The Writing Wombat

The Tooth Noob

A.B. Kelly · May 27, 2016 · Blog Entries, Musings · dental hygienist, dentist · No Comments

“The hygienist is out today. The dentist will be cleaning your teeth.”

I used to think these were the most terrifying words one could hear upon arriving at one’s biannual scrape-and-blood-fest. Most dentists I’ve encountered combine the bedside manner of an executioner with the gentle, nurturing touch of a detoxing crackwhore.

How the hell can someone drill trough enamel and perform root canals, yet be incapable of putting the X-Ray film in my mouth without puncturing through to my nose?

The typical hygienist has had, I’m guessing, seventy fewer years of schooling, yet they still managed to fit that vital “Scrape, Don’t Stab” class in. Is that the stuff they cover on Dentist Ditch Day? Or is it all the dentist’s extra classes that make them forget Dentistry 101: Patients Wincing. Dentists only remember those upper division classes – Dentistry 515a: Scrapers Between the Teeth (Because Floss is Too Forgiving) and 515b: Scrapers & Gums (The Lawn Darts of the 21^st Century).

Whereas the hygienist seems to realize that there will be blood and have the sanitary napkin ready to go.

Wait, that gauzy cheesecloth they use isn’t called a sanitary napkin? Sanitary napkins go where? Hmmm. Maybe I should’ve been concerned by the Dentist/OB-Gyn sign on the front door. But the Dentist/Bartender sign next door looked so shoddy.

Regardless, I learned this week that there is a situation worse than dental dictator subbing as sympathetic schoolmarm. One that can’t be cured by a simple “Milkshakes for dinner?” text to the wife.

“Your hygienist retired. I’m your new hygienist. Today is my first day.”

Yikes. Is this going to be as bad as that first-day hooker I visitied?

The answer: more pain, less chafing.

She asked me how I felt about my dental health. Um, fine? Do I brush twice a day? Let’s say sure. And floss? Yes, I’ve heard of it.

She asked the questions while out of sight, standing behind the upright chair. She paused after each question because she was writing down my answers. Then she asks me to sign the paper. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Will this be used against me in a court of law? I mean, I just told you that I floss regularly, but if I’m required to testify, I might need to plead the fifth.

On this sheet she hands me to sign, I see all the notes the previous hygienist had kept on me. Sentences and sentences appeared on each previous visit. Discussions we had had, what vacation I’m going to be taking before my next visit. Ha! I knew she didn’t “happen to” remember my child’s name six months later! It was all written down on that sheet. The sheet I had never seen, nor had to sign, before.

Today’s “notes” say “Health: Fine. Flosses.”

Alright, as long as I don’t have to use a thumbprint or retinal scan, I’ll sign that. But I’m going to sign it soppy so the prosecution has a tougher time pinning it on me.

Then the festivities began. She handed my some loaner sunglasses. “Wear these so the light doesn’t hurt your eyes.”

Um, how about you just not shoot light into my eyes? Last time I checked my teeth aren’t in my eyes. There’s an entire nose in between the two. If you feel the need to shoot light somewhere other than my mouth, have a gander at those lustrous nostrils.

But not only was she using the standard hovering dentist light, she also had a miner’s lamp strapped to her forehead. Wow. Are we going spelunking?

She then lowered my chair into the reclining position. And then she kept going. Holy crap. The old hygienist could work wonders if I was at a 45-degree angle. Maybe she’d occasionally drop me to 35-degrees. For this chick, zero-degrees wasn’t enough. We were heading into Graphing Quadrant IV.

“Is that comfortable?” She asked as I started clutching the side of the chair to offset the gravitational pull on my head.

“I don’t know. When I come down from the high of blood rushing to my brain, I’ll tell you. Y’know, the hooker made me wear sunglasses and hang upside down, too.”

She reluctantly put me back to horizontal and went to work.

In the teaching world, it can be refreshing when a new teacher shows fresh out of Teacher Prep school. They bring new technology and websites that I might not discover on my own. And I reciprocate by giving them some of my old videos, but mainly just to watch them try to figure out how to jam a VHS tape into their laptop.

So maybe, I thought, this new dental hygienist would bring a similar novelty to the process. Maybe some laser wash that instantly removes all plaque with no scraping.

It turns out she did, in fact, have a newfangled tool. Unfortunately, it resembled Doctor Who’s sonic screwdriver. It vibrated and shot water at the same time. The vibration felt like drilling, because patients loved the drilling sensation so much, they added it even when not filling cavities. The water came out at roughly the same force as a fire hydrant. Because, “Yay, Waterboarding!”

But the really great news was that, after the sonic screwdriver was finished, there was still scraping to look forward to. Whew! In her defense, though, the scraping went faster. I assume all she had to do was scrape the few bits of enamel that hadn’t been pulverized over the twenty minutes of tooth fracking.

She didn’t really know where to sit to gain the best access to my mouth. Probably because I was an asshole and wouldn’t let her hang me upside down. So she kept moving her rolly chair from one side of my head to the other, trying upside down, sideways, whatever. She asked me to move my face and body one direction, then the other, so she could get the best angle. The various tubes and cords came close to strangling me a few times, but what’s a little asphyxiation amongst friends? The hooker would have charged me more for that, but here it’s an all-inclusive price.

During the entire process, she kept the suction tube hanging from my cheek like a goddamned breathing tube. Could she have at least given me some nitrous? Hey hygienist, maybe you can just keep that suction thing nearby and only use it when necessary, huh? Then again, when you’re pumping ten thousand pounds of water pressure into my gumline, I guess the suction needs to be continuously running. Delta Dental ain’t paying your salary if I drown.

So while the cords and suction were constant, you know what was missing? Any conversation whatsoever. I get that it’s awkward to have me deepthroating on a first date, but how about some of that bona fide hygienist banter? I know that has to be taught in hygienist school. It truly is a skill. No other profession on the planet has mastered one-sided conversations. Who else can get somebody’s life story based only on yes-no questions and guttural plegm? I mentioned that my old hygienist had listed my baby’s name as “fghrghrxchtl,” right?

Any big plans for this weekend? Swimming, you say? What hobbies do you enjoy? Blog writing? Interesting! Sado-Masochism? Whips and chains, huh? Does this hurt? Yes? Do you want me to stop? No?

Sorry. Got confused with the hooker again.

But this new hygienist didn’t say a damn thing. I get that I was the first patient she ever had without a giant button between my nipples, but even Resuscitation Annie likes to be asked how her day went, right?

But maybe it’s for the best. Unlike my former hygienist, this one’s copious notes can’t ever be stolen for identity thieves. The fact that I’m behind on my grading isn’t going to appear on Wikileaks.

The only thing the NSA or some Nigerian prince is going to get on me now is some suspicious self-reported dental habits.

$10,000 OR THE WORLD LEARNS THAT YOU LIE ABOUT FLOSSING!

The Great Red (Muppet) Menace

A.B. Kelly · May 12, 2016 · Blog Entries, Musings · child milestones, child rearing, children's television, TV Shows · No Comments

Back around Christmas time, I remember talking to some family members and friends who had kids around my daughter’s age (between 14-20 months). Lots of questions about what her favorite TV shows were. I tried to fake some answers but in reality, she didn’t watch much. It’s not like we had actively tried to encourage or discourage TV Time, but there were certainly times that the TV was on, and even times we put on a children’s show in an attempt to actually get something done around the house. But she didn’t seem interested and when confronted by other parents, I wondered if she was an anomaly Were we good parents or were we the bad parents?

I mean, the experts say no screen time until they’re two, right?

Hey experts, you want to come offer some free babysitting while I’m getting ready in the morning?

Because my baby’s aversion/disinterest in television came crashing down right around twenty months. Now she regularly wants to take her place among the American public by plopping her butt right in front of the Boob Tube. And she can binge watch like a motherfucker.

Oh hey, kids? If you just found this blog after googling Sesame Street, this might be a good time to move along to another blog. And maybe stop going to the 117^th page of Google results.

My daughter’s tastes are not all that refined, however. In fact, there are really only two shows she watches. The first is Bubble Guppies. I like Bubble Guppies. It features six mermaid-type kids that are in school. Or at least they are enrolled in school despite their best attempts at truancy. Each episode starts with two of them seeing something as they dally, unsupervised, on their way to school. Then they get to school and are excited about what they witnessed, and their teacher, Mr. Grouper, immediately delves into a lesson on the topic.

Really, Mr. Grouper? It’s called a lesson plan. You’re just going to scrap what you were going to teach because some kids come in excited about something? If I did that, every day I’d be teaching about teenagers getting “hella crunked over the weekend.”

To say nothing of the Bubble Guppies’ parents. What the hell are you doing letting your kids randomly walk to school through marathons or loading docks or the train station? Just because their teacher indulges their delinquent behavior doesn’t mean you should!

But I digress. The episode then revolves around this theme. They sing songs, they set up a make-believe shop selling items related to the topic, then they have lunch, then go outside (“Line up, everybody, line up, line up…”) and pretend to be that thing. And through it all they ask the viewers to help them solve problems with budding skills in math and literacy.

As I said, I like Bubble Guppies. But my daughter quickly grew tired of it, and now always tries to push me toward her current addiction. She asks, and I say, “Bubble?” “No Bubble, Daddy.”

Except sometimes she manipulates me. After I say I don’t want to watch the other show, she says “Yes, Bubble.” And I say, “Yay, Bubble,” then I go turn on the TV, and repeat “Bubble?” Then, with the TV on and me already thumbing through the DVR, she magically changes her mind. “No Bubble….”

“Elmo!”

Shit.

“Elmo! Elmo! Elmo!”

I don’t even know how she learned who Elmo was, but she was saying his name before she had watched an episode of Sesame Street. I’m sure it’s just like every other addiction – peer pressure from those other kids at school.

I originally pushed for Sesame Street. Before we discovered Bubble Guppies, Sesame Street was one of the shows we tried to occupy her with back when she wouldn’t watch. I was keen to avoid the likes of Caillou and Barney and the other dregs of children’s television.

I grew up on Sesame Street.

But this ain’t her father’s Sesame Street.

“Can you tell me what they’ve done, what they’ve done to Sesame Street?”

And before I get all “get off my front lawn” about it, I’m not saying they should have always kept things the same. I’m not opposed to change for change’s sake. It wouldn’t really make sense for all of the characters to be wearing disco pants like they were when I was watching the show in the 1970s. And for obvious reasons, Jim Hensen can’t voice a lot of the Muppets that he used to voice.

