Far Side Names


My wife Lauren, in her boundless good taste and kindness, gave me The Complete Far Side for my birthday in April. Combined with The Complete Calvin & Hobbes, it makes up the “Books Wile E. Coyote might attempt to kill the Road Runner with should there ever be an anvil shortage” portion of my library.

Flipping through it over the past eight months provided a great excuse to revisit one of the main influences on my sense of humor. I still remember the monthly calendar my dad had up in his office one year, which featured two cartoons which I found hilarious, even if in my young age I thought those spiders were literally referring to pulling the web off the slide for some reason. Much of the material had not been reproduced in book form until now, so it’s essentially like discovering hundreds of new Far Side cartoons. Your co-worker’s Midvale School for the Gifted coffee mug may not elicit much of a chuckle any more, but having a chance to see many of these cartoons for the first time served as a reminder to the comic’s brilliance.

Already unique as a single panel, The Far Side further differentiated itself in that it didn’t have any recurring characters. People looked the same from comic to comic, bulbous, big-nosed and beehived, but every day it would be new people dealing with aliens, or neighbor dogs, or disobedient cows.

But these people of course had names. And as I read through my collection, I wondered how Gary Larson had picked the names for them every day, and whether there was any sort of a pattern to it. Was there someone keeping tabs for him, telling him he had recently used Earl, maybe he should make the co-pilot Murray this time?

So I decided to go through the complete Far Side, all 14 years and over 1,100 comics of it, and find out which name Larson used the most often.

A few rules:

  • You are not allowed to question why I did this
  • First names only. Most of the characters only get assigned one name anyways.
  • Real people (Einstein, Leona Helmsley) show up frequently in The Far Side. So do fictional characters like Paul Bunyan,  Tom Sawyer or Tarzan & Jane. As to not skew the results, neither of these types of people would be counted in the poll.  Only the named denizens who solely resided in the Far Side universe would be counted. So when Johnny Appleseed met Irving Ragweed, Johnny did not get counted, but Irving got a +1
  • Names misspelled for the purpose of a joke, like the llama named Llarry, counted towards the name it was adapted from.
  • Variations all counted individually. Bill and Billy get separate counts.
  • Background names were included. If you could see through the window that the store was named “Al’s Hardware”, Al got a +1
  • Cavemen, aliens, dogs and other miscellany would be included, as long as they were named. When impossible to tell, gender would be speculated at to the best of my ability
  • The name just had to be mentioned. The character could be ‘offscreen’ so to speak.

Without further ado, here are the results:

The top male name for a Far Side character is…Bob! This was not even close. Bob appeared in 54 Far Side cartoons, blowing away the next closest name, Frank, with 38 appearances. Third place, Carl, started out strong, dominating the first year or so of the comic. But while the early years were full of Carl’s, it just did not have the staying power, and only appeared 23 times. Here is the full top ten list of male names and the number of comics they appeared in:

Bob 54
Frank 38
Carl 23
Billy 21
Ernie 21
Harold 18
Henry 17
Larry 17
Al 16
Sidney 16

Female names were interesting because there just weren’t as many of them. By my count there were 296 distinct male names in Far Side cartoons, but  only 104 female names, and the most common names, Barbara and Sylvia each appeared only nine times. Six names, Betty, Doreen, Doris, Harriett, Helen and Zelda, each appeared eight times. The top ten:

Barbara 9
Sylvia 9
Betty 8
Doreen 8
Doris 8
Harriet 8
Helen 8
Zelda 8
Edna 7
Lola 7

If you’re curious to how many times a specific name appeared, here is a link to a Google doc of my complete Far Side names spreadsheet.

Other stray observations:

  • If you them all up, there are 1059 named males, 256 named females
  • The name “Gary” only appears twice (once in the last comic) and was only used to refer to the artist
  • Most of the times that “Al” shows up, it is on the side of a delivery truck. Al’s Meats, Al’s Scissors. Al had his hands in a lot of pots.
  • Cavemen show up in a ton of Far Side cartoons, enough that “Thag” was a top fifteen name, appearing in 14 comics. Zog and Grog got 8 & 7 respectively
  • Farmers proved tricky. In Larson’s universe, the term “Farmer ____” tended to alternate between using the farmer’s first and last name. Sometimes Farmer Bob, sometimes Farmer Macdonald. I used my discretion when it wasn’t clear.
  • Jake was often used as a dog’s name, which I found surprising since many of the other dog names were ‘typical’ dog names like Fifi and Rex
  • I left out Igor, because even though he turns up a lot, it is referring to a specific character from fiction. I don’t think an Igor ever showed up that wasn’t a hunchbacked, mad scientist’s assistant
  • I don’t think anybody has been born with one of the top female names since the end of the 70s, and if you leave out Barbara, perhaps even earlier
  • If you insist on wondering why I took the time to do this, I believe this image that Gary Larson once provided to his critics will suffice as my response:

January 3, 2012, 11:30 pm, No Comments ».
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FAQ for The Munchkin Who Hung Himself On the Set of The Wizard of Oz

I recently learned that Tom Wilson, the actor who played Biff in Back to the Future, carries around a card of the questions he gets asked most frequently. Though this seems unusual, I did some research and it turns out it’s pretty much par for the course for anyone who’s appeared in a beloved movie. Here is a similar FAQ I found on the website of the infamous Munchkin who hung himself on the set of The Wizard of Oz.

Isn’t the whole “Munchkin hanging himself thing” an urban legend?
No, that is just a hurtful rumor

So you really can see your corpse swinging in the background of that one scene?
Well, no. That’s not me.

