RHPS Turns 30

I didn't make him for you!

Today's blog may be a little bit longer, because I'm paying homage to one of my favorite cult movies, "The Rock Horror Picture Show". The movie debuted in 1975, so Rocky Horror is celebrating its 30th birthday. If you count the stage show in London, RHPS is actually 32. The movie is basically a retelling of the Frankenstein epic with a couple of new twists (e.g., fishnet stockings and 50's rock). The story centers around a prim, young American couple, newly engaged, whose car gets a flat in front of a mysterious castle. When they ring the bell for help, they are drawn into the tawdry web of Dr. Frank 'N Furter, a cross-dressing mad scientist who's about to unveil his latest creation. The events that unfold thru the rest of the night are "no picnic", to quote the narrator.

The movie itself pays homage to many Hollywood epics not the least of which are "Sunset Boulevard" and "King Kong". When RHPS came out, it was so weird nobody knew how to classify it. It was thought of as so smutty as to be appropriate only for adults, and midnight screenings. Funny how times have changed, because now the movie can be seen on Fox Television or Comedy Central, usually around Halloween. RHPS has a reputation as the ultimate cult movie, because of continued screenings at the Riverside Theater in Austin, TX and the Waverly theater in NYC, among others. Patrons come dressed as their favorite characters and reenact parts of the movie right while it's playing. Don't know if these theaters are still showing the movie, because this blog author is too lazy to look it up! :-)


All I wanted to do was use the phone

Several things of note in this movie. Brad and Janet are the ultimate prim, American nerds. Brad thinks that Frank'n Furter's castle is a "hunting lodge for rich weirdos". Janet doesn't like a man "with too many muscles". They're driving a Ford station wagon and listening to Nixon's resignation speech when they get the flat. When they enter Dr. Frank 'N Furter's strange world, they are subjected to new realities, and a bit of debauchery. Their characters are the perfect contrast to Columbia, Magenta, Riff Raff and the other "aliens" they encounter. Some people interpret their characters as the naive version of ourselves, when we have not yet had any introspection or expanded awareness.

Tim Curry, as Dr. Frank 'N Furter is spectacular. The way he struts his androgynous self around the set, he has to be one of the most compelling, interesting characters in cinema history. When asked what he based his character on, he said, "I was thinking of my Mother". I don't think any of us had a mother like that. When "Time" magazine first reviewed the movie in 1975, the reviewer described the character as a cross between Elvis and Auntie Mame. The "Time" reviewer didn't like the movie, but it was 1975 and he was a bit of a conservative newby.

Last but certainly not least are the song lyrics and dialog. The movie is laced with hilarious puns and double-entendres. The song lyrics borrow heavily from Sci-fi movie titles and B-movie dialog, but there is something altogether intriguing about how the words are strung together:
....
"At a deadly pace, it came from Outer Space
and this is how the message ran:
Science Fiction, Double Feature
Doctor X will build a creature
See androids fighting Brad and Janet
Anne Francis stars in "Forbidden Planet"
at the late night Double Feature Picture Show"
....
When the author Richard O'Brien (who plays Riff Raff in the movie) was interviewed about RHPS in 1990, he said, "One thing people overlook about this movie is that it's absolutely a true story". He said this with a certainty and sparkle in his eye that makes you wonder if he's either on something or on TO something. Could it be .... did it really come from outer space? Are we in a Time Warp? And in some parallel universe, is there a mad scientist in fishnet stockings creating a blond man?

There are those who only see this movie as a silly send-up of sci-fi movies and Hollywood schlock. And then for those of us who delve into the liner notes and lyrics, we might see Something Other..... Something More. :-)

Color By Numbers

Nothing makes me so happy as to observe nature and to paint what I see.
- Henri Rousseau

 

When I was a sophomore in college, I worked as a summer development student at an engineering firm in Dallas, 200 miles from Austin. My Mother and I exchanged letters (@ one letter every two weeks). I'd considered majoring in English, and considered myself a clever "wag". My Mother's letters read more like this:

"I took out the trash. I took the dog to the vet. I went to the hair salon".

