A Currant Affair (sorry, as I write this, I'm anticipating a trip to Alice's for scones)

With John-Paul's everythingsruined only just back from hiatus, Yaron blogging less on Daily Lunch, and more personally, and Isaac thinking of turning Parabasis into a group blog about arts, my blogroll has had remarkably little current events discussion of late.

Because of this, I want to offer my take on some stories in the news of late ... my highly uninformed "browsing through The Metro on the subway take ...

The Jackson Trial

I won't go into depth here, I just want to mention that my brother's former manager testified at it the other day.

Yep, that's our little six-degrees dealie with this trial. The alleged victim attended a stand-up comedy camp run by this guy who runs a prominent comedy club in LA and New York. Abe was a regular at the LA club for years and eventually the owner became his manager.

So, when this kid got sick, the club owner introduced him to Jackson to help him out, and now he's testifying about this all. Last week, a regular comic at the club also testified, a very nice women who was involved in all this, and attended a Christmas party Abe threw at our apartment in 1999.

I'm being cautious about using names, as you can see. No big deal, though, from everything I've heard, this kid's family is a real piece of work. The kid seems to be genuinely likable, but the parents exploited his illness pretty grotesquely and I assume they have some long-term plan to benefit from this trial.

Which is not to say that Jackson didn't probably do it. It's just to say that, as is so often the case, there really are no good guys in this story.

And speaking of the latest Trial of the Century...

Johnny Cochran, the star attorney from the last one, has died ...

I certainly can't claim I was ever a big fan of Johnny Cochran, though I'm very sorry for his family of course. 67 is way too young to go.

And, of course, the jokes are going to fly. I had one on Fountain last night, though I'm sure variations of it had already occured to people.

Nor can I be the first person to envision a short story where Cochran talks his way past Saint Peter ("If the horns don't fit, you must acquit"). Of course I can't, Steven Vincent Benet wrote it years ago, about Daniel Webster.

But I can't villainize the man, either. I didn't pay much attention to the OJ case when it was going on. As I recall, we didn't really start to hear too much about Cochran until the very end of things. The then-more-famous members of the "Dream Team" such as Robert Shapiro, and umm ... that guy, and, who was it, Alan Derschowitz? ... got more press. But, by the time he got to that final summation, it became clear this had been Cochran's show.

Speaking of which, we all recall the Cochran-inspired character from "Seinfeld" right? Jackie Chiles? Not my favorite character, since I was always kind of irritated when "Seinfeld" based plots so obviously on current events, as in their White Bronco episode, or the Tonya Harding thing. I always felt they could be more creative than that. And the illogic of the Chiles-heavy final episode always bothered me ... there's no way those four do jail time for that! You think a "good samaritan" law doesn't scream out "appeals court"? And that's not even mentioning that the whole thing is a mistrial since the defense attorney slept with a prosecution witness! Grr. Well, okay, it's pretty silly to rant about this ... basically I don't like that episode 'cause it seems like an insult to fans, "Ha ha, for eight years we tricked you into actually liking this horrible people. You must be stupid." But my reason for this digression is this: As you may recall, there was talk, after "Seinfeld" ended, of spinning off the Jackie Chiles character into his own show. Seems like an odd choice, and I'm not sure such a broad character could carry a show, unless it was about, like, his staff, and he was the crazy Louie Dapalma character. Anyway, I happened to be in the offices of Castle Rock TV one day (yes, I'm very cool), when they were putting this show together, and looking for someone to write the pilot. The idea had come up of having Larry David write it. Hell, why not? He created the character. Anyway, while I'm there, David calls and I hear him declining (he was working on some kinda pilot for HBO, or something). Okay ... that's not really a story.

Anyway, Cochran ...

Do I think OJ did it? Yeah, probably. And probably today, with people understanding much more about DNA, he probably would have been convicted. But, here's the thing: it's pretty much impossible for Simpson to have committed the murders in the way the prosecution said he did. I forget all the details, but people have pointed out, Michael Moore among them, that according to the prosecution Simpson somehow managed to spatter massive amounts of blood in certain areas without getting any in the areas in between, which is difficult to do without "Star Trek"- style transporter technology.

So it seems pretty likely that the LAPD, who weren't exactly beating off positive press with a stick in the early-90s, did take some steps to plant evidence to boost their case.

And I certainly hope that this revelation put an end to this practice. If it did, I'm actually glad OJ, assuming he was guilty, was acquitted. I would say that habitual framing of suspects, guilty or not, is a worse crime than a double murder. Seriously.

Remember people complaining that Cochran was "playing the race card" in the trial?

How the hell is it acceptable to say this? Of course he was. As some wise mind, I cannot remember who, said, "If you're born black in America, you were dealt the race card." Cochran had every right, hell, as a servant of his client, he had a responsibility to use every defense he had. And just take a look at the reaction to the verdict. Told us a lot about race in America. Johnny Cochran did us a favor by "playing the race card" -- it opened a lot of eyes.

Stuff like this is on my mind because I've finally gotten around to reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Yeah, I know, how did I miss this one in eighth grade? How ... laziness, sneakiness, and a lack of respect for my English teacher (who was a nice guy and years later took his grandchildren to see CASEY AT THE BAT).

But anyway ... man, had I been missing something by avoiding TKAM all these years. Yeah, it's a little simplistic in places, and dated in others, but it's every bit as powerful and vivid as it's cracked up to be.

(Still, I'm a little hesitant about Amanda's plan to name our first-born son "Atticus Atkinson." That's either a truly great name or a form of child abuse, I'm not sure.)

And it really goes to show how much American culture has changed. For years, in any legal story, the hero was the crusading defense attorney -- Atticus Finch, Perry Mason, "The Defenders," etc. But somehow, these days, we look on Cochran and his ilk as vile bottom-feeders getting murderers and rapists off. Today, legal heroes are people like Jack McCoy on "Law and Order," prosecutors ("L&O" is a conservative show, though, to their credit, they do have the cops arrest the wrong people sometimes ... still, most of the defense attorneys are depicted as pretty sleazy). There just seems to be something unAmerican about rooting for the system, y'know?

And speaking of UnAmerican ...

Jerry Fallwell is very sick. I will have a hard time finding sorrow in my heart when this man dies. I certainly don't wish it on him, but, well, I will consider his loss a lesser one.

Why, you ask? Oh, because he has repeatedly called my wife a whore.

Explanation: Fallwell's university, the laughably-named Liberty University is located in Lynchburg, VA, just down the road from Sweet Briar, where Amanda went to school. Fallwell frequently refers to Sweet Briar women (and the students at the other local women's colleges, Hollins, and Randolph-Macon) "the whores on the hill."

I really really really refuse to take any moral instruction from a man who calls women pursuing an education, "whores."

And speaking of religious leaders ...

One I actually have some respect for, Pope John-Paul II, is now on a feeding tube.

Irony doesn't come much thicker than this.

I think there's a lot to be said for the Vatican's policy of respect for human life. God bless them for opposing the Death Penalty in all instances (personally, I can't really understand how any Christian can support it). But then, in a case like the Shiavo debacle, the flaws come out.

I've tried to avoid this story, too, since it seems so sad and personal. Only recently did I pick up some interesting tidbits of which I'd been unaware, such as: she's been in this state for 15 years, she probably got this way through bulimia (okay, that's even thicker irony), and Mr. Shiavo is now engaged ... though I haven't heard many people accusing him of only seeking his wife's death so he can get married again.

And, yes, these are the kinds of things that just make me want to ignore this whole sad affair. And I can't really fault these people who believe she should be kept alive. I just think they're adhering too closely to outdated dogma.

Though I do think it's pretty hilarious how desperately the GOP has shot itself in the foot over this one.

Here's the thing ... there really isn't any reason why Mrs. Shiavo's death has to be a long, slow, painful starvation. As Amanda has pointed out, they should be able to hook her up to Dr. Kervorkian's machine and end it quietly and peacefully.

Is that a potential slippery slope? Of course, and I do worry about that, but still ...

Now, of course, I am not recommending the Pope as a candidate for euthanasia.

But, man, could we let this poor schmoe retire? Is it really helping anyone to have this poor, failing old man be forced out of a sick bed to wave at a crowd every few days?

I know, Dante said that popes who abdicate get tortured in Hell for all eternity. But isn't using that as you guide a little like assuming you have an insincere pumpkin patch because the Great Pumpkin has never visited it?

Ultimately, it's the same qustion for both issues, though ... is God's greatest gift life, or self-determination?

Noah is not a pervert!

I've been saying I would do this entry since I started this blog.

But I haven't gotten around to it.

And, yes it's a little creepy to post, online, a list of celebrity women you want to sleep with. I seem to recall that a creepy guy in the writing class Billy Crystal taught in Throw Momma From the Train, submitted such a list as his writing assignment.

But I'm not creepy! Look at that picture of me! I'm adorable!


We're all familiar with this idea, right? When you're in a relationship, you're permitted a list of five celebrities you can sleep with, guilt free. This was popularized, if not invented, on an episode of "Friends" that ended with Ross meeting Isabella Rosellini just after removing her from his list.

Amanda and I have played this game since we started dating. Her list has remained rather constant. It's just Colin Firth five times.

Sometimes a Ewan McGregor or a Jason Bateman will flirt with entering the list, but mostly it's just the five Colins.


My list, initially, was as follows:

Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer Connelly
Cameron Diaz
Salma Hayek
Jennifer Love Hewitt

No, I don't have any particular fetish involving the name Jennifer.

Soon, Aniston lost way too much weight and I replaced her with Charlize Theron.
Then, after a while, I was tired of people rolling their eyes when I mentioned my fondness for Hewitt, and I replaced her with Shania Twain. (Eyeballs still roll, but at least Twain wasn't on "Kids Incorporated")

Recently, I kinda got over Diaz. She's just never going to be able to top that entrance she made in The Mask, and frankly, she and Theron kinda repeat each other and I might as well go with the Oscar winner.

Look, it's impossible to discuss this without sounding like an objectifying jackass. Deal with it. Reconcile yourself to the fact that for the remainder of the entry, Noah's most prurient instincts are in charge.


Took me a while to find a suitable replacement for Diaz. I considered Tiffany Amber Thiessen, but I was trying to stay away from implants. Considered Kate Winslet, but I'm not sure she's quite a top-fiver.

For a while I had Christine Taylor in there. She fulfilled a number of categories ... had a crush on her back in high school (the "Hey Dude" years), she fulfills my "Brady Bunch" thing (more on that later), and she clearly likes dorky funny guys (she's married to Ben Stiller). Yet, the intangibles just weren't there.

And Jewel was in there for a while. I'm still awfully fond of her, though, I gotta say it ... the teeth bump her out of contention.

So, largely at the prompting of, believe it or not, my wife, I went with Alyssa Milano.

"Wait, what?"

Look, Amanda is, like, two margaritas away from putting Milano on her own list. Frequently, she'll be watching a "Charmed" rerun and she'll call me in, saying, "Noah, you have to see what Alyssa Milano is wearing! Her boobs look great!"

A lot of women seem very fond of Milano. I'm not quite sure why. On paper she has numerous qualities that women usually hate in female celebrities -- child star turned sexbomb, plastic surgery, tattoos, dresses sluttily, made softcore porn between TV gigs ... Yet somehow, a lot of women seem equally fond of her as men do. I think, if I did sleep with her, Amanda wouldn't be so much mad as jealous.

(Oh, and yes, Milano does violate my "no implants" rule, but ... those are really great implants.)

So, there's my list now:

Jennifer Connelly
Salma Hayek
Alyssa Milano
Charlize Theron
Shania Twain


Giving this a little more thought, what about women I'd actually enjoy being in a relationship with? ...


Zooey Deschanel
Tina Fey
Jennifer Garner
Alyson Hannigan
Amy Poehler


And, while we're at it, what if I had a time machine ?...

Maureen McCormick and Eve Plumb, ca 1974
Susan Sarandon, ca 1975
Jennifer Connelly ca 1991
Helen Hunt ca 1992
Jennifer Aniston ca 1994

Tough list, leaving out classic babes like Marilyn Monroe in the late fifties, or Teri Hatcher in 1993.

Am I cheating because I have both Marcia and Jan Brady in one slot? No. I have a time machine, I can do what I want. Oh, and it's not creepy to lust after teenage girls in this instance, since I developed my crush on them when I was an adolescent myself. Got that?

As you can see, Connelly is an eternal. There's a certain type of guy, who grew up in the late eighties, early nineties, for whom Connelly is the ideal woman. I am that type of guy.

Okay ... there you have it. Aren't you glad you asked?

Wait, you didn't ask?

(I think Dave kinda asked for this a year ago)

Okay, well, I'm gonna ask ... boys and girls, who's on your list?

Pink Slips and Red States

Quick update and then random babbling.

So in the good/bad news department I will be ending my time at ABM this week.

Yes, frankly, I’m relieved. I’ve really just gotten tired of the vibe, the work, and, though honestly I don’t think they’re bad or unpleasant, the people. I’m really looking forward to not having to go to work at 8AM (though being done by four was nice).

I have been told that HR has decided to reassign some permanent people to my duties. This may be true, though I certainly think it’s possible that they’ve grown dissatisfied with my work. They wouldn’t be the only ones.

Anyway, I’m sure Merlin will find me something new relatively quickly. I got this position the day after I tested with them after all. Will it be as good for me in terms of free time I could use to write? Who knows.

And, in the “God closes one door, he opens an innuendo” department, when I got home, there was a message from a Hollywood TV contact of mine wanting to discuss the pilot for “In Loco Parentis” that I sent him. I couldn’t reach him the rest of the day, and he’s off on vacation for a while, but it was a nice feeling. And look, “discuss” almost definitely means “give me some notes on it” and not “offer me three million dollars for the rights to produce it.” But still …

Other personal stuff …

Had a nice, if brief, visit from my father, who spent the night on Sunday on his way back to Kansas from a Boston/Amherst jaunt for comedy, poetry and auditions. Scrabble with me, him and Abe, of course, ensued.

I also have acquired a new, used computer all my own. Yep, no more cluttering up Amanda’s with, like archived editions of Comics 101 and such. We bought this from a student, who, incidentally, was ready to part with it because he had built himself a new one. Pretty good deal I thought, especially since he delivered and installed it and patiently walked me and Amanda through a lot of programs and functions the machine has that I will never have occasion or ability to use.

But, man Windows XP, Photoshop … plus, on this one, I can actually watch Homestar Runner cartoons, which Amanda’s machine couldn’t quite handle.

Okay, now I babble …

More informed people than I could set me straight, but is the right wing out of viable presidential candidates?

Seriously, after Bush, will the GOP have any choice but to nominated a moderate?

Relative term, of course, but still … If Jeb Bush doesn’t run, and he has said he won’t, who’s left? I don’t think DeLay or Lott would do it. Sure a Gary Bauer or an Alan Keyes will surface, but he won’t go far.

I think we’re looking at a field full of people like John McCain, Mitt Romney, George Pataki, and maybe Rudy Giuliani. None of these are my favorite people, but, man, would I rather see somebody pro-choice (or at least not rabidly “let’s stick feeding tubes into actual corpses, ‘cause ya never know), pro-gay (or at least not “God invented AIDS to kill SpongeBob”) as the standard-bearer for the GOP.

Now, of course, none of these guys are really moderate, but they are close enough to it to freak the living shit out of the conservative base and maybe fracture the party … that’s a best case scenario. A slightly less good one would just be a genuine move to the center by the GOP.

‘Course, maybe on inauguration day, McCain will take the oath, then pull off his mask and secretly be Jesse Helms in disguise …

Rejected Joke Friday Edition: Plus,-Scranton-Kinda-Sounds-Like-"Scrotum" Edition

Comments are here, which will have to tide you over, since I won't have an entr for Monday until this afternoon, if at all ...

I know, Rejected Joke Day seems to be just about everybody's least favorite thing I do here. It is useful for me, though ...
Rejected ones from the Ashton Kutcher episode today.

Kutcher? Well, he's never interested me that much. Always thought the rest of the cast on that show was more interesting. He did okay, I guess, though like so many leading men who think they're character actors, he tried a bit too hard to be "versatile." I remember feeling this way about Cameron Diaz too, and guess who's hosting next time.

But I'd rather talk about another TV item before we begin ... okay now I understand the fuss about "The Office." Beautifully painfully wonderful.

Watching the first two episodes while in the midst of flu-like symptoms may not have been the best method of meeting the show. But after two or three more episodes, I was thoroughly hooked.

We managed to get the whole first season (I'd use the British term "series" but that would get confusing shortly) under our belts before catching the Steve Carell remake last night.

And ... pretty good. Definitely the best Brit-to-American translation in a long time.

Yeah, it probably won't be as dark, though it's just as grim as the original so far. Yeah, Carell will probably be broader than Ricky Gervais, though he's modulating nicely so far (the previews may just be choosing the most over-the-top moments, since shows like this baffle and confuse promotion departments). Yeah, the guy playing the Tim character might be a little too good looking, but ... c'mon, you can't expect Americans to give up everything they love about TV.

As I undserstand it, after the pilot, which was more or less taken directly from the original pilot script, they'll be using original stories. Fine by me; they'd have to eventually, since there are only, what 14 episodes of the original? I do hope they won't refrain from doing, say, that customer service episode, or using the plot twist from the end of season one. Not sure why they chose the pilot, of all the Brit episodes, to adapt, since I found that by far the weakest.

Still, highly promising, if it doesn't scare away too many timid Americans.

