Todd Stadler's blog

bearicose

Speaking of bears wielding weapons, I have always wanted to own my own home so that I could create this mural I have been working on in my mind for a while.

It was inspired by the Battle of Five Armies found in Tolkien's The Hobbit, and visual depictions thereof.

My mural will be called The Battle of Five Bear Armies. Instead of nasty old orcs and dwarves, it will feature groups of teddy bears, gummi bears (no, not the crummy cartoon), Teddy Grahams, Berenstain Bears, and Care Bears, hacking each other limb from limb.

It just makes sense to me. Can't you just see it? Teddy bears, stuffing hanging out of their tummies and eyes dangling from threads, easily plucking the arms off of the gummi bears.

And at the rear of the gummi bear army, nursi bears would be licking the severed limbs and sticking them back on to the soldiers.

Meanwhile, Papa Berenstain would be taking an axe to the Teddy Grahams, easily hacking through them and causing tasty crumbs to fly through the air and cover the ground.

And the Care Bears, long ago jaded because it seemed no one bothered to care about them since the 80's, would unleash a newer, far more deadly, Care Bear Stare, which, instead of sending beams of good will, would unleash a huge swarm of bees. Or something.

Clearly, an epic battle for the ages, worthy of an epic mural. It beats the pants off a collection of Hummel figurines, I'll tell you that much.

I can't wait until I have my own house so I can start working on it.

bad news bear

Is there something wrong with me that I don't understand Parade magazine? Or more to the point, that I don't understand its advertisements?

After all, we're dealing with a national magazine whose circulation is so high that it can charge $735,000 for a full-page, four-color advertisement. Never mind that for all that, I often have trouble distinguishing it from the Thriftway flyer when the Sunday paper comes.

But for that kind of money, I expect advertisements approaching Super Bowl quality. Instead I get teddy bears in full military dress.

And mind-boggling ad copy. "There's just something about a bear in uniform that's hard to resist," trumpet the people at The Hamilton Collection.

I have a hard time believing that this factoid has been verified in any way. If my reaction to this ad is any indication, statuettes of uniformed bears are eminently avoidable. I can only assume that I would similarly avoid their real-life furry counterparts. Especially if one were wielding a sword.

But such thoughts don't stop these creators of fine military teddy bear statues. "Standing tall," they continue, "... he's ready to defend honor and freedom."

Isn't that a tall order for a teddy bear? What happened to defending cuddliness? Or a good night's sleep?

But no, this teddy bear isn't about snuggling - he's armed to the teeth. Or the button nose. I guess I'm not too clear on Staff Sergeant Bruin's anatomy.

Still, I worry about the messages this statuette sends.

Are we setting a dangerous precedent by combining children's playthings with the implicit violence of the military? Until now, kid's toys were made to give children a sense of peace with the world. Paddington Bear never lobbed a grenade at someone just because he was from a different country.

Will this start a trend of militarizing toys, creating a wave of mass murderers as today's children grow up?

More importantly, what message does this send to the enemies of America in these troubled times?

When Osama bin Laden picks up his copy of Parade magazine at the library, will he laugh maniacally at the weakness of our military forces? Will Vicente Fox take this as a sign that our Marines are soft and easily dismembered, and that therefore now is the time to invade Arizona and take back the Gadsden Purchase?

Fortunately, these questions do not linger long in my mind. Eventually, I find myself reading Ask Marilyn. And I have bigger questions to ask her. Like which of Bill Hoest's cartoon creations was the funniest - The Lockhorns, Howard Huge, or What a Guy!?

singing in the ... what the?!

People living in the northeastern United States will excuse my exuberance, but it's been snowing here the past two days, and it's got me all excited.

Sadly, the snow is pretty much all melted at this point, which means I probably won't get to skip work tomorrow. Not that it matters, since not having a job means I don't have to leave the house to do my thing, anyway. I guess there is a downside to being unemployed.

But snow is rare enough in my life that it brings with it an air of giddiness. Sure, there's yet more water falling from the sky, but now it's white and fluffy!

