Audiobooks (and the narrators who read them)

I do most of my fiction reading through my ears, having discovered years ago that I prefer hearing a story to seeing it. Some might argue that listening to an audiobook limits your experience of a novel, that the voice of the narrator imposes its own tone on the material, coming between the reader and their pristine reception of the author’s words.

But of course physical books do something similar. There’s the typeface and font employed by the book’s designer, the illustrations the publisher included, even the spellings and punctuation the author chose to use. Each of these frames how the reader experiences a book, just as the choice of a narrator does with an audiobook.

A case in point is George R.R. Martin’s A Song Of Ice and Fire series, the source material for perhaps the biggest show in TV history (or, at least, HBO’s history). I read the books before I ever watched the show, but I’m not sure I would have given them a chance if the printed versions had been my only option. For a start, they have the awful covers typical of the sword and sorcery genre, all the gothic lettering and medieval imagery that comprises the publishing industry’s shorthand for epic.

Then there are the maps, and the glossaries and the timelines, each of which tries to establish the novels’ setting as a fully realized universe, a la Tolkien’s Middle Earth (which, by the way, is not “fully realized” at all. Can anyone tell me how the elves handle garbage disposal in Rivendell, for instance?)

Finally, there are unusual spellings and unfamiliar names to remind you that this is a fantasy novel. There are a lot of knights in A Song Of Ice and Fire, but Martin chose to spell their honorific “Ser” instead of “Sir,” a decision that would have annoyed me no end had I first encountered it in print.

The audiobooks eliminate most of these concerns, at least as read by  Roy Dotrice*, an English actor who brings a robust theatricality to the project. He reads “Ser Boros Blount,” for instance, as “Sir Boris Blunt,” “Ser Jaime” as “Sir Jamie,” and “Robb Stark” as “Rob Stark.” This is a good thing, because the virtue of these books is not in the pure fantasy elements but in the realistic—if often brutal—behavior of the characters.

Dotrice’s narration also salvages some examples of flabby prose, though unfortunately not all. Martin’s sex scenes are cringe-inducing, as revealing of their author’s proclivities as a Robert Crumb cartoon (there’s a lot of biting and nipple squeezing, unfortunately.) On the other hand, Dotrice makes a few missteps as well, such as giving the formidable patriarch Tywin Lannister a Churchillian drawl at odds with the ice that flows in the character’s veins.  But he nails Tywin’s dwarf son Tyrion--perhaps the most compelling character in the whole series—with a Welsh accent that evokes both a Falstaffian wit and the bitter vulnerability beneath it.

Dotrice inhabits this material so completely that it was a shock to start the fourth book and find his voice replaced by that of John Lee, another reader who will be familiar to audiobook aficionados. I was a fan of Lee’s voice in the first few books of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series. But I don’t like how Lee reads the Martin stories. Dotrice sounds like someone who would have lived back in the twelfth century, expressive but rustic. Lee has a forceful, aristocratic quality to his voice that is better suited to the age of Napoleon and Nelson.

Of course, a cultural franchise as big as Games of Thrones is guaranteed to generate a lot of outraged opinions, even in the relatively obscure world of audiobook narration. While the rest of the Internet continues to argue whether Season 8 of the TV series totally screwed the pooch, on Reddit’s audiobook forums, fans are fighting over the best Song of Ice and Fire reader. Plenty of people hate Dotrice’s version, preferring something more straight-forward. They may get their wish, if Martin ever finishes the series: Dotrice died in 2017, at age 94, having completed the narration for the audiobook of A World of Ice and Fire, which, thankfully, did not require he voice a hundred different characters.

Here is a sampling of a few of the many voices Dotrice created for A Song Of Ice and Fire:

And John Lee, speaking in the tones of the Age of Sail:

* sci-fi nerds may remember Dotrice as Wesley’s over-domineering father in Angel; everyone else will remember him as Mozart’s over-domineering father in Amadeus. Almost all the fathers in A Song Of Fire and Ice are over-domineering, so he fits right in.

