Sophistry's Choice

I'm as big a fan of the grand statement or the sweeping generalization as the next person, but lately I've picked up on a journalistic trend that crosses the line from informed objectivity into subjective dark-stabbery.

These statements roughly fit the following equation:

"Without the trailblazing of (X) there would never have been a (Y) or (Z)."

Without The Andy Williams Show, Sly and the Family Stone wouldn't have this pic of themselves.

Here's an example from the otherwise excellent August Vanity Fair article "Sly Stone's Higher Power" written by David Kamp (p.175):

"... his December 1969 single "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," which, with its chanted unison vocals and slap bass, effectively invented 1970's funk–without it, no Parliament Funkadelic, no Ohio Players, no Earth, Wind & Fire..."

I have no issue with the statement about 1970's funk, as Family Stone bassist Larry Graham's new "Thumpin' and Pluckin'" technique marked a sea change in funky rhythm sections. What seems preposterous is the "without that song, no P-Funk, Ohio Players, etc" assertion. There's a huge difference between "influenced by" and "would never have existed without," no?

without Larry Graham, there would have been no Graham Central Station.

Especially when you look at the facts. George Clinton formed The Parliaments in 1956, and his first album as leader of Funkadelic was recorded in 1969 and released in 1970. The Ohio Players were playing under different names as early as 1959. Earth Wind & Fire was founded in 1969.

Even if Kamp was trying to say (as I think he was) that those bands wouldn't have existed as we know them today, his reasoning still has logic and history holes in it.

This summer's Wimbledon saw Roger Federer equal Bjorn Borg's record of winning five consecutive titles. Borg himself was in the stands watching the semis and finals, which gave rise to repeated comments from the announcers along the lines of "without Borg, there would be no Federer." Huh?

This year Major League Baseball celebrated the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's breaking of the color barrier when he was called up to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. In a pre-game special on Robinson, the host said (and I'm paraphrasing from memory here), "not only would there be no Barry Bonds without Jackie Robinson, but there wouldn't have been a Rosa Parks either."

we have only Jackie Robinson to blame for this.

I think I can safely say, with no disrespect to Robinson's amazing and hugely important legacy, that if it wasn't him, it would certainly have been someone else. Sure, Larry Doby or whoever else it would have been might not have handled it with the stoicism and grace under pressure that Robinson did, but history (including Ms. Parks' act of definace eight years later) would ultimately have played out in similar fashion.

If you think of it, let me know if you've heard other examples of the "if not for the genius of (X) there never would have been a (Y)" argument.

And you writers out there, let's try and keep the WHAT IF?-style alternate universe hyperbole to a minumum.

Dog Ears #3: Watchmen

As it's now been established that I'm a Newsweek reader, I had no idea that Time Magazine had published a list of "the 100 best English-language Novels from 1923-Present" in 2005 until I read the back jacket copy of my newly purchased graphic novel WATCHMEN.

There's a good reason they all look so glum.

WATCHMEN, written by Alan Moore (creator of the underrated V FOR VENDETTA), illustrated/lettered by Dave Gibbons, and originally published in serial form by DC Comics in 1986-87, was the only graphic novel named to the Time 100. I picked it up because Damon Lindelof, the co-creator of ABC's LOST, has dropped the occasional hint that some of the show's inspirations were derived from the apparently hugely influential WATCHMEN. I couldn't resist the challenge to see if I could glean some new insights into my favorite still-running show (where have you gone SAXONDALE!?), and other than a couple of Frank Miller graphic novels I hadn't read any comics since the Marvel-ocentric heyday of my youth.

WHAT IF? was more than a comic, it was a pre-teen mantra.

WATCHMEN quickly overcame my skepticism about its placement on the list (I've now read 24 of the Time 100 and am eager to read one more to get that nice round percentage) and continued my recent trend of reading books that really delivered the goods down the home stretch. As with TCOMC, I was struck by a number of exceptionally written (or just plain fun to read) passages and took note of words that were either unfamiliar or needed a look-up to refresh my memory.

If there seem to be some long quotes for a graphic novel, it bears noting that at the end of each chapter there are a variety of "inserts" in the form of articles, book excerpts, interviews, etc. taken from the world of the Watchmen.

