The Tarantino Effect

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Quentin Tarantino is arguably the most successful director of violent movies in the last 30 years. Men, in particular, love his brand of violence. Why were/are Tarantino movies so successful? My best guess is that, with Pulp Fiction in particular, he made violence fun and funny. Beyond the influential dialogue, the style, the great music, and the evocative colors, Pulp Fiction was a modern combination of the most violent Scorsese movies ever made and the humorous exchanges of Abbot and Costello. Another element we love about Pulp Fiction, and the other Tarantino movies to a lesser degree, is the introduction of all of these alternative codes his characters develop to assuage the guilt they might otherwise feel by engaging in such a lifestyle.

No characters refer to codes explicitly, of course, but the philosophical conversations the Samuel Jackson and John Travolta characters have, combined with the manner in which they conduct business suggests it’s not personal. It’s just business. There’s also a hint of the other mafia movie standbys, “Everyone knows what they’re getting into when they enter into this business,” and the, “Kill or be killed” motif.

In a slight twist on the conversation of codes, the Uma Thurman character mocks the extent of this code saying, “You think Marcellus Wallace would throw another person out of a window over a foot massage?” The import of this joke is that we all think, thanks to Travolta’s misunderstanding, that a foot massage is such a sensual act that it warrants violent retribution. The Uma Thurman chunk of dialogue admonishes us all for believing that these characters are so savage that they would seek to maim and kill people for whatever reason they can think up. She alludes to the fact that a foot massage might warrant a behind the scenes scolding, but what Travolta’s suggesting is crazy. She helps the audience understand that while their world does not involve the codes the rest of us live by, they’re not that outrageously violent.

In another scene, the John Travolta character states that he respects these codes, and the hierarchy of their world, but he would prefer that those who order him to do things do so in a more courteous manner. “A please would be nice.” Thus, the Travolta character informs us that he has a code within the code. 

In another scene, pertinent to this topic, Travolta defines his personal code in a conversation about someone keying his car. He says he wishes he would’ve caught them doing it, “It’d been worth him doing it, just so I could’ve caught him.” The Travolta character and the Eric Stoltz character agree that keying a car is an egregious violation of their shared code. Murdering a man is just business, but keying a car is a “They should be killed. No trial, no jury, straight to execution” personal violation of the code. We all speak in such ways, in jest, and perhaps that’s all the Stolz character was doing, but we suspect that Travolta is not joking in the same manner. The whole movie, Pulp Fiction, is all about codes. The characters don’t follow the codes the rest of us live by, but they have an insular code, a code among thieves, that they all live by to establish some sort of order within their otherwise immoral, soul-less, and piece-of-junk universe.

Tarantino did not develop this brand of comedy, and he didn’t invent the idea of an alternative code that criminals develop to assuage their guilt over murdering and robbing people, but he did it in a different, and some say better, way than most screenwriters and directors.

Most men dream of living by such codes, and we think we would might compete pretty well. If everyone agreed that we should settle zoning laws on lawn area disputes with a large pistol, we think everyone would behave a little better. We would love to pull a hand cannon out on someone, repeat some cool biblical verse, and blow someone away without flinching. We also think, on some level, that we could do it without much guilt, as long as the participants all knew what they were getting into when they entered our world. Would we have any guilt if we ran into our victim’s mother, father, or kids? No, because they all knew the life he led, and if they didn’t, that’s kind of on the deceased for not informing them better.  

“It’s not personal, it’s business,” we tell our wives in the movie theater after they question us for laughing at such violent scenes. Their lines and actions make sense to us in those 90 minutes. “That guy wouldn’t pay. The guy had something they wanted, and he wouldn’t give it up willingly. They had to kill the guy. They had to send a message. You understand that right?”

We’ve all accepted this “It’s not personal, it’s business” rationale for so long, dating back to The Godfather, that it now makes sense to us. I don’t care if you’re running a drug cartel, a prostitution ring, or whatever, is killing members of the competition the best way to run a business? Yet, few would attend a movie that contained a line from the leader of the business saying, “We really need to talk to Chris in accounting to see if we can improve on our distribution costs in the Northeast, and if you could drop a line to Steve in the Midwest. I really think he can improve his team’s Quality Assurance scores by laying off the bottom 10%.” That’s business. That’s boring. Have the managers in charge of Apple Music ever considered “taking out” some of the most talented minds at Spotify? We’ve seen that business plan work a million times, in the movies, and we know it works. No one goes to jail, and no one feels the least bit bad about it either. “The programmers at Spotify knew what they were getting into when they signed on for this. It’s just business.”

