A land which I never shall lampoon

[austin_dern]

I just noticed that The Beaver: Canada's History Magazine has published its results for top ten ``worst Canadians''. I didn't see it myself, just saw a write-up about it in the Reuters ``Oddly Enough'' blog. There were two lists made, one from a poll of historians and one from a poll of the general public. Reuters's blogger (Robert Basler) described the public's choices: ``if we can be honest here, there are more prime ministers than serial killers on the list, although it's pretty close.'' I have to admit of the winners, I recognize the names of the prime ministers, as well as of Celine Dion and Conrad Black, but I have no idea who the other names are. Serial killers, I infer.

The Reuters blog file photo of Pierre Trudeau, taken 1982, has him with one hand over his head and doing this odd little dance step that I'm sure must have made sense at the time. Although right now it makes him look exactly like his slightly spastic comic rendition on SCTV, which may not have been being as exaggeratedly wild as I had been assuming.

I also ran across a report about an international Cosplay Summit which gathered anime and manga fans from around the world to Japan's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday. The news article -- without a trace of a smirk to it -- said this was part of an effort to promote a Cool Tokyo image to the world. I don't deny that cosplayers -- or anyone dressing in costume -- can't be fun, but ``cool'' seems like the wrong word for doing it with skill and imagination and flair. Done well you have something that defies ordinary social standards and marches proudly to its own pace. (Done poorly and you have the comic book stylings of David Gonterman.) In any case the cool/lame axis doesn't seem to measure it, somehow.

Weird Brian Williams introduction to an NBC News Special Report about the bridge collapse in Minneapolis: ``We'll have Dateline airing in just a few moments, in its entirety, their iPod theft investigation, but as you can see we are covering a major breaking story at this hour: we've had an Interstate bridge collapse in Minneapolis/Saint Paul.'' I suppose I'm glad they aren't cutting any of the detailed investigation of how to track down stolen iPods. (Actually, they cut a bit of Chris Hansen's introduction.) I don't want to belittle the nuisance of having your iPod stolen, but it seems kind of like slumming for an hour of nearly professional network news time.

Trivia: When Germany invaded in 1914, Belgium was in the middle of an upgrading program for its army which was due for completion in 1926. Source: The First World War, Hew Strachan.

Currently Reading: Gnarl!, Rudy Rucker. It turns out the local library has more Rudy Rucker books than I've ever seen in all the bookstores I've been in put together. I guess somebody's a fan.

Comments

[orv.livejournal.com]

I think the key is that the Japanese don't seem to consider "cool" and "geeky" to be antonyms, the way Americans do. Viewed through that lens, it makes a lot more sense.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that geeky is inherently an antonym to cool in American circles. At least once you get past the high school disdain of everything that requires effort, and even then you can penetrate it if you get strange or intense enough that you sort of fall off the social culture standards. (In my own experience I was surprised to learn that some of the people I went to high school with thought I was kind of cool just for being so unclassifiable. They might have told me this when it would have done any good, but I probably wouldn't have known what to do about it anyway.)

It's like the Uncanny Valley in reverse.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I think if we had to classify things, "cool" versus "uncool" would be one axis, and "strange" versus "normal" being another. I think most of us in fandoms would like to think we're in the cool-strange quadrant (but not too strange, as we want to be the median of normal within our fandom's group on that axis.)

More to the point: it's not a Cosplay convention[*1], but a Cosplay Summit?

--Chiaroscuro

[*1] Which would still, I think, just be an anime/scifi/fantasy/ etc convention, just with a higher costume percentage.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, Reuters said it was a summit. There may be some desire among the participants to make themselves look better (of course, they did get to tromp around the Foreign Ministry, suggesting some people with, if you don't mind the suggested but not really intended sneer, grown-up jobs are treating them with respect), or it may be words being translated as a more grandiose title in English than is perhaps justified.

I'm pretty sure I didn't just remember it wrong, but that also will sometimes happen.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure it's the former, trying to increase reputation by using terminology to refer to the same old thing. Which is a usual state of human affairs.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, think of all the possible subgenres of anime which might finally begin to talk to one another at a cosplay summit like this. Probably all pointing to David Gonterman and snickering.