Though I can't get behind the New York Times statement that it's now the funniest sitcom on TV. "Arrested Development" still wears that crown, especially after the past three or four episodes. (Can't believe I didn't notice Henry Winkler jumping over a shark again)

And, of course, now that I'm working in an office again, I appreciate the show a little too much. Man does it accurately capture the frustrations of this life I'm rather sick of after less than three months. Seriously, being asked to tell jokes in the office has become such an agonizing experience. They never like them (one guy, I think, hates them, but his direct supervisor is the one who keeps asking, so ...), and I hate telling them. I can never remember then off the top of my head, so it takes me thrity seconds to come up with one, I usually set it up poorly, and then the punchling falls flat, which I don't think reflects poorly on the joke, by the way.

Which, of course, makes me wonder ... I don't work for David Brent/Michael Scott. But what if I am him?

ADDENDUM 1:30 PM: Walking outside 30 Rock, which was full of toursist today because of the holiday, I saw a guy wearing a suit and a sandwich board that said "I hate my boss" on one side, and had a promotion for "The Office" on NBC on the back. So, some people have worse jobs than me, though at least theirs come with irony.

Anyway, the jokes that definitely aren't funny ...


This Sunday, Condoleezza Rice denied reports that she was going to run for President in 2008 and said that after Bush leaves office she wants to return to academia. Bush may do the same when his term is up, since his mom keeps pestering him to go back and get that GED.
Okay "Bush is dumb" jokes are hacky, I know, and this is certainly not an expressive-enough way to tell the umpteenth version to justify it. But I think The Onion or someplace similar could have a lot of fun with the idea of Bush going back to high school.

This Sunday, Condoleezza Rice denied reports that she was going to run for President in 2008 and said that after Bush leaves office she wants to return to academia. Dick Cheney also asserted that he won't run in 2008 because he wants to return ... to his crypt to sleep for another thousand years.
Would only work out loud, and not even then, since Cheney's brand of creepy isn't very vampiric.

A New York City photographer working on a series of images involving disruptions caused by topless women in the city, claims that most of the time the women are ignored, especially in Times Square. Tell me about it.
Clearly, this one would have to be accompanied by a doctored "censored" photo that made it look like Amy or Tina were standing topless in Times Square, looking frustrated that people were ignoring them. Another one that I might pitch if I knew them well, but would be creepy over email.

The number one movie at the box office this weekend was the animated film Robots, which made 36 million dollars, making it the most successful film about artificial life forms since the Paris Hilton tape.
Doesn't really hold together.

Tyler Hinman, a 20 year-old college student, became the youngest champion in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament this year, beating out 450 competitors, and being the only one who it's not too creepy that he's still a virgin.
There may be a way to phrase this elegantly, but it's not worth the effort.

Tyler Hinman, a 20 year-old college student, became the youngest champion in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament this year, beating out 450 competitors. Hmm ... what's a six-letter word for "loser who's never had sex"?
Ibid, though at least this plays up the crossword angle.

Tyler Hinman, a 20 year-old college student, became the youngest champion in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament this year, beating out 450 competitors. Losing participants were so upset that they wrote angry letters to the tournament organizers IN PEN!
Okay, this is kinda cute, and the angle is inventive, but it's also kinda not funny.

It was reported that Jay Leno, who has been subpoenaed in the Michael Jackson trial, says that he took "one or two" phone calls from the accuser and his mother, and they made a pitch for money that sounded like a "script," which contradicts the teenagers testimony that he and his mother never spoke to Leno. This leads to one of three possible conclusions: 1) Leno is mistaken 2) The accusers are lying 3) Leno is as forgettable over the phone as he is on TV.
Hmm ... this doesn't suck ... salvage pile.

According to new research, scientists have discovered that pollution such as Mercury, dust and smog are drifting from other countries into the United States, meaning that Pat Buchanan now has something else he can blame on immigration.

Civil rights leaders are urging black politicians to extend the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which barred literacy tests and other obstacles designed to keep blacks from registering to vote. Black politicians responded, "Yeah, 'cause in these past couple of elections, the illiterate vote has really helped out the black man."
Probably wouldn't read right ... no pun intended. I mean, you guys all know that I mean that it's the illiterate moron vote that's put Bush in office twice now, but would most people?

Geraldine McCaughrean will write Captain Pan, the authorized sequel to JM Barrie's classic Peter Pan. The sequel will be faithful to the original except that in the new story, to keep up with the times, "Fairy Dust" has been replaced by "Jesus Powder."
Stupid Michael Jackson. Can't write a decent Peter Pan joke without him popping in there.

Hillary Swank is fighting with a New Zealand court after customs officials fined the actress 150 dollars for failing to declare an apple and orange in her luggage when she arrived in the country. Meanwhile, US officials are pursuing action against XXX for attempting to smuggle peanuts into the Oscars.
I was trying to think of somebody who had visibly protruding nipples at this year's Oscars, but nodbody came to mind. Besides, you need a picture to pull this off, and I'm not sure "smuggling peanuts" actually is a term for "headlights."

A new study suggests that decorative studs, rings and other lip piercings can seriously damage gums and increase the risk of infections, tooth sensitivity and tooth loss. But they are much more likely to get you some action after the Green Day concert.

An Italian prison has launched a rehabilitation program in which inmates make and sell their own wine. The most popular wine so far is the Penal Noir, though the Beaugol-analingus is gaining.
Spent way too long trying to think of wine puns for a joke I knew wouldn't make it.

Edeka, a German supermarket chain, will soon allow customers to pay by placing their finger on a scanner at the check-out. The idea came to them after their first plan, tattooing everyone's credit card number on their wrists, proved unpopular.
Okay, I know this one is absurdly offensive. There is a reason it's on the reject pile.

A new resolution is under consideration in New Jersey that would encouraging residents to join "a campaign toward civility, kindness and respect to all." The slogan for the campaign would be, "Hey, asswipe, show some respect, you fanook!"
Is "Fanook" a word? Is that how it's spelled?

Vin Diesel has said his upcoming movie Hannibal the Conqueror will be entirely in the ancient languages of Aramaic, Iberian, and Carthaginian. This shocked Diesel's fans, but not as much as the revelation that all his films up to this point had theoretically been in English.
Maybe ... salvage if I need it.

Congratulations to the O'Jays on being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Think, just forty short years ago, they were poor kids on the streets of XXX, and today they make millions of people say, "Yes, you have, too, heard of them. They wrote the theme song for 'The Apprentice.'"
More commentary than joke. Not funny either way. Still, it is sad that people probably only think of them that way.

Mario Vazquez has shed little light regarding his sudden decision to leave the American Idol competition saying only that "it's that gut feeling that you get." Former "American Idol" champ Ruben Studdard issues a statement saying, "I fully support Mario's decision, because I know all about gut feelings and ... ooh ... that chili dog didn't go down too well ... you got any Tums?"
There's not as much mileage in "gut feeling" as I'd thought.

In an online chat with fans, Martha Stewart said that she was in a "pretty good mood" while in prison, but that she does not like wearing the electronic house-arrest braclet adding, "I hope none of you ever have to wear one," adding, "but if you do, this month's 'Martha Stewart Living' shows you how to dress one up with dried flowers and nail polish ... it's a good thing."

Ashley Smith, the Georgia woman who persuaded Brian Nichols, who was holding her captive in her home after running from a court house shooting, to give himself up, said that he gave himself up after she read passages to him from "The Purpose Driven Life," a "blueprint for Christian living." But I'm not ready to read this as an endorsement of this book. All this means is that going to prison is preferable to hearing any more of it read aloud.
There's a better variation on this that may show up on Fountain.

It has been rumored that Bill and Hillary Clinton are considering buying an apartment at Donald Trump's Trump Riverside complex on the west side of Manhattan. No word yet if they'll keep their house in Chappaqua, or if Bill will still use that studio apartment in the Village where he brings chicks.

Sensors at two military mail facilities in the Washington area detected signs of anthrax on two pieces of mail Monday, meaning that two people in the DC area probably won't be getting this month's selection from the Chemical-Weapon-of-the-Month Club.

According to a new study, Mormon teenagers fare best when it comes to avoiding risky behavior an doing well in school, while conservative Protestants rank second. The two groups also ranks first an second in being unbelievably annoying Freshman-year roommates.

Ten years after Mayor Giuliani cleaned up Times Square, shops selling explicit material have crept back into the area, by exploiting loopholes in the law that allow porn stores to exist as long as 60 percent of their material is not sexually explicit, which explains why that tape I bought the other day kept interrupting the anal scenes with clips from the Alberto Gonzales confirmation hearings.
I was trying to think of something public domain. Maybe I should have gone more old school and had it be, like, footage of the MCarthy hearings.

Men in Oakland, California, who are caught soliciting prostitutes, will have their pictures placed on bill boards and bus shelters, meaning that, even if they don't buy his book, Oakland A's fans are still going to have a hard time avoiding Jose Canseco this season.
Well, he is probably still more associated with Oakland than anywhere else, but it's a long shot. Besides, despite his many vices, I've never heard hookers on the list.

A former North Carolina dentists accused of using syringes to squirt semen into the mouths of female patients was charged Monday with multiple misdemeanor counts of assault on a female, and one count of "please don't tell me how you got it in the syringes in the first place."
It's not really that hard to imagine it. Probably a situation where the story is funnier than any punchline about it.

The term wedgie was added to the Webster's New World College Dictionary this year, though knowing what we all know about the type of people who write for a dictionary, I'm guessing the word had already been a part of their life experience.
Take that, linguists!

It was reported that NBC is close to a deal to keep ER on the air for another 2 seasons, just as soon as they charge up the paddles.
Get it? 'Cause the show is dying and needs to be resuccitated? Too far to go?

Geraldine McCaughrean will write Captain Pan, the authorized sequel to JM Barrie's classic Peter Pan. The sequel is much anticipated since, well, who doesn't want another story about a boy who won't grow up? -- other than every unmarried woman in the country?
I guess I'm pretty proud of how easily female-perspective jokes come to me. But they're just as likely to be weak as the male ones.

Policymakers in 19 states are weighing proposals that would allow teachers to question the science of evolution and explore the concept of intelligent design, which centers on the role of a creator in evolution. A smaller group is looking into the concept of unintelligent design to explain why Meet the Fockers was number one at the box office for a month.
Seriously, it was kinda cute but ...

Many British war veterans are upset with Michael Jackson for wearing UK military medals to his trial, saying that it disgraces the memory of those who fought and died in the country's wars, they also point out that, since Jackson has never had a formal coronation ceremony, he is, at best, the archduke of pop.
Okay, salvage it.

It was revealed Tuesday that if the proposed 1.7 billion dollar West Side stadium in New York is built, the NFL will likely name it as the host of the 2010 Super Bowl, because nothing says "weeklong bachannal of drinking, public nudity, and outdoor athletics" better than New York in February.
Just my own thinking of why this is a stupid idea.

It was reported that an ex-Army interrogator punished fro sexually humiliating detainees at the Guantanamo prison is now teaching soldiers interrogation techniques in Arizona. In a related story, Robert Blake has been hired to play Katey Sagal's husband on "8 Simple Rules."
I may just be too shocked by the shameless balls of this administration to write good jokes about it.

Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone, the archbishop of Genoa, said that no one should read or buy The Da Vinci Code because it is full of lies, he also pointed out that it was total crap in Jurassic Park when they patched a hole in the dinosaur genome with frog DNA.
I was trying to write something about why it took him so long to say anything, why he waited until everybody had already bought the book, etc. Nothing came. I moved on.

Health officials are warning New Yorkers to avoid unlabeled Mexican cheese that has caused 35 people to develop tuberculosis, and stick with the regular, labeled Mexican cheese, which only causes severe diarrhea.

An unnamed buyer in Ireland has spent almost 200,000 dollars for an 18th century mahogany bucket, used to carry peat fuel between rooms for fires, making it the most anyone's paid for a bucket of dirt since the movie Alexander.
Well, presumably the bucket at auction wasn't full ...

A man in Minnesota, who had a vanity license plate that read "TIPSY," was arrested on charges of drunken-driving with a blood-alcohol level at twice the legal limit. He is charged with one count of Driving Under the Influence, and one count of Understatement.

According to the League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith, the media coverage of Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" and its alleged depiction of Jews as the "Christ killer" led to a spike in attacks against the Canadian Jewish community. A spokesman for the Canadian Jewish Community said, "Oy vey, eh?"
Again, I ignore the important part of the story and just concern myself with the not-all-that-weird idea of Canadian Jews.

Mr. Banana-Grabber's Grab Bag

Hey!

I had so much fun doing THOTS yesterday that I thought I'd do another grab-baggy thing today.

Okay, in all honesty, these are just stuff I've done that are too short to be regular THOTS.

The last two are really Abe creations -- his "West Wing" spec and a cartoon I've created based on a conversation Abe and I had once.

But anyway ...

Hey, Kids! Write your own THOT!

Choose one item from each list

Opening salutation:
1) Okay
2) Hey guys
3) I think of myself as pretty bright, but
4) Help me out here

Rethorical device:
1) What's up with
2) I just don't understand
3) Have you you noticed
4) You know what pisses me off?

Observation
1) Perry White. Does he know Clark is Superman? Does Commissioner Gordon know Bruce is Batman? Does Robbie Robertson know Peter is Spider-Man?
2) Women not understanding how cool robots are?
3) Larry the Cable Guy not having had one single assassination attempt yet.
4) People not understanding the rhyme scheme of "The Star Spangled Banner."
5) This: You can can get an Eckersley Red Sox jersey, but not a Rice one?
6) This: If Donald Rumsfeld had removed that feeding tube, Bush would have given him another medal.
7) Hideki Matsui being called "Godzilla." The dude runs way too fast to be named after a big lumbering lizard.

Pithy remark
1) Things like this are why I can't sleep at night.
2) Seriously, isn't this why we have elections?
3) Or maybe I'm crazy
4) Why are you ruining my childhood?
5) Or have I overthought this?
6) Put that in your pirate and smoke it.

I prefer ...

crunchy to smooth
dry roasted to honey roasted
pajamas to pyjamas
okay to O.K.
all right to alright
Joel to Mike
DH to non-DH (yep, sorry purists)
David to Sammy
Hart to Hammerstein

You?

INT. ROOM WITH SOME PAINTINGS AND LOW LIGHT - NIGHT

President: I'm the president and I enjoy politics!

A republican: I do not enjoy politics!

blonde girl: I'm very pretty, but also, dichotomy, consanguinary, sarcophagus.

another blonde girl: Quixotic!

3rd blonde girl: Quixotic?

2nd blonde girl: Quixotic.

Baldy beardo: I'm dour!

guy fgrom L.A. law: : My brow is crinkled, plus military

black guy: you forgot to consider black guys.

President: ad hominem!

C.J.: road trip!

badguy from Billy madison: I also am on the show, please.

Rob Lowe: I didn't forget to consider black guys. Also, montezuma, Leon Cszolgosz, guy who invented something.

badguy from Billy madison: Invented something?

Rob Lowe: something! (hits desk with fist and is handsome)

A republican: road trip!

fade out, music

THOTS: Well I suppose I could care a little less ...

No time for chatter this time out, let's get straight to 'em.

(Oh, except to mention that I finally added comments to the Rejected Jokes entry from last Friday)

I've noticed a great subtle running gag on "The Simpsons" lately. Dr. Hibbert's wife, a minor character who has had maybe five lines in the sixteen years the show's been on the air, is an alcoholic. It's pretty subtle -- she'll be glimpsed in the background at an AA meeting, or reacting more strongly than everyone else when Springfield goes dry. Little things. I guess being married to Hibbert and living that Huxtable lifestyle can drive anyone to drink.

First weird experience while watching Hitch: Once again, scenes are shot on the Columbia campus, and our apartment windows are in the shot. It comes in the scene where Hitch flashes back to his college days and they have Will Smith dress the way he used to dress on "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air."

I can't recall if I've discussed this before. It kinda disappointed me when I learned that Jabba was called "The Hutt" just because that was his species. I remember my father, who was working as a film critic when Return of the Jedi came out, wondering if "The Hutt" was ...

A) A Title ... "He's the Hutt of all the crime families on Tatooine"
B) An Adjective ... As in "Alexander the Great" or "Ivan the Terrible" ... "You know, that Jabba, he's about as Hutt as they come."
C) A Numerical Designation ... Like Henry V, maybe "Hutt" is a number in some Tatooinian language, like his father was Jabba the Grork and his son will be Jabba the Nolpt.
D) A Nickname, perhaps based on some other animal ... Like Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, "They call me 'The Hutt' because I burrow in the ground and eat twice my weight in sludge and rock salt daily, just like a hutt."

This isn't even mentioning that his sidekick was named "Bib Fortuna," presumably because "Bib Forlobster" would have been too on-the-nose.

Dear Lord, Whom I don't really so much worship ... please give me the strength not to have any characters in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST say "In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."

When you pay with a 20-dollar bill for something that costs five dollars, do you find that it's just as likely that they'll give you three fives for change instead of a ten and a five? I noticed this a lot when I lived in LA and would go to the movie theatre down the street, which raises an interesting question ... movie tickets in LA only cost $5 in 2000?

Have I mentioned that I wrote a "West Wing" spec about three years ago that had a character named Enrique Santos, a Congressman from Texas? And now Jimmy Smits is on the show, playing Matt Santos, a congressman from Texas on the show? Coincidence? Almost definitely.

(though, that script also has Toby having issues about suicide, and they learn why when they call his brother and learn that a childhood friend killed himself, and recently Toby's brother killed himself)

Second weird experience while watching Hitch: Earlier on the day we saw it, we visited Ellis Island, coincidentally, there is a sequence in the film where Hitch takes a date there.