OK, with no further ado...

Chapter 3, Page 31
nepenthes |nəˈpenθēz| noun 1 (also nepenthe) |-θē| poetic/literary, a drug described in Homer's Odyssey as banishing grief or trouble from a person's mind. • any drug or potion bringing welcome forgetfulness. ORIGIN: via Latin from Greek nēpenthēs ‘dispelling pain,’ from nē- ‘not’ + penthos ‘grief.’

The view from the aptly-named restaurant Nepenthe's deck in Big Sur.

Chapter 3, Page 31
The new breed of villains... weren't as much fun to fight. All the cases I ended up investigating during the 50's seemed sordid and depressing and quite often blood-chillingly horrible. I don't know what it was... there just seemed to be a sort of bleak, uneasy feeling in the air. It was as if some essential element of our lives, of all our lives, was vanishing before we knew entirely what it was."

Chapter 9, Page 6

"There is no future. There is no past. Do you see? Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet."

Chapter 11, Page 23
... and from the decks above a cheer went up, both gross and black, its stench affronting heaven.

Chapter 11, Page 32
"Oh, and I've heard some interesting new music from Jamaica... a sort of hybrid between electronic music and reggae. It's a fascinating study in the new musical forms generated when a largely pre-technological culture is given access to modern recording techniques without the technological preconceptions that we've allowed to accumulate, limiting our vision. It's called dub music. You'd like it, I'm sure."

Chapter 12, Page 7
tachyon |ˈtakēˌän| noun, Physics, a hypothetical particle that travels faster than light. ORIGIN 1960s: from tachy- [swift] + -on .

Ah, NOW i understand what a tachyon is.

Chapter 12, Page 27

I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end.

"In the end"? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.

This last quote really affected me, in the same way that laying on the beach and staring up at the night sky does.

ESPN Zones Out

There's a great line in an old KING OF THE HILL episode where Connie stays with the Hills while her parents go to Maui on business. When Hank takes a look at the stack of reading material Connie brings with her, he says "Newsweek? Not in this house."

"Win-GO that Danica Patrick is Hot!"

"Shut up Dale."

Well, even Time reader and ardent sports fan Hank Hill would have to agree with Newsweek's recent evisceration of SportsCenter's "Who's Now" faux bracket-style competition, the latest evidence of ESPN's fall from glory.

"Everything about the segment is so artificial, from concept to execution, that watching it is like chewing Styrofoam."

Sad, but true. The departure from ESPN of longtime, arguably definitive SportsCenter anchor Dan Patrick further highlights the fact that slowly but very surely ESPN's focus has shifted away from cheeky-yet-highbrow sports reporting and killer highlights and inexorably towards populist celebutainment and tabloid pap.

How else to explain 25 year-old actress/Maxim girl Jessica Biel determining who is more "Now": Tiger Woods or Dwayne Wade?

Before we go any further, is there any doubt in anyone's mind that Tiger Woods is gonna "win"? Oh, right, nobody cares, because "Who's Now" is a meaningless and silly title determined by questionable arbiters of the zeitgeist like Biel, the ubiquitous Shaun White, and former Now-boy Keyshawn Johnson.

The guys at the barbershop are always wondering who would win between these two.

Maybe it's unfair to target ESPN for its overreliance on puff pieces, interminable tearjerker and image rehabilitation segments, and New York Post-style blowharding about off-the-field troubles with the law and/or spousal fidelity. Do we (or more to the point, should we) care more about what Brewers ace Ben Sheets' trip to the DL means to the NL Central pennant race or what Pacman Jones is alleged to have done outside a strip club two months ago? Is ESPN tarnishing it's golden goose by focusing so much time and effort on the sordid personal lives of these sports stars, or is it creating and stoking audience demand to find out what these Neanderthals have gotten themselves into this week?

That's an E-6 for ESPN if you're scoring at home... or if you're by yourself.

I guess I remember a time when ESPN doubters were uncomfortable with the perception that SportsCenter anchors like Keith Olbermann, Kenny Mayne and Craig Kilborn were stealing the spotlight away from the games they covered and onto themselves by incorporating their unique brand of humor into the telecasts. Isn't that preferable to both the increasingly interchangeable anchors and the games themselves taking a backseat to the soap-opera of what the athletes' off-field lives and Q ratings are like "Now"?

