But I’d be willing to bet that in 2011, when they begin turning sixty-five, they will not be calling themselves elderly. I have a hunch they’ll come up with some new way of avoiding reality, and I have a suggestion for them. They should call themselves the pre-dead. It’s a perfect term, because, for them, it’s accurate and it’s highly descriptive.
By the way, those ever-clever boomers have also come up with a word to describe the jobs they feel are most suitable for retired people who wish to keep working. They call these jobs elder-friendly. Isn’t that sad? God, that’s just really, really sad.
And so, to sum up, we have these senior citizens. And, whether I like that phrase or not, unfortunately, I got used to it, and I no longer react too violently when I hear it. But there is still one description for old people that I will never accept. That’s when I hear someone describe an old guy as being, for instance, eighty years young. Even though I know it’s tongue-in-cheek, it makes my skin crawl. It’s overly cute and precious, and it’s an evasion. It’s junk language.
More: On CBS’s 60 Minutes, Leslie Stahl, God help her, actually referred to some old man as being a ninety-something. Please. Leslie. I need a small, personal break here.
One last, pathetic example in this category: On the radio, I heard Matt Drudge actually refer to people of age. And he wasn’t being sarcastic. He said, “The West Nile virus is a particular threat to people of age.” Poor Matt. Apparently, he’s more fucked up than he seems.
Now, going to an adjacent subject: One unfortunate fact of life for many of these eighty- or ninety-somethings is that they’re forced to live in places where they’d rather not be. Old-people’s homes. So what name should we use for these places where we hide our old people? When I was a little boy, there was a building in my neighborhood called the home for the aged. It had a copper sign on the gate: HOME FOR THE AGED. It always looked deserted; I never saw anyone go in. Naturally, I never saw anyone come out, either.
Later, I noticed people started calling those places nursing homes and rest homes. Apparently, it was decided that some of these old people needed nurses, while others just needed a little rest. What you hear them called now is retirement homes or long-term-care facilities. There’s another one of those truly bloodless terms: long-term-care facility.
But actually, it makes sense to give it a name like that, because if you do, you make it a lot easier for the person you’re putting in there to acquiesce and cooperate with you. I remember old people used to tell their families, “Whatever you do, don’t put me in a home. Please don’t put me in a home.” But it’s hard to imagine one of them saying, “Whatever you do, don’t put me in a long-term-care facility.” So calling it that is really a trick. “C’mon, Grandpa, it’s not a home. It’s long-term care!”
By the way, while we’re on the subject of the language of getting old, I want to tell you something that happened to me in New York on a recent evening. I was standing in line at the Carnegie Deli to pay my check, and there was a guy ahead of me who looked like he was in his sixties. He gave the cashier a ten-dollar bill, but apparently, it wasn’t enough. When the cashier mentioned it to him in a nice way, he said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I guess I had a senior moment.” And I thought how sad that was. To blame a simple mistake on the fact that you’re in your sixties, even if you’re just sort of joking. As if anyone would think a twenty-year-old couldn’t make the same mistake. I only mention this because it’s an example of how people can brainwash themselves by adopting popular language.
I wanted to pull him aside and say, “Listen, I just heard you refer to yourself as a senior. And I wanted to ask, were you by any chance a junior last year? Because if you weren’t a junior last year, then you’re not a senior this year.” I wanted to say it, but I figured, why would he listen to me? After all, I’m only a freshman.
EYE SAFETY TIP
Here’s a safety tip from the American Eye Association: Never jab a knitting needle directly into your eye and repeatedly thrust it in and out. You could be inviting vision problems. If you should suffer an eye injury, rinse the eye immediately with a caustic solution of Clorox and ammonia, and rub the surface of the eye vigorously for about ten minutes with #3 sandpaper. The American Eye Association reminds you: Don’t fuck around with your eyes. They’re the key to vision.
BODY OF WORK: PART 1
(Not for the queasy.)
