The Most Beautiful Things

the most beautiful hockey player: Martin Brodeur

2012-01-29T22:15:05Z

Who: Martin Brodeur, the goaltender for the New Jersey Devils for the last two decades. It is a cliché of hockey that when a team wins handily, commentators say "the goalie stood on his head." Watch this, and you will see why.

Why: For the fourth of my most beautiful team sports player pieces, I suppose you're shocked that I didn't pick a Chicagoan—say, my Blackhawk heroes Eddie Belfour, Jeremy Roenick, and Chris Chelios—for this honor. Yeah, I am too. After all, my most beautiful baseball, football, and basketball players all wore Chicago uniforms. But that's not the common thread. All those guys were all-timers at one critical thing: defense. More than anyone else who played their position, they would destroy your hopes of showing up on a poster, unless it was their poster. So there's no way this spot is going to anyone but a goaltender, and of course that means it's going to Brodeur. The lifelong Devil lived up to that name, by being cruelly smarter than the attacking player at knowing where his own shot would go. Brodeur wasn't one of those goalies who butterflied in front of the net like an elephant. He stood up, often flying out of the box to take away the puck. The NHL made a rule called the Brodeur rule, which stopped the goalie from handling the puck outside a trapezoid area behind the net. The goal was to stop Marty from being Marty. Didn't work. You can Zamboni the playing surface, but all that does is give you a chance to be better. Brodeur's job is to kill chances, and he does it better than anyone.

Impact: Most wins. Most saves. Most minutes. Most games played. Most shutouts. Most goals—that is, most goals scored by a goalie. And I think the one he's most proud of, fewest teams. That no one in the Eastern Conference ever got a chance to avoid playing Brodeur was a burden those players faced every year they visited the Rock. He might retire this year. He might not. People like Alex Ovechkin, victimized recently by Brodeur in a shootout, sure hope he does.

Personal Connection: I do, anyway. My team has the indignity of having given Brodeur the record for wins, with his 552nd coming against the Blackhawks on St. Patrick's Day, 2009. From the minute the game started, I knew we were doomed. Ah well, we won the Cup the next year anyway. That'll have to do.

Other Contenders: hockey's biggest mouth, Jeremy Roenick, who was so flashy that his near-invincibility in the videogame NHLPA '93 made you forget it was named after a labor union; Hayley Wickenheiser, just about the scariest sight a female goalie can see coming at her; Mario Lemieux, whose many victories include beating cancer and saving hockey in Pittsburgh; from hockey's violent side, Scott Stevens, the other reason the Devils ended many playoff dreams; Don Cherry, a passable player/coach whose blinding fashion sense came to epitomize Canadian hockey extravagance; the bespectacled Hanson brothers, who just want to play old time hockey.

the most beautiful December holiday tradition: a proper eggnog

2011-12-25T17:17:38Z

What: A correctly made eggnog, made with a half gallon of store-bought or handmade eggnog (milk, raw eggs, and sugar), a half gallon of French vanilla ice cream, liberal amounts of dark rum or cognac, and a heaping of nutmeg.

Why: The story goes that eggnog's name comes from the phrase "egg and grog," grog being the most piratical term for a rum and water, and while that's probably not true, this is the time of year for stories that might seem a bit suspect. There's the one about a kindly preacher who, after being tortured, impaled, and fatally dehydrated, came back and forgave us our trespasses. There's the other one about the single dram of oil that burned for eight times as long as oil can burn, in service of a banished people. And there's still another about an overstuffed toymaker who glides a caribou-piloted sled silently onto the roofs of the world, clambers down chimneys, and lays festive offerings at the base of indoor fir trees. Not one of those makes a lick of sense. But that's not the point. The point is that this is a time of year to put aside logic, and get together in celebration of family and untenable stories. And it's also time to put aside the logic that raw eggs can kill you, that ice cream and rum can lead you to ruin, and that nutmeg is a psychoactive poison. Because man, they taste good together.

Impact: Sales of store-bought eggnog have quadrupled in the last 50 years, and yet stores will only stock it for about six weeks out of the year. Eggnog sales drop off a cliff the day after New Years. It remains one of the few beverages with a season, and for good reason. If you drank eggnog all year round, you'd quadruple too.

Personal Connection: I have been making this for nigh on thirty Christmases, having been taught the recipe by my mom's soon-to-be-husband Charlie. Evon doesn't drink the stuff, so I often have to drink an entire gallon of ice-cream-infused eggnog by myself. I live a hard life.

Other Contenders: teaching children to gamble with a dreidel and chocolate coins; threatening children with captivity and devourment at the hands of Krampus, Saint Nick's demonic sidekick; terrorizing children with Maurice Sendak's tiger-people and giant mice at the Pacific Northwest Ballet's production of The Nutcracker; laughing at children's impossible task of memorizing "The Twelve Days of Christmas"; and, after all that, bribing those same children with presents so that they come to expect nothing less for the rest of their awesome lives.

the most beautiful song for the new revolution: The Walls Came Down

2011-11-27T01:55:11Z

What: "The Walls Came Down," The Call's declaration of war against the military-industrial complex off its 1983 album Modern Romans.

Why: In 1983, just as now, the world looked like it was coming apart. As the Soviet Union and United States staked out their respective positions as evil empires in each other's eyes, the center could not hold. Meanwhile, America began to learn what the word "terrorism" meant, as its embassy in Lebanon and the U.S. Senate were bombed. We were facing an uncertain future, and Michael Been of The Call distilled that tremulous uncertainty into an unignorable klaxon based on the battle of Jericho. "They blew their horns, and the walls came down," Been sang, following it with the punch in the gut: "They'd all been warned, and the walls came down." More than any other song of protest, "The Walls Came Down" spelled out the consequences of not listening to the disenfranchised.

Impact: The song was a cult hit, followed up by modest successes such as "Everywhere I Go" and "I Still Believe". But importantly, the revolution didn't happen in America. Instead, the walls actually did come down, in Berlin and elsewhere. Because the Russians and Yanks blinked, the revolution here was delayed throughout a period of prosperity unequaled in history. It was only in late 2008, when, propped up by derivatives tossed like candy by corporate criminals, Wall Street came crashing down. But as Been notes, the corporate criminals still have the tanks. The Occupy movement seems inclined to stare them down. Here's a song to inspire them through the uncertain times ahead.

Personal Connection: At first, I admit I didn't understand the Occupy movement. As the owner of a business and a firm adherent of the capitalist ethic, I don't actually want the walls to come down. But even I can't ignore how metastasized the cancer in the system has become. Tipped by regime topplers in the Arab world and capitol squatters in Madison, the folks in Zuccotti Park, in McPherson Square, in Westlake Mall, and everywhere else in the world have figured it out. The organized system of crackdowns has tried to take away their voices, but through tactics like hand signals and the human microphone, they have shown their determination to heed the call. Let the day begin.

Other Contenders: Occupy Wall Street is getting a soundtrack, so I won't presume to know what its equivalent of Gil Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" will be. I'm partial to Ry Cooder's "Wall Street Part of Town", but I expect it'll come from some voice we've not heard. Maybe it'll be Lupe Fiasco's rap poem "Moneyman".

the most beautiful law: Title IX

2011-07-17T19:17:56Z

What: Title XV of the Education Amendments of 1972, which modified Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law begins, "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

Why: Not surprisingly for an act that can't even get its own number right, Title IX doesn't even say what it came to be most connected with. Its intent was to eliminate discrimination against women in education—not sports in education, but education itself. In the 1960s, it was not even universally agreed upon that women should have equal opportunity to go to school. But by the 1970s, in the wake of the bra-burning revolution, the country was ready to codify the simple concept that women should go to school. The law had a subtle consequence, though. "Any education program or activity" meant that the traditional rampart of male exclusivity—athletics—was about to be turned on its head. Sports, especially team sports, was not then viewed as ladylike. But with Title IX, allowing play was viewed as mandatory. If women wanted to play soccer, play basketball, play volleyball, play softball—now they could. Now they would.

Impact: Greater than any federal administrative law since the Civil Rights Act itself. The collective psyche of more than fifty percent of the U.S. population changed irrevocably, allowing women to feel comfortable in competitive arenas like law and medicine and the military. As for sports, it's gotten to the point today where much of America is gathered around their TV sets to watch a women's soccer team go for a World Cup championship. Nobody's burning any bras now; the ones that matter are those under the jerseys of the new Brandi Chastains. With women's sports expanding ninefold in the past four decades, the presumption that women could be competitive, could sweat, could swear, could leave it all on the pitch, could break you in half if they wanted—all of that is okay now. All of that, for want of a better term, is ladylike.

