15 December 02023 (Happy birthday!): It's Not Across The Street
From Yellowstone, But It's Something
Sometimes you travel to visit landmarks, and
sometimes they come to you.
The National Park Service has just placed the North
Country Trail under its aegis as a National Scenic Trail.
That trail literally runs alongside
my backyard. You could stand on part of the trail,
throw a rock, and break a window in my house.
Please don't.
The property line of the home of The Markives runs roughly up to the
midline of the Kalamazoo River (This is unusual, actually; few of
the homes on my street can claim property under water.).
We're not allowed to block access to the river, but it's a neat
little quirk, if nothing else. This new designation makes
things a bit more quirky. In a good way.
I just hope we're not too overrun with tourists.
M-->
13 December 02023 (Happy birthday*!): As The Past Meets The
Present, What Of The Future?
In and among all of the kerfuffle
associated with "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" topping the Billboard
Hot 100 last weekend after, well, let's just say a lot
of years, one cannot help but think about how this will be
received a couple of decades down the line.
In the 02040s or so, when Sirius/XM has rolled out its "20s on 2"
channel, will they be airing countdowns of historical top 40s, as
is commonly done on some of the other decades channels?
Decembers are going to be tricky going forward.
I am intrigued by this possibility even as I'm skeptical of it
ever happening. There are multiple ways for this not to come
to pass, after all.
M-->
*--And happy 2/3 birthday and happy 1/6 birthday,
of course.
10 December 02023 (Happy birthday
yesterday!): ACME-20/AVMX-14–Misspelling
Megan
I’m not prepared to go to war over this, but I think that “Megan”
is the right way to spell that name, and not just because that’s
how nephice #10 spells it–after all, that wasn’t her choice.
I do take a harsher stance when confronted with “Meghanne” [which
seems like it’d invariably be accented on the second syllable] or
anything with a “Y” in it, though–there are limits, people*.
That said, I am also not prepared to discard good
off-the-beaten-path holiday music over a minor dispute of
orthography, and so we have songs 2 and 6.
1. Christmas
In The Car, Mulberry Lane. It’s the second
appearance in AVMX for this group. The song showed up in a
Pandora non-holiday stream about a month ago, for which I was less
than fully prepared.
On one hand, I like that the focus is from time to time on safety,
as the sisters from Nebraska make several references to wearing
seat belts. On another, as this song moves forward in time,
there are multiple perspectives possible. The
narrator/singer seems to be happy that she’s moved on from a
Porsche Spyder to a 4WD Chevy to a minivan with 3 kids.
I would regard that as something of a step down in the world.
The differing interpretations make this a complicated tune, which
makes it a good fit for AVMX. Possibly too much to think
about in the first song out of the chute, but I liked this one as
a memorable song to kick off the list, which is one of the things
I use as a memory aid (see AVMX-8 for the details).
2. What
Present’s This, Megon McDonough. I very much
want to perpetrate the prank at the center of this song, but it
would be extremely challenging to pull it off.
Or would it?
Only those who see me this Christmas season will know for sure.
3. This
Year's Santa Baby, Eartha Kitt. I have
previously mentioned songs that made the AVMX playlist even though
I had not heard of them before the list was ready to compile.
This one, which came out one year after the original SB in
01954, beats even that immediacy. Once I learned that this
song existed, I cleared a space on this year's list before I
even listened to it.
It is at once doubly puzzling that this hasn't gotten more airplay
over the decades and that it's not been remade frequently along
the way. Here it is for eternity, or at least that
homeopathic corner of eternity that visits this outpost of the
I'net.
4. Another
Christmas Song, Stephen Colbert. Tom
Lehrer, in his spoken introduction to the holiday standard
(by my definition) "A Christmas Carol", comments that none of the
other holiday standards attempt to capture the "true spirit of
Christmas" as it's celebrated in America.
Which is to say (and as he said), the "commercial spirit".
Stephen C. has successfully added to that roster of tunes, which
may not stand at much more than 2, with this number. Bonus
points for working in the phrase "ad infinitum".
