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The Watchmen Bestiary 2: There’s a Ship…

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On November 10, 2012

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[Note: As will be customary for this series, Watchmen spoilers ahoy.]

Continuing my journey through the Annotated Watchmen v2.0, the notes for page 4 of issue 1 addresses the frequently-recurring comic within the series, Tales Of The Black Freighter. Here’s what the annotations have to say:

“The Black Freighter” is the name of a song in Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s opera The Threepenny Opera. It is sung by a woman who tells of a black freighter that comes into town in order to kill everyone in town but her.

Well, no, not really. As I found out when I rented the 1931 movie version of Threepenny Opera, there is no song called “The Black Freighter.” And by the way, despite its name, The Threepenny Opera is not an opera. It’s a musical.

In any case, there is a song in the show called “Pirate Jenny”, which seems as though it might fit the rest of the description. Funny thing, though: I listened to that song in the movie, and it never mentions a black freighter at all. Now, granted, it was in German, but the captions seemed pretty clear. Jenny sings “Und ein schiff mit acht segeln”, which the captions translate as “And a ship with eight sails.” It’s no black freighter, or at least the lyrics never say so.

A fascinating thing about the Criterion version of the movie is that its second disc provides an entirely different version of the same film. In what was apparently not an uncommon practice at the time, director G.W. Pabst shot two Threepenny Opera films at once. Right alongside the German movie is another one in French, with different actors using the same costumes and sets, as well as a few plot details changed. Knowing this, I thought perhaps that it was the French version which mentions the black freighter, but no. The French lyrics are captioned something like, “There’s a ship at full sail.”

At this point, I felt pretty sure that “Pirate Jenny” was the song to which the annotations refer. But where does this black freighter come from? I didn’t think the annotaters would have just invented the connection from whole cloth. So I dug a bit more, and unearthed Nina Simone’s version of “Pirate Jenny.”

Holy. Crap. My friends, I believe we’ve found our black freighter. Not only that, we’ve found an astonishingly powerful rendition of “Pirate Jenny,” one that sheds a clear light on parts of Watchmen. Upon rereading the book, I found it a little bit odd that “pirates” was the genre that replaced “superheroes” in the comics of the Watchmen world — don’t they really serve entirely different emotional purposes? But the black freighter of Simone’s “Pirate Jenny” is just as visceral a power fantasy as any issue of Wolverine, albeit rather darker. Its pirates exact revenge on the narrator’s oppressors in ways that the Comics Code Authority might never approve, but any bullied kid certainly would.

It also seems no accident that the freighter is black. The racial subtext in Simone’s rendition is clear — so clear really that it’s a stretch to call it “subtext” — but it wasn’t her who injected the black freighter into the lyrics. That was the work of Marc Blitzstein in his 1954 Off-Broadway adaptation of the show — the same translation which launched many a successful cover of “Mack The Knife.” So the freighter’s blackness preceded Simone’s apocalyptic invocation of black revolution — in fact, it was Lotte Lenya who sang the role of Jenny in the 1954 production… just as she had in the 1931 movie. Its blackness, then, is just the blackness of doom, which the narrator anticipates eagerly.

In Watchmen, the freighter also symbolizes not revolution but doom, albeit the doom that the so-called “world’s smartest man” imagines to be a revolution. Ozymandias, like Jenny, envisions his triumph atop piles of corpses, but unlike her, he cloaks his bloodthirsty dream in images of final peace and harmony. He seems genuinely surprised when Jon reminds him of the obvious: there is no “final” peace. Nothing ever ends.

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Searching For Sugar Man

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On September 15, 2012

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One of my favorite books as a teen, and a huge influence on me during that time, was a novel called The Armageddon Rag, by the then-little-known George R.R. Martin. The book is about… well, it’s about many things, including loss of innocence, the metaphorical end of the Sixties, the rewards and regrets inherent in revisiting the past, and the enormous power of music. The way it is about those things is that it follows a journalist investigating a murder, one that seems inextricably bound to the music of a fictional Zeppelin-esque defunct band called The Nazgûl, whose lead singer died on the same date as the murder. As the journalist investigates the story, he is startled to discover that the band is getting back together, and somebody who looks and sounds a whole lot like the singer is fronting them…

The documentary Searching For Sugar Man is about many things too, and the way it is about them is that it follows a journalist investigating how a beloved artist died. The artist’s name is Rodriguez. A Detroit singer-songwriter in the Dylan mold, he released a couple of albums in the early 70s — good albums, beloved by producers and critics, but completely ignored by the American audience. He quickly faded into total obscurity. Well, almost total. By some quirk, the albums became wildly popular in South Africa, their protest lyrics credited with awakening an anti-apartheid generation to the possibility and power of questioning authority. One South African describes Rodriguez’s popularity there like so: “If you went into any white, middle-class, liberal home in South Africa and started flipping through the record collection, there are three albums you’d always find: Abbey Road by The Beatles, Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel, and Cold Fact by Rodriguez.”

But while there are reams of information available about The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel, South Africans could learn almost nothing about Rodriguez. They couldn’t even find out how he died, though many seemed to agree it was grisly in some way. Did he immolate himself on stage? Blow his brains out right after the encore? Nobody seems to know, so in the 1990s, South African music journalist Craig Bartholomew-Styrdom starts researching an article whose premise is: “How did Rodriguez die?” He followed the money, made a lot of phone calls, and also made use of this nifty new tool called the Internet. With fan Stephen Segerman, he created a website called “The Great Rodriguez Hunt”, casting far and wide for leads on the mystery.

I don’t want to reveal what he found. It’s best learned watching the film. Quoth Roger Ebert: “Let me just say it is miraculous and inspiring.” For me, it was like a mirror image of The Armageddon Rag: where the story of The Nazgûl is dark and apocalyptic, the story of Rodriguez is redemptive and luminous. Even better, the story of Rodriguez is true. I spent pretty much the entire movie thinking it was a hoax, along the lines of Dave Stewart’s Platinum Weird stunt a few years ago. Nope. It’s not a hoax. It is one hundred percent true, and it shone a light on a couple of things that really moved me.

The first of these is about mystery and music. Not to sound like a village elder, but I am old enough to remember a time when you could hear a song, or an album, and love it, but have almost nothing more than the song or the album. If you heard it on the radio, you might not even know the title or the artist! I once taped a lovely Robert Plant song off the radio, and it took me years to find out the title of the song, and that it was solo Plant rather than Zeppelin.

Even if you owned the music rather than hearing it on the radio, you might have an album cover or some liner notes to peruse, but those could be sparse or willfully obtuse, and in any case they were merely snapshots in time. You could subscribe to Creem or Rolling Stone and get up-to-date news, but only for the artists they chose to showcase. You might be able to find some historical info at the library, for well-established artists, but again, that would be up to the caprice of your library’s collection. Even the albums themselves could be elusive — I remember driving all around Aurora, searching fruitlessly for a copy of Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut.

This atmosphere gave rise to wild rumors and legends. I suppose the poster child for this would be the Paul is dead phenomenon, but these legends lasted well past the Sixties. I remember someone confidently asserting to me that Michael Stipe and Natalie Merchant had a daughter together. It is a truth universally acknowledged that when there is a vacuum of information, human beings will fill that vacuum with speculation, and doubly so for the things we’re passionate about. Thus were many hours spent trading ridiculous stories of our pop idols.

That’s all different now. Don’t get me wrong — the age of rumors wasn’t golden, and I wouldn’t want to go back to it. I absolutely love that we have Google, and Wikipedia, and Shazam, and even horrible ad-splattered lyrics sites. The trade wasn’t something for nothing, though. What we lost was a little bit of that mystique, that sense of the unknowable. Having information at our fingertips about the musical pantheon brings them a lot closer to earth with the rest of us. It’s a mixed blessing.

The other aspect of this film that really spoke to me was about recognition and arrival. The filmmaker speaks to Rodriguez’s daughters, who knew their father as someone who had put his music out into the world, only to see it immediately sink beneath the surface. When they learn that it finally found its home in South Africa, that those songs were deeply loved by an entire nation of people, the revelation is immensely powerful. They see that their father’s spirit, his true self, has been kept alive for all those years. Did the news come too late? Maybe, but I don’t think so. See the movie and judge for yourself.

This part of the movie felt allegorical to me. We each have our core, our essence, and as bravely as we can, we express it to the world. Sometimes the world embraces it, sometimes not so much. But it never goes away. It is there, still waiting to be seen and heard. Sometimes, it gets seen and heard in the most unexpected ways, and when that happens, the resulting illumination is a wonder to behold.

Ice Slowly Melting

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On January 7, 2012

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A couple of years ago, I wrote about my annual Christmas tradition with my friends Siân and Kelly, a mix CD of songs I’ve been listening to that year. The songs generally reflect a little something about my life in one way or another, though not perfectly so — sometimes they’re just songs I’ve imprinted on for some reason. The liner notes tradition has continued as well, but I didn’t post the notes from 2010. See, 2010 was a terrible, terrible year. Professionally, it was by far the unhappiest I’d ever been in my job, and personally, my marriage tailspun into a major crisis right at the same time we moved into a new house and my work life was at peak misery. It was very difficult, and painful, and I withdrew from many things and people.

Then came 2011. In January, I started a new job, thank god. I am in a much healthier atmosphere now, and am much, much happier at work. Laura and I finally found the right counselor in the spring, and have healed a lot of things. By the time November rolled around, I had started to emerge from a fair amount of depression, and it was in that mood that I made this year’s CD. I feel really happy with the collection, both as a musical collage and as a reflection of my year.

