Month: July 2006

Like everybody else, I have my favorite TV series; but within each favorite series of mine there are the standout episodes. These are the episodes that I tend to think of whenever I think back fondly on a show. Here are some of those individual episodes that confirmed my love of these particular series. First we’ll just get the obvious Star Trek stuff out of the way:

:: “The City on the Edge of Forever”, from Star Trek. Might as well get this out of the way — it’s the high point of Trek‘s remarkable first season, and when I watched it on a VHS tape I got from the library a year ago, the ending was as gut-wrenching as ever.

:: “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Wow, what an episode. If only any of the TNG movies had been as good as the forty-six minutes of this particular episode (although First Contact came pretty damn close). What was it about time travel that brought out the best in Trek writers?

:: “Tribbles and Tribulations”, from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. This episode just made me grin like a fanboy idiot from the first shot to the last.

(To this day, I still haven’t seen the DS9 episode “The Visitor”, which I’ve heard is brilliant. Gotta track that one down….)

OK, here are standout episodes from other series I’ve loved. I’m only naming one episode from each series, which makes things tough — if I did this list again tomorrow using the exact same list of shows, I’d probably list a bunch of different episodes.

:: “In the Shadow of Two Gunmen”, from The West Wing. See the post about my favorite TWW episodes, linked over there in the sidebar, for more on this one. Aaron Sorkin often came close afterward, but he never quite reached the high level of writing he achieved with this one again.

:: “Daphne Returns”, from Frasier. This episode exists because of some pure chance: Jane Leeves, who played Daphne, happened to get pregnant at the exact time the writers finally decided to move Niles’s love for Daphne into the open. So, rather than “work around” the pregnancy by always having Daphne standing behind stuff or shooting her in closeup, the writers wrote her weight gain into the storyline, making it a defense mechanism of hers in response to her fears about not being able to live up to Niles’s near worship of her. When it came time for Leeves to give birth, the writers sent Daphne off to a fitness clinic for therapy, and when she returned, she was trim again — but Niles was still wildly conflicted about the fact that he was finally in a relationship with the woman he’d always worshipped as some kind of Platonic ideal. In this episode, it fell to Frasier to prod Niles into realizing that he wasn’t so much in love with Daphne as with a romantic ideal of her, and the show used the dreaded “clip show” trick with surprising effectiveness to get the point across.

:: “Hell and High Water”, from ER. This second-season episode featured Doug Ross rescuing a kid who’d been trapped in a drainage culvert. It’s one of the most riveting hours of television I’ve ever seen, and probably the most riveting hour of television I’ve seen that didn’t involve Keifer Sutherland. And speaking of Keifer Sutherland:

:: “Day 3: 6:00 am to 7:00 am”, from 24. Well, I guess that’s how one differentiates episodes of 24. The ending of this one astonished me; I couldn’t believe the writers had the guts to put Jack Bauer in that situation and follow through with it. (I’m leaving it vague, because even three years later, it’s a pretty big spoiler for that particular season.)

:: “Movie”, from Barney Miller. Here’s a show you never hear about anymore, even though I always thought it was as funny as any of the “great” sitcoms of yesteryear. It was a great ensemble show, and this episode stands out in my memory — for some kind of sting operation against pornographers, Detective Harris (Ron Glass, more recently seen on Firefly as the preacher) is asked to make his own movie. Fancying himself the filmmaker, Harris ends up making a serious movie instead (screening it, Captain Miller keeps asking, “Harris, where’s the sex?”). I used to watch this on reruns every day after school. (By the way, as of this writing, Abe Vigoda is still alive.)

:: “The Lord is my Shepherd”, from Little House on the Prairie. OK, OK, OK — it’s pure sap, and this is probably the sappiest episode of the sappiest show in television history. I mean, you could make a passingly decent condiment for pancakes from the sap that exudes from this show. But I’m a total sucker for this episode, because little Laura runs away from home (after wishing for the death of her newborn brother, a wish that comes true — come to think of it, I could do without that particular bit of subtext), climbs a mountain, and meets an angel who’s played by Ernest Borgnine. You just can’t beat that. (And lest anyone think I’m making fun of Ernest Borgnine, perish the thought! I love the guy, and man, he’s got some range as an actor. Here he’s an angel, but a couple decades before, he’d done From Here to Eternity and played one of the worst guys I’ve ever seen in a movie.)

