In the last year, we have witnessed a steel-headed quarterback do some pretty stupid things, a frosted-flake golfer unveil his personal life in a way neither he nor we wanted, and the return of a dog-killing phenom. What a year!
It is no surprise that these events made major headlines. After all, we live in the days of useless journalism. We no longer can say that the youth are disinterested in the news because we so-called adults don’t really follow much real news ourselves. The fact that there hardly is any news could be the cause. Between homicides that do not shock us, politicians we cringe to trust and world events from which we are terribly isolated in our personal securities, there just isn’t much to read in the papers or on-line in this the tenth year of the twenty-first century. One would think that readership of literature would be on the rise, but with Facebook and Twitter and MySpace being so grippingly fascinating, well, you get the point of sarcasm, don’t you?
The three biggest news stories of 2010 involved sports figures who did wrong and tried to rebound. What to do, what to do? We can’t stop the machine that is media. Even if we turn our televisions off, they (those guys who sell advertising) will still know what we would have watched had we been watching. They are that good!
We could quit watching sports. Stop! Don’t be so silly. Why would we do that? This is life. Without sports we would simply have…well, a life.
Listen, I am as big (no fat jokes, please!) of a sports fan as anyone. I enjoy the games and I buy into the hype. I allow advertisers to throw money around to support the media monolith of our times. I play my small part. I am aware that the NFL has had all kinds of tragedies and assorted flaws – from linemen who have killed innocent drivers in off-field mistakes to tacklers who have paralyzed other players in on-field collisions.
Regardless of events, we take football too seriously and we react too emotionally about athletes and their downfalls. As if we should be surprised! Aeschylus (classic Greek playwright – Google it) taught us the dangers of pride and its eventual destruction some 2,500 years ago, and yet we find ourselves surprised when it happens with each generation.
Take for instance The Big Three of 2010. Ben, Vick and Tiger…were you really surprised? If so, you haven’t paid attention to history.
Michael Vick offers us some sort of hope, though. You may recall that Vick led a dog-fighting ring that was atrocious, violent and just plain wrong. Fair enough – he did a really bad thing. There is no single argument against that. He screwed up. However, he also served his time and was released back into society. He followed the laws that We The People have instituted within our American landscape.
I have heard a lot of people make proclamations that they will never root for Vick or any team that signs him. Again, fair, everyone has their right to their opinion. Everyone also has the right to be brought back into perspective.
Whether you like it or not, our rules state that once you have served your time, you deserve a second chance. After all, society is bigger than football – despite what you might think.
The would-be haters return with comments that no other regular guy would get his job back after going to jail, and that they would be forced to work from the bottom. While I can’t disagree with you, I have to be realistic in my reaction. Mike Vick is not a regular guy. You and I are regular guys. Michael Vick did not make the NFL the Empire that it is – we did.
The NFL runs on the simple logic of Supply and Demand. As long as you demand football, they will supply it, and they meet your demand by paying top athletes a lot of money to entertain you. In short – get off your high horse. Do not tell me for a second that you wouldn’t take the same deal Michael Vick did in order to return to a job that would pay you more money than 99% of the world population will earn over an entire lifetime.
It is the very time you spend, the jerseys you purchase, the television you watch, the fantasy football you play, the ESPN that you follow, the tailgate parties you enjoy, the ticket lists you enroll on, the tickets you beg, borrow and steal for, and the Vegas odds you digest that make the NFL what it is – a Billion Dollar Industry. I repeat, Billion! Any industry pays its employees what the market deems they are worth. I teach; the education sector deems I am worth enough to get by on a modest living in the suburbs. I like to think my profession is noble, but I am sure we have recuperated killers amongst our ranks somewhere. I just hope they don’t run my Super Bowl poll.
So, the next time you scoff at Michael Vick, take a look in the mirror. That authentic rip-off jersey you had to have may well have paid his salary.
As for the other two stories of 2010, only time will tell whether those two silly boys, Tiger and Ben, will change their stripes, so to speak. Both Roethlisberger and Woods are playing the media frenzy well. They are both saying the right things and promising to behave wisely, etc. I just wonder, when 2020 rolls around, which of these athletes will we remember? Probably all three, though Woods will be the one to have done the most. His legacy as a golfer is already set in stone. Ben has done his fame due diligence – two Super Bowl victories will have him part of the discussion for decades. The historical jury on Vick will deliberate longer than his trial jury did. What he does will go a long way to deciding his fame and his fate.
Until then, don’t blame the guy for taking the job, you would and so would I. I would even wear Eagle’s green for that kind of green.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Chris Berman - Shut Up!
So, now that the 2010 baseball season is in the books, we can put to rest the world’s worst saying. (Well, okay, a lousy sports cliché at best.) As the San Francisco Giants are now World Series Champions, we can put the past behind us and move on.
Allow me to explain.
The San Francisco Giants originated in New York, a fact many readers may already know. They moved to California in 1957, a long time ago in terms of our contextual history. There was (and still is) a football team in New York also called the Giants. Perhaps you have heard of them.
It has long bothered me that Chris Berman (a man whose work and commentary I otherwise enjoy entirely) has referred to the American football franchise as “The New York Football Giants.” What makes the moniker worse is the voice he uses when saying this. He drops his vocal range into a deep and husky bass tone that reverberates with memories of long-dead announcers, namely those old school veterans who might have called a football game long before ESPN even existed.
The reference to the “football Giants” has been outdated for decades and can now be ceased entirely!
The beauty of comedy is knowing when to quit. Thus, a good joke is not supposed to be beaten to its untimely death. The beauty of a good radio (or in this case TV) bit should also be in knowing when to quit, knowing when to drop the gimmick and just call a team their name. Case in point, the late Steelers announcer, Myron Cope, always called the Cincinnati Bengals the “Bungles” because of their long history as a terrible team. It was unfair yet funny, but when the Bengals were 11-5 and had thumped the Steelers twice in the same season, it was time to give it up. He never did.
As well, Chris Berman needs to stop! And I have been saying this for about fifteen years.
The joke was old the very minute ESPN first aired as a full-time channel. By 1980, the Giants had been playing baseball in the Bay Area for over 20 years! Willie McCovey, arguably the greatest San Fran Giant of all time, played his entire career under the cool breeze of the Pacific, having never played at New York's Polo Grounds. Berman’s attempt at humor was dead a long time ago.
As we moved through the 90s and the 2000s, the joke became even further outdated. After a decade (1967), maybe it was still clever. But, after a half century, see 2007 has come and gone, the point is done, it’s over!
Half of the sports fans who know the baseball Giants once played in New York just don’t care. For anyone fifty and younger, the Giants have always been the San Francisco Giants, and the football team has always been in New York. My generation does not need to be reminded that there was once a distinction between the two Giants. Once they moved, the distinction was coastal, geographical, two-thousand-five-hundred-miles-apart-ical, to not quite coin a phrase. In short, we know!
Chris Berman does not need to remind me that Eli Manning and Lawrence Taylor share the same city as did Tom Landry, Frank Gifford and others who have played football under the blue and red Giants’ colors. We know! Heck, even the original Giants Stadium is gone, and the site where the 1956-1973 Giants played non-soccer-football (old Yankee Stadium) now sits empty. Maybe Chris can hold an old-timers reunion there, though the affair would have to be broadcast in black and white so that Chris feels more at home.
Hopefully, now that the past has evaporated and the “SAN FRANCISCO BASEBALL GIANTS” have won their first World Series ever on the Golden Coast and the franchise’s first since 1954, we can all go happily about our business as sports fans and root for teams in cities and not clarifiers in team and city names.
I mean, after all, it’s not like the New York Hockey Rangers lost the World Series to those same Giants. Hey, wait a minute…
Allow me to explain.
The San Francisco Giants originated in New York, a fact many readers may already know. They moved to California in 1957, a long time ago in terms of our contextual history. There was (and still is) a football team in New York also called the Giants. Perhaps you have heard of them.
It has long bothered me that Chris Berman (a man whose work and commentary I otherwise enjoy entirely) has referred to the American football franchise as “The New York Football Giants.” What makes the moniker worse is the voice he uses when saying this. He drops his vocal range into a deep and husky bass tone that reverberates with memories of long-dead announcers, namely those old school veterans who might have called a football game long before ESPN even existed.
The reference to the “football Giants” has been outdated for decades and can now be ceased entirely!
The beauty of comedy is knowing when to quit. Thus, a good joke is not supposed to be beaten to its untimely death. The beauty of a good radio (or in this case TV) bit should also be in knowing when to quit, knowing when to drop the gimmick and just call a team their name. Case in point, the late Steelers announcer, Myron Cope, always called the Cincinnati Bengals the “Bungles” because of their long history as a terrible team. It was unfair yet funny, but when the Bengals were 11-5 and had thumped the Steelers twice in the same season, it was time to give it up. He never did.
As well, Chris Berman needs to stop! And I have been saying this for about fifteen years.
The joke was old the very minute ESPN first aired as a full-time channel. By 1980, the Giants had been playing baseball in the Bay Area for over 20 years! Willie McCovey, arguably the greatest San Fran Giant of all time, played his entire career under the cool breeze of the Pacific, having never played at New York's Polo Grounds. Berman’s attempt at humor was dead a long time ago.
As we moved through the 90s and the 2000s, the joke became even further outdated. After a decade (1967), maybe it was still clever. But, after a half century, see 2007 has come and gone, the point is done, it’s over!
Half of the sports fans who know the baseball Giants once played in New York just don’t care. For anyone fifty and younger, the Giants have always been the San Francisco Giants, and the football team has always been in New York. My generation does not need to be reminded that there was once a distinction between the two Giants. Once they moved, the distinction was coastal, geographical, two-thousand-five-hundred-miles-apart-ical, to not quite coin a phrase. In short, we know!
Chris Berman does not need to remind me that Eli Manning and Lawrence Taylor share the same city as did Tom Landry, Frank Gifford and others who have played football under the blue and red Giants’ colors. We know! Heck, even the original Giants Stadium is gone, and the site where the 1956-1973 Giants played non-soccer-football (old Yankee Stadium) now sits empty. Maybe Chris can hold an old-timers reunion there, though the affair would have to be broadcast in black and white so that Chris feels more at home.
Hopefully, now that the past has evaporated and the “SAN FRANCISCO BASEBALL GIANTS” have won their first World Series ever on the Golden Coast and the franchise’s first since 1954, we can all go happily about our business as sports fans and root for teams in cities and not clarifiers in team and city names.
I mean, after all, it’s not like the New York Hockey Rangers lost the World Series to those same Giants. Hey, wait a minute…
Friday, August 27, 2010
Archives from Trivia Blurbs
It has been a long time since I last blogged about anything. I had originally expected to go a month without writing so that the review of the plays might get some traffic. Thanks for reading!
I should have posted again on August 12th. I got busy.
I thought I would catch up by posting a few comments to wrap up the summer. I post a daily trivia blurb each day for friends, enemies, family and strangers. Below is a small collection from one year ago that you might enjoy. (Yes, it's a cop-out...what can ya do?)
8/25/09
I don't want to come off as an intellectual snob, but I must shift some serious gears from yesterday's discussion of Night at the Museum 2 for today's commentary. I hadn't expected to watch another film last night; the chance just sort of presented itself so we watched it. And let me tell you, if you have not seen The Kite Runner, I suggest you do so within the next 24 hours of your life. It is an incredible story about a culture that we don't fully understand, and a tale of people who were mere victims of history - people who we might pass on the street as immigrants who took advantage of our "system," but are really people who just like us needed a chance. It reflects upon those things we take for granted - and I mean that in both a negative sense and a positive sense. And it celebrates the best of what makes us all human - regardless of heritage, national boundaries, faith and even past mistakes. The beauty of the film is that it does not smack you over the head with these issues like some dogmatic documentary. It is subtle, half story-driven, half character-driven, and it winds around a simple, honest plot. In a word, wow! This is a wonderful film.
8/21/09
Yesterday, I promised you the second in a two-part series about my identity. I recently learned that I almost wasn't! Not by some weird surgery or transference of anything inappropriate to list here, but by religion itself. Huh? A few weeks ago, I was at my mom's house as she was organizing photos for a scrapbook gift idea she has for Christmas this year. (Whatever, right?) I began sifting through the myriad of photos strewn upon her table, thus disrupting her organizational system in the process. I came across one photo of a young man dressed in a classic priest's frock - I am talking the long, black, thick, old woolen kind. The photo was obviously dated by a number of years. I asked mom, "Who is this?" She gazed up, "Oh, that was your grandfather." (Insert movie screech sounds of stopping.) "WHAT?!?" I asked. It turns out that my maternal grandfather was planning to become a priest, and had actually entered the seminary but was forced to leave due to The Depression. His mom needed him to return home to work to help his family. (You would have guessed disgrace and dishonor before God in my family, right?) So, between learning I am 3% British and that history itself provided me my life, I have been reconsidering my existence in a whole new manner.
8/20 / 09
In part one of a two-part series, we will discuss Dan's latest revelations in his own life. (NO, I am not gay so relax!) (And shut up with the dumb jokes.) In the great (and I do use the term great in its truest form - not the flim-flam throw-off way that so many use it today to describe anything from cereal to movies) Broadway musical Les Miserable's, the main character Jean ValJean struggles with his identity between his past life of poverty and necessary-to-survive crime and his current life of redemption and sacrifice for others. He laments in song about this issue by asking "Who Am I?" the convict or the father-figure? Well, I now struggle as well. For 39 years I have thought that I am 50% German and 50% Irish, but I am not! I recently learned that there is a dash of British tossed into my American salad. How devastating this has been to me. I will hope (and tell everyone with yet another parenthetical comment) that I am 50% Irish, 47% German and apparently 3% British. (Which finally answers the question of why my paternal grandmother always claimed some connection to Royalty.) Anyway, if you have come so far as to actually read this much, please know that I am about 3% English and not very happy about it...
8/14 /09
In order to understand our place in life, we must know our history. This is not a new notion but rather one that has been told by teachers, thinkers, historians and even moms and dads. And it is true. Quite simply, Cicero taught us that to not know what happened before you were born is to forever be a child. Yesterday, we were reminded of where a lot of our favorite musicians came from, and by extension where a lot of our best times originated. Les Paul passed away at the age of 94. Who was Les Paul, you ask? Well, that is a fair question because not many people know of the name anymore. He invented the solid-body electric guitar. To keep it simple - had it not been for Les Paul's work, we would never have heard the work of Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen (and so many others), as well as all of the up and coming guitarists of today who blaze their path along the trail that Les Paul began over 50 years ago. If you like rock and roll music, thank Les Paul. His work changed music history. Oh wait, I forgot -- the King of Pop died, and somehow that is more important. Follow history, friends. Even rock history has one and Les Paul is much more important than Mikey Jackson.
8/13 / 09
Last evening, I had a fun moment with a van full of kids (our 3 and friend's 2) where we were all singing at the top of our lungs. One of the kids said, "Hey, Dan, blast it!" So we did. It is a song with a deep message that is somehow fun to sing along to. And it got me thinking. You have probably heard (and perhaps enjoy) the song. It goes, "I went skydiving, Rocky Mountain climbing. I spent 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu..." and "Live Like You Were Dying" is its title. I think by Toby Keith, but I could be wrong. The lines that struck me as interesting are: "I gave forgiveness I'd been denying," followed later by "I watched an eagle as it was flying." Here's the thing. I have never gone skydiving - want to, but I bet I would chicken out - and I would probably die while climbing in The Rockies. However -- I DID NOT NEED A SONG TO TEACH ME THE VALUE OF LIFE! I was laughed at and called "nerd" for watching a hawk fly during a baseball game once. I was called a nerd for even discussing the simple joy of forgiveness. If you need a song to teach you that life is about the small things, then you probably haven't yet lived
8/5 / 09
The differences between football and baseball are many, but the main reason we love football is a simple question of supply and demand. They give you just enough that you want more and cannot miss a single game. With baseball, you have all summer to follow or ignore the team. The Pirates lost last night (no surprise there), dropping them to a dismal season low of 16 games under the .500 mark. A football season is only 16 games long in its entiety! Only the lowly Detroit Lions were able to reach a mark of 16 games under .500 by going 0-16 last year. Numbers are funny, but keep in mind that had the Pirates simply won 8 more games they would be even for the year with a record of 53-53, instead they are 45-61. The insurmountable number of 16 seems larger to make up as opposed to those 8 they have already let slip during this soon-to-be-seventeenth consecutive losing season. I'll say what everyone else has been telling me since June: "Pittsburgh: City of Champions...and the Pirates." Oh well, there is always next year!
8/4 / 09
I know that I am addicted to Rush and their music and their philosophy. They say the first step to recovery is admitting there is a problem. I do not see it as a problem. However, it may have become a sickness today for the first time. I never thought I would find a way to connect Rush (the Canadian art rock power trio - not the bombastic loudmouth ultra-conservative radiohead) to Michael Jackson...but I have. On the way to school this morning I listened to a 22 year old album (on CD of course), and was struck by how poignantly Rush had summed up the life of superstars and movie heroes who we might hope to be like...sort of...while realizing we would not want to be them at all. And in the end, Michael Jackson fits this description quite profoundly. I do not mean to bash him. I honestly never liked his music. It's just not my style - not a note, not a single dance beat. But how ironic that Rush in their visionary lyrics sort of defined his life when they sang: "If their lives were exotic and strange, they would likely, if gladly, exchange them for
something a little more plain, maybe something a little more sane." (Rush, 1987)
7/20/09
Eh, why not? Everyone is talking about it. For those of us who are under 40, the moon landing is literally history. We knew about it in grade school and never questioned whether it happened or not -- well, maybe a few people wondered. It wasn't revolutionary as much as it was fascinating. We always knew that man had been to the moon. When we looked up at it, it was part of our neighborhood, an extension of our planet. But what always concerned me were the Moonites. How scared those microscopic citizens of the moon must have been to see these giant humans approaching on a giant ship with intentions of taking giant leaps upon them. Sad, really, how scared the Moonites must have been. Regardless, Happy 40th Anniversary, America - the 40th Anniversary of ruining the Moon for the Moonites!
7/7/09
I understand today is Remember the 80s day, or some insipid thing like that. For those who do recall the 1980s, please help spread the truth. The decade was not as glorious as people would let on. We tend to romanticize the past and dread the future. As I recall, the 80s exposed the underbelly of American greed, uncovered rampant drug abuse in sports, the workplace and small town America, and the music was awful. Come on - from the recently deposed Michael Jackson to ridiculous pop sounds to hair metal bands, the music was not the cultural watershed many make it out to be. It was quick hits, big money, simple chords and basic rhythms. The fact that we were suckered into buying it does not make it great. As for movies - okay, maybe they saved the pop culture of that decade, but all in all it wasn't that great of a time. In short, the 80s are overrated, as I guess each passing decade is in our rose-colored rearview mirror. To once again quote Billy Joel: "The good old days weren't always good, tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems."
