This Attic Emphatic

Does anyone here remember FORTH? Well, this blog is starting to feel a little FORTHed, if you know what I mean.

While we’re dwelling in the past, why shouldn’t I tell you, too, that I began to see signs a week or two ago that he is back. A few more channel surfing excursions and a couple of pop-up ads later, I knew it was true. Some sleuthing at Amazon tells me this must be an “exclusive” release, and a visit to Walmart.com and I’ve found the mother lode. It’s true, the man who helped me give up Dr. Pepper is back, and we’re only just pawns in his game.

Okay, Garth Brooks’ soon to be failed comeback isn’t all that interesting to me or you. I know “Low Places” but absolutely nothing else, and I don’t feel that I’ve been all that victimized by his reign. I’d probably say that Garth Hudson and David Brooks have caused me more pain. But, still, Garth Brooks’ insistent mediocrity makes a little more sense today than it did back then.

Perhaps like so many others, I really stuck on Garth’s fame because it seemed so wildly undeserved. Yes, there are bad, bland, and shameless pop acts everywhere. And, Steve Colbert’s defense of country music notwithstanding, there are even more in red states. But that’s just the thing. Today—seeing Garth again—I cannot get over the idea that he paved the way for W. That after Garth it was possible for willful, entrepreneurial types to seize positions of cultural or political power without even pretending to be anything more than smirking placeholders of granted authority. Sure, the hat must be invoked. The drawled common sense must flow. The predictable blather of family and baseball and America must issue forth. But real talent or actual convictions? These things are just too dangerous for those millions of Americans who have decided that democracy means never having to hear anything that you don’t already know.

The Doctor is.............Out!

ALAN ALDA (NARRATION) This show is all about listening to the calls of the wild and trying to decipher them - always with the assumption that the sounds in fact have a meaning, a purpose in the animals' lives. But before we go on…Is it all utilitarian? I mean, is any of it, you think, just because it feels good? (Scientific American Frontiers, April 8, 2003)

One of the more stunning things I learned this week was that all dissertations written in the school of education at my university must be quantitative in nature. I surely knew that many or most education PhDs relied on “data” and statistics, but I guess I’m a little taken aback that one cannot write a reflective, interpretive, theoretical, or historical education dissertation without hiring a statistician. Does anything more need to be said about why our schools are in such a sorry state? Oh my!

And it gets worse. Surely I’m not the only one who ruined his Saturday breakfast with an early perusal of the New York Times Magazine and the latest installment this culture’s favorite game, Who Needs the Humanities, Anyway? I’m referring of course to “The Literary Darwinists,” an unflinching bit of publicity for another batch of morons who want to look at the world through the grey lens of bad science. Guess what? Even Jane Austen’s fabulous wit, coruscating irony, and fascinatingly twisted characters offer evidence of the “hard-wired” behaviors of this pulsing, urgent, flawed creature, man.

Never mind that this is biology at its dopiest or just Puritanism in disguise. Never mind that “hard-wired” is goddamned figurative language. Never mind that Elizabeth Bennett isn’t a real person. Never mind that Jane Austen wasted her fertile years on writing, not reproducing or that Darwin, Freud, and all decent scientists (even Sherlock Holmes and Horatio Caine) are themselves storytellers. No, we are post-humanities, and even the most bookish types exude a kind of glee in dismissing (and starving) any types of research or analysis that deny the lazy certainty of measurements, counts, and equations.

Now I’m not knocking good science or cures to cancer or Tang or all that. But, whether it’s Maureen Dowd’s annoying biologistic androphobia or E.O. Wilson’s smug anti-Gastonism, it gets under my skin. My monkey brain makes me want to smash something. There are a lot of ways around this, if anyone even wants to bother. I always recommend Althusser’s Reading Capital. Just the first forty pages simply undress these worst ideas that we build our jails with.

A hundred years later and Conrad’s Marlow still has it right:

"The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of something else the while. 'Good, good for there,' he mumbled, and then with a certain eagerness asked me whether I would let him measure my head. Rather surprised, I said Yes, when he produced a thing like calipers and got the dimensions back and front and every way, taking notes carefully. He was an unshaven little man in a threadbare coat like a gaberdine, with his feet in slippers, and I thought him a harmless fool. 'I always ask leave, in the interests of science, to measure the crania of those going out there,' he said. 'And when they come back, too?' I asked. 'Oh, I never see them,' he remarked; 'and, moreover, the changes take place inside, you know.' He smiled, as if at some quiet joke. 'So you are going out there. Famous. Interesting, too.' He gave me a searching glance, and made another note. 'Ever any madness in your family?' he asked, in a matter-of-fact tone. I felt very annoyed. 'Is that question in the interests of science, too?' 'It would be,' he said, without taking notice of my irritation, 'interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot, but . . .' 'Are you an alienist?' I interrupted. 'Every doctor should be -- a little,' answered that original, imperturbably. 'I have a little theory which you messieurs who go out there must help me to prove. This is my share in the advantages my country shall reap from the possession of such a magnificent dependency. The mere wealth I leave to others. Pardon my questions, but you are the first Englishman coming under my observation . . .' I hastened to assure him I was not in the least typical. 'If I were,' said I, 'I wouldn't be talking like this with you.' 'What you say is rather profound, and probably erroneous,' he said, with a laugh. 'Avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun. Adieu. How do you English say, eh? Good-bye. Ah! Good-bye. Adieu. In the tropics one must before everything keep calm.' . . . He lifted a warning forefinger. . . 'Du calme, du calme, Adieu.

