Tuesday various

  • Is the future of Twitter in code? Orangeman? [via]
  • Though I don’t like it, I’m not diametrically opposed to five-day-only mail delivery. But I’d be screwed if the post office shut down all services on Saturday. That’s the only chance I get to check my post office box, and usually my only chance to mail anything like issues of Kaleidotrope. (Act now if you want a copy then?!) [via]
  • Ah literary ice creams… If only.
  • Homeless Offered Free Airfare To Leave NYC. I’m not really sure what to think about this. On the one hand, it’s an effort to reunite the homeless — many of whom I’m sure are teenage runaways — with family members, who may be better equiped to care for them. On the other hand, it’s shipping the homeless problem out of state to save some money and make them somebody else’s problem.
  • But on a somewhat happier note… It’s not often you read the phrase “aerospace engineer turned composer,” but I enjoyed reading about these failed London musicals [via]:

    A common complaint in the reviews for Too Close to the Sun is that the show doesn’t even fall into the so-bad-it’s-good category – that rarefied realm which made Gone With the Wind and Imagine This instant classics of a sort. Crucial to such flops is a sense of failed grand ambitions, which is why the burning of Atlanta in the first was as hilariously inept as the evocation of life in the Warsaw ghetto in the second. To enter the annals of true awfulness, you need to stake a greater claim on the imagination than was ever going to be proffered by a chamber musical about the waning hours of an American novelist. It would have still been a hard sell on the West End if Elton John had written it. (That, by the way, is not a suggestion.)

A magical mystery tour de force?

So I don’t know what you did all day, but I spent way too much time coming up with fake Beatles facts over on my Twitter account, when I wasn’t working on a student counseling book or attending presentations on magazine publishing. (I hate to jinx myself, but so far this week has bucked a recent trend of very busy Tuesdays and Wednesdays.) Anyway, I don’t usually repost Twitter content here, except in the ever-changing feed in the sidebar, but I got a kick out of writing these and actually think some of them are pretty funny. Your mileage may vary. Here they are:

Contrary to popular belief, and mainly for tax reasons, the bulk of “Yellow Submarine” was not recorded underwater.

“Ringo Starr” is an anagram for “Tsar Nirrog,” betraying the drummer’s shared Russian and Middle-Earthian parentage.

“Fixing a Hole” was inspired by McCartney’s lifelong love of archeology. He was, in fact, later the model for Indiana Jones.

The Beatles were originally known as the Quarrymen, due to their original job as the house band on Tom Baker’s Doctor Who.

Often misquoted as saying “we’re more popular than cheeses now,” Lennon was referring only to Gouda and Gruyère specifically.

Beatlemania is a legitimate psychological condition recognized by the DSM-IV in 1994. There is no known therapeutic cure.

To honor the song of the same name, Liverpool celebrates “eight days a week,” disrupting calendars and the tourist trade both.

“Yo mama” jokes trace their lineage back to the Lennon/McCartney song “Your Mother Should Know.”

John Lennon is, in fact, not a walrus.

In his later years, Ringo Starr would withdraw from recording and society, changing his name to Yusuf Starkey.

The Beatles have yet to release songs to iTunes, still upset about the time Steve Jobs introduced them to marijuana in 1964.

Ringo Starr does indeed have blisters on his fingers, and wanders the English countryside showing them to any who care to see.

“Strawberry Fields Forever” was actually a taunt at the notoriously strawberry-phobic Ringo, who refused to drum on the song.

The Beatles first performed at the Cavern Club, which is where John Lennon took up his life-long passion for spelunking.

Ringo’s dreams of being the first Beatle in space were dashed when Pete Best was launched by the Soviets aboard Sputnik II.

Ed Sullivan first booked the Beatles on his show under the mistaken impression that they were the Flying Wallendas.

Fermat’s Last Theorem, predicting how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall, was finally solved in 1968 by the Beatles.

The Beatles madly loved the Beach Boys’ album Pet Sounds, mistakenly believing that Brian Wilson’s pet dog had played bass.

Though now long forgotten, the real Sgt. Pepper fought valiantly in the War of 1812 and was later knighted by Queen Victoria.

Maxwell’s Silver Hammer is now on display in the Smithsonian, although some conspiracy theorists claim it is a fake.

The Beatles were known for being technologically adept in the studio. On Let it Be, for example, Paul was replaced by a robot.

“Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey”? Not so fast. John Lennon’s monkey was a notorious tax cheat.

“Hey Jude” was a sly tribute to American comedienne and accordionist Judy Tenuta. Ringo was allegedly a fan.

Charles Manson found inspiration in “Helter Skelter,” but Ringo’s own “Octopus’s Garden”-style murder rampage went unremarked.

