The Ever-Incredibly Depressing Jian Ghomeshi of CBC’s Q

found here: http://www.cbc.ca/q/

(Please read or scroll to the bottom to see the actual record of this thread!)
 

There’s this black hole in my day, every day, when lushy gushy breathy Jian comes on at 10 a.m.  I just haven’t been bothered to find other radio sources to go to, but every day I tell myself I must.  I sometimes even find myself listening to evangelists, for at least they have a kind of passion that goes out from themselves. 

Jian is the gay Persian CBC has been trying to work with forEVER.  For a while there he read letters, I think, for the charmed aging Shelagh Rogers.  Then there was his stillborn tv show.  But hey, when you’ve got a guy who is gay and not very white _and_ Persian, you just can’t give this kind of opportunity up.  Regardless of how incompetent, a guy like this is a checkoff goldmine.  It’s like in sports, when there’s this can’t-miss guy—the big defenceman who can (learn to) skate, the presumptive five-tool infielder, and so on—no amount of truth can trump your belief.

 

Any show with a Brian Connelly intro can’t be bad, right?  You wouldn’t think so, but even Brian’s theme is totally mailed-in.  He twanged that one hung-over in his pyjamas on a Sunday morning, aged 19.

Jian likes to begin with a very twee, fey spoken intro.  Comically, he refers to it as an “essay.”  This is a collection of a few hundred words about something he has decided to support that day, like, oh, say, Rue McLanahan, and it is full of precocious rhymes, like limes and mimes and what cool times!!!  He always makes sure to let us know that his last word does, too, rhyme with “Q”!!  Oh neat!!  It’s so neat how he does that, every time!  Every time I hear it, all I can think is how Liberace still at least played a piano, even with all those things on his fingers.

Roughly in the middle of his show, Jian usually reads a bit of listener mail or tweets or whatever.  Revealing his hostile self-obsessed stripe, though, Jian almost invariably uses this segment to get back at anyone who has said anything critical about the show.  So he reads a tweet or something that came to his website or whatever and then responds back to it—to someone who, obviously, cannot themselves respond in kind.  Thus does Jian become King of his little dictatorship.  Maybe he reads them in a little Ahmadinejad safari suit. 

The show does have its devices.  For instance, a remarkable portion of every show is taken up by Jian talking about what is going to be coming up on the show sometime in the near future.  Not necessarily any idea when.  And this as guests are actually sitting there.  It is beyond bizarre.  It is as if Johnny Carson were to say, “well, look, Dino, I’m talking to you now, but I’ve got Warren Beatty on tomorrow.”  It is thoroughly bizarre, but I guess Jian is in some way justifying his massive (and oh yes, we do mean massive) taxpayer-funded staff.  Bizarre.  One can only think it does go back to self-obsession somehow, because it is just so bizarre.  Then there’s the “feature chats.”  This is Jian’s favourite phrase, despite the fact that it is a comical oxymoron, like “gourmet burger.”  A “chat,” if Jian looked it up, would be a bit of an informal gossip, somewhere beneath, in seriousness, oh, say, a “conversation” or an “interview.”  But it’s a “feature”!!  A “feature” chat!  I don’t know how Jian managed to make Ben Mulroney look deep, but breathy gushy Jian has.  Jian is hosting a popular culture show, but he wants to make it sound notable, so it’s a “feature.”  I must admit, I never tune in unless it’s a “feature” chat.  All those other chats—they just don’t feature.

Then of course there’s Jian’s worldwide exclusives that he is always rather pathetically anxious to tell us about.  (Yes, if I’d failed and then been offered the public teat as often as Jian, well, I’d be insecure, too, but still, one of the best ways to overcome insecurity is to not act so obviously insecure.) Well, you know, when there’s one broadcaster with pretty much guaranteed national penetration, and most of the civilized (and non-civilized, if you care to look into it) world itself emanates from countries where national “public” broadcasters are standard, well, uh, duh, then of course you’d talk to the CBC.  Who the hell else would you talk to?  The Corus affiliate in Brandon?  

One of Jian’s greatest triumphs was getting to talk to Van Morrison when Morrison was in Canada to play a couple of concerts in places like Montreal and Toronto (where Jian’s show comes from—again, duh, who the hell else would Morrison talk to?).  Probably all the world knows a little bit about Morrison, and most of what the world probably knows is just that he’s a very independent guy who does his own thing and runs his own show and crafts memorable pop tunes and other music besides.  During Jian’s interview (sorry, “feature chat”) with Morrison, Morrison said he was still pissed off about the _Last Waltz_ movie; clearly, he felt he’d been stiffed by it.  Wheedling, cringing, desperately unctuously hyperventilating, Jian kept wondering why Morrison “was so sad.”  It was so painful to hear.  An intelligent veteran of the music business, with countless song credits to his name, being tearily honeyed and cloyed by a hushy-gushy boy who only wanted to know why Morrison was so sad.  You see, this is what depresses me about Jian Ghomeshi.  He is just so incredibly stupid and so incredibly self-obsessed that he can’t manage an interview and ask the kinds of questions that would be on the tip of any sentient less arrogant person’s tongue.  To hear Jian “chat” with Morrison (the very idea of a celebrity “chat” with Morrison kind of does just show how tuned out Jian is in the first place) was to be baffled beyond belief to think that Jian himself would say that he once strummed a guitar in public.  Jian was clearly never brought up to, nor has he ever been able to imagine someone other than himself, and this is what makes him so fundamentally incapable of speaking with other people who are not him.

A great one recently was the interview with Tim Robbins, a bright multi-talented guy.  Whinging and wheedling, gossip Jian desperately sought to know whether or not Tim's new album was really about his breakup with celeb Susan Sarandon.  What a train wreck.  I mean, you've got an intelligent guy in front of you, and all Jian could do was wonder why Tim had not used lots of production on his album.  As Tim Robbins, you've got to be sitting there, thinking, I can't believe I'm sitting here listening to this oily lisping twit wheedling about whether or not I've decided to write an album about my wife.  It's just so embarassing and skin-deep, but that's what Jian does.  You can run over the checklist--Robbins, like his wife, have done all kinds of things that have distinguished them from run-of-the-mill stars, but here's wheedling sucking Jian desperately wanting to know if Tim is "sad" about Susan.  It took a staff of 16 to get Jian to ask that??
 

