THE WRECKTIFIERS

I first came up with the basic idea for THE WRECKTIFIERS around the time the Roslin Institute introduced the world to Dolly the Sheep... and I have been doodling around with it ever since. I know far less about basics genetics then Gregor Mendel did, but with this brave new world of cloning and genetic experimentation fast approaching, I wondered how geniuses would pervert it. I imagined a world where scientists could rid any family tree of all its genetic diseases and make every baby born free from any chromosomal damage. From there, mad scientists then take over and turn all of Earth and everything on it into one very large Petri dish.

If I had had the opportunity to take steroids in high school, I would have gobbled them down like M&Ms. No matter how much time I spent in the weight room, I still graduated looking like
Arnold Stang (shown here, on the left, with Fess Parker and Peter Lorre), which proved quite embarrassing during those mixed doubles arm and leg wrestling contests put on by our sadistic gym teachers. My win/loss record was no doubt due to the high concentration of testosterone in all the girls I faced.

From my fertile imagination sprang a world far beyond steroids: A world where expectant mothers injected a potion into their fetus; a potion which would, over time, give their newborn child the ability to survive on any substance, drink any fluid, fear no ozone depletion, and live as long as there were replaceable parts.

Granted, these powers were not of the comic book variety, but that wouldn't be the story. The real tale involved how Earth disintegrated when this magic formula kicked back results no one expected, turning all of humanity into a messy mass of devolving protoplasm.

Of course the only people who can rectify this situation are two teens with the secret to Earth's salvation. Hey! This is a cartoon show for kids ages 9-14. To make this story work, the two teens have disappeared from Earth for five centuries. During that time, a science fiction convention of mad scientists have taken cloning, cyborg enhancement, dinosaur making and hybrid creation to a point where we can imagine a massive boys' action toy line and an innumerable number of cartoon episodes.

As you read THE WRECKTIFIERS, remember it is a first draft. A number of structural and character questions are purposely left hanging to give the pitch fewer cul de sacs to stumble towards. The development game is a harsh and unremitting exercise in the multiplicity of ideas. Premises either catch fire with executives or sit there like a lump on a stump; move on to the next concept if no one other than yourself has that captivating twinkle in the eye. In that regard, the less written up front, the better.

7:35 de la Mañana

Around 3 in the morning, I climb down from my column and go into Buñuel's cold coffee and day-old pastry shop and order my favorite drink, the Mi Ultimo Suspiro. Playing on a forever loop in the background is "7:35 de la Mañana," a 2004 Oscar-nominated live action short from Spain. I do not know why.

I wait in line, surrounded by a clientele that communicate with each other by holding up cue cards. They frighten me with their petit bourgeois small talk sameness and their matching purses. I am depressed. My donkeys have died while I was playing piano at a jazz bar; all the women around me have thicker beards than I do. I will speak about this to Freud the next time he blows cigar smoke in my face.

Yesterday, a man dressed as a nun and riding a bicycle cut in line and told me my Andalusian dog was peeing into the morning coffee. I laughed to camera. He handed me an invitation. It was to a party hosted by The Devil, who would steal my soul using a set of pliers after first boring me to death with simple magic tricks involving balloons. I would then be driven to a disco; I should refuse for he is a lousy dancer and a mean drunk. I looked at the invitation. The party was yesterday. My soul remained safe, although I would have enjoyed seeing the balloon tricks.

I order a latte and sing in front of a surprised woman who pulls out a razor blade and threatens to strike me with it 400 times. She asks me whether my name is Jules or Jim. I tell her she is confusing French New Wave with surrealism and avant-garde movie making. She tells me never to fall asleep watching Turner Movie Classics again.

And I Thought I Was Dumb...

I've done some pretty stupid things over the years to aggravate women both in and out of my life. Even this Neanderthal knows better than to (1) make cracks about their looks to their faces; (2) disparage their love for bodice-ripping romance novels; or (3) show any hostility to their cats, bathroom wicker baskets, or the ratty stuffed animals from their childhood that lie scattered around their Laura Ashley-designed bedrooms like Dickensian waifs. Oh, yes! Potpourri dishes of cinnamon and lavender flakes came in handy during those years when I would use them secretly as ash trays.

