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When it comes to shows like The Hills or The Real Housewives of Some City/County/State, watching the carefully edited adventures of the affluent and self-absorbed is supposed to be justified by one of the following responses:
a) one is guiltily entertained by their vapid stupidity, their foibles accented through manipulation by the producers, while simultaneously envying their affluence and photogenic features; or
b) one finds one's self unwittingly inspired to want to punch everyone on screen square in the face, regardless of gender or age.
That's the point, right?
Last week, Sci-Fi aired a Land of the Lost marathon on Memorial Day.
(Here's the first episode from Hulu, in case you don't remember it, or weren't born yet, and want to see what you missed.)
Remembering it fondly from my childhood, I flipped by and nostalgia got the better of me. Sure, it was cheesy as hell, with special effects that seem archaic by contemporary standards, and the acting was melodramatic as hell. However, the story had something that, in its own way, had bits of mythology and metaphysics that reminded me of the appeal of Lost.
Of course, from a name standpoint, the latter is the former, just with the first three words excised. Coincidence?
Both have people who crash into a land where the usual rules don't quite apply, and they're trying to get back home. Both have indigenous people who don't care for the newcomers (the sleestak and the Others).
Both make a bit more sense when... chemically enhanced.
Most important: Both are way better than I get the feeling will be the upcoming Will Ferrell wacky-fest--that, for some reason, is also called Land of the Lost. That Sci-Fi was showing episodes of the '70s Saturday morning program must have been coincidence; the pending movie certainly doesn't appear to be based on the show.
~
For every step forward in technology over the last 35 years, it seems there's been several steps back in regarding the audience's intelligence.
In the last couple weeks I heard the Phil Collins' song "In the Air Tonight" twice. Once on the clock radio one morning while getting dressed for work, and then once while standing in a downtown McDonald's restaurant, playing over the speakers in the lobby. In both instances when it got to that part of the song—and unless you've never heard the song, you know exactly what I mean by that part of the song—I could not help but respond.
When the big drum fill kicked in (at 3:41 into the song), I had to air drum on invisible toms hanging in the air. (Well, in the McDonald's I only tapped my foot on each hit and tapped my hands in my pant pockets, but I did move it from left to right to approximate the relative positions of the toms in a drum kit.) In neither case did I consciously decide to perform this; in my mind it's as automatic as blinking to be moved to that action by that part of the song. The shifting dynamics of the track operate on an unconscious level. Frankly, it would take specific effort to prevent myself from initiating some drum-related response in that moment.
Then recently I saw a commercial for the upcoming movie The Hangover. One of the featured scenes in the trailer shows the protagonists in a Las Vegas hotel suite with Mike Tyson (yes, the Mike Tyson). In the background "In the Air Tonight" plays. And then Tyson says "Wait, I love this part" and when the drum fill starts he launched into air drumming that concludes with him punching one of the protagonists; he's simply too caught up in the moment to control himself. Not that "Iron Mike" is known for his self control, admittedly, but this is not animalistic rage—it's the power of music.
I'm sure the joke is supposed to be the seeming incongruity of the brutish reputation of the former heavyweight champ played against the cool temperament suggested by the Genesis singer/drummer. How silly that Mike Tyson would like that song!
No. The humor stems from the unspoken truth revealed in that scene. Even if you don't like that song overall you love that part of the song. Heck, even if you like the song, you still are essentially putting up with the rest of the song as prelude to that sequence.
In the scene, presumably the only reason the protagonists don't respond similarly is because they're scared shitless by Tyson. But that doesn't mean they don't have the impulse to join in; they merely allow their fear to suppress the physical manifestation everyone is inclined to do (whether you've ever bitten off another man's ear or not).
I don't plan on seeing the movie, because the rest of the trailer leaves me completely unimpressed, but I must applaud that bit. Whether the rest of the film is as lame as I suspect or is actually funny, the makers did get one thing right: There is no resisting the most important few seconds of drumming Phil Collins ever laid down.
