cinema history class: yongary, monster from the deep

Session: Monsters International -- Big! Hairy! Scaly! Scary!, Week 4
Movie: Yongary, Monster from the Deep (1967)
Directed by Kim Ki-duk

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

Plot:
A giant reptillian monster awakens from his subterranean slumber, thereby keeping a young couple from consummating their marriage. Horror ensues.

Reaction and Other Folderol:

The biggest flaw in this movie is the acting. The deliveries are all wooden and lifeless. I haven't seen the like since Barbara Bain in season 1 of Space: 1999. In fairness to the movie, we were watching an English-dubbed version. It's quite possible that the original dialogue as delivered by the original actors sounded more real. The poor delivery is a contributing factor to the monster being the lead character. The personal drama that's built in -- newlyweds trying to get some time together, two families joining -- becomes an easily-forgotten sideshow, since the voice-actors fail to inject any real emotion into any of it.

Another weakness is that a lot of the plot is really not adequately explained. And it's really annoying how the kid is treated like a hero after he was directly responsible for multiple deaths. And it's really not clear why he starts dancing to music no one else can hear.

Still, as a giant monster movie -- similar in feel to the Japanese cinema, this has some exciting monster action and destruction. But it was just so hard to care about anybody.

Ratings

Me: 6.5

Bob: 8.8

Christina: 8

Dave: 9.5
Joe: 9.8

happy tunesday! music no one else can hear

 Here's another one of my songs, recorded by Tobias Wilson.

This is a song that took me 35 years or so to write. It went through many iterations and versions, including one that got recorded and released on a CD. I'm not sure if I ever wrote up the story behind this song -- I didn't find anything in a quick search, so I'm gonna go ahead and share. If I'm repeating myself, please forgive me.

If you want the TLDR version, it's essentially: A friend in high school made a stray comment. I used it as a title for a song, which underwent numerous rewrites until what I have now.

The extended version:

It started with a stray comment a friend made when I was in high school. My friend, Melinda, was listening to music on my Walkman. At some point she said she should give it back to me and stop "dancing to music no one else can hear." The phrase struck me as a great song title. At the time, I was doing a lot of songwriting. Sadly, most (that is, all) of the songs I was writing at the time sucked. Back then (as now), song ideas often started with a turn of phrase that caught my attention. So I kind of tucked that into my mind as a title to use.

If I recall correctly, I did use the phrase as a song title at the time. The song sucked and has been mercifully forgotten in the mists of time.

The current song started taking form when I was in grad school. At the end of my first year, I went home for the summer. The woman I was dating stayed in Ann Arbor. And I wrote a song about missing her while we were apart. I don't remember the whole thing, but I do remember the first verse:

I'm lying in bed
With you in my head,
Wondering where you are now.
Can it be?
Are you thinking of me
Even though I'm not around?

I also remember the chorus:

Your song is with me wherever I am
Even though you're not here.
And all around me there's music.
Music no one else can hear.

For the record, I originally wrote the verses o the tune of Air Supply's "All Out of Love," which begins:

I'm lying alone
With my head on the phone,
Thinking of you 'til it hurts.
I know you hurt too
But what else can we do?
Tormented and torn apart.

That's something I still do sometimes -- I write lyrics with the melody of an existing song in mind. Then I go and change the melody.

Anne, the woman I was dating, liked the song. Or at least she liked the gesture.

But I wasn't really satisfied with it. I liked the first verse and the chorus, but not the rest.

A few years later I got together on a weekend with a work friend, and together we reworked the song. We combined the verse and chorus into a new chorus, with a melody I wrote. I added a bridge. My friend and I wrote some verses, and - voila! - a new song was born. I was actually pretty proud of that. Even more so when a friend and his brothers recorded it for their first (and, to date, only) commercial CD. That got me into ASCAP, which is cool. I blogged something about that album here.

But at some point since then I became disenchanted with the song (Scott, if you're reading this, please forgive me). I won't go into my reasons. If you like it, I'd hate to convince you to not like it.

