I'm constantly amazed by how much computers do for us these days, and how easy it is to use them. I grew up in the era when personal computers used "Basic" programming language -- I used to know how to program in that, 'cause I was cool -- and everything was "DOS" based and you had to know things like "C-prompts" and stuff.
Windows and the mouse were a giant leap forward after that, and things just got better and better. About four years ago, I bought a book on creating websites and programming in HTML language because I wanted to look into Internet publishing and the like, do something creative with my writing (other than mail it out to people who would write me uncreative rejection letters.)
I never used the book, because it turns out I don't need to know how to program -- I can just get on the Internet and use things like Blogger to create simple blogs. From "Basic" programming (tedious, stupid) to the ability to post a story and create a video about it, all in one lifetime? Phenomenal.
And now comes the next step: A program that lets you create your own blog and website and customizable pages and more. It's the Wordpress cms Themes from "WP Remix." This is a package of software that lets you put up a Blog, a homepage, products & gallery pages, all with plugin compatibility, smart menus, tabs, tables, and more -- and you don't need to be a computer whiz to use it.
It's a step beyond a simple blog -- your own website/blog/gallery, completely customizable so you can have the site you want without the cost and hassle of hiring a website designer and without the difficulty of learning to program yourself.
For more information, you can go to their site to watch a video showing how easy it is to use and what can be done, and I'm sure that like me, you'll be blown away by how incredible this is.
And it sure beats:
10 Print "Hello."
20 Goto 10.
Monday, April 06, 2009
Sunday, April 05, 2009
We interrupt this blog for an important announcement.
Claudius wanted to be the first man to reach the stars... and maybe he was. Alone, drifting through space with nothing to keep him company but the dot... speck... rock that is drifting there, too, Claudius reflects on what brought him to this point: A spaceship, a dream of reaching the stars he always saw when he closed his eyes... and murder.
Eclipse is a Mobius-strip of a psychological horror thriller that takes the reader on a twisting, turning trip through Claudius' troubled childhood, his time at NASA, and a grimy hospital or prison, peeling back layer upon layer of the personality of a boy who could close his eyes and see the stars, a boy who dreamed of reaching those stars... and maybe he did.
Eclipse is available for purchase through Lulu.com for as little as $1.25 per download, or $11.50 by paperback. Coming soon to a bookstore near you, but why wait?
And, for a limited time, if you are one of the first 50 to purchase the book and send me a picture of yourself holding the book, I will mail you one of these fine t-shirts, free of charge.
Friday, April 03, 2009
The Best Fake Musical (Reader Nomination)
Reader and Blogger Extraordinaire Scott, writer of Husbands Anonymous and Kevin-quizzer does not limit himself to writing parts of books about parenting. He also has a great ability to recall a musical that was only seen after the credits of a kids' movie.
Scott, in response to my nomination of Hamlet 2 as The Best Fake Musical In A Real Movie, said this:
I once heard a novelist say that there are only three plot lines to ANY story- but I'm damned if I can remember them. Love? Death and something?And in advertising, it has to be sex, children or animals.
I liked the brief fake musical in Monsters Inc, when Mike is pretending to practice for it, so that he doesn't get caught out for something else.Sorry. My memory isn't good.But I did love your post, it provoked me.
Scott, you probably heard me say that about the plotlines: I reviewed the idea of the 7 Basic Plotlines of literature and storytelling here.
But I had completely forgotten about the Monsters, Inc., musical, which seems impossible because I have watched that movie 1 hundred kajillion times since the Babies! were born, and I like to go to the credits scene and watch the actual musical they made for the company.
So I've decided to call that comment a nomination, and there you go: Scott nominates "The Monsters, Inc. Company Musical" as The Best Fake Musical In A Real Movie-- which nomination, I note, somewhat undercuts my theory that fake musicals only appear in real movies when the real movies themselves are rather mundane and unoriginal, but if I abandoned every opinion I had just because "evidence" and "facts" and "reality" undercut it, I wouldn't believe anything anymore.
I couldn't find the actual musical after the credits, but here's where they rehearse it:
Scott, in response to my nomination of Hamlet 2 as The Best Fake Musical In A Real Movie, said this:
I once heard a novelist say that there are only three plot lines to ANY story- but I'm damned if I can remember them. Love? Death and something?And in advertising, it has to be sex, children or animals.
I liked the brief fake musical in Monsters Inc, when Mike is pretending to practice for it, so that he doesn't get caught out for something else.Sorry. My memory isn't good.But I did love your post, it provoked me.
Scott, you probably heard me say that about the plotlines: I reviewed the idea of the 7 Basic Plotlines of literature and storytelling here.
But I had completely forgotten about the Monsters, Inc., musical, which seems impossible because I have watched that movie 1 hundred kajillion times since the Babies! were born, and I like to go to the credits scene and watch the actual musical they made for the company.
So I've decided to call that comment a nomination, and there you go: Scott nominates "The Monsters, Inc. Company Musical" as The Best Fake Musical In A Real Movie-- which nomination, I note, somewhat undercuts my theory that fake musicals only appear in real movies when the real movies themselves are rather mundane and unoriginal, but if I abandoned every opinion I had just because "evidence" and "facts" and "reality" undercut it, I wouldn't believe anything anymore.
I couldn't find the actual musical after the credits, but here's where they rehearse it:
Readers: see how easy it is to get your own nomination in here? Post them in a comment, or email me at thetroublewithroy[at]yahoo.com. Or look me up on Facebook by clicking here. You know you think stuff is The Best, so let me know: after all, it gets you a plug, too, and every now and then I'm so impressed by a nomination that I give away some free stuff (just ask!)
Click here to see all the Whodathunkits?!!
Click here to see all the SemiDaily Lists!
Click here to see all the MiniBests!
Click here to see all the other topics I’ve ever discussed!
I will only let attractive people wear them. (Which rules me out.)
The other day, I was walking through the grocery store minding my own business, and trying to carry Mr Bunches, when a guy across the frozen meat counter said to me:
"Hey, how'd you become a Florida fan living up here in Wisconsin?"
It confused me because (a) I'm not a Florida fan, (b) Mr Bunches was at the time inserting his index finger into my ear as far as he could, and (c) I didn't know what the heck he was talking about and (d) who talks to strangers in the frozen meat department?
I figured out a couple of things, though, those things being that this guy talks to strangers near flash-frozen burritos, he was talking about the shirt I was wearing, and Mr Bunches' finger is amazingly long. I still can't hear right out of that ear.
I was wearing, as I realized, a "Florida Gators" t-shirt, and the guy thought I was a Florida fan. I explained to him that I didn't care about the Florida Gators at all -- I'd won it in an NCAA tournament bet from The Boy. Then I explained to Mr Bunches that he was making Daddy's ear bleed, and moved on.
But it got me thinking: how powerful is an advertisement on a t-shirt, if it could distract this guy from picking out chicken breasts and compel him to talk to me?
Then I got to thinking more: Could I harness the power of my incredible body in an attractive t-shirt to, say, drum up some publicity?
That's how I came to find that I could customize a t shirt quickly and easily through Vista Print.
Now, anyone these days can create a custom t-shirt. There's probably a zillion sites that do that. What Vista Print has over those sites is first, they're less expensive, second, they're higher quality, and third, the more you buy, the more you save.
1 customized t-shirt runs only $13.99 per shirt, so if you just want to declare that your grandfather is the world's greatest, that's under fourteen bucks.
But order, say, 201 (or more) and the cost drops to $10.99 per shirt, saving $600. At under eleven dollars a shirt, that's not much money to come up with 300 shirts with your company name, logo, and phone number on it -- which is what I plan to do.
Not with my law practice -- I'm not sure I'd want the kind of clients who want to hire a lawyer they saw on a shirt. With my blogs and writing. Get a bunch of snazzy tshirts for my websites, and next thing you know, "The Best of Everything" is bigger than Facebook. Bigger than Youtube. Bigger than Google.
Okay, not bigger than Google. I take that back. Please, Google overlords, don't punish me.
But you get the point: Cheap, quick, fun, and suddenly, for less money than a new laptop, all around the city people have my blog and the address on their chests, and that hit counter goes up and up and up, until someone somewhere sees this, hires me to write it full time, and I'm relaxing in Hawaii telling you what the best way to avoid getting too tan and too relaxed is.
"Hey, how'd you become a Florida fan living up here in Wisconsin?"
It confused me because (a) I'm not a Florida fan, (b) Mr Bunches was at the time inserting his index finger into my ear as far as he could, and (c) I didn't know what the heck he was talking about and (d) who talks to strangers in the frozen meat department?
I figured out a couple of things, though, those things being that this guy talks to strangers near flash-frozen burritos, he was talking about the shirt I was wearing, and Mr Bunches' finger is amazingly long. I still can't hear right out of that ear.
