December 2013 – Emily Pretends

Julia Nunes – Denton, TX – November 9, 2013

December 10, 2013 Emily Rose

These days, popularity and cultural relevancy are often measured by amount of Twitter followers. Julia Nunes has over 34,000. It’s a pretty good number – it shows she’s fairly well known, but isn’t famous enough to be plagued by twitter spam bots. And as a prevalent YouTube musician, Julia could easily be filling up – at least some of the smaller – music venues. (For example, Mike Tompkins recently opened for the Jonas Brothers on their tour this past August, right before their breakup cut it short. Playlist Live, the music festival featuring strictly YouTube personalities, sells out each year, with tickets going for over $100.) But, by choice, Julia Nunes plays to 40 – 50 people each night, and she does it from random people’s living rooms. She finally came to Texas this November, and I got to experience what it’s like to see a show on the living room circuit.

Julia rose to YouTube fame through her ukulele covers of popular songs. This got her the attention of notable musicians such as Ben Folds, who then asked Julia to open a few shows for him. She performed at the Bushman World Ukulele Festival, and was part of the YouTube Ukulele Orchestra. She also has performances of her own songs on YouTube and three released albums. Her music is mostly acoustic and ranges from slow and somewhat sad, to upbeat, but not quite danceable.

Living room shows aren’t extremely common. Undertow Tickets, the main living room tour organizer, usually has about five artists on tour at any given time. It’s up to the artist to publicize for it – I found out through Twitter. When I went to the Undertow website and bought my ticket it said there were only eight left. The address was a secret until I got the ticket in my email inbox. Underneath it said to arrive from 7:00 – 7:45, and the show would begin at 8. I got to the house right at 7 but I drove around for 10 minutes. I didn’t know what to expect – I didn’t want to be the first one there. When I finally pulled up to the house, I wasn’t even sure it was the right one. It was too dark to read the house number. But through the windows and glass door I could see an unusually high number of people milling about, and a pretty large collection of candles sitting in sporadic clumps, so it seemed likely this was the place. Inside, about ten people sat and stood, drinking water out of mason jars. I stared at them and they stared at me, until a woman walked up to me, about my height but a little older. She said hi, and I said hi. There was a pause before she asked if I had my ticket – which was only the information email I’d printed out. But showing it to her made me feel less like a stranger in someone’s home and more like I was there attending a show, even though really, I was both. “There’s cucumber water in the kitchen,” she added, “and beer if you’re 21.”

The room was arranged with the couch off to the side, in a little nook with a window to the from porch. Mismatched chairs outlined the rest of the room. I took a seat on the side of the couch, trying to leave as much room as possible. Slowly, others arrived, and it was definitely others of all demographics. The youngest looked about twelve, but I was surprised to see those parents-aged, since Julia Nunes is only 24, and the only seating left by then was on the floor.

As the room filled up, I started to think no one else could possibly fit, but the guests kept coming. I made friends with the three others on the couch, the one scrunched up on the floor in the corner, and the one on the floor in front of me, leaning back on my legs. My seat was right by that window to the front porch, and I watched even more people enter and squeeze in. The living room was completely full – overfull. Suddenly the small crowd turned their heads, and Julia was the one coming in. She hadn’t been hiding in some backstage/master bedroom combo, she just came in the front door.

With Julia on her ukulele and Will Sturgeon, her friend and bandmate, on guitar, the night resembled a group of friends sitting in a circle, listening to their one musical friend play what they’ve been learning – only Julia is much more talented. She was very encouraging about audience participation, and even called out a few people for hitting some impressive high notes. She covered Lorde’s “Royals”, causing 50 people to attempt harmonizing in unison. It didn’t always work, but it brought such a sense of unity to the room that it was beautiful anyway.

