Re: In A World -- Thoughts on the Process posted by Martin

Idea length: I agree with you that longer is not necessarily better, but it sure is clearer. I think that, despite the strength of our ideas, what the other person is really reacting to is their own interpretation of the idea. I would guess that we’re going to encounter situations where your understanding of my ideas is much different than my original concept, and vice-versa. So, the process becomes one of re-pitching the idea—which might speak to the gap in some of the stories between your ranking and mine. Which leads me to:

The Scabs: I’ll defend this one more later, but I loved the encapsulation of class issues recast as android-human issues, starring the robots as the socialists and the humans as the capitalists. That’s just damn brilliant. It answers the age-old-question: how can you talk about political issues without activating political triggers?

Rachel My Dear: This one was a bit of a wild card, I’ll confess, but it’s a psychological thriller that would make Fincher wring his hands. I definitely see something there, that I’ll hopefully elucidate well when it goes up against Methane Madness (which, I’m not all that excited about. I’m gonna fight hard…).

Music: Out of your music, I knew: the Burrito’s song, Galaxie 500, and (surprise surprise) Stevie & Tom. I’m gonna make some links to all these songs in iTunes later, so we can all hear them, especially the ones we don’t know. I feel like I totally scored with my iTunes picks—they were all interesting, and with the exception of Black Little Stray (which is more evocative and less definitive in message) and Because, I had no trouble coming up with stories from the music. Even when Roky threw me a loop, when I thought the line “Will he leave Moscow?” was “Will he eat my scalp?” but then that was just a shoe-in for sci-fi, eh? The interpreter is gonna eat your scalp? That’s a motherfucking BADASS interpreter. He rules whatever he interprets. Thus Rasputin….

As for The Angry Youth: you know, that vaguely rings a bell, but I can’t say it’s more than that. I’ll stick with Poochie!

And the playoffs: I’m glad we’re starting out with a tough match. I think it will make the whole process more interesting. In the spirit of this, I think we should allow a rule: after the initial defense of the stories, we should be allowed to add detail to them. So, we start out arguing the germ of an idea, but if no clear winner emerges we can offer bargaining chips, such as “What if Poochie! was voiced by Homer?” (which reminds me, if you Google “homer voice”, Google is smart enough to say “See reults for Dan Castelleneta”), then we can avoid stalemates, and enhance the stories at the same time. Whattya think?

Personally, I’m ready. Let the games of Spitball! begin!

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