Defender of the Free Refill

You know that instrumental song that you hear everywhere, but you never hear the name of because … well, because it either has no words or the famous part of it has no words? Well that bugs me, so here for the sake of reference are those songs:

• That mid-tempo groove track with the electric organ that you hear going to and from commercial on that late night talk show is “Green Onions” by Booker T. & the M.G.s.
• That big band swing number that starts out with a drum solo is “Sing, Sing, Sing” by Louis Prima, the Benny Goodman recording.
• The haunted house music is “Toccata and Fugue in D minor for Organ” by Bach.
• The circus music is “Entrance of the Gladiators” by Julius Fučík.
• The bagpipe song that isn’t “Amazing Grace” is “Scotland the Brave” and is traditional.
• The “Kill Bill” tune is “Battle Without Honor or Humanity” by Tomoyasu Hotei.
• The plate-spinning tune is “The Sabre Dance” by Aram Khachaturian.
• The Elvis intro-music is “See See Rider” and is probably traditional.
• The loud melodramatic music in the commercial for the lousy movie is “O Fortuna” by Carl Orff.
• The gunslinger music cue is the main theme from “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” by Ennio Morricone.
• The twangy rock-a-billy song with the saxophone is “Rebel Rouser” by Duane Eddy.
• The dramatic cue from the old suspense movie is one of several by Ronald Hanmer, most likely “Menace.”

Did I forget any? Describe it in the comments and I’ll add it to the list.

Three espionage-related titles from The Hitchcock Project: Foreign Correspondent, Torn Curtain, and Topaz.

Foreign Correspondent (1940) stars Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, and George Sanders (better known as Shere Khan). McCrea plays an American journalist dispatched to Britain to cover the final days before World War II inevitably starts in Europe, including a nonprofit peace activist group and the visit of a Dutch diplomat. The diplomat is apparently assassinated, but McCrea knows that the victim was in fact a doppleganger — the real diplomat is being held hostage while his captors try to extract secret terms of an international treaty from him.

The bulk of the movie is MacGuffin fare; the protagonist and his two British companions searching for one kidnapped person or another. What does stand out is the degree of humor — from the more seasoned fellow journalist who spends his time not drinking in bars, to McCrea’s complete inability to retain his hat, to the world’s worst bodyguard, to Sanders’ character’s lack of capital letters in his name. The ending was apparently quite dramatic at the time, involving an over-water plane crash. Plugged in after that is an open plea on the radio from McCrea’s character for America to join in the war effort — it feels very tacked-on, but I’m sure in 1940 it was quite a serious matter.

Day’s character is the stock part for the time period: dutiful daughter of the important man. Sanders is an atypically-helpful Bristish man (atypical considering that McCrea is American). There are some bold choices dramatically, like letting the audience know who the real bad guy is well before the end. There are also some questionable ones, like a car that allegedly disappears “into thin air” during a chase sequence, but could have been found in 30 seconds if anyone had bothered to actually look for it. Plus, like Torn Curtain below, for some reason people in some movies can’t spot close acquaintances and family members sitting ten feet away from them on airplanes. And it wasn’t the smoke.

On the whole, though, especially for the well-integrated humor, well worth watching.

Torn Curtain (1966) with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews is considerably less worth watching. Not that it didn’t have potential. The plot is interesting enough; Newman plays a US scientist who defects to East Germany to work on anti-missile defense systems for the Communists after the US government cancels his own research into the same technology. Except that that’s not actually what he’s doing; in reality he’s faked the defection to see if the German program hides the solution to his own roadblock. What makes the plot interesting is that Newman’s character has enlisted zero help from the CIA or anyone else for this venture; he’s just thought it up himself and gone for it, counting on East German sympathizers to help him back out once he’s learned what he wants to know.

Where Torn Curtain falters is in execution — the script (especially in the first half) has no flow and provides no insight into the characters — it’s more like a procedural; the soundtrack is light and peppy, which is totally at odds with the alleged suspense of the plot; and I hate to say it but the effects don’t work. Matte paintings, rear-projection screens, and sets that look as much like outdoor Berlin as the inside of a Taco Bell. The problems (according to DVD documentary sources) plagued the entire production, with numerous rewrites and disagreements … at one point, there was even serious talk of Julie Andrews having a musical number.

