Heck Of A Guy

Behold the remaining detritus from the same closet that produced yesterday’s Pish-Posh Pastiche Post

1. Classic Animations
You young’uns may not know this, but in the days before YouTube and its congeners, those of us roaming the net had to make do with simpler amusements. For example,

A. Viking Kittens: These animated kittens, dressed in Viking garb, perform to Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song.

Of course.

B. HampsterDance:¹ If you had an email address in the period between 1998 and 2000, someone sent you the link to HampsterDance.

I’m sorry.

In his analysis of the phenomenon, David Cassel calls HampsterDance “The most promiscuous meme on the Net.” His essay, Hamsterdance Fever, describes, among other things, how Roger Miller’s Whistle Stop was transformed by the Cuban Boys, then Disney-ized into the background for the opening credits of Robin Hood, and finally ended up as music for 392 images of happily dancing hamsters, and is well worth reading.

Why read it? Well, you might want to keep in mind George Santayana’s warning that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

C. Dancing Baby :
The Dancing Baby was born in 1997 as an animation demo to Hooked on a Feeling by Blue Swede. You may recall this gyrating urchin had a few guest appearances as a hallucination on Ally McBeal.

D. I Will Survive Alien Song: My favorite, this animation, set to Gloria Gaynor’s song I Will Survive,² was created by Victor Navone as a self-appointed exercise in learning animation.

In any case, I still find it enjoyable. Heck, I’m still surprised every time I see the ending.

2. Move: I ran across this - - hmmm, what would one call it? … this pretty darn clever thingie. I like it even though it’s not lewd. See what you think.

3. Banished Words: For the past two or three decades, Lake Superior State University³ has shouldered the burden of issuing a public declaration of a List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness.

The tragedy is that some words have made the list repeatedly. A couple of examples from the 2006 list are instructive:

Community Of Learners – A five-dollar phrase on a nickel-errand. Value-added into many higher education mission statements. “Not to be confused with ‘school.’”

An Accident That Didn’t Have To Happen – Best-laid mayhem. “This means some accidents need to happen, for whatever reason, I can’t figure.”

4. The BookAMinute site: I don’t know about you, but my buddies and I all seem to have too much to do and too little time to do it. One solution is to cut down on the time taken by unnecessary reading.

The point of the site is implicit in its name — the site condenses books of all kinds (I saw Science Fiction/Fantasy, Bedtime, and Classics groups) into a script-like format that can be read in – yep, you guessed it - a minute or less.

For example, I had never understood Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I think the site’s condensation actually helps, especially compared to the efforts of certain of my English teachers.

Heart of Darkness
By Joseph Conrad
Ultra-Condensed by Samuel Stoddard and David J. Parker

Mr. Marlow: I’m the good side of mankind, upstanding and respectable.
Mr. Kurtz: I’m the bad side of mankind, once honorable, now mired in depravity.
The Jungle: I’m the heart of mankind, home to sinister darkness and corruption.
(Mr. Kurtz dies. Mr. Marlow is reborn.)

THE END

5. Santa Imposter Proposes, Newspaper Discloses: I include this newspaper story from 2001 because it combines in one tidy package my fascinations with mall Santa surrogates, the trend of odd wedding proposals, and the weirdness that is McHenry County. Because the newspaper account of this epic saga has, inexplicably, not been archived on the net, the link is to a copy of the story I made for myself (which explains the poor quality). I’ve posted this because - [dramatic pause] - this is a story that must be told.

And, this is, as you will note in the headline of the newspaper article, the story of “a Huntley man.” Now, the males comprising the population of Huntley, a neighboring burg, which is best known, at least around here, as the place that is sometimes confused with (also nearby) Harvard, Illinois, may be, for all I know, universally recognized as zany romantics – or perhaps this guy is the exception to a town full of somber ascetics. Clearly, however, the fact that he is from Huntley has some fundamental significance; if not, why would that information be in the headline? Would it still be a story worthy of publication in a journal of record if, for example, the protagonist hailed from Joplin, Missouri or San Antonio, Texas or New York or Barcelona?

In any case, the story is that this guy from Huntley posed as a mall Santa to ambush his girlfriend with a marriage proposal. That, of course, happens every day; it’s the details that make this a worthwhile read.

I’m most taken with the preparation required to pull off these hilarious high jinks:⁴

• Huntley Guy enlisted various co-conspirators
• He procured a Santa suit and disguised himself as a mall Santa
• He purchased and wore contacts to change his eye color
• He somehow got rid of the real mall Santa.⁵

And, my cynical hunch is that it was not a miracle on East Main Street⁶ that the press happened onto this story; I suspect, with no proof whatsoever other than my embittered perspective on and opinion of the hearts of men, that an item on Mattel’s Proposing Santa’s to-do list was “Alert the press.”

And that doesn’t include the time and effort I surmise may have been necessary for him to learn the spelling and pronunciation of not only his own name (Ciesielczyk) but also those of his now-fiancé’s friend (various written as Aram-bura and Arambura) and the manager of the Santa photography concession (Passalacqua). By comparison, the moniker of bride-to-be is the relatively straightforward Prymek; of course, she may well be losing her last name as the result of the upcoming nuptials.