DON’T GIMME NO LIP
Do you ever get lip crud? That sticky film that sometimes forms on your lips? Especially the lower lip? It’s a kind of gooey crud that builds up, and when it dries it turns into a gummy, crusty coating? Thicker at the corners of the mouth, but thinning out as it works its way down toward the center of the lip? And when it’s really bad, the corners of your mouth look like parentheses? Do you ever get that? Lip crud?
Well, here’s how you get rid of it. It’s a simple, low-tech operation, and it requires just a single tool: the thumbnail. That’s all you need. You scrape the crud off with your thumbnail. You just scrape, scrape, scrape it on down, scrape it on down, and you keep on scrapin’—don’t worry about those people watchin’ from the bus stop; if they knew anything they wouldn’t be ridin’ the bus. You scrape it on down, you scrape it on down, and finally, when it’s all off, you take it and roll it up into a little ball, and then you save that son of a bitch! That’s my practice, folks. I save it. Personally, I’m a lip-crud buff.
IT PAYS TO SAVE
In fact, I save everything I remove from my body. Don’t you? At least for a little while? Don’t you look at things when they first come off you? Study them? Aren’t you curious? Don’t you spend a few minutes lookin’ at somethin’, trying to figure out what it is and what it’s doin’ on you in the first place? Sure you do. You don’t just pull some growth off your neck and throw it in the trash. You study it. You wanna know what it is.
Besides, you never know when you’re gonna need parts. Isn’t that true? Have you ever seen these guys on TV, they’re in the hospital? One guy’s waitin’ for a kidney, another guy’s waitin’ for a lung. I say, “Fuck that shit, I’ve got parts at home! I have a freezer full of viable organs. Two of everything, ready to go. Whaddya need? A spleen? An esophagus? How about a nice used ballbag? Hah? Come on. Caucasian ballbag, one owner, good condition. He only scratched it on Sundays. Come on, folks, take a chance. I’ve got everything you need.”
THE THRILL OF DISCOVERY
But regardless of your need for parts, the larger point is true: Most people study the things they pick off their bodies before they throw them away. Because you want to know what somethin’ is. You don’t want to spend fifteen minutes peeling a malignant tumor off your forehead, just to toss it out the window, sight unseen, into the neighbor’s swimming pool. No! You want to take a good, long look at it. You may even want to share the experience:
“Holy shit, Honey! Looka this thing! Ho-ly jump-in’ fuck-in’ Jesus! Looka this! Hey! Honey? Come in here, will ya, goddammit! Fuck the Rice-A-Roni! Get your ass in here! (Displaying item proudly) Look at this thing. Ain’t it somethin’? Guess where I got it? A minute or two ago it was a part of my head. Not anymore. I pried the bastard off with paint thinner and a Phillips-head screwdriver.
“But look at it, Honey! Look at the colors! It’s green, blue, yellow, orange, brown, tan, khaki, beige, bronze, olive, neutral, black, off-black, champagne gold, Navajo white, turquoise . . . and Band-Aid color! Plus—get this—it’s exactly the same shape as Iraq. That is, if you leave out that northern section where the Kurds live. I’m not throwin’ this bastard away, it might become a collectible! Dial up those dickheads on eBay. We can make some fuckin’ money on this thing.”
STRAP IT ON AND PUMP ME UP
It annoys me when people complain about athletes taking steroids to improve athletic performance. It’s a phony argument, because over the years every single piece of sports equipment used by athletes has been improved many times over. Golf balls and clubs; tennis balls, racquets; baseball gloves and bats
; football pads and helmets and so on through every sport. Each time technology has found a way to improve equipment it has done so. So why shouldn’t a person treat his body the same way? In the context of sports, the body is nothing more than one more piece of equipment, anyway. So why not improve it with new technology? Athletes use weights, why shouldn’t they use chemicals?
