The Best of Everything

Whodathunkit? -- The Three Best Things You WANT To Know About Thanksgiving.

2009-11-20T12:34:00.019-07:00

It's time for another Whodathunkit?, that feature I run just before every major event in American life to give you the facts you really want to know about that big event. It's the only blog post guaranteed* to make you a hit at the next big social event!
(*note: "guaranteed" means "not guaranteed.)

This Whodathunkit?, as the title says, will give you the Three Best Things You Want To Know About Thanksgiving, which by my calendar is less than a week away. (That's how you know my calendar is an American calendar: It has Thanksgiving on the proper day, the day God and Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt decreed. Some calendars -- I'm looking at you Canada-- claim Thanksgiving is some other day, which is completely ridiculous. Canada's Thanksgiving, for example, is supposedly set on the 2nd Monday in October, and it meant to celebrate -- give Canadian thanks for -- the end of the harvest. That's so dumb. Everyone knows that "Thanksgiving" has nothing to do with the harvest and everything to do with surviving through the winter, or, as I pointed out last year, hoping to survive through the winter.

Yes, those Pilgrims were an optimistic bunch, having a Thanksgiving dinner before they had anything to give Thanks for, but at least they weren't so strange as to set the holiday on some Monday in October. Which itself isn't as bad as some other countries' Thanksgivings. Like Croatia's Thanksgiving. Did you know that Croatia celebrates Thanksgiving?

Did you know that Croatia was a country? Now you do, and you'll thank me the next time you're watching Jeopardy! and the category is Countries That Sort of Rhyme With 'Moesha'.

Croatia's Thanksgiving doesn't give thanks for being Canadian, or for not-yet-having-survived the winter, like real Thanksgivings do. Instead, Croatia's Thanksgiving celebrates "the seizure of the city of Knin by the Croatian Army during Operation Storm in the War of Independence." The highlight, that website says, "is the ceremonially lifting of the Croatian flag on the Knin fortress"

Which sounds dramatic and all, but is it as touching a ceremony as when the President pardons a turkey? I think not.

Another country that gives thanks is China, but they do it exactly the way you'd expect a bunch of Communists to do it: By using "Chinese Thanksgiving," or "Chung Ch'ui," as an occasion to exchange traditional "moon cakes," only the traditional mooncakes are used, in times of war, to hide secret messages and "thwart their enemies," according to the website "More4Kids," which is obviously very diligently working to make sure that Kids don't trust the rest of the world, judging by their comment that "there is a lot of bad stuff happening around the world," and so kids should be thankful they live in America.

In America, at least, Thanksgiving is still celebrated on the proper day -- a Thursday in November, although which particular Thursday it is depends heavily on whether the president needs to jump-start the economy; I'm surprised that President Obama didn't decide to move Thanksgiving up a week earlier this year, the way FDR did during the Depression. The Great Depression, that is. Well, the other Great Depression.

Anyway, Obama didn't use that trick to get our economy going, preferring instead to try the "let's let people get new pickup trucks using federal cash" trick. Apparently, the secret manual of knowledge about Americans, the manual that presidents use to control Americans' lives, has been lost.

Or maybe Obama didn't need to move Thanksgiving up, since corporations have done an effective job of ignoring Thanksgiving entirely and simply starting Christmas whenever they darn well please, as evidenced by the November 6 release of the 1,000,000,000th version of A Christmas Carol.

Jim Carrey's latest desperate bid for our attention -- next he'll resort simply to setting his hair on fire in the middle of Fifth Avenue in New York -- isn't the only thing jumping the gun on the Christmas season and relegating Thanksgiving to the back burner. ABC Family is airing two Christmas movies tonight, November 20, but they're three days behind Richie Rich's Christmas Wish and Merry Madagascar. I hope Richie's wish wasn't that Thanksgiving continue to be a separate, independent holiday.

Because it won't be. I predicted last year that eventually Thanksgiving would join the ranks of holidays we don't really celebrate anymore, and this year is proving that prediction even more true. A local Middleton, Wisconsin bar advertised today on the radio that people could watch the Packers-Lions game "on Thursday" at the bar. The Packers and Lions play on Thanksgiving, so not only did this bar offer to let people come sit in a bar at midday on Thanksgiving, but the ad didn't even mention that the day was Thanksgiving. In the ad, it was just Thursday.

This might well be the last year that Thanksgiving is even a holiday; it may be that next year Thanksgiving isn't celebrated at all. Preposterous! you say? (Good for you! Nice vocabulary!) It's not preposterous, though: as more and more people have to work on Thanksgiving, at bars and at the stores that are now open during the day on Thanksgiving, how long will it be before everyone just decides to work? If all your kids and relatives have to work at the stores where people want to shop, how is that a holiday? Three years ago, four major retailers were planning on being open more or less their regular hours on Thanksgiving. Now, almost every store is open at least part of the day on Thanksgiving, including retail giant Fashion Bug.

Fashion Bug.

But can you blame them? If everyone else is open on Thanksgiving, and they are, then Fashion Bug has to open, too, or all the holiday shoppers will spend all their holiday money on factory remnants at other stores. So my prediction last year - -that someday Thanksgiving will mean "eating Turkey Hot Pockets and McDonald's Pumpkin Pies while standing in line at Best Buy" is closer than ever to coming true. I predict that we are at most two years away from people simply opting to have their big "Thanksgiving dinner," if they have one, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, while using Thanksgiving to either work, or to shop.

Until then, Thanksgiving is theoretically still a big event, and we'd better make the most of it, which I'm doing by providing you The Three Best Things You WANT to know about Thanksgiving. As always, I will leave the boring, ordinary facts to the mainstream media; let them tell you how to deep fry a turkey without blowing up your house (hint: you can't, and it's foolish to try), let them talk about the football games and the crowds of people lining up for Black Friday (soon to be Black Wednesday). Here at The Best of Everything, I give you stuff that will amaze your friends, inspire your neighbors, dumbfound your acquaintances, and otherwise exhaust your thesaurus with synonyms for amaze and friends.

Friendly-amazing things like...

1. Thanksgiving is a more philosophical holiday than you think, raising profound questions in our deep-thinking society.

Many holidays are an occasion for some introspection or soul-searching. On the Fourth of July, we ask questions like What's the meaning of liberty, and I wonder if that firecracker would really blow my hand off if I held it while it exploded? On Valentine's Day, we ponder such quizzes as How many roses can I get using the $1.78 I have in my change dish in my car, and Why didn't I plan ahead and save a couple bucks from last night's poker game?

But Thanksgiving brings out the really big questions. Questions like this person's question to "Askville:"

What would you prepare your vampire lover on Thanksgiving?

That's a real question, or at least a question asked on Askville, which makes me think that whoever asked it was serious, because a question like that is too stupid to not be serious. (That person apparently continued to have problems that holiday season, asking what to give her vampire lover for Christmas...)

I was curious about what other questions people might ask about Thanksgiving. So I went to Google -- how everyone, including Richard Dawkins, proves everything, nowadays; Google is the foundation of science, replacing dark matter in the lives of scientists who don't want to think -- I went to Google and did a search for What do you do on Thanksgiving. I was sure I'd get lots of questions suggested, given that just typing What do you do led to these other questions that people had asked:

I did pause a moment when I saw the fifth question down, but then I got distracted from feeling sorry for that person and instead wondered if perhaps the same person had searched those questions in order, and, if so, what that person's day had been like, first realizing that they're bored, then meeting a drunken sailor, then wanting to sing the drunken sailor song, but their iPod freezes up, then looking up the lyrics, only to realize that the drunken sailor has broken her heart and made her cry, then...

Well, anyway...as I continued typing, the questions got more elegant, yet:

But eventually I finished typing and found an entire article about what to do on Thanksgiving in Orlando, which I read, only to find out that in Orlando, stores are open on Thanksgiving, too, so Thanksgiving is dying even in the Magic Kingdom.

Thanksgiving doesn't just raise questions about vampires and sex and Disney World, though. It also makes people ponder the origins of life, something being done by the person who called the Butterball Turkey hotline to ask if turkeys have belly buttons.

No. They don't -- I hadn't ever even thought of the question, and now I know the answer! But that person's question has made me wonder this: What kind of person sits around wondering whether turkeys have belly buttons, and why didn't that person just look at the turkey they were cooking?

That Butterball hotline gets 10,000+ calls on Thanksgiving Day; I wonder whether anyone calls it the rest of the year, and whether one could call for non-turkey related questions? Like, if you couldn't get through to the Kleenex hotline, could you call the Butterball hotline and ask them, instead?

And did you know Kleenex had a hotline? They do, and I was going to look up the number but I got distracted by the fact that there's a frequently-asked questions section of the Kleenex Website, one which includes this (apparently frequently-asked) question:

What are some innovations Kleenex® Brand Tissue has introduced to the facial tissue category?

As I read that, I imagined hundred, no, thousands, no, tens of thousands of people looking up the phone number for Kleenex, and then calling up to (breathlessly) ask the operator: What are some innovations Kleenex® Brand Tissue has introduced to the facial tissue category?

One innovation, by the way, is that Kleenex invented the first three-ply facial tissue. America Rules!

One thing Kleenex leaves off its site is the credentials it's help line operators have. Butterball doesn't do that; they trumpet the experience their people have: "Each of the turkey experts attends "Turkey U" to prepare for the calls that will be coming in."

But enough of that. On to number 2:

2. New York Isn't The Only Place Holding A Parade, You Know. I'm always amazed that parades still exist, period. They seem so anachronistic, like pocket watches or intact families. Who wants to go sit outside and watch bands go by, and local politicians riding in convertibles waving, when we could be watching a little kid forced to memorize a speech for his dad's benefit? And by memorize, I mean "read from the papers he's holding in his hands and the cue cards that aren't shown on camera:"

You know what's sad about that? That kid was, I bet, forced to do that in an effort to get him onto TV and make him famous (and his parents rich), and the best his dad could parlay that into was a chance to say "Let's Play Hockey" at a hockey game. Even Balloon Dad did better than that -- he got dinner in New York City with ABC executives.

But being in New York means that Balloon Dad and Hockey Kid will miss the other Thanksgiving Day parades, like the "Montgomery County Thanksgiving Parade," which will have their own giant balloons and floats, but which will no doubt be put to shame by the real Thanksgiving parade at the site of the real Thanksgiving: Plymouth, Massachusetts, where the real Pilgrims celebrated real Thanksgiving...

... In July...

But never mind that! There's a parade in Plymouth that celebrates everything Thanksgiving! It's got a detailed model of the Mayflower! It's got a depiction of the first Thanksgiving in 1621! It's got...

... a replica Victorian church complete with carolers?

Dang it! Et tu, Plymouth? Even in the Cradle of Thanksgiving, Christmas is taking over? It has to be Christmas carolers, right? After all, there's no Thanksgiving carols, or even Thanksgiving songs, right? Of course there aren't.

On to number 3!

3. There's are Thanksgiving Songs! I should really learn to read on before I ask those questions.

If it's caroling you want, Plymouth, and people who look past Thanksgiving to get to Christmas, then it's caroling you will get.

Everybody thinks there's no such thing as a Thanksgiving Carol, but everybody's wrong, and everybody should have asked me, and should have asked The Knox Clan, who wrote themselves some Thanksgiving carols, carols they've posted on The Knox Clan blog, carols like "Something Smells," an unfortunately-named carol sung to the tune of Silver Bells, with lyrics like:

Should I spray
The stink away
And have a take-out Thanksgiving Day

Festive!

But, you say, those are just knockoffs of Christmas carols, aren't they?

You're very perceptive. If you won't accept those as Thanksgiving songs, then how about actual traditional Thanksgiving songs, songs that you know and love from your childhood, provided your childhood was in the 1670s or something. Songs like Here we go over to Silly Tilly's, a delightful song celebrating the animals' Thanksgiving together. Or songs like the stirring Singing, the Reapers Homeward Come, which features this stirring opening verse:

Singing, the reapers homeward come, lo! lo!
Merrily singing the harvest home, lo! lo!
Along the field, along the road,
Where autumn is scattering leaves abroad,
Homeward cometh the ripe last load, lo! lo!

Now, that song may not exactly be your cup of tea, but it's at least a billion times better than every single thing Lady GaGa will do in her life. Although, in the interest of fairness, I feel compelled to note that road and abroad aren't really rhymes.

I tried searching for a video for Singing, The Reapers Homeward Come, but all I found on Youtube was this:

But that video does have its own charms, so it was worth the effort.

The number one Thanksgiving carol of all time, though, is certainly Alice's Restaurant Massacree, which you probably know as "Alice's Restaurant" and my kids know as that song that I play which goes on forever and is just a guy talking.

"Alice's Restaurant Massacree" tells the absolutely true* (*probably not) story of how Arlo Guthrie dumped some garbage for his friend, Alice, and got a ticket for littering, a ticket that later kept him from being drafted into the Vietnam War.

Arlo gets all the fame from that song, even though it was abandoned-church living Alice M. Brock who set off all the events by being a lousy housekeeper.

Alice M. Brock deserves a little fame herself, for setting off that probably-not-true chain of events, and she's gotten a little fame herself: she's not just a lousy housekeeper with questionable taste in friends, but also an author, having written and illustrated the book How To Massage Your Cat. She also illustrated a book, owned an art gallery, and writes a blog. The blog is called "Alice's Blog," and can be found by clicking this link.

On that blog, I learned that Alice isn't just memorialized in Arlo's song, but in another song, as well, the aptly-titled Another Song About Alice:

How many people do you know who have inspired two songs about themselves? I only know, like, ten. Counting our cats.

Now, let's have Arlo sing us out:

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Going to comment on this post? I wish you would, and here's why...

I'm gonna be a pop star! Just like Mickey Dolenz (Why are all my references so DATED?)

2009-11-20T12:25:00.003-07:00

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Popstation. All opinions are 100% mine.

Are you tired of watching a bunch of jerks and losers go on American Idol and stink it up when you know you could do better?

Do you frequently sing aloud in the car, the kitchen, the shower, and imagine that you're actually in Madison Square Garden performing in front of screaming throngs of fans?

Do you want to hear a radio DJ say, in that cool radio DJ voice, And now here's a new one from the hottest new artist around... and say your name?

You can do all those things... but you're going to have to get in line behind me, because I'm going to win the PopStation contest before you do.

Popstation is an incredibly awesome new website that gives you a chance to take all that singing you do and turn it into a dream come true, quite literally. Popstation lets you sing a song and have listeners vote on it, and if you're voted number one, you get to go record an album and have that album released. You'll be an actual recording artist and have an actual album!

Here's what they do: they put out a song, in what they call the 'practice room.' That song can be listened to and practiced for two weeks. They provide lyric sheets, video, song demos, everything you need to rehearse the song. You take that and practice until you're ready to sing the song the way you want. Then, you download the backing to the song (and a program to let you record it, free) and sing your vocals over the backing, making it into an mp3. (They'll help you do that, and it's really easy.)

You upload your mp3, and people listen and vote on it. Once you're voted up to the top of the charts, you'll be number one, and number one, every three months, gets whisked off to a VIP recording experience (probably just like Jay-Z or Britney do it) in New York. Limos, recording studios, the works, and then your album get released.

Best of all, it's totally free and the people judging are you and me and the rest of us: regular folks, not Simon and Ellen and what's -her-name, Carla Gugino or whoever.

So you get to enter, for free, and sing, for free, and no tryouts or staying in Los Angeles or putting up with the jerks on those other shows. Just singing, and trying out, and getting a recording studio. Go sign up now! You could win now!

Right after me. I've been warming up. Ready...

and a one, and a two... what's new, pussycat?

See you in the practice rooms!

Crossover: For a guy who'd just escaped from Hell, he was awfully calm...

2009-11-20T12:14:00.004-07:00

Welcome to Crossover, a new feature I'm going to do on my blogs from time to time. You may or may not know that I've got more than one blog.

I actually have five. No, wait, seven. See, even I lose track of them. So, from time-to-time, I'm going to post Crossover, putting a previously published post from one blog onto a different blog. This is the first of those...

From "Lesbian Zombies Are Taking Over The World..."
LZATOW is a web novel published in serial format:

In the future, everyone will eat squid jerky, and the fate of the 73 dimensions will rest on the slim, sexy shoulders of Rachel, who may or may not be the Queen of the Lesbian Zombies...

The excerpt below is from Part 9: Meeting God. It's titled Rachel And Brigitte Are Leaving. To get caught up, here's a quick recap:

Rachel woke up one day to realize she didn't know who or what she was. On the advice of her octopus she walked south and met Brigitte. They fell in love but pretty soon were on the run from revenants, meeting up with Lt. Samson, who Rachel rescued from Hell inadvertently. Now, Rachel and Brigitte are heading out of Samson's HQ in Albuquerque...

That's when all hell broke loose just outside the door.

Literally.

We heard it, and smelt it, at about the same time. There was a horrible tearing crashing roaring buckling sound, and also an overpowering smell of sulfur just ballooned out. Doc flew up and stood sentinel near my shoulder, beeping and whirring, and Samson whirled around.

“Don’t move,” he said, and waved a hand towards the door that was not that far away. The door opened and I saw through the door we’d entered that the entire convenience store was being sucked down, slowly, into a swirling whirlpool of slowly-liquifying matter, like the store was melting and being pulled down a drain, while sticking up through the drain was a hand, a hand that was larger, even, than the 100-foot-tall demon’s hands had been. I could only imagine how large the thing on the other end of that hand might be.

I screamed and tried to scramble back from the doorway as the hand came towards up.

“Relax,” Samson said calmly. “The door’s not open and I doubt it can get in here.” For a guy who’d only just escaped from Hell… four? Days ago, he was awfully calm. I stayed pressed up against the wall and flattened my hands.

“What is it?” I asked, barely controlling my hysteria.

It is a demon said Doc. Approximately 400 feet tall extrapolating from the hand. Home dimension = number 4, code named: Hell. Breathes sulfur. Eats flesh.

“What?” I asked, and then the door to the bedroom opened and Brigitte stood there, going from sleepy-and-sexy in a flash to scared as she took in the hand that was pressed up against the translucent door.

“What is that?” she yelled, and moved over by me and put her arms around me.

“It’s a demon,” said Samson, calmly. He stood there, with his hands on his hips, shaking his head. “Those idiots. I mean, they should have known better, because this thing’ll never get to me, but the attention they’re drawing.”

“Kill it!” I yelled.

“Kill it? I can’t kill a demon. I can drive it back, probably.” Samson peered a little and said “And the van’s gone. I’m sure. Great. That’s going to slow us down.” He took a step or two over by the monitor while the demon hand became a fist and pounded on the door and the wall. THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD it hit faster than I could have imagined. The whole structure shook. Dust fell from the ceilings Samson got near the screen and snapped his fingers. It came to life with a bored-looking woman on the other side.

She snapped to attention. “Lieutenant,” she said.

“Private,” he acknowledged, and gave a lazy salute.

“Sir, we did not expect…”

“I got out earlier than expected. No time for that. I need an airstrike.”

“Coordinates.”

Samson mumbled something and she said “Fixing location.”

Then, a pause, and we could see her looking at some other screen. “Drones on the way.”

Another pause. She typed. Samson turned back to watch the fist. Most of the building was gone. We were tilted towards the hole, now, and the melting sidewalk and rest of the street were pulling in further.

“Do something,” Brigitte said, but she said it through clenched teeth. I knew why she’d spoken, now: we were tilted far enough that we could see around the edges of the hole that the hand reached through which meant we could see into Hell, the red glow, the acid-water, the horrors, and Brigitte didn’t want to go back there. Neither did I, especially not with my body.

It might be patched together and a zombie body, but it was the only body I had.

“Report,” Samson said.

“Drones en route. Mark, now.”

As the woman on the screen said that we heard a high-pitched sort of buzz or whine, rising from behind us, getting louder and louder. There were two booms

“Going supersonic,” Samson muttered. “Good. Could’ve been faster.”

And then the whines were fading away off in front of us. Samson watched the hand, which had changed tactics and was not wrapped around our part of the building and was pulling.

As we watched, the sounds of the drones faded away.

“That didn’t do anything,” I said.

Just as I said that, though, the hand started to glow blue and crackle and there was a sound like lightning. Electricity crackled all over it and the hand shot away from the building. It began writhing and twisting and as it did it shriveled and turned black and began to look crispy and burnt. The blue-crackling stuff still flickered all over it and glazed it as the hand straightened up and shrunk.

I knew where I’d seen things just like that before, too: Reverend Tommy’s praying power.

The hand was now only about ten feet tall and appeared to be in pain. I didn’t know a hand could broadcast emotions like that but this hand was certainly doing a good job of conveying what it was like to be in an extreme amount of pain and dying and being sent back to Hell, which it was. It shriveled more and then sucked into the hole, which sealed up, leaving a depression in the earth, a twisted spirally hole that looked exactly like a whirlpool would look if you made a very realistic sculpture of it, provided that the whirlpool was also a convenience store that sold cheap sodas. And squid jerky, which I’d never learned to like though I’d eaten it three times on the way to Brigitte’s.

“Do you work for the government?” I asked, looking at the monitor where the woman sat again, alternating her attention between looking at us and looking at things off to her right. She wore a black jumpsuit with a label on the right shoulder that said GI in stylized lettering and her hair was long and curly. She had her nails done. I thought that was weird for a soldier.

“Government?” Samson asked, and laughed. “No, no, no. I work for something much more powerful than the government. Well, that’s for certain. That poor boy who worked the counter out there, even under the hypno that made him ignore me and anything I did, even he was more powerful than the “government” that people think exists.” Samson looked out at the frozen-rock-store-whirlpool, where, again, people were starting to gather and stare and point. “Poor kid. He really didn’t deserve that. I doubt he was going to go to end up in Hell if he’d hung on a little longer.” He snapped out of it. “Oh, well. That’s what we’re working to fix, right? Maybe he won’t be there long. Or maybe he will be. Who knows. I don’t know anything about that kid. Other than that he really was prone to hypno and was a great kid to have working the counter. I never liked having to fire people who noticed things, especially because I’d have to fire them and then have them deported to France, and who wants to live in a cave for the rest of their life? But I’m a soft touch. I know. I didn’t want to kill them, especially not now when the gate is blocked.

“But I’m rambling. No, Rachel, I don’t work for the government. I work for someone with actual power – a corporation. In this case, a paramilitary organization that uses a corporation as its profit-making, public-friendly arm to market products it comes up with in this never-ending battle, thereby raising money, and also helps hold the “land” so to speak in this battle, the “land” being not only the physical world that you know, the dimension we’ve tabbed “One” only because it was discovered by us first, which is only natural because we lived in it, but also the minds of the people in dimension one, and also something more important than their minds, which is their souls.

“I work,” he finished up, with a flourish, and I got the feeling that we were being given a pitch or recruitment speech,” For God.”

We just stared at him, Brigitte and I. On the screen, the woman watched him and smiled.

“Actually, to be more correct, I work for God, Inc.” Samson said, with a little less flourish. He seemed disappointed that we did not seem more impressed.

“You work for God?” Brigitte asked, in disbelief. She seemed angry. “How can you say that?”

“What do you mean, how can I say that?”

Brigitte shook her head. “You’re not doing God’s work. Not for real.”

“But I am,” Samson insisted. The woman on the screen nodded, I saw. Then she peered closer and looked from me to Samson.

“Lieutenant?” the woman inquired. Samson held up a hand.

“I work for God, and I can prove it, Brigitte.”

“Why?” Brigitte asked.

That kind of startled me as I tried to follow what was going on here. Brigitte asked why? I looked at her. That was a strange question to ask, especially for a girl from the south who’d attended Church, even a terrible hating church like the Church of Our Savior Of Living People Only, to ask why someone would work for God. Which I didn’t believe Samson was, not for a second.

