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Nero Wolfe

Like any serious reader, when I find an author I really really like, I read everything that author has written. This is sort of like a love affair between author and reader. The author gives you as much as you want; the casual date takes a kiss and moves on, while the serious lover takes it all, sometimes even repeating a book when once isn't enough. This is not casually liking an author, or even loving a particular book. This is absorbing everything until there is nothing left. For most readers, this doesn't happen very often, just as with lovers in real life it doesn't happen very often. Who has the energy? But every now and then...

I've read a lot of mysteries, and enjoy a lot of mystery authors, and have even read the full works of some of them like Hammett or Chandler. But none have been such feverish affairs as the one I have had with Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe. I remember my first Wolfe novel, The Doorbell Rang. It comes in the middle somewhere of Stout's total output (48 Wolfe books altogether), but that doesn't really matter, because the first thing you notice about the series is that you can pretty much start anywhere. Most mystery authors nowadays, if you don't read their books in the order in which they were written, you're lost: they're one giant epic in serial parts, rather than stand-alone installments. This may be fine for committed fans, but it's murder on newbies who may pick up the latest and be immediately lost. You're never lost with Nero Wolfe, though. Still, there are occasional plot developments from novel to novel, and it doesn't hurt when you get serious to read them in order. But to start, pick any one at random. Then go back and do the rest. In other words, a real easy buy-in.

The novels are narrated by Wolfe's amanuensis, Archie Goodwin, and as Annabelle Mortensen points out in The Genius of West 35th Street, he is the perfect foil to his boss. Archie is hardboiled, while Wolfe is drawing room. They are from completely different traditions in mystery writing, yet they blend perfectly, and as some would have it, uniquely. No one else ever pulled off this mix like Stout. What you learn early on in any of the stories is that Wolfe has very specific rules about how he spends his time and where. One of the real joys of the series is seeing if those rules will broken. They often are, but they still remain as rules. Stout pulls this off beautifully.

If you don't know the Nero Wolfe books, I would recommend that, first, you read one. As I said, any one. Then take a look at Mortensen's fine article, to give yourself a sense of where these books fit in the genre. Then read the rest of them. Just to keep in with the spirit of things, I'm immediately going to put Fer-de-Lance on my Kindle. I need to read this book again real soon. It's been a couple of years since my last Wolfe. I need to rejoin the pack.
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Hello. My name is John. I'll be your hitchhiker this evening.

The idea that you would be driving along and would see John Waters with his thumb out on the highway was, shall we say, a little bizarre, except with John Waters, calling something bizarre requires a lot of thought beforehand. But there he was, hitching away, and one of the cars that picked him up was carrying a bunch of indy rock musicians, and the rest is history. And also fodder, apparently, for an upcoming book.

That's the thing. Waters is a writer, and a good one. His Role Models is undownputtable, and rather undescribable aside from saying that it is, indeed, about some of his role models. It was the first book I bought for my iPad: a baptism of trash, you might say, provided that you are the sort of person who values trash.

Waters is also a talker, and in addition to recommending his book, I recommend his film John Waters: This Filthy World. It's just Waters talking, and he's a great raconteur as he talks about his filmmaking roots. And of course, he is a filmmaker, with varying results. You've probably seen Hairspray (not the musical); if not, do so now. Or Cry-Baby, with Johnny Depp. Neither is for adults only, if that's a concern. They're certainly his most accessible works.

You're on your own after that.

BigThink.com has a bunch of Waters videos (and a lot of other people as well). I picked the two below as representative. Watch them, and then ask yourself, if you saw Waters hitchhiking, would you pick him up? I would, in an instant.




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The greatest fashion show ever

In photographs, the Pantheon seems toweringly prepossessing. In fact, it is squeezed into a busy Roman street, or more to the point, a busy Roman street has sprung up around it, and this building that should be on a majestic hill is just plopped down in what is now the middle of the city. I point this out because it was on my way to visit the Pantheon that I first consciously realized that priests have to buy clothes too. And bishops and cardinals and nuns (oh my!). In a small but smartly appointed shop directly behind the Pantheon is a store where, presumably, the church elite does its shopping. There were miters and crosiers and chasubles all bejeweled and shiny in the window, fancier than anything else you might see in this fanciest of dressy cities. It was reading this article that brought it back to me, and then I remembered Fellini's Roma and the scene below, which simply is one of the most amazing pieces of film he ever shot, which is saying a lot. It's also the most amazing fashion show ever imagined, by any measure. Alexander McQueen had nothing on this.


