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20 December 02021 (T + 27): An Opportunity Missed

27 years ago today, I did not think to predict "This woman whom I just met seems like just the type who will be appointed to a public library board of directors 27 years from tonight."

I'm not sure how I missed that.

I am not so confident in my prediction skills to claim that I could have nailed down the city, but it seems like I should have gotten the rest of it straight.

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I see that Sirius/XM has 19 channels dedicated to playing Christmas music.
There aren't 19 Christmas songs!

Certainly it seems like that sometimes.  It is in part for that reason that I continue this dodecade-long quest of spotlighting underplayed songs o’ the season.

Seasons, actually.

1. It’s (Already) Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, Capitol Steps.  Though the Steps are no more (The Markives, 2 March 02021), their legacy lives on.  This one shares my sentiment about the expansion of the winter holidays well beyond their right and proper starting date.

However one might define “right and proper”, of course, which in any event shouldn’t be before Thanksgiving.

2. Traditions of Christmas, Mannheim Steamroller.  I’ve not included any MS tunes on these lists until this year, largely because of the remake factor.  After digging a bit, I turned up this original from their second album, so we have the sounds of the Steamroller with the added advantage of new holiday music.

That’s a win/win, from where I type.

That said, this song also exists with lyrics.  While ditching the words may make this a little more difficult to tag as a holiday tune (we kind of need to fall back on “Mannheim Steamroller, despite its range of works,  is largely and perhaps unfairly known for Christmas music”, which is less than fully satisfying), I prefer the instrumental version, and so that’s what’s linked up there.

3. Star of Wonder, Roches.  A study in contrasts presents itself here.  Right after an instrumental holiday tune, we have...an a cappella number.

Put it all together (though you shouldn't) and you have two complete songs with both music and lyrics.  But they're really better off appreciated separately.

4. Santa Claus Is Coming To My House, Karla DeVito.  24 hours ago, I didn't know that this song existed.  Now it's been immortalized on this ever-expanding list.

Owing to the nature of the calendar and the radio stations I listen to, a lot of the research for each year's AVMX list happens 11+ months beforehand, after the previous year's list goes live and I start hearing a wider range of holiday tunes.  I was, as is my nature, casting about the I'net last night looking for inspiration and came across hipchristmasmusic.com, which is a gold mine of the obscure and unjustly neglected among holiday music.  Also at least a silver mine of songs that deserve their obscurity, but one learns to take the bad with the good in projects like this.

The net effects of this calendar quirk are that 3 songs were taken off the original version of this year's list and replaced by late-breaking discoveries, and there are already at least a dozen tunes in the holding pen for 02022.  Sometimes songs that seem like good choices in mid-December don't hold up so well when revisited the following early December.

As to this number: Karla D. is perhaps best known for her album Is This A Cool World Or What?, from which this song is not taken.  The album cover made it a favorite at Winter Camp back in the days when Winter Camps could be counted with single Arabic digits.

5. Strangest Christmas Yet, Steve Martin & The Steep Canyon Rangers.  Because when you can highlight a combination of holiday comedy and some of the best banjo playing ever recorded, you don’t ask questions.
       
I want to believe that the home movies shown in the video are actual family footage rather than something put together for this project, but my willful naivete only extends so far.

6. My Kind of Present, Meghan Trainor. I have organized the collection (now 121 tunes) of AVMX music into a variety of overlapping subcategories, which is useful when I’m fast-forwarding through the flash drive that houses the whole list looking for certain types of holiday music.  A category that’s kind of new this year is “Fun, but not necessarily funny”, which I’ve mentioned as an idea several times (both of Jimmy Buffett’s contributions, for example) but not quite formalized before.

This song qualifies.  I like MT’s work in general, but she went off a cliff for a while there after All About That Bass and Title, revealing herself in Dear Future Husband and Lips Are Movin’ to be what Harry Burns would have called a “high-maintenance woman”.  It’s good to see that she has pulled back from that edge a bit.

7. Cozy Little Christmas, Katy Perry. Kind of a double shot here, with #6.  Two songs by popular singers who recorded something new for the holidays.  This is a trend that I like.

