Walking the Berkshires

The WaPo: Too Square to be Hip

Alert reader Terry Cowgill, himself a fine journalist, observes this embarrassing correction by the Washington Post:

A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number.

Clearly, the reporters and copy editors responsible for the WaPo DC edition were listing to something else on their Sony Walkmen in 1990 when Public Enemy released "911 is a Joke" as the third track on Fear of a Black Planet, an album significant enough to be considered worthy of preservation by the Library of Congress in 2005.  Pitchfork Media calls it the 17th best album of the 1990's.  Take that, Nirvana!  

But perhaps these Post Toasties were underage when PE was telling everyone who saw Do The Right Thing to "fight the power zap bee", or whatever they were going on about in that song.  It's not like it was on MTV or anything.  Mind you, my college a capella group did an angelic arrangement of Fight The Power, in harmony.  Now that's old school.

Political Sit Com Pitches: Get 'em While They're Hot!

"Hillary and Seuss" : The madcap antics of the Cat in the Hat at the US State Department.  Staring Jim Cary and Amy Poehler.

"Biden His Time":  It's a gaff-a-minute as week after week, the Veep puts his foot in the proverbial "bucket of warm piss" and proves that while he may not be secure, he's fully disclosed.

"The Cure for What Ales You";  Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Obama practices his trademark "beer diplomacy" to solve conflicts around the globe and in your neighborhood.   This week's summit features Mahmoud Abbas, Benjamin Netanyahu, and a six pack of Oktoberfest.

"Rush to Judgment"  Critics are giving standing bloviations to this Night Court remake with right wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh starring as eccentric, fun-loving judge Harry T. Stone (and the rest of the cast).

"Green Eclairs" Al Gabore moves to a LEED certified mansion in the country to promote sustainable living and save the planet.

"Van Palin"  Refusing to be a lame duck, the maverick Governor of Alaska trades in her tailored suits for spandex and hits the road with Ted Nugent.  But just who is fronting for whom?  Check your guns and roses at the door for this one.

"Appy Trails to You"  Hosted by the man who gave new meaning to the phrase "hiking the Appalachian trail", Governor Mark Sandford takes us to more places he didn't go when he was actually with his mistress in Buenos Aires.  Next week: Wall, South Dakota!  A Mockumentary produced for PBS by Ken Burns.

 

From Shakespeare to Schaffer: Switched at Birth

In another installment of our " Switched at Birth" feature here at Walking the Berkshires, we feel compelled to point out the uncanny resemblance between the Bard of Late Night and the Bard of the English Stage.  Schaffer, meet Shakespeare.

I believe our 14th President and the actor who starred in The 5th Element have more in common than loose locks and craggy brows.  Gary Oldman is unlikely to appear anytime soon as Franklin Pierce, however, unless they do a presdiential series on the History Channel called "The Worst and the Dullest".

Then we have Napoleon's Marshal Ney and William Schatner's Captain Kirk.   

 As for red toques and Gallic profiles... 

Innocent Innuendo

One of the central truths of advertising is that sex sells.  Another is that words and phrases with perfectly innocent definitions can sound downright pornographic when taken out of context.  Just try saying "kumquat" without blushing.  The fruit itself is actually extremely sour, not at all what the name would suggest.  Accident?  I think not.

Or go to a diner and tell the waitress you take it black, like it over easy, and prefer fresh squeezed.    There is something very earthy about breakfast at a greasy spoon, and when Flo told Mel on Alice to "kiss my grits" we all knew she wasn't talking about hominy.  We can thank the US navy for taking things further downhill with "shit on a shingle" (creamed chipped beef on toast), though the limeys have their own version "on a raft" made with kidneys.  And anyone who made it through Ulysses and all that organ meat that Molly Bloom craves without catching the overt sexual references wasn't paying attention.