~
You'll notice I call it a "drum fill" and not a "drum solo." There's a simple reason: It's not a solo.
It's not.
For quite some time I'd heard on TV or read on the 'net about how newspapers were going through particularly tough economic times, but still each day I'd walk past dispensaries with the day's L.A. Times, and each week I'd see the free weeklies like the L.A. Weekly, L.A. City Beat, and the one that I looked forward to, the L.A. print edition of The Onion. The print media's demise was foretold, but it didn't appear to be hitting those papers. What could put these out of business?
Back when The Onion launched its print edition here in Los Angeles back in 2006 I wrote a post about how paper was the latest thing for the web, given that their website was how most people outside Wisconsin accessed them. (Yes, they did have books in print, but that's not the same as a weekly paper. And granted, what was in the weekly print edition were stories that also appeared on the site, but they were in the same week rather than much later.)
The thing about the website: I couldn't fold it up and put it in my back pocket when I headed out for lunch. (Yes, the availability of the mobile web does allow for accessing sites on devices that fit in one's pocket, but that's hardly the same experience.) Thus, I rarely actually visited the website; I'd wait for the print edition to appear in the bin each Thursday.
Not only would I read each issue cover to cover (including even the small bits), I'd keep a copy in the corner of my cubicle at work. At first it was so I could refer to a story if I was telling someone else about it, but then it became a simple matter of keeping the collection intact.
With the May 7 edition, the height of the pile on my desk was just starting to peek over the height of the wall of the cubicle. The next one would be completely above the top of the wall. What would I do?
Then on the morning of May 14 I passed the Onion dispenser, only to find it empty. I didn't think much of it at the time; the delivery had been late on occasion before, or once in a while a given dispenser didn't get filled. At lunch that day I walked a couple blocks over to where I knew another one was, but it too was bare.
On Friday the 15th it was still empty, which made me suspicious. Then that evening as I walked down the street toward the train station something was amiss.
The entire dispenser had been removed from its spot on the sidewalk.
Sure, these stories would have you believe it was merely a financial decision by The Onion's management because ad sales were down for the L.A. edition (and San Fransisco as well), but then it occurred to me. The last edition coincided exactly with how long it took for one copy of each, stacked one on top of another, to reach the height from the desktop to the top of the wall of my cubicle. They'd stopped because somehow they knew I was out of room.
If only I'd realized that was it, I could have unfolded them so they were only half as tall, and they could have published it twice as long. Or heck, I would have cleared space and started a second pile. Ah, but it was too late.
As with most times I have influence, I discovered it only after I've wasted it.
But the recently discontinued City Beat wasn't me.
~
The photo site has been updated with an artsier shot of these newspapers.
~
Click here to see all my posts that reference The Onion. This isn't the first time.
Some of the people in my department like to play good-natured pranks on others. One time while a guy was on vacation they wrapped Do-Not-Cross tape around his cubicle and filled it with items suggesting it was radioactive. Another vacationer's cubicle got every potted plant moved into it along with stuffed animals and a mini-waterfall to approximate a rain forest.
I'm a stick in the mud and don't participate, but that's neither here nor there.
Recently for the birthday of one of the supervisors they brought in a box of plastic clown masks for everyone to put on. They filled his office with balloons and a box that played circus music. The gag all revolved around the supervisor really not liking clowns, and after he opened the door to his office everyone was supposed to put on the masks so after seeing the balloons and coming out he'd see all these unintentionally-but-kind-of-still-creepy masks.
It didn't quite work out that way, but that's probably for the best. And the actual prank is not what I am here to discuss.
In addition to the masks, the guys behind the prank went around early (before I got in) and asked people to come up with their "clown name" which was printed out and taped over each person's name placard. There were obvious ones (like "Bozo" and "Homey") and some merely silly ones ("Lala", "Jimbo").
Standing by someone's desk who already had a name affixed, I asked if anyone had taken "Pagliacci" yet.