That said, I must say that Portlanders are pretty clueless when it comes to snow. You'd think that people who live an hour's drive from year-round ski slopes would be pretty savvy with the white stuff, but no.

Maybe I can understand the kids up in Washington Park, vainly attempting to sled their way down an incline covered with a quarter-inch of snow. They want so much to be part of that winter wonderland they see so often in the movies.

But what was the guy thinking when he put chains on his truck within an hour of this light dusting of snow? Did he think the streets were too smooth and needed roughing up? was he afraid his truck couldn't handle what I had no problem walking on?

Portland may be pretty far north, but we act like a bunch of Texans the minute we see snow.

mcfear

Speaking of world domination through mediocre products, I was somewhat disturbed to find that McDonald's had registered the following domain names:

www.mctexas.com, www.mcarkansas.com, www.mcoklahoma.com, www.mcflorida.com, www.mcillinois.com, www.mcnebraska.com, and so on.

Although I assume this is an attempt by the global saturated fat concern to appear friendly and local, it has the effect of making it sound like our states are owned by a maniacal Scottish clown. And that bothers me.

Of course, some states sound better than others. McKentucky doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, whereas McCalifornia seems like something we should have been saying all along.

And then there are the grammar questions. Should it be Mcnorthdakota.com or North McDakota? Doesn't Rhode McIsland just make sense?

All of this reminds me of the time I was in a train station in Germany. We were desperately seeking some kind of sustenance, and the only place open was a McDonald's. I promise. There was a sign outside the restaurant in German that had only one word I could understand: McAmerica.

Maybe it was the exhaustion from riding on trains all day, maybe it was the early hour. But it scared me to see the name of my country with the McDonald's prefix on a sign written in German.

As it turns out, I needn't have worried. The sign had something to do with an Olympics ad campaign (PDF format). And besides, McDonald's has its sights set on something bigger.

that's mighty funny

I'm still having trouble with my computer after last week's crash, so I was in the mood for a little Microsoft humor. And I do mean little.

So when I came across thee following joke on a web design mailing list I subscribe to, I couldn't help but giggle:

MICROS~1.COM

Of course, in order to get that joke, you'd have to know all sorts of things about Microsoft file-naming conventions, which aren't funny at all, except in that pathetic sort of sense. But that's not my point.

evil, tuesdays at nine, seven central

Have you ever found yourself asking why American television shows are so stupid? The short answer is that it's because Americans get what they deserve.

I arrived at this conclusion not through my usual habit of observing various media sources and getting frustrated at how dumb people can be (present company excluded). No, this time my lesson was learned through direct observation of Americans.

Not just your average Americans, mind you, but the kind of American who responds to the following overly-capitalized seduction, which was e-mailed to me by my friend Craig:

DEAR TELEVIEWER,
YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED TO PARTICIPATE IN A SURVEY WHOSE FINDINGS WILL DIRECTLY INFLUENCE WHAT YOU YOU SEE ON TELEVISION IN THE FUTURE. ... YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED TO HELP REPRESENT THE TELEVISION VIEWING PREFERENCES OF THE ENTIRE COUNTRY. WE ARE TELEVISION PREVIEW, A NATIONWIDE TELEVISION RESEARCH SERVICE, AND WE NEED YOUR HELP!
[the invitation then goes on to lavish praise on the experience they provide before telling you that, if you want to participate, you should show up at the Embassy Suites downtown to be part of a television audience survey]

And what kind of person responds to such a siren call? Well, I will say that Beeman and I were probably the only young adults who walked to this history-making event.

Which is to say that there were lots of old people. And, um, overweight people. In fact, I don't think I had ever understood so viscerally the statistic that twenty-seven percent of Americans are obese until I saw my fellow "televiewers".

This, of course, shocked me, as you almost never see old or fat people on television shows.

Yet I was not deterred. I wanted to change the history of television!

But first I had to fill out a survey. In it, I was asked some basic demographic questions, along with a rather extensive list of consumer product queries: which of the following shampoos do I like, which of the following toothpastes do I like, and so on.