Word Salad Surgery

I used to love hip-hop, and I still have a great deal of fondness for the decade 1985-1994 when hip-hop albums still ran the gamut from cheeky party music (Slick Rick, Biz Markie (whom we also have to thank for the exclamation "Oh Snap!")) to philosophizin' booty-shakers (Public Enemy, De La Soul) to simply the illest (Paris, Eric B & Rakim). For an already-devoted reader, obsessive music fan, and fledgling writer, that period's liner notes provided a wealth of lyrical inspiration... a new album could take the whole afternoon to listen to properly.

"steadily the melody plays"

People have been frontin' that they're hard and/or down for as long as hip-hop has existed, and though I never (OK, rarely) perpetrated that I was from the mean streets, I did adopt many words into my personal lexicon taken from the lyrics and worldview of my preferred era of hip-hop.

A personal favorite that I still use today (and may or may not earn me snickers behind my back) is "word". Word is such a malleable word, and with the proper inflection it can be used in many situations when belaboring the point just isn't the right call.

Here's a decent definition stitched together from multiple entries at urbandictionary.com.

A versatile declaration, originating (more or less) in hip-hop culture. "Word" has no single meaning, but is used to convey a casual sense of affirmation, acknowledgement, agreement, or to indicate that something has impressed you favorably. "Word" is the shortened form of the phrase: "my word is my bond" which was originated by inmates in U.S. prisons. The longer phrase was shortened to "word is bond" before becoming "word," which is most commonly used. It basically means "truth." Or "to speak the truth." Can also be used as a question, meaning "really?"

Word.

I'm down with Cameo, but I prefer dropping the "up"

Word can also be a surprisingly evocative modifier, as these medical terminology uses attest:

word salad : noun : a confused or unintelligible mixture of seemingly random words and phrases, specifically • (in psychiatry) as a form of speech indicative of advanced schizophrenia. • as a means of bypassing a spam filter for e-mail.

word blindness : noun : less technical term for alexia , or (less accurately) for dyslexia .

word deafness : noun : an inability to identify spoken words, resulting from a brain defect such as Wernicke's aphasia.

Here's one you don't hear often but that I nominate for reconsideration:

wordage: noun : words collectively • quantity or amount of words • verbiage, wordiness

please don't get me this for my birthday

Which of course makes us appreciate the awkward (awkword?) word "wordiness" and makes me start humming Tom Tom Club's oft-sampled 1981 namechecker "Wordy Rappinghood".

You know what I like about blogging? Stream of consciousness writing. Faulkner would have been a helluva blogger.

The list of phrases that word is used in is too long to even consider playing favorites with, but if I must I'd pick "have a word with". Has anything pleasant ever resulted in a conversation that opens with "Can I have a word with you?"

I'm just trying to keep the "Word" in The Word Player. Knowhaimsayin'?

My Grandfather "Big Bill" was a veritable fountain of words to the wise, and one of my favorites was what he called "The Three B's of Public Speaking":

"Be Brief, Baby."

It doesn't get much briefer than "Word".

Litterati

I have not yet joined the YouTube generation, although I have dipped my toe in the water. I've watched the odd clip recommended to me and used it as a reference tool a couple of times, but overall the hundreds of millions of "short form" clips available for viewing just don't call out to me.

Someday I'll sit down and watch every video The Fixx ever made, but I hope I'm wearing black socks with sandals in my retirement community when I do it.

I copied this artwork in high school art class, poorly

Lately it seems that I'm more and more in the minority when it comes to short form and its newer companion "long form on tiny screen." I declined the V CAST option on my new LG cellphone because I couldn't imagine ever wanting to watch movie trailers, Comedy Central, or... YouTube diversions on my 2" display.

But ho, now the marketing wizards at Apple have introduced the iPhone with its luxurious 3.5" display! Won't the latest YouTube sensations or an entry in the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN trilogy look nearly twice as good here? Yes, but nearly twice as good as "unwatchably small" still doesn't excite me.

Doesn't it seem to anybody else that we've already rejected the Sony Watchman once before?

