How Not to Write an Operetta: Being an Indictment Against Neil Gaiman's Cousin

Preamble: I had planned my next entry to be about living in the FUTURE and my many GRIEVANCES owing to the fact that I do not yet have a flying car nor a silver space suit. Yet, friends, I found something even more magical and possibly hilarious to discuss with you today.
Rarely does one have to consider if spending no money to attend a concert is a sound investment. Provided that the musicians at least give it a good college try, one really cannot walk away from the situation saying they had been slighted in any real way. If the performance be miserable, what has the person lost but a few hours time and learned a valuable lesson: don't see that awful ensemble ever again. Needless to say, dear reader, myself and sundry compatriots learned a VALUABLE LESSON on January 17 of the FUTURISTIC YEAR OF 2010!
January 2010. Everyone has welcomed the New Year - I by screaming Auld Lang Syne from the rooftop of one of the less - ahem - friendly neighborhoods of Brooklyn. A few days later, Empress Maria (TITLE BESTOWED BY ME ON THE GOOD FAITH OF NATURE AND OF NATURE'S GOD) and I received an email from our dear friend Sonja telling us that the Knickerbocker Orchestra was hosting a night of free music, the highlight of which would be Neil Gaiman, the celebrated author of a few of my favorite books including Coraline, narrating Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. Maria harbors no pretensions about her love for this piece, and immediately booked us to attend. I was more excited to see Neil Gaiman in person, if only for the chance to bestow upon him the MAYORAL MEDAL of EXCELLENCE for his creation of Neverwhere and his patronage which allowed Susanna Clarke to write Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. With anticipation written in our hearts, we set out on the 17th to the production.
The World Financial Center, with its marble floors framing several live palm trees whose sole source of photosynthetic sunlight is an architecturally stunning glass roof, a decadent palace dedicated to the GLORIOUS credo of our Great Nation: "America: Fuck yeah!" This was the chosen scene. Upon looking at the handbill, we should have sensed that something rotten was in the State of New York - or should I say NEW AMSTERDAM? (This is an example of foreshadowing.)
The production began with the introduction of Gary S. Fagin, the fabled conductor of such masterworks as John Adams in Amsterdam: A Song for Abigail and The Space, whose haunting and eloquent melodies have no doubt washed upon the porches of only the Noblest ears of the Crowned Heads of Europe - or some such shit. I urge visiting his website and listening to the clip of John Adams.
The production began with something by Peter Tchaikovsky. At this point signal flares should have gone off, gongs should have sounded, and messenger ships released from their ports. I here avow that I ABHOR ALL WORKS OF TCHAIKOVSKY, owing to my attendance of his opera Mazeppa at the Metropolitan Opera. Approximately 4 hours into my attempt to pay attention to this affront to good taste, the 3rd act of 5 ended with a girl running around with a severed head in her hands - AND THE SWEDES DIDN'T EVEN HAVE THE COMMON COURTESY TO COME IN AN KILL THEM ALL YET! This was no way to begin a production. I should have gathered my belongings and slapped Gary Fagin on his talentless face on my way out. BUT I RESTRAINED MYSELF.
Next came Up and Down by Duke Ellington. Gary Fagin was so pretentious that he listed Ellington's full name on the handbill, with the more famous "Duke" in parentheses. Really Gary Fagin? And how was it? ...I was not amused. Jazz conducted by a pasty white man just doesn't work - except when the pasty white man is LEONARD BERNSTEIN, and I here provide evidence!
Finally! The moment we had all been waiting for! The reason that there were so many strollers and young couples and nerds hipsterly playing Tetris on their fossilized GameBoy Pockets. Gary Fagin introduced Neil Gaiman - HIS COUSIN!
AHA! ...A-HA!
So, Gary Fagin, you thought you were so clever. I pictured a caped Gary Fagin sitting in his subterranean reinforced concrete writers garret, a crown of wild, tousled hair, madly banging away at a pipe organ, screaming: "How can I lure people to my atrocious work. I know! I will bait them with my famous cousin. OH HO HO HO!"
And what can be said of what happened. It was clear that Neil Gaiman hadn't slept since 1998 and wasn't given sufficient time to practice - or simply didn't FEEL like practicing. I certainly have cousins I wouldn't go out of my way to send a Christmas card, much less offer my vastly superior talent to support their orchestra. Yeah. I said it. In a nutshell... it was pleasant.
NEXT!
The Unanswered Question by Cha - oh who give a shit! The highlight of this atrocity was Gary Fagin pretentiously summoning a less-than-stellar trumpet to play some hackneyed modernist something-or-other. At this point I was getting glares from a painfully sex-starved woman in front of me who thought she was in the presences of brilliance (barring my own brilliance, naturally). Verdict: I've heard sweeter songs from teething children on airplanes.
And finally - the CROWN JEWEL of this catastrophe of the musical world - the very reason Gary Fagin summoned his famous cousin to take and hour out of his busy schedule on his way to the Golden Globes in support of Coraline. It was a special night. This marked the WORLD PREMIERE of Gary S. Fagin's:
AND BOLD TO FALL WITHAL - HENRY HUDSON IN THE NEW WORLD
I here recommend taking painkillers or getting yourself a good stiff spiritous drink.
Ready?
PART I: DEPARTURE
Gary Fagin introduced his tenor soloist for the WORLD PREMIERE of this opera based on the travels of Henry Hudson in North America. A baton raised. A pair of lungs filled with air. And then...
SHAILSH! SHAILSH! SHAILSH!
This skinny ginger tenor decided to emulate Colm Wilkinson (you know, the original Jean Valjean), right down to the badly trimmed beard. For those unfamiliar with Colmish, I will translate:
SAILS! SAILS! SAILS!
It may be easier for you to imagine Sean Connery singing it.
Apparently it's Gary Fagin's modus operandi to begin every song he writes by repeating a word three times. As proof, here is the opening of John Adams' libretto:
ABIGAIL! ABIGAIL! ABIGAIL!
The song continued, listing all the precious things European sailors sought getting faster via a mythical Northwest Passage.
SAFFRON! CINNAMON! SILK! RUBIES! JADE! AND GOLD!
Gary Fagin! Cellos in the background and shouting the names of things does not an operetta make! He went on to sing to us the exploits of Magellan:

"Sail west to reach the East.
Columbus tried.
Magellan's men proved it so.
West, then south, and further south,
Round the treacherous Cape,
Through the Pacific's calm seas."

Hold on a second. Magellan began his voyage from Portugal. If you were granted a caravel from the Royal Family and proceeded to sail west only to turn south and then... go south again, I'm relatively sure that you would run right into Antarctica. Let's ask the Panel of Experts. Panel of Experts?
THEY AGREE!
The cliché parade didn't stop! Each movement was separated by a small introduction... YEAH, like little title cards in a Stanley Kubrick film!
"Year 1609; the thirtieth of May. Henry Hudson, commanding the Half Moon, sails once more into the unknown."
Gary Fagin! You could've said May 30th, 1609!
PART II: TERRA CONTINENS (He added a footnote saying that this means "continent." Do you think Neil Gaiman would put such a footnote in his books? Hm...)
In which he describes the American continent!

"A deep, wide River [unnecessary capitalization - this isn't Germany Gary Fagin!]
Teeming with life:
Foot-wide oysters,
Ten-pound lobsters,
Salmon beyond number,
Magnificent abundance!"

A foot-wide oyster? I will dismiss this and assume you meant foot-long oysters, only to counter that with a reading from Mark Kurlansky's The Big Oyster: "On the bottom [of the riverbed] the very largest ones, described as 'giant oysters,' measure eight to ten inches. This suggests that the Dutch reports of foot-long oysters were ... slightly exaggerated." Also, the optimal size of a lobster for eating is between 1 and 2 pounds. Anything larger is too tough and requires too much dipping butter. Also - LOBSTERS DON'T LIVE IN FRESHWATER! OUTRAGEOUS!
PART III: ARRIVAL
Here Gary Fagin steals lyrics directly from the diary of First Mate Robert Jouet talking about trade with the local Indians. While I'm not sure where they got "Greene [sic] Tabaccco [sic]," it's still slightly cheap to use someone else's words for an entire half of a movement of your operetta.
Setting the tone for the Age of Colonial Expoloration (which, coincidentally, I hate teaching) he mentions a Native stealing a pillow and two shirts from the Half Moon only to be killed, offering this final thought: "O, harbinger of what's to come: / Temptation, Mistrust, Death." Let's move on. And get ready to be angry.
EPILOGUE
He chooses fascinating words to begin a conclusion:

"Three times Henry Hudson fails
To find the Northwest Passage.
The fourth attempt,
Abandoned in the Bay that bears his name,
He dies."

