Don’t Mind Ol’ Gav; He’s Still In That Funny Gestural Mode From Before
All I wanted was a TV crime drama series where computers didn’t chime, ‘dididididit,’ whenever text scrolled on the screen or somebody typed something.
…And they wouldn’t give it to me!
Above: “Just one Pepsi…”
Okay, honestly now. Why do producers and arbiters of film and TV, domestically and abroad, suppose that computers must be so unfamiliar, so futuristic to the viewer, that they’re compelled to dub in this ubiquitous ‘dididididit’ sound (it’s almost always the same sound) in order to telegraph that data is being, as it were, computered?
It’s like we’re in the 1930s, and the popular cinema is all about the Futuristic Power of the Internal Combustion Engine, which, as we know, always goes ‘Vroom! Ah-oogah!’ every time you look at one.
I mean, God.
Note: Gavin will be back to normal pretty soon.
I think it’s because the producers and/or directors of the shows are so old that they remember the days when computers actually did go dtdtdtdtdt (circa 1950s-1970s). This could also be the reason why there have been so few good original shows/films and so many remakes in the past 10-20 years.
I dunno—I kind of like when MTV News used to do that. But I might be remembering the Beavis & Butthead episode where they approximated it, in words to the effect of “You—bawm-buddah-bauw-baaauw—hear it first—deedly-eedly-eedly-eedly-deeee!”
The only reason that should happen is if the show/movie is set in the 80’s or before. Other wise it’s the equivalent of using big heavy rotary telephones that BARIIIIIING! when someone calls.
The X-Files annoyed me a few times because they showed people using the IBM WordPerfect white text on blue screen. I know the FBI can be a bit bass akwards but I also know no government lackey would stand for such a thing. Maybe it was easier to show on film.
Gavin will be back to normal pretty soon.
Sorry, Gavin. But nothing can ever be the same.
P.S. Bonus Jethrene moment provided by Watertiger.
I could do without the dididididit.
Just don’t fuck with the laugh tracks.
The dad in the S.T. video was Pete in Twin Peaks.
Just meowin’
Gavin links to one of my most favorite videos…
Man, I liked that song.
Ah for the good old days when the shows could use footage of 1/2″ magtape reels spinning around to show that computering was going on. You just don’t get that kind of visual excitement from your fancy solid-state memory.
Similarly, whenever someone on TV or in the movies plays a video game, it sounds like “BEEP-boop-beep-boop-BUZZZZZ” and if the graphics are shown they will usually be blocky and pixelated 2-D.
I realize that your average TV director is probably too busy to keep up with the latest video game news, but I’d still expect them to know that the Atari 2600 is no longer the standard in console gaming.
F*ck that is a cool video, although the song is slightly different than the recorded version, no that different, but different indeed.
“I went to YOUR schools!
I went to YOUR churches!
I went to YOUR institutional learning facilities!”
That is just too classic, thanks for posting it Gavin!
Jackson
Jeez Gavin, I used to think you were cool, but now that I know you like cheesy network CSI ripoffs im not so sure… Just watch The Wire and shut the fuck up already. CSI is for republicans.
Jrod: The shit that bothers me is them showing the controllers they’re using, which almost inevitably aren’t even the right system for whatever they’re playing. Like they’ll be playing the latest GTA3-but-not-really game, on an Nintendo 64 controller or an original X-Box.
Sometimes the combine the three so somehow they’ve hooked up a Nintendo controller to a Microsoft product to play a Playstation game.
Those stylized, Minority Report computer interfaces are another reason I can’t stand the whole CSI [YOUR NORTH AMERICAN CITY HERE] franchise.
OT- http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=28845_Dreaming_of_Super_Tuesday&only
Sad we didn’t cover this one from Chuckles last night.
The dad in the S.T. video was Pete in Twin Peaks.
He is also “Eraserhead”
He is also “Eraserhead”
‘Zat some kinda Nick at Nite thing?
Anyway I’d rather see the cops struggling to use their computers.
Didn’t you know, Gav?
Computers are noisy!
I haven’t seen anything like you describe, but I don’t watch those network shows. I remember being annoyed at the time with the talking computer in War Games. I thought, man, even if you had a computer that COULD do that, why would you WANT it to?
mikey
Er, there was supposed to be a whole TV Tropes page on this sort of thing, from computers going ditditditdit to the text being projected onto the characters’ faces so you can read what they’re writing off the wall behind them, but that pages seems to have gone walkabout without leaving a note.
