It's October, which means that it will soon be time for one of my stupid personal traditions: the annual listening of the soundtrack to the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Now I don't really like the movie, and have only seen it all the way through twice. But since, I guess, 1994, listening to the soundtrack has been part of my preparation for Halloween. You see, that fall, around this time, I took the PSAT exam at my high school. On the way into school, I found a cassette of the film's soundtrack lying on the sidewalk. It was in very good condition. "Hey, free tape," I said to myself as I pocketed my musical windfall.
Not long thereafter, I was charged with carving the family pumpkin, a project my father only tolerated so long as my brother and I were incapable of doing it ourselves. I sat down at the kitchen table with my spread of newspapers, assorted cutting and scooping tools, and my walkman, loaded up with a Halloween mixtape featuring the theme from Ghostbusters, Werewolves of London (this was before learning of other, more excellentWarren Zevon tunes) and other appropriate fare. This tape was pretty short, so I turned to my recent find to keep the October mood going. I think my disdain for the movie has something to do with my being a band geek instead of a theater geek, although that's an assertion I think my brother, a theater geek with no particular fondness for the film, might protest. Anyway, the music is catchy as hell, and listening to it, you don't have to watch it, or be surrounded by assholes in their underwear throwing toast at the screen.
Thus a neural connection was made between The Halloween Spirit (TM) and this music. And so, every fall, once, as the days get shorter and crisper and the big orange squash await their slaughter, I revisit those halcyon days of 1994, just before the Democrats lost both houses of Congress.
Postscript: As long as we're talking Halloween music, back in 2005 during the Current's first year on the air, they did special programming for the holiday, wherein all day on the 31st of October, they played Halloween- and ghost- and death-themed music. It was fun, and exposed me to The White Stripes' excellent cover of Tegan & Sara's "Walking With A Ghost," which made it onto the 2005 Beukemix as a result.
Post-Postscript: When I hear "Tegan & Sara," it half-registers as "Teebo & Sara," and then I think that they're an Ewok singing duo. This only increases my enjoyment of their music.
Earlier this year, the Orwell Trust, overseers of the Orwell Prize, apparently one of the most prestigious literary prizes in Britain, announced that they would be publishing George Orwell's personal diaries as blog entries online, 70 years to the date after each. I immediately added the blog to my Netvibes page. How fascinating it would be, I thought, to read the daily thoughts of this great writer, who becomes more a favorite with every piece of his that I read? Especially given the timing, just before Hitler in Munich and as the world spirals towards war.
The diary started on August 9, 1938. Sometime between whenever they announced the blog in July and the first post on August 9, 2008, I forgot the descriptions offered by the Trust in the announcement. As such I was quite disappointed by the first couple of months of the blog. It was boring. First is about a month of updates on the weather (some of them repeated and four-words long) and on the snakes his gardeners killed. Then his trip to North Africa, apparently to recuperate from grave illness.* This was more detailed and substantial, but to be honest, I've never been a big fan of travelogues, at least in written form. I'd usually rather experience the place myself. To be fair, that's definitely the narrow opinion of a person born into a comfortable life in the late-20th-Century age of relatively cheap airfare.
Anyway, in the blog/diary, geopolitics made its first appearance yesterday:
After the crisis was over everyone here showed great relief and was much less stolid about it than they had been during the trouble itself. Educated Frenchwoman in official position, known to us personally, writes letter of congratulation to Daladier. It is perfectly evident from the tone of the press that even in the big towns where there is a white proletariat there was not the smallest enthusiasm for the idea of going to war for the sake of Czechoslovakia.
This is fascinating, but I'm still looking forward to more. Before this paragraph he talked about the low quality of the newspaper, and immediately after he starts talking about Moroccan crafts.
Incidentally, the title of this post is a purposefully incendiary attempt to lure Orwell into a blog fight. He never responds to comments, so I don't know how successful this will be. You hear me, George? Your blog sucks! Weaksauce!
* I want to go back to this point. I'm amazed by the idea of a long-term international vacation of recuperation. On our honeymoon, Melissa and I got fleeting tastes of this sort of leisure in Venice and on the Etruscan Coast, and we liked it. Understatement**. None of the other few times I've been abroad - including the rest of our honeymoon - would be recommendable to someone recuperating from hemorrhage in the lungs. To the contrary, these trips, none of which could be classified as "extreme" by any stretch, have typically required recuperation upon return to the US. Maybe I'm a wuss?
From last night's debate, Gov. Sarah Palin, translated, it would seem, from the original Japanese:
"Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more. I come from a house full of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad who is in the audience today, he's a schoolteacher, had been for many years. My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate."
