A century or two in the past, people would need just about every waking hour to ensure their basic survival needs were covered. But over the years we have invented technologies that have helped us accomplish these things readily, freeing up more and more of our time. In Western society at least, we have opted to turn that time into a luxury by filling it with entertainment.
At first, people were the masters of entertainment. They could choose when, where, and how they would spend their time playing games, reading books, listening to music, etc. They could choose when to watch a movie or go out for a live show. And when there were more important things in their lives that needed to be done, they could put their entertainment on hold, or away on a shelf, and return to it the next time it was convenient for them.
Today, I see signs that providers of entertainment have managed to flip the script, in many ways making us slaves to their wares. In an industry that profits from our demand, is it any wonder that it has employed mechanisms to inflate these demands to new levels? Are today’s entertainment providers designing their products in a way that completely misses the point, influencing us to mix up our priorities so that they can make an extra buck?
Perhaps you’ve gone to see a movie and walked out thinking to yourself, that’s X hours of my life that I’ll never get back. In pursuit of profits, we’re all too often bombarded with entertainment that has no other purpose than to generate money. It can lure you in with the promise of something interesting, but leave you feeling disappointed.
My point with this article is not to condemn entertainment as a complete waste of time. In fact, I believe entertainment serves some very necessary functions and satisfies our basic human nature. Good entertainment serves a purpose: it teaches us something, inspires us to try new things, brings us together with other people, gives us a reprieve from day to day drudgery and helps us unwind after a long day’s work. Bad entertainment just consumes our time and takes away from us doing meaningful things with our lives.
Let’s start with the Reality TV fad, what I dare call the intellectual "junk food" of television. From my experience sampling a number of such shows, I can at best expect ad hoc storytelling, at worst pointless mind-numbing tripe.
Much like real junk food, most Reality TV makes me feel full but it rarely provides me with anything useful that I can take away from it. Yet it seems to keep me coming back to it because I want more – I want to see who gets voted out next, what challenges and surprises lie ahead. Somehow I think consuming more of it will fix that hungry feeling, when in reality this could just be the result of malnourishment. I find myself craving a good overarching story, rather than just a loosely related collection of incidents.
I relish having a Personal Video Recorder (PVR) because it comes in handy for skipping to the good parts. I admit I do enjoy seeing some of the scantily clad men on Survivor, or the cool photo shoots on America’s Next Top Model, or the imaginative costume and makeup designs on Face Off; in the past I have ended up trying out my singing voice whenever I heard people performing good songs on American Idol. So I can get something out of Reality TV shows, I just have to remember to pick through them for the worthwhile parts, rather than swallowing them whole.
However, when unwatched shows pile up on my PVR and I have to spend hours picking through them, I start to think I might be better just turning the TV off permanently. I could perhaps expect worthwhile stuff to later be available on DVD or a service like Netflix for me to watch at my own pace, so that I won’t feel rushed and obligated to keep up with the weekly or daily push of new content.
Video Games, despite being a more interactive form of entertainment, can be just as bad if not worse for sucking people in. Personally I have stuck to my guns, refusing any and all "pay to play" massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft. From what I understand, they charge a player for a subscription – a time window that they can use to play as much as they want. We all want to get our money’s worth, so people will push themselves to play as much as they can during that time – even to the point where it is no longer enjoyable - even letting their real life responsibilities lapse. What’s worse is that if you don’t renew your subscription for a period of time, you lose your all your progress and have to start again from scratch, should you ever return. All this strikes me as being designed to punish people for not playing the game, in a way, forcing us to keep consuming while our time and money are held hostage.
Even in offline games, positive reinforcement is just as effective of a drug for making us slaves to Video Games. Most of my experience is with Role Playing Games (RPGs) where the characters that you play will develop skills and abilities from experience they earn as a result of the time you invest "training" them. You need to do this because, in most cases, you can’t advance the story unless your character improves enough to overcome the obstacles put in their way: things like monsters and other foes. A lot of games completely overdo this, making the gaming experience more about hack and slash than character and storyline. At some points it can feel like work to get past these obstacles. I don’t know about you, but I have enough work in my real life already.
Then again, instant or easy gratification in games is also a dangerous thing. It’s a great feeling, and it’s easy to find yourself needing to strive for that next achievement, complete that next quest, in order to keep that feeling going. But accomplishments made in a fictional world rarely translate to anything useful in your real life. You train your video game character to fight more effectively with a sword, but you yourself don’t learn that skill. All you do is get pretty darn good at pushing buttons.
On the other hand, with the invention of more physical interfaces like Kinect, I can see that one of these days we may very well learn useful physical skills by playing video games. Already we have fitness games that use their power of fun and positive reinforcement to encourage us to do healthy, regular exercise. So I have high hopes that I may yet learn to swordfight!
So yes, what I’m saying is that just like eating healthy, we have to be mindful about what sorts of entertainment we allow our bodies and minds to engage in. We have to be aware that bad entertainment goes down smooth, while good entertainment gives us roughage. At times we need to consider turning away the forms of it that aren’t convenient for us to consume, and not allow ourselves be force fed. And at all times, we need to remember that we’re the boss of ourselves!
