Friday Quick Hits 7-16

Sometimes you just gotta have some quick hits.

World Trade Center Boat. So they found a ship from the 1700's at the site of the World Trade Center in NY. Amazing. Fantastic. But really what is odd is that it wasn't found before. It's not like the ship was hundreds of feet down. It WAS under a building, right? Did they just toss up the buildings without looking around or doing a proper enough survey to find the hull of a big wooden ship? It seems odd. I have slightly less confidence in the buildings in NY now. Of course, I have no intention to go there, so it won't affect me. But still, come on guys. . . .

Is it just me or does it seem that, lately, every issue that Jessee Jackson is on is almost fatally the wrong side? We've all grown accustomed to Jackson being a philandering, spotlight hogging, attention whore, but it seems that he's on a spectacular run of misses. Here was a man that, at one time, fought for what was right and what was just. Now it just seems he goes where he'll appear on tv so he can keep money flowing in. It's sad. A man who worked and struggled hard fighting for civil rights has become a punchline. For many a bad joke.

Every time I'm in a store and I go to the checkstand and look at all the idiot rags such as "US Magazine" and "People" and so forth, I'm pleased to a greater degree than I should be that I don't know ANYONE on the covers. Not a one. "Vanessa splits with Ryan" and "Is Jared cheating on Crystal?" and on and on. I have no idea who these people are. It's fantastic! I feel myself a better person for not knowing something.

I got a little pissed the other day for something small and yet insidious. We all know food stamps. I used to cashier and there were little money like pieces of paper. But it was deemed easier to have a ATM-like card that you could use to buy things at a grocery store. This was also supposed to increase the self-esteem of the user. Which was important, I guess, for some reason.
The card is called EBT. Which stands for .. . . .something. It doesn't matter. I've already gotten over the anger of EBT users buying soda and fillet Mignon and cheetos and other non-essentials. That's one of those "well, people are slime, but I can't do anything about it" things. Even though it's MY money. And yours and anyone who has the gall to have a job and pay taxes. I'm over that.
But what got me cheesed-off, if I may borrow that expression, is that now fast food places have signs that say "now accepting EBT."
So let's get this straight. People who are getting government assistance to buy essentials to live on, can now spend our money on Macho size Mr. Pibb and curly fries and a side order of black beans.
To me, that's a bit too far. I'm fine with giving people a helping hand, but when that help is used frivolously, I have a problem with that. I'd rather keep my money than have people use it to buy a chalupa.

In the coming weeks I'm going to begin a feature called "Why I won't vote for you." I will highlight the platforms of the various parties and the reasons why their core values do not represent me and why I am reluctant to vote for them. I will being highlighting the Democrats, the Republicans, the Tea Party (such as they are), the Greens and even the Libritarians. Should be a gas!

I'm a pretty prideful person. I think most people have certain levels of pride, but at a certain point you say "well, I think my boss/this law/you is stupid, but I have to live and so I won't fight battles not worth fighting."
I bring this up because someone I've known for years has let his pride land him on the streets. Not just pride, but a series of poor decisions that go back as far as I can remember.
But pride. A tricky thing. This friend would speak about losing jobs or apartments with a certain sense of pride. Because it was on his terms. HE made the decision not to put up with a job that made him do work he didn't want to do, and so he felt a sense of pride for not 'lowering himself' or 'compromising his integrity' or some such crap. And I'm sure, as he's sleeping in an alley tonight he's convinced that it's not him that's the problem, but everyone else. They just don't understand. Nobody understands. Only him. He's right. And he'll dream his dreamy dreams without a place to live and precious little sympathy.
I feel bad, but everyone has to take responsibility for their actions, and though he has, it seems it'll end sooner than it should.

How in the hell do Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell keep getting acting jobs? So so so so unfunny.

Oh, the picture at the top is a type of Henri Bergson's 'inversion'

Job Interview

It's that time again. Time for political candidates to vie for your vote. But they don't so much tell you what they will do as tell you how bad the other guy is.

But isn't this election process just an elaborate job interview? Aren't we being approached by people for a position to do something to make our lives easier or less troubled or just plain better?