Gary Fagin... you just wrote an entire hour-long operetta about a failed explorer. Let's see what Henry Hudson actually did to warrant a river, a bay, a parkway and an operetta:
1.) Did not find the Northwest Passage
2.) Left adrift in a large Canadian bay by his crew
3.) That's... about... it.
And that's what history is - senselessly naming things after people who don't deserve it. Triborough Bridge? Why don't we call it The Robert F. Kennedy Bridge after senator who was 11-years old when the bridge opened. YEAH, that's the ticket! At least we can legitimize charging the taxpayers millions of dollars to change all the signage.
Then Gary Fagin lost me forever. I'm going to put dates next to the approximate times when these things happen. Ready?

"Forty years more,
As a spoil of war, [RHYME?! NOW?!]
New Amsterdam becomes New York [1674].
Towers rise, scrape the skies. [ca. 1902 - 1913]
One day two fall. [ca. September 11, 2001]"

Are you kidding me? Did Rudy Giuliani have a hand in writing this?! At this point a Good Taste Referee should have thrown a flag and called an Unsportsmanlike Conduct penalty. You wrote a painfully long piece of shit about Henry Hudson and then have the audacity to connect it to September 11?! Were you trying to draw a parallel between Hudson's downfall and that unforgettable September collapse of the World Trade Center, because I FAIL to see and refuse to acknowledge so shameful a connection. Not only that you skipped nearly 330 years of New York history to mention it! Nowhere is there mention of the Battle of New York, the Stock Market Crash, the invention of the Martini... NO! New York's history boils down to Henry Hudson and 9/11. Pitiful! Tasteless!
Now, you can't imagine how angry I was at this point. So angry that I had to laugh and bite my handbill, much to the dismay of the aforementioned sex-starved cobra who shot me icy looks - apparently oblivious to the fact that she had been subjected to one of the cheapest shots in history - a hack relying on the fame of his brilliant cousin to spoon feed bullshit to the brain-dead masses!
And that is why I need to be a teacher - if only to undo the watery history presented by uncultured no-talent idiots with no musical or lyrical inclinations whatsoever.
We then went to the Patriot Saloon to drown our sorrows - or rather explosions of gut-bursting laughter - in cheap beer, country-western music, and ladies dancing on a bar. Because even a dingy gin-joint like The Patriot is a more authentic American experience than being force-fed falsities and cheap, meaningless references to one of our greatest tragedies.

Wherein I Recall Some More Memorable Dreams...

