The Wild Blog in the West

While I sit here in the United States waiting for Downton Abbey 's Series Four -- not at all  reading episode spoilers or looking for places to download the episodes -- I have been thinking about the show's appeal to Americans.  Part of it is no doubt due to the fascination with British history, its aristocracy, and the pretty-pretty that comes with it.  But another reason could be the nostalgia for our country's past. Not that everything was so great in the U.S. from 1912 to 1922.  After World War I, there were greater tendencies toward xenophobia and isolationism.  "Lost Generation" writers like Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald rejected post-war American culture.  Life was still significantly worse for anyone who was not a white male of Anglo-Saxon descent. Yet at the same time, the U.S. was taking center stage for the first time.  Woodrow Wilson introduced the idea of the League of Nations, which was unsuccessful, but paved the wa

Since I'm on this animation kick, I might as well get something off of my chest that I've been thinking about for a while: is it possible that the creators of MTV's Daria sent the wrong message in the end? Daria  premiered on MTV in 1997 as the rare portrayal of a social outcast.  Not someone who was an "outcast" while looking and acting like a fashion model, but a genuine introvert with no interest in wider social approval.  The first season established a pattern where Daria Morgendorffer and her friend, Jane Lane, stood off to one side and criticized the activities that people their age were taught to embrace. At the same time, these episodes -- frequently referred to as "fish in a barrel" episodes -- started to feel a little stale.  Were Daria and Jane really the only two smart ones in the city of Lawndale?  Were other people really so stupid?  And even if they were, would they just stand by, grinning vacantly, while getting insulted?  The only

... Though being anime, that almost goes without saying. I'm not a great devourer of anime.  There are some that I truly like, but I'm indifferent toward the rest.  Because my greatest exposure to anime occurred about 10 years ago, all of my favorites date from the 1990s and early 2000s... so apologies if some truly great anime series have premiered since then.  I enjoyed  Neon Genesis Evangelion ,  Cowboy Bebop , and a quiet little series called Serial Experiments Lain . While the other anime involved giant monsters and space travel, Lain was a 13-episode series about a lonely girl.  The setting was the present -- or the near future.  Or was it?  One of the intriguing things about Serial Experiments Lain was that it posed questions about human connection, what was and was not real, and this strange new thing called the "Internet." Lain premiered in 1998, when the Internet as a public resource was still fairly new.  Remember how excited and nervous we were a

When it comes to television series, I'm almost always late for the party.  I tend to hop on board the love train after one or two seasons have passed, when the show is safely critically acclaimed and therefore worth investing my time. Such was the case with Avatar: The Last Airbender  and its sequel, The Legend of Korra .  I learned about Avatar  at the same time as its much-maligned film version, and thought little more about it.  But after Doug Walker from That Guy With the Glasses did a review of the film/series, I became intrigued enough to check it out.  While Avatar  was not readily available,* Korra was.  And oh my God, after one episode, I was in love. A little context: since childhood, I have been an absolute nut for great animation.  Until I was 10 or 11, I was convinced that I would become an animator, and spent my afternoons doodling comical dogs and dragons on large sheets of paper.  Disney was the default style, though other animation houses always challenged.  S

This will probably be my shortest update yet.  I know that I usually have a post up by Monday or Tuesday at the latest, but I have been slammed with work this week.  It has been spilling out every which way, and it is all I can do to stay on top of it.  I should have something up by the coming weekend, and I think it will be really good.  So I'll check back in then. In the meantime, feel free to speculate about Downton Abbey  Season Four!

Hairspray  (2007) is another movie that was on the border between Right and Wrong.  However, unlike Across the Universe , I feel a bit more confident saying that Hairspray falls on the Wrong side. Hairspray began as a movie -- a quirky non-musical from 1988 starring Ricki Lake.  From there, it became a Broadway stage musical, and then that stage musical became a movie.  Obviously it's not unusual for movies to be remade, but for a remake to come out less than 20 years after the original?  But then, that's the trend these days for movies to be remade every 10 years or so, though it usually involves a superhero franchise. The story focuses on an overweight teenager named Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky in the Ricki Lake role) living in Baltimore with her two parents.  Tracy and her friend, Penny Pingleton, devote their lives to  The Corny Collins Show , a local American bandstand that features teenagers dancing to the latest music -- of 1962.  The date and the location are si

Even though I officially began the Wild Blog in the West on February 20, 2012, I published my first real blog post on September 1, 2012... one year ago. I had never kept a blog before.  I had done lots of ghost writing for other blogs, but the style of writing was very different.  I also wrote recaps for reality shows several years ago, but that was different -- a set subject matter, defined parameters.  What would I do with a blog?  How often would I update it?  What if I ran out of things to talk about? Thankfully, the fears that I would run out of things to say never came to pass.  If anything, the number of topics has expanded over the months -- the only thing that's contracted is time.  This blog has given me space to be a massive fangirl about things like Les Miserables , the musical, or to rant about things I hate, like leaf blowers.  Despite the fact that the Wild Blog in the West has no major theme or niche, the number of page views for August 2013 was 20 times grea