Friday, September 29, 2006

The Friday... Bolton?

After The Hoff and I had a falling out, my trusty editors suggested that I look for another kitschy hero worthy of JBB worship. So in the coming weeks, stay tuned as I valiantly quest for an object upon which to lavish my affections.

Of all the contenders vying for my heart, Bolton seems the most Hoffian. He's gentler, preppier, and longer-haired, while still retaining the greatest of The Hoff's many, many great qualities: bad clothes, bad coife and bad lip-synching. He's someone I could bring home to my hot wife and kid and not be ashamed of.

He wouldn't call himself "Bolt" in salacious tones. At the dinner table, he would pray for time, love, and tenderness. Over dessert, gesturing with a cigar, he would philosophize on when a man loves a woman. As my hot wife handed him his overcoat and we walked him down the drive, he'd turn to us with a fleeting glance. I said I loved you... but I lied, he would coo. Ooooh. Bolton! Are you the one?



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The Official Fantabulous Photo of the Week

Why trusty editor Oline loves her Memphis.

When You've Got to Go...



Do you have photos of your wild travels? Portraits of circus people? Images of toilets sitting along the bluffs of the Mississippi? Send ’em on in! Impress us with your journalisticatory skills!

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Thursday, September 28, 2006

The Greatest Tribute To Tributes (Tribute)


In Which Oline Takes One Giant Leap for Impersonatorkind

Being a Memphis native, I can easily admit that I love Elvis impersonators. They’re like friendly, unscary clowns with black hair and rhinestone jumpsuits. I’ve seen them picking out fruit at the grocery store, passed them walking down Beale, and cut off their Cadillacs in traffic. I’ve lived among them and they’re still a thrill. It’s a whole other slightly more embarrassing thing to admit that I love the entire genre of which Elvis impersonators are a subset—the cover band.

I rode on an airplane with an Elvis impersonator during Dead Week. His name was Irv Cass. I didn’t have to ask if he was an Elvis impersonator, because he was Elvis. He sat on the plane reading tabloids aloud in deep, rich, Presley (say it right: Prez…ley) tones and a sugary Memphis drawl, commenting on the moral lessons to be learned from the life of Pamela Anderson. An Elvis impersonator pontificating on Pam Anderson’s fake breasts. The irony.

Cover bands are the tabloids of the music world. Say you love The New Yorker and you’ll be pegged as an in-the-know intellectual. Say you race home on Thursdays praying this week’s issue of Star has arrived, and you’ll be dismissed as a flake. Professing undying love for a U2 cover band yields much the same result as the naughty tabloid habit. People take a hasty step back. They make Stop Where You Are! hands. They avert their eyes. They shrug and say something unremarkable like, “Well, if that floats your boat…”

The common line of thought is this: the editors of In Touch aren’t up to producing legitimate news on a weekly basis so they manufacture unfounded gossip about celebrities that only ignorant people would believe. Similarly, cover bands aren’t up to writing original music so they crapily recycle the music of famous, much-beloved artists, a travesty that would appeal only to the musically retarded.

In both cases, the common line of thought is stupid. This is neither the time nor the place for Editor Oline’s “Tabloids Have Changed the World” lecture (The first line of which is: Tabs are not trash; they’re serialized, morality narratives based on celebrity lives). Rather, this is where the valiant Editor Oline rights the record on cover bands.

Because the best arguments are always founded on the bedrock of Elvis impersonation, we begin with the Elvi.

I will admit that Elvis impersonators are inherently ridiculous. I love them, but I can’t help remembering the 1989 Bill Bixby-hosted television special Elvis, Where Are You?—two hours based on an impressive collection of Elvis phone recordings (ie. adolescent prank calls conducted with perfect Presley pitch) and Elvis sightings (ie. impersonators caught on tape by gullible Michiganders) that left me convinced the King was indeed alive and living in Kalamazoo. But this only represents the fringes of the Elvis cult. There’s more to impersonation than being caught leaving the Citgo and mistaken for the living King.

It may be a knock-off, but impersonation is far from simple. Beneath the pagentry and the kitsch lies a more sophisticated art. El Vez, “the Mexican Elvis,” uses Presley’s songs as a springboard, pilfering the music but including his own original lyrics about immigration, political empowerment, and racial dissent. He manipulates Presley as a metaphor of empowerment, superimposing Hispanic culture onto Elvis’ iconic life as the quintessential American Dream. If you can get beyond the cheesy album covers and the fact that he’s “The Mexican Elvis,” you’ll find the same sentiments that resonate through the entire catalogue of highly respected bands like U2.