Until the next post...
I should have posted again on August 12th. I got busy.
I thought I would catch up by posting a few comments to wrap up the summer. I post a daily trivia blurb each day for friends, enemies, family and strangers. Below is a small collection from one year ago that you might enjoy. (Yes, it's a cop-out...what can ya do?)
8/25/09
I don't want to come off as an intellectual snob, but I must shift some serious gears from yesterday's discussion of Night at the Museum 2 for today's commentary. I hadn't expected to watch another film last night; the chance just sort of presented itself so we watched it. And let me tell you, if you have not seen The Kite Runner, I suggest you do so within the next 24 hours of your life. It is an incredible story about a culture that we don't fully understand, and a tale of people who were mere victims of history - people who we might pass on the street as immigrants who took advantage of our "system," but are really people who just like us needed a chance. It reflects upon those things we take for granted - and I mean that in both a negative sense and a positive sense. And it celebrates the best of what makes us all human - regardless of heritage, national boundaries, faith and even past mistakes. The beauty of the film is that it does not smack you over the head with these issues like some dogmatic documentary. It is subtle, half story-driven, half character-driven, and it winds around a simple, honest plot. In a word, wow! This is a wonderful film.
8/21/09
Yesterday, I promised you the second in a two-part series about my identity. I recently learned that I almost wasn't! Not by some weird surgery or transference of anything inappropriate to list here, but by religion itself. Huh? A few weeks ago, I was at my mom's house as she was organizing photos for a scrapbook gift idea she has for Christmas this year. (Whatever, right?) I began sifting through the myriad of photos strewn upon her table, thus disrupting her organizational system in the process. I came across one photo of a young man dressed in a classic priest's frock - I am talking the long, black, thick, old woolen kind. The photo was obviously dated by a number of years. I asked mom, "Who is this?" She gazed up, "Oh, that was your grandfather." (Insert movie screech sounds of stopping.) "WHAT?!?" I asked. It turns out that my maternal grandfather was planning to become a priest, and had actually entered the seminary but was forced to leave due to The Depression. His mom needed him to return home to work to help his family. (You would have guessed disgrace and dishonor before God in my family, right?) So, between learning I am 3% British and that history itself provided me my life, I have been reconsidering my existence in a whole new manner.
8/20 / 09
In part one of a two-part series, we will discuss Dan's latest revelations in his own life. (NO, I am not gay so relax!) (And shut up with the dumb jokes.) In the great (and I do use the term great in its truest form - not the flim-flam throw-off way that so many use it today to describe anything from cereal to movies) Broadway musical Les Miserable's, the main character Jean ValJean struggles with his identity between his past life of poverty and necessary-to-survive crime and his current life of redemption and sacrifice for others. He laments in song about this issue by asking "Who Am I?" the convict or the father-figure? Well, I now struggle as well. For 39 years I have thought that I am 50% German and 50% Irish, but I am not! I recently learned that there is a dash of British tossed into my American salad. How devastating this has been to me. I will hope (and tell everyone with yet another parenthetical comment) that I am 50% Irish, 47% German and apparently 3% British. (Which finally answers the question of why my paternal grandmother always claimed some connection to Royalty.) Anyway, if you have come so far as to actually read this much, please know that I am about 3% English and not very happy about it...
8/14 /09
In order to understand our place in life, we must know our history. This is not a new notion but rather one that has been told by teachers, thinkers, historians and even moms and dads. And it is true. Quite simply, Cicero taught us that to not know what happened before you were born is to forever be a child. Yesterday, we were reminded of where a lot of our favorite musicians came from, and by extension where a lot of our best times originated. Les Paul passed away at the age of 94. Who was Les Paul, you ask? Well, that is a fair question because not many people know of the name anymore. He invented the solid-body electric guitar. To keep it simple - had it not been for Les Paul's work, we would never have heard the work of Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen (and so many others), as well as all of the up and coming guitarists of today who blaze their path along the trail that Les Paul began over 50 years ago. If you like rock and roll music, thank Les Paul. His work changed music history. Oh wait, I forgot -- the King of Pop died, and somehow that is more important. Follow history, friends. Even rock history has one and Les Paul is much more important than Mikey Jackson.
8/13 / 09
Last evening, I had a fun moment with a van full of kids (our 3 and friend's 2) where we were all singing at the top of our lungs. One of the kids said, "Hey, Dan, blast it!" So we did. It is a song with a deep message that is somehow fun to sing along to. And it got me thinking. You have probably heard (and perhaps enjoy) the song. It goes, "I went skydiving, Rocky Mountain climbing. I spent 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu..." and "Live Like You Were Dying" is its title. I think by Toby Keith, but I could be wrong. The lines that struck me as interesting are: "I gave forgiveness I'd been denying," followed later by "I watched an eagle as it was flying." Here's the thing. I have never gone skydiving - want to, but I bet I would chicken out - and I would probably die while climbing in The Rockies. However -- I DID NOT NEED A SONG TO TEACH ME THE VALUE OF LIFE! I was laughed at and called "nerd" for watching a hawk fly during a baseball game once. I was called a nerd for even discussing the simple joy of forgiveness. If you need a song to teach you that life is about the small things, then you probably haven't yet lived
8/5 / 09
The differences between football and baseball are many, but the main reason we love football is a simple question of supply and demand. They give you just enough that you want more and cannot miss a single game. With baseball, you have all summer to follow or ignore the team. The Pirates lost last night (no surprise there), dropping them to a dismal season low of 16 games under the .500 mark. A football season is only 16 games long in its entiety! Only the lowly Detroit Lions were able to reach a mark of 16 games under .500 by going 0-16 last year. Numbers are funny, but keep in mind that had the Pirates simply won 8 more games they would be even for the year with a record of 53-53, instead they are 45-61. The insurmountable number of 16 seems larger to make up as opposed to those 8 they have already let slip during this soon-to-be-seventeenth consecutive losing season. I'll say what everyone else has been telling me since June: "Pittsburgh: City of Champions...and the Pirates." Oh well, there is always next year!
8/4 / 09
I know that I am addicted to Rush and their music and their philosophy. They say the first step to recovery is admitting there is a problem. I do not see it as a problem. However, it may have become a sickness today for the first time. I never thought I would find a way to connect Rush (the Canadian art rock power trio - not the bombastic loudmouth ultra-conservative radiohead) to Michael Jackson...but I have. On the way to school this morning I listened to a 22 year old album (on CD of course), and was struck by how poignantly Rush had summed up the life of superstars and movie heroes who we might hope to be like...sort of...while realizing we would not want to be them at all. And in the end, Michael Jackson fits this description quite profoundly. I do not mean to bash him. I honestly never liked his music. It's just not my style - not a note, not a single dance beat. But how ironic that Rush in their visionary lyrics sort of defined his life when they sang: "If their lives were exotic and strange, they would likely, if gladly, exchange them for
something a little more plain, maybe something a little more sane." (Rush, 1987)
7/20/09
Eh, why not? Everyone is talking about it. For those of us who are under 40, the moon landing is literally history. We knew about it in grade school and never questioned whether it happened or not -- well, maybe a few people wondered. It wasn't revolutionary as much as it was fascinating. We always knew that man had been to the moon. When we looked up at it, it was part of our neighborhood, an extension of our planet. But what always concerned me were the Moonites. How scared those microscopic citizens of the moon must have been to see these giant humans approaching on a giant ship with intentions of taking giant leaps upon them. Sad, really, how scared the Moonites must have been. Regardless, Happy 40th Anniversary, America - the 40th Anniversary of ruining the Moon for the Moonites!
7/7/09
I understand today is Remember the 80s day, or some insipid thing like that. For those who do recall the 1980s, please help spread the truth. The decade was not as glorious as people would let on. We tend to romanticize the past and dread the future. As I recall, the 80s exposed the underbelly of American greed, uncovered rampant drug abuse in sports, the workplace and small town America, and the music was awful. Come on - from the recently deposed Michael Jackson to ridiculous pop sounds to hair metal bands, the music was not the cultural watershed many make it out to be. It was quick hits, big money, simple chords and basic rhythms. The fact that we were suckered into buying it does not make it great. As for movies - okay, maybe they saved the pop culture of that decade, but all in all it wasn't that great of a time. In short, the 80s are overrated, as I guess each passing decade is in our rose-colored rearview mirror. To once again quote Billy Joel: "The good old days weren't always good, tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems."
Until the next post...
Monday, July 12, 2010
A Review of "Thirtysomethings": A Collection of Women's Monologues
The International Center for Women Playwrights recently asked me to review thirty monologues that were published together under the title Thirtysomethings, and I graciously accepted this rare opportunity. I want to thank Coni Koepfinger and Margaret McSeveny for introducing me to these wonderful works and for trusting in my words and thoughts to review such poignant and challenging pieces of literature. Readers will find my review located below.
The book is available as a downloadable e-book or a bound paperback via the ICWP Press online shop at http://stores.lulu.com/womenplaywrights, and also from Amazon.com.
Thirtysomethings is one of four Mother / Daughter Monologues collections that cover the mother /daughter perspective and experiences from teens to women in their eighties. The series also includes these other titles: Babes and Beginnings, Mid-life Catharsis, and Urgent Maturity.
REVIEW OF THIRTYSOMETHINGS
The title for the International Centre for Women Playwrights 2nd volume of mother/daughter monologues registers as being ironic because it smacks of something while being dubbed “Thirtysomethings.” Or, rather, it does not smack, but whispers. It whispers of something calm and elegant – how fitting considering the subject matter is about relationships between mothers and daughters. Yet, where else does the fine balancing act between two such rivals, cohorts, confidantes, extremists, enemies, soulmates of kinship (dare we say friends, even sisters?), exist, other than in that even finer division between a smack and whisper?
Upon first reading the volume, one is impressed by the sheer raw quality of life that comes from the page through means no more complex than the monologue. The beauty of such a delivery piece rests in its simplicity when presented to an audience – sometimes bold, often flashy, always to the point. Precise, a monologue reads as if it is extemporaneous, as fresh as the playwright’s first thoughts. However, as any writer knows, writing is not that easy. The monologue is a culmination of one-sided conversations we never had the chance to utter; it is the things we always want (or wanted) to say but never had the chance. In writing for this format, we find ourselves becoming the meticulous writer that is cliché itself –pouring over every syllable, testing every nuance of language, trying just so to get it just so. We tell ourselves, “It has to work! If only I could parse this or elaborate that without harming such or adding depth to thus.” It drives us mad.
When the writing is fluid and concise and reserved, it allows the actress the chance to study each word as it builds into each sentence and it builds each sentence into the testament that is the monologue.
Thus, what we read in Thirtysomethings is a compendium of the women we have known, loved, desired, detested, wanted to be and wanted to be with; found within is the secret desires for what we wish our wives and partners and friends to be and the mothers that we sometimes wish did not have.
The complex relationships that men cannot understand and many women have difficulty explaining shine through with reverence and dedication – much like the commitment a mother should have to her daughter. At the same time, we feel the strain and the wanting and the attitude and the adoration that each daughter should and often does have toward the mother. Thirtysomethings fits together nicely as a summation of all the women we might encounter.
Each play is reviewed below as a commentary unto itself and should not be taken to include the collection, but rather a glimpse of each tiny piece of glass within the mosaic.
* * *
Living on Nothing by Hope McIntyre, Canada
If the true evil of poverty is the cycle from which no one can escape without a lot more luck than hard work, then this story takes us inside the door of that house we cross the street to avoid, the house we tell our kids not to visit. But, as sure as poverty is real, Miss McIntyre introduces us to the reality for thousands of people trying to get their lives back who are against a system with a long memory. Who’s to blame? It seems both the protagonist and the system, yet we are likely to find ourselves siding with the mother in this play.
Shifting Demographics by Elizabeth Whitney, USA
A nice honest piece about family and regret, but, really, why do we need to learn this lesson? Chances are, anyone who doesn’t already know the stupidity of bigotry (yet alone the hypocrisy of bad parenting) wouldn’t go to the theatre anyway. Mostly everyone else already knows this. It is disappointing in its predictability.
Excerpt from: The Box by Kimberly delBusto, Cuban-American, USA
An interesting view into the mind of a child trapped somewhere between innocence and the loss thereof, a mind spanning all the years of growing up. But, gee, what ever happened to faith, the fact that some good people are truly happy?
Stout Heart by Katelyn Gendelev, USA
In the subtle heritage that makes each family – the stories that never make the headlines or are never made into a movie – there lies sincerity, depth, warmth, and this lady shares it with us in intricate, private detail. So touching the remembrance of a relationship that all families should be gifted with, even the loss is palpably sweet.
If You’ll Have Me by Meryl Cohn, USA
Like a short note that reads, “You were wrong, I forgive you and I want to be friends” (but really meaning it), this play takes us out of ourselves. The hint of humor is refreshing and the investment into one woman’s confused and somewhat tortured past reminds us – no, warns us – to not make the mistakes of past generations. Yet, it echoes of the quiet reminder that while it is never too late to say certain words, it can in fact be too late to have them be heard. This setting offers the director a chance to make even the smallest black box come to life with the serene outdoors that are resting places.
If Ever It’s Served Me by Sera Weber-Striplin, USA
So in lies the confrontation of our mortality, as taught by those who never took a class in life’s most crucial lessons – how we live, how we die, how we connect generation to generation – those learned through experience. The imagery of an oxygen machine humming onward will remain with many theatre-goers, especially those who have lived those nights. In her capable hands, the “playwrightess” softly says farewell to her legacy and hello to the responsibility she carries to enshrine it in memory. An actress will simply love being this character for weeks of rehearsal and for minutes each night of performance.
Photos of Meg by Chris Lockheardt, USA
This play acts out like a Blackjack dealer flipping photo-cards to tell a story and lure the audience. Whose life is at stake? Whose goals? Whose decisions? Through destructive means, a mother laments these issues but she forgets to tell us the answers…or did the playwright just not know herself? While this is a solid piece, it leaves the audience with an incomplete feeling. It is a play-goers monologue but not quite a play yet.
From: Men and Boxes 1 & 2 by Jennie Webb, USA
Short companion pieces that offer a snapshot of family but leave us wanting the entire envelope from the proverbial photo-hut of writing; a story that needs to be finished before it will appeal to an audience.
From: Yard Sale Signs by Jennie Webb, USA
Compact without being arrogant, a painful reminder of the imbalance we strike between career and family, between goals and reality.
Mimosa’s Filly by Kiesa Kay, USA / France
As staggering in its honesty as it is disappointing in its abruptness, this play is full of the confused soul and the silent struggle of both womankind and motherhood, and like a good fight between girlfriends, it just stops for no apparent reason and with no apparent resolution.
A Mother to Tie Ribbons in my Hair by Rachel Barnett, UK
Touching, tragic, but true? Maybe, but a bit forced.
Dovie’s Romance (or Becoming Empress Menen) by Sybil R. Williams, USA
A complex piece that shows itself to be masterful but only in the palms of a gifted actress. Its flaw may be that it is overwritten. Sometimes getting to the point isn’t easy but freedom and liberation aren’t clean either. If under-acted or misdirected, this piece runs the risk of losing the audience.
Laney’s Lament by Barbara H. Macchia, USA
Finally, after forty-five pages we get to the kind of play that delivers to the soul the little beauteous snippets of life that theatre allows. This precise, perfect one-woman show hits the chord of wonderment, fascination, shock and disappointment – all the things (one could think) a man might expect that being a woman resembles.
A Pig in Mud by Barbara Lindsay, USA
Raw and honest, both in its truth-revealing consciousness and its vernacular – this reads as a lonely silhouette of one woman filled with hope and denial while lamenting her past.
The Mom by Barbara Lindsay, USA
A similar voice to be expected from similar formulas of two monologues (see “A Pig in Mud”), yet the differences resonate within the surprise element. An audience, not given the pre-notation of her biography, would be shocked and abhorred. (Actions that keep theatre alive!) If anything, while we gain a look inside the evils of denial in both pieces, we will find it difficult to deny that Miss Lindsay is a quick and gifted writer.
Us and Them by Catherine Frid, Canada
Well said, Miss Frid! Your perception of the over-anxious, over-confident, instantly-gratified mother who has read too many parenting magazines is dead on. Michelle possesses all the worst of what we see in a modern mother alive in the country of Prozac, e-mail, everything-has-an-answer-society. What she lacks is instinct, the maternal within that she desires to have but has neither a grasp nor a clue of.
Real Time by Elizabeth Whitney, USA
Okay…strike two? (See Shifting Demographics) Miss Whitney expects us to be surprised at her non-cliché mother when what we really get is the mother we all kind of want. What the author misses is the chance at humor. Maybe sitting in the library, the IM mistake of multi-tasking and chatting with a friend reveals to mom she is a lesbian. After all, the opening line sets us up to expect a comedy. While hardly tragic, this script doesn’t disappoint; it lets itself down.
The Guardian by Constance Koepfinger, USA
What smacks of Walter Mitty updated somehow touches us in the soft way we think of people who are institutionalized. As long as we don’t have to visit, we are comfortable with their predicament; our emotions tell us we are good while our deepest thoughts project that we don’t really care. Still, we hope this character of a writer gone mad is more real than creative, because the story is good. The notion of Tony the Guardian Angel gives the piece more meaning than the lost soul would allow. To create a short piece so layered is indeed an accomplishment.
Making a Community by Joan Lipkin, USA
Spectacular! Real in its air of Americana. Real in its truth of our flaws. Heartfelt, with the simple ambition of wanting a good life, yet brave in its demand for that which is right. The story is so true and complex that one can see an entire film made of it, or just hear it in passing while on the porch of a conversation-filled evening.
Angel by Kathleen Warnock, USA
Whether stream-of-conscious or slice-of-life, we never fully know, but for a play that doesn’t really need its first six or seven lines, it builds nice character and then abruptly ends. Is it confession? Is it realization? Confrontation? Is it proselytizing to a small degree? Once the playwright decides, we will have a nice audition piece.
Delilah by Kathleen Warnock, USA
And part two (see “Angel” as part of Grieving for Genevieve) doesn’t give us much more. A bit of attitude, perhaps, but not much more than cliché frustration and surface level anxiety.
Susan by Lisa Stephenson, USA
A small piece with a serious heart that with a stronger storytelling needle in perhaps a more confident seamstress-hand would have us weeping for more. As is, we are moved with memory but only until the lights come up and we resume our conversations. Serious potential that has “re-write” applied to it like the fabled stickers on Sophie’s luggage.
Pat by Lisa Stephenson, USA
To address the resolute conviction of having decided upon abortion is brave – another branch on the complex tree of life that we all share and to some extent assume. (No one knows how they would feel until confronted with the decision.) That the modern A stands as a scarlet taboo is real; that Miss Stephenson shows us a reality of the decision is both frightening and refreshing. A good play told in a real voice, and isn’t that what we want playwriting to be?
