Spoken Like A Typer

John Cleese talking recently about how people who are captivated by images over words become moviemakers ... and make movies the way you'd expect such people to make them.

Film is a visual medium, they say. I reply that life is visual. Yet we're sitting here talking.

I say a good script (story & dialogue) can save bad visuals much easier than good visuals can save a bad script. As with all such statements, it's overbroad but largely true and I've seen enough pretty but crappy movies to know. In fact, virtually every movie made nowadays looks great.

Funniest thing I've seen all day

From LL Cool Bean, a commenter at The Washington Monthly

What's probably going to happen is that 59 Democrats will vote for cloture but Kent Conrad will filibuster the bill on the grounds that it can't get 60 votes for cloture.

Democrats can be such infuriating tautologists (Baucus made much the same argument -- for real -- during the finance committee vote).

Love Has Pitched His Mansion

There are about 31,000 verses in the Bible. It really says something about this fellow that he chose this one from Leviticus to inscribe permanently on his flesh.



Methodist Minister Jeremy points to the incredible idiocy of not reading a chapter further before visiting the tattoo parlor.

And the Pope is now trying to poach Anglicans, too, mainly over issues concerning the naughty bits.

Those naughty bits again! God, who is Love, has "pitched his mansion in the house of excrement," and the churches seem to be intent on dwelling there.

China is a Different Place

There's a MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online game) in China called Happy Farms that is alleged to be, as those panicked by such things often claim, "destroying relationships." On the surface, as the name suggests, it's about farming.

Happy Farms is so popular that enrollments are limited.

The limit is 2 million new signups.

Per day.

Related, in that it's about the same country: Why is Pizza Hut thriving in China while Dominos has failed? Intro paragraph includes the sentence: "Early in our stay in Shanghai, my wife and I tried to stop in to the Pizza Hut just north of People's Square -- and were turned away, by a head waiter whose face was barely visible beneath his gigantic sombrero."
.

Among the Savages

See, it's not rectangular.

Students of US geography will know where I've been when I relate that I was first in a Commonwealth and then in a neighboring state with a non-rectangular state flag. (That flag foreshadowed how wackos would reveal their ignorance while jumping to ridiculous conclusions about Obama.)

Part of my trip was in Amish country. Though I didn't see any Amish I did cross paths with those other Anabaptists, the kindly Mennonites. I was surprised at the marketing of both Amish and quasi-Amish products and services, including a four-page tabloid-sized flyer of Amish businesses ranging from the plausible (buggy-harnesses) to the less expected (restaurants--presumably fully equipped).

Through no fault of their own, the Amish are kitsch culture now. General understanding of their beliefs is crude and sometimes misguided. For instance, while they frown on electricity from utilities (with lines which 'tie' them to the greater world), quite a few of them use generators to produce power. And the practice of Rumspringa certainly gives many "English" (as they call non-Amish) pause. But the lack of education and the immersion in a distinctive subculture means that few children leave the faith after this sometimes frenzied interregnum.

Fun fact: If my calculations are correct, the Amish and the Hassidim were started within a few decades of each other, probably about six hundred miles apart. Much as most ancient British traditions date to the second half of the 19th century, our most pseudo-primitive European-spawned sects are just a few hundred years old.

On the return flight the airline offered XM Satellite radio, and one channel was Monty Python Radio. Oddly enough, when I listened it leaned more on audio from films and TV and rather less on the audio recordings (LPs and CDs). The channel appeared to tie in to the broadcast of Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer's Cut) on Independent Film Channel. Regardless of any tie-in, I was amazed an XM channel was given over to Python for ten full days.

Things

I'll be traveling for a few days. I may update here but even less assiduously than usual.

A few oddities stuck near to where my craw used to be, which I'll note briefly:

• A pigeon named Cher Ami was a hero of the Lost Battalion episode in the Argonne Forest in WW I. The whole story is touching (worth the quick read). He survived his travails, the medics carved him a wooden leg, he won the Croix de Guerre with Oak Leaf Cluster, and now Cher Ami is on display in the Smithsonian.

• Prop comic Gallagher (the Original Gallagher, watermelon smasher) gives a bizarrely bitter interview in The Onion AV Club. [He may be a bit difficult: issues with his brother left him estranged from his whole family. This Wikipedia article on the sibling issue differs from the story I've heard and seems to have been written by Original Gallagher himself -- much the same wording appears in the Original Gallagher's press material. ] Anyway, he's not putting his best foot forward in that interview. Whatever he says I hear "After all the watermelons I smashed for you, this is the world I get?

• Richard Herring (a UK comedian) has a bold idea: he's writing a sketch show called As It Occurs To Me each week, getting a couple performer friends (Emma Kennedy and Dan Tetsell) to perform it with him live before an audience on Monday, and puttng it out as a free podcast by the next day . This seems like a cut-out-the-middleman tactic that could make sense for some small set of writer/performers. He hopes to sell enough live tickets to at least break even. I wouldn't be surprised to see more such things spring up. (I'm assuming, but don't know for sure, that it's not been done previously).

Zulu's Revenge

I finally got around to watching Zulu (1964) this weekend thanks to a timely airing on TCM as I lay dying. It was more effective than it should have been considering how archaic the depiction of battle ("realism" has come a long way in 45 years), and how imperial was the ethos. Michael Caine let his accent slip only a few times.

There were no automatic weapons in the true battle or the movie, but the episode depicted reminded me of the excellent book The Social History of the Machine Gun:

Because they [Europeans, especially the British] regarded the Africans as weird eccentrics, hardly even human beings, they could look on colonial warfare as an amusing diversion that had little in common with the 'real' wars that had been fought in Europe and might have to be fought in the future. Thus, because the machine gun had become so much a part of these imperialist sideshows, it came to be regarded, by definition, as a weapon that had no place upon the conventional battlefield. The European was obviously superior to the African, so why would he ever be so stupid as to be baulked by a weapon that was really only good for bowling over 'niggers' and 'Kaffirs?' Of all the chickens that came home to roost and cackle over the dead on the battlefields of the First World War, none was more raucous than the racialism that had somehow assumed that the white man would be invulnerable to those same weapons that had slaughtered natives in their thousands.

--The Social History of the Machine Gun, by John Ellis. 1986, Johns Hopkins Press. Page 102 (paperback edition)

While the engineers and inventors were clever, the officer corps, tacticians, and politicians were idiots. [Alter the tense of that sentence at will.]

HBO Sunday

When did Curb Your Enthusiasm become so mirthless and leaden? The characters have always been unpleasant, which isn't in itself a problem for me. However I never found Susie Essman's "screech obnoxiously twelve beats too long" performance tolerable in any way except as an occasional plot necessity. Now it seems the other characters have become tedious annoyances, too. The formula is the same, but the payoffs are so weak they don't even generate a chuckle. The only reason I tuned in this evening is because it leads in to Bored to Death.

