Tuesday, December 23, 2003

More Signs of the Times

I saw these driving up I-65 from Indianapolis this weekend, meaning millions of people have already seen 'em, but here it is anyway:

  • The "Flying J" truck stop chain's usual series of billboards now proudly proclaim themselves to have "WiFi Hotspots."
  • There have already been Starbucks at the oases on the Indiana Tollway, and I believe they're coming to the Tri-State in Illinois. This was the first time I saw a Starbucks advertised on one of those "Food" signs placed ahead of each Interstate exit. Some may see this as a bad sign of encroaching Starbucks domination (like McDonald's doesn't already dominate the highways). Many travelers who've endured bad gas station coffee will see this as a good sign: finally, a place to be assured of a decent cuppa Joe. Just as long as they're open 24 hours and will fill Thermoses.
Even though the exit with the Starbucks was still in the Indianapolis suburbs, it suggested to me another part of a trend noted by people who marks such things: the resettlement of populations along the interstates. As rural areas continue to empty out, only the interstate corridors show any potential for growth. Industry locates there for easy access to trucking, and small town reinvent themselves as retail centers, extended rest stops or tourist attractions (like my father's hometown of Walnut, Iowa turned all of its empty stores into an "Antique City."). Not suburbs, or even exurbs. Call them "exit-burbs."
Just a few days after I first posted this entry, the Chicago Tribune had an article about hotspots at truck stops becoming a big draw. That's me: two days ahead of the curve.

Friday, December 12, 2003

People Are Wonderful/No Damn Good

I�m back from a long stretch of business and distraction with a couple stories about my adventures in beer geekdom. Although you can probably substitute �Wine,� �Cheese,� even �Cigars� for �Beer,� and there�s a similar story out there.
Back in November, my homebrew club, BOSS, held its usual meeting with samplings of various beers. We popped open one bottle from a brewer with a good reputation for strong, over-the-top beers that age very well. We lifted our sampling glasses and were immediately hit by the smell of� a dirty diaper. Somehow, we had gotten hold of a contaminated bottle, or one that had simply gone stale.

These kinds of things with microbrewed beers. Despite scrupulous attention to sanitation, many of these beers are not pasteurized so they can be �bottle-conditioned:� some active yeast is left in or added to the bottle to continue working on the beer over time, which means a beer like this should improve with age. But the odds are that at some point a bottle will be contaminated or staled.

I said as such when I posted my opinion of the beer at RateBeer.com. That's the link to it on the right, and no, the beer in question is not on that list underneath, those are the latest ten I�ve rated. I give it a low rating, yet explaining that this was likely a single bottle that had gone bad.

Probably not more than five minutes after posting the rating, I had a message in my account from the beer�s brewer. He wrote asking for more information on the bottle, what the date stamp was, so he could find out why there was a bad beer out there. After finding the bottle (which I took home because it could be reused for homebrew), I wrote back that it was dated for last December; and whether it had sat on a store shelf under flourescent lights all that time, or in someone's fridge, could not be determined for certain.

He wrote back asking for my address so he could send some new bottles as soon as they came off the line. Five weeks later, a UPS package arrived with the two new bottles, plus two more of another beer they only have on draft at their tap house.

So first off, I haven�t mentioned the name of the beer involved, so moochers don�t start posting bad reviews in hopes of scoring free brew. But it just goes to show ya that when you�re really interested in someone else�s work, be it beer, or what have you, and you demonstrate your interest with complementary comments (or helpful comments if something goes wrong); then if the people on the other side of the counter also care about what they do, they will sometimes reciprocate that appreciation.

Gotta go now, but I'm also adding some thoughts about the second half of this title. For now, here's a preview at
Pubcrawler.com

Tuesday, November 18, 2003

Time to leave Cub Fans alone

No, I mean it. I had even been planning a new blog dedicated to collecting photos and stories demonstrating how pitiful Cub fans are. But a little while ago, I caught an A&E �Biography� episode about Siegfried & Roy which had, of course, been hastily updated to cover Roy�s being attacked by one of his tigers. The story also showed the hoardes of crying fans gathered outside Roy�s hospital, leaving candles and little stuffed tigers by the entrance. Yep, people who are even more pitiful than Cub fans.

But then again, these people won�t be whining about Roy for the next 60 years.

Parenthetically, even though video does exist of the actual tiger attack, A&E had the taste not to show it (or maybe didn't want to pay for it). Instead, they used their trick of combining existing stock footage to suggest the sequence of events.

And this incident forced me to grudge a little more respect to S&R. Heck, even Penn Jillette was interviewed, saying absolutely no one was doing what S & R have been doing for over 30 years. And he�s right, of course. It�s not like the Mirage has �Magical Manfred and His Mighty Lions� standing by.

I'm littering up the Web even more

I'm trying to place links to other places where I've written pithy or worthwhile stuff. Here you can find an index of comments I've left about movies on the
Internet Movie Database. Worth a try.
Also, when I contributed a plot summary about the "Fargo" TV pilot, it was indexed under this search link.
Finally, wayyy back in college, my roommate Tim was building a card file on which he had entered all of the actors who had appeared on �Star Trek� (this was before the name needed to be qualified with the subtitle �The Original Series�) and was combing through TV Guides to find other shows on which these actors had appeared, clipping the program descriptions, and pasting them onto the index cards. That's right, kiddies, this is exactly the analogy they use to describe a computer database, which, before everyone had computers, had to be done laboriously by hand.

At some point I inherited the card file, with the intention of updating it. Then I had the intention of putting it in the computer. Finally I realized this work had already been done on the internet. So I�ve been taking a few cards at a time, and checking the credits against the IMDB, adding new credits where none were noted before. This is mostly for guest shots on TV shows that no longer have much of a following. I can see the list of update when I�m registered to imdb, but others can�t, I�m afriad. So far, I've updated info on 15 TV shows.

