The first note of Frogger

On the old Atari 2600 I would play a lot of Frogger. The opening theme, you may recall, went something like this:







(at 0:49 in this review)

However, if you held down the reset switch, that first note would go until you let it back up, which made it seem like a pickup note and made the melody sound more like this confusing version:






I remember holding down the switch for as long as I could. That's still the feeling I have for long pickup notes landing into the start of a melody. And maybe it has something to do with these retarded remixes I am so fascinated with.

Also, there is the matter of

My own personal bias vis-a-vis living history

On a completely different note, I want to talk about two ways of enacting history, and my bias about them. First, you got your history-killing Olde-Tymey-ness. This is when you try to reenact historical artforms just as they were, down to the clothes and styles, etc. I call this history-killing because it freezes things into a period and stifles them there. It makes the period itself the showcase, rather than the art that flowed through it. I get most annoyed with this in music, because it just so happens I am really into acoustic instruments, but this buts me up against so much Olde-Tymey-ness I could puke on your suspenders and washboards. Cuz see, my bias is towards the second way of enacting history, which is radically directed at the individual artwork and its enduring message in today's society. No need to beat around the bush here, I am talking mostly about silent film, and the way plenty of those movies are awesome and plenty of them suck, and how that distinction is being lost by their historical fetishization by Olde-Tymey-ists. Each film before and after sound is its own deal, and putting them all to shitty ass old ragtimey huzzah music just dilutes the good ones and makes the bad ones even worse. To reenact movie history, you have to take the movies seriously as though they were made today, and part of that is playing music that is relevant today. It's like the difference between baby-talking to kids or treating them as real honest-to-god people. I get pissed about this issue because to me it is a matter of respect, and my bias is that respect is important, and you disrespect history when you fetishize it and parade it the way Olde-Tymyists do.

So I guess I'm saying there are things within the arts that endure and things that don't, and making that classic argument about how styles change but substance stays the same. Wow, I never thought I'd be that guy, but I guess in my older age that is what I believe.

There is an element of tragedy to historical style-peddlers, because it takes incredible talent to recreate a style, but that talent seems wasted to me when it parades the dead for the living, instead of trying to create something that will have life long after the maker is dead.

I was a highwayman

Willie Nelson says:
I was a highwayman
Along the coach roads I did ride
With sword and pistol by my side
Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade
Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade
The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five
But I am still alive.

then Kris Kristofferson says:
I was a sailor
I was born upon the tide
And with the sea I did abide.
I sailed a schooner round the Horn to Mexico
I went aloft and furled the mainsail in a blow
And when the yards broke off they said that I got killed
But I am living still.

after which Waylon Jennings says:
I was a dam builder
across the river deep and wide
where steel and water did collide
A place called Boulder on the wild Colorado
I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below
They buried me in that great tomb that knows no sound
But I am still around..I'll always be around..and around and around and
around and around

and finally Johnny Cash concludes:
I fly a starship
across the Universe divide
and when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll be back again, and again and again and again and again..