“It’s all fiction,” we tell our girlfriends who put a hand over their face when three guys stab another guy in a trunk after that guy disrespected one of the Goodfellas in a bar. The scene made perfect sense to us in the 90 minute, alternative code mentality, and we knew that guy was in trouble when he wouldn’t shut up. If he had any sense, he would’ve known better than to disrespect Joe Pesci in front of his friends. The guy should’ve known when he signed on to do this movie that if he was going to disrespect Joe Pesci, in a Martin Scorsese movie, that he would suffer some kind of grizzly death. The Joe Pesci character gave this man several opportunities to shut up, and he wouldn’t. I’m not sure how that trunk stabbing applied to their business in anyway, but it was funny when Pesci cracked at joke about it at his mother’s house.   

Our girlfriend laughed at that joke too, and we now know she gets it. She’s along for the ride. She’s adapted her moral code to the alternative code of the movie. We can’t understand why it took her so long to understand this is just fantasy and fiction. It’s not her idea of fantasy, but she’ll put that aside long enough to try to enjoy the movie.

***

I have a dream scene for Tarantino. A bank robbery occurs, off screen, as it did in Reservoir Dogs. After this robbery is complete, the boss who dreamed up this robbery, divvies up the proceeds of that robbery to all the players of this robbery in scenes that occur off screen. The only divvying up we see occurs with one particular recipient. Once this recipient receives his share, a twist happens. The boss turns on the recipient of those proceeds.

“What are you doing?” the recipient pleads with his hands up.

“I’m robbing you,” the gun-toting boss says. The audience might consider this a violation of the code, until the boss adds, “I paid you your fair share, and now I’m robbing you.”

This particular scene might involve a philosophical Abbot and Costello-style exchange that elucidates the alternative moral code of both characters. The unspoken lynchpin of the scene is if we’re going to consider the boss turning on the recipient a violation of the code, then we must consider robbery a violation of code, because the only reason the two of them have any money to divide is a robbery.

Prior to this scene, the director also strategically portrays them as equally sympathetic to the point that we’re cheering on both characters when this scene occurs. We’ve also received ample evidence of the moral ambiguity of both characters involved, and we’ve accepted the codes they’ve established. They’re both living by the code to a point that we don’t know who to cheer on in this scene. They’re both bad guys, and in their own morally ambiguous ways, good guys.

What the boss is doing is wrong in a purely philosophical manner. It is also a violation of the social contract between the two men, but in the context of the arbitrary, fictional movie of alternative moral codes, is it still a violation of the code? The main guy fulfilled his obligation as boss by paying the recipient, and once the money touched the recipient’s hand, he technically fulfilled their social contract, so he’s not a welcher. Once that was complete, he robbed the recipient, and if we’re going to consider robbery immoral, it undercuts the premise of the movie that robbery, violence, and murder are just the way some men choose to make a living.

“Yeah, but the recipient earned his cut.”

Even those of us who enjoy setting our own moral codes aside for 90 minutes aren’t going to go so far out that we think the recipient earned the money he received. He stuck a gun in a teller’s face, and he stole the money others earned. We think about all the miserable hours of labor those who deposited their money in that bank endured to put a little nest egg in that bank. The reply to this is, “They robbed a bank, and most banks are federally insured, and everyone who earned the money they put in the bank was federally insured too.” Okay, but neither the recipient nor the boss earned that money. Both men endured equal levels of risking their freedom to attain it, but they didn’t earn it.

As this scene plays out, the audience learns, through the recipient, that life is not fair, and the life he has chosen is even less fair. The business he chose also involves players who never learned how to share. The internal codes of conduct are in place to self-regulate, but what does the recipient do if a boss arguably violates one of them? The recipient cannot go to an arbitration board to air their grievances, and they cannot go to law enforcement. The boss is also a valuable conduit for the recipient to future jobs, and if the recipient wants more jobs, then he has to abide by the boss’ wishes, but who’s to say that the boss won’t rob him again after future jobs?

The recipient has three choices. He can give the money willingly, as he sees no other option, but doing so, could lead others to perceive him as weak. If he chooses that route, he might as well get out of the business, because everyone who hears about this will rob him after the fact, going forward. He can attempt to talk his way out of it, but we all know that doesn’t work in such settings. His only recourse is to refuse to give the main guy the money and pull his own gun. The main guy shoots the recipient before he can get that gun out. This tweaks our moral code slightly, until the boss says, “Sorry buddy, it’s just business” to the dying man. That line puts him back in the moral code, for it is entirely consistent with the code they’ve established throughout the movie.

