vovat | Don't Stop Feeling Audacious (Reply)

We saw Kevin Geeks Out at the Nitehawk in Prospect Park the Thursday before last. The theme was sidekicks, and there were several presentations on that topic. One interesting thing is that two of these were Christmas-themed at a time way out of season, one about Krampus and another espousing the possibility that Hermey from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer could be a psychopath, comparing him to Norman Bates. Also addressed was how sidekicks are often framed in ways that diminish them, even when they're technically more competent than the heroes. A discussion of the Lone Ranger and the Green Hornet (the latter canonically being the former's nephew) pointed out how calling the character "Lone" when Tonto does a lot of the work isn't really fair, and that Bruce Lee's Kato was the one who did most of the fighting. There was also a mention of Dick Tracy's racist sidekicks from the sixties animated series, Joe Jitsu and Go Go Gomez. Not that I think these characters were intended to be offensive; that's just how it comes off with how they're written. The Kindest Cut was of a movie called Sidekicks, described as a combination of The Karate Kid and Walter Mitty, as the boy in it is constantly daydreaming about fighting alongside Chuck Norris. The game we played was about who out of two characters is the sidekick, based on the opinions of ten people, and some of them were ties.

The other day, we went to a Franz Ferdinand show at the Brooklyn Paramount. We'd gone there a few months ago for Ben Folds, but that time they had chairs, and this time it was standing room only. The opener was a band called Telescreen, and I had no strong opinion about their music, but they seemed to attract some obnoxious fans who yelled a lot. I don't know how many of them were the same ones who insisted on moshing during the headliner. What's weird about that is that I noticed a sign at the entrance that forbade moshing, and I didn't think it was anything we'd have to worry about. I've never understood wanting the possibility of being seriously injured or doing that to someone else at a concert. I'm lucky nothing worse happened than a guy stepping on my foot. The performance itself was good, though, with all the hits and everything. The set did not include "The Fallen," which normally wouldn't merit a mention, but I had just mentioned to Beth recently that they should have changed the lyric to "Who gives a damn about the profits of Tesla?" Alex Kapranos still has a lot of energy.

I know he had a kid recently, which is what one of the songs on the newest album is about, but he didn't say anything about that onstage.

Last night was a Bruce McCulloch show at the Bell House. I think it was pretty similar to the last time we saw him. I can't remember for sure, but some of it was definitely familiar, and some not. It was a combination of monologues, songs, and just jokes. He quoted a newspaper review of an earlier performance in Wayne, New Jersey, about how it (or possibly the Kids in the Hall in general?) had a narrative that even Frank Zappa couldn't understand, then he kept calling back to that.

There's something else I wanted to get off my chest, which is that I saw a post on the OzCon International Instagram about how Emma Ridley, who played Ozma in Return to Oz, although her voice was dubbed by somebody else. I had followed her on social media for a while, but she turned out to be a fervent Trump supporter, and I don't know whether this is a relatively recent development or not. I know some people who have met her before have mentioned her being really friendly, but that doesn't preclude awful politics. She's shared some really obvious lies about how he's actually trying to help people, and fight child trafficking and bring about world peace, which makes no sense if you know anything at all about Trump, and of course he's been well nigh impossible to avoid for pretty much my entire lifetime. While I don't recall seeing anything specific about it, she's apparently also transphobic, which is kind of ironic if you know about the character she played. So some people called out the post, and it looks like it's just been deleted.