While such questions are clearly of a highly personal nature, I knew I had to answer them to be able to watch this ground-breaking television programming promised me, so I wrote and circled and circled some more.

I can't say I provided them with highly accurate data. It's not so much that I lied as I simply can't say that I truly prefer one brand of iron supplements or arthritis cream over the other.

With the survey over, it was time to kick back and enjoy the show. Our grating emcee introduced the first segment by reading the following stultifying text, or something like it, off a sheet of paper: "Have you ever thought you lived a past life? Did you wonder how that would affect your love life?"

I'm fairly certain I have wondered nothing of the sort, but I watched Soulmates, the aforementioned melodrama, anyhow.

And let me say right now that it was awful.

Not just CBS-poor. No, I think I can legitimately say that it was unfit for broadcast television - any channel, any hour. Yes, even UPN at four in the morning. Every infomercial I've ever watched had more production value, and even a better plot.

Here's a short synopsis of Soulmates: Hypnotherapist attempts to cure man of smoking. She falls in love with him and violates basic rules of patient/client conduct in the first five minutes. He turns out to have an air of mystery about him. Or maybe it's just the ham-fisted soundtrack cues.

She follows him to his lair of mystery, whereupon she just happens to break into some sort of highly technological bunker. Although the soundtrack (and the dialogue, which I've already begun ignoring in large part) does not ever explain what the business of this bunker is, the casting director gives us a clue. See, there's lots of Asians inside, which are crappy script writer shorthand for futuristic technology and devious underhandedness.

In the meantime, her friend, whose main role appears to be that of "cute", announces that, while she is having an affair with some prominent hypnotherapist, she will not be sharing a vacation with him as she had hoped. Instead, she offers the tickets and reservations to our protagonist hypnotherapist. Who, I should mention, also appears to have a main characterization of "something cute" with the added twist of "braless".

Although most of the plot to this point had been rather poorly explained, I was nevertheless even more confused when it turned out that our protagonist's vacation was, in fact, not a vacation at all, but a trip to a Hawaiian hypnotherapist convention. Where everyone we had seen earlier in the show just happened to be.

I guess I should mention that there were a number of past-life vignettes interspersed with all this poorly-produced present day hoo-hah. Apparently, our protagonist, her loverboy of mystery, and a few other folks knew each other back in World War II. For those who majored in arithmetic, that means they all died around the age of 60. Perhaps it was the constant suspense in their lives that killed them.

Anyhow, a typical scene from this past life involved the proto-loverboy flirting with the proto-hypnotherapist before he shipped off to active duty:

he: Don't I at least get a lucky kiss goodbye?
she: Oh, don't worry, Pearl Harbor isn't so dangerous.
he: But what if the Japanese attack tomorrow and I die?
she: Not even General Tojo would attack an American airbase on a Sunday morning!
me: {sound of hand slapping forehead repeatedly}

And how did all of this hair-raising intrigue resolve itself? What do you mean you don't know what intrigue there is to resolve - I just told you the plot! Ah well, it doesn't matter, because I don't know how it all got resolved.

See, the show just kind of ended. About thirty minutes too late. It was arguably the worst thing I ever sat through. I can say this only because in any other situation, I would have switched channels within seconds.

The second show we watched was not nearly as bad, or so it seemed. Keep in mind that after that Soulmates drivel, a test pattern would have done fairly well.

The second show was called City (short, to the point), and it starred everyone's favorite star, Valerie Harper.

By "everyone", I mean everyone over forty. I later had to explain to most of my young friends who she is. Or was - I hadn't seen anything she'd done since the seventies until I saw this pilot.

It was introduced to us as a sitcom filmed a few years ago and now being "reshopped" (or some other such made-up word) for today's market.

What that really means is that City looked dated. The hair and clothes all seemed off. The random rap group in one scene had Kid 'n' Play hair. And somebody referred to Teddy Ruxpin. Very late eighties.

Mind you, that would all be fine if the show were called, say, That Late 80's Show. You can just imagine the laughs in that case.

But in this case, I felt I was watching the television equivalent of a reheated store-bought burrito.

