Barf barf barf barf barf.
Like, honestly. We all like Robert Frost and whatever, but tell me that this wasn't just an excuse to -- cleverly! -- sneak some of his lines into the reporting. The piece's tone is also one of unnecessary aggrandizement of the Yank (Bronx Bomber?) Poet. Everyone knows he was an awesome all-American who wrote really beautifully, capturing in meter the natural flow of speech.
But still. Exaggerating his value to make his house by extension somehow important is pretty dishonest and a cheap play at exigency. In real life, it hardly matters that some people had a party in Robert Frost's farm house, or that they ruined some of his stuff. He is dead. And his poetry, not his kitchenware, is what we really care about.
Imagined rejected things the author thought of while writing this article:
"The foundations of the house must have snarled and rattled. Later, the revelers stumbled out, out -- of the house."
"When they left the party I'm pretty sure they had miles to go before they slept. Miles to go before they slept."
"I wonder if it was a swinger party. Not of birches, mind you."
Everyone just needs to chill when these things happen, and please restrain themselves from writing "beautifully" about a worthless topic.
Monday, January 28, 2008
A Wonderful Exchange
In years of excellent instant messaging, this had never happened:
Until today.
[. . .]
Also, my blog is somehow on Tacoma, WA time or maybe even some kind of pacific island time. No, just Tacoma time. Maybe I forgot to pack it when I moved.
Will: party on wayne
me: party on garth
Until today.
[. . .]
Also, my blog is somehow on Tacoma, WA time or maybe even some kind of pacific island time. No, just Tacoma time. Maybe I forgot to pack it when I moved.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Strong and Strong
The world is by turns a kind, gentle place, and a fierce, desperate one. When it is fierce and desperate it feels as though it will kill you just for being in it. But when it fails to kill you, it appears momentarily kind and gentle again.
Because the world is like this, it is also just a place where people live, and where people do their best to go on living.
There isn't ever much point in getting hung up on more than these simple ideas, if that can really be avoided. At least, that is how it appears to me today.
And now I will sleep for sixteen hours, if all goes well.
Because the world is like this, it is also just a place where people live, and where people do their best to go on living.
There isn't ever much point in getting hung up on more than these simple ideas, if that can really be avoided. At least, that is how it appears to me today.
And now I will sleep for sixteen hours, if all goes well.
Some Saints of Note
Saint John the Evangelist aka John Divine: Patron saint of Milwaukee.
Saint Amand: Patron saint of bartenders.
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Saint Francis de Sales: Patron saint of journalism.
Saint Elizabeth of Portugal: Guards against jealousy.
[Not pictured]
Saint James Intercisus: Patron saint of lost vocations, also martyred by being cut into 28 pieces.
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam: Patron saint of skaters (ice, mainly, but probably finds time for other kinds).
Mary Magdalen: Saint against sexual temptation (fits). Also patron of glove- and drugmakers.
The Virgin Mary is/has been saddled with a whole host of duties, but among them is patronage of travelers, and Delaware.
Patron Saints Index by Topic
I Ain't Scared of You Motherfuckers
Bernie Mac is very funny in this video. The repetition, the rhythm, the abject filthiness, and the force of his egomaniacal persona just wash all over the place.
By the third time he says "You don't understand," I don't think there's anybody who isn't on board. And this material ought to be a hard sell.
It isn't.
Rwanda Interview Transcript
A segment of my sister's transcript of an interview conducted with a worker at a school in Rwanda:
Our students help each other a lot.
26 18 05
We even received a national certificate of unity.
26 34 10
We practices national unity at this school. For example, in 1997, there was a massacre of children.
26 55 15
The interhamwe came here and told the children to separate
27 05 09
They told the Hutus to stand together and for the Tutsis to stand together. But the girls, since they were taught to stay together,
27 18 21
They refused to separate. They said that they were all Rwandans, and by refusing, they gave their lives.
27 29 21
They killed 17 young girls
27 35 21
Because they refused to separate into groups of Hutus and Tutsis, they were killed.
27 41 23
They killed 17 and there were 20 that were wounded.
27 46 18
Those girls are still handicapped. This is a moving example. These young girls
27 55 11
from 12 to 20 years of age, who had the courage to die instead of to separate.
28 03 19
Instead of saying “you are Hutu, you are Tutsi” even in the face of death.
28 09 10
They accepted death, and that is very poignant.
Fiction and "The Wire"
Back to "The Wire" for a second.
A couple months ago, someone raised an interesting objection. The line goes that the show's realism actually just feels real because it conforms to our racist stereotypes and expectations about how drug dealers are in real life. The critical praise of this realism only served to further entrench "The Wire" and its problematic racial overtones.
