MOBY DEE MTG WHEE

Okay. I'm not proud of this, but if I'm gonna come clean and move on, now's the time to do it.

Last last year I went on a Magic: the Gathering binge. I made a monoblack EDH deck. I got caught up on the mythology, particularly of Mirrodin and Phyrexia. (For the record, the Scars of Mirrodin block was brilliant.) I even opened up Magic Set Editor, made some fake cards based on my old webcomics, you all laughed (or snickered lowly). As far as costly and time-consuming relapses go, the whole thing was a lot of fun. I've left my cards with a friend living in the backwoods of Massachusetts, so the habit's good as kicked...for now.

But it didn't stop there.

Long story short: over the last year or so, during fits of writers' block or everyday procrastination, I'd open up Magic Set Editor and make more phony cards. I'd already had my fun with 8EB cards, and it seemed even more unforgivably self-indulgent to make any more cards along that theme.

So....well, I made a bunch of cards based on Moby Dick. I hardly even noticed how many I'd slapped together over the last ten months until I stopped and looked them over. I'm not even sure I intended to show anyone but the two or three people with whom I've played Magic since my relapse. But I'm posting them here as a kind of confession.

"Life is beatiful."

Mr. Brainwash

"How's life?" is what I usually ask people instead of "how's it going?" or "how are you?" I don't remember when or why I started saying it.

You know how these rote greetings work—most of the time when we ask someone how it's going with them, we have as little interest in hearing the answer as they have in giving one. Admittedly, when I say "how's life?" to someone at work or to a passing acquaintance, it's usually spoken as much as an incurious courtesy as "how's it going?", but it has a greater likelihood of surprising me by eliciting responses that aren't worn into automation. Even if the person simply answers "good," there's usually still a half-second during which they actually process the question and consider their answer (or consider whether to consider their answer).

There's one response that gets my goat: "beautiful." Especially when it terminates a recapitulation of the question. "Life is...beautiful."

It's usually the damn kids who say it—the damn kids and the double-damned buzzed single thirtysomethings. And they usually say it like they're epiphanizing on the spot or imparting some profound truth.

It sounds like a premature conclusion, especially when it's coming from the mouth of an undergraduate on spring break or a late twentysomething enjoying their second gap year. It has a tinny ring to it; it strikes me as the evaluation of someone who's visited life from time to time, but has never strayed far from the touristy parts.

To these people I have a few friendly suggestions toward a more multidimensional conception of life so that they may more accurately appraise it: 

Outlive your child; have a stillborn child. Live your whole life enjoying the use of your limbs, and then break your neck and live as a paraplegic; or otherwise suffer a debilitating injury that renders you incapable of doing what you're most passionate about. Lose your home, your pets, and every material object you own in a hurricane, an earthquake, or a freak accident when a train carrying crude oil jumps the track. Suffer from an incurable chronic illness that slowly kills you and puts you in constant pain that only gets worse. Believe in someone and watch them let you down. Repeatedly. Believe in something and watch it betray you, watch it fail. Repeatedly. Fail at something yourself—try something, believe in it, stake everything on your success with it, and then fail utterly. Then try something else and fail at that, too. Watch people—more than one person, two, three, ten twenty—who can be objectively judged as unscrupulous, mean, and generally awful human beings, watch them enjoying more success and happiness in their lives than you. Struggle with addiction for a few years. Get raped. Have a traumatic experience that you never get over completely. Happen to be at the bus station, the mall, or the college campus when the pipe bombs go off and the armed zealots or psychopaths start indiscriminately shooting people. Get in a really bad, really stupid fight with your significant other and then lose them in a car accident before you have a chance to reconcile with them. Suffer third degree burns all over your body and live the rest of your life with hideous inoperable facial scars. Get cancer, beat cancer, and then get another kind of cancer. Be lonely for a long time. Be constrained to work a job that you hate, that exhausts you physically, mentally, and spiritually, for many years. Get beaten up for no reason. Get beaten up by a cop. Get your ass kicked by a group of belligerent motherfuckers in a public place and watch people hurry past and pretend not to see you as you bleed and scream for help. Live in a war zone for a few months or years. Live in a place where people are regularly dying from starvation. Stand trial for a crime you didn't commit; go to jail for it. Witness something awful happening to someone you love, something you might have personally prevented. Do something really fucked up, something you never imagined you'd do, and get away with it, and live with yourself knowing you really are the kind of person who'd do what you did.

