After all these years, the laugh track survives

Open: Brad's front room in the evening. Mrs. Brad sits, watching TV, as Brad enters the room.

(Crowd applauds loudly, recognizing the star of the show.)

Brad (in Ricky Ricardo accent from "I Love Lucy"): Hi honey, I'm hoooome!

(Laughter)

Mrs. Brad: Well, it's about time. I was about to see if a picture of you was on the side of the milk carton!

(Laughter)

Brad: Are you a time traveler from 1980? (He looks at the camera and shrugs. Laughter, then applause)

Mrs. Brad: Speaking of 1980, your haircut looks like it's from 1980.

(Crowd shouts, "ohhhhh!" then laughs, then applauds)

Brad: You'll never guess what I learned today.

Mrs. Brad: How to tie your shoelaces?

(Laughter)

Brad: No, more important than that. And with velcro, who needs shoelaces? (Crowd chuckles) Anyway, think of sitcoms.

Mrs. Brad: Hmmm. I think I can do that. (She looks at the camera and rolls her eyes. Crowd laughs.)

Brad: Doesn't it seem like laugh tracks for those shows went out of style a few decades ago? That modern shows don't or shouldn't have laugh tracks and that most of the new shows are shot with a single camera?

(Crowd grumbles)

Mrs. Brad: I don't know, but we need laugh tracks! How else would people know when to laugh?

(Long applause)

Brad: I don't know about that. Shouldn't it be obvious when to laugh? You laugh when something's funny.

Mrs. Brad: Well, then how would they know when to laugh when you say something?

(Crowd laughs)

Brad: Why I oughta . . . 

(Crowd chuckles)

Mrs. Brad: Oughta get a haircut from this century?

(Laughter, then applause)

Brad: But seriously, there are currently 12 adult sitcoms on network TV and seven of them use laugh tracks . . . or least some canned laughter. The fake kind.

(Audience gasps)

Mrs. Brad: It's not fake. It was real laughter when it was recorded.

(Applause)

Brad: But some of the people laughing on 2025 sitcoms are dead. They've been dead for decades. They were recorded in the 1950s!

(Audience gasps)

Mrs. Brad: You're a real ray of sunshine, you know that?

(Laughter)

Brad: It just seems weird that something that seems so outdated remains so strong. I thought the best recent sitcoms are all those single-camera, non-laugh-track shows. It turns out that the laugh-track sitcoms are still happening. It's like we're too dumb to know what's best.

Mrs. Brad: When you say we're too dumb to know what's best, are you talking about TV or the elections? (Crowd shouts "ohhhh" and then applauds.) And what shows are you talking about that don't use a laugh track?

Brad: "The Office." And shows like that.

Mrs. Brad: OK. What other shows don't have laugh tracks?

Brad: Umm. "M*A*S*H*?" "Barney Miller?"

(Laughter)

Mrs. Brad: They went off the air nearly 50 years ago. Is there any show since then that you can cite?

Brad: Seinfeld?

(Laughter)

Mrs. Brad: Anything after the invention of fire?

(Laughter)

Brad: Why I oughta!

(Laughter)

Mrs. Brad: Maybe the reason is that a laugh track is reassuring. Maybe it's just a way for people to feel comfortable and maybe it's a way that older audience members can feel a connection to the past. You know, maybe we should do that: Have a connection to the past?

Brad: Do you mean?

(Henry Winkler walks on stage)

Winkler: Aaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

(Crowd cheers wildly.)

Brad: Why I oughta!

(Crowd laughs, breaks into applause and screen fades into the credits)

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Shocking study: Women say more words than men during adulthood

Women speak more words per day than men, but only during a very specific period of life.

Of course, that period of life is 25 to 65.

So . . .  most of adulthood, which is a strange thing to pull out like it's a weird little period of time. It's 40 years. In terms of the study's findings, 43.8 million more words are spoken by an average woman during that period than an average man.

Nearly half are asking how a man is feeling or suggesting how should drive. But I jest.

The finding – that women speak 3,000 more words daily than men during most of their adult life – is probably no surprise to most women other than Mrs. Brad. Who, if the data is true, must say many, many, many words to herself.

The study, conducted by University of Arizona researchers and published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (which has a tremendous advice column and hilarious comic strips), found that the average 25- to 64-year-old woman spoke 21,845 words per day, compared to the average men of the same age, who spoke 18,570 words (my guess at most common of those male words: "Huh?" "What?" "Whatnot" and "Cool.").

For context of just how many words that is, my columns average about 600 words. The Declaration of Independence is 1,320 words. Novels are usually around 100,000 words. The Bible is about 780,000 words. That last meeting you were forced to attend featured about 1 billion words.

So the average woman says a novel's-worth of words in a five-day period. The average man needs an additional day-plus to reach that level. 

An earlier University of Arizona study from 2007 by the same researcher found that women and men each say about 16,000 words per day, but the follow-up study found differently. The first study focused primarily on college-aged people who lived near Austin, Texas (why would the University of Arizona study people who lived near the University of Texas? They're not even in the same conference!) so it wasn't seen as widely representative. This version used far more participants in multiple countries with a wider age range.

There was no signficant differences between genders for those ages 10-24 and 65 and older. But from 25-64? Hoo boy.

According to the researchers, one reason that women talk more during that period is they are generally the primary caretaker for children, so they speak more words. Others just think blah, blah, blah. (I wasn't paying attention. Sorry.)

The least talkative person in the survey spoke about 100 words a day and the most talkative spoke more than 120,000. You probably know both of those people and have probably been stuck in a longer-than-comfortable scenario with each of them.

Which is worse? Too many words or too few words? Or is a combined 40,000 words between the average man and woman OK, regardless of the division?

This column is 500 words, so only 18,070 left for me. Which is cool and whatnot.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Curry and then who else? Ranking the Bay Area's top athletes

We live in a wonderland of professional sports figures.

Even after the heartbreaking departures of the A's and Raiders, the Bay Area is the envy of most of the sports world, due to the fact that our major pro sports teams (for purposes of this exersise, we mean the Giants, 49ers, Warriors and Sharks) all consistently make serious efforts to win.

That's not true everywhere (and wasn't true when the A's were still here).

Beyond that, consider the number of charismatic stars who have played here (Willie Mays, Joe Montana, Rickey Henderson, Barry Bonds, Rick Barry), and you realize this region has a wealth of great sports figures.

But who are the best? Over the years, I've done this exercise many times, going back 15 years. Curiously, only three people have topped the list (Tim Lincecum, Buster Posey and Stephen Curry), but dozens of stars have been part of the top 10.

There's no science to this, just art (by which I mean don't blame me if I forgot your favorite person). Here are the current top 10 figures in Bay Area sports:

10. Matt Chapman, Giants. He's the type of athlete who you don't appreciate until he's on your team: He's steady, spectacular at times, but generally a really good grinder. Chapman is like the student who isn't the best in any class, but at the end of the year, she has a 4.0 grade point average.

9. Macklin Celebrini, Sharks. He was the first pick in the 2024 NHL draft and had a solid rookie season at age 18 (he was born in 2006!). Celebrini is positioned to become the Sharks' biggest-ever star, due to his early standing in the league and how things appear to be set to build the franchise around him. Bonus points: His name is familiar because his father is the Warriors director of sports medicine and performance..

8. Logan Webb, Giants. He's not the longest-serving Giants player (that's Mike Yastrzemski), but he's been the starting pitcher four consecutive years and has led the National League in innings pitched for each of the past two season. He's old-school in the best way possible.

7. Christian McCaffrey, 49ers. A unicorn in the NFL – a great running back who could be a great wide receiver if needed and maybe could play quarterback in an emergency. McCaffery was injured most of last year, so he's slipped on this list, but if he returns at anywhere close to the standard he's set in eight NFL seasons, he's a top-three NFL running back. Bonus points: He attended Stanford.

6. Fred Warner, 49ers. He's charismatic, he's fast, he's strong and he's a willing leader on the Bay Area's favorite sports team. Warner does everything at full speed and for those rare times when he's off the field (he plays injured), there's a huge dropoff.

5. Draymond Green, Warriors. The best defensive player of his generation, a four-time NBA champion and the emotional spark for the Warriors (often for good, sometimes for bad). Green is wrapping up his 13th season with the franchise, something that only 25 NBA players have ever surpassed (including Steph Curry, with 15 seasons) and is the bad cop to Curry's good cop on the national stage.

4. Nick Bosa, 49ers. One of the best pass-rushers in the NFL, he's the most famous defensive player on the Niners (not the best. That's Warner). There's a reason the team buckled and gave him a huge contract two years ago – players with his skill set are rare. And he's just 27.

3. Buster Posey, Giants. While a player, he was consistenly near the top of this list. Now he's the team's top executive (he's not yet 40!) and is the most famous member of the franchise (next on the list are broadcasters Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow). Giants fans trust him to rebuild the franchise and it will take some significant failure to diminish that confidence.

2. Brock Purdy, 49ers. It's an automatic that the quarterback of the 49ers – by far the most popular sports team in the Bay Area – is one of the most important sports figures in the region. That's true if it's Joe Montana, Steve Young, Tim Rattay or Alex Smith. It's particularly true for Purdy, famously the last pick of the draft, who led the team to the NFC Championship game in his first two seasons (going to the Super Bowl in the second of those years).

1. Stephen Curry. His star power is obvious now, but when drafted in 2009, Curry joined a franchise that had one playoff appearance in 15 years – and proceeded to miss the playoffs the next three seasons. That he's seen as the greatest shooter and one of the greatest winners in NBA history is remarkable. That's he's a perfect "face of the franchise" for a team that is one of the glamor franchises in sports is a tribute to Curry and his teammates.

Reach Brad Stanhope at Bradstanhope@outlook.com.

'What a Show!' – Americans Split on View of Middle Ages

The Middle Ages have an image problem.

By that, I don't mean your 50s and 60s, which some people (who apparently think we live to 120) call middle-aged. I mean the real European Middle Ages, the era of knights and castles and plagues and the Crusades and bathing once a month and the Inquisition ("What a show!" as sung in "History of the World, Part I," the Mel Brooks movie where I learned most of what I know about history).

We don't love the Middle Ages. We don't hate them, either.

A recent YouGov survey showed that 34% of Americans have very or somewhat favorable views of the Middle Ages and the same percentage have very or somewhat negative views. Americans are split on everything (who should be president, whether the designated hitter is a good idea, whether frying beats flame-broiling and whether the Middle Ages was a good time). 

It's remarkable that such a high percentage of people have a favorable view of a period when life expectancy was about 35 years, when less than 20% of people could read and when almost no one had a car or TV. But the other things – chivalry, cool architecture (of famous places, not the homes of those illiterate people who somehow lived to their 40s), the Vikings (they won much more than the modern football team does) – have cache with people.

This is all complicated by the definition of "Middle Ages," although I wouldn't want to live in any version of the times mentioned. The survey-takers asked about the Dark Ages, Late Antiquity and Classical Antiquity. It's really different ways to define the period from about 500 until about 1600 or so. There's nuance on the question of which period includes, for instance, the invention of the printing press. Or when Marco Polo lived. There's an even deeper question of whether it's OK to open your eyes during a game of Marco Polo if you're in water over your head and you're getting nervous about drowning.

But enough about water sports. This is about our view of the Middle Ages. Quit trying to distract me.

Those who took the survey were as divided on the definition of the Middle Ages as they are on the question of Pepsi vs. Coke. A majority considered Columbus' journey to the Americas and Martin Luther writing his Ninety-Five Theses as being post-Middle Ages, while also believing that King Henry VIII annulling his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (which happened after both of the preceding events) was during the Middle Ages.

Maybe they just thought Henry (who was 42 at that time) was in his middle ages. Or maybe, like me, they had no idea about Henry VIII, other than the silly 1965 song by Herman's Hermits, which isn't about the king after all. Most of that ignorance is also likely due to the fact that it wasn't covered in "History of the World Part I," I guess.

We're split on our views of what we think of the Middle Ages, we're split on when they happened, we're split on whether you can open your eyes in Marco Polo to avoid the threat of drowning, but we have some consensus on specifics. 

Most of us dislike the Black Plague and the Hundred Years War. Most of us like castles and chivalry.

But looking closer at the numbers brings some further troubling data. For instance, 73% of people have a negative view of the Black Plague, which killed between 30% and 50% of Europeans. But 9% of people have a positive view of it.

What? Who has a positive view of the Black Plague?

Similarly, 16% of people have a positive view of the Inquisition. I hope the Black Plague fans are just an extreme subset of the Inquisition fans ("Here we go!"), rather than a different group. We're in trouble if 25% of people have a favorable view of one of those events.

Ultimately, our view of the Middle Ages is confused. Movies about the era aren't about people starving to death at age 8. They're not about losing two-thirds of the people in your village to the Black Plague, which you attribute to some sinister spirits. They're not about people freaking out because they're afraid they'll drown in a swimming pool because no one told them there was an exception to the "keep your eyes closed" rule when you're "it."

That's my conclusion: We have a mixed view of the European Middle Ages because we don't know much about them. Maybe that's generous -- not judging something we don't know. Maybe it's ignorance -- thinking things used to be great because we only watch movies about people who have it good.

Or maybe it's just because everyone didn't have the privilege of watching "History of the World Part I," where we learned about the Inquisition, stand-up philosophers and "The 15 Commandments."

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Easy as 1-2-3: There's no reason to change Alphabet song

Things are always changing. Sometimes for the good, sometimes for the worse.

We allowed the designated hitter in all of baseball, not just the American League. We determined that chest hair on men was undesirable. We decided that Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson and Mahatma Gandhi were bad guys, not good guys.

Times change. Things are different now than they were 20, 40 or 60 years ago. Adapt or die.

That's all fine, but this is a bridge too far: They're trying to change the tune and flow of the Alphabet song. Yes. That song.

The one you sang to learn the alphabet. The "elemen-o-pee" song. They're changing that one. Or attempting to do so (and by "they," I means some people on the internet).

It's an outrage that could disrupt the entire educational system. It's a change that shouldn't be made.

We can change our view of O.J. Simpson and decide that Harry Truman was a good president and admit that disco music wasn't that bad. But can we change the flow of the ABC song that shares a tune with "Baa-Baa Black Sheep" and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star"?

There's plenty of reason to say no, but the biggest reason is that the proponents of the new version (new = the earliest version I can find of it is from 2019) are trying to take away the part of the song we like the most. You know, the "elemen-o-pee" part.

I presume there's a reason for it. They think little kids will get confused and not realize that L, M, N, O and P are letters. They're right, but that's not a reason to change it. Generations of kids have learned the alphabet despite the "elemen-o-pee" portion. Maybe because of it.

Perhaps the confusion makes the magic.

Things don't have to be perfect to work. There's value in learning how to drive in an old, imperfect car. It's OK to take vacations where everything doesn't come out perfectly. Sometimes, the best meal can be food that's not perfectly prepared.

And there's value in the traditional version of the Alphabet song.

If we let them change the tune and flow of the Alphabet song, what's next? Will we try to make everything easy for kids? Will we stop having to, two and too mean different things? Will we stop talking about Persia, Prussia and Russia as different places? Will we stop telling them 4 is more than 2, but ¼ is less than ½?

No, no and no. But each of those makes more sense than changing the Alphabet song.

If we change the tune and flow (let's face it, we're changing the lyrics if we take out elemen-o-pee) to the Alphabet song, everything could be on the table. And that's a frightening proposition.

Just say no to the new Alphabet song.

Now I've said my ABCs, next time won't you sing with me?

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

When I learned about a thing by twice wrecking the Thing

Sometimes it takes more than one mistake to teach us a lesson. Sometimes it takes two mistakes in one week.

It was my senior year of high school. My dad had purchased a Volkswagen Thing – the Jeeplike vehicle that VW made for a few years – as a car for my older sisters and me to drive until we bought our own car. It was his car: We had to ask permission to drive it. He sometimes said no, deeming our desire ("I don't feel like taking the bus to school" or "I want to go to my friend's house because my other friends are also coming over") insufficient.

I was the youngest and by the time I was driving it, my sisters had either moved away, bought their own car or both. The Thing was largely mine (although I still often rode the bus to school).

It was an interesting car. The windows (except the windshield) were made of plastic. The doors came off. The windshield folded down. You could take it offroad, except it was just a two-wheel drive vehicle without much power, so you could get stuck. So what? It had a winch on the front, so you could hook it to something and pull the car out.

I drove that Yellow Thing frequently. It had a top speed of about 60 mph, but once you went above about 40 mph, the engine noise was so loud (the car was like a can, it echoed) that you couldn't hear the radio.

I drove the car to my job at McDonald's and one day, I stopped at the small supermarket near my home and picked up something (baseball cards? Diet soda? A Street and Smith's sports preview magazine?), then got in the car and backed up. I rolled back and . . . BAM!

Someone hit me from the right side.

Oh, no. My dad's car!

The other driver was gracious. Their car had very little damage (how much damage can it cause if you hit a car that's as strong as an aluminum can?). The Thing was dented, but not wrecked. It was my fault, since I backed in front of them, so we filed a police report for insurance purposes, knowing that only my car would need some work.

