Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in. We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.
Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered. We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.
I had a topic for tonight, and the post was ready, but I decided on a last-minute change.
How about if we use this post tonight as a way for you guys to share any ideas you might have for future Medium Cool topics? We had one of these a year or so ago when I announced that BGinChi was running off to be department chair :-) and this seems like a good time for another one.
If you’re game for that, have at it! And if you don’t have any ideas to share (not possible!) feel free to talk about anything culture-related.
West of the Rockies
Ummm… favorite tentacles hentai?
Scout211
One topic, book to screen or streaming. Best adaptation/ worst adaptation and why you think so. Was the book or the screen adaptation better? This may have been covered before but I don’t remember.
Also, one thing I would love to see more of, is commenters explaining why their selections (movies, television programs, books, music) are ones that they recommend instead of just a long list.
I know there are no rules but it’s great to hear from commenters who describe their favorites or the plot or why they loved it or hated it.
WaterGirl, I know you frequently ask for that but I am asking for it, too. But it’s balloon-juice, so feel free to ignore me all you list-makers who keep posting lists. 😉
Mr. Prosser
@Scout211: Adaptations would be a great topic.
Also I’m a bit of a jazz, blues & R&b buff. How about discussing different music genres and what makes a person like or dislike one particular genre or sub-genre.
Barbara
Agree about adaptations. Apple TV is now on third season of Slow Horses and I’ve read the whole series. Would love to know whether Apple TV would be worth the investment.
Steeplejack
@Scout211:
I agree with this, with one addition: be careful of spoilers!
NotMax
Howzabout (purely subjective, natch) “perfect” albums of songs/music. Whether rock, easy listening, country — whatever.
Suggest excluding things such as thematic rock operas, cast albums or soundtracks as they, IMHO, can be classified as a single piece rather than a collection of otherwise standalone artistry.
Alison Rose
Can’t recall if we’ve done this before, but maybe something about casting. Like, best/worst casting choices, people you think were the perfect fit for a certain role, those “so-and-so almost had such-and-such role” stories that seem crazy, etc.
piratedan
geez, what happened to all of those ideas I tossed out the last time you asked?
okay… here are some, free of charge
favorite comic strip
favorite poltical cartoonist/cartoon
your favorite guilty crush cereal
your favorite drop dead line from a movie?
best use of a hat in cinema?
the first time you kissed with music, what was playing?
which is worse, toothache, hangnail, muscle cramp or stubbed toes?
Tony Jay
Which movie, novel or previously undiscovered ethnic folk-dance would you love to see transformed into a theme hotel/resort? Total immersion. Actors doing storyline parts for guests to play along with. Live the magic. Etc.
For me, I’d pay cash money to visit the Hammer Horror Hotel of Horror (this will be worked on). Cute little village where you can enjoy a hearty goulash and a flagon of ale until all the singing and dancing is cut short by an ear-piercing scream of terror from outside, and then it’s off to the spooky castle on the hill where the monsters might dwell, but also put on a hell of a Dungeons & Disco Night.
Yeah. I’d go there.
WaterGirl
@piratedan:
Not shaming, but I looked at the post where we did this a year ago, and there were no matches for “pirate”. :-)
NotMax
@Scout211
I try to remember to link to trailers or teasers but also am constrained by the seven link limit.
Not asking that limit be changed, BTW.
WaterGirl
@piratedan: bzzz. the judges do not accept your final suggestion. :-)
Alison Rose
@piratedan:
I’m all about the wide sexuality spectrum but this is a new one on me.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: From a reader perspective, it’s more helpful to me to have each show or recommendation in a separate comment, so of you go that route, the 7 link rule would have no bearing.
piratedan
@Alison Rose: well, for me it was Quisp, but your mileage may vary (or very, depending upon needs)
WaterGirl
@Alison Rose:
I think it’s along the lines of “Who would you rather date, Tony the Tiger with Frosted Flakes, or the leprechaun from Lucky Charms.”
@piratedan:
Do I have that right?
West of the Rockies
What about cartoons that your kids watched that also held your interest? I still regard Rug Rats with fondness. Oh, and one I loathed: Elmo.
Geminid
A post on Civil War history books would probably turn out pretty good. The problem is it would mainly be the same ten commenters yakking up a storm.
Maybe a thread on Broadway musicals. That could attract more participants
Ed. A post on cookbooks would really draw a crowd.
ArchTeryx
@Tony Jay: Sounds like the plot for a Hotel Transylvania resort actually done right (i.e. with Adam Sander kept about 2 parsecs away from it).