I was wearing, as I realized, a "Florida Gators" t-shirt, and the guy thought I was a Florida fan. I explained to him that I didn't care about the Florida Gators at all -- I'd won it in an NCAA tournament bet from The Boy. Then I explained to Mr Bunches that he was making Daddy's ear bleed, and moved on.
But it got me thinking: how powerful is an advertisement on a t-shirt, if it could distract this guy from picking out chicken breasts and compel him to talk to me?
Then I got to thinking more: Could I harness the power of my incredible body in an attractive t-shirt to, say, drum up some publicity?
That's how I came to find that I could customize a t shirt quickly and easily through Vista Print.
Now, anyone these days can create a custom t-shirt. There's probably a zillion sites that do that. What Vista Print has over those sites is first, they're less expensive, second, they're higher quality, and third, the more you buy, the more you save.
1 customized t-shirt runs only $13.99 per shirt, so if you just want to declare that your grandfather is the world's greatest, that's under fourteen bucks.
But order, say, 201 (or more) and the cost drops to $10.99 per shirt, saving $600. At under eleven dollars a shirt, that's not much money to come up with 300 shirts with your company name, logo, and phone number on it -- which is what I plan to do.
Not with my law practice -- I'm not sure I'd want the kind of clients who want to hire a lawyer they saw on a shirt. With my blogs and writing. Get a bunch of snazzy tshirts for my websites, and next thing you know, "The Best of Everything" is bigger than Facebook. Bigger than Youtube. Bigger than Google.
Okay, not bigger than Google. I take that back. Please, Google overlords, don't punish me.
But you get the point: Cheap, quick, fun, and suddenly, for less money than a new laptop, all around the city people have my blog and the address on their chests, and that hit counter goes up and up and up, until someone somewhere sees this, hires me to write it full time, and I'm relaxing in Hawaii telling you what the best way to avoid getting too tan and too relaxed is.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
The Best Fake Musical In A Real Movie.
What is new?
That's the question I'll be exploring, off and on, in the month of April, having come to the depressing conclusion that art -- books, movies, sports, more -- has given up on new things and is simply repackaging old things for us, over and over and over, because we (and by we I mean you) simply won't buy/watch/eat/listen to anything that doesn't have the patina of the familiar on it.
This isn't (ironically?) a new complaint on my part. I noted a long time ago that there were, in terms of human existence, really only four new things in the 20th century. I've mentioned before that some television shows seem to be simply repackaged versions of earlier television shows and also get by simply by "parodying" other television shows and movies (and "parodying" is in quotes because to be a parody, don't you have to be making a point about the original, a point of some kind, instead of simply plugging your own characters into it?)
And while I'm not against some artistic comfort food -- I'm right now reading a John Grisham novel that differs from other John Grisham novels in that the character is on the run from a pregnant cheerleader, rather than an angry mafioso -- I'm against constantly having to retread old ground and I'm against the idea that as a society, we can no longer expect that anything will be new.
Take the latest affront to my sensibilities: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. This is the latest in a recent string of books that merely repackages another story -- like "Edgar Sawtelle," which was "Hamlet, only with dogs." Or "What Happened To Anna K?" which takes Anna Karenina -- a story that didn't need to be told in the first place -- and transports it to modern-day New York.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies starts with what could be considered a unique premise: what would happen if zombies existed in the Jane-Austen-Version-Of-England -- how would those upright, very mannered people deal with the existence of zombies?
But it then throws that unique premise away by simply splattering (!) it onto an actual Jane Austen work.
Why?
Because nobody would buy it if it wasn't linked to "Pride & Prejudice?" Is that the thinking? Was it a very creative idea that some hack at a publishing company said "Wait a minute, there's no way we can market this unless, say, we tie it into Jane Austen or something" and then the publisher forced the writer to change all the characters' names to "Mr. Darcy?" Or did it start out being less than creative?
Because I've got to say: My mom reads Jane Austen, and loves her. But I don't see her branching out into the zombie-verse.
Would the book be better if it was called, say, Victorian Zombies? I think so: It would be more creative. In a world where there are 924 different versions of the game "Monopoly," shouldn't we be trying less to repackage the old with a new gloss, and more to come up with something new that doesn't need gloss?
And it's not like everything about something has to be completely new or made-up or never before seen. That's the discussion I have with my kids all the time: They complain that we have the same things for dinner, over and over. "We always have eggs," they say, and that's generally true-- about once a week we have some sort of egg-based dinner. One week, it's homemade egg mcmuffins. The next, it might be western omelettes. Then egg salad sandwiches and soup. Then fried eggs and bacon. And so on.
So is it fair to say that we always have eggs? Yes -- but is it fair to say that each new dish isn't new? No.
See? I'm not so irrational: I'm saying you can take the same old parts and put them together in a new way, and have it be fun and interesting. You could take zombies (old) and Victorian England (old) and combine them, and get new. But if you then take that new and smush it back into Jane Austen, it's old again. It's no longer, if you do that, an omelette vs. an egg sandwich. It's an egg-sandwich-on-wheat vs. an egg-sandwich-on-white.
To an extent, all art is simply putting together the old pieces in a new way: each story, each painting, each football game, each song, is the same old pieces but stacked up new. Art, in that sense, is a Lego house: there are only a certain number of different kinds of Legos. If you take all the Legos and build a house, and I take them apart and build a different house, we've each made a Lego house, but mine is new (unless I copy yours and call it a parody, a la Seth MacFarlane and the South Park guys.)
With those same Legos, you can build a house, you can build a London Bridge, you can build a Lunar Landing Module, you can build a pirate ship, you can build...anything.
But if the people who mostly run art these days -- Big Art, if you will-- had their way, we would have an endless series of Lego Houses, each slightly different than the rest, for about 10 or 20 years. Then we'd do it all over -- but this time with red Legos.
I don't want Red Lego Houses forever, anymore than I want "Mountain Dew Orange Juice" in the morning. So it's up to me to save the world -- again-- and start telling people how to make something new. And, if you haven't guessed, today's new-osity is created by Putting Old Things Together In A Totally New Way, and that is best demonstrated by the movie Hamlet 2, which as a movie was good, but served a higher purpose: that of housing the The Best Fake Musical In A Real Movie.
At first glance, there is absolutely nothing new about either "Hamlet 2" the movie or the musical. There is nothing new about putting a fake musical into a real movie -- it's been done on other occasions, most recently by Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but it goes back at least to Grease 2 and the talent shows.
On that subject, did you ever stop to think of the great strides made by males in between Grease and Grease 2? In Grease, it was embarrassing for Danny to simply like a girl -- if his buddies knew he liked Sandy, he'd be mortally embarrassed, which is why he had to pretend to be mean to her. But by Grease 2, which was (I think?) only a few years later, Johnny Nogerelli could not only openly like Stephanie Zinone, but he could openly like her and Paulette, and he could sing and dance onstage without being beaten up by his friends. Danny couldn't even admit he wanted to go out for track. Johnny could perform in a talent show.
So the individual parts of Hamlet 2 the movie were nothing new: a struggling, weird artistic teacher tries to motivate kids, the art program at school is in trouble, a guy's wife is leaving him... all of it not very original-sounding.
And the musical in Hamlet 2 -- the actual musical-within-a-movie, "Hamlet 2," put on by the students and the teacher, itself starts out with not much of a very original idea: A rock-star-esque Jesus returns to the world and markets himself. (As I've pointed out before, the unusual-version-of-God is played out; my love of newness no longer extends to unique versions of God. Just get Morgan Freeman. Except in Hamlet 2, as we'll see.)
From those old Legos, though, arises something new. Not entirely new, not My God, I've never seen something like this before New, but new, and that new thing is the actual musical-within-a-movie, the "Hamlet 2" play put on by the students and the teacher.
A lot of times, when I'm watching a movie and they put on a fake musical in it, I find myself thinking Boy, I wish I could watch that whole thing. I thought that when Jason Segal performed bits and pieces of Dracula the musical in Sarah Marshall -- while the Sarah Marshall movie was okay, the musical in it looked great.
That's what I thought, too, while watching (the movie) Hamlet 2: the movie is okay, but that musical looks great.
That's part of what elevates Hamlet 2 above all the other fake musicals in real movies: it's sheer greatness and the spectacle suggested by it. The musical (in the movie) is staged in an abandoned warehouse and has movie screens and dancers and waving blue things simulating water and a time machine filled with televisions and a choir singing "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" and wire-work and... more and more and more, and watching the movie gives a viewer the chance to see enough of it to think: screw this movie, I want to see the musical.
The other part of what makes Hamlet 2 (the musical-within-the-movie) rise above all contenders is that the part presented to the movie viewer is so short, so tantalizing, and so above-and-beyond anything we've ever seen actually performed on stage. I've been in, and to, a lot of musicals in my life. I had bit parts, in middle school, in two musicals, and saw my brother Matt (post the video, Matt!) in one, and saw Phantom of the Opera and Evita and Stomp and The Producers, and I once saw an actual opera performed and I've been to see Pink Floyd in concert (and I kind of almost remember it) and Paul McCartney in concert -- I've seen people put on spectacles, or try to.
