Bubble Gum and American Expression: A Multi-Generational Romance

Bubble Gum and American Expression: A Multi-Generational Romance

(It is a "romance" because everyone is involved--like snakes in the Arizona desert.)

30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90, 00s—there would be no surer thing than to find a villain who chewed, obviously, gum. This is a peculiarly American phenomenon—one doesn't find it in other cultural or filmic expressions, anywhere in the world. The obnoxious chewer—chomping meaning—is unique to America.

Why?

Well, duh, obviously it's incredibly childish, and Americans go in for that, the incredibly childish. Still, the aghast eyes and astonished makeup of the silent era long ago passed on, but the big chewer (normally a villain, sometimes briefly sexy), kept on. At root, perhaps, it speaks to a kind of puritan fear of bad manners—people who open their mouths when chewing—some guy who lets that gum show—he is one bad dude.

Chewing gum was once a kind of middle-American indulgence—it was almost chic. But, then, the masses got hold of it, so it was only uncouth villains who chomped it all around. Class issues.

To chew gum, in America, is to bespeak a kind of raw and stupid villainy. Are you unable to act? Chew gum. Need to be a villain? Chew gum. Director/producer ain't got no smarts? Chew gum. Studio/network need a stereotype? Chew gum. Screenplay got no screen, or play? Chew gum. The sum the imaginationless Hollywoodians owe to those who honestly chew coulda made the Cubs a dynasty. Ernie Banks coulda said “let's play three!”

Well, I think it does go back to childishness. Americans just do not expect that their viewers are capable of nuanced thinking, so they make their actors externalize infantilism through chewing gum. Chewing gum is something that everyone gets, in America. The bunga-bunga orange Boehner-glo is tv, not reality. Simple signs, simple symbols. If America lives that long, chewing gum may one day equate to virtue. Wherever there's a need for a crass, gross, stultifyingly obvious symbol, though, you can bet Americans will be right in there with gum.

Hey, who says Americans didn't contribute to culture? God gave 'em slaves who gave 'em jazz who gave 'em gum. Gum'm gotta come from somewhere.

Gum daddy, go!

zr

Galleons o’ Torrents - Your White Wine Guide

Galleons o’ Torrents

I noticed I had a category for Wines – Red.  I was a bit taken aback, for I mainly consume white—there’s an old oenology fundamental which asseverates that the more you drink wine, the more you drink white—once you drink white, you’ll never go back. 

Of course those fruity Cape/SA wines are delightful; you just can’t beat them.  But let’s take a salty ship over to that other SA, South America.  You just have to love torrontes.

One of the only ones I can get here is Trivento.  I really like it, but it is dangerous.  It is so steely that frankly you could get electrocuted by it if you’re standing next to your tv. Distinct floral backnotes (the vase you’re clutching as you fall by the sideboard).  

Recently tried the Lorca torrontes--is it worth the 25-33% more in terms of price than the Trivento?  Probably not.  If the two were equal in price, I'd maybe trade off equally, but even if Lorca were cheaper, I don't think I'd sacrifice that lie-detector-hooked-to-the-wrong-place shrill thrill of Trivento.

Northwest detour—that Cline viognier from California—such a delightful wine.  Watery and without much flavour ballast, but so like a new piece of fruit with all of the scent and anticipation and none of the squinchy-face upon tasting.  For drinking a couple glasses on its own with no accompaniment whatsoever, this wine is nonpareil.  Its perfect companions are sunlight, a breeze perhaps, and (increasingly generous) thought(s).

Westward ho! for the Oyster Bay and the marlborough.  Tasty, indeed.  A bit thick like. . .tasty mutton. . . .   Critics would say that you could get the same effect by nuzzling up under the foreleg of a lamb who’d been hard at work in the fields all day.  Critics’d be right.  Frankly, I bet this marlborough goes outstandingly with lamb, but I am not a Kiwi.  So perspirational is the effect, that one really does want to pair oil with oil, wine with fish yanked from dark nether reaches.  It’s a pity it’s boutique expensive where I live, otherwise I’d saa- saa-mple it endlessly.