I guess I’ll just have to try to be cool next time … 🙁
*sniff*
I thought, man, even if you had a computer that COULD do that, why would you WANT it to?
10 A=”POOP”
20 SPEAK(A)
30 GOTO 10
RUN
I just had to stop in to pass along this sentence from a top recommended diary at RedState:
After reading that, does anyone else hear a loud pop, followed by a sense of vertigo?
Anyone who hasn’t seen this should.
Eraserhead is a very strange David Lynch movie.
From imdb.com
Is it a nightmare or an actual view of a post-apocalyptic world? Set in an industrial town in which giant machines are constantly working, spewing smoke, and making noise that is inescapable, Henry Spencer lives in a building that, like all the others, appears to be abandoned. The lights flicker on and off, he has bowls of water in his dresser drawers, and for his only diversion he watches and listens to the Lady in the Radiator sing about finding happiness in heaven. Henry has a girlfriend, Mary X, who has frequent spastic fits. Mary gives birth to Henry’s child, a frightening looking mutant, which leads to the injection of all sorts of sexual imagery into the depressive and chaotic mix.
In heaven
everything is fine
in heaven
everything is fine
in heaven everything is fine
you’ve got your good thing
and i’ve got mine
It’s called “computer foo” and the directors and producers insist on it. Apparently it adds excitement. Every new window that opens must make a beep and every action has to bloorp. Same thing with “Hollywood Thunder” where the thunder crash always happens right on the lightning flash. Or the “Office Building Pan-Up Establishing Shot Doppler Horn By”. I got a million of them.
Why yes, I am a sound effects editor, why do you ask?
I saw the damn movie over 20 years ago and still have the image of the baby seared in my brain along with the strange little chickens.
There’s a documentary (“I Don’t Know Jack”) on the life & death of Jack Nance. Haven’t seen it yet.
Why yes, I am a sound effects editor, why do you ask?
*SIGH*
Everybody has a cooler job than I do.
And god dammit to hell and back, in spite of my new motto (I don’t give a rats ass), I still have my stinking job.
Ah well, tomorrow will bring more opportunities to express my motto loud and proud…
mikey
Same thing with “Hollywood Thunder” where the thunder crash always happens right on the lightning flash.
I kinda like the sound of that…
that really has to be one of the great rock songs of all time. it’s just…perfect.
also, mikey, you could try doing this “producing” thing, where doing well and being unemployed happens…simultaneously. yea, it verily bends time and space. pretty fucked up. at least you know the next paycheck, right? and it pays for good scotch occasionally? it can’t be all bad.
The most dangerous place in cinema is the old fashioned fruit stand. You know when you see one that it’s fate is to be the target of a careening vehicle.
As far as computer props go, those stupid flashing banks of lights get to me. They never were part of any real computers.
Chan: You’re probably thinking of TVtropes.org. It’s ok, now that you know you can hang out with us cool kids as we discuss the Xanatos Roulette. I mean seriously, how did Xanatos know Goliath would throw Sevarius into the electric eel tank just after Goliath destroyed the antidote Sevarius was making for Derek (which was fake anyway), turning Derek against the gargoyles, all so he could mess with Elisa as revenge for turning the gargoyles against himself in the first place? There are plans for victory in Iraq that are more straightforward and plausible, for Eris’ sake.
Closeted Conservative Cobags Hall of Fame!
Bad Boys, Nasty Boys: Out of the GOP’s Closet
by Michael Parenti
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/06/6869/
“The most dangerous place in cinema is the old fashioned fruit stand. You know when you see one that it’s fate is to be the target of a careening vehicle.”
Or the giant plate glass window being walked across the street.
. . . along with the strange little chickens.
They’re the strangest damn things. But they’re NEW!
And god dammit to hell and back, in spite of my new motto (I don’t give a rats ass), I still have my stinking job.
Sounds to me like someone’s not giving it the old college try.
GOP family values on parade
http://www.armchairsubversive.org/
Okay, normally I just sit quietly back and mind my own business, making a comment or two, but overall maintaining an even keel.
But dammitall, now you’ve got me going.
(ahem).. ATTENTION MOVIE AND TV WEASELRY:
THE NEXT TIME I SEE A MOVIE WHERE A SUPPOSED HERO USES A SINGLE LIGHTER TO SET OFF A BUILDING WIDE SPRINKLER SYSTEM, I REFUSE TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR MY ACTIONS!!!
