So all you lovely folks going to Dragon*Con just enjoy, have a fun time, and make sure you bring a slicker to wear over your costume because you'll probably just get a "big wet rainstorm," like the folks in that one Daria episode got.
The way the storm track has been going, perhaps it will just boomerang off into the Atlantic and die. Good. After last year the less, the merrier.
Today someone basically gave a name to people like me. I'm a "Rejuvenile." w00h00. Someone's got my number. Someone's been watching me for the past 30 some-odd years. Yeah, Chris Noxon, preach on. You're preaching to the choir here.
A "Rejuvenile" is a person who's supposedly too old for things like toys, comic books, anime, cartoons, fantasy, and so forth, yet doggedly pursues them anyway. A "Rejuvenile" drives around in a cute little car like a Mini or a New Beetle or a Fit or rides a Vespa. A "Rejuvenile" bakes cupcakes or goes to a hip bakery to get them, and washes them down with Producer's Dairy chocolate milk...the stuff with Hopalong Cassidy still emblazoned on the carton. Don't look for it locally here in LA...you have to go to Fresno to find it. A "Rejuvenile" doesn't get together with buddies from the Alma Mater to play nine holes at Riviera, he gets together with his friends and plays kickball.
Is anyone surprised by this?
It seems like the "Rejuvenile" thing got mainstream in the wake of 9/11. I haven't heard official figures but the estimates were that 110,000 to 130,000 people attended San Diego Comic-Con this year. Last year's confirmed total was 104,000 people. It's not just the geeks and the Otakus that have rejoined the ranks of the "Rejuvenile." It's parents with kids and the whole family Cosplays.
What exists for those who are adults in this day and age?
As I wrote to the author of the book Rejuvenile as a response to a post on his blog:
No, I think that people are embracing a second childhood because the terrain of adulthood in the Third Millenium is a scary freaking place, and death is as real and palpable as the images burnt in our brains by the TV news on 9/11/2001 and 8/29/2005. (Hurricane Katrina is the second date for those for whom that date is not burnt into their cerebrums.)
The world is a more dangerous, scary place than it ever has been. Who the hell wants to be an ADULT now? People are looking for comfort wherever they can find it. What's more comfortable than eating cereal out of a box on Saturday Morning in your footies at ungodly-o-clock? What's more comfortable than a chocolate cupcake with rainbow jimmies? What's more comfortable than a pair of Vans' Off-The-Wall skater shoes, jam shorts and a faded old Led Zep T-Shirt?
We are becoming Rejuvenile because we crave what we lost as adults, and what recent history has taken from us. We are becoming Rejuvenile because death indeed lives on our shoulders now. For all of us, not just for Don Juan and Carlos Castaneda.
I am a geek, so much so that my identity online is "Ms. Geek" So many of the current Rejuvenile trends can be traced back to geek/nerd/Otaku tastemaker roots. And before this, to the Fandom that helped make Star Trek an institution and Sci-Fi reading material for a whole generation. Geeks and Otaku and Fannish Folk have always been the disaffected, the ones for whom the "mundane world" seemed colorless and a living tomb. None of us wanted to grow up because dammit, the grown-up world was screwed up. That's what it seemed like from the perspective of someone whose formative years were bookended by Vietnam and the rise of Reagan. And the truth of the matter is that aside from a brief shining moment of Clintonian optimism as the dot-com boom galloped and freedom seemed to be on the move in places like Russia and Eastern Europe, it's gotten worse and worse and worse.
People don't leave Mom and Dad's house because they want to stay there forever, unless you are an Italian male. People live under Mom and Dad's roof here in the States because they can't afford to strike out on their own.
People collect comics and lunchboxes and toys because it's a cheaper thing to collect than antiques and Expressionist paintings. The Rejuvenile lifestyle is not cheap-cheap unless you do things yourself and resist the temptation to blow money on that DVD box set or that Parks Sabers Luke Skywalker replica lightsabre, but it's a more econo lifestyle than others. Bling bling? Ka-ching. It's indulgences that people with lowered expectations and living with the reality of downward mobility can afford.
We know we're mortal. We know it will all be over someday. We dread the end but we dread the period before the end the most: the "assisted living facilities" and worse; the very real possibility of dirt poverty at one's twilight years, of cat food in a Single Room Occupancy hotel room. We know we're going to die and we know we are probably going to have a crappy old age. So why not postpone it all? Why not just cut out the boring, drudgy "adult" years and be a kid until our bodies don't allow us to anymore?
There is a dark reality to which the Rejuvenile lifestyle is a reaction. Does that mean it's dysfunctional? I'd say that people could choose worse and more maladaptive coping mechanisms than this.
The words of Tom Waits, in a song that could be an anthem for the Rejuvenile Nation, say it better than I ever could. Follow the link.
