It’s August of 2011, do you know when your Apocalypse is? 

There are 1000s of people who think that something important—if not the end or the world, then something—will happen on December 21, 2012. These speculations spring from a well-seasoned cultural melting pot, but a key ingredient is the writings and beliefs of both ancient and modern Maya people. In fact, the folks promoting the 2012 movement often frame themselves as experts in Maya traditions.

Here’s the thing, though: There are actual experts in ancient Maya traditions, and actual experts who study the culture and religion of modern Maya living today. These archaeologists and anthropologists have, inadvertently, created some of the pop culture legends that spawned the 2012 movement. But, until very recently, they’ve largely ignored that movement. This is starting to change, however. Last January, archaeo-astronomers held a symposium on the 2012 phenomenon and those papers were recently published in The Proceedings of the International Astronomy Union. Meanwhile, a new scholarly book, collecting essays on the 2012 phenomenon by Mayanist researchers, is set to be published soon.

One of the researchers featured in that book is John Hoopes, an archaeologist and one of my former professors when I was an anthropology student at The University of Kansas.

Hoopes does field research, digging at archaeological sites in Costa Rica and other parts of Central and South America. But, as a side project, he’s also developed some expertise in the way archaeology—and, particularly, pseudo-archaeology—influences pop culture in the United States and Europe. I spoke with him about where 2012 myths come from, why scientists need to study and address pseudo-science movements, and why he thinks the 2012 phenomenon owes as much to H.P. Lovecraft and Aldous Huxley as it does to the ancient Maya.

Maggie Koerth-Baker: I know that you are an archaeologist, but you also have this very meta offshoot of your research that I sort of think of as the cultural anthropology of archeo-mythology. How did you get into that?

John Hoopes: That’s one way to put it. I usually think about it as the ethnography of contemporary culture. It goes a long way back. I was an avid consumer of pseudo-archaeology in high school. I was a sci-fi and fantasy fan. My very first research paper, in 10th grade, was a critical evaluation of the Lost Continent of Atlantis.

MKB: Tell me a little bit about the real science that forms the backbone of this 2012 mythology. When people talk about this stuff, what artifacts and research are they building off of?

JH: The real stuff behind it, it comes in several flavors. The main real stuff are prophecies in The Books of Chilam Balam, the Books of the Jaguar Priest. That’s really a set of different manuscripts from colonial Yucatan and it was published in the 1700s. But they recount stories that were collected much earlier, including ones from the time of Spanish arrival. Chilam Balam is a legendary prophet who made various pronouncements that are collected in these books. That’s what’s referred to as “Mayan prophecies.” The scholarly discussion of them goes back to the 1930s.

Then, beginning in the 1970s you also have discussion of a monument called Tortuguero Monument #6. It appears in Linda Schele‘s work in 1982 [Schele was one of the key researchers in the story of how modern scientists learned to decipher ancient Maya hieroglyphics—MKB] and discussed at the Maya Workshops in late 1990s. As we got closer to 2012, David Stuart published the new translation. [Stuart is a student of Schele’s and another key figure in the translation of Mayan writing.—MKB]

It’s the only monument known to have the date 13.0.0.0.0—the Mayan date that corresponds to December 21, 2012—on it. The monument is damaged. So it’s hard to read and it takes a lot of cleverness to decipher what the text actually says. The preliminary translation came out in the late 1990s. However, the inscription isn’t at all clear. There’s some discussion about whether it’s even a prophecy, but I think it is. It refers to celebration of a god called Bolon Yok’te K’uh. This deity seems to be associated with warfare and with the king of Tortuguero. The most recent translation suggests that whatever they said would happen then was really just the dressing and honoring of this deity, nothing more.

The date 13.0.0.0.0 is a logical extrapolation of how the Mayan Long Count Calendar works. The first published mention of that date was in the 1800s, came from the work of Joseph Goodman. But it wasn’t actually written anywhere other than the Tortuguero monument, which was discovered in the 1970s.

MKB: When did you start noticing the 2012 movement as a phenomenon? Did it grow out of something else that you were already following, or kind of appear on its own?

JH: It had been something on the edge of my consciousness for a while. The Mayan Factor by Jose Arguelles is a book was part of the New Age Harmonic Convergence of 1987. That came out right as I finished my dissertation. I didn’t pay much attention at the time because everybody had just written it off. By that point, people were joking about New Age and not taking it seriously. But at that time, Arquelles was writing about December 21, 2012. And it just grew from there. I didn’t pay much attention until 1995, which is when I noticed two things.

First, that was the year that the first interactive, graphic Maya calendar orientation program came out on the web and it gave December 21, 2012 as the date that corresponded to the Mayan date of 13.0.0.0.0. Then I got an email from Daniel Pinchbeck. We had a common interest in Burning Man and he contacted me saying that he was writing about Jose Arquelles and 2012 for Rolling Stone. That’s when I realized that this had taken on a life of its own. But I hadn’t really realized until early 2003 that it was something people were still paying any attention to.