While on a recent ski (or in my case après-ski) trip to an area of New York designated on most modern maps as HERE BE DRAGONS, a conversation arose discussing dreams. The reader is no doubt familiar with my horrific, nightmarish, violent and hilarious dreams as he or she or it has already read my wonderfully written prophesy of what the New York Mets will wear in the FUTURE. How strange do these dreams get?
First of all, one of my recurring dreams is of an enormous theme park as large as Disney World and as twisted as Pierre Trudeau's wife (I will here give you time to check Wikipedia). In one dream, myself and a few companions were riding a roller coaster cum haunted mansion house in an enormous tree-filled atrium that reminded me of the common area of Hershey's Chocolate World in Pennsylvania. The ride sped violently and ultimately fell apart. When I revisited the theme park in a future dream, the atrium was closed down - cut off with yellow caution tape. Who preserves dreams in dreams, I ask you!
One of the more terrifying dreams I've ever had saw me inheriting a very large, modern looking house. It was of beautiful American architecture that I attribute to Wright in style, but this is only to someone who is uneducated in the various schools of architecture. Every room in the house had the shades have drawn down giving an air of almost constant twilight - neither night nor day. I was sitting down in the living room of this house that had been bequeathed to me by some fictitious relative until I became aware of someone breathing heavily in the dining room which was a small flight of stairs away. I looked up and saw a shadowy figure with unkempt hair - definitely a women. I was horrified. I suddenly became aware that the house was haunted. Imagine the deepened horror when I realized that I was in love with this phantasm that was haunting me. Terror and love staring at me - and suddenly rushing towards me, pinning me to the couch. I struggled away and began shouting for my grandmother, suddenly realizing this was a nightmare and that I needed to be woken up. I kept screaming - or trying to scream for her. When I finally forced myself awake and away from this terror, it took several minutes to calm my heartbeat and fall back asleep. The next morning:
Grandma: Were you screamin' for me last night mistuh? (She has a Brooklyn accent tempered by several decades of cigarette smoking.)
I: YES! Why didn't you come in and wake me up?!
Grandma: I dunno. I thawt you wuh dreamin'.
I: THANK YOU!
Let that be a lesson to you all - if you hear people screaming your name in agony in the night, you should immediately assume they are dreaming AND TAKE NO FURTHER ACTION!
Still, this dream takes a backseat to one of my favorite dreams that I woke up to and wrote down forthwith. I here recall it for the sake of those that wished to hear it told!
It somehow began with me in a Louisiana bayou. I had just emerged from a boat onto a gigantic plantation with torches lighting either side of the landfall. I could already recall in the dream that I had spoken with someone who warned me about the house and the voodoo magic that seethed from its ancient walls. It was supposedly owned by one of the most powerful voodoo mamas in all of the United States. The property was absolutely filled with cats, all of whom were supposedly spies who acted as her all seeing eyes. You could recognize which ones were under her spell because of the purplish glow of their eyes.
As I was approaching the decaying Spanish-moss covered house, I noticed a black cat sitting on the front porch with the most beautiful green eyes you could imagine. I realized that this cat had not yet fallen under an evil spell, so I resolved to rescue it before the Mama could curse it.
For some reason, as I was walking through some knee-length reeds figuring out what to do, I'd decided that [NAME WITHHELD]'s mother was the best person to speak to on the issue of this cat. As I was walking, the landscape changed to one of those fire lanes. You know, one of those perfect lines of grass cut into forests that have electrical lines running across them. You can see them carved on the sides of mountains for miles. I steadily marched up the hill, until I came to [NAME WITHHELD]'s mom's house.
When I got to the door, she recognized the cat as one who had been in the presence of the voodoo Mama, but told me I shouldn't have taken the cat away - that she would know of my theft and start seeking me. The best thing to do, she said, was to return the cat and actually challenge the Mama to free everyone of the curse she'd laid on them.
I'd decided to take the subway back to the bayou. It was an elevated train that went through a tremendous city that I almost cannot describe. The buildings had a golden glow, like how light shines off the Brooklyn Bridge in the morning. The city was certainly something of a ultramodern Brooklyn, filled with a mix of gothic and art deco architecture, stained glass adoring the more stately windows of the most beautiful buildings.
I noticed that the four people with me on the train seemed somewhat uncomfortable and strangely dressed - as if they were trying to dress like that. I asked them what was up.
They informed me that they were all superheroes. One was a tremendously strong partially mechanical black dude. Another was your typical Superman ripoff. Another was a woman who could fly and throw fireballs. The other one just wore a black coat, black hat, and black sunglasses - don't really know what his power was. They told me there had recently been a schism in the city, and that at least half the superheroes in the city had decided to become archvillains. Just as soon as he had told me this, the subway was under attack from a whole host of super-baddies! The subway crashed into the side of a building, and the superheroes told me to run for it and return the cat to the bayou. Amids lasers and fireballs and green energy bolts, I ran for the water until it calmed down and twilight began to fall and I reached the bayou once more. I placed the cat down, and he scurried off.
I went up the beautifully carved, crackly whitewashed door and pushed it open. What was inside obeyed no laws of physics. I could hear the Mama's voice telling me she was on the roof. The entire house was a chaotic labyrinth that would even make M.C. Escher drop his jaw and begin weeping. It was breezy and the world was falling apart, but I bolted for the attic, knowing that was the source of her misguided religious powers. I climbed up a stack of boxes and reached for the attic ladder --
And then I woke up laughing.
And that is ALL that can be said of that.
In other news, I am considering brewing my own sake under the brand name: Uncle Willie's Good Times Sake - the perfect compliment to Uncle Willie's Good Times Fried Chicken.
Until I am bored again...

