P.S. A Column On Things

Paul Schindler, Winner of the 1974 William L. Stewart Award

In June of 1974, I was given the William L. Stewart award for contributions to extra-curricular activities at MIT. I was looking at it the other day and wondered if it was listed anywhere on the Internet. According to Google, there is no list of winners. If you search for William L. Stewart Award, you will find winners who have it on their web page or their resume. Well, now it is on my blog, in the event anyone is ever interested. I won it for my work at The Tech, the MIT student newspaper.

Bucket List: Groundhog Day In Punxsatawney. Check.

 

So how did Punxatawney end up on my bucket list? First, some background, according to CBS and the Associated Press:

“February 2nd is Candlemas — a Christian holiday with pre-Christian roots. Candlemas marks Mary's ritual purification, 40 days after the birth of Jesus. In pre-Christian times, it was the festival of Light. The Celts called it "Imbolc" — the midpoint between winter and spring.

The Germans believed if a badger came out of hibernation in foul weather, spring was on its way, and if it were sunny, he'd scurry back to his burrow, because winter wasn't done.

When German colonists arrived, there were no badgers in the East, so they drafted the groundhog to do the prognosticating.

In the 1880s a western Pennsylvania newspaper editor hatched the Groundhog Day idea, sold town fathers on it, and the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club — and the holiday — were born.”

Note that last part, about the newspaper editor. Newspaper editors have tried to find ways to promote their home towns for as long as there have been newspapers. The Chandlers used the Los Angeles Times to create modern Los Angeles.

While their schtick has not created a city of 15 million people, I have to hand it to the Punxsatawney Groundhog Club (actually, I literally have to hand it to them—I’m now a member, more on which anon), they have created one of the world’s truly great tourist schemes. It’s not New Year’s Eve in Times Square, or Mardi Gras in New Orleans, or Carnival in Rio, or even Rose Festival in Portland, Ore. (gotta plug the home town), but it is an amazing feat to attract 40,000 people, at 4 a.m., in the geographic center of nowhere (an equidistant two-hour drive from either Cleveland or Pittsburgh), to stand in a field where the thermometer says 12 degrees Fahrenheit and the wind chill is in negative territory to watch a rodent (or squirrel or marmot or woodchuck) named Punxsatawney Phil pretend to predict the weather. I say pretend because the sky was covered with a thick cloud layer and there is no way Phil saw his shadow and scurried back into his burrow, but that’s what the Inner Circle said, after their president spoke a little Groundhogese with his charge at dawn on Feb. 2. That’s par for the course; in his 132 years in the weather-predicting business (the club claims Phil has lived that long) he has only predicted an early spring about 30 times.

Of course, the idea of Groundhog Day is good, but maybe not that good as a tourist draw. Locals say the annual turnout was a few hundred people each year—admittedly a lot of people freezing their butts off to watch a marmot weather predictor. But for the event to become a real draw, to bring 40,000 people into a borough with about 5,000 residents, it needed something besides the basic squirrel weather service idea.

One way to get into the big leagues would be to garner enormous press coverage. Even when I was a boy, Groundhog Day was ubiquitous on print and broadcast media. That interested me in the event. I mean, the Journal covered it every year; it must be important. That tradition continues; on the morning of Friday, Feb. 2, 2018, by noon there were 68,000 Google citations to news stories about Phil’s prediction, from reporters of all types. I defy you to find a U.S. newspaper, broadcast station or network that didn’t do an item on Phil. But in a century, that massive dose of old-fashioned publicity didn’t really make the celebration catch fire.

Another way to get into the big leagues would be to get Hollywood to make a film. Perhaps one mostly shot several hundred miles away, one in which the ceremony itself plays a minor part, but one which makes the words “Groundhog Day” part of the English language as a synonym for “living the same day over and over.”

Well exactly.  Danny Rubin wrote it, Harold Ramis directed it and Bill Murray starred in it. And the year after Groundhog Day’s release in 1993, even though Punxsatawney, PA is no Woodstock, Ill., the crowds wanting to see the real thing rose from the hundreds to the tens of thousands.

Here is my experience of the 2018 event, complete with advice.

First, do not, repeat, do not show up at dawn on Groundhog Day and expect to be able to see the stage without binoculars. And frankly, if you show up at dawn, you’ll never get to Gobbler’s Knob on time, because it is two miles from town on steep, icy, narrow roads (closed to most vehicular traffic except shuttles) and takes 35 minutes to walk. Which didn’t keep hundreds of people from walking, but as we drove past, they looked miserable. Especially on the way in. There were large floodlights almost everywhere, but not everywhere. Walking in the pitch black on icy roads would scare me.

