1kBWC: Now Factually Accurate

Thanks to the efforts of Ali, Molly and Seth the no-frills text list on the Blank White Cards page now has one thousand and sixteen cards listed (though the randomizer still seems a bit wonky). The inscrutable-to-non-blank-white-cards-players card shown above is perhaps the lucky thousandth card.

And really, why wouldn't it be?

Next benchmark: Ten Thousand Blank White Cards

List-Making Chain-Smoker: Follow-up

I stopped my friend's office today to chat with him and he was on the phone when he let me in. His phone conversation continued on and I passed several minutes admiring the many nice things in his office. Eventually he said goodbye, hung up and apologized to me:

"Sorry, I couldn't cut that short... it was Rachel Corrie's father"

Followers of this blog will recall the microcontroversy surrounding my March 2006 post about Billy Bragg's reworking of a Dylan song to discuss Ms. Corrie's life and death. This blog doesn't have great circulation. Comments by those who don't know my middle name are few and far between but some random internet jackass somehow sought me out -- such was the keyword power of Rachel Corrie's name.

Back to my friend, his theater company is staging a production of My Name is Rachel Corrie, a play based on Rachel's diaries. Craig and Cindy Corrie may be in attendance at one of the shows and speak about their experiences and their daughter. Of course, controversy looms, even in our local theater scene. Picketers will not be unexpected.

Theatre 13's My Name is Rachel Corrie opens September 11th in Boulder, Colorado.

Just a Fancy Way to Say "Soybean"*

edamame, originally uploaded by delilahismydog.

I am really, really excited about eating some edamame from the garden. Shannon says they may be ready to eat this week!

Edamame is totally the kind of food I would have sneered at had mom tried to feed it to me as a child. Like avocados. So did I have bad taste as a child or have my taste buds died off as I've gotten old, allowing me to be a more adventurous eater?

*This is exactly what dad said when I told him we had about 10 feet of edamame plants growing.

Zucchini Bread

zucchini bread, originally uploaded by delilahismydog.

I made this bread early this morning. It's too hot to bake at any other time of day.

We have so much zucchini right now. I have made it into casserole, stir fry, curry, fritters, chocolate cake, and bread. I have put it in salads, sandwhiches, and sushi. I'm thinking zucchini pickles are next.

By the way, the loaves are made with two different types of flours. The one on the left (slightly collapsed) is for me. The one on the right is shannon's.

A Bad Neighborhood: I Want Some Deer*

So, yesterday morning I woke up early, sent Shannon off to work, went for a quiet walk with Delilah and then settled in to shore up the plants next to the sidewalk.

I was just transplanting some sedums when I looked up and saw four cop cars pull up, right in front of the crack house across the street. I thought maybe it was time to start gathering my gardening tools and head inside, where I could hide behind the curtains and watch the shit go down, as any sensible person would do.

Just as I was picking up the last tool, I saw two cops running down the street from the opposite direction, carrying a fireman's axe. Delilah barked once and then hid in the house. The cops pounded on the door and said, "[Legal Name] I have a warrant for your arrest. Open the door immediately or I will break it down." Then they broke down the door. I was closing my own front door when I heard the cop yell, "Everybody get down! I have a gun and will shoot!"

After about 2 hours, the cops handcuffed Ms. Jaimie (aka Big Mamma, aka [Legal Name]), the guy I think is her current boyfriend, the guy who always brought over the drugs, and the woman who got in a fight with the Roller Derby Girls who live next door about a month ago and brought them all down to the station.

I'll trade one crack house and its denizens for a herd of deer.




Anybody?

Bad Neighborhood: Continued

Originally, I though I would post a picture about how the new neighborhood was all environmentally sensitive -- this picture was taken directly across the street on the way to my car to drive to my work within walking distance. Some spiel about how the street was so close to nature that wildlife nibbled on our lawns.

Aww.

That was before the deer attacked a family member.

Yep, reared up on the back legs Bambulance-style against human and canine family members. Now the deer is Family Enemy Number One. My duty is to peg it with a volleyball.