Knock-offs aren’t always as superficial as they seem. Obviously, there’s much more to a cover band than the derogatory term implies. A cover band is a tribute, a celebration, an homage, an impersonation, a theatrical, a performative art. They represent the real thing, the genuine article. As the Elvis tribute artist, Irv Cass says, “It’s as close as you can come to reality.” In other words, impersonation is the realest fake.

And being this fake is a hell of a lot of hard work. Vertigo USA, a Chicago U2 tribute band, has shelled out its own money to buy gear worthy of Bono and the lads. Vertigo puts on a damn good U2 show, which has, admittedly, once or twice wrought a tear of Editor Oline joy. Juggling day jobs, side projects, and families, the band members tour the country on their own dime, because they love the music that much.

There’s something to be said for loving something that much, and I think an integral element of impersonation is that love, of either the music or the icon. Openly and loudly and unabashedly—regardless of the cultural validity, social acceptability, or the sheer cheesiness of what you’re doing—loving something that much. Because it’s a taxing job, one that demands the vocal skill, musical talent and stamina of a top-notch performer. The cover band is very much a case of tough love.

I interviewed Faux Bono (Alan Lewis) this summer. He didn’t come in character. Watching Faux Bono eating a pretzel, you wouldn’t have thought: BONO! Watching him onstage an hour later, you couldn’t think anything else. Faux Bono’s mimickry of Bono’s moves was without flaw. He clutched his shirt cuffs, thrust his hips, prowled the stage, strutted into the crowd, swaggered across the floor. He’d recently gone from playing Jesus in Godspell to being Bono. But he swore he didn’t have a messianic complex.

Faux Bono’s dead-on impersonation did not come naturally. It took a lot of hard work. The obsession started when he found a rogue copy of Achtung Baby in the bargain bin. From then on, Faux Bono screened U2 concerts, practicing the mannerisms, trotting out the stage moves at kareoke bars. He would snag someone’s sunglasses and sing his heart out. One night, a drunk guy leaned in and said, “Boy! I hope you’re able to do something with that one of these days.” At a Vertigo show, you wonder how he could have possibly done anything else. The kid is Bono through and through.

Faux Bono told me that as Bono, all he wants to do is to make people forget they’re not seeing the real thing. It’s an illusion very much complicated by the fact that Vertigo is, in reality, playing small pubs and bars, not 25,000 seat stadiums. Faux Bono says he gets through it by asking himself, “What would Bono do if he was playing here right now?” Watching him, you wouldn’t guess he had to think about it at all.

Done well, impersonation looks easy. Like modern art, we think: I could do that. Look. Watch me. I’ll do it right now. Truth is, very few of us could. Because we don’t love either the icon or the music that much. We don’t love U2 enough to stay home and drink tea and take care of our voices and practice. We don’t love Elvis’ “Suspicious Minds” enough to fork over our own money for tour expenses and advertising and rhinestone jumpsuits. Like any art—and it is an art—impersonation is demanding and difficult and the only reason it ever looks easy is because the artist is just that good.

Impersonation is deception. Faux Bono is not Bono. Irv Cass is not Elvis. But they almost are. They’re authentically fake. They’ve studied hard. The sugary Memphis drawl of Irv Cass lulled my thoughts back to sticky southern summer barbeques along the mighty Mississippi. It was a drawl so lilting, so smooth, so velvety, that it was shocking to know it came from a Detroit native.

But we overlook the deceit. I’ve seen two separate Neil Diamond tributes. Despite that song, they were still fun. One Faux Neil even carried on stage-banter about his “good friend Barry Manilow” before breaking into a cover of “Mandy.” Yes, a Neil Diamond cover band covering Barry Manilow’s “Mandy.” So meta. And no one stood up to accuse Faux Neil of being an evil liar and duping us all. We didn’t feel cheated that he didn’t really know Barry and that he might not even know a Faux Barry, because it’s implicit in the cover band viewing contract that there will be a pretty significant suspension of disbelief. And we were cool with that. We knew the rules.