On the plus side, though, the last act picks up the pace considerably; Newman and Andrews manage to have a pretty good escape sequence, including the only time in film history when a bus ride provides any dramatic tension (yes, yes — I have seen Speed, and yes, that is a commentary on what I thought of Speed). An interesting DVD feature is the ability to watch most of the movie with the original Bernard Hermann score instead of the replacement ordered by Hitchcock after he and Hermann had a falling out. Hermann’s is the better; it hits moments on screen that make you wonder early on about the allegiances of the characters, and actually feels like a drama the entire way through. I don’t know what Hitchcock was thinking asking for it to be pepped up.

Topaz (1969) concerns US and French secret agents trying to uncover a ring of high-level double agents that has been feeding secrets to Cuba. In my opinion, it’s excellent; it got unfairly slammed at the box office when it came out, but if you look at why, it’s hard to sympathize. It has no big name stars, no hidden identities, and no chase sequences. It has dialogue. Entire scenes where the only way you can follow what is going on is by listening. Hard to believe, but that is enough to turn off most movie audiences (now and in 1969).

But it’s filled with interesting devices, such as a nearly silent scene where the daughter of a defector escapes a tail while browsing in a porcelain museum, two sequences where the French agent enlists local help to talk his way past Cuban security, and you have to observe the action without the benefit of hearing the dialog because it is behind glass, and one of the few times in movie history where a cartoonist saves the day (the only other one I can think of is Zodiac).

So yeah, Topaz isn’t a “suspense” film like Notorious or Dial M For Murder. Hitch deserves some credit for trying something different, and more for actually pulling it off. The production this most reminded me of is John le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, because it is also about uncovering a double agent, but at a deeper level, too. Both films emphasize what espionage is really like — lying about who you are and what you do, tricking people into giving up information they want to keep secret, and never knowing which of the people around you you can trust. It doesn’t look like fun, does it? Jumping out of planes, racing speeding cars along the Riviera, scaling down the walls of hotels — that looks like fun … which is probably why the James Bond movies made a lot of money. And why they’re all individually forgettable.

Topaz isn’t as good as Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, but the latter is a seven-part miniseries, and it digs in deep to some real issues about giving up a little information to gain a little more information — and how the intelligence business is ultimately an untrustworthy house of cards because both sides are always willing to do just that. Topaz settles for less far-reaching fare, but it delivers a solid dose of intrigue and open questions in its own right. I’d recommend both, but within the Hitchcock canon, Topaz is definitely in the yes pile.

I’m way overdue to post about the Hitchcock endeavor, but some progress has been made. Here’s what I’ve added so far: The Lady Vanishes, Saboteur, Lifeboat, and The Trouble With Harry. I know; that’s not very many. The problem is, I got distracted by watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents through Netflix’s Watch Instantly. There are 39 episodes per season; so far I’ve seen almost two complete seasons. It’s entertaining just for the intro/outros from Hitchcock.

But on with the show. I’m at least going to record capsule reviews. First up: Lifeboat (1943), starring some people you’ve never heard of and Hume Cronyn. The plot: the first few days of a random assortment of torpedoed survivors adrift in a lifeboat in the north Atlantic. Really good; if Film Critics hadn’t spent so much time talking about it, I might not even have noticed that the entire thing was set on a lifeboat, which is a “technical feat” that evidently impresses industry folk. Interesting that it was made during World War II; most of the time a war has to end before it’s reasonable subject material. That said, I do find some of the stock-character-types amusing. For one thing, the German is a true dyed-in-the-wool Nazi superiority believer, not merely a military man doing his service. Of course, that makes for better conflict. I did find the clashes between several of the American characters odd, since they were so split along “class” lines — rich industrialist, poor working stiff, poor simple farm lad, rich reporter. Wait; where did anybody ever get the idea that reporters are rich? Anyway, the film does have some really striking moments, including the first time everybody in the boat wakes up and they re-do the headcount.

Next, The Lady Vanishes (1938); also mid-WWII (at least for the Brits). A surprisingly long set-up at a hotel, followed by the actual plot on board the train. The premise of the story was also explored in an episode of ‘Presents, and perhaps more disturbingly. Nevertheless, the confinement to the train and the utter surreality of the predicament of everyone around you telling you you’re crazy makes for a good tale. If you’re the slightest bit paranoid, you’ll relate well. I do think it’s weird that during the course of the story, you see up close that several of the other train passengers are *not* part of any conspiracy to treat the heroine like she’s imagining things, but they do so anyway for their own reasons. Like a lot of really old Hitchcock movies, I wish it didn’t have to have such a neatly wrapped up happy ending, but the explanation of why the old lady disappears (and how) is at least interesting. I recommend watching it, then watching the ‘Presents episode, which is entitled “Into Thin Air.”