MKB: One of the things I found very interesting is the role that legitimate archaeologists have played in creating this 2012 myth. One of those people is Michael Coe, a very well-respected researcher who wrote some of the books I read as an undergrad. Tell me a little about his role in this. Has he ever talked much about it?

JH: He’s made informal statements in email and in conversation with colleagues. And he did write an introduction to a book that’s coming out soon, which I have contributed to, called 2012: Decoding the Counterculture Apocalypse. In that, he discusses his inadvertent role in fostering this myth.

It really started with his 1966 book, The Maya. He did two things. First, he was the first Maya specialist to correlate a long count date to a date in the future, rather than in the past. He was trying to figure out what that 13.0.0.0.0 date would be, and he turned out to be wrong. He thought December 24, 2011 and that was later corrected. But he was also the first person to link that date—13.0.0.0.0—to the concept of Armageddon and say that the Maya would have associated that date with the end of the world. I’ve been in pretty regular communication with him over the last several years, and he’s repeated that paragraph in all 8 editions of The Maya. He really thinks the ancient Maya would have thought about it that way. But that’s not everyone’s interpretation. And it’s not mine. That’s just what he thinks.

MKB: Is his story something that has made today’s Mayanists more careful about the way they talk to the public about their theories?

JH: I think that people are beginning to think that way, but it’s not how they thought before. I don’t think any of the Mayanists saw this coming. They’re taken aback by it. They’re surprised that the statements they make are taken as seriously as this and treated as real beliefs, absolute fact. What they’re really doing is throwing out ideas to make the books interesting. I don’t think Coe was asserting a scientific discovery about Maya prophecies. He was just talking in an informal way about what he thought the ancient Maya might have thought. In the past, those books were intended for academic audiences that understood that, but with the web new audiences have read these books and interpreted them in different ways.

MKB: How do you address this with your students? Do you address it?

JH: Oh, absolutely. I have a class called Archaeological Myths and Realities and we devote a whole semester to looking at myths that have come out of archaeology and how those play out in popular culture. We also discuss the phenomenon of how people learn about the past. I think a lot of the current generation of high school and college kids learn about archaeology through video gaming. They learn about it through Civilization and Tomb Raider. There are lots and lots of allusions in games to ancient cultures and civilizations, and through science fiction movies. Many people learn about the past through pop culture. And pop culture has popularized some really spurious theories. Think about the History Channel and their series on ancient aliens, for example.

MKB: We’re starting to see anthropologists publishing research on the 2012 movement. Why is the movement something important to study on its own, separate from the traditional archaeology that seeks to understand what ancient Mayans believed?

JH: Mainly because I think it gives us an opportunity to see how religious movements begin.

There’s a lot in that mythology that people are referring to as if it is real or as something they want to believe in. It’s been tied together with the Age of Aquarius, the legitimacy of prophecy, and visionary experiences. There’s a lot there that’s similar to the beginnings of other religious traditions. Christianity, for instance, began in the context of messianic prophecies. The LDS church began in the context of speculation about Native Americans and concerns about the end of the world. And the Millerite movement of the 1840s is another one. That gave rise to today’s Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses. William Miller prophesied the second coming for October 1844. And even though it didn’t happen, it still had a lasting legacy because so many people believed. Publications started by Millerites are still the publications of the Jehovah’s Witnesses today. I really think there will be some religious or spiritual movements that come out of the 2012 mythology. If you go into Barnes and Noble and look in the metaphysics or spirituality sections, you’ll find tons of books about 2012. It’s not treated as historical or scientific, but as spiritual.

MKB: How many scholarly articles have been written about this now, and what issues are they looking at?

JH: There’s only three books that represent scholarly critiques, and two scholarly articles. Anthony Aveni is an archeo-astronomer interested in the intersection of astronomy and culture. In his book, The End of Time: The Maya Mystery of 2012, he’s talking about what the real science behind this is. There’s also another book, 2012: Science and Prophecy of the Ancient Maya, by Mark Van Stone, which looks at what the hieroglyphic texts do and don’t say about 2012.

Like I told you, there’s actually only one text that even mentions it. And it’s not complete and not easily interpreted. All the prophecies don’t come from the pre-Columbian texts, but from post-contact documents that are heavily influenced by Christianity. There’s another paper about that contact period that has focused on the role of missionaries in the Yucatan shortly after Spanish conquest. Basically, it’s framing Millenarianism in the context of that post-contact era. Many of those people came to Mexico precisely because they were on the extreme end of ideology and were obsessed with the end of the world. And we know that one of the first things they said to the Indians they found was that the world is ending soon and Jesus is coming. It was a very important part of Spanish colonization. When we hear end of the world prophecies, what they are is synchronistic prophecies where Mayan beliefs and Catholic Millenarian beliefs combined.

MKB: Why has there been so little scholarly attention paid to the 2012 movement until now?

JH: I think that scholars in general are very uncomfortable with contemporary belief systems. They’re laden with a lot of emotional baggage. It’s not the purpose of science to generate or support ideology, and so scientists are reasonably cautious and don’t want to contribute to that growth. They’re also just not familiar with it. They won’t touch fringe literature with a 10 foot pole and so they’re completely unaware of how big this phenomenon is. A student of mine has just written an article called “2012 by 2012.” He’s been keeping tabs on the number of books published about this topic and he thinks there will be more than 2000 books out by the time 2012 comes around. It’s been a huge publishing phenomenon.

