The Queen Aint No Bitch

I am a little tardy to the party but last week Maxim published a great interview with the writers and cast of  The Wire in honor of its 10th anniversary. I'm not sure why this piece was published in Maxim, except perhaps because season 2 is all about Russian hookers, but in any case it was a really interesting look at how the series as a whole, and each season in particular, developed. If you want to you can read it here.
     I've always thought the Wire was one of the best shows on Television, mostly because it was written so well, but also because I grew up in Baltimore. That may seems like an odd statement given that the show deals with drug trades, corrupt politicians and an at times inept police force, but in many ways it paints the city in a fairly positive light.
   But back to the writing. The Wire, at least in season 1, is essentially a cop show, but with none of the overwrought drama or cheeseball antics. The writing is instead intelligent and realistic. There is one scene in particular that I think speaks to the depth of thought involved in writing The Wire. It's an often discussed scene so you may already know about D'Angelo explaining the rules of chess to corner boys Wallace (holla Vince from Friday Night Lights) and Bodie. If not, here's some background, and then the scene itself.

D'Angelo is the head honcho's nephew and ostensibly second in command of dealing with everyday operations. He often visits "the pit" where the corner boys make the exchange between cash and drugs. In this scene he's stopped to convince two corner boys who were using a chess board to play checkers why chess is the better game.

When I think of the sort of people who normally discuss chess I think about child geniuses in thick glasses and old men in sweater vests. The fact that here we have some thugs from the inner city discussing it immediately grabs your attention because that's unusual. That's all well and good but if the metaphor didn't also work well the idea would be a bust. I'm not familiar with the intricate workings of a building a drug empire -even though I'm from Baltimore, but you get a pretty good sense what goes down when watching the show and D'Angelo's comparisons seem spot on. But most importantly, it's what the characters say in particular that make this seen so engaging. It is rare for someone to refer to chess pawns as "little bald headed bitches" or chess pieces in general as "the other motherfuckers on the team." That's just fun to listen to, and that's what TV is all about- entertainment. 

  Of course the scene exists within the larger storyline and the really genius thing is that we get some character development and a little foreshadowing at the end. D'Angelo explains that the pawns "get capped quick; they be outta the game early," which means that Wallace and Bodie aren't long for this world. When Bodie replies, "unless they some smart ass pawns," we get a better sense that Bodie isn't content with his situation and that some shit might go down. 

      It reminds me a little what middle school English teachers tell you, "show, don't tell." All TV shows have character development and foreshadowing. But many do so using only plot points rather than language, which results in a lot of shark jumping. The Wire's plot does not lack excitement, but the nuances of its writing set it apart from just another Law & Order derivation. It's not on Netflix but I'll lend you my DVDs in exchange for a six pack of Natty Boh.

Happy Wednesday

There's nothing like arriving home to a big box from Amazon. There's also nothing like a stack of new books and that new book smell. Although I noticed that all new books smell a little different. There's a particular difference between paperbacks and hard covers- some are a little oaky, some a little bitter, some a little sweet. Maybe it has to do with the wood used to make the pages? But I doubt that. Well those are all the musings for today. I've got lots to do. Read on.

Yes, this picture is blurry. You haven't been looking a computer screen too long.

The Carnival Valor

Last week I wrote about a great line from essay writer David Rakoff. That made me think about the humorous essays we had to write in my copywriting class last semester. I didn't hate mine, so I'm going to post it here.

When I was ten I wanted my mother to buy a minivan so badly I left copies of Consumer Digest on her pillow with the best valued Dodge and Ford minivans circled in red. The idea that you could have individual seats, like armchairs, in a car was unreal. Who would not want to drive around in a portable living room?

But by the time I was sixteen and received my mother’s station wagon as my very own to drive, I was glad she had never caved to my demands. Minivans were way lame; station wagons were, well ok, also lame, but they got better gas mileage.

By the time I was a senior in college I had a similar view of Carnival cruises. The excitement of eating essentially freeze-dried food, participating in family bingo night, and shaking my hips to a boat- wide Macarena dance party led by some poor soul dressed up as Smokey the Smokestack had lost most of its appeal.

