2011 Misfortune Cookie #1

Never refuse an offer you can’t refuse.

Wishes for 2011

Below, we make our wishlist for 2011.

1. The European Court of Human Rights deems the showing of James Cameron’s Avatar as the human rights violation that it is. The needless stealing of nearly three hours of a person’s life for a terrible (and terribly acted) film that rests completely upon plot rip-offs and visual knock-offs from George Lucas’  Star Wars movies (old and new) is an affront to human dignity.

2.  John Ashcroft releases a concept album based upon The Turner Diaries as interpreted by John Waters, produced by Cee-Lo, and featuring The Oak Ridge Boys on backing vocals with orchestrations by The Chemical Brothers.

3. 40 is the new black.

4. My investment in the prophylactic industry finally pays off. I sank money in that sector because I figured with this many people getting screwed these days, condom usage would have to go up.

5. Sarah Palin is kidnapped by Michael Steele and forced by Clarence Thomas to dress as Piglet and record a solo, a Capella version of Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill” at an undisclosed point on the US/Mexican border, while illegal immigrants stream into the country around her yelling “I can see your daughter from my house!”

6. The word “macaroni” is replaced by the word “mooloo”, which is infinitely more-pleasurable and easy to say.

7. Comcast is bought in  a hostile takeover by a zillionaire, drug-trafficking Uzbeki warlord who shows only local programming such as “Samyaki’s goat-head-deboning-for-assholes”.

8. The South secedes and Obama lets them go gladly, with only a wave and a “Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out of the Union..”

Give Roy A Chance!

One of the best guitarists, banjoists, and multi-instrumentalists who has ever lived, Roy Clark has unfortunately never achieved the same A-list name-check status with the rock / indie crowd as have other country artists such as the late, great Chet Atkins. That’s unfortunate. We submit the following video  as evidence of Clark’s under-appreciated virtuosity and unused potential for cross-over. Note Clark’s (seemingly) effortless, flawless, and speedy precision picking. His playing foreshadowed the cross-over playing of pickers such as Steve Ferguson, Al Anderson, Steve Morse, Rik Emmett, and other monsters of the fretboard. Take a listen. All we are saying is “Give Roy a Chance!”

Santa Claus Is Coming to Town

Each year, millions watch and re-watch the classic Rankin Bass stop-motion holiday specials. As much as they are beloved here at BFK, we were starting to get bored. So, this year, we decided to start watching them like a coach would review game video after a loss. We begin our considerations with Santa Claus Is Coming to Town (1970).

1. Why does Jessica never end up in jail? It is clearly tacit that Mayor Burgermeister MeisterBurger is willing to incarcerate children, including girls. So why are female adults not jailed? Jessica was clearly complicit in Kris Kringle’s crimes.

2. Should we really feel sorry for Kris Kringle? The issue raises the age-old philosophical question about whether knowingly breaking an unjust law is just behavior. Kringle definitely knowingly broke the law. Were his actions just?

3. How is it that when Jessica heads from town to warn Kris that Mayor Burgermeister MeisterBurger has set a trap, she never runs into him? They were traveling in opposing directions at the same time and given the capture of the Kringle clan by Sombertown’s security forces, there is apparently only one route.

4. Why should we believe Sombertown has jurisdiction over the forest of the Winter Warlock?

5. Winter, jailed, tells Jessica that he has no magic left with which to dissolve prison bars. He then gives Jessica, seemingly at her request, magic feed corn which can “only make reindeer fly” fly. Soon after, we see a moon-shot (did Spielberg watch this while making E.T.?) of Winter and company flying away from Sombertown on the backs of reindeer. But let’s rewind back to the original problem, and that was getting out of jail. How did they get out of jail?? Did the answer fall to the cutting room floor, or is this just faulty storytelling invading our epic? Rankin-Bass has a habit of this (e.g., the dolly Sue in Rudolph, who was seemingly normal per the special, but of whom Arthur Rankin, Jr. later said suffered from depression because of abandonment).

6. Were Kris and the Kringles (not a bad band name) vegetarians? Or, did they eat those friendly little animals that were occasional helpers, decorators, and wedding guests? Maybe they just ate the bad animals as a form of law and order? Or, did they just ghoulishly feast upon the carcasses of already-dead animals?

