Monday, April 30
"Well, it seems today there's bad news and further bad news. The bad news is, the Royal Observatory in Ottawa has announced that a giant asteroid will hit the earth in one hour. The further bad news is, the Millenium Clock the Canadian government built for $26,000 is an hour slow."
Capitol Hill Blue has come up with a novel idea: they've picked a 100-day benchmark to evaluate the Bush presidency. They're calling it "The First 100 Days." This seems like such a natural, I can't imagine why more political journals haven't done it. Kudos, CHB! Congrats also on the boldness with which you've rendered your verdict: People who like Bush should be pleased, while those who don't, probably won't be. Phew! Talk about using words like blunt instruments!
Sunday, April 29
"Well, there's good news and bad news. The bad news is, your planet is going to be destroyed by a huge, rocky, flaming death star. The good news is, happy little amoeba will frolic where your cities once stood. Have a nice day!"
"Please avoid anything morbid, inappropriate or detrimental to his image in the display of the dead, gay midget lying under the toilet": These are selections from actual standards-and-practices memos sent from actual broadcast networks to TV writers over the years. Hey, you know when nobody will have to face sticky moral issues like whether euthanasia is being depicted in a positive light? When there's NOTHING ON TV BUT REALITY SHOWS.
Saturday, April 28
Well, if this doesn't just take the cake: A British pastor claims he knows who's really responsible for the current outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the British countryside. It's gays, of course. By which he presumably means gay humans, not gay cows, although the chain of logic might be a teensy bit less tenuous if that were his argument. I'm not sure exactly what his argument is: it seems to have something to do with godly punishment of the wicked UK for their embrace of gay sex. A resident of the pastor's town describes herself as "gobsmacked" at the charge, and I think we can all relate to that. The pastor isn't backing down, though; he says "The Bible clearly states that homosexuality is wrong," adding: "So God is killing all the cows. See? It couldn't be clearer. Also, bunwalla smack-a-doodle umbrella stand, la la la la la wheeeeee!"
An appreciative nod to Reuters, who showed unexpected silliness in the lead for this item about a mass dog wedding in Bogota, Columbia.
Coming this fall on Fox... it's "World's Craziest Criminals"! Also "World's Angriest Distance Runners," "World's Dirtiest Wetlands," "World's Funniest Heads of State" and "World's Smelliest Subways!" Yes, the Writers Guild of America is about to go out on strike, but the studios are prepared with much, much, MUCH more of that fine reality programming you think you've grown to love! Hey America: The studios are your friends, not those cranky malcontent writers! The studios are listening to you! You say you want more reality shows? Guess what, America: You got 'em.
Friday, April 27
Everything I know about women, I have learned from Disgruntled Housewife.
"Whitney Matheson," the brilliant collective of comedy writers who make up the fictional USA Today "Pop Candy" columnist, have done it again. (See Blather, April 5, for background on "Whitney.") In this week's column, a devilish meditation on the nature of fake celebrity, "Whitney" muses on meeting someone with the same (made-up) name. Like all "Whitney Matheson" columns, this one is a hilariously deadpan satire of brain-dead newspaper hacks with nothing to say and 1000 words a week to say it in. Kudos to all involved in what is, week in and week out, the funniest inside joke on the Web.
I'm not shedding any tears for Kozmo.com, which failed what I consider to be the ultimate universal live-or-die test for a dotcom -- they pissed me off. (No Chubby Hubby in my delivery. Nobody answered the phone at Customer Service. Long story.) Still, the wage slaves who delivered all those Jolt colas and In Style magazines deserved better than they got, at least if you believe this account in The Stranger. My favorite exchange:MATT: It's too bad, because business was picking up. There were a lot of loyal customers.
CAILLON: Yeah, a lot of lazy, stoner customers.
Thursday, April 26
I am -- and this is not a joke, a gag, or some sort of post-modernist-irono-detachoid comedy "concept" -- reluctant to make fun of others' misfortunes, and I would certainly put a drug bust in that category. But this take on Aaron Sorkin's recent legal troubles, from Modern Humorist, is just really, really funny. (Thanks to Ron Givens for the link.)
More eBay weirdness from Who Would Buy That, which is rapidly becoming an indispensable read. Some of these items are fun, and some are just disturbing. This one is neither. This one bespeaks a level of wigged-out perversity that I can only aspire to. (Sidebar: I'm now spending so much time compulsively enjoying Who Would Buy That that it's starting to cut into the time I spend compulsively bidding on things at eBay. Cool -- irony. I'm slightly comforted by the fact that many of the items on WWBT seem to be posted between midnight and 2 AM, which suggests a comparable level of compulsiveness in the site owners. Go ahead on, girls.)
Do you hate banner ads? Of course you do. Everyone hates banner ads, with the possible exception of me: I figure you get what you pay for, and I don't mind renting my eyeballs out on a per-glance basis if it helps subsidize worthwhile content. Do I ever click through, though? Naah. Nobody does. Which is why banner ads are dying, and being replaced by something even worse: the outsize boxes currently adorning c|net and other sites. These things are truly awful: loaded with bandwidth-hogging gewgaws and impossible to ignore. By comparison, banners are positively benign. The technology behind them can even be put to some pretty cool use, as it is at Clickhere, an online exhibition of "antibanners." Some of them are quite beautiful, in an austere way, which I suppose is the point -- to celebrate the form, and figure out a way to create something like art within its strict limits. The parent site, soulbath.com, is pretty trippy too.
