Stratovania

Halloween is over, but I still have some spooky stuff to write about. Last Saturday, Beth and I went to Deno's Wonder Wheel Park on Coney Island, as it was the last weekend in the year the rides were running. We went on the Wonder Wheel, the Spook-A-Rama, and the Phoenix, the last of which is a small, slow roller coaster. They did have some Halloween decorations up, including a building entrance shaped like a zombie head.

I also always enjoy when rides have murals with seemingly random things in them. Like, this was what was in the back of the bumper car enclosure.

I get the cars and the car model, but a football player, Captain America, and the Statue of Liberty? If it's a patriotic thing, then why does the Statue look like she's been injured?


In the evening, we saw Weird Al at Carnegie Hall, with Emo Philips opening. This was the first time I'd ever been there, and I didn't even practice, just took the subway. It was the same kind of tour as the last time we saw him, with Al and his band playing mostly his original songs. They pulled out a few unexpected ones, like "Velvet Elvis" and "Good Old Days." When introducing "One More Minute," Al talked about how they performed it on network TV back in 1986, and the network insisted on censoring the line "I'd rather clean all the bathrooms in Grand Central Station with my tongue," which already doesn't make sense, but then they made it much worse by just bleeping the word "tongue." "Skipper Dan" is based on a time when the guide on the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland mentioned his failed acting career, but Beth wondered after the show that it might have been awkward for Weird Al to just go on rides without being hassled. Maybe he went in disguise. For "Nature Trail to Hell," an appropriate choice for Halloween, he did the organ part on a midi accordion. Both "Craigslist" and "Albuquerque" were extended, the former including a long bit of free-form nonsense in the part about his being on a phone call with his mother. I know there was something about the snakes rising up, a phrase Al has used before. "Albuquerque" not only had more kinds of doughnuts and the band playing the beginning of the song again after the part about the narrator losing his train of thought, but also an apology for using the word "hermaphrodite." He said that, in that context, it was just a medical term. While Al generally manages to avoid problematic humor, he does have a tendency to use some mildly offensive words presumably just because they sound silly, particularly "midget" and "albino." And in the song, a later line refers to the hermaphroditic person as a man. "Dare to Be Stupid" was performed with a lounge arrangement. For the encore, there was a cover of "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," then a mostly-acoustic medley of "Amish Paradise," "Smells Like Nirvana," "White & Nerdy," "Word Crimes," and "Yoda," the latter including the chant. This is the best of the pictures I was able to take from our seats in the back row.


We visited Tavie and Sean on Sunday, and watched some Halloween stuff, or actually rewatched it in my case. You can see my thoughts on revisits to The Halloween That Almost Wasn't and Return to Oz here. After that, we looked at a house in Flatbush that really went all out on Halloween decorations (well, I guess the owner went all out, not the house itself, although you never know during the spooky season).

We didn't do much on actual Halloween, aside from watch a few other things. We voted yesterday, and today we saw The Phantom of the Opera at the Majestic Theatre.

It's closing soon, so Beth bought tickets for it. She saw it before years ago, but I've only seen the 2004 movie version, although I did hear my dad's CD of selections from it a lot as a kid. It's a very impressive show, complete with a lot of lighting tricks and pyrotechnics. Although it wasn't really intentional that we saw it on Halloween week, I guess it's sort of appropriate, even if the version of the Phantom in the musical is much less monstrous in appearance than in other takes on the character. He's presumably somewhat supernatural as well, although I guess that's kind of ambiguous. A lot of his tricks are based on mechanics and stealth, but he did curse Carlotta. Or maybe that was psychosomatic. Still, if he has the ability to control minds to some extent, maybe Christine wasn't entirely in control of herself when she went down into the sewer with him. Otherwise, she comes across as kind of absurdly naive. I've heard, probably mostly from Beth, that there's a certain contingent who think Christine should have gotten into a relationship with the Phantom and who don't like Raoul. What did Raoul even do, aside from being upper class? She compared it to people who hate Cosette in Les Miserables, although it's not like Eponine was a serial killer. I remember reading a quote from Terry Pratchett, who wrote the Discworld equivalent of the story in Maskerade, that the message of the musical is that you can get away with murder if you're charming. I might have to read the original book; I understand it's not very long. If I do, I'll probably do a bit of comparison and contrast.

