Victor Horton's Idea, Ch. 1

VICTOR HORTON’S IDEA.

BY EDWARD STRATEMEYER.

CHAPTER I.
GREAT NEWS.

It was indeed great news for the Belmont boys. A real city show, and a double one, too, was to give an exhibition at the town hall.

These wonderful tidings had been circulated by means of the following poster, conspicuously displayed throughout the neighborhood:

COMING! COMING! COMING!

ZWINGO’S WORLD-FAMOUS UNCLE TOM’S CABIN
AND HUMPTY DUMPTY PANTOMIME TROOP.

The strongest combination extant! Two distinct companies in one grand double bill of unapproachable excellence! The savage, untamed Siberian bloodhound Leo! The comical donkey Wisdom! The favorite South Carolina Jubilee Shouters! The greatest of all great Clowns, Tim Dicks! The Royal Gold Cornet Band!

BELMONT HALL, Monday, November 3.

Admission, 25 cents. Reserved seats extra. Doors open at 7 P.M. Performance at 8.
N.B.—Don’t fail to hear the open-air concert before the opening of the doors.

No wonder that the feelings of the young folks were stirred to their deepest depths. Outside of the annual school exhibitions during holiday week, no shows had occurred for full three years. And this—this was to be so grand and immense! Oh, but wasn’t it just “boss!” Half the boys hugged themselves thinking about it.

Among the number was Victor Horton, the son of a prosperous farmer, whose broad acres lay a mile from the township centre.

Victor was fifteen years old, naturally bright and lively, and if he had not held so high an opinion of himself, he would have been a first-rate lad.

Besides being conceited, Victor was dissatisfied with the quietness of country life. He longed to go forth into the great world and achieve fame and fortune.

Now, though this idea is often a very laudable one, it was not so in the present instance. Victor’s idea upon the subject had been gathered wholly from the pages of numerous dime novels and disreputable story-papers loaned him by his particular crony, Sam Wilson, and was, therefore, of a deceptive and unsubstantial nature, and likely to do more harm than good.

But Victor was not aware of this, and it is quite probable that he would not have believed it, had he been told. It is my purpose to relate what his idea led to, and how the complicated affair terminated.

It was early morning of the day upon which the exhibition was to be given. Victor stood in a crowd of boys, waiting for Mr. Walner, the schoolmaster, to arrive and open school.

“Tell you what, boys,” Sam Wilson was saying, as he held up one of the show-bills, “my idea is that it’s rattling good, and no mistake.”

“I believe you,” agreed Billy Parsons, “and you can just bet I won’t miss it, either.”

These remarks worried Victor. The truth was that though he had set his heart upon going, he was by no means sure of gaining the required permission.

Mr. Horton was a strict man. He had begun life poor, and now, when the fruits of labor were accumulated around him, he did not believe in allowing money to slip away too easily. He was not close-fisted, only economical—a habit which his only son sadly misconstrued as a mere restraint upon personal liberty.

“Of course you will go, Vic?” continued Sam.

His “of course” meant a good deal to Victor. It was taken for granted, then, that he would go, and so it would never do to admit that permission must first be obtained.

“Oh, of course,” he replied, loftily.

“Then stop at my house at half-past six, and we’ll go together,” said his crony. “We want to hear the open-air concert, you know.”

Victor began to feel uneasy. He had not yet had the courage to ask his father if he could go, and now, if he was refused, what would the other boys say? Public opinion is often hard to endure.

While Victor was turning this matter over in his mind, and heartily wishing that he could do as he pleased, the tall form of Mr. Walner appeared and school was opened for the day.

It must be confessed that nearly all the lessons that morning progressed slowly. The announcement of the show was too much for the average pupil, and many ridiculous answers were returned to the kind old pedagogue’s questions.

The class in arithmetic was soon called.

“Wilson,” said Mr. Walner, thinking to interest Sam, who was unusually dull in figures, “if tickets for that show at the town hall are worth twenty-five cents, and reserves are worth double, which cost the most—nine tickets and five reserves, or seven tickets and eight reserves?”

“Reserves are not worth double,” replied Sam, promptly. “They are only thirty-five cents.”

The schoolmaster bit his lips in vexation.

At this instant a clatter was heard outside, and a second later came a sharp rap on the door.

“Harrison, see who is there,” said Mr. Walner, with an inquiring look upon his face.

The pupil addressed did so, and admitted the railroad station boy.

“A message for you, Mr. Walner,” he said, and delivered it.

The schoolmaster tore open the envelope with a nervous hand. It was the first telegram that he had received in many years.

As he read its contents, his face blanched considerably, and he pressed his hand to his forehead in painful thought, from which he was aroused by the boy asking if any answer was to be sent.

“No,” replied Mr. Walner.

And, after having his receipt-book signed, the boy departed.

The schoolmaster sat thinking for several moments after he was gone, and then arose and addressed his pupils.

“I wish to say to you that I have just received notice to come to New York at once. It is even necessary that I take the next train.” He glanced at the clock. “School is dismissed for the day. I cannot tell how long I shall be gone, but if I am not back by to-morrow, a proper person will take my place. You may go.”

The scholars needed no second bidding. Gathering up their books, they left the building at once.

When all were gone, Mr. Walner locked the door and hurried away as fast as his aged legs would permit.

