Saturday, September 26, 2015

Entry 302: The Angels and The Archies

I was in the grocery store the other day, and the song "My Boyfriend's Back" came on the radio.  I have a strong affinity for bubblegum oldies (I'm a sucker for feel-good pop, in general), so I was really enjoying it while I was shopping.  But then I started listening closely to the lyrics and thinking about what they actually mean, and I came to the conclusion that it is actually an incredibly fucked up song.

The gist of the song is that there is a girl, presumably about high-school age, whose boyfriend went out of town, and while he was gone a different guy started harassing this girl by making unwelcome advances toward her, implicitly of a sexual nature ("He knows what you've been tryin'"), and by spreading rumors that she had accepted such advances ("He knows that you've been lyin'").  But now everything is going to change, because this girl's boyfriend is back, and he is going to beat the living shit out of her harasser ("Now you're gonna get a beatin'") unless he leaves town ASAP ("When you see him comin', better cut out on the double").



So many things wrong with this song, but let's start with the fact that it's an accepted premise that the only way this girl can stop this creep from bothering her is by having a boyfriend who can protector her.  What if she was single?  Then it would be OK?  And why did she even have to put up with it while her boyfriend was away?   What kind of moral is that?  Why didn't she stick up for herself?  This certainly isn't a very empowering message to send to little girls.  The song shouldn't be "My Boyfriend's Back," it should be "My Restraining Order's Filed".
My restraining order's filed, and you're gonna rue the day 
[Hey-la, hey-la, my restraining order's filed] 
Now you have to stay at least 100 yards away 
[Hey-la, hey-la, my restraining order's filed]
Another glaring problem with the song is that her boyfriend being able to beat up her harasser is a crucial part of her being "saved."  What if her boyfriend is physically weak or has cerebral palsy or is a pacifist or something like that?  "Sorry, babe, this guy is bigger and stronger than me.  You're just going to have to live with his harassment.  Nothing anybody can do about it."

And then the final problem is the fact that society was actually siding with, or at least believing, the harasser until this girl's boyfriend came back.  ("My boyfriend's back, he's gonna save my reputation.")  Again, if this girl was single, then she would just to have accept some cad slandering her good name?  Again, what kind of message is that sending?  They really need to update this song with lyrics that show a stronger female voice.
You're a big douche, you lie worse than Wikipedia 
[Aah-ooh, aah-ooh] 
And now I'm going to expose you on social media 
[Aah-ooh, aah-ooh] 
All your Facebook friends will see!
Well, maybe that's just how most songs were back then.  It was before sexism was bad.  I mean, listen to some of the songs from back in the day: "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is more than a little date rape-y, and "Young Girl" is beyond creepy.  Or maybe it's what happens when three middle-aged Jewish men write a song for a group young women.  The song is performed by a group called The Angels, but it is written by men named Feldman, Goldstein, and Gottehrer.  

The Angels were one of the myriad bubblegum groups that had one big hit, and then sort of dissolved into the pop aether.  My favorite of such bands is most definitely The Archies.  The Archies are a fictional band from Archie Comics, but they produced a real single "Sugar, Sugar" that is actually a really good song.  (It was performed by studio musicians, with a guy named Ron Dante on vocals.)  I love this song.  



Part of this is that I used to read Archie Comics all the time.  Everybody in my family did.  We used to have bookshelves full of them, and if you opened a drawer in one of our bathrooms, you were bound to come across four of five of them stuffed in there.  I'm not sure why we liked them -- they're not funny or interesting -- but we did.  I can't even remember what they were about really, and I must have read at least 100 of them, which should tell you something.  