Ticket prices for the buses to the Knob are $5 per person, 12 years of age and under ride for free. If you walk up, the event is free.

But I suggest you check out groundhogday.org and, at the very least, join the groundog club (I did!) and buy a parking pass for $40 and an Inner Circle Section Pass for $20. The parking pass allows you to park quite near the site. The Inner Circle pass gets you close enough to the stage to smell Phil’s breath (kidding). This will be the best money you have ever spent.

I read up on the event on the Internet, which told me you had to be there by 4 a.m.(the site opens at 3 a.m.) for the 7:15 prediction if you wanted to see what was going on. If you have an Inner Circle pass, you can show up at 5 or 5:30 and be fine.

Come prepared for an arctic expedition. Coat, hat, gloves, scarf, (actually, a face mask would be good) all appropriate for sub-zero wind chill. Don’t neglect your boots; there may well be snow on the ground as there was this year. Warm and waterproof are the watchwords. You may not need these clothes (if Groundhog Day had been Jan. 30, it would have been 40 degrees at dawn), but you must be ready.

Accommodations are hard to come by and the “good” ones book up a year in advance. There is not much in town, and not much nearby. Not a surprise for a town of 5,000 in the middle of nowhere. If you don’t want to battle the crowds in Punxsatawney for breakfast, be prepared to drive 30 minutes to the nearest diner. Pittsburgh and Cleveland are each about two hours away, but you’ll need to be ready for a two-hour drive at 3 a.m.; we were ready. By staying two hours away, we got to stay in a pleasant hotel on the eastern edge of Pittsburgh, with nearby restaurants, a gym and a business center.

Note that, if you have a parking place, your GPS will send you to the wrong entrance; be sure to follow the map attached to your parking pass. If you choose to shuttle from downtown, be sure to set Barclay Square as your destination, and read groundhog.org for information on parking.

So, what’s the actual experience like? We had expected to arrive at 5, but the roads were in better shape than we expected, so we got there at 4:45 a.m. We parked and walked the short distance to Gobbler’s Knob. There was an inch or so of snow on the ground, and the sub-freezing temperatures made everything feel slick. My biggest concern was slipping and falling, but despite the apparent hazards, that didn’t happen. Probably because we were standing in a field, not on asphalt or concrete. I imagine a warm rainy year would pose a different set of problems.

My other big concern was standing in one place for 2½ hours with no chance to sit down and not much chance to move. We could have gone back up the hill and bought a hot beverage, but even in the Inner Circle enclosure at the front, if you leave your place you’re not going to get one as good when you get back, unless you are with someone. I was with someone, my daughter Marlow, but was still worried about walking on the icy ground. I was worried, but the entertainment is designed to keep you moving in your place, which helps with both warmth and the lengthy period of standing.

On arrival it was 14 degrees, but it dropped down to 12. That’s something you probably don’t think about very often; as dawn approaches, it generally gets colder all night, with the lowest temperature just before sunrise.

Everything was well lit with large generator-powered lights. The stage was lit for television, of which there was a lot. From the time the site opens at 4 a.m., there is entertainment, hosted by two top-hatted members of the Inner Circle. In energy and demeanor, they reminded me of nothing so much as a young Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi as the Blues Brothers. They were backed with a set of local girls, the Phillettes. In 2018, Sunny Sammy was the standout. All of the dancers were good; she was amazing.

Several bands rotated through, playing until their fingers or instruments froze. Four young women, aged 7 to 17, called themselves “The Queen of the West,” and played violin. I cannot begin to imagine how they either tuned or stayed in tune, considering the weather. There was also a brass band and a group consisting of three guitarists and a string bass called the Beagle Brothers. The two finalists of Punxsatawney’s Got Talent competed for our approval. A big man played a song he’d written about Phil and did excellent crowd work getting us to sing along. In any kind of normal competition, he would likely have won the $500 first prize. Alas, the other act was a belly dancer. Let me make this clear—she was dancing barefoot, in a standard Belly Dance costume (no body stocking), in 12-degree weather with a wind chill below zero, at 5:30 in the morning. I am not an expert on belly dancing, but she was certainly competent. And she blew the singer/guitarist away when it came to crowd acclaim.

The live music was interspersed with lively recorded music. At 6:30 a.m., the lights were turned off for a 20-minute firework display. Who doesn’t love fireworks? And they were being launched from just a few hundred yards away, on a pitch-black, cloudy night. So, they were bright and noisy.