Beg your pardon?
That was another Munchkin who hung himself on the set

Can you actually see your corpse swinging in the background at any point of the movie?
You cannot

Then wouldn’t it perhaps make more sense, and dare I say, be a touch more honest to identify yourself as “A Munchkin who hung himself on the set of The Wizard of Oz” instead of “The Munchkin who hung himself on the set of The Wizard of Oz”? The other guys is a lot more famous.
No, because I gave the other guy the idea

Ah, I see. So you hung yourself first, then he copied you?
No, I told him he was a terrible actor and a bad father and the world would be better off without him being a part of it

And then he hung himself?
Later that night

And then you hung yourself out of grief over the pain you caused his family?
Don’t be ridiculous

Why did you hang yourself?
I served as the treasurer of the Lollipop Guild, and they caught me embezzling from the charity fund

Wait, the Munchkin Lollipop Guild was real?
I’ve said too much already

What was the guy who played the Scarecrow like?
Never met him

What was the guy who played the Tin Man like?
He wouldn’t leave his trailer while any Munchkin was within a 350 foot radius

What was the guy who played the Cowardly Lion like?
I hung myself before he arrived on set

Who did you meet?
One of the “Oh-Ee-Oh, Ee-Ohhhh-Oh” guards tripped over me

Which one?
Not the one who says “Hail to Dorothy, the wicked witch is dead”

Too bad, he was the only one of them who really distinguished himself in any way…
I know

Which scene did you actually hang yourself in?
The scene where the Tin Man kills a bunch of wolves that the Wicked Witch sent after him

That was part of the book, but it wasn’t in the movie version…
You can credit that fact pretty much 100% to my hanging. It caused quite a ruckus.

Are you implying that you…
Evacuated my bowels when I hung myself, yes. All over the yellow brick road. Toto kept trying to roll in it.

Who was responsible for cleaning something like that up?
The uglier two ladies from the Lullaby League

How have you managed to update this FAQ post-hanging?
They have computers in Hell

Hell?
Yes, I was a Jehovah’s Witness.

Wow, so it turns out you guys were wrong, huh?
No, we were right, I just wasn’t one of the 144,000

What operating system do the computers in Hell run, Microsoft Bob? Ha!
They run the latest version of Mac OSX

Oh…
But they deliver strong shocks to your genitals every 30 seconds and the “y” key sticks

How much for an autograph?
$35, no personalizations

December 29, 2011, 10:41 pm, 1 Comment ».
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[Citation Needed] Podcast – Episode 08

Episode 8 of the [Citation Needed] Podcast is finally here, bringing an end to our long, dark drought of Wikipedia-based podcast humor. In this episode:

  • We “Number the Stars” with a King who did his reputation just a wee bit of harm by surrendering to the Nazis
  • Hapless screenwriter Gary attempts to pitch his script for “Hooked Bear”
  • The Professor and Crispin have their craziest time travel adventure yet as they go in search of the mysterious origins of Pack Burro Racing

Download Episode 8 here

Previous podcasts are available here

Subscribe on iTunes or with this RSS Link

December 21, 2011, 10:39 am, No Comments ».
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2011 Man of The Year: Karl Welzein


April 24th, 2011, 1:34 PM, Gchat

Andrew: http://twitter.com/#!/DadBoner
this guy is good

That was how I met Karl Welzein.

Karl Welzein is a middle-aged man. He’s separated from his wife, resents his children, naps on the toilet during work hours and drinks to the point of soiling himself. He’s also a vocal proponent of the Bold Flavor lifestyle, an Original Bad Boy always on the lookout for the next big celebraish. He’s the most hilarious and original voice on the internet. Oh, and most importantly, continuing that conversation:

me: is it a real guy
Andrew: no, just a funny character

Karl doesn’t, technically, exist.

Somewhere in the Flint suburb of Grand Blanc, Michigan, Karl Welzein wakes up every morning in his best friend Dave’s house. That is, if he doesn’t wake up in his beloved Chrysler Sebring. Or next to a dumpster behind the Chili’s. Or on the deck, passed out in front of a grill with an entire package of burnt Johnsonville brats on it. Karl lives with Dave because his estranged wife Ann kicked him out. Karl is fine with this arrangement because Ann and the kids, especially his Harry Potter-loving son, get on his nerves. After he gets up, he’ll probably shamble in to work a few hours late, where he’ll do some pushups in the john after his hated supervisor gets on his case. Afterwards, he’ll head to local watering hole Paddy’s for some Top Shelf Margs, and potentially work up enough energy to show off his dance moves on the floor, working the babes up into a carnal frenzy. He’ll probably sing some Seger.

But forgive me, we were talking about how the man whose average day I just described in more detail than I could provide about any of my friends doesn’t exist…

Karl is completely fictional, the product of an as-yet unidentified creator who has been updating the account since April 14th, 2010. But read the 5.8 posts per day from his Twitter feed @DadBoner (yes, DadBoner, don’t Google Image Search it) for a while, and this is easy to forget. Karl arrived on Twitter fully formed: his first tweet was what has proved to be his most iconic and repeated catchphrase: “Really lookin’ forward to the weekend you guys”, which he’s gone on to repeat nearly every Thursday since he began tweeting. He’s since amassed over 42,000 followers, thanks in part to endorsements from comedy heavy hitters like Patton Oswalt. The list of other Twitter accounts Karl follows is carefully curated to reflect his persona (celebrities he’d want to hang with, babes, Detroit athletes and fast food brands), but he’s only rarely acknowledged that Twitter has the potential to be a two way conversation. And while he routinely addresses his followers with the collective “You guys” , the last time DadBoner responded directly to any of them was May 13th, 2010, when he replied to a Twitterer named WillDavidian. Users TheDaniStew, pricedout, sexcigarsbooze as well as righteous babes @KathyIreland, @JennyMcCarthy and @KimKardashian are the only Twitter users Karl has ever acknowledged.

But this doesn’t mean that Karl’s feed is simply an isolated reflection of his own thoughts. Far from it, the DadBoner Universe has established itself as dynamic a place to live as The Simpson’s Springfield, with colorful recurring characters popping up at every turn. Each one allows a bit more of Karl’s personality to be revealed, from the charmingly clueless racism brought out by black co-worker Vernon, or the hostile disdain for Ann’s friend Tina Carlson, whose thoroughly warranted, appalled reactions to Karl’s behavior get her branded an uptight sack of crap with a catcher’s mitt mug. Though everyone in town is presented to us through Karl’s filter, the reader is always aware what the other characters are actually thinking. Part of DadBoner’s brilliance is that it seamlessly mixes this narrative of ‘reality’ with Karl’s interpretation of it. As he relates to us how a character responded to his new earring or dance moves, we are instantly aware of their revulsion and disgust, while at the same time laughing as Karl puts his delusional, positive spin on it. The fact that the truth is so blatant makes his failure to comprehend it all the more hilarious.