“Because it’s the right thing to do. Did you see Hell? Did you see it? Is that what you want people to end up in? Is that where you want them to go?”

“No. No, I don’t, but that’s… that’s…”

“That’s what?”

”Sir. Lieutenant.” The woman was looking over at me and at Brigitte and then peering to her right more, and I could hear sounds and beeping and she was doing something with her nicely-manicured hands.

“Not now, Private.” Samson held up his hand again. “What’s wrong with you? Brigitte? Why are you so angry?”

Brigitte was angry. I had my hand on her arm and she was tense and quivering. Her voice, when it came out was low and calm. “I don’t think you should work for God, that’s all. I really think that is a bad idea.”

“How can you say that?” If Samson hadn’t asked, I would have. Brigitte, I could recall, told me that morning we were getting ready for Church, that the “Savior” was more important than anything in the world and that was why she went.

“It’s the wrong side,” Brigitte said.

“Sir!” the private interrupted. “I apologize for ignoring orders, sir, but I must. Sir, I’ve been checking and it’s her.” The woman on the screen pointed. It was difficult to tell who she was pointing at because the screen was two-dimensional and all but it was kind of in my general direction.

Samson sounded irrirated: “Private, yes, I know. Quit interrupting. I need to talk with Brigitte. I am aware that it’s her. I’m the one who found her and brought her back here. Why do you think she’s standing in my headquarters?”

I felt a little miserable at that, to be the center of this stuff that I didn’t understand again.

“Not her, sir. Not the zombie. The other one. It’s her.”

Samson looked from the screen to Brigitte.

“Are you sure,” he said, slowly and carefully.

“Yes. I’m certain,” the private said.

Brigitte suddenly held up a little device no larger than my thumb and pointed it towards Samson.

“Rachel and I are leaving,” she said.

Read More "Lesbian Zombies Are Taking Over The World" by clicking this link.

Also available as a free download on Scribd!

The Best Worst Villain, EVER. (Part Five: What's your plan, man?)

2009-11-17T09:23:00.018-07:00

The final installment!

Part Five in my ongoing investigatory series in which I'm whittling down all the villains, ever, into just the one Best Worst Villain, EVER.
Part One: Naming The Villains.
Part Two: Let's Lose The Chicks.
Part Three: Go It Alone.
Part Four: Sure you're crazy, but just how crazy are you?

Everyone's got to have a goal. Maybe even more than one. And the higher the goal, the better, right? Reach for the stars, we're told, because even if you don't make it, you'll get farther than you would have otherwise. I'm pretty sure that's more or less how that inspirational poster, or t-shirt, or poster-featuring-a-guy-wearing-a-t-shirt, goes.

I've never actually liked that quote, myself. I've never gotten it, actually, and in my own mind, I rephrase the quote to be this:

Don't reach for the stars, because your arms are in no way long enough to actually reach the stars, and you'll look foolish standing there with your arms up over your head reaching into the sky with people asking you what it is you're doing. Instead, if you want to actually reach the stars, why not learn something about rocket science and help spearhead a project to send humankind into space, since that's more likely to work and will have tangible benefits for you and for humanity, whereas just standing there with your arms up over your head really doesn't do anything for anyone.

Equally inspirational, right? And helpful, which is important in the Motto Business. Too many Mottos don't have any real world value anymore. A stitch in time saves nine? Who stitches anymore? Nowadays, if clothes get a little ripped, people throw them out. Heck, most people throw them out if they think the clothes might rip someday.

Or what about this Japanese "Motto" I got from "Mottos From The Web:"

"Live as one already dead."

How is that supposed to work? What does that even mean? Live as one already dead? Does that mean I'm supposed to decay? Lie around all day? Crave brains? I'm mystified. And I shouldn't be, because I doubt one already dead would be mystified. Unless I was dead and someone told me that saying, which I think could even mystify the dead. That saying is what's wrong with Japan.

Well, that saying and vending machines that sell teenage girls' underwear.

An inspirational motto can help one have goals, and goals are important, because without goals, we're all just going through the motions of life while not heading anywhere. A goal keeps your life from being one big hamster wheel. Setting your sights on something, anything, gives you a reason to keep doing the things you're doing.

Take me, for example. I have all kinds of goals, some of which are long-term goals (e.g., 1. Get published & make enough money to move to Hawaii, 2. Invent an entirely new kind of doughnut) and some of which are short-term (Don't let my boss figure out that I'm blogging and listening to Dan Patrick online when he thinks that I'm writing a brief). I'm a very goal-oriented person, the kind of person who, now that he thought of it, really does want to invent a new kind of doughnut, the kind of person who isn't sure, exactly, how to go about that but who thinks it might be a pretty big deal if he were to achieve that goal.

The kind of person who, while typing that last paragraph, suddenly thought of Bear Claws, and then wondered if Bear Claws are the same as Apple Fritters, and who then suddenly wanted an apple fritter/Bear Claw very badly. A goal-oriented person who wants an apple fritter/Bear Claw very badly.

Villains, as a group, tend to also be goal-oriented people. That's one of the things that sets them apart from the rest of humanity, and from heroes. In fact, villains are among the most goal-oriented people, while heroes are among the least. If there were a spectrum, then, villains would be at the goal-oriented end of the spectrum, while heroes would be at the just-lazing-about end of the spectrum.

There should be a spectrum. I'll make it so:

Creating that picture made me think it's been a long time since I heard Heroes & Villains by The Beach Boys. So let's listen to that:

As shown on the Spectrum, heroes, as a whole, are not very motivated or goal-oriented people. What goals did you ever hear set by, say, Superman, or Spider-Man, or Timmy Smith?

You all remember Timmy Smith, right? He was the hero of the Redskins' 42-10 victory over the Broncos in the Super Bowl. So a great running back, maybe, but goal-oriented? Also probably maybe, in that running backs are trying to get across the goal line.

So Timmy Smith, alone among heroes, has a goal. But other heroes do not. They don't set out to do something, on their own. They react to other people doing things. Did you ever see Superman get up in the morning and say "Today I'm going to make the world a better place by slowing down the Earth's rotation a tiny bit so that the day is a bit longer and people can enjoy their lives a little more?" No, you didn't. Because he didn't do things like that. He just sat around in his Fortress of Solitude, being all Solitudey, until someone was in danger and he went and reacted.

Ordinary people, as shown on the Spectrum, are somewhat goal-oriented. We want to get a promotion, or get home from work on time, or make sure that we set our DVRs to tape Web Soup because we're not really sure when it's on, and in fact, we secretly suspect that Web Soup is making "new" shows by combining some clips from old shows with some new clips, so that each show kind of seems familiar, making us feel as though we're losing our minds, just a little, because we're never sure if we've seen this Web Soup before or not, so we just tape and watch them all. That's the kind of goals ordinary people set. Heroes, to the extent they have goals, have them when they're in their ordinary-person alter-ego. Spider-Man had no goals. Peter Parker did, though: he wanted to be a photographer and hook up with Mary Jane. Harry Potter, as a wizard, had no goals; he just tried to survive Voldemort's attacks. But Harry Potter, as a teenager had goals: He wanted to be good at Quidditch, and he wanted to hook up with Ginny Weasley.

I'm starting to see a trend there.

Villains, in contrast to ordinary folks and heroes, have goals-a-plenty. No good villain lacks for motivation and no good villain will ever be caught short-handed in the ambition department. Whether it be robbing that bank on the street corner or creating an army of praying mantises to help drive Starbucks off the face of the Earth or good, old-fashioned let's just take over this planet and all the others, villains know that it's easier to get out of bed in the morning when there's a purpose in your life.

And the greater the ambition, the greater the villain. Measuring the goals of the remaining villains on the list will help us eliminate a few more candidates and move further towards the goal of this series, towards choosing The Best Worst Villain, EVER.

Here's our remaining candidates for that title:

Solomon Grundy (New addition!)
Token Female: Reverse Wonder Woman.
The Lizard.
Marvin The Martian
Doctor Octopus
Mangog
Lex Luthor
The Joker
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Voldemort
Ivan Drago (suggested by The Boy)
Galactus
The Anti-Monitor
Gorilla Grodd.
[SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE OR READ THE COMIC BOOK THIS'LL KIND OF WRECK IT FOR YOU] Ozymandias, from The Watchmen.

The goals of that group vary from Gorilla Grodd's "Beat up Flash and Wonder Woman" all the way up to The Anti-Monitor's "Destroy the Multiverse."

The first obvious starting point is to get rid of those whose goals are too small, then. As commendable as it is to have a goal (you hear me, you layabout heroes? Get a goal! You've got super-powers, for God's sake. Why are you just sitting around waiting for someone to attack, instead of using your x-ray vision to diagnose people's diseases, having your power ring help people commute to work carbon-free, and otherwise improving the world?), as commendable as that is, having a goal that's small-potatoes gets you kicked out of the running for Best Worst Villain, EVER. And so we say goodbye to The Lizard, whose goal was to find a way to heal himself and/or to beat Spider-Man. We bid adieu to Doc Ock, too, as his goal was...

... what was Doctor Octopus' goal? Maybe he didn't have one. I think he got to be a villain when an accident grafted those arms on, and then he was just out to harass Spidey, for some reason. If he ever had a plan, then I don't know what it was. Whatever. He's out.

The Joker's gone, too. While he occasionally spouted off about anarchy in the last Batman movie, his obvious goal was to just create trouble. And, yeah, that's a goal, but it's not a very good goal. It's the same goal my 3-year-old Babies! have, really: Mess things up, yell a lot, don't let anyone sleep in on Saturdays. If The Joker had regularly taken his pants off when company was around, he'd have been my 3-year-olds.

And Mahmoud Ahmendijad's out for the exact same reason.

Ivan Drago (suggested by The Boy) had as his only goal beat Rocky. Not only is that a small-time dream, but any goal that makes me think of the hit 70s song Rocky by Austin Roberts is not a very good goal.

Grodd's out, too, but let's face it -- he was always going to be kicked out. As Darwin made very clear in his Origin of Species, "survival of the fittest" means that whenever humans and monkeys fight, monkeys lose. (The same is true, strangely, whenever platypusses fight with the Forgotten Gods Of the Maori: when that happens, monkeys lose.)

(Note: If there is not, in New Zealand lore, a legend in which the Platypus is created by the Maori Gods as an example of human perfection, only to then turn on them and try to take the Gods' place in the heavens, resulting in an epic battle, the end result of which is that Platypus loses and is transformed into the humorous creature we now know, if that legend doesn't already exist, then dibs.)

(Note, two: I'm not sure Platypusses live in New Zealand.)

(Note, three: I'm also not sure that "Platypusses" is the plural of "Platypus." Maybe it should be "Platypi?")

Solomon Grundy is a harder case. He's my sentimental favorite in this journey; I really would like him to win even though I didn't remember he existed until midway through the series. But I'm not sure that "getting Jade To Love Him and occasionally being a hero" is a worthy-enough goal, and the fact is, he's made up of sewage, which would not be very pleasant to sit next to at the awards ceremony, so I'll kick him out.

Next goes Voldemort. His goal: Beat a kid. That's what it boils down to, doesn't it? He set out originally to conquer the wizard world, but then his whole quest devolved into Beating up a twelve-year-old boy who couldn't even do magic properly. (I never got that; if Harry Potter was such a powerful, magical person, why couldn't he cast spells even as good as Hermione, who was from a Muggle family?)

And, lastly, Lex Luthor is gone, because deep down inside, I think Lex's main goal, all along, was to get his hair back, which means that all of Lex Luthor's villainy, all his fights, all his genius and giant robots and death rays and jetpacks, all of it amounted to being embarrassed about baldness. Which, in turn, means that eventually, Lex Luthor will just come out and invent a Giant Robot Death Ray JetPack Combover. I can't risk having that as The Best Worst Villain, EVER.

No amount of cool costumes, sexy female
assistants, or laser-gun wristbands can rescue
that.

That leaves us with the Destroyers, Villains with large goals:

Marvin The Martian
Mangog
Galactus
The Anti-Monitor
[SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE OR READ THE COMIC BOOK THIS'LL KIND OF WRECK IT FOR YOU] Ozymandias, from The Watchmen.

So let's get rid of the remainder. Galactus? He was a planet eater who had a surfer working for him as his "herald." As a planet eater, he didn't so much have a goal as he had an eating disorder.

Ozymandias should actually have been kicked out a little earlier, as he relied on others to do his work for him. (He tricked Dr. Manhattan, didn't he? I think he did. Plus, he had that stupid cat-thing. Out.)

The Anti-Monitor and Mangog deserve special mention. Each of them had a clearcut goal. In Mangog's case, it was draw the sword of Odin from its scabbard. Mangog, remember, was a monster created from the combined hatred of a billion billion people. That's a lot of people. To get an idea how many people that is, picture a person:

Got it!

Then multiply that person by a billion:

Um. Okay?

Then, multiply all those people by another billion:

I'm going to get that little backwards "E" symbol...

And the result is this:

That doesn't seem right.

No, wait, wait. The result is this:

Still seems a little wrong.

That's Mangog, and his goal, as the living embodiment of the hatred contained in a billion billion people, was to draw the sword of Odin from its scabbard -- which would have resulted in the end of the universe.

The whole universe.

All of it.

Even platypusses. Platypi. Whatever.

Do you see a problem with that goal? Because I sure do: what's going to happen to Mangog? Isn't he going to die, too? If the whole universe goes?

Of course he is. As noted philosopher Louis C.K. said, "Things that are not can't be, because then nothing wouldn't be. You can't have ... nothing isn't and everything is."

He really did say that, too:

So Mangog wants to destroy the universe with him in it. That's not the smartest goal in the world. Or any world. It's a terrible goal. That's the problem with The Anti-Monitor, too. He wanted to destroy the multiverse, erase it with his anti-matter waves -- but he lives in the multiverse.

Have these guys not thought this through? Obviously not. Thinking things through would have led to a goal along the lines of "I'm going to destroy almost all the multiverse, but leave the parts that I like, and have the citizens of those parts make me their supreme ruler lest I destroy them." Or a plan like "If I'm strong enough to beat up most of Asgard and the Norse Gods, even Balder, and get to the Odinsword, then I can just take over the universe and threaten to pull the Odinsword anytime someone gives me any backtalk."

Those are goals that are worthwhile: Ruling the entire universe, using just the power contained in your own body. Destroying the universe = not a good goal.

And so we come to the final Villain, the Villain that embodies all the criteria required of The Best Worst Villain, EVER. The Best Worst Villain, EVER, is:

Marvin The Martian. Marvin embodies all of the necessary criteria, in that:

1. He is not a woman.
2. He works alone.
3. He's crazy -- but so crazy that he's almost sane, and
4. His goal is a worthwhile one.

Marvin's goal is simple, but majestic: Destroy the Earth. And in its majesty, it is also villainously selfish: He wants to destroy Earth because it obstructs his view of Venus. In that simple, yet enormously tragic goal, Marvin embodies the Best of the Worst: he is willing to destroy an entire planet to improve the view from his Martian condo. His goals are set high, and yet, there is absolutely no redeeming quality to them. He doesn't want to rule the universe, for any reason. He doesn't think he'd be better at running things; at least with some would-be dictators you could say that, that they think things might be better if they were in charge.

He has no revenge motive. He's not trying to get back at anyone. That's something that, while we might disagree with it, we could at least understand it. Oh, yeah, he caused you to lose your hair, I get it. Or something. But Marvin's not out to get back at anyone.

He's not evil, either, not in the typical sense. Sure, yeah, destroying a whole world for selfish reasons is evil, if you want to get technical about it, but he's not, like, mean about it. It's just business, in a sense -- the business of improving his view.

Marvin's simple selfishness put him on a path to world destruction, a path he followed -- and follows still -- singlemindedly, and singlehandedly, a goal he pursues with the calm ruthlessness worthy of The Best Worst Villain, EVER.

Going to comment on this post? If you read it, I'd appreciate a comment. Click here for a longer explanation of why.

It might be cheaper to teach the Babies! to take care of their stuff, but that would require effort on my part.

2009-11-17T09:13:00.006-07:00

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of DVDRanger. All opinions are 100% mine.

I didn't think this was possible, but it is: You can copy your DVDs into backups, and you can copy your DVDs onto Blu-Ray discs and reduce your library.

We have a TON of DVDs, in part because in the Olden days (2002), Sweetie used to just order up DVDs if she thought she might like the movie. With movies running $8.50 a person (plus snacks!), and with babysitters hard to come by (those older kids are always busy) it made sense to get a DVD for ten bucks if we thought we might like the movie.

The other part of why we have so many movies is that the Babies! like their movies and Little Einsteins and stuff, and they watch them over and over again, so we don't Netflix them, we just buy things like "Up!" for them to watch.

And therein lies the problems: We have shelves and shelves of DVDs taking up space, and the Babies! tend to wreck their movies by carrying them around, fighting with them, drawing on them, dipping them in my coffee, etc.

But that's no longer a problem now that I found out about dvd-ranger, a program that lets you backup your DVDs, including backing them up onto Blu-Ray DVDs.

The benefit of backing up your regular DVDs need not be explained, right? Back them up and the Babies! can do their worst -- and they will -- without worrying about unnecessary expense replacing them. It doesn't matter if Mr F used "Chicken Little" as a prop in his running-around-the-table game; I'll have a backup ready to go.

The benefit to backing up regular DVDs to Blu-Ray is even better: Blu-Ray DVDs can hold up to 10 movies on one disk, so we can reduce our library size to 1/10 of what it is, and have all the movies we've got on a few convenient disks. (Okay, 25 convenient disks, but that's still an improvement.)

I only just heard about DVD-Ranger, and clicked on over to their site, where I found free 3-day trial. And the only thing I like better than new technology is free new technology, so I'm all about this.

The Best Worst Villain, EVER (Part Four: Sure, You're Crazy, But Just How Crazy Are You?)

2009-11-12T07:37:00.020-07:00

Part Four in my ongoing investigatory series in which I'm whittling down all the villains, ever, into just the one Best Worst Villain, EVER.
Part One: Naming The Villains.
Part Two: Let's Lose The Chicks.
Part Three: Go It Alone.

The foundation of western Civilization is this one, central thought:

That's so crazy it just might work.

Sure, there are those who contend that the foundation of western Civilization -- the greatest civilization in the greatest hemisphere on the greatest planet ever, up top! -- can be found in different principles, say, ideas foisted off on us by such charlatans as Aristotle or the "Founding Fathers." But what ideas did they ever give us? Nothing, I say. Here's a summary of Aristotle's career:

He was an ancient Greek.

Now, that'll get you pretty far in life, it seems. In fact, for the bulk of human history, being an ancient Greek was an all-access pass to the philosophical high life, kind of like being on The Hills is now: people pay attention to you for no apparent, reason, and you have a pretty good social life. But, on close examination, being an Ancient Greek doesn't contribute anything more, really, than being on The Hills, and I can prove it using the scientific method of comparing the great thoughts of Aristotle with the great thoughts of Heidi Montag:

Representative quote from Aristotle (as located by Googling the phrase Aristotle quote*)
*for an explanation of how science has come to mean, simply, "googling things," see this article, by me.

"A friend to all is a friend to none."

Representative quote from Heidi Montag (located much the same way, but with more interference from pictures of her):

"I plan to win an Oscar. I’m very ambitious."

Let's compare those two, shall we? Aristotle's, to begin with, is dumb. It makes no sense. If I'm friends with everyone (all the people) then I'm friends... with everyone. But Aristotle claims that makes me friends with nobody (none of the people.) Maybe math hadn't been invented by then -- I'm not sure when Pythagoras came up with it -- but even if they didn't have numbers, ancient Greeks should have known that everyone isn't equal to nobody, that all is not none. Right? Who's with me, here?

So Aristotle's saying is dumb, and also unhelpful to society, because what he's really getting at is a claim that we shouldn't be friends with everyone. What kind of advice is that? Thanks, Mr. Antisocial Ancient Greek. Maybe you didn't get invited to parties and wanted to turn that into a virtue, but I'm not buying it.

Meanwhile, look at the simple homespun wisdom of Heidi Montag's inspirational quote, which I'm thinking of turning into a t-shirt -- the modern repository of all great wisdom. Heidi's quote sums up, in 9 words (I counted, and I bet you just went back and did, too), what modern America is all about: fame, and arbitrary recognition of fame. She understands that today, in America, "ambition" no longer requires backing by hard work or talent or drive or even people liking you. No, if you're trying to get ahead in modern America, if you're ambitious, all you have to do is get enough people to pay attention to you and you've made it. And then, at some point, they'll give you an Oscar to recognize that people know who you are. (Or, in some cases, they'll give you a Nobel Peace Prize.)

So if you were trying to get ahead in America, and you could only take advice from one person, and you had to choose between Aristotle and Heidi Montag, you'd be a whole lot better off choosing Heidi Montag, is what I'm saying, and that's proof -- scientific proof-- that the ancient Greeks weren't so hot after all. (Plus, they believed that the sun was driven across the sky in a chariot. Those nuts! Modern people would never believe something that defies all rational logic.)

In fact, villains could use a little dose of Heidi Montag, themselves, because Heidi's advice is a surer route to the kind of world domination they seek to establish, time and time again -- surer and more fun and less costly than, say "Fighting the Avengers" or "Sending 500 Giant Robots Into Center City To Demolish It" or "Turning the Moon Into A Kind of Super NASCAR and entering it in a race against the Legion of Superheroes" (that last one is a script I'm writing that I hope will help resurrect Will Ferrell's Ricky Bobby character.) Fame and fortune, especially fame and fortune achieved almost, seemingly, by accident, can put a person into the limelight and let them become a person of influence...

...Oprah...

...whereas the methods villains use, like the afore-listed and like other methods (cloning, wars, digging into the bank vault using a giant drill) they've tried, fail over and over and over again.

So why do they keep trying?

Because they're crazy. That's why they're villains in the first place, remember. They're nuts. They're bonkers. They're off the ranch. They're a couple throw-rugs short of a model home**
(**That last saying brought to you by the National Realtors Association. Have you hugged a realtor today? If so, you're kind of weird.)

But their crazy isn't to be shunned and feared, like some wackos should be. No, villainous crazy should be encouraged, because, as I said, villainous crazy is building on the foundation of Western Civilization. Remember, that foundation is the phrase:

That's so crazy it just might work.

That quote is so obviously the foundation of Western Civilization that it seems pointless to provide evidence of my assertion, but I'll do it anyway, in question-and-answer form:

Q: How did Western Civilization find the West, in which it formed a civilization?
A: By crazily opting to sail West and risking falling off the edge of the world.

Q: What was the world's understanding of the American and French Revolutions?
A: That they were crazy to try to defeat royalty and then-established world powers.

Q: How crazy were the major accomplishments of Western civilization so far?
A: Seriously crazy: We drilled through mountains to build a railroad, dug through Central America for the heck of it, and even pretended to land a man on the moon in the 1960s. More recently, we have sent roller blades to Mars for no apparent reason, we gave a second TV show to Jenna Elfman, and we came up with pizzas that cost only $5!

I rest my case. Western Civilization wouldn't exist without the crazy ideas to sail off the edge of the world, to set up a new country with no money and no experience, to claim that all people are created equal when some of them are clearly Madonna, and other crazy notions. Forget "democracy" or "capitalism" or "swine flu vaccines at Walgreens:" Western Civilization is founded on craziness.

So. Villains and crazy: We love us some villains, and they love them some crazy, and that's good because it helps advance civilization, right? Right. Without crazy villains, we wouldn't have the technology to invent Death Rays (now being used by Wal-Mart against shoplifters), or single-use Rocket Submarines (commuters in Tokyo have these already) and, more importantly, without crazy villains, we would have no reason to have bank security guards to stand vigilant against constant break-ins, road construction crews to repair damage caused by RoboTanks marching on Metropolis, architects to design fancy headquarters for the superhero groups necessary to guard against these villains, or satellite TV. (It's a little known fact that the Justice League's satellite HQ, when not used for their meetings, is sublet to DirecTV.) Villains, and their crazy schemes, are propping up our economy, and thank God for that, or I'd have to get a real job.