But I never saw anything that even hinted at how great Hamlet 2 (the fake musical) was, nothing that combined so many old elements (Elton John, Sexy Jesus, time machines) into something so new and wondrous and beautiful.
And, yeah, "Sexy Jesus" is an old idea: Jesus Christ Superstar, Jesus Christ the Musical, Jesus of Suburbia, The Wrong-Eyed Jesus... there's not a lot new there.
There is a sad lesson that could be drawn from the fact that these fake musicals, including Hamlet 2, are always fake and always shown in bits and pieces. More than one sad lesson, in fact.
I could assume that they're always fake because people couldn't pull off that kind of creativity in "real life," couldn't actually stage that kind of musical for real because we're just not creative enough to mount a truly wonderful, truly new production like Hamlet 2 in real life.
Or I could assume that the fake musicals are always fake and short because it's impossible to sustain that level of creativity for the long haul -- that people can come up with a couple of good ideas but can't wrap a whole musical around them.
I could even assume that the only reason these look so good is because they're short and fake -- that if they were presented in "real" life I'd hate them and be bored.
But I don't assume any of that. Instead, I conclude that the reason these fake musicals are presented simply as fake little musicals in real movies, as bits and pieces of other, more standard works of art, is because the Powers That Be, Big Art, won't let them be actual musicals or movies.
There is, after all, no real reason that Hamlet 2, the musical couldn't have simply been made and mounted as a musical or movie. The geniuses that came up with the idea, and the songs that appear in the movie, could have simply written an entire musical based on the idea that Hamlet and Jesus use a time machine to keep everyone from dying in the original Hamlet play (that's the premise of the fake musical) and produced that. There is, after all, no real reason that a Puppet Dracula musical couldn't have been made, either -- and I suspect that Jason Segal wanted to, or would want to, do that, seeing as how he has said he's going to write the next Muppet Movie.
(And the original Muppet Movie had one of the classic fake musicals in it -- a Mobius strip of a fake musical, when the Muppets get together to make a musical movie about the musical movie you've just seen. That was a strong contender for this nomination.)
So why didn't we get Hamlet 2, the actual musical, instead of "Hamlet 2," the fake musical inside "Hamlet 2 The Movie?" Why didn't we get "Dracula The Actual Puppet Musical" instead of "Dracula" the fake puppet musical inside of Forgetting Sarah Marshall?
Because we don't demand them, that's why. Big Art won't give them to us because we won't go watch them because we'd rather watch another stupid movie about a guy who thinks he's in love with one girl but is actually in love with another, and have a tiny bit of a fantastic new musical in that, than watch the fantastic new musical.
And by "we" I mean you.
It wasn't always that way: The Muppet Movie, as I said, was a brand-new kind of musical: Puppets playing banjos and traveling the country to make a movie. If The Muppet Movie were made today, it would, no doubt, be more predictable and more trite and more recognizable, and maybe have a fake musical in it, a burst of creativity in a same-old/same-old chicken pot pie of a movie. I can say that with confidence, because look at the history of the Muppet movies:
* The Muppet Movie
* The Great Muppet Caper
* The Muppets Take Manhattan
* A Muppet Family Christmas (1987) (TV)
* The Muppet Christmas Carol
* Muppet Treasure Island
* Muppets From Space (1999)
* The Muppets' Wizard of Oz
Do you see what happened there? From the weirdness of the first two movies, to the third movie (which itself had another great fake musical in it, and was about putting on that musical)(see how Hamlet 2 isn't built of all new parts?) the Muppets went downhill, eventually just remaking "A Christmas Carol" (which itself is being remade yet again, the lesson being, apparently, that there is only one Christmas story worth telling) and other familiar works of art. (Let's hope that Jason Segal isn't writing "The Muppets In Pride & Prejudice and Zombies.")
It's not just Muppets, either. Disney totally fell downhill, too -- they used to present new stuff like Fantasia and The Rescuers and other original ideas. But with the success of The Little Mermaid, Disney fell into a rut for a long time of simply repackaging old, familiar stories into cartoons (Hercules, Pocahontas) and left the original stuff to subsidiaries like Pixar.
People keep paying actual money to see "Fast and Furious," the threequel to "The Fast and The Furious," which was the first in that line of movies, and "2 Fast 2 Furious," the second in that line, and a movie which in its very title shows how limited our scope is: There are people out there, now, who will no longer go see a sequel if that sequel does not instantly call to mind the original. Those people could not be bothered to see "The Empire Strikes Back," because it would be too different from Star Wars; if it came out today, that movie would likely have to have been called Star Wars 2: More Wars. (When I first saw a commercial for Fast and Furious, I was confused; I thought they were re-releasing "The Fast and The Furious," while Sweetie thought they were remaking the earlier movie. Judging from commercials, she may be right.)
Those same people -- hopefully not you -- are the people who won't pick up Victorian Zombies, who want to keep re-reading Anna Karenina (Book Pitch: Suppose Anna Karenina were to live in Hollywood? Why not a whole series of Anna K books: "Anna K, Texas Housewife"-- it's "Dallas Meets Real Housewives," with a smidge of literary pretension?), and it's those people I have to fight against by presenting the glories of things like Hamlet 2, The Best Fake Musical In A Real Movie, in hopes that they'll put down their same old egg sandwich, put a bookmark in their umpteenth repackaging of Bridget Jones, pause the DVR playback of Yet Another Teen Christmas Carol, and allow me, and hopefully you, to see something new.
That's the question I'll be exploring, off and on, in the month of April, having come to the depressing conclusion that art -- books, movies, sports, more -- has given up on new things and is simply repackaging old things for us, over and over and over, because we (and by we I mean you) simply won't buy/watch/eat/listen to anything that doesn't have the patina of the familiar on it.
This isn't (ironically?) a new complaint on my part. I noted a long time ago that there were, in terms of human existence, really only four new things in the 20th century. I've mentioned before that some television shows seem to be simply repackaged versions of earlier television shows and also get by simply by "parodying" other television shows and movies (and "parodying" is in quotes because to be a parody, don't you have to be making a point about the original, a point of some kind, instead of simply plugging your own characters into it?)
And while I'm not against some artistic comfort food -- I'm right now reading a John Grisham novel that differs from other John Grisham novels in that the character is on the run from a pregnant cheerleader, rather than an angry mafioso -- I'm against constantly having to retread old ground and I'm against the idea that as a society, we can no longer expect that anything will be new.
Take the latest affront to my sensibilities: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. This is the latest in a recent string of books that merely repackages another story -- like "Edgar Sawtelle," which was "Hamlet, only with dogs." Or "What Happened To Anna K?" which takes Anna Karenina -- a story that didn't need to be told in the first place -- and transports it to modern-day New York.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies starts with what could be considered a unique premise: what would happen if zombies existed in the Jane-Austen-Version-Of-England -- how would those upright, very mannered people deal with the existence of zombies?
But it then throws that unique premise away by simply splattering (!) it onto an actual Jane Austen work.
Why?
Because nobody would buy it if it wasn't linked to "Pride & Prejudice?" Is that the thinking? Was it a very creative idea that some hack at a publishing company said "Wait a minute, there's no way we can market this unless, say, we tie it into Jane Austen or something" and then the publisher forced the writer to change all the characters' names to "Mr. Darcy?" Or did it start out being less than creative?
Because I've got to say: My mom reads Jane Austen, and loves her. But I don't see her branching out into the zombie-verse.
Would the book be better if it was called, say, Victorian Zombies? I think so: It would be more creative. In a world where there are 924 different versions of the game "Monopoly," shouldn't we be trying less to repackage the old with a new gloss, and more to come up with something new that doesn't need gloss?
And it's not like everything about something has to be completely new or made-up or never before seen. That's the discussion I have with my kids all the time: They complain that we have the same things for dinner, over and over. "We always have eggs," they say, and that's generally true-- about once a week we have some sort of egg-based dinner. One week, it's homemade egg mcmuffins. The next, it might be western omelettes. Then egg salad sandwiches and soup. Then fried eggs and bacon. And so on.
So is it fair to say that we always have eggs? Yes -- but is it fair to say that each new dish isn't new? No.
See? I'm not so irrational: I'm saying you can take the same old parts and put them together in a new way, and have it be fun and interesting. You could take zombies (old) and Victorian England (old) and combine them, and get new. But if you then take that new and smush it back into Jane Austen, it's old again. It's no longer, if you do that, an omelette vs. an egg sandwich. It's an egg-sandwich-on-wheat vs. an egg-sandwich-on-white.