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Today's science videos: Nao

If you were looking for a personal robot, we've got one for you. They're about $15000, but there is a discount if you purchase in bulk.

We were originally intrigued by this first video, where each dancing Nao (pronounced "now") is responding to a central computer. This article explains how; it's something called quorum sensing, which is how many bacteria coordinate. (You learn something every day.)



After watching this, via Mental Floss, I got curious about these little suckers, and went to the Nao website. This is their promotional video:



Apparently it does not come with rocket launchers to get revenge on the dolt who knocked it over without so much as a "Pardonnez-moi." I would suggest such weaponry as a future enhancement.

There are other videos out there on various versions of Nao and the different things it can do. After watching them, all you'll need to do to get one for yourself is to dig up that spare $15000.
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Italian Spiderman

In honor of The Avengers taking over the number 3 slot on the list of all-time money-earners, we present a film, in its entirety, that is not on that list. [Via Dangerous Minds]


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And then there's the Beach Boys

They're in the middle of their 50th anniversary tour. Unlike the Beatles, they didn't change music. Their role in the popular culture was to capture the California sun, surfer girls, and Thunderbirds in a musical simulacrum of adolescent angst that absolutely did that job, turning everyone who listened to it, gender notwithstanding, into a sixteen-year-old boy at the edge of beach almost having a girlfriend. In reality, the girls on the beach only seem to be within reach...

The music itself is a number of things, but most of all it's Brian Wilson. To call Wilson a genius is easy: he's the one who put all that stuff together, first in his head, then in the studio. But he didn't have an easy go of it. Brian Wilson may be a lot of things, but a quintessential beach boy isn't one of them. His mental sufferings have not made his life a particularly happy one, except, it seems, when he's doing the music. He hears voices, and doesn't want to. Sometimes it's been crippling, but now he's back on stage with the remaining Beach Boys and a big backup ensemble, and they have a new record coming out tomorrow that I have previewed and have no choice but to purchase immediately. Then again, I've bought every Brian solo album over all those years, the good and the bad, and some of them occasionally take off where only Brian can go.

The Beach Boys’ Crazy Summer is the best thing I've read on the reconstituted Beach Boys, and Brian, and the history of the group. At this very moment I'm listening to "Surf's Up" from Brian's solo reconstituted "Smile" album.

I've got to find a video!

poke poke poke

This one will do. Brian is looking awfully good on stage here. Not the Boys, but it does the job.



The Beach Boys are hitting their 70s. No, they're not boys anymore, by any stretch of the imagination. But music is still music, and we can only hope that there's more good music to come.
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Hating the Beatles

In 2012, the Beatles are a given. The Baby Boomers were their first fans, and kids today eventually discover them (not by virtue of having to dig particularly deep) and they become fans too. I've had arguments with teenagers over what album a Beatles or Stones song was on, which is a fruitless exercise on their part, as I've been listening to that album for nigh on 50 years, and they bought some compilation or a couple of downloads and read something on Wikipedia and think they're experts. No, you're not. I also had this exchange once with a high school student, when a Beatles song came up on my iPod mix over the car stereo. "I like the Beatles," he said. "What albums do you have?" I was taken aback by this. "All of them," I responded. Like, which one wouldn't I have? I mean, they broke up in 1969; by now I've been able to scrimp and save to get them all. Sometimes you forget what it's like to be a working stiff.

When the Beatles first arrived, they were not a given. Rock and roll had been around, of course, and was regarded by the establishment as a necessary evil. It was for kids, it made money, and if you wanted to, you could ignore it. Rock was an offshoot of 50s culture; The Wild One and Rebel Without a Cause predated the debut of Elvis on network television. Mainstream culture could sneer at rock if it wanted, but it wasn't the main threat: it was teenagers, period, that were an upsetting phenomenon. It was the other way around in the 60s, where the popular culture became an offshoot of rock, and that all began with the Beatles. Their breakthrough marked a new music, an invigoration of rock via that music, a new look and style, and worse, it came from another country. Popular music was threatened by rock in the 50s; in the 60s, rock became popular music. And that was that.