Edit: The "peg with a volleyball" orders have since been rescinded. It turns out the reason the deer was acting so freaky was that it had two small fawns nestled in the next yard over.

A Bad Neighborhood

On the way home last night, I said "ooh, a fox!" This was quickly followed by seeing three more foxes. This apparent pack of kits had taken this Ford as their territory and did not seem particularly bothered by my taking of pictures and intermittent squealing with cute joy.

Foxes are not generally found in packs and do not like the plural "foxen". They glared at me when I referred to them that way. They also do not particularly like being anthropomorphized.

Originals up on the flickr.

To Do List: The First 25

By popular request, here are the first 25 in the ongoing series of things for me to do in life:

Drive in a demolition derby
Visit the Trinity Test Site
Eat at every restaurant within walking distance of my home and work
Become fluent in Spanish
Go to a drive-in movie
Record an album
Ride NASA's (or a private organization's) "Vomit Comet"
Own a pinball machine
Learn to play the violin
Fall in love for keeps
Drive in the Paris to Dakar rally
Form a publishing company (Recursive Press)
Appear in a movie
Publish collected Apple Sauce Brain Man collection
Stay in the ice hotel
Set foot on all seven continents
Participate in a giant food fight
Remove money as a concern
Spend a week in New York City
Write and then edit a novel
Punch a shark
See a shuttle launch
Learn to juggle
Take a four (or more) day train ride
Take a photograph a day for a year

Disclaimer: I stole some from Maggie.

CWA Panel 3403A: Simpsons Forever!

Panel 3403A: Simpsons Forever! was held Wednesday, April 9, 2008 in CU's Macky Auditorium. It featured a single panelist: Simpsons Executive Producer and Writer Tim Long. Mr. Long began the session with a clip reel of his favorite Simpsons moments. These scenes included:

Homer jumps Springfield Gorge - Bart the Daredevil
The Land of Chocolate - Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk
Potato Chips in Space - Deep Space Homer
Homer in 3D - Treehouse of Horror VI
Gay Steelmill - Homer's Phobia
Marge and Homer Nude - Natural Born Kissers
Homer Builds a BBQ - Mom and Pop Art
Stupid Sexy Flanders - Little Big Mom
Butter Off Dead - Little Girl in the Big Ten
Catch Me If You Can montage - Catch 'Em If You Can
Protestant Heaven - The Father, The Son & The Holy Guest Star
Diversity Tales video - The Italian Bob
White Stripes guest spot - Jazzy and the Pussycats

Mr. Long began his remarks recounting his first day working on The Simpsons in 1998. The writers were pitching the scene D'oh-in in the Wind in where Homer goes outside in the nude to the dismay of neighbor Maude Flanders. Homer attempts to assuage her by saying "Come on Maude, the human wang is a beautiful thing!" Long continues: ''We realized no one had ever said 'wang' on TV... It felt like a war room during the Cuban missile crisis, like we were discovering a whole new world -- a world were things were only going to get dirtier and raunchier. That didn't happen.'' Long cited the FCC's tightening due new presidential administration and the fact that someone revealed their breast at the 2004 Super Bowl.

"We can no longer show a bare ass on television... I wrote an episode last year where Kent Brockman says 'Motherfucker'... I was debating with the Fox censor how clearly we could say that."

To underscore the position of the censors, Long then quoted from the Freedom of Information Act-ed complaints to the Federal Communications Commission regarding the Simpsons (available as a PDF from governmentattic.org):

While watching the world Series. Fox advertised for the Simpson. The Commercial shows a homosexual encounter with an alien. I think this is inappropriate for the audience that would be watchin this program.

Homer was asking Marge, his wife, why they took in this really annoying older mooch named Gil. She responded
nicely saying, "Christian charity, I guess."; And Homer whined and yelled back, "What does a porn star have to do
with anything?!!?"

