Dr. Metablog

Conversation with our State Representative

Dr. M:  "Do you think that these tea party Republicans can be educated?"

State Rep:  "I'm not hopeful. They don't know much about governing. They don't want to know anything.  They're very disciplined -- they vote exactly the way they're told to vote. And they're not very intelligent."

Conversation With Our Congressman

I went to a forum, sponsored by local Dems, with our congressman. Fifty or sixty of my friends and neighbors were in attendance. Our congressman is a good person -- smart, informed, energetic, and progressive. He described the situation in the House of Representatives -- the difficulty of serving in the minority, especially when so many members of the majority side aren't serious about governing. The audience was sympathetic but there was an undercurrent of impatience. Why can't the Dems make it clear that cutting taxes and cutting the deficit are incompatible goals?  Why do the Dems always lose the messaging wars? Our congressman's answers were not always satisfactory to his liberal constituents. 

I understand his plight;  i's easy to stand outside and criticize. But I also felt that he didn't appreciate how damn dangerous these right-wing Republicans and tea-partiers have become. The gap between rich and poor is becoming larger and less ameliorable. We could lose our democracy to the corporations.

Afterwards, I asked him, semi-privately, if the new Republican congressman can be educated. Will they ever come to realize that governing is a hard job that can't be done with slogans and a simplistic ideology.  He didn't think much of my question and didn't answer it. 

I was filled with foreboding when I left for the forum. I returned home even more pessimistic about the future. 

On the Telephone with Ella (8) and Lola (17 months)

Ella:  "Say 'duck.'"

Lola:  "Duck"

Ella:  "Say 'ball.'"

Lola:  "Ball."

Ella:  "Say 'hair.'  (Pause.) No, no. Don't touch your hair. Say "hair."

 

An Old Lesson Learned Once Again

A good friend, a distinguished biologist, asked me to read his cancer manuscript.   

When I read science books (popularizations, for the most part), I usually do so with only half a brain. I'm lazy; I skip the hard parts. But because I was being asked for a serious opinion, I read this book closely. In all honesty,  It hurt my head. The hardest chapters were those on the workings of the cell. I last studied cells in high school biology class with Miss Goetschius.  It was 1957, before there was anything known about DNA.  We copied elementary pictures of cells from the textbook. "You don't know how to stipple," Miss Goetschius complained. There's a thousand times more known about cells than back then in the dark ages, and I haven't gotten any smarter. 

Cells are spectacularly complicated  -- no wonder it took billions of years for them to evolve. Once the single cell had achieved a level of efficiency, the rest of evolution -- even including us -- was piece of cake.

Reading about the lives of cells and about cancer (which is what happens when cells go wrong) confirmed and strengthened my ideas about life and death.  Life,our life, is almost entirely an accident. It's an accident that cells incorporated pieces of bacteria to form mitochondria; it's an accident that they agglutinated in the way that they did to form multicellular creatures; it's an accident that we're here. But more than that: the success and the deterioriation of the cells that make us are part of the same process. The end of life is implicit in its inception. Cancer is exactly as natural as breathing. 

It's trivial;  t's what everyone knows, it's what we've always known. It's a cliche: "death is a natural part of life." And yet it's strangely comforting. Whatever comes next -- cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's -- is perfectly natural. Of course it will lead to death. But it's also life.  

Baseball Facts

In 1968, the average AL batter hit .230 and Carl Yastrzemski won the batting championship, hitting .301; in 1930, the average NL batter hit .303. In 1904, 87.6% of starting pitchers completed their games; in 2004, of 4854 starts, only 150 were completed (3.1%). In 1997, the Texas Ranger franchise was purchased for $252 million; The Ballpark in Arlington was built for $191 million;  in 2000, Alex Rodriguez signed a ten-year contract with the same Texas Rangers for $252 million. In 2004, the New York Yankees sold 3.78 million seats at an average ticket price of $27.34;  in the same year, the Montreal Expos sold 750,000 seats at an average price of $10.82. In 1976, the average salary for a major league baseball player was $51,501; it's now $2,632,655. In the new Comiskey Park, built in 1991, the first row in the new upper deck is farther from the field than the last row in the old park. In 1932, the Giants' shortstop "Doc" Marshall was nicknamed the "ancient mariner," because "he stoppeth one of three." In 2004, the Colorado Rockies hit .305 at home; they hit just .258 on the road. In 1904, Jack Chesbro introduced the "spit ball."  He won 41 games, a record that has never been surpassed. 