Also:
WILL YOU JUST STOP SHOWING ELEVATORS SNAPPING A SINGLE CABLE AND PLUNGING TO THE BASEMENT? FIRST OF ALL, EACH ELEVATOR IS HELD BY A DOZEN CABLES, AND ANY ONE OF THEM CAN HOLD THE RATED WEIGHT OF THE ELEVATOR!!! SECONDLY, EACH ALSO HAS A FULLY FOOLPROOF BRAKING SYSTEM THAT AUTOMATICALLY FREEZES THE ELEVATOR IN PLACE SHOULD THIS HAPPEN!!!!
Okay. I trust we’re straight on these? We won’t be seeing this any more?
Sheesh. I feel better now.
Roger Ebert’s Glossary has most movie idiocies pretty well covered:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=GLOSSARY
I even submitted one to him once, and he even replied and said he’d consider including it. Basically it’s this: Why does every sports movie feature a stadium public address announcer who acts like he’s doing broadcast play-by-play? You know, “And Smith goes down! Wait…he looks like he’s injured! Could this be the end of the line for him?”.
Keep in mind, that’s the PA guy. Like no viewer has ever been to a fucking game in person.
I feel bad about some of these that I haven’t noticed anything wrong about. But I do notice historical ones, like when characters go back in time, and can speak perfectly with anyone they met. While this may be forgivable in English speaking places, this is especially annoying if it’s a foreign country.
I’m looking at you, Time Bandits.
Also, nobody has any problem with the smell.
They apparently also had much better orthodontry in the past.
Orthodontistry…oh heck…perfect teeth!
All I wanted was a TV crime drama series where computers didn’t chime, ‘dididididit,’ whenever text scrolled on the screen or somebody typed something.
I agree, the didididididit is annoying, but at least they’ve finally given up on the teletype ratchety noise accompanying text reeling out on a video display.
But, as a programmer, I realize that showing computers as they really are – and showing programming them as it really is – in movies would make for some really boring movies.
I like programming, but it sure as hell isn’t a spectator sport.
Sorry, what was that? I couldn’t focus on what I was reading because of all the bleeping noises come out of my computer.
Heck, when I was running system 7 (YES! I said SYSTEM 7!!) on my Macs, I had them not only whirriing, bleeping, ditditditdit-ing and dinging, but also croaking, creaking, whistling, singing, chainsawing, screaming, walking (noises), cars, roaring, typewriter-clacking, gunfire, robot noises, and talking but they also sighed with pleasure when you inserted a disk and belched when it was ejected.
S.T. guitarist shreds … in the true 80s sense of the word … inspiring
Billy, dude! You need to come out here and relax for minute. Some places in this country respect that kind of opinion.
The motor goes, “vrrrrrm.” The horn goes, “ah-OOOGA.”
Get it straight.
These are the only sounds I want to hear out of a computer.
BTW, isn’t the “mom” the actor of “Eating Raoul” fame?
perhaps an entire episode of “spaced” will feature every one of these cliches and more.
i like it.
This sort of thing has bugged for years. Every time someone so much as gets an email, the graphics are all colorful and fancy. Even “The Wire” is guilty of this.
“Sometimes the combine the three so somehow they’ve hooked up a Nintendo controller to a Microsoft product to play a Playstation game.”
No doubt a little product placement cash from one of the three would fix that problem.
The mom in that video is indeed Mary Woronov of Eating Raoul fame. But she will always be Miss Evelyn Togar, principal of Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, to me.
Oh my darling Evelyn, how I long for the feel of your luscious thighs wrapped around me… uh… wrong note.
(R’n’RHS also featured the ever-vivacious P.J. Soles and the ever-hideous-but-always-employed-thanks-to-his-big-shot-brother Clint Howard. And the Ramones. Mustn’t forget the Ramones.)
Silent Witness was better when it had the P. O.’d Irish dame.
like when characters go back in time, and can speak perfectly with anyone they met. While this may be forgivable in English speaking places, this is especially annoying if it’s a foreign country.
I’m looking at you, Time Bandits.
Ok, wait a minute. A small boy joins a team of cosmic midgets who’ve stolen God’s Secret Map of the Universe, do battle/join/outwit Agamemnon, centaurs, giants, Napoleon, Robin Hood, trolls, and Evil Itself (in the form of a TV game show) and you can’t get past the unbelievable absence of a language barrier?
There’s just no hope for some people.
I used to work on a mini computer that had six flashing lights. I always wished it had more. They were mesmerizing and conveyed useful information about what the system was doing. I theorized IBM’s stock went into the dumper in the early 90’s when they got rid of the flashing lights.
Mary Woronov? Always “Calamity Jane” from “Death Race 2000”