To an extent, all art is simply putting together the old pieces in a new way: each story, each painting, each football game, each song, is the same old pieces but stacked up new. Art, in that sense, is a Lego house: there are only a certain number of different kinds of Legos. If you take all the Legos and build a house, and I take them apart and build a different house, we've each made a Lego house, but mine is new (unless I copy yours and call it a parody, a la Seth MacFarlane and the South Park guys.)
With those same Legos, you can build a house, you can build a London Bridge, you can build a Lunar Landing Module, you can build a pirate ship, you can build...anything.
But if the people who mostly run art these days -- Big Art, if you will-- had their way, we would have an endless series of Lego Houses, each slightly different than the rest, for about 10 or 20 years. Then we'd do it all over -- but this time with red Legos.
I don't want Red Lego Houses forever, anymore than I want "Mountain Dew Orange Juice" in the morning. So it's up to me to save the world -- again-- and start telling people how to make something new. And, if you haven't guessed, today's new-osity is created by Putting Old Things Together In A Totally New Way, and that is best demonstrated by the movie Hamlet 2, which as a movie was good, but served a higher purpose: that of housing the The Best Fake Musical In A Real Movie.
At first glance, there is absolutely nothing new about either "Hamlet 2" the movie or the musical. There is nothing new about putting a fake musical into a real movie -- it's been done on other occasions, most recently by Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but it goes back at least to Grease 2 and the talent shows.
On that subject, did you ever stop to think of the great strides made by males in between Grease and Grease 2? In Grease, it was embarrassing for Danny to simply like a girl -- if his buddies knew he liked Sandy, he'd be mortally embarrassed, which is why he had to pretend to be mean to her. But by Grease 2, which was (I think?) only a few years later, Johnny Nogerelli could not only openly like Stephanie Zinone, but he could openly like her and Paulette, and he could sing and dance onstage without being beaten up by his friends. Danny couldn't even admit he wanted to go out for track. Johnny could perform in a talent show.
So the individual parts of Hamlet 2 the movie were nothing new: a struggling, weird artistic teacher tries to motivate kids, the art program at school is in trouble, a guy's wife is leaving him... all of it not very original-sounding.
And the musical in Hamlet 2 -- the actual musical-within-a-movie, "Hamlet 2," put on by the students and the teacher, itself starts out with not much of a very original idea: A rock-star-esque Jesus returns to the world and markets himself. (As I've pointed out before, the unusual-version-of-God is played out; my love of newness no longer extends to unique versions of God. Just get Morgan Freeman. Except in Hamlet 2, as we'll see.)
From those old Legos, though, arises something new. Not entirely new, not My God, I've never seen something like this before New, but new, and that new thing is the actual musical-within-a-movie, the "Hamlet 2" play put on by the students and the teacher.
A lot of times, when I'm watching a movie and they put on a fake musical in it, I find myself thinking Boy, I wish I could watch that whole thing. I thought that when Jason Segal performed bits and pieces of Dracula the musical in Sarah Marshall -- while the Sarah Marshall movie was okay, the musical in it looked great.
That's what I thought, too, while watching (the movie) Hamlet 2: the movie is okay, but that musical looks great.
That's part of what elevates Hamlet 2 above all the other fake musicals in real movies: it's sheer greatness and the spectacle suggested by it. The musical (in the movie) is staged in an abandoned warehouse and has movie screens and dancers and waving blue things simulating water and a time machine filled with televisions and a choir singing "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" and wire-work and... more and more and more, and watching the movie gives a viewer the chance to see enough of it to think: screw this movie, I want to see the musical.
The other part of what makes Hamlet 2 (the musical-within-the-movie) rise above all contenders is that the part presented to the movie viewer is so short, so tantalizing, and so above-and-beyond anything we've ever seen actually performed on stage. I've been in, and to, a lot of musicals in my life. I had bit parts, in middle school, in two musicals, and saw my brother Matt (post the video, Matt!) in one, and saw Phantom of the Opera and Evita and Stomp and The Producers, and I once saw an actual opera performed and I've been to see Pink Floyd in concert (and I kind of almost remember it) and Paul McCartney in concert -- I've seen people put on spectacles, or try to.
But I never saw anything that even hinted at how great Hamlet 2 (the fake musical) was, nothing that combined so many old elements (Elton John, Sexy Jesus, time machines) into something so new and wondrous and beautiful.
And, yeah, "Sexy Jesus" is an old idea: Jesus Christ Superstar, Jesus Christ the Musical, Jesus of Suburbia, The Wrong-Eyed Jesus... there's not a lot new there.
There is a sad lesson that could be drawn from the fact that these fake musicals, including Hamlet 2, are always fake and always shown in bits and pieces. More than one sad lesson, in fact.
I could assume that they're always fake because people couldn't pull off that kind of creativity in "real life," couldn't actually stage that kind of musical for real because we're just not creative enough to mount a truly wonderful, truly new production like Hamlet 2 in real life.
Or I could assume that the fake musicals are always fake and short because it's impossible to sustain that level of creativity for the long haul -- that people can come up with a couple of good ideas but can't wrap a whole musical around them.
I could even assume that the only reason these look so good is because they're short and fake -- that if they were presented in "real" life I'd hate them and be bored.
But I don't assume any of that. Instead, I conclude that the reason these fake musicals are presented simply as fake little musicals in real movies, as bits and pieces of other, more standard works of art, is because the Powers That Be, Big Art, won't let them be actual musicals or movies.
There is, after all, no real reason that Hamlet 2, the musical couldn't have simply been made and mounted as a musical or movie. The geniuses that came up with the idea, and the songs that appear in the movie, could have simply written an entire musical based on the idea that Hamlet and Jesus use a time machine to keep everyone from dying in the original Hamlet play (that's the premise of the fake musical) and produced that. There is, after all, no real reason that a Puppet Dracula musical couldn't have been made, either -- and I suspect that Jason Segal wanted to, or would want to, do that, seeing as how he has said he's going to write the next Muppet Movie.
(And the original Muppet Movie had one of the classic fake musicals in it -- a Mobius strip of a fake musical, when the Muppets get together to make a musical movie about the musical movie you've just seen. That was a strong contender for this nomination.)
So why didn't we get Hamlet 2, the actual musical, instead of "Hamlet 2," the fake musical inside "Hamlet 2 The Movie?" Why didn't we get "Dracula The Actual Puppet Musical" instead of "Dracula" the fake puppet musical inside of Forgetting Sarah Marshall?
Because we don't demand them, that's why. Big Art won't give them to us because we won't go watch them because we'd rather watch another stupid movie about a guy who thinks he's in love with one girl but is actually in love with another, and have a tiny bit of a fantastic new musical in that, than watch the fantastic new musical.
And by "we" I mean you.
It wasn't always that way: The Muppet Movie, as I said, was a brand-new kind of musical: Puppets playing banjos and traveling the country to make a movie. If The Muppet Movie were made today, it would, no doubt, be more predictable and more trite and more recognizable, and maybe have a fake musical in it, a burst of creativity in a same-old/same-old chicken pot pie of a movie. I can say that with confidence, because look at the history of the Muppet movies:
* The Muppet Movie
* The Great Muppet Caper
* The Muppets Take Manhattan
* A Muppet Family Christmas (1987) (TV)
* The Muppet Christmas Carol
* Muppet Treasure Island
* Muppets From Space (1999)
* The Muppets' Wizard of Oz
Do you see what happened there? From the weirdness of the first two movies, to the third movie (which itself had another great fake musical in it, and was about putting on that musical)(see how Hamlet 2 isn't built of all new parts?) the Muppets went downhill, eventually just remaking "A Christmas Carol" (which itself is being remade yet again, the lesson being, apparently, that there is only one Christmas story worth telling) and other familiar works of art. (Let's hope that Jason Segal isn't writing "The Muppets In Pride & Prejudice and Zombies.")
It's not just Muppets, either. Disney totally fell downhill, too -- they used to present new stuff like Fantasia and The Rescuers and other original ideas. But with the success of The Little Mermaid, Disney fell into a rut for a long time of simply repackaging old, familiar stories into cartoons (Hercules, Pocahontas) and left the original stuff to subsidiaries like Pixar.
People keep paying actual money to see "Fast and Furious," the threequel to "The Fast and The Furious," which was the first in that line of movies, and "2 Fast 2 Furious," the second in that line, and a movie which in its very title shows how limited our scope is: There are people out there, now, who will no longer go see a sequel if that sequel does not instantly call to mind the original. Those people could not be bothered to see "The Empire Strikes Back," because it would be too different from Star Wars; if it came out today, that movie would likely have to have been called Star Wars 2: More Wars. (When I first saw a commercial for Fast and Furious, I was confused; I thought they were re-releasing "The Fast and The Furious," while Sweetie thought they were remaking the earlier movie. Judging from commercials, she may be right.)
