Category: Best Half

To Gilligan or Not to Gilligan

Best Half First Sister Music Stuff No. 1 Son The Chowder7 Comments on To Gilligan or Not to Gilligan

You know what’s wrong with kids these days? I’ll tell ya what’s wrong with kids these days!

When I was a kid, every­one I knew was famil­iar with the aria “Votre toast je peux vous le ren­dre” from the opera Car­men, aka “The Tore­ador Song” (skip ahead to 1:12):

No, we weren’t opera buffs. Bear with me a sec.

Car­men is an unusu­al opera, giv­en that its libret­to was orig­i­nal­ly in French.

Here are the orig­i­nal lyrics in French:

Toréador, en garde! Toréador!
Et songe bien, oui,
songe en com­bat­tant
Qu’en oenoir te regarde,
Et que l’amour t’attend,
Tore­ador, l’amour, l’amour t’attend!

And here’s a rough Eng­lish trans­la­tion:

Tore­ador, on guard!
Tore­ador! Tore­ador!
And con­tem­plate well!
Yes! Con­tem­plate as you fight!
That a dark eye is watch­ing you,
And that love is wait­ing for you,
Tore­ador! Love, love is wait­ing for you!

My friends and I didn’t have the first clue about Car­men, much less opera in gen­er­al. We just knew a frag­ment of the aria with (at the time) mild­ly risqué alter­na­tive lyrics; a few years lat­er we knew the aria with some oth­er amus­ing lyrics we saw on TV.

You are now about to date your­self with one of three reac­tions:

  1. You’ll rec­og­nize the aria by its qua­si-risqué Eng­lish lyrics
  2. You’ll rec­og­nize it by the fun­ny TV lyrics, or
  3. You don’t rec­og­nize it at all, in which case I would tell you to get off my lawn, but you already got bored and are watch­ing pim­ple-pop­ping videos or some­thing instead.

Here are the mild­ly risqué lyrics:

Tore­ador!
Don’t spit upon the floor!
Use the cus­pi­dor!
That’s what it’s for!

That’s not very naughty, you’re think­ing. But this was a long time ago, when any­thing with even the most oblique ref­er­ence to any­thing scat­o­log­i­cal or burps or farts or spit­ting or what­ev­er was hys­ter­i­cal­ly fun­ny because they’d get you in trou­ble.1

Now, here is the TV ver­sion I men­tioned: It occurred in an episode of Gilligan’s Island titled “The Pro­duc­er.” In “The Pro­duc­er,” a film pro­duc­er crash-lands on the island, so the cast­aways cre­ate a musi­cal ver­sion of Shakespeare’s Ham­let.

As one does.

So they cob­ble togeth­er a mashup of var­i­ous oper­at­ic frag­ments with (sort of) the plot of Ham­let. In this case they mashed up Lord Polo­nius’ speech to Laertes (and here are the fun­ny TV lyrics I men­tioned ear­li­er):

Nei­ther a bor­row­er nor a lender be
Do not for­get! Stay out of debt!
Think twice, and take this good advice from me:
Guard that old sol­ven­cy!
There’s just one oth­er thing you ought to do:
To thine own self be true!

(Skip ahead to 3:30 in the video):

Shock­ing­ly, Gilligan’s Island did­n’t rack up lots of awards. But “The Pro­duc­er” snagged a spot on TV Guide’s list of the top 100 TV episodes of all time.

“The Pro­duc­er” reminds me of some of the best mate­r­i­al from Warn­er Broth­ers’ car­toons or Sesame Street: They can pro­duce high-qual­i­ty, hilar­i­ous enter­tain­ment that both chil­dren and adults love. Not because it appeals to a low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor with fart or poop jokes (don’t get me wrong—well-executed fart or poop jokes can be a plea­sure sub­lime).

No, it’s because they can appeal to chil­dren at their lev­el and adults at their lev­el2 (I could get into a sim­i­lar com­par­i­son of The Rab­bit of Seville, or “What’s Opera, Doc?” (same here), for instance, both of which should have won Nobel Peace prizes).

