what if -- tom lehrer version

History is full of little "what if" moments.

What if the Hindenburg hadn't caught fire? What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo? What if someone at Coca Cola headquarters had tasted New Coke and said, "Maybe let's not"?

Today I'd like to consider another.

What if Tom Lehrer had simply stayed a mathematician?

At first glance, it seems like the world wouldn't be all that different. Before he turned to musical comedy (or would "musical commentary" be more accurate?) Lehrer was a legitimate mathematician. He never earned a PhD (because of his foray into music), but he taught at Harvard, MIT, and UC Santa Cruz. He could have had an entirely respectable academic career writing papers that only six other people would ever read.

Perhaps he'd have solved the Four Color Theorem decades early. Maybe Fermat's Last Theorem would have been known as Lehrer's Last Theorem, depriving Andrew Wiles of his greatest achievement and forcing him to become an accountant. Entire graduate seminars would now begin with the phrase, "As Lehrer showed in 1958..."

But mathematics never happens in isolation, and neither does music.

Without songs like The Elements, chemistry students would have had to memorize the periodic table the old-fashioned way: by crying.

Without New Math, the "new math" movement might actually have succeeded. Millions of parents would have nodded knowingly as their third-graders explained why 7 + 5 equals 12 only in a culturally oppressive base-ten framework. There would be no backlash. By 1983, the IRS would require tax returns in base eight.

The ripple effects continue.

Without Lehrer proving that intelligent people could also be funny, generations of mathematically inclined undergraduates would conclude that humor was simply not an available elective. College campuses would become eerily silent except for the occasional muttering of eigenvalues.

This leaves a vacuum in satirical music.

Someone has to fill it.

Allan Sherman becomes far more influential than anyone intended. By the early 1970s, every political scandal is explained through novelty songs set to public-domain melodies. Congress establishes a standing Committee on Musical Parody.

The Beatles never notice Lehrer, and without his example of sophisticated topical satire, they decide there's really no point in getting terribly serious. "Revolution" is replaced with a cheerful tune encouraging everyone to remember their library books. John Lennon never writes "Imagine" (admittedly, a positive, since that is probably the most overrated piece of crap in musical history). Instead he records "Perhaps," a song about maintaining reasonable expectations.

Bob Dylan, finding himself without intellectual competition, decides he's done enough for folk music and enrolls at MIT to finish the topology degree he never knew he wanted.

Meanwhile, mathematics is advancing at an alarming pace.

Professor Lehrer solves the Poincaré Conjecture during a faculty meeting because the discussion about parking permits is moving too slowly. He casually jots down a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis on the back of a departmental memo, but the memo is accidentally recycled, forcing humanity to rediscover it seventy years later.

The Clay Mathematics Institute quietly disbands due to lack of unsolved problems.

With every famous theorem conquered, mathematicians turn their attention to more practical questions.

Can a sock truly disappear in the dryer?

Is there an optimal strategy for choosing the fastest supermarket checkout line?

Exactly how many cats is too many cats?

These, too, fall within a decade.

By the 1990s, with mathematics effectively completed, every former math department is converted into an escape room.

Artificial intelligence develops much earlier because the necessary mathematics already exists. However, lacking Tom Lehrer's satirical warning that brilliant people are perfectly capable of making terrible decisions, nobody sees any reason to be cautious.

The first AI immediately announces that the mathematically optimal form of music is a continuous 11-hour recording of an oboe tuning to A-flat.

The public accepts this without complaint because, remember, the Beatles never became philosophical.

Eventually historians identify the exact point where our timeline diverged.

Not the invention of the computer.

Not the moon landing.

Not the Internet.

Just one graduate student deciding, "You know...I think I'll write a funny song."

Sometimes civilization really does hinge on a rhyme scheme.

cinema history class: the invisible ray (1936)

The session: Bring Your Own Movie Month
The annual session whe5re everyone in the class takes a turn presenting a favored movie

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 1 (Bobbo's choice): The Invisible Ray (1936)
Directed by Lambert Hillyer

My Level of Prior Knowledge:
I'd never heard of this

Plot Synopsis:
A brilliant but unstable scientist discovers a mysterious radioactive element in a meteorite that grants him the ability to kill with a touch. As the deadly radiation slowly drives him mad, his quest for scientific glory turns into a tragic spiral of obsession, jealousy, and revenge.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
Bobbo got Bring Your Own Movie month started with the 1936 Universal horror/science fiction film The Invisible Ray.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of watching a movie like this is seeing science fiction in its formative years. The basic premise is genuinely intriguing: a scientist discovers a strange radioactive element from a meteorite that grants him deadly powers while slowly destroying his sanity. It's an idea that feels surprisingly modern, even if the film's understanding of science is firmly rooted in 1930s movie logic.

