Nolan Ryan and the Death of Baseball

Put it on Pallid Puddle/Porridge-Faced Nolan Ryan! Fox Producers Hasten the Death of the Great American Game

That baseball has a lot of problems we all know.  For those of us who love the game, those problems are mostly situated with other people, who don’t get its beauty.  I saw Fox throw up a graphic about one of the teams, pointing out how there were a bunch of Hispanics, on one team, anyway, and how that made this “World” (oh the cringeworthiness of Americans, selling the sizzle and never the steak) Series really international.  May-be, but was there even one black American on either team?  I mean, on the playing field, as a regular?  I don’t know.  But I do know that 20-30-40 years ago, you’d sure see one hell of a lot more black Americans playing the game.  Somebody needs to break the barrier, again.  The last couple of World Series’ of baseball, involving Japan and Cuba, and Japan and Korea—man, now that was some baseball.  My lord that was good ball.  This 2011 World Series was such a joke, in terms of execution, that you really had to wonder if anyone out there knew how to play this game.  Abner Doubleday wouldn’t turn around in the street if somebody called his name after this fall classic. It sure looked as if Americans had handed the game over to those who cared more about it; hell, Canada shut down the U.S. at the Pan-Am games.  A little hustle and a little heart, which Canadians possess (forget talent), is enough to do in America now.

Anyway, I love the game, and, yes, sure, baseball has problems.  One is that it isn’t a very good tv sport, but that has everything to do with producers.  One can, of course, beg the question of just what is a good “tv sport,” and maybe Americans would have to travel before they realized the basic oxymoronic nature of the phrase “tv sport.”  How about we watch guys on couches watching sports?  ** wait—I just trademarked that.  It’s called: “real guys watch tv.”  Done and done.  That patent has pended. Baseball always shows us pitcher throwing at catcher, which is weird when you consider the number of players on the field.  Then, in that Sunset Boulevard death-in-life way American tv producers have, we get the 1 camera go-to of pudgy porridge-faced Nolan Ryan.

This, this was a series I just wasn’t much interested in.  When it began, I found myself in the impossible situation of kind of cheering for Texas, a team I never could have imagined cheering for.  But, for personal fan reasons, I just always had the hate on for Tony La Russa, whatever his baseball genius and tenacity (and then there’s the McGwire taint, etc.).  But as time went on, and I grew so completely sick of seeing camera 1 on Nolan Ryan every 10 seconds, well, I shifted my allegiances.  In the end, perplexing to me as it was, I had become a Cards fan.  By not being Nolan Ryan, the Cards seemed to become a symbol of baseball for people like me—people who like the game, not fat, ossified billionaire celebrities sitting next to brittle, evidently bored and uncomfortable wives, and ex-presidents who couldn’t spell “millionaire” despite being one.  The Fox camera 1 on Nolan Ryan puts many things about the state of the game in a nutshell.  A complete disinterest on behalf of Americans and tv producers regarding anything else but vapid wealth and celebrity, etc.  I mean, consider other sports.  When your go-to moment is, dozens of times per telecast, a picture of a fat, dull man in a black overcoat rubbing his eyes (many of these times well after midnight on the east coast), well, I think you could say that that black overcoat is a-coming to get your sport and yank it into history, where they only had black and white, and often not even the black to give the white any perspective whatsoever.

Baseball has so much to show us.  Defensive alignments that shift with virtually every pitch, to say nothing of every batter; batters warming up, signs being given—really there are endless ways to try to interest people in the game.  But we get fat puddle-faced Nolan.  “They say he threw 95 back in the day.”  Yeah, I remember that, very well.  But that was then.  That and five bucks will get me a coffee, today. 

Hockey has become infected with the same hopeless bug, too.  Now, instead of looking at anything on the ice, producers are ordered to lock on pictures of GMs, gleaming beneath the hideous fluorescent glow of upper booths, amidst the styrofoam diet-pop detritus of the end of the day; they might as well give us a downcast Willy Loman coming up the walk and mopping his brow and loosening his tie and wondering how he’s going to trade in that Chevy, or that fridge.  Or that Kotalik.