:: “So-Called Angels”, from My So-Called Life. Damn the ABC execs for cancelling this brilliant show after just one nineteen-episode season. But if the show went on, would the same producers have gone on to do Once and Again? But damn the ABC execs for cancelling Once after three seasons — but had it been renewed, would the same producers have ended up as the team now developing Guy Gavriel Kay’s novel The Lions of Al-Rassan for the silver screen? Ach, who knows. Anyway, this show was just one brilliant episode after another, but this particular episode dealt with a particularly dark underside of Christmas and the holiday season.

:: “The Post-Modern Prometheus”, from The X-Files. A strange episode (weren’t they all?), shot in black and white. And not involved with the show’s mytharc. So why am I picking it? Because…well, I don’t know. I just loved this episode. (More of my favorite TXF‘s here.)

:: “There Be Dragons”, from Once and Again. I just watched this episode again the other day. It’s an absolutely extraordinary depiction of the effect of divorce on a young girl. The final scene, a conversation between Jessie and Rick Sammler, in which Rick has to finally come out and tell Jessie that their old family life can never exist again, is as good a bit of dialogue as I’ve ever seen executed.

:: “My Screw Up”, from Scrubs. I can’t say enough about this episode, except that its twenty-two minutes are more powerful than many two-hour movies. Plot-wise, I shouldn’t say more than that.

And as long as this post has become, I could list episodes from twenty more TV shows. Do I watch too much TV? Hmmmm….

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The one hundredth item on this list of 100 things we know now that we didn’t know last year:

Musical instrument shops [in Britain, presumably] must pay an annual royalty to cover shoppers who perform a recognisable riff before they buy, thereby making a “public performance”.

I knew a few of them, actually — heh! But it’s a fun article. Check it out.

(via Lynn)

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I was just digging through the Astronomy Picture of the Day, and I found this image of Stonehenge on the Summer Solstice:

I also found this image of Manhattan on July 12, one of two dates of the year on which the city’s streets align with the setting sun:

I find it strangely comforting, in a way, to find reminders like this of the fact that even in the face of thousands of years of human history, the mechanics of our Universe still work the same way.

Or, put another way, “Whoooaaaa….”

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And there goes my head against the tabletop:

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich says America is in World War III and President Bush should say so.

Yeah, because the problem is what we’re calling it, since all that “Crusades against the heathens” talk didn’t go over so well. And now we get to tap into what’s looking more and more to me like a fetishization of World Wars I and II: we get to save the world again!

And then:

Gingrich said in an interview Saturday that Bush should call a joint session of Congress the first week of September and talk about global military conflicts in much starker terms than have been heard from the president.

Well, why wait? If it’s a dire problem now, why wait until September? If this war is of such paramount moral importance that it is to be cast as a worldwide conflict, why the extra two months? To give Michael Gerson’s successor time to write the speech and cram it full with a sufficient number of Churchillism’s?

Of course, the “Why wait ’til September” question has a pretty obvious answer, doesn’t it? It’s so obvious that Gingrich, somewhat refreshingly I must admit, lays it right out on the table:

Gingrich said he is “very worried” about Republicans facing fall elections and says the party must have the “nerve” to nationalize the elections and make the 2006 campaigns about a liberal Democratic agenda rather than about President Bush’s record.

Yup, it’s an electoral ploy, pure and simple. It’s about the getting of votes and the protection of majorities. It has nothing to do with winning any war other than the one being fought on the first Tuesday in November.

(And dig that open admission that President Bush’s record isn’t something they wish to run on.)

On a parallel note, I enjoyed this post by James Wolcott, in which he strikes down an irritating example of pro-war rhetoric being couched in cinematic terms:

First of all, it’s embarrassing for a historian of any stature to seal his arguments with Hollywood citations. Alan Ladd’s Shane and Gary Cooper’s marshall in High Noon were fictional heroes whose success in the final showdowns were preordained in the script; their relevance to the policy decisions of a prime minister or president is nil. George Bush didn’t strap on six guns and swaggered bow-legged into Baghdad, much as Hanson and Howard Fineman might want to fantasize; he sent the country’s uniformed men and women to do the fighting, thousands of whom have returned home in flag-draped coffins, thousands more seriously wounded and left to contend the rest of their lives with being blinded, deafened, deprived of the use of all their limbs, psychologically traumatized. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the rest personally risked nothing; they will enjoy prosperous retirements, and be free to pen memoirs primping their place in history.

