Orienting Arrow

A longass time ago, my friend Siobhan wrote a book that was funny and informative. I drew some pictures for it, and I think we all learned a little something in the process (about how I am bad at leveraging opportunities to do things I actually like instead of working for the same company for twelve years or whatever it is now just kidding please keep employing me I need the healthcare: anyway, that is what we all learned).

It was called "30 Things Everyone Should Know How to do Before Turning 30", although you may know it by its German title (interesting sidenote: although they kept the "30" in the title of the German edition, the "How to eat a lot of cabbage before invading Poland in a well-made car" chapter was you know what it's not even worth finishing that line let's just go to the next paragraph. GERMANS, RIGHT?).

AND BUT SO
In addition to looking at archived emailed from the early aughts to remind myself that I'm not as clever/funny/smart as I used to be, I sometimes search for this book, and here is what I saw today: this book, which is $1.54 for a used copy is currently going for between $93.55 and $184.13 for a new copy.



NOW THEN
Later on, my friend Siobhan wrote another book called Hipster Haiku. This book featured zero illustrations by me (whoever's decision that was, I bear you no rancor, I pretty much maxed out my ability to draw hands with the first book).

BUT
Let's see how this book is doing OH INTERESTING IT IS AVAILABLE NEW FOR $4.22.
Look, this is a funny book. This book is funnier than it should be. I think if you were to read it what would happen is you would likely marvel at the funniness therein. But $4.22? I think we see what's going on here.

HENCE
For a limited time, I will draw a picture on any book you want for the jaw droppingly low price of like I don't know a dollar or something (higher if I have to draw hands).
I can basically guarantee (definition 4: "v. to guarantee sarcastically") that the book will increase in value TENFOLD within six years. I am contactable at pmortensen at g ma i l dot com (ha I just tricked some spambots SUCK IT SPAMBOTS I AM ONE STEP AHEAD OF YOU LIKE BOBBY FISCHER ONLY A NONANTISEMITIC VERSION, although I do plan to die of renal failure in Reykjavik, like him, so. OK call it even).

This is a limited time offer. Once I am a millionaire I will probably stop to focus on damaging my kidneys and/or working on my parody of that Beyonce song tentatively titled "Shingle Ladies (Put Some Acyclovir On It)". That joke should probably have gone on Twitter and not here; I think that's how Twitter works. SO CONFUSING. Anyway, go ahead and send me money. THANKS

new math

Queneau's "Exercises in Style"
[times]
Michael O'Donoghue on a Good Day
[minus]
sort-of-racist-toward-Chinese-people?
[minus]
True Love Waits
[plus]
finishing school
[times]
awesome
[equals]

The Recently Deflowered Girl
by Mel Juffe and Edward Gorey

Not in any of the Amphigoreys, and I never saw it upstairs at Gotham Book Mart (which I knew had closed, which was sad, but I didn't know how severely it had closed) and just really really amazing.

Moishe Oofnik

40% sure the specifics of this character were created using MadLibs.

Ctrl+F9

I’ve been trying all morning to come up with a Word field that calculates the current week of the year (e.g., today we’re somewhere in the middle of week 44) (I think..? I will know for sure when I figure out the field code). In trying to puzzle this out, I came across lots of date calculation information for everything except what I want (Convert a Julian Day Number to a Gregorian Calendar Date? YES, PLEASE; THAT JUST CAME UP LAST WEEK).

But in particular, I want to acknowledge the, let’s call it, goofy-yet-clearly-bordering-on-OCD-amiability of Paul Edstein who has a downloadable date calculation tutorial that has just got to have the answer in there somewhere if I can crack it (it’s 16 pages without the field codes displayed; 31 pages with). I don’t know who this guy is, but I think I kind of picture him like Frank Gorshin?

In anticipation of my figuring this out, I would like to thank Paul Edstein by giving him a field code that I have devised on my own, so HEY PAIL EDSTEIN: HERE IS HOW YOU CAN USE THE EQUATION EDITOR TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE YOU’RE RAISING ONE EYEBROW:



Just one possible use for this code: You see your name show up in a blog where the writer thinks you look like Frank Gorshin.


Speaking of Frank Gorshin: Top 10 Riddler Riddles (youtube)!
Check out the big brain on Robin. He’s totally good at these!