However, that spring I agreed to a six -day seven- night Caribbean jaunt aboard the Carnival Valor. Time was running out to be an irresponsible college kid participated in wet t-shirt contests, got matching tattoos at 4 a.m, and downed SoCo lime shots until you threw up in the back of a cab that was blasting Juanes and probably in the process of dropping you off at a Mexican brothel where you would spend the rest of your life as the mistress of someone named Papa Pepe.

Or just fruity drinks in tacky souvenir glasses, sandy beaches, and sunburns. This is where it seemed to be heading when we finally made it past the check- in line, complete with the obligatory group photo in front of a backdrop of the sun setting over palm trees. We boarded the ship to find large groups of people with actual red necks riding the gold plated elevators that shot up from the lounge where a man in a tux was playing Top 40 hits on an electric piano. There were waiters in khaki shorts offering strawberry daiquiris in, you guessed it, tacky souvenir glasses. By the way, these are not free; they are approximately $20 each. It was like OZ gone wrong. That’s basically what my friend Laura shouted to the entire deck, “Oh my God it’s like we’re stuck in a tiny city!” If only she knew how tiny.

We struggled down five flights of stairs to the steerage deck where we found the room four of us would be sharing. If this had been the Titanic we would have been goners. The door clicked open and we peered eagerly around the corner and into a ten by ten square box with two beds. How weird, we thought, how could the front desk have forgotten to give us keys to the second room? So we traipsed back upstairs to customer service where we were told, “No, no, you are booked one room only. The beds, they come from ceiling, you see?” And so they did. Had we been monks perhaps there would have been enough free room but we had STUFF.

We decided to get a little fresh air. We walked up stairs carpeted in giant bald eagles. Stars and stripes served as a wallpaper border. We entered the Bronx Bar and passed through it to the Lincoln Dining room, past the One Small Step dance club, and ended up face to face with a giant tiled mosaic of Rosie the Riveter. Good Lord the boat was America themed.

So what do you do if you are stuck on a cruise ship that is decorated like the 4th of July on crack, sleeping in ostensibly a bomb shelter, a little snobby about muscle tees and jorts, and seated every night at a dinner table with four thirty year old UF grads reliving their college years in a big way?

Well, you have possibly the best week of your life of course. There is nothing to do but roll with it.

There were, of course, tense moments. There was the time Meghan had had just about enough of our other friend’s daily rendition of the same one line of “Sexy Can I?” and yelled at her, “THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE ROOM!” And the time we lost a guest named Tamika and urgent calls were sent out over the loudspeaker until it was discovered she hadn’t been left at port, only avoiding her husband by sleeping in another guest’s bed.

I began to think of the Valor as a sorority or church congregation; there was a special bond between its members formed by experiencing something that could only be understood by having been there. The ship activity pamphlet was our bible, Matt- the hot British cruise director- both our president and preacher, and red and blue our colors- because not only are those America’s colors, but also the colors of the hallmark Carnival smokestacks.

When we were docked and exploring a port, other ship members would recognize us by the Carnival issue towels we carried. “Hey, are you guys on the Valor too?”

“Yeah, yeah we are!”

“Do you want to see how the giant snake tattoo on my arm moves when I flex my bicep?”

“Yeah, yeah we do!”

If they were on the Valor, they were one of us and we loved them for it. We started recognizing the same people around the boat each night and making friends. There was the twelve year old Swede with beaded dreadlocks, the sixty year old who wore a pink sequined tube dress every night, and the boy who told my friend her feet were beautiful, led her off for some romantic star gazing and then made her cry because he wouldn’t kiss her. He respected her too much for that. Or something.

And of course there were the men (boys) with whom we shared dinner each night: Rob, Andrew, Jordan, and Luke. They were quite a group; two had already been divorced, one had his engagement broken off when his girlfriend was deported and they all showed up each night, sunburned and drunk, in Hawaiian shirts and immediately poured a tall glass of whiskey and water.

Meghan developed a serious crush on Rob. So serious that she tried to extend their relationship past spring break. But he was thirty, divorced, and working in finance ten states away. It was clear the differences were too great. Although there may have been more to bring them together than the fact they were both on the same floating object in the middle of the ocean, my guess is that that was a big part of it. Life on a cruise ship doesn’t translate to the real world.

