Anniversary Post: Monty Python’s Flying Circus

Posted on 05 Oct 2015 by Frank Moraes

On this day in 1969, the first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus appeared on BBC One. I remember when I first discovered it, although I’m unclear what year it was — 1977 most likely. It was astounding. But I have to admit that a lot of it worked for me just because it was silly. I especially remember, Climbing the North Face of the Uxbridge Road. How could I not love that?

As I got older, I turned off to it. I started getting more of the inside humor and it seemed somewhat pretentious and always overdone. But about a year ago, I decided to revisit it. I watched the entire series in a short period of time. My first take on it was right: astounding. It’s more the subtle points that impress me now. For example, the first episode of the second season, “Face the Press.” It is most known for The Ministry of Silly Walks. But right at the start of that sketch, Cleese walks by a long line of delivery men — a payoff to the earlier New Cooker Sketch. It’s a marvel, even today; but at that time, this approach to comedy just wasn’t done.

There are things that have become so ingrained in the culture so as to be annoying. I really do find the Cleese “list” sketches hard to take. They depend entirely upon Cleese’s acting, which is superb, but old hat now. These include some of the “best loved” sketches like the Dead Parrot sketch and Cheese Shop sketch. The Dead Parrot sketch has a bit right in the middle where Terry Jones says, “It’s not easy to pad these up to 30 minutes.” Exactly! People remember the beginning of it, but not all the wasted time of going to the brother’s shop and all that. As for the Cheese Shop sketch, it ends stupidly. But I must admit it’s brilliant when Cleese loses it with the musicians.

What works best for me now is when episodes hang together. I didn’t know what to make of “The Cycling Tour” when I was young, but now it is one of my favorite episodes. It reminds me very much of what Palin and Jones would go on to do in Ripping Yarns. But the main thing is that in any episode — Any! — there is a tremendous amount to love. And then, of course, they went on to make three great films. Although, if you ask me, they’re horrible live.

Anniversary Post: SpaceShipOne

Posted on 04 Oct 2015 by Frank Moraes

On this day in 2004, SpaceShipOne took its last, fastest, and highest flight into space. It was the first commercial aircraft to fly in space. It was designed by Burt Rutan for his company Scaled Composites. He’s an amazing guy. But the truth is that I only really know about him because I used to work for a real estate company that did most of its investing in the California desert where the company is located.

I’ve long wondered why it is that Elon Musk is such a big name in the world of high tech but Rutan isn’t. And then I realized: Musk is a billionaire. It’s not about tech. I never thought much of Musk. Other than a couple of successful — but hardly innovating — companies, what has the world gotten from him: talk. But this is America and “when you’re rich, they think you really know!” It’s a shame. And a sham.

But Rutan is the real deal. And he doubtless has a better life. He’s been able to do what he loves. Musk shows all the signs of needing the accolades he receives. He’s another Steve Jobs. And those who read me often will know that I don’t mean that as a compliment.

Update 4 October 2015 7:13 pm

David Nichols mentioned in the comments that “A Satisfied Mind” would would be appropriate here. I quite agree. But we’ll go with Porter Wagoner’s popular version instead of Cash’s:

Anniversary Post: OJ Simpson Acquittal

Posted on 03 Oct 2015 by Frank Moraes

On this day in 1995, OJ Simpson was acquitted for the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. It was not something that I followed, but I remember people were very excited about it. I think the interest in it really made Court TV. Some years after that, I lived with his older brother, Melvin Simpson. Melvin absolutely believed that Simpson didn’t commit these crimes. I’m personally agnostic on the matter. It certainly seems like he did, but I have no problem believing the police set him up.

Melvin most certainly killed someone. He used to be a bus driver. In 2005, he was on cold medicine and fell asleep while driving — crashing his bus. An older woman went flying through the front windshield and died. This made national news because of OJ’s past. But I remember Melvin telling me that OJ had complained that the incident was embarrassing him. The point of the story was, “I’m embarrassing you?!” That always made me wonder if Melvin didn’t secretly think OJ had done it.

My overall takeaway from the OJ Simpson trial was that regardless of his guilt or innocence, if OJ Simpson had not been wealthy, he would have been found guilty. But unlike most people who note this, I don’t think that OJ should have gotten worse representation; I think everyone else should get the great defense that he did. The prosecution has effectively unlimited resources. How is it fair to not allow poor defendants the same thing?

Regardless, OJ is back in jail. He got arrested in Las Vegas when I was living with Melvin. Melvin had been invited to go to Vegas, but backed out for one reason or another. He considered that he had lucked out. I assume so. Clearly, OJ was the alpha. Melvin was actually a very nice guy — even if he was a Golden Gloves boxer.