So why in the name of Walter Camp, when advertisers know that at least 40% of all Super Bowl viewers have the double X chromosome, would Teleflora spend zillions of dollars to run an advertisement this blatantly dumbass, misogynistic, and cruel?





I felt really badly for Diane, the woman in this commercial. Guys like me have a built-in capacity for rejection, dejection, abjection, and self degradation. It's a liquid gurgled daily. It tastes like Shinola. I've lapped it from the horse trough ever since I stopped lighting matches to see if snow would burn.

Someone once sent roses to me at my office. I opened the box. The funny-looking rhododendrons looked dead, but the flaccid stamens lifted their pointy heads and wrote out the sender's message on my pant leg. I was so humiliated I retreated back into my office and swore I would never again date anyone working at Jim Henson's Creature Shop. I took a few deep breaths, then snuck off to the closest gun range to make my feelings known to the local bird and rodent population

If I were the woman in that commercial, I would rent out all but one the talking roses to a high school production of Little Shop of Horrors. Then I would gussy myself up, drive over to the sender and pistil whip the slug with the one remaining flower.

Then I would kick back and choose from any one of these romance novel trailers to weep over while waiting for the police to arrive.

Noir and Sin on Super Bowl Sunday

It's been a tough day already preparing for the Super Bowl. Practicing those expandable stomach exercises while rehearsing the rules of gaseous etiquette for public gatherings takes so much of the fun out of the game. With that in mind, until I can get back into my game, I leave you with two interesting animated pieces.

"Ruby Rocket, Private Detective" (from NiemannWorks Animation)

By late Sunday night, I hope not to have committed any more than four of the seven deadly sins. I might not be a saint, but I'm not that much of a sinner either.

"Los Pecadores" (from Maniac Planet, Dirección: Pablo Polledri)

Hot Air-bender is still Old Hollywood Gas

Scenes from "Avatar: The Last Airbender"

I always got a headache whenever I tried to watch "Avatar: The Last Airbender." I found much of the premise convoluted. I was totally confused throughout the series about which martial arts fighting style represented which element (thank goodness for Wikipedia) and who could bend what and why.

I've seen so much original anime over the years that this program always felt more derivative than original, more anime lite than anything else.

While I applaud the diverse cultural references to Asia inherent throughout the series, even these markers are either poorly emphasized in the storyline or are simply convenient tools to accelerate the story towards another goofball or fighting sequence.

At least "Avatar" was something different for the young viewer; it became a hit among the specific demographic of 6 to 17-year-olds who reveled in the adventures of Aang, Katara and Sokka.

Several months ago, I was surprised to read about ongoing negotiations with M. Night Shyamalan to write and direct a live action version of "Avatar." Why? I thought: Were the toys selling that well? Were the ratings that substantial? Did the general gaming public now know what an "avatar" was without first having to look up the word? Was the world ready for yet another "Village" or "Happening?"

Well the movie is now into pre-production. What could possibly go wrong in the politically correct, forever liberal environment that is the film business? Check out this link and find out. It's mind-boggling that in 2009 something so flagrantly stupid and insensitive could actually take place. Well, actually no: Hollywood has been wallowing in this specific form of color invisibility for decades.

White actors have been playing Asian roles since before "Broken Blossoms."



Hollywood has a long history of confusing Caucasian with Asian. Mickey Rooney played Japanese in "Breakfast at Tiffany's." Brando played Japanese in "Teahouse of the August Moon." Peter Sellers, Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, and Warner Oland, among many others, stomped around as Fu Manchu. In fact the Swedish Oland's most famous role was Charlie Chan.

This comment from actor Jackson Rathbone, dismissing the casting controversy, probably illustrates what I'm talking about best:

"I think it's one of those things where I pull my hair up, shave the sides, and I definitely need a tan," he said of the transformation he'll go through to look more like Sokka. "It's one of those things where, hopefully, the audience will suspend disbelief a little bit."

Yeah: And Bruce Lee could play either Sara Lee or Robert E. Lee just as well, too.