Personal Connection: I am of the right age to have seen American girls change because of Title IX. In the late 1970s, girls in my school became among the first to expect the opportunity to play. In high school, the girls I hung out with played basketball because they could. In college, the women I dated built a national championship program in lacrosse because they could. And now that those women have daughters, the games that I make are expected to be played by everyone. A game designer can write a game for boys, but it will be played by girls. And boys, I hate like the dickens to break it to you, but they will beat you. Because they can.

Other Contenders: the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which among other victories, gave us our bald eagles back; the Do-Not-Call Implementation Act of 2003, which criminalizes telephonic harassment; the ever-expanding list of laws, currently in Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Mexico City, and parts of the USA, that allow everyone to marry; the laws which provide universal health care in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan—which in those cases are provided by the United States.

the most beautiful baked dessert: sachertorte

2011-05-04T21:07:53Z

What: The Original Sachertorte, a rich cake made from Belgian and German chocolate interlaced with apricot filling and served with unsweetened whipped cream, made in its original form at the Hotel Sacher in Vienna. Here's a picture I took of one today.

Why: In the United States, we call a piece of cake melted down, osso buco-style, to the rich essence of pure chocolate a "decadence" or a "death by chocolate." In Austria, they call it "cake." There is no point in making it, the Austrians think, unless it reduces you to moaning as you eat it. Probably half the world's best cakes are made in Austria, but the unrivaled king of all it surveys is the sachertorte. The dessert is a triumph of working class knowhow in extremis. In 1832, Austria's Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich demanded that his chef make him a special dessert for important guests. The chef had taken ill, so his 16-year-old assistant, Franz Sacher, came up with this recipe on the spot. The Prince's guests were delighted with Franz's torte, and when Franz's son Eduard completed his chef's training, he perfected the recipe that stands seventeen decades later. Eduard established the Hotel Sacher, possibly the only hotel whose identity was formed around a dessert. The torte itself was the subject of a vicious lawsuit last century, so that now there are two versions of the recipe—the Original at the Hotel Sacher, and Demel's Sacher Torte, whose recipe is held by Sacher's heirs—competing for Austria's top culinary attraction.

Impact: The Hotel Sacher, and its signature dish, remain among Vienna's most popular tourist attractions. Over 350,000 cakes are sold per year. It owns a day of the year, as December 5th in Austria is National Sachertorte Day. If it is possible to make Belgians weep with jealousy over a chocolate creation, the sachertorte does it.

Personal Connection: My father and I stopped at the Hotel Sacher for sachertorte on our way to Sarajevo today. This was his first visit to Vienna, but it was my second visit to the hotel. My first was in 1990 with future Pulitzer-winning journalist Lisa Grace Lednicer. Now, we are both chatty people, Lisa and me. Over dessert that day, we said nothing. The sachertorte spoke for both of us.

Other Contenders: the Thin Mint, America's greatest contribution to the cookie landscape, available every February from eight-year-old sash-bedecked street peddlers; Chinese egg tarts, brought in by cart at the end of a dim sum feast; the red velvet cupcake, the one great use for beets; gulab jamun, an Indian donut hole drenched in honey for hours; hurmašice, a Bosnian walnut pastry drowned in syrup; apple pie, which is as American as America.

the most beautiful comic book movie: 3 Dev Adam

2011-04-01T16:49:39Z

What: 3 Dev Adam ("Three Giant Men"), a.k.a. Turkish Spider-Man vs. Captain Turkish America, a 1973 Turkish film featuring the long-awaited team-up of Captain America and Mexican lucha wrestler Santo against a surprisingly evil and overweight Spider-Man. Here it is in its entirety, without the burden of subtitles:

Why: 3 Dev Adam starts the way most Spider-Man films do: with your Friendly Neighborhood Wall-Crawler burying a woman neck-deep in sand and then killing her with a motorboat propeller. This brings Captain America and Santo flying in from North America to stop him from... well, doing that again. This Spider-Man is an Istanbul art thief with giant eyebrows, who likes stabbing people with switchblades and strangling people in the shower. This has to stop, so Captain America and Santo split up to find him. Santo stuffs things in his pants and fights martial artists in a dojo, while Captain America hangs upside-down and cat-slaps his foes. Finally Cap and Santo kill Spider-Man... but wait! One of Spider-Man's only powers is to regenerate instantly from death. This happens again and again, until our heroes trap him in a set of train tracks and run over his head with a cart full of cinderblocks. That squashes the Spider dead. Turkish justice is served.

Impact: Fresh off their success with Turist Ömer Uzay Yolunda, in which the USS Enterprise picks up a Turkish hobo, the production company Renkli joined three of North America's greatest heroes in 3 Dev Adam. Stunningly, 3 Dev Adam was the very last time Captain America and Santo teamed up against Spider-Man. Meanwhile, Captain America portrayer Aytekin Akkaya did not fade into obscurity. Instead, he stole the show as the leader of the Sand People in the 1983 blockbuster Yor, The Hunter from the Future. Attention Chris Evans: Keep it up, and this can happen to you!

Personal Connection: As the developer of six Marvel games to date, it falls to me to be aware of all the continuity concerning the Marvel Universe throughout its eighty-plus years of storytelling. So when you ask "Which Marvel superhero is known for sending a pair of guinea pigs through a tube to eat his victim's eyeballs?" I can confidently say "Why, that's Spider-Man!" It's just one of the handy services I provide.

Other Contenders: Roger Corman's emotional take on the Fantastic Four; Killer Condom, the Troma film based on a German comic about carnivorous prophylactics; Halle Berry's bold reimagining of a comic book legend in Catwoman; George Lucas's epic Howard the Duck, in which you will believe a duck can't fly.

the most beautiful vegetable: Chinese broccoli

2011-02-04T02:26:45Z

What: Kai-lan, known as Chinese broccoli, a staple of dim sum restaurants and Chinese New Year celebrations.

Why: Kai-lan makes your heart feel super-happy. Like other Brassica family members, Chinese broccoli megadoses you with vitamin C, fiber, and beta-carotene, and can knock cancer to the curb. But unlike the Calabrese broccoli that you might see in the supermarket, it won't terrify your children. That's because it doesn't have Calabrese broccoli's fractal-headed alien appearance. If regular broccoli had a friendly Nickelodeon character grinning back at four-year-old me, with a tiger and a koala and a whatever that thing on the balloon is, and my mom told me that she wanted me to eat the yummy green snack that shared that character's name, I would be demanding it in my Dora the Explorer lunchbox. You would too.

Impact: Well, China named a cartoon after it, which means that Chinese children must eat it. Quite a lot of it, in fact. The People's Republic of China is the largest consumer of broccoli in the world, and—well, okay, they're the largest consumer of every edible thing in the world, but trust me, they love their kai-lan. And they should. Chinese broccoli is more succulent, more meaty, and more uplifting in taste than traditional broccoli, and it goes perfectly with plum sauce.

Personal Connection: I ate an entire plate of it today during our celebration of the Year of the Rabbit. (Hoppy New Year!) This likely flabbergasts my mother, because for most of my childhood, I could not stand broccoli. Or at least I kept telling myself I couldn't stand broccoli, even though I probably went a decade refusing to eat it. But what I really couldn't stand was my mental picture of the broccoli I ate as a very young child. Eating kai-lan in the Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants of Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood made me understand why my mom wanted me to eat it. Well, that and the whole beta-carotene thing, but that still doesn't work on me.

Other Contenders: corn on the cob, eaten close to harvest so the sugar hasn't yet turned to starch; its counterpart baby corn, which dispenses with the whole humans-can't-eat-corncobs nonsense; the black Spanish radish, so hot it's like eating an entire canister of black pepper; the globe artichoke, which may have the lowest edible content-to-weight ratio of any vegetable, but makes up for it in its frequent proximity to melted butter; the humble chickpea, the basis of everything that's right with the Middle East; the pearl onion, which makes all that peeling and crying seem worthwhile; the flower of the Humulus plant, which makes this activity possible.

the most beautiful coaches: Pat Summitt and Geno Auriemma

2010-12-22T23:41:22Z

Who: The coaching titans of women's college basketball, Pat Head Summitt of the Tennessee Lady Vols and Geno Auriemma of the Connecticut Huskies.

