Since it’s Friday, and I’m about to spend seven hours in a car, in the rain, heading to North Carolina, I thought it’s a good time for a light-hearted music post that has nothing to do with anything.

It’s no secret these days that video games have some great soundtracks. And although some tremendous scores are coming out in the modern era, it’s not entirely a new development; some of the classics go back 20 years or longer.

Chrono Cross got its North American release in 2000, so I’m on 11 years of thinking the theme is brilliant. So brilliant that I finally got talked into playing the game (JRPGs and I have a spotty and adversarial history) and am about 90 minutes into it so far.

Chrono Cross opening theme

This summer’s hit Bastion became as immediately noted for its soundtrack as for its gameplay and art design. It’s fusion in the broadest sense, being something like cowboy-techno-hip hop-bluegrass. ”Build that Wall (Zia’s theme)” is probably the best, but for speeding up Excel wrangling at ye olde day job, “Spike in a Rail” is the winner.

Bastion OST – Spike in a Rail

In “I like men’s choirs, string bass, percussion and 6/8″ news (see also: how I fell in love with Battlestar Galactica), there’s Halo, which is terrific fun to listen to (again, good for motoring through mundane desk-work tasks or even washing dishes!) even though I don’t have an XBox and haven’t personally played any version of it since 2002.

Halo main theme (orchestrated)

And last, but not least, “Terra’s theme” from Final Fantasy VI. It makes a really fantastic wedding prelude on piano. If you happen to be a gamer nerd marrying another gamer nerd two years ago this week. Such as. (It was his idea. I just found the sheet music.)

Terra’s Theme

That’s four out of, oh, hundreds. Maybe thousands. I’m sure a few more favorites in the comments wouldn’t be amiss?  ;)

Thanks again to Alyssa for welcoming me into her space this week; I’ve had fun bringing game chats to the progressive pop culture crew over here.

New York Comic Con has apparently not cottoned to the idea that if you want journalists to file lots of frantic reports about how awesome your events are, it would be good to provide free wifi to journalists, and to make sure that it works in the press room. So I will have more extensive interviews and thoughts up on Monday.

But I just got out of a preview screening of an upcoming PBS documentary about superheroes, The Never-Ending Battle, which though it’s not done and won’t air until 2013 , looks like it’ll be just terrific. The first thing that struck me about it is that it’s very, very funny. As one member of the audience pointed out, movies about superheroes and superhero culture can be pretty self-righteous. So it’s pretty funny to see Joe Simon reading the dialogue describing Steve Rogers’ transformation from mouse to all-American hunk of man and cracking up at how ridiculous it is, or seeing his notes about how Steve needs a sidekick because otherwise he’ll end up talking to himself and sounding crazy.

And it’s also got some interesting demographic information about comics readership. During World War II, literally half the population, 70 million people, were reading comic books. I’d knew the numbers were high, but I didn’t know they had that kind of penetration, most of which I’d have to guess were due to the fact that superheroes were fighting the same war Americans were, and it was a war where people could feel unironically good about seeing mayhem perpetrated on the bad guys. Michael Chabon suggests in the documentary that G.I.s, in particular, wanted to read comics, but not superhero comics, because the superheroes didn’t seem relevant without a world war.

The other thing that surprised me, and which is directly relevant to a lot of the debates we have about comics today. In 1940, when Robin was created, 90 percent of American girls had read a comic book. Given that the dominant assumption of the mainstream comics industry today seems to be that women are not a viable major audience, this is an especially sad comedown. And it makes the tremendous vitriol that’s being spewed at women like Comics Alliance editor-in-chief Laura Hudson, a primary advocate for better representations of women in comics, even sadder. The violent reaction to the idea that the comics industry might want to produce comics women might actually want to read speaks to an infantile fear of women that represents the worst of comics fans, not the best.

Joe Simon reading the dialogue

He was our connection to that action

70 million americans read comics during world war II. Outsold the Saturday evening post.

By Tyler Lewis

I’ve been thinking a lot about Alyssa’s really thoughtful post about how to get majority audiences to watch movies and shows about minorities and their experiences.

I cycled through the usual “as long as it’s not too black, white folks might show up” and “the ‘gayer’ and more desexualized the gay character seems, the more comfortable straight folks will be watching that character” thoughts. Yup, all of that. And I quickly got bored.