We’ll probably never see such a scene added to a movie of this type, because it would lift the veil on this whole world of moral ambiguity by suggesting the only reason the piece-of-junk boss is robbing the piece-of-junk recipient is for more money, and no self-respecting director would allow their audience to think the only reason their characters want to rob is for the money. Such a scene might also undermine the motif the director/screenwriter’s portrayal that these characters are just as a bunch of good guys who just happen to steal. The scene might lead the audience to believe that they cheat their brothers in crime too, and they lie to them. The audience might also believe that thieves are bullies who attempt to dominate their weaker peers for more money, and that doesn’t serve the integrity of the characters or the appeal of the movie well.    

“If you’ve ever been in jail, you know that most of the people who succeed in that environment would not succeed anywhere else,” someone once said. “It’s a bizarro world where up is down and down is up. A piece of junk is heralded for his ability to tap into his most primal, most ruthless nature, and an otherwise successful man, who has spent his life improving on all of his otherwise negative instincts is scorned for being … a pansy, less male, or whatever.”

What would it take to succeed in the climate created at Apple, PayPal, or Spotify? The question the audience is suppose to ask is, is it really that different? The motif that quality directors, like Tarantino and Scorsese lay, is that he who believes in the “honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work” is a schmuck, and the thieves who rot in jail are schmucks too. Their players exist somewhere in the middle of that and everything else the audience considers a truth of life.    

Thus, when they lie, cheat, and steal to gain comfort in life, as opposed to money of course, we’re to assume this happens as often in corporate America, except they’re more boorish in their desire for money. As someone who has never been to jail, and who’s only experience with the culture therein is, admittedly, limited to that which is depicted in reality TV, it appears to be so much more primal. I know this is obvious to everyone but the “Is it really that different?” crowd, but an unstable person prone to displays wild emotional outbursts doesn’t last long in corporate America, but in jail he or she becomes a pod boss for exhibiting such characteristics. An inmate who belittles the weak for the purpose of dominating them doesn’t fare well in corporate America, no matter what you’ve heard, but for a person who wants to be considered a pod boss, it’s all but listed as a bullet point in the job requirements. Thus, to succeed in the jail, we need to channel our worst, most primal characteristics if we hope to succeed. In corporate America, this analogy suggests, we need to exhibit our finest characteristics, but to succeed in the fictional worlds depicted in Goodfellas and Pulp Fiction, we need to find a schmuck-less middle ground.   

Anyone who reads this might suspect that the author is subject to flights of moral relativism. I can assure you, without stepping onto a soapbox, that that is not the case. I suspend whatever I think of such alternative universes in the same manner I will when listening to music or watching cartoons. When I watch a gangster-related movie, I suspend reality in the same manner I do when I watch horror movies. I don’t believe in any of the supernatural beings that torment our main characters, but if I’m not willing to put my rational mind aside for long enough to enjoy a movie that violates everything I believe I probably shouldn’t be clicking play. If the moral fiber of our personal constitution is strong enough, we should be able to weather minimal assaults we experience in cartoons, horror movies, music, what have you. There are serious venues that challenge our modes of thought, and I think everyone should read them for the cerebral, philosophical challenges they present, but anyone who has their beliefs system seriously challenged by these otherwise unserious, artistic vehicles should probably spend more time reading.  

Smashing Pumpkins’ Cyr Will not be Mellon Collie

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“It’s not Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness,” will be the theme of the critical reaction to the new Smashing Pumpkins new album Cyr. The songs we’ve heard from this upcoming album thus far aren’t too bad, but they’re not Mellon Collie. At this date, some 25 years since its release (!), Billy Corgan probably has a love/hate relationship with the album called Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. We can guess that he loves the fact that he created what many call a masterpiece, for not many artists do, but he probably hates that everything he created lives in its shadow.

We all have varying tastes, of course, and some might say they prefer one of the other Smashing Pumpkins’ albums, but even they would admit Mellon Collie and Siamese Dream had special, timeless, and transcendental qualities about them that are difficult to recapture. Some of us call them masterpieces in their own right, and others say they are the products of Billy Corgan’s creative peak.

What is a creative peak? It is as difficult for artists to create, as it is to maintain. It is equally as difficult for the rest of us to explain. We can say that our reaction to it was a time and place phenomenon, and we could say that Billy Corgan’s creation of it had something to do with this phenomenon too. The finished products, coupled with the worldwide reaction to them might have satisfied Corgan’s need to prove himself, and he’s never been able to duplicate that inner drive. Those of us who have never accomplished such feats don’t know how hard it must be to recapture the elements that drove Corgan to create these albums. I don’t intend that to be a commentary on Billy Corgan’s work that followed, for I think most of his work post-Mellon Collie has been better than the vast majority of his peers, but he set such a high bar for himself with Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie. Every artist goes through peaks and valleys, and most of them cannot explain them. We can’t explain them either, as I wrote, we couldn’t explain why we prefer some art to others, but we know it when we see/hear it, especially in hindsight.