Anyway, over a period of years I rewrote it. Again. This time I stripped out the verses and turned the chorus into the first verse and chorus. I then wrote a couple new verses and modified the bridge. In so doing, I removed everything that my old coworker had done. But I turned it into a (mostly) different song, which I like. And I think Toby did a great job with it. And if I ever get around to putting out an album, this will likely be the title track.

I hope I remembered all the details. If not, ask for your money back.

Anyway, enjoy.

cinema history class: the black scorpion

Session: Monsters International -- Big! Hairy! Scaly! Scary!, Week 3
Movie: The Black Scorpion (1957)
Directed by Edward Ludwig

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

Plot:
An earthquake strikes Mexico, triggering the birth of a volcano and giant prehistoric scorpions. Horror ensues.

Reaction and Other Folderol:

We're in an age where so much is done through CGI -- and in which CGI is steadily improving. Most of what we've seen in class is pre-CGI and is therefore somewhat cheesy. I don't recall seeing much stop-motion animation to date. But this was awesome. Not in a "wow! this looks so real!" sense. It was more that it was really creepy and disturbing -- as if, despite not looking real, it triggered some visceral fear. That actually jibes with what Blair has told me -- that no matter how real some CGI looks to the conscious mind, there's some way that, subconsciously, we dismiss it.

As if to drive it all home, I recently saw A Quiet Place Part II with Asher. It features state-of-the-art CGI monsters that look real. But, in the theater, they just didn't get to me the way the scorpions (and other baddies) in Black Scorpion did. The shame is that they ran out of money in production, and had to resort to painting the scorpions into cels in some scenes.

I was puzzled by all the drool -- those scorpions really salivate a lot. But that helped to give them character and make them much more scary.

There was a point in the film that I thought it was ending. And I was kind of frustrated with that, thinking that they hadn't wrapped things up properly. Fortunately, that phantom ending (as I call it) only marked a transition to the real climactic scenes. These, including the railroad crash and the final battle in the stadium were superb. 

Ratings

Me: 9.8

Bob: 9.7

Dave: 9.6
Joe: 10

regional convention 2021

Two years ago, LIDS hosted the Region 4 Summer Meeting. That was the first Daylily convention I attended. I think we were planning to attend the Region 4 Summer Meeting in Connecticut last year, but that got cancelled (OK, postponed) because of COVID. Maybe we weren't planning to attend. I don't remember for sure.

At any rate, that meeting was postponed until this year, and Blair and I attended. So this was my first "away" daylily event. Of course, despite the fact that things are opening up in this post-COVID reality,* the event was scaled back in many ways.

Because of various logistical issues, we were only able to take one day for the convention. So we missed most of the open gardens. I really wish we had been able to see more, but...c'est la vie.

We did make it to the D'Esopos' garden (see accompanying pictures). Though they don't have any daylilies, theire garden is a must-see. Chrissie and John D'Esopo do all the work themselvs and have turned their garden -- full of evergreens and conifers -- into an amazing shrubtastic fantasy world.

After the business meeting, hosted by the Krodels, I participated in the garden judging workshop. I went through the same workshop two years ago at the end of that Regional Meeting, but never followed up on the paperwork needed to get credit for taking the workshop and become a garden judge. I won't follow up this time either. I enjoy the workshops, and the information I learn by attending them. But for the time being I have no need to become a judge. Even if it would mean getting a vote on the Stout Medal winner.

Each attendee was given a daylily fan. We got Heavenly Curls (Gossard, 2000) and Zoot Sims (Bachman, 2003). Since Heavenly Curls is cream-colored, we'll be putting it in the little memorial garden we've been building for Sharon's cat, Cream, who passed away last month. I'm not sure where we'll put Zoot Sims, but that's a nice tall one.

Next year in the Finger Lakes!

___________________________
*Yeah, yeah...I know...Delta variant, remaskings, yada yada. Don't get me started.

cinema history class: gorgo

Session: Monsters International -- Big! Hairy! Scaly! Scary!, Week 2
Movie: Gorgo (1961)
Directed by Eugene Lourie

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

Plot:
Treasure hunters sell a giant reptile as a carnival attraction. Turns out it's just a baby -- and mom is pissed Horror ensues.

