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"title": "The Latest Ms. Marvel Shapeshifts Comic Stereotypes",
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"content": "\u003cp>Meet \u003ca href=\"//marvel.wikia.com/Kamala_Khan_(Earth-616)\">Kamala Khan\u003c/a>: she’s a 16-year-old Pakistani American girl living in Jersey City. She loves Marvel comics and even writes her own fan fiction about The Avengers. But she believes, “My chances of becoming an intergalactic superhero are even slimmer than my chances of becoming blond and popular.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when \u003ca href=\"//marvel.wikia.com/Carol_Danvers_(Earth-616)\">Captain Marvel\u003c/a> herself gives Kamala shape-shifting powers, she has to create her own identity and embrace her Islamic heritage as the newest incarnation of Ms. Marvel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The overwhelmingly positive reaction to Marvel’s update proves that being blond isn’t a prerequisite for popularity anymore. For many years, Marvel presented Ms. Marvel as the buxom and scantily clad Carol Danvers. Like many of us, Kamala grew up idealizing this narrow representation of female superheroes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently \u003ca href=\"//www.mirusgallery.com/about\">Mirius Gallery\u003c/a> presented visual artist Sandra Chevrier’s, \u003cb>\u003ca href=\"//www.mirusgallery.com/exhibitions/les-cages-fractured-gaze-sandra-chevrier\">Les Cages: A Fractured Gaze\u003c/a>\u003c/b>, which explores this dysfunctional relationship between females and their comic book representations through multimedia works. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10137035\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Les-Cages.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Les-Cages.jpg\" alt=\"Sandra Chevrier, Les Cages: A Fractured Gaze, 2014; courtesy Mirius Gallery\" width=\"640\" height=\"1042\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10137035\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Les-Cages.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Les-Cages-400x651.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Les-Cages-184x300.jpg 184w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sandra Chevrier, \u003ci>Les Cages: A Fractured Gaze\u003c/i>, 2014; courtesy Mirius Gallery\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp> “The comic book collages, at once anesthetizing and alluring, echo rather entertaining pop-art references that eventually [belie] the bitter irony that these females have been silenced, smothered, and even blinded by the very mechanisms that seduced us into their existence,” Mirius’ website states. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kamala receives her superpowers while experiencing an identity crisis brought on by these same societal pressures. At first she plans to kick butt as Carol Danvers in the “classic, politically incorrect costume” Ms. Marvel was known for, but the figurative and literal wedge heel doesn’t fit. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10137037\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Ms.-Marvel-1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Ms.-Marvel-1.jpg\" alt=\"Sara Pichelli & Justin Ponsor, Ms. Marvel Issue #1 Cover Art, 2014; courtesy Marvel \" width=\"640\" height=\"972\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10137037\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Ms.-Marvel-1.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Ms.-Marvel-1-400x607.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Ms.-Marvel-1-197x300.jpg 197w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sara Pichelli & Justin Ponsor, \u003ci>Ms. Marvel Issue #1 Cover Art\u003c/i>, 2014; courtesy Marvel\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Assuming someone else’s form does not make Kamala feel beautiful, strong or brave. In the first four issues she begins to explore what does. She re-purposes a modest “burkini” bathing suit and taps into her video gamer reflexes to save her peers as a new Ms. Marvel. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As one of the few representations of Islamic characters in the comic world and the only female protagonist of her kind, the pressure is on Marvel to convey a well-rounded character. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Writer \u003ca href=\"//gwillowwilson.com/\">G. Willow Wilson\u003c/a>, who calls herself a professional genre-bender, told \u003ca href=\"//www.wired.com/2014/01/ms-marvel-muslim-superheroine/\">Wired Magazine\u003c/a>, “The key thing is authenticity, and not trying to please everybody with a cardboard cutout that doesn’t feel like a human being with flaws and quirks and charm.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Illustrator \u003ca href=\"//sweetbizarre.com/\">Adrian Alphona\u003c/a> rounds out the characters with dynamic panels that reflect the awkward movements and conflicted personalities of modern teenagers discovering their identities: secret or otherwise. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"//marvel.com/comics/issue/49093/ms_marvel_2014_5\">The fifth and final issue\u003c/a> of this story arc came out on Wednesday, June 18, 2014. Let Marvel know you appreciate diverse characters like Kamala by calling your local comic bookstore and ordering \u003ci>Ms. Marvel\u003c/i> comics. You can also \u003ca href=\"//comicstore.marvel.com/Ms-Marvel-1/digital-comic/32979\">purchase digital issues\u003c/a> through \u003ca href=\"//comicstore.marvel.com/\">Marvel’s Digital Comics Shop\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keep an eye out for a trade paperback that will combine the first five issues into one volume later this year. \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Meet \u003ca href=\"//marvel.wikia.com/Kamala_Khan_(Earth-616)\">Kamala Khan\u003c/a>: she’s a 16-year-old Pakistani American girl living in Jersey City. She loves Marvel comics and even writes her own fan fiction about The Avengers. But she believes, “My chances of becoming an intergalactic superhero are even slimmer than my chances of becoming blond and popular.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when \u003ca href=\"//marvel.wikia.com/Carol_Danvers_(Earth-616)\">Captain Marvel\u003c/a> herself gives Kamala shape-shifting powers, she has to create her own identity and embrace her Islamic heritage as the newest incarnation of Ms. Marvel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The overwhelmingly positive reaction to Marvel’s update proves that being blond isn’t a prerequisite for popularity anymore. For many years, Marvel presented Ms. Marvel as the buxom and scantily clad Carol Danvers. Like many of us, Kamala grew up idealizing this narrow representation of female superheroes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently \u003ca href=\"//www.mirusgallery.com/about\">Mirius Gallery\u003c/a> presented visual artist Sandra Chevrier’s, \u003cb>\u003ca href=\"//www.mirusgallery.com/exhibitions/les-cages-fractured-gaze-sandra-chevrier\">Les Cages: A Fractured Gaze\u003c/a>\u003c/b>, which explores this dysfunctional relationship between females and their comic book representations through multimedia works. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10137035\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Les-Cages.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Les-Cages.jpg\" alt=\"Sandra Chevrier, Les Cages: A Fractured Gaze, 2014; courtesy Mirius Gallery\" width=\"640\" height=\"1042\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10137035\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Les-Cages.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Les-Cages-400x651.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Les-Cages-184x300.jpg 184w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sandra Chevrier, \u003ci>Les Cages: A Fractured Gaze\u003c/i>, 2014; courtesy Mirius Gallery\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp> “The comic book collages, at once anesthetizing and alluring, echo rather entertaining pop-art references that eventually [belie] the bitter irony that these females have been silenced, smothered, and even blinded by the very mechanisms that seduced us into their existence,” Mirius’ website states. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kamala receives her superpowers while experiencing an identity crisis brought on by these same societal pressures. At first she plans to kick butt as Carol Danvers in the “classic, politically incorrect costume” Ms. Marvel was known for, but the figurative and literal wedge heel doesn’t fit. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10137037\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Ms.-Marvel-1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Ms.-Marvel-1.jpg\" alt=\"Sara Pichelli & Justin Ponsor, Ms. Marvel Issue #1 Cover Art, 2014; courtesy Marvel \" width=\"640\" height=\"972\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10137037\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Ms.-Marvel-1.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Ms.-Marvel-1-400x607.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/06/Ms.-Marvel-1-197x300.jpg 197w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sara Pichelli & Justin Ponsor, \u003ci>Ms. Marvel Issue #1 Cover Art\u003c/i>, 2014; courtesy Marvel\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Assuming someone else’s form does not make Kamala feel beautiful, strong or brave. In the first four issues she begins to explore what does. She re-purposes a modest “burkini” bathing suit and taps into her video gamer reflexes to save her peers as a new Ms. Marvel. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As one of the few representations of Islamic characters in the comic world and the only female protagonist of her kind, the pressure is on Marvel to convey a well-rounded character. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Writer \u003ca href=\"//gwillowwilson.com/\">G. Willow Wilson\u003c/a>, who calls herself a professional genre-bender, told \u003ca href=\"//www.wired.com/2014/01/ms-marvel-muslim-superheroine/\">Wired Magazine\u003c/a>, “The key thing is authenticity, and not trying to please everybody with a cardboard cutout that doesn’t feel like a human being with flaws and quirks and charm.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Illustrator \u003ca href=\"//sweetbizarre.com/\">Adrian Alphona\u003c/a> rounds out the characters with dynamic panels that reflect the awkward movements and conflicted personalities of modern teenagers discovering their identities: secret or otherwise. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"//marvel.com/comics/issue/49093/ms_marvel_2014_5\">The fifth and final issue\u003c/a> of this story arc came out on Wednesday, June 18, 2014. Let Marvel know you appreciate diverse characters like Kamala by calling your local comic bookstore and ordering \u003ci>Ms. Marvel\u003c/i> comics. You can also \u003ca href=\"//comicstore.marvel.com/Ms-Marvel-1/digital-comic/32979\">purchase digital issues\u003c/a> through \u003ca href=\"//comicstore.marvel.com/\">Marvel’s Digital Comics Shop\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keep an eye out for a trade paperback that will combine the first five issues into one volume later this year. \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Behind the Scenes at Antiques Roadshow: The Characters, the Stories and the Treasures",
"title": "Behind the Scenes at Antiques Roadshow: The Characters, the Stories and the Treasures",
"headTitle": "KQED Pop | KQED Arts",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12450\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/06/17/behind-the-scenes-at-antiques-roadshow-the-characters-the-stories-and-the-treasures/antiques-roadshow/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12450\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-12450\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/antiques-roadshow.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: PBS\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/antiques-roadshow.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/antiques-roadshow-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: PBS\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Out of the 30,000 who requested tickets to a recent taping of the PBS juggernaut, \u003cem>Antiques Roadshow\u003c/em>, 6,000 were given. I was lucky enough to be among them. The scene at the Santa Clara Convention Center was exactly what you would hope. People wandered the halls carrying everything from stained glass lamps to carousel animals, taxidermy bird scenes under glass to Danish moderne secretaries. \u003cem>Dukes of Hazard\u003c/em> lunch boxes vied for attention with Shaker tables, as people from every corner of California (and one couple I met who flew in from Hawaii) tried their best to impress appraisers and producers with their treasures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each week, the Boston-based \u003cem>Antiques Roadshow\u003c/em> travels to a new city with a team of staff appraisers and their host, Mark L. Walberg (he was plain Mark Walberg back when \"Marky Mark\" was still modeling jocks), to meet the people. Actually, the people can be slightly incidental, if the object they bring is fantastic enough. Of the 100 or so participants who get taped for the show, roughly ten or so make it onto an episode. Over and over again, I was told by members of the \u003cem>Antiques Roadshow\u003c/em> team that the antiques are the real star. So I set forth into the nerve center of \u003cem>Antiques Roadshow\u003c/em> and met the pieces.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"My daughter is getting this one day. I want her to have it to remember how important random acts of kindness are.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Before mixing with the public, I met Los Angeles-based appraiser Laura Woolley, whose specialty (appropriately enough for this blog) is pop culture memorabilia. Woolley, who started her career at Sotheby's after college and now has her own company, \u003ca href=\"http://thecollectorslab.com/about.php\">The Collector's Lab\u003c/a>, has evaluated everything from production items (a scene painting from the 1960s camptastic film version of \u003cem>Batman\u003c/em> is among her more recent fabulous appraisals) to pop collectables to major celebrity auctions (Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, Bette Midler, and Cher, to name a few).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the past 20 years, the celebrity auction market has taken off and Woolley has been there almost from the very beginning. Appraising a celebrity item is two fold: there's the value of the item itself and then there's the value the celebrity name brings to it, which can raise the final price far beyond the object value. \"The best example I can give you of this phenomenon was the Jackie O auction,\" Woolley said. The Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis auction in the mid-'90s was among the first major celebrity sales, where the prices of everyday items shot unbelievably high because of the star glimmer. \"There was a tape measure Jackie used at the tailor, a totally ordinary tape measure. It went for something like a hundred times its estimated value. That's when we knew the market had completely changed.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/06/17/behind-the-scenes-at-antiques-roadshow-the-characters-the-stories-and-the-treasures/20140612-094143-jpg/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12398\">\u003cimg class=\"alignright wp-image-12398\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/20140612-094143-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"20140612-094143.jpg\" width=\"280\" height=\"373\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Woolley was called off to film a segment, I wandered around the taping, eyes wide open and occasionally agog at some of the items people had brought in. I caught up with Steve and Marion, who had their hands full with an 8 foot tall telescope (in pieces). The antique stargazer, which Steve dated back to 1850, was purchased by the couple 50 years prior from a neighbor in Palm Desert who had taken it when the local school no longer had use for the archaic instrument.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It still works,\" Steve said proudly. \"All I had to do was clean the lens.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next, I wandered from telescopes over to jewelry, where I met Maureen and her husband Larry from Berkeley. Maureen had been given a silver Chinoiserie bracelet from the \"Court of the Seven Seas\" at the 1939 Golden Gate Exposition by a patient when she was a dental hygienist in the 1970s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/06/17/behind-the-scenes-at-antiques-roadshow-the-characters-the-stories-and-the-treasures/antiques-bracelet/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12457\">\u003cimg class=\"alignleft wp-image-12457\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/antiques-bracelet-853x1024.jpg\" alt=\"antiques-bracelet\" width=\"300\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This very elegant lady patient of the doctor I worked for was always so immaculately dressed,\" Maureen said. \"And when I admired her bracelets -- this was one of three in a set she was wearing -- she told me her husband had been the curator of Asian artifacts at the expo where it had come from. Then she told me she had no children to pass it on to, she unsnapped it from her wrist and passed it on to me.\" Maureen put the bracelet on, pointing out its pagoda scene and raised detailing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I wear it at least twice a week. Now, when someone compliments a scarf or a pair of earrings I'm wearing, I love to do what that lady did and hand it off to them.\" Maureen learned that her bracelet was worth about $200, but she had no intention of selling anyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"My daughter is getting this one day. I want her to have it to remember how important random acts of kindness are.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next, I met Larry, who also had a piece appraised with better monetary results. His white 1968 Hot Wheels Camaro turned out to be one of the most rare toy cars from the period. He wouldn't say what the appraiser valued it, but said he was \"very pleasantly surprised.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I thought it might be worth more because it was still in the package but not by \u003cem>that\u003c/em> much.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/06/17/behind-the-scenes-at-antiques-roadshow-the-characters-the-stories-and-the-treasures/20140612-094015-jpg/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12396\">\u003cimg class=\"alignright wp-image-12396\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/20140612-094015-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"20140612-094015.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"400\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the most popular appraisal fields at any \u003cem>Antiques Roadshow\u003c/em> taping is painting and prints. It's almost always the field with the most requests. My eye was immediately drawn to to a woman in line with a large, turn of the century poster from France.\u003cbr>\n\"It's from between 1900 and 1906,\" Sandra said of her piece. \"I collect these French posters, but this is one of the earliest ones I own. My other ones are all more Art Deco and this is very Belle Époque.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I took in her poster, an advertisement for a major exposition/fair in Paris, a number of other people began to take notice of it. Sandra said the item would definitely be staying in her home, regardless of the value (\"it looks perfect on the wall I had to sacrifice so it could hang alone\"), but when word reached us later that Sandra and her poster had been chosen to be taped for the show, we wondered if she might hear that her poster was worth a price that might make her want to reconsider selling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So what's the policy when it comes to buying at an Antiques Roadshow taping? Apparently, soliciting in the taping area is completely verboten. What happens in the parking lot is another story. Sure enough, there were so many deals going down in the parking structure after the show, you would have thought you'd wandered into a very informal flea market. And one more insider Antiques Roadshow fun fact for the road: when a member of the public has an item that is appraised as having a huge value, they are provided with an armed escort to their car. There's never been an issue, but they don't want to tempt the fates.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12450\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/06/17/behind-the-scenes-at-antiques-roadshow-the-characters-the-stories-and-the-treasures/antiques-roadshow/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12450\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-12450\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/antiques-roadshow.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: PBS\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/antiques-roadshow.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/antiques-roadshow-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: PBS\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Out of the 30,000 who requested tickets to a recent taping of the PBS juggernaut, \u003cem>Antiques Roadshow\u003c/em>, 6,000 were given. I was lucky enough to be among them. The scene at the Santa Clara Convention Center was exactly what you would hope. People wandered the halls carrying everything from stained glass lamps to carousel animals, taxidermy bird scenes under glass to Danish moderne secretaries. \u003cem>Dukes of Hazard\u003c/em> lunch boxes vied for attention with Shaker tables, as people from every corner of California (and one couple I met who flew in from Hawaii) tried their best to impress appraisers and producers with their treasures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each week, the Boston-based \u003cem>Antiques Roadshow\u003c/em> travels to a new city with a team of staff appraisers and their host, Mark L. Walberg (he was plain Mark Walberg back when \"Marky Mark\" was still modeling jocks), to meet the people. Actually, the people can be slightly incidental, if the object they bring is fantastic enough. Of the 100 or so participants who get taped for the show, roughly ten or so make it onto an episode. Over and over again, I was told by members of the \u003cem>Antiques Roadshow\u003c/em> team that the antiques are the real star. So I set forth into the nerve center of \u003cem>Antiques Roadshow\u003c/em> and met the pieces.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"My daughter is getting this one day. I want her to have it to remember how important random acts of kindness are.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Before mixing with the public, I met Los Angeles-based appraiser Laura Woolley, whose specialty (appropriately enough for this blog) is pop culture memorabilia. Woolley, who started her career at Sotheby's after college and now has her own company, \u003ca href=\"http://thecollectorslab.com/about.php\">The Collector's Lab\u003c/a>, has evaluated everything from production items (a scene painting from the 1960s camptastic film version of \u003cem>Batman\u003c/em> is among her more recent fabulous appraisals) to pop collectables to major celebrity auctions (Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, Bette Midler, and Cher, to name a few).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the past 20 years, the celebrity auction market has taken off and Woolley has been there almost from the very beginning. Appraising a celebrity item is two fold: there's the value of the item itself and then there's the value the celebrity name brings to it, which can raise the final price far beyond the object value. \"The best example I can give you of this phenomenon was the Jackie O auction,\" Woolley said. The Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis auction in the mid-'90s was among the first major celebrity sales, where the prices of everyday items shot unbelievably high because of the star glimmer. \"There was a tape measure Jackie used at the tailor, a totally ordinary tape measure. It went for something like a hundred times its estimated value. That's when we knew the market had completely changed.