Anyway, this is merely a ragged rant that evidently has not got a lot in terms of constructive criticism (unless one draws from and *builds* upon it and so forth).  Maybe I’ll say more.  Others will.

I’ll just finish by saying what I started out to say.  This was a colossally badly played World Series, from every aspect (as they often are).  If you want to see real baseball, see the World Series played every four years, involving countries that really give a damn about baseball, the game.  Going in, I couldn’t believe it, but I probably did want to cheer for Ron Washington and the Rangers. ????  But it didn’t take me long, after watching Nolan Ryan every couple of seconds, to decide that, well, my allegiance was with baseball, not fat ol’ Nolan.  So I became a Cards fan.  And the Cards won.  Somehow I don’t feel really happy that my team won, but in the sense that fat ol’ Nolan didn’t, and baseball maybe did, I, as a fan, feel less bad than I could.

**[And a footnote.  All those who say, well, you could turn off the tv.  Duh, of course I did.  Most of the time I had Shulman, Valentine, and Hershiser coming through my computer or radio as I was raking leaves.  Those guys were mostly better than Sutcliffe and Horne – Thorne? – the tv talking heads were ok.  But surely to goodness every now and then you must go to the tv to see the most dramatic play—the home run, the inning-ending double play, and so on.  Surely you must see that!!  But no, you’ll see fat ol’ Nolan sitting there, like Pete Rose’s wife, inscrutable and unviewable.  Illusions shattered, you’ll go back to raking leaves, too, baby.]

Cards win! Cards win!  Bleh.  Whatever.  Minor victory for the game over dubya n’nolan, though.

If you love this game. . . .

zr

Kidsupfrontcalgary.com – An Ultimate Sleazeball Organization

Check ‘em out—under “About Us” and “Our Story,” you will find “no page could be found at this address.”  One could substitute “morals” for “page,” but I digress. 

“Kidsupfront” that, endearingly, has no story, nevertheless has some big corporate contributors.  The idea is that poor kids, offered free tickets by rich corporations so that those corporations can show they’ve really got a heart, can see a sporting event.  In this way, corporations can use *children* to suggest, by vast media advertising (on kidsupfront’s website and in the mainstream media, for example), that those corporations are really good people.  It’s just about the most disgusting form of child use you can imagine. Do the kids know it is happening?  Does kidsupfront gather in money and use it to advertise on mainstream media like CHQR? Do “supporters” eagerly advertise themselves on kidsupfront’s website?  This is just beyond disgusting.

Once upon a time, a pro sporting event might have been accessible to an average family.  Now it isn’t.  “kidsupfront,” with its corporate sponsors, has taken upon itself to urge others to sponsor its classist mandate.

For shame.  For shame.

zr

Hockey Season Is Here Again, and It’s Time for Combat Corner, with Don Cherry

Hockey Season Is Here Again, and It’s Time for Combat Corner (Coach's Corner), with Don Cherry

Back in the day, when I was a kid (like one of the ones Don addresses weekly), Coach’s Corner used to be about hockey.  Since Canada entered Afghanistan, though, Coach’s Corner has been transformed into Combat Corner.  Links between the military and sports, especially in North America, have always been prominent.  But of course, historically, links between sports and arts and culture have always been prominent.  Crushing someone with force is part of sports, but so has been deploying finesse, discipline, training, practice, intellectual flexibility and mental stamina . . . and – the ineffable occasional outbursts of pure magic that result, utterly inexplicably, from all of the foregoing.

I’m a Don fan, and always have been.  We are at polar opposites, but he is very often right and has the shrewd eye for the game that those who loved and played it but weren’t good enough to be stars often do (think a Kubek, say).

