The Lake Wobegon Effect

I've been listening to Garrison Keillor's 'Lake Wobegon Summer 1956' and thought I might take a moment to recommend it to those of you that might need more weight to keep the bedside table from floating away. Lake Wobegon, for the uninitiated, is a fictitious town in Minnesota. His weekly radio show: A Prairie Home Companion, features the news from Lake Wobegon, "where the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." .... more about that in a bit.

T will tell you that my favorite book is always the one that I'm reading and that I have "Fan" personality the way some people have addictive personality. By that I mean that given a sufficient amount of exposure to an author / director / world / universe etc., I will feel compelled to explore every dusty corner until the next thing grabs my eye. Observing a multitude of fandoms (as a newbie in each) has provided a rather varied perspective of what it means to be "into" something. Believe it or not, I consider myself a rather moderate fan in just about every category. This is mainly because I have met the "real" fans and well .... they scare me.

My first scare was when I stepped into Cosmic Planet, a comic book store in Tulsa OK. Comic books had been my thing for a few months and I had encountered my first real snag as a collector. You see, I had issues 2-6 of DC's Super Powers Miniseries (including the cool one with Mr. Fantastic on the cover) but I was missing #1. This was right before the "comics are a good investment" revolution of the late 80's when comic stores were made more friendly and staffed with eager friendly investment bankers.

It only took me about 5 minutes to find the book; but I couldn't get out of there fast enough. Not sure what the music was that was blaring through the store; but it probably had "death" in the title and a corpse on the album cover. The artwork on the walls was all gruesome and the employees were all scary older kids dressed in black. On the upside, Issue #1 (with Darkseid holding the all the heroes in his giant fist) is now worth $25 and the value of the other 5 is up because it's a complete set. I paid $3.00 for the book - 4 times what I had paid for the other issues at my beloved Safeway Grocery Store at the corner at 111th and Memorial in Bixby, OK.

I'm a Safeway kind of fan. I know that the long expected party was Bilbo's 111th birthday and like to make sure that I pronounce Tolkien's Elvish names correctly, but have never once considered buying the rings, swords, goblets, or anything else in the Noble House catalog of LOTR collectibles .... except the pewter chess set (which is down to $275 on eBay). As it was told - on a dirt road - I went to see Episode Three at midnight, but there is no storm trooper armor at my house .... although I think there are some second-hand light sabers - but they are in the little guy's room. I can name 26 Star Trek Captains, but have never been to a convention. I never lived in my parent's basement; and yes - Mr. Shattner, I have kissed a girl.

The internet has made it easier to tip-toe into a fandom without going all-in. I don't think I ever used the B'joran ensign profile I created for Star Trek.com to do anything more than review continuity guides and read articles about how Roddenberry's fictitious "star dating" might work ... even though he never bothered to work it out himself. The passing fan can click a bit, find his or her answer and go right back to have a somewhat normal life that more prepared to answer intelligent questions in canceled TV. series trivia.

Now back to Lake Wobegon .....

Sociological studies have shown that most really think their kids are above average. According to one frequently cited statistic that demonstrates this cognitive bias found by a study conducted by Ola Svenson, 80% of students believed they were in the top 30% of safe drivers. The effect has been found repeatedly by many other studies for other traits, including fairness, virtuosity, luckier and better investors, to name a few. While this is statistically impossible, maybe it helps explain my Fan-aticism. If a book or other artistic work is worthy of being experienced, I feel like I'm both cheated and cheating it I don't experience it fully.

I desperately want to be above average - even if it's just in my ability to tell you that while Lake Wobegon is fictitious, Keillor based his town on Anoka, Minnesota - which just happens to be the self-proclaimed Halloween capital of the world. They have a big parade every year ... well actually 2 parades - one during the day and one at night .... plus a kids mini-parade outside the elementary school the Friday before Halloween.

Oh, and there's a big high school football game called the Pumpkin Bowl .....