flattening the curve

One might argue that flattening the curve started with Twiggy (Lesley Hornby) with the Mod look in the Sixties. But one might further, and more strenuously, posit that curve flattening was conceived, pushed, and marketed by men in power desirous of a certain look (can that look be termed androgynous any more?). If the sinewy, slender, skinny (all subjective adjectives) appearance being modeled did not promote anorexia, did it nevertheless subconsciously mumble (or blare in the public square) a message about shape and body, a message about shame and acceptance, desire and hunger?

And what about the hollowed-out waif look?

Has such flattening of the curve ever ceased? Pick up a fashion magazine and tell us.

Then there's curvy. As a pendulum-swinging alternative, curvy embraces the contours, the sensuous curves celebrated by, say, Caravaggio. Fatten the curve, one might say to a Twiggy-era model. (Though, to drill down lexicographically, "fatten" is a semantic choice that would put one in hot water, ripe for boiling, or into a penitential sauna sure to drip off sweat and ounces.)

Take a look at Marilyn Monroe. No one dared suggest she flatten the curve.

Times change.

Times even change to the point where such an analysis as this, such a curvilinear discourse, is not limited to one sex or gender or identity. The curves are up for grabs, flat or otherwise. As are the angular lines, the straight edges.

Not "up for grabs." Wrong phrase. Delete that. Up for discussion, yes. But anything else must be consensual.

thank you for not sharing

In January 2017, Dammit Dave and I hit the road north. On a Saturday morning, we threaded our way through the needle's eye of potential lake-effect whiteouts, landing in Kingston, Ontario, for lunch. Why not? On the night before, I floated the concept as a small clutch of friends yucked it up. I liked the notion for its brazen spontaneity, shock value, and merry foolishness. Dammit Dave was up for it. So was I. On the ride up, we talked ceaselessly about our personal histories, buffered with a few cross-currents of editorial comment. I wouldn't say we delved into our fears; after all, we're men.

We had lunch at Curry Original. Very fine food with a view of Lake Ontario outside our window.

For dessert, we repaired to Balzac's Kingston on Princess Street. Coffee and pastries.

A sign said: "Table sharing is kindly encouraged. #makeanewfriend #communaltables"

Dammit Dave and I found a spot near the back, a table to ourselves. I was tired. I was ready to head back to Syracuse. If the coffee did its job, we'd be alert enough for driving back.

Table sharing.

It depends.

I wasn't in the mood for it, though often I don't mind. Many coffee shops depend on such a code of occupancy; they need to keep the place filled. They need to sell products. Otherwise, there'd be no business, no tables to share, no seats to sit on.

There's a time and a place for communal space.

This wasn't it for me, not quite, though, being a social animal, I traded remarks here and there with Canadian strangers, if only to ask about the location of the restrooms.

When I worked in New York in the Eighties, it was not uncommon for me, or intimates of mine, to engage in deeply personal conversations over lunch, at a restaurant, a cafe, a cafeteria, a food court, or a pocket park. New York conferred an automatic shield of anonymity and resulting privacy. It was like the cone of silence on "Get Smart." The people at the nearby table (sometimes at a shared table) could be talking about bestiality or beatific visions. No matter. Zone it out. Not my business.

That was then. Perhaps in a "hear something, say something" world, things have changed.

I've observed that privacy protection via anonymity is harder to come by in a small town or a modest-sized city. They listen in, pause before the fork hits the mouth. Or maybe that's my bias untested by the evidence of ample experience.

And cultural factors are at play, too.

Dammit Dave and I swapped no secrets, revealed no scandals that Saturday....unless he reads this and corrects my subjectively skewed memory.

Honoré de Balzac would have been disappointed in our conversational blandness as blank and small as a finished espresso.

hugs anonymous

I bought the Friday $3 lunch special at Wegmans (with its absent apostrophe). Hot dog, soda, chips (Fritos). The cost for lunch goes to the United Way. It was sweltering outside. Heavy, dense, the wet heat a blanket. I went inside the cafe area to eat. Cooler. After a few bites, ketchup dripping off, I noticed, almost felt, a figure come toward me from my right, just beyond and then into my peripheral vision. Before my mind could calculate, I'm being jostled, hugged, but not harshly, playfully not violently. Almost the way someone would administer a noogie but this was around the upper body, my chest, my neck. It was a heavyset young man, late teens or early twenties. It scared me until it didn't. Before I knew it, he was walking away. A caregiver was upset. "Don't do that. Stop. You can't do that." The caregiver, a tall young man, apologized to me. I waved it off. I ruminated for a few seconds on semantics. No, we didn't use phrases like "developmentally delayed" as I was growing up. The designations were harsher. And yet in today's culture, America's current environment, let's be thankful I was not armed and quick-triggered, paranoiac, quick to defend, protect, and save myself and all others from all harm or threat.