MKB: In some ways, it seems that this has given people like Mayanists and archaeo-astronomers a role in modern culture that they don’t normally have. You talk about Anthony Aveni having an email conversation with a teenager and trying to debunk the myths and reassure this kid that the world wasn’t really going to end. And, I mean, it’s typical for a biologist to have to have conversations with the public like that, or a climate scientist, but it’s not really something you expect to do a lot of when you study dead things. What has that been like for you? Is that role of public explainer something archaeologists are well prepared to take on?

JH: I think that they’re prepared to take it on in terms of the knowledge that they have. But they’re not well prepared in terms of how it is that we talk to people who are interested in the spiritual aspects of this. I think that actually polarizes the dialogue sometimes. Scientists and academics end up being seen as the bad guys. A lot of this mythology falls into anti-authoritarian mythology. “What the official sources tell you isn’t true. There’s a conspiracy to hide the truth.” The trailer for the 2012 movie said something along the lines of, “If governments knew about a world wide catastrophe, would they tell you?” It raises suspicion of authority. And I don’t think many academics are prepared to deal with people who are hostile to authority and who have made up their minds that scholars are lying or are part of the conspiracy.

MKB: So what do you do when that comes up?

JH: I try to be fairly diplomatic about it. I try to realize that these myths play a very important role in people’s lives. They make them feel comfortable, help them feel better. I try to help people develop critical thinking skills, and help them understand that you can’t educate yourself simply by reading the web and watching the History Channel. That it requires a lot of scholarship and reading, and you have to look at the original academic literature. You can’t rely on popular magazines. You have to evaluate the primary information itself. Lots of people can’t afford the academic training they want and so they try to do it themselves and wind up with an autodidactic education that includes a lot of bizarre and totally wrong speculative literature. In fact, a lot of people writing about this are self taught in the same way.

MKB: Are there cultural anthropologists who make a point of studying pseudoscience movements? Because some of the pseudoscience you talk about seems fascinatingly detailed and complicated, but at the same time, completely speculative. That’s an interesting combination to me. Is it interesting to researchers?

JH: I think it is, but I don’t know of any cultural anthropologists who pursue it. There’s a lot of excellent religious studies work on new religious movements, though. One of my favorite books is The Invention of Sacred Tradition. What they talk about is how people will invent things that they then say have been happening forever. I think it helps us understand the production of culture, how culture is generated. There’s a lot of richness out there that we can see in the creation of new mythologies.

Jesus Potter Harry Christ is another book you should look at. It’s a detailed comparison of Christian myth and the Harry Potter stories, and it comes to the conclusion that, except for the fact that Christian myth has been sanctioned for 2000 years, there’s no difference. Essentially, one could base a whole theology on Harry Potter. And, in fact, I suspect that in the future somebody will. That’s how culture gets created. Myth cycles become the way that people teach morality, values, and behavior. That’s what the Bible does, but Star Trek has that function, too.

MKB: What other influences do you see on the 2012 movement, besides New Age ideology and Mayan mythology?

JH: Something else covered in that 2012 book I’m in that hasn’t really been talked about in mainstream media … the reality is that this mythology came out of the psychedelic subculture. You can’t ignore that influence. I was talking about this with a TV presenter and her reaction was that they couldn’t say that because they do family programming. A lot of people won’t talk about it because it’s a taboo topic. But we do discuss that in this book. If some of the 2012 theories seem like they were made up by people on drugs, it’s because they were. There’s this huge psychedelic subculture that still exists and that the media doesn’t really report on except to demonize it. But it’s important.

Also, the most recent research I’ve been doing, and I haven’t published on this yet, but I’m finding links between the work of H.P. Lovecraft and influence of that on 2012. Michael Coe was a huge Lovecraft fan, even. I’m working on a manuscript on that right now. But Lovecraft is at the root of a lot of the ideas here, like the cycles of destruction, for instance. That’s not Mayan, that’s Lovecraft. Lovecraft himself had a lot of skepticism and felt that spiritualism was appropriate for fiction but didn’t believe any of it in everyday reality, and he kind of used his fiction as a way to mock those beliefs a little. But now that’s being used as reality.

MKB: What about the modern Maya? Has anyone gotten good documentation on what they think about this cultural phenomenon that’s tied to their culture, but is also separate from it?

JH: I hope that that work is happening. In fact, I’ve encouraged some of my students who work with modern Maya to be doing just that. Because what’s happening now is a very active synchretism of the religions of living Maya groups with New Age thought.

Mayan belief has long been synchronistic. In the pre-Columbian era they were influenced by the cultures and beliefs of Teotihuacan, the Toltecs, the Olmecs, and then you get the Spanish and Catholicism, then evangelical Protestantism, and since the 1970s there’s been this influence of the New Age and that’s really intensified now with the 2012 thing.