I do, however, remember the basics: a high school kid named Archie was in a love triangle with two girls, Veronica (the snobby, rich vixen) and Betty (the down-to-earth girl-next-door); he had a buddy named Jughead Jones, who wore a crown for some reason, and whose entire raison d'ĂȘtre was eating hamburgers; and also there was a kid named Reggie, who was Archie's frenemy and the source of much conflict, particularly with Veronica.  And then there were a lot of other ancillary characters -- Big Moose, Dilton Doiley, Mr. Weatherbee, Ethel, Mr. Lodge, Pop Tate, Hot Dog (Jughead's dog), Professor Flutesnoot, Mrs. Grundy, Coach Kleats, Chuck (the token black guy, who had a black girlfriend, Nancy, I think), and ... that's all I can think of off-hand.  They all lived in a place called Riverdale, which is a lot like Springfield on The Simpsons, if The Simpsons was a really campy, wholesome, faux all-American cartoon that isn't at all funny.  And also if its characters said things like "egads!" and drank chocolate malteds at the soda shop.

Oh, also, Archie had several spin-offs.  I think Sabrina the Teenage Witch was a part of Archie Comics (indeed), as was Josie and the Pussycats.

Anyway, in doing the "research" for this post, I came across the official video of "Sugar, Sugar," and I encourage you all to watch it.  It really is a thing of beauty.  For one thing, the song itself is fantastic.  In my opinion, it's a perfect bubblegum pop song.  And then the video ... Well, it's pretty spectacular too.  I showed it to Lil' S1, and he loved it.  I think he is the perfect audience for it.  It seems to be trying to appeal to little kids.  Either that or it is for adults high on mescaline.  I'm not sure which.  

Saturday, September 19, 2015

Entry 301: Shame, Shame

Before we had kids, when S was pregnant, the most annoying thing people who were already parents used to tell us was, "You have no idea how much this is going to change your life!"  Now that I am a parent, I can confirm that this is indeed annoying, and will try to never do it to any soon-to-be parents I might encounter.  In general, I don't like how parents often act (especially toward non-parents) as if they are part of an exclusive club, when in actuality -- like, what? -- two billion people have kids.

With that said, there are definitely a few things about having children that are very difficult -- the extent to which you just don't truly get as a kid-less individual.  Sleep deprivation is the biggest one.  Everybody warns you about it, but unless you actually experience it, you don't really get how awful it is.  Tending to a sick child is another one.  It's terrible.  For one thing, if you and your spouse both work, then it means somebody has to stay home.  It destroys your routine, and often times deciding who is going to be the one to call in sick leads to the dreaded I-do-more-work-than-you fight to which no set of parents is immune.  For another thing, sick kids are fussy as hell!  It is a double whammy of suckitude.

I bring this up, of course, because Lil' S1 came down with a vicious fever a few nights ago.  It peaked at 104.3, and we were on the verge of taking him to the hospital, but the Children's Tylenol we gave him brought it down to the hot-but-not-dangerously-hot 101.5.  We had to page the doctor at like 12:30 in the morning, which is never fun, and it caused a mini fight, because I told the person running the answering service that the issue was "a really high fever," instead of specifying the exact temperature, to underscore the urgency, as S said I should have done.  I'm chalking this one up to exhaustion from both parties.


[In honor of Lil' S1 having a fever, I present to you Foreigner's "Hot Blooded" -- one of the greatest bad-lyric songs of all-time.  "I'm hot-blooded, check it and see.  I got a fever of 103.  Come on baby, do you do more than dance?  I'm hot blooded, I'm hot blooded."  I mean, c'mon ladies, who isn't turned on by acute illness?]

Anyway, he is doing a little better now, but he is still cranky and enervated (I tried taking him to his first soccer practice today, and he just stood there and cried for five minutes, so we went home), and we had to keep him out of school Thursday and Friday.  Luckily, S is not working right now, so nobody had to miss work (I'm really short on leave until next year).  Unluckily, she has another kid -- a baby -- to take care of during the day as well.  Luckily, her mom is around to help out.  Unluckily, there are things her mom can't do (like nurse Lil' S2), and Lil' S1 goes into full-on "mamma's boy mode" when he's sick and most the time wants nothing to do with his Ava.  So it is really taxing on S, which in turn makes it taxing on me, because as soon as I get home, I get a sick toddler dumped on me, and then once I get him to bed, I get the baby handed to me, so that S and her mom can sleep uninterrupted for a few hours.  Once I get the baby to sleep, usually around 9:30 pm or so, it is the highlight of my day.  I have a few hours to myself.