This has lead to a stunning array of misadventures over the past year. Falling for a single mom who clearly just wanted to use Karl as a babysitter. Driving to a Tiger’s game, gin and tonic “roadies” in hand, to track down Guy Fieri and pitch him on his restaurant idea. Kicking the door to his family’s house down in a desperate attempt to retrieve Thanksgiving leftovers, then ignoring his terrified wife’s phone calls when she thinks there’s been a burglar. If Ignatius T. Reilly and the The Big Lebowski adopted a kid, by middle-age he’d likely resemble the Bold Bad Boy from Grand Blanc. And though none of us would want to actually live with the selfish, lying, toilet-clogging, drunk who keeps a fully stocked bar in his car’s trunk, and we definitely wouldn’t want to work with the yogurt-stealing, early-leaving, five beer lunch buffoon with no filter, readers still find themselves rooting for Karl. Why has a slovenly drunk with a mean streak inspired such devotion from so many people?

The Picture

When the DadBoner author set up the account, they found the perfect, real world representation of what Karl Welzein looks like. Fat and happy, a rascal with his shirt unbuttoned to show off a little chest hair to the ladies. He’s the kind of guy that could easily become the life of a really lame party, then get asked to leave by the uptight host after he breaks something or gropes somebody. The picture that served as his avatar for the longest time is actually of a man named Bruce Audley, who I can only guess was on the ninth page of Google Image results for “fat guy beard.” As the account grew more and more popular, it’s easy to imagine the author becoming concerned that the actual man depicted as the face of his potentially lucrative media property might not be pleased with his portrayal as a boozing, shitting lout. The avatar was switched to a crude portrait that bears little resemblance to the Audley picture. It looks a bit more sinister, less like a teddy bear and more like a guy you’d not want watching your kids Little League games. Seeing the old, jolly avatar pop up in my Twitter timeline always brought a smile to my face. With the new one, I’m still delighted, but it just seems a bit less personal.

Edit: Original detective work regarding the image’s origin done by Steve Spillman

The Name

The narrative of Karl’s life is full of wild twists and turns, bawdy hookups, and antics that skirt both societal acceptability and often the law. In other words, perfect comedic material. And yet I feel it would be about 70% less funny if it weren’t called “DadBoner”.

The meaning of the name is never really addressed in the Twitter feed, in fact Karl seems to even forget he has a family the majority of the time. But without the goofy yet shocking name showing up retweeted in people’s timelines, I’m confident the feed would not have spread nearly as fast. Ask yourself: would you rather follow @KarlWelzein or @DadBoner?

Bold flavors? Karl approves

We are Karl Welzein

More than anything, Karl is a reflection of our society. A great deal of his personality is derived from advertising. Bereft of any taste of his own, yet considering himself a connoisseur, he gleefully recites slogans he’s heard on TV as he indulges himself to excess in the crummy products they are advertising. He considers a Top Shelf Margarita and Mango-Habanero wings the pinnacle of taste, because that’s what he’s been told by Chili’s ads and Guy Fieri. Events of actual importance, such as the death of Osama Bin Laden or the 9/11 anniversary occasionally pop up on his radar, but he treats them as another excuse to get drunk and repeat more slogans. The presidential candidate Karl identified most with this year was Herman Cain, because Karl also dreams of opening up his own pizza restaurant. When modern elections can actually be decided by the “he seems like a good guy to have a beer with” mentality, Karl takes that notion to it’s logical extreme: he doesn’t mind the sexual harassment allegations about Cain because he admits he’d do the exact same thing if he found himself in a position of power. Karl Welzein has been told to stand by his principles by the very same media that tells him what those principles are. It’s a brilliant, terrifying read on how people come to believe the things they do.

On that note of people being influenced by the media, I will admit that the worst hangover I had in 2011 may have in part been inspired by the below tweet, one of Karl’s weekly odes to Friday. I guess I just found the energy contagious:

Bold flavors, chest beefers, corncobs, sick of this you guys, and many more

As Mike Myers will gladly attest, you can’t underestimate the value of a good catch phrase, and DadBoner delivers them by the pound. In a time when so much “humor” involves restating tired memes, captioning a familiar photo for the zillionth time, or just throwing your hands up and saying “Fuck it, put some zombies in Return of the Jedi, who cares”, Karl’s unique brand of dialogue is a breath of fresh air. To attempt to compile a comprehensive list would be futile, but it’s safe to say I haven’t had this much fun trying to shoehorn quotes and references into conversations since the glory days of The Simpsons. In September, I tried to convince a friend that his movie production company should find out whoever the hell writes DadBoner, and turn it into a movie. I told him that the last time I could remember phrases this catchy was the stretch of time that Chappelle’s Show debuted its Rick James/Lil’ Jon sketches that had every male between the ages of 15-35 shouting “HWHAT??” and wearing “I’m Rick James, Bitch” shirts in public.

Clearly, you feel somewhat revolted encountering those played out quotes again, and I apologize for bringing them up. As we’ve all survived the great Charlie Sheen blitz of early 2011, we’ve seen how quickly a catchphrase can go from “winning” to infuriating. Twelve years ago your dad may have still been able to get a laugh from his Austin Powers impression three months after the movie came out. Nowadays on the internet, you might miss your opportunity to use a catchphrase without a scathing reprisal if you just show up a few hours late.