Or then there was the famous Billy Bob Thornton interview.  I actually heard this one in the shower.  The story goes that Billy Bob’s handlers told Jian’s monster staff that the focus had to be on the band he was touring with, and the focus wasn’t supposed to be on Billy Bob’s movie career.  That seems fair enough to me.  I mean, after all, Thornton was touring with his band and the whole band showed up early in the morning at studio Queer with its maroon bordello atmosphere and they were ready to play.  The CBC and Canadian media, though, went all out to vilify Thornton, insisting that no, they hadn’t been told not to ask about his movies.  I could tell when simpering Jian tried to urge Thornton into a discussion of his movies that something was wrong.  And, well, yes, there was.  Anyway, to me it made sense that, if Thornton was playing there that night or the next night or whatever, and had his band of guys sitting there, he’d want the focus to be on his band.  In the end, his band did do a nice standard instrumental number that I liked.  Laughably, later, tough Canadian media renegades like posh-boy Russell Smith (novel not doin’ so good?  Write about pocket-poofs your hand can't extract) hailed Jian as _one_ _tough_ interviewer_ (sorry, _chatterer_).  Then the CBC came out, big time, and said that Thornton was a lout who showed up early in the morning and demanded a specific brand of American horsepiss beer for his band.  The CBC pleaded that liquor stores were not open then, in this fine pure land of ours.  All of this may be.  I don’t know jack about Billy Bob Thornton.  I know he got famous for something called _Sling Blade_.  I know he went out with a pretty actress, but I don’t think it was Julia Roberts, who momentarily married (right?) Lyle Lovett.  I know he’s bald (ing).  It is just a basic article of fact that musicians, like brokers and scotch, will typically drink before or during or after they perform.  That just is as it is.   Virtually every media organization on the planet is well stocked with alcohol and clothes and makeup and virtually anything else that may be necessary in order to ensure that a planned media engagement goes off well; to do otherwise would be just stupid.  So for the CBC to claim that they could not find any beer early in the morning (one of Jian’s staff could have run across the street to his flat to get some) is just pathetically stupid and lying.  Clearly, there was some hate on here in the first place, and Thornton was clearly uncomfortable at being unable to drink in some gauzy purple bathhouse at 8 a.m., but, well, I thought Jian’s wheedling inquiries about utterly insignificant gossip issues (he wasn’t asking Thornton about 9/11, or who he was supporting for the presidency, or what he thought about health care, for crying out loud) were pathetic.  Again, tone-deaf, self-regarding, and insensitive (owing to his extreme sensitivity to himself), Jian could not grasp that Thornton had a band with him, that was on tour, supporting an album, and that was the idea for why they were all there.  It was about the band, and Jian, thinking only of himself, just could not wrap his head around that.

I guess it just goes to the point.  With a trail of failed shows behind him, countless hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers' money used (in the millions now), Jian likes to just flash his lashes; but it just isn’t good enough.  He just isn’t very bright, and he’s just not that into all his guests.  He’s much, much more about himself, and that’s why paying for him and his massive staff is so depressing.  Take another gay CBC fixture, Bill Richardson.  Some time ago, when CBC afternoons were deadly dreadful, along came Bill, and he was really good.  He had an ability to come out of himself that Jian, Jian, just can’t find itself within him to do.

What really depresses me about Jian’s show is that he’s not very bright and he’s breathy and pompous and unctuous.  It also depresses me beyond belief that this guy gives so much ammunition to the foes of public broadcasting.  Here is a guy who (only) announces a staff of 16 (and obviously many more put into it and are paid) for a 2-hour (often 1 ½ -hr) show five days a week.  And what does he do?  A kind of Oprah-Ellen on the radio show.  Good lord.  I am constantly exasperated by private broadcasters who rake in the dough on car ads and whose entire operations consist only of a phone and whatever guy is on air, and who cut up public broadcasters while piping in stale used American content.  But 16+ staffers + the host to host a gossip “feature chat” show for about 8-9 hours a week???  Good lord, good lord, good lord.  This, so I can hear from Jane Fonda and Carrie Fisher??

Alright.  I’ve said enough critical.  Jian does do the TMZ news stuff.  That’s kind of funny.  Sorry, I haven’t said enough critical.  It is ludicrous that we are paying for this.  Again, Jian and his tiny constituency just aren’t enough to justify these massive expenses.

Let me try to be positive.  I’m not saying Jian is lazy.  This is a guy who’s had a 100 chances, and he probably knows it, somewhere deep down.  He _does_ google the people he interviews, or reads the google printouts his massive staff prepares for him (it must be such a bizarre thing to see “Q” getting ready to take its show on the road—a full 40 ft boardroom with a dozen or more people eagerly hunched around talking about “what will we ask Carrie Fisher?????”)  There are panels on the show—he addresses sports, but uses plagiarist Bruce Dowbiggin and platitudinous Stephen Brunt—maybe one of his massive staff could find another voice somewhere.  Still, though, good for Jian for addressing this nevertheless large part of the arts/culture spectrum that CBC and others have been being more or less forced in late years to drag into the political/military spectrum where, in democracies, it just really doesn’t belong.  It’s on the edge, and that’s where Jian puts it, and good for Q for representing it.  Q does address topical issues like, I don’t know, being fat, or something.  Ok.  I definitely support an arts show of some kind.  Spending millions on an Oprah show?  No.  I just feel so weird for the musicians as they sit there and Jian talks (again and again and again and again and again) about all the other guests he’s going to have on, sometime, in coming weeks.  Weird.

I like Elvira Kurt, the gay depressive comedian he has on regularly.  As a result of hearing her on Queer (I had heard her before), I did go to her website months ago, where I think she sells self-help books, or something.  It’s funny to hear her, because of course she and Jian actually don’t have much rapport on the air at all.  She is way too smart and fast for him, and he is the primadonna anyway, so there’s an amusing tension between a sharp smart person and one trying to act like one.  Jian, and Elvira, know he's the cute one, but she's the smart one, and the results are amusing.

I support Q (oh boy, through taxes, do I ever), but I just wish the host could be a little smarter, a little less self-absorbed. 