In this song Willie Nelson is a dude who robs ladies and kills soldiers. A bad ass. An outlaw. But eventually he gets caught, and hanged. But see, then his spirit returns, a bit later in History. Now he is Kris Kristofferson, who is by far the most likely sailor of the bunch. Now who can say how glorious it is to make a boat go around some land (I mean, what the fuck, are you gonna go through the land?), I guess in this chapter it's just he's kind of an idiot and he fucked some kind of thing up with the sails or jibs or whatever, I dunno, go ask some blue-blood yacht dude. Anyhow, you'd think this spirit was gone by now, since it got hanged and also drowned. But nope. It comes back, a bit further into History, this time in the person of Waylon Jennings, who got a hand from FDR what with the WPC building a gigantic dam. Here things might be said to get a little metaphorical. The place is called Boulder but it's getting filled with concrete. The Colorado was wild but they are taming it. Steel and water did collide, but at what cost? At the cost of one Waylon Jennings. Granted, he was clumsy and he was the guy who didn't do the smart thing and be extra careful while walking around on top of a giant not-yet-solidified dam. So anyhow now the spirit got hanged, drowned, and encased in what was at the time the largest man-made monument named after a vacuum in History. This brings us, dear reader, not to the present, because the present can't really mean anything to itself, now can it, so instead it brings us instead to the Future, in the person of Johnny Cash, starship pilot. He is flying the entire distance of the universe, not just lurkin' around outside a town, or going around some land in a boat in the water, or spanning the distance between two sides of an enormous gorge. As we well know the universe is finite and who knows what is on the other side. There are those who say it is the same, only backwards, only you can't even tell it's backwards, since you, too, are backwards. There are those who say it is just sort of boring. Nobody knows for sure. Johnny Cash doesn't even know for sure, but he has whittled down the possibilities to two: either he will become a highwayman again, thus starting the cycle anew, or, alternatively, and I'd like to put in my vote for more likely, he may become a single drop of rain. Here is where I like to imagine that every drop of rain used to be a highwayman, an inept sailor, a clumsy dambuilder, or an astronaut. One of those four. Nothing else. I myself, when I reach the other side, may turn into a single grain of sand. I think that is the fate of the musician, the logger, the banker, and the flight attendant. Whereas it has been demonstrated that piano tuners, butchers, systems analysts, and tinkerers shall return a single breath of air. We will all try to find a place to rest our spirits if we can, but chances are we will be back again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, only each time one step lower in a major scale, until we get almost back to the tonic again, at which point I suppose you should just restart the song because not even Johnny Cash could hit that bottom one if he tried.

Where'd the muse go / askphilhartmansballs.com

I usually write about funny things I cooked, but I am on a boring-ass streak of just cooking good food that is not that unusual.

I usually draw a shitty comic strip during the class I TA, but classes have ended for the season.

I usually write about new names I've come up with for my balls, but lately they haven't changed in character enough to warrant it.

I guess instead I will tell you about the idea for a website I got way back around 1996 or so, in the precipitous uprise of the world wide web. It was a time when people still used Gopher to get on those weird not-quite-internet internets, and when I would type my emails through Telnet on a completely text-based system called Pine. It was a time when if you wanted to download a porn video, it would take about a half hour and be like ten seconds long. It was a time when people used a lot of flashing text, when horrible fanfic sex stories (smurfs, brady bunch, etc.) were forwarded in wide circles, it was before much advertising, before Flash, before firefox, it was the era of Netscape Navigator and every other person having an aol account. It was in this environment that I conceived of askphilhartmansballs.com. The idea was simple: a blank page with a crudely drawn picture of Phil Hartman's balls, which you would click as you thought of a question. Then the balls would reply in the style of a magic eight-ball, probably using the exact same set of responses: Yes, No, Outlook foggy, Ask again later, etc. That's it. No other features, no explanation.

Twelve or so years later, I think I have the skills to make that site. But now I don't want to. Isn't it a conundrum about wanting and time? About wanting what you get and getting what you want? About wanting what you want, even?

Signs point to yes.

Post number 211, in which I go from Point A to Point B

Point A: Anton Chekhov's The Student.

* * *

I was driving down to Lee's Summit on I-70 and I came to my favorite part of the trip where this huge valley just opens up out of nowhere. Whenever I drive into that hollow, I look to the crest of the next hill and think to myself, "that is where I am gonna be in about a minute," and then I try to remember to notice when I get there. Usually I forget. Like when you are pumping gas and you say to yourself, "make sure you pay attention as you screw the gas cap on, because otherwise you won't be able to remember if you did it or not." But this time I remembered, and it was cool.

* * *

My grandpa told me something a friend of his had said about music. This friend said that musical sounds are only there for an instant, then they're gone. If they were random and unconnected, you'd not remember them, and not be able to predict them, and it wouldn't be music as you know it. But if each tiny instant has some connection to the one before and the one after, we can entrain ourselves to this string of instants and share in a way of experiencing time. My grandpa then defined music as a way of connecting sound and silence in time.

* * *

My uncle was talking about the pilgrims and how they believed in predetermination as far as who was getting into heaven. But their version of fate had this weird twist where earthly behavior, though it could not have any bearing on one's future after death, could reliably be taken as a reflection of that future. So if you go to church and live a pious life, it must be because you are one of those chosen few to begin with.

* * *

My grandpa told me about how amazed he is that the earth is in just the right place to sustain life. Not too hot, not too cold, enough water, and a good atmosphere. I told him I agreed, sort of, but also that the very basis of our conversation was the life that earth makes possible. The odds seem low, that is, but who could talk about those odds but us lucky few who are on a planet in which atoms can combine into people and not just rocks?