What’s amazing then, is that DadBoner’s way of describing his life only seems to grow more endearing as he spins more tales. His entirely unique, entirely quotable way of talking is either the result of a truly creative mind, or an amalgam of several individuals the author has known during his life. I picture it being a combination of a black sheep uncle, the guy who would still buy your high school buddies beer even though he graduated three years earlier and the youth sports coach you’d think was cool because they swore, rolled into one unfiltered righteous renegade. The best ideas make you think “I wish I thought of that.” DadBoner and perhaps the Wu-Tang Clan are the only people that have ever made me think “I wish I talked like that.”

His Life Sucks

When you first start following Karl, your impression is that he’s a fat drunken buffoon. You are correct. But you shouldn’t confuse Karl with other fat drunken buffoons. Unlike Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin, Karl doesn’t just play situations like “having a job that makes you miserable” or “enduring in a failing marriage” for laughs: his life actually sucks. Homer and Peter are (obviously) cartoon characters on the surface, but they are also cartoons inside, moving from one gag to the next and forgetting the crushing blow that life just dealt them. (Note: It’s important to remember that Homer was not always this way. Way before Frank Grimes came by for dinner and marvelled at Homer’s palace of a house and the photos of his many remarkable accomplishments, Homer was justifiably miserable with his lot in life, and at one point in time actually stood on the edge of a bridge with a boulder tied around him, contemplating ending it all.)

Karl has a lot in common with these two: lousy career, family difficulties, a general lack of respect from society as a whole. But unlike Simpson, Griffin and any number of other doltish sitcom dads, it really, really gets to him. It’s therefore fitting that this added dimension makes me want to compare Karl not to a cartoon, but to a character portrayed by a real person. The character he frequently reminds me of is David Brent of the British The Office. On The Office, we had the advantage of not only seeing Dawn glance at the camera after a particularly bawdy joke by David misfired, but also of then seeing David speak to the camera about how well the same joke had gone after it was done. This personality trait is shared by Karl, who manages to pull off the same feat 140 characters at a time. When Karl describes a bitchin’ karaoke performance where he takes his shirt off to sing Bon Jovi, or how he shared some laughs over some grossly inappropriate “guy humor” with a co-worker, we realize what’s really happening even as Karl continues to offend.

But, just like David Brent, this self-delusion of popularity and success is never fully maintained. It would be unrealistic if it were. Despair and depression inch their way into both men’s lives, as co-workers refuse to “lighten up”, and lack of talent and charm manifest themselves in realistic ways. David Brent ended up friendless, reprimanded by his superiors and literally begging to keep his job (he got fired.) Karl’s self-loathing shines through ever time he utters “sick of this” and heads to Paddy’s. Though at times he relishes the freedom of his newfound bachelor lifestyle that allows him to get drunk on a Tuesday, the other side of that coin is dealing with the filthy house that the kind of guy who gets drunk on a Tuesday ends up keeping. He fancies himself a macho cruiser who doesn’t play by the rules at work, but then he’s issued a well deserved week-long suspension for crapping outside the office. He embraces the highs whole hog, but also gets dragged down by the lows, wallowing in self-hatred for days at a time. We know he’ll eventually pull out of it, but the escape provided by a Lions game or a round of two dollar beers is only temporary; squalor and misery are inevitable for someone with as few goals and talents as Karl. But he lives life the same way he likes his Mango Hab wings: bold. And that flavor designation applies to the bad moments as much as the good.

The mystery

Who the hell is doing this? How have they resisted the urge to reveal themselves to the public for over a year and a half? What do they think about the enthusiastic replies and retweets their account generates? What is their plan? The internet is in the business of providing us with much more information than we want or need about so many things, it’s refreshing and a bit strange to encounter a real mystery. Whether I want to know who is responsible for DadBoner is something I remain extremely conflicted on. Would I still be able to read it the same way if it was revealed that it wasn’t the product of some clever unknown guy, writing from his basement, overwhelmed that his creation had taken off? What if it actually turned out to be a viral marketing campaign, or worse, some gigantic douche?

There’s also mystery built into the story line. We don’t know where Karl works. We don’t know Nosey Lady’s name. The story functions perfectly fine without these bits of information, but their omission is clearly intentional, which intrigues us further. What could Karl possibly do for a living? How long has he been doing it? Reading back through his old tweets brings up other questions. Karl didn’t tweet for an entire month between 9/3 and 10/3, 2010. When he got back, he said he’d had a mild heart attack. Was this an early break from an account that wasn’t getting the attention he hoped, or did the author just go on vacation? (Clearly, as someone who’s decided to write 3,000 words about DadBoner, I have thought about questions like these too much, but I did want to make it clear that I have REALLY thought about it too much.)

I also wonder why more people aren’t paying attention? A natural comparison, @shitmydadsays seemingly had over 500,000 people following it, a book and a TV deal in its first year of tweeting, and it was just posting every couple of weeks. DadBoner has steadily increased its following but still languishes with 4,000 less followers than novelty account @common_squirrel (sample tweet: “blink blink blink”.) There are fewer media properties that so obviously lend themselves to merchandising opportunities, but we don’t have Karl’s friendly face or quips on tshirts or coffee mugs. DadBoner the Movie or webseries seems like the rare sort of inevitable seeming event that might actually not suck. Are talks about this happening behind the scenes?

Speaking of the potentially lucrative value of Karl’s twitter feed, where are the imitators? I won’t claim that DadBoner is the first example of the long form fictional character Twitter feed. But on the internet, it doesn’t seem to matter who does it first, but who does it well first, and there’s no doubt that anyone else who decides to launch their own Twitter character will be pegged as doing “a DadBoner type thing.” In the previously linked AV Club interview with Patton Oswalt, he mentions two other accounts that are often tossed around in the same conversations as DadBoner: PeanutFreeMom and teendad13. Both accounts have not yet found the audience that Karl has, and though I haven’t spent much time reading them, both left me cold. There’s even someone running an account for Karl’s Wife Ann, which the less said about the better. Will someone else be able to create a Twitter character as beloved and developed as Karl? Or is DadBoner the first and last word on the art form?