Reaction and Other Folderol:

I went into this expecting Gorgo, which was a British production, to be a copy of the Japanese monster movies. And I was right. In many ways this had the look and feel of those movies -- which, as I mentioned last week, I don't really care for. The big difference, though, is that this was done much better. Visually, it was more impressive.

When Gorgo stepped on buildings, the destruction looked more real than what we got in the typical Japanese-made monster movies. I actually loved watching the scenes where the rubble was falling on people (including some well-placed visual jokes). Those reminded me of Earthquake, the 1974 blockbuster* which was (as best I recall), the first horror movie I ever saw. And the scenes in the subway were also really interesting. I kept expecting to see characters get pushed onto the tracks and then get hit by a train. I realized that wasn't gonna happen when the tunnels started collapsing. That was some great stuff.

What I found most interesting is the fact that this horrible horrible monster was, in fact, the sympathetic figure. All she wanted was to get her kid back -- after the kid was taken by the horrible, horrible humans. And then, when she got the kid back, she was content to just go back out to sea. No need for extra gratuitous vengeance.

If the Japanese horror movie industry had headed more in this direction, I may have even become a fan.

Ratings

Me: 9

Bob: 9.8

Christina: 9.2

Dave: 9.9
Joe: 9.9

________________________________________

*Blockbuster! Earthquake! Get it! Hah!

this time its lg...customer service failure

I was gonna wait until this was all resolved before blogging about it. Yeah...no. Fuck that.

Last year I had an extended headache with AT&T and its customer service. I wrote about that -- after all was said and done -- here.

Anyway, now I'm having trouble with LG. It's not on the order of what I went through with AT&T. At this point, I don't think that I'm the victim of theft. That may change, depending on how things go. But for now it's really about red tape and slavish adherence to protocol. And, BTW, Home Depot isn't coming out smelling like a rose either.

The TL:DR version: Nearly three weeks after I bought a brand new LG air conditioner, I have a useless piece of crap in my window. I doubt that I'll have a working air conditioner until more than a month after I paid for one.

Here's the detailed version:

On June 20, Blair and I bought an LG air conditioner from Home Depot. 14,000 BTUs. Yay us. It was delivered on the 21st and we had it installed on the 22nd. We powered it up and it worked for less than an hour before shutting off and displaying an error code CH38. Blair looked that up. It means that there's no refrigerant.

I called Home Depot, and was told that I had two options:

1. I could pull the AC out of the window and schlep it back to Home Depot for a refund. They would also refund the delivery charge, but not the cost of installation.
2. Since it's under warranty I could call LG and have them deal with it.

I really didn't want to eat the cost of installation, so I went with option 2.

Blair called LG and explained the issue. The customer service representative (CSR from now on) didn't take the issue seriously, told her how to reset the unit and said to call back if the problem persisted.

The next couple of days were pretty cool so we didn't run the unit until the evening of the 25 (which was a Friday). Same problem. I called customer service and they agreed to have technicians come and deal with the problem. But now that we were in the weekend, I wouldn't hear from anyone until Monday or Tuesday.

Monday morning I got a text that the repair would be handled by "Park Avenue Appliance Repair." Cool! I had hope. I figured that PAAR would reach out to schedule the repair. I didn't hear from them on Monday. But I remembered the words of the CSR who said that I would hear on Monday or Tuesday. By early Tuesday afternoon I still hadn't heard from PAAR, so I called them I got a guy who said he'd call back in a half hour. More than two hours later I hadn't heard, so I called back. He said he hadn't been back in the office but he'd call me back. By early evening, he hadn't reached out, so I called LG customer service. They cancelled Park Avenue, and set me up with an appointment with one of their service people. Note that this person would be an LG employee -- not an independent contractor. The downside is that it would be more than a week away.

So, yesterday -- July 8, the appointed day -- LG's technician showed up as promised. Before starting, he explained to me that if it's an issue with no refrigerant, he would be unable to fix it. Most likely, LG would replace the unit. This brought me down. I had been expecting that the technician would fix the problem and by the time he left I'd have a working air conditioner. Now my hopes were dashed. I should note at this point that I have no beef with the technician. He reached out when he was on his way. He arrived as promised, and was very professional in his demeanor. It's not his fault that protocol dictates what it does. But that all leaves me with no working air conditioner. He gave me a case number and said that LG would reach out in 48 to 72 hours. Of course, since that was a Thursday, "48 to 72 hours" means Monday or Tuesday next week.

