Friday, March 20
Spent Thursday night in a variety of unproductive and completely enjoyable pursuits. Did the Hewitt show at 7:40. Behind the scenes fun: Natalie was supposed to come home from Girl Scouts right about the time I was due to go on the air, which meant DING DONG, and dog barking, and all manner of horrible calamities. So I’m standing by the door, listening to the hold music with the countdown (“the Hugh Hewitt show – returns! In 30 seconds”) hoping she makes it in before I have to Address the Nation. She did. Whew. Upstairs; orate and pace. Afterwards I sat down to write the 100 Mysteries, and thought, oh to hell with it.
Really. These aren’t true deadlines. But I let myself slide, then they don’t happen, and the project evaporates, and the odd satisfaction I’ll feel at the end of 2010 when the project is done will be spoiled by my habitual laziness. Then again, to hell with it. What I really want to do is get some Uniblab sounds for this piece I started last week. It’s cheerful and robotic, and it would profit from Uniblab saying “Back to work, back to work.”
You know Uniblab, right? The big-headed robot who elbowed George Jetson out of a job for an episode. Since I couldn’t find the video on YouTube, I bought it from Amazon, isolated the soundtrack, and carved up the dialogue to put into the piece -
At which point I remembered we hadn’t practiced piano. So I tore her away from her drawing tablet and made her practice. Like me as a kid, she hates it. Loves music, hates to practice. Afterwards she went back to her computer, and finished a story using the week’s spelling words. And here it is:
Spelling Test Words Story
Natalie Lileks
I was basking on my beach chair, watching the sun set on the horizon. Boats buffeted the quay. Hardly any people went out to surf because the swell was dying down. A bird swooped down and molted a feather which happened to land on my knee. Then I slowly fell asleep.
When I woke up, Nothing felt real. It was pitch black. “Must have dozed off again,” I thought. I saw something bubble in the lake, and then it came up. A squid! Quickly I ran. Past palm trees, and – wait, there wasn’t anybody here! This place was deserted! Running faster than before, not looking were I was going, I ran into a palm tree. The squid picked me up. I screamed and closed my eyes, getting ready to be turned into a giant squid’s dinner. Then my eyes opened. I was sitting on my beach chair. I WAS DREAMING! I felt so stupid. I packed up my things, feeling silly.
The End
It’s only a matter of time before she wants to make Club Penguin machinima. If you don’t know what that means, well, it’s using virtual environments to make your own movies. People fire up online games, record the screen action in multiplayer environments according to a script. Add voices, edit it, voila. The sub-tween set is doing this in Club Penguin, Disney’s online community – they type in dialogue, which appears in speech bubbles, and edit the screen captures to tell a story. It doesn’t matter that it’s rough and irregular; you have kids creating their own movies for a mass-distribution platform, and they get more views than M. Night got for opening week of his last movie. It’s not that the world is changing – it already changed, and the new one is going on all around us under the noses of the adults.
Anyway. I put her to bed and worked on the Uniblab Mix for a while, and then I wrote 100 Mysteries. Discovered that the two projects had a remarkable commonality, as you’ll see later today. I mean, really remarkable. What thin strand connected Uniblab to a 1932 movie? You’ll have to wait.
The exercise in the post below this one – name that cartoonist – required some savvy about a subject obscure for most. But not me! No, I knew it! There’s nothing like surrounding yourselt with small subjects about which you know a few things; makes a man feel smart. The only reason I knew the cartoonist was William Steig was because I saw his stuff in that large compendium of New Yorker cartoons we had at the house when I was growing up. I pored over that book until I had every one of them memorized, even if I didn’t get them. Part of my childhood fascination with the Olden Times. It told me who Jimmy Walker and Belasco and Al Smith and John Held Jr. Were, but this isn’t information you can readily work into your daily life. Unless you have a blog.
