So Sweet and Clear

For all the horror that the Juno soundtrack was wrought upon the world, it’s also done an ounce of good. The bad comes first. Yes, we should hate this particular shiny disc for tricking a bunch of tweens into thinking that cool kids listen to cutesy Kimya Dawson songs. Not only is that crass, it’s mean-spirited.

But like I said, this album doesn’t constitute a total net loss for humanity. Its inclusion of the Sonic Youth cover of “Superstar” prompted me to seek out the version by The Carpenters, which I feel like I haven’t heard since early childhood, when riding in my mother’s car meant listening to the mellow 70s hits of KBAY, 100.3 FM. Literally, our every trip to the grocery store was scored with the likes of “Muskrat Love,” “Midnight at the Oasis,” or the Hill Street Blues theme. Eventually, KBAY switched formats and these songs faded from my memory. I don’t think my mom even listens to them anymore. She should, though, because ones like “Superstar” help me appreciate the value of pop music and even make me expect more from what’s popular today.


In short, I feel like The Carpenters should never have recorded their take on “Superstar” at the point in their career that they did. They’d already scored hits with “Close to You” and “For All We Know,” cementing their status as full-on music stars, and “Superstar” has the unique quality of being written from the point of view of the fan — not the singer. That a person whose musical prowess had allowed them even a modicum of fame could still identify with the common man is notable in itself. The fact that they could and would sing a song about it demands attention.

Granted, The Carpenters didn’t write “Superstar.” Leon Russel and Bonnie Bramlett did, two years before The Carpenters got their genetically similar mitts on it. However, having heard the first recorded version of the song — titled in full as “Groupie (Superstar)” and sung by Bonnie herself, in a deliberate, soulful manner — I have to say that The Carpenters’ take is superior. Whereas Bonnie’s voice booms, Karen’s voice quivers with sadness — understatedly, though. Beyond that, the more complex instrumentation that The Carpenters employ in their version helps to contrast against Karen’s voice. I hate to go all English major on this, but I’d venture to say that the very structure of The Carpenters’ “Superstar” helps to underscore the meaning of the song, with Karen’s plaintive voice losing the fight against an orchestra-like assortment of instruments much in the way that the speaker eventually allows the gap between rock musician and rock fan to keep them permanently separated. (Realization at the end of the first verse: “But you’re not really here / It’s just the radio.”)

I have another reason why I prefer The Carpenters’ version to any others I’ve heard, though I didn’t noticed it until today. According to the Wikipedia article on the song, one slight alteration was made to the song’s second verse — the line “And I can hardly wait / To sleep with you again” was subbed with “And I can hardly wait / To be with you again.” According to Wikipedia, the switch helped to whitewash the song of any direct sexual connotation that could have sullied the brother-sister pair’s squeaky clean image. I, however, feel like the amended lyrics also help to create a sense of the relationship between a musician and a fan who may have just attended a concert, rather than a groupie who scored a one-night stand with their idol. (Mental image: a girl, eyes closed, completely lost in the music and seemingly unaware of the fact that she’s in a packed venue, versus some road skank, waking up on a tour bus floor with cigarette butts and condoms in her hair.) Rather than specifying the relationship, the switch leaves it open to interpretation and accessible to the great many people who have heard a song played and felt the singer speak directly to them. (Sadly, the lot of us will not bang a rock star.)

Whatever might have been running through the head of either Carpenter sibling regarding the song’s meaning, their “Superstar” makes me like them more and reminds me how sad it is that Karen died. Considering The Carpenters’ popularity at the time, they would have had every reason not to give a damn about the people who listened to their music. (Musicians have acted like pricks with far less right to do so.) Instead, they made a good song better, more important. “Superstar” implies an awareness of how deeply a fan’s feelings can run. It’s empathetic. It’s respectful. It’s downright human.

I like this song. I like listening to it, but I also like that “Superstar” — a played-out, mainstream success that, in certain contexts, could be considered trite and sappy — can still move me to the point where I’d feel comfortable expressing admiration for it. It’s everything a pop song should be. (Hell, it even contains the lyric “Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby.”) And yet it manages to elevate itself beyond typical pop fodder. That must be it. Why else should my heart break a little each time I hear those opening harp strings?

A Vacation to Indo-Europe, Wherever That Is

I've expressed my delight with the work being done over at Bradshaw of the Future, the blog that can make something as abstract as Indo-European seem meaningful. In a previous post, I even noted a few especially good posts, one of which etymologically linked the Hindu goddess Parvati with the Scandinavian-derived "fjord," a term for glacially carved, water-filled valleys. (It's a match-up I still find boggling, these two.) I even commented on the Bradshaw post itself, noting that I liked seeing verbal linkages between languages that come from two areas that exist on opposite ends of the chunk of earth that inherited Indo-European word parts.

It has since happened again: The February 7 post linked Hindu bigwig Shiva and the Gaelic dancing term "céilidh." That may even be closer to opposite ends of the landsmass.