So now I have to wait until next week so LG can call and schedule to have someone replace the nonworking piece of crap that I have in my window now. I suspect that, when all is said and done, it won't happen until after the 20th, which means it will have been more than a month between my purchase of an air conditioner and actually having one. I also note that we have been experiencing a severe heat wave during this time.

Throughout this ordeal, I have been having a Twitter conversation with LG customer service. I suspect that they prefer having a conversation in DM so that their unwillingness to help me isn't shown for the whole world to see. The most infuriating part is their repeated apologies. "I sincerely apologize." "I'm sorry for the inconvenience." These apologies, interspersed with texts about being unable to do anything for me... They don't help and are, in fact infuriating. Should I be happy that some faceless person -- who probably doesn't really give a shit -- says he's sorry? It's not like he's losing sleep, up at night thinking "I sure hope we can resolve Marc Whinston's issue as soon as possible. It's terrible that we, as a company are failing him and his family." And if he is, that doesn't really do me any good anyway.

So there are two big questions:
1) When will I have a working air conditioner?
2) Next time I want to buy an appliance -- any appliance -- is there a reason to buy LG? 

stoopidstats: wins/losses graphs update for the negro leagues

Before I start, let me acknowledge that the graphs which are an important visual part of this post are not good examples of data visualization. Some are completely worthless for gleaning information. The others are mostly worthless. But I had fun making them and have fun looking at them.

At some point last year Major League Baseball announced that the Negro Leagues, or at least some of them, would be recognized as Major League. In keeping with that pronouncement Baseball Reference, one of my main sources of information for my baseball stoopidstats has added Negro League baseball to its Major League records. You can read about that decision here. At this point, they are including 64 franchises in seven leagues, covering the years 1920-1948. Based on what they've written I am expecting that this is only the first step, and more Negro League baseball will be added to the Major League record in the future. What's holding them back is that the data are hard to come by and research is taking time.

At any rate, this all affects my stoopidstats. Specifically, my big wins/losses charts I had to update them to recognize this new official information. There are twenty major graphs, all of which can be seen below. But first, some commentary.

I have five graphs that show data by franchise. There have been 180 franchises, so each of these five graphs has 180 data series. The five are as follows:

• cumulative wins;
• cumulative wins, but with each series truncated after its franchise' last year of existence;
• cumulative games over .500;
• cumulative games over .500, but with each series truncated after its franchise' last year of existence;
• rank (by cumulative wins.

After that there are five analogous graphs, each grouping franchises by location (as indicated in their team name). Note that, even though Brooklyn is in New York, Brooklyn and New York have separate series -- just as Los Angeles, Anaheim and California are each separate series. Of course, as teams moved (or changed the location indicated in their names), their data go into different series. For example, consider the existing franchise currently known as the Los Angeles Angels. Their data from 1961-1964 and from 2005-2020 are part of the "Los Angeles" series. Their data from 1965-1996 are part of the "California" series. Their data from 1997-2004 are part of the "Anaheim" series.

After that there are five analogous graphs, each grouping franchises by home state. For these purposes, I am considering the District of Columbia, Quebec and Ontario as states. For this reason I sometimes say "state or state-like entity."

Finally there are five analogous graphs, each grouping franchises by nickname.

The Complications

Adding the Negro leagues to my project presented me with some new issues.

The first issue is technological. My file uses a lot of the "sumifs" functions in Excel, which (I understand) are taxing on Excel. I also use a bunch (though not as many) of "rank" functions. I would imagine that they are also taxing on Excel, but I may just be talking out my ass. In addition to the number crunching, there are five graphs with 180 series, five graphs with 155 series, five graphs with 75 series, and five graphs with 38 series. And each series in each graph covers 150 years. Before I added the Negro League information, the file seemed to be working fine. I guess the extra pushed it over the edge, because with all the extra information the file started reacting very slowly. At Meep's suggestion, I broke the file in two. One file does the number-crunching and the other does the graphing. It's not ideal, but what is?

