Quote Unquote "Quotes"

As Max mentioned in the comments for yesterday’s entry, that Greatest American of All Time thing is over and, yes, Reagan won.

Look, there’s not much point in bitching about it, but come on. Is there any sane person, with a legitimate knowledge of history willing to claim that Reagan was a greater person than Lincoln or Washington? Even hard-core Republicans. Seriously. Poor Matt Lauer, having to put up with that and Tom Cruise in one month.

Oh, and also, yes, Max, of course you’re much, much more than “a Brown friend.” In fact, you’re only occasionally a brown-nosed friend. It’s just that I was already running way long with that entry and I had dipped into shorthand. My bad, and, yes, I’m bummed I missed seeing you perform on Sunday night … not quite as bummed as I am that I missed that girl who played the goth chick in the sketches popping out of her bustier.

Regardless, and with some fear that this is turning into a “Noah complains about meaningless lists” blog, I want to talk about the American Film Institute’s recent list of the 100 Greatest Movie Quotes of All Time.

You can find the list here. It’s pretty good, actually. Only one or two I think shouldn’t be on there and a few glaring omissions. Very silly thing to do, of course, but that’s my bag, so let’s get to it.

I’ll only comment on ones I find particularly interesting.



5
Here's looking at you, kid.
CASABLANCA
1942

20
Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
CASABLANCA
1942

28
Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.'
CASABLANCA
1942

32
Round up the usual suspects.
CASABLANCA
1942

43
We'll always have Paris.
CASABLANCA
1942

67
Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.
CASABLANCA
1942


Wow! Six quotes from one movie. No complaints there (except ranking -- "gin joints" should be higher). It's probably the most quotable screenplay ever written … hell, I might add in “I was misinformed,” “You despise me, don’t you, Rick?” “I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue,” and “I like to think you killed a man. It's the Romantic in me.”

Of course, to drag up an old cliché, the most famous line from the movie, “Play it again, Sam,” wasn’t actually spoken, so AFI equivocates by putting “Play it, Sam” on there … and that’s Ilsa’s line, not Rick. He says “You played it for her, you can play it for me.”

They seem to have a rule of no song lyrics ... otherwise there'd probably be a lot more Wizard of Oz quotes here. Hence no "You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss."

Incidentally, none of these quotes would be on this list if Warner’s had gotten their original casting wish for the movie … the alleged Greatest American of All Time.


6
Go ahead, make my day.
SUDDEN IMPACT
1983

51
You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?
DIRTY HARRY
1971

Huh … I had thought “make my day” was the final line of the speech in the original movie. D’oh. Interesting to point out, Harry Callahan is the only character with two quote from two different movies on this list.



9
Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night.
ALL ABOUT EVE
1950

Did many cars even have seat belts in 1950?


14
The stuff that dreams are made of.
THE MALTESE FALCON
1941

Interesting … clearly they have quotes here that originated elsewhere. Their number one choice, “Frankly my dear …” came straight from Mitchell’s novel, I believe. But here we have one that is a paraphrase of Shakespeare, even though it’s not an adaptation of THE TEMPEST.

I guess it’s about the cleverness of the use of the quote, but it raises an interesting point. Is there any better “line” than “To be or not to be, that is the question?” It’s been in any number of movies, after all.

By the way, I’m probably in a minority here, but I think Maltese Falcon is better than Big Sleep, which I feel is a little undercut by Bogart’s stardom. Falcon is about Sam Spade … Phillip Marlowe is a supporting role in Big Sleep, which is about Humphrey Bogart … not that that isn’t a worthwhile thing all by itself.


19
I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!
NETWORK
1976

It isn’t “take it anymore”? Really?



26
Why don't you come up sometime and see me?
SHE DONE HIM WRONG
1933

Another line popular memory has fiddled with … though I do think “come up and see me sometime” actually sounds better.


33
I'll have what she's having.
WHEN HARRY MET SALLY
1989

One of many lines on this list that is pretty meaningless without context.

36
Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!
THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE
1948

Another one that isn’t as good as the version we all misremember.


38
Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES
1942

Somehow, this seems like cheating to me. I mean, the real Lou Gherig really said this. I’m sure there are plenty of movies about Kennedy where he says “As not what your country can do for you” … but since none of those is a classic …



42
Plastics.
THE GRADUATE
1967

Wow … this one totally doesn’t work out of context. Great moment of course, but without the setup:

Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.

It kinda loses some punch.

Still, I can forgive it. If the rule is “only the actual line,” it still belongs here, though I think “you’re trying to seduce me” (number 63) is a better line.

But they cheat the rule later on with this …

79
Striker: Surely you can't be serious.

Rumack: I am serious…and don't call me Shirley.
AIRPLANE!
1980


Not sure why. “I am serious … and don’t call me Shirley” means a lot more out of context than “plastics” does. Imagine you hadn’t seen either movie. Which line sounds better alone? Which one makes sense? For which one could you guess the preceding line?


52
You had me at "hello."
JERRY MAGUIRE
1996

How weird is it that the guy who wrote the country song about this quote is now married to the woman who delivered it? Why hasn’t there been more press coverage of this?


55
La-dee-da, la-dee-da.
ANNIE HALL
1977

A screenplay with some of the most intelligent, well chosen, verbose dialogue in movie history, and the choice is nonsense syllables?


56
A boy's best friend is his mother.
PSYCHO
1960

Not “we all go a little mad sometimes”?




65
Elementary, my dear Watson.
THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
1939

Ah! Here’s a quote not in the original books! Yet we think it is … something a reversal of “Play it again Sam.”


82
Toga! Toga!
NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE
1978

I guess this captures the spirit of Bluto better than his longer speeches (“Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?”)



83
Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.
DRACULA
1931

I would have gone with “I never drink … wine” myself.




91
Who's on first.
THE NAUGHTY NINETIES
1945

The lack of a question mark implies to me that this is Abbot’s response rather than Costello’s question … though I suppose he does list the players at the top of the bit. Um … probably not worth going into.




98
Nobody puts Baby in a corner.
DIRTY DANCING
1987

Memorable, but this is a truly bad line in a truly bad movie. Seriously, people, why not just put Ed Wood lines in there.

100
I'm king of the world!
TITANIC
1997

Now I like Titanic, and I still think this is a bad line. I think the moment is phony (seriously, do you think the prow of The Titanic was ever empty enough to allow two guys to horse around on it like that?). Of course this was tainted by Cameron’s three-quarter-assed recitation of it at the Oscars.


So, what’s missing …

Um … This is Spinal Tap, anyone? Either “It's such a fine line between stupid, and clever.” (though I think that’s a paraphrase and the line is broken up in the real movie) or “These go to eleven.”

Something from a Python movie, maybe “We are all individuals” or “Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.”

Something from an animated movie. “To infinity and beyond,” maybe? "What's up, Doc" or "Be vewy vewy quiet" if you count shorts.

"You've got me? Who's got you?" from Superman.

"I gave her my heart. She gave me a pen." from Say Anything.

"Try not. Do. Do not. There is no try." from The Empire Strikes Back.

"I once thought I had mono for an entire year . It turned out I was just really bored." from Wayne's World.

"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams." from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.


I'm fond of "In a way, all of us have an El Guapo to face some day. For some, shyness might be their El Guapo. For others a lack of education might be their El Guapo. For us, El Guapo is a big dangerous guy who wants to kill us. But as sure as my name is Lucky Day, the people of Santa Poco can conquer their own personal El Guapo who also happens to be the actual El Guapo." or "Sew, old one. Sew like the wind" from Three Amigos ... but the movie probably isn't good enough overall to merit mention.

And, of course, “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

I'm not sure if these ones are all memorable enough to make this list ... I mean, they are to me (as are any number of quotes from, say, The Muppet Movie -- "Draw up the standard Rich and Famous contract for Mr. Kermit the Frog and Friends").

But, regardless ... What else? What would you add?

So, where the hell has Noah been?

Sorry, true believers, I was outta town.

Recap of my weekend … hell, this is an occasionally personal blog:

So Abe and I hit the road on Wednesday night for sunny Pelham, MA (town motto: “It would probably just be simpler to tell people you live in Amherst, MA”). Mom and Dad have been back East for a few weeks now.

As you may know, my parents live in Kansas during the school year and come back to New England for the summer (my father goes by Jack in the country and Ernest in the city, by the way). They bring in tenants during the year, but this year, the renters actually vacated by early May, meaning the house had no occupants while my parents were visiting Ireland and Paris before flying back to Kansas and driving east. So that meant nobody was there when the balloon landed.

Yep, seems UMass was having some kinda hot air balloon festival a few weeks ago and one drifted off course and wound up landing, wouldn’tya know it, on our lawn.

I only learned this because I happened to run into a former neighbor at a friend’s birthday party, that day. Otherwise, my parents would have arrived none the wiser – presuming there weren’t shards of colorful silk still clinging to our chimney – until having an awkward conversation at the farmer’s market one day.

But this was supposed to be about my weekend. So Abe and I arrived late on Wednesday and had a delightful reunion with the parents.

Sadly, of course, our women could not join us. Molly couldn’t miss work and Amanda was, as you may recall, in freaking China. (of course, the city we used to call Freaking, China is now called “Beijing”)

The next day, I made a visit to Summer Theatre, which was in full rehearsal swing (they opened their season on Tuesday night with BLITHE SPIRIT, the first entry in the Four-Timer’s club -- that is a play that has been mounted four times in the theatre’s 35-year history). I saw David Nields, who played the preliminary music he’s written for STONE SOUP.

Let me tell you, it’s fantastic. I’ve said before that with the first three musicals David and I wrote, I usually loved half the songs when I first heard them and felt somewhere between tepid and pleasantly appreciative about the others, though I eventually grew to love them all, and I think they all kicked ass when sung by a full cast. But, man, this time, I loved EVERY SINGLE SONG right from the start -- and this was just David and his guitar, no added keyboard, bass, or drum machines. This show is going to ROCK.

And the company seems good this year, too. Very psyched to have John Albano back. He was amazing in TREASURE ISLAND and EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES last year. Brian Smolin, who was wonderful, some time ago, in PUSS IN BOOTS and CASEY AT THE BAT.



(it was bold of us to mount TREASURE in an all-sideways production)



That night, we were off to my uncle Brian’s house for dinner with his family – Teresa, Little Noah (though his brother is angling to have him become Regular Noah and me BigGER Noah), Griffin and Eli. All are well, and Eli is alarmingly older now and one of the more verbal two-year-olds I’ve known. He also showed me a picture of him and Amanda from last fall and told me he thinks Amanda is beautiful, so clearly he has good taste.

I played my first semi-authentic tournament-style game of Texas Hold ‘Em that night. Not a fan. I love poker but I really haven’t glommed on to this variation that seems to be everybody’s favorite. The play itself seems odd – five up cards … so, like, the hand on the table can beat everybody? And I don’t like the all-or-nothing factor of tournament style. I much prefer the friendly approach where, on any given night, one player might double his stake, one might be up a buck or two, a few break even, a few down a little, and only one or two bankruptcies. Hold ‘Em just strikes me as a remarkably Republican approach to the game.

(The other issue is, of course, that I like wussy games like Chicago and Big Squeeze, where you split the pot between two people – hell, I have twice as good a chance of winning, that way … and, yes the third factor in my not enjoying the game was that I managed to lose 10 dollars, in a five-dollar buy-in game)

Friday night, Abe and Dad has sets at The Comedy Studio in Cambridge. I had asked, some time ago, if Rick, the High God of the Studio, could possibly squeeze me in for a minute or two. Rick said the night was very full and I could probably only hope for, like, one joke, told from the audience. This wasn’t surprising, I knew it was a long shot -- Rick knows me personally, but has never seen me perform, because, heck, almost nobody has seen me perform. And an unfamiliar comic almost never gets a weekend slot, though name-dropping “SNL” helps.

Anyway, I arrived planning on tell Rick thanks-but-no-thanks for the one-liner offer, only to find my name at the top of the list of comics for the evening. Apparently there had been a cancellation and I was slotted in.

Panicked only slightly, I ran across the street to the empty Harvard campus and quickly assembled five minutes of material (one current events joke, now up on Fountain .. try to guess which one). Long story short, it went very well. Well enough for me to want to pursue more stand-up this summer. We’ll see. I’ll discuss this evening in greater detail later this week, I think.

Abe and Dad were great, too of course.

Abe stayed behind to visit Brown friends and the rest of us headed home. Saturday was Dad’s actual birthday, though it was quite low-key. I saw the Saturday run-through of BLITHE SPIRIT (strong production of, well, not my favorite Noel Coward play, by a long shot) and then did a traditional family dinner of Chinese takeout.

Basically, the weekend consisted of a lot of relaxing in the hammock (though I did have to get it down from the attic and assemble it myself, diminishing the relaxation returns slightly), doing a few chores for Mom and enjoying not being in the city on days when the temperature cracked 100 once or twice.

I guess I am a small-town by at heart, at least during the summer. I found it truly heavenly.

Sunday was a trip to Northampton to see THE UNDERPANTS at New Century Theatre (adaptation by Steve Martin of a German play from the 1910s), which was quite good, and then to Cambridge to see Abe perform again and drive him back to Pelham … all so we could pile into the car, all four of us on Monday to drive back to Boston to see the Sox get pounded in Fenway by the Cleveland Racists.

Oh well, despite that, it was a great evening with the whole family -- Mom’s first trip to Fenway Park since Ted Williams was still on the team. Beautiful evening, almost worth the exorbitant price I paid on Ebay for the tickets.

Then, a crack-of-dawn drive back to New York with Abe – back to work, back to thick air and air conditioners dripping from windows.

Not sure how much time I’ll be able to spend in Mass this summer … it will almost definitely not be as much as I’d like.

And many more

Saturday posts are rare around these parts, but today is my father's birthday, so I wanted to say something.

Actually, I'll let him say it. Dad is a poet of no small talent, so instead of me going on about how great he is, I'd like to direct you to some of his poems available on the Web.

"But Seriously Folks"
Dad wrote this one after 9/11. I think it sums up the way a lot of us, as liberals and entertainers, feel.

Three poems here

"Ken Kesey (1935-2001)"
A eulogy to the counterculture icon.

"Another Typo"
About one of those things artists learn about that blows their minds.

"At the Demonstration"
I'm a supporting character in this poem about the anti-nuke protests Mom and Dad went to every weekend in Northampton's Pulaski Park, when I was a kid. They would save the world, while I and my friends climbed all over the statues memorializing local soldiers and sailors.


"Calvary Thunderdome"
More recent stuff now, Dad's take on The Passion. Once a critic, always a critic.

"Painter of Lite"
I'm actually not sure what painter Dad is discussing here, though I'm familiar with the tension. Where is accessible art truly underrated by the self-important, and where is it just crap?

"Defender of the Faith"
Dad's no fan of royalty, but he knows when somebody is swimming upstream against bullshit, too.

"To a Friend in the Hospital"
I've lamented that I'm not allowed to give blood, thanks to my time abroad. Dad speaks of it far more eloquently here.


There you go. Just a small sampling. As you can see, I seem to be particularly drawn to his writing about the position of the artist in these times. When action rules the day, what is the commentator to do?

Comment. Beautifully.

And I think Dad does that.

I love you Dad, and happy birthday.

Audience Participation Day Responses Part One Skillion


Hey folks.

Today is Amanda’s and my 6th Anniversary of our first date (sort of). I waxed all nostalgic about this last year, so if you’re interested in the mushy stuff, look here.

But, with my wife thousands of miles away, I think I shan’t wallow. Instead, please enjoy the final installment of these freakin’ Audience Participation Day answers.

I’m on the road until Tuesday. Not sure if I’ll be posting much.


Are there any celebrities whom you find really attractive, but most or many people don’t? How about the opposite – everyone else thinks they’re hot, but you don’t get it?

None of my friends seem to get my Patrick Dempsey crush (although one or more of the writers of Entertainment Weekly are with me on this). I've never really found George Clooney especially attractive.
Alison | Homepage | 05.23.05 - 11:34 am | #

Huh, I think Clooney is hot.

You are going to kill me Noah, but I thought a number of the hotties you listed were ho-hum. I don't get the Allysa Milano or the Jennifer Garner thing, or Jessica Alba and Amanda Peet. They feel processed in some way.

On the flip side, Robin Tunney (The Craft) I keep staring at.

Alexis Bledel has recently been doing it for me and I don't know if I should be ashamed or not. Lauren Graham is a babe too. (These are Gilmore Girl references by the way.) Maybe finding the Mom and the daughter hot is the shameful part. (I am aware they are not really Mother/daughter.)
tom reing | 05.23.05 - 1:20 pm | #

Geez Tom, why would I kill you for not finding the same women attractive that I do? I understand why not everyone goes for Jennifer Garner. Her particular brand of attractiveness comes from a sort of average-lookingness, if that makes any sense.

I’m with you on Alba. Cute, yes, but some guys seem so absurdly nuts about her. I remember The Sports Guy comparing her favorably to Jessica Biel, whom I find infinitely hotter.

It’s only mildly creepy to be into Alexis Bledel. She’s in her 20s in real life. She just looks 13.