Essentially, some very enthusiastic hippies have gone into remote Maya villages, bringing their ideas about the New Age, Buddhism, and theosophy. They are introducing them to the Maya themselves, who are in turn producing a new synchretism. I think there are a lot of places that are reinterpreting shamanism along the lines of what Western academics think shamanism to be. That makes it really hard to understand what those people originally believed. The religous studies scholars call it “The Pizza Effect,” it refers to what happens when a culture reflects back to a foreign influence as though it had always been there. The Hare Krishnas, for instance, were an American interpretation of Hinduism and were exported to India, where it became a religious movement in India that hadn’t been there all along.

The name comes from the history of the pizza, which is that the pizza was invented by Italian immigrants in New England creating a quick lunch. But as American tourists went to Italy in search of authentic pizza the restaurateurs were happy to oblige by inventing a history of the pizza in Italy. And now you have this “authentic” Italian pizza coming back to the U.S. I think that’s happening with 2012 as well. You have modern Maya talking about New Age secrets as if those were original parts of Maya culture, but those were things that were learned in the 60s and 70s.

It is authentic. Synchretic beliefs are absolutely authentic. You know, the authenticity argument is really one of, “Do these people authentically believe this,” and the reality is that many, many Maya are authentically evangelical Protestants. Yes, it’s recent. But it doesn’t mean it’s any less authentic. But there’s a difference between authenticity and tradition. And the arbiters of truth and what is tradition are changing. Ironically, this is happening at a point where we know more than we ever did before about ancient texts because we can actually read them so much better. And there’s nothing in there about aliens.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution. Boing Boing is a trademark of Happy Mutants LLC in the United States and other countries.

Photo Credit

Apocalypse, a Creative Commons Attribution No-Derivative-Works (2.0) image from torek’s photostream

I’ve got a question for you science fiction fans out there: what was it that first drew you to the genre? It occurred to me to ask that of myself recently when a friend of mine sent me a copy of his new novel, Leviathan Wakes. You see, a lot of science fiction (SF) is highly concerned with exploration and discovery, whether it’s in the literal sense of finding new worlds and new civilizations, or more figuratively by using the genre’s framework to delve into some arcane bit of scientific lore or to highlight some facet of the human condition. It can be a very cerebral genre, providing deep intellectual satisfaction.

The downside of a genre so rich with exploratory possibility is that sometimes in the pursuit of all those ideas, the “fun” gets lost. And when I consider my own history with science fiction, what really caught me in my youth was adventure. Reading Leviathan Wakes, with its return to some good, old-fashioned space opera, reminded me of just how much fun science fiction can be.

Authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, writing as James S. A. Corey, take us into a not-too-distant future in which humanity has reached out into the solar system, colonizing the moon, Mars, the asteroid belt, and some of the gas giants’ moons.

Through this setting we follow two main characters. Holden is the first officer aboard an ice freighter on its way back from Saturn. When his ship is destroyed after stopping to investigate a mysterious distress call, he and a handful of his crew mates are pulled into a series of events that threatens to bring about the first interplanetary war. Meanwhile, Miller is a police detective from the asteroid colony Ceres who is assigned to find a missing girl. During his investigation he discovers a conspiracy, the scope of which encompasses the entire solar system, and which leads him into contact with Holden and his crew.

What’s really impressive about this book is how skillfully it blends its various influences. Miller’s scenes often read like a hard-boiled detective novel, while Holden’s storyline sometimes brought to mind the space adventure in early Heinlein books like Citizen of the Galaxy and Starman Jones, but mixed with the “space truckers” grit of the movie Alien.

You get the same sense that the authors have deeply considered the consequences of a human civilization spanning the solar system that you would from many a hard SF story, but you get all the satisfaction and fun of the starship battles in a space opera.

So many of the books I read these days — even the ones I like — are ones that I end up having to pull myself through, and while the adult in me may sometimes appreciate an ending more for the fact that I had to earn it, there’s also an undeniable joy to coming back to the kind of excitement and adventure that drew me to science fiction in the first place.

Was “fun” what brought you to SF, way back when? If so, you could do worse than checking out Leviathan Wakes when it releases this summer.

Leviathan Wakes will be available in June 2011 from Orbit Books.

Photo Credit

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey, Orbit Books

Ever since my son was born, I’ve been increasingly drawn to the cultural elements of my own childhood. I find myself renting old Disney movies or picking up books I haven’t read in decades. I’m sure that same impulse, whatever it is, is what’s driving my latest obsession: Patsy Cline.

For me, Patsy Cline’s music is inextricably linked with 1986, the year that my mother, brother, and I lived in a cabin in Big Sur with her boyfriend. That year was my introduction to country music, my mom’s boyfriend’s favored genre. The stereo in that cabin, when it was on, was nearly always playing country and western, from The Sons of the Pioneers to Jim Reeves to Alabama. And, of course, Patsy Cline. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able hear “Crazy” without thinking of the smell of redwoods, the feel of an unfinished wood floor under my feet, and the sound of the creek that rippled through our front yard.