There was a third song that was on the edge of making this a trio (which was not one of the 3 late cuts), but I has a suspicion that it might blow up and get too much exposure sometime soon.  If I’m wrong, which is likely, maybe we’ll see it in 02022.

8. You Ain’t Getting Diddly Squat, Heywood Banks.  I take requests, provided they're consistent with the format.

I woke up on the morning of 1 December with this song running through my head, which I interpret as evidence that the universe wants it in AVMX.

Far be it for me to deny the universe a simple request that is consistent with the format around here: a fun little number that isn’t overplayed in the annals of Christmas comedy.

9. Warm December, Sabrina Claudio.  You might want to send the kids out of the room for this one.

The video here isn’t over any decency lines that concern me*, but it’s Right. Up.  Against.  The Line. in a number of places.

Feature or bug?  You be the judge.

Optical matters aside, this is a nice little tune that is probably getting all of the attention it can.

10. Santa Island, Na Leo.  After #9, a more upbeat–one might even go so far as to say “peppier”–song seems called for to close out this list.  And there’s usually something peppy among the music of Hawaii, including but certainly not limited to the holiday tunes.   After all, the ukulele, like the banjo, is not an instrument on which to play the blues.

Io Saturnalia!

M–>

*–If indeed such lines even exist, which is an iffy proposition.

1 December 02021: How Did It Get To Be December Already?

Never mind that now.

On the list of reasons why it's sad that the Capitol Steps are no more, add "Dr. Mehmet Oz has announced he's running for the U.S. Senate from a state in which he does not, evidently, currently live."

Leaving out the reasons why this is a bad idea, I offer the following obvious start on a parody of this development to whomever wants it:

He's---off to run for Congress!
He wants to be Senator Oz!

One thing that has emerged from the current Omicron variant of the virus that need not be named otherwise is that that Greek letter is getting more prominence than it's ever gotten outside its homeland.

In the 24-pack of letters that is the modern-ish Greek alphabet, omicron may well be the least-used anywhere, in no small part because "$\omicron$" is not terribly useful as an algebraic variable.  It doesn't even seem to be the name of a subatomic particle outside of Star Trek.

Iota is down there with omicron, but manages to outrank it in prominence because it's been co-opted as an English word.$\p$

I also like that most of the coverage of Omicron is pronouncing it with a long "o", as I have always done.  If we could get people to agree on "fy" rather than "fee" for $\phi$, that would be a nice bonus.

While I wish no new variants on the world, it'd be interesting to see how WHO responds to variant #25*.  They may well turn to the Cyrillic or Hebrew alphabet, but I'm holding out for "Koppa".

Not "Kappa", "Koppa": the now-obsolete Greek letter that is in some tenuous sense an ancestor of our "Q".

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*--I know that they deliberately skipped nu and xi in naming variants.  My point stands, even if it'd refer to variant #23.

Why aren't there more breakfast soups?

So Book #5 is going to be about poker mathematics, and while doing some research yesterday, I found out about an article in Life magazine from 01968 that seemed interesting.

It did not seem unreasonable that said article would be online somewhere, and though I did indeed find it, it was not in a print-friendly format, or, for that matter, in an easily-read-on-screen format.  Nonetheless, I confirmed that it was indeed interesting and worth procuring a copy.  (I tend to prefer hard copies of articles, where I can scribble in the margins annotate as I need.)

Inspiration then struck me: Life is a legacy publication, so surely my employer's library would have a hard copy that I could photocopy.

Half right.

Finding the bound volume was easy enough.  Finding a photocopier that could take an 11 x 14 page was another matter, and definitely a 21st-century thing.  What the library had was a combined printer/scanner/copier that would have produced a color copy, but which only had an 8.5 x 11 viewing window.  (Truth be known, this was intended more as a printer than as any of its other functions.)

Sometimes it's necessary to improvise.  So I asked the librarian if I could walk the volume over to the science complex and copy it there if I promised to bring it back right away.

She agreed, and I got my copy.  The volume (May-August 01968) was unavailable to other patrons for about half an hour; I am fairly certain that no one's work was disrupted by its absence from the stacks.

Moreover, the library's periodical usage statistics will correctly reflect this adventure--this was the professional concern of the resident librarian of The Markives when I told her the story last night.  And rightly so.