Decision 2008

I don’t generally like to make political statements, but I think this is too important. Sorry to get all “serious”. Please hear me out.

There is a debate going on in this country today, and the results of this debate could change the course of a metaphorical river that I call “Where This Country is Headed: The River”.

Maximum Fun is pitting Leslie Nielsen against Liam Neeson in a winner-take-all match for our nation’s heart.
QUESTION: AND ALSO THE SOUL?
ANSWER: YES.

Earlier I advised everyone in the forum to factor the following in as they quantified each:

Neeson: Portrayal of Abraham Lincoln in upcoming biopic unlikely to capture Lincoln’s frisky side: minus 2 points

Nielsen: Appeared in the Streisand movie Nuts wearing only black bikini ginch gonchers: minus a million points

Some have questioned these numbers.
LET ME SAY CLEARLY AND WITHOUT WAVING MY ARMS OVERMUCH THAT I STAND BY THEM. (Full disclosure: I am bad at “math”.) Regardless, I had thought this would be enough, but right now, early exit polling has Nielsen at 58% and Neeson at 41%. WHAT IS GOING ON?

Now, before you say, “stop typing in all caps that means you are shouting and that is rude on the internet and anyway let’s just let google trends and bacon numbers which are the traditional barometers of popularity contests decide all of this,” let me just say, I AM NOT SHOUTING. THAT IS JUST YOUR INTERPRETATION AND IF I WANTED TO I COULD MAKE A COMMENT ABOUT THAT RUN-ON SENTENCE BUT I WON’T BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO SINK TO YOUR LEVEL .

And anyway:
Google Trends has “Liam Neeson” beating “Leslie Nielsen” pretty consistently, but Google Trends also has “Iraq War” beating “Taffy Apples”, so we shouldn’t really look to that as an indicator.

Similarly, both have a Bacon Number of two:
Liam Neeson 4 Love Actually 4 Colin Firth 4 Where the Truth Lies 4 Kevin Bacon
Leslie Nielsen 4 Spy Hard 4 Marcia Gay Harden 4 Rails & Ties 4 Kevin Bacon
NO HELP.

So let’s just examine the facts, shall we?

Leslie Nielsen
I agree with the general consensus in the forums (I CAN ADMIT THIS MUCH): he gets “props” for Forbidden Planet (and Poseidon Adventure) and some 50s-60s TV work, but he was clearly going to sink in the metaphorical river (a different one than above) that I call “Deservedly Slow Death by Appearances on The Love Boat (The Tributary)” when Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker tossed him a “life preserver” (metaphor again). Should they have bothered? Let's look at the post-Airplane! work.
(1) Police Squad!: LOL.
(2) 87% of the first Naked Gun (before you question this, note that I used “math” to come up with this number): Also LOL.

Wow! Four funny comedies! (note to self: check math before posting) GREAT JOB, OK, BUT THEN THIS IS CANCELED OUT BY: all the bad Naked Gun sequels — not only bad in and of themselves but look what they wrought: Repossessed; 2001: A Space Travesty; Dracula: Dead and Loving It; Spy Hard; Wrongfully Accused; a bunch of Scary Movies.. and these are just the ones that Nielsen was in. Additional alleged comedies by Nielsen include Surf Ninjas, Mr. Magoo and but also plus a bunch of stupid fucking instructional golf videos. (NEVER FORGET.)

I give him credit for this recent “What I Learned” thing in Esquire (though I take it for what it is: an obvious ploy to court voters), which I am man enough to say I liked slightly more than I disliked. (Hint! If you are distracted by the picture of Halle Berry, you can copy and paste the text into a Word document and read it there!)

But what has he actually learned? According to IMDB, he's appearing in another spoof called Superhero Movie.
YOU HAVE LEARNED NOTHING, LESLIE NIELSEN.

Now, Liam Neeson.
Unlike his “funny” opponent, Liam Neeson has been a guest on Beloved Comedy Apotheoses Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons. (Also Ellen!)

ALSO THIS JUST IN AS OF YESTERDAY: He also is apparently the narrator of a 3D movie about black holes that is being shown at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, but which I did not see because that planetarium made me kind of depressed, so I left.

ALSO THIS JUST IN: Apparently, Leslie Nielsen actually was on an episode of Saturday Night Live in 1989. So “subtract” that (whatever that means).