April 2012
April was a ridiculously busy month for us here in Calgary, with something major happening nearly every weekend.
The day after we went to press with the April edition was the much anticipated Back(lot) to Boyz(town) reunion party at Vinyl, the former Boyztown/Rekroom location. For the past two years this event has given people the chance to relive their fond memories of the former gay bar, and for the next generation to get a glimpse of the history behind this space. As the official kick-off party for Apollo Western Cup, the event was extremely well attended. The fact that it was on a Wednesday night seemed to make no difference, although I’m sure there were some hung over people at work the next morning.
The weekend to follow was the 30th Annual Apollo Western Cup, and another spectacular Western Cup dance at Hotel Arts to wrap up the sporting weekend. Western Cup is one of a small handful of LGBT dances in our area that bring together over a thousand people at the same time (the others being PURE Pride in Calgary, PURE Pride in Edmonton, and the dances at the ARGRA Rodeo). According to organizers, they had already run out of pre-sold tickets at most of their outlets, and sold out of the remainder at the door within an hour of the dance opening.
After that we needed a weekend of reprieve, and stayed put in Calgary even though the Bearbash was happening in Edmonton. Out of curiosity, we popped down for the grand opening of Ten in the former Club Sapien space. The changes inside were dramatic, opening up the whole room to be a huge dance floor, with a staggering array of lights and basically a "jumbo-tron" looming over the stage behind the DJs. The place was packed and lined up, though for the sake of taking a quick tour as media we were able to jump the queue. Inside we recognized a lot of faces from the LGBT community, having a great time as part of the mixed crowd concept for the club.
Then the following weekend was the ISCCA Coronation ball at the Westin. Steve and I found it to be a great opportunity to reconnect and get caught up with many people from Edmonton who we haven’t seen in a while, not to mention having a fun time and good discussions with others from out of province, such as Ted Northe (first Empress of Canada) and Paul Therien (founder of Q Hall of Fame). Of course the socializing only came after 6+ hours of work filming and photographing the event. Photos and streaming videos of the show should already be posted in our online gallery by the time you’re reading this.
About a year ago, GayCalgary was nominated to receive a special award for our support of the Alberta courts, from the International Court System of Canada in commemoration of their 40th Anniversary. The ceremony was held at the time in Vancouver but we and a few other Calgary recipients weren’t able to attend. We were happy to finally receive the Royal Order of the Maple Leaf award at this Coronation, alongside of David Atchison and David Patten, presented to us by Martin Storm who is the President of the Canadian Court System and Heir Apparent to Nicole the Great. While these awards were mainly intended for individuals, we were one of only a handful of businesses across Canada to receive this honour.
We would like to congratulate Emperor 35 Chris Tron, Empress 35 Makayla Quinn, and their upper house, who all stepped down that evening. We would also like to congratulate the newly elected monarchs, Emperor 36 Bull Dozr and Empress 36 Ruby Elizabeth Hart, who were crowned at the end of the night. Usually the fundraising totals are announced and cheques are given out to charities at the Coronation, however the ISCCA has declared that they instead will do this at this year’s Investitures ceremony. Check the ISCCA website (http://www.iscca.ca) for more information.
We spent our final weekend of April at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo, manning a booth to promote our magazine whilst gunning for interviews with the many big names they had brought to Calgary.
We’d like to thank Evan and Jade for helping out with our booth, and for making themselves available (along with Jason) for panels and spontaneous interviews throughout the weekend. It was another awesome experience, making us proud to be a sponsor of the expo.
As we discovered last year, attendees of the expo are extremely accepting of our presence there, and many weren’t shy about taking a copy to see what we were about. In fact, we’re happy to say that we gave out more copies of our magazine that weekend than even at Taboo, ARGRA, or the Calgary and Edmonton Pride festivals, in good part thanks to Jade’s mad people skills.
We discovered that we likely had the print media exclusive interview with Wil Wheaton, who had approached us, we are told, on recommendation from another sci-fi celebrity that had enjoyed our interview from the year prior. This really lays testament to the hard work and great attitudes that our writers bring to the table. During one of her panels, Amanda Tapping was happy to hear an audience question from Jade, and announced the fact that she was main feature on last month’s cover of GayCalgary Magazine to which the packed auditorium clapped and cheered.
I was excited that our media and sponsor status got us within 5 metres of the complete collection of my biggest childhood heroes, the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I found it surreal and even a little emotional to be seeing these people, who were important role models to me during my formative years, up close and in person. Even though I was behind a camera, I had to pause and appreciate the moment with my own eyes because it was the sort of thing that only happens once in a lifetime.
This Month
May looks like it will give us all a chance to recharge before the true insanity of the summer months begins. The major event for May is the 14th annual Fairy Tales Queer Film Festival, running from May 24th to June 2nd. Otherwise prepare yourself for Edmonton Pride Week, June 8th to 17th. For more information, see the ads for Fairy Tales and Edmonton Pride Week in this edition.