Ode to Thrifting

Introduction

Sometimes when I’m feeling grateful for something, I am moved to write an ode to it. This is one of those times. (If you would like guidance writing your own sonnet, full instructions are here.) As usual, I provide copious footnotes.

The poem

Ode to Thrifting

A pair of Docs for only forty bucks?
I’ll take ‘em ‘cause they’re only barely used.                   2
Amer’can jeans, with tags still on—what luck!
How can a cheap-ass dude like me refuse?

I always check the housewares section too
Forever seeking out the perfect mug,                               6
And picking up a choice pint glass or two,
And all of it dirt cheap. Who’s feeling smug?

Of course there’s all the stuff you’d never buy.
Such pseudo-brands as George and Charter Club,        10
Godawful art, sad toys … we heave a sigh.
To thrift we have to sift … ay, there’s the rub.

     But when I think of forking out full price?
     No thanks—I’ll opt for thrift and toss the dice.         14

Footnotes & commentary

Title: Thrifting

A linguist once said (or maybe he said it twice, maybe he said it constantly), “There’s almost no word in the English language that can’t be verbed.” (Google’s Gemini A.I. says this was uttered by Jorge Luis Borges; ChatGPT says it was Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes, and that the actual wording was “Verbing weirds language.”) I think “thrift” as a verb (begetting thrifting as a gerund) is perfectly legit. It means, of course, to shop at a thrift store. I think the gerund is more common but there’s no reason you couldn’t say, “I thrifted this sweet linen shirt” or, even better, “I hella thrifted this dope linen shirt,” if you don’t mind your kids making fun of you (and I don’t).

On a related note, I am also fine with “gift” as a verb, as in “my brother gifted me a giant pack of Q-tips” (which thankfully is a hypothetical scenario, as my household is overflowing with Q-tips, and why are they called that, anyway?). But “gifting” as a gerund, notably in the 2018 Nordstrom holiday ad campaign “Let’s Go Gifting!” almost makes my stomach turn. (The print ad actually did, so click that link at your peril.)

Should you be concerned about the quantity of commentary thus far, since we’re only three words into this poem? Yes, unless you’re enjoying this. If you’re not, click here immediately. (If you are, click that link later.)

To the uninitiated, “thrifting” might connote only the Salvation Army or Goodwill. But there are all kinds of variations, like consignment stores (pricier but with much better stuff), other charity outfits (e.g., local humane societies and Out of the Closet), and a variety of for-profit used stores ranging from mom and pops’ to big chains. My wife and daughters have become thrifting experts over the years, and I’ve benefited a lot in terms of secondhand thrift. (Get it?)

Line 1: Docs

This is a real-life example! In the past year I’ve scored not just one but two pairs of Doc Martens. One was $40 and the other was like $50 and they were both nearly mint. It’s not like I strictly needed either pair and I’d never have gone shopping specifically for this product, but you gotta have shoes, right? This is the sweet spot of thrifting: you can obviously never go hunting for something specific you need right now, but you never know what deal might jump out at you.

Line 2: barely used

Look how little wear there is on the soles. There was even less when I bought them.

Line 3: Amer’can

Obviously I needed to reduce this word to three syllables to fit the meter of my sonnet, but that’s only half of it. In my experience, people say “Amer’can” to suggest—ironically or not—heartland-style patriotism. Some may try to make patriotism political. I oppose this. Everyone in America should be openly patriotic, and what better way than to choose American-made products when possible? Often it’s not possible (as lamented at length here), so when I have the opportunity I snap it up.

The pair of American jeans isn’t a hypothetical example either. I found a pair of J Brand jeans, really well made right here in California, for like $50. I wasn’t familiar with this brand but quickly learned they typically go for like $200. I’m wearing those bad boys right now in fact.

Line 3: tags still on

Yes, these jeans (aka, this pant, these jean) still had the original tags. It’s amazing to me how often this is the case. Somebody evidently bought them, didn’t wear them, and either waited too long to change his mind (i.e., after the return window had closed) or hadn’t bothered to keep his receipt. So he sold them to a consignment store for something like an eighth of what he paid for them, probably without batting an eye. Obviously this is a scenario that could only happen in an affluent community like Pacific Heights, San Francisco (which is why it’s worth a trip out there to thrift). And thus, even as I’m sparing the environment by buying used stuff, I’m still susceptible to liberal guilt when I consider how much better thrifting is in the privileged Bay Area vs. many other parts of the country. I tried a Goodwill in Medford, Oregon (official city slogan: “There are worse places!”) and though I found a few good things (as I invariably do), I couldn’t believe how many of the garments were Kirkland brand. No thanks!

(By the way, if you are ready for some very heavy philosophy that is also very light humor, check out this video from the standup comedian Sheng Wang on what it means to wear Costco jeans.)

Line 4: refuse

Of course most of what goes on at a thrift store is refusing. Flicking through an endless rack of mostly godawful shirts is probably the original “swipe left” behavior.

But there are also people who refuse to go thrifting to begin with. I don’t just mean the rare sort who has so much money he or she can’t be bothered to shop used. It can also be cultural. A family friend, who emigrated here from China, explained to my wife that buying used clothing isn’t popular in her cohort. The unease has something to do with not wishing to inherit the energy of the previous owner (about whom you know nothing, after all). Used clothing may also have a historical association with poverty.

Of course such cultural reluctance to used clothing isn’t a given among Asians or anyone else. Consider my old UCSB pal we affectionately nicknamed “Sven” because he was Chinese. One day he was rocking this cool football jersey that he was absolutely swimming in, and I asked where he got it. “I found it,” he said, “at a party.” Being well off, he hadn’t snaked it for reasons of economy; he just liked it, apparently without worrying about who’d owned it before. Well, maybe he should have worried: when I saw him a week or two later and asked, “No football jersey today?” he replied, “Oh, man, I was at a party wearing it and this giant dude comes over, super pissed, and says, ‘Hey, that’s my jersey!’ Man, I’ve never taken a shirt off so fast in my life!”

Line 5: housewares

There was a time in my adult life when my wife and I decided we were no longer kids and should really have all matching plates, bowls, etc. And we lived that dream for a while, before we eventually broke everything. (This might have even been before we had kids along to help.) So now we’re over it. Just about every plate, saucer, bowl, and drinking vessel we own is from a thrift store, except for some Corelle salad plates and bowls that somehow soldier on. I don’t know how we got to be so clumsy, but there you have it.

When I was a kid, anything in my family’s household getting broken was a major incident, causing deep shame in the perp and over-the-top indignation in everyone else. It was like you’d crashed a car or something. So now, having mostly used housewares, it’s really nice to just shrug when I break something. After all, at least we got some use out of it, after buying it for like a dollar, and it had already  served some other family, possibly for years. I’m all about fully depreciated assets!

Line 6: perfect mug

I’ve gone through a number of pint-sized Sur La Table mugs, which I buy on sale when the current style of monogramming is being retired. Usually I can get a few with some really unpopular letter on them, like the over-stylized “J” that looks more like a stocking. When these mugs die, usually in a dishwasher accident, I’m kind of stuck because I need the large capacity, so I can’t just use one of our dozen or so tea mugs. I seldom find suitable, pint-size coffee mugs at thrift stores because they usually say something really dippy on them, like “MY PRETTY DAUGHTER THINKS I’M A GUN NUT,” or they commemorate a golf event or something.

My wife, though, has thrifted lots of really awesome diner-style mugs, very thick and so solid “you could bludgeon someone with one” (as she just said to me, making me wondering if that’s a vague threat … have I gotten on her bad side somehow?). Ideally such a mug is cream or off-white and doesn’t have any writing on it, though one of our favorites says “Ancient Mariner” with a picture of a sailing ship. I can just imagine the diner that mug outlived, which would be a mediocre but cozy place with a sea view, where the waitress snaps her gum and calls you “hon” and has a name like Doris or Debra.

