I just spent the afternoon watching PAUL MCCARTNEY LIVE IN HYDE PARK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG
How much more cool does it get? Yeah yeah yeah... Sting. Matti. ...not the point. I just lamented the loss of printed compendiums because you can't "feel" the world. But Paul played to a great crowd who chose him over the World Cup. And I got to watch it live. Singing with the crowd. Crying with the happy and absolutely tickled that life is good enough for the whole world to watch if it wants to. This is what the Internets can do for you.
Youtube hosted with twitter. So just like all of us who got together over the Spiner fic thing last year, we got to watch and comment together; people all over the world. It was amazing. I wonder if concerts could go that route in the future.
hmmm...
Showing posts with label Spiner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spiner. Show all posts
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Monday, May 4, 2009
he boldy went
My mom was born in 1929. She was raised on the radio programs and Saturday serials at the movies and was a Hollywoodphile. Aside from a traumatic WWII event, her fondest recollections of her youth were the hours her family spent in front of the radio and at the Fox theater.
They listened to everything from Fibber McGee and Molly to the Shadow. Abbot and Costello met and frustrated everyone. The programs she loved best allowed the imagination to fill in the gaps between dialog and exposition. Well, the noir mysteries tended to tell you what color the blonde's hair was. I know- duh. Anyway, the imagination was the hook. Mom said she thought of herself as more of a co-creator than a listener. This might account for her very annoying tendency to accurately "predict" plot twists in the soaps we watched. As I think back on the saga Brent Spiner wove over the course of the last month, I realized that his twitfiction shares similar characteristics with those early radio dramas my mom loved.
First it depended on brief, evocative description to move the plot. Second, he used dialect to color the characters dialog. Third, the secondary characters were built successfully upon stereotypes, updated for modern audiences as seen in Monty the bumbling actors agent. Monty is still an agent, but of a different stripe than the bumbling FBI/revenuers/sheriffs of my mother's time. Production style is not the only similarity.
The audience response, as seen in the real time feed, was similar. The audience has some ownership. This, in part, is due to the close identification the audience, already Spiner fans, has with his previous screen incarnations. The trend in modern screenwriting to reference common pop culture icons to give characters more connection to the audience adds to this feeling of ownership or co-creatorship with Spiner. Bogie, to the best of my knowledge, didn't reference the Maltese Falcon in Casablanca or any of his other movies. And no where in the Wizard of Oz do the characters reference Bogie. It wasn't done back then. Similar to my mother's time, is the audience chatter amongst themselves.
What is different, as I said in the first review, is the immediacy of internet connections and the real time (pacific) updates free of time slot constrictions. Spiner posted whenever it was convenient for the story as oppsed to being convenient for a network. My mother and her girlfriends did the same Monday morning "Oh my God, did you_" that me and my friends did in highschool with only 3 TV networks. That was only if they did not gather at someone's house to listen as a party. With the internet, all 300 thousand of us could follow instantly, chat amongst ourselves instantly and give the author/director/actor feedback instantly.
My mother would be uncomfortable with the physicality of this technological age. But I think she would have loved to be able to participate with the star. Of course, knowing mom, Brent Spiner would have had to wear out the block button to get her to stop spoiling the surprises. Of all the Star Trek I have ever watched in my life, Next Generation was the only thing my mom kinda got and Data, the realization of early sci-fi writers' dreams, was the only character my mom actually liked. Public Radio, to some extent, keeps this radio drama tradition alive with Prairie Home Companion and This American Life. But it is the immediacy unknown is old time radio style drama that, if even for a moment, would have made Spiner her hero for life.
They listened to everything from Fibber McGee and Molly to the Shadow. Abbot and Costello met and frustrated everyone. The programs she loved best allowed the imagination to fill in the gaps between dialog and exposition. Well, the noir mysteries tended to tell you what color the blonde's hair was. I know- duh. Anyway, the imagination was the hook. Mom said she thought of herself as more of a co-creator than a listener. This might account for her very annoying tendency to accurately "predict" plot twists in the soaps we watched. As I think back on the saga Brent Spiner wove over the course of the last month, I realized that his twitfiction shares similar characteristics with those early radio dramas my mom loved.
First it depended on brief, evocative description to move the plot. Second, he used dialect to color the characters dialog. Third, the secondary characters were built successfully upon stereotypes, updated for modern audiences as seen in Monty the bumbling actors agent. Monty is still an agent, but of a different stripe than the bumbling FBI/revenuers/sheriffs of my mother's time. Production style is not the only similarity.
