Man Martin's Blog, page 197

Asterix

For my last brithday, my daughter Catherine got me the board game Asterix and Obelix.  She knows what a fan I am, on a previous occasion she got me two hard-rubber figurines.She and her then fiancee were sweet enough to play me a game.  You may notice that the box is labeled in German: the cartoon was a big international hit. The Asterix comics were the creation of French cartoonists Goscinny and Uderzo, the story of a single Gaulish village holding out against the Roman empire.  They were made invincible by a magic potion from their druid, Getafix.  The stories were silly and convoluted, gorgeously illustrated, and laden with puns and word-play.  The speech of minor characters from other lands was rendered in different lettering so the Goths spoke in that all-but-unreadable Old English script and Ptennisnet, the Egyptian, spoke in hieroglyphics.  Of course, a lot of their puns don't translate directly from French to English, so that the dog Idee Fixe, for example, becomes Dogmatix in English.
I'm not sure I get the last frame in the above - why would the centurion think they'e giggling unless Obelix's "that's the lot," sounds like a giggle to a Roman?  I think the French is "c'est la tout," but that sounds like a sneeze.
One of their panels still floors me each time I think of it.  The pirates below have just had the misfortune to encounter Asterix and Obelix.


The gag, of course, is the representation of the Raft of the Medusa by Gericault (Pronounced Jericho.)


But here's the thing - how would the word "framed" have the same two meanings in French as it does in English, and would our pronunciation of Gericault as Jericho (as in Joshua fit the battle of...) match theirs?  How is it possible for such an elaborate pun to work in two different languages?  And how would it have worked in German?
Don't tell me, I'd rather enjoy the mystery.
By the way, if you're curious about the outcome of the game: I won.

Summer Wardrobe

"You're not going out like that?" Nancy asked me.
We were headed to the Publix to buy our weekly supply of commestibles, and I was attired in my summer wardrobe: drawstring shorts, a stained t-shirt, brown rubber-soled clogs, and an old Panama Jack hat the color of a chain-smoker's lung (to protect my head from sunburn.) In fairness, I was intending to take off the hat.
I do not fully understand the cause of Nancy's concern.  It is unlikely she is worried they will refuse to offer us service - in similar attire I've gone on shopping errands assuming that people will think I'm either so incredibly stinking rich I don't care how I look or else I'm deranged.  Either way, I get speedy service.  Maybe she's concerned that someone will snap a picture of me and I'll end up an internet sensation, like those photo galleries of actual customers who've chosen to go to the WalMart in zebra-print tank tops and thigh-high go-go boots.  I doubt that though.  Most likely what concerns her is what people will think of her for being with me.
There are people who love picking out clothes.  For them, going shopping for their seasonal wardrobe is a delight and they can spend half an hour happily standing before their closests just thinking about what they will wear.  I do not understand these people.  During the school year, I wear an unvarying uniform, green shirt with the school logo and khaki pants.  One of the draws for me coming to the school was that I wouldn't have to think about what to wear.  Right now I'm typing this in black drawstring shorts a "spirit shirt" from my former high school (owing to a misprint, instead of "Stephenson," it reads "Stephensonson" so they gave them away for free)  I'm just on the patio, so I'm not wearing shoes.  It's early in the morning, so I don't have on my hat.  I'm wearing a pair of slightly smeary reading glasses purchased at the Dollar Store and another pair hooked into the collar of my t-shirt.
Judge me if you will.

Who Doesn't Like Waffle House?