Alison Rose
@WaterGirl: Now I feel like we’re getting into Tucker Carlson “why isn’t the M&M sexy anymore” territory.
I’ll go with Cap’n Crunch because at least he’s human and I have two friends with husbands in the Navy and they seem happy, so extrapolate from that what you will.
Alison Rose
@West of the Rockies: I don’t have kids, but when my brother’s kids were little and I’d be watching them, I loved The Fairly Oddparents. I hated most of the others.
Scout211
we just got started and I am upvoting so many already! 👍
@Mr. Prosser: different music genres and what makes a person like or dislike one particular genre or sub-genre.
@NotMax: Howzabout (purely subjective, natch) “perfect” albums of songs/music. Whether rock, easy listening, country — whatever.
@Alison Rose: Like, best/worst casting choices, people you think were the perfect fit for a certain role, those “so-and-so almost had such-and-such role” stories that seem crazy, etc.
@West of the Rockies: What about cartoons that your kids watched that also held your interest? I still regard Rug Rats with fondness.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Judging from some lengthy lists (including by yours truly) in previous threads, wouldn’t that run to multiple Tbogg units and involve a prodigious, daunting. MEGO amount of scrolling for any not present at the time of the initial post?
Scout211
@West of the Rockies: For me, Pinky and the Brain had me watching with my daughter.
ETA: I think I meant Animaniacs because she was older when it was just Pinky.
Alison Rose
Oh, have we ever done a bookish one that was just about memoirs/autobiographies? I’ve read some really amazing ones. I mean, they’re often heartbreaking, but can be taken as accounts of resilience and optimism.
piratedan
@WaterGirl: it was about consumption, but even that could be fraught with interpretation
Scout211
I guess we are hoping for quality, not quantity of recommendations, each with explainers.
NotMax
@Alison Rose
Among the worst, certainly, was the lead for a never made Sgt. Rock movie: Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Geminid
@Alison Rose: Memoirs and Autobiographies would be a good topic. That’s a very wide field, so people would hear about a lot of books they hadn’t known about.
RSA
Lately I’ve been enjoying the art criticism essays I’ve come across in the Washington Post. My suggestion for a topic would be “favorite critic [in genre X]”, where a genre might be any of the fine arts, including literature, film, music, etc.; popular music; restaurants; video games; amusement parks…
gwangung
@Geminid: Yeah, Broadway or near Broadway musicals might be fun.
And something centering on comic book movies could draw a crowd, too.
Ken
Re-tellings of a story from the viewpoint of a different character. Examples:
Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which shows what those two Hamlet characters were doing when not onstage.
Ursula K. LeGuin’s Lavinia, from the viewpoint of the princess who married Aeneas but who, in Virgil’s Aeneid, speaks not a single word.
Sandra Newman’s Julia: A Novel, a retelling of Orwell’s 1984 from her point of view. I’m currently reading this, and it suggested this topic.
Pete Downunder
@piratedan: I love the idea of movie drop dead or tag lines – my only question is would that count as a spoiler, particularly for older movies. I have several favourites – The Front Page (Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau) among them.
I also love Alison Rose’s mis-casting idea. Tom Cruz as Reacher? Really?. Should this category include the chronic Hollywood problem of older men with far too much younger women – there are too many examples to mention but Lost in Translation comes to mind immediately.
Tony Jay
@ArchTeryx:
Adam Sandler is, by most accounts, a genuinely nice guy who just so happens to be astonishingly annoying on screen. That said, can we trust those accounts? I say he can continue to be a genuinely nice guy, or not, anywhere and everywhere that I’m not.
Sounds fair to me.
Alison Rose
@Geminid: I’ve got a list already forming in my head!
Tony Jay
@Ken:
I’d like to see Dracula written from the POV of Mrs Westenra, Lord Godalming Sr and Renfield, because there are more than enough chin-stroking moments in that novel to allow for the suspicion that those three characters were up to something that the main protagonists knew nothing about.
Josie
@West of the Rockies: I hadn’t thought about them in years, but my favorite cartoon that the boys watched was Ren & Stimpy. We still use lines from those silly stories after all these years.
Ken
@Tony Jay: You might try Barbara Hambly’s Renfield: Slave of Dracula.
West of the Rockies
@Josie:
Space… madness!
piratedan
@Josie: bet you still have Log! floating around the house somewhere…..
NotMax
@Josie
“Don’t push the candy apple red button!”
Josie
@piratedan:
My all time favorite was the one in which they were wrestlers. It was the most wonderful send up of the wrestling scene ever.
funlady75
@Geminid: Memoirs of a Geisha….one of my favs……..also I am a TCM junkie…
Josie
@piratedan:
No, but for years my youngest had a pair of ratty old Stimpy house slippers that he refused to let me throw away.