Wednesday, April 25
Meme alert: Is "I disrespected the Bing", from a recent episode of "The Sopranos," the next great thought virus? Tim Noah thinks so, in Slate's Chatterbox column. I agree with his analysis -- that to "disrespect the Bing" means to offer up a minor admission in place of a larger, more damning and difficult one -- but think it doesn't go far enough. It doesn't take into account the all-important false magnanimity of the gesture, the sense that the party offering the "Bing" defense is actually going further than he really needs to, as a gracious concession to the unreasoning demands of the other. The thing that made Ralphie's "I disrespected the Bing" so beautifully, glitteringly sleazy was that he actually seemed to view its patent insincerity as noblesse oblige.
Bud is a world traveler. Bud has been to many, many places you haven't. Bud is a mannequin. (I'm hard-pressed to figure out which of these pictures is the most distressing. They're all so wrong, for so many reasons. But the one I find the most nightmarish may be the picture of Bud at the Liberty Bell in a tri-corner hat, perhaps because it brings back awful memories of grade-school class trips.)
This site is pretty great. It's in abysmal taste, but since when were greatness and abysmal--err, abysmalness ever contradictory? I mean, I have friends who love their Rotisserie Baseball, and more power to 'em... but this is better. If you're looking for an edge, click here. (Link via Memepool.)
This is... disturbing.
Tuesday, April 24
Blather is on the road again this week, headed cross-country, motoring east out of Los Angeles (which is pretty much your only option if you plan to head cross-country). You leave California and cross into Nevada at the unfortunately-named Primm, where the town motto probably isn't "For Gamblers So Degenerate They Can't Wait To Drive the Extra Forty Miles Into Las Vegas," but should be. Primm sits approximately one foot inside the state line. You can practically hear the mass, unspoken id of the millions of gamblers who have driven this road across the Mojave, approaching Primm from the southwest: "Not yet... not yet... okay, wait for it...wait... wait... ooooooookaaaayyyyyGAMBLENOW!" There's a rollercoaster and an outlet mall, in addition to the obligatory casino, and personally I think they missed a bet not combining the two, so the bored wives of guys locked up in the casino 22 hours a day could actually rollercoaster right through the outlet shops, grabbing last year's Dansk and Adidas and flinging their hands in the air in a celebratory fashion. Primm may be the worst place I've ever seen, and I've seen Tonopah.On to Las Vegas, past an apartment complex called -- I am not making this up -- the "Desert Meadows," through a little slice of Arizona and into Richfield, Utah, where the local paper is called "The Reaper." At first I figure this is a nod to the town's agrarian past, but this only comforts me for a second, as I realize that every town in America, if you trace it back far enough, has a more or less agrarian past, and Boston and Milwaukee and Fresno don't seem to feel any need to name their newspapers "The Death Merchant" or "The Collector of Souls." Hmmm. These are morbid thoughts. This screams of blood sugar gone crazy. Memo to self: Road food is fine, but McDonald's followed by Krispy Kreme is just asking for trouble.
Monday, April 23
In case you thought I was making up the item about Miss Israel's bulletproof gown, here's a picture. And maybe this is just the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps more international beauty queens will be taking to the runways in Kevlar next season. Perhaps chainmail will make a fashion comeback. This is just an exciting time to be alive.
He's a Pepper too: You know, it isn't the "Peppy the Pepper" song that really caught my eye here. ("I'm Peppy the Pepper/How do you do?/Welcome to Super Fresh/We love you!") It isn't even the image of a guy who looks like Luther Vandross dressed up as a giant pepper. It's the picture of a guy who looks like Luther Vandross dressed up as a giant pepper saying to a startled shopper "Let's pray right here," and the shopper agreeing, and Peppy and the shopper offering it up to the Lord right there in the seafood section. Get thee behind me, Mr. Peanut. (Link via Obscure Store.)
Tech workers officially go through looking glass: Intel is offering new hires the chance to keep their hiring bonuses, and in some cases two months' salary, if they DON'T take the jobs they've been offered. Future "reverse hiring bonuses" will reportedly consist of socket-wrench sets, See's candies, AAA road atlases and what's behind Door #3. Actually, this does raise the question of what might happen to any new hire foolish enough to actually report for work. He or she would be stiffed, presumably. Which makes the "reverse hiring bonus", in reality, an exquisitely delicate shakedown. It's like Intel is saying to their new hires: "Hiya. Nice little hiring bonus ya got there. Be a shame if something was to... happen to it."
Sunday, April 22
RIP Denmark Groover, who in addition to being a dedicated son of the South owned the coolest name in this week's obituaries.
Man, this just smacks of a big ol' hoax, doesn't it? I suspect the Brits would believe anything about us anyway -- even that we'd retrofit our police dogs with titanium teeth. Coming next: collar-mounted ground-to-air missiles.
It's certainly about time that a Canadian walked in space. I particularly like the way he knocked politely on the shuttle door at the end of his spacewalk, and asked the American if he might have the time to let him back in.
Saturday, April 21
Did we learn nothing from Tamagotchi?: I'm pretty sure this isn't what robot dogs were designed for. (I haven't been able to figure out the purpose of these things yet, I'll confess. But I really don't think "cute, happy little killing machine" is it.)
I don't know who comes out worst in this story from Philadelphia -- the screenwriter who made it up, the freelancer who bought it unchallenged, or the editor who didn't check it. There's certainly blame enough to go around. But the implication that the freelancer, who's gay, got held to a less rigorous standard than a straight reporter ought to have gay reporters everywhere pissed off.