Sidebar: Months ago, I figured my best shot at finding out who was behind the account was buying DadBoner.com. I just set up a crappy site that publishes his tweets. On October 25th, this comment was left by someone named Chris Cook, who apparently works for a production company named Madhouse Entertainment: “E-mail me Karl. Would love to talk further.” So at least someone in Hollywood is aware. Oh, and if you run DadBoner and would like the domain, please email me, it’s yours, I’m not holding it for ransom or anything, I just wanted to make sure some corncob didn’t get ahold of it.

In conclusion

In conclusion, holy crap, I just wrote the longest thing I’ve written since college and it’s about DadBoner. That fact alone should be enough to at least get you to follow him on Twitter, if not read his entire saga from the start. Will I be as excited about Karl at the end of 2012? That’s hard to say. Did the bold daily flavor he provided help 2011 go down smooth? Undoubtedly. When all is said and done, I’ll remember 2011 as the year an imaginary middle-aged man from Grand Blanc won the internet over with his carnal moves and take no prisoners lifestyle. And that’s no small feat, you guys.

December 16, 2011, 10:12 am, 7 Comments ».
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How did A Week Without Star Wars go?

My imploring of the internet to not discuss Star Wars for a week fell mostly on deaf ears. I intend on honoring the vow though, and thought I’d see how often the movies get brought up over that same span of time.

Monday, 11/28

  • Link to Han Solo Carbonite ice cube trays posted on kottke.org
  • Artist Adam Koford posted a Twitter link to his (very awesome) WootShirt derby entry 

 Tuesday, 11/29

  • A comment left on the RiffTrax Facebook page said “My love of Rifftrax lead to my purchase of my own DVD copy of “Revenge of the Sith” over the weekend.”
  • I mailed off a sketch for the [Citation Needed] podcast to Scott Beckett, who does the movie pitches. Though I had this part of it weeks ago, I was still forced to look at it today, a part that involves him comparing the opening lines of the “pitch” to the Star Wars “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”

Wednesday, 11/30

  • Sitting around a conference table in the office, Mike brought up former FCC chairman Newt Minow. Sean remarked that he was only the second ever Newt he’d ever heard of, besides Gingrich of course.  Without realizing what I was doing, I chimed in about the Star Wars character Nute Gunray. I wasn’t sure who this character was, I just knew a character by that name existed. We all assumed he was one of Luke’s X-Wing pilots from the first couple movies. Turns out he is a trade federation guy from The Phantom Menace. I’m pretty sure they never say his name. I still knew it.  What the hell…

 Thursday, 12/1

Friday, 12/2

Saturday, 12/3

  • I try to keep the queue for [Citation Needed] stocked for a couple weeks of posts, so I had no idea that this would be queued up to post today. Even when you’re actively trying not to add any more Star Wars to the dicussion, the universe conspires against you. Fortunately, it’s pretty funny.

Sunday, 12/4

Monday, 12/5

  • And even though the week is technically over, I woke up to a Google Alert for “RiffTrax” in my email, directing me to a blog entry about the Star Wars Holiday Special.
So every single day for 8 days, something Star Wars related popped up on my radar. Keep in mind I wasn’t actively refreshing theforce.net trying to find new stuff, this was all through passively observing a twitter feed or checking a few big aggregator sites. I suppose this means on some level, to use the internet is to experience Star Wars. How to escape it? Move into this guy’s cabin:
Though actually, if you squint, he does kind of look like Chewbacca’s son Lumpy…
December 5, 2011, 10:04 am, 1 Comment ».
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Every time Wu-Tang says “Wu-Tang”

I decided to go through all five Wu-Tang Clan studio albums and make a supercut of every time they say either “Wu-Tang” or one of the nine member’s names. I’ll pause for you to question every decision I’ve ever made in my life.

First of all, yes, this took a few hours. But it was a pleasant journey, like spending time with old friends you never get to see any more. In my life I’ve seen The Wu in concert at Nation in DC, took the Staten Island Ferry to visit the Wu-Wear shop on Victory Blvd and argued with friends over which Wu-Tang member best represented which of our friends (this last one is absolutely quite embarassing, especially when you revisit some of the content of the songs. Did RZA’s hard line five-percenter ideology best define me, or perhaps Ghostface’s rampant, unprintable misogyny on “Wildflower”?)

A few things you learn when you listen to every Wu-Tang album to try to isolate “Wu-Tangs” and their names (note: this only covers the five studio albums: 36 Chambers, Wu-Tang Forever, The W, Iron Flag and 8 Diagrams.)

  • They say Wu-Tang a lot. It peaks with 36 Chambers, still gets brought up a lot on Forever, and sort of trickles out by the last two. I guess they really wanted to establish who they were. Note that I tried not to include repeated hooks like on “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing to F With” or “High as Wu-Tang Get” just because they sounded repetitive, and their were still plenty without them
  • I enjoy thinking about what it would be like if other bands did this, if Led Zeppelin I was just full of lyrics about Led Zeppelin, or if Please Please Me mentioned The  Beatles 48 times in its 33 minutes.
  • No solo albums, though I imagine the early ones have just as much.
  • They also say just plain “Wu” a lot, but this is too difficult to isolate in a listenable form.
  • They introduce everybody every chance they get on the first album. By the second album, people knew who they were so they adopted the “refer to yourself by your nickname for your nickname” technique that is so rarely pulled off. Meth becomes Hot Nickels, Raekwon is Chef, RZA unfortunately becomes Bobby Digital.
  • RZA has by far the most mentions. Maybe he had a clause where if they didn’t keep talking about him, he’d put out another Bobby Digital album
  • Iron Flag and 8 Diagrams are not as forgettable as I had thought. By the time both came out, I wasn’t going to obsess over them the way I did the other two. But it sounds like there’s some solid cuts on them. It’s telling, though, that the absolute standout is this bonus track from 8 Diagrams that sounds like a demo from 36 Chambers.
  • Conversely, Wu-Tang Forever is just as full of filler as I remember. I had not re- listened to the “Papa Wu” intro since the day the album came out, and it is just a bizarre way to launch your second album. A 7 minute sermon decrying everything they’re about to extoll the virtues of on the album. A big “emperors new clothes” moment for everyone who had just cut school to buy it and had to pretend to like it. There are just as many songs that don’t seem to go anywhere, the unfortunate Black Shampoo and a bizarre female vocal interpolation of “MacArthur Park” that doesn’t feature a single rapper. Good thing Reunited and Triumph were so sweet.

