Bored Tuba Player Cracks "Bottle of Beer" Barrier

WEST FORKTON, Idaho--Fueled by Red Bull and crushing boredom, 13-year-old Cody Wickmiller unwittingly resolved one of music theories greatest mysteries, when he successfully completed "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" and discovered what happens when "one" bottle of beer on the wall is "taken down and passed around." The answer, gratifying to some, frustrating to others, is that there are "no" bottles of beer on the wall.

Wickmiller, a tuba player with West Forkton Middle School's marching band ("The Halftones"), says he had not intended to make music history. The Halftomes were returning from a state fair in Pocatello. About halfway through the 4-hour bus ride, Wickmiller and his best friend, trombonist Ned "Slide" Parkman, burst into the time-honored time waster. Several other band members joined in at approximately the "94 bottles" mark. "The kids was having a rollicky time through about 85 bottles," reported bus driver Terry Monk, "but then they started to fade."

"When Cody and Ned were still going strong at 52 bottles of beer, I started to think that maybe something special was happening," said bandleader Thomas "Mr. Williams" Williams. "I mean, I know science had told us that the one-bottle barrier would never be broken, but scientists also thought we would never find a vaccine for diphtheria. So there you go."

Despite the encouragement of his best friend, Parkman finally gave in to exhaustion at 22 bottles of beer. "I thought about quitting, too," Wickmiller said. "But Ned just gave me this look, like, 'You've got this, Dude. You've got this!' So I kept on going."

To put the achievement in perspective, consider that, according to the American Musicology Foundation, fully 63% of all those who begin "99 Bottles" quit before the 80-bottle mark. Of those who continue--fighting through the rhythmic challenges of the 77th bottle--another 25% quit before reaching 50. Prior to Cody Wickmiller's triumph, the closest anyone had ever come to the one-bottle mark was 8 bottles, a joint Chinese-American project undertaken by Yuen-Wan ("Belinda") Lee and Tammy Jefferson of Fats Domino Elementary School just outside of New Orleans. Observers speculate that the pair could have gone further if Belinda's mother hadn't come to pick the 4th grader up for ballet class.

Prof. Anne Shreffler, Chair of Harvard's Music Department, expressed shock at the news of Wickmiller's achievement. "Harvard's '99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall' Project has been going on since 1962. We have spent over $17 million and lost 3 associate professors to diphtheria during the course of the project. For this little punk to come along and casually crack the code is just. . . . infuriating."

Wickmiller's achievement vindicates the "Noneists"--those who had speculated that, in the words of their manifesto Empty Walls (1987), "Beyond the last bottle lies nothingness, an existential blank. Once that last bottle is passed around or--God forbid!--happens to fall and waste alcohol, the song ends. The world, we hope, goes on." At the same time, the "Resumptivist" School, which claims that the onus on the singer is nothing less than to begin the song again, has suffered a major setback. Paul Reubens, better known as Pee Wee Herman, the de facto spokesman for the Resumptivists, was unavailable for comment.

When asked about his plans, Wickmiller replied that he wanted to take some time off. He will collaborate on a film treatment of his story. (Rumor has Steve Carell, Johnny Depp, and Wesley Snipes expressing interest in playing the role of Cody.) When asked about plans for future musical projects, Wickmiller brashly suggested that he might next tackle "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt."

"I'm pretty sure I can find an ending."

(Image from digitalmediafree.com)

Med School for Dummies

Along with (because of?) the familiar phenomenon of grade inflation has come the related phenomenon of qualification inflation. To wit, jobs that once required nothing more than a high-school diploma now often call for college degrees, and jobs that called for bachelor's degrees now more and more often require applicants to have graduate degrees. Our two master's degrees barely enabled us to land a spot here at blogger.com!

In general, we disapprove of this trend. Frankly, most jobs--even white-collar office jobs--do not require the advanced academic training theoretically conferred by a college diploma. At the same time, the fact that nearly all jobs worth holding require some postsecondary education diminishes the whole college experience: No longer is college a place to explore interests and broaden one's mind; instead, it is a factory of pure pragmatism, where any field of study that does not lead obviously to a specific career path invites patronizing smiles and questions of, "But what are you going to do with a degree in that?"