During the annual Simpson Halloween Episode, there was a scene where 4 simpson characters, Bart and Lisa Simpson, Nelson, and Millhouse are playing Halloween tricks. One of these "Tricks" was to blow up the hotel where a major political-event was taking place "Republican National Convention". I have accepted that this show will take pot shots at the President on occassion however I believe that this crosses the line.

The Simpsons cartoon features two women in swimsuits. While there were no nudity, this scene certainly was inapropriate because women should be dressed conservatively and obey the wishes of their husbands.

I want to complain about The Simpsons tv show regarding gay marriage. Homer Simpson kissing himself and having little baby Homers running around was just totally inappropriate for 8 p.m. when kids are watching tv.

Mr Long then cited a January 22, 2004 letter from the Parents Television Council filing an indecency complaint against The Simpsons episode Today I Am a Clown:

Homer remembers that on the night he was supposed to take Santa's Little Helper to get neutered, he instead took the dog for a night on the town.

Homer: "On our way to the clinic I decided to give him a night his wang would never forget."

''I thought we'd be able to use 'wang' forever! When they came for the bare ass, no one stood up. When they came for 'motherfucker', no one stood up. Then there was no one to stand up for 'wang'," Long stated, followed by raucous laughter from the auditorium. He described the FCC's regulations as being so nebulous that the Fox censors twist themselves into making some interesting decisions. He mentioned the episode The Father, The Son & The Holy Guest Star where Homer is confessing his sins.
"The line was 'I masturbated a thousand times, and I have no plans to stop masturbating in the future'. The note from the censor said 'one thousand is inappropriate'. We asked, 'what about a million?" and the response was 'that would be fine'."

He then discussed that if the censor rejected a joke that the writing team would send something dirtier out of spite. An example from the episode Brawl in the Family in which Grandpa Abe Simpson is waking up in bed after his wedding night. The original line was "Wanna take another ride on the Abe train?" which was rejected. The writers replaced it with "Care to give honest Abe another term in the Oval Office?" which was deemed to be fine. Another example was a commercial for a Viagra-like drug on television. The original script called for Bonestra, which was again to be found to be too dirty. Knowing that the script was going to be read, not necessarily aloud by the censor, Long found it an "interesting writing exercise" to come up with something that didn't read dirty but still sounded dirty. The result, Jammitin, was seen in the episode Homer and Ned's Hail Mary Pass.

The floor was then opened up for questions. The first asked that in light of censorship, could The Simpsons go online for less restrictions? Long responded that episodes were currently available on the website hulu.com adding that no one's figured out the business model for online distribution. Regarding the opportunity for decreased censorship he said ''...we don't want to drop the F-bomb -- we'd rather just be funny. We're happy to cede that space to South Park and Family Guy.''

The next question concerned political commentary on the program, and if the writers were promoting a message. "Not really," Long said, "the writers lean left in general. The exception would be John Schwartzwelder who would be proud to be called a 'right wing maniac'. After the impeachment John thought Clinton would hang."

Regarding the broadcast of The Simpsons in Saudi Arabia, Long had initially heard that it was changed extensively, to the point of Moe's Bar serving orange juice instead of beer. He stated later he heard that it wasn't true: that the program was shown uncut. He said the show and movie were embraced world wide with the exceptions of Germany and Japan. Long had heard that in Japan having only four fingers (as the Simpson characters do) is associated with the Yakuza. "That's one of the things I want to believe because it's so cool!"

The next question asked what the Comic Book Guy's name was and Long stated quite plainly: Scott Albertson.

An audience member inquired about censor notes dealing with the many times The Simpsons slams Fox, its parent network. Long said that doesn't really happen. ''We had an episode about Fox News but people are hesitant to criticize a cartoon because they look silly. Besides, Fox is choking on the money that The Simpsons has generated.'' He noted ''The Fox network is extremely raunchy, but its sister network Fox News is extremely conservative. There's a theory that Fox deliberately sets itself up for huge fines in order to funnel money to the Republican National Committee through the FCC. That's another thing I'd like to believe 'cause it's so cool!"