ALSO: Um I think he was also the voice of Aslan?

OH, AND HE WAS IN KRULL (“A world light-years beyond your imagination”? More of that, please!)

ALSO: Unlike Leslie Nielsen, his last name is NOT MISSPELLED IN THE VERY FORUM where people are voting.



DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHO YOU’RE VOTING FOR, YOU STUPID 58 PERCENTERS???! Maybe I should give him props for “Posiedon Adventure”, which is to say: NO PROPS THAT MOVIE DOES NOT EXIST DUE TO THE MISSPELLING OH BUT WAIT MAYBE NIELSEN CAN BE IN A PARODY OF IT, HOPE IT DOESN’T SUCK, WHOOPS GUESS WHAT IT WILL.

I think the choice is clear, but in case it’s not, please vote with me for:

“NOT LESLIE NIELSEN”.

Because that is a vote for a river that is going in the right direction; i.e., toward the “Sea of Awesome”.
And who doesn’t love a trip to the beach?


(Answer: Leslie Nielsen)

Something perfect you can do

if you're like stuck at work (note: just kidding; work is for working at) is listen to This American Life streams while looking at Glen Murphy's old java experiments from like five years ago at bodytag.org.

For the January 5 episode, may I recommend:

maya1 for Act I (The Super Always Rings Twice)*
europa for Act II (Please Re-Lease Me)**
smoke2 for Act III (Super Duper) ***

* Because it's all cloudy charcoal, but then you start to see these spirograph Dave Ford drawings-by-trucks crop circle patterns, but then you look away from it for a minute and when you look back, it's darker and more complex than you thought it was going to be. (a)
** I love pretty much everything Joshuah Bearman has ever done in History, but he confuses me because he chooses to live in LA. (No disrespect.)
*** I actually don't have anything to say about this one, but it looked lonely without asterisks.

(a)
I recommend maya1 for everything, actually. Not just This American Life episodes. I mean I recommend everyone spend several hours a day watching it, even the blind. In fact, unless you can literally see me doing something else as you read this, you can just assume that's what I'm doing right now.

Whoa, θ • (π/180) • r for a central angle θ -- I didn't see that coming!

Late Bronze Age Babylonians Have a Leg Up On My Son: The Play

Sam, aged two, and Dad, somewhat older, are eating breakfast; Sam is having a cereal called "Puffins". Sam notices there are only three Puffins left.

Sam: Look, Daddy, three Puffins.
Dad: That's right, and do you know what happens if you eat one?
Sam: (confused)
Dad: Three minus one is...?
Sam: (confused)
Dad: Eat one. (Sam does) OK, you had three, and you ate one, and now how many are left?
Sam: (looks down) Two!
Dad: Right, three minus one is two! Now eat another one. (Sam does) How many are left? Two minus one is...?
Sam: (looks down) One!
Dad: Right, now eat that one. (Sam does) How many are left? One minus one is...?
Sam: (looks down) Milk!

EXEUNT

Three Wishes, or: “Aaron Sorkin: Ue! Ue! Ue!”

I have never written a sketch before in my life and therefore I am likely a terrible sketch writer and yet I am still a better sketch writer than you, Aaron Sorkin; therefore: Aaron Sorkin, steal this sketch, and give it to Mark McKinney (whom you’re not giving enough to do right now anyway), and he will make it better, and then if you can get past this rise in amateurism (with fists!) you can put it on the show and plus, OK, get this: cast the Nate Corddry/Tom Jeter character as “MAN” and then behold the synergy: the Samantha Li and Lucy Kenwright characters get to see Tom Jeter’s nipples; I get to see Nate Corddry’s nipples; Tina Fey will have to take back that thing she said (OK, that’s not true, what she said is awesome and so accurate that it probably turned into cesium when it came out of her mouth); and we can drop this whole relationshippy direction this thing is taking, because I still believe that the potential of this show, as measured by:




...where Y (i.e., the modulus of elasticity λ), cross sectional area, A0, initial length, l0, which is stretched by a length, Δl and ok, I lost track there, but my point is the Ue — the potential — is so amazing, and this joyless fucking roadtrip through your fucking psyche is fucking wearing me fucking out. (Oh, speaking of which, please note that I will clean up the swears and also I am willing to add a few lines at the end where Kristin Chenoweth comes on stage to pleasure you with pity- and/or make-up-sex, if that will make everything OK, but otherwise, I am serious: I am only giving you seven more chances this season to get this right.)