Employer: Hi Candidate A, thanks for coming in today. So, your resume says you have extensive experience in politics. Can you tell me about that?

Candidate: The guy you will interview after me has almost no experience.

Employer: Ok. . .but tell me what your accomplishments have been.

Candidate: The guy waiting to come in has never had to deal with real issues and has proven himself unable to handle even little issues properly.

Employer: Let's leave the next guy out of this, shall we? How about your policies? Taxes and education? Your plans for those?

Candidate: That other guy will tax everything you find important and cut education and probably pump toxic waste into YOUR drinking water.

Employer: No no no NO! YOU. Tell me about YOU!

Candidate: The other guy is unproven and has been described by the Auto Trader as "someone we just can't trust."

Employer: Why are we even interviewing you?

Candidate: Can we really put our trust and the lives of our children in someone like the guy waiting to come in?

Employer: Please leave.

Candidate: Candidate A, a plan for (fill in the position)

Employer: (loudly) Security!

I think that's what it would go, and should go, for these candidates.
Stop talking about 'the other guy.'
Tell me what YOU will do.

Friday Quick Hits 7-9

And the next adventure begins. . .



Here in California we have a budget problem. Frankly, we've had a budget problem for about 9/10ths of my life. But I have a way to solve it. And quickly.
We could earn enough money to cover everything if the police really crack down on people who talk on their phone while they drive.
Not a day goes by when I'm not almost rammed, run off the road, or having to brake hard to avoid some moron who is too lazy to look while changing lanes or stop at a stop sign.
My idea: Tell cops (in those sneaky all-white cruisers with no lights on top) to look for phone people. The money could be raised in a weekend!
The biggest problem is that the fine for talking while driving is about $150 and doesn't go up (as my girlfriend dutifully found out). My solution is that your first ticket is $150
the next one, $300
then $500
then a grand.
If you're too attached to your phone to either a)not use it while driving or b)use a bluetooth then you deserve to get a big-ass ticket.

Does anyone besides me remember when the History Channel had a lot of actual History content? It's like when MTV stopped showing music videos and the name of the station became an anachronism. "Pawn Stars" my ass!

Apart from the smugness exhibited sometimes, why do so many people sneer at Prius drivers? It seems like a win-win to me. They use less gas, produce less exhaust (yes, I know about the batteries) and I don't see a downside to filtering less of our money to the shady middle east kingdoms whose money supports things we have fundamental problems with (lack of human rights, poor woman's rights, support of radicalism, camel racing.)

Two things were embarrassing about Lebron James' little TV show the other night. One, Lebron himself and showing his arrogance, narcissism, and immaturity in having to have that attention (an HOUR of time to say "Miami"?) Two, ESPN. Fawning over this guy is as embarrassing as when they fall over themselves to praise the yankees endlessly. Jim Gray once again proved himself to be a tool.
I don't care that he left Cleveland. I've no rooting interest in that. But, my god that guy is a lame ass.

Ok, have a seat, I have something important to tell you before you go. You all ready? Good. Obama is just a politician. He's not the devil. He's not the savior. Just a politician. Got that? Write it down so you can reference that later. Ok, now you can go. Have an ice cream, it's hot out there.

McCartney, Best and Worst

This is an older thing I wrote, but since I'm a geek, here it is again.
It's my track by track mini-review of what I consider his best album and his worst album.
So there.