Her letters kept me informed and yet, they lacked that spark of originality. Wasn't really expecting the wit of Voltaire or the bite of Nathan Lane, and yet I found myself wanting more color in the correspondence. Flash forward to 2005, and I see the same thing everywhere:
"How 'bout them Cowboys?" "Think it's gonna rain?" "What's goin' on with the stock prices?"

People who even know each other well stay in the territory of the mundane - business news, weather and sports. Part of it is propriety - don't talk about sex, religion and politics in mixed company. Part of it is conformity - "I might be too revealing if I talk about something important to me". Men especially have a fear of florid speech, a fear of seeming gay, religiously fanatical, or otherwise extreme. In a world that seems to reward bland and poker-faced conformity, maybe they have a point. And thus, we all start to sound like voice mail messages, or robots programmed by a sloganeer for Hallmark cards. What does it take for someone like my Mother, to break out of the mold, to tell it like it is? In my Mother's case, she is very intelligent and has a rich sense of humor. It just takes a familiar, informal setting with her peers and maybe a few cocktails to let her witty self emerge. Others, I'm not so sure. Maybe they speak in monosyllables because that's all they know to do? A Hallmark slogan is all they really have to offer? Let's hope not.

When I worked at TI, my weeklies to my boss were filled with mirth and wit. I wrote in paragraphs, not bullets. My boss was a man of few surprises, and limited imagination. He didn't appreciate my clever asides. My female coworker wrote weeklies in a very muted, bulleted style: "I debugged the Accounts payable program. I modified the Inventory history report". My boss loved this woman and promoted her. Clearly I was working in the wrong venue; or maybe it was just about sex. (He was a bit of a nerd and she was pretty). But I digress. To everyone out there reading this: Color by numbers is dismally dull. Show the world that you aren't timid, and you do have some imagination. Yes there are boundaries and appropriate settings. And yet... There has to be some setting where, dam the torpedoes, you're going to say "it". And it might not be pretty, poetic or expertly thought out, but "it" is more than a Hallmark slogan and it says something about you. And thus, the spirit has prevailed. You, a conversational artist in your own right, are now painting your own picture. No more color by numbers.

Destination Moon

Standby 

I've always been a fan of the NASA space program, and watched with fascination each time some new feat was accomplished back in the 1960's and 70's. Men went to the moon several times, although the major accomplishments were not much more than to plant U.S. flags in the lunar soil and bring back moon rocks. Seems like the main incentive was to show the USSR that America was first in technology; after the mid-70's detente, and then the fall of the Berlin wall, that motivation faded away.

When the Space Shuttle began flying in the early 80's, I hoped it was the next phase of serious space advancement. But I was wrong -- it started a period of stasis, timid space experiments, commercial-oriented satellite launches, and severe budgetary restraints. The Challenger disaster of 1986, and more recent Columbia disaster did nothing to engender most peoples' desire to expand our presence in space. One must admit that there is huge expense, for doing something with little obvious payback. Money spent on NASA could go to social programs and things of a more immediate, practical nature. But the dreamer in me says that space is our destiny. A permanent lunar space station would be a great beginning. Here are some ideas/observations:

o Have private industry foot more of the bill. Private industry has much to gain from experiments and observations in the space realm.

o Have some of the efforts expensed as multinational efforts, not breaking the budgetary back of any one country. China, Russia, European Union and the U.S. could work together on an enterprise of such magnitude as a lunar colony.

o Reserve manned missions for transport of humans only. Robotic, unmanned flights could shuttle much equipment and supplies back and forth, without the expensive overhead of systems that support human passengers.

o Last, and I fear this is the deal breaker: For large scale space colonization, men would need to rearrange priorities so that the betterment of mankind is as important as the assertion of individual egos. Men need to quit killing each other over issues of money, religion and territoriality. Most high-tech budgets throughout the world today are directed towards defense and anti-terrorism. What should be rockets pointed to the moon are ICBM's pointed to a neighbor. Also, a balance should be struck between an acceptable level of personal material well-being and a future-oriented society that puts stock in man's space technology future. With half the world starving, our work is cut out for us. A multinational task force to conquer space would really need to first address overpopulation and starvation.