OMG, Librarians are really Hip

"The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman; illustrated by Dave McKean

Bookstores and libraries beware! Prepare for a mad dash of children coming in search of the 2009 Newbery Award winner, instead of just the usual crowd of well-meaning parents, guardians, nannies, and other individuals with constipated expressions searching for "legitimate" children's books to thrust onto book clubs.

Kids reading for fun and excitement in the post-Harry Potter era: What a concept! After years of selecting novels that gather dust on bookshelves after the initial hype has blown them out to sea, and with the debate raging about its own relevancy for kids in today's marketplace, The Newbery Award committee threw the betting crowd a real long shot when it bestowed this year's honor on "The Graveyard Book."


Who would have thunk that writer Neil Gaiman and his longtime illustrator, Dave McKean, would win the top children's book prize of 2008? Remember these are children's librarians who issued this award. The guardians of civility, top drawer manners, and "no talking at any time" are suddenly going rogue and kicking off their orthopedics; unbuttoning the top fastener of their "Little House on the Prairie" blouses; letting their buns down; and handing out their most important literary emblem to the geniuses behind The Sandman. Now roaming the halls of the San Diego Comic Book Convention really does have literary merit, Mom.

But anyone who has been following the careers of these Englishmen know they have wandered into the realm of children's literature before. There was The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish (1998); The Wolves in the Walls (2003); and, of course, the much heralded, Coraline (2002), soon to be a major motion picture. All well worth the time to find, to read, to savor.

I've stood in line dozens of times at comic book conventions for Gaiman and McKean's autographs because I am a geek and this is a far more exciting thing to do on a Saturday's than ironing more wrinkles into shirts. Somewhere in the black hole I call my apartment, I have an original piece of artwork from Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth that I purchased more than 20 years ago when comic book artwork was not bathed in gold. The piece is dark; it is horrifying in its intensity; it makes your skin crawl and your teeth rattle. That's why for years I hung it in my bathroom, so I could study it when I didn't feel like reading.

Gaiman is an amazing writer; McKean is a phenomenal illustrator. It's comforting to know that we old time graphic novel readers have something now in common with today's Vanessa Bruno clad librarians. I wonder if they will still force us to "shush" in the library?

Defending Wolverine and the X-Men

Watching last night’s premiere of "Wolverine and the X-Men" reminded me once again of an egotistically stupid argument I had nearly twenty years ago. It forever ruined a friendship.

By early 1993, the Fox Kids Network (FKN) was well on its way to becoming the number one place for kids on Saturday morning. From a rather forgettable beginning in 1990, FKN had, with careful programming choices and a keen understanding of the changing children’s marketplace, catapulted itself into a position of ratings dominance over the other three broadcast networks. Two shows truly magnetized the viewers to FKN: "Batman, the Animated Series." which premiered in September, 1992 and "X-Men: The Animated Series." which began its the regular episodic run in January, 1993. I was the network executive in charge of both of them. "Power Rangers" would not make its juggernaut presence felt until September, 1993.

The success of FKN defied the pundits. They argued that the idea of a fourth network on Saturday morning was a very foolish, financially stupid proposition. Fox Television was having enough worries in the late 80's with their prime time schedule: Why add to their headaches with series from a time period already smelling like a musty relic?

Kids had been abandoning Saturday morning for years; advertisers were putting their top dollars into the toy-based children's syndication marketplace. Rumors abounded that all three networks were tired of the kids business and wanted out. The overall ratings were decreasing from year to year; the chronic lack of any substantial hits made jettisoning this daypart that much more appealing.

Pitching children’s programming to the three networks during the 70s and 80s was akin to being pistol-whipped, hog-tied, body-slammed, ridden hard and hung out wet -- and then saying "thank you" afterwards. Independent producers pitched to executives who had been glued to their positions for centuries: While pleasant enough individuals over a martini, they all failed to recognize the changing landscape brought on by syndication, video games, and the slow inexorable rise of cable. Kids were doing other things on Saturday mornings than waiting around to watch cartoons.

While "Scooby Doo" might have worked in the 70’s to attract viewers, it was more Scooby Don't by the mid to late 80’s: Don’t bring us anything that was too boy, too girl, too hip, not hip enough, too well-known, too unknown, too personality driven, not personality driven enough. In the end, the program homogenization was so safe one could store the family jewels within it.