I like that they encourage kids to get up and move around more than they used to.

And I know that Snuffleupagus can’t be an imaginary friend anymore because we don’t want kids to keep quiet about abuse. I might question how much it’s made a difference. I’d be interested to see if there was an uptick in child abuse reports once Snuffleupagus was revealed to be real. But if that statistic was even one, then it’s worth it.

And truthfully, some of the problems are getting a little better since HBO took over. HBO’s increased the production value immensely. Once you can get past the all the full frontal nudity. (I’ll take “The Obvious Joke” for two hundred, Alex.)

But there are some things about Sesame Street that still bug me:

Character Voices.

Grover is now voiced by the same person that does Miss Piggy. Grover sounds exactly like Miss Piggy. And Big Bird sounds like Big Dork.

Muppet Lower Torsos.

I assume this is easier with CGI, but just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. It just looks awkward. Check out the closing credits from last year or this year. Awkward. And man, in the latter, Grover needs to do some squats or something. Not sure how he manages to lug that potbelly around on those spindly legs.

Abby.

If you’re as old as me, you might have noticed some new Muppets in those clips. Of course, I pre-date Elmo, but you would have had to be deaf and dead to not know of him. One in particular, the pink one with pigtails and a wand, is Abby. Abby Cadaby, to be exact. She is a magician. Abra Cadabra – Abby Cadaby, get it?

Abby is probably the second-most featured character on Sesame Street these days. She hasn’t infiltrated out amongst the general population as much as Elmo has yet, but among Sesame Street groupies, she’s almost as ubiquitous.

Abby Cadaby, being a magician, actually casts spells and makes things magically appear. Really, Sesame Street? Magic? What a lazy shortcut to storytelling. I mean, stick to the giant talking birds and cookie-obsessed monsters and green dudes that live in trash cans. Why do you need to add something fake, like magic?

Episode structure.

I seem to remember that the interactions between humans and Muppets on Sesame Street (ie the entire point of the show) were spread out over the course of the entire episode, interspersed with various vignettes. A typical episode might go: Introduce Problem/Theme, Video of animals, Continue storyline, Aliens creating compound word, Preview resolution on “The Street,” Different Muppet video, then back to the Street for resolution and lessons learned.

Today’s episodes frontload all of the plot/lesson/Street scenes so they are self-contained, and completely over by the time we hit the ten minute mark. Then it’s on to the vignettes, maybe with Murray and his Little Lamb at a school or Cookie Monster exercising self-control. I will address the last ten minutes in #5 below.

I assume this re-organization is partly because episodes are now only a half-hour instead of an hour. Damn you, Mitt Romney! Oh wait, he lost? But you know what happens. Republicans are elected and they cut funding, then Democrats are elected and they restore the funding but also increase the ability of Muppet Local 2658 to negotiate exorbitant pensions that shoestring the show’s budget.

Or maybe it’s because these whippersnappers can’t pay attention to a storyline once it breaks away. We’re no longer training the TV watchers of tomorrow to remember the plot through a commercial break. Boy, back in my day, we had to watch commercials, uphill both ways, in the snow. You little rats have DVR’s now.

Then again, Bubble Guppies can break up the theme throughout an episode.

“Bubble? Bubble?”

“No, Daddy, no….”

Elmo!

As I mentioned, I was familiar with Elmo going into this rediscovery process. I used to use Tickle Me Elmo as an example of demand and shortages in economics class, up until that particular zeitgeist craze started pre-dating my students. I’ll let that sink in with some of my older readers – current high school seniors were born in 1998.

So yeah, I was aware Elmo existed. What I wasn’t aware of was that Sesame Street had pretty much become the Elmo show. Take Sheldon from Big Bang Theory, multiply it by Cartman in South Park, and raise it to the power of Barney in How I Met Your Mother and you will begin to approach the degree to which the Giant Red Menace has spread his socialist scourge across Sesame Street. And his pinko girlfriend, Abby, too.

I would guess one of those two is on screen about seventy percent of the time. And if you only count the times that a Muppet is on screen, that would rise to over ninety percent. I’m trying to think of a time that any other Muppet shows up without Elmo lurking on the margins like a Mafioso Union Boss. The only time is when Murray and his Little Lamb go to school, and that’s only in the recent HBO shows. By comparison, Big Bird doesn’t even show up in half of the episodes, and Oscar the Grouch might as well be considered a guest star these days.

Oh, and that “last ten minutes of the show” I referenced earlier? That’s “Elmo’s World,” a completely separate entity. No other cast members, puppet or human, are allowed entry into Elmo’s World. Not even Abby. It’s Elmo, his pet goldfish, and a couple of humans named Mr. Noodle. There are two Mr. Noodles and they are both called Mr. Noodle, unless they’re both on the screen at the same time, in which case they are Mr. Noodle and Other Mr. Noodle. Just like a tyrant to not let the dudes each have their own name. But Mr. Noodle(s) are contained in the Sweatshop that is Elmo’s World, and are not allowed to venture out into Sesame Street proper. Elmo needs to keep his empires separate, like when Walter White picked up that second cellphone.

And really, how is Elmo a good role model? He talks about himself in the third person constantly. “Elmo has a question.” “Dance with Elmo.” “Elmo’s gonna fuck you up and Elmo-shit on your Elmo-fucked corpse.”

That last one might be a misquote.

I know no Muppet is perfect. Each has his or her own little foibles. Oscar represents sloth, the Count has certain OCD tendencies, and Big Bird suffers from the deadly sin of dorkiness. Cookie Monster, in addition to some slightly gluttonous persuasions, also uses the word “me” in place of “I.” But a little subject/direct object pronoun confusion is fine next to the megalomaniacal tyrant that is Elmo.

In fact, I expect Elmo to endorse Donald Trump any day now. It’s too bad he’s only been around since the early 1990s, he’s too young to be Donald’s VP pick. They’d make a natural pairing, and Elmo might be able to bring Republicans back to the fold, reminding them of the third-person self-references of the Bob Dole days.

And with Elmo on the campaign trail, maybe I’d finally win the mental tug-of-war with my twenty-three month old daughter.

But until then, it’s another steady dose of…

“Bubble? Bubble?”

“No, Daddy, no… Elmo!”

…on a Spring Break Afternoon

A.B. Kelly · April 14, 2016 · Blog Entries, Musings · Booze Cruise, Catalina, Catalina bus driver, Cruise, Ensenada, shore excursions · One Comment

Last week I started my “What I did on Spring Break” de-brief by recounting a couple of the characters I met on my Booze Cruise to Mexico (Is that a Jimmy Buffett song?). Head back there if you want to read about the tour guide in Ensenada or the Piano Bar singer. They were each entertaining in their own regard.

But I held back on describing the biggest character of the trip. Because the Mexican diplomat and the singing copyright lawyer paled in comparison to a certain bus driver on the island of Catalina.

To say this guy was a cross between Richard Pryor and the Cryptkeeper would be insulting. Not sure to whom. My money’s on the Cryptkeeper.

The bus driver looked to be in his late fifties, but he easily could’ve been thirty-three with a steady dose of cocaine. His hair was ratty and continuously above/behind his head, as if he was being electrocuted in a windstorm. Or discussing gigawatts with Marty McFly.

I think maybe he put some Jheri Curl in his hair in 1999 and hasn’t washed it out since.

My first impression of the bus driver was not the first impression he was aiming for. I watched out the bus window as he interacted with the cruise personnel who were informing him he would have to wait for a few more people to get off the boat. He was pissed, and I can’t blame him. How hard is it to follow the “be at the tender by x time to be on shore by y time to give yourself z minutes leeway before the tourbus arrives.” And you know the cruise people were now telling the bus driver that, even though there would be people on his bus who couldn’t bother being on time, he still had to get us all back by <insert Sanskrit letter> time, or else they weren’t going to use his company any more. Who cares if he has to drive seventy miles per hour in a bus that tops out at forty on dirt roads designed for twenty?

So he was pissed, and his body language showed it. His jaw was set, lower lip out. His hands were on his hips when they weren’t running through his hair. He paced back and forth along the lawn, looking at the tender boats as if he could will them to go faster. I’m sure there was some “motherfucking kidding me”s escaping his mouth.

He looked like Pedro Martinez cooling himself off behind the mound after strike three was called a ball. Or Lionel Richie the day “Dancin’ on the Ceiling” dropped to number two. Like Richard Pryor after he set himself on fire. Or the two jive guys on “Airplane!” when they… hold up, they had afros, not Jheri Curl. Never mind.

After we finally had the missing cruisers in the bus, he gave us what he had intended to be his “first impression.” He closed the door, trapping (oops I mean “securing”) us inside, put on his microphone headset, and introduced himself as he pulled out into what counted as traffic on the only street in town.

“Welcome aboard,” he said in an obviously-affected, meek falsetto. I think he was aiming for Michael Jackson, but came across as Laverne from Police Academy instead. “I’d like to thank you all for putting your trust in me. Don’t worry. I’ve done this a… couple of times before. You’re… um… safe.”

I’ll give the guy credit. He kept the ruse on for a full minute or longer. I knew it was fake from the start, but still reached the point where I cast a skeptical, nervous side-glance at my wife before the bus driver broke character.

“Hahahaha,” he couldn’t contain himself any longer. “I love seeing all your reactions in the rear view mirror. You’re looking at each other like are we gonna have to listen to this for the next six hours? Like do I have to be polite?”

But here’s the thing. His voice hadn’t dropped that much. Sure, it’d grown in gravitas, but it’s not like his Michael Jackson had morphed all the way to James Earl Jones. He seemed to have settled somewhere in the Chris Tucker range. Or Dudley Moore. In fact, his voice and general disposition might have been part of his audition for a remake of Arthur. In this remake, though, spends his time in the front of a bus instead of the back of a limousine.

And the bus was a character of its own. To call it a Muppet Movie or Partridge Family bus would make it about two decades too modern. This bus, a refurbished bus from the 1950s, would have called my 1985 school bus “luxurious.” Think it harkened back to the Freedom Riders movement. And I don’t mean from that era. I mean actual bus might have physically been a burned out husk in 1961 that had been retrofitted.

