October 2007 Archives

Today I learned another reason why I've been tired lately: I've got bronchitis.

But I took the opportunity, while my three prescriptions were being filled, to get a haircut, which I've needed for a while.

 

Hair and I have a fairly relaxed relationship, perhaps because we've been through so much together.  In deference to Dad's USMC aesthetic, I wore it in a crew cut in my youth, but by the time I started school it was long enough to hang in bangs.  Since it was the Seventies, I grew it pretty long for a while, but not as long as my brother did.  (He was mistaken for a girl once or twice, as I recall--it didn't happen to me, but maybe I just wasn't as pretty.)  It was very straight and medium brown through elementary school, but once I hit puberty it got a little darker, and the Sutker Wave began to creep in from Mom's side of the family.  It soon became impossible for me to wear it any way but parted on the left, curling across my forehead in a near Gene Wilderesqe surge.  Admittedly, the sides got kind of long and rather Bozo-ish at times, but the style was manageable and reasonably attractive.  Better still, it was low-maintenance; I've never used anything to dry my hair but a towel, and my skin produces enough natural oils that I've never seen much reason to add any product to my scalp.

So: that had me covered for the next thirty years.

Oh, sure, I started getting grey around the temples, but hell, my beard was getting shot with grey by the time I hit my late twenties, so a little snow on the roof didn't scare me.  I did notice, however, that some guys my age were already going bald.  It didn't seem to be happening to me yet, but my friends' experience certainly gave me pause for thought.  But then, when the world's most famous guy my age--Michael Jordan--went with the shaved head, suddenly all kinds of options opened up.  Clean-pated Patrick Stewart took command of the new Enterprise and was dubbed "bodacious" by TV Guide.  My friend Dan decided to go with the cropped look.  And though I still had the same hairline as ever, I decided to experiment: thus, in the summer of '93, I had my barber take it all off.  It didn't feel quite as pleasant in the shower as I'd been led to believe, but it didn't look bad.

But about two years back, I could see the writing on the forehead: my widow's peak was starting to erode.  The bays on either side of it were thinning out, too, but leaving points at the temples.  All in all, the effect was something that looked rather like the coif of Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, or maybe Jack Nicholson's hairline circa The Shining.  The wave was starting to look less like a curl and more like a combover--something I swore I'd never have.

So: time to crop it close.  I didn't shave my head again, but for the last two years, I've routinely gotten it cut to about a half-inch in length.  Sure, it's now impossible to tell that I have wavy (rather than straight) hair, but that's the way the aging process crumbles, I guess.  In addition to looking better, the short do has other advantages: it's cool in the summer, it doesn't require combing or brushing, and I only have to go to the barber every six or eight weeks. 

This last is important because the tonsorial options in our little town are, uh, limited.  We have a salon, yes, but it's rare that I can justify paying $25 or more for what's essentially a couple of passes with a hedge trimmer.  There's an old-fashioned barber shop downtown, with two chairs, a tinny radio that picks up only homogenized country music, nicotine stains from the Kennedy administration, and a collection of well-thumbed Guns & Ammo magazines from the Reagan years.  It's cheap--the price of a cut only recently went up to seven bucks--but you get what you pay for, especially if Slowhand is wielding the shears.  No, Eric Clapton isn't the barber--they probably don't even know his name there--but one of the barbers is so deliberate that he's known by EC's nickname.  Don't expect him to finish with you during your lunch hour.  Worse, when it's time to use the straight razor on your neck and sideburns, there's a very real risk of bloodshed.

A year or two back I finally decided I'd had enough laceration, and I began patronizing the other barber a little south of the main intersection.  He's the only man in his shop, which is filled with the same homogenized country music as Slowhand's, but the building is newer, the air conditioning works better, and the air is far less nicotine-saturated.  This barber is quicker and more skilled with a razor than Slowhand, and the price is the same, but the haircut experience is a problem for other reasons, which can be summed up in this barber's nickname:  Mumbles.  Unfortunately, through no fault of his own, he has a significant speech impediment.  This isn't a problem in the abstract, but in practice, it's awful; I can't understand him, and he wants to talk all the time.  Worse, he's trying to talk in a situation where I have the most trouble hearing anyway:  over a lot of background noise, i.e. the air conditioning and the aforementioned homogenized country radio.  If he turns on the electric trimmers while he's talking, I can't tell a vowel from a consonant.  And since I'm facing away from him with my glasses off, I have no visual clues to work with, either. So there I sit, feeling guilty because I can't understand him, but knowing it's not his fault, even though he's the one doing everything possible to prevent me from understanding him, and I'm stuck making noncommital grunts in hopes that they sound reasonably close to the response he's expecting.  It's better than bleeding, but it's still a significant source of psychological stress.

Today, however, while I waited for my prescriptions to be filled, I decided to visit the new barber shop that's opened on the south side of town.  The place was empty, so I was able to jump right to the head of the line.  The gleaming white linoleum was unmarred by cigarette burns and the air contained no strains of Nashville's lowest common denominator; instead, a TV on the wall was tuned to The Military Channel, and the barber affably commented on the pleasant weather as I handed him my glasses and settled into the chair.  Everything looked good.

Once he had his dropcloth around my neck, however, he kicked off the cut proper with that most alarming of conversational openers: "So, what do you think about politics?"