Here’s one of our favorite thrift-store mugs.

Note also the nice wood-handled steak knife. We picked up a box of six of those at a little thrift store in Arcata for like $5; they’re West Bend brand, mid-century, made in USA and for sale on eBay for like $50! In the background there’s a recycled cream bottle we’re using as a vase so it’s even cheaper than Goodwill. On the flip side, at a Goodwill in White City, Oregon I saw a used Coke bottle for like $2.50. As if! Whoever priced that must have been sleepy, stoned, or both. But I snagged two perfect pint glasses there for 71 cents each with my senior discount. (Senior discount? Yep, my first! And yet later that day I was carded buying beer. Go figure!)

Line 8: smug

It’s not often I’d admit to feeling smug. But when J. Crew sells a cotton t-shirt for $60, and Sur La Table wants $24 for a chichi Le Creuset mug (in pastel pink or artichoke, ooh!), it feels really good to find a nice linen shirt in perfect condition for $9 and an off-white diner mug for under a buck. It’s like: in your face, retail industrial complex!

Line 9: stuff you’d never buy

A sonnet is too brief a form to even begin cataloguing all the weird stuff thrift stores sell that nobody could possibly want, like VHS cassettes, a grody plastic water bottle with a lipstick-stained straw, Lance Armstrong’s autobiography, cloying inspirational signs or plaques, a t-shirt commemorating a corporate team-building getaway … the possibilities are endless. You’ll probably have noted the strange handlebar-equipped helmet shown atop this post; I guess that was somebody’s attempt at a DIY rack of antlers. (No, my brother did not buy it.) If you have come across something truly strange you’d like to share, email me here or comment below.

There’s also stuff you’d totally buy but only for a Christmas white elephant gift exchange. Click here to learn about a wall hanging that actually functions reasonably as a doodad tray, and a mint bobblehead (still in the original box!) that turned out to be a collector’s item.

Line 10: pseudo-brands

For years I was puzzled to continually see brands in thrift stores that I never saw anywhere else. Finally I did some light research and sorted it out: these aren’t real manufacturer’s brands, they’re house brands contrived by stores I never shop at. No wonder I’d never heard of George … it’s a Walmart brand—like I’d ever buy clothes there! (Full disclosure: before I knew better, I actually did buy a George button-down shirt, and I like it just fine … but let’s keep that on the DL.)

As for Charter Club, it’s a Macy’s house brand, which isn’t exactly downscale, and in fact my wife warned me that by bagging on it in my poem I might be alienating some middle-class readers. Obviously I wouldn’t want to do that, but I’m pretty sure I’m not. After all, thrift shopping is already way cheaper, so who would try to gild the lily choosing down-market brands? I mean, when every button-down shirt is $9 regardless of brand, why settle? Besides, the name “Charter Club” is so transparently affected and puffed-up; it’s clearly intended to connote wealth, like an expensive chartered boat or an elite country club. It’s like the pretend-expensive Stauer wristwatch brand, or having “Estates” or “Acres” in the name of a suburban subdivision … overreach much? “Charter Club” is such a branding misstep by Macy’s, it comes off sounding even cheaper than Walmart.

Other brands I only ever see at thrift stores are Apt. 9 and Sonoma (Kohl’s); Xhilaration and Mossimo (Target); and Messini (which should be called McCheesy).

Line 11: Godawful art

Bad food, such as fast food or cheap pizza, can be a guilty pleasure, but bad art? We wish we could un-see it. It’s just so awful. I’m tempted to make this footnote an open letter to people who have realized how awful their art is, entreating them to actually destroy it instead of donating it. But then, a thrift store isn’t such a bad place to buy framed bad art,  just so you can pitch the canvas and reuse the frame.

Line 11: Sad toys

Some toys really are sad, like filthy or broken ones, or remote-control cars with no remote. But a lot of used toys only seem squalid to my adult eye and are actually perfectly good. When my kids were very young, their grandma bought them a bunch of random used toys which she kept at her house for when we visited. I don’t think she even picked them out—it was like a whole mesh bag of them for a fixed price at Eco-Thrift (which she cleverly calls “echo thrift”). My kids were enchanted (but then, they loved playing with a big pile of her spring-loaded hair clips, too). I think most of the antipathy toward used toys is the suggestion that the parents can’t afford new  ones, and thus aren’t fit to raise kids in these demanding times, blah blah blah. You know, typical parental guilt.

Line 12: have to sift

Having the time to dig through an endless amount of chaff to find the good stuff is another form of privilege. I reckon if I were a laborer, or a single mother working two jobs, I wouldn’t have the time or energy for thrifting. It also takes patience, and I suppose plenty of people just don’t have enough of it. Myself, I get a kick out of the amateur anthropology angle, so I’m always up for a trip to the thrift store. (And thrifting is a taste worth acquiring if your spouse and/or kids enjoy it.)

Line 12: there’s the rub

When writing a sonnet, I find it’s never a bad idea to work in a Shakespeare reference.

Line 13: forking

In 1987 I visited a thrift store in San Luis Obispo with my mom and my brother. I had my eye on this great serving fork that was about halfway between the size of a standard dinner fork and a regular serving fork. I figured it could help me eat even faster. The proprietor approached and asked if we could mind the store while she used the bathroom. In return, she gave me the fork! I used it for all my meals all through college, and it’s enjoying a second life as, well, a regular serving fork. I hope one of my kids continues using it long after I’m gone. (For more on this theme click here.)

Line 14: toss the dice

Have I ever left a thrift store empty-handed? Well, sure. But it’s rare, and generally somebody in my party finds something, and besides … a rare find like Docs for $40 builds up a lot of goodwill. (Get it?)

Postscript: ChatGPT

I’ve blogged before about ChatGPT’s attempts to write poetry. GPT-4-turbo is far better than GPT-3.5 in that it tends to get the meter and rhyme right, but it’s still no substitute for a human, in my opinion. I did, however, use it to research certain things for this post, such as the weird house brands and where they come from. After finishing my poem and footnotes (and rest assured, I’m not the type to have GPT do a “first draft” that I then “polish”), I asked GPT to write a sonnet of its own on this topic. Here it is:

A Thrifted Tale

Upon the racks of thrift, the brands they lie,
Forgotten names that once did softly shine,
Such pseudo-brands as George and Charter Club,
Their faded glory tucked ‘neath vintage line.

An aisle of treasures, old and full of charm,
Where once was grandeur, now lies humble fate,
These things, discarded, lose their worldly harm,
Yet still they wait, for hands to re-create.

The “downtrodden few” in thrift stores find their place,
Each mark and stain, a story left untold,
While “fledgling” dreams aspire to win the race,
Unseen, unsung, but silently grown bold.

     So let us seek the past, both lost and found,
     In secondhands, the future shall resound.

I don’t know about you, but I’m less than impressed. I won’t do a full critique other than to say this poem is lacking in concrete detail, and has a weakness for meaningless filler phrases like “softly shine,” “worldly harm,” and “hands to re-create.” GPT-4-Turbo should stick to its day job, HTML and coding.  You know, the job it stole from STEM grads.

—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—
Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

2023 Vuelta - Jumbo Visma & the Kuss Conundrum

Introduction

It’s been a hell of a Vuelta a España. Not since Vuelta del Taco Truck have I been so enthralled. Not that it’s a particularly close race lately—Team Jumbo Visma is dominating—but there’s some intrigue within the team. As I write this, the American Sepp Kuss is still leading the GC, but with just a handful of seconds over his teammate, recent Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard. Kuss is only another minute ahead of another teammate, recent Giro d’Italia winner Primoz Roglic.

