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Daily Blah for... Thursday, June 29, 2006
Dude, Where's My Irony?
More than a decade ago, I interviewed a British TV presenter called Mark Lamarr. Lamarr is known by his coiffed 50's style hair and thick Cockney voice, but he confided to me that the latter, at least, was fake. Or rather, it was a joke that had spun out of control. Lamarr, brought up in the posh Home Counties, loved to take the piss out of his London friends with what he called a cartoon Cockney accent. But he spent so much time doing this that his brain adjusted, and Lamarr found to his horror that he couldn't speak in anything but cartoon Cockney. How foolish, I thought. I'll never fall into that trap.
Yet here I am, six years into living in California, and that is exactly the trap I've fallen into -- specifically in my use of the word "dude." At first I used it ironically, alongside "totally" and "sweet" and "trip out" and other easy targets of the West Coast tongue. It got a good response from the natives, who love to hear themselves gently mocked by an English accent. But after many years of mockery, I began to appreciate the way the word crosses all barriers of gender, class and race -- it's my generation's "comrade" without the Soviet overtones -- as well as the way that it can convey so many emotions with tiny differences in intonation: respect (dude!), disbelief (dude?), amazement (dood!) impatience (duu-ude!) and awe (duuuuuuuude).
Then there's the increasing dudneness of entertainment over the last forty years or so. Sean Penn, Bill and Ted, the Big Lebowski, Ashton Kushter, Michael Moore and Michael Dell have all played a part in the dude revolution. But for me the tipping point came less than a month ago, when I watched Easy Rider for the first time (dude, I know, I know) and witnessed this exchange between Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson:
JN: What's dude? Is that like dude ranch?
PF: Dude means nice guy. Dude means regular sort of person.
Nowhere else in the panoply of pop culture, so far as I've seen, has the word actually been definied. In this light, dude becomes a synonym for mensch.
And there's much, much more in the venerable yet mysterious etymology of dude. It may have derived from "doodle," as in Yankee Doodle Dandy, but the first time we see it take off is in the 1880s, when New Yorkers used it to refer to dandys, sharp dressers and aesthetes. Oscar Wilde would have been the quintessential dude -- another point in its favor.
Somehow the word traveled West, possibly via the dude ranch (where those New York dandys went to play at being cowboys). It was being used in Westerns as early as 1933, according to this surprisingly comprehensive Wikipedia entry. And then somehow California surfers picked it up. How? this essay in the New York Observer offers this explanation:
"Dude" was originally a mockery of gentlemanliness, and surfers later rescued the gentlemanliness from the mockery. When transformed in subcultural slang the original irony was itself ironized, and, in the way a double negative can make a positive, it became thereby a mostly sincere, slightly arch term of gentlemanly respect. Surfer dudes decided to own it, own their elaborate subcultural aesthetic dandyism, the way some ethnic groups believe they can own words that were originally derisive slurs. In a way, to address someone as "dude" became a sign of ironic respect for that person’s ironic sensibility.
Dude! So the recent purveyors of dudeness started out by employing it ironically, just like me -- and the word deliberately retains that sly nod-and-a-wink, even today. Dude, I feel, like, so totally vindicated.
Daily Blah for... Sunday, June 25, 2006
Double Dutchies
One of the best World Cup parties I ever experienced was on the beach at Marseilles in 1998, the semi final, Holland v Brazil, as we watched on a big screen and the Mediterranean lapped at our toes. Brazillian fans are fantastic, the best in the world, but the Dutch come damn close. There's more of a sense of irony about their fandom -- everyone wears clogs and ridiculous orange headgear. When your national color makes you look like a highlighter pen, I suppose, you might as well take it all the way.
I was sitting in the Kezar Pub this morning with Aaron and Rachel, lamenting another ignoble, anxiety-fraught England victory, this time against Ecuador, when in streamed a good hundred Dutch fans for their game against Portugal. Here we were in San Francisco, six thousand miles further from Amsterdam than Marseilles is, and all of a sudden it felt like I was back on that beach amongst the same fun-loving Netherlanders. Every one of them had a different accessory -- a flag, orange bunting, an orange superhero cape, a lucky lion, nifty orange scarves that zipped up together and connected every smiling head. I love my fellow fans, but a team jersey and a pint are about the limits of English accessorizing.
