There used to be a website called "You Know, for Kids." Don't know if you've heard of it, you may have actually seen it. Wasn't too obscure. A big fan of the Coens ran it―the name, of course, comes from The Hudsucker Proxy―and it was a popular spot for others.
You Know, for Kids, folded up its tent at some point, I think between Burn After Reading and A Serious Man, although I could be off on the timing. The people behind it just didn't have the time for it anymore.
In some ways The Columbophile, which I've just discovered, reminds me of YKFK. It's a product of one guy's enthusiasm, and the intelligence he brings to his interests. There's no calculation behind it, and not a lot of apparent outside pressure.
This is what the Internet was supposed to be, and what it sort of was once. A series of clubhouses with open doors. At the point where we are now, most of the prime real estate has been bought up. Most websites are official organs of something or other. Which tends to lead to conformity and compelled speech. It's important to be on the same page as everyone else.
I think the web's current state was on some level the plan all along. People always wanted to be in control, and digital technology lends itself well to control. So I appreciate seeing someone just having fun doing their own thing, even if I'm not exactly bursting out of my skin to watch Poker Face.
2 comments:
I don't think either of us ever saw You Know, For Kids but I can understand how it must have been a pretty cool fan site. Unfortunately, it looks like nobody ever saved it to the wayback machine either so there's no chance to have a peek. There were a number of such blogs and websites available in the past that mostly got abandoned when the major social media started getting heavily involved on the interwebs.
The Columbophile is definitely worth a visit or two. I just looked at his list of the Columbo stars who died last year and it certainly looks as though being on the show was good for a person's longevity. A number of those actors lived to great age - as in 99, never mind 100 or more, making the journey to the great stage in the sky.. or somewhere. It's nice that someone would take such an interest in a tv show that ended so long ago. I watched some outtakes of the lieutenant with Dog - my favorite was the time he flunkied out of obedience school for 'demoralizing the class'.
I like your idea of the internet having been largely a series of clubhouses with open doors. Blogging was definitely like that early on and it was wonderful fun meeting new people and seeing what they were interested in. I've looked at some of my old posts and can't help but notice how wordy they appear to be now but at the time rambling was more acceptable. But, yes, once they got us all used to being online it was easy to make the switch to monetization; it probably was the plan all along.
It's good that a few outliers still remind us of how things once were. No, I don't expect we'll watch Poker Face either and it's likely nobody will ever dedicate a fansite to it.
I just had a look 'round to see if there are any surviving links to the site, which might have been an impetus for someone to do some kind of Wayback save. As far as I can tell, no, there are none. There does seem to have been some kind of buying frenzy for URL real estate on the web, with some interests winding up with a disproportionate amount.
If The Columbophile had just posted reviews and the occasional trivia item and had trickled off adding new material soon after the last new episode (in 2003, for the record) I'd be sufficiently impressed that they'd just kept it up intact for the subsequent twenty years. Someone's actually been coming up with new things to say during that time or whenever they started (probably a little after that, actually.) It speaks to an admirable dedication in an increasingly homogeneous medium. And yes, you do have to love that dog of his.
There's rambling and then there's rambling. I can see the point of concision, and in both poetry and short fiction there's an understandable interest in getting to what you want to say. But there's also value in looking at multiple aspects of a thing, including some things that no one even suspects of having anything to do with that thing. Just because it's interesting. And that's become a rarer art form, online and off (in part because just about everything is online now.) John Michael Greer does a great service by continuing to do what he does the way he does it.
Entertainment media doesn't seem able to inspire that kind of dedication anymore. They might not be interested in doing so either.
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