Dr. Metablog

My Cyberfriends

People out there misjudge me. Marcia Wainwright, for example, is certain that I need to lose thirty pounds in thirty days. She proposes that I use her "miracle African weight loss herbs." OK, maybe I'm a few pounds above my fighting weight, but certainly not thirty -- what the heck is she thinking? Joellie Adella is concerned about my hair loss situation. Elsie Bertie thinks that I need fuller and more erotic lips. Susan van Elk wants to help me discover the benefits of a healthy colon. The "enormity" of my "manhood" is a worry of Penelope French; its lack of "rockhardness" seems to make Hoodiea Gordoni mighty eager to come to my aid. Jacklyn Hughes feels that my sperm count is low; she can help (but how? and for goodness sake-- why?). Thank you very much, guys, but I don't really need your assistance: hair, lips, colon, etc. are all doing just fine.

There's more:  Caroline McPherson and William McWilliams both think that I need to accessorize: she suggests "bling watches and designer handbags" while he proposes "Rolex replicas." I don't know what Natasasha (sic) thinks she  knows about me, but, frankly, I'm not especially anxious to employ her services as a "screwbuddy"; nor do I welcome the efforts of Ms. Ginger Snapz -- possibly a pseudonym -- who has big surprises in store for me and whose specialty is pole-dancing. These ladies have a wrong impression. So too does Teressa Brandel, who offers to solve all my problems by introducing me to "horny teen barnyard slutzz." Not this grandpa.

Considering all the negativity, it's good to know that there are not only Russian princesses but also a former Nigerian cabinet official out there who are eager to improve my finances. They both have "unbelievable offers" for me. Sure I have to send a few thousand bucks to an offshore bank, but I'm promised a return of great enormity on an investment that is rockhard.

The Holy Lance

In 1098, crusaders were trapped inside the walls of Antioch and their mission to capture Jerusalem was gravely jeopardized. When things were at their worst, one of the crusaders -- a Provencal peasant named Peter Bartholomew -- was visited by St. Andrew, who revealed to him that the lance with which the Roman soldier Longinus had pierced the side of Jesus was hidden in Antioch's Basilica of St. Peter. St. Andrew informed Peter that "he who carries this lance into battle shall never be overcome by the enemy." 

Bartholemew's claim met with initial skepticism because it was an established fact that the Holy Lance lay safely in the relic collection of the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople. Nevertheless, the authorities agreed to investigate. Twelve men dug until overcome by exhaustion at the spot to which Bartholomew pointed, but they could find nothing. Finally, Peter himself dropped into the hole and brought forth a shard of metal. "All across the city there was boundless rejoicing." Suddenly invigorated by the possession of this powerful relic, their morale euphoric, the crusaders broke out of the city, overcame the armies that surrounded them, and proceeded to Jerusalem.

Some months afterward, Peter Bartholomew had another vision: that the entire crusade  was compromised because some of its soldiers were polluted by pride or cowardice. He announced that he himself would choose and put to death soldiers of the cross who were steeped in sin. There was a backlash against Peter and the authenticity of the Holy Lance was challenged.

Peter decided to prove his truth in a trial by ordeal. After fasting for several days, he ran, carrying the Holy Lance, between two piles of burning olive branches four feet high and thirteen feet long. He was severely burned and died several days later. The Holy Lance lost its magic and morale plummeted. The crusaders were forced to seek an alternative. The ingenious Raymond of Toulouse dispatched his follower Hugh of Monteil to Latakia to retrieve a fragment of the cross on which Jesus had been crucified. In the end, the discrediting of the Holy Lance proved to be only a temporary setback.    

The facts in this and the previous essaylet come from Thomas Asbridge, The First Crusade, a New History (Oxford University Press, 2004). 

Adolf Award for Worst Person of the Century

The winner of the Adolf for worst person of the century goes to Pope Urban II. The century in question is the first one of the previous millennium, or 1000-1100. Like many other Adolf award winners, Urban perpetrated evil deeds that have continued to provoke hatred, war and suffering even to the present day.