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Once again, we have one of those sentences that one seldom, if ever, finds occasion to speak.

Here's what's going on: Laurie and I are having plumbing work done to fix a leaky pipe inside our walls.  As one expects, this involves demolition and eventual reconstruction of said walls, and others near them.  It turns out that there's a veritable spaghetti bowl of pipes that have to be navigated (and, one might hope, optimized a bit) back there, which has surely amused our plumber.

As to the title of this installment: Our upstairs bathroom, we learned today, apparently had a used razor blade catcher in the back of an old and since removed medicine cabinet that, long ago (because I've contributed nothing to it), overflowed its catch basin and piled up a lot of dull metal** that fell into the space within the walls.  When that wall was taken out today, well, there was quite the cascade of historic shaving devices.  I regret not being there to see it all.

May your life be differently interesting.

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*--On holiday intrusion: Sirius/XM has launched Holly, on channel 105.  Other stations will follow later, or so I understand.  I've not tuned in yet.
**--Fun fact: "Dull metals" was one of Professor Roy Hinkley's specialties (when we wasn't working on his book Fun With Ferns) on Gilligan's Island.

1 November 02021: Ashes To Ashes, My Thoughts on Rust

If the I'net is to be believed, which is a pretty big "if", there are an awful lot of people out there who fancy themselves as more careful in handling firearms than professionals.

This I gather from some of the responses of Internet commentators to the recent incident on the set of Rust*.

It's truly amazing how many people are willing to state, for the record albeit anonymously, that certainly they would never take anyone's word that a firearm wasn't loaded--even a professional whose job it is to assure that--and would surely check any such weapon handed them.  This without any real knowledge that I can see about protocols in place for exactly this sort of thing, including but not limited to the fact that an actor fiddling with the chamber leads to a restart of the whole certification process.

It's easy to be virtuous when you'll never be called on your claims.  This is amusing in part because I tend toward leftward-leaning segments of the commentariat, many of whom are highly unlikely ever to be in a position where they'll handle a handgun and carry themselves with a curious unearned sort of pride over that.

Thought experiment: If the shooter in this unfortunate accident** had been someone with a better popular image, this wouldn't be getting this level of undeserved attention.  Discuss.

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*--You know the one.
**--Which is what it was, for everyone not directly involved in the production.

Steve from Allen Park, MI called me today to alert me that Hallmark has flipped two of its channels, Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies and Mysteries, to all-Christmas programming last Friday.  (On further review, Hallmark Drama has not yet made the leap.)

It is indeed right and proper that news of this magnitude should merit a phone call.

Assuming, with no real justification, that the channels will revert to more balanced programming sometime around midday on 25 December means that we're in for over 9 weeks of predictable movies with a lot of evergreen and snowflakes in the background.  That's over 1/6 of the year.

Which is a lot, even for the most ardent fan of the winter holidays.

On another hand, this is probably the sort of thing that one might expect from the Hallmark corporation, which has staked their business plan on the public's enjoyment of all things holiday.  And I suppose that it's nice, in a world with thousands of TV channels, that that subset of America which enjoys such things has a place to go for them now---and it's certainly not like viewing these movies is mandatory.

Still...65 days?

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I ran across this on the I'net this morning and thought it should be preserved somewhere.

And waits.

And waits.

Owing the the vagaries of flights leaving the Virgin Islands, a lot of people are trying to get off the island at about the same time.

After the TSA line, which went through multiple common feeder labyrinths, then and only then is one released into the staging areas for the 8 gates.  This whole thing certainly qualified as "unpleasant".

There are at least three ways to fix this, none of which fall under H.L. Mencken's description of "clear, simple, and wrong".

1. Ease up on TSA security theater.  Clear?  Yep.  Simple?  Not even close--the political barriers are surely close to insurmountable..  Wrong?  Probably not.

Some progress was made on this front: Passengers passing through TSA line #3 (including Laurie and me) were instructed not to remove food or electronics from their carry-on bags.  While this probably didn't save much time due to the size of the mob, it generated some small amount of goodwill.