Anniversary Post: Peanuts

Posted on 02 Oct 2015 by Frank Moraes

On this day in 1950, the first Peanuts cartoon was published. Now, it is easy to discount Peanuts because it certainly is not as good a comic as Calvin and Hobbes or Bloom County. But it can’t be judged like that. It has to be compared to Beetle Bailey — which started less than a month before Peanuts. Or the dreadful Family Circus, which was launched a decade later. When I was a kid, I read the comics every day. I didn’t like Family Circus from the age of 8 onward. And Beetle Bailey was always meh. But Peanuts was consistently enjoyable — and that was 25 years after it was created.

My only distaste for Peanuts comes from the television shows. And it’s not the fault of the cartoon. In fact, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is really quite good — wonderfully written. But why the producers decided to get really bad child actors to do the voices, I’ll never know. It’s just ghastly. But again, it looks great and the writing — as with the strip — is solid.

Anniversary Post: CD Player

Posted on 01 Oct 2015 by Frank Moraes

On this day in 1982, the first commercial CD player, Sony CDP-101, went on sale. It cost roughly $730 (equivalent to $1,800 today). As I recall, when they first came out, what most people were interested in was the fact that they didn’t skip. And then radio stations started using them, and they skipped all the time. They finally got that under control. It seems to me that it was due to a major misconception about the discs: they couldn’t be scratched.

To this day I’m amazed at the way people treat their CDs. Everyone treated albums very carefully, because they understood how easily they could be damaged. But CDs are treated the way cassettes were: people just throw them on the floor on the passenger side of the car. I suppose that’s really why people are so cruel to CDs: they play them in their cars. That would explain why people aren’t quite so bad to DVDs.

Another early myth about CDs was that they sounded better than albums. That certainly wasn’t true. What people meant was that there was no scratching sound. But the truth is that most people are not audiophiles. I’m certainly not. I think audiophiles often miss the music for the sound. And ultimately, CDs were useful to people because they were convenient. If you treated them with the smallest amount of respect, they did last and didn’t scratch. You could easily find a particular song and skip one that really annoyed you. It was nice.

Anniversary Post: The Magic Flute

Posted on 30 Sep 2015 by Frank Moraes

On this day in 1791, The Magic Flute was first performed — just over two months before Mozart died. Mozart had always been keenly interested in the theater. Somewhere, I read a critique he had written of Hamlet and he got the basic problems with the play right. He really did understand dramatic structure. What’s more, he was very much involved with all the parts of his operas — working closely with his librettists. And that was most especially true of Emanuel Schikaneder, who wrote the libretto for The Magic Flute.

Schikaneder was an interesting guy. He was born to domestic servants, but was educated and learned music. He eventually became leader of his own theater troupe at the Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna. He was generally the male lead, librettist, and often composer. He was highly successful during the decade before and after The Magic Flute. But he apparently wasn’t a great businessman — preferring to put on lavish productions and falling into debt. He died in 1812, impoverished and insane. But he led a very interesting life.

Here is a nice short video that doesn’t include any singing, but it includes all the visuals that are the kind of stuff that drove Schikaneder broke. It’s quite beautiful. And yes, I could post the whole opera here. But would you sit here for two and a half hours listening to it? No. (But if you would, the UGA Opera Ensemble performance — In English! — is just a click away.) This clip is from the Dallas Opera:

Anniversary Post: Chevrolet Camaro

Posted on 29 Sep 2015 by Frank Moraes

On this day in 1966, the first (1967 model year) Chevrolet Camaro went on the market. As longtime readers know, I really don’t care for cars. But I actually know something about the Camaro. I can tell if a Camaro is a 1967 model or something else. That is because the 1967 Camaro is the only one that has a vent window. And to know this little bit of car trivia fills me with pride.

When I was a little boy, my parents owned what I think was a 1968 Camaro. It was painted gold. And I remember seeing a Camaro around that time that was painted yellow with a purple racing stripe. As part of my filial duties, I sometimes go with my father to old car shows. And I’m amazed at how often people put racing stripes on “muscle” cars. (The Camaro is supposedly a “pony” car.) It seems so silly to me. Do these people think they are race car drivers?

My father is very much a General Motors kind of guy. He’s very into Buicks. This is kind of odd to me, because whenever I see an American car that I think is compelling at one of these shows, it is almost always a Ford. And as an example of this, I think the Mustang is a much more interesting car than a Camaro. Of course, if I had to have a car, I would like one of those old (tiny) Mini Coopers. As it was, my sister used to have a really old Subaru Justy, and I loved that car. You can make those little cars dance. Literally:

Afterword

It would be the 79th birthday of James Fogle today. He wrote the novel Drugstore Cowboy. And he wrote a number of other novels, but they’ve never been published. The thing about him is that he actually lived the life that he wrote about in his one published novel. So he spent a lot of time in prison and ended up dying in prison. It’s a shame, because Fogle clearly had a lot to offer to the world. But we do have that one novel and we have the excellent film that was made from it — which I consider by far the best drug movie ever made.

