Category Archives: Popular culture

It DOES mean something, Mr. Natural

15 Replies

Totally off any subject at hand, and probably not worth reading, but I’m still reeling from having wasted two hours of my life, so why should you be spared…

In a post toward the end of last month, I made a completely superfluous reference to underground cartoonist Robert Crumb’s Mr. Natural character. I won’t be making such casual links in the future, at least, not to that individual’s creations. Last night, my wife and I watched "Crumb," the David Lynch-produced biographical documentary. We had sort of enjoyed "American Splendor," in which Paul Giamatti managed to make Harvey Pekar‘s excruciatingly mundane existence interesting. Since that oddball flick was based in the "reality" comic book illustrated by Mr. Crumb, we thought (no, I thought; I take full responsibility) the 1994 film about him might also be engaging. We were (I was) wrong.

I came away from the film with one overwhelming impression:

Boy, that R. Crumb is one twisted (expletive).

Excuse my implied language, but I just had no idea. And yet I should have. It’s right there in his work, and if there’s ever been a better illustration of the truism that "by their fruits ye shall know them," it is the work of Mr. Crumb. (And yes, I read the part of that chapter that said "judge not," but read on.)

I never was a fan of Zap Comix or any of Mr. Crumb’s other work, but I was exposed to some of it at the time (although not much more beyond the ubiquitous "Keep on Truckin’" thing, and the Janis Joplin/Big Brother and the Holding Company album cover and such). And back then, I just thought this was a guy whose imagination was a little out there on the fringe of the kind of countercultural stuff that shocked our parents but that I tended to shrug at. I didn’t embrace it, but I wasn’t all that horrified, either. I was very young, and had not yet figured out that in one sense of the word (see sense 2), "discrimination" can be a healthy thing.

If the documentary got it right, the stuff in those comics was not just the product of a warped, hyperactive imagination with a penchant for mocking social mores. The problem was, he wasn’t entirely making this stuff up. According to those interviewed for the film, those twisted characters acting out abnormal, fetishistic sexual obsessions with a complete lack of regard for the human objects of their perversions actually were R. Crumb, in a real sense. As former wife after former girlfriend (one of them a professional pornographer) after family member, and Mr. Crumb himself, repeatedly asserts in the film, he not only thought like that, he acted like that. At one point, he acknowledges that he doesn’t think he has ever actually loved any woman. His relationships — or what we learn of them — tend to bear this out. As for some of the other twisted stuff — such as the drawings that pushed extreme racial stereotypes far beyond mere satire — the viewer is left without any satisfactory explanation.

All of that said (and here’s where I get to the "judge not" part), the film also made clear that the tree that is Robert Crumb was severely bent as a twig. No, it’s not an excuse, but it does appear to be part of the explanation. As Mr. Crumb and his brothers related, their father brutalized them (breaking the artist’s collarbone one Christmas) and their mother was an amphetamine addict who attacked the father (to the point that he wore makeup to work to cover where she had clawed his face). Both of the brothers were withdrawn and dysfunctional — neither was able to make his way in life in even the unconventional manner that their famous sibling has. One of them, who lived with their mother, never ventured forth into the world and spent his days in a psychiatric prescription drug fog, committed suicide a year after the filming.

There were also two sisters, but they declined to be a part of the film, indicating that at least someone in the family was capable of making good decisions.

It was profoundly depressing. And if I ever found anything in Mr. Crumb’s work even mildly amusing before, I won’t in the future, knowing where his "art" comes from.

Come to think of it, the fact that I watched the film all the way to the end makes me wonder a little about myself. And if you read all the way to the end of this, I sort of wonder about you, too.

Back to work.

It’s even gotten to ME

4 Replies

How exciting is tomorrow’s matchup between the Gamecocks and the Tigers? This exciting: Even I am caught up in it. Kinda. Sorta.