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/06/17/behind-the-scenes-at-antiques-roadshow-the-characters-the-stories-and-the-treasures/20140612-094143-jpg/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12398\">\u003cimg class=\"alignright wp-image-12398\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/20140612-094143-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"20140612-094143.jpg\" width=\"280\" height=\"373\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Woolley was called off to film a segment, I wandered around the taping, eyes wide open and occasionally agog at some of the items people had brought in. I caught up with Steve and Marion, who had their hands full with an 8 foot tall telescope (in pieces). The antique stargazer, which Steve dated back to 1850, was purchased by the couple 50 years prior from a neighbor in Palm Desert who had taken it when the local school no longer had use for the archaic instrument.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It still works,\" Steve said proudly. \"All I had to do was clean the lens.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next, I wandered from telescopes over to jewelry, where I met Maureen and her husband Larry from Berkeley. Maureen had been given a silver Chinoiserie bracelet from the \"Court of the Seven Seas\" at the 1939 Golden Gate Exposition by a patient when she was a dental hygienist in the 1970s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/06/17/behind-the-scenes-at-antiques-roadshow-the-characters-the-stories-and-the-treasures/antiques-bracelet/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12457\">\u003cimg class=\"alignleft wp-image-12457\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/antiques-bracelet-853x1024.jpg\" alt=\"antiques-bracelet\" width=\"300\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This very elegant lady patient of the doctor I worked for was always so immaculately dressed,\" Maureen said. \"And when I admired her bracelets -- this was one of three in a set she was wearing -- she told me her husband had been the curator of Asian artifacts at the expo where it had come from. Then she told me she had no children to pass it on to, she unsnapped it from her wrist and passed it on to me.\" Maureen put the bracelet on, pointing out its pagoda scene and raised detailing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I wear it at least twice a week. Now, when someone compliments a scarf or a pair of earrings I'm wearing, I love to do what that lady did and hand it off to them.\" Maureen learned that her bracelet was worth about $200, but she had no intention of selling anyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"My daughter is getting this one day. I want her to have it to remember how important random acts of kindness are.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next, I met Larry, who also had a piece appraised with better monetary results. His white 1968 Hot Wheels Camaro turned out to be one of the most rare toy cars from the period. He wouldn't say what the appraiser valued it, but said he was \"very pleasantly surprised.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I thought it might be worth more because it was still in the package but not by \u003cem>that\u003c/em> much.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/06/17/behind-the-scenes-at-antiques-roadshow-the-characters-the-stories-and-the-treasures/20140612-094015-jpg/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12396\">\u003cimg class=\"alignright wp-image-12396\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/20140612-094015-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"20140612-094015.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"400\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the most popular appraisal fields at any \u003cem>Antiques Roadshow\u003c/em> taping is painting and prints. It's almost always the field with the most requests. My eye was immediately drawn to to a woman in line with a large, turn of the century poster from France.\u003cbr>\n\"It's from between 1900 and 1906,\" Sandra said of her piece. \"I collect these French posters, but this is one of the earliest ones I own. My other ones are all more Art Deco and this is very Belle Époque.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I took in her poster, an advertisement for a major exposition/fair in Paris, a number of other people began to take notice of it. Sandra said the item would definitely be staying in her home, regardless of the value (\"it looks perfect on the wall I had to sacrifice so it could hang alone\"), but when word reached us later that Sandra and her poster had been chosen to be taped for the show, we wondered if she might hear that her poster was worth a price that might make her want to reconsider selling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So what's the policy when it comes to buying at an Antiques Roadshow taping? Apparently, soliciting in the taping area is completely verboten. What happens in the parking lot is another story. Sure enough, there were so many deals going down in the parking structure after the show, you would have thought you'd wandered into a very informal flea market. And one more insider Antiques Roadshow fun fact for the road: when a member of the public has an item that is appraised as having a huge value, they are provided with an armed escort to their car. There's never been an issue, but they don't want to tempt the fates.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "How the Death of a Bachelorette Contestant Is Dismantling the Fairy Tale of Reality TV",
"title": "How the Death of a Bachelorette Contestant Is Dismantling the Fairy Tale of Reality TV",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12222\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/05/27/how-the-death-of-a-bachelorette-contestant-is-dismantling-the-fairy-tale-of-reality-tv-eric-hill-andi-dorfman/bachelorette/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12222\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-12222\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/bachelorette.jpg\" alt=\"bachelorette\" width=\"640\" height=\"426\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/bachelorette.jpg 770w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/bachelorette-400x266.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Eric Hill & Andi Dorfman. Photo: ABC\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I'm not sure whether to start with death or reality TV. Perhaps unsurprisingly, but still to unsettling effect, the two have recently become entwined. In the last few seasons, the facade of \u003cem>The Bachelor\u003c/em> franchise's faux-reality has been falling away bit by bit. Front-runners have sent themselves home at the 11th hour with no last minute cinematic change of heart. Bachelorettes have settled for their second choice. The word 'love' has not been uttered. Proposals have not even occurred each time! The oft repeated mantra of, \"This is like a fairy tale,\" is being dismantled, and it's thrilling to see. This thrill speaks both to the power in \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/11/opinion/sunday/the-marriage-plot.html?_r=0\">the desire for fairy tales\u003c/a>, but also in the delight at their upending and ruin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And now, despite its best efforts, this absurd reality show has finally revealed one of the most real things: that at the end of it all, we will die. In the latest season, the sudden death of one of the men competing for the Bachelorette, has interrupted \u003cem>The Bachelorette\u003c/em> fantasy entirely in a way nothing else could. Eric Hill died in a paragliding accident in the weeks between the filming and airing of the show. Most of the discussion leading up to the premiere of \u003cem>The Bachelorette\u003c/em> centered around how to sincerely honor and acknowledge Hill in the context of this show where nothing is ever really honored. Producers decided not to edit him out, and Chris Harrison somberly dedicated the season to him at the top of the premiere, before a jarring transition to the inane opening rituals we all recognize.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet, no matter what the producers did or didn't do with Eric Hill's footage, we're watching a fairy tale with a ghost prince. I don't know if it's the gravitas of being the ghost amongst all those tanned, muscular, oafish men, but I couldn't take my eyes off Hill during the first episode. He seemed to practically glow. He magnetized the edge of every camera angle that scanned the crowd of forgettable first night boys. When he got his one-on-one time by the fireplace I wanted to hear everything he said. These were some of his last weeks of words. Who among us will have those on camera?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When a celebrity dies, we collectively mourn them, some combination of parasocial psychology, human empathy, surreal familiarity, and celebrity worship at work. We feel that we know them and we attach to some part of the death that we find sad or meaningful. There are, of course, also many people who think mourning the deaths of the famous is ludicrous since there are so many other tragedies every day, involving people whose names we'll never know. But whether death reveals itself through the famous or the non-famous, it still confounds and it still looms. Yet Eric Hill does not raise the usual questions of \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2014/05/02/308925901/pop-culture-happy-hour-posthumous-projects-and-people-were-pulling-for\">how to proceed with a posthumous project\u003c/a>. What makes this public death different from others is that Eric Hill wasn't a celebrity yet; he was somewhere between famous and not-famous. We heard about him dying first and we saw him on TV second.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A fair amount of reality TV stars have died, but most of them died \u003ca href=\"http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/dark-side-reality-tv-27-432060#1-eric-hill\">after their shows aired or their death interrupted an already airing show\u003c/a>. The timing of this particular tragedy is unprecedented in the world of reality TV. \u003ca href=\"http://time.com/106222/the-bachelorette-death-eric-hill-andi-dorfman/\">TIME\u003c/a> calls Hill's death a \"glitch in the Matrix.\" When I see him in the Bachelorette mansion, I do expect an interruption of static, the curtain pulling back. What are we watching? We've always known it isn't real. We know it happened in the past. And yet something of the dark magic of reality TV makes us forget that, at least momentarily. But now, watching Hill, we don't forget. The surreality of his presence enhances the clarity of the truth: this spontaneous string of tropical weeks and socially awkward cocktail parties are in fact already over, the outcome already determined, the inevitable already occurred. This is the intrusion of actual real life into supposed real life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hill's presence in this version of reality is a glitch, certainly, and a haunting, it's a lot of strange things: it's us watching someone in the last months of their life -- us knowing that, and him not knowing. And perhaps it's our knowing that feels so profound, so uncomfortable. It reminds me of this moment in \u003cem>Jesus' Son \u003c/em>by Denis Johnson, after the narrator has survived a car accident:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>“Down the hall came the wife. She was glorious, burning. She didn't know yet that her husband was dead. We knew. That's what gave her such power over us. The doctor took her into a room with a desk at the end of the hall, and from under the closed door a slab of brilliance radiated as if, by some stupendous process, diamonds were being incinerated in there. What a pair of lungs! She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere.” \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's what gives Eric Hill such power over us. We know he's dead even though he doesn't. And we know how it feels to be alive, yet more confronted now by the knowledge that we could so easily not be. We're reminded of mortality by watching this doomed courtship play out. When he talks about the next three years, we already know there won't be a next three years. And we wonder at the timing. Perhaps if the Bachelorette had given him a rose he would've stayed longer, his life would've played out along a different trajectory? Are each of us so beholden to such a random and uncaring universe? And how can it be that it's \u003cem>The Bachelorette\u003c/em> posing this existential concern? Fifteen years ago, there would've been no way to see someone's life (and death) in such an artificially curated, yet intimate, way. Fiction and non-fiction had cleaner lines. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Death is understood and interpreted, in large part, through our cultural lenses. In some cultures, being unconscious means you're dead. In others, people sleep with decaying corpses and meditate on the truth that one day their bodies will also decompose. We use different words to explain death, we believe different things to be true of death, we behave in different ways when confronted with death. In our contemporary Western lives, death is often hidden away from public view, and yet we are simultaneously bombarded by it through screens. We experience plenty of death in this second-hand way, through the sensational reporting of gruesome violent crimes, countless fictional deaths, or even Facebook, \u003ca href=\"http://mashable.com/2013/02/13/facebook-after-death/\">an ever-growing graveyard\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With death so often such a private thing, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.socresonline.org.uk/14/5/1.html\">reality TV so public\u003c/a>, Hill seems all the more strangely powerful, a symbol of this ultimate and inexplicable specter we so often manage to ignore. He is our meditation on death and dying because we don't know how else to do it. So, week after week, we'll tune in to watch him, and we'll try to forget what happens next. But we know.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12222\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/05/27/how-the-death-of-a-bachelorette-contestant-is-dismantling-the-fairy-tale-of-reality-tv-eric-hill-andi-dorfman/bachelorette/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12222\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-12222\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/bachelorette.jpg\" alt=\"bachelorette\" width=\"640\" height=\"426\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/bachelorette.jpg 770w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/bachelorette-400x266.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Eric Hill & Andi Dorfman. Photo: ABC\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I'm not sure whether to start with death or reality TV. Perhaps unsurprisingly, but still to unsettling effect, the two have recently become entwined. In the last few seasons, the facade of \u003cem>The Bachelor\u003c/em> franchise's faux-reality has been falling away bit by bit. Front-runners have sent themselves home at the 11th hour with no last minute cinematic change of heart. Bachelorettes have settled for their second choice. The word 'love' has not been uttered. Proposals have not even occurred each time! The oft repeated mantra of, \"This is like a fairy tale,\" is being dismantled, and it's thrilling to see. This thrill speaks both to the power in \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/11/opinion/sunday/the-marriage-plot.html?_r=0\">the desire for fairy tales\u003c/a>, but also in the delight at their upending and ruin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And now, despite its best efforts, this absurd reality show has finally revealed one of the most real things: that at the end of it all, we will die. In the latest season, the sudden death of one of the men competing for the Bachelorette, has interrupted \u003cem>The Bachelorette\u003c/em> fantasy entirely in a way nothing else could. Eric Hill died in a paragliding accident in the weeks between the filming and airing of the show. Most of the discussion leading up to the premiere of \u003cem>The Bachelorette\u003c/em> centered around how to sincerely honor and acknowledge Hill in the context of this show where nothing is ever really honored. Producers decided not to edit him out, and Chris Harrison somberly dedicated the season to him at the top of the premiere, before a jarring transition to the inane opening rituals we all recognize.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet, no matter what the producers did or didn't do with Eric Hill's footage, we're watching a fairy tale with a ghost prince. I don't know if it's the gravitas of being the ghost amongst all those tanned, muscular, oafish men, but I couldn't take my eyes off Hill during the first episode. He seemed to practically glow. He magnetized the edge of every camera angle that scanned the crowd of forgettable first night boys. When he got his one-on-one time by the fireplace I wanted to hear everything he said. These were some of his last weeks of words. Who among us will have those on camera?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When a celebrity dies, we collectively mourn them, some combination of parasocial psychology, human empathy, surreal familiarity, and celebrity worship at work. We feel that we know them and we attach to some part of the death that we find sad or meaningful. There are, of course, also many people who think mourning the deaths of the famous is ludicrous since there are so many other tragedies every day, involving people whose names we'll never know. But whether death reveals itself through the famous or the non-famous, it still confounds and it still looms. Yet Eric Hill does not raise the usual questions of \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2014/05/02/308925901/pop-culture-happy-hour-posthumous-projects-and-people-were-pulling-for\">how to proceed with a posthumous project\u003c/a>. What makes this public death different from others is that Eric Hill wasn't a celebrity yet; he was somewhere between famous and not-famous. We heard about him dying first and we saw him on TV second.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A fair amount of reality TV stars have died, but most of them died \u003ca href=\"http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/dark-side-reality-tv-27-432060#1-eric-hill\">after their shows aired or their death interrupted an already airing show\u003c/a>. The timing of this particular tragedy is unprecedented in the world of reality TV. \u003ca href=\"http://time.com/106222/the-bachelorette-death-eric-hill-andi-dorfman/\">TIME\u003c/a> calls Hill's death a \"glitch in the Matrix.\" When I see him in the Bachelorette mansion, I do expect an interruption of static, the curtain pulling back. What are we watching? We've always known it isn't real. We know it happened in the past. And yet something of the dark magic of reality TV makes us forget that, at least momentarily. But now, watching Hill, we don't forget. The surreality of his presence enhances the clarity of the truth: this spontaneous string of tropical weeks and socially awkward cocktail parties are in fact already over, the outcome already determined, the inevitable already occurred. This is the intrusion of actual real life into supposed real life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hill's presence in this version of reality is a glitch, certainly, and a haunting, it's a lot of strange things: it's us watching someone in the last months of their life -- us knowing that, and him not knowing. And perhaps it's our knowing that feels so profound, so uncomfortable. It reminds me of this moment in \u003cem>Jesus' Son \u003c/em>by Denis Johnson, after the narrator has survived a car accident:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>“Down the hall came the wife. She was glorious, burning. She didn't know yet that her husband was dead. We knew. That's what gave her such power over us. The doctor took her into a room with a desk at the end of the hall, and from under the closed door a slab of brilliance radiated as if, by some stupendous process, diamonds were being incinerated in there. What a pair of lungs! She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere.” \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's what gives Eric Hill such power over us. We know he's dead even though he doesn't. And we know how it feels to be alive, yet more confronted now by the knowledge that we could so easily not be. We're reminded of mortality by watching this doomed courtship play out. When he talks about the next three years, we already know there won't be a next three years. And we wonder at the timing. Perhaps if the Bachelorette had given him a rose he would've stayed longer, his life would've played out along a different trajectory? Are each of us so beholden to such a random and uncaring universe? And how can it be that it's \u003cem>The Bachelorette\u003c/em> posing this existential concern? Fifteen years ago, there would've been no way to see someone's life (and death) in such an artificially curated, yet intimate, way. Fiction and non-fiction had cleaner lines. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Death is understood and interpreted, in large part, through our cultural lenses. In some cultures, being unconscious means you're dead. In others, people sleep with decaying corpses and meditate on the truth that one day their bodies will also decompose. We use different words to explain death, we believe different things to be true of death, we behave in different ways when confronted with death. In our contemporary Western lives, death is often hidden away from public view, and yet we are simultaneously bombarded by it through screens. We experience plenty of death in this second-hand way, through the sensational reporting of gruesome violent crimes, countless fictional deaths, or even Facebook, \u003ca href=\"http://mashable.com/2013/02/13/facebook-after-death/\">an ever-growing graveyard\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With death so often such a private thing, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.socresonline.org.uk/14/5/1.html\">reality TV so public\u003c/a>, Hill seems all the more strangely powerful, a symbol of this ultimate and inexplicable specter we so often manage to ignore. He is our meditation on death and dying because we don't know how else to do it. So, week after week, we'll tune in to watch him, and we'll try to forget what happens next. But we know.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Dungeons & Dragons: Apatow & Harmon Rewrite the Roleplaying Geek",