And I definitely can’t criticize you about the mother/daughter thing, when I was scheming to sleep with both Marcia and Jan Brady.

Fairuza Balk was sortof attractive in the Craft... Still sketchy, incredibly seedy, but cool.
Dave S. | 05.23.05 - 3:39 pm | #

We all know she was Dorothy in that weird, kinda misguided, but also kinda brilliant Return to Oz movie of the mid-eighties, right? Really sounded a lot like Judy Garland.

I don't get why people think Uma Thurman and Jennifer Garner are so great. (don't send me nasty e-mails!!!!!!
Doyne, the mother-in-law | 05.24.05 - 1:06 pm | #


Does anyone else here think Uma Thurman looks like an alien (and not in a sexy way)?
isaac | Homepage | 05.24.05 - 5:20 pm | #


I saw Uma on the street a few months ago and she looked, quite literally, larger than life. She seemed to be about 8 feet tall. Maybe she really is an alien. But also, IMO, stunning.
Alison | Homepage | 05.25.05 - 11:34 am | #

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Before I read any of the above comments, my mind went immediately to Uma Thurman, and how I just don't get her. I'm sure if I saw her in person, she'd be attractive, but as an international sex symbol, I'm not getting it. I saw her in that cats and dogs movie, and found her co-star more attractive (name having momentarily escaped me)
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:42 pm | #

Ah, the Uma issue. She is awfully divisive isn’t she?

For my money, she’s attractive. On a purely basic level, she is 12 feet tall and has an incredible body. But I do find her face beautiful, too, albeit in a kinda weird way.

I think I may have sort of “come around” to finding Uma attractive, though. In the past, I felt like somehow it was weird if I didn’t find some star attractive who most people seemed to. Like, for instance, I found Sarah Jessica Parker reasonably charming, but never thought she was especially pretty.

Then, when I came to the comforting decision that I really don’t like “Sex and the City” I felt totally okay about that.

Oh, and Fred, yeah, I'm with you. Janeane Garofalo was really cute in The Truth About Cats and Dogs (can't say I find her all that hot these days, but, then, I'm really lame), and Uma was a little weird looking. A lot had to do with the personalities of their characters of course. But Garofalo was genuinely hot, too ... yet the screenplay acted as if she weren't. I remember a friend of mine saying that the movie just needed one line it didn't have ... Ben Chaplin should have told her she was beautiful.

Hmm ... who else have been the official "Smart Funny Chicks Comedy Guys Think are Hot" over recent years?

1996 Janeane Garofalo
1999 Allison Janney
2000 Tina Fey
2002 Amy Poehler

Who else?

I dig Amy Grant--wanna make something of it?
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:42 pm | #

No, no, I always thought she was cute, and since I’ve been told I look like Vince Gill …

Patrick Dempsy, right on. Robert Downey Junior is my all time fave though, and people are always all "but he does drugs." Uh huh. Exactly.
kate fried | 05.24.05 - 2:15 pm | #

I’m not sure if I need to hang out with Kate more or less often.

As for Dempsey, I still think of him as being “the nerd” in movies like Can’t Buy Me (and even Mobsters where he was young Meyer Lansky), so it always seemed weird to me when he was labeled a hunk.

I never got the Johnny Depp thing - everyone seems to think the man is gorgeous, and he just really does nothing for me.
Ashavan D | 05.24.05 - 2:51 pm | #

I wonder how high most fans would rank Edward Scissorhands on their list of sexiest Depp performances. I’m guessing it’s pretty high, and that’s scary.

Robert Downey Jr - but he does drugs!... lots of 'em... enough to make the guys from Motley Crue look like the Vienna Boys Choir.

But Jennifer Garner is a total hottie.
Dave S. | 05.24.05 - 4:40 pm | #

Is it lame that I forgive talented people for drug use? Like, Tara Reid has lost whatever credibility she may have once had, but I’ll keep cutting Downey slack?

Actually, I've often said that I find G'kar from Babylon 5 extremely attractive... but only in the make-up. Andreas Katsulus (sp?) is fugly. I think it was nature's revenge for giving him that voice.
Ashavan D | 05.25.05 - 10:26 am | #

I’m pleased to say I understood none of this comment.


Would you want to hang out with an exact duplicate of yourself? Why or why not?

Ok, yes, but sadly the reason is that I think it would be cool that we'd both want to watch the same cheezy tv shows and sing the same stupid songs (and we could harmonize!)
Carolyn | 05.23.05 - 9:17 am | #

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Yeah, I think so. I'd be pretty happy and cheerful to be around. I just wouldn't want to rely on myself for any major events, cause something would probably come up.
Dave S. | 05.23.05 - 11:27 am | #

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Definitely. I wish I knew more people like me.
Alison | Homepage | 05.23.05 - 11:34 am | #

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I'd want to hang out with me simply because I'd finally be with someone I could legitimately hold to the same standards I hold myself to. And, as a bonus, I could do my puppet shows and watch them too!
Kate S. | 05.23.05 - 4:34 pm | #

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Yes, because he would be the only dude I'd make out with, and I want to see how scratchy it is.
Abraham Smith your brother | 05.24.05 - 10:03 am | #

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No, I would have heard everything that person had to say already.
Doyne, the mother-in-law | 05.24.05 - 1:09 pm | #

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Oh dear God no. Tha twoul dbe so goddamn annoying.
isaac | Homepage | 05.24.05 - 5:20 pm | #

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NOOOO!!!
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:47 pm | #

Wow, this was an interesting question. Well done, Noah.

Doyne’s answer is good … maybe the rest of us really like the sound of our own voices, and like hearing our own opinions validated and parroted.

Wait, no I won’t try to psychoanalyze my friends here, but I wonder what a therapist would say about the self-esteem issues embodied in these answers.

My first thought was that I would like to meet my duplicate, because we could bounce ideas off each other and write together. But would that be any different from writing by myself?

Fascinating.


For one day, you’re one of the two characters on “Quantum Leap.” You will be traveling back in time between 1953 and today, but you don’t know when or where. Would you rather be Sam, the leaper, who can interact with others and change history, or Al, the hologram, invisible and inaudible to all, who can only observe? (Note: As I said, you won’t know what time you’d travel to, but you definitely would not be interacting with/observing anyone you know, or any of your ancestors or anything) Why?

Dude, I thought we were moving AWAY from the nerd-fest... ;-P
Carolyn | 05.23.05 - 9:18 am | #

It’s never far.

So you're asking if we want to mess with time, potentially screwing up the world in the future..... or be a peeping tom?

I guess there are attractive ladies at any given time period. And you're saying they couldn't see you?
Dave S. | 05.23.05 - 11:28 am | #

Yeah, that is the issue isn’t it? It’d be REAL tempting to, say, stick my head into Marilyn Monroe’s dressing room and stuff.

I guess this is kind of a variant on the old “would you rather fly or be invisible” question.

I'd rather be Al, but only 'cause I'd like to see more of Gushy.
Ross | Homepage | 05.23.05 - 1:54 pm | #

God yes. Poor Dennis Wolfberg. And Larry the Cable Guy will probably live to be 90.

can the hologram smoke cigarettes? cause if so, that would be awsome.
kate fried | 05.24.05 - 5:17 pm | #


You probably could - but the buzz wouldn't be nearly as good.

Mmmmmm, nicotine.

Although then you could smoke inside, in bars, at work, and in libraries.
Dave S. | 05.24.05 - 6:44 pm | #


smoking in libraries is fun. it feels subversive yet literary. we used to smoke in the remote stair wells in the college library.
kate fried | 05.25.05 - 12:08 pm | #

Al was a cigar man.

Gosh, for me, part of the appeal of the hologram thing would be that you could visit period of heavy smoking (say, back rooms at the 1960 Democratic Convention) without having to inhale it.

Could I go into the future and pilot a Starship for the Federation after we're done?...
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:46 pm | #

Yeah, but only for four seasons.

So, if you are Sam, what do you do? Well, I guess the only responsible answer is, you try to prevent 9/11. It’s recent-enough past that I feel like it wouldn’t horribly change the present … hell, no one I know would wind up not being born (oh, wait, my cousin Eli … okay, that’s a consideration).

I’d also like to make sure citizens of Florida in 2000 knew how to use the butterfly ballot. ‘Course, I think Gore being allowed to take the office he rightfully won would have prevented 9/11, but that’s just me … oh, and every other correct-thinking person in the world.


Is there any historical figure you have a particular fascination with? Who and why?

I think it's hilarious that nobody has posted to this question but we all have much to contribute to the pop culture questions. Okay, I will start. Um...how about Picasso? Or Dorothy Parker?
kate fried | 05.25.05 - 12:09 pm | #

Yeah, well, the “why” part may have seemed a little challenging. Plus, I asked too many questions, and put this one towards the end.

Kate, are you intrigued by the whole Algonquin Round Table, or just Parker? I was just reading about how she spent an entire weekend with the gang on an island in Vermont, wearing nothing but a sun hat. And, since that Vicious Circle movie has convinced me she looked like Jennifer Jason Leigh, I find that REALLY fascinating.

Betty Paige?
Dave S. | 05.25.05 - 3:47 pm | #

Speaking of fascinating nudity … Hey you know Paige is soon to be portrayed by Gretchen Mol in a film, right?

Does a historical figure have to be dead? Maybe so. Anyway I am picking Jimmy Carter based on the fact he is a good person who tries his best to do what is right even if it is unpopular.
Doyne, the mother-in-law | 05.26.05 - 12:28 am | #

Real thing with your whole family, isn’t he? Amanda reads his books, your father does … Anyone read that novel he wrote?

Former presidents can be historical even if they aren't dead yet. And I'll agree with you, he was actually one of the few decent presidents of my life time.
Ashavan D | 05.26.05 - 9:50 am | #

Decent man … could and should have been a better president. Still the best ex-President ever.

Jack Benny.
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:48 pm | #

Hear hear. I remain a Marx Brothers man when it comes to classic comedy, but I could listen to old Benny radio shows till the cows come home.



What children’s story should Noah adapt for the stage next? Why?

Uncle Shelby's A B Z's... C'mon, adults would *love* to go to see that.

Dave S. | 05.23.05 - 11:18 am | #
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Not familiar. Care to elaborate?

If it really is an alphabet book, it may be a little short on plot.

Anything else from Shel Silverstein.

Maybe the Giving Tree?
Dave S. | 05.23.05 - 11:18 am | #

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where.the.wild.things.are.
kate fried | 05.24.05 - 2:15 pm | #

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Ooh - yeah, listen to Kate!
Alison | Homepage | 05.24.05 - 4:47 pm | #




What about one of those "Everybody Poops" books?

I'd like to see the stage-design for that one.
Dave S. | 05.24.05 - 6:45 pm | #

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"Ramona, the Pest"
Doyne, the mother-in-law | 05.26.05 - 12:33 am | #

Apparently my friends and relative are unfamiliar with the concepts of “public domain,” “stage rights,” and “copyright infringement lawsuits.”

My few experiences trying to get the rights to works not in the public domain were being told by Robert McCloskey’s publishers that he would never give anyone the stage rights to Make Way for Ducklings (of course, he’s dead now …), and being told that Disney owns the stage rights to Winnie-the-Pooh and I don’t want to mess with Disney.

Oh, and that somewhat terse email from JK Rowling’s people in 2000, telling me that stage rights to Harry Potter wouldn’t be available until 2006.

Hey! That’s next year! I should write another letter!

"Stand By Me." To make it more suitable for young kids, change the dead body to a magical, wish-granting dead body.
Abraham Smith your brother | 05.24.05 - 10:05 am | #

Do you have to rub it?

Anything by Hans Christian Andersen, but I would particularly recommend The Nightengale or the Wild Swans, or my personal underrated fave, The Shadow (but that one might be too dark)

Or any of the Stinky Cheese Man stories by Jon Scieska and Lane Smith
isaac | Homepage | 05.24.05 - 5:22 pm | #

So much of Andersen is dark. I’ve done “Princess and the Pea” and “Emperor’s New Clothes.” I think “Little Mermaid” is pretty unproducable, mostly because Disney has everyone expecting a happy ending.

I’d love to do more obscure titles. Trouble is, you need something familiar to bring in an audience.

Commerical concerns suck.

Hey, the “Stinky Cheese” Lane Smith isn’t the same recently deceased Lane Smith who played Perry White on “Lois and Clark,” was he?

I had one of the title roles in my fourth grade classe's production of "Hansel and Gretal" (guess which one), and I was never quite satisfied with my lines--maybe you could punch it up a bit, Noah?...
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:51 pm | #

Love to. Tricky story, of course – hard to make parental abandonment palatable. If I ever did adapt it, I’d probably have their parents taken over by pod people or something.

I will, no doubt, discuss this further, later on.


Any predictions you would like to make about the upcoming season finales of “Lost,” “Alias,” or “24”?

Okay, this is all a little moot one month later, but let’s see how we did.

I GOT YA PREDICTIONS RIGHT HEAH.

Lost: Black Smoke? Zombie Pirates.

Well, you’re half right.

Alias: Vaughn kicks it. Probably shot by a Derevko sister.

Nah, they wouldn’t!

24: I don't watch it, but keeping my eye on the plot. I'm saying massive nuclear fallout or the death of Mr. Lost Boy.
Brian | 05.23.05 - 10:54 am | #

Close …

Hmmmm, Alias: Jumping into a big red-ball of danger - the whole plot line is getting a bit weak. I say they end up at the beach, they get engaged, Vaughn gets shot and falls into a coma which requires the fancy new technology to pull him out. Sidney realizes she's been cloned and has to fight herself. (Just to have one of those fun tech inspired fight-scenes) And Sloane gets killed at the last second, trying to decide between right and wrong, while he has full control of the armegeddon device.
Dave S. | 05.23.05 - 11:17 am | #

Wow, amazingly close, Dave … sort of.

I predict I will fully enjoy Alias Season 4 when it comes out on DVD.
Kate S. | 05.23.05 - 4:35 pm | #

Yeah, it was a great season. Way better than 3 … probably better than 2.

Yes, my prediction is I will not be able to talk to my daughter all week because she will be watching TV.
Doyne, the mother-in-law | 05.24.05 - 1:12 pm | #

Hey, you get her for two damn weeks in China!

Right prediction, wrong show. Alias had all the zombies. Just pretend I said Russians, instead of pirates.

And how the hell did I not see Walt's kidnapping coming? Crazy.
Brian | 05.26.05 - 10:36 am | #

They were basically pirates.

I never would have guessed Walt’s kidnapping myself.

At the end of 24, Jack will be assumed dead by everyone save for a small group of trusted confidants--and Kim STILL won't have any idea what's going on!!
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:53 pm | #

Cheater!


Okay, and that’s the ballgame. Phew.

Next time, fewer questions!

2Gr82B4gotten

Longtime readers know that I’ve been following this AOL/Discovery Channel project to name the Greatest American of All Time with a mixture of fascination, anger, snobbery, and bewilderment.

Well, since last I discussed this, the list of 100 got whittled down to 25, here with my comments:

Muhammad Ali -- maybe a little surprising he got this far. But he’s iconic, and it’s nice to see a Muslim on the list.

Lance Armstrong -- Incredible story of course. Not on my list, but I can’t blame people for loving him.

Neil Armstrong -- The star of one of the greatest moments in human history, though, as I said before, if Aldrin had won a coin toss, would he be here?

George W. Bush -- Obviously I think not.

Bill Clinton -- Nope.

Walt Disney -- Master of an art form and an empire. I approve.

Thomas Edison -- Absolutely. And yes, I know he took credit for other people’s work, but he also made it possible.

Albert Einstein -- My favorite name on this entire list, but I still think it’s stretching to call him American.

Henry Ford -- Not a fan, see below

Benjamin Franklin -- Totally.

Bill Gates -- shrug

Billy Graham -- Clearly important to many people, though you can’t claim he’s been more important to American culture than Joseph Smith

Bob Hope -- Covers the need for a movie star and a comedian … having him instead of, say, Louis Armstrong seems weird, but a decent choice.

Thomas Jefferson -- Of course

John Kennedy -- Overrated, but an unsurprising pick

Martin Luther King Jr. -- naturally

Abraham Lincoln -- ibid

Rosa Parks -- kind of in that Neil Armstrong category, but you gotta love her.

Elvis Presley -- iconic, purely American, for both reasons both good (bold, innovative) and bad (stole from artists of color, drug addict)

Ronald Reagan -- Look, I can’t stand him, but, as I’ve said before, you couldn’t keep him off this list.

Eleanor Roosevelt -- Yes, remarkable woman

Franklin Roosevelt -- My favorite president (though Lincoln is still my overall pick for the title, for some reason)

George Washington -- Aye

Oprah Winfrey -- Clearly she’s affected a lot of people. Just because I’m not one of them doesn’t mean they’re wrong.

The Wright Brothers -- Consider this … between their first flight and the walk on the moon … only 66 years. Um … wow.

This looks like a decent list. Only three names appear on this 25 that I thought shouldn’t have been on the 100 -- Lance Armstrong, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Now there were several names that I put, reluctantly on this list, like Reagan and Henry Ford, and, frankly I’m a little surprised that Bill Gates survived my editing.