Bored to Death is a ramshackle creation, though the production is fairly slick. It's a sitcom created and written by one person -- Jonathan Ames, a genuinely funny oddball. I enjoyed his comic novel Wake Up, Sir!, in which a dissipated American one-novelist endures uncomfortable episodes accompanied by his (probably delirium-induced) manservant Jeeves.

Bored to Death features Jason Schwarzman playing Jonathan Ames (sound familiar?) a one-novelist who, after his girlfriend leaves him, signs up on Craig's List as a private detective -- explicitly an unlicensed one. This sets Ames up to undertake the lowest-of-low-stakes investigations as he banters with his friends, played by Ted Danson and the comically earnest Zach Galifinakis--always a laugh-inducer for me. The settings are Brooklyn's trendier areas and Manhattan, and the local color is a rainbow of effete arts, media, and culture turds (radical vegans, comic book artists, publishing twerps, and Jim Jarmusch playing "Jim Jarmusch" as a cinema turd).

It's loopy. The comedy is driven more by characterization, mildly absurd circumstance, and mood than by gags. Provided Ames doesn't dial up the whimsy, I'll want to watch much more of it.

Unimaginable Travails

This is not H1N1. Not even a particularly gripping seasonal grippe. Actually just a cold that began in my nares and then annexed my sinuses, my throat and my chest, with painful strain on the intercostals from hacking. Along with the blessed syrupy medicament it made me sleepy and abed too much. Now it's subsiding from all these regions but leaving malaise.

Reading about suffering on this scale may inure you to your own petty problems. You are welcome.

A few things strayed across my consciousness in the past few days.

++ Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize and was likely one of the few recipients who rightly felt slightly annoyed about it. The hallucinatory caterwauling from the wingers assuaged me a bit.

++ C-SPAN has been airing UK party conferences and I caught a bit of Cameron's address. Through my haze it seemed he was adopting a roboticized variant of Blair's clipped and erratically paused folksy delivery. He executed a sustained riff on the importance of "society," which I presume UK commentators have already starkly contrasted with Lady Thatcher's view. This must be a version of what we in the USA would call a "dogwhistle."

From my distant and disinterested perch I can tell I'm going to find The Cameron Years oily.

++ With the positive CBO scoring of the Finance Committee bill, things seem well on the way to having health reform this year. I still think it will be a rancider-than-not bill, but things may work out in that regard too.

Provided I recover my health. Which I already largely have.

"Back we go to these questions--friendship, character, ethics."

60.  INT  CAR

As Tom sits into the back, next to Bluepoint.  Frankie
slides in after him.

                   Bluepoint
  How'd you get the fat lip?

The car starts moving.

                   Tom
  Old war wound.  Acts up around morons.

                   Bluepoint
  Very smart.  What were you doing at the club?
  Talking things over with Leo?

                   Tom
  Don't think so hard, Bluepoint, you might sprain
  something.

                   Bluepoint
  You're so goddamn smart.  Except you ain't.  I
  get you, smart guy, I know what you are.
  Straight as a corkscrew.  Mr. Inside-Outsky.
  Like a goddamn bolshevik, picking up your orders
  from Yegg Central.  You think you're so goddamn
  smart.

He sneers:

  You joined up with Caspar.  You bumped Bernie
  Bernheim.  Down is up.  Black is white.  Well I
  think you're half-smart.  I think you were
  straight with your frail and queer with Johnny
  Caspar.  And I think you'd sooner join the
  Ladies' League then gun a guy down.

His eyes narrow at Tom.

  . . . Then I hear that these two geniuses never
  even saw this rub-out take place.

Defensively:

                   Tic-Tac
  The boss just said have him do it, he didn't say
  nothing about--

                   Bluepoint
  Shutup, or maybe you still got too many teeth.

Tic-Tac sulks.  Bluepoint turns and gazes out the window of
the car.

  . . . Everyone's so goddamn smart.  Well, we'll
  go to Miller's Crossing.  And we'll see who's
  smart.

Recently saw Miller's Crossing again after several years and it's definitely wearing well for me. I don't think I ever paid much attention to John Turturro before seeing his resourceful turn as Bernie .

Very refreshing that Tom (Gabriel Byrne), the protagonist in what is apparently a tough-guy movie, never throws a decent punch and is on the wrong end of an assault at regular intervals.

Public Service Announcement

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which summarizes lives from two millennia of British history, is five years old. The writing is sometimes mildly colorful (depending on the life, of course) and necessarily concise. Click through for a sampling of what's on offer.

They provide a Life of the Day via email or RSS and a podcast fortnightly (not often enough!) featuring one life, currently Philip Larkin. The Larkin podcast was revealing to me: while I greatly admire his poetry and own "Collected," I knew little about him beyond recalling he was a librarian who never married.

If updates daily and fortnightly aren't enough for you, many US and UK libraries offer access for free (even from home with certain library memberships).

I presume Oxford is too staid to appreciate the slogan I propose: If you are tired of ODNB, you are tired of lives.

NoKo Hair, Plum Granny, and Queen Anne's Pocket Melon

I find it amusing, as was obviously intended, that there's a cookbook called Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States . Even better that the author C. Christine Fair is a foreign policy think-tanker being considered for a State Department post in the Obama administration.

Some of the food sounds good: Apple-pear crumble; chicken in walnut and pomegranate * stew; and a decent-looking kofte recipe.

And it has asides, too:

[I]n 2005 the NoKo [North Korean] government waged a war on long hair.... Older gentlemen were granted an allotment of fifty centimeters of upper hair for the "comb-over" that older, balding men so love. Hidden cameras videotaped "long-haired" miscreants and televised them for public amusement. The television media campaign stressed the adverse effects of long hair on human intellect, arguing that it consumes needless nutrients, and recommended haircuts every fifteen days. Hmmmm.... These people actually managed to build a nuclear weapon? [page 8 ]

Obviously the short hair made their scientists very smart.

* Pomegranate sidebar: Occasionally when I think of pomegranates I recall a small inedible fruit called Plum Granny in the southeastern USA. Few in the South know about it and almost no one outside the region has ever heard of it, it seems.

Ripe Plum Grannies photo from Aiken Gardens.
Each will fit in the palm of your hand.

I know of no commercial use for the plum granny. It's a rare category of plant, grown for the fulgently clever fragrance -- not the taste -- of the fruit, not the bloom. The small orb emits a flowery and melony perfume but is basically tasteless. When ripe, two or three of them set out in a bowl will sweeten a room's scent for days.

True pomegranates were unknown down there, and I always presumed the term "plum granny" could be a perversion of "pomegranate." [There's no botanical relationship between the plants--plum granny is a melon.] It's a folk-etymology I've proposed before, but there appears to be real evidence for it (though the term "plum granny" isn't in the OED). Another blogger presents evidence from her family history: her older relatives called the plum granny a pomegranate. And the Dictionary of American Regional English has an entry about Plum Granny which indeed traces the name's origin to pomegranate via the Bible, which I suspected: "It is said that the name is somehow derived from pomegranate, which the hillman knows chiefly from the references in Scripture."

