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In the hotel where I’m staying, the list of organizations meeting here for a conference today includes “U.S. Census Bureau.” Cool, the whole Census Bureau’s here! This struck me as very funny for some reason. “All right, sir, we’re just going to need to know how many attendees you expect, how many want the chicken, and how many want the salmon. Can you get me that by the end of the day? Wait, what am I saying? Of course you can, you’re the Census Bureau!”

Breaking! The next President of the United States will be…left-handed! For some reason I’d missed this little tidbit until now: just as in the 1992 election, when Clinton, Bush 41, and Perot were all left-handed, so are both Senators Obama (“There isn’t a left-handed and a right-handed America! There’s just a United States of America!”) and McCain (“My friends, there were five years of my life when I was unable to use either hand!”)

Tuesday’s election will end eight years of tyrannical right-handed rule in this nation: Dubya is a rightie, but he and Carter have been the only two right-handed gaps in the left-handed presidency since Nixon resigned! (If you accept many biographers’ contention, based on photographic evidence, that Reagan was born a leftie but, uh, moved to the right later in life.) If you asked moderate or independent voters who America’s two worst presidents since Watergate were, they might very well tell you it was the only two right-handers. Coincidence? As a left-hander, I’m required to say no.

People sometimes comment on my being left-handed when they see me at book signings and such. “See! I knew he’d be a lefty!” I always ask if they themselves are left-handed; they always are. Only left-handers are obsessed enough with their minority status to make a point of it, I guess. (Alternately: only left-handers are so keenly observant as to notice!)

I’m flying to L.A. later today (assuming everything’s okay at the airport) so here are a couple last-minute TV reminders:

1. Tomorrow is the first installment of my weekly “Stump the Master” segment on GSN Live. Viewers can submit trivia questions here; if your question is selected and you stump me with it, you win $1,000! Even if I get it right, the weekly jackpot goes up a grand, so either way, somebody’s going to win big. (In either case, of course, I win nothing but the good feeling that comes with helping Joe the Unemployed GSN Viewer through these troubled times.) I’m on with Kelly and Fred sometime during the 5pm Eastern hour (2pm Pacific).
2. I’m also appearing on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire all next week as their “Ask the Expert” lifeline. I asked if the feature could be renamed “Ask the Sexpert” for this week only, in honor of my upcoming book True Daily Doubles: Making Sweet, Sweet Love the Jeopardy! Way but The Man turned me down.

So I have a chance to look like an idiot on national TV at least six times next week! Check local listings!

A couple months ago, Mindy and I saw a local production of the 1982 play Intimate Exchanges, by the prolific Alan Ayckbourn, a playwright of British middle-class comedies whom we both like quite a bit. We had the tickets a month or two in advance, so the calendar in our kitchen had “INTIMATE EXCHANGES” visibly scrawled on one September specific weekend for weeks. Which got us a few odd looks from visitors. Hey, gotta keep that marriage fresh.

So the program for Intimate Exchanges told us that the local company was only putting on four different endings of the play. “Only” four endings? The hell?

Ayckbourn wrote Exchanges, it turns out, with no less than sixteen different endings. The play branches four times, based on the decisions the characters make (in their love lives, usually). The play begins with Celia, the lead character (in many of the permutations) deciding whether or not to grab an illicit smoke. Depending on whether or not she does, the play then picks up five seconds later. After the choice at the end of Act I, the play resumes five days later. Act II takes plays five weeks later, and then a final epilogue takes place five years later. The play branches again at each of the crucial decision at each of these gaps, like Choose Your Own Adventure on the West End.

But wait! That’s not all! All ten characters in the various versions of the play are cast with just two actors, who are cleverly shuffled on and off stage after lightning costume changes to give the illusion of a larger cast.

Why? Why any of this? Do the crazy structural gimmicks dovetail neatly with the actual content of the play? Well, no, not really. I can’t see any earthly reason why the same two actors play all the different combinations of lovers, except as a challenge to make the author roll up his sleeves and say, “Well, let’s see if I can do this!” as if he were writing a sestina or a villanelle or something. And, possibly, to make the audience say, “Wow, this is cool! It’s that guy again, with a different accent and mustache!”