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Must be a new baseball rule

So just how is a guy trying to catch a foul ball going into the stands responsible for eight runs? Don't Cubby errors have something to do with it?

Cub Fans Share the Love!

Here's a sampling of Cub fan reaction to the "fouled ball," from the Oct. 15 Sun-Times, in brief:
BY GREG COUCH Staff Reporter
Five outs from the World Series, and Florida's Luis Castillo hit a fly ball that went to Cubs left fielder Moises Alou. He drifted over toward the stands and jumped for the ball, but then a young man in the crowd in a dark shirt, Cubs cap and headphones reached over with both hands looking for a souvenir and knocked the ball away.
The play was ruined, and Alou jumped out of control in anger, reportedly yelling an obscenity at the fan. A few minutes later, the man cried while holding a sweater over his face as three security guards escorted him in safety out of the stands.
Later, they gave the man, maybe 25 years old and 5-7, a tan jacket as a disguise so he could leave the stadium safely.
Cubs security wouldn't release the man's name, saying they worried for his safety.
[...]
"Did you see the replay? Did he interfere?'' asked fan Paul Springer, who was sitting two rows behind the unnamed man.
"Then they should kill him.''
Afterward, the man just sat there. Sat there listening to his headphones as if he had no idea of what the heck he had done to the Cubs, the fans, the city. History.
And that seemed to gall the fans near him. They threw beer at him, screamed "Thanks a lot, [expletive].''
"He had those headphones on and wasn't paying attention,'' Springer said. "He was just sitting there in the whole maelstrom.''
The maelstrom included the fans chanting an obscenity. Outside the stadium, people looked for the man, figuring he had been thrown out.
Some fans in the stands ran down from nearby to yell at the guy or worse. Security escorted several people out of Wrigley Field.
Cubs manager Dusty Baker, who has spent the season shooting down the idea of curses, telling fans to forget about the past, was still able to keep cool afterward.
"It had nothing to do with the curse,'' he said. "It has to do with the fan interference, the very uncharacteristic error by Gonzo, because he doesn't miss anything. And then they just started hitting.''
Alou had calmed down afterward, too, saying, "I had a 100 percent chance to catch it. [But] any fan in any ballpark would go for the ball.''
But other Cubs fans weren't so willing to absolve. A man named Matt, who wouldn't give his last name, sat nearby.
"It's a good thing they got him out of there,'' Matt said. "They were going to beat the hell out of the guy. He was going to die.''

Cubs fans: hapless, hopeless, homicidal.

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

Sheb Wooley

Gosh, darn it, I've been wanting to tell this one for weeks, and it slipped my mind. After going on for some length on my previous posts about the "proper" way to memorialize the passing of a well-liked entertainer, I think Sheb merited the one I had in the back of my mind. No speeches, no cheesy cartoons of the guy meeting St. Peter... as the composer of the Hee Haw theme (and now that there are "Hee-Haw" videos for sale, the official web site has become much more than the mere placeholder I first found), Sheb rates a big "Cornfield County Salute:"

"SA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-LUTE!!!"

Sheb is best known for writing and performing 1958's "Purple People Eater," one of the few rock'n'roll novelty songs that's still fun to listen to after you've heard it a few times. His "Ben Colder" songs wear thin after a while, though. Anyway, Barb and I passed through his hometwon of Erick, Oklahoma on our 2001 Rt. 66 tour. There, the two main cross streets are named after him and fellow homeboy, his brother-in-law Roger Miller. The picture below shows the two streets, but the signs keep getting stolen. One is the old Rt. 66, the other is the road to the Interstate. Unfortunately, like many small, rural towns, there's not much left to see. The corner I stood on to take this 2-picture, expertly stitched together, panorama, was empty, just an old tile floor where a building had been. The cater-corner building is the "100th Meridian Museum," but it was apparently open only by appointment (besides, 100? W is actually the Texas Border, a few miles away). There's a story about our visit there that Barb wrote, perhaps I'll get around to posting it.

Here's a link to some other pictures of mine.

Friday, September 26, 2003

Sweet Painted Little Ladies

Well, the state of Iowa has this program that tries to lure its college graduates to relocate there. Last night, they had a reception at the Chicago Cultural Center, with a meet and greet with Governor Tom Vilsack (whom we'd met previously when they did the same thing in 2000). So what did I get out the event? Well, Vilsack, despite being a native of Pennsylvania, has the laid-back Iowan thing down. He went through a five-minute speech with no notes.

But what caught my eye was the little promotional video they showed before his speech. In the montage of footage presenting Iowa as a healthy, prosperous and safe place to raise your kids up, was a clip of a child at some fair or festival getting her face painted.

It just struck me that a face-painting scene has become video shorthand for family life in a lot of commercials for area chambers of commerce, renaissance fairs and county fairs. I don't know that it has any cultural background to it, except for grandma exclaiming "Why did you get your face painted up like some wild Indian?" I first noticed face painting as an accessory to women characters in sword and sorcery comic books of the 70's. And now here it's a harbinger of traditional family values. I guess it's just one of those things that lends itself to a picture of a kid having some fun without being twirled around in a carnival ride.

