EPISODE 323: ONE OH ONE

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

I discovered the day after I sent the newsletter last week that it was in fact the 100th episode of Pop Culture Spirit Wow. Which, you know, Wow!

I’d been wanting to do something like this for so long; as you’ve discovered, I think a lot about pop culture, both just because I am a nerd and because I don’t know, I think it’s a way that we let God in (if I may be so priest-y for a moment), a way that we allow ourselves to be fed, encouraged, challenged and invited.

There are so many stories that have really helped me at different times in my life, and I think whether your main object of consumption is the Green Bay Packers (God help you), CBS dramas or video games the same is true for all of us. And to be able to think and write about all that these last couple years has been great.

So anyway, thanks for taking the ride with me. Here's to the next 101!

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Usually the 100th episode of a TV show is a big deal. Buffy dies at the end of her 100th episode. Phoebe has triplets. Meredith performs her first solo surgery. Pam and Jim learn they’re pregnant. The X-Files told the origin story of fan favorite supporting characters The Lone Gunmen. And ER had a storyline involving a 100 year old woman who was born in the hospital getting a tour (which is a great idea and I am filled with envy).

Once upon a time (like, 5 years ago) 100 episodes was a main criteria for selling your TV pitch. Do you have a story engine that can get me to 100 episodes?, was the question every production company would ask, knowing that 100 episodes usually meant you’d be able to sell the show into syndication once it was off the air, and make some serious bank.

Today if you want your show on network TV, you probably still need that kind of engine, because you’re almost certainly going to be producing 22-24 episodes a year. But most everywhere else, that’s not the case. The Sopranos had only 86 episodes. Breaking Bad, 62. (That one shocks me; it seems like so much more. Same with Lost – network show, huge buzz its whole run, only 72 episodes produced.)

You don’t hear very much about 101st episodes. Or 101st anything. Usually 101 is used to signify a introduction of sorts – like Biscuits 101, the Skinny on a Fatty Biscuit over at the Southern Fatty website (which is a real thing that I am definitely not making up).

Or it’s a way of implying you’re going to cover absolutely all the possibilities – 101 Cookie Recipes to Fulfill Every Craving You Could Possibly Have This Holiday Season (a title that seems like it’s also just about 101 letters long, because that’s a thing we do now). You’d think 100 would be enough, but that extra 1 is what puts you over the top. It’s basically “the kitchen sink” of numbers.

(Weirdest variation: 101 Things to Do/See/Experience Before You Die. Seriously, Why add the death part? Who is writing this? And what do they know that we don't?)

It's cool, I'm pretty sure that Zombie had Six Fingers.

But there’s a lot of other interesting things about 101. Like, 101 is the 911 of Belgium, and somewhere between that and the 311 of England and Wales. (“Yes, he seems to be choking on the crumpet, but take your time, he insists he’s got a stiff upper lip and he’ll be jolly well good whether his windpipe likes it or not.”)

It’s also a palindrome –the same backwards and forwards -- and a prime number. In fact it is “a sexy prime number”, thank you very much. That is to say, it differs from next prime by only 6 (the Latin for six being sext, and the British mathematicians who invented the term apparently desiring to fit every repressed, lonely stereotype of mathematicians).

Californians love to talk about “The” 101 (SoCal) or 101 (NoCal). That’s the highway that runs from Los Angeles all the way up to Canada. It’s the longest highway in California, one of the longest in the nation, and also maybe my favorite. If you’re driving between San Francisco and Los Angeles, Highway 1 is the ocean route. Very pretty, but it takes a long time. The 5 is the fastest route, and also by far the worst, not enough lanes, nothing to see and right in the middle a slaughterhouse made from nightmares. And the 101 is like the mid-sized everything in Goldilocks, aka just right.

There are no cities of the world at 101 feet above sea level. (Budapest gets closest, at 102.) The Taipei 101, which has a 101 floors, used to be the world’s tallest building, and the largest green building, and had the fastest elevator. Now, not so much. But last year a 101 foot bamboo statue of the Goddess Durga broke the World Record for tallest bamboo sculpture ever.

The previous record was about 8 feet, 8 inches,

because seriously who thinks to make gigantic statues out of bamboo.

In 2016, it was reported that a 101 year old Italian woman had an ovarian transplant and then gave birth to her 17th child. “For so long I have felt useless to God,” she said. “For a long time I believed God was punishing me for only bearing 16 children, but in his godly generosity, he has granted me with fertility once again.” (Yes, she was Catholic.)

