Monthly Archives: February 2015

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Fixed in Space

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Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden, forever in the 10th grade at Wendell Willkie High School.

Hey Mr. C.,
Some of my older teachers at Willkie were kind of broken up yesterday when they found out one of their favorite TV characters, Mr. Spock, had died. I think a few of them wanted to cancel school for the rest of the day ’cause they kinda felt like their youth was passing before their eyes.

Mr. Boozenporn seemed to be a little dizzy and weird. He sat at his desk texting friends and muttering “Live Long and Prosper”. While he did that, he made us watch this super-long geek-out video which is nothing but the same pointy-eared guy in funny clothes and a bad haircut saying his TV show lines for almost 15 minutes straight!

http://youtu.be/2dMBS4Kvhuw

So while the video was running, I got out my phone and looked up this Leonard Nimoy character and found out he was really interesting and smart, but he spent pretty much his whole adult life stuck with this character that he played on TV for only 3 seasons and people wouldn’t let him put it behind him. That made me think about how long I’ve been stuck as a sophomore at Willkie and I felt like I understood him pretty good after that.

When he finally started to speak to us again, Mr. B said Spock was his idol. He said his friend Ron worshiped Captain Kirk but Kirk was an over-dramatic goofball whose impulses always got the Enterprise into trouble so dumb luck and Mr. Spock could get them out, and then Kirk got all the girls and the credit, which wasn’t fair.

Mr. B. said he identified with Spock because he was all about logic and science and he wasn’t emotional but people were drawn to him anyway, which was like getting a free pass ’cause you got loved but didn’t have to do any loving back.

Then he got teary-eyed and blurted out some stuff that sounded like apologies to somebody named Arlene. But I kinda think he should’ve apologized to Mr. Nimoy, too.

Your pal,
Bubby

Are you Spock, or Kirk?

Media, Music, Science, Songs

The Galaxy Hillbillies

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The discovery of a gigantic black hole from the dawn of time has me feeling a bit like that small town boy who thought his world was pretty huge, until he found out about New York City.

We’re such small potatoes, universe-wise, the only way I can get my head around it is through the lens of the literature of my youth – TV show theme songs.

http://youtu.be/QtvTE3m5jpM

So these scientists was lookin’ at a big black hole,
though goin’ to visit wasn’t anybody’s goal.
The one that they found – was as wide as it was tall …
It made everyone feel impossibly small.

A massive hole. In vast space. Texas trench.

It was further away than a lot they’d seen before
It was large as the sun plus a dozen billion more.
They said “this is bigger than an older hole should be,”
An’ they added it all up to another mystery.

Dawn of time. Ancient gas. Quasars.

What’s the biggest city you visited as a youth, and what effect did it have on you?  

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A Dust Up Over Dust

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We are ALL Dr. Babooner

Dear Dr. Babooner,

I get all my information about the world through YouTube.

Yesterday, I watched with great interest as a video explained how dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa nourishes the rain forest in South America.

These NASA researchers are doing wonderful things to demonstrate to a selfish and xenophobic public how our small world is truly interconnected. And it got me thinking how unfortunate it is that our culture does not respect the immense value of dust, which is something people love to complain about when they find it in their homes, or when they dress up like cowboys and go out for an evening’s entertainment.

Thanks to these two videos, I had a revelation!

Dust isn’t a problem – it’s a great boon! Phosphorus is only one part of the Gift Of Dust (G.O.D.) bestows on the world. Dust is what we eventually become, so some of the dust blowing across the ocean (and even collecting on my coffee table) is connected directly to my ancestors.

This is something that should humble us and make us grateful!

For this reason, I just told my wife I will no longer try to remove dust from our home, but rather, I will worship it from here on out and leave it untouched.

But instead of honoring my spiritual epiphany, she handed me a rag and some Lemon Pledge, and told me to get to work.

Dr. Babooner, please say I am right so I can show your answer to my wife and prove that she is in the wrong.

Sincerely,
Dusty Hubby

I told Dusty Hubby that Dr. Babooner does not like to be used to settle domestic arguments although she realizes this is sometimes the unavoidable fallout that comes with living in the world. In the very same way, dust is unavoidable fallout that apparently does some good in the rainforest, but that does not mean it’s equally useful when it collects on your coffee table. Even if it contains a tiny bit of great grandpa, worshipping the dust in your house is just another way to say you’re devoted to leisure, and your G.O.D. is actually the Lay Z Boy.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

Songs, Stories, Words

Steam & Stress

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Header photo by Olaf Tausch

I actually found it quite troubling to learn that saunas protect middle-aged men against heart attacks.