Like every gen­er­a­tion ever, today’s kids think they invent­ed every­thing cool—sex, f’instance. Or more specif­i­cal­ly in this case: Memes.

A meme is a lit­tle snip­pet of a cul­tur­al fad or joke all the cool kids know. But kids these days didn’t invent memes. They just dumb­ed them down.

Memes these days are some idiot on Dr. Phil say­ing “Cash me ous­side; how bow dah?” Or a gamer scream­ing “Leeroy Jenk­ins!” as he gets all his team­mates killed. Or dab­bing, or Nyan Cat, or Grumpy Cat, or Ceil­ing Cat Is Watch­ing You Mas­tur­bate, or Philoso­rap­tor or Tide Pod Chal­lenge or a zil­lion oth­er things.

Many of these are rib-crack­ing fun­ny, but they don’t go any­where. They’re a mile wide and an inch deep. Flash­es in the pan.

If you vis­it Know Your Meme and search for pop­u­lar memes, you’ll find ref­er­ences to a fun­ny line in a show or amus­ing acci­dent or bizarre news sto­ry that caught the public’s atten­tion: DAMN, Daniel!; Oh, wait: You’re seri­ous? Let me laugh even hard­er!; Ermagerd! Gers­bermps!—stuff like that.

And since the Inter­net has giv­en most peo­ple the atten­tion span of a hum­ming­bird on crack, I guess that’s noth­ing to sneeze at.

But again: They don’t go any­where. With memes, the name of the game isn’t to suss out where they came from and who start­ed it and where they got the idea from and oth­er inter­est­ing triv­ia. With cur­rent memes, the goal is to acquire pho­to­graph­ic mem­o­ry of the words or pho­tos accom­pa­ny­ing the meme so you can toss them out there online so every­one will chuck­le at how smart you are.

And how does one acquire this ency­clo­pe­dic knowl­edge? Sim­ple: By stay­ing online and plugged in 24/7/365.

While No. 1 Son and The Chow­der were grow­ing up, Best Half worked Sat­ur­days for a few years; a bit lat­er I worked as a free­lance con­trac­tor with super-flex­i­ble hours.

I had the priv­i­lege of spend­ing many price­less hours with my kids at muse­ums, book­stores, the library and so on.

But some­times when I was busy with con­tract work, we hung out at home and watched movies. For Christ­mas one year, First Sis­ter gave me a set of all the Warn­er Broth­ers car­toons ever made; I already owned all of Mel Brooks’ movies on DVD as well, along with most Mon­ty Python movies, and the unri­valed kings of spoof movies: Zuck­er, Abra­hams and Zuck­er, pro­duc­ers of Air­plane, Air­plane II, Top Secret! and the Naked Gun flicks.

Memes are the cul­tur­al equiv­a­lent of triv­ia quizzes. These days “spoof” movies are just strings of loose­ly relat­ed triv­ia fac­ti­cles, but tru­ly great spoofs are more than triv­ia quizzes. If you want to pro­duce tru­ly great spoofs like Blaz­ing Sad­dles or Air­plane!, you have to love the genre you’re spoof­ing, love it enough to turn it inside out in a way true afi­ciona­dos of West­erns or dis­as­ter movies will rec­og­nize instant­ly.

Old-school memes like The Tore­ador Song are fun­ny and viral, yes, but if you get inter­est­ed in where they come from, you won’t see info like “This meme start­ed when Ben­der the robot said ‘Oh, you were seri­ous? Let me laugh even hard­er’ on Futu­ra­ma.”

That’s what I think, any­way. YMMV. Get off my lawn.

The Blown Away Guy

Best Half Charles the Deep Breather Music Stuff Pioneer Supertuner The Legendary Jensen Triaxials27 Comments on The Blown Away Guy

So this just hap­pened: I’ve got a bit of a stuffy nose today, which is good, because The S.O. has been suf­fer­ing with adult croup all week and that means I prob­a­bly haven’t caught it.

So I said, “Hey; where’s the Mucinex?” Mean­ing, of course, the brand name of the pop­u­lar decon­ges­tant. Except that’s not what I said—I actu­al­ly said, “Hey, where’s the Mem­o­rex?”