I like impassioned political discussion as much as the next man, but there are people with whom I do not want to have it, and one group of people in that category is the group holding sharp objects close to my neck, particularly not if they're interested in television shows about weaponry.  I hemmed and hawed and maintained a studied neutrality while the barber launched into a ceaseless, rambling discourse on Obama's "appealing to the wrong element," the Iraq war, the necessity of giving freedom to the Sunnis, the Shiite requirement of pilgrimage to Mecca to touch "that moon rock," and something about "the moon god" that made me somehow certain that he's a member of a sect whose teachings deny that God and Allah are the same deity.  I said a silent prayer to Him/Them that I was so well-practiced in making noncommital grunts from a barber's chair, paid my twelve dollars (with a three-dollar tip) to the barber I have now dubbed "Tinhat" and darted out to my car before the Protocols of the Elders of Zion came up.

Anyway, I'm thinking of growing my hair long again.

4:42 PM

(If I were the divine Madeline Kahn, I would set this to music and do a Dietrich impression, but these spindly little letters are the best I can manage just now.)

 

*We just finished our second Parents' Weekend at WFS; the first was two weekends ago.  Both of them involve Friday-afternoon games (or climbing demonstrations, in the case of our Rapidan program), Friday-night class presentations for the assembled parents, our usual Saturday-morning classes, and late-Saturday-morning conferences with the parents of individual students.  They're a little exhausting.

*I have been on dorm duty for two of those Parents' Weekends--Friday this time and Sunday last time--as well as on duty on the Saturday in between.  Dorm duty puts you on call all day, starting at breakfast (7:15-7:50 a.m.), with the added responsibility of monitoring the dorms during study hall (7:45-10:00 p.m.) and the check-in/lights out period (10:00-11:00 p.m.)  If I'm lucky, a duty day runs from 7:30 a.m. to about 11:20 p.m.

*Two weekends ago, I was working on students' marking period grades and comments, which were due on Monday at noon.  Last weekend I was furiously grading midterm tests, which I wanted to hand back to my English students on Monday at 8:00 and 8:45.  This past weekend I was furiously grading the second drafts of my speech students' oratories, which they needed to have back so they could work on them in class Saturday morning.  My hand hurts.

*Tuesday I climbed a mountain (Old Rag) with our Rapidan outdoor team.  The Tuesday before that I climbed a smaller mountain (Little Stony Man) so I could set up and supervise a rock-climbing session.

*I've been fighting off what may be the same old respiratory crap I was fighting off at the start of school, popping guaifenesin (Why have I hever heard of this drug before this year?) and sounding like Thurl Ravenscroft.  I felt bad enough last week to go home directly after class, skipping dinner and a meeting on Wednesday and dinner and an assembly on Thursday.  (Assemblies on any night but Monday are bad; they usually mean someone's being dismissed from school.)

*Last weekend the first issue of our school newspaper, the Oracle, had its first deadline.  As I was somehow talked into serving as co-advisor of the paper this year, the deadline meant I got to have several last-minute meetings with panicky students and/or faculty.  The good news is that the paper appeared on Friday, with only three noticeable errors, only one of them egregious.  (The same photo of a faculty member appeared twice--once when it was supposed to be a pic of a student.)

*Yesterday and two Saturdays ago, we had home football games, for which I'm now serving as the public address announcer.  It's not that hard, if your throat is working properly, but it's yet another commitment of two-plus hours during the weekend.

The good news is that during these somewhat intense few weeks, I've been able to keep up a more-or-less regular schedule at the gym, so I've gone roughly three months with a thrice-or-more-weekly exercise routine.  I may not be able to breathe or talk well, but I'm at least feeling relatively strong and spry.  I've also finished reading Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, which is a wonderful, unsettling novel deserving of a title that sounds less like a Lionel Richie song or a Hallmark Theater presentation.  I've finished watching the second season of The Office (the BBC's original version of the show--I haven't seen the American version) and learned its theme song (Rod Stewart's "Handbags and Gladrags") on the piano.  I've taken a new route up Old Rag--the considerably less strenuous Berry Hollow trail, which comes up the southwestern face and involves far less scrambling over bare rock than the exciting but exhausting Ridge Trail to the east.

And, god help me, I've learned what it means to have a teenager with a girlfriend: a busy signal, more or less interminably.

But the long drought finally broke after three straight rainy days, the leaves are turning, the temperature is dropping, and I have a cup of coffee and the prospects of a relaxed day of NFL viewing.  I'm tired, but I'm not yet worn down.

Talk to me again after the Bonfire...

 

8:06 AM

An experiment: as I sit here watching Game 6 of the AL championship series, I'll post occasional notes, just like the guys on ESPN who know more about baseball and get paid!

8: 00 I'm on dorm with seniors Chris and Mark.  We're trying to predict when FOX Sports will first bring up the Yankees' problems, despite the fact that they aren't playing tonight.  Mark says before the game starts.  Chris is going with 2/3 of an inning.  I said before the bottom of the first.

8:25 First pitch.  Curt Schilling throwing to Grady Sizemore.  Wasn't this game supposed to start at 8:00?  Looks like Mark's wrong.

8:27 Sizemore jacks a towering shot down the right field line. It's called foul, but Cleveland manager Eric Wedge comes out to protest that when it cleared the foul pole, it was fair.  Alas, there's no instant replay in baseball.

8:30 Schilling strikes out Sizemore.  Chris was wrong, too.  Will Joe Torre get some love during the break?