5. It Was A
Silent Night At Least Until Jeff Lynne Arrived,
Grandaddy. Another second-time visitor to AVMX, Grandaddy
has shifted focus from the Alan Parsons Project to the Electric
Light Orchestra, for no apparent reason–yet somehow this works.
I admit also to being attracted by the notion of a “Silent Night”
parody. There aren’t enough of those out there.
6. Christmas
Coupon, Meghan Trainor. This is Meghan T.’s
third appearance on one of these lists. All 3 songs have
checked in at #6–the first two times, that was inadvertent.
Now it’s a tradition. (I do, after all, work at a place
where accidents have this annoying way of becoming precedents.)
The link up there is to the official lyric video, which MT’s
production team does very well by channeling Max Fleischer and “follow
the bouncing ball”. Except instead of a ball, it’s
Meghan’s animated head.
Nice.
7. Christmas
With The Devil, Spinal Tap. I’m not at all sure
what took me so long to highlight this one. It’s not even
been on the relatively recent “late cut” lists, nor even on the
running list that lives on my desk 24/7/365**.
Which seems like a tragedy, but one easily corrected. I kind
of think of this song as an ancestor of South Park's
"Christmas Time In Hell", dating back to an era when video wasn't
quite so essential to selling certain songs.
Enjoy.
8. Christmas
In Canada, Eric Bingham-Kumpf. Once again, we're
in "take the composer/performer's word for it" territory in
slotting this as a holiday tune. Following from my note on
#7, it's probably the video that sells this 02023 composition as a
Christmas song.
9. Christmas
In Antarctica, The Minus Five. It’s technically
summer in Antarctica on 25 December, but at least for a few more
years, it should still feel appropriately chilly down there then.
Our years-long selection of geographical holiday tunes now extends
about as remotely as is possible while remaining on
Earth--literally from one end of to the other.
10. Space
Christmas, Shonen Knife. Having reached
Antarctica, it is only right that we leave the planet for this
year’s final installment. Shonen Knife is a Japanese group
with a long history, so there might be some translation issues
with their lyrics, such as when Santa is described as arriving on
a "bison sleigh". That doesn't diminish anything.
Io Saturnalia!
M-->
*–I am a fan of Megyn Price’s
work, but her parents dropped the ball in naming her.
**–366 some years, next year included.
29 November 02023 (Happy birthday yesterday!): Here's Why You
Should Not Buy Our Product
Something that came across my radar recently is
the "Gift Responsibly Campaign", which unites a lot of lottery
administrators around the notion that giving lottery tickets to
children as gifts is a bad idea. This is an arguable point
on which reasonable people of good will might legitimately differ,
and not the inspiration for this post. For me, it's about
amusement, as is so often the case.
One of the things that amuses me about this idea is that different
states have different notions of what "children" are.
Michigan is okay with selling lottery tickets to 18-year-olds,
while Mississippi (the most recent US state to start a lottery)
sets its minimum age at 21.
I'm all about a certain degree of local control, but attempting to
unite across distance like this points up some entertaining
contradictions.
Part of the challenge here is also that some of the non-lottery
agencies participating in this campaign would almost surely
embrace the belief that all gambling is bad for everyone all the
time, which puts them rather at odds with some of their partners
in this quest. The campaign claims that one of its goals is
to "Support responsible gambling practices while remaining neutral
about legalized gambling", but for some folks, signing on here is
surely a case of "tent, meet
camel".
Fortunately, cognitive dissonance is not yet a crime.
M-->
21 November 02023 (28 years later): A Once-In-A-Lifetime Study In
Contrasts
28 is a perfect number, being equal to the sum
of its proper divisors: 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28.
28 years ago today was a most imperfect day, even though things
eventually turned out all right.
6 is also a perfect number, but I wasn't writing here in 02001,
and so didn't have the opportunity to point out this mismatch.
The next perfect number is 496, and even if I'm still around in
02491, I probably won't be blogging--although the runup to
AVMX-482, which will bring the list of overlooked holiday songs to
4821, would be kind of interesting to live through*.
8128 is right out.
M-->
*--At some point, my ability to carry that list in
my memory will no longer be up to the task, but we're not there
yet.