Wu-Tang, Wu-Tang!

December 2, 2011, 10:27 am, 6 Comments ».
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A Week Without Star Wars: 11/28 – 12/4

November 17th was Wookie Life Day. I know this because I used the internet at some point in time today.

Light the sky on fire, folks

I realize this probably wasn’t big news everywhere and probably indicates more about what I’m paying attention to online.  But I had seen a couple posts about it already this week and after it popped up more than once, I was curious how widespread it was. The first place I went to check was io9, and they had…well, nothing.  Damn, theory busted. But hey, as someone who has paid their bills in part by mocking Twilight, this article “Why The Twilight Hate Has Gotten Boring” sounds interesting, or at least designed to generate  a bit of traffic. I’ll take a look.

“Twilight at its heart is no different from any other fantasy franchise. It’s like Star Wars – except it’s set on Earth and the goal is to penetrate Bella’s womb with some guy’s flaming seed, rather than shooting it into the Death Star.”

And, thesis inadvertently proven!  My thesis that I have yet to reveal to you… but will do right now: I don’t think the internet can go a week without writing about Star Wars.

On the surface, it seems like this would be the easiest thing to do. The last Star Wars movie that anyone still talks about came out in 1983. Here’s a list of some of the programs that were among the top ten rated TV shows that year: Simon & Simon, Falcon Crest, Kate & Allie and Hotel. Think back on the last time you heard someone mention any of those shows (I have literally never heard of Falcon Crest or Hotel.) Now think back on when the last time you saw or heard someone reference Star Wars. Was it a few hours ago? Earlier this week?

Evidently, Falcon Crest starred DadBoner

Using an entirely collective “we”, we never seem to tire of Star Wars references, retellings and reimaginings. Already made all the Star Wars video games? Make ‘em again out of Legos!  Need something to rap about, or a beat to rap over? Star Wars has you covered. I was stunned after Community, Family Guy and Muppet Babies, among others, all did one, that “doing a  Star Wars episode” doesn’t have it’s own TVtropes page.

But it gets better! Never even seen Star Wars? Not a problem. Got a cute kid that’s seen it? Even better. A cute kid that’s never seen it? Have three million views! Render scenes from the movie in different mediums: ASCII, pumpkin or crochet, people will want to post about them.

Those are pretty sweet actually...


But why? Why the hell have we not gotten tired of this? What else is there left to unearth from these three movies, unless it turns out that if you take every fourth word a character whose name doesn’t start with a vowel says, you get a sweet jerk chicken recipe? It’s become part of our shared culture, yes, but it’s also become a crutch, rendering potentially promising creative endeavors instantly familiar and stagnant.

And so, I propose that we, the collective internet, try to go a week without referencing Star Wars. That means no linking to the new items those glorious bastards at ThinkGeek come up with. It means no quoting Obi-Wan in your blog post headline (Yoda too.) It means no video reenactments. It definitely means no Twitter hashtag games.

Should this be easy? Of course it should. Will it be easy? I don’t think it will. Once you start keeping an eye on Star Wars references, you’ll notice them pop up in odd places. ESPN. Finance blogs. The first sentence of articles about Jurassic Park Blu-Rays.

I will take the pledge myself. It will probably be difficult. After all, this Pez dispenser sits on my desk every day at work:

Yes, the PEZ come out on his tongue

At RiffTrax, I’d venture every commentary we release contains a Star Wars joke, and we often have to go back through and make sure we don’t have too many. The Wikipedia book I just co-authored contains at least two Star Wars entries. Not to mention the fact that I was eating one of these while writing this post.

Let’s do it the week after Thanksgiving. 11/28 thru 12/4. As far as I know, there aren’t any new Star Wars movies coming out. There shouldn’t be any pressing need to write, blog about, or reference anything Star Wars related during that time. Think of it as a chance to expand your horizons, or to perhaps just sacrifice valuable clickthrus and retweets in the name of proving a point for a stranger.

I think we can do this people! After all, as a wise man once said: “Mesa day startin pretty okee-day with a brisky morning munchy, then BOOM! Gettin very scared and grabbin that Jedi and POW!”

A Week Without Star Wars: 11/28 – 12/4

November 17, 2011, 10:12 pm, 4 Comments ».
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[Citation Needed] Podcast – Episode 07

For Episode 7 of the [Citation Needed] Podcast, we examine President Eisenhower’s strong hatred of a particular pine tree, attend a support group for Adult Baby/Diaper Lovers and take an eventful cruise with some classic Hanna-Barbera characters.

Plus, special guest Paul F. Tompkins drops in to pitch a movie about a thrilling and exciting chase for the truth! It does not go well…

Download Episode 7 here

Previous podcast episodes are available here

Subscribe on itunes or with this RSS Link

August 25, 2011, 8:36 am, No Comments ».

Did Tommy Wiseau teach Kanye West everything he knows?

Obviously, the answer to that question is “No”. But Kanye does have an odd vocal tic on both “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” and “Watch the Throne” that I think may be able to be traced back to a certain scene in “The Room”:

August 9, 2011, 3:04 pm, No Comments ».

How (and Why) I Made Up the Origin of the High Five

 

This is a response/companion piece to this ESPN The Magazine article

It all began with Su-Huey Huey.

Su-Huey Huey is Kai Wang’s mom, and during the 8 years that I attended high school and college with Kai Wang, not a single fantasy football season passed where at least one team was not named after her. Su-Huey Huey, Dewey and Louie. Su-Huey Huey and the Gooey Kablooie. Su-Huey Huey and Sandy Pugh-y. (This involved my own mother’s name as well.  The joke quickly and temporarily got a lot less funny.)