I am also intrigued by the anatomical dexterity described in the paragraph, “Passalacqua asked Prymek to sit on Santa’s lap. Before she knew it, Santa was on bended knee.” If one assumes Ms Prymek was a good sport (I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that St. Charles women – and certainly all women who accept proposals from those wacky guys from Huntley – are known for being good sports) and plopped herself onto Santa’s lap, wouldn’t the pseudo-Santa’s immediate transition to a kneeling position unceremoniously dump Ms Prymek to the floor?

And there is this dark aspect – how was it that Ms Prymek was, to use the news story’s ominous phrasing, “lured to the mall by Arambura and her three-month old daughter?”

Finally, why was there all this to-do accomplished at this point when the wedding is set for fall 2003? What kind of stunt is Mr. Ciesielczyk planning for that occasion that requires almost two years of preparation — the wedding march played by 600 naked bagpipers? — the ceremony itself being held on a platform suspended over an active volcano? The mind reels.

6. Pop Test: This nasty little exam was drifting around the net around 2001. Unfortunately, I do not know whom to credit - or blame.

OK. Pay close attention. Here is a very simple little test comprised of four
easy questions to determine the level of your intellect. See if you have
what it takes to be considered “smart.”

Your replies must be spontaneous and immediate, with no deliberating or
wasting of time. And no cheating!

On your mark, get set, go…

1: You are competing in a race and overtake the runner in second place. In
which position are you now?

Answer: If you answered that you’re now in first, you’re wrong! You overtook
the second runner and took his place, therefore you are now in second place.
For the next question try not to be so dim.

2: If you overtake the last runner, what position are you now in?

Answer: If you answered second to last, you are wrong once again. Think
about it… How can you overtake the person who is last? If you’re behind
them, they can’t be last. You would have been last. It would appear that
thinking is not one of your strong points.

Anyway, here’s another question to try. Don’t take any notes or use a
calculator, and remember, your replies must be instantaneous.

3: Take 1000. Add 40. Add another 1000. Add 30. 1000 again. Plus 20. Plus
1000. and plus 10. What is the total?

Answer: 5000? Wrong again! The correct answer is 4100. Try again with good
calculator. Today is clearly not your day, although you should manage to get
the last question right…

4: Marie’s father has five daughters:
1. Chacha
2. Cheche
3. Chichi
4. Chocho
5. ????
Question: What is the fifth daughter’s name? Think quickly…you’ll find the
answer below….

Answer: Chuchu? WRONG! It’s obviously Marie! Read the question properly.

You are clearly the weakest link.

Back To The Future

This concludes this episode of hard drive archeology. We should be returning to 2006 directly. Please remain seated until the blog has come to a complete stop.

Enjoy your holiday weekend.

Credit Due Department
Photo (at top of post) by Kucharo at Flickr

Footnotes

1. ”HampsterDance” is the correct spelling of “HampsterDance.” Only the prissy, net-naive self-correct to the bourgeois affectation of “HamsterDance.” ↩
2. The song was used without permission; happily, Ms Gaynor was pleased by the animation and even provides downloads of it from her own web site↩
3. Lake Superior State University’s other claim to fame is its role as Michigan’s smallest public university↩
4. “High jinks” doesn’t quite fit since it is a plural noun and the Huntley episode is actually a single incident, but one apparently cannot have a “high jink” without hypothesizing an abrupt turn taken, say, atop Mount Everest, in hopes of evading a pursuer although a plain old everyday “jink” can occasionally be found↩
5. While I certainly have no evidence of foul play, anyone who has watched a few episodes of Colombo or 24 must suspect that the wedding proposal was only an elaborate ruse by person or persons unknown to cover the actual objective of the operation, the abduction of the real Santa. That the reporter cavalierly accepted the testimony of one of the co-conspirators that “[The real] St. Nick went home early because he did not feel well” can only mean that, obviously, the reporter was in on the caper. Did the allegedly ill Santa show up for work the next day? Is he now locked away in a cell in Guantanamo? Did he show up but look somehow different – as though he were replaced by an android? By the time we find out the real story, it may be too late.↩
6. The proposal, you see, took place at the Charlestowne Mall, the address of which is 3810 East Main. The allusion is thus to the 1947 Christmas classic, Miracle on 34th Street, the title of which is extracted from the address of Macy’s in New York, where the Santa in that film was employed. In the UK, in fact, the movie is known as The Big Heart . Of course, the fact that I feel the need to include an explanatory footnote this lengthy and this convoluted indicates that this was, from the start, an inanely chosen, counterproductive allusion, but now that I have invested this much time and effort constructing the original figure of speech and composing this elucidative annotation, I’m not going to resort to using sound editorial practice as a cowardly rationalization to excise this disordered linguistic device and its metastases, a rhetorical complex that has, it seems, taken on a life of its own and may soon overwhelm not only this post, but this blog as well, placing the North American Blogosphere in jeopardy. Should those defenses fall, the internet itself would be at risk. My god. I’ve created a monster. Run! Run! Save yourselves. I’ll stay here and fight to the last semicolon and ellipsis to try to hold off this catastrophe. Tell Mom I loved her. Now go.↩