1. DEAR PRUDENCE – Siouxsie and the Banshees
Siouxsie Sioux was always in the back of my mind as somebody I wanted to learn more about, so last year I procured a greatest hits album. I liked it, though I don’t think I’ll go much deeper than that. I quite enjoy her voice, especially on this cover. It was a pretty Beatles-y year for me, so this was a fitting choice for that, but even more so for the lyrics and tone of the song itself. To me, this is about emerging, after being shrouded in protection. That’s pretty much what happened with me this year. I can hardly measure how much better things are now, both at home and at work, compared to this time last year. Not that everything is magically perfect — there’s still a lot of work to do — but the skies are a lot sunnier now.

2. ALL THIS BEAUTY – The Weepies
And what do we see when we come out to play? This was a year of The Weepies for me. They’re a married couple of singer-songwriters, Deb Talan and Steve Tannen, who started out as fans of each other’s solo work, and then literally began to make beautiful music together. Their harmonies are lovely, and their songs are just killer. I absolutely fell in love with their album Hideaway, from which this track is taken. That was the launching pad for my Weepies infatuation, and this was one of the songs that made me want to buy the album. (Thanks to the Internet radio station for bringing them to my attention.) It’s hard to pick just one song from that album, but this one fit my mindset a lot, or at least a part of it. (Lucky for me, there are other Weepies songs to fit other parts. 🙂 ) It’s about remembering to be amazed — there is so much beauty in this world, and sometimes it’s easier to see it if you close your eyes, then slowly open wide.

3. HERE COMES THE SUN – Paul Simon with David Crosby and Graham Nash
Speaking of lovely harmonies. I saw Paul on tour this fall, and he completely surprised me by singing this song as part of his set. It’s such a beautiful song anyway, and it fits his voice perfectly. After a little research, I found that he actually has a long history with the song — he sang it with George on an SNL episode way back in 1976, and various times in his career after that. I’m a lifelong Paul Simon fan, but I had no idea about this connection. It was a high point of the concert for me, and those always find their way to these end-of-year compilations. Not only that, it resonates with one of the most beautiful moments from the Love show I saw this year (more about that later), and perfectly encapsulates the theme of the year. Hence my title. I had a little trouble finding a good recording of him singing it solo, so I went with this one, from the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame’s 25th anniversary concerts.

4. TRUE FAITH – New Order
Sometimes focus falls on something one year because it belonged to a project from the previous year. So it was with this song. My Christmas gift for my sister in 2010 had a Guns ‘n’ Roses theme, since that’s one of her favorite bands. I decided to follow up on that with her birthday gift (not much of a reach, since her birthday is on New Year’s Eve.) Our tradition is some kind of themed CD as her birthday gift from me, so last year I decided to make her 3 volumes of songs from 1987, the year G+R’s first album came out. I love a lot of the music from that year — it’s probably not coincidental that I was 17 at the time, and just fully embracing music as a part of my identity for the first time. I’m sure plenty of people find much of their favorite music rooted in their late teens. This song appeared on that collection — it’s one of two New Order songs written that year to be bonus tracks on their greatest hits collection Substance. I find the music both hypnotic and uplifting, and the lyrics fit in well with the previous song — “my morning sun is a drug that brings me here.”

5. SECRET LOVE – Stevie Nicks
Why yes, Stevie Nicks did come out with a new album this year! 🙂 In Your Dreams was her first release in 10 years, and I’m sure it’s no surprise to anyone that several songs from it would appear on this compilation. This one was the advance single, and the record company offered a download of it with pre-orders of the album. It’s based an a demo I’d been listening to for years. Stevie has tons and tons of these unrecorded demos that have circulated amongst fans forever, and it’s an incredible thrill when she finishes one up with a proper studio version and releases it. Sometimes these actually turn out to be a little less satisfying than the demo — a couple of songs from the 2003 Fleetwood Mac album are like that — but often they are wonderful realizations of a rough outline. That was the case with this song. I got a full-body rush when listening to it for the first time. I think Dave Stewart does a fantastic job of production, Stevie’s vocals sound great, and it got me very excited for the album.

6. MOONLIGHT (A VAMPIRE’S DREAM) – Stevie Nicks
Here’s one of my favorite tracks from that album, and one of the standouts from her wonderful concert this summer. Again it’s based on a demo, but in a peculiar way. The demo that fans have been calling “Lady From The Mountain” has the beginning verses and piano part, but the more driving music that kicks in on the lyric “Strange, she runs with the one she can’t keep up with” is all new. Apparently Stevie was inspired by the first Twilight movie — she says it reminded her of an experience she had, though she coyly never reveals what that was. I’ve never read or seen any Twilight anything. All I know is that this song charges me full of energy every time I hear it. I love what it does with “Lady From The Mountain”, marrying its fragility to a smooth, powerful backbone.

7. GERM FREE ADOLESCENTS – X-Ray Spex
This song begins what I think of as the “Thank You Siân” section — all artists I’ve learned to love because of her influence. Laura was friends with Siân first — they were in CU‘s English Literature PhD program together. That’s how I met Laura too, except that I was doing my M.A. Siân wrote her dissertation on punk rock. I remember her telling me about X-Ray Spex back when she lived in Colorado — in fact, now that I look at the dissertation, its very title is an X-Ray Spex reference. So I filed that away but rarely thought of it again until she mailed me a couple of CDs of punk songs from the Sunday Times. This song appeared on that CD, and I liked it enough to seek out a compilation. The songs in that collection made X-Ray Spex one of my favorite punk bands — “Identity”, “Art-I-Ficial”, “I Am A Cliche”, “Let’s Submerge”, “Age”… I’ll stop before I list out all their songs. They’re all great, but this was the one that lit the way, and there’s still something special about it.

8. SHOOT THE MOON – Hugh Blumenfeld
Yeah, here’s another guy I wouldn’t be listening to if not for Siân. Hugh is actually a friend of hers, and she’s put various songs of his on mixes she’s made for me over the years, and I eventually became a fan. She and Kelly visited us in August of 2010, and she brought me four of his CDs at that time. My backlog being what it is, I ended up listening to them in November, which marks the beginning of this music-listening year for me. There were many songs I enjoyed from those CDs — I picked this one both because it reminded me of Dante and because it happened to have a wonderful resonance with another much-loved song from another much-loved Siân Mile artist…

9. THE SPACE RACE IS OVER – Billy Bragg
I think Bragg is Siân’s favorite artist overall, and another one I adopted because she passed some of his best stuff along to me. I’ve been buying more things in MP3 form in the past few years, to feed and fill the iPod’s sacred shuffle, but that’s meant that I don’t listen to them as closely as I do my CDs. Therefore, I periodically burn a batch to CD, and so it was with one CD from a Billy Bragg box set I’d downloaded a couple of years ago. It’s a fine collection — some songs I knew and liked because Siân had included them on various compilations, while others I heard for the first time and learned to love on my own. This was one of the latter. I think my jaw literally dropped when I heard him sing, “I watched the Eagle landing on a night when the moon was full / And as it tugged at the tides I knew that deep inside / I too could feel its pull.” What an incredibly gorgeous lyric. I love the way this song summons an elegiac and wistful tone for the bright future that might have been. I think it’s better than the Blumenfeld song, though that’s hardly a fair comparison, and they do pair so nicely.

10. PICTURE WINDOW – Ben Folds and Nick Hornby
This is from the album Lonely Avenue, in which Ben Folds and Nick Hornby do their version of an Elton John/Bernie Taupin partnership — Hornby wrote the lyrics and Folds wrote and performed all the music. It is a gorgeous album, and while it’s hard to pick a favorite song on it, this one emerged from the pack for a couple of reasons. First, I think it’s just heart-rendingly poignant; it’s easily the most moving song on the record. Second, it reminds me strongly of an experience that made a major impression on me this year. A very close friend of mine went through a horrible hospital experience this summer — her 12-year-old son went into the hospital as a result of multiple health issues crashing into each other. I visited them frequently during this period — her son loves comics and music, so I was able to relate to him and bring him some things to make him happy in that difficult hospital environment. I watched him suffer awful, awful mental and physical anguish, and I watched her agonize every day over him, playing the very difficult role of protector and intermediary between him and the institutional realities. There was a series of horrible situations produced by a combination of organizational dysfunction, misjudgements, parental personalities, and the nature of his issues, which weren’t easily pigeonholed. After several weeks of hell, he finally got some treatment that, although rather invasive, began to turn things around. They were in there for a couple of months total, and they’re still recovering. Watching your child suffer like that day after day is one of the worst things I can think of.

11. HELPLESS – k.d. lang
About 5 years ago I saw a movie called Away From Her, about a woman (played by Julie Christie) whose mind is slowly disintegrating from Alzheimer’s. It made a huge impression on me, and this song played over the credits of that movie. It blew my mind. lang’s incredible voice brings out a power I’d never heard in this song before, and every time I hear it, I feel this thick blanket of emotion settling over me. Eventually I sought out the album it came from — Hymns Of The 49th Parallel, in which lang covers all Canadian artists — and listened to it this year. Covers are definitely her metier, I think — her own material (with the exception of Ingenue) tends to fall flat for me. Whereas when she gets a hold of something that’s already really strong, like this song, she can make it profoundly affecting.

12. LIVING IN TWILIGHT – The Weepies
Remember when I said the skies are sunnier now? I know that’s true because we spent much of the earlier part of the year in the twilight this song so perfectly describes. Parts of my life this year were like one of those movies all scored by one artist (Magnolia, Harold & Maude, Good Will Hunting). The Weepies sang the soundtrack of my movie.