Coronavirus, 9-11, and NYC

When the planes hit the twin towers on September 11th, 2001, I was in my apartment on East 12th Street. My girlfriend (now wife) was at her office in the East 50s. Not knowing if there were more attacks coming, and wanting to get as far away from Ground Zero as possible, we decided to meet at her parents’ apartment, on West 100th Street and Riverside. 

One of my lasting impressions of that day is how the practical geography of Manhattan had been altered over the course of one or two hours. Downtown was a no-go zone, but so were all the major landmark areas such as Times Square, Grand Central, Union Square. How was I to get uptown safely? 

Normally I would have walked over to Union Square, hopped on the N or R train, and switched at Times Square to the 2 train, which I’d take up to West 96th Street. By the time I was ready to leave the apartment (about a half-hour after the North Tower fell), I had no intention of taking the subway. The safest bet was to head up 2nd Avenue and cut across the north end of Central Park. 

The walk took about two hours, and when I got to 100th street I found that people on the Upper West Side were doing what we now know New Yorkers do in a crisis: emptying supermarket shelves and waiting on lines.

Our current collective predicament has once again altered the geography in a way that reminds me of that day, but there are crucial differences. For a start, everywhere is dangerous this time around. Back in 2001, I was worried that the terrorists had more plans to execute, and I was trying to avoid the likely areas of attack. Covid-19 has no plan, just an evolutionary drive to infect wherever and whenever the opportunity to do so exists. 

On 9-11, movement equaled safety, and there was a sort of dazed comfort in being part of huge crowds moving uptown, or over the East River bridges into Brooklyn and Queens. The weather was beautiful, everyone was together in the streets and if any danger was headed our way, we’d all be able to see it, moving through the plane-emptied sky.

Now, safety lies in stillness, in not moving and not being outside in crowds. This is nerve-wracking on a fundamental level. It goes against Fight-or-Flight 101: if you stand still, the big cat will get you.

Most people who have the means and opportunity to do so left New York City weeks ago, and it’s not just the practical considerations (fewer people, more places to walk without fear of infection) that led them to do it: it’s that animal need to move, to get away.

For those who’ve stayed, the current crisis has altered not just the geography of the city, but the manner in which we move through it.

When I leave my apartment now, walking down the street almost feels like driving. I’m constantly watching the movement of the other people around me, calculating their speed and trajectory, and adjusting my own so that we don’t get too close. 

I’m also trying to take into account the movement of the invisible exhaust blanketing this particular highway: the germs that I and my fellow travelers are trailing behind us, like junkers with faulty mufflers. I do my best to avoid other people’s slipstreams. I walk at least six feet behind, preferably 45 degrees to the left or right, hoping that puts me outside of any cone of infection. 

A few days ago, as I was returning from a trip to the drug store, a guy started walking behind me and yelling in a way that was either the result of alcohol or mental illness. He was going on about pedophiles and cursing someone (I didn’t look back to see if it was me) and all I could picture was the germs shooting out of his mouth as he ranted.

 I was upwind of him, and the breeze was blowing southward, so I probably was safe. But I wasn’t safe from any droplets being ejected by anyone further north on Broadway, and that made me tense. As I approached my building, I saw a group of five men standing on the corner, talking loudly about sports, none of them wearing masks. I balanced my instinct to avoid them with my desire to not be seen avoiding them. As I passed, one of the men coughed absentmindedly, leaving me quietly traumatized. 

Unfortunately, this is going to be the state of things for the foreseeable future. A friend recently returned to the city from Maryland, and said that things are notably different from when he left over a month ago: everyone is wearing masks and more carefully keeping their distance. Though new infections have gone down, there are still enough to scare people, and everyone is worried about the second wave. 