A lot of the dead weight of the original list is gone (Dr. Phil?), and what’s left is some genuine American heroes, with only a few villains in disguise (Bush, Reagan, Ford), overrated mediocrities (Clinton), and hyped up modern phenomena (Winfrey, Gates, and Graham).

Okay, so, who of the original 100 didn’t make the cut who should (I won’t rant anymore about who didn’t make the 100)?

I’d say Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglas, Dwight Eisenhower, Alexander Hamilton, Malcolm X., Jackie Robinson, Jonas Salk and Mark Twain deserve consideration. So, whom to cut:

Well, as I said, L. Armstrong, Bush and Clinton are already out of consideration for me. That leaves me with five more I need to cut.

So goodbye to: Bill Gates, who loses on the technological front to Edison and the economic front to my personal disdain for business; Rosa Parks, whom I will endlessly admire, but I do feel like she’s famous for one brave action, while many other real Civil Rights warriors have been ignored (though she’s been active in that fight for years); Henry Ford, whose revolutionizing of industry doesn’t compensate for his anti-Semitism, in my book; Billy Graham, perhaps because of my own hesitancy about organized religion; and Albert Einstein, whom I’m going to cheat by pointing out that he was only an American during the last few years of his life.

Yes, it feels very, very strange to me to drop Albert Einstein and Rosa Parks, but keep Oprah Winfrey.

That leaves my distilled list as:


Muhammad Ali
Susan B. Anthony
Neil Armstrong
Walt Disney
Frederick Douglas
Thomas Edison
Dwight Eisenhower
Benjamin Franklin
Alexander Hamilton
Bob Hope
Thomas Jefferson
John Kennedy
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Abraham Lincoln
Malcolm X
Elvis Presley
Ronald Reagan
Jackie Robinson
Eleanor Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt
Jonas Salk
Mark Twain
George Washington
Oprah Winfrey
The Wright Brothers

Apart from a really dreadful gender imbalance, I like this list pretty well. No, it’s not my Top 25 (you can see my Top 10 here -- not sure who my other 15 would be, or if there’d be any room for artists in it). But it’s not too bad.

Now, the voters have whittled it down to a Top 5:

Benjamin Franklin
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Abraham Lincoln
Ronald Reagan
George Washington

For me, the only surprise here is Franklin. I would have thought Edison, Einstein, Jefferson, FDR, or maybe Elvis would be there instead. I wonder if voters could really explain what they think is so great about Franklin (and how many think he was president, or that he "invented electricity").

Me, I’d substitute FDR for Reagan and Jefferson for Franklin, with Edison or Anthony possibly edging out Washington.

So, who’s gonna win?

Basically, it’ll be either Lincoln or Reagan … though King might sneak in there.

So I sincerely worry that we might be about to name Ronald Reagan the Greatest American. This is so patently, enragingly untrue I probably couldn’t discuss it logically.

Yes, Lincoln should win in a walk. But so many southerners might vote against him, and King might siphon away votes that I think it’s a real cause for alarm.

Luckily, Lincoln might steal votes from Reagan, too.

Okay gang, you have your mission. Go here and vote for Abraham Lincoln as often as possible.




PS, I stole the "invented lightning" joke from Abe ... my brother, not the president

From English Pronunciation to Drew Barrymore in 612 Words

In reading that Bill Bryson book I was intrigued to learn how often pronunciation changes to follow spelling -- plenty of words that we now pronounce they way they’re spelled used to have slightly different pronunciations. So I would like to predict that the word “dour” will officially be pronounced to rhyme with “hour” exclusively. Right now, basically you can pronounce it like that or to rhyme with “whore” and either is acceptable. But a few years ago, sticklers would have told you “dower” was incorrect.

The flip side of this is Houston Street in lower Manhattan. Like everybody else, when I first encountered this place, I pronounced it like the city in Texas. I was quickly corrected and told, no, it’s “House-ton.” I immediately became totally hip and began to look down my nose at people who pronounced it wrong. But lately I feel like I’ve heard more real New Yorkers saying “Hyoo-ston” so I bet that will become standard pronunciation in the next few years.

But the irony is: that’s not how the word is spelled. The "official" New York pronunciation is much more logical. Look at the first syllable. If you just saw “Hous” you would assume it was pronounced more or less like “house” except with a slightly softer S. Where the hell do we get “hue” from? Did Sam Houston pronounce his name that way? Or is Texas just screwing things up for the rest of us once again?

And anyway, none of this explains why General Zod pronounced it “Hooston” in Superman II. It’s not like he read it, he had just heard an Earthling say it properly.

Kryptonian Jackass, assuming we’re pronouncing our own words wrong.

Which brings me to Godzilla.

I started to get all huffy over the following train of thought: The Japanese call this character Gojira (roughly – though the J is more of an H, as I understand it), but when the films were brought over, the name became Godzilla. Now, while there is some truth behind the stereotype that native Japanese speakers invert R and L sounds, it seemed to me the height of American arrogance to assume the Japanese were mispronouncing A WORD THEY INVENTED. “Those silly people, trying to name a character Godzilla and not being able to pronounce it!”

Then I remembered that they got the name from “gorilla,” inspired by King Kong.

And I shut up.

Has everyone seen the original King Kong? I love the scene where they’re on Monster Island and they see a brontosaur or something and the big brainy scientist guy says, “Hmm, it appears to be an example of the species ‘dinosaur.’”

Species?

And hey, remember that weird “SNL” sketch shortly after 9/11, when Drew Barrymore hosted? This idea was that some local station was showing the 70s Kong remake with Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges, but they had intercut some footage of their own news anchors for some reason.

Now, at first, I thought the premise was that they wanted to show this, but were afraid of showing footage of the Twin Towers. So suddenly, they’re talking about Kong climbing the Chrysler Building. That made some sense, but suddenly they were splicing in footage of “Cheers” and the George Reeves “Adventures of Superman” show. Now maybe that would still make sense if we assume they have to pad out this broadcast to fill the time allotted, now that they’ve cut the ending. But then it ends with a promo for an upcoming “Cheers” episode with Superman in it and I was just going “huh.”

It didn’t help that Drew Barrymore couldn’t keep from laughing all the way through the sketch.

Two weeks, no kiss

As I mentioned yesterday, Amanda leaves tomorrow for two weeks in China with her mother.

No, I don’t get to go this time. Amanda and her mom have been doing these trips for the last three years. They went to Amsterdam in ’03, the Amazon in ’04 and now this. If all goes well, I will be going to Thailand after Christmas.

So, man, two weeks … that’s the longest we’ve been apart since we’ve been married. Heck, it’s the longest we’ve been apart since 2001 when I came back east while she was still living in Illinois.

Amanda and I actually lived a long distance relationship for most of our first year together, when she was finishing college and I was in LA. I actually wrote a TV pilot about it, which was filmed by a community college. It’s not, like, watchable, but it does remind me how great it is to live with the woman I love.

I’ll survive, don’t worry. Worry more about the apartment and the plants. With me taking care of them, who knows what’ll happen.

But, if my New York friends want to entertain me and keep me from being lonely, feel free.

More importantly than me puttering around the house is Amanda non-puttering around Beijing, Shanghai, and the Yangtze. My wife loves travel. She’s often said that if I had a job that made us both rich, she’d want to travel all the time – and when I point out that I wouldn’t be able to come, since I’d have to work at this job, her plans don’t change.

This is her first time in Asia – leaving just Africa, Australia, and Antarctica on her “continents to do” list, though I think she might be willing to forgo Antarctica.

She’s going to have a great time. It’s an organized tour, which is good. Amanda is awfully good at traveling, but without even a familiar alphabet, she might have some trouble navigating China.

So, since I’ve managed to work graphics into every entry this week, I think I’ll close with the photos we just got back from that trip we took, together, a few weeks ago, to Amanda’s Sweet Briar reunion …



I love this man, his jacket, and his charmingly white dance moves.




Amanda’s friend Kim and her semi-fiancé


Amanda’s friend Kristen and her husband, Brian, who reminds me of Kevin Millar.


The whole darn gang.

I have more, but I have to go spend time with my wife, now.

I Don't Want to be Elfstar Anymore, I Want to be More Audience Participation Day Responses

Indeed, still more, yet, not all of them ...

Is there any TV show, band, website, movie, etc. that isn’t as popular as it should be? Something we should all check out and learn about its brilliance?

Yeah - through your links, I stumbled upon "The Book of Ratings"

http://www.bookofratings.com/arc...om/ archive.html

Hours of entertainment and topics for all tastes.
Dave S. | 05.23.05 - 3:41 pm | #

I (and Dave) seem to have turned a lot of people on to the genius that is Lore Sjoberg. Very glad to hear that. What a clever schtick.

Sadly, Lore seems to be on an extended, and perhaps permanent break from The Ratings.

Oh well, there’s like seven years worth in the archives, and I also recommend visiting his other sites:

The Brunching Shuttlecocks – text humor pieces (I highly recommend you take the “Porn Star or My Little Pony” test)
Lore Brand Comics – web comics need no backgrounds, puny mortal (here’s a theatrical one)
Bandwidth Theatre – great flash animation (though I found the most recent one disappointing but Kevin Smith and his Magic Feather is great)
The Slumbering Lungfish – A very terse blog
Little Fluffy Industries – reviews of and links to online games, because only losers actually work in their offices

Um, can you say "Desperate Housewives"?
kate fried | 05.24.05 - 2:13 pm | #

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I've yet to fall into that trap - is it entirely overrated, or incredibly addictive?
Dave S. | 05.24.05 - 4:36 pm | #

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I ignored it until about 2 months ago, as I always am suspicious of things that are so hyped. But then I discovered that it is, in fact, quite well-done and engrossing. The actresses are fantastic, and I finally see why anybody likes Teri Hatcher, who I always used to find annoying.

And thanks for the book of ratings link - I laughed so hard I cried.
Alison | Homepage | 05.24.05 - 4:44 pm | #

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Aside from Marcia Cross, who basically chews up the scenery in every episode, I am lukewarm on it. Satires on suburban life aren't exactly cutting-edge cultural commentary.
kate fried | 05.24.05 - 5:14 pm | #

But didn’t you recommend it in the first place, Kate?

I like the show, though it’s out-addictived by “Lost” and outfunnied by “Arrested Development.”

Anyway, it was the biggest hit of last season, so I don’t think it exactly qualifies as an undiscovered gem …

(I remain an undiscovered ass, though)

Underrated/undiscovered?
If you're getting into that whole 80's revival Walkmen/Rapture/Arcade Fire/Stars thing, I couldn't recommend highly enough "The Pleased" who have one album (it came out a little over two years ago) and feature, amongst others Joanna Newsome as their keyboardist. But don't hold that against them. They're like what we all wish a certain other band sounded like.

And if you ain't listneing to Spoon by now.. really... what's the matter with you?
isaac | Homepage | 05.24.05 - 5:19 pm | #

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Spoon, sigh. Girls can tell is a lovely album.
kate fried | 05.24.05 - 5:27 pm | #

I don’t know what the matter with me is. I’ve just never had the energy to pursue interesting music. Yet I don’t really feel like that’s missing in my life.

Alias and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
Amanda | Homepage | 05.24.05 - 5:56 pm | #

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Traveling Pants?

Dave S. | 05.24.05 - 6:39 pm | #

As I mentioned last week, I saw the Travelling Pants movie with Amanda and thought it was pretty good. Amanda has been gushing over the book as an honest, unflinching look at what it means to be a teenage girl. The movie does flinch (one character’s exploration of her sexuality is much more happy-go-lucky in the movie, Amanda says), but more of it works than doesn’t.

Yeah, probably didn’t mean as much to me, since I’ve never been a teenage girl. But for someone like Amanda who, in the next couple of years, will be dealing with college students for whom the books were a guide to puberty, they’re very useful.

Oh, “fun” fact – the first book came out on September 11, 2001. You’d think that would have sunk it, but it was a phenomenon.

Ooh, ooh! New group? Spoon? What do I buy?
Dave S. | 05.24.05 - 6:39 pm | #



Spoon are brilliant. Their best album is definitely "Kill The Moonlight" the follow up to the excellent (but not quite as good!) "Girls Can Tell".

And the new one, "Gimme Fiction" is quite good as well in a kinda Beatles-Bowie-Stones way.

Kill The Moonlight tho... that album is fantastic-- stripped down, minimalist rock where the shake of a tambourine can be a profound change in a song.

And Britt Daniel's voice is easily amongst the best in rock today-- versatile, mysterious, channeling many past vocal gods (particularly John Lennon) whilst remaining original. God, what a great band.
isaac | Homepage | 05.30.05 - 12:04 am | #

Hmm … sounds like it would be up my alley (no pun intended on the name of the a capella group Isaac and Dan and I were in in college).

Nellie McKay has SO much more talent than Brittany, Christina,and the Simpson sisters--I'm hoping her upcoming second disc breaks her big time.

And Robbie Williams--though big in Europe--should be much more of a success here!
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:35 pm | #

Have we all heard that Christina Aguilera music was used to torture prisoners at Gitmo? Offensive, yet hilarious.



What actor or actress should get more work?

Kevin Spacey. Where the hell did he go?
Ross | Homepage | 05.23.05 - 1:52 pm | #

Again, I think I might have missed some subtle humor from Mr. Garmil …

Yeah, he hasn’t been quite as ubiquitous, but he’s not been far. He had his big, vanity Bobby Darrin movie and now he’s Lex Luthor in the upcoming pleasedon’tsuckpleasedon’tsuck Superman movie.

How about Emma Thompson? Except not in some love-struck sappy movie. I want the firey rage and passion....
Dave S. | 05.23.05 - 3:37 pm | #

Good point. She’s been taking the lighter path, of late. However, in that love-struck sappy movie you allude to (Love Actually), she was achingly sad in the most powerful scene.

Embarrassed to admit I haven’t seen her in Angels in America, though I’m told she’s brilliant.

Me.
Kate S. | 05.23.05 - 4:31 pm | #

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Does Kate have a demo tape? (Not that I know *anyone* in the film or acting biz, but it would be *so* cool to know an actress from the ground up.

I guess Brandy M. from high-school sortof counts - although not really as we hardly talked.

I was good friends with Uma Thurman's brother - but she wasn't very nice to us (probably because we were the younger kids hanging around) so I was never a fan.
Dave S. | 05.23.05 - 6:18 pm | #

Kate is quite brilliant. I’ll let her tell answer if there are tapes of her, but for now, here are some photos of her in some of my plays …

Dennis Quaid, because I think he's hot.
Doyne, the mother-in-law | 05.24.05 - 12:56 pm | #

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Dennis is a good answer, Mom. Also Alyssa Milano. I never get tired of looking at her. Colin Firth, of course. Ewan MacGregor but only when naked.
Amanda | Homepage | 05.24.05 - 5:58 pm | #


I need to add Oliver Martinez with long hair to the "hot list".
Doyne, the mother-in-law | 05.26.05 - 12:21 am | #

I would like to point out that Amanda and her mother leave for two weeks in China on Saturday (leaving me behind, sigh). Should we assume they’ll be discussing nothing other than actor hotness while cruising down the Yangtze?

Ryan Phillipe - he hasn't done very much since he married Reese.
Ashavan D | 05.25.05 - 10:21 am | #

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But Ryan Phillipe is so bad at acting.
Abraham Smith your brother | 05.25.05 - 11:26 am | #

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Depends on the setting... his debut was on One Life to Live as the first gay teen on daytime TV, and he was brilliant. Like many actors, he can act, but is rarely put in roles which require more than him looking pretty.
Ashavan D | 05.25.05 - 3:34 pm | #

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Check out Ryan Phillipe in "Crash." He has a decent part in a very sad movie.
Amanda | Homepage | 05.25.05 - 11:42 pm | #

He’s grown on me a little in recent years, though he hasn’t won me over.

Have I mentioned that I first heard he had impregnated Reese from his own mouth. Yep, see, I was in the studio audience for a taping of “The Daily Show” when he was the guest and he dropped the news. I was rather upset, seeing how I hadn’t yet met Amanda and I was planning on Reese bearing my children.

Well, of course, all the actors I know personally deserve a vast fortune.

Of those I don't, I think several women who were "hot babe" types in the 80s actually had acting talent and should be working now -- in particular the funny ones like the actress from Just One of the Guys. And it always saddens me to see Corinne Bohrer doing commercials.
Noah | Homepage | 05.25.05 - 7:07 pm | #

Good point, Noah, also it’s really tragic to see Colleen Camp (Yvette from Clue) playing secretaries and stuff.



If you could recast any one role in a movie or TV show, what would it be and why? What new actor or actress would you put in the role? Why?

I have to get rid of David Caruso and Khandi Alexander on CSI:Miami. Although now Emily Proctor's leaving the show, there's no point in re-casting it because it's gone from a guilty pleasure to a chore. BOOOOO. Now I know what everyone else has known all along -- CSI Miami Sucks.
Kate S. | 05.24.05 - 12:19 pm | #

It’s actually the only one of the three I watch with any regularity, now because Vassar alum Jon Togo is a regular. He was frequently paired with Proctor so I don’t know what he’ll do next season. I’m guessing they’ll match him with a younger woman as a possible love interest.

