The Critic's Nightmare

I came to a realization last weekend while I sat in the audience and watched a concert given by the Louisville Winds*, of which my youngest plays in.

It was a pops oriented concert with a lot of standard wind ensemble fare --John Williams soundtracks mixed in with arrangements of some older popular tunes-- and then this made an appearance:

Oh yes. 

MacArthur Park, that song written by Jimmy "Wichita Lineman" Webb that Richard Harris sung in 1968.

I'm being generous when I say it's a song, because to a lot of people --myself included-- that song feels like so much pretentious bullshit. 

While introducing the piece, the Winds' music director admitted that the song has its detractors, but she programmed it anyway. And much to my chagrin while the Winds played, there were people humming along or softly singing the lyrics. Including my wife.** 

Okay, I thought, I'm going to have to re-evaluate a few things.

I got on good ol' Google and punched in the "is MacArthur Park one of the worst songs" query, and got a Wikipedia link to an aggregate list of songs across the decades that groups have considered "the worst songs ever". Among the songs on that list were:

Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da by The Beatles

True by Spandau Ballet

Sussudio by Phil Collins

Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice

What's Up? by 4 Non Blondes

Barbie Girl by Aqua

Nookie by Limp Bizkit

You're Beautiful by James Blunt

Rockstar by Nickelback

Yummy by Justin Bieber

and of course MacArthur Park.

What, no Bee Gees? No Kajagoogoo?

I sighed and listened once more to Richard Harris' rendition of MacArthur Park, searching for why that song resonated with so many people. 

To be fair, you can tell the song was written and orchestrated with an American Musical in mind. Richard Harris had just starred in movie version of Camelot, so he was used to singing in that manner, as can be seen with his rendition of Camelot on the Ed Sullivan show:

And yes, the orchestration of MacArthur Park is overdone in a way that would resurface years later in The Grateful Dead's Terrapin Station, and an orchestration that according to the liner notes of The Best of the Grateful Dead CD the band hated.

So I could see how it pushed all the right buttons at the right time which catapulted the song into global popularity, but to a lot of people --including me-- the song is just pretentious bullshit.

***

And THAT was when it hit me: ALL music is just pretentious bullshit to somebody.

It's more a matter of the reality being that you can't please everybody, so what one person loves another person hates. Sometimes popularity breeds contempt, such as how Toto's Africa was so overplayed in the early 80s that I simply couldn't listen to it for well over a decade.*** Other times a generation came of age hating that what the previous generation liked, such as how those of us who lived through Disco as kids grew up despising the stuff, yet the generation after us was quite okay with Disco.****

Even some of our generation came out as being fine with Disco. Such as the Foo Fighters.

I guess I should have known better, since after all I'm a huge Rush fan. Rush is one of those bands that had a cult following, yet were frequently dissed by the major music critics of the day. 

So that I liked a band that was often overlooked or dissed by the music tastemakers should have given me the clue that it's okay to like something other people don't, and that maybe songs or bands I don't like do have some merit after all. 

***

Yes, I can roll this back to gaming... and pretty much everywhere. Outrage and dismissiveness brings eyeballs to whatever you're opining about, and in this modern internet world the concept of shades of gray seems to frequently get thrown out the window. 

This little revelation is just a corollary to the black and white we paint ourselves into, because it's so much easier to view things through that lens rather than actually use our noggin and understand the shades of gray***** that life is populated with. 

From XKCD #2184.

*A community driven wind ensemble in Louisville (naturally), composed of people from high schoolers up through retirees. It's not affiliated with the University of Louisville, but several students in the School of Music play in the Winds and that's how my youngest found out about it.

**I knew she liked the song, but I figured she was an outlier.

***And in the strange case of deja vu, Weezer's rendition had the same fate. Good thing I don't listen to the radio that much these days or I'd have been driven crazy by the same song twice in my lifetime.

****My wife and I were at a wedding in the late 90s, and one of the people at our table at the reception worked as a DJ in his spare time. When Stayin' Alive came on during the reception, we watched in stunned amazement as all of these teenagers flooded the dance floor. "Oh yes," our table-mate informed us, "the teenagers all love this disco crap. I put on Disco Inferno on request once, and all of these big high school football players ran out onto the floor and were boogieing away, doing the Saturday Night Fever dances."

*****Or the 50 Shades of Grey. /rimshot

Meme Monday: Outdoor Memes

As Monday is Memorial Day, the unofficial start of Summer here in the US, I figured that it'd be a good idea to mix RPGs, video games, and the outdoors. Because.... why not?