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"content": "\u003cp>Since its creation in 1974, the fantasy role-playing game, \u003ca href=\"//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons%E2%80%9D\">Dungeons & Dragons\u003c/a> has become the go-to signifier of geek culture. Today however, the geeks have inherited the Earth as media producers, casting their formative geek pastimes into the mainstream and ushering in an era of geek chic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two prominent examples of geeks turned media moguls are \u003ca href=\"//www.imdb.com/name/nm1363595/%E2%80%9D\">Dan Harmon\u003c/a>, writer and creator of NBC’s \u003ca href=\"//www.imdb.com/title/tt1439629/?ref_=nm_knf_t1%E2%80%9D\">\u003ci>Community\u003c/i>\u003c/a>; and \u003ca href=\"//www.imdb.com/name/nm0031976/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1%E2%80%9D\">Judd Apatow\u003c/a>, director, writer and producer of the cult series, \u003ca href=\"//www.imdb.com/title/tt0193676/?ref_=nm_flmg_prd_38%E2%80%9D\">\u003ci>Freaks & Geeks\u003c/i>\u003c/a> and just about any movie starring \u003ca href=\"//www.imdb.com/name/nm0736622/?ref_=nv_sr_1%E2%80%9D\">Seth Rogan\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"//www.imdb.com/name/nm0290556/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1%E2%80%9D\">James Franco\u003c/a>. Perhaps it is no coincidence that both Harmon and Apatow count Dungeons & Dragons among their influences, since the game revolves around storytelling and character development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harmon records a weekly podcast called \u003ca href=\"//harmontown.tumblr.com/\">Harmontown\u003c/a>, in front of live audience in the back of \u003ca href=\"//www.meltcomics.com/blog/%E2%80%9D\">a comic book store\u003c/a>, which celebrates many aspects of nerd culture, most notably Dungeons & Dragons. During one of Harmontown’s \u003ca href=\"//podbay.fm/show/542228532\">first live tapings\u003c/a>, Harmon happened upon Spencer, a 6’4’’ Dungeon Master in the audience, with a 20-sided die at the ready. \u003ca href=\"//twitter.com/Thesixler%E2%80%9D\">Spencer\u003c/a> became the first DM to join a comedy tour across the country as part of Harmon’s podcast, and is now a geek god in his own right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136723\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1100px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/DDDice.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/DDDice.jpg\" alt=\"Dungeons & Dragons Dice, courtesy Wikimedia Commons\" width=\"1100\" height=\"829\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10136723\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/DDDice.jpg 1100w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/DDDice-400x301.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/DDDice-300x226.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dungeons & Dragons Dice, courtesy Wikimedia Commons \u003ccite>(Wikimedia Commons)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Back before I knew what Dungeons & Dragons [was] we used to just play pretend, you know? But we’d do the same basic things and then someone was like, ‘Hey, have you heard of Dungeons & Dragons?’ and we were like, ‘Wow. Let’s make this more complicated,’” Spencer recalls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harmon identifies these increasingly complex games of make-believe on the playground as the genesis of role-playing games.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Segments of Dungeons & Dragons are now permanent fixtures of Harmon’s show and any special guests are invited/forced to make cameo appearances within the world. Because as Harmon explains, “If there’s one contingency, we of the role-playing ilk have to prepare ourselves for, it’s less people showing up than we thought.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aside from podcasting, Harmon has also broadcasted Dungeons & Dragons on his subversive sitcom, \u003ci>Community\u003c/i>. Two episodes, \u003ca href=\"http://www.hulu.com/watch/212754\">Advanced Dungeons & Dragons\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.hulu.com/watch/611428\">Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons\u003c/a> satirize the trope of the ostracized D &D nerd. And while D&D players are not known for their diversity, these representations show different races, genders and ages engaging with the game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first episode begins with the following narrative, “Gather close that you might harken the story of Fat Neil. Born stout of heart but large of bone, his adolescent years were shadowed by scorn and mockery. Outlets of fantasy afforded him some escape from the darkness throughout high school and as a man he traveled far to a new school and a new beginning . . . or so he thought.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_WWEF06ZUw?rel=0&w=640&h=480]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apatow depicted Dungeons & Dragons with less tongue in cheek humor and more heartwarming empathy in \u003ci>Freaks & Geeks\u003c/i>: his short-lived series about high school in the early 1980s starring James Franco, Seth Rogan, Jason Segel, Linda Cardellini, Martin Starr and others who would go on to become successful actors. \u003ca href=\"http://www.ifc.com/fix/2011/10/judd-apatow-career-timeline\">IFC\u003c/a> describes this episode of Freaks and Geeks as, “the most noble depiction of a Dungeons and Dragons game ever.” This episode and the entire season are available on \u003ca href=\"https://www.netflix.com/?locale=en-US\">Netflix instant watch\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The tension that built between the freaks and the geeks throughout the school year comes to a détente in this finale. James Franco’s bad boy character joins the geeks for a game of D&D as Carlos the Dwarf. To everyone’s surprise, he enjoys it so much that he asks to play again the next night. After he leaves the room, the geeks conference to make sense of what just transpired,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Does him wanting to play with us again, mean that he’s turning into a geek or we’re turning into cool guys?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know, but I’ll go for us being cool guys.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yeah, I’ll buy that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yeah, definitely cool guys.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Cool.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To explore the world of Dungeons & Dragons, visit \u003ca href=\"//www.wizards.com/dnd/\">the official website\u003c/a>. However, the common consensus among D&D nerds is that the 3.5 version is the last version worth playing. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Additionally, the game requires a good-natured Dungeon Master. If you don’t already know a Dungeon Master, ask around your local hobby gaming store, which often have bulletin boards where you can post a call for one. (Just beware the power hungry types.) \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Since its creation in 1974, the fantasy role-playing game, \u003ca href=\"//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons%E2%80%9D\">Dungeons & Dragons\u003c/a> has become the go-to signifier of geek culture. Today however, the geeks have inherited the Earth as media producers, casting their formative geek pastimes into the mainstream and ushering in an era of geek chic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two prominent examples of geeks turned media moguls are \u003ca href=\"//www.imdb.com/name/nm1363595/%E2%80%9D\">Dan Harmon\u003c/a>, writer and creator of NBC’s \u003ca href=\"//www.imdb.com/title/tt1439629/?ref_=nm_knf_t1%E2%80%9D\">\u003ci>Community\u003c/i>\u003c/a>; and \u003ca href=\"//www.imdb.com/name/nm0031976/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1%E2%80%9D\">Judd Apatow\u003c/a>, director, writer and producer of the cult series, \u003ca href=\"//www.imdb.com/title/tt0193676/?ref_=nm_flmg_prd_38%E2%80%9D\">\u003ci>Freaks & Geeks\u003c/i>\u003c/a> and just about any movie starring \u003ca href=\"//www.imdb.com/name/nm0736622/?ref_=nv_sr_1%E2%80%9D\">Seth Rogan\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"//www.imdb.com/name/nm0290556/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1%E2%80%9D\">James Franco\u003c/a>. Perhaps it is no coincidence that both Harmon and Apatow count Dungeons & Dragons among their influences, since the game revolves around storytelling and character development.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harmon records a weekly podcast called \u003ca href=\"//harmontown.tumblr.com/\">Harmontown\u003c/a>, in front of live audience in the back of \u003ca href=\"//www.meltcomics.com/blog/%E2%80%9D\">a comic book store\u003c/a>, which celebrates many aspects of nerd culture, most notably Dungeons & Dragons. During one of Harmontown’s \u003ca href=\"//podbay.fm/show/542228532\">first live tapings\u003c/a>, Harmon happened upon Spencer, a 6’4’’ Dungeon Master in the audience, with a 20-sided die at the ready. \u003ca href=\"//twitter.com/Thesixler%E2%80%9D\">Spencer\u003c/a> became the first DM to join a comedy tour across the country as part of Harmon’s podcast, and is now a geek god in his own right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136723\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1100px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/DDDice.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/DDDice.jpg\" alt=\"Dungeons & Dragons Dice, courtesy Wikimedia Commons\" width=\"1100\" height=\"829\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10136723\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/DDDice.jpg 1100w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/DDDice-400x301.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/DDDice-300x226.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dungeons & Dragons Dice, courtesy Wikimedia Commons \u003ccite>(Wikimedia Commons)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Back before I knew what Dungeons & Dragons [was] we used to just play pretend, you know? But we’d do the same basic things and then someone was like, ‘Hey, have you heard of Dungeons & Dragons?’ and we were like, ‘Wow. Let’s make this more complicated,’” Spencer recalls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harmon identifies these increasingly complex games of make-believe on the playground as the genesis of role-playing games.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Segments of Dungeons & Dragons are now permanent fixtures of Harmon’s show and any special guests are invited/forced to make cameo appearances within the world. Because as Harmon explains, “If there’s one contingency, we of the role-playing ilk have to prepare ourselves for, it’s less people showing up than we thought.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aside from podcasting, Harmon has also broadcasted Dungeons & Dragons on his subversive sitcom, \u003ci>Community\u003c/i>. Two episodes, \u003ca href=\"http://www.hulu.com/watch/212754\">Advanced Dungeons & Dragons\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.hulu.com/watch/611428\">Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons\u003c/a> satirize the trope of the ostracized D &D nerd. And while D&D players are not known for their diversity, these representations show different races, genders and ages engaging with the game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first episode begins with the following narrative, “Gather close that you might harken the story of Fat Neil. Born stout of heart but large of bone, his adolescent years were shadowed by scorn and mockery. Outlets of fantasy afforded him some escape from the darkness throughout high school and as a man he traveled far to a new school and a new beginning . . . or so he thought.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/P_WWEF06ZUw?rel=0'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/P_WWEF06ZUw?rel=0'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apatow depicted Dungeons & Dragons with less tongue in cheek humor and more heartwarming empathy in \u003ci>Freaks & Geeks\u003c/i>: his short-lived series about high school in the early 1980s starring James Franco, Seth Rogan, Jason Segel, Linda Cardellini, Martin Starr and others who would go on to become successful actors. \u003ca href=\"http://www.ifc.com/fix/2011/10/judd-apatow-career-timeline\">IFC\u003c/a> describes this episode of Freaks and Geeks as, “the most noble depiction of a Dungeons and Dragons game ever.” This episode and the entire season are available on \u003ca href=\"https://www.netflix.com/?locale=en-US\">Netflix instant watch\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The tension that built between the freaks and the geeks throughout the school year comes to a détente in this finale. James Franco’s bad boy character joins the geeks for a game of D&D as Carlos the Dwarf. To everyone’s surprise, he enjoys it so much that he asks to play again the next night. After he leaves the room, the geeks conference to make sense of what just transpired,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Does him wanting to play with us again, mean that he’s turning into a geek or we’re turning into cool guys?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know, but I’ll go for us being cool guys.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yeah, I’ll buy that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yeah, definitely cool guys.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Cool.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To explore the world of Dungeons & Dragons, visit \u003ca href=\"//www.wizards.com/dnd/\">the official website\u003c/a>. However, the common consensus among D&D nerds is that the 3.5 version is the last version worth playing. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Additionally, the game requires a good-natured Dungeon Master. If you don’t already know a Dungeon Master, ask around your local hobby gaming store, which often have bulletin boards where you can post a call for one. (Just beware the power hungry types.) \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Be Wary and Bury the Very Scary 'I Wanna Marry Harry'",
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"content": "\u003cp>Gather round, children, and I will tell you of a dark time. A cruel time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a time when reality dating shows were even worse than they are now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Little remains of what was once a rich tapestry of such programming, if by “rich” you mean “smelly” and by “tapestry” you mean “garbage heap.” Back in the day, \u003cem>Joe Millionaire\u003c/em> featured a poor guy posing as a rich guy. \u003cem>Married By America \u003c/em>resulted in nobody getting married. Monica Lewinsky hosted a show called \u003cem>Mr. Personality\u003c/em> where the guys wore masks. \u003cem>Average Joe\u003c/em> ended with a climactic twist where the woman confessed the terrible secret that she had once dated Fabio. (True story. \u003cem>True story\u003c/em>.) \u003cem>Love Cruise\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Temptation Island \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Paradise Hotel \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Eden Something Something\u003c/em> all gave people opportunities to walk around in bikinis and dream the ultimate dream: of one day being able to get into a sweaty nightclub populated by other reality-show refugees on a Friday night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gradually, like a surging tide of fetid water with rotted fish floating in it, this particular fad slowly faded. All that was left of this era, the single gleaming salmon judged marginally safe to eat, was \u003cem>The Bachelor \u003c/em>franchise, which totters along drunkenly, both figuratively and literally, as its participants engage in a sort of premarital trial by combat in which the prize is a bland and/or terrible person delivered to you, caked in makeup, on a silver tray made of the internet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But with summer approaching, Fox has decided to revisit that terrible old time, much as one might decide to become a historical reenactor specializing in plagues of locusts, with \u003cem>I Wanna Marry ‘Harry,’ \u003c/em>a show that posits that women stupid enough to believe that Prince Harry is trying to find a wife on a Fox reality show are nevertheless interesting enough to treat as humans rather than props. We are told that he is just Matt, an average guy, but the women are led to believe he is Prince Harry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It should be said first that \u003cem>I Wanna Marry Harry \u003c/em>is, above all else, patently and ferociously fake — an accusation often leveled against reality television of all kinds despite being deserved to varying degrees. There are, after all, \u003cem>Bachelor \u003c/em>couples who got married and had kids. That show is, let’s say, 70 percent fake. \u003cem>I Wanna Marry Harry \u003c/em>is about 112 percent fake, with the extra 12 percent coming from the fake butler who’s been piled on top of the fake dating — just like Joe Millionaire’s butler was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Consider the very idea that 12 real human women who, in many cases, profess an affinity for Prince Harry could “believe” this story. Could “believe,” that is, that a member of a royal family that is historically so private that the very idea of their wearing underpants would probably get you thrown out of the country if you mentioned it in print would suddenly decide to find a romantic partner by asking Fox to go round up some models and actresses and model-actresses. (Plus a couple of special education teachers and other brains-y types who are probably there to be disapproving of everyone else.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Could “believe” that while royal spouses are probably vetted with a vigor normally reserved for Supreme Court nominees, the family (gazillion-dollar industry that it is) was willing to substitute bikini strutting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Could “believe” that people who prefer not to be seen in public acknowledging they have a nose, let alone picking it, would send a young fellow who could under not implausible circumstances \u003cem>become king \u003c/em>off to rub elbows and other parts with a bunch of fame-seeking Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gaze upon these women, and you will realize that even these women — \u003cem>even these women \u003c/em>— cannot possibly believe such a thing. They can only be in on the joke. \u003cem>Only\u003c/em>. No, this is not even the bent and massaged reality of \u003cem>The Bachelor\u003c/em>; it is pure fantasy. And the fantasy is not romance, as the show might have you believe. The fantasy is comeuppance for vain, beautiful, terrible, greedy women. Oh, sure, Matt may wind up picking one of them and confessing he’s not a royal, and she may say, “Oh, that’s okay!” and leap into his arms. But the real fantasy here lies in week after week watching as woman after woman reveals herself to be a grubbing, grasping, infantile harpy for wanting what the show is dangling in front of her, as well as a moron for believing it’s the truth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Believe it or not, there were bad old days of reality dating shows, and this is what they were like. Fake, cheap, witless and mean, in a way that makes \u003cem>The Bachelor \u003c/em>look like \u003cem>Anna Karenina\u003c/em>. This is woman-hating television for women, times 10, turned up to eleven, with a side of fries. Summer will provide opportunity after opportunity to enjoy frivolity made with substantially less malice than this, not to mention frivolity that doesn’t immediately create the sense that Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me” is about to come on the radio. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Be+Wary+And+Bury+The+Very+Scary+%27I+Wanna+Marry+Harry%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Gather round, children, and I will tell you of a dark time. A cruel time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a time when reality dating shows were even worse than they are now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Little remains of what was once a rich tapestry of such programming, if by “rich” you mean “smelly” and by “tapestry” you mean “garbage heap.” Back in the day, \u003cem>Joe Millionaire\u003c/em> featured a poor guy posing as a rich guy. \u003cem>Married By America \u003c/em>resulted in nobody getting married. Monica Lewinsky hosted a show called \u003cem>Mr. Personality\u003c/em> where the guys wore masks. \u003cem>Average Joe\u003c/em> ended with a climactic twist where the woman confessed the terrible secret that she had once dated Fabio. (True story. \u003cem>True story\u003c/em>.) \u003cem>Love Cruise\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Temptation Island \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Paradise Hotel \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Eden Something Something\u003c/em> all gave people opportunities to walk around in bikinis and dream the ultimate dream: of one day being able to get into a sweaty nightclub populated by other reality-show refugees on a Friday night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gradually, like a surging tide of fetid water with rotted fish floating in it, this particular fad slowly faded. All that was left of this era, the single gleaming salmon judged marginally safe to eat, was \u003cem>The Bachelor \u003c/em>franchise, which totters along drunkenly, both figuratively and literally, as its participants engage in a sort of premarital trial by combat in which the prize is a bland and/or terrible person delivered to you, caked in makeup, on a silver tray made of the internet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But with summer approaching, Fox has decided to revisit that terrible old time, much as one might decide to become a historical reenactor specializing in plagues of locusts, with \u003cem>I Wanna Marry ‘Harry,’ \u003c/em>a show that posits that women stupid enough to believe that Prince Harry is trying to find a wife on a Fox reality show are nevertheless interesting enough to treat as humans rather than props. We are told that he is just Matt, an average guy, but the women are led to believe he is Prince Harry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It should be said first that \u003cem>I Wanna Marry Harry \u003c/em>is, above all else, patently and ferociously fake — an accusation often leveled against reality television of all kinds despite being deserved to varying degrees. There are, after all, \u003cem>Bachelor \u003c/em>couples who got married and had kids. That show is, let’s say, 70 percent fake. \u003cem>I Wanna Marry Harry \u003c/em>is about 112 percent fake, with the extra 12 percent coming from the fake butler who’s been piled on top of the fake dating — just like Joe Millionaire’s butler was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Consider the very idea that 12 real human women who, in many cases, profess an affinity for Prince Harry could “believe” this story. Could “believe,” that is, that a member of a royal family that is historically so private that the very idea of their wearing underpants would probably get you thrown out of the country if you mentioned it in print would suddenly decide to find a romantic partner by asking Fox to go round up some models and actresses and model-actresses. (Plus a couple of special education teachers and other brains-y types who are probably there to be disapproving of everyone else.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Could “believe” that while royal spouses are probably vetted with a vigor normally reserved for Supreme Court nominees, the family (gazillion-dollar industry that it is) was willing to substitute bikini strutting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Could “believe” that people who prefer not to be seen in public acknowledging they have a nose, let alone picking it, would send a young fellow who could under not implausible circumstances \u003cem>become king \u003c/em>off to rub elbows and other parts with a bunch of fame-seeking Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gaze upon these women, and you will realize that even these women — \u003cem>even these women \u003c/em>— cannot possibly believe such a thing. They can only be in on the joke. \u003cem>Only\u003c/em>. No, this is not even the bent and massaged reality of \u003cem>The Bachelor\u003c/em>; it is pure fantasy. And the fantasy is not romance, as the show might have you believe. The fantasy is comeuppance for vain, beautiful, terrible, greedy women. Oh, sure, Matt may wind up picking one of them and confessing he’s not a royal, and she may say, “Oh, that’s okay!” and leap into his arms. But the real fantasy here lies in week after week watching as woman after woman reveals herself to be a grubbing, grasping, infantile harpy for wanting what the show is dangling in front of her, as well as a moron for believing it’s the truth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Believe it or not, there were bad old days of reality dating shows, and this is what they were like. Fake, cheap, witless and mean, in a way that makes \u003cem>The Bachelor \u003c/em>look like \u003cem>Anna Karenina\u003c/em>. This is woman-hating television for women, times 10, turned up to eleven, with a side of fries. Summer will provide opportunity after opportunity to enjoy frivolity made with substantially less malice than this, not to mention frivolity that doesn’t immediately create the sense that Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me” is about to come on the radio. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Be+Wary+And+Bury+The+Very+Scary+%27I+Wanna+Marry+Harry%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Louis C.K. on his 'Louie' Hiatus: 'I Wanted the Show to Feel New Again'",
