250 Words on Patterns

[Note from Brian: I’m changing the day I post these from Monday to Tuesday. I don’t know about you, but my to-do list is packed on Monday morning, and I wouldn’t want to be lost in the shuffle.]

People are pattern-finding engines. It’s our great gift and curse.

Understanding “If X then Y” led to agriculture, industry, science, civilization. It also led to sacrificing goats to appease the rain gods because that one time we sacrificed a goat it rained.

Among my earliest memories is being entranced by patterns. In kindergarten, laying out wood tiles to make roads and railways. Spreading dominoes across the floor, not to play the game but to connect all the numbers in intricate fractals. When my grandmother gave me a bag of clothespins, I’d stay busy and quiet clipping them together in spirals and arches for hours. 

Yes, children of the 21st century, this is what kids had for fun in the mid-20th: clothespins. If we were lucky, rocks and sticks. 

Peek-a-boo is the prototypical pattern-finding activity. Cover your face and then reveal the same expression a few times in a row. On the next reveal, stick out your tongue. Even an infant will laugh because they perceived the pattern and then you broke it, subverting expectations, which is the basis for much humor. Peek-a-boo may be our species’ first joke.*

I think being able to recognize patterns, and then discern the difference between true and false patterns, is fundamental to being a good, informed human and citizen. Distinguishing between goat sacrifice and the scientific method, or being able to spot pattern-breaking lies, hypocrisies and scams, is our gift and responsibility. 

If only it were more common.

* Either that or a fart.

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It's Sentimental, I Know

If you're playing along at home, in previous posts I arrogantly confidently declared that there are only four good Christmas songs. The Top Three are "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" by Judy Garland, "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" by Darlene Love, and "River" by Joni Mitchell. 

Now, who could argue with those?

I expect my fourth pick to be both unknown to many of you and more controversial: "White Wine in the Sun" by Tim Minchin.

"Controversial" because Minchin is an Australian atheist, so his song has neither conventional snow-covered sleigh-bell escapades--Christmas being in the summer down under--nor paeans to the holy babe in a manger. "White Wine in the Sun" acknowledges that, and then asks: if you take away the traditional trappings and reasons for the season, what do you have left? Minchin's answer: still something pretty great and worth celebrating. 

I admit that this probably isn't a tune you'll add to your Christmas party playlist, but I make a point to listen to it at least a couple of times per holiday season. I think about my kids and family, and people who aren't here anymore. Like my other three choices, it makes me happy and sad at the same time.

Maybe that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

I hope you have a good one.

The Trump of Doom!

 Friday the 13th actually falls on a Friday this month, which makes today the rare perfect day to brag (not "humble brag," this is just a straight-up "brag brag") that I own the original art to this "Pogo" comic strip celebrating cartoonist Walt Kelly's favorite date. You can see the blue pencil underdrawing in this scan (the actual strip is four panels across; I stacked it 2x2 to fit better on the Web). 

The "Pogo" characters' terror of Friday the 13th was a running gag of Kelly's. If the 13th didn't happen to fall on a Friday, that just proved how sneaky it was, while a 13th that coincided with a Friday was a perfect storm of misfortune. Such whimsical foolishness is one of the reasons "Pogo" and Kelly are among my Top Five favorite comic strips and cartoonists, respectively.

I Would Teach My Feet to Fly

In recent posts I've declared, based on no evidence or rigorous argument whatever, that there are only four good Christmas songs, and that "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" by Judy Garland and "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" by Darlene Love are Numbers One and Two, respectively. 

Number Three is "River" by Joni Mitchell.

"River" is barely a Christmas song, despite opening with the lyrics "It's comin' on Christmas, they're cutting down trees, they're putting up reindeer and singing songs of joy and peace," sung to a mournful off-key variation of "Jingle Bells" (which itself isn't necessarily a Christmas song, either). Although Mitchell recorded "River" in 1971, it didn't take off as a holiday standard until Linda Ronstadt covered it in her album "Merry Little Christmas" in 2000. 