Alright then.  Enough for now.  This is a very depressing show that I almost always have to dial away from, despite being a member of the very most obvious constituency that the show could ever target.  I guess that’s the point.  Let’s go with Donnie and Marie, a couple of Jian’s “feature chat” heroes.  I guess I’m just a little bit interview, and Jian is a little bit gossip.  I’m a little bit open, and Jian’s just a little bit Oprah.

I know--put Jian on in the afternoon.  I know it seems like a crazy carousel to find Jian, with all his pc indicators, yet another home, but 2-4, surely, that, if anywhere, is where he belongs.

zr

{{4 years, 4 posts on this blog.

(I don't blame you for getting bored, but I've as much a right and a responsibility as anyone to be held to complete account for what I have written.)

The first post, the one that EVERYONE read:
The Ever-Incredibly Depressing Jian Ghomeshi of CBC’s Q -- 17/09/2011

The next and final post, that a few read.
The Ever-Incredibly Depressing Jian Ghomeshi of CBC’s Q -- redux 02/03/2012

3rd post (that a few more read):
My decision to at last address some of the so many comments I got about my *2* Ghomeshi posts (my antique internet attitude has always been that you can respond and say whatever you want to say, and I won't editorialize.  However, after many comments, I decided to take up a few of the most common ones).
The ever-incredibly depressing Jian Ghomeshi treedux -- 11/02/2013

The recent post, that a few have read, now that he's really famous (and a post that's already starting to look really antique, like the once-powerful "Copps-May-Shelaghlah Swoonferit Theory of General Sexual Moral Infallibility"):
50 Shades of Jian Ghomeshi: Parsing Jian’s Infinite Self-Regard -- 28/10/2014}}

Linguistic tics that drive you crazy

Updated Nov. 2014

Well, I surely am not updating this page very much, though I often think of it (somewhat like my "dreams and questions" post, which I think of nearly every day but somehow never update).  What literate person does not think of language annoyances s/he encounters every day?  If you have a tic(k) you'd like to extract (or dream or question, go ahead and add.

Anyway, here's a couple of phrases/things that are really on my nerves these days:

1) "Terms and Conditions Apply"  Honestly, why not just say or show at the end or bottom of every ad "we didn't really mean it," or "sorry you're a sucker if you believed us"?  I'm just writing off the top of my head now, but I'm curious as to how this phrase became so ubiquitous.  I guess it's just because advertisers don't have to use a modicum of truth now as when once they may have ever had to.  I associate "terms and conditions apply" with entities like telcos or media companies who try to hook you with a simple sale and then strangle you with fine print for years as if with a telephone cord (that's a thing--it used to be attached to a "phone"; it was long and stretchy and curly so it could adapt to your every twist and turn).  Or there's car companies offering you great deals before they tell you what you're really in for with leases and loans and financing and so on and on.  I see now American car companies are always advertising ridiculous savings, such as "savings of up to $15 000!!"  Well, say I wanted to buy a truck.  Seems to me like only a dork would pay more than about $40 000 at most for a thing that is mostly a slab of metal on the back end.  But every day, I drive by a dealership offering "$15 000 in savings!!"  Why not just put up a signboard saying "Trucks: $25 000!"  What kind of rube or idiot falls for the "15 000 off" pitch?  I'd like to show up for my next Dodge Dart and haggle over how much I'll get back if I just agree to drive one off the lot for free.  1 000?  2 000?  Maybe I'll get the dealer to throw in free gas for 36 mos. if I approve him.

2) "Our thoughts are prayers are with. . . ."  Nope, they're not.  So ubiquitous has the phrase become that it is merely now an expression of our detached, electronic, moral and emotional feelinglessness.  Robots say it, type it, state it, read it. . .every day.  How come we have so many "thoughts are prayers" to give out, these days?  Is it because we cannot imagine acting or doing?  Since "thoughts and prayers" is such an empty, cliched, hollow, meaningless phrase, one wonders that the occasional person doesn't try to alter it, say by actually trying to cite something specific about the lamented or the aggrieved that really indicated a knowing and engaged and emotional connection between condoler and condolee.  But I guess Twitter only gives you so many characters. . . .

3) The apparent disappearance of the past perfect.  This drives me more crazy every day.  Why?  I can only think because of its so-speedy vanishing and equally rapid supplantation.  You're supposed to say: "If I had have known he had three aces, I wouldn't have bet," not "If I would have known he had three aces, I wouldn't have bet."  This contemporary constant placement of the speculative future conditional (or call it the conditional perfect) in the _past_ is just incredibly annoying.  Why is the past perfect disappearing?  Well, I'd say it's just because it's kind of hard to say--two h/huh sounds in a row.  To some it may also sound ungainly, but to my ancient mind it actually sounds rather emphatic, which is often what we want the past perfect to sound like.  Every time I use the past perfect these days, I am conscious of just how weird and strange I must sound--just like I do when I use the English subjunctive ("if I were a rich man," vs. the now inevitable "if I was a rich man").
-----

I’m not going to re-fight battles over serial commas or split infinitives, though I’d be happy to, if you ask me, irregardless.  “Impact” as a verb—I’m there.  "Due to"--sure.

No, I’d kind of like to reserve this post for pet peeves of mine, and yours, if you like, mainly discussing the most _overlooked_ and/or most recent outrages against the tongue/expression I’ve/we've come upon.  I often venture an opinion on why the linguistic changes I'm apprehending are occurring.  Others may have other opinions.

Foolishly, I decided to express my annoyance at tics in a _single paragraph_.  This was my way of trying, unsuccessfully, to limit myself to a brief, incisive comment.  Of all my posts with which to do this with, this was the most boneheaded.  I wanted just to limit myself and make sure I had a brief, quick (pointless or otherwise) intervention.  Didn't work, clearly, and you can see the results for many entries in discursive paragraphs that could constitute several or many paragraphs.  Whatever.  One can--can--and often really does--edit.

