Month: March 2004

Today I was doing a routine maintenance check of the freezer section of The Store (basically, wandering about with a broom in case someone had dropped a cracker or something). It was apparently a pretty busy “restocking” day for the freezer folks; there were several of the large cargo-carts about laden with product which they had transported from the giant walk-in freezers to the cases. But at this particular moment, the two fellows working the freezer department were not present. They had probably gone off to take their recyclables out, or to the bathroom, or even outside for a cigarette — I don’t know. But even though it seemed patently obvious that there was a restocking-in-progress, some woman still stopped me to ask if we really thought that a cart in the middle of the floor was a suitable place to store ice cream.

My initial impulse — to lean in close and whisper, “You know, that stuff about freezing ice cream is just an urban legend” — was pushed down deep, I’m sorry to say. Oh well.

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Do any of my readers watch Scrubs? I’ve loved this show since I watched the very first episode — it’s always incredibly well-written and perfectly acted. So much of the humor on this show is dependent on precision timing that you’d need a watch made in Switzerland to measure, and yet, the show is hilarious each and every time out.

But right now, I’m wondering if anyone else was completely blindsided by the ending of last week’s episode. The way Scrubs manages to cross back and forth between poignance and farce never stops amazing me, but last week’s episode was a tour de force, with a twist ending that I literally had no idea was coming and which made the episode resonate emotionally with me in a way that few shows do anymore.

And I guess in this case it’s a good thing that Scrubs isn’t one of NBC’s ratings juggernauts; otherwise, the entire preceding week on NBC would have been awash in promos exhorting us not to miss the last five minutes, since the clods in TV these days are evidently unaware that most of the pleasure of a good surprise ending comes from not knowing the surprise ending is coming in the first place.

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Congratulations to this guy:

The Return of the King Oscar love-fest encourages me, not just because the films are so damned good but because I hope this marks a continuing emergence of fantasy storytelling into the mainstream. I’m sick, sick, sick to death of the idea that only things that are “relevant”, that take place in the “real world”, are to be considered worthy — a trend which is not just annoying but also starkly at odds with the rest of culture, where the fantastic holds sway to an impressive degree. Look at how much Shakespeare depends on fantasy; look at Homer. Imagine what the opera world would be like if you struck down all the operas with fantastic elements.

Congratulations, also, to Howard Shore for winning the Best Original Score and Best Original Song awards. The more I listen to these three scores, the more convinced I become that they are the greatest scores since John Williams’s work on the original Star Wars trilogy. I was nonplused when Shore was originally announced as the composer, way back in 1999 or whenever — like most film music fans, my only exposure to Shore was on films like The Silence of the Lambs and Seven — but man, did he deliver in a huge way.

A couple other observations about the Oscar telecast (of which I didn’t watch much):

:: Say what you will about Michael Moore, I loved that he had enough sense of humor about himself to allow a bit of self-parody. (For those who missed it, they showed a clip of the Battle of the Pellenor Fields from Return of the King, and suddenly, there’s Moore in the middle of it, shouting, “You don’t have to fight, Hobbits! This is a fictitious war fought for a fictitious King!” And then he gets trampled by one of the Mumakil.)

:: I used to watch the entire telecast every year, but I haven’t done this in six or seven years. Nevertheless, I seem to have a weird ability to tune back in at the exact moment they’re about to do the “Tribute to Departed Stars” segment. I’d forgotten all about how many wonderful people died this past year, and I’m glad the Academy thought to include composer Michael Kamen in its tribute.

:: I really think that Billy Crystal is a fine host for this show — I enjoy his schtick a lot more than I enjoy Whoopi Goldberg’s, for example. (Of course, I’m one who thinks that Letterman’s performance wasn’t nearly as bad as its legend has become.)

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Aaron posts some photos of himself, his wife, and some other guy performing in what for all the world looks like my parents’ living room*. Aaron is the bearded one. With the hat. And the grin in the first picture as if to say, “Behold my guitar, foolish mortals!” His wife is the non-bearded one in the shirt that shines under its own power.

Aaron’s wife, Krista, was one of the very first people I met in the music department at college (we were freshmen the same year). What I always remember about her (well, one thing) is mildly lampooned by Aaron in the caption to the second photo: no matter what the piece of music is, no matter how frenetic the percussion parts are, she maintains a completely blank expression while playing. I seem to recall her once telling me that she actually worked to cultivate this skill, which I must admit would be absolutely useful in certain situations. For instance, Krista belongs to a special class of people for whom I’ve always felt the highest levels of sympathy: she is one who has had to play the snare drum part to Ravel’s Bolero. (There is no piece of classical music I despise more than Bolero.)

However, looking at these pictures, I note something else about Krista: She shows, to my highly practiced eye, absolutely no sign that she has aged a single day since I first saw her in the music building lobby fifteen years ago**! I spent a bit of my day mulling this over — as I noted previously, my current job is one that lends itself to lots and lots of time for “mulling” — and, when I considered the fact that Aaron’s job is an overnight one (I think), I came to the staggering conclusion that Krista is, in fact, a vampire. Thus, she spends the time when Aaron is sleeping — during the day — also in deep slumber, albeit in a coffin, which serves double-duty at night as the object she uses to tote around her drums. It all fits!

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* You can tell that I am too book-centric when I look at the photos of Krista and try to identify the books on the shelves behind her. I always do this. Show me a picture of George W. Bush accepting a bribe from Saddam Hussein in front of a bookshelf, and I’m going to try to identify the books.

** Holy Crap, has it been that long?!

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Headline says it all, keeping with my Arthurian theme for 2004.

Also, in terms of traffic, February was surprisingly my second-best month yet, owing mainly to the month opening with a lot of hits on “Janet Jackson Super Bowl” (and, even better, “Janet Jackson Supper Bowl”) and a link from TBogg at the end of the month. As always, thanks for coming, and for newcomers, don’t forget to check out the posts listed under Notable Dispatches.

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