Before the last two songs, she stopped singing for a while to have a Q&A session. The first came from a young woman, accompanied with an eraser ring and was, “Will you marry me?” to which Julia answered, yes, and accepted the ring. After that, questions were fairly Nunes-centric, such as, “I heard you say you took a Beatles class in college, what was that like?”

Julia ends each show by getting a group picture. She said this would be one of the hardest ones because the room was so small and there were so many people. Someone turned on the lights and we scrunched the best we could manage.

The experience of a living room show was absolutely void of a concert kind of feel. While I was aware I wasn’t exactly in a room full of friends, we had all crammed into this room together for the same reason. The choice to play living rooms instead of proper venues not only made the night more memorable, but showed another unique way of how the boundaries of a musical experience can be pushed.

For Watching Television, Maybe Illegal is Better

December 10, 2013 Emily Rose

The thought first occurred to me while watching TV with a friend as she fast forwarded through the commercials. She was upset she had forgotten to record the first episode of American Horror Story: Coven, which meant she couldn’t watch the rest of the series. I told her I could find it for her online. She replied, “I don’t watch things illegally.” This surprised me because out of the two of us, I’m the one who wants to work in the television industry. Then, for me, it clicked: by definition, skipping through DVR’d commercials is really no worse than illegally downloading, torrenting, or streaming a television show online.

The main thing is: If you don’t watch your show, your show gets cancelled. That is, if a show’s ratings aren’t high enough, advertisers won’t buy commercial slots, so the show doesn’t make money and the network gets rid of it. That’s how it’s supposed to work. The truth is, it’s not like there’s a counter that goes up and down, showing the exact number of television sets tuned into each show. The system is much more complicated and inefficient than that.

Fans of “Community” try to save the show by having a flash mob

Television ratings are determined by the Nielsen company. They take a sample size of how many people are viewing the advertisements, not the show. This is why most networks are hesitant to stream programming on their websites – that individual view will not count toward their total ratings. No matter how many people have legally obtained a show, by either watching live or on a DVR, or buying it on Amazon or iTunes, it only matters how many people have been told that they need to have a Subway sandwich for lunch tomorrow. Increasingly, people want to watch their shows when it is convenient for them to watch them. Right now, DVR viewings are counted in the ratings if they are watched within seven days (and are a household counted in the sample size), so DVRs in general count as legal. But I don’t have a DVR, and most networks don’t stream their content on their websites, so I usually look to the internet. Conveniently for me, whoever uploads each episode (to any of the thousands of available venues) has stripped it from all its commercials.

In fact, when the legality of a show is measured by which advertisements are administered with it, current viewing methods seem even more arbitrary. Illegally streaming a show online that has been stripped of its commercials has the same effect as watching something on a DVR and fast forwarding through commercial breaks. Even if it’s Netflix or Hulu – advertisers don’t care if the whole world is watching. The whole world’s not watching their commercials, so they won’t be lining up to pay the network money. The second option leaves the possibility a viewer might accidentally forget to hit the skip button, but other than that, it seems irrational that one of these methods counts toward the viewer ratings and not the other.

This is why everyone – including networks and advertisers – needs to get on board with advertising-based, legal online streaming. Networks will be able to get precisely accurate page views they can boast about to advertisers, instead of a sample size of who is probably watching. It will be even more effective than the current system. For advertising companies, commercials are both unskippable and can be placed on other, more permanent and prominent places on the website. Viewers are more likely to sit through a commercial when they are under their laptop and less free to leave the room. Streaming is also able to give a much more reliable viewing number than the Nielsen company’s extremely flawed method. This would provide more accurate, and likely much larger, numbers to advertisers wanting to know who has seen their products.

As the ease and convenience of the internet continually increases, so does internet piracy. The television industry in particular would benefit from accepting this change rather than fighting against it. No matter its legality or level of morality, online streaming is too easy and uncatchable to be stopped. Fortunately this can be turned into a system that is more logical and beneficial. It may sound like the insensitive position of “Just Don’t Fight It,” but in this case, it is a solution that is better than the one it is trying to overturn.