The Trouble With Harry (1955) is called a dark comedy, although it is really not dark in tone; it just involves a dead body — so unless you consider Weekend At Bernie’s “dark comedy” we need to concoct a new term. It’s actually very light, almost too light for me. I think certain kinds of comedy don’t age well — verbal humor does, visual humor sometimes does, sitcom humor does not. For instance, I have seen a couple of episodes of I Love Lucy, and wasn’t tempted to laugh even once. The Trouble With Harry is a lot closer to being funny, but months after watching it what I remember most is the dramatic stuff; along the way we learn more and more about the departed “stranger” Harry, which continually changes what we think of the living characters. It’s an interesting device, and an interesting way to tell a story. It’s just not a laugh riot.

Finally, Saboteur (1942) is a “chase” movie, much in the vein of North By Northwest or a modern “edge of your seat” thriller. But it’s not a bad one, despite the lack of explosions. What really sticks out to me is that Hitchcock knew how to get his protagonist in and out of really tight situations without resorting to cliches. No helicopters crash into fighter jets, but people have to use their wits to get out of trouble, such as being mistaken for one of the conspirators and driven directly to HQ in a car-full of *real* conspirators who will kill you if they catch on. If Michael Bay were making this movie, the only way to escape would be to disarm the guards, shoot everyone, then leap from the car as it goes off a bridge. You probably won’t be on the edge of your seat if you watch this today, but try and think how you would get out of the jams — neither the villains nor the heroes are idiots here, which is a lot more interesting to watch.

Without giving too much away, somebody sabotages a US factory during the war, and the more we learn about it, the more it seems to be evil Americans who hate America or democracy, or just want to push America into WW2 to profit from it or to clean up financially in the aftermath of the war, etc etc. If that sounds like a laundry list of all of the “conspiracy” plots you’ve seen stretched over action movie scripts since the Cold War — congratulations. It is. And it was all here in 1942. I haven’t watched 24 in years, but they’ve retreaded every single one of those conspiracies multiple times, and done it without a single one of those non-idiot heroes and villains. So check out Saboteur if you want to see where ideas come from….

For no reason whatsoever, last week I informally decided that one of my 2009 resolutions would be to watch all of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies. Well, in truth it wasn’t for no reason — it was because I started watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents through Netflix’s Watch Instantly. For genuinely no reason, I am going to keep track of that process on this blog.

But before embarking on the journey, I decided to take stock of what the big man’s filmography actually was. And it’s not short. Here is the list:

1. The Pleasure Garden
2. The Lodger
3. Downhill
4. The Ring
5. Easy Virtue
6. The Farmer’s Wife
7. Champagne
8. The Manxman
9. Blackmail
10. Juno and the Paycock
11. Murder!
12. Elstree Calling
13. The Skin Game
14. Mary
15. Number Seventeen
16. Rich and Strange
17. Waltzes from Vienna
18. The Man Who Knew Too Much
19. The 39 Steps
20. Secret Agent
21. Sabotage
22. Young and Innocent
23. The Lady Vanishes
24. Jamaica Inn
25. Rebecca
26. Foreign Correspondent
27. Mr & Mrs Smith
28. Suspicion
29. Saboteur
30. Shadow of a Doubt
31. Lifeboat
32. Spellbound
33. Notorious
34. The Paradine Case
35. Rope
36. Under Capricorn
37. Stage Fright
38. Strangers on a Train
39. I Confess
40. Dial M for Murder
41. Rear Window
42. To Catch a Thief
43. The Trouble with Harry
44. The Man Who Knew Too Much (56)
45. The Wrong Man
46. Vertigo
47. North by Northwest
48. Pyscho
49. The Birds
50. Marnie
51. Torn Curtain
52. Topaz
53. Frenzy
54. Family Plot

Yikes. Just in case I run out of time — or motivation — I’ve marked the films I’ve already seen in italics (to the best of my current recollection), and will focus on the previously unseen ones to start with. If I make it through all of those, then I could tackle the repeats. And if I complete those, perhaps tackling every TV episode he directed (although he hosted every episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he only directed a few of them). And if I complete those, then I guess I’ll just watch the three or four early movies that are long out of print and believed lost entirely. I’ll let you know if I manage to pull that off.

Question of the week: if one of your crackpot ideas suddenly takes off and you become an eccentric billionaire (and thus, unavoidably, eccentric billionaire adventurer), what obscure world record will you become obsessed with setting?

