Why No Scream Tracks?

Thinking about traditional style sitcoms, I often wondered--where did the "laugh track" come from? At what point did someone watching a television sit com say to themselves "how will I know where the funny parts are if I don't hear others laughing? Oh, television, please guide me!"

I get that live shows would feature laughter from the audience, and perhaps someone at some point decided the audience wasn't laughing enough so maybe they needed to add something. I read somewhere that the actual canned laughter that we hear even today was all part of an original recording from sixty years ago, so who knows what they were laughing at (probably Victor Borge, or some Marx Brothers routine). What is interesting is how it persisted, long after sitcoms were taped. Somehow, though, the use of canned laughter never crossed over into comedy films--when's the last time you heard laughter in a movie theater that was part of the recording?

And why has this not caught on to other genres besides sitcoms? Couldn't we have scary TV shows with piped in screams and gasps from the audience? Couldn't we have clever mysteries (like "Murder, She Wrote") add in some "aha!" from a recording? Couldn't we have pre-recorded groans inserted in CSI: Miami every time David Caruso makes a painfully bad pun?

The Nanny--A Blast From the Past

I've started watching the '90s sitcom "The Nanny" on DVD lately, much to the pain and chagrin of the lady who shares the apartment with me and has to hear Fran Drescher's high pitched whine. The show, for those of you uncultured in the ways of Drescherdom, features a woman named Fran Fine who lost her fiancee and her job at a bridal shop in Queens and happened into a job as a nanny for three privileged children of a wealthy Manhattan widower. Fran, in case you couldn't tell from all the Yiddishisms, is Jewish, and she and her mother are able to embody every stereotype that the ADL spent decades trying to fight. However, we're led to believe she's a kind person--as traditional sitcom protagonists generally are--and most of the "humor" on this show is derived from the "fish out of water" situations involving a tacky, ethnic woman from Queens rolling in stuffy Manhattan high society. (The widower, who Fran appears attracted to in the first season--and will likely consummate this attraction by the end of the series--is a British producer of plays, very repressed, and just the sort of opposite who would be attracted to Ms. Fine. Oh the hijinks that can ensue!)

Watching this show can be a pleasure in that it reminds you that only two decades ago--the show premiered in 1993, when a charlatan named Bill Clinton was just starting his first term--sitcoms were generally a lot more formulaic than they are now. Shows used multiple camera format (compared to single camera, as The Office and Arrested Development use), laugh tracks were used, protagonists were generally good people, and plots were generally self contained in the weekly episode. Today, a show like the Nanny would be a bit of an anachronism.

What Makes a Feminist?

The rise of Sarah Palin and the "Mama Grizzlies" has raised a lot of heartache among those on the left as to whether these conservative women can call themselves a form of "feminist". More precisely, the heartache is about whether certain political viewpoints about women's issues can be labelled feminist or anti-feminist, and which these might be. This led to a debate among the online magazine Slate's female writers.

To begin with, it should come as no surprise to anyone who has heard me opine on the subject that Sarah Palin and her satirical shadow, Christine O'Donnell, are morons with a number of vile beliefs that lead me to think they might be leftist plants sent into the world to make conservatives look awful. (And shame on the conservatives who actually embraced these dolts) And I agree with the first Slate writer's argument that Palin is more a product of feminism than a pioneer--she doesn't seem to be pushing any "feminist" goal except the idea that a woman can soar in the GOP, and frankly there are far better examples than Palin (to name one--Condoleeza Rice).

But first, to use my definition of "feminist"--the notion of gender equality rather than female subservience--what political stances would make someone "feminist"? A lot on the left think this is best accomplished through legislation or court action, but what about a libertarian notion that free markets and private activity will do more for female empowerment than any government action? Even if you disagree with it, does that make such a view "unfeminist"? (After all, if libertarians reject the idea of government action to solve any other social ill, isn't it more consistent for them to assert the same for feminist causes?) So what is it that is particularly unfeminist about a "conservative" feminist agenda--unless it in fact argues in favor of female subservience?

Needless to say, Nora Ephron's short quote managed to pack a lot of stupidity in few words--that one cannot be a feminist if one does not support a right to abortion. That's the sort of narrow minded issue-snobbery I've come to expect from Hollywood. Regardless of your opinion on abortion, if you can't accept that just maybe there are pro-lifers who are guided by beliefs OTHER than the hope that they can make things needlessly difficult for women who find themselves pregnant, then maybe you need to open your narrow mind for a while.

It would seem to me that if you favor equality, you're an egalitarian regardless of the means you favor to achieve that--and there's plenty of room for argument about the proper means. Is that not the same standard for defining a feminist? Or should any person be able to take a broad ideal and define anyone sharing that ideal by whether they agree with your preferred means? Because then perhaps "patriotism" could only be defined by adherence to certain practices. And we know how that turns out.

How To Deal With Workplace Orders

Next time someone asks you to do something, just say "hey, who died and made you Napoleon?" It's a good way to challenge their authority, unless of course they reply with "you know very well that I was promoted to manager when the original manager died" in which case you'll just feel awkward. Also, the reference to Napoleon will only make them more unbearable if they're French.

You could also give the old tried and true "hey, Genghis Khan, how about doing your pillaging and looting elsewhere?" but if there's any chance that they were in a big city during the 1960s they may have also suffered at the hands of looters and then you'll have to deal with a lecture about sensitivity. Even worse if they owned a Mongolian bakery in that was burned and robbed during one of those riots--then you're offending on two levels.

There's also the more rare "hey, Stalin, don't you have a five year plan to work on?" but then it could well be that your business division has an actual five year plan to boost sales and increase profit margins, and Lord help you if your taskmaster has a thick mustache and slicked back hair.

