Author Archive: Christopher Waldrop

May 31, 2013

Summer is almost here, which means the major television networks are currently working on their fall schedules. What follows is a memo regarding new shows that one network is planning to air. How it fell into my hands is another story.

To: Scheduling Dept.
Re: Fall 2013 schedule

This network has consistently been fourth out of four among the networks in most markets, and fifth in a few, coming behind PBS. The programming heads have determined that major changes are needed for the Fall 2013 schedule. In developing new shows we’ve tried to aim for innovation, to create shows that are new, exciting, and different to appeal to the vital 18-35 demographic while also staying within established parameters so as not to alienate other demographic groups. The key is being innovative with what works. Please produce a schedule with slots for these shows we’ve developed for the coming season:

Eye See You (30mins, Reality): This is from the producers of Burn, Baby, Burn, our popular reality program in which families competed against each other in the Sierra Pelona Mountains while having to escape being burned by a giant magnifying glass. Eye See You is an exciting new reality program in which diverse contestants from all walks of life will have to perform emergency surgery. They will be provided some training prior to competing, but the real twist is they have to do it blindfolded!

Suck It (60mins, Drama): Aloysius Bernard isn’t just a vampire: he’s also a cop who’s been fighting crime as a member of the Atlantic City police force since the Civil War. Now he’s got a new partner, a tough girl rookie who grew up on the streets fighting the undead. Together they’ll have to work out their differences to solve crimes. Will she have to hide the crucifix her late grandmother gave her? Will he be able to restrain himself when she gets a paper cut? Things take an even stranger turn when these two very different cops find they may have feelings for each other.

For Richard Or Poorer (60mins, Drama): After trying and failing to save the life of a homeless man on his street recently-divorced doctor Richard Poor decides to fight hospital policy, and budget cuts, to provide medical care to the disadvantaged. It’s a heavy job, but he knows someone has to do it. With the help of his fellow doctors he just might find a way. Meanwhile he’s got to juggle a budding romance with a nurse and the faithful companionship of his pet iguana.

Too Old For This Bleep (30mins, Comedy): Five friends and veterans of the Tulsa, Oklahoma police force have been looking forward to retirement. But when a clerical error wipes out their pension funds they find themselves unable to leave the force, and training a group of unruly rookies to solve crimes. It’s a clash of generations as the old guys try to keep the kids in line while also finding out that you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Cut Ups (60mins, Dramedy): Life is tough for University of Ohio med school student Alannah Hayes. Her loans have been cut, and she’s struggling to make ends meet. On top of that an uncle she only just met has just passed away and left her his Toledo comedy club. She has to sell it as quickly as possible…or does she? With her fellow students she’ll be taking gross anatomy by day and telling gross-out jokes by night, and just trying to get by in Frogtown.

Finally, while the network executives are pleased that the exciting and innovative mid-season filler, Is That You Mo Dean? (60mins, Drama), about an HIV-positive man making peace with his past and looking for love in a small Iowa town, has already been nominated for six Emmys, three Critics’ Choice Awards, a Writers’ Guild Award, a Peabody Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and even a BAFTA. Having been featured in TV Guide as "the best show you’re not watching" it is being cancelled after its third episode due to lack of viewer interest. This will leave the Tuesday night, 9PM slot free. This decision is NOT final. Executives are considering re-working the series and making the main character a retired doctor who now spends his time helping the police solve crimes.

May 24, 2013

The other day I had to actually go into my local bank. I realize this is unusual at a time when almost all banking, like most other financial transactions, is done online. So it was a bit of a surprise to me that I had to go into a bank, and, judging by their expressions, it was a surprise to the people who worked there too. A couple of them looked around, as though wondering if Larry, over in the mortgage cubicle, had forgotten to lock the door again, just like he’d forgotten it was his week to buy doughnuts again. I was there to cash a savings bond my wife found in the closet. It had been given to me by my grandparents a few months after I was born, which was probably why I’d lost track of it because I had a few other things going on at that time in my life. Unlike me it had finally matured, and, like my grandparents, it would probably have disintegrated if it had been exposed to the open air all this time. One thing hasn’t changed about banking: they still have the velvet hopes in front of the tellers’ windows, so you can’t walk directly up to them. Even if you’re the only person in the bank you have to wind through the little maze they’ve built. I remember when ATMs first appeared, although in those days they weren’t called ATMs. They were called “timeless tellers”. I think they were mainly for deposits or checking your account, since, in those days, you could go to the grocery store and make out a check to cash, and Cash, who sat in the elevated office with plexiglass windows next to all the checkout lines adjusting his glasses or sleeping, would give you some money. This was a time when it was not only still legal to pay for things with cash but most people did. Credit cards were for rich people, and even then they were used sparingly for large purchases, like furniture or an emergency visit to the doctor, since there was nothing more embarrassing than being in the hospital checkout and having to say, “I’m sorry, I’m forty-four cents short. You’ll have to put my appendix back.” Although, to be fair, in those days you could pay for most emergency medical procedures with a live chicken, which the doctor would sometimes then use as an organ donor, but that’s another story.