A Waffle House menu featuring The All Star Breakfast
(upper left).  I was unable to find visual documentation
of a sight that is actually quite common:
a view of a Waffle House from the front door
of another Waffle House.The other day Nancy told me the most astounding thing: she has a friend who does not like Waffle House!
Nancy had mentioned to her that we were traveling over the Memorial Day weekend, and how we looked forward to glutting ourselves on a stupendous Waffle House breakfast - a treat we can only allow ourselves on special occasions lest we balloon up like unto the hippopatomi that diet not and neither can they see their toes.  Well Nancy's friend made a comment like, "Feh."  ("Feh" was her actual word unless I mistake.)  "Who likes Waffle House?"
At the time Nancy revealed this astonishing news we were seated in the booth having just been served our four plates apiece of breakfast.  The All Star Breakfast - waffles, eggs, bacon, toast, hashbrowns - requires at least three plates to serve.
In my opinion, a person who doesn't like Waffle House is the same sort of person who's too snooty to consider stepping into a WalMart or eating cold pizza for breakfast.  The sort of person who's never - even for one minute - watched roller derby or will admit to being licked on the face by a golden retriever.  This is not a person who'll pull and eat fresh crackling from a smoked pig sitting in a wheelbarrow, as I have done.  In short, a snob.
Waffle Houses are more plentiful in the southeast than Baptist Churches and in fact, I've thought churches could shore up flagging membership by offering waffles and syrup at communion instead of bread and wine, but for some reason, around north Tennessee, they begin to peter out, and disappear entirely at the Mason-Dixon.  This is a mystery and one of the things that makes me suspiscious of northerners.
People who don't like Waffle House are the sort of people who can't enjoy their food if their waitress calls them "darlin" or smokes Marlboro Lights on breaks.  They don't like it if the men in the next booth have baseball caps but not shirt sleeves and have just come from a construction site and are discussing NASCAR.  They don't like ordering from a menu with pictures, although really, nothing could be handier or simpler; the bashful teen mother en route to a parole hearing for smashing out the headlights of her boyfriend's pickup need not speak the words but can just point to the desired items. 
There are some things, of course, the man of discernment won't eat at a Waffle House.  The posters on the walls announced that the t-bone steak was bidding adieu.  I have never eaten a Waffle House steak, and the news that soon I would lose the opportunity forever left me unmoved.  But I love Waffle House and I don't give a damn who knows it.  I just love it.

Rest in Peace, Doc Watson

I frist heard Doc Watson on an album my mother owned, singing "Froggy Went a Courtin'"  I was too young to separate the musicianship from the personality of Doc.  There were interminable verses, filled in with Doc's funny voices and sound effects.  I didn't realize he was a great musician, I thought he was just someone funny that I'd like to know, maybe an uncle.  Here's a video of two lost greats - Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson playing in an impromptu pickup band in Doc's backyard.  It starts with a commercial, I'm sorry to say, but what the hell.  Listen to the music, but listen to the intro first: how completely ingenuous and without pretense these men are.  I stand by my earlier pronouncement.  They were great musicians, of course, but more than that, they were people you'd like to know.  Maybe in heaven I will.

Stoopid Contest: May 30

The STOOPID CONTEST: May 30th


Can you identify the movie title represented by the cartoon below? Send your guess, along with your name and address, to manmartin@manmartin.net One entry, chosen at random from the correct answers will receive an autographed copy of Paradise Dogs, hand delivered to your hide-out, hovel, or basement apartment by a PAID REPRESENTATIVE OF THE US GOVERNMENT.


 "Moo-ha-ha-ha!  As soon as I throw this switch,
off you go into the infinitely distant future!" 

The previous contest was won by Mark Berryman of Bowman, Georgia. Mark says if at first you don't succeed, destroy the evidence that you ever tried.  Mark wins a copy of Paradise Dogs.
He thinks he's a chicken. She can't spell "BMW."They were made for each other!
"Crazy, Stupid Love"