Suffice to say that I actually grinned during the thirty minutes of sitcom plodding, and at the end, Valerie Harper's character got the feeling that things just might work out in this crazy world.

However, any feelings of warm sitcom closure were brought to a halt as they brought up the lights and asked us to fill out another consumer products survey.

Not only was I asked to answer more of the same questions as before - in some cases, I was asked the exact same question as before. For instance, in both products surveys, they asked me what kind of shampoo I preferred.

Sure, the hair on your neck might not be standing on end yet, but consider this: the two shows we had just seen had commercials interspersed throughout them. We were told that this was to make our viewing as much like a normal hour of television as possible.

And yet, the only product types that appeared on both the before and after survey were those for which we had seen a commercial.

It occurred to me that the crappy television I had just spent an hour watching was not the point of this exercise at all. It seemed increasingly possible that the shows were a ploy to get us to ignore the questions about commercials and commercial products.

Or maybe I came to that conclusion because my brain simply could not fathom the drivel it had been forced to consume actually being made into a television series. And I've even seen Supermarket Sweep on several occasions.

But the thing that really frightened me, the thing that made me question everything I hold dear, the thing that made me blather until this very paragraph, was when the emcee suggested we take a poll of the audience to see what they thought of the shows, after everyone had filled out their opinion forms.

I assumed that some people would like City, as it was generally harmless. I would never watch it all the way through, personally, but I'm a bit of an anti-TV crank. Nevertheless, almost every hand went up when the emcee asked who liked City. This disappointed me, but I can accept that Americans like their generic sitcoms. Anything for a chuckle.

But when he asked the same question of Soulmates, I was sure no one would raise their hand. That show was clearly crap. It wasn't even filmed particularly well. And yet a good ten percent of our viewing audience said they would watch Soulmates again. This is as strong a proof as ever there was for the iniquity of human nature.

I weep for America.

record store olympics

When I wasn't saying very rude things to a computer that was clearly ignoring me, I decided to head over to Ozone Records' going-out-of-business sale.

Sunday was the first day of the period in which everything in the store was 50% off. For those of you who skipped that day in economics class, that's what they call a good bargain, or, in Spanish, una ganga verdadera. ¡Qué buen negocio!

Of course, I wasn't the only person to recognize this, and accordingly, the store was packed to the gills with people looking for cheap music. No, not former Napster users, doofus, I mean CD and vinyl aficionados.

As last week was Ozone's 25%-off-everything sale, much of the good stuff had already been taken, and parts of the store were picked clean, much to my chagrin.

But I was not dissuaded by such apparent setbacks, and I set out to do something I had never done before - to sift through the entire contents of a store's CD collection.

Okay, I admit, I skipped the reggae section, but everything else - new and used - was flitted over by the fingers of yours truly.

In all honesty, I was rather unprepared for this challenge. Being unemployed, I had been rather lackadaisical about maintaining my list of CDs I might want to buy. Sure, I had a list of artists and albums I had heard samples of, or simply heard about, but I hadn't done much research. And anyhow, that list was on my dead computer. I had to do it solely by memory.

It was quite a rush, really. I didn't expect the crowd at the store to be so large, so when I saw large numbers of people waiting to purchase large numbers of CDs, my mind clicked into overdrive.

Adrenaline pumping through my veins, I methodically made my way through all the sections - electronic, hip-hop, new rock, used rock. My fingers nimbly flipped past every CD, my eyes scanning frantically and checking the large database in my brain for any sign that I should pause, considering whether to buy a CD.

Of course, at the speed I was flipping through the CDs, my conscious mind didn't really do a whole lot. It was too busy worrying about whether I was flipping through the CDs fast enough to keep ahead of the one guy to the left of me, or wondering when I would have to trade places with the girl flipping CDs in the opposite direction as I was.

My subconscious, on the other hand, was the one attempting to recognize albums, based mainly on album artwork. I didn't really have time to read the words on each CD cover.

At the end of it all, I walked out with seven CDs, six of them new, for less than $7 a CD.

