Ah, Indianapolis…or, as we in Buffalo call it, the gift that keeps on giving. (Those storms are here now, albeit they’re not thunderstorms just now.)

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Remember that accident last week, where Wilford Brimley’s older brother hit the gas instead of the break and thus ended the lives of ten people? Sure, how could you forget…well, courtesy News of the Weird, this kind of thing is hardly an isolated incident:

America’s most underrated highway safety problem appears to be senior drivers who mistakenly step on the accelerator instead of the brake: Henry Clax, 78, Jersey City, N.J. (hit three lampposts and then 13 people coming out of a Jehovah’s Witnesses assembly, April); Marcella Stahly, 63, Albuquerque (tore through the front wall of a fruit market, March); Ms. Nahid Nainzadeh, 64, New Fairfield, Conn. (plowed halfway into a bank, April); Leonard Borok, 81, Coral Springs, Fla. (crashed through the front window of a post office, May); Waunona Reed, 85, Crescent City, Ore. (struck 26 people leaving an Assembly of God church, January). [Newsday-AP, 4-19-03] [Albuquerque Journal, 3-27-03] [Danbury News-Times, 4-19-03] [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 5-6-03] [Eureka Times-Standard, 1-5-03]

The more I think about it, the more I think that the renewal of a driver’s license should involve continued testing, not just signing a quick form for the DMV.

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This just in: writing an outline for an already-completed novel sucks. This is total drudgery that I’m finding utterly, completely annoying. The clinical detachment from the story (“Just the facts, ma’am”) required by the outline, in which the story is just flopped out there like that scene in The Adventures of Robin Hood where Errol Flynn saunters into Nottingham Castle and tosses a deer carcass onto Prince John’s feasting table, makes the story look like this contrived set of dull experiences and boring events.

“Well, there’s this young kid, about eighteen years old, probably. He lives on this desert planet, you see, where he works on a farm with his aunt and uncle because his parents are long-gone. And anyway, one day these nomadic junk-dealers come along and sell his uncle a couple of robots, just to help out with stuff. And then one of the robots turns out to be carrying a secret message from some Princess or something like that…”

Ugh!

“There’s this guy who had the greatest love of his life suddenly go sour, just as the Nazis were rolling into Paris. So he packs up with his piano-playing buddy and takes his cynical self to a North African city, where he opens a bar…”

Ugh!!

“There’s a young boy who lives in a crappy little house with his mother and his four grandparents, who are all bedridden, and in the same bed. This kid dreams of a better life, but it’s never coming. Until the reclusive guy who owns the local candy factory decides to have a contest to let five people in to see the works…”

Ugh!!!

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I’m seriously thinking about watching this new “reality” show, The Restaurant. I’ll be interested to see how the events depicted on that show match up with my own experiences of that particular industry (although I was in chain restaurants, which this show’s focus is not).

There’s an article about the show in today’s Buffalo News, that includes this interesting quote by the show’s producer, Mark Burnett (the evil force behind Survivor, which may hold its place on my Top Five Nauseating Shows List for a long time to come):

“The next step in unscripted dramatic television is to remove the contest and voting and prize money and to make a show in a venue.”

That’s the “next step”? No contest, just people interacting in a funky setting? Like…this show? It’s funny how the “Next step” often involves dusting off something that was “the next step” ten years ago.

Even so, I applaud the concept. You don’t need some stupid contest or contrived competition to make for compelling TV watching.

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Thirty-four years ago today:

Isn’t it about time we went back?

(Crossposted to Collaboratory.)

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If you like visual art of the “mystical” variety, check out the work of Gilbert Williams. He’s sort of like that Thomas Kinkaid guy, in that he uses a lot of light in his work, but for some reason I like Williams whereas I can’t stand Kinkaid. Maybe it’s the mysticism and fantasy-type stuff in Williams’s work, and it also probably has to do with the fact that Williams hasn’t been “branded” the way Kinkaid has, with the Franklin Mint not issuing various gewgaws based on Williams’s paintings. Here’s one I particularly like:

Williams’s work will be familiar to fans of the New-Age musical group Mannheim Steamroller; Williams did a couple of covers for the “Fresh Aire” series. (Mannheim Steamroller was a staple of my musical diet when I was in college and experiencing my “New Age” phase, which I suspect was a low-level substitute for what might have been a “Marijuana and the Grateful Dead” phase had I gone to a larger school in a more urban environment. But I digress.)

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Oh, those whacky French!!!

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Our summer tour of animated films continued this week with Hercules (which I believe I wrote about some time ago; I’ll dig about for a link later) and The Jungle Book.

I’ve never been able to really make up my mind about The Jungle Book. It’s something of a classic, I guess, and while I greatly enjoy parts of it, I’ve never been able to really embrace it, and I didn’t figure out why until just this week. My problem with the film is this:

I don’t care one whit about Mowgli.

Yep, that’s right: I can honestly say that I have no interest whatsoever in the main character of The Jungle Book. Mowgli is pretty much of a cipher, meandering through the film from one mini-adventure to another. All those mini-adventures are enjoyable, but I never get the feeling that Mowgli is a real person who is actually growing or learning or developing. I get the feeling that I’m simply expected to care about him and his exploits, by virtue of his being a cute-as-a-button kid who gets in a lot of scrapes, some of which through no fault of his own. But the thing is, Mowgli doesn’t so much grow as gain experience, which isn’t really the same thing. He doesn’t start out with a wrong set of values and then become a better person, nor does he learn any great lesson (although he does receive a series of smaller lessons); Mowgli is basically a tabula rasa whose brain is filled over the course of the movie until he spots a girl, and when he would theoretically become interesting as a character, the movie ends. Oh well…Disney’s more recent Tarzan film covers a lot of this same territory, and looking from the standpoint of the “orphan boy raised by the jungle beasts” character, that film is far more successful.

But I can’t really dislike The Jungle Book, either – – because those mini-adventures of Mowgli’s are so entertaining and fun. The elephant marching patrol always cracks me up, with its “stiff-upper-lip” British military attitude; ditto the goofy monkeys who inhabit something that looks like Angkor-Wat. Of course, Balou (the friendly fellow who sings the film’s signature song, “Bare Necessities”) is a delight; and those buzzards always crack me up. (“What are we gonna do?” “I dunno, what you wanna do?” “I dunno, let’s do something.” “OK, so what you wanna do?”) So that’s my take on The Jungle Book, the only movie I’ve ever seen where I probably would not have been bothered that much if the evil tiger had managed to consume the hero. Go figure.

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Cat owners who are still curious as to just what all that meowing means might be interested in this item. Personally, there are some things I would just as soon not know — especially in this case, when my sneaking suspicion is that a lot of what the cat is saying consists of variations of “Feed me, you two-legged furless twit”.

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I have been remiss in my duties, and allowed the Sworn Enemy of All Things Good and Pure to attain another year of life. Woe is a task left undone!

(But wish Matt a happy birthday anyway.)

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