Why: The greatest personal rivalry in all of sports is not fought in the trenches of a football field, between the lines of a tennis court, or bumper to bumper on asphalt. That rivalry is played out on the sidelines of college basketball courts in Knoxville and Storrs, and in the media that flocks to those places. That's because the universe of women's college basketball rotates around just two well-tailored stars. On Tennessee's side is Summitt, the winningest Division I basketball coach (male or female) of all time. Summitt is intense but polished, the Maggie Smith of the hardwood. On UConn's side is Auriemma, the best coach of the last 15 years. Auriemma is provocative and unpolished, the kind of person likely to chuck a firecracker into a room just to watch people scatter. Needless to say, they don't always get along; at one point Auriemma called Tennessee "The Evil Empire." What they do is win, often at each other's expense. Between the two, they have 15 national championships, 8 for Summitt and 7-going-on-8 for Auriemma. They have 5 of the sport's 9 perfect seasons, and Auriemma could make it 6 of 10 if his current record-setting 89-game winning streak continues. Auriemma has beaten Summitt in 13 of their 22 meetings, including 4 national championship games. When they meet, the sports universe stops and watches girls play ball.

Impact: Which makes it all the more tragic that they don't any more. After their meeting in January 2007, Summitt called off their annual series, and they haven't faced each other since. The conflict was apparently over Auriemma's tactics in recruiting current Husky powerhouse Maya Moore, but Summitt has never confirmed this. Both coaches got into the Naismith Hall of Fame in part based on their epic clashes, and neither seems interested in showing us why. More's the pity. If there were a UConn-Tennessee game on this week, I would show you what basketball is.

Personal Connection: I've never seen either coach in person, but as a fan of the WNBA's Seattle Storm, I've been the recipient of gifts from Auriemma and Summitt for a decade. With Aussie legend Lauren Jackson, the Storm is anchored by UConn point guard Sue Bird, alongside former Husky teammates Swin Cash and Svetlana Abrosimova and Tennessee star Ashley Robinson. Along the way, Bird and company have brought Seattle two WNBA championships, making the team the most successful pro franchise in city history. Without Summitt and Auriemma, maybe we're just the city that misplaced our NBA team. Thanks to them, we have basketball pride.

Other Contenders: Tex Winter, the originator of the triangle offense that gave Phil, Kobe, and Michael all of their rings; Sam Wyche, whose insane no-huddle offense drove the Cincinnati Bengals to Super Bowl XXIII... in which they were beaten by San Francisco 49ers guru Bill Walsh, whose West Coast Offense drew a blueprint for modern NFL success; Ozzie Guillen, who gets in not on his delightful White Sox championship, but rather his delightful lack of self-censorship; Smokey Yunick, who combined a mastery of physics and a willingness to be the cheatin'est crew chief in NASCAR; Reggie Dunlop, the player-coach who guided the Charleston Chiefs to a Federal League title by playing old time hockey.

the most beautiful space opera episode: The Empire Strikes Back

2010-12-05T18:05:41Z

What: Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, the 1980 sequel to George Lucas's epic. The continuing story of our band of heroes tempted fans with this trailer:

Why: Showing a humility and foresight few would have imagined, George Lucas sought out his old USC film school professor, Irvin Kershner, to direct Empire. Kershner had previously directed such films as the potboiler Eyes of Laura Mars and the espionage spoof S*P*Y*S, none of which would let anyone confuse him with Hitchcock or Fellini. Kershner said no, but his agent insisted. And so, perhaps only to help his protégé, Kershner directed the greatest science-fiction epic ever. The actors, somewhat raw in Star Wars, had now come into their own, showing a range that made even the Han-Leia-Luke (um, ick) love triangle deeply involving. The script by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan was the crispest of the series. Lucas's revelation that Darth Vader was Luke's father blew audiences' minds; if you saw it in the theater on day one like I did, you most assuredly did not see that coming. And oh my, was it pretty. Cloud City, Dagobah, and the ice planet Hoth looked real, and the Rebel battle against the AT-ATs remains unequalled in sci-fi spectacle.

Impact: As the 12th highest grossing film of all time, Empire still can't compete with Star Wars, which is only behind Gone with the Wind on the all-time list. But while Star Wars is the epitome, Empire is the franchise. Star Wars was a closed loop, but Empire doesn't even have an ending. As Luke, Leia, and the droids stare out the window and the Rebel fleet limps off to parts unknown, Lucasfilm challenges you: "You want to know more, right? You really, really do?" We did, and Lucas had the biggest science-fiction franchise in history.

Personal Connection: I've done lots of projects for and around Lucasfilm, working on three Star Wars games and creating a couple dozen puzzles for Star Wars Gamer and Star Wars Insider. My team also ran the Tatooine Parlor at Star Wars Celebration, allowing players to shoot womp rats, play the game Sabacc, and decide who shot first, Han or Greedo. I've enjoyed my relationship with Lucasfilm, as they let me—and hundreds of other creatives—make up cool things for their expansive galaxy. My latest foray commemorated Kershner's passing last week, over on the Wired site, with artist Corey Macourek and I contributing a Star Wars Hanukkah Special. (My biggest contribution to Lucas's empire has nothing to do with Star Wars, though. More on that in another entry.)

Other Contenders: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the brilliant sequel to the original series episode "Space Seed"; "Best of Both Worlds", Star Trek: The Next Generation's indomitable centerpiece; "Toys in the Attic", the most invasive episode of Cowboy Bebop; "Our Mrs. Reynolds", the first impact of Christina Hendricks's Saffron on Firefly; Aliens, which told all other sci-fi horror flicks, "Game over, man!"; "The Girl in the Fireplace", where, on an abandoned spacecraft, Doctor Who falls in love with Madame de Pompadour.

the most beautiful nerd-rock song: Mandelbrot Set

2010-10-18T20:44:28Z

What: "Mandelbrot Set," Jonathan Coulton's fantastical tribute to mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot, whose contributions to fractal geometry were only slightly less legendary than the demon-slaying versions found in the song. Here's Pisut Wisessing's brilliant video to the song, though it doesn't use the complete lyrics. For that, listen to it on JoCo's website.

Why: Nerd rock (or, sometimes, "geek rock") is a genre spawned in the 1990s by musicians weaned on art-rock bands Talking Heads, Oingo Boingo, and XTC. Defining the term "idiosyncratic" better than any other musical genre, nerd rock is played by people who are not ashamed of being smart, except when it's actually about being ashamed of being smart. Former programmer Jonathan Coulton seems to have settled into the role of the king of nerd rock, with songs featuring the themes of office politics in zombieland, extreme cosmetic surgery, and awkward love in a supervillain lair. (Among a million others. Download them all at Coulton's website.) His tour de force is about perhaps the geekiest subject of all: math. Writing for a series of lectures by John Hodgman on the topic of things named after people, Coulton brought the mind-shattering work of Benoît Mandelbrot to an audience that might not understand it, but would come to love it. "Mandelbrot Set" cast the recursive shape as a Rorschach Test on fire, a day-glo pterodactyl, a heart-shaped box of springs and wire, and, most pointedly, one badass fucking fractal. Can't argue.

Impact: Colossal, at least to the audience that reads Penny Arcade and follows Wil Wheaton on Twitter. On the list of scientific formulas known by the American public, the M-set is now #2 all time, right behind e=mc². Like the Preamble to the Constitution, this generation can recite one of the pillars of fractal geometry theory word for word. (Also like reciting the "of the United States"-challenged Preamble from Schoolhouse Rock, we're doing it wrong. The bridge describes a Julia set, not a Mandelbrot set. Eh, it's a better lyric the way JoCo wrote it.)

Personal Connection: Mandelbrot really is in heaven now, having passed away on Friday. Here's my Wired interview with Coulton on the subject. Coulton described to me the Julia set error as an epic fail, but I think it's an epic win. Now, the youth of America knows two fractal geometry formulas.

Other Contenders: They Might Be Giants' genre-establishing "Birdhouse in Your Soul", in all likelihood the only song sung by a nightlight to a caged blue canary; The Presidents of the United States of America's meow remix, "Kitty"; Barenaked Ladies' affecting tribute to troubled musical genius "Brian Wilson"; Weird Al Yankovic's reflective "Bob"; Paul and Storm's ridiculously overlong "The Captain's Wife's Lament", here done with fellow pirate Wil Wheaton at PAX; the Boston Typewriter Orchestra's keyed-up rendition of the Surfaris' "Wipe-Out," renamed (of course) "Wite-Out".

the most beautiful modern neologism: crowdsourcing

2010-09-26T15:20:33Z

What: The rallying of massive decentralized and often anonymous effort through internet appeal, often (and controversially) called "crowdsourcing." The term, a blend of "crowd" and "outsourcing," was coined by Wired reporter Jeff Howe in the June 2006 article "The Rise of Crowdsourcing".