I am just about the last person you would ever call a football fan. Baseball, yes. Sometimes even basketball. But mostly, my interest in sports extends only to those that I can play, such as golf and tennis. And I have little interest in watching other people play those. If I watch a tennis match on television for five minutes, I want to turn off the tube and get out there myself. (Meaning that I’m either more of a doer than a watcher — which is doubtful, given my love for reading and watching movies — or I’m just a self-centered cuss.)

Anyway, I’ve been sufficiently caught up in the contact high of excitement about the Gamecocks — something that started about the time of the win over Tennessee, I believe — that I actually watchedSpurrier part of last week’s game on the tube. And enjoyed it.

More than that, I actually read one of the advance stories about tomorrow’s big game in the paper this past week. Not a people feature or anything like that, but this story about a real football-geek facet of the game, built around stats. I started reading just out of curiosity, wondering what a "red zone" was (and unlike many such stories, geared only to the cognoscenti, it actually told me, once I got to the jump page), and then got caught up in the fact that it seemed Steve Spurrier’s approach to football was much like my approach to life (or what I like to think is my approach to life): Never give up, and never settle. He doesn’t go for the field goal when there’s a chance for a touchdown. Neither would I. Of course, I would never punt, either — but then, I tend to take things to obsessive extremes.

So, having done the required reading and whipped myself into an appropriate state of anticipation, I’m all set for the big game. And if I had ESPN2 on my TV at home, I’d watch it. I really would.

But lacking that, I’ll have to settle for the radio. If it’s on the radio. I assume it will be.

Anyway: Go, ‘Cocks.

Cleaning up the nation

7 Replies

A remarkable thing happened at precisely 7:47 p.m. yesterday, as I was driving home from work and "tuning in the shine on the light night dial."

A local radio station played Elvis Costello‘s indictment of the sterile radio industry, "Radio Radio." You may have noted previously that I have a certain affinity for this song, as I do for the work of Declan MacManus in general.

Anyway, it was a bit of a milestone. The new WXRY, 99.3 — first recommended to me by one of my children — is doing a very creditable job of living up to its stated mission as an "independent alternative station," to "make radio special again." The management says it believes that the following principles "are essential for a great radio station:"

  • Intelligent presentation, passion and respect for the music
  • No limits on the number of songs we play
  • Support local music
  • Treat listeners with respect
  • Intense community involvement
  • The courage to be different
  • Avoid the trap of playing the same songs 7 or 8 times a day

That’s from the Web site. On the air, it also promotes itself as a station that doesn’t run "adult entertainment" ads that send you lunging for the dial when you have your kids in the car with you.

I like that. I don’t like the fact that sometimes it’s a little hard to get the station without static, and I can’t say I like everything they play, but it’s worth checking out — you know, for when you’re driving in the car and it’s not safe to be reading the newspaper.

Missed opportunity

Leave a reply

I was trying to get a bit of work done just now — and yes, I do occasionally attempt that, even though, as Jake Barnes noted, it’s part of the ethics of journalism never to appear to be actually working (when you get to that last link, search for "newspaper") — and the mobile started buzzing.

I didn’t recognize the number, but answered.

Me: "Hello."
Female voice, with a tone as though there’s something wrong about my voice: "Gracie?"
Me: "No Gracie here. Sounds like you’ve got the wrong number."
She, sounding less accusatory: "Oh, I’m sorry."
Me, taking it like a sport: "Not at all. Quite all right."

She hangs up, and only then, when it is a second too late, do I realize that I should have said: "When you do find Gracie, say goodnight for me."

Feliz Nueve de Octubre

2 Replies

Happy John Lennon’s birthday, all you fans out there! May you be a whole lot happier than he was, in spite of all his advantages.

And no, I’m not the kind of guy who goes around with totally pointless Beatles trivia in his head. Lennon Well, actually, I am the kind of guy who goes around with totally pointless Beatles trivia in his head, but not to the extent of remembering their birthdays. That’s like something chicks would do, man, like remembering their fave foods (John: corn flakes) or something. And as I age, I find I can’t perfectly remember all of the words to all of their songs any more, so there’s a good chance that’s been crowded out by more important stuff. Not a certainty, but a chance.