Any grease monkey knows how to do a lube job, twist a lug nut and what is going on between the master and the slave cylinders.  As for pistons and crankshafts, it takes a lot of thrust to get the engine going.  I am convinced that the absolutely filthiest song ever to slip past the censors is the Beach Boy's "Little Deuce Coupe", as a sample of the lyrics makes patently obvious:

Just a little deuce coupe with a flat head mill
But she'll walk a thunderbird like (she's) its standin still
Shes ported and relieved and she's stroked and bored.
She'll do a hundred and forty with the top end floored

She's got a competition clutch with the four on the floor
And she purrs like a kitten till the lake pipes roar
And if that ain't enough to make you flip your lid
There's one more thing, I got the pink slip daddy

And comin off the line when the light turns green
Well she blows em outta the water like you never seen
I get pushed out of shape and its hard to steer
When I get rubber in all four gears

Much more clever than The Lemon Song, which has all the subtlety of a ball peen hammer. 

Sports metaphors are a slippery slope, especially when inserted in the workplace.  That CEO missed an   opportunity by neglecting to include ice hockey terms in his inappropriate address.  Pressure in the crease, anyone? 

Old School Ads, however, are the cream of the crop.  As one memorable British 60s advert put it: "Unzip a banana"

My, oh my.  What ever happened to Carmen Miranda?  I think I'll go have a Snickers.  I hear tell it satisfies.

"That is So Wrong!" What Else Could be Improved with Zombies?

Associate professors of English the world over are eagerly awaiting the April release of Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith's masterwork: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  Billed as "The Classic Regency Romance - Now With Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!", this is the first time that Ms. Austen, who has been dead herself since 1817, and Mr. Grahame-Smith, whose noted works include How to Survive a Horror Movie and The Big Book of Porn, have combined their literary and exploitative powers.  One can only hope that Sense and Sensibility and Satan is even now slouching toward Bethlehem.

But why stop there?  There must be many other sacred cows of literature that are ripe for shameless subversion!  The publisher of Austen and Grahame-Smith's flesh fresh derivative work cheerfully predicts it will introduce this classic novel "to a new legion of undead fans", so why let them have all the glory? 

Here, then, without regard for copywrite or the bounds of good taste, are my top 10 other beloved works of literature and import that could stand the Grahame-Smith treatment:

"Skate Punk Pooh":  The Hundred Acre Wood is now a housing development, but that doesn't stop the chubby little cubby from hanging with his homeboys and busting out their nups where Christopher Robin plays.  Dag, Pooh gets some sick airfeet with that balloon!

"Wal-Den":  Henry David Thoreau's pondside musings, reinterpreted as a paean to profit.   The must-read manual for business tycoons looking to crush the competition and achieve global dominance.  "Big is Beautiful!"

"The Grapes of Napa": Steinbeck's rags-to-riches epic of the Joad family, who rise above their dustbowl origins to live the good life as owners of a hugely profitable California winery.  They hit it big with "Rose of Sharon Red" when  Wine Spectator calls it the "Mother's Milk of Merlot" and the rest is history.

"Plato's Republican" : The Greeks gave us democracy, but they didn't give us Democrats!  Take a walk on the Supply Side with the Philosoper King, and learn what 300 Spartans have to tell us about the importance of small government and a strong defense.  Never mind tax reform, the G.O.P. needs to lay off the hemlock to be a lock in the next election.

"The Small and the Furry":  Faulkner, with mice.  "Caddy smelled like cheese."

"The Declaration of Co-Dependance":  Sally Hemings' tutu!  Revisionist historians reveal the Founders' feet of clay.  Overcome with repressed guilt over that childhood "cherry tree incident", George Washington can never live up to his father yet becomes the Father of our Country!  John Adams was the kid who always got picked on in school, and now he's gonna make his enemies pay. It's more than a 3/5 compromise with these dysfunctional founders.  Hilarity ensures.

"Mob Edict"  It's mutiny on the Pequod, as Ishmael and the crew pitch Captain Ahab overboard and hoist the Jolly Roger. The wayward whalemen descend into anarchy and the hunter becomes the hunted in an orgy of shipboard slaughter.  Queequeg returns to his cannibal roots and Mr. Starbuck gets dark roasted.  In the end, there can be only one.

"The Getty's Burkha: A Dress": What if Abraham Lincoln had been born a crossdressing Islamic fundamentalist?  Would the South ever rise again?  Inquiring neo-confederates want to know!

"Slaughterhouse None":  Kurt Vonnegut's classic reimagined as a vegan manifesto.  Co-authored with P.E.T.A.

