CSotD: My Back Pages, and perhaps yours
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I’m not ignoring what happened yesterday, but, like the host of Brendan Loper‘s quiz show, I just want to move on to Round Two. And I think that part of what happens next is that we keep on keepin’ on, which has to include some laughter.
When laughter is outlawed, outlaws will laugh anyway.
Maybe it will be like Fahrenheit 451, where bands of resistors will wander around in the forest telling jokes and giggling. Beats the hell out of sitting in the livingroom like Mildred Montag, taking downers and watching interactive soap operas.
The other alternative is to sink into the Jean-Paul Sartre Hell of this Non Sequitur (AMS). I’d rather rely on Jim Beam than downers, but neither seems practical in the long run. I keep seeing people talk about the next four years when they ought to be looking towards the midterms, but even two years are going to seem like a long run.
We’ll get back to that tomorrow. Onward!
Ben (MWAM) has started a story arc about going to a concert by that rock group made up of 40% of the Rolling Stones, who formed a new band and designed that logo. Liv is pretending not to recognize it, but that’s like not knowing what a pair of golden arches represent.
If I were going to wear a T-shirt, it would look like this:
As the young folks say, if you know, you know.
If my laughs today are going to be largely self-reflexive, why not a connection from Big Nate (AMS)?
You don’t need Instagram if you’re on the yearbook staff, which I was. I was also on the wrestling team, but only because it was a minor sport and if you showed up, you were there, and if you could make weight and maintain academic eligibility, you might even get to go out and get pinned in front of a thankfully small crowd.
We used to clown around before Coach got to practice, pretending to be pro wrestlers and faking amazing throws and falls. One day, I was goofing with our 180 (I was a 127), and we horsed around on the mat until I got him briefly into a cradle, at which point there was a blinding flash and he kicked my ass back into the natural order of things.
Turned out the blinding flash was from the yearbook photographer and the resulting picture of me having Eddie in a pinning position drew a burst of laughter at the next yearbook staff meeting. I wasn’t the sports editor, but I didn’t stop him from running it, either.
Not sure Eddie ever forgave me, but it got additional laffs when the yearbooks came out.
And then there’s this past Sunday’s Free Range (Creators). Normally, I’m against critiquing a purposely silly TV show seriously, and most of the Flintstones’ technical devices were purposely silly.
But my first assignment at the Press-Republican in Plattsburgh, back in 1987, was a feature story about how much kids love dinosaurs. It was a very light piece assigned to see if I could write on deadline, and I find, in rereading it nearly 40 years later, that you can sure tell I’d been a magazine writer up to that point, because it’s full of “author’s voice,” which is a nice term for wisecracks and cleverness.
If you’re truly curious, there’s a readable size of the full thing here, but I’m assuming nobody will feel cheated if, instead, I just drop in a sample of what I had found in interviewing third-graders:
On one hand, I can’t believe I got away with that much author’s voice, but, then again, it makes me smile to remember it, and to ponder how quickly I adapted to writing with serious journalistic tone. (I seem to have recovered.)
I’ve said before that I’m glad there was no Internet when I was trying to be a novelist, because I’d have posted that dreck, but, on the other hand, I went back into the archives of my college paper and read my stuff from back then and found a combination of abject drivel, near misses, and soaring pieces that made me feel affection for that half-formed, undisciplined hack.
Best compliment was when my department head told me someone had come to a parish council meeting waving a piece of mine and frothing at the mouth. He had to explain the concept of “satire” to the fellow.
That hasn’t changed.
Juxtaposition of the Day
The segue here is that all the high school and collegiate writing I did was for free, but unlike the kid in Mr. Boffo, it never occurred to me to demand payment. My old alma mater lost a national championship yesterday, but I’ve stopped watching college ball, because my friends who played sports didn’t get paid endorsements or enjoy transfer protocols. Worse, they had to take real courses and show up for them.
Which seemed to pay off for the 90% who never got a pro contract.
Meanwhile, I’ve never liked Connie in Zits and am inclined to take Jeremy’s side in viewing this conflict of interest. It reminds me of a friend in high school whose parents were on our faculty. When it was time for our senior trip to Washington, they volunteered as chaperones, but at least he got to tour the FBI building and visit the Capitol.
Jeremy, for all his hijinx, is a lot more wholesome and innocent than we were. The hotel where we stayed specialized in hosting class trips, and there was a pillar of salt on the sidewalk outside from some chaperone who had looked back as they checked out.
I identify with Bub, as he and Betty (AMS) discuss retirement. I feel I should remember more of class time than I do, but most of what I remember was what went on between classes. That’s where a lot of the learning went on, and it’s as if the classes were the users manual but life was the part where you played around until you figured out how it worked.
The trick is to find a way to pay your bills while fulfilling the between-classes role that helps kids learn.
It doesn’t require an advanced degree, or any degree at all.
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