gee bobg

Andrea has continued beating the drum for planning a family trip to Disneyland soon, and with the kids in the prolonged grip of a combined Pirates of the Caribbean and Peter Pan frenzy I am similarly inclined. There’s just one problem: Disney is the enemy and I will not give them aid or comfort.

They have an excellent chance to redeem themselves by firing the jerk who said that the mainstream media is too liberal and it’s his job to slant news coverage to the right “so conservatives don’t have to be concerned.” That jerk is Mark Halperin, ABC’s political director. (ABC is owned by Disney.)

The major news organizations in this country have forgotten that it’s their job to be adversarial. To promise one group or another that they “don’t have to be concerned” is to abandon the mantle of journalism.

Mark Halperin must go. With that one gesture I would be willing to let bygones be bygones.

Well Disney? The country seems to be getting ready to return from its wandering in the arch-conservative wilderness. Will you get back in touch with the real Main Street U.S.A. or ride the Republican machine over the impending cliff? One family’s vacation plans, and the health of our republic, hang in the balance.

No sooner did I write my blog post, “Us and Them,” on Friday — which, though it didn’t come right out and say so, was in part a screed against prejudice — than I happened to hear a much more eloquent plea about tolerance from none other than Vincent Price.

It came at the end of a radio episode of The Adventures of The Saint circa 1950, one of several that I discovered online last week.

Few people know The Saint as anything other than the Roger Moore TV show from the 1960’s, or the forgettable Val Kilmer film from 1997. But the character was created in his first (and best) form in a series of pulp adventure stories by author Leslie Charteris starting in 1928. In high school and college I devoured every Saint story I could find. Although in later years The Saint became a more conventional kind of detective/spy character, in his first decade or so he was much more like Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood — battling (and often profiting from) criminals, crooked politicians, evil industrialists, war profiteers, and their ilk with a unique and hugely entertaining style. (Indeed, the radio show announcer presents The Saint as “The Robin Hood of modern crime.”) You might not have thought it possible to set a swashbuckling adventure in the streets of 1930’s London, but that’s exactly what Charteris did.

Of the radio episodes I’ve heard so far, a couple are typical murder mysteries, but one (“Death of the Saint”) retains the “gay adventurer” flavor of the early Saint stories. (How I lament the loss of the old meaning of “gay.” No other word quite captures what “gay” used to mean. There’s “carefree” and “insouciant,” but those sound so, well, gay.) Vincent Price is excellent throughout, making easy work of the wordy banter that is one of the great pleasures of Saint stories; plus it’s fun to hear the mid-20th-century state of the art of what is now an all but defunct art form.

Price arranged to deliver a public-service message at the ends of some of his shows. One was on behalf of the Red Cross’s then-fledgling blood program. The following came at the end of the episode, “Author of Murder,” about a poisoning plot. Tinged though it is with nascent red-menace language, it is still relevant, and I found it particularly remarkable. It was not sponsored by any corporation nor was it government propaganda; no standards-and-practices board mandated its inclusion. It appears just to have been what was on Vincent Price’s mind at the time. Can you imagine if today’s TV stars used their shows as platforms to discuss their own civic-minded causes?

Ladies and gentlemen, poison doesn’t always come in bottles. And it isn’t always marked with the skull and crossbones of danger. Poison can take the form of words and phrases and acts: the venom of racial and religious hatred. Here in the United States, perhaps more than ever before, we must learn to recognize the poison of prejudice and to discover the antidote to its dangerous effects. Evidences of racial and religious hatred in our country place a potent weapon in the hands of our enemies, providing them with the ammunition of criticism. Moreover, group hatred menaces the entire fabric of democratic life. As for the antidote: you can fight prejudice, first by recognizing it for what it is, and second by actively accepting or rejecting people on their individual worth, and by speaking up against prejudice and for understanding. Remember, freedom and prejudice can’t exist side by side. If you choose freedom, fight prejudice.

[Reproduced and edited from e-mail.]

In our last episode, I co-founded the Internet Movie Database. The IMDb team consisted of 15 or 20 film geeks scattered around the globe. We were a “virtual company,” coordinating all our activity via e-mail and the rare conference call. Of all the team members, I was the only one in Northern California and thus became the IMDb’s representative at the first Webby Awards ceremony in 1997.

Andrea and I prepared by shopping for new clothes; the invitation instructed us to “dress swanky.” I wrote and rehearsed an acceptance speech just in case the IMDb beat the other four sites nominated in the Film category.

The dot-com boom had not yet really begun in earnest, and so I was surprised to see that many large corporate sponsors were behind the awards ceremony; several “celebrity judges” had voted on the winners; San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was the official “welcomer”; and it was slated to be telecast on KRON, PBS, and The Discovery Channel. For a bunch of computer geeks it was an unaccustomed level of attention and glamour, but not unwelcome. With this event, the revenge of the nerds had officially begun.

When I saw all the trendy corporate sponsors with their brands emblazoned here and there at the club, I despaired of our chances of winning. I was sure that the fix was in, and only the moneyed sites would be walking away with the awards. The IMDb was strictly an enthusiast site, not part of a big media conglomerate.

