Dee Dee with the Easter Bunny

(click to enlarge)


We believed in the magical make-believe trinity in our house in Erie, PA when I was very little - Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. I wasn’t disappointed as a child to learn that the Easter Bunny wasn’t real. I liked the character and the story, but the idea was too fantastical to maintain even as a child.

(Santa is different; he embodies many of the same characteristics shared by personalities we believe in even as adults, including saints, patriarchs, and deities.)

I do remember as a very young child. waking up in the middle of the night in Erie, many hours before Easter sunrise, going downstairs to the bathroom, and hearing something in the kitchen. The lights were off, and I didn't go into the kitchen, I just listened around the corner. Whatever it was, it stopped. Believing firmly it was the Easter Bunny, and not wanting to frighten him off, I used the bathroom, went back upstairs and back to sleep.

Was it Mom and Dad? Possibly. Maybe Dad getting a snack from the fridge and not wanting to stop me from returning to bed.

There is, however, something disconcerting in Easter secular mythology. Christmas has been able to maintain a long and amicable secular and sacred split fairly well (though to what extent and how much longer that can be maintained, I'm skeptical), but Easter is different. The large costumed Easter Bunny with empty eyes in the mall where Santa is supposed to sit is a little sinister, and for a religiously inclined person, it's uncomfortable.

But Dee Dee and Jing liked it, so it can’t be all bad.

One more thing...

We wondered why Dee Dee kept running in and out of our bedroom. She was admiring herself in the full-length mirror while she applied magic marker lipstick. Fortunately, these were Crayola markers and washed off.

 

Started: 2012-04-05

Disconnected Enough to be Better

I'm watching Season 1 of The Love Boat.[1]

I was convinced as a child that ocean cruises were populated by funny, attractive people who's only embarrassments served as object lessons or to prop up the benign humor of friends[2]. I believed you could fall in love over a weekend, that the ports were always friendly, the crew members infinitely patient, and the captain discerning and paternal and stern, and occasionally vulnerable.[3]

I watched every minute of every episode, up to and through the closing credits and circling aerial view that picked up skipping highlights across wave crests around the Pacific Princess. I savored every last note, every glint, knowing it would be another week before these friendly people would visit me again.[4]

I cherished those characters. They were as real to me as any living person, and I'm grateful that at one time some few writers and actors and directors got together to create this airy little confection.

Though I know Gopher well, I'll never meet Fred Grandy, and if I did, he wouldn't be Yeoman Purser Burl Smith. He'd be former Congressman Fred Grandy from Iowa. Even so, I'd like to think I could have a drink with him and tell him how much I identified with the personality he created.

And Julie and Doc and Isaac and Captain Stubing.

Naïve? Sure, so what. The tune in/turn on/drop out generation was leaving me behind and in its wake followed a construct just enough connected to reality to possibly be true, but disconnected enough to be better.

[1]
In my opinion, one of the the best segments of the entire series is "Oh, Dale," Season 1 Episode 3, starring John Ritter.

 

 

[2]
That is a very good sentence.

[3]
Original: "and the captain discerning, fatherly and stern, but deep down a marshmallow." No meter. "Fatherly" gets stuck in you mouth, and if you add "marshmallow," the sluggishness is reinforced; "paternal" and the removal of a comma also picks up the sounds in "discerning."

[4]
You can't do that anymore (savor every last musical moment of a TV show's closing credits); they just don't compose closing themes anymore, and if they play reruns that do have closing themes, they scrunch and mute them for programming announcements. I want to bang my head on the coffee table sometimes and plead, "Just let me have this moment to say good-bye."

What's missing is not so much a respect for my time, but a respect for the relationship I've built with the characters. Artists (and those that package them) have to respect their audience, and that includes the last word, the last note, the last brush stroke, or the last credit.

Started: 2012-03-08

Cheech and Chong in Outer Space

(Originally Posted August 26, 2011; minor edits.)

You all know what actors look like they're acting; it's especially evident in silent pictures (they were compensating for lack of sound), and often in radio (where they compensate for lack of pictures); when you can see or hear the acting, you're not seeing or hearing the story.

I stumbled across two radio series I was unaware of and thought I'd offer my opinion:

2000 Plus
Unremarkable so far; I can get 10 minutes in and my mind is wandering so badly I forget what just happened a minute ago. Still worth the listen, there aren't very many. "The Insect" is good, but suffers from a prolonged effort to convey "these people are really scared; don't believe me? Wait, wait... listen to them be scared some more..."

http://www.archive.org/details/otr_2000Plus 

Chett Chetter's Tales from the Morgue 
I hate to say anything bad about anyone that grooves on radio plays as much as these guys do, but Mark Sawyer and Jay Reel must have watched too much Dr Who and Monty Python; their stories, despite excellent production values, are filled with potty double entendre and voice characterizations that are too obviously old, southern, or dumb to be any of those things.

And there's absolutely no reason for these stories to be told in a morgue.

http://www.archive.org/details/OTRR_Chet_Chetters_Tales_from_the_Morgue_Singles 

"Peace to the Frifalites"
I think this episode introduced "the Master Constipator"; call this one "Cheech and Chong in Outer Space" (Right, never would have put those two ideas together; just listen, won't take you long to get it; after that, well, that's all you get.)