"headTitle": "Louis C.K. on his ‘Louie’ Hiatus: ‘I Wanted the Show to Feel New Again’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Louis C.K. is now commonly acknowledged as one of the greatest comics of his generation. His celebrated FX series, \u003cem>Louie,\u003c/em> started its fourth season a couple weeks ago, after a 19-month hiatus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Louis C.K. created, writes, directs and stars in the series as a standup comic named Louie, who, like Louis C.K., is the divorced father of two young girls and shares custody with their mother. Last year, Louis C.K. also had prominent roles in two films: Woody Allen’s \u003cem>Blue Jasmine\u003c/em> and David O. Russell’s \u003cem>American Hustle\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Louis C.K. joins \u003cem>Fresh Air\u003c/em>‘s Terry Gross to discuss raising his daughters as a divorced dad and facing tough audiences.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Interview Highlights\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the indefinite hiatus he took between Seasons 3 and 4 of \u003cem>Louie\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I wanted the show to feel new again. I felt like I did three seasons that were all one spurt, and that felt good and I wanted to forget the show, so I took time to forget about it. I aggressively forgot the show existed for a few months. I went on tour and did standup and did other work. I acted in some movies. … Then after about only really a month off, like vacation, I started to think about the show again and think about the first episode being like a pilot again. That’s the way I approached this season: do a show that’s brand new, even though I’m bringing back characters. I tried to start from scratch. I spent way more time writing the show than I ever have before, thinking of the stories and plotting them out. I spent a year doing the season; instead, usually I spend about six months or less from the beginning of the writing to the end of the writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the troubled women that his character dates in the show\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It sort of became a trend after a couple of seasons. What’s fun to do with this guy on the show is just put stuff in front of him that he can’t resist: Here’s a beautiful woman and she doesn’t seem like a good choice for you, but there you go. I think I’m trying to beat something into his head. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I like showing a guy deal with bad choices. To me the show wouldn’t be very interesting if I was confronted with all very well balanced women, and then we go and have coffee and everything works out well and maybe we kiss and that’s the end of the episode. That’s not that funny to me. I’ve been playing that game over and over again for a while because it’s still fun for me; that’s why I’m still telling that story of the messed-up woman. It certainly doesn’t represent to me that that’s what women are like. To me it’s funny when people want a show to be an ideal of this-is-what-we-all-feel-is-the-best-version-of-a-woman and –a-man. I’m looking for weaknesses on both sides — it’s fun. But this season, I sort of try to fall in love for real and have a more real relationship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the uncomfortable topics of his standup routine \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The areas I’m going into are touchy. Maybe there’s a God; maybe there isn’t. Is God divorced? Did God kill his wife? You feel a little sweat on the back of your neck when you get there, but if you stay there for a second, you can find something joyful and funny in it. And it’s such a great thing to go to a scary place and laugh. I mean, what’s better than that? …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I just couldn’t help straying into these areas. It’s a little [mischievous]. I just want to go over there and see if there’s anything there. That’s just always been my nature. … I’m also not afraid of it. I’m not afraid if I go somewhere and I upset everybody. I’ve been there. I guess I was in trouble a lot when I was a kid, so I got used to it. When you’re never in trouble, you can never go to places like that. … I know I can survive everybody being pissed off at me. So when I started going onstage, I realized if I talk about this stuff I might upset people in the room, but it’s worth it because maybe there’s something there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On building his onstage confidence\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There really isn’t a situation onstage that I feel like I won’t know how to handle. There’s some that I know that I can’t overcome. There are things where I’m like, “This crowd is just not gonna like me,” but I also have a plan for that. You have to stay cool. You can’t let them change your plan. … I have that confidence onstage. I know even if I don’t open well, it’ll be OK; even if I lose them, I’ll get them back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I was first starting in New York, they had prom shows where they’d fill the audience with kids that were just at their prom and they’re all drunk on limousine booze and as soon as you get onstage, they start yelling at you, before they decide if they like you or not. They boo you when you hit the stage. I used to eat prom shows for dinner. I used to book as many prom shows as I could. First of all, they paid twice as much money — it’s the only time comedy clubs are compassionate to comedians. … But I’ve been onstage with people yelling and booing and throwing stuff at me and I’ve hung in there. I know how to handle that, so nothing scares me now onstage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On being divorced with two children\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is a version of divorced life where you’re partners and you’re both taking care of the kids, the kids are spending equal time with each parent, and there’s balance and there’s harmony between the parents because they’re not married in a bad marriage anymore. If you do it right, it’s a much better life for the kids. I was determined to make sure that my kids still felt me in their lives after divorce. And then I was astonished to find out that they wanted to be with me all the time, that this was positive for them. … And also that motivated me to make a good life for myself so that the kids would have a good home when they came to my place. And their mom is a good co-parent; we’re good partners together, we’re friends and we’ve both I think done a pretty good job of letting the kids feel like they have everything. They have a mom and they have a dad who get along and who are both there for them. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Louis+C.K.+On+His+%27Louie%27+Hiatus%3A+%27I+Wanted+The+Show+To+Feel+New+Again%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The comic tells \u003cem>Fresh Air\u003c/em> that after Season 3, he \"aggressively forgot the show existed for a few months.\" Then he got back to work. \u003cem>Louie\u003c/em> is now in its fourth season.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Louis C.K. is now commonly acknowledged as one of the greatest comics of his generation. His celebrated FX series, \u003cem>Louie,\u003c/em> started its fourth season a couple weeks ago, after a 19-month hiatus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Louis C.K. created, writes, directs and stars in the series as a standup comic named Louie, who, like Louis C.K., is the divorced father of two young girls and shares custody with their mother. Last year, Louis C.K. also had prominent roles in two films: Woody Allen’s \u003cem>Blue Jasmine\u003c/em> and David O. Russell’s \u003cem>American Hustle\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Louis C.K. joins \u003cem>Fresh Air\u003c/em>‘s Terry Gross to discuss raising his daughters as a divorced dad and facing tough audiences.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Interview Highlights\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the indefinite hiatus he took between Seasons 3 and 4 of \u003cem>Louie\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I wanted the show to feel new again. I felt like I did three seasons that were all one spurt, and that felt good and I wanted to forget the show, so I took time to forget about it. I aggressively forgot the show existed for a few months. I went on tour and did standup and did other work. I acted in some movies. … Then after about only really a month off, like vacation, I started to think about the show again and think about the first episode being like a pilot again. That’s the way I approached this season: do a show that’s brand new, even though I’m bringing back characters. I tried to start from scratch. I spent way more time writing the show than I ever have before, thinking of the stories and plotting them out. I spent a year doing the season; instead, usually I spend about six months or less from the beginning of the writing to the end of the writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the troubled women that his character dates in the show\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It sort of became a trend after a couple of seasons. What’s fun to do with this guy on the show is just put stuff in front of him that he can’t resist: Here’s a beautiful woman and she doesn’t seem like a good choice for you, but there you go. I think I’m trying to beat something into his head. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I like showing a guy deal with bad choices. To me the show wouldn’t be very interesting if I was confronted with all very well balanced women, and then we go and have coffee and everything works out well and maybe we kiss and that’s the end of the episode. That’s not that funny to me. I’ve been playing that game over and over again for a while because it’s still fun for me; that’s why I’m still telling that story of the messed-up woman. It certainly doesn’t represent to me that that’s what women are like. To me it’s funny when people want a show to be an ideal of this-is-what-we-all-feel-is-the-best-version-of-a-woman and –a-man. I’m looking for weaknesses on both sides — it’s fun. But this season, I sort of try to fall in love for real and have a more real relationship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the uncomfortable topics of his standup routine \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The areas I’m going into are touchy. Maybe there’s a God; maybe there isn’t. Is God divorced? Did God kill his wife? You feel a little sweat on the back of your neck when you get there, but if you stay there for a second, you can find something joyful and funny in it. And it’s such a great thing to go to a scary place and laugh. I mean, what’s better than that? …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I just couldn’t help straying into these areas. It’s a little [mischievous]. I just want to go over there and see if there’s anything there. That’s just always been my nature. … I’m also not afraid of it. I’m not afraid if I go somewhere and I upset everybody. I’ve been there. I guess I was in trouble a lot when I was a kid, so I got used to it. When you’re never in trouble, you can never go to places like that. … I know I can survive everybody being pissed off at me. So when I started going onstage, I realized if I talk about this stuff I might upset people in the room, but it’s worth it because maybe there’s something there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On building his onstage confidence\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There really isn’t a situation onstage that I feel like I won’t know how to handle. There’s some that I know that I can’t overcome. There are things where I’m like, “This crowd is just not gonna like me,” but I also have a plan for that. You have to stay cool. You can’t let them change your plan. … I have that confidence onstage. I know even if I don’t open well, it’ll be OK; even if I lose them, I’ll get them back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I was first starting in New York, they had prom shows where they’d fill the audience with kids that were just at their prom and they’re all drunk on limousine booze and as soon as you get onstage, they start yelling at you, before they decide if they like you or not. They boo you when you hit the stage. I used to eat prom shows for dinner. I used to book as many prom shows as I could. First of all, they paid twice as much money — it’s the only time comedy clubs are compassionate to comedians. … But I’ve been onstage with people yelling and booing and throwing stuff at me and I’ve hung in there. I know how to handle that, so nothing scares me now onstage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On being divorced with two children\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "Nicolas Cage Themed Art Show Debuts in San Francisco",
"title": "Nicolas Cage Themed Art Show Debuts in San Francisco",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11757\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 432px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/Marguerite-Kalhor-Nic-Cage-Painting.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11757 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/Marguerite-Kalhor-Nic-Cage-Painting.jpg\" alt=\"Marguerite Kalhor Nic Cage Painting\" width=\"432\" height=\"557\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/Marguerite-Kalhor-Nic-Cage-Painting.jpg 1002w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/Marguerite-Kalhor-Nic-Cage-Painting-400x515.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/Marguerite-Kalhor-Nic-Cage-Painting-800x1031.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 432px) 100vw, 432px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist: Marguerite Kalhor\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It's probably no startling revelation that a lot of us are fascinated by pop culture icons, their performances and their eccentricities. This curiosity ranges from simply having favorite actors and musicians, whose work we follow and whose occasional creative failures we might forgive, to a more addictive fascination with their private lives, if popularity of magazines like \u003cem>OK!\u003c/em> or bloggers like Perez Hilton is any indication. The more artistically inclined among fans turn to their craft to express their fascination with entertainment icons. (LA based \u003ca href=\"http://nineteeneightyeight.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Gallery1988\u003c/a>, for instance, has made its stock-in-trade to showcase art remixing and riffing on pop culture iconography.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To my knowledge, however, there hasn't been a show quite as massive and solely focused on one celebrity as the upcoming tribute to Nicolas Cage -- he of the snakeskin jacket, but definitely not the bees -- taking place at \u003ca href=\"http://balancoiresf.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Balançoire\u003c/a> this weekend. What started as a cheeky idea and an online call for submissions has since snowballed into an event that currently has over a thousand RSVPs and seems to have \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/Nicolas-Cage-s-daring-as-actor-brings-out-best-5375053.php\" target=\"_blank\">reached the ears\u003c/a> of the actor himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11759\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 240px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/TabithaLahr.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11759 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/TabithaLahr.jpg\" alt=\"Artist: Tabitha Lahr\" width=\"240\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/TabithaLahr.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/TabithaLahr-400x600.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist: Tabitha Lahr\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Nicolas Cage has had quite a career, and I certainly appreciate how relentless he is in the pursuit of his craft, oscillating wildly between critically acclaimed roles and questionable, eyebrow-raising choices. Cage wowed us in \u003cem>Wild at Heart\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Moonstruck\u003c/em>, and \u003cem>Matchstick Men\u003c/em>, left our jaws and hearts on the floor in \u003cem>Leaving Las Vegas\u003c/em>, and then left us grimacing with some, uh, less than stellar projects (\u003cem>Season of the Witch\u003c/em>, anyone?). Sometimes his intensity simmers under the surface, and sometimes he \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP1-oquwoL8\" target=\"_blank\">lets it all out\u003c/a>. The point is, even though I am not a fan with capital F, Nicolas Cage is very much a part of my pop culture knowledge. This is clearly something I share with Ezra Croft, the curator of the upcoming exhibit, who felt there was something to be mined in our collective fascination with the actor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I've been acquainted with Ezra for a number of years, and he's always had a mischievous, irreverent sense of humor. Although our paths haven't crossed in quite a while, when I learned about the show, I knew I had to pick his brain a little bit, and so we caught up via e-mail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11756\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 240px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/Miriam-Dinkens.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11756 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/Miriam-Dinkens.jpg\" alt=\"Miriam Dinkens\" width=\"240\" height=\"373\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/Miriam-Dinkens.jpg 618w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/Miriam-Dinkens-400x621.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist: Miriam Dinkens\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KQED Pop: I know your idea for the event was to host an art show that was playful and fun, but why Nicolas Cage, specifically? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ezra Croft:\u003c/strong> I chose Nicolas Cage specifically because of the gamut of strange emotions he evokes. He's been ingrained in our culture through his movies and personal antics, and I think that someone with such eccentric status easily proves an excellent study into the iconic and strange. His choices to take roles in more cheesy movies I think admirably show his nonconformist nature, as this art show is reflecting. It embraces the needlessly dramatic. In this, he has fallen from the \"A-list's\" good graces, but still continues to thrive in the movie industry. He's had such dramatic highs and abysmal lows!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Were you considering any other theme?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before I settled on this, I had considered other subjects, such as Christopher Walken, \u003cem>Law and Order\u003c/em>, and Bill Murray. I am planning a dramatically awesome event called \"The Murray Affair\" for autumn, so be ready for that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Would you say the show is a parody or a tribute?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many people first thought this show was a parody show, only reflecting internet memes, but it's far beyond that. Many of [Cage's] true fans and haters have stepped forward and made art, both at his expense and [paying tribute] to his legendary status. As his film career over the years has shown with the public, it's dramatic, serious, silly and true to Cage's nature -- irresistible with a hint of madness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11761\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 240px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/timothytang.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11761 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/timothytang.jpg\" alt=\"Artist: Timothy Tang\" width=\"240\" height=\"370\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/timothytang.jpg 560w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/timothytang-400x617.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist: Timothy Tang\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sounds like the reception has been overwhelmingly positive. Any negative feedback?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I've received some small criticism, one writer calling it a \"hipster art show,\" but I'm not phased by it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You've received countless submissions. What mediums are people using to pay homage?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most works will be done in traditional paint, but there will be a sculpture comprised of hundreds off little cage faces, video projection art and some digital art.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What do you think Nic Cage himself would say about the art show?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I hope that if Nicolas Cage attended the show, he would have a good time and feel that his true fans were roasting him. It is an homage at heart, and we hope he would know that we enjoy the fantastic situations he embraces on screen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>This is your first major art show. What's next?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This show is going to New York and Los Angeles, all scheduling permitting. I have several other events in the making, but I'm keeping them secret for now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Nicolas Cage Art Show and Musical Shenanigans party takes place Saturday, April 12 at Balançoire. Full event details can be found on \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/events/262169750625120/\">the event page\u003c/a> on Facebook.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11757\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 432px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/Marguerite-Kalhor-Nic-Cage-Painting.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11757 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/Marguerite-Kalhor-Nic-Cage-Painting.jpg\" alt=\"Marguerite Kalhor Nic Cage Painting\" width=\"432\" height=\"557\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/Marguerite-Kalhor-Nic-Cage-Painting.jpg 1002w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/Marguerite-Kalhor-Nic-Cage-Painting-400x515.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/Marguerite-Kalhor-Nic-Cage-Painting-800x1031.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 432px) 100vw, 432px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist: Marguerite Kalhor\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It's probably no startling revelation that a lot of us are fascinated by pop culture icons, their performances and their eccentricities. This curiosity ranges from simply having favorite actors and musicians, whose work we follow and whose occasional creative failures we might forgive, to a more addictive fascination with their private lives, if popularity of magazines like \u003cem>OK!\u003c/em> or bloggers like Perez Hilton is any indication. The more artistically inclined among fans turn to their craft to express their fascination with entertainment icons. (LA based \u003ca href=\"http://nineteeneightyeight.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Gallery1988\u003c/a>, for instance, has made its stock-in-trade to showcase art remixing and riffing on pop culture iconography.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To my knowledge, however, there hasn't been a show quite as massive and solely focused on one celebrity as the upcoming tribute to Nicolas Cage -- he of the snakeskin jacket, but definitely not the bees -- taking place at \u003ca href=\"http://balancoiresf.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Balançoire\u003c/a> this weekend. What started as a cheeky idea and an online call for submissions has since snowballed into an event that currently has over a thousand RSVPs and seems to have \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/Nicolas-Cage-s-daring-as-actor-brings-out-best-5375053.php\" target=\"_blank\">reached the ears\u003c/a> of the actor himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11759\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 240px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/TabithaLahr.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11759 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/TabithaLahr.jpg\" alt=\"Artist: Tabitha Lahr\" width=\"240\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/TabithaLahr.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/TabithaLahr-400x600.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist: Tabitha Lahr\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Nicolas Cage has had quite a career, and I certainly appreciate how relentless he is in the pursuit of his craft, oscillating wildly between critically acclaimed roles and questionable, eyebrow-raising choices. Cage wowed us in \u003cem>Wild at Heart\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Moonstruck\u003c/em>, and \u003cem>Matchstick Men\u003c/em>, left our jaws and hearts on the floor in \u003cem>Leaving Las Vegas\u003c/em>, and then left us grimacing with some, uh, less than stellar projects (\u003cem>Season of the Witch\u003c/em>, anyone?). Sometimes his intensity simmers under the surface, and sometimes he \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP1-oquwoL8\" target=\"_blank\">lets it all out\u003c/a>. The point is, even though I am not a fan with capital F, Nicolas Cage is very much a part of my pop culture knowledge. This is clearly something I share with Ezra Croft, the curator of the upcoming exhibit, who felt there was something to be mined in our collective fascination with the actor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I've been acquainted with Ezra for a number of years, and he's always had a mischievous, irreverent sense of humor. Although our paths haven't crossed in quite a while, when I learned about the show, I knew I had to pick his brain a little bit, and so we caught up via e-mail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11756\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 240px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/Miriam-Dinkens.