An Hungarian Goose

July 9, 2021June 25, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

“Listen Daphne,” the character Frasier Crane said, in an episode called We Two Kings, episode ten of season ten, “is your mom partial to a traditional Cornwall dressing, you see I’m thinking it would go splendidly with the twelve-pound Hungarian goose that I’m serving,” he adds the latter with a excited survey of the room to encourage joy.

Niles and Daphne counter that they are planning on celebrating Christmas at their apartment to celebrate their first Christmas as a married couple, and they invite Frasier to partake in their celebration. Frasier argued that it’s been a Crane family tradition to have Christmas at his place. To which, Niles responds:

“Frasier you’ve had Christmas for the past nine years.”

“Yes, but we agreed we’d have Christmas here in its traditional setting.”

“Yeah, well, maybe it’s time to start a new tradition,” Niles says.

“But I’ve had new stockings loomed for everyone,” Frasier says. “Now there you see, you made me spoil the surprise, and did no one hear me say that I have ordered an Hungarian goose?”

As is typical of Kelsey Grammer, he delivers a pitch perfect line. He stresses the word (‘an’), and he punctuates the word goose with a pleading tone that asks his audience (Niles and Daphne) to recognize the import of what he’s saying. We don’t know how many takes Grammer used to hit that line that perfect, but the finished product will live on in television history as far as I’m concerned, as one of the best one-liners Grammer ever delivered.

Some proper grammar enthusiasts might argue that Grammer used improper grammar when he issued this historically hysterical line in the situation comedy Frasier. The grammatically correct use of definitive articles states that we use (‘a’) before vowels and an (‘an’) before consonants, but as with everything in the English language, there are exceptions. The letter (‘H’) is just such an exception. When the (‘H’) is silent, as it is in the word hour, we use (‘an’) even though (‘H’) is a consonant. “It will only take me an hour to complete this article.” If the (‘H’) is pronounced, as in “I always wear a hat when I write”, (‘a’) is the proper definite article to use. The exception to the (‘H’) exception occurs when the accent is not on the first syllable of a word, because the pronunciation of the (‘H’) is downplayed in words where the accentuation occurs after the first syllable, and it renders it closer to the silent (‘H’) rule. Unless, they argue, we’re using some words like historian or habitual, in which (‘a’) is the preferred variant.

We also have other exceptions regarding the sound in certain other words. We don’t say “He has a MBA”, for example, because it sounds like a (‘E’) exists before the (‘M’), or (em-bee-ay). It just sounds wrong to say a MBA, even though the initials begin with an (‘M’). So, the rule states that if it sounds like a vowel precedes the consonant, then we use the definitive article (’an’).

One rule of thumb on the use of definitive articles, says June Casagrande, from The Glendale Newspress, “[I]t’s a mistake to choose based on anything but sound.” So, if it sounds wrong, it probably is? Well, (‘an’) Hungarian goose doesn’t sound correct, even if the stress is found on the second syllable, and if we extend Ms. Casagrande’s quote out to other strict to casual rules of usage, so many of them just don’t sound correct.

Anytime I sort through the rules of grammar and spelling as it pertains to the English language, I think of two people: a foreigner I knew well who told me that English might be the hardest language in the world to speak on a casual level. “I did well in my ESL (English as a Second Language) class,” she said, “but talking to English speakers in this country is so confusing. There are so many exceptions and rules, even in casual conversation, that I just want to pull my hair out. Talking to you, a writer who obsesses over such rules, is even more nerve-wracking. I don’t think I’ll ever get it,” the woman, who speaks seven other languages to near fluency, told me. The other person I think of is Norm MacDonald who, when confronted with the idea that the English language might be one of the hardest languages to learn, he said, “Really, because I think it’s pretty easy.”

Was Kelsey Grammer grammatically correct when he said the line, “An Hungarian Goose”? The Word check program I’m using to write this article suggests that the definitive article (‘an’) is incorrect in this case. Yet it allows me to write both ‘a historian’ and ‘an historian’ without notification of error. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but the stress on Hungarian falls on the second (gar) syllable, and if that’s the case doesn’t it render the (‘H’) equivalent to silent in the phrase and an (‘an’) is more correct in this case?” signed Confused.