If you've had life shit and vomit on you and you can still sincerely say it's beautiful, then wow—that really does mean something. And you're probably right.

In the Zen tradition, the mountains and rivers really are nothing more or less than mountains and rivers, but proclaiming it means nothing unless you've taken the trip and returned again. Life might be beautiful, but it's fatuous to announce such a verdict when you don't know it well enough to understand how poisonously ugly it can be and can transcend it.

Until you're there, I think the most appropriate answer to the original question is "it has its moments." Or treat it like a weather report: "sunny today; chance of rain tomorrow."

Bouchard Buffet, Part 4: Saddle Rash & Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil

I was sort of worried about Loren Bouchard for a while. That's probably too strong a way of putting it, but there were a few years when I was concerned that his career was just going to fizzle out with Home Movies.

Home Movies was cancelled in 2004. By 2006,' Bouchard's collaborator Brendon Small had a new show on Adult Swim called Metalocalypse, which hit it big almost immediately. It got better ratings and much more press than Home Movies, its soundtrack became the highest charting death metal album on the Billboard 200, as of today it (supposedly) has a fifth season on the way, et cetra. Bouchard, however, would have to spend another few years wandering in the desert of late-night cartoon obscurity before landing a prime time network hit with Bob's Burgers in 2011.

Today we're going to take a quick look at the two shows Bouchard worked on between Home Movies and Bob's Burgers, beginning with...

 

Saddle Rash actually aired in 2002, when Home Movies was on its second season. It was Bouchard's first project not to have been produced under the banner of a Tom Synder company, the first for which he could claim complete credit as creator, and the first for which he was the primary writer (though he had help from Holly Schlesinger, who had worked on Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist and Home Movies as a production assistant, and who returns as a writer in Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil and Bob's Burgers). It was also his first (and so far only) rejected pilot; Adult Swim didn't greenlight it for a series, but Saddle Rash was fortunate enough to be aired a few times instead of just getting stuffed into a Cartoon Network vault like some of the unluckier pilots.

Bouchard Buffet, Part 3: Home Movies

 

Loren Bouchard isn't a celebrity cartoon maker with the same degree of public recognition enjoyed by the likes of Matt Groening, Seth MacFarlane, or even Trey Parker. In some ways, this works to his advantage with a certain type of audience. Bouchard's work has a certain kind of connoisseur appeal: to the pop culture epicure, the cult hit is almost always more interesting than the smash sensation, and Bouchard has built a successful (albeit somewhat quiet) career around cult hits. His current show Bob's Burgers usually gets fewer viewers than the shows with which it shares Fox's Animation Domination block (Zombie Simpsons, Family Guy, and American Dad), but a quick Google search for "best TV shows 2013" suggests more critics have Bouchard's work on their minds than MacFarlane's or Groening's.

At this point—with a prime time slot on network TV, viewership in neighborhood of five million, and with a confirmed fifth season—Bob's Burgers may not even qualify as a cult hit. It's a breakthrough success; Bouchard's payoff for the decade and some-odd years that he worked diligently on cable shows that were never in much danger of amassing the kind of broad cultural appeal requisite for inclusion in any professional critic's annual "top 20 shows of 200X" list.

Such was the case with Home Movies, which even the A.V. Club—one of the most enthusiastic Bob's Burgers advocates—snubbed in its "Best TV Series of the '00s" roundup. Co-created by Bouchard and musician/comedian Brendon Small under Tom Snyder's Soup2Nuts studio (basically a rebranding of TSP's animation wing), Home Movies is a true cult classic. It aired for a few years, was enjoyed by a small but loyal consortium of fans, and ignored by the rest of the world. TV ratings from 2001–2004 aren't easy to come by, so I can't comment on how well it actually performed compared to the other shows on Adult Swim. Anecdotally speaking, I remember that the friends of mine in college who caught every episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force never, ever made a point of watching Home Movies; overviews of Adult Swim run by The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Hollywood.com in 2002 don't even mention Home Movies; Adult Swim moved its time slot around while hedging on twelve-minute ATHF-esque absurdism for its original programming alongside its Family Guy and Futurama rebroadcasts. Home Movies never really stood much of a chance; it is very lucky to have lasted as long as it did, and it's a bona fide miracle that it didn't just blink out of existence forever after its unwatched five-episode UPN run in 1999.