Because the gimmicks are pretty cool. If you saw all sixteen endings (or read them, as I just did) then maybe you could say that the branching conceit shows that even little decisions have big consequences, or happy endings just depend on where you close the curtain, or we’re all supporting characters in other people’s lives, or something. But most playgoers won’t get that, because they’ll see only one ending…two at most if they really love it and come back a second night. Companies performing Exchanges generally run just one ending at a time each night. If you didn’t read your program, you’d never know why your ending seemed a little…flat. (It’s hard to write a cathartic, all-resolving ending when your play needs to account for fifteen others of same.)

In 1983, when the play was brand-new, a two-member cast actually did all sixteen endings during a two-week run. But that’s around 15-20 hours of fairly dense dialogue to learn (!) so the play is rarely performed that way. I’m also interested in Smoking/No Smoking, a little-known 1993 French film adaptation of the play by Alain Resnais (Hiroshima, Mon Amour). These British garden-party spats seem like an odd choice for Resnais–plus, how do you do the endings on film? Just present them consecutively, like the copy of the movie Clue we used to have on VHS when I was a kid? The movie is six hours long–plenty of room for several endings–but it’s apparently unavailable on video if you don’t speak French.

I’d love to know if anyone knows of a way to see this movie. Maybe I should rent the VHS from Scarecrow and make my own fansub. But the word “fansub” is a nerd direction I’m not really prepared to go in right now. Sort of like “cosplay.”

Still, it’s an interesting read if you’re into experimental fiction or drama at all. I can honestly say it’s the only 20-hour play I’ve ever read. Unless you count Cats that one time. It sure seemed like 20 hours, that’s all I know.

Yesterday’s photo puzzle went all day without being publicly solved, so here are a few hints for Google-aided solving.

First, consider this recent puzzle from skullturfq (if that is your real name!) over on the message boards.

Secondly, check out the jack o’lantern I carved last night! Yes, I’m sure I’m about the millionth person to have this idea.

My blog post a couple weeks ago about mis-emphasizing two-word phrases generated much follow-up discussion on the message boards. I thought of you all when we were in New York! We were looking at some Edward Hopper paintings at the Whitney, when cartoonist Art Spiegelman suddenly popped up on the museum audio-guide, talking about some comics resonances in Hopper’s famous painting Early Sunday Morning. Art started to ramble a bit, saying that the fire hydrant and barber pole in the painting had always reminded him of R2-D2 and C-3PO. Yes, that’s weird enough. But–here’s the kicker–he pronounced it “see-three-pee-oh,” which was awesome! It was like he’d done extensive academic reading on C-3PO, but never had occasion to pronounce it in conversation, and was just breaking it out for the first time.

Other moments of weird emphasis from vacation: the server who told us about an appetizer special: a “chicken salad.” Not a chicken salad, a chicken salad. I assume he wanted to differentiate his delicious chicken-breast-on-mixed-greens concoction from a mayonnaise-based sandwich filling, but I don’t know how successful his strategy was.

Also, the GPS system in our rental car was having emphasis issues (or, as I like to call them, emphasissues). I’d never noticed before that, in English, we tend to emphasize the last word in street addresses, but the first word in “Street” addresses. Fifth Avenue, but Canal Street. Penny Lane, but Main Street. I’d never noticed, that is, until our in-car navigation system started mangling them right and left. (Ha, right and left! Did you see what I did there?)

Of course, the car also kept calling FDR Drive “F D R Doctor,” which amused us to no end. Even though the economy is collapsing, it looks like there might still be exciting opportunities in natural-language A.I. research for GPS systems.

Paul Bailey, of Game Show Congress fame, reminds me that he’ll be traveling to Oslo this week to represent the U.S. at the European Quiz Championships. I had a great time at last year’s EQC in Blackpool, England, but sadly couldn’t make it to Norway this weekend for the rematch. (My first “Stump the Master” segment for GSN Live airs Friday.)

Still, Paul will be joined by returning U.S. team members Ed Toutant and David Legler (you may remember them from such shows as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Twenty-One) and new teammate Mark Ryder. I don’t know Mark, but he’s done as well as almost any other American at past International Quiz Assocation events, so I’m sure the nation’s future is in good hands. I still suspect that college-level quiz bowl could provide the best U.S. representation for events like this, but maybe our nation’s starving grad students just have less disposable income for weekend trips to Norway than our game show millionaires do. Spread the wealth!

Here’s a little sequence puzzle of the kind that seems popular over on our message boards. This one will probably befuddle many readers, especially younger ones, but I bet it elicits a smile of recognition from at least a few. Why these images, why this order? And (using Google, probably) what images come next?

Edited to add: It took a day, but this was eventually solved.