BEST:
1-Band on the Run (1973)
Preceded by: Red Rose Speedway
Followed by: Venus and Mars
Recorded almost entirely in Lagos, Nigeria, Band on the Run has everything you want in a McCartney album. Huge catchy singles, fun rockers, light acoustic numbers and a song about a dead painter. The only Wings were Paul, Linda, and Denny. The songs are solid, confident and complete works.
-Band on the Run. The title track starts slowly, but builds to an epic height with the help of the rising horns. A fun, interesting, rocker that uses a synthesizer minimally but to maximum effect. Though heard a million times by now, it’s still fun to listen to.
-Jet. This is an energetic song from beginning to end, no matter the silly lyrics. Easy choice as a single.
-Bluebird. A light and breezy acoustic tune just made to sing along with.
-Mrs. Vandebilt. Some very nice bass work on this song keeps the song bouncing along and very listenable. Nice lead guitar.
-Let Me Roll It. The perfect loud concert song. Searing lead guitar riff highlights this thumping rock song. Vocal echo has drawn comparisons to what Lennon would do, but McCartney has been known to sing a few rock songs in his time as well, so I’ll leave it be.
-Mamunia. Another easy sounding acoustic number that sounds like it could be played while sitting on the porch watching the rain fall.
-No Words. A McCartney/Laine number. Good tune that has a nice Paul/Denny vocal.
-Helen Wheels. An on-the-road loud screaming rock and roll song. Strong driving beat that keeps rolling along.
-Picasso’s Last Words (Drink to Me). An unassuming little song about the end of Picasso. Instead of just playing it straight, McCartney decided to try to take cubist ideas and distorted perspectives and use them in a musical form.
-Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five. A kind of throwaway song which could have been annoying except the synth actually works in the song, instead of making it more irritating. The song ends with a crescendo of horns, leading to a fadeout of the Band on the Run song.

WORST:
23-McCartney II (1980)
Preceded by: Back to the Egg
Followed by: Tug of War
Experimentation. Technology. Again, Paul plays everything himself, after jettisoning the rest of the Wings lineup for this disaster. Sometimes experiments shouldn’t be put on vinyl. God, this is an awful album.
-Coming Up. Big hit and a good song as well. Optimistic as per the usual.
-Temporary Secretary. Synthesizers can sometimes be the enemy. The chorus is more than annoying and the only redeeming part of the song is Paul’s voice in the body of the song.
-On The Way. A kinda-sorta blues tune with processed and massively echoed vocal. Could have been better if it had been taken more seriously.
-Waterfalls. Second single from the album. A tinny ballad that suffers from poor lyrics and a ridiculous video where soft focus tries to distract us from the silly sweater vest McCartney wears.
-Nobody Knows. Inspired by the same show on the blues that provided us with “On the Way”, “Nobody Knows” is faster paced and is far from inspired lyrically. It has a nice toe tapping beat.
-Front Parlour. Processed semi-song that spares us from any lyrics.
-Summer’s Day Song. A slow keyboard heavy song with McCartney’s voice sounding thin.
-Frozen Jap. Technology is not our friend in this over-long instrumental. The idea, I assume, was to produce crap.
-Bogey Music. What might have been at least an interesting 12-bar song is destroyed by the pathetic handling of the vocals. The vocal is layered and echoed enough so that it drowns out the words.
-Darkroom. Another synth heavy song that is not pleasing.
-One of These Days. After the rest of the album, a listener might be thrown by the sounds on this song. It’s called a ‘guitar’ and sounds quite good with Paul’s voice. After “Coming Up”, the best song on the album.
Bonus Tracks!!!!! The horror. The HORROR.
-Check My Machine. There’s a backing groove there. But the irritating repeating of “Check my machine” over and over for 6 minutes is cruel and unusual.
-Secret Friend. More experimentation. Vari-speed sounds might be interesting. . .if there was a point to it. Over 10 minutes of “why am I listening to this?” life waster.
-Goodnight Tonight. A single and a pretty good one. Another nod to olde music, generated by Paul’s bass and some deft dueling guitars from Juber and Laine.

Thoughts on Comedy, Part 2

In this installment I'm going to delve into the question of why 'old' tv comedy is NOT funny.

To be fair, it's not funny to us NOW.
There's no denying that shows like "The Honeymooners" and "I Love Lucy" were groundbreaking and masterpieces of comedy for their time.

But if you watch them now, having not seen them when they first ran, they come across as simplistic, unfunny and somewhat lame.
Why is this?
I watched a scene from a Honeymooners that was presented as a 'test' of comic sensibilities. It's supposed to be a 'classic' scene. In the scene, Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton are talking about golf. Ralph is going to go play and is reading a 'how to' book on golf.

The setup is classic. Character A is delving into an area he's unfamiliar with and will either embarrass himself because he doesn't know the game or is physically awkward or both. This situation is common throughout situation comedies.

