Introducing two words that I swear I came up with independently, only to discover that that accursed urban dictionary has already recorded their existence. Whatever, I present you here with my own definitions.
1) baloneous, adj. Having the quality or consistency of baloney, that is to say, malarkey, flim-flam, flapdoodle, etc. Acceptable extensions of the term, courtesy of a jazz musician, a friend, and the Central Square restaurant that inspired him, include: baloneous monk, and thence: baloneous monkish.
Example: His dissertation comparing Barth and Barthes just seemed unmistakably baloneous.
2) crayfish, n. and/or interjection. The next stage of the evolution that has proceeded this far as follows: crazy --> cray --> cray-cray --> crayfish.
Example: So-and-so will be there, and so-and-so, and so-and-so... Crayfish!!!
Friday, December 29, 2017
Cookies
So remember when everyone made fun of Cookie Monster for singing a song called "A Cookie is a Sometimes Food"? Here surely was a case of P.C. run amok. "Even the Cookie Monster can't have cookies anymore in this helicopter-parenting culture of ours! How depressing and humorless of them. "
Except that the title of the song is actually kind of a clever, learned reference to a Gershwin number from Porgy and Bess: "A Woman is a Sometime Thing." Which makes it all a much better joke.
The moral: never assume you are cleverer or have a better sense of humor than Sesame Street.
Except that the title of the song is actually kind of a clever, learned reference to a Gershwin number from Porgy and Bess: "A Woman is a Sometime Thing." Which makes it all a much better joke.
The moral: never assume you are cleverer or have a better sense of humor than Sesame Street.
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
Bo Diddley beat
There is a thing called the Bo Diddley beat. You will recognize it as soon as you hear it. It is one of the fundamental sounds of rock and roll. Sort of a "Wilhelm Scream" of music, if you will.
But there is one example of its appearance in the world of music that is not currently recorded in its Wikipedia entry. It forms the basic rhythm of "The Naked Handstand Man," the song apparently written by a group of surfer bums, when they were teenagers, about the father of Sandra Tsing Loh -- who, among his other eccentricities, as she has often regaled us NPR listeners, does in fact perform naked handstands on the beaches of Southern California. Duh-duh-DUH-duh-duh -DUH-DUH/ He's the naked handstand maa-aaan.
So that explains at last why, as a kid, when you first heard this radio story, the "Naked Handstand Man" song sounded so strangely familiar -- so unmistakably rock and roll -- even though it was the first time you were exposed to it.
But there is one example of its appearance in the world of music that is not currently recorded in its Wikipedia entry. It forms the basic rhythm of "The Naked Handstand Man," the song apparently written by a group of surfer bums, when they were teenagers, about the father of Sandra Tsing Loh -- who, among his other eccentricities, as she has often regaled us NPR listeners, does in fact perform naked handstands on the beaches of Southern California. Duh-duh-DUH-duh-duh -DUH-DUH/ He's the naked handstand maa-aaan.
So that explains at last why, as a kid, when you first heard this radio story, the "Naked Handstand Man" song sounded so strangely familiar -- so unmistakably rock and roll -- even though it was the first time you were exposed to it.
Sugar Water
So, browsing through the 2004 edition of the Rolling Stone Album Guide, one reads about a group called Cibo Matto, made up of two Japanese ex-pats in New York who write songs about food (you know, like, "Apple," and "Birthday Cake," and "Know Your Chicken"), and one feels suddenly and strangely pulled to listen to every song they ever produced. One starts on YouTude with "Sugar Water," and you think -- oh, this song! Well, this song is famous. I've heard this loads of times. This band must be better known than I thought.
Then you realize -- oh, it's actually not that famous. I've just heard it a million times because it appears in that one scene that I've watched a million times from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in the episode "When She Was Bad" -- that part where she weirdly tempts Xander and then leaves the Bronze (which is host to many a forgettable mid-90s music act that never made it far beyond its appearance on this show) and Cordelia tells her to stop being so mean because she might lose "even the weirdo friends that you currently have," or something like that.
And strangely, you love this song, "Sugar Water," by Cibo Matto. Strangely, it sounds indescribably beautiful. The music of angels. The loveliest thing you've ever heard.