We flew home from New York on Delta, and happened to get one of the planes they used for their short-lived Delta Song discount brand. Did you ever fly on Song? I flew Song between JFK and Florida a couple times, and the only thing I remember is the trivia game.

The Delta Song jets were equipped with an individual TV screen in the back of each seat, for watching movies, satellite TV, etc. They had a few simple games as well, most of which you could play against other passengers. (“I’m coming for you, 21F!”) The only one I ever played much was the trivia game. Song was vaguely music-themed during its short life (flight attendants even sang the safety instructions on some flights!) so the questions were all on pop music. A claustrophobic five-hour flight just flies by when you know the oldest Beatle and the name of the other guy in Wham! Especially when 21F didn’t.

The questions were too hard, in general, but at least they were multiple-choice. There was a speed element, to reward fliers with a quick finger on the touch screen. On some flights, when the gimmick was new, dozens of passengers would be playing at once, and craning their necks to glare at the competition. A lively pub quiz at 25,000 feet!

Now that Song has gone the way of Eastern and Pan Am, with their jets all repainted to Delta colors, the questions aren’t all music-themed anymore. The first new batch of material appeared to originate in the UK, with lots of questions on cricket and EastEnders and Robbie Williams. On this last flight, I noticed these had been mostly been phased out in favor of more American-friendly questions, but with a heavy dose of “Aviation” trivia. See, we’re in an airplane, so naturally we’d want to answer questions about Amelia Earhart and ground speed and World War I dogfights.

After a few flights–maybe even after a few hours–you’ll start to see the occasional repeat. But the idea of in-flight trivia, and other on-line games, strikes me as one that other airlines should look at more closely. Nobody sits at home and reads a magazine for five hours straight. Nobody watches bad movies for five hours straight. But lots of people, for better or worse, play video games for five hours straight. And they’re accustomed to paying for the privilege, which is good news for financially strapped carriers.

If only they saved the high score list! I methodically took over the entire top ten on DL 89 last Sunday, but I think they reboot the list every time the plane powers down. All those amazing trivia scores, lost, like tears in the rain…

I don’t know how long until Delta starts to phase out the Song entertainment systems, but they’re still apparently using them on long domestic flights, so, if you like trivia, you might want to price out Delta the next time you fly cross-country.

I just voted! Most counties in Washington have fled to the sanity of a mail-in ballot only system. Our ballots got here when we were on vacation last week, and last night I finally filled it out and sealed up the envelope. Five minutes, no three-hour wait in line.

Now I can either stick it in the mail, or drop it off at a nearby collection spot beginning next week. Last night we had my grandpa over for dinner, and he offered to drop it off for me. (During election weeks, he works at one of the few local polling places set aside for those who can’t/won’t vote by mail.) But then he found out I’d voted for Obama and joked that he might have to light my ballot on fire instead. Um, I think I’ll just handle this one myself, Grandpa…

If you’re a U.S. citizen, and it’s not too late where you are: register, and vote. Why wouldn’t you?

Here’s an interesting bit of election-cycle trivia. When I look at the projected election maps at sites like FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics, I’m struck by one thing: how hard it would be for any candidate nowadays to win a swath of states that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific. FDR could do it, when the South was reliably Democratic. Nixon and Reagan could do it, when California was still in play. But the current electoral map makes it almost impossible. Even in two impressive wins, Bill Clinton never managed it.

The barriers for a Democrat are daunting: to get across the country, he or she would have to win a state in the Idaho/Utah/Arizona column, as well as one in the Dakotas-down-to-Texas column. Oh, and they have to be the right states, and many combinations thereof would require Montana as well. That’s why Clinton couldn’t do it: he took Arizona in 1996–the only time the state’s gone blue since Truman–but a Texas win, to link New Mexico and Arkansas, eluded him. Right now Barack Obama’s got a daunting electoral advantage as early voting begins–but even a landslide scenario for him wouldn’t cross the country. A best-case Obama win might include Montana and North Dakota, but there’s still that pesky sliver of red Idaho in the way. And winning Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico–his western “firewall”–does him no good (transcontinentally speaking) unless he adds one of Utah and Arizona and something between Nebraska and Texas. Even in the proverbial “dead girl live boy” scenario, Utah, Idaho, Nebraska, or Oklahoma are the very last states that would go blue. Texas-Arizona is probably a Democrat’s best bet in 2012, especially as Hispanic populations in the South grow, but they’re both out of reach this year.