Friday, April 20
"In a time when dust was all, and all was dust..." I swear, there's a great '70s disaster flick, or at least a great '70s disaster flick trailer, to be made out of this story, or there would be if this were still the '70s. It seems a giant cloud of dust that formed two weeks ago in Asia was due to float over New England, where I'm visiting, today. I can tell you that the populace is taking the news pretty bravely -- pretending to shop and work and drink and play the Lotto just like any other day, but with a palpable undercurrent of dust-fear. Just this afternoon I heard two women talking in the Stop'n'Shop, and their conversation about Pampers was clearly a valiant attempt to disguise the near-panic that's nearly gripping this region. I don't know if I'll be able to post again anytime soon; there's already talk about mass evacuations, and the formation of a post-apocalyptic civilization that would live deep underground and breathe air filtered from the surface via huge mole-powered generators. At least I think that's what the kid in Bradlee's was saying. There was so much palpable tension floating tensely in the tense, dusty air that I might have misunderstood. According to my notes, he said something about being out of stock on Butterfingers, but I figure that was just palpable tension gripping him palpably. There's also some wild talk in the streets about the state declaring martial law and naming Joseph Prospero, the director of the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies at the University of Miami, as Grand High Imperial Overlord, with full authority to arrest and imprison. The people of this state were clearly electrified by his magnetic presence, and his bold assertion that "I've been studying dust since 1965 and I've never seen anything like this." God knows we need that kind of man now.
Here's a switch: Deejay slips money to wise guy. It should be noted that the deejay, Jerry Blavat, denies it. And I'm predisposed to believe him, because Blavat (professionally known as "The Geator With The Heater" and "The Boss With The Hot Sauce") is a revered figure in the cultural history of my hometown -- a one-man music machine, a motormouth in a shiny suit, one of the last surviving disc jockeys from the golden age of AM radio, an age in which Philadelphia was a ruling nation-state. There was a pretty good movie out a dozen or so years ago, "The In Crowd," about the subculture of Philadelphia teens who danced on local record-hop TV shows, and Joe Pantoliano, who's currently playing Ralph Cifaretto on "The Sopranos," played a thinly-veiled version of Blavat named Perry Parker. He got it all right: the frantic spiel, the jittery way he rolled his shoulders in his Sy Devore suits, the cool, finger-popping arrogance of a guy who was the absolute master of a particular time and place. (No less an arbiter of hip than Bruce Jay Friedman anointed Blavat "The Number One Cat" in 1966.) He's a towering name in the pop culture of a town that once had street smarts to burn, and now is on the way to being as Disneyfied as any major city in America. So if over the years Blavat's been rumored to be mobbed up, which has never been proven, and if along the way he lent some dough to the wrong guy... so what? (By the way, this ongoing Philadelphia mob trial sure is fun. I love Ralph Natale's current defense strategy: that he didn't get money because he was the local mob boss, he got it because he was a hustler and a con artist. Ohhhhhh, okay. That's much better.)
Thursday, April 19
Memo to the LA Times: If I should happen to, you know, die, and I happen to have been the director of at least two really good movies, like "The Candidate" and "Smile," do me a favor: Try to find some better way to describe me than "cost-conscious."
I flew into Providence, RI last night and there's no question it's a changed city since the late '70s, when I last spent time there. The downtown is flourishing, the waterfront is thriving and just about everyone seems to agree that it's become one of the jewels of New England. Much of the credit for this is surely due to Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci, the mayor of Providence for 20 of the last 26 years. The six-year, umm, hiatus came after Mr. Cianci was convicted of assault in 1984. No doubt it's pecadilloes like these that prompt the New York Times to dub him "colorful," which is what newspapers tend to call you when you're a chief executive and you smack somebody around in public. (Note: requires free login and password.) The mayor's colorfulness certainly shot through the roof two weeks ago when he was indicted for racketeering, conspiracy, extortion, mail fraud and witness tampering. You've got to admire his poise, though. When a federal prosecutor admitted he'd had a few friends over to screen a surveillance video of the mayor, Cianci's reaction was a pretty good one-liner: "I guess Blockbuster's was closed that night."
Besides, it spatters up our lederhosen: You just gotta love a news item that contains the phrases "picture-postcard Alpine meadows" and "blowing up dead cows with explosives" in the same sentence.
Quick, let's Ricochet 'em: The good news is, always-on wireless telephony is just a couple of weeks away for customers in the UK. The bad news: It doesn't work.
Wednesday, April 18
So I guess everybody knows by now that Miss Israel will be sporting a bulletproof gown in next month's Miss Universe pageant (and yes, by God, they're proud to tell the world that it IS a pageant, and not some namby-pamby "scholarship competition"). AP reports that "the top of the silk dress, embroidered with diamonds and pearls, is covered by an army-issue flak jacket adorned with diamonds for a so-called softer look." It's been reported elsewhere that Miss Israel, 18-year-old Ilanit Levy, is an admirer of the late Yitzhak Rabin. And you know, I was all set to be snarky about this, and then I thought: No. If only Rabin had been wearing a diamond-and-pearl-encrusted bulletproof gown, he might be alive today.
"The plane. No, the plane. I said I was calling from the plane. No, the PLANE... What? Hello... ?" I'm posting this from the USAir terminal at Los Angeles International Airport (acronym LAX; motto "Impenetrable Acronyms Since 1967!"), via one of those new Ricochet wireless modems. Hey, you know those TV commercials where the awful Eurotrash couple uses Ricochet to nail down a big international business deal while they zip toward Gstaad in their vintage Mercedes? Hey, you know what? TV commercials lie. I don't know about you, but I was disturbed to learn this. If, in some alternate universe, that commercial told the truth it would look considerably different. It would show the guy cranking his body out the car window, holding his laptop at a perilous angle, the Ricochet's dinky antenna extended fully in a futile attempt to get a clear signal. Which would cut down on his glamorous old-world mystique considerably. As would the part where he shouts at his companion: "Slow down, you silly cow of an ex-supermodel! I can't get a connection!" It may be true that in the future we'll all go wireless; what they don't tell you is, everyone on earth will have to sit near a window.
