Short Subjects And Oscar Predictions

I would call this Bullet Point Sunday but that would be a trademark violation of Dave’s signature bit. None of these are worth a whole post by themselves, but too good to waste.

• My dog loves the snow. We got a surprise 4” storm today. It was just the remnants of the blast that walloped Colorado once again. Meanwhile, a Chinese ice sculpture tournament had to be called due to melting. This global warming sure is random. The Washington Post also called Al Gore a rock star because his Powerpoint presentation is about to win an Oscar.


• Since Fat Tuesday fell on my birthday this year, I didn’t mention Mardi Gras at all. I wrote a long post about New Orleans last year and included a link to this picture, but didn’t show it. Here I am in my infamous yellow jacket in front of the New Orleans Hard Rock Café. We didn’t actually eat in it. You don’t go to The Big Easy to eat burgers from a memorabilia chain. This was back in the days when Hard Rocks were few and far between. My blog buddy Dave has been to nearly every Hard Rock there is. My list is much less extensive. I’ve been to the Orlando, Boston, Baltimore, and DC Hard Rocks and that is about it.


• My wife and I went to see The Queen last night since we wanted to see why Helen Mirren is considered a shoe-in. In keeping with Mooselet's Saturday Skinfest (NSFW), I offer this vintage photo of Helen letting her very healthy puppies breath (and I’m not talking about Welsh Corgis).


• I don’t have a lot of horses in the Oscar race this year. Martin Scorcese should win just so he can even the score with Three 6 Mafia. Another winner I am predicting is that Jennifer Hudson will win the award for Best Person Playing Themselves for her role as Sassy Singer in Dreamgirls. Previous winners in this category include Marlee Matlin for Deaf Chick That Sleeps With William Hurt, Henry Fonda for Dying Old Codger, Shirley MacLaine for Wacky Nutjob, and Roberto Benigni for Nutty Italian.


• I also have an announcement. As a rating stunt on par with Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, this Saturday will kick-off Meme Week here on Foma*. I have a few memes already on deck, but if you have a favorite of yours, let me know and I may get around to them. And you are welcome to play along.

Go Jackets!

Updated (5/27/2008): The University Barbie image I used to link to has gone 404, so I've substituted a picture of my actual Barbie.

The Georgia Tech football team pulled off an upset victory over number 3 ranked Miami last night. I know this because I accidentally tuned into ESPN with 1:40 left in the game just after Georgia Tech intercepted a pass that crushed Miami’s comeback hopes. This victory came as the good news in an otherwise bad week for Tech athletics. The NCAA imposed two years of sanctions over the academic eligibility of 17 athletes including 11 football players during a six year period. This link has the official GT press release on the issue. Also, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports on a football player under indictment for conspiracy to distribute marijuana who won a court order to be returned to the team.

These latest events have been tarnishing Georgia Tech’s otherwise sterling reputation for academic integrity. A few years back at a meet-and-greet event with the women’s basketball team, they were asked what they found most unexpected about playing at Tech and they said the academic rigor. Georgia Tech has no “jock” majors. Industrial Management is about as wimpy as it gets and many athletes attend because they do want an engineering oriented education.

In some ways, I would appear to be a superfan. I drive a white Camry with gold trim in the school colors. I have the state affinity tags for Georgia Tech. In my cubicle at work I have a mint-in-the-box University Cheerleader Barbie™. Being a fan of Georgia Tech sports requires a certain amount of distance because the system is capable of producing national championship football teams and Final Four basketball seasons. Other years, the performance can be completely dismal. During my years at Georgia Tech, we lost to Furman and the Citadel.

Ups and downs in the athletic program do not affect my devotion to my alma mater which is one of the finest engineering colleges in the country and an incredible bargain as a quality state run university. As an alumnus, I work with the local alumni chapter to recruit students and award scholarships. The Presidential Scholarship Program is open to all students that apply by the end of October in their senior year of high school.