This idea never sat well with me because "The Wire" strikes me as patently, even overtly, fictional in just about every moment. In other words, it still behaves like a TV show more than anything else. The dialog is clever and snappy, there are lines that are setups for punchlines. There is a blind guy who knows everything, aka an oracle, which has existed as a literary device since fiction was invented by the Greeks (true story), and which has continued through the stillborn run of "Freaks and Geeks" (Harris). Also, the characters are obvious foils to one another (Daniels relates to McNulty because he has a tarnished reputation going back to the "bad old days," McNulty relates to Bubbs because they're both fuckups, etc.).
So it's an uncomfortable position to take that the show really goes all that far in perpetuating stereotypes when it seems so palpably fictitious at every turn. Yeah, there are a lot of persuasive, moving, or resonant aspects of "The Wire." But it's hard for me to see anyone as believing in its truth any more than they would any other show (except "The Office," which is, like, exactly what work is like [barf]).
A couple months ago, someone raised an interesting objection. The line goes that the show's realism actually just feels real because it conforms to our racist stereotypes and expectations about how drug dealers are in real life. The critical praise of this realism only served to further entrench "The Wire" and its problematic racial overtones.
This idea never sat well with me because "The Wire" strikes me as patently, even overtly, fictional in just about every moment. In other words, it still behaves like a TV show more than anything else. The dialog is clever and snappy, there are lines that are setups for punchlines. There is a blind guy who knows everything, aka an oracle, which has existed as a literary device since fiction was invented by the Greeks (true story), and which has continued through the stillborn run of "Freaks and Geeks" (Harris). Also, the characters are obvious foils to one another (Daniels relates to McNulty because he has a tarnished reputation going back to the "bad old days," McNulty relates to Bubbs because they're both fuckups, etc.).
So it's an uncomfortable position to take that the show really goes all that far in perpetuating stereotypes when it seems so palpably fictitious at every turn. Yeah, there are a lot of persuasive, moving, or resonant aspects of "The Wire." But it's hard for me to see anyone as believing in its truth any more than they would any other show (except "The Office," which is, like, exactly what work is like [barf]).
A Few Things
-Not my idea, by the way, but (or maybe therefore) worth chewin over: Part of the reason politics are so crazy in America is because during the New Deal, Roosevelt made all manner of government institutions, willy-nilly. That's fine and whatever, it's not like I'm on a tax-and-spend rant here because that would be stupid. But these agencies aren't anywhere in the Constitution! There are basically not any rules about how they are supposed to operate and they kind of do whatever they want. Presidents can change them but they are also kind of entrenched. The Presidential election is important but not as important as we think, given that this is true.
-A store can run out of a certain DVD. When we were in Circuit City (we'd already tried Target), the clerk told us that they sell "The Wire" over the Internet now. He might have been making a clever joke, but that was also the truth apparently. Why do you have a store in real life if you only sell things on the Internet? It's making more and more sense now that we live next to a fledgling apartment complex called ClermontGreene.com.
-On the other hand, Circuit City is very well stocked, carrying every conceivable episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond," one disc of "The Unit" (they probably started with three but a couple people confused it with "The Wire"), and on the New Releases rack, "New Adventures of Old Christine." I'm not going to hate on Julia Louis Dreyfus, who's actually funny (and weirdly hot nowadays), but in a better world Circuit City's DVD section would only have "The Wire" Season 4 and the Raymond fans (aka "Everybody") would be the ones who have to have the Internet.
-A graffiti artist who calls himself (or herself?) "Kunt" keeps tagging our neighborhood. Because of the misspelling it can't just be a dirty word. So someone out there is calling themselves a bad name anonymously and at the same time letting everyone know how they feel about themselves. I bet Kunt has a blog, since it's kind of the same idea.
-I fell asleep reading a book at around 8 p.m. and woke up at around 2:00 a.m. I tried the usual tricks of eating, drinking water, etc., but might be bound for dawn here.
-It's unclear whether the discontinued practice of giving money to homeless people is geographical, biographical. In DC it was just easy to give a few dollars here and there. In Tacoma the homeless people were so obvious about the voracity of their drug addictions that it seemed even more futile than usual to give them anything other than cigarettes, which is what they usually would ask for anyway (which says something geographical I think). In New York there may just be too many, or maybe the weird signage that actually admonishes against giving to panhandlers is working on me. But I kind of doubt that's it.
-With time, it gets easier, not harder, to make big mistakes.
-I miss Water and Vegetables. Puffy Shoe, where are you?
