‘A’ for idea, ‘F’ for execution

I am currently reading the book The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived, a book that was inspired (at least partially) by Michael Hart’s The 100: A Ranking of the 100 Most Influential People Who Ever Lived, which is one of my favorite books.

Besides its obvious connection to Hart’s book (which the authors simply “leafed through”), I was attracted to this book because of its potential. Yes, of course real people have influenced our lives, but can it really be true that fictional people have also had such influence? I was immediately taken in by the prospect of reading captivating, persuasive arguments on how fictional characters had impacted my life. Paging through the book, I caught the names of Mickey Mouse, Odysseus, Captain Ahab and Superman, and I thought “Yes, I can see how these people may have influenced culture, I am eager to read more”.

Alas, the persuasive arguments are not there. Well, they are in some cases: the argument is made that Uncle Tom was a partial cause of the US Civil War, that The Cat in the Hat encourages children’s love of reading and that Buck raised animal rights awareness (though I think that distinction belongs to Black Beauty, who doesn’t make their list)…but in most cases, the authors simply give a ‘bio’ of the character. When I read the entries on Don Quixote, Ebenezer Scrooge and Tarzan I made a mental note to one day read the books from which these people came, which is a good thing. But unfortunately, the authors spoiled the plots by deciding to reveal the entire story of said characters, rather than detailing their lasting influence.

This is a missed opportunity, to say the least. The fun of Michael Hart’s book is not found in retelling the life of Buddha or Darwin or Shakespeare, it’s reading Hart’s arguments as to why those men belong in the top 100, and why they belong at the position he assigns them. Conversely, this book makes no such arguments. Why do they place King Arthur above Santa Claus? How is it that Dick Tracy finds himself nestled between Hercules and Joe Camel? What’s Peter Pan doing at #70? What’s Dracula doing at #33? Why is J.R. Ewing even on the list at all? And why isn’t Ronald McDonald on the list? Sadly, we’ll never know…because the authors’ miss this great opportunity to make their case.

To make matters worse, the authors nix the idea of discussing each entry in order of importance, instead placing them in the book by category. Another fun aspect of Hart’s book is the variety: one minute you’re reading about Adolf Hitler, then you turn the page and you’re reading about Plato. But in this book, the authors lump characters into categories, which they are very proud of. Heck, the list of entries by category appears in the book prior to the list of entries by ranking. Sherlock Holmes, incidentally, appears in the “Crime” category, instead of the Adventure or Literature categories. The authors even interrupt the discussion of each character and devote a chapter to how they decided which category to place each character into: Why is Dorothy Gale placed in the Movies category rather than the Literature or Americana category? The better question is: Who Cares? Dorothy’s influence, like Superman’s and Luke Skywalker’s, isn’t limited to cinematic appearances.

One more thing: the authors miss a grand opportunity here for real controversy (and higher sales!): in the introduction, they tell us of their lame decision to leave out all religious characters. Too bad – God belongs at number one.

Bottom line…
The idea of writing such a book: A
The execution of the idea: F
The book as a whole: C

Credits and Demerits

My wife and I have been watching a rotating selection of TV shows lately. We get the shows from Netflix, and watch them in order. I can’t help but notice that, sometimes, when we start an episode, we let the disk play right on through the opening credits. Conversely, with other shows, we habitually skip past the credits. Clearly, in the world of opening credits, not all television series are created equal.

Good opening credits (in order of when I thought of them):

Freaks and Geeks
Northern Exposure
The Addams Family
Star Trek (Both the original and the Next Generation)
Gilligan’s Island
Mission: Impossible
The Flintstones
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
The Jeffersons,
Wonderfalls
The Simpsons
The Office
The Muppet Show
All in the Family
The Twilight Zone

We’re not watching all these shows, of course, these are just good openings regardless of whether I’ve seen an episode lately. In fact, some of these shows aren’t particularly that great – the opening song is the best part of the show. Either way, I list them here because they either have a great song, clever footage, a unique or stylized intro, or it’s just nice and short. Or some combination of all that.

Bad Opening Credits:

Quantum Leap
So, first there’s an opening scene that explains the premise. This, I have no problem with. But then, there’s a really long, really dated song and, just when you think it’s all over, you realize they haven’t even flashed the actors names on the screen yet, and a whole other verse begins.