When creative peaks prove as fruitful as Corgan’s was, most of us laymen just assume that they will last forever, and when they don’t, we express our disappointment by saying, “It’s a good album, but it’s not as good as their masterpiece. It’s almost like they’re not trying anymore.” Everyone assumes that Kurt Cobain would’ve just gone on, had he lived, writing top-notch albums, but as Cobain wrote, “Teenage angst has paid off well. Now I’m bored and old.” It was almost as if he was preparing us for what was going to follow, if he lived of course.

If we lump Siamese Dream in with Mellon Collie, and we add Aeroplane Flies High and Pisces Iscariot into the mix, I think we can say that Billy Corgan had an enviable five-year run. Some of the songs on those latter two productions were definitely B-sides, but if we removed some of the top-notch songs on Aeroplane, we might be able to put together two high quality albums. We diehard fans have done so on blank cassette tapes and MP3 playlists. It just seems unfair to compare everything he’s done since, and everything he will do in the future to that creative peak, but such is the nature of art.

Billy Corgan and Co. were a songwriting machine from roughly 1993 to 1996. It was an incredibly creative period for Billy Corgan, Jimmy Chamberlain, and James Iha. (I’m sure Chamberlain, Iha, and D’arcy had more creative input than reports suggest, but from what I’ve read Corgan was the maestro/dictator in the studio.) Personally, I loved the album Gish, and I devoured that album before Siamese Dream’s release, but I wouldn’t put on the same shelf as Mellon Collie and Siamese Dream. I realize that some of the material on the boxset likely predates Siamese Dream, so let’s be generous in our estimate and say this creative period stretched out over a five year, incredibly prolific creative peak. How many musicians would give whatever remains of their otherwise damaged livers for 1/5th of the creative output the Smashing Pumpkins had in those five years? Personally, I think it was one of the most prolific periods of music for one artist in rock history, but I think it’s fair to say that the high bar Corgan set during this period ended twenty-five years ago.

I remember when the Smashing Pumpkins released the single Ava Adore. Oh boy,we thought, here we go again. The leap wasn’t as great as the one between Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie for some of us, but we all fantasized that the single was a sign that this peak would last far longer than we thought it would after the Pumpkins released a double album of material followed by a boxset. Siamese Dream was, after all, the opposite of a sophomore jinx. Once Siamese Dream hit our tape deck, it rendered Gish obsolete, and any flirtation we had with the idea that there might be a junior jinx ended the moment we heard the single Bullet with Butterfly Wings. So, when the single Ava Adore came out, it seemed feasible that Corgan was simply a hard rock/pop prodigy who would blow us out of the water every two to three years until the end of his life.    

How could one man, and his band, release so much material in such a small amount of time, and come up with yet another great album? The answer was he couldn’t. The peak was over. I still think that if Corgan saved about eight of the best songs on Aeroplane Flies High, and combined them with the six best songs on Ava Adore, I think he could’ve satisfied critics and fans so much that they would’ve listed Ava Adore as his third best album and part of the creative peak. What motivated Corgan to release the boxset, I suspect, was that he wanted to put Mellon Collie, and everything attached to it, behind him. I think he wanted to defeat the idea of a creative peak in his own mind and challenge himself with a restart.   

***

When critics savaged R.E.M.’s first effort without Bill Berry, 1998’s Up, Michael Stipe complained that he thought Up was a great album. He said that critics unfairly compared Up to their previous five albums, i.e. their creative peak. He said something along the lines of, “If an up and coming band created Up, you critics would be salivating all over it, but because it wasn’t Automatic for the People, Monster, or New Adventures in Hi-Fi, you think the album stinks.” Perhaps Stipe and Co. were frustrated that the high bar they set for themselves that couldn’t be maintained forever, or that they felt like the critics helped cut that peak short prematurely. It’s also possible that the departure of Bill Berry was more profound than anyone imagined. Whatever the case was for them, the critics were right, as Up proved the creative peak was over for R.E.M. They would release four more albums and except for a few singles here and there, those albums only provided further evidence that peaks end for every creative artist.

Stipe’s greater question is worthy of exploration however. How would we regard albums like Ava Adore or Machina, if they came out before Mellon Collie or Siamese Dream? It’s impossible to answer of course, but it’s an interesting question.

