Lake George Rednecks

Just back from an illuminating weekend up North, where I was led to believe–erroneously–that redneck-dom isn’t the force that it clearly is in my native mid-South. Oh, my friends, but I now disabused. 

I have lived in a number of states: LA, KY, MD, IN, NJ (and more), and I have known rednecks. My friends, I am descended, proudly, from a long line of rednecks. I am a painted redneck, wending my way toward bourgeois middle-class respectability. When your daddy dies from too many cigs and Miller Lites, you know that you are the progeny of rednecks. When your daddy’s best friend tells you at said daddy’s funeral, “he could drink a case of beer and you’d never know it,” you know that you are in the presence of a great redneck. I have redneck in my blood and bones. And to top it off, I barely knew my daddy.

And so when I stole away to Lake George, New York, for a weekend break before the semester madness, I was brought up short: Lake George is full of rednecks. And I mean this with both affection and a certain amount of revulsion, for I have both for my own family. 

Resort this is not. The good ole boys in the room next to mine drank beer on the deck all day and smoked cigars. They were good enough to offer me both, but I haven’t had a cigar since college and I wasn’t about to ruin my weekend by throwing up.

Here is what I saw in Lake George: two and three-year olds up until 11 and 12 at night, tattooed already or on their way thusly; obese first-graders that would gladly kick your ass if you looked at them slant-wise; big-assed trucks driven by cage-fighters, UFC t-shirts tightly wound around their shot-put bodies; a shop that hawked shirts advertising something called DILLIGAF, which the buck-toothed red-head told me meant, “Do I Look Like I Give A Fuck,” though I had already figured that out since it was plastered everywhere; skinny little teen-aged smokers carrying cases of lime-inflected beers down the street while simultaneously pushing strollers as their babies’ mommas tailed behind, sporting tight blue jean cut-offs and a bad attitude. Non-helmet wearing ATV driving rednecks: YAHOO!

And you just knew that given the right public health program, this would be an orthodontist’s dream town.

This Bud’s for you, redneck town by the lake!

Another “Predictable Argument”

Since when did we become a nation so in love with the put down, “predictable argument”? So-and-so offers another “predictable argument” about such-and-such. Our fearless leader put forth another tired, “predictable argument.” Should a thinking person lend any credence to her “predictable argument”? 

I’m seeing it everywhere. Are we only to believe those who can come up with an original, fresh, fruity argument? Do we really put that much stake in originality?

Spare me the “predictable argument” shtick. Try to come up with something a little more original if you are intent on reaming out some poor bastard who only wanted to put in his two-cents’ worth. And by the way, if it was so “predictable,” why didn’t you come up with it yourself?

Olympic Swimmer Has Baby!

This just in: Forty-one year old Olympic medal hopeful Dara Torres has a two-year old baby! No word yet on where John Edwards was two years and nine months ago, but my sources tell me that he’s not a strong swimmer.

My New Obsession: “Piazza, New York Catcher”

Perhaps I am coming late to the game, but I feel like I’m in high school again. My new obsession, Belle and Sebastian’s “Piazza, New York Catcher.”

Elope with me, Miss Private, and we’ll sail around the world
I will be your Ferdinand and you my wayward girl
How many nights of talking in hotel rooms can you take?
How many nights of limping around on pagan holidays?
Oh, elope with me in private and we’ll set something ablaze
A trail for the devil to erase 

San Francisco’s calling us, the Giants and Mets will play
Piazza, New York catcher, are you straight or are you gay?
We hung about the stadium, we’ve got no place to stay
We hung about the Tenderloin and tenderly you tell
About the saddest book you ever read, it always makes you cry
The statue’s crying too and well he may

I love you, I’ve a drowning grip on your adoring face
I love you, my responsibility has found a place beside you
And strong warnings in the guise of gentle words
Come wave upon me from the wider family net absurd
“You’ll take care of her, I know it, you will do a better job”
Maybe, but not what she deserves