I'm generally pretty lax about grammar rules and I have nothing against colloquialisms, double negatives, etc. Some things bug me, like misuse of "literally" and so on. But one thing that really really drives me berserk is "I could care less" when it should be "couldn't care less." It just sounds so glaringly wrong. How can people say this and not hear themselves saying that they DO care? I dunno ... maybe I just wasn't raised with either phrase, wrong or right, as a part of standard vocabulary. I think my family has little regard for ... disregard.

Abe has brought to my attention a fun fact that offers a new a way to make myself feel old and like a complete failure: by the time he was my age, George Harrison was already an ex-Beatle, and had been for over a year.

Which is easier a piece of cake, a can of corn, or pie? And could all of them be described as "easy peasy Japanesey"?

One generational difference between men my age and men my parents' age: I don't think guys my age have a problem with using credit or debit cards for small purchases. It's really almost as fast as paying with cash these days, though a lot of guys over forty act as if paying with credit is a betrayal of their masculinity.

Little embarassed that I only learned this past week that the members of Yo La Tengo aren't Latin.

I was able to catch the end of the St. Patrick's Day parade. It started at 11AM and passed fairly near my office, but I wasn't able to leave until after four. So the parade lasted over five hours. Wow. That's a testament to the stamina of the Irish, or to anybody who's able to remain even standing upright that long on St. Patrick's Day. I saw a lot of high school marching bands, some very good, none of them playing remotely Irish music. I heard "America the Beautiful" four or five times, as well as "Can Can" and "Yellow Submarine." Well, as I remarked to the green-kilted guy standing next to me, I guess Paul McCartney is of Irish extraction ...

Another weird St. P’s day thing … some credit card company or supermarket or something was handing out free bag breakfasts outside my office building on the 17th. Water and Alka Seltzer I understood, but a bagel? It’s, like, the only boiled food the Irish didn’t invent.

People always refer to covering your nose when you sneeze. Maybe this is just my deviated septum talking, but when I sneeze I feel most of the air coming out of my mouth.

Was there any particular reason "The Cosby Show" took place in Brooklyn? Why not Philadelphia? That's Bill Cosby's home town and he clearly has affection for it. Cliff was always eating hoagies "Philadelphia style," with potato chips in them (probably my favorite of Ben Franklin's many inventions). They hardly ever took advantage of the New York setting. I bet plenty of regular viewers of the show would be surprised to learn that it was set in New York City at all.

A difference between Generations X and Y. Anyone my age knows what you mean if you say someone is wearing "a Marty McFly," but that will baffle some Millennials. On the other hand, Millennials will throw around the phrase "Zach Morris cell phone" casually, and it usually takes us a minute to realize what that means.

Chocolate chips are misnamed. Well, the chocolate chips in chocolate chip ice cream are pretty genuinely chiplike, but the chips in cookies are really blobs. Could you call them "chocolate blobs" though? I certainly wouldn't want my cookies filled with those puny ice cream chips, of course. Of course, we could do away with morsel-sized chips all together and move entirely over to chocolate chunks ... please?

You know the problem with TV poker? I don't think really elite players would let themselves appear on it. What's the point in having a poker face if your opponent has seen you on TV and knows exactly how you play hands based on what's dealt to you?

Third weird experience while watching Hitch: I actually kind of enjoyed it.

So what's this I hear about you and Amanda taking an eight-hour round-trip bus trip to get soup?

Yeah, we kinda did that.

So, a week or so ago, Dan discovers that a new bar was opening in Chelsea. No. Not the kind of bar you usually associate with Chelsea. This was a place called Boston 212, and as its name suggests, it's a "Boston in New York" tavern (212 is the Manhattan Area Code, if you didn't know).

I'll be writing more about this place in the Red Sox blog. I even have photos.

And look, it's quite nice. When Amanda and I went there on St. Patrick's Day, with Abe, Molly, and Dan, we had a fun time watching part of Game Four of the ALCS (we stayed until Roberts scored the tying run, one of the most glorious moments in Boston sports history), we chatted a bit with some other New England expats. It's a bit sparse yet, since it doesn't have its official grand opening until April First. When we show up then, I'm sure it'll be more gussied up.

Yes, that does worry me, by the way. What if this is all a big April Fool's Day Joke on us Red Sox fans? Like, we'll show up on the First and there'll be NESN camera there, and it'll be festooned with Sox banners and "Dirty Water" will be blasting from the stereo, and they'll say they have a special guest to cut the ribbon or what have you. So we'll get all jazzed that we'll get to meet Carl Yastremski, or Carlton Fisk, or whoever. Then suddenly the lights will change, "New York, New York" will start playing; Yankee banners will unfurl over the Sox banners; the NESN camera guy will yank a sticker off the camera, showing that he's really from the YES Network; the TV will start playing an endless loop of Aaron Boone's home run; Bucky Dent will stroll in with Ashton Kutcher and we'll all be left to shake our fists in impotent rage and make sounds like the straight man in a Laurel and Hardy short.

Well, that's the fear, and it's a worse case scenario. As far as I can tell, Boston 212 is on the up and up.

(Incidentally, you can be pretty sure I'll be posting those exact same passages over on soxblog ... I'm not above plagiarizing myself)

But Amanda and I had been feeling a little homesick lately, so we were probably wanting this place to give us more than it could logically offer. I don't know what we expected ... booths shaped like swan boats? a fountain flowing with clam chowder? a statue of Paul Revere made out of baked beans?

Then, the next night, we found a restaurant on the Upper West Side that makes our favorite Thai dish, Tom Yum Noodle Soup. Every Thai place offers a Tom Yum soup, but it's the noodles that really make or break it, in our book. And, yeah, we could probably order it with noodles, but you always run a risk when you're dealing with a waitstaff for whom English might not be their first language and you ask for something special. As it was, we had a mini-crisis when we saw that the noodle soup was on the take-out menu, but not the regular menu and we had a hard time explaining it to the waitress. I was also briefly worried that when we told her we wanted two bowls of the soup, she would think we wanted two bowls each, which would have been a lot of soup.

Anyway, we got the soup, and ... it was fine. They put tomatoes in it, proving that "Manhattan-style" soup is always inferior. But it just wasn't the soup we had come to love from Rod Dee 2, the place down the street from us in Boston.

(Incidentally, this restaurant was technically Malaysian, which should have been a tip-off that it wouldn't be the same. The did have a lot of dishes on the menu that I think of as Thai, though. My geopolitical knowledge is deficient however, so I don't know if I should be as irked by this, in a "hey, not all Americans think every Asian country is alike!" way, as I am when I see Chinese restaurants serving sushi.)

So, casually, I mentioned that we didn't have any plans for Sunday, so we could hop the "Chinatown Express" to Boston and spend the day.

For those not in the know, there are several Chinese-American-owned companies providing inexpensive bus service from Boston to New York (and, I think also New York to DC and Chicago), that pick up and drop off in each city's Chinatown neighborhood. The most famous line is called Fung Wah.

This was idle chatter for a while. But then Amanda was suddenly really into the idea. I was a little hesitant. It seemed a bit crazy, like Elvis flying his private plane to Denver for peanut butter sandwiches.

The next day, we had a pleasant lunch at Alice's Teacup, where Amanda and I seem to be rapidly becoming Cliff and Norm ... only with less sexual tension. This trip was organized by Alison, so Scott was there as were Dan and Sara Schlossberg. Dan bristled at the cuteness of the place, though not as much as Abe did, and Dan did concede the merits of the scones.

Anyway, I was starting to feel a bit sick. Quite sick actually, and I mentioned to Amanda that if I felt that way tomorrow, I wasn't going to be up for eight hours on a bus.

We invited everyone up to our place, for a brief visit which wound up consisting entirely of watching two episodes of "Arrested Development." By this point I was genuinely achy and exhausted, so, after our guests took off, and this was only about 4PM, Amanda could tell I was done for the evening.

Amanda went into Florence Nightingale mode and ran out to get me juice, zinc lozenges, and the like. The question -- did she want to take care of her husband, or was she just so set on the idea of a trip to Boston that she would kit-bash me into traveling health, come hell or high water?

Of course it was the former, but ... look, she really, really likes this soup.

I basically slept till 8PM, watched two episodes of "The Office" from Netflix (enjoying it, though I don't quite yet see the big deal ... don't worry, I'll watch them all before passing real judgment), then slept again till 11:30, watched "SNL" ... nope, none of my jokes, then back to bed.

By morning I was genuinely much better. Still sick, but it had moved into my head, where colds tend to stay, because it's roomy. So the achiness was gone and I was game for the adventure.

Besides, chicken soup is good for you.

We got to Chinatown too late for the 9AM bus, but we caught the 10AM (oddly, none of Fung Wah's competitors offer buses at quarter-past or half-past the hour, which seems to us like it would be a good way to snag latecomers).

We pulled into Boston around 2PM, and, even though I had never actually been in that part of South Station before, it felt like home. So nice to see that particular brand of Boston Irish face.

And Red Sox caps as far as the eye could see.

Boston seems more or less the way we left it. The "new" Citgo sign, which replaces the traditional bulbs for more up-to-date optics, but still tries to look the same, looks pretty much the same, except that it seems brighter and, to my eye, has tweaked the colors to look like the Bank of America colors. Also, I find this interesting -- with Fleet turned into Bank of America, there are now two red-logoed banks in Boston (BoA and Sovereign) and only one green one (Citizens Bank), a reverse of what we had before. Oh, and JP Licks has changed the name of their ice cream flavor from "Cherry Garciaparra" to "Cherry Vinatieri." I like that, personally, since, as much as I love Nomar, as a comedian I think a pun based on a pun is a house with a foundation of sand.

We T'ed it back to our old neighborhood and hightailed it over to Rod Dee. Entering it felt, after all this time like we'd finally made it to the Emerald City ... we could practically hear the chorus singing, "You're out of the woods, you're out of the dark, you're out of the night/Step into the sun, step into the light"

Damn good soup, followed by a trip to Coolidge Corner for visits to JP Licks Ice Cream (technically, you can break your Lent give-ups on Sunday) and The Paper Source, then, just in case this wasn't getting girly enough, we headed back to Simmons.

We were greeted by a session of RA training, so all the RAs, save those celebrating the B'Hai New Year, and all the RDs were there. Amanda got a truly boisterous ovation when she came in. We didn't have time to talk for long, since, well, everyone was in the middle of a meeting. But, later on, two of the RDs joined us for dinner at Audubon Circle.

Then, another four-hour bus trip back to New York, which had us back at Columbia around 1AM. Eight hours on the bus, about six in the city ... look, if you do stuff like this in your twenties, it's cute and quirky. Only once you turn 30 does it get weird.

So what's my point here?

I actually kinda of have one this time ...

The RAs and RDs all clearly missed Amanda and were glad to see her. But those who got to spend more time with her observed, correctly that she seems much happier.

And she is ... all of the petty frustrations she had after three and a half years at Simmons are gone. She gets much more satisfaction and much less stress out of the Columbia job.

But ... we still miss Boston. Even after four months in New York, Boston still feels like home.

But it's not.

And we need to remember how much great stuff we have right here. We have an incredible apartment. We have a lot of great friends right nearby. We have what may be the world's best scones.

We have a home, we have a routine, we have a life. We'll always have Boston as a memory.

And we'll always have the Fung Wah for the occasional madcap Sunday dash.

Now, if only we had the soup ...

Geek Out Day: Comics and Linguistics Geekery

If you're not up for a geek-out day this early in the week, there is finally a new post up over at Away Team. We should be picking up the pace there, soon, honest.

Superman
Wonder Woman
The Bat-Man/Batman/ The Batman
Spider-Man
The Invisible Woman


What's up with this list? Well, it's all superhero names that have a similar construction. But, as you can see, there are subtle variations. Some use hyphens, some use compounds, some use two words separated by a space.

Why?

Well, let's look at it case-by-case.

Superman ... Well, there was precedent here, since superman was already a word. I've heard it said that GB Shaw was the first to use the term in MAN AND SUPERMAN. I don't know if that predates Neitzche's term ubermensch. I had given ubermensch credit for the English word (and the American hero) not being Super-Man, because German, as far as I know, doesn't use hyphens, and is rather compound-happy ... or as we'd say in German compoundhappy.

Then again, we don't hyphenate other words that use "super" as a prefix ... superannuate, supernatural, supercede, superintendent etc. It's my understanding that there's no hard and fast rule, though, vis a vis prefixes. Probably 90% of the time we don't hyphenate, but sometimes we do (especially with polysyllabic prefixes like intra, extra, and, well, poly), and I feel like we did much more often as recently as the 19th Century.

In the 1978 movie, we have Lois giving Superman his name after observing that he was a "super man." But I think this fails the logic test, since I'm pretty sure "super" wasn't used as an adjective (notably, a superlative adjective) until after Superman was created. So, in a world where there's no Superman until 1978, how did the word come into use such that Lois would have it at the tip of her tongue.

By the way, DC has to tie itself in knots a bit these days. Since Superman is probably supposed to be under 40 (he should be perpetually 29, but that's a rant for another time), then he's probably only been active since the 1980s or sooner, so that means "super" probably wasn't a popular adjective in the DC universe before Superman debuted, and that means the term "superhero" probably didn't exist, leaving the question of "so what did they call all the superheroes who were around in the 1930s-50s"? The answer seems to be "Mystery Men," which actually was the term most people used to describe costume heroes during the Golden Age.

I suppose we could say that the term super and superhero could have been around since Superman was Superboy, except that Superboy was written out of continuity in the 80s. But anyway, that raises some odd issues, as John Byrne point out recently on his board. Sure, Superman had a reason for picking his name, since, as we've said, it was already a word. But "Superboy" only makes sense if it's the "kid version" of Superman, who, of course didn't exist yet at the time Clark would be choosing a name for himself.

I suppose young Clark could have been forward-thinking enough to decide that he'd want to become SuperMAN someday, but he'd better call himself "boy" for now. (I wonder how that transition was, I'm thinking of the trouble Ricky Shroeder had when he wanted to become just "Rick")

Or maybe Clark had read his Neitzche, and tried to get everyone to call him "Superman" but was widely derided and had to settle for "boy." That's kinda what happened with the current Superboy, who is a clone of Superman who tried to assume the name when Superman was briefly dead.

But you can't blame National/DC for not thinking this through when they decided that they could get some mileage out of telling "young Superman" stories. And what else could they call him?

Well, I suppose they could have borrowed from another German term and called him Wonderkid. Except that that makes him sound like he's connected to Wonder Woman instead of Superman.

Speaking of which ...

Wonder Woman ... I think we can chalk up the fact that this is two words to purely asthetic concerns. Wonderwoman looks kind of silly, and it obscures the alliteration.

In fact, I can think of only three three "Women" characters who have compound names -- Batwoman, Catwoman, and Hawkwoman. I guess it really only works if the word added to Woman has one syllable. I suppose the evil Wonder Woman double from Earth 3 is named Superwoman, but … c’mon.

Of course, there are many fewer "Woman" supeheroes than "Man" superheroes. For one thing, a lot of the female heroes went by ___ Girl for way too long. The Invisible Girl had been a married woman with a child for about fifteen years (real time, not comic time) before she finally became The Invisible Woman in 1985. Jean Grey was introduced as Marvel Girl when she was legitimately a teenager. Then she changed her name to Phoenix, then died, then it was revealed that Phoenix was actually just an alien disguised as Marvel Girl. So Jean came back, calling herself Marvel Girl for a while, though that started to sound weird. Marvel Woman would have been worse, though, so she just kind of ... stopped having a super name, hence, she doesn't have one in the movies, or on the cartoon. (I think, for a while, she was called Phoenix again ... yeah, 'cause most women I know would eagerly name themselves after the evil alien who stole their bodies, slept with their boyfriends, and tried to kill all their friends).

I'm intrigued that when the producers of the "Justice League" cartoon decided that rather than having Hawkman as a member, they should have his female counterpart, they went with her original name, Hawkgirl, rather than Hawkwoman, to which she changed her name in the 70s. Probably, they just wanted a different sound, since Wonder Woman was already on the team.

But even proportionally, I think women are more likely to be named for an animal, or a concept or something. Men are more likely to be ___man. Also, very few heroines have names that come from honoriffics. There were female versions of Dr. Light and Captain Marvel, and there was Ms. Marvel, though none of them go by those names, now.

By the way, if you thought that Superboy thing was convoluted, wait’ll you hear about Wonder Girl. See, Wondergirl was originally just young Wonder Woman, the same way Superboy was young Superman, except that Wonder Girl and Wonder Woman would sometimes all go on adventures together, thanks to some magical contrivance and a lenient or distracted editor. Meanwhile, other powers were putting together a comic called Teen Titans and thought that Wonder Girl was a traditional teen sidekick and made her a member. The mistake was caught and they made up a new origin for this Wonder Girl, making her Wonder Woman’s adopted sister. But then in the eighties, they decided to revamp Wonder Woman and declared that with her new Issue #1 she was a brand new hero making her first appearance in the DC Universe … but Wonder Girl was now suddenly a more experienced hero than her namesake, the fact that she had similar powers to go with her similar name was a staggering coincidence, and the whole adopted-sister angle couldn’t work any more. Eventually, they came up with some explanation, and managed to make there be a previous Wonder Woman, who was actually Princess Diana’s mother, changed Wonder Girl’s name, created a new Wonder Girl, who really was Wonder Woman’s teen sidekick … and then killed the original Wonder Girl. Sigh.

Anyway, I'm digressing.

The Bat-Man/Batman/The Batman ... See, those have been the variations on his name over the years.