Speaking of spooky music, there's one short piece that I've heard over and over again in different contexts, but never knew what it was called or the original source. For instance, I remember hearing it in elementary school music class with the lyrics "We are here to scare you-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo." Anyway, it's called "Mysterioso Pizzicato," and it was originally used in silent film scores as a theme for villains. I thought of it recently because I was looking up the music to Wizards & Warriors, which uses it as the boss theme.

Beth and I saw "Weird Al" Yankovic at the Apollo Theater last night after work. This is the second time we'd been there, and the other was when we saw Neko Case. Do I need to start an #ApolloSoWhite hashtag? Okay, I'm sure they're the exception rather than the rule; I just have pretty white (and nerdy) tastes, I guess. This was part of Al's Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour, where he plays mostly his original songs instead of direct parodies, and since there aren't any costume changes or the like, the setlist is different every time and the atmosphere informal and fairly relaxed. The opener was Emo Philips, the guy who had his finger cut off in a table saw in UHF. I really didn't know much about him as a comedian, but he has his own style, often very dark and with a lot of the jokes based on phrases that seem innocuous at first but mean something disturbing after the punchline is delivered. That probably applies to a lot of comedy, but I can't really think of a better way to describe it. Emo's Wikipedia entry describes it as paraprosdokian, a word which I'm hoping can become part of my lexicon in the future. He still has the weird haircut and delivery he did in the movie, although I've seen him without the former, in the "It's All About the Pentiums" video, for instance.

At the end of his set, Al himself paid tribute to the venue's history by dragging Emo off stage Sandman-style.


For most of the main set, Al sat down between guitarist Jim West and bassist Steve Jay, sometimes playing accordion and other times just singing or contributing something simple like the vibraslap on the Cake style parody "Close But No Cigar."

The show opened with "Dare to Be Stupid" in more of a Grateful Dead sort of arrangement. While I'd seen some of the other setlists for this tour, I was still surprised by a lot of what they played. I think "Nature Trail to Hell" might have been the most unexpected, but I certainly wouldn't have thought "I Remember Larry" or "Young, Dumb & Ugly" would have shown up either. For the latter, Al announced that he never did it live because the high key hurt his head, but he eventually realized he could do it in a different key. The weird thing is, as Beth pointed out, Neko said the same thing about "Duchess" when we saw her at the same theater a few years ago.

Al did "Dog Eat Dog" on the Poodle Hat Tour, but it's one of my favorites, so it was cool to hear it again. I've always liked the song, but I wasn't that familiar with the Talking Heads catalog back when I first heard it. Now I have most (maybe all?) of their albums, and it's interesting how much of their material Al was able to work into it. "Once in a Lifetime" and "And She Was" were obvious influences, but they had a more obscure song called "Found a Job," and those are the first three words of "Dog Eat Dog." I think "Jackson Park Express" is standard on this tour, but that doesn't mean it wasn't exciting to hear it. That song actually uses a fair amount of paraprosdokian, come to think of it: "I want you inside me...like a tapeworm" or "I never, ever want to see you cry...so please let me cauterize your tear ducts with an arc welder." For "Albuquerque," Al extended the list of doughnuts the shop was out of. I'm pretty sure he did this on the Straight Outta Lynwood Tour as well, but I can't remember if he included the extra joke of mentioning a bunch of berries, then ending with "You got any Halle Berry doughnuts?" They also started the song over again after the bit near the end where Al loses his train of thought. Obviously they didn't play the whole thing over again, but the idea that they might do that with an eleven-minute song was pretty amusing. The thing is, while I enjoyed it, I kind of don't think they should have included two extra-long songs in the setlist, and I've heard "Albuquerque" so many times that it isn't as funny to me anymore. No big deal, though. The main set ended with a medley of parodies done in acoustic arrangements. This was part of the last tour as well, but this time it included some he was still including in the main set at this point: "Smells Like Nirvana," "Amish Paradise," and "White and Nerdy." I believe the band does a straight cover during the encore at every show on this tour, and this time it was Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl," which I'm not sure I've heard before. Al claimed it was his guitar-playing debut, but I think he just strummed without even using the frets. The typical closing is "The Saga Begins," but here he did "Yoda" instead. I consider that a good thing, since it's shorter and more fun live.

