802 Online

I'm technically on vacation for a week, starting today, though I expect I'll be checking in and posting from time to time while I'm "away." Don't mess things up too much in my absence.

Or so Andrey Summers writes in this excellent essay from JIVEmagazine.com, entitled The Complete and Terrifying Reality of Star Wars fandom:

My girlfriend doesn’t understand what I see in Star Wars. We’ve hadseveral soul-crushing arguments about what exactly makes this series soimportant to me, and every time I have found it more and more difficultto argue my case. As the maddening years have wound on, I think Ifinally understand the reason for this crippling handicap.

There is a diabolical twist to Star Wars fandom, you see, that defiescomprehension, and yet is the life-blood of all Star Wars fans. It isthis:

Star Wars fans hate Star Wars. 

If you run into somebody who tells you they thought the franchise wasquite enjoyable, and they very-much liked the originals as well as theprequels, and even own everything on DVD, and a few of the books, theseimposters are not Star Wars Fans.

What's to hate? Naturally, he elaborates:

Star Wars fans also hate the original Star Wars trilogy. We think MarkHamill’s acting was whiny, the pacing was flawed, and Empire was betterthan Jedi, making the end of the series a let-down. We hate the wayBoba Fett died, and we hate the cantankerous, arthritic duel betweenVader and Obi-wan. We don’t understand why the storm-troopers can’tshoot worth a damn, and we don’t get why “an entire legion of [theEmperor’s] best troops”(ROTJ,Palpatine) can be overpowered by a tribal society of midget teddy-bearsarmed largely with rocks and twigs. Star Wars fans hate omnipotentwar-machines that get their legs tangled in strings, or slip on logs.They hate Darth Vader’s face and that stupid harmonica thing he wasplaying. Star Wars fans hate the original Star Wars trilogy.

I should probably be embarrassed by how much I connect with this essay, but I'm not. As a true Star Wars fan, I, too, hate Star Wars in the same way.

Thank you, Bill.

Last week, I posted a video in which a guy named Paul announces that he's found the World's Biggest Strawberry.

Seven Days food writer Suzanne Podhaizer interviewed him this week as part of her story, Ruby Fruit Jungle. Turns out he's Paul Reynolds of Montpelier, a violist who teaches at Middlebury and plays in the Vermont Symphony Orchestra.

From the interview:

SEVEN DAYS: Do you plan to preserve the strawberry for posterity? Maybe you could varnish it or something.
PAUL REYNOLDS: My plan was to preserve it . . . I thoughtabout selling it on eBay, and I told my wife about that. But we agreedthat, in transit, it probably wouldn't last.

SD: What did you ultimately decide? Did you carve it up like a Thanksgiving turkey?
PR: My 2-year-old daughter's eyes were so big when she sawit that I couldn't resist giving it to her . . . she ate the wholething.

SD: That must have taken a while.
PR: About 20 minutes. She had it all over her face and she just kept saying how good it was.

Hey, I just added the 200th Vermont blog to my blogroll. Congratulations, Vermont 251 Club! Sadly, there are no prizes involved.

I will definitely be categorizing the blogs soon. I'm on vacation next week, so it probably won't happen until mid-July.

Keep sending the blogs my way!

The iPhone debuts this Friday, but you can't buy one in Vermont (unless you have friends or family in other states who will order one for you and send it up).

We don't have AT&T wireless here, and though you can supposedly use the iPhone here, you can't actually purchase it here (this is according to the sales guy I talked with at Small Dog).

In lieu of writing about the iPhone, I interviewed Burlington designer Jerry Manock on Friday. He lead the Industrial Design Team that produced the original Mac.

I've known of Jerry Manock for years. Until March, his consulting business was located in the office next to Seven Days in the Indepedent Block on South Champlain Street. In March, he moved out, and our office expanded into his old space. Plus, his talented daughter Abby has long been a 7D illustrator.

But I didn't know anything about Manock's Mac connections until Meghan D. forwarded me an email about a talk he gave earlier this month.

Luckily he was in town and agreed to a hastily scheduled interview.

We talked for over an hour, and I had to cut our talk down to just 1800 words or so. Sadly I had to leave out the story he told about Joan Baez visiting the top-secret Mac offices. But you can find it here.

Here's my story, with a PC or Mac poll. (Photo by Matthew Thorsen). 

There's always a certain adjustment when you leave Vermont and travel to a more urban environment. Jessamyn West sums up the disconnect nicely in this post from yesterday.

She writes:

The longer I stay in Vermont, the more I'm a gawking slack-jawedtourist when I'm in the city. Look at these PEOPLE. Look how TALL thatBUILDING is. I got to do a lot of late night subway riding. Look howLATE these people are AWAKE. I had tacos out in Redhook while watchinga soccer game. OMG how TASTY is this food?! I paid equal amounts for ataxi ride and a fancy cocktail. Twelve DOLLARS. I got to hang out withten friends at once and it wasn't even a holiday. It sure was fun.