But "The Honeymooners" has a problem translating to now because of several factors.

First is the style of physical comedy that was the base of the show. Television was relatively new and most of the watching public was either familiar with movies or vaudiville theatre. In the theatre, the physical movements and facial expressions had to be broad enough to project to the back of the theatre. This thought followed, naturally, the actors to the new medium. So what we have is the over exaggerated reaction: Big bug-eyed gaping toward the camera/audience, along with a sustained pause. To those watching, this was a continuation of the comedic acting style that they were used to. It made sense. There was no reason to assume that there would be any other way to present comedy.

Secondly, the show, to us in the here and now, is not surprising. One element of humor that is often overlooked, though essential to humor, is that of the surprising or unexpected. What that means is that the humor has to be clever enough to not let us, the loyal viewer, know what's coming up next. If we KNOW that something will happen, then when it does, the element of surprise is lost, and we're left with a joke we've already heard the punchline to. It's true that in shows like The Honeymooners the jokes they presented were original and the audience DID NOT see them coming. But, by this point, we all have seen these set-ups a million times. The joke is a surprise, but when the punchline, as it is, is already known, then the joke is no longer a joke. And, except in rare cases, a joke that falls flat is not funny (unless it's on purpose.)

Back to the Honeymooners scene. Kramden is reading to Norton. Step by step instructions about how-to golf. Kramden says "first, address the ball." What the viewer is supposed to do is think, "ahh, 'address' in golf is to approach and get in my stance." And I'm sure that at the time the home viewer thought that. But everyone over the age of 2 in this day and age knows what will happen next. And, yes, it does. Norton approaches the ball, bends over and says "hello ball. . ." which is followed by extremely exaggerated physical movements by Ralph Kramden. The joke was so obvious that the humor is lost. To us.

These shows just don't translate very well.
Classic show. Groundbreaking. But just not all that funny. I don't blame them. I blame every comedy since 1956.

Friday Quick Hits 7-2

And away we go

First off, I seriously believe that physics hates me. Yes, I have my reasons.

Just an annoyance. It's about book covers. More accurately, the back of the book cover. I bought "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (ehh) and read about halfway through before I read the back cover which said, I'll paraphrase, that the character "lives loves and dies in the hills of Spain." What?! Kind of ruins it a bit. Hard to read a book and hoping a character survives when I now know he'll die. Very unhappy about that. "Go see 'The Empire Strikes Back' where Luke learns and fights and finds out Darth Vader is his father."
Same thing happened to my girlfriend who was reading a non-fiction book (The Story of Z) whose back cover somewhat gives away the ending. Come on now. Is there someone we can blame? Can we sue? Is there a chance for a hands across America protest?

Quickly. It's "I couldn't care less", not "I could care less." As I posted at some point earlier in my life, saying you 'could' care less means that you actually do care more than zero and up to the most you can possibly care. I will, from this moment on, assume that if anyone says "I could care less" it actually means they care passionately about that subject/person/pasta dish. If you're too stupid to use the phrase correctly, I should not be required to decode your idiocy.

The customer is always right? Do you know what that really means? No, you don't. It does NOT mean that the consumer should expect to get free stuff because they want it. What it DOES mean is that if a store is selling beta-max machines and customers want VHS machines, then the customer, or more correctly their money, is right. Their purchasing habits vis-a-vis a business standpoint are right. It should realistically be "The customer's money is always right." Or, to use a Spinal Tap line "Money talks and Bullshit walks."

Hey you, get the hell out of the fast lane if you're not willing to go fast. Driving the speed limit in the far left lane is NOT alright.


I heard the stupid phrase, "he's not MY president" alot during the Bush administration and thought the people saying it were, frankly, morons. "At least," thought I, "republicans won't do the same thing if a democrat gets in office." Nope! I have heard the same thing now that a democrat is president. And it's no less stupid. If you are a citizen of the United States, he's YOUR president. This applies to everyone of any party at any point in the future. Unless you wish to renounce your citizenship. If so, follow these instructions:
1. Go to nearest foreign country and walk into US consulate or embassy.
2. Tell officials there you wish to renounce your citizenship.
3. They will try to talk you out of it, but after you fill out a bunch of forms and make a oral declaration, you are now free! You no longer have to have a president you have disagreements with! Easy.
If you don't follow those steps, then be a man and shut the fuck up.