Zines: Blogging in a Land Before Internet

December 10, 2013 Emily Rose

Sifting through blogs on the internet is pretty hit or miss. Sometimes you find a goldmine of information – sometimes you find incoherency among photos of someone’s breakfast or dogs. Because of zines, this was a problem even before the internet. But that’s a pretty unfair way to describe them. Zines have made a huge impact on the rise of independent publishing. It’s a medium that may now seem a staple of the past, but is still extremely relevant, and may even be making a comeback.

Basically a zine is a self-published magazine. It’s made without the help of a publisher or distributer, and usually has a staff of one. Each zine focuses on a specific subject. Those subjects are often obscure and niche, and also tend to have content that is fairly personal to the maker. Authors assemble, then copy their work, and either give it away, trade it for other zines, or attempt to sell them and possibly make a profit.

[“The Book of Zines”: The ultimate zine culture recap]

Technically, the concept of a zine has been around since writing has. Following the zine-guidelines above, any collection of ideas, written down and distributed, counts as a zine. The form was more clearly defined in the 1930s, when science fiction fans started writing, and publishing, and trading their own stories. They called them fanzines. Slowly, other subcultures started picking the idea up and using it for their own. The most advantageous for the medium was the rise of punk zines in the 1970s. These came at the same time photocopiers emerged, so zines were much easier to share, causing a huge boost in their prevalence and popularity.

[Check out an overview of the history of zines here.]

The most important thing the rise of the zine did was enable creators to speak their minds. Like blogs, they help similar people find each other and build a community of independent writers.

Zines made the statement that anyone with an idea could get it out there. People were creating and trading their own stuff, and others were reading and buying. One of the points that attracted so many people to the concept was that there was no one higher up to tell them what they could or couldn’t write. This caused zine subject matter to be often controversial, things that people were discouraged from talking about.

There was a freedom, a sense of secrecy, operating in the underground: even a sense of doing what’s right. Now, with the internet, the ideas that used to fill up zines are filling up blogs instead. Sometimes this feeling translates, but the internet gives the chance to be open to any number of eyes, from anywhere, at any time. While the content is still there, part of the fun is in the way you obtain it, and there’s nothing much special about just logging on. The concepts are similar, where anyone can put their writing out there for free. But it loses that subculture of people, laboriously creating and physically putting their work into the world.

[Read about some of the independent voices involved in zines.]

What can come through on blogs is the raw, personal story that’s allowed to be told. In traditional publishing there will always be someone – an editor, a publishing company – that has a claim on switching things around. Zines, and now blogs, create that element of one person broadcasting to the world.

Zines are a medium that have inspired and transformed writing and media. The physical aspect may have been lost in translation, but as “the original blogs”, a lot of writers owe more to zines and their long history than they realize.

[Make your own zine! Check out these DIY instructions.]

‘Hell Baby’ Slowly But Successfully Mixes Fear And Fun

December 10, 2013June 22, 2023 Emily Rose

Independent horror films are often held up to the “Paranormal Activity” standard – to be so bone-chilling for audiences in the festival circuit that a major studio immediately snatches it up. But Hell Baby is not that kind of movie. By the way, do you know where to watch scary movie 6?. Categorized as a “horror-comedy” film, there is far too much emphasis on the comedy half to be taken seriously, but still scary and gruesome enough to make it a movie you wouldn’t want to watch alone. In fact, its high level of absurdity, mixed with sufficient chills, makes Hell Baby an optimum fun viewing experience.

Ultimately, the film uses the horror-comedy genre to find its stride. Written by Tom Lennon and Robert Ben Garant of Reno 911!, the often ridiculous mocumentary and Cops spoof, Hell Baby knows how to make fun of itself. It will appeal to fans of the show which spanned most of the 2000s. The film mirrors Reno 911! in its normal, mundane setting, which then, through unexpected circumstances, edges toward surreal.