"the next big thing" victim #106783

I kid. This isn't a rant against YouTube or the iPhone. I'm not a Luddite, and I believe most of these technological advances are damn cool and extremely valuable in the right context.

I guess I've just been cringing a lot lately at the thought of what this is going to mean to the generation growing up with audio and video streaming into every orifice.

Will they know how to read English as we know it, or will Pidgin Textlish be the preferred form of written communication (presumably employed when one's video messaging function is on the fritz)?

I was shocked to see the full-page ad in Sunday's New York Times announcing "NYTIMES.COM/VIDEO" with this enormous headline:

WHEN WORDS AREN'T ENOUGH.

So The New York Times is trying to compete with YouTube by offering "Exclusive Short Videos On Everything From World Affairs and Scientific Innovations to Weddings and Diversions"???

Even after Mrs. Word Player reminded me that the iPhone campaign frequently uses footage of a user surfing NYTIMES.COM as a selling point I still couldn't shake one question:

With theoretically unlimited bandwidth and storage space, does "all the news that's fit to stream" mean that the Times will be far less picky about what they present as news online than they are in the print edition?

Is "When Words Aren't Enough" a tacit admission by "old media" that they just cannot compete with "new media"?

"All the Vows That's Paid to Post"

Should it bother me that whenever I go to my local library it feels like the vast majority of people are there to use computers and free Wi-Fi or check out free videos and DVDs instead of reading books or periodicals?

Is it laughable or terrifying that the new book Cinema for Managers preaches that "executives learn little from books" and that "high-quality films, though, can offer lessons about problem-solving and teamwork as well as focusing on issues such as globalisation and diversity."

What more convincing sign of the Fall of Western Civilization can you imagine than a multinational CEO making decisions based on multiple viewings of THE TERMINAL?

Dog Ears #2: The Count of Monte Cristo

Damn the last 484 pages of TCOMC were sweet.

I'd be lying if I said I were sad to finish the book, as I've spent chunks of the last five months reading it and I have a dent in my chest from propping it up in bed, but it ended with a magnificent and heartbreaking crescendo that I won't soon forget. Overall the most impressive book I've ever read, and Dumas' insights into human nature are still uncomfortably spot-on in 2007.

I enjoyed jotting down unusual or archaic words and particularly incandescent bits of prose from the first two thirds in Dog Ears #1, so I thought I'd complete the process now.

p1024. "Really, my dear count, you seem to throw a sort of magic influence over all in which you are concerned; when listening to you, existence no longer seems reality, but a waking dream."

p1036. "cartouche" |kärˈtoō sh | noun. a carved tablet or drawing representing a scroll with rolled-up ends, used ornamentally or bearing an inscription. • Archaeology an oval or oblong enclosing a group of Egyptian hieroglyphs, typically representing the name and title of a monarch.

p1056.

"With whom are you going to fight?"
"With Beauchamp."
"Is he one of your friends?"
"Of course; it is always with friends that one fights"

(sad but true...)

p1093 "fruiteress" \Fruit"er*ess\, n. A woman who sells fruit. [1913 Webster]

(hard to believe this essential word has fallen out of favor)

p1095 "pilchard" |ˈpil ch ərd| noun a small, edible, commercially valuable marine fish of the herring family. • Sardinops and other genera, family Clupeidae: several species, including the European Sardina pilchardus. See also sardine.

mmm... crunchy

p1197 "I know the world is a drawing-room, from which we must retreat politely and honestly; that is, with a bow, and all debts of honor paid."

p1204 "nothing induces serious duels so much as a fruitless one."

p1231

"...is someone dead in his house?"
"The general has just blown his brains out," replied Monte Cristo, with great coolness."

(who knew that the phrase "blowing your brains out" has existed for over 160 years?)

p1270 "britska" a long carriage with a calash or movable top, and constructed to afford space for reclining on a journey. Source: W. H. De Puy The People's Cyclopedia (New York: Phillips & Hunt: 1881)

if you're not reclining on your journeys, you're not really journeying

1287 "lazaretto" |ˌlazəˈretō| noun ( pl. -tos) chiefly historical– an isolation hospital for people with infectious diseases, esp. leprosy or plague. • a building (or ship) used for quarantine. • a military or prison hospital.

p1359 "But the excitement had calmed down, and they felt themselves obliged to descend from dreams to reality; after having exhausted the ideal, they found they must talk of the actual."