Thursday, September 18, 2003

Linked by Death

When two famous people have the bad luck to die on the same day, or at least so that their deaths are noted in the news on the same day, we can help but compare their relative contributions to our culture. So we note that the Chicago Tribune put Johnny Cash?s obituary on their September 13 front page, while John Ritter was in the Tempo entertainment section. This also despite the fact that Ritter died Thursday night, September 11 (no irony marked there) and Cash very early on Friday the 12th, so while both deaths were all over the morning TV and radio on Friday, the papers couldn't get to them until Saturday morning.
The placement of these stories in the paper, and the order in which they were covered on broadcast news, clearly favored Cash as the more pre-eminent person. That?s likely so, what with his being "there at the creation" of rock?n?roll and a pioneer country crossover, and influencing even punk and later styles, and managing a comeback in the 1990's, while Ritter was "just" the lead in a "jiggle comedy" most people are embarrassed to admit they watched.
However, had theseoccurred occured in, say, 1985, Ritter would have certainly gotten more play as one of the most successful sitcom actors in TV at that point, and one whose show sparked a host of imitators, while Cash had been largely ignored, influential but not as far as the mainstream was concerned. And with the reach of TV being what it is, its possible more people saw an episode of "Three's Company" than ever saw Cash perform. Whether more people might have heard one of Cash's records than saw a Ritter performance is up in the air. But each had a part in shaping the world we know today.
Of course during the whole time these two were alive, it's impossible to imagine that one had compared himself to the other, whether favorably or unfavorably, the way death has invited these implied comparisons. Now it is possible their paths had crossed: the Internet Movie Database cannot put them together on the same production, although Ritter was doing TV work starting in 1968, the same time Cash had his own variety series. And Ritter was the son of Tex Ritter, who had to have shared a bill with Cash at some point, maybe with little John backstage. The mind boggles.
And you haven't seen the video for Johnny's last single, "Hurt?" (a cover of a Nine Inch Nails tune, yet), Cash's website has links to it. Watch it; it's astounding.

Tuesday, September 09, 2003

German Film Director, Leni Riefenstahl, Dies at 101

Ooooh... I can't wait to see if any editorial cartoonists touch this one! Then again, I haven't seen any Warren-Zevon-meets-St.-Peter gags, so that string may finally be played out!

Monday, September 08, 2003

"Let them eat Freedom Fries!"

I'm waiting for someone to suggest this to Bush as he now goes begging "that irrelevant debating society" for help in Iraq.

Friday, September 05, 2003

Adult Children of the Corn

What did we do over the Labor Day weekend? Rather than make any big plans, I just said to Barb on Saturday, �Let�s go for a drive and see where we end up.� Spontaneous holidays are a sort of fantasy I have.

We headed south on the Historic Dixie Highway�I suspect any highway that leaves any northern city going south is named �Dixie Highway.� We�ve gone down this route before, prowling antique malls or taking the scenic route to the nearest Lowe�s in Bourbonnais, but this time we kept on going south a little further. Passed some nice little river towns with great old houses. Too bad living there would run counter to my goal of spending less time commuting to work, unless I change jobs.

We decided to go as far as Watseka before we turn around, but just before we get near that town, we spotted a small sign reading �Corn Maze.� Immediately we decided to detour six miles west and came across the Shule Family Corn Maze, near the unincoporated town of L�Erable.

So yep, we spent a few hours wandering around a corn maze, looking for �scavenger hunt� clues: lettered slips of paper that would make us eligible for a drawing. These folks have been doing their corn maze since 1997, though only on odd-numbered years, since farmers need to rotate corn with soybeans that fix nitrogen back into the soil.

I, of course,

�Copyright 1997 by Bill Welch
www.a-natural-selection.com
worked in the fact that I had spent a few summers detasseling seed corn. Even so, Mr. Shule warned us to watch for black-and-yellow banana spiders, which are harmless and beneficial, but are also pretty noticeable, especially when they spin webs right across your path. I had never encountered these back in Iowa. We almost considered taking one home to help with our mosquito problem. The ones we saw were a lot plumper and more colorful than this photo suggests,

As darkness approached, we abandoned the scavenger hunt, and were directed to a local restaurant in L�Erable called the Long Branch, were, coincidentally, Mrs. Shule worked. But that was okay, since it was the only nearby place to eat. We had some nice entrees with homemade bread, and an appetizer of corn fritters in commemoration. (The other attraction in L�Erable is one of the country�s largest all-wood Catholic churches).

Corn mazes are a good place to get the kids to burn off energy. Many farmers plot out and make their own, or there are companies that do it for them (and here's a Google link to help you find some). Some are part of "U-pick" farms, others may be local fundraising events. And if a maze incorporates a "crop circle," all the better!

Tuesday, September 02, 2003

"If you watched more TV, perhaps you'd be better at your job"

Woe unto Bat-fans who don't have the Trio cable channel. Every couple of months, they run a "Brilliant But Cancelled" promotion featuring network shows that died before their time, like "Ernie Kovacs," "East Side/West Side," etc. (though it's a stretch to put "The PJs" into that category, if for no other reason than they had a three-season run). For September, they've dug up some cult favorite pilots that never made it to air: movie spin-offs of "L.A. Confidential" and "Fargo," but best of all the classic "Lookwell!". This 1991 pilot starred Adam West as an actor who played "Bannigan," a TV cop many years ago, but still tries to solve crimes whether the LAPD needs his help or not. It was written by Robert Smigel and Conan O'Brien and featured such business as West's Ty Lookwell brandishing his honorary police badge, encased in Lucite, and explaining the difference his character and others:

"Hey, weren't you Banacek?"
"You're mistaken. George Peppard was Banacek."
"Were you Brannigan?"
"Hugh O'Brian was Brannigan."
"Who's Hugh O'Brian?"
"Exactly!

Though I doubt a series made from this would have survived 13 weeks, this pilot proves Adam West is probably the greastest deadpan, self-reflexive actor of our time. Someone has got to give him a non-Batman project!