Moping

Okay, I'll admit.  Last week I was moping.  I'm over it now, but I was moping pretty hot and heavy for a while there.  The reason was I learned I'd torn my ACL for the second time, and now over the summer, instead of running a triathalon sprint with my daughter like I planned, I'm going to have surgery and physical therapy.  So I moped.
I'm over it now, and I apologize to everyone, especially my wife and my friend Mike Burr to whom I subjected the intensest bombardment of mopiness radiation.
At this point I will digress to tell a seemingly unrelated story from my childhood, which at the end of, I will tie together in a way that will not only return to the theme of my torn ACL and my erstwhile mopiness, but touch on some universal of the human condition and give the reader a thought to ponder.
Here goes.
One Christmas I got a lunchbox.  Those were simpler days, of course, but I don't want the reader to infer that was all I got; I got a host of other goodies; nevertheless, it's the box I recall.  It was black with two chrome snaps, exactly like the one used by Ralph Cramden on the Honeymooners.  Better yet, it had a matching thermos with a twist-off cup and lid which I imagined carrying tomato soup.  School was out, but I played with my lunchbox all morning.  Actually, "played with" is too strong a phrase; the lunchbox was a passive though crucial part of my game.  I stowed it in my tricycle's back basket of and pedaled like wild around the carport.  I was heading to work!  I was running late!  I'd nearly left my lunchbox with its thermos of tomato soup!  In short, I was playing Ralph Cramden, or if not him, an amalgam of mildly comical adults in the midst of their busy lives with places to go and things to do, unlike me who had no better use for his time than pedaling a tricycle with an empty lunchbox around the carport .
I took a sharp turn and tipped over.  I was unhurt, but from the direction of the lunchbox, I heard an unexpected tinkling.  I unscrewed the thermos and discovered that in addition to its screw-on cup and lid it had another, unsuspected chamber which unscrewed as well.  When I did this, out issued a rain of little silver mirrors.  I understood nothing of the the principle by which a thermos maintains the temperature of liquids, yet I knew without needing an adult to explain, that in some way I had broken it, completely and irreparably, and that while it might appear a thermos to the outward and casual eye, it was a thermos in fact, no longer.
Nothing can match the matchless shame of a five year-old.  I told no one.  I picked up each silver shard and threw it in the garbage can, something in my throat and stomach as dark and heavy as the thunderclouds that rolled in just then to cover the sun.  I came in with my mutilated lunchbox and concealed it in a way that would appear I was only neatly putting it away, useless now and lighter by the weight of its missing inner chamber, and yet as heavy and joyless in my hand as the sky and my sinking stomach.
Even had I dared to share this crime with an adult, I could not have articulated my emotions, and I'm not sure I can now, but what so upset me was not just the thermos itself, but the news, which was still news to my five year-old heart, is that I lived in a world in which things got broken, and when they did, often as not, the guilt for breaking them would fall on me.  The adult world, I foresaw, was more than a mildly comical rush to important destinations: it was a world in which loss and shame were integral and increasingly frequent themes.
I think that's why I moped about my ACL (See, I told you we'd end up back here.)  Just the same news, still capable of disheartening me now that I'm older by a factor of ten.  Things break and tear.  Nothing lasts forever.
I'm heading to the Y today to do some weights.  I'll swim and ride my bike, and next year, by golly, I'll do my triathalon.  I'm fifty-three and a torn ACL can't keep me down long.  You get over an ACL. 
It's that first broken lunchbox you never get over.

An Open Letter to Vickie Anderson on Whom I Had a Crush in Ms Hussein’s Third Grade at Ft Pierce Elementary

Dear Vickie:


I do not know if you will see this letter, or if you do, if you will remember me. Part of me earnestly hopes you do neither. I sat one seat to the right and rear of you in Miss Hussein’s third grade class in Ft Pierce, Florida; I moved the following year to Georgia, and you had entered school in March, so our paths crossed only briefly. Nevertheless, I remember you well.

If you have our class photo, I’m in the red bow-tie second from the back, third from the left. I am smiling broadly, which means the picture was taken before the April Ho-Down. Next to me is Darren, my best friend, or rather who had inserted himself into that slot without asking; I was drawn to Grady, the gregarious red-haired hooligan, second from the right in the front row, but once during recess Darren struck up a friendship out of the blue, which I was too polite to rebuff. I knew letting Darren glom onto me ruined any chance for a real friend at Ft Pierce Elementary; because of his body odor that suggested he’d had an accident in his pants, others would naturally assume that either I had a bad smell myself, or – just as unforgivable – that I liked people who did, or – nearly as unforgivable – that I didn’t know the difference.