The really weird thing is, Kuss’s lead has been dropping a bit, stage after stage, because his own teammates have been attacking. A member of my bike club emailed the group, “Can one of you armchair directors sportif explain today’s stage of the Vuelta in which 2 guys on the GC leader’s team attack him on the final climb? I’m struggling to find a charitable explanation.” By the time you read this, things may have changed, but I want to follow my pal’s prompt and investigate this weirdness from this particular moment in time, right after the Angliru stage, when the team still has the opportunity to decide how to conduct itself, with Kuss still in the red jersey. I have developed some theories.

Theory #1: it’s just the hierarchy

It could be that Team Jumbo Visma is simply too risk-averse to shake up the established hierarchy for no good reason. Not that they don’t have good reason, from my perspective as a fan. I mean, I think rewarding a very loyal domestique, who some commentators are saying may be the best mountain domestique in the history of the sport, is actually a good reason to challenge the established pecking order. But this team is about winning races, not just being cool. Roglic has won the Vuelta three times, Vingegaard has won two Tours de France, and the team can be confident these guys won’t falter in the final week, or buckle under the responsibility of finishing out the job. As a GC leader, Kuss is an unknown entity.

Beyond tactics, this hierarchy could extend into the messier realm of unconscious bias, like an unofficial caste system in the sport. Consider the label domestique. It wasn’t until I was talking about bike racing with some recovering journalists recently that I thought much about this term. I was just trying to tell the story of Kuss pounding champagne after his brilliant stage win (more on this later), but—with the curiosity befitting journalists—my friends backed me up and said wait, wait, wait. … support riders are actually called domestiques? It really is an ungenerous term, like calling your teammates “the help.” In this light, the sport really does promote elitism. Meanwhile, it surely takes a massive ego to be a Grand Tour winner and perhaps guys like Vingegaard and Roglic take it as an article of faith that they’re simply superior to their staff, occupying a more rarified realm. (“Kuss?! That motherscratcher? He’s never even made the final podium!”) If that’s their feeling, the idea of this (albeit strong) domestique becoming a GC winner is just preposterous and cannot be allowed.

From this hierarchical viewpoint, even letting Kuss ride hard in the Stage 10 time trial was actually charitable.  Don’t forget that Floyd Landis, while in his last year of service to Lance Armstrong, was severely punished for riding too fast in a Tour time trial (instead of saving his energy for his support role in the later stages). Although Floyd professed his innocence—“I was going easy, I’m just really strong!”—Lance threw a fit and flushed Floyd’s blood bag down the toilet, right in front of him, to remind him who was boss. (No, I did not make that up. It really happened. It’s in Tyler Hamilton’s book.)

By the way, Kuss was a good sport after the Angliru stage, congratulating his two teammates on, well, beating him.

Theory #2: no gifts

During one of his Tour “victories,” Lance let Marco Pantani win the Mount Ventoux stage, which was an unpopular move with everyone. In the press conference post-race, Lance casually mentioned he’d only cared about the GC, basically announcing the gift, and Pantani was offended and said so. There was more backlash because Lance could have just been making an excuse instead of admitting Pantani was stronger, and for this reason Lance himself came to regret his professed generosity. Many Pantani fans felt ripped off, too, like there was an unnecessary asterisk next to their hero’s win. Well, the next time Lance had the opportunity to win a stage, when he already had the GC in the bag, he took that opportunity, and during the podium celebration the former five-time Tour champ Bernard Hinault said to him, “That’s right: no gifts.”

Hinault lived by this ethos himself. Prior to the 1986 Tour de France, he announced that he would be working for his teammate, Greg LeMond, to reward him for his past support. It would be like passing the baton. But in the actual race, Hinault totally attacked LeMond, several times, leading to a big dustup in the media, a real soap opera. When questioned about breaking his word, Hinault shrugged and said something like, “I wanted to make him earn it.” And wasn’t it a better story in the end, that LeMond had to beat everyone, even his friend and teammate, to prove he deserved the Tour title?

Applying this to the current Vuelta is admittedly a bit of a stretch, but perhaps this “make him earn it” notion is a clever story Vingegaard and Roglic are telling themselves because it’s more palatable to them than, say, theory #1.

Theory #3: Plan B

It’s also possible that according to some convoluted tactical logic, to have Vingegaard and Roglic attack is just a way to make sure Jumbo Visma has a plan B for winning the GC if Kuss should happen to falter. Since the time Kuss took the red jersey, Vingegaard has soloed twice. The first time, at least, the Dane wasn’t in great position on GC, having had a poor stage or two. His attack bought him some needed time on his rivals, and after all nothing was preventing Kuss from also attacking and defending his own position (which he did). Such tactics aren’t very nice, of course, but if the overall team directive is to win the GC at all costs, and if Vingegaard and Roglic have the legs, why not?

This wouldn’t be the first time a team put a GC leader’s bid at risk to support a Plan B. In one of the Tours that Lance “won,” his teammate Víctor Hugo Peña crashed in the team time trial, and the team waited for him. I was astonished … Lance was not known for his dedication to the team, to put it lightly. A pal explained to me that Peña was the team leadership’s Plan B for the GC if something happened to Lance, so they needed to keep him from losing time in the TTT.

Jumbo Visma themselves have some experience with Plan B: last year, when Roglic crashed in the Tour and couldn’t perform at his normal level, his support rider Vingegaard had been kept close enough on GC to take over and get the win.

Theory #4: envy

It could be that Vingegaard and Roglic are nursing petty jealousies when it comes to Kuss. I mean, let’s not kid ourselves: Kuss is better looking, has more charisma, is more of a crowd favorite, and as the tireless, loyal domestique is more relatable than these past heroes … and now he gets to lead the Vuelta on top of it all. A real Cinderella story.

In case you don’t take all these claims for granted, let’s look at a couple of Kuss’s endearing exploits. When he won his first Vuelta stage a few years back (and again when he won a stage this year), he did something that American mountain bike racers have done for years: as he headed for the finish line he rode near the fencing at the side of the road and held out his hand to high-five scores of fans. I don’t think these European fans had ever seen anything like it. To see him doing that, a big shit-eating grin on his face … I had tears in my eyes.

And then let’s consider Kuss’s podium celebration after this year’s stage win. He took the standard jumbo-sized bottle of champagne and sprayed the crowd with it, as is customary, but the he went completely off-script. Most cyclists, especially climbers, can barely lift that magnum to their lips, and take a prim little sip. Kuss hefted that bad boy above his head and started just pounding it. Check this out:

It’s kind of amazing how long he went and how much he drank … that would be impressive even for a non-bike-racer. The commentator Christian Vande Velde said admiringly, “You go, boy!”

It’s not just any cyclist who could do this to such good effect. Roglic, who to me looks like a bit of a thug with his swarthiness and amateurish tattoos, might have looked kind of scary pounding the booze. And Vingegaard … God forgive me, but everything about that guy seems a bit weird, so to see him guzzling the champagne might have just seemed, I dunno, a little creepy. But Kuss, with his apple-pie face and boyish charm, and his unassuming persona, and that little surprised, half-suppressed burp at the end, all wrapped up with an exuberant grin ... well, it’s the very epitome of charisma.