Dad was surprisingly gracious. That's why we have insurance, he said. Be careful next time, he said. I still felt pretty bad.

A week later, the police report was at his office. He worked near the police station and somehow it was sent to him. He told me to come by his office after school, pick up the report and take it to the insurance company, since they would be paying for the repair. (Imagine a world without email or even fax machines. I had to physically take the report to their office!)

I stopped by, picked up the report, backed out of his small parking lot, when . . . BAM!

Someone hit me from the right side.

What happened? Was this deja vu? How could this happen again? That other driver must have been driving too fast! I didn't even see him!

Well, maybe he was driving too fast, but three things worked against me:

1. The other driver knew my dad.

2. He was an insurance agent.

3. His father was the mayor.

Oh, no.

This time, the Thing was smashed. The entire right side was ruined.

I didn't understand how the same thing happened twice. This time (I found out a few days later), the car was totaled. I'd wrecked the car my dad bought for us to drive. Worse yet, I didn't have a car to drive and both accidents were my fault. I'd ruined everything.

As I thought more about it, I realized what happened. Sometime over the year-plus that I'd been driving, I'd developed a bad habit: When I backed up, I looked over my left shoulder and then looked in my rear-view mirror. I never looked to the right! Never. I saw what was on the left side and behind me, but that's all.

In retrospect, it's amazing that I hadn't gotten in other wrecks. I was blind to any car coming from the right side.

It's a life lesson: Sometimes, things happen that are not our fault. Sometimes, they're someone else's fault, sometimes, they're no one's fault.

And sometimes our bad habits – of which we may not even be aware – cause all kinds of problems.

Since I was 17, I've never been hit by a car coming from the right side as I was backing out of a parking spot. Of course, I've backed into a closed garage door. I've scraped off the rain gutter off a school building (sorry Laurel Creek Elementary!) while driving a storage truck too close. I've backed into a tree while on a camping trip.

But I haven't backed in front of the insurance-selling son of the mayor again. Lesson learned.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Ranking the most disappointing food and drink

On a recent day, I was getting groceries and saw something irresistible: Diet Blackberry Dr Pepper.

What could go wrong? It's adding something great (blackberries) to something already good (Dr Pepper). This was going to be the greatest soda experience of my life!

Then I remembered one of the key factors in all of food and drink: Sometimes things that seem great aren't. And sometimes, we continue to have false expectations of how good something is, even after previous disappointing outcomes.

Here are the top seven such foods. (Note: A food is disappointing if it's bad. It's also disappointing if it's good, but you expect it to be fantastic. So inclusion on this list doesn't mean a food stinks. It means it's disappointing., the same way that your mother didn't think you were bad, you were just disappointing.)

7. Exotic soda flavors. Blackberry Diet Dr Pepper. Fanta Peach. Sprite Cherry. Pepsi S'mores Toasty Marshmallow (!), Coke Cinnamon. They always seem great – if you love soda in general, it will be even better with this new flavor! Then you drink it and . . . you realize the basic soda is better.

6. Pop Tarts. I surveyed some friends and this got the mixed reviews. It's either disappointing (because we remember these as bigger and having more filling than they do) or great. I suspect the "it's still great" crowd might not have eaten Pop Tarts in a while.

5. Froot Loops. This is specific, but also a placeholder for all children's cereals that don't appeal to an adult's palate. Cap'n Crunch is still good. Lucky Charms is still good. Froot Loops? Honeycombs? Nah.

4. Abalone/crab. Both are very good, but when you consider the work that goes into them? Maybe not worth it. It's like spending (presumably) $100,000 on a car. It might be good, but is it 250% better than a $40,000 car? Nah.

3. Fast food. Everybody liked fast food when they were kids. Some people never gave up their love of it (much like I've never abandoned my love of pizza), but for many of us, fast food is a less frequent choice as we age. Then you decide to stop at a fast-food restaurant, maybe because it's along the freeway on a trip or because you're running errands and fast food seems easier than going to a regular restaurant or maybe because you decide to have it delivered. It's rarely great. It's OK. It's fast. It's food. But memory is better than reality.

2. Hot chocolate. The fact that this is rarely an option (you are never offered hot chocolate during the summer; you rarely think of it outside the holiday season) makes us forget that it's disappointing. Hot chocolate? Sure! It will be great. Then you drink it and it tastes like chocolatey warm water. It's a disappointment.