And one starts to credit a theory propounded in Aeon a little while back: that the main reason we enjoy any piece of music has not a lot to do with its intrinsic quality, if there is such a thing -- but with the fact that we've heard it before.
Then you realize -- oh, it's actually not that famous. I've just heard it a million times because it appears in that one scene that I've watched a million times from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in the episode "When She Was Bad" -- that part where she weirdly tempts Xander and then leaves the Bronze (which is host to many a forgettable mid-90s music act that never made it far beyond its appearance on this show) and Cordelia tells her to stop being so mean because she might lose "even the weirdo friends that you currently have," or something like that.
And strangely, you love this song, "Sugar Water," by Cibo Matto. Strangely, it sounds indescribably beautiful. The music of angels. The loveliest thing you've ever heard.
And one starts to credit a theory propounded in Aeon a little while back: that the main reason we enjoy any piece of music has not a lot to do with its intrinsic quality, if there is such a thing -- but with the fact that we've heard it before.
A koan for the 2016 elections
From a person who liked Bernie Sanders before everyone else did, but who swallowed hard and supported Clinton when it came down to it the way everyone else ought to have done.
Ahem, the koan:
The only good thing about Hillary Clinton losing the 2016 election is that Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election.
Ahem, the koan:
The only good thing about Hillary Clinton losing the 2016 election is that Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election.
A bald assertion for the start of the Holidays
I don't particularly want to bother substantiating this point, so, at the behest of a friend, I will just assert it. Besides, I trust it will not prove controversial to anyone:
Everyone who is worried about a "war on Christmas" has it perfectly backward, because Christmas wasn't that big of a deal, or such a central part of our domestic and cultural life, until it became essentially secularized and entered the mainstream of American culture as a part of our "civil religion," rather than as a part of Christianity.
We all started caring about Christmas in exact proportion to the extent to which it stopped being about Jesus. "Christmas" in this country is really not about Jesus, and never has been. It's about the United States, and Charles Dickens, and a handful of modern liberal values that provide a surface-coating of moral coherence to this ever-fracturing society.
Everyone who is worried about a "war on Christmas" has it perfectly backward, because Christmas wasn't that big of a deal, or such a central part of our domestic and cultural life, until it became essentially secularized and entered the mainstream of American culture as a part of our "civil religion," rather than as a part of Christianity.
We all started caring about Christmas in exact proportion to the extent to which it stopped being about Jesus. "Christmas" in this country is really not about Jesus, and never has been. It's about the United States, and Charles Dickens, and a handful of modern liberal values that provide a surface-coating of moral coherence to this ever-fracturing society.
Santa Claus
When you are a teenager, it seems very knowing the first time you think back to that scene in Peter Pan where they all go "I do believe in Fairies, I do believe in Fairies, I do I do I do believe in Fairies," or to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and you say -- belief in God is just as ridiculous as all of those things!
News flash -- there's a reason all of those things are strangely reminiscent of debates around belief in God. Because all of those things were created by nineteenth and twentieth century writers and journalists who were transparently using them as code for belief in God. They are all drenched in the rhetoric of faith and doubt that derive from Victorian and Edwardian debates between skepticism and evangelicalism.
More people, and for more of recent history, have entertained serious doubts as to the existence of God that is dreamt of in the philosophy of the typical American teenager. The doubt about God came first. Belief in God became relegated to the ranks of the juvenile sometime in the reign of Queen Victoria. Santa Claus and the rest of them were a later addition. They entered our public consciousness as an in-joke among faithless adults. So there.
News flash -- there's a reason all of those things are strangely reminiscent of debates around belief in God. Because all of those things were created by nineteenth and twentieth century writers and journalists who were transparently using them as code for belief in God. They are all drenched in the rhetoric of faith and doubt that derive from Victorian and Edwardian debates between skepticism and evangelicalism.
More people, and for more of recent history, have entertained serious doubts as to the existence of God that is dreamt of in the philosophy of the typical American teenager. The doubt about God came first. Belief in God became relegated to the ranks of the juvenile sometime in the reign of Queen Victoria. Santa Claus and the rest of them were a later addition. They entered our public consciousness as an in-joke among faithless adults. So there.
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