Please don’t think me callous and shallow for this, just the opposite; I accepted Darren as my sort-of best friend in spite of the social handicap entailed. My vegetarian mother raised me to be unusually sensitive of others; when passing the second graders en route to lunch, we traditionally chanted, “Second grader babies, second grader babies,” to the nasal tune of “Yanner-nanner-nanner.” When returning, fourth graders passed us, who likewise chanted, “Third grader babies, third grader babies.” I saw through the hollowness of this, and while not enlightening my peers about mindless perpetuation of pointless cruelty down the generations, I did not participate in the chanting either, which I think indicates my good character. Moreover, for Valentine’s Day, I deliberately selected my largest and nicest Valentine for Jackie, the fat girl whom everyone picked on. To be strictly truthful, I don’t recall anyone ever actually picking on her, but I believe many had planned on doing it, and I’m sure in the fullness of time, they did. I also admit that Valentine-giving in Ms Hussein’s class was anonymous so Jackie never knew whence the card came, but I’m sure it cheered her to receive what was clearly a very large and nice Valentine. In the spirit of perfect candor, I will go on to say I may have taken part in chanting “Second grader babies” one time, but I stopped after that first occasion, and I think my honesty in coming forward with this now, when I don’t have to, speaks very well for me.

I was too shy to talk to you, and if you had a crush on anyone, it would have been Grady, for which I don’t blame you. He was a swaggering rascal with a sense of rough justice for which he was universally admired. My one fond fantasy was taking your hand at the April Ho-Down and dose-e-doeing you across the gym floor, flanked by clapping third-graders. That was all I wanted or hoped, that I could hold your hand, which I knew would be cool and soft and fit in mine like a small tame bird. All week our class fashioned bandannas and cowboy hats out of construction paper, and festooned the gym with gaudy construction-paper chains. Ms. Hussein put on an album of grade-appropriate Ho-Down music, “Turkey in the Straw” and “Froggy Went a’Courting.” Your first dances, of course, were for Grady, but Grady was a rover, as we all knew, and soon his attention was elsewhere. Darren was dancing with a partner of his own, and I was alone. This was my moment. You were sitting at the sidelines, raising a paper cup of Hawaiian Punch to your pink lips, and I went over. I bowed in facetious formality and offered my hand. I believe you were on the cusp of accepting it, and the record, which had finished “Coming Round the Mountain” fell silent except for a sibilant hiss.

I have mentioned my mother was a vegetarian, these days quite common, but in the late ‘60’s still considered eccentric, one of the drawbacks to a diet of beans and rice being the associated flatulence, especially in young digestive systems already prone to gaseousness, especially at times of anxiety or social pressure.

Vegetarian farts have no smell; this is not just my opinion or wishful thinking, but a generally acknowledged truth. The report however, amplified by my standing slightly bent over and the echoing gym walls as well as the silence between songs, ruined whatever tender memory I might have treasured. For a few beats there was a lull, and then the record broke in with “Oh, Susanna!” which seemed an ironic commentary on what had just occurred, and then the gym burst into gales of laughter as I turned heel and slunk hot-faced to the punchbowl.

The class construed this catastrophe as a daring jest on my part, that I had been “saving up” and waiting for just the right moment to let fly in gallant mockery of all the sham pretense of April Ho-Down, and also in mockery and contempt of you, Vickie Anderson, the prettiest girl in third grade, and I was coward enough to let them do so. For this I am ashamed, not for the fart, which I couldn’t help, but for letting you and the others believe that I was making fun of you. My mother got a job in Georgia, and we moved away that summer, which came as both a relief and an additional burden, that I never got to mend fences with you or explain my actions.

Forgive me now, Vickie. Forgive me now.