Artists can artificially attempt to realign the stars back to the configuration they experienced during their peak. They can bring back ex-members, hire the producer who helped finesse their masterpiece, and they can go back to the basics, after expunging their need to experiment. They can eat nothing but bacon and drink nothing but the flavor of Snapple they drank when they created their masterpiece, but something will forever elude them.

Our immediate reaction to a new Smashing Pumpkins album now is, they just lost it, whatever it is. They can write some great singles here and there, but as far as writing awe-inspiring magic that drove them to create deep cuts and B-sides that are better than most bands’ hit singles, those days are over. The greater question I would ask is, “Did they ever have it?” The answer to that question, to my mind, is an undeniable, “YES! Yes, they did. For five years, Billy Corgan and Co. created some of the most beautiful, most aggressive, and most pleasing music some of us have ever heard.” For all of the comparatively greater praise devoted to bands such as Guns N’ Roses, Metallica and Nirvana, they only had two influential, transcedental albums. As great as Mr. Bungle and Soundgarden were, they only came out with two fantastic albums. How many great bands came out with songs that blew our minds, but they failed to follow those great songs up with enough deep cuts to make a great album? It’s debatable, but I would suggest that great singles blind most people to the fact that most of the albums they were on weren’t as great as we thought they were.

In some ways, legends like The Beatles, Queen, David Bowie, and Led Zeppelin spoiled us by setting such an unreasonable standard for the rest of the bands in music by having more than two great albums. For those who are lucky enough to have more than one great album, they should go on to make the best music they can, but they should know that they will probably never be able to recapture that ‘time and place’ magic that usually only happens once in a lifetime. If it happens twice, live it and love it for as long as it lasts, for it will probably never happen again. This note also goes out to all critics, fans, and everyone in between who judge decent to good albums on the basis that they’re not as great as the albums these artists produced during their peak. How many of our favorite artists never made one great album, top to bottom?

As one reviewer on Allmusic.com wrote, “You can’t blame Billy [Corgan], he already did his best.” This reviewer reminds me of other non-creative types who have never created one piece of art. The implicit suggestion some make is that once a creative peak ends the artist should just quit. They should just ride off into the sunset, collect their royalty checks and consider their life a life well lived. They do the same with athletes. They suggest that after a professional athlete wins a championship that he should just retire. They proved that they did the best they could with their talent, and we all know that it’s downhill from here, so we want them to quit so we can live with a fond memory of them. What we forget when we make such self-serving requests is how hard it is to accomplish great artistic and athletic feats. They require massive amounts of practice, time spent doing this while their friends did something else, and a level of commitment and passion that critics and fans will never understand. That passion doesn’t just end even if they come to terms with the idea that they’ve peaked. The passion is their reason for being, and we don’t have to pay tickets to see them do it, but to call for them to end their career is self-serving. I think the passion and love that drove Bill Cogran to create the masterpieces Mellon Collie and Siamese Dream is obvious in the beautiful music he’s created since, even if what he captured during that five-year peak isn’t.   

Guy no Logical Gibberish

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My dad didn’t pronounce words correctly. It embarrassed me so much, when I was younger, that I matured into something of a wordsmith. A wordsmith, in my personal definition of the term, is not necessarily more intelligent than anyone else is. We do not have a better hold on pronunciations than anyone else does, and we don’t have a gift for spelling or proper word usage. A wordsmith is someone who focuses (see obsesses) on such matters. A wordsmith is also so embarrassed by past, present and future mistakes that we make that don’t think we’ll ever live down. Such matters didn’t embarrass my dad at all. He didn’t care about any of it. 

Even though I put more effort into pronouncing words correctly, spelling them correctly, and using them in a proper manner, I still make errors all the time. I mispronounced a famous person’s name one day, and it was so embarrassing to me that I don’t think I’ll ever live it down. Someone mispronounced the name, I thought that mispronunciation was hilarious, and I began mispronouncing it on purpose, as a joke, until I did it in front of two people I sought to impress. I’m sure if I asked those people hear me do it what they thought, they probably wouldn’t even remember it, but it haunts me. I used a word that that we don’t recognize as a word in my formative years, and I used a tense of an adjective that is not considered one of the tenses for that word. I also used the word (“had”) too often, as in “if he had lived to see the day”. I hear professional speakers use incorrect terms and words all the time, and I hear them mispronounce words as often, and I don’t mock them. I’m mortified for them in a manner that constitutes the difference between empathy and sympathy. 

