Volume 6, Number 8  Friday, March 4, 2005

Randomotomy (With A Ballpoint Pen)

I've been noticing lately how often I'll start a sentence with, "My problem is ..." Like I only have one problem ...

I appreciate the role that the coffeehouse has played in the evolution of folk music and the role of singer-songwriters in popular culture today, so I will never begrudge an aspiring young musician the right to sing any song from behind the coffeehouse mic. And I certainly don't want to sound like a bitter curmudgeon, for while some days I'm bitter, and some days I'm a curmudgeon, I am rarely both. But seriously, people, just because you slow down your covers of the Sheryl Crow songbook to the sort of tortoise tempo at which people can conduct entire conversations between verses doesn't make your version of the song an "interpretation" -- or, for that matter, meaningful ...

So the Pope had a tracheotomy last weekend to relieve his breathing difficulties. This is probably just me, and I mean no disrespect toward his Holiness whatsoever when I say this, but whenever I hear about a tracheotomy, I think about the episode of M*A*S*H where Hawkeye guides Father Mulcahy over the radio through an emergency tracheotomy with a ballpoint pen...

Speaking of meaningful songs, I suspect I'm not the only one with that incredibly inane song, "Over And Over," by Nelly and Tim McGraw, stuck in my head. I'm pretty sure it's the longest, most repetitive song ever, but what I'm really wondering is, do they get some sort of mention in the Guinness Book for being the first Country/Rap duo to record together? I mean, clearly there's some sort of cultural significance there, right? Or was there some Dolly Parton/Public Enemy duet from the early 80s that I'm not remembering? ...

One of these days, I'm going to stop being amazed at how much Google has changed the way we access information, but for now, I still marvel at it. For example, when I was talking about the tracheotomy, I knew it was M*A*S*H and I knew it involved a ballpoint pen, but I actually thought it was Hawkeye performing the tracheotomy, and I could never have told you what season it was, let alone what episode. But I Googled "mash tracheotomy ballpoint pen," and .35 seconds later, I had a link that told me it was actually Father Mulcahy, so then I Googled "mash tracheotomy father mulcahy," and .19 seconds later, I had three sites giving me the exact episode (Season 5, Episode 104, "Mulcahy's War," aired November 16, 1976) in which it happened. All told, we're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of one second to find this information. One second! Pre-Google -- and yes, I remember Yahoo!, Lycos, and all those other bubble-era relics, but none of them gave me the accessibility Google does, unless you're talking about pictures of Anna Kournikova -- I would never have found out the exact episode. I probably wouldn't have even found out that it was Father Mulcahy performing the surgery. I mean, even if I'd had an idea of where to look, I certainly wouldn't have been willing to put forth the effort to actually do the looking. What this means, of course, is that Google is slowly eliminating the need for a work ethic. I mean, think about it -- billions of pieces of useless information are instantly accessible to you right now, no matter how lazy you are ...

Speaking of TV, I've been watching a lot of Clean Sweep lately, partly because I can TiVo it, mostly because I've been feeling a little unorganized, and generally because I've been hoping for some inspiration to attack the disaster that continues to be my office. And while I have learned many things from this show (rooms with white walls look messy, but rooms with olive-colored walls look organized; never try to convince an Australian man that you really need all of those purses; you can build just about anything if you have the right nail gun), one lesson supersedes all others -- never buy exercise equipment. Honestly, I think the Clean Sweep scouts come to your house to make sure you have some sort of treadmill or Bowflex machine that you haven't used for anything other than a clothes rack in three years before they'll agree to actually come and Clean Sweep your home. And every time, that exercise equipment ends up getting sold at the yard sale for something like twenty bucks. It's like an anti-commercial for exercise equipment. I'm expecting to hear that NordicTrack has filed a conspiracy to commit bankruptcy lawsuit any day now ...

Speaking of TiVo, I was reminded last Sunday of why I so rarely watch the Oscars, and why I will never watch them again without the benefit of TiVo. The main reason I even considered watching was because I wanted to see what Chris Rock had to say, but who has the patience to invest three-plus hours of their lives for maybe 20 minutes of Chris Rock's best PG-13 material? I know I don't. And with majority of the rest of the three hours filled with awards given to people I'd never heard of for movies I'd never seen, Beyonce trying to sing in French, and celebrity presenters in bizarro dresses struggling to read their impossibly corny lines from cue cards, it's no wonder ABC's worried about the ratings -- the show is practically unwatchable. Seriously, aren't these presenters actors? Can't they memorize a few lines? But if they want to really boost ratings, they need to scrap the current format and just put an Oscar highlight show on the air. They can still have the whole ridiculous event as is, so all the celebrities can feel good about themselves, but just give the rest of us about an hour -- the six or seven Oscars people actually care about, all of Chris Rock's stuff, any award where Al Pacino's presenting, and a few Salma Hayek cleavage shots. I'm telling you, ratings would soar ...

I go back and forth on this one, but at least today, I think the song "Pink Cookies in a Plastic Bag Getting Crushed by Buildings" by LL Cool J is, like, the best song ever written about pink cookies in a plastic bag getting crushed by buildings ...