No, I remember that the ninth of October is John Lennon’s birthday because Nueve de Octubre is also Guayaquil Independence Day. Now, you might not find that credible — who goes around remembering anything beyond the Fourth of July and maybe Bastille Day, right? But I lived in Ecuador back when I was in the fifth and sixth grades, and not only was Nueve de Octubre the name of the main drag in Guayaquil, but we got a whole week off from school for it. We got a Scroogesque day-and-a-half for Christmas, but a week for the day that Guayaquil tried to secede from the rest of the country. Lest you think that means Guayaquil is more nationalistic than Catholic, I should probably point out that since we were south of the equator, the school year was backwards, and Christmas fell just days before summer began. There was little point in taking off a lot of time at the end of December when we were going to be off from early January until April. Besides, the week-long celebration also included the Día de la Raza, which we think of as Columbus Day.

And OK, I also remember that John Lennon was born during the Blitz, as German bombers were attacking Liverpool in 1940. That’s a pretty cool factoid, I always thought. But I don’t know his fave color. Or I didn’t until I looked it up (green).

Get a little respect

1 Reply

Based on the fact that it garnered no comments, I’m thinking not many people bothered to read this little ditty from yesterday — probably because there wasn’t a whole lot of substance to it in and of itself, I’ll admit. (The Ron Morris column it was based on was much better.)

But if you didn’t read it, you probably didn’t follow the link back to this older (and marginally more substantial) posting, and that would be a shame. Because when I looked at that older posting, I noticed I had failed to provide an explanatory link for the phrase,  un’ uomo di rispetto, and so I went out surfing and found one. And I thought it was pretty cool, so I write this to draw your attention to it.

Of course, you’re not going to like it unless you’re a Godfather fan. I particularly liked it because it was so much like one of my many get-rich-quick schemes that I’ve never followed up on (probably because I don’t want badly enough to be rich). It came out of an idle conversation one day with a colleague while we were riding in a car and had the time to be idle. The idea was to do a self-help book that would actually sell to guys, rather than just to the Bridget Jones types out there. It would have been lessons for life gleaned from Mario Puzo‘s masterpiece — both the book and the movie. The title could have been something like, "Listen to Your Godfather." Or whatever.

Anyway, the lessons would be based on such pearls as, "Never tell anybody outside the family what you’re thinking," and "Spend time with your family… a man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man."

Basically, every other page would have elaborated for a few paragraphs on one of the aphorisms, with an appropriate still from the movie on the facing page — assuming we could get the rights. I think it was thinking about going through the hassle of dealing with all of those pezzonovantes in Hollywood and New York trying to get the rights that put me off the project.

I never figured out what to do with the most oft-repeated saying from the movie: "This is business, not personal." It probably would have required an introductory essay at the beginning of the book explaining that the reason you need to buy the book is that you might think you understand the significance of that phrase, but you really don’t. See, the movie actually failed on one level. The point of the book, revealed in a soliloquy by Michael just before he goes off to kill Sollozzo and Capt. McCluskey, is that all the things that people say are "business, not personal" are actually personal. He explained that understanding that, and living his life accordingly, was the secret of his father’s "greatness."

This is a major theme for Puzo, which he explored more transparently in The Fourth K, which is about a president who, because of a personal tragedy — the murder of his daughter by terrorists — uses the power of his position to launch a worldwide War on Terror that is in reality a personal vendetta. And no, all you antiwar folks out there, the president’s name wasn’t "Bush." It was "Kennedy."

“WORK!?!?!” Giving Maynard his due

Leave a reply

I was grateful to my colleague Mike Fitts for pointing this out to me. Mike had heard me moan about how Maynard G. Krebs had been slighted in the coverage of Bob Denver‘s death.

Imagine being remembered forever as Gilligan. Is that fair to anybody? I mean, Maynard may not have been television’s most outstanding citizen, but he was an original. He may seem in shallow hindsight to have done nothing more than present the TV stereotype of a "beatnik" (a term that itself showed an unhip cluelessness, since it was a mainstream columnist’s bastardization of Kerouac‘s more meaningful "Beat" coinage). But there was no such thing as a beatnik stereotype on television in 1959. Bob Denver invented it.

