Aug
25
News: Roger Clemens still a horse’s ass
August 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment
It’s news because it isn’t really news!
Roger Clemens was indicted for perjury last week, and I wish there were a more vibrant term for just how perjurious his perjury really was. Clemens has been accused of cheating and doping a lot of times and has denied it, fervently, in colorful terms and in a vaguely threatening way. Like if you said it to him, he’d tell you to F off, and did you wanna take it outside? Did you?
Well, no, Roger, I don’t, because I know you’re doped up and already one of the stupider public figures. On All Things Considered they re-aired some old tape of Clemens’ ridiculous denials and didn’t even have to write editorial material around it — like classic George W. Bush statements, they speak for themselves and require no embellishment. Clemens’ former teammate Andy Pettitte, who has long been a favorite player of mine for no real reason EVEN THOUGH he’s a Yankee, confessed his own drug use and made comments about Clemens’ as well. To this Clemens responded with the following soundbyte re-aired during All Things. I’d read it aloud for full effect:
CLEMENS: I think he misremembers the conversation that we had. Andy and I’s relationship was close enough to know that if I would have known that he had done HGH, which I now know, that he was knowingly knowing that I had taken HGH, we would’ve talked about the subject.
[NPR's Tom] GOLDMAN: Now, Robert, we should add that the indictment does not include charges against Roger Clemens for assaulting the English language.
[NPR's Robert] SIEGEL: Yeah, they could sentence someone to parsing that sentence.
Knowingly knowing that Clemens denied his doping for so long, I’m happy he’s in a heap of trouble.
Apr
5
Overheard: The currency of argument
April 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment
The NYT’s “The Caucus” blog ran a post on Sarah Palin’s discomfort-inspiring endorsement of John McCain in a state primary where he is being brutalized from the right. I hate John McCain for bringing Palin to anyone’s attention in the first place and can never forgive him, but the photo of him standing beside (yet several feet away from) Palin is painful. She is, of course, wearing her scary structured black leather jacket that seems to come from the Dominatrix Lair line of Chanel. He looks as though he has been holding his breath for the last hour, or year and a half.
Anyway, this doesn’t draw out more than the typical level of outrage for me, but one of the reader comments explained my thoughts better than I’ve managed to before now:
Maybe as Republicans keep moving further and further into the past we’ll finally return to a time when the currency of argument was reason rather than emotion and symbolism.
Yesterday on Speaking of Faith, Krista Tippett hosted two Jesuit priests who are celebrated scientists: Brother Guy Consolmagno and Father George Coyne. They discussed extensively the gaps in our understanding of the universe, and how those gaps are something to celebrate, to pursue without ceasing.
They also quoted the Anne Lamott line that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. The certainty of today’s most abusive and relentless right-wingers is their most offensive trait among many.
Mar
16
News: Laughing burns the calories
March 16, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Some enchanted evening
Someone may be laughing,
You may hear her laughing
Across a crowded room
The girl in “Some Enchanted Evening” may as well be me, because I am virtually always the loudest laugher.
Until a certain age I laughed quietly, and also never smiled with my teeth showing, because adolescence is a mental illness whose logic does not hold up to scrutiny. But things change, and in my case for the better, as related on last weekend’s Car Talk:
While exact caloric expenditure is not yet known, it is thought that 100 good laughs equals some of the physiological benefits of 10 minutes on a rowing machine, even though it doesn’t boost aerobic fitness.
Sep
22
O’Donohue, Fish, and the interior
September 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment
This weekend, Speaking of Faith reran a 2008 interview with John O’Donohue, Irish poet, former priest, and Hegelian (What an array of descriptors!), done shortly before his death. This moment took me aback:
Yeah, I feel like in the book I wrote on beauty, I was trying to say that one of the huge confusions in our times is to mistake glamour for beauty. And we do live in a culture which is very addicted to the image, and I think that there is always an uncanny symmetry between the way you are inward with yourself and the way you are outward. And I feel that there is an evacuation of interiority going on in our times. And that we need to draw back inside ourselves and that we’ll find immense resources there.
We have largely evacuated interiority, at least in my portion of the Western world, and I can’t think of a better way to phrase the situation. One of history’s favorite literary zingers is from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
We are all large and should contain multitudes, which is, I think, why O’Donohue suggests we “draw back inside ourselves” — plus, a nice Hegelish note there when Whitman expresses himself as the combination and synthesis of his own contradictions and dualities.
Stanley Fish really stirred up some murk last week with his column advocating a limit on curiosity. Fish himself is a source of controversy and I find it hilarious and awkward that anyone accuse this bastion of individual thought and intellect as a curiosity-hater — seriously? Someone widely revered or reviled as the best or worst kind of rhetorician or theorist, who makes his living in the world of higher education?
This is Fish’s thesis in the column, an idea originally situated in the Garden:
The provocation was to go beyond the boundaries God had established and thereby set himself up a rival deity, a being with no limits on what he can conceive, a being whose intellect could, in time, comprehend anything and everything.
I think that Fish views destructive curiosity as the end of wonder and humbled awe, the kind of smug quest for “understanding” that characterizes literary examples Faust and Frankenstein, among others whom Fish does not cite. It is the product of two competing but parallel forces: First, that we are not grounded enough by our families, communities, or otherwise to ever have reason to stop the quest for new knowledge; and second, that we arrogantly assume this quest will lead us to something better, bigger, greater.
But more importantly, as Fish’s weekly column is aptly titled, he simply encourages us to Think Again, to not evacuate our interiority.