Here's my guess about why and how The Bat-Man became Batman.

At first, the character was this mysterious visitor in the night who might be half-man, half-bat. After a few months, he was the much more accessible character, who even had a brightly-dressed kid sidekick. "The Bat-Man" is a description. Batman is a name.

Then, in the 70s, there was an attempt to call him "The Batman" more often, but it never took off. Even though the Adam West campiness had gone away, and the Dark Night Detective was back, we still knew the guy too much as a human being to think of him as something ... other. Plus, this was a world with plenty of people using ___Man as a name. It just felt more natural.

Spider-Man ... however, always had his hyphen (well, in his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy, it kinda went back and forth, though it was a hard-and-fast rule by the time The Amazing Spider-Man debuted). Of course, even though there have now been two successful movies that properly hyphenate the name, and the character is better known than ever before, plenty of people still seem to think he's Spiderman.

And why isn't he Spiderman? Well, that looks a little weird, but Byrne's theory is that Stan Lee, nee Stanley Martin Leiber, wanted to make sure the hero's name didn't look like a Jewish surname.

We all remember Chandler and Phoebe debating why it's not pronounced Spidermuhn, like Goldman or Silverman, right?

The other approach, of making the name two words, is used with the villain The Mole Man. In part this is because he’s more of a monster-movie style villain name (ie The Wolf Man), and partly because, as “The Simpsons” has proved, Moleman looks like a last name.

Invisible Woman ... Pretty hard and fast rule, if the word added to Man or Woman is an adjective, then the name becomes two words. After all, we talk about the White House, not the Whitehouse or the White-House. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any examples where it works differently. Iron Man, Plastic Man, Elongated Man, etc.

Okay, a linguist or real comics historian could tell you more, but, at over 1500 words, I’ve given you too much already.

Rejected Joke Thursday: The-Washing-of-the-vomit-off-the-green Edition

(Noah is a freelance joke-submitter to "Weekend Update" on "Saturday Night Live." Good jokes that don't make the air wind up on Not Like a Fountain. Jokes that didn't make the cut wind up here.)

Finally! Comments!

Does anybody read the comments? Tom does, I know ... otherwise ... well, it's good for me, I think.

These were from the David Spade episode, which was pretty good I thought. I was a little cautious about writing celebrity stuff, since I thought Spade might do a "Hollywood Minute."

Incidentally, this is the first time I can think of where the host was promoting something directly tied to SNL itself ... not just, like, a movie based on SNL characters (though I don't think that's happened either), but a DVD of old SNL sketches. Well, I guess he wasn't quite promoting it, since it's not our till fall, and his mention of it was pretty much just a set-up for a joke.

Martha Stewart enjoyed one day of freedom Sunday before she was fitted for an electronic ankle bracelet Monday. Stewart will wear the bracelet for 5 months or until she chews her leg off.
Well, it's a little hacky. Maybe it could work, out loud, but in print it looks trite.

Following a shooting last week involving a member of 50 Cent's entourage and rapper The Game, the Reverend Al Sharpton is calling for a 90 day ban on radio and TV airplay for any performer who uses violence to settle scores or hype albums, most affected by this would be cartoon animals Tom and Jerry.

Following a shooting last week involving a member of 50 Cent's entourage and rapper The Game, the Reverend Al Sharpton is calling for a 90 day ban on radio and TV airplay for any performer who uses violence to settle scores. Three violence-prone performers who preferred to remain anonymous issued a statement calling Sharpton "a knucklehead," then added, "woo woo woo woo woo woo woo."
The Stooges allusion is better, since it doesn't spoon-feed the audience. But it could only work if delivered in a stone-faced newsreader way, and that's not what Fey and Poehler do. jon Stewart occasionally does that, interestingly more often in his informal "before the show really starts" chat.

More than 40 surfers in Australia entered broke a world record Saturday when they successfully rode a giant surfboard. "Surfboard" being, in this case, an Australian word that means "raft."

More than 40 surfers in Australia entered broke a world record Saturday when they successfully rode a giant surfboard. Congratulations, Australia. After years and years of trying, you've finally invented the raft.

I had seen footage of this, and I couldn't think anything other than "if it's that big, how is it a surfboard?" Well, that's not very funny, either way I phrase it. Oh, and I'm sure there was something about the board that made it a surfboard and not a raft, but who cares?

Psychologists are saying that teens today must now face cyberbullying, in which other teens can insult classmates through message boards, e-mail and instant messaging. Luckily, cyberbullies can't force you to give them your lunch money, but they may make you hand over your parents' credit card numbers.
Might be funnier as a sketch ... in fact, it was funnier when they did this, basically, on "The Simpsons" about three years ago.

In an interview with Japan's Fuji Television, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said he saw no need for military action against Iran for its suspected nuclear weapons program. Then, because it was Japanese television, he danced with an animated squirrel and sang a dance version of the theme from "Titanic."
Sometimes I'll reread a joke of mine and wonder, "why the hell make a joke about THAT part?" Clearly, this is a story about possible war with Iran, why make a fairly generic joke about Japanese TV? Well, sometimes I really like jokes that come at an oblique angle, but I think, in this case, I just couldn't think of anything about the real story. This is a potentially dangerous trend, though. If I don't tell jokes about actual stories and just reinforce popular stereotypes (Japanese TV is weird! Bush is dumb!) then I start to veer into Leno territory.

Nearly two years after he embarked on a diet and fitness regimen that left him 110 pounds lighter, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee finished the Little Rock Marathon on Sunday ahead of Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack. Historians say this is the first time the words "Arkansas governor" "beat" and "sack" have appeared together in a news story that wasn't very interesting.
Ooh ... I actually like this one. Take it off the reject pile. The actual phrasing of the punchline is a bit of a downer, though ... and I'm still WAY too obsessed with wordplay.

A New York designer has created a line of clothes for dogs based on dresses worn by celebrities at this years Oscars. Though, come on people ... don't most dogs have better taste than XXXXX.
I was going to ask Amanda, or someone who remembers these kinds of things better than I, to name a celeb who wore something weird to the Oscars. But I never got around to it, and it wasn't worthwhile, anyway.

Julia Roberts said that she is struggling to come to terms with her enlarged breasts after giving birth to twins and said she had a hard time finding a suitable dress for this years Oscars. So, to clarify -- the worst thing in Julia Roberts' life is that she now has large breasts. Feel free to compare this to the worst thing in your life, and remember to check to make sure it's a gas stove before you put your head in it.
The other spin I put on this was much better, and more distinctive (the one about the beautiful songbirds that spring from her feces). Though I find it interesting that I'm getting more and more into writing jokes from a female perspective, imagining everything being said by two women.

In a recent statement James Brown said, "I'm like Moses in the music business." But I'm not so sure ... here's how Moses parted the Red Sea (image of Moses parting the Red Sea), and here's how James Brown parts his hair. (picture of the mug shot of Brown looking dissheveled).
This one I like a lot ... not enough to submit, but still a lot. But, alas, wouldn't work on Fountain without the visual.

To mark the tenth anniversary of her hit debut record "Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morissette will record an acoustic version of the album, raising again the question ... seriously? Dave Coulier? The "Full House" guy? Hey, Alanis, when you were doing that ... thing to him in the theatre ... did he do the Popeye voice? (Popeye laugh) "Whoah! Blow me down!"
I already did this as a THOT, and I think I might do this on stage if I ever get the balls to go on stage again. Almost submitted it. Probably not right for Founatin, either.

The man in charge of Thailand's tourism wants to build a theme park that would feature a virtual reality simulation of the deadly tsunami waves that hit the country last year. The park will be called "Nott in Very Good Taste Berry Farm."
Again, one I kinda like, though the other punchline I wrote for this (still in better taste than "It's a Small World" is better.

While speaking at the National Defense University on Monday, President Bush cited the progress being made from Lebanon to Afghanistan saying, "The trumpet of freedom has been sounded, and that trumpet never calls defeat." He then added, "That pussy glockenspiel, though -- now there's a loser."
Hmm ... doesn't suck, though using a blatantly "funny" word like "glockenspiel" seems rather Krusty the Clown.

The sudden popular push for independence in Lebanon is giving President Bush an opportunity to take on Hezbollah, the terror organization that controls much of Lebanon. Bush said he's very excited and that once he's done with Hezbollah, he'll try to do something about Her Bollah.
Umm ... maybe Robert Smigel could get away with this playing Bush in one of the "Clutch Cargo" interviews on "Conan," here it just looks lame. Oh, and it can't possibly be original.

Researchers say that the ankle bracelet Martha Stewart will be wearing over the next five months was created in 1977 after a New Mexico judge read how Spider-Man was being tracked by a transmitter worn on his wrist. That explains a lot, because I saw Martha Stewart in a restaurant once and suddenly she yelled out "My Stewart-Sense is tingling!" and she ran over to tell the waiters they were folding the napkins wrong.

Researchers say that the ankle bracelet Martha Stewart will be wearing over the next five months was created in 1977 after a New Mexico judge read how Spider-Man was being tracked by a transmitter worn on his wrist, which does explain why, since her release, Stewart has been performing most of her crafts and cooking via webshooter.

It always frustrates me when I can't write a good joke about something that's right up my alley ... like a judge reading Spider-Man comics. By the way, contrary to what you might expect, I don't actually visit all that many comics-related message boards. Has this startling revelation been revealed/discussed? Perhaps my duty is clear ...

In Touch Weekly published a photo this week of Michael Jackson cavorting on a bed with Emmanuel Lewis in 1984, when the actor was 13 years old. A spokesman for Lewis said, "There's a photo of Emmanuel Lewis in a national magazine? Really?"
Okay, though I've heard jokes like this recently ... Conan did one a few weeks ago where the spokesman for some obscure celeb said "Oh my god, I'm a spokesman for (obscure celeb)"

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Monday that before the US hands over terror suspects to foreign governments, it receives assurances they will not be tortured, but he acknowledged that once a transfer occurs, the US has little control, other than that pamphlet they give out called "How Not to Torture Prisoners, the US Military Way, Wink, Wink."
Maybe with a visual of the pamphlet ...

Thousands of smokers across the country are getting letters from state and local tax collectors demanding that they pay taxes on cigarettes purchased over the internet. Smokers who received these letters laughed and laughed and laughed and then had to clean up all the fetid, black phlegm they had just sprayed everywhere.
Too similar to that joke I had written earlier about shooting kale out of your nose for me to consider ... purely my own personal restrictions.

A new study shows that laughter can improve a person's health because it relaxes blood vessels, boosting blood flow, unless, of course, it's Fran Drescher's laughter, which has been known to cause strokes and infant paralysis.
I'll move this to the salvage pile, too ... pretty generic, though.

Ed McMahon was hospitalized last week after falling at his Beverly Hills home and suffering a mild concussion. He is currently recuperating in a mayonaise jar on Funk & Wagnall's porch.
Blatantly stolen from Rob's eulogy to Johnny.

Ed McMahon was hospitalized last week after falling at his Beverly Hills home and suffering a mild concussion. McMahon reported that while he was unconscious, he saw a strange white light and thought he saw Johnny Carson, but he didn't wave him over to the couch, this time.
I love this, though it's too inside. People who aren't pretty familiar with the ins-and-outs of stand-up don't realize the importance to a comedian's career of Johnny waving you over to the couch after you did your act. If you got to panel as well as perform, you were sitting pretty.

Inside Edition host Deborah Norville put on an ankle monitoring bracelet like Martha Stewart will be wearing to give viewers an idea of what Stewart's life will be like under house arrest, or, at least that was the excuse Norville's producers gave her, this time.
I do like jokes that imply a story. "Daily Show" did a great segment about this, btw.

A new Family Edition of Amazing Race will allow children as young as 8 years old to compete. Not to be outdone, Survivor producer Mark Burnett announced that next season the show would, quote, "be going all 'Lord of the Flies' on your ass."
Doesn't work because the show is already "all 'Lord of the Flies'" except that it's not kids. But I think people connect 'Flies' with stranded-on-an-island long before they do with kids ... if they get the reference at all. Anyway, the Neverland Ranch joke, which I did submit, was better.

Bill Clinton will underwent a medical procedure on Thursday to remove fluid from his left chest cavity. That fluid ... pure Big Mac special sauce.
Did a variation on this that was better. I think it's already run on Fountain.

It wa reported that Jacqueline Stallone, the mother of Sylvester Stallone, will appear on the British version of Big Brother, while Frank Stallone will appear on the doorstep of HIS big brother, asking for another loan.
Shrug

A dime created in 1894 at the San Francisco mint was auctioned Monday for 1.3 million dollars, the most ever paid for a US dime, yeah, 'cause everyone knows, to get a really decent dime, you ought to go Mexican, unless you can find some Jamaican.
Drug humor ... not so much my milieu.

Egypt's top archaeologist said Tuesday that the results of a CT scan done on King Tut's mummy indicate that the boy king was not murdered, but may have suffered from an infection after badly breaking his leg. And if it wasn't the infection, it may have been shame at his inability to walk, properly, like an Egyptian.
Well, makes me giggle ... but it's too cutesy.

President Bush issued an open-ended threat Tuesday, demanding that Syria leave Lebanon before parliamentary elections scheduled for May 1, but he did not say whether he would back that deadline with force, though, while he made it, Cheney and Rumsfeld were standing behind him, cracking their knuckles and shrugging their shoulders.
Fun visual, but it's a downer ... by which I mean, it ends with a raised eyebrow instead of a cymbal crash, if that makes sense.

President Bush on Tuesday demanded that Syria leave Lebanon saying, "The Lebanese people have the right to determine their future free from domination by a foreign power." Iraq and Afghanistan ... they don't have that right, but Lebanon, totally.
Y'know, if I were actually working on the show, I might pitch this, but it seems generic here. And, in general, I tend to shy away from writing the jokes about the big stories, since I assume they'll "have those covered."

The cover for the next Harry Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," was released this week and features Harry and Professor Dumbledore staring into a cauldron that emits a green light. Rumor has it that at the end of the book, Harry testifies that Dumbledore was using the cauldron to make Harry look at pornographic websites.
It kinda works if you've seen the cover ... kinda.

According to a new study, the share of black Americans joining the Army has fallen by about 1/3 over the past five years, while the number of female recruits dropped 13 percent. Look, everyone, do what you want, of course, but believe me! We do not want an army consisting of nothing but angry white guys with crewcuts.
Too much of that "personal voice or wisdom" sneaking in.

The UN General Assembly on Tuesday approved a non-binding resolution that seeks to ban all forms of human cloning. Y'know, if you think about it, people who can clone life should never have to lose anything that's put to a straight majority vote.
Good point ... salvage pile.

Jeff Ferguson, a North Carolina high school teacher who staged a class experiment that encouraged students to drink milk until they vomited, lost a court challenge to his firing from his job. Ferguson has reportedly changed his personal motto from "Got Milk?" to "Got Any Spare Change?"
Not quite.

Officials in Uganda said that they have caught the one-ton, 16 foot crocodile said to have eaten 83 people over the last 2 years, which raises the question ... is it really that hard to locate a one-ton, 16 foot crocodile with a taste for human flesh?
Shrug

After more than 30 years, next fall's Emmy Awards will revive an old category "Best New Program." Wow, that's the next best thing to actually having some good new programs.
Except that there were some pretty good new shows this year ... Maybe just two or three, but how many do we need?

A new report by the American Society of Civil Engineers gives that country's infrastructure an overall grade of D. A spokesman for the Interstate Highway System could not be reached after the bridge he was standing on collapsed.
Okay, reading it just now made me smile. Salvage.

Michael Jackson, who faced possible arrest Thursday for failing to appear at court on time, showed up wearing pajama bottoms and sandals, with his bodyguards helping him walk into the building. Experts say this is the most normally Jackson has ever dressed.
Blah. A retread of "the least assault-y thing 50 Cent has ever done" and more obvious.

Dan Rather closed his final broadcast as the anchor of the CBS Evening News with his old sign-off "Courage." Out of sheer reflex, Republican operatives immediately claimed that the sign-off could not have been old, as it was obviously typed on Microsoft Word.
The joke I did eventually write about this (Fox News anchors asked the Wizard for a brain) didn't come to me until quite a bit later, after the episode I wrote this for had already aired. Odd, since mocking Fox News and referencing The Wizard of Oz are two of my favorite things.

Astronomers said this week that there appears to be a weight limit for stars that is equivalent to 150 suns, but no larger. But don't say that too loudly, or Kirstie Alley will just take it as a challenge.
I hate fat jokes about women ... but I do consider Roseanne Barr and Kirstie Alley fair game, since they both do so many jokes about it themselves. Still ... I'm probably an asshole.

Snake Oil

I say, if someone of English decent (like, oh, say, 37.5 percent of me) tries to make a point that St. Patrick was actually Welsch by birth, you might point out that the Catholic Church has declared that St. George is officially a fictional character, and their Patron Saint might as well be Chewbacca.

Anyway, Happy St. Patty’s Day, from 25 percent of my heritage, though most likely the part responsible for my coloring, and my fondness for salted meats and boiled things.

Of course, this means it’s time for my annual batch of limericks (you didn’t know these were annual? Hell, why not) Just three this time out. I’ll tell you why later.

Neocon queen Condoleeza
Told Dick Cheney, "I hate to displeeza.
I'll rain death from above.
'Cause I make war, not love.
So sadly, I can't squeeze and teeza."

While visiting Chez Michael Jackson
Don't climb with him into the sack, son,
Lest you like getting touched
By rich weirdos and such
Or want to cash in from some legal action

Bush nominates this jackass called Bolton
To the UN, and they might let this dolt in
To a body he hates,
Wants to join but berates.
This development's simply revoltin'.