Roglic in particular might envy Kuss’s situation enough to want to spoil it. In the 2020 Vuelta, during the last mountain stage, Roglic had a narrow GC lead that was challenged when Richard Carapaz made a sweet solo move. Carapaz needed only like 40 or 45 seconds to unseat Roglic, and things looked dicey for a bit. Uncharacteristically, Kuss was dropped, and another Jumbo Visma domestique had to make his way up and slay himself for Roglic. In this situation, Kuss—though he’d let down his leader in a key moment—didn’t get a lot of attention; his lapse wasn’t that visible because the cameras weren’t on him. Compare this to the one Tour de France that Roglic probably felt he had in the bag, only to spectacularly lose it in the final time trial to the upstart Tadej Pogacar. Roglic will never live that down. And now Kuss, who is leading the Vuelta seemingly by accident, could go on to lose it without any particular disgrace because after all, he didn’t come into the race with any ambition other than to do his normal job of domestique. To Roglic, that might rankle enough to incite an attack or two.

Theory #5: the business people

It’s possible that Vingegaard and Roglic didn’t launch those attacks on their own initiative. The big brass of the team might have ordered them to do it, for financial reasons. After all, if Kuss were to win the Vuelta, he’d be in high demand from other teams and Jumbo Visma might have to raise his salary. If all they care about is one of their members winning the GC, why not make it one of the guys who’s already at the top of the salary scale?

Theory #6: the business people, continued

It’s also possible that the team’s business leaders didn’t like Kuss’s champagne-swilling antics. Perhaps, they feel, this sent the wrong message about the Jumbo Visma team culture. They may have decided his behavior was unprofessional and glamorized the uninhibited consumption of an alcoholic beverage. “Think of the kids! Those poor impressionable youth!” they might be thinking. Perhaps they determined that the less attention Kuss gets from here on out, the better … so he shouldn’t be allowed to win the Vuelta. So they deploy their henchman, Vingegaard and Roglic, to stop him.

Theory #7: nationalism

Ever since the Dubya years, and particularly since the Trump years, the United States hasn’t exactly been the darling of Europe. It also doesn’t help our cause when American tourists like me go around saying things like, “World War II: you’re welcome.” (No, of course I don’t actually say this, but you get the point.) It also didn’t help that Lance took his don’t-mess-with-Texas ethos over there and messed with Europe, handing the Tour (and the sport) its biggest scandal in history. For Vingegaard and Roglic, as helpful as Kuss has been to his team, maybe they’re nursing some unconscious anti-American grudge such that they can’t bring themselves to promote him to the protected rider.

If you’re skeptical about this theory, and haven’t felt like Kuss wears his nationality on his sleeve, consider Exhibit A, his bike travel case:

That really does smack of unbridled patriotism, doesn’t it? I mean, would you use such a loud, brazen product? I sure wouldn’t. With all this in mind, you’ll surely be relieved to learn that (at least to my knowledge) Kuss’s bike case actually looks nothing like this.  I was just messing with you.

Theory #8: it’s not about Kuss

It could be that these attacks actually have nothing to do with Kuss. For all I know, Roglic and Vingegaard are bitter rivals, and their attacks are simply on one another, with Kuss and the rest of the peloton being collateral damage. Or even if the two get along, Roglic could be lashing out at having been kept off the Tour team this year, and wants to show everyone he was wronged, and/or Vingegaard wants to demonstrate that only he could have won the last two Tours.

Theory #9: irrational exuberance

Maybe these riders have been trying to do the right thing and work for Kuss, but they just can’t help themselves. When you’ve got the legs, it’s hard to resist using them. Look at LeMond in the 1985 Tour, attacking Hinault, his team leader. I already mentioned Hinault returning the favor in the 1986 Tour. Then there was Marc Soler up in the breakaway throwing a tantrum during the 2019 Vuelta when his Movistar team called him back to help his leader (i.e., do his fricking job). Sport in general is riddled with reckless, impulsive behavior. Chalk it up to testosterone poisoning.

Theory #10: none of the above

Of course it’s entirely possible there’s a perfectly good reason for these attacks that just isn’t apparent to an armchair directeur sportif like me. For example, Roglic and Vingegaard could be space aliens driven by forces utterly foreign to us humans. That would explain a lot, actually.

—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—
Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

The Case Against the Metric System

Introduction

It’s easy to argue the merits of the metric system—its ubiquity in the developed world, the ease and elegance of doing calculations with it, etc.—but this is not very interesting. Meanwhile, proponents of the metric system (aka “metricites”) have often struck me as very secure in their position, to the point of smugness. My dad—a gruff, dyed-in-the-wool engineer—was this way, and after decades of sucking up to him, trying to gain his approval, I became disgusted with myself and looked for ways to occasionally nettle, annoy, and provoke him instead. Toward this end, I discovered that praising the imperial system of measure worked great. The withering, disgusted look he gave me, bordering on anger, was priceless. Ever since, I’ve been pondering the advantages of the imperial system and planning a more widespread assault on the metric. Here it is.

(A semantic note: in this country, the measurement system developed by the British, generally referred to as the imperial system, often goes by the term “US customary system.” I’ll use the term “customary” in this sense throughout this post.)

Leadership vs. subservience

Because some metricites will write off the customary system purely because most of the developed world has, I’ll start there. The prevalence of the metric system cannot be denied: look at this map of who uses what system.

Look at how many nations are on the metric system! Could this many people be wrong? Sure! Keep in mind that almost 3 billion people worldwide waste their time, ruin their privacy, and compromise their emotional health by using Facebook. And when they do, the vast majority use a terribly antiquated and inefficient keyboard layout. Don’t look to your fellow man for the best way to live a perfect life.

Meanwhile, consider that the map shown above would probably bear striking resemblance to a map of where you can get a good taqueria-style burrito, and what nation creates the best movies, software, and rap music. The US is not traditionally a follower on the world stage. We’re probably much of the reason English is the lingua franca of world trade, and our dollar is also the foremost global currency. Don’t look at that turquoise coloration and think “outlier.” Think “leader” (or at least “leadership potential” since, admittedly, the rest of the world doesn’t always follow us).

Temperature

This is an easy one. The fact of Celsius having zero as the freezing point of water and 100 as its boiling point is admittedly cute, but not actually very useful. My brother Bryan, solicited for comment on this debate since he’s an engineering sort but also an expansive thinker, has eloquently pointed out:

As elegant as the Celsius scale is, I find it’s a bit crude for actual measurement of the human condition. Most of our experience takes place between really cold and really hot, which is to say from well below the freezing point of water to a bit above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Much above 100 F, you’re kind of toast anyway; once your flesh starts burning it doesn’t really matter what the number actually is. It’ll never get anywhere near 100 Celsius, so that part of the scale [38 to 100] is just wasted. And if you want to talk about it being really cold with C, you have to use negative numbers, which is kind of awkward, especially if you want to compare temperatures.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Meanwhile, the other obvious benefit of Fahrenheit is that the units are smaller so it’s more precise.

Distance

No matter how handy calculating with base-10 may be, there’s no arguing that 60 mph—that is, a mile a minute—is a really handy mnemonic, since it’s roughly the speed we drive on the highway (the >60 mph speed limit being offset by roadside stops, etc.). If our destination is 300 miles away, it’ll take about 300 minutes. The kilometer cannot offer any similar trick. And since the typical speed limit on a city street is 35 and on a residential street it’s 25, we can estimate the time for a non-highway trip by just doubling the miles … so a five-mile drive across town will take roughly ten minutes. (If your community is more congested than this, leave your car at home and use your bike. In fact, do that anyway.)

Another benefit to miles is the word “mileage.” This is a very useful word, both literally and figuratively (e.g., “Your mileage may vary”). There is no equivalent in the metric system: “kilometerage” is not a word and if it were, it would be a dumb word used by nobody ever. Same with the word “milestone.”