And, really, what do you do with a bus that’s been fire-bombed by segregationists? Hey, I know! Sell it to a company that drives a bunch of drunk tourists around an island! I imagine the sales pitch went something like:

“Want a ride that’s as comfortable as a youth hostel cot?”

“No thanks, I live on an island with one town.”

“It corners like a tank!”

“I’m listening…”

“It gets two miles to the gallon.”

“Where do I sign? Is the bus here right now?”

So the guy drives us up the winding road into the mountains surrounding the town. I was on the right side of the bus, so I was only able to see how close he was coming to the mountain, not the cliff on the left side of the road.

But at one point, even from my vantage point, I could tell that was going straight when the road and, more importantly the mountain, were curving around to the right. This is it, I thought. It’s been a nice life but now it’s going to end in a fiery heap of asbestos-filled steel at the base of a mountain, the smoldering form of a still-cackling wraith spewing puns to my corpse.

Tomorrow, my undead corpse will be driving a new set of tourists off the cliff.

Wait, did they put asbestos in busses back then?

But he didn’t drive us off the cliff. At least not right away. What would be the fun in that? Killing your victims at the first chance is a strictly zombie move. Why do that when you can drag it out? When you can spend the whole time looking at the fear in their faces in the rear-view window?

Because it’s not like he was using said mirror to watch the road.

Instead, he brought our attention to the beautiful view of Avalon, the Pacific Ocean, and Southern California beyond as the bus hung precipitously from the cliff. Or we were safely positioned in a turnout that I couldn’t see. But I assume the former.

“Where’s your Michael Jackson now, bitches?” I imagined Monsieur Keeper de Crypts cackling.

And then, after the pheromone level of his passengers dropped, our Dementor started up the bus again and drove us forward. I mean forward on the road, not forward off the cliff. Farther up the mountains and out of Avalon. There’s actually a barrier gate to get out of the “urban” area outside of the city. You have to be authorized to drive on the meager dirt paths that count for roads on the island. The golf carts that dominate the city are not allowed outside.

But a bus with no power steering driven by somebody whose head can spin around? What better definition of “authorized” can there be?

And for the rest of the trip, it was relatively painless. We were told we would visit a bald eagle sanctuary, and we did. Although there was nobody there, and it was pretty much just a netted enclosure that happened to have an eagle inside. I assume the driver’s buddy had just trapped an eagle and now it was a tourist trap. Although we didn’t pay to see it, so it’s a pretty shitty business plan for a tourist trap.

We drove to the east side of the island. At one point, he just randomly stopped the bus in the and told us we could get out to look at the view. It was indeed a beautiful view, if a bit marred by the bus sitting in the middle of the road, blocking any chance to escape. At least he hadn’t repeated his driving-off-the-road feat from earlier.

We ended up at the airport. I think that was the original purpose of the tour, but by this point in the day, I had forgotten. I half expected the driver to beeline it to the bar there before getting back behind the wheel with a foofy umbrella drink. But instead he told us that we were running low on time, so we had to take a couple pictures and run. Any food would have to be scarfed down. I guess all of that traffic we ran into had put us behind schedule. There were maybe two or three cars we encountered all day.

Or maybe he could have told one or two fewer puns. Or seventy-five fewer.

If you missed my earlier post, here are a few of his “highlights:”

“Love isn’t compromise, love is surrender. That’s why they call it a French Kiss.”
“The bumpy drive isn’t my fault. It isn’t the bus’s fault. It’s the asphalt.”
“Why don’t they play poker in the jungle? Too many cheetahs. If he says he’s not a cheetah, he’s probably a lion.”

On the way back to the ship, we were on to him, so he had to go a little farther for each zinger. “A crow has five wing feathers, called pinions. A raven only has four pinions. So the difference between a crow and a raven is all a matter of a pinion.”

His last zinger was quite electrifying. While stopped to watch the zip lines, he told us not to try to zip down the OTHER lines that were right there. Those were power lines.

“I zipped down those lines once. It was an electrifying experience. I used to be blond haired, blue eyed, and six feet tall.”

Nice one. And were you alive back then, too?

But what can I say? The guy was a professional. He safely drove a behemoth around on shaky infrastructure, kept us entertained and still had us back to the ship in time to depart. Quite the professional.

But even so, I still find myself questioning whether he was an employee of the company at all. Or if he was just some random dude who had escaped from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with the bus.

Cruisin’…

A.B. Kelly · April 7, 2016 · Blog Entries, Musings · Booze Cruise, Catalina, Cruise, Ensenada, Spring Break, Vacation · One Comment

“Love isn’t compromise, love is surrender. That’s why they call it a French Kiss.”

“Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all of the week.”

Actually, that zinger wasn’t mine. It, and many others, came from a tour guide on Catalina Island, driving his 1950s-style bus around hairpin turns on a dirt road like he’s Doctor Teeth in The Muppet Movie.

Here are a few others.

“The bumpy drive isn’t my fault. It isn’t the bus’s fault. It’s the asphalt.”

“Why don’t they play poker in the jungle? Too many cheetahs. If he says he’s not a cheetah, he’s probably a lion.”

“A crow has five wing feathers, called pinions. A raven only has four pinions. So the difference between a crow and a raven is all a matter of a pinion.”

Whoo! I’ll give you a second to catch your breath.

After a year of weddings and campings and vasectomies (oh, my!), I decided to spend my Spring Break with Ye Olde Booze Cruise. You know the type. Less-than-exotic destinations amongst the not-quite-splendor of a floating quasi-resort amongst nearly-tangential American territorial waters. On the East coast, there are a few different destinations for these short benders. But on the left coast, there is only one such Inebriation Itinerary: Ensenada.

Ensenada: the Poor Man’s Cabo! Ensenada: Fewer Donkey Shows than Tijuana!

(Ensenada people, I’m available for advertising and am waiting by the phone for your call.)

I was far from the only teacher on board. I know the stereotype is that Spring Break is full of college students, but it turns out educators have the same time off as those college students. We also have the benefit of (a little) more money in our pockets, and twelve-dollar pina coladas might be the great equalizer. On this particular Booze Cruise, I couldn’t swing a passed-out frat boy without hitting a teacher, counselor, or principal.

And, my goodness, teachers are annoying.

But instead of devolving into my distaste for most others in my profession, I would instead like to highlight three people I actually enjoyed on the trip. All three were in some sort of official capacity. Because I don’t go out of my way to talk to too many other teachers.

In Ensenada, we decided to avoid “La Bufadora,” aka The Blowhole, aka a place where the ocean waves break against a rock. Most of the people in my group had done this Booze Cruise before, and pretty much every first timer gets roped into La Bufadora. You pay $70 to sit on a bus for an hour, then be amazed by waves for about 15 minutes, then spend two hours as a captive audience with a bunch of booths selling shitty wares before the bus takes you back to the ship, loaded down with ten-cent sunglasses, 50-cent ponchos, and a year-supply of Chiclets.

Ninety percent of Ensenda shore excursions go to the blowhole. It’s “Bufadora plus downtown shopping” or “Downtown shopping plus Bufadora” (Yay, variety!). You can also do “Bufadora plus winery” or “Bufadora with kayaking” or “donkey show with a blowhole.” Although I don’t think the last one includes La Bufadora.

“Hey, a jeep excursion. This is different.” I remember reading to my wife as we shopped for excursions. “Let’s see, it says ‘Ride in jeeps along the beautiful coast to La Bufa…’ oh, for fuck’s sake!”

We wanted to try something different, and fortunately found a cheese cellar tour. Instead of going south along the coast, it actually (Gasp!) went inland, up into the hills to a dairy farm. We sampled cheeses at various stages of aging, which was very interesting, tasted some of the same wine we would have tasted on the winery tour, and had an excellent lunch featuring, naturally, quesadillas.

Our tour guide was new, because the tour was new. What was even more impressive was the fact that he hadn’t known any English prior to being hired. For speaking the language less than a year, he was impressive. Hell, I had six of German between high school and college and I still can’t even understand the lyrics of 99 Luftballons.

The tour guide said he had grown up thinking Americans are uptight. Not sure how, given he lived in a city’s whose main economy is drunk Americans at Papas y Beers. But regardless, he said he had always heard we were uptight and had learned over the past year, as he had met more of inebriated Yanks, that Americans aren’t always uptight. We don’t all build border fences. Some of us do body shots.

He started to get past his preconceptions when he started to learn English. He felt that a lot of the differences, the misunderstandings, between our two nations might come down to just that – misunderstanding. Literally, we can’t understand each other. If the average American and the average Mexican were better able to communicate with each other, both countries might be better off. I nodded along, knowing that this guy was right, I should be more conversant in Spanish.

I resolve to get Rosetta Stone when I get home.

Then somebody asked him if it was always this hot in Ensenada. He responded that the temperature was usually around 25.

What? You’ve learned English, met a bunch of Americans, and don’t know the proper way to tell temperature is Fahrenheit? I mean, what point is there in learning each other’s language if you’re going to use that heathen Celsius? You almost had me, dude. A minute ago, I was marveling at the potential future between our glorious civilizations as we strode toward the future together. Now I’m signing up to build the wall. And the dimensions of Trump’s “door” better be measured in goddamned feet and inches!

The second person who caught my attention worked in the piano bar on the ship. Actually, I shouldn’t say he worked in the piano bar, he was the piano bar. Some of those fancy-schmancy boats have dueling pianos, but when the entire cruise costs less than a week of daycare, you take what you get.

He did the usual fare of Billy Joel and Elton John with a smattering of Jimmy Buffett, what with us being on a boat and all. Fewer sing-alongs than a usual piano bar, but again, you probably need a second musician or, I don’t know, a cocktail server to work the crowd into sing-along mode. And when the poor guy needed to rest his vocal chords or take a leak, the bar emptied out and he had to start from scratch.

At one point he busted out an original song. In a piano bar? When I go to Denny’s, I expect the waitress to bring me my Grand Slam Breakfast, not recite her Hamlet soliloquy for next week’s audition. And, Mr. Piano Man, in a piano bar, I expect you to perform “Piano Man.”

The kicker is that in this original song, which he swore he had recorded the day before getting on the boat, he wanted us to sing along. Except that we weren’t privy to the iPhone he had taken into Sam Goody to record on. Nor the radio station, K-RAZY, broadcasting it in his head.

But he assured us we could sing along. He taught us a bunch of “la-la-la” notes and told us to sing when he played those notes on the piano. This meant we were constantly late, but we eventually figured it out, because half the song was nothing but “la-la-la.”