She said, quite rea­son­ably, “What?” I went to the replay, as I so often have to do, to fig­ure out what I real­ly said. “Oh, I meant the Mucinex.”

“It’s under the sink in my bath­room,” she said. “What’s Mem­o­rex?”

“Ah!” I said. “You did not have to fight in the Great Car Stereo Wars of the ’70s. There was all sorts of debate about stereo and record­ing equip­ment, but it got most vicious when it came to car stere­os. Which was a lit­tle sil­ly, because every right-think­ing per­son knew the cor­rect answers: The very best car stereo was the under­dash Pio­neer Super­Tuner; the very best speak­ers were Jensen Tri­ax­i­als, and the ONLY cas­sette tapes that should be allowed in any­one’s stereo were Max­ell cas­sette tapes—in short, pre­cise­ly what I had installed in Charles the Deep Breather.”

That whole “Stair­way to Heav­en” thing? This is what they meant.

She wise­ly stopped lis­ten­ing at that point, so I’ll just tell you what I meant:

See, if you were around in the 1970s, it came down to this: If you liked Mem­o­rex tapes, you had to get behind their lame com­mer­cial with Ella Fitzger­ald singing a high note that broke a wine glass, then the record­ing of Ella Fitzger­ald doing the same thing.

“Is it LIVE—or is it MEMOREX?” the com­mer­cial smug­ly asked.

Well, lemme think: I’m in my car lis­ten­ing to music. Is it live? A quick glance at the pas­sen­ger and back seats con­firms: There are no musi­cians per­form­ing here. None of my win­dows are shat­ter­ing. Con­clu­sion: It is nei­ther live nor Mem­o­rex BECAUSE I’LL SET THIS CAR ON FIRE BEFORE I USE MEMOREX TAPES!

There were oth­er worth­less tape brands out there, such as TDK (aka The Dick Knnnnnnig­gits3, favored by wimps who lis­tened to smooth jazz) or BASF (aka Barf and Shit Farts,4 which your younger sib­lings used to record, direct­ly from the radio, what­ev­er bub­blegum dreck was pop­u­lar that week, and you made it known across the land that a slow, painful death await­ed he who dared even think about using in your car).

On the oth­er hand–Maxell. MAXELL, baby. They got more famouser even than Mem­o­rex with a sin­gle print ad: It was a fan­tas­tic, icon­ic image; the kind of adver­tis­ing Apple is always grasp­ing at.

On the left is a hulk­ing, mon­strous speak­er, the kind Dr. Dre wish­es he’d replaced with the Beats Pill. On the right is a deep leather arm­chair in which a guy wear­ing a leather avi­a­tor’s jack­et and scarf is hang­ing on for dear life. His scarf is snap­ping and flut­ter­ing like he’s a Flori­da reporter stand­ing out­side for no rea­son dur­ing a hur­ri­cane. Behind him, on his right, a lamp is about to blow away. On his left is a small side table upon which a mar­ti­ni glass has slid to the edge and is about to tip over; the mar­ti­ni itself and its olive are spray­ing over the edge of the glass.

The guy in the chair quick­ly become known as The Blown Away Guy, and the ad OBLITERATED Mem­o­rex. It was on bill­boards for a while dur­ing my senior year of high school–just the pho­to with the word Max­ell down in one cor­ner. That’s all they need­ed. If you were a faith­ful Max­ell user you would just shout “MAXELL!” and high-five your pas­sen­ger. If not, you would turn your stereo way down in abject hor­ror and mis­ery, won­der­ing if you could ever aspire to redo all your mix tapes and albums on Max­ell tapes.

When they final­ly decid­ed to make it a com­mer­cial, they did Apple before Apple was Apple: All you saw was the guy hang­ing on, teeth and toe­nails, against the oncom­ing tsuna­mi of–not Led Zep­pelin or KISS or The Who, but Wag­n­er’s “Flight of the Valkyries.”

It’s been 20 years since even seen a cas­sette tape, much less lis­tened to one. But hav­ing acci­den­tal­ly spo­ken the Cas­sette Brand That Must Not Be Named, I still feel the need to apol­o­gize to Max­ell and any­one old enough to under­stand what the hell I’m talk­ing about.

