Quid Me Anxius Sum?

Latin for “What Me Worry?” – the motto of Mad magazine’s impish mascot, Alfred E. Neuman. Translations can often be tricky. The Latin literally translates as “What am I worried?”  This illustrates the problem of translating idioms.


Each of our 50 states has a motto. Twenty of them are in Latin, twenty-four are English and the remaining six include: Chinook (Washington), Greek (California), Hawaiian (duh, Hawaii), French (Minnesota), Spanish (Montana) and Italian (Maryland). South Carolina and Kentucky have two. For the curious readers, both of South Carolina’s are Latin; Kentucky has one Latin and one English.

Maryland’s Italian motto is Fatti mashii, Parole femine. This archaic form of Italian comes from the Calvert family crest. While this idiom means “Strong deeds, Gentle words,” it literally translates as "Manly deeds, Womanly words." 

The state I grew up in, New Jersey, has the motto,  Liberty and Prosperity. Over the years, the Garden State has had several slogans. In 2005, the state wanted a new one. An ad agency was hired, but to no avail. They then looked to the citizens of NJ for ideas. The winner was a conglomerate of submitted ideas. “New Jersey, Come See For Yourself” An example of how lame marketing by committee can be. 

I submitted my own: “New Jersey, Here’s Your F@*#in’ Garden”. Graphically the spokesperson, traditionally the governor, would cup his/her genitalia as he/she intoned this "Jersey as you can get" slogan. 

I described an entire campaign -  a group of hikers in the Kittatinny Mountains, life guards on a beach, Revolutionary War reenactors on the battlefield in Monmouth, farmers in the blueberry patches in Hammonton, a group of Giants and Jets at the Meadowlands, Bruce and Little Steven on the stage at the Stone Pony - all grabbing their crotches yelling “New Jersey, Here’s Your F@$#in’ Garden.” 


The campaign would have generated international attention. The state would have achieved tons of free publicity - news articles, commentaries, editorials, late-night talk show fodder... but nooooo! Once again  I had cast intellectual pearls before cretinous swine. Or maybe they just thought this New Jersey idiom wouldn't translate well out of state? – as ever BB  

“Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.” - Oscar Wilde

Apology for Musings and Doggerel*

* Actually started this over a year ago as the introductory blog for this discourse. I forgot about it, then stumbled on it earlier this week. Better late than never as Chaucer coined. A mind is a terrible thing when wasted. - BB

From the Greek “apologia” in the manner of Plato, Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, I write this to give insight to my frame of mind. Be afraid, be very afraid.

1954… the Lone Ranger’s last radio episode aired, the H-Bomb was tested on Bikini Atoll, Bill Haley & the Comets recorded “Rock Around the Clock". America was in transition. World War II morphed into the Korean War that morphed into the Cold War. Amid this melee, I was born.

The bosom of the 50s nurtured me. The golden age of television’s glowing cathode ray was my lodestar. Nascent rock n’ roll was my lullaby.  “May you live in interesting times,” is said to be an ancient Chinese curse. Actually written by a Victorian-era British writer, it is apocryphal, yet apropos.

A brief list of events that occurred while I aged from 5 to 10:

1959 – Revolution in Cuba led by Fidel Castro

1960 – U2 pilot Gary Powers shot down over Russia  - war possible

1961 – Berlin wall erected – war possible

1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis – war imminent

1963 – President John F. Kennedy assassinated

1964 – Troops, not just advisers, sent to Vietnam.

Those are just the highlights of what occurred during my first 10 years on this planet. Mixing that with the normal twists and turns of childhood produced a strange potting soil to germinate the sprouting seeds of my consciousness.

Theories on personality development abound - Psychoanalytic, Humanist, Behaviorist, and Biopsychological to name a few. Whatever witch's brew of genetics, societal factors and husbandry produced the psyche that types these words is inconsequential. I have no idea what will incite my interest and give impetus to my doggerel. 

My father was once asked why I acted as I did. Dad shrugged his shoulders and said, "All I can tell you is when he was a kid, I put more stitches in his head than I can count." - as ever - BB
“I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.” -Oscar Wilde 

Sinister

Adjective - 1. giving the impression something harmful or evil is happening, or will happen 2. wicked or criminal - from Latin sinister - left

This Saturday, August 13, is Left-Handers Day. Lefties have rights too.