16 November 02023 (Happy birthday yesterday and tomorrow!): Three
Degrees Of Linking, or: Way. Too. Soon.
I continue to believe that the working press is hyping any poll
that suggests a close Presidential election next year because they
think it would be more fun for them, and not due to any meaningful
principles of statistical analysis this far out.
Here's a link
to a fellow believer, who himself links to this, which is a
pretty trenchant description of things.
M-->
8 November 02023: Away In A Manger, There's Holly To Bite
After a week of admirable corporate restraint, it came up on my
satellite radio this morning:
Channel Updates...0% Complete
22
holiday channels this year between streaming and conventional
satellite, and that's without Radio Hanukkah, which is, as usual,
being held back until the 8 Days draw closer.
I'm not sure that "Sleep Christmas" represents a positive
development in entertainment, though.
M-->
31 October 02023 (Half-price candy tomorrow!): Thought for the Day
From today's
Washington Post (subscription required, although this
tells you all you need to know):
There has never been a
substantiated case of a child being seriously injured or
killed by a Halloween treat from a stranger. But there’s been plenty of panic.
Here ends the lesson.
M-->
28 October 02023: Sideline Stories, Part the Nth
Today's episode: "There Are No Seat
Cushions On This Lifeboat!"
Anyone whose been to a football game or two is probably familiar
with the phenomenon of fans or players berating the game
officials for what, to them, are missed calls or calls made
incorrectly, both to the detriment of their favored team.
From my usual position on the visitors' sideline, I get to hear
this invective in somewhat purer form, from the players and
coaching staff as well as from the fans. It's usually
amusing, although there are days when I come away impressed by
the officials' ability to continue to do what is usually very
fine work in the face of all that screaming*.
Last weekend was a new one, though. The visiting team got
the call they wanted (pass interference, I think--the exact
infraction doesn't matter). Did that silence the sideline?
No.
They went on, for more time than seemed appropriate, loudly
voicing their concerns that the wrong official had made the
call.
I'm not sure what the point of that was; it's not like you
get more penalty years walked off or added on if the head
linesman drops a flag than when the line judge does. Yet
for a few minutes, it seemed like that was the most important
thing in the world to them.
I have logged this as another data point in the "It must be nice
not to have any real problems" file.
I do not know if they lived happily ever after.
M-->
*--I will note here that we on the chain gang
have devised an informal ranking of opponent sidelines by
their behavior. It turns out, reasonably, that one
recent opponent is a lot better-behaved when they're winning.
18 October 02023: News Of Something Approximating Science
I am one to mock the notion of "umami" as one
of the now-5 fundamental tastes--the name is crying out not to
be taken seriously. (My spell-checker doesn't recognize
umami as a word, which I regard as evidence that some small part
of the universe agrees with me.)
In today's news, we see that a 6th fundamental taste has
apparently been identified, and it's...ammonium
chloride.
Really.
This is getting dangerously close to "you're not doing anything
really useful, and what you're doing may not be science"
territory. The fact that the article linked up there
describes NH4Cl as “bitter, salty, and a little sour”
suggests that it's not fundamental.
At the very least, perhaps it's time for the universe to give
some more serious thought on what constitutes "fundamental"
anything.
M-->
4 October 02023: Is This Still On?
Indeed it is. The universe out
this way has been particularly tricky to navigate lately, and is
likely about to get trickier.
Here, however, is something worth highlighting and
preserving. In the overtime coin flip in last week's
football game between Sam Houston State (which is not in
Houston) and Jacksonville State (which is not in Florida), the
referee recognized that the coin had not, in fact, flipped, and
called for a do-over. Well done, good sir.
I care a little more about coin flipping
than most*, so it was nice to see things handled
properly. This brings back memories of Super Bowl XXXIX
in 02005 (The Markives,
7 February 02005**) when the coin was also flipped poorly.
M-->
*--More than is healthy, again. That list is getting
really long.
**--I've been at this for a long time.
4 September 02023: Celebrity Deathwatch: Now With As-It-Happens
Reporting
Jimmy Buffett, poet laureate
of The Islands, one of 9 cultural divisions defined in the 01980
book The Nine Nations of North America, a book that holds
up pretty well 40+ years later: 9.