Weight

As with temperature, the larger weight units in the metric system make it less precise, a kilogram being 2.205 pounds. But the lack of precision isn’t the only problem; it’s also the case that since a majority of humans would like to lose weight, this larger unit is demoralizing. Imagine eating right and foregoing fattening snacks for a whole week and then having to express your weight loss with a fraction: “Oh, boy, a lost a whole half-kilogram!” That kind of discouraging scale (no pun intended) is the last thing America needs.

Liquid measure

Actually, this is one area where Americans do dabble in the metric system: although we measure most liquids (fuel, beverages) with customary units (gallon, pint), there’s one product that’s sold in metric units: wine. How fitting, since so many wine lovers are annoying and pretentious. Humbler, more down-to-earth Americans drink beer, which is of course measured in ounces (excepting some small and/or lazy overseas breweries that don’t bottle or label their product specially for the American market).

Why does it matter that wine is sold in metric units? It’s because Americans have no sense of milliliters, so we can’t keep ourselves honest when drinking wine. It’s hard to develop a sense of volume with an ungainly basis like the liter, as it’s too large, and nobody ever uses deciliters—they’re too small (less than half a cup)—and there’s nothing in between a liter and a deciliter. With beer, you can keep track pretty easily: whatever vessel you pour that can or bottle of beer into, it’s a known entity: 12 ounces, one drink. From a temperance perspective, the 750-ml wine bottle is a black box: the servings vary with your glass and how much you fill it; the milliliters are like Monopoly money; you just pour and pour, and you wake up hung over and overweight. This is what happens when Americans indulge the metric system.

Another benefit to the customary system: when you go out for a beer, you can say to your pal, “Shall we go grab a pint?” This has a nice ring to it. What would you say in France? Perhaps “Allons-nous prendre un demi-litre?” (literally, “Shall we grab half a liter?”) That sounds terrible—how do you grab half of something? And “Allons-nous prendre un litre?” sounds like you have a drinking problem—I mean, drinking beer by the liter? Yes, I know the French wouldn’t actually say this; they’d say, “Allons-nous boire un verre de vin?” (literally, “Shall we grab a glass of wine?”). I rest my case.

Air pressure

When it comes to inflation, you can’t beat the pounds-per-square-inch (PSI) unit, because the proper inflation for a road bike tyre is a nice, round 100; for a commuter bike it’s a nice, round 50; and for a mountain bike it’s a nice, round 25. What are the metric equivalents? That would be 6.895, 3.447, and 1.724 BAR, respectively. Nothing nice or round about that. (Apparently some Europeans prefer kilopascals, which is just fricking goofy. Imagine pumping your bike tires up to 690 kPa, or 690 of anything, for that matter … I’d be afraid!)

Meanwhile, the giant size of the BAR presents an obstacle to precision. I can input my weight, tire width, and riding style into a handy-dandy mountain bike tire pressure calculator and it gives me a nice precise inflation number: in my case 25 PSI for the rear tire. Since the calculator is trying to be metric-friendly it also gives me 1.8 BAR … but that’s not right—that’s actually 26 PSI, which could be the difference between great handling and merely good. To be sufficiently precise we have to go into the hundredths, with 1.72 BAR, and who can remember that?

(Arguably air pressure measurement isn’t that important, but it’s simpler than some of the next few categories.)

Construction

As detailed here, much of American industry does use the metric system (which, I hasten to point out, is no reason everyday Americans need to do so in their personal lives; after all, it’s not like web developers speak in HTML at the dinner table). One standout is the construction industry, and for good reason. As my brother Bryan explains:

Using inches is really handy for doing the mental arithmetic associated with carpentry. When a carpenter uses inches, he’ll keep track of the bit smaller than an inch using fractions, with as much resolution as is necessary for the application at hand. For example, if he needs to cut a two-by-four to use as a brace while framing a house, he may only need to cut it to within an inch. If he’s cutting a piece to be used as part of an internal structure for something, he may need it to be accurate to half an inch. If it’s a finishing piece, he may want it to be much more accurate, say a sixteenth of an inch. Using fractions, you can decide before you start cutting what units you’ll use—half inches, quarter inches, and so on. Each division is twice as precise. It’s easy to adjust the accuracy of your calculations as you go, too. For example, if you find that ¼ isn’t accurate enough, say you want slightly more than a ¼ inch, you just go to eighths of an inch: ¼ is 2/8, so a smidgen more than that is 3/8 (three of them instead of two), and so on. The tape measure shows these gradations elegantly with longer and shorter ticks, making it easy to visualize these fractions as well. So in ‘merican, you have all these units to choose from that we’re all familiar with and that are easy to convert among: 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, and even 1/32. In metric all you have are centimeters and millimeters, which are significantly different in size, so if a centimeter isn’t enough resolution, you have to jump all the way to millimeters and keep track of a bunch of them.

Another thing that carpenters often must do is find the midpoint of a piece of lumber or whatever. So if a carpenter’s board is 21-½ inches long, he can calculate half of that easily: 21 divided by 2 is 10-½" for the whole part, plus ½ divided by 2 which is ¼ for the rest. It’s easy to add the ½ and ¼, since ½ is 2/4, making ¾” for the fractional bit and thus 10-¾” for the whole thing. Dividing that in two is 5 & 3/8”, which is easy to compute since dividing a fraction in two is just doubling the denominator. I feel like doing this kind of mental arithmetic keeps us closer to the numbers and to their scale, while just plugging numbers into your phone and tracking them to four significant digits makes you lose touch with reality.

Yeah, exactly! This guy knows what he’s talking about ... he even holds a math degree!

Firearms

Okay, that was a lot of math so this next category will be simpler: guns & ammo. This is another area where Americans are dabbling in the metric system. Traditionally, firearms were described in customary units, such as the .45 Colt, the .308 Winchester, and the .30-06 Springfield (all of which numbers indicated the bullet diameter in inches). These are all old school, and American. Now, your more worldly guns, like the Uzi and the Glock, use the metric system with their 9-millimeter round. Which is better? From a practical standpoint there can be no difference because the utility of a firearm, for civilians, is essentially zero. To split hairs we’ll have to consider the matter culturally. In that vein, I have to admit that the modern automatic weapons heralded in rap songs sound cooler and more sophisticated (e.g., “slapped a clip in my nine”) than older American standards—and that’s exactly why the metric system is a bad choice. America has a huge gun problem and the last thing we need is to be glamorizing firearms of any kind. If the .45 Colt and John Wayne seem anachronistic, that’s good … because guns are, too. The wild west days are over and (to paraphrase Ice-T) your best weapon now is your mind.

Shoe sizing

It’s pretty normal when thinking about the metric system to lump the European shoe sizing standard into it. Thus Americans are tempted to think that European shoe sizing, with its smaller units, is both a) metric, and b) more precise. In actuality, European sizing is a disaster. As explained here, this sizing is based on the “length of the last, expressed in Paris points,” which are 2/3 of a centimeter. There is absolutely nothing elegant or sensible about this, and even with this smaller unit of measure I’ve bought cycling shoes in half sizes (e.g., 45.5). Any perceived benefit of greater shoe sizing precision is an illusion, because with shoes you simply must try them on as the fit will vary widely across manufacturers (shoe size expressing only one dimension to begin with).

So why is this a mark against the metric system? Because Americans who have been brainwashed that the metric system is superior will automatically assume that European sizing is a) metric, and thus b) better. If Americans stuck to their guns (an unfortunate turn of phrase, I’ll admit) about our customary units, we’d probably kick this silly European shoe sizing basis to the curb as well. At least our size 12 shoe is approximately 12 inches long … give me one good reason why 45 makes more sense.