The audience response, as seen in the real time feed, was similar. The audience has some ownership. This, in part, is due to the close identification the audience, already Spiner fans, has with his previous screen incarnations. The trend in modern screenwriting to reference common pop culture icons to give characters more connection to the audience adds to this feeling of ownership or co-creatorship with Spiner. Bogie, to the best of my knowledge, didn't reference the Maltese Falcon in Casablanca or any of his other movies. And no where in the Wizard of Oz do the characters reference Bogie. It wasn't done back then. Similar to my mother's time, is the audience chatter amongst themselves.
What is different, as I said in the first review, is the immediacy of internet connections and the real time (pacific) updates free of time slot constrictions. Spiner posted whenever it was convenient for the story as oppsed to being convenient for a network. My mother and her girlfriends did the same Monday morning "Oh my God, did you_" that me and my friends did in highschool with only 3 TV networks. That was only if they did not gather at someone's house to listen as a party. With the internet, all 300 thousand of us could follow instantly, chat amongst ourselves instantly and give the author/director/actor feedback instantly.
My mother would be uncomfortable with the physicality of this technological age. But I think she would have loved to be able to participate with the star. Of course, knowing mom, Brent Spiner would have had to wear out the block button to get her to stop spoiling the surprises. Of all the Star Trek I have ever watched in my life, Next Generation was the only thing my mom kinda got and Data, the realization of early sci-fi writers' dreams, was the only character my mom actually liked. Public Radio, to some extent, keeps this radio drama tradition alive with Prairie Home Companion and This American Life. But it is the immediacy unknown is old time radio style drama that, if even for a moment, would have made Spiner her hero for life.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
still going
Spiner saga is still going. On the run, blaming Data for the daring do... this is still entertaining. The audience is still captivated and we are growing a community of Spiner watchers. If I were not participating in this as it happens I would not believe it possible.
Oh technology, what have you wrought for good or evil and... can I have some more?
Oh technology, what have you wrought for good or evil and... can I have some more?
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
boldly going somewhere
Since the middle of March I've been following Brent Spiner on Twitter. Trekkies know him as Lieutenant Commander Data, a Soong type android serving aboard the Enterprise. At first I was following because I was already following Wil Wheaton. They had a dialog between them that all of us Hollywood outsiders could eavesdrop on. They totally sounded normal and geeky in a famous people way. Spiner had just finished "Man from LaMancha" & auctioning his 500th tweet. Then things got strange.
Wondering how to jump start/restart/reboot his career he put himself into an imaginary world only two steps into the pale beyond the reality that we know. Spiner pulled a Serling and went somewhere dark and desperate that could have been real. After only a few posts I was hooked. I've been obsessively signing into Twitter to see where we were going with him. In turns humorous, poignant and puzzling, Spiner's saga was always captivating with its minimalism. Twitter only allows post of 140 characters at a time. Thus an author must be evocative, making the most of this stringent limit.
Spiner gives us dialog, direction and emotion in each post. For a while it seemed as though he were living the life any actor uncertain of his future and frustrated with his agent would live. Events of his life seemed to unfold with the steady pacing each of us see in our lives, a convincing reality where nothing but everything could happen. After the initial joke about kick starting his career with an unnecessary rehab stint and ping pong with James Woods, days ticked away with the kind of everyman updates we had become accustomed to with Wheaton.
But if you know anything about his life you would have to wonder why there were no more posts about events with his son. And why didn't he mention the home cooked dinner Gates McFadden made for the next Generation family as reported by LeVar Burton? The plot isn't interrupted with his Denver convention experience of last week. If there was ever a doubt that he was writing fiction on Twitter these omissions remove all doubt.
Because his tweets were infrequent, irregular and organic his fiction had the feeling of reality. This might account for the confusion among his followers that manifested in a flurry of replies to Spiner's twitterstream on Sunday. The plot twisted. I started thinking.
What makes this so compelling? What does this experimental medium mean for fiction? And the answer is surprising: the audience. Spiner's readership can do with Twitter something that no audience has been able to do before. That is that they can make the author aware of their thoughts as the story is being written. This medium offers opportunity for critique, commentary and community in realtime. In the past an author had to wait for a story to be published to find out how it is recieved through reviews and placement on the New York Times Bestseller List or the dread booksigning. In the past a book club or the book signing was the only way that the audience connected with each other. This is no longer true.
