Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matt Wrather overthink the issues of identity and appropriation in the controversy over Avril Lavigne’s “Hello Kitty.”
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Your Panel
Further Reading
- Digging up meaning from the rubble of an excavated Atari landfill from Ars Technica
- Airwolf on Wikipedia
- Wolfenstein 3D on Wikipedia
- Roc (TV Series) on Wikipedia
- “Hello Kitty” Music Video on YouTube
- “Hello Kitty” lyrics
- And the Internet goes crazy: Vox, HuffPo, TMZ
- Robert Palmer – Simply Irresistible on YouTube
- Kawaii on Wikipedia
Airwolf!
Pete, if you haven’t already heard Ernie Cline’s spoken word piece on Airwolf, you must listen to this immediately:
Airwolf!
It does sound, Matt, like the closest thing to the show you’re looking for is probably Parks and Recreation. Because most things that are “middlebrow” today tend to avoid politics, the only way to comment on them in an accessible and feel-good way is through local politics.
It strikes me that Avril is trying really, really hard to be Tommy Kawase, and is terrible at it – not only as a cutesy Japanese pop singer but as one who can convincingly portray youth while actually approaching middle age.
Is the Andrew WK album you mentioned, Pete, his album of covers of music from the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise?
PS. Shout out to Pitbull! ¡Te quiero, 305! Also, Pete, were you aware that he is part owner of the fast food chain Miami Subs Grill?
Good point. But for me, part of the appeal of Roc was the steadfast earnestness of its tone, which is not a feature of a lot of comedy these days. We live in a post-Apatovian, post-MacFarlaine world.
@Josie
The Andrew W.K. album I was thinking of is called “Close Calls With Brick Walls.” It was released in Japan and South Korea only, in 2006.
I’m familiar with it because it was issued as part of a double album with a bunch of live tracks in the U.S. in 2010 — Andrew W.K. did a promotion that year via Twitter where the first large bunch of people who bought the album in the U.S. directly from his website got a signed note from Andrew W.K. in sharpie telling them to party and such. I was one of the people who got the album to get the note, and it was up on my wall for a few years. Not sure where it is now. The album is, I’m sad to say, still in the plastic.
But yeah, looking through his wikipedia page, Andrew W.K. actually has two other, more kitschy Japan-centric albums — the aforementioned “Gundam Rock,” which he released in 2009 for the 30th anniversary of Gundam, and an album of J-Pop covers called “The Japan Covers” that he released back in 2008.
Also interesting – Andrew W.K. wrote an advice column _for ten years_ in a Japanese magazine called “Rockin’ On.” You can apparenlty buy a book called “I Will Change Your Life” that is a compilation of his Japan advice columns.
And for the t-t-t-t-t-riple post, it seems that a contributing factor to Andrew W.K.’s investment in Japan was not just his relative success there with his second album, but also his legal dispute with a former collaborator over the U.S. rights to the use of the Andrew W.K. name and image.
Talk about making lemonade out of lemons.
Other possible episode titles:
Arnold Palmer Has Nothing To Do With This Conversation
Colonels All The Way Down
Hashtag Blessed
Lots Of Asian Stuff Happening Over Here
Buzzes In The Proverbial Feed
Hate F Your Television For Five Hours
…well, maybe not that last one. Maybe just:
We Got The Band Back Together…To Play Chad Kroger Songs About Japanese School Girls
Yup, most of those were on our internal list.
“This could be white privilege talking” would be another possible title for this one…
Some more on cultural appropriation through music here: http://shamelessmag.com/blog/entry/not-your-fashion-dots-the-continuous-appropriatio/
Though I think the South Asian case may be different from the Japanese case in some ways regarding global socioeconomic power.
Also, you didn’t talk about the Canadian-ness of Avril much, but I’d be curious to know if anyone’s familiar with any differences between the Canadian and US American discourses on appropriation.
There was a minor internet kerfuffle in March about the propriety of white women “appropriating” belly dancing. As all minor internet kerfuffles do, it began with a Salon article titled “Why I can’t stand white belly dancers”:
http://www.salon.com/2014/03/04/why_i_cant_stand_white_belly_dancers/
Well known legal blog responds with “What would Salon think of an article called, ‘Why I can’t stand Asian musicians who play Beethoven’?”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/03/06/what-would-salon-think-of-an-article-called-why-i-cant-stand-asian-musicians-who-play-beethoven/
It went back and forth a bit, and I side pretty heavily with the latter position – while clearly it’s possible for a white person to belly dance in a way that’s offensive to others, I think it’s unnecessarily reductive to make it a categorical ban (as I think Matt was saying on the Podcast).