-A store can run out of a certain DVD. When we were in Circuit City (we'd already tried Target), the clerk told us that they sell "The Wire" over the Internet now. He might have been making a clever joke, but that was also the truth apparently. Why do you have a store in real life if you only sell things on the Internet? It's making more and more sense now that we live next to a fledgling apartment complex called ClermontGreene.com.
-On the other hand, Circuit City is very well stocked, carrying every conceivable episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond," one disc of "The Unit" (they probably started with three but a couple people confused it with "The Wire"), and on the New Releases rack, "New Adventures of Old Christine." I'm not going to hate on Julia Louis Dreyfus, who's actually funny (and weirdly hot nowadays), but in a better world Circuit City's DVD section would only have "The Wire" Season 4 and the Raymond fans (aka "Everybody") would be the ones who have to have the Internet.
-A graffiti artist who calls himself (or herself?) "Kunt" keeps tagging our neighborhood. Because of the misspelling it can't just be a dirty word. So someone out there is calling themselves a bad name anonymously and at the same time letting everyone know how they feel about themselves. I bet Kunt has a blog, since it's kind of the same idea.
-I fell asleep reading a book at around 8 p.m. and woke up at around 2:00 a.m. I tried the usual tricks of eating, drinking water, etc., but might be bound for dawn here.
-It's unclear whether the discontinued practice of giving money to homeless people is geographical, biographical. In DC it was just easy to give a few dollars here and there. In Tacoma the homeless people were so obvious about the voracity of their drug addictions that it seemed even more futile than usual to give them anything other than cigarettes, which is what they usually would ask for anyway (which says something geographical I think). In New York there may just be too many, or maybe the weird signage that actually admonishes against giving to panhandlers is working on me. But I kind of doubt that's it.
-With time, it gets easier, not harder, to make big mistakes.
-I miss Water and Vegetables. Puffy Shoe, where are you?
Just for Starters
In writing it is possible to begin by typing the wrong letter. Letters I typed before getting these sentences out:
M
S
H
L
M
S
H
L
Friday, January 25, 2008
Feel-good Hit of the Winter
Devine Calloway.
With a name like that there is only one path. And it involves big-spins.
With a name like that there is only one path. And it involves big-spins.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Decisions
-New Book
-Plane Ticket
-Insolvency is not so bad
-No long bus rides for a while (but not too long a while)
-Plane Ticket
-Insolvency is not so bad
-No long bus rides for a while (but not too long a while)
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
This Is How the Magic Happens
Speedra: does harry potter come out
me: and it probably won't be flattering
Speedra: in the last booK?
me: no dumbledore
Speedra: oh
dude
me: and thaat was just a made up thing
Speedra: i wish harry did
me: so you could fuck him!
Speedra: do you think there is harry potter gay porn
ill look
me: ooh
me too!
Sent at 11:57 PM on Tuesday
me: i'm going to start blogging now
[. . .]
Fantasies Of a Virgin: Harry Potter
me: and it probably won't be flattering
Speedra: in the last booK?
me: no dumbledore
Speedra: oh
dude
me: and thaat was just a made up thing
Speedra: i wish harry did
me: so you could fuck him!
Speedra: do you think there is harry potter gay porn
ill look
me: ooh
me too!
Sent at 11:57 PM on Tuesday
me: i'm going to start blogging now
[. . .]
Fantasies Of a Virgin: Harry Potter
Monday, January 21, 2008
Another Good Line
From Evan Lavender-Smith. "Appalachian Spring." Land-Grant College Review 3, 13-19.
This is the introductory sentence to a new paragraph. It continues the pace and tenor of the rest of the piece. The imagery is cartoonish. Some people still know how to make this stuff happen.
Mr. Feingold was angry that funding for the music program had been cut in half, so he threw a euphonium through the ceiling.
This is the introductory sentence to a new paragraph. It continues the pace and tenor of the rest of the piece. The imagery is cartoonish. Some people still know how to make this stuff happen.
Shaving in Fiction!!!
I shaved this morning and it occurred to me that a literary passage ought to be written about such an event.
He brought himself, after weeks of neglect, to the basin. The task had loomed, growing evermore insurmountable as each facial hair crawled farther outward from his face.
The thought of grooming himself had become terrifying. A looming mass of fiery, tentacled redness taunted him. His hand trembled as it reached for his dulled, weather-beaten Gilette Mach III.
Holding the razor poised to strike, he met the cold eyes of his reflection.
"Time to get your life together, hoss."
With that, he set to work.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
A Good Line, But ...
From McCullough, David Willis. Wars of the Irish Kings. New York: Three Rivers, 2002. xx.
Totally rad! Warring Wisconsin farmers! Nacho cheese! Anarchy!
But ...