Yeah, none of these are brilliant …

But y’see, today (well, late last night, technically) is also the launch of the brand new Red Sox Blog.

Yep, please cast your browsers over towards …

The Away Team: The Year After Next Year

My theory is it will always be called The Away Team, but the subtitle will change season to season.

Look, a lot may change – the look, maybe even the URL. Whatever Dan and Abe say, since I think they may wind up as the primary contributors, since I do have two other blogs to worry about.

(How the hell did that happen?)

But enjoy it, delight in it, and Go Sox!

Oh, hey … remember that March Madness thing I did last year? Well, if you don’t, try your hand at it now …

Can you ask me some personal questions?

Noah, how's the job going?

Eh. Look, it's probably what I need right now. Not a ton of work, so I can do my writing (though I'm finding that I'm nowhere near as productive as I was in a similar position in 1999). But when the work comes -- real work, not just answering the phones -- it's the most annoying, brainless, envelop stuffing, photocopying, sorting, filing etc. And, yes, when I do that, I tend to say to myself, "Don't I have a master's degree?"

But that's lame. I could get a real job easily enough -- I don't have a great resume for business, but I can interview well. But I don't want a real job. I want the freedom to do my writing. So I should just shut up.

I'm probably more frustrated by the atmosphere at the office here. I don't think anybody here is a bad person. It's just ... my supervisor can get a little attitudey, and that one guy I mentioned who looks like the Kingpin is rather an asshole -- coming just short of the kind of asshole I find charming. He's also discovered that I'm a Red Sox fan and has decided to give me shit about it (more on this in the forthcoming Sox blog). The big boss in the office does seem to be a nice guy, though he's always asking me to tell jokes, and he doesn't always like/get them and ... Plus, now that there's another temp in the office for a special project, and she happens to be an attractive young woman, there has been a flurry of hilarious jokes about how I had better watch out of they'll replace me with her.

See, I'm just slightly too arrogant to suck all this up and deal. But I'm too lazy/cowardly to quit. I could probably get another temp job somewhere pretty quickly (I had this one the day after I tested at my agency). But ... then those questions arise ... "what if I really hate the new job?" "what if it turns out to be actual work all day?" etc.

Clearly, I can't stay at this job for more than a couple of months more. It's just insane.

What I need to do is find something I actually enjoy doing. I need to look at local children's theatres, or into teaching prospects. Molly may be able to hook me up with some grantwriting, which will be nice -- just making some money as a writer, for a change.

But I really need to get an agent. Gotta get those letters out (there've been some, but there need to be more), maybe order some promotional postcards for Not Like a Fountain (y'all are telling all your friends to go there, right?). Gotta hustle. And I'm no good at hustling.

Have you seen any people you haven't seen in years because you're in New York now?

Sure have. In fact, I think some of my recent job frustration stems from this. See, this past Saturday, I sat in on the auditions for Pioneer Valley Summer Theatre, as a reader (meaning, when the auditioners read a scene, I read the other side). Plenty of old Summer Theatre pals had auditions, including Mac Brydon, whom I hadn't seen since 1999; Tori Mack, whom I hadn't seen since 2000, and I've now discovered works at a diner Amanda and I go to all the time; Kate Sandberg, who I had seen only a week or two ago, but before that it had been a while.

And it just kinda reminded me -- these are the people I love. These are the people I want to be working with, and this is the business I want to be working in.

Are you doing Lent this year?

Kinda.

Longtime readers may recall that I abstained from eating any gummi candy last year at this time. I was successful in that, so I've attempted to give up all sweets.

This is somewhat less successful. See, at work they ordered, like, a jillion bags of Reeses Peanut Butter cups ... and they're just sitting there ...

Actually, I've been pretty good. I don't cheat all that often, and I've had no gummi at all, so I'm on par with last year's Lent. And my cravings have been remarkably few. Is it possible I'm losing my sweet tooth?

Probably not. I seem to have developed a series taste for yogurt, with fruit and granola. Plenty of sweet there, but at least it's actually pretty good for me.

Yet, despite the yogurt and the salads (and yes, I know granola has a lot of fat, and I know that a cobb salad with nuts, egg, cheese, chicken and sometimes bacon isn't exactly a nutritious option) ... despite all this, I don't seem to be losing weight. I'm not gaining any ... but I'm just treading water. Think it's those damn scones?

More likely, it's those frequent errands my bosses send me on to McDonald's, in which I'm encouraged to add a meal for myself onto the tab ... dammit, I can't turn down free food! I'm a playwright, for the luvva Pete!

Book Report, Part One

Hey Noah, how's that reading to broaden yourself thing going?

Okay. I'm not exactly devouring books, partly because they did resurrect that "no reading" policy at work (it sucks, and I'm a pussy for occasionally obeying it). But, as I mentioned a while back, I finally read The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay.

Kind of a transition back into genuine literacy for me. Yes, it's a Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel, but it's about comic books.

Unsurprisingly, I truly loved it. Excellent mix of comedy, soap opera, and tragedy. A great American story about a great American art form.

I'll be intrigued to see the movie. Like Isaac, though, I also worry.

Hey, look. Hollywood screws up books. It happens. It doesn't really affect the book much. 9 out of 10 times when Hollywood produces a film wildly different from its source, you get a forgettable movie that limps to mediocre box office and the book remains a classic (or whatever), though the movie-tie-in editions, where the original cover art is replaced by photos of actors who don't look anything like the characters, wind up in remainder bins. The other ten percent of the time, the movie manages to be a good film, despite being somewhat-to-vastly different from the book (e.g. The Wizard of Oz, Breakfast at Tiffany's, debatablyThe Lord of the Rings).

Will Hollywood screw up Cavalier and Clay? Oh, probably, yes. The fact that they were considering casting Jude Law, who has just about the most Goyisher punim imaginable, as the Czech Jew Joe Kavalier speaks highly of their plan to miss the point entirely.

And it's funny, because Law would probably make a pretty good Tracy Bacon, the actor in the book who plays The Escapist on radio and film. Yeah, he's not American, which is kinda the whole point of Bacon (that he's the ultimate middle American Christian type that K&C idolize enough to make their character resemble). But he looks quite a bit like the drawings of The Escapist that are currently appearing in Dark Horse Comics. More on those later.

But Law shan't be Cavalier. Isaac thinks it should be Adrian Brody.

This hadn't occurred to me, and I was hesitant, at first, since I thought Brody was too old and too ugly. But, since then I have read more and more about women who find Brody not only sexy, but actually good looking, proving once again that I know nothing about women. As for the age issue ... well, they're gonna cast people pushing thirty, anyway, and that's probably wise, since the characters need to age from 20ish to 40ish over the course of the story. So, yeah, Brody would be pretty much perfect.

Isaac also thinks the story wouldn't fit into a two-hour film, and should be a multi-part miniseries. This may be right, and it certainly would allow time to really explore the rich, detailed world Chabon has created. Plus, the book is divided into sections, each of which (maybe not "Radioman") could be an evening of TV.

But -- just for gits and shiggles, let's see how it would have to break down if it were a theatrically-released film? Let's assume we have two and one half hours to play with, since this would be a prestigious film:

SPOILERS AHEAD ...

(Many of these sections would be intercut with other stuff, of course, I'm just giving you total elapsed time for each segment. I've probably forgotten some important stuff.)

Intro of Joe's world, time period, his learning how to be an escape artist. A pretty good idea of what his brother is like. Perhaps intercut with Sam's world, getting to know the atmosphere of Depression era New York, and a little about the explosion of superhero comics. 20 minutes

Joe and Sam meet, create the Escapist. Maybe some animated stuff about the character. 15 minutes

The success of the Escapist leads to fame and fortune. 5 minutes

Joe meets Rosa, begins a romance, bases a character on her, begins performing as an escape artist, works on bringing his brother to the US. 25 minutes

Joe investigates anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi groups in New York, incurs their wrath. 10 minutes

Sam meets Tracy Bacon, they begin a romance. 12 minutes

There is a disastrously ineffective attempt on Joe's life. 4 minutes

Rosa learns she's pregnant. 2 minutes

One night, everything falls apart as we learn that Joe's brother's ship has sunk, and an FBI bust breaks up Joe and Tracy. 17 minutes

Jump to WWII -- Joe has some tragic adventures in Antarctica. 20 minutes

Jump way ahead to the fifties -- Sam and Rosa married, raising Joe's son -- intro to their world. 8 minutes.

Tom Clay meets fugitive Joe (his father), they strike up a friendship. 12 minutes.

The fake suicide attempt brings Joe back into Sam and Rosa's life. 10 minutes.

We get a glimpse at the project Joe has been working on for years. 5 minutes.

Sam has to testify before Congress. He is essentially outed. 10 minutes.

The Escapist is canceled, Sam decides to head West and leave Rosa and Joe together. 5 minutes.



Yep, that's 180 minutes. And, yes, that's pretty rushed. And if you hear that coming from me, you know it's a big deal, since I'm real big on streamlining stories and cutting to the chase (I could easily cut an hour out of LES MIZ).

So, would this work? I dunno. I can't think of any movies that jump, for their last forty minutes, twelve years into the future. You might need to begin the fifties, and tell the rest in flashback. Yeah, that technique is getting a little hackneyed, but it might be necessary.

Yet, when I was reading the book, I couldn't help but think of an adaptation of it that would require even more drastic truncation.

I think this would work well as a musical.

Seriously, I think this book has everything you would want out of a musical -- comedy, romance, drama. There are chances for lavish costumes and sets, some very theatrical special effects, and there are a couple of scenes at big parties which could make for incredible production numbers. The scene with Sam and Tracy on the top of the Empire State Building just before dawns seems eminently stageworthy to me.

Yes, of course a musical would have to lose some of the scope, and probably some of the depth of the original. More than a movie? Maybe. More than a miniseries? Definitely.

But, man, I'd just like to see a musical based on something other than a movie on Broadway.

Some time this week, I want to talk about a musical based on a book based on another book, and where certain adaptations live up to their responsibilities and where they don't. That'll be part two of this entry.

GEEK OUT SECTION STARTS HERE

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that I would like to see a sequel to AAoK&C. See, the book leaves off just a few years before superheroes were about to make a major comeback. Surely people would be clamoring to see a return of The Escapist (just as other seemingly-dead superheroes like Captain America, the Sub-Mariner, Captain Marvel, Plastic Man and many others came back). Wouldn't C&K's old cronies like Stan Lee and Julie Schwartz be interested in getting them to do some work for Marvel or DC? (there's a footnote early on that suggests that Sam got at least peripherally reinvolved with comics in the 60s and 70s) And then, when graphic novels start to be produced in the 1970s, wouldn't Joe's Golem novel be a hot property? Might not Sam and Joe's paths cross again? I don't think these stories are over.

(Maybe I was just a little disappointed by the book's ending, which seemed a little abrupt, after 600 pages. But maybe I'm stupid.)

Anyway, I discovered this past week, to my joy, that there is a small taste of "sequel" available.

Dark Horse Comics has been publishing some Escapist stories for a few months now. I picked up the eighth issue last week. Now I know I'm going to have to track down the issues I missed.

The stories themselves are a little hit or miss (some purport to be "authentic" Escapist stories from the past, one "from the seventies" looks more or less right, one "from the fifties" reads kinda Silver Agey, though a little too self-conciously, and the art is wrong). But what I'm really digging is some of the text pieces they're running which invent further publishing history for The Escapist after Empire Comics stopped publishing him.

Now, my theory is that DC comics would have acquired the rights to the Escapist sometime in the sixties or early seventies. When Chabon had National (later DC) sue Empire because of alleged similarities to Superman, he was clearly alluding to their similar suit against Fawcett and Captain Marvel (Shazam!), which, like the suit against Empire in the book, was successful and eventually killed the character in the 50s. But eventually, DC got the rights to the character and began publishing him themselves (with limited success -- the character was very much of his time, quite light and child-based, which didn't translate well in post-60s America). It seems to me that The Escapist would "enjoy" a similar fate.

But Dark Horse probably would feel a little uncomfortable creating this history about a rival company, especially since they'd have to contrive some way for DC to LOSE the rights in order for Dark Horse to have them now.

(I'm no legal expert, but if DC has sued the character out of existence because he's too similar to a character of their own, wouldn't they be the only ones who could legally publish him?)

So they've concocted a pretty involved history where the character was essentially handed from small press to small press for years, sometimes with multiple companies publishing unauthorized Escapist clones simultaneously. So they have cartoony Escapist stories, serious ones -- even one which offers a black Escapist. They have tales of how real certain writers and artists worked on Escapist projects and how much the character inspired their work.

(I don't see any evidence that the "histories" have told or will tell anything more about the lives of K&C after the events of the book -- that would probably be unfairly treading on Chabon's toes, though inventing future history for the Escapist does, too. Of course, if he ever wanted to revisit this world, I'm sure he wouldn't feel bound to anything Dark Horse invented)

Dark Horse's world is fun, though I do kinda wish they coulda woven the character into DC's convoluted Multiple Earths of the sixties and seventies.

See, when DC would acquire other companies' characters, as they did with Fawcett, Quality, and Charlton, they wouldn't just have them suddenly running around Gotham or Metropolis. No, they'd say that they were from "Another Earth." They'd have the Justice League meet them through some contrivance and they'd have an adventure together.

Wouldn't that be great? If DC "reprinted" the classic "Crisis on Earth E?" Where some villain's scheme traps members of the League, and of the Justice Society on some unknown world, which, luckily for them, happens to be the home of the greatest escape artist of all time. Maybe the Escapist, Luna Moth, and all the other Empire characters have formed a team in this world -- "The Rescuers" or something, maybe just "The League of the Golden Key."

Then, of course, in Crisis on Infinite Earths, the big 80s miniseries than blew up all the multiple worlds and made everything one reality, we would have had the Escapist as the representative of his world going into the final battle. And now the Escapist -- maybe not the original, but somebody else chosen by the League -- would be in the Justice Society, and Luna Moth would be romancing the Blue Beetle and stuff.

Can't wait for when DC contacts me and Rob about buying the rights to all the Western Mass Avengers characters.

Less Famous Lines, Spoken Immediately After the Famous Quotes

Yet another idea I more or less stole from Lore Sjoberg.

“Well, your majesty, I don’t think they have any cake, either.”

“What if I get afraid of starting to fear something?”

“Cogito ergo sum? Well … that’s what you think!”

“If I move, can I stop loving my current neighbor? ‘Cause that guy’s a real dickhead.”

“Man! Nikita’s gonna bury us all if he doesn’t put some odor eaters in those things!”

“Geez, Sir Winston, I was going to call you a cab so you could get home safely, and here you go, insulting me, you drunk asshole.”

“Okay, fine, Joe, but when they cheered for you, I’m guessing there were fewer requests to take off your top.”

“Great! Who can we start kicking around now? Stevenson?”

“I regret that you have one life, too, Mr. Hale. I get paid overtime for two-fers.”

“Um … hi, Julie? It’s Lucius, from the infantry … sure, you came, you saw, I’ll totally give you that, but I just wanted to remind you that you had a little help on the conquering part there.”

This blog has produced one so far, and another on the way ...

A few weeks ago, The Onion ran in their AV Club section a piece about TV spinoffs. I seem to have lost my copy of that issue, but it classified several different kinds of spinoffs.

So, I think I'll try my hand at stealing this idea and offer some other, possibly duplicate categories ...

THE ANIMATED SPINOFF

I find these highly amusing. It was a big trend for about twelve years, and it still pops up sometimes, with, like the "Sabrina" cartoon and the proposed, I-hope-it-eventually-happens "Buffy" cartoon. I suppose it's a pretty clear case of a network trying to squeeze a golden goose as hard as possible. But it amuses me how they all embraced the same formula -- take the characters, stick in some fantasy element, and PRESTO! Thus, we have ...

Fonzie, Richie and Ralph (poor Potsie -- outta luck) traveling through time

Laverne and Shirley serving in the army, with a pig as their commanding officer

The Brady kids having adventures in some weird psychedelic landscape with a bird named Merlin and two pandas who speak in pantomime

Punky Brewster hanging out with a weird, furry, pigeon-English-speaking thing with magical powers, who calls himself Glowmer. (Dan Golub does a great impression, "Glowmer Punky friend!")

A remake of "Gilligan's Island" called "Gilligan's Planet," whose title explains the premise.

Frankly, I'm amazed that we never saw, say Arnold and Willis from "Diff'rent Strokes" battling trolls in Narnia or something.

There was also an animated "Mork and Mindy," where Mork was occasionally voiced by Robin Williams, and sometimes by a young Dave Coulier. I don't recall if there was any twist on this, since it was a fantasy show to begin with.

There's a subset, less common, which turns the characters into animals. There was a cartoon "Odd Couple" where Felix was a cat and Oscar was a dog. I think there was an attempt to do "Amos and Andy" (Andy and Kingfisher, really, according to Mark Evanier) as cartoon animals, though not with the original character names.

I kinda wish this would continue. Wouldn't it be fun to see, say, the "Seinfeld" cast as squirrels? Or Will and Grace battling robot sou-chefs or something?

THE SPIN-OFF IN NAME ONLY

You know what I mean. Like, suddenly one episode of the show has a brand new character played by a slightly more recognizable actor than the usual guest star. And this character has slightly more of a real personality than the average sitcom guest star. And suddenly, you notice that the episode is focusing A LOT on this new character and on some change in their life, and then suddenly the show normally after the show you're watching is preempted so you can see the first episode of a new show starring this character.