And it only took an hour. Not bad, for a human (WAV format).

back again, for now

You know, it was almost cute when my computer decided to, um, "take a break" last Thursday.

I told everyone that "the network was down at work" and went off and did productive things that I don't normally do because I'm sitting in a chair all day.

For instance, I cleaned my room. It's a lot less cluttered now. I also hopped on a bus to go buy a new ribbon for my typewriter. It was nice to get out in the city.

It was even nicer when my computer came back alive the following day. Of course, I spent most of Friday running scandisk and defrag. Large hard drives are not quickly fixed or cleaned up.

Saturday was nicer still, with my computer working perfectly in that ironic portent sort of way. It should be noted that, having concluded that I had fixed my computer on Friday, I did no backing up of files on Saturday.

Which made things all the more annoying on Sunday, when my computer decided to take a break in a much more palpable way. Apparently, all the ennui had come to a head.

I won't go into the details, but suffice to say that as of this posting, my computer seems mostly fine, with the exception of an annoying, if seemingly innocuous, error everytime I start up Excel (cue ominous music).

But it occurs to me that I shouldn't have to spend two days every several months or so bringing my computer back from the dead. I shouldn't have to know what I had to know to fix this beast. It should work a lot better than this.

The only thing that keeps me from switching to a clearly superior operating system is the money I have invested in software and hardware that won't run on a different platform.

And thus do I propagate the mediocrity that runs rampant in the computer industry. Sigh.

At least I find the defrag utility to be pleasantly mesmerizing to watch. So I've got that going for me.

meet the cheaples

There are other signs this new year is off to a swell start. This past weekend I made the CD find of the century. Not that this century is very old.

You know, I really enjoyed living back in the 1990's, when saying an item was the century's best meant something. Or maybe I just liked all the grunge rock. But I digress.

What I found was a Beatles album. Of course, Beatles albums are very easy to find, but this was different from most in that it was used. And unlike most used Beatles albums you can find, this one wasn't some crummy anthology or collection of interviews.

No, I found The Beatles (aka "the white album"). Used. For $20.

You just don't find that very often. And I should know - I've been looking for it for several years now.

I just thought I'd share that.

you say you want a resolution

Day 7 of the new year and my resolution is going strong.

And what is this self-promise I have kept with an iron will, you may ask. I can sum it up in one word: dapper.

However, as that one word lacks a proper sentence structure, I will explain further. I have resolved to be more dapper this year.

As that is a somewhat vague resolution, I have amended it to say that I will wear a vest and tie when I am at "work", which is to say when I am at my computer between Monday and Friday, inclusive.

That is, in short, a dumb resolution. I know it. But I don't really like making resolutions, and I didn't figure I'd keep any real resolutions I made, so I decided to have fun. And look good doing it.

After all, it's not every day I wear a vest and tie. Or, rather, it wasn't, until this year. That's the point.

Mind you, this would be a more interesting resolution if I had more than two vests. But I don't, and I don't feel like spending more money on an essentially useless part of my wardrobe right now. Because my other resolution is not to spend too much money on vests. Pity, that.

I'm not even sure if it's kosher to wear a vest without a suit. I simply noticed that I had some non-grubby clothes in my closet that I hadn't worn in a long time, and decided that New Year's Eve was as good a time as any for dressing up a bit. Somehow that whim turned into my current new year's resolution.

Yes, it's all very silly, but you have to admit that it makes for a better story than resolving to exercise more.

Perhaps my real, secret resolution is not to take anything more seriously than it warrants, hmm?

But I can't tell you that. Because then it wouldn't be a secret.

although it's been said many times many ways

But none of that makes for very interesting journal fodder, so I will spend the rest of my typing here complaining about the comics I read while on vacation.

There's something about Christmastime that lends itself to intense mediocrity in the artistic world.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, go purchase any Christmas album. What better way to celebrate the birth of Jesus than with a half-dozen shlocked-up standards and some bland generic holiday-esque filler?

Comic strips at Christmastime are no better. Writers confuse triteness with tradition and feed us the same tired jokes over and over again.