"To be glib" is a sucky way to start any sentence. "Guys! Hold on. Just to warn you, I'm about to be seriously glib. So I don't want you to get carried away with what I'm saying. It's just glibness. Okay? Here we go!"
To be glib, medieval Ireland sounds like a somewhat crazed Wisconsin, in which every dairy farm is an armed camp at perpetual war with its neighbors, and every farmer claims he is king.
Totally rad! Warring Wisconsin farmers! Nacho cheese! Anarchy!
But ...
"To be glib" is a sucky way to start any sentence. "Guys! Hold on. Just to warn you, I'm about to be seriously glib. So I don't want you to get carried away with what I'm saying. It's just glibness. Okay? Here we go!"
This Is Just So Effing Good
Hello Stranger "Her in These Lights"
Genuine despite all the synthiness. And as I've said before, she is a BAABE!
Rock Band
Rock Band is a new video game that simulates various elements of being in a rock band. There is a toy guitar like that of Guitar Hero, there is a toy drum kit, there is a microphone.
I was chatting with a friend the other night who plays real-life drums, and she remarked that, basically, on drums at least, Rock Band can actually teach people to play songs.
A couple weeks ago, an acquaintance who teaches guitar lessons for a living remarked that several of his students, aged 10 or so, want to learn songs by Kansas because of Guitar Hero.
I'm hoping that in subsequent editions the guitars become more and more complex, until they are just actual guitars, and that we're using video games to make an entire generation into inadvertent musicians.
I was chatting with a friend the other night who plays real-life drums, and she remarked that, basically, on drums at least, Rock Band can actually teach people to play songs.
A couple weeks ago, an acquaintance who teaches guitar lessons for a living remarked that several of his students, aged 10 or so, want to learn songs by Kansas because of Guitar Hero.
I'm hoping that in subsequent editions the guitars become more and more complex, until they are just actual guitars, and that we're using video games to make an entire generation into inadvertent musicians.
An Idea for a Video Blog
Take full-length porn videos and edit out the sex scenes. You're left with 5-minute short films.
People would watch these because they get to do a lot of the work. Initially, it might not be clear that the videos are edited porn, but that revelation would be a gratifying punchline. After that, the videos would make an interesting comment of some kind (although maybe not super interesting). What are horny people willing to sit through between scenes of human depravity? The answer involves a lot of babysitters!
One of the conventions of erotic film (talk about diction!) is an everyday situation quickly turning the bend into a not-so-everyday situation involving private parts. People often laugh about the flimsy seductions that drive porn plots to the sex. However, I'm beginning to wonder if it's the sheer improbability that makes those scenes funny? Is seduction really that unlikely?
The reason to ask this question is that porn obviously shows people acting the way a viewer would want to be acting. For most of the screen time, this simply means getting some jollies with an athletically-to-artificially-built other, but in the other scenes it means exercising some form of charm over another person, being uninhibited, etc.
It'd be strangely revelatory to see people acting the way we wish they did, without the ensuing payoff. Or, it would just be ridic and funny if it weren't also sort of :'( . See also.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Toubab
Toubabing around comes from the Wolof, Toubab (n): white person; someone who doesn't know what's going on; moronic automaton. Picked up the Toub in 2003 during a nude excursion to Toubab Diallo, a tiny resort town in Sunu Gaal. The night involved showers and Ivy Leaguers, gin and guilt.
Started being a good little toubab - in earnest - around 2005, waiting tables in Bethany Beach, DE. Just trying to not let it get to me when I didn't get someone's Poffenburger to the table quickly enough or I got a three-dollar tip.
Maintained toubabitude through some harsh events out in Tacoma involving wait-staff and assistant managers at coffee houses, a cigarette habit and far too many beers every day, which did, indeed, net me a decent-sized "spare tire" (inner toubab) from January to April.
Played the Toubab in a brass band until lately when I've been sick and can't jam out on the video-game bikes over in New York Sports Club so I'm skittish of late, my toubab fighting for its life.
The toubabs only come out at 3 a.m., but they are not a frightening race.
Doing a lot of toubabing lately. (Riding the tobabogan = mounting a sled full of toubabs.)
Fucking toubabs. I've got em bad, from my head to my shoe-bobs.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
----
Pretty tired of talking like everything mattered ... Someone asked me today "poetry?" and I said "I don't know how I lost that bug."
We used to be a lot heavier into monstrosity but that was before we knew how find it in the dictionary.
I walked home today about a half a mile and the whole time I kept thinking about how my Seattle Mariners beanie flips up to one side and makes me look like a conehead.
I put on my pants (the same pair) for the third time this work week, it is Wednesday, and I think I just might go for the whole thing -- pants aged five days, they get a certain sweetness about them.