I was met with a blank stare clearly indicating the person had no idea what I was talking about.
What made me even think of Pagliacci was this: Each day the mastermind of the prank posted a quote of the day on the outside wall of his cubicle, and that day's quote was from the old SNL "Jack Handey Deep Thoughts": You know what would make a good story? Something about a clown who makes people happy, but inside he's real sad. Also, he has severe diarrhea.
(That's the story in Pagliacci, except for the diarrhea part.)
Over the course of the day I mentioned Pagliacci to several others in the department—college-educated, reasonably cultured individuals—and not one recognized the reference at all. Blank stares. Puzzled looks.
Here's the thing: It's not as though I'm familiar with the story of the sad clown from actually seeing the opera. Primarily I knew the name from the Smokey Robinson & the Miracles' song "Tears of a Clown"—which I know was known by at least some of the people in question. I'd quote the line "Just like Pagliacci did / I try to keep my sadness hid." And they'd sort of nod, but mostly in a placating manner than out of recognition.
I'd elaborate by alluding to the episode of The Simpsons (titled "The Italian Bob") where the family goes to Italy and Sideshow Bob is there and is performing in a production of the opera (wherein he and his Italian wife and son get with him to try to kill Bart and the other Simpsons). And the first guy I spoke with is a big fan of The Simpsons, so I know he had seen the episode in question. He'd just never realized that was what they were alluding to.
Worst of all: The mastermind who'd posted the Jack Handey quote which mined the Pagliacci story for its humor didn't even know it.
It wasn't that I was that cultured. A pop song and a cartoon are certainly culture in their own way, but nothing to impress the intelligentsia. Were I at a cocktail party and trying to discuss it with someone who knew the opera well, I could not have B.S.'ed for very long before being revealed. I was below even a dilettante in my concrete knowledge, and that still proved to be more than anyone else around had--and I work with a lot of otherwise smart people.
Although I smiled as I left these people after giving my pop culture explanation, inside I was sad. In part it was for their ignorance, but mostly I felt a bit like a freak for actually paying attention to the tiny bit I had.
In contemporary society, it does seem like having a bit of knowledge in a number of areas, perhaps gained through cultural osmosis, but lacking any approximation of expertise in any area is worse than knowing nothing at all. At least then one doesn't know what one doesn't know, and such ignorance is more blissful than knowing what one doesn't know.
And, alas, that is not a prank.
The glory of the internet is how vastly it increases the size of the audience by which one can be ignored.
Perhaps the worst part of reaching one's middle years (which, I suppose, at 41, I have done) is all one's mistakes seem less forgivable, and one cannot dwell in self-pity as one did in one's younger days. One can try, but it won't be at all cathartic; it merely suffices in making one feel stupid for still attempting self-pity at an age when one should know better than to try to get away with self-pity.
If I had any advice for those in their 20's it would be this: Hurry up and get it all figured out; in a couple decades it won't be any easier, and you'll be far more aware of tricky it is to figure it out.
The clock is ticking…
In his latest column for Entertainment Weekly, our uncle Stevie (King) discusses the results of a solicitation he did for readers of his website: the song that's the worst "earworm" (a song which gets stuck in one's head and just burrows itself deeper into one's consciousness). (The most often mentioned song: "The Macarena".)
But what struck me was the tale he related at the beginning, as the introduction to the topic. He referenced stumbling to the kitchen in the middle of the night, barely coherent, and finding himself muttering an opening couplet, which he quotes: "They say a man should always dress for the job he wants / So why am I dressed up like a pirate in this restaurant?"
Yes, it's from one of the Free Credit Report commercials.
And when I went to type that quote, I assure you I didn't have to refer the magazine. I could continue with the next line off the top of my head ("It's all because some hacker stole my identity"—I told you; and it's worth noting that as I type this I have my iPod playing Sweet's "The SixTeens" so there's actively another song that should be distracting me but it's not), but I won't go on (for everyone's sake).