The last time I rode a subway was on March 11th, when I returned home from a visit to the dentist. My dentist’s office is in a building on 2nd Avenue between 42nd and 43rd streets. The building is also home to offices of the Israeli consulate. There is always a police car out front, and to get into the lobby you have to walk past a row of concrete bollards that run the length of the block. Such bollards have been common in New York since September 11th, as have policemen standing outside of subway turnstiles to randomly search backpacks, or armed National Guardsmen standing with assault rifles in Penn Station or Grand Central. They’re just part of the fabric of the city, and no longer signal to me that something is wrong. Who knows what anti-Covid measures we will one day take for granted?

Bad Dads In Armor

This past April, I started reacquainting myself with George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, spurred by the start of Season Six of HBO's "Game of Thrones."  When not actually watching the show, I spent my time searching  Reddit and Imgur for Game of Thrones memes, reading new theories about Jon Snow's parentage on Quora, and listening to the audiobooks on my iPhone. My family got used to the sight of me walking around our apartment with headphones on. If they asked me a question, I'd roll my eyes or grunt in annoyance. Being summoned back to the real world was such a drag.  

Normally, I would say that a man in his forties spending this much time on sword and sorcery fantasy stories is a man trying to escape something—such as the pressures of fatherhood.

I did not try to get my sons to watch "Game of Thrones" with me. Despite all the sword fights, magic and adventure--exactly the type of thing that a guy raised on comic books would want to share with his two pre-teen boys--"Game of Thrones" is wildly inappropriate for children. Like a lot of HBO's previous hit shows--The Sopranos, the Wire, Deadwood--GOT is gruesomely violent, overtly sexual and emotionally brutalizing. A lot of characters die, and those who don't are just as likely to end up burned, raped or crippled. I'm happy to say that my sons are not yet desensitized enough to enjoy this type of thing. 

What's more, neither seems terribly interested in the fantasy genre. The elder, who is 13, is really only concerned with social media, Drake, and his hair. The younger one, almost 10, likes to play Minecraft and memorize the Billboard charts from the Eighties through the Oughts. Different strokes, etc.

Even if you have never watched "Game of Thrones," you've probably heard that the writers regularly kill off the main characters, often at moments when the audience least expects it. This is in keeping with the source material. George R.R. Martin has made a point of subverting the narrative expectations set by fantasy classics like The Lord Of The Rings, particularly the idea that the hero will survive to the end of the story. 

My children, on the other hand, hate surprises, especially nasty ones. Years ago, I read my son, as a bedtime story, a chapter from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. This particular chapter features a plot twist right out of the Martin playbook: a character who we've come to know and started to like, Cedric Diggory, is suddenly killed. When I read this scene, my son got quiet for a few moments, then started wailing so loudly his mother rushed into the room. It took another hour for her to get him to sleep and afterwards she yelled at me so loudly she almost woke him up again.  

It's just as well my kids don't discover "Game of Thrones" now anyway. The most powerful force in Westeros, far more destructive than dragons, ice demons and sorcery, is family. Both the show and the books are full of awful patriarchs: Tywin Lannister, whose dedication to maintaining his family's power and reputation warps his children in terrible ways; Stannis Baratheon, who burns his own daughter alive in order to help him win a battle (and it doesn't work, which only compounds his bad judgment); Craster, the "wilding" who weds his own daughters and gives his baby sons to the demonic White Walkers; and even Ned Stark, the protagonist of the first season, whose stubborn sense of honor costs him his head, and arguably the lives of his wife and several of his sons.

My children already get plenty of examples of incompetent fathering from my day-to-day interactions with them--I see no need to provide more.  They have their whole lives to discover the shitty parenting so ably celebrated in the world's art and literature--from Hamlet's mom to Homer Simpson.  For the moment, then, "Game of Thrones" will remain a private pleasure, no-kids-allowed, like alcohol, expensive restaurants and curse words.

Agent Carter's Rebound

         For those of you who've never seen it, Marvel's Agent Carter is an action/espionage adventure show, with a side helping of superhero. Set in the late '40s, the show's protagonist is the frighteningly capable Peggy Carter, the romantic foil to Steve Rogers in the first Captain America film. Now that the war is over and Captain America is apparently dead, Carter is working for the SSR (an organization that will eventually evolve into Marvel's super secret service S.H.I.E.L.D.)  

