Periodicity

A while back All Things Considered had me really laughing.

See, they ran a story about The Periodic Table of Haiku. And that was cool. It's a cute concept -- each element of the periodic table gets its own descriptive haiku (some strictly so, some more loosely).

But what some sneaky producer did next was the really funny part. Because, as a piece of incidental music to separate the Haiku piece from the next one (or "bumper", in radio jargon), they used Gilbert & Sullivan's "Model of a Modern Major General".

As Denis Leary says, "Some of you are laughing, and some need an explanation..."

In a very generational kind of thing, there's a musical parodist by the name of Tom Lehrer. He was a math professor (now retired), but he also did topical stuff. This was in the 1960s -- he hasn't made any new recordings in decades.

One of things he did was, he sang through the list of elements to the tune of, you guessed it, "Modern Major General". (Though not in order.)

Fortunately, due to The Magic of the Web ^(TM), I can point you to this: An animation of Lehrer's ditty (done using Macromedia Flash -- go here if you don't already have the plug-in).

You can thank me later.

Lazarus Long Revealed!

Well, I'm probably going to regret this, because it'll prolly generate e-mail once it hits Google, but... I was reminded of this earlier this week, and thought I'd share.

Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear... Circa mid 1980s. I was still getting around LA by bus. There was a big court case going on with the Church of Scient*logy (hereinafter S-Church, for Google reasons). The S-Church, being the media mavens that they are, decided one way to get their message out was to plaster RTD's buses with billboards. Not a bad plan, as RTD used downtown as a hub, so that would mean all these pro-S-Church billboards going right by the County Courthouse.

I already knew that the L. in L. R0n stands for "Lafayette". So I would have conversations in my head, in that familiar way I have, that would begin, "Lafe, let me tell you about these followers of yours. They just don't get the joke!"

But... But... Waitaminnit. "Lafe Hubbard". I'd heard that before.

Indeed, I had.

I refer the interested reader to pg. 11 of Heinlein's Time Enough for Love, wherein one finds, among the many other names of the Senior, that he sometimes went by the moniker Dr. Lafe Hubert.

I submit the distance from Hubbard to Hubert is not far at all. Especially with "Lafe" as an off-ramp.

But it gets better.

Let's go to page 20, where Justin Foote the 45th is writing his nominal introduction to Lazarus Long's memoirs. Heinlein is sometimes criticized for not describing his characters physically, but check this out:

"As may be -- If today I see a man with sandy red hair, a big nose, an easy disarming grin, and a slightly feral look in his gray-green eyes, I always wonder how recently the Senior has passed through that part of the Galaxy. If such a stranger comes close to me, I put my hand on my purse. If he speaks to me, I resolve not to make wagers or promises."

With that in mind, look at this picture:

Lazarus, arise!



This second picture was the one the S-Church used on the billboards:

Heinlein is sometimes critiqued for writing endless variations of himself. And I can see that, somewhat. You want to tell me that the characters Jubal Harshaw, or Prof. de la Paz are variations of Heinlein... Hey, I have no problem with that.

But Lazarus is different. Lazarus is crooked in a way that I just can't see Heinlein as viewing himself... even if he's crooked in a rapscallious, rogueish, semi-admirable way.

Also, look at the basic plot of the set-up of TEFL: Group of "descendents" kidnap the ol' scamp, for his "wisdom". They don't allow him to "abandon" them -- regardless of his own wishes. He eventually becomes reconciled to this, but...

And remember how L. R0n went into "seclusion" beginning in the 1970s, just as TEFL was written.

All circumstantial, to be sure... but Ph.D. theses have been written on less.

UPDATED TO ADD, 2007-02: Another "coincidence" recently occurred to me: "L. Long" vs "L. R0n." Hmm...

UPDATED TO ADD, 2009-05: In "The Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail" section of TEFL, the main character described is a member of the US Navy. The standard reading of this is as a nod to Heinlein's own time in the Navy. But L. R0n had a thing for the Navy as well, as anyone familiar with the existence of the Sea Org within the S-Church should realize.