After the show, we were able to meet Al! How this happened was due to someone Beth went to high school with and is now her Facebook friend somehow becoming a regular merchandise seller on Al's tours. That was quite nice of her. When I meet famous or semi-famous people, I typically do one or more of three things: 1) hardly say anything, 2) make a really awkward joke, or 3) try to tell them something about my life that has no relevance whatsoever to them. So many people had monopolized Al's time that we barely got a chance to do anything but introduce ourselves and get a picture taken, but it was still amazing. I mean, since I'll obviously never meet L. Frank Baum, this is probably the closest I'll ever get to one of my personal heroes.

So far, being thirty-four doesn't feel any different from being thirty-three. Really, though, that's the case with every year, isn't it? It's only when you look back that you see the change. I feel like I haven't changed much at all when compared to other people I know, though. It seems like other people have some experience that makes them feel grown up, and that's never happened with me. I don't feel exactly like I did when I was a kid, and I hope I'm not as clueless as I was in my younger days, but how I react to things and what I enjoy doing are still about the same. I wonder if that's true, or if my perspective is skewed because I'm seeing it from the inside instead of the outside.

I just got around to watching last week's Simpsons, and this week's while I was at it. The food blog one was pretty good, although the show does seem to be a bit inconsistent on what Homer will eat. Sometimes he'll eat anything, and other times will avoid anything exotic. I remember a joke in "The Last Temptation of Homer" about his having a cheeseburger at a Chinese restaurant. I guess they just go with whatever they think is funny in a particular scene. It is kind of weird that Homer doesn't want to be a food critic when he already was one in "Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner," but maybe the fact that this led to his almost being killed was what turned him against the idea. I also have to give points to the video game convention scene, although the parody names they come up with have been getting a bit weak. I know we've seen the Funtendo Zii in other episodes, but really, how long did that take for the writers to come up with? Five seconds? There was some discussion of this over at Press the Buttons. Also, I give credit for Lisa ranking Weird Al as one of the sexiest vegetarians. From what I understand, Edward Cullen isn't a vegetarian, but I know that was Stephenie Meyer's fault. Apparently no one every explained to her what a vegetarian was. Last week's Family Guy, with Stewie and Brian going back in time to the very first episode, was a pretty creative idea. It also allowed for a lot of meta-humor, and we finally learn what the characters do after setting up cutaway gags. As for American Dad, Principal Lewis is pretty much always funny, so I approved. The bit about Diff'rent Strokes being based on his childhood was a good running gag.

While this week's Simpsons was another parody of a movie I haven't seen, the idea of collaborative young adult fiction writing as a criminal scheme was amusing enough in and of itself. I also think it did a better job with the multiple twist endings than other episodes have in the past. ("The Great Money Caper" comes to mind here.) A coming-of-age story about trolls is probably actually a good idea, although I have to suspect it's probably been done before. I don't know that the golem love story has, though. One joke I found a bit interesting was when Homer called Neil Gaiman "British Fonzie," because bethje told me that not_glimmer said Gaiman was the Fonzie of graphic novels. (I think it was her, anyway.) I'm kind of surprised that it took them this long to have Gaiman guest star, but I guess it's a generational thing. He's been pretty well-known for a while, but mostly with younger people, not people the age of the veteran writers. Family Guy finally found a way to bring back Joe's son Kevin, who was around in earlier episodes and then just kind of disappeared. That he was killed in Iraq was just a one-off line from an earlier episode to explain his absence, but they did incorporate that. They did apparently forget that Brian and Stewie also fought in Iraq for a little while, though.

Actually, most of these items aren't particularly monstrous, but it IS technically Halloween. Unfortunately, I'll be working tonight. Boo! (Um, that's an "I don't like this" kind of boo, not the ghostly variety.)
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Happy Halloween, everybody!