Ducks/ Bad Corporate Names

It is possible that in the entire history of capitalism in America, the silliest name that has ever been devised for a business is "Lady Footlocker." I understand the reasoning behind the name: "Footlocker" was a successful athletic goods store for men and the geniuses in charge wanted to hive off a parallel enterprise for women. How to do so? Well, right here, in our state, as all basketball enthusiasts know, we have the Colorado Buffs and the Lady Buffs; why not, by analogy, Lady Footlocker -- except for the intractable fact that footlockers don't exhibit gender. A female footlocker? Goodness gracious. Not that the name "Lady Buffs" is at all is satisfactory -- although inasmuch as a female buffalo is properly a cow -- well, things could be worse. Which inevitably calls up the question of what to call the distaff version of Oregon's famous Ducks. Lady Ducks? The obstacle here is that "duck" is already female ("drake" the male "duck"), so Lady Ducks would be excessively hyperfeminine. The finest solution to this onomastic puzzle would be to change the men's team to Drakes -- and then the female version would be immediately obvious. But what about the related question: what to do for a mascot for Drake University of Des Moines, Iowa. My choice would be Drake Monks, but I would accept Drake Drakes. No such luck; in defiance of all mascot logic, they're the Drake Bulldogs -- and I'm going to guess that the women's team is called the Lady Bulldogs, but I don't know for sure. It's a horrid moniker, but still orders of magnitude superior to Lady Footlocker.

But is Lady Footlocker the worst corporate name, as I've asserted? I can offer two other nominees. The first is Unisys (formerly Sperry-Rand); "siss" is a syllable that should never be found in any corporation's name (except in conjunction with -tem) especially if it expects to be taken seriously. My other nominee:  a cleaning product that I use, which is called "Mr. Leather." Entirely too S & M for my taste.

The question of worst corporate name is the kind of  topic for which the internet is designed. If you google "worse corporate names," you find several lists. Here follow some of my favorites: Casket Basement; Chainsaw Cottage; Hung Fat Lingerie; Stiff Nipples Air Conditioning (you think that  I'm making this up; check here; Blood's Seafood and Caterer; B. S. Liquidators;  Dodo Mortuary; Cramps Liquors; Beaver Cleaners; Lynch Tree; PMS Firearms; Master Bait and Tackle; Knobs and Knockers. There are dozens more, but none, I think, quite so quintessentially absurd as Lady Footlocker. 

Life with Dickens

Charles Dickens and I are intimate friends and have been so since 1952, when, delighted and astonished, I zoomed through David Copperfield -- the first of ten or a dozen readings. At this very moment, I'm renewing our long asymmetrical friendship by re-reading the fifteen novels (fourteen and a half, actually, inasmuch as Dickens collapsed while Drood was still in process). It's my third pilgrimage through the collected works; first in the summer of 1969, again sometime in the early 1980s, and now once again (no doubt the last). I know a couple of the novels almost word for word -- Great Expectations, for example, -- but others, such as Barnaby Rudge  -- gosh, I don't think that I could say any more about it than that it's a historical novel and that it contains both riots and a conspicuous cherry ribbon. I don't know any more about Barnaby Rudge than your average man on the street. Despite these blank spots, my relationship with Dickens has been enduring and satisfying. Troubled, some of the time, but always rich and complex. 

He's the best of novelists; he's the worst of novelists. Dickens' formula is "make 'em laugh, make' em cry, make 'em wait." Waiting must have come easier in previous centuries. It's a good thing that I'm a patient person, because these 800-pagers can wear a reader down. There are times in almost every one of the novels in which I would be happier if there was a trifle less waiting. On the other hand, laughing and crying have remained a splendid part of the Dickens experience. No matter how much I steel myself against the obvious tearjerker death or disaster looming at chapter's end, I still fall into the Dickens trap and besprinkle my Penguin with hot tears -- not as plentiful, I think, as those that I let fall when poor David's mother died in 1952, but no less genuine. And when Aunt Betsey threatens to tread on Miss Murdstone's bonnet or when Trabb's boy lashes himself with his empty blue bag -- well, even after all these years, I can't help but break into loud laughter. When he goes after Chadband and Creakle and Podsnap, he's unequalled. No one can equal Dickens for comedy.    

I am convinced that the finest moment in all of nineteenth-century literature occurs just in Bleak House, just after the death of poor Jo the crossing sweeper, when Dickens stops the novel right in its tracks and directs the full  force of his indignation at his own indifferent country: "Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day."  There has never been another writer who had the magnificent effrontery, the bravura daring, to so attack his readers, high and low. Dickens is a force of nature, not to be judged by ordinary canons of literary excellence. 