Short hop but long run to the true motor oil of wine of any kind.  For a time I lived within shooting distance of the Barossa Valley, where so much famous Australian wine is from.

In a nutshell, what happened there was that stateless but determined Germans, non-convicts but enterprising, planted bushes to provide themselves with hooch.  When they noted that it totally knocked the corks off bushmen’s hats in the up and beyond, they industrialized it further.  Soon, steel silos began to appear all over southern Australia.  Leftists said they were American military bases.  John Howard said it was diversification.  Actually they were vast wine vats containing up to 40 million hectolitres at a go.  A grape was top-mounted into each vat, then each vat was left to fester in the relentless sun for up to six months—presto—Australian wine.  And world’s away, I can now have it for one low price of about 8$/L.  I’ll say one thing for those Australian vineyardists: they are nothing if not industrial.

zr    

Why Can’t Americans Just Not Be Celebrities?

Why Can’t Americans Just Not Be Celebrities?

Well, I guess it’s because they don’t have an integrated, mature society in which others care for one another.  I often have heard Obama talk about values American cherish, I’ve heard him embrace Reagan and so on, but you just know his heart isn’t in it.  You know that Americans don’t believe it, either.  It’s the hollow chamber when the bullet’s gone and the stag has scampered away and you’re left with the grey sky and the chill echo and the dry brown reeds and your buddy’s silence around you. (Girl in the trailer, she wouldn’t know for shit.) It doesn’t take a village to raise an individual; it takes one man and an inheritance.  It takes dubya and some draft-dodgin’ tough talk.  And jogging with a gun. Trust Americans to bomb us back to the caves of pre-civilization.  I’m not sure the last time I went jogging with a gun, but I’m guessing, oh, 5 million years, give or take.

Such thoughts occur to me after watching tv and movies.  Say you like music, or movies, or anything popular in general.  Say you wonder: “what ever happened to. . . ?”  Odds are, if it was someone outside America, that person went on to have a functional, productive life.  But in America, you can’t.  Call it the _insert name of person or Scott Baio here_ syndrome.  All over the world, people go in and out of the celebrity business with _relative_ ease.  But in America, you are defined by your momentary fame, and you can never escape it.

Well, ok, let’s say I’m wrong about this.  Off the top of my head, I’m thinking about that John Tesh guy—I think he had an entertainment show, or something.  You could land a jet on his face.  I think he went on to become a singer with some success.  Ok, fine, so now I’m wrong.  Or am I right X2?

But wait—let’s stop blaming the Tesh guy; let’s not even try to get teshphobic about this.  Let’s blame it on the people, the people who really ought to be blamed.  Blamed for what?  Loving celebrity?  Well, yes, because if you turn every tesh into a celebrity, then you can’t even grow a radish to feed yourself.  You can’t adjust to reality.  The center cannot hold because there is not a center—you’re Tesh, he’s Tesh, we’re all famous and . . . .

Tesh.

That’s what the end of the world looks like: not a whimper or a bang; just a puff of ~tesh~ in the distance as leaden dreams reground in the far-off desert of the soul; a ~tesh~ of your grandmother wondering (no, really wondering, what you were thinking); a ~tesh~ a ~tesh~ as you flap that magazine back in the supermarket and the line advances.

Well, kudos to Tesh, unlike Jon Stewart (Johnny Leibowitz), for having the conviction at least to keep his own name (I’m sure it must be), instead of calling himself Rock Mayrifle or Mascotty Merican.

Motto: Celebrity is wise, for those who wish only to live and contribute for 15 mins.

Tim Hortons, Second Cup, Starbucks: Two Lines for Coffee or Lose All Your Coffee Business

Just like the whole world, I have long noticed that there are two kinds of coffee buyers—people who want coffee, and people who would like to buy something else.  –also a coffee, to be sure, but an _experience_.