The Simpsons Intro: What You Don’t See

Technically, in every episode of The Simpsons that begins with the un-abbreviated intro, Milhouse appears. So too does Nelson, Dr. Hibbert, and even Maude Flanders, who overcomes the considerable handicap of being dead.

I speak of a brief section of the intro that occurs directly between Marge and Maggie’s simultaneous horn-honking and the arrival at Casa de Simpson that segues into the weekly couch gag. The camera pans away from Marge’s car and, if only for a few seconds, over a Springfield panorama, featuring various characters. It’s pretty hard to see the whole of it with the naked eye, and it wasn’t until the arrival of the Simpsons DVDs a few years back that I could actually see who was there by scanning frame-by-frame. For whatever reason, I was suddenly motivated last week by the urge to reproduce this scene in full in a way other people could see by Photoshopping the frames together. The result is below.

It may be even more fulfilling to see the full-sized version.

I like how this image, jagged edges though it might have, presents a cool Simpsons landscape that most people haven’t ever gotten a chance to appreciate, despite “seeing” it every time they watch the show. I’m also struck by the strangeness of who actually appears: It’s a mishmash of familiar regulars, anonymous background characters, characters who once were prominent on the show but are no longer, and finally characters that I don’t think ever appeared on the show, to my knowledge.

Here they are, in order of appearance, starting at the left at moving right, more or less.

• Some anonymous girl
• Some yokel-looking boy
• Milhouse, throwing a baseball, despite his established suckiness at sports
• A blonde, pig-tailed girl who is Bart’s class but has no name
• The two look-a-like thugs who initially henched for Nelson in “Bart the General” but have more or less vanished from the show. (Wikipedia says their names are Weasel #1 and Weasel #2.)
• Nelson himself
• Richard, Bart’s weirdly gray-haired friend, who’s since become less prominent
• Lewis, Bart’s black friend, who was never all that popular
• Martin Prince
• Unless I’m mistaken, Mr. and Mrs. Winfield up in the chairs. They’re the Simpsons neighbors who move to get away from Homer in “New Kid on the Block.” (In their absence, Ruth Powers moves in. In looking them up, I found this list of bygone characters from the show’s first season depicts the Winfields, in case you’re interested.) However, the woman is also a dead-ringer for Miss Feesh — the church organist and a character whose existence doesn’t seem to be well-documented online.
• Jimbo Jones
• Jimbo’s flunky Kearny, whose last name Wikipedia states is “Zzyzwicz.”
• Patty and Selma
• Kent Brockman
• Sherri and Terri, looking more like the twins from The Shining than ever
• Above the twins, from left to right: Herman the military antique store owner, Grandpa, and Jasper, the last of whom apparently has the last name “Beardley”
• In front of the Springfield Retirement Castle: four old people I can’t identify. The first looks a little like Jerry Seinfeld.
• Below, some anonymous Channel 6 cameraman
• Officers Eddie and Lou
• Dr. Marvin Monroe, who was dead and then wasn’t
• The chronically nauseated Wendell Borton, hanging out of the bus window, likely puking
• Dr. Julius Hibbert
• Some blonde girl I’ve never seen before
• A girl with green glasses who is in Bart’s class but has never been named.
• Otto Mann
• Some creepy, happy-looking girl, who I’ve never seen before
• An equally unfamiliar kid who looks seriously messed-up
• And then finally the Flanderses, only minus Rod

See? A weird bunch. But it’s here now. I suppose that I’m not the first to do this, but I couldn’t find any evidence of previous efforts online. (Admittedly, it’s not the easiest thing to Google.) However, I don’t see anything like it up on the Wikipedia page for the Simpsons opening sequence, which, not surprisingly, exists. So as far as my limited research has told me, this is a first.

Whee.

Blatantly Nab Need

I made a good one.

Other menu sign anagram adventures:

• Bentley Banana, Ltd.
• Le Bad Nanny Battle

Far as a Rental Car Can Go

Tonight I realized that I’ve made a pattern of not doing what I think would be funny. Perhaps this results from my brain’s desire to protect my body from physical harm. However, just positing that something would be “so funny” and actually making that allegedly funny thing happen are two very different matters. Presented below: three recent instances of me failing to create the funny.

One: Last Saturday night, Spencer and I attended CAF for its annual Valentine’s fundraiser, an event which doubled as a going away party for longtime employee Kami. Given that CAF tends to draw from a rather well-to-do crowd, the idea came that a fun way to pass time would be to approach apparently single women and begin the following line of dialogue: “Hello there. I couldn’t help but notice you from across the room. If you could, I’d like you to settle a bet between my friend and me.” At this point, I’d motion to Spencer across the gallery. “See, my friend over there told me you were a cougar, but I say you’re way too old to be a cougar.” The game would have to be played immediately in front of valuable art, of course, because the target’s natural reaction would be to strike me. But even if a fancypants modern art piece were to be crushed beneath the fist of some former debutante, I still say the game would be fun, at least in theory, and I can’t decide whether it would work better on the 40-something set — that is, actual cougars — or women my age, who would surely have an even better reaction to being called cougars.