Catching this a second thime, I noticed that among the knick-knacks at Lookwell's home was a bust of Shakespeare which I'm certain looks exactly like the one in stately Wayne Manor whose head was hinged to reveal buttons marked "Access to Bat-Cave via Bat Poles"

And maybe a future video release of the movie "Fargo" will include the pilot for the attempted TV spinoff. Even though it doesn't include any of the movie's featured acters, it stuck close to the tone of the movie and even had a sort of Northern Exposure slant. Though I couldn't see the series lasting too long: if Chief Gunderson (Edie Falco in the pilot) was going to investigate a murder every week, the population of Brainerd, MN would empty out faster than Jessica Fletcher's Cabot Cove. Oh, yes, and at the end of the pilot, Marge finally had her baby in an abandonded drive-in cafe surrounded by snow. Don't know if they filmed it in Minnesota, but you sure can't make snow like that in Hollywood.

Nize Lady!

Another Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon has come and gone, and again I am compelled to watch it waiting for a train wreck. Now understand, that even though Jerry's motive for working this event for nearly 40 years has never been explained, and his statements in defense of his "kids" border on the bizarre, it is still a good cause that focuses lots of attention on a disease that otherwise wouldn't get any notice. That said, when Jerry announced that scientists told him a cure would still be found "within my lifetime," my bud Marc Nelson and I were thinking it's a safer bet that Jerry shouldn't waste his money buying new calendars. Leaving aside the fact that Jerry looked like Mr. Creosote (and yes, it had to be the result of his pain-killing steroids; people in their 70s don't gain weight like that), he was obviously in a great deal of pain. It's tempting to say it would be typical of Jerry to exploit himself the way he exploited his kids for so long, but I suspect Jerry was more concerned that once he's not on the show, bang goes the $60+ million it raises.

And after writing so much about Bob Hope, for whom the popular belief is that he slipped away quietly while surrounded by his loving family, there are millions of people, celebrities included for whom "their time" will come following several years of suffering. I had been re-reading Aristotle on "Happiness" for my Great Books club, where he raises the question of whether a man can be judged to have been "happy" only after his life is completed. I dunno. A lot of entertainers may have the adoration of millions, but does that count against living through the infirmities of advancing age or scars in one's personal life? Just something to think about.

Other highlights from the telethon:

  • Jerry's son Gary Lewis doing a few numbers from his days with the Playboys. Actually good to see, as they were rumored to have been estranged.
  • Charro! Y'know, she was a student of Andres Segovia and is conidered one of the world's best flamenco guitarists, but in America, flamenco don't get ya on the "Tonight Show." She's looking great for someone who's either 52 or 62, and she dared to just play guitar with nary a "cuchi" to be uttered. Her choice of Ravel's "Bolero" wasn't that challenging, but I may check out the few albums she has in print.
  • The local station on the "Love Network," WGN Channel 9, produced one of the most irritating cutaway segments I've seen. When a corporate sponsor announced they would be matching phone pledges for the next several minutes, 'GN spent that period in some sputtering special effect mode which looked like we were watching it through a web cam at 6 frames per second. All the while, the background music was usually that Beyonc� tune that might have been cool when it came out, but not after you've heard in a Pepsi commercial 500 times. And because the Cubs game was rain delayed, it went on several more hours than it would normally. But "entertainment" like is par for the course for Cub fans.

Thursday, August 21, 2003

America's Culture Imperiled!

And one more article about the loss of America's innocence, precipitated by terrorist activity: The offices of the National Enquirer and other supermarket tabloids, contaminated by anthrax spores, will lose their photo and source archives! All those pictures of Batboy gone!

Remembering the Good Old Days

I was "Googling" to see if my hometown newspaper, the Schaller Herald had any online presence yet (it didn't), and stumbled across a web page citing the Herald's editor as one among many who were dumbfounded by an 1898 tour by the pride of Marion, Iowa: the Cherry Sisters. Click the link here to read. Newspapermen in those days had quite a way with the language. Since they were also usually their own typesetters, you'd think they would want to write a bit more tersely.

For those who didn't know, the Cherry Sisters were to vaudeville what Florence Foster Jenkins was to opera, Elva Miller to 60's pop and the Shaggs to rock'n'roll: quite probably the worst to take the stage in that field. The linked article has its own links to other info about the Sisters, including an article that surmises the ladies knew how terrible they were: but they had an agenda.

Catching Up

Finally got a little time to mention: I went to Minneapolis a few weekends ago on business. Spotted two culturally iconic cars during the trip: on a suburban Minneapolis street, I passed a panel van painted to look like The Mystery Machine from the Scooby-Doo cartoons (not the first time I've seen it, or maybe one of many: last year I spotted one in a storage lot in Bourbonnais, Illinois).

Then, while driving home, I was taking the two-lane highway 12 to avoid fighting Wisconsin Dells traffic in the middle of a thunderstorm. As I was coming around the south of Madison, what should be tooling down the opposite lane but one of the Oscar Meyer Wienermobiles! It'd be polite to link this to something, I know, but Oscar Meyer's web site is pretty scant about its Wienermobiles.

Wouldn't it be a just slightly cooler world if there were more cars like this on the highway? It'd sure lighten the morning commute to be stuck in traffic ahead of the Munstermobile.