Because honestly, until I come up with a good one, I just can’t see the point in making all that money, and I for one am not going to do it.

… when you forget to look outside for a couple of days.

How time flies.  I count 14, so there is still considerably more to come.  And if you’re wondering about the inverted-T distortion, that’s the wire cage keeping out the varmints and neighborhood kids.  Early tomorrow morning I’ll remove the cage and shoot a few more, since the window is so short.

or, “The Times, It Are A-Changin’”

Recently The New York Times flung open the vaults to its online article archive, permitting free access to non-advertising content as far back as 1851, complete with full-text search. Is that a valuable research tool, or an unparalleled means to waste time?

Guess that depends on how you look at it. For my part, I decided it would be interesting to look up some contemporary reporting on Wild West figures (that relates somewhat to my grad work on re-enacting).

So, for instance, you can read the very first mention of Billy the Kid, which covers his arrest in 1880. The NYT subsequently reported on his death in 1881.

If that seems like slim coverage of the most famous outlaw of the time period, he at least fared better than stagecoach robber Black Bart, who endured a longer and far more interesting career (1888). Even John Wesley Hardin warrants a more detailed “breaking news” account of his capture on board a train, the authorities having been tipped off in advance and cleared the car of bystanders.

Perhaps papers out west would have provided more in-depth coverage.

Like they gave to Butch Cassidy, whose career was covered considerably later, with more of a “follow along” feel. In 1899, the NYT reports on the first member of his gang being captured. In 1902, authorities claim they are closing in on the ringleader himself. To learn what happened next, of course, you’ll have to watch the movie.

But fame, we learn, is a two-way street. Jesse James’ first mention comes not through reportage on his actual crimes and escapes, but in the form of an 1875 letter to the editor, defending himself against the accusations of (presumably other) papers regarding his involvement in some particular escapade. So mistrustful is he of the papers that he demands they print his defense without editing for spelling and grammar. Though it’s not like he needed to tell us that.

Fame can also be fickle. Perhaps the most interesting public record is Wild Bill Hickok’s. First he is commended in 1867 for having done “good service for the Union in the war.” But the same year, he is also derided as “a gambling bummer of the low order.”

Things turn up in 1872, when he is made a Marshall, although it is not without criticism. “Violent disorders oftentimes require violent antidotes, and therefore was this man Wild BILL, chosen Marshal. He effected what a less desperate man could not, and that was an almost total cessation of street fights…”

A few months later, Hickok’s “tough love” approach to law enforcement makes for more positive news. ” .. the famous “Wild BILL” was prevailed on to take the post. This excellent person bears the reputation of never missing his man when he has leveled his fatal pistol, and of having by a judicious exercise of this engaging talent killed more men than any other on the Western frontier.”

We assume those “men” are all bad guys. Interestingly enough, the article doesn’t dwell on it but the language does seem to support Hickok’s reputation as a bit of a “slow draw artist” — not renowned for being the first to fire a shot when trouble bubbled up, but almost certain to be the last.

Alas, the career soon hit the skids yet again, and Hickok eventually moved to South Dakota to try and lose all of his money playing cards. By 1877, his death itself was not considered newsworthy by the NYT, but the execution of his killer was. From there it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to HBO series stardom.

There’s certain to be more such gems buried in the NYT archive, though if you try it for any length of time, you will get frustrated at its lack of flexibility. Like the lack of phrase searching. “Wild Bill” turns up all articles with both words independently, rather than the exact phrase. And from the looks of it, Congress during that time period had some pretty wild days and passed quite a few bills.

Since I’m on NewsVac duty this weekend (and no, that’s not a euphemism; that’s actually what it’s called), I am going to be near a computer for a lot of time anyway, so I thought it a good opportunity to polish up some photos and make better use of Flickr.

Take Nuestro Pueblo, for example. That’s the official name of Watts Towers, which my brother Adam and I drove out to see when I was in Los Angeles last month.

It’s the single-handed work of Sabato Rodia; seventeen independent structures built out of steel and mortar, inlaid with mosaics made from tile, glass, ceramic pottery, stone, and all other manner of found objects — and carved, impressed, and everything else.

Rodia signed the pieces with an SR in numerous places, many (like the one at left) also sporting impressions of his tools.

He built the towers after work and on his days off, over an astounding thirty year timespan, starting in the 1920s.

The tallest of the towers reach about one hundred feet into the air, which is impressive for a structure built by hand no matter where you find it, but is even more unusual given that Rodia built the entire collection of spires, stairs, alcoves, and fountains in his own yard.