We arrived at Bimbo’s 365 Club a little after 8pm. Being nominees, we were allowed to bypass the long queue of people waiting to get in. We saw a line of limousines dropping off dignitaries. Big searchlights shone upwards to mark the location of the event.

Inside, we received our “nominee” badges and drink tokens. We milled about along with a large number of trendy Multimedia Gulch folks. I’d been to Bimbo’s a few times before, but this was the first time I’d seen all the rooms of the club open and in use.

In the main room, a swing band was playing dance tunes. Andrea and I found a table and had a couple of drinks. I took a last look at my speech, which by now I had comfortably memorized.

The event began. Mayor Brown came out to say a few words about how he loved The Web magazine (which had organized the show), how proud he was that San Francisco was hosting this event, the first of its kind, and so on. He told a couple of good jokes, too, which I promptly forgot. Mayor Brown was something of a national celebrity, and in person it was easy to understand his legendary charm.

The mistress of ceremonies, columnist and playwright Cintra Wilson, then came out, made a few very funny remarks, and got the show under way. Her first rule was that, to keep things moving along, winners would be limited to an acceptance speech of no longer than five words! I tore up my speech — oh well!

There followed a rapid-fire sequence of category and nominee announcements, followed by winners and very quick acceptances. Film was the third category and the IMDb won! I ran up on stage and got a kiss and a trophy. Then I thanked our many thousands of contributors over the past seven years (in almost as many words) and ran off. It was very exciting. As I left the stage, some guy pulled me aside and told me to join the “winners’ circle” in the lounge after the ceremony.

The trophy itself was ugly as sin and tremendously heavy — cubical black base made of solid neutronium, near as I could tell, with a badly-etched plaque stuck on it and supporting a freakish oblong colored glass ovoid, which actually looked kind of cool at one point when I set it down on a table and some light came from behind it. The fifteen winners hefted their trophies around the club like Sisyphus. Some who weren’t careful enough with theirs found that the glass ovoid snapped easily off of the base.

Most of what followed was a blur because I was so thrilled at having won. I do remember the presentation for the best Sex site, though. One of the guys from Bianca’s Smut Shack who came up on stage to accept their award was wearing a Hugh Hefner style robe, smoking a pipe. Big laughs.

After the ceremony, we milled about some more and made our way to the lounge, where several camera crews were at work. Production people from various TV shows asked me to stick around so I could be interviewed. While waiting, Andrea and I met Mayor Brown. He was talking to a woman who had also won a Webby. He asked her in what category she’d won. “Politics,” she said. Mayor Brown turned to me and said, in mock confidentiality, “I want to see the people who won for their sex site!” I thought, “He’d get my vote, if I lived in San Francisco.”

Then I met an interviewer from a Web-related program on PBS. I underwent a very short interview in which I waxed enthusiastic about having won, espoused the IMDb philosophy (i.e., by film fans, for film fans), described the site, and said a few words about the team. I managed to work in much of what had been in my acceptance speech.

After that, there were two more interviews that were almost identical in content. One was for The Discovery Channel’s web show. The other was for C|net. The Discovery folks told me that my footage would be edited into a segment they’d already done about how the IMDb blows away the corporate movie sites. Some PC magazine reporters spoke to me too.

Andrea and I stuck around for a little while longer as the interviewing wound down and music, dancing, and drinking picked up again. Then we left, drove across town, and had a bite to eat at Mel’s Drive-In — suitable, I thought, since it was the setting for a movie (namely, American Graffiti).

It was great fun. Andrea and I resolved to embark on a career of ingratiating ourselves with politicians, celebrities, and captains of industry in order to get invited to events like this all the time. And in fact we did show up for the 1998 and 1999 Webbies…

(…to be continued…)

A week ago, Andrea and I learned of the existence of The Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia. So this past week we finally gave Jonah and Archer the Pez dispensers (Batman and Spider-Man) that my mom sent them for Christmas last year and that we withheld because we’re mean rotten parents. We also introduced them to Colorforms, which the museum also exhibits (in addition to a handful of other classic toys). Then, on Saturday, we visited the museum.

It’s small but great! Don’t plan to spend more than fifteen or twenty minutes there, but while there you may get a guided tour like we did and learn some truly fascinating Pez arcana. (Pez arcana spoilers [highlight to read]: Pez is made in Austria and was originally available only in peppermint [you get "Pez" by abbreviating "Pfefferminz"]; they were first sold in little tins like modern Altoids; the first Pez dispensers were headless.) You’ll also see the short-lived 1950’s era Pez “guns,” perfect for (in the words of our guide) shooting your friends in the head with Pez, and now the object of my sons’ keenest desires.

After viewing the exhibits, we shopped the museum’s Pez store. I spotted a “complete collection” of Incredibles Pez dispensers. It contained Mr. Incredible, Elasti-Girl, Dash, and Jack-Jack. I asked the owner/curator/tour guide, “Where’s Violet?” He said, “Everyone asks about that. They never made a Violet for some reason.” I joked, “Maybe she’s invisible.” He said, “Everyone says that too.”