Finally, just before sunrise, the Inner Circle, a group of largely older men in top hats, tuxedos and black overcoats (except for one relatively young member, who apparently didn’t get the memo), walks to the stage, and the prognostication ritual begins. The movie gets this part almost exactly right. The president taps on the door marked “Phil,” with a special cane. Phil is removed. The president talks to him in “Groundhogese,” then reads a scroll (more words but less ornate than the one in the movie) which reveals Phil’s prognostication. Shortly after, the crowd makes a break for their shuttle bus, their nice warm car, or another half hour of bracing cold as they walk back to town. In a nod to the movie, the PA firsts blasts “Pennsylvania Polka,” and then Sonny and Cher’s “I’ve Got You Babe,” which show up more often in the movie than Phil.

So that’s it. There are hundreds of people who come every year. There were people at the Knob from all over the world. I though that coming from San Francisco would distinguish us, but there was one person from Japan and one from Pakistan, so we didn’t have the longest trip by any means.

I love the movie, and I enjoyed the ceremony as much as it is possible to enjoy an event where you spend several hours in the freezing cold to watch a woodchuck predict the coming of spring. For me, once is enough. I’ll just watch the movie every year on Groundhog Day. I’ll be warmer and more emotionally involved.

We'll Always Have Pittsburgh in February

Those of you who know me (and that’s most of the people who read this column) will already know I have an aversion to cold. I didn’t take it well during my five years in Boston, or my year in Hartford, or even during the occasional ice storm in Portland. So, if someone told you I was going to see Groundhog Day in Punxsatawney, PA, you would no doubt have scoffed, particularly if you were looking at the weather prediction for Feb. 2, 2018.

I feel certain none of you were looking at that prediction, but I can tell you the temperature was around 12, with a sub-zero wind chill. The story of how I got there, in the context of my love for the movie and my indoctrination by decades of media coverage, follows. But first, the literal story of how I got there.

My daughter Marlow and I flew from SF to Chicago on American, then changed planes for Pittsburgh. Ten months of the year, United flies to Pittsburgh non-stop from San Francisco, but not in January and February. The plane change was tight but uneventful.

Upon arrival at SFO, I realized I had left our parking pass and VIP enclosure passes in my filing cabinet. My wife was kind enough to FedEx them to our hotel in Pittsburgh, so no harm, no foul. If she hadn’t done so, we’d have been taking a shuttle bus to stand with the hoi polloi, and the stage would have been a distant implication instead of a close-up.

We arrived Wednesday night, and had Thursday to go around Pittsburgh. We were still on Pacific Time, so we didn’t have breakfast until 10 (7 pacific) nor get going until 11.

Paul, paying strict attention to the streetcar's progress

I insisted on riding the T, Pittsburgh’s subway, through the 140-year old tunnel to the Heinz Stadium station. It’s a beautiful system, with lovely up-to-date cars, and clean, well-lit subway stations. We used the same day-pass to ride the Monongahela Incline, which gave us a beautiful view of the city.

Marlow gets wacky in front of one of the big Deutsch Town murals

We had lunch in the Germantown neighborhood (or Deutsch Town, if you will), at a restaurant which served pierogi. Marlow had never had them, and I hadn’t had them in years. Still good.

We knew we were going to have to be in bed by 9 p.m. (6pm pacific!) and up at 2:30 a.m. Working backwards from dinner and a viewing of Groundhog Day, we knew we had to be back at our hotel, an hour away from downtown (in rush hour), by 4:30 p.m.

Paul pays homage to the opening scene of Groundhog Day at the Warhol Museum

Thus, we decided to limit our sightseeing to one more attraction; the Andy Warhol museum. It is quite something; allow more than 90 minutes to see it. I knew I hated his movies; the exhibits reminded me why. I knew I loved his art; ditto. He was older than I realized (8 years older than my dad). He presented as younger. He had a quite successful but relatively ordinary career as a commercial illustrator until he reverted to his college roots and became an artist. He lived with his mother and never married; infer what you will, but I’ll infer he was given a tough time while growing up in a Catholic neighborhood of Pittsburgh. His Brillo Boxes (I’d only seen pictures; they are more impressive in person), his silk-screened works and his appropriation of pop culture images made him an artistic pioneer. I still think he was a bit over the top.