I took some NyQuil last night and woke up thinking about grabbing a steak knife out of the drawer and doing something mean with it but had a couple thoughts in the meantime:
-"Wait you are high on NyQuil [what?]."
-"We don't even have a steak knife."
Without NyQuil, the night before that I dreamed my brother had drowned at a swim meet and I was in the stands. Someone big and furious made a snide comment about drowning in a swim meet (which come to think of it is sort of funny). Over my mom's protests I challenged this lunkhead to an outdoor brawl, like in the movies. We had to push past all these high schoolers in swim suits to get outside and when we got out there the mook pulled of the hood and it was a Girl! And I couldn't fight the Girl because the Girl was a Girl so I went back inside to watch the swim meet and grieve about my brother. [He's fine in real life though.]
There is an expression called "upside surprise" in financial reporting. This is always worth a giggle.
Someone told me the other day "heart attacks aren't funny."
Antonio Banderas was at one point considered one of the sexiest men in the world. Is that still true?
I have not even gone on Billboard.com in over a month to see what's #1.
[.......]
T-Pain again!
I saw some pitstains the other day and they looked pretty natural.
Yeah.
In some sports the line is out in others the line is in.
Can you fix the way you look in that shirt?
A guy in a wheelchair on the subway today kept himself from drifting around the car by buttoning his coat around the vertical pole that is more commonly used for standing people. I wanted to ask him about the brakes but it seemed sort of a rude idea. He was in good spirits, though, so it would've been fine.
My room smells like excrement and has for several weeks, through no fault of my own (ask around, it's true).
-----
We used to be a lot heavier into monstrosity but that was before we knew how find it in the dictionary.
I walked home today about a half a mile and the whole time I kept thinking about how my Seattle Mariners beanie flips up to one side and makes me look like a conehead.
I put on my pants (the same pair) for the third time this work week, it is Wednesday, and I think I just might go for the whole thing -- pants aged five days, they get a certain sweetness about them.
I took some NyQuil last night and woke up thinking about grabbing a steak knife out of the drawer and doing something mean with it but had a couple thoughts in the meantime:
-"Wait you are high on NyQuil [what?]."
-"We don't even have a steak knife."
Without NyQuil, the night before that I dreamed my brother had drowned at a swim meet and I was in the stands. Someone big and furious made a snide comment about drowning in a swim meet (which come to think of it is sort of funny). Over my mom's protests I challenged this lunkhead to an outdoor brawl, like in the movies. We had to push past all these high schoolers in swim suits to get outside and when we got out there the mook pulled of the hood and it was a Girl! And I couldn't fight the Girl because the Girl was a Girl so I went back inside to watch the swim meet and grieve about my brother. [He's fine in real life though.]
There is an expression called "upside surprise" in financial reporting. This is always worth a giggle.
Someone told me the other day "heart attacks aren't funny."
Antonio Banderas was at one point considered one of the sexiest men in the world. Is that still true?
I have not even gone on Billboard.com in over a month to see what's #1.
[.......]
T-Pain again!
I saw some pitstains the other day and they looked pretty natural.
Yeah.
In some sports the line is out in others the line is in.
Can you fix the way you look in that shirt?
A guy in a wheelchair on the subway today kept himself from drifting around the car by buttoning his coat around the vertical pole that is more commonly used for standing people. I wanted to ask him about the brakes but it seemed sort of a rude idea. He was in good spirits, though, so it would've been fine.
My room smells like excrement and has for several weeks, through no fault of my own (ask around, it's true).
-----
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
You've Got It All Wrong
You Can't Get It Right
In younger days, I used to have an 8'x4'x1' box and, inspired by the ollie-then-3-flip in this vid, I'd jump over something like three inches tall, but not level out after popping, to get that lazy effect you see in Reynolds' skating. Then I'd go right over to the box and do a f/s 50 on it, just feeling pleased as punch at the simplicity.
In the Kazaa days of college, I found this vid and found out Archers of Loaf were responsible for the song. "I'm never honest with you / Cause you don't deserve it anyway."
Steroid Up and He Won't Come up out That Bitch
Lyrical gym workout, amino acids, we do sell steroids
Lyrical gym workout, amino acids, we do sell steroids
That's right if you wanna press up and bench up for cheap
We do.. have.. steroids
- Kool Keith
Various NY tabloids, including the Times, are taking swipes about the irrelevant baseball steroid scandal's slow, aggravating lava flow trickling down the island to Village of Rap (population: 100?).
The Times piece in particular spills an awkward nut graph trying to explain why rappers would do steroids in the first place. The answer is obvi - a battle aesthetic and (haha) "pressure ... to maintain perfect, even superhuman physiques."