Friday, August 15, 2003

I just go on, but in a Fair and Balanced way

Okay, I promise, my two absolutely last words on Bob Hope (I can't help it, I'm a pop culture maven). The entertaining TVParty has a feature story on Bob's TV career, which points out how he managed to avoid burning out in the medium like his contemporaries did by only appearing in "specials," instead of weekly sitcoms or variety shows, never more than once a month. And that through the 70s and 80s, despite replacing his jokewriting staff in an effort to shake things up, the only notable attempt and becoming "more contemporary" was to replace Joey Heatherton with Loni Anderson then Brooke Shields. Last Christmas season one of Chicago's public TV stantions ran a 1950 Bob Hope Christmas special it just happened to have, and the skits, jokes and show order were almost exactly the same as they were 30 years later. (But in order to remain Fair and Balanced, I wanna point out that even if his "politcal" humor was more blunted than blunt, he was doing it on the radio and in his live shows at a time when the only other "topical" humor was Fred Allan interviewing Senator Claghorn about his opinions on National Fire Safety Week.
PS, TVParty also has--at this writing--a piece about the great Daws Butler's voice work on cereal commercials, with Real Player movies from his demo reel! See Pixie & Dixie and Mr. Jinx don Beatle wigs to sing about Kellogg's Raisin Bran! See Hokey Wolf disguide himself to steal Corn Flakes from Yogi Bear (and what is the deal with cartoon commercials in which characters steal cereal from each other?!). And best of all, early Cap'n Crunch and Quisp and Quake commercials!
Okay, the other thing is that some of the editorial cartoon memorials also showed an army field helmet hung on a microphone stand, in imitation of a fallen soldier being marked with his rifle stuck into ground. That's well, and good, but a few months earlier, these same cartoonists showed a helmet hung on a large drawing pen in tribute to Bill Mauldin. Pat, I'd like to buy a new idea!

Thursday, August 07, 2003

"See? I told you so"

Even Chicago Sun-Times Columnists Richard Roeper agrees!
Memo to the editorial cartoonists of the world: I love the creativity you show in your work, but the next time a celebrity dies and you're thinking about doing a drawing of God or St. Peter greeting the celeb at the gates of heaven, hmmm, maybe not. It's been done about a million times by now. (Not to mention the fact that some of these famous folks hardly led ticket-to-heaven lives.)
Thanks for your consideration.

The final count of editorial cartoons for Bob Hope (collected on Slate.com):
Bob Hope meeting St. Peter: 11
Hope & Crosby in Heaven: 4 (they're playing golf on the clouds in 3 of 'em) But where's Dorothy Lamour? She's dead, too!
Entertaining troops in Heaven: 5
Simple portraits: 6
"Thanks for the memories:" 3.

Hollywood writer Mark Evanier has added lots of good stories and correspondence about Hope on his weblog. Among the fun facts we've learned: Mention the licensed DC Comics series "The Adventures of Bob Hope," and he'd proudly point out that he owned a complete run of the series, which ran from 1950 to the late 60's. Also, that he really did have a photograph of Gen. Patton pi**ing in the Rhine River. It appears from these reminiscences that if you got to visit Bob at home, you were bound to be entertained. Evanier also points out that most of these cartoonists seem to be totally unable to draw Bob Hope! The most distinctive schnozz in the entertainment world! Come on!

And yes, my ranting was originally inspired by an essay written a few years back by George Carlin. He has reprinted it on his own website. Carlin was more accurate than even he could have imagined: CBS really did have the major Bob Hope tribute special, not NBC.

Monday, July 28, 2003

Addendum

I started on the previous rant yesterday, before Bob Hope died (and how many times will you hear or use the phrase "finally died" today?). So let's count the number of cartoons tomorrow that show St. Peter meeting Bob, and telling him "Thanks for the Memories." I predict that a slightly lesser number of cartoons will show Bob reunited with Bing and Dorothy on "The Road to Heaven." After that, golfing with Bing on top of a cloud. Betcha.

In fact, I bet most of those cartoonist had their Bob Hope Tribute cartoon all drawn years ago and ready to run, just like a newspaper's obiturary department. All they have to do is date it and submit it.

So let's wonder how many personalities already have clich�d memorial cartoons prepared for them: all the ex-presidents, no doubt, um, Clint Eastwood, who is 73, after all (St. Peter will be telling him, "Go ahead, make my day!" Yuk, yuk, yuk). The Pope and Billy Graham (the cartoons there would be just too easy).

And this is not to take anything away from Bob at all, but I notice the obit on CNN.com said Bob had been "Known as 'Mr. Entertainment' or 'the King of Comedy'." Really? Just about everybody worthy of a Friar's Roast has been "Mr. Entertainment." The only nickname I remember applied exclusively to Bob was "Old Ski Nose."

Sunday, July 27, 2003

Are Cartoonists People?

  Here's a rant that been fermenting in the back of my head for awhile, and I'm finally getting it out.
  Editorial cartoonists are supposed to be able to summarize world events and distill them into a single image that makes a salient point, maybe even provoking a laugh. So howcum it is when some celebrity dies, their tribute cartoons are almost universally lame! Lame like Tiny Tim. "I'm talking 'Night Court' in its fifth season lame!"
  When Katharine Hepburn passed on, most of the editorial cartoonists once again centered their "tribute" aound a weak gag involving the recently deceased meeting St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. If you go to Daryl Cagle's cartoonist roundup on slate.com, you can see them. About half have St. Peter announcing "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner!"

  For this they give out Pulitzer Prizes.

  Coming up second in the pool of possible ways to remember someone who's been in the public eye for generations, is St. Peter fuming about Kate's determination to wear pants in heaven. You remember, how she scandalized all of fifteen people in polite society by insisting on wearing a pantsuit only SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO! It's like Garrion Keillor once said, No matter how famous or successful you are in life, back in your home town you'll always be the kid who dropped an easy pass and cost cost his team the homecoming football game. And how many writers have you seen reference him and Eric Cartman at the same time? Dig through that archive for the Mister Rogers tributes, and you'll see pretty much the same thing. (And too bad Barry White had to die less than a week afterward. No icon for the Icon of Love [I know Buddy Hackett died the same day as Kate, but I don't think anyone outside of the entertainment trades was planning a tribute. Sorry, Buddy])
  So what's the deal? Why are these guys so hard up for a nice thing to say about someone that they'll go back to a clich? from Grandpa's Sunday School lessons?
  Maybe they are. It seems editorial cartooning is still stuck in the world of clich?: lying politicians growing Pinocchio noses, Jimmy Carter the peanut farmer or Gerry Ford the clumsy oaf (just see how many cartoonists use those crutches when either of those two gentlemen passes on). Eighty years after the comic strips stopped having characters react to a joke by "flopping" off-panel, editorial cartoonists will still feature "feelthy" Frenchmen in berets and striped shirts, or Congressmen with their skinny ties and wide-brimmed black hats. I guess if you want to make a point quickly, you need to use imagery that's been with our culture ever since Thomas Nast first drew donkeys and elephants to represent the political parties.
  Still, it was kind of disappointing that when browsing the archive of Kate Hepburn cartoons, only one of the cartoonists featured just drew an affectionate portrait. I'd think if an entertainer or artists really meant something in your life or worldview, that's the best thing you could do.