Those same people -- hopefully not you -- are the people who won't pick up Victorian Zombies, who want to keep re-reading Anna Karenina (Book Pitch: Suppose Anna Karenina were to live in Hollywood? Why not a whole series of Anna K books: "Anna K, Texas Housewife"-- it's "Dallas Meets Real Housewives," with a smidge of literary pretension?), and it's those people I have to fight against by presenting the glories of things like Hamlet 2, The Best Fake Musical In A Real Movie, in hopes that they'll put down their same old egg sandwich, put a bookmark in their umpteenth repackaging of Bridget Jones, pause the DVR playback of Yet Another Teen Christmas Carol, and allow me, and hopefully you, to see something new.
Because until then, we're going to be stuck hoping for little nuggets of gold hidden in the same old same old:
Related: John Irving included A Christmas Carol in A Prayer For Owen Meany, in a totally new way.
Like fake works of art? Read About The Best Book That Never Existed, But Should.
Related: John Irving included A Christmas Carol in A Prayer For Owen Meany, in a totally new way.
Like fake works of art? Read About The Best Book That Never Existed, But Should.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
The Best REM Songs That Prove They Should Stand Among The Giants Of Rock And Roll
Where does REM fit into the rock'n'roll pantheon? As U2's mediocre new album sells only half of what they'd hoped, as Coldplay stands astride the World of Rock while making music that, let's be honest, is not rock-and-roll, as people continue, inexplicably, to pay sporadic attention to Nirvana and Pearl Jam...
... and let's face it: Were shiny white suits, platform shoes, and flares any more or less embarrassing than flannel shirts, greasy hair, and cargo pants? No. Was the music put out by the "grunge" rockers of the early 90s any more or less influential than disco? No.
Yet, it took about 35 minutes for people to begin making fun of disco; meanwhile, twenty years in, people are still pretending that grunge was "real" or "authentic" or whatever it is that makes people pretend to like grunge...As all that happens, REM gets ignored, really. They even got ignored by me when I set the world straight on what Rock & Roll actually is (as I did here, and here, and here, and here, and here, too. )
Which is odd, if you consider, first, facts:
REM has released 14 studio albums. The Beatles released 13.
REM has had 6 singles hit number 5 or better in the U.S. The Police had three.
REM has been around and making albums for 29 years. Pearl Jam has only been around 19, if you count "technically, existing as a band even though nobody cares anymore" as "being around."
But Rock and roll isn't about facts, it's about... emotions and arm-pumping and wanting to get up and move and feeling alive and all that other stuff. And about being creative
and doing it better than everyone else in the world. REM does that, too-- they don't just out-fact the competition, they also out-music them. But for some reason, even though REM does all that, they still get short shrift.So, to set things right, I'm presenting today's SemiDaily List:
The Best REM Songs That Prove They Should Stand Among The Giants Of Rock And Roll
First up: Stadium Rock: If you're going to rock the world, you've got to be able to get 55,000 fans to stand on their feet and wave their lighters (for Olden Days' fans) and their iPhone Lighter Apps (kids these days) and shout the lyrics and sing along.
Quintessential Stadium Rocker: Queen, Radio Ga-Ga at Live Aid. Freddie Mercury gets people worldwide to fight hunger by waving their arms and chanting nonsense words:
REM's Answer: It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) (live). I'm not a fan of live songs, in general-- but REM does this song live more or less just like on the studio version. And what's more impressive than getting a crowd of people to say ga ga? Getting a crowd of people to dance to a jelly-bean based Armageddon:
Did you get a little chill when Michael Stipe got the crowd to CHEER for feeling fine at the end of the world? I did.
BONUS ROCKER CRED: "It's The End of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) was release two years before Billy Joel's more-famous stream-of-consciousness rock song "We Didn't Start The Fire."
Next comes Quasi-Mystical References/Historical Allusions: Great rock bands build up hype by having songs in which mystical, historical, weird things are said that seem to make sense, but which, if you parse them out, don't really. That adds to their credibility because they can claim that we just don't get it. They don't even have to get all "10 Summoners Tales" on us. They can simply throw in a couple of Tolkien references, or use words that nobody understands plus Roman numerals (Synchronicity II?).
Quintessential Quasi-mystical/historical songs: I'll give you two. First, there's "Space Oddity," By David Bowie:
Then, no pretentious Lit-Rock would be complete without Sting. Here's "Love Is The Seventh Wave." Note the chorus: "There is a deeper wave than this." Yes: And only STING can tell us about that. He even says so: "That you don't understand." That's because you're a Philistine:
REM's Answer to those songs? "Imitation Of Life"
How's THAT for inscrutable: "Thats sugarcane that tasted good/Thats who you are, thats what you could/Cmon cmon no one can see you cry." What? It's not obscure or literary enough for you? What if they pulled out a little-known celebrity and made him a figure of almost religious devotion, mentioned a bunch of child hood games and other obscure or academic folk, and then set it all to an orchestra?
Can do: Here's "Man In The Moon,"
And here's an orchestral version from the soundtrack to the movie. Remember when America had Kaufmania? No, neither do I:
You know who "Fred Blassie" was and why he's in a "breakfast mess," right? No? You Philistine. (Hint: He apparently coined, or maybe just popularized, the phrase "pencil-neck geek.") Don't miss the Charles Darwin reference in that song, either.
With all that, now, let's Slow It Down A Little. Great bands know that sometimes, the rockin' has to stop so that we can move in close and dance a slow one with that hot chick wearing the white, tight, halter top. (Or, in my teen-and-early-twenties' case, go sit back at the table and wait, impatiently, for the next fast song.) U2 laid a little "With Or Without You" on us, causing a generation of people to confuse "stalking" with "romance," and you know they did that because that same group of people then rallied around Guns & Roses' "Used To Love Her," then found solace in "November Rain," which -- no lie -- begins "When I look into your eyes/I can see a love restrained."
It's tough to look into someone's eyes from a minimum of 500 feet away, isn't it?
The quintessential Slow It Down A Little song, though, has to be INXS' "Never Tear Us Apart:"
INXS was a bunch of rave-rockers who tore it up with "What You Need" and "I Send A Message," and was hitting it big... but only hit it bigger still when they threw some violins and foggy days and angel metaphors and the like at us, with a wedding-vow friendly set of lines: Two worlds collided/and they could never, ever, tear us apart. Oh, the many mulleted weddings that must have been sealed with those lines, the speeches made by best men quoting that song to end their toast: "Tony was standing, and Tina was there. Two worlds collided, and nobody's going to tear them apart. I love you guys!"
Can REM match INXS step for step? Can they romance you and make you swoon? Can they give you something to say at your parents' 50th anniversary? Sure. Here's "Nightswimming."
Moon. Naked swimming. Photographs tucked into the dashboard. I love you guys!
Finally, all great rock bands know that behind the music lies ... tragedy. Lies sadness. Lies emotions that we only want to acknowledge when we are driving home late, late at night, and we're tired, and the drive-throughs are closed, so we can't even get a stupid chocolate shake to make us feel better... they know that we miss our friends and our family even though we saw them that morning and/or never really hung out all that much. Great bands know that they can get through to you by singing about that friend of theirs who overdosed...on his 21st birthday..., like U2 did on "Bad:"
What can REM say to that? How could they possibly top that tragedy, the pain felt by Bono over the loss of his friend... what are they supposed to do, universalize it and show that Everybody Hurts?
Well played, REM. Well played.
So, REM, step up and take your place on the pedestal among the other Legends of Rock and Roll. There's just one final question. You never, say, made an overly-pop song in an attempt to cash in on newfound fame, and then watered down your coolness a little bit more by singing it with puppets, did you? Because that might pose a problem...
Related:
Want to hear REM's amazingly cool version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight? Click here.
Quintessential Stadium Rocker: Queen, Radio Ga-Ga at Live Aid. Freddie Mercury gets people worldwide to fight hunger by waving their arms and chanting nonsense words:
REM's Answer: It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) (live). I'm not a fan of live songs, in general-- but REM does this song live more or less just like on the studio version. And what's more impressive than getting a crowd of people to say ga ga? Getting a crowd of people to dance to a jelly-bean based Armageddon:
Did you get a little chill when Michael Stipe got the crowd to CHEER for feeling fine at the end of the world? I did.
BONUS ROCKER CRED: "It's The End of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) was release two years before Billy Joel's more-famous stream-of-consciousness rock song "We Didn't Start The Fire."
Next comes Quasi-Mystical References/Historical Allusions: Great rock bands build up hype by having songs in which mystical, historical, weird things are said that seem to make sense, but which, if you parse them out, don't really. That adds to their credibility because they can claim that we just don't get it. They don't even have to get all "10 Summoners Tales" on us. They can simply throw in a couple of Tolkien references, or use words that nobody understands plus Roman numerals (Synchronicity II?).
