First, a brief public service announcement: This edition of “The Bloody Red Pen” concerns itself with clinical terminology as applied to the female nether regions. If you’re the sort who gets indignant or starts feeling all squicky inside when you hear or read about such things, you might want to go check out some pictures of cats with funny captions for a while. Go ahead, I won’t hold it against you. We’ll just plan on catching up later.
Well, I’m still at the office at 6:44 PM, looking at another late night following a really hectic day. Yay me. Long-time readers know how much it irritates me on those occasions when my job precludes me from having any time in the evenings to, you know, live. But long-time readers probably also don’t want to have to read yet another boring whine about how much I hate something. So instead, how about if I just share a photo with y’all? Behold:
P1000385, originally uploaded by jackskitchen.
Yes, that’s right, kids. That’s my balding — but, I hasten to add, not yet completely bald! — head in the general vicinity of Rick Springfield! This was taken by my buddy Jack at a concert about ten days ago; he and his wife accompanied The Girlfriend and myself to the show and an overnight stay in Salt Lake’s favorite cultural relief valve, Wendover, Nevada.
And now, thanks to the wonders of the Internets and its peachy-keen user-generated content, here’s a video clip from that very same concert. This is the big climax of the show. Sing along, kids, you know the words…
Forced good humor aside, it is slightly amazing that that I can so easily find and view a reasonably good-quality amateur video of a concert I attended less than two weeks ago, and for free, too. If you’d told me way back in 1981 that we would one day be able to relive these sorts of events in this fashion, and while I’m still relatively young, I would’ve figured you’d been reading too much Arthur C. Clarke.
Sigh. I wonder what else I’ll be able to find on the tubes before that project I’m waiting on finally makes its way back to my desk…
Here’s a strange thought: today would’ve been Christopher Reeve’s 57th birthday. And in only a few days, on October 10, it will be five years since his death. Time flies, eh?
I don’t intend to make a habit of observing celebrity birthdays here, especially those of celebrities who are no longer with us, but, well… Chris is kind of a special case for me. Besides, marking this particular date gives me an excuse to post a real treasure of a video, a clip of Chris’ first appearance on The Tonight Show way back in 1978, when he was promoting Superman: The Movie. He comes across as very young, very earnest, more than a little nervous, and kinda goofy, especially when a couple of his jokes fall completely flat. Johnny Carson, though, is gracious as always and helps this up-and-coming young star through what must have been an incredibly nerve-wracking experience:
Strange to think that all three of the men featured in this clip — Chris, Johnny, and Rodney Dangerfield — are now gone. Without getting too maudlin about it, let me just say that realizations like this are what make me feel increasingly out of touch with the present.
Hat tip to LA Times‘ Hero Complex blog for the clip…
Like a lot of other young people, I went through a phase in my late teens and early twenties when I idolized the legendary actor James Dean. It’s tough to explain the Dean mystique to someone who doesn’t get it, but I think a major component is the unanswerable question of what might have happened to him if he hadn’t died in a car crash at the age of 24. You see, he made only three movies before his untimely death, and by some quirk of fate, all three were good and memorable. He never had the chance to fail, to appear in a box-office dud or choose some experimental project that no one understands; to be involved in a career-threatening scandal or fall out of fashion with the fickle movie-going public. He is frozen in our collective consciousness at the peak of his physical and professional attractiveness, an eternal avatar of unfulfilled potential. Which means that, sociologically speaking, he’s a blank slate onto which fans — young fans, in particular — can project their dreams and worries about the unpredictable future.
What classic-movie buff has not speculated on what Jimmy would’ve done if he had lived beyond the year 1955? Would he have flamed out in another year or two and gone back to Iowa to raise hogs in obscurity? Would he have gotten fat and weird like his own idol, Marlon Brando? Or would he have been the rare Hollywood personality who manages to build a lifelong career and ends up respected and beloved well into old age, like his contemporary Paul Newman? This same “what if?” scenario is at the heart of a pretty amazing TV commercial that I’ve been seeing around the ‘net the past couple of days. Created for a South African investment company, this piece is brilliantly conceived and executed, in my humble opinion. I’m still trying to figure out just how it was done:
Seriously, was that a lookalike who’s had his face tweaked with CGI? Or actual footage of Dean that’s been inserted Forrest Gump-style into other settings? I’m usually pretty good at spotting special effects, but I honestly can’t tell what’s been done here. It’s an impressive piece of work, regardless.
