Why martinis? Could it be Mad Men fever? Actually, it was because of Julie and Julia. They were drinking Martinis in just about every scene. So after the movie, Julie and I (the real Julie) went to CostPlus to obtain the paraphrenelia. Then we went to Safeway to obtain the hooch. Then we came home. I looked up the recipe for Martinis. It’s not too hard, as it turns out. Couple cubes of ice, a bunch of dry gin, a splish of dry vermouth, and shake. I was unable to achieve the full on sexy shake, but nevertheless. Soon we were drinking home-shaken, dry Martinis.

They were OK. I prefer beer.

The only other time I ever drank a Martini? Saudi Arabia, 1989. Things were just peachy in the Gulf before the Gulf War, let me tell you. I was teaching English to Saudi naval cadets. Saudi is as dry a country as they come, hoochwise, as everybody knows. But at the Dharan airbase the U.S. military maintains a tiny bit of sovereignty, sort of a diplomatic briefcase but bigger. And inside that briefcase, you can drink. If you can get in. We got in. To the Officer’s club. So we’re in this semi-swanky space, drinking real drinks (not the homemade beer we drank back in our teacher’s quarters). Everyone was having Martinis, so what the heck, sure, I’d have a Martini. So guess who else was there having Martinis? Norm Schwartzkopf. The US had recently invaded Panama, so my buddy James, who was bold about this sort of thing, talking to generals about classified military operations and such, engaged Mr. Schwartzkopf about it. Norm, I’ll call him Norm from now on since it’s easier to spell, Norm’s a pretty intense character. Especially armed with a Martini. Norm and James went at it a bit, not arguing, but Norm obviously proud and conscious of his power to impress, inhibited by the classified aspects of the story, James trying to get him to spill. Since none of you know James, unless you do, go ahead and picture James Woods, circa Salvador. All politics aside, if you’re going to have a Gulf War, I guess Norm was the guy you’d want to be your general. And if you want someone to needle him about it, James was your man.

Anyhoo, that’s my Martini story. I hope not to have very many more like it.

She says, “Thank you. It’s my design. I am fashion-designer.” Her accent confirms she’s foreign, but I could not identify it, perhaps Russian, but she’s dark, could be eastern European or Turkish, Iranian or something else. I look more closely at the blouse and it’s got silk-screened images of a photograph of the very woman’s own face, cut and arranged into an abstract geometric design.

Clerk continues admiring the design as he bags, and them says, “Well, it looks like you’re doing what you should be doing.”

To which the woman replies. “I am. Are you?”

The clerk is obviously taken aback, and continues bagging her groceries as he searches for a reply, which he eventually comes up with, a half-hearted, insincere-sounding, “I hope not.”

The woman offers a vague sounding inspirational message about keeping your dreams.

She leaves and the clerk greets me. I want to say, “Jeez, you try to give someone a compliment.” But I don’t say that and just say the minimum, “How are you?” “I’m fine”. “Thank you.” And I leave.

Does her reply sound as unkind to other people as it did to me? Would my offer of solidarity to the clerk have been welcome, or reinforced a message that he should feel bad about what he is doing? What kind of person takes a compliment like that and turns it around to insult the complimenter? Why should a fashion-designer feel like her accomplishments need to be recognized as greater than those of the shop clerk? A fashion-designer can be an awful, unhappy person, and a young grocery store clerk can be a happy, cool, spiritually evolved person. Why the need to define one’s self and others by their occupation? What other accomplishments has the clerk made in his young life that could easily be seem as remarkable that totally transcend his occupation?

I know there is a cultural aspect to this that I have not quite figured out. Maybe the woman is conscious of her class and was somehow offended by the person of lower social status presuming to be so forward and friendly (even though that’s typical of this culture, and especially characteristic of this store). Maybe her desire to encourage the young man was totally sincere if awkward, and only came across as an insult as a translation loss.

I recognized this pattern of conversational exchange. I have been on the wrong end of it before.

I remember once chatting with an old high-school friend who was enjoying some success in a local theatrical pursuit. I said how impressed I was, and how glad I was for her and congratulations and all that. Her response was, “What about you? Are you writing? Have you published? What’s stopping you? I am a success and so can you…” In other words, for her to be successful, it meant I had to be viewed as a failure. Words of encouragement which were rooted in one-upmanship. I had not said anything about feeling like a failure or that I was somehow in need of such encouragement. It was gloating.

I also remember another time when I was friendly with a group of born again Christians in college. They seemed so beautiful, happy. Their apartment was so warm and comfortable. They were smart and like to laugh, and they made me laugh which was why I liked them. I felt like was being all open minded. I was kind of a punk in those days — but even though my taste in music was the Clash I was open-minded enough to express appreciation for my hosts soft, easy, jazzy, Christian instrumental stuff (I think it was called “Fresh Air” but I’m having trouble finding info on it, maybe this). Point being I was trying to be a good guest by complimenting them on the stuff of their lives they were sharing with me. Which they immediately saw as an opportunity for some Christian evangelizing (what did I expect?): “We’re blessed. And so can you, if you accept Jesus… You can have all of this and more…” basically was their message. They immediately assumed that because I was being a cordial guest paying them a compliment, that meant I was somehow expressing regrets for my own sorry life. I was far too well behaved (some punk, I know) to do what I should have done, something like piss on the record collection.