HIs principal crime: Pope Urban fabricated a litany of Muslim atrocities in order to incite Christians to wrest Jerusalem from a “race” that he called “absolutely alien to God.” In November, 1095, in Clermont in the south of France, Urban told an eager audience that Muslims had circumcised Christians and spread their unspeakable blood on baptismal fonts; that they had “cut open the navels of others, tearing out their vital organs” and that they had committed appalling atrocities upon women “of which it is more evil to speak than to keep silent.”

Some say that his catalog of mutilations and barbarities was based on faulty intelligence but most think it was his own invention. Urban did not just incite and condone warfare, he sanctified it. His crusade would be a pilgrimage -- and therefore a form of penance. Combatants who died in its course would be purified. God, it was claimed, has instituted “holy wars” so that knights might find a new path to salvation.

Roughly one hundred thousand crusaders answered his call and set out for the Levant to take Jerusalem from the infidels.On the way, they warmed to their task by conducting genocidal attacks of unprecedented brutality upon the Jewish communities of the Rhineland (communities that had been in place before the advent of Christianity). These quasi-sanctioned raids are now known as “the first holocaust.”

The passage of the crusaders to the middle East was made easier because the Muslims were divided into two factions --Shiite and Sunni -- that were perpetually at daggers drawn. The crusaders laid siege to Antioch in October, 1099, and when they took the city, slaughtered its entire Muslim population. In possession of Antioch, they found themselves entirely surrounded by hostile armies. But God was on their side. The timely intervention of “countless armies with white horses… led by the saints George, Mercurius, and Demetrius“ allowed them to fight their way out of the city.

The crusaders headed south and in midsummer of 1099 besieged Jerusalem. Muslim defenders taunted the crusaders by setting up crosses and urinating on them; in response, the Christians catapulted the bodies of captured Muslims over the walls. When Jerusalem fell, the celebration was euphoric. The Provencal crusader Raymond of Aguilers reported that “some of the pagans were mercifully beheaded, others were tortured for a long time and burned to death in searing flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet lay in the houses and streets. Infants were seized by the soles of their feet from their mothers’ laps or their cradles, and dashed against the wall, breaking their necks.” Covered with gore, weighed down with plunder, “rejoicing and weeping from excessive gladness," the crusaders "worshipped at the Sepulchre of Jesus the Savior.”

Although Pope Urban II died just two weeks after the fall and sack of Jerusalem, there is no question but that his Adolf was well and truly earned and that his legacy lives on. 

"Within" Again; Backbiting

On March 10 of this year, I registered an objection to use of the word "within" in sportscaster-slang. Here's my complaint: "Why in the living heck do they say that the Nuggets are "within" two points of the Lakers?  "Within" means less than than the proclaimed margin -- 1.9 points perhaps. Why not say that the Nuggets are two points behind?  Or trailing by two points?  But not -- goodness gracious -- 'within'."  Now, at the website Language Log, an accomplished young linguist, Benjamin Zimmer, has independently offered a theory of the origin of this idiom. He claims that "within" is short for "pull within," as in the case of a rower plying his oars to literally "pull" within a certain distance from his opponent. Over time, he says, "pull within" migrated from sports such as racing and rowing, which measure advantage in distance, to sports such as baseball and basketball, which measure advantage in discrete numbers, and where, he concedes, "the metaphorical fit was not exact." It's an interesting theory, and it might very well be correct. It's consoling to imagine that there's a reason for the irrational use of "within."

Zimmer is less persuasive when he moves from linguistics to chronology.  He claims that "it became common by the mid-20th century for announcers and reporters to talk about teams pulling (to) within a certain number of runs, points, goals, or even games in the standings." He offers no evidence for the "mid-20th century" assertion. I can't say that my memory supports his version of history. I've been listening to basketball games on the radio since just after World War II, when the NBA succeeded the old BAA, and I'm moderately sure that I didn't hear the idiom "within two points" until the 1980s at the earliest. It was an unpleasant innovation in language that stuck painfully in my ear. To the best of my recollection, "within" was the relatively recent invention of Marv Albert  -- one of his limited repertoire of linguistic tics. Others: "from downtown," "served up a facial," " yesss," "a spec-tac-ular move."

