Tiny Money Land

MAN, THAT'S A LOT OF BREAD: It says here that the owner of a Greensboro, NC bakery snuck into a Pennsylvania-based competitor and stole 60 formulas and recipes worth $30 million by impersonating an employee. He was arrested, charged with stealing trade secrets and criminal tresspass, and is being held locally on $2 million bond awaiting extradition back to Pennsylvania.

I suppose such is the cutthroat life of bakery espionage...and all this time I thought being a dirty player in that game amounted to oversalting the loaves or making loud noises around the ovens.  

TNN ANIMATION REDUX: Now that I've finally seen the TNN animation block in full, I can truly say I'm underwhelmed. I went in expecting very little, and got even less in return.

The new "adult" Ren and Stimpy makes a great case that imposed limitations work for certain types of people sometimes. For all the farts and "nose goblins," Ren and Stimpy was pitched to a kid's network, and as a result, there was a line that you could be sure wasn't going to be crossed. John Krikfalusi worked within these restrictions (for awhile, anyway), worked on ways to dance around the restrictions, and the result was one of the classic cartoons of the 1990s. The problem--or one of them--was that John K. chafed under restrictions, and Nickelodeon wouldn't hang. Along with several missed deadlines, this led to an acrimonious parting of company.

Compare this to the state we're in now. When they brought back John K. and Spumco for the current round of Ren and Stimpy, TNN effectively signed a creative blank check. No restrictions. And that might've been where the problems began. In the course of a half hour, we had a uvula up the butt, our heroes kicking a man's (apparently anthropomorphic) testicle around, eating snot and vomit...and I think we already covered "I'm the catcher, you're the pitcher" elsewhere ad nauseum. In other words, when not explicitly told to, there's apparently no inclination in this crew to rope it in, allowing a longstanding anal and bodily fluid fixation to run wild. The result was a cartoon which was crass most of the time instead of funny.

I'm hoping that conditions improve in the remaining episodes, but whether I actually stick around for them or not is another matter.

Anyway, moving on...

Gary the Rat was cheap-looking for a reason, and I think there should be a moratorium on using Macromedia Flash for TV network projects. What looks slick and compelling on a web hookup looks downright chintzy when blown up to full-screen and broadcast as a major television debut. South Park's first season was Fantasia by comparison.

There were a few decent laughs, but the comedic area of lawyers with no scruples (even if one's a giant rat) has been stripmined for generations to the point where the comedy landscape looks like parts of West Virginia, where everything is covered in lawyer dust. That's the worst kind, trust me. We also have the nosy next-door neighbor and the exterminator who loves his job because he loves to kill, for those of you keeping up at home on your comedy cliche score cards.

That brings us to Stripperella, which (apart from the striptease in the opening credits) was apparently held back from some of the press previews. Technically, it's very well done (as far as television goes); the animation moved very well and the character designs were reasonably appealing. The problem is the art direction doesn't match the direction the writing crew chose to take. When you're doing Tex Avery-style sexy-girl takes (the bursting catheter bag, the frothy beer), they don't have the same effect if you're rendering people like real people, and that goes double for the looney dialogue. I couldn't shake the feeling that a lot of the material would've tracked better if they had taken a more cartoony approach. That would preclude the anatomically-correct moneymaker-shaking that's been the show's selling point since its initial announcement, so apparently that's right out.

I know, I know..."Eric, it's supposed to be about tits and ass," but let's get one thing straight, if I wanted to watch breasts for breasts sake, I could buy a Playboy, or a subscription to Cinemax. Making the "men's network" in the spirit of sniggering teenage boys does nothing for the case of mature animation in this country (or men, for that matter, a group that's gotten a bad rap in general). One of the reasons that anime is going over huge in this country is because of complex storytelling that sometimes rewards you for thinking, a type of storytelling that American cartoon mills have rarely tried because the either can't or won't do it. If TNN was a fanboy, it would firmly place itself in the tentacle rape camp.

The night closed out with a classic Ren and Stimpy show, so at least there was something here to which I can give an unqualified thumbs-up.  