Elope with me, Miss Private, and we’ll drink ourselves awake
We’ll taste the coffee houses and award certificates
A privy seal to keep the feel of 1960 style
We’ll comment on the decor and we’ll help the passer by
And at dusk when work is over we’ll continue the debate
In a borrowed bedroom virginal and spare

The catcher hits for .318 and catches every day
The pitcher puts religion first and rests on holidays
He goes into cathedrals and lies prostrate on the floor
He knows the drink affects his speed, he’s praying for 
a doorway 
Back into the life he wants and the confession of the bench
Life outside the diamond is a wrench

I wish that you were here with me to pass the dull weekend
I know it wouldn’t come to love, my heroine pretend
A lady stepping from the songs we love until this day
You’d settle for an epitaph like “Walk Away, Renee”
The sun upon the roof in winter will draw you out like 
a flower
Meet you at the statue in an hour
Meet you at the statue in an hour

Okay, I get most of the references, and I’ve done a little research on a few others. I get the pun on the Say Hey Kid. But looking more generally at the song as a whole–indeed, thinking of it as a performance–moves past the realm of mere interpretation into the place where music best sits, emotion. I’m not trying to say we shouldn’t do a little exegesis here, but that something slips away in the telling, and that’s exactly why the song works for me.

If you know the song, what do you think?

My Coffeehouse, Redux

I wrote previously about the old farts at my local–which is to say, global–coffeehouse. I made it back this week and they were there again, loud as ever, disrupting the calming influence of white noise with their boisterous banter. 

Taking my cue from the now defunct Dr. Disillusioned, I decided to listen in, and here is what I heard:

Framing, rebar, ball joint, crank, sending lights, flange, wizz snips, reciprocating saw, soldering station, sleeve puller, threading kit, plug wrench, acoustic tile

And it thus occurred to me, perhaps not for the first time, that the language of people who actually work for a living is every bit as specialized as my own, and every bit as undemocratic, alienating, and frightening. I remain repulsed at my own ignorance, not of the intricacies of post-Marxist theory (to take but one example), but of all that makes the world work in a real material necessary way. 

And yet, I remained pissed off that they had, once again, invaded my air space. 

The Special

I made the mistake of ordering The Special, both for the appetizer and the entree. I knew from experience, of course, that The Special would cost twice as much. But I expected–no, I hoped–that this would be different. I had eaten at this Japanese place before, but I had never had The Special. Where did such hope come from? Wherefore such delusions? Was it because I was trying to make nice with the waiter? 

Did I want to be friends with him, or make him believe that America is a place where everyone orders The Special? Did I want him to like me? 

I wasn’t disappointed at first. It was delicious. One of the best Specials I’ve ever had, so much so that I can say unequivocally that it lived up to its name. It. Was. Special.

And yet, when the bill arrived I was confronted with what I already knew. It had returned in the exact form that I expected. 

Perhaps I was only disappointed that it didn’t cost more.

Going to the Olympics? Beware.

Don’t jaywalk. Don’t spit on the sidewalk. You might leave the chewing gum in your hotel room. Forget about urinating in public. 

Hands off Cain released a study that says that of the roughly 5,851 executions in the world last year, China was responsible for around 5,000. 

 

Reuters, 2001

If I were you, I’d try to get a room at the U.S. Embassy. Unless it’s in Texas.

Teaching Composition: A Pissing Match

There’s a useful debate happening at Inside Higher Ed and at One Flew East over William Major’s article on the teaching of composition in the academy. What it really looks like is a pissing match. Professors Gerald Nelms and Tim Mayers chide Professor Major for supposedly not knowing the important literature relating to composition and rhetoric studies. Mayers even goes so far as to accuse Major or being ignorant of the work being done in the field. Nelms provides a catalogue of where he thinks Major goes wrong.

Major responds that Nelms seemed to have read a different essay. He points out that by moving some of the literature professors into the classroom they might take a new appreciation for the teaching of writing (and learn something along the way). More importantly, they would have to move out of the lofty graduate seminar and into the trenches. This might, Major argues, leave us with fewer Ph.Ds and more jobs.