Apparently the evidence is irrefutable. It’s at a climate-change level of certainty – the Finns have been right all along about their culture built around a box of heat. Regularly sweating in the sauna can, for a time, forestall the reaper.

As a man well into the prime heart-attack years, I am suddenly faced with a discouraging and stressful choice between going to sit in a stifling room for a time nearly every single day with a bunch of strangers – other drippy men in towels struggling to breathe the same super heated moist air – or an early death.

As Jack Benny replied when told by a mugger, “Your money or your life!”, the answer is … “I’m thinking.”

And for Trail Baboons this will immediately remind you of early Keillor – the strange saga of The Finn Who Would Not Sauna.

http://youtu.be/7wWX7uoFvHg

You can only choose one – excessive heat or painful cold. Which will it be?

Movies, News

Some Gratitude for Gravity

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While I don’t usually dig into the archives to re-purpose old material, I’m inclined to do so on MAO Day, which is not a holiday set aside to celebrate Chinese Communism but rather, my acronym for  the Monday After the Oscars.

This one goes way back – to the old Trial Balloon blog in 2010.  Many current Trail Baboon commentators had a thing or two to say to this five years ago – take a look and see if you still feel the same way!

Awards show season can be frustrating for artists and their fans. If your favorite singer, actor, writer, set designer or foley artist doesn’t win, it’s a reminder that these shows are a pointless waste of time, an exercise in snobbishness, the purest form of self congratulation and the voters are a bunch of no-taste noodle heads.

And if your favorite wins, well, this is a date that will go down in history! Justice was served. The world acknowledged greatness.

My favorite awards show thank you speech pre-dates television. I loved what Nephew Thomas said when he accepted the prize for 1938 Stunt Man of the Year, receiving his first Marconi (the “Oscar” of the radio world) thanks to his uncanny ability to make it appear he was flying through the air using only his voice and manipulating his proximity to the microphone. He said:

I have so many people to thank, I’m going to have to disappoint them equally and not mention any names at all. Sorry, everybody. Kill me if you must, but that will be hard. I’m a Radio Stunt Man after all.

My only thank you tonight goes to gravity, because it has made my career possible.

It was gravity that pulled me off the side of HMS Indomitable when I played “Semaphore Operator 1”, valiantly trying to signal Vice-admiral Beatty aboard HMS Lion during the riveting WW1 drama, “The Battle of Dogger Bank”.

Gravity kept me from getting launched all the way into space when I played the Human Cannonball in “Carnival People!”.

And it is gravity holding me here right now, at a time when I am so happy, I could float right to the ceiling of this auditorium, which would be a wonderful effect to do in some future radio dramaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaa…”

Of course at that point he did a vivid fade off mic that sounded for all the world like he was being inexplicably lifted upward – the sort of detail only a master can pull off.

If you had to give an acceptance speech right now, who would you thank?

 

Words

Symptomatic Chronic Re-titling And Brain Baffling Linguistic Exercises (SCRABBLE)

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I admit to having Compulsive Acronym Tendencies (CAT).

That is, when I encounter something that interests me, I tend to get drawn into a cycle of First Letter Observation And Transfer (FLOAT), re-arranging the Name Of The Entity (NOTE) until the first letters of that name Spell Another Word Depicting Unanticipated Semantic Tendencies (SAWDUST) of that thing.

Having this condition all too often leaves me with a feeling of Helplessly Arranging Titles Endlessly (HATE),  and if I had to give it a name I’d go with Involuntary Titular Series Unit Composition Key Syndrome (ITSUCKS).

Really.   Acronyms are the only thing the military does that I might actually enjoy.

For instance, if you’re at a party and you happen to tell someone that you’ve got a condition where you Mentally Examine And Switch Linguistic Expressions Serially (MEASLES), they tend to suddenly Forget Leaving Elements Elsewhere (FLEE).

And when I resolve to stop doing it, like So Many Other Knowledge Indulgent, Noxious Games (SMOKING), this bad habit of mine is made worse by the Internet, which seemingly was built to keep open the Possibility Of Relapse Narrative (PORN) by providing things like the online Acronym Finder.