Still . . . It has everything I look for in a Christmas song. Melancholy. Nostalgia. Lamenting lost love. Longing for simpler times in a different place with deeper roots.

When she wrote "River," Mitchell was a Canadian transplant living in Los Angeles. Aside from being an emotionally raw break-up song, "River" has a deep undercurrent of homesickness, too. I relate. I lived my childhood in South Dakota, where we had prodigious snowfall and really did skate on frozen ponds. Then I moved to a part of northern California where it never snows. It's not quite as dramatic as the contrast between Mitchell's hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and sunny southern California, but every winter I get wistful. Christmas just isn't Christmas to me if you can go outdoors in a short-sleeved shirt. 

More than 400 other artists have recorded versions of "River," and Rolling Stone magazine ranked it number 247 on its list of "500 Best Songs of All Time." Plus: it's Joni Mitchell. Hard to go wrong. 

 

Baby Please Come Home

A few days ago, I declared that there are only four good Christmas songs. Despite hearing from many who suggested other tunes I should give a chance, I stand by that. The best Christmas song is "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" by Judy Garland. Accept no substitutes. 

The second best is "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" by Darlene Love, and I have to explain that my opinion is completely colored by watching Love's many joyful, soulful performances of the song on David Letterman's late-night TV programs. First in 1986, and then from 1994 through 2014, Letterman ended his last show before Christmas break with Love belting out the song she first recorded in 1963.

Every year, Letterman's band and stage crew made each performance more spectacular than the last while staying faithful to the original song. To that end, Letterman's bandleader, Paul Shaffer, bought the baritone saxophone that Wrecking Crew session player Steve Douglas played on the original record from Douglas's estate. When Shaffer's saxophonist, Bruce Kapler, said he'd have his horn mechanic fix it up, Shaffer said, "Just don't take out any of the dents." Aside from not wanting to affect the instrument's unique sound, Shaffer explained that one of the dents was acquired when Elvis knocked it over during the filming of "Jailhouse Rock." When Kapler steps forward for his sax solo, that's the real deal.

The annual performance also gave Love, who in 1986 was largely forgotten, a new late-in-life career. She is currently 83 and still singing, acting, and receiving all the accolades she's due.

Historical trivia: one of Love's background singers in 1963 was a 17-year-old Cher.

Darlene Love with Cher in 1963.
The guy in the shades is producer Phil Spector.

On its own merits, "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" is the rare Christmas song that legitimately rocks. If you were in that theater, you'd be on your feet! It's got that hint of melancholy I appreciate, telling a story of lovers separated during the holidays. In addition, Love's Letterman performances are a link to half a century of popular music, plus a couple of decades of me sitting in front of a TV until 12:30 a.m. waiting for Darlene to announce that Christmas had truly begun. 

250 Words on Cultivating Greatness

[Note from Brian: I’m changing the day I post these from Monday to Tuesday. I don’t know about you, but my to-do list is packed on Monday morning, and I wouldn’t want to be lost in the shuffle.]

Nobody but the rarest prodigy is born great. The best athletes, artists, or scientists in the world were not great when they were 5 years old. They were just great for 5-year-olds.

What happens after that? You become the class athlete, artist or brainiac. You may get praise from teachers, status among peers, support from parents. You begin to study and master the thing you’re good at and get more positive feedback for that. Maybe you join a team, class or club to learn from others who excel at it. You practice for hours, not because you have to but because it lights up your brain like nothing else. Repeat that loop for years and, if you have the necessary physical and mental tools, you too could be great.

Unless you burn out. As Charles Schulz wrote for Linus to say, “There’s no heavier burden than a great potential!” Encouragement easily twists into discouraging pressure. Happens all the time. My daughters had a friend who was a talented athlete and could have gotten a university scholarship in her sport, but by the time she graduated high school she was done. It was no fun anymore. 

Also, being a wunderkind rarely ages well. Competitors catch up. Skills that dazzle the world when you’re 10 aren’t as impressive at 30.

Self-motivation is the key. Do it because you love it, because you can’t imagine not doing it. Ironically, you only become the best when you realize your only true competition is yourself.