His sudden departure was the subject of much comment among the boys. It was a most unusual occurrence, for which no one could give an adequate reason.

“Wonder what was in the telegram?” said Sam.

“Must have been important,” replied Victor. “He looked kind of pale when he read it, didn’t he?”

“Won’t Squire Green be mad when he hears of it?” remarked another boy.

For Squire Green, the head of the school committee men, was very particular in all transactions, and disliked anything out of the ordinary.

“Anyway, it gives us a holiday, and I’m in for making the most of it,” broke in Harrison. “Get your sticks, boys, and let’s have a game of shinny.”

This proposal met with instant favor. Nearly all got their sticks, and soon the cry of “Shinny on your own side!” arose on the morning air.

Victor did not stop to take part. He liked the game well enough, but his mind was on a certain paper-covered book, hidden away in the pocket of his jacket, and he started off for some place where he might continue its perusal.

“Hi, Vic, where are you going?” called Sam, running up.

“To the den,” replied Victor. “I want to finish this story.”

“Oh! I thought you were going home. Ain’t it just splendid?” he continued, referring to the book.

“You bet! Got any more like it?”

“Yes. Got this last night—‘Dakota Dick, the Red Rifle of the Rockies.’ Oh, but ain’t it immense! I’ll finish it to-morrow. But, say, let me have that as soon as you can. Butterfield is going to trade me for it.”

“I’ll be done with it this afternoon.”

“Then bring it to-night, when you come to the show.”

Victor’s face fell.

“I will if I come,” he replied, slowly.

“If you come!” Sam’s eyes opened widely. “You don’t mean to say you’re going to miss it?”

“Not if I can help it,” replied Victor, his face flushing: and to avoid being questioned further he hurried away.

 

(originally published in Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. X, No. 49)

Edward Stratemeyer

For as long as I've been able to read, I've been a big fan of the Hardy Boys. I easily read over 150 of their books while I was a kid between the original series and the totally '90s Casefiles series. Flash forward to college, when I learned that something called the Stratemeyer Syndicate was responsible for loads of the series books that I remember from that time in my life—the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, the Bobbsey Twins... The list goes on and on.

The Syndicate's army of ghostwriters cranked out hundreds of books over the years in a myriad of different series, but I've recently become more interested with the man where it all began, Edward Stratemeyer. Stratemeyer was a fairly prolific writer himself before he created his story-building factory, but most of his work remains fairly unknown. Largely in the mold of Horatio Alger (famous for his 1868 story Ragged Dick and the books that followed), Stratemeyer's stories tend to feature young men coming-of-age and/or going on adventures of one type or another, but what I like best about reading them is getting a window to the past. The vocabulary, the setting, the customs, the morals—like any works of fiction, they're written through a particular lens, but I find it's often a fascinating one.

Stratemeyer's earliest professional stories were serialized in a Philadelphia publication called Golden Days for Boys and Girls. As a rule, its publisher, James Elverson, didn't ever resell its stories, so they were never published anywhere else. The relative obscurity of these stories means that you can't even find them in places like Project Gutenberg, even though they've long since fallen into the public domain. I've got some time on my hands (IYKYK), so I'm going to work on transcribing and submitting the ones that I can find to PG.

As I work on them, I'm going to be posting my transcriptions here, and perhaps exploring a bit of the cultural context around these stories as we go. Let's start at the very beginning, as it's a very good place to start, so my next post will be chapter 1 of Victor Horton's Idea, a relatively short 14-chapter story. Stratemeyer's first professional story, the first three chapters were published in Vol. X, No. 49 of Golden Days, which has a publication date of Nov 2, 1889. For an inkling of what was going on in the world at the time, check out Wikipedia's overview because I don't know about you, but I don't know very much about the first Cleveland administration.

Hold Me Closer, Tiny Mama

Early this evening, M and I hit the AMC to see Céline Sciamma's (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) latest film, Petite Maman, which finally hit American theaters nearly a year after it was first released in France.

Clocking in at a brisk 72 minutes, Petite Maman is a wonderful little exploration of parent-child relationships.  8-year-old Nelly's grandmother has just passed away, and Nelly is helping her parents clean out the house where her mom grew up.  In the woods nearby, Nelly makes a new friend -- Marion, a young girl, also 8.  Marion just so happens to be Nelly's mom's name, and she just happens to live in the very house that they are cleaning out...

The many scenes of Nelly and young Marion (played by real-life sisters) playing together sparkle with joy, and although the story plays with themes of grief, loneliness, and depression, it's an altogether heartwarming experience.  I don't have any kids, but one of the things that the movie puts front and center, is a need for parents to share their humanity with their children.  Remember what it was really like to be a kid.  Tell stories with as much color as you can about your own childhood.  Build bridges of trust and understanding.  Your children aren't your equals, but that doesn't mean you always have to resort to preaching and teaching.

A New Leaf

One would think that being housebound because of the onset of a global pandemic would have been the perfect opportunity to revive this blog.  But no.  Instead, as we start to put COVID-19 in the rear-view mirror, or at least learn to live with it forever, I found myself tinkering with Blogger today in an effort to migrate this dusty old thing over to my real Google account, nearly five years after my last attempt to restart was hampered by having to juggle two accounts.