Bouchard Buffet, Part 2: Science Court

 

Huh. This is a strange one. Until a few months ago I didn't even know it existed. Let's take a quick peek.

It's difficult to cover Science Court's development in detail because there aren't many details to be found. It debuted in 1997: after cutting its teeth on Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, classroom software developer Tom Snyder Productions incorporated its educational ethos with its new TV production wing to create a Saturday morning edutainment show for kids. Beyond this, the fact are murky. Depending on who you ask, Science Court ran for either two or three seasons, and there's no definitive episode list to be found anywhere. Its Wikipedia entry claims twenty-nine episodes, but only twelve are actually listed. These are the same twelve that appear in the TSP product catalog—not as DVDs, but as the CD-ROM components of classroom activity kits. There are thirteen episodes floating around YouTube, most of which seem to have been ripped from the TSP classroom kits. As for the purported sixteen other episodes—who knows?

It also seems the show was retitled Squigglevision after its first season, and the courtroom dramedy stories were made to share episode time with vocabulary and math-focused content—which would explain why some of the extant episodes run for fifteen minutes instead of twenty-two. If you're able to dig up any full episodes of Squigglevision, you're a better sleuth than me.

Most of the substantial information about Science Court comes from magazine articles published during the show's run. Here's an excerpt from an interview with Tom Snyder in Imagine News:

Bouchard Buffet, Part 1: Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist

Greetings, anthropods!

I was recently thinking about how Bob's Burgers is the best animated sitcom since The Simpsons and feeling a yen to write about pop culture again (seeing how it's been nearly two years since my last "let's overthink some video games from the 1990s!" piece). So I've decided to do an overview of the cartoon career of Loren Bouchard, creator of Bob's Burger's and Home Movies. Someone more eloquent than me has lauded him for [helping] spark a refreshing movement in modern day animated television, one that champions conversation as the main character. Quite so. Though Bouchard may not have the celebrity stature of Matt Groening or Seth MacFarlane, I'm confident that history will show him to have been no less valuable a contributor to the world of animated cartoons. But while we're waiting for the cultural bean counters to catch up, why don't we take a look at what he's contributed thus far?

This is ordinarily the sort of thing I would do at SMPS, but seeing as how the site is on hiatus, we'll have to make it happen it right here. Just for a personal challenge (because I don't have enough to deal with already), I'm going to try to bang out each installment within one to two weeks. I'm sure that by the time it's over I'll be gnashing my teeth to start writing about stars and trees and bugs and books and stuff again.

So let's begin with. . . . .

 

Take a look. Take a long, hard look. That's the withering gaze of a cartoon iconoclast pressing into your soul. Step through the door on the right and you'll be entering the domain of one of American broadcasting's quietest rebels. Sessions by appointment only. Rate is $150 an hour.

Apropos Nye v. Ham: Signs and Wonders

So yes, I watched most of the Ken Ham vs. Bill Nye debate. Don't really have much to say about it that hasn't already been reechoing across the Internet for the past two days.

I'd like to share another excerpt from History of the Warfare of Science with Theology (1896). Yes, I am quite aware I've been posting a lot of these lately, but in light of Ham's logical godmoding (as it were) and backwards applications of the scientific method to suit his foregone conclusion, this particular section within the chapter on comets ("From 'Signs and Wonders' to Law in the Heavens") seems apt to the moment. If you're not terribly curious, you can just scroll through and glance at the text I've boldfaced.