Marv Albert, it may be remembered, was a protege of the late great Marty Glickman, sprinter and sportscaster, and (regular readers of these essaylets will be delighted to learn) as far as I know the only genuine celebrity to have set foot in the fabled P. S. 217 schoolyard. Glickman would not have been proud of Albert, who is less well known for his creativity in language than for his strange sexual exploits. In 1997, Albert plead guilty to sexual assault. He had proved himself to be a man without a tad of castration anxiety and of exceptional, perhaps unparalleled, courage, when he first bit a woman fifteen times on the back, drawing blood, and then forced her to perform fellatio. A spec-tac-ular move!! Just a couple of months after the Albert nonchalance, Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield on both ears, taking quite a chunk out of one of them -- the left, I believe. I had high hopes for a great TV moment: the sportscaster Marv Albert interviews the boxer Iron Mike. Two Brooklyn boys discuss the theory and practice of oral incorporation. Yesss! 

May 19: On Language Log, Benjamin Zimmer responds to my reminiscence that "within two points" was a creation of the 1980s. He offers comprehensive evidence that the idiom "pull within" was in print as long ago as the 19th century. Although he hasn't offered a chronology for "within" without a preceding "pull," and hasn't discussed radio basketball (how would he access radio archives, even if they exist?), he's certainly a thorough and imaginative researcher. But just because a phrase can be found deep in the archives somewhere, doesn't mean that it was in common oral usage.   

Angels and Fools

"Earth Angel," by Jesse Belvin's Penguins, offered, or seemed at the time to offer, a succinct and accurate distillation of relations between the sexes. The song appeared in 1954, when I was a vulnerable 15-year-old, and was a monster hit, perhaps because of its ideological clarity. "Earth Angel" is of the genre that has lately come to be called "doo-wop"; in the P. S. 217 schoolyard, we just called it "juke-box music." Here's a pithy stanza: "Earth angel, earth angel, will you be mine/ My darling dear, love you all the time./ I'm just a fool, a fool in love with you." The heart of the matter, and the essence of life as we knew it -- the simple-minded, retro-Victorian doctrine that  girls are angels, boys are fools.

Looking back, I have no doubt that such an oppressive formula was painful for girls. It must have been hard for young women who knew themselves to be flesh and blood to pretend to be angelic. But I didn't concern myself with the effect of the song on them -- girls were clearly and obviously different from us. Not that I knew anything at all about female culture; the world in which I lived was rigidly segregated by gender. I didn't have sisters and while the guys talked obsessively and ignorantly about girls, we almost never talked with them. Even in the high school lunchroom, girls sat to one side, boys the other. On the stoop, and In the schoolyard and the drugstore, we talked baseball, flipped cards, played softball and basketball and stickball, and practiced spitting for distance. I didn't have a clue what girls were doing -- probably at home starching their crinolines. It was therefore easy to believe what "literature" told us: girls were or should be beautiful, aloof, distant, polite, ethereal, sugar and spice and everything nice, and certainly not sexual -- in short, angels. Boys, on the other hand, were not just nasty and foul-mouthed, as we knew from first hand experience, but also pathetic, filled with longings that they gratified imperfectly several times a day, fumbling, awkward, big-eared, pimpled, and sloppy. The girls were all Bettys and Veronicas -- desirable but unattainable. Perhaps in better neighborhoods there was an occasional Archy, but at the corner of Newkirk and Coney Island, there were only Jugheads. We were, in brief, exactly what "Earth Angel" had described: anguished adolescent fools.

The notion that girls were unburdened by the flesh took a big hit when I found myself in one of those lower-level high school English classes where the disorder was such that weeks would go by without the teacher attempting a single lesson. Two very young but very tough girls (huge hair, pounds of makeup, stiletto heels, and bras so pointy that they could a bore a hole in the chest of any guy brave enough to risk an embrace) were discussing a "health" class in which chastity had been advocated by one of the maiden-lady teachers. One of the girls whispered: "She should take up a candle and see how it feels." Whoa, daddy! And then, a few days after I arrived at college, on a dark, moonless night, I overheard one "older" woman say to another, "there must be a mile of cock on this campus and I can't get six inches." At the sound of those words, "angels" all over America plunged to earth. 