Bill Richardson, former governor of New Mexico, Secretary of
Energy, political prisoner negotiator, and a man devoted to
establishing an NFL
franchise in Albuquerque: 8.
This matchup ran a bit closer than one might expect for the
following reasons:
1. Buffett's passing was first announced very early Saturday
morning EDT, so some of the usual outlets didn't get to it until
after it was no longer breaking news (1 hour after the first email
lands).
2. Two of my sources for breaking news emails are the Albuquerque
Journal and Santa Fe New Mexican, giving Richardson
a bit of home-field advantage.
Today: Steve Harwell, former lead singer for Smash Mouth, has
logged 8 emails in the first 35 minutes, and stands a good chance
of beating both Buffett and Richardson.
(Update, 5 September 02023, 259 PM EDT: Harwell topped out at
9, tying Buffett and topping Richardson.)
It's my 55th first day of school.
You'll have to trust me on this; I don't have the photographic
record of Day One that some of my nephices have.
Someday I'll do it right, but it wasn't today.
M-->
24 August 02023* (Happy anniversary tomorrow!): A Dormant
Interest Surfaces
I am a logistics aficionado.
There may not be more than 4 or 5 of us out here, but I admit to
a borderline-unhealthy fascination with the nuts-and-bolts
activity that goes on, frequently behind the scenes, to pull off
a big project.
We saw this play out recently in South Korea, when Delta
Airlines took the wise step of canceling our flight from Incheon
to Detroit because the crew smelled something burning in the
cabin but couldn't figure out what it was. Leaving out how
puzzling that is, this seems like entirely the correct
ration of caution.
Except...That meant that a lot of people had to be shuffled
about, and the vast majority of them accommodated
overnight. This led to what was, to me, a fascinating
display of institutional scrambling--most of which was pulled
off reasonably well.
Laurie, very wisely, set out to find some lunch while Delta
personnel figured out what had to be done and how to do it
all. Herewith, some highlights:
Somehow, there was a hotel within an easy bus ride of the
airport that had room for somewhere in the neighborhood of
350 unexpected guests. That was perhaps the most
surprising part of the whole experience. Someone had
to round up buses for everyone--but of course, an
airport-adjacent hotel probably has a small fleet of
vehicles.
There was an initial sorting of customers. Everyone
who had purchased something at one of the duty-free
shops--in the entirely justified belief that they would soon
be leaving the country--fell into one category, for all of
their purchases had to be returned. They got blue
stickers. The rest of us got red stickers and were
allowed to bypass whatever that entailed. Yes, this
happens enough that supplies of multiple colors of stickers
were on-site.
A second sorting crossed the line determined by the
first. South Korea, like many countries but not
including the USA, recognizes "transit" passengers, who are
merely connecting through an airport and so are not required
to clear customs so long as they're not leaving the
airport. Well...they were now leaving the airport,
which meant that if they came from a country that required a
visa to enter SK, they now were in immediate need of what
they didn't have. Somehow, arrangements were made.
While that didn't affect us, what did ensnare us was the
next requirement: Collect our checked baggage (We had
checked our bags all the way through from Guam to Detroit,
and got by on carry-ons for our previous night's stay at the
hotel inside the airport and within the secure zone.), go
through customs inspection** with all of our bags, and wait
in a very long line for a bus to the hotel. This
wasn't too terribly inconvenient for Laurie and me, but
there were some folks traveling with multiple large
suitcases or really big boxes of stuff who had a very big
challenge ahead shepherding everything along. (There
was a family of 5 in front of us bearing 9 pretty big
suitcases all tagged for Orlando. They had my sympathy
even as I was glad not to be them.) Fortunately,
luggage carts are free at this airport.
The dissection of the line into bus-sized lumps made the
line to check into the hotel reasonable. Dinner was
provided at the hotel, which didn't seem to have to stretch
much to offer a very nice buffet dinner to a lot of extra
guests.
