… and hate living it now.
(Incidentally I don’t recall the bit with Stuart Russel at the end being part of this when I first watched it, and feel it dilutes its power now: there is no reason to say “Given developments in A.I. and drones, someday soon this is going to be real!” It’s already real; it’s called guns: 1 out of every 20 Americans owns an AR-15; 3 in 10 own a gun of some sort. Only half of those guns are stored under lock and key, and only a third unloaded.)
Great news, everyone! It’s finally here!
Rough chuckles from our friends at The Onion, but they ain’t wrong:
OK, those scare quotes are unfair; this is indeed art, even if the creator is phoning in bits where he or she could certainly have applied a small amount and greatly improved their work.
Yes, “Pooky Park” is credited like so:
This is an AI-generated 1950s TV commercial for a family theme park called Pooky Park, where customers are chased by giant, somewhat terrifying puppets. Script: ChatGPT Photos: Midjourney Video: PikaLabs, Runway
That leaves the impression that someone typed “Make a 1950s TV commercial for a family theme park called Pooky Park, where customers are chased by giant, somewhat terrifying puppets” into ArtGT, hit the GO! button, and it pooped out this short, festive romp whole.
But that’s not how any of these tools work. For example, I can tell you from experience that Runway only gives you three or so seconds of footage at a time. The creator is eliding the fact that a lot has gone into editing the visuals and creating the audio. Yes, the script sounds like it’s straight ChatGPT (“Colossal howdy-doody-type puppets”? 🙄), and us thus hella week. But this is still an excellent creative application of new artistic tools—evidenced by the fact that I watched it and shared it not because of the gimmick (“AI made this!!!1!“), but because it captivated me and entertained me and unsettled me and made me want to share it with other people so they could be captivated and entertained and unsettled, too. And that, my best belovéd, is what art is all about.
The Gramma bit always cracks me up.
This is always a fraught time of year for grade-school music teachers: they wanna sing Xmas songs, most of the kids wanna sing Xmas songs. But they know that the constant wintertime Othering grinds away at the Jewish kids. (It’s even worse when teachers try to “include” you be singing the “Dreidel Song”; that song is crap, and we know it. The Xmas songs are way better.)
Back during the pandemic I eavesdropped on the most brilliant piece of classroom third-rail navigation I’ve ever seen in my life, and I wanna share it here again, for any that need help (esp. in what’s become an extremely fraught year for Jewish kids in America).
This was early in the pandemic, when our community was pretty locked down (my kids didn’t have in-person school for 400+ days). My daughter was then a third grader, and I was sitting nearby during her Zoom music class (we’ll leave for another day any discussion of the crime against humanity that was “grade-school Zoom music class”).
A few slides into the lesson, the teacher show a picture of an unremarkable middle-aged White dude, “Mitchell Parish.”
Who the heck is Mitchell Parish? Well, he was born in Lithuania, and brought here by his parents, who were Jews (my daughter immediately perked up; Jews! Like us!) looking for a better life. Mitchell Parish was a popular songwriter in New York in the ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s—and he wrote the lyrics to …
*advance to next slide*
… “Sleigh Ride”!
*kids sing “Sleigh Ride”*
*EVERYONE IS A WINNER!*
My daughter felt seen, gentiles got their Christmas carol, and no one had to sing the goddamned “Dreidel Song.”
So there’s the trick to getting to sing Christmas carols in public school in what has been the worst year for Jews since 1945:
Start out with a brief bio of the Jews who wrote your Xmas song
You could do a whole Winter Concert—featuring “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer,” “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” and “Run, Run Rudolph”—on just a single bio slide: All four of those classics were written by the same Jew (the inimitable Johnny Marks, whose Jewish brother-in-law was the guy who created Rudolph to begin with).
(SPOILER ALERT 🚨: All your favorite Xmas songs were written by Jews; you’re welcome).
I’m a mixed Jew (i.e., one raised in an interfaith family, and raising my Jewish kids in one now). I’ve lived in the American Midwest for my entire life (which is kind of a double-Diaspora).
I think these songs—which I wrote and recorded nearly 20 years ago now—possibly capture that experience more purely than anything else I’ve ever written.
I wrote this essay a few years back, as a little bonus for the folks kind enough to have subscribed to my newsletter. A good friend, Chris Salzman, was gracious enough to make something pretty of it. I relish the opportunity to reshare it each year, and I’m doing so once again. Every word here is both true and factual—which is a harder trick than you’d think.
You’ll be 15 minutes into that Lesser Family Feast in Michigan when your mother-in-law will turn to you and ask:
“What do Jews do on Thanksgiving?”
You should be prepared for this sort of thing in Michigan. But even though I’m warning you in advance, you still won’t be prepared.…
(read more: IN MICHIGAN: A PRIMER, A TRAVELOGUE)
THANKSGIVING TURKEY GIVEAWAY! (WKRP in Cincinnati) from Tony DeSanto on Vimeo.
I repost this every year, because I love this gag, and because watching this on TV—and rehashing it with my mom and sisters each year—is one of my fondest holiday memories. But it is, in my humble, a damn-near perfect gag. That’s saying something, because I find single-camera laugh-track situation comedies almost entirely unbearable to watch. If you wanna read more of my thoughts on this specific gag and what it can teach writers, you can do so here.)
I’m a child of the 1980s, so most of my nostalgic holiday memories are TV-related. 🤷♀️
I hope your T-day is good and sweet. Gobblegobble! 🦃💀