I like Billy Joel's music, but the guy's attitude gets on my nerves. It's that whole tough-guy front that I complained about with Jay Leno. Why are you people so insecure that you need to act like that all the time? Afraid someone might think you're gay? Hey, I'm kind of surprised that Billy is willing to tour with Elton John, for fear of accusations of flamboyance by association.

I've been thinking of doing one of my dissections for a Billy Joel song, but I wasn't sure which one to go with. I considered "Captain Jack," but I couldn't think of that many jokes other than "huh huh, he said 'masturbate.'" So here's my look at the 1977 song "Only the Good Die Young," about a guy trying to convince a Catholic girl to have sex with him. I can agree with him in a sense, because while "no sex before marriage" might be a useful guideline for some, I really fail to see how a marriage license is the key to preventing sin. Isn't God usually portrayed as operating more subtly than that? Still, while I have nothing against premarital sex, I don't think that means you need to do it with the first schmo who expresses interest, which seems to be what this song is suggesting.

Come out, Virginia, don't let me wait
You Catholic girls start much too late

That's not entirely true. Some of them just get married young to people they hardly know.

Ah but sooner or later it comes down to fate
I might as well be the one

So the narrator is saying that this girl's fate is to have sex, so she might as well have it with him as anyone? What a crappy pick-up line! It's making "Did you fall from Heaven?" sound sensible. Why not argue that the ban of premarital sex dates back to a time when women were considered property? I'm sure it still wouldn't work, but at least it would sound less smug.

Well, they showed you a statue, told you to pray

Yeah, I know Catholic churches are full of statuary, especially when compared to other Christian houses of worship, but I'm still kind of amused by this line. Hey, Billy, are you sure she's a Catholic, and not a worshipper of Ba'al Hadad?

You might have heard I run with a dangerous crowd
We ain't too pretty, we ain't too proud

I've seen pictures of you, so I know you're not too pretty. You DO come across as awfully proud in this song, though.

We might be laughing a bit too loud
Oh, but that never hurt no one

Hurt? Maybe not. Annoyed the crap out of everyone in the vicinity? Most likely. They're probably those obnoxiously noisy teenagers sitting the next table over at a restaurant.

I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints
The sinners are much more fun

I'd say that depends on what the sin is, wouldn't you?

Said your mother told you all that I could give you was a reputation

Nah, he could probably also give you an STD.

The way this song comes across, it sounds more and more like she's rejecting this guy because he's a jerk, and just using the Catholic thing as an excuse. But maybe that was intentional. I don't know.

Anyway, here's the source of the title (WARNING: not a real video, just various old Weird Al pictures and clips):

This was one of Weird Al's early songs, before he started getting permission for his parodies. I've heard that Billy didn't like it, but I don't know for sure. While relatively mean as far as Al goes (it's one of his few parodies that directly mocks the original song, like "This Song's Just Six Words Long" and "Smells Like Nirvana"), I don't think it's really that harsh. I guess it's a bit outdated now, though. It would be years before Al released an officially sanctioned Billy Joel parody, "Ode to a Superhero" (to the tune of "Piano Man") in 2003. I've also heard tell of something called "A Matter of Crust" that he would occasionally play in live medleys, but have never heard the song itself.

And while we're on the subject of Al, here's his interview with Billy:

1. On Thursday night, I went out with bethje and Dorothea to Bennigan's. It was karaoke night, and while we didn't actually go into the room where they were doing the singing, we did get to hear a drunken rendition of "Roxanne." Bennigan's now has one of those three-course meal deals like they do at a lot of comparable restaurants. I ended up getting one of those even though I didn't really want dessert, because it was cheaper than getting the dinner and appetizer individually. The dessert I had was an Apple Sizzler, which I didn't really care for that much. I'm really not that big on restaurant desserts anyway. I usually don't like chocolate-intensive dishes, and the non-chocolate offerings tend to be a bit bland and overly filling. I did like the Strawberry Tallcake at Ruby Tuesday, but they've since discontinued it, and totally changed the format of the Chocolate Tallcake as well. I think my favorite desserts are ones that include fresh fruit, but those are rare, for obvious reasons. And I even remember some berries-and-sorbet dish, which is something I usually like, having some particular kind of berry that I found unappealing.