Fun coincidence: the two Vassar alums (from my time) who have had the most Hollywood success since going there (not counting Marguerite Moreau or Angela Goethals, who were child stars before starting Vassar) have been Togo and Justin Long. Intersestingly, the two of them read the same role in separate readings of my play THREE STORY HOUSE.

Someone--ANYONE--with a better physique in the titla role of the sixties "Batman" show...
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:45 pm | #

Good point, though, as I said yesterday, I think the West show is misunderstood.

These photos of West and Burt Ward in costume in the mid-seventies for the disastrous “Legend of the Super Heroes” show shows, however, that an aging West looked much better than a thirtysomething Ward …






I'm a little bummed that more people didn't answer this one. But I understand ... it's tricky. I've tried to think about it and realized it requires a LOT of thought. Maybe it'll be a full entry down the line.


What was the toy you always wanted as a kid, but never got?

I always wanted some of the original transformers. Like Optimus Prime. Or that guy who turned into a radio and had his friends sit inside his chest as audio tapes.

On that note, it's a good thing transformers came out when it did. It would be *really* hard to turn a robot into a CD to fit into today's radios.
Dave S. | 05.23.05 - 11:26 am | #

Interesting point … hey, when they made the Transformers movie, it was set in 2005 right, were Rumble, Ravage, Laserbeak and the others still turning into cassettes? Think the other Decepticons mocked that? (“Hey, why not disguise yourself as a wax cylinder recording? – nobody would be able find you … in 1893”)

I actually did have a Soundwave (and an Optimus Prime … apparently I was blessed, though still jealous of my friend Peter who had an Omega Supreme). Didn’t have his Autobot equivalent, Blaster, though.

Dammit, why can’t I remember who Blaster’s cassettes were? Hmm … checking, checking …

Okay, apparently they had names like Ramhorn and Steeljet, which sound unsettlingly like something you would buy at the Hustler Store.

I really like the Dave called those two cassette dron Transformers as Shockwave's "friends."

Anyone remember Mr. Game Show? I wanted that.
Abraham Smith your brother | 05.23.05 - 1:57 pm | #

Ahem … Soundwave was the tapedeck, Shockwave was the laser gun …

Noah is the dork.

Snoopy Snow Cone Maker.

I asked for it over and over, every year for christmas and never got it. I still kind of want it.
Kate S. | 05.23.05 - 4:32 pm | #

I’ve heard people speak ill of it.

I would have thought you totally had the hookup when it came to toys, since your mom had those sweet, sweet Milton Bradley connections.

Easy Bake oven. You give these things to your kids if you feel you missed out.
Doyne, the mother-in-law | 05.24.05 - 1:03 pm | #

Yep, pretty much why my father let me buy comic books … but look how that worked out.

Believe it or not, a game console - Atari, Nintendo - I wouldn't have cared... but I never got one.
Ashavan D | 05.24.05 - 2:53 pm | #

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You can always get a nintendo for about $25 - hours of entertainment, it you haven't already been spoiled by owning a PS2.

Mario Bros. still has some coolness to it - although trying to play games with only two buttons seriously limits the options.
Dave S. | 05.24.05 - 6:42 pm | #

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My husband has a super nintendo and a sega, so I have plugged them into the TV to have a game console fix on occassion. To be honest, I think I'm more tempted by the joystick with Ms. Pacman programmed into it. I wish they would do one with JUST the pacman games in it... but all of them.
Ashavan D | 05.25.05 - 10:24 am | #

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I never knew this, but I recently read that much like the Rubik's Cube, there was a set strategy to Pac-Man, consisting of specific routes and waiting times. If you memorized it, (and performed it properly) you could always win the board.
Dave S. | 05.25.05 - 3:46 pm | #

I think you’re right about Pacman (who just turned 25, by the way). It didn’t require strategy, just memorization, according to Sjoberg.

I guess you can find pretty much any NES game simulated online today, and pretty much anybody with an understanding of Flash can make a game as intricate as the best games of the 80s.

Me, I like the parodies:

Super Mario Rampage
Super Kingio Brothers
Stinkoman

Wasn't a toy, but for some reason, my mother refused to buy hypercolor t-shirts when I was a kid.
Brian | 05.26.05 - 11:09 am | #

Well, you don’t want to encourage groping, do you?

I remember seeing a high school semi-girlfriend in one once and worrying slightly that she might be encouraging other guys to test it out.

Not myself, but my now nearly 15 year old daughter Julie always wanted a Barbie car, and though we pretty much got her everything, we never got one of those for her. To this day, we hear about it, and if I'd known we were going to scar her for life, I wished we'd gotten her one.
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:38 pm | #

True confession … I wanted a Barbie as a kid.

I dunno, the ads were always on TV, it just seemed like a thing you were supposed to have.

My parents, who were pretty hip about such things, refused. I assume they figured, correctly, that owning one would cause me embarrassment down the line.

I did have some dolls as a kid (and really, those Mego superheroes with the cloth costumes were essentially Ken dolls), including one from a line of mermaid dolls from the very early eighties.

Noah Smith … secure in his masculinity.

Okay, one more entry, next week, and we’ll have killed this thread off.

Geek Out Day: The Batmoviesignal is shining in the sky

Look, I spent a freakin’ week talking about Star Wars, you have to indulge me one day to talk about Batman on the release of Batman Begins.

By all reports, this is it. This is the live-action Batman that really gets it right.

But what was wrong with the other ones?

Well, let’s talk about who Batman is.

The character first appeared in Detective Comics in 1939. That’s a year later than Superman, but in many ways, he’s part of an older pulp tradition. The Shadow had been lurking in the dark, fighting crime, and then retreating to his luxurious mansion and his secret identity, for eight years already. Zorro who was a brighter figure, but had the mask, and the wealthy playboy secret identity schtick, was around before then, too. The Scarlet Pimpernel was doing the same thing even earlier. Batman wasn’t even National Comics' first masked crimefighter. That honor goes to the Crimson Avenger … don’t feel too bad if you’ve never heard of him.

So clearly all of this was in Bob Kane’s mind when he didn’t invent Batman.

Okay, I’m being glib, but when you read articles this week about how Hollywood is bringing “Bob Kane’s creation” to the screen, please take it with a grain of salt. Kane was a mediocre young cartoonist who presented National Periodicals with a basic idea for a hero who dressed like a bat. But practically everything beyond that, everything that gave Batman a real character, was created by Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson. Finger and Robinson also deserve credit for most of Batman’s villains, supporting cast, and the world around him.

But Kane was a smart businessman and managed to get full credit for the creation. In fact, until the 60s, his credit appeared on every single Batman story, leading many kids to believe that he wrote and drew every issue for 25 years. Meanwhile Finger and Robinson were eventually weaseled out of money and work and died poor.

Now, I can’t fully blame Kane for this. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who created Superman, head to toe, failed to do this and basically got totally rogered, selling National Periodicals the rights to Superman for little more than a handshake. As was the traditional story, the two got pushed out the door. Siegel came back in the 60s and wrote some of the best Superman stories of the Silver Age before getting cut loose again. Finally, after much agitation, the two were given royalty money in the 70s and ended their days with some degree of comfort. So Kane’s actions are understandable, but they went a long way to obliterate the real creators of Batman.

Anyway, my point, originally, was that Batman wasn’t necessarily all that original. Even the Bat motif probably owed a little to Bela Lugosi’s Dracula. Basically, Kane and Finger (I think Robinson came in a little later) were taking elements from several different sources and grafting it on to this new character genre, the superhero.

So what made Batman unique?

Well, in all honesty, besides good storytelling and dynamic, if crude, art early on, I’m not sure. I think it means something that he was a featured character (eventually the only featured character) in Detective Comics. See, Batman was The Dark Night Detective before he was The Dark Knight.

The early issues don't have a ton of detection, but soon it was an integral part of Bat stories, with the reader often encouraged to follow the clues and crack the case along with Batman. This is the most significant and most often screwed-up aspect of the character. He’s not Superman flying to the rescue of a crime in process. He’s not Spider-Man stumbling across crimes incidentally, or finding out that someone close to him is a supervillain. And he’s not The Fantastic Four encountering dangers in the midst of a scientific exploration. No, he’s the detective, the one you call to solve the crime no one else can solve.

The Tim Burton movies forgot this, mostly. Yeah, there were some scenes of Batman frowning at his computer or picking up a clue somewhere, but the stories certainly didn’t unfold as a mystery.

On the flip side, the much maligned Adam West TV series did this pretty well. That Batman and Robin were often finding clues to the location of the villain’s hideout or the next place they’d strike.

Yeah, the West series was silly and did mock the source material. But it was actually pretty faithful to the comics at the time. The Bat comics of the late fifties and early sixties were colorful and frequently ridiculous. They weren’t campy and self-mocking, like the series, but the extreme creativity behind them did often manifest itself in rather absurd ways.

Conversely, the Burton movies, and the Schumacher ones that followed really missed the boat. Burton got the tone right, and some of the characters. But he really fundamentally got Batman wrong. Yes, Batman has a lot of gadgets, but he had Keaton standing stiffly, using the gadgets rather than doing the acrobatic fighting the character was known for. Bruce Wayne, the suave ladies man, became a stammering boob. And, sorry, Batman, the man who saw his own parents die from a mugger’s gunshots, would not stock his Batwing with artillery.

It sure looks like this movie is going to get this part right. I have some qualms about the SUV Batmobile (though I suppose something like that might be necessary in a modern US city), and I think the costume looks kinda lame. Otherwise, I have high hopes.

Now, this is a story of a young Batman. Interesting idea, and probably a good way to start a new franchise. I know Bale is interested in doing more movies and I think they have a great chance to show the character grow and develop.

Will this include the introduction of a Robin in, say, the fourth or fifth film? I hope so. Robin is also maligned, but I think he’s pretty important.

Robin came very early on, so people who think he was a betrayal of the original point of Batman, or made it too bright or whatever -- they can bite me. The theory was that children should have a character they could relate to. As Jules Pfeiffer has pointed out, kids already had Batman to look up to. In fact, it kinda backfires, because if you’re a kid you can look at Batman and say “someday, I’ll be that strong and cool.” But if you look at Robin, here’s a kid your age (he was supposed to be about eight when he first appeared) -- he’s already tougher and cooler than you’ll ever be.

Pfeiffer, genius though he is, is also somewhat to blame for the endless gay jokes about Batman and Robin. Oh, sure, Frederick Wertham is the real special guest villain in that episode, but Pfeiffer made plenty of jokes, and he knew better. Batman and Robin are clearly meant to be an idealized father and son relationship (with no annoying mom to get in the way of boys having fun -- or so was the presumptive logic of the intended audience).

This is definitely not an original thought, but here’s how I see it: Superman’s your father. He’s a pretty boring guy, wears a suit, goes to work, but secretly you know when he takes off his glasses, he’s the most powerful man in the world. Batman’s your dad, too, but you get to go with him on the adventures.

And this makes sense to me. Batman lost his family, so he’s created a surrogate family for himself. Yes, this rose to ridiculous levels in the fifties …


(Note – this was not drawn by Bob Kane, of course, but by Sheldon Moldoff)

And it’s pushing it again today …



But I totally buy that Batman would want a partner, and a son.

Of course, when they do add Robin to these movies, they won’t cast an eight year old. It would just seem reckless and insane to have a kid that small fighting crime. But he really shouldn’t be any older than 12 or so … did it make any damn sense in Schumacher’s Batman Forever for Bruce Wayne to semi-adopt the college age Chris O’Donnell Dick Grayson?

I think you could get a great cinematic story out of it, if Bruce wants to adopt Dick (maybe it should be Rick) because he doesn’t want the young orphan to turn out the way he did. Then he feels Dick heading down that path anyway, and basically lets him become his partner because he’s afraid he’ll go off on his own and get killed if he didn’t.

The current trend in comics is to depict Batman as an asshole, or as a psycho. He’s neither. Yes, he’s aggressive, and takes crimefighting very seriously. But he also enjoys it. It’s a release. The argument “You’d have to be insane to dress as a bat and fight crime” only goes so far, because the answer is … yes, but that’s the therapy for the insanity. Fighting crime keeps Bruce Wayne sane. It’s actually healthy for him.

Many people miss the point of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. Yes, it’s about a crazy, older Batman of the future. But he’s only crazy because he stopped being Batman. Get it?

Look, I know I’m insanely devoted to John Byrne’s work, but I really dug his JLA arc, and I think there was a moment when he displayed a great understanding of who Batman ought to be …



This is from the end of the adventure in which the Justice League and the Doom Patrol have defeated a vampire by, of course, driving a stake through his heart (or maybe it was a cross).

While wrapping up the case, Batman suggests about the vampire that, in the end, “his heart was in the right place.”

That look on Batman’s face is perfect. Yes, he’s the grim Dark Knight. But he’s also a man who loves his job … and loves to surprise people.

From what I’ve seen, it looks like Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan got that right. I guess we’ll all find out this weekend.

Photo Blogging: Because Words Suck

Amanda’s been a Triple Crown fan for quite some time now. Her mom got her hooked on the ponies way back when and she went to a Kentucky Derby in college.

So we figured, heck, we’re pretty close to Belmont Park, where the final leg of the Triple Crown is run, why not?

Well, turns out we weren’t THAT close. We rode the F train to the bitter end, then caught a bus to the track. I actually kind of enjoyed that. I’d never seen that part of Queens before.

(We went to a Mets game on Sunday to see Pedro pitch, thanks to my generous boss’s gift of two tickets, so it was a Queensy weekend)

Anyway, here’s what we saw …



… ‘cause everything needs corporate sponsorship.



The grounds of Belmont are quite lovely and in general it’s a nice facility. But you can tell that horse racing has not been wildly popular in recent years. Yeah, there are big screen TVs, but a lot of the signage, and the color scheme inside really scream “late 70s.”


Amanda and some shady hunchback.


One of Amanda’s prize possessions, in the trinket category, is her souvenir Kentucky Derby glass. It once contained a Mint Julep, which, according to Amanda is basically like drinking condensed mouthwash. But it has all the Derby winners listed on it. The glass actually broke some time ago, but Amanda tracked down a copy on Ebay.

So, of course, she had to get the equivalent at Belmont. Except, of course, there is no iconic alcoholic beverage associated with Belmont Park. I suppose they could serve Manhattans, except we were in Queens. So they invented “The Belmont Breeze.” This combination of juice, Seagram’s seven, Harvey’s Bristol Cream, and Sprite … probably not going to set the world on fire. In fact, according to Amanda, it would be better at dousing fires, having proved to be quite watered down.

But this is the interesting thing about The Belmont Stakes. It’s … the third race. The Derby is the famous one and all the others are in its shadow. It’s quite peculiar to see New York City playing kid brother to the deep south, but they definitely are. (example: the Derby is The Race for the Roses, so Belmont has to be The Race for the Carnations ... though, to me, that just implies further mob ties)

The Belmont is most interesting when a horse is going for the Triple Crown, as Smarty Jones was last year. No one has won it since the seventies, and there haven’t been a ton of them in total. But a lot of horses win the first two legs, then blow it at Belmont. So the Belmont Breeze glass is covered with a list of spoilers – the horses who ruined everyone’s good time.

This year Afleet Alex and Giacomo had split the Derby and the Preakness, so interest in the Belmont had waned. Yeah, you could promote is as “the rubber match” between the two, but there was always the chance that, like, some other horse could win.



Now here I look okay. And yes, I was told once that Boston sucks, but not by that guy behind me. Actually, there were quite a few Boston hats this year, and with the Yankees under 500, who cares what Yankee fans think?


Yeah, interest was down from last year, but the crowd wasn’t exactly dinky.



There were ten races before the big one that day, this was the sixth.

I forget which one it was, but we saw Funny Cide, the big horse story of 2003 in one of the early races. Amanda said this was like seeing a celebrity, which I misinterpreted as her thinking that we would see, like, a human celebrity, which I assured her we wouldn’t, since we were in the $10 general admission seats. But to Amanda, and she’s right, Funny Cide is a celebrity.

He didn’t win. He actually didn’t even place, though, unlike Mike Tyson, he actually went the distance. But it was much like watching any athlete past his prime.




Fun trivia fact: the starting gates move with every race.





The horse ridden by the pink and green jockey (Sweet Briar colors) is Giacomo, who won the Derby, but came in third at the Preakness.


And here’s Alex


And they’re off.


Sorry, no photo finish, not from our camera, anyway.

Alex won. Giacomo didn’t even place.



So, did we win any money? Yep.

Amanda picked win and place, though she didn’t bet both as an exacta. Still, she won a decent piece of money from her two individual two-dollar bets.

But the girl next to us succeeded with her Pick Four (she picked the winner of four races in a row), and walked off with nearly 500 on her 2 dollars down.

Me … not so lucky. I placed money on a horse called Chekhov. Remind me not to put so much faith in playwrights.

Book Report 20X6

So, as all Americans are required to do, I read The Da Vinci Code.

And, again, I can certainly see why it’s so popular. It’s compelling and easy to digest.

But it’s barely a novel. The book is a triumph of research over writing, research, I might add, into conspiracy theories, rather than actual history. I’m also told that Dan Brown borrowed liberally from other novels to create his plot, and that always bugs me.