Georgia Tech is not for everyone. If you do not have a strong background in math and science, you are better off somewhere else. Nearly everyone takes some level of calculus no matter what the major. The school heavily recruits strong female students and the “ratio” has plateaued at about a 70/30 male/female ratio. I’ll save you the rest of my recruiting pitch, but give it a thought if you are or know of prospective students.

So the yellojkt is a Ramblin’ Wreck from Georgia Tech and a helluva engineer. And while I do not gnash my teeth over the travails of the “student-athletes”, I have one sentiment that unites all Yellow Jackets, past and present:

TO HELL WITH GEORGIA!!!

Technorati tag:hummingbird rump, yellojkt, Yellow Jacket, yellowjacket, Georgia Tech

Jazz and Jackets

I complained a few days ago about the work involved in being a band parent. It also has its rewards. For Band class, my son is required to go to two concerts a year and write reports and the U2 concerts we drag him to don’t count. A rival local high school hosts a Maynard Ferguson concert each year, so we bought tickets and went. The show warmed up with the really superb high school jazz ensemble and then some solo work by members of Maynard’s band, the Big Bop Nouveau Band.

After a break, Maynard himself joined the band for several very high energy jazz numbers. MF’s contribution seemed to be that after every member of his young talented band took a solo, he would bleat about 10 notes of his trademark ultra high notes to end the number. Not bad for a guy pushing eighty.

The show ended with all hands on stage including the high school group doing Maynard’s rendition of "Gonna Fly Now (Theme From Rocky)" to send everybody home humming.

Now here is where my peeve/rant begins. The definition of Jazz has been stretched beyond all traditional meanings of the form. While Maynard has a right to record pop hits in the jazz idiom, he is doing a disservice to his young audience by blurring the line so fuzzily.

The local "Oldies" station recently switched formats from mostly late fifties and early sixties pop to “Smooth Jazz”. This station’s definition of jazz includes such legends of the form as Marvin Gaye and Hall & Oates. I saw Daryl Hall and John Oates (as they prefer to be called to avoid the “Haulin’ Ass” pun) at the peak of their pop cheesiness in 1984 and I guarantee you no one in the Charlotte Arena thought they were at a jazz recital.

I like jazz but don’t have a lot of it because it all sounds pretty much the same to my tin ear. I don't know why jazz artists insist on giving their instrumentals titles since that is no help in telling them apart. I own two jazz albums, Pat Methany’s Still Life (Talking) because I love the Publix jingle "Last Train Home" on it and The Best of Yellowjackets. I have the Yellowjackets album because I kept getting asked in music web forums if I was a fan. I am now, but I was led to them by my nom de web yellojkt, not the other way around.

And I promise that this is the last red herring concerning the origin of yellojkt. The next time I discuss it, I will reveal once and for all the very anti-climactic reason for this obscure handle. Hint: I need a barrel of rum and sugar three thousand pounds next week.

Technorati tag:hummingbird rump, Maynard Ferguson, jazz, music, Yellowjackets, yellojkt

Hank Pym - The Yellowjacket

On the Comics Curmudgeon site one day, another frequent poster there noticed my yellojkt signature and was honored to be in the presence of the one and only Hank Pym. I had never heard of Hank Pym and went googling to find that Hank was among other things a Marvel superhero named Yellowjacket. He also goes by Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath or even sans alter ego. Scott Tipton has an enormously entertaining and obsessively detailed history of Yellowjacket and his other identities here. Heck, Yellowjacket even has his own Wikipedia entry.

I read a lot of comics when I was a kid. My parents would stop at a convenience store and I would beg for a superhero comic, but they would only let me get the Scrooge McDuck type Disney comics. Finally, when I was in first grade, I went to the Seven-Eleven and bought a Superman (issue #242 if my web source is correct). I went to a vacant lot and read it three times before I snuck it into the house. I was hooked.