As one of 10% of the earth's population who is left-handed, I have suffered slings and arrows from the dexterous world. (From the Latin dexter - on the right)



Since ancient times, those using the left hand have been deemed instruments of the devil. What makes one left-handed? Theories abound. Researchers have discovered specific alleles of at least one of three single-nucleotide polymorphisms linked to left-handedness. I still prefer Flip Wilson's Geraldine postulate, "The Devil made me do it!" 

Growing up, the world seemed full of devices designed to disturb my disposition: scissors, spiral-bound notebooks, ladles, can-openers, corkscrews, et. al. The right side of the brain controls lefties. We are imaginative and creative; ergo, we survive well in a right dominated environment. 


So they say. I think the anguish of sinistromanuality explains why the left-handed lifespan is 9 years less than that of our right-handed brethren. 


Despite all of this, I enjoy being left-handed. I relish in being different. All my life, I've had a distaste for following the crowd. Am I a lefty because of my contrariness? Or is being contrary symptomatic of my left-handness? Causa latet, vis est notissima - Ovid (The cause is hidden, but the result is well known.)


I have one idiosyncratic lefty dysfunction which upsets me - the inability to use a fountain pen. One with a gold nib will form to your hand so that only you can write correctly with it. However, I have yet to find an ink that dries quickly enough. The drag of my left hand over the written words smudge out any possibility of using this stylish stylus. 


Left-handers excel in fencing. 44% of the world's top rated fencers are lefties. Alas, the pen may be mightier than the sword, but lefties make better swordsmen than scribes - As ever BB


"I am not afraid of the pen, or the scaffold, or the sword. I will tell the truth wherever I please." Mary Harris "Mother"  Jones 

Smell as Sweet

"What's in a name? that which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet" - William Shakespeare 

My topic is not a late 16th century play based on an Italian love story, but a 1957 film noir classic, The Sweet Smell of Success. The alluded aroma is not the fragrance of a rose, but the stench of entertainment's underworld of gossip columnists, press agents and mendacity.


The film did poorly in the box office. From the title, moviegoers expected to see Tony Curtis in a light-hearted comedy. Burt Lancaster fans expected a hero role. The film disappointed the audience. It's definative film noir full of unsavory characters, collusion and New York City neon juxtaposed against gritty street scenes. 


Martin Milner of Route 66 and Adam-12 portrays a jazz guitar player. He maintains his integrity while being unjustly smeared as a "marijuana smoking communist." West Coast jazz combo, the Chico Hamilton Quintet acts the part of the band.  Milner replaces John Pisano, who's left hand was used in the movie. This only adds to my personal fondness for the film. 


The pièce de résistance for me is the language. (A piece of Baltimore trivia associated with the film is the character in Barry Levinson's Diner who speaks only in quotes from this movie) Here are some of my favorite bon mots:
Steve (Milner) to J.J. (Lancaster): "You've got more twists than a barrel of pretzels." 
Steve to Sidney (Curtis) after Sidney feeds him some press agent fast talking: "That's fish four days old; I won't buy it."
J.J. to Sidney: "I'd hate to take a bite out of you. You're a cookie full of arsenic."
Sidney to J.J. - "The cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river."


I watched this film again Sunday afternoon and you can expect to hear these phrases added to my pathetic patois soon - as ever BB


"A lot of musicians aren't proud; they'll do other work, just to be able to play music. I guess that's the way it's always going to be - musicians will have to suffer to a certain degree in order to obtain their outlet. " - Chico Hamilton

Procrastination Strikes Again!

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, one of 19th century Britain's most popular novelists, coined such memorable phrases as "the great unwashed" and "the pen is mightier than the sword." His plays and novels did not survive the test of time.


However, the opening phrase of his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford (famous for being used by Snoopy) has become a literary icon. Or should I say a literary laughingstock. "It was a dark and stormy night..." Those seven words have become synonymous with wooden writing.


They are just the beginning of his 58-word opening sentence, and the impetus for San Jose State University's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Since 1982, the contest has attracted writers from across the country. Wordsmiths have strove to concoct the worst, most convoluted and verbose opening lines. Over the years, prizes in crime fiction, romance novels, purple prose and other sub-categories have developed.