Plum Granny was called the "love melon" because boys gave it to girls, much like bouquets, so they could enjoy the sweet smell. "Love melon" sounds risque today, doesn't it? Plum granny has other names too, including Queen Anne's Pocket Melon, which sounds downright ribald.

Variety Shows Are Coming Back!

It's a hoary game pulling out twas ever thus quotes from the past. But I was surprised to see this from as early as 1949:

Yet out of the wizardry of the television tube has come such an assault against the human mind, such a mobilized attack on the imagination, sucn an invasion against good taste as no other communications medium has ever known, not excepting the motion picture or radio itself ..... Since television has been on an assembly-line basis, there has been mass-produced a series of plodding stereotypes and low-quality programs. Behind it all, apparently , is a grinding lack of imagination and originality which has resulted in the standardized television formula for an evening's entertainment: a poisoning, a variety show, a wrestling match.

Norman Cousins, Saturday Review of Literature, Dec. 24, 1949 [I found this excerpted in the book Television and Radio in American Life, Herbert L. Marx, Jr. ed., 1953, p. 70 ]

In the US in 1949 there were about 2 million TV sets (nearly 720,000 in New York alone) for a population of nearly 250 million people. See also Wikipedia's 1949 in television.

Norman Cousins was a renowned liberal journalist, but the book has TV-bashing from a paleoconservative, too.

King James: Get Me Rewrite

Much fun has been made of the Conservative Bible Project, which aims to retranslate the Bible to fit the current Republican idiom. NearlySomebody at DailyKos kicks the tires. Stephen Suh at Cogitamus, a strong liberal Christian, points out the blasphemous nature of this endeavor. JC Christian does some mockery. Rod Dreher, himself a cultural conservative, finds the Bible translating idea laughable, too.

The Conservapeda folks have already translated a little bit. I'm going to paste the same verse in various translations. Here's Mark 10: 33

King James Version
Saying, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes; and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles:

Conservapedia Translation
"Listen carefully: we will arrive in Jerusalem, where the Son of man shall be betrayed and handed over to the Elites, who shall condemn Him to death for execution by the Gentiles.

LOLCATZ Translation
33 We r goin to Jerusalem, an teh son ov man r pawed over to teh chief priests and scribes, an dey gonna condemn him to death.

Klingon

SuH yeruSalemDaq maSal. lalDanla'pu'vaD HaDwI'pu'vaD je nuv'a' jeghlu'. HeghmeH luqIch. novpu'vaD lujegh.

It's pretty astounding that someone has translated the Bible into LOLCATZ.

The Backstory

In 2006, some conservatives were upset at what they perceived as liberal bias in Wikipedia. (This echoes a liberal quip about how "Facts have a liberal bias.") They started a conservative alternative called Conservapedia, which is well exemplified in its rejectionist entry on evolution.

Having vanquished Wikipedia, the Conservapedia team is now starting the Conservative Bible Project, because "Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations."

The worldview that generates this wheels-within-aggrieved-wheels scheme is the cultural Christian outlook of today's Republican party. Here's one passage they want to deal with:

At Luke 16:8, the NIV describes an enigmatic parable in which the "master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly." But is "shrewdly", which has connotations of dishonesty, the best term here? Being dishonestly shrewd is not an admirable trait.

The better conservative term, which became available only in 1851, is "resourceful". The manager was praised for being "resourceful", which is very different from dishonesty. Yet not even the ESV, which was published in 2001, contains a single use of the term "resourceful" in its entire translation of the Bible.

So "dishonestly resourceful" is fine, but "dishonestly shrewd" is necessarily negative? I suppose they need the "Conservative Dictionary Project" next.

If there is actually a group of people working hard on translating the original texts to modern conservative rhetoric--really wrestling with the text-- I'd wager twenty-five percent of them will be agnostics before the translation is complete. From what I've seen, it's going be a half-assed Search and Replace operation.


RELATED:

• Wikipedia's entry on Conservapedia.
  
• Conservapedia's entry on Wikipedia.
  
• Conservapedia's entry on Conservapedia.
  
• Wikipedia's entry on Wikipedia.
  

Unfortunate name of the day

Senator Max Baucus, Democrat from Montana is now despised by the Left (and me) for slow-walking health care reform though the Finance Committee.

On April 2009, The Associated Press reported that Baucus and his wife, the former Wanda Minge, are divorcing after 25 years of marriage.

Some posters at the wingnut refuge Free Republic seemed mystified by unexpected Google Ad results. That's not surpising since the UK slang term "minge" is virtually unknown in the USA.

EXTRA bonus Baucus name fun: Baucus's son (by his first wife) is named "Zeno." Let's hope he and his wife have two children who become physicians. Why?

Because they would be Zeno's Pair o' Docs.

Curious Orange

In a typically incisive manner, John Finnemore points to a peculiarity involving the word "orange." I'll be more boring.


I'd wager that if researchers asked English speakers: "In one word, how is the right swatch different from the left swatch above?" a common answer would be"Oranger."

Yet, while "redder," "bluer," "greener," "whiter," even "purpler" appear in common dictionaries, the word "oranger" does not. Strictly speaking, "oranger" isn't a word. Still, no native speaker would be confused. Only a few prescriptivist pedants would even bristle.

I was going to explore this a bit, but I've caught a flu and am not really up to it though it is interesting. It would require me to read some linguistics, psycholinguistics, color-categorization theory, and more. Time-consuming and boring, even for me and even if I were not ill, whine whinge whine.

And after all that I still wouldn't be able to say for sure why it was the case. But there are a few things I knew already and I'll type those up.

Of the six main color groups (the primary colors: red, blue, yellow; and the compound colors: orange, purple, green), "orange" was accepted into English usage most recently--at least 300 years after the others (and even then as the name of the fruit, not the color). It had the least "normal" origination for Middle English words -- it's from Persian, not Old English, Old French, Norse, or Germanic or classical roots.

While the citrus fruit was called "orange" in English around 1300, I think it wasn't until 1500 or so that the color was assigned that English name. Before that, the color was "geoluhread," which roughly means "yellow-red."

Thus, the color designation "orange" is more than 500 years newer to English than any of the other basic color words. Unusually for such a common color name, it's newer than the Magna Carta and roughly contemporaneous with the discovery of the Americas.

Some other peculiarities about "orange" -- the color and the word.

• The earliest carrots were apparently not orange, but probably purple or yellow -- 17th century Dutch farmers bred for the orange color.
• In the development of color classification systems in various languages, orange is one of the last major named color concepts to arise.
• That orange rhyme thing, which Tom Lehrer had a bash at.
• The House of Orange, the Dutch royal line, has an etymology apparently unrelated to the English word.
• Paul Putner played Curious Orange and has one of the most ear-piercing screeches ever emitted by a man.