I guess Elton John doesn’t write any lyrics, either.

I’m not being harsh on the guy, he was actually pretty nice. After one of his breaks emptied the room, he chatted with us between songs. Jokes about the Sam Smith/Tom Petty lawsuit led to a general discussion about the legalities of the music profession. Turns out you can’t copyright a chord progression, hence songs like “La Bamba” and “Twist and Shout” being indistinguishable on rhythm guitar. Note progressions can be protected, but they are notoriously hard to prove. How many notes in a row constitutes copying?

Piano Man mentioned one of the few successful lawsuits, prior to Sam Smith, was between Huey Lewis and Ray Parker, Jr. At this point, he played the bass line from “I Want a New Drug,” and although I had never noticed it before, sure enough, when he got to the end, I wanted to shout, “Ghostbusters!”

But Huey Lewis’s song had been playing on the radio a lot when Ray Parker, Jr. wrote his song, so the copying was pretty obvious. It becomes a little more difficult for some random Italian dude to prove that Michael Jackson had ever even heard his song, much less copied it.

“For instance, my new song,” Piano Man segued. “Were you in here earlier when I played it?”

We assured him we had been, but it was no use, he started playing it again anyway.

“This melody, for instance?” he continued. “It just came to me one day. Can I swear I’ve never heard it before? No. I’m pretty sure I made it up, but it’s very catchy, so maybe I’m not the first person to string it together. It would be hard to prove.”

Uh huh, buddy. Just like my book about a haunted hotel in Colo… I mean, Wyoming, and its caretaker, um, Zack Borrance.

But the Mexican diplomat and the singing copyright lawyer paled in comparison to the star of the trip, someone who I will write about next time.

You’ll have to return next week. The Blog experts call that a teaser.

The Case of the Missing Billy Joel

A.B. Kelly · March 17, 2016 · Blog Entries, Musings · Billy Joel, musician, retired artists, songwriting, Stephen King · One Comment

I’ve been listening to a lot of Billy Joel recently. There was a temporary Billy Joel Channel on Sirius/XM and, shockingly, they played a lot of Billy Joel.

One wouldn’t think it was shocking, but my thought process whenever I got back in my car usually goes something like, “Whoa, Billy Joel is on. Wasn’t Billy Joel just playing when I went in the store? Oh right, Billy Joel channel.”

I’m used to listening to Margaritaville Radio, but that’s only about fifty percent Jimmy Buffett. Maybe because Margaritaville’s a permanent station. Billy Joel Radio’s only had a limited time frame, so it had to be all Billy all the time.

One nice addition to this station is that Billy Joel introduces a lot of his songs and says what went into them. Beautiful nuggets like the song “Honesty,” for which he had the melody before the lyrics. His drummer needed lyrics to figure out how to fill it, so until Billy could come up with lyrics, the drummer was singing “Sodomy.” I guess that would get you writing some lyrics pretty hastily.

Although I think the original title would’ve worked just fine. “Sodomy is such a lonely word… and mostly what I need from you.”

But the most shocking revelation was that Billy Joel hasn’t written a song in twenty-three years.

“That can’t be right,” I thought. “I remember when River of Dreams came out. Since then he’s released…. Well… Nothing that I’ve bought, but I’m sure something.”

I’ll be honest. I haven’t bought many albums since college. But I know they still exist. Paul McCartney released Off the Ground the same year as River of Dreams, and although I haven’t bought any Paul McCartney albums since then, I know there have been some. Evidently the bouncer at the Grammy awards post-party is in the same boat as me.

I just assumed Billy Joel was in the same boat, having gone on to release a whole bunch of albums that I didn’t buy containing songs I hadn’t heard on the radio.

But Billy Joel was not on said boat. The last metaphorical boat he was on was floating down that River of Dreams. And then he went cold turkey. Or cold fish, maybe? To keep the metaphor going.

He even told us that he was done on that album. The last song on his last album was called “Famous Last Words.” The song is all about being done. “These are the last words I have to say/It’s always hard to say goodbye/But now it’s time to put this book away/Ain’t that the story of my life.”

Whoa. Did he just drop the mic on his career a couple decades before dropping the mic was even a thing? Has this ever been done before? An artist just deciding they’re done and telling us as much?

Sure, the Beatles put “The End” at the end of Abbey Road. But then they moved “Her Majesty” after it. Then they released Let it Be after they had broken up. So that kind of killed it.

The last chapter of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is titled “Nothing More to Write,” but I think that was from Huck’s point of view, not Mark Twain’s. If the latter was what was intended, then he fucked up big time because he wrote a lot more books.

Speaking of which, how many books has Stephen King written since he retired? At least ten, I think.

And Stephen King is a good counter-example to Billy Joel. A creative person who said he was finished, yet continued to create. Because how does one really turn that part of their brain off?

Seriously, Billy Joel, how did you do that? Have you really gone through the last two decades without a single idea for a new song?

And Billy Joel wasn’t some one hit wonder. He was not a J.D. Salinger or Harper Lee, who had one big hit then went into seclusion. If Billy Joel had just released “Piano Man,” then went behind closed doors, I could wait patiently until he was on his deathbed when his entire catalog would be released.

I’ve known Tommy Tutone. Tomy Tutone was in a Walkman of mine. You, Billy Joel, are no Tommy Tutone.

Billy Joel had, and I would wager still has, talent for writing songs. He produced twelve albums over a span of twenty years. For a while there, he was producing a new album every eighteen months or so. Then nothing.

On the radio station, he gave a few hints as to how easy it is for him to write songs. He says he has “Magic Fingers,” which thankfully, did not refer to some sex act he uses to get all of those supermodels. Instead, he just plays a chord on a piano, then he moves a finger to make a different sound. Diminished, minor, maybe a flat 7^th. But that new chord puts him in a mood or gives him and idea and he goes from there.

“And that’s how I write songs,” he says, “or how I used to write songs.”

Almost caught yourself there, Billy! I know you’re still writing songs. Where the fuck are they?

One time, he explains, he had a whim to make an homage to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. So he worked on his falsetto. Then he took the Four Seasons song, “Rag Doll,” about a rich boy upset that he can’t date a poor girl, and decided to reverse it. Add in a little biographical info about him using his magical fingers on Elle McPherson and, voila, “Uptown Girl.”

But he didn’t stop there. He kept that jazzy falsetto feel going decided to throw in a few more homages to his musical influences. Take a little Ben E. King, add a dash of Little Richard, mix in some doo-wop style, and before you know it you have one of the definitive and best albums of the 1980s, An Innocent Man. Not only does that album have the aforementioned “Uptown Girl,” and its title song, it also has a minor little ditty called “The Longest Time.” Heard of it? Oh yeah, and “Tell Her About It.” Plus “Keeping the Faith” and “Leave a Tender Moment Alone.” I could go on, but I’d have to divert to explain to my younger readers who Rodney Dangerfield is.

But evidently a guy who can churn out that list of songs in less than a year after releasing Nylon Curtain can’t find a single thing to write about since the first days of the Clinton Administration.

Maybe he believed that the end of the Cold War really was the end of history. A lot of his songs were based on the historical events that happened during his life. Vietnam, the Cold War, and the post-industrial economy. He always said if he hadn’t been a musician, he would’ve liked to be a history teacher. To which I say, “Want to switch?”

But trust me, Billy, there’s a plethora of other history for you there, Billy. I know St. Petersburg is harder to rhyme than Leningrad, but I have faith in you. If you don’t like history, you can try a science fiction song again, like you did in “Miami, 2017.”

Dude, he should so play a concert in Miami next year.

He does still tour, after all. Maybe he knew that concertgoers always hate the new stuff and he didn’t want to give them the opportunity to go to the bathroom during his concerts. Or maybe, as a self-proclaimed social scientist, he foresaw the coming time when musicians didn’t make jack shit from album sales.

Part of me wonders if he’s afraid to go back to writing because of that whole drop-the-mic moment. In a few interviews, he implied that he wasn’t necessarily done forever, but that he was closing that book. There might be more songs in the future, when he’s at a different point in his life. In one interview, he even implied that the title, “Famous Last Words,” was meant to be the sarcastic usage of that phrase. “This is my last cigarette.” “Yeah, famous last words.”

So maybe in 1993, he thought there’d be more writing in the future but as time went on, it became harder and harder to get back to it. Maybe he has some song ideas now, but doesn’t think any of them are worthy of going back on his “Famous Last Words.” If he released a new song now, regardless of how good or bad it might be, there’d be a lot of people who would say “Wow, twenty years away and that’s what you break your silence for?”

I at least have faith that it would be better than Van Roth’s “Tattoo.”

I keep going back to Stephen King. If he had taken a year or two off after his retirement, he might not have come back. Instead, he went back to some of the old ideas he had had earlier in his career. Now that the pressure was off, he could try again and it didn’t matter if he failed. In my opinion, it’s some of his best stuff – I love both Under the Dome and 11/22/63. I don’t love the latter enough to pay Hulu to watch TV shows I can watch for free on demand, but it was a damned good book. I mean, JFK blown away, what else do I have to say?

In fact, that last line might be a little nudge to Billy Joel. Stephen King finally got around to writing a sequel to The Shning. How about a sequel to “We Didn’t Start the Fire?” That’s usually how I start off my history classes. We listen to the song, then I have them look at the lyrics and write another verse . I can forward some of their compositions if you want.

In the meantime, let me help you get started. “No World Series, Nine Eleven, Tupac and Biggie gone to heaven, something, something, bread unleavened.”

Damn, this is hard. Maybe you should just stick to the classics Billy.

“Sing us a song, you’re the Piano Man. Just make sure it ain’t nothing new. Well, we’re all in the mood for a melody. The one you wrote back in ’82.”

Dear Other Former British Colonies,

A.B. Kelly · March 10, 2016 · Blog Entries · Arrogant American, Australia, Canada, celebrities, currency, money, New Zealand · No Comments

So New Zealand’s thinking of changing their flag to take out the Union Jack, huh? I also heard a rumor that Australia was thinking of loosening their ties with the mother country. It’s the very same “mother” that kicked them out eighty years ago, but hey, baby steps. Kind of like when Greg Brady moved his room to the attic. And maybe, if either of these moves prove successful, Canada can take its rightful role of “America’s Hat” instead of “Britain’s Toddler.”