Apr
25
Literary desire
April 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment
The New York Times has a story on the Kindle and how it affects our ability to judge others by their covers, so to speak:
Michael Silverblatt, host of the weekly public radio show “Bookworm,” uses the term “literary desire” to describe the attraction that comes with seeing a stranger reading your favorite book or author. “When I was a teenager waiting in line for a film showing at the Museum of Modern Art and someone was carrying a book I loved, I would start to have fantasies about being best friends or lovers with that person,” he said.
I have had this same thought more times than I can recall. When someone you see is reading your favorite book! Or something radically different that sounds so interesting! Andy has this giant collection of really glossy gorgeous food books and I love sitting in his apartment flipping through them.
Sep
1
Brain sluts
September 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment
This week’s This American Life rerun is brilliant. It might even be listed on their “Best Of” page, I’m not sure.
In it, a former professional medical test subject, a self-described guinea pig, explains why he never did psychiatric-drug studies:
“The phrase is ‘brain sluts.’ It’s more harsh than most guinea pigs would use, but I think it’s disgusting because they’re becoming retarded for money. I’m just very sensitive about the mind. I personally don’t lay it out for rent.”
Download the episode from this page.
Apr
19
Received Pronunciation
April 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment
The majestic and indomitable Julie Andrews appeared on Fresh Air last week to talk about her new memoir. I only heard part of the interview (you can hear it here) driving around on my lunchbreak, and once again I marveled at how recognizable Andrews’ voice is, even in speaking instead of singing.
Her speech is impeccable, and it was funny to hear her describe the process by which she learned a Cockney accent to sing Eliza Dolittle in My Fair Lady on Broadway. Apparently she had the words to certain songs written out phonetically as to get the full Cockney effect, though you can still hear her erudite English sneaking through the ‘Enry ‘Igginses in the original Broadway cast recording. In this regard, Audrey Hepburn and Marni Nixon (dubbed as Hepburn’s singing voice) did a better job.
In these modern times, people no longer so adamantly work toward Received Pronunciation (the official title for Henry Higgins’ ideal English accent) — even the BBC no longer holds RP as its standard.
Sep
24
Reflections on “Walden” after reading a summary of it
September 24, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Weekend Edition – Sunday (NPR) 05-05-2002
Commentary: Reflections on Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” after reading a four-page summary of it
Host: LYNN NEARY
Time: 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM
LYNN NEARY: Henry David Thoreau went to Walden Pond to write, observe and reflect. His reflections are still being studied nearly 150 years after they were first published. WEEKEND EDITION commentator Tom Schiff found a handy shortcut that got him thinking about this classic work of literature.
TOM SCHIFF: I wasn’t actually reading “Walden,” I was reading a book called “The Book of Great Books,” something you get at the bargain table at Barnes & Noble. “The Book of Great Books” is itself actually a summary of 100 great books, sort of like Cliff Notes summaries, only shorter. I was reading it mostly out of a genuine curiosity about most of the books, which I haven’t read, and also so that I can seem more educated and erudite than I really am.
Anyhow, when reading the four-page summary of Walden, I was struck that Thoreau, though roughing it, more or less, back there in 19th century rural Massachusetts, was actually living on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 300-acre farm out there at Walden Pond. I mean, this wasn’t like some homesteader tromping off into the wilds of Montana to chop down trees and bring his little slice of modern civilization to the wilderness. It was more, like, `Hey, Ralph, you know me. I’m Henry David Thoreau, the intellectual poet and, you know, you’ve got this 300-acre spread out there in Concord, and it’s your property, so even though civilization is creeping up, you can farm it and hunt on it and fish on it and keep others out, and you don’t mind if I build a place on it and just kind of hang out for a little bit, do you?’ Of course, Ralph, also being an intellectual and a writer, said, `Sure, go ahead. I’ve got 300 acres. Suit yourself.’
So that’s what Thoreau did for a couple of years. And I think having read a four-page condensation of “Walden,” that the moral of the book is live modestly, and you don’t need that many possessions, especially if you’ve got a friend with a 300-acre property that they let you live on for a few years. Which brings me to my other observation about the book, which is about the difference between liberals and radicals. Radicals seem to me to be people who don’t have much and live amongst others who don’t have much and genuinely feel they’ve been screwed by an unfair society or economy. A liberal is somebody who lives on their friends’ 300-acre farm and preaches to others about the virtues of material modesty. Or maybe it’s someone who reads a four-page summary of a book and pretends to be more educated and erudite than he really is.
NEARY: Tom Schiff reads condensed books in Los Angeles.
Aug
31
promises promises
August 31, 2006 | Leave a Comment
a recent this american life had a dan savage piece in which he described a promise he made to an ex-lover who was, at the time, dying of aids. the advent of a new drug cocktail extended the length of dan’s promise from a few months to the next several decades. this made me wonder, have i made (and broken) promises? i’m sure i have but the worst part is knowing that i don’t know what they are. the breakees probably remember, the way i remember girls who cruelly teased me in junior high. i wish i could remember.
Aug
14
dying words
August 14, 2006 | Leave a Comment
this american life this week is a rerun about dying words. all of this makes me wonder, if i died today and people looked in on what my life is, what would they think? what would seem consistent with the way i am, and what might come as a total surprise? we rely on our intuition to give us a real sense of what people are, because otherwise, my existence could be boiled down to a messy, colorful room and the half-formed resume of a twenty year old. thank god for intuition. and thank god for messy, colorful rooms.