Fairbanks, 1959 by Debbie L. Feldman, USA
A strong woman with resolve sets out to redefine herself (or, perhaps, rather, to find the true self she had lost or let slip away) but, so…are we in 1972 again? These women are out there, finding their way, plodding their mud-slide road, climbing their Everest, but now (today in 2010) a supportive husband is as common as a Pennsylvania summer storm. Behind every modern woman is a man with great ideals – didn’t the author read that? Sorry, the point is just too forced. The metaphor of Alaska is trite and the independence outdated. What marks the post-twentieth century as important is that men and women, wife and husband, are figuring out how to make society better by staying married to create family units that work, by not giving in. This mini- adventure spits in the face of all that those who are product of divorced selfishness of the post-sixties have worked to reverse. Or, is that little tag-line after the comma in the title saying the exact same thing?
The People by Vicki Cheatwood, USA
A fine and stellar piece – deep and thoughtful; touching and alarming. However, it has all the workings to not be a monologue. Add the characters we meet through the telling of the story, and write a play. Show, don’t tell! Also, one wonders if, like Peter Shaffer, the writer has ever been on stage. All that for one actor? Too much! And, let’s not forget the audience. A good playwright knows when to introduce a new character – often it is instinctual, not planned – and this piece needs not one but several to finish the play. The story is good, the play is misplaced.
The Hope by Koorosh Angali, Inranian-USA
A poem, a monologue, a tiny triumph! So much can be said in the fewest words, and for Mister Angali to see a soliloquy within the verse is both creative and insightful. But it is more than a poem-play; it is a testament to its own title, for hope is both metaphor and personification, and all that we write for.
Of Mother and Men by Lylanne Musselman, USA
Intriguing. It possesses the fundamental power of storytelling – a kernel of truth that keeps us listening, and a powerful “Ahhh!” of a good surprise ending. Not unnecessarily layered with subtext and symbolism, this straight-forward piece reveals one of those inner monologues that countless women have undoubtedly had with themselves. And the title is clever and pointed.
Unspoken Fears by Karen Jeynes, South Africa
Alive and sincere with the fond truth of our most complex happenstance, this work reflects all that is good and pure and honest and instinctive in a mother-to-be. Its doubts are not fool-hearty and its hopes not sophomoric. It is quite simply a tender smile.
House by Judith Pratt, USA
She conjures so much of what we long for in this short play, yet she grasps regret and decision with such clarity one cannot help but like the character. It’s the kind of conversation we walk into in the middle of and know that our friend will need a long chat afterwards, and we cherish the opportunity to share the moment together.
* * *
So, there we have thirty glimpses into the lives and wonderment of women, no simple task indeed.
I walk away wondering just one thing. After Erica Glyn-Jones has written such a touching and true foreword, should the collection of thirty monologues not be called Dancing with Rainbows? For as much as thirty-somethings affect us all and we grow in that time frame, what more colorful of substance does the mother-daughter relationship possess than the warmth of yellow, the crossover sexiness and antagonism of red, the subtle charm of blue, the deep passion of green, the bounce and spry of orange, the royal lushness of purple. The colored metaphors could continue and still not capture the essence of moms and daughters and wives and lovers, nor any of the women we adore and loathe, much like monologues can and will be written onward until the mystery of woman is unfurled and solved, which, thankfully, it never will be.
The book is available as a downloadable e-book or a bound paperback via the ICWP Press online shop at http://stores.lulu.com/womenplaywrights, and also from Amazon.com.
Thirtysomethings is one of four Mother / Daughter Monologues collections that cover the mother /daughter perspective and experiences from teens to women in their eighties. The series also includes these other titles: Babes and Beginnings, Mid-life Catharsis, and Urgent Maturity.
REVIEW OF THIRTYSOMETHINGS
The title for the International Centre for Women Playwrights 2nd volume of mother/daughter monologues registers as being ironic because it smacks of something while being dubbed “Thirtysomethings.” Or, rather, it does not smack, but whispers. It whispers of something calm and elegant – how fitting considering the subject matter is about relationships between mothers and daughters. Yet, where else does the fine balancing act between two such rivals, cohorts, confidantes, extremists, enemies, soulmates of kinship (dare we say friends, even sisters?), exist, other than in that even finer division between a smack and whisper?
Upon first reading the volume, one is impressed by the sheer raw quality of life that comes from the page through means no more complex than the monologue. The beauty of such a delivery piece rests in its simplicity when presented to an audience – sometimes bold, often flashy, always to the point. Precise, a monologue reads as if it is extemporaneous, as fresh as the playwright’s first thoughts. However, as any writer knows, writing is not that easy. The monologue is a culmination of one-sided conversations we never had the chance to utter; it is the things we always want (or wanted) to say but never had the chance. In writing for this format, we find ourselves becoming the meticulous writer that is cliché itself –pouring over every syllable, testing every nuance of language, trying just so to get it just so. We tell ourselves, “It has to work! If only I could parse this or elaborate that without harming such or adding depth to thus.” It drives us mad.
When the writing is fluid and concise and reserved, it allows the actress the chance to study each word as it builds into each sentence and it builds each sentence into the testament that is the monologue.
Thus, what we read in Thirtysomethings is a compendium of the women we have known, loved, desired, detested, wanted to be and wanted to be with; found within is the secret desires for what we wish our wives and partners and friends to be and the mothers that we sometimes wish did not have.
The complex relationships that men cannot understand and many women have difficulty explaining shine through with reverence and dedication – much like the commitment a mother should have to her daughter. At the same time, we feel the strain and the wanting and the attitude and the adoration that each daughter should and often does have toward the mother. Thirtysomethings fits together nicely as a summation of all the women we might encounter.
Each play is reviewed below as a commentary unto itself and should not be taken to include the collection, but rather a glimpse of each tiny piece of glass within the mosaic.
* * *
Living on Nothing by Hope McIntyre, Canada
If the true evil of poverty is the cycle from which no one can escape without a lot more luck than hard work, then this story takes us inside the door of that house we cross the street to avoid, the house we tell our kids not to visit. But, as sure as poverty is real, Miss McIntyre introduces us to the reality for thousands of people trying to get their lives back who are against a system with a long memory. Who’s to blame? It seems both the protagonist and the system, yet we are likely to find ourselves siding with the mother in this play.
Shifting Demographics by Elizabeth Whitney, USA
A nice honest piece about family and regret, but, really, why do we need to learn this lesson? Chances are, anyone who doesn’t already know the stupidity of bigotry (yet alone the hypocrisy of bad parenting) wouldn’t go to the theatre anyway. Mostly everyone else already knows this. It is disappointing in its predictability.
Excerpt from: The Box by Kimberly delBusto, Cuban-American, USA
An interesting view into the mind of a child trapped somewhere between innocence and the loss thereof, a mind spanning all the years of growing up. But, gee, what ever happened to faith, the fact that some good people are truly happy?
Stout Heart by Katelyn Gendelev, USA
In the subtle heritage that makes each family – the stories that never make the headlines or are never made into a movie – there lies sincerity, depth, warmth, and this lady shares it with us in intricate, private detail. So touching the remembrance of a relationship that all families should be gifted with, even the loss is palpably sweet.
If You’ll Have Me by Meryl Cohn, USA
Like a short note that reads, “You were wrong, I forgive you and I want to be friends” (but really meaning it), this play takes us out of ourselves. The hint of humor is refreshing and the investment into one woman’s confused and somewhat tortured past reminds us – no, warns us – to not make the mistakes of past generations. Yet, it echoes of the quiet reminder that while it is never too late to say certain words, it can in fact be too late to have them be heard. This setting offers the director a chance to make even the smallest black box come to life with the serene outdoors that are resting places.
If Ever It’s Served Me by Sera Weber-Striplin, USA
So in lies the confrontation of our mortality, as taught by those who never took a class in life’s most crucial lessons – how we live, how we die, how we connect generation to generation – those learned through experience. The imagery of an oxygen machine humming onward will remain with many theatre-goers, especially those who have lived those nights. In her capable hands, the “playwrightess” softly says farewell to her legacy and hello to the responsibility she carries to enshrine it in memory. An actress will simply love being this character for weeks of rehearsal and for minutes each night of performance.
Photos of Meg by Chris Lockheardt, USA
This play acts out like a Blackjack dealer flipping photo-cards to tell a story and lure the audience. Whose life is at stake? Whose goals? Whose decisions? Through destructive means, a mother laments these issues but she forgets to tell us the answers…or did the playwright just not know herself? While this is a solid piece, it leaves the audience with an incomplete feeling. It is a play-goers monologue but not quite a play yet.
From: Men and Boxes 1 & 2 by Jennie Webb, USA
Short companion pieces that offer a snapshot of family but leave us wanting the entire envelope from the proverbial photo-hut of writing; a story that needs to be finished before it will appeal to an audience.
From: Yard Sale Signs by Jennie Webb, USA
Compact without being arrogant, a painful reminder of the imbalance we strike between career and family, between goals and reality.
Mimosa’s Filly by Kiesa Kay, USA / France
As staggering in its honesty as it is disappointing in its abruptness, this play is full of the confused soul and the silent struggle of both womankind and motherhood, and like a good fight between girlfriends, it just stops for no apparent reason and with no apparent resolution.
A Mother to Tie Ribbons in my Hair by Rachel Barnett, UK
Touching, tragic, but true? Maybe, but a bit forced.
Dovie’s Romance (or Becoming Empress Menen) by Sybil R. Williams, USA
A complex piece that shows itself to be masterful but only in the palms of a gifted actress. Its flaw may be that it is overwritten. Sometimes getting to the point isn’t easy but freedom and liberation aren’t clean either. If under-acted or misdirected, this piece runs the risk of losing the audience.
Laney’s Lament by Barbara H. Macchia, USA
Finally, after forty-five pages we get to the kind of play that delivers to the soul the little beauteous snippets of life that theatre allows. This precise, perfect one-woman show hits the chord of wonderment, fascination, shock and disappointment – all the things (one could think) a man might expect that being a woman resembles.
A Pig in Mud by Barbara Lindsay, USA
Raw and honest, both in its truth-revealing consciousness and its vernacular – this reads as a lonely silhouette of one woman filled with hope and denial while lamenting her past.
The Mom by Barbara Lindsay, USA
A similar voice to be expected from similar formulas of two monologues (see “A Pig in Mud”), yet the differences resonate within the surprise element. An audience, not given the pre-notation of her biography, would be shocked and abhorred. (Actions that keep theatre alive!) If anything, while we gain a look inside the evils of denial in both pieces, we will find it difficult to deny that Miss Lindsay is a quick and gifted writer.
Us and Them by Catherine Frid, Canada
Well said, Miss Frid! Your perception of the over-anxious, over-confident, instantly-gratified mother who has read too many parenting magazines is dead on. Michelle possesses all the worst of what we see in a modern mother alive in the country of Prozac, e-mail, everything-has-an-answer-society. What she lacks is instinct, the maternal within that she desires to have but has neither a grasp nor a clue of.
Real Time by Elizabeth Whitney, USA
Okay…strike two? (See Shifting Demographics) Miss Whitney expects us to be surprised at her non-cliché mother when what we really get is the mother we all kind of want. What the author misses is the chance at humor. Maybe sitting in the library, the IM mistake of multi-tasking and chatting with a friend reveals to mom she is a lesbian. After all, the opening line sets us up to expect a comedy. While hardly tragic, this script doesn’t disappoint; it lets itself down.
The Guardian by Constance Koepfinger, USA
What smacks of Walter Mitty updated somehow touches us in the soft way we think of people who are institutionalized. As long as we don’t have to visit, we are comfortable with their predicament; our emotions tell us we are good while our deepest thoughts project that we don’t really care. Still, we hope this character of a writer gone mad is more real than creative, because the story is good. The notion of Tony the Guardian Angel gives the piece more meaning than the lost soul would allow. To create a short piece so layered is indeed an accomplishment.
Making a Community by Joan Lipkin, USA
Spectacular! Real in its air of Americana. Real in its truth of our flaws. Heartfelt, with the simple ambition of wanting a good life, yet brave in its demand for that which is right. The story is so true and complex that one can see an entire film made of it, or just hear it in passing while on the porch of a conversation-filled evening.
Angel by Kathleen Warnock, USA
Whether stream-of-conscious or slice-of-life, we never fully know, but for a play that doesn’t really need its first six or seven lines, it builds nice character and then abruptly ends. Is it confession? Is it realization? Confrontation? Is it proselytizing to a small degree? Once the playwright decides, we will have a nice audition piece.
Delilah by Kathleen Warnock, USA
And part two (see “Angel” as part of Grieving for Genevieve) doesn’t give us much more. A bit of attitude, perhaps, but not much more than cliché frustration and surface level anxiety.
Susan by Lisa Stephenson, USA
A small piece with a serious heart that with a stronger storytelling needle in perhaps a more confident seamstress-hand would have us weeping for more. As is, we are moved with memory but only until the lights come up and we resume our conversations. Serious potential that has “re-write” applied to it like the fabled stickers on Sophie’s luggage.
Pat by Lisa Stephenson, USA
To address the resolute conviction of having decided upon abortion is brave – another branch on the complex tree of life that we all share and to some extent assume. (No one knows how they would feel until confronted with the decision.) That the modern A stands as a scarlet taboo is real; that Miss Stephenson shows us a reality of the decision is both frightening and refreshing. A good play told in a real voice, and isn’t that what we want playwriting to be?
Fairbanks, 1959 by Debbie L. Feldman, USA
A strong woman with resolve sets out to redefine herself (or, perhaps, rather, to find the true self she had lost or let slip away) but, so…are we in 1972 again? These women are out there, finding their way, plodding their mud-slide road, climbing their Everest, but now (today in 2010) a supportive husband is as common as a Pennsylvania summer storm. Behind every modern woman is a man with great ideals – didn’t the author read that? Sorry, the point is just too forced. The metaphor of Alaska is trite and the independence outdated. What marks the post-twentieth century as important is that men and women, wife and husband, are figuring out how to make society better by staying married to create family units that work, by not giving in. This mini- adventure spits in the face of all that those who are product of divorced selfishness of the post-sixties have worked to reverse. Or, is that little tag-line after the comma in the title saying the exact same thing?
The People by Vicki Cheatwood, USA
A fine and stellar piece – deep and thoughtful; touching and alarming. However, it has all the workings to not be a monologue. Add the characters we meet through the telling of the story, and write a play. Show, don’t tell! Also, one wonders if, like Peter Shaffer, the writer has ever been on stage. All that for one actor? Too much! And, let’s not forget the audience. A good playwright knows when to introduce a new character – often it is instinctual, not planned – and this piece needs not one but several to finish the play. The story is good, the play is misplaced.
The Hope by Koorosh Angali, Inranian-USA
A poem, a monologue, a tiny triumph! So much can be said in the fewest words, and for Mister Angali to see a soliloquy within the verse is both creative and insightful. But it is more than a poem-play; it is a testament to its own title, for hope is both metaphor and personification, and all that we write for.
Of Mother and Men by Lylanne Musselman, USA
Intriguing. It possesses the fundamental power of storytelling – a kernel of truth that keeps us listening, and a powerful “Ahhh!” of a good surprise ending. Not unnecessarily layered with subtext and symbolism, this straight-forward piece reveals one of those inner monologues that countless women have undoubtedly had with themselves. And the title is clever and pointed.
Unspoken Fears by Karen Jeynes, South Africa
Alive and sincere with the fond truth of our most complex happenstance, this work reflects all that is good and pure and honest and instinctive in a mother-to-be. Its doubts are not fool-hearty and its hopes not sophomoric. It is quite simply a tender smile.
House by Judith Pratt, USA
She conjures so much of what we long for in this short play, yet she grasps regret and decision with such clarity one cannot help but like the character. It’s the kind of conversation we walk into in the middle of and know that our friend will need a long chat afterwards, and we cherish the opportunity to share the moment together.
* * *
So, there we have thirty glimpses into the lives and wonderment of women, no simple task indeed.
I walk away wondering just one thing. After Erica Glyn-Jones has written such a touching and true foreword, should the collection of thirty monologues not be called Dancing with Rainbows? For as much as thirty-somethings affect us all and we grow in that time frame, what more colorful of substance does the mother-daughter relationship possess than the warmth of yellow, the crossover sexiness and antagonism of red, the subtle charm of blue, the deep passion of green, the bounce and spry of orange, the royal lushness of purple. The colored metaphors could continue and still not capture the essence of moms and daughters and wives and lovers, nor any of the women we adore and loathe, much like monologues can and will be written onward until the mystery of woman is unfurled and solved, which, thankfully, it never will be.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Soccer: Some Say it is a Kick (not me!)
My recent reaction to the United States men’s team having lost in the World Cup was as follows, and I quote myself: “Well, at least we can go back to not caring about soccer for another four years.” For a number of decades, it has been widely known and criticized that soccer is the most popular game in the entire world but not here in the United States.
Many pundits have suggested that the reason for this fact is we Americans are selfish, that the purity of a team sport is lost on us. I disagree. Our team sports are just as lofty as soccer. Football (sorry, American football) requires absolute commitment to team. Has anyone ever watched how many times a wide receiver runs the thirty-yard-dash in a given afternoon? As well, blockers within the trenches take a beating that make the ever-popular “header” look like a kids’ game. I won’t say soccer is not physical in nature, but so is basketball.
Some have said that we do not like the so-called “international game” because it isn’t high-scoring enough, that somehow a 1-Nill final is not enticing to the American way of excess. Again, I disagree. The 2007 Steelers 3-0 victory over Miami on national television in a hurricane-induced swamp-of-a-field was one of the best games to watch – ever! As well, a baseball game wherein a pitcher’s duel results in a 2-1 final score is outstanding, and many fans enjoy that game for the edge-of-your-seat anticipation. Besides, what the hell is “nill”? How dare you call us snobbish when we say the score was one – to – zero! Or, maybe just a shut-out. Take your nill and get the hell off my couch!
Still, others have offered that we have too many distractions, too much to do as a whole society so that the focus of one solitary game becomes impossible. Maybe this is true. After all, we have 300 million citizens – we cannot all be fans of anything, though somehow television has tried its best to overtake us. The distraction argument goes right through your umbros, kid. The whole world is distracted – that is why we participate in or watch sports to begin with. We need a break so that we can be distracted! It is time soccer fans get off their high horse (no wait, that is polo) and realize that their game is no better than any other. Let’s see you take a skate across the throat. When that happens, call up the NHL guys and ask them how popular soccer is.
I have long wondered how anyone who professes a love for soccer could call baseball boring. Granted, fans of jai-alai (if anyone still is), competitive bull-fighting or roller derby can fairly state that the level of excitement in any of those contests is higher than baseball and soccer combined, but those are not even sports – they are glorified self-abuse camps for the athletic masochist. Baseball is a game for purists, and, okay, we tend to over-intellectualize and aggrandize ourselves for that purpose. However, I have come to understand that soccer is actually popular only because it is boring.