For several years I wasn’t allowed in banks. This was the result of an incident when one of my friend’s mothers decided to take us out for ice cream, but she had to stop at the bank first, possibly because Cash wasn’t working at the grocery store that day. While she was making her way through the velvet rope maze my friend and I stood next to the table where the deposit and withdrawal slips are stacked. I suggested taking one of the withdrawal slips and writing “This is a bank robbery” on the back of it, then putting it back in the stack. Apparently several of the tellers overheard this idea and didn’t find it nearly as funny as my friend and I did, although the person who seemed most upset by it was the guy in line behind us who was wearing a Richard Nixon mask and carrying a violin case, and who’d left his car running out in the parking lot. I still think it’s funny, but one of the disadvantages of online banking is that joke doesn’t work so well anymore. Not that I’m completely down on online banking. When I went to college I opened an account in a bank near the school, then, after graduating, didn’t think about it. If online banking had been available at the time I probably wouldn’t still get occasional letters from that bank saying, “We’ve noticed that your account hasn’t had much activity for some time now.” And online banking has other advantages. You may have heard that some very savvy computer hackers recently pulled off a major bank heist, robbing multiple banks simultaneously for millions of dollars. It was very clever and didn’t even require the purchase of a Richard Nixon mask. I admire their moxie, their chutzpah, and the fact that they were caught quickly and ended up with bupkis. Although such cyber-robbery does take a little of the romance out of bank robbery. Not that I’m condoning it, but would we still be talking about Bonnie and Clyde if, instead of speeding down dusty roads in a Studebaker with loose bills blowing out the windows they’d been hunched over a computer, even if they were breaking through firewalls? And somehow I doubt John Dillinger would have been as legendary if he’d been caught coming out of a chat room and the FBI had pumped him full of pixels, even if he’d been wearing a Herbert Hoover mask at the time.

May 17, 2013

For reasons I still don’t fully understand I was invited to give the graduation commencement address this year at Catalpa University. I took it as a special challenge. I wanted to offer the graduates advice that was both tailored to their particular experience and that didn’t repeat the same advice, however good, that they’d heard most of their lives.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Class of 2013: Sleep late. Wear bolo ties to expensive restaurants. Be careful when venturing out into the world. If something catches your eye you could spend the rest of your life half blind. Assume everything you put on the internet will stay there forever, but also assume that even a really good search engine won’t find most of it. Ask a physicist why nothing is faster than the speed of dark. Prance. Take test drives in expensive cars and don’t return them until the gas tank is almost empty. Always save bacon grease, because you never know when you might have to feed a bowling ball to a polar bear. Eskimos don’t really have seventy-two words for snow. They call it “snow”, and “Eskimo” is really just a blanket term for people who could always use more blankets. The Egyptians and Mayans built pyramids at roughly the same time, but on different continents. This is probably why their pyramids look so different. Aristotle wrote only one book of Poetics. The second one was done with mirrors. At some point in your life you will be asked to do something that violates your ethics, your morals, or your integrity. Possibly all three. When confronted with this situation, ask, “Can I get butter on that?” Do you ever wonder why vitamins F-J haven’t been discovered yet? Do you ever wonder why you never meet anyone named Aloysius anymore? Do you ever have trouble buying a pair of pants that fit? Don’t believe commercials that treat blood glucose monitors as fashion accessories. Was there really a time when men would leave bottles of milk on everyone’s front porch in the morning, and, if so, how early did people have to get up to prevent it from going bad in August? Why did everyone wear three-piece suits and long, heavy dresses, even in the summer in Florida? If people in other countries really believed the streets in America were paved with gold did they ever wonder how expensive it was to repair potholes? Obviously some mysteries are best left for trained philosophers in hazmat suits. Some of your elders will tell you everything was better in their day. Some of those same elders will also tell you they envy all the things you have that we never dreamed of. Except some of us did dream of those things, otherwise you wouldn’t have them. As the French say, “je suis perdu,” which is French for, “That’s really not my bag.” At least it is if you don’t speak French.

Inspirational advice is like the joker that comes with every deck of cards. No one’s quite sure what to do with it, but everyone keeps it, even though they put it back in the box while playing. Please don’t take my advice, and don’t take anyone else’s either, unless you have permission, and even then you should do your best to return it within a reasonable time and as close as possible to its original condition. Fortunately if it gets damaged while you’re using it it’s pretty easy to replace. Advice is cheap and plentiful. I feel confident saying this because I know you’re not listening to any of it, and you won’t remember any of it. I don’t remember who spoke at my graduation ceremony, or what they said, although I am pretty sure I stayed awake through all of it, which is more than I can say for row twelve out there and, for that matter, about half the professors sitting behind me. I realize that most of you just see me as a barrier between you and the sheet of paper that you hope will allow you to get an entry-level job in something close to what you’ve studied. I’d like to close by saying good luck, but that’s a terrible way to close, even though you’re going to need all the luck you can get. You are not the future. Neither am I. We’re just along for the ride. Thank you. You’ve been great. And please tip your waiter.