Marlow and I watched Groundhog Day. I have seen it at least 25 times; Marlow maybe a half-dozen. There are still parts where I cry, especially after my instruction in the Buddhist themes of the film. Dinner, 9 p.m. bedtime, 2:30 a.m. wakeup,

Saturday was taken up with a visit to Amish country, an item Marlow wanted to cross off her bucket list. Lancaster County is the Pennsylvania center of Amish culture, but it is four hours by car from Pittsburgh. As it happens, T, a woman Marlow’s age who was in the next village over from her when she was in the Peace Corps in Mali (and whose initial has previously appeared in this column, back in 2011), lives near Middlefield in Geauga County, Ohio, the fourth largest Amish area in the United States—and a mere 90 minutes by car from Pittsburgh. Thus, we combined a reunion with T and a tour of Middlefield and environs.

Scenes from Amish Country

It began with lunch at Mary Yoder's, a fine Amish restaurant. The food was simple, well-prepared and beyond ample. Amazingly, I couldn't finish mine. One side dish I ordered was noodles on mashed potatoes. T said it was a common dish, and that the Amish like their carbs.

We didn’t see any good Amish quilts (in winter, they are making them more than selling them), but we did see a number of Amish people, on the road, in the stores, and at the computer terminals in the library. I will never understand how the Amish make the rules that state in which parts of modernity they can partake. Middlefield’s no Lancaster, and many Amish related tourist attractions and enterprises are closed for the winter, but as Marlow said, as we made our second purchase from an Amish sales clerk, “I’ve met my quota of Amish.”

It was a balmy 31 degrees, with a wind-chill of 21. As T put it, “you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about wind chill in San Francisco, do you.” No, we don’t.

I must comment on a fortuitous happenstance. As American Airlines blanketed the Internet on Saturday with warnings to book away from Chicago because of harsh weather, I admired the sheer dumb luck that I had booked our return through Charlotte, N.C., presently unencumbered by weather warnings.

 

Life is short, and we do not have too much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel the way with us

I was discussing the "life is short" blessing, used by Father Larry Hunter of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Orinda several years ago. All the online versions just seemed slightly off.Then with the help of the Wayback Machine (the Internet Archive), we found his exact wording, which, we agreed, was the best. Typepad is very well indexed by Google, so I hope that the next time someone is looking for this prayer, then can find this first-rate version.

 

Life is short,
and we do not have too much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel the way with us;
So be swift to love,
and make haste to be kind,
And may the Divine Mystery Who is beyond our ability to know
but Who made us, and Who loves us, and Who travels with us,
Bless us and keep us in peace. Amen.

 

A benediction by Dr. Edmund Jones adapted from words by philosopher and writer Henri Frederic Amiel, 1821-1887

Gratitude and Thanksgiving

For 18 years, I have been running variations of the same Thanksgiving column, listing the things for which I am thankful. A variety of events during the last several years led me to stop posting regular blog entries and start writing  regular entries in a gratitude journal, which got me to thinking of the difference between thankful  and grateful. Google isn't much help:

Grateful: feeling or showing an appreciation of kindness; thankful.
Thankful: pleased and relieved, grateful

So, basically, it treats the words as synonymous. I do still give thanks for my health and my family. I am also grateful to have them in my life. I am grateful to be of use, to my family and others. I am grateful for the love I get and the love I have an opportunity to give. I am grateful that my medical problems are all treatable. Every day, I am grateful to be here, because every minute I have had since January 2007 has been a gift. I cherish that gift. I don't need Clarence the Angel to show me that this is a wonderful life; unlike George Bailey, I have never for a moment doubted that the world is a better place for my being in it. I give thanks for my blessings every morning, and expect to do so for the rest of my life. And, yes, especially on Thanksgiving Day.

Finally, if you feel life has been dealing to you from the bottom of the deck, I recommend the practice of keeping a gratitude journal. Write down one or two things each day for which you are grateful. Big or small, serious or silly. You may find it helps you keep things in perspective; I know it has had that effect on me. Going back and rereading it sometimes can be an interesting and rewarding activity.

For all of you who are still left to read this now-occasional blog, Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving

If this sounds familiar, it is because, in the great tradition of Herb Caen and Jon Carroll (both now gone from the Chronicle and nearly forgotten), I am recycling my 12 previous Thanksgiving messages from 18years.

This year we will be in Orinda, California, my wife and my older daughter and her husband, and my nephew and his beloved. My younger daughter will be back for a Saturday Thanksgiving at her sister’s.

I know I have a lot to be thankful for. I am enjoying retirement, I have my health, such as it is, and I have my family. I can't imagine why I would bother getting out of bed each morning if not for my wife and my two girls.