Impersonation is inevitably a failed deception. Despite the effort at verisimilatude, there’s no escaping the fact that masquerading as another band or another person is an obliquely fake enterprise. This falsity is most often betrayed by anachronisms, which are, in turn, largely responsible for the fundamental kitschiness surrounding cover bands. Elvis died at 42, Irv Cass is now 53. Faux Neil, the dear friend of Barry Manilow, was decked out in glittery scarves and low-cut blouses, but sang accompanied onstage only by the saddest of boomboxes. Even Vertigo’s U2 tribute, of which I’m an ardent fan, is a little off. Sometimes Faux The Edge is dressed in Joshua Tree-era garb, while Faux Bono is decked out à la Zoo TV. So impersonation is not perfection. And that’s the one thing that those who can’t handle the kitsch will be the first to point out. That people no longer love “Mandy,” jumpsuits are not cool, and Elvis is dead.

But, ultimately, it’s the imperfections that are most interesting within cultural artifacts: the dissonance between interpretations, the stories we believe that turn out to be untrue. It is the fictions that best capture the overarching values and dramas of the society that created them. We can only see so far on our own, while fiction affords a sweeping, panoramic cultural view. Cover bands are a living interpretation of a cultural icon. The impersonator captures the sound, movements, and image of the icon, even after the individual behind that image has long since passed away. It’s tableaux vivant for the modern age.

To me, the most fascinating element of impersonation is that process of deceiving to recreate a reality or an image. Because in reality, if we deceive, we are condemned. What is acceptable on a stage will not be tolerated in life. And yet, we all pretend. To an extent, we are all fictitious, we are all performing. We pretend through friendships, marriages, careers, hope and fear. We pretend we’re happy when we’re sad. We laugh when we want to cry. We remain silent when we want to kick and scream. But unlike impersonators, we are not onstage. We are real, the impersonators are fake. And somehow they seem more honest.

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Wednesday, September 27, 2006

The After-MAPH


Jack Black’s Body is 87% MAPH-made. In honor of the third anniversary of the MAPHers that are making my Body becoming MAPHers, my trusty editors and I offer our dear readers an exclusive rocking alumni round-up.

Trusty Editor Croftie (MA, James Joyce, the Herd Instinct, and Public Intellectualism) is working in her field as an editrix in Chicago, writing plays and novels and short stories in her spare time. She recently learned the difference between real monkeys and fashion monkeys. She herself is a funky monkey.

Trusty Editor Oline (MA, Jackie Tabloids, the Herd Instinct, and Public Intellectualism) is working in her field as an editrix in Chicago, writing plays and biographies and blogs in her spare time. She is both historical and lazy.

Dananator (MA, Fan Fic, Public Intellectualism, and Bridget Jones studies) is enthusiastically instructing young people in the tyrannical ways of the Chicago Manual of Style, a book in which she no longer believes.

The Dread Pirate Toe-Sock Dougo (MA, Architecture, Graphic Novels, and the Art of Peltic Interior Design) is a wildly successful bookseller at the Seminary Co-Op, directing this year's crop of MAPHers to their weighty tomes.

Germanatrix (MA, German stuff, Christian Bale movies, and Lots 'O Music) has recently made a triumphant return to Chicago and landed a posh job at Northwestern where she dazzles the youngsters with her Germanosity.

Jenny Fair (MA, Virginia Woolf, Benjamine, and Brunch) is the most successiest of MAPH's success stories. Engaged to a poet on the verge of taking his SATs and working as head honcho at a museum in Boston, Jenny Fair is living the MAPHer dream.

Osutein Sensei (MA, Japanese things, Virginia Woolf, and Winter Weather Endurance) recently relocated to Chicago, where he will spend the entire winter shivering his southern self to nothing. He is on the employment hunt and watching Cheers reruns all the livelong day. If you know anyone, hook him up. He needs a place where everybody knows his name.

Scott Hamilton (MA, Swimming, Nannying, and Facial Hair Studies) is somewhere—probably somewhere Alaskan—doing something unspeakably cool that we don't know about and wouldn't quite understand but would know is unspeakably cool nonetheless because he’s the one doing it.

The Sex Panther (MA, Creative Writing, Public Intellectualism, and Online Dating Studies) is rocking the L.A. nightlife on a nightly basis and making the Chicago MAPHers feel very pastey pale and bookish. She brings the sex. We bring, um.... the tweed.