I bring this up because I had a burrito tonight. So far, I haven’t brought up the burrito, which is good; all the cooks had shirts that said “Don’t Drink the Water,” ha ha because it’s Mexican food, full of amoebic dysentery. The burrito was six bucks, which seemed steep – until I saw it. The last time I held anything that big it was wet and screaming and had an umbilical cord attached. I took it home and got to work, relieved to find it was mostly rice, the gustatory equivalent of packing peanuts. When it was done I felt . . . Full, and though “I feel sorry for my rice.” Which led to a twitter remark:
If you have any dignity, apologize to the rice right now! (I DEFY anyone to name the movie that quote comes from.)
Of course, a flurry of replies nailed it: A Better Tomorrow, a 1986 John Woo movie with the very cool Chow Yun Fat. The only reason I knew it: a long, long time ago I had a real digitizer that could take sounds and convert them to computer files, and for years – from one computer to the next – I’ve dragged those files along, pieces of audio lint I can’t get out of my pocket. I could never hear them again and I’d still have them in my head, somewhere.
Anyway: some got the reference, as expected; the internet is a giant distributed information storage and retrieval system, and the most powerful tools are the meat-and-water units attached at the end by their fingertips. But some, it seemed, googled it. That’s fine. But it reminded me that there’s a difference between knowing a thing and knowing how it find it. Does the distinction matter? Well, yes. For obvious reasons, it helps to know how to make a fire, as opposed to knowing where you can get pdfs online of the Boy Scout Handbook. But knowing things lets you make connections in your head you can’t get with the web; the intenret leads you from point A to point 85, and while it’s usually an interesting anabasis, all you remember at the end is how one damn thing leads to another, not connects to another. It’s as if we dump out a jigsaw puzzle on the table and compliment ourselves on seeing 500 pieces, instead of the picture they’re supposed to form.
I know, I know – I’m talking about knowing the source of an amusingly dubbed Hong Kong movie that concerns mock outrage over rice. I wonder if it’s on YouTube.
Sigh. I feel so stupid for thinking it wouldn’t be. (language warning.) Don’t worry; it switches to English for the pertinent parts. I suspect this is an iconic moment in Hong Kong movies, because rice is disrespected, and someone is shot in the leg for the crime.
I feel sorry with my rice:
I haven’t seen that since, oh, 1992. The things that stick in your mind. For example:
When I saw this, I thought immediately of Zippy the Pinhead.
Your morning challenge: why?
Later today: 100 mysteries, and perhaps the Uniblab Mix, if I finish it. Column at at StarTribune.com, and the now-traditional Lance Lawson up at buzz.mn. I have another column to write, and my father’s coming into town to see a basketball game. Friday looks grand.
38 Responses to “Friday, March 20”
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No offense Mr. Lileks but that kid of yours needs serious help…. on how to spell the word “where”. Or you need to do a better job spellchecking when you post her stories on your site.
Yeah…the kid needs to learn how to use semicolons, too. And would it have been too much to ask for some iambic pentameter?
Only thing I can think of is the big polka dots on Zippy’s costume. Interesting clip, BTW.
And I thought (G)Nat’s story was great!
Ha – I know that one.
Zippy (Actually, Griffy, the cartoonist) is obsessed with Ernie Bushmiller’s “Nancy” and its spare and iconic visual landscape. He points out that one of the elements of Nancy and Sluggo’s world is the “three rocks” arrangement which appears in numberless Nancy panels.
I love meaningless connections between things. I remember how thrilled I was to discover the source of Obi Wan Jenobi’s Jedi finger-twiddle (“these aren’t the droids you’re looking for”). I’m sure it wasn’t in the script. Alec Guiness used exactly the same gesture in “The Ladykillers” (the 1955 Ealing Studios version) when the little old lady discovers the string quartet in her basement are actually bank robbers. He is trying desparately to convince her of some insanely unlikely excuse and he does the Jedi finger thing. Wonderful.
Since I am not James Lileks, I am not going to go get the DVD and grab a frame and post it somewhere to prove it, but it’s there.