Within minutes they had decorated the pub, bought us drinks, made us kiss the lucky lion and wrapped their orange scarves around us. They were beautiful. I felt a bit guilty for my previously declared position on Holland v Portugal: "I don't care who wins as long as it's the worse team, and as long as they suffer lots of red cards, injuries and fights" -- so that England faces a weakened team in the next round.
Be careful what you wish for in the World Cup, because of course that's exactly what the game brought us. Hard to believe that one game could contain so many flying ninja-kick tackles, or that the ref could allow civilized play to break down so fast. I learned some choice Dutch words today as San Francisco's friendliest fans screamed at the screens. And to see them so dejected when it was all over, to have gone out in such a dirty manner -- it was heartbreaking. "Don't worry," I told them. "We'll get revenge for you next week when we play Portugal." Well, we're going to need all the support we can get -- and who better to have it from?
Daily Blah for... Friday, June 23, 2006
Future Boy Brews Up Some Moonshine
My latest column tackles the tangled world of ethanol, the grain alcohol fuel that's all of a sudden breaking away from the pack as an alternative energy source. There's so many versions of ethanol, though, that it's a hell of a tough subject to sound like an expert in. You be the judge of how well I did (considering I had less than a day to prepare my materials).
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Eleven Idiot Sons
England fandom, I tell the friends who have unfortunately been sucked into my World Cup vortex, is not supposed to be fun. It's about clenching teeth, screwing up eyes and gripping the wooden table in the pub with your fingernails. It is a recipe for long-term anxiety and ulcers, and no one should be allowed to go through it unless they've had a thorough medical examination.
No one who isn't English, that is. For us, this biannual pain is inherent, expected, like the way you anticipate you'll have at least one really bad head cold once every couple of years.
The game against Sweden, which I watched in the Irish Bank, was a classic example. This time, I'd managed to suck in four American friends -- one of whom brought his parents. They had to witness a typical England performance -- two flashes of brilliance that resulted in England goals, two moments of absolute dribbling incoherence that let Sweden equalize, and a whole lot of heart-in-mouth anguish inbetween.
We qualified for the next round, at the top of our group. So why did I walk back to work in such pain, pain that was barely soothed with the free Ben and Jerry's cones they were giving away for free on California street?
Because supporting England is like having eleven idiot sons. You love them to death, you cannot but love them, and occasionally they surprise you. But mostly they just embarrass you in front of the whole world.
Daily Blah for... Monday, June 19, 2006
Journey Jealousy
My good friend Dan just became the luckiest bastard I know. He somehow, without the use of chloroform, managed to persuade his editors at CNet that it would be a Good Idea to send him out on the road for two weeks with a car full of gadgets -- testing GPS devices and satellite phones while driving up the gorgeous Pacific coast. To do such a thing makes him lucky enough; that he's doing so on company time makes me insanely jealous. Already he's done one thing I would give my eye teeth for -- sat in the cockpit of the Spruce Goose.
I haven't had that sweet a gig since I covered the 1998 World Cup, and the only thing that's keeping me from turning completely green is the thought that if I were in his shoes, I'd be missing this World Cup.
Anyway, click on the link and stay in touch with his journey via the interactive map -- a Google Map mashup with Dan's head hovering above his latest position. Seriously.
Daily Blah for... Sunday, June 18, 2006
Bouncing Things Redux
I seem to have become the central clearinghouse for all information about that Sony Bravia TV ad -- the one with the colored balls bouncing in slow motion down a San Francisco street -- and all its subsequent parodies. I have no problem with this. It is Daily Blah's business to own random stories like these, to climb up the Google results list for searches like "Boots caffeine strips" (number seven) and "purple polar bear" (now sadly dropped to number 10 after five years at number one).
It is, therefore, my duty to inform you that Tango, a British soda, has produced this parody, featuring various items of fruit bouncing messily down a dreary suburban street. Amusing enough, but where do we go from here? A soccer ball version as a World Cup promo, perhaps? I'd love to see that, especially given all the complaints that the Adidas ball used this year is too round. I can just see it now -- all the goalkeepers chasing the balls in slow motion down the hill towards a giant net ...