Allow me to explain.
If by definition, a pastime is deigned to, oh, I don’t know, pass the time, then how or why we become fans of any team, country or player is ridiculous. We are not supposed to be investing our loyalties; we are supposed to simply be passing the time. We are not expected to be involved to a spectacular personal level; we are simply expected to be spectators, to watch! So, then, how did fandom become fanaticism? I think it has something to do with the human need to “ism” everything into existence, but that would be another topic for another column.
Soccer allows for time…a lot of time…a lot of wasted time…ninety minutes of nothing happening time…a lot of extra add-on time that seems to be unfair to competition…to pass time without much going on. So, yes, it is the ultimate pastime. And what do people do when they have time to pass? They party! Therein lies the secret, America. The rest of the world loves, adores, dies for, admires, and follows soccer because it is a lengthy excuse to party. And, in turn, they criticize our dislike for soccer because they don’t want us to crash their proverbial football party.
You don’t have to pay attention all that much when watching soccer – just wait until a collective roar goes up from the teetotalers or twelve-step-programmers, glance quickly toward the field, and see if one of the three goals to be scored all afternoon just happened to hit the net at that moment. If so, yell and scream and bally-hoo and hug strangers; if not, drink up! There might be overtime.
The reality is this – just because something is popular does not mean it is good. Aerosmith is popular, Rush is good; The Rolling Stones are popular, Led Zeppelin is good. The Beatles…maybe both. Apocalypse Now is a good – no, a great – film; it is mainly popular among film fans, Uber nerds and guys who like guy movies that do not necessarily star Nicolas Cage (there is a Coppola joke in there if you are clever enough), but you might only catch it uncut on cable a few times a year on certain weekends. You will never see Pretty Woman shown in a film class at Marquette University, though you will see it broadcast on cable sixteen times a week. While that absurd story is popular, it is not a good movie!
The examples could roll on as long as a soccer match itself. Grease, that musical / movie, was popular, it was not good! Hair spray (not the movie this time) was popular once, we now know it is not good for various reasons. Binge drinking is popular, it is not good. Hell, even the necktie is popular, and that is definitely not a good thing. Hockey is good, soccer is merely popular.
Again, and with emphasis: just because soccer is popular does not mean it is good!
Finally, that damn clock. Let’s add time to a game because an injury occurred? Really? In our sports we have this thing called a whistle. If play needs to be stopped for an injury or a ball that goes out of bounds, the play is stopped. See, sports are an artificial construct in which the participants determine how much time is to pass; soccer seems to believe it controls “real time” by keeping the clock moving – and upwards at that! Oy vay! Oh, wait, there is a sport that does not even require a clock? What sport is that? Wait, I know this one. Don’t tell me. Oh, yeah, baseball! I rest my case. Soccer, popular; baseball, good.
Many pundits have suggested that the reason for this fact is we Americans are selfish, that the purity of a team sport is lost on us. I disagree. Our team sports are just as lofty as soccer. Football (sorry, American football) requires absolute commitment to team. Has anyone ever watched how many times a wide receiver runs the thirty-yard-dash in a given afternoon? As well, blockers within the trenches take a beating that make the ever-popular “header” look like a kids’ game. I won’t say soccer is not physical in nature, but so is basketball.
Some have said that we do not like the so-called “international game” because it isn’t high-scoring enough, that somehow a 1-Nill final is not enticing to the American way of excess. Again, I disagree. The 2007 Steelers 3-0 victory over Miami on national television in a hurricane-induced swamp-of-a-field was one of the best games to watch – ever! As well, a baseball game wherein a pitcher’s duel results in a 2-1 final score is outstanding, and many fans enjoy that game for the edge-of-your-seat anticipation. Besides, what the hell is “nill”? How dare you call us snobbish when we say the score was one – to – zero! Or, maybe just a shut-out. Take your nill and get the hell off my couch!
Still, others have offered that we have too many distractions, too much to do as a whole society so that the focus of one solitary game becomes impossible. Maybe this is true. After all, we have 300 million citizens – we cannot all be fans of anything, though somehow television has tried its best to overtake us. The distraction argument goes right through your umbros, kid. The whole world is distracted – that is why we participate in or watch sports to begin with. We need a break so that we can be distracted! It is time soccer fans get off their high horse (no wait, that is polo) and realize that their game is no better than any other. Let’s see you take a skate across the throat. When that happens, call up the NHL guys and ask them how popular soccer is.
I have long wondered how anyone who professes a love for soccer could call baseball boring. Granted, fans of jai-alai (if anyone still is), competitive bull-fighting or roller derby can fairly state that the level of excitement in any of those contests is higher than baseball and soccer combined, but those are not even sports – they are glorified self-abuse camps for the athletic masochist. Baseball is a game for purists, and, okay, we tend to over-intellectualize and aggrandize ourselves for that purpose. However, I have come to understand that soccer is actually popular only because it is boring.
Allow me to explain.
If by definition, a pastime is deigned to, oh, I don’t know, pass the time, then how or why we become fans of any team, country or player is ridiculous. We are not supposed to be investing our loyalties; we are supposed to simply be passing the time. We are not expected to be involved to a spectacular personal level; we are simply expected to be spectators, to watch! So, then, how did fandom become fanaticism? I think it has something to do with the human need to “ism” everything into existence, but that would be another topic for another column.
Soccer allows for time…a lot of time…a lot of wasted time…ninety minutes of nothing happening time…a lot of extra add-on time that seems to be unfair to competition…to pass time without much going on. So, yes, it is the ultimate pastime. And what do people do when they have time to pass? They party! Therein lies the secret, America. The rest of the world loves, adores, dies for, admires, and follows soccer because it is a lengthy excuse to party. And, in turn, they criticize our dislike for soccer because they don’t want us to crash their proverbial football party.
You don’t have to pay attention all that much when watching soccer – just wait until a collective roar goes up from the teetotalers or twelve-step-programmers, glance quickly toward the field, and see if one of the three goals to be scored all afternoon just happened to hit the net at that moment. If so, yell and scream and bally-hoo and hug strangers; if not, drink up! There might be overtime.
The reality is this – just because something is popular does not mean it is good. Aerosmith is popular, Rush is good; The Rolling Stones are popular, Led Zeppelin is good. The Beatles…maybe both. Apocalypse Now is a good – no, a great – film; it is mainly popular among film fans, Uber nerds and guys who like guy movies that do not necessarily star Nicolas Cage (there is a Coppola joke in there if you are clever enough), but you might only catch it uncut on cable a few times a year on certain weekends. You will never see Pretty Woman shown in a film class at Marquette University, though you will see it broadcast on cable sixteen times a week. While that absurd story is popular, it is not a good movie!
The examples could roll on as long as a soccer match itself. Grease, that musical / movie, was popular, it was not good! Hair spray (not the movie this time) was popular once, we now know it is not good for various reasons. Binge drinking is popular, it is not good. Hell, even the necktie is popular, and that is definitely not a good thing. Hockey is good, soccer is merely popular.
Again, and with emphasis: just because soccer is popular does not mean it is good!
Finally, that damn clock. Let’s add time to a game because an injury occurred? Really? In our sports we have this thing called a whistle. If play needs to be stopped for an injury or a ball that goes out of bounds, the play is stopped. See, sports are an artificial construct in which the participants determine how much time is to pass; soccer seems to believe it controls “real time” by keeping the clock moving – and upwards at that! Oy vay! Oh, wait, there is a sport that does not even require a clock? What sport is that? Wait, I know this one. Don’t tell me. Oh, yeah, baseball! I rest my case. Soccer, popular; baseball, good.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
To Marriage
It has become abundantly clear in our country (and maybe the world at large) that there is something wrong with how we perceive, value, evaluate, judge and either support, oppose or tussle with marriage. When the failure rate of marriages is at 50% (or the success rate at half if you prefer to follow the optimist's bent), we have to ask ourselves what is going on.
Surely, we could blame the sexual revolution. What we see in the media and even in our own neighborhoods is a sexiness factor that might lead people to stray. As if clothes themselves do not have enough ability to make an already attractive person look sexy, it doesn't help that how much we wear, reveal, expose and look for has increased to levels that teeter between absurd and pleasurable. I am no prude. I enjoy the fascination of a beautiful woman as much as the next guy, and I feel equally intimidated by the stud who can jog through the neighborhood without a shirt and without breaking a sweat. But the failure of so many marriages cannot be explained that simply.
Marriage as an institution might be the problem. Who wants to be stranded for their entire lives with one person on Fidelity Island? One hopes that marriage goes beyond such a notion - that friends can live together as lovers, that soulmates can share financial responsibility, that growing old together can be cherished as opposed to feared. Granted, some do feel a legitimate pressure when all they hear for their entire life is how one should get married, how one should find a spouse, how one should start a family. The word should implies pressure itself! How can one be expected to live as others believe? There is more to the force that drives the failure or success of marriage than the mere rules of society, though pressure does play a part.
What about commitment itself? That is often the fear that keeps people (arguably, mostly men) from taking the plunge, tying the knot and walking the line in the first place. Whether you are a family man, a player, a playboy or a cruiser; whether you are a mom-in-training, a boy toy, a devoted wife or a run-around-Sue, you have to know for yourself if long-term commitment is right for you. The rule is simple - if you can't stand the commitment, don't buy into the merger.
There are some who have said that divorce is too easy, that marriages are convenient-based agreements that can be dissolved as quickly as they are impulsively brought to form. True, for certain. When one can get a divorce from the same page of the newspaper where you find pizza coupons, we have passed a point on the moral compass of society. When we convince ourselves that the end to a marriage is an option, and therefore something worth taking the risk to get into, I fear we are lost, or have lost already. In all fairness, this is reality for but a select few and most people truly do want to be happy.
However, marriage was never meant to include an out-clause! It is comforting at best to think that those who reach the point of divorce have done so at a crossroads they never imagined, that they reached a moment they never saw coming. Is it naivety? Perhaps. Do fairy tales instill a blissful ignorance to personal shortcomings? Maybe. Or, is it the basic fact that we separate marriage from other things that we plan for? We plan a move, why not a marriage? We plan the wedding, but do we plan for the days when love is trickling away and frustration building up? We plan for retirement, but do we plan time for the one we were meant to be with?
Our lives pull us this way and that and take us here and there. As such, it is possible that marriages fail when couples forget to discuss/develop/draft a plan, a long-term plan.
Sure, the wedding is exciting! But what do you do afterwards? The famous "honeymoon is over cliche" can be dropped into text here for analysis and review, but I hope we have at least learned that life and love must go beyond sex and the beach, sex on the beach or annoying sand lodged in...never mind!
Wow, kids! What a great addition. All the fuss, the cutesies, the bonding through the late nights together. These are the best years. But then the kids gain independence, they keep you busy and away from each other, they pull you apart, they take your money and your recliner and your favorite shirt. (Who used that 1995 AFC Championship shirt to wash the damn dog anyway!?!) Kids can be a stress on any marriage - go wisely into that decision, friends! One must want the joy and accept the obligation; if you want the tax write-off, you'd better have the responsibility to stick through the times when headaches surpass passion and when the cutesies turn green with the sickies.
A bigger house! This will keep us happy. Hello, debt, repainting, a new roof, annoying neighbors, a longer commute, a longer driveway to shovel, more junk to fill storage...Man, I wish we had stayed in that starter house, they say. By then it is too late. The mortgage is fixed, the house is a mess and you start thinking you should be somewhere else.
Therein lies the trap! In a convenient world of individual accomplishment, we think of ourselves first, we forget the team concept. Buck up, kids! Marriage is a lengthy ride with amazing results, if you stick to a plan. Can you alter the plan as life goes its merry way? Of course you can. Just be sure you make those adjustments together. Like a good carpenter who would call the electrician before making a change to the floorplan, a good spouse sets the cards on the table so that both gamblers know the hand they are playing.
The events go on, the life continues, the excuses mount. Without a long-term plan, you can't see the marriage past the wedding.
I am no psychologist or marriage expert - I am simply a full-time teacher, a want-to-be-writer, a 100% dad and a committed husband. I don't know a lot. I have, however, figured this tiny reality to be true -- in the instant society in which we live, in the world of pressures both real and imagined, we have failed to see marriage as a long-term investment. Not an investment in funds and foreclosures, stocks and certificates, but an investment in time and growth that will yield a better end product.
There will be ups and downs, the long-term marry-er (to coin a terrible phrase) must recognize that those ups will require great pull because it is easier to push instead of pull, but those downs will require hard work because luck only plays a small part.
Will having a long-term plan solve the world issue of marriages failing at a fifty-percent clip? No. If half the world combined a heart decision with an it-takes-guts decision, maybe fewer domestic wars would be waged, less families would be separated and less hearts would be broken. For the record, today is the fourteenth anniversary for myself and my wife. A long time? Sort of, but it is always relative. Long term? You bet ya.
AN AFTERTHOUGHT (June 24, 2010):
I had to add this because I cannot believe I forgot to mention this in my commentary on marriage.
Let us not forget one truth: it takes 2 to make a marriage succeed, and it takes 2 to make a marriage fail.
Please be aware of this when choosing sides.
Surely, we could blame the sexual revolution. What we see in the media and even in our own neighborhoods is a sexiness factor that might lead people to stray. As if clothes themselves do not have enough ability to make an already attractive person look sexy, it doesn't help that how much we wear, reveal, expose and look for has increased to levels that teeter between absurd and pleasurable. I am no prude. I enjoy the fascination of a beautiful woman as much as the next guy, and I feel equally intimidated by the stud who can jog through the neighborhood without a shirt and without breaking a sweat. But the failure of so many marriages cannot be explained that simply.
Marriage as an institution might be the problem. Who wants to be stranded for their entire lives with one person on Fidelity Island? One hopes that marriage goes beyond such a notion - that friends can live together as lovers, that soulmates can share financial responsibility, that growing old together can be cherished as opposed to feared. Granted, some do feel a legitimate pressure when all they hear for their entire life is how one should get married, how one should find a spouse, how one should start a family. The word should implies pressure itself! How can one be expected to live as others believe? There is more to the force that drives the failure or success of marriage than the mere rules of society, though pressure does play a part.
What about commitment itself? That is often the fear that keeps people (arguably, mostly men) from taking the plunge, tying the knot and walking the line in the first place. Whether you are a family man, a player, a playboy or a cruiser; whether you are a mom-in-training, a boy toy, a devoted wife or a run-around-Sue, you have to know for yourself if long-term commitment is right for you. The rule is simple - if you can't stand the commitment, don't buy into the merger.
There are some who have said that divorce is too easy, that marriages are convenient-based agreements that can be dissolved as quickly as they are impulsively brought to form. True, for certain. When one can get a divorce from the same page of the newspaper where you find pizza coupons, we have passed a point on the moral compass of society. When we convince ourselves that the end to a marriage is an option, and therefore something worth taking the risk to get into, I fear we are lost, or have lost already. In all fairness, this is reality for but a select few and most people truly do want to be happy.
However, marriage was never meant to include an out-clause! It is comforting at best to think that those who reach the point of divorce have done so at a crossroads they never imagined, that they reached a moment they never saw coming. Is it naivety? Perhaps. Do fairy tales instill a blissful ignorance to personal shortcomings? Maybe. Or, is it the basic fact that we separate marriage from other things that we plan for? We plan a move, why not a marriage? We plan the wedding, but do we plan for the days when love is trickling away and frustration building up? We plan for retirement, but do we plan time for the one we were meant to be with?
Our lives pull us this way and that and take us here and there. As such, it is possible that marriages fail when couples forget to discuss/develop/draft a plan, a long-term plan.
Sure, the wedding is exciting! But what do you do afterwards? The famous "honeymoon is over cliche" can be dropped into text here for analysis and review, but I hope we have at least learned that life and love must go beyond sex and the beach, sex on the beach or annoying sand lodged in...never mind!
Wow, kids! What a great addition. All the fuss, the cutesies, the bonding through the late nights together. These are the best years. But then the kids gain independence, they keep you busy and away from each other, they pull you apart, they take your money and your recliner and your favorite shirt. (Who used that 1995 AFC Championship shirt to wash the damn dog anyway!?!) Kids can be a stress on any marriage - go wisely into that decision, friends! One must want the joy and accept the obligation; if you want the tax write-off, you'd better have the responsibility to stick through the times when headaches surpass passion and when the cutesies turn green with the sickies.
A bigger house! This will keep us happy. Hello, debt, repainting, a new roof, annoying neighbors, a longer commute, a longer driveway to shovel, more junk to fill storage...Man, I wish we had stayed in that starter house, they say. By then it is too late. The mortgage is fixed, the house is a mess and you start thinking you should be somewhere else.
Therein lies the trap! In a convenient world of individual accomplishment, we think of ourselves first, we forget the team concept. Buck up, kids! Marriage is a lengthy ride with amazing results, if you stick to a plan. Can you alter the plan as life goes its merry way? Of course you can. Just be sure you make those adjustments together. Like a good carpenter who would call the electrician before making a change to the floorplan, a good spouse sets the cards on the table so that both gamblers know the hand they are playing.
The events go on, the life continues, the excuses mount. Without a long-term plan, you can't see the marriage past the wedding.
I am no psychologist or marriage expert - I am simply a full-time teacher, a want-to-be-writer, a 100% dad and a committed husband. I don't know a lot. I have, however, figured this tiny reality to be true -- in the instant society in which we live, in the world of pressures both real and imagined, we have failed to see marriage as a long-term investment. Not an investment in funds and foreclosures, stocks and certificates, but an investment in time and growth that will yield a better end product.
There will be ups and downs, the long-term marry-er (to coin a terrible phrase) must recognize that those ups will require great pull because it is easier to push instead of pull, but those downs will require hard work because luck only plays a small part.
Will having a long-term plan solve the world issue of marriages failing at a fifty-percent clip? No. If half the world combined a heart decision with an it-takes-guts decision, maybe fewer domestic wars would be waged, less families would be separated and less hearts would be broken. For the record, today is the fourteenth anniversary for myself and my wife. A long time? Sort of, but it is always relative. Long term? You bet ya.
AN AFTERTHOUGHT (June 24, 2010):
I had to add this because I cannot believe I forgot to mention this in my commentary on marriage.
Let us not forget one truth: it takes 2 to make a marriage succeed, and it takes 2 to make a marriage fail.
Please be aware of this when choosing sides.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
May The Kirk Be With You
The definition of irony might begin with the fact that I am a Kirk who prefers Star Wars over Star Trek, though the most recent “Trekkie” film sure challenged me to think that maybe George Lucas has taken a backseat to Gene Roddenberry in the battle for Greatest Geek of All Time.
Despite being Kirk, I grew up wanting to board the Millennium Falcon and race through a fictitious galaxy of weird creatures, space stations, odd planets and amazing characters. I was caught up in the magic of The Force. I admired the subtle command of the laser blaster and swooned over the charm of a Princess on a mission. While I did not in my juvenile mind see the connection between Star Wars and the classic tales of chivalry and gallantry I had read as a child, I sure found myself wishing Obi-Wan “Ben” Kenobi was among my kin. Honestly, who wouldn’t want a lightsaber? I have even been told that I resemble Lucas himself.
