Pandemic? I’m not going to rush out and buy rubber gloves and face masks, because
1. It’s one thing for the flu to spread quickly and infect millions; it’s another for it to kill millions. When the mortality rate starts getting above 5 percent, let me know. We have flu all the time, and yes, I know this one is different, assembled from demon DNA cooking in pork guts. I dimly remember the Swine Flu outbreak of the mid 70s, which was likewise portrayed as a matter of great national urgency; in true seventies fashion, the flu itself was mild and the vaccine killed people. The seventies’ relation to the sixties is like the 70s relationship to everything else: the cure was worse than the disease. Although in retrospect I think disco had its moments.
2. I bought rubber gloves and face masks years ago, Put them in the emergency kit. So, I’m set.
Checking a Fark thread on the matter, I was pleased to note that someone had written he was in San Diego with the flu right now, and wondered if he should be worried. To which someone responded What I really want to know is, baby can you dig your man? That was a line from a song written by one of the characters who survived the pandemic in “The Stand.” When the author updated “The Stand” for the Bible-thick King Steve edition in 1991 or so, he didn’t change the pop culture references. They stuck out like dirty hippie feet. “Captain Trips” would not be the name people gave a superbug in 1990, and “Dig your man” would not be a song lyric in the mid 80s. Even in the 70s such a lyric would be banal. Define dig, please. Understand? Enjoy? Isn’t the fact that he is her man imply a certain amount of pre-existing digging? We also learn in the song that he is a righteous man, which suggests that his eminent diggability is obvious to all, and “baby” is being asked if she has the necessary perception to appreciate him.
As for “Captain Trips,” I think people would have abandoned that name rather quickly, since the summer-of-love vibe we’re supposed to get from “Trips” – a gentle, mind-expanding exercise in perception enhancement, man – would not flow naturally from a germ that made you bleed from every spontaneously manifesting skin eruptions. I don’t know what people would have called it, although a literate New York Times editor would have been hard-pressed to resist a headline that said MY NAME IS LESION.
So we need a name for this one before it becomes NC-NI31 or some such antiseptic string, and I’m pushing for the Tijuana Pig-Plague. Or the Mexicali Pork-Grippe. The cure? Hamiflu!
Yes, I know. Whistling past the stockyard.
What i really fear in the short term is the standard media spaz. Today someone woke up with the knowledge that he had to go into the office and work up a logo for this. Obviously literal swine are out; the biohazard sign is played out – kids use it for a tat, for heaven’s sake – so what?
If he had a hangover, we might see a skeleton in a face mask.
Aside from the cooling temps and the TPP, it was a good weekend. Friday was perfect. Worked all night on non-deadline items, then watched “Quantum of Solace.” It’s about a super-secret society whose members are known to few, and can only be identified when they walk around in public with a little “Q” pin stuck to their lapels. It was a roller-coaster ride, as they say, and I enjoyed every minute. Had perhaps the poutiest Bond girl in the entire franchise. Perhaps it’s me, but they seem to get more gorgeous as I age. And they don’t have names like Vadge Deepenme, or Havme Tanite. To my abiding satisfaction the movie concluded with the one true staple of a Bond film: the villain’s lair BLEW UP real good.
I was twittering about it while watching, OF COURSE (said, for no particular reason. “If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? YES, IF MICHAEL BAY DIRECTED) and noted how lousy the song was. They’ve been dreadful for decades. The last good one might be Moonraker, and I’m serious: it’s sung by leather-lunged Shirley Bassey, which people forget, and it was written by John Barry, who can pack mystery, danger, longing and regret into four notes. He is the Sean Connery of Bond composers. It even comes with a wacka-chicka end-title disco version.
Saturday: did not go to the postcard show. That makes two in a row. Having read Friday about the ghastly pay cuts coming down the pike at the paper, buying some old cardboard rectangles felt like an extravagance. I did, however, buy a gazebo. Used some store credit. It will be delivered this week. I’ve seen this one, sized it up, judged its heft – it’s not made of metal-coated drinking straws like the last one, so it won’t end up in St. Paul when the breeze hits it. Looking forward to those civilized nights outside reading with a drink of my own invention, twittering about watching the sun go down.
Sunday I fortified myself with eggs and bacon and headed downtown to MC the Minnesota Youth Symphonies concert. It’s the last concert of the year, and it was my first of this season. (They switched to rotating hosts for this season.) (Not literally; I assume they all faced the microphone.) It was a joy to be back at Orchestra Hall, addressing the great room. Having written about this thrice yearly for a decade or more, I’ll spare you the details. Save two:
1. At one point I needed to go back to my dressing room, a small tidy space that adjoins the Bathroom of the Famous (every time I use it I wonder how many great tuxedo-wearing performers gave a lumpy yawn to the commode before they composed themselves and headed out to the stage – none, probably; they’re pros) and there was a gigantic bass violin case blocking the way. I hesitated to touch it, not knowing how many thousands of dollars were contained inside in varnished wood form – but when I touched it, the case was feather light. It was empty. It was like a chrysalis from which a gigantic gossamer-winged insect with a very low voice had departed.