Let’s put this base-10 thing to rest

Naturally the metricites among my readership are all saying, “But wait, none of the above matters because base-10, base-10, base-10! Elegant calculations! Engineering! Stuff that matters!” Even if I indulge this by pretending that the industrial world is more important than the quotidian doings of your average joe, I take issue with base-10 being obviously better. Why? Because the base-10 system lacks sub-multiples. To explain this, I will quote from my friend Peter’s son’s friend, a recent high school grad named Kellen Sisco (who may or may not be ready for the worldwide fame he’s about to achieve through this blog). Kellen, in an anti-metric essay he decided to write (totally unconnected to this post, by the way), explains:

In base ten, there are two sub-multiples: 2 and 5, and these are both prime, inconvenient numbers. Now, contrarily, base twelve is good, as there are eight sub-multiples: 2, 3, 4 (which divides by 2), and 6 (which divides by 2 and 3). So, at least four times as many sums in base twelve will [yield] convenient numbers. Base 24 has 19 sub-multiples! Number 16 is a particularly liked number amongst mathematicians because it is good for halving and doubling. As one can see; number 10 is not a distinctly good number; numbers 12, 16, 24, and 60 are considerably better numbers.

Now, I don’t expect you to take this young man’s word for it that mathematicians like the number 16, or that 12, 24, and 60 are better than 10; instead, I’ll give you some real world examples. Consider mathematicians … what do they even do and why do we even care? Well, you like money, don’t you? And what math is lucrative, besides the boring engineering that goes into, say, building bridges? Answer: the Internet. Mathematicians do crazy-ass stuff like string theory which you assume is useless until they suddenly solve some Internet routing thing and become gazillionaires, etc. And I’m here to tell you, Internet engineers just dig hexadecimal, which is base-16, just like Kellin said. A classic dot-com interview question, when hiring engineers, is a pop quiz on network subnetting, which requires the kind of in-your-head division I described above in the construction example; it’s fractions, not getting out your phone and calculating to several decimal places. So beloved is hexadecimal among engineers, I had a boss who balanced his checkbook with it! Sometimes network guys will use octal (for arcane reasons), and when constrained by electrical engineering requirements around on/off (i.e., 1 or 0) they’ll use binary, but they don’t tend to use decimal unless they’re pressed into financial projections (the least fun part of the job).

And what about 12, 24, and 60? Well, it’s no coincidence we use those to describe time, whether we appreciate all the sub-multiples involved or not. We can say “Meet me at quarter past nine” and that’s really easy to grasp (and to visualize, clocks being as elegant as they are). With a base-10 time system we would all be totally screwed. Decimal time has a 10-hour day, so the units are impossibly huge: the minute is 1.44 times the size of ours, and the hour 2.4 times the size, so you’d always have to use decimals since you wouldn’t have handy fractions to play with. Just look at this preposterous base-10 clock:

I’ve tried to figure out how to express 9:15 a.m. in a base-10 time system, and my head exploded—and I’m no slouch at math (being well versed in binary, octal, and hex, and being nerdy enough to blog about daylight saving time, leap years, and leap seconds). If my head explodes contemplating base-10 time, surely billions of heads would explode worldwide if we tried to adopt it. And of course nobody has (except, briefly, the French, who abandoned it after less than a year … ‘nuff said).

Since we thus acknowledge base-10 is not necessarily superior, I think we can agree the metric system doesn’t automatically get a huge benefit from it. So to the STEM types promoting the metric system on this basis, I have this to say: you talk dog farts.

—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—
Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Beck’st Spotlight - What Beer Goes Best With “Remains of the Day”?

Introduction

Every once in a while, a Beck’st comes along that is so monumental, it deserves its own blog post. This is one of those times.

What? You haven’t heard of Beck’sting? What rock have you been sheltering-in-place under? Well, click here for my original Beck’sting post, which will tell you all you need to know about this global phenomenon.

A Beck’st isn’t just a photo, but a photo with a caption or other gloss, along with the dialogue a good beer snapshot inevitably elicits. I’ve included those, along with the initials of all involved. Where you see one letter only (e.g., “E—”) that’s somebody’s spouse, kid, or another friend.

A little background

Back in 1994, my wife and I did a cross-country bicycle tour. Along the way, we stayed for a couple of days with my friend DW and his wife down in Ventura. It was a great visit, the highlights being a) getting a gun pulled on us, and b) watching The Remains of the Day in the theater. Having a gun pointed at me was pretty exciting, but the movie bored the crap out of me. I sat there thinking, “When is this gonna end? And how can Anthony Hopkins’ character be so annoying and useless?” Frankly, I’d have bailed early, but I knew DW had really been looking forward to the movie. (Did I say “movie”? I meant “film.”)

So, we left, when it finally ended, and when DW asked how I’d liked it, I decided I had to come clean. I admitted I’d been less than gripped by it. So had E—, my wife. DW’s reply was something like, “Thank God! I was bored out of my skull. I totally would have walked out, but I assumed you and E— were enjoying it!” The Remains of the Day has been a running joke ever since.

Remains of the Beck’st

DA: E— and I decided that it’s not enough to watch The Remains of the Day on demand via streaming platforms, even if that’s how all the cool kids do it. For a movie of this exalted intellectual caliber, we need a physical copy, just in case the Russians take down our Internet. I can’t wait to watch it again tonight. We might even watch it twice tonight!

P.S. Yes, the stemware is to add insult to injury.

JL: I for one appreciate your dedication to the old and trusted, even if the new is more “convenient”! But my main reaction to this photo was the absolute certainty that that beer would taste so much better straight outta the can than in that silly glass! Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go and stream “Sense and Sensibility” on my iPhone via Netflix for the 172nd time.

DA: You’re probably right about the beer tasting better right out of the can, but the inconvenience of pouring it gently into the stemware glass without generating too much foam, and the added nuisance of having to hand-wash the glass later (since the dishwasher would over time damage the Duvel logo) together became irresistible.

DW: I love the graphics of the can. Loads of irony going on here. I am amused by how they are putting the slogan “Mas Intensa” on a session IPA. “More Intense” is not how I would describe a session IPA. Maybe it’s more intense than a Corona? The other irony that just kills me, is that you have a VHS tape of Remains of the Day in your household and, not only that, it clearly states “Be Kind and Please Rewind.” So you must have purposely forgotten to return it to the Blockbuster or other neighborhood movie rental store, paid the fines, or timed it perfectly when you knew the store was going out of business, so you could keep a copy of this great movie to show your kids and rekindle the past. I am impressed. I once read that Lady Gaga frequently watches Remains when she needs to tap into her creative stream. Well done, DA.

DA: You’re so spot-on about the can. It’s pure nonsense, really. There was nothing intense about that IPA (except the price, E— having purchased it at some chichi Spanish delicacy boutique). It’s the weakest IPA I’ve ever had, both in flavor and ABU (at a mere 4.5%, it makes even the watery lagers seem powerful). On top of all that, it’s not even 12 ounces! It’s 11.2, that being the American-market labeling equivalent of a third of a liter. Why didn’t they do a half a liter, which would be just over a pint? Because they hate us. They’re downright un-American!

We did end up watching Remains of the Day, over two nights. It was a special treat for this convenience-averse viewer because we hadn’t used our VCR in so long, the batteries in the remote had corroded, destroying the electrical contacts. I tried to fix it with aluminum foil, and though I was unsuccessful, the process was very engaging and absorbing, almost as much as Remains itself. As for the movie, all I can say is that the wisdom of age has made me ever more receptive to its subtle charms. Repeated viewing affords the cinephile the opportunity to imagine himself as the auteur, making subtle changes to actually enhance the film, or at least bring it into closer alignment with a modern audience. 