Anniversary Post: Battle of Matewan (Kinda)

Posted on 28 Sep 2015 by Frank Moraes

I’ll admit this is a bank-shot. John Sayles is 65 today. And in 1987, he made the film Matewan. I wrote about it last year, John Sayles and Matewan. And so I figured that I would write about the actual event today: the Battle of Matewan, which took place on 19 May 1920.

So it’s 1920, and mining is an even more dangerous profession than it is today. And they were paid very little. In this particular case, the workers living in the Stone Mountain Coal Camp in West Virginia were being paid in script that could only be used at the company store. Basically, these miners were slaves. But things were happening in other areas not far away. Union miners had earned large pay increases by going on strike. So when the United Mine Workers of America came to town, thousands of miners signed up. The coal company responded the same way companies do today: they harassed the workers that they didn’t just fire.

The workers then had a great advantage that workers in most times — including very much today — don’t: the mayor and the chief of police of the local town of Matewan sided with the workers rather than the coal corporation. The way it was supposed to go was that the mayor and the police chief would work together to brutalize the workers. But when that didn’t work, the coal company hired thugs from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency.

On the morning of 19 May 1920, a group of “detectives” arrived by train with the stated intent of evicting some mining families from the camp, but more generally to brutalize the workers. This is something that continues to bug me to this day: the idea that unions are violent. This is pure corporate propaganda. Certainly workers have been violent — no group is perfect. But the business community has used every tool available to them to keep workers in line, and that included huge amounts of violence both private and with the help of the state. Yet it’s the workers who we constantly hear about being violent.

The “detectives” went to the police chief to serve what turned out to be fraudulent warrants. A shootout ensued. The mayor and two miners ended up dead, as did seven of the “detectives.” It would be nice to think that this all led to the coal companies accepting the union and everyone getting along. It would be more than a decade later that some amount of fairness came to the region. And that was due to New Deal policies. So those of you who think it doesn’t matter who gets election, pay attention! It’s like the advice I gave to young Carey Wedler: it’s not about one election or one candidate. We have to push and win battle after battle. There is no other path to justice.

Oh, and: happy birthday John Sayles!

Anniversary Post: Pope Urban VII’s Short Run

Posted on 27 Sep 2015 by Frank Moraes

On this day in 1590, Pope Urban VII died. Given all this Pope Francis madness last week, I thought it would be nice to talk about Urban VII. He did some nice things. He banned tobacco from in and around churches. He subsidized bakers in Rome so they could sell bread cheaply to the poor. But mostly, he’s known for dying: he was only pope for 13 calendar days. That’s the shortest papacy in history.

But he has a lot of competition. Of the 266 popes that the Catholic Church has had, there are ten who served for between 16 and 34 days. A total of at least 23 served less than a year. And there’s also Pope-elect Stephen — a man who died so fast (Three days!) that he didn’t even make it to his consecration and thus isn’t generally considered a pope.

Currently, Pope Francis is sitting at roughly a quarter the way up with two and half years, but he is still alive of course. Benedict XVI served almost 8 years, and that puts him in the middle of popes. Of course, he’s still alive too — just not pope. Well, he still has the title — it’s kind of weird. He’s pope but not the real pope. Anyway, I suppose I should mention that the longest reigning pope was Pope Pius IX (1846 – 1878). He did live a long time, but it was mostly due to the fact that he became pope at the age of 54. He is the joker who came up with “papal infallibility.” The same is true for the number two man, John Paul II, who was only 58. That gave him 26 years to shame AIDS-ravaged Africa into avoiding condoms. We might have been better off if these men had served terms more like Urban VII.

Anniversary Post: Soviet Nuclear False Alarm

Posted on 26 Sep 2015 by Frank Moraes

Stanislav Petrov On this day in 1983, the Soviet nuclear false alarm incident occurred. But in order to understand it, we have to take a step back to 1 September of that same year. Just three and a half weeks earlier, the Soviet Union had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, which strayed into its prohibited airspace. The Soviets claimed that the flight incursion was meant to test their defenses (a claim very similar to that made by the Clockers). But understandably, no one in the west really believed that.

So on 26 September, when the Soviet nuclear early warning system detects two ballistic missile launches from the US, the generally twitchy Soviet Union could easily believe that we had decided to start a war. Luckily, the officer on duty at that time was Stanislav Petrov. The first detection was of a single missile. Petrov thought that it must be a computer error for two reasons. First, it made no sense for the US to launch a single missile. Second, there had been concerns about the detection system. So he waited. Then another detection came in — this time of four missile launches. He again did nothing. And in so doing probably saved the world. (It turned out to be an unusual reflection of the sun off clouds.)