Indeed. Paraphrasing a line from Sleepless in Seattle, these guys don’t want to be in a war; they want to be in a war in a movie.

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(A Rumination on the change in a favorite candy, written in the style of Mary Kunz Goldman.)

One of several little birdies told us that a number of Internet bloggers were going to be taking a break from their cellar-dwelling commentating to have a picnic at Chestnut Ridge. A picnic! For Internet bloggers! Don’t Internet bloggers recoil at the mere touch of sunlight? Apparently that’s a myth. Who knew! Since I myself, along with other local news personalities, have been the occasional subject of scorn (one actually scores everything I write with a “Mockability Score”! How droll!), I decided, why not go and actually meet these fine people?

But first things first: what do I bring? It was apparently to be a potluck affair, but what dish should I bring? This was tough. A peace offering of sorts was called for, but what? I decided to go to a grocery store and look for ideas. After walking the aisles — wheat thins? a relish tray? gourmet potato salad, with mustard and hord boiled eggs? that traditional baked ziti dish that is served at every Western New York buffet event? — I found myself in the Bulk Food section, and my eyes fell on my favorite candy.

Skittles.

Yes, Skittles! Those wonderful little round bursts of fruity goodness, with their wonderful commercials where Skittles fall from the sky and a whispering voice tells us to “taste the rainbow”. What better metaphor could there be for those Internet bloggers coming out of their basements to greet the world? What better way to show them a world of color than these rainbow-colored candies! I filled a bag with three pounds of Skittles, and headed off for Chestnut Ridge, trying to chuckle off my trepidation. Surely they’d like me! Who could dislike a person bearing a three-pound bag of Skittles!

My trepidation increased, however, when I exited the Thruway onto Route 219. There’s something about the 219 that feels strange somehow, like you’ve entered some kind of parallel universe. It looks like an Interstate, but it’s not an Interstate! And driving a road like that, at 60 with the window down, you feel like driving across the country — but alas, one knows that the 219 ends in Springville, forcing the rich Canadians of winter onto two-lane roads all the way to Ellicotville. Every minute took me one more mile away from Buffalo. More than once I wished that I was an asthmatic, just so I could pull over for a dose from the inhaler.

I was even more nervous as I exited the 219 onto a road that went up to Chestnut Ridge Park. This road also had four lanes, but its intersections were marked by traffic lights (who knew Orchard Park had that much traffic!) and it was lined with houses whose driveways came right down to the road. How do they back out? Reaching Chestnut Ridge Park itself felt better, because it’s like an actual exit from the Thruway, at first; but then it’s terribly bumpy and ill-maintained. Curse you, Red Budget! Even we pickup-truck driving Republicans like a smooth road! But now to find the Internet Bloggers.

Alas, it was not to be. I drove around Chestnut Ridge for hours, passing buildings that look like darling replicas of the kinds of structures they used to build during the Works Progress Administration, encountering many picnic shelters housing what appeared to be family reunions and church groups and the like. But no Internet bloggers! No shelter filled with untanned folk tapping away on laptops. One time I thought I’d found them, but the folks at that shelter said no, they weren’t the bloggers, but hey, would I like a large carton of fruit salad? Alas, I had to pass. We don’t eat food from cartons in the City.

Eventually I had to give up. Perhaps it had all been a ruse to lure me so far south of the City. Perhaps they were all still in their basements, having a laugh at my expense. I was tired, and hurt, and angry. But I still had three pounds of Skittles. So I parked my car and walked over to a large hill that I bet would be wonderful for sled riding. And as I sat down in the grass at the top of that big hill, my heart lept, for there in the distance was the HSBC Tower! And the Ralph! And the other buildings of downtown! And even the Central Terminal! I could still see home! All was not lost! I rejoiced to see my hometown again. I hadn’t left at all! And I popped a handful of Skittles into my mouth.