8:33 Julio Lugo introduces the Sox lineup.  He looks deeply, deeply, nervous--like he's in a police lineup, maybe.

8:34 No mention of the Yanks yet.  I'm quietly astonished.

8:35 Terrific play by Asdrubal Cabrera at 2nd--barehanding a Dustin Pedroia chopper to second and almost making the play at first despite throwing it off his right leg.

8:38 Joe Buck informs us that Kevin Youkilis calls himself a "handsy" hitter.  I have no idea what that means, and since Buck's not explaining, I have to wonder if the same isn't true for him.  Off the top of my head, I'm guessing that it means he uses his hands when he bats, which isn't exactly a revelation.  In fact, only one hitter I can think of--the St. Louis Browns' legendary one-armed player Pete Gray--would not have been "handsy," though he was certainly "handy."  Maybe this needs further study.

8:43 Fausto Carmona walks David Ortiz to load the bases with no outs, and here comes Manny.  I predict that he'll be Manny.  But will he be handsy?

8:48 Manny goes 0-2, then the count fills up, then finally he strikes out.  No word on his handsiness or lack thereof.

8:50 As J.D. Drew comes up with two out and the bases loaded, Mark reveals that he hates Drew fiercely.  A varsity pitcher, Mark finds Drew's show-me-the-money attitude objectionable: "He doesn't even like baseball."  I'm sure there are fans in Boston who agree...

8:52 ...or not.  Drew just hit a 3-1 pitch over the left-center wall for a grand salami.  That should improve his chances of getting a cab in Boston.

8:56 FINALLY.  Out number three.  When one inning takes thirty minutes to play, you know you're in for a rough night of blogging.

9:01 Victor Martinez "absolutely tattooed" a ball into right field (in Chris's words).  Not into the upper deck of Fenway, but a long way up and a long way out.  4-1 Boston.

9:06 I know I shouldn't be surprised to hear the Rolling Stones' "I'm Free" used as a theme for the Chase Visa Card, but it sure puts the sound of Mick Jagger singing "Street Fighting Man" at the end of V for Vendetta in a new context, doesn't it?

9:10 Carmona looks a lot less rattled so far this inning.  Granted, it's easier when you're facing the bottom of the order.

9:12 And sure enough, as the top of the order comes around, Pedroia hits a double off the left-field wall--just out of Kenny Lofton's reach.

9:14 In case my tone hasn't made it apparent yet, I'm rooting for the Indians here.  I've got no serious beef with the Red Sox, but I feel the Indians are due--they haven't won a Series since 1948, after all.  The Sox had a better claim up until 2004 (which was the year I went to Fenway and bought myself a Sox cap--in May, I'd like to note), but now they've got to respect the other long-time losers in baseball.

9:16 Double play to end the second.  A twenty-minute inning is a little better.

9:17 Oy.  Tonight's first airing of the inescapable Chevy ads featuring The Artist Formerly Known As Cougar's "This Is Ourrrrrrrrrr Country."  I'd run to the snack bar, but my gorge is rising.

9:24 Two singles for Cleveland before Sizemore drops a shallow fly into Drew's glove.  A little rally?  Cabrera's hitting well with runners in scoring position... but all he gets is a fly to right, leaving runners at the corners with two out.

9:29 And Hafner chops a wambly little ball to Youkilis at first.  Not even the merest scintilla of a rally.  Feh.

9:32 Time for a snack bar break?  Nah, I'll watch the bottom of the third beforehand.

9:34 Oy.  Manny Ramirez walks--that's Carmona's third walk in two innings plus one batter.  He's not looking sharp at all.

9:35 And now Carmona's gone 3-0 on Mike Lowell... and there's ball four.

9:36 And here come J.D. Drew (to the plate) and the pitching coach (to the mound).

9:38 Drew drives a liner into center and Ramirez comes home.  5-1 Sox, no outs.  Carmona's coming out with men on first and second.  I'm heading to the snack bar.  Back soon.

10:28 Well, I'm back, and from what I could see at the snack bar, it wasn't pretty.  It was 8-1 when I walked in, and I got to see Youkilis caught in a run-down--at which point the second baseman attempted to flip the ball to first and bounced it off Youk's head, allowing another run to score.  By the time I got back, it was 10-1 and the Sox were closing out the top of the 5th with a double play.

Pedroia's back up now--he's already been on base three times in the first four innings.

10:32 Whoa.  Pedroia lashed one hard, but Cabrera backhanded it, spun, and threw him out with ease.

10:33 Nice defensive inning, Cleveland--finished off by a beautiful barehand scoop by Casey Blake.  Too bad about that nine-run deficit.

10:35 Devo's "Whip It" is being used in a strange little Taco Bell ad that I don't really like.  But I do like the song.

10: 41 Schilling strikes out Victor Martinez, ending the Cleveland sixth. 

10:42 The ad I just saw for the new Beowulf movie gives me some serous heebie-jeebies.  (The story's one that I like very much, and not just because J.R.R. Tolkien was a fan, either.  And not just because of Seamus Heaney's translation.  And not just because the Heaney has a fabulous cover.  No, I genuinely like it; I studied it at UNC and enjoyed it enough to keep Kevin Crossley-Holland's translation for several decades before Heaney's became available.)  I may even end up seeing the movie, but the commercial makes me worry, because if what it shows is accurate, the film is a video game.  That's what it looks like, I mean.  The actors and actresses appear to have posed for the computer animators, so the video-game version of Grendel's Mother looks like Angelina Jolie (who is in fact playing her), but she looks like a video-game version of Angelina Jolie, not like Angelina Jolie herself.  In fact, weirdly, it looks almost as if Grendel's mother is being played by Lara Croft.