Don is all over the news right now because he accused former fighters (Chris Nilan, Stu Grimson, etc.) of going against fighting now, despite the fact that fighting was what gave them a paycheque.  Now those former fighters are speaking back. 

Well, anyway, all of that is tedious.  I’m not sure what I set out for on this post, and that you may be able to tell, but I’ll write it by offering a few wishes:

1) that he doesn’t die or go to a cable network or whatever.  Although, again, Don and I are polar opposites, I can’t imagine life without him, and I know for sure my watching of hockey would be diminished in his absence.  Essentially because the NHL lost a golden opportunity to gradually reshape itself by enlarging slightly its ice surface when every team in the league got new arenas, the sport has become somewhat unwatchable.  Why are World Juniors and Olympics tournaments often popular?  Duh;

2) that Don and his handlers somehow learn to drop his petty insistence on his often being presciently right.  Live long enough, and you will be.  Week in, week out, Don looks more and more like what he isn’t—a petulant, childish, old man regressing into childhood.  Don’s right maybe 50% of the time, but nobody logs that.  I’d like to see someone take up the issue of Vinnie Lecavalier’s being the greatest player in the world with Don someday, for example.  It will never happen, but Don’s unchallengeability actually ages him and makes him look older and more pathetic than he really is.  Shame.

3) that Don didn’t have to address every remark to “you kids out there.”  Yes, I realize it’s a tic, like “hold it, hold it, don’t show it yet!” but boy is it tiresome.  Does Don think he really is addressing kids?  Possibly, but I don’t hold much with that.  Do kids watch Combat Corner?  Of course they do.  Don is aware of his pulpit.  Fine.  But again, that diminishes him.  Every time he yells: “you coaches out there!!”, he diminishes his own show which, inaccurately or not, is named “Coach’s Corner.”    If Don were really a man, and a hockey man, and his handlers weren’t pantywaists, then Don could just talk about hockey.  If Don just talked about hockey, he might actually get himself into _less_ trouble than if he kept pontificating as if he were hockey Dad to a nation.  The more he wants to extricate himself, often, the deeper he gets.  Nasty Swedes.

4) we could just have two different segments, finally, Coach’s Corner and Combat Corner.  It’s a truth universally known that the last refuge of a scoundrel is nationalism, and Don bucks this one up in ways that would make his ancestors turn away in shame.  True patriotism is something you feel on an almost divine and ethereal plane, and to speak of the flag, or to use a telecast as a teary opportunity to beat your own breast is the saddest desecration of the memories of the fallen.  You don’t touch the Cup until you’ve won it, and you don’t make ratings out of the deaths of servicepeople unless you’ve fought with them.  I’ve certainly never met anyone who didn’t “support the troops,” though I do know many who are against the war in Afghanistan.

Sadly, Don’s momentarily felt sentimental gushes have been popular enough with CBC brass fearful of being pantywaists that they have allowed him now to cut his hockey commentary back even further, so that he can hail police officers and firemen and just about anyone he can’t remember once he gets in his Lincoln outside the ACC at 8:35 p.m.  Let’s put one or two things in perspective, even if only for just a second.  To a much greater extent than it is in the U.S., or many other countries, military service in Canada is a _choice_.  You don’t have to serve, and you probably aren’t in a community so desperately dirt-poor, as in America, such that really there’s no choice but to enlist.  In Canada, too, minimal education can also be a gateway to astonishing wages and pensions and benefits as police officers or firepeople that most Canadians, often with notably greater training and education, cannot even dream of.  It is trotted out endlessly that the war in Afghanistan is to “kill scumbags” (to use Canadian General Rick Hillier’s term—a cut and runner if there ever was one, who cut out and took his pension after barely finishing the word “—bags” and getting hailed for it) and protect women.  But yet, if you look at the police and firefighters, and/or even the military, where are the women, the minorities, the small of stature?  Organizations such as the police and firefighters have constantly fought as hard as they could against any kind of recognition of other people—precisely what Canadian troops are supposedly fighting _for_ in Afghanistan.  Some irony.  If you filled out an application to be a police officer or a firefighter in Canada today, you would see precious little recognition of the fact that, every day, across the world, women and men of every age and colour and size and orientation and whatever are—actually—fighting crime and putting out fires and making their communities stronger.