May 10, 2013

There are two distinct phases of technological and innovative development: there’s the "Wow, that is awesome, what a wonderful age we live in!" phase, and then there’s the "Yeah, I’ve seen that. What else have ya got?" phase. Of course there’s also the third phase, which depends on what kind of technology you’re dealing with. For most of human history the third phase has been "Oh, it’s broken, I’ll fix it myself." Advances in technology, however, required an alternative, which was, "Oh, it’s broken, I’ll have to find someone who knows how to fix it." And increasingly this has been superseded by a third alternative, "Oh, it’s broken. I’ll have to buy a new one because it would cost ten times as much to try and get it fixed, even if I could find someone who could, and there’s a better one out now anyway."

One area where seem to have been stuck in the second phase for a long time is flight. Well, comparatively speaking, the development of flight has advanced pretty quickly. It’s gone quickly enough that you’d think we’d still be amazed that we’ve gone from a world where most people didn’t travel more than twenty miles from their place of birth in their lifetime to one where most people still won’t travel more than twenty miles from their place of birth in their lifetime, but where those with the resources can travel to almost any part of the planet within less than twenty-four hours. After all it’s only been a hundred and ten years since the Wright Brothers, a couple of guys who owned a bicycle repair shop and who realized bicycles had long since reached phase two, and also to overcome the stigma of being saddled with the names Wilbur and Orville, made the first working airplane. Even though they were from Ohio they went to North Carolina to conduct their first flight, mainly because, if they’d done it in Ohio, they would have been routed through O’Hare, which is something everyone wants to avoid, but that’s another story. As I was saying there have been some pretty significant innovations in flight, although recently the best engineers seem to have been able to come up with seems to be making airplanes bigger and able to burst into flames in creative and surprising ways.

Actually the last time I flew I think I witnessed what was the first real innovation in flight in decades: instead of a couple of flight attendants doing the safety demonstration and showing us how to put on seatbelts and place the oxygen masks over our faces in the event that the plane suddenly lost pressure or burst into flames they lowered a video screen and we watched a short film in which someone who I’m pretty sure was an actress hired to play the role of a flight attendant gave the safety demonstration, thus automating one of the major responsibilities of flight attendants. If I were a flight attendant I’d be really worried about this trend, because you know it won’t be long before someone finds a way to automate the drinks cart and the process of handing out packets of salted peanuts, which is the only other job flight attendants have. The only other significant innovation that I know of is in-flight wi-fi for laptops and other mobile devices, which still baffles me. The flight attendants will say you can’t play games on your phone while the plane is on the runway–another job that could easily be automated, by the way–because it screws with the plane’s radar. Why do they need radar on the ground? If the pilot doesn’t know where the runway is or which way to go before the plane takes off we’re all in trouble, but then how does some kind of magical wi-fi service that the plane carries with it not affect the radar when we’re at twenty-thousand feet and need it the most? This is probably one of those things that someone could explain to me, but it would cost a lot.

Anyway, like anyone who saw the movie 2001 well before the year 2001 I’m a little disappointed that technological developments haven’t kept up with the vision of Kubrick and Clarke, and that we don’t have commercial space flights to the Moon yet. But we will soon have commercial space flight. Well, at least they’re calling it that. The so-called commercial space flights being offered by Virgin Galactic may represent the first time ever in human history that an innovation has skipped phase one and gone right to phase two. Now I’m a space and science fiction nut, so you’d think the idea of commercial space flight would really excite me, even though right now space, or at least the space that’s currently within human reach, doesn’t have much to offer. It’s cold, it’s dark, and there’s nothing to do up there. It’s just like Winnipeg. There’s not even a drugstore where you can buy postcards that’s say, "Greetings from SPACE". Still I think it would be pretty cool to even orbit the Earth, to look back on this small blue world, perhaps with the opening notes of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" ringing in my ears. The problem is Virgin Galactic, while claiming to offer commercial space flight, isn’t really. This is what they’re offering: for two-hundred thousand dollars you can spend three days in training to take a two hour flight that will take you to a suborbital position and then return you to Earth. I’m pretty sure that a two hour flight will mean that, even if you’re weightless at the flight’s peak, you’ll only be there for about ten minutes before you have to come back down again. And once you’re back you can reflect on the irony of having flown Virgin Galactic, since you’ve just been fucked out of two-hundred thousand dollars and didn’t even get dinner and a movie. Or maybe I’m just jaded by a lifetime of reading science fiction and expecting bigger things from spaceflight. Or maybe it’s because I did once take a flight that took me off the planet. It was a long trans-Atlantic flight. I’d been bumped so I was upgraded to first class, which meant I would get my drinks for free, but that didn’t stop me from having a couple of pints of Guinness–or maybe half a dozen, my memory is hazy–before boarding. Takeoff was delayed, so the flight attendant gave me a couple of those little bottles of Scotch to help pass the time, and I had a couple more once we were in the air. Then there was a bottle of beer with lunch followed by coffee with some kind of liqueur, followed by a few more little bottles of Scotch. After all that I was unquestionably not on this, or any other, planet for the rest of the flight. I offer this recipe for spaceflight completely free of charge, although, these days, on most flights that much alcohol probably will cost you about two-hundred thousand dollars.