I am anti-categorical ban.
Categorically.
Wait… dammit…
(We did Episode 298 about this problem.)
On helicopter-based TV shows from the 80s: There was also a short-lived television adaptation of the movie Blue Thunder, starring the late, great Roy Scheider. Er, that is to say, the movie starred Roy Scheider; the series, of course, did not, though it did prominently feature a pre-SNL Dana Carvey.
YES!! Blue Thunder! That’s the show I was thinking of!!! I was totally blanking on it.
Thanks, Corwin!
Blue Thunder had a peculiar evolution. The original movie had the premise that an armored, heavily armed, silent helicopter with advanced surveillance had no place in police operations, and only made sense in a militarized police state. The story ended with the protagonist destroying the helicopter and walking away.
In the TV series, the same helicopter is part of LA police operations, often used against people who _don’t_ have an armored, heavily armed helicopter, which seems a little unheroic.
The series even restages the demonstration scene, in which the Blue Thunder is deployed against a simulated hostage situation. In the movie, the test ends realistically with the bad guys all dead and many of the hostages dead too, which the protagonist considers unacceptable. In the TV series, the Blue Thunder can magically wipe out bad guys without harming civilians, a fantasy of technological superiority. You can see an almost 180-degree shift in politics between the two iterations.
The TV series also shared the fundamental problem of all “super vehicle” shows: coming up with challenges to the super vehicle.
The thing is, you, Matt, don’t need to get involved in that conversation. Your serenity is fine up until the point where you get involved, and that’s how you’re privileged. When I’m hanging out with friends after watching Game of Thrones and the guys start getting pissed off that certain actresses decided to, uh, I don’t know, exercise some sovereignty over their own bodies and go “I’ve changed my mind, I’m not doing full on nude scenes anymore” and they’re complaining about how that sucks and how the actresses shouldn’t be allowed to change their minds once they’ve agreed to it right in front of me as if that’s something entirely unrelated to my existence, I can speak up (and suffer the consequences) or I can shut up and wish I were home instead, but either way, my serenity has been effed with. I don’t get to decide whether or not to get into the argument, cause either way I have already lost. If I argue, I might very easily cry out of frustration while trying to explain why I have a problem with what they say and hearing back that “I’m being overly sensitive” “Dude, we weren’t talking about you” and “Why do you care what they (the actresses) do?” (I have to admit, not having had the argument yet, I can’t be sure what the reaction would be, but I’m guessing a group of guys who feels comfortable saying that stuff and more – like yelling “gangbang!” at a random female character during the show – wouldn’t be too kind about my attempt to explain to them why they maybe shouldn’t be saying those things).
I get what you say about internet discussions being “buzzes in the proverbial feed”, but I have two points. One, I believe that, in the case of a facebook comment thread in a friend’s page, for example, when a lot of people come to the rescue of a friend whose views are being attacked, at the very least the “attacker” (sorry, can’t think of a better word right now) will feel like they’re not welcome, and understand that their prejudices are not something they can just “broadcast” with no consequences (as someone who knows people who will say the most horrifyingly racist things out loud, I would be grateful if they would just get the hint and think those things instead of actually saying them out loud, since they’re not in a position where they can act on their prejudices anyway). Two, in “real life”, outside of the internet, your voice (white, male, educated) may very well be the one they listen to. If someone like you, standing around with friends after watching Game of Thrones, were to make my points for me (“Well, you know, guys, I get that they signed a contract but seeing the directions the show took their storylines/the exploitation of so many actresses’ bodies, I think they are totally justified in changing their minds and revoking that permission” or something to that effect), all the other guys present would be much more likely to listen, much less likely to question your assertions and your reasons for making them, and you’d also be more likely to just make your points while remaining calm and logic and stuff, something which would be much harder for me to do since there’s an undeniable emotional component to it for me (having grown up in a country where women are expected to wear very little and passively accept stares without complaint) that just isn’t there for you. Yes, you as a decent, modern man would still be pissed off, as would anyone with any empathy, but I’m pissed off too ~and~ feeling all that other stuff. When you omit yourself, you withhold your (very effective) help from the people who need it.