Blaming rap culture for steroids is too crazy, given that many of the greats were total heavies.
In rap, as in most things (barring professional sports), if you want to have more than 5% body fat, most people won't care. If there's anything interesting about the rap-steroids thing (which is debatable), it's that steroids have different applications. 50 Cent is not juicing so he can one-up The Game by making it through 600 bars. He's doing it so that women continue buying his albums.
Also: Mary J. Blige? The Marion Jones of rap? Baby girl is not a runner, and while I give her props for those pipes, they're probably not pumping any more wind thanks to the shots in the butt she's taking. This solidifies my point. In addition to making you hit home runs or knock receivers over like Atari Bigby or (sadly) sometimes make you flip out and kill your family, steroids can make you hot. The extent to which rap is vulnerable to this is the extent to which everyone is vulnerable.
The extent to which rappers are subject to investigation for it is the extent to which they are rich and famous.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Some Performers of Late
Hello Stranger (So Hot)
Big Fun (So Fun)
Juiceboxxx (So Famous) -- Of white people, he says: "They wanna rap, but they're afraid." He is not afraid.
Big Fun (So Fun)
Juiceboxxx (So Famous) -- Of white people, he says: "They wanna rap, but they're afraid." He is not afraid.
Re: Wrong Ideas, or, Tradition and the Individual Talent
"Whiskey in the Jar," as it turns out, offers a specific instance of the general idea I was driving at in last week's post.
A brief look at Wikipedia reveals that the song is a traditional dating back to the 18th century and has been through an unknown, but vast, number of lyrical iterations.
The criteria we use to know that a song is "Whiskey" are less exacting than the ones we normally use to identify music. Each version of "Whiskey in the Jar pretty much must contain several narrative elements:
-Whiskey
-A Jar
-A Femme Fatale
-A Highwayman
-A Lawman
However, across different interpretations, the song's setting moves to different counties, the name of the treasonous woman changes, and the lawman serves different authorities. I haven't done the legwork, but I get the feeling the song has been performed in different keys. It certainly has been through different rhythmic tumblers and fallen all over the place, timbre-wise. All this adds up to mean that "Whiskey" stays "Whiskey" no matter what you do to these things.
This happens in jazz a ton and is not really that weird in most genres of music. Anyone who's sat through a jazz appreciation class knows that "Autumn Leaves" has been done about sixty million different ways. Taken together, the many versions might even demonstrate that there are very few aspects of "Autumn Leaves" that make it what it is.
Weirdly, pop songs ordinarily seem much more rigid, and maybe it's record-shop pedantry that keeps people jumping on somebody's case for singing the wrong words, but something has gone wrong with that. I mean really, who cares if you know whether Britney Spears is saying she's a professional learner or an exceptional earner? (It's the latter for anyone keeping score -- which you shouldn't be.)
What's cool about "Whiskey" is that it's not set up to be expanded musically, although it certainly could be. Because it has lyrics and sort of an obvious storyline, you'd know "Whiskey" from another song, even if the melody and the chord progressions changed.
So one upshot of this is that the line from Metallica's version, which I love, is not actually even technically wrong, given that the lyrics to "Whiskey in the Jar" are not actually known. I'd like to do one more and say that they are not knowable, but that seems a little pomo and I've slogged through enough theory articles to know that that's mostly a cutesy thing theorists do to pat themselves on the back.
But I will take one more shot before I go for a jog. It strikes me as an enormous strength when a song (or a work) demonstrates sufficient flexibility to have its words rearranged, its characters altered, its instruments of performance electrified. Whiskey in the Jar is good whether the Dubliners, Thin Lizzy, or Metallica perform it. I haven't heard the Peter Paul and Mary version but that's probably alright too.
Mistaken or lazy reinterpretation may not be as laudable, but it would be interesting to see if there are any masters out there who can take something fairly unappealing and retroactively turn it into something awesome via the same kind of dinkering we see in "Whiskey."
Sidenote: Sort of a similar thing, although not as broad in scope, is the decision by "The Wire" to include different versions Tom Waits' (or maybe someone else's) "Way Down in the Hole." For more spelunking on "The Wire," check out a recent post by a hazy Sulks.
A brief look at Wikipedia reveals that the song is a traditional dating back to the 18th century and has been through an unknown, but vast, number of lyrical iterations.
