CSotD: We’re ALL with Stupid
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Let's start with stupid today and work our way up.
Gags about saggy blue jeans and other teen fashions are the stuff of lame, burned-out old hacks, but today's Bizarro is more incisive, probing beyond Andy Rooney and getting into more dangerous Bill Cosby territory.
I was a huge Bill Cosby fan in my early teen years. But as he went from joking about his angry father to being the angry father himself, my laughter began to fade.
There is an ocean of difference between "I'm going to turn this car around!" and "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out."
The break — or "break through" — came when Loveable Cliff Huxtable went to court to watch his wife, fresh out of law school and new to the bar, try her first case. Loveable Cliff sat in the back and, part way through the trial, began to remark to the fellow next to him that this lady attorney was pretty hot, then ramped it up to betting that he could score with her.
When the trial ended and she had won, Loveable Cliff went up to her and gave her a hug, and winked back at the guy as if to say, "She may be smart, but she's easy!"
And the hostility and arrogance behind Loveable Cliff snapped into sharp focus.
At least there was a suggested "Don't be like this guy" sign hung around Archie Bunker's neck. We were supposed to admire Cliff Huxtable, but the more I heard him direct his passive-aggressive and not-so-passive-aggressive barbs at his family, the more I was glad I didn't have that son of a bitch as a father.
So when it comes to riffing on those crazy kids and their crazy fashions, I'd rather be clueless Andy Rooney than hostile Bill Cosby.
Actually, I'd rather be David Byrne, who long ago remarked that the wierd hair, piercings and other purposely anti-social trappings of punk were a thumb-to-the-nose at Thatcher's jobless nation, a statement from people who couldn't find work that, "I didn't want one of your dumb old jobs anyway."
I suspect there is some of that in the current fashion of looking like, well, a slack-jawed moron, but it's more sweeping than that.
Punks, after all, affected an air of "I'm so much smarter than you."
The first time I saw a "Beavis and Butthead" t-shirt, my (inner) response was "You do realize they are making fun of kids like you, right?"
And I've never gotten an answer to that question.
But it's bad enough to put kids in an economy so hopeless that they feel compelled to look unemployable to dull the sting of being unemployed.
Putting them in a world in which they feel compelled to look stupid to dull the sting of feeling stupid is a whole other level of failure.
I linked to Ron White the other day, with his signature wisecrack that "you can't fix stupid."
No, but you can build it from scratch.
Tune in for a new adventure
My frequent-collaborator Chris Baldwin has wrapped up "Spacetrawler" and launched his new comic adventure, One Way, this morning. Bookmark it and settle back.
And a theological question
Christmas is over but late deliveries are not and, besides, this is the Sixth Day of Christmas, so your true love's presents should still be pouring in. And Arlo and Janis is the official comic strip of true love.
But every year, a question arises about this song: Is each day only a single set of gifts, or does the lucky recipient end up, by Twelfth Night, with a dozen partridges in a dozen pear trees and so on and so forth?
I see it as additive, and, while Janis now — with the addition of the two that were back-ordered — has the full complement of six geese a-laying for those who feel the song merely adds the last gift each verse, the way I envision it, she should eventually have 42 geese a-laying.
I'll admit that six geese a-laying is probably sufficient, if they are actively laying.
From left to right, chicken, duck, turkey, goose.
A goose egg is pretty much a meal in itself, and so having 42 geese popping these things out with any regularity would feed m'lady's entire household and she'd still have enough left over for all those lords a-leaping, ladies dancing and so forth.
Still, this is about love, not home economics.
Men feel it's better to give a potted plant than cut flowers, too, but part of the romance is the impractical nature of a gift.
And you can't get a whole lot more impractical than 42 geese a-laying and an equal number of swans a-swimming.
And a second theological question
I'll have some year-end stuff tomorrow or the next day, but Edison Lee poses a question to ponder.
Orville would have kept 1955. I was the prisoner of a psychotic nun through much of 1955, so he can have that one. I might take 1958, not so much for the first part as the second.
Third-grade was no great shakes, but the summer I was eight was that magic time when you're old enough to go play without supervision but young enough that not much is expected of you. And fourth grade gave me the best teacher I would ever have, and, fortunately, I knew she was cool: She was old-school in a literal sense, having taught for years in a rural one-room school before our centralized district was formed.
But let's play with this fantasy a bit, because it's one of my favorites: Imagine that you get to the Pearly Gates and St. Peter says, "You're in, but, before you start your time here, you get to go back to Earth and relive one year of your life. Not necessarily a calendar year; you can choose any 12-month period. But you have to go through it all, without any cuts, both the highs and the lows."
Choose.
Nat King Cole: He wasn't just for Christmas, young'uns.
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