Daily Blah for... Saturday, June 17, 2006
US Plays Good Game of Soccer. Apocalypse to Follow.
I never thought I'd find myself rooting for Team America as much as I did this afternoon, watching the US-Italy match with friends. Not that I haven't supported the Yanks before. I generally do, partly because they're the underdogs, and I always feel drawn the underdogs in any World Cup match that doesn't directly or indirectly affect a British team, and partly because I want this country to continue its growing acceptance of real football, and nothing will do that more than a few good US victories. I can already feel World Cup fever spreading slowly around the office, around the city -- put the national team in the quarter finals again, hell, put them in the semis, and who knows how far into the heartland that fever would spread?
But against Italy, I was supporting the US for a different reason, an entirely suprising one -- they were the better team. Down to nine men, and they played with more heart than a freezer full of organ donations. When they scored what seemed to be their second goal, we were on our feet, screaming, whooping, high-fiving -- and then came that moment of anguish, oh so familiar to an England fan, when the ref made an insane call and disallowed the goal. Still, the rest of the second half was a joy to behold -- even poor plucky McBride, who kept charging down the field only to knock the cross well to the left of the goal. We surmised he must have concussion from the red-carded elbow shiv in the first half, and started calling him "McBride of Frankenstein." Well, it's no fun supporting a team if you can't gently mock them too.
I thought of all the Americans getting it for the first time -- understanding that soccer levels the playing field like no other game. Find your pluck and your courage, slow the ball down, look for the man in space, and you're in with a chance even if your opponent is one of the world's top teams.
Someone must have sat on a remote control or something after the match, because all of a sudden we were watching enormous volcanos belching out smoke and dust and massive lava flows. What's this, someone asked. "It's what happens if America wins the World Cup," I said.
Then I went home and played as the US team in FIFA 2006 on the Xbox. Just for a laugh, yet I made it straight through to the final, beating Brazil 4-2, something I've never been able to do as the England team. Take heart, America. It is possible.
Daily Blah for... Friday, June 16, 2006
Sailing By
I suppose you could say I've become a bit of a ship-spotter. Sitting here at work with a pair of binoculars on my desk and this widescreen view of the Bay, as it rotates through its many misty, foggy, aqua-blue and muggy green incarnations, affords me many opportunities to gaze at the giant container ships, the tiny pleasure yachts, the Marin-bound ferries. Now you can join in with this website, which gives you real-time positions of all ships on the Bay. My point of view is looking towards Treasure Island, the elongated Pac-Man shape in the middle connecting the gossamer threads of the Bay Bridge like dental floss through its teeth. Note that the site offers all the numbers of the vessels, practically begging you to start making notes on the ones you've seen. All good clean harmless fun, this ship watching, but who knows what it could lead to?
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, June 14, 2006
But What About Anarcho-Syndicalist Communes?
Franklin Foer, the soccer-mad editor of the New Republic, has written a nice tongue-in-cheek treatise on what kind of government your country should have if you want your national team to win the World Cup, based on past performance. His conclusion: either be ruled by a military junta or a democracy. Which presumably means the US, having the best of both worlds, can expect a spectacular comeback against Italy on Saturday.
Daily Blah for... Saturday, June 10, 2006
Pictures Within Pictures
this interactive piece of art is probably the most mind-blowing thing you'll look at today. Well worth the download.
Daily Blah for... Sunday, June 04, 2006
Meanwhile, in Washington ...
Daily Blah for... Friday, June 02, 2006
Miraculous Mint-Soda Fountains
The Diet Coke and Mentos experiments raise an interesting question. Is this site, which showcases the Bellagio fountain-like results of mixing even small quantities of said consumer products, a commercial in disguise? Or is it true that this simply the most visually exciting chemical reaction you can get from any of the products you'd find in a 7-11?
And if it's not an ad, why not? The commercial tie-in possibilities are huge. That's what makes me suspect this is a clever grassroots website-style con.
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