Of course, I'm usually too tired to fully appreciate it.  I'm certainly too tired to do any physical activity, which is unfortunate, because I can feel myself slowly descending into an unhealthily stagnant lifestyle.  I sit at a desk or in a car all day, and then sit on the couch all night.  I'm trying to move more during the day, but it is difficult when your coworkers are expecting you to, you know, get your work done.  It also doesn't help that S and I do not see eye-to-eye when it comes to exercise.  She sees it as more of a luxury -- something you do in your leisure time, if you have any.  I see it more as a life-maintenance thing.  To me, it's like brushing your teeth: You can get away with not doing it for a while, but if you put it off everyday, there are going to be adverse consequences down the road.  It really needs to be part of your regular routine.

Anyway, speaking of exercise, I wanted to weigh in on the "Dear Fat People" brouhaha.  I don't think the video is very funny.  It's got a couple good jokes in it (I chuckled at "meth shaming"), but for the most part it's just a screed against overweight people; she apparently forgot that "insult comedy" is still supposed to be comedy.  With that said, I absolutely hate how much grief she is getting from everybody.  I mean, c'mon, she's a comedian, not a nutritionist.  She's trying to make people laugh, not running a Weight Watchers group.  If you (like me) don't think it's funny, then turn it off, forget about it, and get on with your damn life.  You really want to waste you time and emotional energy being offended by a sub-D-list comedian?  If Donald Trump says something offensive about Mexican immigrants, it matters because he is running for president and could (God forbid) someday have influence over immigration policy.  If a hyperactive chick with a video blog makes an offensive, (wannabe) humor video about fat people, it matters because ...?  And it is also the case that her haters are the ones making her popular.  I never would have heard of her or her video, if somebody didn't link to a story chastising her on Facebook.



By the way, lest you think I'm OK with fat shaming, I'm not.  I do think that sometimes we enable obese people in ways we never would with other people partaking in self-destructive behavior.  (My example is a really obese acquaintance, who loves making and eating baked goods.  We all just eat her delicious desserts with her.  But if she was an alcoholic, who brewed her own beer, nobody would feel comfortable drinking it with her.)  Fat shaming is incredibly mean, which maybe I would be okay with, in a "tough love" sort of way, if it actually worked.  But I don't think it does.  Just as you don't reform drug addicts by making them criminals, you don't reform people's eating habits by insulting them.  Not only does shaming not work, it might actually make things worse because it makes people feel bad about themselves, which drives them even more toward the comfort of their vice.

In general, anytime anybody justifies shaming by claiming it is "tough love" and that they are reforming unhealthy behavioral, you can pretty much call BS.  It seems to me shaming is usually not even about the shamee it is all about the shamer.  They are projecting their own insecurities -- or, in the case of "Dear Fat People," they are trying and failing, to be funny.

OK, time for me to go.  I gotta go for a run.  I got a few pounds to shed.

Until next time...

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Entry 300: A Crossword Puzzle Constructor Posts Mean Comments

My tenth crossword puzzle to appear in The New York Times ran today.  It is a low-count, themeless puzzle, which means that it is not for the crossword puzzle solving novice.  But, I think, it is a pretty good puzzle with a few answers that you might not expect to see in a mainstream publication like NYT.  You should check it out, if you are so inclined.  

(And if you are, then I suggest you stop reading this now and come back to it later, because what follows contains spoilers.)



I wrote a little bit about it here (again, spoilers).  And you can read a review of the puzzle here.  But I thought it would be fun to post a few comments from the haters and respond to them.  I'm doing it here, instead of a more "public" forum, because I really don't want to waste my time with a petty back-and-forth online, which is often what these types of things turn into.  And also because I don't want to come off as thin-skinned.  I'm not.  I really don't care about comments like this because: (1) I'm just not particularly sensitive to criticism (or in this case insults) in general; (2) Other people said nice things about it; (3) When somebody starts getting rant-y, their comments lose validity, because it becomes more about them (is this a moment of catharsis?) than the work; (4) My puzzle was published in The New York Times.  I already "won."  People you don't know hating on your work is not necessarily a bad thing; it is much better than people you don't know having no idea about your work.

