Interlude: Big Bang Crazy

I'm going to break off for a moment from the Real World and just rant for a moment, because I'm sitting here trying to read and my lovely Bride has turned on the fucking Big Bang Theory again.

She loves the hell out of this sitcom, and it's her single most go-to form of video entertainment, to the point where I can be at the far end of the house and hear the laugh track and know without a scintilla of doubt that it emanates from the fucking Big Bang Theory.

(Since I'm gonna be using this term a lot, let's save bandwidth and abbreviate it TFBBT.)

This sucker turns out to have been insanely popular - so she's not alone - ran for twelve seasons, and made big stars out of at least two of the leads; Jim Parsons as the male lead, Sheldon, and Kaley Cuoco as the female, Penny. Supposedly each of them (and Johnny Galecki, who played second lead, Leonard) made something like a million bucks an episode and they made over seventy of the bastards.

That's some serious jack.

And I don't get it.

I mean, de gustibus nil disputandem and all. But to have gustibus for TFBBT? Really? C'mon!

Seriously. The thing is just that bad. It's one of those painful trainwrecks that leaves you wondering if the writers and showrunners weren't missing out on their destined careers as housepainters, baristas, or grips on a porn film set.

To make matters worse, it's backed by a braying Sixties-sitcom-grade laugh track that just serves to point out how gawdawful the supposed-"jokes" are.

I have problems with about 99% of "reality" television because "reality" usually turns out to be a cast of variously-dysfunctional assholes being miserable to each other.

Christ, if I wanted that I could go to work.

Somehow TFBBT manages to combine the unfunny-ness of an unfunny sitcom with the trash human resource of your average "reality" show.

 No kidding. There's barely a salvageable human being on the screen.

"Raj" (a.k.a. "the Indian guy") is just an extended Apu joke; he's a whiny, clingy, constantly horny rich desi whose domineering parents bankroll his overseas adventures while his supposed American friends mock his race, his culture, his personality, and his pathetic attempt at a love life. The whole Raj idea should have been euthanized for the same reasons the Simpsons showrunners flushed Apu.

The three women characters are just different versions of female stereotypes; "Bernadette" is a ball-buster (who hooks up with the smarmiest male character) who improbably becomes the mommy-character, "Amy" is the girl-geek, all social incompetence and ugly clothes, and "Penny" is the hottie who uses her looks to gold-dig and manipulate.

The male leads are just punchable; "Howard" (the smarmy wanna-be-womanizer) is needy and whiny but with a nasty undertone, "Sheldon" is just a complete asshole who'd be shunned by normal humans, and "Leonard" is perhaps the worst of them all, a meeching little man who hates his roomate Sheldon's bizarre assholish behavior yet constantly defers, enables, and sucks up to him - why he'd want to stay "friends" with the gomer is beyond inexplicable. Leonard "gets" the hot girl Penny by lying and faking and pursuing her so relentlessly she just gives up and settles for him.

It's all just simultaneously sad and annoying, and my Bride loves it dearly, which makes it even more annoying.

And it re-runs constantly, so she can always find one playing somewhere, so as often as not the evening resounds with the braying laughter of TFBBT's idiot "audience".

Ugh.

I'm with you, Penny; rather than sit through a FBBT I'd spend the evening sanding my feet...

So Emotional

I really try and avoid the horrible celebriphilia that runs mad through everything in American pop culture.

You know when you read something like that you're in for a post about celebrities and pop culture, right?So, okay. It's not that I don't enjoy pop culture; by and large - if you've been reading this blog for any time you know that - I am the pop culture guru in this household.

But to my mind there's a skeevy sort of obsession with famous people you can't avoid unless you work hard at dodging the electronic media and limiting your exposure to almost all the other forms of popular press and entertainment. I try, but even I couldn't miss the "news" that Ms. Whitney Elizabeth Houston departed this vale of tears the past Saturday, aged six years younger than I am.

Now in general this blog tries to live by Joe Kugelmass' "Five Rules About Celebrity Deaths", to wit;

1. A blogger is not capable of being “disrespectful” to a dead famous person. That person’s friends and family do not care.

2. In most cases, famous people who die young will still have managed to have more of “a life” than 99.99% of people who die old.

3. Many people who are publicly sad about a celebrity death had not thought about that celebrity once in the previous twelve months.

4. Some of the things that lead to celebrity deaths are, in fact, not relevant to the lives of ordinary folks (e.g. Michael Jackson’s personal drug doctor).

5. Public mourning is affected by ridiculous, irrelevant factors. For example, the bad economy increased mourning for Steve Jobs. People are more grieved by Whitney Houston’s death than they were by Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s death because her songs were more radio-friendly and sentimental.

