Capital punishment is the only issue on which I sometimes find myself not agreeing with others on the far, far left. My feeling is that some crimes are so monstrous as to render unthinkable their perpetrators ever enjoying another moment’s pleasure, of which there’s a small chance even in solitary confinement, even in the most unspeakable prison. But I’m aware that sometimes the innocent are convicted, and I would sooner live in a society that errs on the side of executing no innocents.
I’m also all for gun control.
Having said all that, I must confess that there is a situation in modern American life I believe warrants the presence of snipers licensed to kill. I speak, of course, of the athlete who, after doing something terrific — think of Clint Dempsey’s extremely dodgy (because of the England goalkeeper’s sudden spasm of incompetence) World Cup goal — points up at the heavens as though to say, “Thank you, God. Couldn’t have done it without you, big guy.”
I believe that athletes who think God has the slightest interest in whether or not they score a goal should be forbidden to operate motor vehicles or other heavy machinery, or even to reproduce.
I understand the gesture is supposed to be seen as one of humility, one of acknowledging A Higher Power. In my old age, I’ve come to think it imperative to make such an acknowledgment. I address God every night; offering thanks for my many blessings and asking forgiveness for my many failings keeps me aware of both. But I strongly believe that this should be done in private.
My objection to the athlete pointing heavenward isn’t the acknowledgment of God, then, but that it’s inconceivable arrogance masquerading as humility — Look what God and I achieved together! Moreover, in a great many cases, I think the gesture is intended in large part for prospective corporate tenderers of endorsement deals — for Nike, and Gatorade, and Ford. Look how humble and pious I am; my endorsement will boost your sales in the Bible Belt.
Fire when ready, snipers!
[Many of my books are now available for download from Amazon. They include The Total Babe & Other Wine Country Yarns, Lentils on the Moon (aka A Message From Jesus in Braille, aka A History of the Jews in the Hudson Valley), Self-Loathing: An Owner's Manual, Third World USA, The Mona Lisa's Brother, and, for baseball nuts, Foul Balls and Alpha Males. You need neither a Kindle nor an iPad to enjoy 'em; simply download (free) Kindle software for either Mac or Windows, and enjoy them on your laptop or other computer!]
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
Your Horoscope for Today, Part 2
I pride myself on having regarded astrology as patent nonsense even when lots of otherwise sensible persons were giving it credence. I have never asked another human being what his or her sign is, and have only rarely told the ttuth about my own, as it gives me pleasure to misrepresent it, and then have the other smirk knowingly and say, “I thought so.” (For a very long time, before there was an Internet on which to check song lyrics, I dared to hope that Mr. Rotten had endorsed this exact practice in “Anarchy in the UK,” in which I thought I heard him sing, “Give the wrong sign/Stop the traffic line.”) At other times, I would insist that the other rephrase the question from What’s your sign? to What sign were you born under?, whereupon I would happily reply, “Births strictly forbidden.”
I’ve always found it incomprehensible that anyone could take seriously the horoscopes in newspapers or magazines, as they’re so very vague, as they of course have to be. I would very much to prefer something like:
Libra
You will finally find and return that long-overdue library book. The librarian will shake her head sadly on noting that you owe $11.20 in fines on it. Claiming to have left your wallet in the car, you will ask if you can settle up “next time.” All too familiar with this plea, confident that she will never lay eyes on you again, the librarian will arch her eyebrows censoriously while murmuring, “You bet.”
Samsung
Absolutely nothing of the slightest interest will happen, and you will have only yourself to blame, as immobilizing despair will keep you whimpering piteously under your duvet. As the day grinds on, though, you will take some solace in being able to blame your parents for the larger part of your inability to live happily in the world.
Snuffleupagus
You’ve been very rigorous about eating at least five portions of fruits and vegetables every day, but now you read an article suggesting that even one who eats only allegedly organic produce ingests dangerous levels of various carcinogens. There is nowhere to hide in the cruel modern world.
Thespian
You will phone your agent in the morning, only for his secretary to inform you he’s in a meeting. You will phone him again in the afternoon, while taking a break from your (temporary!) job as a greeter at Walmart, but he will turn out to be in another meeting. In a tone in which equal parts pity and contempt may be detected, his secretary will confirm that she has indeed been giving him your messages.
