Author: Bill Zapcic

A work in progress. Contributions welcome.

Years ago, when ads for smoking were permitted on television, one brand ginned up a faux debate about how grammatical its slogan was or wasn’t.

I have no idea why; did they think people intelligent enough to know spelling and syntax and the like were stupid enough to suck on cancer sticks?

Anyway, the fine folks from North Carolina staged a quibble-fest between their existing “Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should” and “Winston tastes good, as a cigarette should.”

(Winston tastes like $#1t, as all cigarettes do. But that’s off the topic.)

This series of ads capitalized on the notion that language is always changing, evolving, reflecting the times and the people who speak it. Those of us who make, or have made, their livings shaping written or spoken communication know we walk a Wallenda-style tightrope balancing grammatical purists on one side and vernacular evolutionaries on the other.

My first real head-butt came early in my editing career when the estimable Robert Wright, he of later accomplishments and prestige in historical and scientific journalism, insisted on using “presently” interchangeably with “currently.” His insistence: It’s a variation of “at present,” having shed its “momentarily” definition the way a snake sheds its skin.

Bob and his allies won this battle; scarcely anyone outside of broadcasters on the BBC and scholars of Shakespeare use “presently” in its classical form. Far fewer people would understand it, even in context.

And so goes the vernacular. Language belongs to those who understand and are understood.

Still, I’d argue that we usually have a plethora of synonymous options that would obviate rewriting a definition merely because a word seems as if it should mean something it doesn’t. “Presently” has “present” within it, right? Or so goes the argument.

Interestingly enough, the clarity and spatiality that, first, CDs and now nonstop streaming services added to the flood of remastered 1960s rock also exposed us to lyrics we could only guess at when we heard them on 16-transistor Kent AM radios. British and some American lyricists peppered their tunes with allusions to Tolkien — “…in the darkest depths of Mordor / I met a girl so fair / But Gollum, the evil one, crept up / And slipped away with her” — and dozens of other literary lights who used florid language. Who used “presently” to mean “shortly.”

Please note, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” doesn’t count.

For reasons that will become clearer early this December, I’ve had The Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty-Four” kicking around my brain a lot, and one adjective my mother’s mother used a lot — “dear” — has lost any meaning save “sweetheart.”

   Every summer we can rent a cottage
   In the Isle of Wight, if it’s not too dear
   We shall scrimp and save…

The List

Presently — Then: shortly, in a little while. Now: now.

Dear — Then: expensive. Now: loved, lovely, cute.

…to be continued. What are your words?

Some commercials are annoying. Some are outright embarrassments to anyone who has even attempted to act. Some — JSM — are both.

Television ads for certain products, especially for medicines or so-called biologics, make you wonder who skimmed off the production budget, because there’s no way the client got their money’s worth.

Let’s start with the commercial for Jardiance that features a band director just a little too into marching onto the field with her high schoolers. Hips sway, arms swing, she’s totally in control. We’re to believe her Type 2 diabetes is under control as well.

The commercial’s director decided a ground-level shot of the band would make the ad more interesting, and in most circumstances that would be true. But the shot captures the band marching onto the field, and John Philip Sousa must be turning over in his grave at how out of step these kids are.

The band director may be On It — per the slogan — but if her diabetes is being managed as well as the band’s routines, well….

Next is the “aww-ahh-ee-ahh” band for Humira, whose singer battles a serious intestinal disorder. It seems an odd career choice for someone whose condition is not yet being treated.

But let’s not discriminate. Musicians do get sick like the rest of us. It’s just that the whole storyboard and script for this travesty would be preposterous if no one in the band were debilitated.

In the alleged recording studio, the musicians are too close together, their mics are not properly filtered — the singer’s microphone definitely would pick up the drumming — and the keyboardist can’t see the rest of the band, until she is shocked and dismayed that the vocalist is heading for the loo.

And what band takes the stage without their singer unless she’s supposed to bounce out at a dramatic point in the song? Just standing around in front of a crowd?? Stage managers and crew would never let that happen, even if the band was naive enough to try.

Both of these ads are embarrassing because somebody convinced the suits somewhere that TV-watchers in America have no idea what goes on at high schools or at concerts.

The ads that drip into the Annoying Bucket usually involve clichéd characters, especially ones who appear in a continuing series — a continuing saga, if you will — and whose character development is cringe-worthy.

Progressive Insurance has Jamie. Liberty Mutual Insurance has Doug.

Ugh.