Well, I gave up on Starbucks abt 5 years ago, and I gave up on Tims (with its deeply cherished bad grammar) at around the same time.

These franchises refused to respond to consumer demand in the most obvious of ways: one line for people who just wanted a coffee (not a macchiato or whatever), another line for people who didn’t.

Starbucks, Tims, they said to themselves, “well, we can keep people in line forever, and, once they finally get to the till, they will be so exhausted and influenced by other buyers that they will say to themselves, “yes, yes, I want the $14.95 macchiato.”  Didn’t happen for me; didn’t happen for many.  No wonder McDonald’s is so successful now.  Not only do they serve much better coffee than Tims, and come nigh on equalling anything else, but it just doesn’t matter whether some mom’s ordering 15 teenburgers for a softball team or not in front of you—you’re _still_ going to get your coffee much faster.  Bingo dingo.  I’m in there.  When I think fast decent coffee now, I think McDonald’s.  Oh, sure, I could stand in line at Starbucks or Tims for 20 mins, but if I haven’t got the latest encyclicals with me to read, no go.

The truth is (sorry multis) that I mostly only patronize 2 indies near me.  One is one where the woman I know (who, incidentally, runs a successful coffee shop _across_ from a Second Cup only cops go to) and can somehow, despite all the things she has to handle, get my order quickly.  Oh, she’s got all the liqueurs and shooters and so on, the console of machines, but, miraculously, even with all the black pens and cardboard sleeves, she can actually pull off a coffee in a couple mins. or so—I’d like to say she loves me, but really, she probably just wants my business.    I’d like to love her, but really she just gives me a good coffee 20X faster than Tims can.

Then there’s the trendy place I go to.  They don’t even pretend to make you wait.  You just go off and wait by yourself.  But they sure do call it out pretty quickly.

Anyway, massive failure by major chains like Starbucks, thinking it was ok to alienate coffee drinkers by prioritizing coffee experiencers.  Starbucks’ logo could be purple, for all I remember now, and Tims, sheltered in blacked-out marts along lonely sub-urban ways, well, it could be Toms, for all I know.  I want a decent coffee, and I want it fast, and McDonalds has beaten the shit right out of Starbucks and Tims and Second Cup and all the contenders.  I won’t leave my indies, but when I really need and want a coffee, McDonalds has pulled it off.  The latter has priced themselves out of the market, and demonstrated egregious contempt for consumers, while wily McDonalds has worked itself in.  Maybe one day McDonalds will work themselves out of it, but their track record suggests to me that I kind of doubt it.   You gotta have coffee, you gotta have coffee.  This is a restaurant/service concept Tims and Starbucks have showered with contempt, and in their race to provide sandwiches and tarts to people who don't drink coffee, I guess they will meet in the middle with McDonalds—but that middle is going to be a steep, hard climb.

zr

What is with the half-face photo thing for people on webpages?

I really don’t get around much on the web, you may have noted, but now it seems that, everywhere I go—friends, acquaintances, total strangers—they all seem to be putting half their faces on their webphotos.

Is this cool?  Why?

--Perhaps this is like getting a tattoo—a way for deeply conformist ~individuals~ who lack unique personalities to think to themselves that they have expressed something notable about themselves.  They think they can do this by putting some ugly blotch on their bodies (usually they do dislike or are insecure about their bodies, or they wouldn’t try to cover/deface them).  Or, as is so often the case, they’re shallow (and insecure) and can’t express, or have no confidence to express themselves, through their minds as well as bodies.  Is the half-face an extension of the tattoo aesthetic?  The tattooed person says: “here’s a tattoo that externalizes something about me than I can’t communicate or can’t be bothered to and that I want you to see and remark upon.”  The half-face person says: “I’m really quite mysterious and full of remarkable qualities, but, tee-hee, I’m not going to show you all of them until you stroke my ego enough to wonder (though I can stroke it myself just by looking at half of me and thinking of you) what the rest of ME is really like.”