Tuesday, April 17
It's up! It's up! It's up! Yes, the latest edition of Larry King's "It's My Two Cents" column is up on the USA Today web site, and it's everything you could possibly want! For the unintiated, "It's My Two Cents" is the apotheosis of a certain kind of newspaper column that my friend Tim Noah, who writes the "Chatterbox" column for Slate, generically titles "Just S'posin..." -- a random collection of unconnected thoughts, a delirium of pointlessness. As an example, try to guess which of these is the real item:a) If you want to talk about diplomats, Ralph Bunche is an all-time champ.
b) Dr. Grip's ballpoint pen is the best I've ever used.The correct answer is "b". But it could just as easily have been "a," and that's the sheer giddy delight of "It's My Two Cents." Really, if you've never read it, you're in for a treat. And the nerve of this guy, posting his random jottings for the world to read... No organizing principle, just odd thoughts, strung together in a capricious order... What a maroon... Heh heh heh..
Heh...
Oh.
Senor Misterioso: International Man of Mystery or Pet Rock in a Fedora? I don't know, but I do know this: He glows, man. Dear Sweet Mother of God, how he glows.
Oh man. Oh no. Oh man. Oh no. Drill down to "General Information" for the true, unvarnished horror of this site. Although maybe "unvarnished" isn't the word I really want here. (Link via 50 Cups of Coffee.)
Blather has now been published long enough that certain themes have started to emerge. I put a little time today into tracking them, in the hope that maybe I can be responsible for the Next Big Meme. (That guy who came up with "All Your Base Are Belong To Us"? A millionaire now. It's true, I swear, my friend Sherry told me.) So forgive the self-referentiality and just enjoy, won't you...The Top 5 Most Popular Ideas Espoused So Far on Blather
5. Swedish accents are always good for a cheap laugh. (Two items.)
4. Clowns are scary. (Three items.)
3. A tie: Disfiguring injuries don't have to be sad, and human brains are even more interesting when they're disembodied. (Four items each.)
2. Celebrity has an infinite capacity to corrupt and debase. (Five items.)
1. Death, death, death!!! (Seven items.)There's a connection here somewhere. And I intend to look for it until somebody offers to pay me to stop.
Oddly enough, the disturbing part of this story isn't that this guy lifts weights with his eyelids. He can lift weights with his eyelids if he wants to; I mean, Pakistan's a free country, right? (Right? I think it is, but I'm not really sure.) No, the part that caught my eye (so to speak) is the part about how he was applying "Surma," a black herbal powder used in Pakistan to protect the eyes, when he accidentally stuck a needle through his eyelid and was "surprised at the lid's strength." Questions: Why do you apply Surma with a needle? I mean, do you sew it onto your face or what? Also, if you or I accidentally stick a needle through an eyelid -- which is how the vast majority of people do stick a needle through an eyelid, intentional eyelid-needlings being relatively rare -- would our first reaction be "Wow, I had no idea my eyelid was so strong"? Or would it be to register in the ancient and undeveloped primate part of our brainstems a millisecond of surprise, a millisecond being about all we'd get before the pain signal would reach our cerebral cortexes and we'd fall to the floor and start shrieking in agony? I wonder these things. At any rate, the strongman in question has been responsible enough to warn would-be strongmen away from trying anything similar. You know, on purpose. Sticking a needle in their eyes. To which I can only answer, in the ancient phrase of the Pakistani highlands: "Good. Important safety tip. Thanks."
Oh man, I really don't like the sound of this: Disturbing, unreliable British news-toy Ananova reports that Russian scientists have developed the first artificial brain with the same intellectual potential as a human brain. Chilling quote follows, from someone identified as "scientist Vitaly Valtsev": "This machine needs to be trained like a newborn child. It is extremely important for us to make it a friend, not a criminal or an enemy." Ummm... okay, you know what? I'll just wait over here in the West until you're through with that whole training thing. And hey, do me a favor and keep the brain-in-a-jar away from any stray live nuclear warheads you have lying around, okay? Thanks.
There's nothing laughable about massive layoffs, like the ones that are about to hit Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson AB. But still, come on, admit it: Even bad news sounds funny in one of those silly damn Swedish accents. Try it right now, it's fun: "We have to focus harder on our core business and eliminate activities and structures that might be appropriate in times of strong growth cycles but are simply unacceptable in times like we have now." See what I mean? Hilarious! Picture it: The CEO gathers his staff in their coldly austere corporate auditorium and says somberly: "I'm sorry to have to say that 6000 of you will no longer be working here as of next week. Poverty, disgrace and ruin will surely befall you and your families." Only the way it comes out is: "I'm surry tu hefe-a tu sey thet 6000 ooff yuoo veell nu lunger be-a vurkeeng here-a es ooff next veek. Puferty, deesgrece-a und rooeen veell soorely beffell yuoo und yuoor femeelies. Um gesh dee bork, bork!" I promise you, those unemployed Swedes would be giggling through their tears.Of course, the drinking helps too.
