Category: Culture

Society by Joe WilcoxJul 9, 201511:51 pm

Comic-Con Rapture

Street preachers greeting—and in many cases offending—Thursday Comic-Conners manifested metaphor as Day 1 advanced. It’s as if the Rapture came, taking away a significant minority. Because the crowds felt less to me. I asked several vendors about their perception. One of them agreeing said that earlier he’d had a conversation with other exhibitors about the feeling of fewer.

My experience has been that first full-day crowds are smallest of the four. The big draws in Hall H typically start on Friday, along with other panels with punch. Perhaps I am too accustomed to the crowds, or maybe they were smaller as a whole throughout the Convention Center; fewer gathering places but drawing still significant numbers.

Society by Joe WilcoxJul 9, 201512:27 am

Uh-oh! Red Shirts!

What an Uglydoll way to go. I wonder how long these will last? Star Trek Uglies are this year’s San Diego Comic-Con exclusives. Just beam me up some, would you? But Preview Night wasn’t their time for big sales. Long lines queued elsewhere.

Each day of SDCC has its own distinct character. Preview Night is the big geekfest. It is not the pretty people gathering. The group fulfills a wide range of stereotypes that says nerd. The fewest cosplayers are seen of any day, also. You would think Star Trek would appeal to these types, and perhaps it does. I observed more of a Dr. Who, Orphan Black, and The Walking Dead crowd.

Society by Joe WilcoxJul 8, 201512:12 am

Comic-Con Heroes Enters the Public Domain

Timing is deliberate. As the big pop-culture convention starts here in San Diego, I release my ebook Comic-Con Heroes: The Fans Who Make the Greatest Show on Earth into the public domain. You can grab the PDF here, or click on to Smashwords for more formats, including epub. I relinquish rights, believing the content remains evergreen valuable even if dated. The book published in September 2013.

During SDCC two years ago, I interviewed attendees, choosing one-dozen to profile. My contention about the convention: The fans are the stars, not hollywood, which gets the glory. The concept started from a recollection posted during Comic-Con 2010: “The Roles We Play“. Yesterday, I published a followup that I planned to title “The Roles They Play” but last-minute changed to “The Heroes Are Us“.

Society by Joe WilcoxJul 7, 201512:05 pm

The Heroes Are Us

Tomorrow night begins my seventh sojourn to the greatest geekfest and pop-culture event on the planet. Imitator shows are everywhere this Century, but none commands character and class like the original. San Diego Comic-Con is an amazing amalgamation of hopes and aspirations—and the grandest storytelling—where, for four days and a Preview Night, tens of thousands of people can be themselves—fit in, rather than feel oddball—or be whom they would want to be by dressing up as beloved superheroes or villains and by adoring the storytellers and actors behind them.

The first, full three-day event took place from Aug. 1-3, 1970, at the U.S. Grand Hotel, with about 300 attendees and sci-fi luminaries, including Ray Bradbury and A.E. van Vogt. This week, 130,000 attendees will storm San Diego Convention Center to enter an alternate reality, where the social rules binding them everyday no longer apply.

Society by Joe WilcoxJun 29, 20153:15 pm

Why iPhone Matters

Happy Birthday! iPhone is 8 years-old today. Oh my, it seems so much longer because so much has changed. Think back. Eight years ago, there was no Android. YouTube was but 18 months available to the public, and Facebook or Twitter only about a year. There was no market for tablets, or smartwatches.

The iPhone marks everything right about the Steve Jobs era of risk-taking design. More changes: He is gone from this world and some of that other-worldly innovation with him. In 2007, the smartphone was a decade-old slow seller that few people owned. Now it’s everywhere! Apple deserves credit for the transformation, whether or not anyone wants to give it.

Living by Joe WilcoxJun 24, 201511:03 pm

Don’t Go There

While sitting with my 93 year-old father-in-law outside the Starbucks in San Diego’s Hillcrest district, I observed a directional sign for two shops, today. Then I read them as a sentence and laughed. Okay, you—think like an imaginative kid and not a stuck-up-the-butt literal adult: Ignore the K. It’s funny, yes?