13. THE SOUND OF SETTLING – Death Cab For Cutie
Last year, Pink was the artist I discovered 10 years later than everyone else. This year, it was Death Cab For Cutie. I think I listened to their album Transatlanticism for about 3 weeks straight in September. It is just amazing. I knew I’d be picking a song from it for this compilation, and the choice was so difficult I just randomized it. Fittingly, this was one of the Death Cab songs that made me decide I needed to go out and buy their albums. I find the first lyric especially arresting: “I’ve got a hunger / twisting my stomach into knots / that my tongue has tied off.” Wow! I just love that.

14. YOU JUST HAVEN’T EARNED IT YET, BABY – Kirsty MacColl
There is one reason that things are better between Laura and I, and that reason is that we have worked our asses off this year to get to where we are. We have both been very committed to learning new ways of relating, and putting our new knowledge into practice. As a consequence, our conflicts are fewer, less frightening, and more quickly resolved. I don’t mean to make it sound like we’re finished working, but we’re closer than we’ve been in years, and we’ve earned it, baby. I’ve loved this song ever since hearing it on the She’s Having A Baby soundtrack in high school. I’ve never been much of a Smiths person — I like Johnny Marr well enough, but with a few big exceptions I just find Morrissey too grating. However, I do have strong affection for some Smiths covers, and this one tops the list. I adore Kirsty’s voice, and the production is gorgeous and uplifting. I can’t get enough of it.

15. ON SUNDAY – ‘Til Tuesday
‘Til Tuesday’s Welcome Home was another of those CDs I burned from downloaded MP3s. I’ve been a Mann fan for years, but never went beyond the “greatest hits” level with her old band. I like this song a lot, and it fit my life since part of my commitment with Laura was to do a regularly scheduled session of emotional/relationship work on Sundays when we didn’t have a couples therapy appointment. “Why spend your sadness now? / Save it up for me, on Sunday.”

16. ROCKS AND WATER (LIVE AT CHAUTAUQUA 2011-08-27) – The Weepies
As a part of my Weepy year, I saw them on tour at the Chautauqua Music Hall. It was a wonderful concert, everything I’d hoped it would be and more. The “more” was composed of a few things. One of these was actually the amazing set and lighting. They had this stylized miniature city set up on one side of the stage, and then kind of a forest glade on the other, and throughout the show, the lighting would change on various things to highlight different parts. At one point, a previously unseen river gets lit up, running through the city and the woods. You can get a little flavor of it from this photo, though obviously that doesn’t get at the different lighting changes. One of the other great parts was the new songs they played — well, new to me anyway. I have their albums, but forgot all about the fact that they had solo careers before they got together! This is a song from one of Deb’s solo records, and I just adored it the first time I heard it. As soon as I came home, I downloaded both her version and one that they did in an iTunes exclusive concert. However, neither version captivated me the way the concert version had. Lucky for me, some bright soul put up a bunch of clips from the concert on YouTube, so I used my handy-dandy DownloadHelper and turned the audio from that clip into an mp3. God bless the internet.

17. SEA AND SAND – The Who
Three things about this song. 1) I listened to Quadrophenia more intently this year than I had ever done before. For reasons “I Can’t Explain”, Quad was kind of a passed-over Who album from my youth, so I ended up really appreciating it much later than most of the rest of their material. 2) This song is a major standout from that album for me. It’s one of the most perfect Who songs to me, flawlessly blending Pete’s fantastic lyrics and storytelling with the immense power of the band. 3) Given that “Sea and Sand” was already on my list, how could I resist pairing it with “Rocks And Water”?

18. HERE COMES THE SUN/THE INNER LIGHT [TRANSITION] – The Beatles
I went to Las Vegas for a trivia convention this summer — a great experience. While I was there, I saw the Cirque Du Soleil show of The Beatles Love — an utterly transcendent experience. I’ve already written about how I spent most of the show with tears streaming down my face, so I won’t rehash all that. I just new that I needed to pick a song for this compilation to represent that experience. It was very hard to choose. I settled on this one both for the reasons I mentioned in the Paul Simon entry, and because this part of the show remains absolutely indelible for me. It wasn’t the yoga poses and the trapeze artists, though those were certainly eye-popping. Instead, it was the massive ball of candles, glowing warmly and rising from the center of the stage, as robed children sit on the edge, radiating joy from meditative poses.

19. ADD MY EFFORT – The Weepies
Yep, one more Weepies song. This one returns to the theme touched on earlier in the MacColl and ‘Til Tuesday songs. It’s about loving someone who frequently lives in darkness — really loving them. I was always adding my effort, but without understanding, that effort can be fruitless or even counterproductive. However, when understanding is there, effort can be enough.

20. CHEAPER THAN FREE (FEATURING DAVE STEWART) – Stevie Nicks
Yep, one more Stevie Nicks song. This the closer for In Your Dreams, and it felt like a perfect closer for this collection as well. It is a pure love song, and for me, purely magical. “What’s cheaper than free? You and me. What’s better than alone? Going home. What does money not buy? You and I. What’s not to feel, when love is real?”

Until next year…

Love in Las Vegas

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On October 16, 2011

In Uncategorized

Last year, I wrote about the Beatles album Love, an astonishingly brilliant mash-up of Beatles songs crafted by George and Giles Martin. That album is the soundtrack to a Cirque Du Soleil show of the same name, which appears in only one place in the world: the Mirage hotel and casino in Las Vegas. Well, when I knew I would be going to Vegas, exactly a year after writing about Love for the first time, I seized the opportunity to see the show.

I’m finding the experience of the show very difficult to put into words. Here are the words I gave it in an email I sent that night:

Oh my god, I think it may have been the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t stop crying. Seriously, I must have cried through like 70% of it. I kept thinking, “I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

Why? Well, a big part of it had to do with sound. I’ve never heard anything like the sound in that theater. They built the theater at the Mirage especially for this show. There are something like 6,000 speakers in it. Every seat has speakers embedded invisibly, including a speaker that faces the seat behind it. Hearing the incredible sound collage of Love in that theater… it feels like being inside the music. No, that’s not it. It felt like the music was inside me. I’ve been to plenty of concerts, including some where I was seated in the front row, directly in front of the band, hearing them play. This was different. The music was everywhere, not just in front of me, with pieces separated out — some close, some far, but all incredibly crisp and clear. It was perfect. It sounded perfect — like a sonic diamond. It would have been a moving experience just to sit in that theater and listen to the album, with no show at all.

But of course, there was a show. This was my first (and only) Cirque show, and it had what Cirque is known for: acrobatics, feats of daring, movements so graceful and gorgeous you can hardly believe they’re possible. “Humans in the service of beauty” should be their motto. And all of that was wonderful, and thrilling, but it wasn’t what was causing the tsunamis of emotion in me, or at least not in itself.

There was something remarkable, though, about seeing those movements synchronized with music that I love. Sometimes, the bodies on stage gave physical expression to the soaring, giddy feeling that was in me, inspired by a particular sound or lyric. Or a hopeful feeling, or a loving feeling, or sorrowful, or whatever. In a DVD extra to All Together Now, a documentary about the show, Yoko says, “Beatles were like acrobatics of the mind, and Cirque Du Soleil is the acrobatics of the body. When it comes together, it makes a kind of… something that’s whole.” She’s absolutely right. The other crucial quote from the film is from Dominic Champagne, director of the show: “You know, bodies go. George Harrison is dead, but we can really say that his spirit is with us, and we gave a body to that spirit. All together.”

It seems ridiculous to even try describing the various pieces of the show in any detail. It’s even worse than the old “dancing about architecture” bit, because the show is already dance, and theater, and art, about music. Not to mention, my powerful emotional reaction to it all makes me keep reaching for superlatives in a way that feels authentic to write, but I suspect is rather tedious to read.

So I’m not even going to try anything like a systematic recounting of the show, but instead just mention a few things that resonated intensely with me, and that remain strong memories of the show:

  • The kids: For whatever reason, I just did not expect there to be kids in this show. The way they were used just blew me away. Since becoming a parent, I’ve gotten rather softhearted about children as symbols. Consequently, seeing them sit in happy meditative poses in front of a huge ball of candles for “Here Comes The Sun”, or rocket towards the sky on a bed whose billowing sheet envelops the audience in dreamy atmospherics, or scramble through the rubble of the Blitz, was quite moving for me.
  • The imagery: Champagne calls the show “a rock and roll poem”, which aptly captures its astute use of imagery. Rather than just a greatest hits dance performance, or a musical homage, or, as I had originally imagined it, “a bunch of guys in tights, swinging from trapezes, forming human pyramids, and so forth”, the show is actually an evocation of some of the most important emotions woven into Beatles music. It does this with a deft use of images. Liverpool just after World War II — crumbling or destroyed brick edifices, exploded further by youthful energy. Groupies and Beatlemania — a girl with a dozen legs, frenetic in her movements. Longing and disappointment “As My Guitar Gently Weeps” — letters raining from the sky onto a solitary dancer. Lucy in the sky with diamonds — twinkling LED stars hang down everywhere, illuminating the swings and arcs of a trapeze artist.
  • The voices: I don’t just mean the singing, though that was breathtaking, especially the a capella voices of “Because.” But beyond that, at several points in the show, Beatle shadows are projected onto screens or hanging muslin, and they move in sync with recordings of the Beatles talking, from studio sessions or casual chatter. Combined with the amazing sound quality, this produced an amazing feeling of intimacy, like you were right there with them. It was an especially wonderful surprise because those sounds are not included on the album.