Friends, I am here to say that it was successful.  Welcome back to the Amber Tower.  I suspect you'll see a lot of capsule thoughts about movies here -- Meagh and I see an awful lot of them these days, since we signed up for AMC's A-List plan a few years back.  Outside of that, we'll see what the future holds.  I hope you enjoy.

mother!

Remember what I was just saying about screen addiction and my brain turning to mush?  Yeah... I'm going to come off like a pretentious douchebag, but I fear for the movie-going public of America if all of the 1-star reviews for Darren Aronofsky's mother! on IMDB are any indication.  Because so many people (including some in our screening) didn't seem to get the movie on any level, I'm going to ignore the surface-level story and talk about it as the metaphor that it is instead.  Although I'm confident that my old cast of regular readers here would be able to understand what's going on as the movie unfolds, I'm going to ensure it.  I wouldn't consider anything I'm about to say a spoiler.  These aren't twists; this is simply the context you need to understand to make sense of the movie.  Otherwise, you will find it hard to get any enjoyment out of it.

mother! tells the complete history of the Earth in microcosm, using various Biblical allusions to help mark the passage of time.  Don't worry, you don't need to be steeped in too much Biblical knowledge -- a basic understanding of the stories of Adam & Eve and Jesus are all that is needed.  God (Javier Bardem) is living in blissful tranquility with his wife, Mother Earth (Jennifer Lawrence).  They're all alone on Earth (their enormous house), and it's Mother Earth's job to build and maintain their domain ("building a paradise" as she says).  God is portrayed as a poet, who's had one great success in his career (Creation), but now has writer's block.  He begins to have a new idea when suddenly Man (Ed Harris) comes to the door; this is Adam.  I have confidence that you can take the rest from here.

The reason none of the above is a spoiler is because just playing "Spot the Metaphor" isn't what the movie is about.  There are a few different ways to read mother!, which I'll leave as an exercise to the viewer since that's where all the fun lies, but I tend to fall in line with Aronofsky's preferred reading.  You can watch his short Q & A from the screening at the Toronto Film Festival, if you want to know what that is.

I am a huge fan of Darren Aronofsky.  There's a reason that Meaghan and I chose him as the first director in the Decker Director Series.  I like to be entertained as much as the next person, but very few people today are able to use the Hollywood machine to create multi-layered movies that take some actual work to tease apart and fully understand.  We all need to be challenged sometimes, and Aronofsky consistently does this.

mother! is a fantastic movie.  Much like The Fountain, I can understand why it isn't for everyone... but it should be.

Decker Director Series

Back in the summer of 2014, Meaghan and I started a weekly event series with some friends.  Here's how it works:

• Pick a movie director who's made at least three feature-length films.
• Put that director's movies in order chronologically and make a weekly viewing schedule.
• For each week, pick a potluck dinner theme that corresponds to that week's movie or director in some way.
• Get together with friends, eat good food, and watch good movies.
• Repeat.

Three years later, we're still going strong.  So far, we've watched all of the movies of Darren Aronofsky, Sofia Coppola, Lenny Abrahamson, Frank Darabont, Ridley Scott, Ben Stiller, Ang Lee, Sarah Polley, David Lean, and Lynne Ramsay.  We're currently working on both Hayao Miyazaki and Woody Allen.

If any of our directors puts out a new movie after we've completed their filmography, we organize a "field trip" to see it in theaters, usually on opening weekend.  I'm bringing all of this up now because the director that we started this whole thing with, Darren Aronofsky, has a new movie in theaters this weekend, mother!  We're going to check it out this afternoon, so hopefully I'll be able to put some words together about it tonight or tomorrow.  It's supposedly a pretty difficult film; I'm looking forward to exercising my brain with it.

If you have any suggestions for directors we should check out in the future, or want to share some fun things you've been doing with your friends, feel free to comment.

My Brain is Turning to Mush

I don't know if it's the fact that I'm getting older (I've now survived 38 years on the planet) or the constant exposure to screens in my life or the overwhelming disposability and superficiality of nearly everything in this world, but I can feel my ability to think creatively or critically slowly beginning to slip away.  I've tried my best to combat the cell phone addiction that's rampaged across this country over the last ten years, but even I have a smart phone now.  Don't worry; it's not that smart.  Even so, I find myself checking all the usual suspects like Facebook and Twitter once a day despite there not being anything particularly new or useful to be found on any of them.  It's a world of information and entertainment overload, only hardly any of the information matters.

Ironically, my solution for all of this is to re-open the Amber Tower for business.  Sorry in advance for overloading you instead, dear readers, but there's something about the act of putting words together in a coherent fashion that does something for your brain that nothing else can.  Even if no one's still watching for updates on this blog or ever reads what I have to say, it'll be good for me and that's what I need right now.

Taste the Future

Has anyone seen one of these new Coca-Cola Freestyle soda fountains yet?

Meaghan and I ate at the Noodles in Plymouth tonight and got to use one for the first time ever. It looks like they've been slowly spreading across the country for the last year or two, so maybe I'm completely out of the loop and they've just taken forever to make it all the way to the Great White North. If you can't tell from the picture and didn't bother to click the link, the big deal is that this is a digital soda fountain with touch-screen selection that can mix and match 100+ flavors of soda. So if you've been dying to find easy access to some Vanilla Coke or Coke with Raspberry (really?), look no further.