As adolescence took its usually awkward course, I drifted away from the original trilogy as any self-serving neo-nerd would (and should) want to do. I needed to get a life: I was about to drive a car, maybe get a job, and I sure as hell had better get a girlfriend (soon!) if I were to move out of my fantasy-driven world of good versus evil and into reality.
My mother delights in telling the story of how I, as a seven-year-old boy, was scared by Darth Vader to the point that I ran from the theatre crying. As well, my aunt laments the fact that I was able to convince my cousin that hitting his collection of Star Wars Action Figures into the woods as if they were baseballs was somehow a good idea. We lost the whole collection. Damn e-bay! Had it not been for the sudden surge in collectable memorabilia from the 1980’s, I would never have been accused of throwing good money over that hill.
Now that I am a father, I have revisited Star Wars, and I have found myself enjoying it all the more. Of course (insert famous cliché music to enhance your reading experience), I see it through different eyes and with a different perspective. No longer does the Death Star represent some evil empire in the sky; I see it for what it is – the headquarters of the New York Yankees. No more do Stormtroopers surprise me for having regenerated scene after scene when they had just been killed. I now see through the eyes of a humanitarian who comprehends genocide and xenophobia but also recognizes the horror and tragedy of war. The Force? Ha! Who needs it? What was once connectivity of all great spirits is now simply nothing more than life itself.
What struck me most about watching Star Wars with my son (and daughters, though they were about as interested as the girls from my 1982 neighborhood who were somehow NOT impressed that I could speak just like Yoda after having seen – and successfully stayed in the movie house for – The Empire Strikes Back) was the notion that he might find a role model within the Star Wars anthology that he could follow and aspire toward. But who?
Lando Calrissian? I hope not. A friend turned traitor turned savior is a risky friend indeed.
Boba Fett? Perhaps. But under all the really cool gadgets is just a renegade vigilante wrapped around a mercenary bounty hunter…Damn, why didn’t I think of The Dog the Bounty Hunter idea? That dude makes some serious money.
Jar Jar Binks? No! I fear my son will one day bring home a friend who reminds me of Jar Jar, and I will say something I regret temporarily that in ten years we will all laugh about.
I think it is time for me to identify with one of the characters that defined my childhood. Granted, if I had put this much thought into the plays and novels I had read as a college student, I would either be writing professionally or teaching Shakespeare by now…but that is a different legend. If I can relate to one character, perhaps I will understand how to be a better father in the light of whom my son admires.
So, here goes.
Chewbacca was my first favorite Star Wars character, mostly because that was my first action figure. When I connected the fact that he is a “Wookie” to the massive species we meet in the 6th / 3rd film, I was disappointed. I had always seen him as one of a kind, like me; but he is also brutish and stupid and strong. Keep your comments to yourself! I am only brutish when I am stupid and strong when it is overtime of a Stanley Cup play-off game. It takes guts to watch that stuff. I am no Chewie.
Then came Yoda - wise, articulate…yeah, that kid of ruled me out. As much as I want to be Yoda, just not am I.
Princess Leia? Wow, that could open a whole other galaxy to me! But, no.
I am not brave like Han Solo. That guy has chutzpah: arrogant beyond regret, tough as titanium, quick with a quasi-real cool gun, he is handsome and athletic. I was (and am) none of these. As much as piloting my own smuggler ship across the stars sounds like fun, it just isn’t me.
Nor am I intelligent like C3-PO. Who doesn’t love his entrance line: “I am C3-PO, protocol droid, human-cyborg relations. I am fluent in over six million forms of communication…”? Imagine the dates that guy could get! He is out there somewhere, though. C3-PO is the kid we all made fun of who could master French and Spanish as well as English in high school, and who in college took up German, Farsi and Swahili just to annoy us lesser-cyborgs. He is as smart as Einstein but was a worry wart to end all wet-blanket revolts. I could name the kid in high school whose dad asked me to take him to a baseball game with the guys and get him into a little trouble just to humanize him, but that would not be fair. That guy, either real or imagined, is not me.
So who the hell am I in the Star Wars mythology? These characters relate to us for a reason. (There must be a Jabba the Hut joke in here somewhere.) Darth Vader…I wish I could be so evil! Obi-Wan Kenobi…I wish I could be so good. Qui-Gon Jinn…I wish I could have such a stupid name and not get my ass kicked once in while.
I guess I must be Luke.
Yeah, the lamest of the lame. Naïve, ambitious, over-reactive… a little wishy-washy when he wants the girl, but he does get the girl only to find out, yeah, never mind that… nice to a fault… a bit stubborn…wants to be a dreamer but circumstances align in such a manner where he is forced into action… ultimately, he is indecisive, thus he is me …or, is he?
Who knows? I can only hope my son will learn from me because I want to be less like a Star Wars character and more like a dad. Maybe he and I will go back and forth between all of these – Boba Fett had a bad dude for a dad, and Luke’s father was…well, you know. To struggle like Darth and Luke would not be fun, but at least the fate of the universe will not be on our minds. I will not be to him what my father was to me – lost and unknown like Han Solo’s dad. Do we ever meet a Mr. Solo?
The only thing I can do is teach him along the way and be just a little pissed off to remember that when he first saw Darth Vader burst through the smoke and fog of the Rebel ship that sets the stage for “A New Hope,” my then-five-year-old son turned to me and said, “Dad, this is so cool!” So, I pass a movie along the generational line. What scared me, he enjoys; heroes for me may become anything or nothing to him. But we are Kirks together, regardless of the universe. Okay, fair enough. That solves it. I will try to be his role model.
Then again, R2-D2 is a pretty cool cat…
Despite being Kirk, I grew up wanting to board the Millennium Falcon and race through a fictitious galaxy of weird creatures, space stations, odd planets and amazing characters. I was caught up in the magic of The Force. I admired the subtle command of the laser blaster and swooned over the charm of a Princess on a mission. While I did not in my juvenile mind see the connection between Star Wars and the classic tales of chivalry and gallantry I had read as a child, I sure found myself wishing Obi-Wan “Ben” Kenobi was among my kin. Honestly, who wouldn’t want a lightsaber? I have even been told that I resemble Lucas himself.
As adolescence took its usually awkward course, I drifted away from the original trilogy as any self-serving neo-nerd would (and should) want to do. I needed to get a life: I was about to drive a car, maybe get a job, and I sure as hell had better get a girlfriend (soon!) if I were to move out of my fantasy-driven world of good versus evil and into reality.
My mother delights in telling the story of how I, as a seven-year-old boy, was scared by Darth Vader to the point that I ran from the theatre crying. As well, my aunt laments the fact that I was able to convince my cousin that hitting his collection of Star Wars Action Figures into the woods as if they were baseballs was somehow a good idea. We lost the whole collection. Damn e-bay! Had it not been for the sudden surge in collectable memorabilia from the 1980’s, I would never have been accused of throwing good money over that hill.
Now that I am a father, I have revisited Star Wars, and I have found myself enjoying it all the more. Of course (insert famous cliché music to enhance your reading experience), I see it through different eyes and with a different perspective. No longer does the Death Star represent some evil empire in the sky; I see it for what it is – the headquarters of the New York Yankees. No more do Stormtroopers surprise me for having regenerated scene after scene when they had just been killed. I now see through the eyes of a humanitarian who comprehends genocide and xenophobia but also recognizes the horror and tragedy of war. The Force? Ha! Who needs it? What was once connectivity of all great spirits is now simply nothing more than life itself.
What struck me most about watching Star Wars with my son (and daughters, though they were about as interested as the girls from my 1982 neighborhood who were somehow NOT impressed that I could speak just like Yoda after having seen – and successfully stayed in the movie house for – The Empire Strikes Back) was the notion that he might find a role model within the Star Wars anthology that he could follow and aspire toward. But who?
Lando Calrissian? I hope not. A friend turned traitor turned savior is a risky friend indeed.
Boba Fett? Perhaps. But under all the really cool gadgets is just a renegade vigilante wrapped around a mercenary bounty hunter…Damn, why didn’t I think of The Dog the Bounty Hunter idea? That dude makes some serious money.
Jar Jar Binks? No! I fear my son will one day bring home a friend who reminds me of Jar Jar, and I will say something I regret temporarily that in ten years we will all laugh about.
I think it is time for me to identify with one of the characters that defined my childhood. Granted, if I had put this much thought into the plays and novels I had read as a college student, I would either be writing professionally or teaching Shakespeare by now…but that is a different legend. If I can relate to one character, perhaps I will understand how to be a better father in the light of whom my son admires.
So, here goes.
Chewbacca was my first favorite Star Wars character, mostly because that was my first action figure. When I connected the fact that he is a “Wookie” to the massive species we meet in the 6th / 3rd film, I was disappointed. I had always seen him as one of a kind, like me; but he is also brutish and stupid and strong. Keep your comments to yourself! I am only brutish when I am stupid and strong when it is overtime of a Stanley Cup play-off game. It takes guts to watch that stuff. I am no Chewie.
Then came Yoda - wise, articulate…yeah, that kid of ruled me out. As much as I want to be Yoda, just not am I.
Princess Leia? Wow, that could open a whole other galaxy to me! But, no.
I am not brave like Han Solo. That guy has chutzpah: arrogant beyond regret, tough as titanium, quick with a quasi-real cool gun, he is handsome and athletic. I was (and am) none of these. As much as piloting my own smuggler ship across the stars sounds like fun, it just isn’t me.
Nor am I intelligent like C3-PO. Who doesn’t love his entrance line: “I am C3-PO, protocol droid, human-cyborg relations. I am fluent in over six million forms of communication…”? Imagine the dates that guy could get! He is out there somewhere, though. C3-PO is the kid we all made fun of who could master French and Spanish as well as English in high school, and who in college took up German, Farsi and Swahili just to annoy us lesser-cyborgs. He is as smart as Einstein but was a worry wart to end all wet-blanket revolts. I could name the kid in high school whose dad asked me to take him to a baseball game with the guys and get him into a little trouble just to humanize him, but that would not be fair. That guy, either real or imagined, is not me.
So who the hell am I in the Star Wars mythology? These characters relate to us for a reason. (There must be a Jabba the Hut joke in here somewhere.) Darth Vader…I wish I could be so evil! Obi-Wan Kenobi…I wish I could be so good. Qui-Gon Jinn…I wish I could have such a stupid name and not get my ass kicked once in while.
I guess I must be Luke.
Yeah, the lamest of the lame. Naïve, ambitious, over-reactive… a little wishy-washy when he wants the girl, but he does get the girl only to find out, yeah, never mind that… nice to a fault… a bit stubborn…wants to be a dreamer but circumstances align in such a manner where he is forced into action… ultimately, he is indecisive, thus he is me …or, is he?
Who knows? I can only hope my son will learn from me because I want to be less like a Star Wars character and more like a dad. Maybe he and I will go back and forth between all of these – Boba Fett had a bad dude for a dad, and Luke’s father was…well, you know. To struggle like Darth and Luke would not be fun, but at least the fate of the universe will not be on our minds. I will not be to him what my father was to me – lost and unknown like Han Solo’s dad. Do we ever meet a Mr. Solo?
The only thing I can do is teach him along the way and be just a little pissed off to remember that when he first saw Darth Vader burst through the smoke and fog of the Rebel ship that sets the stage for “A New Hope,” my then-five-year-old son turned to me and said, “Dad, this is so cool!” So, I pass a movie along the generational line. What scared me, he enjoys; heroes for me may become anything or nothing to him. But we are Kirks together, regardless of the universe. Okay, fair enough. That solves it. I will try to be his role model.
Then again, R2-D2 is a pretty cool cat…
Thursday, May 13, 2010
40 and Going
Those born in 1970 were placed at a unique crossroads of the twentieth century. Reared in the throes of Vietnam and under the long shadow of World War II, we somehow feel connected to the JFK assassination simply because it occurred a mere seven years before our births – come on, our generation wants its defining moment, too! We came about prior to the computer and before AIDS shocked a generation, yet a human had already walked upon the moon before we took our first steps. The seeds of the Woodstock myth had already been planted before we were even aware of that awesome musical sound. And, for a majority of 1970s babies, the Beatles had already called it quits when Paul left the band in April of that year, though officially the band would not split until the last day of the greatest year ever.
Each of us turned to our own muse to guide us through life. Some did follow the Beatles, others the Stones; a few found R&B, others Pop Top 40; some liked Elvis, others got into punk; many ran the gamut from Led Zeppelin to Boston to Styx to, etc… as that list goes. For me, it started with some old time rock and roll by an American named Bob Seger.
I have always enjoyed the music of Seger, the Detroit-based rocker from the 1970s and 80s. His work has often connected to my life, that of a late-twentieth-century suburban kid who was sometimes bored but not adventurous enough to get into trouble. Like Seger’s music, there was a longing within me to find the perfect love (which I have found), discover simple truths about life (which I've learned), and experience life in a memorable way (which I have done). While songs like “Old Time Rock and Roll” and “Turn the Page” have become radio staples, much of Seger’s music goes unnoticed in the what-have-you-done-for-my-record-sales era in which we now live and he performed. His songs tend to be simpler melodies and open rhythms, but his lyrics strike a certain tone about becoming a man within the American landscape.
“Someday Lady You’ll Accompany Me” echoes of searching and waiting for that perfect love while “Still The Same” teaches us we cannot change people no matter how hard we try; “No Man’s Land” resonates with the hope and failure and struggle and success that comes with daily living while “The Ring” tells a simple story with complex endings of remorse and regret; and “The Famous Final Scene” (a personal favorite) carries metaphor through levels of relationships, performance and even death while “Fire Lake” reminisces of times we can only recapture in our minds and through song.
Still, Bob Seger goes largely unrecognized by music critics and all but forgotten by today’s listeners who care not for rock and roll history. In his later days, he turned out one more effort to wrap up what had been a stellar career. And that is what takes us to the point of this message written today, on my fortieth birthday.
I turn forty this year, yes, 40 – the quadra-decado, the “Big Four-Oh, …one, two, 3, IIII, V, pick up six, seven-heaven, I forgot what 8 was for…you get the point. And Bob Seger has been with me for the majority of the ride that has been without a Harley but has hardly been easy, the ride that has been my life.
I discovered Seger’s music through a song that would go on to define much of my personality. “Feel Like a Number” taught this (now former) young man that he would not be treated like “just another spoke in a wheel, another blade of grass in a great big field.” It is a basic rock song of lyrical hyperbole that provides a perspective on growing up but not conforming. My path had little to do with the now cliché non-conformists of the 1980s, the “I won’t give into 9-5 and wear a tie” mantra that so many of my friends proclaimed. Rather, it was the ability to not conform within my own generation that has kept me on an even keel. Drugs were never of interest to me and beer tasted like I had just grown a cat’s tongue and licked a field of wheat until my throat had gone dry. Abstaining from vice had a little something to do with having learned that song.
Thus, I sought other songs, bought that album and went on to collect almost everything Bob Seger played with either the Silver Bullet Band, the Seger System, or his solo work – except for that damn ellusive album Noah, a rarity indeed! Among that collection was the mid-2000s CD, Face the Promise, which featured a song that would once again proclaim a message that I had to hear. That song is called “Wait for Me.”
Was I surprised Bob Seger had written another song that just so happened to strike a chord to where I was in my life at that moment? No, I wasn’t. It almost fit like the proverbial tune in-tune with life itself. Again, Seger had made music that clicked with my thinking, but one line in particular resonated with how I feel about “growing old” – not that being 40 is old!
Seger sings, “And I’ll fight for the right to go over that hill, if it only means something to me.”
It used to be that turning forty meant that one was over the hill. Not so. Now, they say that 60 is the new 40 – great, another hill to climb for one more score.
To take a cliché about aging and turn it into inspiration (as Seger has done) is like finding the fountain of tunes. Seger has brought us to a point where we now embrace aging and recognize it as a part of the process of life. Aging is neither embarrassment nor the dwindling of one’s faculties. It is, rather, an accomplishment, a personal journey still being fulfilled. It is also highly personal. In a world over-published with fluff and anti-matter, our stories become lost under the mortal shuffle and toil that is life. Yet, if we contextualize stories within our time, within our own families, and share them with friends or just write them down for the future to read, then we have made sense of the tradition of storytelling itself.
Really, my having gone to the summit of this first hill only matters to a handful of people – family, my kids in particular, a few friends, a stranger I may have helped along the way – but I must make sense of it in order to keep on living. It is the very process that has taught me lessons, opened my perspective, challenged my views for reasons both right and wrong, and showed me how to keep going.
One who fights to go onward is not a winner, he is simply a doer. Life needs to be done. Sure, it will never be complete because some idiotic idea or moronic race will come along and screw it up for the next guy, but the perfection is sought year after year, decade after decade, life after life. To this moment, I have fought a little, not as much as Seger’s song might suggest, but I have had my share of run-ins, mistakes, goof-ups, errors, mishaps, regrets and “damn-I-didn’t-know-it-all-after-all” epiphanies. I will keep on fighting. Come tragedy, disease, high water or evolution, I have a lot of living left to do. I will indeed continue to fight for my right to go over the hill, if it means something to no one but me.
It has been said in movies and proverbs that one would be fortunate to live during interesting times. While the list of things both mundane and fascinating that has transpired in these my forty years would be a full chronicle indeed, I can attest to having spanned a nuclear age, an information age, a self-serving and selfish age, a space age, a rock age, a world-torn-apart-by-chaos age, and a world-still-reinventing-itself age; but I have also seen a hopeful age, an electronic age, a self-realization age, and a we-can-do-better age.
We 1970 babies were indeed born upon the precipice of interesting times. My hunch is that Bob Seger knew what he was saying to us (or maybe a few guys like me who still rock) when he sang:
“Take it calmly and serene…”
“Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then…”
“I could go east, I could go west; it was all up to me to decide…”
“Until you’ve been beside a man, you don’t know if he cries at night…”
“Dark clouds are all in the past…”
Or, quite simply,
“Turn the page…”
We move into the next decade, and I for one do so willingly and with the knowledge that I have earned a little something from going over the so-called hill.
Each of us turned to our own muse to guide us through life. Some did follow the Beatles, others the Stones; a few found R&B, others Pop Top 40; some liked Elvis, others got into punk; many ran the gamut from Led Zeppelin to Boston to Styx to, etc… as that list goes. For me, it started with some old time rock and roll by an American named Bob Seger.