But Jesus Christ, can’t people take a compliment?

This makes me realize a bias I have. To me, evidently, the only proper way to accept a compliment is with humility. To not express humility in the face of a compliment, and worse, to express pride in that which is being complimented on, seems to offend me enough to want to piss on people’s records, or at least blog about it. Maybe this is not the only or even best way to receive a compliment, but it’s where I come from. (Some Christians my hosts were.)

I’ve over-thought it, I know. But I would welcome any other aspects to this dynamic or this anecdote if anyone has anything to share. I’m sure I’m missing something, and I grant that this story reveals as much about my own prejudices and insecurities as it reveals about anyone else.

Anyway, that happened.

BTW, try the lemon crisp cookies from TJ’s!

I moved to south Mississippi from Washington State in second grade, 1970. Hurricane Camille had blown through the previous year, wrecking the place. Hurricane Camille was just the most recent past thing that had happened here, whose memory was still so vividly felt, and whose reminders were still so visible. This was just an overlay on top of other past things still felt, still visible. It hadn’t happened to me, but it happened here, and shaped the world I grew up in to be this unique, unmistakable thing.

I was not aware of having a southern accent. I remember hearing southern accents in TV and movies and recognizing them as a stock stereotype, but not recognizing it as supposedly referencing my experience at all, not even enough to critique or reject it. It just meant a stupid man, or an old-fashioned person, or a sort of aristocrat from a bygone era, or a number of other stock southern stereotypes. It was no different to me than other types like the urban Italian American gumbah (Vinnie Barbarino), or the Jewish comic (Mr. Kotter). I actually said “Oy vey” sometimes — I learned Yiddish from Mad magazine and Mel Brooks, before I had any conception of what Jewishness was. I was half-Italian, but the stereotypical TV gumbah was so alien it did not occur to us to be offended.

A few years after we moved south, friends we knew from Washington State also moved down there. I remember them telling me I had a southern accent. I could not believe it — I could not hear it in myself. I was good with language, and could mimic accents. I spoke with good grammar, loved diagramming sentences. So being conscious of language on a level most of my peers were not made it all the more perplexing that I could possess an accent yet be unaware of it.

I traveled to Italy when I was 12. Later when I was 25 or so, returned to Italy and one of my uncles, Zio Lorenzo, produced an audio tape of me and my brothers teasing each other. I had this squeaky girly voice with the deepest south accent. “Qu-i-i-yut! Tony! Qu-i-i-yut!”. So it was confirmed: I really used to have a southern accent.

In college I know it started becoming less pronounced. When I traveled to non-Southern locales after college, I marveled at how fast people seemed to speak, and how sure they were of their assertions. Southern speech tends to be slower and less direct.

Today nobody would guess that I grew up in the south and people are usually really surprised when I tell them. I used to hate telling people this. You say “Mississippi” and this whole chain of associations is activated, and you don’t know exactly which ones, and then you have to stand there and account for it, reconcile yourself to it. In most places, that chain of associations is negative. Occasionally some people think of literature, which is better, although I am unprepared to discuss Eudora Welty or William Faulkner. Sometimes it’s a really positive association. In France, they are impressed because the south is the home of the blues and jazz and Elvis, and you are its honorary ambassador. In Italy, no matter where you say you are from, they reply, “Beau-tiful!” which is uninformed, but pleasant to hear.

But now I enjoy telling people. Rather than being threatened by their preconceptions, I am amused by them. It becomes their problem to reconcile what they think they know about the south with what they think they know about me.

Today watching films set in the south is often excruciating. Usually there’s the one actor who really nails it — he’s the best mimicker, had the best voice coach, practiced the most. Then there’s the rest of the cast, who basically just channel Foghorn Leghorn or Blanche Dubois.

Here’s a tip for actors doing southern roles: practice, dammit, people do care and can tell. You only have a dozen or so lines anyway, or a hundred, but it’s some finite number, just learn those lines with the right accent.

Here’s a tip for voice coaches and directors: guess what? Not every single individual in any particular southern locale is a born and bred native descended from slave-holders or slaves. In any locale you have a guy who move there from California, or Vietnam. You have someone from Georgia, and someone else from Jackson, and guess what, they speak with different southern dialects! They have TV and indie films and rock and roll, so you don’t just hear the blues all the time. Proud as we are of the blues, some people listen to Kraftwerk and Neutral Milk Hotel ( an excellent group from Louisiana).