Thanks to the National Association of Broadcasters decision to disband its Code Authority Board in 1983, advertisers suddenly found themselves bereft of any moral scruples, let alone any self-regulating obstacles to introducing toys, candy, and other enticements into the now free wheeling marketplace of children’s programming. A once-a-week offering of "Dungeons and Dragons" or "Muppet Babies" or "Saved by the Bell" was not competitive when advertisers could get more eyeballs with a Monday through Friday series of "GI Joe," "Gobots," "My Little Pony," "Jem," or "Strawberry Shortcake."

Throughout that time, parents and pressure groups were constantly confusing the toy-based syndication programming seen Monday through Friday -- and conveniently airing right before and right after school -- with that of Saturday morning fare.

Well enough of the boring minutiae. The argument was all about the X-Men in general and Wolverine in particular. What better place to have a donnybrook than at a festive children's television industry luncheon? Over some rubber chicken and rock-hard boiled potatoes, the conversation turned to the Fox Kid's Network's sudden rise in popularity.

I knew why we were successful: The design of our comedy shows was hipper, the writing was funnier, the editing was brisker. The action shows were beautifully constructed, wonderfully animated, and the story-telling was sophisticated and multi-layered. Our programs were classier and had more kid appeal than the retreads on the other networks. I thought the case was obvious.

No, my friend argued, the reason Fox was winning the Saturday morning ratings war was due to the lack of any decent broadcast standards and practices. The action shows on FKN were all but running red with blood and gore. Wolverine was a psychopath who had no business being on Saturday morning kids' television: What were we trying to do, turn every boy into a unbridled lunatic? The Fox success was based on how much we had bent the normal network rules of censorship. She questioned whether we had even hired any broadcast standards people at all.

She called "X-Men" a cheat, a show her network would never put on the air. The stories were too adult, too frightening, and incomprehensible for children. The irresponsibility of airing this program and saying we had a legitimate Broadcast Standards and Practices (BS&P) department was, to this person, a mind-boggling lie, and she said I should be ashamed of myself.

Of course we had a BS&P department. Fox Broadcasting was a legitimate network. Rupert Murdoch would not have had it any other way. The key difference was our BS&P officials had not been born in the 19th century. They weren't old biddies scared of their bloomers flapping in the wind. Our BS&P people were younger, smarter, and far more attuned to the goings on in the marketplace than their ancient counterparts at the other three networks.

Did they let us get away with more? Hardly. We could stage action sequences more forcefully and have our heroes in more jeopardy and dispatch our villains with more clever means; but no, there were no punches to faces, no torture sequences, no ongoing cries of pain by either hero or villain, no dispatching anyone permanently, no blood ever, no pointing of realistic armaments at anyone, no first person shooter points of view, and definitely no blowing up anything other than robots and vacant buildings. Any planes, trains, and automobiles involved in mayhem were empty upon impact -- piloted by robots, or safely brought down with no loss of anything except animation time. The list was endless. We knew the rules. We played by them. We made exciting programming viewed by millions.

I found her remarks stunning. Her network was spiraling downward faster on Saturday mornings than my GPA did during science classes. The shows on her network had, over years, become formulaic, slow, and tediously timed and edited. I told her that no animated human characters were hurt during the making of any of our boys' action adventure shows. She did not seem amused.

Even back then I was more worried about the continuing presence of 24/7 cable concerns like Disney, Cartoon Network and NICK, not the feeble competition of the other broadcasters. Cable was the wave of the future for children’s programming. Funny I wasn’t smart enough to ever get a position with any of the new comers.

I tossed out a few quips to lighten up the conversation: Her programming was so bad it drove kids outdoors faster than anything other the San Francisco Earthquake. Her shows were so bad kids begged their parents to drive them back to school. Watching her schedule could bring any kid down from a sugar rush. Okay, none of my quips were A material; they were churlish, I admit; but I was working extemporaneously and when I do, I rarely think before I speak.

Cooler heads eventually prevailed and we went back to eating and networking.

We never spoke again after that day.


Coming soon: My thoughts on the NICKTOONS, "Wolverine and the X-Men" series.