For instance, consider the big scene where Lord Darlington, the English gentlemen of the estate (and of course Anthony Hopkins’s boss), has gathered the heads of state of western Europe together with a German delegate and is convincing them to adopt the appeasement strategy as their response to the Nazi regime. Christopher Reeve, the American delegate (and tycoon) gets up and gives a speech about how the people there are all perfect gentlemen but as politicians they are all amateurs and should leave this up to the professionals. A stirring speech, to be sure, which had me thinking to myself, “Amer’ca!” but then of course all the Brits and the craven Frenchmen et al totally disagreed, and in their very proper and gentlemanly way they basically kicked Reeve to the curb (or “kerb” as they’d have spelled it). As a viewer, and as an American—born American—I couldn’t really handle this scene. Of course great cinema is supposed to be unsettling, but still, this was a bit much to take. So I think a slight rewrite of this scene could have improved the movie, particularly for the patriots in the audience. Instead of clearing his throat and sitting back down, Reeve could have said, “You know, we’re just not going to accept that answer.” Darlington, being perplexed since Reeve was the lone American in the giant banquet hall, would say, “Excuse me, but ... what do you mean, we?” To which Reeve would slyly reply, “Me ... and Smith & Wesson!” Then he’d pull out his 44 Magnum [or 1930s equivalent) and escalate the peace process, if you catch my drift.

But of course the whole Nazi appeasement angle was just a side show, the real “action” being the fraught, eternally nascent relationship between Hopkins and Emma Thompson, the besotted housekeeper. There’s that utterly gripping and engrossing scene in Hopkins’ private study where he’s reading a book and takes pains to hide it when she arrives, and—perhaps because she’s besotted not only by Hopkins but by a few proper British 20-ounce pints of Mahou Màs Intensa Session IPA, or the 1930s equivalent (we don’t know what because the drinking occurs off-screen)—she pursues him about it, literally backing him into a corner, relentlessly repeating her inquiry as to the book, and then literally prying it from his fingers to discover that it’s just a banal, prosaic romance novel by some lowbrow hack (perhaps whatever that period’s equivalent would have been to Kazuo Ishiguro). Hopkins is flummoxed and embarrassed and assures Thompson that he only reads it to improve his vocabulary. She doesn’t buy this for a second and a charmed smile flits over her face as she recognizes this softer side of the starchy, staunchly professional head butler. It’s a very moving scene, but frankly I found it a bit too intense, even after repeated viewings. I know I should be stronger than that, and after all I knew what I was signing up for with this film, but still, it’s just so wrenching, like the emotional equivalent of a Hieronymus Bosch painting if rendered in dialogue, and I really think a touch of levity would do so much to bring the viewer back from the edge. So in my version the book would turn out to be pure smut, the 1930s British version of Penthouse Forum, so that we in the audience could have a good laugh. And Hopkins could say, “I only read this to improve my understanding of the coarse vernacular of the lower servants, so that next time the under-butler or a footman uses a phrase like ‘one-eyed trouser snake’ or ‘I came Lake Superior [or whatever large English lake would fit here], I should know to what he is referring.” Thompson could grin lustily and say, “I know better, you dog!” Then she’d stick her tongue in his ear, and Hopkins would finally get out of his comfort zone, gratifyingly arriving in ours.

When I woke up this morning, my first thought was, “I can’t wait until this weekend day is over so it’ll be evening time, and we can watch Remains again.” I even toyed with watching it as a matinee, but of course any sophisticated viewer of a fine film like this knows the viewing properly begins in the gloaming, so that when the movie has been fully savored it’s bedtime. But then I realized this movie was becoming an obsession. These are intense times for me, with COVID-19, my broken collarbone, an impending election, and several more Mahou Màs Intensa Session IPAs still in the fridge. I think I need to give my poor psyche some respite, and shelve Remains for a while. But I know myself too well ... owning that film on VHS is just too strong a temptation. I would be putting that tape back in right after dinner, telling myself I’m only going to watch the first five or ten minutes but knowing full well I’d be in for the full two-hour-plus journey. Cold turkey is the best way. So today, we’re going to take the videocassette out to one of those little “Free Library” community book boxes and leave it for some other lucky person to stumble across.

Will I be rewinding the tape? No! As you probably already know, “Be Kind - Please Rewind” is a ruse perpetrated by the Videocassette Industrial Complex to give video rental outfits an excuse to fine you for not rewinding. All VHS aficionados know that the tape is in a vulnerable state—much like anyone who has just viewed Remains—right after it is played, due to the heat from passing through the player, and can actually be unduly stretched out if rewound right away. This surely accounts for why this copy of Remains, like all of them surely, has been so badly damaged from repeated, same-seating viewings that the audiovisual quality is severely diminished. The picture is as blurry as a pointillist painting and the sound as muddy as your spouse’s stern lecture when you’ve got a pillow over your head. Not that this is such a bad thing, though … I think I’m going to miss the soft-focus warmth of VHS when I digitally stream The Age of Innocence this evening.

Additional reading

For more Beck’sts, click here or here, and if you’re looking for the Becks’ts that commemorate my late father, click here. For my most recent Beck’sting post, click here.

—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—
E-mail me here.
For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

From the Archives - Studying French at UC Santa Barbara

Introduction

My older daughter has been accepted by a number of colleges, among them UC Santa Barbara. I’m tempted to say, in a grave tone, “Don’t do it, kid. You don’t have to go down the same road I did.” But actually, I’d be stoked if she followed in my footsteps. Then I could lord it over her—you know, “I paved the way, I got their first,” etc. (Yes, of course I’m still joking.) Anyway, in honor of this opportunity, and of my (first) alma mater, here’s another UCSB essay from my archives.

French class at UCSB - November 14, 1988

I’m always ranting and raving about UCSB. Does that mean it’s the greatest? It could … though it could also just mean I’m just insecure about my life and am boasting about my circumstances to shore up my fragile ego. (Perhaps the real truth lies somewhere in between.)

I have a friend who would kill to attend UCSB, based solely on the abundance of gorgeous girls here, but he can’t get in because he has never taken, and in fact refused to take, a foreign language class. All the schools in the UC system require like three years of a foreign language, so he’d have to take care of this at a community college and transfer in.

I wish I could get through to this guy. Foreign languages classes are actually kind of a hoot, especially at college. You get some of the wackiest, most behaviorally bizarre instructors. A trained student can spot a foreign language instructor a mile off. First of all, they never wear normal looking clothes. I think they do all their shopping in Europe, or maybe at a special foreign language instructor boutique. It’s hard to describe these outfits. Let’s just say if every garment could be a beret, that’s what these clothes would be.

This sartorial oddness goes back, I believe, to a secret longing of each foreign language teacher to either be elsewhere, or be thought to have come from elsewhere. They’ve all cultivated this aura of longing, like they’re in exile or something. I’m not like some wild-eyed patriot or anything, but I’m sometimes tempted to say something rash, like: “America: love it or leave it!”

Another instant sign of a foreign language teacher is his or her tendency to speak English with a foreign accent. Surely some of these people are native born, or have at least been here long enough to adapt, but I can’t help but think they’re clinging to this accent as some sign of authenticity. Kind of hypocritical, isn’t it, when they lower our grades for lacking a perfect accent in the foreign tongue they’re teaching us?

Here’s another weirdness: all the foreign language instructors smoke. Every last one of them. Just cruise by Phelps Hall, where they hang out between classes, and you’ll see them, standing around puffing away. They can’t help but to look self conscious, because they know that besides your occasional “social smoker” (i.e., who only smokes when getting wasted at a party), they are the only smokers at UCSB. They are also the only instructors whose hanging out we can witness, because other instructors, who don’t have to worry about stinking up their classrooms and offices, hang out indoors where the students can’t get at them.

