Christmas with Dennis II: Electric Boogaloo

 

It's been 5 years now since I first celebrated Christmas with Dennis and I have celebrated Christmas with Dennis, perhaps not every year, but many times since.

Well, there is a sequel - canonically entitled "Dennis Awe: An Awesome Christmas." And this edition has a number of guest stars including Pat Boone and Donna Douglas (Elly May from "The Beverly Hillbillies") as well as a giant Shoji Tabuchi-size audience.

The organ playing is excellent, the special has all the quality you'd expect from Dennis. But early on it becomes apparent that there is a strict separation between the performance and the giant applauding crowds. The game within the game is this: will there ever be a shot that establishes the performers and the audience are in the same place? Spoiler alert: it never comes.

At 46:00, it's time for Dennis' sister DyAnne to shine. You don't need me to tell you that her playing charges the special's atmosphere with eroticism.

At 1:35:30 the special completely gives away the game as it tries to pass off a split-screen gag as taking place in front of the "live" audience. There's no question anymore.

Finally, you might go to 1:47:15 to see Dennis do a comedy double-act with someone other than himself. And I won't give it away, but at this point the special sinks to new lows. I was hoping, "Surely, they're not going to do this." But they did it. Oh, they did it.

The Oldest Known Recording of Jingle Bells

 From 1898.

People back then had a much "freer" notion of rhythm, I guess.

Late Night - Diane Sawyer's Expose

 

The Letterman channel has been uploading segments from Dave's Film Festival lately. It's an interesting concept and new to me but there are more misses than hits.

I like this Diane Sawyer piece, partly because I miss Diane Sawyer. I'm going to send this to my parents, I think it's especially for the Boomer crowd.

Late Show Staff - Will Forte

 

Former writer Will Forte talks about his experience working on the Late Show.

I'm amazed. Firstly, I didn't know Will Forte was a writer on the Late Show. Secondly, I didn't know there was a MacGruber TV show.

Calling Out Josh Groban

 Or: "Partially Ruining a Christmas Classic"

Driving to my parents house with the Christmas music on the radio and Josh Groban's rendition of "O Holy Night" comes on. I noticed something askew.

It's a high quality rendition of a classic song for the most part but I couldn't stop noticing something absolutely inexplicable about it.

The first two minutes, everything's as it should be. Once we get to 2:00 Groban sings "O Knife Divine." Thereafter, almost every instance of "night" is replaced by "knife." The only exception is at 4:15 where there's a legitimate "night" but even that is followed up 2 seconds later with another "knife." So it's "O night / O knife divine."

And now I will never un-hear "O Holy Knife." This is the biggest lyrical scandal since "Poker Face."

Living in Cyberiad

 "The Cyberiad," by Stanislaw Lem, is a whimsical collection of science-fiction fairy tales, in a similar style as "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." It's episodic but it generally follows two intelligent machine rivals who try to outdo each other with their own invented machines. My favorite story in "The Cyberiad" is "The first sally (A), or Trurl's electronic bard."

The following contains spoilers for "The Cyberiad."

Through much hard work and countless hours of toil, Trurl has created a machine that, he hopes, can write poetry. He invites his rival Klapaucius over to test it (or to show off.) Klapaucius accepts, and after some false starts and tweaks, recites a short poem. Klapaucius is not impressed - the poem was just a pre-recorded message written by a person. Trurl invites him to make a request as a real test. Klapaucius thinks, trying to figure out the hardest request he can imagine. Finally he suggests:

"Have it compose a poem - a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!!"

Trurl begins to object...

But he didn't finish. A melodious voice filled the hall with the following:

Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.

She scissored short. Sorely shorn,

Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,

Silently scheming,

Sightlessly seeking 

Some savage, spectacular suicide.

The story goes on from there with other bizarre requests and other poems but I'll focus on just this one, as it's my favorite. I was so used to seeing this story as a wonderful, whimsical flight of fancy (I first read this story in 1998-1999) that I completely failed to see that it's now a reality. Or is it? I was wondering, if I give this same prompt to ChatGPT, what would be the result?

Here is the experiment.

In truth, I usually see ChatGPT as just a more advanced search engine. I was fully expecting it to just lookup and return the poem from "The Cyberiad," at which point I would have had to try a similar prompt. But no, it simply went straight to its own attempt. Also surprising is that it doesn't follow the "only s" rule, for some reason. I mean, if a computer program doesn't write great poetry, we can all understand why but I absolutely do expect it to understand and follow basic, concrete rules.

I don't want to lose sight of the fact that I am astonished by the sophistication of ChatGPT. Still, it definitely falls far short of the goal.

Let's try Bing:

Arguably better; it at least follows the 's' requirement, but still wanting.

And You!:

Terrible.

We live in a science-fiction future but the world of "The Cyberiad" still retains its mystique and fascination.

Finally, a small factoid that I just learned from Wikipedia: "The Seventh Sally was also an inspiration of the game SimCity." According to the New York Times, "In the Lem story a banished tyrant returns to his despotic ways after being given control over a simulated city."