(I think we've all been there... every rush must eventually be slowed, right?)

p1424 "... who immediately entered into conversation with two or three of those industrious idlers, who are always to be found in Rome at the doors of banking-houses, churches, museums, or theatres."

(I just love the idea of the "industrious idler"... could be to the 'aughts what the term "slacker" was to the '90s)

p1435 "As I was saying last night, they intend me to be ransomed. Holla! here is my watch! Let me see what time it is."

(and I thought "blowing your brains out" seemed anachronistic!)

And finally, my favorite sentiment in the book. Those who haven't already read TCOMC may want to click away now, as these lines represent (IMHO) the culmination of the entire experience and journey of the book...

a view from a cell in the actual Chateau d'If (where Edmond spent 14 long years)

p1461 "There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life."

Truer words have never been written.

Right, what you know.

"Write what you know" they say. Try as I might, my googling was not able attribute that quote to any one individual, so I guess it'll have to fall into the "sayings" category (unless any of you know).

But what happens when you feel you don't know anything at all? Or even worse, everything you know is wrong? I had a wake-up call along these lines several years ago when I was on the phone with an editor from Rolling Stone magazine hustling for work. During my "so tell me about yourself" reply, I talked of growing up in the Midwest, college in the South, formative work years in LA, and now life in the wilds of Brooklyn. Historically, the story of my odyssey had played very well and earned approving nods and smiles, but this guy casually knocked me down a sizeable peg with zero malice or sarcasm in his voice.

"Yeah, a lot of people end up in New York that way."

Just like that, one of my big "cards" was junked. What I knew (as far as life experience was concerned) was a virtual cliché. It smarted at the time, but looking back it was a valuable thing to hear. Yeah, I have some fun cocktail-party stories and small-talk openings, but at the end of the day EVERYBODY who goes out into the world and makes something of themselves has plenty of that stuff to pull from too.

if life experience always meant creative gold, this guy would be writing for High Times

So what do I "know" well enough to write about? I got to thinking about it over the weekend when Kristin Gore, in the "Questions For" segment of the NY Times Magazine, said that although she was happy living in California and far from Washington D.C. her upcoming novel is a political satire set in the White House because, "for better or for worse, Washington is a world I know well."

I get that. I also get that Gore was a successful writer on FUTURAMA despite never having lived in the future. So where does one draw the line on the "write what you know" mantra? I stumbled upon a good quote on the subject by contemporary American Novelist Daniel Quinn, author of
Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit:

"How can you make a great - or even an adequate - bouillabaisse if you've never had any? If you don't really understand why people read mysteries - or romances or literary novels or thrillers or whatever - then there's no way in the world you're going to write one that anyone wants to publish. This is the meaning of the well-known expression 'Write what you know.'"

This quote made me think of plenty of "creative" people I've met along the way who violate the deceptively simple principle above, including the aspiring songwriter who never listened to new music and the aspiring screenwriter who proudly boasted that he didn't go to the movies.

surprisingly, 82% of those who kill their TV used to write for TV

In the end, all of us know as much as we truly believe we know, and when it comes time to write about any given thing, I guess you have to fill in the blanks as you're going by learning something new (that, conveniently, you then "know"). Writing what you know doesn't necessarily mean writing what you've lived.

One thing I feel certain about; if you fake it (especially in this day and age) you won't be writing for long.

American Blogger

I said stay away-hey
American Blogger
Listen what I say-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay

Sometimes the freedom to write anything your heart desires (or, more to the point, that pops into your head) isn't such a good thing... but I am going somewhere.

What does the word "American" mean? I ask this because yesterday I saw a trailer for the upcoming Universal Pictures film AMERICAN GANGSTER starring Denzel Washington as the titular protagonist and Russell Crowe as the (anti-American?) cop.

I'm gonna get you, sucker.

I won't go into how dreadfully tired and cliché it all looked, but the title jarred something loose that I've been thinking about off and on for years: why is the word "American" so overused in movie titles year after year? And even further, what exactly are the powers-that-be trying to communicate about the movie when they use "American" as a title descriptor?

