“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
Hi, I’m Lorne Michaels, the producer of Saturday Night. Right now, we’re being seen by approximately 22 million viewers, but please allow me, if I may, to address myself to just four very special people—John, Paul, George, and Ringo—the Beatles: Lately there have been a lot of rumors to the effect that the four of you might be getting back together. That would be great. In my book, the Beatles are the best thing that ever happened to music. It goes even deeper than that—you’re not just a musical group, you’re a part of us. We grew up with you.
It’s for this reason that I am inviting you to come on our show. Now, we’ve heard and read a lot about personality and legal conflicts that might prevent you guys from reuniting. That’s something which is none of my business. That’s a personal problem. You guys will have to handle that. But it’s also been said that no one has yet to come up with enough money to satisy you. Well, if it’s money you want, there’s no problem here.
The National Broadcasting Company has authorized me to offer you this check to be on our show—a certified check for $3,000. Here it is right here. A check made out to you, the Beatles, for $3,000. All you have to do is sing three Beatles songs. “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.” That’s $1,000 right there. You know the words—it’ll be easy.
Like I said, this is made out to the Beatles—you divide it up any way you want. If you want to give less to Ringo, that’s up to you—I’d rather not get involved. I’m sincere about this. If this helps you to reach a decision to reunite, it’s well worth the investment. You have agents—you know where I can be reached. Just think about it, okay? Thank you.
—Lorne Michaels, Saturday Night Live, 24 April 1976
Little things.
It’s not the sum total of what I’ve been up to, or where I’ve been, but I can’t stop listening to this ever since Joshin pointed it out. —I mean, I’ve also been writing, and I haven’t read a news feed in, what is it, three weeks? Four? Something’s happening, I’m just not sure what.
Magnificently shaggy.
The new Dresden Codak strip is, as they say, a thing. A hell of a thing.
I knew these things were complicated, but damn.
Complications of Taran: Attack air; Considerable distress; Kill previously deathless Cauldron-born; Kill wizard; Strike down warrior; Suicidal Taran attack. Causes of Taran: Craddoc; Dallben; Article; Lot; Request. Treatments for Taran: Shelter; Companion; Critic Taran Adarsh; Ellidyr; Movie. [via]
Plum.
Kris’s Color Stripes really is a wonderful thing to find in your RSS feed of a morning.
Four minutes, sixteen seconds.
Just like that right there. [via]
Always already.
Beloit College has posted its “Mindset List” for the Class of 2013: the things that for them have always already happened. It starts with “Martha Graham, Pan American Airways, Michael Landon, Dr. Seuss, Miles Davis, The Dallas Times Herald, Gene Roddenberry, and Freddie Mercury have always been dead,” and ends with “There has always been blue Jell-O,” with 73 steps in between. —For me, the worst was at the top: “If the entering college class of 2013 had been more alert back in 1991 when most of them were born…” Christ. I was already about to drop out of college in 1991. [via]
Still doesn't pass the Bechdel Test,
and I never even liked GI Joe as a kid, but damned if this doesn’t somehow make me all warm and fuzzy nonetheless:
Sing into my mouth.
Yeah, I know. But I can’t stop listening to it.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Irrespective of how much I might or might not be looking forward to a Tim Minear take on Alien Nation, there’s something terribly wrong with this sentence:
Syfy [sic] Creative Director of Original Programming Mark Stern sat with us and talked about the new reboot we’re all eagerly awaiting—
But the night was dark! And stormy!
Somewhere in San Jose a server’s straining mightily to serve up the 2009 winner of the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest. As you might remember, we at the pier are not so fond of the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest, which has (we feel) substantially lost its way; we are pleased to note that the Lyttle Lytton awards are still running strong, and recommend the 2009 finalists to your attention as a welcome tonic. —Finally: an unlooked-for but as-welcome defense of the Great Man himself, from Jess Nevins, a champion of the welcome unlooked-for.
μῶμος.
At the age of 15, Humperson ran away from home to become a lighthouse keeper on the rugged, storm-lashed Atlantic coast. During this time he worked on a new signaling system intended to warn sailors of the various complex dangers—extending far beyond mere storms and rocks—presented by the sea. Unfortunately, because of widespread unfamiliarity with the system amongst sailors, wrecks were caused and a great many lives lost. Humperson fled to Jerusalem, where he studied anthropology and sociology in Hebrew under Martin Buber.
It was here—swatting flies in the fierce Palestine sun—that he began to develop the ideas for which he’s best remembered. Later, as a tenured professor at the University of San Marino, Humperson developed these preliminary insights into the five Laws of Meta as we know them today—
Momus extols an uncelebrated thinker.
The Bay 38.
While as with all right-thinking people I celebrate Charlie Jane Anders’ review of Revenge of the Fallen as some sort of critical apogee or at least the most fun I’ve had reading a movie review this summer so far—
And around hour six of ROTF, something curious happens: the two components—male enhancement and pure id—start to clash, badly. Usually, in a summer movie, the two aspects go together like tits and ass: Jason Statham plays someone who faces the same insecurities as regular dudes, but he overcomes them, and in the process he blows up everything in the world. But creating that kind of fusion requires enslaving the id to the male enhancement, and that in turn means only going way over the top instead of crazy, stratospheric over the top. Michael Bay is not willing to settle for going way over the top, like other directors.
So you have a movie that tries to reassure men that they can actually be masters of their reality—but then turns around and says that actually, reality is not real. There’s no such thing as the “real world,” and the only thing that’s left for men to dominate is a nebulous domain of blurred shapes, which occasionally blurt nonsensical swear-words and slang from ethnic groups that have never existed. If you’re drowning in an Olympic swimming pool full of hot chewing gum fondue, do you still care if Megan Fox likes you?
—Robert Humanick’s more pedestrian review from the House Next Door nonetheless proposes what I think will become the crucial metric for gaining some perspective on the era of the entertainment-industrial complex:
I mourn the volume of human life being wasted on this thing. If the film makes $100 million this weekend and tickets cost $10 a pop, that’s ten million viewers and a total of twenty-five million hours, not including previews, travel and the time spent earning the wasted money. If the average person lives to be 75, that’s 38 lives.
Remember the Bay 38, people. Never forget.
Half-learning all the moves.
Seriously, io9, how the hell do you write even a puff-piece on The Last Airbender movie without even a gesture toward its calamitous casting calls? I mean, over a third of my traffic these days is from people googling up this article right here…
A question for the ages is answered.
They say everything is on the internet somewhere, so here you go: the reason why Yellow is orange.
If you ever wondered what it is I sound like,
I read “Bottom Feeding,” by Tim Pratt, for Podcastle.