10: 49 Mike Lowell just bounced one off the Green Monster, bringing J.D. Drew up.  Drew, Ellsbury, and Lugo have driven in all of Boston's runs, apparently, and they're batting 7-8-9.  "Not Cleveland's night" is the phrase I'm thinking of.

10:50 Drew strikes out and FOX goes to commercial with Boston's "Don't Look Back."  Boston the band, I mean.  I sincerely hope I never hear Manny Ramirez trying to cover Brad Delp's vocals.

10:55 Jhonny Peralta (sic) is swinging, but I've got to drop out of the blog here in the top of the 7th so I can help the boys check in on dorm.  I'll check back in later, I hope.

11:50 The dorm is checked in, I'm home at last, and the Tribe is going to have to win Game 7 if they want to meet Colorado.  A 12-2 shellacking was NOT what they were hoping for, especially after being up three games to one. 

Maybe I shouldn't live-blog their next one.

6:25 PM

"I am not professional, but I love basketball,
The squeaking of the sneakers, the echo in the hall."
               --Spearhead, "People in tha Middle," from Home (1994) 

Years ago, when Waffle O'Cheeseman and Torrid Elmo Burnadorm (Hi, Waff!  Hi, Elmo!) introduced me to a CD called Hypocrisy Is the Greatest Luxury, I didn't quite know what to think, but I was intrigued.  The name of the band--the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy--suggested a peculiar mix of swagger, literacy, and self-awareness, and the music itself was a combination of industrial noise, hip-hop rhythms, and political commentary that wouldn't have been one bit out of place on a Gil Scott-Heron album.  The lyrics cited the Dead Kennedys, Salman Rushdie, and Billy Bragg.  On a couple of songs, the lead vocalist actually sang, and moreover, there were moments when he revealed things that are usually carefully concealed on a hip-hop record: vulnerability and self-doubt. 

This was my introduction to the work of Michael Franti.  Before I heard the Heroes, I'd found a few hip hop albums that I enjoyed--De La Soul's Three Feet High and Rising, A Tribe Called Quest's People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, mainly--and some choice singles such as Young MC's irresistible pop confection "Bust a Move" and Eric B & Rakim's "Paid in Full," but I couldn't really point to a rap record that I found artistically satisfying.  They were often fun, sometimes extremely clever and/or technically fascinating, but they didn't hit me where I lived.  Even the critically lauded Public Enemy albums I heard all through the Eighties had left me unmoved, even as I respected Chuck D's talent; I just didn't want to listen to him all that much.  As far as hip hop went, I was obviously too something or not something else enough.

Franti changed that.  Politically aware, keenly intelligent, and lyrically inventive, he also had something else that appealed to me more than any rapper I'd heard before:  a rhetorical stance I respected.  As David Foster Wallace points out in his brilliant essay "Authority and American Usage" (collected in Consider the Lobster), the approach taken by any authority has a great deal to do with how well that authority is accepted.  In Wallace's case, he's discussing lexicography, and the reasons why neither an all-accepting descriptivism nor an orthodox prescriptivism is an entirely satisfactory stance on which to base a dictionary.

He could be talking about hip hop, though.  Or heavy metal.  Or pretty much any form of pop music where the front man tells us he is The Authority.  I don't much like it when a pop singer tells me what to do.  I also don't much like it when a pop singer whines overmuch, which explains why, despite his lyrical gifts, I've never been able to listen to Morrissey for more than a few minutes without just wanting to smack him.  I don't want lyrics that hand down rulings from the bench any more than I want lyrics that deny the singer's responsibility for taking up my time.  I want lyrics that treat me as the judge; I want him to convince me that he deserves my attention.  The best approach for this, in my experience, is to treat me as an equal: offer me sympathy, offer me wit, offer me a new perspective, but don't pretend you know absolutely everything (which makes me unlikely to believe you even when you DO know what you're talking about), and don't pretend you know absolutely nothing (which makes me unlikely to believe you about anything).

Michael Franti walks betweens the horns of that rhetorical dilemma.  He asks me for respect and offers me reasons why I might extend it, as well as reasons why I might not.  By honestly doubting his own claim to authority, he makes it that much more likely that I will recognize his claim.

All of which explains why I like Antawn Jamison so much.

It's not just that Jamison plays basketball, and that Franti's a hoops fan.  In fact, on his first album with his current band, Spearhead, he performed a wonderful song about African-American history cast in the form of a musing on the 1992 US Men's Olympic hoops squad, called of course "Dream Team."  Franti imagines a whole slew of historical/political figures taking the court instead of Mike and Magic; my favorite image is either Marcus Garvey taking Charles Barkley's power forward spot or Angela Davis posting up, lowering her shoulder, and bringing down the backboard.

But even though Jamison spent a few years playing in Franti's home in the Bay Area, that's not why I like him.  I like him because (work with me here) of his rhetorical style of basketball.