A couple of years ago, President George W. Bush proposed a more expedited, manned mission to Mars, perhaps in the next decade. It was seen by some as more of a political device than an earnest drive to rediscover the space frontier. I don't know what Bush's motivation was; let's just hope that somewhere in the future of the people on our "blue marble" planet, there is a red planet Mars.

Evolutionibus

Creation 

Today I'll take on a topic that could fill 3 tomes - Evolution. As a boy in elementary school, I never believed the Biblical story of creation. Even then, I saw Adam & Eve as nice metaphors, but realized that the Biblical account was terribly far off on the timing (having the Earth only a few thousand years old). People who supported the Biblical account seemed dismissive of the massive fossile and geological evidence that shows how life has changed over eons.

In 8th grade, I was introduced to Darwin's theory of Evolution. At the time, I embraced the theory and later on, it's newer variants (e.g., Neodarwinism and Punctuated Equilibria). It was at least consistent with fossile evidence and the known time scale. However, at the age of 26, a little bit of a priori reasoning and maybe a bolt from the blue told me that highly complex systems couldn't occur thru accidental mutations. Not even a complex organic molecule would come about thru pure chance. I was nearly back to square one. I inferred that there was an intelligence involved, and it left calling cards along its path.

What I've searched for since has been a reconcilation of fossile evidence and logic, and maybe the discovery of a knowable, engineering "God". As far as intelligent design, some people have proposed UFO's, aliens, some type of directed Panspermia, and even one author who thinks some type of quantum-level events cause mutations. Am not fond of organized religion's approach, because of its myopic arrogance, as well as it's insistence on Special Creation (Judeo-Christian code words for "Garden of Eden"). My own feeling is that life evolved slowly, over time, consistent with fossile evidence, but that the changes were intelligently driven.

Our public school systems currently are being bombarded with lawsuits to emphasize that Darwin's theory is only a theory. I'm "down" with that, but am afraid that one brand of organized religion would use this as a way to get it's head in the classroom tent. What would make a far more interesting argument would be to say, "Yes God did it -- and by the way whose God, and exactly how did he go about it?" There's your debate! And it would be a way more interesting discussion, by the way.

iPod, Therefore I Am

Revolution in a white box 

Some revolutions are noisy and bloody (think French, Russian). Some revolutions are splashy if not bloody (think 1950's rock or 1960's sex revolution). Then sometimes the change is sneaky, furtive, quiet. You might just notice one day, something is different. And in the case of the Apple iPod, pleasantly so.

I'm a self-admitted gadget nut, and have desk drawers full of old Palm Pilots, Sony Mavica cameras and Windows CE handheld PC's. With most gadgets, you get the oh-wow factor of a new feature (e.g., color screen, new OS) and then become bored with it after a while. The musical capabilities of handheld devices prior to iPod were unimpressive. On handhelds and MP3 players, song lists were limited to the size of a storage card, and even then, with handheld PC's, you had to forsake other applications to load music. Then came Apple, circa 2001, with the idea of shrinking a 40 gigabyte hard drive to the size of a deck of cards. The other thing they did is make their gadget serve one master (music) well, instead of several masters poorly. When it first came out, I ignored the hype; I already had a huge CD collection, CD players in house and car, and good CD burning software. What need had I for an iPod? On a 3 hour trip to Austin, I can switch out CD's pretty easily.

Well here's a difference. The iPod holds my entire CD collection. My every whim, whimsy and mood change can be accommodated by this remarkable device. You can mix songs and playlists around in an endless variety of ways. We look at how we did music over the last 100 years - Victrolas, Hi-Fi's, plastic LP's, Eight Tracks and what not. My parents had a big Hi-Fi (maple wood finish) and a giant record cabinet to hold a small record collection (Perry Como and Johnny Mathis among others). I myself had LP's and CD's stacked to the ceiling in my bedroom at home. Now, it all fits in a shirt pocket and you can summon it in a snap. That is a revolution.

Have wondered - could they eventually do this with movies or television shows? It's bound to happen -- and there is justifiable concern for how these new devices will affect the music and entertainment industries. I tried Movielink recently -- the download took 1 hour on broadband, and I had to watch the movie within 24 hours, on my PC screen. While that's kind of kludgy and doesn't suit me, the momentum is there. I don't think the entertainment industry really has anything to worry about; new venues will replace the old. And small, white, innocuous little boxes will cause quiet revolutions when people realize what they can do.