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11756 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/Miriam-Dinkens.jpg\" alt=\"Miriam Dinkens\" width=\"240\" height=\"373\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/Miriam-Dinkens.jpg 618w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/Miriam-Dinkens-400x621.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist: Miriam Dinkens\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KQED Pop: I know your idea for the event was to host an art show that was playful and fun, but why Nicolas Cage, specifically? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ezra Croft:\u003c/strong> I chose Nicolas Cage specifically because of the gamut of strange emotions he evokes. He's been ingrained in our culture through his movies and personal antics, and I think that someone with such eccentric status easily proves an excellent study into the iconic and strange. His choices to take roles in more cheesy movies I think admirably show his nonconformist nature, as this art show is reflecting. It embraces the needlessly dramatic. In this, he has fallen from the \"A-list's\" good graces, but still continues to thrive in the movie industry. He's had such dramatic highs and abysmal lows!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Were you considering any other theme?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before I settled on this, I had considered other subjects, such as Christopher Walken, \u003cem>Law and Order\u003c/em>, and Bill Murray. I am planning a dramatically awesome event called \"The Murray Affair\" for autumn, so be ready for that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Would you say the show is a parody or a tribute?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many people first thought this show was a parody show, only reflecting internet memes, but it's far beyond that. Many of [Cage's] true fans and haters have stepped forward and made art, both at his expense and [paying tribute] to his legendary status. As his film career over the years has shown with the public, it's dramatic, serious, silly and true to Cage's nature -- irresistible with a hint of madness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11761\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 240px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/timothytang.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11761 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/timothytang.jpg\" alt=\"Artist: Timothy Tang\" width=\"240\" height=\"370\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/timothytang.jpg 560w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/timothytang-400x617.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist: Timothy Tang\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sounds like the reception has been overwhelmingly positive. Any negative feedback?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I've received some small criticism, one writer calling it a \"hipster art show,\" but I'm not phased by it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You've received countless submissions. What mediums are people using to pay homage?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most works will be done in traditional paint, but there will be a sculpture comprised of hundreds off little cage faces, video projection art and some digital art.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What do you think Nic Cage himself would say about the art show?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I hope that if Nicolas Cage attended the show, he would have a good time and feel that his true fans were roasting him. It is an homage at heart, and we hope he would know that we enjoy the fantastic situations he embraces on screen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>This is your first major art show. What's next?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This show is going to New York and Los Angeles, all scheduling permitting. I have several other events in the making, but I'm keeping them secret for now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Nicolas Cage Art Show and Musical Shenanigans party takes place Saturday, April 12 at Balançoire. Full event details can be found on \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/events/262169750625120/\">the event page\u003c/a> on Facebook.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "'Thwack Factor': San Francisco DIY Game Inventors on the Brink",
"headTitle": "‘Thwack Factor’: San Francisco DIY Game Inventors on the Brink | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>After toiling for more than a decade in the garage of new proverbs, next month \u003cstrong>two San Francisco musicians-turned-DIY inventors\u003c/strong> are releasing their next-wave target game, \u003ca title=\"Kooba Game\" href=\"http://koobagame.com\">Kooba,\u003c/a> to the states. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The creation of Stephen de Zordo (a former pro bodyboarder already responsible for a toy industry all-time monster hit) and Scott Shanks (a sculptor and 78rpm deejay), Kooba is a game of physical skill that’s sorta kissing cousins to darts except, in this case, one uses a pair of sticks to launch magnetic projectiles at the wall-mounted game board. Eyes and hands are coordinated, competitions are mounted, and fun not staring at a screen is had.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What started out as an unexpectedly dangerous prototype created out of repurposed materials went on to become an early crowd-funded Kickstarter project. It later became a consumer-safe, crowd-vetted hit at \u003ca title=\"Maker Faire\" href=\"http://makerfaire.com/bay-area-2014\">Maker Faire\u003c/a>, that “science fair meets county fair” of someone’s do-it-yourself fever dream. Newly armed with the prestigious \u003ca title=\"American Package Award 2014\" href=\"http://www.gdusa.com/contests/apda14/winners/gallery.php?c=sports_toys_games\">2014 American Package Award\u003c/a>, Kooba will be making the leap this June from hand-built labor of love to a high-quality, impeccably designed, mass-produced must-have consumer item available across the country at specialty boutiques, chain toy stores of the anthropomorphic giraffe mascot variety, and even the hallowed shelves of SFMOMA’s museum shoppe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I recently interrupted Stephen and Scott’s heated lunchtime game of \u003ca title=\"Mousetrap\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_Trap_%28game%29\">\u003cem>Mousetrap\u003c/em>\u003c/a> to get the lowdown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How did you guys get into this racket in the first place? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stephen de Zordo: I invented a toy back in 1989. After coming back from surfing one day, I was playing with tops on the floor in my friend’s garage. I was spinning them in a large spiral patterns, and began wondering how you could capture or trace the spin patterns. I was very into graphic design at the time. Then I realized you could put a pen into the end of the top and \u003cem>boom\u003c/em>! I got together with some family members, we sold the idea to a distributor and launched \u003ca title=\"Doo\" href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Doodletop-Single-colors-may-vary/dp/B000F4G5I2\">DoodleTop\u003c/a> in 1990. It immediately found success. DoodleTop was the toy industry’s #1 Stocking Stuffer of 1993. We ended up selling tens of millions of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136090\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/doodletop-spiral.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/doodletop-spiral.jpg\" alt=\"DoodleTop - in action\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10136090\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/doodletop-spiral.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/doodletop-spiral-400x300.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/doodletop-spiral-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">DoodleTop – in action \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Anthony Bedard)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>There’s a toy industry Stocking Stuffer award?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: There is! And we won a bunch of other awards for it like Top Impulse Toy. It’s still in production to this day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scott Shanks: Stephen and I knew each other from George Washington High School here in San Francisco. In the late 90s, we’d been collaborating on various art, music, and creative projects together. I was sick of working in web design and wanted to get into designing toys. Meanwhile, Stephen wanted to get out of the toy business and involved in the digital world. So we were coming from completely opposite directions. We started inventing stuff on lots of cocktail napkins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What was the genesis or creative spark for Kooba?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: We were trying to invent a whole new way to propel things – but not by kicking, or throwing, or bouncing them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shanks: We started slinging metal rings off the end of sticks with terrifying velocity. Once we started breaking bottles and sending these steel rings deep into walls, that’s when we knew we had something. Danger being one of the greatest elements of all successful physical toys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: Think about a \u003ca title=\"SuperBall\" href=\"http://www.wham-o.com/brands/superball.html\">SuperBall\u003c/a>. The first thing you want to do is throw that thing right back into your face off the ground. That’s the kind of stuff we grew up with. We love things that have elements of surprise and danger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136089\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-pckg-with-aeros.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-pckg-with-aeros.jpg\" alt=\"Kooba packaging (recipient of a 2014 American Package Design Award, designed by San Francisco firm Stapley Hildebrand\" width=\"800\" height=\"641\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10136089\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-pckg-with-aeros.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-pckg-with-aeros-400x320.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-pckg-with-aeros-300x240.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kooba packaging (recipient of a 2014 American Package Design Award, designed by San Francisco firm Stapley Hildebrand \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Anthony Bedard)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why did you decide to invent a physical game instead of creating a mobile app?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shanks: They didn’t exist when we started this project! We started developing early versions of Kooba in the late 90s, way before the iPhone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: People weren’t touching their computer screens yet, just getting pissed off at them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Were there any historical precedents for your game?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shanks: After we had our fun destroying everything, we did patent searches and found a sticks-and-hoops game from the 1800s called \u003ca title=\"Game of Graces\" href=\"http://fairetymetoys.com/pmwiki.php?n=main.graces\">Game of Graces\u003c/a> (\u003cem>‘meant to help preserve young ladies’ femininity by instructing them on the art of graceful movement’\u003c/em>). But that was a game of catch and we’d already been playing ours as a target game. Target shooting is way more fun. At that point, we had to figure out a way to make our game physically safer to play so we lightened up the materials and then asked ourselves how we could make the projectiles stick to a board, like darts but with magnets instead. It became sort of a target game mixed with a board game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Before discovering that I hadn’t pressed the “record” button on my iPhone for this interview, you were discussing how Kooba is a new type of “play pattern”.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: I’ve always been interested in new and inventive ways to do stuff. When we came up with this idea, I realized it was an innovative play pattern – play patterns are what the toy industry talks about when you physically do something. We didn’t set out to invent a game. That’s not it. We set out for a whole new play pattern, found one, and then had to figure out a way to make it into something that wasn’t going to kill you. Rather than coming up with something to slap Spongebob’s image on or some other licensed property, the play pattern is key for us. Not just filling another hole on the toy store shelf.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shanks: Doing it on a target board opened up a lot more possibilities than just getting something into a hole or knocking something over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136088\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Stephen-and-aero.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Stephen-and-aero.jpg\" alt='Close up of Kooba \"aero\" magnetic game piece' width=\"800\" height=\"533\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10136088\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Stephen-and-aero.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Stephen-and-aero-400x266.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Stephen-and-aero-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Close up of Kooba “aero” magnetic game piece \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Anthony Bedard)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What was the first prototype like?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: We went on a sourcing binge. Scott created a prototype out of arc welded metal rods, cardboard, felt, headliner from a car. We were repurposing materials from everywhere. The shooting sticks, for example, used to be antenna rods. And there was a big moment when we found shower curtain grommets and repurposed the button snaps for the aeros (\u003cem>the flying magnetic pieces one shoots at the game board\u003c/em>).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shanks: We were trying to find a way to fasten the magnets to the neoprene. I found a tool to pressure fit the magnet into the female end of a button snap with a little dab of epoxy for good measure. I was doing this at the desk of my old web design job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You left an early prototype behind at someone’s house by accident?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I brought the prototype home, left it in a bag in my room and then went on a month-long trip. When I came back, the board was up on the wall and my roommates were playing it even though they’d never been shown how. At that point in the project we were being super-secretive so I was angry they had played it but they were telling us how rad it was and their enthusiasm was so inspirational that it motivated us to take it to the next level. At that point we decided to try to license it to one of the big guys and we re-ignited all my toy industry relationships.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How’d that go? Were any of your old contacts interested?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: The people we showed it to liked it but didn’t know what to do with it. Once the big guys turned us down, we shelved it for a little bit and tried to figure out our next move. Then Kickstarter came along and we realized it could be our funding platform. We raised about $3,000, a tiny sum by current Kickstarter standards, and got to work on the next generation of the prototype. And that dovetailed with \u003ca title=\"Maker Movement\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maker_culture\">the Maker movement\u003c/a> – the design philosophy promoting repurposed materials, thinking differently about design, designing for environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Unlike bands trying to fund their albums, a game prototype actually seems like an interesting use for Kickstarter.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: A few years ago, you never went through these channels because they didn’t exist. The Maker movement, Maker Faire, and Kickstarter, those crosshairs all aligned for us. We rethought the entire thing. We said, f*** the big guys, we can do this ourselves. We re-shifted our focus onto how we could do this and make it ourselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136096\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-Board-hanging.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-Board-hanging.jpg\" alt=\"Kooba board - hanging\" width=\"800\" height=\"726\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10136096\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-Board-hanging.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-Board-hanging-400x363.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-Board-hanging-300x272.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kooba board – hanging \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Anthony Bedard)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Is “screen time” Kooba’s biggest rival?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: To compete with screen time, you have to create an engaging experience. Our product gives people feedback. We’ve designed that into it. You can see the excitement in players’ eyes when they actually hit the board after physically manipulating this object. When we take it out to the public, which we’ve done numerous times at Maker Faire and other events in the city, people really latch onto it. People love it. The games get really competitive. It’s purely because of the physicality of the product. We put a lot of thought into the thud and thwack. The thwack factor (\u003cem>laughs\u003c/em>).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shanks: Every time we take it out people start coming up with different ideas for games they can play. We felt we should make a relatively nondescript board that allows people to come up with their own ideas for games, something that would be more of a physical gaming platform.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: People used to invent games and toys that you play \u003cem>with\u003c/em>. Now, everything plays \u003cem>for\u003c/em> you. It’s generally, \u003cem>hey do this, tap this\u003c/em> and it guides you along the way. And if it’s tied to a licensed property, you already have a predisposed dialogue. But with our game, there is no narrative. It’s wide open. We tried to design for the experience, not necessarily for the market. The market would tell us to do things very differently. But we designed it for the consumer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The burning question our readership has been waiting all interview for me to ask: Is Kooba the next \u003ca title=\"Hula Hoop\" href=\"http://inventors.about.com/od/hstartinventions/a/Hula_Hoop.htm\">Hula Hoop\u003c/a>?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: That would be awesome. I would hope it ramps up a bit slower than that but it does have that “back to the experience” factor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shanks: Playing Kooba is an addictive experience. You can get good enough to make a decent shot, but it’s challenging to make a perfect shot and do it consistently. It’s hard to do and I’ve been playing versions of this game for 10 years now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Where would you rank Kooba among other \u003ca title=\"Bay Area inventions\" href=\"http://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2014/05/01/tv-google-and-bendy-straws-bay-area-inventions-and-discoveries/\">noted San Francisco/Bay Area inventions \u003c/a>such as the bendy straw, the Popsicle, the squeegee, television, and Eggo’s?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: No question: somewhere in between Eggo’s and television.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>——————————-\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stephen de Zordo and Scott Shanks will be doing live demonstrations of Kooba and displaying all of its prototypes at the \u003ca title=\"Kooba at Maker Faire\" href=\"http://makerfaire.com/makers/kooba-the-revolutionary-targetgame/\">Maker Faire Bay Area 2014\u003c/a> at the San Mateo Events Center on Saturday, May 17\u003csup>th\u003c/sup>.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "After years of development, two San Francisco musicians-turned-toy-inventors are releasing their own game and it could give darts a run for its money.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>After toiling for more than a decade in the garage of new proverbs, next month \u003cstrong>two San Francisco musicians-turned-DIY inventors\u003c/strong> are releasing their next-wave target game, \u003ca title=\"Kooba Game\" href=\"http://koobagame.com\">Kooba,\u003c/a> to the states. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The creation of Stephen de Zordo (a former pro bodyboarder already responsible for a toy industry all-time monster hit) and Scott Shanks (a sculptor and 78rpm deejay), Kooba is a game of physical skill that’s sorta kissing cousins to darts except, in this case, one uses a pair of sticks to launch magnetic projectiles at the wall-mounted game board. Eyes and hands are coordinated, competitions are mounted, and fun not staring at a screen is had.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What started out as an unexpectedly dangerous prototype created out of repurposed materials went on to become an early crowd-funded Kickstarter project. It later became a consumer-safe, crowd-vetted hit at \u003ca title=\"Maker Faire\" href=\"http://makerfaire.com/bay-area-2014\">Maker Faire\u003c/a>, that “science fair meets county fair” of someone’s do-it-yourself fever dream. Newly armed with the prestigious \u003ca title=\"American Package Award 2014\" href=\"http://www.gdusa.com/contests/apda14/winners/gallery.php?c=sports_toys_games\">2014 American Package Award\u003c/a>, Kooba will be making the leap this June from hand-built labor of love to a high-quality, impeccably designed, mass-produced must-have consumer item available across the country at specialty boutiques, chain toy stores of the anthropomorphic giraffe mascot variety, and even the hallowed shelves of SFMOMA’s museum shoppe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I recently interrupted Stephen and Scott’s heated lunchtime game of \u003ca title=\"Mousetrap\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_Trap_%28game%29\">\u003cem>Mousetrap\u003c/em>\u003c/a> to get the lowdown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How did you guys get into this racket in the first place? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stephen de Zordo: I invented a toy back in 1989. After coming back from surfing one day, I was playing with tops on the floor in my friend’s garage. I was spinning them in a large spiral patterns, and began wondering how you could capture or trace the spin patterns. I was very into graphic design at the time. Then I realized you could put a pen into the end of the top and \u003cem>boom\u003c/em>! I got together with some family members, we sold the idea to a distributor and launched \u003ca title=\"Doo\" href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Doodletop-Single-colors-may-vary/dp/B000F4G5I2\">DoodleTop\u003c/a> in 1990. It immediately found success. DoodleTop was the toy industry’s #1 Stocking Stuffer of 1993. We ended up selling tens of millions of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136090\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/doodletop-spiral.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/doodletop-spiral.jpg\" alt=\"DoodleTop - in action\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10136090\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/doodletop-spiral.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/doodletop-spiral-400x300.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/doodletop-spiral-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">DoodleTop – in action \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Anthony Bedard)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>There’s a toy industry Stocking Stuffer award?