In keeping with the first five of these rules I have no real insights or trenchant observations about the passing of Ms. Houston. She seems to have been a rather ordinary woman whose single outstanding qualities appear to have been her pretty face and powerful voice, without particular intellectual or emotional depth, lacking any hint of either greatness or depravity. Without her voice she would no doubt have been simply another nice semi-urban girl from New Jersey.

So it is her voice that ensures the emotional glurge regarding her death.

And for me, at least, her voice is perhaps the single thing that I truly dislike about the woman, and the only real observation of any worth that I can think to make about the woman now that she is sure to be enshrined in the pop culture pantheon.

Here's why.

First, let me qualify myself; I've sung publicly, not professionally, but in both an organized choral group and as a soloist. You wouldn't pay for my solo singing - at least, I hope you wouldn't - but I have a decent amateur bass-baritone and know my way around both classical and popular music. I've been known to rock the house with "Wild Colonial Boy" when I've had a few. So; I can sing, a bit. And as a result I have some very definite ideas about what makes a song work.

Okay. So, here's our gal the late Ms. Houston tearing into perhaps her best known pop song, "I Will Always Love You" at the 1994 Grammys.The performance is...well, it's what Houston did. The quivering vibrato, the swooping, breathy phrasing, and of course the "big moment" - it comes with the key change at 3:19 in the video - the pause, the breath, and then the soaring blare as Houston's voice rises and swells in a cresting wave of throbbing emotion. That was her style, and although she wasn't the only singer of her era who used it she might have been the best known and the most influential.

That belting style is now nearly inescapable when you hear power pop sung in public. You hear now it every time you turn on "American Idol" and any one of it's many imitators, or encounter one of the many pop-song belters trained in the post-Whitney Era. It's as if every single jazz and pop vocalist between 1950 and 1980 had been instantly turned into Barbra Streisand.

But...here's the thing. Check out the lyrics to "I Will Always Love You":

"If I should stay,
I would only be in your way.
So I'll go, but I know
I'll think of you ev'ry step of the way.
And I will always love you.
I will always love you.
You, my darling you.

Bittersweet memories that is all I'm taking with me.
So, goodbye. Please, don't cry.
We both know I'm not what you, you need.
And I will always love you.
I will always love you.

I hope life treats you kind
And I hope you have all you've dreamed of.
And I wish to you, joy and happiness.
But above all this, I wish you love.

And I will always love you..."

Got it? Is that a sad song, or what? "Bittersweeet memories"? "We both know I'm not what you need"? This sucker is about loss, my God; heartbreak, the death of a precious love, desolation, the long, slow, agonizing draught of bitter gall you know you will drink the rest of your life as the one you can never forget recedes in the rear-view mirror.

This is fucking tragedy, man.

But Houston's version - and all the other belters' that have followed her - makes a kind of joke out of that. The emotional throb and gush, the soaring finale...she's not standing there heartsick and grieving that she will always love you; she's hurling her challenge to the skies - she WILL always love you, goddammit, and she's not ashamed who knows it.

Now.

Here's the woman who wrote and first sang this song, Dolly Parton, doing the tune exactly twenty years earlier than the Grammys:Excuse me for being partial, but for my money that's how you put over a hearbreaking song; simple, clean, her voice as clear and sharp as a winter night and as crushingly empty. There's no strength in Parton's version, no power, no hope. She knows she has lost everything, and the sweet clarity in her voice makes the pain of that loss utterly unbearable.

But you hear much more of Whitney than Dolly in pop singing today. So while I am sure that there are those who were fond of Ms. Houston, or loved her, I cannot and do not pretend to share in their grief.

Since I was not a particular fan of the woman's vocal stylings what was lost to me by her death was only her voice and her vocal style, and since that part of her leaves me somewhere between indifferent and mildly irritated to mourn, or pretend to mourn, or, indeed, to do more than to note her passing with a rather irked shrug would be to violate the Five Rules.

Therefore, I will do no more.Sorry, Whitney, but...meh.

Life During Wartime

Since "We Are At War", a little reminder of...well, real war."Because that stable in Bethlehem was a 'shelter', too..."

All the presents are wrapped, the Christmas roast beef consumed, the Littles are entertaining themselves while taunting their parents by watching one of those appalling "Chipmunks" movies (dear God!) and my bride is finishing binding the edge of a quilt. I'm looking up bizarre Christmas videos on YouTube (the Nazi one is...strange). We're an exciting group here at the Fire Direction Center.

I still find the entire business of our "Christmas" strange; a glittery ornament that is completely hollow inside.

I still have not a shred of faith, other than my usual bitter amusement at the ability of my fellow hairless chimps to find justification for their most self-serving actions in tales of a magical Judean two thousand years old.