Quintessential Quasi-mystical/historical songs: I'll give you two. First, there's "Space Oddity," By David Bowie:
Then, no pretentious Lit-Rock would be complete without Sting. Here's "Love Is The Seventh Wave." Note the chorus: "There is a deeper wave than this." Yes: And only STING can tell us about that. He even says so: "That you don't understand." That's because you're a Philistine:
REM's Answer to those songs? "Imitation Of Life"
How's THAT for inscrutable: "Thats sugarcane that tasted good/Thats who you are, thats what you could/Cmon cmon no one can see you cry." What? It's not obscure or literary enough for you? What if they pulled out a little-known celebrity and made him a figure of almost religious devotion, mentioned a bunch of child hood games and other obscure or academic folk, and then set it all to an orchestra?
Can do: Here's "Man In The Moon,"
And here's an orchestral version from the soundtrack to the movie. Remember when America had Kaufmania? No, neither do I:
You know who "Fred Blassie" was and why he's in a "breakfast mess," right? No? You Philistine. (Hint: He apparently coined, or maybe just popularized, the phrase "pencil-neck geek.") Don't miss the Charles Darwin reference in that song, either.
With all that, now, let's Slow It Down A Little. Great bands know that sometimes, the rockin' has to stop so that we can move in close and dance a slow one with that hot chick wearing the white, tight, halter top. (Or, in my teen-and-early-twenties' case, go sit back at the table and wait, impatiently, for the next fast song.) U2 laid a little "With Or Without You" on us, causing a generation of people to confuse "stalking" with "romance," and you know they did that because that same group of people then rallied around Guns & Roses' "Used To Love Her," then found solace in "November Rain," which -- no lie -- begins "When I look into your eyes/I can see a love restrained."
It's tough to look into someone's eyes from a minimum of 500 feet away, isn't it?
The quintessential Slow It Down A Little song, though, has to be INXS' "Never Tear Us Apart:"
INXS was a bunch of rave-rockers who tore it up with "What You Need" and "I Send A Message," and was hitting it big... but only hit it bigger still when they threw some violins and foggy days and angel metaphors and the like at us, with a wedding-vow friendly set of lines: Two worlds collided/and they could never, ever, tear us apart. Oh, the many mulleted weddings that must have been sealed with those lines, the speeches made by best men quoting that song to end their toast: "Tony was standing, and Tina was there. Two worlds collided, and nobody's going to tear them apart. I love you guys!"
Can REM match INXS step for step? Can they romance you and make you swoon? Can they give you something to say at your parents' 50th anniversary? Sure. Here's "Nightswimming."
Moon. Naked swimming. Photographs tucked into the dashboard. I love you guys!
Finally, all great rock bands know that behind the music lies ... tragedy. Lies sadness. Lies emotions that we only want to acknowledge when we are driving home late, late at night, and we're tired, and the drive-throughs are closed, so we can't even get a stupid chocolate shake to make us feel better... they know that we miss our friends and our family even though we saw them that morning and/or never really hung out all that much. Great bands know that they can get through to you by singing about that friend of theirs who overdosed...on his 21st birthday..., like U2 did on "Bad:"
What can REM say to that? How could they possibly top that tragedy, the pain felt by Bono over the loss of his friend... what are they supposed to do, universalize it and show that Everybody Hurts?
Well played, REM. Well played.
So, REM, step up and take your place on the pedestal among the other Legends of Rock and Roll. There's just one final question. You never, say, made an overly-pop song in an attempt to cash in on newfound fame, and then watered down your coolness a little bit more by singing it with puppets, did you? Because that might pose a problem...
Related:
Want to hear REM's amazingly cool version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight? Click here.
Click here to see all the other Whodathunkits?!!
Click here to see all the other SemiDaily Lists!
Click here to see all the other MiniBests!
Click here to see all the other topics I’ve ever discussed!
Thinking The Lions is Life, only funnier. Ever try to find your way around Illinois using a high-school play as a reference? Ever wonder what "squid chili" has to do with romance? Ever think maybe those velociraptors weren't real after all? No? Well, I did, and you can read about it here.
Monday, March 23, 2009
No, you taste like failed ideology, which is more akin to root beer: (The Fourth Best Foods Shaped Like Other Things)
It's a MiniBest!Here's a thought I had, the first of many, and a thought that just struck me as both sort of sad/sort of odd, just tonight:
People only maked shaped cookies for special occasions.
Weird, huh? We make shaped cookies for Christmas, and for Easter, and for Halloween, and maybe, if you're really into them, other occasions, like, I suppose, Arbor Day or Lenin's Birthday or something.
But everyday cookies aren't shaped like anything but cookies. Why is that, I wonder? Is it only worth the extra effort to shape the cookies like something else if it's for a special occasion? Would people think it was weird if I baked shaped cookies for just a "Tuesday?"
I bet they would. I bet if I went right now and baked cookies, nobody would say anything about it (other than Sweetie, who would likely say "I thought you said you were coming to bed. Why are you making cookies at 10 p.m.?")(What's oddly frightening is that she might not ask that last part. She might just figure that's par for the course, for me.)
But if I were to get up and bake cookies shaped like other things, then everyone who saw me would probably say "What's the occasion?" and if I said "Nothing," they'd think I was weird.
But there's really no reason not to make cookies shaped like other things during regular periods of time. If I could have baked shamrock-shaped cookies last week for St. Patrick's Day and nobody would have thought it was strange, then why can't I bake, say, Pirate-Shaped Cookies this week and have everyone think it was okay?
That's the second thought I had tonight: I could invent pirate-shaped cookies, and popularize them, and make my fortune, and retire, probably by Friday at the latest.Unfortunately for me and my get-rich-quick ideas, someone else had already done just that. Invented pirate-shaped cookies, at least. I don't know if they're rich. Probably not, because if they were, that would mean that pirate-shaped cookies were a big deal and I have never heard of them before, so they're probably not rich.
At least, though, I could bake pirate-shaped cookies, since it turns out there are pirate-shaped cookie cutters. I could get a pirate ship, a pirate pistol, and a treasure-chest shaped cookie cutter, which looks, when you see it, as thought I would not need it, after all, but, then again, if I was capable of making a treasure-chest shaped cookie on
my own, I'd have done it by now, wouldn't I?I found those cookie cutters online and was enthralled by the idea of making pirate-themed cookies, but that enthrallation was replaced instantly with a new obsession, prompted by this:
The "Princess Pig, Prince Frog" cookie cutter set -- seemingly based on some cookie-esque fairy tale that I never heard, but which, combined with the pirate cookie cutters, promised to give me at least a day of fun.
That was the third thought I had tonight, and then I had the fourth: then I thought about what I'd written here, and decided to find out if it was possible, in fact, to celebrate Lenin's birthday in cookie form.
Sadly, I learned that the world has yet to invent a Lenin-shaped cookie cutter and/or a Lenin Cookie (and, honestly, I'm astounded that Madison, Wisconsin, doesn't have, like, a million of them.)
But don't fret, because while you cannot sit down and dip Lenin in your glass of milk, you can eat a Lenin Pop:
Which means a couple of things: (A) Sweetie's going to wonder about this latest charge on my credit card, (B) the market for Communist Cookie Cutters is mine to take over like a modern-day Rockefeller only with less capitalism and more cookies ("Less Capitalism and More Cookies" sounds like Obama's 2012 re-election theme) and (C), well, I don't really have a C. I just got carried away with letters.
Life's like that sometimes: You set out thinking maybe you'll bake some Princess Pig and the Pirate Frog King cookies and you end up instead with a pocketful of Dictator candy and some big dreams.
Also, no matter where I go, those Lenin eyes on that sucker keep looking at me. Weird.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
The Best (And Only Real) Explanation For How Humans Ended Up Being Alive And Running A Planet.
All this has been written before. And it will all be written again. Provided that someone makes a show like this again and I happen to see it...I thought I would start this nomination off in a more literary manner, hoping to gain a little credibility by piggy-backing on the shoulders of a more respected writer. After all, how can half-thought-out literary references that make no real sense, in the context of whatever else you're doing, not make things seem a little better and more weighty.
No?
Let me try this, then:
Are you not liter-tained?
Still nothing? Well, I'm sure I'll come up with something to prove to you that this is a weighty, thoughtful, symbolic literary enterprise, and not some throwaway crap that I more or less copied from some memories I had of books I read back in high school. And, if I'm lucky, I will also remember that for a couple of years now, I've been calling one of my characters a harbinger of death, and I will therefore make sure that comes true instead of, you know, forgetting about it along the way.
Since the dawn of time, men have speculated about how we got here, whether we were put here or evolved or both, whether we are alone in the universe, whether we are the pinnacle of creation and master of everything, or whether we are instead just one among many. I say men because women have not, to my knowledge, speculated about that. Women have been busy promulgating the myth that they (women) don't care about physical appearance while simultaneously writing odes to Tom Brady's butt, leaving all the important thinking (and the Disney-movie-quoting, and the crappy-let's-hope-it's-a-tribute-and-not-plagiarism-ending-to-series'-writing) to men.