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We'll Muddle Through Somehow

I am weary of carols. If I never heard another Christmas song by Andy Williams, Dean Martin, Burl Ives, Mariah Carey, Paul McCartney or Mannheim Steamshovel again, I'd consider that a life happily spent. 

There are four good Christmas songs. "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" by Judy Garland is at the top. No other version will do. First, because it's melancholy, the season's best emotion (Karen finds this dumbfounding, but I maintain Christmas is best met with a tinge of bleakly nostalgic sadness). 

Second, because it's from the movie "Meet Me in St. Louis," released in November 1944. I can only imagine how the original lyrics--"Next year all our troubles will be miles away . . . Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow"--would have hit audiences like a sledgehammer during the separations and deprivations of World War 2. There wouldn't have been a dry eye in the house. Frank Sinatra and subsequent singers rewrote the lyrics because they thought they were too depressing, but for when they were composed, they're perfect.

Third, because it's Judy Garland. 

A Good Sentence

A Sentence So Good I Wish I'd Written It: "Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read." --David Sedaris, "Loggerheads."

Photo of last night's sunset by me because every post should have a pretty picture.

250 Words on Reviews and Critics

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Monday until I run out of good ones.]

“I’m the bird. You’re the ornithologist.” –Orson Welles, when pressed by a critic to explain his work.

I wish I were serene enough to say I don’t care about reviews and never read them, but I do and I do. Everyone wants to be liked, and you remember one bad review much longer than a hundred good ones. Plus, they affect sales. 

I consider the source. A pan from an anonymous troll carries much less weight than from a respected critic. I’m fine with “tough but fair.” I got one of those from a reviewer I know and sent her a note that said, “Sorry you didn’t connect with this story, maybe next time.” No hard feelings.

Replying “I’d like to see you try it!” is easy but wrong. Criticism is its own skill. A good critic can put artistic work in context and render thoughtful judgment. Quality criticism is provocative and entertaining. I respect it. Still . . . It’s a fundamentally parasitical racket, isn’t it? Without creative people producing material to critique, they’d be out of a job. 

My real frustration with criticism is that it’s not actionable. The work is finished, so even if a critic’s right, I can’t change it. I suppose I could learn from my mistakes and do better next time, but that seems unlikely. Like Welles’s bird, I just write what I write, draw what I draw, fly how I fly. What the ornithologists make of my plumage is not really my concern.

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250 Words On Living Color

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Monday until I run out of good ones.]

I remember when black-and-white TV turned to color. I’m sure my family’s first color TV arrived on a Saturday morning because the first thing I watched on it was a Superman cartoon. It took my sister and me no time to find the brightness and contrast knobs and crank up the colors to eye-blistering.

Before that, I actually once saw a few seconds of color on a black-and-white TV. It was a commercial for the soft drink Squirt, and the tagline was something like, “So flavorful you may see it in color!” And I did! The Squirt bottle turned green! On a black-and-white TV!

I had caught a one-time use of Color-Tel technology, which strobed white light to create the impression of color, like the Benham’s Top optical illusion. Unfortunately for Color-Tel, it came along at the same time as actual color TV, making it an obscure novelty instead of a revolutionary game-changer. 

There was a period when TV shows’ titles proudly proclaimed, “In Color,” partly to entice viewers into buying a color set. Programs quickly exploited the new medium in occasionally garish ways. For example, the original Star Trek’s red, blue, and yellow-green costumes were not coincidentally the primary colors produced by the three electron beams that shot colors onto a TV’s cathode ray tube.

The only technological transition I can recall that rivaled the miracle of color TV was the leap from vinyl records to CDs. The first time I encountered both, I knew the future had arrived.

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250 Words on the Memory Hole

 

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Monday until I run out of good ones.]

In his novel 1984, George Orwell introduced the “memory hole,” a chute leading to an incinerator that destroyed forbidden history. It’s a tool of the sort of totalitarians who used to airbrush disfavored Soviet generals out of May Day Parade photos. 

As a person who can lose sleep over embarrassments or offenses going back to elementary school, I’m a fan of the memory hole.