On the surface, it appears that only skilled comedians and comedic actors can explain why some words are funnier than others. They don’t know squat, I suggest, until they try it out. Standup comedians test their material constantly, and comedic actors sort through their numerous takes, with directors and writers, to find the right sentence, the perfect pitch, and everything else that produces a finished product to which we marvel. We can only wonder how many takes it took Grammer to try to hit that line perfect, but when he hit a hard (‘an’) in the line and punctuated the word goose with a distinct plea in his voice, I think it was as close to comedic perfection as the skilled comedic actor ever achieved. Steve Martin suggests that comedy is similar to music in that what works in comedy is often based on rhythms and beats. In this frame, the syllables involved in the words an Hungarian goose are funnier than Danish hen ever could be, even if Grammer dropped the line in the exact same manner. So, if anyone who wants to debate whether Grammer should’ve said (‘a’) Hungarian goose, I would introduce them to another exception to the rule, and I regard this an exception to all rules of usage in the English language, “If it works, and it’s that funny, you can go ahead and throw all of your rules of usage right out the window.

Guy no Logical Gibberish V

May 20, 2021December 31, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

We’ve discussed the idea that the human inferiority complex could drive our belief that aliens from another planet are intelligent beyond our comprehension, but we’ve never discussed the basis of our comprehension. The natural instinct when discussing intellect is to gauge it by comparing it to our own. We could achieve some level of comparative analysis by giving the aliens an I.Q. test, but we might consider that an unfair standard by which to judge someone or something from another planet, depending on the test. Another definition of intelligence might be the ability of a being to harness their surroundings to use them for a designed purpose. An example of this might be when humans use every natural and manmade element at their disposal to create a product. When an alien aircraft lands on earth will the product that transports them be born of greater intelligence or just different intelligence, based on different elements from their home planet?

**Abbot and Costello vs. The Alien Amazons**

Are individual, modern comedians funnier than the comedians of, say, the 1930’s? Or are they just different? When we watch Abbot and Costello today, we probably don’t find them as hilarious as our grandparents did. A current teen, who has an altogether different frame of reference, might not even find them humorous. Some comedy is timeless, such as the Who’s on First? routine, but Abbot and Costello had a different frame of reference, a different base, and a different mainframe from which they operated.

When a radically new comedian, such as a George Carlin or Andy Kaufman took the stage, they were so different initially that we consider them brilliant and ingenious. Are they that brilliant and ingenious, or do they just change (sometimes radically) the landscape and language of comedy?

Is a Jimmy Fallon that much funnier than Jack Benny was, or is the comedy of a Jimmy Fallon more of a product of a different era that Jack Benny helped define in some ways? If we were able to flip them around on the timeline, and Jack Benny was everything the modern Jimmy Fallon is, would we regard Fallon as funnier than Benny? This switch would have to incorporate the time and place elements of comedy, the influences that led Fallon to the stage, and all of the prior comedians who changed the face of comedy prior to Fallon. If we incorporated all that into a more modern Jack Benny, would we regard him as funnier than a 1960’s Jimmy Fallon?

When the aliens touchdown on our planet, will they be superior intellects, or will their knowledge be so different that we don’t know how to comprehend their intellect? Will they be carbon-based, as we are, or will they be silicon-based, as some science fiction films theorize? Some scientists deem that impossible, as a Scientific American piece suggests that “silicon oxidizes, and it cannot support life.” What if the aliens introduced us to their line of alien products, our intrigue would initially lead us to believe that they’re intelligent beyond our comprehension, but what if their home planet operated from an entirely different periodic table? We assume that all life, comes from the shared mainframe of the periodic table, but when we find out that’s not the case, it will shock us, and lead us to marvel at whatever they do outside human comprehension. When, and if, we find out our assumption that all life operates from a shared premise was incorrect, we’ll be shocked into believing that they’re better and superior, when it could be as simple as just being different.