“Ho, Ho, Ho” ?

We at BFK like to keep abreast of the newest fashions, and think “Ho, Ho, Ho” pretty much says it all, here.

What the Dickens?

This post is about the meaning of a  curious expression in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” but let me digress for a moment so that we may arrive at that issue in orderly fashion.

Because I describe myself as “spiritual, not religious” I get asked from time to time whether my love of Christmas is somewhat hypocritical. My response usually has two elements. First, I tell them that, as much as I love “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, Linus’ monologue about “what Christmas is all about” gets it completely wrong. I recommend they read one of my favorite books, Stephen Nissenbaum’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated “The Battle for Christmas“. I’m no good at summarizing things I love, so here’s the Publisher’s Weekly summary:

Christmas in America hasn’t always been the benevolent, family-centered holiday we idealize. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony so feared the day’s association with pagan winter solstice revels, replete with public drunkenness, licentiousness and violence, that they banned Christmas celebrations. In this ever-surprising work, Nissenbaum, a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, conducts a vivid historical tour of the holiday’s social evolution. Nissenbaum maintains that not until the 1820s in New York City, among the mercantile Episcopalian Knickerbockers, was Christmas as we know it celebrated. Before Washington Irving and Clement Clarke Moore (“A Visit from St. Nicholas”) popularized the genteel version, he explains, the holiday was more of a raucous festival and included demands for tribute from the wealthy by roaming bands of lower-class extortionists. Peppering his insights with analysis of period literature, art and journalism, Nissenbaum constructs his theory. Taming Christmas, he contends, was a way to contain the chaos of social dislocation in a developing consumer-capitalist culture. Later, under the influence of Unitarian writers, the Christmas season became a living object lesson in familial stability and charity, centering on the ideals of bourgeois childhood. From colonial New England, through 18th- and 19th-century New York’s and Philadelphia’s urban Yuletide contributions, to Christmas traditions in the antebellum South, Nissenbaum’s excursion is fascinating, and will startle even those who thought they knew all there was to know about Christmas.

The second element of my reply is that I celebrate a “Dickensian Christmas”. This may be false, factually in toto, but it sounds good and it means to me what I need it to mean. And what I mean by it is that I celebrate a Christmas where one meditates upon one’s relations with family, friends, and, especially, society at large. It is a time to think about how one’s own actions and life have broader societal implications. Maybe I should say that I celebrate a “Capra-esque” Christmas, as what I describe is part of George Bailey’s spiritual resurrection in “It’s A Wonderful Life”. But I think “Dickensian” fits me better because it is at Christmas that I think of my impact on the broader world beyond relations and my immediate locality; “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!” said Marley to Scrooge.

That’s what Christmas is REALLY all about, Charlie Brown.

Sp, to the point of our present posting. In “A Christmas Carol” the rejuvenated Scrooge throws open his shutters and eventually asks a small boy to go buy a prized turkey and the boy responds “Walk-er!” Essentially, while puzzled most of my life by this expression, I have been, until of late, remiss in seeking an explanation of what it means. A few days a go I did, and here’s what I found at Michael Quinion’s excellent website Word Wide Words:

According to Quinion, “[The boy] might instead have said something like, ‘Are you pulling my leg, Guvner?’ In standard English, he was incredulous, seriously in doubt that Scrooge actually wanted him to go and buy that turkey. That’s why Scrooge had to reply, ‘No, no, I am in earnest.'”

It was shorthand for a full expression, which was “Hookey Walker” — an “exclamation of disbelief”.  According to Quinion, “Charles MacKay wrote about Hookey Walker in his Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions in 1841: In the course of time the latter word alone became the favourite, and was uttered with a peculiar drawl upon the first syllable, and a sharp turn upon the last. If a lively servant girl was importuned for a kiss by a fellow she did not care about, she cocked her little nose, and cried “Walker!” If a dustman asked his friend for the loan of a shilling, and his friend was either unable or unwilling to accommodate him, the probable answer he would receive was “Walker!” ”

There are several stories about where it came from. MacKay says it “derived from the chorus of a popular ballad”. Another guess, downplayed by Quinion, comes from the 1894 edition of the “Dictionary of Phrase and Fable“, where Dr E Cobham Brewer, a pseudonym of John Badcock, said: “John Walker was an outdoor clerk at Longman, Clementi, and Co.’s, Cheapside, and was noted for his eagle nose, which gained him the nickname of Old Hookey. Walker’s office was to keep the workmen to their work, or report them to the principals. Of course it was the interest of the employés to throw discredit on Walker’s reports, and the poor old man was so badgered and ridiculed that the firm found it politic to abolish the office, but Hookey Walker still means a tale not to be trusted.”