The audience can critque the work in progress, within seconds of the words being printed. And they do, with color and intensity. For the first time in history the author can "hear" the audience's commentary. The audience can tell the scary movie character not to open the door; or in Spiner's case we were yelling at him to get out while the getting was good. I believe I encouraged him to run for his life. I only hope I neglected to add that the Tasmanian Devil was on the lose. Of course just because the author/actor can hear us doesn't mean they listen any better than the canned actors. But the comments are varied and do go off on tangents. The author got to see what was going through the audiences' mind. Fortunately, our author is used to dealing with strange new worlds and packs a phaser... just in case. The author can also see how and why the audience connects. In this case it is obviously the Star Trek stuff. As this is the first time anyone has written a novel/treatment/script using Twitter (that I know off) it is hard to say exactly how this will all play out.
As for what it means for fiction, I can't say. I fear what it says for performance art is the same thing that VHS movies said to the cinema: everyday is casual Friday. I hope that people going to see live performances of any kind remember that they aren't supposed to interact with the cast on stage and that the place to make friends is not in their seats while they are watching but in the cafe afterwards.
In general this has been a fun ride. As of this post it is not over. There is the conclusion yet. Will he? Won't he? I don't know. All I know is that Earl Stanley Gardner would have thrown the book at the audience instead of the defendents on the witness stand.
Wondering how to jump start/restart/reboot his career he put himself into an imaginary world only two steps into the pale beyond the reality that we know. Spiner pulled a Serling and went somewhere dark and desperate that could have been real. After only a few posts I was hooked. I've been obsessively signing into Twitter to see where we were going with him. In turns humorous, poignant and puzzling, Spiner's saga was always captivating with its minimalism. Twitter only allows post of 140 characters at a time. Thus an author must be evocative, making the most of this stringent limit.
Spiner gives us dialog, direction and emotion in each post. For a while it seemed as though he were living the life any actor uncertain of his future and frustrated with his agent would live. Events of his life seemed to unfold with the steady pacing each of us see in our lives, a convincing reality where nothing but everything could happen. After the initial joke about kick starting his career with an unnecessary rehab stint and ping pong with James Woods, days ticked away with the kind of everyman updates we had become accustomed to with Wheaton.
But if you know anything about his life you would have to wonder why there were no more posts about events with his son. And why didn't he mention the home cooked dinner Gates McFadden made for the next Generation family as reported by LeVar Burton? The plot isn't interrupted with his Denver convention experience of last week. If there was ever a doubt that he was writing fiction on Twitter these omissions remove all doubt.
Because his tweets were infrequent, irregular and organic his fiction had the feeling of reality. This might account for the confusion among his followers that manifested in a flurry of replies to Spiner's twitterstream on Sunday. The plot twisted. I started thinking.
What makes this so compelling? What does this experimental medium mean for fiction? And the answer is surprising: the audience. Spiner's readership can do with Twitter something that no audience has been able to do before. That is that they can make the author aware of their thoughts as the story is being written. This medium offers opportunity for critique, commentary and community in realtime. In the past an author had to wait for a story to be published to find out how it is recieved through reviews and placement on the New York Times Bestseller List or the dread booksigning. In the past a book club or the book signing was the only way that the audience connected with each other. This is no longer true.
The audience can critque the work in progress, within seconds of the words being printed. And they do, with color and intensity. For the first time in history the author can "hear" the audience's commentary. The audience can tell the scary movie character not to open the door; or in Spiner's case we were yelling at him to get out while the getting was good. I believe I encouraged him to run for his life. I only hope I neglected to add that the Tasmanian Devil was on the lose. Of course just because the author/actor can hear us doesn't mean they listen any better than the canned actors. But the comments are varied and do go off on tangents. The author got to see what was going through the audiences' mind. Fortunately, our author is used to dealing with strange new worlds and packs a phaser... just in case. The author can also see how and why the audience connects. In this case it is obviously the Star Trek stuff. As this is the first time anyone has written a novel/treatment/script using Twitter (that I know off) it is hard to say exactly how this will all play out.
As for what it means for fiction, I can't say. I fear what it says for performance art is the same thing that VHS movies said to the cinema: everyday is casual Friday. I hope that people going to see live performances of any kind remember that they aren't supposed to interact with the cast on stage and that the place to make friends is not in their seats while they are watching but in the cafe afterwards.
In general this has been a fun ride. As of this post it is not over. There is the conclusion yet. Will he? Won't he? I don't know. All I know is that Earl Stanley Gardner would have thrown the book at the audience instead of the defendents on the witness stand.
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