I mean, the characters are either vague or cartoony, and every chapter ends like a Hardy Boys novel – “Little did Langdon realize, as he slipped the letter opener into his pocket, the deadly purpose he would find for it in mere hours, as he faced The Mystery of the Smugglers on the Hill.” And in a book that’s allegedly about the return to worship of the sacred feminine, the one female character sure doesn’t do much. Yeah, she cracks a code or two (though, since she’s the professional code breaker, it’s really kind of an embarrassment that the other characters beat her to ANY code cracking), but mostly, after she gets Langdon out of a sticky situation early on, she mostly sits there and listens to the male characters explain all the research Dan Brown has done.

Also, if you need to pull off a series of clandestine murders, is a giant albino monk really your best pick for an assassin?

None of this prevented me from devouring this book and highly enjoying it, I should day.

In fact, much of May, for me, was about The Da Vinci Code and Homestar Runner.

Dan had been trying to get me to check out the site for some time. I hadn’t gotten around to it, yet, for some reason, though. Until I got my new computer, I actually couldn’t access the longer, more complicated flash cartoons, so I was only able to watch Teen Girl Squad and maybe some of Marzipan’s Answering Machine. But soon, during days of unemployment, I was gobbling down the cartoons, shorts, holiday cartoons, and Strong Bad Emails like candy. Of course, now I’ve seen everything on the site and I’m jonesing for more.

So, what the hell am I talking about? Well, I’ll tell you …

Homestar Runner is a site put together by two brothers, Mike and Matt Chapman. They’re from Georgia, but I actually don’t hold that against them. Basically, I consider them the best, possibly only good thing to come out of the Peach State since TBS showed reruns of “Saved by the Bell,” featuring Tiffani Amber Thiessen in a cheerleading uniform when I was in high school. The site is a series of cartoons about a batch of peculiar characters … there’s not much more you can say about it than that. There’s no particular setting. They seem to live in Free Country USA, they may be high school or college students, they may still live with their unseen parents. But this isn’t particularly important, since all the humor comes from character interaction, more or less devoid of setting.

This is an impressive feat. More so when you realize that only one guy does all the voices, except that of the one female character, and they sound COMPLETELY different. Really, even some of the best voice actors of all time (Mel Blanc, Daws Butler, Dan Castalanetta) can be identified easily, much of the time. But Matt Chapman is not only able to voice literally dozens of characters, but he can also do one character imitating another character. It’s nothing short of alarming.

Yes, characters imitate other characters on HR.com, they also have 1936 versions and future quasi-anime versions. Sometimes they’re animated in a wholly different style, and sometimes one character (The Cheat) will create a cartoon himself, about the other characters, and do the voices himself … even though he can’t talk (oh, when this happens, Mike Chapman does the voices). Oh, and there’s a whole fictional line of toys based on The Cheat, who have their own “GI Joe”-esque cartoon.

So, for five and a half years now “The Brothers Chaps” have created some really great comedy based entirely on these characters (and, to be fair, a lot of riffing on Gen-X touchstones like 1980s cartoons and videogames), who are, to be generous, two-dimensional. It’s an impressive feat.

It’s risky, the site is highly self-referential and that might alienate new viewers. I know when I’ve tried to indoctrinate others, I haven’t known where best to start. The Halloween toons have every character in them, but they’re in costume, which can be confusing. When you go, click on “first time here.” But I wouldn’t pay attention to Strong Bad’s recommendation of “A Jorb Well Done.” I find that one a little tedious. Head for the character pages instead.

Oh, and if you have questions, there is a dedicated, which is to say scary and insane fan presence on the web. They have their own Wiki (I’m still new to the idea of wikipedia myself, but it’s like that) which can tell you where to find Easter Eggs in the cartoons, explain inside references, etc. Like many fans of comedy, they go WAAY too far and kill a lot of jokes, and sometime seem blazingly unable to get the point (well, the wiki isn’t too bad like this, but the forum is). Still, they’re nothing like the fans at Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, who are the most clueless, self-loathing losers I have ever encountered. I mean, I’m still grateful to them for transcribing “Simpsons” episodes, but WOW … the desperate need they have to “figure out” inside jokes and references that aren’t there, to explain the self-explanatory, and the rage they feel when an episode doesn’t meet their standards or a character doesn’t behave exactly the way they expect them to (for instance, if Lisa is ever shown to be something less than flawless, they blow a gasket) … well, it has to be seen to be believed.

But why mention HR.com in a piece that started off being about The Da Vinci Code?

Because I think this would be a better cast for the movie than the Hanks/Tatou/McKellan version Ron Howard is making:


Homestar Runner as Robert Langdon …

“Yes, I think there is definitely a code in that painting. Oh, wait, no, it’s just a smiling woman.”

Marzipan as Sophie Nuveu …

“Homestar, why are we in Pennsylvania? I don’t think that’s the type of Kesytone we’re looking for.”

Strong Bad as Bishop Aringarosa …

“Holy crap! We’re looking for a lot of … holy … crap.”

Strong Mad as Silas …

"WHERDAKEESTOHN! TELLMEWHERDAKEESTOHNIZ!"

Strong Sad as Leigh Teabing

“I’m sad that we’re flying illegally from France to London to avoid the police.”

The Cheat as Remy Legaludec


Coach Z as Bezu Fache

“We’ll catch dat Langdon before he cracks da cord! Uh ... I mean ... zoot alyers, dere.”

The King of Town as Jacques Saunier

“Ooh, I’ve got to leave clues for Sophie before I die … but first, one last ham!”

Audience Participation Day Just Won't Die

Yet more Audience Participation Day responses. Okay, next time I do this, I’ll ask fewer questions.

First some ones we’ve already dealt with but I left out a few good answers …

If you were in a position where you had to have a codename, like, if you were under secret service protection or you were a spy or something, what would you want your code name to be?

I'd be "Trixy."

It might not be cool, but it sounds good over a spy-radio.
Dave S. | 05.23.05 - 11:21 am | #

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My codename would be "Taller Abe."
Abraham Smith your brother | 05.23.05 - 11:46 am | #

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It's not so much of a code name, but I think I would be known as "The worst spy in the world."

As in when I walk by, taking microfilm pictures like a tourist at Disneyland (completely with Goofy hat) everyone would should "Hey, there goes the worst spy in the world."
Ross | Homepage | 05.23.05 - 1:45 pm | #

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I don't know... many of my friends use "Giles" as a codeword for me, accusing me of often being too professorial for them.
Ashavan D | 05.24.05 - 3:21 pm | #

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Laff Lad (which would also be my Legion of Super-heroes name)
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:09 pm | #

I don’t have much of a response to any of these, but I wanted to preserve them for posterity since they’re all darn funny and Haloscan deletes old comments. Sometimes I like to scan back through the archives and see if any comments have cropped up. Just one about a piece I wrote in November of ’03, parodying the Reagan TV movie CBS shelved. Apparently, I’m a liberal wacko.



Part One: You have to do college all over again, but at the same school. You have to choose a new major. What is it and why?

English, so I could write gooder.
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:11 pm | #

I just want to point out that Marvel Comics really owes Fred some royalties. He was Destroying the Marvel Universe years before Joe Quesada and his cronies started doing it.


Part Two: Since you have to do college all over again, would you want to be be 18 and doing it or the same age you are now? Does your answer change depending on whether you have all your memories/experiences of your current age despite being 18 again? Does it change whether you're travelling back in time, or you're now an 18-year-old in 2005?

18, dude!
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:13 pm | #

Nice to have a vote from a slightly older participant. Those of us in our twenties probably flatter ourselves to think we could pass as 18, anyway … because we’re highly delusional. I was getting mistaken for professors when I was a student myself.


Any particular words that really bug you? Not just obscene words, but some common word that rubs you the wrong way?

I don't really like it all that much the way the words "President" and "Bush" always seem to be connected! Damn you, electrolate!
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:22 pm | #

Yeah, though it saddens me that my smug liberal inclination to point out that Bush wasn’t really elected president in 2000 is a little pointless now.

Some solace … as Mark Evanier points out, Bush’s approval ratings are now 20 points lower than Clinton’s were when the latter was impeached.


When was the first time you realized you were smarter than one of your teachers or professors?

In college, one of my art teachers had the unfortunate habit of drooling (really!) on people's work as he examined it, and then pontificated relentlessly afterward, so, that's when I realized, I gotta be better that THIS!?!
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:18 pm | #

Um … ew …

And now, the questions I haven't touched yet.

If you could choose anywhere on Earth for your next travel destination, where would it be?

Madagascar - wooooooo, lemurs!
Dave S. | 05.23.05 - 11:23 am | #

Perhaps I should have broken this question up. I have different answers if it’s, like, a supervised, expert driven tour or if it’s just me, Amanda, and a guide book.

Yeah, I’d like to explore rural India, or go on safari, if I had adequate protection and guidance. If I’m on my own, I’m sticking with places that don’t have adorably deadly animals.

IHOP!
Abraham Smith your brother | 05.24.05 - 9:58 am | #

Hey, remember when we all tried to find an IHOP on the day of my wedding and we searched through Lynchburg for, like, an hour and finally pulled over to quit and then discovered we were basically in the parking lot of an IHOP.

Yeah, that was awesome.

train ride on trans-Siberian railroad
Doyne, the mother-in-law | 05.24.05 - 12:54 pm | #

Would you have to listen to that orchestra?

Prague
isaac | Homepage | 05.24.05 - 5:14 pm | #

Went there on my honeymoon and loved it, though, in all honesty, I was a tiny bit disappointed.

See, I had had it recommended to me so highly by people who had gone there, so my expectations were too high. Amanda and I later figured out that some of these Americans who LOVE Prague spent all their time there hanging out and drinking cheap beer with other Americans … there are a lot of them over there.

Still, it’s great, though probably not as cheap as it was two years ago, now that the Czech Republic is in the EU (or just about to be, I forget, I don’t think they’re on the Euro yet). And the beer may compensate for the fact that Czech food is … well, you might be able to find a nice goulash.

After my scheduled trips I'd say Africa or Australia. Yay for continents.
Amanda | Homepage | 05.24.05 - 5:53 pm | #

Amanda is off to China next week, with her mother (and without me, sadly). That will mean she has been on four continents in the past 11 months (including North America). Still, she’s got nothing on her cousin Adar who has all seven wrapped up, thanks to a marathon she ran in Antarctica. No, seriously, she did.

Front row of a Paul McCartney concert--and what's wrong with that, I'd like to know?
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:24 pm | #

Nothing at all.



Who would you really want to be president? Not, like, “of the viable candidates,” though you can certainly bring political experience into your consideration. But what currently living, natural born US citizen over the age of 35 would be the best president possible?

Jimmy Smits, or maybe Alan Alda...
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:14 pm | #

Hmm … who on that show would actually make the best president? I might say C.J. … maybe Glenn Close’s character.



Is there a restaurant where you almost always order the same thing? Where and what?

Hey - serious I always order the same thing.. never stray- sad isnt it!
victimoffete | Homepage | 05.22.05 - 11:22 pm | #

This is a bit odd, since this was one of the first responses I got to any of these questions. I don’t know this fellow, which isn’t a problem. And he’s from Australia, which I find exciting because … well, because my life is rather pedestrian.

But … how did he manage to answer the question without actually answering the question?

WHen I happen to go to fast food places I ALWAYS order the exact same meal, done the exact same way (with slight variation for each chain, of course, since the deals are alittle different). If you actually care about this, it's a burger with no ketchup or tomato, add lettuce.
Carolyn | 05.23.05 - 9:14 am | #

No ketchup?

Weirdo.

Thai food - I always get Panang Chicken. It's chicken over rice in a spicy peanut sauce. The spicier the better.

Mmmmmmmmm.
Dave S. | 05.23.05 - 11:23 am | #

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I’m going to Thailand in December, theoretically. Should I just go the Homer Simpson rout and coat my mouth and throat in candle wax before every meal?

Until recently I always got Lamb Vindaloo at Indian restaurants, but I've disovered some other favorites.

Why did I capitalize "Lamb Vindaloo." Is that the title of the meal? Should I have italicized it, too?
Abraham Smith your brother | 05.23.05 - 11:54 am | #

No, I think you’re thinking of Breakin’ 2: Electric Vindaloo.

(HAR!)

I always get chorizo tacos at this authentic Mexican joint (like nobody speaks Inglaze there) and refried beans and totopos. Five hours later interestingly enough I also do the same thing every time...and yes, it is worth it.
tom reing | 05.23.05 - 12:51 pm | #

Do they serve gigantic portions? The authentic Mexican place near us served burritos the size of your head.

I tend to have a favorite dish at every restaurant and vary my meals by going to different restaurants. Some samples:
On the Border - chicken quesidillas, no peppers, no onions
Olive Garden - Chicken parm, sub alfredo on both chicken and pasta, penne instead of the usual pasta
Chili's - Chicken crispers no corn, malt vinegar on the side (they've discontinued the malt vinegar, the bastards)
Eastside Grill - sirloin burger, plain with cheese and ketchup
Fitzwilly's - gorgonzola garlic bread and the BBQ chicken pizza no scalions
Ashavan D | 05.24.05 - 3:12 pm | #

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California Pizza Kitchen - pear and gorgonzola salad pizza on honey wheat crust. Is it wierd that I live in NYC, where we have the best pizza, and I frequent CPK?
Alison | Homepage | 05.25.05 - 11:30 am | #

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When I go to IHOP or Perkins, I order some sort of omelette just so I can smother the side pancakes with gooey, deliciuos syrup!

Yum!
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:26 pm | #

I’m intrigued that so many of us named chains. I have nothing against them. Some of them (CPK, Olive Garden, Chili’s, Outback) I actually like a lot.

I suppose that’s part of the appeal of a chain restaurant – familiarity. Maybe because we see the same décor and food everywhere, we’re inclined, moreso than in local restaurants, to order the same thing.

The Smith College cafe has several excellent pizza varieties... of which my favorite is buffalo chicken (it's a special and they don't have it all the time... usually about once every two weeks). Unfortunately none of them are really allowed on my diet.
Ashavan D | 05.25.05 - 3:33 pm | #

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Antonio's - Spicy Chicken/Bleu Cheese Pizza...

Yay Amherst.
Dave S. | 05.24.05 - 6:37 pm | #

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Antonio's has a spicy chicken bleu cheese pizza!?!?

I have got to get back over to Amherst man.
Ashavan D | 05.25.05 - 10:20 am | #

Man, I love Antonios. It’s probably silly to carry my punch card around in my wallet, while I’m 200 miles away, but … damn, that’s good pizza.

Faan-- Pad See Yew
Five Points-- Chocolate Brioche Bread Pudding
Boerum Hill Food Company-- I always get the same thing there in the morning (gorilla coffee, pumpernickel bagel, bottle of water) they call it the "bookstore special" now.
isaac | Homepage | 05.24.05 - 5:15 pm | #

Pad See Yew is probably “my” Thai dish now … I can convince myself it’s slightly more grownup than always getting Pad Thai.


What animal from TV or film would you most like to have as a pet?

A lemur - but one trained to perform cool tricks and household chores. Like a "helper Lemur."
Dave S. | 05.23.05 - 11:24 am | #

Remind me to do Abe’s “monkey” routine for you some day.

Please note: this is Dave’s second lemur reference of the morning.

I guess Animal from the Muppet Show.
Abraham Smith your brother | 05.23.05 - 11:55 am | #

Wasn’t Animal supposed to be a human … just a really hairy one? All the other band members were human, right?

Makes it kinda weird that they kept him on a chain, but the Muppets always had that perverse side to them.

Mothra
Travis Tack | 05.23.05 - 1:23 pm | #

Gamera would be better with kids.

Ben, the bear from Grizzly Addams. I can't figure out if that's the same thing as Gentle Ben and/or the "Ben" from the Michael Jackson song. I'm hoping he can shed some light on the subject. Then I'd like to box him, because I think fighting dangerous animals is the next extreme sport.
Ross | Homepage | 05.23.05 - 1:51 pm | #

Wasn’t Ben from the song a rat?

I'd like to have that talking cat from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, except I'd want it to be cuddly, not all mechanical and weird.
Kate S. | 05.23.05 - 4:39 pm | #

Yet nobody would want the real Nick Bakay to live with them …

Yeah, I'd have to go into the magical realm ... as much for the fringe benefits as for the fact that it could probably clean up after itself. Glower, maybe? Nah, the voice would annoy me.
Noah | Homepage | 05.24.05 - 11:03 am | #

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Do you mean Glomer, Noah? I almost said that, but I figured I can always ask Dan to do the voice for me.
Alison | Homepage | 05.24.05 - 4:41 pm | #

Yes, I did. D’oh.

A liger. It's pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and a tiger mixed... bred for its skills in magic.
kate fried | 05.24.05 - 5:12 pm | #

I didn’t get the reference until this weekend.

Hey, let me have your tots!

I think I'd like a gummi bear.

They bounce here and there and everywhere.
Or snarf.
isaac | Homepage | 05.24.05 - 5:16 pm | #

Would they share the juice?