Phrase of the Day

Anthony Weiner, debating the profoundly mendacious Betsy McCaughey, described her as a "pyromaniac in a straw man factory."

Perfectly sums up her function in the anti-healthcare debate for the past fifteen years. Except she's the manufacturer of the straw men, too.

Plea Heard, Somewhat

A month ago I publicly shamed BBC America by noting they hadn't aired any comedy in weeks, and demonstrated how pear-shaped the whole channel had gone by viciously copying and pasting one full day's purulent schedule.

I presume my brutality played some part in BBCA changing their weekday programming in recent weeks. Instead of endless repeats of You Are Eating the Trash in your Attic! and How Clean are your Hotel Inspector's Breasts?, they've begun airing 6-hour blocks of a given prime-time UK program each weekday. They are calling these the "All-Day Marathons"-- without marathon-induced chafing. Monday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. eastern will be Torchwood. Tuesday it wil be Robin Hood.

While neither program wins Riffle's "I Watch This Unbidden" award, it's a vast improvement over the earlier begging-to-be-euthanized lineup. Maybe a few Americans will stumble upon things they enjoy.



In a flash of astounding Good Sense, they have scheduled That Mitchell and Webb Look on Wednesday, October 7 from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Apparently they're airing all six episodes of the first series and the first three episodes of the second series.

That Mitchell and Webb Look is the best UK TV sketch show of recent years, with top-flight writers and great comic performers. Set your DVR to record it on Wednesday in the USA, especially since it's not available on DVD here... yet.

Let's encourage BBCA to expose the US to the higher quality UK material, and thank them when they do so.

BTW, the radio series That Mitchell and Webb Sound has just ended its fourth series on BBC Radio 4. Fortunately, we in the US can still listen to the last episode via BBC iPlayer. The whole series has been splendid, and I'm sorry to see it go.

The Truck Driver's Gear Change Hall Of Shame

The Truck Driver's Gear Change , that jarring key change in many songs, is analyzed in great detail with examples and humor by the author of a book called The Songwriting Secrets of the Beatles.

I've always called such a key change a "direct modulation," and am surprised he doesn't refer to that term. I'll prefer "Truck Driver's Gear Change" from now on. [It's also interesting -- if very explicable -- how often all kinds of modulations go up and how relatively rarely down, although he doesn't remark on that.]

I'm also surprised to hear:

Former Spice Girls songsmith Richard Stannard even explains how, in the modern dance music market (and especially the Ibiza scene), the truck driver's modulation is seen as such an essential element that the A&R men actually demand it from their songwriters. As he puts it: "If it's not there, you can guarantee they'll say: 'where is it?'!"

A Spice Girls songwriter allows his name to be used in public!

Falsely Attributed to Churchill

From several quotes falsely attributed to Winston Churchill: "The only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash."

OTOH, HMS Cockchafer, Gunboat.

Dialect Tragedy

Oh, my, the confluence of incident,reportage, scanning, and transcription that adds up to oddities in this segment of a report from the Old Bailey, which I accurately paste below--though I will add some emphasis. From the testimony of James Fitzgerald, allegedly robbed of a watch on 25 Feb 1725:

For it ish my Way to make Love upon a Woman in the Street, and go home with her, whenshoever I intend to lie alone. But ash to the Preceshoner, she wash after making me shit upon the Bed with her, and sho tumble together; but I wash after shitting in the Chair, and then she was coming to shit in my Lap; but I would not let her, and sho she shit beside me; and then I wash hoping that she would be eashy; but for all that she would not let me shit at quiet, for she wash after being concerned with my Breeches, and got away my Watch whether I would or no; and I pulled, and she pulled; and sho for fear she should get it from me, I let go my Hold, and went for a Constable, and he carried her to the Watch House, where he took the Watch upon her. He found it in a Plaushe that my Modesty won't suffer me to name; for ash I am a living Chreestian, she had put into her ***.

[OldBailey's text here, and image of the original page here.

These scattered uses of "Shit" I believe are early examples of dialect transcription from the Old Bailey Proceedings. where the reporter used "sh" when the speaker said "s" with an Irish accent. Susan Grimes, the accused says that Mr. Fitzgerald [note her speech is reported without the unneeded "sh"] "....said he was an Irishman, and could swear farther than ten Englishmen."

Ms. Grimes was found Not Guilty. One can impute anti-Irish bias. But the countours of Fitzgerald's statement are self-contradictory and (even without the added dialect) hilarious.

Susan Grimes' rebuttal is terse but fairly coherent. She says Fitzgerald followed her home, knew the premises and pawned his watch to her landlady to pay for brandy (and she says both Susan and her landlady felt "He was so impudent, that we were both found to fall upon cut Knees to keep his Hands from under our Petticoats.").

Grimes' acquital seems to have some craftiness about it, too: "It appearing upon the Prosecutor's Oath, that she took the Watch from him violently, and with his Knowledge; and she being indicted for stealing it privately, and without his Knowledge, the Jury acquitted her."

Snap! But what did the Landlady testify to? Apparently to nothing. Did Fitzgerald buy a bed? Does she claim he pawned his watch? Was he grasping? The Proceedings are silent.

Who knows what really happened. Some London reporter wrote a dessicated account of a trial and gave the poor London lass the benefit of the doubt, as did the jury, on what some now would call illogical grounds (If the landlady took the watch in pawn, how did Susan end up with it that very evening?)

The whole trial from swearing in to verdict was well under an hour, probably under half an hour or even merely ten minutes long.

I'm not sure Susan stole the watch. I'm sure James was drunk and was trying to tumble with Susan. I think there was some anti-Irish bias in the trial and in the reporting of it, but Fitzgerald was a scamp regardless.

Since they are all long gone, there is a lot there to wonder at from just this one entry in the Old Bailey Proceedings from 1725. It's brief and worth a read.

[Note: My family is in America due to proceedings in Old Bailey -- not these above-- from early 1700's. I'll delve into Old Bailey occasionally in the future since there are fascinating things there.]

---
Update: I was surprised that no potty-mouths on the internet had yet found this Old Bailey transcript. But this case is quoted in a book about Irish English -- so my surmise about the dialect appears to be correct. Here's a few pages on Google Books from Irish English: history and present-day forms by Raymond Hickey which uses part of this passage to illustrate the use of "after - [verb]-ing in old Irish English. Nifty.

LiTwit

Palin's slapped her name on a 400-page book titled Going Rogue that was ghost-written in under four months.

It will have a number-purchased-vs.-number-read ratio greater than A Brief History of Time Volume 2: The Computations.

Brian Beutler started a "Failed Palin Book Titles" quasi-thread via Twitter which didn't go on for long. I'll rescue a few I enjoyed:

My favorite of all:
@msbellows: "Suck It Up + Board The Plane: Obstetrics the Alaska Way."