Look, I'm a UNC fan, and I think about the Tar Heels too much, but there is a point here, and it's sort of analogous to my point about hip hop and Wallace's point about lexicography.  I was in the same freshman class with one of the most beloved Tar Heels of all, Michael Jordan.  I saw him play every time the Heels ever took the court at Carmichael Auditorium.  Even in the early days he was astonishing--not just because of his size, his athleticism, or his incredible jumping ability, but because he dictated what would happen on the court.  He was The Authority.  His talent, his competitiveness, his will power would not bow to anyone else.  I'm glad he was on my favorite team, make no mistake, but I can't really connect to a player who comes at the game from such a singular perspective.

By contrast, many UNC fans love the last man off the bench, such as Dewey "Biscuits" Burke, whose appearances were usually limited to garbage time, when the main issue to be settled was whether the Heels would score 100 points and thereby render ticket-holders eligible for a free biscuit at Time Out.  I deeply respect these scrappy, hard-nosed kids who spend untold hours in practice, helping the starters hone their games, and work their asses off for four years in exchange for little more than the right to throw up a few last-minute jumpers against overmatched foes.  At the same time, their contributions--however fundamentally sound, however noble, however necessary--simply aren't as important to the game or as aesthetically pleasing as the contributions of the players in the regular rotation.  I'll never in my life say a bad word about Woody Coley, but his game could simply never demand my attention.

Antawn's game, though, could make me watch in awe.  OK, granted, he's no George Lynch on defense.  But on offense, he takes the talent he has and uses it to make the maximum possible contribution in a way that actually calls attention to his limitations.  Jamison was the classic "tweener" coming out of school, a college power forward whose size would force him out to the perimeter in the pros.  At UNC, he didn't really have a jump shot.  What he had was a nose for the ball and the quickest release of anyone not named Dan Marino.  If he jumped up for a rebound, he would grab the ball in shooting position and immediately pop it back up; the grab, the cock, and the release would all take place simultaneously at the apex of his jump.  It was a remarkable thing, made all the more remarkable to me by what it said about Jamison as a player: "If I bring this thing down, I'm probably not big and strong enough to bring it back up again."  It was a physical expression of doubt, far from the swagger of a Jordan, even as it was a display of talent that was light-years away from the scrappiness of a Burke.

In my essay "Seventeen Things I Learned from Dean Smith," I quoted Cicero: "If you aspire to the highest place it is no disgrace to stop at the second, or even the third."  I believe that Franti and Jamison, recognize that they may not be the best there is at what they do, but by recognizing that fact, they help make themselves the best they can be.  And there is something appealing, even beautiful, about watching a talented person do something as best he can--imperfections and all.

The Greek mathematician-astronomer-librarian-geographer-poet Eratosthenes was something of a tweener, too.  In fact, he was nicknamed "Beta" by his contemporaries because he was second-best at everything he tried, without ever being best at anything.  As a generalist myself, I naturally find that approach to life intriguing, but it's worth noting that "Beta" was in fact pretty darned good at such things as finding prime numbers and measuring the circumference of the Earth using only a couple of shadows.  Does that mean he could lead a band or score in traffic?  I wouldn't put it past him. 

And if Michael Franti and Antawn Jamison ever decide to collaborate on a book of poetry, I for one am likely to pick it up.

8:09 PM

Raised as I was under the influence of George Carlin records, I have a more-than-passing familiarity with the Seven Words You Can't Say on Television.  In fact, my dad and I have both been known to run through them (in order, of course) during moments of duress.  There's something deeply satisfying and cathartic about rolling the consonants of "shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker and tits" off your tongue--something that makes a potential road rage moment into something a little easier to bear.

Nonetheless, it had always been my belief that Carlin's list was only partially accurate.  As he himself noted, motherfucker is redundant when fuck is already on the list, and a few other words such as fart, turd, and twat should also have been included.  He was also right that "tits doesn't even belong on the list," which any British birder could have told him.  (Surely there's a BBC program in which David Attenborough marvels at the lifestyles of tits.)  Still, I was surprised to discover, in a recent post over at Andrew Sullivan's blog, that the Seven Words were nearly made official in U.S. law.

Back in 2003, in the wake of Bono's on-the-air comment that winning a Golden Globe award was "fucking brilliant," at least one member of the United States Congress saw a need--a need to ensure that no awards show audience, no matter how small, would ever have to hear a word used by nearly every member of the public to describe an activity performed by nearly every member of the public.  Representative Doug Ose proposed something called the Clean Airways Act, which in its text listed the Heavy Seven in six-sevenths of their original glory, prompting Sullivan to claim the bill "[m]akes Cartman look demure."

In a new piece for The New Republic, Steven Pinker analyzes the practice of cursing more generally than Ose, but also brings up Ose's brainchild (which did not, alas, pass, leaving Carlin's list unenshrined in American law) and notes that "the Clean Airwaves Act would have forbade from broadcast

the words "shit", "piss", "fuck", "cunt", "asshole", and the phrases "cock sucker", "mother fucker", and "ass hole", compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms)."

Carlin's list was recorded on his 1972 Class Clown album.  When it won a Grammy award, Carlin was at a show that was being recorded for his follow-up album, Occupation: Foole, and his pleased exclamation of "Shit!  I won the Grammy, man!" suggests that awards-related profanity is more common than even Ose believed.  Still, between 1972 and 2003, Carlin had been proved right: tits was removed from the list of the seven most dangerous words, replaced by asshole.