Guest star Thomas Pynchon was the subject of next question. ''That was such a coup! You kind of test the power of the show sometimes. We wrote his part as a joke and he loved it. The second time he was on the show he wrote his own jokes! (These wings are 'V'-licious! I'll put this recipe in 'The Gravity's Rainbow Cookbook', right next to 'The Frying of Latke 49'.) These terrible jokes from one of the world's greatest writers... We had Mick Jagger on the show, but because everybody wants to be on the show we don't treat them very well. Jagger wanted a hotel room with a Jacuzzi. We found him a room with a coin-operated one: you had to feed quarters into it...''

The next question began "You've done a lot of episodes-"
"Too many!" Long interjected.
"- Where's the show going?"
The reply from Mr. Long was ''It just keeps going... as long as there's things on this earth you can make fun of we'll keep going - I have no other skills.''

Regarding any restrictions on The Simpsons Movie, Long said "They wanted us to make it good" but otherwise no. "Fox was afraid we'd come back with an X rated cut."

"Do you get more letters complaining about sex or violence?"
''The ratio is about 10 letters about sex to every 1 about violence.''

On the subject of competition between The Simpsons and other shows, Mr. Long said "The more the merrier," adding for the most part the relations between the various animated shows are pretty respectful.

A viewer then asked if the kids will ever get any older and Long said for the most part no (outside of flash forward episodes). ''They're pretty adorable at the ages they are now. Bart works as an underachiever at ten. If he was sporting a starter mustache that would be pretty pathetic. Not that there's anything wrong with starter mustaches.''

The next question dealt with The Simpsons Movie. Specifically: "How did you get away with showing underage Bart's penis?" Long replied that ''oddly enough, there's actually an exception for underage children. There's tons of research, including how much flaccidity is acceptable. The key is it was presented in a non-sexual way."

The final question of the day was regarding guest stars: how much do they get paid and how long does it take to record their parts. They get paid scale. ''Someone like Tom Hanks, who was in the movie, doesn't need the money. Most guest stars donate their scale wage to charity. How long it takes depends on how many takes they need. Typically it's about twelve to fifteen takes. When we had Mr. T on we had to do a few more, since all his lines were in Hebrew. I was really nervous meeting Mr. T - much more so than with most of our guests - because he's one of my heroes. He was telling me about his role in Rocky III, how he wasn't beaten by Rocky, but instead took a dive because his grandmother needed money for an operation. I mentioned I didn't remember that being in the movie and Mr. T said 'Scenes you don't see'. He had made up a movie in his head!''

Mr. Long then thanked the audience for attending and closed the panel. Fans stood four and five deep to talk to him after the panel.

Semiquotes: CWA Blogging Technical Footnote

I felt a little guilty about the condensed remarks from last year's Michael Laine post: while it appears to be a transcript, it isn't. And after the posting was picked up, it was presented as a transcript on sites out of my control. The reality is that I can't type fast enough to liveblog, nor do I know shorthand (though it is on my list of things to learn) so I take notes longhand in a legal pad. Consequentially, I miss words - I know I'm not getting everything exactly correct. I'm confident I'm presenting an accurate summary of a speaker's remarks, but the editor in me screams that whatever is in quotation marks out to be sacrosanct.

Therefore, I've invented semiquotation marks. They're really two apostrophes together ''like this''. Look closely, there's an extra pixel of space in there. They're meant to convey that whatever is within them is not a direct quotation, but probably close enough so that the speaker would say "yeah, I said that".

Punctuation fans, please note that the semiquotation marks (or gist marks, depending on which sounds cooler) fall at the beginning of the quotation order of operations. Thus: Mr Jones stated, ''I'm reminded by something Lorem Ipsum said: "The first line in Citizen Kane is 'Rosebud'."'' Sure, it tends to look like ASCII art sometimes, but at least one knows when a quote is not held up to be accurate.

To sum up: semiquotes are pretty accurate, normal quotation marks are spot on and the nested single quotes are the concern of the person being quoted. I have to draw a line somewhere.

