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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Actually, that’s not true, since OSTG doesn’t do anything political. I mean, obviously I’ll still make fun of libertarians but come on — everybody does that; it barely even counts as making a joke.

In all seriousness, though, OSTG is the evil clandestine global corporate syndicate that weakens the minds of the young through cereal additives, publishes some Web sites about Linux and free software, and keeps the metric system down.

My role will be to write for them on whatever topic amuses me at the moment, peppered with the occasional vitriolic rant about the obscure shortcomings of various objects around my desk. Periodically I will do something about the milliliter.

Really you probably wouldn’t notice anything different about my material if you started reading it now than if you had read it before, only it will be a little more frequent, drastically shorter, and I will no longer be bothered to politely respond to readers’ comments. Hey, the news doesn’t slant itself. It takes people, people.

Here it is in a nutshell: I don’t read books.

I don’t like reading books, I don’t want to do it anymore, and I’m adult so I don’t have to. I quit reading books just about one year ago, and I have to say: it’s been great. Better than great. I don’t miss them at all.

Some people (stuffy, English-literature-types mostly — you know the kind) seem to have a problem with this decision. It bothers them. It doesn’t affect them one iota, but it bothers them. I hear everything from disbelief to fear to shock to anger whenever it comes up. That’s puzzling in and of itself, particularly since the more stuffy the person the more likely they are to have a chip on their shoulder about how they don’t watch television.

Of course, when you boil it down, feeling better about yourself because you don’t watch television is a pretty shallow illusion of self-righteousness. Most of us know that. But what’s more troubling is the underlying notion some otherwise normal people hold that some forms of media are inherently better than others.

This is absurd both in general and in specific cases. To suggest that one medium is always better than another is easily disproven, and to suggest that it is “usually” better is empty.

Having had this discussion more than once, after a few coutnerexamples what you’ll end up with from the book-hugging crowd is one of two things, either “I usually like books better than I usually like television” — which is fine with me as long as you agree to be fine with the opposite in exchange — or some sort of vague, historical argument that hinges on how many more “great” books there are (you know, “how can you say you don’t like Huckleberry Finn???”) and how long people have been writing them.

Now there’s a problem: if books are better than more recent media simply because of the timeframe in which they were invented, then books and other written media are easily trumped by the spoken word. I.E., if reading books > watching TV, then hearing sermons > reading books and hearing stand-up comedy > reading books. And wait: what about watching stand-up comedy on TV?

Clearly illogical. Proudly I say, “Books: who needs em? Not me!”

So please, don’t recommend books to me, and though I am happy to hear about your summer reading list, I’m not going to pick up anything on it.

Sure sure, you may think you know, but there’s one simple way to find out. Find a group of people (eight or more should do) from different parts of the country. Ask them whether or not New York is part of New England. Sit back and watch the ensuing argument.

Just one little spoiler: if either everyone in your group is from the Northeast, or no one is, this won’t work. If you’re in such an unfortunate situation, you can always try this alternative argument-primer: is Texas part of The South?

Fewer fireworks, but still something.

Therefore the intimidating name is much sought-after. The reasoning behind Captain Defeat is two-fold. First, any villain who hears the name will immediately think to himself “Defeat? Is that supposed to sound threatening? Because it sounds kind of like ‘Captain Loser’….” Then, naturally, they’ll wonder whether or not I understand how the name sounds, and whether or not my choosing such a name indicates that I’m not very bright or just that I’m not very good with names — either way it’s hardly a plus. But more to the point, the obvious question will be “if this guy doesn’t understand how moronic his name sounds, is he still intelligent enough to understand it if I take a moment to mock him about it to his face, or is he so dense that I’ll have to explain it to him first, and then mock him about it?”

And while he’s thinking about all that, that’s when I’d hit him.