And then everything changed.

The Skittles weren’t right. They didn’t taste the way they usually do. What was wrong? I took another handful, and again they tasted wrong. Close, but wrong. What had happened? I stared at the bag, and the answer became obvious. The red Skittles weren’t there. They’d been replaced by pink ones that tasted not of cherry, but of…something else. What fruit is pink? And what kind of rainbow is this? As children, the nuns taught us “ROY G BIV”, not “POY G BIV”.

You can’t change the rainbow, darn it! You can close our libraries and shutter our Catholic parishes and equip every new car with a subwoofer, but you can’t just change the rainbow!

We now live in a world with pink Skittles instead of red ones. When did it all go wrong?

(Editor’s note: the preceding is parody, although the Editor did actually get some Skittles today that had pink ones in place of the red ones. He called shenanigans at the time, and rightly so. The Editor has no idea whatsoever if Mary Kunz Goldman likes Skittles, although he admits that she’s always struck him as a “sort the M&Ms by color and discard the brown ones because they have unpleasant associations” kind of person.)

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My whole life, I’ve never yet met a person who thought Marmaduke was funny. Not one. I know people who look forward to Doonesbury, Boondocks, and Blondie. It strikes me as one of the Universe’s cosmic injustices that Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side are distant memories, but Marmaduke keeps chugging along.

Well, here’s a fellow who makes Marmaduke funny. How does he do it? By simply explaining each daily morsel of insipidness:

Marmaduke is preventing a charity organization from aiding the needy simply because he is hungry, and also powerful enough to stop a car with his front legs.

This is so wonderfully funny and weird — it’s a quintessential Burst of Weirdness!

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At the outset of yesterday’s BloggerCon Episode IV, a reporter and photographer from the Buffalo News showed up to do some coverage of the event, and the resulting article can be read here. Yes, I am quoted in the article, albeit extremely briefly (fine by me!) and, in the Dead Tree Edition, in the continuation of the article on the inner pages of the City and Region section, so I doubt I’ll see any kind of traffic jump from my mention therein. No big deal, though. I’m fine with being a smaller fish in the blog pool these days.

After they left, there was some speculation that the resulting piece would be yet another “Hey, there are these things called ‘blogs’ and here’s what they are and stuff” pieces that typically constitutes the News‘s awareness of the existence of Blogistan, but I’m glad to see that this wasn’t the case: the thrust of the piece isn’t the existence of blogs, but the existence of the Buffalo blogging community. The Buffalo Prefecture of Blogistan is a real thing, folks! It was a good thrust for this article; any coverage of Blogistan that undermines the stereotype of bloggers as pasty-skinned folks who sit around and bang away on keyboards, bereft of real human contact outside of the pizza delivery guy, can only be a good thing.

(And yes, while the article itself is well done — kudos to Stephen Watson! — I have to once again throw some rocks at the News‘s Web operation. Assuming that this isn’t some kind of problem Firefox is having with rendering the News‘s website, as of this writing the online version of the article presents the text as one giant and unbroken paragraph. It’s not that way in the Dead Tree Edition of the paper, of course — but here’s a paper that doesn’t care enough about its Web operation to present an article in the way that the reporter wrote it. Come on, folks at the News! Whatever company you’re paying to slap your Website together is doing a job that makes you guys look like idiots. Ditch them and get some real Web developers whose knowledge of the Web didn’t stop growing in March of 1998.)

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So I’m driving home from Target earlier today, before the picnic, and I tune into WNED (our local classical station) to hear the final movement of Berlioz’s second symphony, Harold en Italie. This movement, called the “Dance of the Brigands”, is one of my favorite movements from any symphony.

It begins with a device straight out of Beethoven’s Ninth: brief quotations from the previous three movements are interrupted by orchestral bursts before we go into the main part of the movement, the Dance. What struck me today, even though I’ve heard this piece any number of times, is something that I’ve always known about Berlioz but never really commented on: his rhythms. Berlioz had a way with rhythm that was occasionally a seventy to a hundred years ahead of his time, and that aspect of his composing really stands out in this movement.