As/Because

The surest sign of a person new to the language, or its sophisticated use, is the use of "as."  "As" expresses a comparative relationship: "It was as hot as July."  "Because" expresses a cause-effect relationship: "I went home because I was tired."  One of the surest dead give-aways that you don't know anything about writing is when you pompously and desperately attempt to use "as" to express cause-effect relationships.  Happens every day.  Often the most pompous of all use it.  Keep doing it, and, indeed, one day the sanction will indeed be universal.  But to people who grasp the language, you will only ever look silly and pathetic, and you will have revealed definitively your lack of knowledge.  Yes, you can reference that (see "Reference," below).

Could care less

People of the faintest education and intellect love to use this phrase constantly.  A couple of micro-presences who spring to mind are the FAN590's Pat Steinberg and Rob Kerr.  They love to use this phrase, because they think they're sounding tough and dismissive and jock-like.  Only problem is, they just expressed how much, yes, they really *do* care about what, comically, they just tried to dismiss (rough, tough guys that they are).  It's a basic little test in logic and rationality, and that's --tough-- for many.  If you really don't care about something, you indicate as much by saying "I could NOT care less."  That is, if there's something you really don't care about, you say that you are not able to care less, or give a damn.  But if you do, indeed, give a damn about something, then you would, logically, allow that, well, you "could" care less.  That is, there are other things you care less about, but on this issue, sure, you maybe do care a bit more.  With a faint grasp of oral and written expression, Rob Kerr and Pat Steinberg tough it out, acting all tough about how they "could care less."  Silly bois who can't read, they don't realize just what pantywaists they revealed themselves to be by observing, unwittingly, that, indeed, they *do* care.  It may be stupid to be tough, but it has sure got to be tough to be stupid.  If you *really* wanted to be tough and cool, you _could_ try just saying the phrase accurately, giving emphasis to the NOT--"I could NOT care less."  You might find it would work just as well, and the dorks you're saying it to won't notice anyway.  Win-win.

Drop the writ

Yes, it's been who knows how many generations since this idiotic cliche took over from "draw up the writ," but it still rankles with me.  It's just such an idiotic image.  I can, yes, see "a hat thrown in the ring"  or "a gauntlet thrown down," but a "writ" (that is, something written) being "dropped," is just phenomenally stupid.  Hold up a piece of paper in front of you.  Now let it drop.  Watch it flutter aimlessly until it hits the ground.  How stupid can you get?  One draws up a writ on a sheet of paper with a writing instrument--or a computer or whatever--who cares--but one does not "drop" it.  This reminds me of all the kids I know who call laptops "labtops."  They are very unaccustomed to seeing words in writing, but they have been in labs, so they just naturally assume a small computer must be a "labtop," not something anyone, including people not in a lab, could just use portably on their persons.  Whenever I hear anyone say "drop the writ," I know I am in the presence of a very stupid person who could no less discern between a snowfall than an ice-cream cone sitting atop his/her head.

Efforting

D'jep, it sure does sound gauche and silly.  But I don't know, in a strange way, I don't mind it so much, yet.  "Efforting" follows in that age-old tradition now of English speakers turning nouns into verbs, like "impact" and so on.  People actually used to be upset by neologisms such as "nationalize" and "rationalize."  I'm so often amused when I hear linguists talk about "prescriptivists" vs. "descriptivists."  Frankly, I've never really known anyone who is or or was or who would describe him/herself as a "prescriptivist."  So it's a fake debate.  What a prescriptivist could, theoretically, be, though, would be someone who lamented the passing from use of great and useful descriptive words and phrases and constructions.  Just because something is new and is happening doesn't make it wonderful or signal organicness or vitality.  Car crashes happen, but they aren't wonderful or renewing.  Anyway, so far, "efforting" has been almost exclusively confined to the media ("we're efforting on that story now!!"), and there, it kind of makes sense.  I mean, it's glib, it's gushy/breathless, it tries to impress with its new/nouvelles-ness, it's used by people who have spent little time learning about English--and so on and on.  I have a hard time imagining "efforting" having alot of uptake.  Would a kid being pressed on his/her homework bleat: "but dad, I'm efforting!"?  If you're late for a lunch date, would you call your lunchmate and say: "I'm efforting, I'm really efforting, but traffic is hell!"?  Even journalists who use "efforting" unwittingly show how awkward and idiotic the word is by usually turning it into a phrasal verb or a kind of tautological construction with two verbs, anyway.  I guess we'll see.  For now, I don't mind the fact that the word is mostly used by airheads.  Then again, people who used "irregardless" used to be sympathized with for their ignorance; now, "irregardless" is in the dictionary and is used quite seriously often by people who should and maybe even do know better.  Maybe in a hundred years someone will write a tiny "oid," let's say (for they won't be called "blogs" then, I would assume), and tell readers about how "efforting" once didn't even exist, and how it came to be so popular.

Future Hall of Famer

Somebody should write a good blog someday about the great halls of fame.  I think the greatest and toughest always used to be the LPGA hall of fame up until the late 1990s.  The women had far and away the toughest and most stringent standards, and it really meant something.  The other halls were always fairly tainted anyway--the NHL voted on by buddies, many nobodies getting in; the MLB compromised infinitely by race and drugs and gambling and the striated history of that great game that also mimicked the society it was played before.  Now, "future hall of famer" means about the same thing as "supersizing" your fries.  Sports talkers continue to say, constantly, "future hall of famer" because they think that if they say "future hall of famer," so saying will somehow include them in the pantheon.  That is, recognizing the greatness of another will somehow shed an afterglow on the person who stated it.  Thus, sports talkers continue to say, ad nauseam, even as they demean and diminish the phrase, "future hall of famer."   I'm giving it 50 years, maximum, before we are _all_ in the hall of fame, and then we'll invent a new way to bring accolades upon ourselves, athletes and non-athletes alike.

Home in/Hone in

In the sense that to hone means to sharpen, it makes faint sense to me that people will think that to “hone in” makes some kind of sense, but what an evil and wrong sense it is.  The far less evil term is “home in,” as in the pigeon, finding its home.  Or, if you like, WWII bombers “homing in” on their targets.  “Hone” makes no sense whatsoever of any kind ever, but yet it is used, no doubt by those who live in a “hone.”  Could anyone just think about this, even for just a second?  You know what a home is—at least I think you do—so you can imagine “homing” in on something.  Now imagine your “hone.”  Once you’re done “honing” in on it, you can ask me for a band-aid.

literally
another battle lost.  This adverb is now used almost exclusively as an intensifier, without any reference to anything actually literal.  There's an amusing/poignant irony in the sense that those who most now use "literally" (as in: "like, oh gee, wow, like, dude") are those most unlikely to have a sense of anything literal, literally.