The second issue has to do with team names and locations. Without the Negro Leagues, each team had one home location in each year*. Teams all had names of the form The <location> <nickname>, or names that could be shoehorned into that format. But the Negro Leagues had some franchises that had no home park and didn't identify a home location (e.g., the "Cuban Stars West"). For those I introduced "N/A" as a location and as a state. There were also quite a few teams that split time between two cities. I don't have it in me to try to break down all of their games between multiple locations; given that they also played away games, I think such attributions would be near-impossible if not completely impossible. For these, I am recognizing locations and states such as "Cincinnati/Indianapolis" and "Ohio/Indiana." I don't like to do it, but I see no better alternative.

Finally, I noticed some data inconsistencies. Every time a team wins a game, another team loses. And every time there's a tie game**, two teams register a tie. So, in each year (and, until 1993, each league in each year) registered the same number of wins and losses and an even number of ties. But that is not reflected in the statistics in Baseball Refence. According to BR:

• The 1890 American Association had a combined record of 525 wins and 526 losses.
• The 1942 Negro National League had a combined record of 156 wins and 157 losses.
• The 1890 American Association had 29 ties.
• The 1928 Eastern Colored League had 9 ties.
• The 1933 Negro National League had 7 ties.

The statistical mistakes in the Negro Leagues are probably a result of incomplete records. Hopefully they will be corrected as more research is done. The 1890 American Association numbers are curious. In a prior iteration I did not see this issue. This means that the record was updated to something that clearly has an error. All this said, I don't have any basis to reflect numbers different than what is in BR.

Finally, I note that, in ranking franchises, locations, states or nicknames by win total, there are inevitable ties. My first tie breaker is ties (on the theory that a ties is sort of half a win). My second tie breaker is games over .500 (on the theory that getting to n wins with x losses is better than getting to n wins with y losses if x<y). My final tiebreaker is which team/location/state/nickname got to that number of wins first (on the theory that I had to do something).

And now, without further ado, the graphs:

________________________

*With one exception. The 1884 Union Association had a franchise that moved from Chicago to Pittsburgh during the season. For an earlier version of the file I researched to determine how many wins and losses are attributable to the team in each of its locations.

** Honestly, in the context of baseball, I am not exactly sure how ties occur. Ties were more frequent in the early days of the game, but they do occur in modern times. The last tie was in 2016. It involved the Cubs and the Pirates. If you want to research to find out what happened, please let me know.

test footage

 I have now spent some time in front of the camera, in character as Professor Crisp, for the upcoming film, Three Slices of Delirium. It was only some test footage, but still...

A bit of background is warranted. Anyone who has followed this blog at all is aware of the cinema history class I attend. It's taught by film historian, Keith Crocker. In addition to teaching this class, lecturing at libraries, speaking in featured "extras" on DVDs, and the like, Keith has produced and directed two feature films: The Bloody Ape (1997) and Blitzkrieg: Escape from Stalag 69 (2008). Though it's been a while since that last one, but Keith has completed screenplays for (I think) two features, and he has started work on the first of them.

Three Slices isn't a new idea. In fact, Keith put a teaser up on Youtube more than ten years ago. And I've had a copy of the screenplay for about five years now, waiting...waiting...

Given the changes in technology and personnel, I don't know how accurate a representation of the movie the trailer will prove to be. OK. That's wrong. I believe that, when all is said and done, the movie will look much better than the trailer. I am amused by the enumeration of the beasts: "Vampires! Werewolves! Wicked women!" At any rate, Three Slices will be an anthology of three short films, each based loosely on a Poe story. I am to play Professor Crisp, a predatory anatomy professor, in "The Premature Burial." Having read the script, I can say that this appears to be Keith's most ambitious film yet. I don't know details, but he is working on trying to get funding. Also, with the improvements in technology, you can certainly do more with less.

So, last week, we started doing. Keith had Chris Gullo and me over to read lines in front of a green screen. As near as I understand it, this is to see how we look on camera, and to test to see how we look with a background thrown behind us. Chris will be in "The Last Kiss of Ullalume," so we won't be interacting onscreen.