We didn't notice the machine was there until after we ordered, so all I can tell you so far is that it dispenses water like a pro.

Everything Ends

For those not tracking the stretch run of the MLB season, it may not be news to you that the Detroit Tigers lost last night. However, it is if you consider the fact that their improbable win on Wednesday over Chicago, which included two pinch-hit 9th inning home runs to send the game into extra innings, raised their winning streak to 12 games.


I'm not going to predict a World Series win or even an appearance, as the baseball playoffs are an enormous crap shoot, but it's worth noting that every other Tigers team that won >10 consecutive games during a season made it to the Series. I'm looking forward to seeing what our AL Central champions can do this year.

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On a completely different note, since January I've been reading the 27 book Time-Life series on the Civil War that I inherited from my grandpa. I finished the last one this morning, detailing the failed attempt at Radical Reconstruction of the South from 1865-1877.


I've made a few half-hearted attempts in the past to read this series, but have never made it past the sixth book before. I've enjoyed it each time I've tried in the past, but failed because of the huge time commitment required. Now I'm pleased to say that I've learned everything there is to learn about the Civil War. Well, at least I've learned a lot about it.

It's already paid dividends at quiz bowl (first practice was yesterday) because I can laugh mercilessly when those puny high schoolers don't know who the Confederate general at Shiloh (and Fort Sumter) was. It's Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, of course.

Been There, Done That, Ate the Turkey Leg

The Warrior Dash turned out to be a ton of fun. Not only did we get some good exercise rambling up and down the ski slopes at Afton Alps, jumping over cars, climbing cargo nets, and ducking under barbed wire, but we did a bunch of other stuff I never thought I'd do. Among them:

- blasted clean by a fire hose
- ate a turkey leg at 9:30 in the morning -- my dad would be proud, there was absolutely no meat left on that bone when I was done with it
- queued up for beer at 10:00 in the morning -- it was free, and it was bad

If it comes back to Minnesota next year, I'd love to get a big group together to go with us. You don't have to be in fantastic shape, and can even walk it if you want to. The absolute worst part was right at the beginning because the course went straight up one of the steep ski slopes at the resort. We went at Meaghan's pace, which was less than strenuous, and finished in 50+ minutes. Even so, we didn't feel particularly out of place and could complete all of the obstacles with relative ease.

Because of the messy nature of many of the obstacles, we didn't bring a camera along, but there were professionals there to immortalize the occasion. Apologies for the watermarking, I'd have to pay money to get rid of that.


No, we're not drenched in sweat there. One of the first obstacles was to run through a couple of snow machines that were on at full blast. Since it's the summer, this amounted to being blasted with a metric ton of water.


Nearing the finish line, after going back down the ski slope on a giant Slip n' Slide, we had to hurdle a couple of flaming berms.


Emerging from the mud pit at the finish line, ready for the fire hose. Some of those clothes will never be clean again. Meaghan's still crawling through the mud somewhere behind me here.

Breaking the Silence

It's been a busy couple of weeks since returning from Europe.

I had fully intended on using that first weekend to load this place with tales from the journey, but instead we turned around almost immediately to get on a plane to Florida for Meaghan's G'Pa's funeral. Unbeknownst to us, he had suffered a stroke while we were gone and was placed into hospice. To our relative good fortune, he managed to hang on until the day after we returned so we were able to visit with the family at least a little as opposed to missing it completely. I only knew him for a small fraction of his 92 years, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a kinder soul.

We returned to Minnesota again to the news that one of Meaghan's students had committed suicide, so we attended our second funeral of the week that Saturday. Between that and trying to get acquainted with the current goings-on at work, it was a difficult week.

For this past week, I don't really have an excuse beyond working too much. We saw a couple of movies in the theater that I'll be writing about before too long, and as I write this we're in the midst of completing Disney movie #3. There are scads of bonus features and multiple commentaries on our copy of Fantasia, so it's taken us a long time to make it this far. Dumbo comes next for those of you tracking our progress.

None of that is the real reason that I'm making the effort to break my silence at such a late hour, though. My reason? Sunday morning, Meaghan and I become WARRIORS! Or at least, we're going to make the attempt. As a fan of "American Gladiators", "Ninja Warrior", etc. it'll be fun to try something that's even a tenth of what those contestants do. I'll let you know how it goes next week.

The Moral of the Story

So what was the point of all this? Good entertainment aimed at kids does exist. I know that none of my regular readers have children that are the right age for any of this stuff, but someday they will. Since we now know it exists, I urge you to take an interest in what your kids are watching and listening to. Help them differentiate the bad from the good so they don't fill their heads up with the mindless drivel that so many Americans waste their time on these days. Future generations will thank you for it.

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Epilogue: I just had to know if my crap sensor was broken, so I went out to YouTube and watched a random episode of "The Suite Life on Deck". Yep, it still sucks.

Thank goodness.

Deaf is the New Down

I'd tried Disney. When that failed, I moved on to campy werewolves. Another failure. There had to be a show targeted at tweens or teens that wasn't any good. After all, they're not supposed to be good. Looking over my list again, I decided to try a new ABC Family show, "Switched at Birth". I've seen a couple episodes of different ABC Family shows before, and absolutely none of it was good. Surely this would be an easy target. Just look at the name. Nothing with a premise that ridiculous (yes, I know it's happened in real life before) could possibly be any good.