Lose/Loose
e.g. "She thought that she would loose her boyfriend."  I can't speak for you and where you live, but having taught at post-secondary institutions for many years, I can say that well under 15%, and probably only around 5% of university students in Canada (cross-country), can distinguish between the words "loose" and "lose."  This isn't a tic or anything, just a sad fact that both amuses and bothers me.  That these tiny words should be so unlearnable to the people who will be supposedly zapping our tumours and selling our houses and managing our financial portfolios is sad, sad indeed.  The tiniest, most basic and common words cannot be spelt by people with university education.  Why?  Just a basic unfamilarity with the written word, I guess.  If seeing a word in print were as unfamiliar to you as seeing a jockey atop a dragon, well, I guess you wouldn't know whether or not a loose grasp of communication were a loss or if you were losing anything, at all.  Notably, non-English speakers or ESL learners don't have as much trouble with English verbs like this as people who have been brought up with English do.

Pore/Pour

To study or go over something closely is to pore over it.  Maybe one in 50 people now grasp this (ok, probably much less).  If you "pour" over something, you are probably using water or gravy or something.

Refer/Reference

There's a word for that--how is it that “reference” is now used almost exclusively (?) as a verb.  I discovered one of my colleagues using it recently.  Then John Doyle of the Globe and Mail, who really ought to know better, was right up there at the bar.  “Reference” is a noun, as in a “reference library,” or a “reference book.”  There’s a good old handy English word that can handle “reference,” and it is called “refer.”  Yep, that’s right.  The verb is “to refer.”  In other words, if I want to “refer” to a book, I can just do it, just like that.  I don’t even have to “reference” it, because then I’d look really stoopid referencing a reference book in the first place.  The reason “reference” has taken the place of “refer” in common discourse is because people, such as John Doyle, think they can sound much cooler and erudite and educated if they can only add one more syllable to their. . . .  Well John, take it away.

Roil/roiling

People, it's a perfectly decent word that can be used perfectly decently on occasion.  But now it is so ridiculously overrused that it risks losing any meaning whatsoever.  Could we all, please, just stop roiling so goddamn much?  If people knew how stupid they looked when they were roiling, like when they were doing the chicken dance, I'm sure they'd stop doing it. 

so/Well

Looks like this battle has been lost for now, and it all happened so fast.  I have no idea how it happened.  Not so long ago, and over quite a period of time, I found I was grated upon by Slavic speakers in central Europe who, without fail, began responses to queries or started unmeditated reflections with “so” (it usually sounded kind of drawn out, like “saaawh.”  With some success, I urged them to begin conversational, informal forays with “Well,” for this, as I had long known, was a common way to begin a comment that was quite common across the English-speaking world.  The Slavs explained to me that they got their “so’s” from German, which most of them spoke, and that they therefore followed a pattern they’d heard in another language they’d learned.  Fair enough.   Anyone out there remember anything?  I remember almost every speculative question being answered (often politely or with an understanding of one’s interlocutor’s point of view) with “Well, . . .”, or just a general unformed, informal thought being vocalized initially with “Well, . . . .”  It’s like in French, in which, admittedly, conversation is probably relished a fair bit more than in English.  You will always hear French people begin with “Bien,” or “Bien mais,” or Bien, ou peut-etre que. . . .”  Notice that the French place the coordinating conjunctions such as “but” or “or” _after_ the “well” (bien), which is where it should be. But in English, now??!! Everything, even in English-speaking North America, seems invariably to begin with a finger-pointing, jabbing, shut-down “so.”  Back up a bit.  “So” is one of seven coordinating conjunctions in English—or, for, nor, so, yet, but, and and.   Since no-one uses, or knows how to use “for” or “nor” as coordinating conjunctions anymore (but fear not, brave hearts, it can still be done—it’s just that no-one will understand you unless you’re having a game of Pinochle), many authorities are now reducing the list to just five, though these lists still include “so.”  --and don’t get me started on the constantly misused “Yet,” at the beginning of a sentence, as a transition word, when, in fact, it is a transition word, such as “however,” that should be used.  A “coordinating conjunction” is just what it says it is: it is a little word that comes after a comma in a sentence and that binds the two parts of the sentence together so as to make a logical whole.  In other words, the people who now, it seems, nearly universally begin their spoken sentences with a self-important, self-satisfied “SO” are saying that, sure, you just said something to start things off, but now they are coming in and finish off and complete your useless spoken beginning.  Think about it.  If you are young-ish, say 30 or less, talk to someone who is old-ish, say 50 or more.  See if they begin every response to you with “SO.”  Now talk to a younger person, or just hear a talking head on radio or tv. “Well” sounds kind of benign and responsive and dialogic or conversational to me.  “So,” on the other hand, sounds illegitimately (or buffoonishly) authoritative, confrontational, and superior, like kids in a schoolyard saying “yeah, so??”  “So” sounds like trying to take the upper hand and end or finish, rather than continue, a discussion.  So maybe that’s why it has become so common so fast in our online times, in which you’re very unlikely to speak to someone directly, but rather tell him/her your important conclusion some time after the fact of the original communicative offering, or from a remote distance.  I don’t know, but I put it out there, like everything else here, as I respond to and try to make sense of what I take in; any other thoughts are welcome.  And I’m going to have to tell those Slavs: “SOOOaaahhh, you were right all along.”  And then we’ll just sit there and stare at each other for a while, until someone offers another “SOOOaaaahhhh” statement to not start us off again.  Then we’ll reach for our I-devices, and say it again with thumbs, and see if that arouses anything.

Stanch/Staunch

You are staunch if you can get shot in the shoulder (Hollywood stars do it daily) and probe for and pluck the bullet out yourself and stanch the flow of blood with bandaging.  People who think you can stanch with staunch are part of an ever-growing illiterate majority.

