A cultural event this weekend makes the case for geek culture
Memorial Day weekend starts off summer in Geek America, when the human impulse to be out and about runs headlong into the common refrain of THE YELLOW FACE! IT BURNS! IT BURNS, MY PRECIOUS! Here in Seattle, where the geeks roam freely and the Yellow Face more or less leaves us alone most of the time, many of our kind will make for Folklife, a four-day arts festival held downtown.
The relationship in the geek (nerd, dweeb) community between gearheadedness and a love of Ye Olden Tymes is tenuous in the 21st century. Years ago, Ren Fayre attendance, a fondness for filk, and a tolerance for girls wearing twirly dresses and flower garlands was more or less required for admittance to the computer lab. Cyberpunk, thankfully, drove a wedge into that relationship; steampunk attempts to re-knit it somewhat, but these days a working knowledge of morris dancing or ownership of a 20-sided die is strictly optional.
Normally I'd avoid Folklife completely, having deep antipathies to crowds, the Yellow Face, and much of the patchouli-stink cosplay that events like Folklife seem to encourage. You say you're doing a showcase with your jug band? Great -- in that case, you are allowed to wear the stovepipe hat and britches and braces, strictly to get in the mood for your performance. But you, lady in bellydancing garb -- you're not performing? You just thought it would be reasonable to bring that powder-pale gut outside and jingle at me while I'm trying to overpay for a lemonade? HOURI FAIL.
But I may go this year, because this year we've got a chiptune showcase scheduled. Chiptune, if you're not yet in tune, is music written for synthesis by sound chips -- think old-school videogames. Very squared-off sound waves. Very chirpy. Very danceable, if you're into that sort of thing. 8bitcollective is your first stop for self-education.
The 8 Bit Showcase isn't apt to look like anything else happening at Folklife. (When they say "dance music" at Folklife they usually mean something that was handed down from the foothill villages of North Obscuristan and authentically performed only by left-handed men in pantaloons.) Chiptune hasn't got some venerable history of survival and emigration, though most of us who survived the '80s get a little nostalgic for the bright and sunny home country when the blipping and beeping begins.
Protip: Like most homelands one leaves, the 80s wasn't really that bright and sunny. (Where I grew up, the 80s looked a lot like 2009 does in most of the country. I digress.) But the current artists working in chiptune, like the jug bands and morris dancers and céilidh musicians elsewhere at the festival, extract the good stuff and make it fun to identify with the subculture you're from, or to drink in the vibe of one you find you like. At which point, I guess, I've even got to give Miss Pale Belly Lady some respect, and space on the dance floor.
For the rest of the weekend? I haven't got any specific suggestions this week; Memorial Day is the traditional beginning of a seasonal lull in tech, and though that's not as true as it used to be, we all need a little breather right about now. As for myself, I've got a list of necessary work to be done on all four of the major computers lurking in my home office, plus a hospice-care plan for a long-suffering Maxtor external HDD that deserves to end its days with dignity. Naturally I'll also be spending a certain amount of time ignoring Terminator Salvation; after all, more Americans these days play videogames than watch movies anyway. An iced latte may become integral to my plans at some point.
And (if I understand next week's schedule correctly) I'll be enjoying my last weekend of sleep and sanity before we here at Betanews launch a project that'll pretty much redefine my work weeks for quite a while to come -- hence the scramble to get right with the computers. I'd tell you more but then they'd have to kill me, and that'll only further postpone the launch. Let your geek flag fly and have an excellent long weekend.