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: There is! And we won a bunch of other awards for it like Top Impulse Toy. It’s still in production to this day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scott Shanks: Stephen and I knew each other from George Washington High School here in San Francisco. In the late 90s, we’d been collaborating on various art, music, and creative projects together. I was sick of working in web design and wanted to get into designing toys. Meanwhile, Stephen wanted to get out of the toy business and involved in the digital world. So we were coming from completely opposite directions. We started inventing stuff on lots of cocktail napkins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What was the genesis or creative spark for Kooba?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: We were trying to invent a whole new way to propel things – but not by kicking, or throwing, or bouncing them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shanks: We started slinging metal rings off the end of sticks with terrifying velocity. Once we started breaking bottles and sending these steel rings deep into walls, that’s when we knew we had something. Danger being one of the greatest elements of all successful physical toys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: Think about a \u003ca title=\"SuperBall\" href=\"http://www.wham-o.com/brands/superball.html\">SuperBall\u003c/a>. The first thing you want to do is throw that thing right back into your face off the ground. That’s the kind of stuff we grew up with. We love things that have elements of surprise and danger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136089\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-pckg-with-aeros.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-pckg-with-aeros.jpg\" alt=\"Kooba packaging (recipient of a 2014 American Package Design Award, designed by San Francisco firm Stapley Hildebrand\" width=\"800\" height=\"641\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10136089\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-pckg-with-aeros.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-pckg-with-aeros-400x320.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-pckg-with-aeros-300x240.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kooba packaging (recipient of a 2014 American Package Design Award, designed by San Francisco firm Stapley Hildebrand \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Anthony Bedard)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Why did you decide to invent a physical game instead of creating a mobile app?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shanks: They didn’t exist when we started this project! We started developing early versions of Kooba in the late 90s, way before the iPhone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: People weren’t touching their computer screens yet, just getting pissed off at them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Were there any historical precedents for your game?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shanks: After we had our fun destroying everything, we did patent searches and found a sticks-and-hoops game from the 1800s called \u003ca title=\"Game of Graces\" href=\"http://fairetymetoys.com/pmwiki.php?n=main.graces\">Game of Graces\u003c/a> (\u003cem>‘meant to help preserve young ladies’ femininity by instructing them on the art of graceful movement’\u003c/em>). But that was a game of catch and we’d already been playing ours as a target game. Target shooting is way more fun. At that point, we had to figure out a way to make our game physically safer to play so we lightened up the materials and then asked ourselves how we could make the projectiles stick to a board, like darts but with magnets instead. It became sort of a target game mixed with a board game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Before discovering that I hadn’t pressed the “record” button on my iPhone for this interview, you were discussing how Kooba is a new type of “play pattern”.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: I’ve always been interested in new and inventive ways to do stuff. When we came up with this idea, I realized it was an innovative play pattern – play patterns are what the toy industry talks about when you physically do something. We didn’t set out to invent a game. That’s not it. We set out for a whole new play pattern, found one, and then had to figure out a way to make it into something that wasn’t going to kill you. Rather than coming up with something to slap Spongebob’s image on or some other licensed property, the play pattern is key for us. Not just filling another hole on the toy store shelf.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shanks: Doing it on a target board opened up a lot more possibilities than just getting something into a hole or knocking something over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136088\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Stephen-and-aero.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Stephen-and-aero.jpg\" alt='Close up of Kooba \"aero\" magnetic game piece' width=\"800\" height=\"533\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10136088\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Stephen-and-aero.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Stephen-and-aero-400x266.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/Stephen-and-aero-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Close up of Kooba “aero” magnetic game piece \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Anthony Bedard)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What was the first prototype like?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: We went on a sourcing binge. Scott created a prototype out of arc welded metal rods, cardboard, felt, headliner from a car. We were repurposing materials from everywhere. The shooting sticks, for example, used to be antenna rods. And there was a big moment when we found shower curtain grommets and repurposed the button snaps for the aeros (\u003cem>the flying magnetic pieces one shoots at the game board\u003c/em>).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shanks: We were trying to find a way to fasten the magnets to the neoprene. I found a tool to pressure fit the magnet into the female end of a button snap with a little dab of epoxy for good measure. I was doing this at the desk of my old web design job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You left an early prototype behind at someone’s house by accident?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I brought the prototype home, left it in a bag in my room and then went on a month-long trip. When I came back, the board was up on the wall and my roommates were playing it even though they’d never been shown how. At that point in the project we were being super-secretive so I was angry they had played it but they were telling us how rad it was and their enthusiasm was so inspirational that it motivated us to take it to the next level. At that point we decided to try to license it to one of the big guys and we re-ignited all my toy industry relationships.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How’d that go? Were any of your old contacts interested?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: The people we showed it to liked it but didn’t know what to do with it. Once the big guys turned us down, we shelved it for a little bit and tried to figure out our next move. Then Kickstarter came along and we realized it could be our funding platform. We raised about $3,000, a tiny sum by current Kickstarter standards, and got to work on the next generation of the prototype. And that dovetailed with \u003ca title=\"Maker Movement\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maker_culture\">the Maker movement\u003c/a> – the design philosophy promoting repurposed materials, thinking differently about design, designing for environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Unlike bands trying to fund their albums, a game prototype actually seems like an interesting use for Kickstarter.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: A few years ago, you never went through these channels because they didn’t exist. The Maker movement, Maker Faire, and Kickstarter, those crosshairs all aligned for us. We rethought the entire thing. We said, f*** the big guys, we can do this ourselves. We re-shifted our focus onto how we could do this and make it ourselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136096\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-Board-hanging.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-Board-hanging.jpg\" alt=\"Kooba board - hanging\" width=\"800\" height=\"726\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10136096\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-Board-hanging.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-Board-hanging-400x363.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/KOOBA-Board-hanging-300x272.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kooba board – hanging \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Anthony Bedard)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Is “screen time” Kooba’s biggest rival?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: To compete with screen time, you have to create an engaging experience. Our product gives people feedback. We’ve designed that into it. You can see the excitement in players’ eyes when they actually hit the board after physically manipulating this object. When we take it out to the public, which we’ve done numerous times at Maker Faire and other events in the city, people really latch onto it. People love it. The games get really competitive. It’s purely because of the physicality of the product. We put a lot of thought into the thud and thwack. The thwack factor (\u003cem>laughs\u003c/em>).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shanks: Every time we take it out people start coming up with different ideas for games they can play. We felt we should make a relatively nondescript board that allows people to come up with their own ideas for games, something that would be more of a physical gaming platform.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: People used to invent games and toys that you play \u003cem>with\u003c/em>. Now, everything plays \u003cem>for\u003c/em> you. It’s generally, \u003cem>hey do this, tap this\u003c/em> and it guides you along the way. And if it’s tied to a licensed property, you already have a predisposed dialogue. But with our game, there is no narrative. It’s wide open. We tried to design for the experience, not necessarily for the market. The market would tell us to do things very differently. But we designed it for the consumer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The burning question our readership has been waiting all interview for me to ask: Is Kooba the next \u003ca title=\"Hula Hoop\" href=\"http://inventors.about.com/od/hstartinventions/a/Hula_Hoop.htm\">Hula Hoop\u003c/a>?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: That would be awesome. I would hope it ramps up a bit slower than that but it does have that “back to the experience” factor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shanks: Playing Kooba is an addictive experience. You can get good enough to make a decent shot, but it’s challenging to make a perfect shot and do it consistently. It’s hard to do and I’ve been playing versions of this game for 10 years now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Where would you rank Kooba among other \u003ca title=\"Bay Area inventions\" href=\"http://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2014/05/01/tv-google-and-bendy-straws-bay-area-inventions-and-discoveries/\">noted San Francisco/Bay Area inventions \u003c/a>such as the bendy straw, the Popsicle, the squeegee, television, and Eggo’s?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>de Zordo: No question: somewhere in between Eggo’s and television.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>——————————-\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stephen de Zordo and Scott Shanks will be doing live demonstrations of Kooba and displaying all of its prototypes at the \u003ca title=\"Kooba at Maker Faire\" href=\"http://makerfaire.com/makers/kooba-the-revolutionary-targetgame/\">Maker Faire Bay Area 2014\u003c/a> at the San Mateo Events Center on Saturday, May 17\u003csup>th\u003c/sup>.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>He’s known as an astute comic observer with an unerring ability to skewer the most hypocritical moments of modern life. But it turns out Louis C.K. can also be a surprising example of TV’s double standard when it comes to men, women and weight. He complains about his tubby body in part of his standup act. But on his TV show, his love interests are often beautiful, thin actresses like Parker Posey and Yvonne Strahovski.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monday’s episode of his FX series, \u003cem>Louie\u003c/em>, puts all that hypocrisy on the line. He takes an overweight girl on a date, and she hits him with this: “On behalf of all the fat girls, I’m making you represent all of the guys,” says Vanessa, a woman who was once a waitress at a comedy club where Louie performed, dressing him down during their first date. “Why do you hate us so much?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now let’s stop here a minute and rewind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The episode begins with Louis C.K. performing at a comedy club. He talks about how deftly women put off men they’re not interested in — hugging them in a “boxing move” to avoid kisses — before proving how much worse men are at it. When he steps offstage, he meets a funny, vivacious overweight waitress named Vanessa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I get off in an hour. You wanna hang out?” she asks. “Are you scared that I’m asking you out? Because I am.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He is clearly hesitant, which seems odd for a guy who complains so much about dating. Especially since Vanessa has all kinds of personality, flirting with her customers and cracking jokes about some of them with Louie. “You’re cute, you’re funny, and I am both of those … plus, like, seven other things,” she says, sounding a lot like Louie when he has tried asking other women out in previous episodes. She’s quick-witted, confident and charming. Who wouldn’t want to date somebody this cool?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Louie’s not interested. Instead, he hangs out with a guy friend who is even bigger than he is. They leer at slim, sexy women on the street. Then they roll into two different restaurants to eat two full meals in a celebration of food they call the Bang Bang. That’s something only guys can do without serious guilt. It’s also proof Louie can be a serious schlub.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eventually, Vanessa gives Louie free hockey playoff tickets, which impresses or guilt-trips him enough that he finally agrees to a date. They have a great time trading smart, slightly morbid jokes. And it’s clear they are a perfect match.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point, Vanessa complains about how tough dating is for fat women. Louie tells a lie she’s probably heard from lots of guys. He says, “You’re not fat.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And she lets him have it. “Do you know what the meanest thing is you can say to a fat girl?” Vanessa says, a look of exasperation on her face. ” ‘You’re not fat.’ I mean, come on, buddy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her question is heartbreaking: Why don’t guys who look like her want to date her? “You know what’s funny?” she says. “I flirt with guys all the time. And, I mean, the great-looking ones, like the really high-caliber studs — they flirt right back, no problem. Because they know their status will never be questioned. But guys like you never flirt with me. Because you get scared that maybe you should be with a girl like me. And why not?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Louie can’t give the truthful answer: Even dumpy guys often don’t want to date fat women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We never see this on TV — an overweight woman calling out the hypocrisy of the dumpy guy in her life. That’s the kind of gutsy, perceptive revelation Louis C.K. regularly writes. And actress Sarah Baker, who plays Vanessa, knocks it out of the park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a single, sweeping moment of television, he’s made us all consider the hypocrisy of how we laugh at fat men and shun overweight women, sparing no one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Especially himself. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Louis+C.K.+Takes+On+TV+Hypocrisy%2C+Aiming+Scrutiny+Back+At+Himself&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>He’s known as an astute comic observer with an unerring ability to skewer the most hypocritical moments of modern life. But it turns out Louis C.K. can also be a surprising example of TV’s double standard when it comes to men, women and weight. He complains about his tubby body in part of his standup act. But on his TV show, his love interests are often beautiful, thin actresses like Parker Posey and Yvonne Strahovski.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monday’s episode of his FX series, \u003cem>Louie\u003c/em>, puts all that hypocrisy on the line. He takes an overweight girl on a date, and she hits him with this: “On behalf of all the fat girls, I’m making you represent all of the guys,” says Vanessa, a woman who was once a waitress at a comedy club where Louie performed, dressing him down during their first date. “Why do you hate us so much?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now let’s stop here a minute and rewind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The episode begins with Louis C.K. performing at a comedy club. He talks about how deftly women put off men they’re not interested in — hugging them in a “boxing move” to avoid kisses — before proving how much worse men are at it. When he steps offstage, he meets a funny, vivacious overweight waitress named Vanessa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I get off in an hour. You wanna hang out?” she asks. “Are you scared that I’m asking you out? Because I am.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He is clearly hesitant, which seems odd for a guy who complains so much about dating. Especially since Vanessa has all kinds of personality, flirting with her customers and cracking jokes about some of them with Louie. “You’re cute, you’re funny, and I am both of those … plus, like, seven other things,” she says, sounding a lot like Louie when he has tried asking other women out in previous episodes. She’s quick-witted, confident and charming. Who wouldn’t want to date somebody this cool?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Louie’s not interested. Instead, he hangs out with a guy friend who is even bigger than he is. They leer at slim, sexy women on the street. Then they roll into two different restaurants to eat two full meals in a celebration of food they call the Bang Bang. That’s something only guys can do without serious guilt. It’s also proof Louie can be a serious schlub.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eventually, Vanessa gives Louie free hockey playoff tickets, which impresses or guilt-trips him enough that he finally agrees to a date. They have a great time trading smart, slightly morbid jokes. And it’s clear they are a perfect match.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point, Vanessa complains about how tough dating is for fat women. Louie tells a lie she’s probably heard from lots of guys. He says, “You’re not fat.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And she lets him have it. “Do you know what the meanest thing is you can say to a fat girl?” Vanessa says, a look of exasperation on her face. ” ‘You’re not fat.’ I mean, come on, buddy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her question is heartbreaking: Why don’t guys who look like her want to date her? “You know what’s funny?” she says. “I flirt with guys all the time. And, I mean, the great-looking ones, like the really high-caliber studs — they flirt right back, no problem. Because they know their status will never be questioned. But guys like you never flirt with me. Because you get scared that maybe you should be with a girl like me. And why not?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Louie can’t give the truthful answer: Even dumpy guys often don’t want to date fat women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We never see this on TV — an overweight woman calling out the hypocrisy of the dumpy guy in her life. That’s the kind of gutsy, perceptive revelation Louis C.K. regularly writes. And actress Sarah Baker, who plays Vanessa, knocks it out of the park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a single, sweeping moment of television, he’s made us all consider the hypocrisy of how we laugh at fat men and shun overweight women, sparing no one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Especially himself. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Louis+C.K.+Takes+On+TV+Hypocrisy%2C+Aiming+Scrutiny+Back+At+Himself&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "A Tale of Two Competing Cat Video Festivals",