His melodies don’t always line up in the typical “symmetrical” fashion we expect from melodies of an arch-Romanticist, and he’s always willing to put the rhythmic emphasis on an off-beat. Those things I knew, but what I really heard for the first time today was that there are times in Berlioz when the bar line completely disappears, and the listener is totally at sea with respect to the “one-two-three-four” aspect of the music before the tempo reasserts itself. His rhythms are always non-standard, but sometimes they are so unusual that they approach the kind of rhythmic writing of a Stravinsky or an Aaron Copland. That’s part of what makes Berlioz always sound fresh in my ears, even though there’s barely a note of his that I haven’t heard many times.

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Well, The Daughter and I have just returned to our nicely climate-controlled apartment following BloggerCon Episode IV: Bloggers in the Park.

(Actually, I wasn’t going to post at all tonight, but now that there’s possibility of this blog being mentioned in the Buffalo News tomorrow, I’d rather shove that “Hey, the City Mattress guy looks like Clark Kent! Yuk yuk yuk!” post below down the chain a bit.)

The picnic went about as perfectly as a picnic can go, with one notable exception that I’ll get to in a minute. It was a very hot day in these parts, but there was a nice breeze moving through Chestnut Ridge, we had a shelter, and our area was in a nicely secluded part of the park with lots of trees around.

Who all was there? Well, let’s see:

:: Scott was there, along with his wife. I got some instruction in the finer points of grilling from Scott; he did up a nine-pound brisket that was well-worth the three-hour wait. He should be running his own barbecue-themed restaurant — or, failing that, blogging about food. It was a great pleasure meeting him under pleasant circumstances. (The only previous time I’d met him was at Little Quinn’s wake.)

:: Jennifer was there, of course, and she was delightful as always, full of fun stories about, well, all things Jennifer. Her boyfriend Mark was also there; already ahead of the game by virtue of having moved to Buffalo (because, well, who does that?), he turned out to be a good guy. Thus begins another fine Buffalo couple!

:: Jennifer 14221 was not there. Disappointment reigned.

:: Erin was not there. More disappointment.

:: Kevin and Mark were not there! O the crushing disappointment!

:: Alan was there, however, and thus we had the makings of a party, for he is a Party Person. I got to meet his wife and two daughters, the second of whom is something like thirteen days old. Beautiful baby, fine family. Apparently Alan isn’t running for office. Also apparently Alan’s stomach isn’t as strong as Scott’s; Alan spit out the taste of Highly Questionable Fruit Salad Food Product he sampled, whereas Scott swallowed his and pronounced it, “Meh”. (Of course, Scott served in the military, so his gastrointestinal fortitude is probably stronger than our Lawyer from Clarence’s.)

:: Let’s see, who else? Kevin and Val were there. What a terrific couple they are. I already knew they were great people, but it was still wonderful to learn that there are people out there who share my hypothesis about some of the stranger Looney Tunes cartoons (i.e., Chuck Jones was friggin’ stoned when he did some of those).

:: Red was there. He was surprisingly down to earth and fairly calm. (I say “surprisingly” because after years of watching That 70s Show, I expect people named Red to be surly folk who bark “Dumb ass!” a lot.) He also has a lovely family, with a baby who nicely slept through one chunk of the picnic (and nicely screamed through another).

:: Ummmm…crap. BuffaloGeek was there. But I’ve forgotten his real name. Curse me for a poor memory! See, folks, there’s a reason why I gravitate toward jobs where the wearing of nametags is required: because I’m horribly bad with names. Anyhow, he’s a great guy too.

:: Ditto the In Da Buff guy. Shit, can’t remember his name, either. Help me out, fellas.

:: Derek and Amanda from punaro.com. I’d never heard of punaro.com until I read their matching shirts. Now I have. They are bookmarked for an upcoming revision of the blogroll — until then, we really enjoyed Hillbilly Horseshoes (although I frankly didn’t care for the other name this game apparently goes by). And I’m glad to see that I am not the first person to blog about the picnic, as their post predates mine! This makes me feel slightly less geeky.

:: Mark of WNYMedia.net, who nicely reiterated his standing offer of hosting services for Buffalo bloggers. I’m thus far doing fine on Blogger, but you never know what the future might bring.