Communication was old-school the next morning, with a
sheet of departure instructions slipped under everyone's
door and a 5 AM wake-up call.
Off then to the checkout desk, where grab-and-go
breakfasts were available for everyone--that one may have
been an unexpected challenge well-met--then to the buses,
and then to the airline check-in desk, where the lines were
long to accommodate the new flight. Once again,
breaking things up into bus-sized lumps of people probably
made a difference.
It's a good story now, but I won't be too
disappointed if I don't ever repeat this experience.
M->
*--It is, once again, International
Strange Music Day (The
Markives, 24 August 02020). There are still no
signs that the UN was involved in this declaration.
**--Which garnered us each an extra unexpected
sticker in our passports. In the "look for good wherever
you can find it" department, this qualifies.
9 August 2023: Interim Travel Report
As students start their return to campus and I prepare to flee
again*, a few thoughts on last month's island-hopping.
1. Guam is underrated as a destination.
I blame the name. Other tropical island names suggest that an
exotic sort of pleasure might be waiting: Tahiti, Bora Bora,
Aruba, even something like St. Croix.
"Guam", on another hand, sounds more like an industrial
adhesive.
But if so, it's an industrial adhesive with nice beaches (where
the military hasn't closed off access, that is) and good tourist
infrastructure. That includes the ability to close down
and repave roads overnight. Governor Whitmer should look
into recruiting down there.
2. Saipan is reeling from recent weather and pandemic damage,
but it's got a lot of potential to bounce back.
Part of my motivation for including Saipan on our itinerary was
some box-checking, to hit the 6th of 6 American inhabited
territories that are readily open to the public. I'd go
back there in a minute, if only to try and catch the island when
it's not raining. There are a lot of empty resorts and
other tourist sites that just need the right nudge (which will
probably have to be from Asian travelers) to spring back.
3. In the reverse license plate game, we saw a Michigan plate
on a vehicle in Guam.
Oddly, it was the new/old Water Winter Wonderland plate,
which raises an interesting set of questions that will ever be
unanswered.
That said, one wonders about "alien" license plates anywhere
that we were traveling. Guam was the only place we saw
anything that wasn't local.
M-->
*--These things are unconnected.
11 July 02023 (Happy birthday yesterday!): Time To Press
Pause
I'll be away from the home of The Markives for a
while, and so in the spirit of the ancient Internet tradition
begun by Leonardo DaVinci, here's a picture of a can of
Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup to mark the hiatus.
More to follow.
M-->
4 July 02023 (Happy birthday!): Day One Of
A New World
Yesterday morning, fueled by adrenaline and Fruity Pebbles, I of
necessity spoke to many people about what was going on.
Of all of the conversations that I had, this comment is
particularly sticky:
Listen to what people say at the funeral
home. You'll be amazed.
This being the 21st century, a lot of funeral
comments are living online, in the usual places where one might
find them. So far, I find this advice to be especially
wise.
I'll be paying very close attention these next few days.
M-->
29 June 02023 (Happy El Mediodia!): A Convergence Of Midpoints
No, that's not a collective noun.
The halfway point between consecutive Winter Camps coincides this
year with the midpoint of college summer up this way. Credit
to an extended summer break for that amusing coincidence (for El
M. is fixed on 29 June).
M-->
12 June 02023 (Happy anniversary yesterday!): Celebrity
Deathwatch In Blue
Ted Kaczynski 12, Silvio Berlusconi 6.
Like every Deathwatch I've mentioned around here so far, I expect
that this one will not be mentioned in the alumni newsletter of
the University of Michigan's mathematics department.
It's slightly less automatic this time, though.
M-->
8 June 02023 (Happy Anniversary!): Career Change, Or,
There's Always One Question You Haven't Prepared For
It is, I suspect, well-known that I have a
long-running interest in comedy.
Some may have heard the story of the comedian's nightmare: being
dragged up on a stage and told "Be funny." without a
chance to prepare.
I can now confirm from personal experience that that is
justifiable anxiety. A couple of weeks ago, I was
presenting a paper at the 18th
International Conference on Gambling and Risk-Taking.