Of course, not everyone was quite so thrilled with his actions in the Soviet Union at that time. And I think about how some people here in the US would think about someone working for our military doing the same thing. I don’t think it would go well. Look at Chelsea Manning — who critics claim (1) didn’t release any information we didn’t already know; and (2) should be shot for treason. There are a lot of people who really do think it is better to destroy the world than to disobey orders.

The whole thing reminds me of a kind of communal Sword of Damocles. But instead of sword hanging over the leader, there are swords hanging everywhere. It doesn’t require anyone actively cutting the threads; it just takes an accident. The rational thing is not to hang swords over everyone’s heads. But things that are obvious to individuals and even small groups are beyond the means of whole countries. “So what if we do develop this Solanite bomb? We’d be even a stronger nation than now!” Ed Wood got that one right.

Anniversary Post: Bill of Rights

Posted on 25 Sep 2015 by Frank Moraes

James Madison On this day in 1789, the US Congress passed what would become known as the Bill of Rights. It would take another two years for them to be ratified. What I find constantly amazing about them is how simple minded people are about them. It is hard to speak of myself in the present tense, but when I was an ignorant libertarian, I had the Tenth Amendment all wrong. And there is now a name for such people: Tenthers — although I like to think that I thought a bit more deeply than these people do.

The Tenth Amendment says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Tenthers normally cram the word “expressly” right before “delegated.” If that were what the Constitution said, then it would indeed put ridiculous limits on the federal government. But it doesn’t say that for a very good reason: that was what the Articles of Confederation said, “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.” And it created a wholly ungovernable country!

The truth is that the Tenthers are mostly a bunch of pretenders. They generally are all for the federal government running roughshod over state and local rights. It’s just a question of what the issue is. Is it drug law? Then its okay! Is it same sex marriage? Then it’s a violation of the Constitution! And we are not just talking about loons here. There was quite a bit of discussion of the issue at the last Republican debate. It’s silly and dangerous.

But I don’t want we liberals to get off easy here. In general, I have a very big problem with the way that both conservatives and liberals talk about the Second Amendment. When I hear conservatives talking about how the Second Amendment is all about stopping government tyranny, I just want to gouge my eyes out. That was not the intent. In fact, it makes no sense: if you were living under a tyrant, she wouldn’t abide by the people’s rights. The whole point of the Constitution is to create a federal government strong enough to protect your rights!

At the same time, the liberal view that the Second Amendment is all about militias and nothing more is not true. We as liberals — more than anyone else — must understand that the Constitution is a living document. We can’t be locked into what a bunch of rich men thought two centuries ago. Over time, the Bill of Rights has been interpreted and we have learned new things about it. And for well over a century, the Second Amendment has been interpreted as a right to individual gun ownership. So it really doesn’t mean anything to whip out a pocket Constitution and read, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

This is a good day to go and read the Bill of Rights. The truth is that most people who talk about the Constitution and Bill of Rights have never actually read it. It’s something that they think they just “know” — as though Americans are born with it just like HP laptops are “born” with McAfee Antivirus software. But we aren’t. And so the Constitution becomes something like magical text that proves that each of us is right about all of our prejudices.

Anniversary Post: Black Friday 1869

Posted on 24 Sep 2015 by Frank Moraes

Gold On this day in 1869, gold prices plummeted in what was know as one of at least a dozen Black Fridays. What was happening was that two speculators, Jay Gould and James Fisk, were trying to corner the gold market. Following the Civil War, the US government was badly in debt. It was thought that the government would eventually have to pay this back with gold. So Gould and Fisk figured they could make a mint if they cornered the market. They succeeded at first, but were ultimately defeated when the Grant administration flooded the market with gold. Prices went back down within minutes of the news.

This was one of many scandals during the Grant administration — most of all because Grant’s brother-in-law was in on the whole thing and secretly encouraging Grant not to sell any gold. He also got Grant to appoint Daniel Butterfield as assistant Treasurer — where he acted as a mole for Gould and Fisk. I’m not actually that interested in any this. What most interests me is how easy it was for a small group of men to monkey with the price of gold. And if it weren’t for the government stepping in, they would have succeeded at their dastardly plan.

What I still don’t understand is why so many libertarian friends of mine have been so hung up on the idea of the gold standard. Basing a currency on gold does not magically fix the problem of inflation. In fact, inflation has been far less of a problem since we stopped basing our currency on it than it was before. Regardless, gold prices fluctuate. There is nothing special about it. I think the appeal of it is simply based upon the fact that these libertarians really don’t have a clue as to how money actually works.

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