I'm wrong yet again. Ostensibly, the show is about two teenage girls who discover that they were switched at birth. This raises the natural issues of identity and the importance of nature vs nurture. In and of itself, this could make for an interesting show, but the main thing this show really has going for it is that one of the two girls who were switched at birth is deaf.

Remember "Life Goes On"? It was that show from the early 90s that was essentially a regular family drama, except for the fact that one of the kids, Corky, had Down syndrome. It brought a whole new cultural awareness to the plight of the mentally retarded. "Switched at Birth" is absolutely going to do the same for Deaf culture. So many of the scenes, with good reason, focus on what it means to be deaf and how deaf people and the hearing interact, that it's obvious that this is what the show is really about.

The fact alone that it's doing something that's completely new to television (which is so rare in this day and age) would probably make it worth watching. Add the fact that it's decently written, well acted, and treats its subject matter with the utmost respect and there's absolutely no reason to not give it a try.

Howl at the Moon

Shaken by my unexpected enjoyment of "Sonny With a Chance", I decided that I needed to make sure I could still tell the difference between something that was good and something that was crap. I'll admit that I have the annoying ability to find the good in almost anything, but I can usually still tell when something is actually bad. Perusing my list of new summer shows, I settled on something I was sure would fit the bill, MTV's new remake of "Teen Wolf".

Everyone remembers the cheesetastic movie starring Michael J. Fox, right? Some high school kid becomes a werewolf and consequently becomes the best basketball player in the world all while wearing a ridiculous hairy wolf-man suit.


Well, this new show is not that.

In fact, much to my chagrin this new "Teen Wolf" is actually pretty good. For one, it's played completely straight. No camp, no cheese, and it employs a lot of tricks used in modern horror (tense scoring, dim lighting, and decent effects). For another thing, it's not another stupid show about vampires. Sure, it has a supernatural bent and is probably trying to cash in on the Twilight/"True Blood"/"Vampire Diaries" phenomenon, but it's refreshing to me that it's taking on a different fantastical creature for once.

Storywise, it probably employs a few too many cliches, but at least it's cliche done well. Our protagonist, Scott, is bitten by a werewolf while walking in the woods alone at night (yeah, I know), transforming him overnight into both a werewolf and his school's best lacrosse player. Props for showcasing a non-traditional sport, by the way. Unlike in the movie, though, this isn't common knowledge. It turns out werewolves are scary things that prowl moon-filled nights meting out death and destruction. Consequently, his best friend is the only guy in school to know his secret.

Add in a group of "hunters" whose mission in life is to stamp out all the werewolves in the world, a jealous team captain who used to be the best player on the team, and a new girl in town who takes a romantic interest in Scott (and oh yeah, happens to be the daughter of the lead hunter), and you have all the necessary ingredients for good teen drama. Seriously. If you're a fan of this kind of stuff at all, I recommend you give it a try. I think all of the episodes to date can still be viewed at the MTV website.

For Kim, Part 5/5

I know the suspense has been killing everyone, but now after a month's delay I'm finally ready to reveal who my 5th and final male actor is. Drumroll please...


It's none other than Paul Rudd.

Rudd first came to my attention back in 1995 when he played Cher's "total Baldwin" of a stepbrother in Clueless. He was the cute, charming straight man in an otherwise highly stylized and over the top teen comedy. This launched a brief period of popularity back when I was in high school where he most notably acted alongside Leo DiCaps in Romeo+Juliet, but none of that is why he makes this list.

In 2003, Meaghan and I were on our first vacation together in Winnipeg. (Don't knock it until you try it; it's a great city.) When on vacation, we often try to find some time to catch some movies in the theater wherever we are. On that trip, we decided to see Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things, which happened to star Paul Rudd as the bamboozled Adam. This dark exploration of how we all shape each other in our lives (intentionally or not) still ranks among my favorite movies of all time, and it catapulted Rudd back onto my radar screen.

He followed this up with a notable recurring role in the final seasons of "Friends" and a series of roles in Judd Apatow's comedies (The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, among others). Most recently, I've seen him in 2009's I Love You, Man alongside Jason Segel ("How I Met Your Mother", "Freaks and Geeks"), which was easily amongst my favorite comedies of the last few years. He plays the funny everyman so well, it makes me think that he's the kind of actor I would be if I were a giant movie star. Looking at his IMDB page, I can safely say that I'm looking forward to seeing how Rudd brings the funny in 2011 & 2012.

I'll leave you with this rather silly (and ultra-specific) celebration of Rudd's career.

Surviving the Disney Channel?

Next up on my list was a new sketch comedy show for tweens on the Disney Channel -- "So Random". I've tried watching episodes of tween shows on Nickelodeon ("True Jackson, VP") and Disney ("The Suite Life...") before, but have never talked about it here. Truth be told, Meaghan and I absolutely love most things Disney, but the garbage they spew on to their TV channel is universally terrible. I haven't seen anything on it in the last 5-10 years that's even been close to good. Ahem. Let me amend that. I hadn't seen anything...