2. Last night, we watched a documentary on Ingrid Newkirk, the founder of PETA. I've addressed before how, even though there are some points on which I agree with PETA, and others where I disagree but can see their viewpoint, their wacky "let's sit around naked in cages" sorts of protests aren't such a great way of getting their message out. Regarding Newkirk herself, though, I get the impression that she's a cold, bitter person in general, and coming up with outrageous demonstrations is the only enjoyment she gets out of life. It's kind of sad, really.

3. Listening to some of Weird Al's old albums, I've noticed how, when he's not parodying a specific artist or style, his songs tend to be somewhat generic rock numbers (in terms of music, that is). And there's often a saxophone solo. Just consider things like "That Boy Could Dance," "Cable TV," "One of Those Days," "Airline Amy," or even "Attack of the Radioactive Hamsters from a Planet Near Mars." Not surprisingly, they tend to be the ones that even fans don't talk about all that much.

Here's a meme-style game I just recently thought up, which for lack of a better title I call "Things You Dislike About Things You Love." Basically, you list some things you enjoy (I ended up listing seven, but I don't think the number should be set in stone; it's cool if you think of more), and then mention an aspect of each that you don't like. You can be creative with them, but try to go with something that's more of a general trend than a specific item. For instance, don't choose a particular episode of a TV show, or a particular song by a band. That might also make (and probably is) a good meme, but it's not what I'm going for here.

1. The Simpsons - The overabundance of jokes that simply consist of Homer being seriously injured. Sure, these are funny occasionally if done cleverly (everybody loves the fall down Springfield Gorge), but I think too many episodes will have a five-minute scene of, say, Homer being electrocuted in lieu of any dialog or plot development.
2. Futurama - Yeah, this is a nerdlinger criticism, but I kind of wish they were more consistent about the level of technology. I don't mind things like the Professor using an overhead projector or a dot matrix printer, because those are funny. I mean like how there are episodes where the characters don't know what wheels are, even though we see a bunch of them in other episodes.
3. XTC - That they apparently can't just get together and record an album every once in a while.
4. The Oz Books - One issue that tends to make my head ache when I think about it (okay, I'm exaggerating a bit, but still) involves animals. We're told a few times that all animals in Oz can talk, and that no animal ever dies (with the occasional exception to this latter item). Yet we still see predators eating other animals, and people eating meat. Some of this meat does appear to grow on trees, but The Lost King of Oz gives us a case of a cook planning to kill and cook a goose in the usual way. So we have situations where people and animals apparently have no qualms with eating other sentient beings, and of animals that are presumably still alive while being cooked or devoured. It gets a little messy when you think about it, doesn't it? Then again, the idea in the Chronicles of Narnia that it's not okay to eat talking animals, but it's perfectly all right to eat non-talking animals of the same species, also comes across as rather messed up (and more elitist than in Oz, but then Narnia seems more elitist in general).
5. "Weird Al" Yankovic - One thing that comes to mind especially with his recent work is that he seems to think the word "midget" is inherently funny.
6. They Might Be Giants - The demise of Dial-A-Song. I mean, I understand why they had to shut it down, but it still sucks. Also, they no longer seem to have much interest in doing themed concerts, and I never got to see any shows back when they did (well, aside from a Flood show).
7. Role-Playing Video Games - I've mentioned this before, but in the spirit of the meme, I'll repeat myself. It bugs me when there's a big, long, unskippable bit of dialog before a difficult battle, which probably means you'll have to sit through it a whole bunch of times. I had that problem with the Valentina and Dodo fight in Super Mario RPG.

If anyone else wants to perpetuate this, go right ahead. I imagine it will go the same way as anything else I've attempted to start, though.