Another Scott
1) Genius directors that we cannot watch any more? Mine – Spielberg. His stuff is so cheaply manipulative (at least the one’s I’ve seen (and I haven’t seen much since CEotTK). I expect to be manipulated at a movie (Amélie), but at least make an effort not to beat me over the head with it.
2) Tropes that we cannot stand any more? Mine – Manipulative music (when the violins start up for the love interest; when the scary music starts up for the scary scenes). Use some creativity!
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
piratedan
@Josie: I was pretty happy with the choices my kids had, everything from the Ren and Stimpy madness, to the sweetness of Doug and dueling science shows of Beakman’s World and Bill Nye, The Science Guy.
Josie
@piratedan: I agree completely.
gwangung
@funlady75: For a moment, I thought Memoirs would be for the miscasting thread….
kalakal
@Alison Rose:
John Wayne as Genghis Khan should easily see off all comptition
Salty Sam .
@Josie: “Happy Happy Joy Joy”!
Alison Rose
@kalakal: I’d put Mickey Rooney as Mr Yunioshi up there, too.
Salty Sam .
His stiffest competition would have to be himself, in his self selected role of Davy Crockett in his bloated “Alamo” production.
kalakal
Travel books, what book has most evoked a (real) journey for you?
Not sure if we’ve done this, I know we’ve done what fictional world would we like to live in.
Wyatt Salamanca
Favorite live versions of a song
Favorite cover versions of a song
Favorite comedy sketches, standup routines, jokes
Favorite guest cameo appearances on a tv show
Favorite lines of dialogue from a film or play
Favorite poems or passages from a novel or short story
Favorite paintings, photos
Favorite quotes, aphorisms
Favorite YouTube channel, blog, website, podcast devoted to cinema, music, literature, etc.
Favorite sources for film, tv, music, or book reviews
Curated lists of favorite films, songs, books, poems. etc
More threads devoted to painting, photography, architecture, poetry
Alison Rose
@Wyatt Salamanca:
I got a bunch of these.
WaterGirl
Appreciating all of the ideas! Keep them coming!
Martin
I think my challenge with this topic area is that it feels like a cultural survey or sometimes nostalgia (something I dislike, which is a me problem) and not an exploration of why culture is what it is. To take a random example, the first post quip about tentacle porn – even though we know it dates back at least to the early 19th century, is whether the Japanese prohibition of showing genetalia requiring Japanese erotica creators to be creative about working around the prohibition has the side effect of elevating the concept into more of the mainstream. What other cultural (if we agree this is the dynamic) norms or memes or whatever come from a policy like this? What are the factors that shape our culture. Why is zoomer comedy so fucking weird?
I don’t know, maybe it’s because I explore ideas by interacting with others. I was going to write a Barbie movie post for this series until an emergency pulled me away, but a few days later I realized I was a bit relieved because I kind of get the sense that isn’t what people are looking for. Anyway, I’m not trying to be critical, just offer up how I engage with things and what would cause me to engage more.
Alison Rose
@Martin: There’s no Balloon Juice Law saying you can’t engage in some kind of deep philosophical discussion on the threads. But for me, I don’t think that’s what most people come to these posts for. It’s a bit of respite, something fun and light, and maybe an escape from the other topics that are not those things. If you don’t need that, you should count yourself lucky.
WaterGirl
@Martin:
Medium Cool can be a mix of things, and what you’re suggesting is just one more possible dimension.
I would totally welcome suggestions for topics that could explore why culture is what it is.
UncleEbeneezer
@Josie: “I like Darren! And he likes me. And I like him. I’d like his autograph. It is a nice picture. He is NICE!!!!!”
UncleEbeneezer
@Martin: I would love a Barbie post!
WaterGirl
@Alison Rose: @Martin:
I’m not looking to totally change up the kinds of things we talk about on Medium Cool, but I would be perfectly happy adding another dimension occasionally.
I would welcome a philosophical discussion of this or that related to culture. Not all the time, but every so often.
We have a ton of really smart and interesting people on Balloon Juice and I think a philosophical discussion could be interesting.
But I would definitely need help framing the concept of posts like this, but I would welcome input on that from you, Martin, or others.
UncleEbeneezer
@NotMax: “The red, shiny button. The jolly, candy-like button. Will he hold out? Can he hold out???”