I don’t remember a lot of details from "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" the way I can recount episodes of "The Andy Griffith Show" or, yes, "Gilligan’s Island," but I do have one memory that had significant implications for my future profession.

Oddly enough, it was from Dobie Gillis that I learned of the concepts of voting and elections. As I recall, however dimly, there was an episode in which Dobie was being encouraged to run for class president, and he at first rejected the idea, saying something like, "How could I run for president? I’m not popular enough." I was confused, and asked my parents what being popular had to do with being president.

Understand that as far as I was concerned, Dwight Eisenhower had always been president. It had never occurred to me that there was a process involved in becoming president. So my parents explained to me about how you had to have enough people actually vote for you in this thing called an "election" to be chosen for such an office. I remember being shocked. I think it took Ike down a peg or two in my estimation, learning that his administration wasn’t simply something that was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. It caused me to be a little less in awe of the office.

This had to have been in the first season of the show, because I remember following the 1960 election
pretty closely — once Dobie and Maynard and the gang had hipped me to what it was all about.

The Bene Gesserit way

1 Reply

Deleted from my Friday column fairly early in the writing process. It just didn’t work, and wasn’t worth the digression. But I pass it along for any sci-fi fans out there…

    The Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear from the science fiction classic Dune sort of sums up the self-congratulatory (and probably selective) memory I have of the event: “I must not fear…. I will face my fear. I will allow my fear to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone I will turn my inner eye to see its path. And where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
    Well, that’s all very well for fictional characters with superhuman abilities, but for ordinary folks living below sea level and facing a Category 5 hurricane, such a philosophy is downright stupid. In the aftermath of Katrina, I say take that litany, dry it out, and sell it as fertilizer.

You see? It just didn’t fit the tone, or anything. I was going to have to shoehorn it in with some transitional gyrations, so I just ditched it.

Out amongst ’em

Leave a reply

    Just a few more minutes — a precious few — and the mob will be sufficiently distracted by their bread and circuses that I can make my escape. Until then, I’m trapped…

Forgive me, but this situation brings out the very worst, most prejudiced, least tolerant elements of my character.

I was out amongst ’em today. By "’em," I choose a semi-articulate means of expressing my strong sense of "otherness" when compared to a certain very broad swath of the folk of our land.

I’m talking about football fans. Yes, yes, I know, many football fans are otherwise good and decent people in whom I would find many fine and admirable qualities. Many of them are friends of mine. (But we bigots always say that, don’t we?) But when they are in fan mode, I find them intolerable.

I suppose this is to some extent, like all prejudices, an irrational response. I have an excuse, though. I think I’m suffering from a mild form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Football has been very, very bad to me.

I haven’t been a football fan myself since 1969, when that snotty Joe Namath led the Jets to beat my team, the Baltimore Colts, in a drastic distortion of the natural order. I had waited what had seemed like forever (a year or two is like forever at that age) for Johnny Unitas and company to prevail over the hated Packers, and they finally had. That meant they had achieved their rightful place as the best team in the world. Sure, there was that mere formality of a post-season exhibition against the AFL, but everyone knew that the AFL was profoundly inferior to the NFL, so it hardly counted, right?

What that stunning experience taught me was that football is an unforgivably capricious sport. Too much rides on the uncontrollable flukes of a single game. In baseball, as in life, you’ve got to be good over the long haul to achieve the pennant. That builds character. In football — because the game is so insanely harsh upon its practitioners’ bodies — there are so few games that every single one is all-important. You can’t afford to lose a single one, if you want to be the champs. Such inflated stakes make each game ridiculously overimportant to fans. They lose all sense of proportion, which is very off-putting.