Battlestar Gallactica
This one is a lot like Quantum Leap, what with it’s “here’s the whole premise” thing. After the teaser, though, the credits finally come on and then – after the credit are over! – we are treated to a bizarre montage of scene that we will see in the upcoming episode. Talk about spoilers.

M*A*S*H
There’s nothing wrong with the music…if this was a drama. My sister used to watch this show all the time, and after sitting with her through the opening credits, I’d get up and leave because I was so depressed. Some people claim this is a comedy, but I’ll never know because I can’t get past the first thirty seconds.

Futurama
Just a big, bloated, confusing mess. It nearly induces a seizure.

How about you – any TV show openings you particularly like or dislike?

New Year’s Resolutions

I’ve made new year’s resolutions for years, but I’ve never documented them anywhere. They’ve just been something I’ve kept in my mind and strove for as the twelve months unfolded. One year (1991?) I made it my goal to read everything by Dr. Seuss. Another year (2004), I made it my goal to learn to juggle and to read all the canonical Sherlock Holmes stories.

Of course, there are always the ‘big’ goals: eat better, exercise more, and – on a more personal note – move out of this house. Those are all good things to strive for, but I don’t consider them new year’s resolutions. I usually reserve the fun stuff for new year’s resolution. So here’s some fun stuff I want to accomplish this year:

1) Learn to yo-yo.
I can do the boring part, where you let gravity grab the yo-yo and then let momentum bring it back into your hand. But I want to learn the fun stuff. Owen loves his two yo-yos, and I am now the proud owner of one myself. I used part of my Xmas gift (a certificate to Amazon.com) to purchase a book on yo-yo techniques, so once it arrives I’ll begin in earnest.

2) Brush up on my German
I used to be pretty decent at travel German. Alas, I let it slide. It’s time to get some tapes and listen to them in the car once again.

3) Read “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn”
My wife tells me they’re good reads, and I do like 19th Century fiction. So I guess it’s time I tackle these.

4) Run in a race
Yeah, I’ve done this two years in a row now, but I want to do it again. In early November, the company I work for organizes a 6K race, so that’s my race of choice, if possible, again this year.

5) Edit the wedding video
Our wedding was video-taped by two people, for a total of 4 hours of footage. My goal is to finally dump all that into my computer and edit it down to a watchable 1 hour (or less) video. I hope to have it done by our anniversary. Maybe we could give a copy of the video to our friends and family members as kind of a reverse anniversary gift. If I can do this by August, then I hope to…

6) Preserve other old videos
Specifically, my graduation party, a for-the-heck-of-it party I attended in 1988 and something called “Explorations in Videotaping” are all languishing on VHS tape, degrading more and more with each passing year. I’d like to at least get these into digital format by year’s end.

And, finally…
7) Finish my book
If you know me, you know I’ve been writing a book. I started writing it well over a year ago, and I still have several chapters left. I’d like to wrap up the epic this year.

I’ll recap in 365 days.

Word of the Year

Ever since I was a young lad working at the library, I’ve been aware of the American Dialect Society (http://www.americandialect.org/). The most interesting thing about the ADS is that each year, it’s members vote on what they call the “Word of the Year”. It might be a new word that was coined by a politician or singer, it might be a word that adopted a new meaning, or it might be an old word that suddenly resurged in popularity. Sometimes the ‘word’ of the year is actually two words that, when put together, have a new meaning.

I love this idea. The words they select for each year are quite a reflection of the times. For example, in 1992, they selected “Not”, the over-used put-down popularized by the Saturday Night Live sketch “Wayne’s World”. In 2000, they selected “Chad” – a word so defunct that Oxford was considering dropping it from the next edition of their dictionary, until the voting fiasco in Florida gave the word new life.

So, in 1999, I began selecting my own personal “Word of the Year”. Like the ADS, my choice can be a word I never heard before, or one that suddenly surged in popularity for me personally (for whatever reason). Since 2007 is all but over, I’ve once again added to my list. Here it is, with brief explanations…

1999 – Filmlet
I was tired of calling my short films “Zimmerscope Productions”, so I flipped through the dictionary looking for a new film-related word. I found “filmlet”, which is a term used to describe any motion picture under 60 minutes long. I loved how underused it is – I swear I’ve never heard anyone else use this word besides me.