My most important role is as husband to Vicki and father to my daughters.

The years I spent full-time with my girls are priceless. The time I spend with them now is priceless as well.

Not everyone can work in a home office, as I did for two decades.

But no matter where you work, the next time you have to make the tough call between the meeting and the soccer game, go to the soccer game. You'll never regret it. I am thankful for my family. Be thankful for yours.

Also give thanks for your friends and your good fortune. Spread that good fortune around in any way you can. I have much to be thankful for this holiday season, as I have had every year of my life. Another friend slipped out of this world during 2016, and I will miss him as I will miss my other departed friends.

I am thankful that I have a loving brother. I am thankful for my loving and understanding wife, and for the two most wonderful daughters I could have imagined, both of them turning into vibrant, intelligent young women before my very eyes.

I am thankful for every sunrise and sunset I get to see, every moment I get to be in, every flower I try so desperately to stop and smell. I am thankful that I can move closer every day to living a life in balance. Every morning, I am grateful to be alive. Not a bad way to start the day. For reasons I don't want to detail, I am extremely grateful just to be alive.

I am thankful for 250 pounds; down 50 from my peak. I am thankful for the fact that I will still be near that weight next year at Thanksgiving.

Every week at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Orinda, the former vicar concluded the service with this homily. The provenance seems uncertain; the Internet lists several attributions. All I know is, it touches me every time I hear it and is sound advice for life: The new vicar has discarded it, but I haven’t.

"Remember that life is short and we have too little time to gladden the hearts of those who travel the way with us. So be quick to be kind, make haste to love, and may the blessing of God be with you now and always."

It has been with me. I hope it is with you. In the meantime, I am thankful, finally, for each and every one of you reading this column. I hope you have a great Thanksgiving!

This and That

I have collected a lot of string since last I posted. In July, when the shape of the future was dimmer, I received this email from my friend John Ruley. I guess I am violating Godwin’s law, but it does provide some historical perspective:

On your Brexit Correction - according to William Shirer, in Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Chapters 6 and 7), Hitler was first appointed as chancellor after the Nazis failed to win a clear majority in the 1932 elections - but after he became chancellor, in what Shirer calls "the last relatively free election Germany was to have" - received 44% of the total vote, which while not a majority far outpaced that of competing parties. Hitler formed a coalition with the nationalist party, and that gave him the majority he needed to pass the "enabling laws" that gave him absolute power, among other things outlawing all other political parties, including his erstwhile nationalist allies. So, while Hitler was not personally brought to power in a free election, he in fact gained power legally - as he often said - as a result of free elections. Strange, but true!

 Long-time reader Stephen Coquet (one of the few who came to this column organically, rather than through pre-existing friendship with me) suggested this article about Hillary’s email server, back when it still might have done some good if placed before a wider readership. I feel like I let our side down. He also sent me this article from the Guardian about Baltimore police surveillance, and added,

The key statement is, “Police spokesperson TJ Smith insisted that the privately funded agreement between Persistent Surveillance Systems and city police 'was not a secret surveillance program.' " They just thought better if they didn’t tell anyone.

Dan Grobstein mentioned something I had vaguely heard about: A hip, cuddly and cunningly sadistic musical adaptation of the 1993 Bill Murray movie has opened in London. It is scheduled for the August Wilson Theatre on Broadway starting on April 17, 2017 Dan also passed along Ang Lee Is Embracing a Faster Film Format. Can Theaters Keep Up? There are exactly two U.S. theaters showing Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk at 120 fps; one is the Cinerama Dome in LA, where I plan to see it soon. The other is in New York City. Dan also tipped me to the race to preserve old celluloid. 

 Kevin Sullivan has a book tip:

Looking at your book list, I was reminded by your love of film that I recently enjoyed reading - a) "Adventures in the Screen Trade" by William Goldman, and then for fun, the actual book by him of "The Princess Bride". Both were informative and enjoyable.

This from my friend and former colleague Jerry Pournelle (the article is behind the paywall)

"I have ordered the book, but the review is itself informative and interesting."

We’re All Cord Cutters Now
At one chain, the top 100 movie titles accounted for 85% of the DVDs rented in-store. But online, the top titles make up only 35% of rentals.
By Frank Rose
Sept. 6, 2016 7:18 p.m. ET

Does the internet pose a threat to established entertainment companies? Michael D. Smith and Rahul Telang lead a class at Carnegie Mellon University in which a student recently put that question to a visiting executive. He pooh-poohed the idea: “The original players in this industry have been around for the last 100 years, and there’s a reason for that.” As co-heads of CMU’s Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics, Messrs. Smith and Telang aim to counter this line of thought, and in “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing” they do just that, explaining gently yet firmly exactly how the internet threatens established ways and what can and cannot be done about it. Their book should be required for anyone who wishes to believe that nothing much has changed.