I have always enjoyed the music of Seger, the Detroit-based rocker from the 1970s and 80s. His work has often connected to my life, that of a late-twentieth-century suburban kid who was sometimes bored but not adventurous enough to get into trouble. Like Seger’s music, there was a longing within me to find the perfect love (which I have found), discover simple truths about life (which I've learned), and experience life in a memorable way (which I have done). While songs like “Old Time Rock and Roll” and “Turn the Page” have become radio staples, much of Seger’s music goes unnoticed in the what-have-you-done-for-my-record-sales era in which we now live and he performed. His songs tend to be simpler melodies and open rhythms, but his lyrics strike a certain tone about becoming a man within the American landscape.
“Someday Lady You’ll Accompany Me” echoes of searching and waiting for that perfect love while “Still The Same” teaches us we cannot change people no matter how hard we try; “No Man’s Land” resonates with the hope and failure and struggle and success that comes with daily living while “The Ring” tells a simple story with complex endings of remorse and regret; and “The Famous Final Scene” (a personal favorite) carries metaphor through levels of relationships, performance and even death while “Fire Lake” reminisces of times we can only recapture in our minds and through song.
Still, Bob Seger goes largely unrecognized by music critics and all but forgotten by today’s listeners who care not for rock and roll history. In his later days, he turned out one more effort to wrap up what had been a stellar career. And that is what takes us to the point of this message written today, on my fortieth birthday.
I turn forty this year, yes, 40 – the quadra-decado, the “Big Four-Oh, …one, two, 3, IIII, V, pick up six, seven-heaven, I forgot what 8 was for…you get the point. And Bob Seger has been with me for the majority of the ride that has been without a Harley but has hardly been easy, the ride that has been my life.
I discovered Seger’s music through a song that would go on to define much of my personality. “Feel Like a Number” taught this (now former) young man that he would not be treated like “just another spoke in a wheel, another blade of grass in a great big field.” It is a basic rock song of lyrical hyperbole that provides a perspective on growing up but not conforming. My path had little to do with the now cliché non-conformists of the 1980s, the “I won’t give into 9-5 and wear a tie” mantra that so many of my friends proclaimed. Rather, it was the ability to not conform within my own generation that has kept me on an even keel. Drugs were never of interest to me and beer tasted like I had just grown a cat’s tongue and licked a field of wheat until my throat had gone dry. Abstaining from vice had a little something to do with having learned that song.
Thus, I sought other songs, bought that album and went on to collect almost everything Bob Seger played with either the Silver Bullet Band, the Seger System, or his solo work – except for that damn ellusive album Noah, a rarity indeed! Among that collection was the mid-2000s CD, Face the Promise, which featured a song that would once again proclaim a message that I had to hear. That song is called “Wait for Me.”
Was I surprised Bob Seger had written another song that just so happened to strike a chord to where I was in my life at that moment? No, I wasn’t. It almost fit like the proverbial tune in-tune with life itself. Again, Seger had made music that clicked with my thinking, but one line in particular resonated with how I feel about “growing old” – not that being 40 is old!
Seger sings, “And I’ll fight for the right to go over that hill, if it only means something to me.”
It used to be that turning forty meant that one was over the hill. Not so. Now, they say that 60 is the new 40 – great, another hill to climb for one more score.
To take a cliché about aging and turn it into inspiration (as Seger has done) is like finding the fountain of tunes. Seger has brought us to a point where we now embrace aging and recognize it as a part of the process of life. Aging is neither embarrassment nor the dwindling of one’s faculties. It is, rather, an accomplishment, a personal journey still being fulfilled. It is also highly personal. In a world over-published with fluff and anti-matter, our stories become lost under the mortal shuffle and toil that is life. Yet, if we contextualize stories within our time, within our own families, and share them with friends or just write them down for the future to read, then we have made sense of the tradition of storytelling itself.
Really, my having gone to the summit of this first hill only matters to a handful of people – family, my kids in particular, a few friends, a stranger I may have helped along the way – but I must make sense of it in order to keep on living. It is the very process that has taught me lessons, opened my perspective, challenged my views for reasons both right and wrong, and showed me how to keep going.
One who fights to go onward is not a winner, he is simply a doer. Life needs to be done. Sure, it will never be complete because some idiotic idea or moronic race will come along and screw it up for the next guy, but the perfection is sought year after year, decade after decade, life after life. To this moment, I have fought a little, not as much as Seger’s song might suggest, but I have had my share of run-ins, mistakes, goof-ups, errors, mishaps, regrets and “damn-I-didn’t-know-it-all-after-all” epiphanies. I will keep on fighting. Come tragedy, disease, high water or evolution, I have a lot of living left to do. I will indeed continue to fight for my right to go over the hill, if it means something to no one but me.
It has been said in movies and proverbs that one would be fortunate to live during interesting times. While the list of things both mundane and fascinating that has transpired in these my forty years would be a full chronicle indeed, I can attest to having spanned a nuclear age, an information age, a self-serving and selfish age, a space age, a rock age, a world-torn-apart-by-chaos age, and a world-still-reinventing-itself age; but I have also seen a hopeful age, an electronic age, a self-realization age, and a we-can-do-better age.
We 1970 babies were indeed born upon the precipice of interesting times. My hunch is that Bob Seger knew what he was saying to us (or maybe a few guys like me who still rock) when he sang:
“Take it calmly and serene…”
“Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then…”
“I could go east, I could go west; it was all up to me to decide…”
“Until you’ve been beside a man, you don’t know if he cries at night…”
“Dark clouds are all in the past…”
Or, quite simply,
“Turn the page…”
We move into the next decade, and I for one do so willingly and with the knowledge that I have earned a little something from going over the so-called hill.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Our Language
It began with a trip by car to the local fast food burger chain. At first, it appeared as if someone had made the intellectual equivalent of a typo while painting. The sign read, “Drive-Thru.” Really? That was odd, but when we learned that the truncated spelling was intentional, did any of us stand up and declare, "No, you can't do that to our language!"?
Of course not. We are not allowed to call a company foolish. That company provides jobs, it moves the flow of commerce. We do not have to hold them accountable to our basic rules of life. We idly allowed for the manipulation of proper spelling to take place while going about our stuffing of fries and slurping of colas. Let’s not go overboard – this kind of verbiage is not a travesty, though it is bordering on something that is just plain wrong.
Can we not use the extra few letters worth of paint to properly call a fast-food-delivery window what it is, a Drive Through?
Soon, it was apparent this was not a mistake but rather the introduction of an oncoming trend. Child care became Kiddie Korners; the convenience store became a Kwik Stop; the ice cream parlour became an EZ-Freez. Even churches took to the act. A musical was “Wee-Three Kings,” a choir became a “Praize Band.” WHY? What is the point of a z instead of an s in that instance?
Before long, there came a cereal for kids not rabbits that tricked the kids into thinking they would get a kick out of performing trix instead of tricks while eating Trix instead of Kix. Try explaining that one to a three-year old.
It all came tumbling down with the great American chicken sandwich. Good food indeed! But, when a company begins by spelling fillet as “fil-a,” the point of words is doomed. Later, that same Georgia chicken discovered that an illiterate cow was the way to advertise, as if dumb beef is somehow less appealing than the chicken which that cow protested against in the first place. The jokes about illiterate cows abound, but we won't poke fun at a chain's target audience. That would be mean.
However, we could take a shot at the irony by which that same company purports to support and promote education through their toys and kids meal packages while simultaneously misspelling common words and butchering (get it?) grammar for the sake of a simple pun. Have you seen these ads? “Buy More Chikin.” “Eet Moore Chikin Heere.” It might as well read, “We Are as Dumb as You are so Buy Our Chicken.” Then again, that chicken is good!
Then, without warning, along came a vitamin-laced water provider that went and pulled a fast one. Their label is written in all LOWER CASE letters! (Get it? That is an attempt at irony.) The label-writers at a soft drink company are no e.e. cummings, so who are they to write without proper capitalization? Unless someone in that company can provide proof of direct family lineage to the great poet, then they may not and shall not advertise in lower case letters. It is not only bamboozling the American people to think that they are original, but it is also dumbing down those who choose to drink the stuff.
The more we publish or sell or advertise or print material that is incorrectly written and formatted, the more we counter the very meaning of education. It is bad enough that parents do not support education, the least a company could do is try. The point is - the more we tolerate, the more we lose!
While Hooked on Phonics tried their very best to stem the tide that was becoming the unfortunate dismantling of our language, we stood by and thought it cute that a “Masked Marketeer” came up with that idea. We were pirated! Would you let someone steal your luggage? No! Take your CD player? No way. Then why were our words any different? Our language was taken from us on the deep Sea of Ignorance that has become commercialism. And what did we do? We stood aside, handed over that big fancy wheel that drives our ship, and allowed for our language to be pillaged.
How is it that a corporate scheme undermined the very thing that identifies us as a people?
When we no longer police our own language we begin to lose our identity. Language itself represents us. It will become the only testimony that we were ever here in the first place. Buildings will collapse, empires will dissolve, commerce will eventually turn over to the next great theory, and this life as we know it will become a boring chapter in a history book which no one wants to read. Under the section for our times, there will be a heading that reads: “Bizness Was Good: The EZ Years!”
Without clear and concise language we are nothing more than the animals – but a cow would never utter a moo in a tone that tries to convey anything more than its three or five main concerns. We realize that animals communicate through their own rhythms and nuances, but they do not alter it to be clever or to throw a pun around like we throw their dung at some humiliating toss-a-contest.
History will look at us as a confused race - one that is lost between kwik, quick and qwik all because someone wanted to be cute... as if the proper delineation between to, two and too or there, they’re and their aren't enough to confuse kids or people who not speak English as a first language.
Perhaps this is taking things too seriously. After all, language is a living and breathing evolution of history. But what does it say about us if we mistake cash for kash and EZ for easy? It says we are either lazy or stupid, or maybe complacent.
Recently, students wrote a paper in a Pennsylvania school about the famous literary character Rip Van Winkle. The teacher was surprised to receive several essays that identified the sleepy fellow as R.I.P. Van Winkle. Talk about an assumption. Did anyone tell Van Winkle that his century-long sleep was in fact the same sleep of death that Hamlet moaned about?
By letting our language devolve into its own sub-genre where words are only understood by a few, we have begun the extermination of thought. As soon as we do not even know what the hell we are talking about, we devoid communication of its substance. Likewise, we water down the basic meaning of what we are saying. This is without even addressing text message lingo - the very place where language has gone to die.
R U kidn me? Neone noes we git it. IDK. Mabee dae dont. WutEv. C U L8r…
Boy, spell check is going to love this post! Sorry, but the proof is in the typo.
Of course not. We are not allowed to call a company foolish. That company provides jobs, it moves the flow of commerce. We do not have to hold them accountable to our basic rules of life. We idly allowed for the manipulation of proper spelling to take place while going about our stuffing of fries and slurping of colas. Let’s not go overboard – this kind of verbiage is not a travesty, though it is bordering on something that is just plain wrong.
Can we not use the extra few letters worth of paint to properly call a fast-food-delivery window what it is, a Drive Through?
Soon, it was apparent this was not a mistake but rather the introduction of an oncoming trend. Child care became Kiddie Korners; the convenience store became a Kwik Stop; the ice cream parlour became an EZ-Freez. Even churches took to the act. A musical was “Wee-Three Kings,” a choir became a “Praize Band.” WHY? What is the point of a z instead of an s in that instance?
Before long, there came a cereal for kids not rabbits that tricked the kids into thinking they would get a kick out of performing trix instead of tricks while eating Trix instead of Kix. Try explaining that one to a three-year old.
It all came tumbling down with the great American chicken sandwich. Good food indeed! But, when a company begins by spelling fillet as “fil-a,” the point of words is doomed. Later, that same Georgia chicken discovered that an illiterate cow was the way to advertise, as if dumb beef is somehow less appealing than the chicken which that cow protested against in the first place. The jokes about illiterate cows abound, but we won't poke fun at a chain's target audience. That would be mean.
However, we could take a shot at the irony by which that same company purports to support and promote education through their toys and kids meal packages while simultaneously misspelling common words and butchering (get it?) grammar for the sake of a simple pun. Have you seen these ads? “Buy More Chikin.” “Eet Moore Chikin Heere.” It might as well read, “We Are as Dumb as You are so Buy Our Chicken.” Then again, that chicken is good!
Then, without warning, along came a vitamin-laced water provider that went and pulled a fast one. Their label is written in all LOWER CASE letters! (Get it? That is an attempt at irony.) The label-writers at a soft drink company are no e.e. cummings, so who are they to write without proper capitalization? Unless someone in that company can provide proof of direct family lineage to the great poet, then they may not and shall not advertise in lower case letters. It is not only bamboozling the American people to think that they are original, but it is also dumbing down those who choose to drink the stuff.
The more we publish or sell or advertise or print material that is incorrectly written and formatted, the more we counter the very meaning of education. It is bad enough that parents do not support education, the least a company could do is try. The point is - the more we tolerate, the more we lose!
While Hooked on Phonics tried their very best to stem the tide that was becoming the unfortunate dismantling of our language, we stood by and thought it cute that a “Masked Marketeer” came up with that idea. We were pirated! Would you let someone steal your luggage? No! Take your CD player? No way. Then why were our words any different? Our language was taken from us on the deep Sea of Ignorance that has become commercialism. And what did we do? We stood aside, handed over that big fancy wheel that drives our ship, and allowed for our language to be pillaged.
How is it that a corporate scheme undermined the very thing that identifies us as a people?
When we no longer police our own language we begin to lose our identity. Language itself represents us. It will become the only testimony that we were ever here in the first place. Buildings will collapse, empires will dissolve, commerce will eventually turn over to the next great theory, and this life as we know it will become a boring chapter in a history book which no one wants to read. Under the section for our times, there will be a heading that reads: “Bizness Was Good: The EZ Years!”
Without clear and concise language we are nothing more than the animals – but a cow would never utter a moo in a tone that tries to convey anything more than its three or five main concerns. We realize that animals communicate through their own rhythms and nuances, but they do not alter it to be clever or to throw a pun around like we throw their dung at some humiliating toss-a-contest.
History will look at us as a confused race - one that is lost between kwik, quick and qwik all because someone wanted to be cute... as if the proper delineation between to, two and too or there, they’re and their aren't enough to confuse kids or people who not speak English as a first language.
Perhaps this is taking things too seriously. After all, language is a living and breathing evolution of history. But what does it say about us if we mistake cash for kash and EZ for easy? It says we are either lazy or stupid, or maybe complacent.
Recently, students wrote a paper in a Pennsylvania school about the famous literary character Rip Van Winkle. The teacher was surprised to receive several essays that identified the sleepy fellow as R.I.P. Van Winkle. Talk about an assumption. Did anyone tell Van Winkle that his century-long sleep was in fact the same sleep of death that Hamlet moaned about?
By letting our language devolve into its own sub-genre where words are only understood by a few, we have begun the extermination of thought. As soon as we do not even know what the hell we are talking about, we devoid communication of its substance. Likewise, we water down the basic meaning of what we are saying. This is without even addressing text message lingo - the very place where language has gone to die.
R U kidn me? Neone noes we git it. IDK. Mabee dae dont. WutEv. C U L8r…
Boy, spell check is going to love this post! Sorry, but the proof is in the typo.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Rush Concert Rankings
Rush will be playing Pittsburgh on September 16, 2010. I am thrilled to know that for the rest of my life I will be able to say that my first time in the new Pittsburgh Consol Energy Center (to undoubtedly be renamed 5 times during its history) was to see a Rush concert!
Because I have been so busy reading composition papers for the last three weeks, I will simply provide a list and call it a post to the blog. (A cop-out, I know.)
MY FAVORITE RUSH CONCERTS:
Ranking of Rush concerts - based on quality of show - that I have seen...though I recently miscounted. I thought I had seen them 18 times; it has only been 16 events to date. Drat!
1 - Pittsburgh, June 2007 - Snakes & Arrows (Just a great album played to a great tour)
2 - Cleveland, 1989 - Presto (This one cost me a relationship...so worth it.)
3 - Pittsburgh, December 1987 - Hold Your Fire (MY FIRST RUSH SHOW!)
4 - Pittsburgh, June 1992 - Roll the Bones (Man, was it cold for that outdoor night.)
5 - Cleveland, November 2002 - Vapor Trails (Wow, really, what a GREAT comeback!)
6 - Cleveland (2nd night)...1991 (Nov?) - Roll the Bones (Exhausted after 3 shows in 3 nights)
7 - Pittsburgh, Memorial Day, 2004 - Rush 30 (Made me feel old...)
8 - Pittsburgh, August, 2002 -Vapor Trails (Took 2 of my kids to this one - so proud.)
9 - Milwaukee, 1997 - Outdoor show in June - Test for Echo (A surprise summer show)
10 - Atlanta, 1993 - Counterparts (Someone I forget entirely bought this ticket for me.)
11 - Cleveland 1st night, 1991 - Roll the Bones (Rocking Cleveland!)
12 - Pittsburgh, - July 2, 2008 - Snakes & Arrows (First concert where I ran into my students.)
13 - Pittsburgh, 1989 - Presto (Are those giant rabbits?)
14 - Cincinnati, Sep. 2007 - Snakes & Arrows (Great trip...should have gone to Columbus too!)
15 - Pittsburgh, indoor 1991 (Oct?) - Roll the Bones (The only time I ever skipped classes...)
16 - Milwaukee, winter/indoor, 1996 - Test for Echo (First as a married man)
Between now and September 16th, I will rock and I will write.
Until the next post...
Because I have been so busy reading composition papers for the last three weeks, I will simply provide a list and call it a post to the blog. (A cop-out, I know.)
MY FAVORITE RUSH CONCERTS:
Ranking of Rush concerts - based on quality of show - that I have seen...though I recently miscounted. I thought I had seen them 18 times; it has only been 16 events to date. Drat!
1 - Pittsburgh, June 2007 - Snakes & Arrows (Just a great album played to a great tour)
2 - Cleveland, 1989 - Presto (This one cost me a relationship...so worth it.)
3 - Pittsburgh, December 1987 - Hold Your Fire (MY FIRST RUSH SHOW!)
4 - Pittsburgh, June 1992 - Roll the Bones (Man, was it cold for that outdoor night.)
5 - Cleveland, November 2002 - Vapor Trails (Wow, really, what a GREAT comeback!)
6 - Cleveland (2nd night)...1991 (Nov?) - Roll the Bones (Exhausted after 3 shows in 3 nights)
7 - Pittsburgh, Memorial Day, 2004 - Rush 30 (Made me feel old...)
8 - Pittsburgh, August, 2002 -Vapor Trails (Took 2 of my kids to this one - so proud.)
9 - Milwaukee, 1997 - Outdoor show in June - Test for Echo (A surprise summer show)
10 - Atlanta, 1993 - Counterparts (Someone I forget entirely bought this ticket for me.)
11 - Cleveland 1st night, 1991 - Roll the Bones (Rocking Cleveland!)
12 - Pittsburgh, - July 2, 2008 - Snakes & Arrows (First concert where I ran into my students.)
13 - Pittsburgh, 1989 - Presto (Are those giant rabbits?)