Two: You may remember the girl who lives below me. Yes, the one with the guitar and the mental library of 90s hits. Perhaps because the nights are warmer now and the entire complex has its windows open, we can hear even more of what she does around her apartment. Most annoyingly, her cell phone chirps with a distinct “new text message” noise about every ten minutes. Just about an hour ago, however, that gave way to an exclamation of “Oh my god!” that we would have heard even if the windows were shut — the kind of line that’s either followed with the giggling glee of someone who has just run into her old sorority sister or the dull thud of a body hitting the floor. My patience having grown thin, I decided that the obvious way to shut this girl up and have fun while doing it would be to hurry down the stairs and knock on her door. When she answers, I would ask if everything was okay. She’d say yes, of course. I’d apologize for overreacting and explain that I was just worried for her welfare… given what happened to the poor girl who lived in the unit previously. “I shouldn’t — I shouldn’t talk about it,” I’d say, before telling her that if anything — anything — happens, that she shouldn’t hesitate to call for help again. Then, at least, she’d be quiet for at least the one night.

Three: Spencer is taking a creative nonfiction class that I took four years ago. Same professor, even. (The class ultimately prompted to write a strange short story that I titled “Godspeed, Captain Pinchy.”) When I took it, so did six or seven of my friends. Franzese, Dina, the Other Drew, Palmy, a few people from the Nexus, and my old roommate Moe. Because a large portion of the class involved writing short stories — ones based on events that actually happened — and then reading them to the class, my friends and I had a running joke about how funny it would be to read a dramatic, nail-biter of a tale in the front of the whole class… and then ended it with the narrator — the same person who had written the piece — dying tragically. I can’t imagine anything better than standing before a group of twenty other young writers and speaking the final words of that week’s project: “In pain, I placed my hands on my abdomen, only to find a strange warm feeling there despite how cold the wind blew that night. I had already stumbled to the ground by the time I realized it was blood. Strange how in the moonlight, even blood glimmers with the beauty of some mountain stream. I suppose that made it better — seeing the beauty in that blood and having it be the last thing I’d see — for soon I’d crumpled the ground. The pale moonlight slowly faded from my sight. I closed my eyes one last time. I thought of home. And I died.” Then, I’d put down the paper and confidently stride back to my seat, past my classmate’s expressions of confusion and rage as they realized that I’d completely failed to grasp the concept of the class.

Being a shit as performance art — now that would funny.

The Countryside Is Overgrown

Two things I saw at Catholic today but did not buy.

This horrifying mug. Because there's nothing I'd like least than a beverage container with weird Bart Simpson eyes and facial hair. The strange date of 1887 is clearly fraudulent and makes me hate it all the more.

This mirrored sign, which made me feel like I was having a stroke until Spencer pointed out that it's Dutch. I Googled the phrase — "Ooit'n normall mens ontmoet? En... beviel't?" — and found exactly one hit: Slightly Off Kilter, a blog kept by a woman who considers it one of her personal mottos. According to her, the phrase translates into English as "Ever met a normal person? So... did you like it?" I, however, prefer to think that it means "Taste metal in mouth... Can't feel right side of body."

Worse Than a Murder-Death-Kill

Some quick thoughts, both of movies and the names of characters in movies.

One: I saw the awful Sylvester Stallone movie Demolition Man a good three years before I first had to read Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World. However, TNT or SciFi or one of the other cable channels that plays bad movies ran Demolition Man recently and I realized that Sandra Bullock's character, Lenina Huxley, is doubly named in honor of Brave New World: The female lead's first name plus the author's last. That's two times more creativity than I would have expected.

Two: Though it has occurred to me before, Angelina Jolie's recent appearance here in Santa Barbara has reminded me of the strange fact that a character in Scream 3 is named partially in honor of her and partially in honor of the woman I'd imagine to be her sworn enemy. Parker Posey's character — the Gale Weathers clone who, much like Courtney Cox, formerly starred on a Must See TV sitcom — is named Jennifer Jolie. The last name's a dead giveaway for Angelina. The first name seems arguable until you consider the Must See TV connection and the fact that Cox spends a lot of time on screen with Jennifer Jolie. Thus, she amounts to Jennifer Anniston plus Angelina Jolie, a combo designed years before one would allegedly steal Brad Pitt from the other. For the record, Angelina Jolie gets double recognition in Scream 3: Emily Mortimer's character gets saddled with the name Angelina Tyler, the latter part of which I'd guess is a nod to Liv Tyler, who was a much bigger deal when the film came out than she is today.

A final sidenote: It might seem plausible that Deon Richmond's character in Scream 3, Tyson Fox, is named for Tyson Beckford and Jamie Foxx, especially given that Richmond is black and the latter two are both notable black celebrities. However, I'm not so sure that either was famous enough when Scream 3 came out in 2000 — much less when the film was first written — that they would have warranted such recognition. Rather, I can't help but wonder if Tyson Fox is actually a masculinization of Tyra Banks, who was famous enough in 2000, and Vivica Fox, who had appeared in the previous Kevin Williamson project, Teaching Mrs. Tingle.

This has been Drew, overthinking movies that are better off being forgotten.