As a rule it’s safe to say that popular culture tends to celebrate mediocrity. Consider the iTunes Top Songs list frequently hosting such pre-fabricated products like Britney Spears, whose music, if it were a food, would be Pixie Sticks, and whose talents, which we assume do exist, do not include singing. Expecting to find something truly remarkable in a list of best sellers can be like checking a stopped clock for the time.
Of course even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and the Broadway musical Wicked, having grossed $1.2 billion so far, is both popular and remarkable. The plot is a meaningful and clever adaptation of a story we’re familiar with, the writing is witty and well-timed, and the music is at times genius. The traveling cast playing to sold out crowds in Salt Lake’s Capitol Theater is nearly as impressive as the cast we saw last summer in Los Angeles. The woman playing Elpheba in particular has that amazing ability to make the incredible seem effortless, and her counterpart Glinda made us laugh with timing you’d expect from SNL funny woman Amy Poehler.
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I am fascinated by certain aspects of the way our minds work. Here’s a fun experiment from On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not by Robert Burton:
Read the following excerpt at normal speed. Don’t skim, give up halfway through , or skip to the explanation. Because this experience can’t be duplicated once you know the explanation, take a moment to ask yourself how you feel about the paragraph. After reading the clarifying word, reread the paragraph. As you do so, please pay close attention to the shifts in your mental state and your feeling about the paragraph.
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I was standing near the tee box at Wasatch Mountain State Park when Rusty Anderson hit the drive of his life. We were all impressed for a moment, but our congratulations caught in our throat as we realized the ball had enough on it to reach the group on the fairway ahead of us. By the time we realized the ball’s intentions it seemed futile to warn anybody, and our half-hearted “fooooore!” came just as the ball took a menacing bounce and hit John Peterson squarely in the shoulder.
It can sometimes be hard to track a golf ball, but it’s remarkably easy to tell when it hits somebody—especially when that somebody is sitting next to Terry Crowther. He would later apologize for his language and for throwing the offending ball into the woods, but I learned two things about Terry that morning. First, he had a temper like my own, and second, he wasn’t afraid to go to bat for his friends.
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In response to Pascal Vows not to Gamble, which was a reply to Pascal goes to Vegas
By now I’m sure Merritt has already guessed what my response is likely to contain; we’ve shared enough conversations across a ping pong table or hiking through trees and desert that I doubt my ability to surprise him with a response. But who knows who else might read along?
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Blaise Pascal was a French philosopher who famously wrote that believing in God is “safer” than being an atheist. Pascal’s Wager, as it is called, asserts that believers have everything to gain if they’re right and nothing to lose if they’re wrong, whereas non-believers have nothing to gain if they’re right and everything to lose if God does exist.
Ignoring the common criticisms of this plan, (which deity should we bet on? Christ? Allah? Vishnu? Odin?) I think there is a more compelling way to frame the idea that would make Pascal turn in his grave.
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If you haven't caught on by now, I'm not really paying much attention to this blog and don't plan to revive it. I am using Twitter these days, though, a far more brief and easily updated method, so if you know me and would like to keep up you can always follow me over there. (Of course, my Twitter feed is private, so don't be surprised when you have to ask me first.)
twitter.com/pmalan
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(As I wrote earlier, I think the book Schott’s Original Miscellany is a great idea – random knowledge compiled in list form is surprisingly fun to read. I thought it’d be fun to add a category of blog entries filed under “miscellany” that would take a similar format as the book, though more wordy and stuff about me, because it is, after all, my blog.)
It is true that I am known for my musical snobbery, but every now and again I am forced to suspend my hatred for popular music and admit that a certain band or song is worthwhile. In this first-ever miscellany post, here’s a short list of music I really like even though I heard it first on the radio:
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Two years ago Wendy and I took a 105-mile bike ride together. By the time we finished Wendy had sworn to never ride such a distance again—a sensible promise, but one that I predicted she wouldn’t keep. Last summer Wendy was pregnant with our beautiful blue-eyed baby so I rode the ULCER alone, but this summer she re-enlisted and the two of us rode the now 111-mile route side by side.
Riding 111 miles might sound hard, and for most people it is, but I had ridden the ULCER five times before, the weather was only in the low 90’s, and though I’m not in top cycling shape this summer I thought it wouldn’t be too bad. But the jerseys did say “Sufferfest,” a curious pronouncement that made me question the mental capacity of all 1,800 riders with me on the roadways. Very few people actually enjoy physical pain, so why were there so many of us there volunteering, even paying, to suffer?
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I am Paul Malan. I take pictures. I write. I read. I ride my bike. I married Wendy a decade ago and count myself lucky that she seems to like putting up with me. We have 4.5 kids.
