The Bleat.

How the Brain Works. Or Doesn’t

From Stephen Foster to “Brockman, to the ants submits,” or, How the Brain Works

Looking at today’s news stories, talking about headlines, said: Election fills the seat once held by Dick Day. I heard it as music, Camptown-Races meter: election fills the seat once held! Dick Day! Dick Day! (Every time we do a story on Dick Day I want to mention his daughters, Sunny and Yester, but that would be lying.) Having thought that, I couldn’t get Camptown Races out of my head. After a while I heard Yosemite Sam singing it. Then I heard Sylvester Cat schinging it, possibly while he held a trash can lid in one hand while picking out garbage from the bins with the other.

Then another piece of information inserted itself: a couple of guys looking at each other with instant recognition of something that had to be done, finally, then walking almost with exaggerated precision to do it, while singing “Camptown Races.” My brain scrambled for images to fit that nebulous thought, and came up with Lou Grant and Murray doing something to Ted Baxter. Dunking him in water? Then I realized it wasn’t Yosemite Sam I was thinking of; it was Foghorn Leghorn. He’d sung that, or whistled it, while setting up some trap for the Dawg, or perhaps dunking him in water or pummeling his backside with a plank of wood.

But the Lou + Murray having a moment of mental sync, then doing something with exaggerated motions, stuck. Couldn’t be any other TV show; I don’t know any TV show well enough. Didn’t seem right. Couldn’t recall. Damn. Senile. Everything in the head all a-meltin’ together -

No! Got it! I was thinking of the moment in “Singin’ in the Rain!” When they all realize it’s time to pull the curtain and reveal the hateful star for the fraud she is, they smile and march and yank the ropes and justice is done.

Whew!

What the hell did this have to do with “Camptown Races”?

Nothing. But it did make me wonder: what did people daydream about before popular culture? History? Religion? Geneology? Was I suffering from some sort of condition exacerbated by the internet culture of link and remix? (God help me, just writing that made me think of a Lincoln Remix – say, take that funny video of the Lincoln robot slumping over, set it to Elvis Costello’s “I Can’t Stand Up” – which you would think would be a natural for an America’s Funniest Home Video sequence, right? But I’ll bet they’ve never used it. One of their writers is an old Mystery Science guy. I follow three funny MST guys on Twitter. Hello! Can I have a cookie? I am in the sixth grade! I have a doggie!

This would be the point where you’d hear a needle scratching across a record, a sound that no longer means what it originally did – someone bumped the record player – but means a sharp break with the content and intention of what you’d heard before.) Oh, it’s possible. I’d worry if I wasn’t able to retrace all these thoughts back to their original position.

All of which makes me think again of that Star Trek episode where Picard’s stranded with an alien who speaks only in allusions to his species’ mythology. Darmak at Viagra, when the walls fell! Cool episode, but such a thing would be impossible. Never mind the technical difficulties – I always assume they had another language for science, perhaps nothing but numbers – the meaning of an allusion would change over time. Like the sound of a scratching needle. The other day I almost tweeted (and there’s a new standard for inconsequentiality) that “I, for one, welcome the day when people no longer say “I, for one welcome.” Because it’s old. It has to do with the Homer on the Space Shuttle ep of the Simpsons; anchorman Ken Brockman believes ants have taken over the shuttle, and says “I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.” So a culture that speaks only in allusions could say “Brockman, to the ants submits,” and mean “rote, cowardly, reflexive submission to authority,” OR it could mean someone drawing all the wrong conclusions from scant evidence. To the hip kids steeped in sarcasm it could mean a written meme long past its expiration date.

I had fun attempting to sift through the mental junk-trunk; artificial intelligence could possibly repeat the process, but it would be a matter of matching stored objects against each other, without the imperfections memory inflicts on the original. IF object = Lou & Murray AND IF object contains “Camptown Races” AND motion [subset synchronized] then return value

Value = 0

This operation took .004 seconds

The computer certainly wouldn’t wonder why the Camptown Ladies sang doo-dah, anyway. If they did walk around singing that, the 19th century was much more peculiar than we know.

Oh, the iPad? Want. I have more to say, but it’s for a paying column on the Hughniverse, and I’ll be on Newsbreak talking about it tomorrow. My video predicting what it would be is here. That’s it for today; no updates, but tomorrow will have the usual glee-spree with 100 Mysteries, Comic Ads, and Sears 1934.

Finally, re: that Singin’ in the Rain scene: why did someone do this? WHY?

Oh, and: this. 1:38. So I was right. Whew.

Oh, and this:

And.

Bottom line: in 5 minutes I can find video annotations for a bunch of stuff that ran through my head during a cigar break. I love the modern world.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 1:11 am. It is filed under Pop Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.