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In Hell Baby, this is the life of a couple (Rob Corddry and Leslie Bibb), expecting their first child, who are moving into a new house. It’s a common enough set-up, even when the neighbors inform them that everyone who previously lived in the house has died. It even has the nickname “House of Blood”. While unusual for real life, that’s a pretty standard scary movie situation. The first tip-off that this is not a straightforward horror movie is the wife’s description of the neighborhood as “the lower lower garden district,” and the husband’s as that “white people don’t know this neighborhood exists.” It’s a signal that the writers intend to play with the traditional genre. The introduction of the next door neighbor, F’resnel (Key & Peele’s Keegan-Michael Key), heightens this. He’s obviously a sidekick comedic character, but it’s taken even further than usual. The reason he pops up at unusual times is that he sometimes lives in the couple’s crawlspace – a secret he doesn’t even attempt to keep. It’s an unrealistic situation that’s grounded in a pretty ordinary conceit.

Throughout the first scenes, the comedy can seem a little stiff and jilted until the audience gets a chance to become immersed in the film’s ironic tone. The jabs at the formulaic horror genre are far less than subtle. The joke about white people not knowing about the neighborhood is played so straight that it’s hard to tell if it’s actually meant to be a joke or not. This creates some confusion – is this a satire of horror, or is it just dryly imitating the well known horror format? It causes Hell Baby to initially creep toward parody with no substance of its own. But a third of the way in, it hits its stride.

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The narrative is mainly about a possessed mother-to-be and her (appropriately terrified) husband. While fully aware of the house’s blood-filled past, the wife starts acting strangely, and vaguely demonic. She’s uncharacteristically aggressive, she growls, she communicates with the recently appeared black ghost-dog. Their trials are predictable, mainly focused on just trying to figure out what’s going on. It is when the Vatican City priests arrive (played by the film’s writers Tom Lennon and Robert Ben Garant) that the style of the film clicks into place. They are the characters who solidify Hell Baby’s mocking yet unconventional tone. Solely Lennon’s foreign accents have the ability to pick up any floundering film, and here is no exception. Obviously, with these characters, realism isn’t the goal. The Italian accents are ridiculous, over the top, but finally show the audience that, yes, this is a little bit foolish, but you’re supposed to be laughing.

The strength of the full cast is continuously a strong point. New characters are sporadically introduced (the sister, the cable guy), and each are played by prominent members of the stand-up comedy scene (Riki Lindhome, Kumail Nanjiani). Hell Baby is working with a strong basis but it is the array of supporting characters that give the film its fun, unique spirit. A large portion of one scene is dedicated just to the cable guy crashing into garbage cans. It’s irrelevant, but it’s entertaining. While the husband’s humor seems stiff on its own, his shared scenes with F’resnel is when his intended natural dry humor comes through.

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Fortunately, once these side characters come into play, the rest of the story follows suit and immediately becomes engaging and entertaining. Two thirds of the way through I was audibly laughing every couple of minutes. Still, the movie never loses the ominous, demonic tone throughout. This is achieved mainly because by this point, the audience is safely invested in the actions of the characters. The transition into that investment is particularly slow and subtle. By the story’s climax, I realized I had built up an emotional attachment to these characters that I wasn’t expecting, largely stemming from their fun and effortlessly comical personalities. They had gone from stiff to accessible in under an hour, and I hadn’t even noticed the shift.

Overall, Hell Baby successfully achieves its goal of fitting into the horror-comedy genre – a group that includes Shaun of the Dead, The Lost Boys, and even Gremlins. It is obvious it was made by people excited to bring a sense of humor to the terror realm, but still write a story that can stand on its own. The opening may feel slightly choppy, but it is a slow beginning that pays off in the end. Expect to leave Hell Baby having enjoyed yourself and feeling satisfied with this new take on a classic horror story.

‘Hell Baby’ comes to DVD 12/31/13.