For a Republican candidate, the dream of a red path nationwide is much nearer–even this election, with McCain down heavily in the polls. All he/she has to do is hold Georgia and flip either Washington or Oregon. Georgia is fairly safe: it’s wavered briefly this year, due in part to African-American voter enthusiasm, but in recent elections has only voted for a Democrat when he’s (a) from the South and (b) not Al Gore. The thought of a red Washington or Oregon may seem far-fetched, but vast stretches of both states are rural and conservative, not just the rainy coffeehouses and hip indie bands you’re picturing. Both states were reliably Republican pre-Bush 41, and both have occasionally wandered from “strong Obama” to “lean Obama” on pollsters’ maps this year. Washington’s gubernatorial race and Oregon’s Senate race are both too close to call right now, with strong Republican candidates in both. So it could happen. Not this year, but it could happen.

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the death of Portland singer-songwriter Elliott Smith, an anniversary I hadn’t really taken note of until I heard a radio DJ spin “Angeles” late yesterday afternoon. Smith was an absolutely one-of-a-kind talent, and was–unlike so many widely mourned music deaths–still at the top of his game when he left us.

I was actually at his very last concert, September 19, 2003 at the University of Utah’s Redfest. I’d seen him live a couple times before, and there was just no comparison between those earlier performances and this final one. His voice was even wispier than usual, and he didn’t try any of the complicated guitar-picking that had been a hallmark of his earlier work. He came off as quiet and distant, even a little lost. Just over a month later, he was dead.

I have an eleven-month-old nephew named Elliott, in honor of Smith, but until the little guy produces a handful of brilliant lo-fi acoustic indie-folk albums, and maybe earns an Oscar nomination, I’ll still miss the original.

On a brighter note: Wordplay Wednesday!

1. You know another singer/songwriter who died too young? Otis Redding. When I was in high school, I had an Otis greatest hits CD that had “Cigarettes and Coffee” on it, which I used to listen to over and over. Great song. But “Cigarettes and Coffee” is not the only Otis Redding hit whose last six letters spell a delicious hot drink. Can you name another?
2. Don’t you love it when British people spell things with weird ligatured vowels they just made up? It makes ugly words like “fetus” and “pedophile” even better when you spell them “foetus” and “paedophile.” Anyway, can you think of a common word in American English that uses both an “oe” and an “ae” combination? There are two that are fairly common–and one isn’t a plural noun.

Edited to add: Both questions answered quickly here.

A little playlet. Last night, waiting for doors to open to see the Mountain Goats downtown. (Great show, by the way, surprisingly muscular set.)

(A buttoned-down businessman type walks by the line, does a double-take. His brow crinkles in confusion at the sight of a neat single file of one hundred hoodie-wearing young people.)

BUSINESSMAN TYPE: Excuse me, could you tell me what this line is for?
GUY AHEAD OF US IN LINE: Uh, for the Mountain Goats.
BUSINESSMAN TYPE: Oh. (Long pause.) Is that a band?

“Is that a band?” He thought a crowd might have lined up in downtown Seattle to see actual mountain goats, Oreamnos americanus, rather than the John Darnielle-led folk-rock trio of the same name!

So, my Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? appearance last Friday. If you missed the show, or part of it was pre-empted for baseball in your time zone, the whole thing is available on Hulu. Those watching the show were apparently Googling along as well–check out this trend graph someone sent me for last Friday night.

I’ll admit that I originally signed up for 5th Grader for the cash. (I assumed at first I’d be playing for charity, but hey, either way. My bank account or Oxfam’s, doesn’t really matter, as long as FOX doesn’t have it!) I assumed it was some terrible lowest-common-denominator show, symbol of America’s long gradual slide into whatever America is gradually sliding into, yada yada yada.

Then I started watching the show–to study up, you know? And it turned out I was actually a genuine fan. Sure, the gameplay gets unnecessarily dragged out and amped up. But, at heart, it’s still a smart show celebrating smart kids, and it’s hard to disagree with that. (Dylan dreams of being part of the 5th Grader “classroom” in five years.) It’s probably the only quiz show since GE College Bowl went off the air that quizzes contestant only on academic subjects. Foxworthy is charming. What’s not to like?

I was a little worried about how I’d come off as a contestant. Who wants to cheer for the already-a-game-show-millionaire guy to win another million? I told the show’s producers most of any money I won would be going to charity, only to be told that this story wasn’t “relateable,” and could I mention getting Mindy a new kitchen instead? During the taping, Mindy and Dylan’s “handlers” were always telling them when to lean forward, do a “nervous face,” sigh in relief, etc. etc. Manipulating every reaction shot. So I was prepared for the worst.