Having done a bit of hiking,
I can attest to watching where
you're going. From 9GAG.

Seriously.
From Pinterest.

Time to embark on that
great adventure...
From fyxt.

And for those that need to go
outside a bit more...
From imgflip.

Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life

Another six months have passed, and I figured I ought to check in with an update as to how ol' Red is doing.

I had a checkup in April with my Cardiologist and in early May with my primary care physician, and both were pleased with my progress. I've maintained a steady weight* and exercise, and my shoulder and knee are behaving themselves. My physician wants me to begin adjusting my medication so I can start weaning myself off of the insulin, and now that my son's graduation is finished I intend to start that process. 

Of course, my medications occasionally kick me in the ass and I end up spending the night in the bathroom, but considering the alternative I'm okay with this side effect.

Hey, I take that drug!
From ifunny.co.

***

So.

Let's talk about the rest of it all.

It's been a year and a half since my life has been upended, and while physically I've done quite well --my body's stubborn inability to push past this weight I've been stuck at for 8-9 months notwithstanding-- my brain is finally realizing that this is going to be my situation for the rest of my life. I could cope quite easily with that first year, because I had to spend time learning how to deal with my new condition and being hyper vigilant to any changes. Now that I have more than a full year's cycle under my belt, I'm starting to unclench a bit, but that has also allowed the enormity of the situation I'm in to seep into my consciousness. 

I suppose it's not a great surprise, then, that people with chronic health conditions such as Type 2 Diabetes and Hypertension are at greater risk for depression. 

And I completely understand this, even before mental issues kicked my ass. Trust me on this one.

I'd be foolish to not admit that my bout of congestive heart failure has also taken a mental toll on me, with the long term survival rate of people with congestive heart failure having an on average a 10 year survival rate of 35%. On the bright side, the younger a person is who has had a bout of CHF the greater the chance of long term survival. So my having congestive heart failure at age 52, being less than age 65, works in my favor. Kinda sorta, but I feel like it all evens out in the end; people who are over 65 might not live that long but if you're under 65 you do but that gets you caught up, age-wise, to about the same age as the over 65 person kicking the bucket. For example, someone aged 55 has a better chance of survival and they live another 20 years, that gets them to 75. Then, someone aged 65 lives only 10 years and they live until age... 75. 

So, like someone who is diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, I do have a time limit on my lifespan. It's not a question of if, but when.**

All of that knowledge doesn't exactly help with this:

Uh... Thanks, I think. But is the Sindorei
the person I'm supposed to have a fling with?
Knowing Elves, I'm pretty sure she's NOT
younger than me. (From this Etsy site.
I'm seriously impressed.)

Yeah, helluva time to have a midlife crisis. Although I suppose you could argue that it might not be a mid-life crisis but a full blown "rest of your life" crisis.

"You have my axe..."
From 9GAG.

As I pointed out in the links above, this is not an unusual situation to be in. And I totally understand that. That doesn't exactly make things easier, but it makes it understandable. From there, I can cope.

In a bizarre way, playing WoW Classic Era has been a panacea because I don't have to worry about any external pressure to perform to a standard that I can't maintain without a lot of effort. (If at all.) Without any existential fear of letting the raid down --or worse, getting "The Talk"-- I can at least hang out and just be me for a while.

Not you again.

Okay, I'll pretend to be someone else for a while. Happy now, Card?

Anyway, I now have yet another thing to keep track of going forward. Barring any other surprises, however, my cardiologist expects to see me on a yearly basis, and my primary care physician concurs. Carry on carrying on, I suppose.

*Occasionally my weight drifts upward, and an extra diuretic pill takes care of that. Before you ask, yes, my Cardiologist told me to do that if I have weight gain without any changes to my diet or exercise, and that excess water will get flushed out. It's only if that isn't working then I'm to give her a call.

**Okay, we all have a time limit. As the old saying goes, we start to die as soon as we're born. Still, the direct knowledge that I know what will kill me in the end isn't exactly comforting.

EtA: Replaced "older" with "younger". Older, younger, same difference, right?

They Actually Did It Part Two: Preach-ing to the Converted

Okay, excuse the bad pun.

Preach of Preach Gaming came out with a video that does a pretty good job of explaining why some of the WoW Classic playerbase has gone ballistic over the introduction of the Wrath Classic WoW Token:

Of course, if you are part of a progression raid team and don't partake in GDKP, the introduction of the WoW Token won't have an impact on your ability to play Wrath Classic. (Myself, for example.) However, there will be inflation in the prices found in the Auction House, and that might just have an impact on me.