There have been moments were odd songs have just come to mind (such as the one documented in this post about the inexplicable "Arthur's Theme" incident), but that's nothing compared to when I find myself absent-mindedly humming those jingles from those Free Credit Report ads (not merely the aforementioned one). I've been in the bathroom, brushing my teeth, with these lines running through my head: "Well, I married my dream girl, I married my dream girl / But she didn't tell me her credit was bad…".
I dare not proceed with the quote. I've made it bad enough as it is.
Here's the thing: It's one thing for an actual song—even a Christopher Cross one I haven't heard in decades—to pop in there. That's merely odd. And whether it's terribly artistic or not, it's at least art. The jingles are commerce; there's no pretense to the contrary. They seek to get me to spend money on some credit monitoring service—which means that the credit report isn't really "free" so the name of the website it promotes is wildly inaccurate (just to add insult to proverbial injury). And rather than songs I actually like—or at least songs that are just songs—being what my synapses spur me to sing, it's those damned, infectious lines about feet sticking to the floor and my posse getting laughed at.
It's worse than subliminal. It's slammed in my face, but it still works. It succeeds beyond their wildest hopes.
Except for the fact that I've never gone to the website. But maybe that's not what their aspirations were. Perhaps they wanted me to eventually write about it.
Free advertising they did achieve. Insidiously effective.
If only someone comes up with a website that provides a means of getting these jingles out of my head, that is a service I'd pay for. Of course, one can only imagine how catchy the song in that commercial will be...
Over at the photo site I've uploaded some shots of the first jacaranda blooms of the spring. Click on over and have a look.
In this week's print edition of The Onion (in select cities an actual paper edition is available, and Los Angeles is one of those lucky ones), in the A.V. Club section (the non-satire part), there's a column by The Hater (subtitled "Pop Culture Love Letters") took on Eminem's latest video, "We Made You" (in which he parodies a number of pop culture paragons).
The column in the print edition that hit stands yesterday is different from this online version, although the gist is pretty much the same. Because the print edition cannot include an embedded video, the column lists highlights of his satire, including perennial punching bags like Kim Kardashian and Lindsey Lohan. The point of the column was that Em's jabs were a bit dated, as pop culture goes. However, as she also mentioned the old school elements he included; it seemed clear Em wasn't looking to be cutting edge with the satire.
To that end, in the list of highlights that was in the print version of the column only was this: "Dr. Dre and Eminem re-enact the casino scene from Rain Man, as well as several scenes dressed as Dr. Spock and Captain Kirk from Star Trek" (see screen capture below):
Yep. "Dr. Spock."
The character on the original Star Trek portrayed by Leonard Nimoy was Mr. Spock (and later he ascended to higher ranks), but he was never Dr. Spock.; "Bones" McCoy was the doctor. Dr. Spock was a famous real-life pediatrician who wrote a best-selling book, but, to the best of my knowledge, never appeared on any Trek series or movie.
And with even my tepid level of geekitude I recognized the error immediately. Even as a very mild fan of Star Trek I consider that to be dragging up a pretty hackneyed mistake. It's not remotely clever, in any context, at this point; it's just lazy (or, rather, nonexistent) copyediting.
It struck me as her point about Em's dusty spoof became a wee bit hypocritical, in a way. Sure, he's behind the time in the targets for his costumed barbs, but she's behind the times in rudimentary pop culture distinctions about a tremendously popular science fiction series (even outside the geek arena)—especially for one whose focus as a journalist is purported to be… pop culture.
But it's undoubtedly already outdated of me to say (even though the issue hit the stands only yesterday), because the online column (which does not include the references to the characters names, only an allusion to general Star Trek*) came out back on April 7.
What can I say? I'm out of date that way, reading text on actual newsprint, nine days later. How archaic. Just like being able to distinguish '60s fictional characters from '40s actual people.