One field, however, for which we think colleges do and should provide a clear path of practical instruction is medicine. Call us snobbish, but when we go to a doctor, we want to know--or at least be able to maintain the illusion--that the man or woman we are talking to was the cream of the academic crop. Thus, we felt uneasy when reading "Getting Into Med School Without Hard Sciences." It seems the prestigious Mt. Sinai medical school offers a program called "Humanities and Medicine," wherein select students can enroll in medical school without having taken the MCATs or organic chemistry or physics in college.

Now, in fairness, the program's graduates seem to perform as well as those doctors who undergo more conventional training. Not surprisingly, many of these students focus on specialties like psychiatry or primary care, as opposed to those fields more commonly associated with "alpha-med-school students" like surgery. And we can agree that it's not that important that a psychiatrist or pediatrician have a strong background in physics.

What bothers us is not so much that some doctors may not have studied physics or o-chem--or taken a standardized (if challenging) test like the MCAT; we certainly don't plan to quiz our primary care physician about light refraction. At the same time, though, we derive comfort in knowing (or, as mentioned above, believing) that our doctor has the intellectual wherewithal to answer such questions should they arise.

Independence (A Short Play)

"In the general scheme of life, parents are the ones who keep tabs on the children. But now, a raft of new technology is making it possible for adult children to monitor to a stunningly precise degree the daily movements and habits of their aging parents.
The purpose is to provide enough supervision to make it possible for elderly people to stay in their homes rather than move to an assisted-living facility or nursing home — a goal almost universally embraced as both emotionally and financially desirable. With that in mind, a vast spectrum of companies, from giants like General Electric to start-ups like iReminder of Westfield, N.J., which has developed a system to notify families if loved ones haven’t taken their medicine, are looking for a piece of the market of families with an aging relative."

--"Technologies Help Adult Children Monitor Aging Parents"

[A New York apartment. 7:12 a.m. A woman, Mother of Solipsist, is sleeping. A phone rings.]

MOTHER OF SOLIPSIST (Answering phone, waking up, groggy): . . . 'lo?

SOLIPSIST (On phone): MOM! MOM! Are you OK?

MOS: What? Yes, why. . .what's wrong?

SOL: IT'S 7:12!!!!

MOS: OK. . . So?

SOL: So you're always up by seven! Seven-o-five at the latest! What's wrong?

MOS: I decided to sleep a little late! Is that OK?

SOL: Ohhhh. . . Heh . . . OK, sorry. . . .So. . . How's things?

(MOS hangs up.)

(Empty bedroom. A few hours later. Phone rings. No one answers. An answering machine picks up.)

SOL (Yelling on answering machine): MOM!!!!! MOM!!!! You've been in the bathroom for seventeen minutes! We know you're not in the shower because the update from the water company has shown NO activity during this entire time. We're calling the fire department!

(A few hours later. MOS is sitting on a sofa, eating a sandwich. The phone rings.)

MOS (answering phone): (Sigh) Hello?!?

SOL: Didn't your doctor say to cut back on fat?

MOS: What?!?

SOL: Uh. . . Hel-lo! Mayonaisse?!?

MOS: It's low-fat!

SOL: Don't lie to us! We got the receipt from Waldbaum's. . . .And what are you doing with all those yams?

MOS: I picked up some yams for the couple next door. They invited me over for dinner. . .

SOL: Oh. Well, OK. . . . Uh. . . So, what time will you be heading over there? Don't forget to set your collar for "roaming" so that we-- (MOS hangs up.) Uh. . . We think we might have gotten cut off. . . .So. . .uh. . . we'll just call back later. OK, bye.

(Later that afternoon. MOS sits on the couch, reading. The phone rings.)

MOS (snatching up phone): WHAT?!?

SOL: Don't "What?" us! You haven't taken your pill!

MOS: I took my pill!

SOL: Did not! Did not! LIES! LIES AND OBFUSCATIONS!

MOS: I TOOK MY PILL!!!

SOL: Look! We are looking at our "Pill Monitor" right now! You are supposed to take your pill at 3:30. It is 3:58, and our alarm has NOT gone off!

MOS: I TOOK MY FUCKING PILL!

SOL: YOU DID NOT! YOU DI-- Oh,. . . .Oh, never mind. We forgot to set the alarm. . . Our bad!