My favorite of my own: "Moose, Mousse, and Moues"

and more:

@brianbeutler "The Bridge to Nowhere: How John McCain Ruined My Life"
@keefs "The Origin of Specious: My Evolution"
@kcivey "Dress for Success on $2500 a Day"

To be a bit more serious, Palin isn't exactly known for being fully candid with those she's working with (ask the McCain campaign). Add to that tendency 1) the extreme rapidity of putting together 400 pages in three or so months; 2) the fact that her ghostwriter isn't a journalist; and 3) the notoriously poor fact-checking of book publishers and you have a recipe for a tome full of errors, blunders and falsehoods.

There's speculation that the publication date was pushed up to rush release prior to some critical books by real journalists. Makes sense to me. Even if not, the second edition is likely to be twice as big to incorporate all the corrections.

---
UPDATE: Wow, that was quick-- rewriting of history noted just a day after I wrote the above. I figured we'd have to wait weeks for errors and falsehoods to trickle out.

And there's this, too, from Rupert Muroch's NY Post no less:

Palin's bookers are said to be asking for $100,000 per speech, but an industry expert tells Page Six: "The big lecture buyers in the US are paralyzed with fear about booking her, basically because they think she is a blithering idiot."

The fact that she's very popular with the Republican base tells you a lot about what's wrong with this country.

Light Cavalry Ovituary

I'm amazed that Dennis Brain, one of the finest 20th-century hornists, was only 36 years old when was killed in the crash of his Triumph TR2 in 1957.

As a (very difficult) lark, Brain famously played a horn concerto by Leopold Mozart [Wolfgang's father] on a length of rubber hose fitted with a mouthpiece and trimmed with garden shears to the correct tuning.

Brain performed this amusement during one of the kooky Music Festivals thrown by Gerard Hoffnung.

Hoffnung was only 34 years old when he died on this date exactly fifty years ago: 28 September 1959. In a grotesque homonymic coincidence, it was a brain hemorrhage that killed him.

Here's one of those brief Oxford DNB "Life of the Week" biographies about Hoffnung that will last a short time. The Wikpedia entry should be up longer.

Which makes me consider the death of classical music familiarity. Now that few recognize compositions by Wagner, Haydn, Brahms, Dvorak -- or even lighter stuff that used to be in cartoons, like von Suppé, Ponchielli, Rossini, fewer will make jokes out of them. I don't care greatly for the light music (as opposed to some of the "heavier" stuff) but I will miss the jokes.

Speaking of jokes, Hoffnung's instrument was the tuba and I'm sure he would have enjoyed a practical joke that made the rounds, perhaps apocryphally. It's true that Anthony Braxton wrote his Composition No. 19 for 100 Tubas in 1971, and the existence of the piece was famous among brass players. Purportedly some prankster called every tuba player in the New York musicians union and hired them to rehearse the piece at a specified place and time.

Of course, the tuba players showed up, scores of them milling about with their unwieldy instruments and ... there would be no actual rehearsal. Just a lot of irate tubists.

The piece sat unperformed for decades. Until, in 2006, the Bang on a Can festival recruited tubas (and Sousaphones, double- and single-belled euphoniums, Wagner Tubas, contrabass bugles, helicons, and perhaps others) and put on an outdoor performance in Manhattan.

It looked something like this:




Video of the performance is here. It's a serious avant-garde piece and the performers mill about with the audience. Braxton conducts, such as it is.

As with the Hoffnung Music Festival performances -- you had to be there.

Free James Brown and Roman Polanksi!

WFMU's Beware of the Blog: Free James Brown: ".....the incident began when Brown dropped in on an insurance seminar in an office building he owned and demanded to know who had been using his restroom."

It's a fair cop. Visit the linked site a bit more and a rare mp3. And RIP James Brown.

Now I guess we'll see such a movement for Roman Polanski. He certainly got jerked around abysmally by the Los Angeles County prosecutor and courts.

Knife in the Water is a great movie of his few have seen (as opposed to the many great ones many have seen), and I've always thought it played a small and circuitous role in the ascendence of Nicole Kidman, for which I forgive him.

On the other hand he drugged and raped a 13-year old.

Conundrum

Hey Czechs!

Some expensively dressed and housed 82-year old German virgin wants you to cease using birth control. And to give him huge amounts of money and property, but stop being materialistic.

Why aren't you greeting him enthusiastically, Jan Hus?

Preserved Funny Names

America does not have the most hilarious English names. This must surely fall to the British Puritans with their virtue- and slogan-naming craze. We Yankees had some good ones, but not the breadth and richness. Humiliation? Fly Fornication? Kill-Sin Pimple?

But the US takes pride in one of most perfectly absurd Quaker monikers. The Fish family was wealthy and powerful, with Hamilton Fish becoming US Secretary of State, and many notable relatives including several congressmen named "Fish" and descendants including the two Presidents Bush.

The gold-standard of funny names in this clan is Preserved Fish. "Preserved" was a shortened slogan, meaning "Preserved in Grace" or "Preserved from Sin." (Purportedly it's pronounced in three syllables, but this is a sin against humor.)


This is mainly an excuse to put up a picture (click to enlarge) I took some years ago of a plaque at the cemetery (the second nonsectarian one in Manhattan) where he's buried.

The NY Public Library has an image of him looking perfectly spiffy. I'm sure the artist was asked by a friend "What are you doing today?" and he replied "I'm rendering Preserved Fish." "I bet that smells great!"

Astoundingly, there were at least two other men in the family named Preserved Fish:

President Preserved Fish (1766-1846) of Bank of America was born in Portsmouth, R. I., son of Blacksmith Preserved Fish, whose father was another Preserved Fish, whose father's name was Thomas.

As an aside, someday I'll have to read Fischer's Albion's Seed all the way. When I've dipped in it's spectacular.

Jargon and In-Jokes

Excellent idea from John Cole and the folks at Balloon Juice: The Balloon Juice Dictionary.

Some of the terms are specific to Balloon Juice and its comment threads but most are in general use around the U.S. political (especially liberal) blogosphere. I remember when it took me some searching to parse IOKIYAR.

There's a danger when a political movement communicates in jargon and concepts that don't speak to the broader public. That's more a Republican problem nowadays than a Democratic one, since so many of their tropes reach back to hoary days of Reagan or Clinton and they expect relatively apolitical folks to understand them. For the most part, Dems keep their funny argot on blogs rather than in Senators' mouths.

It's hard to top the shorthand term "Two wetsuits and a dildo." Defined here:

Two Wetsuits and a Dildo- A quip often used to make fun of the hypocrisy of the Republican family values crowd and various other religious scolds, which finds its genesis in the police report following the death of Alabama Baptist Minister Gary Aldridge in which his corpse was found wearing, among other things, two wetsuits, rubberized underwear, with a dildo inserted in the anus. Also notable, it is illegal to purchase a dildo in Alabama.

The Lord works things into anuses in mysterious ways, Reverend Aldridge.

Reminds me of a page from long ago on the Internet (1997!): Rectal Foreign Bodies, with mostly medical reports of same. Glad to see it's still around.