And men have come up with a couple of theories in that time, theories which can be boiled down to these:
1. Men were put here by God, who created them in his image and then created women, who, when not trying to convince Adam that they "really didn't care about physical appearance" spent their time eating apples and getting men kicked out of Eden.
2. Men evolved from... um... absolute nothingness. Or rocks, maybe. Yes, something like that: the universe suddenly came into existence but wasn't created or anything like that, so shut up! and then stars formed and created elements and then the elements combined into rocks that in a one-in-a-mochazillion chance happened to break down into amino acids that then recombined into life forms that grew increasingly complex, and it all happened more or less by accident.
3. We were all vomited up by a god who suffered from indigestion. (Really!)
4. We were all made from ashes by gods whothemselves were the products of a cow eating a popsicle, only women weren't ash, they were made out of vines. (Really!)
and
5. Mankind was taught the art of surfing by Kamohoali'i, the Shark God of Hawaii.
I know that last one didn't, technically, deal with the subject of how man (and women) got here, but isn't it kind of cool to imagine the Shark God teaching a girl how to surf, and a parent letting him do that? Nowadays, the Shark God would be sitting and talking to Chris Hanson.
Chris Hanson: Why don't you have a seat, Mr. Shark God.Kamohoali'i: I was really here just to teach Hi'iaka'i- ka-poli-o-Pele how to surf.
Chris: Uh-huh. Just have a seat. I have some printouts of your chats with Hi'iaka'i- ka-poli-o-Pele.
Kamohoali'i: Did Lohi'au put you up to this? That guy's always been jealous of me ever since he was engulfed in flames. I wish Pele had just left him dead. Besides, I'm in love with Hopoe.
Chris: Isn't she a stone statue?
Kamohaoli'i: To each his own, man.
But of all the creation myths, and surfing-lesson myths, that mankind has ever devised, only one appears to be the correct one, and by "correct" I mean "it must be so true that Battlestar Galactica couldn't help sort of copying it because otherwise it looks a lot like maybe they just sort of plagiarized it," and I have no desire to accuse the Battlestar Galactica writers of plagiarizing someone, because we all know what plagiarism leads to:
Law school.
At least it does if you are Kaavya Viswanathan, who cut-and-pasted "her" "novel" into a $500,000 advance and a movie deal only to get caught.
Not that I'm saying that the Battlestar Galactica writers plagiarized anything; let me emphasize that: Battlestar writers, I'm not saying you plagiarized anything.
I'm saying you simply reported the truth.
That's what I've concluded: the Battlestar Galactica TV series ended the way it did because the writers wanted to show people the actual, true, real explanation for how humans ended up being alive and running a planet.
So all you other creation myths, you've been exposed as the fictional pieces of work that you are. Yes, even the one that posits that life was created when the world pushed its parents apart, causing Dad to cry. All fake.
Myths about how mankind learned to surf: still true.
If you didn't watch the ending to Battlestar Galactica, then allow me to get you caught up: After a couple of years of wandering in space looking for "Earth," with repeat
ed references to Kara "Starbuck" Thrace being a harbinger of death, Battlestar wrapped things up on Friday, March 20, with a doubly-long episode that was not in any way padded out at all. And I would give you a [SPOILER ALERT!] except that the storyline is not SPOIL-ABLE because it is true, so don't worry about having it spoiled for you.The double-episode began with a first hour devoted, primarily, to demonstrating just how awful the "Bad"Cylons are at fighting: roughly 100 humans and some Cylon allies, piloting a damaged and woefully-understaffed Battlestar, are able to teleport directly next to the Cylon base colony, ram their ship into it, and then walk into the Colony and back out in about 8 minutes (not counting commercials) while firing more or less three bullets. Total.
The subplot to that first half of the episode was this: Yeah, well humans are equally bad at fighting, a subplot that was demonstrated by having the humans find the little girl they were there to rescue...
... and let me note that in the end, the entire rescue mission turns out to be entirely unnecessary.
Completely.
Un.
Necessary.
...and after they find the little girl, getting her back onto the Battlestar, only to find that somehow the Cylons have walked onto the bridge of the Battlestar... and gotten there first.
It's important to keep in mind that the writers had a character on the Battlestar command that the blast doors be closed. So those Cylons that stormed the Battlestar did that by going through the closed blast doors.
Then there is, of course, a big fight prompted by one of the Final Five Cylons killing one of the other Final Five cylons and losing the secret to resurrection -- a secret that the Final Five were going to give to the Bad Cylons to help settle the war, a secret that apparently only all five of them could tell, even the brain-damaged one that was living in a bathtub on the bridge of a spaceship (remember that; it's important) even though one of the Final Five -- Ellen The Cylon-- apparently knew it all herself, too.
I realize this is getting a little complicated and is only really able to be followed by those of you who, like me, sat there Friday night slowly realizing that you'd wasted an hour every Friday night for about three years, and took some small consolation in the fact, at least, that you were right when you said they'd wreck it. So I won't dwell on it. If you watched Battlestar, then you know I'm right about all of this. If you didn't, well, then, you're among the lucky.
Anyway, on to the second part, the part that revealed the truth of The Best (And Only Real) Explanation For How Humans Ended Up Being Alive And Running A Planet.
Here's what happened: After the humans waltzed onto the Cylon ship and the Cylons waltzed onto the human ship, a bunch of cylons have been killed and the Battlestar is under attack from a Raptor that's sort of floating in space, carrying nuclear weapons (even though a character earlier in the episode said that nukes wouldn't be usable in this fight) and Starbuck has to punch in a code to warp them out of there using the FTL (Faster
Than Light) drive which apparently works like a teleporter, given that it's activated when the Battlestar is pointing right at the Cylon ship, so if it just accelerated to light speed it would simply ram the Cylon ship...... stick with me, here, I'm getting to the point...
... and Starbuck punches in numbers that she randomly assigned to musical notes to a song that her father taught her when she was a kid, the same song that "activates" Cylons, and the same song that was written down by the little girl they were there to
unnecessarily
rescue, at which point the Battlestar teleports to...
... Earth.
But not "Earth" the planet that the Cylons were originally from; instead, this is just some random planet that the Battlestar humans and some Cylons decide to name Earth because, well, I don't know why. But they do: they name it Earth and it is, as it turns out, our Earth, with an Africa and all, so, hey, what're the odds of that, and now they're going to settle down on Earth, and as it turns out, there are aboriginal people living on Earth, too, and then, as it turns out, all the survivors opt not to use any of their advanced technology and instead want to go walkabout, living on "Earth" by their wits and stuff.
And... fade out. But not yet: first, flash ahead 150,000 years and show ghosts of Baltar and Number Six commenting on "Lucy," the hominid that's presumed by scientists to be the ancestor of modern humans, and who, we are led to believe, is the little girl who the Battlestar fight was there to save.
Whew. Got all that?
Also, Starbuck disappears and is probably an angel.
Okay, so I'm not going to get into why it was completely unnecessary to rescue the little girl, other than to say that if Starbuck knew the Numbers Song from her childhood, she could have at any point programmed it in and taken them there, and in fact gotten them there without having to risk a bunch of people's lives, and probably gotten them there earlier, too.
Nor will I get into anything about how people in the 150,000-years-in-the-future Earth were pretty clearly not solely descended from that little girl, given that about 38,000 Battlestarian humans landed on "Earth," while only four Cylons did so, and two of those four were in their 70s, and one of those four went off to live in Iceland or something by himself.
I even will not mention any further the repeated references to Disney's Peter Pan beyond pointing out that it appears the writers were trying to make a literary reference with the several-times-over-use of "All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again," or variations of that phrase. The phrase doesn't actually appear in James 's book, to my mind; instead, it's the opening line to Disney's movie about the boy who wouldn't grow up, and is quoted to try to show the "cyclical nature of time," according to the show's producers. So I won't bring up whether it makes, in the context of a space opera building on religious themes and making pointed references to current politics, any sense to make references to movies based on literary works about the whimsy of youth and the way that adult lives tend to crush that out.
And I won't dwell on the fact that in the end, the harbinger of death turned out to be the one who saved all of humanity and the remainder of the Cylons by finding them the needle-in-a-haystack that is "Earth." Whatever death Starbuck harbinged (it's probably a verb!), nobody saw.
I won't dwell on all of that because I'm overwhelmed by the greater purpose of the final episode, which obviously had to drop some plot points and take some creative hints to, as I said, point out the real truth of The Best (And Only Real) Explanation For How Humans Ended Up Being Alive And Running A Planet, and that truth is not that humans were people who somehow existed in a world that was constantly eaten by a pulled-apart monster. No, the truth is that humans were the result of people from another planet accidentally arriving at Earth via a spaceship piloted by a man in a bathtub, and then displacing the aborigines that were here to become the "humans" we know.
That's the truth. Pure and simple. That's it. That's how we got here. It has to be -- because if that was not the truth, how else would two separate people have come up with exactly the same story?