2. Crank the AC in the waiting area down to about 60°F.  It was unbelievably hot with all those travelers crammed very close together.  The ambient temperature in the room, with all of the 99° humans in there, would surely have equilibrated at something more comfortable.

3. Make the Virgin Islands a state.  With that in place, there's no need for Customs to be involved.  The political ramifications, once again, are immense.

One could argue that there's no need for an import limit on goods purchased in the Virgin Islands since nothing's being imported into the USA, but that's surely been beaten to death elsewhere.  Nonetheless, this is the solution I favor.

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15 August 02021, 12:18 PM EDT: Notes From The Final 2.6%

As I type this, Consumers Energy reports that 97.4% of its customers currently have power.

The home of The Markives is not among them, though the office is.

We were somewhat prepared for this possibility through frequent email updates while enjoying the Caribbean last week, and had held out some hope as we drove through town that the lights would be on at home, but the turn onto Linden Ave., enveloped in darkness, revealed the folly of that dream.  By morning's light, it became clear that we may well be toward the far end of restoration--a big tree came down and apparently took out a utility pole, which is down and across the mill race, making repair or replacement that much more challenging.

The power here was apparently off, then back on, then off again during the set of storms we missed out on last week.  Fortunately, the heat and humidity aren't so high as to make air conditioning desirable.

Laurie and I took a walk around town this morning, and the hum of generators out in our neighborhood may just have to be another of the sounds of summer.  (We have a generator, but haven't felt a need to fire it up just yet.)

And so we wait.

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618: For a good stretch of the road in New Mexico and Colorado, my car was making the audacious claim that it could go 618 miles on a single tank of gas.

Taking the 12-gallon gas tank into consideration suggests that I was capable of getting 50 miles to the gallon for an extended period of time, which is a bit of a stretch.  I won't argue that sustained driving on relatively straight and uncrowded roads with the cruise control on increases gas mileage, but I'm not convinced that I'd've made it even to 550 miles on one tank if I'd taken the risk of not refueling on a conservative schedule.  When driving through wide-open spaces such as abound in parts of the American West, it's good sense to fill up well before the low-fuel indicator light comes on.

There was a very short stretch--about 4 gallons' worth--where my rough calculations suggest I'd topped 50 mpg, but that was an n = 1 situation, and needs a lot more study before it's even remotely reliable.

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3 August 02021: Carbonated Water, Sugar, Lemon Oil, Lime Oil, Citric Acid, and Potassium Citrate--And Why They Matter

For some very minor medical reasons, I embarked recently on a quest to decaffeinate my life, at least for a while.

There've been a few bumps in that road, in the name of practicality.  It turns out that eschewing all caffeine is incompatible with cross-country driving, especially across states like Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa.  Nice scenery there, but it doesn't change a lot.

Nonetheless, I press on.  That means a lot more lemon-lime soft drinks and some careful attention to the ingredients in root beers.  Barq's contains caffeine; Mug does not--to inventory the offerings of the two industry behemoths.

One thing that I've been thinking about, though, is why any sort of rivalry between Sprite drinkers and those who favor Sierra Mist hasn't risen to the intensity level that some people bring to Coca-Cola v. Pepsi.

I don't claim to have all of the answers, but I think I've got this one:

It's because everyone involved knows that both drinks are just poor substitutes for 7 Up, which is a lot less available at fountain outlets.

Since they know they're settling, at best, for the silver medal (by a fairly wide margin) of colorless pop, there's a lot less at stake.

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6699.3: Number of miles driven on this road trip.*  If I didn't live on a dead-end street, I might've taken the suggestion to drive around the block and bring that up to an even 6700--but the "around" part of that was kind of a nonstarter.

*277: I am certain that the state of Colorado established this as its highway emergency number because the numbers spell out "CSP", for "Colorado State Police".

I am almost as sure that no one thought about other things that can be spelt on a telephone keypad with those digits.

49: In this year's edition of the license plate game, we scored 28 states before crossing the Michigan-Indiana border, but the drivers of Delaware were all able to avoid us during our sojourn.  We got #49 (Hawaii) in St. George, UT on Day 8, which made the remaining 2 weeks a fruitless search for the ecru-on-navy rectangle that is the Delaware plate.

