Way back in high school, I took driver’s ed in a dumpy complex adjacent to Austin’s Burnet Road. That’s BURnet. One of my instructors, of uncertain wisdom, taste in clothes, and sexuality, frequently told me to turn onto BurNET. I wanted to slap his rat-tail for not knowing how to pronounce the street printed on his paycheque.
I discovered a more tactful way I could have taught him. The Texas Hill Country has a line for this very occasion: ‘It’s Burnet, durn it, can’t you learn it?’
This was mentioned on the previous blog, but it deserves a revisit.
Look Around You is a BBC series of short segments parodying 1980s science classroom films to which we’ve all been subjected at some point. The show’s attack is subtle and spot-on. So much so, in fact, that the pilot episode is actually too subtle. The first five minutes are conducted in such seriousness that it does not pass as satire. Beyond that it grows increasingly absurd to the point that, by the end, they’ve achieved maximum British humour per second. Succeeding episodes distinguish themselves much better.
Look Around You has earned a second mention here because Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim has picked up the series for United States broadcast. It airs midnight CST every Sunday night. (Monday morning?)
I could not be happier. It shows that US television is not as xenophobic as I have often claimed. In most cases, if a series concept proved successful in another country, it was adapted for American audiences rather than broadcasting the original. Many of 2008’s new shows were guilty of pretending to be original, made-in-America material. The Office set a precedent for this behaviour, and I insist the series was always worse off for it. Steve Carell is a brilliant man, but his character exudes only predictable ignorance. Ricky Gervais is an entirely different man, producing a slimy and naïve boss personality irreproducible in the United States.
On my previous, now-deceased blog (peace be with it), I made my sentiments known about smooth jazz, the musical genre with a serious misnomer. When there are lyrics, they’re as shallow and repetitive as a third grader’s attempt at poetry. When there aren’t, the performers make no effort demonstrating what makes their music jazz.
The supreme example is Kenny G. Trashing Kenny G is preaching to the crowd in most ways, but despite that he is one of the most popular saxophonists alive. For years I blamed his godawful music on his instrument, the alto saxophone. One critic outlines precisely what is wrong with this man, and since reading it I have (snicker) changed my tune. His tone changes from calm and collected to foaming with rage (Kenny G’s ‘lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing’), but every point he makes is spot-on.
Anecdote time: in high school chemistry my class was taking an exam right before Christmas. The room was silent, the air thick with concentration, as exam periods are wont to be. Halfway through, our teacher ((This woman had a few screws loose, just in general. This dumb idea of hers is merely an example.)) piped up:
‘Would anyone like to listen to some music while they’re working?’
Unless her taste in music comprised Iron Maiden and Billy Ray Cyrus, it seemed like a harmless idea. We weakly mumbled in agreement. She marched over to the CD player, punched a button, and Kenny G came blaring out. Not just any Kenny G: Kenny G’s Christmas carol cover album.
Needless to say, I failed that exam.
In 7th grade (1997) I sneaked into Frau Bouska’s classroom at the end of her German 1B class, the 8th grader class. The room was dark, and every face was glued to the TV set up front. A man was dancing in place and singing. It made sense in theory, but it was in German and had the production values of a scaled back cable access TV channel, so it made my brain hurt.
‘What is this?’ I asked The Frau. She refused to tell me; for the answer, she said, I’d ‘have to wait ’til next year.’ It was clearly too special for 7th graders to appreciate.
Fast forward to 1998. She popped the PAL-to-NTSB-converted cassette in the VCR, and the secret was unwrapped. We were watching Falco music videos. To the unfamiliar, you probably know Falco best as the singer of ‘Rock Me Amadeus.’ To the girls, Falco was swoon-worthy and extremely sexy in his Miami Vice-style garb. To me, he became my favourite 1980s icon and one of mainland Europe’s finest pop musicians. As we watched the TV, everyone in the room agreed: we were watching a treasure.
‘Der Kommissar’ (imported to America by After The Fire) featured a music video so primitive, it wasn’t just filmed at the birth of the music video boom, it was music video’s premature baby, the result of snorting too many cocaine lines in discotheque bathrooms. It was a flagrant abuse of green screen technology. And for that, it was brilliant.
Today I compliment Frau Bouska for her decision to hold these videos only for advanced ages. Falco videos are fine wines intended to be aged. For a chaser, here’s the video to Rock Me Amadeus, which actually has production quality to it, likely because it had three more years of experience and development behind it than ‘Der Kommissar’:
It’s been a little over a year since I graduated from Case Western Reserve University (May 20th, 2007). My commencement was god-awful, with laughter in all the wrong places. The commencement speaker Richard Lederer ((Who? Yeah, that’s the question I asked.)), a man who makes a living cracking jokes about motherfuckin’ grammar, failed to score points with most of the crowd. Grammar can be funny, but he talked about his professional poker-playing kids ((Both their Wikipedia articles are longer than his; the latter is three times so.)) more than his livelihood, so I had all the reasons I needed to take a nap for 20 minutes.
All the laughter was pent up in preparation for Case Western’s alma mater song. A tune that should inspire pride and honour in alumni instead made me struggle to keep from snickering. It was written in 1990, even though CWRU was founded in 1826.
Shine on, forever, Case Western Reserve.
Loyal and true are we (are we).
Your brave sons and daughters,
Your knowledge we use to make our history.Our school days we will cherish forever more,
A lifetime of friends from the start (the start).
Shine on, forever, Case Western Reserve.
You’ll be forever in our hearts.
Let me outline a few rules for any future anthem writers that may be reading:
If you’ve ever spoken to me, you may have noticed I speak with a slight stutter. It’s so slight, you may not have even noticed it until just now. Indeed, I never noticed. For my entire life, everyone I’ve ever known has either been polite it not bringing it up or just unconscious of the fact. Only last spring did someone point it out. On the day I had arranged to perform a soliloquy from Paradise Lost for an English class, I got an odd e-mail from the professor:
Hi Will,
It occurred to me that asking you to do a recitation in class might not be entirely fair and I wanted to give you the opportunity to do some other written assignment in lieu of this one or recite the lines to me in my office. I’m sorry I didn’t think of this earlier. I think last time we talked you mentioned you were scheduled for tomorrow, but it’s fine if you would prefer not to do it in class.
That class, I proceeded with the recitation and bombed, due more to memory failures than stuttering. Afterwards, she elaborated on the e-mail with me privately. She assumed I had a diagnosed speech impediment. The confused but not hostile look I had on my face must have made her want to curl up in a ball and die on the spot. I have the feeling I got a high grade on the project as an apology.
Prior to that class, I was pretty loose with my words. The impact of my professor’s misunderstanding goes beyond stuttering. Self-criticism of my stuttering spills over into general speaking ability. Everything I say is analysed by my brain after the fact for damage control purposes. I’ve become obsessed with the twelve-second past that most people retain as short-term memory. Did my sentence come out in a continuous stream? If not, rephrase it and say it right. Did I say unintentionally creepy? Panic and backpedal. Was there an unintended double entendre? Tack on a ‘That’s what she said’ and turn it in my favour.
No—scratch the last item. According to the laws governing that phrase, it has to be in response to another person’s comment, not your own. The best I can and will do is laugh along.