"Hey, Chica!"

So I'm down in Los Gatos for my 40th high school reunion.  I walking across the big North Santa Cruz, Hiway 9 intersection.  There's a heavyset woman with long black hair walking in front of me.  Because of her hair style, clothing, and the way she walked, I figured she was younger than myself.  (She wore blue jeans and dark t-shirt and her hair didn't look "done.")  As we are crossing, a red Cadillac convertible with some youngish men rolled by and one of the guys hollers, "Hey, Chica!"  I say "youngish" because the late afternoon sun was glaring against my dark glasses and I couldn't see them all that well.

So, what does it mean?

First, because there was a group of young men in the car, I assume that the targets for this shout were not only the long-haired woman and myself (wearing black t-shirt and black pedal-pushers) but also the other men and anyone else in a car with a window down.  Therefore, this shout could have meant any or all of the following:

1.  I am a rich young man who has the power and right to make noise in this rich town.
 2.  You are a Hispanic woman and therefore of lower class than I so I have the right to shout at you.
3.  I am really a cool guy because I'm riding in this red Caddy and I want you all to see me.
4.  Look, I have the power to intimidate women from a moving vehicle.
5.  I must have a lot of testosterone because I'm so hot for anything that moves that I have to shout from a moving vehicle.
6.  I am actually from a poorer section of the Valley and this behavior is part of my cultural heritage.
7.  I'm petite bourgeois but I want you to think that I'm poor because poor people have street cred and god knows I need some.
8.  I'm a gay boy and I'm behaving ironically.

It's impossible, of course, to know how the shot was intended.  And, of course, communication is a transaction.  I found the shout annoying and disconcerting and perhaps that was it's message.  "Hey, middle aged woman!  Men in red Caddy convertibles are annoying and disconcerting and I just wanted you to know that!" (9)

Dexter Season 5 SPOILER ALERT

There are two class-based killings in Season 5 of Dexter.  These killings give us insight into the demographic that supports Dexter.  The first killing is the "tearing apart" with an anchor of a guy who says, "Well, your wife can suck my dick."  He is ugly and doesn't use language well.  He is the class opposite of your well-educated, lower middle class, "my dad was a cop" Dexter.

Dexter needs to fit with whatever demographic downloads it, rents it, buys it, or watched it on HBO the first season.   I've relied on Netflix until Season 5, when I turned to one of the free "Watch Dexter Free Online" sites.

So what do we see in the Guy in the Restroom?  He insults women, he speaks in a dialect, he sneers, he's not attractive, his clothes don't quite fit him.  Yeah, it's ok to kill him.  If the viewer is a middle aged woman.

What about the creepy ex-cop who makes use of the video and tapes Dexter showing Lumen how to make a downward kill-thrust?  Well, we dislike him because he's crass.  The tv show, however, also wants us to dislike him because he is "dogg'ed."  This is more difficult.  It's only by being persistent that people from the wrong class can work their way into the appropriate sphere. 

Upshot -- the viewers of Dexter are "hailed" by this pop cult test into the position of believing it's okay to murder men because they are crass, crude, and tough. 

NCIS

Another reason I value NCIS is the mentor/mentee relationship between Gibbs and his subordinates.  He is gruff, demanding, quietly loving, and absolutely loyal.  We see the model of Gibb's leadership in his own association with Mike Franks.  These men remain psychologically close even though they rarely see each other or speak.  Each knows that the other is there if needed.  This season's (the 8th) finale featured the great ritualized event of Mike Franks' funeral.  (See Wikipedia's  entry on Jethro Gibbs.)

If the paragraph above sounds like a turn in an ongoing conversation, it is.  I've been thinking about NCIS for a few seasons and presented a PowerPoint on the program last year at the Pacific-Northwest Division Conference of the Community College Humanities Association.  In my presentation, I started with the axiomatic assumption that all popular texts both support the dominant ideology AND support the minds of individuals seeking to manage the challenges of their lives.  The nastiest bit of ideological work that the show performs is justifying the "total surveillance society."  What it offers in return is a vision of a family of workplace friends who accept each others' foibles (as long as such quirks don't involve workplace incompetence) and grant each other absolute loyalty.  What I've been thinking about the past few weeks is how I've also hoped for a relationship like the one between Gibbs and Franks.  Loving, protective, admiring.

But such a relationship can't really exist in my profession.  The bond among those whose work involves the management of death is simply different than the one that is forged among those who don't face life's ending with regularity.