Pisces
You will wish you were able to afford fish a couple of times a week — preferably Chilean sea bass. You will try to remind yourself that a large percentage of your fellow humans would kill for your diet of grilled cheese sandwiches and pasta with bottled sauce, but it won’t do much good, just as it didn’t do so much good in your childhood when your parents invoked starving children you’d never met in countries you’d never heard of to try to get you to eat your fucking lima beans.
Shinola
You wonder if you’ve ever heard or ever will hear an interview with a professional athlete in which he or she doesn’t misuse the word hopefully. You will not be able to say for sure why this bothers you so much, and will speculate that it’s a function of your having resented student athletes so much back in high school, where you had an A-minus average but they enjoyed heavy petting with girls who didn’t know you were alive, and didn’t want to know.
Vegan
Going out to dinner with friends, you will announce as everyone is seated that you’re not at all confident of being able to find anything to eat, but wouldn’t dream of making everybody go elsewhere just to accommodate you. At several points over the course of the meal, you will frown in profound moral anguish at what your friends are eating. When they ask about this, though, you will claim they were just imagining things. You will bravely assure everyone that you’re really enjoying your bread and olive oil, which were — really, honestly! — all you wanted.
Leprosy
The top half of your right ring finger will fall off as you try to type a text message. This will not hamper your guitar playing nearly as much as if it were your left ring finger. Django Reinhardt didn’t have full use of all his fingers, and it didn’t slow him down, so quit whining — or, if a Brit, whingeing. It's the only world we've got.
[Many of my books are now available for download from Amazon. They include The Total Babe & Other Wine Country Yarns, Lentils on the Moon (aka A Message From Jesus in Braille, aka A History of the Jews in the Hudson Valley), Self-Loathing: An Owner's Manual, Third World USA, The Mona Lisa's Brother, and, for baseball nuts, Foul Balls and Alpha Males. You need neither a Kindle nor an iPad to enjoy 'em; simply download (free) Kindle software for either Mac or Windows, and enjoy them on your laptop or other computer!]
I’ve always found it incomprehensible that anyone could take seriously the horoscopes in newspapers or magazines, as they’re so very vague, as they of course have to be. I would very much to prefer something like:
Libra
You will finally find and return that long-overdue library book. The librarian will shake her head sadly on noting that you owe $11.20 in fines on it. Claiming to have left your wallet in the car, you will ask if you can settle up “next time.” All too familiar with this plea, confident that she will never lay eyes on you again, the librarian will arch her eyebrows censoriously while murmuring, “You bet.”
Samsung
Absolutely nothing of the slightest interest will happen, and you will have only yourself to blame, as immobilizing despair will keep you whimpering piteously under your duvet. As the day grinds on, though, you will take some solace in being able to blame your parents for the larger part of your inability to live happily in the world.
Snuffleupagus
You’ve been very rigorous about eating at least five portions of fruits and vegetables every day, but now you read an article suggesting that even one who eats only allegedly organic produce ingests dangerous levels of various carcinogens. There is nowhere to hide in the cruel modern world.
Thespian
You will phone your agent in the morning, only for his secretary to inform you he’s in a meeting. You will phone him again in the afternoon, while taking a break from your (temporary!) job as a greeter at Walmart, but he will turn out to be in another meeting. In a tone in which equal parts pity and contempt may be detected, his secretary will confirm that she has indeed been giving him your messages.
Pisces
You will wish you were able to afford fish a couple of times a week — preferably Chilean sea bass. You will try to remind yourself that a large percentage of your fellow humans would kill for your diet of grilled cheese sandwiches and pasta with bottled sauce, but it won’t do much good, just as it didn’t do so much good in your childhood when your parents invoked starving children you’d never met in countries you’d never heard of to try to get you to eat your fucking lima beans.
Shinola
You wonder if you’ve ever heard or ever will hear an interview with a professional athlete in which he or she doesn’t misuse the word hopefully. You will not be able to say for sure why this bothers you so much, and will speculate that it’s a function of your having resented student athletes so much back in high school, where you had an A-minus average but they enjoyed heavy petting with girls who didn’t know you were alive, and didn’t want to know.