Baccalaureate of Time Travel

As I have finally graduated after far too long a time period, I needed to have a little fun at my graduation ceremony, didn't I?
I can already hear your murmurings.
"Did he bring a flask of bourbon and keep a laudanum-soaked cotton ball in his cheek?"
"Did he bring a beach ball inflated with lithium to pep up the mood?"
"Did he steal the University President's speech and translate it entirely into Esperanto?"
I DID NONE OF THESE THINGS.
Upon first arriving wearing my finest Spanish Inquisition robes, as Stony Brook indeed thought scarlet a most appropriate color for graduation, I was given a card with my name and pertinent information on it. The card asked for a phonetic spelling of my name in case it was difficult to pronounce. At the bottom was a special area for "Other commendations."
I looked around the gymnasium where the candidates were convening. Some had a "Cum Laude" sticker attached in this area. Fewer had a "Magna Cum Laude" sticker there. And for those who favored fervent study over the occasional sip of alcohol on the weekends, "Summa Cum Laude." Now, dear readers, I am a man of no small character. Some have called me a FORMIDABLE HUMAN BEING! Am I not worthy of some sort of special commendation merely for my sheer wonderment? I DO!
On a whim I scribbled the words "Time traveler" in this area, and thought not another thing about it.
After a painfully long ceremony wherein a singer hit notes she only IMAGINED she could actually hit in the National Anthem and megahours slugged by during the Doctoral Hooding, the long awaited moment arrived. I handed my card to the lady at the microphone. And she firmly, clearly, energetically announced:
"WILLIAM OLSEN-HOECK..."
I here turned around to correct her, only to hear almost immediately:
"TIME TRAVELER!"
My complexion changed to the color of my stylish gown as I walked over to the President to received my much-deserved Baccalaureate of Time Travel Diploma. I had done it. I had successfully pulled a prank at graduation!
I met a person in the parking lot who was laughing about whoever added "Time Traveler" to his card. I confessed, receiving congratulations from the family, and the suggestion, "You should have put Time Lord."
Alas, ladies and gentlemen - apart from my snappy mode of dress, I share nothing in common with the famous Time Lord who flies about the universe in an outdated British Police Box. Still, I consider this one of the greatest successes of my life. And guess what - I HAVE ANOTHER TITLE TO ADD TO MY TITLERIFFIC NAME!
Until I receive my Doctorate of Theoretical Time Travel.
-Commissioner The Rev. Dr. Mayor William C. Olsen-Hoek, Esq., B. of Time Travel

In Which I Have a Nightmarish Prophesy...

I had a most blood-curdling nightmare last night.
I dreamt that Maria, Kyla and myself scored tickets to opening day at Shea Stadium. The very fact that the Mets were still playing at the erstwhile Home of Amazin' set the tone for this surreal, terrifying phantasm. Somehow we were invited to sit on seats on the first baseline dirt in foul territory. You could not imagine my excitement, waiting for the Mets to unveil their new 1960s style uniforms. For too long my team has suffered from uniform disasters, though none so offensive as the 1980s racing stripes or the "snow white" cap of the late 1990s... or, and I shudder at the very though of this, the "Turn Forward the Clock" Mercury Mets uniform - WHICH WILL NEVER AGAIN BE MENTIONED IN THIS WEBLOG. Imagine the sheer horror coursing through my slumbering veins when the New York Mets took to a no-longer-existent field wearing - BLUE SHORTS and a BLUE HOODIE featuring MR. MET on the front and numbers in COMIC SANS on the back! Heart racing, I shot up in a cold sweat - shuddering, weeping, praying to the Almighty to erase this indelible mark from my somniferous mind.
The horror.
In other news, I have finally received all the sufficient credits and jumped through sufficient hoops that the State University of New York at Stony Brook has seen fit to confer upon me the mark of academic achievement entitled Baccalaureate. Oh frabjous day! And more good news - I have been hired as a substitute at my current place of professional development, MS 104 Simon Baruch School. My only hope is that this position lead to a full time commitment with the said school, as I have quickly become enamored of it.
Until such time that I have found something else so elegant of modern humanity in America...
Auf wiedersehen.

Godot? God No.

Some years ago, my grandfather and step-grandmother (whom I never address as step-grandmother - preferring to call her Denise which is not her given name) came to visit Long Island and brought us to a painfully expensive restaurant courtesy of Taylor Publishing. Grandpa was a big shot in the said publishing company, and was fond of showing how much he cared for us by buying us expensive meals about twice every decade. Denise (not her real name) upon hearing my analysis of the restaurant's faux pas in overcooking the flounder I had eaten stated how she imagined me one day becoming a critic. What type of critic she never said. It is true that I carry strong opinions about nearly everything. I find it difficult to harbor wishy-washy flip-floppery feelings about things. So being the case, I found no small amount of pleasure when I took a "Modern Drama in New York" class as part of the bullshit required curriculum of Stony Brook University. What this essentially entailed was going to see shows and writing critiques of them. Because I found this process so entertaining and was extremely pleased with the results, I here share them - one by one. I here present the one I most recently re-read - that of Nathan Lane, John Goodman, Bill Irwin, and John Glover in Waiting for Godot. This was my final submission for the class which ultimately resulted in yet another A.