What does being 12 years old mean?

You see, we were talking about the parlous nature of our past relationship. 

And I said, “I’m fifty-effing-seven years old.”*  By this I imagined that I was indirectly sending the message that I no longer have the energy or the inclination to go all intense just to jack up my norepinephrine levels.

I don’t know what my friend’s internal interpretation of my statement was.  We are two very different people. 

The external interpretation was in the response given to my statement.  This response suggested that my claim to being well aged and mellow (like Laphroig) wasn’t a legitimate guarantee that my relational performance in the future would be of sufficient difference from that of the past.  (Yes, dear interpersonal communication students, I am NOT a perfect practitioner of all I teach.  I understand the concepts.  I just can’t always do the skills both efficiently and effectively.)

My friend’s response was, “(Inside?) We’re still 12 years old” in a “gestural” vocal tone accompanied by a sweep of the arm. 

While I could not see my own face, I think it may have been registering confusion or disagreement because after a couple of beats of silence this phrase was added: “Well, 13 years old.”

What does it mean to be a 12 years old thought pattern inside of a 57 year old body?

How was I at 12?  I was in 7^th grade which means that I hadn’t yet learned and then purposefully unlearned how to use John Kennedy’s assassination, just two year’s passed, to make myself cry.   That year I spent several months talking in a faux-Liverpudlian accent that went with the three cheap plastic rings I wore on each hand.  My two girlfriends, Robin and Julie, pretended to be Paul and John.  I don’t think we had anyone to play George. 

Were we crazy or simply 7^th graders in the throes of the hormonal disruption of adolescence?

Also, by the age of 12, I had flunked and continued to flunk the gender test.

Oh yes.  One of the games kids played in 6^th grade was to ask someone to do some common behavior:  “look at your fingernails” or “sit down and cross your legs.”  And then, whatever you did, they explained it as either a “girl” or “boy” behavior.  And if you responded as the wrong sex, of course you got picked on.  Yeah, yeah.  Not as rotten as kids today have it and . . . HEY YOU KIDS, GET OFF OF MY LAWN!  Dag nabbit!

Anyway.  Oh, yes.  Well, of course you must have guessed as soon as I learned what the list for “boy,” was, I performed THOSE, not the “girl behaviors.”  I looked at my nails with the palm curved inward, facing me.  As soon as I got into pants each day, I sat with my ankle crossed at the knee.  Those are the only two tests I remember but I’m sure there were more.

Now, what was my motivation?  To be different?  To BE a boy?  To show that there was no difference between boys and girls?  To annoy the living Bjeezuz out of my Mom?

Whatever answer I give at this age and this point in time has a lot more to do with the audience who is in front of me and what I think they need to get from the story than with any accessible “truth.”

So, was I interested in boys at thirteen? Thirteen was eighth grade, when most of my girly excitement was taken up with following the careers of Bobby Kennedy and Ilya Kuryakin I had a chance to see the former on the University of Santa Clara campus in a smallish theatre and acted (with the other 8^th grade girls) much as though he were a Beatle – our cheers too much like screams.  I joined the latter’s fan club.**

So.  What was my friend’s experience at age 12?  Deep interest in politics and government?  Excessive hormonal discharge resulting in parasocial relationships?  Looking forward to serving our country?  An interest in becoming rather than being with the opposite sex?  And what about at age 13? ***

All sensemaking is retrospective.  We give explanations after we do what we do. I know that whatever story I’m giving must by its nature be an attempt at audience adaptation.

Unless of course, Kenneth Burke was right that that it’s possible, it’s conceivable, that people may sometimes, though far more rarely than we imagine, speak expressively rather than rhetorically, to the universe instead of to (an) Other(s)

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*Note to new VPI:  I don’t use profane or  obscene language in front of my students (unless it’s the focus of part of a lesson or a comment to be published in The Broadside) but the blogosphere does, I believe, have different standards of speech than the classroom.

** And have thought about the actor David McCallum’s aging often since becoming a fan of NCIS and catching the episode of Madmen in which he was Sally Draper’s pre-teen heart throb. 

*** Speaking of Thirteen, aren’t you glad she came back to House?  I know I am. 

Elevator Pitch for Wine

I've been thinking about the "elevator speech," wondering if I should add it to my public speaking class activities.  An "elevator pitch" is a short (one minute or less) promotional presentation selling oneself or a product to another person who is riding the elevator with you (or in a similar, trapped position in which they need to listen to your proposal). 