Listen to "Peace to the Frifalites"
from Chett Chetter’s Tales from the Morgue

What do both have in common? Long stretches of dialog between a couple or few people that requires few new sound effects to move the conversation along, but unfortunately the conversation doesn't move the story along, it just burns through a few more minutes of airtime.

Any writer, whether he's working in type or sound (which are ultimately the same thing), that finds himself stretching dialog to fill space, doesn't deserve your attention any longer.

The best pieces have no more words than they need, and no less.

And that is why I am stopping here.

Are the 147.435 Repeater Denizens "pathetic codependent losers"?

The LA repeater at 147.435 was my first exposure to licensed ham conversation.

Listen to the LA repeater at 147.435MHz
(WARNING: Foul language and adult content. If you're at the office or kids are around, turn it down.)

Story:
I'd studied for my ham Technician's License, bought a dual band HT radio, read sample exchanges online of what you say, what the other guy says back, read voraciously about the hobby and the opinions of those in it. Then I went to RadioReference.com (a wealth of streams and information ), and tuned in a ham repeater that had the most listeners, 147.435.

Certainly, I thought, something interesting must be happening there.

There certainly was.

The profanity and utter disregard for common courtesy and protocol was worse than anything I'd ever heard over CB, and that's saying something. I knew from eHam.net and other places that there were lots of people that respected the hobby and had a low opinion of this kind of crap, but I wasn't about to run the gauntlet through it to find respectful hobbyists if this was what the majority were like.[1]

I kept listening locally over a real radio and also found another repeater on RadioRefence.com that exemplifies what's good about the hobby. It's the WIN System Amateur Repeater Network and it's pretty active. It's in California and most activity is centered there, but I've heard folks join from far away as Hawaii, Tennessee, North Carolina, New Zealand, and England.

It's not a constant talkfest 24/7, but if you let it stream, you'll hear the chatter every few minutes.

Listen to the WIN System
Amateur Repeater Network here

If ham bands ever get diced up further for corporate fat cats wanting fatter bandwidth for their cell phone networks, it'll be partly due to irresponsible folks that have abused the airwaves like those on 147.435. It's hard to tell if they're acting or as one QRZ forum contributor wrote, are just "pathetic codependent losers."

Does it matter?

[1]
Believe me, I'm no prude. Anyone that knows me knows I have a healthy respect for 4-letter words. What I can't abide is disrespect for the hobby and the technology. You can be a foul-mouthed antisocial nogoodnik the rest of the time, but when you pick up your mic or keyboard or paint brush or wrench or whatever tool you use to engage with people, put on your big boy pants and act like a grownup.

Started: 2012-03-29

My High School Caste System

Circa 1981, McDowell High School, Millcreek, PA.

Brains and Looks
Class presidents reside here, and prom kings and queens. They go to the best schools and become politicians, captains of industry, military brass, doctors. They live in the nicest neighborhoods and no one in your family knows anyone in theirs. They are generally successful and generous later in life, but never truly intersect with or understand the other castes.[1]

Just Brains
They discover vaccines, start technology companies, have stable, long relationships, and remain convinced that at least one really dumb thing is really true despite their exceptional smarts in everything else.

Just Looks
They're just like Just Brains except they have none and they remain convinced that nearly every dumb thing is really true despite the exceptional odds that they would be wrong once in a while. Both Just Brains and Just Looks don't know you exist unless you have considerable amounts of one or the other, in which case you're the object of ridicule or admiration, depending on what you have the most or least of.

Jocks
Sports, drinking and girls. In that order. Heavy jackets, big letters, wide shoulders, low brows, ever-present sidelong glances. Lots of alpha male posturing and elbows in the hallway. They tend to gravitate toward the Just Looks crowd, since, aside from their athletic ability and cult status, there is little else to distinguish them from that group.

Not Everyone Else
Quiet, invisible, anonymous. They have no name, they're just "not everyone else." They are never voted "most likely" to do or be anything, and generally they don't and aren't. They ride the bus to school. They don't have jackets with letters, and only enough looks and brains to wish they had more of both.

Outcasts
Everyone knows of them but doesn't know them. They are manipulated and bullied by one half the class, ignored by the other. They belong to no other group, have no friends, and disappear after graduation. They sometimes meet sad ends that we only learn of years later.

Dirt Bags
Music, drugs, and rebellion. In that order. Long hair, frayed jeans, bad grades, maximum amount of legal missed days; if they're over 18 they write their own absentee excuses. Antisocial, antiestablishment, anti-everything, but big hearts looking for a connection to other big hearts.
God bless Jon Flueger (Fleuger?), wherever you are. I reach the dirt bag in you.

So, where were you?

[1]
As a former acquaintance of mine said, these are the members of The Lucky Sperm Club.

There were of course many exceptions, variations, and subdivisions within this system, like the ROTC crowd, which overlapped a couple others. I'm sure there have been many studies on high school social structures, so no need to belabor the point here. Your school was certainly similar, you just used different words to describe it (unless you were home-schooled, then you are a group unto yourself; perhaps you were even spared some of the pain high school inflicts, though I suspect you've only met it in the workplace, as it festers everywhere, though violations of the rules have more severe consequences as you get older).

Of course, there are folks that think they are in one group or another, and they are really not, which can lead to social embarrassment or low self-esteem from always trying to fit someplace you don't belong, and never really finding where you do.

Finding the inner I'm Okay/You're Okay voice is the first step.

Started: 2012-03-20