For a long time after we left that cabin, I eschewed country music. Some bluegrass crept in later in high school, but it wasn’t until 2005 and the movie Walk the Line that I really started to come back to country. Starting then, it slowly came back into my listening rotation, a little Johnny Cash here, a little Willie Nelson there. And, finally, about a month ago, when I broke down and bought a copy of The Patsy Cline Story, the 1963 Decca compilation released not long after her untimely death at age 30.

Listening to Patsy Cline for the first time in over 20 years was in a lot of ways like going back home and finding your old room just the way you remember it. But what really struck me were the things that I never noticed as a child, the things I was too young to understand at the time. Like the fact that nearly every song on the album — indeed, pretty much every song she’s known for — is about heartbreak, even the uptempo ones. Or just how much 50s pop made up her “countrypolitan” sound.

And then, of course, there’s the voice. Cline, with her full, rich contralto, is possibly the greatest female vocalist in country music history. She’s influenced generations of women across many genres, from Loretta Lynn to k. d. lang to Neko Case. I knew all of that, but hearing it again, I couldn’t help but be amazed by how such a confident voice could express such vulnerability, or, conversely, how songs with such ache could have so much strength, even sexiness, to them. Some of these songs are over 50 years old, but the sophistication in her performance still blows me away.

But I think what excites me most about listening to Patsy Cline’s music again after so long is knowing that I get to share it with my son as he grows up. Who knows? Maybe 30 years from now, listening to Patsy Cline will make him think of this time in his life.

Photo Credit

“Patsy Cline” Photographer Unknown

Think about the last time you walked down a busy street. What do you remember? If you’re like most people, you were probably thinking about where you were going or where you came from. If you were with someone, you might have been engrossed in a conversation; if you were alone, perhaps you were lost in thought. But most likely you weren’t really looking around at the other people in the crowd.

It’s an odd bit of cultural conditioning, that impulse to act as though the people around you don’t exist, and it’s one that can be hard to break. But if you can do it, if you stop and actually look around when you’re out, you start to notice things. Like the way that guy’s face over there is briefly hidden as he walks through a shadow.

Or the speckling of freckles across that girl’s face.

Or the juxtaposition of images as a bus passes behind a street performer.

You start to realize that there’s a surprising amount of beauty and mystery all around you. And with that realization, maybe you want to look a little closer.

Danny Santos II is no stranger to that impulse. Danny is a Singapore-based weekend shooter who has become known in the photography world for his street work, especially his ongoing series, “Portraits of Strangers.” It was actually Danny’s photography that inspired me to start shooting street, so I was very excited when he agreed to answer a few questions for me about his style and methods”

The Popculturist: Why Street?

Danny Santos: It’s very accessible. Just go to an area where there’s good light and good people traffic and you have the whole street at your disposal. Plus, nothing beats getting that really good shot within an uncontrolled, unpredictable environment. In the streets, nothing cooperates with you… not the weather, not the subjects, not the situation… but when luck suddenly shifts to your side and everything comes together for you to capture that elusively perfect street shot, the wait and hard work becomes all worth it. And you’ll want to shoot more.

The Popculturist: Why Orchard Road in particular?

Danny Santos: I remember the first time I saw Orchard Road, I was just completely amazed by its energy and variety. It was unlike any street I’ve ever seen… although I really haven’t travelled that much. But yeah, I can still remember my excitement I felt… and this was before I even started photography. A few months later, when I discovered street photography, Orchard Road was the first thing that came to mind. It’s a beautiful street, with beautiful light, and beautiful people. What more can you ask for?

The Popculturist: What is it that draws you to approach a particular person for a street portrait?

Danny Santos: As long as it’s someone that I think stands out of the crowd, I go for it… whether I’m fascinated by their beauty, or intrigued by their mystery. I like to create portraits where you just want to get to know that person or wonder what their story is.

The Popculturist: What are you thinking about when you’re out shooting?

Danny Santos: I’m always thinking about the next keeper shot. What or who will it be? I’ve learned to always observe what’s happening around me and try to anticipate any potential keepers. I’ve missed so many good shots because I let my mind go blank, making my alertness level slump to zero — the next thing I knew, one hell of a keeper shot just passed me by.

The Popculturist: How would you describe your method?

Danny Santos: I always mix it up. I don’t stick with one method only. Sometimes I see a good spot with good light and I camp in one place until I get that one good shot. Other times I walk around in very crowded areas and see if I can catch that one face that stands out of the crowd. When it rains, I just grab my umbrella and walk into bad weather. And lately, I started asking strangers for permission to take their portraits. I’ve tried so many methods — some worked, others didn’t. I’m excited to see what my next method will be

The Popculturist: It seems like the tendency with street photographers is to work in black and white, but the bulk of your work is in color. What is it about color photography that attracts you, especially with respect to street?

Danny Santos: I really don’t have any preference between color or black & white photography. I always try to see which treatment the subject of the photo will be represented best. Some work better in color, others in b&w. If the colors adds to story of the photograph, they stay in color… otherwise, it can potentially be a distraction, in which case its better to have it in black & white.

The Popculturist: You describe yourself as self-taught. What idea or technique that you’ve learned has had the biggest impact on the way that you shoot?