Consider the Greek Phidippides, a professional runner who, in 490 B.C., ran from Athens to Sparta and back (280 miles) to ask the Spartans for help against the Persians in an impending battle that threatened Athens. Don’t you think his generals would have been happy to give him amphetamines if they had been available? And a nice pair of New Balance high-performance running shoes while they were at it? Grow up, purists. The body is not a sacred vessel, it’s a tool.
IT’S NOT POLITE TO POINT
I don’t care for athletes who point to the sky after they’ve accomplished something on the field. Even worse are the ones who kneel down, bow their heads and make a big show of being “believers.” You know something? God doesn’t like that shit. He’s not impressed with spiritual grandstanding; it embarrasses him. He says, “Get up, you phony, showoff bullshit artist and pay attention to the fuckin’ game. I took the points!” Imagine the conceit of these people who think God is helping them and is looking for their acknowledgment. I say, play now, pray later.
ATTITUDE CHECK
Let’s straighten out this whole “attitude” thing. Someone on TV said the sports anchor guys on ESPN have a lot of attitude. Let me tell you something, what these guys have is not attitude.
Here’s attitude: One day, when I was about eighteen, I was standing at the bar in the Moylan Tavern with a couple of guys from my New York neighborhood. The Moylan had big windows, so if you were standing at the bar, you could easily see the people walking by on Broadway.
One of the guys in our group was a little older than the rest of us—an ex-convict named John Cooney. All of a sudden, in the middle of the conversation, he looked out the window and saw someone walking past. He reached behind the bar for the baseball bat—the one the bartenders used for settling sports and political arguments—and he went outside, walked up to the guy on the sidewalk and just started smashing him with the baseball bat. The guy fell down, John walked back into the bar and put the bat away. He said, “The guy owes me money.” That’s attitude.
The guys on ESPN don’t have that. What they have is a kind of smart-mouth, white-boy, college mentality. They’re snotty, superficial white guys. Even the black anchors on ESPN are nothing more than snotty white guys. Snotty is not attitude. Snotty is just bad manners. And it’s boring.
John Cooney knew attitude. He also knew more about how to swing a bat than any one of these blow-dried, never-were-athletes sitting safely behind their fruity little desks.
GOOD CHEER
Twenty-five years ago, two lovely girls in San Carlos, California, were kind enough to perform this football cheer for me, and in 1984 I used it on an HBO show. I’m passing it along now and would like to point out that it’s actually quite useful at sporting events of any kind. In fact, I’ve found it to be a big crowd pleaser at weddings, baptisms and first communions, as well. Here it is. Chant it in good health:
Rat shit! Bat shit!
Dirty ol’ twat!
Sixty-nine assholes
Tied in a knot!
Hooray!
Lizard shit!
Fuck!
Let’s go over that again, this time with a few comments:
Rat shit! Bat shit!
(How nice to begin with a reference to nature.)
Dirty ol’ twat!
(A perfectly normal sports reference, as far as I’m concerned.)
Sixty-nine assholes
Tied in a knot!
(No, I don’t know what that means, either.)
Hooray!
(There’s the cheer part.)
Lizard shit!
(Back to nature once again.)
Fuck!
(And we end on an uplifting note.)
Now here’s the happy postscript: About ten years later, I met a guy named Michael who gave me the second verse to the cheer. I hope those San Carlos girls will see this and accept it as my way of saying thanks:
Eat, bite, fuck, suck!
Nibble, gobble, chew!
Finger fuck! Hair pie!
Dick, cunt, screw!
Hooray!
Bat fuck!
Blow me!
Let’s go over that again:
Eat, bite, fuck, suck!
(Once again, off to an excellent start.)
Nibble, gobble, chew!
(I notice verbs are more prominent this time.)
Finger fuck! Hair pie!
Dick, cunt, screw!
(More good sports references.)
Hooray!
(Can’t have a cheer without it.)
Bat fuck!
(Truly an interesting thought.)
Blow me!
(Once again, ending on an uplifting note.)