Assisted Twister

Best Half Funny Stuff My friend Rob2 Comments on Assisted Twister

You’ve heard this say­ing: “If you don’t like the weath­er in (wher­ev­er you are), just wait five min­utes and it’ll change!”

This, my friends, is Fake News. I’ve lived in, or spent enough time in, enough states to get an idea what the weath­er is like: Ore­gon, Wash­ing­ton (State and DC), Col­orado, Texas, Ari­zona, Flori­da (and Aku­mal, Mex­i­co and Guangzho, Chang­sha, and Hong Kong).

But I grew up in Kansas.5 Kansas is the only place where the “wait five min­utes and the weath­er will change” joke applies. In fact, Kansas is the only place I’ve ever lived that has weath­er at all, and I can prove it. To do so I need to talk about cof­fee:

Back some mum­bledy-sev­en years ago, I worked after­noons at the state hos­pi­tal and got off at 11. Depend­ing on how much mon­ey we had, my friend Rob and I would either dri­ve around and drink beer till the wee hours of the morn­ing, or go down­town to Pore Richard’s, pay for one bot­tom­less  cup of cof­fee each, and drink cof­fee till the wee hours of the morn­ing.

Pore Richard’s was a restau­rant and café where you could spend a lot of mon­ey on steak or lob­ster or oth­er pricey munchies, or you could spend $1.25 on a cup of cof­fee and get refills until you start­ed to vibrate.

Being broke, and giv­en that Nin­ten­do and iPhones and Android and X‑Box and restau­rants with dozens of TVs show­ing every chan­nel there is at ear-shat­ter­ing vol­ume were all years in the future, we had to find some­thing else to do. So we’d talk and argue and talk with the servers and argue about things with them, all of which are alas becom­ing lost arts.

But most often we would whip out Road Notes and get busy.

Road Notes was a big 200-page col­lege-ruled spi­ral note­book (sev­er­al, in fact; I still have about 10 of them and I’m pret­ty sure there were more).

And upon the pages of Road Notes we would inflict song lyrics; goofy draw­ings; vignettes; short sto­ries writ­ten back and forth between us, two para­graphs apiece; all man­ner of things.

One night I was noodling around in Road Notes and the Wham song—oops; I mean the WHAM! song—“Careless Whis­per” came on our table juke­box, which meant some­one at one of the oth­er tables had dropped a dime in their table juke­box.

Then it came on again. And again. And again. Now, I like this song and I liked it back then. It wasn’t as bad as some­one play­ing “What’s New Pussy­cat?” 21 times in a row, but it was wear­ing thin. I sac­ri­ficed a dime from pet­ty cash (aka the serv­er-tip­ping cash) to play some­thing else, but some­one in the restau­rant had just bro­ken up with some­one else and was drown­ing his or her sor­rows in a tsuna­mi of dimes to hog the juke­box.

Rob grabbed Road Notes from me and start­ed draw­ing. A minute lat­er he hand­ed back a pair of draw­ings. One was a cred­i­ble forgery of the old “Loose Lips Sink Ships” poster labeled “Care­less Whis­per,” except the sol­dier gab­bing at his girl­friend had a bull­horn aimed right at Hitler and was blow­ing his hair and mus­tache off.

Next to that was a draw­ing of a bald woman, labeled “Hair­less Sis­ter.”

I said, “Hair­less Sis­ter”? Rob said, “Wait; don’t tell me you haven’t heard this. The Hair­less Sis­ter song? On Dr. Demen­to?”

I hadn’t, but I did lat­er: Hair­less Sis­ter was a spoof of Care­less Whis­per, in which a high school guy’s sis­ter shaves her head, and her broth­er is singing about how he’ll nev­er go to school again, because an embar­rassed mind can do no learn­ing.

So I grabbed Road Notes back and drew an old woman yelling “Get me some pears!”, labeled “Pear­less Spin­ster,” which set off a pret­ty damn good pun war, which end­ed like this:

After sev­er­al more rounds, Rob drew a pic­ture of Dee Snider with a corkscrew stick­ing out of a big lump on his arm. It was titled, “Twist­ed Blis­ter.”