Out of this belief was developed a great series of efforts to maintain the theological view of comets, and to put down forever the scientific view. These efforts may be divided into two classes: those directed toward learned men and scholars, through the universities, and those directed toward the people at large, through the pulpits. As to the first of these, that learned men and scholars might be kept in the paths of "sacred science" and "sound learning," especial pains was taken to keep all knowledge of the scientific view of comets as far as possible from students in the universities. Even to the end of the seventeenth century the oath generally required of professors of astronomy over a large part of Europe prevented their teaching that comets are heavenly bodies obedient to law. Efforts just as earnest were made to fasten into students' minds the theological theory. Two or three examples out of many may serve as types. First of these may be named the teaching of Jacob Heerbrand, professor at the University of Tubingen, who in 1577 illustrated the moral value of comets by comparing the Almighty sending a comet, to the judge laying the executioner's sword on the table between himself and the criminal in a court of justice; and, again, to the father or schoolmaster displaying the rod before naughty children. A little later we have another churchman of great importance in that region, Schickhart, head pastor and superintendent at Goppingen, preaching and publishing a comet sermon, in which he denounces those who stare at such warnings of God without heeding them, and compares them to "calves gaping at a new barn door." Still later, at the end of the seventeenth century, we find Conrad Dieterich, director of studies at the University of Marburg, denouncing all scientific investigation of comets as impious, and insisting that they are only to be regarded as "signs and wonders."

The results of this ecclesiastical pressure upon science in the universities were painfully shown during generation after generation, as regards both professors and students; and examples may be given typical of its effects upon each of these two classes.

The first of these is the case of Michael Maestlin. He was by birth a Swabian Protestant, was educated at Tubingen as a pupil of Apian, and, after a period of travel, was settled as deacon in the little parish of Backnang, when the comet of 1577 gave him an occasion to apply his astronomical studies. His minute and accurate observation of it is to this day one of the wonders of science. It seems almost impossible that so much could be accomplished by the naked eye. His observations agreed with those of Tycho Brahe, and won for Maestlin the professorship of astronomy in the University of Heidelberg. No man had so clearly proved the supralunar position of a comet, or shown so conclusively that its motion was not erratic, but regular. The young astronomer, though Apian's pupil, was an avowed Copernican and the destined master and friend of Kepler. Yet, in the treatise embodying his observations, he felt it necessary to save his reputation for orthodoxy by calling the comet a "new and horrible prodigy," and by giving a chapter of "conjectures on the signification of the present comet," in which he proves from history that this variety of comet betokens peace, but peace purchased by a bloody victory. That he really believed in this theological theory seems impossible; the very fact that his observations had settled the supralunar character and regular motion of comets proves this. It was a humiliation only to be compared to that of Osiander when he wrote his grovelling preface to the great book of Copernicus. Maestlin had his reward: when, a few years, later his old teacher, Apian, was driven from his chair at Tubingen for refusing to sign the Lutheran Concord-Book, Maestlin was elected to his place.

Not less striking was the effect of this theological pressure upon the minds of students. Noteworthy as an example of this is the book of the Leipsic lawyer, Buttner. From no less than eighty-six biblical texts he proves the Almighty's purpose of using the heavenly bodies for the instruction of men as to future events, and then proceeds to frame exhaustive tables, from which, the time and place of the comet's first appearance being known, its signification can be deduced. This manual he gave forth as a triumph of religious science, under the name of the Comet Hour-Book.

The same devotion to the portent theory is found in the universities of Protestant Holland. Striking is it to see in the sixteenth century, after Tycho Brahe's discovery, the Dutch theologian, Gerard Vossius, Professor of Theology and Eloquence at Leyden, lending his great weight to the superstition. "The history of all times," he says, "shows comets to be the messengers of misfortune. It does not follow that they are endowed with intelligence, but that there is a deity who makes use of them to call the human race to repentance." Though familiar with the works of Tycho Brahe, he finds it "hard to believe" that all comets are ethereal, and adduces several historical examples of sublunary ones.

Nor was this attempt to hold back university teaching to the old view of comets confined to Protestants. The Roman Church was, if possible, more strenuous in the same effort. A few examples will serve as types, representing the orthodox teaching at the great centres of Catholic theology.

One of these is seen in Spain. The eminent jurist Torreblanca was recognised as a controlling authority in all the universities of Spain, and from these he swayed in the seventeenth century the thought of Catholic Europe, especially as to witchcraft and the occult powers in Nature. He lays down the old cometary superstition as one of the foundations of orthodox teaching: Begging the question, after the fashion of his time, he argues that comets can not be stars, because new stars always betoken good, while comets betoken evil.