Ah, remember when cartoons promoted better living through drug use?

The "Book or Ratings" gives Snarf from Thundercats a "D":

I quote:
"Snarf has a personality, in the same sense that tainted pork products have flavor. My question, though, is this. If the rest of the team is made up of human-sized, human-shaped cats, and Snarf is basically cat-sized and cat-shaped, then why isn't Snarf just a basic cat? Wouldn't that make more sense -- and be substantially more aesthetically apealling -- than his actual form, which seems like some sort of god-mocking cross between a cat, a lizard, and Jerry Garcia."

And you want him for a pet?
Dave S. | 05.25.05 - 3:42 pm | #

Well, at least he didn’t say he wanted Scrappy (the only F Lore Sjoberg has every given), though, as I’ve said, I don’t hate Scrappy.

Snarf was nominally the babysitter for young Lion-O, right? Did they explain why Lion-O aged to adulthood during their trip, but Wily-Kit and Wily-Kat stayed the same? I forget.

Lassie because I've already had some close calls with the well.
Amanda | Homepage | 05.24.05 - 5:55 pm | #

I have no idea what that means, dear.

Mr. Ed, because he was a better conversationalist than any other pet on TV, save for Sabrina's kitty, who was a tad stiff for my tastes.

(Wasn't "Tad Stiff" a porno star? Just asking....)
Fred Hembeck | Homepage | 06.03.05 - 2:31 pm | #

Man! Everybody gets dirty on Audience participation day!

The relationship between Mr. Ed and Wilbur was always a smidge psychosexual for me.

And yes, my porn name would definitely be Smidge Psychosexual.

More Audience Participation responses next week.

Meme myself and I

Okay, I don’t really know why memes are called that, and I wasn’t familiar with the word a few short months ago, but I have recently been invited to participate in two of them so here I go.

The first is from Isaac over at Parabasis …

1: Total # of books I own
Huh … I’d guess I have about 200-400 real books at my apartment (plus about 30 trade paperback collections of comic books and maybe 300-400 comics). Back at my parents’ house, I probably have another 300 real books.

2: The Last Book I Bought.
Hmm, lately I’ve been reading books on my shelf that I hadn’t gotten around to, yet, and borrowing other from friends. Assuming we don’t count Essential Iron Man: Volume 2, it would probably be The Annotated Wizard of Oz or another book I bought for my Children’s Literature classes at Simmons.

3: The last book I read
It Can’t Be my Grave by SFX Dean. That’s my grandfather’s pen name. He wrote a series of murder mysteries in the 80s. Very fun thriller set amidst the world of London theatre, concerning a Shakespeare-contemporary play of uncertain authorship. (PS, Isaac, my grandfather is good friends with Norton Juster)

4: Five Books that mean a lot to me

Act One by Moss Hart is that book you read and say “oh, right, I have no choice but to work in theatre for the rest of my life.”

Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum. I could name practically any of Baum’s Oz books, but this may be my favorite. Really expanded my imagination as a child.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. For all the non-celebrity-killer reasons this book appeals to young people.

Saturday Night: A Backstage History Of Saturday Night Liveby Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad. I know it’s lame to name a book about TV in something like this, but this is one I can read over and over again and revel in the stories about changing comedy forever.

For a fifth choice … hmm, it would be cheating to name The Complete Works of William Shakespeare huh? Okay, I’ll go ultra-lame and say Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Seasonby Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King, because I feel like I was a character in that book, minor, supporting, but still a part of the story
(I can’t believe I just said a Stephen King book “means a lot to me”)

5) Tag five people and have them do this
Geez, I hate to demand that people do something. Check back with me after the second meme.



This one comes from Alison and is a photo meme. Whee!

The place I grew up:


Amherst, MA


The place I live now:

Wallach Hall

Which is on the campus of …

Columbia University

Which is on the West Side



Of …


Manhattan

My name is

Noah


Smith

Not to be confused with


My grandmothers’ names are


Margaret


Margaret


and Jean

(yes, I have three grandmothers)

My favorite food:



Chicken tikka masala … this week, anyway

My favorite drink:


ginger ale … again, this week, anyway

My favorite song:

To list a few that come immediately to mind …


“The Ballad of John and Yoko” by the Beatles


“I Will” by the Beatles


“New York City” as recorded by They Might Be Giants


“Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison


And, to be completely self-serving “Home is Where the Story Starts” written by David Nields for our version of THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN (listen here)

Favorite shoes:


Can you tell a girl made up these questions?


Okay, I would love it if everyone on my blogroll took a crack at both these memes If I have to pick five, so as to fill the requirements above, I’ll say Alison, Fred, John-Paul, Meron, and Rob … though I’d love to hear from Brian, Jessica, Kate, Max, Ross, Sarah (whose site has changed its name from Sarah's Entertainment Spot to Finishing the Hat, a much cooler name in my mind), Tina, Travis, and Yaron, … I think that’s everyone on the roll who reads this blog with any regularity. And actually, if you’re a regular reader, but don’t have a blog yourself, but would like to participate, let me know. I can make you a guest blogger, or just post something you email me.

apple cheek

Perhaps you were worried, when I moved to New York, that I would turn into one of those people who only blogged about “New York stuff,” with that insular arrogance that does tend to pop up in the city of brotherly shoulders.

Good call.

Three New York things I want to talk about, briefly.

For one, I was very pleased that the proposed West Side Stadium is probably dead. The Jets haven’t officially conceded, but the state legislature voted against funding it, so it’s hard to see how it could be reborn from the ashes.

Now, we may go through this all over again in Queens, and something similar for a proposed Nets move to Brooklyn. Of course, as a snooty Manhattanite, I don’t care about what happens to those “other boroughs.” Seriously, though, the other boroughs have, like, some room to play with. I just can’t envision how a big stadium in Manhattan wouldn’t have just clogged an already overcrowded island. I’d be okay with something happening in an outer borough, where it might actually help the economy, with a number of provisos, the first and biggest of which is that no public money be spent on it. Well, yeah, that ain’t gonna happen, though, so fergit it.

Is there any example of a public-funded stadium being anything other than a boondoggle?

Is it worth it to have these proposals continue just so we can say the word “boondoggle” over and over?

The stadium was divisive, but a clear majority of New Yorkers opposed it. However, it seems most New Yorkers did want the Olympics to come here in 2012, though many opposed it. Somehow, NYC2012 totally hitched their wagon to the Jets’ star on this one, and basically the party line became “we need to build this thing to attract the IOC,” which later evolved into a hard-line, “we can’t get the Olympics unless we build this stadium.” For one, I’m not sure a “eat your Brussels sprouts before you can have your ice cream” approach was wise with New Yorkers. For another, as a friend of mine, involved in the fight against the stadium, points out, this is an unhealthy precedent. Now you need to build the venue before you get the games? There are dozens of old, rotting Olympic stadia, just sitting there in former host cities. In sixty years, will there be similar detritus in former candidate cities? Think how bizarre that sounds, and consider that, if that happened, we can forget about any African or South American city ever hosting a games (hell, plenty of Eastern Europe would be out of the running, too). It’s really quite absurd how Euro/Amerocentric the games are …

Which is why I was opposed to bringing the games here. I just think enough is enough with games in the states. I mean, look

1980 winter – Lake Placid
1984 summer – Los Angeles
1996 summer – Atlanta
2002 winter – Salt Lake City

Since my birth, the longest the States have gone without hosting the games is 12 years. Now, okay, the US has more major, modern cities than anywhere else, and probably more varied geography. But still, it’s just one country. Give somebody else a chance!

Now, yeah, I guess there are concerns about weather in Africa. Cairo games might be too hot, Johannesburg too cold. But you’re trying to tell me Rio couldn’t host a kick-ass games? Buenos Aires? (yeah, I know it’s winter during our summer there, but that hasn’t stopped Australia) Look, these games are supposed to be a celebration of international diversity, no country should get to hog it all.

Yeah, I’d like to see my homeland get the games again in, oh, say 2024. New York? Well, maybe, but I’d probably rather see a city that’s never had one get it. Has Chicago? Boston is probably too small, but how about a joint Boston/Providence games?

Okay, the other, smaller stuff …

They’ve discontinued the number 9 train. I’m not sure how I feel about it, since that was my line. The 9 ran on the same tracks as the 1, but skipped a few stops uptown. This was clearly getting a little redundant, so they ended the 9 and just increased 1 service. No skin off my nose either way, since the skipped stops were north of my stop, and I rarely have occasion to train up there. Still, somehow I feel like my options have been truncated.

Anyway, I wonder, when they eventually add another line somewhere, will it be the “new 9”? They’re running low on alphabet, having reached W (there is no I, or O train, presumably because they look like numbers, and perhaps they thought U looked too much like V. Not sure why H, K and T were overlooked, but I think it was wise to invite public micturation on “The P Train.” But would they revive an old number, give it a new color and destination, etc.? Or would they think that would cause confusion. I assume we won’t see a 10 train anytime soon. But when they open the X line … man, that’ll kick ass!

Finally, I finally saw Napoleon Dynamite. Um … Noah, you say, what does that have to do with New York? Isn’t that movie set in Idaho? Yes, yes it is, but seen, I was reminded, by the Tonys that I used to be a playwright, and I should, perhaps give that a shot again.

And, while I got some laughs out of ND, and I saw why people like it, I knew that I could never write something like that. See, that movie it propelled by its creators utter hatred of their characters. Really, everybody involved in his creation hates Napoleon Dynamite. They feel no sympathy or love for him, and take great delight in humiliating him and holding him up to ridicule. Whatever happy ending they find for him in the end comes out of left field and a sense of “well, it’s time for the happy ending now.”

It’s like … okay, I know Molly Shannon had her fans, but I think Mary Katherine Gallagher came from the same approach. I don’t think Shannon ever was Mary Katherine, I think she was the girl who sat on the other side of the lunchroom and giggled about her.

Compare that to the “Wake Up Wakefield” sketches they seem to have stopped doing. Also about middle-school nerds, but I really feel genuine love in those. Yeah, Maya Rudolph and Rachel Dratch are probably exorcising personal demons with them, and there’s probably an element of “God, I was such a dork back then,” but not an aggressive hatred towards their own flaws the way – if I may psychoanalyze people I don’t know – the Dynamite people feel about their inner Napoleon.

‘Cause, see, I can’t write like that. I genuinely love all my characters. The main reason I kept reapplying and reapplying to produce INTERTWINED in college was that I loved those characters so much and felt like I owed them a production.

If I didn’t love my characters, why would I bother telling their stories? Hell, I even love Ted from AN INTERVENTION FOR ISAAC, and he’s an asshole.

I wonder if that’s why I’m gunshy about submitting plays to contests and theatres … and why I haven’t written a new (grownup) one in over a year. It’s not my own rejection I fear, it’s doing harm to my characters …

No, I’m probably just lazy.

THOTS: Oh, so verbose

Hey guys. Yeah, THOTS, though these aren’t as pithy as some previous entries.

One new addition to the blogroll and one departure. It seems that Heather Allison isn’t going to be updating Heather Feather any more (there have only been two entries ever), so its position as the “a little over Noah’s head” blog on the roll is Ben Fine’s appropriately named BenFine.com

CELEBRITY SIGHTING:

Luis Guzman in Times Square, right outside the MTV store.

But the big one was last week when Amanda and I went to see Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. (Yes, I saw it, and yes it's actually a pretty good movie, though it seems they softened or cut some of the most powerful parts of the book, sez Amanda. I was indeed one of only about eight men in the packed theatre, but somehow my penis didn't fall off just from being there) Seemed we'd come on the night of the big premiere of Cinderella Man. Sure enough, we saw Russel Crowe, Ron Howard, Rene Zellwegger, Craig Bierko, Paul Giamatti, Harvey Weinstein and Brian Grazer. As well as not-in-the-cast but there anyway Topher Grace and Anne Hathaway. We took two blurry pictures with my camera phone. I don't know how to post them, but I'll send them to you, should have have a similar device.

Hey, don’t miss Crying While Eating. It’s exactly what it sounds like.

We were dogsitting this weekend for a friend and coworker of Amanda’s. Hugo is a cute and very friendly (well, moreso to women) little French Bulldog, and, while I’m still not the world’s biggest animal lover, and I’m in no rush to get one of my own, he was a pleasant weekend guest.

And I realize that, were I a single man, I could totally get some action off of a dog. Wow. Total strangers came up to pet him, started conversations with us, etc. Admittedly, none were hot babes, but we might not have been in the right area for that. I did have the weird experience of not being able to tell if the people talking to us were using baby talk, because they were around a small dog, or they were actually mentally retarded.

I am somewhat glad that Hugo is gone, because on Saturday night, he did manage to chase me out of my bed and get my wife all to himself. Our air conditioning hasn’t arrived yet and New York decided to skip its usual pleasant spring and dive right into oppressive summer, so it was quite sweltering in the apartment and Hugo, whom Amanda invited to sleep between us was firing off pants a faster than a Vietnamese orphan in a Levis factory (Har!). I couldn’t sleep through that and figured the bed could use less body heat, so I moved to the guest room.

Y’know, I’m really kinda cheesed off that they chose “Somewhere” as the “tribute to Stephen Sondheim” song on the Tonys. How about one that he wrote lyrics and music for? Look, “Somewhere” is a great song, but c’mon.

Amanda is a little bothered, or perhaps perplexed by this upcoming project. Good point. I mean, it’s only been ten years since the BBC/A&E miniseries, which really is as faithful and good a retelling of the story as you?ll see (and perhaps the most successful wholly-faithful page-to-screen adaptation of all time). What can this new version possibly add? Sure, the story is timeless, but why do a straight adaptation? Modernize it, do it with animated gerbils, something, because this is really only going to seem like a poor truncation. And sadly, I seem to be over Keira Knightley. I do find it amusing that they?ve scored this preview with music from Love Actually, which starred Knightley and the definitive Darcy, Colin Firth.

Isaac is doing his own Audience Participation thing over here, please click if you are, or ever have been a fan of musical theatre.

Hey, Carolyn, how is it possible that I didn’t know the Night Owls had performed on a Comedy Central Presents in 1998? Story! Story!

With everybody who grew up loving those Kool-Aid Man ads, where the pitcher smashed through brick walls, is now of legal drinking age, when is some smart company going to make a series of parody ads with a giant beer pitcher? (“Hey! Coors Light!” CRASH “Oh, yeah!”)

Allegedly, you can watch the trailer for the upcoming movie version of RENT here. I can't open it, though. Maybe you can. I'm not optimistic about the movie, since I think casting the original cast was unwise (they're too old now), and Chris Columbus has always disappointed me, except with The Goonies which was 20 years ago. (Plus, I wanted to play either Benny or the Waiter)

Have we reached the point where it’s actually less convenient for your phone number to spell something? I mean, I usually get most business numbers online these days, so I have the number right in front of me when I dial. Word-numbers are great to help you remember when you see an ad on TV and can’t write the number down on time, but now I feel like I’m losing time hunting and pecking for the right letter.

Overheard in the offices of DC comics in 1960: Okay, guys, we’re spinning the Justice League of America off into their own monthly comic book, let’s make sure we have a really exciting cover for the first issue. Hey, the Flash is popular, how about we feature him doing something that requires his power of super speed?

So the other day, I’m walking past Penn Station and I see all these women wearing only thongs and head-to-toe bodypaint (they also had nipple patches) posing for a photoshoot. They were painted to look like they were wearing black suits a la the characters in Reservoir Dogs … let me tell you, the illusion was uncanny. I practically forgot I was looking at a 20something anorexic model, and became convinced it was Steve Buscemi. Anyway, turned out it was a promotion for a month of “Pulp Indies” on the Independent Film Channel. Well, it’s certainly appropriate, on account of all the prominent female characters in Reservoir Dogs.

More characters that should have been in Strawberry Shortcake’s supporting cast …

Pear Jam … detached grunge rocker
Peach Cobbler … crusty southern artisan
Lime Rickey … Cuban bandleader
Blueberry Muffin … I think this one really did exist, and I can’t think of any jokes to make, except for a vague “muffin”/female genitalia reference which is definitely not worth the effort
Hara Kiwi … Japanese bar slut
Pineapple Upside-Down Cake … Killer gymnast assassin
Coconut Shavings … Deranged Sweeney Todd-esque barber

How long do you think the WB promotions department laughed when someone pitched “from the mind of Ashton Kutcher” as the tagline for “Beauty and the Geek”?

Because my family had British connections, I grew up reading Enid Blyton’s Noddy stories about the little wooden toy who lived in Toytown, but I think they never caught on stateside. Then why did I see a coin-operated Noddy ride in the lobby of a Wal-Mart in York, PA?

Mo' Mailbag

Okay, continuing with the responses to Audience Participation Day ...

If you were in a position where you had to have a codename, like, if you were under secret service protection or you were a spy or something, what would you want your code name to be?