The problem was that I became a fan of DC comics which included great heroes like Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and more, but that in the early seventies all the comics buzz was at Marvel which had Spiderman, The (Uncanny) X-Men, The Fantastic Four, Hulk, and the Avengers.

I saw the Avengers as a cheap rip-off of the much more prestigious Justice Leage of America over at DC. Hawkeye was a poor man's Green Arrow. Tony Stark was Bruce Wayne with a bad ticker. Scarlett Witch was nowhere near as sexy as Black Canary. And so on.

Yellowjacket was an Avenger. One whose career ended in disgrace in a long convoluted soap-opera-ish story arc that is the trademark of Marvel comics. My comic company snobbery had blinded me to the existence of my future namesake. I had long adopted the yellojkt persona well before I knew there was a superhero of the same name.

After I graduated from college, my mom gave me the "Clean out the closet" ultimatum and my comic collection got liquidated. They were in terrible shape since an eight year old knows nothing about acid free backer paper and clear covers. None of them were particularly collectible anyway.

I haven't bought a comic book since I tried to cash in on the "new" Superman craze several years ago. The "Marvelization" of comics is complete. All the superheroes have incredibly complicated storylines that are impossible to follow if you aren't showing up at your local comics store every Wednesday for the new releases.

I still read them when I am killing time at the mall in Waldenbooks Borders Express. Their selection of comic books is thin and disorganized. Meanwhile, my teenage son and his peers are crowding the manga aisle to read translations of black and white Japanese comics from back to front. If I were a comic publisher I would fear the losing of a generation to anime and manga. I am one of the last of a generation that read comics from when they could read.

Technorati tag:hummingbird rump, comic books, Yellowjacket, DC, Marvel, superhero, Avengers, yellojkt

Time Warp For Tots

The school where my wife works has a Fall Festival every year near the end of October. Fall Festival being the non-denominational, non-occult version of Halloween. As I walked through the halls I heard a vaguely familiar tune that I wouldn’t normally associate with a school environment. It was the Kidz Bop version of “Time Warp” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

This disturbed in a great number of ways. It’s just so wrong when that stuff filters sown to the elementary school set. The first time I saw a group of five year olds clamoring to be included in a YMCA line dance, I cringed and wondered what happened to all that was edgy and subversive from my younger days. Rocky Horror was a vital part of my youth that has now been co-opted as children’s entertainment. Not to mention the cloying children’s chorus arrangements that the succubae at Kidz Bop use to totally defang anything. I think they could do Iron Maiden Kidz Bob style and no one would object.

I was never a huge Rocky Horror aficionado, but went at least a half dozen times when in high school. I knew what to shout and when, but never went out of my way to bring props or show up in costume. A casual fan.

In college, my future wife and I were visiting an old junior high friend of hers that attended Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. Her friend, B., said he was a cast member of the local Rocky Horror troupe at the only Cineplex in the area and wanted to know if we wanted to go along. My wife is the only person I know that has fallen asleep at Rocky Horror and she begged off, but I was game.

B. warned me that the Saturday night performance was a little looser than their by-the-book show on Fridays and cast members frequently skipped out. B. played the monster and had the gold bikini shorts for the part. We got there and found out that the regular actor that played Brad had called in sick. B. asked me if I wanted to substitute. I tried to beg off by saying I didn’t know the movie well enough. He rightly said “What is there to know? The movie is right there on the screen and all you have to do is pantomime the action.”

Besides, the cast thought I was perfect for the part. I was tall, thin, wore glasses and had a dorky yellow Members Only jacket. Secretly indulging my deeply repressed thespian tendencies, I went on with the show.

It was easy and a great time. The cast was a lot of fun and everyone went out to Waffle House afterwards, where I found out that Columbia and Magenta stayed in character off stage, if you know what I mean. While the whole event seems pretty tame in retrospect, it was all wild and bacchanalian when set against the mores of the surrounding community. Greenville, after all, is also the home of Bob Jones University, but that is a whole ‘nuther culture clash.