Clever, but Tasteless

What Bush and Cheney Thought Brought Down the Plane in the Hudson

Stepping on a Fox's Tail

I fell asleep reading Kafka and so...

I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon at various hardware stores, battling with members of Beverly Hills gangs of liberals and progressives -- punching and screaming and carrying on as if we were all after the same plasma television at a Circuit City liquidation marathon. I don't remember being in so many cat fights since I stopped to ask for directions at a local trucking establishment east of Reno several nights ago. That was a great dream as well.

The Inauguration was less than 24 hours away. Therapists had been notified; prescriptions filled; my heart monitor was at the ready, but there was so much more to do. Still, I was not truly prepared for the upcoming event. I knew the dangers that lay ahead. Prepare sloppily and my entire neighborhood was at risk -- pets would never poop properly again, and apartments and homes within a three mile radius of where I lived would be uninhabitable for weeks. Hence the need to visit hardware stores. It all made so much sense to me. I could hear myself snoring.

It was a chance worth taking. I needed to witness the destruction myself. Without it, January 20th would simply be another 24 hours in our nation’s history.Anyway, I like looking at new brands of cyclone fencing.

At 3 a.m. this morning, the police arrived at my door. Some irate loser in my building reported I was making too much noise during my pre-celebration festivities: Something to do with hammering so early in the morning and off-key whistling of Disney songs.

I greeted the officers with a nail gun in one hand and a moderately sized beach umbrella in the other. I don't know where that other hand came from, but it held a very large whisk broom. I was wearing a hurricane slicker, size ten hip boot waders, and a welder’s helmet -- the exact outfit I used to wear whenever I went quail hunting with the vice president.

I looked around. I had covered my entire apartment, walls, ceiling, carpeting, and furniture with the two-ply, heavy duty, water-proof plastic, the sort Dexter uses to wrap his victims after he fillets them. Was I expecting Jackson Pollack for breakfast? one of the cops asked. Pretty amusing I thought: A police officer who has David Kelley writing his dialogue.

But the boys in blue knew exactly why my apartment was one big drop cloth. They showed me memos alerting Interpol of potential early morning rowdiness by a certain select troublemaker. They warned me if my activities became to grandiose, I would be arrested under some Homeland Security proviso and sent to a castle as a lifelong juror. They did fine me, however, for using a brad nailer rather than a framing nailer when putting up the plastics.

It was 5 a.m.. Everything was ready around me. My herbal teas, pop tarts, and two day-old pizza were all under heavy plastic bags ready for consumption. I turned on my television to That Network, the very same one I watch only when I want a quick cardiovascular work out. My head exploded so often watching That Network that I could now look up in the middle of my living room and see constellations.

Today would be different. What could anyone on That Network say? Would the news readers keep their cool? Disappearing quickly, eight years of preaching an alternative reality, officials scurrying away like cockroaches in sunlight. Would any of the punditry last the day or would they self-detonate or melt before my eyes. Unharnessed kinetic energy can be a real mess to clean up. I've read the X-Men. I hoped I had enough plastic.

Fulminations. Blasts. Diatribes. Harangues. Jeremiads screamed from the TV set. For the next ten hours I witnessed with awe and near reverence the violent effects of No Drama Obama on this wandering herd of confused and lost pundits, commentators, and experts. Funny but none could recall ever saying that Obama was too black, not black enough, a secret Muslim, a jihadist, far too cerebral, much too elitist, not really Middle American, valueless, un-American, not American, a lousy bowler. January 20, 2009 was not the start of a new mandate, but one in which celebrity crazy America, ever ready for the next sparkling info product, had, hypnotically cast their ballot for the new guy. History would one day judge the previous administration differently, much like the way the crew of the Titanic would eventually reevaluate the role of the iceberg.

I dreamt of heads exploding outward, limbs twitching and flying away, and teeth shooting forth like missiles. I was ducking and covering. My television morphed into a Gatling gun, rapid firing canines and molars towards me. The floors and ceiling melted away into rivers of brainstems and eyeballs.

Wow! This is what happens after eight years of regurgitated miscalculations, misjudgments, guesstimates, broken promises and asinine justifications! I was swimming in bits and pieces of Charles Krauthammer, Fred Barnes, Neil Cavuto, Morton Kondracke, Ben Stein, and dozens more who had taken money for sitting on their brains and getting everything wrong. Were they too asleep when we thought they were awake? All that was missing from this carnage was Charlton Heston and a burning bush.