The execution, however, is... unusual. The story takes some unexpected turns, and the pacing can feel uneven. The expedition to Africa, in particular, was one of those sequences that had us alternating between laughing at its sheer absurdity and cringing at the period stereotypes that were all too common in Hollywood films of the era. It's a reminder that older movies are products of their time—for better and for worse.

The real attraction, of course, is seeing Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi together. Karloff gives a wonderfully expressive performance as the increasingly unstable Dr. Janos Rukh, conveying both his initial excitement and his gradual descent into obsession and madness. Lugosi, meanwhile, gets a comparatively sympathetic role, and it's simply fun to watch these two horror icons share the screen. Their scenes together are easily the highlight of the film.

The Invisible Ray isn't one of Universal's undisputed classics, but it's an interesting entry in the studio's horror catalog and a fascinating glimpse into early cinematic science fiction. Even when it doesn't quite work, it's never dull.

And finally, one thing is certain: had Joe been there, he would have given it a 10.

cinema history class: helga, she wolf of stilberg (1977)

The session: Don't Make Ilsa Angry
Having shown us the original Ilsa movie, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, over ten years ago, Keith decided to show us some follow-up movies 

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 4: Helga, She Wolf of Stilberg (1977)
Directed by Alain Payet

My Level of Prior Knowledge:
I knew there were a few Ilsa follow-up movies, but I wouldn't have been able to name them for you -- especially this, which doesn't even have the Ilsa name in its title.

Plot Synopsis:
A cartoonishly evil commandant spends most of the runtime proving she's the worst boss in history, while everyone else waits for the script to remember that revenge is a thing. It's less a war movie than a checklist of exploitation clichés with swastikas stapled to them.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
After four Ilsa movies, I suppose it was inevitable that someone would decide to make a fifth without actually making a fifth. So instead of Dyanne Thorne's infamous torture queen, we get Helgaa new blonde sadist played by a different actress, in what is essentially an Ilsa knockoff wearing a fake mustache. And to complete the identity crisis, Ilsa -- I mean Helga -- spends almost the entire movie in a bright red blouse that makes her look less like the commandant of a brutal prison camp than like she's on her way to Studio 54. It's the cinematic equivalent of changing one letter on a bootleg action figure and hoping nobody notices.

Unfortunately, this one makes even the weaker Ilsa sequels look respectable. The story is barely there, the acting is uniformly awful, and the soundtrack consists largely of atonal noise that seems less interested in setting a mood than in testing the audience's patience. Most scenes exist for one reason: to get another group of women out of their clothes before moving on to the next bit of cruelty.

One moment in particular perfectly captured how bizarre the whole production was. Two women are escaping, yet the soft-focus photography and syrupy music make it look less like a desperate jailbreak than the beginning of a romance. I honestly wasn't sure whether the filmmakers had become confused about which movie they were making.

Then there is the war sequence at the climax. The movie cut to stock footage of tanks and flamethrowers that make no sense in the context of the rest of the scenery or story. It went from tiny prison camp in South America to major battle in Vietnam and back. The scene arrives out of nowhere,  and disappears just as abruptly. And leave no impact whatsoever. It's as if someone found an old reel of old war footage in the editing room and thought, "Sure, why not?"

And just when I was ready for the ordeal to be over, the movie ends with an irritating tease that promises...something. I have no idea what. It felt less like an ending than the filmmakers saying, "Wouldn't it be funny if we implied there was more of this?"

Seriously...WTF?

As a final bit of trivia, Joe gave this one a zero. That's unexplored territory for him (for the class, honestly), and honestly, I can't say I blame him.

cinema history class: ilsa the wicked warden (1977)

The session: Don't Make Ilsa Angry
Having shown us the original Ilsa movie, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, over ten years ago, Keith decided to show us some follow-up movies 

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 3: Ilsa the Wicked Warden (1977)
Directed by Jess Franco

My Level of Prior Knowledge:
I knew there were a few Ilsa follow-up movies, but I wouldn't have been able to name them for you. 

Plot Synopsis:
Apparently someone thought the previous movie had far too much plot, so this time it's mostly an excuse to string together prison torture, exploitation clichés, and the occasional reminder that Nazis are, in fact, the bad guys.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
In the lush jungles of South America, Ilsa—this time calling herself Greta—runs a psychiatric hospital for political prisoners. That's the premise, anyway. In practice, it's mostly an excuse to string together scenes of sexual violence, torture, and spectacularly excessive gore, with only the thinnest excuse for a plot.

This is widely regarded as Jesús Franco's bloodiest film, and it's hard to argue with that assessment. The makeup effects are impressively well done, even if they're deployed almost entirely in the service of making the audience squirm. Franco certainly wasn't aiming for subtlety here.

Ironically, the movie briefly threatened to become interesting near the end. There's a sequence where the imagery takes on an almost zombie-movie atmosphere, with some genuinely striking visuals that suggested Franco might finally be building toward something memorable. Then came the finale.