This year's winner was Sue Fondrie:  "Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories."


My favorite nugget came from Mike Pedersen, the Purple Prose winner: "As his small boat scudded before a brisk breeze under a sapphire sky dappled with cerulean clouds with indigo bases, through cobalt seas that deepened to navy nearer the boat and faded to azure at the horizon, Ian was at a loss as to why he felt blue." A periphrastic locution worthy of Thesaurus Girl herself.


Every year with the contest winners' announcement, I vow to submit an entry for the upcoming year. Alas, my penchant for procrastination prevails, and I have yet to plunge into that prose pool. A love of film noir, pot-boilers and Runyanesque slang impels me to the crime fiction category:


I figured her for a good egg, not a banana, but I guess my judgement took a powder at the sight of those never-ending gams, so she cheesed me and now I'm on the lam with just a gatt, a sawbuck and a vacant expanse of empty where my heart used to beat. As ever- BB


"I've been as bad an influence on American Literature as anyone I can think of." - Dashiell Hammett

Nostalgia

For my birthday, a good friend gave me a 3-CD set of the Grateful Dead performing at the Big Rock Pow Wow in May 1969. They were at their psychedelic peak. Songs like Dark Star, St. Stephen and The Eleven mixed with bluesy jams behind Pig Pen's vocals.

Three months earlier, I had my first Dead experience at the original Electric Factory in Philly. At 14, it not only changed my idea of music, but my outlook on life. I realized a different lifestyle than the one I had grown up with existed. Years later Garcia put it into words. He explained the concept he had learned from Neal Cassady, "Living your life as your art."

Listening to those songs again transported me back. Nostalgia has no hold on me, but I found myself awash in waves of it. My mind contemplated the yin/yang of  the sixties' final year- man walked on the moon, Woodstock, the Manson Family murders, Altamont...war, children, it's just a shot away.

It wasn't the momentous events that fueled the reminisces. My wistfulness sprang from lost innocence. Remembering the simple things - mastering changes between the G, C and that damned F chord. Riding my bike in the crisp morning air. Lying under a tree watching the light dapple through the leaves with absolutely nothing on my mind. The naive belief that the new generation, of which I was becoming a part, could build a bridge of positive change for the future.

The river of time has ravaged the trestles of that bridge leaving the detritus of cynicism and Weltschmerz in its wake.  Hearing the live muisc of what one critic of the time called "that band of hirsute simians" stirred embers of optimism in the bonfire of my soul. As ever - BB

"...how sad and bad and mad it was - but then, how it was sweet." - Robert Browning

Guys

Last night, I beat the heat lounging in a cool tub reading Life by Keith Richards. In 1979, he was living in New York City, hanging in tough neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx, visiting West Indian restaurants and record stores. He alluded to his friends at that time as "this group of assholes." A blog was born.

Referring to your closest friends as assholes is a guy thing. We do it in a humorous, tongue-in-cheek fashion with affection, even pride. Over the years, I've been blessed with a congregation of kindred spirits. Guys who are there when you need them. In the same breath, they can be satirical, sardonic, and at times, downright mean-spirited. Assholes indeed.

While the opposite sex perplexes me, guys I get. Growing up with three brothers gave the house a locker room atmosphere...much to the chagrin of my sister and mother. I'm sure dad relished in our boisterous brotherhood.  At 13, I entered  the all-boy, Bishop Eustace Prep School. This strengthened the male-bonding aspect of my psyche. Showing affection through insults and jibes, substituting lewd innuendos for compliments, throwing punches and wrestling as physical signs of friendship. Basically acting like assholes.

I used to attribute this aspect of my personality to heavy doses of Hemingway, John Wayne movies and sports at an impressionable age. Grace under pressure, a stoic attitude to pain and heartache, a man has to do what a man has to do. As I get older, I understand that we act this way as a manifestation of our inner man. Something in the Y chromosome's nucleotides trigger the asshole tendency.

So, with pride, affection and esprit de corp, I express a deep appreciation to my "group of assholes". You know who you are - as ever  BB

“It snowed last year too: I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea” - Dylan Thomas