What Is Success, Anyway?

The following sentence, gleaned from the endless flood of material that’s been flowing through my inbox the last couple of days, is perhaps the most fabulously inane bit of copy I’ve ever encountered:

[The device] will make a successful sound when successfully entering data into a field, and will make an unsuccessful sound when the scan does not successfully enter data into a field.

What the hell is a “successful sound,” anyhow? Is it one that owns a big house on the east side and a summer cabin up in the Uintas? One that skis in Vail every other weekend, and drives a black Escalade that never seems to have mud-splashes on the rear quarters?
What does a successful sound actually, you know, sound like? Is it like a bell? A chime? A bird tweet? The contented sigh of a bikini-clad teenage girl sunning herself on a hot summer day? For that matter, what does an “unsuccessful sound” sound like? The first thing that comes to my mind is the truncated raspberry sound at the end of the opening credits for Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Which tells you an uncomfortable lot about my mind, probably.
Lest you think I’ve pulled this sentence out of context for comic effect, let me assure you that this is the only line in the entire document that addresses these rival sounds. There is no further description — or even mention! — of them.
I think I’m done at the office for today. I’m blowing this pop stand and heading for home… ibuprofen and whiskey await.

Mar042010

Busy Busy Busy…

It’s pedal-to-the-metal at the office this week, and I’ve been almost as busy at home with a little — okay, a big — renovation project that I’ll elaborate on another time. In the meanwhile, let me entertain you with this really awful sight gag/pun based on the unexpected juxtaposition of popular music and typography (whoever came up with this has a sick, sick mind):

We can thank Sullivan for this horror show.
And now back to the regularly scheduled grind…

Mar022010

Congratulations to a Friend

I’d like to give a quick kudo to my friend Diane Olson, who I mentioned in passing during last week’s lengthy pity-party about my gout.
Diane is a copywriter at the ad agency where I work, but before that, she was a journalist and a staff writer for Catalyst magazine, a Salt Lake alternative monthly. She had quite a run there, stirring the muck, sticking it to The Man, earning a number of awards, and even having a creepy Silkwood moment or two while investigating what really goes on at Utah’s infamous Dugway Proving Ground. (Trivia note: Stephen King was inspired to write The Stand after he heard about some of the scary crap that happens out there.)
These days, Diane’s only work for Catalyst is a regular column called the Urban Almanac, a monthly compilation of timely factoids about what’s happening in the natural world right outside our patio doors, as well as tips for how readers can improve their gardens, their diets, and their connection to something more authentic than the suburbs. I know Diane gets a lot of satisfaction from her column, but she’s often said she’d hoped to do more with her writing (a familiar lament among us word-slinging types).
Just last week, quite out of the blue, as they say, she got a message from her editor at Catalyst; it seemed that someone from a local publishing house was trying to track her down. They want to turn Diane’s Urban Almanac into a full-blown book, an illustrated hardcover, no less. Whereas the Catalyst version is region-specific for SLC, the proposed book will be more global (or at least national) in scope… and they want it by October.
Diane is understandably over the moon about this, especially the way it just fell into her lap during something of a low moment, and I’m very happy for her myself. (Also a little jealous, but we won’t tell her that.) I’m already on the list for an autographed copy. And who knows… depending on when the finished volume hits the stands, it may make my Christmas shopping much easier this year!

Feb272010

Live and Direct from Network 23

Edison Carter and Theora Jones in the short-lived series Max Headroom

Astounding! Earlier in the week, I reported the DVD release date for the 1982-83 TV series Tales of the Gold Monkey; now this morning I read the even more unlikely news that Max Headroom is on its way as well!

Although I’m sure most children of the ’80s will remember Max from the Coke and New Coke commercials of the day, the series Max Headroom had nothing to do with those, aside from the character of Max himself. Based on a British made-for-TV movie called Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future, the American-made series followed the adventures of Edison Carter, an investigative journalist living in a near-future dystopia entirely dominated by massive corporations and television. When Carter gets a little too close to uncovering his employers’ nasty secret, they attempt to download his brain and create a virtual replica of their top-rated news personality so they can eliminate the troublesome original. The experiment doesn’t quite succeed, and a smart-mouthed AI named Max Headroom is born!

Max Headroom was a trippy show, a biting satire of consumerism and mass media wrapped up in a tissue of futuristic ideas that wouldn’t penetrate the consciousness of mainstream audiences for another 10 or 15 years. (I’m not ashamed to admit that I didn’t fully comprehend some aspects of it myself.) Weirdly prescient in a lot of ways, and just plain weird in a lot of others, the show failed to find much of an audience, and it lasted less than a single season. Nevertheless, it made an impact on those who liked it; I don’t think it’s a stretch to call it a minor landmark in the history of science fiction, and certainly in the pop culture of the 1980s. I can’t begin to imagine how well it holds up today, but I’m excited to add it to my collection.

The press release doesn’t mention anything about possible extra features on the DVDs — I’d love to have those old Coke ads at least, and ideally the complete 20 Minutes into the Future movie — but the way these things go, I’ll count myself lucky just to have the series itself.

