Singing Snakes on a Plane

As part of Yankee Fog’s ongoing commitment to bringing you the latest Snakes on a Plane news, we wish to direct your attention to Snakes on a Plane: the T-Shirt and Snakes on a Plane:the Song.
Unfortunately, the audio quality on the song is rather low, perhaps because the snakes have infiltrated the recording studio itself. Still, muddied though it may be, the singer’s tragic dilemma shines through:
You’re a cold, cheatin’ woman, and there’s nothin’ to gain.
Do I let you break my heart, or stick with snakes on a plane?

Strange Rites

It is an unquestionable theological principle that anybody who is even slightly less religious than I am is a godless heathen, while anyone who is even a jot more religious is a dangerous fanatic. That’s why I’m glad to have found a synagogue in London that is very near the level of observance that I grew up with.
But there’s one major difference that never fails to jar me. In every Jewish service I’ve been to, there’s always been a “prayer for our country,” which asks that wisdom be granted to our nation’s leaders. In the US, I’ve seen some variations that specifically mention the President and the vice-president, and others that just cover all the bases by praying for “all who exercise just and rightful authority.”
But at our synagogue in London, the prayer includes “the Queen and her advisors.” That’s logical enough, but it always feels a little odd to my rebellious Colonial soul to be praying for the Queen.
In any case, shana tovah to my Jewish readers, Ramadan mubarak to my Muslim readers, and to everybody else, erm, have a nice day.

A Minicab Conversation

Our minicab driver has a Caribbean accent, although it’s been faded by years in England. There’s a “Dominica” sticker on his dashboard, and one on his windshield.
He tells us that English children have no discipline. He’s carried passengers with kids, and watched in amazement as the kids treated the parents “like servants,” yelling at them, and even cursing.
“My mother would never let us get away with anything,” he says. “When she sent you to the store, she’d spit in a corner, and tell you you’d better get back before it dried. You hurried. There was a tree near the house–it looked a little like that one, over there–and when she wanted to punish you, she’d pull off a branch, and strip it, and–”
He mimes whipping. “Then she’d tell you to go down to the beach–we lived near the sea–and swim in it.”
“Salt water,” I say. “Ouch!”
“Salt water,” he agrees. “And you had to do it, because when you came back…” He mimes his mother running her finger along the back of his neck, and then licking her finger to check for salt. “And if you just put your head in, she’d lift up your shirt.” He mimes the same action, this time on his back. “She knew.”
He drives for another minute or two, and then adds, “My brothers and my sisters, they’re here in England, but they’ve sent their kids to her to raise, so they can just work, and send back their money.”
“Are your sisters as tough as your mom?” I ask.
“No, they’re not,” he says, and then adds, “My dad is white.” I’m not sure if that’s meant as an explanation, or just as a new train of conversation. He goes on, “He’s lived in Dominica for so long, though. When I go visit them from England, he says, ‘Go back to your country, and take your cold weather with you.'”
And then, unfortunately, we’re at our destination. We pay our fare, and go our separate ways.

Backstage at the Emmies, 2005

My friends Rob Kutner and Sheryl Zohn have written up their experiences backstage (and onstage) at the Emmies. Here it is, reprinted with their permission. If you enjoy it, you might also want to read Rob’s Emmy writeup from 2004.
Dear Friends and Family,
With the recent events in New Orleans hanging heavily on everyone’s minds, we thought we’d distract you for at least a few moments with something utterly frivolous: our account of the 2005 Emmy Awards. Yes “our,” because this year, Rob has enlisted some help from his trusty cub reporter/Emmy “+1,” Sheryl.
We begin our story at the Standard Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, where the “Daily Show” housed its entire staff. Of course, not everyone at the hotel was a fan of the show. At check- in, Rob’s co-worker Jason Reich overheard the following conversation concerning one Mr. Jon Stewart:
Clerk #1: “Hey, did you see the guy from ‘Half-Baked’ is staying here? But he’s grayed a little.”
Clerk #2: “Yeah, he has his own show on Comedy Central now.”
Clerk #1: “Oh, I only watch Comedy Central for ‘Mind of Mencia’.”
Fortunately, several members of the Academy were more familiar with Stewart’s work (and that of his 13 writers), and so Sunday afternoon we found ourselves in a limousine on our way to the Shrine Auditorium for the 57th Annual Emmy Awards. As in past years, the city was clogged with limos, stretch hummers, and even a stretch Mini-Cooper (Is that just a Cooper?). But not everyone believed in motorized transportation: From our car window, we saw Zach Braff (“Scrubs”) passing by on foot and waving at all of us suckers stuck in traffic, as well as David Letterman sitting at a bus stop, in his best Emmy formal shorts and T-shirt.