With the pandemic closing borders, it was a tough year for Canadian and Mexican license plates.  We saw 6 provinces--everything Quebec and west--which is about the best that I hope for when driving in the West, but all were on commercial trucks.  Saskatchewan fell on the last day, so the continued watching for Delaware paid off right at the end.  Only 2 Mexican states--Sonora and Chihuahua--fell before our gaze, which is a little under the norm, especially since we spent a night in Tucson and a fair amount of time near the southern border.

1: In the reverse version of the license plate game, where the challenge is to find a Michigan license plate on a moving car other than my own, every state except Arizona was checked off.  This includes Idaho, which we only passed through en route from Wyoming to Nevada.

704: Number of photos that I took.  Those will take some time to sort through, but there are a lot of duplicates.  An advantage of digital photography is that it costs nothing to reshoot a picture.

6: National parks visited (plus 1 national monument).  4 of those were new to us.  The travel tree will be greatly enhanced this Christmas season.

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*--Number of miles driven by Laurie: 0.  We're both okay with that.

Autonomous driving researchers working on Earthbound cars spend a lot of time designing systems to avoid things
like bicyclists, jaywalkers, construction barrels and other hazards that have, so far, not been found on the moon.

I was in Las Vegas on and around 1 June, which was being touted as some kind of post-pandemic Reopening Day.  Most folks didn't wait that long.

On the other hand, the exceptions were kind of amusing in a sort of contradictory way.  Leaving out the obvious examples: Laurie and I were out for dinner one evening.  When the check came, it was presented to us with a ballpoint* pen still in its cellophane wrapper.  This, we were told, was a safety measure.

I had kind of thought that the nation was over the obsession with sterilizing surfaces, including but not limited to that brief time when people were agonizing over whether or not to microwave their mail.  Here in the office of The Markives, most of the cleaning supplies distributed liberally throughout the buildings have gone unused; I don't think that the complicated restocking procedure detailed on all of the laminated instruction sheets has ever been used.

It's possible that mathematicians are less messy than, say, biologists, but I'm not prepared to make that assertion absent some data.

That said, I took the pen, and its wrapper, with me when we left.  No sense subjecting a presumably innocent patron to a contagious writing implement.

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I'm back, for a while.

If you are ever renting a car in Las Vegas, NV and have any choice in the matter at pick-up, select a car that isn't white.  When you're looking for an unfamiliar vehicle in a strange parking lot or garage, it's very useful to be able to eliminate what seems like 2 out of every 3 cars.

I get that part of the appeal of a white car is temperatures in triple digits Fahrenheit, but I'd rather be inside a car with the AC on than wandering a blacktop parking lot in the heat trying to find my rental car among all of the possibilities. 

That said, humidity in single digits makes the heat a lot more bearable.

Seriously.  One day when the local TV weather was on, Laurie asked me if the humidity in Michigan was ever 6%*.

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*--Michigan ranks #7 among the states for average relative humidity.  Nevada is #50.

In and around the bizarre nature of awards shows this past 6 months, it would be a relief to hear that there will be no Emile Arturi Awards this year.

If it were telecast, or if the Emile was a desirable award.

Which it's not, and which it isn't.

There were 2 contenders that we were watching at EAA HQ this year: Mom and Last Man Standing.  Neither one even came close to the clunky series finale that The Emile recognizes.  In the case of Mom, the fact that Anna Faris didn't return for the last episode meant that four other occasionally recurring characters weren't necessary, which knocked out the possibility of a universal artificial closure.  There were a couple of big storylines that were introduced, but neither one got resolved in the waning minutes, and so this could be described as a season finale with cliffhangers masquerading as a series finale.  It avoided everything that it should have.

Last Man Standing spent a little time with clever wordplay and back-references to Home Improvement--fine by me--but again didn't try to give everyone their own story.  As with Mom, keeping one performer (Kaitlyn Dever, appearing only briefly and on an iPad in this case) at a distance lessened the likelihood of a clunky universal episode to the right level (that would be 0).  This one could also be misread down the line in syndication as a mere season finale.  Well done.

This may be the first time that LMS has ever been described as a model for the future of televised comedy, but it's appropriate.

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17 May 02021 (Happy birthday!): Apparently I Am In Troble

...and it has nothing to do with today's birthday.