***

If you’ve read as many interviews with musicians as I have, you’ve run across the one-more-song phenomenon. I’ve read numerous musicians say they sweat blood and tears to compile enough songs to complete an album, only to have some record executive say, “It’s great and all that, but there’s something missing. We need an oomph song to put it over the top. Do you have one more song in you? We want another song to help unify the album thematically. Put simply, we want a hit.”

The musicians greet this directive with resentment and disdain, as they regard the exec’s request as flippant, as if it’s so easy to just write another song, and a hit song at that. The idea that the record exec would approach the main songwriter in such a flippant manner builds resentment between the two, until the songwriter approaches the other musicians and the producer with the request, “It looks like we need to go back to write another song,” in tones that mimic and mock the record exec. “We need a hit, so let’s go back to the studio and write a hit, because we obviously didn’t do that the first time out.” If you’ve read as many interviews as I have, you know that this musician eventually reconvenes with the other players in the studio, and they resentfully write “another song to appease the masters of their universe” and they haphazardly, and almost accidentally, create a song that ends up defining their career.

The conditions of the creation of this throwaway song are such that the artists involved often end up despising it throughout their career. Almost every musician wants the deeper cuts they spent decades compiling to define them and their brand, yet every audience member wants to hear “the hit” that the band probably spent three days writing, composing, and singing. The song has no meaning to them, yet they’ll spend the next twenty years playing it in concert so the audience will feel like they got their money’s worth.

I’ve read about this happening so often that I think there’s something to it. It can be as simple as the difference between writing a complicated song about the fall of the Roman Empire and a simple ditty they write about their walk to Burger King. For some reason the Burger King piece hits, and their artistic dissertation on the Fall of Rome falls by the wayside. I don’t think it’s breaking news that most silly, little ditties about love and rocking every day and partying every night sell well and the important pieces usually do not. It might have something to do with the fact that people work so hard in their daily lives that when they get off work, they don’t want to think anymore. It might have something to do with the messenger, as opposed to the message. “Who’s this guy, a rock star? I’m not going to take the views he develops between bong hits too seriously.” The difference might also have something to do with the artist, as they try so hard to write an important piece that they try too hard, and it shows.

It’s so difficult to predict what will hit, and most of my favorite artists often say they don’t even try anymore. They probably started out trying to appeal to our interests, but they realized that the best course of action is to create the best art they can, and if the audience loves it that’s gravy. When it happens with a song, story, etc., that didn’t require any effort on their part, the artist can feel the frustration in their answer. The complicated, brilliant works required them to jump through all the hoops of creative expression, and it was as difficult for them to be covert as it is to be overt at times, so they seeded and spruced their creation through the gestation cycle, until they decided it was ready to enter the birth canal. Pffft. Nothing. Then they wrote that little ditty about something interesting that happened to them on a walk to the local Burger King, and everyone went crazy. Writing the former was hard, as the perspective changed six different times, and the artist went through as many as twenty-five edits before they finally reach some form of satisfaction. When they wrote the Burger King ditty, they did it in a day, and they didn’t care about it as much. They’re all their babies, of course, but the artist works so hard on some of their material that they find it depressing when no one recognizes them for how important, intelligent, and well-informed they are. What does any of this mean? No one knows, and fewer care. As I wrote, it might have something to do with an artist trying so hard to write important and meaningful art that their effort shows. It might also have something to do with the fact that these simple little ditties, filled with silly and stupid lines, are more pleasing to hear, and read, because all we really want in life is to do is dance.

The Frivolous Fun of 80s Hair Metal

May 1, 2021January 27, 2025 RilalyLeave a comment

They were hairy and kooky, obnoxious and a little spooky, the metal bands of the 80s. As fashionable as it was to love these (mostly) L.A.-based heavy metal in the 80s, it became just as fashionable to openly despise them in the 90s.

I loathed them too, until a young co-worker, who was discovering them for the first time, said, “Hey, they’re not [Bob] Dylan, or [John] Lennon, I get that, but c’mon, they’re fun.” I immediately dismissed that line, because the guy was a doofus. His musical tastes did not define his doofosity, but it was everything else that led me to dismiss just about everything that came out of his mouth. Yet, to my amazement this simple line, from such a simpleton, fundamentally changed the way I listen to music today. I went through a they’re-not-this-that-or-the-other-thing phase, until I eventually turned into a “C’mon, they’re fun” guy too.