DSL Hell

I Command Thee 

I finally decided to bite the $27/month bullet and get DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) from SBC. I'm a software developer, and think of myself as technically in-the-know (more in the software area). DSL tested my limits in every area. I have an HP Windows PC at the front of my house and an iMac mini at the back. We (the installer & me) decided it would be a good idea to set up a wireless network with these two computers. We ended up putting the wired modem on the iMac, and the WAN USB receiver on the HP, because the iMac was having problems recognizing the USB device. All was up and working perfectly when the technician left.

Then my troubles began. I didn't like the WAN device being plugged into the front USB port, thought it looked messy. Replugged into the back of the HP, and rebooted. Voila, no internet. After an hour talking to a help desk in India, and yet another day of flubbing around with it, I figured out that you need to log back into your specific WAN with a network password, whenever you unplug and replug the WAN receiver.

Next adventure: I thought it would be cool to create a network between my computers so I could browse one from the other. Knew it was a long shot since you have Windows XP on one talking to Mac OS X on the other. Little did I know that my good intentions were paving the road to Hell. I initiated the new network from XP, which has a friendly wizard that steps you through the process. Then, you create a network disk that will need to be run on each computer in your home network. THEN - you reboot.

When I rebooted, it was as if Satan took over. I clicked on Internet Explorer, and America Online kept trying to connect to broadband (unsuccessfully). I'd hit "cancel" but AOL would start up again. My ZoneAlert firewall software kept popping up alerts right as I was fighting off this other poltergeist. I ended up having to read the 2wire documentation on the other computer, on their web site. After much tribulation, I discovered that the HP had moved my WAN from the LAN area to "Network bridge" on the Network control panel. I lost at minimum half a day on this, and perspired heavily. Would say that it was very close to Mickey Mouse's performance in "Sorcerer's Apprentice" where the brooms keep bringing in water. I'm now enjoying my DSL, but guess what? I don't really need to network those two computers! :-)

The Games People Play

Baby needs a new pair of shoes 

Seems many of my friends have tired of the singles scene, and now do their dating in on-line chat rooms, be it match.com, AOL member rooms, or various other options. One obvious appeal of this is that you can do it from the comfort of your den, wearing boxers and a tee shirt.

I've given it a cursory look myself, and I'm not as enamored of this high-tech approach. I've had disappointments seeing people up close, from across a smoky bar. Imagine the surprises you can be in for if you're looking at someone's out-of-date, digitally enhanced photo. If you're a brave soul who goes by verbal description alone, the chances for disappointment rise exponentially. Very few people are going to tell it like it is: fat, average-looking, pear-shaped. If they post a picture, it will be a boudoir photo from a very best angle. The things that would turn you off at a singles bar or a church social, in person, will belatedly strike you when you finally meet in person. Things like a high-pitched voice, no chin or being one foot shorter than stated in a profile. Some people may operate on the principal of immediate gratification -- you've driven across town and canceled other appointments, you might as well settle.

There are other unsavory aspects to on-line dating. All the dialogs, pictures and videos are traceable and can be forwarded by unscrupulous recipients. Then there is the story of two German men who met in a chat room; one of them killed and ate (that's right, cannibalized) the other man. It may have been consensual but nevertheless. Nobody wants a date to end like that. There are less sensational reasons to be hesitant. You need a broadband connection, or just viewing profiles and opening picture is endless tedium. Some of the same things that made you tired of bars can tire you on-line. The same-old same-old. "Aren't these the same 6 ID's I see logged on every time?"

The best way to meet someone, is to see them in all their three-dimensional glory. See them in a setting which isn't fraught with any kind of expectation; see them in a public venue or public event. You can still play lots of mind games with each other: "Yes, I'm an astronaut". But at least the biggest possibility of fraudulence is eliminated. Now, the boobs may be fake or the hair is a toupee, but such trickery has always been the case. I must say in closing, that maybe my mind is not open enough; several of my friends have gone completely over to on-line coupling. If I'm wrong about all this, someone email me and maybe include a picture. :-)

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