After all, I'd like to do the Quel'Delar questline on Linnawyn at some point, but I do realize that given my history of getting that Battered Hilt to drop* I'd expect the AH to be selling said Hilt for well over what I paid for it back in the day. Then the question becomes "Do I want to farm for the gold to buy the Battered Hilt on the Auction House, or do I want to buy gold via the WoW Token?"

Or maybe a better question is, "Is it worth it to try to recapture some magic from the old days when I know it's destined for failure?"

At this point, I'm starting to think that it's not worth it. Era has been a shot of adrenaline to my system, and I'd be foolish to give that up.

*Narrator: It didn't drop for Quintalan in original Wrath, and Q had to pony up 5000 gold on the Auction House for the Battered Hilt.

They Actually Did It

Well, MadSeasonShow was right.

In addition to the return of Joyous Journeys to Wrath of the Lich King Classic, there was this little ditty hidden below the top of the news section:

Woah.

The WoW Token has come to WOTLK Classic, which means you can pay money to buy a WoW Token for Wrath Classic, and in turn sell the token to buy gold in game. You don't need to go spend money on a third party site, just give it to Blizz instead.

The details upon clicking are this:

So the Token is for Wrath Classic only --for now-- but I guess you can go out and buy your way into Ulduar runs legally via in-game gold you purchased by selling said WoW Tokens.

To say there are some unhappy people is an understatement. Reddit's r/classicwow has suspended their rule banning promotion of private servers, and it wouldn't shock me if Blizzard gets ClassicWow suspended shortly for promotion of basically pirated content.

This won't end well.

I kind of presume that Blizz is adding the Wrath WoW token to not only boost their bottom line, but they figure that people will come back when Icecrown Citadel opens and they'll want to gear up as quickly as possible. Or, to be blunt about it, to pay people to get them geared as quickly as possible.

Or to put it a third way, the Kingslayer title is now officially for sale via GDKP runs and carries, with Blizzard approving. For Blizz to keep the Random Dungeon Finder out and bring the WoW Token to Wrath Classic, I have to wonder who Blizz was listening to. Most of the heat generated over Wrath Classic was from the RDF, not from any lack of the WoW Token. But the Token directly generates profit for Activision Blizzard, and the RDF does not.

Oh well. 

A Big Problem of Epic Proportions

There are only so many times the characters can save the world before it becomes old hat.

--AD&D 2nd Edition Dungeon Masters Guide (1989), page 123.

That little quote from the 2E DMG highlights a big problem in a lot of consumable media today. Every conflict has to have bigger and bigger stakes, and each movie or book or game's conflict has to be earth shattering to draw your attention and give the protagonists something to do. While I realize that some might blame this on the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe --or Star Wars, for that matter-- this issue of constantly raising the stakes has been a staple of SF&F for decades. 

Works such as Lord of the Rings, Dune, and Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion stories have all had epic consequences that result in a heightened form of dramatic tension. Even Michael Moorcock's Elric short stories, while typically not so epic in scope, over the course of the cycle build toward a world shattering conclusion in the sixth collection, Stormbringer. You could even make the argument that stories that may not have such dire circumstances, such as Isaac Asimov's original Nightfall or The Martian Way, still present a conflict epic in scope.

Yes, yes, I know, it's right there in the name "Epic Fantasy". Duh.

The thing is, the SF&F genre and the media industry as a whole (movies, television, video games) has a big epic problem: everything needs to be epic in scope or in conflict.

And to borrow that oft used term from The Incredibles, if everything is epic, nothing is.

Yes, this one is back again...

I didn't realize just how pervasive this was until I started rummaging around the SF&F section of bookstores, looking for something new to read after being away from the fiction section of bookstores for several years. The shelves were full of massive tomes with taglines such as "Every age must come to an end" or "The greatest sagas are written in blood" and... I couldn't get excited about any of them.

That lack of interest has nothing to do with who is writing, and neither does it have to do with the setting. I'm sure that some people would tell me that it's because of "woke" culture or a "politically correct" setting or some other bullshit answer, but the thing is, I don't have issues with any of that. Yes, I read a lot of "Classic" SF&F back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s* so I have my street cred, and I have absolutely no issues with new voices or settings for Science Fiction or Fantasy. It's just that I'm tired of the same old "the world/universe/nation needs saving" Epic story trope, because in the end the stakes are of the same variety that I've seen countless times by now. 