We didn’t know much about Su-Huey Huey, but one of the few bits of information that did surface made her all the more enigmatic: Su-Huey Huey had attended Murray State University. Murray State was one of those schools that is perennially seeded between 7 and 13 in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, so everyone has heard of it, possibly even rooted for them, but they are obscure enough that until about a month ago, I mistakenly thought that the Kentucky based University was located in Texas.

So when it came time to make up a story about the origin of the High Five, what better a place to turn than Su-Huey Huey’s alma mater.

Let me backtrack for a second. Casually mentioning that at one point in time in my life it was necessary to invent a story about the origin of the high five may not make sense without any context. In 2002, some friends and I created National High Five Day while we were in our third year at the University of Virginia. Decreeing that on the Third Thursday in April you should brighten a stranger’s days by offering them a friendly high five, we set up a table in the center of the campus and doled them out to our fellow students. The next year, a local TV station did a human interest story about us, and after we graduated and set up a website about the fake holiday, there was a substantial amount of media interest about it every April. The Today Show announced it, PTI has led the show off with a High Five on several occasions, Charles Barkley expressed his skepticism about the holiday on Inside the NBA, Jimmy Kimmell Live, Cold Pizza and much to our delight, The Tony Danza Show all brought up the holiday on the air.

 

The main places we were actually invited onto, were of course countless Morning Zoo radio shows, the kind with names like “Dingo and The Baby” or “Sully and The Smoot Tariff.” These were always fun to do. You call in, assume an overly enthusiastic tone of voice, and hope the sound effects guy goes easy with his use of the fart button. After doing a few of them, you’re pretty well prepared for the questions you’re going to face: “When did you come up with this idea”, “How drunk were you at the time”, “How do you feel about the fist bump”, etc. But one question kept coming up over and over again: “How did the high five get started?”

We didn’t have a good answer. Granted, there were some theories out there. But nothing that I felt confident passing along. They all had an Urban Legend type of feel to them, the type of thing that Snopes.com should be verifying. I’m usually one of the first to ruin someone’s day by pointing out “That adorable kid isn’t actually Dr. Dre” or “That picture of the royal wedding that looks like Cinderella was photoshopped.” So why pass along a High Five story that I couldn’t verify myself?

 

Glenn Burke

The most prominent origin story on the matter is covered in this article on Outsports.com about Glenn Burke. (It’s the first non-Wikipedia google result for “Glenn Burke high five”.) It had a little bit of everything: As the first former ballplayer to come out as being gay, Burke was an intriguing fellow even without high fives. His story was also quite tragic as well, a once-promising career cut short, he got into drugs, eventually serving time in prison and dying before his time from AIDS. The recipient of the supposed first High Five was Dusty Baker, who was still a recognizable name as the manager of the Cubs and Giants. But the story was still vague enough that it didn’t really sit well with me. Read that first paragraph, and despite the familiar names, and specific teams involved, it still warrants a big fat wikipedia style [Citation Needed]. (Not to mention the fact that it only claims that it was “The first high five in baseball.”) But the fact that it was printed somewhere on the internet was enough for several radio hosts to bring it up and to get it credited on the wikipedia page for High Five.

So I realized that what that article really had going for it were three things. First was the names of some people that you could confirm had existed. Second, it was vague enough that it couldn’t really be disputed. (Note that it doesn’t even mention who the Dodgers were playing.) Third, and most important: it had the feeling about it of “Why on earth would you make something like this up?”

Why indeed. Well if you’re speaking to radio hosts every April and they keep asking you who invented the High Five and you don’t have an answer for them, that seems like reason enough to come up with a good story.

(As a side note, this is the worst example of a High Five Origin story I’ve seen. I just checked my gmail archive and I’ve been sent this by five different people claiming it is the real origin story:

Five Yard Fogerty
In the 1931 Rose Bowl game, `Five-Yard` Fogerty carried 25 times and gained exactly 5 yards on each carry. It was in that game that teammates celebrated the oddity of Fogerty`s achievement by slapping palms – this practice is now known as exchanging `high fives.` The results of that game were Alabama, 24, Washington State, 0. Fogerty played one year of professional football before breaking his leg in a skiing accident. He became a bank president in Wichita, Kansas. Sadly, he died five days before his retirement.

Again, notice the important factors here that make this a story people are willing to pass along: A specific date. Real teams, with a real score. These make people willing to ignore that “Five Yard” Fogerty’s first name is never mentioned, and that it is astronomically improbable that someone would gain exactly five yards on each of his 25 carries in a game. Like the Burke story, it even has the tragic element with “Fogerty’s” career being cut short. Guess that just gives it a human touch…And let’s not even get into the worn out movie cliche of him dying five days before retirement.)

So we decided that if these vague stories were good enough for people to pass around, we could come up with one of our own. The trickiest part was just going to be: who invented the high five?

For whatever reason, my thoughts drifted to Su-Huey Huey on that day. Perhaps the origin of the High Five could be traced to her old stomping grounds (Should Su-Huey & The Stomper be a Morning Zoo hosting duo?  Yes it should.)  The Murray State basketball team is probably the school’s most recognizable institution to the public at large, but off the top of your head, you probably couldn’t name anybody who played there. (It turns out that Popeye Jones went there, as well as a Hall of Famer named Joe Fulks.) In order to usurp the Burke story, the High Five would have to have been invented before the claimed 1977 date, but it would be best not to date it back too far, lest the gap between claimed inventions seem too implausible.

Perusing the Murray State records towards the late 70s, one name stood out from the rest: Mont Sleets. Sleets was an all Ohio Valley Conference player twice, during the 79-80 and 80-81 seasons. The guy was good, but he never went on to the NBA. We found an article reminiscing about his playing time at Murray State and Eminence High School, where the below picture came from (we can’t find it now, for some reason all the google results for Mont Sleets are now about him inventing the high five.) In short, he fit the bill perfectly: he was verifiably at Murray State, people who were there would remember him, but the general public wouldn’t know him at all.