And a few months afterwards, "fool," too, gave up the ghost. 

Seven Years Later and Still Going Strong

Here's a letter that I wrote to the local newspaper. It appeared in 1999 when AGGP retired.

"I have read all sorts of commentary in this paper about the public school system -- letters from parents, students, board members and from both grudging and supporting taxpayers -- but I can't ever remember reading a letter from the spouse of a teacher. So here's the perspective of a person who has sat on the sidelines for almost forty years.

'My wife, AGGP, retired this June from a career in teaching secondary mathematics that began at Warren Junior High School in Newton, Massachusetts, in 1960 and continued in the local schools, initially at the junior high school level and since 1977 at BHS.

'In my considered opinion, public school teachers, especially secondary school teachers, rank among the genuine heroes of American society -- right up there with hospice nurses, smoke-jumpers, and astronauts.

'Consider the conditions of employment. Perhaps readers of this letter can bring themselves to think back to their own youth, or possibly they can remind themselves what it was like to share a home with one or two young people. Remember the mood-swings and the erratic behavior. Then try to extrapolate from this recollection and imagine two thousand energetic adolescents crowded into an ungracious old building where the air is always too hot, too cold, or too fetid. Imagine a world in which the girls are slightly more rounded and boys just a bit hairier on Tuesday than they were on Monday. Two thousand hormone-fueled young people who are so supercharged that they can't make it from history to English without playing keep-away with each other's shoes; whose normal mode of greeting is to shoulder their best friends into a bank of lockers. It is a world of games and exuberance but I'm sorry to say that it is also a world of troubles -- of cliques, of alcohol and drug abuse, of private pain and of public disorder. And yet five times a day, five days a week, an accomplished teacher manages to keep thirty or so of these young ones focused for fifty minutes on conic sections or sinusoidal graphs.

'A high school is also a place of increasing expectations and shrinking resources. Five teachers in an office suitable for one. Larger and larger classes. it was only a few years ago that BHS's mathematics department could employ a para-professional to xerox the exams and keep track of the textbooks and calculators and overhead projectors. Not too long ago there was released time for a department chairperson to make the schedules and screen prospective teachers and advise students. No longer: the public as said, "cut out the fat," and has decided that teachers can handle these chores between classes.

'What happens after school is out for the day? Piles of exams and notebooks and homework to be read and returned tomorrow. Lessons to be prepared. I have seen with my own eyes that it is ordinary for a teacher to put in two solid ten-hour days on the weekend. And the phone calls. I'd be willing to wager that there are several hundred people reading this letter who have called our home between 5 p.m and 9 p.m. because Amber or Zack has stopped attending classes and hasn't handed in homework for a week, or just "can't get" hyperboles, or will have to miss school next week because of a family ski trip.

'And what of that much-vaunted summer vacation? In my experience, the first half is spent in a state of profound collapse, and the second spent gearing up for the the one hundred and fifty new students who will roll in come August.

'But let me report on AGGP's response to working conditions that would crush mortals not as strong as your heroic secondary school teacher. "I love my functions class. My algebra students are trying so hard. My basic students are great. They did a splendid job on matrices. I have such wonderful kids this year."

'Is it a good job?  For those who are fortunate enough to have a genuine calling, as AGGP has so clearly had, and who possess tremendous physical stamina, and who can look with amusement rather than horror at an infected navel-ring, it's great; for others, better to choose an easier profession. 

'And what are the rewards for four decades of teaching?  There is a warm retirement ceremony and a letter from someone in human resources, a plaque and a handshake and a very modest pension (health insurance not included).

'But then there are the rewards that truly matter. The first is the pleasure of knowing that in an "I, me, mine" culture, a teacher has honored the precept that asks us to promote the general welfare. But more particularly, there's what happens whenever we stand in line at the movies or take a walk on the mall. "Oh, Mrs. P. You don't remember me, but I was in your algebra class a few years ago. I've been meaning to write to you and thank you. I learned so much in your class. Now I'm a doctor/engineer/chemist/businessperson." And not regularly, but every once in a while: "Oh, Mrs. P. You'll never guess. I'm a teacher now. it's exhausting but I love it. You're my model. And someday I hope to be as good a teacher as you."'