People I knew and loved mocked my lexicon so often, in my youth, that I made it my life’s mission to eradicate all errors. (I’ll let you know if I ever accomplish that feat.) I could handle most of the mean-spirited mockery directed at my other, numerous errors, because they meant nothing to me. The mockery directed at my lexicon concerned me, because I knew my dad’s casual disregard for the conventional rules of language, and it embarrassed me as a teenager.

They say that if we spend enough time in another part of the country, we might carry accents, and/or peculiar pronunciations for words that are otherwise indigenous to that area of the country. My dad said the word wash for most of his life, until he traveled to Tennessee. He spent one week there, and for the remaining decades of his life he said, “warsh.” Correcting that proved an insurmountable hurdle for him, as did “eckspecially”. He made up contractions, such as ‘kout’ for lookout and (‘Q’) or “kyou” for thank you. He also made various plural-sounding names singular and vice versa. McDonald’s was McDonald and Burger King was Burger Kinks. Don’t ask me how he arrived at that second (‘K’). He also said intentendo, instead of Nintendo. We could fault his hearing for some of it, but after numerous corrections, the man stubbornly maintained his fault-ridden lexicon. He subconsciously picked up on errors in usage, but he never picked up on my numerous corrections. 

Speaking of word choices, how did we arrive at the word anus to describe what Etymology.com describes as the “inferior opening of the alimentary canal”. The first question the more insecure among us might ask is, “How do you know mine is inferior? How dare you!” Beyond that, we have to imagine that those in the front of the receiving line of word choices place a lot of trust in those in charge of the language used in medical periodicals and biology textbooks to choose words that cannot be misappropriated for the purpose of humor. There are a number of choices common folk have that have a greater propensity for humor, but why did these serious professionals coin such a cute term for such a repugnant organ to be used by other serious professionals in serious situations? 

How extensive was their search for the ideal, unfunny sounding word? How many voices did they hear, pro and con various other terms before they eliminated all others and ended up with anus? “The search is over, we’ve found the ideal word to describe the organ that sounds professional and doesn’t lead to uncomfortable smirks and giggles. Going forward, we shall all refer to the organ as the anus in doctors’ offices, biology text books, and other professional settings.” No one can blame the collective we, for etymologists say the term predates English. The word anus derives from the Latin word anus, meaning “ring”. The Latin derivative annulus means “Little ring”. So, modern professionals cannot be blamed, and for that we must go much further back, but there had to be a first person to coin the term. 

In the search for the ideal term, the first thing they had to do was rule out the other, less professional alternatives. Imagine if your doctor said, “You’re fifty years old now, it’s time to see what’s going on inside your smelly freckle.” If my doctor used such a term, in such a sensitive situation, I wouldn’t care if they were trying to add some levity to an otherwise uncomfortable situation. I would seek another physician.

The term they decided on sounds so unusual and cute that all humans, no matter their age, gender, or background, giggle when they hear it. If we could remove all of the connotations the word has with otherwise repugnant biological functions, we might picture a cute, little bug if we heard the word for the first time. If the word had no connotations to our little ring, imagine if comic book writers used the word to name one of their bad guys. “Join Spider-Man, in next week’s issue, as he takes on the Anus!” There’s something so unusual and cute about the word that I don’t think it would strike fear in the reader, until we learned what her powers were.    

We giggle, because it makes us feel uncomfortable in a way we can’t explain. One explanation might involve the idea that they chose such an unusual, cute term to describe such a repugnant orifice. What better punchline is there than, “… and I ended getting it stuck in my anus.”?

There was never a board of lords assembled to determine what term we should use to refer to the inferior opening of the alimentary canal a term. As stated, the word has roots in Latin, and Old French, but the Indo-European language family that dates back to 4500 BC to 2500 BC influenced those languages. As with other words and terms, we can arrive at the first recorded use of a word, and Wikipedia states that the first recorded use of the word anus dates back to 1650-1660, but there was probably never an official orifice decree that suggested all professionals should start using the word anus in professional settings. Anytime we try to source a word, we encounter its complicated roots through a maze of variations of language based on migrations, and subsequent regional dialects that affect different shifts in pronunciation, morphology, and vocabulary. We then encounter various efforts at reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European roots of the word to arrive at the conclusion that it’s almost impossible to source the origin of some words and terms. The one thing we can agree upon is that the modes of communication were so archaic in 1650-1660 on back that most words achieved staying power places via word of mouth, and that it just sort of caught on after that. Even with all that, the question remains why did one prehistoric person, with some biological knowledge, pass this agreed upon, unusual, and cute-sounding term anus to another, and how did it pass the smell test?  