I could go on, and on, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that if The Beatles hold a special and sacred place in your heart, as they do for me, Las Vegas has just become your Mecca. You must go there and experience Love in that theater, at least once in your life. I don’t know that everyone else will feel what I felt, though if you love the Beatles I suspect you will. For me, it was elevation, suffused with spiritual transcendence and love. If there’s such a thing as heaven, I hope it feels like that.

Syllabus: The Allusive Stevie Nicks

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On September 22, 2011

In Uncategorized

I got both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in English Literature, and for quite a while there I thought I was going to become an English professor, one of those new media and popular culture types combined with a wide swath of 19th century novels and poetry. Then I watched Laura go through her Ph.D. process, and thought, “There have to be less excruciating paths to travel — maybe I’ll pursue this computer thing.”

I don’t regret for a second my decision to abandon academia, but sometimes my brain starts to spark, and I think of the classes that might have been. Recent such sparkage has been inspired by Stevie Nicks’ new album, which I’ve been listening to many times over (as should surprise few who know me.) I’ve been wanting to write about all these flying thoughts, and suddenly I realized the perfect form. It allows me to gesture grandly towards a bunch of broad themes, without having to apply any actual rigor to discussing them. Hooray! Plus, since it’s imaginary, I don’t have to try to engage with some of the more irritating (to me) aspects of what the field has become, or rather what it was 17 years ago, the last time I read a syllabus. It’s my party, and I don’t have to invite Julia Kristeva if I don’t want to…

In Her Dreams: The Allusive Stevie Nicks

DESCRIPTION
Stevie Nicks’ 2011 album In Your Dreams serves as a capstone to her 35-year career as a singer/songwriter. Its songs both build upon and comment upon many of the themes, poetic modes, and even specific lyrics that emerge from her considerable body of work. Beyond that, they draw from a rich variety of sources — literary, cinematic, musical, autobiographical, and more. As is typical of Nicks, their meanings are layered and their referents not always clear. This class will explore issues of allusion, intertextuality, and influence both external and internal, using the work of Stevie Nicks as a lens and the structure of In Your Dreams as a frame.

COURSE PLAN
We will meet once per week, with each session dedicated to exploring a different aspect of Nicks’ work, as highlighted by a particular song or songs from In Your Dreams. Naturally, these themes enrich each other, so we’ll bring them together more and more as the class goes on, with a couple of sessions at the end devoted to synthesizing what we’ve learned. Class sessions will be focused on discussion, and participation will comprise a key part of the course grade. The other elements of the grade are a final paper and two Chain Links projects, explained below in the Grading section. For each class session, course material will be assigned along with supplementary reading, viewing, or listening of interviews and documentary programs.

GRADING PLAN
Your grade will be based on the following components:

1) Regular attendance and active, engaged participation in class discussions. Students are expected to have paid careful attention to that week’s assigned material, be it words, music, or video, and to arrive in class having already thought through some of its implications and interconnections. I encourage you to do further reading and listening beyond what’s assigned — the more you know, the better you’ll be able to recognize important connections.

2) Two Chain Links projects. As we’ll see in this course, Nicks’ work is deeply engaged with a panoply of sources, works that resonate and harmonize with each other. Together, these works form a web of influence, “the web that is my own” as she sings in “Edge of Seventeen.” The purpose of Chain Links projects is to add to this web. The nature of what you create can be fairly free-form: songs, films, essays, stories, poems, paintings, plays, and computer games are all examples of viable projects. However, while their form is flexible, their content must meet some specific requirements. First, all Chain Links projects must be engaged with Nicks’ work, either directly or on a clear thematic level. Secondly, all Chain Links projects must be approved by me in advance. Meetings will be scheduled during my office hours for these approvals. I also strongly recommend that you bring works in progress to me for coaching sessions, to ensure that you’re on the right track. Because of the flexible nature of these assignments, grading is highly subjective — let’s be sure we’re on the same page.

3) A final research paper, 12-15 pages in length. This is a thesis-driven paper on a topic of your choice, due at the final exam session for the course. As with the Chain Links projects, you are required to discuss your topic with me before turning in your final paper. I expect a research paper to be original in its conception, rigorous in its argument, and polished in its execution. Remember, an “A” paper is one that teaches me something.

Final evaluation components are weighted as follows:
20%: Participation
20%: First Chain Links project
20%: Second Chain Links project
40%: Final paper

ASSIGNED READING
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Fleetwood: My Life And Adventures In Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood
Storms: My Life With Lindsey Buckingham And Fleetwood Mac, Carol Ann Harris
Complete Stories And Poems, Edgar Allan Poe
Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
Interview With The Vampire, Anne Rice
The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice
Reading Packet: Selected articles and interviews

ASSIGNED VIEWING
New Moon, Chris Weitz
The Dance, Fleetwood Mac
Selected interviews and program excerpts

ASSIGNED LISTENING
Fleetwood Mac – “Angel” [Tusk]
Fleetwood Mac – “Destiny Rules” [Say You Will]
Fleetwood Mac – “Dreams” [Rumours]
Fleetwood Mac – “Everybody Finds Out” [Say You Will]
Fleetwood Mac – “Eyes Of The World” [Mirage]
Fleetwood Mac – “Freedom” [Behind The Mask]
Fleetwood Mac – “Gypsy” [Mirage]
Fleetwood Mac – “Illume (9/11)” [Say You Will]
Fleetwood Mac – “I’m So Afraid” [Fleetwood Mac]
Fleetwood Mac – “Not Make Believe” [mp3 provided]
Fleetwood Mac – “Silver Springs” (1997 live version) [The Dance]
Fleetwood Mac – “Sisters Of The Moon” [Tusk]
Fleetwood Mac – “Storms” [Tusk]
Fleetwood Mac – “Sweet Girl” [The Dance]
Fleetwood Mac – “That’s Alright” [Mirage]
Stevie Nicks – In Your Dreams [full album]
Stevie Nicks – “After The Glitter Fades” [Bella Donna]
Stevie Nicks – “Battle Of The Dragon” [Enchanted]
Stevie Nicks – “Bella Donna” [Bella Donna]
Stevie Nicks – “Candlebright” [Trouble In Shangri-La]
Stevie Nicks – “Desert Angel” [Timespace]
Stevie Nicks – “Edge Of Seventeen” [Bella Donna]
Stevie Nicks – “Enchanted” [The Wild Heart]
Stevie Nicks – “Fire Burning” [The Other Side Of The Mirror]
Stevie Nicks – “Ghosts” [The Other Side Of The Mirror]
Stevie Nicks – “Have No Heart” (demo) [mp3 provided]
Stevie Nicks – “I Can’t Wait” [Rock A Little]
Stevie Nicks – “If Anyone Falls…” [The Wild Heart]
Stevie Nicks – “Lady From The Mountain” (demo) [mp3 provided]
Stevie Nicks – “Leather And Lace” [Bella Donna]
Stevie Nicks – “Long Way To Go” [The Other Side Of The Mirror]
Stevie Nicks – “Love Is” [Trouble In Shangri-La]
Stevie Nicks – “No Spoken Word” [Rock A Little]
Stevie Nicks – “Rooms On Fire” [The Other Side Of The Mirror]
Stevie Nicks – “Rose Garden” [Street Angel]
Stevie Nicks – “Secret Love” (demo) [mp3 provided]
Stevie Nicks – “Sleeping Angel” [Enchanted]
Stevie Nicks – “Sorcerer” [Trouble In Shangri-La]
Stevie Nicks – “Stand Back” [The Wild Heart]
Stevie Nicks – “Street Angel” [Street Angel]
Stevie Nicks – “Touched By An Angel” [Sweet November Soundtrack]
Stevie Nicks – “The Wild Heart” [The Wild Heart]
Selected interviews

CALENDAR
Supplemental interviews and articles will be assigned each week along with the scheduled reading, listening, and viewing.

Week 1: Introduction — A brief history of Stevie
In-class listening: “The Chain”, “Dreams”, “Go Your Own Way”

Week 2: “Must secret loves secretly die?” — Clandestine romance and veiled autobiography
Reading due: Fleetwood: My Life And Adventures In Fleetwood Mac
Listening due: “Secret Love”, “Stand Back”, “Everybody Finds Out”, “Secret Love” (demo)

Week 3: “Part of a great romance” — Retrospection and introspection
Reading due: Storms: My Life With Lindsey Buckingham And Fleetwood Mac
Listening due: “For What It’s Worth”, “Rose Garden”, “Love Is”, “Sweet Girl”

Week 4: “Always in and out of your light” — Power struggles and regrets
Reading due: Jane Eyre
Listening due: “In Your Dreams”, “Dreams”, “Silver Springs”, “Bella Donna”
Viewing due: The Dance

Week 5: “In the smoke and the fire” — Fiction and reality
First Chain Links project due
Reading due: Wide Sargasso Sea
Listening due: “Wide Sargasso Sea”, “Fire Burning”, “I Can’t Wait”, “No Spoken Word”

Week 6: “I stare at my city” — Permeable roles and the general maternal
Reading due: Interview With The Vampire
Listening due: “New Orleans”, “Illume (9/11)”, “Ghosts”

Week 7: “The candle burns bright” — Rock and roll vampires
Reading due: The Vampire Lestat
Listening due: “Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream)”, “Candlebright”, “Lady From The Mountain” (demo), “Sorcerer”
Viewing due: New Moon