zr

CHQR AM 770 Steve Norton's screwups - ongoing

Well, as I indicated in a post earlier, it's at once funny and sad.  Say your daughter had been abducted and the media were charged with getting the message out.  And Steve, good ol' Steve, just couldn't manage as much.  That'd be a problem.

Anyway, what the hell.  Not like CHQR AM 770 cares.  I mean, if I were a CHQR AM 770 personality, or one of their advertisers, what the hell would I care if they had a clue what their employees were saying?  I mean, it's that old-timey feel, right.  It's like homes by Abi.  I'm in there for sure. I hear good ol' Steve only now and then, normally when he takes over at 1 a.m. to do the 4-min. newsbit to top the hour.  He goes on through the wee hours until 5 a.m., and I don't think he starts at 12 a.m., but I'll clarify.  Anyway, for the hell of it, I'll just start noting here the howlers I hear when I hear them and can be bothered to note them.

Steve--take it away!!!!

duh-WAR - Paul Dewar - the Ottawa politician, a longtime parliamentarian whose mother was a significant Canadian political figure and mayor of Ottawa.  His name is pronounced like "do-er," as in three-term Calgary mayor Al Duerr.  Or the Scotch.  Or. . . .  Just to be living in this world is not to be living around Steve Norton.

Bar-lee-UH - Chris Baryla.  A **Calgary-born** long-time member of the PGA and Nationwide golf tours.  His name, as it is spelled, is pronounced "Barillya."

McQuinlan - Matt McQuillan.  Another Canadian golfer who has played on the PGA and Nationwide golf tours.  As you can see from the last two, maybe CHQR AM 770 could just spring for a pair of eyeglasses for good ol' Steve Norton, and then maybe Calgarians could get something approaching accuracy in their news.

--couple days ago, Steve said Dany Heatley scored one for the Sharks.  Yes, Heatley used to play for the Sharks.  He plays for the Minnesota Wild now. Man like Steve, all he's gotta do is pull the spool like Bobby Troup on _Emergency 51_.  But no, Steve, having realized his error and bumbling and fumbling over it, continued nevertheless!!  Now _THAT_ is when your daddy really works for CHQR.  When you can brazenly screw up and know it, and then brazenly keep on screwin' up.  If Steve Norton were in charge of letting me know if there was a rapist on the loose, CHQR would have no ass left to sue.

--last night Pekka Rinne became "Reen-UH"; I thought it was Steve's prom date, but he did a double salcow on the second turn.  It's clear that sports are troublesome for Steve; he's only got 45 seconds or so of news to do, so if the Toronto Astronauts are playing, then blast off!!

It occurs to me, though, that maybe Steve really is developmentally delayed.  Maybe CHQR is giving an opportunity to a slow person.  If this is really the case, and CHQR is giving an opportunity to someone who (can barely stay awake but) really wants to do what he's doing, then I'll take this post away in a second.

--lately:

Referring to Raptors Italian player, Steve came up with Barn-yanni, as opposed to "barn-jhonni.  Yanni--hee hee, CHQR AM 770 says to its Italian listeners.

It's key, though, if you're CHQR, to really amp up your disrespect for other people, so CHQR has been lately pilin' it on, with, say, Peter Haight (hate?), who came up with Teemu Seleenee for Teemu Selanne, and the aforementioned Josie Fotah, who came up with "Randing Cunningworth" for Randy Cunneyworth, and, again, "Teemu Shelanee" for "Teemu Selanne."  Who would have thought reading would have been so hard?  But lo, it is, and a joyous disrespect for Canadians of all backgrounds mounts all CHQR AM 770 programming.

