Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Pics or It Didn't Happen

I was employee of the month for July, which is exciting, I suppose. That isn’t to say I’m ungrateful or anything, but I didn’t even know until almost halfway through the month when my manager approached me and said “Hey, you’re employee of the month! I need your picture for our praise board.”

In the back of the restaurant is a board with nothing but compliments. Generally these are from customer surveys, from people who not only bothered to respond to the link on their receipts but also bothered to ask their server or cashier their names for the sole purpose of giving them a shout-out in the “additional comments” section, but it’s also used by managers who notice particularly “above and beyond” behavior and decide to write about it to the world. I’m actually not sure why customers can’t see it (maybe because it would set their expectations too high), but the point is that it exists, and right in the middle is a slot for a picture of whoever is that month’s top employee as decided by the managers.

It’s not that I’m against my picture being taken -- I’m against selfies, sure, but that’s a subject for another blog -- I just don’t pose for the camera when it’s out. The one time I did have my picture taken was for my birthday, but one of our chefs was having their work anniversary at the same time, which meant the managers couldn’t use that as a solo picture.

In addition to a prominent placement on this board is a gift card. But that had its own set of problems. For example, only the general manager could approve giving a card, he was on vacation that month, and nobody wanted to bother him by calling about a work-related matter. But even when the card was finally given to me, I still didn’t have my picture up. Managers just kept forgetting.

On one of my final shifts of the month, I decided to do something about it. I printed out an image of a similarly-named cartoon character and threw it on the board. On my next shift after that, it was gone.

I never got my picture taken.

-F

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Raindrops on Roses (Part Nine) -- The Frontiersmen: A Narrative

The first time I remember being warned that a theatrical production would have disturbing sequences, particularly involving “cannon and musket fire” was preceding the play Tecumseh!, a play written by Allan W. Eckert exploring the life of the titular chieftain. It was also the first time I remember being disappointed at such a warning, though I can’t remember for certain whether this was because I didn’t think the cannons were that loud or because I didn’t think the warning warned enough. But the play was decent enough for my eleven-ish-year-old tastes and afterwards my grandmother bought me The Frontiersmen: A Narrative, a book by the same author concerning many of the same events.

The Frontiersmen isn’t primarily about Tecumseh, though. Instead it focuses more on the life of Simon Kenton, and the trials of his life as he drifts between America’s then-westernmost towns and the wilderness beyond. With both of these works, it’s very apparent that when you focus directly on one single person in history, their life becomes very interesting just by the nature of being around events enshrined in history.

The (maybe apocryphal) story behind the writing of Tecumseh! is that Allan Eckert refused to watch any other productions or read any scripts until he had finished writing his own. He “didn’t want certain tropes or gimmicks to pollute his writing process” or something to that effect. And I’m not sure if I believe that, or if it is true, the roughness Eckert was going for has been sanded down over the years. A lot of effort is put into a flair for the dramatic -- stage lights cut from one side of the stage to the other on a dime to represent two sides of a conflict, the aforementioned musket fire is almost rhythmic in its cue. To be fair, the production I saw had been around for forty-five years, and Eckert has been dead for almost ten of them, so changes are bound to happen (hey, I wrote a blog post on that!), but it does mean that “miracle play” narrative falls a little flat.

Recommending The Frontiersmen is difficult, and not only because it’s physically heavy enough to kill someone if it fell on their head. Eckert pulls no punches describing scenes of violent gore, from scalping to the ritual gauntlet to things with intestines that I’m not even going to attempt to describe. You have to be really interested in American history, have a strong stomach, and the willingness to sit through what some might consider a lot of fluff to get to the really interesting moments.

Recommending Tecumseh!, on the other hand, well, you still have to deal with a prop scalp and some musket-fire, but the “sanded-down roughness” I mentioned is only for the better, I think. Things just click together, author license means that historical events still make a tight enough script (from what I remember, at least), and the things that weren’t that good will probably have been improved upon in the years since I’ve seen it.

I had this all in my head while laying out the theme of these three Raindrops and Roses posts, but then I got to thinking about that disconnect. More specifically, how can I recommend only one of these two media written by the same person about many of the same events? And that got me thinking more about adaptation and the differences in form between media. “Pondering adaptation and America” was the teaser last time, and I’m not really sure I have more than comparing these pieces of media. The nature of adaptation seems like a theme all on its own, so that’s what we’ll be taking a look at next time.

-F

Tuesday, July 17, 2018

The Kitchen of Theseus

My job is slowly becoming more modern as it goes along. Sometimes it’s purchasing an iPad that we never use, sometimes it’s adding chip readers to the cash registers so that the half-imagined epidemic of semi-fast-food employees frisking their customer’s credit information is finally put to an end, and sometimes it’s adapting its look to more modern sensibilities (though the phrase “Noodles from all over the world and one from Wisconsin” continues to be the opposite of funny). Now, finally, we’ve moved on to the kitchen, which has its own set of issues.

Logistically, it’s a nightmare. Certain things just can’t be made without access to an oven, or are at least more difficult to prepare. Without a grill, well, you have to take the “grilled” out of “grilled chicken” for example. And a lot of this is done through contract work, which is apparently poorly negotiated. Materials take forever to arrive (rumor is that this is a purposeful action, but I’ve yet to see any evidence), which means that instead of coming into work and seeing a new kitchen appliance, it’s entirely possible to see a printout with “We are undergoing renovations. Unfortunately we cannot serve chicken or potstickers at this time. Thank you for your understanding.”