To talk about "So Random", I'll have to start with a not so brief but hopefully interesting history lesson. It all starts with another Disney Channel show that debuted a couple of years ago, "Sonny With a Chance". Yes, the name is terrible. "Sonny" shares a common setup to a lot of other Disney shows (analogies include: "Hannah Montana":Miley Cyrus, "Lizzie McGuire":Hilary Duff, "Wizards of Waverly Place":Selena Gomez -- if you don't recognize any of those names then you're living under a much larger rock than I am) in that it's primarily a vehicle for its leading lady. In this case, that lady is the star of the Disney Channel movies Camp Rock and Camp Rock 2, Demi Lovato. More on her in a bit, but first "Sonny".

"Sonny With a Chance" is the story of a girl from Wisconsin (Sonny Munroe) who is hired to join the cast of a Hollywood-based teen sketch comedy show called "So Random". It starts out primarily as a fish out of water story as Sonny has to adjust to the strangeness that is life in show business as part of a hit show. Complicating that is the fact that they share a studio with the #1 teen drama in America, Mackenzie Falls. Needless to say, the casts of the two shows do not get along... at all.

The ringleader of the people at the Falls is its star, the greatest actor of his generation, Chad Dylan Cooper (hilariously played by Sterling Knight -- remember that name). Most shows that feature a show within a show (or in this case, two shows within a show) fail miserably when they attempt to show anything from it -- "Studio 60" I'm looking at you here -- but that's not the case with "Sonny". Yes, the "So Random" sketches are hit and miss, but so is SNL. Sketch comedy is hard to do right. "Mackenzie Falls", however, is pure comedy gold as it single-handedly takes the mickey out of every CW show ever created. Behold!


In season 2 of "Sonny", the focus shifts to the burgeoning relationship between Sonny and Chad, exploring the regular hazards and pitfalls of dating as a teen as well as the complications that arise when those teens happen to be famous celebrities on competing shows. I didn't think I'd ever say this, but I'm proud to say that I've seen pretty much every episode of "Sonny with a Chance" and it's actually quite good. Sure, the acting can be a little rough at times, but those are the hazards when your cast is young and inexperienced. In particular, Lovato (who was only 16 when the first season was filmed) has a tendency to talk loudly and try to get through scenes by flashing her megawatt smile. Thankfully, she improves quite a bit in season 2 and blends into the show much better.

So if it was so good, why is a real version of "So Random" now on the Disney Channel? What happened to "Sonny" season 3? Well, the answer to that lies with its star. Demi Lovato is first and foremost a musician, not an actor. Prior to doing research for this piece, I hadn't heard a single song of hers, but now that I have it's not all that bad. It certainly tops trainwrecks like Ke$ha and the aforementioned Cyrus. She reminds me a little bit of a young Kelly Clarkson. Hopefully, she's able to grow into her voice in the future. This song in particular, "La La Land", from her first album is a catchy little earworm that I haven't gotten out of my head for the past week. Please take a listen and pay attention to the lyrics (which she actually wrote) as they're important to the tale I tell.


Ah... ain't naivete grand? The gist of the song (for those who refused to listen to it) is that even though she's knowingly stepping into the Hollywood hype machine, she's going to stay the same person she's always been. I think Mmes. Spears and Lohan (among others) might be able to offer a differing opinion. I actually think it's pretty appalling the way our culture treats young people in show business. It's almost as if it's designed to completely chew them up and leave them a frail shadow of the person they once were, after extracting every last penny of revenue from them, that is. Add to that the endless line of kids (and their parents) looking to get rich and famous and you can see why the individuals don't matter. There will always be someone there to replace them.

It's complicated enough being a kid in the first place. Add in the fact that you're expected to be a role model to other kids and everything you do is in the public eye, captured by tabloids or Internet gossip sites, and the pressure can be absolutely astounding. Interestingly enough, many of the best episodes of "Sonny" deal with these very issues, so not only was Lovato living them out in real life but she was play-acting them a second time over for her TV show.

In Lovato's case, she quickly became popular with the tween crowd from her TV roles and her albums. As I'm writing this, she has nearly 3.5 million followers (dubbed "Lovatics") on Twitter. Think about this for a minute. How many people are you or I even going to interact with in our lifetimes? She has 3.5 million people watching her every move on the Internet. After messy public breakups with childhood BFF (and fellow Disney star) Selena Gomez and boyfriend Joe Jonas (of the Jonas Brothers), it was only a matter of time before something was bound to go wrong.

And go wrong it did. While on tour in South America in late 2010, she punched out one of the Jonas Bros. (her tour mates) backup dancers. This was quickly followed by her leaving said tour and checking herself into a medical treatment center to deal with eating and self-harm issues. After receiving treatment and being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Lovato recently reemerged to begin work on her third studio album, which is due out some time this year. She's also been hired to write editorials for Seventeen magazine in an effort to help other young girls cope with problems like the ones she experienced. I hope everything works out for the best, but that brings us back full circle to "So Random".

Left without a star for "Sonny", Disney was forced to make a decision: cancel it entirely, or do something else with all of the actors under contract. Hence, the new sketch comedy show. It features all of the other main actors from "Sonny" along with a variety of musical guests and guest hosts, much like a little 20-minute version of Saturday Night Live. Is it any good? As with the sketches from the show within a show, it's hit or miss. Without any compelling characters or ongoing storylines, though, there's no real reason for me to watch it.