But the dream continued. After some commercial breaks all the Beltway boys and girls returned as verbally dense as before, ready to blow apart like mini Vesuvius mannikans. So many befuddled individuals twisting into yoga pretzels, emphasizing their relevancy and denying they were still part of the James Buchanan administration. They talk lovingly of Kumbaya moments, bipartisan appeals, and Congressional checks and balances. These guys were backtracking so quickly from their previous words that GPS units later found them on Jupiter.

"The Fox Hunt" by Winslow Homer

I laughed. I cried. I fell in love. I wake up. The Network is running for its life. Barack Obama is about to give his speech. Unlike Marley and Me and Seven, this day will have a happy ending.

I’m now sweeping out the apartment and doing some dusting as well. Now I know I'm back to dreaming because I would never do either action fully awake. My television appears ruined as is my Hummel collection of weird looking gnomes. I also discover that Easy Off does not work on carpets. I see so much viscera left on the walls and floors that I think I'll make sausage tonight.

How will That Network survive? Well there are still gays, guns, God, and the assault on Christmas so I guess they'll do just fine. My quick cardio workouts will continue.

Life is good. It's morning in America again. Actually it is late evening. Most of all, I am happy that Obama mentioned the word “science” in his Inaugural Address. Once more it is safe to believe the earth rotates around the sun rather than the other way around. And that ain't no dream.

The Gates of Eden

If Jean-Luc Godard Directed Garfield the Cat

Earlier today, a friend commented that my blog had, after only one month's worth of existence, become blurred and neglectful of my original objective of uploading all of my animation and live action treatments onto this site. Her evaluation has some merit, since only one example exists online to read. My posts tend to ramble and stumble around from one subject matter to another, much like the two bad ants in Chris Van Allsburg's children's book; but I have been told I have a winning smile.

She says I can't focus on one thing at a time. She's a doctor, and trained, as far as I know, not to operate on two patients at once; she has a different perspective about how many plates can be spun at any one time. Plate spinning reminds me of the Ed Sullivan Show. Could this be worth a post?

I'm not doing much at the moment except watching some Smothers Brothers retrospective, downloading Buddy Holly onto my iPod, microwaving dinner, listening to my neighbors explore new meanings for the word "evolution," doing laundry, vacuuming, and dusting. I only do vacuuming and dusting at this time of the evening when I need to find clean dishes and silverware, so that really doesn't count as an activity. I hate eating with my fingers, especially since tonight's meal doesn't look Moroccan. I don't know where I placed my cell phone earlier today. I wonder if the doctor is still on hold.

I was going to upload another idea tonight, but I love little kitten videos -- especially clever ones. I'm glad I discovered Henri. This could be the only chance I get to learn French in 2009, since I can no longer afford the services of either French maids or their outfits.

If the Jean-Luc Godard reference in the post title is a mystery, then I suppose I should save my Jean Cocteau joke for later. I don't think I ramble at all.

Atul Rao's Channel Runs on Animation Voltage

Atul Rao, a Canadian animator and friend, recently posted his latest piece of wacky animation online and, as usual, it's pretty funny. This guy is so prolific that he has his own channel. Not even David Sarnoff programmed every time period on NBC, and he ran that joint for 50 years.

I've liked cutout and collage animation since I first noticed it while watching Monty Python's Flying Circus. I've worked in cutout collage for years. Just today, I placed all of my store coupons in a neat little pile at the checkout counter in a very provocative fashion.

47 Years, 2 Months, 18 Days After the OK Corral Gunfight

On October 26, 1881 the most famous gunfight in all of American history occurred. 47 years, 2 months, 18 days later Wyatt Earp put his six guns down forever, cinched up Old Paint and rode off to join brothers Virgil, Morgan, and James at that big cat-house in the sky. I’m watching My Darling Clementine for the umpteenth time when I realize that I had forgotten to post by three days the 80th anniversary of the death of Wyatt himself.