Stohlermandude (MA, Chinese Things, Poker, and Fantasy Sports) recently returned to the Ivory Tower (ver. NYC) to pursue his doctoral degree in Chinese Things. He also knows lots of stuff about computers—like the multifarious uses of the “alt tab” key.

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Tuesday, September 26, 2006

The Rocking Consumer Report

At one time or another, we’ve all been sitting at our desks, listening to some tunes, and wondered wistfully, “If a plastic, glowing fish were swimming in rhythm to this song, what would that look like?”

For just $49.95, you can find out!


Product: iFish™ Musical Pet
for iPod® & MP3
Price: $49.95
Materials: plastic, AAA batteries
Home: Sharper Image






Observe the dancing fish. This feisty, flashy, finned friend is in tune with all of your musical entertainment needs. This 8 1/2" long pet and friend plugs right into your iPod or MP3. He plays music, he dances, he’s generally nifty. Swimming along the lines of his predecessors, the 80s vintage dancing flower and the holiday singing reindeer, iFish is sure to be a hit with the young, hip generation.

You don’t need a pricey tank, a filteration system, food, or even water! This low-maintenance, technologically advanced pet is entertaining and decorative. His design follows sleek, aerodynamic contours in pure, unadulterated white. iFish seems to glow from within as he transmits your musical selections and wriggles with cadenced passion. His jointed tail swings to the music in lithe sweeps of sound. His fins flip to your own personal beat—they’ll stomp to JTim’s “Sexy Back,” swoop to U2’s crescendos, or whiz and whir to Outkast’s crunk. He’s up with all the latest music trends.

The iFish’s uses include: providing tranquil companionship to the easy-listening crowd, supplying your kids with the boundless delight of a fishy pet that won’t go belly-up, decorating any surface in a mod home, and teaching infants about aquatic life. What more does anyone need from a fish?

So do away with the dull, death-prone goldfish, and order your luminous musical iFish today!

Click HERE for more information about the iFish.

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Monday, September 25, 2006

And Now... A Word From Our Sponsors

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Coming Soon...

Here at JBB, we delight in celebrating the side projects of our many, many various Body parts (not to mention the side projects of friends and lovers and uncle's former roommates of our many, many various Body parts). Thus, we are proud to offer this kind of exclusive sneak peak at Master Matt's latest tour de force.



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Tuesday, September 19, 2006

A JBB To Do


Wine, Stories, & Serendipity
By the Bombshell


The last Sunday of every month, Chicago’s Serendipity Theatre Company (STC) hosts an evening of live music, wine, and storytelling at the intimately posh Webster’s Wine Bar. Jack Black’s own Bombshell and Oline were on hand for the most recent event.

2nd Story was created by Serendipity Theatre Company’s founding members with the aim of fusing music, wine, and storytelling into one aesthetic experience. It is an intriguing and direct approach to theatre and collaborative performance. Four stories were told over roughly two hours, each completely different than the last. And all quite unforgettable. First up was Lauren Pesca, Artistic Director of Serendipity Theatre Company, who told how she met and adopted her dog, Joplin, and how Joplin, in turn, calmed her anger toward Oprah. Jonathan Messinger, Books Editor for Time Out Chicago, told of his terrifying and oddly humorous ordeal with an anti-semetic stalker. Megan Stielstra, the head of Storytelling Development for STC, related the evolution of her perception of love and marriage culminating in the story of her own wedding, and Matt Miller, casting director for STC, began his story with “There are three things to remember when carving a giant wooden dick for your girlfriend…”

As each of the storytellers began, a flight of wine chosen to complement the piece was served. Music created by DJ White Russian, selected to highlight or deepen the emotion of each story, played softly in the background. The atmosphere was intimate and elegant, more like someone’s chic living room than a drinking establishment.

The entire effect was one of intimate exchange between speaker and listener, and the evening played out the way one hopes a cocktail party will and rarely does. Between stories, the audience, seated on overstuffed couches or around little tables, chatted, nibbled cheese, reclined, and sipped wine. We nodded and sighed and cried and laughed by turns as each story was told. Oddly, the evening had very little sense of “theatre.” Rather, we left feeling as though we had just been to someone’s home and met four fabulous new people who were good-humored enough to share their very best stories.

The next 2nd Story occurs this Sunday September 24th at Webster’s Wine Bar, 1480 W. Webster. Doors open at 7pm, admission is $10, and a flight of four wines can be purchased for an additional $5. For an evening of relaxation and reflection, this event is highly recommended by Jack Black’s Body.