~
* Because there's no mistake online, there's no furor in the comments about it. I have to imagine it would have been clarified ad nauseum by this point had "Dr. Spock" been mentioned there. As it stands, the commenters dwelled only on Eminem's incongruous pairing of characters from the original series with some from The Next Generation. Deftly eschewed hate, Hater.
Some acquaintances at work only found out about me even having a fiancée when they read the LA Times article about my cover-winning photo and saw the allusion to that in the text. (It's true. Long story. Not interesting. Moving on.) And while not every one of them actually asked me about that, and the ones who brought it up had slightly different approaches, there was one aspect of their investigation (of sorts) that was the same. In referring to my fiancée, they all used the term "her."
Now, this was entirely accurate; my fiancée is, in fact, female, and thus the pronoun is applicable for what it is representing. Why does that matter, you are undoubtedly wondering.
Upon realizing this subtle consistency I grasped why there are those who oppose same sex marriage. They may claim it's forbidden in the Bible or abominates the sanctity of marriage or that it serves as a harbinger for unions between humans and other species, but that's just skirting the issue. Really, they seek to avoid the embarrassment of alluding to an unidentified pending (or current) marriage partner and know that they can safely choose the gender-specific pronoun that is the opposite of the gender of the one with whom they are speaking.
As long as the homosexuals must use the term "partner" (rather than "fiancé" or "fiancée") those who don't know better can glean from the word choice that the person they're talking to could be in a long-term relationship with a person of the same sex (one where "boyfriend" or "girlfriend" would not be appropriate any longer).
And of course, eschewing an awkward exchange with someone they didn't realize was gay certainly justifies denying that person the same right to have that person's relationship be acknowledged by the state the same way that theirs is.
I get it now.
It's all a matter of taking the time to think about the other side and what's important to them in a way that relates to one's own experience, so we can see how really we are all the same.
From the Okay-this-is-it department:
Recently during a conversation with a friend whom I've know for over 20 years, we touched on the movie version of Watchmen. He had gone to a Saturday afternoon screening on the opening weekend. In part this was out of desire to see it, but for him, there was other motivation. Working in a comic shop, he needed to see it early, before customers started coming in and talking about it (and potentially spoiling it).
His assessment was that overall he enjoyed it, and more than he expected. It could have sucked, he noted, but it didn't. As superhero movies go, with (as he ranked them) Iron Man at the top and The Dark Knight at the bottom, Watchmen fell nicely in the middle.
Yes, with Dark Knight at the bottom.
That was another film he saw its opening weekend, again as much out of obligation as anything. He applauded Heath Ledger's performance, but otherwise he considered Batman Begins to be vastly superior. He didn't go into detail about the issues he had with DK, but clearly he didn't understand why it became the second-highest grossing film of all time.
I merely noted that I enjoyed DK, and the conversation moved on to other topics.
~
During a Facebook chat some time back with a different friend, he too noted having problems with DK (not liking how the Joker had no explained motivation for his anarchism, for example), and considering Slumdog Millionaire (back before it won the Oscar) to be much better.
I mentioned having liked Slumdog when I saw it (the weekend after it won the Golden Globe), but my visceral response in exiting the theater was stronger for DK, which at that moment I remember thinking it was pretty good.
~
Two people whose opinions I do heed had vastly different reactions than I did. It's not like some arbitrary movie reviewers panned it; these are people with whom I share at least a reasonable amount of similarities. How could our responses vary so much?
Is that not supposed to be something of a window to our personalities in contemporary society? What we like should make a statement about us and give an indication of with whom we would get along, right? Isn't that why sites like Facebook prompt for our favorites books and movies and bands, etc.? So we can find others who share those same faves, and by inference who share similar personality traits.
(You don't suppose the real answer is that Facebook prompts for that so it can allow advertisers to market to us individually, do you? Can we avoid going off on that cynical tangent? Yes, yes we can.)
Apparently what makes us be friends is not merely the coincidental similarity of reaction to the same stimuli. Egad—could human relationships actually be… complex?
Too bad movies that show that never seem to be ones everyone can agree on…
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