Thanks, Amanda, for this comment.
Let me try to clarify: I’m advocating not watching Fox News; I’m not advocating abandoning an ally who is being harassed. I agree with you that bullies need to be stood up to, and the responsibility to stand up falls to all of us.
And the poignancy of your account drives home for me my central conviction: There is enough that is outrageous in the world without trying to manufacture and sustain a high level of artificial outrage on cable. That stuff I decline to ingest.
Thanks for understanding :)
I totally get what you mean now, it’s just that parts of this episode (I’ll admit I dozed off a few times and def need to re-listen), coupled with the “A Requirement for Jerk” ep made it seem like you just tune out of anything that may “eff with your serenity”, as opposed to what you described now. Staying away from Fox News and Upworthy-type stuff seems so obvious and understandable to me that when you said you tried not to pay attention to certain things, I took that to mean literally everything else that might make you uncomfortable.
I learned a lot of the basic feminism/racism stuff online because, as I said in a recent fb rant, my university didn’t even offer the kind of class where any of that was discussed, so in between a lot of learning there was a lot of feeling like people were yelling inches away from my face for asking questions whose answers I had no way of knowing. There’s a lot of ethnocentrism in that kind of conversation where, when the topic of appropriation comes up, the POV is always “white Americans appropriating from less powerful countries/cultures” and when other people raise the point that the power dynamics between other cultures that borrow from each other might be different, a lot of the SJ activists I’ve read had no idea how to deal with that, because to these specific people, the answer is always the categorical ban you talk about. I think an interesting example would be the cultural exchange between Brazil and Japan. Both countries have significant populations of immigrants from the other country, with Brazil having the largest Japanese population outside of Japan. Having grown up as an upper middle class kid, going to an international (German) private school, the only significant minority present at my school was made up of the many students of Japanese descent, who were all also middle/upper middle class. Growing up, all kinds of kids (Japanese and just regular Brazilian) would bring nori (dried seaweed) to school as a snack, Hello Kitty was always prevalent, and Japanese products like stickers and cute erasers were desired by all. São Paulo has a particularly strong Japanese influence too. Anyway, one of the arguments (American) people make when talking about cultural appropriation is that if an immigrant kid were to wear their country’s garments in the US, they would be ridiculed and thought of as not assimilated enough yet, but when a white kid wears it, they’re trendy. That argument doesn’t hold up in Brazil. I know the plural of anecdote is not data, but I have multiple Asian (mostly Chinese and Japanese) friends who have worn stuff like kimonos and cheongsam dresses in everyday life and prom-like parties and never suffered any ridicule. Cheongsam dresses and clothing inspired by them like tops are also kinda popular, and Brazilian kids of no Asian descent will wear them too. I really never got the feeling that anyone, Asian or otherwise, was discriminated against in São Paulo for “dressing Asian”. Anyway, I’m white over there (another topic for another comment maybe?) so I might be completely wrong, but even if I’m wrong, the point is that a lot of people online would rather just repeat the mantra that anyone who’s not X is not allowed to Y or Z instead of actually parsing through the specifics of the situation being posed to them. And that’s annoying as hell and doesn’t really get us anywhere, so this is my extremely long-winded way of saying “Yeah Matt, totes agree!”.
tiny bit of extra info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japantown#Brazil
Yeah, I saw Matt’s perspective much less as tuning out everything that might eff with his serenity, and more as whether a person ever should tune out anything that effs with his or her serenity.
The answer to the latter, I think, is a controversial and difficult “sometimes.”
For more on what I think other people think, check out this week’s Game of Thrones recap.
Yeah, I read Matt’s comment the same way – that there has to be some acceptable line that you can draw and decide what you are and are not going to care* about, even if some legitimate sources of outrage end up on the “wrong” side of the line.
That’s more than just serenity – it’s sanity. There are simply too many outrageous things in the world to get worked up about them all – and we’re naturally going to gravitate to things that a) are close to us personally, b) we can easily empathize with or c) we can do something about.