As I said, I’ve seen this in several places, but the first was (naturally) on Boing Boing. Surprisingly, the ad brought a lot of derision in the comments over there, with several posters saying that it was tasteless, disrespectful, or downright irrelevant because “hardly anyone under 50 remembers” Dean. The latter argument is just plain stupid — I am under 50, and obviously I know who he is, and I’m willing to bet a lot of the Damn Kids™ I complain about are aware of him, too, as an iconic face and a legend, if nothing else. But I really don’t get the charges of tastelessness and disrespect. Maybe I’m operating from a different paradigm or something, but it struck me as a very reverential piece, a harmless exercise in wish fulfillment that does nothing to diminish Dean’s real life or reputation. I suppose you could argue it’s crass to use a dead celebrity’s image for advertising under any circumstances — but that’s problematic, given all the ways Dean’s face is used to make money already — or whether the concept of the ad is really suited for the thing being advertised. Personally, I think the company’s slogan — “given more time, imagine the possibilities” — is both poignant in its connotations for Dean’s life and appropriate for the services being sold, i.e., long-term investments.
Or maybe I’m just a sentimental dope who likes the fantasy of a life that might have been for the guy whose image hung over my bed for several years.
If you’d like to know more about the creation of the “James Dean (Legend)” ad or see a full-rez version of it, go here.
Every region of the country has its own dialect, a collection of pronunciations, vocabulary, and so forth that are unique to that place, and Utah is no exception. But usually that dialect is confined to spoken language; with the exception of Mark Twain, no one writes words the way people actually pronounce them. So I can only assume that whoever wrote this brief paragraph about Tool Logic Survival Cards in the Salt Lake Tribune was not intentionally trying to capture the weird way Utahns flatten words that sound like “eel” into “ill”:
The 1.3-ounce Survival Card I includes a fixed serrated stainless still blade, a magnesium allow fire starter, a loud signal whistle, an 8x power lens, a compass, tweezer and toothpick.
I could be wrong, of course, since this description appears to have been lifted more or less directly from the product’s Web page, and over there the blade is said to be made of steel. Perhaps this really was an exercise in what we marketing and tech-writer types call localization, i.e., when a document’s spelling and usage is adjusted to suit the area where the document is to be published. (True story: A co-worker of mine who hails from Mississippi and Georgia and has worked very hard to rid herself of her Southern accent — she feels that it’s too often misinterpreted as a sign of low intelligence — recently thanked me for pronouncing “deal” properly, instead of like “dill”; it’s apparently one of her pet peeves about living here. I’m far more bothered by the a/o inversion myself; many Utahns, especially older and/or rural ones, would say “born” like “barn” and vice versa. I cringe when my mom talks about “hornessing the harse.”)
However, I don’t think even localization can excuse the “magnesium allow” thing. That’s just plain wrong.
For the record, this entry marks the beginning of a whole new category of entries here on Simple Tricks and Nonsense: The Bloody Red Pen, a compendium of all these dippy grammar and usage errors I seem to keep running across. If I can find a few free moments, I’ll go back and re-categorize the older such entries, so you can find all these little rants in one convenient bin. Assuming you’d have any reason to, that is…
I started thinking a couple weeks ago about what, if anything, I wanted to write here on the blog regarding my 40th birthday (which was Tuesday, in case anyone is compiling a dossier). I’ve tried not to be a drag about it, but if you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably picked up on the fact that I’m not too happy about reaching this particular milestone. My reasons are pretty unremarkable, even cliche’d, mid-life crisis stuff, which means they’re probably utterly pathetic and boring to anyone who isn’t me. So I won’t bother to elaborate on them, beyond simply saying that I’ve been struggling for a while with a nagging sense that I’ve wasted a lot of time, energy, and money on unimportant crap instead of forging the life I used to think would somehow just happen. I realize that nobody’s life turns out the way you imagine it will when you’re a child or a teenager or even a college student, but it seems like a lot of folks at least end up in the right ballpark, even if they’re not actually pitching the game. I don’t feel like I have, and I know I’ve got no one to blame but myself. And that’s not an easy thing to admit or accept. Even worse, I’m afraid I may have missed the window of opportunity, passed my peak without even realizing it had arrived, and now a lot of what I’ve always wanted simply isn’t going to be possible.
But I said I wasn’t going to bore you all with that stuff, and honestly, I’m not nearly as concerned with it now, two days after the calendar page turned over, as I was earlier in the summer. My depression and angst seemed to peak last week sometime, and I was actually in a pretty good mood on my birthday itself. For this, I thank my friends and loved ones, who all realized I was having a hard time and did their very best to cheer me up. My coworker friend Diane surprised me with brownies and some nifty Bettie Page collectibles on Monday. My former coworker friend Amber surprised me with an Amazon gift card. Then there was the flood of good wishes from my various acquaintances on Facebook (I’ve been somewhat dubious of the sincerity of social networking “friendship,” but I have to admit that each wall posting from old coworkers and classmates gave me a genuine boost). Anne, my lovely Girlfriend, was wonderful, of course, as were my parents. Anne’s and my friends Dave and Sarah brought me a delicious homemade cheesecake.