That such thinking still exists, at a time when Apple and Alphabet (that is, Google) are by far the world’s most valuable corporations, is testament to the power of self-delusion. Whether in music or movies or television or books, digital technology has given artists the tools to strike out on their own, enabled audiences to avoid paying for anything they don’t want to pay for and denied media companies the ability to control audience behavior. No longer can executives in New York or Los Angeles force music fans to buy an entire album instead of a single song; or movie buffs to line up at the box office for something they’d rather watch at home free; or television audiences to rush home and endure a barrage of ads in order to see their favorite shows.

From The Desk of Daniel Dern

Dern  spotted the British Version of the musical version of Groundhog Day. It is nice that some people have noticed my GHD obessesion). He sent along two other Bill Murray observations:

1) Bill in a Brooklyn bar

2) If you didn't see the recent THE JUNGLE BOOK, you should -- for you, because, if nothing else, Bill Murray voices Baloo (the bear), and yes, he and Mowgli do indeed sing "The Bear Necessities." Here they are doing it live on Jimmy Kimmel:.

Also from Dern: Watch the New York Public Library's Beautiful Reading Room Get Reshelved with Books and (SNL) movie trailer for Disney Bambi live-action sequel

Too late for theaters, but just in time for on-demand and DVDs from the Library, are some brief reviews from Daniel Dern (who also discovered Windows 9). Yes, I know I used to review these things myself, but I also used to eat a pound bag of M&Ms and drink a large bottle of Tab at one sitting—there are lots of things I used to do that I don’t do anymore.

Star Trek Beyond -  I'm sure there are no shortage of plot holes, cavils, and legit criticisms, but I thought this movie was Just Fine. Gave us lots of what we want -- lingering looks at the Enterprise, space fights, (a reasonable amount of) snappy dialog. Recommended. Note, no 'post-credit end of movie 'Easter Egg.''

Deadpool - I'm sure you saw this in the theatre. (I didn't.) The BluRay version includes lots of bits that were left out because of too much cussin', violence, sex, etc., dramatically upping the humor level. If you haven't seen the BluRay, consider doing so.

The Jungle Book - I never read Kipling's stories this is based on, nor saw the Disney animated 'toon. This take was live/CGI, and quite well done.

The Legend of Tarzan - I see that the reviews were mixed, to say the least. I enjoyed it. Jane was played by Margot Robbie, who (of course, although I didn't remember until seeing the info online) played Dr. Harley Quinn in the recent Suicide Squad movie.

Brooklyn - A good historical (pre-WWII USA) movie with no villains, no chase scenes, no explosions.

Through the Looking Glass - Having just watched it courtesy of our library, I enjoyed it, and recommend it. In some ways it's better than Burton's previous Alice movie, although I can easily list what feels like some weak points in TtLGlass. Much of what I could say, I won't, because it would be spoilers. Here's what I will say: It's not a movie of Carroll's book. It does take place in that "universe," focusing on Alice, with many familiar characters. It's an action movie. It opens with explosions, and builds. It looks fabulous. The library disk had a good short feature on aspects of the costuming which give a better look at some of the details. And Sasha Baron Cohen has a great role and does it well. That's all I'm going to say, that should be enough.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets - Official Trailer #1 (2017) 

A few political words

Faithless electors on Dec. 19 seem like a good idea, but aren't really likely, despite Hillary's popular vote lead.

Exit polls aren't perfect, but they sure raise some questions in an election where the electoral college victory was won with the votes of fewer people that you can find watching Ohio State play football on a Saturday.

A friend noted the work of Bob Fitrakis, Ph.D., J.D., who was an international election observer for the 1994 presidential election in El Salvador and co-wrote and edited the international observer's report for the United Nations. He was also a lead attorney in the Moss v. Bush election challenge in 2004 and is currrently suing the Edison Research Group regarding their practice of adjusting exit poll data in favor of improbable results. 

Charts courtesy of Greg Kilcup. 