The Zen of the Three Rocks…. OOOOmmmmmmm.
Ahhh…..three rocks. We’re in Bushmiller Country now. Sluggo is my Co-Pilot.
Jenobi? I love this non-editable comment format. And zefal – I hope you were kidding. “Were” for “where” is a TYPO. We all do ‘em.
“Three Rocks”– There was a large format collection of “Nancy” material, and it included some stips from “Zippy” where Ernie Bushmiller entered the strip advised Zippy that comedy is in ‘three rocks’. ‘Two?’ ‘No, three’. I bought that book…I dunno, 1992?
Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick — she’s eight years old! Cut her some slack.
The book of “Zippy” selections is “Are We Having Fun Yet?” It includes the Ernie Bushmiller/Zippy conversation re: three rocks versus two rocks or one rock.
I think of that conversation every time I look through my kitchen window. I live in a collection of townhomes (translation: suburban barracks) and some would-be landscape architect placed a large and irrelevant rock in the park-let out back. Maybe if I added two more rocks myself, it would annoy me less.
I was grateful to discover Zippy in the 1980s. He made that decade tolerable for me.
I thought I might be the first to get this . . . wrong! “Are We Having Fun Yet” came out in the 80’s, actually.
On a completely unrelated topic, Mr. Lileks, my wife’s two sisters are the two little girls pictured in “Interior Desecrations.”
“No offense Mr. Lileks but that kid of yours needs serious help…. on how to spell the word “where”. Or you need to do a better job spellchecking when you post her stories on your site.”
There should be commas before and after “Mr. Lileks.” The use of an ellipsis is very dubious here, and, in any event, in the middle of a sentence it should have three dots, not four.
“Serious help” is arguably idiomatic, but inarguably crude, and it should be “better job OF spellchecking.”
No offense.
Whoa! Wich ones, and were?
Yes, SERIOUS HELP indeed. I did proof the story a 2nd time before printing it off for class, and we went through the errors together. Serious help. Criminey.
Whenever I see a little pile of rocks I think of The Blair Witch Project. Same planet, different worlds I guess.
You mean “Woa!”
No, pretty sure he meant “Woe”.
My parents were the opposite of manic, and I could have used more structure, but I do wonder about future blowback from kids who are continually being assessed and put through paces.
OK, now I’m downloading the machimina Chuck Norris off the original site.
Synchonisity alert (and, now, I’m not going to apologize for the gd spelling. Live wit it): Yesterday, I had iTunes up on the computer, set to Party Shuffle, and it came up with Bill Shatner’s “Common People” and “Captain Clanton” by one J. Lileks.
Whoa, as Spicoli would say.
Uniblab! “Spacely’s a stupe! (click click) Spacely’s a stupe!” I’ve always loved that character, he was so thoroughly rotten. Remember the one where Uniblab was the drill sergeant in Jetson’s army reserve unit? good times.
Didn’t get the Zippy reference on the three stones, but my first thought was SkyNet.
@Bridey: Nice smackdown on zefal, who deserves it if he/she is serious. It could also be pointed out that the period after “where” should precede the quotation mark instead of following it. (The only exception would be if zefal is from England or Canada.)
@zefal: If you’re serious, please lighten up. This is an elementary school kid we’re (not “were”) talking about here. I teach people all the way up through the college level, and I’ve seen “were” misused in place of not only “where,” but “wear” and “we’re” as well. (And if you weren’t being serious, make sure your tags are turned on; I don’t think your HTML worked that time.)
Go Bison!