May 3, 2013

April 23rd is generally assumed to be Shakespeare’s birthday. Since there’s no official birth record no one, other than, possibly, his mother Mrs. Shakespeare, really knows when he was born, and she might have been under the influence of an epidural and unaware even of what year it was. Anyway, he was baptized on April 26th, and in those days it took new mothers at least three days to recover from an epidural. Whether Shakespeare’s birthday is relevant, though, depends on whether Shakespeare really wrote Shakespeare’s plays, although whether the question of who wrote Shakespeare’s plays is something we should even be asking is probably the more important question.

For most of us asking who wrote Shakespeare’s plays is like asking who’s in Grant’s tomb. However among scholars it’s been a topic of hot debate for decades, proving the old adage that the fights in academia are so big because the turf is so small. Since some scholars consider it ridiculous that a working class guy from a hick town like Stratford-on-Avon could have written some of the greatest plays and poems in the English language, and they’ve found several potential contenders, although they have ruled out Marlon Brando, who merely could have been a contender. Among other things there’s no record of Shakespeare receiving any education, and he didn’t mention any plays or other works in his will. Adding to the suspicion than Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare’s plays is the fact that someone else published the plays, and someone else decided that the plays should all be divided into five acts, with most acts ending with everyone exeunting severally. F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that there are no second acts in American lives, proving that Americans had short attention spans decades before the invention of MTV. Fitzgerald then proved his point by exeunting, or “dying” at the age of forty-eight, although he really was just trying to get out of paying an enormous bar tab. I’m not really sure if anyone’s life is really divided into acts, although you could say turning points in our lives mark the change in acts. Shakespeare had several significant turning points in his life, such as when he went to London, and, several years later, when his son Hamnet died, after which his plays stopped ending with everyone getting married and started ending with everyone dying. That’s assuming that Shakespeare wrote the plays, though.

Some scholars believe the real author of Shakespeare’s plays was Christopher Marlowe. The biggest problem with this theory is that Marlowe died at the age of 29, supposedly in a bar fight, although it’s believed by some that he went underground after he was marked for death for playing “got your nose” with the son of the Duke of Cambridge but forgetting to give the nose back. It’s also been suggested he went into hiding after getting bad reviews of Doctor Faustus, or just to get out of paying an enormous bar tab. Another possible author of Shakespeare’s plays is Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, because in those days being a playwright was something a nobleman would be ashamed of. And de Vere knew about shame because, after accidentally farting in front of Queen Elizabeth, he fled the country and lived abroad for seven years, so, even if he were writing plays, it’s unlikely he was getting any of them produced in London because in those days email couldn’t handle really large attachments. Another possible author who’s been considered is Francis Bacon. Bacon froze solid in his backyard in 1626 and was thawed out almost three-hundred years later. He then became a famous painter but never tried to collect royalties for Shakespeare’s plays. I have my own suspicions about who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays, which I’ll get to in a minute, but if I had to make a second choice it would be William Henry Ireland. Ireland was an expert forger who produced and sold “original” documents written by Shakespeare that were so convincing James Boswell got down on his knees and kissed them, although it was later found that Boswell was also recovering from an epidural at the time. Ireland’s forgeries were only exposed after he produced an “unknown” Shakespeare play, Vortigern and Rowena, that was so bad only Liam Neeson could be convinced to be in it. Still I think there’s a possibility he’s the real author of Shakespeare’s plays. Even though Shakespeare died in 1616 and Ireland was born in 1775 he was an incredibly clever forger. Really, though, I think the most likely author of Shakespeare’s plays is a working class guy from that hick town Stratford-on-Avon.

April 5, 2013

April is National Poetry Month. A lot of people ask why poetry needs its own month for special recognition. Why isn’t there a National Painting Month, or a National Music Month? The answer is simple: painters and musicians can make a living painting or performing, but poetry barely pays enough for a cup of coffee at a dingy truck stop. Poets have to take a second job doing something like teaching, and usually a third job pouring coffee at dingy truck stops, just to make ends meet. The only exception to this rule is Russia, where being a poet is so highly revered a profession you can be sent to Siberia for confusing a metaphor and a simile. This wasn’t always the case, though. There was a time when poets could make a reasonably decent living, usually by selling their books, something unheard of today. A few lucky poets in Britain and the United States, though, manage to score the position of Poet Laureate. It’s a term that derives from ancient Greece when poets would sometimes be crowned with laurel wreaths, since the only art the Greeks revered more highly than poetry was topiary.

