Net Surf
GeoCities: Homesteading on the Electric Frontier
GeoCities is never quite what it appears to be. Touted as the 10th largest consumer Web site by marketing godzilla PC-Meter, GeoCities spins like a beckoning Starship Enterprise of simultaneous individuality and commonality. And it holds a treasure trove of promotional stuff: dumb flea-market things like GeoCities caps, hokey things like birthday greetings, valuable things like homepages (2 megs of which you get free) - you'll find all forms of conspicuous consumables here. Which is why 240,000 so-called homesteaders have built homepages within GeoCities' virtual microclimates.
Dig deeper and GeoCities becomes a pioneering Paul Bunyan of an outpost in cyberspace, a munificent world that attempts to be all things to all people. GeoCities is what the Web is all about: dreams for a better virtual life. Have a mansion in lusty Hollywood even though you live in Belgium. Travel to virtual Vienna to discover megaclassical music MIDI sites. Become a homesteader and move into one of 29 cybercities, where you can live and love, build and set down roots.
GeoCities seems poised to become the first moneymaking Webventure known to geeks. Of course, the omnipresent extraterrestrials of advertising exist here, but somehow, they're more subtle, more acceptable. Advertisers are treated like John Cheeverish new neighbors who will do anything to fit in. But homesteaders are treated with megarespect, and they respond by coming pretty damn close to creating the mythic community everyone always talks about but never quite actualizes.
Though initial GeoCity homepage attempts were annoyingly primitive, the last six months have witnessed a full genetic transformation. The homepage-happy denizens are into raucous creativity now. Witness The Mona Mailart Show project (www.geocities.com/SoHo/7022/), where villagers submit graphic parodies of the wry DaVinci diva. Here, all your knowledge of fine art morphs into a renaissance Italian cabaret, old chum. Regard The Mona Liza, in which the elusive Mona becomes a plastic-surgery-poster-girl-Broadway-show-tune crooner. Or perhaps the Mona Lisa as busty Marilyn in a checked bikini.
Even if this isn't the highest tech stuff, these mavens do a lot with their 2 megs. Although there's a preponderance of talk about drinking at the BourbonStreet community, an Australian known as reefR creates a fairly funny page of drinking games and history*(www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/1053/)*. There's even a Reservoir Dogs game where (gasp!) you have to quaff libation every time a character uses the f word. At Sunsetstrip, oddly, there's a megapage about the terrific and culty New York antifolk singer Brenda Kahn (www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/6480/), with a Brenda crossword puzzle for her few thousand motley but rabid fans. GeoCities beckons with everything from MotorCity (an ideal subdivision if, say, Bobby LaBonte is your pedal-to-the-metal hero) to Soho (a beatnik paradise).
But GeoCities, of course, isn't a real community: there's no suicide, sex, drugs, or murder. It's not the utopian planet of perfection, either. But right now, it's the best use of the Web by a group of regular Janes and Joes. There are no Internet geeks, no intranet techheads, just people who love their computers and desperately need to communicate a sense of place.
Harold Goldberg (mediacur@aol.com)
If Web Sites Had Gun Racks
Staking out new territory down by the river, y'all is almost certainly the leading outpost of Southern culture on the Web.
This deceptively slick e-zine is, as my aunt Bonnie would say, "HIGH-laryuss." Though breathtaking in its redness of neck, y'all still pulls off some impressive high tech entertainment, including WrassleMania and Hicksville 200. Most addictive is the Cowchip County Bottle Challenge, a full-fledged Shockwave game in which you chuck beer bottles from your speeding pickup at cows, road signs, and UFOs.
A word of caution, however: before long, you may find yourself filling out the Application to Live in the South. (Sample question: "Do you own any shoes? If yes, how many?")
www.yall.com/
Syllabels in Space
Since the sparse Japanese poetry form haiku hit the American consciousness in the late 19th century like so many detonated cherry blossoms, Westerners have infused the petite 17-syllable frame with everything from Hollywood mojo to beatific acid trips to corporate melancholy. But hold on to your Mount Fuji. A new season in three-line verse has hit the Web: SciFaiku. What do you get when you morph Matsuo Basho with Philip K. Dick, or Kobayashi Issa with William Gibson? Check out the elegant, techie, and tripped-out text known as The SciFaiku Manifesto and sneak a peek at some possible scenarios. Can't stomach your lit without a chopstick of crit? Then flip over to the Sci-Faiku Review-O-Rama. And if you're inspired to pen your own poem, follow the link to The Virtual Fridge, select the SciFaiku word heap, and get futuristically existential all over your galaxy.