Now that Lovato is in the public eye again, will "Sonny With a Chance" ever return? It's doubtful, and that makes me sad. But maybe, if we're lucky, she'll make a guest appearance on "So Random". I'd probably tune in for that.

Cartoon Cartoons!

It all started when I decided to do what I've been known to do from time to time: look into some new TV shows. Little did I know that I would soon be embarking on a rather specific quest...

It began innocently enough. Cartoon Network's Regular Show is one of the few new shows I picked up last fall as appointment TV (for my DVR). Nearly 40 episodes have aired to date, and few if any of them have been misses. Given that, I decided to start with some programs that recently began airing on CN in the hopes of striking it rich again.

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Specifically, I started with a new show that aired on Adult Swim -- a late night block of animation that shares a channel with Cartoon Network. Ostensibly geared for the 18+ crowd, they draw an awful lot of teens their way, too. They air a lot of popular stuff that I or people I know watch from time to time: "King of the Hill", "Family Guy", "Robot Chicken", and "The Venture Bros". They also air a fair amount of anime and some rather off the wall stuff, too.

One of those off the wall shows is something called "Aqua Teen Hunger Force". If you've never heard of it, that's probably okay, but it's now in its 8th season so it must be fairly popular with somebody. I'm just not real sure who that somebody is. I like a lot of weird stuff (goodness knows I'm a huge David Lynch fan), but this really does just seem to be weird for the sake of being weird. Featuring the adventures of an anthropomorphic milkshake, french fries, and meatball, ATHF is chock full of non sequitur, absurdist humor as well as a bunch of pretty offensive stuff.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. I thought I was watching a new show. So why am I telling you all this about ATHF? Well, that new show I watched is something called "Soul Quest Overdrive", and it's a spin off of a particular episode of ATHF. In that episode, we're introduced to three anthropomorphic fruits. I think the schtick is supposed to be that they claim to be born-again Christians, but then proceed to do a bunch of crude, violent, and illegal things. Unfortunately, that's just not funny.

For "Soul Quest Overdrive", the fruits have been turned into sports equipment, but the characters remain the same. I just can't recommend this at all. The only thing I found amusing is what a good time the foley artists must have had using bowling pins, basketballs, and the like to emulate the characters moving about. Watch at your own risk.



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Beaten down from that horrible experience, I turned my gaze back to the regular Cartoon Network and decided to try "The Looney Tunes Show". Wait... what? Did you know they were making new Looney Tunes? It's admirable that Warner Bros is trying to reintroduce their classic characters to a new generation of teens and tweens, but unfortunately this show pales in comparison to the originals or even the Tiny Toon Adventures that I grew up with.

Part of the problem is just that -- it's a show. Where all previous incarnations of Looney Tunes have been a series of largely unconnected shorts, each episode of this is one long-form story with one or two 2-minute unrelated shorts mixed in. In the era of ADD and short attention spans, I find it a curious choice that they would turn their back on a format that would seem tailor-made for today's kids. To make matters worse, there's little chance that they'll be able to tell the diversity of stories they have in the past.

Each episode is based in the same coherent universe. Bugs Bunny lives in a house out in some suburban neighborhood development and Daffy Duck is his unwanted permanent house guest. All of the other characters only exist in so far as they enter and exit Bugs' and Daffy's lives. I watched the first six episodes to get a good feel for it, and I still haven't even seen some classic characters like Sylvester, Tweety, and Foghorn Leghorn. This would all be okay if it were funny, but beyond little bits and pieces its just not that great. It seems to be doing reasonably well in viewership numbers, so unless it's egregiously expensive they'll have some time to improve. I just don't know that I'll be there to see it.

I mentioned before that it features a short or two every episode. So far there have only been two types of these. The first type is a slick CGI version of Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote. These exactly capture the spirit and feel of the originals. If you were a fan of those, you'll actually enjoy this 2 minutes of the show. The other type is an absolutely horrific new version of Merrie Melodies. Watch the video below for an example at your own risk.



I warned you.

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Having failed again, I decided to give Cartoon Network one more chance to impress me. The final show I tried is something called "The Amazing World of Gumball". And impress me it did, despite the fact that I have little to say about it. It's essentially a family-based comedy with everything that entails, but it has an absolutely zany cast of characters and a good sense of humor.

My only problem with it is that it skews pretty young -- it is rated TV-Y7 after all -- so it's not likely to be something that I continue to watch on a regular basis. If I had kids, though, I would definitely make an effort to tune in every week. Check out the first episode and let me know what you think.

A Little Musical Theater

I know this is nearing 5 years old now, so any self-respecting fan of "How I Met Your Mother" and/or Les Miserables has probably already seen it, but I can't resist posting it here. I discovered it while doing some YouTube research for a future post.

For those familiar with the original Broadway cast recording of Les Mis, I really dig how much they're channeling Terrence Mann and Colm Wilkinson in this. I also find the reactions of the other HIMYM cast members on the sofa to be hilarious.

The Lazy Bachelor

So I wish I could say I had a good reason for the recent hiatus. In fact, I thought I would have loads of time to build up a big buffer of prepared posts. Well, I have had loads of time...