The foreign language curriculum is a curiosity too, well worth observing. My French textbook, for example, teaches more than grammar and conversation: it gives us insights into the differences between these cultures, and particularly into how France is basically better. My textbook, oddly, is the Teacher’s Annotated Edition, which offers some interesting insight into the pedagogical process. For example, in the section of the book teaching the comparative structure in French, using physical appearance as a model, the book offers this advice to the teacher: “In order to avoid sensitive areas of weight and height, such questions have been omitted. If students feel comfortable about it, they could also describe these aspects.”

This seems like a minefield for the instructor. Sure, he or she could try to go by body type, on the theory that if nobody in the class is overweight, they’ll all be comfortable being compared. But of course that’s absurd; distorted self-images are rampant among the college set. And it’s not like the instructor can just ask us. Who’s going to raise a hand and say, “That subject is strictly off-limits for me owing to my poor self-esteem”? Nobody, that’s who. Surprisingly, my instructor ignored the textbook’s advice and went right ahead with calling students up to the front of the room to be compared. To my great relief, nobody seemed uncomfortable. The only problem was that all the girls in my class are about the same height and weight, making comparative statements impossible. Maybe that’s why so many of us bombed the last test.

Building on my original point of the French air of superiority, the book feels safe telling the teacher how to promote French supremacy, since it knows the teacher is a French supremacist anyway. For example, next to the French translation of Cinderella is this note: “Suggestion: Point out that “Cendrillon” is from Les Contes de ma Mère l’Oye by Charles Perrault (as are “Le Petit Chaperon Rouge [Little Red Riding Hood], “L’Histoire de Tom Pouce” [Tom Thumb], “Barbe Bleue” [Bluebeard], etc.).” Now this seems harmless enough at first, until you look at the “etc.” What’s that supposed to mean? Literally, it means “and the others.” As in, “Not only these three stories, but just about every other good kid’s story as well, are originally French.”

Let me interject at this point: the English version of “Little Red Riding Hood” is a lot better than the French, since in our tale both the grandmother and Little Red Riding Hood get eaten, and then the wolf gets killed, instead of the boring ending where the girl simply kills the wolf. Meanwhile, the publisher knows this note is far from innocuous, because it’s only in the Teacher’s Annotated edition. (I checked Molly’s standard edition to make sure.)  I’ll tell you what’s going on here: the publisher knows it has a receptive audience in the instructor … and it’s his or her job to figure out how to subtly inculcate the Americans.

The French supremacy theme is further promoted by the never-ending menagerie of intelligent, charming, and nice people you see in these textbooks. You’ll never get a statement like, “C’est Pierre. Pierre est un perdant [loser].” This is true across the board. I can remember a dialogue from my junior high French 1A book: “Est-ce qu’elle est intelligente? Oui! Et est-ce qu’elle est charmante? Oui! Est-ce qu’elle est belle? Mais bien sure, elle est Francaise!” [Is she smart? Yes! And is she charming? Yes! Is she pretty? But of course, she is French!] You never get, “Est-ce qu’il va mourir d’une mort horrible d’un cancer du poumon?” [Will he die a horrible death from lung cancer?] even though it’s highly likely more French people smoke than are intelligent and charming.

But cultural oddities aside, foreign language classes at the college level are actually very hi-tech. The pride and joy of the department is the Foreign Language Learning Lab. Let me take you on a tour of this outstanding facility.

Kerr Hall, home of the Learning Lab, is one of the most modern buildings on campus. I’m surprised it doesn’t have one of those scrolling digital signs. Instead there’s just this printed one: “Learning Lab upstairs.” Interestingly, the Learning Lab is the only place on the whole campus that offers signage of any kind. Up the stairs, there’s another sign: “Learning Lab down the hall.” Down the hall, there’s yet another: “Learning Lab across from this room.” Why all the signs? Well, I have my own theory: this lab is so different from anything we students have ever seen before, we wouldn’t even know what to look for!

First, you have to punch the clock, just like at a factory. Unlike me, most UCSB students have probably never been near a factory, so this is surely quite novel for them. I guess the faculty somehow doubts that we students will avail ourselves of this cutting edge learning technology on our own volition, so they have to monitor, and thus enforce, our use of the Lab. And how much usage is that? Let’s have a look at these timecards. Hmmm, Leigh Malone only put in three minutes during her last session. Must have been called away. And the one before that was similarly brief. How much can you really get done in three minutes? And look at this, Rebecca Martin forgot to punch out last week. And Don Stannage forgot to punch in, so he just wrote in the time. Oh yeah, I believe that.

What’s that? You’re wondering why I’m punching Leigh’s and Molly’s timecards in addition to my own? Well, we kind of have a deal going. We look after each other. I don’t suppose this is a purely ethical behavior, no, but the Language Lab is 10% of our grade, and we’re just trying to survive.

See that redheaded kid over there reading a magazine? Well, his name is Christopher, and I’ve seen him here before; he’s in my class. Let’s check out his card: yep! he’s on the clock! Now, this guy is a veteran of the Language Lab, and has discovered a little loophole: it doesn’t actually matter what you do in here. You could practice French, you could do your math homework … heck, you could theoretically read a comic book or even sleep. It’s kind of along the lines of a t-shirt I saw recently: “They can send me to college, but they can’t make me think!”

So here’s what you do when you’re actually learning French here. You talk into the recorder, and it tapes your voice. Then, by using the repeat feature, you can listen to your own voice spoken back to you (as long as you keep straight the “Drill” button vs. the “Play” button … that does stymie some of the students). It’s a fascinating experience because not only does your own played-back voice sound high-pitched, nasally, and weird—like your recorded voice always does—but you can tell how bad your accent is, without the instructor having to complain to you in class. That’s the beauty of this technology.

Just look out over that sea of heads, all hung low as their eyes scan their workbooks. Well, not a sea, I guess … more of a puddle. But anyway, you are looking at some seriously voracious students. Wait, that guy is bobbing his head around! He’s really getting into it! Look, his foot’s tapping, this guy’s having a great time! Let’s see what language he’s taking: oh, right. Led Zepplin … right there on his tape case. And his workbook seems to be an issue of Rolling Stone. See, at college there are a lot more languages to take than just French, German, and Spanish!

I love all the posters in this lab, locked in a bitter struggle for dominance. One arrogant French instructor probably put up the first “France” poster, and then a German instructor felt compelled to represent his country, and on down the line. That’s why there’re about fifty posters on that one wall. And they don’t go unnoticed, either; just look at the students gazing at them. Well, okay, fair enough, they’re actually gazing off into space. But what do you expect? This is college.

Over there is the Operations Desk. If you ask the clerk there how to operate the machinery, he’ll give you a tape with all the instructions recorded on it. But it’s a Catch-22, isn’t it? If you can’t work the machine, you can’t play the tape, so you won’t hear the instructions. That’s why you have to bring your Walkman the first time here. What do you mean, “What if you don’t own a Walkman?” This is California, man! Everybody owns a Walkman!

This is my favorite poster: “Learning, culture, and friendship at the Learning Lab.” Well, obviously you can learn here, and in the foreign language department, culture always comes with the learning. But friendship? I’ve never made any friends here. Is that because everybody’s plugged into a set of headphones and can’t talk? No, it must mean I’m just not outgoing enough. Standing in line at the cassette library, for example, is a great place to strike up a conversation. If only a line would ever develop.

Well, I’ve got some learning to do here, so I’ll have to leave you alone for a while. You can listen to any tapes you want. Just ask the clerk to get you started. I’ll be over here covering Chapter 13, Simon & Garfunkel.

In summary, the foreign language department is a reason why you should attend UCSB, not a reason not to. French class gives me a chance to diversify my college experience, make friends, and broaden my horizons culturally. Plus, it’s an easy “C.”

--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--

For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.