Wow. Where did the freaking summer go?
Tomorrow I'm going to be going to Woodbury at Nine Freaking O'Clock in the freaking morning to attend an orientation for people manning the Woodbury info booth. I'm also going to make it official and bail from Psychobiology. I hate doing that because one of my favorite Woodbury profs is teaching it, but then again it's a 9AM class and I'm simply not a morning person. I won't be able to do anything about it when I'm finally done with college and I have to re-enter the workaday world, but now I can schedule my life in such a way that I don't have to take early classes.
I was partially successful in tidying up the Lab. It's still a cluttered mess but not as bad as it was.
When this interface works, it's really, really nice. Of course, when authentication gets all stuffed up and I can't log in, it stinks. Thanks, Blogger...or at least, I think I'm thankful anyway.
Thanks to the miracle of Craigslist I was able to offload a whole bunch of books I'm not going to need anymore. Au revoir, MCSE study books. Hasta la bye-bye, obsolete computer books. I kept most of my Linux books except for the really old ones. I even kept a compact but informationally dense book on Windows 2000, imagine that.
I still have a pile of books in the front room, but it's much smaller now. The majority of them are old textbooks I didn't part with for any number of reasons.
I haven't been able to get through all of the clutter I have wanted to this Summer. However, I have managed to make some progress. I still wouldn't invite someone here to hang out just yet. But it's getting better.
OK, here's my review.
1.) It's silly but it's not especially campy. The humor is all in the absurdity of the scenario.
2.) It's technically OK but you can definitely tell when a live snake was used in a scene and when CGI snakes were used. The CGI snakes had hints of "video game character" all over them.
3.) Nobody could have pulled this movie off but Samuel L. Jackson. In a lot of respects he's what elevates this above and beyond the schlock barrier. Great acting, with little hints of that good comedic sense he displayed at Comic Con when they did the panel.
4.) The director really got acquainted with Sam Raimi's style of directing when he did this. In fact I think the only person who could have made this better would have been Sam Raimi. Maybe they'll hire him when they do the inevitable sequels from Special Agent Flynn's case file.
5.) If you want a good idea of what you are in for, think the original Poseidon Adventure or the Airport movies instead of Airplane! This is a reboot of the '70s staple, the disaster film, not a spoof. If you've seen any of the originals from the period you'll know what you are looking at.
6.) I'm sure getting Keanu Reeves to portray the surf rat dude would have cost way too much for the budget. But that role was made for him. Maybe he'd be a bit too old for the role by now. In that case, the guy who got the role was just fine.
7.) No matter how prepared you are for the catch phrase, it's still effective. Although in my opinion the best line is actually "Fucking snake! Get off my dick!"
Was it worth the $15 for the both of us? Yeah, it was. Is it high art? Nope. Is it a mythological journey with a universal message? No freaking way. It's just your basic grindhouse disaster movie and if you come looking for anything else you will be disappointed. However, if you come looking for your basic grindhouse disaster movie you will be richly rewarded.
I haven't been able to get to the theatres to see Snakes on a Plane yet, but I'm going tomorrow morning to my local megaplex ('nuff respect for the Mann Plant 16 in Panorama City!) to check it out during the first matinee. My hubby is getting all romantic and telling me to "consider it a date." OK, cool. Lunch and a movie. It's been a while since I've done that.
Of course, the fan action is at Snakes on a Blog. Some folks in Seattle got all Star Wars on it and lined up for SoaP at the Cinerama Theatre, which is owned (like about half of the city) by Paul Allen, formerly of Microsoft.
The movie is also surprisingly keeping a "fresh" profile on Rotten Tomatoes. Usually critics don't like getting shut out of a movie, but a lot of critics seem to be enjoying the movie anyway.
Here's a little bit of fan art I came up with:
Click it to see it in all its glory.
I still want to write a fic where Mace Windu has to deal with an attempt on his life on a starship bound for the tourist paradise planet of Naboo. And of course, the weapon chosen by the still-in-hiding Sith? Snakes. Snakes on a Starship. It's a natural. I took a few whacks at it but I suppose it really does require seeing the movie first. Of course, when it's finished, it'll be linked here.
Until tomorrow...sssssssssssss....
There are some definite quirks about this machine. The specs are actually consistent with an iMac released in Europe, although it came with a plain-Jane slot loading CD-ROM as opposed to a CD-RW like the original spec says. Apple makes educational-only machines from time to time, and they are usually bare-bones affairs.
Now that the upgrades have been done, however, it is a more capable machine. It will get external storage upgrades which will make it even more capable: a DVD-/+RW/RAM drive and an external 120GB hard drive.
This should hold me until I get a MacIntel. I'm hoping to get one as a grad gift in 2007.
Update: here's my desktop. I don't know why I get such perverse pleasure in decorating my desktop but I do.