It seems the Disney theme parks are collecting visitors’ fingerprints and being unclear about the uses to which they plan to put them.

For someone who’s sensitive to privacy issues, this news is a clear catastrophe, but to everyday folk the problem may not be so obvious. Cory Doctorow nails it when he writes,

Now that our national immune system has begun to attack us in a terrible anaphylactic spasm — indiscriminate NSA wiretaps, meaningless TSA security theater, secret aviation rules and no-fly lists, “free speech zones,” suspension of habeas corpus and all the rest — it’s absolutely irresponsible to gather this kind of information and leave it where the savage toddlers of the national security apparat might find it and wreak havoc with it.

For me, the worst part of this is that it conditions us to get used to being treated like crooks.

This news comes at a time when Andrea and I are feeling a mounting urge to visit Disneyland. Not only do we have vouchers for free airline tickets that expire on October 31st; not only would we get to see new-family-member Pamela and celebrity-friend Eli; but we haven’t been to a Disney property in three years, which is a long time for us; and Jonah, who was one and a half then, is one up on Archer, who’s never been!

Yet Disney keeps giving us reasons to stay away. The fingerprint news comes on the heels of this:

New ABC Docudrama Blames Clinton For 9/11, Praises Bush

On September 10 and 11, ABC will air a “docudrama” called “The Path to 9/11.” It was written by Cyrus Nowrasteh, who [...] is giving interviews to hard-right sites like FrontPageMag to promote the film.

ABC is owned by Disney.

What to do? Hell, we were married at Disneyworld! We were at California Adventure on opening day! (We were two of the few.) The very first thing I ever gave to Andrea was a little Thumper doll! Might as well face it: we’re Disney freaks. Stay away from Disneyland? Stay away from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride just when Jonah’s and Archer’s interest in pirates is peaking?

In an earlier time I might have threatened to disconnect my cable TV instead. But that trigger can only be pulled once. If I want to punish ABC and Disney for these errors in judgment — and I do — about the only good option left is to vote with my wallet and boycott the company.

Or — here’s an idea — I can write a blog post convincing a bunch of you Gentle Readers to boycott Disney yourselves… so Andrea and I can feel better about it when some latex-gloved Disney gate attendant swabs our cheeks to match the DNA on our Park Hopper passes.

I’ve resurrected another post from my defunct old website in response to a Ken Jennings blog topic — this one about a puzzle that obsessed him as a kid.

The one that obsessed me for a while in seventh grade was in Games magazine, and it led more or less directly to my present career as a computer programmer. It was called The Calculatrivia Marathon.

---

In late 1978, shortly after I began attending Hunter College High School, Games Magazine published a contest that it called “The First — and Maybe the Last — Calculatrivia Marathon.” First prize was:

A 16K Apple II Home Computer System (with both integer and floating point BASIC in ROM, RF modulator, and cassette tape recorder)

The contest consisted of dozens of trivia questions, each of whose answer was a number. Entrants were required to answer all the questions, then plug the resulting numbers into a fearsome-looking mathematical formula to determine the value of “x.”

I don’t know exactly why this contest captured my imagination, nor why the first prize was so appealing to me (I had no particular interest in computers before then) — but it did, and it was. I set to the task with a single-mindedness that my new teachers wished I would devote to my homework.

At one point I got stuck on the question, “Number of Best Actress Oscars won by Katharine Hepburn.” (Little did I imagine then that in the future I would become involved with The Internet Movie Database, which can supply that answer in a matter of seconds. But in 1978 there was no World Wide Web and we had to do research the old-fashioned way.) I called the research librarian at the New York Public Library and asked the question, and was amazed when the librarian replied without hesitation, “I’m sorry, I can’t answer that; it’s a contest question.” Did they somehow keep track of all the trivia contests going on in the world? Well, I guess that’s what made them research librarians at the prestigious New York Public Library. I tried a research desk at a less prestigious library and got my answer. (Three, at the time; she later earned a fourth for On Golden Pond.)

After I assembled all my trivia answers, I consulted my math teacher, Ms. Krilov, for help in interpreting the formula. At the tender age of twelve, you see, I’d never seen a fraction with another fraction in the numerator or denominator. After that was cleared up, I plugged in my numbers and began calculating.

The first two or three times I got totally different answers. But in the end I got a number I could feel pretty confident about. It was something like 117345.0625.

The contest had been hard, very hard — and I had finished it. Surely only a very few others had gotten as far as I had? My chances of winning the grand prize were clearly very, very good. Of course, I had no idea what such phrases as “BASIC in ROM” meant. During the few months before the contest winner was announced, I went to the school library and checked out “A Basic Approach to BASIC,” by Henry Mullish, and read it cover-to-cover. Then I read it again. When it was due back, I re-checked it out.

In this way, while waiting to hear from Games Magazine, I learned to write computer programs; and today, programming is my livelihood and my chief avocation.

In the end, I didn’t win — my answer wasn’t even right. That might have been the end of my programming career right there, but for my new friend Chuck and his dad’s home computer…