"Happy Thoughts: The Inspirational Poems of Emily Dickinson":  The feel-good poet of all time, Dickinson reminds us that nothing makes life seem so worth living as when we take the time to notice the little things, like the buzzing of a fly.  With a new forward by Norman Vincent Peale.

A Horse of a Different Color

If this book isn't on the shelf alongside My Friend Flicka and Black Beauty at your local library, it is no wonder that Johnny can't read...

Wait, there's more.

Better Dead than Red (Power Tie)

Readers of Walking the Berkshires and those who know me in person know how little attention I generally   pay to the world of men's fashion.  True, like most men with facial hair I am keenly aware of how it works - or doesn't - on the faces of others as well as my own.  If we were peacocks we'd be checking out each other's tails.  But aside from that, my own wardrobe trends toward jeans and safari cloth, with something to wear to funerals and formal business meetings and that's about it.

But being an observant fellow, I have noticed a trend in American politics away from the aggressive Reagan-era red power tie toward a cool and sophisticated blue.  Today's photo-op of President Bush with President Elect Obama is a classic example of this new chief executive style.  In fact, president Bush has been favoring blue ties for some time now - some are calling his fashion legacy - and Obama often dispenses with neck wear altogether, which very well may become his.

How did this come to pass?  What is it about red power ties that had members of both parties dutifully knotting up their Scarlet half Windsors in the 1980s, and seems today as dated in American politics as the double wide "Barney Miller" ties of the 1970s?  Herewith, a photo-mosaic, courtesy of a quick Google image search.  Feel free to free associate:    

Now there are so many matters of great import and substance requiring strong and decisive leadership today that it would be rash indeed to favor one candidate over another based on the one item of men's fashion apparel that makes the most dramatic statement.  Still, this sort of scrutiny is how our society treats women seeking advancement and high office, so why not the alpha male?

Style over substance, perhaps.  But McCain might have taken a cue from the pale blue Prez before trotting out on the hustings in tired bureaucrat drab.  Or from those who dressed his own running mate, whose glamor made him seem more like an accessory (after the fact).   Would a nice powder blue silk tie have made the difference?  Or a Mandela shirt?  Hey, the first candidate Clinton borrowed a jazzy tie from Arsenio Hall before blowing sax for the late night crowd.  Politicians gotta do what it takes...

More: I don't know how I failed to make the connection the first time around, but on reflection it occurs to me that G.W.'s pale blue has a presidential prededent from the other G.W.: our first Commander-in-Chief.  Washington wore a silk sash in that color as a badge of rank, as this action figure from Sideshow Collectibles accurately portrays!  Red is for Redcoats, Blue for Whigs. Case closed.

Washington's Hot Pants

Consider this item:

Dateline, London - The leather smallclothes worn by George Washington sold at auction today for €7,350 ($11,440), the most ever paid for Presidential breeches. Daryl McWilliams of Bishop's Stortford, Herts., has been collecting Washington memorabilia for more than 20 years, and says that these buff deerskin pants will have a prized place in his collection.  "I don't have a set of his false teeth, yet", said Mr. McWilliams, "bit these pants had a front seat at history.  It gives you chills."

In addition to the President's leather pants, McWilliam's collection includes the corset Washington wore as a young man to maintain the broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted physique that was so desirable for men of his station.  "Washington was a big man, especially for that time", said McWilliams. "These leather breeches are so tight, they leave little to the imagination.  They fit him like a second skin.  Maybe that's why the Father of your Country had no children of his own."

I rather doubt you'll ever see a story like this about Washington's hot pants in the MSM.  Definitely in poor taste. We prefer to snicker instead about Queen Victoria's enormous crotchless knickers being bought at auction by a woman from Canada.  Jolly good, what?

Physignominy

Founding Fathers found again!

Eerie, ain't it?                                                       

'Course, if you age them, there are other possibilities.  Vice President Burr, meet Senator Byrd.                      

For some reason, it is easier to find Democrats who are dead ringers for these revolutionaries.  I tried to make Dick Cheney look like Martha Washington, but couldn't find any photos of him without glasses. This may be why he doesn't wear contacts...

Caption This!