Whatever you do, don't say "Captain Ahab, if this is how you run the boat, you can let me off!" if you happen to know that the boss lost some loved ones in a whaling accident. I wouldn't even try it if they have a relative who played on the Hartford Whalers. It hits far too close to home.

Come to think of it, you're better off with the one thing that won't offend anyone--"who died and rose from the dead three days later and made you Christ?"

Snoop Dogg Would Call Her a "Wiaatch".

Now, I'm no professional pundit, but something tells me that when a major party nominee for the U.S. Senate has to put out an ad where she insists that she is not a witch, we have finally hit a new low in this country. I wish I were making this up. Christine "Derp Derp" O'Donnell, the Republican nominee for one of Delaware's Senate seats, has to actually pay good money to produce an air a TV ad where she has to clarify that she is not a witch.

This is unfortunate for her campaign, because for every dollar and minute spent making clear that O'Donnell is not a witch, that is a dollar and minute not spent telling the good people of Delaware (state motto--we make quality beer and you'll love our tollbooths) that she is not completely stupid. I don't know much about her opponent Chris Coons, but I do know that he could run head first into a tree and still be considered the intellectual in this campaign.

I also think this "I'm not a witch" thing is an ill-advised move. O'Donnell has no prayer of winning this race--why not pull a Palin and just set herself up for a lucrative celebrity career after this is over? (I hear she has financial trouble--wouldn't a multi-million dollar per year take as a TV celebrity and being paid to go to dance club openings be better than a U.S. Senate job?) Instead of "I am not a witch" she could do a series of ads saying "I was not a witch between 1985 and 1993", or "Booo!" or "Whether or not I'm a witch has nothing to do with my qualifications. But I still refuse to work during a full moon. No more questions!" She could even do the ad in a pointy hat to get attention.

Oh, Glorious Future

There's something about having your cell phone out of comission that makes you feel absolutely helpless. In this case, it was my iPhone, and even just having it down for a day was traumatic. How do you call anyone? What if you get lost and need your map? What if you have to check Facebook to see what your friend had for breakfast since she posts that every day and amazingly gets 18 comments and at least ten "likes"?

But the interesting thing about this sense of helplessness is that it wasn't all that long ago that I had no cell phone at all (let alone one that sends texts, takes photos, and can figure out what song is playing on the stereo at the bar) and never felt a big emptyness in my life. Somehow, without a cell phone, I was able to actually arrange airport pickups and meet friends out for dinner. Somehow, I was able to find where I was going with just printed directions. Oh, how dependency has weakened me!

But rather than focus on the technology-dependent blob that I have become, I instead will think about what new essential device will come about in the next decade that will make me stop and wonder how back in 2010 I was able to get by without it. Some newfangled scooter? An electronic food tester? A hangover cure?

Tipping Questions

Tipping. We all do it, because for that one moment at the end of a restaurant meal we get to feel generous and nice--saying "I'm paying you, even though I don't have to." Some restaurants have tried to go the way of Europe, paying waiters more and eliminating tipping, but this meets an outcry here from customers who like to have SOME discretion over rewarding their servers and servers who know that if they're good they can make much more through tips than a higher salary. But this raises a number of issues:

1) Tipping is traditionally based on the cost of the meal rather than the difficulty in bringing it to the table. A plate heaped with a burger and fries is just as hard to carry as a plate of caviar stuffed in a Faberge egg, yet the waiter's tip is going to be much higher on the latter. A $2 soda will fetch a much lower tip than a $10 Manhattan, even though the soda is likely to be sent back for refills. Is this really fair to the waiter with the lower cost items?

2) Tipping as a percentage also doesn't work when you're dealing with smaller amounts. 20% sounds great when a meal is $100, but what if some diner patron only orders coffee and a bagel, and the bill comes to about $5? It makes more sense to give extra (and most patrons will), to justify the trip to the table.

3) Also, the tip as a percentage misses another factor. Picture two tables being served, each ordering $100 worth of food, each leaving the customary $20 tip (I keep the math easy). Table One stays for an hour, Table Two stays two hours (let's say they're old friends who haven't seen each other in years). It's expected that the people at the longer duration table will tip better, and when it's an uncommonly long time (say, three hours or more) they usually will leave extra tip since the waiter can turn over fewer tables in that case. But within normal wait periods, the tip will usually be about the same. It seems the tip should reflect some function of the amount of time the table is occupied. (Of course, if the long wait is due to the waiter or kitchen, there's no reason the tip should be higher)

4) Some guests will undertip, because they think 10% is a good tip and that's the way it was in 1951 so of course that's the way it should be. And some Europeans will pretend they don't know any better, even though they so do know better and are just being cheap. But the random nature of this reward system hardly seems fair. Especially since the reward comes after the services are rendered, so it cannot affect the behavior of the waiter in the current instance.

5) Tipping in groups can really suck when you have undertippers in there. Sure, you can throw in extra, but you have to either pretend you're not good at math ("I think I owe an extra five bucks, even though I put in $20 for my fifteen dollar meal") or you have to all out tell the diner their being a cheapskate.

6) As a reward system, the tipping only covers one aspect of the dining experience. Reducing a tip in no way punishes the chef for serving a lousy meal, or the host(ess) for seating you next to the bathroom, or the manager for not throwing out that family with screaming kids.

So is there a better solution? Probably not, or some innovation would have been invented by now. In the meantime, if you can't afford a decent tip, stay in and save your money (those restaurant menu prices don't reflect sales tax and the extra fifth of its cost for tip), and try to consider the effort the server is going through beyond the price of the meal.