Instead, watching the show, I found that they’d actually edited me to make me seem, somehow, likeable. This is pretty amazing; Mindy’s had eight years of marriage to work the same miracle on me and hasn’t really managed. At one point during the John Smith/John Rolfe question, I said out loud that “I’m pretty sure Pocahontas married one of her Johns.” Would’ve made me look like a wise-ass–but, presto, removed! Thanks FOX.

(By the way, on the way out of the studio I chatted for a minute with the guy who’d written the Pocahontas question. He admitted he hoped the Disney cartoon would trip people up. “But didn’t you remember The New World?” he asked. I was gobsmacked. For some reason, the Terrence Malick Pocahontas biopic of a couple years ago had totally slipped my mind. Oops.)

Foxworthy couldn’t have been nicer–he was interested in my résumé, because he’d also worked a computer job for years (servicing mainframes for IBM, apparently) before his stand-up took off and he could quit. Jeff Foxworthy knows Unix! Fake redneck!

He even apologized profusely for his little “I’m sorry…you’re right!” fake-out on one of the last questions. “They made me do it!” he told me. Sure, Jeff, blame the earpiece.

A couple people have asked if I was pretending to talk my way through questions I really knew, to hype up the drama. Not really: my muddling through the Pocahontas and diameter-of-the-Earth questions was totally genuine. (And edited considerably for time; I stalled much longer than you saw.) Obviously, I didn’t need to see The Namesake to tell me the Taj Mahal is in India, but I wanted to give a shout-out to one of my favorite movies of last year.

Mostly people talk about the last question. Do I wish I’d gone for it? Well, obviously, in hindsight. I was kicking myself for a few days afterwards. But really, risking almost half a million dollars on a single trivia question, of a type I’d gotten wrong before? Pretty hard to justify that. If it was literature, I was going for sure. If it was math, I might have. (I think in the whole first two seasons of the show, I only saw one math question I would have muffed.) If it had said “U.S. History,” I bet I would have gone for it. I’ve never missed a question on the show labeled “U.S. History.”

But they called their U.S. History question “Social Studies,” and I just couldn’t quite pull the trigger. The last “Social Studies” question I’d seen on the show asked how many people signed the Declaration of Independence. That’s just plain too hard–you’d never see that on Jeopardy! But sometimes they ask stuff that would be an easy top-level clue on Jeopardy! (Chuck Yeager’s name) or stuff that might be around the middle or bottom of the board (the longest-reigning British monarch, the country that shares the longest land border with Russia). You just don’t know which you’re going to get.

In hindsight, would I have liked to be the show’s first million-dollar winner, rather than a Georgia Republican previously best known for trying to remove the word “evolution” from high school textbooks? Well, yes. But she got lucky–the question she risked so much on turned out to be not so hard. I know I’d feel a lot worse if I’d gone for the Million Dollar Question and drawn a hard one.

So, no regrets! Is Mindy getting her granite countertops? Sure, but not until the 5th Grader check arrives. Is Dylan getting his playhouse in the backyard? Yep, I think we have a guy starting next week. Incidentally, in rehearsals, Dylan had much more modest ideas in mind for the money. A Lego set or stuffed animal or something. Only when the cameras were on and Daddy was trapped in the spotlight did he up the ante. Smart kid.

1. Cynthia Nixon. Corner table at Norma’s at Le Parker Meridian on 57th Street.
2. Martha Stewart. Sitting in the row ahead of us at The Seagull, the Broadway transplant of the lauded West End Chekhov production. By the way, I’m mystified at all the hoopla around Kristin Scott Thomas’s performance, her Broadway debut. She’s fine, but it’s not a showy part. She’s barely in it. Mackenzie “Gareth” Crook is much better. (I wasn’t sure this was Martha, but Mindy vouches for my ID. I didn’t spot an ankle bracelet or anything, but whatever.)
3. Patricia Clarkson. At an empty little cafe in middle-of-nowhere northwestern Massachusetts, weirdly. We were the only people in the place having dinner, when in comes Clarkson’s party for drinks after, apparently, a local film festival screening of her latest movie. She was in full-on diva mode, dancing around the table, gesticulating wildly, semi-flashing her companions in order to tell some crazy story. Every bit the Eccentric Actress! Kristin Scott Thomas, take note.