But Dickens can also be awful -- sentimental, gooey, repetitive, obsessive. Sometimes the satire is ill-aimed. Why is it so ridiculous to be concerned with the victims of imperialism?  Perhaps the denizens of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the NIger, need all the help they can get. Why should Mr. Guppy or young John Chivery to be so pilloried, just because they dare to love above their stations?  Why does Dickens have so much trouble with ambitious or wronged women?  Don't Miss Dartle and Miss Wade have a right to be angry? And what about Dickens' Jewish problem? His bigotry disfigures the page and makes the philosemitic Mr. Riah even more offensive than horrid old Fagin. And then there are all those monsters of goodness: the weak-tea Brownlows and Clennams. Dickens is sometimes faulted for his caricatures, but his grotesques are a thousand times more realistic and more interesting than his faultless, blameless, bowel-less goody-goodies. And there are moments of high stupidity, such as Mr. Krook's death by spontaneous combustion. Goodness gracious -- the greatest of hearts supported by the most ordinary of brains.         

Up next in my final passage through the novels, already two-thirds of the way to the finish line: Dombey and Son,  where I'm going to cry at Paul's death, be offended by perfect Walter Gay, giggle at Mr. Toots, marvel at Edith Grainger, and spend far too much time transfixed by Carker's teeth. 

More Noir: Otto Preminger's Laura (1944)

Laura is a stylish noir mystery that maintains its fascination even after the passage of sixty years. It is cleverly written and handsomely cinematographed but it also comes with some murky psychological baggage. At the heart of the enigma lies Waldo Lydecker (played by Clifton Webb). He's so head-over-heels in love and so ferociously jealous of Laura (the ingenue Gene Tierney) that he'll resort to anything, even murder, to keep her from other men. The premise is good whodunit fare, but it would make more obvious sense if Lydecker weren't both old and gay.

Clifton Webb was fifty-five when the picture was made, but he looks and acts ten or fifteen years older. He may be a bachelor, but he's not an eligible one. There's a story that Webb had a clause in his contract with Twentieth-Century Fox that barred the company from alluding to his homosexuality, but the prohibition, if it existed, didn't stop him from playing Lydecker with a pronounced gay affect. He's fussy, he's bitchy, he's a queen -- in short a stage homosexual in every aspect except that he's not obviously interested in men. Well, not overtly;  but it is a surprise that he exposes himself to the detective Mark McPherson [Dana Andrews] when he steps out of a bathtub and asks McPherson to throw him a robe.)

A clue to Lydecker's character occurs in the film's first scene. He spies on Detective McPherson, who's wandering around Lydecker's apartment, browsing an extensive collection of fragile objets d'art. McPherson goes to pick up a piece of glass and Lydecker calls out "Careful, that's very valuable" (I'm quoting from memory). From this incident we learn two things:  that Lydecker is a collector of beautiful works of art, and that he's willing to let people look but not touch. These same two traits control Lydecker's relations to Laura: he cherishes her beauty and molds her in a Pygmalion-like way, but he's hyper-protective. For him, she becomes an untouchable work of art (the portrait of Laura, on which the camera focuses so obsessively, is the metaphorical signifier of her place in his mental world).  His cool sexuality (he's perfectly content with twice-a-week dinners) and his age (he's more interested in fathering Laura than in making love to her) are less powerful than his pygmalionism. 

By transforming Laura into a work of art, Lydecker attempts to preserve her virginity. He therefore shoos away her potential lovers. He destroys the career of Jacoby, the painter, by writing a vitriolic attack on him; he collects revealing information about the southern gigolo Carpenter (Vincent Price). He competes with McPherson.  t's a neat turn that to do so he becomes a detective himself -- loitering in the snow outside Laura's apartment, eavesdropping behind a post in a night club, etc.  Eventually he comes to understand that he can't preserve Laura's "purity"; it's then that the film turns to violence. After all is lost, he gives away the game when he says to McPherson, with visceral horror, "I suppose you'll have a disgustingly earthy relationship" [i.e. with Laura]. 

It's fascinating that McPherson, though he has all the outward marks of the macho gumshoe, is himself tepid about sexuality. He lacks charisma, emotion, lust. The film allows him and Laura only one slight awkward peck of a kiss. The detective is not a creature of passion, but he may be, like Lydecker, a lover of art;  it's revealed, climactically, that Laura's portrait will be auctioned and that McPherson has put in a bid on it.