Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Fri, 11 Jan 2008

On the nature of fame

For Christmas this last year, I got two DVDs I've been vaguely wanting for a while: seasons 1 and 2 of the Venture Brothers. The show is a fairly smart and tongue-in-cheek cartoon about the adventures of a sort of anti-hero Johnny Quest-like family. Fortunately, for the purposes of this discussion, you don't really need to know anything about it.

I had enjoyed watching the show on TV, back when I was still blowing my $30 a month to the satellite TV company. It was even more enjoyable to be able to watch them again, in order, and back-to-back. Being a professionally produced DVD, they also had a bunch of extra features, including creator commentary.

As is usually the case with these things, they essentially gathered a few of the people involved with the show in a room, started playing the episode in question, and recorded whatever sounds they made as a result. Sometimes these commentaries are really insightful into some aspect of the show, sometimes they're really a waste of time.

I started out kind of annoyed at the commentaries. Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick (the co-creators of the show) are the primary commenters, and they would go frustratingly off-topic as the episode played as an occasionally beguiling distraction in the background. I could hear traffic outside the window, the distinctive clink of Zippo lighters being deployed, and so on. For the second season, they'd mysteriously arranged the microphone so that one of them sat right next to it, and the other sat some distance away, putting the distant one's voice slightly below the level of the quiet episode sound playing underneath.

As I listened more, however, I became increasingly fascinated. These weren't two aloof jerks who thought they were god's gift to cartoons, they were just a couple of guys. At one point, Mike Daisey showed up in a commentary. The same Mike Daisey I visited in his tiny New York basement apartment when I went to New York with Flaming Box of Stuff lo these many years ago. That was really the moment it hit home -- if they lived in Seattle, it was likely that I'd know these guys, and they'd just be, well, guys. With my love of behind-the-scenes-ness, I'd probably even be friends with them.

I started to feel like I knew them. I could picture (particularly with the help of a special features tour of their studio) being in the studio, seeing the stacks of paintings (Doc is a painter who's doing the cartoon thing as a kind of side project, and he seems to be a painter in the same way that I find myself on two wheels -- there's no way to stay away), smelling the cigarette smoke in the air, moving carefully between the unstable piles of clutter. They became just some more people in my life.

In the commentaries, including some with James Urbaniak, the voice of one of the main characters, there's discussion of various blogs they keep. This sent me out to where I quickly rounded them up, and read through them. James in particular is a prolific writer, and has an engaging personal style that, again, brings him close to the reader.

Of course, I don't know them. It's unlikely I ever will (although the thought of begging an introduction through Mike, whom I know only passingly, occurred to me). And that setup, all those words you just ploughed through, are background for my musing: fame is really weird.

A related thing happened to me with, for instance, Bald Faced Lie. I had seen them on stage, heard them on the radio, even seen some of them on local TV. They were larger than life, yet when Sibyl introduced me to them, they were just folks. Really nice folks, and we ended up working together so well that I was a member of the company for the last few years of its existence. I was able to contribute materially to Speechless, which I consider to be the best comedy show, and possibly the best show of all I've ever worked on. Through BFL, I met Bill Radke (whose show Rewind was probably my favorite news-comedy show on the radio) and was one degree away from Bill Nye, a perennial favorite from Almost Live to The Eyes of Nye.

One day, I walked past Bill Nye crossing the street in Pioneer Square. I had a sudden urge to call out, "Oh, hi Bill!" as if we were old friends. I didn't, because, of course, we aren't. I've never actually met him in person before, but I felt like I had.

All of which leads me to say, fame is really weird. It must be a very odd thing to have people recognize you and act all chummy, when you've never met them before. I can't even imagine going to a convention (such as both Doc and Jackson have done) where you're the object of fanboy/fangirl interest. It must be surreal, tiring, and thrilling/terrifying all at the same time.

The only glimpse I've had into this world of fame (of which I want no part, despite my narcissistic ramblings on this petite leaf of the massive tree-of-life we call the Internet) was related to me by Sibyl (ex-girlfriend, and stylist extraordinairre) the last time I got my hair cut.

The topic came up that Jesse (my best friend, and fellow motorcycle nut) and I always seem to come in to get our hair cut at very similar times. In fact, this last time, he and Basil (who was in BFL, also a friend of mine) had crossed paths. Jesse and Basil have met at my parties on many occasions, and they'd struck up a conversation of several minutes before Jesse left. "You know Jesse?" asked Sibyl of Basil. He smiled in a dazzling grin, and said, "I have no idea who that was." Basil does the fame thing pretty well, even if it is only the fame of having a friend in common.

So, Jackson or Doc or James, if your wanderings on the web have mysteriously brought you to this place, hats off on a job well done on the show. Keep up the good work, and stay personable.

Posted at 23:57 permanent link category: /misc


How not to do it

If you would like to be a useful member of the flying community, this may not be a good way to help your fellow pilots. I got a new comment on my 4th of July flight video, which read as follows:

So let's do the math. 500' terrain / obstructions. 1500' Class B. 5 miles from BFI. Flying under SEA final. At least 3 network helo's. Maybe another Police helo or two. And then, flying, watching and operating a camera. Hmmmm. You must be one of those guys setting my TCAS off. I taught out of BFI for years. You're not set to deal with everything. That's why the pros have a pilot & film crew.

This is, in essence, aviatrical condescension. Pull out a bunch of jargon to wow the non-pilots, and end with the implication that I'm not a pro.

Well, good catch, dude. I'm not a pro. I'm also not an idiot. I replied to him in a private message (which is how I would have expected his criticism to arrive at my door, or at least that's the polite expectation), which I won't recount here in all its tedious defense of my professionalism (whether actually a paid professional or not).

Because I'm not an idiot, I was flying the plane while my passenger operated the camera. Because, you know, not an idiot. Implying that I am one in a public forum without all the evidence in front of you (particularly without my having been an idiot in the first place) is a great way to get on my bad side, and not much else.

So, now that that's over, it must be time to eat some ice cream and reprise some Venture Brothers...

(For those keeping score:

Posted at 22:57 permanent link category: /aviation


Weirdest thing

Possibly one of the most reality-jarring moments I've had in recent memory was when I was listening to the radio.

I was happily following along to Marketplace on the local NPR station. Markets, numbers, etc. It's the only way I've ever been able to stomach financial news.

Then, the story ended, and they cut to some quick interstitial music. I felt my face freeze as I tried to identify it -- I knew the melody, but it was... wrong.. somehow.

Then it hit me. They were playing an adaptation of Hong Kong Garden by Siouxsie and the Banshees, for string quartet. Suddenly, I felt, well, not old exactly, but very bizarre, as if reality had skipped a little bit.

A similarly odd moment hit me recently as I was perusing the blog of Jackson Publick (one of the creators of The Venture Brothers, about which more later). Livejournal apparently encourages bloggers to list their current music, and Jackson had listed:

Current Music: "Into the Light" - Siouxsie & The Banshees

Weird. Mostly, it's weird because I never seem to meet other fans of Siouxsie (which is, in part, because I'm not an overt fan, and also, you know, the band's been history for years now). Not that I met Jackson, but reading another person's blog is a bit like meeting them. More on that later, too.

So, of course, now I have to say:

Current Music: "This Wheel's On Fire" - Siouxsie & The Banshees

Posted at 09:37 permanent link category: /misc


Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater