On the Road to Mtigwaki
I had one of those Emperor’s New Clothes moments this morning. In that story, the idea is that the Emperor is hoodwinked by criminals into believing he has fancy clothes, until it is revealed by a little boy that he is actually naked. Oh foolish Emperor. Always do background checks on your tailor. I never liked the criminals’ part of the story. To me it is more reasonable that the Emperor has deluded himself into thinking that he doing well only to have the rug (or clothes) yanked from under him in the most embarrassing possible way. That has happened to me so many times, I cannot count them all.
The other part of the Emperor’s New Clothes story is that his closest advisors know the truth, but won’t tell him because they are afraid of offending the Emperor. Oh, foolish Emperor. You should always encourage your advisors to tell the truth. It reminds me of those times when I would see someone making obvious errors. Do you correct them? Will they take correction? Or will they get angry at the criticism? The story works on many levels, and I guess that why it is still told today.
I have had those same kinds of moments: When I finished a production and was informed that I hit the wrong note during a solo every time I did the show. Why didn’t they tell me beforehand so I could correct it? Or, the time in college when, during the end-of-year dormitory banquet, my roommate received the “Most Likely to Have a Better Roommate Next Year” award. I cannot tell you how humiliating that was. In the case of the solo, I did actually hit the wrong note. I heard the recording of the production. In the case of the roommate, I discovered that my roommate was really particular about the way he liked things to be done, but decided to tell other people about those things and not me.
So, like the moral of the story, I plan to take the advice I have received about my Howard posts on April’s Real Blog and put on what I believe to be better clothes.
On to Mtigwaki, the land of trees. This is a place that I have felt was desperately in need of snarking and so I set up some days ago, a post that would allow Howard to have an excuse to go there and snark, that being his defense against the conspiratorial defense of Liz from Warren, to make Anthony her only suitor. Not that this really needed to be done. The letters from Elizabeth on the FBOFW website have been harping on Warren’s inattentiveness to Liz for over a year, sort of. He’s not visited in person, but he emails occasionally and they saw each other over Christmas and I’m thinking, “That’s not too bad for a guy working out of a helicopter in B.C.” Speaking of the website letters, it was interesting as I went through the FBOFW website September letters and the various commentaries about those letters, that Lynn received much snarking about how obvious it was that she was setting up Mike and Dee to move into the Patterson ancestral home and for Elly and John to move elsewhere. I was wondering if people had analyzed my posts as carefully as that, would they have noticed my Mtigwaki setup for Howard as the setup it so blatantly was?
In preparation for the Mtigwaki snark, I went very rapidly back through the strips involving Liz for the last year, starting from when she went to Mtigwaki the first time. I discovered something that surprised me. If I concentrated just on Liz in Mtigwaki, it was actually a very pleasant read, so much so that the Liz / Anthony / Thérèse triangle and fall-on-the-ice storyline in the middle of it was pretty jarring in comparison. Also, reading it that rapidly allowed me to gloss over the sillier parts of the story in Mtigwaki, like Gary and Viv doing weeks of expository dialogue on the lifestyle there and the extremely coincidental arrival of Shiimsa, as a newly born kitten. They were silly, but they weren’t unpleasant. It made me wish that Lynn relied more on the real-life stuff and not the Lifetime Channel Movie plots she used with Howard / Anthony / Liz.
I think I may get a dialogue partner in mst3k4evr, who started doing posts again for Kortney, who is currently traveling with Howard. There is the potential for a lot of fun dialogue, and it should allow fewer of the Howard posts to look like fan fiction.
Join us tomorrow for H&K in Sin City
The other part of the Emperor’s New Clothes story is that his closest advisors know the truth, but won’t tell him because they are afraid of offending the Emperor. Oh, foolish Emperor. You should always encourage your advisors to tell the truth. It reminds me of those times when I would see someone making obvious errors. Do you correct them? Will they take correction? Or will they get angry at the criticism? The story works on many levels, and I guess that why it is still told today.
I have had those same kinds of moments: When I finished a production and was informed that I hit the wrong note during a solo every time I did the show. Why didn’t they tell me beforehand so I could correct it? Or, the time in college when, during the end-of-year dormitory banquet, my roommate received the “Most Likely to Have a Better Roommate Next Year” award. I cannot tell you how humiliating that was. In the case of the solo, I did actually hit the wrong note. I heard the recording of the production. In the case of the roommate, I discovered that my roommate was really particular about the way he liked things to be done, but decided to tell other people about those things and not me.
So, like the moral of the story, I plan to take the advice I have received about my Howard posts on April’s Real Blog and put on what I believe to be better clothes.
On to Mtigwaki, the land of trees. This is a place that I have felt was desperately in need of snarking and so I set up some days ago, a post that would allow Howard to have an excuse to go there and snark, that being his defense against the conspiratorial defense of Liz from Warren, to make Anthony her only suitor. Not that this really needed to be done. The letters from Elizabeth on the FBOFW website have been harping on Warren’s inattentiveness to Liz for over a year, sort of. He’s not visited in person, but he emails occasionally and they saw each other over Christmas and I’m thinking, “That’s not too bad for a guy working out of a helicopter in B.C.” Speaking of the website letters, it was interesting as I went through the FBOFW website September letters and the various commentaries about those letters, that Lynn received much snarking about how obvious it was that she was setting up Mike and Dee to move into the Patterson ancestral home and for Elly and John to move elsewhere. I was wondering if people had analyzed my posts as carefully as that, would they have noticed my Mtigwaki setup for Howard as the setup it so blatantly was?
In preparation for the Mtigwaki snark, I went very rapidly back through the strips involving Liz for the last year, starting from when she went to Mtigwaki the first time. I discovered something that surprised me. If I concentrated just on Liz in Mtigwaki, it was actually a very pleasant read, so much so that the Liz / Anthony / Thérèse triangle and fall-on-the-ice storyline in the middle of it was pretty jarring in comparison. Also, reading it that rapidly allowed me to gloss over the sillier parts of the story in Mtigwaki, like Gary and Viv doing weeks of expository dialogue on the lifestyle there and the extremely coincidental arrival of Shiimsa, as a newly born kitten. They were silly, but they weren’t unpleasant. It made me wish that Lynn relied more on the real-life stuff and not the Lifetime Channel Movie plots she used with Howard / Anthony / Liz.
I think I may get a dialogue partner in mst3k4evr, who started doing posts again for Kortney, who is currently traveling with Howard. There is the potential for a lot of fun dialogue, and it should allow fewer of the Howard posts to look like fan fiction.
Join us tomorrow for H&K in Sin City
posted by howard at 11:10 PM
1 Comments:
Your Mtigwaki snark was spot-on and much needed! :)
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