MOS: AND STOP REFERRING TO YOURSELF AS "WE"!!! IT'S SCHIZOPHRENIC AND CREEPY!!! (Hangs up)

(Later. Phone rings. MOS answers.)

MOS: Yes. Yes, I know. . . .I was a little late feeding the cat. I had to take a phone call from the fire department. They wanted to know why a fire engine had been dispatched to "rescue" me from my bathroom earlier this morning. I had to explain that my psychotic son panicked because he didn't know I had eaten a chili omelet for breakfast! Look, I know in the history of the world no mother has ever said this to her son: STOP CALLING SO OFTEN! (Hangs up.)

(A house in Florida. Living room. A phone rings. Answering machine picks up.)

SOL (On answering machine): Dad? DAD!!!! You forgot to shut off the coffee maker. . . . DAAAAAAD!!!

Spoils of Charity

With all the talk in Washington about restricting bankers' pay, we suppose it was only a matter of time before legislators turned their attention to the real egregious violators of common decency, non-profit managers! (Hmmm. . . "non-profit"? Sounds like a commie plot to me! [a-HOOG, hawk, spit!])

In principle, we agree that non-profit organizations should expend the bulk of their revenues on programs and services consistent with their mission statements, and that exorbitant paydays for chief executives at these organizations are unseemly. When one looks at the straw men set up by lawmakers to argue against these "exorbitant paydays," though, one's bile-meter creeps upward.

Consider that the whipping boy (or girl) for those who would rein in egregious violations of NPOs' fiduciary responsibilities is Ms. Roxanne Spilett, chief executiveof the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, who received total compensation of nearly $1 million in 2008 (about half of which was retirement and other benefits). "'A nearly $1 million salary and benefit package for a nonprofit executive is not only questionable on its face but also raises questions about how the organization manages its finances in other areas,' said Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma."

Sure, a million-dollar salary sounds huge--OK, it is huge--but let's put it in perspective, as Senator Coburn suggests. One of the major responsibilities--if not the main responsibility--of a non-profit manager is to ensure that the organization is able to maintain operations. It is thus reasonable to measure a manager's success based at least partly on the revenue he or she helps generate. According to the Boys and Girls Clubs annual report, the organization took in revenue of over $127 million in 2008. Thus, Ms. Spillett's total compensation comes to about 0.8% of revenue--or 0.4% if we look only at her salary.

To put this in perspective, in 2007 Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, received a salary equal to about 0.6% of that firm's net revenues. Granted, this is net revenue, while the figure we quoted for Ms. Spillett is a percentage of total revenue. At the same time, though, since a non-profit organization is not supposed to maximize net revenue (another word for which is "profit"), we think the comparison is apt. Furthermore, it shows that Spillett's compensation is well within the range of what may be considered appropriate compensation for a manager of a large organization. (OK, her total compensation may be slightly higher as a percentage of revenues than a Wall Street Master of the Universe; in fairness, though, she probably didn't play as big a role in demolishing the global economy as Blankfein, either.)

One more thing: When Roxanne Spillett heard she was being singled out by Congress, here was her response:

In an interview, Ms. Spillett, joined by Mr. Goings, choked up when she was asked what had happened the day the senators first raised the issue of her compensation. “I can’t talk about it,” she whispered, tears in her eyes.

She said the day had been the worst she could remember. “I have worked in the organization for 32 years, and I’ve never been motivated by a dime, not for a single minute,” she said.

She said she had contacted board members and demanded that they stop putting money into her supplemental retirement plan, which gave the impression that she took home more than she actually did. “I said, “Forget it, take it away,’ ” Ms. Spillett said. “I cannot watch our movement get hurt by this. I don’t want it to hurt our ability to help kids.”

Mr. Goings said the board had reluctantly agreed. “We felt that would be sending a signal to these guys that we did something wrong — and we didn’t,” he said, referring to the senators. “We really pushed back, but Roxanne pushed harder.”

It's funny. We don't remember too many tears in the eyes of Blankfein and his ilk.

(Image of Roxanne Spillett from Boys and Girls Club of America)

More Musings (A Brief Post)

"Edible gardens are the fastest-growing trend at botanical gardens, consistently increasing attendance. . . ." ("Botanical Gardens Look for New Lures").