Unbeknownst to me, an audience member was married to one of my
former students, who apparently clued him in to my interest in
things that are funny. During the question period, he
asked me to tell a math joke.
Out of nowhere.
It was very much a deer-in-headlights moment. One joke
that came to mind did so only incompletely: I had the punchline
in place, but couldn't conjure up the setup. I finally
came up with something, but it was only after what seemed like
an eternity of a blank mind.
Worse, the questioner didn't even stick around to inform me
which former student he is married to.
He did, however, put the whole story online.
I admit that I kind of like being called a "Stand Up Math
Comedian".
Maybe it's time to have some new business cards printed.
M-->
1 June 02023*: I Don't See This Going Well
One of my former employers recently changed its name, from
Olivet College to The University of Olivet.
<snicker>
Apparently, all "truth in advertising" laws were repealed when I
wasn't paying attention.
The following quote from a Division III sports discussion board
pretty much sums up what's going on just up the road:
Olivet has a grand total of one
post-graduate program, and to no one's surprise it's the
ubiquitous MBA.
There are no other masters programs, nor is there a program
that has a doctorate as the terminal degree. Nor does it appear that Olivet is morphing into the Oxbridge
model of multiple affiliated residential colleges, each with
their own faculty and administrative divisions. In other words, this is a branding move by Olivet, and
nothing more. It will still very much remain a liberal-arts
college (that happens to have an MBA appendage, of course). Nothing wrong with that. There's no such thing as Name Police
in American higher education.
You can call your school whatever you want to call your
school. Just setting the record straight, that's all.
I admit to being intrigued by the notion of
"Name Police".
M-->
*--Hail Mary, full of grace. The Tigers are in second
place!
18 May 02023 (Happy birthday yesterday!):
So Many Possibilities, So Little Time Something that I probably do more often than is healthy
is to think, when something sufficiently unusual occurs, "This
is probably the first time in the history of the world that
that's ever happened."
I don't do this out of encyclopedic knowledge of everything that
has ever happened everywhere, but rather based on a rudimentary
understanding of humans and some insight into the laws of
probability.
One such story was told to me last week. A friend of mine
was meeting another friend for pizza. Since she is not a
vegetarian and he is, they split the pizza up: half pepperoni
and bacon, half pineapple and mushrooms.
By itself, that'd be rare, but if they do this with any
frequency, it's not going to make it to "first time in world
history" territory. However, when this particular pizza
arrived, it was half pepperoni and bacon, half pineapple and
mushrooms, and then had green peppers and anchovies over the
whole thing.
I have a difficult time twisting my brain so that it fits in a
world where that's someone's intentional order, for a variety of
reasons. As we marvel at the fact that first-time
achievements like this still happen, we cannot help also to
wonder what sort of misfiring communication chain made that
happen.
...and wherever fine books are also sold. Here's the
cover art for book #5, in which we see that my campaign to
preserve the memory of the Riviera Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas
continues, without meaningful effect.
M-->
3 May 02023 (Happy birthday overmorrow!): John Venn Would
Approve
I'm just going to leave this here:
M-->
25 April 02023: Career Deathwatch
In a different spin on breaking news, we have: Tucker Carlson
leaving Fox 14, Don Lemon leaving CNN 12.
It's possible that CNN itself was part of the difference here, as
"breaking news" is a little different when it's happening to
you. (I don't subscribe to breaking news updates from Fox,
if indeed those exist.)
In other news, the clock is counting down until Harry Belafonte's
death is no longer breaking news. KQNG-FM is automated until
500 AM local time, or 1100 AM EDT, so the memorial tunes haven't
hit the air yet.
But they soon will.
M-->
4 April 02023, 1250 PM EDT: Something Seems To Be Happening In
New York City
I've been arraigned before--in Findlay, OH in 02015.
It's really no big deal.
I have not, however, ever been arrested, which might make what's
going on more of a thing. Nonetheless, I'm not monitoring
the situation.
M-->
31 March 02023: Just As Politics Was Getting Interesting Again,
This Happens
It's a sad day for comedy. Political satirist Mark
Russell passed away yesterday at 90. He was inspired
by Tom
Lehrer and in turn was an inspiration for the Capitol
Steps, which is a pretty good place to be in spacetime.