The criteria we use to know that a song is "Whiskey" are less exacting than the ones we normally use to identify music. Each version of "Whiskey in the Jar pretty much must contain several narrative elements:
-Whiskey
-A Jar
-A Femme Fatale
-A Highwayman
-A Lawman
However, across different interpretations, the song's setting moves to different counties, the name of the treasonous woman changes, and the lawman serves different authorities. I haven't done the legwork, but I get the feeling the song has been performed in different keys. It certainly has been through different rhythmic tumblers and fallen all over the place, timbre-wise. All this adds up to mean that "Whiskey" stays "Whiskey" no matter what you do to these things.
This happens in jazz a ton and is not really that weird in most genres of music. Anyone who's sat through a jazz appreciation class knows that "Autumn Leaves" has been done about sixty million different ways. Taken together, the many versions might even demonstrate that there are very few aspects of "Autumn Leaves" that make it what it is.
Weirdly, pop songs ordinarily seem much more rigid, and maybe it's record-shop pedantry that keeps people jumping on somebody's case for singing the wrong words, but something has gone wrong with that. I mean really, who cares if you know whether Britney Spears is saying she's a professional learner or an exceptional earner? (It's the latter for anyone keeping score -- which you shouldn't be.)
What's cool about "Whiskey" is that it's not set up to be expanded musically, although it certainly could be. Because it has lyrics and sort of an obvious storyline, you'd know "Whiskey" from another song, even if the melody and the chord progressions changed.
So one upshot of this is that the line from Metallica's version, which I love, is not actually even technically wrong, given that the lyrics to "Whiskey in the Jar" are not actually known. I'd like to do one more and say that they are not knowable, but that seems a little pomo and I've slogged through enough theory articles to know that that's mostly a cutesy thing theorists do to pat themselves on the back.
But I will take one more shot before I go for a jog. It strikes me as an enormous strength when a song (or a work) demonstrates sufficient flexibility to have its words rearranged, its characters altered, its instruments of performance electrified. Whiskey in the Jar is good whether the Dubliners, Thin Lizzy, or Metallica perform it. I haven't heard the Peter Paul and Mary version but that's probably alright too.
Mistaken or lazy reinterpretation may not be as laudable, but it would be interesting to see if there are any masters out there who can take something fairly unappealing and retroactively turn it into something awesome via the same kind of dinkering we see in "Whiskey."
Sidenote: Sort of a similar thing, although not as broad in scope, is the decision by "The Wire" to include different versions Tom Waits' (or maybe someone else's) "Way Down in the Hole." For more spelunking on "The Wire," check out a recent post by a hazy Sulks.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Wrong Lyrics
One of my favorite lines comes from Metallica's cover of the Thin Lizzy version of "Whiskey in the Jar," which from what I gather is actually some kind of Irish folk song or, failing that, one that was at least at one point performed by a band known as The Dubliners.
The line in question, sung by Hetfield, goes, "Here I am the ball and chain." It follows the line "Here I am in prison."
Other versions insert the grammatically correct "with," and though the words are slurred (Irish), the ball article may switch to indefinite. If that's the case, the metaphor and/or metonymy implicit in the line get totally wrecked, leaving the listener with some bland-ass lyric unfit for even a facebook profile shoutout.
[Side note: It's kind of a good idea to just drop this construction in everyday and not so everyday situations. When blogging: "here I am the keys and blogspot"; when swimming: "here i am the suit and water." Like, what if someone called you on the phone and said "what's up" and you answered "here I am the beer and TV."? The world would be a little better.]
So my favorite line is technically incorrect. This happens fairly often, and not only to me, I imagine. But it shouldn't really be wrong to have favorite lines where the blanks have been filled "incorrectly." The words in place are usually better -- I picked them out.
So to all you pedants, I'm just writing my own lyrics when I get em inaccurate so don't correct me because whoever wrote them in the first place did just a first draft and I'm a good editor. Plus I don't like blushing about being wrong about things.
The line in question, sung by Hetfield, goes, "Here I am the ball and chain." It follows the line "Here I am in prison."
Other versions insert the grammatically correct "with," and though the words are slurred (Irish), the ball article may switch to indefinite. If that's the case, the metaphor and/or metonymy implicit in the line get totally wrecked, leaving the listener with some bland-ass lyric unfit for even a facebook profile shoutout.
[Side note: It's kind of a good idea to just drop this construction in everyday and not so everyday situations. When blogging: "here I am the keys and blogspot"; when swimming: "here i am the suit and water." Like, what if someone called you on the phone and said "what's up" and you answered "here I am the beer and TV."? The world would be a little better.]
So my favorite line is technically incorrect. This happens fairly often, and not only to me, I imagine. But it shouldn't really be wrong to have favorite lines where the blanks have been filled "incorrectly." The words in place are usually better -- I picked them out.