Stuart McLean and punctuation between verb and subject

Well, it’s one of the most basic rules of English that you don’t put punctuation between subjects and verbs.  I guess it’s been a long time now that that Stuart, that ageing teenboi, has been making me cringe.  Just the sound of his voice, echoing in some prairie theatre, now makes me cringe.

It didn’t always used to be that way.  He used to be quasi-relevant.  I remember his piece on Anthony Robbins, or the time he just went to a payphone and talked to the people who came up to use it, or when he sat down at a fair and had people come up and talk to him—at those times, Stuart McLean really did represent people and show us how more than just journalism could be done.  But now he’s become a mockery of himself, a kind of drunken Liz Taylor.  Now he seems almost to cringe before we do, trying to make himself loved. 

Since I’m on about it, I’ll offer some Stewie. A basic reason for why I can’t listen to Stuart McLean is because he doesn’t grasp that punctuation doesn’t come between a subject and a verb.  Is Stuart illiterate?  It seems hard to believe, but probably he is.  He is probably one of those (otherwise quite literate) people who can’t spell and who can barely read and who feeds lines to his editors and handlers so that they can make sense of him, so that he can in turn make sense to his audiences. 

Lemme see.  Here’s Stewie talking about Dave and his record store:

            Dave    saw      a truck.  Truck that said,         said,     bread.              Dave said,       I’ve seen that truck,            truck with bread.         He       didn’t have to deliver             that bread.                   But he did.                  That bread.                  Truck driver stopped, stopped, near Dave      said Dave, Dave          I

want you         to have a

loaf.

Dave    said      a          loaf?   

And the truck driver said, “yes” (laugh track)—

a          loaf!!

Dave    said:  “I don’t need a loaf                   now.” (laugh track)

Truck driver said: “I know, Dave, you don’t                         need    a          loaf.”

But I want you to have           one.

Dave took that loaf     inside.  Marlie             or Marly          he’d forgotten which  was estimating their retirement income.  Now.  But it was      just spelling,    now.

Dave    said      “Marlie, I’ve got a       loaf!”  Marlie said: “that’s great, now maybe 2 of us can eat.”  Dave             said:  but I just            got us a            loaf!”  Marlie said:      It’s good, Dave.  Now light us           a candle.              “A       candle,” Dave             said.  “But       I just got this               loaf!”

Marlie said:     “But Dave: we can’t   set fire to         that.”

Dave said:       “But we           don’t need       fire.  “We’ve              got a, a                        loaf!”

And Marly had to agree.  They did, indeed, have a loaf.

Thrash/Thresh

Must be a 100 years ago now that people stopped talking about threshing ideas out, and so forth.  This made sense, for threshing is the act of separating the wheat from the chaff, or figuring things out, making sense out of chaos, separating the valuable from the valueless.  The literal and metaphorical meanings were almost plangent.

Alas, now, everyone “thrashes” things out, which, if you think about it, is hilarious, or a perfect metaphor for our times.  Beating the shit senselessly and insensibly out of something is, indeed, “thrashing” things out.

"Tuh" for "To"

I'm hardly gonna pretend that I don't constantly shorten and elide and drop g's in my everyday colloquial speech, but this "tuuuhhh" coming out of the mouths of not just teen girls but major public figures is really starting to grate.  And I do associate this trend more with women than men. . .there can't be a simpler or more common word than "to," but it is possible that women and men use it more or less in different situations.  The hanging dewlap of the present-day "tuh" is truly taste-offending to regard.  Why is it happening?  Maybe the ongoing schwa-ization of everything. . .it takes just a tiny bit of discipline to try to articulate clearly and use a variety of distinct sounds during speech.

Walk-off

This is a term supposedly initially used by Dennis Eckersley, the great starting and relieving pitcher, in the late 80s/early 90s.  In his parlance, it meant when someone got a hit, particularly a homer, to end a game, and, as the pitcher, you just "walked off," because the game was over, and you had lost.  Such a term could have become a special-use part of the rich baseball lexicon.  However, it has regrettably become an automatic term that virtually all sportscasters must use.  Hence the walk-off triple, the walk-off double, the walk-off single, and, yes, even the walk-off walk.  By beating this term to death by their senses that they must use it or lose their jobs, sportscasters have removed a potentially useful and descriptive and definitive and dramatic term from baseball meaning.

Always more to come.

zr

Shiftless? Incompetent? Ignorant? – Get a Job Reading the News with CHQR AM 770

There’s little reason for anyone on the internet to know of CHQR AM 770, a hard-right radio station in southern Alberta, Canada’s Bible belt.  Most of the time it plays syndicated far-right talk hacks.  Late at night it pipes in American conspiracy and UFO shows—you know, the kinds of shows that are definitely going to advance the world and make their programmers proud as they lie on their deathbeds toting up the goods they did to society. 

I guess CHQR AM 770’s main personage must be Dave Rutherford, the hate-filled morning man who hosts a show in which he cuts off even the pre-screened callers who *agree* with him.  He has a high, whiny, whinging adenoidal voice.  If you see him, he kind of looks like what you’d expect: he’s a lined and paranoid-nervous looking guy, with thinning light hair and a pinched face; he undeniably looks like the keening, wailing baby that he is.

Dave’s job is to spew hate; people won’t call if they aren’t pissed off, so Dave has to develop that hatred, day in and day out.  It’s a tough gig.  I’d look like a 70-year-old 7-year-old, too, I don’t doubt.

Anyway, how would I know of CHQR AM 770 so well?  Because I very often listen to the Old Radio Show segment between 11 and 1 a.m.  I really enjoy this show.  Admittedly, it, too, is a syndication job, and very often CHQR gaily garbles it—skipping records, shows cut off, incorrect shows announced and played, and so on.  It’s just CHQR AM 770’s general disrespect for the listener at work.  Like any good company, CHQR AM 770 has only one constituency in mind, the advertisers who make it money (CHQR AM 770 is rather well known for taking ads from companies charged with criminal offenses).