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Monday, September 18, 2006

And Now... A Word From Our Sponsors

Friday, September 15, 2006

The Friday Hoff

Dear Mr. The Hoff,
You know I love you. I know many others love you. I had hoped this wouldn't go to your head. I now know that it has. So I think maybe we need to take a break. Maybe we shouldn't see each other for awhile. Because the way you say Hoff makes me feel very dirty deep down inside. And I've got a hot wife and a kid now, and that just won't do. So it's goodbye for awhile Mr. The Hasselhoff. Don't stop the softly sung Rock.
xo,
Jables



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Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Blimey, He Was A Beaut

Jack’s Jock Pays His Respects
to the Crocodile Hunter


I remember quite well the first time I saw Steve Irwin on television. One evening following dinner I was in the basement of my fraternity house watching television with a few of my brothers and having a cold one. Someone stopped on The Discovery Channel or Animal Planet. And on the screen was this crazy Australian precariously dangling a snake in front of himself and talking to the camera. I mean… he wasn’t even looking at the snake the whole time he was talking!

So admittedly, the shock value makes you watch the first few times. After all, the man is crazy. Right? With a nickname like the Crocodile Hunter, he’d have to be crazy.

No – he was not crazy. He was masterful. He was an educator, an entertainer, and a steward to Mother Earth. He genuinely cared for the creatures he encountered on a day-to-day basis. He fought for their protection, and he laid his life on the line to learn more about them so that we could make the world a better place. I watched episodes of his shows where he spent hours rescuing animals from certain death. His fight for the good of God’s creatures was relentless. They called him a Wildlife Warrior.

He brought the issue of wildlife conservation into living rooms across the globe. He did it with his own outspoken methods, with a big grin on his face and a swagger in his step. So, in many ways he was a pioneer.

In the past, nature shows were always characterized by a camera crew filming the animals from a long distance. Meanwhile, a boring BBCesque voice would quietly narrate the action as if this were commentary for a golf tourney or tennis match—detached, no interaction with the audience. “The cheetah gets its prey as the graceful gazelle goes down. The cycle of life on the savannah.” Yawn.

These things couldn’t be further from the Crocodile Hunter’s style. He would wrestle crocs to the ground, pull a snake out of its hole, or get in the water with sharks. But his antics had purpose. He knew that to get people interested in what he was doing, he had to be a bit outlandish. Show some bravado. But after the shock of watching an educated, fully-grown man dodge strikes of a venomous serpent, you suddenly began listening to what he was saying.

He would tell you how farmers in the Australian brush ruthlessly kill these animals. Or how pollutants are ruining their habitat. Or how deforestation is driving the species out of its home. He would speak of the animals and how their specific traits tailored to their ecosystem are indeed a thing to behold. He would speak of a crocodile’s lurking ability and ferocious bite with extreme respect. With awe, really. This man knew that the abilities and tenacity of animals in the wild are truly awesome. A lizard’s camouflage, a sea turtle laying its eggs, a pack of dingoes stalking their prey, and even a stingray’s ability to protect itself when it felt threatened are all extraordinary things.

I was very sad to learn on Monday, September 4th, that Steve Irwin had died. While swimming above a stingray, he accidentally boxed it in. Threatened, the stingray fatally drove its poisonous barb into Irwin’s chest. It was a terrible loss from a tragic accident. Steve was a devoted family man with a wife and two young children. His wife once said, “The only thing that could ever keep him away from the animals he loves are the people he loves even more.” The son of wildlife experts, Irwin grew up around crocodiles and other reptiles at the family’s small Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park (later renamed the Australia Zoo). He learned about wildlife conservation from his father and wrestled his first croc at the age of 9, under his father’s supervision. Conservation was more than a job to Steve Irwin—it was a way of life.

Irwin’s untimely passing has set him up for an unfortunate comparison to Timothy Treadwell, the “Grizzly Man.” Although both men were victims of the wild, the similarities end there. Treadwell was an amateur, a failed actor and recovering addict who found comfort in the wild. Perhaps through some misguided need for companionship, he tried to foster personal relationships with the animals of Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. He did not approach them as a scientist or ecologist, but as a friend. For thirteen years he summered, unarmed, among the brown bears, cooing “I love you” and swimming alongside them. Ultimately, he was devoured by a bear he considered his brother and refused to respect as a wild animal. In contrast, Irwin’s bravado belied an extensive ecological, wildlife training. He was a professional first and foremost, an actor and media personality second. He understood the risks and he took precautions. Unlike Treadwell, whose eventual demise surprised few, Irwin was felled by an accident for which he could never have prepared.