The Beatles weren't alone in making this happen, but they were at the forefront. Their popularity was ridiculous, and the idea of Beatlemania, and teenaged girls going hysterical at concerts, must have been a little scary to the popular performers of the time, who had no one of any age going even mildly hysterical. In their days, folks like Sinatra had their hysterical followers, but at least they shut up during the performances of what it was they were hysterical about. Not the Beatle maniacs. They just never shut up until the Beatles finally gave up performing live. Who could blame them?

As the Beatles led their cultural upheaval, there was reaction. And if you think I'm exaggerating the extent of their upheaval, measure it by the extent of the reaction. From the mainstream to the depths, from Dean Martin to Homer & Jethro, the threat was clear, and the return fire fairly immediate.



I have nothing against Homer & Jethro, but please, guys, can't we just coexist?

The A.V. Club has put together The Beatles Just Got To Go?: 18 anti-Beatles songs, a roundup of reactionist music, mostly from the time, but a few a little later. I disagree with their interpretation of the Barbarians, but then again, Moulty, the one-handed drummer, was another story altogether. The collection just shows that the Beatles really meant change for a lot of people who didn't want that particular change.
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Riding off into the weekend with Mr. Toad

An opening day attraction in both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, only the smaller California version still exists. But, thanks to the interwebs, where people have time on their hands, you can still ride it, not via somebody's shaky handheld VHS video, but via...some software or other.

As far as we know at Grinwout's, this is the only Disney attraction ever to send its guests to hell. Except, perhaps, for "it's a small world," but we refuse to have that discussion.


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Gilbert & Sullivan

During a trivia night, I asked a group of teenagers to fill in the blank: "For I am the very model of a [blank]."

Blank indeed: blank stares all around.



Gilbert wrote the words, Sullivan wrote the music, and they were a big hit in their day. Patter songs, like that of the Major-General, were a feature in their operettas. So was patent silliness, like the encores in this trio. John Reed was a legendary G&S performer, and one imagines that his work with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company is representative of how the shows were performed when they were originally produced.



I can't resist Todd Rundgren and Taj Mahal having their go at it, but John Reed was better.



We could go on. The movie of The Pirates of Penzance is a perfectly good starting point for G&S noobs, although fans of the Marx Brothers might prefer the 1920ish The Mikado with Eric Idle. It doesn't matter. Either way, don't think of these as dead old examples of an art form that is long dead. Today's musical theater is nothing more than G&S in modern dress: singing, dancing and joking around at a high level. And the music is wonderful, and the lyrics, for the most part, timeless.

"Ring the merry bells on board-ship, wend the air with warbling wild."
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Star Wars recast

What we've got here is the radio play of Star Wars, performed by voice actors doing pretty much every voice you can think of from George Takei to Stimpy, changing roles after every scene. It takes a minute or two to go through the introductions and get started, but be patient. You will be rewarded.


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Marilyn

We've reached the point where Marilyn Monroe doesn't exist anymore. Instead, the girl born Norma Jeane Mortensen on June 1, 1926, has morphed into whatever the beholder wishes her to be. Needless to say, this arises to a great extent from the way she looked. Keep in mind that she died at the age of 36, which means that throughout her entire career she was pretty much always young (to varying degrees) and always sexy (ditto). She was referred to as a sex symbol during her lifetime, but worked hard to become a good actress. The pressure to be Marilyn Monroe was rough on her, as it would be on anyone. We don't have to look far nowadays to see people who can't handle the pressures of fame and publicity, but she was one of the first to suffer those pressures in a very public fashion (her stardom began as the studios were losing control of their publicity machines, not to mention the fact that her marriages to the world's greatest baseball player and the world's greatest playwright were noteworthy in and of themselves). Apparently she died as a result of those pressures.

One wonders what she would have been like if she had not died. Would she have matured into a great actress? Would she have faded away as her sexy image was passed along to younger actresses?

I'm betting that young people today don't know much about MM's work. They certainly know her name and her fame, but have they seen any of her pictures? Some Like it Hot is still one of the funniest movies ever made. It should be on everyone's must-see list. Bus Stop is corny fifties drama, but it's good corny fifties drama and MM is perfect in it. Watch The Misfits if you want to judge where her acting was headed. And if you want to see her shine at her best, check out How to Marry a Millionaire or one of her other signature roles, Lorelei Lee, in this one, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes:



Whatever you do, do watch the movies. The Marilyn Monroe that the movies created was the one on the screen. See that one, and let it go at that.
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