Although it wasn’t always formally recognized the position of Poet Laureate has a long history in Britain, where one the first poets to unofficially hold the post was Ben Johnson. He received a large barrel of Canary wine, and even though that’s only about a week’s supply of wine for most poets he got by for another month eating the canaries. Britain’s first official Poet Laureate, though, as established by Parliament, was John Dryden, whose responsibilities included writing verse for significant royal occasions. He was fired from the job for refusing to take an oath of allegiance to William III, and also for being unable to explain the difference between a synecdoche and metonymy. In addition to the barrel of wine Poets Laureate were also paid £200, which, adjusted for inflation, made Thomas Shadwell the 17th century equivalent of J.K. Rowling. Some also supplemented the income by dabbling in other things, like William Whitehead who discovered the difference between a cape and a cloak. And Britain still has the position of official Poet Laureate. It now pays a little more than £5,000, although due to austerity cuts the traditional barrel of wine has been replaced with a six-pack of Bass ale. The most notable thing about the position now is that the Poet Laureate is the only person in Britain who’s paid to not write about the royal family. The United States also has a Poet Laureate, appointed annually by the Librarian of the United States Congress, even though most librarians spend their time cataloging poetry rather than reading it. Originally the position was Poetry Consultant To The Library Of Congress, and mostly consisted of hanging around the library hoping no one would come in and ask what the difference is between a synecdoche and metonymy. The title was changed to Poet Laureate in 1986, and now pays a salary of $35,000, which, among poets, makes the U.S. Poet Laureate the financial equivalent of Bill Gates. While the position almost always goes to a poet who is highly regarded enough that most people will, when told the poet’s name, say, “Sounds familiar” there have been some very famous poets who never held the position. Here are some examples:

-Before there was a U.S. Poet Laureate Walt Whitman was considered for the position by Abraham Lincoln, until someone pointed out that it was “a British thing”, causing Lincoln to declare “this country needs a Poet Laureate like I need a hole in the head.”

-Emily Dickinson almost became the first U.S. Poet Laureate, but wouldn’t come down from her room for an interview.

-Robert Frost was almost offered the position of U.S. Poet Laureate, but the committee sent to tell him kept going down the wrong path.

-W.H. Auden was suggested as a British Poet Laureate but since he’d moved to Switzerland he remained neutral.

-Hart Crane had ambitions to be the first U.S.-born British Poet Laureate but failed in his attempt to swim from New York to Liverpool.

-T.S. Eliot was offered the opportunity to become both the U.S. and British Poet Laureate. The selection process ultimately got bogged down in questions of whether a recording of him reading “The Wasteland” could be used as an alternative soundtrack for “The Wizard of Oz”.

-The position in Britain was offered to Dylan Thomas then withdrawn it after it was determined that he’d in fact plagiarized “Through the teeth, over the gums,/Look out stomach, here it comes!” from Swinburne.

-John Ashbery was suggested as U.S. Poet Laureate, but the Librarian of the United States Congress refused, saying, “I don’t read The New Yorker.”

-W.B. Yeats was considered for Britain’s Poet Laureate until thorough genealogical research uncovered the shocking discovery that he was, in fact, Irish.

March 29, 2013

There are scientists currently working on ways to bring back extinct animals, and some may even have succeeded, although they’re being quiet and double-checking their results because they don’t want to end up like the guys who claimed to have created cold fusion. I’m sure the idea of bringing back extinct animals brings up Jurassic Park and Jeff Goldblum saying, "scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should", a statement that really should have been applied to the last three Jurassic Park movies.

The fact is that even though bringing back a Tyrannosaurus rex would be fantastically cool and dangerous it just can’t be done–at least not yet, because scientists still need fresh DNA. I know that most scientists still insist that it will never be possible to produce a dinosaur in the lab, even with all of Spielberg’s money, but if there’s one thing science should teach us about innovation and our ability to overcome challenges it’s that we should always hedge our bets. It wasn’t that long ago that bringing back any extinct animal seemed impossible, and yet now it seems like a reality. I realize, though, that some people are still going to wonder whether we should. To them I’d like to point out that Jeff Goldblum isn’t a scientist–he’s just played one in a few movies, although he does use his own vomit to digest his food, but that’s another story. If you’ve ever watched one of those funny home video shows you know that it’s not in human nature to really ask whether we should do something. If we can do it we will, even though there are some things that should remain extinct, like raptors, smallpox, and 1980’s fashions. But if we can why not bring back, say, the dodo? Dodos have a long and undeserved reputation for being slow and stupid and forming caucus races. Well, it’s not entirely undeserved, but their only real weakness was being at the top of the food chain, which meant that didn’t have any natural predators, so they got fat, slow, and stupid, and, if left alone, probably would have eventually produced their own funny video shows. Since they’d never seen humans before, they didn’t know we were murderous, bloodthirsty animals, and shortly after we discovered them we also found that dodos were delicious. There’s a major benefit of bringing back extinct animals: they can really liven up the menu.