Week 8: “The moon never beams without bringing me dreams” — American gothicism
Reading due: Selections from Edgar Allan Poe
Listening due: “Annabel Lee”, “Gypsy”, “Have No Heart” (demo), “Storms”, “Edge Of Seventeen”

Week 9: “I am a soldier’s mother” — Permeable roles and the specific maternal
Listening due: “Soldier’s Angel”, “Desert Angel”, “Eyes Of The World”, “Battle Of The Dragon”, “Freedom”

Week 10: “But you’re so alone” — Isolation within adulation
Second Chain Links project due
Listening due: “Everybody Loves You”, “Sisters Of The Moon”, “Not Make Believe”, “Enchanted”

Week 11: “Like a ghost through the fog” — Closures and hauntings
Listening due: “Ghosts Are Gone”, “Angel”, “Long Way To Go”
Listening to revisit: “Sweet Girl”, “Silver Springs”, “Ghosts”

Week 12: “Love was everywhere, you just had to fall” — Storybook romance
Listening due: “Italian Summer”, “The Wild Heart”, “If Anyone Falls…”, “Destiny Rules”, “Rooms On Fire”

Week 13: “I used to dream that you were an angel” — Resonance of recurring themes
Listening due: “You May Be The One”, “Sleeping Angel”, “Touched By An Angel”, “Street Angel”, “I’m So Afraid”

Week 14: “Deeper than a deep well” — Country music and love songs
Listening due: “Cheaper Than Free”, “Leather And Lace”, “After The Glitter Fades”, “That’s Alright”

M-m-m-my TCONA! [Days 2 and 3]

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On September 8, 2011

In Uncategorized

On day 2 of TCONA, the first trivia event was scheduled at 8:30am, but it was the Quiz Bowl Seeding Test, which I co-wrote. So I wouldn’t be taking it, which was all for the best, since I’d had a late night. I left my sister asleep in our room and toddled on down to the conference room around 9:45, as the test was breaking up.

The next event was “LearnedLeague Live!”, hosted by Shayne Bushfield, or rather his alter ego, Commissioner Thorsten A. Integrity. If you’re not familiar with LearnedLeague, it requires a bit of explanation. The game is played over the Internet, six questions per day in a variety of categories, and with varying levels of challenge. The twist is that each 6-question match places you head-to-head against another player. You must not only answer the questions, but also play defense against the other player by assigning a point value to each question — a zero, two ones, two twos, and a three. The points are how much the other player will score upon answering the question right. Consequently, you’re required to both assess the difficulty of each question and also guess your opponent’s chances at getting it right, depending on his or her skills in the category. And LL provides zillions of stats, so you can make this analysis just as painstaking as you like.

When I first heard about the game, it sounded a bit overwhelming, intimidating, and time-consuming. I stayed away for a while, and then even after I was ready to join, I had to wait to be invited by a trivia buddy. Now that I’m in it, I love it. The questions are excellent, the format is fun, and the whole thing is quite addictive. The live version of it was a lot of fun too. The group was seated at a bunch of tables, 8 people to a table. Each player was assigned a number and given a packet of questions. Then we faced off in a series of 7 four-minute matches — you’d turn the page to reveal the questions, scribble down your answers and assign points to them, then the Commissioner would read off the answers. You’d compare notes with your opponent to learn your scores, and figure out who won the match. Here’s a sample set of questions, along with the point values I gave them and whether I got them right or wrong:

  1. Name the three yellow properties in the standard American version of the board game Monopoly. (1 point, wrong)
  2. This 1942 Aaron Copland ballet tells the story of a young woman, accomplished in all the skills of a cowpoke, who hopes to attract the attentions of the head wrangler on a ranch; commensurate with the pre-feminist tradition of the day, he is unimpressed by her skill but succumbs to her charms when she trades her cowboy duds for a dress and shows a more “womanly” side at the ranch dance. (3 points, wrong)
  3. Among other things, this film is known for G, A, F, (octave lower) F, C. (0, right)
  4. The holiest city of Zoroastrianism, Rhaga, is today known as Rey, a suburb of what western Asian city? (2, wrong)
  5. What is the mode in this number series? 1,2,2,3,3,4,4,4,5,5,5,5,13,17,17 (2, right)
  6. This word can be used generally to apply to any appendix or supplement, but when used as a legal term refers specifically to an amendment to a will. (1, right)

It was a whole lot of fun. I ended up with a record of 3-2-2, which is pretty comparable to how I tend to perform in online LL (I ended my first season 13-11-1, and I’m 18-15-3 overall.) That meant that I didn’t advance to the championship round which was held later that day. My teammate (and tablemate, and the guy who actually invited me to LL) George Doro did, though, and ended up taking the silver medal overall! (Did I mention that TCONA gave out actual medals to event winning individuals and teams? It was pretty cool.)

After lunch was one of my favorite parts of the entire event: a panel featuring Ken Jennings, Bob Harris, and Ed Toutant, talking about Jennings’ match (with Brad Rutter, who bailed on TCONA in the 11th hour) against IBM’s Watson computer. This, as you may know, was an event that I found fascinating, so a live panel on it with Jennings himself was catnip for me. Even better, it turns out that Toutant, in addition to being rich and famous (well, game-show famous), spent his career as an IBM engineer, and served as a consultant to the team that built Watson. He observed the computer’s behavior in its middle stages, and wrote a report that provided his insights as both a software designer and a game-show expert. After that, he played against Watson in its final practice matches before it went in front of the cameras. Toutant’s report is available online at edtoutant.blogspot.com. I particularly enjoyed his entry on gamesmanship, which not only has very insightful tips about Jeopardy! strategy, but finally explains why Watson chose such bizarre dollar amounts for its Daily Double wagers!

The panel explained that there are four strategic elements in Jeopardy:

  1. Daily Double wagering
  2. Picking a square
  3. Buzzing or not
  4. Final Jeopardy wagering

Watson was programmed to take advantage of all these strategic elements to the best of its ability. It picked squares to maximize its chances of finding a Daily Double — these generally occur in the harder clues (the bottom 3 clues of each row), and I was fascinated to discover that according to the unbelievably comprehensive J! Archive, the first column on the board has by far the highest percentage of Daily Doubles found. Watson based its buzz on its confidence level — a delay was intentionally built in on answers where Watson was less confident. And the reason why it wagered such peculiar numbers for Daily Doubles was basically to increase its chances of screwing up an opponent’s mental math. As Toutant wrote, “One of the most challenging parts of Jeopardy! for many players is the need to do quick math in their head under pressure, especially when making a bet. It is always easier for humans to do math that involves only round numbers. Unlike humans, Watson can’t get flustered and forget to carry the one during addition. So Watson should exploit his inherent math superiority by never using a round number on a Daily Double wager… This may give viewers the impression that Watson’s thinking is very precise, but the real motivation is to make the math more difficult for his opponents when they have to make a wager.”

Another great aspect of this panel, and of TCONA in general, was the opportunity to spend some time with Jennings. I wasn’t watching Jeopardy during his run, so he isn’t an icon to me at quite the level he is to some people, but he’s still the closest thing the trivia world to has a rock star. How cool it is, then, that he is down to earth, funny, and personable. In a roomful of trivia nerds, social skills stand out, and Jennings excels in this arena. Interestingly, he didn’t dominate every competition. He held his own, but was beaten in some events. I ended up convinced that his knowledge is very strong, but what made him so hard to beat in Jeopardy was his extraordinary touch on the buzzer — he’s just about peerless in this physical aspect of trivia. Well, unless he’s competing against a computer. Jennings’ own account of TCONA is here.

After the panel were the quiz bowl matches. If you’re not familiar with the quiz bowl format, I explain it here. I think it is still my favorite trivia format. It combines individual challenge (in the toss-ups) with team synergy (in the bonuses), and it encourages that zen trivia flow state that I love. This time, unfortunately, the fates were not with my team. The six-person Anti-Social network added a couple of friends and split into two four-person teams. In addition to that, our team took on an extra person, a Las Vegas native who had shown up solo at TCONA and was seeking a team to join with. He was knowledgeable, but a bit eager, and not terribly accustomed to the format, so there was a bit of a breaking-in period there. Unfortunately, once that period was over, we only had a couple of games left. We played five games in a round-robin format, and ended up doing well in the later ones, but it wasn’t enough to advance us to the finals. On the plus side, I got to spend some time with Dave Gatch, who wasn’t participating in TCONA as a player, but who came out to Vegas to serve as a reader for the quiz bowl portion. (Dave and his mom come to Vegas a lot, so apparently it wasn’t a big sacrifice.)

After flaming out in the quiz bowl, that was pretty much it for my trivia day — the only other events that day were playoffs for which I hadn’t qualified. So that meant that my sister and I got to hit the town! We took the monorail to the Bellagio, saw the fountains, gambled a bit. She took me to a fancy dinner at a wonderful restaurant called Olives, where we had so much delicious food. Once again, we wandered around gambling and hanging out. I taught her a bit more about video poker and she taught me a bit more about slots. At the end, we headed back to Bill’s room for a little more pseudo-Jeopardy, then gambled into the night. It was a great, great time, and a great close to a second day of Vegas and trivia.

Day 3 was playoffs and championships, and I wasn’t much involved. I stuck around to watch the quiz bowl finals, but for some inexplicable reason they chose to repeat a set of questions for the semi-finals — not a lot of fun to sit and watch the same questions asked twice. So I bowed out at some point and went to a final buffet lunch with my sister before she caught her plane for home. I still had one more night at the hotel — I had tickets to see The Beatles’ LOVE (Cirque Du Soleil show) at the Mirage that night. I decided after hearing the album that I had to make a pilgrimage to see the show, so there was no question that if I was in Las Vegas, I’d be going.