Not that anyone who reads Hagar the Horrible expects innovation (hey, look, Helga is overworked and underappreciated, and there is enmity between Hagar and his mother-in-law). But at least you're never sure which hackneyed joke you're going to see on a given day.

Not so at Christmastime. No, every Christmas Eve, without fail, some hack cartoonist will run out of new ideas and give us the old "Twas the night before Christmas" treatment, often with a wonderful modern twist. Chuckle. (Apologies if King Feature's server fails to show the comics I linked to - they worked when I wrote this)

But the triteness train has only left the station! For on Christmas day, we are reminded of that bone-tickling truism that kids get up earlier than adults on Christmas. It's funny because it's greedy. Chortle.

(And isn't it odd that all three examples I just cited are part of the United Feature Syndicate? Maybe they provide a suggestion sheet to the cartoonists who ran out of ideas years ago.)

But Christmas wouldn't really be Christmas unless it was followed the next day (and the day after that) by strips that humorously remind us of one of the major problems in life - returning gifts you don't like! And how! Guffaw.

Of course, not all clichéd comic strip ideas follow such a rigid schedule. You can laugh about fruitcakes all through the holiday season. Laff.

The surprise this year was that the formerly savvy Garry Trudeau chose to announce his slide into irrelevance by joining in the fruitcake chorus. Of course, he placed his gag at Ground Zero in Manhattan so as to make the strips seem topical, but a cliché is a cliché, even if it's surrounded by the aftermath of terrorism.

Not that other artists didn't try to weave the effects of September 11 into their Christmas cheer. And just as tacky sculptors once used Santa to remind us of the true meaning of Christmas, so now many cartoonists turned to Santa to remind us what we're all scared of these days. Accordingly, Santa decided not to fly this year, choosing instead to take a bus. Or if he did choose to fly, he chose an airplane over a sleigh, and suffered the fate of many holiday travelers at the security gate. Or if he did ride in his traditional sleigh, he got an escort from a phalanx of F-16s, in keeping with FAA policy. At least we know that Santa knows our pain.

Of course, I suppose if I had to choose, I'd pick the tedium of clichés over blasphemy. Fortunately, I don't have to pick, thanks to Bil Keane (okay, and Jeff, too). There's something magical about a "family friendly" strip in which a child directly correlates the birth of his savior with his accumulation of material possessions. Most cartoonists only allude to such concepts, but not Bil - subtlety was never his strong point.

That said, my greatest ire is reserved for wholly unecessary political correctness. And who is guilty of this label? That would be the team behind the Christmas Day Sally Forth, in which Hilary, the daughter, has spelled "Happy Holidays" in the snow.

Oh, sure, I understand that there are many holidays in December, from many different belief systems. But on the day this cartoon appeared, exactly none of them were occurring, as I understand it. Hannukah was over. The solstice was over. Eid al-Fitr was over. Kwanzaa had yet to start. The only holiday on that day was Christmas. So then, why does it say "Happy Holidays"? Were any non-Christians fooled into thinking this applied to them and their celebrations, or did they wonder why generic holiday wishes were not given at some generic holiday time?

It's clear the writers are trying not to say "Christmas", so Christians aren't really included in the message, either. In short, by striving for inoffensiveness, they have achieved blandness that pleases no one. Well, at least not me. I mean, I'd rather have the writers of Sally Forth wish me a happy Junkanoo, if that's what they really mean.

Gads, I'm cynical. Of course, you would be too, if you had to sit through the "lite jazz" holiday stylings of John Tesh, Mannheim Steamroller, and more, every time you got on an American West airplane in December. It's yet another example of how an attempt to please everyone (or at least not offend everyone) actually offends people, or at least me.

If I see another middle-aged white guy in a sweater playing a saxophone while surrounded by candles and other merry middle-aged white folks drinking champagne, I may just spit.

off hiatus

Dear Diary, I just had a nice vacation with my girlfriend. We spent time in Dallas, Houston, and Portland. It was nice.

I met my girlfriend's parents, she met mine, we had Mexican food, wore short-sleeve shirts, and even saw a high school basketball game.