The continued use of this term probably has more to do with hundreds to thousands of years of tradition, and a certain level of consistency attached to it, as I wrote, but the professionals who continue to use the term whenever they produce a new textbook or periodical of any sort have a choice every time they pass it on. The question they might ask is what’s the best viable alternative? The answer is there probably aren’t any now, the term is too ingrained, but we have to wonder how many alternatives the linguists and lexicographers of yesteryear passed on, before they agreed the word anus should be the preferred choice for those in professional and scientific circles. If they hoped that their final decision might end all of the snickers, giggles, and uncomfortable smiles when the subject comes up, then I think we can all agree that they failed.

“Don’t text me during the game,” I text. “I’m taping it. I don’t want to know if it’s a good game or a bad game. I won’t even check my phone during the game, so save your, “You’re going to love this,” “Don’t bother watching,” or “Get out of your house, there’s a small Cessna heading toward your house.” I don’t know why it bothers me so much when someone texts me about a game I’m taping, but I think it has something to do with a compact I have with the game I’m watching. It seems pointless, to me, to watch an otherwise exciting 7-yard out route, on third and six, when I know the outcome. Thus, when someone texts me some hint about the outcome of the game, it frustrates me so much that I want to coat my naked body in some sort of glistening liquid and run through the city streets, just to teach humanity a lesson. I know that I couldn’t live with that memory though, so I just avoid my phone during games.

Big Things vs. Little Things. We dream of big things, but we cannot accomplish big things without tending to all the little things that make big things possible. Before writing the Great American Novel, for example, the author has to write. That first page can be tough, but it’s not near as tough as page two. Page one is often the flurry of inspiration that led us to sit down and write. That inspiration probably struck them at a relatively boring moment in our life. Page one often ends up gibberish, however, and that doesn’t make it past Chekov’s Razor test. Page one often ends up being deleted or tossed into the waste paper basket. Page three is often where the book begins, according to Anton Chekov. Page one is important to the author, but it’s not as important as page three, or any of the pages that constitute continuing.  

An important note I heard recently that contradicts that paragraph is, we don’t have to accomplish great things to be great. By taking care of the little things in life, we can still be great. We can be a great father, mother, businessman, and student. I knew a man who accomplished great things in life, but he turned out to be something of a failure as a father. I call it the Larry Bird Complex. There’s an old saying that “those who can’t do it teach” but the flipside proves to be true too. Those who can do it, often cannot teach others how to do it. Larry Bird was a man many considered by many to be one of the greatest to play the game, but he wasn’t a very good coach. The man I knew with a Larry Bird Complex had a personal resume so loaded with prestigious accolades that we might have to break the story of his life down to chapters. When they buried him, however, those of us who sat in the second row of his funeral realized that he couldn’t take his accolades with him. We also realized those who sat in the first row were his legacy, and they were confused adults who lived a life of chaos. Was that his fault? It’s debatable, but he obviously didn’t do enough in his life to relieve them of their pain, and they were/are how the rest of us measured him. A man of great accomplishment enjoys telling people about his great accomplishments, but if he often fails to tend to his backyard, and that will end up his legacy.

So, You Want to go Into Business. “My employees think I’m Daddy Warbucks,” an owner/operator of a local franchise said with a laugh. “They don’t understand how thin profit margins are.”

“Most people don’t,” I said. “I don’t for the most part. I’ve never owned my own business. Most of us think that anyone who does is in the money, especially if that business is a franchise. Most of us have no idea of the expenses involved in running a business.”

Most of us know-nothings loosely define profit as the difference between the wholesale and retail prices. We don’t consider the idea that an owner/operator uses that profit to pay employees’ wages, rent, utilities, various forms of marketing, the franchise fee, insurance, repairs, remodeling, various forms of security, and all of the other numerous costs associated with owning a business. Once the small business owner factors these numerous costs in, they still have to pay all of the federal, state, and local taxes and any fees associated with registering and owning a business. Some of us even begrudge the business owners for writing off expenses when it comes time to pay taxes. Yet, if we deprive them of the ability to do that, then they would have little to no profit at all. After paying off all of these expenses, the middle class owner/operators also have to pay off the loan the bank gave them to open the business.

Another element of the equation that should’ve been obvious but wasn’t until I attended a “Welcome to [the franchise]” meeting for potential owners of a nationwide franchise, is that the individual franchisee has to purchase everything from the vowels on the sandwich board, to the floor, to the franchise chairs and napkins from the corporation. If the owner/operator’s franchise runs out of napkins, for instance, the owner/operator cannot simply run to the supermarket to purchase napkins, they have to fill their napkin holders with napkins that have the corporate logo on them. Failure to do so could result in franchise infringements penalties. To ensure individual franchises are adhering to the level of uniformity the franchise, and their customers, expect throughout the chain, the corporation hires what some call secret shoppers. The primary goal of these insects is to prove the value of their employment, so they grade the owner/operator’s franchise on everything from the significant to the seemingly irrelevant. They find things to write in their report, because they fear if they gave the franchise an (‘A+’), “no infringements found” the corporation might not hire them again. The infringements they find could lead to more penalties and other unforeseen costs for the franchisee.

