[Brief political rant here]
You know all the sanctimonious crap we always have to endure from Republicans over the manners of Democrats at funerals? The whole “They got political in a time of mourning!” thing?
Fox “News”. “Fair and balanced”. Right.
Sentential Links #95 (the Martin Luther edition)
One Sentential Links post for each thesis that Martin Luther nailed to the door of…wherever it was that he nailed them to the door. Crap, I used to know this. There was college tuition money well-spent….
[off to Google!]
Ah, he nailed them to a church door at Wittenberg, Germany. Not to be confused with Wartburg Castle, where he translated the New Testament into German from the original Klingon (and thus provided a handy name to some people in Iowa centuries later who needed to name a college).
Anyway….
:: Will the demands for authenticity expand to a ban on flush toilets? Shall the sewers be open? How about no electricity or phone? Candles and torches only. (Local issue here, but I’m generally a lot more sympathetic to preservationists’ arguments when there is something to preserve.)
:: Some things are so titanically great that we can even loose sight of how amazing they truly are: living for too long in their shadow, we come to underestimate their size. (What a friggin’ truth this is. I think of this every time I listen to Beethoven’s Seventh: everybody knows that it might be the greatest of all symphonies, and yet to listen to it anew as I do every year or two is to amaze myself again at how stunning it still is. But he’s talking about something else; go find out.)
:: And whenever we’ve called in repairmen they always begin by saying the exact same thing:
“Well, that’s weird.” (Interestingly, in my job I’m now getting experienced to the point that I’m starting to recognize instances in which it’s appropriate to say, “Well, that’s weird”.)
:: This is a full shot of the character concept from a few posts ago. (Wow, nifty art here. For obvious reasons, I really dig the ones for the Space Opera project he’s working on.)
Tune in next week, as always.
Share This Post
The Unnamed Hero Cometh!
OK, folks, I just saw this “Make Your Own Superhero” gizmo over at Aurora Walking Vacation, and I just had to give it a try, using his suggestion of creating a superhero based on myself. Here it is!
How about that! Lightning from my right hand, and a blaster in my left; long hair blowing in the wind; some kind of green energy crackling ’round my Eyes Of Hot Instant Death; nifty wristguards that may or may not have extra powers within them; and on my feet, Rollerblades of LightSpeed! Note the battle scars on my powerfully-muscled arms, and the necklace made from the teeth of my vanquished Rigelian foes! Note my faithful companion through many dangers, Ozzy the Avenging Ocelot! Zap! Pow!
(Yeah, my alter-ego is a smoker, I’m sorry to say. Maybe the cigarettes deliver some kind of super-duper battle drugs into my bloodstream or something. And yeah, I was surprised that overalls were a clothing option there, too.)
I did have a problem, though. See that empty text box at the bottom? That’s where the name of your Superhero goes. Problem is, I couldn’t think of a name for this guy. That’s where you all come in. Put your suggestion in the comments!
Share This Post
I don’t understand the world
I just don’t get this world we live in sometimes.
Actually, I never get this world we live in. Not one bit.
UPDATE: Oh, my God:
THE FIRST SHOOTING TOOK PLACE AT AROUND 7AM. I WENT TO CLASS AT 9AM. THEY DIDN’T CLOSE CAMPUS UNTIL 10AM.
More here.
UPDATE II: Sorry, folks, but this pretty much kills my mood for blogging today. I’ll have Sentential Links and some other stuff up tomorrow.
It seems trite to offer condolences, but I offer them anyway to the families and friends and neighbors of those killed or injured today.
Share This Post
Sunday Burst of Weirdness
This apparently happened a couple of weeks ago, but I’m seeing it now, so it counts. In the For Better or For Worse comic strip, April Patterson turned sixteen a couple of weeks ago, and here’s how that Sunday’s strip began, for those whose Sunday papers don’t include the “big splash panel” thing that many Sunday strips use:
What’s weird about that? April’s a young musician, right?
Well, what’s weird is that they actually recorded that song she’s playing and put it on the FBoFW official site.
(via)
Share This Post
River of the Monks
I recently read Bill Bryson‘s latest book, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, in which Bryson recounts his experiences as a kid in 1950s America (Des Moines, IA, specifically). This was one of the more delightful reads I’ve enjoyed in a long time, full of the kind of loving naivete that marked, say, the funnier episodes of The Wonder Years or the less-serious parts of Stand By Me.