As an arrogant American, if any of this happens, I’d be the first one to say “Welcome to the eighteenth century.”

Early in my teaching career, during one of the seemingly bi-annual budget cuts that schools go through, I started looking at which other countries would accept my teaching credential. When I looked at New Zealand, which I had once spent three days in and absolutely loved, I was disappointed that there was no reciprocity with the United States. They WOULD accept a Canuck Credential, or Aussie or South Africa or any number of other nationalities’. But not a Yank.

I tried to bribe a Canadian official with some maple syrup (“Have you met my friend, Aunt Jemima?”), but no luck.

Those other countries are deemed as “culturally similar” to New Zealand, but the United States is not. Evidently the whole “former British colony” didn’t seep into a people’s culture until 1850.

The whole “asking for your independence” thing makes the Commonwealthers aghast. There’s a certain cultural element to waiting until your parents kick you out of the house. I’m sure we Americans were probably a bit too brash – screaming at our parents and running away from home while still in our formative pre-teen years. But really, Kiwis? Y’all waited till your parents converted your bedroom into a game room. Then you still asked if you could just live in the garage.

And none of you three are even independent now. How do I know? Because you still depend on your parents for money.

And last I checked, all y’all still have the Queen on your money.

You also still celebrate the Queen’s birthday. Although you can’t seem to agree on when said birthday is, and it is nowhere near the actual Queen’s birthday, but that’s a post for another time.

I don’t mean to call the three of you out, but you are aware that Fiji finally got around to taking her off their money, right? This is the same Fiji that proudly made up the phrase “Fiji Time,” meaning “when we get around to it.”

“I thought the bus was supposed to get here at 7:30.”

“Ya, da bus get here at Fiji Time.”

Those people beat you to the whole “putting our own people on our currency” by six years and counting. No pressure.

So the Queen’s still on your money after, what, 85 years of independence? That’s a serious question. When did you three become independent? I tried googling Canadian Independence and Google just laughed at me. Then it gave me a whole range of dates, some as early as 1867, some as late as 1982.

But the year 1931 seems to be a regularly agreed upon date. I assume that’s when Britain made you start paying rent. The earlier date was when she told you to get a job, and it wasn’t until 1982 that you had to start paying for your own insurance.

What? You guys don’t have to pay for insurance? What the fuck?

Regardless, just like you aren’t really an adult until you have your own place, you aren’t really a country until you have money featuring people that live there.

Fortunately, I can help you out with that. After all, I’ve visited ALL THREE countries we are discussing. I don’t think there could be any more qualified person on this planet, Kiwi Teacher Credential Board be damned.

Besides, having an American condescendingly tell you how to run things is another one of those “rites of passage” for being a real country.

Since the Queen is currently among the living, I can only assume you aren’t tied down by that pesky “must be dead to be on our money” rule that ties us down in the United States. If we didn’t have this restriction, I’m sure Britney Spears would be leading Harriet Tubman in that “which woman are we going to put on the three-dollar bill” debate.

So it’s a good thing you guys don’t have that rule. Because I’m not sure I could name any historical figures from any of your countries. Wait, the Crocodile Hunter is dead, right?

So without further ado…

Canada: This one’s a little bit tougher than at first glance. The natural assumption would be to pick a hockey player. That’s the first thing that people think of when they hear Canada. And from what we hear, they are even more popular inside Canada than they are outside.

Sorry, Canada, I meant “ootside.”

There are other Canadian sports figures, too. I would suggest a curler, but the more logical person would be Steve Nash. Not only is he a Canadian athlete, but also owns gyms throughout Canada. On the road to Vancouver, there is a Steve Nash Sports Club right next to a Tim Horton’s, and I think that spot right there is the most Canada spot on the Earth. The only thing that could make it more Canadian would be if, instead of an exact address, it was “Aboot 250 Centre Street.”

Wait, is Tim Horton a real person who can go on your money?

Outside of sports, Canada is known for a number of actors, especially comedians. I think roughly half of the SNL members have been Canucks. It’s a seriously impressive list: Dan Akroyd, Mike Myers, Jim Carrey, Martin Short, Phil Hartman, Norm MacDonald, John Candy, Seth Rogan. Shit, even Dana Carvey was born in Montana, which is effectively Canada.

But how would you even begin to pare that list down? Plus, the unfortunate fact is that most of their memorable characters aren’t Canadian. Mike Myers is known for an English secret agent, a Scottish ogre, and a teenager from Ohio. Dan Akroyd plays an alien and Norm MacDonald was last seen as a dead Kentucky Colonel.

Music? Bryan Adams defined the 1980s and Alanis Morissette took over the 1990s, but they haven’t been heard from since. A friend of mine told me that Rush was Canadian, which I found surprising. Not that Rush has a particular nationality, only that someone would think of Rush when discussing Canada. Or discussing music. Or really at any time, ever. My biggest problem with the book Ready Player One was how the the guy who created the game was a huge Rush fan. Nobody, I thought, is actually a Rush fan. Much less a big Rush fan.

But wouldn’t it be ironic if Canada put Alanis Morissette on their money? Don’t ya think?

Yeah, I’m going with the obvious one here, Canada. Wayne Gretzky’s going on your money. Maybe Mark Messier and Patrick Roy can go on different denominations

New Zealand: Ooo, this one’s a toughie. Google’s already laughed at me once today. I’m not even sure Wikipedia could help me find any famous New Zealanders.

My own personal famous Kiwi was the cute blonde that worked at the Zorb run when I visited, but I don’t think she was quite currency-ready.

You could put the kiwi bird on there. Or the kiwi fruit. Maybe a kiwi bird eating a kiwi fruit? But that sounds more like the back of money. The front really ought to have a person.

You could put the All Blacks on your currency. I’m sure the average Kiwi would know who they are. But when you try to exchange that money anywhere that doesn’t play rugby, people will just be confused. Plus you can’t have someone wearing shorts on your currency. Sorry.

I guess you’ll just have to put the hobbits on your money. The Lord of the Rings movies are what you’re most famous for.

I’ll be nice and let you guys vote on whether you use illustrations from the books or the actual actors. I assume Sean Astin would let his likeness be used.

You might have a little more problem with Orlando Bloom.

Australia: The world is your oyster, Oz.

There really are a shocking number of Australian actors. Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman, both Wolverine AND Thor, not to mention the late Joker. Both of the Crocodiles (Dundee and Hunter). Russell Crowe.

What? Russell Crowe is from New Zealand?

Hold on, let me think.

Nah, New Zealand, you’re still good with Elijah Wood.

And it’s not just actors. Rick Springfield comes from the Land Down Under. As, of course, do Men at Work. So does Kylie Minogue. Most people might throw Kylie into the same category as Rick Springfield and Bryan Adams, as a throwback to the 1980s. Not so. I discovered when I was in Australia that not only is Kylie Minogue still making songs, but the Aussies are fiercely proud of her for it. I’m pretty sure every third song on the radio, and every other video on the TVs at the night clubs, featured the former Locomotion artist.

Keith Urban is the most unlikely Country star ever – not only is “Urban” the worst Country-sounding name, but how the hell does an Australian get a Southern twang?

Actually, there seem to have been a few Aussies who play American cowboys. Like Russell Crowe in “3:10 to Yuma.”

Wait, Russell Crowe is a Kiwi? Are you sure?

And of course, combining singing and acting together is none other than Olivia Newton-John. I could see a full line of paper currency on her career. Maybe the five would show the good Sandy from Grease and the ten would feature naughty leather-clad Sandy. The hundred might have that memorable character from Xanadu. You know the one. Then all the coins would have the fat people working out in the Physical video.

But something’s missing from this whole thing. None of these people fit that international concept of Australia that the Aussies themselves hate so much. Where’s the “shrimp on the barbie?” I don’t see a Bloomin’ Onion anywhere.

And are we going to advertise the new currency with an “It’s Australian for Money” campaign?

You Aussies are known for getting blitzed, right? And being ready to fight at the drop of a hat? Like the time Russell Crowe got in that bar brawl or threatened that one reporter?

Dammit, Russell Crowe was born in Wellington. Wellington is in New Zealand. I can’t be the only one surprised by this.

We’re going to have to combine some of this Oz stuff together, Australia.

Let’s start with Wolverine. I don’t mean Hugh Jackman, I mean the character Wolverine. Sure, in the comics he’s Canadian. But he’s been played by an Aussie twice. Hugh is nice enough to hide his accent, but the Wolverine in the original X-Men cartoon made Steve Irwin sound like a caricature. So let’s go ahead and put him on your money.

So Wolverine snickts out his claws and we throw some shrimp on them. Then we barbie those shrimp over a fire made out of a few dried-out remnants of the Great Barrier Reef. With a Bloomin’ Onion and a Foster’s on the side. With a Kyle Minogue song playing when you take the money out of your wallet, like when you open those greeting cards. The ten can have the relatively tame “Loco-Motion.” Most people gamble with twenties, so those should play “I Should Be So Lucky.” And, giving truth to power, a hundred-dollar note should sing out “Can’t Get You Out of my Head.”

On the back, you could write, “Did You Know… That Russell Crowe is not Australian?”

So you’re welcome, former British colonies.

You’ll definitely want to re-visit this post if Prince Charles outlasts his mother.

Sincerely,

America

The Apple-Google Civil War

A.B. Kelly · March 4, 2016 · Blog Entries, Musings · 4th Amendment, Apple, Civil War, Current Events, FBI, Google · No Comments

So I guess Google is now backing Apple’s encryption fight against the government.

Dammit!

Don’t worry, I’m not coming down on the side of Big Government. I just don’t like to see Google and Apple agreeing on anything. It’s like those episodes of “Tom and Jerry” where the two got along. Nobody likes those.

But Apple and Google playing well together and, even worse, teaming up against the government, destroys my future narrative. I was sure the country was headed toward a Civil War between these two behemoths. Now what am I going to do with this elusive Apple-only virus I’ve been working so diligently on?

Yes, I know there are still great geographical divides between different ways of life. Contrary to President Obama’s inaugural address, we are still a nation of red states and blue states. But I don’t see us resorting to geographic fisticuffs this time around. If Mississippi woke up tomorrow and decided they didn’t want to be American anymore, I think the collective blue state response would be, “Can you take Arkansas with you?”

But mock my android phone? Oh, we’re coming to blows.