I'm Surprised They Didn't Think of This Earlier:: This in particular; earlier in the week, TNN released an affidavit from Spike Jones, Jr., the son of the man who gave us "Der Fuhrer's Face" and a slew of song parodies in the 40s and 50s, which backed up TNN's position that Spike Lee should get over himself re: the Spike TV thing. I don't remember "Never Hit Your Grandma With A Shovel," though. That title wouldn't leave you if you'd seen it.

I should've mentioned that I watched what was supposed to be the Spike TV cartoon lineup rollout on Monday night after wrestling. I'll say that Stripperella was better animated than I thought it would be, although it's kind of an oxymoron to make Pamela Lee into a cartoon at this point. On the flipside, Gary the Rat was a little LESS animated than I thought it would be, and Ren and Stimpy...um...well, they were always weird anyway, and I suppose it's only fair that TNN puts the weirdest of the clips right up front. But that clip was supposed to make you watch Ren and Stimpy, which wasn't the effect it had on the Happy Funtime Chat Gang by a long shot.

The unintentional highlight of the evening, though, was seeing the blurjob that was used to cover up all the Spike TV logos. It was a hard job, since there was a huge one right behind the stage. They even had to blur the finish on the piano in the Richard Cheese band, since it reflected the Logo Which Dares Not Speak Its Own Name. It was the same type of retrofit that WWE uses on their pre-wildlife-lawsuit footage, and drew just as much attention to itself.

I still have no idea why they would think calling the network Spike TV equals THE NETWORK FOR MANLY MEN, especially when they insist on using the same font the Spiegel catalog uses. On top of that, in the weeks leading up to the rebranding, they showed promos of a guy eating the "invitation" to watch Spike TV with a fierce lack of subtlety. Maybe they saw an Herbal Essence ad or something. ("Oh..ohhhhhhhhhhhSPIKETVYES...") I thought a lot of things during that spot; "manly" wasn't one of them.

I'm going to skip the phallic implications of calling a guy's network SPIKE, although by typing this, it proves I wasn't able to. Darn.

Anyway, there's already a network for rugged, MANLY men, and it's called Outdoor Life Network. Well, rugged women, too, I suppose...although I've never actually seen a woman on an OLN program yet.

My point (thought I didn't have one, did you?) is that there's a huge dollop of ridicule that everybody in this case is owed: Spike Lee for filing a suit that makes him look overly paranoid (unless he writes his name like that, too), TNN and Viacom for choosing that name in the first place (although it makes more sense than The National Network, to be sure), and Johnny Cochran for hitching his wagon to this case and defending his title as America's Number One Ambulance Chaser.

(Thanks to XPacArmy on the Wienerboard for finding the Spike Jones Jr. tidbit; I've been asleep at the switch lately.)  

TAKE THIS STUFF AWAY, PLEASE!: After finding out there's still MORE downtime on the job (not working today, not working tomorrow, maybe back to normal by the end of next week), I'm doing two things: 1) opening up the want ads again (brrrrrrrr), and 2) I'm doing the eBay auction again, so keep checking in and maybe I'll be getting rid of something you might want. If you don't buy, wish me luck...  

I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN YOU, I've just been in an odd work-related mood lately, and I always hold my mud as best as I can. Here's the story, though: after my unexpected five day weekend, I managed to put in almost a full day yesterday (after jumping surveys after lunch). There's a severe slowdown (or maybe a refocusing) at our branch, at least on the day shift; there were about seven surveys going on the day I started, while yesterday there was just the one. It was a very empty building yesterday.

The other problem with yesterday was entirely me...because I crashed and burned on Sunday afternoon, I got exactly 20 minutes of sleep Sunday night. When I don't have to wake up early in the morning, I don't wake up in the morning (that's my Bizarro-land anti-ethic going), but the side effect of that is rewiring your internal clock when you go back to a set schedule. It gave me a nice tightness behind the eyes for the whole day, and that boiling feeling at the bottom of my throat didn't help either. If you've never had to do a job where you had to think on your feet while pushing through a mental and physical fog, try not to put yourself in that spot. I remember fresh out of high school working a Sunday fast food shift after a no-sleep night and with a fever building to a crescendo; the day finished with a customer buying $5 of food with a $50 bill and me trying three times to get the right change. It was ridiculous, but so was I. These things tend to happen sometimes, but they don't have to happen.