So, without further ado:
This was the worst piece of crap trying to pass itself off as a Saturday NYT puzzle I have ever seen. How are A BALL crossing A BEAT, then A LUI, A GHA, A OUT, SAGER crossing RAVER, and RAS, RES, HTS, STES, CERF, CBER etc. fit to print? IJSSEL is easily inferrable, right? OH, COME ON now! Exactly half of all entries are shortz (3 and 4 letters). The boatload of obscure proper-name trivia plus BLAXPLOITATION and BICURIOUS did nothing to improve things, instead they pulled the puzzle further down into the gutter, which even LILLIAN HELLMAN couldn't prevent. A new low in NYT crosswords in my 45-year solving experience. 
For a good workout, try Stan Newman's Saturday Stumper instead. 
Enjoy your weekend.
  And one more:
Usually I find your reviews spot on, Rex, but calling this POS today a great puzzle makes me scratch my head and wonder if I have any idea what a puzzle is supposed to be. Too many obscure clues with zero chance anyone "normal" would be able to figure them out without Google. If you did, great...my hat is off to you. But I'm a mere mortal and I have to say GALBA (one of four emperors in a single year??), CHRISTIANMINGLE, FAUXFUR (hey veganism is about food, not garments), an unheard-of Lillian Hellman work, and some minor league hockey team in Knoxvile?? This is crap, pure and simple.
It took a truly awful puzzle for me to finally post a comment. Hope I don't have to again.
I like how the first commenter writes "A GHA" and "A OUT," when in fact the words are agha (a Mideast chieftain) and Aout (the French word for August).  Apparently words starting with 'A' are no good?

The second one does something I see often, which is thinking something is obscure because you, personally, doesn't know it.  Since he doesn't know Galba or the Lillian Hellman play (Toys in the Attic), he assumes nobody "normal" knows it either.  In fact, Galba gets nearly 600K hits on Google, which means somebody normal has heard of him, and Toys in the Attic was one Hellman's biggest Broadway successes (according to Wikipedia, anyway).  

Lastly, he clearly does not know what a vegan is if he thinks it is only about food.  Being friends with many a vegan, I know that it is about abstaining from animal products in general.  So I too hope this guy doesn't "have" to post again.  It's embarrassing for everybody.

OK, that's all I got today.  Until next time...

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Entry 299: System Dad

There is a nebulously defined term in football "system quarterback."  It's supposed to mean a quarterback who is not that good, but who succeeds anyway because the system he is in makes him look better than he really is.  It's really a dumb phrase (as many sports phrases are), because everybody who ever succeeds at anything is a "system [that thing]."  Nobody succeeds outside of their environment.  Nobody exists outside of their environment.




That's one of the fundamental flaws of neo-libertarian conservatism.  People who support a laissez-faire "winners and losers" society, guided by unbridled competition and the invisible hand of the free market, act as if everybody is born to nearly equal opportunities and "winning" is almost entirely a function of personal virtue.  When in fact, evidence suggests the exact opposite.  For the most part, you are what your parents were.  As an example, you should read this piece about Donald Trump's fortune.  But if you don't, here is the gist: All of Donald Trump's money came from his father.  Over the past 35 years, he has been a subpar investor, and has probably lost money compared to the market.  That is, if he just put his money into a typical 401(k) and ignored it (like the vast majority of the U.S. workforce), he would be even richer than he is today.  My brother posted this story on Facebook, and I replied with what I thought was a pretty good quip: Donald Trump was born on third base, ran back to second, and brags about how he hit a double.




But I digress ...