Mmmmmmmm, burritos…Hey, did you pick that burro up at Chipotle’s? Considering it’s owned by Mickey D, they don’t wrap a bad burro…
Of course (oooh, I started with a preposition!), having lived in the Phoenix area for over ten years, I can confidently state that there ain’t no Mexican food like Mexican Mexican food. Filiburto’s was my favorite drive-through breakfast burro place, the size of a forearm and a preponderance of carne…But to sit down and eat? Ajo Al’s every time. I’d order the Pollo con Qeso and ask the waiter to request that the “chef” prepare it HIS favorite way–He’d send it out on a 1-inch thick bed of jalapenos and a side of Pico-Pica….Nummy *slurp*…
Oooh! Oooh! We had that New Yorker cartoon compendium. I remember that Al Smith cartoon, showing his influence on Washington: trees and Washington monument set off-kilter. Hilarious. And all the references to the Trylon and Perisphere introduced me to the 1939 World’s Fair, and the wonder that it was.
Honestly don’t remember the William Steig comics standing out though.
Hmm. No one else has picked up on the New Yorker cartoon book. My folks had the 25th Anniversary compendium of cartoons, the dates being 1925-1950. I, too, about had it memorized. The Steig connection on the cartoon was easy. Names of cartoonists should perhaps also include Charles Addams, James Thurber, and Peter (?) Arno.
My folks also had a cartoon “best of” book from Punch. It was from the 1930s-early 1950s or so.
I have the Punch book. No idea whatever happened to the New Yorker volume, since my folks broke up the house in 2002 and moved to a Retirement Village in the Cincinnati area. Lot of stuff went missing right around then, including lots of family photos going back to the interim Old Country between life in Fiddler-on-the-Roof-land and here in The Land of Promise. Which it was to my great-grandparents. But I ramble…
Hmm. MichaelsDaddy hit the submit button first.
Oh, yeah, I remember that cartoon. It was a commentary on the influence of Al Smith during his run for the Presidency in 1928 against Hoover. He kept his hat/cap on his head slouched to the left. Even the KKK spooks marching along had their coneheads tilted!
Hmm. Wonder if Harry Turtledove could do an alternative history with Al Smith winning and the Great Crash and Depression beginning on Dems’ watch. The mind boggles. Mine does, anyway.
You might enjoy CDB by W. Steig. Delightful, and (G)Nat would enjoy it as well. What a terrific story–those lousy spelling assignments are devilish for most kids, but she knocked it out of the park–or beach, as the case may be. Warms your heart as a parent to see her talent, no?
My 11:49 a.m. post above was supposed to tell zefal to make sure that his/her *sarcasm* tags were turned on next time, but I typed it in HTML and the program turned my own tag off (d’oh).
In 2004 someone gave me “The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker”. Extra cool part is it came with 2 CDs with all the cartoons in pdf format! Love it! Especially the George Booth cartoons featuring cats and a very grumpy Target dog (sans red target).
Heh, I read that first comment above as sarc. The … is the tipoff.
I don’t suppose you need to be told this, but your kid has talent! That is very good indeed for an eight year old. (And that’s coming from an EXTREMELY persnickety editor.)
I’m with Gina. (G)Nat has obviously inherited her Dad’s flair for the written word. Nice work, James!
Lileks–the photo in Interior Desecrations where the mother is in the kitchen looking out into the dining room at the two little girls, the caption makes a crack about drive-thru windows. Those two girls are my wife’s older sisters, their dad was in the PR business. Their mom made the dresses they’re wearing in the photo.
“…the period after ‘where’ should precede the quotation mark instead of following it. (The only exception would be if zefal is from England or Canada.)”
Not necessarily–it used to be acknowledged as conditional here, but we’ve become too lazy & anti-intellectual to bother with whether a punctuation mark is part of the quote, or part of the sentence as a whole. I was taught the old way–thank you Miss McGucken– & still use it(to annoy those around me who think they know style, if nothing else).
I am anxiously awaiting the day that (G)Nat follows in her daddy’s footsteps and writes a book. That small story is better than most of the dreck that is published these days. You go (G)Nat. That was awesome. p.s. I won’t live forever so, you had better get busy, kiddo.
We made ‘machinima’ back in the mid-90s using Goldeneye. Huh, no idea I was so far ahead of the curve.