Because whether you opt for Apple products or Google products is much more than a geographic choice. It defines your character. It defines your very way of life. It announces whether you want your favorite company to steal your money or your information.

Just like in the first American Civil War, economics trump God and country.

(Oh shit, I said trump. That’s a Civil War that’s not quite as funny to comprehend.)

As a relative moderate on the political scale, I’ve had plenty of arguments with both Democrats and Republicans. Usually those arguments end with something along the lines of, “Well, I don’t agree with you, but it’s an interesting perspective.”

But when I tell an Apple-phile that I like my Android phone? Like, I actually PREFER the phone over an iPhallus?

I get a blank stare back.

Blink. Blink.

“You just mean for the price, right?” They ask.

“No. It swipes better. The widgets are better. The home button works more logically.”

No response.

“Why would I pay twice as much for a product that is obsolete as soon as it comes out?”

“I just…” they’ll respond, “I don’t know how to respond to that.

“Can we talk about something not as controversial, like re-instituting slavery, instead?”

So the two sides seemed to be firmly entrenching themselves for a brother-against-brother battle when the stupid FBI had to get their grubby Fourth Amendment paws involved. Now the iWorld and Chromeland are all peace, love, and understanding.

Dangit, now what am I going to do with all of these non-iPod MP3 players I’ve been stockpiling?

I couldn’t think of the name of any non-iPod MP3 players off the top of my head. Maybe I should google it.

But maybe my dream isn’t too far from happening. Maybe they’re teaming up to get the United States government out of the way before they can truly face off for dominance. Like all dominant civilizations throughout history, they are creating a vacuum of power, then will vie for which worldview will fill that void. Stalin and Caesar both teamed up with others to oust their rival, then turned on their allies.

But who is iStalin? And who is Chrome-zar?

I figure the coming war will be fought primarily on the west coast. In Oregon. They already have a football game there that they call the Civil War for no damn reason. I could understand calling it the Civil War when Kentucky plays Tennessee. Or West Virginia against Virginia.

But Oregon versus Oregon State? Last I checked, there were no fights in Eugene or Corvallis back in the 1860s. Which means they must be referencing some other Civil War. A future Civil War, perhaps.

How would they know where a future war will be fought? Why, a time machine, of course. And if any company has a time machine, it’s Nike. Where else can they find people willing to make shoes for 25-cents a day, but 1875?

So the Google troops will march north from the Silicon Valley to take on the iTroops swarming down from Seattle. Yes, I know Apple is also currently based in Silicon Valley, but I can’t imagine a war would be fought entirely in San Jose. Neither army would even be able to move unless they took public transit. And BART won’t make it that far south until the fifth Civil War.

In my scenario, the Fort Sumter of the Second Civil War would be Google’s storming of Apple HQ. Apple would be ousted from California pretty quickly and have to make amends and take refuge with their old buddies at Microsoft.

How will they be routed so quickly? They weren’t informed of the impending attack because it was posted on Facebook, a natural ally to Google. Or maybe Apple tried to find their way to the battlefield using Apple Maps.

Apple would have some pretty quick victories at the beginning, because they’d schedule an offensive right after the new iGun comes out. Their troops would smugly show off the new weapons they waited in line for three days for.

“Siri, how do I gut a Google prisoner of war?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know which mutt grew more.”

Of course, they wouldn’t realize that the Chromegun that just shot them has had that capability for two months. It might have taken six weeks of that two months for the Verizon people to get it all set up, but the capability’s at least been there.

Verizon is Italy in this war. They’ll play both sides and keep jumping to the side that’s winning.

And Apple wouldn’t help their troops any. They would already have the iGun Plus ready to go, but their marketing department would not let them release it for six months.

Plus another two months while the Verizon worker taps the counter saying, “It just needs to upload your contacts.”

And it’ll be hard for their troops to fight when they’re standing in line for three days waiting for the new iTillery. The new iTillery uses Google Maps to drop a bomb in the right place.

By then they’ll be in quick retreat through Portland.

“Siri, how do I get the patchouli smell out of my iTank?”

But then the northern offensive would sputter out. Google has been selling the location of their troops to the highest bidder. They all get distracted by ads for a lovely bed-and-breakfast near Crater Lake. Google tries to commandeer the Amazon drones to fly new supplies out to their troops, but it’s too late. Troops on both sides are now devoting all of their time to the true victor of this war.

They’re watching video after video on YouTube.

They were really only planning on watching one, but then there was a video just like it on the sidebar, and dammit, now these new videos are just playing by themselves unless you click to stop it.

The videos both sides are watching?

Nike commercials, naturally.

Best Presidents

A.B. Kelly · February 15, 2016 · Blog Entries, Musings · Abraham Lincoln, Best Presidents, Harry Truman, history, James K. Polk, President's Day, Presidents, Teddy Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt · No Comments

A year ago I commemorated Presidents’ Day by shirking conventional wisdom and maligning the mediocre, and in many ways subpar, presidency of one Abraham Lincoln. Since then, there has been a clamoring of demand for my opposite list: “If Abraham Lincoln was not a good president, then who, oh, American-marsupial-who-also-studies-history, do you think is a good president?” And by “clamoring of demand,” I mean one dude clicked “like” on my last post. Anyone want to wager he’s from the South?

Other than Lincoln, my Top Five is going to have some overlap with the “Official Lists.” It’s hard to ignore Jefferson. The Louisiana Purchase might have just fallen in his lap, but still, he had to go against his own beliefs to do it. As a “small government” guy, Jefferson did not think the president had the power to unilaterally make that purchase. But he did it anyway, and if you’re an American west of the Appalachian Mountains today, you can thank him.

Sure, “going against what you stand for” might not be seen as a hallmark of greatness, particularly by today’s standards. But I wish more presidents would put the strength and progress of the nation ahead of your own personal goals and fortunes.

Plus, with that act, Jefferson set the presidential precedent of breaking campaign promises. What could be more American?

The other president that usually appears in most people’s “Best of” list is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Again, this is a hard one to argue against. His leadership during World War II was instrumental, and even if his results in battling the Great Depression were mixed (as was every other non-Dictator’s on the planet), he infused optimism when it was desperately needed.

However, I always take FDR with a grain of salt because of how long he was president. He had three terms compared to everyone else’s one or two. (He was elected to four terms, but died a few months into his fourth term, so that barely counts.) Had he stepped aside in 1940, like every other President in history, would he be remembered as being so great? If all of those pictures of the Big Three victors of WWII featured John Nance Garner or Wendell Willkie, would FDR still be at the top of the list for his Fireside Chats alone? I’m not sure.

So, yes, FDR is one of the best, but he cheated.

Here, then, are my Top Three Presidents. Two of them are not overly surprising, as they usually appear in the second grouping of presidents, with one often “On the Bubble” of the top list. But Number Three is largely forgotten in history, and I’m not sure why.

#3 James K. Polk. The general consensus of historians is that, after Monroe, the only two nineteenth-century presidents of note were Jackson and Lincoln. Not so! Sure there were some abysmal presidencies, but there were a few bright spots. John Tyler had a pretty solid presidency, especially considering he was the first “accidental President” after dumbass William Henry Harrison gave an inaugural address that ended up killing him. Later in the century, the Garfield/Arthur combined presidency as a particularly accomplished one, as well. And not only because it gave us both a hilarious cartoon cat and the greatest sideburns in history.

But Polk stands as the best president of the nineteenth century. He was elected as Manifest Destiny was sweeping the country and he promptly went out and gobbled up the rest of the continent. He annexed Texas and then provoked the Mexican-American War. Maybe that’s seen as too proactive and violent. I guess we like our presidents to sit there and have the war fall in their lap. But at least in the Mexican-American War, we kicked some ass. None of this “almost losing a war in which we have numerical, technological, and economic superiority,” which I like to call the Lincoln Special.

But Polk wasn’t just about war, he was about stretching from sea to shining sea in the most efficient way possible for the United States. Because after winning the war against Mexico, many of his supporters wanted to take on England for the northern half of the Oregon Territory. Ever heard of the motto “54’40 or Fight?” Guess what? We did neither. The border between the United States and what would become Canada was negotiated to be the 49^th Parallel by President Polk. So just like Jefferson, he knew when to tell the stalwarts in his party to shut the fuck up for the good of the nation.

And thank God he did. 54’40 would include all of British Columbia. I mean, there’d be a bunch of Canadians in America. Don’t they drive on the other side of the road? No? Isn’t maple syrup their national drink? Are you sure? Oh, I know! They have the metric system. But wait, they wouldn’t if we had taken them in 1848? Dammit! Stanley Park is beautiful – England, is it too late to renegotiate this thing?

But the most impressive thing about President Polk is that he was only president for four years. One term and he was out. He’s the anti-FDR. Why? Because that was his campaign promise. He said he would only run for president once and he would take over the rest of the continent in that time. And he did.

No wonder he doesn’t make people’s list. Getting shit done and keeping your promises? That, sir, is NOT what we look for in our Presidents.

#2 Harry S. Truman. I understand why Truman was overlooked for most of the last seventy years. He came after FDR, and he made a number of controversial decisions. Correct decisions, but controversial and unpopular at the time.

Nobody knew who Truman was when he became president. FDR had picked him as a new Vice President for his fourth term, so he had only been Veep for a few months when he became President. However, FDR knew he was dying and knew that, for the first time in our history, one person alone was going to pick the next President.

Then again, had FDR told the people that he was on his death bed when he was running for his fourth term, he might have helped Truman’s popularity a little bit when the inevitable happened. It might also have helped if he had mentioned the whole Manhattan Project thing to that hand-picked successor. Ah, FDR – America’s first dictator.

And of course, that pesky Manhattan Project ended up being one of the definitive decisions of Truman’s presidency. I don’t think it was the right call, since Japan seemed willing to surrender. But I still give props to a guy who went from junior Senator from Missouri to Vice President to first new President in many people’s lifetimes in the span of a year to get up to speed and have to make that decision.

But the atomic bomb kind of fell in his lap, and I never like basing the strength of a President on things outside of his control, like the plebians do with Lincoln. So instead I like to point to a few of Truman’s later decisions to judge his fortitude.

Truman went toe to toe with Stalin in the early Cold War, and almost always came out on top. The Berlin Blockade and the crises in Greece and Turkey that led to the Truman Doctrine could easily have gone against him. But he showed the country and the world that we were the new superpower in the world. Sure, the idea of containment would end up biting us in the ass twenty years later, but if Truman hadn’t stood up for Berlin and Greece, there never would’ve even been a South Vietnam for us to fuck up.