Considering that we live in an era where family budgets--particularly for entertainment--are stretched thin, and numerous attractions compete for scant dollars, we think botanical gardens nationwide have stumbled onto a clever gimmick here. Flowers may be boring, even when compared to such relatively uninteresting destinations as art museums, but, let's face it, you can't eat a Matisse.

Just Call Us Blogfinger

During the 2008 presidential campaign and for some time thereafter, Sarah "Buttercup" Palin found herself embroiled in "Troopergate." She was investigated for improperly firing an Alaskan government official after the official refused to fire her former brother-in-law, an Alaskan state trooper. The details of the case don't interest us here. We simply wish to point out that, even without knowing the intricacies of the case under discussion, most readers would know that the subject matter was scandal. Why? Because of the suffix "-gate," of course.

Now, most (if not all) of our reasonably well-educated readership knows from whence this suffix comes. If questioned by a member of the younger generation--or by someone unversed in late 20th-century American history (Sarah Palin, perhaps)--any Sloppist would explain that it plays on the Watergate scandal that scuttled the presidency of Richard Nixon. But if pressed further as to why this scandal was referred to as a "gate" of water, the educated reader would explain that, no, it had nothing to do with water, but, rather that the Watergate Hotel was the site of the scandal's nefarious goings on.

But "gate"--with its connotations of restriction, blockage, hindrance--just sounds so good as a suffix, who can blame political pundits and journalists for adopting and adapting it to subsequent scandals? Iran-Contragate, Whitewatergate, Lewinskygate (and/or Interngate), Travelgate (depressing that so many of these are Clintonian, but what can you do). By the time we get to Troopergate, and whatever the next "gate" will be, we can skip the mental calisthenics to decode the meaning because we've adopted the suffix into our working vocabulary.

Which brings us to another suffix on the edge of acceptance: "finger."

A "finger" denotes a person who attempts to corner the market on a product, probably through underhanded means. As most Sloppists no-doubt know, the etymology comes from the James Bond movie "Goldfinger" (1964), whose eponymous villain, Auric Goldfinger, sought to rob Fort Knox. Yesterday's Times contained an article about cocoa mogul Anthony Ward, who has acquired the nickname "Chocolatefinger" in response to his attempts to corner the market in the world's favorite dessert ingredient.

We know that "finger" has not yet gained universal suffixial currency due to the fact that the Times saw fit to explain the nickname: "The British news media has christened Mr. Ward 'Chocolate Finger,' a nod to the [James] Bond villain Auric Goldfinger." Perhaps this is due to the relative scarcity of moguls with the inclination and resources to try to control a worldwide commodity. We could imagine Rupert "Knuckles" Murdoch being dubbed "Newsfinger"; perhaps Google or Microsoft could come to be known as "Webfinger." Still, we will watch with interest to see if one day "finger" will join "gate" in the gallery of pop-culture affixes.

(Image from imdb.com)

TV or Not TV

(NOTE: We planned to call this "TV or DVD," but that didn't sound as good.)

Tonight, the much-anticipated fourth season of "Mad Men" gets underway on AMC. We enjoy "Mad Men," and we have seen every episode of seasons 1-3. We have, however, never watched "Mad Men" on AMC.

Like many people (we imagine), we have watched "Mad Men" (along with other current hit shows like "Breaking Bad" and "Dexter") on DVD. And, as with those other shows, we have now caught up with "Mad Men." That is to say, we have watched all the previous programs and, should we so choose, we could tune in to tonight's season premiere fully aware of "the story so far" and intimately familiar with all the characters. So we now wrestle with the question: Do we want to hop on board and travel with season four as its journey unwinds?

We think not.

We realize we may subject ourselves to spoilers when our Facebook community starts blabbing about the latest scandals to rock the world of Don Draper and his crew. But we weigh that risk against the near-certainty of feeling impatient when having to wait a week between episodes and the existential certainty of commercials. We realize that it is the commercial avoiding tendencies of folks like us who have all-but eliminated high-quality programming on network television, and we feel bad about that. Just not bad enough to sit through the words from our sponsors.

(PS: If you haven't watched "Mad Men," it's worth a look.)