* * *

Point B: Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics.

The Spanish Civil War

When I was a kid I loved Metallica, and they had a song called "For Whom the Bell Tolls" that every single kid metal band since then has played. I swear to god. You got a little brother or cousin in a metal band? Ask them. They played it.

Anyhow, I heard there was a book by that title and so I read it. I found it BORING, but I was probably too young. That experience saved me a lot of time, since I was also into Iron Maiden, and they are famous for having songs named after great literary works but having nothing to do with those literary works:

• Stranger in a Strange Land
  
• The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
  
• Murders in the Rue Morgue
  
• Phantom of the Opera (it was too a book)
  
• Revelations (do bible chapters count?)
  
• Rime of the Ancient Mariner
  
• Heaven Can Wait (ok, that's a movie, but still)
  
• A Tale of Two Cities (ok, I made that one up, but still)
  
• Only the Good Die Young (do Billy Joel songs count?)

When I was an even younger kid I had been to the Alcazar in Toledo and was pretty moved by it. I must admit that I still don't really know much about the Spanish civil war, but I do know this giant half-crushed building made me feel something. There was a story, I don't even know if it went with this building or some other one, but there was a story of a besieged building, and of a tired general finally surrendering with only two words-- "no más." That really stuck with me.


A while back I had this list of embarassing confessions that started out with me not getting what was so great about the Clash. Well, that caused a small outcry with some of my friends, and soon I had a lot of advice on what to listen to and why. I had mix CDs and playlists and documentaries and books, and I decided it was my duty to give the Clash another try.

It didn't work.

Until one day I was tinkering around on the piano, and my wandering made-up melody suddenly seemed like it had to go a certain way-- a certain AWESOME way that must be from the awesomest song ever, what the hell was it from?

It must have sounded kinda like this:



I had to ask around and see what it was I was stealing, because I know the feeling of making something up and I know the feeling of stealing something you didn't even know you knew, and I knew this must be a little turn of musical phrase I had heard somewhere.

Lo and behold:

* * *

I've never read another Hemingway novel. I still listen to Metallica and Iron Maiden from time to time. I dream of going back to Spain. I love the Clash.

No place, like home

I moved a lot as a kid. Rather than write a confusing paragraph, let me summarize with an unordered list.

• Born in Akron Ohio.
  
• Moved to Madrid, Spain in 3rd grade.
  
• Moved back to the Akron area (Bath, OH: childhood home of Jeffrey Dahmer!) after a year and a half.
  
• Moved to suburban Chicago for half a year or so in fifth grade.
  
• Back to Akron.
  
• Moved to Des Moines, IA in 9th grade.
  
• Moved to suburban Minneapolis, MN (pretty close to Prince's house) in 11th grade.
  
• Off to school in Galesburg IL.
  
• To St. Louis in 1999.
  

Moving a lot as a kid has its developmental perks. You learn how to get attention, you learn how to make friends pretty quick, you maybe learn how much people everywhere are the same and so you rise above most parochial attitudes, you learn that place never matters as much as people, you learn that people talk funny in different places, but that you will also talk funny if you live there even a few months, you learn to cut ties when you need to, you learn to re-invent yourself when you have to, you learn to get by without friends when you got none, which probably means you got pretty good at something like music or writing or drawing.

Sometimes I feel like moving a lot made me have some superpowers as compared to people who didn't: I can interact with people without a lifetime of personal history weighing us down, I can bridge social gaps that are invisible to me as an outsider, I can meet and understand people outside their cultural context, I can see what makes people great cut across place in ways that are hard to understand for those with firmer roots in their home soil.

Moving a lot as a kid also has some downsides. You develop a certain rhythm to your grasp of things-- every so often it feels like time to let go, even if it isn't. You sometimes have a hard time forming attachments. You often feel like an imposter. You start to have too many sports teams you consider "your team." You have a lot of trouble mattering to people the way the people they grew up with matter to them. You just don't seem to have clout. You sometimes envy people's sense of place. You are often cast in a role in which you have disrupted a garden of eden. There isn't a long enough time to live somewhere other than since birth to avoid a sort of mark, a mark which is generally ignored but often becomes important in times of crisis, when you are "put back in your place" of not-here.

