God bless you, Big Man, and Godspeed.
Category: writing
Everything I Know About Postmodernism I Learned from the Phillies
This piece now resides here, at Hobart. Do enjoy!
Yes, Twitter, There is A Connection Between #Dadism and #Dadaism
Today, #dadism is a sponsored trend (that doesn’t make sense) on twitter. A lot of people, your Daily Cocca included, thought at first that #dadaism was the sponsored topic. That would have made even less sense. But, alas, there IS a connection between public life (in this case, twitter), #dadism, and #dadaism. At least according to one of the characters in a cut scene from one of my old works in progress:
Tonight I try to avoid him but he catches my eye and calls me over. He knows it’s a game and he knows how stupid it is, but he does it anyway and I’m sure it cracks him up. Tonight he’s talking about nihilism as some kind of masculine failure, and, like always, I take the bait.
***
“Come on Jim!” he says. “You can’t think it’s a coincidence that this whole movement celebrating the absurdity of life is called dada…”
“Yes, actually, it is, and that’s kind of the point…” Like I said, I can’t seem to help it.
“Right, right, disillusioned by World War I a bunch of artists got together in Zurich and stabbed a French-German dictionary and named the movement they hoped to create after whatever word they landed on. They landed on dada, French for hobby horse, and also a phrase meaning ‘yes, yes,’ in Romanian. Believe what you want, Lord Jim, but it will always be a daddy issue to me.”
Sometimes he made sense.
“If you’re going to bitch about something you have to be ready to be defined by it,” he said. “That’s a decision you don’t make lightly. So you’re afraid to come out swinging because that means you’re giving it all away. You’re affirming that there’s actually order and meaning in the very act, even if everything you’re trying to do and say is aimed at convincing everyone of the opposite. That’s the thing about those dada jerks, they wanted to talk about randomness and meaninglessness and show the world how mad it was, but it’s like, ‘so what?,’ you know? Who cares? The bigger statement would have been to just say nothing. So, anyway, I find it hard to give a damn about much of anything in public, because then there I am, coming out and admitting that there are things worth saying and doing or even fighting for, even when most of me is saying it’s a sign of weakness to stand up for anyone but yourself, vain, foolish nonsense to clamor on about anything you can only ever hold provisionally.”
(copyright Chris Cocca 2011).
MFA Friends, In Case You Misread, this Trending Topic is Not Just For You
Jake Shimabukuro at TED and My Episode at the Thrift Store
A few months ago, my wife and I were listening to a WXPN interview with Hawaiian ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro that was nothing short of awesome. As we were about to get out of the car, Shimabukuro said that he was going to play an original arrangement of “Bohemian Rhapsody” to show just what his four-stringed, two-octave ax could do. Needless to say, we stayed in the car for the next eight minutes.
I just stumbled upon this video of Shimabukuro doing the same thing at TED. It’s fantastic, and you can’t help but believe what he says about the uke and world peace:
https://ted.com/talks/view/id/1063
A few days after the World Cafe session in our car, I found a ukulele at the Salvation Army thrift store. I think they wanted four bucks, and it came with instructions that had clearly been printed before 1970. So I picked it up as a gift and immediately informed the giftee of my impossible find. As I was carrying my new hipster treasure around the store, I noticed two young ladies in my peripheral vision. I sort of got that feeling you get when people are talking about you, and then I heard one of them say “should we say something to him?” My first thought was “my fly must be down. This is embarrassing.”
If only.
The question emerged:
One of them: “How much do you want that ukelele?”
Me: “Like, a lot.”
Them: “Really?”
Me: “Yeah. It’s going to be a gift.”
One of Them: “Oh.”
The Other: “See, I told you you shouldn’t have set it back down.”
Me: “Honesty, I would give it to you if I hadn’t already promised it to someone else.”
Them: “No, that’s cool.”
But I don’t have to tell you how it feels to have a find like this slip through your fingers. Remember the vocab word crestfallen? I would have been, too. Thankfully, they were really cool and didn’t make me feel bad.
Rush Hour, Dutch Hour. 33% of All Trips in Utrecht are Made on Bikes (VIDEO)
Until today, the only thing I knew about Utrecht was that a treaty was signed there a long time ago. Not quite as long ago, I was an ace at 11th grade European history, but have sadly since forgotten just what the Treaty of Utrecht ended. Turns out it was that Europe-wide clusterfrock known to us now as the War of the Spanish Succession. But, as a Pentecostal Irish bus driver once told me on a trip to the site of Michael Collins’ death, “that’s an awful lot of ugliness, and I think it’s time we get to forgivin’ each other just like the good Lord forgave us.” Well said, friend.
Today, Utrecht is the fourth largest city in The (We’re Not All Holland) Netherlands. And a third of their traffic takes place on bikes. Transit accounts for most of the rest, and this is the beautiful, healthy, clean, safe result:
So I ask you: How do we do it in the US? Do we start in towns ravaged by natural disasters and rebuild them with these kinds of goals in mind? Do we somehow incentivize cycling and mass transit at local, state, and federal levels of government? Tax credits? Insurance incentives?
Young Americans want to live in walkable, bikable cities and even walkable, bikeable suburbs. How do we push this growing desire, the increasing cost of gas, and the increasing concerns about emissions and obesity toward a real tipping point? In the Lehigh Valley and beyond, Car-Free.org is a great organization currently working to bring like-minded folks together around these. Check them out, buy a shirt, take a class. If you don’t live in the area, that’s okay, too. I understand that our good friend Steve at Car-Free/CAT is more than willing to talk to you about starting a Car-Free.org chapter in your area. If you’re a leader in a similar local or regional group, Steve wants to talk to you, too.
I want to see fewer cars, more transit, less emissions. I want to see more bikes. Don’t you?
In the 80’s, Superman Also Fought Asthma
I was diagnosed with asthma when I was five. My family lived in eastern Berks County and I still remember the late-night trip to the hospital in Allentown during my first attack. Before I experienced the condition first-hand, everything I knew about the disease came from a 30-second public service announcement featuring Superman. Kids with asthma were supposed to ask their parents to call the American Lung Association for a pack of free information, or, as it appeared to me at the time, free Superman stuff. To be honest, I felt left out and thought asthma must be awesome if it got the Man of Steel to show up at your pick-up baseball games.
Obviously, I was wrong. Asthma is not awesome. Superman does not show up at pick-up baseball games. Chunk from The Goonies did not eat his weight in Godfather pizza.
But DC Superheroes did have their own cookbook.
Chris Cocca 