cinema history class: a study in terror

Keith's film class in the basement continues with week two of our Sherlock Holmes session. This time it was A Study in Terror (1965), starring John Neville and Sherlock Holmes. Not counting the stupid Sherlock Holmes episodes of Star Trek the Next Generation*, this was my second exposure to the Holmes character. The first was a week prior, when Keith showed us the 1959 production of The Hound of the Baskervilles.


Short answer? I loved this film.


Study isn't a horror  movie; it's more of a crime drama/mystery. In the discussion afterwards, I said it seems to me like a krimi, though I don't really know what exactly that genre entails. Keith seemed intrigued by that observation, though he explained that the krimis typically involved criminal plots that were more complicated.


The key to why I enjoyed this movie is that it was well-paced and riveting. Like any good mystery, it had me guessing the whole time. In addition, there were some good comedic moments (including Sherlock's scene with his brother Mycroft -- who was admirably portrayed by Robert Morley). And since this was a restored version on blu-ray disc, the color was wonderful.


As an aside, I note that a lot of this movie seemed like it was right out of  Oliver! In fact, during a couple of the bar scenes I kept expecting Georgia Brown (who was playing the role of the singer) tyo start belting out "Oom-Pah-Pah" And a couple of times I thought I was looking at Bill Sikes. And, who knows? Maybe that association played a role in my enjoying the film. Oliver! is one of my favorite musicals -- the Broadway soundtrack is one of the records I associate with my childhood, and I played Fagin in my sixth grade class production. My apologies to the curious: that performance is not available on Youtube.


As I noted in a prior post, I wasn't crazy about the 1959 Hammer version of Hound of the Baskervilles, so I actually had low expectations going into this. But this helped restore my faith in the possibilities of Sherlock Holmes. Even if the character is an a-hole.


*Data, the android, had an obsession with Holmes. Data was the most annoying regular on the show (with the possible exceptions of Picard, Riker, Troi, La Forge and Wesley Crusher). But that's another matter.

why didn't the dentist lose his license?

Is anyone familiar with the appropriately named Jackass films? These films are vignettes of a crew of guys, headed by Johnny Knoxville, playing practical jokes and pranks on each other, or doing distasteful things on dares. A few examples?

• One guy ate horse manure on a dare.
• A couple guys were tricked into getting into a limousine. Once they were in, the doors were locked and bees were poured in through the moonroof.
• One guy allowed himself to be branded on the backside (with a red hot brand shaped like a penis.

 You get the idea.

These don't interest me, but I have, unfortunately, seen a bunch of these stunts and pranks. Which is a bunch more than I need. But I learned something today that has me wondering. In one incident, a member of the crew was convinced to have his tooth pulled by a Lamborghini. That is, they tied it to the back of a car and had the driver burn rubber. In order to convince him to allow this, they paid a dentist to tell him the tooth was infected and needed to be pulled.

How is that not a violation of medical ethics? How come that dentist hasn't been censured?

The relevant video is below. But it is definitely NSFL.

baseball stoopidstats: who has won their share of world series?

Ready for more baseball StoopidStats?

What last I yammered about this stuff, I was looking at the lengths of World Series droughts. That was inspired by the Cubs victory, which ended their streak of more than 100 years. And I was thinking about the Mets (my team of choice) and the fact that they haven't won in 30 years.

But although 30 years is a long time, it's not really an extraordinary drought, since there are 30 teams. With 30 teams, we can really only expect a team to win once every 30 years (on average). This led me to wonder about the Mets: Have they won their share of World Series? The answer isn't entirely obvious. There have been 54 World Series since they were enfranchised. With two wins, they've won more than 1 in 30. But for most of the time they existed, there were fewer teams.

To answer the question (and the analogous question for each other team), I came up with a statistic (which I will call a team's Wins per share ratio). The goal is to calculate how many World Series a team has won, divided by the number they would have been expected to win if wins were evenly distributed among the teams. For a given team, this statistic is taken by adding 1/Nt for all years, t that the team existed (and a World Series was played, where Nt is the number of teams existing in year t. To take a simple example, if a team has existed for six years, during which there were 30 teams, and they won 1 World Series, then their statistic is 1 / (6 / 30) = 5. This means that they have won 5 times as many World Series as their share.

The accompanying table shows the 30 existing franchises and their ratios. By way of background (for those not into MLB history), the modern World Series began in 1903, and has been played every year since then except for 1904 and 1994. For the years in that span, the number of teams was as follows:

• 16 teams through 1960
• 18 teams in 1961
• 20 teams from 1962 through 1968
• 24 teams from 1969 through 1976
• 26 teams from 1977 through 1992
• 28 teams from 1993 through 1997
• 30 teams from 1998 onward

I am not considering Federal League teams, since the FL did not participate in the World Series.