Just like civilization wouldn't exist without crazy, villains wouldn't either. Being a villain means being crazy. It doesn't matter how you get there -- whether you were born nuts, whether you went crazy because Superboy interrupted your experiment and caused you to lose your hair, or whether you went crazy because you realized that you were a zombielike creation made up of vegetative matter found in sewers and therefore will never be with the woman you love...

...Oprah...

...er, I mean, Solomon Grundy...

(Boy, I bet everyone gets those two confused)

However you got to crazy, you've got to get there because otherwise you wouldn't be a villain. Supersmart or superstrong sane people do not move to tropical islands and create MegaViruses. They do not launch rockets at the moon (unless they work for NASA and have some old rockets lying around and need to distract people from the constant failures by making up some story about ice on the moon). Sane SuperPeople with SuperAbilities go play for the Yankees and make $150 million dollars a second, or they make a bunch of hit movies and then become Scientologists and brainwash a wife, or they star as "Arnold" on the hit 80's TV series Diff'rent Strokes, but they do not try to take over the world or kill people. You've got to be nuts to do that.

And you've got to be really nuts to be a great villain. Because crazy, like cool, is not a straight line; it's a circle. Crazy starts out just to the side of sane, but then, the crazier it gets, the further it gets from sanity.. but then, just as the great scientists in Modest Mouse pointed out will happen with the universe, crazy comes back around until it becomes so crazy it's sane.

The Best Worst Villain, EVER, then, will be someone who's crazy -- because he's a villain -- but who is so crazy, so demented, so far beyond the pale that he's almost sane again. His schemes will be so crazy they just might work. Because regular crazy never works -- Al Davis' Raiders never win anything that counts. Hardees' doesn't sell any good food.

But super-duper-mega crazy? That stuff works: Samuel L. Jackson's entire career is premised on it. So is Rachael Ray's. Internal Combustion Engines: super-duper crazy -- "let's power our transportation via a series of explosions!" is the thought behind that.

So our list of remaining Villain Candidates can be pared down by eliminating the crazy-but-not-too crazy. The current list:

Solomon Grundy (New addition!)
Token Female: Reverse Wonder Woman.
The Lizard.
Marvin The Martian
Doctor Octopus
Mangog
Lex Luthor
The Joker
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Voldemort
Ivan Drago (suggested by The Boy)
Galactus
The Anti-Monitor
Gorilla Grodd.
[SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE OR READ THE COMIC BOOK THIS'LL KIND OF WRECK IT FOR YOU] Ozymandias, from The Watchmen.

From that list, we can cut out:

The T-1000 -- because he's a robot, and robots by definition aren't crazy. They have logic circuits, as everyone knows, and if the logic circuits break down we know it because they just walk in circles.
"The Rake," from the Decemberists song of the same name, and the guy from Country Death Song by The Violent Femmes. Both these guys killed their kids, and while that's crazy and despicable, it's also commonplace and not too smart.

The Red Baron (both the real one and the one from the Peanuts comic): He was a flying Ace. An evil one, but crazy people don't fly airplanes well; they invent wings and use those.

All the old guys who ran all the haunted amusement parks in all the episodes of Scooby-Doo, and Rob Lowe in Wayne's World. Rob Lowe liked Tia Carrere, which is proof of sanity. True, he lost to a bunch of idiots from Illinois, but that's not insane, it's just lame. The old guys? If I recall correctly, the haunted amusement parks were always covers for a secret mining operation to find the lost gold that Grandma had buried there years before. That's a crazy level of effort to go to, but in the end, it's still a desire for gold, which isn't crazy enough. Not with the price of gold these days. (More proof that villains are crazy? Sane people don't invent a haunted amusement park to get gold; they invent a company that tells people to mail their gold in and then trust they'll get money back.)

Mr Norrell (who I think turned out to kind of be a villain?): I'm actually cutting him out because in retrospect I don't think he's a villain.

Darth Vader: Was he crazy? I don't think so. Darth was the one who didn't believe in giant battle stations, remember, but trusted ancient religions, which would've been a really smart move had the Emperor listened to him. Darth headed off Han Solo in Bespin, and always sent in the stormtroopers first. I think Darth Vader wasn't hardly crazy at all; he had only the minimal level of craziness required to make him a villain -- probably brought on by being called Annie all the time -- and further proof of his minimal craziness is that it took almost nothing to turn him good again; Luke just threw him a Father's Day card or something.

Saddam Hussein and The Mariner (from The Mariner's Revenge Song by The Decemberists): I think we agree, just not crazy enough.

Toth (from Raiders of the Lost Ark:) He was nuts -- he used his scarred hand to recreate that one thing to find the Lost Ark -- but, in the end, was just a regular kind of nut.

The remaining candidates,

Solomon Grundy (New addition!) Token Female: Reverse Wonder Woman. The Lizard. Marvin The Martian Doctor Octopus Mangog Lex Luthor The Joker Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Voldemort Ivan Drago (suggested by The Boy) Galactus The Anti-Monitor Gorilla Grodd. [SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE OR READ THE COMIC BOOK THIS'LL KIND OF WRECK IT FOR YOU] Ozymandias, from The Watchmen,

I think we can agree, all display the requisite minimal level of supercraziness to keep on going. Whether they want to destroy everything that ever existed, or exist as a piece of skull grafted onto the Dark Arts' teacher's turban, or use their mental powers as the King of Gorillas solely to fight Wonder Woman and The Flash, these villains are nuts, but really, really nuts -- they invent healing potions, they break their soul into pieces to make themselves immortal, they alone know the power of the Umonium P-38 Explosive Space Modulator and intend to use it to get a better view of the planets by destroying those worlds that are in their way... they're nuts, and nuts enough to almost be sane.
Next up -- I'll cut the list down further by looking at what our Modern Philosopher Queen, Heidi Montag, suggested is the key to existence: Ambition!

The sun and I have never been close.

2009-11-12T07:25:00.004-07:00

Sunblocks today are better than ever at blocking the sun and improving your skin at the same time, which is a good thing, because I think the sun is getting a little more powerful each day, and my skin is certainly getting a little older each day. Older and more wrinkly and damaged and leathery and... well, ecch.

That, combined with the sun's trying to get better at what it does, makes it all the more important to have good sunblock, sunblock that'll protect you even on the sun's most vicious days, days when the sun has gotten up on the wrong side of the bed and is just trying to beat you senseless with UV rays.

I'm a newcomer to this sunblock thing; for years and years I didn't pay attention to things like "protecting my skin from harmful radiation," 'cause that's for suckers. But I paid the price for it, in sunburns and painful summer days and now in prematurely aged skin. I'm only 40, but my skin is (as a best estimate) 300-years-old by now.

I've learned my lesson, though, and it's not too late to fight back (or at least prevent further damage), and I've started using the Sunblock reviews at BestSunBlock.com to help me in my battle against the sun. They post reviews there about which sunblocks worked under which conditions, and whether the stuff they use to help fight wrinkles and restore skin works, too, so I don't have to just pick something at random from the drugstore -- I can get the information I need to get the help I need.

And I need help, and so do you -- don't kid yourself. Even now, with winter coming on, it's still important to keep up to speed on what sunblocks work and what don't. Maybe you have a vacation coming, someplace sunny and warm (with an emphasis on the sunny). Or maybe you like to get outdoors in the winter, on a clear-skied, cold day where the sun can hit your frost-bitten cheeks mercilessly -- but either way you need sunblock year round, so you'll need information on which are best, year round.

The First Best Song By Alli Millstein: "Our Love Is Underground."

2009-11-10T12:53:00.004-07:00

So you thought maybe I was just making it up when I claimed that I'd been contacted by a world-famous singer-songwriter who reads my blog?

Well, you were wrong. Because unlike the many other delusions of grandeur with which I fill my day and which I use to distract me from things like "work" and "driving safely," this delusion of grandeur is actually true. It's a truelusion of grandeur.

Or something. I'm not really into vocabulary.

Anyway, today is the First Best Song by Alli Millstein, today's song being "Our Love Is Underground." Here's my video for it:

You can listen to the song while you read what Alli has to say. I asked Alli to pass along how she came up with the idea for the song, and she said:

When I wrote Our Love Is Underground I actually wrote the lyrics first, before coming up with a melody. For me, that happens once in a while. Sometimes I have a creative surge lyrically and end up writing five or six sets of lyrics, and then just saving them. Whenever I have writers block I can go into that bank of lyrics and try and pull something out that I haven't used.

When I wrote the song, I was thinking about New York, and it seemed like an interesting idea to me about falling through the cracks in the sidewalk in the city. The song sort of grew from that idea. Like many of the songs written on the EP, I was going through a time of transition when the song was written, and the song reflects my struggle with that transition.

I understand what Alli means. I once wrote a song called Eatin' Gummi Bears, which reflected my struggle with eating gummi bears. As I recall, I didn't like eatin' gummi bears. That experience gave me the insight to ask Alli about any changes the lyrics might have gone through and the creative process she took in writing Our Love Is Underground. She said:

The lyrics for the song have stayed the same since the day I wrote them, although I did consider revising them at different times. I decided against a revision, considering that what I have works, why mess with it?

The melody to the song, and the chord changes came to me after I wrote the lyrics. I remember I had these lyrics, and I was just playing around one day and found a chord progression and melody that fit with the words. I had a recording I did of this song about 6 months after I wrote it, but the recording that's on the EP is a much more polished, professional recording.

The recording is very polished and professional, and quite lovely. (Can I say lovely? I mean, it sounds kind of girly as I type it, but that's really the word that fits best. Whatever. I'm secure in my masculinity, and it's a lovely song.)

I also asked Alli to pass along anything else she'd like to add about the song, like stories about performing it live, maybe. She said:

Our Love Is Underground is a particular difficult song for me to perform live given the vocal part. If the sound isn't set up well, or I'm not concentrating, things can turn sour quickly. Luckily, I think I've worked out those kinks by now, and it finds it way into my set now and again.

The song has a long title, so I think sometimes I forget to announce the name. I at one point considered naming the EP "Our Love Is Underground," but decided not to because I was worried people would think it was a love-song album, which it's not.

It certainly is not a love song album, as we'll see here in the Month of Alli Millstein. Look for another song of hers coming soon. In the meantime:

Click here for Alli's Myspace page,

Click here for Alli's Facebook page,

And click here to buy the EP "Human Nature" on Amazon.

Skin care you can trust (unlike my office coffee)

2009-11-10T08:07:00.002-07:00

The war on acne has two powerful new weapons:

1. My office coffee, which is so godawful that it actually makes me cry. I'm serious. My coffee at home is made in a $10 coffee maker from Wal-Mart, and I buy the absolute cheapest coffee on the market, and I love it. At the office, the Office People Who Buy Coffee have fancy coffee makers and fancy coffee and they put all this time and effort into it, and it's so bitter it hurts my soul. I just poured myself a cup and I took a sip and, honestly, I thought I was going to barf, and

2. Dr. Dermal's new revolutionary acne treatment.

Of the two, I'd recommend the latter for dealing with your acne. My office coffee might help, in the sense that it will destroy your life, starting with your taste buds, but it's not one of the best acne products on the market, like Dr. Dermal's stuff is.

Dr. Dermal's innovative skincare treatment products, available now at their online store, are the only products with ac.net, a patented ingredient developed in France that fights all four acne-causing agents (oily skin, skin shedding, bacteria, and inflammation) and Dr. Dermal's products do it with no side effects.

This new acne range of products is available via free shipping for a limited time only, so ordering now can save over $300-- and you'll get getting the best dermatologist endorsed, holistic skin care product available.

This product has never been tested on animals (they know it's side effect free because it's been human-tested) so you don't have to worry about it being cruel -- and you don't have to worry about it working, because those tests have proven it effective.

So don't live with acne any longer, and don't go through the horror of drinking my office coffee, either -- just get Dr. Dermal's new skin care products and get on with your perfect-skin life.

As for me, I'll be sobbing into my coffee mug.

Grocery Shopping In An Alternate Universe: A Parable

2009-11-06T09:06:00.003-07:00

This post appeared first on Thinking The Lions. I know it doesn't quite fit here, but it's important enough that I'm putting it on all my blogs today.

I was one of the lucky ones, I suppose.

I was able to get hired by an employer who offered a great grocery plan. And not only that, but the plan covered my family, which meant that only a few months after getting hired, we'd be able to get to the grocery store almost any time we wanted and buy food.

I liked the plan. Even though I had to pay 15% of my income each month towards groceries (whether or not I bought any), my employer was paying 85% of the cost (whether or not I bought groceries), so I could accept that part of my pay was being taken towards necessities I might never use. It even kind of made sense to me that my employer covered 85% of the cost of the Grocery Plan for the higher-ups who made 2 or 3 or 4 times what I made. Sure, they could afford to pay more for their groceries -- and if they did so, it would reduce my own costs-- and, yeah, 15% of my just-about-minimum wage earnings really kind of hurt a lot more than if I was paying, say, 15% of $200,000 like the guys at the top, but it seemed fair, to me, that we all paid the same exact percentage. Besides, whenever it came up in my mind, I just reminded myself to look only at the percentages, not the actual dollars.

In just three short months, I was covered under the Grocery Plan and it was about time, too, as the kids and my wife were really hungry. We'd put off going to the grocery store until we were covered, but not by choice: Without a Grocery Plan, we couldn't find a grocery store that would let us in unless we paid in advance for everything we wanted.

"But I don't know what I want, yet," I told one lady on the phone. "I don't even know what you offer or what it costs. How can I pay for it in advance?"

She was apologetic and said that's just the way it works.

So anyway, when my Grocery Plan went into effect, I called up and got pre-approval to go to one of the three grocery stores that were kind of near us. The one I really wanted to go to, just down the street, wasn't in the plan, but I could deal with that. I don't mind driving a little, especially because it's important to control the costs of groceries by using only pre-approved stores.

My wife asked "What if we just need a gallon of milk in a hurry? Can't we just run to the Store nearby?" So I asked the insurance lady that, and she said that we could, in an emergency, but that they might not pay for the groceries if we did that and we should try to call them first. Anyway, my wife's just a worrywart. We can plan ahead and never need to run out and get milk at the last minute.

Once I had the pre-approval, I drove to the grocery store, but they told me I needed an appointment to shop. When I asked how long it would be until I could get an appointment, they said they could get me in during the afternoon on Tuesday, three weeks from now.

I wasn't starving, yet, but the kids were pretty hungry. The littlest one, Mr Bunches, hadn't eaten since I lost my last job and I was worried that maybe it was starting to affect him.

"Isn't there any way I could get some groceries today?" I asked the lady at the desk. She said that there was an Urgent Groceries across town, if I felt it was that important.

I pictured Mr Bunches and the way he'd stared longingly at the refrigerator, and decided this was pretty urgent. Not a Grocery Emergency or anything, but pretty Urgent. And besides, even if it wasn't terribly urgent, what other choice did I have? I might have been able to wait a day or two, but three weeks?

So I drove to the Urgent Groceries and went inside. The lady at the front desk asked to see my card and asked what I was there for.

"I need some groceries, today," I said. "I've got some little kids, and a wife, at home, and they haven't eaten in a long time." She looked skeptical, like I didn't belong there, and I wanted to say "Hey, it's your fault that I couldn't get into the regular grocery store," but I didn't, because I didn't want to get them mad at me.

She handed me some forms and said that there was a $100 copay, which really surprised me. "I already pay a premium, through my work," I said. "It's 15% of my income, the same as everyone else's in the business, even the higher-ups -- they make, like 3 times what I do but we all pay the same share, so that's fair, right?"

She said that the co-pay is in addition to the premium, and said I should look at my Grocery Card. I'd never looked at it before -- that whole stack of Grocery Policy Papers and things they'd given me was pretty confusing, and I hadn't read it anyway because it was the only policy my boss offered, so it didn't matter whether I liked it or not, I had to take it or leave it. I didn't really like that I'd pay more every time I went to the Store, but I figured if it became a problem I'd limit my trips, go only when I absolutely had to.

The card said that the copay was $50, and I showed it to her. "That's for regular shopping, not Urgent Groceries," she said. "Urgent Groceries are double."

"I have to pay more if it's more urgent?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, and she didn't sound sympathetic.

"But it's not even my fault I'm here. I tried to go to the regular Grocery Store and they didn't let me in."

"Sorry," she said, but she didn't sound sorry. I had to write out a check for this "copay" and hope that they wouldn't cash it before I got paid on Friday, but what could I do? I needed groceries, and I didn't want to go home and see Sweetie and Mr F and The Boy staring at me.

Then she gave me some forms and said to check in with the receptionist, which was weird because I thought that's what I'd done. But I began filling out the forms and telling them my grocery history, as best as I could. I'd never had Groceries before, so I wasn't really sure how to answer some of the questions.

I sat in the waiting room for about 50 minutes, but I didn't mind because I knew I probably shouldn't have been there. I mean, when I looked at the other Urgent Grocery shoppers waiting their turn, they all looked worse than me. One guy kept smacking his lips and saying "Hamburgers!" over and over, and his eyes looked glazed. There was a little girl there who looked really thin and pale, like she'd never eaten. I thought she should have gone to the Emergency Groceries, or maybe even a Fast Food Place. I didn't mind that she got to go shopping ahead of me.

There were a couple other people like me, though, who didn't seem to really be that needy. I bet they'd done what I did: Just realized that they kind of needed to get some Groceries, and couldn't wait 3 weeks.

While I was sitting there, I couldn't help but wonder why it was that the Regular Grocery Stores weren't open past 5 p.m., or before 9 a.m., or even on the weekends. It might make it easier if they were open longer, or had different shifts. I mean, for regular grocery shopping, I'd have to take time off of work just to go get some potato chips, and if I couldn't do that, I'd always be at the Urgent Grocery Store, since that was the only one open past 5 or on weekends.

Oh, well, I figured. They know what they're doing. It's not up to me to second guess how the grocery business is run.

When they finally called my name, I stopped reading the old Shoppers' Guide they had in the waiting room and got up with my list in hand. I was actually kind of excited: I'd waited so long for this and now I was finally going to get some Groceries!

I took the list Sweetie had made and moved into the store. The first thing I needed was the Bakery, to get some Bread. I didn't see a sign for that, and I asked the clerk up front.

"We don't have a Bakery," she said. "This is an Urgent Grocery, so you can't get everything you need here. If you really need something that's not here, we can refer you. The Emergency Grocery has everything, downtown."

I decided that I didn't need Bread so much, and moved into the Cereal aisle. The selection was pretty slim there, too -- just the bare necessities, but that's what you get, I figured, when you have to go to the Grocery Store after hours. I walked around that aisle for a while trying to figure out which one to get, but I'd never had any cereal before and couldn't tell whether any of them was better than the other, or which one I might need, let alone which one a 3-year-old or my wife might need.

There was a Cereal Assistant, though, and I asked her whether she would recommend one or the other Cereals in the aisle. "I can't really recommend anything," she said. "I'm here to take information from you and pass it on to the Cereal Specialist. Then he and I will talk it over and he'll tell you what you need."

So I answered her questions ("I like sweetened cereal for the boys," I said, and "Maybe something with raisins.") She put it all into her computer, and nodded, and then said she'd be back in a while or the Cereal Specialist would come in in a bit.

After about 10 minutes, the Cereal Specialist came in. He asked me the same questions the Cereal Assistant had, looked at my stomach and my cart (which was still empty) and said "You need corn flakes."

"How much are they?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said, "But I'm sure your insurance will cover it. You should talk to them about it." He handed me a box of corn flakes and then patted my shoulder and said to make a follow-up appointment about a week before the box was empty.

I put the cornflakes in the cart and walked past all the other cereals, wondering why I had corn flakes instead of one of those other ones. It kind of bugged me, to tell you the truth. I'm not the smartest guy about these things, I know, but I saw a Dateline report a couple months ago where they were talking about how corn flakes don't really do that much to curb hunger, and they're not all that nutritious or tasty. I didn't watch the whole thing ('cause... boring), but I got enough to know that maybe I'd never try corn flakes.

Still, he was the Cereal Specialist, and nobody's ever really sure about these things, right?

I did know I needed milk for the corn flakes, and I headed over to the Dairy Aisle. All the milk was behind a counter, where a lady stood in a white coat. I wondered if she was a doctor, and asked her.

"No, I'm the Milk-A-Cist," she said.

"Oh," I said. "I need some milk for these corn flakes. We're going to eat tonight!"

"Did you call your prescription in ahead of time?" she asked.

"Prescription?" I asked.

"I can't sell you most milks without a prescription from the Specialist," she said. "If you've called it in, it'll probably be ready. Otherwise, you might have to wait."

"I've been here a pretty long time already," I said, "And I didn't ask about a prescription in the Cereal Aisle. Isn't there anything you can sell me?"

"We've got some over-the-counter stuff that might work, almost as good," the Milk-A-Cist said.

"Let me have some of that," I said, and she pulled out a bottle of water.

Water with cereal? I wasn't sure about that, but, I'm not Grocery Expert. I didn't go to Grocery School for 8 years or anything, so how should I know what's best? Besides, what else could I do?

"Will that work with cereal?" I asked her.

"I'm not supposed to give advice like that," she said, "But the label says it should be okay. Do you have any allergies to water?"

But I didn't know. I'd never been to the Groceries before. Then I had another thought: "Is that okay for 3-year-olds?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No, you'll need Childrens' Water for them." So she got some of that, too, and then rang it up. I showed her my insurance card, but she shook her head.

"No," she said. "Prescription Milk would be covered, mostly, but for over-the-counter things, you've got to pay cash."

That didn't make any sense to me at all, but, again, who am I to say what makes sense in these things and what doesn't? All these complexities are probably just lost on me. They must be, since the other day a guy on the radio said that we have the Greatest Grocery System In The World. So the weird stuff must work, and I'm not questioning it.

I paid for the waters and then was going to head out, but I looked down and thought Cereal and water doesn't seem like much of a meal, so I decided to try and get something a little more hearty. I headed back to the Meat Department to look for some chicken or something.

But at the Meat Department, there was another clerk. She said "Do you have an appointment?"

"No," I said, "But I didn't think I needed one. This is the Urgent Groceries, right?"

She shook her head. "The Meat Department is a specialist. We can't see you unless you have a referral."

"What's that?" I asked. She sighed and said:

"You have to go back to your regular Grocery Person and get them to refer you to us. Then you call us and make an appointment, and we'll help you with your Meat needs."

"I don't have a regular Grocery Person," I said. "I've only just gotten on a Grocery Plan."

"You should call your plan administrator and ask them to assign you a regular Grocery Person," she said. She seemed pretty nice and added "I'd like to help you, but that's all I can do."

I was really kind of upset. I didn't take it out on her, or the Meat Department, though. It was probably a law, I figured -- probably some stupid government law that was keeping them from helping me right now. Those God damn regulations! It's always like that: every time the government does anything they screw it up. I said that to her:

"Stupid Congress, right?" I nodded. She shook her head, though, and said:

"No, sir, it's just the Policy requirements."

I didn't know what that meant, though. So I thanked her and then said:

"Do you know who my Plan Administrator is?"

She said it was probably in my Policy, whatever that is. There was a 1-800 number on the back of my card, though, so I used my cell phone to call it while I walked back towards the front of the store. I couldn't get a hold of anyone, though. They said to call back during "normal business hours." That made sense: I worked during the day, so they must, too. I'd try to call the next day, I figured, on my lunch break.

Luckily for me, I didn't have to check out at all -- my Grocery Plan was going to pay for EVERYTHING. Except the water, of course. I showed my cereal to the cashier as I went out and she motioned to me.

"We need your address," she said.