His memory will live through the work of his family and colleagues at the Australia Zoo.

I’ll remember him in my own way. Today, I just so happened to come across The Crocodile Hunter on television. During a commercial I went to the kitchen and fetched a beer from the fridge. As the show rolled on, as shows do, I had a few quiet thoughts and lifted a cold one to the passing of a great. The passing of a Wildlife Warrior… the passing of The Crocodile Hunter.

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Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Returned Japanese


Osutein-Sensei: Out of Asia
(Part 2)

One of my Japanese students once asked me what I missed the most about America. I thought about my family, my friends, the deep well of American culture that had shaped my personality and world view. I missed none of these. What I really missed, truly deeply longed for in the very depths of my soul, was Chick-Fil-A.

Now, you might be wondering why I would miss a fast food chicken joint, but then you must understand that I am Southern. You see, to a Southerner Chick-Fil-A is a sacred thing, like Sunday morning church, football, sweet tea, humidity, and reducing entire sentences to monosyllables (for example, in the South "have you eaten yet?" is pronounced "jeat?")

Thus when I walked into my first Chick-Fil-A after moving back to the States, I entered starry-eyed and full of anticipation. I approached the counter, chose what delicious deep-fried morsel of obesity I was going to eat, and then... nothing. I didn't know what to do. How the hell do you order fast food in English? I thought. I timidly shuffled up to the counter, stumblingly announced I'd like a chicken sandwich, pulled out the strange green bills and oddly sized coins from my pocket and dropped it on the counter. "Don't say anything in Japanese, don't say anything in Japanese," I whispered to myself, afraid of the instinctive responses that had been drilled into my head. I backed away, accidentally bumping into the condiments stand and when my order came up, I took the tray, bowed deeply, and said "domo."

Shit.

I thought living abroad would expand my horizons and give me the confidence to do anything I set my mind to do. Instead, I can no longer function in Chick-Fil-A. Having studied esoteric book trivia in the dim, hallowed corridors of the Ivory Tower, I knew from a millenia's worth of journey narratives that "you can never go home again," much as you cannot step into the same river twice or reuse the "Buy 2 Dish Towels Get 1 Free" coupon at participating Targets. Odysseus and Leopold Bloom had taught me that much. What I didn't realize was that I would also find ordering a chicken sandwich problematic.

And there's the rub. Coming back, one expects to find everything changed (as stipulated by literature): one's son grown, one's wife cheating on you with a guy whose name is even more absurdly sublime than yours, one's Shire scoured, and the dish towel coupons hopelessly expired. Epic revelations, full of grandeur and melancholy, not fried chicken and frustration.

There's a certain joy, though, in rediscovering one's home country, of being able to see it as the rest of the world does. There's the horror, obviously, of the consumer waste, the violence, the cultural banality and nearsightedness you insisted America did not have when a Japanese co-worker asked for the hundredth time if you could in fact use chopsticks, and the fact that salads are served with bacon in bowls the size of plastic kiddie pools. But there's also the glorious chaos of so many cultures living, working, cooking, and quarreling together, the endless choice, the English language, the vastness of a continental nation, and of course, Chick-Fil-A.

I know now that I can never go back to Chick-Fil-A as I once did. But I will go back, and I will order a chicken sandwich without fear or failure. As God as my witness, I will never go hungry again.

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Monday, September 11, 2006

And Now... A Word From Our Sponsors

Friday, September 08, 2006

The Friday Hoff

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Sometimes it's hard being my trusty editors. This silly four day week has been one of those times. My trusty editors have spent Monday thru Thursday exhuberantly tossing the various JBB hats back and forth and, lest you think The Honorable Editor Croftie's artistic skills have taken a perilous turn, this week The Hat of Comic Striply Duties situated itself upon the head of The Honorable Editor Oline, who is no artist but she sure likes to color.










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Tuesday, September 05, 2006

The Versificator Takes Her Throne

My trusty editors and I are thrilled to announce that, following a grueling admissions process and a full round of innoculations, Bernanation has been accepted as the innaugural Jack Black's Body's Official Versificator. During her tenure as Versificator-in-Residence at JBB World HQ and in her position as the reigning Rhyming Laureate, Bernanation will be wowing you with her versification skills on an entirely irregular basis. Enjoy, folks!


