Infinite MonkeysWell, something's changed. I don't know what's happened, but I seem to have passed some boundary. It certainly wasn't intentional. The first thing happened Friday when one of Dennis Prager's callers asked him about the theme music for the weekly Happiness Hour segment. Both the caller and I would have sworn it was The Ventures. And we would have been wrong. Sure the tune is peppy and a bit more saccharin than most Ventures stuff, but not all of their tracks are wave-cutting burners. I love the song. Behind its melodic surfy guitar one hears a background of hipster-lounge percussion and an organ reminiscent of something Feathers McGraw's radio might have churned out in The Wrong Trousers. Hearing its first few opening measures (which I got used to over summer break) can be a day-making highlight for me. As if that weren't dorky enough, it turns out the song is called Apples and Bananas, and it's by one Mr. Lawrence Welk!
I still haven't quite come to terms with this discovery. My wife and I fell in love over Nat King Cole and many assorted "standards" that were from before our time, but I'd always kept Lawrence Welk relegated to a campy corner of ironic Polka. (Speaking of Polka, Matthew Hoy pointed out that "Weird Al" Yankovic lost his parents in a house fire last week.)
A snip of the song can be heard here. It appears to be from somewhere near the middle or end of the tune, which loses a good bit of the strong guitar melody, and displays much more of the signature Welk sound than the opening bars reveal. Hearing this sample, one can probably only think, "well, duh - of course it's Lawrence Welk." I can't find a clip of the beginning. You'll have to trust me. Or think me more a nerd than I may really be. Big woop. That's a risk that I'm clearly not daunted by. Read on.
The second thing happened late last night. After a horrible fit of channel flipping, something caught my eye: women in 19th century get-ups... practicing archery. Hmm. Flip some more channels. Nothing on. Back to Ladies' Archery. For a minute it was like Howard's End meets Samurai Jack. But then I notice that the dialogue's really pretty clever; the old man seems like the sort of pleasant odd coot that I'd like to grow into one day... The dialogue keeps me for another scene, and from an exterior to an interior. Then the hooks are in. I'm caught. My wife joins me and declines the offer of free reign over the remote. Soon she's hooked too.
After a while we realized that we were watching PBS. But soon we discovered that to see the conclusion of the story that we were following closely, we'd have to tune in for the next episode... of [cue music] Masterpiece Theater [yes, you should have read that in a halting pretentious accent]. We looked at one another with genuine surprise. I mean, we had watched Monsterpeice Theater, hosted by Alistair Cookie before, but never the original. When we mentioned it to some friends this afternoon, they just exclaimed, "You're old." I don't exactly know why. I don't feel old for reading classics. I guess I just classify Masterpiece Theater with tapioca and Louis Rukeyser; they're for old people.
I should note that having explored the MT website, I'm impressed with the idea of having access to essays and commentary on the original books and their adaptations. I doubt I'll change my opinion of tapioca, but I think I may be dropping my prejudice against Masterpiece Theater. In a perfect world we would have this kind of support material for many more programs and DVD's.
The show we were watching turned out to be Daniel Deronda (click for a glimpse of the archery), an adaption of a novel by George Eliot (a "George" of the George Sand variety - her real name was Mary Ann Evans). In deciding whether or not to go out of my way to catch the story's resolution, I checked out the author's bio. Funny how so many things come back to doctrine. [Huh?]
Well, her bio mentioned that Evans renounced the Evangelical Protestant faith in which she was raised. I thought that interesting, since it also mentions that she first came to be published by translating works on Christianity. The bio describes one, David Friedrich Strauss's Das Leben Jesu, ["The Life of Jesus Critically Examined," 1846], as simply "one of the most influential books on religious thought in England at the time." I'd say that's an understatement. Now, without getting into the issue of Election, I think it's worth noting that Evans's falling away from the faith was accompanied by her work on books that could only be described as hallmarks of Higher Criticism -- the 19th century equivalent (progenitors?) of today's Jesus Seminar folks.
Will this affect my decision to seek out or pass on the conclusion of Daniel Deronda? Probably not, but it will be in my mind as I watch how the author portrays the Christians in the story. This may come into play, as the plot involves issues of how Jews were received in English society at the time.
Okay, that's all. It's been a long time since I've had a sugar high like the one I allowed myself today. Hope you all had a blessed and fondly memorable Easter, or "Resurrection Day."
Posted by Brad at April 11, 2004 11:20 PM | TrackBack