Late at night, once the old radio shows are done, one can often expect to hear Steve Norton take over the tough 4-minute news slot.  To hear Steve really is something.  Garbled, illiterate, yawning and pausing—his stunning lack of professionalism (and, well, let’s just face it—outright stupidity) is truly amazing.  When I first heard this guy, I just figured he was a nepotism case and that someone was giving his son a job.  But no, Steve stayed on the air, butchering and bastardizing every 4-minute segment he was manfully called upon to do once per hour.  There’s really nothing Steve can’t mess up, but he takes pride in it, and obviously CHQR AM 770 does, too.  During Steve’s pauses, coins could appear on your eyelids.  He stumbles and bumbles over 1- to 2-sentence news items.  It is mind-blowing just how amateurish and 4^th rate CHQR AM 770 delights in being.  If I were tired, but knowing I had to go on for a (huge!!!) 4-min. stint, I’d probably throw some water on my face and just do it.  Not Steve, though.

I’m not uncharitable.  Being a night man can be a dull and boring thing.  You might get tired, indeed, even if it was your JOB to be awake 5 nights a week and settle into a routine.  But not for Steve, oh no.

As I’ve indicated before on this blog, I have no little experience of radio.  My very first experience with radio was back with 5MMM public radio in Australia.  I have good memories, in the sense that, despite my youth, everyone there, from the Station Manager to the emphysematous night jockey, treated me well.  They weren’t interested in me, nor had they any reason to be, but they took their work seriously and they treated me seriously.  I remember a couple of tall, handsome, sharp-dressed guys who read the news.  I remember glancing at their copy and laughing over their hilarious misspellings.  They looked at me very soberly and told me that, when they were reading the news, they used phonetic spellings so that they wouldn’t get anything wrong.  Then or now, I would never use such things, because I would almost never need them, and would mess up horribly if I did that, and I had no way of knowing what they were doing, but still I did feel a bit small as they calmly and dryly pointed out to me why they did what they did—they wanted to get the pronunciations right.  And these were just a couple of guys at a public radio station!!

Needless to say, I learned from moments like that, and I still remember times I screwed up on radio, even though I had nothing near the technology and producers CHQR AM 770 has.  Anytime I ever screwed up, I never forgot it, and I tried to make sure it never happened again.  I guess I just had a hint o’ pride, and a bit of work ethic, unlike those at CHQR AM 770.

We’re now in the internet age, when and where you can get virtually anything you want virtually any minute.  All night tonight, a person named “Josie Fotah” (I have no way of verifying the spelling of her last name because CHQR AM 770 does not want to let us know who is employed at its station—I’m just going by what the phonetic sound of her last name, as she says it, seems to be), has been stumbling and bumbling and crashing over names such as Arencibia, or Djokovic.  This, again, is in the age of the internet, when you can go online and check something virtually instantly.  And, if you’re uncertain or responsible, you can *double-check* it instantly, too.  But would Josie do that?  Oh, no.  Never.  That just ain’t ‘QR style, by which ignorance is at a premium.  Each hour, a name she finds hard comes up, and each hour, there’s an agonizing wait as her halting mind tries to shift the heavy boulder of a (!foreign!!—in Canada!!) name, and each time, she comes up with a new bastardization.  I don’t know what her last name is, but I suspect that if I kept announcing it wrongly over the airwaves, time after time, she might find that a bit disrespectful.  She might say: “What’s your problem?  Why can’t you just look it up?”  But no, that ain’t the way ‘QR rolls.

Djokovic has been one of the top tennis players in the world for several years.  He has been having a record-breaking season.  He has won 2, and is on the verge of winning 3 of 4 available major tournaments this year.  Simply to be alive would have been to have heard his name innumerable times over the past, oh, I don’t know, 36 months or so.  But good ol’ Josie, she can’t even look it up or go to YouTube.  And, for many hours now, she has been announcing that Djokovic’s opponent for the U.S. Open final has not been determined.  The last time she said this was at 3 a.m. MST, some 7 hours after Djokovic’s opponent, Rafael Nadal, had, indeed, been determined.

So now let’s get in CHQR AM 770’s backyard about this.  As the far-right station of note in southern Alberta, CHQR boasts on an hourly basis just how it is the place to go to for any kind of instant updates or important news bulletins.  Let’s just say there were a firebug, or, say, a PEDOPHILE in your neighbourhood.  Could CHQR AM 770 be relied upon to let you know, even during the course of a standard 8-hour business day?  Of course not.  Josie knows it, ‘QR knows it, we know it.  ‘QR prides itself on ignorance and hate, and it would compromise itself six ways to Sunday if it tried for even a second to act like a responsible radio station.

What a sad, sad outfit. 

zr

God and the Death of America - God Loves Webb Simpson – But He Hates the Hell Right Out of Chez Reavie

God Loves Webb Simpson – But He Hates the Hell Right Out of Chez Reavie

In the latest tiresome instalment of tv athletes (there are quite a few athletes, really, but they don’t all get to be on tv) who point to the sky and then thank god when there’s a microphone, Webb is that man.

Dude, you’ve won *2* tournaments, and if the Lord was pushin’ for you like you’re pushin’ for Him, you maybe might have won many more.  Tiger got inspired by two-bit pancake-house whores, and look what he pulled off.  The Webbster might’ve backed the wrong demi-urge entirely, if golf success was his aim.

Anyway, why has there never been an embargo on scripturally illiterate pinheads sounding off about things they know nothing of? 

For so long now, as a kind of groaning death rattle, American athletes have been citing, along with their politicians, the Lord.  They do stand up there and they do suggest that they and they only have been blessed by the Lord.

Faith.  It’s a funny thing.  Funny in the sense that truly only dorks have it.  When you see it on TV, it tends to be dorks who have it.  Well, faith, as Jesus would have it, isn’t something you just pick up at Wal-Mart for $.99.  Faith—real faith—is hard won.  It knows setbacks and periods of querulousness. You don’t just point to the sky.  If I did that, I bet for sure I’d be struck by lightning.

American athletes on tv—as a kind of irreplicable genre—do refer to their Lord.  They know dogs and cats like I know boots and hats.  This, this, way in which athletes praise the lord when they have won, the while the world ignores the others who have not, what does it mean?

Well, well.  It means Michele Bachmann, far from the last American “of faith” to believe that storms that hit people she didn’t know (but whose votes she’d nevertheless solicit) were a visitation upon their morality.

