Cloud Nine Had Some Turbulence Yesterday

I was in a fantastic mood yesterday. Very engaged, excited to be a global citizen and make a difference in the world! I am taking care of myself physically…yeah, go me!
Of course, the realist and Tibetan Buddhist that I am, I knew that this feeling could not last forever. I also knew that preparing for whatever bad thing was coming next was pointless because it will always be unexpected and it will always throw me on my ass. So I decided to enjoy myself with company and let it come. Not like I could do anything about it anyway.
Had a homecooked dinner with friends. Relaxed.
Then felt suddenly ill.
Very ill.
Oh sweet Jesus ill.
Then I combed through my food, and found meat. Pieces of meat.
I suppose I should have mentioned earlier that I am a vegetarian. My friends are not. But they promised to carefully make sure that no meat got anywhere near my food.
Someone later told me that the chef was not as careful as she could have been.
So my meat allergy/intolerance kicked in. I was so miserable for the next 5 hours.
I accepted it with as much grace as I could.
I suppose it’s lucky I didn’t have a peanut issue.

So long, good friend

VHS is finally dead.

“The last major Hollywood movie to be released on VHS was “A History of Violence” in 2006. By that point major retailers such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart were already well on their way to evicting all the VHS tapes from their shelves so the valuable real estate could go to the sleeker and smaller DVDs.”

I know, not my usual shocker article, but I’d like to pay homage to the VHS.  After it was made mainstream by porn, VHS has entertained us for something like three decades, really taking off in the 90’s.

So I’d like to write about some memories that I have with VHS. A eulogy, of sorts. Feel free to add your own memories in the comments section.

I remember still being in Russia, so I was under the age of 6, and how I thought my Grandpa was something close to god (secular Soviet home) because he could make TV stop, rewind, and play at will. I watched endless reruns of the same episodes of Gummi Bears (in Russian of course). I thought the TV power solely belonged to my Grandpa. Sure, I didn’t know it was a trusty VHS that held my joy on it, but there it was, a token of  my early childhood.

In case you’re curious as to what Gummi Bears sounds like in Russian..

You can only imagine my sheer happiness when I discovered that this strange new land, America, also had Gummi Bears, albeit in it’s own language. America also had those adorable little cheese wrapped in wax (Babybel), which I first met on the plane coming to the USA, where I promptly ate the cheese, wax and all, until some nice lady took pity on me and explained to me that I can take the wax off.

Oh VHS, I remember the sheer control. I could put it in, record anything I want on TV, play it back, record over it again. I remember recording mistakes. I remember footage being lost. I remember the joy of finding it again, accidentally, that as you’re watching some old cartoon, for nostalgia value as now you’re too told for the cartoon, that you recorded at a very tender age that would get interrupted midway through by the porn that you recorded from the TV at that same tender age.

I remember feeling so powerful. I could capture moments. I could rewind and play at will. I could erase. Maybe this sounds so geeky, but the idea that one could take memories from the TV without permission. We don’t have that anymore. We pay for it. We are also watched. Someone else knows what we record. What we prefer. The privacy is gone. That was really the glory of VHS, video home system, the privacy in your own home. Obviously this was primarily for porn purposes in the beginning, as it’s nicer to watch it at home instead of some peep show theater. With VHS we had our own personal cinema. It was so revolutionary. It was so intimate. I loved hitting pause, and then play and watching everything move very very slowly. I loved the noise of the machine when it would fast forward or rewind. You could feel the little guy working.

I remember the anticipation of tracking. When the tape was too old and it would be fuzzy and not so perfect, and you would hold your breath hoping that tracking would fix it. I remember actually the days before auto-tracking and how that was a bitch and a half to set the levels just right. It was a sense of pride and accomplishment every time I made a video look good.