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"content": "\u003cp>Has the Bay Area become the crazy cat lady of the West Coast? I’m asking because this Saturday there are not one but TWO feline-centric video festivals being held here — one in Oakland, the other in San Francisco — and both are aiming to be massive celebrations of the Internet’s flagship product, the cat video.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco’s Roxie Theater is hosting a cat video festival so big it has intergalactic in the title. Organized by Roxie Theater programmer Mike Keegan and SF Sketchfest’s operations manager Jay Wertzler, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.thefirstannual.com/sfiffavffh/program/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cb>First Annual San Francisco Intergalactic Film & Video Feline Festival for Humans\u003c/b>\u003c/a> (SFIFFAVFFH) will consist of 12 hours of cat videos shown on the big screen, the intended medium for many of the pieces being shown at the festival. Broken into three acts, highlighted works from the festival include the world “purr-miere” (their word, not mine) of \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/catagentRB\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003ci>Cat Agent,\u003c/i>\u003c/a> a series of an animated shorts from Kent Osborne of \u003ci>Adventure Time,\u003c/i> and clips from found footage curators \u003ca href=\"http://watch.everythingisterrible.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Everything Is Terrible,”\u003c/a> credited with bringing \u003ci>So Your Cat Wants A Massage?\u003c/i> to the Internet-using public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnZhi5gaX8g\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Across the Bay in Oakland, the East Bay SPCA will be holding its second annual \u003ca href=\"http://www.oaklandcatvidfest.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cb>Save a Kitten at OakCatVidFest,\u003c/b>\u003c/a> an event that mixes the Bay Area’s love of cat videos with the desire of its residents to save every lonely kitty living in a shelter. Along with a curated selection of cat videos provided by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.walkerart.org/calendar/2014/internet-cat-video-festival-2014\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Minneapolis-based Walker Art Center\u003c/a> and shown on the 100’x100′ Great Wall of Oakland, the festival will include opportunities to adopt homeless kitty kats and create feline-inspired art in its “Cativity” section.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(It should be noted that last year’s OakCatVidFest was so popular, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan declared that day to be “Internet Cat Video Day.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though the two festivals are technically competing on Saturday — SFIFFAVFFH runs from noon to midnight, while the OakCatVidFest runs from 3 to 10 pm — they share a common feature: Internet celebrity Lil Bub. With over 680,000 friends on Facebook, her own chat and feature-length film, BUB has to be one of, if not thee most popular cat on the Interwebs (though Keyboard Cat and Grumpy Cat might have an issue with that statement.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10135696\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/LilBub3crop.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/LilBub3crop.jpg\" alt=\"Lil Bub\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10135696\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/LilBub3crop.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/LilBub3crop-400x225.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/LilBub3crop-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lil Bub \u003ccite>(Facebook.com)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Lil Bub is going to have quite a busy day on Saturday, as her schedule might as well be the same as our president’s when he’s on a Bay Area fundraising trip. She’s the honored guest at the SFIFFAVFFH, where she will receive the festival’s “First Annual Lil BUB Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cat.” She will also be premiering her new video, \u003ci>The BEST of Lil BUB’s Big SHOW,\u003c/i> after which she and her owner will participate in a live Q&A. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the OakCatVidFest, for which she’s this year’s “spokes-cat,” Lil Bub will participating in a meet-and-greet to raise funds for both the East Bay SPCA and her own charity, Lil Bub’s Big Fund for the ASPCA, which benefits cats with special needs. (Lil Bub is a \u003ca href=\"http://lilbub.com/about\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> special needs cat herself,\u003c/a> having been born the runt of a litter with several genetic mutations, resulting in her “perma-kitten” appearance.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TJ2IiHmBeM\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At this point, if you’re having problems deciding between which festival to attend, don’t let your conscience be the deciding factor. Though the OakCatVidFest has several animal shelters participating in the hope of signing up 100 new foster homes for local kittens, both events are raising funds for their local SPCAs. So keep yourself from commuting on a Saturday (unless you want to) because the most important aspect of these events are the cats themselves. Sure, Internet cat videos are fun and we certainly can’t have enough fun in this town, but for those who truly love cats it should be noted that springtime is “kitten season,” where shelters become overwhelmed with pre-weaned kittens who need around-the-clock attention and care until they are old enough to be adopted. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now with that said, on Saturday, you should get yourself to one of these events, enjoy some off-the-wall cat videos and take a moment to tell the Bay Area’s honored guest, “Good Job Bub.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The First Annual San Francisco Intergalactic Film & Video Feline Festival for Humans\u003c/b> runs at the Roxie Theater on Saturday, May 10, 2014, beginning at noon. Tickets are $12, $30 for an all-day pass. \u003ca href=\"http://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/first-annual-san-francisco-intergalactic-feline-film-video-festival-humans/?instance_id=\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> For tickets and more information,\u003c/a> visit www.thefirstannual.com/sfiffavffh/.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The second annual Save A Kitten OakCatVidFest\u003c/b> will be held on Saturday, May 10, 2014, from 3-10 pm at the Great Wall of Oakland. Tickets start at $10 for adults. \u003ca href=\"http://www.oaklandcatvidfest.com/#tickets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> For tickets and more information,\u003c/a> visit www.oaklandcatvidfest.com/.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Has the Bay Area become the crazy cat lady of the West Coast? I’m asking because this Saturday there are not one but TWO feline-centric video festivals being held here — one in Oakland, the other in San Francisco — and both are aiming to be massive celebrations of the Internet’s flagship product, the cat video.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>San Francisco’s Roxie Theater is hosting a cat video festival so big it has intergalactic in the title. Organized by Roxie Theater programmer Mike Keegan and SF Sketchfest’s operations manager Jay Wertzler, the \u003ca href=\"http://www.thefirstannual.com/sfiffavffh/program/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cb>First Annual San Francisco Intergalactic Film & Video Feline Festival for Humans\u003c/b>\u003c/a> (SFIFFAVFFH) will consist of 12 hours of cat videos shown on the big screen, the intended medium for many of the pieces being shown at the festival. Broken into three acts, highlighted works from the festival include the world “purr-miere” (their word, not mine) of \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/catagentRB\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003ci>Cat Agent,\u003c/i>\u003c/a> a series of an animated shorts from Kent Osborne of \u003ci>Adventure Time,\u003c/i> and clips from found footage curators \u003ca href=\"http://watch.everythingisterrible.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Everything Is Terrible,”\u003c/a> credited with bringing \u003ci>So Your Cat Wants A Massage?\u003c/i> to the Internet-using public.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/TnZhi5gaX8g'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/TnZhi5gaX8g'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Across the Bay in Oakland, the East Bay SPCA will be holding its second annual \u003ca href=\"http://www.oaklandcatvidfest.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cb>Save a Kitten at OakCatVidFest,\u003c/b>\u003c/a> an event that mixes the Bay Area’s love of cat videos with the desire of its residents to save every lonely kitty living in a shelter. Along with a curated selection of cat videos provided by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.walkerart.org/calendar/2014/internet-cat-video-festival-2014\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Minneapolis-based Walker Art Center\u003c/a> and shown on the 100’x100′ Great Wall of Oakland, the festival will include opportunities to adopt homeless kitty kats and create feline-inspired art in its “Cativity” section.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(It should be noted that last year’s OakCatVidFest was so popular, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan declared that day to be “Internet Cat Video Day.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though the two festivals are technically competing on Saturday — SFIFFAVFFH runs from noon to midnight, while the OakCatVidFest runs from 3 to 10 pm — they share a common feature: Internet celebrity Lil Bub. With over 680,000 friends on Facebook, her own chat and feature-length film, BUB has to be one of, if not thee most popular cat on the Interwebs (though Keyboard Cat and Grumpy Cat might have an issue with that statement.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10135696\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/LilBub3crop.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/LilBub3crop.jpg\" alt=\"Lil Bub\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10135696\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/LilBub3crop.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/LilBub3crop-400x225.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/LilBub3crop-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lil Bub \u003ccite>(Facebook.com)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Lil Bub is going to have quite a busy day on Saturday, as her schedule might as well be the same as our president’s when he’s on a Bay Area fundraising trip. She’s the honored guest at the SFIFFAVFFH, where she will receive the festival’s “First Annual Lil BUB Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cat.” She will also be premiering her new video, \u003ci>The BEST of Lil BUB’s Big SHOW,\u003c/i> after which she and her owner will participate in a live Q&A. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the OakCatVidFest, for which she’s this year’s “spokes-cat,” Lil Bub will participating in a meet-and-greet to raise funds for both the East Bay SPCA and her own charity, Lil Bub’s Big Fund for the ASPCA, which benefits cats with special needs. (Lil Bub is a \u003ca href=\"http://lilbub.com/about\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> special needs cat herself,\u003c/a> having been born the runt of a litter with several genetic mutations, resulting in her “perma-kitten” appearance.)\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/6TJ2IiHmBeM'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/6TJ2IiHmBeM'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>At this point, if you’re having problems deciding between which festival to attend, don’t let your conscience be the deciding factor. Though the OakCatVidFest has several animal shelters participating in the hope of signing up 100 new foster homes for local kittens, both events are raising funds for their local SPCAs. So keep yourself from commuting on a Saturday (unless you want to) because the most important aspect of these events are the cats themselves. Sure, Internet cat videos are fun and we certainly can’t have enough fun in this town, but for those who truly love cats it should be noted that springtime is “kitten season,” where shelters become overwhelmed with pre-weaned kittens who need around-the-clock attention and care until they are old enough to be adopted. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now with that said, on Saturday, you should get yourself to one of these events, enjoy some off-the-wall cat videos and take a moment to tell the Bay Area’s honored guest, “Good Job Bub.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The First Annual San Francisco Intergalactic Film & Video Feline Festival for Humans\u003c/b> runs at the Roxie Theater on Saturday, May 10, 2014, beginning at noon. Tickets are $12, $30 for an all-day pass. \u003ca href=\"http://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/first-annual-san-francisco-intergalactic-feline-film-video-festival-humans/?instance_id=\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> For tickets and more information,\u003c/a> visit www.thefirstannual.com/sfiffavffh/.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The second annual Save A Kitten OakCatVidFest\u003c/b> will be held on Saturday, May 10, 2014, from 3-10 pm at the Great Wall of Oakland. Tickets start at $10 for adults. \u003ca href=\"http://www.oaklandcatvidfest.com/#tickets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> For tickets and more information,\u003c/a> visit www.oaklandcatvidfest.com/.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "24 is Back, But Are We Grasping for Something We’ll Never Get Again?",
"title": "24 is Back, But Are We Grasping for Something We’ll Never Get Again?",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12009\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/05/02/24-is-back-but-are-we-grasping-for-something-well-never-get-again/attachment/24/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12009\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-12009\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/24.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: Fox\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/24.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/24-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Fox\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Victor Beigelman\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jack is back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On May 5th, one of TV’s most beloved characters, Jack Bauer, will return to action in \u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">24: Live Another Day\u003c/span>, a 12 episode mini-series event following the same real-time format as the first eight seasons of the show, with periodic jumps forward in the day between episodes. On paper, this is great. Fans of the show get to reunite with their hero and undoubtedly watch him shoot, scream, defy order, survive unimaginable torture, and everything else Jack Bauer stands for. But to what extent is our excitement for this rooted in a nostalgia for something that’s already seen its best days? Are we getting our hopes up for something that’s doomed to yield diminishing returns? If that’s the case, do we really want to \u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Live Another Day\u003c/span> at all?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Don’t get me wrong. I loved \u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">24\u003c/span>. Although its formula became stale by the final season, the show always excelled at action-packed sequences, shocking twists, and how-did-he-do-it heroic victories that came with a serious toll. Jack was a tragic hero in the strongest sense of the term, and the ensemble around him was packed with great characters. No doubt,\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\"> 24\u003c/span> was a hit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s important to emphasize, though, is that I\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\"> loved\u003c/span> the show\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">.\u003c/span> Loved. Past tense. It’s gratifying to fondly recall Jack Bauer as an iconic figure of the post-9/11 aughts, as with any happy memory. But when you have a positive, yet removed lasting image of something in your head, it’s strange to bring it back into your life and expect things to be the same. Jack might be coming back, and the core aspects of his world might be relatively constant, but we as viewers have changed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given the entertainment industry’s increasingly sequel-happy nature, it makes sense to view TV show comebacks with skepticism -- there’s a proven track record of brewing anticipation at a story or character’s return followed immediately by disappointment. Just look what happened with \u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Arrested Development\u003c/span>’s return on Netflix last year. The show was brought back on the sheer volume of enthusiasm from its dedicated and growing fan base, thanks to post-mortem DVD sales and Netflix binges. However, its “triumphant return,” once digested, didn’t go down smooth at all. What’s more, \u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">AD\u003c/span> was a show that was axed well before its time. What chance does \u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">24\u003c/span> have of a successful return if its original premise had grown stale by the end of its initial run?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s no question that money plays a big role in bringing shows and movies back; when profits are involved, its hard to let a smash hit just sit peacefully in its grave. But when all the creative juices around a story have run dry, it’s almost a disservice to the characters and original product to bring it back in any lesser form. Our intense desire to relive the glory days as viewers only enables that trend. Simply put, we’re bringing disappointment onto ourselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another more recent example, this one in film, was the return of Ron Burgundy and the channel 4 news team in \u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues\u003c/span> last December. A look at the sequel’s \u003ca href=\"https://mail.kqed.org/owa/redir.aspx?C=abb0eb8fd34d461e988095c26f80feec&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.rottentomatoes.com%2fm%2fanchorman_2_the_legend_continues%2f\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cspan class=\"Hyperlink__Char\" style=\"color: #0000ff\">Rotten Tomatoes score\u003c/span>\u003c/a> relative to the original -- 75% to 66% -- tells you that it’s a better movie than the original, but these are just numbers. The reality is that, as nice as it was to revisit these characters, the same formula just didn’t have the same punch as it did back in 2004. We expected the same slew of quotable one-liners, but instead we left the theater generally dissatisfied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Granted, there are instances of TV shows (and film sequels) coming back after long gaps in time to match or exceed the brilliance of their original source material (\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Family Guy\u003c/span> and \u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Toy Story 3\u003c/span> to name a couple), but they’re very clearly the exception rather than the rule. As viewers, we’ve come to form a habit of missing what we don’t have, and demanding a way to bring it back only to inevitably discover the missing piece doesn’t fit that hole in our lives anymore. It’s sad, but true: we’re grasping for something we’ll never quite get back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This phenomenon is not surprising -- it’s really just a projection of typical human nature onto the landscape of the entertainment industry. We want what we can’t have, and we’re prone to playing a high-risk, high-reward game. If these comebacks could just work out, it would be the best feeling in the world. But much more often than not, they don’t. In reality, it’s best to let favorites and absolute classics lay where they are, and not potentially tarnish their image by forcing a shell of their former selves back to life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So although I’m excited to see Jack back in my life next week, I’m welcoming him with a fair share of guarded skepticism. Of course I care about him, and I know he cares about me (I am an American, after all). But if it’s just a generic re-hash of the world we shared the first time around, I honestly don’t want any part of it. Neither should you.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12009\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/05/02/24-is-back-but-are-we-grasping-for-something-well-never-get-again/attachment/24/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12009\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-12009\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/24.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: Fox\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/24.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/24-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Fox\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Victor Beigelman\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jack is back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On May 5th, one of TV’s most beloved characters, Jack Bauer, will return to action in \u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">24: Live Another Day\u003c/span>, a 12 episode mini-series event following the same real-time format as the first eight seasons of the show, with periodic jumps forward in the day between episodes. On paper, this is great. Fans of the show get to reunite with their hero and undoubtedly watch him shoot, scream, defy order, survive unimaginable torture, and everything else Jack Bauer stands for. But to what extent is our excitement for this rooted in a nostalgia for something that’s already seen its best days? Are we getting our hopes up for something that’s doomed to yield diminishing returns? If that’s the case, do we really want to \u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Live Another Day\u003c/span> at all?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Don’t get me wrong. I loved \u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">24\u003c/span>. Although its formula became stale by the final season, the show always excelled at action-packed sequences, shocking twists, and how-did-he-do-it heroic victories that came with a serious toll. Jack was a tragic hero in the strongest sense of the term, and the ensemble around him was packed with great characters. No doubt,\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\"> 24\u003c/span> was a hit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s important to emphasize, though, is that I\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\"> loved\u003c/span> the show\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">.\u003c/span> Loved. Past tense. It’s gratifying to fondly recall Jack Bauer as an iconic figure of the post-9/11 aughts, as with any happy memory. But when you have a positive, yet removed lasting image of something in your head, it’s strange to bring it back into your life and expect things to be the same. Jack might be coming back, and the core aspects of his world might be relatively constant, but we as viewers have changed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given the entertainment industry’s increasingly sequel-happy nature, it makes sense to view TV show comebacks with skepticism -- there’s a proven track record of brewing anticipation at a story or character’s return followed immediately by disappointment. Just look what happened with \u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Arrested Development\u003c/span>’s return on Netflix last year. The show was brought back on the sheer volume of enthusiasm from its dedicated and growing fan base, thanks to post-mortem DVD sales and Netflix binges. However, its “triumphant return,” once digested, didn’t go down smooth at all. What’s more, \u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">AD\u003c/span> was a show that was axed well before its time. What chance does \u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">24\u003c/span> have of a successful return if its original premise had grown stale by the end of its initial run?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s no question that money plays a big role in bringing shows and movies back; when profits are involved, its hard to let a smash hit just sit peacefully in its grave. But when all the creative juices around a story have run dry, it’s almost a disservice to the characters and original product to bring it back in any lesser form. Our intense desire to relive the glory days as viewers only enables that trend. Simply put, we’re bringing disappointment onto ourselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another more recent example, this one in film, was the return of Ron Burgundy and the channel 4 news team in \u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues\u003c/span> last December. A look at the sequel’s \u003ca href=\"https://mail.kqed.org/owa/redir.aspx?C=abb0eb8fd34d461e988095c26f80feec&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.rottentomatoes.com%2fm%2fanchorman_2_the_legend_continues%2f\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cspan class=\"Hyperlink__Char\" style=\"color: #0000ff\">Rotten Tomatoes score\u003c/span>\u003c/a> relative to the original -- 75% to 66% -- tells you that it’s a better movie than the original, but these are just numbers. The reality is that, as nice as it was to revisit these characters, the same formula just didn’t have the same punch as it did back in 2004. We expected the same slew of quotable one-liners, but instead we left the theater generally dissatisfied.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Granted, there are instances of TV shows (and film sequels) coming back after long gaps in time to match or exceed the brilliance of their original source material (\u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Family Guy\u003c/span> and \u003cspan class=\"Normal__Char\" style=\"font-style: italic\">Toy Story 3\u003c/span> to name a couple), but they’re very clearly the exception rather than the rule. As viewers, we’ve come to form a habit of missing what we don’t have, and demanding a way to bring it back only to inevitably discover the missing piece doesn’t fit that hole in our lives anymore. It’s sad, but true: we’re grasping for something we’ll never quite get back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This phenomenon is not surprising -- it’s really just a projection of typical human nature onto the landscape of the entertainment industry. We want what we can’t have, and we’re prone to playing a high-risk, high-reward game. If these comebacks could just work out, it would be the best feeling in the world. But much more often than not, they don’t. In reality, it’s best to let favorites and absolute classics lay where they are, and not potentially tarnish their image by forcing a shell of their former selves back to life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So although I’m excited to see Jack back in my life next week, I’m welcoming him with a fair share of guarded skepticism. Of course I care about him, and I know he cares about me (I am an American, after all). But if it’s just a generic re-hash of the world we shared the first time around, I honestly don’t want any part of it. Neither should you.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Felicity's Ben or Noel Conundrum: How The Side You Took Predicted Your Entire Love Life",