Airing A Peeve and an Interest

My career as a professional journalist began in the summer of 1973 at the Oregon Journal, the afternoon daily newspaper in Portland, Oregon, one of the 50 largest newspapers in the country. I loved the OJ and I am proud of my two stints there as a reporter. It was a great paper produced by great people, and I learned a lot. But the New York Times it was not. As far as I could tell, we did not have copy persons to do errands for us. We bought our own coffee, took our own copy to the City Desk, and, if we needed clippings to support a story, we went downstairs to the morgue and got them ourselves. The latter meant that, if you were on deadline (and at an afternoon newspaper that closed at noon, you were nearly always on deadline), you almost never had time to "pull the clips." So, if you had to reference an historical event, you turned to the person on the desk next to you and said, "When was the First National Tower built," and they told you "the late 60s." The OJ (and for that matter, nearly all other newspapers) were filled with such imprecision, as were the Associated Press and United Press International, where I also worked. Not only were such imprecise dates common, they were also (given the nature of human memory) frequently incorrect.

[I pause here for an anecdote. In their latter years, my parents kept disagreeing about events in their past. "You know, 40 years ago when we went to Disneyland," my mom would say, and Dad would say, "No it was 30 years," and they would argue and become frustrated. This occurred so frequently that they finally agreed; everything happened "about 10 years ago." It made for some silly conversations, but ir prevented domestic strife.]

Frankly, reading "the late 60s" irritated me, and having to write it frustrated me. It became a pet peeve of mine; whenever I had the time and resources, I tried to find the actual dates. For most of my career, such research was difficult, time-consuming and sometimes impossible. Just as I was leaving journalism, Google arrived on the scene. How I wish we had access to Google back in the day. Of course, the Internet is a cornucopia of bad data, but if you are diligent and vet your sources carefully (I am looking at you, Wikipedia), you can arrive at actual dates with some hope of accuracy, particularly if the event occurred after 1995.

So that's my peeve. My interest is in Bob and Ray, radio comedians whose radio careers stretched from WHDH in Boston in 1946 (no precise date available) to National Public Radio, ending on April 5, 1987.  I don't know where I was first exposed to them; my family regularly listened to KOIN (where I might have heard their 1959-60 CBS program at age 7) and KGW (where I might have heard them on the weekend NBC Monitor program). In any case, I cannot remember a time when I was not aware of them  nor when I was not amused by them. They were two very funny people.

For complicated reasons, I decided I would like to be able to keep straight the timeline of their joint career. This is no easy matter, especially in the early 1950s, when they worked multiple simultaneous jobs and also moved around quite a bit. "Surely someone has done a Bob and Ray timeline," I thought.

Well, no. Not until now. Based on numerous old-time radio sources and the excellent book Bob and Ray, Keener Than Most Persons, by David Pollock. In case of prizes, duplicate ties were awarded. That is, when dates from the Internet and Dave conflicted, I went with Dave.

Here now, for the first time ever, anywhere, is a complete Bob and Ray Timeline. I will correct it if someone runs across it and finds an error (information on contacting me is in the sidebar on the right of the page)

Bob and Ray Timeline

• 1946 WHDH Boston (ad libbed together on the air)

• 1947-WHDH Baseball Matinee April 11, 1947-June 30,1951
  15 min then 30 min, became Matinee with Bob and Ray

• 1949 Jan. 14, 1949-one time WMGM appearance
   filled in for Morey Amsterdam and were "discovered"

• 1951 July 2, 1951- Sept. 28, 1953 NBC Radio
  15 min 5:45 pm Mon-Fri, 1 hour Saturday 9:30pm

• 1951 WNBC Radio Aug 27, 1951-Nov. 17, 1952
  Morning program (They spent 12 hours a day at NBC; 15 on Saturday)

• 1951 Nov. 26, 1951-Sept. 28, 1953 NBC-TV
   15 min 7:30pm weekdays
   July 5, 1952 weekly half hour
    Fall 1952 15 min 10:30pm weekdays (and a variety of other slots)

• 1953 Oct. 5, 1953-July 2, 1954 ABC Network
  Also, some midnight shows on NBC radio

• 1954 WINS  March 22, 1954 -May 25, 1956 (6:30-10am)

• 1955 NBC June 12, 1955- (?) NBC Monitor

• 1955 Mutual Broadcasting System Oct. 3, 1955-September 20, 1957 
   5:05-6pm    (since WOR was the main MBS studio, some sources count this is a stint at WOR)

• 1959 CBS June 29,1959-June 24, 1960
   No NBC monitor during this period

• 1962 WHN July 30, 1962-June 30, 1964
  mornings (ironically, formerly WMGM)

• 1973 WOR March 12, 1973-April 30, 1976
  afternoon drive time 4:15-7pm

• 1983 National Public Radio July 14, 1983-April 5, 1987

There. I feel better even if you don't.