14 - Cincinnati, Sep. 2007 - Snakes & Arrows (Great trip...should have gone to Columbus too!)
15 - Pittsburgh, indoor 1991 (Oct?) - Roll the Bones (The only time I ever skipped classes...)
16 - Milwaukee, winter/indoor, 1996 - Test for Echo (First as a married man)
Between now and September 16th, I will rock and I will write.
Until the next post...
Thursday, April 1, 2010
In Praise of Baseball
I have seen this year after year. As much as we love football and hockey in this country, there is something about baseball that captures people in the heart. Do not deny it. You love baseball! Okay, maybe you don’t. Many people, however, do love the game, and those people go about life with a bounce in their step, a glint in their eye and a warm grasp on their memory. They wait all winter for baseball and spend all summer enjoying it. It is about life.
If I were a Jedi, I would do a great mind trick that would finally and ultimately convince you of the fact that, despite your denial, you really do love baseball. I cannot do that…so I won’t even try.
I have given up the fight of trying to convince people of the beauty of baseball. I am now confident and content that those who do not appreciate the great game, never will and that is their loss. Much like the father who abandons his children and never even realizes that he is the one who loses out when the child takes his first bike ride or dances her first recital, those who ignore baseball simply do not know what they are missing. In the meantime, I will sit in the stands, follow the standings and question the stance of the next power hitter. I will absorb what you deny.
See, baseball is about so much more than the final score. If all we cared about in any of life’s pursuits was the final score, would we even spend our time being alive? A very wise person once asked me this, “If life is so easy, why doesn’t everyone do it?” Wow – that hit me like a line drive. What a concept. And it got me thinking about a lot of things that have nothing to do with baseball but also about a lot of things that have much to do with baseball.
In life, there are choices. If a runner is on third, he can attempt to steal home. A rarity, yes, but a surprise attack strategy nonetheless. What happens when one steals home? One runs the risk of being caught stealing, getting called out and disappointing the team. Sure, the rewards outweigh the risk…or do they? Is one run and attention from thousands worth potentially losing the game? How many times has a runner attempted to steal home? A few dozen, maybe, in the entire history of the game. How many have scored? Who knows? I would think that stealing home is a lot like abandoning your kids. It walks a fine line between cautious risk and undue consequences. By the way, Ty Cobb alone stole home 54 times in his career. Perhaps that is a lost art.
In life, there are also mistakes. What is interesting about baseball, and what separates it from other sports, is that there is no direct penalty for having committed the error or the blunder. Even the much-maligned balk results only in a free pass to the next base. Imagine being the guy who balked in a winning run! In football, a referee either gives or takes away yardage; in hockey, they take a player from the ice and place a man in the penalty box; in basketball, they grant a free opportunity to score a point uncontested. Not so in baseball. The errors you make effect you in ways to which only you can react. If a booted ball advances a runner, you still have the chance to get out of the inning. It is not arbitrary. That error could cost the whole game or an entire season, or it could just be a blip on the road through nine innings. Much like our laws, one could argue. Depending on the severity, a judge’s rulings could sidetrack long-term success or place you under custody of the manager for a longer term; or, it could simply teach you a quick lesson to never do that again. But, what’s the point of even discussing that? You hate baseball, remember?
We have in this our life teams that support us, teams that want us, teams that respect us; fans who hate us, fans who adore us in an overly-obsessive way, and fans who might not even notice that we came or went in the roster that is their own life. We have umpires who keep us cool, those who infuriate us and those we get mad at, even though they only kicked us out when we lost our cool and crossed the lines of the rules we knew about all along. It is funny how those things work.
What baseball offers is a time to reflect. We don’t get enough of that in our hectic lives. Between pitches, we can converse with a friend, guess what pitch will come next or just sit quietly enjoying the surrealism that is the moment. Heck, we can even get up to run an errand if we want to do so and not really miss all that much. See, baseball can be like that moment in pre-school when you realized it was okay to relax. In fact, there are but a few moments during baseball when we must focus absolute concentration. We do this with the pennant on the line, the final out moments away, the winning run on second (and, really, what is more exciting in baseball than the potential winning run standing on second?), the ceremonial first pitch, the singing of the National Anthem. In life, we pause when our children are born, stretch when we have worked too hard, clasp our hands in cerebral prayer as the floodwaters rise, doff a cap in farewell to a loved one, shake our heads in dismay over things both silly and profound, anguish when the bad news arrives, and watch the highlights of somebody else’s victory or defeat.
Eh, whatever. If you don’t like baseball, you just don’t like it. What can I say? It is neither sport, nor metaphor. It’s just a game I guess. By the way, that person who said -- “If life is so easy, why doesn’t everyone do it?” -- she was nine when she asked that question. Barely to the on deck circle of life, and I think she has a lot of things figured out already. I think she will do well at this game.
If I were a Jedi, I would do a great mind trick that would finally and ultimately convince you of the fact that, despite your denial, you really do love baseball. I cannot do that…so I won’t even try.
I have given up the fight of trying to convince people of the beauty of baseball. I am now confident and content that those who do not appreciate the great game, never will and that is their loss. Much like the father who abandons his children and never even realizes that he is the one who loses out when the child takes his first bike ride or dances her first recital, those who ignore baseball simply do not know what they are missing. In the meantime, I will sit in the stands, follow the standings and question the stance of the next power hitter. I will absorb what you deny.
See, baseball is about so much more than the final score. If all we cared about in any of life’s pursuits was the final score, would we even spend our time being alive? A very wise person once asked me this, “If life is so easy, why doesn’t everyone do it?” Wow – that hit me like a line drive. What a concept. And it got me thinking about a lot of things that have nothing to do with baseball but also about a lot of things that have much to do with baseball.
In life, there are choices. If a runner is on third, he can attempt to steal home. A rarity, yes, but a surprise attack strategy nonetheless. What happens when one steals home? One runs the risk of being caught stealing, getting called out and disappointing the team. Sure, the rewards outweigh the risk…or do they? Is one run and attention from thousands worth potentially losing the game? How many times has a runner attempted to steal home? A few dozen, maybe, in the entire history of the game. How many have scored? Who knows? I would think that stealing home is a lot like abandoning your kids. It walks a fine line between cautious risk and undue consequences. By the way, Ty Cobb alone stole home 54 times in his career. Perhaps that is a lost art.
In life, there are also mistakes. What is interesting about baseball, and what separates it from other sports, is that there is no direct penalty for having committed the error or the blunder. Even the much-maligned balk results only in a free pass to the next base. Imagine being the guy who balked in a winning run! In football, a referee either gives or takes away yardage; in hockey, they take a player from the ice and place a man in the penalty box; in basketball, they grant a free opportunity to score a point uncontested. Not so in baseball. The errors you make effect you in ways to which only you can react. If a booted ball advances a runner, you still have the chance to get out of the inning. It is not arbitrary. That error could cost the whole game or an entire season, or it could just be a blip on the road through nine innings. Much like our laws, one could argue. Depending on the severity, a judge’s rulings could sidetrack long-term success or place you under custody of the manager for a longer term; or, it could simply teach you a quick lesson to never do that again. But, what’s the point of even discussing that? You hate baseball, remember?
We have in this our life teams that support us, teams that want us, teams that respect us; fans who hate us, fans who adore us in an overly-obsessive way, and fans who might not even notice that we came or went in the roster that is their own life. We have umpires who keep us cool, those who infuriate us and those we get mad at, even though they only kicked us out when we lost our cool and crossed the lines of the rules we knew about all along. It is funny how those things work.
What baseball offers is a time to reflect. We don’t get enough of that in our hectic lives. Between pitches, we can converse with a friend, guess what pitch will come next or just sit quietly enjoying the surrealism that is the moment. Heck, we can even get up to run an errand if we want to do so and not really miss all that much. See, baseball can be like that moment in pre-school when you realized it was okay to relax. In fact, there are but a few moments during baseball when we must focus absolute concentration. We do this with the pennant on the line, the final out moments away, the winning run on second (and, really, what is more exciting in baseball than the potential winning run standing on second?), the ceremonial first pitch, the singing of the National Anthem. In life, we pause when our children are born, stretch when we have worked too hard, clasp our hands in cerebral prayer as the floodwaters rise, doff a cap in farewell to a loved one, shake our heads in dismay over things both silly and profound, anguish when the bad news arrives, and watch the highlights of somebody else’s victory or defeat.
Eh, whatever. If you don’t like baseball, you just don’t like it. What can I say? It is neither sport, nor metaphor. It’s just a game I guess. By the way, that person who said -- “If life is so easy, why doesn’t everyone do it?” -- she was nine when she asked that question. Barely to the on deck circle of life, and I think she has a lot of things figured out already. I think she will do well at this game.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Rush - 8 Years After VAPOR TRAILS
PREFACE: I have to write about Rush eventually; that is just par for my course. While many friends, readers and enemies may and do mock me for my addiction, I will stand firm in supporting the band because they have influenced me as both an artist and a thinker. As I am short on time, this week's post will be a review I wrote in 2002 when Rush released Vapor Trails, one of their finer albums. I am posting this because I think it is decent writing and also because I was kind of ticked that it never got published. Breaking into the music review business is tough business.
REVIEW OF Vapor Trails by Rush; originally written in 2002:
If your musical tastes draw you toward the latest hit-rap, hip-hop, flip-pop or sap-top, then perhaps Rush isn’t (and never has been) for you.
But if your maturing, yes even reaching middle age, intellect feeds on a more introspective sound, then perhaps the Canadian trio is (and always has been) just what you’re looking for.
With the release of Vapor Trails, their 17th studio album, Rush not only launches into a new chapter of their musical odyssey, but they simultaneously sculpt a finer image of their unique style — an eclectic blend of rock and melody which heightens the spirit and awakens the conscious to newly formed realities.
For as much as Rush is a rock and roll band, they are musicians first, and as musicians they have challenged themselves artistically and conceptually with each of their previous sixteen endeavors. Vapor Trails is no exception.
From the opening riffs of the single “One Little Victory” the middle-aged rockers seem to be toying with us, reinforcing their ability to grasp every genre of rock with a drum and guitar escalade that would impress even the hardest Korn fan. In fact, they seem to be showing off, portraying a “Listen to what we can play” expression of virtuosity. You want hard and fast, well how about hard, fast and intricately complex?
Layered with hearty cords and resounding percussion, the rhythm straight out rocks, a ripping tirade that has become a signature of the band’s talents. The song, however, drifts with a comfortable transition into an ethereal, sensitive tune one tends to expect as quintessentially Rush, then pounds back and forth between the two alternating styles to encompass the sense of accomplishment felt when one experiences “Just one little victory...the spirit breaking free...”
Geddy Lee’s voice has aged like wine — now lilting and praiseworthy rather than screeching and powerful as it was fifteen years ago. Alex Lifeson’s guitar work has taken art and craft to a level of sophisticated trade, a “Blacksmith and Artist,” to borrow a phrase from the Rush anthology. And Neil Peart, well, Peart as lyricist and drummer is precise and rhythmic on percussion, worldly and in-tuned on lyrics, as always.
If the introduction to the band’s return after a six year hiatus does its job by pulling the rock audience in, the album does not disappoint.
The second track, the inspired and lively “Ceiling Unlimited,” pulsates with energy and direction, supporting the thoughtful lyrics under a shell of sense and vibration. It previews the entire record, a veritable journey which sends the “culture of the thinking class” on a mission through near-anthemic songs with heart and determination at every beat. After all, with their return, “The time is now again.”
The haunting and mystical “Ghost Rider” tells a tale of exploration around the world’s majesty, based on Peart’s own experiences as recounted in a memoir of the same title, and perhaps confronting the personal demons he faced while mourning the death of both his wife and daughter in separate events between 1997 and 1998.
Likewise, the album's title track leaves one envisioning all the places we have been and need to go in a world falling away with chaos while attempting to redefine ourselves as a shared human race.
Tenderly, “And the Stars Look Down” and “Secret Touch” find ways to exhibit emotionality while being backed by a heavy thud and thunderous rock sound. At moments the album lingers between hope — with the inspiring “Sweet Miracle,” which utilizes the “Rushian” (to coin a term) technique of double meaning layered like a Chekhov play with subtext and suggestion — and lost despair in “Freeze,” a darkened, driving exploration of the human psyche confronted with fear.
One cannot critique a Rush effort without focusing on the lyrical quality of the piece, for it is there that the soul of the band exists and where Rush separates themselves from other bands — namely the countless, both famous and forgotten, other bands who have come, gone and come back and gone away again in the twenty-five plus years since we first heard the Rush sound.
While Vapor Trails is not the “Tom Sawyer” or “Free Will” of mass appeal from the group’s halcyon days, it is an album whose conscious is vital and profound, free spirited and as wise as Sawyer may have hoped to become. It is, perhaps, Tom Sawyer all grown up.
Vapor Trails as a piece of literature endears itself poetically to a substance within that conscious, a thinking man’s creed, to pardon the pun. The album is over-layed with innuendo and insight both reflective and contemplative.
From the mundane yet omnipotently practical, “That’s how it is, that’s how it’s going to be,” to the hopeful, “Dream of a peaceable kingdom, dream of a time without war,” the work echoes of a band comfortable with the wisdom of age and sincere in their concern for humanity. As well, it underlines a conviction in their belief, if the line “It’s a smile on the edge of sadness/ It’s a dance on the edge of life” is to be believed in a better means of existence, a hope for conscious.
As he has in the past, Peart investigates those things which make us human and develops the ideas which teach us to consider how we understand the world around us: “What is the meaning of this? / What are you trying to say? / Was it something I said? Something you’d like me to do? / And the stars look down...” In the end, he grants us the peace of mind to age, but to do so while still kicking butt.
The flaw in the album may exist in its failure to produce a single track which jumps off the CD as a classic radio play mainstay. That never has been the concept Rush has gone for, and other tracks, “Earthshine” and “Nocturne,” support a complete work driven to redefine the band as rock musicians. The final track, “Out of the Cradle” signs off with a cryptic message, “Here we come, out of the cradle, endlessly rocking, endlessly rocking,” suggesting perhaps their resolve to continue with their passion for rock and roll as long as they are able to pound out boastful melodies and intense music.
Vapor Trails may not find its way onto the Billboard Top 40, as few Rush releases have, but it remains musically a tricky and elusive investigation of sound. Still, like their other works, it will sell its gold-standard to a devoted following and will place itself proudly within the band’s anthology as a spiritual, esoteric piece of musical art which exists not for, but because of, its conscious.
REVIEW OF Vapor Trails by Rush; originally written in 2002:
If your musical tastes draw you toward the latest hit-rap, hip-hop, flip-pop or sap-top, then perhaps Rush isn’t (and never has been) for you.
But if your maturing, yes even reaching middle age, intellect feeds on a more introspective sound, then perhaps the Canadian trio is (and always has been) just what you’re looking for.
With the release of Vapor Trails, their 17th studio album, Rush not only launches into a new chapter of their musical odyssey, but they simultaneously sculpt a finer image of their unique style — an eclectic blend of rock and melody which heightens the spirit and awakens the conscious to newly formed realities.
For as much as Rush is a rock and roll band, they are musicians first, and as musicians they have challenged themselves artistically and conceptually with each of their previous sixteen endeavors. Vapor Trails is no exception.
From the opening riffs of the single “One Little Victory” the middle-aged rockers seem to be toying with us, reinforcing their ability to grasp every genre of rock with a drum and guitar escalade that would impress even the hardest Korn fan. In fact, they seem to be showing off, portraying a “Listen to what we can play” expression of virtuosity. You want hard and fast, well how about hard, fast and intricately complex?
Layered with hearty cords and resounding percussion, the rhythm straight out rocks, a ripping tirade that has become a signature of the band’s talents. The song, however, drifts with a comfortable transition into an ethereal, sensitive tune one tends to expect as quintessentially Rush, then pounds back and forth between the two alternating styles to encompass the sense of accomplishment felt when one experiences “Just one little victory...the spirit breaking free...”
Geddy Lee’s voice has aged like wine — now lilting and praiseworthy rather than screeching and powerful as it was fifteen years ago. Alex Lifeson’s guitar work has taken art and craft to a level of sophisticated trade, a “Blacksmith and Artist,” to borrow a phrase from the Rush anthology. And Neil Peart, well, Peart as lyricist and drummer is precise and rhythmic on percussion, worldly and in-tuned on lyrics, as always.
If the introduction to the band’s return after a six year hiatus does its job by pulling the rock audience in, the album does not disappoint.
The second track, the inspired and lively “Ceiling Unlimited,” pulsates with energy and direction, supporting the thoughtful lyrics under a shell of sense and vibration. It previews the entire record, a veritable journey which sends the “culture of the thinking class” on a mission through near-anthemic songs with heart and determination at every beat. After all, with their return, “The time is now again.”
The haunting and mystical “Ghost Rider” tells a tale of exploration around the world’s majesty, based on Peart’s own experiences as recounted in a memoir of the same title, and perhaps confronting the personal demons he faced while mourning the death of both his wife and daughter in separate events between 1997 and 1998.
Likewise, the album's title track leaves one envisioning all the places we have been and need to go in a world falling away with chaos while attempting to redefine ourselves as a shared human race.
Tenderly, “And the Stars Look Down” and “Secret Touch” find ways to exhibit emotionality while being backed by a heavy thud and thunderous rock sound. At moments the album lingers between hope — with the inspiring “Sweet Miracle,” which utilizes the “Rushian” (to coin a term) technique of double meaning layered like a Chekhov play with subtext and suggestion — and lost despair in “Freeze,” a darkened, driving exploration of the human psyche confronted with fear.
One cannot critique a Rush effort without focusing on the lyrical quality of the piece, for it is there that the soul of the band exists and where Rush separates themselves from other bands — namely the countless, both famous and forgotten, other bands who have come, gone and come back and gone away again in the twenty-five plus years since we first heard the Rush sound.
While Vapor Trails is not the “Tom Sawyer” or “Free Will” of mass appeal from the group’s halcyon days, it is an album whose conscious is vital and profound, free spirited and as wise as Sawyer may have hoped to become. It is, perhaps, Tom Sawyer all grown up.
Vapor Trails as a piece of literature endears itself poetically to a substance within that conscious, a thinking man’s creed, to pardon the pun. The album is over-layed with innuendo and insight both reflective and contemplative.
From the mundane yet omnipotently practical, “That’s how it is, that’s how it’s going to be,” to the hopeful, “Dream of a peaceable kingdom, dream of a time without war,” the work echoes of a band comfortable with the wisdom of age and sincere in their concern for humanity. As well, it underlines a conviction in their belief, if the line “It’s a smile on the edge of sadness/ It’s a dance on the edge of life” is to be believed in a better means of existence, a hope for conscious.
As he has in the past, Peart investigates those things which make us human and develops the ideas which teach us to consider how we understand the world around us: “What is the meaning of this? / What are you trying to say? / Was it something I said? Something you’d like me to do? / And the stars look down...” In the end, he grants us the peace of mind to age, but to do so while still kicking butt.