"Why?" I asked.

"To send your statement of benefits," she said.

Whatever that is. I gave it to her. She also made me make a follow-up appointment. "Will I get more groceries that day?" I asked. She shook her head and said "It's just to see how these groceries went." I wondered if I'd have to pay a co-pay for that, too, but I figured I could just cancel it. She said I couldn't just call in and talk to them, either, and I'm not going to miss a day of work if the Groceries are fine.

I headed on home, where we feasted on corn flakes and cereal. The Boy complained about the dinner, saying that his friend's dad, when he got hungry, had gotten to go to a fancy restaurant and have a three-course meal.

"Well, what Grocery Plan does he have?" I asked. The Boy didn't know what a Grocery Plan was, so I explained to him that everyone has to have a Grocery Plan, that there's companies out there that will "cover" your Groceries, so that when you get hungry, you go to the Store and they tell you what groceries to get, and then they pay for him.

"Why do they do that?" The Boy asked.

"Because it makes sense," I said. "Nobody knows in advance how much their groceries are going to be, and when they'll need them..." but he interrupted.

"But you know you will need them, right?"

"Maybe," I said. "Not everyone needs groceries."

He shook his head. I could see he didn't get it, and he said "Everyone will need groceries some time or other." I didn't know how else to explain it to him, so I said

"Well, if they need groceries, they get on a Grocery Plan through work and then they'll get them."

"Can't they just buy a Grocery Plan?" The Boy asked. Sweetie and I laughed at that.

"Sure," I said. " I suppose they could just call a Grocery Plan Company and sign up but that'd cost them a bundle. It's better to get a job and have their boss give it to them."

The Boy still looked a little confused and said "But doesn't everyone need to eat? Shouldn't everyone be entitled to at least get some groceries, somehow?"

You've got to expect that from kids: They think that everything's a right, that things like groceries are just guaranteed to be given to you and that somehow, society can guarantee that. I tried to set him straight:

"Everyone can get groceries, if they want, Boy," I said. "But you can't just go around handing them out. We're not Russia, you know. That kind of thing doesn't work. Besides, imagine if the government were to take over the grocery industry!" Sweetie laughed at that, too.

"The government does pretty good with some things," The Boy said. He's probably got teachers that fill his head with that crap.

"Like what?" I challenged him.

"They deliver the mail all over the country, pretty quick, and it's cheap, too. You can mail a letter for less than fifty cents and it'll go from Maine to Alaska in a day or two."

I didn't even know where to begin with that one. "The Post Office?" I said. "That's your idea of government efficiency? Have you ever seen the lines at the Post Office? You wait forever just to get stamps, and the government has to pay the Post Office just to keep it in business." He was being ridiculous. I mean, yeah, I had to wait to get into the Urgent Groceries, but that was different because it wasn't the regular grocery store, which I could have gone right into if I'd had an appointment, plus, once I was in the Urgent Groceries, I'd hardly waited at all.

"Why do they do that?" The Boy asked. "Why do they pay to keep the Post Office running?"

I'd never thought of that, but I gave him an answer: "I guess," I said, "It's because it's important to the government, and people, that everyone gets to mail a letter or send a package and keep in communication with people."

"Aren't Groceries as important as mail?" The Boy asked.

"No," I said, "It's not that. Everyone agrees Groceries are important, but if the Government got into the Grocery business, it would put the private Grocery Companies out of business, and plus, nobody would want to go into the Grocery Store end of it." Something about that bugged me -- I kept thinking of Federal Express and UPS and the Post Office, for some reason, but I shrugged it aside. "We've got the Best Grocery System In the World, and you don't want to mess with that, right?" I figured if the guy on the radio swayed me, it'd sway The Boy.

That was the end of that, more or less. I was going to, the next day, call ahead and make a Grocery Appointment so I could go to the regular store in three weeks, since the follow-up appointment wasn't for new Groceries, but I was pretty busy and, anyway, I had groceries now, so I didn't need an appointment for three weeks away. I didn't know how long the corn flakes would last, but I guessed that if I couldn't get in when they ran out, I'd just go to the Urgent Groceries again.

The only real shocker was that about 3 months later, we got this thing in the mail. We got, like, four things, actually, all these papers that said This Is Not A Bill and had all kinds of figures and numbers on them. I couldn't figure them out -- I've been to college, but these were confusing -- but I didn't need to figure them out. Since they said This Is Not A Bill, I didn't need to do anything so I just threw them away.

The fourth one, though, was a bill, and it was for $4,000. Four thousand bucks! And they said it had to be paid within 30 days or they might send me to a collection agency.

I didn't have four grand sitting around, and anyway, I had a Grocery Plan, so this had to be a mistake. I finally got a chance to call the number on the bill and talk to the lady -- I had to go outside at work to do it because I'm not supposed to make personal phone calls -- and I said that it had to be a mistake because I had a Plan and because it was so expensive.

"I didn't even know how much those corn flakes cost!" I said, and she said that she was sorry about that but there was nothing she could do.

"But the Cereal Specialist said I needed those corn flakes and didn't give me a choice," I said. She didn't have any answer for that one, so I said "Well, anyway, it must be a mistake because I've got a Plan, so I don't have to pay for corn flakes."

"It's not a mistake, sir," she said. "You're not covered for those benefits you received," and when I asked what that meant, she said that because I was a new enrollee, I wasn't covered for Hunger, as that was something she said was a "pre-existing condition."

"You mean," I said, "If I was hungry when I went shopping, you wouldn't pay for it, but if I wasn't hungry, then you would?"

"Exactly," she said. She explained that helped keep their costs down so that I could afford the Grocery Plan.

I tried to make a payment plan, but she said they didn't do that, and that I'd have to pay in full or they might garnish my wages. I talked to a guy I know about this, and he said that maybe a lawyer could help me, but all the lawyers I talked to just said that I could file bankruptcy, and I don't want to do that if I don't have to. I've been just sending them $20 here and there, whenever we have a little extra money, and hoping that they don't sue me or something. I can't keep that up for long, though, since my boss said that they're going to have to start charging the employees more for Grocery Plans to make ends meet at the business. So they're going to raise the contribution to 25%, which seems fair, I guess because with the recession and all, everyone's cutting back and I don't want to get laid off, so paying more seems like a good idea if it keeps me in my job. We couldn't ask many questions, since he told us about it on a conference call; he's on vacation right now, someplace warm like Guatamala or something, but he said even he's going to pay 25% of his wages, so it's not like I'm the only one sacrificing.

_____________________________________________________________

You wouldn't put up with that kind of thing for groceries... so why put up with it for health care?

Tomorrow, or soon, the House of Representatives is going to vote on the health care reform bill. This bill is not everything that's needed -- but it's a good step along the way.

Health care is a basic right that America should guarantee to everyone, and you can help. Contact your representative and tell him or her that you want Universal Health Care. See the links below.

Then contact the White House, and remind President Obama that he said this:

'We can have universal health care by the end of the next president's first term, by the end of my first term,'' Obama said, bringing 600 union workers to their feet during a question-and-answer session with members of AFL-CIO affiliated unions...

And tell him to quit mucking around and get Health Care Reform passed!

To contact your legislator, click this link and follow the simple directions.

To contact the White House, click this link and fill in the form.

WE INTERRUPT THE VILLAINY FOR AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT THAT WILL AFFECT YOUR VERY EXISTENCE AND SHAKE YOU TO YOUR CORE.

2009-11-04T08:01:00.007-07:00

Boy, I hope I'm not overselling that in any way. Nah, couldn't be. This is huge. So huge that it deserves more than simply italicizing that word. This is HUGE.

Still not enough.

This is HUGE!

Hmm. Let's try this:

This...

IS...

Yeah. That's better. I'd forgotten how fun it is to draw in huge block letters with crayon-like instruments. You don't get to do a lot of that as a lawyer. (Unless you work in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals! Ha! Ha!)

Oh, God, I'm sorry. I forgot that "lawyer humor" is not funny to the rest of the world. And also that lawyer humor is not funny.

Anyway, I'm getting distracted from the

News.

The Huge News is this:

Singer/Songwriter/Really Really Cool Person Alli Millstein reads my blog and has gotten in touch with me!

This is Alli Millstein:

Memorize her face because you're going to be seeing it a lot, here and in public and on MTV and VH1 and probably in movies and stuff, too, as Alli Millstein is a singer/songwriter on the rise.

Alli was originally named as the Number 4 Overall Best Quirky Chick Singer, a position she earned through her great music and because she's from Brooklyn. While it's no Staten Island, Brooklyn is pretty cool. But mostly she earned that spot through her music.

Alli then contacted me about having read that blog post, and as we all know, if there's one thing I love more than anything else, it's me, so getting in touch with me and telling me you read something from me is the number one best thing you can do in my life.

(Number two: Give me cookies.)

Alli and I have been corresponding a little and I've decided a couple of things:

1. She's now the Number One Best Quirky Chick Singer, a change I've made official by redesigning the original post, and

2. I'm going to feature Alli's music off her new EP, Human Nature, all this month on The Best Of Everything.

Here's another picture of Alli, since I can't find a picture of her Human Nature EP:

You can find out more about Alli on her MySpace page -- or on her Facebook page -- and it's all very interesting stuff, including the very interesting fact that I just found out, which is that she's maybe not from Brooklyn, after all... but is instead a native of Hartford, Connecticut.

But let's just say she's also from Brooklyn, as doing that will reassure you that my legendary research skills are still legendary, and also still skills.

And those legendary research skills, along with my other skills, will be put to the test as I am declaring November to be Alli Millstein Month on The Best Of Everything. Periodically, over the next few weeks, I will be featuring The Best Songs (And Thoughts) of Alli Millstein, with videos (maybe?) and input from Alli and more.

(I haven't forgotten about the villains. I'll finish those up this month, too. But this was important enough to interrupt.)

So say Hi to Alli:

And look forward to getting to know her better over the next Month.

Click here to see all the other Whodathunkits?!!

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Debatin' Mania!

2009-11-04T07:57:00.002-07:00

Do you like Great Debates? Do you question authority? Discuss the important topics of the day? Are you constantly challenging the assumptions and dictates of your peers and authorities around you?

If so, you're either one of my children or you are a person for whom Question Bin is intended.

Question Bin is a site that lets you ask a question about anything on your mind -- and then get debates and answers and topics going about it. Questions already up on the site range from "Where did Will Smith go to high school?" to debates like "Balloon Boy: Did anyone take physics this century?" You can get answers, you can get arguments, you can get in a lot of trouble because you've spent the first hour of your day reading and debating the topic of whether Glaring Mistakes In Movies Just Completely Ruin Them (You BET!)... it's all there at your fingertips.

If you like controversy, or like answers, check out Question Bin and get your debate on.

The Best Worst Villain, EVER (Part Three: Go It Alone.)

2009-10-26T06:41:00.012-07:00

All villains, all the time...

Read Part One Here.

Read Part Two here.

Everyone knows that one quote about the one thing about evil winning if nobody does anything, right?

I thought I knew that quote, which goes something like All that is required for evil to win is that it wins, or something, but then I was sitting here on Monday morning, having returned to "work" from my week of Adventures in Babysitting, and I couldn't remember how it went, so I did what I always do, which is Google the question.

(I'm not the only one who does that; "scientists" try -- in vain -- to prove things via Googling, too, which means that when I google things, I'm using the scientific method! And to think that Mr. Karsten, my 6th grade science teacher, thought I'd never learned anything in that class.)

In this case, I tried to search for the quote that I almost remembered, typing in "All that is required for evil," a search which will help me maintain my standing as number one on the Homeland Security watchlist.

And I was rewarded with the exact quote, exactly as I remembered it, and no doubt exactly as whoever said it actually said it. Here's the quote I got:

All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.

That was attributed, by "QuoteDB," to a guy named Edmund Burke. I didn't know anything about Edmund Burke, so I googled him, then, and got to a page of quotations by Edmund Burke. That page, I was gratified to see, had the exact same quote as the number one quote on the page. And, although it was exactly the same and there's therefore no reason for me to re-write it, I will do that, anyway. Here's the exact same Edmund Burke quote:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Wait a second... that's not the same at all!

That made me wonder -- and get sidetracked, as I so often do -- what the exact quote actually was. And where better to get good, rock-solid answers than from a bunch of anonymous people on Yahoo. After all, these are the people who correctly identified the flavor of a white jellybean as "Mystery." So you know they're authoritative. Or at least that they'd have opinions on the subject.

They didn't disappoint, either: Noted Edmund Burke-ologist "RetroRay" discoursed on the subject, saying as follows:

The eighteenth century Irish statesman, philosopher and political theorist, Edmund Burke, is credited with the remark that "evil prevails when good men do nothing". Some have said that the quote was actually "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

In either case, it means that evil will win if good people do nothing.

Of course, the vexing, unsolved problem is to determine who or what is "evil" and who or what is "good." I, for one, often fear those in the world who are sure that they are "good" and are equally sure that those who oppose them are "evil."

But that might not be the last word on the subject, because the Internet abounds with people who have opinions, most of them wrong, all of them hilarious, and a click over from Yahoo! Answers yields "WikiAnswers," where, if you search for "Who said evil will prevail when good men do nothing?" you can find this:

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)

Numerous searches by numerous people have failed to find this exact quotation in any of Burke's writings,and it is now thought to be a 20th Cen. paraphrase.

Friedrich Nietzche made the quote.

I like that: The quote is first attributed to Edmund Burke, but the author then debunks his own answer, and then, without any sources whatsoever, attributes the quote to someone else entirely.

Of course, the main reason why "[n]umerous searches" by "numerous people" (remember: Everyone proves everything by Googling it!) failed to turn up the "exact quote" might be because they weren't searching for the right quote, but let's leave that aside in the interests of accuracy. Internet-style accuracy, that is, in which the fact that someone said something makes that thing they said true.

Which is why The Best of Everything is such an authoritative reference. I say things all the time, and once said, they're true! (Of course, I stole that quote from Nietzche, who himself stole his quote about evil not from Burke, but from The Flaming Lips.)

The reason I was looking for that quote is because I wanted to use it to lead in to Part Three Of The Best Worst Villain, EVER, although in the end, I'm lucky that I got so distracted by the search for the real Quotent Quotable (as Alex Trebek might say, if he was a little drunk)(Can you picture Alex Trebek just a little drunk? I think that'd be awesome.)

I'm lucky I got distracted by the search for the real quotation because I forgot that starting an article with a quotation is among the worst of cardinal sins for writers. Starting with a quotation is superceded, in terribleosity, only by (a) starting with a dictionary definition, or (b) making your post/article/essay an "open letter" to someone famous.

(Someday, I expect I'll read an editorial that begins with a famous person's quote about the meaning of an open letter, according to Webster's, and I'll know then that the long slow death of good writing, which began with Mitch Albom, is complete.)

I was looking for that quote because it's Monday and I couldn't figure out how else to start this post (that's why it's a cardinal sin; it's lazy), in which I intend to narrow down the list of potential Best Worst Villains, EVER by weeding out those who rely too much on henchman, sidekicks, computers, or other helpers to achieve their evil. My point was going to be this:

If it's true, as The Flaming Lips and Edmund Nietzsche said, that all evil needs to win is for good men to do nothing, then why would evil villains ever need henchmen?

And that is my point, whatever the quote actually is. My point is that Villains do not need henchmen. Not great villains, anyway.

There are three kinds of villains-with-henchmen.

First is the super-competent villain whose plans are so large that he feels he must enlist help, or an army, or both, to achieve them. That type of Villain is exemplified by Dr. Impossible, in Soon I Will Be Invincible, or by Walkin' Dude from The Stand or by Hitler, from World War II.

Let's examine those archetypes a little more closely, beginning with Dr. Impossible. He's a supergenius, a mad scientist, has an IQ of 300 or something, and he's invincible and has superstrength. Using that, he tried to conquer the world 12 times (and tries for a 13th time in the book Soon I Will Be Invincible.) In the book, Dr. Impossible reveals that he robs banks and the like to get money for his superplans, and he has an island lair (as many good villains do) where there is an army, or has been an army, maybe. (I read the book a while ago, so I don't exactly remember if there is or was an army.)

Then there's Walkin' Dude, who, following the decimation of 99% of the human race, begins walking around gathering up evil humans to do battle against the good humans for the right to rule what's left of the world, with "what's left of the world" being, apparently, "Boulder, Colorado," and some grocery stores with cans of food that people can break into and steal.

And, finally, there's Hitler, who I don't mean to make light of and I'm certainly not. We all know what Hitler did, and tried to do -- and if you don't know, watch The History Channel, which presents Hitler shows 23 1/2 hours per day. (Last week, Newsweek had a chart at the back showing which television broadcasts have hit which star systems. At some point, The History Channel will hit Alpha Centauri, whose denizens will then assume that nothing happened in the 20th century other than Hitler's rise to power, kind of the way I assume, based on my US History classes, that nothing happened between 1865-1930 other than "The Gilded Age" and Upton Sinclair's writing The Jungle.)

What happened to each of those Villains, in the end? [SPOILER ALERT!, EXCEPT THAT IT'S NOT REALLY A SPOILER ALERT! FOR THE STUFF THAT HAPPENED TO HITLER, BECAUSE THAT'S HISTORY, AND YOU CAN'T 'SPOIL' HISTORY, CAN YOU?]

[SPOILER ALERT! DISCUSSION: WOULD HISTORY CLASS BE MORE FUN IF STUDENTS DIDN'T KNOW HOW THINGS TURNED OUT? IMAGINE A TEACHER SAYING: NEXT WEEK, WE'LL FIND OUT WHETHER THE UNITED STATES WON THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR OR NOT!" ]

[COMMENT ON SPOILER ALERT! DISCUSSION: YOU THINK I'M BEING FACETIOUS, BUT I BET IF YOU ASKED THREE RANDOM HIGH SCHOOLERS RIGHT NOW WHETHER THE US WON THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR, THE ANSWERS YOU'D GET WOULD BE "Um...", "Which war was that?" and "I've got pepper spray, you creepy old man."]

Each of those villains failed, and they failed, in large part, because their troops let them down. As they always will, when working for a Villain. Who goes to work for a villain, after all? People who get forced to do it, or who are villainous themselves, that's who. That's not exactly a roadmap to success: I'm going to pin all my hopes for world domination on those two guys who are only doing this because they need the antidote for the poison I gave them, and that third guy who just tried to stab me in the back, literally.

Nazis, bad people who survived a plague, people who would be willing to go work on a deserted desert island to take over the world using weather satellites: These are not the type of recruits you want, and Evil, far from prevailing, will never win out if it relies on guys who wouldn't get let in the door at a job fair. The Nazis army, in particular, won all its stunning victories before anybody knew they were fighting. If I were to attack you entirely by surprise out of the blue, a la Andy Samberg:

If I were to do that, I'd almost certainly get in a good punch, like the time I fought a guy outside a teen bar when I was 19, and I hit him first and really scored a good one on him, too.

But if you then start fighting back, I'm almost certain to lose, just as I did that fight outside the teen bar, because that guy then punched me in the side of the head while I was celebrating my first-- and only -- good punch, then he tackled me, and then he kicked me while I was down.

Which is what happened to the Nazis, once the world began fighting. They began to lose, all over the place. And that's what happens to all villains who rely on an army to take over the world. Saddam Husseins' Republican Guard -- the "much vaunted" Republican Guard -- collapsed in the face of an invasion that consisted solely of George Clooney, Marky Mark, and Ice Cube. Walkin' Dude's army fared even worse: They were wiped out by a guy called "Trashcan Man," if I remember correctly.

Worse than Competent-Villains-With-Armies are Incompetent villains with armies. This includes guys like The Emperor from The Star Wars movies (I know, I said nobody else from those movies except Darth Vader, but I'm making an exception because I make the rules here), Sauron (and Saruman) from The Lord of The Rings, and Space Invaders.

I'm not even sure how these guys raised an army in the first place, but it's very apparent they are not qualified to lead one, and that their "army" barely meets the minimum criteria for a fighting force.

Space Invaders provide the best example of incompetence at the head of an army. Whatever particular Space Invader was in charge, that person was a complete nincompoop. Line the army up and have them march slowly forward? We figured out a way to stop that kind of attack back in 1776 (although that kind of attack was then tried by the South at Gettysburg, putting whoever led the Confederacy's forces there onto the short list of villains who should ride the short bus.) Even the Galaga invaders understood you've got to try to outflank people sometimes.

Then there's The Emperor, who people equate with "evil genius" but who had the "genius" notion of using an army made of clones.

Let me make the point of how bad an idea that is by looking at corn. As far back as the 1970s, scientists and farmers became concerned about preserving the genetic diversity of crops after "southern corn leaf blight" wiped out 15% or more of crops -- something that was possible because 90% of the corn hybrids shared cell cytoplasm. They weren't clones, not exactly, but they were very, very similar, genetically, and so they were easily wiped out by one common threat.

Now, can you see where that would apply to clones? One bad genetic marker, one discovery of a susceptibility to a virus, and your entire clone army is wiped out.

The only people dumber than the Emperor were the Old Republic/Rebellion, which spent billions on lasers and spaceships and X-wings and cool monitors and droids, but which could have simply funded a small lab somewhere to find a way to throw a retrovirus into the cooling system of the Death Star, kill all the clones -- and then have the Death Star for themselves.

Then there's Sauron, who might be the dumbest Villain of all. First Sauron takes all, or almost all,of his power and puts it into a ring.

Why? Why do that? Is it because the power was itchy and you just wanted to get some relief? How is a ring safer than your own body? Was there some chance that Gollum was going to kidnap you and wear you in a cave?

But then, Sauron decides to get his ring back, and take over the world, by relying on Orcs. Twisted versions of elves. That's his big plan. Beings that have all the troubles exhibited by the usual army-in-the-service of evil (that is, conscripts or villains themselves) but who also were made of "heat and slime," or, maybe created as parodies of elves and animated by evil will. (Tolkien tried it both ways.)

So they're basically Solomon Grundy, but without the muscles-and-falling-in-love-with-heroes thing going for them.

(Note: I just decided that, having remembered him, I'm going to add Solomon Grundy to the list.)

Some villains, though, don't rely on an Army of Clones or Easily Demotivated Conscripts. Some villains rely on a small group of henchmen, or just one henchman or assistant.

Villains like Dr. Evil work with a tiny group of almost-as-evil people, while villains like Plankton mostly work alone but get advice and help from one sidekick. In Plankton's case, that's his computer wife, Karen.

Either way, it's a bad idea and proves that you're not worthy of true Super Villainry. Again, not only does Evil not need help, but the help usually brings you down or points out just how inept you are.

Dr. Evil's helpers show both. There's the Will Ferrell character, who is tragically, but comically, inept at his job, and the rest of the helpers are about the same.

Except for Scott, of course. The helpers who are competent, though, are routinely ignored. Scott's suggestion that they just shoot Austin Powers is derided as no good. Number Two, in the absence of Dr. Evil, built Virtucon into a powerful, rich corporation -- and powerful, rich corporations have a far better chance of taking over, or wrecking, the world than any number of atomic bombs. Just ask Wal-Mart, which actually has its own nuclear program, but doesn't talk about it much because they don't need it.

Captain Hook is another example of a Villain with a few henchman, and look what happened to him: He lost to a kid, after repeatedly ignoring his own men's suggestions that they simply sail off somewhere where Peter Pan didn't live, and go back to pirating. Plus, he couldn't even kill Tinkerbell. Or keep her captive.

Villains with only one henchman don't fare any better. There's not many of these around, or at least not many I can think of (and Egocentric Existentialism then proves that those Villains I can't think of don't matter), so I'll go with Plankton, again. Plankton's computer wife works against him in two ways: First, she's always making suggestions that Plankton refuses to follow, to his own detriment -- his plans go awry when he doesn't listen to her. But second, she's always suggesting that he not do his evil plans.

