Sunday, April 28, 2013

The First - So What Is The CVG Exactly?


The Geek is a communication tool used all over the Chippewa Valley where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another.
- Holden McNeil

This.
Or… Er…  Something like that.

Creating "the Geek" has been a project that's been on my mind for a number of years now, to set up a corner of the intertubes for me to get into all kinds of public discourse and personal navel-gazing and other wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff about our collective particular brands of subculture.  

But while to some degree this site is bound to become my own personal soapbox, I also hope it can become a tool and a resource for us to help build our community a bit here in the Chippewa Valley – not just to get into discussions of the larger zeitgeist, but also to get the word out on local news / events / happenings.  And maybe, just maybe get enough momentum simply to qualify as a cool place to hang out once in a while.  Not that I know anything about cool per se.

Anyway, I am being a bit vague about timing and commitments as to how often I want to get new content out here, because I have seen so many other projects implode, implode utterly when that kind of structure is applied to them.  (A terrible futility is born?)  But briefly, I want to be able to get an update out here on the website every week or so, on average.  I will shortly be publishing the premiere episode of The Chippewa Valley Geek Podcast and Rhythm and Blue Revue, which I hope to get in the proverbial can monthly.  And I’ve linked the page to a facebook page as well, which I’ll use for the occasional blurb that doesn’t seem to fit on this site.

Also, be forewarned I have plans to incorporate a "Monthly Marathon" into the ongoing life of the Geek -- opportunities to sit down and watch some cool stuff together (if "together" could theoretically be construed to mean physically separate and within a few vague weeks of each other).  Each month I’ll have a new task to assign, either a series of themed movies or a run of a television show that’s out on dvd.  Some of these will be easy and obvious, others less so.  (I’ve always wanted to watch The Passion of the Christ and The Life of Brian back to back…  Any takers?)  But I always find watching things in a run helps one glean more out of them, and I think being able to do it in tandem with other like-minded souls and then enter into a brief discussion thereof will help all get the shiniest shinies we can out the whole process.  So think of it as an Oprah's book club, except with more folks getting stabbed / staked / cloned / blown up / cutie marks.

As a last thought here, I also want to make note of a personal goal of mine for the general tone of the site, which is simply to “save the snark”.  It’s pretty well proven that we, as a community and as individuals, all seem to have an amazing talent and creativity for describing how much we think something sucks.  No witty turn of phrase is ever as sweet as the one we can deliver to a captive audience about the exact reason one thinks Sucker Punch was as lame as Professor Xavier.  (Sorry, too soon?)

But these days I kinda think the whole “everything sucks” thing really sucks.  (Sweet irony!)  Everybody knows “that guy”, and while he may have a point, more often than not, he’s just an asshole.  Tearing things down doesn’t help anybody.  It poisons the well and leaves a bad taste in the mouth.  Of poison.  See?  That wasn’t really a mixed metaphor.

Anyway, the fact of the matter is that I would much rather spend my time here talking about all the stuff I love than trashing the stuff I don’t.  I know I won’t be perfect in catching myself, and it’ll take a sincere effort, but to paraphrase Gordon Downie, I want to be it. 

So what say we be it together?

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