1. Fair food. Year after year I went to the Solano Fair excited about the food. Corn dogs! Fried pickles! Huge turkey legs! Kettle corn! Frozen bananas! They seem so great and it's easy to look past the fact that they're overpriced and are prepared in trailers that might be less than sanitary. Then you eat them and they're OK. And 20 minutes later, you feel like you have a bowling ball in your stomach. You will remember this . . . until the next year, when you're excited again.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

DVDs, CDs teach us an important lesson about technology promises

About 30 years ago, most of us accepted what was obviously a scam.

As we transitioned from vinyl records and cassette tapes to compact discs, we told ourselves and each other that this was better. Not only was it easy to transport CDs, they were digital. They would last forever.

Forever, unlike record albums, which could scratch, warp and otherwise deteriorate over time.

CDs would hold up forever. They would never deteriorate. When we were 80 years old, that Tracy Chapman album would still sound exactly the same. It would never get old.

We believed that, even though the evidence was right in front of us. If you bought enough CDs, you knew that some didn't work. Some got caught on a loop in your CD player, forcing you to skip a song. Some actually skipped, like an album or 45.

Still, we believed the propaganda. CDs would last forever, just like the lie that microwaves would heat food evenly, that the new dishwasher didn't require us to pre-wash the dishes, that our shirts will never wrinkle.

Ultimately, we forgot the promise of forever CDs, not because the lie was exposed, but because technology overtook them. Why listen to a CD when you can stream music?

I thought of that bubble of false confidence in CDs when I recently read an article about how many DVDs – which I think of as the visual equivalent of CDs, since they were to VHS tapes what CDs were to vinyl albums – are decomposing rapidly.

An editor of a movie blog site pulled out some old films on DVD to watch. They failed. The DVD stopped playing partway through. Or it never stopped. 

This isn't something new. For years, DVD lovers have had the same experience, particularly with Warner Brothers Home Entertainment DVDs. You sit down with your DVD player (which most of us got rid of 10 years ago, along with our CD players and that old VHS player that we kept just in case), pop in a copy of a James Bond movie or "That's Entertainment 3," press play and . . . nothing. It doesn't start. Or it gets partway through and pauses.

Warner Brothers releases from 2008-2010 have been specifically targeted –- perhaps because that was the Great Recession and perhaps because the San Francisco Giants World Series title in 2010 broke the WB DVD Curse –but this shouldn't be a surprise.

Every new technology makes grandiose claims that it can't fulfill. Frozen food will make dinner simple, particularly with a microwave that heats evenly. A CD will never falter. A Nerf ball will never break a lamp. Self-driving cars won't go haywire.

But DVDs fail. CDs skip. That permanent press shirt you bought in 1978 is still in your closet, but it's wrinkled.

When people make claims about new technology – about artificial intelligence or electric cars or new TVs or a pill that will make you skinny with no side effects – keep in mind what happened to DVDs.

Technology overtook them and now they're useless. Although I guess anything that keeps you from watching "That's Entertainment 3" is probably worthwhile.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Discover of more moons makes Saturn the Rickey Henderson of planets

Underpromise and overdeliver.

As always, Saturn is living up to its motto. And by "Saturn," I mean the planet, not the former car company from which I purchased a 1994 vehicle that I drove until it went to the junkyard. That included an incident where I thought bungee cords would hold down the hood after the latch was broken, leading to a wild few moments on Interstate 80 between Fairfield and Vacaville when the hood popped open, shattered my windshield and blocked my view at 60 mph.

But enough about that (also: That's a future column topic). This is about the planet.

A team of astronomers at Mauna Kea in Hawaii recently discovered 128 additional moons for Saturn, extending its hold on the record for most moons in the solar system. One hundred twenty-eight. That's not a small increase, like finding out that what we thought was one moon was actually two, or that four moons were in the bathroom when the moon picture was taken.

This is a huge increase. Saturn now has 274 moons.

Of course, as all Saturn fans are aware, Saturn was previously credited with 146 moons (official motto of the Saturn Fan Club: "If you're not a fan of Saturn, you've obviously got your head up Uranus." It's a motto that's hilarious if you're a 13-year-old boy. Or any male, I guess). 

