Oh, Fannenbaum! Oh, Fannenbaum!

Bo and I love Christmas. It’s not because of the presents, cooking good food, or visiting with friends and family, though we do enjoy these things. Neither is it the spiritual aspect, since we are both atheists. No, we love Christmas because every morning we get to get up and turn on the tree. It’s an odd ritual, that no matter how bleary or hungover we are, can always tug the corners of our lips.

Let me explain.           

In our family the holiday season only really gets rolling when the tree is up, which usually happens not long after Thanksgiving with a visit to a local tree farm, where we pick out and cut down our own tree. Once the tree is installed, we put on a Christmas movie like Die Hard or The Ref, and decorate. 

This year we watched the Nick Offerman’s Yule Log, a departure from the norm, but a pleasant diversion since we are big fans of Parks and Rec.  Over the next couple of hours we unpack three decades worth of ornaments given to each of us since we were infants and hang them on the tree. 

The result is a wonderful cultural smear that from a distance looks like an ordinary tree complete with the little baubles and characters that you would find on most trees. On closer inspection though you find that some the angels are a little different, or that the bulbs have dirty works written on them. The drummer boy and nutcracker hang alongside Boba Fett and Captain Picard. Shuttlecraft and fighters zip in between dewdrops and icicles.  Looking around the room you don’t see an Elf on a shelf keeping an eye out for naughty children, but a space station complete with its own cascade of little ships.  

Many of these ornaments make noise and the ones that are plugged into the light strands running around the tree spit out little lines of dialogue lifted from movies, or wishing us a happy holiday. The result is clamoring conversation of shouted messages from the Borg, Darth Vader, C-3P0, R2-D2, and Worf every morning when we turn the lights on.

Hanging alongside the Star Wars and Star Trek ornaments, are a large number of angel ornaments that Bo has been given over the years. Much like my ornaments, the angels are a yearly ritual that help mark the seasons. It’s a tradition that Bo and I have continued, and in addition to the ornaments that we often receive from our families, we usually end up adding three or four ornaments every year. We talk of getting a house, not because of the investment, but because we might end up with more space, and therefore can add a second tree.

Several years ago, I added to Bo’s collection by cross-stitching an 8-bit version of the angel Castiel from the show Supernatural. The show is a favorite of ours and the ornament was a neat way to tie together the various aspects of our tree. It also served as the genesis for our new tree topper, which we completed this year. 

Christmas, like Fandom, is a holiday powered by nostalgia. Each year we reinforce traditions often handed down from parents to children through repetition, which creates a confusing sensation of past and present.  I think it’s part of the reason why we often see strife amongst in-laws during the holidays, because we are encountering traditions that differ from our own, which disrupt our existing narrative of what the holiday should be. Over the years, our tree has become our tradition, a way to combine both of our childhoods, fandoms, and our love for each other. Our friends have even gotten in on the tradition by keeping an eye out for fandom related ornaments, launching us into the future.

I am not sure what kind of ornaments will be added to our tree this year, (I have my eye on Captain Phantasma though!), but I do know whatever it is it will be a wonderful addition to our expanding library of ornaments adding to the joyful noise that is our Christmas.

Happy Holidays! 

A Lovely Wet Slog

Spoiler free! This post is about the wait in line and contains no information about the movie.

Thursday night Bo and I trooped down to the Bagdad Theatre, to wait in line for the latest episode of Star Wars. The show was scheduled for 7 PM and we took our place in the queue sometime around three, expecting a line would form not long after. Despite the nearly constant rain, twenty or so fans had already lined up. We unpacked our camp chairs just past the first bend in the line and we felt we had a pretty good chance of getting good seats. I am glad we did, because the line wrapped around the building and down the block an hour later.  

When we purchased our tickets for The Force Awakens, I expected to have to wait in line to get good seats, but wasn’t excited about it. I have been spoiled when it comes to seeing movies. My first job was sweeping popcorn at the local six-plex, so I had never had the experience of waiting in line. I didn’t have to, by the time the people were lining up, I had already seen the movie. Don’t get me wrong I had waited in line for tickets, but that was for concert seats, which is a different experience since most concerts offer reserve seats, a service that movies theaters are only now beginning to offer.  Boann, on the other hand, waited in line for all of the re-releases, and had fond memories of the experience.

“There is something about an opening night crowd, that is different from any other,” she said when I griped about the need for a wait.