We can talk forever about how to make “black experiences” more “universal” or about making gay people as boring as straight people so they can be “normalized,” but the truth is all we are doing when we have that conversation is reinforcing the majority’s cultural hegemony. I don’t actually think it gets us to the goal of an integrated, diverse society. It’s great for assimilation though. I’m not, personally, so interested in that.

In truth, majority audiences need to be made uncomfortable, they need their assumptions about minorities challenged, and they need to step outside of their own narrow experiences and consume stuff that they may not understand. Sure, we need to emphasize how we are all human and are essentially the same, but we also have to challenge the tendency to deem difference as bad, dangerous, or threatening without asking that difference be erased or eliminated.

But there is also part of me that just doesn’t really give a damn if majority audiences consume minority cultural products. What I really care about is the fact that the majority’s narrow consumption affects what minorities get to consume.

Our communications infrastructure has become so consolidated that there is no way for a multinational telecommunications conglomerate to make any money on something that only appeals to 13 percent of the population and has zero international appeal. So no more black shows on network television. No more $15 million black romantic comedies. No more $20 million gay coming of age stories. Or, if we want to be generous, fewer.

The conversation we need to have is one in which minorities think about what kinds of economic models will make it possible for them to make cultural products for themselves and about the way we’d have to redefine what success means in order to do that. This might actually be something we could do more quickly than trying to get majority audiences to broaden their consumption.

I’m still quietly recovering from the Red Sox collapse (by which I mean anesthetizing myself with Patriots football), but this devastating analysis of the team’s disintegration reveals some astonishing class politics, and some ridiculous team management policies. And this bit comes after the players throw a temper tantrum about rescheduling a game, to which management responds by buying all the players $300 headphones and giving them a trip on a yacht:

Drinking beer in the Sox clubhouse is permissible. So is ordering take-out chicken and biscuits. Playing video games on one of the clubhouse’s flat-screen televisions is OK, too. But for the Sox pitching trio to do all three during games, rather than show solidarity with their teammates in the dugout, violated an unwritten rule that players support each other, especially in times of crisis.

Sources said Beckett, Lester, and Lackey, who were joined at times by Buchholz, began the practice late in 2010. The pitchers not only continued the routine this year, sources said, but they joined a number of teammates in cutting back on their exercise regimens despite appeals from the team’s strength and conditioning coach Dave Page.

“It’s hard for a guy making $80,000 to tell a $15 million pitcher he needs to get off his butt and do some work,’’ one source said.

For Beckett, Lester, and Lackey, the consequences were apparent as their body fat appeared to increase and pitching skills eroded. When the team needed them in September, they posted a combined 2-7 record with a 6.45 earned run average, the Sox losing 11 of their 15 starts.

First, I’m all for the idea that athletes need some special treatment to do their jobs correctly. Their bodies go through a lot. Massage tubs and sideline oxygen and fancy doctors may seem like luxuries to a lot of folks, but they’re a business investment for teams and they make sense for those of us who want to see these guys on their respective fields of play day after day and week after week.

But you know what? It is not such a terrible hardship to wait until you get home from your amazingly well-compensated job to have a beer, or to treat yourself to some Popeye’s. I’m more ambivalent about the video games — there are such things as rain delays, and I understand that at some point, there just might not be more video you can review, and video games are a decent way to kill time. But letting your stars do things that are actively harmful to their performance while they’re being paid to perform their duties seems pretty epically indulgent. We do, after all, live in a world where teams sometimes run through their entire roster of pitchers and end up with Jose Canseco on the mound. Drinking beer and eating chicken during games is in total violation of the Girl Scout rules about being prepared.

And it’s pretty embarrassing to see these players blow off their strength and conditioning coach. I respect the right of players to seek alternate opinions, especially on medical concerns. As much as I may have been annoyed by Jacoby Ellsbury’s behavior last year, if the guy really thought the alternate medical opinions he was getting gave him a better chance of succeeding in the future, I have to respect that, especially given the season he had this year. But to just straight blow off your strength and conditioning coach, who is, after all, hired to help you do your job better, especially if, as that quote implies, you’re pulling salary rank on him, is pretty disgraceful. I don’t really expect athletes to be classy people, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not worth pointing it out when they behave badly. I love Fenway, but after this, I’m tempted to shift my ticket money to the team’s affiliates in Pawtucket and Lowell, where the players appear to have some actual investment in succeeding, and there are sumo suit fights in between innings.