The release date for this set is August 10. I ought to be finished with Gold Monkey by then, so that will be just about perfect…

Update: I’ve just remembered that I already wrote about Max Headroom a couple years ago, when I posted the show’s opening credits as part of my TV Title Sequences series. It appears that the embedded video in that previous entry has been removed by the copyright Nazis; for your viewing pleasure, here is another version:

Feb262010

In Memoriam: Andrew Koenig

That’s sad news about actor Andrew Koenig, the son of Star Trek‘s Walter Koenig. If you haven’t been following the story, Andrew disappeared on February 14, after visiting friends in Vancouver. His family, friends, and fans initially hoped he was just going off the grid for a while to sort some things out, but as more details have trickled out over the past week, the grim conclusion to this story started to seem both obvious and inevitable: his father received a letter from him in which he sounded “despondent”; he’d recently dropped the lease on his LA apartment and sold or given away a lot of his possessions; he’d also turned down a couple of job offers. And Vancouver was reportedly a place where he’d been happy earlier in his life. So the discovery yesterday that he had committed suicide in one of that city’s parks was not at all unexpected. But I still found it deeply sorrowful.

Feb252010

Just Shoot Me Now, Please

Hi. My name is Jason, and I have gout.

If you don’t have any first-hand knowledge of the so-called “disease of kings,” consider yourself extremely lucky. I wouldn’t wish this shit on anyone, not even Dick Cheney, and my Loyal Readers all know how I feel about that guy. I can honestly say without exaggeration or hyperbole that I cannot imagine any pain worse than what I experience at the peak of a full-on outbreak of gout, except maybe a burn. A napalm burn, to be exact.

But Bennion, you’re asking, what exactly is this horrible affliction, and how can it be so horrible without having its own telethon?

Feb232010

I’m Going to Bora-Gora This Summer!

I’ve just learned that Tales of the Gold Monkey, one of the “holy grails” of my misspent youth, will get its official DVD release on June 8. You can read the details here, if you’ve a mind to.

It looks like it’s going to be a nicely done set, with a 36-minute retrospective documentary (rare for these old television shows), a number of photo galleries and episode commentaries, and a collectible booklet. That’s impressive treatment for a series that lasted only one season way back in 1982! And I even like the package art, which is usually a big weak spot for TV-show DVDs. Although I do have to admit that the Gold Monkey artwork looks a lot like what was done for the Young Indiana Jones series; I guess Gold Monkey never will manage to shake off that particular association, will it?

In any event, this makes me irrationally happy… the last week or so has been pretty crappy, for reasons that will be revealed shortly, and this little jolt of good news is welcome distraction indeed.

Oh, and if you have no idea what the hell I’m even talking about, I’ve previously written about Tales of the Gold Monkey here and here.

Feb192010

Friday Evening Videos: “You Can Sleep While I Drive”

I’ve got some things in the works, but for right now, enjoy a song that was one of my favorites back in the early ’90s and which I’ve just rediscovered:

The song is called “You Can Sleep While I Drive” (if you hadn’t surmised that already), a somewhat obscure track from the 1989 album Brave and Crazy by Melissa Etheridge. As I recall, this song was my introduction to her… I have vague memories of hearing it on a short-lived but wonderful radio station called The Mountain (105.7 FM) not long after I returned from my summer sojourn in England, way back in 1993. Melissa broke out (and came out of the closet) that same year with the monster-selling album Yes I Am, but I’m pretty sure I first heard “You Can Sleep” before that happened. I honestly can’t recall for sure at this point, but no matter…

I’ve always loved the mood of this one, the plaintive earnestness, the restlessness, the slight tinge of wee-hours-of-the-morning desperation that seasons but doesn’t overwhelm the song. It was the perfect articulation of everything I was feeling after coming home from a big adventure that I knew even then was going to end up being a singular experience for me. I was struggling with going back to my movie-theater job, knowing that it was time to move on but having no idea what to do next. I was struggling with a lot of things, actually. And hearing a woman’s voice sweetly suggest that we shake off the familiar dust of home and just… drive… well, anyone who reads this blog knows that’s still an alluring fantasy for me.

Despite my long affection for this song, however, I’d never seen this video before today, and it’s really kind of a trip. The pre-coming-out Melissa looks like a tougher version of a friend’s wife, and she also has a certain something that reminds me of a girl I used to know a long time ago and still think about sometimes. If I’d seen this back in ’93 (or earlier, since the video was apparently made in 1990), I probably would’ve developed a big crush…

Feb182010

Missing Jim

Kermit the Frog remembers an old friend

Not much to say, I just really liked this photo I spotted over at SamuraiFrog’s place.

It amazes me how alive The Muppets, and especially Kermit, still seem to me, even after all these years, and even when I’m looking at a picture that ought to shatter any remaining illusion that these things are anything but a cloth tube — a decorated sock, really — with a human being’s hand up the bottom. And yet, looking at this all-too-recognizable pose, this reminder that a gentle man and an insanely creative artist left us way before his time, brings a lump to my throat because, for just a moment, I know exactly what that silly cloth frog is “feeling.”

I miss him, too, Kermie… we all do.

Feb152010

Smart Kid

So, let’s say you’re a small boy who has gotten separated from your parents in some big, crowded place where you’re surrounded by strangers. Who are you going to turn to for help?

How about the nearest pair of superheroes?

If you're ever lost, try and find the nearest superhero...

His dad must’ve been very proud of his son that day. I know I would’ve been.

I spotted this charming photo — which supposedly was not posed, but actually depicts a lost kid asking Wonder Woman and The Flash for help — at Byzantium’s Shores; Jaquandor, in turn, took it from Cal’s Canadian Cave of Coolness. And I imagine it regresses back into the reaches of the Internets from there…

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