If anyone lets Steve Norton out of the building attempting to pronounce Milos Raonic, who is pretty much on the verge of the greatest tennis player this country has ever produced, then clear the area and I'll call the cops and bring in the traffic 'copter myself.

--Lately Steve came up with Pekka Ryne, for Pekka Rinne.

--During the recent Australian Open, Steve observed that the women's semifinals were still taking place, and that Maria Sharapova and Petra Kvitova were still "on the court."  The match had ended 20 mins. or more before he started his "newscast."  But hey, maybe I'm too critical.  Maybe Steve was broadcasting from Hawaii that night. 

--good ol' Josie (not Steve) came up with "Darn-eye-ay" for Canadiens forward David Desharnais.  Canada does have a couple official languages, and obviously CHQR would be outraged at having to know even one, but even in America, I've just kinda got a funny feeling most Americans wouldn't call it San Josie.

--new guy John Happy (?) came up with "Car-ta-Gee-Nuh" for Cartagena.  No doubt his parents are very prowd of him for his ignorance, and CHQR AM770 Program Director John Vos is thrilled at his new charge.  Ain't no sense being a dorcque if you can't be prowd of it.

--tonight on a couple of occasions Steve tried to call Martin Hanzal "Hazel."  I wouldn't point it out unless Steve-o didn't just keep doing it.

--Steve also came up with "Vuhberta" for Radim Vrbata.
--and in the same night, "Veh-barta."  And Petrangeloh for Frank Pietrangelo.  And "Incarnashun" for Edwin Encarnacion.  All in all, just a standard screwup night for what would take 1-2 mins. to verify on the web.

Reading Robert Carver - The Accursed Mountains - Albania

Reading Robert Carver’s (I know, he’s thrilled just to see his name) _The Accursed Mountains: Journeys in Albania_ (Murray, 1998).

Well, I have to agree with the general consensus on this one.  Carver approached the country with studied scepticism that determined his writing before he even opened his notebook.

It may be that much has changed in Albania between when Carver was there in the mid-90s and I was there around 2010, but I doubt that the change can have been all that huge.  Besides, if you read Carver, he will tell you that the country was never not and could never not be in a state of complete tribal chaos and corrupt political intrigue from start to finish, so . . . .

I think the travel books that tell you to steer clear of Carver are right, but still it’s worth reading Carver for his (distorted, snotty, public school) portraits of individuals, and his notations of other characters now gone.

What debilitates Carver most of all is his unironic stance and his lack of humour; these prevent him from gaining comprehension.  For example, I would say that Albanians are honest and helpful and hospitable, and I really—despite what is in his book—doubt that Carver would argue otherwise.  Yes, it is a corrupt society and so forth, but what one isn’t?  It’s a matter of learning the rules, and Carver, in very short pants when it comes to travel, can’t grasp as much.  It wouldn’t matter if _The Daily Telegraph_ had sent Carver to Mars; he ought to have been able to have a look around at the situation and adjust himself accordingly.  Sadly, nothing in his training or background had prepared him to meet other humans on their own terms.

Carver is essentially at war with himself.  There are bits of scenery, bits of girls, bits of values that he glimpses in Albania and that attract him.  Still, though, it’s a hopelessly backward place (you can’t sell books if you can’t make it grotty).  And yet he’s the great fearless (and here is does get a bit comical--~British~ intrepid man in the mountains—sometimes, you really want to say to him, ‘er, Roderick, I say old chap, do you not think you could just throw a rock, maybe?’).  Carver’s estimation of *his* importance to Albanians is just constantly comically completely out of whack.  He tries to pitch his narrative as a dangerous journey into a fearsome land populated by bumbling diplomats behind urban barricades while he sallies out red-eyed into the hinterlands, but. . .for Christ’s sake, come off it—who but a Brittwit toff would really, in a million years, think that his skinny white ass meant anything to any Albanian??  Good lord.  People—the British are still hard-up to find out—have other things on their minds than (hate to say it) Brits. 