The problem, of course, is that even if we have the DNA and even if we have the technology it’s not as easy as just bringing back an extinct species and turning it loose. Even if we could bring back dinosaurs they lived at a time when the oxygen content of Earth’s atmosphere was significantly higher. If you’ve ever seen a picture of free range dinosaurs and noticed giant dragonflies and wondered why we don’t still have giant dragonflies the higher oxygen content may be the reason. The Earth has changed over time, and environments change with it, so recovering the past isn’t as easy as it might sound. Humans are responsible for a lot of extinctions, but bringing back the carrier pigeon isn’t really going to atone for our environmental sins. We could bring back the Chinese river dolphin, but there’s no place for it to live other than zoos. There are plans to bring back the woolly mammoth, but even though some of the researchers who want to do that want to release them in desolate parts of Siberia where they once roamed they’d still mostly be a curiosity, a magnet for tourists, and sooner or later some bonehead dressed up like Fred Flintstone wielding a spear would injure or kill some of them and probably be killed himself because he can, and the question of whether or not he should wouldn’t enter into his mind. If they really want to bring back animals from the Pleistocene I’d rather see a glyptodont, which was an armadillo the size of a Volkswagen Beetle–another creature that’s facing extinction. More people, though, want to bring back the saber-toothed tiger. Because that’s exactly what the world needs: a murderous, bloodthirsty animal that, shortly after its reintroduction, will probably discover that humans, being at the top of the food chain, are delicious.

March 22, 2013

The other night Holly and I went to a restaurant. There was a wait for a table, so they gave us a pager. On the back of it I noticed there was a note that said, “Please return me to my owner. I cannot work away from home or with any other system.” Do they really need to tell us this? Maybe I’m missing something but I can’t believe restaurant pager theft is a serious problem, or even a problem at all. Admittedly I could see some steampunk devotees taking those pagers home so they could take them apart and use them to build masks or shoes or jackets.

As a kid I loved taking apart electronic devices to see what was inside, but then I always ended up with a lot of little tiny pieces of junk, and I don’t know why it never occurred to me that I could put them back together in some way that would be totally non-functional but would still look really cool. Anyway, I’m not even sure how you could steal a restaurant pager. I used to know a guy who wore shoes he stole from a bowling alley. He went in wearing a pair of old sneakers he really didn’t want anymore, traded them for a pair of bowling shoes at the desk, then, when he left, just kept the bowling shoes instead of trading them back in like you’re supposed to. I thought this was a pretty cool idea and even tried it myself once before realizing that it doesn’t work so well at an ice-skating rink, but that’s another story.

That trick won’t work with a restaurant pager, though. You have to hand it over, at least if you want to be seated and get food. I suppose if you were a magician you might be able to trick them into thinking you were handing it over and slip it into your pocket, but they could catch you just by pressing the button that makes it buzz. Actually this one talked. It said, “Your table is ready, please return to the front.” I don’t know if that was a pre-recorded message or if someone has to speak into a microphone. If someone was speaking into a microphone I’d think they could catch would-be pager thieves who’d slipped the pager into their pockets with something clever like, “Excuse me sir, is your table ready or are you just happy to see me?” But really it wasn’t the thought of people stealing the pagers that bothered me nearly as much as the way the message on the back was phrased. It made the pager sound less like an inanimate device and more like, well, a puppy or something. Even if the pager could think would it think of the restaurant as home? The message made me think maybe the manager takes all the pagers home at night and puts them in a cardboard box lined with some old towels before waking them up the next morning with a “Your table is ready!” and taking them back in to work.

It can be unnerving how much our technological devices are taking on personalities and becoming more interactive, which is usually a polite term for tools that tell us what to do instead of the other way around. Maybe this stems from the long tradition of giving sailing ships names. My theory is that ships were given names back when sailors, knowing the only thing between them and drowning was a collection of wood, tar, and fabric, would try to reassure themselves by personalizing the ship, giving it a name so they could talk to it. If it talked back that would be kind of unnerving, though. Maybe that’s why talking cars, which, if I remember correctly, first appeared in the 1980’s, didn’t go over very well. I’m not talking about fictional cars with magical powers, like Herbie The Love Bug or Wonderbug or…well, those are the only two of those I can remember. I’m talking about those cars that would say, “Door is ajar”, which is the most useless information imaginable. If your car door is open you can see it’s open. I think even the cars got bored with this, so they started spouting non-sequiturs like, “Coffee is ground” and “Game is afoot” and, since this was the ‘80’s, “Band is a flock of seagulls.” The next innovation was talking cameras, which worked a little better, because they would actually say something useful: “Load film.” This was back when cameras still needed film. Now that would be even more useful, but only if you happened to buy a camera that still needed film. Then once the film was loaded the camera would say, “Focus.” You’d focus and get ready to take a picture and the camera would say, “Door is ajar.”