Find Yourself in the Thick of It...

"Martha My Dear" (not the Col Mustard version) just came on Shuffle, reminding me that I'm (again) a few days behind.

Frances, I've been thinking about your post.

I experience a phenomenon similar to yours, but from a different perspective. My male friends do their bonding largely without my participation: going to baseball games, meeting weekly for dominos, joining bowling teams, or just going out and drinking all nite. More significant: the 'boys' in my group do these activities (and the e-mails, phone calls to make plans etc.) without the 'girls.' If it's a 'couples' thing, Aubrey & I will always be invited, or if it's something like a movie or karaoke, I'll get invited (and Aubrey too), but if it's a 'trad' guy thing as above, I almost always won't even know about it... I may get looped in on an e-mail chain if, say, a music-related question happens to come up - then I'll discover from the chain that the reason they’re asking me which album some Van Halen song was on was because they heard it during halftime at a Sonics game the other night or whatnot.

Anyway, I don’t feel 'left out' by any means. It's just that I don't like sports/games, they all know I don't like sports/games, and so (over time) they've learned that I'll say no to the invitations anyway.

The kicker - and where it relates to your point - is that sometimes the girls will all get together elsewhere at the same time, in 'response' to the boys nights out. And they'll say to me something like "yah, you're stuck with us because we weren't ALLOWED to go." Not allowed. Seriously. While I don't care that these activities happen without me, a lot of the girlfriends/wives DO care, and get fairly upset and hurt feelings about it.

As I think about it, age and cohab-status seem to be the biggest factors. Back when everyone's young-n-single (your Twin Cities days?), boys and girls wanted to hang out together, in part to hook up and date. Not too long ago, these very same boys I know planned their evenings around getting as large a group together, boys and girls, to hang out. More evidence of this is the way that those few friends in the group (male and female) who are still single complain that we don’t all ‘go out’ the way we used to.

So now that most of these people are married, the boys sometimes wanna hang out with the boys. They send each other boy-only e-mails even if they are also friends with the boys’ sig-others, and they plan activities that are boys-only. You mentioned the need for occasional ‘away from the sig-other’ time, and I also think that’s part of it. So I also wonder if it feels ‘safer’ – that once in a relationship, boys hang out with boys because mixed groups may be more likely to have unattached girls which symbolizes potential trouble? I don’t know – I’m less sure about the reasons/causes, but what you described and what I experience here are similar enough to make me think something cultural (not geographic) is at work. It seems clear that boys-only activities fill some sort of role, at least for your friends and mine.

What kind of role? Again, I’m not sure, but I did recently have an uncomfortable possible glimpse: last month I was at a bachelor party for one of my friends, and it was actually the first 'boys only' event I've ever attended with this group. I was straight-up SHOCKED at the change in behavior of these people I've known for years: everyone called each other 'faggot,' there were lots of wayyyy off-color jokes and insults that would make Gaston’s online bridge partners blush, and, worse, rude treatment of restaurant/bar staff where the party was taking place. It could have been the particular context – the pending, symbol-heavy wedding – that guided this behavior, but I couldn’t help but think ‘so THIS is what happens during those bowling tournaments.’ I also thought “no wonder they want the ladies to stay away.”

Frances – on the other side, do you have any ‘girl-only’ activities with friends? There was a group here at work that was all about that: creating a ‘Ladies Who Lunch’ e-mail group, going out to shows together, etc. It would be interesting to compare these activities and think about the roles they might serve and add that to this discussion…

Endcaps and Handicaps

I know that you’ll feel better when you send us in your letter and tell us the name of your, your favorite vega-table.