CWA Reintroduction

It's that special time of the year again: the annual Conference on World Affairs in Boulder. Each year in April the University of Colorado - Boulder hosts 110 panelists and 60,000 attendees for hundreds of panels in what The New York Times calls “a week-long extravaganza of discussion and debate”. This year is the 60th incarnation of the event and will be showcasing such luminaries as Former Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy J. Chamberlin, Time International editor Michael Elliot, M*A*S*H star and death penalty opponent Mike Farrell, skeptic James Randi, Air America host Rachel Maddow and Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra.

Pikamac coverage of last year's event includes my reading list and my scoop on the space elevator.

Auteur Theory and Pinball

Kids don't understand the concept of authorship. It takes awhile walking the planet to realize that the reason one likes both Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen so much is because the same person wrote them. Or that the same guy (Alan Miller) programmed two of my favorite Atari 2600 games: Robot Tank and Surround. I think I was in Junior High before someone pointed out to me that many my favorite comics were all written by Larry Hama (actually, the comment was much snootier: along the lines of "I can't believe you buy comics based on characters rather than the writer").

And I thought those days were gone: I know if I've read an author before when I open a book. I know the province of a movie before the lights go down. Imagine my surprise when I found that my two favorite pinball machines were designed by the same person. It's bit like realizing Eleanor Rigby and Yellow Submarine are both songs by the same band. The machines are The Addams Family and The Twilight Zone and the designer on both is a man named Pat Lawlor.

Even people who aren't pinball aficionados have likely played a game designed by Mr. Lawlor. The Addams Family is the single best-selling pinball machine of all time. Over 20 thousand machines are out in the world, shouting "The Mamushka!" But Mr. Lawlor's not only responsible for the two greatest pinball machines -- he's also the designer of more than a dozen instantly recognizable pinballs, including Funhouse, Earthshaker, Whirlwind, and No Good Gofers. Pat Lawlor is currently running Pat Lawlor Design, responsible for newer titles like Ripley's Believe It or Not, RollerCoaster Tycoon and most recently a pinball machine based on Family Guy.

Now, dozens of people are involved with something as complicated as a pinball machine. But Lawlor's machines all express similar design principles. The most obvious is innovation. Lawlor's first design, Banzai Run, featured an additional pinball playing field in the backglass. Twilight Zone had more related patents than any other pinball game (since eclipsed by Pinball Magic). In fact, every Lawlor game has something never before found in a pinball machine from Earthshaker's internal motor that shook the entire machine, to Addams Family's magnets under the playfield all the way up to the recent NASCAR game's circular racetrack.

The second hallmark of a Lawlor design is that the playfield is arranged to play in a horizontal direction as well as a vertical one. In addition to the standard flippers at the bottom of the machine, Lawlor's tables frequently include flippers on the sides of the playfield as well. These flippers target ramps, tunnels and other items that can only be "hit" from this horizontal perspective.

A third element in Pat Lawlor's designs is a sense of storytelling. Can a metal ball and two flippers present a narrative experience? Well, there's not a lot of character development, but players accomplish goals through play and are led through a sequence of events. For example traveling the country in Road Show or opening an amusement park in RollerCoaster Tycoon.

Finally, there's a host of more subtle features that distinguish a Pat Lawlor machine. Lawlor has a signature 'flow' which pinballers refer to as the path the ball takes as the game is played. Play is dynamic: the game pauses occasionally to give the player a breather before unleashing utter chaos. I'm thinking of the moments before multiball in Addams Family as the most extreme example, but even when the mechanized Thing picks up the ball is a welcome respite after a tricky shot. Perhaps most memorably, Lawlor's games are funny! Characters are unique without being annoying (unless their purpose is to be annoying). Situations are offbeat without succumbing to "wackiness". I often find myself laughing out loud in the arcade.