Laurie and I have been spending some time lately clearing out the crawl space under our primary living room in preparation for some insulation work down there later this summer, which has involved hauling out a lot of construction debris, probably from when the addition was originally put on.  In and among the detritus, I found this note on Saturday:
I'm not sure what kind of "troble" I'm in, but since we've been wearing gloves for this work, I'm reasonably certain that the "I take finger prints" threat poses no real danger.

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Steve from Allen Park, MI took time out from celebrating his birthday to offer up a plausible interpretation of Sticker-mania, as reported here last Tuesday:

I think what we can take from this is that people don’t have to be reminded to be fiscally responsible.

Socially responsible is a different matter entirely.

There are days, and this is one, when it seems like the world is being run by 7-year-olds*.  (I can get away with that right now because none of the Gang Of Twelve is within 2 years of age 7, so this won't be read as a personal attack.)

Which of these things is not like the others?

• Getting Covid shot #2.
• Depositing a check through a credit-union's drive-through lane.
• Voting in a municipal election.

Answer: Depositing the check--because that's the only one of those 3 things where I was not offered a sticker after completing that task this morning.

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*--Admittedly, there have been fewer of those since 20 January 02021.

30 April 02021: Atop A Very Short List

Over at amazon.com, my next book has a Web page, if not a hard or e-copy, or cover art.  Nonetheless, it ranks #1 on the "New Releases--Baccarat" chart, which I was not aware was even a thing until last night.

This goes on even as the book's overall sales rank* is somewhere in the vicinity of #7,000,000.  As always, actual publication (which is scheduled for 13 August 02021) might move that up a touch.

Clicking through reveals that Mathematics of the Big Four Casino Table Games is, quite literally, in a class by itself.

Still, #1 is #1.

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Looks like another year of normal life being held hostage by society's weakest links.

Anyway, let's smoke weed about it.

Life is a lot more fun if you live it with thicker skin instead of outrage.

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*--And happy half-birthday, and happy one-third-birthday!

Alcohol, when used properly, is perfectly legal.
The same can be said for machetes.
Few good things, though, have ever come from mixing the two.

5 April 02021: Number One, Out Of 57*

Last night, John Oliver claimed that he had "the face of someone who has a favorite kind of graphing calculator", though he claimed little knowledge of mathematics.

He and I don't look all that alike (credit the facial hair for that), but I can look in the mirror and see such a face.

For the record, my favorite graphing calculator is the TI-85, which was the first mainstream calculator, graphing or otherwise, to break the googol barrier by handling numbers greater than 10¹⁰⁰.  Of course, that's from 01993, and there have been some nice techno-upgrades since then.  A lot of the number-crunching for my recent work has been done on a TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition, which has better screen resolution, has gone back to rechargeable batteries, and sports a color display, though my primary color interest on that machine was to outfit it with an aftermarket red cover.

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*--Today I learned that this means that I own one model of graphing calculator for each year I've been alive.  Interesting.

It is said that history doesn't repeat itself, but historical situations recur.  So it (sort of) is with college basketball.

In 02019, Texas Tech singlehandedly eliminated both Michigan and Michigan State from the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament (The Markives, 1 April 02019).  Tomorrow night in Indiana, UCLA has a chance to repeat that double play, albeit in the other order.

Here's hoping that things turn out differently this time, although I suspect the fact that many people like underdogs will mean that not a lot of the country outside of metro Ann Arbor (and maybe a few Big Ten conference loyalists) will be rooting for Michigan.  The spirit of the infracaninophile is strong.

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Laurie and I are on rather different daily calendars.  Typically, she's much more "early to be, early to rise" than I will ever voluntarily be.  We make it work.

This means that the first few minutes that we see each other in the morning typically involve trading notes about what I did the previous night and what she's already been up to in the early hours o' the day.  Usually this is a re-affirmation that nothing important happens in darkness, but I had a pretty good nonstandard response one day last summer. When Laurie asked if she had missed anything the night before, I told her that I had, overnight, "won a class-action lawsuit".

Which was true.

And certainly doesn't happen every day.  (At least one would hope not.)