Thursday, July 03, 2003

All Killer, No Filler?

Was just reading some news squibs about the fact that some bands, specifically Metallica and Red Hot Chili Peppers have refused to have their music sold online via Apple's iTunes Music Store. Their rationale was that they were unhappy with the service for allowing customers to download indivudal tracks, with the rationale that "Our artists would rather not contribute to the demise of the album format," This, in turn, has sparked the usual flaming on the discussion boards about how albums today have maybe two good songs, while the rest is just filler crap. Some songwriters have responded that they feel none of their work is filler, but represents their best efforts, and artists don't spend a year of their lives working on what they think is just filler, blah, blah, blah�
I'm here to tell ya [old man voice] these kids today [/old man voice] must not remember that when singles artsits in the early 60's--and that's most rock 'n' roll artists--were accorded the honor of putting out an album, they were just one or two hit singles and a lot of filler. Check out any original Motown album: you get one or two of the Supremes' latest two hits, and then ten cuts of show tunes, or covers of songs made famous by other Motown artists. I can understand an artist still wedded to the concept of an "album" as a single unit of music that he wants to control: Brian Wilson mixed most of the Beach Boys' LPs, especially "Pet Sounds," in mono so the listener couldn't fiddle with his vision of how the music should sound (that and he was deaf in one ear). But if you really want your album to be an intact "vision," then you have no business releasing singles from it to radio. That instantly divorces those songs from the experience of listening to the album.
Besides, each songwriter may think each of his efforts is excellent, but record companies determine early in the process that "these" songs will be the singles, which will have videos made for them, and which will get the extra production boost. No matter how much the creative person protests, there are less worthy songs on a CD that many consumers resent paying $18.99 for, and would prefer to have just one or two songs.

The way to really fly

Haven't had a chance to mention that my commuting time was severly hampered last week. Seems one of the trestles on the Illinois Central line that my Metra Electric train runs over burned down the night of June 22. I learned this as I was driving to my station Monday morning the 23rd: No trains would be running south of 115th Street (I'm at about the 215th Street area). So I decided my best bet would be to drive to the Metra Rock Island station in Oak Forest-- a bit of a detour involving driving through road construction either on Cicero Ave. or I-57. Made the train there, which ends at a different station meaning I walk further to work, only managed to be half-an-hour late. Tuesday, Metra announces that all affected riders should go to the Oak Forest station. Bigger crowds all 'round. They also "anticipate" the bridge will be repaired by the following Wednesday, July 2.
Wednesday, Metra breaks down and charters lots of buses to meet riders at some of the Electric stations and shuttle them to Oak Forest. We continue operating this way the rest of the week.
But, on Monday, June 30, they announce the viaduct has been repaired, and we can go back to using the Electric line a day early! That's pretty good for a public infrastructure project!
Now if only they could start that rehab of the Randolph Street station, which had all its amenities town out 3 years ago, then had it's rebuilding stalled while the city rebuilt Michigan Avenue, then its bloated Millenium Park project.

Tuesday, July 01, 2003

Worst Movie ever? (At least physically)

In one respect, yes. I saw Decasia over the weekend at Facets uptown. It�s kind of a �found film� project, compiled from film archives across the world, of old, unstable nitrate film in various stages of decomposition. It s indeed a little disturbing to watch. We see the images of people, sometimes barely discernable amid a swarm of flaked off emulsion, bubbles in the film itself, or images �solarizing� from an unstable fixed image. The scenes most commented on by critics has been one in which two boxers are sparring, but one of them is completely obliterated by a column of black streaks, leaving his partner to appear to be trying to hold back oblivion itself. Another scene shot at an amusement park shows a swirling miasma of emulsion on the left side of a frame, from which the cars of a whirlygig ride materialize. Given the premise of the movie, many less startling scenes take on an air of urgency. The films� subjects, who had done nothing more than walk in front of a movie camera years ago, now appear to be holding on to the last remnants of their souls. Even though these people likely died years ago, the film seems to represent the only trace of existence, now in danger of fading into oblivion. But again, this is due to director Bill Morrison's choices in presenting and editing the film; most of the subjects went on to live their lives without concern for the film they were. Heck, some of them may even be still alive.

Only problem in seeing the film is that it was produced as a backdrop for contemporary dissonant muscal piece by Michael Gordon, kind of a Philip Glass wannabe. That kind of work is best heard in shorter pieces, and not always sober.

Still, I'll willing to be confounded, challenged or frustrated by a movie. Just don't insult me for forking over my money to see it.

Monday, June 30, 2003

Fatal Porch Collapse in Chicago Kills 12

I had a link to this story in the Sun-Times, but of course it's expired by now�

Isn't your first reaction to think "those people should've known better than to...?" Just like with the nightclub tragedies of a few months ago, it's our way of compartmentalizing people different from us (in those cases, urban black clubbers and/or mulletheads, in this case Lincoln Park yuppies) and convincing ourselves that we would have better sense than to join 100 other people and a couple of kegs on a wooden fire escape.