"title": "Felicity's Ben or Noel Conundrum: How The Side You Took Predicted Your Entire Love Life",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11954\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/04/29/felicitys-ben-or-noel-conundrum-how-the-side-you-took-predicted-your-entire-love-life/felicity-porter/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11954\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11954\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/felicity-porter.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: The WB\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/felicity-porter.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/felicity-porter-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: The WB\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Meghan Lewit\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There's a rather famous deleted scene from the film \u003cem>Pulp Fiction\u003c/em> in which Mia Wallace quizzes hit-man Vincent Vega on whether he's a Beatles man or an Elvis man, whether he prefers The Brady Bunch or The Partridge Family, and other character-defining questions. “My theory is that, when it comes to important subjects, there's only two ways a person can answer. Which way they choose tells you who that person is,” she states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve always found this to be a profoundly wise observation. My own cultural litmus test revolves around the love triangle at the heart of the late '90s college drama \u003cem>Felicity\u003c/em>. Or, more specifically, Ben or Noel?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The show, which first aired on the now-defunct WB network in 1998, starred Keri Russell (currently kicking ass on \u003cem>The Americans\u003c/em>) as a good girl who thwarts her parents' expectations by following her high school crush to college in New York City. (Also worth noting, \u003cem>Felicity\u003c/em> was the first foray into television for a then-unfamous J.J. Abrams.) The show became a watershed cultural moment for me -- partly because I was, at the time, at home in Illinois plotting my own escape to an East Coast university, but mainly because \u003cem>Felicity\u003c/em> cemented my attitude toward romance for my entire adult life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As heroines go, Felicity wasn’t particularly cool. She studied a lot, clothed herself in an unending parade of giant fuzzy sweaters, and recorded long, embarrassingly earnest messages to her absent friend Sally on a voice recorder. For a smart girl, she made the dubious choice to follow an 18-year-old boy across the country. But viewers who saw themselves in Felicity understood that the move to New York was about much more than a guy -- it was about making a brash stab at independence, about carving out a place in the world where her uncoolness and her romanticism and penchant for oversized wool could flourish. In her insane, ill-considered moment of bravery, Felicity became the patron saint of nice girls who got good grades, followed the rules and more or less listened to their parents, and sometimes wondered what the hell it was all for.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in the halls of the fictional University of New York, she found love in the form of two appealingly floppy-haired choices: Ben Covington (Scott Speedman), the mumbly, emotionally inscrutable crush she followed to college; and Noel Crane (Scott Foley), the charmingly geeky, nice-guy resident advisor. Although the Felicity love triangle came along before fans identifying themselves as “Team X” or “Team Y” had entered the vernacular, the Ben vs. Noel question became the basis of a four-season love triangle, the outcome of which can still spark heated debate among those who came of age at the turn of the millennium.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Felicity Porter felt like my fictional spirit sister back in 1998, so her love life has provided the framework of a theory that has guided my beliefs about romance for the past 16 years: that every straight woman in the world is either a Ben-girl or Noel-girl.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Noel established his good-guy cred early in the show when he became Felicity's confidante and Boggle partner. In the pilot, when Felicity is close to throwing in the towel on her New York adventure, he makes an endearing plea for her to stay:\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11970\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 284px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/04/29/felicitys-ben-or-noel-conundrum-how-the-side-you-took-predicted-your-entire-love-life/felicity/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11970\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11970\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/FAN-noel-and-felicity-6985617-355-500.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: FanPop\" width=\"284\" height=\"400\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: \u003ca href=\"http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/noel-and-felicity/images/6985617/title/fan-photo\">FanPop\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“You'll be the fancy doctor, with the fancy practice. You’ll be married and you’ll have like four phone lines in your home. And then, boom, it’ll grip you like a blast of freezing cold air. You know, ‘what the hell is my life?’ And you’ll be able to trace it back to this instant...when that geek RA gave you [these] words of advice: stay in New York or perish.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From that moment we knew that Noel understood her particular brand of romantic idealism, and that he would have her back. And throughout their first season courtship and over the course of the show (with the exception of an out-of-character quickie marriage and divorce to \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haMghffhJes\">the Doritos Girl\u003c/a> in season 3), he remained a steadfast presence in her life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Noel/Ben choice reached its most dramatic climax fairly early in the show’s run, at the end of the first season when Felicity has to choose between spending her summer break in Germany with Noel, or on a cross-country road trip with Ben. The season ends on a cliffhanger with Felicity -- in slow motion of course -- getting into a cab en route to an undisclosed destination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t have to make a decision between Ben and Noel,” she tells Sally in voiceover. “But I did.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A decade and a half later, it’s not a spoiler to report that she chose Ben, and that in season 2, just a couple of episodes into their nascent romance, he broke her heart. This event launched the infamous hair chop, and a series of forgettable romances with randoms until Ben eventually wins her back by tracking down a copy of the movie that had been playing when he stood her up (Charlie Chaplin’s \u003cem>The Gold Rush\u003c/em>). In his most swoon-worthy moment, he describes the film canister as a time machine that would allow them to rewrite their history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11966\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 245px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/04/29/felicitys-ben-or-noel-conundrum-how-the-side-you-took-predicted-your-entire-love-life/tumblr_mj26oau8dg1qkjkwao1_250/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11966\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11966\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/tumblr_mj26oau8Dg1qkjkwao1_250.gif\" alt=\"Photo: Tumblr\" width=\"245\" height=\"184\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: \u003ca href=\"http://nickmillerturtleface.tumblr.com/post/44498303958/ben-and-felicity-1x06-looks\" target=\"_blank\">Tumblr\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And that was the trick with Ben. He wasn’t a bad guy. He wasn’t cruel or dismissive, although he could often be thoughtless. He was a little too good looking; a person for whom things had always come a little too easily. He was someone we have all known, and probably dated at some point. Even in the midst of their on-and-off coupledom, he remained, on some level, tantalizingly unavailable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You want something with me, but you’re not strong enough to have it,” Felicity tells him at the beginning of their relationship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She had a point because in the fourth season -- after Felicity and Ben have graduated and moved to Palo Alto together for grad school -- Ben cheats. This earnest and heartfelt drama then takes a bizarre turn into the supernatural when Felicity’s former roommate, Meghan, casts a spell that allows a devastated Felicity to travel back in time and live out an alternate reality where she chooses Noel instead. The storyline, which is just about as absurd as it sounds, sets off a sequence of events that results in Noel’s tragic death in a fire on campus, but Felicity is ultimately able to make things right by reversing the spell and returning to her life with Ben.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a deeply unsatisfying conclusion to a show that had dealt so thoughtfully with the college experience. At the end, we’re supposed to accept that she made her choice not necessarily because it was the right one, but because choosing Noel would directly lead to his untimely demise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the fact that the Ben/Noel question still lingers is a testament to the viability of both characters. Unlike some other notable pop culture love triangles involving young people, Felicity’s choice never felt like a foregone conclusion. (By the end of their runs, was there anyone left who was still hoping that Joey would choose mopey Dawson over Pacey; that Katniss would pick volatile Gale over gentle Peeta; or thought there was a chance that Bella would end up with the werewolf instead of her creepily possessive vampire beau?) Felicity, for all its '90s trappings, holds up as a contemplative and authentic portrayal of the coming-of-age experience and the choices that it presents. The power of the Ben/Noel divide was that neither felt like a plot device, but rather a choice between two valid real-life archetypes: the nice (albeit somewhat predictable) guy who adores you, or the soulful sort-of bad boy you’ll never be quite sure of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also important to note that the choice between Ben and Noel has less to do with the guys themselves than it does with the girl doing the choosing. Each type has its own distinct appeal, perhaps depending on where a woman is in her life. A Ben who seems irresistible at age 20 may feel like more trouble than he’s worth at 30. A friend of mine recently noted that, if she were going to write a memoir of her dating life, she’d title it: \u003cem>Too Many Bens, Not Enough Noels\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although a staunch Noel devotee, when I rewatched the entire show recently, it was easier for me to understand the Ben appeal -- possibly because I’m less self-serious about love now than when I was 17. Still, when I reached the end of the series, I had to conclude that my fundamental preference \u003ca href=\"http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v516/YolkieFan27/f2.jpg\">hadn’t changed\u003c/a>. While Ben-girls will always crave the challenge and unpredictability, Noel-girls just don’t need that noise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It may seem like an over-simplification of the vagaries of love and attraction, but some things really are that straightforward. Just like with the Beatles and Elvis, at some point you have to make a choice. You can like both characters -- think they’re both cute, admire their overlapping taste in flannels -- but no one likes them both equally. And the one you choose says everything about you.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11954\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/04/29/felicitys-ben-or-noel-conundrum-how-the-side-you-took-predicted-your-entire-love-life/felicity-porter/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11954\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11954\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/felicity-porter.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: The WB\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/felicity-porter.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/felicity-porter-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: The WB\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Meghan Lewit\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There's a rather famous deleted scene from the film \u003cem>Pulp Fiction\u003c/em> in which Mia Wallace quizzes hit-man Vincent Vega on whether he's a Beatles man or an Elvis man, whether he prefers The Brady Bunch or The Partridge Family, and other character-defining questions. “My theory is that, when it comes to important subjects, there's only two ways a person can answer. Which way they choose tells you who that person is,” she states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve always found this to be a profoundly wise observation. My own cultural litmus test revolves around the love triangle at the heart of the late '90s college drama \u003cem>Felicity\u003c/em>. Or, more specifically, Ben or Noel?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The show, which first aired on the now-defunct WB network in 1998, starred Keri Russell (currently kicking ass on \u003cem>The Americans\u003c/em>) as a good girl who thwarts her parents' expectations by following her high school crush to college in New York City. (Also worth noting, \u003cem>Felicity\u003c/em> was the first foray into television for a then-unfamous J.J. Abrams.) The show became a watershed cultural moment for me -- partly because I was, at the time, at home in Illinois plotting my own escape to an East Coast university, but mainly because \u003cem>Felicity\u003c/em> cemented my attitude toward romance for my entire adult life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As heroines go, Felicity wasn’t particularly cool. She studied a lot, clothed herself in an unending parade of giant fuzzy sweaters, and recorded long, embarrassingly earnest messages to her absent friend Sally on a voice recorder. For a smart girl, she made the dubious choice to follow an 18-year-old boy across the country. But viewers who saw themselves in Felicity understood that the move to New York was about much more than a guy -- it was about making a brash stab at independence, about carving out a place in the world where her uncoolness and her romanticism and penchant for oversized wool could flourish. In her insane, ill-considered moment of bravery, Felicity became the patron saint of nice girls who got good grades, followed the rules and more or less listened to their parents, and sometimes wondered what the hell it was all for.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in the halls of the fictional University of New York, she found love in the form of two appealingly floppy-haired choices: Ben Covington (Scott Speedman), the mumbly, emotionally inscrutable crush she followed to college; and Noel Crane (Scott Foley), the charmingly geeky, nice-guy resident advisor. Although the Felicity love triangle came along before fans identifying themselves as “Team X” or “Team Y” had entered the vernacular, the Ben vs. Noel question became the basis of a four-season love triangle, the outcome of which can still spark heated debate among those who came of age at the turn of the millennium.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Felicity Porter felt like my fictional spirit sister back in 1998, so her love life has provided the framework of a theory that has guided my beliefs about romance for the past 16 years: that every straight woman in the world is either a Ben-girl or Noel-girl.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Noel established his good-guy cred early in the show when he became Felicity's confidante and Boggle partner. In the pilot, when Felicity is close to throwing in the towel on her New York adventure, he makes an endearing plea for her to stay:\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11970\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 284px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/04/29/felicitys-ben-or-noel-conundrum-how-the-side-you-took-predicted-your-entire-love-life/felicity/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11970\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-11970\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/FAN-noel-and-felicity-6985617-355-500.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: FanPop\" width=\"284\" height=\"400\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: \u003ca href=\"http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/noel-and-felicity/images/6985617/title/fan-photo\">FanPop\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“You'll be the fancy doctor, with the fancy practice. You’ll be married and you’ll have like four phone lines in your home. And then, boom, it’ll grip you like a blast of freezing cold air. You know, ‘what the hell is my life?’ And you’ll be able to trace it back to this instant...when that geek RA gave you [these] words of advice: stay in New York or perish.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From that moment we knew that Noel understood her particular brand of romantic idealism, and that he would have her back. And throughout their first season courtship and over the course of the show (with the exception of an out-of-character quickie marriage and divorce to \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haMghffhJes\">the Doritos Girl\u003c/a> in season 3), he remained a steadfast presence in her life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Noel/Ben choice reached its most dramatic climax fairly early in the show’s run, at the end of the first season when Felicity has to choose between spending her summer break in Germany with Noel, or on a cross-country road trip with Ben. The season ends on a cliffhanger with Felicity -- in slow motion of course -- getting into a cab en route to an undisclosed destination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t have to make a decision between Ben and Noel,” she tells Sally in voiceover. “But I did.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A decade and a half later, it’s not a spoiler to report that she chose Ben, and that in season 2, just a couple of episodes into their nascent romance, he broke her heart. This event launched the infamous hair chop, and a series of forgettable romances with randoms until Ben eventually wins her back by tracking down a copy of the movie that had been playing when he stood her up (Charlie Chaplin’s \u003cem>The Gold Rush\u003c/em>). In his most swoon-worthy moment, he describes the film canister as a time machine that would allow them to rewrite their history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11966\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 245px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/04/29/felicitys-ben-or-noel-conundrum-how-the-side-you-took-predicted-your-entire-love-life/tumblr_mj26oau8dg1qkjkwao1_250/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11966\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11966\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/tumblr_mj26oau8Dg1qkjkwao1_250.gif\" alt=\"Photo: Tumblr\" width=\"245\" height=\"184\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: \u003ca href=\"http://nickmillerturtleface.tumblr.com/post/44498303958/ben-and-felicity-1x06-looks\" target=\"_blank\">Tumblr\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And that was the trick with Ben. He wasn’t a bad guy. He wasn’t cruel or dismissive, although he could often be thoughtless. He was a little too good looking; a person for whom things had always come a little too easily. He was someone we have all known, and probably dated at some point. Even in the midst of their on-and-off coupledom, he remained, on some level, tantalizingly unavailable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You want something with me, but you’re not strong enough to have it,” Felicity tells him at the beginning of their relationship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She had a point because in the fourth season -- after Felicity and Ben have graduated and moved to Palo Alto together for grad school -- Ben cheats. This earnest and heartfelt drama then takes a bizarre turn into the supernatural when Felicity’s former roommate, Meghan, casts a spell that allows a devastated Felicity to travel back in time and live out an alternate reality where she chooses Noel instead. The storyline, which is just about as absurd as it sounds, sets off a sequence of events that results in Noel’s tragic death in a fire on campus, but Felicity is ultimately able to make things right by reversing the spell and returning to her life with Ben.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a deeply unsatisfying conclusion to a show that had dealt so thoughtfully with the college experience. At the end, we’re supposed to accept that she made her choice not necessarily because it was the right one, but because choosing Noel would directly lead to his untimely demise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the fact that the Ben/Noel question still lingers is a testament to the viability of both characters. Unlike some other notable pop culture love triangles involving young people, Felicity’s choice never felt like a foregone conclusion. (By the end of their runs, was there anyone left who was still hoping that Joey would choose mopey Dawson over Pacey; that Katniss would pick volatile Gale over gentle Peeta; or thought there was a chance that Bella would end up with the werewolf instead of her creepily possessive vampire beau?) Felicity, for all its '90s trappings, holds up as a contemplative and authentic portrayal of the coming-of-age experience and the choices that it presents. The power of the Ben/Noel divide was that neither felt like a plot device, but rather a choice between two valid real-life archetypes: the nice (albeit somewhat predictable) guy who adores you, or the soulful sort-of bad boy you’ll never be quite sure of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also important to note that the choice between Ben and Noel has less to do with the guys themselves than it does with the girl doing the choosing. Each type has its own distinct appeal, perhaps depending on where a woman is in her life. A Ben who seems irresistible at age 20 may feel like more trouble than he’s worth at 30. A friend of mine recently noted that, if she were going to write a memoir of her dating life, she’d title it: \u003cem>Too Many Bens, Not Enough Noels\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although a staunch Noel devotee, when I rewatched the entire show recently, it was easier for me to understand the Ben appeal -- possibly because I’m less self-serious about love now than when I was 17. Still, when I reached the end of the series, I had to conclude that my fundamental preference \u003ca href=\"http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v516/YolkieFan27/f2.jpg\">hadn’t changed\u003c/a>. While Ben-girls will always crave the challenge and unpredictability, Noel-girls just don’t need that noise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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},
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},
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"id": "bbc-world-service",
"title": "BBC World Service",
"info": "The day's top stories from BBC News compiled twice daily in the week, once at weekends.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BBC-World-Service-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/bbc-world-service",
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"rss": "https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p02nq0gn.rss"
}
},
"californiareport": {
"id": "californiareport",
"title": "The California Report",
"tagline": "California, day by day",
"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
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}
},
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"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.cityarts.net/",
"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/City-Arts-and-Lectures-p692/",
"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
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"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"order": 1
},
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"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
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"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
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},
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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},
"hidden-brain": {
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
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