Today we hiked Mount Greylock, the tallest peak in the Berkshires. On a little residential street near the trailhead, we saw this odd stack of road signs:

SLOW

THICKLY SETTLED

CHILDREN AT PLAY

We kept our eyes peeled for some of these slow, thickly settled children (is that what we’re meant to call them these days?) but didn’t see any.

Mount Greylock is the highest point in the great state of Massachusetts. Reaching the summit made me think about a new project: climbing to the highest point in all 50 states. A little Googling shows an official organization of people with the same dumb idea, called the Highpointers Club. Some states are easier than others: it doesn’t take much huffing and puffing to get to this trailer park in Delaware or the observation deck of the Sears Tower. But Alaska or Colorado or Washington or California? Those take a little more doing.

But at least you can climb Mt. McKinley or Mt. Rainier without once setting foot in a trailer park.

Sorry to be AWOL from the blog for a few days…we were in Manhattan and super-busy and Internet was inconvenient, etc. etc. But now we’re ensconced in a quaint B&B somewhere in New England, where free wi-fi is slow but plentiful. I have a bunch of new stuff I’ve been meaning to post, including an entry on Friday’s 5th Grader appearance, but that probably won’t happen until I’m back in Seattle next week.

But I did manage to put up a new page listing errors and omissions from the Trivia Almanac. (If you’ve spotted others that aren’t on the list yet, now’s the time to drop me a line.) And I took a second to ban that one troll guy you hate from the message boards. So I’m not gone altogether. I’m not some absent deist God. Just a busy, sort of absent-minded God, like Ralph Richardson in Time Bandits.

What the heck, your moment of wordplay for a Wednesday. I call this one “All Over the Map.” Take the name of a U.S. city, somewhere in the West. The last two letters in the city’s name are the postal code for a U.S. state, somewhere in the Southeast. Replace those two letters with a different postal code, one for a U.S. state in the Northeast. Presto, now you’ve got the name of a U.S. state–this one somewhere in the middle. What are the city and states in question?

Edited to add: Answer (and a less plausible alternatives) here.

FOX never called me to update. 5th Grader never called me to update. But they’re still running promos for my Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader appearance tonight! Apparently the ball game starts at 4:30-ish Eastern, so Jeff and I will follow the game.

So forget everything I said! 5th Grader tonight is on! (Unless Dodgers-Phillies goes to extra innings, in which case who knows what’s going to happen. I think it might let FOX wiggle out of paying me though.)

So maybe the MAN doesn’t want you to see me on Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader tomorrow night, but I am still going to be dropping by GSN Live tomorrow afternoon. Sometime in the 2:00 hour (Pacific), I think. I’m not sure if my sinister GSN puppet masters want me to tip you off, but really, what are the odds that they’ll read my blog before two this afternoon?

Which is why I’m in L.A. tonight…sleeping in the very hotel where I tried out for Jeopardy! five years ago! Full circle.

Mindy and I are big fans of Mike Leigh, the slice-of-life director of finely observed little London dramas like Naked, Life Is Sweet, and Career Girls. In America he’s mostly known for Secrets & Lies, which earned a Best Picture nomination in 1996, and Topsy-Turvy, his fine 1999 change-of-pace film about the first mounting of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. The Seattle International Film Festival folks had him in town last night for a screening of Happy-Go-Lucky, his latest, so we checked it out.

Happy-Go-Lucky is charming, an utterly convincing screen portrayal of a woman–Poppy, an elementary schoolteacher, played by Leigh regular Sally Hawkins–who is unfailingly optimistic, but by no means a naive Pollyanna. Leigh discussed the movie and took questions after the screening, and revealed himself to be a bit like his movies: slow, friendly, not charismatic or a capital-s Showman in any way, but honest and thoughtful. Or maybe he was just jetlagged.

Like much of Leigh’s work, Happy-Go-Lucky has scene after scene of life unfolding quietly, with little or no concern for conventional narrative structure or plot advancement. Poppy and a friend design paper-bag masks for their respective classrooms. Poppy and her friends go dancing and have a bit too much to drink. Poppy and a friend try flamenco lessons. Poppy and a friend debate what to do about tea. Poppy and a friend drive to the suburbs to visit her pregnant sister. The fabric of daily life. These gentle, unforced scenes reminded me of the warm camaraderie of the musical theatre troupe in Topsy-Turvy, or the absolutely believable rapport between “best mates” Katrin Cartlidge and Lynda Steadman in Career Girls. I can’t think of another director who’s done better work than Leigh depicting easy friendship on-screen–friendships that feel the way you feel about your friends, not the way movie sidekicks or sitcom friends act.