Here’s my overarching point:

Hard-working actors can and do use commercials as springboards into steadier gigs, especially actors whose recurring characters have some humanity to them.

Melanie Paxson (zillions of commercials, especially FiberOne), Milana Vayntrub (Lily of AT&T) and Morgan Smith (the red-haired Wendy’s salad spokeswoman) come to mind. I’m sure you recognize them. They’ve made the leap.

Commercial actors such as these get 60, 30 or even 15 seconds at a time to let their character skills be known and shown. When the character is ridiculous — I still feel sad for the Big Lots! human exclamation point woman — when the character is a joke, then whoever portrays Liberty-Bibberty Struggling Actor will remain just that.

Actors already struggle too much.

The range blew up the other night.

Well, not the entire range. Just one heating coil on the 20-ish-year-old GE freestanding stove.

It went kerblooey.

And then some.

From where I was sitting in the living room, kerblooey was more gerRANnerrrrazzZAPPP, with a light show that put the Grucci Brothers to shame.

After the excitement and a cooling-off period, the coil, from one of the two small burners, had a crater near its center, not big enough for the Eagle to land in but enough like Tranquility Base to commemorate Apollo 11.

Fortunately, no injuries to humans or felines, though there was a massive adrenaline rush. Nothing burned, although the flare-up blew the electrical cable off the end of the coil, knocked the connection bracket off the underside of the stove top, and welded the connector screw to the opening where the drip pan sits.

The service tech was nonplussed as, two days later, he assessed the damage. Something must have spilled, he said; that’s how these things short out and go up like that.

I wasn’t going to argue with him, even though that was not what we recall happening. This wasn’t spilled napalm; this was The Nader Effect.

Fifty-four years after Ralph Nader outed Planned Obsolescence in “Unsafe at Any Speed,” Andrea and I are swimming in a maelstrom of repairs and replacements.

Our phones are paid off. So the batteries don’t hold a charge as long as they used to.

New tires for me this week. New tires for Andrea last quarter.

New storm door two weeks ago.

And now, new stove.

Repairs to ol’ Bombs Bursting in Air would have equaled — if not exceeded — the cost of an exact replacement now on sale (it’s still called Columbus Day in New Jersey). So we buy instead of fix.

Folks who know us know we are crazy for maintenance. Oil changes on time. Wash and wax when the road salt sticks. Balance and rotate.

Our cars last 200K.

So it’s a doggone sin that Planned Obsolescence interrupts our rhythm, let alone our finances.

Now, I will concede that going-on-two-decades is a good run for any appliance, especially one that handles temperature extremes and the clang-banging of pots and pans.

But, still.

Planned Obsolescence? Must our disposable-consumer-goods economy, with tariffs slapped on so, so many items made in China or elsewhere, be the only model? Do we have to buy cheap?

I miss owning shoes whose soles could be mended, because what passes for shoes today wear out just when I get the leather on the uppers as soft as butter and as shiny as a mill pond, and I have to toss them and start breaking in new ones.

I still have — and often use — the hammer and Crescent wrench that hung from my backstage tool belt as a collegiate theater tech.

I still have — and occasionally wear — the scarf my Mom gave me in fourth grade, in the last century!

And even folks who are tortured by frequent software updates (where is 19H2, Microsoft?) will concede that the apps or OSes are better afterward.

So instead of Planned Obsolescence, instead of The Nader Effect, let’s transition to The Deacon’s Masterpiece. 

Oh, Shay, can you see?

P.S. — I’m not that deacon.

By mid-August, I begin to sense the changes. Always have.

The sun, especially the afternoon sun, is ever so slightly more orange. Just enough to affect the corner of my eye, but it’s there.

Of course, the daylight getting shorter (we all say “the day is getting shorter,” but it’s still 24 hours) is noticeable, especially as the dusk’s earlier arrival accelerates toward the equinox, just over a week ago.

Three days ago, this was early morning in Long Branch, New Jersey:

And while I appreciate my Vermont friends’ appreciation of the changing seasons, a la the stand of Jersey trees pictured atop this post and the many IGs and FBs from New England …

I

Just

Ain’t

Ready.

I want the scene to be more Long Branch than Long Trail.

With a h/t to Al Sleet, tonight it’s gonna be dark, continuing mostly dark and seasonably 60-degrees-ish, but tomorrow (Oct. 2, 2019) the temperature and the Jersey Shore humidity are gunning for the record.

90°F, 32°C.

