Never let me go

[austin_dern]

You know the sort of day: a lot of running around doing stuff, while feeling like nothing's accomplished. Much of it was spent with students who would not have these particular problems if they did the questions on the assignment sheet before starting to write code, so I asked many times, ``Did you do what it says in question three? Why not?'' Some are unsettled they get different results each time they run the program, suggesting they don't quite grok the pseudorandom number sequence generator.

The top musical distraction today was an instrumental cover of Elvis Presley's Love Me Tender on one harp. It edges out a radio station playing Kermit the Frog's The Rainbow Connection, which I think I'd never heard on radio before, and shame on radio for that. On Knotted Note Radio the teaser for the next Adventures of Philip Marlowe was the rousing ``When the will was read everyone figured she was crazy when she wrote it, and that included me -- but I changed my mind after spending a night on an island with a pig, a cat, and an ape. Because in reality -- they were people!'' (Dramatic flourish.) That station's going off the TCP/IP air and I won't know what it was all about.

Check that: it's almost certain the teased episode was #4, ``Where There's A Will,'' originally aired 17 October 1948, which is on the web in MP3 format, so I can find out what story follows from that introduction.

Trivia: Johann Bernoulli had the logarithmic spiral he discovered, the curve described in polar coordinates by r = exp(theta/2) engraved on his tombstone. Source: Mathematics in Civilization, H.L. Resnikoff and R.O.Wells, Jr.

Currently Reading: The Most Unsordid Act: Lend-Lease, 1939-1941, Warren F. Kimball.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I've heard Rainbow Connection on the radio at least once, but no more than thrice, certainly. Like any movie-based song, it had its best chance at being a single when the movie was out. Ah well.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I suppose it did have its best chance of airing after the original movie came out, and maybe again after Jim Henson died, but really -- is there anyone in the world who doesn't like that song? And shouldn't radio music be about the stuff we'd like to hear?

Oh, the Philip Marlowe adventure -- I found and downloaded it -- turned out to be a bit misleading; the pig, cat, and ape who were actually people were, in fact, literally humans. Their pig, cat, or ape-ness was metaphorical to the way they acted.

The ``crazy'' part of the will was the dying woman left a huge fortune in bonds, drew a complicated map, and gave each of the three a third of it. If they could collaborate on it and find the bonds within a day, they'd get to keep them; if not, her executor (with a much simpler map) would find the bonds and donate them to charity. I'll avoid spoiling this further, but it's a fine enough episode.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't mind it making the tours on the radio dial again.. but if so, t'd probably end up predominatently on lite-rock staltions, and I tend to not linger on lite-rock stations, at that. (Being a male 18-35, I'm the wrong demo and all that.) Of course, calling that station which played it (and has a copy, therefore) and requesting it again might boosts its spread..
I'm also certain, though, that if I heard it more than twice in a month, I'd get that creeping annoyance with some overly-repeated yet very good songs. I'm just about burned out on "One Bourbon, one Scotch, One Beer", for example, which is an amazingly wonderful song I just.. don't want to hear for a good year.

--Chiaroscuro

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Furthermore.. The Muppets have a reputation as 'kiddie entertainment', and that applies forth to their songs. (Mind you, that's a reputation both accurate and wrong, but, there's a lifetime of discussions there.) So Rainbow Connection gets a bit of that kid/novelty label, I'd imagine, and thus less airplay.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sure if it were on too often the song would get old mighty quick (ask me sometime about that Nat King Cole/Whatsername Cole ``duet'' of Unforgettable). While it is a beautiful song with a lot of emotional support behind it it's not in the same family as (say) The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night -- though come to think of it, I don't hear that on the radio often enough either. (Mind, I don't have an electromagnetic wave radio in Singapore, so if there are Oldies stations I don't have the power to set them.) Still, there is interest in more than the current Rick Dees Top Forty and that needs attention.