Flipping channels a few weeks ago, I caught part of one of those episodes. It was the "Who's the Boss" episode where Leah Remini comes on as Alyssa Milano's never-before-seen best friend from Brooklyn and by the end of the episode, she's suddenly the tough girl at the modeling academy Judith Light's never-before-seen friend runs. I vaguely remember seeing that the first time it ran and being rather bored by the premiere episode of "Living Dolls" that followed it (featuring, of course, a cameo by Alyssa Milano as Samantha Micelli, just to bridge things). Trivia: "Living Dolls" featured a young Halle Berry.

The subset of these is when they make a set-up episode like this and the spin-off never materializes. Y'know, like that one episode of "The Brady Bunch" that focuses entirely on these never-before-seen friends of Mike and Carol who adopt three boys -- one white, one black, one Asian. Too bad. Bet that one woulda been a winner.

THE DISASTROUS CHOICE TO SPIN OFF TOO IMPORTANT A CHARACTER AND RUIN THE ORIGINAL SHOW

I don't think this happened too often, but "Joanie Loves Chachi" comes to mind. Richie had already left "Happy Days," and, as great a character as Fonzie was, he probably couldn't really carry a show all by himself. So losing your two juvenile leads -- and sticking them in a show with the worst theme song ever -- was an unwise move. Suddenly they had to bring in Roger McGinley and Crystal Bernard as some never-before-seen cousins back on "Happy Days."

OTHER SPINOFF THOUGHTS

Who's the champion of spin-offs? Let's see ...


"Happy Days" (itself kinda a spin-off of “Love American Style”) -- "Laverne & Shirley," "Mork & Mindy," "Joanie Loves Chachi," "Fonzie and the Happy Days Gang" (animated), and this forgotten show I've never seen called, I think, "Out of the Blue," which starred (very funny) comedian and former "Tonight Show" writer Jimmy Breslin as some sort of Guardian Angel.

"All in the Family" -- "The Jeffersons," which, itself, spun off a short-lived show about Marla Gibbs' character working in a hotel; "Maude, "which spun-off “Good Times,” right?; "Archie Bunker's Place," essentially a continuation of the original show; "Gloria," (I'm still kinda pissed that they had her get divorced from Mike); and "704 Hauser, the only sitcom I can think of that spun off the location, instead of a character … and the creators apparently didn’t know that Queens addresses always have hyphens in them.

“Mary Tyler Moore” – “Rhoda,” “Phyllis,” “Lou Grant,” the only instance I can think of where a sitcom spun-off a drama. The only instance I can think of where a show spun off something of another genre would be “Tracy Ullman” producing “The Simpsons.”


Spin-offs we never got to see …

As The Onion pointed out, they tried to produce a “Family Ties” spinoff about Nick, Mallory’s boyfriend. This never made it, though they did broadcast the pilot, which, I guess, took place in an alternate reality, since Nick was still a character on “Family Ties” the next season.

I would’ve been fascinated to see the live-action “Krusty the Clown” show that seemingly never got past the script stage, when they realized jokes you can do in animation don’t work on film -- not without tons of money, anyway. Wonder if they would’ve kept Krusty as a character on “Simpsons” … no reason not to, they would have had Dan Castalanetta recording voices anyway.

What’s my point? As usual, I have none … just scroll down and vote for a name for the Red Sox Blog.

If I could think of a title for this entry ...

NEW POSSIBLE TITLES, 7:30 PM

So.

Baseball season is nearly upon us.

And this is going to be a weird one, because never in my life, or my father's life, or my grandfather's life has our favorite team, the Boston Red Sox been the reigning World Series champions.

But they are this year.

Heady stuff man. Too heady to work out here, in fact.

So that's why I'm starting a new blog.

Yep. See, I was hoping to eliminate all traces of a personal life ...

Actually, I have help this time. Abe and Dan are joining me in this new endeavor.

I was inspired by Steven King and Stewart O'Nan's book, Faithful. I had such a blast reading what was essentially their diary of the season that I though "why didn't I do that?"

So I'm gonna, with a lot of help from Abe and Dan, both of whom are more knowledable than I about this.

We'll explain the specific purpose of the blog over in the new blog, when we start it in a week or so. (No URL yet) But basically, it's the blog of three Red Sox fans living in New York, learning what it's like to root for a World Champion team.

I'm going to try very hard not to turn this into a whiny "We're in Yankee territory" thing, though we certainly will be touching upon that.

Anyway, we need a title.

Here are the suggestions so far. Some by me, mostly by Abe.

Away Team
Royal Rooters
Beat That (Also good in case "Snick" comes back)
Pilgrims
Boston Americans
The City that Never Weeps (Pie!)
Oil Can Boys
Jewely Pants Julie
Home Away (or Home Away from Home)
Bench Coach
1918
Proud of the Hat
The Actual El Guapo
Whine? Not us.


New names, 7:30 PM

Some names suggested by my father.

A Dragon Whose Girlfriend Thinks Johnny Damon Is Hot

I've Got You, Babe

Idiots' Delight

Steinbrenner's Marmite

Fenway on the Hudson

And a few more by me ...

Lovers, Fuggers, and Thieves
Frankly Beantown
Pilgrims' Progress
Splendid Splinters
The Year After "Next Year"
Jim Rice and Beantown
Red, Sox & Blue
West of Landsdown
Fenway Frank
Wicked Pisser Red Sox Blog
The New Republic of Red Sox Nation
The Yawkey Way of Life
The Pride of the Yawkeys



And here are some that Abe suggested, which I'm fairly certain were jokes ...

A different anus sack
I enjoy the Red Sox and their baseball
Mike Greenwell, MVP
Tasty Chinese food and the Red Sox
My Sox are Red, yours are encrusted in failure
Jewely pants Julie!!!
You can't spell "Red Sox" without misspelling "socks"
Planned Parenthood
A dragon who thinks Jim Rice should be in the hall of fame
Welcome to the Jungle, if the jungle were a metaphor
Abermetrics
Three non-pedophiles

Okay, whaddya think?

Check back later on today. I may add more possible names as they come to me, or Abe or Dan email me more suggestions.

Th*s and Th*t

Bit of a grab-bag today.

First off, a piece Amanda found in the New York Times. I went to high school with this guy. A pretty talented actor, I think, and I'm glad to see him doing well.

The piece intrigues me though. Was it the Times choice, or his, not to mention Porn and Chicken, by far his largest film role?

More significantly, it is not true that his only prior acting experience was in a Junior High OUR TOWN. I was in that production, too. Two months earlier, I had been in YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU, with him. Later, I appeared in productions of THE PAJAMA GAME, KISS ME KATE, and CAROUSEL with him. Abe was in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF in which Eb*n played Tevye.

It's very possible that Eb*n is withholding certain facts -- minor ones, certainly -- to make his story seem more romantic. It's possible that the Times reporter did shoddy reporting. I know every time there's an article about me somewhere, they get something wrong. On the other hand, those are small-town papers. On the other, other hand, they haven't had huge scandals in recent memory about manufactured "news."

Anyway, here's the piece. I've edited Eb*n's name, not because I think I've accused him of any great sin (how dare he forget our brilliant performance in the "Blow High Blow Low" hornpipe?)... but hey, why risk it?

ONE TO WATCH | ACTOR, 'ON THE MOUNTAIN'
Eb*n M*ss-B*chr*ch
By LIESL SCHILLINGER

Published: February 27, 2005

N "On the Mountain," a new drama at Playwrights Horizons by Christopher Shinn, a tightly wound single mother named Sarah (Amy Ryan) brings home a lanky younger guy named Carrick. He has sought her out because he is obsessed with one of her exes: a dead Indie rocker. But that doesn't mean he can't genuinely fall for her.
Carrick, who is played by Eb*n M*ss-B*chr*ch, is tall and low-key, with ice-blue eyes and wavy light brown hair. He radiates a hypnotic macho gentleness that calms her. Stealing covetous looks at him as he sits in her kitchen, Sarah can't resist bringing up Ashton Kutcher. Incredulous, Carrick laughs, and says teasingly: "Ashton Kutcher has nothing on me."
He means it ironically, but the line isn't a throwaway - at least, coming from Mr. M*ss-B*chr*ch's mouth. Mr. Shinn wrote the line, indeed the whole part, with this actor in mind after seeing him in Lanford Wilson's "Fifth of July" two years ago. That's a great honor for a 27-year-old actor in his first leading role, especially when you consider that before a college production of "The Tempest" at Barnard (acting alongside Maggie Gyllenhaal), his sole acting experience was a junior high production of "Our Town."
Music had been Mr. M*ss-B*chr*ch's longstanding hobby. His father runs a music school in Springfield, Mass., and as a teenager he played piano in a jazz quintet. (He learned to play the guitar for "Fifth of July" and now has a band in Bushwick with the actor Peter Sarsgaard).
But "The Tempest" reactivated Mr. M*ss-B*chr*ch's dormant drama bug. He signed on as an apprentice at the Williamstown Theater Festival the summer after his sophomore year. He ended up being cast as T. B., a sickly street punk, in the Sidney Kingsley play "Dead End." The other members of the cast were Campbell Scott, Hope Davis, Robert Sean Leonard and Marian Seldes, whose "unbelievable furor and emotion," he recalls, so overwhelmed him that he hid out on the roof of an onstage shack to get a closer look at her performance.
This experience confirmed Mr. M*ss-B*chr*ch's passion for the stage: "To me, it's very exciting to feel that I could do this for a long time and still never be satisfied with myself," he said over breakfast, after an early morning tour of "The Gates" in Central Park. "That appeals to me." In the last five years, Mr. M*ss-B*chr*ch's profile has been rising on screen and onstage. In 2001 he appeared in the films "The Believer" and "The Royal Tenenbaums" and in 2002 he won praise as an Asian-art expert in Naomi Iizuka's "36 Views," at the Public Theater. "The Fifth of July" followed, and a boyfriend part in the 2003 film "Mona Lisa Smile." Since then he has acted in five movies, from the comedy "Live Free or Die," which he just finished, to "Winter Solstice," "Stealth," "Road" and "The Dying Gaul," in which he has a biggish part but is not the lead.
"I see myself as more of a character actor than as a leading man," Mr. M*ss-B*chr*ch said.
In the near future, however, he plans to be neither. After the play closes, he will take a break in Massachusetts, "walking, biking, feeding the neighbor's horses and playing music with my dad." Mr. M*ss-B*chr*ch's father has picked up an electric violin, with an eye to jamming with his son's fledgling rock band. The actor said ruefully, "Everyone's trying to be part of the game."

Otherwise ...

We had a very nice visit this past weekend from Doyne, Amanda's mother, and Denny, Doyne's German exchange student. It's always fun to have an excuse to play tourist.

Doyne had to spend a lot of time in a conference about the whole exchange thing, so I spent a lot of time playing tour guide for Denny. This was much fun. Denny seems oddly fond of me. I only say odd, because I'm really not much fun, as any of my friends can tell you. I think he just likes having a male around, since Doyne's family and circle of friends runs pretty female.

I don't have photos of everything -- Denny might email me some of the others.

We visited the Natural History Museum again (we're members now), and Amanda and I saw this Butterfly exhibit they're doing ...



I don't know this woman's name, but the butterflies were intensely attracted to her. Damned Garnier Fructis!



Amanda always looks petite, but next to an apatosaur (or whatever this is) ...



It bothers me slightly that my head is only slightly smaller than the relative size of the planet Saturn, here.



And, of course, we had to take them to Alice's Teacup, too ...
(No! This doesn't make me gay!)



Just in case you thought we were raving egotists, we did take some photos that included our guests, too.

THOTS: What's Your Marmite?

I think I need to work on short THOTS. I've been way too wordy lately. Okay, next time, just little nuggets. Nothing over 50 words .... maybe.

Hey, new blog link. Heather Allison is the first person I know to take advantage of Friendster's new blog technology. I dunno ... I think this is a bad trend in websites that they have to be all things to all people ... Yahoo has to have auctions, Friendster has to have blogs. This is McNugget thinking ... did we really need to have chicken at McDonald's? Apparently, since a lot of people like them.

Everyone is stupid except me.

Anyway, go read Heather's blog. It is devoted to networking and an art project she's working on. Wow ... a purpose in life. Dig it!

CELEBRITY SIGHTING: Jeff Ross the producer for "Late Night With Conan O'Brien." I might not have recognized him, but he was wearing a "Late Night" ID card around his neck. I'm intrigued that I always see "Conan" people, but very few "SNL" folks. I suppose, since I finish work at 4PM, I'm gone before "SNL" people arrive. Oh, and a weird one ... do remember a few Academy Awards back when one of the documentary prizes went to a documentary about this guy Thoth who performs weird violin on the subway while dancing crazily, and when it won, this bizarrely dressed wild-looking guy came up on stage to help accept? Anyway, I saw him.

I'm so glad I no longer have to pretend I didn't always like Green Day.

What happened to the word "horror"? Why don't we use it any more in referring to film? It seems so much more evocative than "scary movie." "Horror," after all, is a genre. "Scary" is just an adjective. Film in any genre can be "scary." For instance, I think Baby Geniuses 2 is unbelievably scary, sheerly because it exists.

Am I misremembering something from my youth, or did they actually used to put the drink inside the Happy Meal box, rather than handing it to you separately?

Y'know, it's interesting. The current cast of THE PRODUCERS features Richard Kind as Max and Alan Ruck as Leo. Kind had a key guest-role on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" during last season's finally, in which Larry David goes up on his lines while playing Max and only recovers once he starts ad-libbing insults to his cousin, played by Kind. Whereas, of course, Ruck played Cameron, sidekick to Matthew Broderick in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Broderick, of course, created the Broadway role of Leo. Wait ... what's that? This isn't interesting? Okay. Never mind.

This suggests to me that they aren't presenting a clear message: Until recently, I thought these Chinese people I saw protesting on the streets were opposed to Falun Gong.

It seems like the latest bit of eighties nostalgia to have a comeback is "Jem and the Holograms." I've seen t-shirts; there's a construction paper Jem on a bulletin board in the lobby of the dorm where I live (seriously, how old were these kids when that show was on? Five?). This really says to me that we are just about out of 1980s crap to revive. Seriously, "Jem and the Holograms"? That was pretty late in the 80s and pretty bottom-of-the-barrel to begin with. I would have thought it was the only thing left, until Abe reminded me about "Beverly Hills Teens" an animated soap/sitcom which predated "90210," though it probably more closely resembled Archie Comics, except EVERYBODY is Reggie and Veronica. So ... that must be next. Order your "Beverly Hills Teens" t-shirt today!

Is there really any difference between a clenched fist and a tightly-clenched fist? Are there really that many degrees of clench?

Amanda and I have grown very fond of a place in the West 70s called Alice's Teacup. It's a twee, and, I'll admit self-conciously cute tea room with an Alice in Wonderland theme. But I really enjoy all the cutesy-poo, and the tea and scones are excellent. Anyway, I think they should reach out to kids more and bring in a Hamburglar-style character in advertisements. Of course, this is a classy place, so he can't be a burglar. How "The Scone Absconder"? "Ab-scone-der"?

Isaac and a friend recently coined the term "marmite" to describe something many people seem o love but you just can't stand. So ... what's my marmite? I'd definitely say, "Sex and the City," of which I have genuinely never seen the appeal. For Amanda, it's Pulp Fiction, but then, she's crazy.

I'm going to start a new fad diet. It's called the palindrome-or-close-to-it diet. The way it works is this ... if you eat some kind of food, you have to eat or do something suggested by its palindrome (or near equivalent). For instance, if you eat a Kit-Kat, you need to eat a Tic-Tac. If you eat tuna, you need to eat a nut. If you eat a steak, you have to read some Keats. If you eat a salad, you have to go to Dallas, etc.

(Think I have too much free time at work?)

Line of dialogue I'll have to work into something, sometime: "You fouled that up like a southpaw in circle jerk."

For Valentine's Day, Amanda gave me this very nice moleskin notebook (that term has always seemed odd to me. Glad it's not really the skin of a mole ... as far as I know). And what do I do with it? I jot down things like "southpaw in a circle jerk."

Remember when they rereleased Gone With the Wind a few years ago and they gave it a G Rating. Seriously? G? This is a movie with graphic battle scenes, limbs getting sawed off, slavery, and a husband raping his wife. General Audiences? (To say nothing of Clark Gable's flagrant use of the D-word.)

Dear Iowa,


I saw your new quarter and we need to talk. What the hell is with this "Foundation in Education" thing? I'm sure it's very important to you and its swell that Grant Wood painted it, but let's get serious here. Other than unfairly influencing presidential primaries, there's one damn thing your state is known for, and one damn thing that shoulda been on your coin. Corn, corn, corn. Seriously, guys. C'mon. Take a cue from Wisconsin, who knew enough to put a cow and a wheel of cheese on their coin (and still found room to sneak in your corn) -- sure, they could've had the Fonz, or a fat guy having a heart attack, or a big mug of beer, but let's get serious here. They know they're all about the cheese, and they're comfortable with that. Still not sure what the hell is up with "forward" though.

I don't know if this campaign has gone national yet, but there are series of posters for Suave shampoo (or something) on New York subways that take female cartoon characters, such as Wilma Flintstone, Marge Simpson, and Velma from "Scooby Doo" and redraw their hair, suggesting that, if they used this product, they'd have a much more stylish 'do. I have heard several women ... several oohing and aahing over how great these characters look. All women are officially insane. (Besides, everyone knows Betty Rubble was the hot one)

If there was anyone worried that Boston had gotten over its massive inferiority complex, comparing itself to New York ... don't worry, it's going strong.