Vegan
Going out to dinner with friends, you will announce as everyone is seated that you’re not at all confident of being able to find anything to eat, but wouldn’t dream of making everybody go elsewhere just to accommodate you. At several points over the course of the meal, you will frown in profound moral anguish at what your friends are eating. When they ask about this, though, you will claim they were just imagining things. You will bravely assure everyone that you’re really enjoying your bread and olive oil, which were — really, honestly! — all you wanted.
Leprosy
The top half of your right ring finger will fall off as you try to type a text message. This will not hamper your guitar playing nearly as much as if it were your left ring finger. Django Reinhardt didn’t have full use of all his fingers, and it didn’t slow him down, so quit whining — or, if a Brit, whingeing. It's the only world we've got.
[Many of my books are now available for download from Amazon. They include The Total Babe & Other Wine Country Yarns, Lentils on the Moon (aka A Message From Jesus in Braille, aka A History of the Jews in the Hudson Valley), Self-Loathing: An Owner's Manual, Third World USA, The Mona Lisa's Brother, and, for baseball nuts, Foul Balls and Alpha Males. You need neither a Kindle nor an iPad to enjoy 'em; simply download (free) Kindle software for either Mac or Windows, and enjoy them on your laptop or other computer!]
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Your Horoscope for Today, Part 1
I pride myself on having regarded astrology as patent nonsense even when lots of otherwise sensible persons were giving it credence. I have never asked another human being what his or her sign is, and have only rarely told the ttuth about my own, as it gives me pleasure to misrepresent it, and then have the other smirk knowingly and say, “I thought so.” (For a very long time, before there was an Internet on which to check song lyrics, I dared to hope that Mr. Rotten had endorsed this exact practice in “Anarchy in the UK,” in which I thought I heard him sing, “Give the wrong sign/Stop the traffic line.”) At other times, I would insist that the other rephrase the question from What’s your sign? to What sign you were born under?, whereupon I would happily reply, “Births strictly forbidden.”
I’ve always found it incomprehensible that anyone could take seriously the horoscopes in newspapers or magazines, as they’re so very vague, as they of course have to be. I would very much to prefer something along the following lines:
Aries
The nervous new person where you take your dry cleaning will have a devil of a time finding one of your garments, and when you finally get back to your car, you will discover that a parking control officer is poised to begin giving you a parking ticket. Howling, “No, please!” you will dash across the street so frantically as to lose your grip on one of your newly dry-cleaned garments, which a 2003 Nissan Ultima with New Jersey plates will run over. As you pick it up, though, you’ll take comfort in the realization that having it re-cleaned will cost very much less than a parking ticket. After agreeing not to write which, the officer will smirk at you expectantly, and you won’t know if she’s expecting you to slip her 20 bucks. You will give her 10, she will not look pleased, and you will never feel comfortable parking anywhere near your dry cleaner again.
Nabisco
That attractive colleague at work who’s been bumping into you quite by chance in the coffee room so often lately will finally summon the nerve to ask you out. You will meet for an after-work drink, and it will be sufficiently pleasant for you to agree to dinner and a movie on Friday night. You will have Asian fusion cuisine and see the new Leonardo di Caprio hit Inception. You will enjoy the movie rather more than the cuisine, and the cuisine rather more than the subsequent coitus, which will nonetheless be sufficiently pleasurable for you to consider an encore. But then, when you encounter your colleague in the elevator on Monday, you won’t receive anything even faintly resembling the warm greeting your having put out made you expect.
Auto Club Member
Stopping at the Sunoco for gas, you will discover yourself unable to pay at the pump. However carefully you swipe your credit card, the machine will invite you to try, try again, and then, finally, insist that you consult the attendant. The three fellow motorists waiting for your pump will audibly impeach your ancestry when you hurry inside to do so. The attendant will be from a Fourth World country of which you’ve never heard, and his accent will be incomprehensible, but he will get your credit card working. Back outside, you will ignore the hateful looks of your fellow motorists, but will stop short of cleaning your windshield to really get their goats.