Do these factors add up to a distinguishable, recognizable design? I argue yes. Consider Lawlor's contemporary Steve Ritchie, best known for tables like Black Knight, Terminator 2, High Speed and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Ritchie is inarguably a master of pinball design as well, but makes significantly different decisions: playfields are open where Lawlor's are more confined. Ritchie's 'flow' is vertical with an emphasis on ramps and loops whereas Lawlor's play tends to be more horizontal. Ritchie's tables lack the multi-level or mini playfields often found in Lawlor's designs. This is not to say Ritchie's pinball machines are wrong or bad, but they're obviously designed from a different perspective.

I'm not entirely sure François Truffaut would agree that a pinball machine can have an auteur like a film. But in many ways a pinball machine can be closer to a single author's vision than a movie can. Few directors are also screenwriters and composers, while a pinball designer's vision becomes a player's experience. Heck, an Addams Family pinball promo video shows Lawlor overseeing assembly of the machines, tweaking each one as he goes. Lawlor's signature (a red button) shows up just a surely as a Hitchcock cameo does in one of his films. Where David Lynch casts a musician in a supporting role, Lawlor includes a shot through the pop bumpers. I know I'm dancing about architecture, but it was a pretty nifty feeling to realize that pinball machines bear the creative stamp of one or two people, rather than a soulless committee in a corporate office somewhere.

[Photo from the upcoming documentary TILT: The Battle to Save Pinball]

Now my wrists hurt: Meditation on Pinball

I got the urge to play some pinball this morning. I suppose I should say I was unable to suppress my urge to play pinball this morning. I'm one of those folks who can't pass a pinball machine without plunking a few quarters in. There was a pinball machine in the basement that I would play before I knew how to read. I'm pretty sure I logged enough hours in college to major in pinball - certainly more time than I spent in class. Pinball is ideal for the shiftless college student or layabout adult -- it's cheap, tactile and intermittently rewarding. Plus it's loud and bright!

There's a subtext to pinball that, I think, is the true appeal. The eponymous ball is perfectly spherical steel. Unyielding. Fast-moving. If you look closely at a pinball you'll see your own face distorted and looking back at you. A pinball player only has limited influence over that ball. Of the entire pinball playfield the only area you control is the tiny radius of your flippers. A playfield which is quite literally tilted against you. From the minute you put those quarters in you're going to lose. The game is designed that way. The pinball parlor owner is relying on it. It's as inescapable as gravity.

Except...

Sometimes you don't. Sometimes, only very rarely, through some combination of skill and luck a single game will last forever. You enter the elusive state some call flow. That three ounce ball bends to your will. You rack up more extra games than you can possibly play. You could go until ragnarok. Or at least until you have to pick your sister up from the airport. As you leave your machine and bequeath your free games to a spectator: you've won. You've proven your inherent worth on an un-leveled playing field.

Yeah, there's a lot of other ways to get this feeling. Winning a marathon, becoming a captain of industry, writing a best-selling novel are all perfectly good ways too. I submit there's no other way to do it in a laundromat, waiting for a dryer.

New Item in the Store

There's a new item in the official Apple Sauce Brain Man Store: The Official Apple Sauce Brain Man 12 Page Sample comic!

Don't have time to read the four hundred-some comics in the ASBM archive? Just read twelve of them. Don't want to sit at the computer? We'll mail 'em to you. Right to your house! Or office. OR HOME OFFICE!

Each sampler is signed and numbered and I'll draw the cover however you want (limited by my art style, of course).

All this for the low price of Pi dollars. That's $3.1415 (rounded down to $3.14) and includes shipping.

Also: there's an Apple Sauce Brain Man Store now. I just made it.

Cheese Chess: It's Strategically Delicious!

From the ever-awesome Molly comes this magnificent chess+architecture+cheese combination:

In addition to the traditional castles in the corner one will find a pair of stables, then cathedrals surrounding the queen's citadel and the king's keep (all set tastefully behind a row of villas).

It's important to note that the country this picture was taken in hadn't discovered milk products until circa 1995, so finding cheese is an achievement in itself, let alone making it into chess.

Check and mate!