We're halfway through this decade and we haven't decided on a name for it yet. I guess that's not gonna happen. But what about a word to represent a new "type" in American society to go with beatnik, hippie, preppie, yuppie, and slacker? I suppose it might be "tween," since, sadly, this decade is dominated by the tastes of these millennial thumbsuckers. Time magazine proposed "twixters" a few weeks ago, meaning thirty-year-olds who live at home and can't hold down a steady job -- I like that, since it keeps Gen-X in the spotlight, though that just seems like slackers with shorter hair and worse music. Don't really see it catching on, anyway.

Rejected Joke Friday: Clever-Pun-About-the-Military-Command-"March Forth" Edition

These are the rejected jokes from the last two episodes -- Bateman and Swank.

I missed the firsthalf of the Bateman episode, as we were partying with our Swede. From what I saw, he was pretty good, as you'd expect. Swank avoided most of the pratfalls of the "talented actress a little at sea in sketch comedy."

Nothing of mine on the air, of course. You think I wouldn't have been trumpeting it all over town if it were?

The Bateman episode I had the odd experience of watching my jokes disappear one by one, as they used another punchline for the setups I'd used, or did some other joke which would have made mine repetitive. It was like an Agatha Christie novel.

So, with a new episode next weekend, I'll finally start writing new jokes on Tuesday. But I've pretty much exhausted my backlog.

So what does that leave me for next week? Nothing, unless I do a lot of research and write jokes for myself in addition to the "SNL" jokes.

Probably not gonna happen, so I'm thinking of doing a week of reruns. Like, the best jokes from the first few months of entries. Would that be cool? Or would it violate the description "New Jokes Every Monday-Thursday?"

Anyway, the rejects:





A German shorthaired pointer, named Carlee, took Best in Show at the Westminster Dog Show Tuesday. This is believed to be the first time Jews from the Upper West Side of Manhattan ever rooted for a short-haired German.

Interesting idea, but the premise is flawed. Do Jews enjoy the Dog Show more than other people?

The first day of a three-day auction of Jackie Kennedy Onassis' trinkets resulted in the sale of a rocking chair once used by John Kennedy for 96,000 dollars. The chair's authenticity is verified by a graffiti message scratched on it in Marilyn Monroe's handwriting, reading, "If this chair's a-rockin', don't let Jackie come knockin'."

This is okay, but it's a bt of a stretch. And I doubt even JFK could have satisfying sex in a rocking chair.

Two 100 year-old paintings of dogs playing poker sold at auction this week for almost 600,000 dollars. This beats out the 400 thousand that was paid for "Mexican Child With Giant Eyes," and the 500 thousand that went to "Kilroy Was Here."

I had a different version of this which was terser, but I used this as a joke in the title of Thursday's entry. Incidentally, I ran a THOT about "A Friend in Need" a few months ago, and this site is now fairly high on the results of a Google search for "dogs playing poker."

Police in Long Island threw six fresh turkeys out of a moving car Tuesday in a reenactment of the prank that nearly killed a woman last year. Either that or they were really desperate to get on Letterman.

Again, I wrote a better punchling, though not a great one.

A sentence of 12 to 15 years in prison on child rape charges came down on Tuesday for Father Paul Shanley. The defrocked priest is expected to be gang-frocked in the shower room on his first day inside.

Yet again, and this is really just a rephrasing. I do like this, though I'm on pretty familar ground punning on "defrock."

A German zoo has now stopped plans to break up homosexual penguin couples following protests from gay-rights groups. A spokesman for the penguins said he was happy with the decision, but still won't rest until Batman and Robin have been defeated for good.

He always seemed a little prissy to me, what with the formal wear and umbrella.

A Swedish woman was shocked when she opened a bottle of ketchup to find a human penis in there. Wow, turns out Theresa Heinz-Kerry really IS a castrating bitch.

I liked my "fancy ketchup" on better and I couldn't run both. Plus, she really isn't. The connection may be too tenuous, anyway.

A team of British detectives on Tuesday searched the Paris tunnel where Princess Diana died in a 1997 car crash, hoping the use of the latest high-tech equipment would provide new clues to the accident. How much investigation does this need? Nobody's spent this much time looking at a tunnel in Paris since that sex tape came out on the Internet.

I may ressurect this one, though I'm sick of Paris Hilton jokes. Even one that falls neatly in your lap like this.

A woman who was arrested while dressed as a Humvee sued New York City on Tuesday for stopping her one-person protest in front of an SUV dealership during the Republican National Convention. The woman is demanding 100 thousand dollars and that the city remove the boot traffic cops attached to her left buttock.

Might work in a cartoon, but you have to visualize too much in print.

A woman who was arrested while dressed as a Humvee sued New York City on Tuesday for stopping her one-person protest in front of an SUV dealership during the Republican National Convention. The suit was filed by her lawyer, who was dressed as a BMW before he left to go chase a man dressed as an ambulance.

Cute and silly, but again a bit of a leap.


North Korea announced for the first time Thursday that it has nuclear weapons, and rejected moved to restart disarmament talks anytime soon. Guys, you don’t have to try so hard. I’m sure “24” will have Koreans as the bad guys sometime soon.

Might work in delivery, but it's not strong.

North Korea announced Thursday that it has nuclear weapons and says that they are protection against an increasingly hostile United States. Yeah … announce you have nuclear weapons so the United States won’t attack you … that plan is pretty much foolproof.

I think I'm sick of jokes in "my voice" y'know. I may try to avoid jokes where I'm "the voice of wisdom" for a while.

Prince Charles announced Thursday that he will marry his lover Camilla Parker Bowles on April 8th at Windsor castle. It will greatly resemble Charles’ first wedding, except that where his wedding to Diana Spencer was grand, elegant, and captured the world’s attention, this wedding will be inconceivably depressing.

Kinda like it, and Fey could've delivered it well. But it's certainly no belly-laugh.

Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling has donated the bloody sock he wore while pitching in the World Series to the baseball hall of fame. This becomes the second blood-spattered exhibit in the hall, standing next to Barry Bonds’ urine-sample cup.

A little too gross. Do steroids even cause that?

The New York City Council is considering a bill that would require companies that want to do business with the city to disclose whether they profited from slavery. Look, how many times do I have to explain? Those were interns! Twelve-year-old Cambodian interns who worked in our costume shop stitching replica LeBron James jerseys … for a sketch.

An "SNL"-specific one, so it couldn't go on Fountain. Wasn't funny enough, anyway.

Speaking of which, here's one I did submit (though I'm not wild about it), that clearly couldn't work on Fountain.

Students inside a troubled Bronx high school told a New York City Council Education Committee that police regularly trigger stink bombs and pepper spray to break up rowdy hallway fights. Believe me, it’s no fun to have your hallway smell like hot pepper and farts. I should know. I have to work with Horatio Sanz.


According to news reports, secretly recorded audio tapes reveal that Bill Cosby offered to pay off a woman who accused him of drugging and molesting her, and that, when he wants to cop a feel, he does the Weird Harold voice, but Mush Mouth is an ass-man.

A postcard addressed to Adolph Hitler sent from an address in England was delivered this week to the Germany, 60 years after the Nazi's death. See Adolph, it was all a big mistake. Little Benny Leftkowitz DID invite you to his Bar Mitvah, but you got all upset and decided to hate all the Jews for no good reason.

Wow. Now that is a bad, unfunny "joke."

Birdwatchers in New York say that the famous red-tailed hawks, Pale Male and Lola, have been mating "every day, five times a day for five seconds,” which explains why Lola’s nickname for Pale Male is “Pale Comparison to Most Guys I Dated in College.”

Okay, this one I kinda like. Works better out loud.

One of Miami's hottest attractions is the Hercules, a 10 foot-long, 900 pound "liger," which was born from a tiger mother and a lion father. Like many children of mixed race, Hercules tries to speak Lion slang and hang out with a Lion posse, but secretly, he really digs teen pop and likes to shop at the Gap.

I think this is a rich premise, but, dammit, I don't really know what stresses biracial kids go through. Incidentaly, I think we'll be hearing more and more from the biracial voice in the future.

Jennifer Lopez has canceled a trip to Europe to promote her movie "Shall We Dance?" due to a sore throat, swollen glands and exhaustion, worse news for the film’s studio -- Lopez only got sick in the first place from actually sitting through a screening of “Shall We Dance.”

Obvious.


Microsoft said Thursday that it will recall 14.1 million power cords for its Xbox video game console, after a defect gave some users minor burns and scorched carpets. Ladies, I know it seems like the only way to get your boyfriends to pay attention to you, but you really shouldn’t be plugging the Xbox in down there.

"Carpets" may be too far away from the punchline and it's definitely too crewd.


A Monopoly-style board game called the Grow-Op Game, in which players run an imperiled marijuana growing operation, has been pulled from the New York Toy fair because officials decided it violated the group's mandate to support positive development of children. Yes, something like that could adversely affect a child’s maturation process and he’d never grow a proper Charley Horse, Bread Basket, or Water on the Knee.

Too much of a pun on the word "development" when the funny part is the pot thing. Still Operation references are funny.



Insiders say that Usher was upset that he did not win more Grammys this year, and thought he was going to sweep all eight categories like Thriller did the year it came out. Is it possible that somebody is getting just a little too full of himself? (A clip from “Yeah” is played, answering “yeah” to the question)

Coulda been fun on air, though it didn't make my top ten list that week.

New York City will soon begin experimenting with water power, which uses tidal currents in the East River to produce electricity. Environmentalists applaud the plan, though they do caution that appliances run on East River electricity may wind up smelling like feet covered in old cheese.

Eh. Territory's a little too well-worn.

A New Jersey man has filed a false advertising lawsuit against a maker of herbal penis enlargement pills, alleging the medicine does not fulfill its promises. Okay, so this guy may have a small penis, but the fact that he’s willing to discuss this in open court tells me that he has enormous balls.

Colin Quinn did something too similar a while back.

A leading Republican said Sunday that President Bush is so worried about Social Security that he'd back raising taxes and cutting benefits to ensure the program's solvency. Boy, somebody REALLY doesn’t want George Sr. to have to move in with him.

Funny idea. But there's that voice again.


On Fox News Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist urged Howard Dean and the Democrats not to be obstructionists in Congress, adding, "Don't say no to everything." Relax, Howard Dean is from Vermont. The state that gave us Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and the band Phisch doesn’t say “no” to very much at all.

Too wordy, but I think you need to spoon-feed to audience to make it work.


The sheriff of a small town in Upstate New York was called after neighbors complained about a 6 foot tall snow sculpture of a penis in a woman's front yard. The woman is facing one count of public lewdness and one for “raising unrealistic expectations.”

I prefered my Milton Berle punchline.

The Beauty Part

So you may be wondering, is Noah still a playwright, or just a full-time nerd?

The answer ... kinda. See, I'm still not sure if I want to write any more grownup plays. That one day in class when we read part of COMING OVER/OTHER SIDE OF THE PILLOW really really hurt me. It was just so bad that I really thought, "Somebody needs to keep this jackass from ever writing again." And some more looks at older scripts of mine only reinforced that.

So, yeah, it's frustrating. At this point, I really don't like much of what I've written. Oh, I like my children's plays ... and I like my jokes ... and I like this blog. Otherwise ...

Well, not all is lost. I recently took a look at INSTANT MESSAGE and kinda liked it. I should have some people over some weekend afternoon to read INTERVENTION FOR ISAAC, just to see what I feel about this now.

I can't pinpoint what it was about Brandeis that made me question this whole world. I liked my professors, though I would have liked a little more variety. I liked the people I worked with. I certainly didn't like having the program canceled and the general attitude the Department took towards us.

But I can't really blame my current malaise on Brandeis. Sarah and Meron went through the same thing and they're still writing. It's just me and Tina who seem to be in a funk. (I think Dani hasn't been writing too much, either, though I'm not sure if that's a question of a funk, or just the fact that she has, like, a life)

Some people thought that moving to New York would get me to dive headfirst into theatre. Well, not yet. Frankly, I'm rather scared of the New York theatre scene, which I'm pretty sure isn't interested in producing the type of stuff I write. Theatres and especially critics in this town are pretty disinclined to like lighter stuff, and I'm not especially interested in writing darker stuff.

So, I dunno ...

But, I am still writing plays for kids, and really enjoying it. Some interesting productions of the three plays published by Eldridge seem to be on the way. I seem to have broken through from small towns to small towns that happen to be the state capital, with productions in Topeka and Fargo of CASEY. And, this is more interesting to me, a production of PUSS IN BOOTS at the Missouri School for the Deaf. I'm gonna have to write to them to learn about how this is going to work. Is is all in ASL? What about the dialogue in French? It's a pretty verbal play. How will the audience participation work? What about the voiceovers? Amanda and I lived next to the Illinois School for the Deaf when we were in Jacksonville. I covered a few sporting events there, in my journalist days.

And, I think I've mentioned this, I'm writing two new scripts for Summer Theatre this year.

The musical will be STONE SOUP, again with book by me, music and lyrics by David Nields. We haven't gotten too far into that. This idea originates with my discovery, last summer, that David shares my fondness for the Marx Brothers. I suggested that our next musical should turn some traditional story into a Marx Brothers movie. After casting around for a while, I thought of "Stone Soup." After all, the Marxes did Duck Soup, it seemed like a good match.

I think David wasn't as big on the idea -- probably not interested in composing a harp solo, and he's not really a keyboardist (though he's a guitar virtuoso), so making up something for a Chico character probably would have required bringing in some outside help, but I think he was game. Susan, the Artistic Director, loved the idea of the story, but wasn't as interested in the Marx thing. I think she thought it would have been alienating, though I disagree. Even if you've never heard of the Marx Bros., as most of the kids wouldn't, it's still funny to see a guy running around with a painted-on-moustache, another with a silly accent, and another who doesn't talk at all, but honks horns and gets into mischief. And I think I could be trusted to write something that would entertain all people, whether or not they've seen A Night at the Opera six times.

So I find that frustrating. It's the type of thing that occasionally makes me want to find some other theatre.

But, y'know what, this isn't going to prevent me from writing a different version of SOUP that does include the Marxes. And I'm quite certain that what we do come up with will be pretty great.

One thing that really grabbed Susan about the story was that the guy (or in some versions, multiple guys) who come up with the stone soup idea is a soldier returning from war. She wanted to make some use of that. I think that'll be pretty cool, though I'm awfully cautious of making any overt references to Iraq. What I do think I'll do is work off of an On the Town model. So, three soldiers, typical 40s-era buddy types, all in town, wacky hijinks, farcical love stories ... soup, everything you want.

I haven't heard from David yet about this idea. He's a hard man to reach during the school year, when he's always knee-deep in directing school plays and stuff. I hope he's game for the idea.

In a break from the tradition of the past three years, we aren't closing with the musical. Rather, it'll be our middle show. The theory, and I think this is good logic, is that SOUP is a lesser-known title, so we should put that in the middle slot, when camp groups are at their biggest. Then we close with the other script I'm writing, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

The downside is that some people might be expecting a musical B&B, since Disney has made them think of the story as a musical and they may have come to expect us to close the season with musical comedy.

Believe me, that ain't what they're getting.

I've written the first act so far. And this is not a light, fluffy comedy.

I really like the story of "Beauty and the Beast" (have you SEEN my wife? ... I'm not quite a beast, but compared to her ...). It just strikes me as the most mature of fairy tales. It's not about love at first sight, it's about slow, gradual affection. It's about redemption, sacrifice, and second chances.

So I'm taking this kinda seriously. There's no screwball bickering between B&B, no pies in the face or goofy proclamations of devotion. There's actually a lot of ... conversation.

I know, this may be a disastrously bad idea. But don't worry. This isn't turning into a hairier version of My Dinner with Andre. Beauty has two sisters who have a wacky romance subplot that actually has them bonking heads and stuff. But mostly, I think what will make this show work is pageantry. This is tough with a small budget, but I'm borrowing a bit from that excellent Cocteau film version and using a human ghost-in-the-machine approach.

I really, REALLY want to have lit torches on stage. I have this idea about arms sticking through walls holding the torches, one getting lit and passing the flame down the line to the others.

Yeah, this probably won't be allowed, so any number of reasons. But, c'mon! If we can't do this in outdoor theatre, performed on a cement patio, when the hell could we?

After getting burned (pun slightly intended) on TREASURE ISLAND last year, where I demanded a lot of spectacle and got crap, I'm trying to be careful here. Ask for the moon, but make sure the show will still work without it. The trick is to pretend that it's all vitally necessary. If I let on that anything is "gosh it'd be nice to have ..." then it's a surefire way to make sure I don't get it.

But the human spectacle won't cost anything. It really is fun just to watch people moving around on stage. I saw a weird quasi-ballet based on Cinderella a few weeks ago. Didn't especially thrill me, but it did remind me how captivating human movement can be. I hope we can make this work. I'd like to direct this one, though I don't think they're going to let me.

The specter of the Disney vision looms pretty large here. For my money, there are two fairy tales which Disney has pretty much "ruined," only in the sense that it's pretty much impossible to do a stage version (or any other-media version) close to the original, since people associate the story so much with the Disney. The first is "Snow White." Unless you go out of your way to make it clear this is a different, modified, or satirical version (as Jack Neary did with his), people will be disappointed when the dwarves don't have the Disney names. The other is "The Little Mermaid." Just try explaining to kids and parents that, in the real version, the mermaid dies. Or, if you gave it a happy ending, you'd just be ripping off Disney, eh? (I suppose The Hunchback of Notre Dame is like that, too, but who in their right mind would adapt that for kids, anyway?)