I called last night to be sure I was on the list for tomorrow, and sure enough, I wasn't. On top of that, a crew out to widen the road dug up the driveway, which has left me stranded until maybe a half an hour ago. So this week is also starting to look like a write-off, except for the fact that I got a full seven hours sleep last night (instead of the afternoon). Hopefully things will work out.  

HULK SMASH CRITICS: Saw the Sci-Fi Channel documentary about the Hulk movie, and I'll say I'm a bit less skeptical, although still reserved. The proof was in the extra clips folded into the hour; the bits of the transformation I saw were nicely done, and when the big green fella isn't moving as much (that is, when you can actually get a fix on him) he looks fairly decent. The actual story behind the movie sounds intriguing, although predictably, Sci-Fi didn't actually talk very much about that (unless they covered it in the seven minutes I missed), zooming in on the CGI, the video games, and so on.

After reading a few reviews, I think I finally got a fix on what's really bugging me about those action scenes, and it has something to do with literalizing the Hulk concept: at seven feet tall and with 1,000 pounds of muscle (low body fat), the Hulk would be powerful, but would he be fast enough to run along the side of a canyon wall? It looks impressive, but since we know the Hulk's main power is brute strength, it doesn't really look plausible. As a recovering comic book fan, I will believe the impossible, but not the implausible; in the words of a letter-writer to one of the Superman books, I'll buy the guy flying through the air, but I won't believe that Lois Lane is dumb enough to wear open-toed shoes when the forecast is calling for rain. Also, as a wrestling fan, I've seen big goobers a-plenty, and most often the popular adjective to go between "big" and "goober" is SLOW. I'd add "inflexible" to that, since I don't think Scott "Poppa Pump" Steiner has been able to lower his freakish arms to his sides since 1995. Anyway, the point is that when you see a huge guy with that much muscle on him, speed and maneuverability aren't the first things that come to mind.

So again, I'm a little more interested than I was, but still not enough to drop the dime at the movies...not yet, anyway. Maybe when it hits the $1.50 house.

There is one other thing that bugged me about the Sci-Fi special. The man who currently is the head of Marvel was on and I believe he mentioned the old saw about how Marvel started out as Timely Comics, which, as some comic book archaeology elsewhere has shown, isn't necessarily so. It's a small thing, but the small things are what really bug small-timers like myself in the long term.  

Irony Ain't Something You Use On Your Pants: Remember when Senator Orrin Hatch said that people who download copyrighted software from the Internet should have their computers destroyed? Well, guess whose website was using unlicensed software to make it look all fancy?

Bugs: Would you like to shoot the computer now, or wait until you get home?
Daffy: SHOOT IT NOW! SHOOT IT NOW!  

HOLY CRAP: Oprah Winfrey revives her book club, this time dealing with the "classics" (read (by me, anyway): dead writers who won't pull a Franzen on her), and the first book she chooses this time is John Steinbeck's East of Eden, definitely a good start. I never read Eden, but Of Mice and Men was one of the select English class novels that I managed to finish, and it definitely stuck with me.

Anyway, today I hear the remarkable news that thanks to Her O-ness's blessing, Eden is number TWO on the list of Amazon.com bestselling books, right behind the new Harry Potter book. Barnes and Noble's online store has it at #6, which is still remarkable for a book 50 years old. It's doubly remarkable because Oprah, who knows how to play to her crowd, often picked books with sympathetic female characters, and the strongest female character in this book is an "evil and manipulative prostitute" (so sez the Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature).

If I buy this one, though, I'll be looking for a copy that doesn't say "THE BOOK THAT BROUGHT OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB BACK" on the cover. I'd like to remember Steinbeck for a lot of reasons, but this isn't one of 'em.