2000 – Viscosity
I’m sure I’d heard this word before, and I’d definitely heard its root word, viscous. But until I took a class on laboratory technology, I never appreciated this word for all it was worth. I loved performing viscosity tests – both in college and at my previous job. I throw this word around whenever I can. [runner-up: Flyboat]

2001 – Denouement
Another word I learned in college. Despite reading dozens of books about motion pictures, I never knew what to call that last part of the film, you know – the part after the climax. I used to just call it “the ending”. But then I was taught this word, which practically screams ‘pretentious!’, and all was right with the world.

2002 – GMP
Okay, so it’s not a word. But by ADS guidelines, I can still use it. It’s an abbreviation for Good Manufacturing Procedures, which is a nice way of saying the FDA forces food and drug manufacturers to be anal to the point of neurosis. I hate the yearly GMP classes I have to attend, and I hate laboring under its rules. Nevertheless, it’s been a big player in my vocabulary from 2002 onwards.

2003 – Environmental Monitoring
Worried about a possible lay-off at my job, I offered my services in the microbiology lab, hoping to make myself twice as useful. It worked, and I never did get laid-off. For several days out of each month in 2003 (and into 2004), I ventured with the microbiologists as we went out environmental monitoring.

2004 – Big Lake
Despite the fact that I never lived more than 2 hours from Big Lake, I’d never heard of it until our realtor began showing us property there. By mid-summer, I was living there. [runner-up: Doula]

2005 – Cephalohematoma
Nothing says smarmy health care professional like knowing the technical name for a lump on a newborn’s head. When I told people my son was born with cephalohematoma, most of them immediately adopted an air of sympathy, as if I’d just given them the gravest news ever.

2006 – Cognitive Dissonance
Thanks to the Watchtower Society’s inability to answer questions, provide supporting documentation and misquote, I knew the old farts in Brooklyn were throwing up a smokescreen for years. But it was in this year that my wife helped me appreciate what a Watchtower apologist I’d become. She explained it using this term. [runner-up: Love Bombing]

2007 – Apraxia
Another medically related term, only this time, it sounds like a planet the Star Ship Voyager would land on. It sums up my son’s speech delay (and other quirks) so nicely, my wife and I began wondering if other people we knew also had un-diagnosed apraxia.

Lovers Quarrel

From the “You never know what’s gonna happen next” Department:

My wife and I walked into our spare bedroom last night and my wife asked: “Is it dead?” She was referring to one of our Love Birds. After examining the body from several angles, I responded in the affirmative.

Here’s a brief history of our lovebirds: In 1997, we purchased a Love Bird on a whim, from a private breeder who, on the same day, sold us a cockatiel. Within weeks, we felt sorry for pretty Tango. She was lonely. So we returned to the bird breeder and purchased a friend for Tango, whom we named Tequila. A funny thing about Love Birds is that they are, like Killer Whales, improperly named. They are extremely territorial, and they only bond to a human if they are given oodles of contact. They don’t even love each other. They are quite finicky regarding their mates, and even if they choose to bond with a mate, they will frequently bicker to the point of drawing blood.

Anyway, Tango died in 1998. Coincidentally, at this same time, my wife and I had been raising and feeding a baby female love bird by hand, whom we named Twoey. Twoey bonded to me quite nicely but, when Tequila was widowed, we placed Twoey in the cage next to hers to see if they would get along. They fell in love; it was not uncommon to walk in on some hot lesbian fornicating.

Sometimes, we’d notice blood on one of their faces, or on their feet, but it was nothing serious. Their love-hate relationship proceeded fairly stable for nearly a decade.

Yesterday, around 5 in the evening, I went into the spare room, noticed the two birds hiding under some chewed up paper (as they are wont to do) and made a mental note to clean the cage this coming weekend. That was the last time I saw them both alive.

Six hours later, we found a Love Bird corpse on the floor of the cage.

Did I mention that the #1 cause of death among Love Birds is…cannibalism? Maybe now would be a good time to mention that.

The dead bird was not lying in peaceful rest. She was mangled and bloodied, her feathers were wildly out of place, her beak was hyper-extended and her head was tucked under at a frightening angle. Her yellow feathers were pink from blood. Her mate had blood on her face and chest.

Funny thing is (not ‘ha-ha’ funny), we’re not sure who died and who lived. Although we’ve had all manner of colorful birds in the past, it just so happened that these two torrid lovers had exactly the same coloring and disposition.

So now, our house is home to one, single, Love Bird. She’s sitting on her perch right now – a cold-blooded fratricidal psycho. Seething…waiting…waiting…she’s coming for you next.