People [in the 50s] looked forward to the future, too, in ways they never would again. Soon, according to every magazine, we were going to have underwater cities off every coast, space colonies inside giant spheres of glass, atomic trains and airliners, personal jet packs, a gyrocopter in every driveway, cars that turned into boats or even submarines, moving sidewalks to whisk us effortlessly to schools and offices, dome-roofed automobiles that drove themselves along sleek superhighways allowing Mom, Dad, and the two boys (Chip and Bud or Skip and Scooter) to play a board game or wave to a neighbor in a passing gyrocopter or just sit back and enjoy some of those splendid words that existed in the fifties and are no longer heard: mimeograph, rotisserie, stenographer, icebox, dime store, rutabaga, Studebaker, panty raid, bobby socks, Sputnik, beatnik, canasta, Cinerama, Moose Lodge, pinochle, daddy-o.
(Well, a couple of those words are still around, aren’t they? Just last week at The Store I had to help move our rotisserie, and believe me, that damn thing is heavy, so much so that when we have to move it, we then refer to it by its official name, “the f***ing rotisserie“.)
This book was often laugh-out-loud funny, and it describes a world that is not only gone but that we also seem to admit is gone and thus try to preserve or recapture as best we can. Just last week in a Buffalo suburb, an injunction was sought by some preservationists in order to preserve a drive-in movie theater. The only mis-step in the book comes in a chapter toward the middle where Bryson delves into the dark underbelly of 1950s America (McCarthyism and the Red Scare, the dawn of the arms race, the seeds of Vietnam, race relations); it’s a well-written chapter, but it doesn’t really fit the rest of the book at all, and as such that chapter stands out like a sore thumb.
As usual with books like this, toward the end it takes on an elegiac tone about the passing of an age. Here’s the final passage:
That’s the way of the world, of course. Possessions get discarded. Life moves on. But I often think what a shame it is that we didn’t keep the things that made us different and special and attractive in the fifties. Imagine those palatial downtown movie theaters with their vast screens and Egyptian decor, but thrillingly livened with Dolby sound and slick computer graphics. Now that would be magic. Imagine having all of public life — offices, stores, restaurants, entertainments — conveniently clustered in the heart of the city and experiencing fresh air and daylight each time you moved from one to another. Imagine having a cafeteria with atomic toilets [you have to read the book to know what the hell Bryson’s talking about here], a celebrated tea room that gave away gifts to young customers, a clothing store with a grand staircase and a mezzanine, a Kiddie Corral where you could read comics to your heart’s content. Imagine having a city full of things that no other city had.
What a wonderful world that would be. What a wonderful world it was. We won’t see its like again, I’m afraid.
You see faint hints of that old world every now and then in American cities these days. Obviously things will never be like that again, but maybe as we move forward, we will draw inspiration from the best of that time? Who knows?
Anyway, this was a good book. I’m a big fan of Bill Bryson’s writing.
Share This Post
We Believe!
Thanks to Buffalo Hodgepodge for pointing out this wonderful Sports Illustrated article about Buffalo and the Sabres.
Weather was the last thing on our minds on Jan. 27, 1991. Not with paradise a mere 47 yards away in Tampa. I looked at the clock to preserve the moment: 9:37 p.m. Around town, similar scenes played out. Byron Brown, then the director of Equal Employment Opportunity for Erie County and now the mayor of Buffalo, was at a Super Bowl party at his mother-in-law’s house on Blaine Avenue in Hamlin Park. Mark Hutchinson, the chef and owner of Hutch’s, one of the city’s most popular eateries, watched with his pals above Casa Di Pizza on the Elmwood Strip. Finally, it was Buffalo’s time. Adam Lingner’s snap was pure, and when the ball arrived in the hands of backup quarterback Frank Reich, I felt a tug on my hand. Our group stood up as one and screamed. Scott Norwood gave it a ride.
You know the rest. SUPER HEARTBREAK The Buffalo News declared on its front page the next day. They wept at Byron Brown’s party. Hutch recalled how one of his friends kicked a table across the floor, stormed out of the restaurant, and locked himself inside his home for seven days. On Montrose Avenue, we were all numb. Barely anyone spoke a word after the kick as we headed out into the darkness, a journey that became all too familiar for Buffalonians in the 1990s.