Danger Basket. Because it's Kate Sandberg all mixed up. Very sneaky, no? (and far cooler than Garden Basket, which is also an anagram)
Kate S. 05.23.05 - 4:37 pm #

Ooh, I do like that! And now I’m totally going to open an action/adventure Italian Restauraunt called Danger Garden

I tried to play anagram games with “Noah Smith” and all I got were …

Ham on Shit … something they serve in military mess halls?
Math Simon … an unsuccessful late-70s educational toy?
MASHithon … programming for TV Land for a weekend … if they forgot “marathon” is spelled with an A?
Moist Hahn … the thing that cost Reverend Jim Baker his job (and yes, we’ll touch upon “moist” later)

Part One: You have to do college all over again, but at the same school. You have to choose a new major. What is it and why?

Art History. I didn't discover how much I love it until I finally got to take the 101 class senior year. I think I would have learned a lot more than I did with my drama major, and it would be more relevant to my life and interests today.
Alison Homepage 05.23.05 - 11:20 am #

I was reluctant to take Art History because I had heard it would require learning lots of names and dates, proving, once again, that I was a moron at age 18.

I loved it when I did take it, Junior Year, though. Hell, we were at Vassar, one of the best undergrad art history institutions in the country … youth is wasted on the young.


Probably physics or biology, just so I could know how some things work. Like how they *really* work - not just how blood carries oxygen somehow, or why an apple drops at a certain rate...

Then I'd join the "Mythbusters" and get my own tv show.
Dave S. 05.23.05 - 11:22 am #


Dave continues to fascinate me. The man is a lawyer, meaning that he studied one of the few fields in undergrad that actually is job training, yet he now wishes it had been something more practical. Speaking as someone with two degrees in Theatre Arts … I am amused.

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Add me to the Art History list as well--with a double major in Studio Art thrown in. That's what I wanted to do originally and didn't because it "wasn't practical". Neither was English.
kate fried 05.24.05 - 2:10 pm #

Why? Put myself through that again? Feh. To be honest, I'd probably choose to not go to college. But if I must, probably management. At least it actually IS practical.
Ashavan D 05.24.05 - 3:23 pm #

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Sigh ... please don't take this the wrong way, but I hate hearing college students seeking “practical” education. For the love of Pete, it’s COLLEGE. BE IMPRACTICAL. Seriously, if you wanted something practical, you should have gone to trade or technical school. Attending a liberal arts college and complaining you didn’t learn anything useful in “real life” seems deranged to me. Anyway, college isn’t about professional training, it’s about become an educated person, though that’s an idea lost on Americans.

Stupid Protestant work ethic.

History. Never took a history class at Vassar, and now I regret it like a motherfucker.
isaac Homepage 05.24.05 - 5:12 pm #


Interesting, you didn’t learn from history and now – at least according to this hypothetical – you’re doomed to repeat it.

WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!


Film or American Studies or Theatre
Amanda Homepage 05.24.05 - 5:45 pm #

Um … but you did major in Theatre, dear … sort of.

(And you’re about to start an American Studies program, so you’ll have that covered, too)

Part Two: Since you have to do college all over again, would you want to be be 18 and doing it or the same age you are now? Does your answer change depending on whether you have all your memories/experiences of your current age despite being 18 again? Does it change whether you're traveling back in time, or you're now an 18-year-old in 2005?

Speaking as someone who IS doing college all over again (if only briefly), I think being 18 again is definitely the way to go. From an educational perspective, one could say I'm getting more out of it now that I'm older than I did before b/c I'm more focused - I'm there for the education, not for the "experience". But DAMN I had fun in college. That's the part I would really want to relive, b/c that's the part I don't quite do as well now that I'm a grown-up (I can't stay up until 4am anymore, eat total crap without FEELING like total crap, etc.) As it is now, I'm a fogey when I'm on campus, an outsider, and that's totally fine with me b/c I have absolutly NOTHING in common with the 19-year-olds in my classes, nor do I particularly want to. I'm learning quite a bit, but I'm not having "fun" there. Socially, I'd much rather be with people closer to my own age (which I think would still be true even if I had my current brain in an 18-year-old body). So I think to really enjoy college that way again I would have to be IN THAT PLACE again in my life as well.
Carolyn 05.23.05 - 9:10 am #


I feel kind of that way when I go back to Summer Theatre. I’m just too old to party with these college and high school kids … certainly too old to do it without seeming creepy.

I often think “I could do college better” now, and I could in many ways. But … well, I’ll continue this thought after I reprint Asha’s comment.


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I would have to say going back to being 18 again. I took a breather after my first semester, and in a real sense, I never got to experience the "18 and going to college" thing. On the other hand, that would make the age gap between my husband and I really friggin huge.
Ashavan D 05.24.05 - 3:25 pm #


Yeah, that’s the thing. Every time I think about going back to fix the things I “did wrong” back then (many of which seem to involve women) I remember that that series of mistakes and blunders led me where I am now, happily married to a beautiful woman in a great apartment in the most exciting city in the world. Yeah, I guess there’s no need for a do-over, since I’m quite happy with my life, except for the whole “career going nowhere” thing.

Who would you really want to be president? Not, like, “of the viable candidates,” though you can certainly bring political experience into your consideration. But what currently living, natural born US citizen over the age of 35 would be the best president possible?

Jon Stewart
Abraham Smith your brother 05.23.05 - 11:50 am #

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Damn - Jon Stewart... I gotta run with that one.
Dave S. 05.23.05 - 3:35 pm #

Golly guys, look, I love Jon Stewart … I actually literally consider him an American hero at this point. But, tongue out of cheek, could he actually govern?


Peter Fonda.
Travis Tack 05.23.05 - 1:22 pm #


Huh … well, at least he’s more politically active.

Oprah, but she's already said she won't do it.
Ashavan D 05.24.05 - 3:13 pm #

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Madonna (since Britney is too young and Avril is Candadian and Anna Wintour is British. I think.)
kate fried 05.24.05 - 5:24 pm #

If I had to pick a celebrity/entertainer, I might go with Warren Beatty.

When was the first time you realized you were smarter than one of your teachers or professors?

Do bosses count? And does it have to be the first time, or can it be a recent instance? I hope the answers are "yes" and "the latter is fine" as I am going to share a tale anyway.

My boss recently decorated the office in anticipation of a visit by this "news" team that you pay to do a "documentary" on your business. (You know, news.) Our office is a dump (tenth floor above a Chinese restaurant on the most charmless street downtown) and the decorations she put up were incredibly generic--Einstein posters and inspirational quotes written over picturesque mountainscapes. It's not how thoughtlessly she manipulated our work environment that bothers me, though, it's that she put up--with no apparent sense of irony--a poster of Yoda saying "There is only do, or do not; there is no try" right next to a poster proclaiming with big, bold font reminding us not to forget the importance of "Perseverence!"
Molly Tack 05.23.05 - 7:16 pm #


I worked a temp job a few weeks ago, subbing for a woman whose work space was plastered with inspirational posters, calendars, coffee cups, as well as newspaper clippings from Ann Landers and her ilk … all I could think was, “this woman has the most pitiful life I could imagine for a middle-class American.”



Frequently in my J Warthen's english class. On the other hand, J Jacobs could make almost anyone feel dumb.
Ashavan D 05.24.05 - 3:15 pm #

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I'll take your J Warthen (jackass) and raise you a Ben Minks.
kate fried 05.24.05 - 5:10 pm #

J. Jacobs actually came to my wedding. He's one of the few teachers I've kept in touch with.

Mr. Warthen assumed I was stupid, which in itself made me feel smarter than him, since he spent all his time underestimating me and evaluating my work as though I was a dunderhead. I think I shocked him at the end of senior year by handing in a thorough thought out assignment rather than a one page, yes I wrote this during open period paper.
Ashavan D 05.25.05 - 10:18 am #

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I can see Warthen being condescending, but he was definitely smart. And Mr. Minks was the man! He was extremely intelligent, and his gentle, laizzes-faire classroom technique allowed the interested students to plug in with vigor while the "I have to take an English class" students could drift in and out as they pleased. He guided me through some of my favorite literary experiences.

Noah, how did you get all these ARHS alums to post? I don't remember the names of anyone from my year.
Abraham Smith your brother 05.25.05 - 11:21 am #

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I second that emotion on Mr. Jacobs. He's one of those people I always wanted to have standing next to me some time when a ranting religious zealot was yelling at me.

Mr. Warthen gave me the "willies" in the same fashion "panties" creeps out Kate. Wrong for some reason...
Dave S. 05.24.05 - 6:36 pm #

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Mr. Minks told me to stop participating in discussions because I was "hogging the conversation". So I took his advice and then nobody ever talked and class was even more boring. And then I graduated, went to Oberlin, majored in English and found out what true conversation hogs were and how I paled in comparison.
kate fried 05.25.05 - 12:03 pm #

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Abe - your class doesn't post 'cause they're lame... Yep, face the cold-hard facts.

The fact is, no high-school teacher needs to be condescending. It's like playing dodge-ball against elementary kids. Don't be snarky, as most of the high-school kids have never touched the area before, while the teachers have had their whole career to delve into issues and form their opinions. The fact is, given that high-school students can hold up a strong, thought-out debate with a teacher should be given some respect.

Although, I'll also add that the environment could have influenced my perspective of Mr. Warthen. Why was he always in the trailer-home class-room in the back of the school?
Dave S. 05.25.05 - 3:39 pm #

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Never had Mr. Minks, so I can’t kick in on that. But, while I certainly had issues with Mr. Warthen, and fully understand how he could rub people the wrong way, I think it’s pretty much impossible to argue that he’s not intelligent. He’s tremendously well-read and thoughtful, has a sharp mind about writing, and has directed some productions of High School Shakespeare that were actually damn good theatre – that’s practically impossible. I also think he had a very clear and compelling teaching style. I would actually propose that he was one of the four or five smartest teachers at Amherst High … and that school had some darn good teachers. I learned a great deal about theatre, and certainly about writing from him, though, as is often the way, I didn’t really realize the importance or even the meaning of what I had learned until much later.

Be honest, guys, if he didn’t have the accent, would you feel differently about him?

I’m quite certain that he’s smarter than I am, but I never felt like he was condescending to me … okay, maybe once or twice.

ABE: Mostly, these people find me, though I did renew some contacts via Friendster and at the reunion.

DAVE: Not sure how he wound up in the add-on classroom, though it was near the department office. Since he taught acting, he may have wanted a room where students could make noise without disturbing others. He certainly made it his little sanctum sactorum.


In high school gym class... although I think she figured out I thought she was an idiot so she gave me a B one marking period. Hello! I was a varsity athlete in two sports. Gym should have been a gimme. She said it was because I had not skill in volleyball. No shit, Sherlock! I know I don't have skill in volleyball that's why I don't play it. I don't like balls near my face (too bad for Noah). She said I got a C for volleyball but an A for having my gym clothes. Whatever, I'm still bitter. Stupid Miss Mack.
Amanda Homepage 05.24.05 - 5:51 pm #


I can’t … believe … my wife wrote that …

Um, did everyone else notice Amanda was pornographic back then?
Dan 05.28.05 - 2:11 pm #

No! Nobody noticed it! We’re having a perfectly healthy conversation about high school! Nothing to see here!

Any particular words that really bug you? Not just obscene words, but some common word that rubs you the wrong way?

"Supper." God I hate that word, and I tend to hate the kind of families who use it instead of "dinner." They're the families who made the kids go to bed at 9 PM when you, the normal kid, were sleeping over.
Abraham Smith your brother 05.23.05 - 11:49 am #

Angry … angry little man.

It is weird, if you said “dinner” you think people who say “supper” are morons (y’know, morons like Leonardo DaVinci) … and, I assume vice versa. No particular reason, as each word only describes half of our traditional evening meal (“dinner” really meaning a large meal in the middle of the day, and “supper” meaning a small meal eaten at night). People are the same way about “soda” and “pop,” though that’s mostly regional, while dinner/supper seems to crop up anywhere. How about “basement” v. “cellar.”


awesome in its present usage. fruit roll-ups can now be awesome. That's lame.
tom reing 05.23.05 - 12:56 pm #

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I hate people who overuse the word "lame." It's real--oh, sorry Tom.
Ross Homepage 05.23.05 - 1:47 pm #

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What about Ross? Now there's a stupid word!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And so's your face.

(I'm kidding of course.)
tom reing 05.23.05 - 1:51 pm #


BOYS!

Play nice or I’m turning this car right around and nobody gets a Pudding Pop!


Wow, words really do hurt.

Nah, not really. I meant no true offense either. Besides, not only am I one of your "awesome" offenders, I've recently begun to reuse "wicked" along with it, so I deserve whatever you've got.
Ross Homepage 05.23.05 - 3:50 pm #


My history with the word awesome:


1983 – Noah hears a word on the playground he had only previously encountered in Marvel Comics to describe things like the Hulk’s strength. It becomes a major part of his vocabulary

1985 – Somebody tells Noah “Nobody says that any more.” He immediately stops saying it.

1991 – Brief return, only to say “That’s awesome, just not like the way people use that word to describe pizza.”

1993 – Noah notices that people seem to be saying the word again, but does not join the bandwagon, having been burned before.

2002 – Noah starts directing high school students in a production of ANYTHING GOES, the word creeps back into his vocabulary.

2003 – Noah writes the following phrase on his blog, “The Patriots (are) being the awesomest bunch of awesomes who ever awesomed, awesomely.”

2005 – Noah frequently asks his wife if she has noticed how awesome he is.



"Moist" Scheeve-ola! Cake is not moist, it's just tasty or good. And I will not address moist's other usages here. bleck!
Kate S. 05.23.05 - 4:28 pm #

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Mmmmmm, moist.

C'mon, it's a *great* word. It almost sounds naughty - but not quite. Sortof like "lurid" except when the definition is taken into account, it doesn't sound quite as good.

I have a whole page full of legal terms I hate... But I think they are pretty obvious.
Dave S. 05.23.05 - 6:16 pm #

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"panty" especially when men say it. makes my skin crawl.
kate fried 05.24.05 - 2:12 pm #

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But Kate, there is *nothing* sexy about "underwear." Any other options out there?

Any other ones are specifically limited to type.
Dave S. 05.24.05 - 3:50 pm #

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Oh, whatever. You chose moist. That's almost as bad. Besides, he said "not just obscene words" not "not just sexy words". But since we're going to get all picky about it, how about "diss." My mom used it the other day and I wondered if I had been transported back to 1990.
kate fried 05.24.05 - 5:09 pm #

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Not a big fan of moist, any really derogatory term (esp. faggot and kike), and "tripe"
isaac Homepage 05.24.05 - 5:13 pm #

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Gotta go with both Kates on this one. I hate both of those words. And together they are the worst combo ever!
Amanda Homepage 05.24.05 - 5:48 pm #

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Aaaaaaaaaaand Cut!
Dave S. 05.25.05 - 3:49 pm #
Okay, let me weigh in on the M and P words …

I fully understand why women don’t like P. Men wear “pants” but women wear “panties”? Why must they have the diminutive? It makes them seem like little girls …

Yet, as Dave point out, we consider the word “sexy.” Am I saying that any man who uses the word “panties” is a pedophile? Yeah, more or less.

Seriously, why do underpants have to be “sexy” in the first place? I don’t know women, or gay men for that matter, who put nearly so high a premium on men’s underclothes. Can’t something be practical?

Hey, I enjoy the Victoria’s Secret catalog as much as the next guy, but I can understand how this gets under women’s skin.

As for M … sorry ladies, I don’t get this one. I’ve heard plenty of you voice disgust for it, but I’ve never gotten a justification for why you feel that way. When I ask, you usually just descend into weird squirm syllables and distorted facial expressions.

I guess I understand why you get uncomfortable about the word’s vague sexual connotation, though I don’t think too many guys use it that way (“Yeah, I got her totally M last night”). They probably say W, if anything.

Meanwhile, M is quite useful. Sorry Kate S., but it does describe a particular quality of certain foods that “delicious” doesn’t.

Also, I think most men would agree that if the entire P is M, something is wrong, and it probably involved spilling a beverage, which brings us to …



"Humorous" and "beverage." Please-me's through and through.
Molly Tack 05.23.05 - 7:17 pm #


Y’know, I can’t quite get with you and Abe on the whole please-me thing.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but a please-me is any use of language or decoration utilized expressly to make the user feel like a fancy pants … for instance, my use of the word “utilized” in this sentence.

I mean, yeah, there aren’t many instances where “funny” and “drink” wouldn’t do just as well, but … c’mon, we have the most diverse, flexible language in human history, shouldn’t we make the most of it?

Yeah, don’t be a prick about it, but sometimes it’s just more fun to be ornate.

I’m reading another Bill Bryson book now, called Made in America about the history of American English. He offers some great examples of how absurdly convoluted formal American speech and writing was before Lincoln changed everything with The Gettysburg Address, which seems pretty formal-sounding to us, but was shockingly plain-spoken at the time … oh, and it was considered a huge failure.

overuse of the word "really". Find another adverb.
Doyne, the mother-in-law 05.24.05 - 12:52 pm #

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I’ve told students in writing classes, you don’t need “really” “very” “extremely.” Helping adverbs like that just make it seem like you have no faith in the adjective you’ve chosen. Anyway, adjectives suck. Verbs rule!

I'm intrigued that our dislike of these words seems quite tied-in to our dislike of people or the type of people who use them. Like, if Toby Keith wrote a song called "Chocolate Chip Cookies" all about how we should murder anyone who refuses to wear a WWJD bracelet ... it might make me hate chocolate chip cookies.