"Beauty and the Beast" isn't quite that inextricably linked. I'd put it one rung down on the "Disney OWNS this one" rung with "Aladdin," and maybe a few others. Yes, a lot of people will ask me "where's Gaston?" "where's the dancing silverware?" etc. But people are at least a little willing to accept that the story could be told a different way -- as long as it entertains them.

Note to self -- entertain audience.

Sue-ee!

Hey, if ...



Wednesday Addams

married



Frederic March II

Her name would be ...

Wednesday March the Second!

Yuk yuk. Get it? Today's date?

I'm the first person ever to make a joke like that.

Ever.

Okay, if that's not a clue, it's geek-out day again ... though, really, that's kinda been every day, of late.

Remember when I threatened to sue Rob for posting that picture of me at the prom? Well, now loaded up on my NetSuit queue is Fred Hembeck.

See, I wrote Fred a nice, casual email where I happened to mention that, when I was nine, I had written a letter to the letters page of Peter Porker the Spectacular Spider-Ham.

This was a book published by Marvel Comics under their "Star" imprint -- comics for younger readers. The line was pretty evenly split between 1980s media tie-ins (Ewoks, Strawberry Shortcake, Muppet Babies, etc.), and a series of new characters they had created in a fairly blatant mimicking of Harvey Comics (they didn't have Richie Rich, they had Royal Roy. They didn't have Wendy the Witch, they had Wally the Wizard). But Spider-Ham was an oddball. It was set in a funny-animal version of the Marvel Universe. Every issue had a feature story starring Spider-Ham, and a shorter backup story starring such characters as Captain Americat, the X-Bugs, Hulk-Bunny (not, perhaps, the most inspired name), The Fantastic Fur, etc.

I LOVED this book as a kid. See, I had always enjoyed the funnier side of my comic-book heroes as a lad. When my friends thought it would be fun to play "Pooperman and Fatman" sometime, I thought this was the greatest idea in the history of anything. I loved when Dad told me about Bouncing Boy, Matter-Eater Lad, and the Legion of Substitute Heroes. I really loved it when the Greatest American Hero would fly around all crazy and crash into things.

This, of course, carried on into my adolescent life when Rob and I "published" The Western Massachusetts Avengers in Junior High. And even recently, I actually really liked Mystery Men.

(Lately, I've gone a little off superhero parody, since, as John Byrne has pointed out, it seems to be Hollywood's default mode for superhero movies ... how long will it be until Sam Raimi leaves the Spider-Man franchise and it takes a turn towards the garish comic excess of Batman and Robin? Even The Incredibles, which I thought was great, made me a little itchy.)

But Spider-Ham, I loved. I actually had a dream as a kid that I was playing Spider-Ham in a children's play at the Amphitheatre at Mt. Holyoke College. I did eventually get to act in quite a few plays on that stage. But I never did get to don the tights and snout.

Not that Spider-Ham didn't bug me every now and then. I really basically just wanted it to be exactly like a Spider-Man comic, but with animal characters. So it bothered me when he wasn't fighting, say, Ducktor Doom, The Green Gobbler, or Dr. Octopussycat, just some other threat that had no parallel in the Marvel Universe.

It also bothered me that the X-Bugs were never given individual names, though clearly they were drawn to be Cyclops, Storm, etc. In later incaranations, Wolverine appeared as, I think, Wooferine and an actual Wolverine. This bothered me, since he was supposed to be a bug, dammit. And recently, it seems to me that "Wolverinsect" would have worked just fine.

Anyway the reason I'm suing Fred, who did his share of Spider-Ham stories in his day, is that he actually found the issue with my letter in it, scanned the letter page, AND POSTED THE LETTER ON HIS WEBSITE.





Here I am, trying to establish a career as a writer, and he goes and makes this garbled, unintelligible piece of fourth grade writing available to world at large!

(Pretend grumpiness, pretend grumpiness, pretend grumpiness)

Anyway, since it's out there, I probably ought to translate it from fourth-grade Noah to English.

See, I was always a pretty decent writer as a kid, except that I wasn't as good as I thought I was. I was creative, but I tended to get ahead of myself. So I would write things that made perfect sense to me, after a particular train of thought had run through my head, without writing the necessary steps to make that thought comprehensible to my readers.

Of course I never do things like that on this blog ...

Add to this tendency my attempt to write in a breezy, faux-Stan Lee style and, well, you see the results above.


Dear Hams,

An obligatory wacky salutation. This is a humor comic, after all.

Once upon a time there were three little humans ...

I seem to be suggesting that in the Spider-Ham universe, the story of "The Three Little Pigs" would have to be "The Three Little Humans." I think there was one throwaway reference in a book to Peter Porker "sweating like a human." I don't know if I was even familiar with the phrase "sweating like a pig," and I'm sure, being a trivia-prone child, I wouldn't have approved of it, since everyone knows that pigs don't sweat ... that's why they roll in mud. Duh.

Anyway, extrapolating from this I assumed the rule was -- and I was always assuming various rules were hard and fast as a kid -- that humans were the "animal" class in this world. All animal analogies we use in English had human equivalents, and, presumably, humans were eaten as meat. This idea didn't disturb me much as a kid, for some reason.

wait a minute, school's out!

See, we used to write stories in school. I went to a hippie-dippy public school in Massachusetts, so we were encouraged to do TONS of creative writing. I loved this, of course, as did Abe, whose masterpiece was "Kermit the Frog Goes to the Bathroom."

But, it was summer vacation. In fact, I think I might have bought the issue that inspired me to write (one that had, I think, Hembeck artwork), on the last day of school.

So, school's out, so I don't have to write any more stories, so, though I started to write "The Three Little Humans," I've realized I don't have to ... get it?

See what I mean about this train of thought problem?

Of course, Spider-Ham was a bimonthly comic, so even if the letter ran in the next issue (it did, but usually it took longer), it would have been late August or early September before it saw print, and school would no longer have been out. Not sure if that had occured to me.

I go on to recommend that they produce a parody of Secret War. This was a hugely popular limited series of the 80s in which the Beyonder, an omnipotent being, created a planet and transported most of Marvel's superheroes, and plenty of villains, too, to it, and made them fight each other. Basic, I suppose, and somewhat derided now, mostly for its sequel, Secret Wars II, which seriously irritated a lot of creators who were forced by the editor-in-chief, for whom SW was a pet project, to jimmy appearances by the Beyonder into their storylines, often fouling up plotlines they'd been planning for months. But I loved both series. I'm always a sucker for "everybody into the pool"-type stories where they cram in a ton of characters. I always loved those scenes at the end of the Oz books when all the characters would meet in the Emerald City for dinner, or when a cartoon would have Bugs, Elmer, AND Daffy.

Anyway ... at this point in the letter, I start my plan for the SW parody ...

I've got it! The Baboonder

I was looking for an animal that started with B to use as a substitute for the Beyonder. I considered "Bee-Yonder," but I thought that was lame. Mom suggested Baboon. Then, when a Beyonder parody did appear, they DID call him "The Bee-Yonder" (with the explanation that he was "a Bee from Yonder galaxy.") Well, it is better than "Baboonder."

creates a farm

The Beyonder made a planet, the Baboonder makes a farm. Couldn't be more simple.

I thought, at the time, and I continued to think this till college, practically, that a parody was basically just a perfect duplicate of something with silly substitutions. For instance, when Rob and I were doing WMA, I had plotted out a parody of -- you guessed it -- Secret Wars, which would have been a blow for blow retelling, essentially, with, like, No-Homework Man as Spider-Man, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Republicans as the X-Men, etc.

and takes Captain Americat, Spider-Ham, etc.

No more creativity from me; Captain Americat was already an existing part of this universe.

And we have The Secret Furs!

Get it? Instead of Wars? Furs?

Okay ... so they ran this letter. Then, a few issues later, they ran it again, giving you some idea of how many letters Peter Porker the Spectacular Spider-Ham. received. The second time, they ran my full address (rush out to your local comic store to scour the back-issue bins for a copy of PPTSSH #7 to find out the address of the house Noah grew up in. Just don't use this information to harrass the current tenants). Fred suggests this was so they'd have a reminder of where to send the royalty checks ... I'm guessing it had more to do with having less white space on the page.

(Incidentally, I'm not the only person I know who had a letter published in a Star comic. Meron, my friend and fellow Brandeis playwriting alum, had one published, but in the "Bullpen Bulletins"-equivalent page that ran in every Star Comic that month. He asked if there was any connection between Planet Terry and the Kree, since they had similar symbols on their chests ... so I think he has outnerded me on this front.)

But here's the thing, suddenly other readers started writing in, demaning "Secret Furs." One of them even said something like, "I agree with Mr. Noah Smith, of Pelham, MA. There should be a Secret Furs."

Eventually the anonymous editor's voice wrote, "We're thinking of doing a 'Secret Furs' backup, either that or 'Secret Warts.'"

Well, that would never have done. I always severely objected when the parodies weren't animal related ... like, when "Alpha Flight" became "Awful Flight," etc.

So, then, finally, in all its glory, issue #17 rolled around and, sure enough, the backup story was "Secret Furs."


Well, it wasn't what I had hoped for, since it wasn't exacly like "Secret Wars." It had something to do with the Beyonder casting superheroes in television shows like "Days of Our X-Bugs" and "Whale of Fortune" (two characters would be invited down from the audience to whale on each other ... actually, this could be a successful reality show these days).

Still, I felt like I had contributed something to Marvel Comics ... my first freelance assignment hey, if I can tell people I'm a freelance writer for "SNL," now, then I can certainly claim to have been a freelancer for Marvel back then.

Then, of course, they canceled the comic and the entire Star line.

Yep, "Secret Furs" was the last thing to appear in PPTSSH. I try not to blame myself.

Stuff like this is the real reason they invented the Internet

We had guests over on Saturday night, nominally for a "pre-Oscar" party, but basically it was just dinner and games.

I know, sometimes I act like I'm deeply into my thirties. But I really enjoy a nice evening of Trivial Pursuit with friends. P'raps on my deathbed I'll say "gee, I wish I'd spent more time in nightclubs."

Anyway, one of our favorite games is Davis Cresner. I've mentioned this game before, I think. It's simple -- you write famous names on paper, put the papers in a bowl, and everyone draws slips and tries to get their teammates to say the name on the paper. Most people call it "Celebrity." I learned it as "Who the Fuck?," a name which I found juvenile. So, when Abe started bending the rules and writing down made-up named, such as "Davis Cresner," we decided this had to be the new name of the game.

We played this game for HOURS on Saturday night, well into the wee ones. Sadly Alison and Scott had to leave around midnight and missed the really silly stuff. The others spent the night.

See, we played by the normal rules for the first few rounds. That's not to say weird stuff like "Frankenberry" or "The Amazing Mumford" didn't crop up, but that's par for the course with Gen-X. But by the last few rounds, we just threw out the rules and wrote any damn thing we wanted on the slips. Abe got this weird obsession with Dragons. Amanda kept putting in retail outlets. Dan had a running gag about pants. I put in a few "Before and After"s like they do on "Jeopardy!" and "Wheel of Fortune," where one person's last name is another's first, like, say, "Johnny Carson Daly." Molly ... well, Molly was just freestyling.

Here's some of what we wrote. Enjoy. Italicized notations are my own additions. Otherwise, it's exactly what's written on the paper, or close to it.


Custard Pie Curtis
tie-belt (Amanda was wearing one>
Let's have pancakes for breakfast, please!
sucker punch
A friendly Dragon
My pants
wine
Dan's lesbian girlfriend (Much mockery of Dan that evening, his single status, and his history of dating women who later discovered they were lesbians)
A dragon with future plans
Jimmy the Hair Follicle
Don't give me any more of your guff, mister
The Kool-Aid Pitcher ("oh Yeah")
Pants! Pants! PANTS!
Sleepytime tea (as in "if you dunk a midget in a tub of hot water, he makes sleepytime tea," according to Patton Oswalt)
A different Dragon
Zooey (not pronounced the way you think)
Several dragons
A hat
Sideburn
Sleepover fun
Dan's shirt (that a lesbian would love)
Pajama partay
(Before and after) John Tyler Durden
The Dragon who breathes love
A plate Dragon
gum
The Ugly One
Johnny Heineken
23 Skidoo!
Pants (The Shirt)
Pants McGee
A scary dragon
Mona Linda (the other one)
Johnny 5 (alive)
Suzanne & Vega (this was supposed to be "Suzanne and Vincent Vega," but I got distracted and forgot to write Vincent. As it was, Abe gave it as if it were just somebody named Suzanne and "the guy with the claws from Street Fighter II")
A hat only a mother could love
A caveman dragon
I'm covered in gravy
(Before and After) Little Debbie Allen Cumming
Average Rainfall
Billy
Vincent & Vega & Theo (after my previous mistake, I got creative)
R2D3
Noah and Amanda's house rulez!
AfriCan opener
The color blue
I like Dan's shirt, does that make me gay
Infinity
Arby (presumably, the guy after whom the restaurant is named)
snacks
The thing about Peter Pan is he lacks pockets
Mabel Syrup
40 year olds Dan should date (this became a running gag. It seems the women Amanda and Alison kept thinking of to set him up with were all over 40. Dan is only 26, so that seemed a bit of a jump for him.)
Xena (Warrior Princess)'s hot blonde sidekick
Dr. Donuts
A Dragon with Wanderlust
A Dragon with campy enthusiasm
more wine
Why did this Dragon call his mom? Was he afraid?
You (the one who's guessing this)
Shirt vs. Skins
Guy Who Invented Something (to understand this, you'll have to read Abe's "West Wing" "spec" ... p'raps I'll post it sometime, with his permission)
overpants
American Eagle
Mabel Syrup's Revenge
Commodification (I had no choice but to give this one as "the process of becoming a toilet")
You (Not You)
My Bare Area
John Steinbeck, the Dragon
Your Grandma's Doilies (I forget who wrote it, but I love this one. It sounds like something a "tough kid" character would say in a movie from the 40s to express derision. "Ah, yer grandmother's doilies!")
The Dragon who has no respect for other people's magazines
Zinc
A supermodel Dan could easily date (Dan wrote this one himself. He was a little sick of the 40-year-olds)
Punch (and, on the other side of the paper) Judy
Pants Jr.
Gym Rice (as in Rice eaten in a gymnasium)
lead poisoning
I'm still sleepy
A hat that smells a little odd
Future Pants
Bugaboo Creek
We are all very clever
Chuckles McSpooky
Pillow Fight
What ever happend to my Transylvania Twist?
Doctors/Golf * Cops/Donuts * Homosexuals/Typewriters
t-shirts
when "no" means "yes"
A hat that's blue
Norway is better than Sweden
A Dog's Dream 2
A dragon you like --in theory
"Just a dragon? I thought this was Spain!" The Quote
Kr*st*n Ir*sh, my high school nemesis (vowels removed to prevent Googling)
Your monkey
A Dragon who's not quite ready
Billy Jelly Bean
Fighting Babies
99 Bottles of
The Dragon who can fly, but not when the pressure is on
If we run out of pancakes, can we have donuts?
Phil A. Buster
Log Cabin Lite Republicans
pants fight
Adolf Hitler (the captain of industry)
McSpensive (an idea Abe and Molly had for a new McDonald's sandwich where the whole point is that it costs a lot)
Pier One
The Kandor Tourism Bureau
wiccups
Naughty the reindeer
Okay, assuming we run out of donuts ... plain donuts?
600 puppies
25
Sexy Dragon 2: The Legend of Curly's Gold
candy tonsils
A Dragon you like!
The True Love
arm hair soup
Just Put This Back In The Bowl
Rollerblading without pants on
Stop fucking writing dragons
Ellipses
Molly's going to be so sad that there's no pancakes (sadly prescient. I had planned on making pancakes for everyone Sunday morning, but while doing so, I accidentally set of a fire alarm and the whole building had to be evacuated. Probably not the way most Columbia students had hoped to wake up on Sunday. We went to Tom's Diner instead.)
Homeless people
Shrink-i-dink kid (some debate over whether this was just a kid who really liked Shrink-i-dinks, or a kid who actually WAS a Shrink-i-dink)
New Amsterdam (or what New York should be called) (Amanda has this whole Dutch obsession)
You (the person reading this)
Booker T. Washington and other famous black people for Black History Month
that salad bowl that looks like a lampshade
Madeline Albright (Secretary of State under Clinton) (you're welcome)
The letter "C"
the Neverending Dragon
Gay Paris (pronounced Pehr-eee)
Teddy Graham S'mores
pancake machinery
A Dragon who won't go to the dentist even though he should
knitting
Joe the Leaky
Sexist Sexinstein
The Dragon who poos cannibal sonnets
A Dragon you've heard of
Mr. Ikea
A hat wearing another hat
steak
R2D1
A Dragon who seems cool at first
The Old Bay
Poop McDingleberry
Sleepytime Whiskey
The greatest Dragon of all time
midnight-oh-three
second dinner
Tits 'n' Ascots
Libya (the person not the country)
Cliff (who has "notes")
Mrs. Pants Magee
coat of legs
Dragons from the spa
"Just put this back in the bowl" the Dragon
regular-sized s'mores
I named my sandwich Uncle Chester
The Dragon we're rooting for
Arby's (the draft dodger)
An exceptionally tall dragon
A Dragon who won't play your mind games
A Dragon who doesn't believe in representational democracy
goo goo gah gah
Pointillism (the dessert topping)
This piece of paper
Chipmunk the Squirrel
Jem Finch and the Holograms
Toto (the country, not the band or the dog)
plastics
sandalwood
Olive Boyle
Bursting into flames
lumpy things
ultra "sound"
A Dragon who's over the scene