None of that, of course, is justification for actively DENYING that a given outrage exists – where arguments of “privilege” have the most bite, I think, is where someone is actually trying to argue that a problem doesn’t even exist (or is unworthy of action) because of your insulation from the effects of that problem. But that’s very different from just saying that you’re not going to devote some of your limited bandwidth to the problem.
As a personal example – there are certain problems unique (or at least substantially unique) to members of the military and their families. Long deployments, weird legal and financial issues, etc. And if someone DENIED that these problems existed, I might justly claim that they were blinded by their “civilian privilege” (though I might use other words, the substance of the claim would be the same). But I don’t claim that everyone needs to share my outrage about these problems, or even that they need to particularly care about them – in the grand scheme of things, most of these problems are relatively minor, and there are institutions and advocacy groups dedicated to them.
All of that said, (and to cycle around to mostly-agreeing with others on the thread), there are some issues that are so widespread and deeply damaging that there’s a plausible argument that it’s an educated citizen’s to both know and care – gender and race equality probably at or near the top of the list.
*: For certain definitions of “care.”
@Ben I’m curious about the “weird legal and financial issues” you mention. My husband’s in the Air Force but I don’t think we’ve had any of those yet. Do you mind telling me what to expect?
(about the drawing the line/serenity stuff, I’m not sure how to answer yet. My brain feels like it did in math class right now :P But I do mostly agree with you.)
Well, what Crystal said. Obviously someone who denies there’s a problem is a douche. But being able to tune things out in the first place is something that’s reserved only to people with privilege. I can choose not to read the news/watch GoT, but I can’t opt out of being catcalled in the street/being afraid of rape all the time.
So I know that wasn’t his intention, but when Matt says he tunes things out in order to maintain his serenity, it feels a tiny bit like he’s rubbing his capacity for serenity in front of my serenity-less face, because there’s only so much I can do to maintain mine.
Not to hijack Matt or Amanda’s point, but I think being able to “tune out” all this shit is where privilege comes in. I can never really tune out sexism, because it’s a direct affront to me. I can’t even watch an episode of GoT without being reminded that life sucks more for women or that, as a woman, I am disposable. And I’ll probably get raped.
I <3 you Crystal! Hijack all you want!
And that was my point too! I can't tune it out, watching GoT for ex is likely being repeatedly punched in the gut.
I think this inability to tune things out is expressed really well in a Hari Kondabolu quote:
“Saying that I’m obsessed with race and racism in America is like saying that I’m obsessed with swimming while I’m drowning. It’s absurd.”
So, I love OTI and I truly believe Matt is a good person and as a dear internet friend, I really like him. But I also believe his ability to tune out in the first place is due very much to his "white-straight-maleness".
CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE MATT! (jk) (but not entirely)
I really doubt this is a male thing — especially because it’s something I always have had difficulty doing, and my female therapist has been helping me to understand it.
So I have it on good authority that male privilege is not a necessary condition to incorporating some gentleness and self-care into what you choose to expose yourself to in your entertainments.
And it’s not about “tuning out,” as much as just not engaging. The whole point is that once you’re engaging with this thing, it has already had its effect on you. It triggers you and upsets you. So you have to be mindful of things that trigger you or you will drive yourself crazy.
That’s not to say it’s easy, or that culture makes it easy — but yeah, definitely not white-exclusive or male-exclusive. White men are not known as the masters of meditation or mindfulness.
The E.T. game was bad (by the way, the goal was to collect pieces of a device that would allow him to phone home), but have you ever played Desert Bus? Although, I don’t know if that counts as a real “game,” though, because it was designed to be awful and arduous, unlike the E.T. game.
Aside from the cultural stuff in this Avril Lavigne video, what definitely irks me is that this is another in a long line of songs where an adult sings as if though they are a child. That’s super weird. All the references she makes and stuff. Also, Smarties are a different candy in Canada. That is important to know.
I haven’t played Desert Bus, but I have played a game, the exact name of which I forget, called something like “Mary ______’s Marathon” — which was a retro-8-bit-style flash game where you just pushed two buttons over and over again to have a woman run an entire marathon. So it’s a similar concept.
Even then, a game that aims to entertain by deliberately being bad — especially absurdly bad — is going to be better overall than a game that fails colossally at an attempt at being good.
