Based on a comment from my friend Dennis, about the dark side of George Bailey in the classic movie It’s A Wonderful Life, my sister Jean recommends watching this.
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Author: DOuG pRATt
NOVA: Marathon Challenge
October 30, the evening after American Masters shows the Charles Schulz program, NOVA on PBS will present Marathon Challenge.
NOVA wanted to investigate these questions through the “Marathon Challenge,” and with the help of a dozen enthusiastic recruits, we set out to see if “ordinary people” could transform themselves into marathoners in just a matter of months. The results were extraordinary.
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The timing of this program is interesting, because a runner died in the Chicago Marathon this past Sunday; not from the 84° heat, but from a pre-existing heart condition. I have completed six Boston Marathons, under a wide variety of weather conditions, including a day when the temperature hovered around 90°F. And take it from me, it’s not something you want to try unless you’re totally in love with the idea of doing it and are prepared to do the work to get ready.
Does the idea of heading out the door to run 16 miles, even when it’s raining, because that’s what the training schedule says to do, appeal to you? No? Then forget marathon running.
The NOVA participants benefited from expert guidance throughout their 40-week training — hmm… the same number of weeks it takes to have a baby. The idea that anybody can run a marathon is simply wrong. Jon Krakauer is a favorite author of mine, and in his book Into Thin Air he is critical of people who want to believe that anybody can conquer climbing Mt. Everest with proper training and adequate equipment.
WALKING the Boston Marathon course is do-able, with proper preparation. A good friend of mine did exactly that recently. But if you aren’t already a runner, and you’re more than ten pounds overweight, and you’ve never jogged more than three miles, I strongly suggest that you not get it in your head that 26.2 miles is nothing more than 13.1 miles times two, because doubling the effort it takes to do 13.1 miles occurs at about 19 miles. And you still have another 7 miles to go.
My Military Mind
WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 — The Marine Corps is pressing to remove its forces from Iraq and to send marines instead to Afghanistan, to take over the leading role in combat there, according to senior military and Pentagon officials.
…and this is what I said a year ago.
- We’ve got to get out of there. Now. It would be far cheaper and safer to simply give Iraq the money it needs to rebuild. Send the National Guard home where it belongs, let half of the regular Army rest, and redeploy the other half to Afghanistan. I’m no military strategist, but this is obvious.
If this was obvious to me a whole year ago, with no military experience whatsoever, what took the experts so long to start coming around to the same conclusion?
Happiness Isn’t…
The word “depressed” is in three out of four panels in today’s Peanuts strip reprint. That’s it! Schulz was happy one quarter of the time.
Here is a clip from the upcoming American Masters program about Charles Schulz. As hoped, Schulz’s great lost love, Donna Wold, makes an appearance.
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My best buddy, and fellow Schulz fan, D.F. Rogers has these interesting comments to make on the subject of Schulz the man…
That lovable cartoonist, Good Ol’ “Sparky” Schulz…warm and witty. Let’s see what he has to say to Mike Barrier. [Link to interview] The portrait of the man as a REAL person, prickly with strong opinions, but stated in a very normal speaking tone with that distinctive Minnesota accent. I was so fascinated by the prickly things he said, that I just had to cut them out to highlight them, OUT OF CONTEXT. It’s like taking all of the scenes of the mad, drunk, crazy George Bailey [in It’s A Wonderful Life] and putting them together. These are things that he really said, so I wonder what the new Bio says that can be anymore prickly than this — other than sensational things?
No; it’s not the time, it’s the anxiety and the guilt feelings that they give to you. Time is no problem with me. I actually don’t even work very long hours. I start here at 9, and usually I go home at 4 o’clock. That’s not bad. Five days a week; I don’t work at night, or on the weekends. So it’s not a matter of time, it’s just a matter of the energy, I guess, plus the fact that it’s not a job which depends strictly on the amount of hours you put in. It depends on what you can think of. The never-ending burden of having to do something day after day after day, and it never lets up.
No, I’m never swamped by that kind of distraction. The only kind of distractions that bother me are the continual requests for special drawings for my grandfather who’s retiring, or the priest in our church who is retiring and who uses your cartoon, or so-and-so’s birthday’s coming up, or so-and-so is sick in hospital, and auctions—we get auction requests every day. Some are fine, and some are not; if they write “Dear Celebrity,” and it’s a form letter, we throw it away. I cannot understand anybody wanting a favor from somebody and not only not even—most of the time not spelling your name right, but not even using your name at all. But we try to do the best we can with all of these things. Those are the things that bother me the most.
Continue reading Happiness Isn’t…
Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (And So Can You!)
I expected Colbert to interview himself to promote his new book, I Am America (And So Can You!). It appears to be “thin, yet meaty” as a college professor of mine used to say. I expect I’ll be picking up a copy.
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Beatless Ringo?
I’m in the middle of reading the autobiography (written with help) of recording engineer and producer Geoff Emerick — Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of THE BEATLES. This is an excellent, excellent book, a great read, and it’s enormously, vastly better than George Martin’s All You Need Is Ears.
Emerick’s vivid accounts of the Beatles’ recording sessions make a perfect companion to the superb — but highly technical — reference text, RTB Book — Recording the Beatles, by Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew. He tells many stories that others have told in ways that were either exaggerated, off-the-mark, or incomplete. For example, Emerick has the best account I’ve read of why Ringo was pulled after the first take of “Love Me Do.”
Ringo was having difficulty maintaining a steady beat, and Paul was starting to get annoyed with him. George Martin did his best to prop them up over this talkback mic, but in his private conversations with Norman [Smith], he criticized the unsteady drumming.
Another interesting moment was when Emerick met Brian Epstein for the first time.
Friendly though he was, Brian struck me as a bit odd. He was a quiet man, obviously upper class. He didn’t come to many sessions, but he was always very polite to me when he did; however, I always got the impression that the Beatles didn’t like having him around.
Despite Epstein’s importance to the success of The Beatles, they felt the recording studio was their domain, and Epstein didn’t belong there. Also, Epstein was gay, and from what I’ve read elsewhere, at that time The Beatles weren’t comfortable with his lifestyle.
Emerick loves to describe the various recording tricks that were employed to give The Beatles’ records their distinctive sound. And unlike the RTB book, his explanations aren’t technical. In the spirit of audio experimentation, I recommend checking out a link on the WFMU blog, where the entire Beatles album catalog has been compressed into one hour. You may find yourself getting bored quickly with that, so I suggest listening to the time-compressed songs that have been slowed down. EMI/Capitol may not appreciate these mashed-up recordings, but they’re exactly the sort of playing around that The Beatles loved to do in the studio.