But I didn’t really learn to hate the game until I came to work at The State, and spent my first year here being the editor in charge on Saturdays. You can see where this is going, can’t you? It seemed that the sadists over in the Roundhouse had contrived to schedule every single home game that year to begin shortly after the time I had to be at work — meaning that there was no way I could get to work in less than an hour and a half. You’ll recall that back then, the newspaper offices were located in the very shadow of the Grid Temple. We’re a little farther away now, but not enough so to make it easy to get in and out on a game day. Oh, excuse me, isn’t that supposed to be capitalized — Game Day?

I would travel around and around a circle with a five-mile radius centered upon Williams-Brice, probing for weaknesses in the wall of flag-bedecked vehicles, looking for a way in to work, always frustrated. Up Bluff or Shop road? No. Around Beltline to Rosewood and back in? No. A frontal assault up Assembly? That was as mad as Pickett’s Charge. Through Olympia? Are you kidding?

By the time I was finally at the office, I was foaming at the mouth. Seriously, I wasn’t fit to talk to for hours, I was filled with such hostility for every single fan (you know the word is short for "fanatic," don’t you?) out there. I was in such a degraded, paranoid state of mind that I actually believed (temporarily) that they had all conspired to cause me this frustration intentionally (they couldn’t possibly be enjoying that gridlock themselves, so there HAD to be a nefarious motive somewhere). My embarrassing discourses on the subject to fellow employees were as profane as they were unwelcome. I think the worst day was the one when I was almost arrested by a Highway Patrolman who refused to let me up Key Road to The State‘s parking lot when I had finally worked my way to within 100 yards of it — an obstinacy on his part to which I responded with a distinct edge of barely-contained rage.

This afternoon, I had to go out a little after 1 p.m., and had to pass twice through the heart of the fan encampment. Folks were already tailgating. There was no yardarm in sight, but I’m quite certain the sun wouldn’t have been over it if there had been, and these folks were already getting a six-hour jump on the liquoring-up process. (They couldn’t really like football, if they need that much anesthetic before a game.) This shouldn’t have bothered me, but I couldn’t stop thinking thoughts such as these: This is Thursday, a workday. I’ve got more work waiting for me back at the office than I can get done by the weekend, and there’s a war going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Gulf Coast from Texas to Alabama has just been essentially wiped off the map, the price of fuel has jumped practically 50 percent in a matter of days, and these people can’t think of anything better to do with their time.

But they’re not the problem. It’s me. My response is contemptibly irrational. I’m only harming myself. Case in point: I’ve been ranting about this so long, I’ve almost lost my window of opportunity to escape before the fair-weather types start slipping out at halftime and clogging Shop Road.

Gotta go. Bye. I’ll try to be more civil and tolerant of my fellow humans in my next posting. But I’m not promising anything.

Physicianow, heal thyself

48 Replies

I was completely stunned when a regular correspondent shared this with me via e-mail. I could only respond thus:

What a presumptuous pile of pontification! How dare he presume to know the soul of another this way, and to pass judgment on it based upon such guesses? Does he think his literary license gives him the right to write omnisciently about real people the way he does fictional characters? Well, it doesn’t.

I’ve got major problems with this president, including many decisions he’s made (or not made) with regard to this crucial war. I often wonder whether I want us to succeed in Iraq more than George W. Bush does, and some days I’m quite sure I do.

But as healthy as my editorialist’s ego is, I would NEVER have the gargantuan gall to write something like this about another human being. I suppose one has to be a lionized author, sitting in the Hamptons contemplating in awe one’s own greatness, to produce rhetorical excess this extreme. Alas, we lesser lights must content ourselves with more humble assertions.

You know, he just plain looks a lot more intellectual than I do. Maybe if I grew back the beard, I could be more pompous, too. Not that I’d try to compete in HIS league.

You might want to leave this sort of thing to Dylan

8 Replies

Sure, Mick, "You call yourself a Christian; I call you a hypocrite" COULD be made to rhyme with "Shut the door, you silly twit," but you’d really have to WORK at it, and I’m afraid the strain would show.

I’m just not sensing another "Honky-Tonk Women" here. You and Keith put your heads together (if Keith can find his) and get back to me…

What’s WITH these people?