The same teaching was given in the Catholic universities of the Netherlands. Fromundus, at Louvain, the enemy of Galileo, steadily continued his crusade against all cometary heresy.

But a still more striking case is seen in Italy. The reverend Father Augustin de Angelis, rector of the Clementine College at Rome, as late as 1673, after the new cometary theory had been placed beyond reasonable doubt, and even while Newton was working out its final demonstration, published a third edition of his Lectures on Meteorology. It was dedicated to the Cardinal of Hesse, and bore the express sanction of the Master of the Sacred Palace at Rome and of the head of the religious order to which De Angelis belonged. This work deserves careful analysis, not only as representing the highest and most approved university teaching of the time at the centre of Roman Catholic Christendom, but still more because it represents that attempt to make a compromise between theology and science, or rather the attempt to confiscate science to the uses of theology, which we so constantly find whenever the triumph of science in any field has become inevitable.

As to the scientific element in this compromise, De Angelis holds, in his general introduction regarding meteorology, that the main material cause of comets is "exhalation," and says, "If this exhalation is thick and sticky, it blazes into a comet." And again he returns to the same view, saying that "one form of exhalation is dense, hence easily inflammable and long retentive of fire, from which sort are especially generated comets." But it is in his third lecture that he takes up comets specially, and his discussion of them is extended through the fourth, fifth, and sixth lectures. Having given in detail the opinions of various theologians and philosophers, he declares his own in the form of two conclusions. The first of these is that "comets are not heavenly bodies, but originate in the earth's atmosphere below the moon; for everything heavenly is eternal and incorruptible, but comets have a beginning and ending——ergo, comets can not be heavenly bodies." This, we may observe, is levelled at the observations and reasonings of Tycho Brahe and Kepler, and is a very good illustration of the scholastic and mediaeval method——the method which blots out an ascertained fact by means of a metaphysical formula. His second conclusion is that "comets are of elemental and sublunary nature; for they are an exhalation hot and dry, fatty and well condensed, inflammable and kindled in the uppermost regions of the air." He then goes on to answer sundry objections to this mixture of metaphysics and science, and among other things declares that "the fatty, sticky material of a comet may be kindled from sparks falling from fiery heavenly bodies or from a thunderbolt"; and, again, that the thick, fatty, sticky quality of the comet holds its tail in shape, and that, so far are comets from having their paths beyond the, moon's orbit, as Tycho Brahe and Kepler thought, he himself in 1618 saw "a bearded comet so near the summit of Vesuvius that it almost seemed to touch it." As to sorts and qualities of comets, he accepts Aristotle's view, and divides them into bearded and tailed. He goes on into long disquisitions upon their colours, forms, and motions. Under this latter head he again plunges deep into a sea of metaphysical considerations, and does not reappear until he brings up his compromise in the opinion that their movement is as yet uncertain and not understood, but that, if we must account definitely for it, we must say that it is effected by angels especially assigned to this service by Divine Providence. But, while proposing this compromise between science and theology as to the origin and movement of comets, he will hear to none as regards their mission as "signs and wonders" and presages of evil. He draws up a careful table of these evils, arranging them in the following order. Drought, wind, earthquake, tempest, famine, pestilence, war, and, to clinch the matter, declares that the comet observed by him in 1618 brought not only war, famine, pestilence, and earthquake, but also a general volcanic eruption, "which would have destroyed Naples, had not the blood of the invincible martyr Januarius withstood it."

It will be observed, even from this sketch, that, while the learned Father Augustin thus comes infallibly to the mediaeval conclusion, he does so very largely by scientific and essentially modern processes, giving unwonted prominence to observation, and at times twisting scientific observation into the strand with his metaphysics. The observations and methods of his science are sometimes shrewd, sometimes comical. Good examples of the latter sort are such as his observing that the comet stood very near the summit of Vesuvius, and his reasoning that its tail was kept in place by its stickiness. But observations and reasonings of this sort are always the first homage paid by theology to science as the end of their struggle approaches.