Until last year, Anne and I always lived within a very short walk to a grocery store. It was not unusual for us to go to the store almost every day of the week when we lived in Highland Park. Here, we do have two smallish, last century food stores with the requisite deli meats, breads, produce, and overpriced canned food. Quaint, but not exactly places we can afford to rely on. And the shiny new Whole Foods that just opened this week adds a remarkable dimension to our walkable options—especially if we’re in the mood for the chocolate fountain or a $30 quiche. But, most of the time, we drive to the Stop ‘n’ Shop on Sunday mornings and buy the whole week’s food in one highly choreographed, dual-pronged food-gathering operation. In a division of labor that reveals our different family backgrounds, Anne burrows into the produce section for almost the entire visit (often a half hour of eying and prying those colored things that grow in the ground). She handles the meat and fish purchases, the breads, and the dairy stuffs. Me? I comb for “deals,” calculating per pound advantages and overpurchasing particularly winning sales items. I also get breakfast items like cereals and syrups, and I collect sweet things or supplies for my next baking adventure. We meet at last in the bakery where, traditionally, we buy a cinnamon roll or muffin and proceed to the checkout. My undiminished bagging skills then save us, oh, twenty seconds or so, and we are on our way. Giants kickoff is upon us.

I’m reminded of the Ginsberg poem that celebrates supermarkets and Walt Whitman—a fine link to Emile’s posts, if you care to look into it. Here.

But I really started in this way to raise the question of What are you eating these days? I have had my food issues in the past year, and I have become ever more conscious of partially hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, soluble and insoluble fiber, and the rich scientific euphemisms on just about every cereal box and packaged food. For a while, I was absolutely sworn off of restaurants and anything with more flavor than, say, “maple.” And even now that I’m generally back to normal, I find myself in an ongoing nutritional psychomachia, weighing the desires I still have for food that is unquestionably bad for me with my reasoned commitment to taking care of myself.

Food fascinates me, but not in the ways it is supposed to. Way back when, I embarrassed myself by refusing to eat the salad at the dinner meant to celebrate my high school academic achievements, and I can still see Father O’Neill shaking his head at my fussy, narrow tastes. I’m still afraid of fancy restaurants, especially when every dish has orange or lemon in it and my colleague has just asked for the wine list. And, while I’ve graduated into a respect for vegetables, I wrinkle my nose at anything with mushrooms in it and, sadly, most kinds of fruit. What is that?

Anne has greatly expanded my food breadth, and I’m happy to report that our home-cooked meals get better and better as the years pass. I think it’s a true sign of middle age that we now prefer to eat at home. So, yes, this post ends again in a praise of the domestic sphere. Okay, I’m not Charles Lamb. (Mmmm…lamb.) But I hope you haven’t minded my excursion into the cupboards. I imagine blogging as a way to bring out thinking that doesn’t otherwise get a chance to come to a boil (food metaphor…nice). I could be wrong.

Call any vegetable
Call it by name
You’ve got to call one today
When you get off the train
Call any vegetable
And the chances are good,
Oh, the vegetable will respond to you.

Ok, I'm going in...

I missed my day, but it's been quiet on the 3T front so I'm grabbing the mic, as it were.

Right now I'm holding my breath as I suck in the drugs from my inhaler. Sucks to YOUR ass-mar, pal. This stuff makes my mouth tastes like metal but it does help open up my lungs. Rainy Seattle weather just makes my lungs feel wet.

These days I feel sorta out of touch. our cell phone bills are ri-dic-u-lous, so we've been cutting down on calls..., which has been more jarring than I would have thought. I figured I'd shift all my calls to the weekends (unlimited minutes, yo) but after a while I start to feel like a telemarketer going from call to call to call, so I get talked-out WAY before I get to the bottom of the list. If I haven't called you in a while, sorry. I used to call whenever I happened to have time/headspace. Now that both need to be regimented more, it's difficult.

If I sound like I'm disjointed and kinda dumbed-down, I am. I just spent the last half hour on Myspace, adding friends, comments, posts, messages, etc. all for the elusive goal of hitting 1,000 page hits on the Withholders page. We've been having a streak of good luck lately: 3 of our last four shows were either reviewed post-show or were preview picks for the week - including (did I mention this already? Because I will again!) a preview in the Stranger!!!! It took the M's 5 years to get in the Stranger. It took the Withholders 5 shows. I don't want to read that much into this, but we also just got an e-mail from a promoter in a two-hour-away college town who wants to pay us (well) to drive over and play a show there. He is also saying very nice things about the record and has already offered to produce and release our second record. All we need is one other person to say that, and we'll have a veritable 'bidding war' on our hands!!! YESSSSSS!!!!

The puzzling thing? The same clown is writing the same lame songs as before. Same clown is singin' em. So what gives? The answer: our drummer! There weren't any cute girl drummers in my previous outfit. This is my theory.

Anyway, booklet art & the audio master were sent to the pressing plant yesterday, expect the finished product right before T-giving.

Ok all, gotta motor...
v

p.s. DIG that Motown stomp on "My Doorbell!!!!!!"