Monday, April 16
I was a 19-year-old college deejay the first time I heard The Ramones. My friend Rob Falk, who would shortly turn into as much of a punk as it was possible to be in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1976, ran -- and I mean ran -- into the booth clutching an LP with a black-and-white cover photo of four pale white guys leaning against a grimy brick wall. The title just read "RAMONES." I don't know if Rob was actually so excited that he interrupted a break, although that's the way I remember it. I also remember this: he collars me, literally grabs me by the collar and demands that I put this record on, and before I can answer he races out of the booth and into the control room, shoulders the controlman out of the way and drops the needle on "Blitzkrieg Bop." And this... sound comes out of the studio monitors, this buzzsaw of guitars, and then this voice that sounds like the pimpliest, most deeply adenoidal and disaffected white suburban kid who ever came out of Glen Cove or Long Beach or Quincy, all unfocused 15-year-old American energy, except for the weirdly touching way he bit off the word "bop", like a British kid would do -- or like an American kid might think a British kid would do.I didn't know how to listen to what I was hearing. It was an alphabet soup of rock and roll references: the half-snarl of Bobby Fuller, maybe, mixed with something that sounded like the gnarliest surf guitar ever, Dick Dale on crank. These guys were so unknown to us that when I back-announced the cut I actually pronounced the band's name "Rah-mah-ness." Who knew what a Ramone was? We didn't, not that night. But we found out. And it changed everything. I never did become a punk; my tastes ran more to Graham Parker, whose first LP came out that same year, R&B-tinged bands like Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, and The Stompers, who rocked a bar like nobody on earth and are still playing out that way. But nobody could deny the force in what we heard that night, or its originality, and in later years not even the staunchest punk-hater could deny that that record was a hurricane, and it blew the roof off the house of pop. You may have to be my age to remember how truly bad pop music was in 1976. That it's a distant memory today is in large part a tribute to the raw, catchy, unbeautiful sound of The Ramones.
Dogs Good, Cats Bad, Pt. 27: If you skip past the stuff in this LA Times piece about E. Fuller Torrey's brain bank in Bethesda, MD -- Okay, let's see, brains in jars... delivered by FedEx... packed in dry ice, right... You know, the dry scientific stuff -- you come to what I feel is the actual meat of the story: Torrey's theory that schizophrenia is caused by a viral infection, and that infection is spread by cats. Torrey notes a correlation between high rates of schizophrenia and populations where cats are prevalent: "It's a reasonable hypothesis," says a former director of NIMH. That's right: Mr. Whiskers is Mental Health Threat #1. At last, a possible scientific basis for that deep, DNA-level distrust we all feel when a strange tabby comes swishing by. Come on, admit it: even cat-lovers have that infinitesimal flash of worry that they're going to end up with a faceful of claws. You know what that feeling actually is? Survival instinct. Cats are bad news. Here's the proof.Hey, maybe we should turn 'em all over to that vicious harpy on "The Weakest Link." She'd know what to do with them.
Hey, you know what looks like a gas? This "You Are The Weakest Link" show. Apparently there's a cruel, all-powerful authority figure who arbitrarily culls out people she feels aren't worthy of inclusion in the group. What a hoot! You know when it was also funny? When the NAZIS did it. Only they called it EUGENICS.
Sunday, April 15
I seem to be obsessed with obits lately. Well, maybe not obsessed. But weirdly, morbidly fascinated. Oh wait: that is obsessed. Like with this one, for one of the guys who helped invent the Zip Code system. Along with his counterparts at the phone company, the ones who dumped local exchange names for all-digit dialing, Robert Moon was one of the people responsible for pushing local culture aside in favor of an aggressively modern sensibility in the early 1960s. I'm no Luddite; I like my direct-dial phone and being able to get my mail in a relatively timely fashion. But I also believe that the exchanges I remember from my early youth, Livingston 9 and Waverly 4, had more panache and more of a connection to the community they served than the 549 and 924 prefixes that replaced them. Are we more efficient because we can dial a millisecond faster? I guess. Are we also a shade more disconnected from our neighbors? Yeah, that too, probably. Maybe that's why I like obits: they sometimes give us an occasion to mark one of the million small ways popular culture changes every day, changes we barely notice otherwise.
Saturday, April 14
More weirdness from Washington State: Bremerton residents reported that the keyless entry devices on their cars stopped working for several hours on Thursday. This is the second such episode; the first lasted for five days in March. Both outages coincided with the arrival of BIG, SCARY aircraft carriers at nearby Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Navy officials denied any connection... to which military analysts could only respond: "Well, DUH." Like they're actually going to admit it's because the Bremerton area is so rich with RF you can place your ear to the mayor's chest and hear Paul Harvey. Man, I tell you what, this is scary. It happened to me, man, I tell you what, I'd jump in my car and drive like hell for Canada. Umm, if I could unlock it. (Link via Follow Me Here.)
As if anybody needed further proof that life is rich with irony, here's the story of a 31-year-old who posed as a high school student in Vancouver, WA. She played on the tennis team and attended the senior prom, and was convincing enough to get away with it for three years, graduating with a 2.83 GPA. The grade that dragged her cume down a bit? A D in drama. (I can't help comparing this to Comedy Central's sublimely dark "Strangers With Candy," in which a 47-year-old junkie hooker returns to high school.)
I'm not saying Harvey Ball, who died the other day, wasn't a perfectly nice guy, and I certainly mean no disrespect when I say this: There is surely a circle of Hell where the brimstone is always hot, the smell of doom is always unbearably sharp in the nostrils, and every last single freakin' denizen of Satan wears one of those freakin' Smiley Faces.
