Recently in Pop Culture Category

I spent the last month pretty much totally smitten on Glee, a weekly sitcom about a teacher gathering a bunch of misfits in high school to form a singing group. The premise isn’t new - it’s Mr. Holland’s Opus, a huge dose of Scrubs humour and beautiful, beautiful pop music set to Broadway. It’s basically Broadway on tv.

What is brilliant about the idea is how the show has served as an aggregator of pop culture for me. I’ve bought the show episodes off iTunes. Then there are the extended versions of the song which were cut short for the show, but available for sale. I bought those as well. Then intrigued, I searched for the original performance of the song, and sometimes bought those as well. I’ve never been so compelled to spend so much on media, but the storytelling and music make it well worth the money.

For example, Glee’s performance of “Don’t Stop Believing” had me buy Journey’s original rendition (oh so beautiful).

So yes, Glee in itself is campy, but it’s opened a window in the previously closed room of things I like, and I’m loving the new stuff. My wife and I are now momentarily-crazed fans of Kristin Chenoweth.

Going ahead, I have some ideas for Glee. :) They should release the instrumental tracks with backup vocals so fans all over can belt it out and put up their renditions on youtube. Do this a month or two before American Idol - you can imagine how many participants will be plugging Glee on the largest singing show on earth.

We could possibly see a renaissance of some sort.

I speak in my own echo chamber of course, I can’t fathom people not loving Broadway.

Taken from the CNet article Sony PIctures CEO hates the internet: Howard Stringer, the CEO of Sony Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton said,

“I’m a guy who doesn’t see anything good having come from the Internet…(The Internet) created this notion that anyone can have whatever they want at any given time. It’s as if the stores on Madison Avenue were open 24 hours a day. They feel entitled. They say, ‘Give it to me now,’ and if you don’t give it to them for free, they’ll steal it.”

The internet levels the playing fields for big corporations and small startups.

These are my perspectives:

I’m a guy who sees amazing opportunities coming from the internet. The fact that I can now do business anytime, in any timezone, to anyone who wants to buy my product on impulse is a wonderful notion. It’s as if the stores on Madison Avenue were open 24 hours a day, and Madison Avenue were found in every connected household, and on every broadband-enabled mobile. My customers and purveyors of my content are empowered to connect with me, giving me constant feedback on how I can better serve their needs or improve my product. Best of all, where once I had to pay a lot of money to agencies running focus groups, I now get all this feedback for free. This goes a long way into helping me create a product that is useful to my customers, a product they are happy to pay for.

I’m a guy who sees the internet as the emancipator of the consumer. No longer are we bound to buy more than we need. We have been persecuted by corporations long enough, made to buy 19 tracks of garbage music for the 1 track we really want. They have forced their advertisements on our DVDs, disabling our right to skip content we have no interest in; wasted our time in the movie theatres and on the radio. They have grown fat on extorting us and blame us now that their unsustainable business model is collapsing. Many of us do not expect content to be free forever - we are wiling to pay a reasonable price for the content and services we consume. Spend less time branding us as pirates, and more time building the infrastructure to sell us content free of the boardroom’s control. It’s a simple business transaction - I want what I pay for, and am willing to pay reasonably for what I want.

My name is Lucian Teo. And if you are reading this for free, you are the consumer. You are the resistance.

Henry Jenkins on Transmedia - November 2009 from niko on Vimeo.

This is the stuff that rocks my socks. (via Kevin).

Our story begins, as many stories do, with the fury of a woman scorned. It was Ping.sg’s first anniversary, and they held a blog awards ceremony. An up-and-coming blogger, Jayne had secured 4 of the 11 awards, a remarkable feat by any standards. However, as the ambitious are wont to do, Jayne threw a hissy fit when she didn’t win the largest award of them all.

Depending on whose account you heard, you either came away with the conclusion that people ought to learn how to lose graciously, or that the people in “power” were abusing their godlike status.

Fast-forward to present day. Jayne announces the registration of the Association of Bloggers (Singapore):

“Association of Bloggers (Singapore) is a non-profit association. It is dedicated to promoting, protecting and educating its members; supporting the development of blogging as new media. I hope eventually it can help to provide legal assistance to bloggers too. It is a professional body for bloggers in Singapore.”

This association was created, if anything, to coalesce power.

“[Singaporean bloggers were] easily manipulated and even banned for standing up against the foreign tyrant from self-proclaimed ‘community meta weblog for Singapore bloggers’.”

And if Jayne’s own blog posts are anything to go by, the association has a maniacal leader at its helm.

Personal disclaimer: I am a civil servant, a fact made publicly known numerous times in all my online discussions. I find Jayne’s broad sweeping attacks on public servants extremely hurtful and uncalled for.

I believe that a person who judges another by the place he is born (Chua Uzyn … is a ‘foreign talent’, educated in Singapore, enjoying our subsidies) should not be in a position to educate anyone.

It is my hope that the Singapore blogosphere would evolve to be an environment that fosters creativity and intellectual discourse. Starting behind a web of hypocrisy and an insatiable thirst for power is a bad place to start.

I know I’m a thirty-something working professional with two children and all, but allow me this teen-inspired prepubescent outburst:

OMG! I FOUND CLIPS OF THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL MUSICAL ON YOUTUBE! Thank you thank you thank you Youtube!!!

Ok, back to your regular programming.

You see, I have 2 favourite musicals of all time. Les Mis, which I have watched thrice and The Scarlet Pimpernel, which I have never ever watched. I have the CDs (both Broadway Original and Encore) which I listen to very, very often. I visit their website in the vain hope they’ll start again on Broadway. I scour eBay to see if they have t-shirts, mugs or souvenirs on sale.

I live with the regret that I will never see Douglas Sills perform as the Pimpernel. :(

Until today, thanks to the amazing godsend that is Youtube.

If you must know (and I insist you must), the Scarlet Pimpernel is the story of Percy who decides to save his fellow folks from the guillotine by forming the league of the Scarlet Pimpernel. In order to deflect any suspicion of a particularly sticky cop, he pretends to be a total fop. His wife and love of his life is also secretly trying to save her own brother from the guillotine and cooperates with the sticky cop under blackmail. Percy continues his superhero ways, keeping his identity from his own wife, whom he suspects is a traitor.

Amazing stuff.

I’ll admit it. I initially thought Kina Grannis, the girl who became huge after she wrote and performed a song about Digg was just a one-time flash in the pan.

Her latest song on Youtube rocks. Ok, I’m a sucker for country-style lyrics and smooth falsettos. Kina’s sincerity and her deft use of social media has me just a little spellbound.

I might just be a Kina Grannis fan.