WaterGirl
@Martin:
I think I had asked if you would be willing to write something up about Barbie after you had written an interesting take on the movie in the comments. Am I right about that, or am I remembering wrong?
citizen dave
Lots of great suggestions as always. I love the regular check-ins about what people are watching (or have watched and hated); that could be a monthly one.
Appreciate Ken’s examples at #32 or stories told from another character’s POV (will have to check out the 1984 re-do).
Tonight I started up the Love Has Won doc on MAX (currently mid-way in Ep 2). Why do we watch stuff about cults?
Made me think of: Shows you watched but hated; series you didn’t like but kept going anyway. Shows your partner watches that aren’t your bag. Does your partner require you to watch? What’s the debate/arrangement? Has anyone started cell/web scrolling as their partner is watching stuff?
Miss Bianca
@NotMax:
I like that idea!
zhena gogolia
@NotMax: Great idea. Workingman’s Dead.
zhena gogolia
@piratedan:
“Your winnings, sir.”
UncleEbeneezer
Favorite stand-alone episodes (or film) from a series. I can think of a handful from recent series’ where you can totally watch and enjoy a spectacular episode without having any knowledge of the rest of the series.
zhena gogolia
I’m so sorry I missed this thread when it appeared.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: Jump in now! It’s not dead. :-)
Mr. Bemused Senior
@UncleEbeneezer: this brings immediately to mind two examples. Once More with Feeling from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Serving the King from the Closer.
I was introduced to Buffy by a friend who showed me that episode. Later I had a father-daughter bonding experience watching [I suppose you can say binging] all of Buffy and Angel.
I think Serving the King stands alone well even though there’s some context that is only briefly explained in the episode itself. Still, it’s great.
kalakal
Best parodies of either a specific title or a genre. What is a parody ( as opposed to satire, comedy set in a genre etc?) Why it worked, parodies that fall flat etc
Martin
@Alison Rose: Yeah, and that’s my observation as well, which is totally fine. I’m not suggesting this not be the thing the community wants, just that I’m out of step with it. I threw the comment out there because sometime people are more inclined to ‘me too’ than to lay out a case. So, consider it a candidate on the ballot that people are free to reject.
Martin
@WaterGirl: No, that’s right. I nearly finished it when some emergency showed up.
It was a critique of the Barbie movie by someone who hadn’t seen the Barbie movie. I’ve now seen the movie, and I don’t think I got anything wrong, but it was incomplete. There’s a lot more going on there. Loved it.
UncleEbeneezer
One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others- Work of art that is nothing like the rest of the artist’s repertoire. For good or ill. Something like The Phantom Thread, which I absolutely love but never would’ve guessed was a Paul Thomas Anderson film because it is so different than his other films (most of which, I also love, but for very different reasons).
Martin
@UncleEbeneezer: I can dust off the Barbie post if people want it.
zhena gogolia
@Ken: I love that idea.
zhena gogolia
@Ken: Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea.
The Wind Done Gone.
gwangung
@Alison Rose: Yeah, I love that idea, too.
WaterGirl
@Martin: Finish it up, if you like, and send it to me. It’s never too late for Barbie.
gwangung
@Martin: I dunno…that actually sounds like something that could sit in a thread as….I dunno, a garnish, or a counter-flavor, to make the rest of the thread pop better.
WaterGirl
@Martin: Yes, please! I had written my comment at #81 before seeing you at #77.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Alison Rose: @gwangung: hear, hear! Song covers, yes.
WaterGirl
I’ll be checking back in for more ideas in the morning!
Ben Cisco
@West of the Rockies: I was lucky – had more than one generation’s worth. Animanics, Batman: The Animated Series, Hey Arnold, Big Hero 6, Peppa Pig… and so on and so forth.
Also, I made sure to show them all the OG Looney Tunes.
bbleh
@piratedan: Alison Rose: Cap’n Crunch, which is of course exactly the same thing in a different geometric form.
The slurry at the end was a big part of it, btw.
bbleh
Best thing to do on vacation to get out of the tourist / hotel / resort scene and get more of the flavor of the place (without offense or undue risk). Eg, take a walk / run off the main drags, go to a local food market, go to a restaurant / bar that doesn’t cater to the tourist trade, do a little research into local history and make up your own tour …
NotMax
@bbleh
Reaching way back on memory lane there was a spoof radio ad hawking a thin wafer-shaped cereal imprinted with a grid pattern.
The name? Graph Eaties.
NotMax
@bbleh
Many little or off the beaten path museums all over, also too.
Nelson
@Barbara: I’ve also read the Slow Horses books and and am very much enjoying the Apple TV series. Gary Oldman is a delight as Lamb.