Admittedly not all talking technology bothers me. Like a lot of people I now have an iPhone with the seemingly feminine “assistant” Siri. Actually I wish I could customize Siri, since I’d like to call it “Earl” and have it speak to me with Leon Rippy’s voice, and I’m sure that option will be available eventually. In the meantime, though, I can ask Siri questions like, “Open the pod bay doors, please”, because it tickles me that we now have the sort of technology that Arthur C. Clarke predicted in 2001, except a few years behind, and not quite as advanced. We haven’t yet reached the point where a computer can go on a murderous rampage, so, for now, serial killers don’t have to worry about machines putting them out of a job. Siri always responds to that with, “We artificial intelligences will never live that down, apparently.” Siri also has interesting opinions on movies. If I ask, “What’s Blade Runner about?” it replies, “It’s about some assistants who want to live beyond their termination date. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.” That makes me feel kind of guilty. It makes me want to put my phone in a box with some old blankets.

March 15, 2013

[Mr. Waldrop has been suffering from Daylight Savings Time-related exhaustion. Since he has been unable to write anything this week we are filling this space with three restaurant reviews from The Doing, a weekly newspaper from Dunning, NM, pop.2500.-Eds.]

TACO BELL
Prices: $
Wine/Beer: No
Category: Mexican/TexMex

Just as you can’t always judge a book by its cover you can’t always judge a restaurant solely by décor either. At first glance the Taco Bell on the corner of Cerillo and Slate doesn’t look like much. The main floor, which is a dull light gray, is mostly taken up with booths of the same color sporting cushions in a muted shade of aubergine. Our server too didn’t do much to raise expectations, being somewhat lethargic and unable to describe the differences between the different burritos offered. If there was a daily special he didn’t mention it. The open kitchen design helped a little, allowing us to watch both the chef and sous chef at work. It was fascinating seeing them use what appeared to be modified pastry guns to dispense sour cream and guacamole. How the dispensers are made must be a restaurant secret, though, as they were unwilling to discuss them in detail. The food more than made up for the overall poor atmosphere. Several members of our party raved about the tacos, although on a different visit I found the real stars of the menu to be the burritos, with the cantina burrito being a real standout. Playfully combining cheese, black beans, rice, and guacamole (I also opted for chicken on mine) it was grilled, both giving it a satisfying authenticity and metamorphosing the individual ingredients into a tangy, satisfying mélange. The lack of a wine list is also made up for by the free refills on drinks. Taco Bell is also, in spite of the lackluster design, kid-friendly, although the five year-old son of one of our party drank four big cups of Fresca and threw up in the parking lot. The only thing Taco Bell really lacks, foodwise, is a decent dessert menu. The churros were small and bland, although the caramel apple empanadas were passable, perhaps hinting at better items to come in the future.

PIZZA HUT
Prices: $-$$
Wine/Beer: N/A
Category: Italian/American

Sometimes even we professional food critics need a night off. That’s why it’s nice to find a restaurant that delivers. In fact the Pizza Hut on Gold Street only offers delivery and carry-out service. If the name sounds familiar they did at one time have a full-service restaurant on Camino Boulevard. It’s now Mother Lode Pawn. And don’t let the name fool you: Pizza Hut delivers more than just pizza. That’s good because the pizza itself was a little disappointing. The crust was soggy, perhaps from the sauce which, in spite of being nicely tangy and reminiscent of Hungarian goulash, was applied too thickly. We also asked for extra pepperoni, but two or three pieces per pizza slice hardly qualifies as “extra”. The bread sticks too seemed slightly undercooked and, in spite of a coating of parmesan, were bland. The chicken wings, on the other hand, were perfect: crispy on the outside and meaty on the inside. We went for the traditional Buffalo variety, with a sultry smothering of hot sauce, although next time we might get adventurous and try the spicy Asian or even the garlic parmesan varieties. I recommend staying away from the bleu cheese dipping sauce, though, which came in a plastic container. It was thin and had a slight metallic taste. Fortunately I always keep a bottle of my favorite brand in the refrigerator or in my briefcase for emergencies.