www.crew.umich.edu/~brinck/poetry/manifesto.html
Virtual Idolatry
It's responsible for cocktail parties, office pools, and is the raison d'�tre for many a gay man: the Oscars are March 24, and Mr. Showbiz - the snarky celeb site that regularly pokes sticks in the glitterati's spokes - promises "more contests than Liz Taylor has ex-husbands!" For six weeks preceding O-night, the site hosts a hurricane of special events and interactive features; but don't expect the brownnosing that ET serves up. Instead, check out the Fashion Face-Off of best- and worst-dressed starlets and the newly added Plastic Surgery Lab, an ongoing mix-and-match of celebrity facial features.
Mr. Showbiz remains the favorite online tattler of gossip-mongers. So whatever your money is on (Fargo still has our vote!), join the gang online for the 69th annual worship of our golden idols.
www.mrshowbiz.com/
Postfem and Proud
Devoid of splashy graphics, The Postfeminist Playground is a welcome relief from those pages that take five years to download. But what the site lacks in visual pizazz, it compensates for in thought-provoking, vitriolic nastiness.
Notably different from the sites of its femme-friendly riot grrrls who abound on the Web, the playground's two postfeminist editors tackle gender politicking head-on with pop culture reviews, overtly sexual fiction, and critical essays. "We don't have to write any more stories about victimization and oppression! We can write about something else for a change," they shout. You won't find any finger-pointing at the male-controlled media or corporate patriarchy; what you will find are unabashedly self-absorbed essays that aren't afraid to poke fun at themselves.
www.pfplayground.com/
In the Web's Darkest Hour...
Into the dreary chaos of Netropolis comes a man with a vision of how things once were and might be again. Brooklyn-based graphic artist Chris Kalb has rediscovered - and brilliantly resurrected - our first mysterious superhero, The Spider.
Kalb's Spider Kit lets you learn about, and then embody, pulp fiction's earliest dark avenger. A series of ingenious paper cutouts (gun, hat, mask, and, of course, The Spider Ring) can be downloaded with Netscape and the Adobe Acrobat plug-in. A quick flash of steel scissors, and you're ready to kick some criminal backside.The site is part of a larger online pulp-fiction renaissance, including Kalb's Hero Pulp page (members.aol.com/heropulp/) and Vintage Library's Pulp Fiction Central (www.vintagelibrary.com/pulp/).
The Spider Kit's cunning combination of high and low tech is, at last, a payoff on the promise of the Web. In one stroke, Kalb unites the best of interactive technology, American pop culture, and our own childhood dream worlds. The Super Friends wish they had it this good.
www.vintagelibrary.com/pulp/spider/spdrkit.htm
Beer Frame
While many Web sites look really great, they often read like they were put together by illiterate fourth graders. But not www.highfalls.com/, erected by the HighFalls Brewing Company. Not only does this microbrewery make a great beer (including the buttery smooth J. W. Dundee's Honey Brown Lager), but it has some of the funniest text on the Web, much of it delivered by retired brewmaster Chester.
Chester's tour of the site covers many an odd link, including one aside about movies that should have won Oscars: Animal House, Strange Brew ("the whole movie is about beer"), and "any Dirty Harry movie, including Sudden Impact." Then he introduces you to Jeannie, the brewery's receptionist, whose son Ronnie was paid 10 bucks by Frank Sinatra to stop staring at him (Ronnie gets his own page, too).
The rest of the site is a bit more useful - with a list of famous beer quotes, a beer quiz, and an abbreviated history of the twist-off cap - but it delivers with the same snappy, irreverent humor. This site will make you laugh so hard, beer will come out of your nose.
Thanks to the Wired 5.02 Surf Team
Colin Berry (colin@wired.com)
Colin Lingle (colinl@starwave.com)
Tessa Rumsey (tessa@wired.com)
Paul Semel (beerhound@aol.com)
Anne Speedie (anne@wiredmag.com)