Second Printing

Matthew and I have been informed by our editor that they’re printing another 4000 copies of The Government Manual for New Superheroes, on top of our original print run of 9000. Obviously, this is good news.
One of the things I never realized is how hard it is for an author to get a sense of how well his book is selling. I’ve been somewhat obsessively checking our Amazon sales rank, which has generally been hovering between 20,000 and 70,000, but I really haven’t had any way to calculate what that means. I’m glad to know we’re doing well.
And I’m also glad to see that, as of this writing, The Government Manual for New Superheroes is at 10,581 on the Amazon sales chart. At this rate, we’ll be in the top 10,000 in no time.

Awards Show Season: The Starting Gun Is Fired

Two pieces of awards-show-season e-mail arrived in my inbox today, signifying that the season has begun in earnest:
1. Cinea wants to remind me to register the DVD player they sent me last award season. It’s been sitting unregistered in a shelf since then, and I don’t intend to register it this year, either. For those of you unfamiliar with the technology, a Cinea DVD player allows studios to send out screener DVDs that can only be played on the Cinea DVD player–and only on the Cinea DVD player of a single person, at that. I’m afraid that, if I register my player, I’ll be contributing to Cinea’s installed user base, which will encourage studios to send out Cinea-only DVDs, and I resent having to wedge a second DVD player into my already-crowded TV cabinet. Still, if there’s some Cinea-only film that I feel I really have to watch in order to vote this year, I will bite the bullet and register the damn thing.
2. BVI wants me to know that next week, they’ll be having screenings of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Cinderella Man, Sin City, and Goal! next week.
I’m not surprised that Cinderella Manand Sin City are getting pushed for awards, and it makes sense to push Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, given how fond the British are of the original series. I’m interested that the list includesGoal!–a film that looked to be fairly bog-standard, based on the reviews I’ve seen.

Straight8

I went over to the Raindance Film Festival hoping to use my hard-won festival pass to get into NightWatch, which is supposed to be an exuberently over-the-top Russian fantasy thriller. Alas, it was sold out, perhaps because it’s been labeled the must-see film of the year by Quentin Tarantino. (By which I mean that Quentin Tarantino has decreed it a must-see film, not that it is a film that must be seen by Quentin Tarantino.)
Instead, I watched the best films of Straight8, an annual filmmaking competition in which filmmakers are given a blank cartridge of Super8 film and challenged to shoot a short movie with it. The catch is that you have to hand in your film cartridge undeveloped, which means (1) you can’t do any post-production on your film, and any edits have to be done “in-camera” by turning the camera off, pointing it at the next shot, and turning it back on; and (2) you don’t get to see your finished film until it’s projected onscreen at to a full theater.
In its adrenaline-fueled let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may spirit, the event reminds me of the 48 Hour Film Challenge, although in other respects it’s completely opposite. The 48 Hour Film Challenge requires your film to be more-or-less improvised on the spot, but the Straight8 festival, by demanding that you edit your entire film on camera, requires a great deal of advance planning.
In any case, the results were interesting. Some were only successful in context. Others– in particular, a quirky short about a guy who grows colour televisions in his garden– would be charming and funny even if you didn’t know the restrictions under which they were made.
I hadn’t heard of the event before today, but now I’m highly tempted to enter it next time around.