The flaw in the album may exist in its failure to produce a single track which jumps off the CD as a classic radio play mainstay. That never has been the concept Rush has gone for, and other tracks, “Earthshine” and “Nocturne,” support a complete work driven to redefine the band as rock musicians. The final track, “Out of the Cradle” signs off with a cryptic message, “Here we come, out of the cradle, endlessly rocking, endlessly rocking,” suggesting perhaps their resolve to continue with their passion for rock and roll as long as they are able to pound out boastful melodies and intense music.
Vapor Trails may not find its way onto the Billboard Top 40, as few Rush releases have, but it remains musically a tricky and elusive investigation of sound. Still, like their other works, it will sell its gold-standard to a devoted following and will place itself proudly within the band’s anthology as a spiritual, esoteric piece of musical art which exists not for, but because of, its conscious.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Rock and Roll is on Life Support
All great empires eventually fall. That is the unrequited truth of history. We cannot stop it - nor are we supposed to. The long rises, reigns and perils of great societies have been documented elsewhere. This page is not intended for stories of history, it is merely the wonderings, ramblings and inquiries of one writer trying to find his voice. Sadly, one voice of our time is dying. You may have known him as R. N. Roll.
Mr. Roll rose up in the heyday of an American empire itself that faces unfathomable challenges in these days. Roll was a rebel, a savant, a clairvoyant, a punk, a garage filler, a dancer, a stripper and a harlot all rolled into one. But R. N. also had his softer side, the anima to compliment his animus. On that side, we heard the Sirens, the heartbreak, the wail, the intrusion, the hope, the future, the piano of our lives.
R. will hold a legacy that many will cherish and that some will do nothing more than willingly forget. For R.N. Roll was not met, he was ingested, and in the bellies of our mainstream he rose up to greet us head on, one-to-one or one-to-ten-thousand, but he never left us lonely. There were good times and bad times when good men and strong women had to run far away to avoid the nausea, the vomiting, the gut-wrenching that followed Roll's lifestyle. As well, there were those who stood to be soothed by the subtle charm, mystified by the electric brilliance, and dazzled by lights unseen, chords ever echoing and reasons unquestioned.
We are all fans, in one way or another. So, please, stand with me, ladies, gentlemen, junkies, alcoholics, lovers, winners, runaways, bus stop clerks, teachers, poets, politicians, doctors and prostitutes alike, as we prepare to bid farewell to R.N. Roll.
R.N. Roll is sick.
Rock N. Roll needs Hospice care.
Rock and Roll is DYING!
You did not even see it coming, did you?
Rock N. Roll recently reached middle age. Many historians pin 1955 as the birth of Rock. With that being accepted, it would be 55 years old now. No, it did not live to the ripe old age of 92 - only poets are afforded that opportunity. One might guess that Rock died of a massive heart attack - the final effect of a life of excess, debauchery and overexposure. Ironically, no. How did Rock N. Roll die? He just kind of slunked off into the night as the rest of us were watching idols and retreads and washed-up reunions.
It started as a half-time show, never mind the act, they all appeared to be the same by the turn of the most recent decade. Rock hobbled itself onto a barely built stage, ran through meaningless repertoire of a mindless montage played at semi-half speed, doffed a hat and went on to some trendy party in the foothills.
The first real signs of declining health came in the form of a Rock Hero Guitar game, played by unknowing children and clueless former fans of bubblegum pop. They spent the summer asking, "What song was that? Who played that? Is that really the title of that song?"
Not soon after, she appeared as metaphor, a commercial selling cheeseburgers or facial cream or even erection pills. Her condition worsened as she gave herself willingly to the newest cell phone. What a travesty! It even provided a copy of her newest song as a free ringtone.
Originally, Rock had a keen sense for business, but its purpose was never about the profit. The music had always come first. Later in life, he turned to concern over retirement and investment strategies - even an odd trust fund here and there. Scholars will later come to mark that as the beginning of the end.
She led a grand life. Along the way, a museum was named in Rock N. Roll's honor - in Cleveland, Ohio, of all places. Fitting, seeing as Alan Freed dubbed her by her given name there so many years back. Since, she has been called Grunge, Pop, Acid, Metal, Art, Garage, Psychedelic, even a savior once - just so long as you make no claims that she is as popular as any Biblical friends.
She was at once a Long, Tall Woman in a Black Dress, an Evil Woman, a Jessica, a Maybeline, a Pearl, and at the same time a Johnny B. Goode, a Johnny Rotten, a Sexy Pistol, a two-time Elvis, and even The-Mister-Duran-twice-over-each somehow as well.
She had her finer moments - a clash here and there, a kink to work out, a temper to throw.
But she is now dying, as near death as the legacy of the many one-hit wonders who have come and gone in her short but remarkable career.
And in that palace - that Rock and Roll Hall-of-Fame - is where the death knell began its somber toll, a tintinnabulation marking the trek to an early grave.
Rock was given due celebration recently as a new group of members joined service after years at her calling. While the stage looked like her typical show, Rock N. Roll was bamboozled. As he strutted his bare-chested glamour across a New York stage, socialites in black ties, tuxedos and three-thousand-dollar dresses sat idly by and watched the demise. They did nothing to try to save her. They did not rock! They did not roll! They did not demand an encore call! They did not rush the stage, scream for more or even mosh their nearest friend. They just sat there and clapped in rhythmic denial of her beautiful swan song.
A few witnesses screamed for help, but most just nodded and smiled in some deft reverence to her inevitable passing. After all, they had paid so much for the dinner.
Perhaps you saw it. The Waldorf Astoria was the location, and the event was the 2010 Rock and Roll Hall-of-Fame Induction Ceremony. It was anything but ceremony. It was a funeral pyre! Mr. and Mrs. Rock N. Roll never expected to be famous in the first place; now their eventual passing has been met with luke-warm applause and the tragedy has unveiled itself.
Those long-dead empires mentioned earlier all crumbled from within. Due to either arrogance or corruption, they simply did not pay proper attention to their simplest of needs. Their people went hungry, their leaders grew powerless and their enemies found easy rapture over their once-proud societies.
Rock has suffered much the same fate. It is as if someone left the back door open to a great gig (in the sky) and forgot to check the front of house for intruders, and in crawled the posers and look-alikes who had no artistic originality, no soundful skill and who were certainly not welcome. Still, they mosied to the stage and didn't so much as steal the show as snuffed it out in fear of a fire code violation.
Once the passion is gone from Rock, its soul withers quickly.
Somewhere between a Genesis it failed to acknowledge and a wanted Nirvana that never lived up to its hype, Rock became ill and began to die. And Who knew?
While Green Days have tried to save it, White Stripes have bandaged it in vein and some sort of Purple Haze still looms over its impending demise, it may be too late. No colorful soliloquy can bring about a miracle cure.
Twenty years ago, that induction ceremony would have seen tables toppled, fists furiously flying and even the occasional bra brandished toward the bar. Not at The Astoria! Rock and Roll was never meant to be played to black ties, it was made to drive you mad with its pounding, tear at your ears with its howling and leave you sweaty like a lover who still demands more from you.
The only hope is that somewhere out there in Australia or England or Germany or Russia or even Bosnia, Boston or Brussels, that a few angry lads are strapping on guitars and kicking into a chord that will forever drive them mad. If not, rock will die. Someone needs to re-energize her, for us.
In the end, we have tributes far and wide left to her greater legacy - the Mount Rushmore of Rock - effaced with Led Zeppelin, Rush, The Beatles and...you decide. It is too painful to chisel. U2? Metallica? The Eagles? Pearl Jam? Lynyrd Skynyrd? Areosmith? Who will fill the final spot? History will decide. Just don't kiss her or adorn her with guns or roses, she deserves more than such a creed.
Like all great arts, Rock N. Roll will not be forgotten, so in that manner she will live forever, but Rock as we know it is nearly dead.
Long live rock - but only in our minds. Rest now, for you are tired. We can only hope that it is not too late. Flatline would make a terrible name for a band.
Mr. Roll rose up in the heyday of an American empire itself that faces unfathomable challenges in these days. Roll was a rebel, a savant, a clairvoyant, a punk, a garage filler, a dancer, a stripper and a harlot all rolled into one. But R. N. also had his softer side, the anima to compliment his animus. On that side, we heard the Sirens, the heartbreak, the wail, the intrusion, the hope, the future, the piano of our lives.
R. will hold a legacy that many will cherish and that some will do nothing more than willingly forget. For R.N. Roll was not met, he was ingested, and in the bellies of our mainstream he rose up to greet us head on, one-to-one or one-to-ten-thousand, but he never left us lonely. There were good times and bad times when good men and strong women had to run far away to avoid the nausea, the vomiting, the gut-wrenching that followed Roll's lifestyle. As well, there were those who stood to be soothed by the subtle charm, mystified by the electric brilliance, and dazzled by lights unseen, chords ever echoing and reasons unquestioned.
We are all fans, in one way or another. So, please, stand with me, ladies, gentlemen, junkies, alcoholics, lovers, winners, runaways, bus stop clerks, teachers, poets, politicians, doctors and prostitutes alike, as we prepare to bid farewell to R.N. Roll.
R.N. Roll is sick.
Rock N. Roll needs Hospice care.
Rock and Roll is DYING!
You did not even see it coming, did you?
Rock N. Roll recently reached middle age. Many historians pin 1955 as the birth of Rock. With that being accepted, it would be 55 years old now. No, it did not live to the ripe old age of 92 - only poets are afforded that opportunity. One might guess that Rock died of a massive heart attack - the final effect of a life of excess, debauchery and overexposure. Ironically, no. How did Rock N. Roll die? He just kind of slunked off into the night as the rest of us were watching idols and retreads and washed-up reunions.
It started as a half-time show, never mind the act, they all appeared to be the same by the turn of the most recent decade. Rock hobbled itself onto a barely built stage, ran through meaningless repertoire of a mindless montage played at semi-half speed, doffed a hat and went on to some trendy party in the foothills.
The first real signs of declining health came in the form of a Rock Hero Guitar game, played by unknowing children and clueless former fans of bubblegum pop. They spent the summer asking, "What song was that? Who played that? Is that really the title of that song?"
Not soon after, she appeared as metaphor, a commercial selling cheeseburgers or facial cream or even erection pills. Her condition worsened as she gave herself willingly to the newest cell phone. What a travesty! It even provided a copy of her newest song as a free ringtone.
Originally, Rock had a keen sense for business, but its purpose was never about the profit. The music had always come first. Later in life, he turned to concern over retirement and investment strategies - even an odd trust fund here and there. Scholars will later come to mark that as the beginning of the end.
She led a grand life. Along the way, a museum was named in Rock N. Roll's honor - in Cleveland, Ohio, of all places. Fitting, seeing as Alan Freed dubbed her by her given name there so many years back. Since, she has been called Grunge, Pop, Acid, Metal, Art, Garage, Psychedelic, even a savior once - just so long as you make no claims that she is as popular as any Biblical friends.
She was at once a Long, Tall Woman in a Black Dress, an Evil Woman, a Jessica, a Maybeline, a Pearl, and at the same time a Johnny B. Goode, a Johnny Rotten, a Sexy Pistol, a two-time Elvis, and even The-Mister-Duran-twice-over-each somehow as well.
She had her finer moments - a clash here and there, a kink to work out, a temper to throw.
But she is now dying, as near death as the legacy of the many one-hit wonders who have come and gone in her short but remarkable career.
And in that palace - that Rock and Roll Hall-of-Fame - is where the death knell began its somber toll, a tintinnabulation marking the trek to an early grave.
Rock was given due celebration recently as a new group of members joined service after years at her calling. While the stage looked like her typical show, Rock N. Roll was bamboozled. As he strutted his bare-chested glamour across a New York stage, socialites in black ties, tuxedos and three-thousand-dollar dresses sat idly by and watched the demise. They did nothing to try to save her. They did not rock! They did not roll! They did not demand an encore call! They did not rush the stage, scream for more or even mosh their nearest friend. They just sat there and clapped in rhythmic denial of her beautiful swan song.
A few witnesses screamed for help, but most just nodded and smiled in some deft reverence to her inevitable passing. After all, they had paid so much for the dinner.
Perhaps you saw it. The Waldorf Astoria was the location, and the event was the 2010 Rock and Roll Hall-of-Fame Induction Ceremony. It was anything but ceremony. It was a funeral pyre! Mr. and Mrs. Rock N. Roll never expected to be famous in the first place; now their eventual passing has been met with luke-warm applause and the tragedy has unveiled itself.
Those long-dead empires mentioned earlier all crumbled from within. Due to either arrogance or corruption, they simply did not pay proper attention to their simplest of needs. Their people went hungry, their leaders grew powerless and their enemies found easy rapture over their once-proud societies.
Rock has suffered much the same fate. It is as if someone left the back door open to a great gig (in the sky) and forgot to check the front of house for intruders, and in crawled the posers and look-alikes who had no artistic originality, no soundful skill and who were certainly not welcome. Still, they mosied to the stage and didn't so much as steal the show as snuffed it out in fear of a fire code violation.
Once the passion is gone from Rock, its soul withers quickly.
Somewhere between a Genesis it failed to acknowledge and a wanted Nirvana that never lived up to its hype, Rock became ill and began to die. And Who knew?
While Green Days have tried to save it, White Stripes have bandaged it in vein and some sort of Purple Haze still looms over its impending demise, it may be too late. No colorful soliloquy can bring about a miracle cure.
Twenty years ago, that induction ceremony would have seen tables toppled, fists furiously flying and even the occasional bra brandished toward the bar. Not at The Astoria! Rock and Roll was never meant to be played to black ties, it was made to drive you mad with its pounding, tear at your ears with its howling and leave you sweaty like a lover who still demands more from you.
The only hope is that somewhere out there in Australia or England or Germany or Russia or even Bosnia, Boston or Brussels, that a few angry lads are strapping on guitars and kicking into a chord that will forever drive them mad. If not, rock will die. Someone needs to re-energize her, for us.
In the end, we have tributes far and wide left to her greater legacy - the Mount Rushmore of Rock - effaced with Led Zeppelin, Rush, The Beatles and...you decide. It is too painful to chisel. U2? Metallica? The Eagles? Pearl Jam? Lynyrd Skynyrd? Areosmith? Who will fill the final spot? History will decide. Just don't kiss her or adorn her with guns or roses, she deserves more than such a creed.
Like all great arts, Rock N. Roll will not be forgotten, so in that manner she will live forever, but Rock as we know it is nearly dead.
Long live rock - but only in our minds. Rest now, for you are tired. We can only hope that it is not too late. Flatline would make a terrible name for a band.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Classic "Here's Something Nobody Cares About..."
I thought it would be fun every once in a while to publish an essay from the original column I wrote in college. Today's is by complete coincidence. It was published twenty years ago - almost to the day! Originally published in "The Thielensian" newspaper on March 20, 1990, an original "Here's Something Nobody Cares About...":
As warm weather pays a humble visit to Greenville, I jump at the opportunity to once again view the world from my "window of inspiration." It is a quaint little spot on campus: comfortable, confined, cozy, and flooding with memories. With the coldness of winter now passing, I can write without being frozen solid to this construction which allows me to break all laws of gravity. In other words, I won't freeze my butt off! A number of months have passed since last I sat perched high above our home to contemplate the lesser important significances of this world called planet Thiel.
However, today, I go beyond Thiel, cross the border of Greenville, and reach far and wide over the vast expanse of our universe. Today, I embark on yet another noble quest, a quest for an answer.
QUESTION: Who are "they"?
The English speaking world uses the term "they" to apply to everyone who does something significant, or does nothing at all, but since no one knows these people, we refer to them as "they." An example: "they say it's gonna rain tomorrow"..."they should fix those damn potholes..."; and the most used cliche "they" statement, "they can put a man on the moon, but they can't..."
Who are "they"?
I personally believe that "they" are a group of high school dropouts strung out on Mountain Dew, BB-Q chips and MTV, who consider themselves to be noted experts on everything. Then again, "they" could be a group of seven philosophers who, after taking Doc White's courses, thought the world was theirs to rule. These philosophers sit around a well-lit, air-conditioned room, drinking Perrier (is that spelled correctly?) and eating finger sandwiches, whatever they are. And, of course, they all drive Saaaaaabs. Perhaps, "they" are three old ladies who have nothing better to do with their lives than to annoy us.
Whoever "they" are, "they" should form a conglomerate to solve the world's problems. Wouldn't it be nice to say, "A bunch of high school dropouts, seven philosophers and three old ladies found a cure for cancer."? That would ring so much nicer in the ear. Enough of that.
A WARNING: An ice-age is expected to hit in about 100,000 years. That is 36,500,000 days from now (approximately) plus 25,000 leaps days. So make sure to stock up on parkas, sweaters, and a lot of reading material. Rumor has it's gonna be a doozy! Don't worry, though, it's not until after finals.
As warm weather pays a humble visit to Greenville, I jump at the opportunity to once again view the world from my "window of inspiration." It is a quaint little spot on campus: comfortable, confined, cozy, and flooding with memories. With the coldness of winter now passing, I can write without being frozen solid to this construction which allows me to break all laws of gravity. In other words, I won't freeze my butt off! A number of months have passed since last I sat perched high above our home to contemplate the lesser important significances of this world called planet Thiel.
However, today, I go beyond Thiel, cross the border of Greenville, and reach far and wide over the vast expanse of our universe. Today, I embark on yet another noble quest, a quest for an answer.
QUESTION: Who are "they"?
The English speaking world uses the term "they" to apply to everyone who does something significant, or does nothing at all, but since no one knows these people, we refer to them as "they." An example: "they say it's gonna rain tomorrow"..."they should fix those damn potholes..."; and the most used cliche "they" statement, "they can put a man on the moon, but they can't..."
Who are "they"?
I personally believe that "they" are a group of high school dropouts strung out on Mountain Dew, BB-Q chips and MTV, who consider themselves to be noted experts on everything. Then again, "they" could be a group of seven philosophers who, after taking Doc White's courses, thought the world was theirs to rule. These philosophers sit around a well-lit, air-conditioned room, drinking Perrier (is that spelled correctly?) and eating finger sandwiches, whatever they are. And, of course, they all drive Saaaaaabs. Perhaps, "they" are three old ladies who have nothing better to do with their lives than to annoy us.
Whoever "they" are, "they" should form a conglomerate to solve the world's problems. Wouldn't it be nice to say, "A bunch of high school dropouts, seven philosophers and three old ladies found a cure for cancer."? That would ring so much nicer in the ear. Enough of that.
A WARNING: An ice-age is expected to hit in about 100,000 years. That is 36,500,000 days from now (approximately) plus 25,000 leaps days. So make sure to stock up on parkas, sweaters, and a lot of reading material. Rumor has it's gonna be a doozy! Don't worry, though, it's not until after finals.
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