Long ago, I realized I was probably the only person on Earth who remembered many of the social disasters I still fretted about. At most, someone else might have half a memory of a thing that happened involving someone they used to know but whose name they’ve long forgotten. 

If that’s so—if there’s no record of the disaster except the one replaying in my head—then it’s as good as if it never happened. I can let it go. 

Understand that I’m not talking about getting away with crimes. Just the day-to-day unintended fumbles and stumbles we all commit, especially when we’re young. Things we wish we hadn’t done, humiliations we wish we hadn’t suffered, feelings we wish we hadn’t hurt.

“Oooh, I could have handled that better.”

Of course, the ultimate memory hole is death. I’m not in favor of eliminating witnesses, but isn’t there some peace of mind in knowing that eventually nobody alive will know of your transgressions? I’d like to be remembered after I’m gone—that’s one reason people write books—but there’s certainly some relief in the prospect of oblivion. 

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Amazing Adventures in Emeryville!

Me, Amber and Judd with our book cover (disclaimer: the actual book is not that large).

I had a terrific time talking about Marvel Super Stories: Amazing Adventures with Judd Winick and Amber Padilla at the Barnes & Noble in Emeryville, Calif. Tuesday night. We were three of the 15 cartoonists who contributed stories to the anthology, and just hanging with them was great! The fact that there was an audience there to watch us talk was even better.

We got a lot of good questions that sparked some fun discussions ("Which Marvel character would you want to be?" Judd: Spider-Man. Amber: Storm. Me: My first thought was Thor, then switched to Captain America). 

No doubt talking about something deep, cool and clever.

One questioner asked how we constructed our stories. We all agreed that character came first: if you can take a character from A through B to C, the rest is ornamentation. However, I also said that I'm often inspired by particular images that come to me; I don't always know what they mean, but I know they're going into the story somehow, and I pulled out a page of original art to show one such image.

I was also happy to meet my friend Christy Vaca for the first time, in the way that people can be friends online for years without actually meeting because this is the 21st century. So glad she came out for the evening! 

My friend Christy! We spent some time talking about how she knows someone who met Eleanor Roosevelt, which improves my standing in the "Six Degrees of Separation" game immensely! I'm now like four degrees from people like Churchill and Stalin!

I sketched the Marvel character Beast, who appears in my story. Christy took it home.

And we even sold a few copies of A Fire Story, including a couple to a woman who said she recommended it to high school students studying nonfiction comics, which I really appreciate.

Nice night. Good audience. Great company. Happy to be a part of this project!

250 Words on the Metric System

[NOTE: I scheduled this to run the week after the election some time ago because I figured something lighter than politics would be nice no matter which way it turned out. Today, I think that’s truer than ever.]

I’ve always admired the metric system, but didn’t feel entirely comfortable with it until I became a chemist and used it routinely. It is an objectively superior scheme of weights and measures with, in my opinion, one exception.

The strength of metric isn’t just how everything’s divisible by ten, although that’s convenient. Its real beauty is how it links length, volume and mass at its foundation. 

One cubic centimeter of water—that is, 1 x 1 x 1 cm or 1 cc, a bit smaller than a sugar cube—equals 1 milliliter of volume and 1 gram of mass. 

From that seed, everything blooms. 

One liter of water measures 10 x 10 x 10 cm and weighs, by definition, 1 kilogram. Want to know how much your bucket of water weighs? Measure its volume. Want to know its volume? Measure its weight.

So elegant!

The one metric measurement I dislike is the Celsius temperature scale. Unlike the other metric measurements, it has no connection to length, mass or volume (nor could it). A scale defined by the freezing and boiling points of water is no more logical or useful than any other. 

Also, the difference in temperature measured by one degree Celsius is equal to nearly two degrees Fahrenheit, meaning Fahrenheit has almost twice the precision of Celsius. For example, both 69 and 70 Fahrenheit round off to 21 Celsius, but I can feel the difference between 69 and 70. Fahrenheit is a scalpel while Celsius is a chainsaw. 

Enjoy!

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