I loved the working technology as a kid, but I also loved it when my parents gave me the important task of destroying videos as well. I’d pull the black tape out and out and dance with it in the house. Sometimes I would rewind it manually with my fingers. See if I could put it back together. See if I could undo it more. I would braid it into my hair, then take it out because I wasn’t allowed to look like that outside the house. I loved how tangible VHS was.

My college house still has a ton of VHS tapes. Old Disney movies, not digitally remastered, that we gather around and watch. We bask in the feeling of being young again. Of the tape sometimes being soft around the edges. How everything wasn’t so perfect, and that is, and was, part of the appeal. Nothing more exciting than taking that clunky VHS tape and watching the VCR eat it. No menu screen with options. Just ff and then play. No DVD that sits and keeps replaying the menu screen over and over.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the new digital world. Yet sometimes I miss the fuzzy memories of my youth.

So goodbye and so long, VHS. You done good. I know others will make a far more creative and artistic omage to you. You might get some gallery installations. Some modern art pieces. Maybe a movie and documentary. Maybe a porno.

But you will never again teach young immigrant girls how to capture memories on their own. Don’t worry, VHS, your memory is already captured. It keeps playing inside. My generation watches your graceful death. You embody the death of our childhood.

Even after the thrill

So the class is over.

I’m going to keep this blog up and running, I’ve just been MIA because of finals.

I’m trying to write a paper on “Can we save the world by shopping?”–a discussion of whether we as consumers or citizens can further the green movement. Well, that’s one part of it, I guess.

I’m glad I took the cyberpolitics class. It was very useful. I must say that my favourite book was ISpy. It was incredibly informative. I also liked the Digital Democracy book. Those two books really worked my brain.

I enjoyed the presentations on the last two days of classes. I love seeing how people tackle issues creatively. How they combine their videos. What the end result will be. I guess that’s the sociologist in me; where did it come from, what was the process like, what was cut out…I think the last one is the question that gets to me the most. What was cut out? Every thing had an infinite number of ways to look like in the end, yet somehow, it ended up looking as it does, and we hardly question the process. Yet, at the end, it feels like it could not have been any other way. It’s good to remember that things were cut out. The video could have been different. It could all have been different.

I’m happy people engaged themselves. I think a number of students took some life lessons from the class. A number of people surprised me with their progress, comments, and blog entries as time wore on. First impressions of people should never be static and permanent.

I’ve been debating whether or not I should mention this, but, hey, it’s my blog, right?

After presenting my group video, something we were all incredibly proud of, as we felt that we managed to touch on nearly every aspect of the class, without being fragmented and constantly presenting a clear message, and also, unlike other videos, we created an independent thesis that has not been highly discussed in class. Our thesis was that mashups are the conversation of Millennials, and thus the future. We demonstrated how mashups in entertainment (music) but also political and corporate mashups, were growing in significance, and if the Boomer generation would only listen, they would see the innumerable benefits to embracing this “Millennial conversation”. We constantly re-iterated themes of interactivity, connectivity, open-source. We felt that our topic was unique and multi-faceted. We thought, a final project, man that’s got to do a lot. The other projects were done well, they focused on a single-target; email surveillance at HWS, a beer company going through various social networks, a blog created around issues on campus. Don’t get me wrong, they were good topics and well-presented. They were clear in message and structure.

At the same time, I felt that because we went after a topic that was not discussed in class, was not so “safe”, or easy, or clear..that because we had to really make a creative, involved thesis that would sum up the class and take in major themes…I felt that when the professor chewed out one of my group partners and called our video “neat,” it was uncalled for.

So I’m a little hurt, and mainly confused.The group is planning on meeting with the professor, because all I know of the first meeting was an unhappy text, so I won’t be unfair. I’m sure some criticism might be fair, but if my group is compared to the efforts of other’s; I think ours was excellent in topic matter, and even execution.

As soon as I can get the video, I will put it on youtube.

So while I enjoyed the class, I thought the professor’s judgement was out of line. I won’t let it cloud what I have learned, but at the same time: uncool.