Mr. Kite has actually not benefited at all from the Beatles, despite years of painful contract and royalty arbitration.

“Mean Mr. Mustard” would be the Beatles’ first and only commercial jingle, a failed attempt to market Grey Poupon to teens.

I don’t know if I amused more than annoyed my Twitter followers with these today, but I had fun with them.

The Ten-Per-Cent Solution

Teresa Nielsen Hayden is absolutely right, this is what editing is all about:

Yes, you get cynical, because you see one submission after another that says “Read this, it’s great!” Only it’s not great, it’s anything but great, it’s passable at best; and the passable ones are a tiny fraction of the many, many, many submissions you see. Then one year you open yetanotherenvelope, and ZOMFG it’s the real thing!!! Overcome with joy, you fall over backward and wave your arms and legs in the air in that wholly ravished “Do with me what you will” kind of way. OMG OMG OMG it’s Maureen McHugh, it’s Stephan Zielinski, it’s Jo Walton, it’s wonder beyond reckoning. It’s the real thing. It’s what you live for.

She brings it up in response to all the hoopla surrounding Susan Boyle’s stunning recent performance on Britain’s Got Talent. Sometimes, real talent just gobsmacks you upside the head. If Sturgeon’s Law applies — and it seems to apply nowhere so well as in the fiction slush pile, let me tell you — you can’t help but be floored when you’re lucky enough to stumble upon that ten percent that isn’t crud.

There is the question, of course, of whether we should be so surprised what that non-crud comes from someone like Susan Boyle. Do we find her story uplifting because she has a beautiful voice, or because we think she looks like somebody who almost certainly couldn’t? On this week’s Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, guest panelist Tom Bodett joked that the moment he teared up at Boyle’s performance was “when I questioned my own moral character.” It’s that subtext of “oh wow, ugly people can do beautiful things” that he found disconcerting. Host Peter Sagal quipped, “Tom, if it wasn’t for ugly people doing worthwhile things, there’d be no radio.”

But I think it’s a valid concern, and it’s one that’s echoed by Dennis Palumbo, who asks the very simple question: What if Susan Boyle couldn’t sing?

The unspoken message of this whole episode is that, since Susan Boyle has a wonderful talent, we were wrong to judge her based on her looks and demeanor. Meaning what? That if she couldn’t sing so well, we were correct to judge her on that basis? That demeaning someone whose looks don’t match our impossible, media-reinforced standards of beauty is perfectly okay, unless some mitigating circumstance makes us re-think our opinion?

Real talent is rare enough without the assumption that it can only come in certain packages. If ninety percent of everything is crud, why on earth would you want to further limit your sample size like that? It can be exhausting to wade through that ninety percent — most of it well-meaning, honestly attempted, but crud nonetheless — but imagine missing the opportunity to discover those ten-percent gems!

Of course, there are plenty of cynics ready to say those gems are ersatz, to call bullshit when something seems too perfect, too good. And maybe that’s okay; a healthy dose of cynicism is necessary for survival sometimes. Personally, I happen to think Boyle is the real thing. Maybe there’s some spin after the fact, and maybe Simon Cowell was feigning his surprise. But you know what? Who cares? The woman can sing.

Feeling slightly meme-ish

Via Glen and Thud comes this odd little musical meme:

Using ONLY SONG TITLES from ONE artist, and cleverly answer these questions below. Make sure you send a copy to me when you respond. Do not use the same artist as I did or duplicate song titles.

All of these songs are by the Beatles.

Are you a male or female: Nowhere Man
Describe yourself: Mother Nature’s Son
How do you feel about yourself? I’m So Tired
Describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriend: For No One
Describe your current boy/girl situation: Got to Get You Into My Life
Describe your current location: The Fool on the Hill
Describe where you want to be: Here, There, and Everywhere
Your best friend: With a Little Help From My Friends
Your favorite color is: Yer Blues [I don’t think they ever recorded a song with “Green” in the title]
You know that: Tomorrow Never Knows
What’s the weather like? Getting Better
If your life was a television show what would it be called? The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill
What is life to you? We Can Work it Out
What is the best advice you have to give? Let it Be
If you could change your name what would it be? Rocky Raccoon

Friday Night Video

Melodies derived from stock charts:

Via Gerry Canavan.

I’m immediately reminded of these videos of classic hits as interpreted by Microsoft Songsmith — seriously, some of those are wonderfully awful — as well as by people who’ve taken Ze Frank’s already weird voice-based drawing toy and adapted it to interpret popular music.

In general, I’m interested in people who take tools and turn them towards completely unexpected purposes.