I do love games like this, though, that blow apart game structure. I don’t remember if I’ve talked about “Pick Up the Phone Booth and Die” on the podcast, but I recommend it wholeheartedly for people who enjoy deconstructing video games.
Anyway, there’s something about that carrot in front of you urging you to progress in E.T. (with no explanation of how) that makes falling in the pits over and over again extraordinarily frustrating.
I found _Hello Kitty_ more disappointomg than offensive. There’s so much crazyness to exploit in Jpop that it could have been an opportunity to have some fun. Instead it was all so wooden.
Does anyone have a grasp of current Jpop? I’m having fun listening to these guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MtTmRttwcY
I don’t know what the harajuku TFTers are listening to but I suspect it’s not Avril.
Do we have any sense of how it’s doing in Japan?
Is anyone familiar with the new J-rock/metal combination of “BabyMetal”? This is a band that uses J-pop costumes and choreography but with metal music. The Avril Lavigne video reminded me of this.
I wouldn’t say this group is offensive at all, but it appears to be aimed at a Japanese audience. However, I have a lot of friends that are really into it, most of which are fellow anime fans. I have several friends, who are metal fans that also love it. It might be interesting to check out and contrast with “Hello Kitty”.
I haven’t searched out lyric translations, so, I’m now sure what they’re singing about. Although, I doubt it would sound like anything Chad Kroeger had a hand in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLBjHl6w8pExntveB_DDcDUt7eW_6kCwnx&v=nDqaTXqCN-Q&feature=player_detailpage
I’m actually a Japanese music fan and I write extensively on that. The thing is, Babymetal has actual metal cred; their music is written by well-known, respected musicians/composers. For example, “Headbanger” and “Catch Me If You Can” are written by NARASAKI, frontman of the alt. rock/metal-influenced Coaltar of the Deepers. Gimme Choco, the song that went viral, was written by Ueda Takeshi, who is the bassist and a songwriter for the band Mad Capsule Markets. Babymetal may be a mass-market produced girl group, but they’re a mass market produced girl group with good music.
Japanese music is almost entirely aimed towards a Japanese audience; the money is so good that there’s no reason for it to be any different. Babymetal is what’s known as an “idol group” which is a catch all term for girl groups and boy bands, essentially. Currently, girl groups are having a ressurgance in popularity in Japan, when for the most part they’re a niche interest. There are hundreds of girl groups in Japan; I know this because I write about the Tokyo Idol Festival, which has 111 acts perform every year. Because of this, many groups tend to go a niche route to carve out an audience for themselves. Momoiro Clover Z gained popularity through their sentai-inspired outfits and their unusual music/music videos. Lyrical School and Rhymeberry are hip hop idol groups. And Babymetal has inspired a whole wave of metal inspired girl groups, like Alice Juban.
So it’s not really appropriation as much as an extension of girl groups as a niche cultural interest as well as metal being a similar niche cultural interest.
Oh, yes, I’m familiar with idols. I’m a fan of J-pop, K-pop and J-rock, but I haven’t been up to date with them as much lately. I do enjoy BabyMetal, and you’re right, it’s very good music.
Allyson, I’ll have to thank you for naming some artists I’ve never heard of! I may have to update my itunes. I usually find J-music from watching anime and getting recommendations from friends.
I used to love Camino and saw them at a con in Dallas a few years ago. Do you know if they’re still doing anything? They’re not metal but I did like their style.
If you’re interested in idol music, right now there’s a bit of a renaissance going; there’s a wealth of interesting stuff going on to enjoy and overthink.
Right now, my favorite artists are Dempagumi.inc, Team Syachihoko, Shiritsu Ebisu Chuugaku and Rhymeberry, but there’s a lot of really great stuff going on, musically.
Don’t know much about Camino, to be honest, but I haven’t heard about them. I generally mostly follow pop.
The reason I think people have an issue with appropriation (saying this as a white woman) is that it generally has a tendency to be reductive at best. It’s not so much spreading culture as taking the most obvious, ostentatious elements of the culture without the underlying meaning. It’s a difficult issue to deal with, because the line between appreciating and appropriation is a thin one, but I would personally argue that Hello Kitty errs on the side of appropriation. A friend of mine wrote a good blog post on this. http://thenumber244.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/on-avril-lavignes-hello-kitty/
As a fan of Japanese music, one of the biggest things that drives me up a wall is the common media rhetoric of “lol Japan, you so crazy;” the things that we find weird are either backed up by history/culture or are things that Japanese people find odd/weird as well.