It was the suit against Sirius/XM involving the true meaning of "lifetime subscription".  It hasn't quite wrapped up yet, but I'm hoping to get some small cash consideration, and certainly a release from future payments.

Today, Laurie had her own non-routine news to report.  In the early hours of 12 March, she got herself enrolled in a CDC study.

Nothing major--there's no cause for alarm--but she's having a very minor side effect from her first Covid-19 vaccination, and while seeking out information online, wound up enrolling in said study.

Not what one expects to hear at the start of the day.

We await further medical updates, and continued interesting overnight developments.

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*--Those would be "365ish days of an official Covid-19 pandemic" and "Daylight Saving Time is awful".   I have nothing to add to the voluminous (and often pointless) rants on those subjects that are currently clogging the I'net.

2 March 02021: Stepping Out

Tom Lehrer has claimed that political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, an actual event which far outstripped anything a comedian could conceive of.

Perhaps the same can be said of the Trump administration.  It may not be a complete coincidence that yesterday's announcement that the Capitol Steps are closing up shop after 39 years comes on the heels of that administration's departure.

I'm not prepared to say that political comedy is dead, but it's got to be a lot harder today than it was 6 months ago.  And that's factoring the pandemic out of the equation.

I've been a fan of the Steps since about 01991; Laurie and I have seen them perform live 7 times, in 6 different cities*.  The last time (now "the last time" in more ways than one) was one year ago yesterday in Las Vegas.

Which, I've frequently thought, might've been a good place for a Steps resident show.  Alas, it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

Farewell, and thank you.

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*--The duplicate city was Interlochen, MI.  The Steps frequently played Ann Arbor on July 4, and from there it's a quick jaunt up two-lane highways to play at Interlochen on July 5.

1 March 02021 (Happy birthday yesterday and overmorrow*!): A Looming Trainwreck With A Long Lead Time

In the home of The Markives, the TV is frequently showing reruns of The Big Bang Theory on TBS.  The reasons are simple: it's a funny show, it's good background noise, and it's the kind of show that can be enjoyed simply from the audio track.

Indeed, this is very often true of multi-camera sitcoms, since the number of locations is typically not very large, and many of the visuals can be filled in from memory.

That means, though, that since about the middle of February, I've seen and heard a lot of promos for Chad, a new show that's slated to debut sometime in April.

And that show looks awful.

Just awful.

Knowing the gimmick behind the show (which, to me, is ridiculous) doesn't change my assessment.  It certainly doesn't make me more likely to watch it, even in the faint hope that this might fall into "so bad, it's good" territory.

I've long held to the belief that if an entertainment product is being advertised ahead of its premiere in a timespan best measured in months, it's probably terrible.  (This doesn't work the other way, incidentally: Often a product known to be in for critical bashing is held back from advance previews and promotion in an effort to capture some box office dollars before word gets out.)  This shows all the signs of that.

Others will make the final judgment, of course--I don't plan to tune in.

M-->

*--Birthweek, of course, in the case of the latter.

We turn to a sentence attributed to Mark Twain--and even though he didn't say it, he should have--but properly credited to Clarence Darrow:

I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.

At a time when all parts of the political spectrum are acting in complete disregard for anything approaching consensus, I am certain that the recent deaths of Larry Flynt and Rush Limbaugh are giving both right and left wings reason to live the truth of this quote--for I am sure that many of us can appreciate the sentiment here.

It's nice when people can agree on something, even something as incredibly minor as this.

M-->

As overspecialized as that category seems, we had two recent entrants.  Cloris Leachman and Cicely Tyson battled to an 11-11 draw.

M-->

Cabinet officials who are resigning or thinking about resigning right now are at risk of abdicating what might be their single greatest responsibility, should this national embarrassment go the 25th Amendment route.

Once again, I recommend Full Disclosure, about the use, or not, of the 25th Amendment to sideline a blind President.  (Also once again: This refers to William Safire's book, not Stephanie Clifford's.)

Over on the Congressional side of things, it is somewhat vexing to hear Senators and Representatives simply suggesting that maybe the I-word is called for again.  If you think so, you have an obligation to take action to make it happen, and you alone have that power.

||: Once again, it would be nice to see someone in power actually do something.  :||

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