Why: As escribitionists like myself often note, neologisms come and go, and more's the better: If I never hear the portmanteau words staycation, glocalization, and McJob again, I will die a happier man. But some stick around, and we become better for it. In 2006, Wired described a trend that needed naming, because it fundamentally shifted the nature of work. At least until the price of fresh water surpasses it, the cost of labor will always be the most important economic reality on the planet. A project, no matter how noble, requires effort that may not be available for a price that a coordinator can meet. Take, for example, the search for extraterrestrial life in the universe. There are two ways we could get the computing power to scan the heavens: pay for more dedicated radio-telescope analysis systems than we could afford, or ask everyone in the world to help. As the internet went stratospheric, it became possible to reach a large enough audience that collaborators could investigate a government scandal, map the world, or find survivors of a natural disaster. Through controlled applications of chaos theory and Warhol's law, everyone is now a resource for everyone.

Impact: By changing how work works, crowdsourcing has given us a serious question: what if the price of labor is zero? Don't we as a society need people to be paid for their endeavors? The answer, I think, is that sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. Let's take encyclopedias: Is Encyclopedia Britannica hurt by the existence of Wikipedia? Perhaps, but as long as the expectation of crowdsourced quality is suspect, those who are paid to work will be more respected than those who are not. The more interesting question, then, is are we raising a generation of people who hold that ideal? If people want creativity without lag time, answers without expertise, and fundraising without banks, then crowdsourcing will take root. We will become a nation of people expecting everything delivered by strangers at the touch of a button. Maybe we already are.

Personal Connection: If there's a person who's more of a sucker for crowdsourced projects, I haven't met them. I'm an admin on Wikipedia, a contributor to crowdsourced anthologies, and an advocate of microfinance. I've started an entire puzzle website for Wired (there's that magazine again) based on the principle that puzzle people want to tell puzzle people about puzzle things. When a project like the3six5—365 bloggers, 365 essays, 365 days—asks me to join the fun, I can't resist. I don't want to be part of something bigger than me; I want to be part of everything bigger than me. So, if you'd like my help with something, all you have to do is get a thousand other people to help first. Then I'm all yours.

Other Contenders: retronym, a neologism defining neologisms forced to exist due to the creation of later phrases, like "black-and-white TV," "acoustic guitar," "d6," and my favorite, "meatspace"; Keyshawning, cashiering a football player after repeated abuses, named for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' treatment of malcontented receiver Keyshawn Johnson; two keepers from pop songs, unboyfriendable from The Magnetic Fields' "All My Little Words" and interactiveodular from Raffi's "Banana Phone"; Santorum, a sexual term that Stranger columnist Dan Savage named for anti-homosexual Congressman Rick Santorum that... well, don't say I didn't warn you.

the most beautiful proof of advancing civilization: vegetarianism

2010-08-15T14:43:38Z

What: The rise in vegetarianism across the world.

Why: In all honesty, we should not be trending toward vegetarianism. As industry makes the harvesting of animals more efficient and further distant from the consumer, and as global nutrition and the economy improves, we should be eating a lot more meat. But we're not. In a statistically large portion of the world, a light has gone on. Whether it stems from sympathy for animals or fear of artificial hormones or just no longer liking the taste of flesh, those adopting the vegetarian lifestyle are finding they can live perfectly enjoyable lives without meat. It is vastly easier to be a vegetarian in a major city now. Sure, there are places in the U.S. and the rest of the world where it's nearly impossible to be a vegetarian, but even those places are changing. Within a decade, most everywhere in the world, vegetables will no longer just be "what food eats."

Impact: In 1971, 1 percent of Americans self-identified as vegetarians; now, 3 percent do. That's a huge jump. And we're not even leading the movement. In India, a whopping 30 percent of the population is vegetarian. That's as many vegetarians as there are people in the U.S. But the coolest change is not statistical, it's cultural. Restaurants like Seattle's Sutra and Carmelita have found that health and sophistication are not antithetical. You can eat vegetarian and not feel you're missing anything. That's the makings of a revolution.

Personal Connection: So when did I decide to become a vegetarian? In 1986 (yes, of course there was a girl involved), and then, after two months of wanting to blow my brains out, never again. It wasn't missing meat. That took only a week or so to get over. It was the feeling that every time I wanted to go somewhere, I was choosing not to engage myself. I'm a consumer of everything, as this column suggests; I try not to cut myself off from anything but the unhealthiest things. Being vegetarian isn't being me, at least not how I currently imagine myself. I don't apologize for that—not to humans, anyway. But I can admire vegetarians, and I can reach over and try their food, because man, it sure is good these days.

Other Contenders: the many Internet applications of the phrase "everything old is new again," from Project Gutenberg's instant access to every classic book you ever read to Hulu's broadcasting of every TV series you ever loved to Facebook's permanent collection of every friend you ever had; the popularity of the microbrew and the democratization of alcohol; the rise of the empowered daughters of Title IX, the most important piece of administrative law in my lifetime; the tantalizing promise of the first car I want everyone to own, the Honda FCX Clarity; the election of Barack Obama, and the magnificent possibility that if he fails, it will be merely due to his inadequacies and not his skin color.

Note: This entry was inspired by Mark MacKinnon's fascinating new blog Evil Things, which mirrors The Most Beautiful Things in style if not substance. Mark's first entry was on Eating Meat, so I figured that in tribute, I should do one on that subject too. Check his blog out; you'll be glad you did.

the most beautiful military victory: Finland beats everybody

2010-07-18T19:54:39Z

What: Finland stands up to the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and Nazi Germany in World War II, and comes out battered but still standing. Below is the precarious situation at one part of the war, in 1941. The Germans are in grey and black, the Russians are in red, and the Finns are in blue.

Why: Finland broke away from Russia in 1917, when just about everybody bailed on the Revolution. After a civil war of its own, Finland settled into being an independent state, with its border butting up against Leningrad. In their 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Hitler told Stalin he could have Finland free of charge. Trouble was, nobody told the Finns. After shelling their own village to trump up a casus belli, the Russians invaded in what would be called The Winter War. This was an error. Because while the Russians knew how to knuckle down in winter, the Finns knew how to attack in it. Using skis and sleds to outmaneuver the clunky Soviet materiel, the Finns deprived the Russians of their supplies and drove them back at the Battle of Suomussalmi. Still, this was a costly battle. The countries came to a settlement in March 1940, with victorious Finland being declared the loser and giving up 9% of their territory. And then things got really bad. With its eyes on a slavering USSR, Finland found its northern territory swarming with Nazis. The Germans were coming in one way or the other, so Finland let them move all the way to the front lines. That was all the provocation the Russians needed. They came blasting across the border with planes and artillery. This also was an error. With German backing, Finland reconquered Karelia, destroyed the Russian naval bases at Riga and Liepaja, and stood on the doorstep of Leningrad. Meanwhile, Finland faced a new opponent: In the only time WWII democracies battled each other, Great Britain declared war on Finland, but after losing aircraft in a futile attack, the Brits decided to hang back and let the Russians die. During this Continuation War, 1.5 million Soviet soldiers entered Finland; a third of them didn't make it home intact. Eventually, the Soviets gave up. Despite winning this war as well, Finland had to concede huge amounts of territory and half its GDP. And it had one problem remaining: a whole bunch of Germans still within its borders. So Finland went to war a third time, facing a German foe with no hesitation about burning the entire country to the ground. Run ragged from constant combat, Finland's forces finally booted the last occupying force out of its country in 1945. Finally, it could breathe.

Impact: Finland had one goal—survival—and it achieved it. The only country to beat the USSR and Nazi Germany in World War II, Finland gave up so much—territory, lives, money, dignity—but retained its independence. It remained democratic even as an ally with Germany, surrendering only eight Jewish prisoners to the Holocaust. It stood on the sidelines in the Cold War, not an easy thing to do given the reach of the belligerents. And it became a modern oasis of calm; only Norway ranks "lower" on the Failed States Index. It remains the toughest, coolest customer in Europe.

Personal Connection: I like train rides. You learn a lot about an environment by whipping through its countryside at 70 miles an hour. One of the most interesting I ever took was the ride from Helsinki to St. Petersburg in the summer of 1992. During the Northern Lights, the sun never goes down, and so my entire train ride was bathed in radiance. On the Finland side, the landscape was gently manicured, with trees cut just so and arranged in perfect lines. And then it all fell off a cliff. As my dad and I crossed the Russian border, just three years after the Wall came down, the landscape blackened, like I imagined Frodo and Sam saw as they crossed into Mordor. Smokestacks blotted our field of vision, and brutalist concrete residence halls sprung tumorlike from the earth. At that moment, I understood what the Finns were fighting for.