It’s more like falling down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland where nothing happened as it should and everything was turned upside down. Laura does not usually get hickies so bad she has to wear a scarf with her bathing suit, and we do not usually meet teenagers asking us to help them hotbox their bathroom with weed from Belize. For further proof, each clock on the ship told a different time that seemed to be in no logical relation to any other. But, unlike Alice, there was no rabbit rushing around with a broken time piece to point this out. It just was what it was. And what it was was absolutely  amazing. Book your tickets now.

Grammar Witch

Today when I was driving back from San Antonio I got to thinking about grammar. I believe it was because the radio DJ used "less" when he should have used "fewer." Much like Pavlov and his dog, my high school trained us to cringe every time we heard a "me" when it should have been an "I" and I never lost that nails-on-a-chalkboard feeling about bad grammar.  A few years ago my sister gave me this card for my birthday:

And inside...

There are now many versions of this card, but at the time I'd never seen it before, and it was perfect. Of course there are lots of grammar rules that make you seem like an ass if you use them in everyday conversations. For example, if, instead of saying, " that's something I won't put up with" you said, " that is something up with which I will not put," you would sound like a pretentious old man in a Dickens novel. But in general, yes I am kind of stickler for sticking to the grammar rules. 

Therefore, I'm going to share my top three pet peeves when it comes to messing up the English language. I just need to get it off my chest. My blood pressure is getting kind of high.

1. The old I vs. Me. 

       People are overcompensating. It seems everyone decided that if they ever used the word "me" they would sound uneducated and unprofessional. Not true. There are actually times at which "me" is the right word to use. For example, do not send an email to "Bob and I." Send and email to "Bob and me." "Send me" an email sounds a lot better than "send I" an email, doesn't it? My old boss used to do this all the time and I really don't know why because he was kind brilliant.

        This is also way too prevalent on Facebook. If I had a dollar for every time someone captioned their picture " Bob and I" I could buy a Lamborghini. When you caption a picture what you are essentially saying is, " this is a picture of...." This is a picture of me after I had five tequila shots, not this is a picture of I making a drunken fool of myself.

2. Ending a sentence with the word "at."

     Surprisingly what bothers me is not that you are ending a sentence with a preposition. What bothers me is that the word "at" is entirely unnecessary. In the above birthday card, she could have just asked, "where's your birthday party?" This has been on my mind all year because in my very first class as a grad student last fall our professor asked us to go around the room and answer, " where'd you do your undergrad at?" My first thought was to get the university to refund all my tuition and become a street artist. Ending your sentence with a preposition will most of the time make you seem like a normal person. Ending your sentence with "at" will make you seem like your name is Billy Bob, you have one tooth, and your overalls are torn from the squirrel trying to claw its way off of the spit on which you were roasting it. 

3. Misspellings. 

     This is not really a grammar problem, per se, but it makes you look equally unprofessional. And it is also on my mind because of a professor. This week I had a professor post an assignment that asked us to find an article that addressed how an advertising trend had "morfed" in the past ten years. Morfed? Morphed. Phuck that.

    I also recently had a very long email exchange about a computer chord. As far as I know that thing that charges your laptop is not a musical note. It's a cord. If you are so important that you must have a "chord" sent over to your hotel immediately please understand the difference between electronic equipment and parts of a song. 

Three other things:

1. I have many times used "your" instead of "you're" and even "their" instead of "they're" once or twice. Just know it gives me heartburn when I hear the shwoop of a text finally being delivered and then realize my mistake will be stuck in smartphone space forever.

2. I go to a very good university with a very good graduate program. I'm not hating.

3. Sorry for being snarky.

Read on.

Not So Much Nashville

So my goal was write a post everyday. Due to my hugely busy social life, however, I need to revise this to a post every weekday. Which still doesn't account for my absence for the past two business days. So, here comes three posts in a row. Being caught up just sits so much better with my neuroses.