2. At another point the Symphony Orchestra was waiting for two musicians – the flautist who’d just finished the gnarly GNielsen concerto, and a kid who’d forgot his music. That seemed a bit odd; if there’s one thing you would remember after years of tromping onstage to perform, it would be A) your instrument, and B) your music. He was mortified. The orchestra was sitting, waiting, and a deathly silence had fallen over the hall. You want expectant silence, but not what-the-hell silence. Manny, the conductor, was standing in the wings, and he said PLAY! PLAY ANYTHING! A few students heard them, and started to saw away; before long, everyone was just playing to play something, and it was a most amazing din. When the two students were seated, I wandered over to the mike, and said “That was Symphony #1 by Charles Ives.” Yeah, I know, hardy har, but half the hall really seemed to like the jape. I mention this because I was talking with Mike Nelson, one of the MST3K / Rifftrax geniuses the other day, and he said he’d worked a Charles Ives joke into a commentary track. “The internet kids come a’runnin’ for those Charles Ives jokes,” he noted with his customary dryness. And I thought: UNLIKE YOU, MIKE. I SUCCESSFULLY DEPLOYED A CHARLES IVES REFERENCE.
Of such small victories are self-images made, and carefully buffed and maintained.
Buzz.mn is up; later today, a matchbook.
Pass it along, if you wish
83 Responses to Monday, April 27
Host with the Most
OK two more then I’ll stop:
Circe’s Revenge
The Truffles
Maybe we should be discouraging immigration from Mexico…. you know, close the borders?
…(self-face-slap)… Oh yeah, like THAT’S never been thought of! And exactly how would we do that, since our fearless leadership has for years decided not to maintain the illusion that we are a sovereign nation and control our own borders?
_@_v – let’s just call it a case of hamdingers…
I’ll have you know we have set up an effective program against immigration.
it’s called “economy in the dumper.”
and undocumented workers of Central American extraction (ooh, pretty PC, there!) are headed back south.
if we put up The Fence we will hinder their free flow back into the swamp of drug kingpins’ territory, rampaging Pigtrots, collapsing Maquilidoros factories, and back home with four generations under one roof.
you wonder why they come up here, I suppose?
has to do with political theory I suspect. greater freedom of debate.
The “Carnitas” Flu
Drink of your own invention? Enquiring cocktail enthusiasts want to know.
carne is beef, cerdo is pork. the wacky wacky webbiepoo tells me so.
there is a touch of bird flu in this, added for flavor and a little excitement. and the horror factor. “El Cerdito Oinkies! now! improved! with More Bird Flu! let’s do THIS in real time, camera guy!”
I like much of Quantum, but in the end, I was supposed to feel fear and trepidation about hearing how an evil genius secured a water monopoly for a million or two people under false pretenses?!
Not to be partisan here, but taking control of an entire banking sector is more terrifying.
I felt severely let down by the plot at the end, and the action was too jerky. What happened to filming a fight scene from fewer than fifty angles?
swschrad thanks!! You once again have proved my mother was correct. She said, “Lurk and everyone thinks your an idiot. Post and you remove all doubt.”
I’ll just keep this brown paper bag over my head for a while in shame.
“…Well, no wonder we didn’t see it! Nobody likes hamdingers!”
“I’ll just keep this brown paper bag over my head for a while in shame.”
Paste a picture of Mr Natural on it so we’ll know it’s you.
It’ll never make it to Madagascar.
(Not sure if that’s too obscure.)
“Shut…down…EVERYTHING!!!”
“The song for ‘Casino Royale’, on the other hand–”You Know My Name” by Chris Cornell–is fantastic and demonstrates just what modern Bond themes should all strive to be.”
+1
Casino Royale is now my all time favorite Bond movie. The title song gave me goosebumps as Craig walked toward you, with the song blasting “you know my name”
And that cool little bit as the gun crosshairs passed over the Queen of Hearts and you briefly see Vesper Lynn’s face. One of the best Bond title sequences ever.
Quantum was OK. I could really do with ut all the shaky camera shots and the fast paced jump cuts. Too disorienting…..
hpoulter – I can’t paste a picture. I am not allowed to use scissors. How about if I use the big crayons and draw Mr. Natural. Will that do?
I’ll just keep this brown paper bag over my head for a while in shame.
No, you were right the first time. Carnitas is braised or roasted pork.
True – “little meats” but always made with pork.
In the Thai language the word for Pork is “moo”. Go figure. They don’t call beef “oink”, though.
When they come up with a Swine Flu cure, they should name it Haminex.
You are right! Carnitas is roasted pork. Proven an idiot once again for listening to the experts. I’ll just keep this bag on my head and go sit in the corner, drooling happily on my chinney chin chin.
Besides it doesn’t matter what its called because I won’t get it.
I submit that “The World Is Not Enough” was an excellent Bond song.
(Sitting quietly in the corner, chuckling to myself at the fine and clever posts made by my friends here in Bleatland. Darn, you guys are fun.)
Mexican Jumping Flu (with a Spanish pronunciation, where “J” sounds like “H”)
Carnitas is pig-based; Carne Asada is cow-based. Carnival food is a mystery.