How is a guy, even a one-celled guy, supposed to succeed when his wife is constantly telling him he shouldn't even be trying? How is a guy supposed to, for example, create the World's Best Sandwich if his wife is always telling him that he needs to put on pants and get into the office? (Not that I'm talking about anyone in particular.)(Sweetie, that last one would have been it, and we'd be rich, because, like they say, "Build a better sandwich and the world will beat a path to your door so that Evil can prevail more easily.")(Nietzsche.)

Master Control Program, too, had a henchman: Sark. But MCP was easily bested because Sark was easily bested and Jeff Bridges was able to figure out the intricacies of video games and how to drink electronic fluid and beat him in a movie that wasn't copied by The Matrix at all, really, except that it was.

No, what's necessary for success, if you have a henchman, is that your wife/henchman back you up -- like Richard Heene's wife backed him up, making his plan to rise to fame work brilliantly. At least until she confessed -- another reason not to have henchmen. If you don't rely on a 6-year-old and your wife, you can't be ratted out by a 6-year-old and your wife. If Richard Heene had done his plan himself, we'd even now be watching his reality show on which he and Kate Gosselin travel around the world battling Death Panels.

In the end, Villains work alone, as shown by the quote I almost introduced this post with, and as shown, too, by a far better quote than that. Rather than discussing what is or is not necessary for evil to triumph, one could listen to the words of the greatest philosopher known to the 20th century:

"I'm a loner, Dottie. A Rebel."

Now, I know he wasn't talking about evil, but neither was Burke Nietzsche or whatever his name was; the quote I kind-of-led into this post with was actually about Rock-and-roll. The full, actual quote is this:

All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to keep on claiming that Coldplay is rock and roll when clearly they are not. And what's so great about Radiohead, while I'm on the subject? Aside from Anyone Can Play Guitar, they've never really had a good song, have they? And that wasn't all that great, either. I mean, it was okay, but it wasn't, like a classic...

-- Friedrich Burkington III, in Walden: Or Life In The Woods.

So, what have we learned? That key number two to being a great Villain is: Be a loner.

Working with henchmen, groups, armies... that's for second-rate dictators and soon-to-be-imprisoned madmen.

Working alone: That's the way to go.

With that, I'll pare the list down again. The remaining candidates for Best Worst Villain, EVER are:

Solomon Grundy (New addition!)
Token Female: Reverse Wonder Woman.
The Lizard.
Marvin The Martian
"The Rake," from the Decemberists song of the same name.
The Red Baron (both the real one and the one from the Peanuts comic)
All the old guys who ran all the haunted amusement parks in all the episodes of Scooby-Doo.
Doctor Octopus
Rob Lowe in Wayne's World
The T-1000.
Mangog
Mr Norrell (who I think turned out to kind of be a villain?)
Darth Vader
The Mariner (from The Mariner's Revenge Song by The Decemberists)
Lex Luthor
The Joker
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Darth Vader (and absolutely nobody else from the Star Wars univere including especially not Boba Fett, so don't nominate him.)
Toth (from Raiders of the Lost Ark)
Saddam Hussein.
The Mariner (from The Mariner's Revenge Song by The Decemberists)
Voldemort
Ivan Drago (suggested by The Boy)
Galactus
The Anti-Monitor
The guy from Country Death Song by The Violent Femmes (Just to prove that I can think of bad guys from songs by groups other than the Decemberists)
Gorilla Grodd.
[SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE OR READ THE COMIC BOOK THIS'LL KIND OF WRECK IT FOR YOU] Ozymandias, from The Watchmen.

A word about why Voldemort is still on there: Voldemort had henchmen: The Death-Eaters. But Voldemort didn't appear to ever coordinate with them, so far as I could tell. He told them, at times, what to do, but he also seemed to mostly work alone when he wasn't attached to the back of a guy's head under a turban. So I'm leaving him on here, for now.

Canada In A Nutshell (But Not Literally.)

2009-10-26T06:26:00.002-07:00

Before a few minutes ago, here is everything I knew about Canada:

1. The superhero team "Alpha Flight" was from Canada, and had that cool guy with the suit that was kind of the Canadian Flag. Canada Man, I think he was called.

2. Something about hockey.

But now, I know a lot more about Canada, like, I wish my kitchen was there so that I could get a free $32,000 kitchen makeover.

I was looking for recipes this morning because I wanted to make Sweetie something nice for her birthday, and I came across this "Maple Leaf Market" website. I didn't know what it was, but it had headings like The Butcher, The Baker, and The Pasta Maker, and I'm a sucker for rhymes, so I checked it out.

It turns out that Maple Leaf Market produces meats and baked goods and pasta, and their site has a lot of helpful tips about how to buy and cook meats and some entertainment tips (like "Host a progressive dinner") and "Great Meals In Minutes," all very helpful stuff, but all of it paling in comparison to the $32,000 kitchen giveaway.

The contest requires only that you enter your email (you can enter again each day) and if your name is drawn, you get a $32,000 kitchen makeover: that's like a new kitchen, plus. Imagine what I could do with a brand-new $32,000 kitchen: Fancy countertops to eat my cereal on, new tile floors to spill my cereal on, great new cupboards to get out more cereal... the possibilities are endless.

Unfortunately for me, I am not a Canadian, and the contest is only open to Canadians (just like Alpha Flight!).

If you are Canadian, though, click that link above and enter yourself. If you're not Canadian, then let's all get together and wait until a Canadian wins, and then go to his or her house!

The Best Worst Villain, EVER. (Part Two: Let's Lose The Chicks)

2009-10-23T13:03:00.015-06:00

I'm in the process of deciding who is The Best Worst Villain, EVER, a task I am convinced has some value to society.

Yesterday I did Part One: Naming The Villains. Today I begin the process of reducing that list of villains, a process that will continue until there is only one villain left, with that villain being The Best Worst Villain, EVER.

Before I begin narrowing down the list, though, I'm going to add to it, because I thought of a few more villains. So to the List of Villains (everything sounds more important if you capitalize it... try it yourself: President. Cure For Cancer. Pop Tarts. See what I mean?)

To the List of Villains, I will add:

Plankton (From SpongeBob SquarePants.)(See: Capitalization!)
Gorilla Grodd.
Dr. Impossible (from Soon I Will Be Invincible.)
[SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE OR READ THE COMIC BOOK THIS'LL KIND OF WRECK IT FOR YOU] Ozymandias, from The Watchmen.

Those were all I could come up with last night, even though I devoted a substantial amount of time to thinking about Villains, at least until I got distracted by Parks & Recreation.

I realized, again last night, that I had no real women villains on the list, and so I asked Sweetie if she could use her insight to name some Female Villains for me. Sweetie's insight into that is (a) she's a woman, and (b) she watches a lot of movies and TV shows that I don't, so maybe she could think of some. Sweetie thought and came up with:

"Lara Flynn Boyle's Character from Men In Black II." Which movie, I note, actually had roman numerals in it, making Men In Black and the Superbowl the only two pop culture events which take themselves so seriously they require Roman numerals to keep track of them.

Or, at least, Men In Black was one of the two; it isn't any longer, I guess, something I just found out because I couldn't remember if there had ever been a Men In Black III, one that I hadn't seen, like I didn't see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 or Spider-Man 3. I never seem to make it to the third installment of movies, which you'd think would be bad, because it would seem to leave me hanging and never knowing how things turned out, but I'm surviving all right. Don't worry about me.

They are, it seems, going to make Men In Black 3, giving up on Roman Numerals but continuing the adventures of the guys in black suits erasing people's memories and making jokes about aliens living among us, an exercise that seems kind of pointless since the first two movies, which had their charms, ultimately were so throwaway that I can't, as I sit here now, remember which scenes that I liked took place in which of the two movies, or, even, what the plots of the movies were, beyond Will Smith fights aliens who are trying to take over the planet.

Nor can anyone, even Sweetie, who's usually good about that, remember details of the two movies, details like: What was Will Smith's character's name? (It was "Ofcr. James Darrel Edwards III", then "Agent Jay," according to IMDB, which I think has it wrong because I believe the conceit of the movie was that the agents were named after letters, so it should be Agent J, but maybe I'm wrong... who cares?) Nor can anyone remember what Lara Flynn Boyle's character was called. I had to look that up, too.

It was "Serleena." Generic and nonmemorable, and also, Lara Flynn Boyle was never really very hot. They should've gotten someone else to play that part.

I then asked The Boy, who likes movies and stuff, to name some female villains and he came up with Aileen Wuornos (although he put it this way: "Charlize Theron in that one movie where she was ugly,") and then he came up with, too, "Jason's Mom in Friday the 13th," and then Carrie, (asking "Was she really a villain, though?')(To which I responded "I don't know. Did she kill someone?")

He finished up with: "How about Daryl Hannah from Kill Bill?" which made me proud of The Boy because he's finally given in and agreed with me that Kill Bill is one movie. That's a huge pet peeve of mine: People who refer to Kill Bill as two different movies. It's ONE movie. It was released in halves because it is one long movie. I've run into people time and again, though, who say "I liked Kill Bill One but not Kill Bill Two." Do you realize, you people, how idiotic that sounds? It's like saying "I liked the first half of The Godfather but not the second half," if in saying that you meant to imply that the first half of The Godfather was an entirely different movie than the second half.

The Godfather, by the way, was not a good movie. I got a little bored watching it and had no desire to see The Godfather II.

Oh! Three things that use roman numerals!

Having then exhausted our collective knowledge of Female Villains, I gave the issue some thought today and made a decision. Originally, I was going to have the first cut-off be something different, but having spent nearly 24 hours thinking about it, off and on, I had to change my plans and make the first cut-off Are you a man?

That is, if the villain is female, then the villain has absolutely zero chance of being The Best Worst Villain, EVER, as I am hereby today removing all women villains from the list.

I have to do that, because Women Villains are either nonexistent, or terrible, or both. Everyone I ask to name a Woman Villain stumbles around and then comes up with some half-baked villain that they can't even remember the name of, really, and can't remember what she did or what she was all about.

The Boy, in talking about Daryl Hannah, said "I don't remember her name in the movie." I don't, either. I remember that she had an eye patch, and was blond, but beyond that, I don't remember much about her at all, making her a useless villain.

As most women villains are. Desperate to pad out the list, I considered my options: Make up a villain? I thought about that, seriously thought about it. Reverse Wonder Woman, I figured I could make up, adding Reverse Wonder Woman to the list and figuring that nobody would figure it out because nobody really cares about female villains, and because Wonder Woman was a lame superhero, anyway, with no good villains of her own, so far as I know. She was always fighting Flash castoffs, or maybe Greek goods, or just palling around with the rest of the Superfriends. Reverse Wonder Woman, I bet, could easily have passed for a real supervillain. I could invent a backstory that ripped off Bizarro and Reverse Flash (did he run backwards? Go really slowly? DC Comics, you really have a problem with understanding opposites) and move on, eventually dropping Reverse Wonder Woman off the list at some stage of this process.

But that seemed too easy. There must, I thought, be some female villains out there, and just because I don't know about them doesn't mean they don't exist, right? (The fact that I don't know about something doesn't mean it doesn't exist; it just means it doesn't matter. I am the first-ever practitioner of Egocentric Existentialism.)

So I finally googled around to try to find some female villains, and came across a couple of sites that attempted to claim that the Woman Villains they were discussing were worth paying any attention to whatsoever.

AfterEllen.com has the Top 10 (Hottest) Female Villains, which isn't exactly feminist, I think, or is it? Is it anti-feminist to say women are hot? What if it's women saying women are hot? Is that okay? What if it's women who like women saying women are hot? Isn't that just as sexist as if a man says a woman is hot? Modern politics confuse me.

Whatever credibility that list had, though, was undermined quickly by putting Demi Moore on it. Demi Moore apparently played a female villain in those worthless and annoying Charlie's Angels movies that came out a while back. Appearing in Drew Barrymore's twice-a-decade "Chick Empowerment" flick is not to your credit; every few years, Drew Barrymore puts out a movie that promises to totally empower women and be fun and female centric and blah blah blah and every few years we have to hear how Drew Barrymore is on top of Hollywood, and then the movie bombs and we can go back to our regular lives, which hopefully include neither Drew Barrymore nor Demi Moore.

The AfterEllen list also has Meryl Streep from The Devil Wears Prada, and that, too, is an argument against counting female villains towards anything. I'm ashamed to live in a society where people like me, God-fearing, honest, hard-working (?) people know what Prada is, let alone that there was a movie about people who know what Prada is.

Then I went to something called the "OFCS Top 100 Villains List," and scoured that for female villains. Out of 100, I counted 15:

8 Wizard of Oz, The - The Wicked Witch of the West

17 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Nurse Ratched
18 Manchurian Candidate, The - Mrs. Iselin

22 Misery - Annie Wilkes

49 Double Indemnity - Phyllis Dietrichson

53 All About Eve - Eve Harrington
54 Bad Seed, The - Rhoda

57 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - The queen

63 Basic Instinct - Catherine Trammell

66 Rosemary's Baby - Minnie Castevet

69 What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? - Jane Hudson

70 101 Dalmatians - Cruella De Vil

71 Metropolis - The evil Maria -

75 Last Seduction, The - Wendy Kroy

82 Batman Returns - Catwoman

But there were also two villains who aren't even human

19 Jaws - The shark
28 Alien etc. - The alien

But, technically, the Alien in Aliens was a female, or at least one of them was, the one Sigourney Weaver battled in the suit that the makers of The Matrix would then copy for their crummy sequels.

But at least we've got some women on the list now, right? Before I remove them from the list, that is, since, now that I've got some women on the list, I'm going to strike them right back off of it, because the first criteria I've established for being The Best Worst Villain EVER is: You have to be male.

Why is that, you may ask, while also thinking "Man, Sweetie has a jerk for a husband." Here me out here, though. I've got a valid point to make, and that point is this:

Female Villains Suck.

See how that looks better with capitals?

They do, though. They're terrible, for a couple of reasons:

1. They always focus on clothes. Every female villain in every movie, book, song, television commercial, or political campaign, at some point focuses on clothes. Take Lara Flynn Boyle in Men In Black II (I've already forgotten her name!). She begins her scene in the movie by crashing her (tiny and cute) spaceship into the ground and then...

... Picking up a fashion magazine with an underwear ad in it. Would male villains do that? Okay, probably, because men will look at an underwear ad under any circumstances. I guarantee you that the guys on the Apollo 13 mission, en route to the moon while trying desperately to fix whatever it was that had gone wrong with the ship, would have stopped to pass around an underwear ad had one been in that spaceship. The only reason that thing got fixed was because the Mission Control guys didn't have access to magazines, or the Internet, so they had the ability to focus on repairs instead of "just happening to glance at that ad, Sweetie." (Also a good line: "I was looking to see if there's something you'd like.")

(That latter one does not work if you were caught at a strip club. Be warned.)

Anyway, before I get too distracted, back to the point: Chicks and clothes. It's always about the clothes. Hillary Clinton ran for president, and talked about her pantsuits along the way. Sarah Palin ran for (in her mind) Empress of a Talk Show Or Somethin' and began her run by going clothes shopping. Both women wanted to be leaders of the country, and couldn't get their minds off clothes.

Cruella De Vil's entire reason for being evil was to get clothes. Sure, she wanted to get them in an evil way, but clothes, as a motivation? Lame.

Women trying to take over anything for clothing will face competition only from other women, ultimately. Men don't care. Or notice. "Go ahead. Rule the clothing department or whatever," we'll say, when confronted with women's evil demands. And we'll say that about ten minutes later, when it finally sinks in that you're talking to us.

Oh, and before I forget: Lara Flynn Boyle's quest in Men In Black II is to get a piece of jewelry. That alone ought to be enough to disqualify all women villains from Supervillainry, but there's more:

2. Women Villains Have Feelings. When not out shopping for kicky pumps to totally rule the universe with, Women Villains get all bogged down in emotions that men villains don't bother with, like love and having babies and love. You can't be totally evil if you love things; how are you ever going to push the button on the Universe Eraser (TM The Best of Everything 2009) and create a blank-slate new start that you can mold in your own image if just before you do that, you remember Your son/That man who left you at the altar/Fatty Shnookumkins, your widdle kitty who you totawy wuv, then wipe away a tear and walk away, head drooping down over your magnificent breasts, encased in...

... whoa. Got carried away there. But how will you do it? How will you not feel the love that women have overflowing in them all the time, for everything? Sweetie cries during Cheerios commercials, and Sweetie is a woman.

Catwoman loved Batman. Black Cat loved Spider-Man. Glenn Close's character in Fatal Attraction loved Michael Douglas, for reasons lost on everyone except Catherine Zeta-Jones. Rosemary had her baby (didn't she? I've never watched the movie, but I assume she did.) Annie Wilkes loved that writer. Willow loved, I don't know, someone or other who then turned her into Dark Willow, if my hasty reading of the AfterEllen list is correct, but Dark Willow probably still loved whoever it was that had turned her into Dark Willow. Jean Gray loved Cyclops before she became the Phoenix and tried to destroy the world. (I hope that's right, too, because I never really read X-Men, and I've fallen asleep each time I try to watch the movie, leaving my only lasting impression of the X-Men being that they mispronounce Magneto. They say Mag-neet-oh, but that's wrong. It's Mag-NET-oh, just like a "magnet" is a "magnet," not a "magneet.")

Women love clothes, and women love feelings, and the two of those keep women out of the running for Best Villains, because it means they're focused on all the wrong things and can never make it to the big time.

That's the end result of women villains, if you think about: they never make it to the big time. They always focus on some little nagging detail, some project, or get hamstrung by emotions. All the women villains in all the movies, books and other media end up aiming low: they want their daughter Snow White out of the way. They want to kill some johns in Florida. They want to eat a little girl on a faraway planet, a little girl that they'd tolerated living there for years and years and years, even though they (the Mother Alien) were apparently able to not only move around but also to think intelligently, meaning that if it was really so important to kill that little girl, it would have been taken care of years before, instead of waiting for Sigourney Weaver to come along and try to rescue her, at which point Mother Alien pulled out all the stops. So it must not have been that important, or there was another motivation behind that big fight Mother Alien put up, and, as we've seen today, we know what that motivation was: Either Mother Alien loved little Newt, or Mother Alien loved what Little Newt was wearing.

In any event, I'm done with worrying about whether there are, or aren't female villains out there that I don't know about (or care about) because I'm removing them from the list of candidates. The first criteria to meet in being The Best Worst Villain EVER is that one must not be hamstrung by caring about clothes, or by caring, which means that one must be male to be in the running.

Out of deference to women, though, I will leave one woman on the list of potential candidates, a Token Female who can carry the torch (or Jimmy Choo strappy sandal, or picture of a cute puppy in a bow tie) for all of female kind.

With that, the list is hereby narrowed down to:

The Token Female: Reverse Wonder Woman.

Saddam Hussein.
The Lizard.
Sauron
Marvin The Martian
Frankenstein
"The Rake," from the Decemberists song of the same name.
The Red Baron (both the real one and the one from the Peanuts comic)
All the old guys who ran all the haunted amusement parks in all the episodes of Scooby-Doo.
The team that always plays the Harlem Globetrotters.
Doctor Octopus
Rob Lowe in Wayne's World
The T-1000.
Bowser (from Super Mario Brothers.)
Hitler
Walkin' Dude
Mangog
Klingons
Captain Hook
Mr Norrell (who I think turned out to kind of be a villain?)
Darth Vader
The Mariner (from The Mariner's Revenge Song by The Decemberists)
Lex Luthor
Master Control Program
The Joker
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Lex Luthor
Darth Vader (and absolutely nobody else from the Star Wars univere including especially not Boba Fett, so don't nominate him.)
Toth (from Raiders of the Lost Ark)
the Qotile from Yar's Revenge.
Voldemort
Ivan Drago (suggested by The Boy)
Galactus
The Anti-Monitor
The guy from Country Death Song by The Violent Femmes (Just to prove that I can think of bad guys from songs by groups other than the Decemberists)
Space Invaders.
Binky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde.Gorilla Grodd.
Dr. Impossible (from Soon I Will Be Invincible.)
[SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE OR READ THE COMIC BOOK THIS'LL KIND OF WRECK IT FOR YOU] Ozymandias, from The Watchmen.

In the interest of fairness, I need to note that Robot Chicken invented
Negative Wonder Woman and did a skit about Reverse Superheroes.
But Negative Wonder Woman would be nothing like Reverse Wonder Woman.
Reverse Wonder Woman would be made of anti-matter
and would have short blond hair and her bracelets would attract bullets, and...
...I give up. They're the same thing, essentially.
Seth Green, if you want to sue me, go ahead. But if you do, all I'm going
to do is keep pointing out that you read this blog.

Go on to part THREE: GO It Alone by clicking here.

The Best Worst Villain, EVER. (Part One: Naming The Villains.)

2009-10-22T13:55:00.009-06:00

The FBI released it's updated 10 Most Wanted Last week, and it was notable for (a) not including Richard Heene on it, and (b) for being boring.

Not to downgrade either Richard Heene -- whose true crime is giving his kids stupid names -- or the seriousness of the actions that get someone placed on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List, but I felt, as I watched the news story about the new guys on the list, a little let down, a little like, well, there should be something more to the 10 Most Wanted List than just... a bunch of murderous drug dealers.

Where, I wondered, are the REAL villains of the day? Where are the real bad guys, the bad guys that in their insane lust for power, their depraved genius plots to take over the world, kidnap the girl, destroy the sun, whatever, would show us a glimpse into the evil that lurks deep inside humanity, the evil that is so terrible that upon its rearing its ugly head, we have to rise above our own base natures and become heroes... nay, we must become SUPERHEROES, to fight such an evil.

In short, I wondered: where are the good villains?

I wonder a lot of things about a lot of things, many times wondering what's happened to the good parts of society. Because it seems like society is slowly dropping out all the good parts. We're giving up on Thanksgiving -- as I predicted, some stores are now open on Thanksgiving, making it only a matter of time until Thanksgiving takes its place among second- or even third-tier holidays, noted on a calendar and in sales at Sears, but nowhere else -- but my wondering isn't limited to holidays. I also not so long ago wondered why we don't get any new good superheroes; I recently picked up a comic book, a brand new comic book, reading a superhero comic for the first time in 20 years, and the superheroes in this comic book were the same ones that were old when I was first reading comics back in the 70s and 80s. Recently, I pointed out that we don't really have movie theme songs anymore, pointing that out because it's true, and because we're the poorer for it.

Unlike some so-called "thinkers" (Aristotle, Colonel Mustard), I don't just sit around and ponder things like some latter-day Thoreau mulling over my thumb in my ethereal blog-cabin. I do something about things, taking the time to explain how lame things can be cool, and what rock-and-roll really is, and now I'm going to do it again, via a series of posts that makes the world a better place by focusing on people who want to make the world a worse place. (Worse-r place? Why not?) By focusing on people who want to make the world a worser place.

I'm going to do that because, as I said, we need villains, and we need good villains. Wait, that's an oxymoron, and Nature Abhors An Oxymoron, as I learned in my physics class.

(Yes, I did learn that in my physics class. I think I've made pretty clear that I never actually learned, in school, what the school hoped to be teaching me, resulting in an "education" that has given me "intelligence" which can be best described as "a hodgepodge of half-truths, beliefs, and facts gleaned from comic books," although there's also a smidgen of "absolute certainty that neither dark matter nor velociraptors exist or existed."

(I haven't yet made up my mind about Fruitadens haagarorum, although the fact that the name calls to mind a cereal mascot makes me suspicious that the so-called tinosaur (really? Can we just quit being lame about this, please?) was invented as a publicity stunt for a new cereal along the Booberry line.)