I’d love to write, right here, that the self-indulgent critics’ call for important, meaningful music, never got to me, but the pressure to denounce hairy metal from the 80s came from every “cool kid” corner of my life. Prior to loathing them, I went through a long and expensive heavy metal phase when I was a teen. I spent almost all of my minimum wage paychecks on cassette tapes of every major, and many minor Los Angeles-based, hair, glam metal band out there.

When I aged out of it, I sought serious, brilliantly complex music, but when doofus said what he said, I realized that I was trying to make myself into a serious adult, because I wanted adults else to take me seriously. Doofus reminded me that we can all seek complex arrangements in our music from artistic musicians, but let’s not forget to keep it fun.

With his succinct condemnation of my self-importance and self-indulgence, doofus reminded me of the simplistic brilliance of all those years ago. The book Nothin’ but a Good Time also reminded me, more recently, that the hairy, glam metal music of the 1980s never claimed to be anything more than what it was. Say what you want about the bands of this era, and the music they wrote, but they never tried to be vital or important. They never wrote a seven minute opus on the Fall of the Roman Empire and how it might correlate with the modern rise of technology. The music of the Los Angeles-based hair bands were all about having a party, abusing their body with whatever substances they could find, having random and consensual, conjugal visitations, and any other forms of excess they could find to have a good time. The book also pointed out that they didn’t mind practicing what they preached.

Shortly after I grew out of my love of hairy metal, I sought clever and complex music, but I’ve never enjoyed deep songs with meaningful lyrics. This might be a result of listening to so many thousands of hours of metal music in my teens, but I have always considered deep, meaningful songs so silly. They do nothing for me. Most of the time, when I hear a lyricist attempt to write deep, profound lyrics, I think of Fredo from The Godfather, “I’m smart! Not like everybody says… like dumb… I’m smart and I want respect!”

We’ve all read critics pour through lyrics for the deep meaning the author intended, but most of them either have something to do with something political or social, or they contain some oblique, or over the top, reference to drug use. I listen to that music, and I repeat it numerous times, but the lyrics don’t affect me in anyway. Vocals, and vocal inflections, should be used as another instrument in a song. If they do it well, I’ll listen, but I don’t understand why we should care what Thom Yorke of Radiohead has to say about his view of the world any more than we do Bret Michaels of Poison. In this vein, Michaels’ lyrics might be more respectable, because he doesn’t engage in any of the “look at me, ain’t I smart?” type of the self-indulgent lyrics we find in Yorke’s work.

Most of the “vital and important” music critics of the era loathed heavy metal, but we didn’t really care. We didn’t need Nothin’ But a Good Time, and that served to undermine the power of the music critics. The critics knew that most of the hairy metal bands didn’t know how to play their own instruments, and they panned them for not only ignoring socially significant issues but damaging some. They loathed these bands for thumbing their nose at consequential issues, and they deemed them inconsequential. No one I knew cared. We wanted to play heavy metal music at our parties, and we wanted to play that same music in our cars on the ride home from work to remember those parties. The book Nothin’ But a Good Time reminded those of us who loved it that there was a time when we didn’t take ourselves so seriously, and we knew we weren’t vital and important. We were silly and stupid, because we were kids, and we wanted our music to be silly and stupid too. We didn’t want to hear what critics said we should be.

How bad were the hairy metal bands of the 80s? How good were they? It depends on who you ask and when you asked them. As the book points out, the era was all about timing. Those who were in a Los Angeles-based heavy metal band between 1984 and 1988 learned how the other half lives for a while, and they indulged in every excess they could think up. If a heavy metal, glam band had all of the above and they released an album as late as 1989 to 1990, a major record label probably signed them, but every album they made went straight to the $.99 bin. The idea that sales are all about timing is not a novel concept of course, but was any rise-and-fall of a musical genre as stark as what happened to heavy metal in the 80s? Disco? maybe.