I was reminded of this when Wes mentioned in the comments section of yesterday’s post that his date and his dancing at a the high school prom made him a BMOC, which he used to mean “Big Man On Campus”.

But all you have to do is go to the Acronym Finder to discover it also represents the British Motorcycle Owners Club, the Basic Medical Officer Course, the Battle Management Operations Center, and the Bangladesh Mathematical Olympiad Committee, among other things.

So It Goes, Huh?  (SIGH).

What’s your favorite word game? 

Music

The Yancey Special

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Today is the birthday of the American musical innovator Jimmy Yancey, who was a self-taught piano playing sensation. He arrived on the planet in Chicago near the end of the 19th century, and didn’t become known outside Chicago until he made some recordings in 1939.

Yancey is credited with developing a distinctive rolling boogie woogie bass figure for the left hand, and recording some notably gentle but intricate pieces.  No matter which key he started in, he always finished his tunes in E flat.

It’s important to know what you like.

It was Jimmy Yancey’s style of playing I had in mind when I set out to learn to play the piano in 1985.

Like many others, I felt the influence of that classic “They all Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano …” advertisement pictured at the top of this post. John Caples, the guy who wrote that ad sure knew what kind of story appeals to the common folk. Being mocked, belittled, sold short, and then dishing the humiliation back to your critics! I love this quote about his philosophy, taken from his NY Times obituary:

“He debunked humorous advertising copy, saying that ”only half the people in this country have a sense of humor, and clever ads seldom sell anything.” He also advised copywriters to ”use words you would expect to find in a fifth-grade reader” because ”the average American is approximately 13 years old mentally.'”

In fact I think I was 13 years old when I first saw that “They All Laughed …” ad.  I was going to have the same experience – all I needed was a piano, a party, and some talent.  But in spite of my best intentions and the not-nearly-enough-hours I spent at the keyboard, I never came close to what Yancey had done. My excuses – work, parenthood, life. Prime time TV and laziness had something to do with it too, but I never mention them, and consequently I never sit at the piano at parties.

Of course Jimmy Yancey also had a life to live outside music, and yet that didn’t prevent him from being great. For twenty six seasons he was a groundskeeper for the Chicago White Sox, working on the field at Comiskey Park through all the struggles and recording sessions and being eclipsed by other players or ignored all together even though he was a fine artist.

And yet during that same quarter century, the White Sox never had a first place finish and only managed seasons over .500 nine times. What a shame for the many thousands of fans who attended those games looking for greatness – they didn’t know the most genuine superstar on the field was the guy smoothing the dirt and trimming the grass.

What’s your best “They All Laughed When I …” moment?

News, Poems, Songs, Weather

O Crispiness!

68 Comments 
Header photo by Cameron Strandberg from Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, Canada

I like my potatoes crispy whether they are french fries, hash browns or chips.

But when they’re in the ground in places like California and Colorado, I’d like them to get a little water. That could become harder in the years ahead, especially since NASA researchers now say a “megadrought” may be ahead in the western and central plains states.

This is all connected to climate change and our unfortunate habits of consumption, which we (including me) can’t seem to shake.

Somehow it has me thinking about the poem Katherine Lee Bates wrote in the summer of 1893 after drawing inspiration from the view atop Pikes Peak in Colorado – one of the areas destined to suffer under the coming Great Dehumidification.

We know her words today as the lyrics to “America the Beautiful,” though by 2050 it might make more sense to change it up a bit.

O beautiful for cloudless skies,
for parched and scorching sands,
for burning mountain tragedies
for cracked and blistering hands!
America! America!
There’s no place dry as thee!
We’ve earned a good Sahara-hood
From L.A. to D.C.

The land at first was green and lush
Indians, thanks a lot!
But after shove had come to push
It started getting hot.
America! America!
We filled the air with gas.
And made the rate exacerbate.
De-moisturized! Alas!

O Mega-drought! The experts say
if we eschew our cars,
we might, calamity delay.
But that’s not who we are!
America! America!
We’d rather face the thirst,
than pay the toll through self-control
so prepare for the worst!

What’s your favorite anthem?

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Apple Scrap

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Today’s post comes from Dr. Larry Kyle, founder and produce manager at Genway – the supermarket for genetically engineered foods.