The Almost Jaywalker

She stood at the corner of West Genesee and Avery, by the Rite-Aid. She had gray hair and was in her late fifties or early sixties. She was in a hurry, or impatient. And confused, as if she was unfamiliar with how to cross a street, when to do it, with the light red, or the light green. She pressed the button on the pole, the button to change the light. She slammed it repeatedly, the way we do that while waiting for an elevator, with no speed-up of results. She was angry at the delay. Slam slam slam. She frowned. She seemed to be taking the whole challenge personally, an affront to her freedom of movement, impeding her progress, hindering her day. The light changed. I crossed the road. I saw her crossing in my rear-view mirror. I traveled south, now looking forward through my windshield, lessening the chance of a collision.

This is America today.

maybe words don't matter

I'm often declaring that words matter. "Words matter" is the tagline on a promotional piece for my business. I make a living flirting, fondling, and fussing with words, as is evidenced in this space. But how and when words matter circumscribes a shifting landscape of context, complexion, and atmosphere. 

Listening to some Beatles oldies has driven this home ("Baby, you can drive my deconstructionist car...") Several years ago, I was driving around. "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," from Abbey Road, was playing. My youngest child was in the car; maybe a young teenager at the time, or younger. I was bopping along to the relentlessly cheery and bubbly tune. My daughter said something like, "Dad, are you listening to these lyrics?" Well, I had many times listened to the song's gleeful depictions of MURDER, but never gave it any mind. The narrative was indefensible, if you were to take the lyrics seriously, that is. But who did? I never did. But a new generation of listeners perhaps took away an utterly different message. This has become a family joke, especially if we listen to "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" in the car.

I recently slipped in the CD for Rubber Soul. (I am really bothered that Capitol released the British version; it totally messes with my boyhood memory of listening to the LP; different songs, different sequence.) "Run for Your Life" has John Lennon, or more accurately the character in a song, threatening death to a girlfriend (maybe it's an ex-girlfriend) owing to the narrator's jealous rage. As a teenager, these lyrics never fazed me (perhaps because I was such a late bloomer and had no actual 3D girlfriend at the time of the song's release). I don't recall the song causing the slightest controversy. It likely caused less stir than "Under My Thumb" by the Rolling Stones. (Was preconceived prejudice a factor? After all, the Stones traded on their outlaw appeal.)

Would any of these lyrics cause a ripple today?

These reflections have forced me to evaluate some of my easy-access hostility to pop or hiphop lyrics that strike me as patently offensive (though, I don't have ready examples except the obscenities or verbal brickbats hurled from car speakers whose drivers are pleased to give the finger to society as if to shout, "you got a problem with that?").

And it's not just words alone, is it? In music, the lyrics coexist with the melody, whether we like it or not. It has been said that the tune for "Yesterday" started off with "scrambled eggs" as a holding pattern, a place holder, for the immortal lyrics eventually wedded to the musical notes. Imagine if "Yesterday," perhaps the most covered song in history, with its haunting and heartbreaking melody and lyrics, had silly or indecipherable or obscene lyrics. It would not endure.  At all.

So, I'll come full circle and say that words do matter. But how and when and why are tricky concepts to delineate. 

Just as in life.

applause

I heard and watched repeated rounds of applause this evening at a senior sports banquet. I myself applauded frequently as a proud parent. Applause. We are told the word derives from Latin, meaning the beating of wings, an angelic image if you accept the wings-on-angels premise as depicted in medieval art. (Or was it Renaissance art? Or both?) Applause, the repeated joining of hands in praise. Granted, it can get tiresome after forty or fifty times. Is it not true that you can tell if someone is righty or lefty just by watching them clap? I'm lefty. My left hand claps onto my right. What would an ambidextrous person do? Clap like one of those wind-up chimps that was a toy in the Fifties? Doubt it. When did humans first applaud? Have they ever clapped feet instead of hands? Or anything else? If aliens appeared, how would we explain this habit? Do some cultures clap louder, or softer, than others? What are aural or oral or verbal equivalents of applause? Hoot-hoots more than grunts, right?

the courtesies of rudeness

I pick up a newspaper at CVS, the local Post-Standard, 75 cents. The checkout counter has two or three registers open; people queue up and go to the next available cashier. Or perhaps they form a separate line in back of each cashier. I am standing in the back of an imaginary line, trying to discern where and how to check out. A young lady, presumably a Syracuse University student, approaches from my left. She is carrying, oh, maybe some cough drops, bobby pins, hair clips, deodorant. I don't know. Two hands holding smallish items. She calmly and directly walks in front of me, cutting ahead of me in this imaginary line. (Some cultures, we know, do not even hold to any semblance of a line, imagined or otherwise.)

"Oh, are you in line?" she asked, and when I nodded or spoke in the affirmative she responded as if she already knew this, as if it were a given that, yes, I was in line, why else would I be standing there?

But -- and I cannot prove this -- I got the sense that she wanted me all along to say, "No, you go ahead; go on," waving her on ahead of me; giving her the entitlement she felt she deserved.

Sometimes I will do this. If I have several items in a store and someone has one item, I let them through. Wait. Wait. I'm the person with one item, the newspaper, here.