Moving a lot has given me confused ideas of rootedness. Any claim I make to be "from" is usually based on fleeting memories and mythology. "From" just isn't a thing that I have the way more rooted people do. I swear to god sometimes this makes me feel like a ghost. As though wherever I might try to grow them, my ghostly roots would pass through the soil anyhow. I cannot move back X spaces and be "back home."

In a year or so I will have lived in St. Louis the longest I've ever lived somewhere. There was a time when I was convinced that living somewhere long enough would turn it into that kind of home I envied in people. Now I don't think that is true. But I don't mind too bad, because I have an idea of home that has worked for me since I was in high school, and it was cross-stitched against a white background, and in a frame, and hanging in the downstairs bathroom at some house or other, and it actually looked better than this one, but this was the only one I could find on the internet:

the sexual revolution: I don't buy it

Man, fuckin' ex-hippies are so self-congratulatory. They think they invented sex. And the concept of personal freedom. They didn't even invent being too lazy to find out all the people who did the same shit before they did. People have been fucking, feeling free, and being lazy since the dawn of time, I bet. That's what I bet. I'm no historian. But I do sometimes see a few seconds of a history channel documentary, and I usually come away pissed off at ex-hippies taking responsibility for basic facts of human existence. They didn't even invent sex the way George Washington Carver invented the peanut. They didn't even invent sex the way Newton invented gravity. They maybe invented sex like Steak-n-Shake invented the steakburger. Maybe.

Maundy; Maudlin

Catholics, man. I asked some what Maundy Thursday was, and they said it was the thursday before Good Friday. That's like if you ask someone how a refrigerator works, and they tell you you open it and put stuff in it and close it.

I was watching this history channel show about Mary Magdalene, though, and how I guess people confuse that Mary with this other Mary who was a prostitute or something. I don't know, I was mostly paying attention to the hot Mary in the reenactment, see, there was one who was hot and one who wasn't.

Then I looked up "maudlin" because I got it confused with "maundy," plus it is one of those words I just never really got around to learning. Turns out "maudlin" comes from Mary Magdalene herself, her last name that is. Because maudlin means kind of oversentimental or tearful, and I guess when they used to paint Mary Magdalene they always caught her crying (also often topless) (rumor is she was a real fox) (historical art unfairly favors breast men, get me a time machine and a petition).


Figure 12: Mary Magdalene (note breasts and mawkish* sentimentality)




"Maundy," on the other hand, comes from the same sort of stuff as "mandate" (like a command, not like taking a dude to dinner and getting him drunk), because on Maundy Thursday Jesus said "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."

I'm not a religious man, but I do think that is Jesus' raddest commandment unto us, and the hardest one to keep.

I love you!


* "Mawkish" comes from a word for maggot! How about that?

The execution of the last imperial family

I heard a great and disturbing story the other day. It's about the last Tsar, Nicholas, and his family. They were being held captive after the revolution, and then finally someone decided they ought to be killed. Knowing what was coming, Nicholas and the imperial family sewed a bunch of jewels and diamonds into the corsets of his daughters-- both to hide the riches and to protect the girls' lives. It ended up being a really bad idea, though. A group of men came into the chamber and started shooting the imperial family. Everyone fell down, but the daughters weren't dead. The gunmen kept shooting, but the daughters kept on not dying. They tried bayonets, but that didn't do the trick either. Finally they had to resort to shooting them in the head (I swear I'm not making this up-- read a first-hand account to get even more details. While you're at it, watch this movie too, and you'll realize that this wasn't so very long ago and that these are real people we're talking about. Plus it has some cool music).


What a great story. I mean, I can't imagine the pain the daughters must have been in. And I can't imagine how freaked out the executioners must have been when they couldn't seem to kill the daughters. And of course there's a lot one could say, if one felt like it, about the symbolism of those precious diamonds and jewels. And it's so cool the gunmen tried so hard to not have to ruin their victims' good looks, even though as it turns out they were gonna go dump the bodies down a well somewhere anyway (again, it's all here). I guess I'm just blown away because it's so much better than any story anyone could ever make up about the death of the last imperial family. It seems like someone should make a movie with this scene in it. Wait, maybe they already did. I'll have to check that one out and get back to you.