(EDIT @ 10:39am: it turns out I was looking at the wrong place in the B&N website, since the "Oprah" edition actually is at #2; the "centennial edition" is the one at #6, right behind (surprise, surprise) the CD version of Order of the Phoenix. Among all the B&N mishmash, four of their top 10 are various editions of Phoenix, while four different editions of Eden are in the top 20. It definitely makes me wonder how many copies of all the editions combined will end up being sold. If you can't tell, I find these types of sales chart vagaries fascinating; if you find them boring...well, you just read 'em anyway, sucker.)  

AW MAN, NOT AGAIN... What happens when you only sleep a few hours the night before, wake up to go to work at 9, and get there in time to find out that you missed the phone message to say that you weren't needed that day?
Well, if you're me, you go home, conk out, and sleep all afternoon...and don't sleep tonight. Well, we'll see how long this lasts...  

I'M WITH "I'M WITH BUSEY": Last night was the much-ballyhooed debut of Comedy Central's I'm With Busey, where a "regular" guy (Adam) gets to hang with the always unpredictable, never boring Gary Busey. "Regular" has to be qualified, since this guy with Busey doesn't seem to have the strongest character. Maybe it's because Busey is such an overpowering presence that anbody will look weak by comparison, Busey being positioned as some sort of crackpot sage. Anyway, it was reasonably decent television. There was a hint of freakshow, but it was all rugged, manly freakshow, not the whiny, mushmouthed freakshow that is the life and times of Anna Nicole. The paintball sequence was a trip...very nice point-of-view shots to capture the heat of the moment.

My main gripe on reflection is that Adam seems to be trying too hard to force things sometimes. When Busey is on, he obviously doesn't need extra nudging. There are enough interesting things in the man's head that you could just point a camera and a mike at him for an hour and let it roll.

I still think Adam looks kind of like Chaz, though.  

Since that's the direction I've been heading in anyway, I changed the blog title to something that reflects my current situation. Hope this doesn't confuse both of my regular readers too much.  

JUST FINISHED: The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy. Thomas Hardy was a bridge between the Victorian and the "modern" literary world, but if you asked somebody to name a Hardy book, The Mayor of Casterbridge probably wouldn't be their answer. That's a shame, because boy, was this ever a twisty story.

The scene is pre-industrial England, and a hay trusser named Michael Henchard has arrived at a city fair with his wife and newborn daughter. The evening ends in a bad way, as a drunken Henchard auctions both of them off to a sailor, and thinking the next day he'll never see either again swears off drink and promises to make something of himself. The scene jumps ahead 18 years; Henchard has settled in a nearby town, where he's the mayor and a successful businessman, when the family he though he had lost forever reappears in his life. He also takes on the managerial services of a bright young Scotsman with a good head for business.

With most people, this would be the happily-ever-after part, but Henchard is a man of mercurial moods, jealousies, and self-loathing, so there are no guarantees. While there are some who only have a grudging respect for this man, and others grow to actively hate him, Henchard's biggest enemy is Henchard.

At least one literary type has said he doesn't see how anybody can actually enjoy a Thomas Hardy novel, since Hardy was English lit's original downer. All I can say is that after a week of working my way through the first third in the down hours of an erratic schedule, I sat down with this book yesterday afternoon and didn't put it down until the last page. Maybe, as the commentary at the end says, there are a few too many dramatic coincidences for some people's comfort, but if you accept the premise of the first chapter, you'll probably hang with the rest. There are also lots of gorgeous descriptive passages--although you should be warned that a few of them run a bit long--that do a wonderful job in setting the time and the place, and that's where I think Hardy the poet and Hardy the storyteller come together best.

Also, for those of you who are wrestling fans, there is an action sequence. Don't panic.

One more note: some of the language used in Casterbridge is archaic enough that it might not be familiar. Barron's has posted an online glossary of the trickier parts to help you through.
 