Why?  Good question.  The logic of cursing is hard to follow.  Perhaps the combination of excretion and sexual utility makes asshole a more potent word than tits.  Certainly sex and scatology compete with blasphemy for the title of Dirtiest Thing to Mention in most languages, but there are tongues that have no native swear words (Japanese and a number of native American languages are more-or-less cussing-free) and others whose rude words are downright nonsensical, including German (which uses "pig-dog" as a term of abuse) and Finnish (which, according to Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue, adopted the phrase "in the restaurant" for cursing purposes; it sounds a bit more satisfying in the original, luckily:  ravintolossa.)

Personally, my swearing tends toward the Big Three of Carlin's list, sort of the Superman-Batman-Wonder Woman triumvirate of profanity's Justice League: shit, piss, and fuck.  The rest are like Green Lantern or Aquaman: okay in their place, I suppose, but not primal enough for me to ignore the fact that they're a bit silly.  I almost never use cunt, and I probably use cocksucker even less than that.  Once in a while, motherfucker will escape my lips, but not nearly as often as a garden-variety fuck.  As for Carlin's additions, fart has become almost harmless, turd has been enshrined in our political dialogue already (thanks to Dubya's nickname for Karl Rove), and twat is just too weird to encounter very often.   

I'll agreed with Ose in one area, though: asshole is a much better curse word than tits, which somehow doesn't satisfy the need for a solid consonant-based impact when cussing--it sounds too crisp and tinny.  (Indeed it was the one exception to Monty Python's principle that "all the naughty words sound woody.")  Of course, to Ose, that meant that asshole must be done away with, while to me, his distaste simply proves how effective the word is in its proper context.

And context is everything, really.  One of Carlin's most valid maxims, to my mind, is this: "There's no such thing as a bad word.  You got bad thoughts... bad intentions... and words."  Human beings need words for many occasions, including getting cut off in heavy traffic and hitting thumbs with hammers.  On such occasion, having a good word to express one's pain and frustration allows one to release emotion, rather than leave it festering within.  Without the catharsis of cursing, I believe, we'd be repressed to an unhealthy degree.  I'll grant you that in many situations such language would certainly be unwelcome at best and offensive at worst, but in the proper place, they're not only not "bad words," but become actively good ones.

If you doubt me, consider how often a perfectly good word, used in the wrong place, can suddenly turn bad.  And yes, I'm talking about non-profane words suddenly becoming unwelcome or even offensive.  Look at that Pinker quote again:

would have forbade from broadcast

It "would have forbade"?  A past-tense form used where a participle form is needed?  That's like saying "I have ran home before." or "I've never was in love before."  It's grotesque!

Steven, you have to use forbidden there--you fucking have to!

9:37 PM

No real news here.  I'm just delighting in the fact that I'm once again able to post an entry without worrying about its being flushed down the Memory Hole.

I'll also admit to a certain degree of pleasure in the new ability to apply a title to an entry.  I'm not sure whether that'll be something I do often, but for the next little while, I'd say you'll be seeing a lot of them.

I'm also curious about the whole comments thing.  In the past I've avoided taking them, but they seem to be a part of the usual Movable Type layout--except that I haven't yet figured out how anyone could make them.

These are the mysteries, I guess.

Soundtrack: Maddy Pryor and Martin Carthy's cover of Richard Thompson's "The Great Valerio"

1:00 PM

Sorry to go all Yoda on you with my syntax, but personally I feel a bit like an eight-hundred-year-old Jedi who's been fighting the Dark Side for a very long time.

Luckily, the Force is strong in the fine folks at FictCo (mainly Jonathan), so we're now using Movable Type rather than Blogger.com to create this journal.  MT means I'm able to provide not only links to all the entries I wrote after February, but also a variety of annoying interesting text effects, headers and tags for each entry, and a host of other features that I hope to master in short order.

A big thank you to Jonathon and the Fictional Company, and to all of you for your patience over the last few months.

 

Yoda Cat thanks you, too.

3:55 PM

The horror, the horror... the 2008 election is still more than a year away, and the pundits are already gathering to determine how the campaigns will go.

It's a particularly interesting campaign season, admittedly, but I'm already finding the focus on everything from Hillary's "cackle" to Rudy's cell phone habits to Obama's lapel pin choices deeply, deeply irritating.  I'm also somewhat frustrated at the possibility--indeed, at this juncture I'd say probability--that the U.S. will again extend its executive power to one of the same two families that have held the White House since 1988.  I mean, this is supposed to be a democracy, right?  It's starting to look like Florence in Dante's day, with the Guelphs taking charge for a while, and then the Ghibellines seizing power, only to yield it to a Guelph when times change, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

But still, I can't help looking at the field and trying, in my amateurish way, to handicap it.  In particular, the GOP field is baffling.  I still haven't figured out how any of them can win the nomination, let alone the general election.  My short takes on the Republican leaders:

John McCain:  His reputation as a straight-talking maverick is suffering badly after his "misstatements" about Baghdad's safety, his open courting of the religious right, and (primarily) his hitching his wagon to an increasingly unpopular war.  Yes, Republicans support the war more than independents or Democrats do, but if the situation in Iraq doesn't improve drastically, Giuliani and Romney will use McCain's voting record on the war against him.  He also has less money than either Mitt or Giuliani (and is making less and less with every report), his campaign staff is in seemingly perpetual disarray, and his age is a concern for some voters.  Finally, he's a Senator, and it's extremely difficult to jump from the Senate (where compromise with the opposition is a necessity) to the White House (where the voters expect more uncompromising leadership); in fact, the last sitting Senator to win the Presidency was John F. Kennedy in 1960--and he barely pulled it off.

Mitt Romney:  He's only pulling 11%, despite having bought a win in the Ames, IA, straw poll with his own money--that's trouble.  He's been ridiculed for such lapses in judgment as comparing his sons' campaigning for him to their peers' military service in Iraq, not to mention for lashing his (understandably terrified) dog's carrier to the roof of his car for a drive from Massachusetts to Canada.  Moreover, his Mormonism is an issue for many, especially among evangelical Christians, who also have trouble with the pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay-rights record in Massachusetts.  Of course, many also have problems with the fact that he has flip-flopped on nearly every issue he addressed when he was governor, including immigration, gun control, health care, and stem cell research.  His opponents are going to hit those flip-flops hard, whether they're Republicans in primaries or Democrats in the general election.  Can he convince voters that he's not just an opportunist?  He'd better--the last Massachusetts politician to win the White House was... John F. Kennedy.

Rudy Giuliani:  His reputation as a can-do mayor helps, but he has no foreign policy experience, and his comments about Iran (a Shiite nation) being a supporter of al-Qaeda (a Sunni organization) suggest that he's not studying very hard.  His stance on abortion--not merely pro-choice, but in favor of allowing federal funding for some abortions--may repel many GOP voters (including Focus on the Family's James Dobson, who has openly claimed he'll lead an evangelical walkout from the party if a pro-choice candidate is nominated) and his marital record (three divorces and a very public affair) won't help him win votes among family values voters, especially if he keeps interrupting his speeches to take his latest wife's cell phone calls.  Accusations of connections to corrupt city officials aren't helpful, either.  His supposed 9/11 heroism has been debunked by NYC firefighters and the other members of the 9/11 Commission (who kept investigating the attacks after Rudy left the Commission to exploit his fame in the more lucrative arena of public speaking), and he's also been criticized for choosing to put the city's anti-terrorism emergency headquarters in the WTC itself, which had already been targeted by terrorists in 1993.  And he may even face bias against his Roman Catholicism, much like that faced in 1960 by... John F. Kennedy.

Fred Thompson: He has a reputation as lazy, which hasn't exactly fallen away during his will-he/won't-he flirtation with declaring his candidacy, and he has yet to energize the conservative base, including evangelicals such as the aforementioned Dobson, with whom he's exchanged sharp words on several occasions.  He doesn't seem to have any expertise on anything (except maybe television acting), he's done legal work for Planned Parenthood, and he was a staffer in the Nixon White House, which means there are people who dislike him all across the political spectrum.  His main advantage now is his celebrity, but it might help that he has a hot wife, just like... John F. Kennedy.

Unfortunately, despite all the above candidates' similarities to JFK, not a one of them possesses his main political advantage: running against Richard Nixon.  That's essentially the Republicans' strategy for November, though: to hope that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee, and that their loyal voters will be so galvanized by the threat of a Hillary White House that they'll defy all polling numbers and sweep a Republican--any Republican--into office.  Alas, I don't think her five o'clock shadow will be enough to give the GOP any leverage in 2008.

All in all, it's a stunningly weak and deeply peculiar group of candidates, which might be why libertarian Ron Paul is starting to make more campaign cash than expected, and why Mike Huckabee (who is at least a sincere evangelical conservative) finished well in the Ames poll.  Basically, the GOP has already decided that it'll be kissing a pig; now it's going to have to spend the next eight months deciding which one looks best in its compulsory Red State Passion shade of lipstick.

3:53 PM

For some reason, I'm listening to Sinead O'Connor's first two albums tonight, wondering (as one must when listening to them) "What the hell happened?!"

I can still recall quite well the night I first came across Sinead's work.  Kelly and I were still in Chapel Hill in those days, and one night over at our friend Ginny's place--more accurately, at her parents' house, since she had moved back in with them for a bit while she was looking for a new place, but I think her folks were out of town--we sat around watching music videos.  (I don't think we were actually watching MTV, which had stopped showing music sometime around 1985, but the channel was certainly showing something similar to the classic '82-era MTV, minus all the goddam REO Speedwagon vids.)

We heard a grinding guitar riff, followed by a peculiar vision appearing on the screen: a huge-eyed gamine with cropped hair and a voice alternately comforting, yearning, and berating.  The song was called "Mandinka," and we were instantly fascinated. 

A few weeks later, when her debut album (The Lion and the Cobra) turned up in both the playbox at WXYC and the New Releases section at Record Bar, I listened to a few more tracks--probably "Jerusalem" and "Jackie," though I no longer remember--and decided that this was an album we ought to have.  I don't recall whether it was Kelly or I who finally broke down and paid for it, but soon enough we had it at our house and I was able to say that this Sinead person was a major talent, as well as a highly attractive woman with a highly arresting hairstyle.  She joined the list of not-that-well-known artists we recommended to people, along with They Might Be Giants, Robyn Hitchcock, XTC, the Balancing Act, etc.  I certainly had no real inkling that she'd every be anything else.

But a couple of years later, a new album (I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got) popped up in the same two places, and this time people outside my circle of friends noticed.  I was transfixed by the almost painful openness of "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance" (still on my mix of the Saddest Songs in the World) and stuck like Velcro to the melody and pulsing rhythm of "The Emperor's New Clothes."  I also remember a couple of local DJs coming in hoping for a 12" single of "I Am Stretched On Your Grave," a brilliant bit of smashup from before the term existed: a Frank O'Connor poem set to a keening Irish melody, but sung almost without accompaniment over a sample of James Brown's "Funky Drummer."  (It was an album-only track, alas for them.)