Why would I remember that Wyatt Earp died here in Los Angeles on January 13, 1929? Beats me but any more questions as to why and I go for my pig irons! The knowledge of this fact haunts me; yet, is it worth any more sessions of hypnotic regression to discover the reason? I’m still trying to resolve why everyone in high school gave me the wrong date for our prom.

My Darling Clementine is not my favorite John Ford western. I much prefer The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Darling is chock full of historical nonsense and downright idiocy about the Earp boys. Brother James did not die at the hands of the Clantons as portrayed early in the film; he died an old man several years before Wyatt. Linda Darnell, singing up tempo pop ditties to Victor Mature's, coughing and wheezing Doc Holiday irks me even more. When I lecture today's students, I warn them never to confuse what they see on the big screen with what real library scholarship will uncover. Never, for instance use rustler dialogue as primary source material for college term papers. Professors will horsewhip your grade point average and friends and acquaintances will hide their prize cattle from you.

The calendar calculations took longer than I thought. I was comforted during this arduous process by the same sort of medicinal tonic that the Earp Brothers and Doc Holiday fortified themselves with before heading down those streets of Tombstone. It wasn’t sasparilla.

For a truer history of the Earps, Doc Holiday, the Clantons, and the rest of the varmints of Tombstone , check out Casey Tefertiller's book, "Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend."

Manning the Barricades One Last Time

Does this man not deserve his own Wikipedia entry?

Ever since I first discovered the tubes and piping called the Internets, and with it the invention of Wikipedia, I’ve waited for someone with knowledge of the man to write up an entry for Harvey Goldberg. Is it important to recognize him in this fashion more than two decades after his death? I think so, otherwise why would I bring it up?

Could the oversight be due to the paucity of his published materials? Certainly his politics would not have precluded an entry, nor would the intellectual quality of his lectures. Isn't there one hero worshipper out there who knows enough about the man to write an article? Other immortals from my days as a history student at the University of Wisconsin have their free encyclopedia links: the forever provocative William Appleman Williams, the Arthurian legend George Mosse, and the American icon Merle Curti. So why not Harvey?

Countless other UW-Madison professors are listed amongst the millions of Wikipedia entries, but I sat in on classes with these four. Recurring 60s flashbacks allow for only so many memories about that time on campus. I have been told I did not take any courses with Frederick Jackson Turner.

I entered the University of Wisconsin with one goal in mind: to become a history professor. I dreamt of standing in front of an audience packed solid with adoring students, enthralling them with a masterful presence and a clear certitude of righteousness. My words and phrases would be thundering tours de force, a secular evangelical romp, weaving the intricate fibers of 5,000 years of human inheritance into a crisp 50-minute piece of oral acrobatics.

I fancied myself rushing pell-mell down Bascom Hill, class notes, like my long strands of coal black hair, madly flying in the wind; beautiful acolytes following behind me, retrieving from puddles and snow drifts my discourse for the day. I would overwhelm academia with research of such stunning contrarian insight textbooks would have to be rewritten each time I published my brilliant insights. The world would be at my feet, and I would no longer be addressed by my parents as “Hey You.”

The rest of the time I would kick back and play hearts in the Memorial Union , or drink brew at any one of the dozens of beer joints around the campus, while preparing my thoughts for the next day’s classes. Life would be so sweet I would develop a chronic sugar rush. Then I woke up and discovered it was a dream. I heard Harvey Goldberg throw down a lecture and realized the only part of my fantasy that would come true was the tossing of hearts at 2 AM and the drinking of slosh at the nearest pub. I also remembered my hair was brown.

Goldberg’s grasp of history was so prodigious and his mannerisms so entrancing that even the asbestos flecks that form the foundation of the Humanities Building refused to fall during his lectures. One could imagine Harvey rushing UP the Odessa Steps to confront the Czar's troops; leading the members of the Estates-General into the streets towards the Bastille; manning the Parisian barricades in 1870; taking that fateful bullet in 1914 that would claim the life of Jean Léon Jaurès.

For a quarter of a century, Goldberg's reed thin voice never faltered; he danced out his words from memory, a verbal misstep was as unheard of as a yawn from the audience. He spun rhetorical gold, his oratory soaring over the stellar landscape of the University of Wisconsin History Department, stimulating the standing room only crowds to ponder, if only shortly in their undergraduate lives, the march of the common man over that of common stocks.