This post contains spoilers through the Oct. 13 episode of Community.

I feel bad that Alyssa doesn’t get to write this Community recap, because I’m sure she will delight in both the use of the alternative timelines and the character development this week’s storytelling device allows for. Alternative timelines let us learn how characters would react in certain circumstances without them actually having to experience them — I still love thinking about how Captain Janeway’s grit and determination was tested in the “Year of Hell” that never actually happened. In the case of Community, it gave the writers a chance to catch up on the character development that seemed lacking in the first three episodes, resolve the tension that was apparent in last week’s “mean clique,” and lay some groundwork for the characters to evolve in forthcoming episodes.

Every character grew or at least demonstrated potential for growth. Pierce showed he was capable of compassion (or at least not being vindictive, which is a step up for him). Annie is still insecure, but taking steps to handle her problems. Shirley doesn’t need to buy the group’s love with baking if she just dances along. Britta is a bit lost, but apparently quite a good listener — and she is taking that psychology course this semester. Troy is learning he needs to grow up if he no longer wants to feel like the little kid Jeff picks on. Abed proved with both his fake invitation and swipe of the die that he can foil Jeff’s authoritarian parenting of the group, and Jeff likewise learned that stepping back and not trying to control the situation can have positive results. Pierce even made that jab about Jeff’s father, so the writers haven’t forgotten there are issues that still need explored in that department. I’d argue that after three episodes of unsure footing, “Remedial Chaos Theory” proves that Community knows its characters incredibly well and is ready to take them new places that make sense. Read more

This post contains spoilers through “Day 2″ of Neal Stephenson’s Reamde. Feel free to spoil beyond that, but please label comments as such. For next week, lets read “Day 3″ and “Day 4.”

One of the things that I like best about this book, which, though I think so far is definitely not Stephenson’s best or most audacious, and in fact, really feels like a parody of Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum (which is a really fun, useful thing to do, but not what I’d expected), I’m enjoying in a propulsive kind of way, is how it handles relationships between the genders. It’s not so much that they’re realistic, or even aggressively subversive. But I really appreciate — even though it may be as much a fantasy for me as the Frat Pack movies are for men — that the main object of a great deal of chivalry is a nerdy Eritrean refugee who knows more about video games that her ex-boyfriend and builds realistic Eritrean deserts in a fictional world.

First, there’s Sokolov’s entrance, which I’ll get back to in a minute and from his perspective:

Over Zula, he made a bit of a fuss, because he was that kind of guy. It didn’t matter why he was here, what sort of business he had come to transact. Women just had to be treated in an altogether different way from men; the presence of a single woman in the room changed everything. He kissed her hand. He apologized for the trouble. He exclaimed over her beauty. He insisted that she make herself comfortable. He inquired, several times, whether the temperature in the room was not too chilly for a “beautiful African” and whether he might send one of his minions out to fetch her some hot coffee. All of this with meaningful glances at Peter, whose manners came off quite poorly by comparison.

This is all sort of funny and horrible and slightly off as well as being charming, because Sokolov is in the midst of an operation that is murdering someone Zula’s been working with, calling her a “beautiful African” is kind of creepy and reductionist, and part of this chivalry ends up being a ploy to drug Zula and put her on a private jet bound for China. But at the same time, there’s something genuine to it, something that’s not exclusive to Sokolov. We already know that Richard has gone to extreme lengths to keep Zula protected. Peter’s gotten them into this horrible mess because he wants to hang on Zula. Sokolov brings her flowers along with the coffee, which is totally unnecessary. And then, they’re joined by a hunky but vulnerable Hungarian who, when he meets Zula, who goes in for a handshake, “bent forward and kissed it, not in an arch way, but as if hand kissing were a wholly routine procedure for him.”
Read more

by Tyler Lewis

Earlier this week, when I watched the independent black gay film, Finding Me: Truth, (which can be streamed, along with the first Finding Me film, for about $4 on TLAvideo.com) I was struck by how director Roger S. Omeus constructed the Greg character – the protagonist’s bisexual best friend.

There are so few images of bisexual men in popular culture – and in black pop, culture bisexuality is usually constructed as the predatory, deceitful “DL” man – that it’s actually a pretty revolutionary occurrence for a bisexual black male character to be a prominent, fairly well-developed, character in a feature film.