Tom Kelly from Enoteca Website

At yesterday afternoon's Newport Market wine tasting (you'll notice they don't take their web presence seriously), I was observing elevator pitch's for wine.  A handsome young man named Tom Kelley, the Northwest Ambassador of Small Vineyards, a division of August Wine Group, was pouring four delicious Italian wines.  Shortly after the tasting began, he was giving a short pitch with each pour.  These were memorized and usually contained two or three words about the flavor (rich, jammy, tobacco, etc.), place of origin, and vineyard.  He had pictures of some of the winemakers and a picture of decorative tower with a flock of birds rising upwards.  (Frankly, this particular type of picture annoys me:  the cliche image of architecture with birds in liftoff.)  I picked up a wonderful and very cheap bottle of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo from the La Quercia estate.

I enjoyed hearing each pitch and wondered if he'd have the energy to keep it up until six.  I didn't go back to find out.   But I will got back to buy more of the Montepulciano.

The Meaning of Laschcar

As I walked the dog yesterday, I heard a story on PRI's The World in which reporter Mustafa Quadri talked about "lashcars."  The lashcars are defined as an "anti-Taliban tribal militia, or lashcar."  These words were used by the voice introducing the story.

Then Mr. Quadri, sounding very "classic BBC," tells the sad but millenially common story of an area divided by war.  Much of the story comes through through his editing of his interview with Irshad, a lashcar member from Adezai, a village that had become a fort.  Irshad says he knows about "80 %" of the local Taliban because he was involved in local elections and sporting events before the fighting started.  Now, he says, if a Taliban would pick him up, they'd kill him and if he caught a Taliban, the man would be killed.

This true story saddens and horrifies while making me thankful that I don't live in this situation.

Strangely enough, however, my very first response to the story was my response to the word "laschcar."  It brought a mental image of painting of dark menacing man with long mustachios. On boats.  With big swords.   I think I saw this painting when I was in high school.  (Or, Dr's Freud and Jung, did I just dream of that shadow with its long steal/stele?)  Later on, looking at 19th Century paintings in museums, I would run across pictures of "lascars."  The men in the paintings were dark skinned and usually not presented as heroes of the image.  They were often subsidiary characters, decorations, part of "exotic" locals.

So as I listened to Mr. Quadri's story, I felt he was playing on my old, orientalist biases to get me to think of the Afghanis being as different from me as the Victorians imagined these dark skinned men.

It seems to be true that both laschcar and lascar mean a military group of some kind.  But the lascars were not evil, though they were treated and pictured as far less "good and decent" than the white folks of the Victorian period.  Perhaps to justify their misuse. As historian Diane Robinson-Dunn notes,
they were simply "Asian sailors" or sometimes "Asian or African sailors."  They were predominantly Muslim and dark skinned.  And they have an honorable history.  So the old, "white man's burden" images that popped to mind were probably not what Mr. Quadri was intending me to imagine as I listened to the story.  Though he does spend a lot of time emphasizing the bloodiness of the Afghanee quarrel.

Why not FREEDOM?

My colleague Terry Krueger had an article in the Bend Bulletin today in which he used a metaphor* to describe the growing size of our classroom syllabi.  The tenor of the metaphor was the classroom syllabus.  The vehicle was a novel.  The ground was the concept of "things with many pages."  His point was that the current institutional expectation that we clearly state every possible do or don't and our graded or behavioral response thereto has encouraged us to produce syllabi greater than the 2-6 typed pages  we received when we were but graduate students.

The novel he offered as an example was one known for its length: War and Peace.

Now, my question.  Why use this particular example?  Why not Freedom?  Why not Middlesex?  Why not some other great contemporary tome, popular or literary? 

Perhaps because a more creative metaphor would have called attention to the writing of the piece rather than to the point that appears when we extend the metaphor to the inevitable question, who is going to read either?**

Of course it could be we're looking at one of the differences between a readerly and a writerly text, and because Terry's purpose is persuasive, I think, I think he's probably thinking of his audience.  (That's at least three thoughts and plenty enough for one post.


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*By the way, if you surfed to t-bob's homepage, you could see her interest in Great Pyrenees, an appropriate obsession for a college teacher.  I mean, not everyone can have a poodle.
** If you click to these pages, please make sure you read Dan Coleman's comments.