As I waited the few brief moments before being called on, my line-competitor seemed to reflexively dart ahead of me -- as if we had not had the briefest of conversations earlier -- and then halt, inviting me silently to let her proceed. Perhaps my perceptions are wrong, but I had the keen sense that she was determined to be ahead of me -- and not because she was in a hurry. Just because. Or this was a rich fantasy played out in my imagination; something to blog about.

I bought my newspaper and, when prompted by the cashier, I agreed to contribute a dollar to a charity. I don't deny I was making a "statement," telling the woman in the "line" in back of me to think wider and larger. Yeah. Right.

Afterward, I was reminded of a little tussle I experienced at an SU football game, when I myself darted out in front of a guy quickly coming down the stairs at intermission. We exchanged words. I was seen as the rude on. I guess I did mean to slow him down, the way you want to slow down those people on the plane or are crazy trying to get their luggage from the overhead bins, only to stand there, blocking the aisles. But maybe in that case I was the jerk.

Perception.

Reality.

And then there are those who in traffic, for example near toll booths, smile, push ahead, barge through, wave, smile, and thank you -- thank you! as if you are so privileged and pleased to be sanctioning their discourtesy, as if you had a choice. Some marketing of rudeness!

Bitchy 'bout Pitchy

I am neither a musicologist, nor a musician, nor a music theoretician. Nor am I a connoisseur of pop culture. However, by background and training I can lay claim to more than a passing knowledge of semantics and diction and syntax and rhetoric, which brings us of course to the topic of "American Idol."

I like Simon Cowell the most because of his acerbic wit and semblance of taste; his capacity for unflinching criticism. I don't much care for Paul Abdul's critiques, but, hey, she's foxy and a champion of the underdog; always willing to encourage. Randy Jackson is the middle ground between "good cop" Paula and "bad cop" Simon, plus he brings a wealth of music industry experience to the role.

But what is it about his use of the word "pitchy," huh, dawg?

I guess Mr. Jackson means something like "wandering away from the desired pitch" or "not adhering to perfect pitch." I don't know. As I said, I am not "the music man." Surely, he is not invoking the sense found in my trusty old Oxford English Dictionary (OED), or even in Merriam-Webster's: pitch-black or tarry.

Unfortunately, if Randy has a problem with a contestant's performance, you are pretty much guaranteed to hear him declare that the performance was "pitchy" in places.

Help me out here. Help Randy out too, okay, folks?

We need some synonyms.

I'm itchin' for some pinch-hittin' for pitchy.

(Well, I never claimed to be any kind of rhymester, buster.)

Saint Ersatz

Unseemly (and unsightly, some would say) as it seems, Pawlie Kokonuts (a.k.a. The Laughorist) played the part of Saint Nicholas yesterday. (This is either a new low, or a new high, depending on one's honesty or perspective.) The appearance marked the Feast of Saint Nicholas, December 6, at a local church event.

It involved Yours Truly donning a long, white robelike article of clothing, cardboard bishop's miter, wooden staff, and red velvety cape that weighs about 127 pounds. I did not wear a beard (except for my real goatee, trimmed very tightly today incidentally) or in any way try to disguise my so-called normal visage and appearance. And no ho-ho-ho's.

If you children don't behave, I will either spank you, or show you pictures of this episode.

In all seriousness, I tried to -- in a quiet way -- make a sort-of anti-Santa Claus statement.

The youngsters gathered around in a circle before me, and I crouched down to chat with them. Here are some of the things I told them, or tried to convey (whether based on facts or legends, I didn't get into; it doesn't matter):

• The real Saint Nicholas, from present-day southeastern Turkey but under control of Greece in the 4th century, loved the poor.
• And he showed it. When his wealthy parents died, he gave his whole inheritance toward helping the poor and lonely and troubled and suffering.
• The whole bit about putting little gifts in stockings or shoes was based on the legend of his anonymous gifts to poor girls.
• He loved children.
  
• He loved them whether they were naughty or nice. He loved them. Period.

I don't deny I am flawed and filled with many contradictions. (After all, last month I managed to read these two books, though not exactly simultaneously: The Pornographer, a novel by the late Irish author John McGahern, and Praying Like Jesus: The Lord's Prayer in a Culture of Prosperity by James Mulholland. The former was ultimately dismal and only occasionally erotic, sort of like the movie "Alfie"; the latter was a challenging indictment about the misuses of Christianity in the world's richest nation.)

My point is: somehow I juggle these disparate tangents of self, these self-delusions.

But yesterday's event, and my little research leading up to it, underscored how Western society, and most especially the United States, has perverted everything Saint Nicholas stood for. We call it Christmas and Santa Claus, but ain't it really Capitalism and $anta Claw$? (And I'm not naive: an immediate cessation of this nonsense would cause economic hardship to many; the tamped-down economic activity would shed thousands and thousands, if not millions, of real jobs.)

Well, it explains, just a little, why I'm such a holiday curmudgeon.

Laugh. Or....

Else.