Were Motley Crue (‘83), Ratt (’84), Poison (‘85) that much better than Bang Tango (’89), Junkyard (’89), or Dangerous Toys (’89)? When we listen to classic rock radio today, which bands do we hear? How many of us even know the latter three? One would think that if the latter bands had music that was just as good that they would eventually rise to some levels of prominence. They didn’t, in part, because the more prominent bands of the era tapped into a time and place of the zeitgeist that will presumably never die in some quarters.

What happened in the intervening years, some of those band members interviewed in Nothin’ but a Good Time say the dynamic in the industry experienced a subtle shift when Guns N’ Roses changed it a little in 1987. Others not in the book, say the industry tilted further away from the “Rock and Roll all nite and party every day” rock theme when the funk-rap hybrid bands Faith No More (’89) and Red Hot Chili Peppers (first noteworthy album ’89) arrived on the scene, but most acknowledge that the Seattle, grunge movement led by Nirvana’s Nevermind in 1991 sounded the death knell of the hairy metal of the 80s.

To read about 98% of most modern critics, the modern reader might believe that Kurt Cobain single-handedly killed ‘80’s hairy metal. The critics write this, I think, because they loved everything about Cobain, Nirvana, and the single Smells like Teen Spirit. They love the narrative that ten minutes after Smells like Teen Spirit aired on Mtv, everyone knew the heavy metal movement was over. Some of the artists interviewed in this book, however, suggest that Slash might’ve done more to end the mid-80s version of hair metal than Cobain. I consider that an intriguing notion, considering that most put the heart of heavy metal’s reign over the music industry between ’84 and ’89, and that it began to wane two years before Nevermind was released. As factual as that statement appears to be, according to record sales and Mtv plays, it’s not as compelling as the narrative that suggests one band, one man, and one song ended it all. Others claim that other Seattle artists Mother Love Bone, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden did something so different in the years preceding Nevermind that they laid the times-they–are-a-changing groundwork to pave the way for Nevermind. Some musicians claim that the King’s X 1989 album Gretchen Goes to Nebraska laid the groundwork for what some call the Seattle sound, and others call grunge. Regardless the who, what, and whens of the argument, most agree that Nevermind did put the final stake in the heart of the dying carcass that was the hairy metal of the 1980s.

*******

As compelling as the argument of the death of heavy metal is, the tale of the birth of heavy metal might be as interesting. Almost every artist of the era lists Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin as the forefathers of their sound, and others state that the first Black Sabbath album, AC/DC’s Back in Black, and Quiet Riot’s Metal Health, and Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry all played a role. The over-the-top looks, the stage theatrics, and the simple, arena, sing-a-long rock songs intended for nothing but fun, however, belong to KISS. Put simply, if KISS didn’t rule the airwaves of the 70s, the early hair metal movement of the 80s probably doesn’t happen.

Nothin’ But a Good Time mentions KISS a couple of times, but for the most part this book strives to cover the scene in this era, and it provides little backdrop for who (other than Quiet Riot and Twisted Sister) might have inspired it. Yet, if KISS inspired the early years of the movement, it would be a stretch to say they were the catalyst for the entire era. KISS came out in ’73, and they hit their peak commercial value between ’75 and ’77. Why did it take seven years for bands like Poison and Motley Crue to take their influence to platinum success?

The missing link, in my humble opinion, arose from a subtle shift the British band Def Leppard made away from their more traditional heavy metal sound from the KISS, AC/DC sound to the more polished, David Bowie, T. Rex catchy pop-metal sound that proved more radio friendly when they made the relatively successful High N’ Dry in ’81. In ’83, Def Leppard took that concept up a notch with the release of Pyromania. That album’s success did not happen overnight, but in my world, no one I knew had ever heard of a group called Def Leppard on Thursday, but by Monday, everyone I knew was wearing the Def Leppard Union Jack sleeveless T-shirt. The groundswell was almost that immediate.

The primary difference between Def Leppard and KISS, in my world, was defined by every teenaged girl I knew. I knew teenage girls who liked KISS, especially the song Beth, but when Def Leppard put Pyromania on the shelves, every girl I knew suddenly loved a rock band. When the songs from Pyromania hit the radio, it was the closest thing to Beatlemania that I’ve ever experienced. Every teenage girl I knew listened to Pyromania and when teenage girls love something that much, teenage boys pay attention, and they eventually learn to love it.