I’ll say this for tattooed people, though—it could be their first and only contact with ink, and in a way that can’t be lamented.  Best tattoo guy I ever knew was a guy named Tracy, or something, that I worked with.  He was a bartender with a motley string of tattoos down his left arm (he was tattoo before tattoo was cool—old school), and he had about four that were ex-girlfriends.  So he’d have “Sheila”: line through it; “Wendy”: line through it; “Debbee”: line through it; “I mean Debbie”: line through it, etc.  Just goes to show, a chick does love a man with tattoos.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to sidetrack into tattoos; I grasp that they have a long history—Nazis putting them on Jews, and so on—and I obviously don’t want to take on all the people with PhDs in tattoos.  They know their uniqueness, and they needn’t deign to express themselves by noting the likes of me.

--it is a truth universally propagated by scientists (you know, those geniuses), that humans naturally are attracted to and like and trust people with symmetrical faces.  Most people aren’t blessed like that.  Most people have halves of their faces they prefer.  So they post those, the ones they like the most or think are most attractive.

--it’s just trendy (like tattoos).  You see one person do it, and you think: “hey, that’s neat; I’ll do it, too,” but you don’t realize 40 million other people just clicked on the same thought.

--in a world when people expose so much of themselves constantly—and, indeed, in many ways _have_ to (even those who would prefer not to), you just have to show something, so half a face is at least something.

Or is it something else?  Are those tiny pictures the web has given us just so small that you can’t put a whole face in there? 

Well, at least I’ve got a face.  Blue, querulous, Alfalfan, but at least a face.

zr

Mira Bergman-Tonic (drink recipe):

1/2 part lemon juice

1 part acquavit (chilled in freezer)

2 1/2 parts tonic water (preferably Canada Dry)

* in certain quarters, the surface of the drink is decorated with once-rinsed capers

This is a _very_ dry Scandinavian cocktail.  Partakers often like to listen to Goldstein’s _Wiretap_ on CBC while imbibing.  Typically, a herring is placed alongside.  When the herring begins to grin and make googly eyes at you (normally after 20 mins. or so), then you know the beverage is taking effect.

Harper Goes to School on Chretien

Harper Goes to School on Chretien

Stevie wasn’t just building a firewall around his unilingual desk when he was sitting across from John, oh no.  Note the shrugging, empty phrases—you dance with the one that brung you, Harper says, and if it’s 1 in 3 of the 2 in 3 who voted, good enough.  Shrug.  What, me miniscule majority?  Shrug.  Harper’s replication even of Chretien’s physical gestures are almost uncanny.

Jean would often hand off to other MPs, though in his case he had some trusted go-to people.  Harper has to adopt the Mulroney-Nielsen approach—so cloaked in scandal is Harper that he has to hand off to John Baird (wake me up after the fourth chin).  Clement, Ambrose, Bernier, Raitt, Oda—all stuck in the most disgusting muck Canada has seen for a generation, Harper has no choice but to go to his gay bachelors—Baird, Kenney, Moore, etc.

Weak front bench, no second line—clichés aside, is there a difference?

Chretien, the p’tit gars, normally liked to express himself as being on the side of the little guy, the average Canadian.  Harper seethes with open contempt for average Canadians, knowing he needs his pitchfork base and a few more glassy-eyed chinless dupes he can round up at the saloon on his way out without paying.  If they don’t speak English, “yes, your Papa Dum, Papa Dum.”  Yes!!

Harper regales himself on his empty Challenger at your expense (you can’t catch that with a swather, although some people did like Bennett buggies, too, when R. B. was in a dewy glen, at home, in England), but his just-enough commonality touch—he got his style suggestions from the man he supposedly most abhorred.