THIS IS A FARCE!

With their Get Me Hennimore! sketches, written by Toby Davies and David Mitchell, Mitchell & Webb have been paring down to the essentials and streamlining ultra-cheap TV farce. I find these Hennimore sketches totally hilarious-- by the end of Series 2 of That Mitchell and Webb Look, just a shot of Hennimore's boss's office and the mention of the first element of the farce machinery would have me howling.

Trivia: Apparently Hennimore's name -- if nothing else -- was based on that of the gifted comic writer John Finnemore, who created the great Radio 4 series Cabin Pressure as well as bits for Mitchell & Webb.

Most of the Get Me Hennimore! sketches are on YouTube. Here are two:

Golf Clubs


Russians!


That latter clip includes a skillfully implemented "blah blah blah" and ends with a Mitchell standup to audience mentioning YouTube and torrenting costing them money-- sadly. Fortunately for non-UK fans of Mitchell and Webb, there's more of them on YouTube!, for the casual criminals among you. [We really should -- and I have -- bought BBC DVDs. Amazon.co.uk discounts prices, ships them fairly quickly and reasonably, and converts currency seamlessly, too. Support your BBC!]

I'm heartened that on their radio show That Mitchell & Webb Sound, the gents have one-upped themselves in the abject farce sweepstakes with an sketch about farceurs (one carrying on an affair), a stripper, a policeman, cats, and an adult entertainment business (with bakery) downstairs, a Ming vase, an executive washroom, Penang, etc. Very farcically done in under five minutes.

The sketch I'm referring to is the concluding one in Series 4, Episode 5. It's currently up on BBC Iplayer for another week. Iplayer works for those outside the UK (though only for radio, not for TV content).

I've also put a clip of just that radio farce up. It's most enjoyable, and not just in an "approaching theoretical limits of radio farce" manner, either.
< - - Click the little triangley-arrow-in-a-circle thingy to the left to play. (Other than this Yahoo player, I haven't found a simple MP3 widget that won't preload the file.)

These sketches are all funny even if they're also Meta. Farce.

UPDATE: via the invaluable Mitchell and Webb Log from Project 76, I see this farce sketch was written by Toby Davies and Chris Pell. Davies co-wrote the Hennimore sketches. This sketch is called "The Last Farce" which I hope doesn't mean these exercises won't be continued.

Howard Kurtz - Sheri Annis Pillowtalk

Howard Kurtz is probably -- and this is really sad -- the most high-profile news media critic in the USA. He has a column in the furiously oxidizing Washington Post and a weekly media criticism show on CNN.

I realize a media critic has to accept a paycheck from somewhere, but perhaps only one of the largest news organizations should be paying him and not two.

Wonkette noticed that Kurtz Twittered quite pissily about Obama's appearance on David Letterman's show Monday night. Some of his comments were unbelievably ignorant, churlish, and misplaced -- he seems to forget that Obama appeared on five hard news Sunday shows the day prior, and that Late Night with David Letterman is a comedy talk show. Here's Kurtz' real-time media "criticism" of a late night gabfest:




Hey, Howard, if the show regularly features "Stupid Pet Tricks," it's not likely going to include harshly interrogatory questions. Go figure, Mr. Media Critic.

I wonder if Kurtz' disappointment with Letterman's grilling of Obama was in any way related to the fact that Howard's wife is a Republican operative of long standing? I'm sure Sheri Annis was pulling for Letterman to unload on Obama, and perhaps her standard-issue Republican ire rubbed off on Kurtz a little bit?

Yes, Howard Kurtz' current (second) wife is Sheri Annis, a professional Republican operative now working at (running?) an outfit called Fourth Estate Strategies. She's written for National Review, was a spokesperson for the Arnold Schwarzenegger, and helped run anti-affirmative action, anti-bilingual education, and anti-immigration campaigns.

If she's also worked against gay marriage, Howard married the Full-Metal-Wingnut!

How can someone married to this person be one of the most important news media critics in the USA? It would be like having an oncologist whose husband was a pro-cancer lobbyist.

So, now I wonder if Sherri Annis and her Fourth Estate Strategies are dealing with any insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, or any health industry-related organizations of any kind. I wonder if I could trust Howard Kurtz to reveal his wife's client list accurately?

Iin the midst of a massive health care legislative push, it would be a real shame if Howard Kurtz's bank account depended in any way upon the outcome of legislation and if his healthcare coverage was slanted by his wife's pillowtalk. It's bad enough that his wife is a Professional Republican Operative.

Howard Kurtz and Sheri Annis were married in May 2003 [PDF file]. Purportedly Annis " gave up political work after their marriage. " But, if so, she only gave up working for specific political candidates, and continued to work advocating for Republican positions on public policy issues.

For instance, as recently as 2007, Sheri Annis was representing Americana Consumer Institute, with a push to kill carbon cap and trade legislation -- another hot issue in DC nowadays.

American Consumer Institute appears to be an astroturf organization (Surprise!) also fighting Net Neutrality.

That's what I could find with a quick Google. I presume all her clients wouldn't be so easily located. And Howard Kurtz hasn't always been sensitive when he's dealing with his wife's clients during his work.

If only David Letterman could have Howard Kurtz on and ask him how his family's financial future could be altered by whatever issues his wife may be lobbying for or clients she may be representing.

Bills are Long

Ezra Klein posts about the length of bills and why whining about it is a lameness.

Some weeks ago on The Daily Show (TDS), Jon Stewart even pulled this complaint out when questioning someone about Health Insurance reform (was it Howard Dean? Not sure.)

I thought a great way to answer it would be to ask Stewart a question in response:

"Jon, your contract should basically be a short sentence: 'I, Jon Stewart will host TDS for x years and Comedy Central will pay me Y dollars.'"

"Now, Jon, how many pages long is your actual contract?"

Our Gay Brothers and Sisters...

...really know how to do -- and mashup-- protest signs.

This guy is justifiably proud for covering up "SIN" with "Great."

"We can't ALL marry Liza Minelli," I presume David Gest isn't holding that one up.

Quote the Bible back at them. I'll have to remember this Bible verse.

More funny protest signs here about all kinds of political things (not just gay issues).

Difficult quiz:

Who said the following, and when:

Here's one of the most exciting and emulsified carboniferous acts that I've ever had the pleasure to introduce. She's hermetically sealed and egregious beyond my companionship. Miss Libby Morris.

Answer: 1966, and the "who" is in the linked video

Numbering the Teabaggers

Another datapoint about attendence at the Teabag event: DC Metro has released ridership figures for the weekend. Look on that page for most of the raw figures below.

September 12, 2009 - Rail ridership: 437,624 Bus ridership: 236,347
(I sum that to 673,971 total trips)

That is well lower than average workday rail/bus ridership (which is over one million: 700,000 rail and 450,000 bus on most weekdays).