And I’m so, so glad I did, but that experience deserves a post all its own. For now, let’s revisit those Learned League questions:

  1. Name the three yellow properties in the standard American version of the board game Monopoly. Atlantic Avenue, Ventnor Avenue, Marvin Gardens
  2. This 1942 Aaron Copland ballet tells the story of a young woman, accomplished in all the skills of a cowpoke, who hopes to attract the attentions of the head wrangler on a ranch; commensurate with the pre-feminist tradition of the day, he is unimpressed by her skill but succumbs to her charms when she trades her cowboy duds for a dress and shows a more “womanly” side at the ranch dance. Rodeo (You’ve probably heard its most famous song, Hoe-Down).
  3. Among other things, this film is known for G, A, F, (octave lower) F, C. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (This.)
  4. The holiest city of Zoroastrianism, Rhaga, is today known as Rey, a suburb of what western Asian city? Tehran
  5. What is the mode in this number series? 1,2,2,3,3,4,4,4,5,5,5,5,13,17,17 5 (Mode means the number occurring most often.)
  6. This word can be used generally to apply to any appendix or supplement, but when used as a legal term refers specifically to an amendment to a will. Codicil

I ended up tying my opponent in this match, with a score of 5 points each.

M-m-m-my TCONA! [Day 1]

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On August 7, 2011

In Uncategorized

If you tend to read what I write here, you’ll know that this has been quite a trivia year for me. The most recent highlight is that I played in another pub quiz tournament with the Anti-Social Network (renamed The A-OK’s for this event), i.e. the same team that won The Geek Bowl. And we won again! This time the purse was $1000. It is astonishing, weird, and wonderful to be part of such a high-performing group.

The highlight before that, though, was the Trivia Championships Of North America, or TCONA. This event is poorly named, according to me — it sounds like it’s going to be some kind of culmination of a long season of North American trivia contests, when in fact it’s more of a triviapalooza, a big convention of trivia hobbyists who get together to compete in and/or watch a variety of events. The “championships” of anything else is not something that just anybody can buy a ticket to, show up, and participate in the competition, but TCONA was open to anybody who cared to pay the ($100) admission fee and get themselves to Las Vegas, where the event was held.

Economic times are a little tight in my family right now, so I would not have been one of those people, but for two things. First, organizer Paul Bailey reached out to us Anti-Socialites and offered to waive the admission fee if we’d provide some material for the weekend: a 100-question seeding test for the quiz bowl tournament event. Secondly, also because of the Geek Bowl, I had some winnings set aside, to be used for a special occasion. I decided that TCONA was just such an occasion, and booked my ticket. However, I still tried to cut corners, which is how I found myself getting up at 3:30am on July 8th, preparing for a 6am flight to Las Vegas.

I got myself on the plane without incident (unlike my last airplane adventure), and by 9am I was in Vegas. (This delay brought to me by a layover in Phoenix, another cost-cutting measure.) I’d never actually been to Vegas before. It is a strange, funny place. One of the first things I noticed is that it is totally the land of women-as-things. I mean, every place in America is at least a little bit like that, but Vegas is really like that, in little things like magazines and bus advertisements, and in big things like enormous billboards. Or this — pretty much the first sight that greeted me when I walked into my hotel, the MGM Grand, was an enormous bank of screens, all projecting one massive image: a long line of women, framed against a black background. Then, the women turned around, and revealed the backs of their outfits, completely black from head to toe, blending into the background, all except for their asses, which were left perfectly bare. Picture it — as I walked in the door, my greeting committee consisted of an extensive queue of disembodied asses, hanging in the air and twitching tartly back and forth, with military precision.

Anyway. The hotel staff was very nice about letting me check into a room early so I could get a nap before the trivia festivities began that afternoon, and they also gave me an extra key for my awesome sister Jenny, who was flying out from L.A. later that night to join me for Vegas partying. I headed up to the room for a much-needed nap, and afterwards explored the hotel, so that I could figure out the lay of the land. Trrish gave me some excellent advice about Vegas, which is that everything is much further away than it looks like it’s going to be. That is so, so true of the MGM Grand. I swear I did about 45 minutes of walking each day, just within the hotel! It’s like a huge hotel combined with a huge casino, a huge mall, a huge conference complex, and another huge hotel. Finally, I scoped out where the events would be held, though it was all barricaded because nobody was ready yet. After I snagged some lunch, I returned and got my nametag, program, and cute little swag bag.

Prior to the TCONA kickoff, my Colorado trivia colleague Bill Schantz hosted some mock-Jeopardy games in his room. Bill wrote a cracking J-simulator, and I went on a long Jeopardy-question-writing jag last year, so I was one of people who provided material for this unofficial event. Thus, around 3:30 on that day (more like 3:45 once I’d figured out I was at the wrong room and took the 10-minute hike to the right one) I got to do a very enjoyable trivia warmup, both as a reader and as a player. My “The Onion Rates The 2010 NFL” category was a hit. (Sample question: “After giving up 50 sacks in 2009,” this team‘s “offensive line appears to have forgiven Aaron Rodgers for whatever he did.”)

I did do a little gambling. I’m not a fan of slots — they feel more like just rolling a die than actually playing a game. And I don’t have nearly the skill, interest, or bankroll required to play table games. But I do enjoy video poker, and I’ve had a little practice at it too — Colorado has a few mountain towns in which gambling is legal, and I’ve been there enough times to learn the basic video poker ropes. My mom had given me some casino mad money — thanks Mom! — and I sat down at a poker machine and spent a very enjoyable 90 minutes turning $5 into $50! That was as lucky as I was ever going to get that weekend — turns out I’m much better at turning $10 or $20 into $0, though I have a reasonably good time on the way there.

Finally I sauntered down to the main event room — basically a big conference room with tables and chairs set out — around 5:30. Lots of trivia compadres were there, and it was fun to catch up with them. At 6pm, the first event began: a solo “kickoff quiz.” This was a pen-and-paper test, one of my least favorite trivia formats, at least when I’m not by myself. Also, I found it ridiculously hard. The gimmick was that all the answers consisted of a two-letter abbreviation for a US state, US territory, or Canadian province. Given the “North American” theme of TCONA, this made some sense, though obviously Mexico and Central America were conspicuous by their absence. Mr. Bailey explained that this was because nobody from those countries was attending this time, though he’d love to recruit anybody who’s interested. This quiz was posted for a while, but the links have long since rotted. Closest we can get is a little image snip over on Boing Boing.

After the kickoff quiz was an event called “Smarty Pants,” hosted by Paul Paquet. The deal with this game is that it sets up two opposing teams of four players each. Three members of each team are famous game show winners or trivia “celebrities” in some way. Players in this edition included Ken Jennings, Ed Toutant, Kevin Olmstead, and Bob Harris. All the “civilians” in the room got handed a card with a number on it, and then Paul picked random numbers for people to come and play on the all-star teams. I wasn’t one of those picked, but I had fun watching, and found the questions pretty interesting and clever.

The next event was a “pub quiz mash-up.” Representatives from four different pub quiz companies — Geeks Who Drink, King Trivia, TriviaNYC, and the aforementioned Paquet — brought a couple rounds of trivia each, and took turns quizzing a roomful of teams, 11 in all, with one extra made up of the quizmasters. Moreover, the teams themselves were randomly selected, with an eye toward geographical distribution. Each was captained by some kind of trivia celeb, so as to ensure that no one team marshaled an unreasonable amount of firepower, and they were constructed to ensure that each would have someone from outside the USA, someone from the west coast, someone from Colorado, etc.

The selection process for these teams was painful — rather than having the teams assigned beforehand, they were constructed on the fly, which meant about 45 minutes of tedious “Okay, please come to the front if you came here from California. Hm, only 8. Okay, California, Oregon, or Washington, please come to the front. Can everybody hear me?”, etc. However, once the teams were settled and the questions began, this was one of the most fun events of the weekend. I was on a team captained by Jerome Vered, called “Veredable Smorgasbord.”

Everybody on the team was extremely nice, and nobody was overly uptight about scores and answers, which was great, since nothing kills a good time at trivia like the guy who takes the whole thing too seriously and gets emotional about things going wrong. The questions were a lot of fun too. One group just did category questions, like “There are 11 NFL teams whose helmet graphics include some kind of writing or lettering. Name 10 of them.”, and “There are 10 people who are in the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame both as a solo artist and as a member of a group. Name them.”

My favorite round was presented by Geeks Who Drink, an audio “before and after” round in which two different songs were played blending into each other, and the answer was a blend of the two titles, hinging on the common word. Examples: Tori Amos & The Beatles “Precious Things We Said Today”; Guns ‘n’ Roses & John Mellencamp “November Rain On The Scarecrow”; and Wu-Tang Clan and M.I.A. “C.R.E.A.M.I.A.” Probably this was my favorite round because Adam Villani and I teamed up to kick ass on it, and brought our team back from the doldrums to a solid middle-of-the-pack showing.

Somewhere around the middle of the pub quiz, Jenny (my sister) showed up, and watched from a back table. After it was over, she and I headed out to explore the strangeness of Vegas. We ate a little, gambled a little, and walked a lot. She was looking specifically for a slot game she loves called Invaders From The Planet Moolah, which has a fun cascading reel effect, a bit like Bejeweled. We finally found it at Excalibur, but occupied, so we stalked the person playing until she left. By which I mean, we casually hung around playing neighboring machines, until finally she split, and we pounced on the moolah!