One more lick of the July lollipop before the 14-day forecast says 65°F high, 55°F low pretty much every day.

My friends in Great Falls, Montana, of course, get the Rocky Mountain roller-coaster ride of 75° one day, followed by a two-day blizzard and an indefinite cold snap. So what’s in reality a gradual change of seasons around here is no cause to whine.

But full disclosure: I get SAD — that’s seasonal affective disorder, not all caps for emphasis — and just as a parent can tell when a tot is about to go from a mild whimper to a full-belly howl, I can tell in August that my season is ending, once again too short. The September flurry of restarted activities — and no matter how long it’s been since you had kids in school, you must conform to the school-year schedule because the rest of the world does — the September flurry is but a minor distraction.

This year, it seems, the leaves are changing, peaking, browning and tumbling more quickly, more abruptly than in years past. I have no empirical evidence; I just sort of know.

Head up to the Northeast Kingdom, O leaf-peepers of 2019. Enjoy the late-arriving fall in Vermont, a place I love.

Nonetheless, I’ll cling to green in 2019 in the Garden State as long as I can.

It’s getting more and more difficult to be open-minded.

This may well be because of my advancing age or creeping senility, and I don’t totally dispute that.

I believe, however, it’s because of noise.

Let’s define terms.

These days, noise is more than audible.

There’s visual noise — extreme and/or subtle distractions, blinky-flashy-twinkly, electronic. 

(And we’ll save the whole topic of idiots reading their inane texts while driving for another post.)

There’s sensory noise, the vibrations triggered by raspy or rumbling exhaust pipes and bass kickers, the jostles from potholes absorbed by your butt and spine.

Then there’s emotional noise, the baggage that accompanies so, so much communication anymore. And that’s the noise that makes it almost impossible to keep an open mind.

To be clear, I believe certain thoughts and certain beliefs should swim in deep legitimate passion. Our nation’s Founders were no slouches in the “Give me liberty or give me death” department; likewise, Churchill rallied Great Britain to some of its greatest days with his emotional pleas.

But any attempt at a debate nowadays rapidly becomes a competition, a shouting match in which anger and even threats supersede logic and the 30,000-foot view.

Winner take all, and not give and take.

I am absolutely sure there are people whose observations and opinions I’d love to consider, because I’ve not lived everywhere, done every type of job, been African-American or female or anything except a white Euro-mongrel middle-class American male. They all have much to offer.

But I can’t see myself talking with a pickup driver whose rear window has stickers of “My Family”: from left, AK-47, AR-15, 20-gauge, Mac-10 and Glock 9mm. Or the person whose Malibu’s trunk is held together by stickers proclaiming MAGA, Lock Her Up, and It’s All Fake News.

Yes, I’d love to have a conversation. But if other people come to their figurative door with a drooling, snarling Doberman, I don’t think I can.

I’d be thrilled — and I’m sure many people would be, too — if the noise would stop, and we could start to open ourselves to many points of view.

It’s possible to cut through the noise. It has to be. I’m trying.

How about you?

I wore a sweater this morning. A black V-neck, of thin-ish Merino wool, the kind I add to my inventory each year when the moths get last year’s and the new ones go on sale at Costco for about $20. It’s a magic price point.

I wore a sweater this morning, Aug. 25, 2019, around 9 a.m. EDT, at the Jersey Shore. The Weather Channel app said it was 63 degrees and cloudy; the breeze from the northeast had kicked up a bit and the flags were fluttering while the cattails were swaying.

I wore a sweater this morning until about noon, when the sun worked some of its magic and warmed anybody in its rays. Some of its magic, because the air never got past 69, and because the gusts kept jamming fat clouds between the sun and me. And because the wind was — ugh! — chilly.

It’s not sweater season, not at the Jersey Shore, not yet, even though Labor Day Weekend — next weekend! — drops like a guillotine on what people consider the summer.

We had a spring this year; we had a nice stretch of warming days that coaxed the blooms. But then we had monsoons that vexed backyard gardeners and wreaked havoc on their tomatoes, the official fruit of New Jersey (at least, I think it is).

The flawless lawn burned out in July and the crabgrass and goose grass are the only verdant, succulent leaves reaching toward the sun.

Which was feeble today. So I wore a sweater.

The equinox is about a month away. We’re coming into peak hurricane season. The ocean is tepid at last.

Please, Mama Nature: Let me leave the sweater in the drawer with the mothballs a little longer.

I have some skin in this game.