Other Contenders: King Leonidas and 300 Spartans hold the pass at Thermopylae; Hannibal destroys the sense of Roman invincibility at Cannae; young Henry V rallies his band of English brothers at Agincourt on Saint Crispin's Day; Joshua Chamberlain orders the bayonet at Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg; the U.S.S. Archerfish single-handedly takes out the Shinano, the most powerful aircraft carrier in the world, before it sees a minute of action; Israel decides it doesn't want to be invaded during the High Holy Days, thank you very much, in the Yom Kippur War.

the most beautiful guitar signature: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning

2010-07-12T15:00:07Z

What: "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," Richard Thompson's 1991 tale of young hoodlums in love. As it's so hard to play, the studio version trumps any of his live versions, but you have to see him play it live to get just how intricate it is.

Why: The '52 Vincent Black Lightning was the last of the greatest breed of British motorcycle. Faster than anything on two wheels in its day, the Vincent was favored by criminals and policemen alike across Britain. Richard Thompson, already a guitar legend for his work with Fairport Convention and later his wife Linda, cemented his reputation as a solo artist with the album Rumor and Sigh and this song about a young thug named James Agee and his sweetheart Red Molly. Knowing full well that there's nothing in this world that beats a redhead on a motorbike, Thompson crafted a tragic love story around one of the most complex acoustic guitar lines in rock history. He cut it in the Hawaiian slack key of "C wahine," one almost never heard on the mainland except in Fleetwood Mac's stirring "Never Going Back Again". Thompson seems to be playing two different instruments, the dominant one tuned at the highest end of the guitar's range and the other seesawing back and forth on the bass end. Only when you see him perform it live do you realize one person can play both parts. Assuming that person is Richard Thompson, of course.

Impact: Rumor and Sigh became Thompson's most popular solo album, though in Venn diagram of rock, the words "Richard Thompson" and "popular" have a minuscule intersection. It continued a long run of post-divorce songs where true love goes horribly wrong, but unlike "She Twists the Knife Again" and "Missie How You Let Me Down," at least the female character (always Linda) didn't betray the male (always Richard). Then again, James Agee ends up with a gaping hole where his heart should be, so you never know. Nonetheless, "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" remains Thompson's sweetest song, a love ballad to redheads and superbikes everywhere.

Personal Connection: I spent a little time riding my friend's motorcycle in college, but never developed a knack for it. But from the instant I heard this song, I knew I wanted a Vincent Black Lightning. I seized my chance to ride one on the virtual level when plotting the Repo Men ARG for Universal Pictures. The director, Miguel Sapochnik, slipped the nonsense phrase "Fiona rides her bike now" in binary into the film, and I needed a character to deliver a package to Seattle's Scarecrow Video in the ARG. So I gave Fiona the nickname "Red Molly," and her theme song became this one. Like the characters in the song, things didn't work out for her either. It wouldn't have done the song justice if they did.

Other Contenders: surf-rock's jangliest jangler, Dick Dale's "Miserlou"; Link Wray's three-note hellblast, "Rumble"; Nancy Wilson's finger-breaking kickoff to Heart's "Crazy On You"; the Allman Brothers' byplay on "Jessica", adapted as Top Gear's hard-driving theme; Joe Perry's talk-box infusion on Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion"; "Sweet Child O' Mine", Slash's announcement that Guns 'N Roses was now in charge; "Thunderstruck", Angus Young's announcement that AC/DC might nonetheless still be in charge; Tracy Chapman's loping journey through the poverty-stricken "Fast Car"; Beck's highly sampleable fuzzbomb "E-Pro"; The Slip's cloudwalking guitar vocalization toward the end of "Even Rats".

the most beautiful game convention: National Puzzlers' League con

2010-06-30T15:32:40Z

What: The annual gathering of the National Puzzlers' League somewhere in North America in July. This year it is in Seattle, starting tomorrow. Details of the convention can be found here.

Why: The National Puzzlers' League is the world's oldest puzzle organization, founded in 1883. At the time, its members gathered in small groups in hotels to solve word puzzles and trade amusing stories. 127 years and 170 conventions later, that's exactly what still happens. Master of ceremonies Will Shortz, he of the New York Times crossword and National Public Radio, leads the gathering in a dozen or more official games prepared by members, usually for all the attendees at once. The unofficial games, though, are what many most look forward to. There's walkaround puzzlehunts, homemade Jeopardy! games, insane charades, and puzzling till all hours. At one convention in Cambridge, members noticed that the courtyard was made of large square shapes. So they gave 16 attendees large signs with letters on them, had them run around the squares, and turn their signs toward the heavens. Why, you ask? Well, imagine you are on the 14th floor of the hotel looking out a window. That's the biggest Boggle game you're ever gonna play. Only at the NPL con could that happen.

Impact: The NPL is where all the best puzzlers end up. It's hard to call a group with a public website and a public convention a "secret society," but it's possible that if you walked into its convention you might think you'd joined one. Everyone has a nickname, called a "nom," which helps obscure the fact that some of them are famous (Will Shortz's is "WILLz," or "Will short z") and some are not. The noms make everyone equal; if you walk in the door, you'll be welcomed and put to work solving something bizarre. It is where many of us made the best friends we've ever had.

Personal Connection: When I started creating puzzles for a living, my editors Henry Rathvon, Emily Cox, Mike Shenk, and Will all lobbied me to join the NPL. Said it would be the best decision I ever made. I catch on quickly, so a decade later, I took the plunge under the nom Slik (letters read left to right in my last name). Seven years later, I went to a convention in Montreal, and got a lot of the "Oh my gosh you're Mike Selinker I've wanted to meet you for years I'm so glad you joined here solve this you have forty-five seconds" kind of comments. I haven't missed any of the 16 cons since. If you go to the one in downtown Seattle at the Red Lion starting tomorrow, there's a good chance your Julys will have a permanent itinerary item. Come on along, and bring your brain. It'll never be the same afterward.

Other Contenders: I can hardly be fair about this, since I work for or at all these shows. But I will strongly recommend PAX in Seattle and Boston, Gen Con in Indianapolis, and Origins in Columbus. I've been to something like 48 of those, and had a great time every one. There are lots of other smaller conventions, so seek one out and join the fun.

the most beautiful song about the rain: I Can't Stand the Rain

2010-06-06T17:28:43Z

What: Ann Peebles' delicate 1973 chartbuster "I Can't Stand the Rain," performed by many artists, but none as delightfully as Eruption in their awesome 1978 bug suits:

Why: This is the third of my couldn't-miss-if-you-tried trio of song subjects, the first being the moon and the second being trains. Songwriters daily thank the gods for Seasonal Affective Disorder, for songs about rain hit upon feelings we develop before we can talk. That first giant raindrop that hit your tiny head and sent you screaming back into the house returns when you hear the pitter-patter of a song about rain. On "I Can't Stand the Rain," Ann Peebles and her co-writers Don Bryant and Bernard Miller channeled that terror in the timbales and minor-key horns of her original soulful dirge. Five years later, Eruption stripped out the unease of the original for a wholly different disco sound, making the rain a harder keyboard drive. Either way, the rain signature pounds into your brain, making you remember that bad day you waited for that call while watching the windows streak with water. That was a day you'll never forget, and never want to.

Impact: It was the next cover version to hit the charts, Tina Turner's 1983 powerhouse cover on Private Dancer, that exposed most of the world to Peebles' classic. Propelled by the greatest voice (on the greatest pair of legs) the music world has ever produced, Turner moved the song into the pantheon. Then Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott remodeled the pantheon's walls entirely on her visually arresting 1997 breakthrough "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)", which sampled Peebles' original vocal. It's rare to have a song with four hit versions that sound so radically different, and all so original.

Personal Connection: I grew up an only child in Seattle, and spent a lot of time silently looking out water-streaked windows. As a result, I can stand the rain. I don't wear rain hats, carry umbrellas, or cancel picnics. If the air is dry, I think there's something wrong; if the sun is beating down, I think there's something wrong with everyone who wants to go outside. I am a rainchild, and will always be. This song makes me think of happy things.