In true Vegas fashion, we suddenly realized it was like 3:00 in the morning, and headed back to go to sleep. Thus ended Day 1 of the Vegas trivia adventure. More to come, but for now, the answers to some lingering questions.

NFL Teams with lettering/writing on their helmets

  1. Baltimore Ravens (a raven’s head with a “B” inscribed)
  2. Chicago Bears (The letter “C”)
  3. Green Bay Packers (A big “G”)
  4. Kansas City Chiefs (A “KC” inside an arrowhead)
  5. Miami Dolphins (The jumping dolphin is wearing a little helmet with the letter “M” on it)
  6. New York Giants (A stylized “NY”)
  7. New York Jets (The word “Jets” with an outline of “NY” in the background)
  8. Oakland Raiders (The word “Raiders” at the top of the shield icon)
  9. Pittsburgh Steelers (The word “Steelers” by the logo)
  10. San Francisco 49ers (The letters “SF”)
  11. Tennessee Titans (A comet bearing a “T”)


People in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame both as a solo artist and as a member of a group (as of 2011)

  1. Jeff Beck [The Yardbirds]
  2. Eric Clapton [The Yardbirds and Cream]
  3. George Harrison [The Beatles]
  4. Michael Jackson [The Jackson 5]
  5. John Lennon [The Beatles]
  6. Curtis Mayfield [The Impressions]
  7. Paul McCartney [The Beatles]
  8. Clyde McPhatter [The Drifters]
  9. Paul Simon [Simon & Garfunkel]
  10. Neil Young [Buffalo Springfield]

Good Questions, part 4

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On May 12, 2011

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Sad to say, I just found out I’ll miss the next Basement Bowl, due to vacation. Drat! On the plus side, I’m scheming to attend the Trivia Championships of North America, a weekend-long trivia explosion scheduled for Las Vegas in July. In any case, it’s time for one more installment of this series. Previous posts have focused more on the philosophical aspects of question construction, but in this one, I’ll get a little more technical — more about the craft than the art, as it were. I think I’m about out of gas after this, so let’s call it the season finale and get rolling.

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Good Questions, part 3

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On April 16, 2011

In Uncategorized

I had another great trivia day last Saturday, this time a “Clubhouse Bowl” — just like a Basement Bowl, except held in a guy’s apartment clubhouse rather than a basement. There were trivia bowl-style games along with a bunch of Jeopardy! games run on a magic Jeopardy! simulator created by one of the gang. There was even “Trivia Battleship” — a wild cross of quiz-bowl questions with the classic strategy game. Correctly answered toss-ups would earn one shot against the other team, while bonuses could earn up to four more shots. Very fun.

Predictably, the whole thing primed me to whip up another episode in this series. Since I am apparently an endless font of opinions about good practices for trivia question-writing, let’s get started:

CROSS THE STREAMS

If you’re a Ghostbuster, crossing the streams is a bad thing. If you’re a trivia question writer, crossing the streams, by which I mean mixing the broad categories to find interesting hybrids, can be a very good thing indeed. There are plenty of sports questions, and plenty of movie questions, but how about sports movie questions? How about athletes who played bit parts in movies? How about movie-related nicknames given by Chris Berman to various athletes? The intersections between trivia categories can be fertile ground for some appealing questions, and can allow people who are normally weak in a category to kick ass in unexpected ways.

A great example of this came up at the recent Clubhouse Bowl. Dave Gatch handed out a sheet of movie stills, and asked us to tell him what song was playing during that point in the movie. Sound tough? Take a look at these examples (not the ones he used) and see if you can’t do exactly that:

1. Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, along with two other actors, from the movie Wayne's World. The four of them are in a car, singing.

2. Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in the movie Ghost. She is sculpting on a potter's wheel, and he is shirtless behind her, guiding her hands.

3. Phoebe Cates in the movie Fast Times At Ridgemont High, about to undo her bikini top.

4. Tom Cruise in the movie Risky Business, singing into a statuette.

Combining two categories (in this case movies and music) opens up new avenues of fun, activates players’ brains in new ways, and gives your game a feeling of greater unity.

STRETCH

I am no good at sports questions. Whenever I hear a sports toss-up begin, my hand relaxes on the buzzer, and I know there is very little chance that I will have anything to contribute. I start looking over at our team’s sports guy (yeah, it’s nearly always a guy) with hope and gratitude. I know the basics, but I just do not follow sports enough to know much beyond that.

Nevertheless, I include sports questions in all my regular (i.e. non-specialized) trivia games. Why? Writing sports questions helps improve me, both as a writer and as a player. Writing questions that are outside my comfort zone forces me to research things I don’t already know, some of which I may even remember later on down the line. This research also turns up unexpected gems of information which are quirky enough both to make a great question and to make the piece of information it concerns memorable enough to stick with me. Like, for example, did you know that Guy LaFleur, all-time leading scorer for the Montreal Canadiens (hockey team), recorded a disco album?

Incidentally, I do the same thing on Sporcle, a great site for trivia quizzes. I like to take Sporcle quizzes in areas where I’m strong, like music, movies, and literature. But I also like to take them in my weaker areas, like geography, history, and sports. Generally, I like to take a new random quiz, and then retake an old quiz. I pick which one to retake by sorting the list of quizzes I’ve taken, and identifying the one with the lowest percentage of right answers. Consequently, I’ve taken the NHL all-time team leaders quiz about 10 times so far, and my best score is 26 out of 120. That’s a huge improvement on my first score, though, which was 8 out of 120. And now I can tell you about a bunch of hockey players I’d never heard of before I started in on that quiz. (Which is how I learned the weird fact above.)

Another way to stretch is to try broadening your knowledge of areas in which you’re already strong. For instance, I love movies, and I know some Oscar trivia, but there is so much more for me to learn, and the Academy Awards are a very common trivia topic. So I write Oscar questions in areas I don’t know well, both to challenge players and to make me a better player and writer. (Just as an aside, if you want to improve as a trivia player, be on the lookout for creative ways to strengthen your knowledge. For instance, Windows 7 has a feature which lets you rotate through a set of images for desktop wallpaper, changing automatically at an interval you select. So I went out and snagged an image of every Best Picture winner, dropped them all into a folder, and have the wallpaper machine circulating among them. Now when I use my computer, I also get a little help remembering which movies have won the Best Picture Oscar.)

SPREAD THE LOVE

Something that makes trivia games great fun is their ability to point you to wonderful corners of culture that you never knew existed. I’ve been introduced to lots of great movies, music, TV, and other stuff via trivia, and I try to do the same for others. It’s great fun to write questions on topics you feel passionate about. At the same time, at least for me, that’s too narrow a field. I’m a white guy who grew up in the 80’s, and I have an endless well of questions I could write about cultural artifacts I got attached to in my time. But while I want my games to be fun for me, I also want them to be fun for people other than me. Consequently, I try to include questions about areas of culture that don’t mean as much to me, sometimes even things I actively dislike. As I sometimes point out, inclusion does not imply endorsement. I suppose this might seem like a restatement of the “stretch” point, but there’s a slightly different intention behind it. I try to spread the love among all different kinds of knowledge not just to make myself a better player, but to remember to include a diverse variety of topics so that my games are fun for a wide variety of people.

Okay, that’s all for now. How about those movie songs?

1. “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen plays during that scene from Wayne’s World.

2. The Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody” is the music behind that scene from Ghost.

3. Any boy who grew up in the 80s (see, I told you that was my wheelhouse) is likely to remember The Cars’ “Moving In Stereo” as the soundtrack to Judge Reinhold’s fantasy sequence about Phoebe Cates in Fast Times At Ridgemont High.

4. Before Tom Cruise was famous for being crazy, he was famous for dancing around to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock & Roll” in Risky Business.

Good Questions, part 2

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On March 17, 2011

In Uncategorized

As promised/threatened, here’s another installment of “Paul’s Random Thoughts About Trivia Questions.” Carrying on with question-writing principles:

BE MORE FUNNY!

In my last post, I spent some time harping on the fact that trivia games are supposed to be fun. Your job as trivia question writer is to provide an enjoyable experience to your players, and humor is a crucial tool for that job. On its most basic level, it can liven up a somewhat bland question, like this bonus from the 2005 TRASH regionals:

Given clues, name the subjects of the following celebrity biographies, all of whom share a favorite hobby, for ten points each.
1. A Paper Life details her adventures with her allegedly abusive actor father, with ex-husband John McEnroe, and with heroin.
2. Don’t Try This At Home, his chronicle of the year he decided to turn his house into a crack den, details his struggles with bandmates, his record label, and heroin.
3. Scar Tissue recounts his life from toddlerhood and his drug dealer dad’s felonious additions to his mashed bananas, through forming a band with best friend Hillel Slovak, to his long standing affairs with Ione Skye, Sinead O’Connor, and sweet, sweet heroin.

This question boils down to, “Name the celebrities based on the titles of their autobiographies and maybe some clues about their connections to other famous people,” which is just fine, but when you tie them together by their heroin addictions, dryly understate that as “all of whom share a favorite hobby”, and hurl a fastball zinger punchline at the end like “long-standing affairs with Ione Skye, Sinead O’Connor, and sweet, sweet heroin,” a run-of-the-mill question turns into one of the best ones in the game. (Though in my opinion the second part needs another clue or two.)