The Roundabout Theater Company’s latest production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, staged in the perverse yet hallowed halls of Manhattan’s erstwhile disco orgy palace, Studio 54, seems more like an overpriced sleep aid than a play. Or, for up to $116, treat yourself to one of the best-orchestrated naps that money can buy. In what can only be described as the Roundabout’s plan to cash in on celebrity names, they have staged their Godot with a look and feel so fresh, you’d swear it was 1953.
It is quite impossible to imagine any self-respecting director sitting back in his chair and believing he has created his magnum opus in this particular production. Instead, it plays out like something of a Godot fanboy’s wet dream with this platitudinous dime-store formula: Well Established Comic Genius + The Set You’ve Seen Countless Times + A Dreary Bridge-and-Tunnel Audience = Success!
Steve Rubell with his usual nightly ration of cocaine would have had difficulty staying awake for the duration of this performance. Even Nathan Lane’s signature grating, Jersey-accented shouting and overly expressive gesticulations weren’t enough to sufficiently energize Beckett’s existentialist lullaby to keep much of the audience around for Act II. Witnesses to this tragedy of a comedy may find it easy to sympathize with John Goodman’s increasingly corpulent rotundity rolling around the stage blindly asking for help, but as the bobbing heads and drooping eyes from the theater’s mezzanine indicate, they won’t necessarily be entertained by it. The audience seemed so unsure of the humor in this clunker that they basically laughed when instructed to by Mr. Lane; that is, when he screeched or grotesquely contorted his face.
Bill Irwin’s Vladimir makes a gallant effort to outshow Lane’s porcine Estragon, but he and his thin frame vanish into the drab background between the two scenery-chewing behemoths, the twin moons of Lane and Goodman. Perhaps Goodman’s most sincere moment of acting was when he “feigned” heart palpitations, an event that left this reviewer wondering if he shouldn’t call the paramedics… just in case.
Godot as read may not be the most exciting play, but just as throwing a couple of hams into a pot does not a Sunday dinner make, tossing two fat funny men on a New York stage and hoping for the best is less a recipe for success and more for disaster. But perhaps disaster is too strong a word - the audience in this production was so mind-numbingly disengaged that had Lane and Goodman spontaneously burst into flame at the end of the play it is doubtful anyone would have been paying enough attention to think to shout “Fire!”

Oscar the Grouch: TIME LORD

Having recently watched the new Doctor Who special The Waters of Mars, I have drifted to sleep these past 2 nights trying to come up with theories as to how the Doctor will regenerate. My nerdiest idea? The Master imbued the Doctor with part of his essence right before he died in the Doctor's arms - leading to the Doctor's dark turn in the most recent episode. Thus, the Master STEALS ONE OF THE DOCTOR'S REGENERATIONS... causing the Doctor grievous bodily harm and forcing him to regenerate. Another theory - he senses that his current regeneration has fallen from grace and willfully goes about the process.
As I've been thinking about Doctor Who and the 40th Anniversary of Sesame Street, it suddenly dawned on me.
OSCAR THE GROUCH IS A TIME LORD!
Ladies and gentlemen, this seems a stretch, but I do assure you by the end of this transmission, you will be as devout a believer as I was when I saw this stark evidence. LET THE PROOF BEGIN!
ITEM ONE: TARDIS
The Doctor is well known for traveling around in an obsolete time and spacecraft called a TARDIS, a less-than-clever acronym for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. Due to a broken Chameleon Circuit (a device which normally disguises the machine to match its surroundings), the TARDIS is stuck in the form of a wooden blue 1950's style British Police Box. Oddly enough, never were police boxes constructed of wood. Apart from being able to travel back and forth through time and through all points of space (not unlike the Infinite Improbability Drive of Douglas Adams' limitless imagination) the craft is well known also for being much larger on the inside than on the outside. See for yourself:
Exhibit A: Exterior with 6'1" 10th Doctor for scale.
Exhibit B: Interior w/ Camera Crew in background for scale