And video games aren't exactly helping.

I've said it before about World of Warcraft and it bears repeating now: I prefer the original, vanilla version of WoW because of the overall lack of an Epic plot to the extent the expansions put into place. Sure, there are storylines riddled throughout the leveling areas, but nothing so laser focused on an epic conflict to the extent that you see in the latter expansions. You've got Nefarian, C'thun, and Kel'Thuzad, but you didn't have two continents' worth of quests focused on the storylines behind those three. That lack of an overall epic narrative meant you could forge your own story, picking and choosing what to do and where to go, without having an overarching epic story to direct you.

Let's be honest here: video games and novels are one thing, and movies are quite another. I mean, look at the tons of movies and shows that are churned out year after year in the MCU alone, not to mention the DC Universe or Star Wars. Everything is epic in nature where the MCU is involved, and even a movie such as Captain America: The First Avenger Goes Fishing would somehow turn Steve Rodgers' catch of the day into an epic worthy of Ernest Hemingway. 

I had no idea this existed... I SWEAR!!!
From a YouTube video by Reel Hazardous.

But therein lies the blandness of it all: you've seen this story a few times, and it all starts to blend together. And trust me, given the amount of books, video games, and movies I've consumed over the decades, I've seen far more than just a few versions of the same trope. 

I need to be perfectly clear: I'm not saying that "[insert content here] sucks", I'm saying that I'm tired of these stories. These books could be incredibly well written, the video games programmed and designed to an exquisite degree, or the movies insanely well crafted, it's just that I've seen it all before. And to get my attention something else needs to be done. 

What doesn't need to be done is do what's been done to death in video games: the moving goalposts problem. You play a video game with an epic story, finally defeat the big bad, and then either in the final cutscene or a lead-in to the next expansion/installment in the series there's a revelation that "it wasn't this Big Bad who was behind everything, it's this NEW Big Bad!" 

Or the "Princess is in another castle!" meme.
From knowyourmeme.com.

Or you saved your town in this video game? Now you get to save an entire province! Then the next expac is "Now you have to save your country!" Then "the world!" Then "You now have to save the Afterlife!" (Oh wait, that's Shadowlands...)

That's a huge trap that authors and developers alike fall into, where the stakes have to ratcheted up more and more to keep people's attention. (After Infinity War, what then, Marvel? Multiverse Mayhem? Well crap, that's exactly what they're doing now...)

***

What's the solution? Hell if I know.

And besides, if I did know the way out of this, do you think that publishers and developers and producers would be beating a path to my door? Oh HELL no. Right now, the sound of dollars from the people who consume their content is louder than anything I can say or do. If I've learned anything in this world, content creators want a sure bet on where to put their money, and it's a lot easier betting on the same old same old than trying something new. Of course, game companies discovered that breaking their games up into pieces got them a lot more money than release it all at once...

Dorkly, don't ever change.

That doesn't mean that I've turned into a costume drama loving highbrow (or lowbrow, or midbrow-or-whatever the Hallmark Channel fits into) consumer, it's just that I want something more than what we've got right now. 

It also doesn't mean I want to eschew standard novel formats and instead go with modern novel constructs; I had to read Virginia Woolf in an English class at university and that experience alone put me off of reading any novels designed to be "modern" for a couple of decades. The English professor who taught the class I read Mrs. Dalloway in warned us away from taking his Modern Novel class, because non-English majors sign up expecting to get to read modern popular novels, but that isn't anything at all what they actually read.

Probably the best way to put it is that maybe the sentiment "go big or go home" is missing the point: perhaps not going all out will result in a better story. 

*And part of the end of the 00s/beginning of the 10s.

Meme Monday: Allergy Memes

If you're like me, seasonal allergies kick your ass multiple times per year.

The one major drawback to my son's graduation last week was that Meadville, Pennsylvania, where Allegheny College is located, is in the middle of their big pollen bloom for the Spring. And for me, that was, well, kind of hellish.

"Just when you think you're done with seasonal allergies, they drag you back in!"

--Michael Corleone, maybe

So in honor of those who scarf down a bottle of Zyrtec every Spring and Fall...

Yeah, kid, I feel it too.
From Science.abc.

From imgflip.

Don't get me wrong, Benadryl works.
Faaar too well. From izismile.

Yeah, Geralt, I get it. Really do. If
you're a hypochondriac, Covid offers
a whole new set of paranoid fantasies.
From Reddit via mematic.