Mont Sleets in high school

So we came up with an utterly ridiculous, long winded story about young Mont Sleets coming to develop the high five as a way to greet his father’s army buddies who served with him in the fifth division in Vietnam. We made sure to include place names and dates, as well as to challenge the Burke origin story outright. You know, things that would make it sound believable. We posted the story on our website, and announced to any and all radio hosts who would listen that we had found the true origin of the high five.

People believed it. And why wouldn’t they? We had nothing to gain from making up this story, it was posted on a website, the people and places in it were real. We watched in delight as it got added to the High Five wikipedia page, and people created flyers for that year’s National High Five Day that featured Murray State’s own Mont Sleets going in for a layup. We figured our work here was done.

There was just one problem. We hadn’t got a few details right.

We were informed of this by Stacey Sleets, Mont’s wife. She wrote two emails to us, about a year after we first posted the story:

I am Lamont Sleets wife and I recently read the information on the High Five Day which includes some information about my husband. You did not speak with him as your article states, but if you would like to, e-mail your telephone number to me and he will call you. Happy High Five Day!!!!!!

We wrote back and she sent this email, which I’ve excerpted:

We are a little confused about who you spoke to who claimed to be Lamont. Also who pretended to be his father, who by the way is not Lamont Sleets , Sr. His mother’s maiden name is Sleets and she and his father were never married. The story about the high-five and the fifth batallion is a great one but it is just that…a fabricated story. Since I read the article I have been trying to get to the bottom of it myself. He admits he may have invented the high-five but not the way it was explained. Nevertheless, I would like to get some of the flyers that “Support Mont Sleets… Give a High-Five.”

So pretty much the most basic details of our story could easily be proven false. There was no Lamont Sleets, Sr. There was not even a Mr. Sleets. Sleets is his mother’s maiden name. Fortunately, nobody who repeated this story really seemed concerned with this major, jarring detail. After all, why would anyone make something like this up?

(Another side note, the claim I bolded above that “He admits he may have invented the high-five but not in the way it was explained” is one of my favorite sentences ever. We never got to speak to Mont or Stacey to get to the bottom of this (we did send them the jpg of the flyer), but I’ve always been curious what his story of inventing the High Five would have been. Just imagine that: if in our efforts to assign a creator to the high five, we stumbled across the one guy who all his life had been claiming to anyone within earshot that he had in fact invented it.  That would be a terrible, terrible movie that I would definitely see on opening night.)

Sample dialogue from that movie:
Conor: So the guy that we made up a story about actually invented the high five???
Greg: It appears so. And if we don’t track him down and get him to change his story, I’m gonna get kicked off the school paper and my dad will move the family to Manitoba.
Conor: I’d totally go with you, but the prom is in…FOUR HOURS!?!

So, our hoax had been unleashed into the wild and circulated as those things tend to do. We’d get an email every now and then telling us we were crazy, that the Louisville men’s basketball team had invented it, or that there was a video of jazz musicians exchanging high fives in the fifties, or the damn idiotic Five Yard Fogerty story. But for the most part, the story circulated as printed: unverified, unresearched, like so many things on the internet. I always wanted to announce to people that it was fake, but wasn’t really sure what the best way to do it was.

Turns out that we caved the instant a legitimate reporter asked us a question. Granted, it took five years for this to happen. Joe Mooallem, a writer for ESPN the Magazine reached out to us for a piece he was writing about the murky origins of the high five. I talked it over with my co-conspirator Greg and decided that we should tell this guy the truth. We forwarded him the emails from Stacey, and he seemed to think that our efforts to cloud the record on the high five origin would lead to a more intriguing story for him. He even got in touch with Sleets once before he talked to us, but didn’t get a chance to ask him any questions, and Sleets didn’t respond to any follow up calls.

In my mind, the most fascinating part of the story is that it took five years for someone to even question the origin we made up. Most of the time the story was just passed along with the same vague lead that cable news channels also use: “Some say that Mont Sleets invented the high five…” “Mont Sleets is often credited with the invention…” Sure, of course he is ‘often’ credited with it, but all by people who read a fake article two idiots came up with when they were bored one afternoon!

No he doesn’t! We said that!

Mooallem even expressed skepticism about our coming clean about the story (I had never thought about it as a “hoax” until he referred to it that way.) When we forwarded him Stacey Sleet’s two letters, he said that he thought it was fairly obvious that they were written by two different people. Once you’ve admitted to someone that you willfully created a five year web of lies, it’s surprisingly hard to convince them that you’re not lying to them. But we weren’t.  We found Stacey Sleets and Mont on facebook, looking happy. I have no reason to believe it wasn’t her that emailed us back in 2007.

The tone of the article Mooallem wrote surprised me. Calling our hoax “tragic” seemed like quite a bit of overkill, but by focusing on the sad end to Burke’s life, it’s hard to avoid that. (Identifying Greg as the man “who was once named “Laziest Person in America”" feels pretty pejorative; let the record show that the man worked in a creative role on Kimmell for four years, left to work for the Obama campaign, has worked for the past few years organizing a urban renewal non-profit and has spent the past 8 months or so starting the National High Five Project as an effort to raise money for charity via our fake holidays.) I still don’t feel like he turned up any new evidence to suggest that Burke “invented” the high five, and I feel like this sentence from it probably sums up the tricky nature of trying to track down the “origin” of something that may not have one:

“such things are invented many times, by many people — there are multiple mythologies rewritten over time”

It honestly seems like the type of story that has taken on its own life, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the people he interviewed have told the story so many times that they believe it to be true. But to Mooallem’s credit: at least he asked the damn questions.

So, despite the rather overdramatic tone of that ESPN article, all that really happened was that for five years, a bunch of people thought Mont Sleets had invented the high five, and we had a good story to tell to drive-time DJs like Stinky and The Dung Heap.

I just pray that we never learn Su-Huey Huey was made up all along too.

July 29, 2011, 1:24 pm, 2 Comments ».
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