(Then again, I tend to think everything is a publicity stunt, because in my mind, marketing departments no longer worry about television commercials and instead are always trying to get a pack of gum to be landed on the moon via laser shot from Shaquille O'Neal's bicep or something. The only thing I didn't immediately peg as a publicity stunt was Richard Heene's claim that his son floated away on a balloon, or didn't float away, or whatever it was he claimed. I didn't even know about that until after the fact.)

(But, just to be ahead of the curve, I'm going to go ahead and say this: The claims that Richard Heene faked Balloon Boy as a publicity stunt are themselves a publicity stunt, a meta-stunt that will have you all reeling, and I said it first.)

So we don't need good villains, we need bad villians, worse villains, worst villains. We need villains for the same reason we need rain, bitter-tasting foods, people who hate Brett Favre for no apparent reason, and the country of Uruguay: Without the bad, we don't know what's good. Or, put differently, good cannot exist in the absence of evil. Pizza can't exist without broccoli (maybe... I'm a little unclear on the science there) and Superman can't exist without Lex Luthor.

Maybe... although I think actually Superman existed before Lex Luthor did, and now that I think about it, I'm positive he did, and in fact, Superman created Lex Luthor, in that lab accident that made Lex Luthor go mad and start trying to kill Superman.

Whatever. The point still stands: Evil defines good as light defines dark. Some of humanity's greatest moments have come when good faced off against evil, and the greater the evil, the greater the good that overcame it.

We saw that when The Americans forced the Brits to leave this country, letting us found a country premised on idealism and equality and the determination to someday claim that any government intervention in anything is socialism and should be damned.

We saw that when Peyton Manning faced off against the then-undefeated Evil New England Patriots*, and failed to bring them down... only to have his greater and nicer younger brother rise up and vanquish Tom Brady and Bill Belicheat for once and for all, at least until this season started and they began scoring 300 points per quarter.

We saw it in World War I, and World War II, and we'll see it in World War III, which should be starting any time now, according to my 2012 Farmer's Almanac, which I got at a discount because for some reason it ends on December 21st. (Must have been a printer's error.)

Nowadays, though, nobody truly knows what evil is, what a villain is. Everything is Hitler this and Stalin that. People can be accused of horrible crimes and have half of Hollywood come to their defense, or their funeral. Public figures can shoot someone in the face and still hold office, but a politician who suggests that perhaps the richest country in the world shouldn't, maybe, let people die in the streets for lack of insurance is a fascist. We imprison an old man, rightly, for ripping off people in a massive Ponzi scheme, but then hand out a trillion dollars in bailout money to the Wall Street bankers and insurance executives who ripped people off in a different massive Ponzi scheme, and then we hurl insults at the President because he got awarded a prize he didn't earn, but also didn't seek.

It's time to set things straight, and teach people what evil truly is, what a villain truly is. It's time to stare, as Conor Oberst urged, to stare into "the face of every criminal strapped firmly to a chair," and not just to their faces, but into the faces of madmen and dictators and scientists who become reptiles and beings that eat planets and more, and time to show humanity what evil truly is, define it and categorize it and shape it, and in doing so, time to name The Best Worst Villain, EVER, who, when we look at him (or her, it could be a her, even though women really can't be great supervillains, just like they can't dunk, but, sure, her, okay) when we look at him... we see the dark half of ourselves that will then lose to the brighter half of ourselves.

So, over the next few posts (until I grow bored, to be honest) I'll do that, naming various villains and bad guys and supervillains and then slowly winnowing and sifting them out until only one remains, the one that embodies all of the necessary qualities it takes to be The Best Worst Villain Ever.

I will begin the way all endeavors must: with a bologna-salami-mozzarella sandwich and bowl of "Roast Beef" flavored Ramen noodles, which I had for lunch while I came up with a preliminary list of all the Villains I could think of, from real life and comic books and books and movies and songs and "various" and "whatnot."

This list is what I'll be working off of. It's not a comprehensive list of every bad guy ever, mind you. It's just the bad guys I could think of while I ate the aforementioned endeavor-beginning lunch. But if I couldn't think of a bad guy in that time, he's not a very bad guy, is he? So it's a pretty good list to start, although I retain the right to add to it. (And if you think of one I've left off, make sure you mention it.)

Here's the villains, bad guys, she-demons and others currently in the running for The Best Worst Villain Ever.

Saddam Hussein.
The Lizard.
Sauron
Marvin The Martian
Frankenstein
"The Rake," from the Decemberists song of the same name.
The Red Baron (both the real one and the one from the Peanuts comic)
All the old guys who ran all the haunted amusement parks in all the episodes of Scooby-Doo.
The team that always plays the Harlem Globetrotters.
Doctor Octopus
Rob Lowe in Wayne's World
The T-1000.
Bowser (from Super Mario Brothers.)
Hitler
Walkin' Dude
Mangog
Klingons
Captain Hook
Mr Norrell (who I think turned out to kind of be a villain?)
Darth Vader
The Mariner (from The Mariner's Revenge Song by The Decemberists)
Lex Luthor
Master Control Program
The Joker
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Lex Luthor
Darth Vader (and absolutely nobody else from the Star Wars univere including especially not Boba Fett, so don't nominate him.)
Toth (from Raiders of the Lost Ark)
the Qotile from Yar's Revenge.
Voldemort
Ivan Drago (suggested by The Boy)
Galactus
The Anti-Monitor
The guy from Country Death Song by The Violent Femmes (Just to prove that I can think of bad guys from songs by groups other than the Decemberists)
Space Invaders.
Binky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde.
Snow White's Stepmother, The Queen.

That was all I could think of for now, but I'll add to it.

I'll note that as I finished this up, I asked both Oldest and The Boy to name villains, and both said: The Joker. But I'd already thought of him.

Click here to go on to Part Two: Let's Lose The Chicks.

I'm going to forewarn you, there is absolutely no reason for this post to exist, and I do not have a point, at all. (The Best Strange Movie Roles, 2)

2009-10-19T12:55:00.006-06:00

Last year, video games took in $10.96 billion dollars for selling games to people. A recent videogame release, "Halo ODST," sold 2 million games in 24 hours, bringing in about $160 million. In one day.

That was on September 22. The weekend before that, Hollywood took in about $83,000,000 for the top 12 movies then in release, over three days. So, Halo ODST took in $6,666,666 per hour, while all of Hollywood combined took in $1,152,777.

What to make of all that?

I don't know. Why ask me? I just thought it was interesting. I only got to thinking about it because I was looking around IMDB today as I decided which Strange Movie Role I'd talk about today, and I stumbled across John Cleese's page, and saw that John Cleese played something called "The Bomb" in something called Starship Titanic. I'd never heard of either, so in lieu of doing any actual work, I "researched" what this might all be about, and found out that Starship Titanic was a video game, released in 1998 (they had video games in 1998? It seems to me like we barely had video in 1998...) that was "written" by Douglas Adams, one of my favorite writer ever.

Starship Titanic was a game based around a spaceship that crashed, and the player had to go onboard the crashed spaceship and do various things while interacting with other various things, not unlike every single video game ever, more or less, from Adventure on up to Halo: ODST.

And, am I the only person who thinks that we are far overdue for a Halo:OCD parody, in which a videogame player has to go through a ruined city invaded by aliens, and try to put things back into some semblance of order, using his laser to blast out the few remaining windows of a tenement so they all match, and then lining up the rubble in order of size? How did everyone else in the world miss that? I thought the Internet was made for snark like that. Do I have to do everything?

Anyway, reading up on Starship Titanic made me wonder about voice-overs, and more importantly, about voice-over work on video games, and whether, as I always thought, voice-over work would be a piece of cake, letting me sit at home and record some lines and then collect my checks for millions of dollars.

It sure seems that way, doesn't it? Especially for videogames, where I imagine there's not even any rehearsal or anything. Because while in a cartoon you have to have the voice match what's onscreen and have to do it in varying manners, once frightened and once mad and you have to react to other actors, too, so that your kung-fu-fighting panda doesn't appear to be lost in the world, responding with wildly varying emotions to the ... um... was Dustin Hoffman's character in Kung Fu Panda a koala? Or what was he, exactly?

And, for that matter, are there turtles in China? Because it seems like they made an effort to have the animals in Kung Fu Panda be actual animals you could find in China, which is where I assume Kung Fu originated -- and I note that I assume that because Kung Fu Panda is set in China. That may be circular logic, but it doesn't mean it's faulty circular logic.

While doing voice-overs for cartoons might approach real work, using "work" in the loosest possible sense that there is, voice-overs for video games wouldn't seem to even have that, because voice-overs for video games don't have to make sense or react to anything, really, as anyone who's ever played Madden NFL can tell you. Listening to Videogame John Madden's commentary as you play the game shows you just how detached from the game a voiceover can be, as your characters line up to go for it on 4th and 37 from their own 1 yard line, and Videogame John Madden prattles on about how the coach really is trying to establish the run, even though your last 13 plays in a row were "Hail Marys."

Then again, that's not all that different from Real Life John Madden commentary.

Reading about Starship Titanic was fascinating in the way that doing something like that, rather than the stack of work off to my left, can be fascinating, in part because the game is practically prehistoric, coming out in 1998, but was heralded for its revolutionary voice-over system in which a player could type into the game some sort of command, and then get any one of 10,000 phrases spouted back by the computer, phrases pre-recorded by various actors, including John Cleese. Supposedly, this made the whole thing very realistic, so realistic that they dubbed the system "Spookitalk," although I'm skeptical. Every time I've been told that there's a computer that can interact believably with humans, I first get sort of spooked out because I remember Hal, and then I get skeptical because I remember that this morning, I froze up my late-model, high-tech laptop computer by asking it to open two windows at once. Until computers can reliably not freak out if I triple-click on a link, I very much doubt that they can carry on "real" sounding conversations.

And computers in 1998 carrying on a "real" sounding conversation? I'm guessing that it went a lot more like a conversation with Teddy Ruxpin than a conversation with a "real" person.

But that led me to wonder: How does one become a computer game voice over actor, because if that is one of the rare jobs that like less work than being a lawyer who refuses to do any lawyering because he's too busy reading up on how to become a voice-over actor (and getting paid to do that!)(As long as my boss doesn't notice).

Which led me to discover that there are actual companies that specialize in hiring out actors to do just that: lend their voices to video games. Actors like Ashley Garrett, who says this about her voice:

Refreshing, engaging, and intelligent, the voice of Ashley Garrett is head and shoulders above the rest. Her cordial, pristine, and influential temperament involve the listener while soothing their ears. Ms. Garrett's voice shines in corporate narratives, educational recordings, and authoritative reads. Her voice is often described as friendly, but authoritative. She can be warm,sultry, smart, knowledgeable, energetic, dynamic, sarcastic, educated, genuine, sexy, strong, professional, intelligent and smooth.

I wonder if she can be all those things at once. And, I wonder, what's the difference between "sultry" and "sexy?" Or between "smart," "knowledgeable," "educated," and "intelligent?" Has anyone ever said, of someone else: "That person sounds pretty smart," to which the listener responded: "Nah, I'd say she sounds more educated than smart."

Clicking through Ashley's link then led me to Voices.com, which bills itself as the number one voice over marketplace, and which provides a blog that has invaluable information about the voice-over market, including that only 15% of the voiceover work goes to non-English speakers.

Take that, Swahili!

Voice-over work, according to Voices.com, is split about evenly among Men (37%), Women (38%), and "Both," (25%), proving that there is hope for the hermaphrodites of the world who dream of being the Voice of The Person Who Talks About The Features Of That One Car, or who dream of being The Voice That People Will Think Is Kevin Costner's, But They'll Be Wrong.

15% of all voice-over jobs go to a category called "Telephone," which kind of surprised me, because for as long as I've been alive, the telephone voices that I get have been the same person: There's the lady who tells me that the telephone I'm calling can't receive calls, there's the lady who tells me that if I want to leave a message I should wait for the tone (and I think they might be the same lady), and there's James Earl Jones, who was the voice of Bell when I lived in Washington, D.C., something I was startled to learn -- when I was an intern there, I once called up information and was startled to hear Darth Vader asking me what city I wanted to call.

The smallest category of voice-over work is cartoons, which is really surprising, because, other than the Telephone Lady, I didn't realize there was voice-over work, outside of cartoons. "Educational" voice over work takes up 11% of the market, which made me recall, again, the comedian who used to be on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update and who would do the character of "Dwight McNamara," the man who narrated all those educational filmstrips we watched in fifth grade, the kind that advanced one frame at a time.

I've searched time and again for Dwight McNamara online, and I've never found any clips. But I'm positive he existed, because I recall sitting around in study hall in 11th grade watching my friend Bob do his imitation of Dwight, and laughing. We were cool.

Videogame voiceovers make up less than 7% of voice-over work, according to Voices.com, because 7% of the work goes to "other," which includes not just games but also movie trailers, music jingles, music composition, and podcasting.

Which made me think: movie trailer voice overs would be even better work, wouldn't they?

Then again, I could never compete with the current Movie Trailer Voice Over Guy, so I stopped worrying about that and instead read up on "Caryn Clark."

"Caryn Clark" bills herself as "The Hip Chick Voice." She describes her voice as a:

hip and cool voice ... heard on VH-1, Disney, Nickelodeon, other television and radio stations and web sites across the nation and around the world. Her sound is fresh, bright, organic, wholesome, fun, young and hip, sweet, girl next door, yet can also be sexy and seductive, or down to earth, heartfelt and sincere.

Which just served to make me nervous that my voice isn't "hip and cool." So I listened to a couple of clips to try to figure out what made Caryn's voice hip and cool, while also being wholesome, fun, young, girl-next-door, sexy and seductive. I clicked on "Promo Demo" and got a spiel on "the health kick heard round the world," a Disney promo, which segued into Groomer Has It and then Go Diego Go.

That sealed the deal for me: There's no way to say the words Groomer Has It and still remain hip and cool. But Caryn then went a little further, and promoed Rock Of Love, making me feel icky.

Caryn Clark has a blog, as do many other voice over artists, people like "Paul Strikwerda," the "Ultimate European Voice." All you other Europeans, you're just pale imitations of Paul Strikwerda, who's agile enough to do English with a Dutch accent, but also to do English with an English accent, during which he sounds a little like... John Cleese. But Paul Strikwerda is not just the Ultimate European Voice, he's also... well, I'll let him tell you. From his blog:

As a former newsreader and anchor for Dutch radio, I set the standard for what is generally considered to be “Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands” or ABN. ABN is the accepted national norm for accent-free Dutch pronunciation.

Says who, Paul?

I don't really have a conclusion here. I just spent about an hour wandering through the world of voice-over actors, and I probably should go ahead and actually nominate today's MiniBest, which is...

Philip Pope, an actor from Starship Titanic, has played Jack Nicholson, Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, and Frank Sinatra.

This is Philip Pope:

While it might be amazing to have a voice that is smart and educated, or great to have a voice that totally nails the Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands, I think it's far more amazing to be able to play Jack Nicholson, Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, and Frank Sinatra, all while looking like a high school guidance counselor.

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Some dreams have to die so that others may live. So long, Handelbar!

2009-10-19T12:42:00.005-06:00

Quick: What's the single most important thing to keep in mind when interviewing for a new job or promotion?

If you said "Wear pants," then... um... well, you're right. That probably is more important than what I was going to say, which is Be well groomed. But now that I think of it, having pants on is probably pretty important, too.

I say Be well groomed is important because I am aware of the recent survey of HR people in which 84% of the people who make hiring and promotion decisions agree: well-groomed people move up faster. That's why I shave every day now, and, not coincidentally, that's why I've given up on my dream of being known as "The Guy Who Invented The Handelbar Moustache."

And, no, I didn't mispell it. I really did mean Handelbar moustace; see, I'd been trying to promote the concept of "Facial Hair Shaped Like Great Composers," with the Handelbar moustache and Schuberns and Shostagoateevichs and the like. But when I read that survey, I stopped all that, because I really want to climb up the corporate ladder, even though my own corporate ladder has only one rung above me. I really want to climb that rung.

I also, I suppose, could have used the wear pants thing, too, which makes it all the more important that I, and now you, know about the Gillette Career Advantage site, where people like me and you can go to get good, practical advice and infomration from experts like GQ Style Correspondence Brett Fahlgren, or career expert Mark Jeffries.

Anyone looking for a job, or a better job, or a promotion, should check out the Gillette Resource Center, because it's full of information that's crucial. The information comes directly from HR professionals, those people who will meet with you and interview you and pass on their impressions to their bosses -- the gatekeepers of the jobs.

With the Gillette Career Advantage, you can learn what HR people are really looking for, and use those tools to advance faster, which is especially needed given the high levels of competition out there today.

Gillette even offers a career quiz and a Hire Guide to help shape your search and get you thinking about what you really want to do, and then how to get to what you really want to do.

Click here to learn more about the Gillette Career Advantage, and click here to take advantage of the Gillette Resource Center

The Five Best Books Schools Should Have Kids Read (And The Five Crummy, So-Called Classics They Should Replace.)

2009-10-09T08:44:00.015-06:00

I am not a fan of "classic" literature. Most "classic" literature stinks, and I've read enough of it to consider myself an expert on the subject.

Of course, I consider myself an expert on every subject, but on the subject of "classic" (stinky) literature, I am an expert, because I've read so much of it, and because so much of it was... is... terrible.

Moby-Dick? Boring. The Canterbury Tales? Infathomable, and then boring, too. Anna Karenina? By the time I was halfway finished with it -- a task that seemed to take centuries -- I wanted to throw myself under a train. If that was what happened. I can't be sure, because that book was so stultifying that I scarcely remember any of it, beyond the fact that there were roughly 1,000,000 pages-long descriptions of the Russian countryside, descriptions that all boiled down to this:

Tundra.

Dostoevsky could have used a good editor.

Why do we make kids read these books? What's the point? To turn them off of reading forever and create a race of people who find Man vs. Food to be the highest form of human expression? That's the only reason I can think of for having people read a bunch of the awful, stilted, incomprehensible, unrelatable, books and poems that were routinely crammed down my throat. For every Great Expectations, a book that was not only genuinely great but which led me to read other, genuinely great Dickens books as well, there were three or four 1984s or Red Badge Of Courages.

Now, I never read that latter book; I just know that other people have read it. I might have been required to read it, at some point, but if I was, I blew that requirement off and still managed to graduate high school, college, and law school and get myself into a job where I can spend Friday mornings thinking about things like this, and about things like how I out-vested my boss, who today is wearing a sweater vest, whereas I am wearing a button-up, pinstripe, belts-in-back vest that is part of a three piece suit.

I never read The Red Badge Of Courage, but I assume it's boring and pointless because (a) the title sounds boring and pointless, and (b) the cover looks boring and pointless:

What's the deal with that cover? Is a poorly-drawn, weirdly-dimensioned image really the best way to convince someone to pick up that book? And (c) the book is by Stephen Crane, who I know best as the guy I think is Stephen Foster, but who obviously is not, because Stephen Foster is the guy who is best known for meeting the lead singer of Squirrel Nut Zippers at the Hotel Paradise:

And I'm pretty sure if "Stephen Foster" had written The Red Badge of Courage under the pen name "Stephen Crane," Squirrel Nut Zippers would have mentioned it in that song, which I assume is historically accurate, aside from the ghost part.

Is there any person, anywhere, who wanted to read The Red Badge of Courage in school? I never met anyone who wanted to read it, and I certainly didn't want to ever read it. Looking at that cover alone makes me yawn and want to punch myself in the eye so that I have an excuse not to start reading it.

So what we're doing, as a nation, is encouraging kids to associate reading with a punch in the eye, and a self-inflicted one, at that. Good job, educators.

Before I began writing this, I looked up, out of curiosity, what were the most-often-required books for college-bound students, and for high schoolers in general (there's a distinction there, about which I think that if there is a high school, nowadays, that doesn't want to consider its students college-bound, we should be closing that school and making the teachers get real jobs.)

I found there is a list of the 43 most-frequently-taught books, some strange ones stand out. A Christmas Carol? Really? We're teaching that to children? I understand that by now, A Christmas Carol is the only allowable holiday movie, but is it really a book to be taught in high schools? Does it prepare one for college adequately to read of Scrooge throwing open the sash to inquire what day it is and have the boy go get a fat goose for Christmas dinner?

There are not one, but two Greek tragedies, Antigone and Oedipus Rex, and I've read both of those and can tell you, if you haven't, don't waste your time. There's nothing about those plays that can't be summarized in a quick line or two, saving you the trouble of parsing through awkward ancient-Greek-to-modern-English translations. Guy accidentally sleeps with his mom and jabs out own eyes; lessons are learned about the weird fates we sometimes endure. There, I just saved you three weeks.

The awkward, hard-to-follow language is a highlight of many high school and college reading lists, the idea seeming to be "If it's hard to understand, they'll overlook how dull and uninspiring and unrelatable the story is." That's the only explanation I can see for including so much Shakespeare on a typical reading list. Five plays from Shakespeare make the top lists. Five. One man makes up 1/8 of the total reading list for college-bound kids. And one man whose writing, while possibly very well-received in his day, no longer resonates with us, in part because it's almost completely unintelligible to us:

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be
What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great;
Art not without ambition; but without
The illness should attend it.

I have no idea what that means, or what it's supposed to mean. Who is Cawdor? If I were to replace some words in that paragraph, would the meaning change? Ballistique thou art, and Der Eisenwolf... (those, by the way, are supervillains, whereas Glamis and Cawdor are either Scottish provinces, or Scottish castles, or Scottish laundry detergents.)

Try this one on for size:

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell;
Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,
Yet grace must still look so.

I've been trying to parse that through for about 10 minutes now, and still can't tell what it's talking about.

You see the problem here. These stories and poems are boring, and hard to understand, and pointless, and long, and dry, and dull, and they're part of the problem with school, and teachers, and kids. They're teaching kids to hate reading and teaching teachers to hate kids because the kids hate reading, and that vicious circle goes on and on until eventually, we, as a society, must suffer through Joy Behar having a television show of her own.

I'm not content to live in a world where people who appear to be doing a bad impression of Mike Myers' bad impression of Barbra Streisand get to be on TV, and so, to remedy that ongoing cultural debasement, I've come up with a list of

The Five Best Books Schools Should Have Kids Read (And The Five Crummy, So-Called Classics They Should Replace.)

Teachers, take note of this. Students, go demand that your teachers teach these books instead of those books. Parents, quit worrying about how you're going to pay for your Lexus and instead talk to your kids for a change. And school administrators, go on doing whatever useless tasks you were doing. You're a waste of money, but harmless.

Note: I've deliberately left off of this list all the books I've mentioned on this blog before. Those books are great, but I can't keep talking about them.

1. Nothing Like It In The World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869, by Stephen E. Ambrose (who is not Stephen Foster or Stephen Crane.)

Why It Should Be Read: Schoolkids have to read some nonfiction, I guess, despite the fact that our entire lives are nonfiction and reading ought to be an escape from that. If you're going to read nonfiction, it should be nonfiction that not only makes a point about what life was like during the era the book's set in, but also makes a point in a non-weenyish, non-flowery-meditative-language, way. If possible, the point should be made by focusing, as Nothing Like It In The World does, on men carving their way through mountains using, more or less, their bare hands.

Nothing Like It In The World tells, as its title suggests, the story of the building of the transcontinental railroad, which sounds boring but isn't, because Ambrose pays attention not just to details, but to the impossibility of the task that America set out to do. Building this railroad would be hard now, and we've got spaceships and lasers and robots to help us. Building a railroad across America in the 1860s seems impossible, and probably was. Except they did it.

Bonus Lesson Schoolkids Will Get From It: They'll learn that something besides the Civil War and Lincoln getting shot was happening in the 1860s. When I first read this book, it took a while to sink in that this is happening at the same time as the Civil War. Schools present a distorted view of history, making it seem as though only one thing happened at a time. First we settled America. Then we killed the Indians with smallpox. Then Ben Franklin wrote some 'witty' sayings. Then... But, as we know, at any given time, lots of important things are happening, and schoolkids could do with a dose of that knowledge.