Cancer
Scanning your test results, your oncologist will shake her head sadly and finally say, “I wish I had much better news for you.” You won’t be so sure you detect much genuine compassion in her tone, and will remember having briefly dated an oncology nurse several years ago — when it was clear nothing like this could ever happen to you, who have always eaten sensibly and gone to the gym and not smoked since you were 19 — and of her having told you about compassion fatigue, whereby one who has watched many die in agony goes into a self-protective mode in which it’s difficult to feel much of anything, including compassion.
[Many of my books are now available for download from Amazon. They include The Total Babe & Other Wine Country Yarns, Lentils on the Moon (aka A Message From Jesus in Braille, aka A History of the Jews in the Hudson Valley), Self-Loathing: An Owner's Manual, Third World USA, The Mona Lisa's Brother, and, for baseball nuts, Foul Balls and Alpha Males. You need neither a Kindle nor an iPad to enjoy 'em; simply download (free) Kindle software for either Mac or Windows, and enjoy them on your laptop or other computer!]
I’ve always found it incomprehensible that anyone could take seriously the horoscopes in newspapers or magazines, as they’re so very vague, as they of course have to be. I would very much to prefer something along the following lines:
Aries
The nervous new person where you take your dry cleaning will have a devil of a time finding one of your garments, and when you finally get back to your car, you will discover that a parking control officer is poised to begin giving you a parking ticket. Howling, “No, please!” you will dash across the street so frantically as to lose your grip on one of your newly dry-cleaned garments, which a 2003 Nissan Ultima with New Jersey plates will run over. As you pick it up, though, you’ll take comfort in the realization that having it re-cleaned will cost very much less than a parking ticket. After agreeing not to write which, the officer will smirk at you expectantly, and you won’t know if she’s expecting you to slip her 20 bucks. You will give her 10, she will not look pleased, and you will never feel comfortable parking anywhere near your dry cleaner again.
Nabisco
That attractive colleague at work who’s been bumping into you quite by chance in the coffee room so often lately will finally summon the nerve to ask you out. You will meet for an after-work drink, and it will be sufficiently pleasant for you to agree to dinner and a movie on Friday night. You will have Asian fusion cuisine and see the new Leonardo di Caprio hit Inception. You will enjoy the movie rather more than the cuisine, and the cuisine rather more than the subsequent coitus, which will nonetheless be sufficiently pleasurable for you to consider an encore. But then, when you encounter your colleague in the elevator on Monday, you won’t receive anything even faintly resembling the warm greeting your having put out made you expect.
Auto Club Member
Stopping at the Sunoco for gas, you will discover yourself unable to pay at the pump. However carefully you swipe your credit card, the machine will invite you to try, try again, and then, finally, insist that you consult the attendant. The three fellow motorists waiting for your pump will audibly impeach your ancestry when you hurry inside to do so. The attendant will be from a Fourth World country of which you’ve never heard, and his accent will be incomprehensible, but he will get your credit card working. Back outside, you will ignore the hateful looks of your fellow motorists, but will stop short of cleaning your windshield to really get their goats.
Cancer
Scanning your test results, your oncologist will shake her head sadly and finally say, “I wish I had much better news for you.” You won’t be so sure you detect much genuine compassion in her tone, and will remember having briefly dated an oncology nurse several years ago — when it was clear nothing like this could ever happen to you, who have always eaten sensibly and gone to the gym and not smoked since you were 19 — and of her having told you about compassion fatigue, whereby one who has watched many die in agony goes into a self-protective mode in which it’s difficult to feel much of anything, including compassion.
[Many of my books are now available for download from Amazon. They include The Total Babe & Other Wine Country Yarns, Lentils on the Moon (aka A Message From Jesus in Braille, aka A History of the Jews in the Hudson Valley), Self-Loathing: An Owner's Manual, Third World USA, The Mona Lisa's Brother, and, for baseball nuts, Foul Balls and Alpha Males. You need neither a Kindle nor an iPad to enjoy 'em; simply download (free) Kindle software for either Mac or Windows, and enjoy them on your laptop or other computer!]
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Gabriel, Blow Your Vuvuzela
I was puzzled for the first several minutes of the first World Cup game I watched this year, USA v. England, as it sounded as though every wasp in Africa had converged on the stadium. I have now come to understand that strange buzzing noise was in fact thousands of vuvuzelas, elongated plastic horns that South Africans seem to love to blow (and blow and blow, and then blow some more) while watching what the rest of the world calls football, and we soccer.