The sky-pointing, you-did-that-tornado-to-you state of America now says a lot about why China is obliterating the U.S. now.  America is in desperate blind retreat.  It isn’t a good thing for many reasons.  Michele Bachmann may profit, but it’s weird that she could be so selfish, cryogenics aside, knowing she only had a few decades or less to go.  America needs some serious patriots now, but there are none on the horizon, and that means American workers are going to have bosses named Wong, not Smith.  And, had they not retreated to faith but instead just got off their asses and worked, Americans could have prolonged their minor empire.

People cling to the idea of an afterlife so that they can live forever afterwards; in this way, they absolve themselves from having to act well while they actually lived and dealt with human beings.

zr

Tonight I Saw Jimmy Kimmel: Leno and Letterman and the Question of Who Watches this Shit, Anyway?

Tonight I saw Jimmy Kimmel for the first time.  Ok well, maybe not, maybe I have seen his face before.  But I could not have put a name to it, that I know.  I have definitely seen his name on the cable guide thing on TV.  I just always thought, why would I watch something that sounded like me trying to get my dog to come eat?  Anyhoo, saw a few mins. of Jimmy.  I couldn’t get much out of it.  I felt that I could not see his face.  I mean, he has one, but what does it look like?  He also has a nasal voice, and I’ve got tiny tiny tolerance for that feature.  I see he has a band and a backdrop with city lights on it, so I gather he’s the same as them all.  But seeing him, anyway, I think for the first time, prompted me to write this post.

(I think I also never watched Mr. Kimmel because I think I read somewhere that he went out with my nex girlfriend, Sarah Silverman, for a while.  I could be wrong.  I could look it up on the web.  I’ve never actually seen a Sarah Silverman tv product, either, or even listened to her potty monologues, but I’ve seen her, and I’ve a good sense of who she is, and I am very distraught to think that some faceless guy knows her better than I do.)

I essentially never watch these—what do they call them—senior adult late night shows?  As a genre, what are they called, anyway?  The other night (in a--dismal? researching? comatose-but-still-with-few-clicks? too-big-a-steak? moment), I thought, ok, I’ll watch a minute or two of Letterman.  I do remember people who did watch him.  His monologue was so tired it was like Perry Como at 16 rpm.  Talk about a time warp.  He told a fat joke about Kirstie Alley.  Talk about mailing it in.  That guy’s a dead man walking, and one wonders why he doesn’t put himself and his geriatric writers out of their miseries.  I aged 20 years in the 2 mins. I attended to him.

Speaking of creepy cadavers, I also had a look at Leno.  I remember when he was a snappy dark-haired guy who spotted for Carson.  He was a quipster, and that’s ok, but who knew then that he represented the apex of post-prime-time American tv achievement 30 years later?  But I'm too cynical.  That Jay found jokes older than his cars is, undeniably, an achievement.

Or Conan O’Brien—watched a monologue of his, too.  Dreadfully unfunny.  I keep trying to tell myself, look, this guy’s frenetic, he’s wired, he must be funny.  Perhaps he is, but he seems determined to unfunnily undermine himself.  He has this tic, one that he shares, I do suppose, with pretty well anyone like him generically, of having to (re-)act out and reiterate the not funny jokes he just told that got a sign- or sigh-induced laugh.   It’s awful.  Painful.  The camera tight in on him, staring blankly/eagerly, restating the same lame joke about a celebrity you’d have to stand in a checkout line forever to know of.  That or some hapless audience member, being panned to over and over and over and over more often than a wife at a World Series until the laughs just seem to come from—not beyond the grave—but someplace like Malaysia, where just looking at Americans seems funny. 

But Conan O’Brien—do like the man’s suits.  He’s a tall skinny guy and I think he does nail his suits.  His colour selection, anytime I’ve seen it, seems counter-intuitive, but it works.  I think he’s almost always side-vented (they don’t show him from behind), but at any rate he’s got a Savile-savvy look that certainly bests all the others.

Craig Ferguson.  I’d like to like that guy.  I’m told he improvises more than others, but in any brief moment I’ve seen, he seems to have the same tics of repetition and faux-pleading and so forth that all his brethren (why never a sister?  How many reasons?  Go on, go on, and suggest. . .) do.  I read he was once a drunk, and now he plays on acting like one, allowing him to get drunk on something else.  I’d like to say—and I would mean—that I could listen to that Scottish accent and like it as it read phone books; still, after a bit of his monologue, I find myself strangely at odds with the truly meant statement just before stated.  Nice voice, shame about the content.

Bill Maher; haven’t seen that guy in a hundred years, not on my tv service, anyway.  Arsenio Hall.  I remember that guy.  I don’t think he was funny, but he sure did smile a lot.  His band was to his left, which I think is fairly unusual and must mean he was left-handed.

Anyway, the question is, who watches this shit anymore, anyway?  Once upon a time, I think Letterman pulled in people from their 20s to their 40s, say, but surely to goodness those times ended eons ago.  I hear tell of a time when suburban couples of a certain advanced age would go to bed with that new embarrassment-avoidance mechanism, the bedroom tv set (a “set,” no less), and watch Carson.  But honestly, who in the hell watches these guys—all the above-named—anymore?  How?  Where?

I’ll date myself now.  I do watch Stewart and Colbert, though far from religiously and often on the computer as opposed to the tv.  These shows are inevitably very disappointing, though, because, despite the fact that they announce a guest at the start of the show, those guests get a silly 2-min. walk-on in which the host has to joke it all up such that you really didn’t hear anything.  Every single episode of Stewart or Colbert, no matter how provocatively ironic it is, is always done in entirely by its own superficial knock off of the ol’ hokey-jokey siddown next to Ed vapid interview.  In this way, even Stewart and Colbert cannot get beyond the formula they’d hoped to surpass and/or, more grandiosely, supplant.  They’re still locked in on the “do a skit, then bore it on out” shtick.  Colbert even brings music acts on his show, showing him dragging himself back to the formula.  The TV and radio world is and has been full of examples that can bring the comic and serious together.  Is/are the TV/radio worlds always determined by their delivery and who owns the networks and who pays for the advertising?  Absolutely.  But could not some new innovations be made with the formula?  I imagine they will be, someday, to my or my not liking.  Any thoughts welcome.

zr