Three Wishes

A man is wandering on the beach and comes across a lamp. Looking at it skeptically at first, and then making sure no one else is watching, he rubs the lamp. Sure enough, a Genie pops out.

GENIE: Jesus.
MAN: Whoa, hey.
GENIE: Oh man, how long was I in there?
MAN: I don’t know. What’s the last thing you remember?
GENIE: Steve Martin was doing interesting work.
MAN: A looooong time.
GENIE: I suppose you want your three wishes.
MAN: Oh man, yes. Yes I do.
GENIE: OK. Shoot.
MAN: I’ve actually been thinking about this for a while. Wish number one: I wish for more wishes!
GENIE: (laughs) OK, whatever. (waves his arms like it’s no big deal) Wish granted!
MAN: Why’d you say it like that?
GENIE: Yeah. Um, I can’t really tell you.
MAN: Did I do it wrong? Did I fuck up? I thought that was a good one.
GENIE: I’m really not at liberty to tell you. It’s the Genie Code.
MAN: Crap! How do I know if I screwed up or not?
GENIE: I don’t know, I guess you could make a bunch of test wishes and see if they come true.
MAN: Yeah.
GENIE: But then, you wouldn’t know for sure if they were the unlimited wishes that you wished for in the first wish, or if you were squandering your remaining two wishes.
MAN: Yeah. Crap. Shit! Crap.
GENIE: It’s a tough call.
MAN: OK. Alright. For my second wish, I wish to know if I screwed up the first wish, and, if so, how?
GENIE: That’s sort of two, but I’ll give it to you. You said you wanted to wish for more wishes, which is cool; I gave you that. But: you didn’t say you wanted the wishes to come true.
MAN: That was understood.
GENIE: Not really.
MAN: Damn it!
GENIE: You have one more. Make it count.
MAN: Damn it! This sucks! Of COURSE I meant they would come true.
GENIE: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”
MAN: Shut up.
GENIE: “If fishes were wishes the ocean would be all of our desire.”
MAN: Shut up.
GENIE: Gertrude Stein.
MAN: Shut up. OK. (trying to word everything very carefully) I wish that whatever I wish for would come true, wait, cancel cancel cancel.
GENIE: Canceling.
MAN: Because then it could be like maybe, say like I dream that I’m fellating the Vice President then you’ll make it come true.
GENIE: You dreamt that you fellated Mondale?
MAN: (pause) No.
GENIE: Or, you know, not Mondale, but whoever’s Vice President now?
MAN: IT WAS A DREAM.
GENIE: Jesus.
MAN: IT WAS A DREAM. OK, stop distracting me. I wish… OK? Listening? I WISH that… my wishes will come true but this is not counting any dreams I have that I’m not in control of and not like just random thoughts I have throughout the day; aaand it has to be an out-loud wish and, wait, cancel cancel cancel.
GENIE: Canceling.
MAN: Shit.
GENIE: It’s hard, I know.
MAN: OK. I just sort of panicked, but I think I got it now. I WISH that… whatever I wish for will come true… whenever… I touch my middle finger and my thumb together like this… and start a declarative sentence with the phrase ‘I wish…’ then that’s the beginning of the wish and then whatever I say after that is what comes true… and then when I release my fingers, then that’s the end of the sentence, so whatever I say after that doesn’t count as the wish, unless I touch my fingers again, and I don’t have to say ‘I wish’ in the exact same tone of voice and inflection I just said it in… I can, like, modulate the way I say it, and my fingers don’t have to be in that exact position, just sort of like this in general, and if for some reason I lose my fingers in an accident, or I have laryngitis, then I get to revisit the criteria for wishing for things… and I can reverse the effects of any wishes that get screwed up and if, OK, wait, cancel cancel cancel.
GENIE: Maybe you want to aim lower.
MAN: I don’t know. I think, if I can get this, I think I’ll use my power wisely. I could maybe stop some wars or feed the hungry, or cure cancer or something. I mean, sure, some of them were going to be like, ‘I wish that every basket I tried to shoot would go in’ or ‘ I wish that I could stop time and undress people,’ but the larger world problems, I was going to take care of those things. You know? Those two didn’t count, OK? The basket and the stop time one.
GENIE: Got it.
MAN: I just feel like this is my chance to make a difference.
GENIE: So, what’s your final wish?
MAN: (thinks for a long time) I wish… OK, wait. I wish…
GENIE: Whenever you’re ready.
MAN: (thinks for a long time) I wish… I wish… that… my nipples weren’t the size of hubcaps. Anymore.
GENIE: Done. Congratulations. I’ll see you around. (he leaves)
MAN: Yeah. (He slowly pulls his shirt up. His nipples are, in fact, normal-sized nipples. He shrugs.) Yeah. OK.