I read now that this type of plastic horn has been popular in Mexican stadiums since the 1970s. Well, I had one in the autumn of 1966, when I began to live away from home for the first time, at a dormitory at the university where I was a sophomore. Excruciatingly shy at the time, I would take pains to be the first person in the dinner line every afternoon at five so I could dash into the dining room, gobble my dinner, and then get the hell out so that no one would see I had no friends with whom to sit; I needed to be first in line so I could keep my back turned on everyone else, and thus avoid having to converse. This went on for about three and a half weeks, from the time I moved in to the Saturday night a leggy freshman girl resident approached me while I was playing at a dance and asked if I would teach her to play the drums.
Once having bolted my dinner, I would hurry back up to the room I shared with a Mr. John Blodgett, a nice guy with whose friends I didn’t want to be seen dining because they were inexpressibly uncool, and blow my horn. Oh, did I blow it. The sound would travel across the valley between my dormitory and the one a bit up the hill from it and then bounce back at mine. I wouldn’t be surprised if I startled the sad old drunks in the awful bars that used to line San Vicente Blvd. across from the Veterans’ Administration.
It was classic passive aggression, exactly the sort of thing you might expect from a desperately shy kid inside whom a frightful showoff yearned to burst free. I think I stopped it after the leggy freshman officially became my gal.
Apparently the players in the World Cup detest the merciless buzzing of the vuvuzelas, but I can think of one huge advantage to it. I remember reports of drunken England fans yelling at David Beckham, as he left the pitch after a subpar performance in international competition, that they hoped his children got cancer. Can you imagine what they must have been bellowing at goalkeeper Robert Green, whose shocking lapse on Saturday allowed the USA to tie the score? Far better, I think, 90 minutes of vuvuzela buzz. Far better 180 minutes of it.
[Many of my books are now available for download from Amazon. They include The Total Babe & Other Wine Country Yarns, Lentils on the Moon (aka A Message From Jesus in Braille, aka A History of the Jews in the Hudson Valley), Self-Loathing: An Owner's Manual, Third World USA, The Mona Lisa's Brother, and, for baseball nuts, Foul Balls and Alpha Males. You need neither a Kindle nor an iPad to enjoy 'em; simply download (free) Kindle software for either Mac or Windows, and enjoy them on your laptop or other computer!
I read now that this type of plastic horn has been popular in Mexican stadiums since the 1970s. Well, I had one in the autumn of 1966, when I began to live away from home for the first time, at a dormitory at the university where I was a sophomore. Excruciatingly shy at the time, I would take pains to be the first person in the dinner line every afternoon at five so I could dash into the dining room, gobble my dinner, and then get the hell out so that no one would see I had no friends with whom to sit; I needed to be first in line so I could keep my back turned on everyone else, and thus avoid having to converse. This went on for about three and a half weeks, from the time I moved in to the Saturday night a leggy freshman girl resident approached me while I was playing at a dance and asked if I would teach her to play the drums.
Once having bolted my dinner, I would hurry back up to the room I shared with a Mr. John Blodgett, a nice guy with whose friends I didn’t want to be seen dining because they were inexpressibly uncool, and blow my horn. Oh, did I blow it. The sound would travel across the valley between my dormitory and the one a bit up the hill from it and then bounce back at mine. I wouldn’t be surprised if I startled the sad old drunks in the awful bars that used to line San Vicente Blvd. across from the Veterans’ Administration.
It was classic passive aggression, exactly the sort of thing you might expect from a desperately shy kid inside whom a frightful showoff yearned to burst free. I think I stopped it after the leggy freshman officially became my gal.
Apparently the players in the World Cup detest the merciless buzzing of the vuvuzelas, but I can think of one huge advantage to it. I remember reports of drunken England fans yelling at David Beckham, as he left the pitch after a subpar performance in international competition, that they hoped his children got cancer. Can you imagine what they must have been bellowing at goalkeeper Robert Green, whose shocking lapse on Saturday allowed the USA to tie the score? Far better, I think, 90 minutes of vuvuzela buzz. Far better 180 minutes of it.