"AIRMAN!!" That's right, it's "AIRMAN!! United States Air Force Basic Training in Sound"! This LP, listed for sale on eBay, seems to date from that era in pop culture when all it took to mount a new show was to find a piece of source material, extract the key word from the title and slam an exclamation point after it. ("Dracula!" "Copperfield!" "Finn!") The resulting name on a marquee invariably seemed to promise a zippy, tuneful evening in the theatre. This kind of exuberance didn't last, of course; observers of the Broadway scene tend to date its demise to 1974, when dapper boulevardier John Lindsay was replaced by the dour, number-crunching Abe Beame. (Link via Who Would Buy That?)
Friday, April 13
This guy is totally, thoroughly, abjectly wrong about the Springsteen concert currently airing on HBO, but his piece is still pretty funny. I offer it here because I like dack.com, and also as proof that there's room for everyone on Blather. Even guys who are totally, thoroughly, abjectly wrong. (He's also fair-minded enough to link to this Billboard review, with which I agree.)
Good piece in today's New York Times about how many of New York's surviving movie palaces are now houses of worship... which seems appropriate, not only for the architectural similarities, but also the churchly reverence we used to have in America for the moviegoing experience. (Anybody who's been to the multiplex lately knows how long gone that reverence is. My wife almost got into a fistfight a few weeks ago when a woman sitting behind us not only failed to turn off her ringing cell phone, but actually answered it. In the middle of a movie. The movie was "The Mexican," but still... ) One exception to the trend, by the way: the old Brooklyn Paramount, the second-biggest theatre in New York when it opened in 1928, and once home to Alan Freed's live rock-and-roll shows, is now in service as an athletic center for Long Island University. There's an amazing photograph of a basketball practice going on under the soaring vaulted ceiling. (Requires free login and password.)
Is that an efficient, reliable source of eco-friendly energy in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?
I'm sorry to have to report the death of Mary Elias Kassab, a founder of the Big Boy drive-in burger chain. This obit from the Detroit News offers some nice pop history. Here's a site dedicated to the oldest remaining original Big Boy in America, in Burbank, CA. I've eaten there. The decor is swell. The food is... Well, the decor is swell. On the plus side, Mrs. Kassab lived to be 84.
I feel much better today. So much better, in fact, that I'm introducing a new feature: the daily tally of people injured by pickles, relishes, chow-chows and chutneys. Today's count: 1. Total count to date: 1.
Thursday, April 12
Continuing today's theme, here's an idea: A Texas Steel Cage Death Match between the Taco Bell "Zesty" guys (man, I never thought I'd miss the freakin' Chihuahua) and that chick on the Tivo commercials who's wide-eyed with wonder that she doesn't have to rush home to see her favorite shows anymore, because, hmm, let's see, why was that... Oh yeah, because they INVENTED THE VCR ABOUT 20 YEARS AGO. I don't know who would win, but I know this: America would be the richer for it.
"Who would want to launch a potato 400 yards?" Well, this kid, apparently. In other news, a Wilmington man was killed while running with scissors, and the face of a little girl in Minnesota actually did freeze that way.
Hmmm. Looking back over today's entries, I detect a certain undercurrent of... well, rage. And this makes me feel bad. There's too much rage in the world already. Here. Be happy.Or, here. Don't. What am I, your shrink?
This is a big relief: For some years now I've been wondering if the rest of the world was totally insane when it came to Cirque du Soleil. Once, I'll admit, I did briefly consider the possibility that I might be wrong -- that my deep, abiding hatred of this arty, fey, despicable French-Canadian snoozefest was somehow unfounded or unfair. Then I remembered the evening my wife and I spent at a performance of CduS a few years back, and all my loathing came back, and a warm feeling of certitude flooded through me. And if that meant I was the only person in the world who wanted to gut myself with a box knife rather than sit through another twinkly, gauzy, pretentious, execrable night with these north-of-the-border pseudo-harlequins, I was okay with that. Still, it was a pleasant surprise to read this AP review of a CduS show in Jersey City and know that there is at least one kindred spirit out there. Mark Evans, whoever you are, you are my brother.
My God. Has it already been a year since PorkFest 2000?
I have a question: Are there no cheap, shabby, low-rent, awful events that celebrities won't attend? And does Warren Beatty really have nothing better to do on a Tuesday night than attend them? Even if it's only hanging around the house... I mean, it's still gotta be a really nice house, and you know, what the hell, he gets to hang around it with Annette Bening. But run down to the awards store on Pico and have them retrofit an old bowling trophy and slap the words "World Artist Award" on it and BANGO, Warren's dusting off the tux. And ooh, "World Artist Award," that sounds impressive. What, did they run out of the stick-on letters they use to spell "Lifetime Achievement Award"? They must have, because by my count Hollywood gave itself approximately nine million and six "Lifetime Achievement Awards" in calendar 2000.Warren. Buddy. Look: You're a good-looking, talented guy. You have options. The next time the phone rings and the Caller ID lights up with any combination of words including "Awards" and "Committee," please: Let the machine get it.
Hey, you know what're really funny? RESUME BLOOPERS! These are ACTUAL MISTAKES made by REAL PEOPLE when they were looking for jobs! Only they didn't get them, because they're SO STUPID! And they probably ended up in a deepening spiral of unemployment and life-sucking, soul-killing despair! Ha ha ha ha! Good thing we're so much better than them!