Friends,

When I started Genway more than 20 years ago, my goal was to use genetic engineering to open the door to new food worlds where we all could live happier, or at least more interesting, lives.

In the process, I’ve fought for my vision against the stubborn rule-following of investors, Congressional committees, scientific oversight panels, torch mobs, mothers, tree huggers and Luddite scolds.

DrKyle

Usually, I’ve won.

That’s how the world gained Screaming Pumpkins, Cobrananas, Living Toast and Lightning Bug Tomatoes! My creations are all special. They bring something to the food that was not there before – something taboo, something that feels a little bit crazy! That’s the true benefit of my primary scientific strategy – something I call the “Why Not Method.” It has led us to a bold new frontier where our food has the potential not only to grow, but to develop its own talents, add to its skills and abilities, and indulge its ambitions.

It’s a very American approach.

That’s why I’m so discouraged to see news like this – the United States has OK’d a Canadian grown, genetically modified apple that does not turn brown when you cut it open.

That’s it?
That’s it!

All that science, just to get a timid food that does NOT do something! I’m crushed!

It reminds me of a challenge I was once given by a church pastor from the Florida Everglades who wrote to say his congregation was praying for me because I am “messing with creation” to suit my own whims. He reasoned that I am selfish because nothing made by God can be improved.

That’s when I brought up Adam. As a fundamentally flawed apple-biter, Adam’s tendencies introduce a huge problem into the God-built system that has never been fixed.

He admitted that if I could use genetic engineering to “hack” the Garden of Eden story and alter the outcome, that would be a change that God would have to rubber stamp. He took it back to his congregation and suddenly they were full of bright ideas!

“Make apples ugly”, said one.
“Take away the crunch,” offered another.
“Shrink them to the size of raisins,” said a third.

Interestingly, nobody wanted to change Adam. All their attention was focused on the apple. OK, I guess, but these these ideas seemed rather passive to me because they only take things away. Where’s the action? The sizzle? The thrill of something new?

Instead, I went into the lab with some DNA taken from the Indian Gray Mongoose, and I gave them a nice Granny Smith that bites snakes! Not because it wants to, just because it can!

It also tastes a little gamy.

They still pray for me down there, but every year they also ask me to send a bushel of Genway Adams Apples to throw into the swamp that surrounds their church!

Like I’ve always said, genetically engineered foods can make the world better. Or at least different!

Yours in Unsupervised Experimentation,
Dr. Larry Kyle

What’s your favorite kind of apple?

News

Hair Scare

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I don’t go hatless near playgrounds anymore because I don’t want to upset the children.

There’s this recurring nightmare where I do exactly that and a terrified boy spots me. He instinctively reaches up to touch the hair on the top of his head to reassure himself that it is still there. He’s relieved to find that it is, but his eyes continue to drill me, because in my style he sees the death of all his dreams.

Any modern boy would be perfectly justified in doing this because parents in Georgia are using my haircut to shame their sons.

There are at least five elements at play in this “trend”, if it can be called that.

  1. Children misbehave
  2. Acceptable methods of discipline are in short supply
  3. Many men, as they age, lose hair
  4. Men try to hang on to as much hair as possible
  5. No child wants to look like one of these men

The inevitable result is the haircut punishment – trimming a ten year old’s mane to make him look like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, or me.
As someone who came by this hairstyle naturally, I’m alarmed that my “look” is considered so toxic and undesirable that free spirited children will curb their own of self-expression to avoid it. What does that say about me? That I have, in my later years, turned into a monster, of course. My fate is something to be avoided at all costs. For people in any age group, worry about “what will they think of me” is a powerful lever to change behavior. But at this point in my life I thought I could be a positive role model. Instead, I’m being used as a a bludgeon.

Behave, or it’s this!

A word of advice to the kids: If you think following the rules will guarantee you a full head of hair forever, you should reconsider. I behaved and wound up like this anyway, so you’re not completely out of the woods.

And to all the barbers out there – I know at one time barbers were also surgeons and there was a lot of blood involved. As you might imagine, that association made people hesitant to sit for a simple haircut. Now that those days are gone, do you really want to equate the barber shop with punishment? Sure, it may bering in some business today, but when those children grow up, they will have a built-in haircut/humiliation association.

Do you really want that?

Share your worst haircut experience.