I became a fan through his PBS specials, and got a chance to see
him perform live in Sturgis, MI in the fall of 02001, just as the
US military action in the Middle East was resuming. It was a
great show, which he closed by saying "When my grandchildren ask
where I was when the war started, I'll tell them that I was in
Sturgis, Michigan, with some very nice people."
Way to work the crowd. RIP.
M-->
26 March 02023: Evidence For Upsidaisium,
If Perhaps Not For ESP
As the USA woke up yesterday morning, we were confronted with
the following fact:
One of Creighton, Florida Atlantic, Kansas
State, and San Diego State will be playing for the NCAA
Division I men's basketball championship a week from Monday.
(As I type this, you can cross K-State off
that list.) The self-proclaimed "psychics" of the world
all seem to have missed this development, adding further
(unnecessary) evidence for the claim that they are frauds.
M-->
17 March 02023: What's On This Weekend
Years back, I read the book Straight
Man, about a beleaguered English professor at an
underfunded Pennsylvania college. It may well be the best
academic novel ever published. I've reread it several times
since then.
Now it's coming to AMC as Lucky Hank, which debuts this
weekend:
I am not prepared to draw the looming parallel between the
fictional Railton College and my employer* ("Mediocrity's capital"
doesn't quite apply here yet.**), but I must admit that "I'm
concerned that I might say something really consistent with my
personality, but inconsistent with a modern college campus."
resonates more than it probably should.
M-->
*--Although if you rearrange the
letters in "Railton" and squish the R and T together so they
sort of form a B, well... (T - R = 20 -18 = 2 = B.
I'm just saying.)
**--In the book, mediocrity was touted as a reasonable goal for
the institution. Things have changed in the transition
from analog to digital media.
Laurie and I spent part of Spring Break in New York City
with 9 college students*. Herewith, some thoughts:
1. Security at the Statue of Liberty is...odd. Apparently
they're worried that someone might see something on the island
and want to emphasize it for future reference. Markers, of
all things, are banned on the trip, which cost me a highlighter
and a Sharpie.
2. The New York subway system, for all of its iffy press,
functions a lot better than one might expect. That may not
be as true in the outer boroughs as it was in midtown Manhattan,
but there was only so much territory we could cover in the 4
days we were in town.
3. It may be thatThe Book of Mormon is just a
difficult show to engineer sound for and that intricate wordplay
is fundamentally incompatible with choral singing. I noted
this when I saw the show at the Wharton Center (The Markives, 19 June
02016), and some of the same technical issues came up at the Eugene O'Neill
Theater where Laurie and I saw it on Tuesday. That
said, female lead Kim Exum managed to break through the sound
engineering challenges and be very clearly heard.
4. In all my years of driving, I have never returned to my
parked car to find a note on the windshield from someone who
dinged it in my absence. That streak is still intact, but
it got a mystery attached to it last night. On our arrival
at US Park on Middlebelt, I found a Post-It most of the way
under the hood of my car. No phone number or contact
information, only the vaguely cryptic message "Midori, Proctor".
I know no one named Midori Proctor. Google
is no help here. The comma suggests that this might be a
combination of a name and a job title, but that doesn't make
searching for a solution to the mystery any easier. I
suspect I'll never know.
How it got there, I also do not know, Right now, I'm
chalking it up to a version of the Law of Truly Large Numbers:
Given enough time, everything that isn't forbidden will
eventually happen somewhere, to someone. That includes a
semi-random scrap of paper blowing around and just by chance
lodging itself under a car hood.
M-->
*--There were 2 other more responsible adults in
our party of 13. My official title for this trip was,
however, "Administrative Assistant", not "Responsible College
Official".
3 February 02023 (Mmm...groundhog!): It's Not Just A December
Rant
What I frequently say about Christmas music applies here: Remakes
are usually a bad idea.
Seriously.
The attempts by the singers to put their own spin on the classic
tunes were, in general, a flop. And there's something
vaguely wrong about the fact that the performances were
accompanied by open captioning.