A Writing Family

Yesterday we learned that my nephew Steven's book on the philosophy of martial arts will appear in July. Hosannas to him. Steven's wife, Terrylynn, has a book out on criminal justice.

It's a writing family. The direct descendants of Isaiah and Eta have produced books on a wide variety of subjects. 

It began when my father construed and annotated the standard form of real estate contract. And then my brother Jon published that novel about the dance and another family member of his generation wrote that introductory book about Shakespeare and a bunch of stuff on English literature. NGP''s book on election technology. My cousin Marian's twin daughters (upon whom I haven't set eyes since their grandfather's funeral, which was in 1965, I believe) have written a number of books. Nancy, a folklorist wrote about the hammered dulcimer and about musical instrument making in New York in earlier centuries. Nora, a medical anthropologist, has written a classic account of sign-language on Nantucket as well as volumes about third-world medicine. And then there's Eve's journalism (not yet in hardcover). If we look to the descendants of Isaiah's father, we can include Hiram C's book on global justice. 

I bet there are other books -- I've lost track of many members of the extended family. 

Also:  my sister-in-law Ellen's book on the internet; my daughter-in-law's writings on advanced technology, and probably all sorts of other things by non-genetic family members.          

I have no statistics, but I'd guess there's a higher concentration of published authors in our family than in most. Is there a gene for scribbling?

 It's interesting to me that except for the one novel, there are no other stories, poetry, screenplays.Our inheritance: facts rather than fantasy. 

A Rare Baseball-Shakespeare Confluence

It's not often that there's an intersection of the disparate universes of Shakespeare and baseball. Yet even such distant areas of experience occasionally overlap.

A contributor to a Shakespeare discussion group of which I am a member recently wrote about Jim Bouton's Ball Four (1970) (a very good baseball book), "Like Bill Bradley's excellent Life on the Road, it was written from the player's perspective." If I remember correctly from my own reading, it neither sensationalized nor glamorized professional athletics.

This Shakespeare correspondent had "recently read Howard Bryant's earnest history of baseball in the 1990s called Juicing the Game (Viking, 2005) and was reminded that Ball Four did not make Bouton's fellow ballplayers happy." "Bouton revealed to the world what most everyone in baseball already knew, and what most people outside it suspected: Players took amphetamines.... They had girls in different cities.'  Ball Four sold two million copies but Bouton himself was ostracized and eventually harassed out of baseball."

Now comes the baseball-Shakespeare confluence. Juicing the Game reports that sometime after Ball Four appeared, Bouton was "on the mound against Cincinnati... when he heard the voice of Pete Rose bellowing from the top step of the dugout, 'Fuck you, Shakespeare'. Literary criticism has seldom been more explicit."   

It's a good story, but the correspondent to the Shakespeare list does not fully explicate its significance. "Fuck you, Shakespeare" uses the epithet "Shakespeare" as a generic term for a writer -- almost as though Pete Rose could not think of the name of any other author. Under ordinary circumstances, to call someone a Shakespeare would be laudatory. This particular usage is either a very uncommon or a unique instance of the epithet serving as a term of derogation. In a way, it's a tribute to Shakespeare's prominence. "Fuck you, Flaubert," had such words been bellowed by Pete Rose, would have carried a dissimilar valence.

I myself feel confident in surmising that Rose's acquaintance with Shakespearean drama -- and with the written word in general -- is less than profound. No one, even those who vastly admired the convicted rapscallion's skill with the bat, has ever confused 'Charley Hustle' with 'Bertie' Russell or Charley Dickens.

"Fuck you, Shakespeare" reminds me of two of my favorite baseball/intelligence anecdotes. The first is the laudatory evaluation of Yale-educated Yankee pitcher Ron Darling by his teammate, center-fielder Mickey Rivers: "he knows the answers to things what I don't even know the question of."  A second anecdote has a similar valence. I 'll call the participants in the following genuine conversation Player A and Player B because I no longer recall who they were (although I do remember that both were Yankees). Player A: "That guy is a total idiot." Player B: "What are you saying? He has an IQ of a hundred thirty." Player A: "Yeah?  Outta what?"