Somehow I suspect that you couldn’t get away with that today. At least, not any place I’ve lived.

Rodia gets a pass because he’s considered an “outsider” artist; mostly meaning that the didn’t market himself commercially (sure, I know people will disagree about the definition here, but that’s what it boils down to). Allegedly in the early Fifties when he decided the sculpture was completed, he deeded his property over to one of his neighbors and moved away, never to return.

We headed out to Watts about 10:00am — which is quite a drive from West Hollywood on a weekday in a vehicle with no A/C — without real exact directions. Luckily, finding the site is not difficult, since Watts is still an almost entirely residential neighborhood with mostly single and two-story dwellings.

Unluckily, as with every place in the greater LA area, there is no place to park, so we stashed the car and walked a couple of blocks to the spires. There we discovered a full-fledged (if small) art museum, an outdoor amphitheater, and a uniformed police officer encouraging us to take the tour. We decided we didn’t have time (half an hour until the next tour, and another for the tour itself) and went self-educated.

The downside here is that the sculpture is surrounded by a security fence only paying tour members are allowed inside. On the other hand, the sheer size of the installation makes it nearly impossible to photograph in its entirety from outside the fence — you have to come close to standing in other people’s yards — so being inside the fence would not have solved that problem.

In this case, I opted for a few “normal” shots of the tall spires that will have to be stitched together with Hugin, and then switched over to the Lensbaby to bring out the raw peculiarities of the site.

Supposedly they have concerts at Watts Towers a couple times each year; no idea if they feature “outsider” musicians.

All in all, easily one of the most unique* sites I’ve seen in California, even if it’s not on the star maps or bus tours. It’s hot and you have to walk. When you see it, it seems to have neither rhyme nor reason. If you don’t get that, I guess that makes you an insider artist.

* - You heard me. It’s more unique than many of the other unique things in California. Some of them are very unique in their own way, just not as unique.

… or, Naught In My Back Yard. A few minutes ago:

The scene outside my front door last Saturday:

Attention-grabbing headline, eh? I was going to title this There’s Lots of Room for You on the Bandwagon, but I couldn’t pass up the shock value.

Anywho, the fun-loving cobblers at Last.fm have finally released an audioscrobbler player that works on my operating system, so I decided to try it out.

In stark contrast to its disturbingly eschatological name, Last.fm is nothing more calamitous than a little computer program that watches what music you listen to and logs it remotely. That lets you do two things: browse the site’s recommendations based on what you listen to, and share your song info with others.

So if you want to know what I’ve been listening to, all you have to do is visit http://www.last.fm/user/n8willis/. Well, actually that’s just a summary page; recent tracks is the feature I was referring to.

There are plugins and whatnot to embed this info in Wordpress, but I haven’t gotten around to them. And like every other “social computing” site to pop out of VC over the last couple of years, the Last.fm site is strewn deeply with buzzword compliance like groups and tags. They don’t add anything to the service, they just make you want to spend a few minutes at the automatic Web 2.0 BS Generator to unwind.

We’re all back in the republic now, if there was any doubt. To show for it I’ve got nearly eight gigabytes of photographs (raw). That’s going to take some time to sort through. I know, I know - everyone visits Prague Castle or some old river and thinks they’re the only one who turned a camera on it. So I promise not to go crazy. But I will try and sift through the damage and find things to show for those who want to see them. And in the process, hopefully get more familiar with Adobe Lightroom.

aka two things they don’t have in Vienna. I don’t know who’s responsible for the sausage misunderstanding; presumably Hormel or Kraft or someone of their ilk. But the Vienese are pretty up-front about the Kangaroo thing. I can’t imagine how it became a big deal, but it must have happened during the short-lived “Dundee” era as it was known here in the US.

Austria has a dearth of famous people these days — entire palaces and museums about empires we were never taught about in school in Temple Texas and Springfield Missouri. Then there’s a big gap. Apparently Ahnold is out of favor here at present, which leaves them with exactly one bragging point: Mozart (well, almost one). And boy do they crank it to eleven on the Mozart. The streets are teeming with hired hands dressed in Mozartlian finery hawking tickets and programs. Though only about one in six seems to go as far as the powdered wig — which I would consider far and away the high point of the get-up. A few sad sacks even hit the street in Court Casual — half costume, half comfort. That is, period jacket and puffy shirt … and jeans.  Where I come from, that’s glorified busking.