After we settled in with provisions and coffee, we started to take notice of the people around us. In the bend where Bo and I settled, we swapped stories with a professor, a waitress, a gaggle of Target employees, and a young couple bedecked in side buns and lightsabers that could have easily been Bo and I ten years earlier. Despite the rain, which came down in pelting sheets more akin to a 

Midwestern winter rainstorm then a Pacific Northwest one, we excitedly shared stories or information from cell phone feeds. Little by little, a temporary friendship developed and added to a feeling not unlike the buildup to Christmas Eve or an important birthday, a build of anticipation that sits in your chest or throat. As the afternoon went on, the excitement built with the addition of new faces or every time the staff made another round to check people in.  

The doors to the theatre opened at 5, and in preparation for that, Bo took our camp chairs back to the car. While she was gone, I couldn’t help but wonder if she and Dr. Frankenfurter were right.  If the wait, the rain, the people around us would make the experience better or if it was just a necessary price that had to be paid to do this thing we had waited months to see. Looking around at the people, I smiled.  No names were swapped, just a mutual enjoyment for what we were about to see, and the hope that it would be better than the prequels. Part of me knew that when those doors opened I probably wouldn’t see these people again, but that didn’t stop us from enjoying the time we shared.

Finally, the moment arrived, the spaces in line condensed, and the line slowly began to move forward. Each group making their own mad dash to prearranged seats or concession stands, after showing their armbands to the ticket takers. It’s sounds like bit of chaos, but the staff at the Bagdad did a wonderful job of containing and controlling the madness so that all could have a good time. 

The two hours we spent in our seats having dinner and beers evaporated in the buzz of the crowd. Bo and I rehashed stories about other important movies we had seen over the years. I live-Tweeted our conversation and the things we were seeing so our friends and family could fallow along. As the lights went down the crowd let out a cheer loud enough to be heard on Hoth, and I realized that I wouldn’t have wanted this any other way. I would have enjoyed the film no matter what, but the wait and the comradery made it that much sweeter.  

Review: Beat the Champ

I have never been a big fan of wrestling, which I blame on my mother, who forbade my sister and I from watching the highflying antics of the WWF. She feared the bad influence on us, so I missed out on the early narrative that wove together Rowdy Roddy Piper, Hulk Hogan, and Ric Flair. Other than a few illicit viewings at sleepovers, my first real extended exposure to the sport was in college. Every Monday I would curl up on a couch with Julie Newcomb, the girl I was dating at the time, who was really into the sport. Over the next year, she gave me a crash course in the mechanics of how wrestling operated. While I was never keen on the matches themselves, the dynamics that dissolved and formed between the wrestlers in the aftermath of the battles was fascinating. For a while, I even considered going to see a couple of the Wrestlemanias that passed through Chicago at the time.

Sadly, my interest in the sport waned after Julie and I broke up, but I continued to consume the sport, in small consumptive ways through movies like Nacho Libre and Mikey Rourke’s The Wrestler. I also kept any eye out for films starring wrestlers like The Rock or Mic Foley. Part of me wanted to keep in touch with the mythologies that flowed alongside the battles.

This fascination explains my immediate enjoyment of The Mountain Goats’ recent album, Beat the Champ. Each track is unique, switching easily between driving classic rock like on the track Werewolf Gimmick to a poppy bounce in The Legend of Chavo Guerro. The song, Fire Editorial, could easily fit into any musical about Americana. While the Mountain Goats play with style, lyrically they are digging deeply into people who live in this world of sports entertainment. Some of the tracks like the Ballad of Bull Ramos and The Legend of Chavo Guerro are about the lives and families of real wrestlers.

In many respects, this album is exactly why I started this blog. Beat the Champ moves the fan experiences out of simple consumption and into creation, filling the same space that Filking does in science fiction and fantasy fandoms. Filking is a musical style whose lyrics are about science fiction and fantasy, often television programs or movies. While the Mountain Goats are clearly a mainstream professional band and Beat the Champ will definitely turn a profit, I still think this album is clearly an expression of fandom because it was crafted by someone who has a deep appreciation of wrestling.

While the songs on this album are written by an aficionado, I still think it has quite a bit to offer non-wrestling fans. Each song transcends the action in the ring, playing with themes like inadequacy, loneliness, as well as the thrill of a crowd, all things that could easily have meaning anywhere. Don’t be surprised though, if after you have listened to this album a couple of times through, you feel a thrill when someone climbs up on turnbuckle ready to pounce.