[Many of my books are now available for download from Amazon. They include The Total Babe & Other Wine Country Yarns, Lentils on the Moon (aka A Message From Jesus in Braille, aka A History of the Jews in the Hudson Valley), Self-Loathing: An Owner's Manual, Third World USA, The Mona Lisa's Brother, and, for baseball nuts, Foul Balls and Alpha Males. You need neither a Kindle nor an iPad to enjoy 'em; simply download (free) Kindle software for either Mac or Windows, and enjoy them on your laptop or other computer!
Monday, June 14, 2010
It's True We Make a Better Day, Just You and I
Watching Bravo’s new reality show Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, I am most amused by its being virtually identical in all key ways to everything from Rock of Love to I Know My Kid’s a Star. A bunch of people who want to win a Fabulous Prize (not Bret Michaels’ heart, in this case, or child stardom, but a big bag of gold and a solo show in Brooklyn) are confronted with a weekly series of challenges. When not working on their art, they are seen biting one another’s backs. They are wide-eyed with wonder when a Glamorous Celebrity — in this case the unspeakable Sarah Jessica Parker — daring to show her face even after Sex and the City 2 — drops in to mumble platitudes of encouragement. They speak to the cameras with brimming eyes about How Much This Means to them. Each week, a panel of putative experts then sends home the one who’s met the challenge with the least panache.
I think it’s time the stakes in reality shows got raised. I would promise to watch, and buy all the products advertised on, a show in which the prize is getting to reproduce. Over the course of such a show, contestants would be judged on the basis of, for instance, their ability to retain their composure while infants howl implacably at them at 3:30 in the morning. Later, they would be required to turn their actual cars over to spoiled American teenagers, who would first damage the cars, and then, when confronted, assert with the utmost contempt and rancor that the real fault was somehow the contestant’s, rather than their own. God! As each contestant was eliminated, he or she would be sterilized.
Speaking of sterilization, how about a show inspired by the classic Saturday Night Live sketch Quien Es Mas Macho? Each week, contestants (and these could obviously include butch lesbians) would try to demonstrate themselves — via home repair, knot-tying, ability to find a particular address without asking directions, and chugalugging — more manly than one another. Each week's losser would be put on a regular schedule of injections of cyproterone or a comparable anti-androgen.
In other news, we spoke yesterday, or whenever it was, about Lionel Ritchie and the late Michael Jackson’s anthem of altruism “We Are the World,” which, in its latest incarnation, has grown a parenthetical appendage to become “We Are the World (Cup).” I will here admit that something about the song has always driven me crazy, made me feel as though locked in a room full of people removing Styrofoam-encased electronics gadgets from boxes. (I could listen all day to fingernails on a blackboard, but the mere thought of the screech of Styrofoam makes me shudder.)
I know it’s foolish to expect the lyrics of pop songs to be grammatical, and sometimes their ungrammaticality sort of works, as in The Doors’ classic "Touch Me," the last line of whose chorus just wouldn’t have worked if it had been “…”til the stars fall from the sky for you and me.” The ungrammaticality of "We Are the World," though, shoots the song in its own foot. I speak, of course, of the last line of the chorus:
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives.
It's true we make a better day
Just you and me.
If they’d sung I at the end, it not only would have been grammatical, but would have rhymed, sort of, with lives! What could Quincy Jones have been thinking?
I am reminded of a little song I made up for the amusement of the 7-year-old daughter of my second major girlfriend, Marie, who’d nicknamed me Nutso Futso in recognition of my deficient mental hygiene. Went something like this here — and do keep in mind that this was at the height of Steve Martin’s popularity, and thus of the ubiquity of the wild-'n'-crazy guy meme:
My name is Nutso Futso and I’m a crazy guy
But if you were to ask me, I could not tell you how come.
[Many of my books are now available for download from Amazon. They include The Total Babe & Other Wine Country Yarns, Lentils on the Moon (aka A Message From Jesus in Braille, aka A History of the Jews in the Hudson Valley), Self-Loathing: An Owner's Manual, Third World USA, The Mona Lisa's Brother, and, for baseball nuts, Foul Balls and Alpha Males. You need neither a Kindle nor an iPad to enjoy 'em; simply download (free) Kindle software for either Mac or Windows, and enjoy them on your laptop or other computer!