I looked at him and said “Twist­ed Blis­ter”? You HATE Twist­ed Sis­ter! What song is this, We’re Not Gonna Lance It? He snick­ered and said, “Your move!”

I made a few false starts and then inspi­ra­tion struck: I drew a pic­ture of a house with a tor­na­do head­ing its way. There was anoth­er tor­na­do on the oth­er side of the house.

The first tor­na­do was say­ing, “Help me wreck this house!” The oth­er tor­na­do said, “Sure!”

I titled it Assist­ed Twister.

I pushed Road Notes back at Rob. He looked at Assist­ed Twister and start­ed to laugh. So did I.

Before long we were both howl­ing and falling out of the booth and try­ing very sin­cere­ly not to wet our pants and/or have asth­ma attacks.

Assist­ed Twister. Com­ing soon to a restau­rant near you.

 

So I—yes, I know it’s a hor­ri­ble pun. But that was wh—What? Look, you had to be there. Any­way, we—okay, shut up and sit down. You don’t have to like a bad pun. You just have to respect its courage to be seen in pub­lic.

So let me abrupt­ly change the sub­ject:

I men­tioned ear­li­er that I lived in Ore­gon for a while. I went to col­lege in Ore­gon, in fact. One day I was walk­ing to a class with some­one, and he said, “You’re from Kansas? Weren’t you alla time scared of tor­na­does?”

I said, “You’re from Port­land in spit­ting dis­tance of five vol­ca­noes; ain’t you alla time scared of the floor being lava?”

If you live in Port­land, you can’t wait five min­utes for the weath­er to change: Port­land doesn’t HAVE weath­er. All the weath­er folks on the news have to say is, “Fore­cast: Damp. Cur­rent con­di­tions: About to Rain, Rain­ing, or Just Stopped Rain­ing.”

Arizona’s just the oppo­site: The weath­er in Prescott Val­ley is always mild and sun­ny (unless you’re in Phoenix, where the weath­er is always boil-your-eyballs hot and sun­ny), except that in Prescott Val­ley it rains a few weeks late in the sum­mer, which they call “Mon­soon sea­son,” like they’re in Tahi­ti.

But Kansas—Kansas, my friends, has WEATHER. Back in about ’91, I remem­ber try­ing to dri­ve to work one morn­ing, but it was so cold the trans­mis­sion flu­id was like molasses and the car couldn’t move an inch.

Lat­er that same win­ter, on New Year’s eve, I left work at 11pm and it was a balmy 75°. When the sun came up on New Year’s day it was 20 below zero, and a lot of peo­ple couldn’t get to work because the tem­per­a­ture extremes made a grain ele­va­tor explode, cov­er­ing I‑70 with a 30-foot-high wheat­drift.

Lat­er that spring I was attempt­ing to dash from my car to my house dur­ing a nasty thun­der­storm, and I took a rac­quet­ball-sized hail­stone to the nog­gin that almost knocked me uncon­scious.

I’ve seen it cold enough in Kansas you could spit and it would freeze before it hit the ground. I’ve seen it hot enough that recent­ly resur­faced roads soft­ened up, leav­ing cars mired in asphalt.

Kansas folks are tough enough to deal with apoc­a­lyp­tic weath­er, but Kansas just doesn’t get any respect.

In Dia­monds Are For­ev­er, the evil vil­lain Blofeld asks Bond, James Bond, how he should set about extort­ing the world with his giant space laser.

“I sup­pose I could destroy Kansas,” Blofeld says, “but it would take years for any­one to notice!”

Hyuk hyuk hyuk. But con­sid­er this: If Kansas was destroyed, all that real weather—frozen spit, boil­ing asphalt, Mama-said-knock-you-out hail­stones and tor­na­does, oh my—would have to hap­pen in oth­er states, where peo­ple talk about how the weath­er changes every five min­utes but don’t have a clue what’s in store for them.

Think about that the next time you’re mock­ing Kansas with your hilar­i­ous Wiz­ard of Oz jokes.