"You Just Made Me Vomit In My Own Mouth": Warning: politics vs. commerce rant follows. Don't say I didn't warn you.

The most filthy and offensive thing I've heard all day just came through my TV on an ad for Cricket cellphones: "Here at Cricket, we believe that unlimited talk time is a basic human right."

Anybody who knows me knows what's coming next; to me, the most offensive thing about the consumer culture these days is the deliberate misinterpretation of the words "rights" and "freedoms" in advertising. You have a right to buy a huge, lumbering car that siphons off ungodly natural resources. You should feel free to get that big screen TV. CELEBRATE YOUR INDEPENDENCE from the high prices of standard cellular phone service.

Being able to spend money has nothing to do with freedom or rights; our country's thriving business relationship with China has proven that "free market" doesn't lead to "free speech." Look at the bill for your credit card...the one that you've maxxed out. Zoom in on the balance, the interest charges. Makes you think of a lot of things, I'll bet, and I'll bet even harder that "freedom" isn't one of them. Take it from one who knows.

If Cricket would set up "moles" from Amnesty International with some encrypted satellite phones, or something similar, so they can go to hotspots and tell the truth as they see it without fear, maybe I can forgive them of muddying a decent word with commerce. Maybe.

Anyhow, it's no wonder that the rumblings about Patriot Act II have been so tiny.  

Hey, diggit...you might have noticed I added a comment tag for each of the new posts here. For that I say THANK YOU, HALOSCAN.COM...please don't forget the forum that you're all not using anyway just because HaloScan's now embedded like Geraldo...

(Edit: ...and mad props to Neurosis for sending me the link to HaloScan...Neu is a fine individual if you don't cross him. Now please tell him to put down the gun.)  

SCREAMIN' FANCY MOSES, but was I floored when I found out that Patton Oswalt (a fun stand-up and supporting cast member on "King of Queens") wrote a one-shot JLA comic book (that's short for Justice League of America, for those unfortunate few of you who have real lives). Oddly enough, here's an interview on that subject! Amazing! Who knew?  

HOWEVER YOU SLICE IT, IT STILL STINKS: This story says the Rugrats movie, with its Odorama scratch-and-sniff cards, has infringed on John Waters' intellectual property, and now Waters wants to sue. The Rugrats movie producer says Odorama is not trademarked, and swears her crew intended as a hommage, which makes me wonder if they threw in an overweight transvestite, too. We already know the babies have a stink fetish, so they're two-thirds of the way there.

The real question remains unanswered, though: which of the seven seals have been broken by getting The Rugrats Go Wild and Polyester into the same news story?  

JUST FOR THE RECORD, from what I've seen in the TV ads I have very strong misgivings about the new Hulk movie. Maybe I'm spoiled, but the Bill Bixby/Lou Ferigno TV series set the standard for what you can do with real actors when it comes to the character. I also feel that the way the Hulk looks in this productions shows why the screwed-up anatomical proportions used in modern comics should never be literalized, especially on the big screen. But mostly it's because the big green guy look like a character in a video game instead of a live critter, and that makes a huge amount of difference in my book. Just because you can make the Hulk all-CGI doesn't mean it's necessary.

I have little doubt the opening weekend will be huge, but that's a false pointer of quality anyway. I think Mark Evanier pointed out one time that the march towards style over substance coincided with the moving of film openings from during the week to the weekend, and that skewed the opening box office to young guys. So the film trade pitches to where the money goes. As a guy who, for the most part, was never really into teen culture (even when I was one), that makes my head hurt, which is why I've stayed out of the cineplex for a long time. I get enough loud and shrill in life without paying $8 at the box office for it.

I won't be seeing this one in the theater, but I rarely see 'em in the theaters these days anyway. I'm poor like that.  

A FEW NOTES to some of the people I called as part of the telephone survey today, posted here where they'll be sure not to ever read them:

--To the lady who was asking "Are you done yet?" after only two questions: if the guy on the phone is done after two questions, they're not legit. The classification questions at the end take at least a minute; if it's shorter than that, the guy might be casing your place to see when you're not at home. I heard your TV jabbering soap operas in the background, so I know you weren't really busy. You can't fool me, cos I went to college.