[sic]
Palin's responses in interviews and in the debate last night have tended to remind me of three things. First, as suggested, the grammatical diaspora and non sequitur bonanza that is the Japanese language as poorly translated into English, exemplified by the classic Mr. Sparkle commercial on the Simpsons. Second, Word Salad as used by computer spammers to string together a reasonable-sounding email that will sneak past your filter to try and sell you cheap watches. Third, and this just occurred to me, she comes across almost like a primitive Turing Test artificial intelligence, like ELIZA.
Let me explain:
Alan Turing, a pioneering computer scientist and cryptographic hero of World War II (and tragic figure in being gay at a time that homosexuality was illegal in Britain, prosecution of which led to his suicide), posited in 1950 that the test of an artificial intelligence is whether, when interacting with a human being, the AI can pass as human. ELIZA, named for Eliza Doolittle of Pygmalion/My Fair Lady, was a simple attempt at AI using the psychoanalitic technique of turning a patient's statement around as a question. You chat with ELIZA like you were on an instant messenger program, and she chats back. This idea has evolved into chat bots, which have been used as amusement, advertisement, and, annoyingly, customer service tools.
Anyway, these AIs are programmed with simple rules to mimic the behaviors of a human being. I am of the opinion that Sarah Palin has been similarly coached to mimic the behavior of a candidate with a basic working knowledge of national policy and politics. Her answers have consistently seemed copied-and-pasted, often without regard for their appropriateness. This was exemplified by the bit last night where, instead of answering the question on what spending items she and McCain might have to give up, given the increasingly staggering defecit, she riffed on her energy talking points again. Now, granted, Biden's answer sort of went at the question sideways, but it at least had some relationship to the question. His answer acknowledged the existence of the question. Add to this example her constantly looking down at her cards, her general sense of recitation, and especially her recent collapses in follow-up questions, and I think it's clear that all she has to work with is memorized chunks of stump speech. Stump speech wood chips, if you will.
The professional Conservatives, of course, love her. She's awesome. She rocks. Performed brilliantly. They often point, as does the Wall Street Journal editorial, to her convention speech as evidence that she's a natural. Look: opponents of Barack Obama have often said that he's only great with a teleprompter. I happen to disagree with that, but for those same critics to now say Palin's a natural is laughable. Here's what she's done: she read, off of a teleprompter, a speech written by this guy (wonder what he thinks of her wolf policies - incidentally, the Humane Society has never endorsed a presidential candidate before), most of which had been written before she was picked. In public appearances she has recycled (mulched?) pieces of that speech, and she has attempted to do the same in interviews and in the debate, with mixed success depending on the ability of people to ask her follow-up questions. But there's no "there" there. Even when she's talking about the subject that she's supposedly a top expert on, she has no idea what she's talking about.
Palin has a background as a sportscaster. She's good at reading material prepared for her. Any competent former broadcaster could have done the same. Like Amelia Santaniello. Or Ted Baxter.
Update: Check it out. Reading a script:
Retracted: Apparently the debate commission provided blank paper - no notes or pre-prepared anything were allowed out on stage. I retract my suggestion that she was reading something she brought with her. I stand by everything above the Update, though.
The surest way to get attention is to do something bat-shit crazy. But does pondering what it would mean to do such a crazy thing affect the outcome and make you crazy? The case of Ralph Nader seems to comply with the Copenhagen interpretation: he tries to measure his own insanity, and collapses the waveform to the state of "gibbering." He opened the box, and forced the cat to be dead...
Update: Jim in the comments suggests that I have perhaps failed to see the humor in this. Not so! This video is fucking hilarious (pardon my French), though to me perhaps not in the lighthearted manner in which Nader intended it. I put this in the same category as P. Diddy's recent treatise on Sarah Palin, which is not for those offended by swearing or by incredulity at Palin's selection.
I'm glad there's only a couple months left before the election, because this is getting old. To repurpose a line from Reagan, "there you go again," McCain.
McCain's new ad, supposedly running in blue-collar swing states, claims that Obama wanted "comprehensive sex ed" for kindergartners. "Learning about sex before learning how to read?" the narrator scoffs. The word "icky" has become an adjective of choice for me lately, and I think it's useful here. The claim of the ad is a lie. Not a distortion, but a lie.
The bill Obama supported, which did not pass, for what it's worth, called not for comprehensive but "age-appropriate" sex ed for kindergartners. What dos this mean for kindergartners? Teaching them about physical boundaries and what constitutes a "bad touch," and how to talk to a safe adult if they're touched inappropriately. Period. Keeping them safe. Not the birds and the bees. Not "when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much..." To suggest otherwise, as the McCain campaign has done, is a lie. Stay classy, San Diego.*
Some commentators have unfavorably compared this ad to the infamous Willie Horton ad, since at least it was true that Dukakis supported a forlough program that Horton was out on when he committed robbery and rape, even if that ad was (also icky) race-baiting. I certainly hope that this ad does not gain the traction that the Horton ad did, since it is truthfully-challenged, and the media, uncharacteristically, seems to have been calling the McCain campaign on their bs lately.