The success of Def Leppard’s Pyromania (’83) led to Poison’s success (in ’85), and Motley Crue’s shift from their KISS-inspired (’83) album Shout at the Devil to the more female friendly Theater of Pain (in ’85). The formula Def Leppard set (by selling 6 million albums at the time) was to release a hard rock single followed by a more radio friendly ballad led every 80s heavy metal act who followed, to include a more female friendly ballad. (This formula started before Def Leppard, but they appeared to reignite it.)

The book Nothin’ But a Good Time begins right about here. The book doesn’t mention the integral role that I think Def Leppard played, but after the success of Pyromania, every major label tried to sign their own version of Def Leppard/KISS between 1984 and 1988. Most metal bands signed during this era went gold (selling 500,000 units sold), and some went platinum (1,000,000 units sold) to multi-platinum. As evidence of how crazy this signing spree became, a member of a band called Bang Tango said, “We weren’t even a real band when we were signed, and we had to learn quickly.”

Were most of the 80s hair metal bands ridiculously excessive? Were they politically incorrect? Did they have the lyric “baby” in every song, at least once? Were they everything critics loathe? The answer is D, all of the above. No one cared. When I write that we didn’t care about the critics, that shouldn’t be limited to the “who cares what the critics think?” trope that bands drop about critics. I’m talking about genuine, almost total obliviousness. We may have dropped a “You know the critics hate these guys right?” To which, the other guy would say, “Really? No, I didn’t know that.” And that was the end of the discussion in the non-cerebral and non-political party we teenagers were all having for a majority of the mid-80s.

At some point, the party we were all having with the L.A.-based, hair metal, glam bands had to end. The definitions of when and how this happened differ, but it did end. Some bands were still being signed to major record companies, and in this book those bands said that they paid their dues, and they felt like they wrote a decent album, but the record company didn’t promote them the way they might have just two years prior. They claimed that they were just as talented, or more so, than other bands who made millions two years prior. They missed the signing spree, and the multi-platinum awards for any band who could string together a halfway decent heavy metal ballad. They missed the crucial money making part of the era by about two years.

For those of us who were young and easily-influenced teenagers during this era, the polished pop metal to heavy metal music they produced will always be “ours”. It seduced us into believing life could be fun, and that it could be one big party that doesn’t have to end. Logic dictates that everything must end, however, and there came a point when glam metal needed to die. An era defined by excess eventually became so excessive that it became a parody of itself, and those of us who once loved it developed a love/hate relationship that eventually came to an end when young, rock enthusiasts reminded us how fun the music from the era used to be. Even with that, however, some of the artists interviewed in the book Nothin’ But a Good Time now admit that it became obnoxiously excessive, and it had to die under its own weight. Someone had to come along and burn the field to prepare for the harvest of something different and new. These facts about life and art can be as hard to accept as they are to deny, but as the book states a number of the top-tier bands of that era have experienced a certain rebirth from younger crowds who missed it the first time around and older crowds who seek the nostalgia of the acts.

“Write jokes, get paid,” was the philosophy Jay Leno followed throughout his career in comedy. He also preached this to his fellow comedians who thought they could and should use comedy to change the world. “That’s all such nonsense.” Leno reportedly replied. “It’s all about write jokes, get paid.” The glam metal of the ’80s followed this philosophy. They wrote fun, little meaningless songs that they hoped young people would enjoy so much that they might run to their local record store and buy, and we did, by the millions. The music was not important, vital, or consequential, but those of us who lived through the era thought it as a lot of fun. When we comb through music timelines, with critics who write such things, we’ll never see them list our favorite artists on the “most influential artists of the eras” lists they write. Those of us who lived through the era know what a ridiculous time it was in music, in terms defined by music critics, but if we were to write a eulogy on the time period, we might say something like, “Was it a meaningless era that focused on a lot of dumb, superficial stuff? It was, but that was the kind of party we were having back then. Sorry, you missed it.”