--To the guy who said "The head of the house isn't in, and I'm not allowed to talk to you because I'm a child.": If you're going to try and pull that one off, don't say it in a baritone, unless you want me to believe you're a seven-year-old with a rare glandular conditon.

--To the woman who said "Stop calling here and harassing my family": This one is actually an interesting case. I checked the call record, just to be sure, and nobody at her number had ever answered for us. Our number doesn't show up on caller ID because of the way the system is set up, so unless the whole house is in a state where they're terrified of the phone, there's no way you can say we're the ones dogging you unless you actually pick up the phone and talk to us. They never did that, so my verdict? Paranoid nutcase. The situation reminded me of that Kids in the Hall sketch about the people terrified of the phone. "I heard that ring once before...IN 'NAM."

Still, she said the magic words ("don't call here"), so as a part of a legit organization, I marked her name off. I can't say this enough: the only way to make a telephone solicitor or a survey person go away is to tell them not to call. No other "clever" technique will work: screaming random curses into the phone doesn't count, making incoherent noises like a horny chimp is a no go, but the one that will guarantee a callback 100% of the time is to hang up without saying anything. In fact, most people will call you again on the same day if you do that; there are a million reasons why the line would drop without a word, while there's only one reason that a caller would say "don't call back". Just a word to maintain the sanity of the world. Later, gang.  

Who Will Save Jewel's Soul?: Damn you, insomnia. Overhearing the Leno repeat through the haze of sleep reminded me of something else I ran across over the weekend: Jewel's performance during halftime at the NBA playoffs. I would've missed it if the Thread aPa chatters weren't mostly sports fans, but it did stay with me once I saw it. Something in (or somebody behind) Jewel has moved her to make the transition from singer-songwriter territory to dance-pop. She's kind of got the pop look (kind of, I must stress), but her approach to the new song is strictly production line. Considering the care she took singing the folk material (the lyrics never hit me in the right place to invest money in her albums), the disconnect in appoach is somewhat unsettling.

The song that is the crux of the whole transition is "Intuition," a mild, if somewhat cynical, empowerment lyric (so at least in that respect it's not a complete break) set to the sort of dire march rhythm that mild empowerment lyrics are set to these days. The thing is I wasn't listening closely enough to actually hear what she was saying the first couple of times; she didn't seem terribly attached to the lyric in either performance I caught, so why should I be?

In fact, I see on the Leo's Lyrics page that, for some people, this is actually a good thing:

This song is so awesome, it sounds cool and i didnt understand the words to the song which i like so i can listen to the song more w/out getting sick of it! This song reminds me of my girlfriend =)

That says volumes about the new audience she's courting, and considering that Jewel has always struck me as somebody who is somewhat attached to words, she's bound to burn out on this new sound in a hurry.

In retrospect, I should've seen the potential for the full-on showbiz sellout coming, since the first time I heard Jewel's folkie bit was in connection with her performance of Dorothy in TNT's production of "The Wizard of Oz In Concert." Her performance was passable-if-bland, but considering the video for "Who Will Save Your Soul" was inserted into every opening in the TNT schedule as a promo for the special, it was a really jarring transition, seeing her shift gears like that.

I suppose in the end, that's how it boils down, to do what it takes to not go back to living in her car. I just hope she doesn't get so far gone that she can't come back to home base.

Considering how I was singing the praises of Hikaru Utada earlier on Sunday, I'm a bit stupefied that I didn't have any thoughts on the topic on the night, but sometimes you have to let these things stew...don't be surprised if I give this a fuller treatment for the website at some point in the next week.  

Want to end the deficit?: Institute this plan in America. We'd have a sound budget faster than you can say "supersize it."  

FEEDBACK!: Check the sidebar...this lame blog now has a lame forum attached to it. I know I should be beaten within an inch of my life for cluttering up the Delphi community for starting yet another forum, but I should also be beaten within an inch of my life for starting YET ANOTHER BLOG. Use it in good health.  