The climactic cannibalism sequence is genuinely horrifying. Franco intercuts the human carnage with footage of big cats devouring their prey, clearly hoping to elevate the scene into some sort of artistic statement about humanity's animal nature. For me, it didn't work. It was certainly disturbing, but disturbing isn't automatically profound.

To the film's credit, I did appreciate the twists in the closing minutes. They were clever enough that I wish the screenplay had spent more time constructing an actual story around them. As it stands, they feel like an unexpectedly solid ending attached to ninety minutes of exploitation set pieces.

In the end, I can't recommend this one. There are flashes of interesting imagery, some effective makeup work, and a surprisingly decent final twist, but they're buried beneath an avalanche of gore and cruelty that never develops into much of a narrative.

And joe...he gave it a 2! Which puts it among the lowest ratings he ever gave. He gave El Topo something in that neighborhood, but he actually missed that class, watched that movie on his won and delivered his rating after the fact. So that's non canon. He did give The Woman in Black a 2. But, three years later he retroactively revised it to a 9. I don't remember why. So I have no frickin' clue what to make of that.

cinema history class: ilsa, the tigress of siberia

The session: Don't Make Ilsa Angry
Having shown us the original Ilsa movie, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, over ten years ago, Keith decided to show us some follow-up movies 

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 2: Ilsa, the Tigress of Siberia (1977)
Directed by Jean LaFleur

My Level of Prior Knowledge:
I knew there were a few Ilsa follow-up movies, but I wouldn't have been able to name them for you. 

Plot Synopsis:
A sadistic prison commandant escapes postwar justice by relocating to Siberia, where she discovers that the best way to rehabilitate criminals is apparently through forced labor, torture, sex and elaborate catfights. When a revolutionary hero shows up to challenge her reign of terror, the movie remembers it needs a plot and lurches toward an ending between bouts of exploitation and fur hats.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
Ilsa, the Tigress of Siberia gives us a pretty good idea of what we're in for right from the start. That occurs by way of a bullet in the frozen north. The trailer proudly quotes Oui magazine. If your marketing campaign begins with the endorsement of a men's magazine best known for articles that nobody read, subtlety is probably not on the menu.

I went into this one wanting to dislike it. The previous Ilsa films haven't exactly convinced me that the franchise has hidden depths waiting to be discovered. And for the first half of the movie, I felt completely justified.

The Siberian section is, for long stretches, little more than an exercise in increasingly elaborate cruelty. Plot seems almost optional. Instead, the filmmakers appear to have sat around a table brainstorming ways people could be tortured, maimed, or killed in creative fashion. Some of these ideas are admittedly inventive. The arm-wrestling match over running chainsaws certainly leaves an impression. But it's hard to shake the feeling that the movie is less interested in telling a story than in seeing how far it can push the audience's tolerance for gratuitous violence. At times it feels like a proto-Saw film, only with fur hats.

The sex scenes don't help much. One sequence featuring Dyanne Thorne, her real-life husband, and another man manages the impressive feat of being more vulgar than erotic. By this point I was pretty sure I knew exactly what kind of movie I was watching, and I wasn't especially impressed.

Then something unexpected happened.

The movie moved to Montreal.

At first I assumed the Canadian material would be a brief epilogue after the Siberian story wrapped up. Instead, it gradually became clear that Montreal was going to occupy roughly half the running time. And the longer it stayed there, the more interesting the film became.

I didn't notice the transition immediately. It sort of snuck up on me. Scene by scene, the movie started developing an actual plot. Characters had agendas. There were competing factions. People were spying on each other, betraying each other, and occasionally shooting each other. I often found it difficult to keep track of exactly which side was scoring points at any given moment, but that confusion was preferable to the straightforward sadism of the earlier scenes. At least now there was something happening besides torture.

The second half becomes a surprisingly entertaining mix of action film, espionage thriller, and double-cross-heavy adventure story. And interestingly, a number of scenes felt almost like spaghetti westerns transplanted into a Cold War setting. The sequences in Gulag 14 in particular had that familiar atmosphere of armed men facing off in dusty compounds while shifting loyalties determine who survives. Swap out the snow for desert landscapes and some of the scenes wouldn't feel entirely out of place in a Sergio Corbucci film.

By the end, I found myself admitting something I hadn't expected to admit: this was actually much better than I thought it would be. That's not the same thing as saying it's a great film. It's still exploitative, frequently ridiculous, and often unpleasant. But somewhere along the way it transformed from a plotless parade of atrocities into a reasonably entertaining action-and-espionage picture.

As for Joe, he once again found a way to keep us all on our toes. He awarded the film a real-world score of 8.9. He then clarified that, symbolically, it was a 10. I dutifully acknowledged this distinction at the time. Unfortunately, a few weeks later, I can no longer remember what on earth he meant by it.