     One of the main themes of the first season of Agent Carter was the trouble professional women have being taken seriously by their male co-workers. The show got a lot of mileage out of the way Carter ran rings around her fellow agents, though inevitably it was the men who got the credit for her work.  For this new season, the show has added the element of race, and its treatment in the first two episodes illustrates one of the challenges of creating a period piece TV show: how do you realistically portray the racial attitudes of the past without offending present day notions of diversity and progressiveness? 

   The Season 2 premier of Agent Carter introduces a possible new love interest, an earnest black scientist named Jason Wilkes. Carter first encounters him when she sneaks into a sinister industrial firm called Isodyne in order to investigate a murder. They run into each other in a hallway, and, after a beat of surprise, Wilkes immediately invites her back to his office, in order to wow her with the still he has built in his apparently ample spare time, a collection of glass tubes and beakers in which he creates "the best wine" Carter has ever tasted. Carter is on a mission, but she's also charmed by Wilkes, and engages in some light badinage while trying to get information. Were Agent Carter set in the present, this meet cute would seem perfectly normal (if a little ham-handed). But this is supposed to be the late '40s, when such forwardness to a white woman could--and sometimes did--get black men killed.

    Suspension of disbelief is a funny thing. I've never had any trouble accepting that Carter can beat up just about any man she encounters, nor that a villain can freeze people solid with a touch of his hand, as happens in this first episode. But the ease with which Wilkes moves in the world of white people struck me as scarcely credible. Affable, intelligent, and confident enough to recognize the chance that his interest in Carter will be reciprocated, he is a "post-racial," Obama-esque figure years before such a thing existed--before the civil rights movement and "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner," before it was even legal for black and white people to marry in many states (though California did repeal its miscegenation laws in 1948, around the time in which Agent Carter is set.)   

     To be fair, the writers do try to address the racism of the time. At one point, Wilkes says that Isodyne is the only company that would employ "one of his kind." Later, as he and Carter are on the run from some murderous company thugs, they encounter a white store owner whose attitude--including calling Wilkes "boy"--sends Carter into a fury. When she expresses her desire to settle things with her fists, Wilkes smooths things over, noting that the store owner is hardly the only racist in LA.

    That's about it. Wilkes doesn't seem angry about such treatment, nor particularly hampered by it. So far, so good. So far, so bland.

     Perhaps Wilkes is not meant to be a recurring character. By the end of the second hour, he seems to have been sucked up by the mysterious black ooze which serves as the show's current McGuffin. If they bring him back--and he is not possessed by some sort of alien demon (such things often happen in the Marvel Universe)--I hope the writers make him more compelling, and explore the dramatic possibilities of his character's presence. How will the other men in her life--buttoned-down butler Edwin Jarvis, playboy inventor Howard Stark, sad sack SSR agent Daniel Sousa--react to Agent Carter's interest in Wilkes?  A romantic relationship between them would highlight Carter's disdain for convention, and also give her plenty of opportunities to get outraged on Wilkes behalf: a good thing, as actress Hayley Atwell is most engaging when her character is either angry at, or annoyed by, men.

    Besides, how cool would it be for Captain America's ex-girlfriend to find happiness in the arms of a black man? This is a woman whose romantic ideal is the blond-haired, blue-eyed Steve Rogers, a guy who dresses in an American flag and beats people up for a living. For her to end up with a nerdy, African American scientist would be a subversive act in ways that resonate as much now as they would have 70 years ago. 

PERISCOPE UP!

It’s not often we have the chance to test drive a new app the moment it’s released. We missed the boat with so many of them–Instagram, Vine, Meerkat. So when we saw that Twitter had just released Periscope, its live video streaming app, we jumped on in an attempt to get ahead of the curve for once.

What we found was…well,  a lot of people doing what we were doing: testing it out by filming their dogs, or their office, or their kids, or talking into their front facing camera. It’s fascinating to see these early baby steps, before the platform has thrown up any “stars” or anything has gone viral.