In abour an hour, we’ll be leaving for Europe.  If you have no idea what I’m talking about, who “we” are, where in Europe we’re going, where Europe itself is, or even where we’re leaving from, stay tuned.  Today will likely be a long string of airport layovers, and if DFW is any indication, there will be rampant inspiration to find something to do from within your own carry-on luggage.

Last week I did something I hadn’t done in about a decade — listen to a new Ned’s Atomic Dustbin single.

See, the band split up in the mid-90s, due to record label trouble. And for a long time, there was nothing. Several band members started other projects, some just left music entirely. Then in 2000, they were invited to perform a set at a multi-band showcase show celebrating the birthday of the local club where they got their break.

They must have enjoyed it, because the following year they played a couple of other gigs. In fact, they were scheduled to play in New York on September 14th (or 15th?), 2001 — I was unable to travel up there to attend, but did persuade the then-local Alisa Cooper to purchase tickets. That show, of course, never happened, given what transpired a few days before the scheduled event. The Neds never returned to the US.

But they kept doing more and more regular shows — Christmas every year is a staple — while maintaining that they only wanted to remain event-centric, not “reunited.” But then they released a couple of live CDs, and a concert DVD, then last year, a couple of new songs began to appear in the setlists. Finally, a couple of weeks ago (on my birthday, no less) they released a new single. I preordered.

Reasons to like Ned’s Atomic Dustbin? Legion. For one thing, they straddle genres in some unique ways. I say it’s like punk music if it had been invented by youths non-angry and (lacking a more polite way to put it) non-stupid. Most non-fans remember them only as “the band with two bass players” — although that doesn’t really describe the sound. One plays rhythm lines, the other lead. Yeah. Lead on bass. Don’t think Primus; nothing like that. The chap’s name is Alex Griffin, and he plays the bass like a guitar — either the melody or a countermelody to the lead guitar. But unlike with two guitars playing lead, the bass and guitar lines are in different enough registers that they don’t step on each other (I’m not a musicologist, if you hadn’t guessed). It’s just different.

That and Jonn Penney, the vocalist, who is a reason unto himself. The most upbeat individual in the music biz. He’s clever, he uses wordplay, he writes introspective, optimisticly-melancholy lyrics, and no matter what he says, he wins you over. I’m serious; in the Ned’s hiatus he founded an indie record label and in a one-page interview about it, he had me excited about indie music and local artistry — through talking about Stourbridge England, and how positive he felt about its music scene. I’ve never been to Stourbridge.

The Neds today are a little different; two of the original five — though invited, and still apparently on good terms — are not playing with them, replaced instead by volunteers from Jonn’s other hiatus project, Groundswell UK (whose album and single are also worth hearing).

So, how’s this new single sound? It’s good. Hibernation; for the fans I’d say it falls into the Are You Normal? spectrum, but not exactly. Beyond that it’s catchy enough that it sticks in your head. It seems to be well-received, too — according to MySpace, Ned’s are (temporarily) the number-one merchandise-selling artist.

Lucky for us, the band’s Web site says they’ve now headed to the studio, recording more new material. Perhaps that means a full-length album. If so, whichever direction they take it, it’s always fun to see those first-time reviewers grapple for a new way to comment on the two bass players.

Over the weekend, I attended/participated the wedding of my friends Don Bell and Melissa Martinez down in sooouth Texas. As we speak, they are still in the air on their way to their honeymoon destination New Zealand, where they will make wisecracks about the Lord O The Rings movies, and be met with wisecracks about giants and elves in reply.*

I come away from this experience with a collection of groomsman gear generously denoted “keepers” by the tux rental people — including a top hat, gloves, spats (yes, you read that correctly) and cane. I rarely wear tuxes in my day to day routine, but the amenities will certainly come in handy in my pimpin’.

But more importantly, I come away with a host of unusual stories, gleaned from all the friends I visited with and have not seen (in some cases) for years. For instance, Matt Shaw, Man of the People, has inexplicably added to his reportoire the ability to make unlikely things Just Happen. By talking to the desk, for example, he got our shared hotel room bumped up to a suite at no extra charge, despite the hotel being booked solid.

Even less likely was the series of events now known as The Simpsons Incident. It works like this: I decided that, rather than some impersonal item from the official registry, I needed to give Don and Mel the now out-of-print Simpsons Monopoly game. Since it is only available through back channels, it took some searching; eventually I decided I had to purchase one via eBay. As the wedding drew near, I found two up for auction: one in the metroplex and one in Denver. Since Matt Shaw lives in Golden, he agreed to retrieve it and bring it to me in Harlingen if I won it.