– Man

Another Reason I Never Made it as a Cartoonist

My Monkish Fantasy

The other day I told Nancy I thought I'd like to try out being a monk.
She gave me one of those looks of hers I have so much difficulty interpreting, where the eyebrows flex and straighten, one side of the mouth goes up, and one side goes down, like she's studying a very large, multi-segmented insect and can't decide whether she finds it comical or repulsive.  "Yes," she said.  "Become a monk.  That's exactly what you ought to do."
She was in the process of cleaning out the silverware drawer.  Somehow every fork, knife, and spoon, as well as the inside of the drawer itself had become coated with melted butter pecan ice cream.  I know it was butter pecan because when she opened the drawer, she asked, "What is this?"  I came over and dipped a finger in the liquid and tasted.
"Butter pecan," I told her.  She had just returned from a business trip to Orlando and, as seems so frequently the case after coming home from such junkets, was not in the best of moods.  She did not acknowledge my helpfulness in identifying the liquid, and in fact seemed more displeased than otherwise, so I steered clear of her.
My monkish fantasy strikes me whenever Nancy is away on business.  There's a monastery somewhere nearby where laymen can check in for an extended stay to share the tranquil spirituality of the brothers.  Wouldn't that be lovely?  But then, why go to all the trouble of moving into a monastery when one can adopt the monkish lifestyle in one's own home?
Whenever Nancy's going to be gone for a week, I imagine myself falling into my role at Brother Man, a humble, godly monk, going about his daily routine with the humble godliness so characteristic of him.  I would start with a simple breakfast of oatmeal (I would not call it porridge, that would be overdoing it.) after which I would wash the bowl and pot with simple prayerful mindfulness of all the Lord's gifts, as I watched my neighbors, the birds, go after the suet treats I have hanging from the eaves outside the window.  Then, light exercise and tending my simple garden, until lunch, when I might have a leafy salad with berries, and on special occasions, chunks of wild-caught grilled chicken.  Again, I would clean after my repast, then journaling, reading, and meditation for supper, for which I would enjoy maybe a nice lean piece of fish, snow peas, and that little pasta that looks like rice.  Perhaps a single glass of picturesque red wine and one of those apples like Cezanne painted where you realize the apples in those days weren't as good as what we have now.  I would clean up a final time, give the floor a good sweep, return the broom to the broom closet, and read until "lights out," when I would pull the chain on my beside lamp (my beside lamp does not have a chain except in this fantasy) and sleep until my routine began again.
Somehow it never works out this way.  I get derailed.  I think it begins when I wake up.  I realize how foolish it is, and wasteful of time, to make the bed when I'm only going to unmake it by getting in a few hours from now, so I leave it as it is, as no doubt Jesus and Siddhartha once did themselves.  Then for breakfast, it seems equally silly to go to the trouble of oatmeal, when we have perfectly nutritious single-serve containers of yogurt in the fridge.  I eat a couple of these, fully intending to throw them away, but getting absorbed in Internet searches for important information and games of free cell, I somehow neglect this.  Lunch comes and I'm famished.  I don't have leafy greens, and actually don't care for that sort of thing, but it strikes me as almost as good to have a "walking salad," apple smeared with peanut butter and raisins.  I've already gotten out the peanut butter and had a sample tablespoonful, when I realize we don't have any apples.  Nor crackers.  Nor white bread.  Only an atheist will eat peanut butter on whole wheat.  So I eat the peanut butter straight from the jar along with handfuls of raisins.  A half-eaten jar of peanut butter with a spoon in it, a bag of raisins - some spilled onto the floor, where my office chair steamrolls them into large black dots - join the yogurt cups beside my computer while I hone my potentially-vital minesweeper skills.
For supper, I'm craving a good juicy rib eye.  I've spent the last four hours watching reruns of the original Dark Shadows, from which I'm gathering additional research for an as yet unspecified future project, and I find it laughable anyone could waste time on such jejune entertainment.
I cook rib eyes the way my mother did, thrown into the oven still frozen with the broiler set on high.  Knowing that dinner will be awhile, I get out the box of butter pecan ice cream.  Conscious that I still have not tidied my meager breakfast and lunch things, I decide to save dirtying a bowl by eating the ice cream straight from the box as my steak broils. 
The fascinating thing about Dark Shadows, a show with many fascinating qualities, I have begun to realize, is just how many episodes there are.  Although it ran for only a short time, there was a new episode each day, so there are hundreds of them.  They had gotten past the part where Barnabas Collins attempts to cure his vampirism with blood transfusions, and into the episodes with the parallel universe when I notice a smokey haze filling the intervening distance between me and the TV screen.  I leap from the chair, realizing the delicious aroma of cooking steak has become the delicious aroma of burning steak.  I turn off the oven and extinguish the flames, and enjoy my steak - carbonized on the outside with little bloody ice crystals at the core as I watch the further adventures of Colinwood.  The thing is, that the episodes move with such arduous, excruciating slowness; it's like watching an old man climb a flight of stairs: the cane goes on the first step, a pause for reflection, then the left foot joins it, another pause, then the right foot, a pause, then the cane goes to the second step.  Finally, I have to call it quits, as vital as this research is, because it's nearly midnight and we still haven't caught sight of the extraterrestrials the script writers have been hinting at and dancing around for the last three hours.
The next morning I arise, and knowing this is the day Nancy returns, make the bed.
I enter the living room, and then begins the tempest to my soul.  I think it's seeing it through her eyes that makes it so terrible.  Much of the wreckage I can account for, even if I don't remember it being quite as bad as it now appears, but some of it is frankly mysterious.  For example, what possessed me to leave all these clothes lying on the floor of the shower?  It's almost as if some evil and extremely messy vampire had visited and left his calling card.  The greasy steak plate, the yogurt containers, the raisins, and peanut butter are easily taken care of.  The odor from scorched beef is harder to deal with, and expending an entire aerosol can of freshener - which upon studying the label more closely proves to be hairspray - does little to amend the problem.  This however pales in comparison to the sight of the gallon bucket of butter pecan ice cream which I neglected to put in the refrigerator and is still sitting on the counter. 
Thank goodness, when I pick up the container, I discover it's empty.  It looks as if the good Lord is watching over me after all.
All of which makes me think of how pleasant it would be to be a monk for a little while.  I think I'd be good at it.