One gets the sense that the rhetoric/comp folks are a little sensitive about the matter. I’m not sure–and it’s not clear from the article–what Major knows or doesn’t know about rhet/comp theory. But Mayers and Nelms would seem to have some kind of institutional ax to grind (as well as being able to read minds). They may be feeling that they aren’t getting their due, that as composition experts their ideas are still being ignored–especially by literature folks. Maybe they are secretly tired of the whispers in the hallway that what they’re doing really isn’t worthwhile (the same way that professors of education have to swallow it). 

Some of the books Mayers cites as evidence of Major’s ignorance make the point–as Major does–that writing departments have historically been relegated to the back of the bus. It seems to me that Major’s article wants to change this fact. Too bad Nelms/Mayers and others didn’t get it.

Addendum: Mayers replies to The Grumpy Academic here.

Academic Politics: What Happened to the 60s?

The title of Patricia Cohen’s recent article in the NYT, “The 60s Begin to Fade as Liberal Professors Retire,” was a little misleading. Indeed, those of us who were in graduate school during some of the most fiercely fought battles (for me, late 1980s through mid 1990s) understand that the culture wars were invariably the result not of 60s radicals looking to have their day in the academy, but of their ideological progeny: those who were in college in the 70s and 80s and who sought to emulate their brothers and sisters who peopled the barricades a decade or so before.

In other words, the young professors in the late 70s, 80s, and early 90s confused what they were doing in the classroom with real politics. Of course, they had notable successes, especially when it came to opening up the canon. On the other hand, the culture wars helped give us Ronald Reagan and Bush I and II. 

Cohen writes that the young profs of today are far more politically moderate than their predecessors of a generation or so ago. I would amend her analysis to say, simply, that today’s younger profs (late 20s through early 40s, perhaps) are more politically moderate because they are more practical in their understanding of what can be done in the academy in terms of social change. They simply do not buy the idea that the university seminar room is where the rubber meets the road. 

In my day as a graduate student, I could not help but wonder how the linguistic and ideological contortions that passed for criticism and theory had any relevance to the homeless guy down the street. Even though they purported to be just what that guy needed.

A Leathery Woman; A Horny Man

Here’s what I saw on my last evening on the beach, as I was enjoying a gin and tonic and trying to concentrate on the sunset:

A woman in her mid-50s–body sculpted by modern medicine and a legion of personal trainers–had donned what would have been a very fetching bikini had she been 20 years old. She may have, at some earlier time, been a white person, yet her skin was now the color of gnawed shoe leather, and I suspect it felt about the same: a sinewy monstrosity, the product of too much good living in the sun. I was both fascinated and repulsed, strangely drawn to her presence, so symbolic she was of our collective fear of death.

But she wasn’t alone. Hard by I spotted her beau of the week. The poor fellow could barely keep up with her mockery of the passage of time. He wore a knee brace, which instead of preventing a rather marked limp only served to highlight it. He was slightly overweight, though given his age and size I wouldn’t call his overall look that unusual. He, in other words, was on his way to the grave and he didn’t seem to mind too much.

Now here’s the fun part. He saddled up behind her and began a very slight–but noticeable–grinding into her bottom, rejoicing, I guess, that he was able to land such a creature as this and therefore all the more ready to proclaim it to the world–or to her. Even though he was probably in his cups, as well as in his near dotage, I imagined that he was sporting a bit of a woody. Wouldn’t be so absurd in this, the age of Viagra.

And yet, I wasn’t scandalized: not by this woman-as-preservative, not by the soft-porn show they were putting on in front of the kids. But alas! She had to give him the reverse reach around, right there in public. She thought she was being sly, but I am, if nothing else, an observer: I observe. And thus I observed her grabbing his manhood in the midst of dozens of unsuspecting sunset worshippers. You sly leathery fox, I’m watching you!

This is what I saw at the beach at 8:27 p.m. last night.