The corporation will also send out trainers who train the owner/operator and the incoming staff on how to do things “the corporate way”, and the franchisee then “helps” pay their salaries.

The corporate advisers, who provided us this “Welcome to [the franchise]” presentation, did not provide an itemized list of the total costs of purchasing and running a franchise. I had to do my own research to find some of them. One look at this list and every potential franchisee should wonder how anyone makes any money in this business. When I emailed some leading questions regarding my findings, to the advisers, they said, “[This corporation] will help you with any costs and expenses,” they wrote using the specific name of the company. “[This corporation] wants to help you open a location in your city, and they will do whatever they have to to help you make it happen.” This was a blanket statement the corporate advisers made throughout their presentation, and it was the theme of most of their answers throughout the “Welcome to [the franchise] presentation”, but they often avoided providing specifics. 

“Profits in food service are so thin that I would seriously advise you consider another business,” a former owner of a mom and pop restaurant advised me. “We obviously didn’t have to pay all the franchise costs you list, and we barely made it month to month. You probably won’t make money for years, and even then you’ll probably want to consider opening two or three different locations if you want to make any real money and each of those franchises will each take their own time to turn a decent profit.”

A franchise owner/operator then wants to pay the person most responsible for opening the location. Themselves. They want money for their time and headaches. “Expect to work at least 60 hours a week,” the mom and pop owner told me. “At least 60 hours. You’re the one responsible for all the hiring and firing, and after a number of incidents, you’ll probably develop a greater tolerance than you predict for misbehavior and poor performance. You will put up with whatever you have to from your employees, to avoid going through the headaches involved in firing an employee, hiring a new one, and training them. Other than all of the headaches and time involved, you’ll eventually view it as an unnecessary expense. Then, you’ll have to fill in for those who call in sick, and when you finally pay yourself for all the hard work you’ve done, before taxes, you should expect to make less, per hour, than you’re making now. Most business owners, like your friend think it’s cute and funny when their employees consider them Daddy Warbucks in the beginning, but when they hear it four or five times, they might accidentally launch into a rant about how wrong they are.”

Some of us celebrate when we see “big business” fail in our neighborhood to the point of closing down. We see their big name as a blight on our community. Some of those franchises are corporate owned, but a number of them are not. We might see it as sticking it to the man when we contribute to their failure, but that failure might be a man or woman who is seeking an alternative way to feed a family of four.    

Why do flies, moths, and other insects want into our home so badly, and they want out just as badly and just as quickly? If it were nothing more than a mistake, why do they bump against the glass trying to get out? Are they just dumb? No, they’re not dumb, some argue. Okay, then why do they immediately fly to the nearest glass trying to get out shortly after getting in?

Light guides most insects at night, and the only light at night that guides them is the moon. Their internal guidance systems lead them to fly according to the light of moon, and our artificial light messes with their internal guidance system. Do they then recognize their faux pas soon after making it? If the moon explains the nighttime insects wanting in our home, how do we explain daylight flies trying to get in? Do they smell our food? When do they recognize their faux pas? Some of them might be attracted by the smell of our trash, but they rarely visit our trashcan. They usually bump to get in and turn around and bump to get out. Do they recognize their error to get in, or are they just dumb beings driven by instinct?

Why do birds only fly so high? We’ve all witnessed a predator fly higher than other birds. Why do they fly so high? Answer, they want achieve a vantage point where they can see their prey. Why don’t other birds fly just as high? Answer, they’re more affected by low levels of oxygen, as they’re not as equipped, as their predators to extract necessary oxygen from the air. The temperature is also cooler at greater heights, and most birds cannot generate enough heat within their muscles to counteract that. These latter two paragraphs describe the mysteries and functions of the every day lives of some of its smallest contributors to our daily life.  

My Favorite Teacher of all time performed a miracle. He led me to believe the subject of Economics might be interesting. He made the subject so interesting that when I left high school, I became an Economics major. In college, I discovered how boring Economics could be in different hands. On the flipside, I considered Shakespeare so boring in high school that I found it difficult to hide my disdain for the material. In college, I found a passionate teacher who made Shakespeare sound like a genius. My takeaway, every subject is one good teacher away from being interesting.