Danny Santos: I think it’s developing the right attitude for your chosen genre of photography. Shooting in the streets looks easy to do, but it’s really not. It requires a tremendous amount of patience, discipline, and a go-getter atittude that will allow you to shoot even when you’re scared. But just as anything that you invest some hard work on, when you get the results you want, it’s all worth it.

The Popculturist: What do you wish someone had told you when you were first starting?

Danny Santos: I wish someone had told me way before I started… to start early!

Danny’s photography can be seen at his personal web site, Shooting Strangers in Orchard Road, as well as via his Flickr stream.

Photo Credits

“Urban Warrior” © Danny Santos II. All Rights Reserved.

“Stranger 7” © Danny Santos II. All Rights Reserved.

“First Good Street Photograph” © Danny Santos II. All Rights Reserved.

You should know before I start that when comparing the Coen brothers’ new adaptation of True Grit to the 1969 John Wayne version, there is so much more to talk about than just John Wayne vs. Jeff Bridges. There are other performances to compare, of course — Kim Darby and Hailee Stanfield, Glen Campbell and Matt Damon, and Robert Duvall and Barry Pepper, to name a few. But then there are also questions of tone and cinematographic style to discuss, and themes, structure, and faithfulness to Charles Portis’ novel. It doesn’t come down to just Wayne and Bridges. Try as I might, though, I can’t stop thinking about anything else.

It makes sense, though, doesn’t it? After all, True Grit brought Wayne his first and only Best Actor win* and may very well bring Bridges his second. And, of course, Rooster Cogburn’s charge against Lucky Ned Peppers’ gang in the climactic scene is one of the most iconic moments in cinema history. But beyond all that, the two men’s performances are like microcosms of their respective films.

Consider John Wayne in 1969. In the thirty years since his breakthrough role in John Ford’s Stagecoach (not his first film, but the first anyone really thinks about), Wayne had become a living legend, star of over one hundred films, the kind of man whose name is used as shorthand for rugged masculinity even today. No one going to see him could fail to bring with them the concept of  “John Wayne.”

Now, consider Jeff Bridges in 2010. In the nearly 40 years since his breakthrough role in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show (not his first film, but the first anyone really thinks about), Bridges has established himself as one of the most talented actors of his generation, but despite his massive cult following, he still remains more a critical darling than a huge mainstream star.

And doesn’t that just describe the two films? After all, Westerns in 1969 were still a huge and vital part of the film world, the single most popular genre. But very quickly after that point their production slowed to a trickle, and though they may be going through something of a renaissance today, this movie in particular is practically an arthouse film.

Contrast the two men’s performances: Wayne’s Cogburn was drunk and coarse, but underneath it there a sense of decency shone through. Perhaps it was just that Wayne, himself, had become something of a father figure to movie-goers of his time. Perhaps it was just that his character was gentle enough to take care of a cat. But put that up against Bridges’ Cogburn, who beneath the booze and swagger has a real sense of menace, of wildness to him. It’s a darker performance and, likewise, his is a darker film.

I may be doing a disservice to the Coen brothers, and to the rest of the cast of their new adaptation; I fear I am. So at this point I’d like to open it up to the readers — what struck you about the new True Grit?

* As an aside, if you care at all about Westerns or John Wayne and you have never seen Wayne’s acceptance speech for his Oscar win, you should take a couple of minutes and watch it. Seeing the very archetype of American masculinity visibly moved to tears remains the most affecting moment in the history of the Academy Awards for me.

The Popculturist tries to decide whether or not to watch reruns of the cult comedy series, “The State”. Will the show’s funny factor hold up over time?

I used to watch a lot of sketch comedy shows when I was a kid. The early 90’s were a great time for that genre — Saturday Night Live had one of its strongest casts during that time, and In Living Color debuted and launched the careers of stars like Jim Carrey and the Wayans brothers. And then there was The State, which I always thought of as the Velvet Underground of sketch comedy — relatively unknown to mainstream audiences but with a devoted cult following, and ultimately very influential on groups that came afterwards. To my young mind, The State represented the pinnacle of comedic achievement, and it became my yardstick for funny for years to come.

Somewhere along the way, though, sketch comedy shows just stopped being funny to me. At first I blamed it on falling standards and — as old people are wont to do — wistfully thought of the “good old days.” Eventually I stumbled onto some SNL reruns on Comedy Central, though, and I was cured of that notion relatively quickly. Nothing shows you the rose-colored glasses of your memory like watching “Toonces the Driving Cat” with grown-up eyes.

Still, I couldn’t completely blame it on myself, either. Take a look at Monty Python’s Flying Circus, for example. It still kills after over 40 years. Heck, look at Abbot and Costello. Some comedy is timeless.

The reason I bring all this up is that I recently found out that the entire run of The State had been released via Netflix’s instant streaming service. Now, The State was my unrivaled favorite comedy show from high school. Catchphrases like “I’m outta heeeeeere” and “$240 worth of pudding (awww yeah)” became staples of my young pop culture vocabulary, and the show became my measure of funny for years to come.