But let's compare the Saturday of 9/12 to Saturday one week earlier:
September 05, 2009 - Rail ridership: 300,963 Bus ridership: 236,347 * see note below *
(Sums to 537,310 total trips)


This past Saturday was about 26% above the previous Saturday's rail ridership. Bus ridership was the same. Teabag day didn't even come close to ridership levels for a regular weekday with commuters.

There were about 137,000 extra trips (that would include both to and from trips) the past Saturday over the previous one, meaning probably around 68,500 excess round trips on the subway this weekend compared to last. I wouldn't attribute all that transit to the TeaBag event, and one would have to figure in the people who drove, but that seems in line with official estimates of around 60-70 thousand protestors on Friday. Also, there were other events that same Saturday 9/12 (American triathlon and Black Family Reunion), so ridership would have been up for them, too.

However, it's apparent there was no huge unparalled ridership surge on Saturday that would have come from more than 100,000 protestors.

Let's compare ridership with Inauguration day:

January 20, 2009 - Rail ridership: 1,120,000 Bus ridership: 423,000

About 800 thousand more trips for Obama's inauguration than on last Saturday.

To throw in a weekend day for a comparison without weekday workers, how about the Sunday two days before inauguration?
January 18, 2009 - Rail ridership: 616,324 Bus ridership: 152,108

So, even the Sunday two days before inauguration had more ridership (especially by rail, but even by rail and bus combined) than the teabaggers had on Saturday.

I wonder what university Beck got his figures from?

None of the above is meant to estimate the numbers of people there on Saturday. It' s just to show that those estimating some huge crowd of over a hundred thousand or even a million are smoking weed from another planet.

---
* I realize Metro gives the same figures for bus ridership on both Saturdays 9/5 and 9/12. I'm presuming that's an artifact of how they count their ridership and not an indication that the number of trips were precisely the same -- still it's the figure they give both days.

Not a Comedienne, Either

The invaluable Instaputz brought back joyous memories by posting this brief but compelling video of former Saturday Night Live performer Victoria Jackson on Fox before the election.



Lest we forget, the right was calling Obama a communist even before the election.

Victoria's whole schpiel is elegant but particularly this segment of her run-on sentence:

"I don't see why people are afraid to say the word Communist and I've done a lot of research and I've read the book 1984 by George Orwell twice ... "

Ahem. I presume she considered 1984 a cautionary tale, which is why it's assigned to pre-teens. But Orwell was certainly a socialist (Does Jackson know the difference?), another epithet hurled at the President.

Ah, memories. I recall Victoria Jackson, in her pre-Saturday Night Live days, as a kooky performer on late-night talk shows, particularly Johnny Carson. Her act, as I recall, was reciting poetry in her Betty Boop voice (or possibly singing a quite dopey song and playing ukulele) while doing a poor junior high school gymnastics pose.

That was her act.

Initially I assumed this was faux Dada or intended ironically. (What hath Andy Kaufman wrought?) After a few interviews it was apparent she was serious -- and therefore seriously un-self-aware, untalented, and vapid. Somehow she she extended her show biz career by getting the gig on SNL, left that and did a few tv and movie appearances, and finally disappeared until she ended up Tourretting rightwing non-sequitors on Fox News. Quite a sad career arc, even for second-tier SNL alums (though not quite as pathetic as poor Charles Rocket).

Now I see that she "writes" for Breitbart's "Rightwingers trashing Hollywood in hopes of getting jobs in Hollywood" site Big Hollywood. Scroll around there a bit in amazement: it's even worse than this blog.

The sad thing is, there were sixty or so thousand people on Capitol Mall this weekend talking like Victoria Jackson, sometimes with a lagniappe of casual racism.

Poop Show

David Mitchell has an amusing column in The Guardian that mildly disparages politicians of all sorts and David Cameron particularly. But at the end he points to something that those of us in America should despair of:

The solution is to tighten expenses rules but pay MPs more, but that's a difficult argument to win and politicians would have to be brighter to do it, particularly after they've all been caught pilfering House of Commons toiletries.

Ultimately, it's not in Cameron's interests. He doesn't need the money – many Tories don't. Lower pay and cutting things like each MP's communications allowance, which they'll then have to find from political funds, will always tend to benefit the right wing, the advocates of the rich. What sounds like selfless parsimony for those who aspire to govern translates as voicelessness for people without private wealth or contacts in big business. It turns out he's not stupid.

That's utterly sensible and, while communicated with a humorous tone, solid advice for the UK, I think.

Here in the US this week, it's pretty apparent from Supreme Court argument that the justices nominated by Genius George W. Bush will gut campaign finance laws. This means that corporations will not just be able to dump ungodly amounts of money into some parts of the political process, but that there will be no area of political discourse that will be even slightly off-limits to their sewage.

Expect the Bush Supreme Court to soon rule outright bribery "protected political speech," so long as Republicans are the ones raking in the payoffs.

Why are lower-middle class and poor southerners screaming in anger for the right to die bankrupt and untreated rather than have insurance companies regulated? Because some of the richest people in the world are pumping their heads full of rank bullshit.

Hard to believe, but expect it only to get worse, until the USA is a premodern state with a microthin gilded upper crust seperated from poorhouses, workhouses, and a seething underclass of Dickensian proportions: but an underclass that loves rich corporations bankrupting and killing them. Scrooge will never have to change his ways.

I appreciate David Mitchell's amusement at the irrationality of what Cameron is doing. I wish we had that problem here.

The Shah and Orchestral Tuning , from Slonimsky's Book of Musical Anecdotes.

More Media Maron

I wrote about Marc Maron's new podcast the other day, and since then he's added two more: One with some angsty entertainment industry inside ball, movie chatter, and the insanely funny Jim Earl (Episode 2), and another with the also insanely funny Patton Oswalt (Episode 3) and a visit from Kent Jones' alter ego Lawton Smalls.

Give them a try. They're free on Itunes and not on Itunes. He plans on doing two a week, which will be great.

Republicans: Putting Government between you and your emergency care

Wingnuts such as Joe (The Palmetto Prat) Wilson are worried that immigrants will get coverage under health care reform.

That is false. It is false.

Illegal immigrants won't be covered--that condition is not only in various reform bills but it's also in pre-existing statutes the reform will conform to. Since that can't be true, maybe they are concerned that, whether covered by insurance or not, immigrants might receive care from physicians and hospitals?

I presume so: I think what they're indicating is that if anyone is brought to an ER injured badly after an auto accident, the Doctors will have to determine whether the patient is an illegal immigrant or not -- be forced to check papers -- before delivering care.

You can't tell merely from looking at an injured human being what country they are citizens of.

Which means that as we American citizens lay injured and bleeding in the ER, medical personnel won't be able to give care until they've checked our citizenship and immigration papers. If we don't have papers, we don't get treated. If you, as even a native-born American citizen, have papers but they were destroyed in the car crash and fire you barely survived, the hospital won't be able to treat you because you can't prove you're not an illegal immigrant.