It was also kind of predictable that they'd give short shrift (at
least early on; I didn't make it to the end) to Multiplication
Rock, which was the first installment of the series but
wasn't excerpted until about halfway through the hour. I'm
definitely sure that "Ready Or Not, Here I Come" was not the best
choice to lead off the math portion of the show.
Maybe it got better, but I saw "Figure Eight" being performed as I
was fast-forwarding, so my hopes for improvement on a rewatch are
not high.
I was in a thrift store over the deluxe
weekend, and happened upon a blank nondescript leather-like
case. As I picked it up to inspect what I knew the
contents to be, I noticed that it had been shelved on 11
September 02022.
Four months on the shelf, waiting.
It was a very nice slide rule, which is now part of my
collection. It might have been fun to see how long it took
before someone else bought it, but I don't get to that thrift
store as often as I used to. Besides, the 4-month delay
triggered a 50% price reduction, which is a nice feature when
considering obsolete technology.
While my calculator collection is well-known, it's less
well-known that I also own over a dozen slide rules, including 4
wall-size models that have found me over the years.
If the timeline is examined carefully, it turns out that I've
been collecting slide rules for longer than I have calculators.
M-->
13 January 02023: In Death As In Life, It's Not What You Know,
It's Who You Know
Celebrity Deathwatch: Lisa Marie Presley 14 (including one
alert from a newspaper in the Northern
Mariana Islands which doesn't usually play this game), Jeff Beck
5.
M-->
11 January 02023 (Beautiful!): Whatever You Call It, It's Still
Not 7 Up
Word
on the street is that Pepsi is changing its lemon-lime
product. Sierra Mist is out and something called Starry is
in.
The article linked up there suggests that this is because Sierra
Mist has failed to make a meaningful dent in Sprite's market share
in nearly a quarter-century.
As noted here (The Markives,
3 August 02021), it doesn't matter, because no matter what name
starting with S* you assign, it's not going to be as good as 7
Up. Sprite, Sierra Mist, Slice, and so forth--they're all
playing for second place.
M-->
*--Or any other alphabetic letter. Teem
didn't register with drinkers, nor did Upper 10, Bubble Up,
Mist Twist (a failed rebranding of Sierra Mist), and the like.
6 January 02023: Life Imitates...Whatever I'm Doing Here (which
is probably not "art")
It turns out that the step associated with marzipan (The Markives, 10 December
02022) is not so much "march" as it is "reel". From Saturday
Night Live:
We await further developments on this important matter.
M-->
5 January 02023, 1:37:00 PM EST: As Nothing Happens In
Washington
Is it too much to ask that every other roll call on the
Speaker of the House be conducted in reverse alphabetical order?
It'd be nice to let some folks farther down in the alphabet cast
some votes that matter, since the reality of the situation is that
Kevin McCarthy's hopes are always getting defeated somewhere in
the Cs.
M-->
4 January 02023: On The Next Orbit
Someone who shall remain nameless here*
appended to my birthday wishes the sentence "Enjoy this last
year of your 50s."
As if I needed reminding.
However...About 9 years ago, just after birthday #50, I was
chatting with someone who had just passed 60 about milestone
birthdays. He commented that, while passing 50 wasn't a
big deal to him (nor was it to me, for those wondering), hitting
60 struck him differently.
I didn't have a good answer for that at the time, but I think I
do now: Obvious exceptions aside, it feels a lot less automatic
that one will make it from 60 to 70 than from 50 to 60.
There are actuarial numbers that I could quote here, but they
merely confirm the basic idea.
I am also currently occupying myself by watching the Republican
party implode live on national television, which is more
entertaining than life expectancy mathematics.
M-->
*--Nor will I insert her name in a
footnote. Let's just say that it was another data point
in support of my belief that the phrase "bratty little sister"
is redundant.
4 January 02023:
Celebrity Deathwatch: Brought to you by the letter "B" Edition
Barbara
Walters and Pope Benedict XVI battled to a 12-12 tie.
Once again, I find that an oddly compelling and entirely
reasonable result.
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The Markives for 02023