Naturally, I did win the one in Denver. Picking it up was problematic: coordinating schedules with the seller, assuring the seller that the stranger who wanted her address (and was not the buyer) was legitimate, and finding a way to get there around work and packing for a trip to Texas are not small tasks.

Finally it came down to do-or-die time; Matt sent the seller an email saying he would have to pick it up Thursday morning before his 10 AM flight. He drove to the address in Denver, and as he got out a car pulled up to the driveway. Matt asked for the seller by name, and was told “oh yes, this is her right here in the car, we just came back to the house for her wallet.”

The game is retrieved, and after Matt flies it down to Texas, he finds waiting for him an email from the seller (sent after he left for her house that morning) regretting that she has to be gone all day and will have to arrange another time for the handoff. For anyone else, a missed opportunity, for MSMOTP, it all falls into place, like clockwork.

There was far more worthy of telling, of course. We went to South Padre on Saturday morning. I talked Hilary into stopping at a highway fruit stand on the highway on the drive home Sunday. There are giant pink gorillas denoting gas stations in certain parts of Texas. The pizza guy at the bachelor party went to the wrong hotel multiple times. Fingerless gloves were smuggled. More people crashed the reception than attended the ceremony.

But there’s time for that kind of talk later.

* That would make sense to you if you had seen Don and Melissa standing together.

Even as I write this, cellular traffic is slowing to a crawl all across the country as otherwise normal people throw time and SMS fees into voting for this season’s American Idol winner.

There are quite a few American Idols these days, enough that a few weeks ago someone posed the following question:

When will there be more American Idols than there are US Presidents?

Looking into it, I have the results, and I am happy to say that we are safe for a while.  According to my calculations, the number of American Idols will exceed the number of US Presidents on September 8, 2052, at 9:36 AM.

This is based on simple linear regression, which by my eye seems to fit the data best.  On average, there is a new US President every 1841.21 days, but a new American Idol every 271.6 days.

Naturally, this is due to the fact that American Idol (the show) airs in just one long season each year.

But if you think that the aforementioned number bodes well for our survival as a species and a culture, don’t beathe a sigh of relief just yet. Think about this: even though Amercian Idol is only on once a year (I know, it feels like more), Survivor is on three times a year — spring, summer and fall.

Three times per year.  Three times a year, some unwashed moron gets handed a bag filled with a million dollars just for sitting in the sun and being an idiot for 30 days in a row.  Think about what that means for future generations.  Say what you will about American Idol (see Keith Olbermann if you’re behind on the facts), but at least it’s some form of merit-based rewards program.

I say all that to warn you.  The number of American Survivor winners (I’m sorry, I just can’t bring myself to refer to them as “winners” — let me start over).  The number of American Survivors will exceed the number of US Presidents on December 1, 2024, at 10:04 AM.

That’s not that far away.  That’s nearly thirty years sooner than the Idol Apocalypse.  *If* things continue on their current trend lines.  I shudder to think what we’d come up with if we counted all the variants in other countries.  All I can say is, at least we’ll have an extra half-hour on that fateful morning to get ourselves mentally prepared.

I hope your family is ready.

Nate

PS - I’ve uploaded a spreadsheet with the data and calculations used in this post, in case anyone wants to check for mistakes or try some other type of curve fitting.  Download it here.

Tuesday brought us the DVD release of season one of Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, the greatest television show of all time.

Historians were quick to note that at numerous points in the past, I have described Arrested Development as the funniest television show of all time.

Both statements are true. Arrested Development is funnier; the thing that makes Dr. Katz great is that it is exactly the opposite. Jonathan Katz and the other creative types crafted this show to — at every turn — shoot for the least funny option (line, joke, or gag).

Not the most un-funny thing, mind you, the least funny thing. That’s a big distinction. Even as a stand-up comic, Katz always aimed to make the audience continually never quite sure whether he was being serious or making a joke. There are other comics who seem to enjoy keeping the audience off-balance, as it were, though most of them tend to do it through shock value.

The example I like to give for novices is from a scene where Ben and John are eating cereal, debating the merits of the different meals. At one point Katz attempts to sum up his position with the proclamation “Breakfast: it’s not the most important meal of the day — but it’s not bad.”

That’s just barely even a joke. But that’s not easy to do. Try it yourself; try to come up with something only a tiny, tiny bit off-kilter. Just subtle enough to make the hearer stop and re-think. The NSF and the scientific journals would probably describe phenomena like this as quantum comedy. Or, in the vernacular, quamedy.