I'm not sure how Republicans expect to deny emergency care (again, we're discussing mere medical care, not insurance coverage, which will not be part of the reform plan) other than immigration-checking every injured person in every emergency room in the USA. I can't figure out any other way of denying all medical care (not coverage) to immigrants besides this except for tattoing or implanting 'US CITIZEN" on every citizen of the USA. Of course, even tattoos and implants can be removed in traumatic injuries, so that wouldn't be foolproof either.

I would like to ask Rep Wilson and every other Republican trying to demagogue this issue: Why will you prevent my doctor from treating me if I don't have my citizenship papers on me at the moment I need life-saving emergency care?

PS: Rob Miller is running against the wingnut Joe Wilson who shouted "You lie" during Obama's speech. Send Miller some money.

Media Maron

A little more comedy now-- but for a change, it's about an American. The main news, should you want to skip the rest, is that Marc Maron has a new Podcast and it's great. It's called WTF and it's free on iTunes or not on iTunes

I didn't know of Marc Maron much before he started the ill-fated morning program Morning Sedition on Air America way back when. The show was a revelation: smart and powerful hilarity. There was plenty of satire, but very little of "let's have someone imitate a given politician" or "let's write a gag that's not funny but is remotely topical" that passes for satire nowadays, and none of the "Wow, lesbians and midgets are hilarious" that has bizarrely become a standard of unfunny "funnymen." He's left-of-center but I'd be hard-pressed to call him a "political comedian" because most people who do that are about as funny as Jay Leno with chin cancer, and Maron's stuff and that of his writer/performers is usually much more oblique than just reformulating headlines.

Someone has kindly put up an archive of the comedy bits from Morning Sedition, and they are still funny. Especially if you can cast yourself back to the very dark days when Bush was running things but it was somehow treasonous to mention you were ashamed the President was from Texas (unlike now, when the preferred term is for a sitting President is "Stalinist African-born Hitler" -- get right on that Diane Sawyer).

Give these bits a listen -- they're still hilarious. (also they feature Kent Jones, who appears as Rachel Maddow's sidekick now, the multifarious Jim Earl, Wyatt Cenac, and a lot of other good comics).

Maron parted ways with Air America (meaning they shafted him several times), but he's kept a unique and darkly hilarious take. Here's an hour-plus long standup set he did a few weeks ago. It's great how relaxed and natural he is. I'm not a fan of mere "Setup. Punchline. Repeat" comedians and he's certainly gone way beyond that. It's theatrical in the most basic sense, and had me roaring with laughter.

Go check out Marc Maron's new WTF podcast, either on Itunes or not on Itunes. He tells a few stories, rants a bit, and has a long and interesting conversation with Jeffrey Ross (who I respect a lot more after this interview).

There's a lot of Maron's history I've left out-- I've just put up mostly what drew me to his work. If you want to read more, you can start with Wikipedia and visit his website.

BBC America, Hear Our Plea

Regular readers will know that I'm a hardcore fan of British media -- especially comedy. Here's an American who knows which radio sitcoms are airing on BBC4 most weeks -- and often who wrote them. BBC (radio and TV and even their website) is a world treasure. So much great stuff.

But even for those not so involved, if you asked most Americans what entertainment forms you think of when prompted with "British," it's worth a wager that in the top five responses would be "comedy" (even higher if you eliminate music and musical groups).

This is to point out that BBC America for the past few weeks has aired no comedies -- no sketch shows, no sitcoms, no Monty Python, no comedy quizzes no news parodies, no historical comedy-dramas. There are a couple talk shows with comedy caulking (Graham Norton and Jeremy Ross), but no straight comedy. Here's a paste of the lineup for today:

BBC America Schedule, Wed. Sept 2

01:00:00 AM  You Are What You Eat
02:00:00 AM  Dragons' Den
03:00:00 AM  The Graham Norton Show
04:00:00 AM  How Clean Is Your House?
04:30:00 AM  How Clean Is Your House?
05:00:00 AM  BBC World News
06:00:00 AM  BBC World News
06:30:00 AM  BBC World News
07:00:00 AM  BBC World News
08:00:00 AM  Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares Revisited
09:00:00 AM  Cash in the Attic
10:00:00 AM  Antiques Roadshow
11:00:00 AM  Bargain Hunt
11:30:00 AM  Bargain Hunt
12:00:00 PM  You Are What You Eat
12:30:00 PM  You Are What You Eat
01:00:00 PM  How Clean Is Your House?
01:30:00 PM  How Clean Is Your House?
02:00:00 PM  Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares Revisited
03:00:00 PM  Gordon Ramsay's F Word
04:00:00 PM  Hotel Inspector
05:00:00 PM  Gordon Ramsay's F Word
06:00:00 PM  Kitchen Nightmares
07:00:00 PM  BBC World News America
08:00:00 PM  Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares
09:00:00 PM  Gordon Ramsay's F Word
10:00:00 PM  BBC World News America
11:00:00 PM  Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares

BBC News is great, and I'm glad they expanded it. Some of the other shows are okay timewasters, but there's nothing there which would make me say "I have got to see that." Much of it is just dross of the drossiest sort.

On other days they have more interesting programs in the evening, and I don't hate Gordon Ramsay -- I'm just not that interested and he's on every day it seems.

There's tons of great entertainment on BBC and other UK stations: please, BBC America, air some of it in America.

One example is QI, which is Stephen Fry's entertaining, bizarre, and interesting (Quite Interesting) comic quiz show. There's a bit of a push to get it aired somewhere on US TV, and that's a cause to get behind. Here's a Facebook page devoted to getting QI aired in the USA. Go pitch in and read about the program. It's great that John Hodgman will be a panelist this season!

I'd love to see QI on BBC America, but there's a lot of other stuff that would be wonderful to see, too. I've often wondered if some shows they are airing (e.g. How Clean is your House?, You Are What You Eat?, and The Hotel Inspector) get much viewership, or if they're just nearly free to license.

I'd be extremely interested -- and, of course, surprised -- to see ratings for BBC America's various programs, but there is no way their current strategy is the strongest lineup they could put forward, even giving viewership, licensing, and pecuniary issues. If IFC can air The IT Crowd and Graham Duff's wonderful pot-dealer sitcom Ideal, with those Mancunian accents that regularly cause even an anglophile like me to use Closed Captions (I love you Johnny Vegas, but Moz's slurred rasp can be a bit hard to decipher), then surely BBC America can run some of the many great shows that are on offer on UK TV nowadays.

Adult Swim is airing The Mighty Boosh, fer chrissakes, which is as funkily British as Melton Mowbry pies with gooseberries, jellied eels, Stilton, and HP sauce.

[I'm sure competition from stations like IFC and Adult Swim--and of course PBS for the tonier productions-- is a challenge to BBC America. But BBC A weren't airing Ideal anyway and it's been years since they aired The Boosh, so that can't be the driving force behind their odd programming choices.]

Please!