Other Contenders: Billie Holliday's rain is a similarly oppressive reminder of loneliness in her live "Stormy Weather"; The Beatles' rain is a trifling inconvenience in Ringo's signature song, "Rain"; The Doors' rain is a gentle tattoo in a dark world in "Riders on the Storm"; The Alarm's rain is a treasured respite from the heat in "Rain in the Summertime"; Guns 'N Roses' rain is a histrionic destroyer of bliss in "November Rain"; John Hiatt's rain is a reason for cuddling closer in "Feels Like Rain"; Stevie Ray Vaughan's rain is a Texas flood of negative emotion in "Couldn't Stand the Weather"; Bambi's rain is a Vivaldian intimation of one little fawn's insignificance in "Little April Shower".

the most beautiful portrayer of crazy people: Dennis Hopper

2010-05-30T03:58:44Z

Who: Actor and director Dennis Hopper, who passed away today at age 74. Here he is in an immortal confluence of cool on The Johnny Cash Show, loopily reciting Rudyard Kipling's poem "If," which as he notes, is the middle word in "life."

Why: Dennis Hopper never let you forget he was onscreen. Maybe he picked this up from James Dean, alongside whom he had some bit roles in Rebel Without a Cause and Giant. Cool Hand Luke had to have a goggle-eyed piehead in the background when Luke eats fifty eggs, and Hopper fit the bill. In his film Easy Rider, he set his template: kinda likable, kinda scary guy on the edge. In Hoosiers, as alkie hoops fan Shooter Flatch, he pushed it one direction; in Blue Velvet, as sociopath Frank Booth, he pushed it another direction altogether. But it was the action film Speed that will be Hopper's most enduring work. Therein, he seemed completely at home in his own skin, tearing up the screen with enjoyment at being a mad bomber. It didn't seem like much of a stretch.

Impact: Hopper was a crowd favorite, the kind of actor more likely to win an MTV Moon Man than an Oscar, though he was nominated for a couple of the latter. Over time, a Hollywood outsider became one of Hollywood's most dependable actors. Need a centerpiece for your Best Picture TV spinoff? You need Dennis Hopper. Need a narrator for your documentary about a porn film? Hopper'd do that too. Just don't expect your leading man to be the best thing about your project. Hopper's taking that with him on the way out. After all, he could even make this worth watching. (A bit.)

Personal Connection: Time to talk about the power of Facebook. It is without question the single most important news site in the world. How did you find out about Hopper's death, or Gary Coleman's yesterday? There's at least a 50% chance that you found out on Facebook. If I'd told you ten years ago that the term "news feed" would define a network of reports by your friends, and that you would trust it more than CNN, you'd have thought I was as loopy as one of Hopper's characters. But that's where we are. It's a fascinating world.

Other Contenders: Christopher Walken, who makes the space between words into an art form; Ed Norton, who always sounds reasonable till suddenly he doesn't; Joe Pantoliano—what!; Gary Oldman, your go-to fella for conscienceless wise-cracking badguy; Rutger Hauer, who makes creepy charming, and charming creepy; and while we're on The Hitcher, there's the mistress of both scary-crazy and sympathetic-crazy, Jennifer Jason Leigh (and yes, that movie is terrible, but there's no video of her in David Auburn's Proof on the internet).

the most beautiful humorous reference book: Our Dumb Century

2010-05-23T03:25:20Z

What: Our Dumb Century: The Onion Presents 100 Years of Headlines from America's Finest News Source, a 1999 "compilation" of more than 100 fictional newspaper front pages from the years 1900 to 2000. (The Onion itself, as it turns out, has only been published since 1988, despite some evidence elsewise. But that little detail didn't stop them.) It is published by Three Rivers Press and randomly serialized on The Onion's site.

Why: It's hard work being funny. One joke can take days to craft. So imagine your job was to create thousands of jokes about everything that's happened in a hundred years. That's the job the Onion's editors took on toward the end of the twentieth century, running the world through its uniquely grief-colored glasses. The newspaper warps from a broadsheet to a USA Today-clone tabloid, spewing forth quarter-column-inch throwaway headlines ranging from "Unsingable Song Of Explosions And Defeat Becomes New National Anthem" to "Spielberg Reveals The Two Secrets Of His Success: Monsters, Jews." Every trial is the "trial of the century." Lady Liberty gets repeatedly assaulted by caricatures of America's foes. Pop culture icons become real: Peter Parker dies from a radioactive spider bite, Mr. Potter pays 50 cents on the dollar, and Sharon Tate is slain by the Partridge Family. Zapped! sweeps the Oscars. And it all makes perfect sense. Here are some highlights:
April 22, 1906: "Earth-Quake Marks Least Gay Day In San Francisco History"
October 22, 1929: "Stock Market Invincible: 'Buy, Buy, Buy!' Experts Advise"
September 3, 1939: "WA— (Headline Continued On Page 2)"
July 28, 1953: "Korean War Ends In Tearful 3-Hour Finale"
July 21, 1969: "Holy Shit! Man Walks On Fucking Moon"
November 20, 1978: "Anthropomorphic Juice Pitcher Among Dead In Jonestown Cult Suicide"
May 26, 1996: "Oprah Secedes From U.S., Forms Independent Nation Of Cheesecake-Eating Housewives"

Impact: Our Dumb Century became a #1 bestseller, aptly enough, on April 1, 1999. It came out amid a hurricane of centenniospectives from important-sounding publications like Time and Life. They're all useless, landfilled on some metaphorically obvious ashheap. That's because they portrayed the century as smart. The Onion knows better, and so its book will last forever. The Onion followed it up in 2007 with Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth (free globe inside!), an equally biting and brutal tome, where Nigeria's entry is a chain letter and Nicaragua's is a flashback to the NES game Contra. I hope there's an encyclopedia in their future. (Bonus fun fact: The Onion is the first thing that comes up when you type "onion" into Google. What, that's not all that fun? Okay, try just typing "the".)

Personal Connection: I can remember exactly where I was when I first saw The Onion. My mates and I were hanging in The Daily Northwestern offices plotting some no-doubt-revelatory investigation of pop prices in the student union. Some plugged-in freshman wandered in with a copy of an early printing of The Onion, saying "This is what the J-students are doing in Madison." Now, you have to understand that this was the top of the class of the best journalism school in the world, bound for the best newspapers in the country. And to a man, every one of us said, "Can we go to school there?"

Other Contenders: Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary, wherein, for example, "accordion" is defined as "an instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin"; The Lazlo Letters, a series of insane letters to businesses and politicians from Don "Father Guido Sarducci" Novello's lunatic patriot Lazlo Toth, and the letters he gets back; James Gilbert's The World's Worst Aircraft, which will teach you never to get in something called a "Christmas Bullet"; The Darwin Awards: Evolution in Action, which you should read if you don't want to be in one of its sequels.

Programming note: Speaking of centuries, this is column #100 of The Most Beautiful Things. Thanks for coming along for the last 100, and for the next. (Update: Except it isn't. It's #101, and I can't count. But I still can be thankful for people reading this.)

the most beautiful joke: the duck joke

2010-05-08T20:25:18Z

What: The duck joke. Here it is told, sort of, by James Ernest, while I try to ruin it, at yesterday's w00tstock in Seattle.

Since that probably didn't help much, here it is in its entirety:
A duck walks into a bar, and asks the bartender, "Do you have any grapes?"
The bartender says, "I'm sorry, Duck. We're a bar, and so we have wine and beer and mixed drinks. But no grapes." The duck is sad, and leaves the bar.
The next night, the duck comes back into the bar and asks, "Do you have any grapes?"
The bartender says, "No, Duck, I told you last night. We don't have any grapes! And if you come back in here tomorrow night asking for grapes, I will nail your beak to the bar!" The duck hops down off the bar and runs out the door.
The next night, the bartender is waiting for the duck to come back in, and sure enough, he does. The bartender grits his teeth as the duck asks, "Do you have a hammer?"
The bartender explodes. "What? No, of course I don't have a hammer!"
So the duck says, "Do you have any grapes?"

Why: Upon hearing the duck joke from us, Adam Savage of Mythbusters wondered aloud why it worked so well. The answer, I hypothesized, is that every key word—duck, bar, grapes, hammer—is maximized for funny. (Imagine it with a chicken, a restaurant, some apples, and a mallet. See, no joke.) The joke has been optimized for the rule of three (westerners expect jokes to have three parts); when told in Japan, it is optimized for their rule of four. Everything in the duck joke has been tested and re-tested. It's the game designer's joke.

Impact: Thus and so, the duck joke has become "The Aristocrats" of the gaming industry. It is infinitely malleable, as evidenced by the German version, the Japanese version, the D&D version, the pirate version, the Office Space version (which replaces the hammer with a stapler), and dozens of others. Should the producers of The Aristocrats be reading this, we would happily direct a film for you about a joke that has an ending.