The other thing that the humor in that question does is to tone down a fairly dour topic. There’s a bit in the crosswords documentary Wordplay in which puzzle creator Merl Reagle explains that there are some words that you don’t see in crossword puzzles, even though they might be very useful cruciform words, just because their content is too distasteful. He calls this “the Sunday morning breakfast test”: “They’ve waited all week for this. They’re sitting there relaxing…and here comes RECTAL? I don’t think so.” Trivia games allow a wider latitude, especially when written for an informal event like a Basement Bowl, but still, you don’t want to offend, disgust, or annoy your audience. So when you find that question that you just have to write but whose subject matter is a little questionable, a little humor smooths the way.

Something about being in a Billy Wilder movie frequently makes people want to kill themselves. Fortunately, they rarely succeed. I’ll give you an actor and a suicide method, you tell me the Billy Wilder-directed movie, for five points each, 40 points for all 7:
1. Audrey Hepburn, carbon monoxide poisoning
2. Shirley MacLaine, an overdose of sleeping pills
3. Gloria Swanson, slashed wrists
4. Ray Milland, handgun
5. Marthe Keller, jumping in front of a train
6. Carol Burnett, jumping off a building
7. Jack Lemmon, hanging

That’s a question I wrote for the Basement Bowl a couple of years ago. I’d just come off a Wilder-watching jag and was amazed at the number of suicide attempts in his movies. It was great trivia fodder, except that quizzing about suicide after suicide is kind of heavy. Thus, I lead with a joke to lighten it up.

Perhaps the best reason to joke liberally is to relieve the tension that can sometimes build in trivia competitions. Relaxed players not only have more fun, I think they play better too.

CUDGEL THY BRAINS

Trivia games can and should be more than memory and speed tests. Yes, of course, those two skills (in varying proportions, depending on the format) constitute the backbone of a trivia game, but crucial to the art is creating opportunities to connect recall with thought. One of my favorite recent examples of this was invented (as far as I know) by Bill Schantz:

I’ll give you the year and the first letter of each word in its title, you name the 80’s pop song, for 10 points each:
1. (1983) E.B.Y.T.
2. (1983) O.T.L.T.A.
3. (1984) W.M.U.B.Y.G.G.
4. (1984) O.N.I.B.

You may have awesome recall of 80’s songs, but that by itself won’t get you very far with this question. Instead, you have to use part of your brain to generate plausible strings of words based on a breadcrumb trail of letters, while another part of your brain tries to connect those words to song titles that you know from that era. Even better is when you hear the letters, feel a moment of instantaneous synthesis, and just know what the answer is. Hitting this answer is even more satisfying than the average trivia pull, because of the additional solving effort necessary. Of course, in any kind of timed competition, it’s imperative to balance the time constraints (and attendant pressure) against puzzle elements in your questions. If they require too much thought, they’ll bog the game down.

Puzzle questions like this make regular appearances on Jeopardy!, and that show’s writers are particularly good at coming up with clever new ways to keep contestants on their toes. Generally the twist is in the nature of the category. Some recent examples, courtesy of the J! Archive:

Category: FRUITS AND VEGETABLES
Clue: Riesling, Syrah
[A fairly gentle example, in which the puzzle is to figure out how the category is working. The first clue in any Jeopardy! game is usually easier than its successors, but in a category like this, there’s generally a pointedly clear indicator in that first clue.]

Category: ALPHABET HOMOPHONES
Clue: In Romania they say “da”, in Japan, “hai”, & in Panama, this
[Here’s the flip side — a clue that can be answered on its own, but the category narrows down the set of possible answers. Jeopardy! does this all the time with its “quotation mark” categories, in which some piece of the category is in quotes, meaning that correct answers must start with or contain the quoted string of letters. A clueful category like this, though, is much more fun to discover.]

Category: GOD SPELL
Clue: Vulcan is the Roman equivalent of this Greek fire god (10 letters)
[There’s no puzzle element to this one — Alex makes clear at the beginning that contestants will have to spell their answers. It’s notable, though, because it exercises a different sort of recall than the average trivia question.]

Category: ALPHABETICALLY LAST
Clue: Of presidential surnames
[This is an example of a question in which contestants must recall a set of data and then do some kind of processing on it. And because of the high-pressure nature of Jeopardy!, they must do it very quickly, leading to the sort of intuitive pulls that supply the pleasure of answering this style of question.]

Category: OF ORDER
Clue: U.S. cities, from west to east: Newport News, Milwaukee, New Orleans
[In this one, they provide the set of data, but the answer is still the result of some processing on the part of the contestant.]

This could go on and on, and does, but I trust the point is made. Finding new angles from which to challenge the player is a great way to increase the fun of the game.

SENSES WORKING OVERTIME

Another surefire way to make your game more fun is to write questions that step outside the typical text format and engage some of your players’ senses. This is one of my favorite things to do, and consequently my Basement Bowl games have been littered with visual clues:

Logo design is an art, and sometimes it takes a few tries to get it right. Given the defunct logo, tell me the NFL team it represents for five points each.
Four different old-timey NFL logos. The first shows a football player towering above a stadium, the second shows a football player in front of a football with the image of a bison on it, the third shows a football player standing atop a horse, and the fourth shows a spear with a feather hanging from it.

I find images via Google Image Search, copy and paste them into a Word document, resize as necessary, then print out a couple of copies on the color printer. I hand these out to players before I read the clue. A couple of things I’ve learned: make two copies (since in the Basement Bowl missed bonus answers can transfer over to the other team), and make the pictures large enough that they can be seen in a dimly lit basement.

Then there’s the audio. I’m a huge fan of the audio. For instance, I’ve written a couple of all-audio games of one-hit wonders, another one of mellow gold tunes, and another couple of all female artists. Thanks to the wonders of digital audio and the fabulous Audacity, it’s extremely easy to create mp3 song clips and burn them onto a CD. I bring my nifty mini-boombox to the basement, and play the game as all tossups, no teams. Each person has a buzzer, and they score points by buzzing in first to correctly identify a song, generally both the title and artist.

Sometimes I’ll even go a little more complicated. For instance, with my female artists game, I recognized that for a number of the clips, someone might be able to identify the artist even if they couldn’t name the song. So the rules were that if you buzzed in before the clip ended, you had to identify both the title and artist. Correct answers scored two points, with a bonus point for naming the singer in the case of groups (e.g. if I played The Pretenders you could get a bonus point for naming Chrissie Hynde.) If you buzzed in after the song was over, you could name the artist for one point.

One thing I learned for my second round of this type of game was to end the clip with a distinctive sound, like a ding. The first time, nobody was sure when the clip would be over, so there was some hesitation from people who didn’t want to get penalized for buzzing too early.

I’ve done audio toss-ups in regular games too, and not just music. There’s plenty of great fodder in movie clips, comedians, interviews, and miscellaneous distinctive sounds, such as the sound of Pac-Man dying. And there is further sensory fun to be had. I once wrote a bonus in which I handed out soda-pop flavored Jelly Bellies, and had players identify the soda from each one. I’ve had players get up and dance the Batusi. Another quizmaster had people do 4 different dances from A Charlie Brown Christmas, which I thought was brilliant.

The point is that you can add a lot of variety and excitement to your game by creatively extending your questions into nonverbal (or more-than-verbal) realms. Not only that, these kinds of questions can bring out hidden strengths in your players, allowing them to have more fun by kicking ass in new ways.

That’s enough for tonight. More installments to come. But never fear, I would never sign off without providing the long-awaited answers:

Sweet, sweet heroin:
1. A Paper Life: Tatum O’Neal
2. Don’t Try This At Home: Dave Navarro
3. Scar Tissue: Anthony Kiedis

Wilder suicides:
1. Audrey Hepburn, carbon monoxide poisoning: Sabrina
2. Shirley MacLaine, an overdose of sleeping pills: The Apartment
3. Gloria Swanson, slashed wrists: Sunset Boulevard
4. Ray Milland, handgun: The Lost Weekend
5. Marthe Keller, jumping in front of a train: Fedora
6. Carol Burnette, jumping off a building: The Front Page
7. Jack Lemmon, hanging: Buddy Buddy

80’s initial songs:
1. (1983) E.B.Y.T.: “Every Breath You Take” by The Police
2. (1983) O.T.L.T.A.: “One Thing Leads To Another” by The Fixx
3. (1984) W.M.U.B.Y.G.G. “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” by Wham!
4. (1984) O.N.I.B. “One Night In Bangkok” by Murray Head

Jeopardy!:
Category: FRUITS AND VEGETABLES
Clue: Riesling, Syrah
Question: What are grapes?

Category: ALPHABET HOMOPHONES
Clue: In Romania they say “da”, in Japan, “hai”, & in Panama, this
Question: What is “si”? (Homophone with “C”)

Category: GOD SPELL
Clue: Vulcan is the Roman equivalent of this Greek fire god (10 letters)
Question: What is H-E-P-H-A-E-S-T-U-S?

Category: ALPHABETICALLY LAST
Clue: Of presidential surnames
Question: What is Wilson?

Category: OF ORDER
Clue: U.S. cities, from west to east: Newport News, Milwaukee, New Orleans
Question: What is New Orleans, Milwaukee, Newport News?

Olde-tyme NFL logos:
1. New York Giants
2. Buffalo Bills
3. Denver Broncos
4. Washington Redskins

Oh, and finally: Each heading in this edition is a cultural reference.
“Be more funny!” is a classic Simpsons gag.
“Cudgel thy brains” is from Hamlet by William Shakespeare
“Senses Working Overtime” is a song by XTC.

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