Actually, this reminds me a little of my work history at CMP, and of my work history in general, which involved cycling through a lot of jobs early in my career, than a gradual slowing of the changes towards the end.

Brexit Correction

Another reason for not mentioning Hitler in an argument is the risk of getting the reference wrong. My friend Kevin Mostyn wrote to correct my reminder that the German people elected Hitler, a cliche I was taught when I was quite young:

Strictly speaking, Hitler was not voted into power by the German people. The Nazis were elected as the largest party in the Reichstag, but they weren't the majority. Hitler was *appointed* Chancellor, not elected. Later, the Reichstag, not the people, gave him special powers, through the law called the Ermächtigungsgesetz [Enabling Act]. Those who would have voted against it where mostly excluded from the vote. Hitler took that law and ran with it. You know the rest of the story. But he was *not* elected by the German people, to rule Germany. Of course, while things were going well, they loved him.

I don't know if this makes my comparison better or worse. Donald Trump, who collected more primary votes than any Republican ever before, still collected a plurality, not a majority, of the votes.

This and That

This is a funny talking dog video.

Check out Donald and Hobbes.

Daniel Dern found this great pun in the funnies.

In Brexit news: The single best summary of Brexit. The funniest comment is this "Hitler" screed, sent to me by Robert Malchman. I am apparently the last to hear of this meme, since the London Daily Telegraph rounded up the best of these screeds in 2009. Just because I (and maybe you) are behind a meme doesn't mean it isn't still funny.

WTF

Why yes, I did give up this column. And despite three weekly Thursday publications in a row, I really don't think it is back for good. But who knows; I never said never, I just said "not weekly."

Brexit Special: Expats Check In

From London, Larry King writes:

I'm gobsmacked, to use a Briticism, which under the alien registration acts soon to be enacted I might no longer be allowed to do. Or might be required to do. It's unclear so far whether the thugs will impose mass deportations or enforced assimilation.

I might be getting a little overwrought, but make no mistake, this was a victory for the thugs. The kind of people who voted to quit the European Union are the same kind of people who drool and gibber at Trump rallies. They are largely the uneducated, the ignorant, and the mean-hearted. Above all, they hate and fear foreigners, and an inch below the surface, they hate and fear anybody different from themselves.

I'm going to have to sit and think for a while about what it all means.

From Amsterdam, I hear from another friend:

We don’t read all the Dutch newspapers in depth, but we haven’t seen anything that would lead us to believe there’s a signficant movement here to leave the EU. The only people pushing for it seem to be the ones who are anti-immigration, but they are not mainstream here. Most Dutch continue to have “welcoming” as part of their genetic makeup, and as they have for hundreds of years, they recognize that they’re way too small to go it alone. They were one of the founders of the EU and I can’t imagine them wanting to leave. Of course I couldn’t imagine Bush winning (twice) or Trump getting the nomination, so stranger things have happened. But that kind of stuff hasn’t happened here, and I like to think people here are fundamentally different than in the U.S. That’s certainly been our experience so far and one of the main reasons we feel at home here.

A friend in Seattle chimed in:

As a college history major back in the 1960s, one of my insights (it earned me an A+ on a paper) was that the United States seemed to be following Great Britain by 20-30 years in many respects. I think this still has some validity, and I am not encouraged by what I'm seeing.

There was this thought-provoking note from another friend:

In the 1820’s the five Central American republics created a short-lived union. The 20^th century saw the United Arab Republic, which attempted to fuse Egypt, Syria and North Yemen. In our own country, the founders quickly saw problems with the Articles of Confederation and, going in the other direction, replaced them with a strong Constitution. Then four score and something years later, we fought a great war to establish the principle that there’s no getting out.

I loathe Wikipedia, but it has some thoughts on the subject.

 [I used to tell my students the United States is like the Hotel California; you can check in any time you like but you can never leave. No article 50 in the U.S. Constitution, no matter what Texas says.]

Meanwhile, in another part of town

 

If you were to download a recent New York Times Book Review podcast, and listen at the 43:48 mark, you might well hear a familiar voice describing his experience with Have Space Suit, Will Travel by Robert Heinlein.

Daniel Dern tipped me to this:

‘The West Wing Weekly,’ a Podcast With a Ringer By ROBERT ITO Joshua Malina and Hrishikesh Hirway, the podcast’s co-hosts, have set an ambitious goal: discuss all 154 episodes of one of TV’s most beloved shows.