Of course, Periscope seems ripe for misuse, and we assume that it’s only a matter of hours before the network is chock a-block with all kinds of kinky stuff we shouldn’t be watching. Stay tuned for a Buzzfeed story on the first live robbery to be “periscoped“ (see, we don’t even have an official word for it yet!) or the first couple do do the nasty while sharing it with every one of their Twitter followers. About five minutes ago, we saw some guy take a pee, so things seem to be off to a grand start.

Will Periscope take over the mantle that Meerkat assumed only last week? Who can say? This is social media, baby: things move fast. Who knows if either platform will even survive the two minutes it will take us to finish this post?

EDIT - Well, that was quick. Ten minutes after we posted the above, a building collapsed in NYC’s East Village and Periscope became a go-to place for people to share video of the scene. Not at all the kind of viral event we were hoping for.

Are You Watching?

This being America and all, we figured it was only a matter of time before someone took the NSA scandal and figured out a way to make money from it. But we’re pleased that the creators of new iOS app TouchTone seem to have their priorities straight: while we’re sure they’d like to turn a profit, they seem most concerned with teaching a lesson.

TouchTone perfectly illustrates the dangers of domestic surveillance by making the user complicit in it: to do well at the game, you have to spy on your (fictional) neighbors. The directions have a disturbing Orwellian tone—“The innocent have nothing to hide”—and the graphics are pure “24”-style tech. This is an example of a game in which the premise and design actually serve an idea beyond simply garnering buzz—a rare thing in the tech world these days.

Oakley Dokley

We went searching for well-designed websites, and our discovery of moto.oakley.com presented us with a question: is it appropriate that a site promoting "impact protection" should itself make such a powerful impact?

The clean, cool design of Oakley's site employs parallax technology, and sensibly avoids the cheesy effects to which said technology is often put. What you get is an interactive site that conveys the product's value to its intended audience, blends with the aesthetic of other companies in the competitive dirt biking space, and makes keeping mud out of your eyes seem like a fashion choice. We approve, Oakley: we approve.

HER

Sexbots have been the dream of lonely nerds since time immemorial, but who knew we were living in the age when they become a reality?

This weekend, users of dating/hook-up app Tinder who happened to be in Austin for the SXSW conference found a fresh new face to swipe right on. Her name was Ava, and she was gorgeous. She was also interested in what they had to say, and seemed full of questions. In every case, she gave the person with whom she was texting an Instagram handle and told them to check it out.

Those who did check it out experienced a mix of disappointment and admiration–for, of course, Ava was a bot, a bot specifically created to promote a film called Ex Machina about artificial intelligence. A surprising number of people responded with praise for the audacity of this viral marketing campaign—though how many of them were just trying to put on a brave face is impossible to say.

As we only heard about this after the fact, and never got our heart broken by this achingly beautiful bit of software, you can believe us when we say the whole thing is genius. Ava caught the user’s attention, engaged their emotions, and gave them an experience they will always associate with the product she was promoting. The perfect marketing machine.

via AdWeek

It's A Crazy Case Camera Kit!

Most of the DML crew is out of the office today, in Miami filming a video for one of our clients (more on that later). Those that are left are busy helping another client conquer SXSW via Twitter and other social media platforms.

So that just leaves us to man the store. And our way of manning the store is to find cool designs to share with you. This one is via Laughing Squid--and though it came out late last year, we only just noticed it.

It's a crazy case/camera kit for the iPhone 6. We admit that part of our fascination with it is due to the Amy Adams-ish charms of the spokesmodel in this video, but that's just because we appreciate good marketing.

The case itself looks handy--though it goes to such great lengths to look like a real point and shoot that we start to wonder "why not just buy a point and shoot?" One of these days, someone is going to invent a pro-grade camera that comes with a phone as an add on. Probably someone already has.

Only Missing Mugatu

Can this be for real? Derek Zoolander and Hansel McDonald showed up at the Valentino show in Paris! We feel like we're taking crazy pills!