I think it’s time the stakes in reality shows got raised. I would promise to watch, and buy all the products advertised on, a show in which the prize is getting to reproduce. Over the course of such a show, contestants would be judged on the basis of, for instance, their ability to retain their composure while infants howl implacably at them at 3:30 in the morning. Later, they would be required to turn their actual cars over to spoiled American teenagers, who would first damage the cars, and then, when confronted, assert with the utmost contempt and rancor that the real fault was somehow the contestant’s, rather than their own. God! As each contestant was eliminated, he or she would be sterilized.
Speaking of sterilization, how about a show inspired by the classic Saturday Night Live sketch Quien Es Mas Macho? Each week, contestants (and these could obviously include butch lesbians) would try to demonstrate themselves — via home repair, knot-tying, ability to find a particular address without asking directions, and chugalugging — more manly than one another. Each week's losser would be put on a regular schedule of injections of cyproterone or a comparable anti-androgen.
In other news, we spoke yesterday, or whenever it was, about Lionel Ritchie and the late Michael Jackson’s anthem of altruism “We Are the World,” which, in its latest incarnation, has grown a parenthetical appendage to become “We Are the World (Cup).” I will here admit that something about the song has always driven me crazy, made me feel as though locked in a room full of people removing Styrofoam-encased electronics gadgets from boxes. (I could listen all day to fingernails on a blackboard, but the mere thought of the screech of Styrofoam makes me shudder.)
I know it’s foolish to expect the lyrics of pop songs to be grammatical, and sometimes their ungrammaticality sort of works, as in The Doors’ classic "Touch Me," the last line of whose chorus just wouldn’t have worked if it had been “…”til the stars fall from the sky for you and me.” The ungrammaticality of "We Are the World," though, shoots the song in its own foot. I speak, of course, of the last line of the chorus:
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives.
It's true we make a better day
Just you and me.
If they’d sung I at the end, it not only would have been grammatical, but would have rhymed, sort of, with lives! What could Quincy Jones have been thinking?
I am reminded of a little song I made up for the amusement of the 7-year-old daughter of my second major girlfriend, Marie, who’d nicknamed me Nutso Futso in recognition of my deficient mental hygiene. Went something like this here — and do keep in mind that this was at the height of Steve Martin’s popularity, and thus of the ubiquity of the wild-'n'-crazy guy meme:
My name is Nutso Futso and I’m a crazy guy
But if you were to ask me, I could not tell you how come.
[Many of my books are now available for download from Amazon. They include The Total Babe & Other Wine Country Yarns, Lentils on the Moon (aka A Message From Jesus in Braille, aka A History of the Jews in the Hudson Valley), Self-Loathing: An Owner's Manual, Third World USA, The Mona Lisa's Brother, and, for baseball nuts, Foul Balls and Alpha Males. You need neither a Kindle nor an iPad to enjoy 'em; simply download (free) Kindle software for either Mac or Windows, and enjoy them on your laptop or other computer!
The International Language of Music
I don’t think anyone was more surprised than I, following our big reunion gig in May in Las Vegas, when Christopher Milk was invited to be part of the big World Cup-opening entertainment extravaganza in Johannesburg on Friday. If you missed it on television, we performed three songs between Alicia Keys and the Black-Eyed Peas, and then came out at the end for the big all-inclusive version of “We Are the World (Cup),” for which Lionel Ritchie and the late Michael Jackson had written poignant new lyrics.
While living in London in 2006, I had occasion to do some freelance design work for a woman ]trying to put together a dating Website for fellow South African expatriates, but it didn’t go very well because their accents are even weirder than Aussies’, to which Americans are more accustomed on the strength of Steve Irwin, commercials for the Outback restaurant chain, Olivia Newton-John, and the Easybeats’ 1966 classic “Friday On My Mind.” I could barely understand a word out of this woman's mouth! But our hosts’ accents weren’t a problem on Friday night, as we were all speaking the international languages of music and love.