James, where is the promised matchbook for your matchless friends?
Yeah, James–I need a smoke, and I ain’t got a match!
Mr Lileks, I agree also that, e.g., checking updates on the “outbreak” every five minutes simply adds unnecessarily to a stress load that is heavy enough, thank you very much. Let’s try to keep it together, people! And when it is time for the Hamiflu, it is time for the Hamiflu, ‘k?
I’m with you on the Twittering. Sometimes I just pull out my phone and see what’s going on in the Twittersphere.
Is there a source for the “25 to 45 year old men are dying” statement? It sounds a little melodramatic to me, since 1) I’ve never heard that healthy, adult men have stronger immune systems than healthy, adult women, so the emphasis on gender makes little sense, and 2) there’s no logical reason why the bottom age should be 25; it should be more like 17 if the flu is targeting the very strongest people.
A man in Brazil is coughing, Rat.
“Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?” COULD work in the ’90s.. possibly. I think it could be kind of a Beck thing, though it would, like Beck, be an acquired taste.
But ‘Captain Trips’ never worked for me, for the popular name. I suspect ‘superflu’, ‘Black Flu’ (as a play on Black Plague of course), things like that would’ve been used. King mentions that in the midwest it’s called ‘tube neck’ which is unimaginative, but certainly descriptive.
Weird thing is, I’ve never heard him or anyone else explain why he went with ‘Captain Trips’. It doesn’t make sense.
Between our host and the Bleatniks, I’m startling the security guard with random barks of laughter. The picture of a nervous emcee slowly revolving behind a podium as Billy Crystal’s old intermittent-mic bit goes out over the p.a. is priceless, as is that of James’ back yard, one corner artistically strewn with mangled gazebi in various states of decay.
As for Charles Ives, there’s one piece that used to get airplay(back when there was such a thing as classical broadcast stations) that made much more sense when it was finally explained to me that he was recreating that aural version of a film/TV slow cross-fade you get when watching a parade with one marching band after another. ‘Course, appreciating it and listening to it for fun are two different things. Besides, every time I hear that piece I started giggling, picturing the Faber band at the end of “Animal House” self-compacting into the dead-end alley wall.
And, deciding whether to second our host’s admission about some disco is vexing: much of what is now lumped into that category is just funk, Atlantic soul and pop that happened to use that particular high-hat riff. Makes me think of the last time I saw “American Blandstand”–after ignoring it for years(the acts all had to lip-synch & besides, I was into blues and art rock then), on a whim I clicked(more like k-thunked, on a big old Zenith console set that finally died on Mom last year) over to the local ABC affiliate. I immediately laughed & wanted to rinse my eyes with bleach. The music was that most dreadful “dance” stuff that apparently survived for a few years only in gay bars, the dancing consisted of couples grinding groins for the length of the single(still can’t believe Standards & practices allowed it back then) and the dancers were almost all dressed like the “Barbarella” fan club blundered into an S&M/kink ball. This nauseating spectacle was topped of by(appropriately enough, for this retelling) an appearance by The Purple One himself(in his pre-purple disco days), clad IIRC only in platform go-go boots, a leopard-skin brief and a clear plastic trench coat. Made one quite glad to be in an unfashionable “cow town” like Milwaukee, it did.
Oh, and about that assumed correlation between professionalism and not praying to the porcelain god before a performance–bad assumption. Some of the most revered performers of modern times have had horrible stage fright, some when young, some just over certain pieces/performances and some chronically. Anita Ellis would be as well-regarded an interpreter of standards as any of her contemporaries by the general public if hers hadn’t been debilitating and Sir Laurence Olivier himself inexplicably developed it in middle age. He was fine once he got on, but she had to be persuaded to get into an empty recording studio. You just never know…
Sorry–one more comment: there are few things more cringeworthy than authors using current pop culture(there are, of course, exceptions). I still recall my embarrassment for Anne Rice when I read “Tough Cookie” as her name for a girl in a punk band. It’s not like she didn’t have names like Xene, Siouxie and Jello Biafra to point her her in the right direction.
The Capt. Trips business bothered me the first time around when I read ‘The Stand.’ King seemed to presume the Grateful Dead had a much deeper cultural influence than they actually did. But the expanded (unredacted actually) and updated version showed King really wasn’t paying attention. He should have consulted his kids.
The bit that bothered me the most was that Larry Underwood’s mother makes a reference to Frank Sinatra, unchanged from the earlier published version, indicating he was the big heartthrob of her youth. In the updated version this would have made her exceedingly long in the tooth when she produced Larry. Even in the late 70s it seemed a bit dated. A simple change from Sinatra to Elvis would have fixed it in few keystrokes. Was nobody paying attention?
I’ve actually enjoyed a lot of King’s stuff but gave up on him because he is so persistently wrong in his politics and hasn’t learned a thing since his twenties. This is a guy who named his oldest child after a martyred activist who was almost certainly guilty of the crime for which he was hung. Worse, this was a guy who was still hating on Reagan long after the Cold War was won and the man long dead.
“Mexicali Pork-Grippe” alone was worth the price of admission.
My own take is here – with a Hat-Tip to you included.