Some other folks dropped by from another function that was up the hill at the next shelter site, this one hosted by SpeakUpWNY. I’m very unfamiliar with these folks, but the ones who dropped by seemed nice. (They were the source of the five-pound carton of Highly Questionable Fruit Salad Food Product mentioned above, it should be noted.)

Conversation topics during the event ran the gamut: the dangers of standing between Brian Higgins and a camera; the future fortunes of the Buffalo Bills (they’ll suck in 2006); the future fortunes of the Sabres (that logo makes our eyes bleed); movies; how to light charcoal without using half a bottle of lighter fluid; George Bush the Boy Wonder; the surprising popularity of Frisbee Golf in Chestnut Ridge Park (our shelter area was quite near one of “the fairways”); the wisdom (or lack thereof) inherent in turning off the A/C when leaving the home (for a room-unit, it probably makes no difference, but for central air, leaving it on is the way to go); and how Buffalo should build a waterfront shrine to George Lucas. (OK, we didn’t discuss that last one. But the others came up!) I did have one nice moment of geekness, when Val mentioned that she does horseback therapy at a place called Rivendell, and I pointed out that The Wife does volunteer work at a horseback therapy place called Lothlorien, and sagely pointed out that both names come from The Lord of the Rings. Cue the ensuing silence filled by the chirping of crickets. Criminy.

Meeting the faces behind the blogs is always worthwhile, because as I’ve noted continually, “The Internet is made of people”. If you have a BloggerCon in your town, try and go sometime. You’ll be glad you did.

OK, Buffalo Prefecture of Blogistan: when’s the next one, and where?

(BTW, I hope it’s clear that I’m genuinely disappointed that those named above who were not in attendance couldn’t be there. The Buffalo Prefecture of Blogistan is loaded with fine, fine folks, and I’ve genuinely liked every one of them I’ve met. Well, except for that guy. Because nobody wants to be that guy.)

UPDATE: Since my brain is basically a giant trap for all kinds of cultural stuff, and since I’m constantly making connections between my real life and stuff that I see on TV or movies or read about, here’s the association I made for the Highly Questionable Fruit Salad Food Product: the Friends episode where Monica takes a job developing recipes for another Highly Questionable Food Product:

MONICA: So, Mr. Rastatter, what exactly does this job entail? The ad wasn’t too clear.

RASTATTER: Mockolate.

MONICA: I’m sorry?

RASTATTER: Mockolate. It’s a completely synthetic chocolate substitute.

MONICA: Ohh.

[He pulls out a piece of Mockolate.]

RASTATTER: Go ahead. Try a piece. Yeah, we think that Mockolate is even better than chocolate.

MONICA: All right. Mmm-mmm.

[She tastes it, and obviously hates it.]

RASTATTER: Yeah?

MONICA: [disgusted, trying not to show it] I love how it crumbles. Now see, your chocolate doesn’t do that.

RASTATTER: No, ma’am. Well, anyhoo, we should be getting our F.D.A. approval any day now, hopefully, in time for Thanksgiving. See, the way we look at it, chocolate already dominates most of your major food-preparation holidays: Easter, Christmas, what have you.

MONICA: [still chewing] Mmm-mmm.

RASTATTER: But, we’re thinking, given the right marketing, we can make Thanksgiving the Mockolate holiday.

MONICA: Wow.

RASTATTER: Aren’t you going to swallow that?

MONICA: Just waiting for it to stop bubbling.

RASTATTER: Yeah, isn’t that great?

MONICA: [with false enthusiasm] Mmm.

RASTATTER: Well, anyhoo, um, we are looking for a couple of chefs who can create some Thanksgiving-themed recipes. You think you might be interested?

MONICA: Abso…[swallows hard]…lutely. See, I love creating new recipes. I love Thanksgiving. And, well, now, I love Mockolate.

RASTATTER: Really?

MONICA: Especially the after taste, you know, I’ll tell ya, that’ll last ya till Christmas!

(via)

Yeah, good old Mockolate!

UPDATE II: I was remiss in noting that Craig wasn’t there, either. I hope he didn’t feel “politically unwelcome” — in fact, one of the WNY Media guys said that they really need some Republican bloggers for their burgeoning Empire.

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