Some on-the-fly research, courtesy of imdb.com:

When you search for the word “American” in Film and TV Titles you get 1397 results. when you cull out all the times it turns up in "American Film Institute salutes..." or "The 12th Annual American Music Awards"-type hits, there's still close to a thousand.

If you search for the word “Chinese” in Film and TV Titles? 232 results
"Brazilian"? 12
"Australian"? 41
"British"? 132
"French"? 204
"Spanish"? 114

Why does "American" beat the rest of the world combined?

I worked for one of the companies (Civilian Pictures) responsible for the documentary AMERICAN MOVIE that won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1999, a banner year for American-titled movies. I'm very, very fond of AMERICAN MOVIE, but I've often thought that if it wasn't called AMERICAN MOVIE that it wouldn't have had nearly the same amount of success. Well done Mr. Smith (who continued to feel patriotic and/or satirical after titling his 1995 film AMERICAN JOB). Sundance 1999 featured AMERICAN MOVIE, AMERICAN PIMP, and AMERICAN HOLLOW all in competition, and 1999 also saw the release of AMERICAN BEAUTY and the AMERICAN PIE franchise (now with a startling five entries).

Do any of these films have something definitive to say about America and/or Americans? Does "American" find its way into so many titles because it's meaningful in selling/marketing the films overseas, where +/- half of a film's gross will be earned?

Or does it mark a distinct lack of imagination on the filmmaker and/or studio's part that they are willing to take a shortcut and use such a generic-yet-familiar title?

the definitive American hero

What makes Denzel's based-on-a-true-story 1970's gangster so authentically American? Is an African-American gangster more "American" than the Italian-American gangsters that we see so much of? Maybe the war profiteering/drug smuggling angle defines American ingenuity: Denzel's character gets fabulously rich smuggling heroin from Vietnam to New York hidden in bodybags of dead GI's. Maybe a lot of people just think it sounds cool.

(As grandiose-yet-indifferent as AMERICAN GANGSTER is as a title, it's still far better than their working title "Tru Blu.")

I was looking around for dictionary definitions of "American" that might shed more light on the meaning of the word outside of the obvious "of or relating to America" part, and the only meaningful (for my purposes) description was in the wiktionary which mentioned "or pertaining to the United States of America, or American culture."

That sounds a little closer to what I think many of these films are shooting for... that their particular subject is the quintessential representative of the Pimp, President, Virgin, or Gigolo as found in American culture, and therefore is worth your entertainment dollar.

The next best theory is that it differentiates martial arts films featuring American stars and/or locations (AMERICAN NINJA, AMERICAN SAMURAI, AMERICAN KICKBOXER, AMERICAN DRAGON, AMERICAN SHAOLIN, AMERICAN CHINATOWN, etc) from all-Asian films.

audience confusion with European cyborgs was niftily avoided

A cool feature of the imdb Title Search is that the working title of films often pop up too. Thankfully, a few films that were slated to have "American" in the title decided against it before release. Does "American Vacation" have the same iconic ring as VACATION (1983)?

How about all-time great CITIZEN KANE (1941)? The working title for Orson Welles' masterpiece was only one word... "American."

Move Over Sex...

I don't plan on watching any of HBO's new flagship series JOHN FROM CINCINNATI, but it's been impossible to avoid the saturation-bombing of its advertising campaign. In today's "Calendar" section of the LA Times is a full-page spread filled with one-word critical plaudits, including one word in particular that makes me uncomfortable every time I see it used to sell:

"Addictive"
- Oakland Tribune

Maybe it's just me, but I am trying to avoid any more addictions in my life, not seeking to add new ones.

not me, I can quit any time I want.

What bugs me in particular about using "addictive" to hype this series, is that the narrative backstory deals with addiction of the drug and alcohol variety. The following is clipped from HBO's site:

"The Yosts' reign and reputation, once defined in the curl of a perfect wave, have been eroded by years of bad luck, addiction and hubris... The gifts of 13-year-old Shaun rival those of Butchie, his addict-derelict father..."