But when herd mentality takes over, a lot of us will go along with the crowd, because if they're doing it, it must be all right. Just like Mom suggested: if all my friends jumped off a cliff, maybe I might, too. I would also think that the building where this party was held had a rickety-looking metal fire escape, there might not be so many people on it. But we're now pretty much conditioned to think that a structure built with treated lumber, that resembles the decks now built onto many homes, is a deck, and therefore we move the party there without a second thought. I'm sure quite a few decks on single family homes have collapsed over the years, but because many are no more than a few feet off the ground, there are usually no fatalities like this one.

To compound the case, the local news last night made frequent mention of the fact that the owners of the building were based in Canada and �could not be reached for comment.� Now that sure makes them sound like a couple of greedy absentee slumlords. But gee, maybe the owners couldn�t be reached because TV reporters were trying to call a business office on a Sunday?

Friday, June 27, 2003

Time to play a little catch-up:

The Homebrewers Conference was a lot of fun, even though I didn't win anything in the National Homebrew Competition. Thursday was Club Night, at which I helped man the BOSS booth. At least I got people to sample my Chile Beer and agree that there is such a thing as Chile Beer that doesn't suck. Also brought a crock pot of my Green Chile Pork Stew, which was halfway eaten before somebody remarked that it was still cold� the specialty outlets at the hotel didn't work right, and I needed an electrician to bring a power block (even then, one attendee told me it was "still the best food here!").

I was registered for all day Saturday, but my pal Nelson wanted to go, and I talked Barb into coming, so long as it was just to the "Real Beer Real Food" night. I not only can't rememebr how many beers I had, I'm not sure I remember how many different kinds of beer I had. A lot of mostly sausages and cheeses were sampled, not to mention Eli's Cheesecake.

Tuesday, June 17, 2003

"Actor and Star Trek alum William Marshall passed away last week. He was 78."

You know, it pains me to admit that I had never associated the actor who played Blacula with his guest role on Star Trek (as Dr. Daystrom, who built "The Ultimate Computer" which took over Enterprise and screwed up a war game by shooting at other starships for real). Somehow I just never encountered that little piece of trivia in all my years of Trek geekdom. Worse yet, I didn't know he had also been The King of Cartoons in Pee-Wee's Playhouse.
Some years ago, an acting friend of mine played Roderigo in a Steppenwolf production of Othello opposite Gary Cole as Iago. The night I came to see it, Marshall was there after the show because the actor who played Othello was a friend or a student of his. I didn't say anything to him I didn't think he wanted to talk to some fanboy who had nothing interesting to say. Oh yeah, and Cole went from that production straight into his own TV show, Midnight Caller. Now he's better known as the "new" Mike Brady (But he's also Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law!).
I do remember Marshall had one of those wonderful, oratorial speaking voices, being as he was of the time when black actors had to get years of cred in theatre roles in New York or London, which usually meant more than one Othello, before Hollywood would even think of putting them on TV in a dignified role. Thus any black actor on TV before The Mod Squad had that Ossie Davis style of precise and declamatory speaking that added extra gravitas to their roles. I think that at that time, if a producer was willing to use a black actor at all, at least it would be in a positive role.

Friday, June 13, 2003

The National Homebrewers Conference is next week. I've sent my chile beer on for the final judging in the National Homebrew Competition. It'll be a tough sell, because it counts on there being at least one judge who's a real chile-head. Designed a small label for the commemorative mead that attendees will receive, and I'll post it after the conference.

One reason I'm posting all of this is to put a few more links on the web to my new Cafe Press page, where I'm selling T-shirts, beer mugs and other items with my homebrew beer labels. A link like this one will help push my site up a little in Google searches, so they say.

Monday, June 02, 2003

Repeating an oldie but goody:

This was one of my earliest posts, from June of 2002 (ah, memories). I accidentally deleted it from the Blogger interface, but kept fudging the template so it still shows in the archive. Now that I've switched templates, I'm just re-posting it so it won't end up overwritten.

This past weekend (June 15), I discovered a little custom car show being held in a local McDonald's parking lot. Along with the rather out-of-place stock Prowler and Viper (maybe there was Chrysler money involved), was an interesting, albeit usual assortment of restored and customized cars. Like a 1966 Ford Cobra, a low-rider car whose owner happily demonstrated its hydraulics, all the way back to a '26 Ford Model T. Some, like the Cobra, needed only to be restored to their original condition to impress; others were chopped, lowered, revved up and otherwise refitted into impressive street rods. Some had extra banks of batteries in the back to power a honkin' sound system. There was even a Rav 4 fitted out with both video and DVD players (running "The Fast and the Furious," natch).
I think nearly any male who was a kid during the 1960s has had some acquaintance with the hot rod culture. We had at least issue of "CarTOONS" magazine, we assembled Aurora models of hot rods original built by George Barris or Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. At the very least, we wanted to cruise around in the Batmobile, or sit in Eddie's seat way in back of the "Munster-mobile." We might even have met some of favorite TV stars at a "World of Wheels" appearance.
That America's love affair with the automobile was expressed in a large, distinct hot-rod culture has been covered extensively elsewhere. Perhaps, though, we should consider revisiting the world of "Kustom Kars" in our everyday lives.
After all, look at the buying frenzy that surrounded the P.T. Cruiser. Ford will probably get similar results with its reintroduced Thunderbird and its Forty-Nine Roadster, and BMW is re-introducing the Mini Cooper from England.
But why stop there? Why pay a premium to be first on your block to buy a snazzy new car when everyone else on the block is just to get their a little later. Are still impressed with someone who has a Cruiser?
I just think that if I am ever at the point where I have $40,000 to blow on a car (yeah, right), why should I clutter the highway with yet another Mercedes? I'm going to a custom shop and having a car customized for me. Maybe a late 40's cabover pickup truck, with captain's cars swiveling to a portable snack galley. With not just a DVD player, but a Sharpvision projector in the bed so I can face it to a wall and have my own drive-in movie show. With that kind of audio gear, I'd just need one iPod to be an outdoor DJ, too.
It would also need a nive intimidating flame job around the front of the cab, to blow some of those piggy Lincoln Navigators off the road for a change.