May 9.  My brother Jon called to say that Ron Darling never played for the Yankees. He hypothesizes a memory failure on my part: Darling was with the Mets and the center-fielder in question therefore must have been Mookie Wilson (former Rockies outfielder Preston Wilson's uncle and stepfather [note Hamlet reference] and the man who hit the grounder that went through Bill Buckner's legs). But the identification of Darling's admirer isn't crucial; let's just agree that he was someone with the linguistic competence of a Pete Rose.

What's the Deal with Mike Yamagita?

In Fargo, a tightly structured film, the extraneous Mike Yamagita episode might easily have been cut.

Here’s the story (Fargophiles may bypass the plot summary). Mike is a high-school classmate and possibly an old boy friend of Marge Gunderson. He telephones Marge when he learns that she’s the police chief investigating the Brainerd triple homicide. When they  meet in a hotel bar in Minneapolis, Mike makes a half-hearted pass which Marge decisively rebuffs. Mike then reveals that he had been married to a mutual friend, Linda Cooksey, but that Linda died of leukemia. Because he’s lonely and, it would appear, because he’s embarrassed to have crossed the line with Marge, he breaks into sobs. A couple of scenes later, Marge is on the phone with a girl friend. She is surprised to learn that Mike never married Linda, that Linda is very much alive though she had been “pestered” by Mike for over a year, and that Mike’s been having psychiatric problems.

The Mike Yamagita excursion doesn’t easily connect to the gruesome botched-kidnapping main story. What, then, is its reason for being?.

The Coens like to toy with audience expectations. When we first hear Mike on the phone, we recognize the same flat upper-Midwest accent with which we've become familiar -- and so, we're taken aback to discover that Mike is Asian-American. But is it a gimmick or does it matter?  Mike himself plays against type. Almost everyone in the film (although not Carl Showalter, the excitable talkative funny-looking guy who's destined for the wood-chipper) is laconic and stoical. Mike's bawling opposes him to both the stereotypical impassive Asian as well as to the stereotypical low-key Swedish Lutheran. But can his display of sentiment be trusted? Mike is no less insane than Gaear Grimsrud, the psychopathic killer, but he’s addled in a sweeter way. He wants desperately to be part of a family. It's because of this longing that he harasses Linda Cooksey and fantasizes a romance with Marge. In its own Coenesque way, Fargo is a film that extols families. Although the Lundegaards are not a good model, Marge and Norm are emphatically in the process of creating a good and decent family. So perhaps, taken all together, the Mike Yamagita episode adds an unexpected quirky element to the film, challenges ethnic assumptions, and reinforces, in a 'funny kind of way,' Fargo's family values.

The Mike Yamagita subplot also deepens the character of Marge Gunderson. Although she’s interested in Mike--she primps for their "date" -- she’s not a bit flirtatious. There must be hundreds of policiers in which the tough cop engages in gratuitous sex, but Marge is not that kind of policeperson. When she confines Mike to his side of the table, she reinforces her status as the moral center of an otherwise amoral film. But Mike catches her off guard and she’s not nearly as discerning in fancy duds as she would be if she were in uniform. The Fargo screenplay describes Mike as “bald, paunching.” (The coinage “paunching” must mean “becoming paunchy.”) By changing direction and casting the handsome Korean-American actor Steve Park,-- a native of Vestal, New York, by the way -- in the role of Mike Yamagita, the film makes him less pathetic and more sexual. While Marge does resist, she’s curious enough about him to make it her business to investigate. She ably balances restraint with curiosity. 

Finally, there’s a broad sketchy parallel between the Mike Yamagita sequence and the main action of the film. Jerry Lundegaard attempts a scam that eventually kills his wife; Mike Yamagita attempts a similar scam when he tries to insinuate himself into Marge’s life by, so to speak, 'killing' his own imaginary wife. Marge thwarts both scams.

Three different approaches, then: one about Mike, one about Marge, and one about plot parallels. But has the heart of this mystery been plucked?  Do we now know what Mike Yamagita is doing in Fargo?  I don't think so. Is there anyone out there in the cinemablogosphere who can improve on these suggestions?