What Chickens Taught Me About Writing

We writers worry if writing is too hard. After pounding our heads against the same obdurate wall for too long, it’s natural to think that maybe we’re taking the wrong tack – maybe instead of pounding, if we felt along that same wall eighteen inches to the right, we’d find a handy latch to an unlocked door. Or maybe we’re working on the wrong thing altogether: maybe this story, or poem, or essay doesn’t want to be written. Or not written by us, anyway. If it doesn’t come natural, maybe we shouldn’t do it.
But we’re also worried if writing is too easy. If the words flow out like un-stoppered dishwater, then maybe dishwater’s what they are: filmy, tepid, thoroughly-used.
So is writing supposed to be easy or hard? When should we be concerned and when cocksure?
A couple of days ago, I opened the pop-door of my coop to check for eggs, and saw my chicken Sorche in the act of laying an egg, not as rare a sight as beholding the Eastern Gossamer emerge from her cocoon, but unusual enough to take a careful visual inventory when it happens. There was no mistaking what she was up to. She was not lying down as you might expect, but half-standing, knees bent at 40-degree angles. (You must recall that chicken knees bend backward to ours, for an accurate image of this.) Her breathing was calm, her beak set in a resolute frown, her eye – normally as expressive as an average collar button – wore a look of determination mixed with pensive reflection, an expression that I can only describe – and now as I’m about to write it, the word becomes obvious – as brooding.
Chickens do not rank high among nature’s nobility. When speaking of the avian kingdom’s glory and wonder, chickens do not spring readily to mind. They are not bright. They are poor flyers. Their plumage could not be called magnificent, or even gaudy. Seeing chickens trot across the yard for leftover grits will bring a laugh to the lips of even the most careworn. But at that moment, Sorche had dignity; I do not lie or jest, there was a solemnity to the moment to which I was an uninvited witness. I closed the pop-door at once, and waited until she emerged a few minutes later, worthily tired and a few ounces lighter; then I reached back in and extracted the still-warm egg from where she’d left it in the straw.
Here is the thing I keep returning to – how humbly yet seriously she went about this daily chore. Granted, Rhode Island Reds are bred to do exactly this, and I know she doesn’t choose to lay eggs, but still – ! She goes through the miracle of childbirth every day, and she neither complains, nor brags, nor frets if she’s doing it right.
And this is what Sorche has taught me about writing – it isn’t much, but how much wisdom can you expect from a chicken? It’s hard to articulate, but it has something to do with patience and humility. So I’m going back to work now; I’ll close the pop-door of my office, grit my beak, and brace myself against the impact of the muse, and I won’t leave until something comes out of me. And I’ll try to learn what every chicken already knows: just because it comes natural doesn’t mean it comes easy.