So if someone brings up this claim, it's not true. Spread the word.
Now, as for the photo above, it comes from an old Conan O'Brien bit Nels told me about years ago but I hadn't seen until recently. It's very funny.
* Speaking of accusations of classlessness, I do not buy for a second that Obama's comment yesterday about "lipstick on a pig" was (a) in any a reference, veiled or otherwise, to Sarah Palin or (b) otherwise inappropriate because of her presence in the race. Obama has used the phrase, along with a variety of other corny (probably Kansan) verbiage, many times in recent, including before Palin's selection, in reference to McCain's and Bush's policies. Hell, McCain used the phrase last year in reference to Hillary Clinton's policies. Nobody got vocally upset about the phrase then. The fauxtrage now is the same as ignorant liberals claiming racism when someone uses the phrase "call a spade a spade" or the word "niggardly." Grow the hell up, people. (Oh, also, as a fan of words and metaphor, I enjoyed Christopher Orr's take on this.)
If any post earns the shameless self-promotion tag, it will be this one:
1. So you've always wanted to see a Brave New Workshop election show, but you hate Joe Bozic? Well, you're in luck. He and Theresa are busy multiplying (Go Theresa Go!), so for this weekend and next, I will be stepping in for Joe in "The Lion, The Witch & The War Hero, or, Is McCain Able?" So, Fridays at 8, Saturdays at 7 & 10. 2605 Hennepin. 612-332-6620. And come to the BNW After Party tonight. I'm playing Martin Van Buren in it, I guess.
2. So you've always want to see me pretend to act, but you wish I was younger, thinner and combed my hair? Well, you're in luck as well. I finally put my bronze-winning film from the 2001 Grinnell College Titular Head* student film festival on YouTube. As of this writing, you could very well end up being the first person ever to view it in this fashion. How forward-thinking!
* Despite my being a rabid practicioner of Grinnellian chauvinism and having been the Titular Head of Titular Head, I somehow doubt that the festival passes the notabilty threshold for Wikipedia consideration. Also, despite what the article implies, there was a 5-minute time limit before 2003 as well. We instituted it in 1999 after having a long, horrible festival to sit through in 1998. Apparently some of my efforts at institutional memory have faded.
Working in downtown St. Paul during the RNC has been interesting, to be sure, but it hasn't quite been what I'd hoped. I was looking forward to shooting steely glances at Rick Davis from behind a Snoopy statue, examining climate model displays with James Inhofe at the Science Museum, or throwing dice with Rachel Maddow and Pat Buchanan behind the Dorothy Day Center. Sadly, none of these things have come to pass. I haven't even seen any political or journalistic celebrities. One of my coworkers saw the extremely jowly RFK-California-campaign-manager-turned-PBS-pundit Mark Shields (whoops, fixed link) in the food court downstairs, but I'm not even that lucky. No, the most nationally known individual I've come across, sadly, is this a-hole: This is Larry Sinclair. He's the serial fabulist who claims he snorted coke and had sex with Barack Obama in a limo in 1999. The best overview about him that I've found is in (or linked from) this post. Apologies for the image quality: I don't have good resizing software at work.
Anyway, he was wandering with his sign (the back of it features Donald Young (no not that one), who Sinclair claims was Obama's lover before being murdered last winter) around Rice Park, where MSNBC has their outdoor stage. He got a call, and told his interlocuter of his intention to walk up and around the State Capital. I was curious to see what the DVD was under his right arm, but I didn't get the opportunity.
I took a long walk at lunch today and snapped pictures of the security, media, decorations, some scattered protesters, and so on. Thanks to Troy for the loan of his camera. I'll get some more pics up here sometime, including, if I can, some I took with my phone en route to my car last night. Yesterday I was thinking I wouldn't take any time off to avoid the RNC this week, but walking across downtown through a 700-person protest surrounded by riot cops, bike cops and horse cops waiting for The Shit to Go Down changed my mind. It was a weird, tense, creepy vibe, and I don't want to be anywhere near downtown St. Paul tomorrow at quitting time.
Update: Coworker Troy nabbed one of the DVDs they were handing out in the park, the one Sinclair was toting. It's this.
I'm a structural engineer and lapsed improvisor. I like nerdy stuff and was a three-day Jeopardy Champion in 2009. A Minneapolis boy born and raised, I have a lovely wife from California who is a public school social studies teacher, and two great kids.
It's October, which means that it will soon be time for one of my stupid personal traditions: the annual listening of the soundtrack to the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