Avril appears to be trying to channel Kyary Pamyu Pamyu in her music video. Kyary is arguably the best known Japanese music act in the US (I say arguably, given the recent attention of Babymetal) due to her video PON PON PON; however, there are more comparisons that could be made to Kyary’s single “Candy Candy”, mostly with the four back dancers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoK8DaJRDaM
Kyary, for all her visual interest, has music by Yasutaka Nakata, a well-respected composer from the band capsule and the producer of the girl group Perfume. Avril has Chad Kroeger. So I think Kyary wins on this round.
Trying to promote herself in Japan isn’t a bad idea. It’s long been the second largest music market in the world, possibly now THE largest; not per capita, but in general. CDs there sell for much more than they do in the US (~$30-$35 for one CD) and restrictions on piracy are fairly strict. If you can be a successful music artist in Japan, you don’t really need to be successful elsewhere; several Korean artists do a large portion of their work in Japan.
What kind of astounds me is that, really, Kyary doesn’t sell all that well. She tends to sell between 25,000 and 40,000 copies of her singles, with a couple of slightly higher selling examples (though her albums do considerably better). This isn’t terrible, but it’s a far cry from what the most popular musical acts in Japan are selling. I do think it’s telling, though, that Avril chose to emulate the Japanese act that is the most well known in the US, and is almost more famous with foreign JPop fans than Japanese fans of Japanese music.
Moer than anything it feels like Avril didn’t do her research; she went to Japan, saw a couple of things, saw a Kyary Pamyu Pamyu music video and went “Oh, this is what I should do.” Hello Kitty feels lazy, which is what I think makes it feel more offensive. If she had done her homework, made something inspired by Japan that felt like more than a stereotype then I doubt people would be offended.
Pete’s breakdown of the different areas of elementary school pop culture really needs to be a full article. (Possibly with additional divisions for the sci-fi kids, and for the “cutesy” stuff in the 80s that evolved into the terrifyingly pink “girl’s shows” of the 90s.)
Also I was discussing it with a friend of mine whose elementary school time extended into the 90s, and we decided that once Jurassic Park came out, all the shark kids became dinosaur kids. Probably a lot more mentally healthy.
Pete, re: Airwolf’s relation to the Vietnam War. For much of the series, Jan Michael Vincent’s brother is MIA in Vietnam! (He turns up for the generally reviled 4th season, if memory serves.)
The lyrics throw a few curveballs but it seemed pretty clear to me that Kroeger asked his wife to sing out some fantasy about stereotypical teenage girls getting it on at slumber parties. “Like oh em gee, you’re so pretty, we should play spin the bottle, pinky swear you don’t tell anyone I tasted your cherry chap stick, BFFs 5ever”. Romantic friendships between girls are also a fairly popular manga/anime trope and it often associates homosexual feelings with immaturity and sugary girly innocence, which you could see in the video but I don’t know if it was supposed to have anything to do with the text outside of “Japan is a place” (credit where credit is due, it is). Either way invoking Japan when you’re basically fetishizing schoolgirls and reffering to one of them as “Hello kitty”… oof.
Yeah, I’ve avoided the Avril video up to now and I’m going to continue to avoid it. Though I’m coming at it from a different perspective as a Chinese American woman, sometimes you have to adopt Matt’s position and just opt out of the conversation. To engage with every single internet argument is just exhausting.
On a lighter note, I think this might be my favorite Harvey appearance so far. I was not expecting it at all and it made me incredibly happy. Can we please get a compilation of all the Harvey appearances on the podcast?
Thanks for discussing one of my native land’s well-known pop musicians (of the genre I like to call “Angry Canadian Chicks”). I feel as if you were discussing my cultural heritage too, in a way. I had to go watch the video for context, and I think once was enough.
Airwolf was a great action show, but it did beg the question “How many problems can be solved with a super-helicopter?” Bonus question: “How many times do you need to do an aerial loop, after proving that it is possible with this superior technology?” Thanks for reminding me how much I enjoyed the show.