(and then, my personal favorite)

"Into this world, where even simple joy has been turned into a commodity, steps a mysterious stranger named John. "

I guess if we're "exploring" how simple joy has become a commodity, then it's OK to commodify the sorrow of addiction too. You know, for artistic purposes only. Well, for marketing and artistic purposes only.

But ho, what does HBO have to say in it's full-page ad for ENTOURAGE on the back page of the "Calendar" section?

"Addictive"
-Chicago Tribune

Let's see... how about BIG LOVE?

"An addictive treat"
-Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

And so on. I wonder if it's possible that in using the "addictive" blurb as a selling point, HBO might be alienating untold numbers of viewers who only want a casual relationship with their TV shows. I really started noticing the trend of using addiction as an overt selling tool about a year ago in the Glendale Galleria. Trendy boutique Planet Funk was offering a "Jeans Junkie" discount card for frequent shoppers of designer denim.

"Bayer Junkie" discount cards are now collector's items.

I just couldn't get over the fact that young women were encouraged to become "junkies" for jeans. The so-called "heroin chic" trend was bad enough, but that term was used to condemn a perceived strategy, not to openly encourage the connection between drugs and fashion.

Might as well face it you're addicted to... jeans?

Who Threw That Strikeout at Me?

the following excerpt was taken from ESPN.com's wrapup of the game between the Reds and the Angels today.

Summary: Kelvim Escobar threw a career-high 14 strikeouts, but when he was pulled in the sixth when his pitch count reached 116, the Reds were able to jump on the Angels' bullpen and rally for a two-run win.

A long, long time ago I realized that the sports page in the newspaper was not held to the same standard of editorial correctness as the other sections. At first, it was big things that caught my eye, like listing the incorrect winner of a baseball game (crushing to a kid in the pre-internet age who walks around thinking their team has won until discovering the error.) Then, as I grew older and more wise in the ways of English, I saw more and more typos, grammar and syntax errors, and just flat-out lazy copyediting.

But one thing I thought I could count on was that the sportswriter of any given article knew the basics of the sport he was writing about. Today, even that appears to be out the window.

fight illiteracy; stick your tongue out at bad writing

The above clipping is certainly poorly written, but far far worse is that the scribe over at ESPN News Services thinks that baseball pitchers "throw" strikeouts!

"Hey Bronson, how many strikeouts did you throw last night?"
"I only threw five strikeouts David, but the opposing pitcher Escobar threw fourteen strikeouts! And he only threw one walk too!"

Upon reflection, I suppose (grudgingly) that from a technical standpoint it isn't completely incorrect to use "throw" in this context, but in the thousands of hours I've spent watching baseball games I have never once heard an announcer or fellow baseball fan say anything close to "(Pitcher X) threw (Y amount of) strikeouts."

Have you?

also: You Reds fans will get a kick out of the player pictured in the Wikipedia article on strikeouts.

How Did David Chase Become a Cowardly Writer?

The last two episodes of THE SOPRANOS were an absolute disgrace.

Artie Bucco can't believe he was invited to the shoot.

"Don't Stop Believing" America! The "Journey" is over! Get it? Tony was supposed to look like he was in a coffin at the beginning! Get it? That burning yellow SUV is all of us! We're all gonna die! The whole bleepin' show was about mortality for chrissakes! Get it!?!

HBO: If it's about mortality, it's important.

Get it?

Or maybe it was all about family, i dunno. What I do know is that more and more marquee talents like Chase have turned away from writing for their audience and instead are writing for themselves or, even worse... history. When you no longer have the audience's needs and wants in mind, you're apparently freed up to wallow in your own narcissism and use your show to make hollow political points, utilizing critic-friendly/meta/pre-existing material(Twilight Zone dialogue about... TV writers, a clip from execrable "we're dysfunctional and loving it!" family dramedy LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, the weighty weighty warbling of Bob Dylan, etc) to hammer them home.

Blecchh.

The More Dominatrices, the Better.

There was a time when I read a handful of scripts and a book or two every week. I never really minded writing the "comments" section of coverage, but I quickly grew to hate the relentless synopsizing. I sympathized with Newman when he would rant about his job as a postal carrier:

"...the mail never stops. It just keeps coming and coming and coming."