My bride is, so far as I know, even less religious than I am; while I have a certain lingering affection for and admiration of those who genuinely live the tenets of their faiths (whatever those faiths may be) she has said that she considers the entire nonsense a sort of nonprofit scam at best. I try and tell the kiddos that the stories of Jesus and Muhammad and Abraham are no less "real" than those of Santa and Ebenezer Scrooge - that while I don't believe in them I don't know that they're "wrong" anymore than the religious people who tell them "know" they're right.

Mojo just laughs and tells the littles that it's all a big ball of styrofoam packing peanuts, a whole bunch of hooey.

And the small ones, they are at the stage where laughing and mocking the old Bible stories seems daring and funny.

So...why bother?

Presents.

If I had any more respect for the institution of the Papacy than I have for the North American Man-Boy Love Association and Bank of America combined I would be tempted to apologize to Bennie Sixteen. He's pretty much got us pegged. We're in it for the bling, baby. If my kiddos had been there in that stable two thousand and forty-three years ago they'd have tossed li'l Jesus out of the manger looking for one more prezzie. He would have been so much detritus around what they consider important to the day and, besides, as Missy herself would advise you: "Babies are stupid!"

Well.

Regardless of our impiety and our disregard for the "reason for the season" this time of year is traditionally also supposed to be about loving and caring for others. And as I am here surrounded by those I love I hope you and those you love are together, or, if not, at peace and in harmony tonight. I hope tomorrow, whether you're waking for a holiday or just for another Sunday, brings you challenge and fulfillment, joy and contentment.

And Baby Jesus? Well, if He is why you're celebrating today I sincerely hope you find him, in the day, in your loved ones, in your world, in your hearts. As the Chipmunks would say; me, I want a hula hoop.

G'night.

The Lifeguard's Revenge

I admit to watching "Baywatch" back in the day to a) ogle the scantily-dressed babes and b) revel in the utter doofiness of The Hoff. At the time, the actress in this video, someone named Nicole Eggert, was just another skinny California blonde. And apparently even California blondes put on a few pounds when they pass 40. Hence the subject of this...

Nicole Eggert is BACK IN BAYWATCH! from Nicole Eggert

But y'know the real odd thing to me about the thing?

Nicole is NOT fat.

Nowhere CLOSE. She's got a little belly, and is a little soft around the hips. Does she have the truly unhealthy dewlaps of flesh, in the sagging gut or under the arms or on the thighs, of the dangerously obese? C'mon. She's a gorgeous woman in her middle forties. How the hell is that fat? Add to that the fact that the woman has apparently had a serious back injury, is still in some lingering pain and probably can't maintain her the kind of fitness you need to stay actress thin.

And she's had a baby.

So this little vid doesn't work for me; you have to start from the concept that a couple of extra pounds makes you...FAT. That a woman who is a little extra curvy is disgusting because of that. Not me, Giacomo; that's not a bug, it's a feature. I'm with her; let 'em drown, the dumb bastards.

No, y'know what does kinda squick me out?

The tramp stamp. Ewwwww. Sorry, ladies. Tats look good on bikers...no, wait, they don't. Tats are tough; they have to fit you and your personality, they have to be part of you. The strange little butterfly or whatever that is you wear over your right kidney, Nicole. Ick. It just doesn't work for me.

Strange, isn't it, what the human eye and mind finds to delight in or reject? The makers of the video apparently think that Nicole's weight is unpleasant. For me, it's the scrimshaw on her skin; it's like painting grafitti on Venus di Milo.

Pretty and Not-so-pretty Things

Just doing a little housekeeping before going to lunch. First, last pictures from the Bull Run: the ethereal cirrus clouds yesterday morning. They looked as chill and sharp as the air around us.Lovely.And second: here's "Count Dooku" from the George Lucas "Star Wars the Clone Wars" series, a big fave of my little Peeper. He's an evil Dark Lord of the Sith, in case you're not familiar with the trope.And here's me. Now, tell me honestly: do you think I look like an evil Sith Lord?'Cause my kid does. And if I do, is that a bad thing?

Take Off With Us

Bear with me. I've been thinking about art, creators and creativity.

Somewhile back I posted a classic Warner's cartoon by director Chuck Jones. And talked a little about Jones, and his great forerunner Tex Avery, the real creator of the modern screwball cartoon for grownups. (I really want to talk more about these guys and their influence in a later post. Outside of Japanese anime, where you see a cartoon character in pop culture today, you're seeing Tex Avery.)

Anyway, then another adoptive mom - I'm not going to link to her because she enjoys her private little niche of the 'net - posted a picture her little girl drew on the Etch-a-Sketch and compared it to the work of Joan Miro.