And then there was the “present” I received from my old buddy Cheno. I don’t know how funny this will be to anyone who doesn’t know “The Dudes” — i.e., the guys I worked with at the multiplex way back in the day, who are still somehow, improbably, my friends — but it cracked me up:
In case you don’t know what I look like, I’m the dashing bearded guy in the middle…
Reading the Sunday funnies yesterday brought me to an important moment of self-realization.
No, really.
You see, yesterday’s edition of “Get Fuzzy” turned on a disparaging reference to the TV sitcom Two and a Half Men, a series that seems to be deeply loathed by a not-insignificant number of people. I like it, myself; it’s not remotely deep, but I find it is consistently laugh-out-loud funny, at least to my sensibilities, and I’m frankly baffled by the level of ire I often see directed at this amiable — if admittedly crass — little show.
So I was thinking all of these things about Two and a Half Men and suddenly it struck me.
OMG… I like crap.
The things the sophisticates, connoisseurs, intellectuals, and hipsters generally decry as lowbrow, superficial, or — how I have come to loathe this word! — cheesy are often the things I most enjoy. And in turn the things that make them gush with enthusiasm and sweet, sticky joy tend to leave me, well, unimpressed. Consider the evidence:
The Girlfriend and I passed a pleasant afternoon today watching DVDs, one of which was a little film called Fanboys. If you’ve never heard of it, don’t feel bad; I’m not sure it got a wide theatrical release, and it was probably only in the theaters that did show it for 10 minutes or so. It’s got a winning premise: set in fall of 1998, months before The Phanton Menace is due to premiere, a group of nerdy friends embark on a cross-country roadtrip to George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch, where they intend to steal a work print of the movie so their buddy who has cancer can see it before he dies. Unfortunately, the execution of that premise is a little rough. While the film has a number of good sight-gags and a few knee-slapping moments, it also has some really tedious segments, and the ending isn’t nearly as poignant as it ought to be. Also, the script perpetuates some very tired stereotypes about the fanboy scene that are just this side of insulting, and there’s a really bizarre running gag about Star Wars fans being the mortal enemies of Star Trek fans. That strikes me as deeply false, the sort of rookie error made by a screenwriter who doesn’t know his subject nearly as well as he thinks he does; every bona-fide fanboy and -girl I know tends to like both franchises to one degree or another, if not equally. Fanboys is pleasant enough, but I think a movie called Free Enterprise from about 10 years ago covered the same basic territory far more effectively.
However, this entry isn’t really intended to be a movie review. It’s a rant about a very common punctuation error that I, with my proofreading superpowers, am constantly running across out there in the real world, and it drives me absolutely crazy. It turns up everywhere, even in places where you’d expect a certain command of the English language. Like, say, in movie credits. See if you can pick it out in this transcription of a line from the closing credits of Fanboys:
Special Thanks to The Skywalker Ranch and It’s Wonderful Staff
Do you see it? The apostrophe in “It’s”? Do you think whoever typed up this film’s credits really meant to say “The Skywalker Ranch and It Is Wonderful Staff”? Because that’s what it means when you put an apostrophe in between “it” and “s.” That means you’re looking at a contraction of the words “it is.” The possessive form of the word “it” is “its.” Just three letters, no apostrophe. Yes, that is a contradiction to the way nearly every possessive in the English language is formed, but, well, that’s English for you.
Let me make this easy for everyone:
Got it? I hope so, as there will be a quiz later. And just in case you think I’m overreacting here, just consider this:
see more Lol Celebs
I’m going to go take an aspirin now…
As she did last year, the lovely Mrs. Jack sent text-message updates on my buddy’s Lotoja progress throughout the day. If anyone reading this is interested, he crossed the finish line in Jackson Hole at 7:31 PM, with a final time of 13 hours, 43 minutes, 22 seconds, landing him in 279th place. (I have no idea of how many riders there were this year, so his position doesn’t mean much, I guess.)
Jack’s time was just ever so slightly longer than last year’s, which was 13:39:58. I haven’t spoken to him yet, so I don’t know if he had issues with wind or what happened. Still, I remain impressed with his accomplishment; I doubt if I could pedal a bike much farther than a couple of miles, let alone the distance he covered in a single day. Well done, my friend!
Update (Sunday morning, 10:11 AM): I just heard from Jack, who informs me that the time I had on record for last year was incorrect. His time in 2008 was actually 14:00:55.138, so his performance this year was a significant improvement! Kudos, once again, and sorry for the mix-up!
My friend Jack is going to ride in the Lotoja Classic bicycle race tomorrow, his second time participating in this 206-mile endurance event. (You can find last year’s coverage here.) I’d like to wish him luck, if he happens to be sitting up too late for someone who has to pedal a bike up and down mountains in the morning, and may the wind be at his back. Or whatever bicyclists say to each other. I’ll be away from my computer all day tomorrow, but I’ll be getting text-message updates on Jack’s progress, and I’ll report the results when I get the chance…