Before lunch, we paraded the Parisian streets, rallying against the Bourbon dynasty and the Ancien Regime, an emotional cataclysm made comprehensible even though the names today are better known for flan than for flames. The lives of long dead and all but forgotten men and women crackled with high tension, for individuals, even the most seemingly insignificant, lead and bleed movements. An hour of a mystical Harvey harangue would have turned even the drones, clones and fem-bots at Fox News into the proleteriat, Googling and Mapquesting in search of the closest barricades to man.

My encounter with Professor Goldberg has already been journalized for embarrassing posterity. I have no qualifications to work up a Wikipedia entry for Harvey. My skills are limited to doing dishes once every three months and signaling when I turn right at a red light. I would hope that one of his grad students or a current professor who worked a PhD under the Master would think Harvey worthy of such an entry.

Who knows, perhaps in the future some kid looking for a plastic surgeon or a podiatrist or a brain specialist stumbles instead onto the Goldberg Wikipedia article and rummages around long enough to click onto the Harvey Goldberg Center link. This could lead a future scholar into a world where teaching became more than a dry syllabus full of irrelevant facts and unremembered figures.

Harvey Goldberg and George Mosse discussing Marxism and Fascism for all eternity at Forest Hill Cemetery.

Note: The above photographs were taken at my behest in 40 degrees below zero temperatures by one of Madison's top bloggers and the class historian of the late and much missed Madison Central High School. She had the wherewithal to e-mail me the pictures before wandering off into the snow drifts, muttering something about "Fugu for Foodies." She was last seen between the Conrad Elvehjem marker and that of John "Snowball" Riley. Only the spring thaw will give us the truth.

A Little Bit of Wisconsin in Oz

As coroner, I must aver

I thoroughly examined her

And she's not only merely dead

She's really, most sincerely dead!

You know when you reach a certain age and there's no one to help locate your walker or find the pills necessary to make you pee straight (any bowl in the storm will do), and sleep is nigh impossible because the bedroom has been misplaced, a 2 AM viewing of "The Wizard of Oz" sets everything straight. Well mostly everything.

And when it comes time for the Munchkin coroner to warble the above Arlen-Harburg verse, I press pause and croak out On Wisconsin before resuming play; for as everyone knows, Meinhardt Raabe '37 is a University of Wisconsin alumnus.

As of this writing, Meinhardt is still with us at the age of 93, his longevity, no doubt, due to all the Oscar Mayer wieners he consumed while serving as the company's Little Oscar spokesperson for several decades.

Metaphors Are My Friends

Several weeks ago, we residents were given an early 2009 bonus: notification by a budgetary official in Sacramento that California could be in the "Brother Can You Spare A Dime", riding the rails category within two months.

The Golden State has now become so bankrupt the Pacific vacations elsewhere. We're so broke we can't afford a dust bowl. Times have become so tough the Grapes of Wrath are served at The Four Seasons as blue plate specials. Los Angeles is so depressed it no longer wants to waste time asking for an NFL team. Metaphors are so cheap, they're found littering the ground next to hopes, dreams, and aspirations.

Imagine an entire State "shutting shop and buggering the customers" as my Cockney mother might have said. A "For Sale" sign" hung out from San Diego to Crescent City. A whole world of 401K wounded, scuffling mindlessly along in their Jimmy Choos, Manolo Blahniks, Miu Miu, and Le Coq Sportifs, clogging up the I's, both 5 and 15. All glory bound elsewhere than here. Frederick Jackson Turner's 1893 monumental thesis of Westward Expansion comes in 2009 with reverse gears.

Our biggest concern is no longer who wins the Rose Bowl, but whether the float roses are edible over an unlit Coleman stove seasoned with dirt. Today's big question is one of practicality: Is it more viable to live over an underpass or under an overpass? The opening lyrics of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" have now been changed to "This Land's Defaulting on You and Me."

We've been terminated, decimated, eradicated. So now it might be time to rethink our State Motto of "EUREKA" and maybe change it to "WTF."

The new year is starting off great. Poupon goes well with rock salt.