EXEUNT UNTIL THE FALL LINE-UP IS ANNOUNCED

The Cost of Utopia

(or: Serf’s Up!)

Last weekend we saw part one of Coast of Utopia (Voyage) by Tom Stoppard. Maybe for background I should say that reading R&GaD in high school was formative, I think Invention of Love is hypergreat and Arcadia is one of the best things I’ve ever read in my life; I’ve read twelve of his plays (that’s a lot, right? I don’t think I’ve read twelve things of many (any?) other authors, except maybe Edward Packard, Choose Your Own Adventure stizz, and maybe Shakespeare and those weren’t even all voluntary) plus that book of interviews with him, and my favorite exchange in Brazil, which is full of favorite exchanges...

Sam: How are the twins?
Jack: Triplets.
Sam: My God, how time flies.

...not only was his line, but he fought for its inclusion when Gilliam didn't understand it. He fought the director for the inclusion of my favorite line. For me.

But this play, in performance, was just kind of only OK: I had read it a couple of times last week in anticipation of seeing it, and it was infinitely more subtle and nuanced and, um, better? In my head? Because all the perfect little throwaway lines were rendered non-perfect, because they were all undefenestrated.

I posit: the director was worried we wouldn’t be able to remember all the characters due to their quantity and our television-shortened attention spans and their being Russian and our being American and/or our not being Tom Stoppard, and so he made all the actors find One Defining Emotion, crank it to eleven, and keep it there for three hours, so we’d be able to remember everyone; so we could go, oh, there’s the erratic, effeminate shouty one; right, that’s the sad, shouty one. Oh, there’s the nervous, shouty one.

But I brought my A Game: I read it twice; I wikipediad every-one (ok, it was my B+ Game); I recognized that Act II's doubling of Act I's timeline was just a dumb Hegel joke; I avoided reviews; &c. And so to see every actor overselling everything (we were in the back, so I’m not sure who they were pitching to/at; is the point of the play that Russians had to be loud so you could hear them over all those serfs?) made for an increasingly disheartening night; lines that I knew were key lines were kind of smothered by the fact that all the lines were said the same way — there were a couple of exceptions (David Cromwell, maybe), but Amy Irving: Really Bad; Jennifer Ehle: not bad (my brain won't allow her to be bad), but a near-one-note performance; Ethan Hawke: Worst Thing Ever (at least he has fiction to fall back on); Billy Crudup: almost embarrassingly hard to watch in his exaggerated hysteria, but still not as bad as Hawke and I guess eventually he forces his rhythm on the audience in a way that you finally just accept it, but no, you know what? He blows his late-in-the-play scene with Cromwell, so I’m still putting him in the bad column.

(I don’t go to the theatre that much anymore; are we going through an acting style phase where everything is presentational like this?)

Regardless:
Dinner for two....................$130
Two tickets to the play........$200
Car service home.................$30
7 hours of babysitting..........$84
Car home for Babysitter.......$20
--------------------------------------
Total (For Part I).............$464

Patrick: I guess I’ll just read parts two and three and
use the extra $928 to bribe preschool admissions people.

The Ginger Cat: Of course.

EXEUNT

Mark Russell!

Mark Russell is like Tom Lehrer, Alan Sherman and Victor Borge all rolled into one, and then subtract Will Rogers and add Young Bob Hope, then take out Old Bob Hope.
Add a dash of whimsy and NEA funding, and shake gently.
Garnish with Freedom.

Serves six.

Not really. It serves five.
Is he even still alive?