Strangely, I came to live the sign not long later. As we walked into Trader Joe’s, a neighbor said hello on her way inside. I politely introduced my father-n-law, then she started on about the Neighborhood Watch group that she recently organized. The first meeting went well, but she wasn’t sure how to contact me. That’s when I blew her holy smoke up her arse.

Living by Joe WilcoxJun 21, 20155:49 pm

Small Town Living

I couldn’t reach my dad to wish him Happy Father’s Day. Calls kept coming up “User Busy” on my smartphone screen. One of my sisters shared similar problem, and we mutually expressed hope that perhaps […]

Living by Joe WilcoxMay 23, 20156:39 am

A Life Lesson

For three summers during high school, I participated in federal assistance program Upward Bound at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. My parents divorced when I was 13, and my then 31 year-old mother chose to raise four children alone. Jobs were scarce in Aroostook County during the early 1970s, and mom couldn’t earn enough. We were poor, by most American measures.

That circumstance and college plans qualified me to spend summers in Southern Maine and someday to attend a school like Bowdoin (I didn’t). The program has expanded such that if I were a high school student today, my UB participation would be at the University of Presque Isle branch rather than the one at Bowdoin. While closer to home (next town over), the benefits wouldn’t be as a great: Getting out of the County’s confines, experiencing life on such a prestigious college campus, watching Shakespeare at the Theater at Monmouth, or traveling—even for a day—to Boston.

Photo by Joe WilcoxMay 13, 20156:18 pm

When One Gets Away

If you don’t follow my “Flickr a Day” series, you really miss out. The 133rd, “Jenna Bean“, is the most recently curated photo. There will be 365 pics picked this year, with no photographers repeated (unless by carelessness), Storytelling motivated me to begin the project on January 1.

But there are many images or shooters I want to feature but don’t. Okay, can’t. Two common problems: Resolution of the photos are too low or they are licensed All Rights Reserved. The project only features Creative Commons-available content.

Society by Joe WilcoxMay 5, 20153:46 pm

Contextual Cloud Computing is for Everyone

Keeping with my recommendation that “Writers, Own Your Content!“, I cross-post many, but by no means all, of my BetaNews tech stories here. As explained two months ago, much of my readership engagement takes place somewhere else, which is major reason there are so few comments here. Some of them occasionally deserve additional attention.

Late yesterday I posted my review of Chromebook Pixel LS, which Google released in early March. The write-up is purposely rah-rah to impose the importance of embracing contextual cloud computing and to shake up preconceptions about Macs being the tools of the creative elite. I also call “dumb” developers who may receive free Pixels during Google I/O later this month only to then sell them online.

One reader comment, from SmallSherm, to the BetaNews version caught my attention, for accusing me of calling him (or her) stupid and for insulting readers. After writing my response, I wondered how few people would ever see the interaction, which I regard as being quite valuable, there and absolutely none her. I present our two comments for your Tuesday thought train.

Living by Joe WilcoxApr 10, 20158:56 pm

This Sign can’t be Good

While walking I saw this sign on the Adams Ave. bridge crossing the 805 here in San Diego. What? People park cars there to sell and must be warned not to? The hazard is obvious. […]

Photo by Joe WilcoxApr 8, 20156:54 am

Flickr a Day 98: ‘NgaNga’

Dramatic is my reaction to this protest shot from Freedom II Andres, in Makati City, Philippines, on Oct. 4, 2013. The second “Million People March” rallied against the country’s so-called pork-barrel scam that a Philippine Daily Inquirer investigative series exposed about two months earlier.

The photographer’s name is appropriate for a protest shot like this one, and spotlights his family heritage. The second of four sons, “we are all named Freedom“, he explains, “simply because our father was one of the student-activists of his time in the 1970s, when Filipinos fought against the dictatorship of then president Ferdinand Marcos”.