You see, right after the end of the school year back in the 2nd week of June Meaghan left the country and I've been living the bachelor life ever since. It turns out I'm apparently really lazy when I'm all alone, or maybe just demotivated from doing things -- not sure which.

Why is Meaghan gone? Remember that German teacher exchange? Well, she got to go to Düsseldorf to visit Cordula for the 2nd half of the program. In fact, she'll be staying in Europe for the better part of a month. She co-sponsors a writing-based trip at her high school. Last year, she took about a dozen kids to London, Paris, and Rome. This year the trip size is up to 20 and they're going to Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and England. What am I saying? We're going to those places. 20 was the magic number that they needed to hit for me to go along as a chaperone. I leave Monday, and am starting to get amped up for the trip. Hopefully, not too many of the teens give us grief.

So what have I been up to for the last couple weeks? Good question. I've attached a couple small pieces below along with a teaser for the series that will hopefully keep you company while I'm gone -- assuming I can get them all written before I leave. Enjoy!

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Before Meaghan left the country, we went to see another movie at one of our local art house theaters. This probably deserves its own post, but I'm probably not eloquent enough to do it justice. The film was Terrence Malick's new work The Tree of Life. Like all of his films, it was beautiful and strange if not lacking a little bit in coherency. For those not familiar with Malick, despite the fact that he directed his first movie back in 1973 this is only his 5th full-length feature. I've only seen the two previous to this: The Thin Red Line and The New World.

It's a largely autobiographical story about his childhood growing up in Texas in the 1950s. Depicting his father as a violent force of "nature" and his mother has a beautiful force for "grace" (nature vs grace is the dichotomy set up in the opening narration, hence the quotes), it's essentially a series of related vignettes showing their interactions, their troubles, and the events that shaped him into the person he is today.

My childhood was not nearly as contentious as Meaghan's (she's compared us to the Cleavers on more than one occasion), so I didn't relate to the actual story elements as much as she did, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a beautifully made film. And oh yes, there are dinosaurs!

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Last year when Meaghan was in Europe, I spent a lot of time watching the World Cup, so it's only fitting that this year I've been keeping my eye on the Gold Cup. What? You didn't know that North America's largest soccer tournament has been going on in our country over the last two weeks? I'm shocked.

Wait, no I'm not. Apparently this is the year that I spend all of my sports-related energy on the sports that Americans just don't care about. The finals are tonight, but the only places you can see it are on FOX Soccer (who knew that existed?) and Univision (in español). Predictably, the USA is facing off with Mexico. It's not been an easy road to the finals for the US, so I'm expecting them to get pasted by "El Tri". We'll see what happens.

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Lastly, I spent a lot of time on an unexpected journey that I'll be sharing over the next two weeks. It started with me questioning my sanity, and then I thought I'd completely lost my taste. In the end, though, I came to grips with reality and learned how to stop worrying and love the tween.

New School, Same as the Old School

This weekend Meaghan and I kicked off the summer blockbuster season by going to see the brand-new X-Men prequel/reboot X-Men: First Class. With James McAvoy as Professor X and a Rotten Tomatoes rating up above 80%, we had high expectations. Did it meet them?


In a word, yes. Although it continues to play in the same thematic pool as X2, it does so with enough skill to easily wipe away the bad taste left in my mouth from the horribly flawed 3rd and 4th entries in the franchise. From its setting (1962's Cuban Missile Crisis -- of sorts) to the surprising turn by Kevin Bacon (I had no idea he was even in it) as Sebastian Shaw, villainous leader of the Hellfire Club to the slam bang action sequences, First Class makes a lot of right moves. And with director Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass) at the helm, that's not completely unexpected. The acting is competent, the effects are good, but what has always made the X-Men movies worthwhile (or not) are the ideas.

At its heart, as in most of the first movie trilogy, First Class is an exploration of what it means to be different. It uses its two main characters, Charles Xavier (Prof. X) and Eric Lensherr (Magneto), to present two differing viewpoints. In the film, the existence of evolved humans (mutants, if you will) is just becoming known in some circles. Charles, a child of privilege, believes that mutants can and will be integrated and accepted into human society. Humanity will flourish as a result of the unique things these individuals can do. Eric, a Jewish child of the Nazi death camps, knows from his personal experiences that humans are ugly beings that persecute others for their differences. It's a kill or be killed world, and Eric knows that in order to survive mutantkind is going to have to go it alone and be ready to defend itself.

The beauty of X-Men is that neither viewpoint is necessarily painted as right or wrong. Although Xavier is clearly intended as the moral center of the story, you can understand and accept what informs the opposing arguments. Also, mutants can be used as a cipher for many of the issues that are debated in the world today: gender, race, sexuality, etc. Even though it feels to some extent like we're stuck circling around the same ideas as the previous films, no one can deny how much they resonate, and the climax of the film sets us up nicely for further exploration in this space. Planned as the first in a new trilogy, hopefully First Class will make enough at the box office to allow us to see more.

If you're a fan of previous X-Men movies, particularly of X2, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

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Djokovic Watch != 44

You won't be seeing any more tennis updates from me for some time. As feared, Novak Djokovic's win streak was stopped at 43 as he fell in four sets to Roger Federer in the semifinals of the French Open on Friday. That leaves him tied for 3rd longest streak of all time. If he (or anyone else) starts another one, I'll let you know when they get up around 30. Until then...