I find Jon Stewart to be pompous, unfunny and his conclusions faulty.

Thoughts on Comedy, Part 1

A subject near and dear to my heart, Comedy.

In this installment on comedy, I wanted to ramble on about is an element of what Henri Bergson classified as the "ABSENCE OF FEELING."

An example of this can be easily seen in Buster Keaton's silent films. Keaton might fall down, get thrown off a roof or generally get thumped around, but it is ultimately humorous because he is NOT seen to be suffering. Our protagonist, Keaton, is apparently unharmed by what has happened, and it is therefore funny. If he had someone shoot him in the butt with a pellet gun (which happened in a film) and we saw him suffering and bleeding and becoming infected, it doesn't quite add to the comic.

Another, more tangentially, case is that of Wile E. Coyote. He gets blown up or falls from great heights or has endless anvils dropped on him, but he always comes out relatively unharmed. If his guts fly everywhere or he has brain damage. . .it just isn't that funny. The fact that there is a sort of absence of feeling makes it possible for the humor to flourish.

That is the physical level. But there is another level to look at. That is the emotional level. If we feel for the character in a play/show/movie it is much harder to laugh at their misfortunes. In these cases we, the viewer, identify with the character on some level and when we see them miss a train, we empathize with them. It becomes an 'us against them' situation. When you eliminate the 'them' of this equation, the humor ceases to exist.

Though that was confusing, let me give an example in one of the greatest tv comedies of all time, MASH.
When the show started we had two main protagonists, Hawkeye and Trapper. They were accompanied by a series of sidekicks, but were essentially the main characters to which we attached ourselves. Then there was the ineffective, yet non-threatening, leadership (Henry Blake) and the dual enemies of Frank Burns/Hotlips and the Army itself.

Frank Burns was the ultimate foil. If something bad happened to him, we laughed. He was a caricature, sure, but we, as viewers, had a certain absence of feeling when it came to him. We had no sympathy for him (or for Hotlips, early on) so if he was slipped a Mickey and tied up or pushed into a ditch, it was 'us' pushing 'them' into a ditch. We laughed.

Now, when we remove the Frank Burns character, the ready-made foil disappears. The funny 'them' ceases to exist, in the show, in any other respect other than the Army itself. The replacement of Burns with Charles Winchester was ineffective, because the character was made to be a fully rounded human character. He had a family, feelings and thoughts that, though not meshing with the kooky doctors, was certainly not obviously worthy of open derision (the silly 'posh' upper crust character, in general, is so outdated that it is not only ineffectual, but actually annoying, see the movie Volunteers.)

So what happened in the show was that, over time, the ABSENCE OF FEELING, in the emotional respect, was eliminated. In it's stead the characters all became the same: angry, outspoken pacifists.

The fact that we couldn't really laugh at BIG misfortunes of the characters, due to us identifying with them on a personal level, created a show where they tried to create humor out of the mineute.

The problem then spiraled out of control as they created stupider characters (Zale and Rizzo, for the love of god!) being played by inferior actors trying to make marginal material funny.

By creating feeling for the characters, we cannot laugh as heartily and are left with, at best, muted giggles.

I believe this is one of the reasons why "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" is such a tepid and humorless movie. (There are some who would disagree, but there isn't a joke in the movie that isn't telegraphed well ahead of time, the acting is too broad and the set up to the jokes is just too damn slow.) In that movie John Candy's character would have been PERFECT if he hadn't, at the end, been shown to be a character deserving of our sympathy. If he was just a pathological annoyance then the scorn we wish to heap on him is justified. But since he has a sad story, any abuse we might direct toward that character now becomes mean-spirited.

Bergson was correct. The ABSENCE OF FEELING creates an environment in which the viewer can both identify with the character on a physical and emotional level without taking pleasure in any pain that character might feel.