You see, I am a reader of mystical texts and ancient works, and that is how I am familiar with the fact that this particular Creation story -- not a myth, because it's true, as evidenced by the fact that two separate people came up with it without knowing of the other one -- has been told before.
All this has been written before. And it will all be written again.
That's liter-tainment.
Let's call it the Bathtub Spaceship Creation Myth.
The Bathtub Spaceship Creation Myth was just dramatized on Battlestar Galactica. Remember when I said to remember that there was a brain-damaged guy on a spaceship bridge? That was important, and it was also true: As a part of the final episode, one of the Cylons was put in a bathtub on the bridge of the Battlestar, where he helped pilot the ship by being wired into the central command unit. So, in a nutshell, here is what Battlestar Galactica posits as the Bathtub Spaceship Creation Myth:A bunch of people adrift in space on a ship piloted by a guy in a bathtub end up on Earth and displace the aborigines that were already there, becoming the progenitors of the entire human race.
And here is how I know that is the One True Creation Story: Because someone else, independently, ages ago, told that exact same story as an Explanation For How Humans Ended Up Being Alive And Running A Planet.
So it's either true, or it's copying, right? And remember, Battlestar writers -- and your lawyers-- I'm not saying it's copying. I'm saying it's true.
The ancient texts I read had this to say, more or less:
Two guys one day stole a spaceship and had to teleport out of it. Because of problems with the teleporter, they had to randomly teleport somewhere in the universe. Their "random" teleportation lands them on a spaceship where they are taken to the bridge and meet the Captain. The Captain has spent the entire space cruise in a bathtub, on the bridge of a spaceship. The two guys talk with the captain for a while, at which point they learn that the fleet is made up of people who had to leave a planet because of a terrible cataclysm or problem, and that they are going to set up a new civilization somewhere.
The Bathtub Spaceship eventually ends up on ... Earth, where the people have to rough it without their technology, and where they displace the aborigines who were living on Earth, to become the progenitors of the human race.
The two guys who witness all of this were not "Baltar" and "Number Six." They were, in the ancient text I read, named "Ford Prefect" and "Arthur Dent." The ancient text I read was The Restaurant at the End Of The Universe, by Douglas Adams, and it was published in 1980, and featured more or less that exact sequence that I just spelled out: the Bathtub Spaceship Creation Myth: people on Earth are the result of a spaceship of survivors piloted by a guy in a bathtub accidentally winding up here.
As Creation stories go, that theory is no more or less ridiculous than, say, the idea that we were created by a god that spontaneously hatched from an egg. (Where'd the egg come from, Ancient Egyptian scientists?) And it has the virtue of being the absolute truth, as shown by the fact that two totally independent people came up with it totally independently, 29 years apart, one first writing it into a hilarious and excellent space novel, and the other totally independently also writing it into... a television series-finale which effectively wrapped up all the loose... no? Well, then, a finale which put a satisfying cap on the... no, still? Fine: A television series-finale which fulfilled their contractual obligations, and which demonstrated that the Bathtub Spaceship Creation Story is The Best (And Only Real) Explanation For How Humans Ended Up Being Alive And Running A Planet.
All this has been written before. And it will all be written again. Unless people demand originality.
Click here to see all the other Whodathunkits?!!
Click here to see all the other SemiDaily Lists!
Click here to see all the other MiniBests!
Click here to see all the other topics I’ve ever discussed!
In the future, everyone will eat squid jerky and the fate of the 73 dimensions will rest on the sexy shoulders of Rachel, the lesbian zombie who may just be trying to take over the world. Read Lesbian Zombies Are Taking Over The World!
Friday, March 20, 2009
Sweetie would probably prefer I carve a Butter Jamie Bamber: (The Third Of The Best Foods Shaped Like Other Things!)
It's a MiniBest!
If crunchy saviors and Commerce Radishes cannot help me retire in style -- and retire now, so that I could properly prepare to watch the last-ever Battlestar Galactica (Titled: "Maybe They'll Forget All Those Teasers We've Planted For Years If We Have A Big Fight?"), then I might have found the next best thing: A Giant Butter Elvis:
"Butter Elvis" is definitely going to be my ticket to riches and fame and retirement, provided that (a) I learn how to sculpt, and (b) federal copyright law is inapplicable to food-based sculptures.
That last is particularly important, given that Butter Elvis was first created by The Butter Cow Lady, who is not a lady made out of butter cows (false advertising!) but is, instead, the world's most renowned butter sculptor.
The Butter Cow Lady's real name is
Norma Lyon, and Norma Lyon became famous (?) for sculpting, for 45 years, the Iowa State Fair Butter Cow. From 1960-2005, Norma sculpted Iowa's annual cow, as well as other butter sculptures -- the pictures shown here are all hers, including her buttery endorsement of Barack Obama -- retiring in 2005 and passing the torch to her apprentice, Sarah Pratt.
Sarah Pratt is no novice to butter sculpting: she apprenticed for 15 years before getting the prestigious post of Official Iowa Butter Sculptor. How prestious is that? Really prestigious: Consider this. There've been 43 presidents in US history. (That number is right. Barack is not the 44th president, as has been widely misreported. He's the 43rd.) There have been 27 Superbowl-winning quarterbacks. There have even been five people who have run a mile in 4:20 or less (curiously, three of those people were named William).
But there have only been four Official Iowa State Fair Butter Sculptors in all of history. So your children have a better chance of growing up to become the first super-fast, Superbowl-winning quarterback/President than they do of growing up to become the Official Iowa State Fair Butter Sculptor.
As for me, I'm not interested in apprenticing 15 years to get that post, and I can't count on Sarah Pratt to retire and hand it to me. But I don't need to, because Butter Elvis sculpting is obviously big business and a key to fame and fortune: Norma may have created the first one, but there is a hue and cry out for Butter Elvises, and a dearth of Butter Artists fulfilling that need. Sure, people like Sharon BuMann have stepped in to create Butter Elvises for the Texas State Fair and the Oklahoma State Fair, but that's only three state fairs, total, meaning there are at least... a lot of other state fairs out there, just waiting for me to wheel my own Butter Elvis in there and reap the rewards that naturally flow from combining two things that America loves.
Click here to see all the Whodathunkits?!!
Click here to see all the SemiDaily Lists!
Click here to see all the other MiniBests!
Click here to see all the other topics I’ve ever discussed!
If crunchy saviors and Commerce Radishes cannot help me retire in style -- and retire now, so that I could properly prepare to watch the last-ever Battlestar Galactica (Titled: "Maybe They'll Forget All Those Teasers We've Planted For Years If We Have A Big Fight?"), then I might have found the next best thing: A Giant Butter Elvis:
"Butter Elvis" is definitely going to be my ticket to riches and fame and retirement, provided that (a) I learn how to sculpt, and (b) federal copyright law is inapplicable to food-based sculptures.That last is particularly important, given that Butter Elvis was first created by The Butter Cow Lady, who is not a lady made out of butter cows (false advertising!) but is, instead, the world's most renowned butter sculptor.
The Butter Cow Lady's real name is
Norma Lyon, and Norma Lyon became famous (?) for sculpting, for 45 years, the Iowa State Fair Butter Cow. From 1960-2005, Norma sculpted Iowa's annual cow, as well as other butter sculptures -- the pictures shown here are all hers, including her buttery endorsement of Barack Obama -- retiring in 2005 and passing the torch to her apprentice, Sarah Pratt.Sarah Pratt is no novice to butter sculpting: she apprenticed for 15 years before getting the prestigious post of Official Iowa Butter Sculptor. How prestious is that? Really prestigious: Consider this. There've been 43 presidents in US history. (That number is right. Barack is not the 44th president, as has been widely misreported. He's the 43rd.) There have been 27 Superbowl-winning quarterbacks. There have even been five people who have run a mile in 4:20 or less (curiously, three of those people were named William).
But there have only been four Official Iowa State Fair Butter Sculptors in all of history. So your children have a better chance of growing up to become the first super-fast, Superbowl-winning quarterback/President than they do of growing up to become the Official Iowa State Fair Butter Sculptor.
As for me, I'm not interested in apprenticing 15 years to get that post, and I can't count on Sarah Pratt to retire and hand it to me. But I don't need to, because Butter Elvis sculpting is obviously big business and a key to fame and fortune: Norma may have created the first one, but there is a hue and cry out for Butter Elvises, and a dearth of Butter Artists fulfilling that need. Sure, people like Sharon BuMann have stepped in to create Butter Elvises for the Texas State Fair and the Oklahoma State Fair, but that's only three state fairs, total, meaning there are at least... a lot of other state fairs out there, just waiting for me to wheel my own Butter Elvis in there and reap the rewards that naturally flow from combining two things that America loves.
Click here to see all the Whodathunkits?!!
Click here to see all the SemiDaily Lists!
Click here to see all the other MiniBests!
Click here to see all the other topics I’ve ever discussed!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)