I love country music. Many people find this unusual being that I'm from the Northeast. Actually, I'm from the Mid Atlantic, but no one besides everyone else from the Mid Atlantic seems to know what that means, so fine, I'm from the Northeast. In any case, it is true that I didn't grow up anywhere near tractors, trucks, honky tonks or red dirt roads, but love, family, and a penchant for drinking beer are certainly things to which I can relate. In addition, country music is really easy to sing along to. Most lyrics fairly repetitive, so even if you've never heard the song before you can certainly at least chime in during the chorus. And, while country music lyrics are sometimes just as inane, they are at least a little more wholesome than many Top 40 hits. I sound like my mother, but seriously, FLO RIDA- (We get it! Your name is also a state!) "Round up baby 'til the freaky show/ What happens to your body it's a private show"? I just couldn't say that out loud with a straight face and that's not even that racy.

   What I've been talking about is the mainstream Nashville country stuff, but since moving to Austin I've learned about some more local artists, for example, the Josh Abbott Band. His new album, Small Town Family Dream, was released at the end of April and I've been listening to it pretty consistently since. He's actually fairly bitter about the mainstream Nashville country stuff, particularly in "I'll Sing About Mine" when he says that " tractors ain't sexy (oooh burn, Kenny Chesney!)... and the radio's full of rich folk singing about places they've never seen." I happen to think Eric Church has some of the best lyrics in country music, but that's for another post. Anyway, my favorite song on the album, "Dallas Love," has nothing to do with that. Besides being a pretty sweet song, I like that he uses the word "love" in three different ways.

    Here's the first line of the song:

"Climbing through the clouds/ I'm so close now/ To feeling your touch/ I'm heading southwest to Dallas love."

So by "love" he means the love he has with this girl he's going to see, but might he also mean the airport- Dallas Love Field? I think so. And, I am sure I'm reading too much into this, but Dallas is also  headquarters to Southwest airlines. Maybe? All I'm saying is that southeast fits just as well and it's my blog and I'll overanalyze if I want to.

Next he says:

"Oh I can see the light/ Of your smile glowing in the night/ Such a beautiful sight/ And your hair falling down/ And the tender sight of Dallas love"

That's pretty obviously just referring to romantic love, but while you cannot literally see a smile glowing in night, you CAN see airport lights. That may also be a stretch, but just work with me.

And finally, he quotes the airline stewardess when he says,

"Sorry your flight was so rough/ We're ten minutes away from Dallas love."

He's ten minutes away the love of his life, or the plane is ten minutes away from the airport, or, maybe I'm stereotyping airplane stewardesses, but, if you add a comma after Dallas, that could also be a term of endearment. 

Even if you don't buy any of what I just said, it's a catchy song. Listen to it. And read on.

     

This is Making Me Hungry

Today I came across a really great line of writing while perusing back articles of NY Mag’s Grub Street NY Diet. If you aren’t familiar with these and you like reading about food, you should be.

Each week NY Mag commissions a self-defined New Yorker to keep track of what and where he or she eats that week. The diarists range from B-list celebrities, food writers, chefs, and politicians to Martha Stewart. The meals range from extravagant dinners at Le Bernadin to Costo canned chicken.

In any case, the April 20^th issue was written by author David Rakoff. Yes, it is slow at work today. No, I did not know who David Rakoff was before reading his entry; maybe that’s a crime in the literary world, I don’t know. I do know that I will pick up his book of essays, Half Empty, the next chance I get. It seems like a perfect accompaniment to David Sedaris and Sloane Crosley (OMG I would love if she did a NY Diet). And also maybe David Foster Wallace if you want to get intellectual about it.  What is it about Davids and humorous essays?

But I keep digressing. Here’s the good part. Rakoff writes about the food department at Ikea which is so clean that beautiful that it, and I quote, “ led me to buy a pretty bottle of elderberry syrup which is so off-puttingly floral, it’s like drinking someone’s grandmother.”

Right? Great line. First of all, even though at first glance that seems like a very odd and perhaps morbid thing to say, after you let it absorb you know exactly what he means. Of course what he means is that old ladies wear too much really sweet smelling perfume. And that’s the other cool thing about this line. He’s talking about a taste, equating it with a smell, and describing it as an action. He’s got a lot of your senses engaged, which is what makes reading interesting. And it doesn’t take him a long time to create such a vivid idea; the simile is only three words long. Short and simple, and yet not at all.  And now I will stop talking about it because great writing is often diminished by analysis. As an erstwhile English major I am allowed to say that, even if it mostly discredits my whole college career.  And on second thought perhaps this blog as well. Oh well. Read on.