Am I complaining about work again? I mean, some of this thought is based in negative thinking, yes. But it’s not like I want to deal with outdated equipment, and it’s not like the solution is immediately obvious either (I don’t think shutting down the store for a day to replace the kitchen entirely is something upper management would find particularly palatable, for example).

The weird thing is, I don’t think we’re losing that many customers over this, either. I mean, one or two groups have up and left because we didn’t have the meat they were looking for, but there seems to be the same amount of people each shift that there had been before these changes started happening, and the people that have left still end up coming back eventually. So maybe the only people really inconvenienced by these changes are the employees. And it’s certainly easier to inconvenience seven people than one hundred and seven.

-F

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Raindrops on Roses (Part Eight) -- Dr. Langeskov, the Tiger, and the Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist


Imagine a one-man-show. This is going to be a pretty gross oversimplification, but in general, it’s the single person on stage running everything. There’s only one microphone, so sound is well-managed, and tech cues are generally minimal, maybe a sound cue or some minor special effects that someone else needs to handle, but by and large, one person has designed everything. The opposite, therefore, would be a one-audience-show, with a massive amount of work behind the scenes trying to give one singular audience member the experience of their lives.

This is the sort of analogy that Dr. Langeskov, the Tiger, and the Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist attempts to make, when it’s being serious enough to make any sort of analogy at all. But hey, it’s actual free, so maybe consider playing it first, and we can go from there. It’s only an hour long, and this blog isn’t going anywhere, so hey, give it a shot maybe?

Ready? Okay.

So like Birdman before it, Dr. Langeskov is very interested in the production of media and the idea of keeping up appearances despite hardship. Despite almost everybody else having joined a picket line, the show must go on, and so Simon Amstell has to guide a random schmoe through the process of making sure whoever is actually playing Dr. Langeskov remains immersed in what turns out to be a pretty ridiculous experience.

During the first playthrough, it’s this reading that is brought to prominence. On the second one, though, a tape player becomes available, and we start hearing the perspective of somebody who would even create such an experience. Instead of the collaborative “the show must go on” nature of art, this second playthrough presents an auteur character, the singular creator, who everyone else is below.

It’s this contrast that I think makes the game a complete whole, because the second character (voiced by Justin Roiland of Rick and Morty fame, if you enjoy that sort of trivia) is a complete moron. It’s clear he’s in charge, but it’s his inadequacy that has lead to the situation his game is now in, with only Simon Amstell remaining to pick up the pieces.

-F

Next time: Pondering adaptation and America

Tuesday, July 3, 2018

No Accounting for Taste

I’m dropping the Raindrops on Roses label for a second because, although I’m going to be making a recommendation in this post, I’m more interested in reflecting on three different albums and the popular reaction to each of them. With that thesis out of the way:

Justice (or Jus✝ice if you’re being particularly pedantic), is a very popular French House duo, perhaps most well known for their debut album, “✝” (generally referred to as “Cross”, which even the non-pedants use). Songs from this album -- Genesis, D.A.N.C.E., and Waters of Nazareth in particular -- have been used in all sorts of media, from game soundtracks to trailers to even being heavily featured. The film The Square, winner of the 2017 Palme D’Or at Cannes Film Festival, for example, featured Genesis heavily in one of the more prominent scenes in the film (though it is erroneously referred to as “Track Five” when it has never, ever, shown up as the fifth track on any of their albums. Like, it’s not that hard to check that sort of thing, come on). They’ve also done a handful of remixes -- We Are Your Friends, a remix of Never Be Alone by Simian, being the most popular -- and a pair of live albums, but what I want to focus on more is the reaction to their two follow-up albums: “Audio, Video, Disco” and “Woman”.

A popular phrase I’ve seen used to describe the music in ✝ is a prog rock album where they forgot to add the melodies. Obviously this isn’t always true, the three songs on the album with vocals, for example, but Waters of Nazareth especially sounds like a droning baseline with drum hits. And people love it. So when Audio, Video, Disco started adding guitars and other melodious instruments, and when Woman added even more, there was a lot of push back from the people who wanted more of the same.

There’s this idea of fandom and how fandoms develop that revolves around this feeling of ownership. More specifically, people come together around a piece of media because they all like it, but when more media is produced, it naturally fractures the fandom group. Just because they all liked the first thing doesn’t mean they naturally enjoy the second, of course. But because the community exists in the first place, people desperately want the general opinion to match theirs.

So arguments happen. And gradually, as more and more media related to the fandom is released, as the fandom becomes more and more split, the arguments multiply and take over any influence the original creator might have had. I’ve noticed this especially with music, as length between new material is directly proportional to the amount of hype and subsequent backlash that can fracture a group. Audio, Video, Disco wasn’t “✝ 2.0”, so to many it was inferior and not worth even the single listen required to make that judgement.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this. Personally I like both Audio, Video, Disco and Woman, even if some of that appreciation is comparing them with their predecessors. I guess I just wanted to caution against this sort of fan-related groupthink that can occur. “Everyone has their own opinion” is one of those near-meaningless platitudes that people tend to hate, but I hope I explained the sort of viewpoint that leads to it well enough, and maybe in the meantime I gave you one more musical artist to listen to. Just don’t talk about it on the internet.

-F