For the show, Katz teamed up with H. Jon Benjamin, like-minded comic who in interviews has expressed his lifelong desire as a performer to play away from the funny:

“I’ve never had the desire to tell jokes. I’ve always been more interested in not making people laugh, but people seem to laugh at that. So actual jokes have always been the antithesis of what I’ve wanted to do. I started doing comedy with a lot of people who were great at telling jokes so I just wanted to not do what they did.”

The result is precision comedy, like a balancing act; hovering just barely over the threshhold of humor.

There were other great elements to the show — the weird animation style, the fact that the entire half-hour of each episode was improvised — that contribute to its greatness. But at the core, the key is still that unique focus on being so dry that you have to pay attention in order to spot the joke.

In so many ways, it’s easy to go for the big laugh. What I admire about Jonathan Katz is his ability to go for the small laugh, and to hit it every time, repeatedly, for six years.

The problems of the world, solved. One by one, by me. This time it’s the earth-battering question of what to do about Barry Bonds and/or other professional athletes and their hankering for those sweet, sweet performance-enhancing drugs.

The sides are fairly clearly demarked — high school principals and agitated parents want steroids and the like banned for fear that it will kill their children. Pro sluggers want access to them because hey, it’s a free country. Access to the drugs, that is, not the children.

Anyway, the major leagues are stuck in the middle, not wanting to alienate the fans that pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars for tickets and more for concessions, and not wanting to alienate the players who bring in those fans.

Actually, they also don’t want to kill off the young fans who might some day grow up to work for them, and they’re afraid of enraging the hormonally-charged sociopaths that do work for them, but that’s much the same predicament.

Well, I for one can’t believe it’s taken this long, but the solution seems perfectly obvious to me:

We should legalize steroids and all the other performance-enhancing drugs anybody could ever want — but for pro athletes and only for pro athletes.

That’s right. If you’re an amateur (collegian, grade school kid, Olympian, church-league softballer, etc.), nothing doing. But if you have a professional contract, go crazy. Pump up your system with all the growth hormones, steroids, oxygenated hyena blood, nanorobots, uppers, downers, outers, inners, goofers, bombers, tranquilizers and hallucinogens you want. Congress can decide who counts and who doesn’t, for the gray areas like part-timers. But otherwise, let the games begin.

I mean, why not? It solves both sides of the problem at once. Now, I know what some people will say: the pros tanking up are going to encourage the kids to imitate them, and therein lies trouble. But that takes care of itself; nonprofessional athletes are not allowed to possess or use steroids, so if little Johnny tries to buy any, before he knows it he’ll be doing some serious hard time.

The system is going to instill a sense of motivation. If your kids want to use drugs, they are going to have to work hard, and be the very best they can be. With responsibility comes privilege.

The other complaint, of course, is that juicing up athletes makes the game “unfair” to those who play clean. To that I say if you don’t want to win, why’d you come to the park? If you’re scared of technology, maybe it’s time to retire and sit on the porch reminiscing about the good old days. I mean, how often do you see an NBA player choose to play in flat-soled canvas Chuck Taylors?

Besides, the major leagues are a self-equalizing ecosystem. If too many players overdo their rightful dosages of legalized drugs, they’ll be dead. The herd will be thinned. Subsequent generations will learn and move on. The system will be perfected.

Though there is a high likelihood that one or two years into this system, there will be a mad dash to the pharmacy and we’ll lose a significant chunk of our pro players to overdoses, bad reactions, and dehabilitating side effects. But that’s life. And in the meantime, the fireworks are going to be great for us fans. During the long, dull months of summer we’ll have the obituaries to look forward to.

Everybody wins.

Well it had to happen. For reasons I have no intention of getting into, I’ve moved this blog from its cushy home buried deep within Blogger.com to the wild wooly wilderness* of my own domain.

That being this domain. Glyphography.com is a made up domain that I’ve owned for a couple of years just to have provider-independent control over some services like email and my back-room lobbying efforts through the Freemasons.

It looks virtually the same, so far, a fact about which I am surprisingly unmoved. And I have exported content from there to here with what looks like success. For you nerds, it’s Wordpress, and no, I don’t intend to discuss which I like better.

So if you’re short on entertainment, feel free to reread the old material again and again and let me know if there’s something wrong with the new system. Someday, I will write a new post, and the few of you who read it will be well rewarded for your perseverance.

But the odds are it won’t be today.

Nate

* - yes, I realize that I used two forms of the word wild in that expression. There’s no prize.