In a sad attempt to keep the updates flowing, WHAT ERIC ATE: Brunch (since I overslept and couldn't call it breakfast): Raisin Nut Bran. Afternoon snack: half sandwich of cheap store-brand peanut butter (bad texture, so I wouldn't usually hang) and butterscotch chips, plain tortilla chips. Dinner (15 minutes ago): Burger King Whopper and onion rings.

The onion rings from BK now come with a "spicy" dippng sauce, sort of like a cross between horseradish and Thousand Island dressing. My theory is that somebody ab BK HQ got bloomin' onion envy. Anyway, that's what I got for ya today.  

J-Pop: I just latched on to J-pop superstar Hikaru Utada after I realized she was the one singing the song in the Kingdom Hearts ads that were all over TV earlier in the year. The name of the song is "Simple and Clean", and listening to the full version, she sings the hell out of the song without overdoing it (for overdoing, see any of the early American Idol singers who were voted off). It's a gorgeous song gorgeously sung, which would be enough in most cases, but then I saw the video for the Japanese language version ("Hikari") and that pretty much sealed the deal. The videos for songs from our dance-pop divas would take a propulsive track like this and make overblown, obnoxious production numbers, and I won't deny that J-pop and J-rock videos lean in that direction quite a bit. So I was preparing myself for anything, and still got something I didn't expect. Hikki and her people took her song and set it to an anchored-down shot of her washing dishes. She even walks out of the shot for a few lines of the bridge to get more dirty dishes. So I sez to myself: is this an anti-video, like the Replacements' "Bastards of Young," where the video was an extremely slow zoom-out on a stereo turned up to 11? Or the promo shoot in 1966 where the Beatles "illustrated" Day Tripper by sitting on the floor of the studio and eating fish and chips?

And then it hit me...it's a simple video, and those dishes are definitely clean now. Can't get more straightforward than that. Her latest video is a bit more traditionally MTV, but I'm still sold.  

Thrift Store Archaelology: Far too many people mock me for the fact that, in addition to the regular VHS VCR and DVD, I also picked up an on-the-cheap but remarkably functional Beta VCR a few years back, and started grabbing up Beta tapes at breathtaking speed not too long after. The prerecorded tapes are about as interesting as you'd expect, but the real treats are on the "blank" tapes, because when you find them at flea markets or thrift stores, they're rarely ever blank. The tail ends of other people's tapes always hold my attention, since the stuff they record over is often a lot more interesting than what they choose to keep. Just in one score at Goodwill from last year, I've found parts of old newscasts, pieces of the 1984 Olympics, and something on a tape I didn't bother with until today.

Through some whim, somebody recorded a Conan movie over an evening of MTV that they just let roll, so there was a nice surprise after the movie ended: at least an hour and a half of 1988 vintage MTV, loaded with (GASP!) music videos, and right in the center of what was left was the crown jewel of the schedule: Remote Control, with Colin Quinn, Kari Wuhrer, and your host Ken Ober. No Adam Sandler as the Trivia Delinquent, sadly, but it was a fun trip. And then, in the ad break right after, was one of those ads that linger in your subconscious, like a lady's perfume or where you buried that drifter. Two grubby comedy hippies sitting in front of a VW van with a boombox:

Hippie #1:Hey, man, is thatFreedom Rock?
Hippie #2: Yeah, man!
Hippie #1:Well, turn it UP, man!
(Cut to the record jacket, Allman Brothers "Ramblin' Man", and a photo montage...)

There was also an MTV News appearance by Toby Radloff (genuine nerd), a coworker of American Splendor's Harvey Pekar and one of a seemingly endless line of MTV Short-Term American Celebrities, dressing up for Halloween. (Kurt Loder: "That's the news...or whatever...")

The lot included a few sealed Beta blanks, too, and I was thinking of using one of those to make a Beta copy of The Matrix, complete with photo sleeve, and leaving it at the Goodwill sometime. It's conceptual humor, for sure, but I'd think a Matrix fan would appreciate the concept. ("What is the secret of the Matrix on Beta format?" "The secret is there is no Beta format.")