And that got me thinking: why is it that most Americans can identify the work of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones and not Joan Miro and John Cage?Should I think that this is a Bad Thing? A Good Thing? Or just what it is, a change in the seasons of public taste and popular culture?

And that, in turn, got me thinking about why we think of some things as "art" and others as merely "pop culture", and the connection between the two.

I've always had a great affection for the pictures and sounds we gorge on in the modern world. To an extent undreamed of before the electronic age we are surrounded by and move through and in a world of images. Our lives have a soundtrack, if we wish it, often composed and played by others. Never in human history have pictures and music been so inescapable.

Yet, in an odd fashion, we are utterly disconnected from art and music, especially what we think of as the "High Arts", in a way that a moviegoer of Avery's and Jones' would, I suspect, have found shocking. Most of us know nothing of contemporary art, music, and literature. Many of us are also unfamiliar, or worse, contemptuous, of the "classic" great works that helped create the very Western culture we swim in like fish.

I suspect part of this is the very nature of our electronic society. Faster and more ephemeral than ever, we have little time or patience for the older forms. And the immediacy of the electronic arts leaves less for the traditional arts to say. Here's a good example: in 1808 when Goya created his series of sketches and paintings centered on the horrors of the Dos de Mayo his vision was the only way people outside Spain had to imagine the frightful events and picture the lives and deaths of the Madrilenos.But today we would see the images on CNN or Channel 2 news and have been glutted with the frightfulness long before Goya had a chance to touch us.

Still...that doesn't explain the widespread loss of affection for and interest in the High Arts. People sitting in a dark moviehouse in 1950 had newsreels and radio and TV...but think of the kind of knowledge that they needed to really get a laugh out of "What's Opera, Doc?"It's more than just the fat white horse and Bugs in Valkyrie drag; part of the funny is knowing that in the Wagner original Siegfied DOES have a "speaw and magic hewmet", and the conventions of Wagnerian opera. Few of Jones' viewers were hard-core opera fans. But they needed SOME degree of understanding of, and affection, or at least respect for, classical opera, to really "get" the gag. Jones had to know that, too, to have made making his art worthwhile.

But, if you dare, look at the latter-day descendants of Bugs and Elmer in the only profitable Warner's cartoon since 1959, 1996's"Space Jam". The only references in this...unfortunate...thing are to OTHER pop culture icons: Nike, "Pulp Fiction", Disney. It's culturally "dead", self-referential, capable of being fully understood by a kid who has read nothing but cereal boxes and watched nothing but ads and basketball.

Then think back to the John Cage piece I embedded above. Does "4'33"" touch you emotionally? Does it reach you on a really visceral level? Or do you sit there thinking to yourself, consciously working to find meaning in it? Or, worse, are just amused or contemptuous of it as a bit of nonsense? It's art, or a sort, but an art so rarefied and disconnected and self-absorbed as to have lost its ability to reach all but the smallest of self-selected audiences. Try and imagine a Bugs Bunny cartoon that uses 4'33" as a reference point. Hard, isn't it? The thing is so difficult to encompass, and yet so insubstantial, that it almost parodies itself. It, too, is "dead" in a way.

(I have to stop here and tell you a story about this piece. Someone named Batt, best known a "Womble" in Britain, apparently wrote a silent piece that ended up in court as plagarized from 4'33". Mr. Batt had two great quotes about this: first that his was "...a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds." The former-Womble also claimed that "My silence is original silence, not a quotation from his silence." Hesettled out of court. Heh.)

So let's agree that "Space Jam" is trash: fun but disposable, commercial crap. But I'm going to suggest to you that 4'33" is trash, too: twee, affected and oblique, you sit in front of it, cough, scratch your ass and walk away, untouched. Much of modern art, particularly painting and sculpture, and huge job lots of modern classical music seem to have this same problem. They are just lost, jealously treasured by a small coterie, disconnected from and disregarded by the rest.

So where does this leave the art and music we hear and see all around us?

This may seem insane, but I'm suggesting that Chuck Jones might be our Goya, the Coen Brothers our Miro.

I'm honestly suggesting that some of what is our "pop culture" IS going to turn out to be our Art. That, much as Mozart was the highest expression of the folk music and popular drama of the 18th Century, Bob Fosse may turn out to be the Mozart, Goya and Nijinsky of our day.

So what do you think?

And with that, let me feast you on one of Fosse's greatest: the "Come Fly With Us" scene from All That Jazz. I wouldn't be my Big Gay Son's Big Gay Dad if I didn't tell you that this is one of my favorite scenes from one of my all-time favorite movies. Pure. Fucking. Broadway. Dance. Genius.
"Now Sinatra will never record it..."

Heh. Priceless.