The rest of the world, however, seemed unable to hear anything but "Nothing Compares 2 U."  (It's a cool song, yes, but it's never going to be my favorite Sinead tune.)  Suddenly Sinead was huge, appearing on MTV itself, selling oodles of records, and having her hairstyle and/or name's pronunciation debated by sorority girls.  It was a bizarre spectacle for those of us who'd been in her camp already.

But then came the commercial seppuku:  the appearance on Saturday Night Live, and the shredding of the pope's portrait in front of the camera, and the snide remarks from Sinatra, and the sudden feeling that Sinead's overtly confessional lyricism and confrontational style were not perhaps aesthetic statements, but signs of a deeply conflicted psyche.  As success reached for her, she withdrew, and to this day I've never heard a single note of any album she's released since 1990.  I think maybe she's happier that way.

I'm occasionally sad for the great artists who never got the mass audience they deserved--artists like TMBG, Hitchcock, XTC, and the Balancing Act, for example--but it's hard to be sad for those with both enormous talent and an unwillingness to share it with that mass audience.  I don't want to criticize Sinead for that unwillingness, however; I recognize the difference between talent and fame, and I appreciate that the latter makes demands that not everyone can handle.

I've still got the pulsing arpeggios of "Just Call Me Joe" and the sublime bass entrance of "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance."  It's enough for me.  I think it was enough for Sinead, too.

3:50 PM

LBJs

*After last September's disastrous sinus infection, I was deeply unhappy last week to discover my throat getting sore and my head getting stuffy.  By Friday, when I accompanied the Rapidan group up Cedar Run to its natural water slide, I was already dubious about the wisdom of getting into the rather chilly water, but I felt like I had to do one slide after hiking all the long, sweaty way there.  I did, and I don't think it hurt me, but the next day I had to serve as public address announcer for the varsity football game in Woodberry's brand-spanking-new Johnson Stadium.  I got through with the help of many, many Hall's Honey-Lemon-Mentholyptus cough drops and a bottle of water, but by the time I finally reached bed (thank the football gods I live right next door to the stadium) I was ready for a serious recuperative crash.  My ears felt so clogged that I actually had a couple of dizzy spells.  Things improved a bit with a restful Sunday; my only activity was watching the Bengals/Browns shootout and the Patriots/Chargers pummeling, but that was it.  Still, I could tell there was no point in pussyfooting around, so on Sunday night I called in sick and said I'd be visiting the doctor's office first thing Monday.  I dutifully did so, and after waiting nearly an hour to be seen, I got a five-minute exam, a diagnosis of viral upper respiratory infection, and two prescriptions which, I'm happy to report, seem to be improving things for me.  Yay.

*It was a good fantasy football weekend.  The Scrub Jays, my team in Mike's insanely complicated Number Crushers league, are undefeated and have earned the highest score in the league two weeks running.  Having drafted Peyton Manning, Jon Kitna, Steve Smith, Chad Johnson, and T.J. Houshmandzadeh gives me a pretty serious passing game, I must say.  The Fighting Coelacanths, over in FLOGG, underachieved in Week One, but came back with a very convincing win in Week Two, helped by the acquisition of Jake Delhomme from the waiver wire.  Here's hoping these trends continue.

*Sometimes there's little point in explaining things:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=5C_bw3aDSOI

But this may not be one of those times, since the above link will take you to a video of Boss Hoss (a German country & western band) performing Outkast's "Hey Ya!"  That probably requires at least minimal explanation.

*Somewhat to my surprise, I've been persuaded to take on the role of co-advisor for the school paper, the Oracle.  In recent years, the paper has all too often consisted of two pages of in-jokes followed by two pages of summarizing the last three months of the sports season, but we're hoping to make it a more consistent piece of student journalism.  All we have to do now is find the time to do it.  Ha!

*After years of not having the first clue how to do it, I think I've finally figured out how to play Elton John's "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" on the piano.  Patience is a virtue.

*I've finally put up the new Yankee Flipper feeder out back and logged the first two birds on it:  a chickadee and a female house sparrow.  I'm hoping something a bit more exotic may turn up soon, but so far the Albemarle Mix doesn't seem to be bringing in too much.

*I finished the summer re-reading some old favorites.  Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett's Good Omens remains every bit the treat it was when I first encountered it.  Back then I didn't know Pratchett at all, so I was uncertain just how much of the writing was Pterry's, but now that I've completed the Discworld books to date (yes, I know, there's a new one), I feel confident in saying he had the job of assembling the final manuscript.  There are certainly Gaiman-like touches throughout, but the book seems put together in a very Pratchetty way, which is not in the least a criticism.  Meanwhile, Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons' Watchmen is still a marvel, but I've become so familiar with it that it no longer bowls me over the way it once did.  Not so Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta, which still has some sublime moments; if it's less mature, less polished and less intricate than Watchmen, it's superior in its emotional resonance.  And "Valerie" still hammers me every time I read it.  I'm not sure I know a better moment in the medium of comics than its last panel.

*There are exactly two people in America happy to see O.J. Simpson back in the news:  Michael Vick and Larry Craig.

3:43 PM