But that’s the problem of Carver’s narrative.  He _has_ to pitch himself as an intrepid daredevil.  But he regards all those around him as sycophantic, lazy, useless scum.  He regards the country as utterly primeval, but, to buttress his sense of himself as a conquistador, he must allow himself magnificent moments in which he, say, sees a moon rise over a mountain, and he exults, “Imagine, I was the first man since Columbus to see. . .” or “I was the first Westerner to penetrate. . .” or “Not since WWII had a foreigner. . .”.  I mean, really, Roderick.  Maybe shooting tied-down rabbits was your vocation, after all.

It’s a pretty foolish book, and one that Carver is probably pretty embarrassed about now.  He was probably operating on the age-old imperial schema he’d imbibed in his youth, that, so long as no-one finds out what you’re up to, you can say whatever you want.  He couldn’t see the future because the past had dictated to him what he’d write in the present.

But I’m not lying—I read the book.  At first, I was amused by his faux-Greene (Carver himself would admit this) weary cynicism and the characters he introduced me to.  Increasingly, though, as he continued his travels, and went to places I’ve been to, too, I found myself reading to hear about him, though not in the way he’d intended (the intrepid traveller).  I started to read through him, and see his attempts to make himself seem bold and uncanny as silly or tired.  Carver’s book is predicated on a north-to-south terrible adventure, but even he apparently tired of that and gave in to petulant phrases when it became apparent that those were all he’d be able to work himself up to.  Give him another 150 pages, I say, and this turns right into Pickwick in the Balkans.  It would have been bloody hilarious, seeing him either attempting to sustain his Bond-ish persona or keep on mustering evil amongst peasants for whom evil was much less interesting than a bowl of yoghurt.

z-r

Pat Boone and George Noory – Pushin’ for Hatred

Good ol’ Pat Boone was on George Noory’s Coast-to-Coast the other day, and Pat did kind of charm with his ol’ I’m just an aw-shucks kid routine. 

But then Pat went on to reveal something pretty telling.  He was struggling as best he could to attempt to point out that those without faith were unhappy—so he said that “psychologists and psychiatrists” (in Pat’s wisdom, things that start with ‘p’ kinda just go together like that) just, they all tended to commit suicide more than others.

Well, you could smell the smoke burning (could be a devil, no doubt) as he said that he heard one time that. . . .  Look, far be it from me to attempt to get into the hateful religious mind of Pat Boone.  I think what Pat started out to say was fairly simple enough, that people who had faith had a kind of beatified presence that made them immune to the tough and dark situations humans face.  This is if I’m being really, really charitable.

But Pat had to keep ‘er goin,’ and, well, wouldn’t you know it, right out there on George Noory’s Coast-to-Coast AM, Pat had to relate his joke about how a “mousey” (check George’s logs) woman went to a psychiatrist, and she complained “I feel so inferior.”  Gol’ darn’ if that psychiatrist (I thought he’d shot himself) didn’t say “you are inferior!!”  Yuk, yuk.  George Noory of Coast-to-Coast AM listened with rapt enthusiasm, as is recorded on his show.

On the one hand, you would like to think that religion—any religion—could be a force for good in this world.  You’d even like, just being white and being located somewhere on a gps and so on, to hope that that religion would be Christian.  That’s what you’d hope.  On the other,

Hope denied, howsabout just starting to act a little bit more humanely to those very close to you, religious or not?

Pat Boone made millions of dollars off of it; George Noory is making millions now, fostering hate; is there anyone out there willing to step up and say, hey, I’m willing to take one for the team and _give up_ a few dollars to make the world a better place?

You’ll never make as much money as George Noory, but when you die, your mind won’t be criss-crossed with the knowledge of the hate you’ve engendered.  If you really believed that you were going to live again, then wouldn’t you want to do something good now?

zr

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.

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