Stupid Book It Would Replace: Walden. Published in 1854, "Walden" has, so far as I can tell, no reason for existing. It doesn't purport to demonstrate anything about "typical" life at the time, presents no new or unique thoughts, and rambles on incessantly about things which I'd be more specific about except that I stopped reading it at page 7, when Thoreau was still blathering about the grain of the wood on his log cabin. For 155 years now, students have been subjected to the transcendentalist ramblings of a rich man who took a vacation, and asked to believe that they're important. If the Internet had existed in 1854, Walden would have been a blog, and not a very good one at that.

2. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman.

Why It Should Be Read: Great literature is about telling a great story, and Neil Gaiman does that, first and foremost. But great literature isn't just here's a story, read it. It's also about creating a sprawling, interlocking world that resembles our own except for some critical little difference, and in the tiny gap created by that distance live revelations about our own lives and thoughts and beliefs, and Neil Gaiman does that, too, in spades. In his story about newly-released ex-convict Shadow going to work for the old gods in a battle against the New Gods, Gaiman presents a society in which the things people believe have power actually exist -- but as belief in them fades, they start to lose power while new gods rise up, gods who don't go by names like Odin and Thor but instead have names like Internet. And, Gaiman creates scenes of intense emotion and vivid imagery, as when Shadow has to play chess against an old god, who, if he wins, gets to hit Shadow in the head with his hammer.

Reading American Gods will help schoolkids appreciate the intricacies of a modern novel, as the story begins small and expands out to include even a murder mystery, and will help them appreciate a longer story, as the book is allowed to flower with language and themes and plot. None of this 100,000-word-or-less modern publishing stuff for Gaiman.

Bonus Lesson Schoolkids Will Get From It: Here and there, classes glance at mythology and discuss it, but they never get into what mythology really represents, and never discuss how understanding the way people used to believe in God might help analyze the way people nowadays believe in God. Remember, at some point in the past, a group of people looked at Mount Olympus and swore that their Gods really existed and were right -- and then went and killed some people to prove it. A book that compares and contrasts religious beliefs with cultural signifiers might just help sort things out a little.

Stupid Book It Would Replace: Moby-Dick. Melville's so-called "classic" tale of man and nature, obsession and madness, is as exciting as reading a statistical abstract. Nobody learns anything from a book which has, as its main reaction, "Oh, God, how long is he going to be talking about rope, now?"

3. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury.

Why It Should Be Read: Hey, remember all those great short stories you read in high school and college? No? Me, neither, and here's why: they all sucked. Short stories in high school and college classes uniformly fell into two categories: there were the "excerpts from longer works" that were hard-to-follow and meant nothing because you hadn't read the larger work, and then there were short stories by Ambrose Bierce, who's the only author ever to write a short story, at least so far as I can tell, based on my educational background. If you go by my English classes, nobody wrote a short story after An Occurence At Owl Creek Bridge, unless you count Jack London, who wrote all those stories about those cute husky dogs freezing to death or something.

Short stories, as a result, have fallen into disfavor. Everyone everywhere takes it for granted that people don't read short stories anymore, which would make James Thurber extremely sad if I knew who he was.

People don't read short stories because, like most other forms of literature, schools have ingrained in us a belief that short stories are awful and boring. But short stories would be very useful to society right now, when we don't have the time or patience to read novels all the time and when we do have the Internet, which allows for quick, cheap publication of short stories, stories which could be downloaded easily or read on your lunch break. If you can spend 15 minutes watching LOLCatz, you could also read a short story.

The Illustrated Man will cure all that. I read it when I was about 12 or 13 and I have never forgotten it. Never. Ray Bradbury expertly places out succinct narratives that are quick to read but which embed themselves in your mind. Each very quickly creates an entire world with rules unique to that realm, where the characters come alive for a short time and play out their brief episodes, and then retire offstage, while lingering in our minds. These are scary, surprising, fascinating short stories that can be read one at a time, but you'll likely read the entire book in one sitting.

Bonus Lesson Schoolkids Will Get From It: Ray Bradbury's a sci-fi writer, so they might just get interested in science, as men walk under Venus' eternal rainfall or drift helplessly in space after a rocket explodes, or as children use a television-room to recreate an African veldt, with possibly murderous results.

Stupid Book It Would Replace: Sorry, Ray: Fahrenheit-451 has to go. Schools pick this book out because it sends an Important Message: Censorship is wrong, reading is right. But the book is dull and dry and hard to read, so kids likely side with the firemen. It just goes to show you that the message has to be secondary to the story, a lesson schools have never learned.

4. The Harry Potter Series, by J.K. Rowling.

Why It Should Be Read: Okay, first off, I know this isn't a book, but a series of books. Still, it tells one story, really, one epic story, so I'm counting it. If it makes you feel better, duct-tape all seven of the books together.

People have long said that J.K. Rowling made it fun to read again and saved reading for kids, the way Dan Brown saved reading for adults, while other people have said No, she didn't. Well, other people, you're wrong. J.K. Rowling did save reading -- for adults and kids. She made reading not only fun for these books, but made reading newsworthy. Think back to before 1997: When was the last time before 1997, when the first Harry Potter book hit the shelves (in the U.S., at least) that you recall a book making the news, let alone news stories about people lining up to buy it. (Answer: The Satanic Verses, which made the news but which nobody bought. I read it; you can skip it. Instead, read Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories.)

Harry Potter changed all that, and brought reading front-and-center again, making it socially acceptable to read books again and talk about it. Before that, books were going the way of ... well, whatever other entertainment had been nearly driven out of society. Opera, maybe.

The Harry Potter books do more than just that, of course: they present a time-honored literary tradition, or a couple of them, in a new and fun light, taking concepts that seem familiar and re-presenting them in such a way as to make them fun and interesting again. If, as has been said, there are only so many story lines to go around, then it's important that those storylines be told in a fresh way, and Harry Potter does that be imagining a Britain that doesn't exist inside the Britain that does, presenting the alienated stepkid who's actually the hero-in-waiting, the multiverse idea, the Second coming of unknowable evil, all those old tropes, as something new and bright. Harry Potter's adventures are similar to that of many kids who stumble into magical realms; he'd probably get along well with the Pevensies, and as a kind-of adopted kid who turns out to be a world-saving hero, I bet he and Clark Kent could trade some anecdotes. But his story is told in a new, fresh, modern way.

Bonus Lesson Schoolkids Will Get From It: Not everything everywhere is like it is in America. The original book's title changed from a Philosopher's Stone to the Sorceror's Stone, and language was edited around before later books became more British. Little differences in culture can be starting points for understanding the vastness of the world, so if Harry wants to eat a cookie and call it a biscuit, let him.

Stupid Book It Would Replace: The Catcher in The Rye, by J.D. Salinger. From it's too-obscure title to its rambling writing to the fact that this book has been owned by every psychotic ever to make the news, The Catcher In The Rye has no place in schools. I don't even know what the title is supposed to mean, and if The Catcher In The Rye has anything to say to me, or about life in general, or literature, or anything, it was lost in the deranged but somehow still boring ramblings of the author. The whole time I was reading The Catcher In The Rye, I kept thinking "Really? This book? Really?"

5. The Bonfire Of The Vanities, By Tom Wolfe.

Why It Should Be Read: I finally picked this as book 5 out of a list of about 20 remaining, opting to put it ahead of A Prayer For Owen Meany, Never Let Me Go, The Professor and The Madman, The Corrections, and more. Here's why: Never has there been a book which so accurately captured a moment in time, a feeling, an era, as The Bonfire Of The Vanities. What The Great Gatsby is to the 1920s, what The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is to the late 19th century, The Bonfire Of The Vanities is to the latter 20 years of the 20th century, and then some. In prose that never stops being entertaining and never seems to drag or dawdle, Wolfe spins the tale of unforgettable characters who are archetypes and yet still real: The Wall Street Trader. The Floozy Mistress. The Social Climbing Wife. The Drunken Reporter. The Grasping Public Servant, and more, all make an appearance here, all interacting in a story that starts from a minor car accident and spins more and more out of control, and then refuses to end even when it ends. Here, in one book, is both enough social commentary and enough entertainment to fill a whole year. It almost seems unfair to other books that The Bonfire Of The Vanities should exist.

Bonus Lesson Schoolkids Will Get From It: Again, there's an embarrassment of riches here. The book helps explain how bond trading and the stock market worked, had a look inside the economics of newspapers, the real machinations of a state court system (as opposed to Law & Order: Never A Plea Bargain). And that's just to name a few.

Stupid Book It Would Replace: Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Why, in God's name, are we using 700-year-old, "Olde Englysche" verses to examine the roles played by various people and sectors of a society? Especially of a society that not only no longer exists, but which existed so long ago that it no longer has any impact on our society, outside of Making kids hate English class because they have to read this junk. Here's an actual quote from The Canterbury Tales:

"The serpent Satan, our first enemy,
Who has his wasps' nests in the heart of Jews,
Swelled up: 'O Hebrew people!' was his cry,
'Is it an honorable thing, think you,
That such a boy should walk where he may choose,
In scorn of you, and make of you his scoff,
Singing songs that are an insult to your faith?'"

Um. What? I dozed off, and then gagged, too. Here's an actual excerpt from The Bonfire of the Vanities:

Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later, that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called 'Being a Father' so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life.

What's not better about that second one? It's better written, it's intelligible, it relates to kids who themselves are on the verge of adulthood, and it comes in the context of a really great book.

If schools are going to serve as anything other than warehouses for children -- and warehouses for children whose purpose is to scare and bore kids out of learning -- they'd better take my suggestions about these books.

Otherwise, we as a society are about 15 minutes away from Joy Behar vs. Food.

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Cross-Pollinization

2009-10-07T09:41:00.001-06:00

What I'm Writing, and what I'm Reading, this week!

READ MY BLOGS ON YOUR KINDLE! For as little as 99 cents a month, you'll be subscribed to ongoing serials, humorous stories, and others. Act now and get 14 days free! Click here for more information.

What I'm Writing:

Rachel has one question for Brigitte, and it's this: What happens to a baby when a Valkyrie kills you and you end up in The Void? That's a real head-scratcher. (Lesbian Zombies Are Taking Over The World!)

When Saoirse died, her life began. Starting (hopefully) tomorrow, my latest novel to be serialized online: the After. (5 Pages.)

New Sam's still wondering what his parents are up to what with the jars of tiny clones and the weird symbols...oh, and having New Sam dig all those catacombs for the dead bodies Dad brings home. Read "The Grave-Robbers," if you haven't already, (on AfterDark.)

Want to stop debt collectors from calling you? Then read Family and Consumer Law: The Blog.

The movie role of a lifetime: "Prison Inmate Sitting Behind Henry." Your move, Dame Judi Dench! (The Best of Everything)

Vooks? Blooks? Why does everything on the Internet have to have a stupid name, and what does that have to do with me always being right? (AAAAUGGGH!)

Look, I'll get back to the 1001 Ways soon, all right? I've picked the NL baseball winner, and mentioned the Septathlon, and done 3 Good Things almost every day, but you're never happy! (Thinking The Lions)

What I'm Reading:

She says she has only three readers left, but that can't be right. I love reading read.dance.bliss. It's like poetry only moreso. Does that make sense? Probably not. (read.dance.bliss.)

The Boy is still blogging -- and I disagree with almost everything he says. (Mean True Things.)

My Facebook Friend of the Week is Sabine Goldman. Her profile is here, and Sabine rates "Friend of the Week" because Sabine not only read what I said about those 15 Senators who believe insurance companies should let kids die, but she did something about it: She called Senator John Kyl and spoke to him about health care. Sabine reported:

Just called Senator Kyl, that was interesting. First the guy claimed a bad connection, then it was "Ma'am do you understand all the points of the issue." I said I may not understand all the "points" as he calls them but what ...I do understand is that there are thousand of unemployed people in his home state who cannot afford health insurance. If it weren't for those people he wouldn't be sitting in a cushy house in Washington. So think about that next time he goes to the Dr for anything.

Way to go, Sabine!

"Wistful" is the word that springs to mind. That or "An Easy Day's Work" (The Best Strange Movie Roles, 1)

2009-10-02T09:38:00.006-06:00

Exploring The Best ACTUAL horror movie monsters last month for the MiniBests led me to discover that the guy who played The Jeepers Creeper also played, in that movie, "Bald Cop," missing out on the much-better role, that of "Cop With Hole In Chest."

Discovering, in turn, that there had been an actor who got the much coveted role "Cop With Hole In Chest," led me to think about what other great roles there might be out there, roles that don't get nominated for Oscars, or get put at the top of resumes, roles that, if they're mentioned at all, probably get thrown in there as an aside and embarrasedly put away. But these roles shouldn't be ignored. They should be heralded, because while anyone can play, say, "Don Vito Corleone," (because, really, who doesn't pretend they're the Godfather while singing The Bath Song to their 3-year-olds during the hair shampooing? We've all been there, right?)(Please say 'yes' or I'm gonna feel weird all day...), while anyone can play "Don Vito Corleone," a role that just requires a moustache and some mumbling, it takes a lot of talent to play some roles.

Think about it: How would you play "Cop With Hole In Chest?" As a sad guy, who's just realized that he's not going to find out who won Dancing With The Stars, because he's got a hole in his chest? Or is he grateful because finally he's lost that extra last few pounds and he'll look good at his funeral? These are choices that actors must make -- and don't get credit for it.

So I'm going to pick out some of those roles for October's MiniBests, and highlight The Best Strange Movie Roles to help get these hardworking people the acclaim they deserve, beginning with Number One, which is:

Nick Vallelonga as: Prison Inmate Sitting Behind Henry in Goodfellas.

I've never seen Goodfellas. My only exposure to it is to accuse The Boy of trying to be a Goodfella whenever he gives me one of his evasive answers about whether or not his homework was done:

Me: Did you do your homework yet?

The Boy: Don't you trust me?

Me: Did you do your homework yet?

The Boy: Which homework?

Me: Did you do any homework, yet?

The Boy: Why?

As tough as that is to get through, it must be even harder for Nick Vallelonga to get into the role of Prison Inmate Sitting Behind Henry. But Vallelonga may be an expert at these types of roles; his resume includes not just this one, but Street Hood kissing girl in opening credits in The Flamingo Kid, and not one, but two roles as a wedding party guest -- one of whom was singing.

But the hallmark of his career has to be, ought to be, Prison Inmate Sitting Behind Henry. Imagine what Vallelonga could put into that role: seething in one scene because Henry is blocking his view. In another, he's resigned to a dreary and unwelcome fate of always being upstaged by Henry -- first prison, and now Henry's broad, plain back, are all he has to look forward to. In take 3, Vallelonga goes for wistful -- remembering the times, on the outside, when he sat behind people on the bus, or at a movie, but now all he can do is sit behind Henry.

If you have seen Goodfellas, think back on it, and think to yourself: Would that movie have been anywhere near as good without the poignant, heartfelt performance of Prison Inmate Sitting Behind Henry?

In fact, think that even if you haven't seen Goodfellas. It won't kill you to ask yourself a rhetorical question, you know. Unless you're allergic to them. But what're the odds of that?

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___________________________________________________________________

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Update on the 1001 Ways: 15 Senators Vote To Let Insurance Companies Kill Your Children.

2009-09-30T10:07:00.002-06:00

I'll be back to the usual mishmash of songs, dumb jokes, stories of the Babies!, and obscure superhero references tomorrow, but for today, this is important enough to take over all my blogs.

Fifteen Senators Voted Yesterday To Let Insurance Companies Kill Your Children.

I don't know how else to put it. Health care -- access to health care, access to doctors -- is a universal, inalienable right. We in America don't treat it as such, but it is, and the sooner everyone realizes that we should all be able to get medical care without worrying about it, without having to decide whether to pay the electric bill or the doctor bill, the sooner our world will be a better place.

Too bad 15 senators -- who I can only assume sold their souls to insurance companies, and who probably right now are counting the piles of unmarked bills dropped into their limos yesterday morning -- don't care whether you can get medical treatment for your children.

Yesterday, the "Senate Finance Committee," (a/k/a Pawns Of The Insurance Companies) voted 15-8 against the "Public Option." That is, they voted not to have a government-sponsored health care plan that would compete in the marketplace with other insurance plans.

They voted that way despite polls showing that 65% of Americans want that option.

And they voted that way despite the fact that Senators and prisoners -- who are, as far as I'm concerned, moral equivalents -- get public health care. Senators can buy a "public option" that provides fantastic health care. Prisoners get health care at no cost to themselves.

So, to put it bluntly, 15 Senators think child molesters deserve better health care than your children.

And the Senate Finance Committee voted that way even though Nikki White died.

It's doubtful that you know about Nikki White, and it's even more doubtful that those 15 Senators -- who I hope rot in hell-- know about Nikki White. They'd have to stop counting their campaign contributions to notice Nikki White, in part because Nikki White is dead.

She didn't have to be dead. Nikki White had an illness, lupus, that is treatable and not always fatal. But she's dead anyway, because Americans would rather spend money seeing a stupid Diablo Cody movie than pay for health care, and she's dead, anyway, because Senators and Congresspeople would rather line their pockets than provide health care.

Nikki White was employed, and working, and taking advantage of her employer-provided health care coverage when she was diagnosed with lupus at age 21.

Lupus is a totally, completely, manageable condition, if... if ... IF... the person suffering from it can get a doctor's care.

Nikki White soon became unable to work, and because she was unable to work, she wasn't able to get health care coverage anymore; not being employed, she was denied health care coverage, since for some reason stupid Americans and evil, child-hating Senators think that health care should only be given to the employed (and not even to all of them.)

Nikki tried, unemployed, to get health insurance coverage. But she was denied coverage for her lupus because it was a pre-existing condition.

So Nikki didn't get treatment for her lupus, at least not at first. She suffered and struggled with it and finally she collapsed one day and was taken to the emergency room. By law, emergency rooms have to treat people with life-threatening conditions, so that's good to know, right? While Senators are rolling, naked and greedy, in piles of insurance company money like pigs in slop, they've at least ensured that you'll be taken care of, if you're near death.

By then, though, there wasn't anything they could do to save Nikki's life. Nikki died of a treatable condition.

Nikki wasn't alone in dying because she lacked insurance coverage. The Urban Institute estimates that in 2006 22,000 people died because they didn't have insurance.

Think about that, Senators, when you get up from your slop-money rolling: 22,000 people in one year died because you didn't want to provide insurance coverage. Think about that, Americans who spend $5 for a cup of coffee but don't want to pay anything to provide health insurance for everyone. Think about that, free-marketers who have no freaking idea just how an actual free market works (and that we don't have anything near a free market when it comes to health care or health insurance.) Your $5 cups of coffee, re-election campaign funds, and stupid blown-dry Hannity Hair are killing 22,000 Americans a year.

But it's not just that they're dying. I want you to think about how they are dying, by knowing what it was like for Nikki White to die of lupus.

Lupus is a disease that causes the body to attack itself. This disease, which is rarely fatal if treated, causes arthritis, a painful swelling of the joints, muscle pain and weakness, fatigue, sun-sensitivity, hair loss, rashes, fever, anemia, and headaches. It can attack the organs of the body, as well. Patients get swelling in the wrists, feet and hands first, and then it can spread to ankles and shoulders and knees. Back pain is common as fluids leak from the kidneys and cause inflammation and leg swelling, too.

Swelling in the joints where the sternum meets the ribs causes intense pain that makes many sufferers think they're having a heart attack. Then lupus can attack the organs and cause them to swell. There can be sores in the mouth and light sensitivity. The symptoms are worst in the morning.

Most people who suffer from untreated lupus die of overwhelming infection (probably cause the bodies' antibodies are all killing the body, not the infecting agents) or kidney failure.

So that was Nikki's life, for eleven years: Swelling joints, pain, rashes, sores in her mouth, organs ballooning up, leaking fluids, headaches, and light sensitivity, all of which was worse in the morning, so that each night, when she went to bed, instead of looking forward to the next day, she had to dread it.

Until she died, that is. Until she died of a treatable disease.

There was a way to cure her, and it's simple. It requires just two laws.

First, pass a law that any insurance company which does business across state lines must cover pre-existing conditions. They can charge whatever they want, but they can't deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions.

Second, make the same plan that Senators and Representatives -- those greedy pigs -- get access to available to anyone who wants to buy it, but means-test the coverage so that if you earn very little, you pay very little. If you earn a lot, you pay a lot.

Doing those two steps, which are very simple, would guarantee that everyone gets health care if they want it. Everyone. And we'd all have access to the same health care as the child-killing senators who don't want you to have health care.

Doing those two steps does nothing more than level the playing field between all insurers. It does nothing more than impose the same system that we have with package delivery -- where there are private carriers and a public options -- with student loans (private lenders plus a public option), with schools (public schools haven't ended private schools) and hospitals (VA hospitals haven't put private hospitals out of business.)

There is simply no reason that health care shouldn't be provided. There's no reason those laws shouldn't pass. No reason beyond Americans are greedy, and Senators are stupid, and insurance companies have paid off those who are in charge of getting us to that point.

So if you are one of the people who believes that there shouldn't be a public option, if you are one of the people protesting higher taxes because you'd rather buy a $5 cup of coffee than pay a little more on your tax bills, if you are one of those stupid, mean, greedy people who thinks things are okay the way they are...

... then take a moment to think about Nikki, and how she died. Then go drink your stupid coffee and see how it tastes.

In the meantime, EVERYONE should be calling their senator or representative and telling him or her: I will pay a little more for my taxes if it helps save a life. I am personally volunteering, right now, to pay an extra 1% -- one percent, one measly percent-- of my gross income if it can help fund universal health care.

If you'd like to be a one percenter, if you're willing to see one less movie per year and brew your coffee at home so that people like Nikki don't die in agony, then call your representative or senator, or both, and tell them I'll pay one percent of my income in taxes if it means universal health care.

And then call these fifteen people who would rather see your children die in agony than vote for a public option, and tell them that, too, and tell them you'd rather they save lives than line their own pockets or protect their own careers:

Max Baucus: Call Max at (202) 224-2651 and tell him that you don't want him to let insurance companies kill your children.

Kent Conrad: Call "Senator" Kent at 202-224-2043 and tell him that lives are more important than his re-election.

Blanche Lincoln: Call Blanche at 202-224-4843 and tell her that her website's claim that she's trying to address health care is a lie.

Bill Nelson: Call Bill at 202-224-5274 and ask him why child molesters get public health care but you don't.

Thomas Carper: Call Tom at (202) 224-2441 and ask him if he knows who Nikki White was, and why that's important.

Chuck Grassley: Chuck claims to be interested in ferreting out wrongdoing in goverment -- so call "Chuck" at (202) 224-3744 and tell him that 15 members of the Senate Finance Committee, including him, appear to be wholly owned by the insurance industry.

Orrin Hatch: Orrin said on his website that "we should do exactly what American families are demanding." So call Orrin at (202) 224-5251 and tell him to do that. Then remind him that 65% of Americans are demanding a public option.

Olympia Snowe: Olympia claims to focus her energy on "key issues" that matter to Maine. People in Maine: Call Olympia at (800) 432-1599 and ask her why she thinks you want your children to die just so she can get re-elected.

Jon Kyl: Jon thinks that you don't deserve the same health care that he gets. Even though he's elected by regular people, he thinks he's better. Call him at (202) 224-4521 and tell him he's not.

Jim Bunning: One Kentuckian dies each day because he or she doesn't have health insurance. Jim Bunning, "Senator" from Kentucky, obviously thinks that's okay -- call him at 202-224-4343 and ask him why he's willing to let his own constituents die at a rate of one a day.

Mike Crapo: Call Mike at (202) 224-6142 and ask him if he has the public option for his health insurance.