Be back later...  

Greetings From The Land of Tiny Money

Apparently I get an unexpected four-day weekend; on top of not being called into my survey gig today, I find out they're only asking for twenty people to work on Monday and I'm not one of them. On top of that, I got cut from the lineup early almost every day this week for underperforming. For the purposes of simplicity, I'll be calling these "tiny money" weeks, since a full schedule still wouldn't count as big bank for me, anyway.

So whaddya think? Time to investigate some alternative revenue streams? eBay liquidation sale, maybe? Wanna buy a duck? I'm pretty sure I can find one for you...eventually. If it takes too much time, you might have to settle for sparrows or squirrels, since we have plenty of those around here. Squirrel pie is good eating.

Anyway, that killed some time...
 

My First Bollywood

Caught Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge on the TCM Bollywood month last night, and holy schlamoley but they weren't kidding when they said Bollywood movies had stuff for everyone. It was a romantic comedy musical (they're just about all musicals, I'm told) with doses of family melodrama, social commentary, and even an full-on action sequence. Well, if you had to fill three hours, you'd pull out the stops, too.

And just as all the advance reports say, every 15 or 30 minutes you get a full-on production number. You can set a watch by it, honestly. But one thing you can say for sure, the songs actually drive the plot, and aren't as useless as an appendix.

Ska said it was like The Wedding Singer, ("except not as whiny," I had to add then, and with a stronger male lead (I add now)); Doom's mother stayed with it through the whole thing, and apparently that will make me a marked man from now on. The old man has to catch me first, though.

Dammit, dammit, dammit:: The short version is that Hamas is seriously cheesed off that the new Palestinian PM has rolled over on too many things for Hamas to play ball on this field, so they took a hike, at least for now. The Islamic Jihad people still don't know whether to stay or go.

All things considered, I hope these talks don't fall apart again. The whole Israel/Palestine thing is a huge reason why a lot of the Middle East hasn't trusted us in a long time. The lack of movement on this resolution figures heavily into it, too. Check that date: 36 years of noncompliance.

Highest Unemployment Rate In Nine Years: But the economy's coming back on the good foot, honest. Have a tax cut on that income you're not making. Depression? What's that?

And that's it for now... Mebbe back later today, if the wind doesn't shift...  

Oh boy...a fresh start. Let's see what happens next...

One of my self-improvement projects right now is working my way through Clifton Fadiman and John S. Major's The New Lifetime Reading Plan, so part of this blog will be me dealing with these books as I finish them off, and also what else crosses my path in a day.

BOOKS I JUST FINISHED: Monkey, Arthur Waley's translation and condensation of Wu Ch'eng-en's Chinese folk novel (Journey to the West). It was a fun trip, the story of a Buddhist monk's trip to India to retrieve some rare scriptures and bring the "true faith" to China. They say that the story was inspired by historical fact, but only in the sense that The Devil and Daniel Webster had a real person as the main character. The real star of the show, of course, is Monkey (of course he's the star; that's why his name is in the title), a hard-swinging, rough-living, fun-loving ape made of stone. The first third of Waley's version is his backstory, and it goes toe-to-toe with his Dragon Ball descendent (at least until a good way into DBZ, where the cartoon loses me).

My big yap is that by putting in the setup chapters basically complete, and then picking and choosing what's left in from there (the unedited version runs three volumes), they spend more time on the setup for the journey than they actually spend journeying. Still, the book did it's job by whetting my appetite for the full work.

WELL, HERE'S SOMETHING YOU DON'T SEE EVERY DAY: A snippet of Hillary Clinton's memoirs...gee, I wonder which part they read first.

I JUST WANT TO CONCENTRATE ON MY SALAD! OR..."Coming up next on 'Martha Stewart Living', using hand-woven area rugs to liven up prison cells, and using applique to personalize orange jump suits. It's a good thing, I'm told."