I spent some time last night fooling around with metabrowsers. These are web-based applications that aggregate user-selected content into a single page for easier browsing. Sounds great, right? So I couldn't figure out why they haven't caught on. Then I did: They suck.QuickBrowse is the most promising of the metabrowsers I looked at, at least on paper. It retains the source sites' original formatting and graphics, and includes a feature called QuickLinks that lets you designate a set of links from your metapage, then gather the target pages into a single separate metapage for zippy quick access. Again: Great, right? Wrong. QuickBrowse runs off a Java applet that worked maybe half the time on my system. (And runs, and runs, and runs... You can duck out for a couple of quick ones while you're waiting for a metapage of any complexity to load.) Even so, Quickbrowse is the class of the field. Octopus and Onepage, both of which have been around for a while and have been through facelifts, strip the graphics and the formatting from source content and present plain-vanilla text links. Again, in theory, this should make for speedier browsing. But the results are unsatisfying, like... Oh, I don't know. Like Tofutti, I guess. Without their original layouts and designs, bland though they may be, the web sites of USA Today and the Boston Globe just seem... sad. Like a clown with a death wish. Worse, this kind of text-only abstraction eliminates all the serendipitous linking to weird sites that catch your eye while you're looking for something else. Like... Oh, I don't know. Like Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, a site that's quite wonderful and really, really hard to explain. I found it while I was looking for information on London. It is, of course, totally unrelated to London. How'd I get there? I have no idea. And isn't that the fun of the Web?
Wednesday, April 11
"What's the game, Warden, and whose side am I supposed to be on?" I don't know who Fourth Ward Productions is, but their fan site for "Dolemite" (the finest film ever made) and Rudy Ray Moore (the actor/comic who brought Dolemite to badass life) is a little bit of blaxploitative heaven. For some appropriately funky background, run the MP3 of the week (now playing: "Ghetto Expressions," by the Soul Rebellion Orchestra) and go strolling. Don't miss Dolemite's Blaxploitation Tagline Generator ("The freshest blood brothers clean up the ghetto!") and Dr. Dolemite's Pimpbuilder, which is basically what Shockwave was made for. By comparison, Rudy Ray Moore's officially-endorsed site seems downright stodgy. And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, do yourself a favor and screen "Dolemite" some Saturday night. It's blaxploitastic. (NOTE: The fictional character of "Dolemite" is a "pimp." He uses pimp-appropriate language, which is represented on these sites through the use of "sound clips." Don't say you weren't warned.)
Is it just me, or does George Bush walk like a guy who's trying constantly not to trip? And I don't mean metaphorically, as in "make a misstep"; I mean literally, as in "stumble, lose one's footing and fall to the ground." (Requires media player.)
Tuesday, April 10
Oh man. This ain't right.
Did we learn nothing from Ethan Hawke? Justin Timberlake of 'N Sync is shopping a book proposal. The novel will apparently be called "Justin Timberlake's Cross-Over Dribble." (I'm guessing he was inspired by "John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath" and "Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.") Lest you think it will be a light read, the proposal promises that the book will deal with "the glamorous world of sports stars and movie stars AND (explore) the deep chasm of race in the country." (Cheap, mean-spirited emphasis mine.) The proposal goes on to say that the book will "challenge young readers to think about men and women, teamwork and friendship, and winning and loosing."That's right: "Loosing."
Justin. Dude. Two words: Spell check. Have your agent look into it.
Things That May Be Touching, or May Just Be Weird: Hasbro's GI Joe at the Vietnam Memorial action figure. (Thanks to Pop Culture Junk Mail.)
Update: If you do plan to perform a human head transplant, just remember that it's very, very important to check the donor head first.
Alive... it's ALIVE... I tell you, I wake up every day busting to see what the fine folks at SiliconValley.com are going to drop in my mailbox. Today it's a link to a Scientific American piece pithily and descriptively entitled -- and I apologize to readers in time zones where it's earlier than it is here in California -- "HEAD TRANSPLANTS." And if that doesn't just say it all, I don't know what does. The author is Robert J. White, who is not a clearly insane person, but rather a professor of neurosurgery who in the 1970s surgically attached one monkey's head to another monkey's body, thereby giving the scientific lie to the generally-accepted notion that, hey, they're only monkeys. "When the monkey awakened from anesthesia," White recounts, "it regained full consciousness and complete cranial nerve function, as measured by its... aggressiveness... " To which I can only say: Yeah, I bet. Anyway, White is still going on and on about head transplantation this, head transplantation that, buttonholing strangers at faculty parties with his assertion that "it is now possible to consider adapting the head-transplant technique to humans." Man, don't you just hate that? There you are, comfortably ensconced by the petit fours, settling in, when some neurosurgeon with tenure and a couple too many sherries in him races over, pins you into a corner and starts babbling that "maintaining an adequate, uninterrupted flow of blood to the brain would be absolutely essential during all stages of a human head-transplant operation because the brain, unlike other solid organs, cannot survive being separated from its blood supply (at least at normal body temperature)." And you're thinking, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, it isn't like I haven't taken Neuro 1, pal, please... Anyway, White goes on to describe in, umm, detail how such a procedure would work. It's actually quite thrilling, if you're INSANE. Take a look.
Monday, April 9
Who says violent TV shows aren't good for anything? A study just published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science suggests that viewers of violent shows are less likely to remember sponsors' brand names than viewers of violence-free shows. This seems like a refreshing conclusion, with its suggestion that a good bracing round of TV chopsocky helps to clear the brain of all those lousy commercials. Keep reading, though, and it seems like the study's authors have a socio-cultural agenda: "Advertisers might want to think twice about sponsoring (violent shows)," according to Brad J. Bushman of Iowa State University. Reuters goes on to paraphrase the rest of Bushman's argument: "Moral appeals to the TV industry from the public are unlikely to cut down small-screen violence... Money, on the other hand, might." Man, it seems like everybody's got an axe to grind. Can't we just love our TV violence and let it go at that?