The south is in flux. Echoes and memories of the past are always there, and certainly this is a motif of southern culture. But it’s constantly in flux. Every collection of personalities is every bit as diverse in the south as it is in the west or the north or the midwest.

When I watch British produced films set in Ireland or Scotland, I wonder if they treat those accents in the same way. Do they lay it on way too thick? Are the lapses in the actor’s performance obvious and grating to Irish or Scottish natives? I totally love hearing those accents.

I’m writing this on the June solstice in Northern California. It’s hot, and whenever it’s hot I start running around the house talking like Foghorn Leghorn wiping my forehead with a glass of iced tea, just to annoy my Cajun girlfriend.

In conclusion, the South will rise again! That’s a joke son, Ah say, ah say, that’s a joke.

http://www.hootenanny.com

I tried to pick a fight with a group of Twins fans headed for the ballpark. I called the pitcher a pussy but they were too polite to take offense. I quoted Noam Chomsky and they said, “Friend, if it’s trouble you want, you’re on the wrong side of the river. It’s the St. Paulers you seek, for some of them are assholes.”

“Some of them are killers,” they went on. “Some of them fight dirty.”

I realized then how mean and weak I was, and how fortunate to have steered clear of that notorious hellhole St. Paul. I thanked the Twins fans and bade them good game.

I affected a false limp and hobbled down to the riverfront. The sun broke through the clouds like a sick joke. The Pillsbury warehouse gleamed insultingly.

A horse and buggy clopped past me. While the driver was unflappably sincere as he smiled and waved at me, the same could not be said of the horse, which attempted to mask its racial epithets under a horsey cough. I knew the epithets were meant for me, which was ironic, since I am not ethnic in the least. The tired, spotted equine beast was one clop away from the glue factory (Duluth). I felt enormous compassion for the beast, so I tossed the driver into the Mississippi quite unceremoniously. His stupid vowels gurgled into foam at the falls two bridges down, as I inhabited what had been his life. I collected numerous fares that evening, taking them up and down the warehouse district and across the river as far as I felt it was safe to go. Happily, the last fare of the evening left his wallet in the back seat, so I dined at the Spoonriver on oysters, lobster, salmon, scallops, mussells, steelhead, and ahi tuna over a bed of wasabi peanut sauce risotto and boiled cabbage, with just a pinch of ice cream. For dessert — key lime struedel with blackberry jam, wrapped in two crepes, burrito style, smothered in honey. For a night cap I asked for a tall glass with a shot of every whiskey in the house tossed in, and a shaker of salt. I charged it all on Mr. Keith’s corporate American Express card, which put me in mind to get Mr. Keith in even more serious trouble.

As a fare, Mr. Keith had seemed a kind enough sort of fellow. But after that tall Minneapolis Iced Tea, as the wait staff coined it, Mr. Keith’s image had distorted considerably in my mind into a typical, self-absorbed, superior, arrogant St. Pauler, deserving of every insult and damage my inebriated ego might concoct. So it was off to Annie’s Topless Dancers with me and Mr. Keith’s corporate American Express card. I handed the card off to the likeliest fool and told him to buy lap dances all around. I pretended to limp back to Roscoe, my tired, spotted equine beast, whom I had parked at the corner of 7th and 9th, two streets which inexplicably intersected after 10 p.m. I assumed this either was some form of Viking efficiency, or had to do with snow escape routes and made perfect sense in winter.

Roscoe was engaged in heated argument with a gang of Somali teenagers. I laughed and explained the nature of their misunderstanding. “This horse speaks to me in just the same way, and as you can plainly see, unlike yourselves I am not ethnic in the least. It’s a harmless form of equine Tourrettes. Some veterinary psychiatrists from the University are studying Roscoe. Look for a peer-reviewed article later this fall.” To which the Somali youths replied, “unvesty” a few times, and ran towards a fireworks display down by the river. Roscoe bolted off in the opposite direction.

Having inhabited the existence of the buggy driver and that of Mr. Keith, I though it prudent to inhabit my own, at least long enough to get back to the hotel. I hired a cab with a distracted Somali driver, who handed me the GPS device and commanded me to enter an address. I selected a random hotel from the recent destination list, and we sped off. We spent the next several hours crossing and recrossing the humble Mississippi. Each time we did I heard those same stupid vowels gurgling out from beneath the bridge. Finally at dawn we pulled into the hotel driveway, which was located exactly where I had hired the taxi in the first place. I handed the driver hundreds of dollars and bade him good game.

Later that morning I caught the first flight home, for I could not return to the arms of my lover soon enough, and apologize for everything I had done.

“So, Auggie said after a few minutes. “You think Bono ever farted on stage? I wonder if Bono ever farted on stage. I mean, not so anyone could hear it. I just mean, you know, with all that noise, and all that movement, and you know he would have had to have eaten that day. With all that travelling, you can’t always be sure about what you eat… I have to say, I would feel better about myself if I knew that Bono had farted on stage.”