Where have I seen something similar? OH YES! Oscar the Grouch's garbage can in front of 123 Sesame St.! Observe!
Exhibit C: Oscar the Grouch in Garbage Can with 5'9" Tony Danza for Scale

Exhibit D: Interior of Oscar's Garbage Can

Oscar's trash can is obviously much larger on the inside. It is said to contain, apart from the items pictured, an elephant, a swimming pool, a china cabinet, and a portal to Oscar's home planet of Grouchland. I can hear your nerdly grumblings already: "But BillChas, surely you know that Time Lords are from the Planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous at "galactic coordinates ten-zero-eleven-zero-zero by zero-two from galactic zero centre." I say it was a ruse - that Oscar was merely hiding his true home planet to live a low-profile life on a happy block full of happy neighbors singing about the alphabet in Queens, New York.
What may we infer? Oscar's trash can is a TARDIS!

ITEM TWO: REGENERATION
The Doctor's famous ability to cheat death by a process of regeneration, essentially changing of physical appearance and a general trend toward aging backward, has ensured that even 47 years into its broadcast the Time Lord abideth. Behold!
Exhibit F: The Doctor's 11 Regenerations

The Doctor changes appearance and mode of dress over his 903 years (debatable) of life. It is one of the most powerful and recognizable trademarks of any superhero. Indeed, the image of the Doctor suffering and dying only to cheat death is... wonderful to ponder. It is one of my favorite of his traits. WATCH THE DOCTOR REGENERATE AFTER CONTRACTING SPECTROX TOXAEMIA... my favorite regeneration.

And as for Oscar? Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to have your minds blown!
Exhibit G: The FIRST Oscar the Grouch (1969-1970)

Exhibit H: The SECOND Oscar the Grouch (1971-Present)
Ladies and gentlemen: YOUR MINDS ARE BLOWN! Oscar appears to have regenerated some time between 1970 and 1971. What the circumstances leading up to his apparent death are left to the imagination, but just let this shocking, STARK evidence of Oscar's Time Lordship settle in.
Still, a few questions remain. Why is he not sought out by the Doctor or the Master? Why did he leave Gallifrey? How could he have survived the Time War? Does the fact that he lives in a trash can suggest he is part Dalek? Is he still liable to fall in love with hideously bucktoothed British women with badly dyed hair and mannish eyebrows? I suppose that is the mystique of a Time Lord... and a question worth pondering.
I have no idea what I will talk about next.
This blog entry was brought to you today by the letter Q and the number 8.
Cue Doctor Who theme tune.

MTA: Misguided Transportation Annoyance

You will pardon the interruption. Today's entry will not be about Oscar the Grouch: Time Lord, but instead is inspired by true events. The next entry will be MUCH more entertaining (read: silly). (This was posted to quell any comments Derek may make.)
Times are tough. Even life for we self-proclaimed mayors is not without its inevitable snares. Today, I had to write a pointed letter to the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing regarding a very serious issue that occurred this morning. At around 8:00 am, I arrived at the Franklin Ave. 4, 5 and Shuttle stop. Finding that my 30-Day Unlimited Ride Metrocard had expired, I approached a ticket vending machine, only to find that every single machine was not accepting credit or debit cards. I asked the station agent at the token booth who said there was nothing she could do for me and that I'd have to use cash, an extraordinarily inconvenient bit of news. As such, I had to leave the station and walk to a nearby bank to withdraw $100 in twenty-dollar bills, as I had no cash on my person at the time. When again I approached the machine to purchase an $89 30-Day Unlimited Metrocard, I was informed that it would only dispense a maximum of $6 in change. I again approached the station agent who very kindly made the change for me. Nonetheless, the entire ordeal caused me to be 20 minutes late for work. Given the current times, this is unacceptable. I expect and deserve a sincere written apology (not an automated reply) and a solemn promise that such a fiasco will never be allowed to happen again.

Sincerely,
William Olsen-Hoek

I neglected to throw in my multitudinous titles for fear that they would be overwhelmed by my perceived importance. Let us hope that His Excellency Emperor Bloomberg, Defender of the Boroughs sees fit to improve this obviously flawed system. Now... if only we had a mayor with real ideas - say... A MONORAIL.
But for real, next time! OSCAR THE GROUCH: TIME LORD!