Plagiarizing Joyce
Bernanation


On his wise shoulders
through the checkerwork of leaves
the sun flung spangles,
dancing coins,
current
currency of the noon sun
paying its way to get through the day.

And he knew
and he saw
the light on the asphalt
and the air laced with faraway fires and damp leaves
an equinox murder
an end of heat daze
and a slow-down wake-up in the debris of calendar leaves.

Shedding the seven year suit of solemn and sad somber silence
ending the aeon-long episode of eternal eyeless ease
needing the nocturnes in blue and green
digging digits into damp debris
making a patchwork garden in the collected carbon of burned calendar leaves,
easy trails of light, paralyzed in the heat.

Days of bearing weight on wise shoulders
and contemplating a king on a checkerboard of seasons
Yes, give him some moon-spun bangles
Sing him broken harmonies to get him through the day.

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Monday, September 04, 2006

And Now... A Word From Our Sponsors

Friday, September 01, 2006

The Chicago Bible of Style

The Dananator Takes a Love-ah
Illustration by
Master Matt

Style has many contrasting qualities, much like an affair. It can be fabulous, tacky, impromptu, premeditated, tawdry, passionate, casual, and glamorous. It can begin with a wayward glance or a knowing smile or a simple sheet of paper. Case in point, the Chicago Manual of Style.

The Chicago Manual of Style started as a single sheet of paper. Someone (who was this creator, lost in the mists of obscurity?) bothered to make a list of basic typographical considerations and methods of citations to serve as an in-house style sheet specifically for the University of Chicago Press. In the beginning, it was a casual dalliance.

But somehow, subtly, it took hold and began to grow into a more solid, substantial romance. Slowly, word of it began to spread, and eventually its roots grew deep into university life and it branched out to become nationally and then internationally respected.

Now it sits on my desk, a venerable and stately tome. Or, a 984-page orange monstrosity cataloguing every nit and every pick that relates to any print or text or type that you can think of. Ah, The Chicago Manual of Style: a name that mentally drapes frothy layers of chiffon over some very hard edges. “Style,” you say? A manual of “style”? How lovely! Style is an individual thing, something that welcomes whimsy and combines creativity and panache. Interesting, then, that when I heave open The Chicago Manual of Style—CMS—I can also find style—that elusive, gossamer expression of individuality—pinned down like a chloroformed butterfly on a wax tray.

I’ve always had difficulty trying to teach my students writing “style,” either the analysis of the style of others, or the cultivation of their own. When I point out an example of a certain writer’s style, there is almost no way to explain how it is identifiable as such. Sure, I can tell them to look at word choices, sentence lengths, rhythm of language, cadence of dialogue, but ultimately, the example I have chosen is one instance of what one person decided to do with one particular language situation—never to be repeated.

But of course, one’s writing style does have a nuance, it leaves that taste it your mouth, drips with that je ne sais quoi. Really: je ne sais quoi. And if je ne sais, you can imagine what my students are thinking. Style is a certain way of moving, speaking, looking, doing, choosing—a certain way, but not necessarily a particular way, or the same way every time.

More maddening by far is trying to teach my students how to use The Chicago Manual of Style.

The inevitable protest: “But why? Why does the comma have to go there in my citation?” And from some of the more informed ones: “Ancient Greeks didn’t have punctuation. Are you telling me that Plato would have gotten a C on his bibliography?” Or: “Look at ee cummings and bell hooks—they did awright.”

I explain patiently, that we need consistency. We need all the sources cited in a universal format so they are immediately comprehensible to all.

“So if I put the page numbers before the publication date, it would become incomprehensible to you?”

Well, no. I guess that would be fine. Other things would also be fine. If you mix up ibid and the 3-em dash, the academy would survive. If your page range is indicated by a hyphen instead of an en dash, the ivory tower would not crumble.

Granted, it wouldn’t be good if bibliographies were composed in the style of e e cummings, but somehow I doubt it would come to that. So why the rigidity? Why has the CMS become such a colossus, so admired and yet so feared?

I believe a clue may lie in its nickname: The Bible. People use bibles to find hope. To receive comfort. To prove that they’re right. To condemn the deeds of others. To brush up against omnipotence and even, after much study, to claim it as theirs.