Tell me about it. I do not doubt for one second that every year on January 27, late in the evening, if you venture out into the still of an wintry Iowa cornfield, and if you listen as hard as it’s possible to listen, you’ll still hear my scream of NOOOOOO!!! echoing across the icy prairie.
What began as a magic ride for an underdog last season has morphed into a collective confidence that hasn’t been felt among Buffalonians since the kickoff of Super Bowl XXV against the Giants. This season the Sabres clinched their first Presidents’ Trophy title and set a franchise record with 53 victories. They hold home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs.
But the euphoria surrounding this Sabres team comes from more than just the winning. It’s the manner in which they have won. In a league that now rewards skating over brawn, the Sabres are the fastest team on the ice. They play with flair and panache, traits normally not associated with rust-belt Buffalo. They win games by coming from behind — 10 times they have overcome a two-goal deficit — which plays to a city predisposed to the underdog role.
By unanimous accounts the locker room consists of character guys. (“They are the most accountable team I have ever been around,” says Buffalo News columnist Bucky Gleason. “And they don’t have much to be accountable for.”)
For seven consecutive months Buffalo has been the top-selling team on Shop.NHL.com. Sales of Sabres merchandise in March increased 657 percent compared with last year. In mid-December there was a 12-week waiting list for a Sabres jersey; the wait has now receded to eight weeks. All 41 home games this season were sold out (as is every playoff game), and 90 percent of the team’s season-ticket holders have already renewed for next year.
Let’s go Buffalo!
Share This Post
Games as Art
I recall a while back reading Demosthenes take on Roger Ebert’s contention that video games may display a lot of craft, but they’re not art:
I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.
Demosthenes meditated on this here and here. I never weighed in myself because I just don’t know enough about games to make a coherent argument in their favor, although my sympathies lie in their favor.
But today Mary checked in with quite a wonderful post on game-as-art, although she doesn’t cast it as such. Here’s how her post starts:
Okay, I am not your average video game reviewer. Mostly because I suck at video games. It’s my total lack of hand-eye coordination and my low frustration-threshold that does it. So what I am, is a video game spectator.
But there’s only one game that I’ve ever asked someone to play just so I can watch. It’s called “Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.” And I want people who don’t play video games to know what game designers are capable of, these days.
Do read the whole thing. (I didn’t read the spoilers, but they’re minimal and don’t seem to impact the main point.)
(And I’ll bet Shamus has some thoughts on this whole thing! How about it, Shamus? Are games art?)
Share This Post
Mahna Mahna!
Longtime readers will remember my unreasoning love of the Greatest Thing to Ever Feature Muppets Ever, the classic nonsense tune “Mahna Mahna!”. The Muppet Show version, as ever, can be seen here.
However, I always knew that the song was actually heard several years earlier, on Sesame Street, which in its elder days used to feature some niftily surreal stuff — i.e., the show wasn’t “All Elmo, All The Time”.
Here’s the original “Mahna Mahna”. I still prefer the Muppet Show version, as it distills the song down and shows off the significant growth in the understanding of “Muppet Body Language” that marks the greatest work of Jim Henson and company. But it’s still fascinating to see the original, no?
UPDATE: In comments, local blogger Derek Punaro levels the shocking accusation that the song was actually used originally in an Italian porn movie. This is, of course, a libelous statement of the worst kind, and to think that Derek would dare imply that Jim Henson, one of the finest purveyors of entertainment for the young at heart ever, would even think of using a song from an Italian porn movie is just so terrible as to…oh. Never mind, then.
Wow, the things you learn on Teh Internets!
Share This Post
Passages
I see via Electronic Cerebrectomy that character actor Roscoe Lee Browne has died. He had a long and productive career on TV and in voiceover work; for me, his most memorable role was in an episode of Magnum, PI in which some eccentric and mean rich guy fakes his own death to find out which of his mansion staff is out to get him, or something like that; Browne played the butler. I first knew of Browne by his voice on, of all things, a record album called The Story of Star Wars. This was an album that told the tale of the film through bits of dialogue, sound effects, music, and Browne’s narration to tie the whole thing together.
I’m not sure when the last time was that I saw Browne in something, but that’s the point of good character acting, I suppose. Filmed entertainment would grind to a halt if not for all the “Hey, it’s that guy!” or “Hey, it’s that lady!” actors, many of whom I sometimes suspect are actually more talented than the top-billed “stars”.