For a long time I had bemoaned the fact that the show was unavailable after it finished its three-season run on MTV, so you might think that my discovery of its presence on Netflix would have been an unadulterated joy. But after spending almost half my life idolizing the show, I worried that there was no way it could ever live up to my image if I revisited it. I spent a few weeks vacillating, and eventually jumped back in.

It wasn’t as funny as I remembered it being. It almost was, though, and considering how long I’d had to build it up in my memory, that’s something. Of course, some of the references are a little dated, particularly the ones that relied on the audience being familiar with the MTV landscape of 1993, but a surprising amount of the humor held up. In some ways, having some distance from high school (and even early adulthood) actually made it even funnier.

I suppose that in entertainment, as in life, you can’t really go home again. But sometimes it turns out that even if what you find when you revisit your past isn’t quite what you remembered, it’s still worth having made the trip.

Photo Credits

Courtesy of “The State: The Complete Series”

The beginning of the Christmas season is an eventful time in the Popculturist household. We decorate our Christmas tree. I drag the ladder out from the garage to hang the lights up on the eaves. And, of course, the radio dial moves over to the local soft rock station for the 24-hour holiday music. Whereupon I start grumbling and Mrs. Popculturist starts commenting on my Grinchiness.

The thing is, I do like Christmas music. Vince Guaraldi’s soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas, for example, is one of my favorite albums in any genre. And the warm, inviting tones of Nat King Cole’s voice in his rendition of “The Christmas Song” never fail to bring a smile to my face.

Still, I can’t deny that a lot of what gets airtime on that radio station does set my teeth on edge. There’s just something about hearing yet another flavor-of-the-week boy band massacring a classic that gets to me. And when I hear some over-the-hill pop star obviously milking the standards for an easy payday, I can’t help but feel cynical.

The other day as my family and I were coming home from a weekend outing, it occurred to me that nearly all of my favorite holiday songs are over 50 years old — it’s the newer stuff that makes me want to shout “Bah, Humbug!” And yet, there is always new music coming out that works for me, so the idea that the past couple of decades were dead to me as far as Christmas music goes just seemed wrong. There had to be something there for me, music snob though I may be.

So, to prove it, I set myself a task: identify 10 holiday songs recorded since 1990 that I like. That’s 20 years of music to pick from — picking just 10 should be no problem, I figured.

As it happened, my knowledge of recent Christmas music was completely exhausted well before I finished the list, but armed with Internet streaming services like Pandora and Last.fm, I was finally able to put together this somewhat incongruous list:

1. “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings”
Barenaked Ladies, featuring Sarah McLachlan
A fun twist on two holiday classics, with an innovative arrangement and some great harmonies.

2. “Hanukkah Blessings”
Barenaked Ladies
Alright, maybe picking two songs from the same album is pushing it a bit, but Barenaked for the Holidays is easily my favorite holiday album of the decade, and these two songs stand out equally for me.

3. “All I Want For Christmas Is You”
Mariah Carey
I’m not normally particularly into Mariah Carey but this song is infectiously upbeat and catchy, and what with all the mopey Christmas music out there, we could do with a few more like this.

4.“O Holy Night”
Josh Groban
Groban’s work is hit-or-miss for me, by turns soaring and schlocky. But when you pair his pop-opera voice with a beautiful classic like this one, magic happens.

5. “White Christmas”
Bright Eyes
It’s kind of a sleepy take on Bing Crosby’s biggest hit, but even though it’s a bit downtempo, it comes off more wistful than emo, and that works for me.

6. “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”
Sufjan Stevens
Stevens is a master of layering songs, and the way this one starts sparsely but builds into something potent yet deceptively simple is a perfect example of that talent.

7. “The Christmas Song”
Catherine Feeney
Feeney’s stripped-down sound reminded me of a living-room sing-a-long with friends, and while Nat King Cole’s version is still the definitive one in my book, there’s definitely something comfortable about this one.

8. “Hibernation Day”
Jars of Clay
I hadn’t heard of this group or this song before setting out on this quest, but cozy imagery and cute pop melody made me smile, and the lead singer has a very nice voice for this kind of music.

9. “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”
Zooey Deschanel and Leon Redbone
You may recognize this one from the closing credits of the 2003 movie Elf. Zooey Deschanel’s retro stylings makes a great match with Leon Redbone’s folksy baritone, and the bluesy instrumental arrangement is one of my favorites.

10. “Ain’t No Time of Year to Be Alone”
Mark Erelli
Another new one to me, Mark Erelli’s blues-folk instrumental style and the jaunty melody caught my attention immediately. The song turned out to be good enough to make me want to investigate the artist further.

And there we are: 10 relatively recent holiday songs that I really liked. Of course, if there’s one thing I know about music — especially Christmas music — it’s that one man’s gem is another man’s finger-on-a-chalkboard.

So tell me, what are some of your recent faves?