Things have more or less settled in over here at the G & G household.  We've got our system down, which, I suppose, makes me a "system dad."  I typically go to work, come home about 6:30 p.m., do a quick bit of yoga (if I'm lucky) and eat dinner.  Then I'm on Lil' S1 duty until he goes to bed around 8:30 (he's been better with bedtime of late).  Then I switch off to Lil' S2 duty to give S and her mom a contiguous block of uninterrupted sleep.  I usually pass him off at around 1:00 a.m., and then I sleep until about 7:30 a.m.  I wake up and get Lil' S1 off to school on my way to work.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

It's not a bad routine.  I don't have to wake up in the middle of the night, which is nice, but I have very little free-time.  By the time I get Lil' S2 to sleep, I usually have just few hours to cram in all the things that I really want to do.  But maybe I should just be grateful* for those few hours.  I have several advantages many others raising kids don't have -- namely a mother in-law who is an enormous help, letting S sleep when she needs it (which in turn allows me to sleep at night) and cooking almost every meal for us.  Also, we have enough money to, say, hire house-cleaners to come once a month.  Since we both work, finances are not super stressful for us.  I definitely do not take things like this for granted.

On the other side of the coin, I have one major disadvantage: Lil' S1.  People ask how he's doing with the new addition, and my standard response is, "He's a pain in my ass, but it has nothing to do with his little brother.  He was like that before S even got pregnant."  I wouldn't change Lil' S1 for anything; I like the way he is, but he's a lot of work.  He has three main modes -- bouncing off the walls, incessant whining (actually, I would change this about him, if I could), or staring at the iPod like a zombie.  There is another mode -- thoughtful, play-quietly or listen-to-a-story mode, but it never lasts long.  Usually we can coax him into it at the end of the night when he's tired.

By the way, quick aside, I read Lil' S1 a few stories every night before he goes to bed, and I find myself constantly changing the content on the fly because what is actually on the page is not really appropriate.  For example, Bambi is fraught with veiled sexism (Faline needs Bambi to come save her more than once), and Jack and the Beanstalk has some awful messages.  Jack trades his mother's cow for so-called magic beans and is rewarded when the magic works (bad message number one).  Then he goes into the giant's house without permission (bad message number two).  Then the giant categorizes him by his ethnicity and uses the term "Englishman" in a implicitly pejorative way (bad message number three).  Then Jack steals the giant's goose and his flute (bad message number four).  And then Jack's mother chops down the beanstalk, killing the giant (bad message number five).  And then Jack and his mother live happily ever after on their stolen riches (bad message number six).  I'm not trying to raise Lil' S1 to be a member of the PC Police or anything like that, but, damn, how I am supposed to read him a story in which the protagonists are blatant thieves and murderers?

[If one of my kids ever trades our cow for "magic" beans, he will absolutely be sent to bed without supper.]

Anyway, getting back to Lil' S1 and what a handful he can be, this is how I woke up this morning:  He burst into my room, shouted "wake up, Daddy!" at top of his lungs, climbed onto the bed, stood on top of me, cannonballed onto the bed next to me, rolled over on top me, and started slapping my exposed belly.  That is -- literally -- how I woke up this morning.  Thankfully it was already 9:15 a.m. (S let me sleep in a bit), and also thankfully S's sister is in town, and she took him to the park shortly thereafter, giving me a chance to write this post.  So, you know, it's just like Billy Shears says "I get by with a little help from my friends" -- or in this case family.



So the last thing I want to touch on, Kim Davis, that asshole clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky who has become a celebrity by refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, has been arrested and placed in jail.  Two points on this: 1) If she was a radical Muslim refusing to issue marriage licenses to non-Muslims, under the rationale that it violates her religion to aid the unions of infidels, I doubt the "religious freedom" warriors like Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz would be defending her; 2) I've read a lot of comments on social media about how this is what she wants, because it makes her a martyr, to which I say, "good."  She gets what she wants, gay couples in her county get what they want, and the rest of us can get on with our damn lives.  Sound like win, win, win to me.  And if she really is motivated by martyrdom, I think she's going to get to a rude awakening in a few months when nobody on either side of the debate gives a rip about her anymore.  This woman lives in America after all, we don't have long attention spans here; her 15 minutes are nearly up.

Ok, that's all I got.  Until next time ...

*Grateful is an odd word, isn't it?  Full of grate?  It seems like it should be greatful.