7 Replies

Celebrity worship is a mystery to me. This puzzlement is deepened by the case of Michael Jackson.

OK, I can sort of understand how someone might have become a fan of his at one point. In the early ’80s, he was a remarkably talented young black man. But now that he is no longer young, or black, or manly in any way you’d notice, and hasn’t put forth any striking evidence of talent lately, about all he’s got left is being remarkable. And not in a good way.

I’m not saying this to be mean or anything like that. I just don’t see how, beyond memories of some catchy tunes and dancing that seemed to defy physical laws, anybody would feel any sort of emotional involvement in anything that Mr. Jackson does, or anything that happens to him or doesn’t happen to him.

And yet there are people who really, really cared what happened in his trial. Michael_jackson_fans They were willing to put their whole lives in suspense over whether he was found "guilty" or "not guilty." They made it their business to be there at the courthouse, as close to his side as possible. They were ecstatic at the verdict.

What I want to know is, Why? It seems to me that even a cursory examination of the stipulated facts regarding Mr. Jackson would give any sensible person considerable pause. I mean, I can seeing pitying a man who lives in a fantasy world and sleeps with young boys to whom he is not related (even innocently), and has obsessively done bizarre things to his own body. But I can’t see how anyone would admire him, or hitch one’s own happiness to his fate.

I’d appreciate any insight that anyone out there has into this phenomenon. If I could understand this, maybe I could understand the whole celebrity culture.

Frood, where’s my towel?

1 Reply

I’m totally befuddled — like some hapless twit who doesn’t know where his towel is.

I’ve been hesitating to go see "Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" because I’ve waited so long for it, and I don’t want to be bitterly disappointed. I’ve read such contradictory reviews. The one we ran in The State made it sound awful, and it seemed to be written by someone who knew his way around Douglas Adams’ universe. Then The New York Times made it sound delightful. This made me hopeful. That’s a pretty good paper, right? And has Martin Freeman ever been in anything bad? (Then again, the Times had kind things to say about the awful American ripoff of "The Office." And the original version of that is the only thing I’ve ever seen Martin Freeman in.)

There are reports that true believers are split on the matter.

Help me out, froods. If you’re a true fan of Arthur, Ford, Zaphod and the rest — and you have to have read all five volumes in the Hitchhiker Trilogy, and read the first two repeatedly, to qualify — and you’ve seen the film, let me know.

Which is it? Should I avoid it like the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal? Would it cause me to walk out in the middle, gratuitousy muttering "Belgium" under my breath? It so, tell me now. But if it’s really hoopy, just say, "Don’t Panic!"

Meanwhile, back at Wernham Hogg

Leave a reply

"Professionalism is … and that’s what I want." — David Brent

I haven’t had time to post anything today because I’m really behind. Fridays are horrible around here — all those weekend pages to put out, plus write a Sunday column — and I’ve just complicated things by dropping one column idea and picking up another one that I’ll have to do from scratch.

Of course, I would have had to do the other one from scratch, even though I’ve had the idea for days. Trouble is, I’m behind on everything because I spent all yesterday afternoon in one of those management training things that they make you do every once in a while if you work at a large publicly-traded company. Basically, I spent several hours being warned yet again about avoiding sexual harrassment, age discrimination, oppressing the workers, etc. So I guess I’m not going to be doing any of that stuff any more. ("So what does that leave me?" I wanted to ask, but didn’t, seeing as how I’m a vice president and all, and supposed to set a good example.)

After the session, we had to fill out a critique form, and there was space to suggest ways to improve the process. At the time I couldn’t think of one, but now I have:

These things would be a lot more fun if they were like the training day episode on "The Office" — the original BBC series, of course, not the American knockoff. In fact, since I have to do a second half-day session next Tuesday (not to mention another a couple of weeks after that), I think I might bring in my acoustic guitar and lead the group in a rousing chorus of "Free Love Freeway." Assuming Debbie doesn’t think that’s too disruptive, of course. Professionalism is … and that’s what I want.