Mascots

   I would like to congratulate Duke for winning the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship.  Unfortunately, as I didn't go to Duke (or pay to send a relative there,) I am not part of the .001 percent of Americans who can actually say nice things about their school and mean it.
   And besides - their mascot is pretty creepy.  As a matter of fact, Brutus, the nut-headed mascot of Ohio State (current NCAA football champs,) isn't exactly normal looking either.

   And I won't even show you Scrotie, the mascot of the Rhode Island School of Design.  (That would require a parent advisory.)
   But even those mascots that pass muster with the FCC (who now regulate the internet in case you missed that,) there are quite a few out there that leave me wondering - What were they thinking?
   Even if you get past all the stupid racist stuff like the professional baseball team in Cleveland and the professional football team in Washington DC, there's a lot of weird out there.
   Speaking of racist crap - I have to give a thumbs up to the largely Native-American University of Northern Colorado in Greeley for naming their team, The Fighting Whites.

   Unfortunately, no Caucasian has stepped forward to serve as their mascot.
   But back to mascots.  I enjoy the trend of adopting botanical mascots.  Nothing is more threatening than athletically inclined foliage.

 There's the Wichita State Shockers who played very fine basketball this year when they didn't mistake the ball for a pumpkin.

The Delta State Fighting Okra.  They might not be undefeated, but they are undigested.

The Scottsdale Community College Fighting Artichokes.  It's a good choice.  I've never figured out how to eat these things.

Then there's the Stanford Cardinals who eschew an avian mascot for a tree.  Stanford just doesn't do predictable.

   Animal mascots have always been popular.  What could be strange or creepy about the representation of earth's fauna?

I think I stepped on a classics-reading banana slug just the other day.

They say this mascot looks a lot like a horned frog (lizard.)  It's one of several reasons I don't live in Texas.

   Then there are the human mascots.  What's creepy about a human?

A Demon Deacon...  right in the middle of the bible belt?  Okay, that's creepy.

Why am I worried that if Purdue Pete bends over we're going to see a polystyrene butt crack?

What is it about the Vandy Commodore that makes me want to warn small children away?

On the other hand, Whittier's Johnny Poet is reassuring - in a "the'll never win another game," kind of way.

   Finally, we have the imaginary creatures.

Kansas City art teacher and illustrator Florence Pretz had the Billiken appear to her in a dream back in 1908.  University of Saint Louis has brought the little fella to the tournament several times since, but some dreams don't come true.  They haven't won it all since 1948.

Williams College boasts the Purple Cow.  I don't think they're really trying.

But the champion mascot (in my opinion,) belongs to The New College of Florida (will they still keep that name a hundred years from now?)  They have a mascot of supremely low expectations.

The Empty Set

I have no idea what this vid is supposed to be about - but it fits the theme.

I Got Nothing.... But Cats

 

 As they teach us in the International Academy of blogging, there will always be times of inspirational breakdown.  This is the only reason cats exist.  Otherwise they are useless beasts.
   When you do your cat post, there are two ways to cheat.
   One is to post gifs that have been photo-shopped.

   The other is to post gifs where humans are making the cat do something he/she would never do on their own

   This is considered both cheating, and bad form.  On their own, cats will do funny things - assuming there are sufficient humans available who have nothing better to do than take pictures of cats.

    Props are acceptable

   As is the inclusion of other beasts

Even other cats

   I'm pretty sure this next one was cheating - but who can know?

   Finally, adding children is encouraged

   So now you know how to post a blog post with little or no creativity on your part.  Try it on your own now.  You not only contribute to the mental stagnation of Western culture, you also justify the existence of these otherwise worthless creatures.

I think they meant this vid to be cute and educational.  For me, it has the feel of a Hitchcock flick.

Creepy Stuff part 2: Secret Societies

This is the second in my series of things that creep me out. If you want to see the first post, Diane Keaton, you’ll find it here .

I went to YouTube and found lots of video on Secret Societies. Most of them were conspiracy videos warning me how Masons were working with Satan, Hitler, and the militant wing of the Captain Commando fan club. That’s why I chose this one (warning – brief nudity.)

What is allegiance, after all? When no one could give me an exact definition in Jr. High, I stopped saying the pledge. The Vice Principal was ready to lower the boom, but after a while he just shrugged his shoulders. “You don’t have to recite the pledge,” he told me, “but I’m confiscating your chess set until the end of the school year.” And so, he added another mystery to my life – the connection between chess sets and civil disobedience.