My pal John Schwartz has a great piece in today's New York Times about the only sector of the Internet economy that seems to be relatively downturn-proof. It's pornography, of course. And it isn't only that, well, people will always want porn; it's also that the porn merchants have proven to be nimbler and quicker than their straight counterparts at adopting new technologies that allow them to stay ahead of bad times. The latest wrinkle: using phonecards to pay for visits to XXX web sites. (Requires free login and password.)
I think this is my all-time favorite photo caption: "An Omaha, Neb., resident tries to manage her hair blowing in strong winds, while watching the steeple of Westside Church in Omaha, Neb., lean at an angle Saturday, April 7, 2001, after gusts of nearly 70 miles per hour ripped through eastern Nebraska overnight, damaging homes and knocking out electric service." The photo is more strange than funny, but worth a look.
Quote of the week, from the New York Times via the always excellent World New York:"As long as they're born faster than we can make them hate us, we're in business."
-- An airline employee, on why threats from passengers never work.
For those of you who live in California, as I do, and are confused about the current power crisis, as I am, let me see if I can clarify the situation:Cold weather = rolling blackouts.
Hot weather = rolling blackouts.See? It couldn't be simpler!
Sunday, April 8
I have mixed feelings about AdFlip, which describes itself as "the world's largest archive of classic print ads." Sure, the ads are fun to look at, scanned with care and presented in sizes large enough that they don't induce eyestrain. But these guys should take some time in the penalty box for their promiscuous use of the word "classic" to mean "anywhere from several decades old to not quite brand-spanking-new". Worse, it seems pretty obvious that they've been guillotining, or taking old volumes of magazines, slitting them open along the spines and razoring out the ad pages. (The New York Times has a good piece on this practice. Requires free login and password.) In a time when libraries are deaccessioning the recent history of print media right into oblivion, this practice may seem like pure preservation. But is it? Or, when it's coupled with a commercial motive like the sale of banner ads, is it vandalism for profit? These are agonizing questions, at least if you care about pop culture: What is the best fate for big, heavy, musty-smelling volumes of old newspapers and magazines when our libraries and schools don't want them anymore? Is it to be digitized, with the pages that don't (literally) make the cut to be trashed? Who decides which pages are worth saving? Is a page of weekly journalism from Life or Time or Newsweek -- the "first draft of history," in the old newsmag cliche -- worth less as an artifact that the DuMont TV ad that ran next to it?The "Fading Ad Campaign" site doesn't raise any such troubling issues; pop-culture ephemera are preserved here in a way that doesn't require the use of anything more destructive than a digital camera. I think there's something particularly poignant about "Our Only Location." Whose only location was it? Where'd they go? That's the thing about pop culture... Little by little the bits of the past break off and fall away, leaving only questions behind. One day you wake up and everyone's commuting to work on jet packs.
Saturday, April 7
"Man, if only there was some way I could get up-to-the-minute information on what Barry Williams, who played Greg Brady on 'The Brady Bunch,' is up to now... or even hear his rendition of Queen's 'We Are The Champions,' a vocal performance about which he is apparently NOT KIDDING."Who takes care of you? Huh? Blather does.
Show business and media types call them "goodie bags." The rest of us call them "big sacks of free junk well-connected people get in exchange for showing up at press events they wouldn't otherwise be caught dead at." There's something inspiring about the prospect of folks who could easily buy the contents of these bags sloshing crosstown in a freezing rain to get them free. Here's a particularly nauseating example, from Inside (read it while you still can): the THIRTEEN-POUND goodie bags given out by magazine publishers Gruner + Jahr USA to "celebrate" the recent launch of their new "magazine," Rosie.
Interesting piece in today's New York Times about sentiment to designate B Reactor at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation a national historic landmark, and open at least part of it to tourism. Two potential wrinkles: 68 of the site's 177 underground storage tanks are thought to have leaked radioactive waste; and a museum project might cost up to $10 million beyond the costs of cleanups already ongoing at Hanford, in southeastern Washington. B Reactor opened in 1944 under the supervision of Enrico Fermi and played a key role in the Manhattan Project. It's been shuttered since 1968. (Note: Requires free New York Times login and password.)
All right now. Hasn't our litigation-happy culture gone far enough? It's one thing when patients sue doctors, or neighbors sue neighbors. But when it starts to involve the clowns...
Friday, April 6
I've been through the web site and I have to admit I'm still a little fuzzy on what tightcircles are; I'm also not sure I buy the company's argument that they're a big improvement over plain old listservs. But I know that Penn Jillette is a fan and Joe Bob Briggs uses the technology to host his discussion list, and they're two of the coolest guys going. At the very least tightcircles seem to be an interesting variant on mailing lists, which are either the reason God made the Internet or the end of free time as we know it. I lean more toward the latter view. But if you have a spare sixteen or seventeen hundred hours per week, this might be worth a look.
Once again, the cheerfully muckraking folks at The Smoking Gun have provided proof that touring musicians are basically not human. Their favored tool: the concert rider, which is the part of the standard appearance agreement that specifies the visiting artist's particular, umm, requirements on show night. The fun this time around is provided not by a spoiled rock and roll star but by a spoiled, aging tenor... and as TSG observes in its pithy introductory remarks, "Christ, what a load this Luciano Pavarotti is!" Read and enjoy, and remember: No distinct smells.
Also via SiliconValley.com this morning, Dan Gillmor reports on the strenuous vetting process the Bush administration has put into place at the Labor Department. Speaking to the World Economic Forum in Washington, Secretary Elaine Chao told the audience: "I need people. If you have an 'R' behind your name and you're breathing, I'll take you." Oh, I see. So when she says "I need people," she actually means "I need white guys in their 40s."