Karl, who the years have made only handsomer, seemed to have a lot to talk about with Ms. Keys, but he’s always been able to get just about any "sheila" who struck his fancy into a conversation, and usually even out on a date. I loved his opening line, delivered with his customary poker face: “Is Key West named in your honor?”
Later, after our brief but rapturously received performance, his greater interest seemed to be in Peas’ singer Fergie. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he’d broken the ice with her by asking, in that straightfacedly mischievous way of his, how she’d enjoyed being married to Prince Albert, namesake of the popular male genital piercing. Of course, it was Prince Andrew to whom the non-singing, Weight Watchers-shilling Fergie was married; therein the joke!
Looking out at them as I spoke of how our strongest commitment as a band had always been to universal brotherhood, I was nearly moved to tears of my own by the sight of the audience's. I pointed with pride to the fact that none of our great-grandparents had owned so much as a single slave, even when it was fashionable to do so. Indeed, my, Rafe’s and George’s great-grandparents were all in Russia, Scotland, Norway, and Italy at the time of the American Civil War, and Karl’s were probably fervent abolitionists. And when I mentioned that we hadn’t played a single note in South Africa during apartheid, you might have heard the crowd’s roar of approval in Key West.
Ordinarily, given such a narrow window of opportunity, we would have performed three of our biggest hits, of which of course we hadn’t any, but in this context it seemed fitting and proper that we should play at least one anthem of racial harmony. Our first impulse was to do The Yardbirds’ "Mister, You’re a Better Man Than I," but Axl Rose claimed that one, so I suggested Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” in spite of its having become a favorite of Caucasian American Idol contestants. In retrospect, maybe it wasn’t the greatest idea to do it in the style of the Velvet Underground, but I, for one, have little use for Monday morning quarterbacking, especially in view of the fact that in the World Cup, there isn't even such a thing as a quarterback.
While living in London in 2006, I had occasion to do some freelance design work for a woman ]trying to put together a dating Website for fellow South African expatriates, but it didn’t go very well because their accents are even weirder than Aussies’, to which Americans are more accustomed on the strength of Steve Irwin, commercials for the Outback restaurant chain, Olivia Newton-John, and the Easybeats’ 1966 classic “Friday On My Mind.” I could barely understand a word out of this woman's mouth! But our hosts’ accents weren’t a problem on Friday night, as we were all speaking the international languages of music and love.
Karl, who the years have made only handsomer, seemed to have a lot to talk about with Ms. Keys, but he’s always been able to get just about any "sheila" who struck his fancy into a conversation, and usually even out on a date. I loved his opening line, delivered with his customary poker face: “Is Key West named in your honor?”
Later, after our brief but rapturously received performance, his greater interest seemed to be in Peas’ singer Fergie. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he’d broken the ice with her by asking, in that straightfacedly mischievous way of his, how she’d enjoyed being married to Prince Albert, namesake of the popular male genital piercing. Of course, it was Prince Andrew to whom the non-singing, Weight Watchers-shilling Fergie was married; therein the joke!
Looking out at them as I spoke of how our strongest commitment as a band had always been to universal brotherhood, I was nearly moved to tears of my own by the sight of the audience's. I pointed with pride to the fact that none of our great-grandparents had owned so much as a single slave, even when it was fashionable to do so. Indeed, my, Rafe’s and George’s great-grandparents were all in Russia, Scotland, Norway, and Italy at the time of the American Civil War, and Karl’s were probably fervent abolitionists. And when I mentioned that we hadn’t played a single note in South Africa during apartheid, you might have heard the crowd’s roar of approval in Key West.
Ordinarily, given such a narrow window of opportunity, we would have performed three of our biggest hits, of which of course we hadn’t any, but in this context it seemed fitting and proper that we should play at least one anthem of racial harmony. Our first impulse was to do The Yardbirds’ "Mister, You’re a Better Man Than I," but Axl Rose claimed that one, so I suggested Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” in spite of its having become a favorite of Caucasian American Idol contestants. In retrospect, maybe it wasn’t the greatest idea to do it in the style of the Velvet Underground, but I, for one, have little use for Monday morning quarterbacking, especially in view of the fact that in the World Cup, there isn't even such a thing as a quarterback.
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