Cheers!
ONE AT A TIME, PLEASE
Never buy two different garments of the same type at the same time, such as two sport shirts. Inevitably, you will like one better than the other and you will choose to wear it every time. The second one will always remain second choice and it will stay in the closet, coming out only occasionally, when you hold it in front of you at arm’s length and decide not to wear it. Here’s how you handle this problem: Exercise a little discipline at the store and buy just one shirt. Then, if you like it, wait a month and buy another. That’s it. Next, I’m gonna work on nuclear proliferation.
KEEPIN’ IT REAL IN THE RING
Another area of speech that could benefit from a bit more realism would be those announcements that are made just before a boxing match:
“Ladies and gentlemen, the main event of the evening: twelve rounds of heavyweight boxing. In this corner, from Cornhole, Mississippi, weighing two hundred pounds and wearing soiled white trunks, an utter and complete loser who is wanted in six states for crimes against the animal kingdom. Considered a complete scumbag by his family, he once fucked his sister at a church picnic and forced her to walk home alone. Also, on at least four occasions he has taken out his dick at the circus and waved it at the trapeze lady. Here is, He-e-e-n-r-y-y Gonz-a-a-a-lez!
“In the other corner, wearing a pair of lame, out-of-style zebra-skin shorts that he found on the street, from Sweatband, Arkansas, an unattractive and disturbed young man who, by court order, is not permitted to be alone for more than two minutes at a time. In and out of sixteen mental institutions over the years, he is a dangerous sociopath who once killed a nun for blocking his view. He has been legally barred from more than fifteen hundred bars in the New York City area, and recently, while visiting a supermarket, he forced a fat woman to blow him in the meat section. Here he is, Ma-a-a-tty Mu-u-u-urphy-y-y!”
The fighters move out to the center of the ring to have the boxing rules recited to them.
“All right, boys, you know the rules: No biting, scratching, clawing or tripping. No yanking dicks. No grabbing the other guy’s testicles and snapping them up and down. No using a small screwdriver to punch holes in the other guy’s neck during clinches. And if you’re gonna call the other guy’s mother a diseased, two-dollar whore, please, in the interest of accuracy, use her full name.”
WELL-WISHING
When taking leave of one another, we often say, “Be well.” Perhaps we should be more precise and a bit more practical. Reasonably, we can’t expect everyone to be healthy all the time. Good wishes should be more realistic: “I hope you remain reasonably healthy during the next eighteen months or so, and if you have a stroke, I hope it only paralyzes you on one side, leaving you free to take phone calls.” I think people would appreciate such thoughtfulness and precision.
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES
We Americans love our prepositional phrases.
Out of sight, off the charts, in the groov
e, on the ball; up the creek, down the tubes, in the dumper, out the yin-yang; off the wall, ’round the bend, below the belt, under the weather.
And of course . . . under the table.
TABLE TALK
But rather than under the table, let us begin on the table. That’s a phrase you hear a lot in the news, especially from Washington. In negotiations of any kind, certain things are said to be on the table. Implying that other things are off the table. And sometimes, regardless of what’s on the table, a settlement is reached under the table.
The table seems important. If a person is highly qualified, we say he brings a lot to the table. Unfortunately, those who bring a lot to the table often have too much on their plates. Still, they’re guaranteed a seat at the table, because they think outside the box, which puts them ahead of the curve.
Now, if the negotiators agree on what’s on the table, then they’re on the same page. Personally, I don’t like people on my page. If someone says to me, “We’re on the same page,” I say, “Do me a favor, please, turn the page; I’d rather not be on that page. In fact, I’d rather be in a completely different book.” But that’s beside the point; I’ve wandered off the track.
Returning to negotiations, if the sides are getting close, we’re told they’re in the ballpark. This often comes from people in the know, speaking off the record. And in Washington, many in the know are also in the loop because, after all, they work inside the beltway.
When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? Page 19