Personal Connection: I have told the duck joke more times than I can count, since I never started counting. So when geek god Wil Wheaton asked us to write a puzzle uniting the four w00tstock shows, it was a natural fit for the first of our four "juzzling" (puzzling + juggling) videos, which you can solve along with the w00tstockers as the videos get posted. And if you're near Portland, Chicago, or Minneapolis, get thee to a w00tstock!

Other Contenders: the easy-to-mangle riddle beginning "What's E.T. short for?", first related to me by jangler_npl; the tragical tale of Angus the industrious Scotsman; the striking byplay between two muffins baking in an oven; three quarterbacks testify before God (note: I believe that the order of the last two may have flipped in recent years); the ultimate when playing the dozens: "Yo mama's so fat, she wore an X jacket and a helicopter landed on her back."

Update: Here is part two of the w00tstock routine, shown in Portland on May 8, and featuring the Angus joke. Also, there's part three from Chicago and part four from Minneapolis. For answers, see our Wired Decode site.

the most beautiful sign of spring: the return of the ospreys

2010-05-03T03:29:30Z

What: The clockwork return of mated pairs of ospreys to the Pacific Northwest in early spring, to raise a family before returning south to California in the fall.

Why: Ospreys wake us up from our winter doldrums, returning every year as mated pairs to the same places they spent previous summers. As with our bald eagles, ospreys are raptors. But while an eagle will prey on rodents, the osprey is almost exclusively a pescetarian. It is living proof of the central tenet of evolution—that species will evolve merely as far as they must to survive—in that an osprey has reversible outer toes which lock with the front claws allow grasping slippery fish from the water. But if an osprey grasps something it cannot lift, it cannot let go. If that thing is in the water, the osprey may drown. That fact is well known in Seattle, making the osprey more sympathetic than the infallible bald eagle. (The fact that it might not be entirely true rarely disturbs us. What, you think we moved here for the science?)

Impact: The osprey is the Seattle area's avian mascot of choice. We named an occasionally dodgy military aircraft after the osprey, for example. Since it is often known in these parts as the seahawk, we also named a football team after it, giving them a gorgeous nest that gives full view of the ospreys plunging into Puget Sound for meals. (During the Sounders games, of course. The ospreys fly to Cali for NFL season.) If you'd like to learn more true scientific facts about the seahawk, let the Presidents of the United States of America tell you about our most noteworthy one.

Personal Connection: The cell tower's benefits are obvious. Certainly, it enables a world of communication never dreamt before. But the cell tower's design—a rail-ringed flat base atop a mammoth pole—is also the perfect nesting ground for an osprey family. Many of our cell towers are now protected wildlife sanctuaries, and one of them is in the driveway leading up to our house. So every year about this time, when we see massive shapes wing across the sky, we rush out with our binoculars to see Hassel and Becky come home. We watch for newborns to emerge from the nest, and for their feathers to turn white. Then we watch them leave. You can keep your summer reruns; I've got the only channel I need.

Other Contenders: the long-awaited opening of tulips; the kites blotting out the sky over Gasworks Park in Seattle; the beautiful dynamic of the NHL playoffs; the pickling of asparagus; the arrival and demolition of Cadbury Mini-Eggs; the traditional Easter Monday bottle-kicking and hare pie scramble in Hallatan, England, far and away the dumbest and most violent "ball sport" in the world; WXRT-FM in Chicago plays its annual April Fool's joke.

the most beautiful role for a child star: 2ge+her's Q.T.

2010-04-10T15:56:09Z

What: Michael Cuccione's performance as Jason "Q.T." McKnight on the 1999-2001 MTV mockumentary series 2ge+her, spotlighting a prefab boy band. In this clip, impresario Bob Buss introduces Q.T. to his new bandmates.

Why: 2ge+her was a perfectly timed show. The audiences for the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync were just starting to become self-aware, gaining a sense that they were being fed empty calories. The Gunn Brothers' 2ge+her was entirely empty calories, provided by singers with empty heads. The band consisted of heartthrob Jerry, shy boy Chad, rebel Mickey, and (way) older brother Doug. But 2ge+her wasn't quite together until manager Buss recruited Q.T., the cute one. Q.T. came with impish good looks, a silky voice, and a secret weapon to make the pre-ladies swoon: a terminal case of biliary thrombosis. (Q.T. on his disease: "Dude, we're gonna get so many chicks.") United, the band rolled out a series of catchy hits such as "U + Me = Us (Calculus)" and "The Hardest Part of Breaking Up (Is Getting Back Your Stuff)". They opened for Britney Spears, with Q.T. likely getting to second base with more than a few of her plaid-skirted fans. Then they vanished. 2ge+her may not have been 2ge+her 4ever, but for a moment, they were the funniest thing on TV.

Impact: Oh yeah, one other little detail: Just like his character, Michael Cuccione was also dying. Cuccione didn't just suffer his stage 2 Hodgkin's lymphoma in silence; he took it to the people. At age 11, his Make-a-Wish request was to play a cancer victim on Baywatch. Hardly afraid to wear his impending death on his sleeve, at age 14 he played his ailment for laughs on 2ge+her. But it couldn't last. As season 2 began, he suffered serious breathing problems and had to miss tapings of several episodes. After a car accident, he entered the hospital and never left it. At age 16, actor and cancer activist Michael Cuccione died, having taught a generation how to deal with death. 2ge+her folded after his passing, a permanent reminder of how vapid the music business can be when it tries hard enough.

Personal Connection: The MTV I knew just played music videos, except for a few series that played specific kinds of music videos. I had long given up on the Real Road World Rules-generation's MTV, but 2ge+her sucked me back in. The cleverness of the concept got me there, but I stayed to watch Cuccione. Perhaps it was the rare opportunity to watch someone die with dignity, in complete control of what little he could control. When I go, that's how I'm going out.

Other Contenders: Philip Alford and Mary Badham ham it up in To Kill a Mockingbird; Haley Joel Osment has a secret in The Sixth Sense; Kirsten Dunst is a cute little dead girl in Interview with the Vampire; Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Jerry O'Connell, and Corey Feldman walk a dead man's curve in Stand by Me; Natalie Portman is a semi-pro in Léon; Emil Minty sure likes his boomerang in The Road Warrior; Joey Calvan rewrites the alphabet on Sesame Street.

the most beautiful magazine feature: Wired's artifacts from the future

2010-04-05T15:28:16Z

What: Wired magazine's end-of-book Found page, featuring a heavily Photoshopped photo of an artifact from the future. Here is May 2007's "Fido Fusion," clearly the best way to procure a dog. I mean, who wouldn't want a dorkie?

Why: Wired's editors figured out Photoshop before anyone else. They realized that it could not only make things prettier, but also that it could make things. So each issue, they concoct an intricate vision in their virtual workshop. Look at the slides from this 2013 Happy Meal. The burger is vat-grown Kobe beef. The box has a mini-fryer, a disposable iPod, and a diabetes warning. The Coke has a tunable flavor infusion system and a free sample of Flintstones Ritalin. Welcome to the future.

Impact: The artifacts take our measure like nothing else on earth. Walking a laser beam between winsome and terrifying, the pieces are masterworks of plausible deniability—plausible, because they could happen, and deniable, because, ha ha, I mean seriously, we're not going to let it go that far, are we? Well, are we?

Personal Connection: My phone rings a lot. When Wired's Chris Baker called early last year and asked if Lone Shark could help them and producer J.J. Abrams transform the May 2009 issue into a festival of puzzles and mysteries, we said yes. Then Wired's Nick Thompson asked if we could build a manhunt to chase reporter Evan Ratliff across the country, and we said yes to that too. We've been saying yes a lot to Wired; on one day this week, I worked on four different Wired projects, including the mind-exploding Repo Men hunt we did with Universal Pictures on wired.com. Sadly, I haven't yet gotten a chance to envision an artifact, but I hope to eventually. After all, the future is soon.

Other Contenders: Martin Gardner's long-running column on mathemagical distractions in Scientific American; Harper's Index, a logical way of looking at a world which defies logic; Games' influential fake ads, a trick which I've copied more times than I can count; Highlights' coolly moralistic Goofus & Gallant, the adventures of two boys who could not be more different; Mad's fold-in, a near-certain method of destroying your issue's resale value.

the most beautiful bit of psychedelia: Ralph Steadman's Alice

2010-03-07T17:17:29Z

What: Illustrator Ralph Steadman's acid-trippy version of Lewis Carroll's classics Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, first published in 1967 by Dennis Dobson of London, then alongside The Hunting of the Snark as The Complete Alice in the definitive 1986 Jonathan Cape version.