So to all you pedants, I'm just writing my own lyrics when I get em inaccurate so don't correct me because whoever wrote them in the first place did just a first draft and I'm a good editor. Plus I don't like blushing about being wrong about things.
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Hemingway, Kerouac, and Fun Activities
Sulky and I were just juicing about The Sun Also Rises (you can tell he's reading it by some of the things he's been saying lately).
Sulks raised a question that comes up often enough: "I wonder how these people had the money to do these things?"
My gut response was "Maybe it was cheaper back then ... ?" which reeks of golden-age mythology that "everything was easier before."
I remember at 18 thinking how great it must have been in the 1950s to go drive around the country like Sal and Dean, and lamenting how America had gotten too dangerous and full of serial killers for anyone to actually hitch across the country anymore.
Living in Paris briefly a few years down the road, I felt the same pangs whenever I passed a cafe and saw a delicious-looking cake or some old guy sipping a little coffee and continued on because I thought I couldn't afford that kind of thing.
It's lamentable that hindsight allows us to slip into this bent nostalgia for activities that, when these authors did them, probably seemed as natural to them as several things that are readily possible for the children of the New Era Age.
So instead of getting sad about the faded glory of driving through Denver or lazing around in a Parisian flat, it's time for a catalog of awesome stuff we can still do.
1) Blogs (thanks to Sulky for the sugg): One day people will probably say "It must've been great when you could just sit around and blog, but now we have this other thing, so you can't do that anymore."
2) Fucked-up poor countries: The supposition being that eventually those will somehow disappear: "Man it must've been so awesome to go fight poverty and genocide in Darfur. Too bad we don't have that anymore."
3) Chinatown bus: When our generation's luminaries get discovered and it is revealed that those of them living on the East Coast used to ride these things, the Fung Wah and the 2000 Coach will seem like impossible relics -- cheap, dirty, adventurous links between some of the stinkingest cities in the world.
4) Poker: The Internet, Matt Damon and ESPN are already making/have already made this reckless toothgrind wholesome and common. Beware: Different forces are doing the same thing to recreational drugs of all varieties.
5) AIDS: When this gets cured, people will wonder about how thrilling and adventurous a dance with death sex had been.
6) T-shirts: I'm not sure what's going to happen to them, but the outlook isn't good.
And finally, several fun things that are now dying or being reinvented.
1) Zines -- now blogs.
2) Porn was once rare and harder to come by -- and sometimes controlled by the Mafia.
3) Race (???)
Sulks raised a question that comes up often enough: "I wonder how these people had the money to do these things?"
My gut response was "Maybe it was cheaper back then ... ?" which reeks of golden-age mythology that "everything was easier before."
I remember at 18 thinking how great it must have been in the 1950s to go drive around the country like Sal and Dean, and lamenting how America had gotten too dangerous and full of serial killers for anyone to actually hitch across the country anymore.
Living in Paris briefly a few years down the road, I felt the same pangs whenever I passed a cafe and saw a delicious-looking cake or some old guy sipping a little coffee and continued on because I thought I couldn't afford that kind of thing.
It's lamentable that hindsight allows us to slip into this bent nostalgia for activities that, when these authors did them, probably seemed as natural to them as several things that are readily possible for the children of the New Era Age.
So instead of getting sad about the faded glory of driving through Denver or lazing around in a Parisian flat, it's time for a catalog of awesome stuff we can still do.
1) Blogs (thanks to Sulky for the sugg): One day people will probably say "It must've been great when you could just sit around and blog, but now we have this other thing, so you can't do that anymore."
2) Fucked-up poor countries: The supposition being that eventually those will somehow disappear: "Man it must've been so awesome to go fight poverty and genocide in Darfur. Too bad we don't have that anymore."
3) Chinatown bus: When our generation's luminaries get discovered and it is revealed that those of them living on the East Coast used to ride these things, the Fung Wah and the 2000 Coach will seem like impossible relics -- cheap, dirty, adventurous links between some of the stinkingest cities in the world.
4) Poker: The Internet, Matt Damon and ESPN are already making/have already made this reckless toothgrind wholesome and common. Beware: Different forces are doing the same thing to recreational drugs of all varieties.
5) AIDS: When this gets cured, people will wonder about how thrilling and adventurous a dance with death sex had been.
6) T-shirts: I'm not sure what's going to happen to them, but the outlook isn't good.
And finally, several fun things that are now dying or being reinvented.
1) Zines -- now blogs.
2) Porn was once rare and harder to come by -- and sometimes controlled by the Mafia.
3) Race (???)
Ben and Aparna
Ben being gay all over the stage. All over it.
And Aparna being Asian (?) over less of the stage (she's smaller).
And Aparna being Asian (?) over less of the stage (she's smaller).
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