Actually, this is a great example of non-traditional integrative marketing. Blurring the lines between fiction and reality (or as close to reality as fashion gets), this execution is all win. Valentino gets a little extra Hollywood buzz, and shows that they don't take themselves too seriously. Paramount can sit back and relax, confident in the knowledge that everyone on the Internet now knows about "Zoolander 2." And we all get to wig out at the joy of seeing these two iconic characters inject themselves into a real fashion show.

First those amazing stock photo shots of Vince Vaughn and the other stars of "Unfinished Business," now this. Integrated marketing stunts are soooo hot right now!

Magic Emotions

So we saw this Wired video review of Magic, the new text-based delivery start-up in San Francisco, and felt conflicting emotions.

On the one hand, Magic feels like another example of the cheapening of labor in America, a trend that is turning the country into a high-tech luxury hotel where vast armies of room servants cater to the whims of a lucky few, all for low wages with zero job security. It feels entitled and elitist, like Google’s bus service or that time those tech guys tried to reserve space in a public park.

On the other hand, how cool is it that you can text a stranger and have them turn up at your door an hour later with a Mexican wrestler’s mask? It’s the kind of thing that would have blown our 8-year-old, lucha libra-obsessed mind.

So, like we said: emotions.

A Camera Falls...

 A camera falls from a plane, plunges several thousand feet through the air and lands in a pigsty. If we remembered more from our college Lit courses, we could make some fancy reference to pride coming before a fall, or the flight of Icarus, or Lucifer in Paradise Lost “hurled headlong flaming from th’ Ethereal Skie.”

But as we are all just day-jobbing swine, incapable of looking further than the next paycheck, we’ll just go with: “Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool.”

Polar Vortex

Polar Vortex

Winter Storm Janus (really? Are we naming blizzards now?) hit New York City (and lots of other places) yesterday, resulting in some beautiful photographs (and lots of other things). Here is a prime selection, put together by @Gothamist.

DML Man of the New Year

Sir Patrick Stewart, who continues to not give a flying f*** about his reputation as a distinguished old man of the theater. Case in point: appearing on an obscure podcast and spending a good ten minutes imitating the different accents of British cows.  Either he is Buddhistically enlightened or smoking more weed than Seth Rogan. Regardless, we send him a solid “Ave Caesar!”

NYC is the Matrix

We could talk about how these aerial shots of NYC, courtesy of Gothamist, feel like stills from a new Star Wars movie, or like what Neo saw when he tried “the jump” in the first Matrix film. Or, we could be slightly less nerdy, and say they represent a stunning new angle from which to contemplate our urban spaces. But that sounds academic and pretentious. So let’s just say that these shots are epic, and leave it at that.

Fox In A Yellow Dress

Another piece of NYC nostalgia, this time via the Facebook page of Dirty Old 1970s New York. While the straight men in the office are sure-‘nuff diggin’ the fox in the yellow dress, all of us are loving the old school touches—including the vintage traffic light, garbage can and bake-shop store front.

Saul Leiter's Allure

We’re afraid to click on the link to more of these pictures—because once we do, important work will not get done. Unimportant work will not get done. We will forget to eat, and will only tear our eyes away from the screen with the most extreme reluctance.

Photos by Saul Leiter

via

photojojo

The Yurting Kind

When we die, we hope our obituary contains a line as awesome as: "No one did more to promote yurts than Bill Coperthwaite."

(via Cabinporn.com. Photograph by A. William Frederick.)

Keep Your Nose Clean

The fellows (and ladies, presumably) of Laughing Squid recently posted a link to a book of dogs licking their noses.

We particularly like this because our office is run by a queen pitbull bitch named Gouda: she pretty much calls the shots around here, and she licks her nose a lot. The dog above is not Gouda, who you can see below.

Miley Surprised Us

Miley Cyrus has finally done something that legitimately shocks us. She collaborated with the Roots on an a cappella version of We Can’t Stop and she totally crushed it.