President Truman also knew when to back down. In the Korean War, when MacArthur wanted to advance into China, Truman told him no. MacArthur went to the American people, who backed him. A President with less testicular fortitude would have backed down to the experience of the World War II-winning general. But Truman not only stood up to MacArthur, Truman fired him. Whoa!

Again, this was an unpopular decision, but it was the right decision to make. I don’t know how many of the forty-three presidents can consistently say they cared more about the future of the world than the future of their job.

As there are fewer and fewer people who remember Truman, or remember their parents complaining about him, he is slowly starting to rise up most historians’ lists. Hopefully in another twenty years, he’ll take his deserved place near the top.

The opposite seems to be happening for our best president, whose confidence and braggadocio makes many of today’s Americans uncomfortable.

#1 Teddy Roosevelt. How amazing is it that a guy who voluntarily put himself in front of enemy fire just three years before becoming President, then went on to fight monopolies, reform the government, and create the national parks and Panama Canal is usually referred to as the “other Roosevelt.”

Oh, and we also carved his face into a mountain. But that was all before his distant cousin took over and relegated him out of most historians’ Top Five List.

But they are wrong. Instead of Lincoln and FDR, Teddy should be everyone’s definition of a President.

Much like Truman, he was a Vice President who took over after the death of his predecessor. But unlike Truman, he was not hand-picked to be the next President. Quite the opposite. The party bosses were worried about the popular upstart after he brought his own photographer to his Spanish-American War soiree. He had already made some major reforms as New York City Police Chief and then as Governor of New York.

So they put him in the most feeble and pointless job in the United States to stop him from making waves.

Oops.

The weakness of the vice president is predicated upon the president staying alive.

To list the achievements of his seven-year presidency would push this already long entry way past the tl;dr designation. He didn’t sign the Sherman Anti-Trust Act but he swept off the twenty years of dust it had been collecting. Everything from food inspection to civil service itself were greatly solidified under his watch. He even invited Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House, the first African-American to ever have that honor.

He did most of this without overstepping the power of the presidency. Most of reforms either involved enforcing laws that were already on the books or using his popularity to get what he wanted passed in Congress. Some later critics complained about his use of gunboat diplomacy in Panama or his harsh policies dealing with insurrection in the newly-acquired Philippines, but he had to pursue the best goals of his country (See above: Polk, James K.). And, hell, the fact that he only threatened, and didn’t actually attack, Colombia to secure the Panamanian land, made him positively pacifistic by early-20^th Century standards.

More than anything, though, Teddy symbolized how Americans saw ourselves, and how many still see ourselves today. A rugged individual with boundless energy, halfway between city slicker and frontier cowboy. Someone who seized every opportunity given to him, but rarely for personal glory or gain. And someone who rose to the highest position in the country only to blow up the status quo once he was there.

And if only some of our more recent presidents and politicians could remember the first part of his Big Stick adage. Always speak softly.

Bah, Bah, Goo, Goo

A.B. Kelly · February 6, 2016 · Blog Entries, Musings · baby talk, child milestones, child rearing · No Comments

My baby is talking!

My baby is communicating!

Bear in mind, these two usually do not go hand-in-hand.

Hey, it’s not my fault if Daddy and Doggie sound exactly the same coming from her. Aww, my baby’s saying “Daddy” and pointing at me. She loves me. How sweet…. Shit, the dog’s right behind me.

It’s been a slow process. Usually, when she comes up with a new word or gesture, I don’t realize it’s intentional. She repeats it two or three or twenty times, and all of a sudden, I’m like “Yes, that IS the doggie,” and she responds with either a proud gleam or a rolling of the eyes that clearly communicates “Finally, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

It started off subtly. All of a sudden she could understand a lot of what I was saying and even follow directions. Sure, she had been able to understand basic meanings or instructions for a while. But up until a month or so ago, it couldn’t go beyond, “milk?” or “put it there.”

Then one day, in some amalgam of a delaying tactic and a scatterbrained daddy moment, I muttered a string of steps that needed to happen before we went for a walk. “We need to get your shoes and go find a jacket and load the stroller and free the hostages and re-form the Beatles and blah, blah, blah.”

Next thing I know, she’s standing in front of me with her shoes in her hands. Random, I thought, but whatever. I put her shoes on and followed her as she walked back toward the front door. Sitting by the front door was her stroller, upon which she has already placed a jacket. The only thing missing was Ringo Starr.

Whoa, there’s no way she just followed my instructions. Must be a coincidence. But I’m always one for a science experiment, and since there wasn’t any enriched uranium atoms around, what would be the harm in using my daughter as a control group?

“Can you go get your sippy cup from the kitchen and bring it here?” I asked.

And she did. Shitballs! She can understand me! Maybe I shouldn’t be using “Shitballs!” as my primary exclamation anymore.

Before I knew it, the baby was following complex sets of directions. I don’t know that I’d trust her to cut the blue wire, not the red wire, but “go close the door” and “take this spoon to mommy” and “don’t be late for your job at the coal mine” are well within her wheelhouse.

Then came the pointing stage. She communicates like that fake sign language interpreter at Nelson Mandela’s funeral. A typical interaction might start with her pointing to her mouth because she wants to eat, then when I ask what she wants, she runs to the refrigerator. Do you want milk? Shake of head. Yogurt? A pause, then a more subtle shake of the head. A line of cocaine? Emphatic nod.

Everyone knows to store their crank in the fridge, right? That was purple drank in the Sunny D commercials.

Her gestures are not always reactionary, though. She’s a master at curling her hand toward her in a beckoning motion, followed by patting the ground next to her. She wants me to come and sit there. I remember the first time she did this and was shocked at how well it worked.

Let’s see, I beckoned mommy and she came to me, what do I do now? Pat, pat. Momma sat down Let me try it with Daddy. Ooooooooohhhhhh!

At this point her eyes and mouth got very big. She ran up to look me in the face, then turned around, did a U-Turn toward my wife and her mouth grew even wider. Have you ever seen Shaq’s dunk face? If she could speak right now, she’d be screaming “Holy Cunt-ticles!”

I really need to watch what I say around her.

Then came the words. Or maybe “the syllables” would be a better description. Or half-syllables. Sometimes it’s the first half of the syllable, sometimes it’s the second. Two syllable words become one syllable. Kee-ee is kitty. Me can be me or milk. Mo is more, which is code for anything from “I’m hungry” to “Let’s do that again.” No means no, and boy, when she first mastered that word, stomping her foot down with an emphatic “NO!” well, the dark side s strong with this one.

Baa might be bear or might be ball. Baa might also mean sheep, because a sheep says baa. Evidently this is a word. When the doctor asked how many words she can say, we were low-balling it to “properly enunciated words used in the proper context. But the doctor assures us that “If she say ‘moo’ when she sees a picture of a cow, that counts as a word.” Uh huh, Doc, let me explain that to the College Board when she takes her SATs.

One thing I can take credit for is her first compound word, baseball. Or, more precisely, “bay-baw.” It started during the World Series. Then we spent most of November playing MLB: The Show on my Playstation to get her to fall asleep. Like mother, like daughter.

She also says “bay-baw” for football if it’s on the TV. And curling. And, for a while, I’m pretty sure the TV itself was “ba-baw.” This trend has re-emerged now that her favorite TV Show is Bubble Guppies.

My wife says she knows the difference between baseball and football, and that the latter sounds closer to “boo-baw” than “bay-baw.” I’m skeptical, but I should believe my wife, because she’s much better at catching the nuances of baby language. I think the baby’s making random sounds (“eee, eee”), and my wife busts out “She wants cheese,” and the baby nods. Crap, I thought “eee” was the sound a monkey makes. Gonna have to study harder for my own Baby SAT.

Then the baby says “Fucktwat” and I give her a high five for listening to daddy.

Her most recent communicational leap was reached around New Year. The doctor told us to be on the lookout for stringing two words together. And sure enough, her first sentence came out clear as day, while sorting through things with my sister-in-law.

Auntie moved one item from the front of the line to the back of the line. Baby grabbed it from her, then shouted, “NO, MINE!”

I’m patiently awaiting my Parent of the Year Award.

Taking Stock of the Bonds

A.B. Kelly · November 13, 2015 · Blog Entries · Actors, Best and Worst, Daniel Craig, James Bond, Movie Ranking, Pierce Brosnan, Pop Culture, Roger Moore, Sean Connery · No Comments

Time to weigh in on a controversy I wasn’t aware even existed.

I always thought there were certain universal constants. Some facts or central truths that everyone could more or less agree on. That the Earth rotates around the sun, for instance, or that we should all use the Base-10 numbering system.

Or that Sean Connery is the best James Bond.

But it turns out that that last little tidbit isn’t quite as commonly accepted as counting to ten. I recently observed a conversation between my wife, someone tangentially required to be a Bond fan, and a friend of mine who proudly professes herself as a fan of the franchise. I say I observed this conversation, and did not partake in it, because it would have been hard to enunciate with my jaw upon the floor.

“Who’s your favorite James Bond actor?” the agent of Blofeld friend asked.

“Well, my husband says there’s only one answer to that question,” my wide responded. “I know I’m supposed to say Sean Connery, but I’ve always really liked…”

At this point, I think I blacked out. I tried to focus through the haze in my vision, the buzzards flying through my ears. My wife couldn’t have just listed the worst Bond of all time, the one who had made a mockery of the character and the franchise, as her favorite.

“And for looks alone, you’ve gotta love…”

Did she just do it again? Reference my second-least favorite actor? Has she seen the same movies as me? Is it too late to reference George Lazenby in the Pre-Nup?

So I guess it’s now on me to write the definitive list of the six James Bond actors from best to worst. I won’t countdown from last to first, because there shouldn’t be any suspense at the top of the list. I won’t rank (or even reference) every movie, because if I wanted to write 50,000 words and waste fifty hours of my life, I would’ve just done NoNoWriMo . And even if you put a Golden Gun to my head, I wouldn’t be able to recount what happened in The Man with the Golden Gun.

Sean Connery.

Let me put it simply for anyone that is confused: Sean Connery is James Bond and James Bond is Sean Connery.

Go find a James Bond book. Any book. It doesn’t have to be an Ian Fleming one. Now read a passage and try to envision anyone other than Sean Connery as the person performing those actions. It can’t be done. He is the definitive version.