Why: A youthful and enthusiastic commercial illustrator in the mid-1960s, Ralph Steadman convinced a completely sane publisher to let him take a crack at the children's book Alice in Wonderland. Except Steadman knew Alice in Wonderland wasn't a children's book, and that children were about to be very different than parents of the day expected them to be. So Steadman crafted a work of psychedelia as mind-bendy as anything Moby Grape was dropping on San Francisco. Everything in seen Steadman's Wonderland is not quite right: the Cheshire Cat has tuned in, turned on, and dropped out; the playing cards are about ready for a dock strike; the Mad Tea Party could easily morph into an SDS meeting; and lord knows what the Caterpillar's been smoking. Steadman took it as far from the Disney cartoon as it could go, which I'm sure Carroll would've preferred. If little Alice Liddell grew up and went to Berkeley, this is what her life would be like.

Impact: Alice made Steadman the most popular illustrator of the acid generation. He formed a friendship with fellow gonzo Hunter S. Thompson, whose hyperjournalistic works he illustrated to perfection. He continued his lucrative commercial work in his eclectic style; I expect a bottle of Steadman-labeled Bonny Doon Cardinal Spiced Zin would not be appropriate for certain functions. But mostly he just painted whatever was on his mind for the next half century, and what his mind was on was always in question.

Personal Connection: I don't actually like drugs at all, but despite that, this is my Alice. I got Steadman's book as a child and have never wavered from dubbing it the only Alice that matters. But I always like it when Carrollinians of all types venture into this psychedelic territory. There's the Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit", of course, and Tom Petty's genre-defining music video for "Don't Come Around Here No More". And just this weekend, director Tim Burton took his trip down the rabbit hole. I'm particularly delighted with this last one, since Disney Interactive asked us to write the riddles for their Alice in Wonderland iPhone game. If I had to define the phrase "my dream project," I could do no better than Alice + Burton + riddles + iPhone. (See the comments for the most beautiful day in Wizards of the Coast history.)

Other Contenders: artist Robert Indiana's LOVE Christmas card, the design that launched a thousand skateparks; Tommy James & the Shondells' floaty "Crimson and Clover"; Vanishing Point, a movie about the pointlessness of chasing anything (Guns 'N Roses fans: watch this); the fab pre-Blue Meanies train wreck that is the Beatles cartoon; Mati Klarwein's 1961 collage Annunciation, used years later as the cover art for Santana's must-listen Abraxas album; Jimi Hendrix's entire catalogue, of which I'll offer "Little Wing" as an example; Le Flashbic, the infectious pas de deux of the pangolins Bic and Bac from the French cartoon Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea.

the most beautiful football player: Mike Singletary

2010-02-07T17:43:59Z

Who: Mike Singletary, the dominant middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears' teams from 1981-1992. Here is Singletary's Pro Football Hall of Fame induction video:

Why: I know, I know. I've picked a Chicagoan for my baseball and basketball players from the decade I lived there, and you saw me picking a Bear from a mile away. But you're still puzzled, because it's not Walter Payton. "Sweetness" almost got the nod; he was a transcendent running back with man-of-the-year personal qualities. But it just didn't feel right picking an offensive player from that 1985 Bears championship, because that ain't how they got it. That prize was gained by the legendary Monsters of the Midway defense. Their 46 defense, perfected by D-coach Buddy Ryan, is a scheme so risky, you might lose every game if you don't have the best players, and especially the best middle linebacker. The "mike" (no, really) has the toughest job on the field; he has the equivalent role of the quarterback, except the quarterback knows what the quarterback is going to do. (Consider the mike's job the rough equivalent of dancing backwards in high heels.) And in the 46, which gives up the middle of the field to the QB, you need a visionary. As you can see from the photo here, Singletary was quite literally one of those—his eyes were the scariest thing on the football field. On a play, Singletary's eyes would bulge out, boring X-ray vision into the brain of the opposing quarterback, catching every nuance, every hesitation, every hopeless attempt at misdirection. Singletary knew what the quarterback was going to do before he could communicate that to his offense. And since the greatest defense in history followed Singletary's every command, the quarterback was toast. For a game about large men running into each other, football is all about intelligence, and you did not want to try to outthink Samurai Mike.

Impact: Bone-crushing. That 1985 team had a 18-1 Super Bowl run which allowed just ten points in the divisional round, NFC championship, and Super Bowl XX combined. Singletary was first or second on his team in tackles for 11 straight seasons, ending the promise of countless plays. He was defensive MVP twice, and a ten-time Pro Bowler. But it's those brains that got him where he is today: a talented and entertaining head coach of a promising San Francisco 49ers team. Yeah, I have trouble looking at that picture too, because those samurai eyes are wearing glasses. Maybe that's to shield his players from the aforementioned withering glare. Or heat vision. I'm not entirely sure.

Personal Connection: Despite that decade in Chicago, I only got to see Singletary play once. Truth to tell, as awesome as the Bears were during those years, they weren't that lovable. Mike Ditka's Bears crushed fools, and bragged about it. For someone who grew up rooting for the underdog, that was a bit off-putting. But I eventually got it; the Bears were built on ending aspirations, not building them up. Singletary was the assassin of other people's dreams. And so I followed Singletary's career more than any other Bear, pretty darn certain I'd never see anyone like him again. Thankfully for football fans some years later, then-Ravens assistants Rex Ryan (son of Buddy) and Singletary had other thoughts.

Other Contenders: Sweetness, of course; the two most rock-solid QBs, who happened to share a uniform if not a city, the golden-armed Johnny Unitas of the Baltimore Colts and the microsurgeon Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts; linebacker Mike Vrabel, who also caught eleven passes in his time with the Patriots and Chiefs, all for touchdowns; Elbert "Ickey" Woods, the most entertaining player on the most watchable team ever, Sam Wyche's Cincinnati Bengals; New Orleans Saints linebacker Scott Fujita, whom you might just like even if you can't stand football.

the most beautiful imaginary supergroup: The Who-tles

2010-02-01T23:26:37Z

What: The long-rumored (since 9:30 this morning), once-in-a-lifetime uniting of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr—the surviving members of The Beatles—and Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey—the surviving original members of The Who—for a whizbang supergroup megaconcert dubbed "The Who-tles." Or, if you prefer, "The Beat-Whos," or maybe "The Who-Be's." Whatever. Here's a photo of the New Fab Four in their nonexistent younger days, crafted in Photoshop by my handsome and sophisticated Loonbucket Brigade co-conspirator, Corey Macourek. Will you still see them, will you still feel them, now that they're 64?

Why: With apologies to the Kinks and Stones, these are the two biggest bands of the British Invasion. With their success has come tragedy at every turn. An assassin robbed us of The Beatles' rhythm guitarist, John Lennon; drugs took The Who's drummer Keith Moon and bassist John Entwistle; cancer silenced The Beatles' lead guitarist, George Harrison. Despite this week's Super Bowl halftime show, The Who isn't real without a massive rhythm section; The Beatles can't even imagine reuniting without their legendary guitar and vocal duo. But if The Who had The Beatles' backbone, they'd rock much harder; if The Beatles had The Who's frontmen, they'd blow everyone's minds. It is time for these bands to realize their mutual losses are an opportunity for the greatest rock act of all time. It is time for The Who-tles.

Impact: What could you imagine paying for that ticket? Three hundred dollars? A thousand? Five thousand? Even in this economy, that band could fill Wembley for a month at those prices. What if it were a charity benefit to reconstruct Haiti? The gate could build an entire hospital from the ground up. How long would the album stay at #1 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart? That's not measured in weeks, it's measured in years. Do The Who-tles go into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, despite its members being in already? I say yes. Paul, Roger, Pete, Ringo: It's too good an idea not to do.

Personal Connection: Let's be clear: This is the best idea I've ever had*. But it goes nowhere unless the rock star royalty hears about it. At last count, these senior citizens don't have Facebook accounts. We need a groundswell so loud that even Pete Townshend can hear it. Leave a comment even if you don't have a LiveJournal account. Start a Facebook group. Tweet it all day long. If you're going to unite around something that doesn't matter, this is it. Bang the drum.

Other Contenders: It's hard to put anything else in this conversation, but can I interest you in New Order and Lou Reed forming a new Joy Division? How about Barenaked Ladies fronted by Brian Wilson? Axl Rose accepting his destiny and joining Queen full-time? Feel free to dream out loud.

*Inspired in part by a throwaway comment by muskrat_john. All hail the Muskrat King.