ThenI got in my (unlocked all weekend — you know how this part goes) car todrive home from the train station. When I was just a few miles fromhome, driving along a road(yes it's called notown, I know I know) that is bordered on one side bya river and one side by a pretty steep hill. I saw what I thought was ahorse in the road and slammed on the brakes, skidded a little and cameto a stop next to a moose. We regarded each other for a while in thelight of my headlights on the totally-abandoned-at-10-pm route 107 andthen he trundled off. I've never been that close to a moose in my life.

Good thing she was able to stop. We wouldn't want to lose our internet folk-hero.

Yes, it's Monday, and my blog is one big freaking house ad for Seven Days because I'm actually writing a story this week and don't have time to blog.

Here's something you might have missed — you can win a pair of tickets to see Michael Moore's new movie Sicko at Merrill's Roxy by sharing your own medical horror story. Deadline to get tickets is Wednesday at noon.

If you haven't voted for your favorite Vermont blog in our annual Seven Daysies survey, better do it now — the deadline's at 5 p.m. today!

Spent the weekend camping with family and friends at Lake Carmi. It was lovely. But cold. Poor Graham had to wear his mittens on Saturday morning.

Mittens! At the end of June!

Maybe I'll post a picture, if I ever remember to download the photos from my camera.

Speaking of weekends... if you haven't signed up for Notes on the Weekend (NOW), the Seven Days email newsletter, you should. I write it and compile it and send it out each week on Thursday afternoon. It's free, it's often got good coupons in it, and I'm proud of it. All reasons for you to subscribe. Here's last week's NOW.

Did anybody see the big cover story the Free Press ran on Sunday about stay-at-home dads?

Mariana Lamaison Sears profiles two stay-at-home dads. She writes that the US Census estimates there were about 159,000 stay-at-home dads nationwide in 2006. There are no numbers for Vermont, but Sears says their numbers are increasing:

With dad as orchestra director, the Barronsof Burlington are one of what seems to be a growing number of familieswho choose a nontraditional arrangement when it comes to raising thechildren and providing for the family. While Barron, 33, stays at homewith Milo and Linus, 2, his wife, Carrie, works full time as a labtechnician at the University of Vermont.

I saw this story when I walked into the office this morning. I also happened to see an item in this morning's paper touting the Freep's new GreenMountainMoms site, and its blog, Moms Blog Best.

"If you're a mom, you need to be a part of www.greenmountainmoms.com," reads the little advertorial on the front of today's Living section. "It's a social networking site for local moms — a place for them to connect, share information and news. It's informal, and the Free Press is simply facilitating the discussion by providing the forum — the content is the mothers themselves."

What do the moms talk about on the site? Says the Freep: "Best playgrounds, preschool recommendations, where to pick strawberries, using cloth diapers, Mom's funny secrets."

So let's review: the Free Press ran a big, front-page story about how more fathers are staying at home with their kids, but when it comes to their parenting website, they think only moms will be interested in preschool recommendations. Does anybody else see a disconnect here?

Apparently someone does — I was just reading the reader comments on the site, and came across this one, from tickedoffdad, who titles his message, "This website is insulting to modern parents."

Tickedoffdad also saw the cover story on Sunday. He writes,

For such a progressive state/country, the Free Press has insulted dadsand reinforced the typical gender stereotypes that plague modernAmerica.

This is even more ironic since the Free Press had an article onFathers day about stay at home dads? Where is the forum for them?

I am the proud parent of a 1 year old girl. I have done everythingfor my daughter that her Mom has, with the exception of breastfeedingand childbirth and even those two topics I contributed to the decisionmaking process.

I change diapers, have opinions on her childcare and feeding, etc, etc, etc. Where is my website?

The Free Press has been going down the toilet for years and thisconservative traditional motherhood nonsense that they are reinforcingis insulting to many woman and many men.

Tickedoffdad didn't bother to change the generic avatar that GreenMountainMoms gives to all of its commentors. Which means that, ironically, the avatar displayed on his post shows a woman cradling a baby!

One of the site administrators responded with a message entitled, "Dad, you can join the conversation, too." She explains that she's created a "special spot" on the site for dads to comment, though I couldn't find it to add a link here.

I told that to one of my co-workers, who called it "The Dad Ghetto."

Here's an observation about how I suspect this site came into being: a few months ago, I attended a seminar sponsored by Newspaper Next: The Transformation Project. It was an interesting day of presentations about how newspapers can create systems within their companies that encourage innovation.

At one point during the day, the consultant who spoke to us offered us a couple of case studies of people who are not currently using newspapers. One of those case studies featured a generic, 36-year-old mom with two kids who doesn't have time to read the paper. The consultant basically recommended that newspapers create social networking sites where mothers can reach out to each other.

There is not a shred of doubt in my mind that this website is a product of the Newspaper Next process.

Which is not to say that the idea behind it is necessarily bad. I like the concept.

I just find it puzzling that the Free Press is choosing to frame the conversation in this old-fashioned, outmoded way, especially in this particular market. Do the people at Gannett know who lives in Burlington?

I guess their market studies told them this was a good idea, but it's definitely not pitched at the parents I know.