Does it help that he went first? Sure. Does it help that he never shot laser beams in space? Absolutely. Does it help that he was named the Sexiest Man Alive twenty years after leaving the role behind, at the age of sixty? That certainly doesn’t hurt.

When you ask a random person to describe James Bond’s traits, the most common answer is suave. That’s all Connery. Despite our little imagination check two paragraphs ago, it’s not how the character was written. Ian Fleming put a certain vulnerability to the character. He was a flawed man in a flawed world.

But the James Bond that we have come to know is a non-powered superhero. The only time he is vulnerable is when a Russian lady is kicking at him with a poisoned knife or if Goldfinger has a laser pointed at his crotch.

And how does Bond react in that laser scene? Roger Moore would have hammed it up with a few puns. Daniel Craig would have stared down Goldfinger until the opponent withered. Pierce Brosnan would’ve just chilled out and waited for a machine gun or explosion to save him because he’s too attractive and cool to die.

But Connery shows his mind racing while his forehead is sweating.

“You expect me to talk?”

“No, Mr. Bond,” Goldfinger responds in one of the greatest lines in cinematic history, “I expect you to die.”

But Connery talks anyway. He uses his wit before resorting to weapons or gadgets or… whatever the hell Roger Moore uses. What people who grew up with the later Bond actors don’t realize is how understated the character should be.

Some people have said Connery was the least believable Bond in the fight scenes. They’re probably right, but the character isn’t supposed to be a hulking stuntman.

The one major drawback to Connery was that he clearly stopped enjoying it after Thunderball. He kind of mailed in You Only Live Twice, before leaving for one movie and coming back for Diamonds are Forever. And really, we can’t blame him for that last one.

Daniel Craig. I haven’t seen SPECTRE yet, and if it’s as good as Skyfall, I might be willing to put Daniel Craig as 1a.

Remember what I said about Connery creating the movie version of Bond, but not following the book version? Well it took fifty years, but someone finally played the literary James Bond, and that’s Daniel Craig.

The character is supposed to be dark. He should be focused on the task at hand. He should always be wanting out of his lifestyle, but knowing there is no way out. If he’s ever reckless, it’s because he assumes his own mortality, not because he’s an invincible, cavalier playboy.

The definitive Daniel Craig exchange happens not long into his first movie.

“Do you want it shaken or stirred?”

“Do I look like I give a damn?”

Oh, snap! Did he just pull the rug out from every other actor? Because he’s right, James Bond should never have been focused on how his martini is watered down. He’s got way too fucking many things to keep track of and keep his eyes on.

I’ll be honest, when I first heard there was going to be a blond Bond, I thought it was a horrible idea. They should all look as close to the source as possible. But by the time his third movie rolled around, I couldn’t imagine anyone taking over for him. I fear whoever’s next might get the Lazenby treatment.

In fact, I would have loved to see Sean Connery play the caretaker in Skyfall. Even though Albert Finney did a great job, It’s obvious the roll was written with Sir Sean in mind. It would’ve been a cool bury the hatchet/pass the baton moment, but alas, it was not to be.

Allegedly, one of the myriad of reasons they didn’t pursue Connery for the roll was that they didn’t want the sideshow to distract from the main actor. And while that would have been an issue for any other Bond actor, I think Daniel Craig could have held his own starring against Sean Connery. Hell, he held his own against Judi Dench, the best M in history.

My only hope is that Craig is serious about not coming back for a fifth movie. If he wanted to come back, I’d welcome him back. But if he ends up coming back only for the money, he might be tempted to mail it in.

Timothy Dalton. This will be the first surprise on the list for most people.

Timothy Dalton only had two movies, and one of them might be the worst Bond movie of all time. But he was a precursor to Daniel Craig, someone who gave Bond the seriousness and gravitas he deserves, but at a time when people had come to expect nothing but camp from the character.

I feel sorry for Timothy Dalton, as he came into the franchise at a horrible time. Not only was the Cold War wrapping up, but the rights to the character were going through legal issues. The six-year gap between License to Kill and GoldenEye almost killed the franchise.

But it wasn’t Dalton’s fault.

In fact, I’ll put The Living Daylights up as one of the top five or six Bond movies of all time. The Living Daylights had it all. Just enough gadgets and explosions without going overboard. A James Bond that is unflappable and smooth.

Then came License to Kill. Ugh. It was 1989, and although the Wall hadn’t come down when they filmed it, the whole glasnost and perestroika thing was going on. How could they make Gorby the bad guy?

So instead, they made it a personal vendetta story. Yes, I like my Bond dark, just like my coffee. But a rogue agent stalking and killing someone without the backing of the British Secret Service? That’s not dark roast, that’s ground-infested sludge. Bond is a secret agent, not an assassin.

So there’s Dalton for you – one really good movie, one horrible movie, then a legal battle which ensured he couldn’t prove which one was really him. It’s worth noting that Quantum of Solace was Daniel Craig’s second, and worst, film. How much higher esteem would we have for Dalton’s run as James Bond if his third movie had been like Skyfall?

George Lazenby. I might be the only one who feels sorry for Timothy Dalton’s luck and timing, but EVERYONE feels sorry for poor George Lazenby. He never stood a chance.

When Sean Connery announced he would not continue the James Bond role, one of two things was going to happen: either they’d stop making the movies or else he’d have to be replaced. Since they opted for the latter, somebody was going to be the guy that replaced Connery. It didn’t matter what George Lazenby did, or how well he did it, he wasn’t Connery. There’s a reason that almost every Vice President who took over for a dead (or resigned) President didn’t win the next election.

Except for Teddy Roosevelt. And poor George Lazenby is no Teddy Roosevelt.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was one of the last Bond movies I got around to seeing. I assumed it didn’t fit in the grander scheme of movies. It was an anomaly, the answer to a trivia question. George Lazenby was Pete Best. He was New Coke. Why should I bother?

But then I watched it, and guess what? It’s a damned good movie! And George Lazenby? He was solid. I wouldn’t say he knocked it out of the park, but he certainly doesn’t come across as a model who had never acted before, which is precisely what he was.

Then Connery came back for one more movie (not counting Never Say Never Again), and that movie was a sizeable step down.

And in the end, George Lazenby can say one thing that none of the other actors can say – he never made a bad James Bond movie.

Pierce Brosnan. So disappointing to have this guy down this far.

After GoldenEye, I thought the franchise was back on solid footing. Bond was back kicking ass and pleasing every lady in sight. He had just the right amount of smugness. Sure, they had to make the plot based on the Cold War, but this was the first post-USSR movie, so cut them some slack.

I couldn’t wait for him to return.

Maybe he should’ve pulled a Lazenby.

What followed was three movies that were interchangeable. A mishmash of the same tropes and same mailed-in performance. I think it was a trilogy called The World Dies Again Tomorrow.

Am I being harsh? Quick, which one was the one with Denise Richards? And was the one where he got captured in North Korea the same one that had Michelle Yeo? Or was that Terri Hatcher?

That line of reasoning doesn’t hold true with the other actors. If I asked the average fan which Sean Connery movie had Oddjob and which one happened on the Orient Express, it wouldn’t take an imdb.com search.

My biggest problem with the Pierce Brosnan movies is that they turned the character into an action hero. Instead of Bond needing to investigate and unravel a conspiracy that slowly led back to the main villain, it was “Here’s the bad guy. This is where you’ll find him. Now go bang some chicks and blow some shit up for a couple of hours, then get a machine gun and shoot everything.”

I know the actor isn’t responsible for the plot and the script that’s put in front of him. This is an argument that people who like the Worst Bond Ever (see below) point out. Certainly it’s not Pierce Brosnan’s fault that they made the character windsurf down a Melting-Ice-Hotel-Tidal-Wave.

But I have to think they cater some aspects of the script to how the actor wants to play the character. Maybe if Pierce Brosnan had said “Hey, guys, how about if I put the machine gun down and just kick somebody’s ass this once?”

So a brilliant start and then three duds. Even Roger Moore waited until his fourth or fifth movie before he started going through the motions.

Some people still swear by Pierce Brosnan. The next time someone says he was a great Bond, ask them what they liked about him. Then have fun seeing what percentage of their answer comes from his first movie.

Roger Moore. Wow, what can one say about the actor who played the character in more movies than anyone else? Here’s what I say – let’s include Never Say Never Again, so at least “most movies as James Bond” becomes a tie.

Some people say Roger Moore was good at first, but just hung on too long. To them, I say that Man with the Golden Gun was only his second movie.

Others will point out, as I did with Pierce Brosnan, that he can only read the lines that are given to him.

It’s certainly not Roger Moore’s fault that they decided to go into space and make Jaws a recurring character. I doubt even an android love-child of Humphrey Bogart and Robert de Niro could make Octopussy watchable.

But seriously, Roger Moore, get that fucking smirk off your face. James Bond doesn’t smirk, he doesn’t pan to the camera, and he doesn’t speak exclusively in puns and double entendres.

The best example of Roger Moore at his worst was A View to a Kill, his final movie. It should be a damned good movie. Christopher Walken and Grace Jones as the bad guys, with the final fight scene on the Golden Gate Bridge. What’s not to like?

Other than Grandpa Roger Moore bumbling around, completely unbelievable with actresses one-third his age, desperately looking for a camera he can do a half-assed breaking of the fourth wall into.

What if the producers had decided to pull the plug on Roger Moore one movie earlier? Put Timothy Dalton or Pierce Brosnan in that movie and look how much more kick ass it would be. An actor that played a “Not Taking Any Shit” James Bond would’ve added much more gravitas to the batshit crazy that Christopher Walken can play so well.

Let’s take the definitive Roger Moore line from A View to a Kill:

After sleeping with Grace Jones the night before, Christopher Walken asks him if he slept well.

“A little restless, but I…,” eyebrows raised into the camera, “got off… eventually.”

Wow. I made better ejaculation jokes in eighth grade.

Ian Fleming is rolling over in his grave.

Let’s see how later actors would’ve reacted to that script and that scene.

Timothy Dalton would’ve looked at that script, and said, “I’m not saying that. I’ll just say fine.”

Pierce Brosnan would’ve asked if he could just take out a gun and shoot Walken.

And Daniel Craig’s scene would’ve gone something like…

“How’d you sleep, Mr. Bond?”