Regardless of its etymology, finally getting some clarity on the meaning of this expression is a gift this year for yours truly.

Sweater Party

So. Once again, your intrepid editor who works so hard to bring the important world to your PC screen was invited to exactly ZERO bad-sweater parties this Christmas. Thus, I’ll have my own damn sweater party but, unlike some, I’ll be big about it and invite all of you along.

Well..c’mon if you’re coming!

What do you mean you don’t know what to wear? Sigh. Really? OK, I’ll help, as usual.

Below are four sweaters I’ve picked out for you, depending on your type. Choose one.



This sweater is for (a) fans of John Waters, or (b) Madeleine Albright.

This sweater is for southerners or hunters (a redundancy?) who (a) have run out of space on their walls for dead creatures, or (b) love dead creatures so much they need a portable one like Linus needs his security blanket.

This sweater is for (a) fans of the movie Alien (you folks also might also like Rudolph, above, come to think of it), 0r (b) those who use cars instead of guns to go hunting.

This sweater is for (a) stalkers, or (b) shy exhibitionists.

Wanted: Third Wheel for New Axis of Evil

Hi. No, we’re not looking for that kind of wheel. This is not the Axis of Evil Knievel. Just a new Axis of Evil. Just evil. No Knievel. No matter how cool those wind-up motorcycle toys were. And they were VERY.

Wheel #1: BFK is going to buck the conventional progressive winds and believe that Julian Assange is essentially a terrorist. While transparency has no greater friend than yours presently, we do realize and accept the fact that politics sometimes requires closed doors. People focus on the bad things that can happen behind closed doors. However, good things also happen in private that cannot take place in public. This is why psychologists do not hold sessions in shopping mall food courts. Well, that and they, as a breed, have a well-known obsession with Sbarro pizza. What BFK would call the foundational ABCs of diplomacy can happen in private exactly because it is private: accommodation, bargaining, and compromise. Human ego is frail, and this plays out in interstate relations, a process that must accommodate human imperfection. WikiLeaks destroyed this foundation, crippling the ability of states to work with one another. It is the case that states don’t work well with one another to begin with, so in what manner is it better to cripple what little process exists? Further, those intent on full, complete disclosure of all activity at all times, everywhere, rest their logic on a foundation of rationality in human endeavor. Humans are not rational, as a race. Perfect information does not exist, even if fully disclosed, because of greed, which established lies. As long as there are lies, there will be no perfect information. What Assange has done is to carry out some schoolboy dream of shaming states, particularly the USA. If he were purely interested in disclosure for a pure sake of transparency, he’d not have a “doomsday release” up his sleeve. He’d have released everything right away. His motive is schoolboy retribution, or the desire of a hacker (who didn’t even hack anything in this case) to show strength because of inherent weakness.

Wheel #2: The National Rifle Association (NRA). This is a no-brainer, but check out the very cool interactive map of the NRA’s role in the 2010 midterms in today’s Washington Post. It’s accompanied by a very interesting article detailing how the NRA systematically frustrates law-enforcement efforts, nationwide — particularly those of the ATF.

Wheel #3:  Ideas?

It was 30 years ago today…

It was 30 years ago today…

…and it still hurts like hell.

Santa Cross

In the sorely under-appreciated film “The Ref”, Kevin Spacey delivers what is perhaps the greatest movie line ever:  “You know what I’m going to get you next Christmas, Mom? A big wooden cross, so that every time you feel unappreciated for your sacrifices, you can climb on up and nail yourself to it.”  Genius.

We feel a great deal of regret, however, in reporting to you that there will be no Christmas this year, as Santa Claus, feeling overcome with a lack of appreciation, nailed himself to a cross in Washington state, USA, and died shortly thereafter. In a BFK exclusive, we bring you the photograph above, taken right before the old fellow was cut down and bagged. Sad.