Photo Credits

“Santa plays guitar” Unknown

“Charlie Brown Christmas” Charles M. Schultz

“Mariah Carey”

When I was a young child, my mom had to work several jobs in order to make ends meet, and what with affordable childcare being hard to find, a lot of my memories from that time are of the back seat of her car as she drove from one workplace to the next. What I especially remember is the music. My mom always had a kind of weirdly eclectic taste in music — riding around with her back then you be just as likely to hear Ángel Parra as Lionel Richie. But one staple album that she listened to over and over, and which I’ve repeatedly returned to as I’ve grown older, is Jackson Browne’s The Pretender.

It’s funny to think of a seven-year-old saying that his favorite album is by Jackson Browne, the canonical example of the sensitive, depressive, 1970’s singer-songwriter. And especially so considering the cynicism and despair of the title track. I didn’t really know what any of the songs meant back then, of course; I just liked the tunes, and by that time, having listened to it for my entire life, it was familiar, comfortable.

It’s that familiarity that has kept me coming back to The Pretender over the years. Partially it’s because knowing the songs so well — having sung and lip-synched along for so many years — the actual meanings became obscured. The songs, the melodies: they were and are so enmeshed with associations of childhood and memory that for a long time I ignored the words.

It’s even a little ironic that this album would be so strongly tied to feelings of innocence for me, because in a lot of ways it’s about innocence — or, rather, the loss of it. When he wrote the album, Browne was approaching his 30s and dealing with the death of his wife. Here was a man who through three albums struggled with life, death, drugs, spirituality, identity, finally arriving at The Pretender and appearing to want to chuck it all away. Listening now, I hear a guy who hasn’t felt innocent in a long time, but who desperately wants to.

At various times in my life, different things have struck me about The Pretender. The last time I really thought about it was six years ago, writing a review for my blog, and what I focused on was the sort of identity crisis a 20-something goes through, trying to figure out what kind of adult he is and what kind he wants to be. These days, as a relatively new parent, I listen to “Daddy’s Tune” and think about how my own relationship with my parents has changed, and wonder what things will be like between me and my son when he gets older.

From what I gather, many critics have found The Pretender to be lacking in comparison to Browne’s earlier works. I disagree, though. At every stage of my life, somehow this one album has managed to resonate with and reflect a piece of myself. Maybe some day I’ll outgrow it for good. Maybe not. But it’s been 30 years now, and for 35 minutes of music to keep up with me for that long, there must be something there.

There’s something about funny people that has always been fascinating to me. A truly funny person has that combination of intelligence, insight, and charisma that is immediately recognizable and impossible to ignore. I think, too, part of the allure is the recognition of a skill or talent that I don’t have, myself, but that I respect and admire in others.

I bring this up because over the past week or so I’ve been working my way through the archives of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, and I’ve been reflecting on why I got so hooked on it so quickly.

The premise of the show is relatively straightforward. Maron, a stand-up comedian and sometime radio host, interviews other comedians and comic actors, talking to them about how they work, what they’re like, and so on.

Given that the host and most of the guests are comedians, you might be surprised to hear that the show isn’t particularly funny. That is, there are funny or lighthearted moments, but in general the interviews aren’t played for laughs. Rather, it’s more like listening in on a conversation between two friends, or possibly even a therapy session. You hear comics talk about their youths, their reasons for getting into comedy, and how they work. Maron knows many of his guests fairly well, so often there are reminiscences of things they’d done together in the past.

Now, if the show only functioned to give you an insight into the minds of the guests, that would be plenty interesting. But there are two other aspects to this podcast that push it over the top into the “must hear” category for me.

I mentioned that Maron often knows his guests. Even when he doesn’t, though, it’s clear that they move in the same circles—they know the same people, have worked in the same clubs, and have many of the same experiences. What becomes clear as you listen to a few episodes is that comedy is a community, to a far greater extent than most other forms of entertainment. Everybody knows everybody, or at least knows of them. Like many communities, it’s hard to get in, and within the community there are factions and grudges, but at the same time there’s a general feeling of respect and protectiveness of each other against outsiders. It’s the kind of thing that, to me, seems both intimidating and alluring.

But the single thing that keeps me coming back to this podcast is Maron, himself. Unlike most interviewers, who work to draw as much out of their subjects as possible while revealing nothing of themselves, Maron is a huge participant. Both from his introductory monologues and the conversations with his guests, you come away learning as much about him as them.

He’s an interesting guy—at times narcissistic and self-loathing, abrasive and sometimes even mean, but self-aware enough to know these things about himself and good enough to try to be a better person. In some ways, the show is as much a journey of self-improvement for him as it is anything else.

Of course, the show isn’t for everybody. As you might guess from the title—or if you know anything about Maron’s comic work—there is a lot of, shall we say, “colorful” language. Moreover, the intensity of his demeanor will be off-putting to some. But if you enjoy good interviews and have an interest in comedy, you may find this podcast worth your time.

The WTF podcast is available via iTunes or at the show’s website.

Photo Credit

“Tablica do badania wzroku z reklamy Vision Express” Trochim @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

“Marc Maron” Entertainment Studios

Description

Mike talks about his recent obsession with the WTF podcast.

Keywords

Podcast, WTF, Marc Maron, comedy, comedians, interviews.