The new They Might Be Giants song "Upside Down Frown" (which can be heard on this radio show) includes the lines, "When I'm with you, the landscape goes all weird, black is white, and the rainbow has a beard." I've been told that "the rainbow has a beard" is a reference to a Cream song. But as for the "black is white" line, Weird Al's song "Everything You Know Is Wrong," itself intended as a TMBG style parody, begins its chorus with, "Everything you know is wrong. Black is white, up is down, and short is long." While I'm sure this wasn't intentional on the Johns' part, is this a case of things coming full circle? {g}

And speaking of TMBG, I know I'm not the only one who finds the insistence of some online fans with not having new albums "spoiled" is pretty ridiculous. On the tmbg community, people have been putting lists of TITLES under LJ-cuts. Yes, because an album won't be enjoyable for me if I know the titles of the songs before I listen to them! In one thread, someone was insisting that "Bird Of The Bee Of The Moth" doesn't count as a "new" song because it was performed on the radio. And this isn't a new thing, either. I remember someone saying several years ago that a certain song (I think it might have been "Cyclops Rock") shouldn't be on an album because it was already on a radio promo CD. (This WAS a while ago, so it's possible I'm not remembering the context correctly, but I'm pretty sure it was something like that.) Apparently, to some fans, if one of the Johns is heard whistling a song while walking down the street, it's old hat and should not appear on a future album. Sure, I like to have SOME surprises when hearing an album for the first time, and the fact that pretty much everyone with Internet access had heard the majority of the Mink Car songs before the release of the album was kind of annoying, but come on! Isn't this the band that pretty much always put their songs on Dial-A-Song (back when it worked) before releasing them anywhere? Didn't some of their early songs not see album release until years after their earliest appearances? ("Which Describes How You're Feeling," for instance, was on the 1985 demo tape, but wasn't put on an album until 1992.) Personally, I wouldn't mind hearing a few more tracks from The Else.

I got this from revme:

Pick one of my icons that you'd like to know about (post the image in your reply, if you can -- otherwise, just describe it). I'll tell you what it means to me. I'm sure you've seen some of them and just wondered what in the HELL that thing is!

Post it on your journal, don't post it, it's your call. I just thought it'd be a fun way to talk about some of my interests.

In other news, I had a dream yesterday in which I bought some dijon ketchup at the grocery store. Within the dream, though, it reminded me not of Barenaked Ladies, but of a Seinfeld episode where Elaine bought some. Even in the dream I thought it sounded gross, but I thought I'd buy it to show people. It was probably inspired by the fact that, that morning, I was telling bethje how I like spicy brown mustard, but don't care for the dijon kind.

In another dream, my late grandfather was still alive, and was playing with me like I was a little kid. My other (still living) grandfather also got involved at one point. In the same dream, I apparently had a bunch of junk at my grandparents' house, which I was sorting and throwing out. I also remember listening to the Weird Al song "One Of Those Days," which I actually heard the day before that.

Speaking of that song, I was thinking about how it's a good example of how Al's general rule not to use even mild swear words can work to his advantage. The line includes the line, "Those darn Russian spies won't leave me alone." Would this have been as funny if he'd said "damn"? I really don't think so.

Hopefully, I'll have something more worthwhile to talk about in my next post.

First of all, happy birthday to lozenger8!

I did some searching for old AL-TV clips, and I came up with this page, which has some cool stuff. The same site has lists of all the bits from AL-TV and AlMusic. Wow, back in the early eighties, he had some four-hour specials. I wish the music video channels had the guts to give him that much time nowadays.

Here are a few interview segments that I found on YouTube:

Vince Neil
Def Leppard
Paula Abdul
Paul McCartney
Tom Petty
Mick Jagger
Keith Richards
Billy Joel
Boy George
Mariah Carey

Watching all of these in close succession makes it obvious that Al tends to reuse jokes fairly often. Since most of them are funny multiple times, though, that's all right. Here are a few other Al-related things I found:

Commercial for a combination sweatband and solar-powered blender
Al narrates a Starship video
Al's earliest TV appearance, performing "Another One Rides The Bus"
Al on BoxTalk, promoting Alapalooza

( A few holiday-related memes )

I haven't done very much Christmas shopping. I don't have very many people to buy for, so I'm sure I can finish most of it in time. I'm really not particularly excited about the holidays, though. Things have been hectic as of late, and it looks like I'm not going to be able to go down to Virginia with my family. Maybe I'll take them their presents this weekend, assuming I've bought them by then.

( And we close with a survey about 2006. )