It then turned out to be a total fiction, as apparently is everything on World News Daily Report’s website and online, but nevertheless it’s still the number one item when you Google “101 Year Old Woman”, because Google is not about truth.

Meanwhile not at all fake but altogether delightful is this great video of little kids meeting a 101 year old woman and asking things like “Did you have knives and forks back then?” (Her answer: “Yes, and spoons too (you little !#%)”.)

Disney’s 101 Dalmatians is probably the most famous 101 on record. Weirdly, neither the book nor the movie ever named all 101 dogs (to which every youngest child of big families nods their heads and says “Exactly”).

Dalmatians wasn’t Disney’s 101st movie; that goes to 1972’s The Biscuit Eater, which was one of those dog and his boy movies, but came at the end of those being popular, which is why you’ve never heard of it. (Also, it was called The Biscuit Eater.)

Disney’s 101st animated film, believe it or not, is the 2013 Black-Death-of-Earworms Frozen. (“Let it Go”. You’re welcome.)

This Book is Really Pretty Amazing.

HBO’s 101st show was one of the great experimental comedies of the 20th century, Mr. Show with Bob and David, which debuted November 3, 1995. If you never saw it, it was sort of the Monty Python of U.S. sketch comedy. “The Story of Everest” , about a guy who comes home from climbing Mt. Everest to tell his parents the story, is one of their most well-known sketches. Vulture actually wrote a whole Origin Story/ Making of just about it.

Although Netflix has only been producing or co-producing original content since 2012 it has already produced way more than 101 shows. (In fact it took HBO 20 years to get to a 101 shows. It took Netflix 5.) Its 101st production is its Cuban-American remake of One Day at a Time, which debuted January 6, 2017 and I suspect will be the most relevant and important take on immigration and 2018 whenever its third season drops. (Such a great show.)

Speaking of which, 101 is also the number of people who became citizens on Wednesday at Mount Vernon in Virginia. Psalm 101 has the speaker promising to be a person of integrity and to cast out liars and those who “secretly slanders a neighbor”; “A haughty look and an arrogant heart I will not tolerate.” And “deride” is the 101st most tested word on the GRE.

Luke Cage may be the 101st character ever invented by Marvel Comics, in 1972. (It kind of depends on whether some minor characters count. Another option is the equally cool Ghost Rider.) Uncanny X-Men 101 introduces pretty much the biggest storyline of that comic book or maybe any ever, Jean Grey’s resurrection as the Phoenix. Meanwhile in Batman Issue #101, this happened.

But Exciting News! 5000 Prizes!

Stephen King hasn’t written 101 novels, believe it or not. But he has written tons more than 101 stories. His 101st is coincidentally also called The Biscuit Eater. It’s about an American college student who spends the summer in London and then the following fall insists on calling cookies “biscuits”, until his roommates go crazy and starve him to death.

(Or it may be a story called Sneakers from the collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes, about a music exec who for some reason decides to investigate a dirty pair of sneakers in a bathroom, I don’t know why, it doesn’t seem like something anyone would care about, but it’s Stephen King so there’s no doubt he can make it believable and of course it will lead to pretty much the most catastrophic things that have ever happened to a human being, moral of the story just leave strange sneakers alone, people. Stick to eating your biscuits.)

Author James Joyce created a word that is 101 letters long: Ullhodturdenweirmudgaardgringnirurdrmolnirfenrirlukkilokkibaugimandodrrerinsurtkrinmgernrackinarockar. It’s one of Finnegan Wake’s “thunder words” (there are 9 others that are 100 letters), and has something to do with the Old Norse story of Armageddon. You can watch a video to learn how to pronounce it and understand it here. And believe it or not it is not even a tenth as long as the longest word in English. (The longest word, at over 3000 letters, strangely translates as “sweet bun” or “sticky roll”.)

And is it me or did all of this somehow make you hungry?

Admit it, You Thought I Made This Up, Didn't You?

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It’s a short one this week, as I try to push through an article about Terrace House (think: a Japanese Real World, but instead of focusing on either eliminating housemates or ruining their relationships the emphasis is on how they can help each other grow) and finish the rewrite of the rewrite of the rewrite of this feature I’ve been working on. (As in the Godfather, just when I think I’m out, it pulls me back in.)

I’m always thinking about ways to improve what I’m doing. Feel free to chime in at jptmcd@gmail.com. Or if you’ve got questions or comments about anything pop culture, etc., I’m happy to do a “viewer mail” type thing, too.

The world keeps spinning, but that doesn't mean you have to spend every minute spinning with it. Take time for the Ahhs and the Mmms and at least the occasional Yes, I say Yes, I will Yes.

Here we go.