The nickname is eerily appropriate, although at times it does come up lacking. The CMS does not particularly inspire hope to students who have to compile a bibliography from a compost heap of books and papers at 4 AM after writing for 13 hours straight. Nor do its pages produce much comfort, even as an impromptu pillow.

But on a more general level, the nickname is right on. After all, it’s got chapters. And verses, of a sort. With its paper cover off, it even resembles a religious text. It’s only missing an embossed dove on its cover. In fact, it reminds me of the hymnal that was in the church I went to when I was a little girl. I can almost hear Father Kincade’s voice booming from the lectern: “Please open your CMS to page 302 and join us in singing ‘Hyphenation Guide For Compounds, Combining Forms, and Prefixes,’ verses 3 and 4.”

I do, in fact, think of the CMS as a sort of Catholic Church. It is demanding, exacting, exhausting, mostly unreasonable, and often ambiguous. There has even been a Schism. APA, AMA, MLA, and Turabian styles are all similar, competing style guides that were adapted from the original CMS.

Also, like the Catholic Church, the CMS has followers—some casual, some fanatics. It is tempting to look at the CMS and marvel at its infallibility, its utter ironclad correctness. If you sit very still in front of it you can feel a slight tug, such is its gravitas. I count myself among those too easily wooed by its 77-page index.

That is, until I heard about the Green Bay Packers. I recently took a course called Basic Manuscript Editing, which was all CMS, all the time. One night as I sat in class wide-eyed with indoctrination, our instructor mentioned in a humorous aside an example sentence in section 6.83 that featured the Green Bay Packers. She told us that the editor in charge of that section is a huge Green Bay fan, so he tried to include the Packers whenever he could in the examples.

What?

Had she just said that some guy had made up this example? And that this guy, whoever he was, edited only one section, implying that there were other unknown guys editing other sections, themselves gratuitously inserting other arbitrary sports teams?

I couldn’t fathom that there was a human being behind that example. Did it not just rise unbidden from the mists of omnipotence? Were its original letters not carefully scribed on crumbling papyrus now hidden in a clay jar at the back of some desert cave?

No, that example was not penned by the hand of the almighty, but by some guy. An editor at the University of Chicago. Someone not unwise, certainly, but who equally certainly did not send his seraphim to get him another cup of coffee or to run to Medici to pick up some lunch. Perhaps this man is slightly balding, with tortoiseshell rimmed glasses and a cracked front tooth. If he only knew my mental scrutiny, he would freeze immediately, or maybe make a flustered attempt to conceal his work, as did the little man behind the great Wizard of Oz.

But however he looks, he is a Green Bay fan. If he were a Dallas fan, the CMS would read differently.

We like our bibles set in stone, unyielding and universal in both their essentials and their particulars. We take comfort in making and referring to comprehensive guides to things that can never truly have comprehensive guides. Dr. Spock wrote a comprehensive guide to children, and consequently a generation was raised in a certain style. The style was not all bad, or all good. He advocated a certain pattern, one man’s way of handling a series of possible incidents, suggesting particular choices that can never truly imitated or repeated because they are each unique, like the children themselves.

Someone made a list of typographical considerations, and now thousands of students struggle to write in a certain style, twisting and contorting language until the very thoughts they are striving to articulate are lost, their uncertain beauty painted over by meaningless consistency.

Someone, or perhaps more accurately a group of guys, wrote something that was compiled into the book we now call the Bible, and now untold numbers of people live their lives in a certain style. This style is not all bad, or all good. It advocates rules to which nearly everything seems an exception. It strongly advises courses of action for situations that will never occur again, just so, in the modern world. Its nuances are interpreted in as many ways as there are readers. Yet people live and die—and kill—by it.

Some things shouldn’t have manuals, not because the manuals are bad but because we abuse them with our trust. Unfortunately, the manuals prone to this blend in with those that bear up much better under blind confidence. The manual for your Mac? Sure, tattoo it on your arm. It will never disappoint. The DVD instruction guide? Yes, by all means, organize your life by its precepts and you will never blink 12:00, 12:00, 12:00. The TIAA-Cref manual? Bow your head over its pages and search for the meaning of life therein, and your medical benefits will be none the worse for the wear. But manuals for children, language, or morality? These are the manuals that should come with a warning—maybe a Green Bay logo emblazoned across the cover.

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