Happy-Go-Lucky opens in limited U.S. release Friday.

So much for yesterday’s news! Despite running the teaser for my show last Friday, Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? called yesterday to say they’ll be pre-empted by baseball for the next little while. My show won’t actually run until November 7, just in time for sweeps.

Does it ever make you sit up and blink when someone says a familiar two-word phrase, but chooses to emphasize the wrong word? Hey, we as a culture have collectively decided it’s “Bernie Mac.” We’re happy saying “Bernie Mac.” It’s working out okay for us. Where do you get off thinking you’re such a special little snowflake that you can say “Bernie Mac”?

Sometimes there’s a cultural excuse. Mindy and I were watching the British Big Chill rip-off Peter’s Friends on DVD (finally) the other night, and one of the characters dreams of being a fighter pilot, ever since he saw Top Gun. Only he insists on saying “Top Gun.” Americans tend to say “Top Gun,” I believe.

Sometimes it connotes age or out-of-touch-ness. I was recently watching an interview with Jerry Beck, an expert on Golden Age movie animation. He was trying to convince me that the madcap cartoons of the Fleischer Studios were the direct ancestor of modern shows like The Simpsons and South Park. But he didn’t help his case by saying “South Park,” like he was giving me cab directions. It’s “South Park,” Jerry. Society has spoken.

I guess the ultimate example is stereotypical yokels who always watch tee-vee instead of tee-vee. I have no idea if there’s some part of the country where people actually say this, but it’s a quick movie/TV shorthand for identifying comical rubes, if they can’t afford a big floating Pop-Up Video bubble that says “THIS IS A COMICAL RUBE.” “C’mon, ma, let’s go home in time for Cops on the tee-vee!”

Heard someone mis-emphasize a two-word phrase lately? Let us know!!!

So the teaser on last Friday’s show let the cat on the bag: I’m the contestant on this Friday’s Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? (8/7 Central). This is in keeping with my odd habit of only appearing on game shows whose titles end with a punctuation mark. Apparently I can compete in the British but not the American Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

I’m not sure if I’m going to be watching. I expect that I’m going to look like a pretty big dork out there (i.e. even moreso than usual). Really, the only up side would be if Mindy and Dylan, in the studio audience, are as adorable as usual. Or, I guess, if I won a lot of money. But it would have to be quite a bit to make up for what I’ve lost in the market recently! If only I’d put all the Jeopardy! winnings in Campbell’s Soup! Mmmm good. I guess I’ll have to settle for buying a “I’m a Former Game Show Millionaire–Where’s MY Bailout?” T-shirt on CafePress.

One funny bit of 5th Grader synchronicity: watching Superbad on DVD last night, I was excited to see that the 10-year-old version of Michael Cera’s girlfriend “Becca”–the one traumatized by Li’l Jonah Hill’s disturbing artistic muse–is played by none other than first-season 5th Grader classmate Laura Marano! It’s the game show version of the Dakota Fanning Rape Movie! Poor Laura…without Jeff Foxworthy to protect her, she sank so quickly from 1st Grade Grammar to 4th Grade, uh, Anatomy. Luckily, IMDb says that Laura’s innocent little eyes were shielded from the actual sketch in question. (The insert close-up must have been shot by a second unit. Get it? Unit? Hey-oh!)

It was actually warm enough this week to take the kids to the beach one last time. Then it got cooler and started to drizzle, but at least we think that’ll let up around…next June.

Here’s Katie pondering the age-old questions that philosophers have long grappled with: What is a hoe? And what is a rake?

Last week I was reading reprints of some old EC horror comics and found a 1951 story that sounded familiar. In “Loved to Death,” a man buys a love potion from a mysterious shopkeeper, and, when it works, comes to regret his love’s obsessive attentions and returns for an “antidote”–a fatal poison. It was obviously the same story that had inspired one of my favorite Twilight Zones: 1960′s “The Chaser.”

A little on-line research revealed that both versions were adapted from a New Yorker short story written by one John Collier.

Had you ever heard of John Collier? I hadn’t. From the 1930s through the 1950s, the London-born writer was one of America’s most popular authors of short stories from the better glossy magazines. Five minutes on Google found quotes from writers like Ray Bradbury, Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman, and Paul Theroux praising Collier to the skies. So why had I never heard of him?