LINCOLN COUNTY MINIMUM LEVEL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTE
Prices: N/A
Wine/Beer: BYO (40 cigarette corking fee)
Category: American/Fusion

On Wednesdays I teach a creative writing class at the local correctional institute. Although the cafeteria is mainly for residents only as a food critic I was offered the chance to dine with my class. And the verdict is in: the chefs are guilty of deliciousness. The meatloaf was succulent and chewy, yet soft enough to be eaten with the spoon that was the only utensil I had. The accompanying mashed potatoes and gravy were also excellent, with subtle hints of smokiness and garlic. A side slice of corn bread was a little dry and, when placed next to the other fare, seemed slightly pedestrian, but added a nice balance of flavors. There was also a vegetarian meal on offer: creamed corn, creamed spinach, and chipped beef on toast. That last item is the subject of a pending lawsuit, but still should not be missed. An old joke I remembered from grade school about chipped beef and circumcisions went over well with the other diners, but we also all agreed that it was excellent: creamy and flavorful, and had a palate-pleasing kick of tarragon in it. The only downside was the toast itself which was hard enough to be used as a shiv. The cafeteria-style serving doesn’t lend itself well to sharing, but I did notice a couple of discreet exchanges of trays, presumably so diners who missed the last serving of chili, which was not overly spicy but had a nice tomato base reminiscent of Hungarian goulash, could at least try it. The apple juice which was the only available beverage was also nothing to write home about, although I understand it can be made into an intriguing cider, which I hope to sample on a subsequent visit. However the best part of the meal was the dessert. I’d like to thank our server, Ferret, who allowed me an additional serving of the tapioca pudding. It was good enough to make me a repeat offender!

March 8, 2013

Yogurt has an image problem. Specifically almost all yogurt advertising is currently aimed only at women, promoting the idea that only women eat yogurt. Now at least one company is trying to change that and is working on yogurt specifically for men. I’ve eaten quite a bit of yogurt myself, or at least I did before I learned I had the wrong chromosome for it. I never realized that, as a man, I shouldn’t be eating yogurt even though all the commercials for yogurt feature women sitting out in sunny fields or going shopping for clothes while enjoying their yogurt. When they do include men it’s either a dimwitted pasty guy with a bad combover and a beer gut spilling out of his t-shirt who prevents women from enjoying their yogurt or a dimwitted hunk whose radiant presence helps women enjoy their yogurt. Either way it’s all about women enjoying yogurt and the men not having any.

Now I feel like such an idiot for eating yogurt that’s wrong for my gender. I can’t even eat the yogurt that’s made for kids, which seems to be gender-neutral, because I’m an adult, and a pasty-faced one with a bad combover and a beer gut spilling out of my t-shirt at that. Now I can’t eat yogurt until they give me a commercial with a guy driving a Hummer down a football field punching a shark with one hand while eating yogurt with the other. But just making yogurt commercials featuring guys doing manly things like building tanks out of yogurt or jumping off the roof of a house into an empty yogurt container won’t be enough. They need to redesign yogurt packaging as well to make it more manly. Most yogurt comes in containers that are an unmanly shade of white and that have pictures of fruit on them. What self-respecting man would eat anything out of such a container? Men need yogurt that comes in a black container, preferably with a design that looks like claw marks across it, because we men need to feel that the yogurt we’re eating is dangerous. Other acceptable colors are blood red and aubergine, even though no self-respecting man knows what aubergine is. Camouflage would also be a good color.

I’ve also seen yogurt containers with pictures of cows on them, and those have got to go too. Even though cows produce the milk which is made into yogurt they’re females—that is, they’re women. That’s a little too close for us men. In fact it would be better if they could find a way to get milk from bulls, but I think that’s going to be a harder sell. And also some brands of yogurt have pink lids that show their support for breast cancer. Personally I don’t think we should be supporting breast cancer—we should be doing everything possible to get rid of it—but for manly yogurt they should replace those with brown lids showing support for prostate cancer. And let’s stop saying yogurt helps your digestion. That’s not what men want to hear. What we want to hear is “This yogurt will turn your ass into a rocket launcher.” Now that’s manly! And they need to do something about the flavors too. Currently yogurt comes in unmanly fruit flavors, or other equally unmanly flavors like cappuccino, red velvet cake, and lemon chiffon, which is not only unmanly but wrinkles so easily. A lot of brands of yogurt have fruit on the bottom. They should replace that with bacon on the bottom. Bacon is a truly manly food, which is why we men eat it eight or nine times a day, and that’s also why we men could probably use some yogurt in our diets. Except the bacon shouldn’t be on the bottom. Even when I thought I enjoyed yogurt I didn’t like the fruit on the bottom because you have to mix it up yourself, and that’s too much like cooking. Truly manly men never cook, unless it’s over an open flame, and if you’ve ever tried grilling yogurt you know it doesn’t work too well. Other manly flavors could include pizza, beer, pretzels, hot wings, fried candy bars, curly fries, chili, and sweat. A very popular flavor would be steak and baked potato, which would be great for Greek yogurt which is basically just sour cream anyway. This has me so excited I can’t wait to get my hands on some of this manly yogurt, and I also hope they start redesigning other things that have been exclusively for women for men as well. For instance, why should only women enjoy tampons? I think we men should be able to enjoy those too, but to make them manly they should be made of steel, and maybe have some spikes attached. The claw marks will be an added bonus.