On May 14, 2019, I celebrated the eighth anniversary of my ordination as a deacon for the Catholic Diocese of Trenton. In slang terms, I’m a collar.

As my bio states here and at dozens of other places, I’m also a husband, a father, a brother, a (forcibly retired) journalist, a photographer, and overall a lover of humanity.

God Bless Everywhere, indeed.

In some ways, that’s the simple answer to everything that’s wrong today, wrong with America, wrong with Britain, wrong with the EU, wrong with….

You know.

Wrong.

And especially, on this topic, what people perceive as wrong with clergy and religious institutions.

A cradle Catholic, with eight years of parochial school and four more of LaSallian day prep to shape me, I heard incessantly that the Church of Rome is the One True Religion™, and that believers in other religions — not “religious traditions” or “faiths” — were Damned. To. Hell.

The unquenchable fires of Gehenna.

Fire and brimstone and Cotton Mather.

But no sooner had I learned my altar boy Latin than, from an unlikely source — men in dresses with pointy hats — came the notion that the Big RC would start to acknowledge the deeply held faith of other believers. 

Infidels and apostates and Israelites, oh my.

So about a half-century ago, amid Vietnam and Freedom Riders and sit-ins and Woodstock, we went from OTR™ to throw open the windows.

Praise the 9 billion Names of God!

Maybe even Groucho Marx would want to join this club, if it’s big enough to welcome him and everyone else.

Somehow, though, the windows got stuck. JP2 and B16 were short on WD-40, and Swiss Guards started checking membership cards super-closely again.

More than one collar much higher in the food chain than I has said that a certain faction in the Church prefers a smaller gathering of purists, and that the empty pews suit them just fine.

Think like us, act like us, or you’re not one of us. And we don’t want you to be.

The Vatican is not alone, though the spotlight (and Spotlight) is on the top-heavy organization that Pope Francis is trying to tame.

But as in other top-heavy groups, e.g. political institutions (and heaven knows the major denominations are political!), the real life, the real everything, is local.

We hear all the time these days that people disgusted with news out of Washington or London or Beijing are turning off the news and unplugging from FB and IG and Twitter, and reconnecting with local friends and family to restore kindness locally.

I hope I’m not naive in believing that local churches — and by church I mean the people of faith, the people of God — that local churches can involve themselves in each others’ lives and make the institution meaningful again.

Trusted again.

Beloved again.

And that that local familial bond ripples across the world, like a butterfly sneeze, caressing all God’s children. Everywhere.

Who is your oldest friend?

That shouldn’t be a trick question, but it is a tricky one.

Is it someone who has known you the longest?

Is it someone who has known you continuously the longest?

Is it someone who has known you the most intensely?

Friends from childhood may rank as longest in years, but if there are any gaps in the relationship, those buds may have you confused with someone you used to be but no longer are. A persona frozen in time, or at least in memory.

Reconnecting with old-old friends oftentimes is akin to making friends all over again. Those folks are not strangers, but many times the things that brought you together in the first place are no longer common between you, among you.

Friends from college, especially if you went to a smallish school and doubly especially if it was a residential school, those friends are a step up from childhood friends. You likely were well on the way to who you’d be for the rest of your life at that point — you’d decided your career path, perhaps, or at least figured out what to do with your major; your likes and dislikes had matured; your personality jelled.

You and your crew shared the same kind of foxhole experiences, albeit in calculus or Morrison and Boyd, and not along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Those times are seared into your brain, and may haunt your dreams (mumble-mumble-mumble) years later. So you’ll always have that in common.

But just as friends from childhood can lock you into a time and place, so too your college friends.

Sigh.

Friends from work have a lot in common with you: a different foxhole, but an intense one; bosses to grumble about or occasionally praise; inadequate pay; similar personalities, which brought you to the company or institution originally.

But people change jobs, lose touch — they never want to — and though they’re less likely to freeze you in their memories than childhood or college pals, the W-2 folks no longer have the binding post of the workplace.

So the answer (thanks for playing all the way to Final Jeopardy) is a complex one.

Your oldest friend is the one who has an intense relationship with you: lives intertwined, room for personal growth, memories of where you singular and you plural have been, eyes pointed to a future in which you still are together. Separations because of time and distance are mere pauses in the conversation and not gaps in the ties that bind.

When any of us can identify such a person or — alleluia! — such people in our lives, we have the greatest gift.

And when we recognize the one other person who qualifies, when we see our own selves as the BFF we can rely on, then we start to be complete humans.