Ad Agencies: Get in the Game

Last fall I kept a blog for class that examined the effectiveness of celebrity endorsements in advertising- both traditional and alternative forms. This is my favorite post from that assignment and it seemed like a good place to start now. Read on.

It’s been said many times before that there must be some connection between the celebrity and the product he’s endorsing. It seems an obvious fit then, for sports stars to endorse sports related products or services. So, what a great idea for Clay Matthews, a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers, and Steven Jackson, a running back for the St. Louis Rams, to promote Nike's Vapor Carbon Fly Cleat and Pro Combat Hyperstrong gear in a Dick’s Sporting Goods store, right? The ads do seem to start with a solid concept. The pro athlete approaches a customer with the Nike product in hand, mentions the name of the product and proceeds to act as they would in a football game, implying the consumer can also do this if he buys the item. The idea of a football player exaggerating actual game day moves in a sporting goods store is supposed to be funny and the tagline, “take every advantage” is supposed to bring these moves to life for the everyday athlete.
But to me, these ads, particularly the Clay Matthews version, are not effective. This is because not only is the athlete not showcasing the product at all, either visually or in terms of its characteristics, the sight of a huge man blowing past a family and barging through a wall display of footballs is both gratuitous and off-putting. Here’s the ad:

According to Clay Matthews, the Nike cleats are about “being quick and blowing up plays.” Fine. Cleats that make you fast, that seems right. And if you look for it, you can tell that Matthews is wearing the cleats throughout the ad. But that’s not what’s focused on. What the ad focuses on is the smashing of Dicks’s Sporting Goods displays. That’s not sports, that’s not how the cleats would actually be used, and that’s not even an analogous situation that demonstrates the benefits of breaking up tough situations. And then we hear, “take every advantage.” But that ad has not shown us that wearing Nike cleats actually gives us any advantage. Nothing is accomplished by Clay Matthews running into stuff. The ad seems to think that merely by using a figure that in real life is quick and does blow up plays it can successfully transmit these ideas in an unrelated situation. This is an example of using a celebrity merely for his fame, not for any real purpose. Also, running around like an idiot is just embarrassing for a Pro Bowl athlete.
            The Steven Jackson version ameliorates a few of these problems. Here’s the ad:

In this version, Steven Jackson still doesn’t mention any particular benefit of the Nike shirts (and also pants?), although he does imply that when wearing the gear, he is able to perform his job as a running back more effectively. But, we still don’t know what differentiates Nike Pro Combat Hyperstrong from the many other compression clothing options available. The gear, however, is much more prominently featured, visually, and in a logical way, than the cleats. In the sequence where we intermittently see Jackson dodging actual football players and rolling past other customers waiting in the checkout line, Jackson is not only wearing the clothing, he’s holding it, as one would a football, as well. What also works about this section of the ad is that a clear analogy is made between actual sports and Jackson’s actions in the store. It is still a little strange that he imagines himself dodging football players in a dimly lit, snow filled store, but at least there is a direct association between football and the reason he is rolling over customers in slow motion. More importantly, the ad has made a clear association between his actions and the reason we know who he is in the first place. And, the fact that a man whose job requires him to be physically aggressive is shown delicately pushing past people is funny. Clay Matthews is also required to be physically aggressive, so portraying him that way in an ad isn’t funny, it’s what we expect. Finally, the tagline “take every advantage” makes sense here: because of the Nike Pro Combat Hyperstrong gear Steven Jackson moved from the back of the line to the front..

The moral of the story here is that a sports star holding a sports product does not mean we understand what the product is about. That’s too simple. The connections we draw between a person endorsing a product and the product itself are complex, even if we don’t consciously think about them all when we see an ad. Sure we watch grown men run into each other in pursuit of a stretched out piece of rubber every Sunday (and Thursday and Monday) but that doesn’t mean we’re stupid. Not really.