Horsefeathers! Animal Crackers!Yesterday when I went jogging in the morning, I noticed that the roof of my carport was covered in frost. Frost! The first I recall seeing in California (other than the viewed-at-a-great-distance snow on top of the mountains last winter). It made for a brisk run. However, I've totally geeked out (partly in preparation for colder nights of Ultimate next year) and bought some jogging tights, so it wasn't too bad.
 News from friends: Karen wrote me that she defended her Ph.D. oral examination earlier this week, and passed. Woo-hoo! Karen and I started grad school at UW-Madison at the same time - fall of 1991. I bailed after three years to go work for Epic, but she stuck it out, switching focuses, passing her prelim, and now it sounds like it's all over but the shouting. Now she's going off to become a professor. Good for her! I tend to doubt I'll ever go back to get my Ph.D. I don't have a strong desire to teach or to specifically do research, though I think working with students would be fun. But, I think I've had enough of the student lifestyle for this life.
I watched my first episode of the Avengers cartoon series (Saturday mornings on Fox Kids), based on the comic book. It was not very good. The script was over-the-top but might have been fine if the actors' delivery hadn't been likewise ham-handed. Ugh. And all of the characters (the team features Ant Man, The Wasp, Hawkeye, The Falcon, Tigra, The Vision, and The Scarlet Witch) have had their costumes radically re-designed from their comic book equivalents. They're all too busy, and don't really mean anything. (When The Scarlet Witch's costume isn't even crimson anymore, you know someone's not on the ball.) I mean, why bother? I chuckled - surely, not by design of the creators - at a sequence where Ant Man and The Falcon are "suiting up" against an abstract background in dynamic poses that I suppose are intended to be exciting, but don't do a single thing to advance the story. I guess they probably appeal to kids - I remember similar things in the few anime shows I watched as a kid, and from the one episode of Sailor Moon I stumbled over a while back - but they do absolutely nothing to advance the story. I was really thinking, "Geez, what sort of 'writer' or 'director' takes a 40-second time out from his story for this stuff?" Oh, and the animation is stiff and generally unimaginative. Overall the show is a very far cry from the excellent Batman/Superman Adventures on Kids WB.
Tonight Subrata and I went to see a couple of Marx Brothers movies, Horsefeathers (1932) and Animal Crackers (1930). Tracy told me that Animal Crackers is her favorite Marx Bros movie, so I figured I couldn't miss it. David Packard told us beforehand that the prints of these films are not so good, and that the prints we saw are actually from the UCLA film archive, but have not been restored. The film quality was often grainy, and bits of scenes dropped out from time-to-time, which was disastrous in moments where Groucho and Chico were having a full-speed-ahead exchange. Pity. Horsefeathers is not a particularly strong film. The plot is cellophane-thin, even for a Marx Bros movie. It involves Professor Wagstaff (Groucho) hiring a couple of schlubs (Harpo and Chico) to help win the upcoming football game for Huxley College. Zeppo Marx plays Wagstaff's son, Frank, and is basically just a straight man. The story wanders around to provide an excuse for Groucho and Chico to (more or less) woo the female lead in the story, and winds up with antics at the game. It's pretty amusing, but not outstanding. Seeing Groucho sing and dance in the opening number is entertaining, however; it takes a lot of talent to look at uncoordinated! Animal Crackers is much better, with Groucho playing Captain Spaulding, fresh from Africa. He arrives at the mansion of Mrs. Rittenhouse (Margaret Dumont) for a party in his honor at which noted painter Roscoe Chandler (Louis Sorin) is unveiling a famous original he's recently acquired. Zeppo plays Groucho's right-hand-man, while Chico and Harpo play the entertainment for the party. The plot involves two different substitutions of the painting with imitations. Groucho gets to ham it up in grand fashion as a famous individual who is being honored in the story. He bosses Zeppo around, and gets into an extended exchange with Chico about who might have taken the painting. And you always know that this is going to lead to Groucho with his head resting resignedly on his hand making catty remarks about Chico's theories. Plus there are lines like this:
Groucho: Have you ever seen cole slaw?(Subrata - who doesn't care for puns - commented afterwards that he wasn't sure why he actually came to see a Marx Bros film with me!) It's easy to see from these films why Zeppo later left the troupe: He's at most a straight man, and has very little to do. He's completely overshadowed by his three brothers. On the other hand, watching Chico play piano and Harpo play (duh) the harp is pretty educational. I doubt many people of my generation have much familiarity with the harp (I sure don't) and watching Harpo's technique at making its various sounds is revealing. It was a good time. I dimly recall thinking that A Night at the Opera is somewhat better than either of these, though.
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