Saturn surpassed Jupiter's 95 moons long ago (really long ago, I guess. Having undiscovered moons means they were there, we just didn't know about them. Kind of like North America to the 14th-century Europeans or Peter Frampton to my friends before the "Frampton Comes Alive" album). 

This discovery makes Saturn the undisputed king of moons in our solar system. Saturn has more moons than all the other planets combined and if my math is correct, the fact that Saturn has 274 moons means it has (let me get my calculator and punch in some numbers . . . OK, hold on . . .) 274 times as many moons as Earth.

Saturn has more moons than the Unification Church (hey! Another 1970s joke!).

To be fair to other planets, some of Saturn's moons are rather unimpressive. They are blurry chunks of rocks, seen only in photos. They're likely the result of comets colliding with existing moons, breaking them into smaller bits, like how the Beatles breaking up meant four solo careers (but in this case, none of the moons are John Lennon or Paul McCartney. However, Saturn does have ring(o)s, get it?).

Anyway, there remains debate about this subject because there's no agreed-upon definition of when a rock becomes a moon, just like there's some dispute about what constitutes a planet (Pluto, of course, lost planethood when it was declared a "dwarf planet," which seems like a slur. "Little planet" seems more appropriate, but I can't make that point to experts because I've been banned from astronomy conferences due to my steady stream of "Uranus" jokes).

Scientists think there may be more Saturn moons to be discovered, so it's highly likely that the planet will remain the king of moons in our solar system. Jupiter remains a distant second, like Lou Brock (938) to Rickey Henderson (1,406) in baseball's list of stolen base leaders.

Saturn is way above Jupiter in moons, which is why we in the Saturn Fan Club always say, "If you really love Jupiter, you couldn't be stupider." And then someone mentions something about Uranus and we all laugh.

Astronomy can be fun.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Why superhero movies don't seem interesting to me

It happens every couple of months.

Someone at my office or at church or online will be excited. Perhaps I'll see a news item about it. Or will overhear someone else talking about it in the grocery store.

"I can't wait! The new Green Salamander movie is coming out next month!"

Or, "Finally, they're making a 'Fishman' movie. I hope it's true to the real story."

People love superhero movies from Marvel or DC. (I think. Other superhero comic companies may exist, and Marvel and DC may be the names of insurance companies.)

People love superheroes. They love the comic books and they especially love the movies. Superhero movies (by this, I include fantasy movies that seem superheroish to me) dominate the box office every summer. Black Panther. Spider-Man (why the hyphen?). Deadpool. Wolverine. Batman. Dr. Strange. (Superhero? Seems superheroish to me).

Here's where I'm an outlier. I don't love superheroes, I don't care about them, I've never read superhero comic books and I haven't seen a superhero movie since the 1978 Superman with Christopher Reeve (which I didn't like and contributed to my not returning to the genre).

This makes me strange, the same way not liking Star Wars does. (I don't hate Star Wars, I just don't care about it. I think of Star Wars in the same way I think of the Orlando Magic or raisins or AC-DC. I don't have strong feelings one way or the other.)

But superheroes. People love superheroes and I remain slightly baffled.

Perhaps it comes from my childhood, which didn't include superheroes. Oh, I read comic books. But the comic books I read were Archie or Richie Rich or Sad Sack or Donald Duck.

Superheroes seemed like something little boys should like, although it's not true. There's an entire genre of literature devoted to such things: The graphic novel (confession: The first several times I heard the term "graphic novel," I presumed it applied to novels that were explicitly sexual in nature. You know, graphic).

Adults buy and read graphic novels. They like the superheroes.

The same thing is true with manga, the Japanese graphic novel genre (another confession: I presumed manga was a fruit since I never heard anyone say manga and mango in the same sentence).

There are plenty of reasons people like superhero movies. There's long-form storytelling (people follow characters through development). There's a sense of justice or injustice. There's the opportunity for extensive backstories on secondary characters.

There's nothing wrong with superheroes. In fact, I kind of like the fact that people get so excited about the new movie about the Grape Bucket or Fat Cat (not real characters. I think.). But it's a culture in which I'm an outsider.

In fact, when the first Black Panther movie came out, I expected it to be about Huey Newton and Bobby Seale and the late 1960s political movement. Nope.

So keep watching the superhero movies (and manga and Star Wars). Just realize that some of us (I presume I'm not alone) don't know the Green Salamander or Grape Bucket. We're waiting for the next (first?) movie about Jughead, Archie's goofball friend.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.