So I did wear a yellow jacket while in college, but that is not why I am yellojkt. But if anyone needs a Brad for a Rocky Horror revival, I’ve got that on my resume.

Technorati tag:hummingbird rump, Rocky Horror, Kidz Bop, yellojkt, comics

Why yellojkt?

Whenever I am asked for a username/alias/handle I rely on the one I have had since I first started visiting computer bulletin boards back in the early 90s. This was way before the World Wide Web hit the mainstream and the internet meant e-mail or Usenet. Most bulletin board systems (BBS) were hobbyist things that a guy (and it was inevitably a guy) used his computer for after he got a modem.

My first modem was a US Robotics Sportster 19.2kbps v-something or other. In those days, the speed of the modem and the protocols it supported was a major marketing phenomena as each new standard would immediately render the other standards obsolete. Modem speed increased exponentially from 300 bps in days that predate me to 2400, then 9600, and 14.4k. Modem speeds eventually topped out at 56kbps, which was when I made the jump to broadband, never to turn back.

Using a modem was very high-geek. You needed to know a bunch of very obscure initialization string settings. The most important of which was how to silence the dial tone, dialing and answer squawk so that you wouldn’t wake up your wife while BBS’ing late at night. The word “surfing” didn’t even exist then.

The typical BBS sysop (system operator) was a guy with a computer he left on 24/7. As his BBS grew he would add modems so that more than one user could be on at a time. Large ones would charge membership and adult oriented ones often required proof of age (or so I heard). Widespread use of the WWW put most of these guys out of business. Some bigger commercial ones evolved into ISP’s, but the hobbyists all went onto other things. Like running fan-sites on the web.

Once on a BBS, there was precious little to do except post on a message board or download files. Files tended to be of the variety favored by male technically enabled early adopters, warez and pr0n. There was a whole etiquette to downloading files that included uploading files as well. Since I didn’t have a stash of uploadable files and was a little squeamish about having that stuff on a family computer, I kept to the message boards or reading Fidonet threads.

Fidonet was the BBS users’ semaphore-flag-on-a-hill simulation of Usenet that ran in parallel to and in many ways was superior to the similar Usenet groups. The topic groups ran to the geek end of the spectrum. Star Trek was well represented.

Much of the jargon that still exists was coined by users of early BBS’s as well as the mainframe users of Usenet. There were “lurkers” and “trolls” and “doodz” and “file-leeches” and several other sub-species of anti-social specimens. Each BBS would develop its own little community of frequent users and hierarchies and feuds and flame-wars would ensue. Just like any decent blog or message board today. The more things change the more they stay the same.

And my point before I started geezing was…. Oh, yeah, most of these BBS’s were DOS based shareware platforms that created little files for each user on the host’s machine, so user names were limited to eight characters. I needed an eight character word to succinctly summarize me and my multi-faceted personality yet still remain anonymous, just in case.

I chose yellojkt.

Over the years this choice has served me well. There are very few places I go where I can’t get yellojkt as a username without having to resort to silly numerical suffixes. By now, nearly everybody everywhere allows names of nearly unlimited length. I hang onto yellojkt for sentimental and practical reasons. yellojkt is short, easy to type, and easy to remember. I have been yellojkt on Prodigy, AOL, Netcom, Earthlink, Comcast, and numerous chat-rooms, bulletin boards, blogging services, and other assorted members-only environments. I even now own yellojkt.com, although all you will find is a redirect to my Blogger account. I just hated the thought that someone else might have grabbed that domain name when I get around to wanting to do something with it.

But why yellojkt, and not some other nonsensical eight letter combination?

That’s a different question altogether. It’s fairly easy to figure out phonetically that yellojkt is short for Yellow Jacket.

But why Yellow Jacket?

For one thing it’s a great conversation starter. It’s really not hard to figure out, but I’m going to give out some red herrings in further posts before I spill the beans. I have heard some wild guesses over the years and you are welcome to give it a try. The more outlandish the better.

Sincerely,

yellojkt