Pat Roberts: "Senator" Pat Roberts recently voted to give money to help people find housing. Call him at (202) 224-4774 and ask him how people are supposed to live in those houses if they keep dying of treatable diseases.

John Ensign: John Ensign, a horrible human being, is bragging about how he voted to let people die just so he could get re-elected. And he's smiling about it. Call him at (202) 224-6244 and tell him you can't stand him and hope he loses his health care.

Mike Enzi: Mike's website today brags that he's fighting to keep down health care costs. By letting people die, Mike? Call him at (202) 224-3424 and say that.

John Cornyn: John Cornyn claims he's trying to improve your security and pushing PATRIOT Act extensions. If I was writhing on the floor of an emergency room in pain because all my swollen organs are shutting down due to an autoimmune deficiency treatment, I wouldn't care much about wiretapping issues -- which is fair, because John Cornyn doesn't care much about people who are, quite literally, dying for health care. Call him at 202-224-2934 and tell him to get his priorities straight.

That picture above is Nikki White before her troubles. This is her after she struggled with the disease:

The 6 Best Quirky Chick Singers (And How To Tell Them Apart)

2009-09-28T07:30:00.011-06:00

"I've heard this song about 50 times today already," Sweetie exclaimed Saturday night when I was cleaning up after dinner and put on the song "You and I" by Ingrid Michaelson:

But she hadn't. She'd only just heard that song for the first time that day, and ever, because I'd only just downloaded that song.

I don't blame Sweetie for being a little confused, though, because I had been listening, most of the day, to my "Quirky Chicks" playlist on my iPod.

I don't, as a general rule, go in for playlists. I prefer to think that any of the 10,197 songs on my iPod could come up next, and limiting myself to a playlist takes away the surprise of an unusual or seldom-heard song coming up. That, and I don't like to ever be more than a click or two away from Rock Lobster, Rock Lobster being the song that made me go from an iPod mini to a full-size iPod: I had to make the jump up, because back when I had just an iPod mini, I could only get about 1,000 songs on it, and eventually I had more than 1,500, which meant that I didn't have every song available every moment that I was listening to it. That dilemma sprung into a full-fledged crisis when I was jogging one day at the health club and decided I needed Rock Lobster to spur me on to go that extra mile, literally, as I was trying to stretch a 3-mile jog into a 4-mile jog. But I couldn't find Rock Lobster, and eventually realized that I didn't have it on my iPod. Depressed, and looking for an excuse to stop running anyway, I stopped and went home and cursed the Fates.

I almost lost faith in America and humanity that day, but I forged bravely ahead, got a bigger iPod, and now have Rock Lobster constantly available. Like now:

I don't, then, tend to segregate my songs into playlists, but I do have a few that I use for specific purposes. I have one for each of the stories I'm writing, a playlist for Lesbian Zombies and a playlist for Up So Down, and so on. I have my "Upbeat" playlist of songs that make me want to dance and sing along with them. I have my "Running" playlist of songs that are good to run to, a playlist that features this song:

I don't know why that song is good to run to, but it is. So is this one:

And recently, I created my "Quirky Chicks" playlist, after I realized that about 1/3 of my iPod is taken up with songs by Quirky Chicks, Chicks who sing songs about weird things, or who swear sweetly in feminine voices, or who play unusual instruments, or who seem just too shy to sing but there they are singing, or who use dolphin imitations as part of the chorus of a song.

Quirky Chicks, in fact, are a whole genre of music now, as legitimate a genre as "Rock" or "Hip Hop" or "Songs Written, Sung, Performed, Produced By, Or Somehow Or Other Associated With Jack White," that latter category itself accounting for 97% of everything you hear on the radio or Internet. The theme music to Parks & Recreation? Written by Jack White.

Well, I don't know if it was or not, but it could have been, and "could have been" is as good as a fact in the Virtual Age.

Sweetie's comment, though, concerned me that society, as a whole, may not appreciate the differences that make each of the top Quirky Chicks unique. It's easy to lump them all together as peasant-blouse wearing, piano-playing, high-voiced chirping chicks, but to really get the most out of their music, and the genre as a whole, it's necessary to dive in a little more deeply.

As usual, I am here to guide you in that effort, and so I will walk you through The Six Best Quirky Chick Singers (And How To Tell Them Apart.)

UPDATE! Because Alli Millstein reads this blog and got in touch with me, I have upgraded her to the UNDISPUTED QUEEN OF QUIRKY CHICK SINGERS! and have moved her up to number one from her original spot of number four:

1. Alli Millstein. "Mend My Heart" is the song that had played before Ingrid Michaelson's You and I, and is the song that Sweetie thought was the same song, even though the two songs are not very much similar. You have to forgive Sweetie; her last three musical purchases were "Live Through This" by Hole, because she thought it played over the credits of the horrible movie Jennifer's Body, then Doll Parts, by Hole, because she thought that was the actual song that played over the credits, and then Cruel To Be Kind, by Nik Kershaw. Sweetie does not have good taste in music.

(Whereas my last three purchases included What Would Brian Boitano Do? From South Park, so clearly I do have good taste in music.)

Alli Millstein is on my Quirky Chicks playlist by virtue of that mix-up. Listening to her music (which you can do on her MySpace page, since she doesn't have any videos on Youtube yet), you'll note the absolute lack of weird sound effects, unusual instruments, stories about people who are enraged with love, or anything else that would mark her as quirky.

But she has quirk potential, as she has a song called Skeletons (as does Kate Nash, making skeletons a de riguer stopping point on the Road to Quirksville) and she describes her music as "

The moments between sleep and awake.

On her Myspace page, and also she's from Brooklyn. Brooklyn is quirky, isn't it? Or it was. Or should be. Wasn't Brooklyn the home of Welcome Back, Kotter?

You know what borough is underrepresented in pop culture? Staten Island. There's the Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn... and Staten Island. All the others have their pop culture moments and signifiers: The King of Queens, the Bronx Bombers, Alli Millstein & the Sweathogs and the Tree that Grows in Brooklyn. But Staten Island... has there ever been any significant piece of music, film, art, literature, or cookery that celebrated, or was set in, Staten Island?

I can't think of any, and if I don't know about something, it doesn't exist. So you writers, singers, painters, and cooks: Get going with your Staten Island stuff.

Representative Song: As I said, you can't get an Alli Millstein video on Youtube, making her sort of the Staten Island of Quirky Chicks. But I'll pick out her song Skeletons, as the quirkiest of the bunch. It features a cello and a moog, and that's pretty out-there for music. Plus, again, it's about skeletons. Hear it here.

Where You Might Have Heard Her Music: Connecticut. She's playing open mic gigs in Connecticut, which is the Staten Island of states.

What's The Weirdest Thing She's Done? She's friends on MySpace with some guy who goes by the name of "Meepy Meep."

We'll begin with the undisputed Queen Of Quirky Chicks, Regina Spektor:

1B. Regina Spektor:

Representative Song: On The Radio.

Why That Song Is Representative Of Her Work: Regina specializes in strange images, pop-culture collages strung together in impossible-to-sing-along with lyrics, the impossibility coming from the quirky way she sings, all pauses at the wrong time and stretched-out words that carry through 2, 3, or seemingly seventeen verses. I expect the time signature for Regina's sheet music involves both pi and imaginary numbers.

On The Radio hits all the Spektorisms: Pop culture reference (On the radio, you'll hear 'November Rain,"), strange imagery (worms? Styrofoam? Driving a limo through a crowd?), oddly-syncopated music that kind of hypnotizes you: all there and accounted for.

Where You Might Have Heard Her Music: Since almost none of these singers makes it onto the radio -- radio doesn't reward originality or brilliance or quirkiness or even unsualality, remember, especially not since they invented a machine to tell what songs will be a pop hit...

... they really did, you know. There really is a machine that can tell, with phenomenal accuracy, whether a song will be a hit. Using what the inventors call "spectral deconvolution software" the Machine predicts whether or not a song will be a hit. It works, too: It was tested on a then-unknown singer's album, and the Machine predicted that the album would be a phenomenal smash; the album, by a then-unknown singer named "Norah Jones" sold 28 million copies. (I learned about the Machine from Malcolm Gladwell; read more about it here.)...

Since machines now tell radio stations what will be a hit, and since studies have shown that radio listeners instinctively turn off music they haven't heard before, it's unlikely you'll hear a Quirky Chick on the radio sometime soon. But you have heard them, and you maybe heard Regina Spektor if you went to see (500) Days Of Summer. Her song "Us" was featured in the movie and in previews for it. I can't play you that song -- Regina won't let it be embedded -- but here's an even quirkier version of it than I could have imagined existed:

Marimba! Plus, it's kind of like that guy traveled in time, like he got the time machine they used in Primer and used it exclusively to play along with Regina Spektor on that song. I wouldn't necessarily have used a time machine for those purposes myself, but I can admire that he did.

What's The Weirdest Thing She's Done, Musically? With Regina, that's hard to narrow down. Virtually every song features something that would make the general population say "Well, I don't get that. I'm just going to go watch According to Jim instead of listening to this song any further."

(That, I imagine, is the only way According to Jim ever got any viewers: People who were confronted by something weird in the culture, who retreated into the most banal point of human existence as a way of comforting their souls. That's also the only reason, I imagine, that people read Jacquelyn Mitchard books.)

But if I had to choose one really weird moment that makes me think Oh, that's too far, and then think wait, no, it's not far enough, but then go back to just trying to learn the lyrics, it would be the chorus in Folding Chair:

Yep. She went Full Dolphin on you.

2. Kate Nash: I just went and Googled the number Two Quirky Chick, Kate Nash, and I have this to say: When I saw her photo on her MySpace page, I first thought "Oh, that's what she looks like?" and then I thought "Yes, that's exactly what she should look like." And how many people can you say that about, that they look exactly the way they should.

Here is Kate Nash's MySpace photo:

And here is a Kate Nash song that shows you why she should look like that:

There is a certain type of British girl who probably exists only in movies and Nick Hornsby books and Kate Nash songs -- the kind of girl who won't give a shit when she fights with her friends and who, in fact, would write a song called This Shit Song, with lyrics like

i'm sittin with my friends gettin drunk again
on wine and i think about you
i'm sittin with my friends gettin drunk again
on wine and i think about you
darling don't give me shit

And the type of girl who exists in those realms should look exactly like Kate Nash looks in her MySpace photo, so bravo to you, Kate Nash: You've nailed it.

Representative Song: There's certainly nothing wrong with Foundations and the way it's jubilant piano background is underscored by the grim lyrics and under-underscored by the rising, threatening, monotonous tone in the background (if you missed that, go back and re-listen and turn the sound up), but while that song is good, the true essence of Kate Nash seems to me to be found in Mariella:

Note: I know nothing about Kate Nash, so when I say the "true essence of Kate Nash," I'm speaking about the "Kate Nash" that exists in those Nick Hornsby books.

Where you might have heard her music: Because I'm 40, I'm constitutionally prohibited from watching this channel, but apparently MTV featured Kate Nash all over the place, from baguette competitions to a commercial for Run's House. I wouldn't have imagined that you could use a British Quirky Chick to advertise a reality show about a rapper-turned-preacher raising his kids, but then, that's why I'm going to be excluded from the future postapocalyptic society (or at best used as monster bait.)

What's The Weirdest Thing She's Done? Aside from the Baguettes & Run? I'm going to go with Birds. I'm already a fan of love songs that don't seem as though they're love songs but are actually phenomenally good love songs, and Birds is one of those:

You have to listen carefully to it, but if you do, you'll realize that amidst the swearing, Kate Nash comes up with a fantastic metaphor for love and puts it in the hands of two people trying to stretch themselves above this mortal life and into the poetic life -- that being another metaphor. These two people, who really want to express themselves in a lyrical manner (but can't) manage to come up with the image of love as a bird that flies up high, poops on you, scares you... but is beautiful.

I know; it'll never replace Never Tear Us Apart as the wedding song of choice, but it should.

3. Lisa Hannigan: Lisa Hannigan is one of the reasons I give why it's sometimes better to stay up a little late and be tired the next day than to get a good night's sleep. With twin 3-year-old Babies! that never sleep, I don't need excuses to be awake all night, but it's nice when being awake pays off with something like Lisa Hannigan, who I saw when I happened to blearily watch The Colbert Report as it aired one night at 10:30. Lisa came out and took out a weird instrument and played a song that I liked within the first three notes, and it only got better from there.

Representative Song: "I Don't Know."

She's got the unusual accent, and she's gunning for Regina's throne as Queen of Quirk: She was covered in chocolate to promote fair trade, her blog includes cake recipes, she knitted the cover of her album herself, and "prepared" her album in a barn, something I hadn't heard of a band doing since Cowboy Junkies recorded The Trinity Sessions.

But it works, giving her the "plinky plonk rock" (her words, coined by a friend) sound and image she's trying for.

Where You Might Have Heard Her Music: Being a male, I'm constitutionally prohibited from watching this show, but I understand that she's featured about every 30 seconds on Grey's Anatomy. She also appeared on The Colbert Report, and she's the background music to a same-sex marriage support video that apparently is an Internet smash:

"Sinead's Hand,":

You learn something every day. I didn't know that the debate over whether gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry -- a debate that shouldn't even exist-- existed overseas, too. I guess people are stupid and shallow and narrow-minded in other countries, too. But maybe Lisa Hannigan can help end that.

What's The Weirdest Thing She's Done? I think she found the instrument she played on The Colbert Report in the trash. But I may have dreamed that.

5. Garfunkel & Oates: I only know about Garfunkel & Oates because I read Dan Savage every week, and one week he mentioned them in passing. I don't know anything else about them beyond (a) Dan Savage listened to them, (b) now I listen to them, and (c) they're both hilarious and quirky and good musicians.

I always secretly suspect that albums are concept albums. Or, to put it more clearly, I always secretly suspect that albums which are not reputed to be concept albums are, in fact, concept albums (like Get Behind Me, Satan, by the White Stripes) while also deciding that albums which claim to be concept albums aren't, like American Idiot by Green Day. So when I first heard most of Garfunkel & Oates' songs, I immediately decided that they told a story about two girls who fall in love and then fall out of love. If you listen to their songs, you'll see why; they seem to follow that pattern. (You can listen to a lot of them here.)

But I hate researching, and like most Americans I'd rather believe something than know something, so I've never checked that out.

Representative Song: I Would Never (Have Sex With You): Probably NSFW. Or NSF-sharing-with-the-kids, and it's also TKOSTWSHI,SWS"WDTJS?" (which stands for The Kind Of Song That When Sweetie Hears It, She Will Say "What Did They Just Say?")(I don't foresee that acronym catching on.)

Where You Might Have Heard Them: This song:

Called "F*ck You" (safe by an asterisk!) was reworked as "Screw You" and sung on Scrubs. Meanwhile, this song:

"Sex With Ducks," has been all over the airwaves, they say, only it's on shows I don't watch because I am stupidity-intolerant and have trouble watching "The O'Reilly Factor." What is that supposed to mean, anyway? The X-Factor was the gene that gave mutants their powers. Is O'Reilly saying he's a factor in something? And if so, can someone please tell me what effect Bill O'Reilly has ever had on the world, besides making me shoot milk out my nose everytime someone says Play us out?

Weirdest Thing They've Done: They played a show with "The legendary" John Oates.

6. Imogen Heap. Here's why it's a good idea to keep kids around: Sometimes, they introduce you to new music that doesn't suck, as happened to me when The Boy introduced me to Imogen Heap.

He didn't know he was introducing me to Imogen Heap; he thought he was introducing me to a Saturday Night Live skit making fun of an obscure The O.C. episode in which one kid kills another or something; that led to the skit, Dear, Sister, in which a bunch of people kill each other to the repeatedly-restarted song Hide And Seek by Imogen Heap.

Here's the OC part:

And here's the parody, which is pulled off of Youtube all the time, so don't be surprised if it doesn't work. If this is out of order, go to Youtube and look for "Dear Sister."

The song in the background of the short is "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap, and apparently is not at all representative of her work, even though it's a really great song.

What is representative of her work, then, you might ask? Having asked it, let me have Imogen Heap answer you. According to her Youtube channel, her work sounds like:

Starlings @ sunset, food, brain ache books. Coming out the cinema after an amazing film feeling, log fires. Folk I know + like who make music + also spend lots of time alone, noodling : back ted n ted, Milosh, Zoe Keating, David Sugar, Pixelh8, Leo Abrahams, Jon Hopkins. Family, Men or the lack of them, people i violently disagree with. A calm beautiful day. Bustling London. Driving my car, jogging, RJDJ. Basically pretty much anything! yay o yay bring forth the wonderfully random jolts of life.

Representative Song: I've listened to a bunch of her music, and I tried to pick out the song that best captured the "starlings @ sunset... back ted n ted...RJDJ" feel. That's not, as you'd gather, an easy feeling to encapsulate. It's even harder when most of what Imogen Heap has on Youtube is a video blog:

No, I didn't watch the whole thing. I don't want to watch singers talk, any more than I want to watch writers sing, or actors run for political office or Brad Pitt do anything. Instead, I clicked around and found "Headlock," which seemed pretty good:

Where You Might Have Heard Her: You didn't watch The OC, did you? Because if you did, you and my dad have something in common, and I still can't believe anyone, let alone my dad watched that show. Or you might have heard her in the SNL parody. And her song "Can't Take It In" was used at the end of the movie The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe:

What's the Weirdest Thing She's Done? I'm just going to go ahead and quote from Ms. Heap's blog:
The thing about flamingos which I learnt pretty quickly is that they're not that into us getting too close to them. They like to keep a good wide berth! So In order to combat this situation I went down the local fancy dress shop and bought myself a 6 foot flamingo suit. I was very convincing!

She goes on to note that she was just kidding about that. She then played a B-side of her song "Headlock" for a Maasai warrior. She seems like she'd be pretty cool to know, come to think of it.

Cross-Pollinization, and A Blatant Attempt to Win A Contest

2009-09-23T09:47:00.001-06:00

READ MY BLOGS ON YOUR KINDLE! For as little as 99 cents a month, you'll be subscribed to ongoing serials, humorous stories, and others. Act now and get 14 days free! Click here for more information.

The weekly round-up of What I'm Writing & What I'm Reading...

What I'm Writing:

Okay, I haven't updated it in a while, but there'll be some big news on there soon. Should writers blog about their adventures in publishing? It doesn't matter what you say -- I'll do it anyway. (AAAUGGGH!)

We're up to Day 19 of 30 Days of Debt Collection: The only 30 day period that lasts, at this point, well into two months. (Family and Consumer Law: The Blog)

Joe wakes up in the hospital, screaming. And not because of his insurance co-pay! No, it's because he thought he might rule the world with the magic power he siphoned from the sun, in my short (?) story "The End Of Light." (AfterDark.)

Samson falls to earth, but unfortunately, lands in Tampa, surrounded by Valkyries. (Lesbian Zombies Are Taking Over The World!)

Jeepers Creepers! That's the fourth best Actual Horror Movie Monster, a topic I've been delving into in September. That and Miniature T-Rex's. (The Best of Everything.)

When water comes to life... my story ends: The epilogue to Up So Floating wraps up the story of Sarah and Bumpy's year by revealing how Sarah and Peyton met. (5 Pages)

The Boy And I Take On Event 3 In the Septathlon: How will this contest between two legends of sports end? Probably with us both eating Snickers and watching TV. But until then, it's thrilling! (Thinking The Lions )

What I'm Reading:

I mentioned a while back that I like to get mp3s off of Muruch. She's now also not just posting great music, but running 5 contests to give away CDs for FREE, just by you leaving a comment. So go enter, but remember: I should win at least one because I'm blogging about it. (Muruch)

I don't know why I like it, but I do. I've started reading Gawker, even though I don't live in Manhattan and the only time I was there, I walked around in an "I HEART NY" shirt and took pictures of flower stands. And I'd do it again, in a second. (Gawker.)

My Scribd friend of the week is Marco Tulio Pettinato, a dentist in Brazil who not only provides helpful tips on oral hygiene, but also writes, A LOT. I don't speak Portuguese, so I can't read a lot of what he writes, but I know he's brilliant, because he chose to follow me on Scribd. So if you speak Portuguese, or have teeth, check out Marco's site. It looks like that picture to the right there:

Did you know a short horror story of mine, Don't Eat My Face, will appear in the upcoming anthology "Harvest Hill," available next fall from Graveside Tales? Go to their site to find out more and order your copy! And don't forget to read my other horror stories on AfterDark.

Check out all my free stuff on Scribd:

Eclipse: Claudius wanted to be the first man to reach the stars, and maybe he was. Or maybe things went horribly, murderously, wrong.

Up So Down: When Sarah's fiance drowns under mysterious circumstances on the night of his bachelor party, she copes by joining a group trying to prove there's a serial killer at work. Her brother copes by moving to Las Vegas and becoming rich.

Lesbian Zombies Are Taking Over The World! In the future, everyone will eat squid jerky, and only Rachel, queen of the lesbian zombies, can prevent Armageddon.

The Guy Who Played The Creeper Cleans Up Well, Don't You Think? (The Best Actual Horror Movie Monsters, 4)

2009-09-21T14:40:00.005-06:00

Since, this week, the public largely rejected an ill-defined horror movie monster that simultaneously embodied every horror-movie cliche while also making no sense (why would pulling off the "BFF" necklace take away the demon's power, I wonder?), I thought I'd again help everyone remember just what it takes to be an Actual Best Horror Movie Monster, by presenting, without much ado, the Fourth Best Actual Horror Movie Monster:

The Jeeper Creeper,

Or whatever he was called. Whatever it was, it was amazingly, brilliantly, scary, and it was that because (a) it had big leathery wings and also drove a rusty truck and wore a hat, (b) it was building a person out of parts of other people, and then sewing the used up people into a big mosaic, and (c) it avoided every single horror movie cliche in one fell swoop -- a fell swoop being what the Jeeper Creeper used to get people.

The Jeeper Creeper had no backstory, beyond Cat Lady saying it's been around forever. There was:

-- no television news show setting out exposition,

-- no professor beginning the movie with a lecture about how we've discovered every possible kind of creature and therefore there are no new creatures left in the world to be identified, after which the main female character says "How can you be sure?" and leaves class only to later realize that the Jeeper Creeper is just what she was sure existed, thereby ironically proving the professor blah blah blah pleh.

-- no scene in which the main characters try desperately to research this thing online or in print, coming up with a half-baked plan based on dusty old books/an obscure website/A Milton-Bradley game.

There was just a truck-drivin' bat-thing that wanted to listen to oldies' music, eat people, and use their body parts for his outsider art.

True story: the night I watched Jeepers Creepers, by myself in our house, I didn't want to turn off the lights before going to bed, and then had such trouble falling asleep that eventually I had to watch Disney's Hercules just to clear my mind. Compare that to this weekend, when for most of the latter part of Jennifer's Body, I was preoccupied with wondering whether it would seem cheap to ask for a refill of my popcorn on the way out.

Also, this is the guy who played The Creeper.
He also played "Bald Cop" in that movie. But you know what the greatest part in that movie was? Officer With Hole In Chest. If I were an actor, I would love to have that on my resume. Imagine the conversation starters:

Me (In alternate world where I'm an actor:) Hey, baby, can I buy you a drink?

Her: Don't I know you from somewhere?

Me: Maybe. I played "Officer With Hole In Chest" in the movies. And not just one movie, either -- there was a whole series of movies, like Officer With Hole In Chest 2: Electric Boogaloo, and Officer With Hole In Chest Vs. Predator.

Her: No, it's not that. Wait a minute... you're the guy from my apartment complex who took all my clothes out of the dryer and then put his clothes in. And you threw my clothes in the garbage!

Me: Sorry. The Fast Officer With The Furious Hole In Chest didn't actually pay that well.

Yeah. That's the dream.