Saturday, May 17, 2003

What I'm wasting time reading these days:

I was finally induced to pick up the Oxford American, a magazine of "Southern writing," because it was the annual music issue. It comes with a CD of over 24 interesting artists who are each profiled in the magazine. It's a great eclectic mix, all the way from a Blind Willie Johnson waxing from 1926 to My Morning Jacket, who are headlining this week here in Chicago; as well as the requisite early Willie Nelson song (the accompanying article makes clear that Willie is America's Spliffmaster General. And one time in your life, you're going to need to hear Del McCoury's bluegrass rendition of Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning."

Also finally subscribed to Cool and Strange Music, the fan magazine of any and all types of estoeric and odd records. My first issue cover featured Rudy Ray Moore, but more interesting was the profile of "Josie and the Pussycats," which turns out to have been quite a boundary-breaker for Saturday Morning cartoons. The web site linked above also has many links to some of the best wierd and bad music sites on the planet. Getcher dose of Shatner and Nimoy singing all at once!

Wednesday, April 02, 2003

By the way, the Marquis de Lafayette is buried on a plot of American soil he had transported to France. Maybe our brave Congress will sponsor a resolution to go rip the American dirt out of his grave. If it wasn't for Lafayette and the French fleet at the Battle of Yorktown, there may not even be a United States.

My father has been forwarding every e-mail he is sent supporting the war, and containing stories of some unwashed anti-war protrester getting a can of Shut-Up opened on him by someone whose brother died in France (those ungrateful wretches!), etc. I was finally compelled to send this reply:



Here's a story you can also forward to everyone on your list. You do forward them, don't you, or do you actually agree with everything you send on?

 Anyway, I know this one is true, because it happened to me!

I am currently working second shift at a downtown Chicago office building. Upon the start "Iraq II: the Revenge!", a number of anti-war protests had been organized that went through the Loop. One evening, as I was coming back to the office from my lunch break, I saw the protest of the day was parading down Wacker, right in front of my building. The procession of several thousand was big enough that it had to use the street, which was lined on both sides by a row of police from departments all over the area. I walk back to my entrance, holding my hand up in solidarity (boy, that peace sign thing just doesn't cut it gesture-wise).

 Right at the corner of my building, some twentysomething lout is shouting at the protest: "LO-O-O-OSERS! GET A JOB!" Now, it's 7:30 in the evening. I wonder how anyone would assume someone marching in a protest at this hour didn't have a job. I shout back at the guy: "Hey, maybe next someone will liberate US from from OUR dictator! Y'know, a dictator? Someone who takes over a country without being elected?"

 (Now here I am picking a fight with some frat boy on a street corner surrounded by more police than appeared in all of Buster Keaton's movies. That's why I don't join movements. They're safer without me.)

 As expected, he lays into me with some more brilliant invective: "Why don't you get a JOB!!!"

 Me: "Why I have a job. I'm going back to it right now."

 Him: "Probably cleaning TOILETS!"

 "No, I work for the very company after whom this building is named!"

 "No you don't! _I_ work here!"

 "Really? What do you do?"

 "I'm a LAWYER!" He bellowed it out like it would stun me into reverent silence. Meantime, I'm showing my building ID to the desk guard. He continues: "Hey, that guy doesn't WORK here, does he?"

 The guard says, "Yes, he does."

 Frat boy can't take it. "It's a sad day when people like HIM work in this building! He probably cleans TOILETS!" I shrug my shoulders at him, thinking whoever has to clean up after him must be getting little pay and less respect. He turns to enter the bar in our building's entrance, with one last "I'm a LAWYER!!!"

 The guard just watches him, then tells me, "Yeah, he's already had a few." Me, I wonder if gets to argue cases in court, with that kind of brilliant declamation.

 This is the kind of pro-war person we encounter more often than not. The kind of ditto-head who found time to go the Florida in 2000 and assault recount judges with their "Sore/Loserman" signs. They seem totally incapable of understanding that people who oppose Bush's little vendetta are anything but leftover hippies, too indolent to look for work or form a well-reasoned opinion.

 They're the people passing along lists of French corporations to boycott, while completely forgetting that it was American firms like Honeywell, Rockwell, and others, that sold Saddam his weapons of mass destruction, with Bush I's blessing. They focus on getting REVENGE for 9/11, even though the perpetrators were born in Saudi Arabia, funded by Saudi oil money (that's your car and my car), educated in America, and took refuge in Pakistan. They never see the many veterans of previous wars, 9/11 family members, and religious leaders asking why we are starting another war with a former CIA "friendly."

 Instead, they're the guy in Houston who last week assaulted a spectator at a rodeo because he wouldn't stand up for a recording of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA." (Here's the link to the story:
abclocal.go.com/ktrk/news/31403_local_rodeofight.html#. I verify MY sources).  Now last I heard, this song isn't the national anthem, at least outside of Branson. It also happens to be owned by MCA Records, a division of Vivendi-Universal, part of the new French "axis of evil." (I also don't know how all the news reports reported the song's title as "I'm Proud to Be an American." Maybe the policeman who wrote up the report got it wrong.)

 Any way, I just needed to vent. I also e-mailed an anti-propaganda poster created by a former Army Ranger who has a few things to say himself. this link.