 It should come as no surprise that the Yankees sit atop the list, having won nearly five times as many World Series as their share. My Mets have won just fewer than their share.

One quick anecdote about this. When I did my first draft of these calculations, I made a mistake and had the Yankees winning 4.80 times their share. I IM'd a friend at work about it. Then when I realized I had made a mistake, I IM'd him to say it was actually 4.74. His response? "I thought 4.80 looked a little strange."

cinema history class: the hound of the baskervilles

In coming up with themes for the sessions of the cinematic history class, Keith has often taken suggestions from those of us in the class. Which makes sense, since he's -- at least to a degree - catering to us.


This past week we started a session of Sherlock Holmes movies -- it was Ethan's suggestion -- with Hammer Films' 1959 production of The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Andre Morel, this should have been better than it was. Ethan tweeted that he enjoyed it, but it was still his least favorite Hammer film (which, I suppose, is a tribute to how good Hammer was). I noted -- and the others agreed -- that this was more of a live action Scooby Doo than horror film. Still and all, Cushing and Lee were good enough that we generally gave this film high grades.


The shameful admission for me is that this is -- I think -- the first time I've seen a Sherlock Holmes film. And I've never read a Sherlock Holmes book. I have seen all those annoying episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Data recreates Holmes in the holodeck. So I've got that going for me, which is nice.

the long island motor parkway: exploring a new discovery

The Long Island Motor Parkway will always be in my mind as a part of my childhood. That's because

The end of the bike trail, at Union Turnpike and Winchester Boulevard

a part of it formed a bicycle path from Cunningham Park (near my home) to Alley Pond Park (a few miles away). That section formed a bicycle path, running through suburban Queens, which my sister, my father and I rode quite often. Together and apart. We called that section "The Bike Path." Short and sweet.

The bike path, or at least the paved part of it that we used, began just East of the Clearview Expressway and North of Union Turnpike. It ran Eastward, through the trees between rows of backyards. There were a few access points -- one at Bell Blvd, and one at Springfield Blvd. It crossed those North-South Boulevards via bridges. It entered Alley Pond Park a few blocks East of Springfield Blvd, and then swept downward. There was a gentle curve to the right, then down under the Grand Central Parkway. It continued downhill, sweeping back to the left. Then, further down, you could see Union Turnpike to your right and the fields of Alley Pond Park to your left. Finally, it starts climbing, and you reach a dead end atop an embankment. Facing Winchester Blvd, you've reached the end. The embankment is there because the LIMP used to continue on to the East, crossing Winchester Blvd. via bridge, and going through what is now Creedmor Psychiatric Center.

I haven't been on that path in years, but it remains a part of my childhood memories.

I was unaware that there is a historical society dedicated to researching the LIMP, and preserving its history. I guess it stands to reason, but the thought had never crossed my mind. At any rate, this past Saturday I found myself on Creedmor's grounds because of an advertised event -- a walk to explore the first new discovery about the LIMP in years. So Asher and I went to see what the hoohah was all about.

Asher at the tunnel entrance

The discovery was an underground walkway, crossing under Union Turnpike. We gathered at the North entrance, a nondescript weathered staircase on the hospital grounds. We could walk down the stairs, but the actual walkway was closed off by a locked door. We could peer through the door and see a long damp corridor with a hint of light at the other end. Howard Kroplick, a historian with the Long Island Motor Parkway preservation Society was talking about the LIMP and the underground walkway. He explained that the other end, located south of Union Turnpike was grated up. But the staff at Creedmor goes through the tunnel periodically to make sure all is OK.

This kind of puzzled me. The tunnel was a new discovery? How did that make sense? The entrance was maybe ten yards from the parking lot. The entrance to the tunnel was walled up with a locked door. The other end was grated shut. And Creedmor's staff goes through it periodically to check that it's sound. That didn't jibe.

Kroplick (or someone else -- I forget) explained that the staff at Creedmor knew of the tunnel since forever. But they didn't know that it had anything to do with the LIMP, and the Preservation Society was unaware of its existence.

There were blueprints out, and we could walk down to take a peak at the tunnel entrance. Kroplick told us stories of his time chasing LIMP-related history. My favorite story involved the building of a new bicycle path at Bethpage State Park. Workers found parkway under the surface of the ground, and realized there had been a road there. The Preservation Society was called in to investigate before construction of the bike path continued. I enjoyed the irony of Kroplick complaining that they had paved over the road.

All was going well. Asher and I were having a good time. Then the police arrived.