Thankfully (warning: rationalization ahead) all that "practice" I had synopsizing has helped immensely with my copywriting work. Far more often than not, I've been hired to help the client synthesize a copious amount of copy (inc. big ideas, pertinent product factoids, wide-ranging corporate philosophy, etc) into brief bursts of text.

The briefest burst possible is the headline, which, fortunately for me, requires blending a number of my personaly predilections like wordplay, potent quotables, and... synopsizing.

Heart'safire!

One of my favorite columns in The New York Times is William Safire's "On Language"... such a great way to keep up with the vernacular (and, for fellow wordplayers, a great source of sly humor too). Today's installment featured a delicious description of the synopsizing and headline writing process borne of Safire's puzzlement at the following headline from Brit-written The Financial Times:

"Murdoch denies Beijing kowtow as Dow Jones rhetoric hots up."

No, not "heats up"... "hots up." Wondering if perhaps the editors of The Financial Times were eager to save space by cutting "ea" and replacing it with a single "o," Safire writes:

"Granted, brevity is a whip-bearing dominatrix in the discipline of headline writing."

Combining S&M imagery with wordplay hots a brother up, no?

you never know what you'll get when you google-image "kowtow"!

The Perils of the Well-Read Moviegoer

I saw Judd Apatow's new comedy KNOCKED UP on Tuesday, and despite having fast-forwarded through nearly every commercial for it and having seen only one theatrical trailer I still felt like I'd somehow already seen most of it.

oh, to be as delightful as Paul Rudd

The reason for this cinematic deja vu won't surprise anyone who reads the occasional magazine and/or newspaper: by the time the movie came out I'd read no fewer than TEN articles, reviews, and profiles of the film and its cast and crew. And I skipped a few that looked interesting too!

we are walking... we are smiling

Not enough apparently. I not only knew that several interchanges between characters in KNOCKED were derived from Apatow's real-life marriage to actress Leslie Mann (who stars in KNOCKED after stealing her scene in Apatow's THE 40 YEAR-OLD VIRGIN), but I could feel precisely which ones they were as they unspooled. Why? Because after reading features in Los Angeles Magazine, Newsweek, New York Times (2) and Los Angeles Times, I know more about Apatow and Mann's marriage than virtually all of my "real" friends'. The narrative and/or character impact of dozens of scene details were rendered powerless to me because my mind was too busy remembering that they were borne of heavy improv sessions and Apatow's stripmine-style explorations of the young cast's embarrassing pasts.

well, for actor/stoners anyway...

None of this is news, really, as studios with high hopes for their films will always get as much raw information about the film, cast and crew into the marketplace as possible to keep the hype machine humming until release. What I'm not used to is that the film (and filmmaker) being hyped is one I'm genuinely interested in.

BACKSPACE: old word, new meaning?

I was just reading a good article about composer/musician David Axelrod in the usually pretty worthless "magazine" West that comes with the Sunday Los Angeles Times when I noticed author Lynell George's unusual use of the word "backspace." Twice.

"David Axelrod grew up in the Los Angeles of the '30s and '40s, when jazz was the popular music–on the radio, in the clubs, in the backspace of daily life."

and

"Axelrod's imprint... was an essential part of the backspace of the day, after-the-fireworks music or a dimmer-switch for a quiet Thursday night."

Mercy, Mercy, Mercy!

I had never heard or read "backspace" used in such a way, and I assumed she meant it as a more three-dimensional variation of "background" that takes more of the general ambiance into account. Then I looked it up, and found nothing on "backspace" outside of its use on a keyboard or videocamera.

So did she decide to repurpose a familiar word, or are my research skills not sharp enough to check exhaustively in four minutes? Is she hoping her use of "backspace" will catch on? Is this something her editors should have caught? Will I start using "backspace" that way and pretend everyone else should know what I'm talking about? Or, is "backspace" so close to "background" that few if any will notice at all?

Has he ever been Experienced? He has.

Also–How cool is David Axelrod? Aside from his enormous and continuing contributions to music, he voiced an opinion that I wholeheartedly agree with:

"I always thought the ideal record store would have the whole thing alphabetical instead of broken down into what kind of music it is. Why is that necessary? Will you tell me?"