Okay, that’s long enough for now … it may take me a week to get through all of these.

Muppet Mailbag

Okay, this was supposed to be a mailbag entry, where I wrote clever responses to your clever responses to my questions on Audience Participation Day.

But I only got up to the second, question, about your favorite Muppets and I suddenly found I had well over 2000 words.

Plus, I kept finding new Muppet questions to research and those led to more questions and … basically, I’ve spent all day scouring the web for Muppet info. At least I’m at a temp job, so I’m getting paid for it.

Much of the Muppet fan stuff out there seems to be out of date. But I found a frequently updated blog called, what else Muppet News Flash. I left some of my unanswered questions there. Hope the get answered.

So … it’s all Muppets today, including my thoughts on the recent Muppet Wizard of Oz.

As a child I loved Dr. Bunson Honeydew and the Swedish chef. From Sesame Street, I have always loved Grover (do you remember "There Is A Monster at the End of this Book"? I came across it recently and bought it again for any future children I may have.) I love all the Fraggles, but especially the red haired girl one. But really all of them.
Alison | Homepage | 05.23.05 - 11:18 am | #


Didn’t have cable as a child, so I only got occasional glimpses of Fraggles. I still remember the day in high school when I finally understood the pun in the name “Travelling Matt,” which, along with Gobo and Sprocket gave me my “all the Fraggle characters have film names” theory.

Monster at the End of This Book is a classic. Grover may have been my favorite as a kid. I loved the sketches where he was a waiter, and I would make my parents play “Restaurant” with me, where I’d take orders and bring imaginary food. Abe points out that, on a show where Grover was a superhero, and a waiter, I wanted to emulate the waiter part.

I read, some time ago, someone pointing out that in Bert and Ernie sketches Jim Henson (Ernie) was the clown and Frank Oz (Bert) played straight. But when they would team up Kermit and Grover – remember, Grover was always trying to sell Kermit things he didn’t need, such as a toothbrush – Oz and Henson switched “roles,” with Oz’s Grover the new clown.

I also fondly remember a book where Big Bird is trying to find something red to tell us about, and a whole parade of red things goes on behind him. I think it ended with him sitting on a bag of tomatoes.

I recently heard that when Big Bird appears now, he’s CGI … I think that might be an urban myth. How could that possible be cost effective? When I’ve seen bits of “Sesame Street” flipping channels, I’ve seen sketches where Big Bird and Ernie run around in a cartoon background … maybe that caused some misunderstanding.

Anyway, Big Bird has taken a back seat to Elmo these days. Sigh. I don’t loathe Elmo, though I think he’s basically a less-versatile Grover. He was just starting to appear as I was outgrowing the show, as sort of an “annoying little brother” character. I identified so well with Big Bird as a kid. Not sure why kids would glom onto a baby-talking character.


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I loved Sweetums from the Muppet Show - but only when he was the scary monster who ate people. Not when they added the loveable personality in which he always got left behind and you felt sorry for him.

"If I could be anyone in the world, I'd be Kermit the Frog. 'Cause he's rich, he's famous, and he never has to wear any clothes." - Dan Wynne
Dave S. | 05.23.05 - 11:20 am | #

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Yeah, Sweetums did get … sweetened … there. I think he’s been used as a threat in recent projects. He and Crazy Harry appear in the gang of bad guys (the rest of whom seem to be new) in both Treasure Island and Wizard of Oz.


No contest -- Cookie Monster. What a brilliant idea for a character -- his entire personality is that he loves cookies! He is, in fact, a cookie MONSTER. He's all id. Perfect.
Abraham Smith your brother | 05.23.05 - 11:45 am | #


I love that, too. The purity. I believe he was intended to be a one-joke character – a blue monster who comes in to steal Ernie’s cookies. But he took off in popularity. This explains why he doesn’t have a real name – Miss Piggy is like that, too. She was one of a handful of generic female Muppets (they had a Miss Mousy, too), who appeared in the background in early sketches. Only when Oz started performing her did she really take off.

As for Cookie, well, we’ve all heard that he’s being reformed now, and eating a more balanced diet.

I can live with this, I guess, since childhood obesity is a SERIOUS problem. Seriously, have you seen how fat these kids are these days? And I do buy the “role model” side of things.

But, of course, if Cookie had remained this weird, fringe character, this might not be a problem. Once you’re dressing him in an ascot, calling him “Alistaire Cookie” and having him introduce “Monsterpiece Theatre,” you’ve headed down a road, there.

Hey, remember that film piece where it’s just footage of a girl of about one or two eating a messy chocolate cookie, while Cookie Monster speaks in voiceover, trying to convince her to give him some? Clearly just Oz adlibbing over stock footage, but in incredibly charming piece which ended something like:

“Oh, you getting cookie all over you face! Oh, oh, me tell you what! You finish eating cookie, me give you big kiss, lick all that cookie off you face, then you and me go back to my place. Me got whole closet full of cookies. We eat cookies all afternoon.”

Ah, simpler times.

SHOCKING NEWS I JUST LEARNED FROM IMDB … It was revealed last year that, before he started eating cookies, Cookie Monster’s name was “Sid” … I don’t know how to wrap my brain around this …




I liked Sam the Eagle and how he tried to keep some sense of propriety while all around was lunacy. And I liked when he says "you are all weirdos!" in Great Muppet Caper--arguably the best of the Muppet films.

Does anybody remember Emmit Otter's Jugband Christmas? It was a muppet special on HBO back in the day and was a rip off of O'Henry's Gift of the Magi I think. Anyway it's about an otter jugband and their competition was called RIVER BOTTOM NIGHTMARE and I love that name for a band.
tom reing | 05.23.05 - 1:05 pm | #

Sam’s great. I loved when he would get upset when a “classy” guest like Beverly Sills or Rudolph Nureyev would take the show as a chance to sing hoedowns and such.

Never seen all of “Emmit Otter”



That's a tough, open-ended question. Still, I've always had a weak spot for Fozzie.
Ross | Homepage | 05.23.05 - 1:43 pm | #


I have to say Fozzie too.. I used to get so excited when he would come on! and I still do
victimoffete | Homepage | 05.23.05 - 6:09 pm | #


Yes, and the new guy doing the voice (and Piggie’s) is spot-on.

Fozzie was so charmingly desperate. Everybody else was basically talented, but Fozzie was truly hopeless.



no contest. pepe the king prawn. why? because he's a crustacean, okay?
Kate S. | 05.23.05 - 4:25 pm | #

Certainly the best character they’ve introduced in years. And I love that he’s a completely untrustworthy degenerate, quickly willing to betray his friends. The Muppets needed some scum.




Miss Piggy, of course.
Doyne, the mother-in-law | 05.24.05 - 12:48 pm | #


Y’know, it’s weird. A great character, extremely useful, and, still the only successful female Muppet character (who’s next on the list … Prairie Dawn?). But if I were a guest on a revived Muppet Show, she’d be pretty far down on my list of characters I’d want to work with. Not sure why.


Gonzo -

I always loved Gonzo. He's an absolute lunatic, and he loves chickens. More, he doesn't care if anyone knows it.
Ashavan D | 05.24.05 - 3:20 pm | #

Yeah, but, y’know … as weird as it sounds, I think I like “Muppet Babies” Gonzo more. I think the weirdness was more fully realized, and the crush on Piggy had more power. While the “real” Gonzo has gotten a little bogged-down in pathos and melancholy of late. Muppets from Space is a decent movie, but now that Gonzo’s a leading man, he can’t really be shot out of cannons as much, anymore.

Not that “New Gonzo” is a bad character. He was great as “The Tin Thing” in Wizard of Oz.


As a kid my pics were:
Muppet Show: Gonzo
Sesame Street: Grover

Now i would say:
Muppet Show: Rolf
Sesame Street: Telly!
isaac | Homepage | 05.24.05 - 5:11 pm | #


Wait... can't I get a witness to Telly??? All neuroses all the time? Isn't he the modern day every-monster?
isaac | Homepage | 05.30.05 - 12:02 am | #


Telly was also fairly new as I was outgrowing the show … this may just be a case of Isaac being one of my younger regular readers … yeah, only by a year or two, but p’raps these were crucial years.

When I was babysitting a lot in Junior High, and would watch the show with the kids, I noticed Telly was featured quite heavily.

My theory had been that the guy playing Telly didn’t have many other characters to play, maybe he didn’t do non-Sesame Muppet projects. But a little research now tella me that there have been two Tellys … Brian Muehl from 1979-1984 and Martin P. Robinson ever since. Robinson also took over as Snuffy in 1980 from Jerry Nelson. Not sure why Nelson surrendered the role, since he continued to play other characters (apparently – ah, Internet research – he’s now “Sesame Street”-exclusive, and letting others play Robin, Floyd and his other “Muppet Show” characters – he is 70 and this may be deliberate slowdown). Not sure why Muehl left either. His Muppet credits continue into the 90s. Anyway, Robinson is pretty much Sesame-exclusive, at least lately – he had small parts in Take Manhattan and did puppeteer work on the Ninja Turltes movie.

Then again, Telly’s also, as Isaac points out, a cool, useful character. Particular as Big Bird got less neurotic, he became highly necessary.

Trivia – his name comes from his original intention to be a “television monster” who couldn’t stop watching. This was dropped.


Cookie Monster (cooooookies!), Grover, Oscar the Grouch (a grumpy green thing that lives in a trash can? hello, perfect), and following along that line, the snarky old men who always sat in the balcony.
kate fried | 05.24.05 - 5:21 pm | #

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Yep, Cookie and Oscar … two characters who would NEVER make it to air if the show were premiering now. We were lucky, lucky children. (Lore Sjoberg

I’m also fascinated that the sweetest character on the show, Big Bird, and the meanest, Oscar, are performed by the same guy, Caroll Spinney (yes, that’s a man). He doesn’t do many other characters, either.



As a kid I loved Gonzo, now it is Kermit. I hated when Kermit was on Sesame Street mostly because I didn't like Sesame Street. My attention span was too long for all those short skits.
Amanda | Homepage | 05.24.05 - 5:44 pm | #

Again, my wife is very weird.


So, did anyone see any of the Wizard of Oz special? I couldn’t miss it, of course, because it was a confluence of two of my childhood, and, let’s face it, adult obsessions. I taped it and I have some thoughts …

Now, I seem to recall some Muppet/Oz stuff before … including a medley of songs from the movie on “The Muppet Show” that had Kermit as the Scarecrow, Gonzo as Tin Man, and Fozzie as the Lion (the same casting they had here) – I think the guest star played Dorothy. And an episode of “Muppet Babies” had that same grouping, plus Rowlf as Toto, Piggy as Dorothy, Skeeter as the Witch, Scooter as the Glinda equivalent and … I dunno, maybe Bunsen as the Wizard?

(okay, just looked up the “Muppet Show” sketch, and Fozzie was actually the Tin Woodman in an extended Alice in Wonderland sketch on the Brooke Shields episode … um … yeah. The gag was Fozzie was confused, but the gag was that the sketch had descended into such chaos that they all sang “We’re Off to See the Wizard” to wrap it up … yet I remember a different, longer medley in full Oz costumes … I could be wrong_

But this new project was decidedly not a parody of the movie. In fact, probably because Disney doesn’t want any trouble from Warners, they seemed to try in places to make it quite different from the movie.

They attempted this in three ways: 1) they modernized it considerably (the Tin Woodman is basically a cyborg) 2) they made it distinctly Muppety (Toto is played by Pepe the Prawn) 3) they found places to be faithful to Baum where the movie wasn’t.

Unsurprising, if you’ve read this blog for long, that third one interested me most.

I would say that the MGM classic is about 60% faithful to Baum’s book. I approve of all the changes they made, some of which are improvements, some are break-evens. The only change I don’t like was making it all a dream – but I think you kinda had to do that in 1939, ‘cause you couldn’t promise people a fantasy when reality was so harsh.

This new one is probably also 60% … maybe less … but it’s a different 60%.

For instance … it’s not a dream, the Munchkins (rats here, allowing them to also fill the role of the field mice) wear mostly blue, there are two good witches as well as two bad, our heroes have to find Glinda after the Wizard fails them, the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman are rather gruesomely dismembered by the Winged Monkeys (here a motorcycle gang, with only one monkey member) so they can’t help Dorothy, the Monkeys are enslaved by the Witch through a magic hat and most significantly …

They kept the sequence from the book where each of the companions meets the Wizard on their own – Dorothy sees the giant head, the Scarecrow sees a beautiful woman, Tin Woodman sees a great beast, Lion sees a ball of fire. So, get it? Each one sees a symbol of what the next one desires to be (you have to interpret the ball of fire for yourself – Dorothy is searching for passion, maybe … I’m not sure).

In the Muppet version, each one sees their own metaphor, rendered in CGI (making sense in the modern world). Yes, Gonzo’s seductive woman turns into a chicken. I forget what Dorothy sees. Not fire.

The other thing they kept, in highly altered form, was the kalidas. These are these neat monsters with the body of a tiger and the head of a bear that chase our heroes, in the book, shortly after they meet the Lion. MGM alludes to this with “Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh my!” (in the version I wrote -- sigh -- nine years ago, I had the witch screw up a spell to turn her assistants into one of each – so one had a tiger head/bear body and the other had the reverse)

The Muppets give us “Kalida Critics” – Statler and Waldorf (the guys in the balcony) mock Fozzie as he’s trying to cross a log bridge. Turned into a very touching sequence with Gonzo talking him across.

Ashanti as Dorothy didn’t especially work for me. She’s not exactly an actress, and they didn’t have her sing much. Either way, she wouldn’t have made me forget Judy Garland and she certainly didn’t give us the innocent little girl of the book, either.

Okay, I’m going to shut up now, because this has gone on waaay to long … except that I’m going to leave you with an idea I had years ago, which I think could really be great …

MUPPET GUYS AND DOLLS

Cast humans as Sky, Sarah, and Big Jule and then …

Nathan Detroit: Kermit
Adelaide: Piggy (the part she was sewn for)
Nicely Nicely: Fozzie
Benny Southstreet: Gonzo
Rusty Charlie: Rizzo
Harry the Horse: Pepe
Arvide: Bunsen
Calvin: Beaker

More on those other questions later.

Felt up

Does anyone remember the "Smatthew" episode of "NewsRadio"? That's the one where Matthew convinces himself he's drinking brain-boosting juice and suddenly becomes a genius, until he gets smart enough to realize the juice is just juice and he returns to normal. Great weird stuff, reminding us that "NewsRadio" was really the only network sitcom of the 90s that actually made use of the incredibly creative people doing comedy in the 90s.

Anyway, in that episode, Matthew helps Dave understand the complexities of Watergate by using an extended Star Wars analogy.

paraphrasing:

DAVE: But who was Nixon?
MATTHEW: Yoda.
DAVE: But that doesn't work. Yoda was wise.
MATTHEW: Yoda was a puppet, and the hand up his ass ...
DAVE: Kissinger? ... But the question is, did George Lucas really make these movies as an allegory about Watergate?
MATTHEW: Of course not. I just boiled down a complicated political scandal to language you could understand by comparing it to a popular children's movie.

Anyway, this has been on my mind because of yesterday's revelation.

So. We know who Deep Throat was. Wow. Momentous. Huge. Exciting.

Kinda disappointing.

Oh, sure, it's nice to have the mystery solved. Perhaps it would have been nicer if it had been someone I've heard of, though the fact that Felt's name has a slightly naughty sound to it (There's a joke about it on Fountain).

But ... and here's where I tie this in to Star Wars ... it's like what Abe said to me as we were leaving the theatre after seeing Sith. "What more do we have to look forward to?"

(Of course, yes, we only mean in popular culture ... in a very particular subset of popular culture from our youths. We have much to look forward to in real life.)

But seriously ... we've seen the volcano. We know how it went down, how Anakin became Vader. One of a small remaining handful of missing pieces from our childhood has been filled in.

Are there any left? I mean, I guess I'd like to know if Elliot ever saw E.T. again. But ... what do we have to look forward to?

People thought New Englanders would feel this way when the Red Sox won. They thought we'd lose our identities as fans, because it was all caught up in being losers. But that was not the case. We wanted to lose this identity and be like any other group of fans. Whatever masochistic pleasure we may have gotten from losing -- and most of us got trace amounts of this at most -- was wholly subsumed by the joy of winning.

And it's not really the same as Star Wars or Watergate. Both of those were mysteries (though that's overstating it, in SW's case) that we knew had solutions, that we knew we'd find out some day ... the Sox were an "if," the others were a "when."

And now all we have is "what else."

Now that the great real-life mystery of the second-half of the 20th century has been revealed, what else is there? Yeah, they could find Hoffa (again my suggestion on Fountain). I suppose new info could surface about the assasinations of the sixties. Someone could come forward to reveal how Bush stole Florida in 2000 or Ohio in 2004.

But these won't involve a secret identity, taken from a porn film, hidden for years by a duo of crusading journalists ... both of whom kinda digressed into embarassments.

Note to self as a writer: The mystery was cooler than the truth.