Probably because he’s been out of print for decades. The very things that made Collier a national treasure sixty or seventy years ago were out of style for many years thereafter. His impeccable prose, Wodehousian in its tight control and broad hint of a smirk. His unapologetic use of horror/fantasy genre elements straight out of Rod Serling’s attic: genies in bottles, the newly deceased choosing between heaven and hell, fountains of youth, etc. His ironic twist endings, sometimes satirically telegraphed, always beautifully underplayed. This stuff could make you a rock star in 1938, but in the 1960s, it seemed pretty unfashionable. A couple of other Johns–Cheever and Updike–were filling The New Yorker with quotidian tales of suburban angst. No neatly be-ribboned O. Henry endings. No couples in evening dress poisoning each other’s martinis. No mysterious magic stores appearing in parts of town where you never noticed them before.

But the magic stores are back! Influenced by the magical realism of Latin American novels, “literary” authors from Salman Rushdie to Margaret Atwood have made it okay–even cool–to mix fantasy elements with reality. The McSweeney’s crowd digs tightly structured stories with real endings, especially if you dress them up in ironic pulp trappings. And accordingly, in 2002, a best-of collection, Fancies and Goodnights, came back into print from New York Review Books.

I got my hands on a copy last weekend, and it’s fantastic. I’ve read maybe a third of the fifty stories, and almost every one has been a gem. I’m trying to read only a few a day to make the fun last. At least once a page, I wonder to myself, “Why isn’t this guy better known?” Ray Bradbury has literally dozens of short story collections in print. Well, this is the guy who inspired Bradbury. And where Bradbury is lyrical and wide-eyed and poetic, Collier is–well, he’s just as lyrical. But there’s nothing wide-eyed about him. He’s witty and sardonic and mean.

Anyone who’s ever enjoyed a rerun of Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents (for which Collier wrote many episodes, by the way) needs to check this book out. All it will take is the first paragraph of a story like “Bottle Party”:

Franklin Fletcher dreamed of luxury in the form of tiger-skins and beautiful women. He was prepared, at a pinch, to forgo the tiger-skins.

or the last paragraph of a story like “Over Insurance”:

The poison, however, acted extremely quickly on their weakened constitutions. Even as they scuffled for precedence they fell prone upon the door mat, and the postman came and covered them with bills.

and you’ll be hooked.

I was honored to receive the National Review‘s endorsement for vice president of the United States yesterday! (Read the last graf.) Sorry, Mark Goldblatt. If nominated, I will not run, even if it would get McCain to shake up the ticket. I want to see that shotgun wedding October surprise as much as anyone. I’ve never seen bridesmaids in moose fur.

Does it bother me to have my name used like this this? Especially in (intended unflattering) comparison with Sarah Palin, the only vice presidential nominee in U.S. history who makes Dan Quayle look statesmanlike? Not really. Apparently there was a linguistic niche in English: we needed some shorthand phrase for “nerdy gentleman who knows a lot of useless stuff.” And I was there!

But I don’t buy the implied argument that facts don’t matter to a world leader. We’ve been trying that for eight years, haven’t we? (Rim shot.) Yes, once elected to national office, a Sarah Palin would have a massive staff briefing her on issues. Yes, it’s her decision-making processes that matter more than “mere facts.”

But consider: informed decisions are based on how well we’ve mastered and weighed the “mere facts.” (That’s what the “informed” part means.) When our vice president is meeting with a foreign leader, wouldn’t we like it if they’d, say, spoken with that leader before about common interests and issues? Or can at least chat confidently and intelligently on mutually important subjects, even if they’ve never met? Think of the rapport you gain. Sure, you can be studying world capital flash cards in the back of Air Force Two on the way to Belarus, but if you already know the basics, you can relax, focus on nuance, etc. Leadership isn’t a replacement for knowledge. It’s built upon it.

By now, expectations for Palin are so low that I’m sure she’ll do just fine against Biden tomorrow, even if she doesn’t manage to name-check me. Of course, Quinnipac currently has Obama +8 in Ohio and Florida and +15 in Pennsylvania, so it doesn’t matter if she recites pi to 300 places or face-plants into the microphone. It’s over.

Right, Wordplay Wednesday. Speaking of the election: what award-winning children’s book contains in its title the name of an important public figure this election cycle, if you interchange just two adjacent letters?

Edited to add: Solution here.