“You’ll understand when you’re older,” my sister, who was two years older, told me whenever I asked. She’d been saying that for three or four years by then. I smelled a rat.

To this day (and I’m considerably older now,) I don’t understand, pledges, oaths, vows, promises, or pinky shakes. Why would a sane person ever decide to make him/herself less free? Presumably when I turned 18, Uncle Sam could have drafted me into the army, had he had such non-avuncular intentions. Should I have spent twelve years pledging something I didn’t understand, just to make it seem more justified?

Secret societies are for oath enthusiasts. Such organizations lost their charm for me shortly after I realized that a “No Girls Club” might not be such a great idea.

My aversion wasn’t due to lack of exposure. My father was a Mason. I think he was a Grand Mason which left me wondering why our piano was upright. My Mother is Eastern Star, though I still have no idea what that is. I never saw her twinkling off to any celestial meetings. My sisters were each Rainbow Girls, which meant that they got to wear wedding dresses and sashay around in elaborate meetings, and had secret Gideon-bible-looking books that they left around the house.

“Don’t look in that book!” sister #2 warned me.

Of course I looked in the stupid book.

But I wasn’t really curious what it said. I just picked it up when I heard her coming into the room and pretended to read it.

“You can’t be reading that!”

“Then why’d you leave it sitting around?”

If you’ve never been a little brother, you might not understand. It was my duty, my oath-free purpose in life (until I figured out something that makes money – still waiting on that,) to bug my older sister. Rainbow was an organization that made her easier to bug, and that’s about all I saw in it.

“Don’t you want to join Demolay?”

“Why?”

“You learn secrets.”

“If the secrets are all that great, why do you have to keep ‘em secret?”

It was sort of like my allegiance question, except nobody took my chess set.

The silly hats I get, but oaths, secrets, increased vulnerability to little brothers – why does anyone do this? Secret societies creep me out – almost as much as the people who make conspiracy videos about them.

Creepy Things Part 1 – Diane Keaton

 

When Bo Derek did the dinner scene with Richard Harris in the gratuitously unnecessary 19 version of Tarzan, they collaborated on one of most unintentionally funny scenes in the history of film. Unfortunately the irony, and Richard Harris’ evident torture has been lost on UTube – can’t find it anywhere.

If you could see it, you would see the gears in Bo’s little brain going, “I’m in a scene with Richard Harris, and I’m acting REAL GOOD!”

I’m sure she was pleased until she heard the audience members laughing - at least those that weren’t yelling, “Take it off!” from the balcony.

But that was Bo Derek, a woman whose only possibility of getting near an Oscar was linked to her apparent willingness to have sex with anyone (including Cheeta as we saw in the last reel,) that might have one. (An Oscar, that is.)

So who can explain to me, Diane Keaton? When I see Diane Keaton in a movie (which I avoid when I can,) I see Bo Derek without the um… Dereks. It’s not a personal dislike. I don’t know Diane Keaton. If Diane Keaton was the local manager of the Safeway, or a clerk at the DMV, I might think she was a fine person – at least as fine as anyone can be with the emotional range of a cantaloupe.

Matt Groening exposed the fraud of Steve Guttenberg in this fantastic segment of The Simpsons  effectively ending our decade of Guttenmovies. Why has no one done this service with the woman with three expressions – fake exasperation

 fake surprise

 and face smile?

One person who is grateful for Ms. Keaton is Al Pacino. Pacino played Micael Corleone to Keaton’s 'Kay, the woman pretending to be an actress, pretending to be a mobster's wife,' in all three Godfather movies. Pacino established himself as one of filmdom’s greatest actors for his ability to make a credible interactive scene without an actress present. Keaton’s flaylings were too distracting, even for Pacino. The scenes we see in the first two films were shot on early green screen. In the super-secret original reels, a very young Pauly Shore read Kay’s lines. Pacino made him look brilliant.

Francis Ford Coppola decided to double-down in Godfather 3. “If one talentless actress works so well, two will be twice as good!” he confided to an associate as he terminated the contract with Winona Ryder to play Mary Corleone. Sophia Coppola did her level best to reach Keaton’s level of futility, but the movie fell apart when the weather department of L.A.’s KTLA channel 5 reclaimed their greenscreen mid-shoot for a special on sun cancer among dolphins. Talia Shire, who gave her career’s greatest performance in G3, is adamant that she does not wish a slow death to Keaton, her niece Sophia, or KTLA.

Keaton won an Oscar for Annie Hall, and was nominated for two others – and not in the category of most ingenuous movie prop – but best actress! Am I on another planet? This is creeping me out.