Greg is pretty openly bisexual. All of his friends know he’s bisexual and he never once seems tortured or run down by his sexuality. But Greg is presented as greedy, as wanting to have too much, so he dates a man and sleeps with a woman on the side. It’s kinda lame and predictable that he isn’t honest with both of his partners or that the film wastes an opportunity to acknowledge or reference societal pressure. Greg’s just deceitful because that’s who he is. That feels too easy.

Ultimately, Greg’s story doesn’t really help us rethink our assumptions about what bisexuality is. And perhaps that’s because its fluidity is very hard to actually live in a day-to-day way. Do you construct a story where the character dates a man and a woman in succession in order to convey bisexuality? Or show a character dating men and women concurrently, but without lying to them?

I don’t know the answer, but it’ll be interesting to see how other filmmakers address this challenge.

If you like marriage equality, Jane Espenson, or me, and are at New York Comic Con today, you can have all three at once. I’m going to be moderating the panel on Husbands, Jane’s terrific new marriage equality web series, with Jane and the stars of the show at 12:15 p.m. in room 1A24. And some folks had asked if there was going to be a blog meetup at New York Comic Con, so I guess this can serve? Whether you come to the panel or not, if you meet me at the room after, we can grab a collective coffee.

This post contains spoilers through the Oct. 13 episode of Parks and Recreation.

Here’s the thing about Parks and Recreation: the show manages to be sweet without losing its ridiculous humor or becoming too schmaltzy. The situations may be surreal and over the top, but Leslie looking out for Ron while Tom and Donna decide to take Ben with them for a day of relaxation comes across as nice friendships that lend themselves to the ridiculous humor (like Ben crying to Tom and Donna’s horror).

When the episode started out with Ron leading the boys-only troop of Pawnee’s local version of the Boy Scouts, the Pawnee Rangers, I thought no good could come of this. We’ve seen how much of a wilderness man Ron is, so I figured his camping trips wouldn’t be anything like Leslie’s. And she of course had her own girls’ troop, the Pawnee Goddesses, which she had started when a girl was banned from joining the boys-only Rangers five years prior. And both groups were going camping together. Much to Ron’s displeasure, Leslie had constant activities for the girls and a full spread of international food. (His boys had cans of beans and nothing to do besides not get killed.) It’s really no surprise that one boy wanted to defect to the girls side, leading to Leslie’s mini-me Goddesses suggesting a public forum to debate about why they had a girls-only group. The girls pulled out Brown v. Board and separate education of the sexes while debating the separate clubs. The boys’ argument? “You get candy. I want candy.” Mutual love of puppies finally ended the debate, and the boys became Goddesses while Ron sat outside alone. “You were right, by the way — your group is better,” he told Leslie when she came out to check on him. But when they got back, Leslie put an ad in the paper for a new group — the Swansons, a tough group for those who hate video games. And dare I say Ron actually looked happy once those kids were happily following his orders to build a trench.

Meanwhile, it was Tom and Donna’s “Treat Yourself” day where they treat themselves to whatever they want. Donna noticed that Ben had been down — “He’s like a skinny little rubber band who needs a day off,” she tells Tom — so when they see him alone on a bench eating lunch, they bring him with them for their day of pampering. He can’t relax during his acupuncture treatment and only buys a pair of white socks before Tom figures out that Ben’s version of treating himself is very different than theirs. Ben’s version apparently includes buying a Batman suit. While still wearing the Batman costume, he explains to Tom and Donna later at the mall that he had been seeing someone but now it was over and he wasn’t sure what was keeping him in Pawnee. I hope what keeps him in the town is a new friendship with Tom because between this episode and Ben helping with Tom’s business Entertainment 720, I’m starting to like them together.

And then there was Jerry left alone in the office, who decides to get lunch with his daughter when Chris says he needs more rest. Once Chris meets Jerry’s gorgeous daughter, he joins them for lunch, which leads to Chris later explaining to Jerry how he will go about wooing his Jerry’s daughter. Jerry just tells Chris to go for it. However, judging from his shocked face at the end, I’m positive Jerry did not want Chris to give him as full of a recap of the date as he did.

All in all, I liked that this episode got away from just being about Leslie’s campaign for city council. I loved Ron’s explanation of how he just didn’t understand kids even though he’s the Rangers’ leader, and any episode that ends with Ben dressed in a Batman costume at home fixing the Internet is just going to make me laugh.