Happy almost-2024! I've got some new writing on Substack:
And here’s a friend link to my recently published Medium story: “How to Enjoy Going to the Movies.”
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Lots of news about Twitter this month; if you don’t care or are already saturated, feel free to scroll down to my Twitterless content.
The bluf: Twitter’s dark overlord, Elon Musk, announced on Saturday, July 23, that “soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.” And lo, by the following day the Twitter logo and name—but not the word “tweet”—had disappeared from the platform, replaced by a grim, spindly “X,” Musk’s favorite letter. (In 2000, he wanted to rebrand PayPal as X. He was ousted as CEO, but bought back X.com and went on to found SpaceX, name the Tesla Model X, and sire a child named, alas, Æ A-Xii.)
It’s not quite the end of Twitter, but it sure ain’t what it used to be. I wrote for Medium about what I’ll miss—and am already missing—about Twitter, which I started using in 2008, a lifetime ago.
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A quick audiobook recommendation: I thoroughly enjoyed So Many Steves: Afternoons with Steve Martin, a series of conversations between Martin and his longtime friend the New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik. (Gopnik is everywhere, isn’t he? He was also “in conversation with” the fictional Lydia Tár in last year’s Tár.) Martin, who will turn 78 in August, has spent more than 60 years plying his various trades: magician, musician, comedian, actor, novelist, librettist. Gopnik elicits charming stories and surprising revelations, and gently nudges Martin toward a discussion of craft and motivation. The book—audio only, with some delightful banjo music—is available from Pushkin Industries and the usual online merchants. Or, if your public library supports the Libby app, you can borrow it free for three weeks. (By the way, the title is a twist on the E.E. Cummings poem “So Many Selves.” Martin is a big fan of Cummings, it turns out.)
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On the occasion of the death of R&B singer Billy “The Kid” Emerson, at 97, Ben Zimmer applied his lexicographical lens to a term immortalized by Emerson: “doodly-squat.” Did you know that doodly-squat is what linguists call a “vulgar minimizer” or—I love this—a “squatitive”? (Strong Language)
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Ramped up, amped up, ratchet up, gin up, up the ante: a long and poetic list of clichés. (Gift article)
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If any non-Jews out there are starting a business, I am available to consult on whether your proposed brand name means “butt” in Yiddish pic.twitter.com/SnSXBTeem2
— Dan Berger (@dnbrgr) May 22, 2023
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A personal plug: I have a couple of new stories on the EatDrinkFilms site about an upcoming screening, with live orchestral accompaniment, of the classic silent film Pandora’s Box (1929). Pandora’s Box was made in Germany, but it starred a young American actress, Louise Brooks, whom the film historian David Thomson has called “one of the most mysterious and potent figures in the history of the cinema.” Read my story about Pandora’s Box and the sidebar about Club Foot Orchestra, the remarkable ensemble – now celebrating its 40th anniversary – that created the score for the film and will perform it, along with students from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, on May 6 at Oakland’s Paramount Theater. The event is being presented by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Hope to see some of you local cinephiles there!
Louise Brooks as Lulu with Gustav Diessel as an anachronistic Jack the Ripper. Her hairstyle had lasting influence.
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I’ve been enjoying “Stiffed,” a podcast – not to be confused with Mary Roach’s book Stiff or Susan Faludi’s book Stiffed, both of which I also recommend – about the rise and fall of Viva, an erotic magazine for women that briefly flourished in the 1970s. Founder/publisher Bob Guccione died in 2010, but host Jennifer Romolini managed to interview his son, Bob Jr., as well as many of the women who worked at Viva and tried their damnedest to inject feminism into the mix. Related: my March 2022 post about “Minx,” which name-checks Viva and also rival Playgirl, for which I was a contributing writer..
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Another podcast worth your attention: A Way with Words, hosted by Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette. The April 16 episode examined, among other topics, why Southern Californians insert “the” before freeway numbers (“take the 405 to the 5”) and whether there’s such a thing as a “neutral” accent.
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“We are currently in the midst of a radical reinvention of English. Not perhaps since the 15th, 16th and early 17th centuries has the English language shifted faster, with the rapid introduction of loanwords (borrowed from other languages), neologisms, buzzwords, slang and a host of acronyms.” (Steven Mintz for Inside Higher Ed)
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A link of my own to kick things off: I wrote for the Strong Language blog about a product name I was surprised (to put it mildly) to encounter in a family-owned, family-friendly grocery store in Berkeley, California.
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I also continue to publish about once a week on Medium, a platform that actually pays me! This week’s story is about Pepsi’s new logo—and the logo that preceded it, back in 2008 (friend link), which the branding agency sold with a totally bonkers presentation. If you’re not a Medium member, use this referral link to join. Yes, there’s a fee, but you’ll gain access to lots of other good writers, too. And maybe you’ll want to start publishing there yourself, and you’ll be glad you made this tiny investment.
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For more than a century, the New York Times’s nameplate included a period. Then, one day in 1961, it was gone. “Dropping the period caused much consternation and soul-searching at the Times, until finally the production manager came up with the calculation that eliminating the period would save some $600 a year in ink!” (Steven Heller for Print Magazine)
The final full stop?
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I’ve started listening to the “Tech Won’t Save Us” podcast, expertly hosted by Canadian tech critic Paris Marx, who’s joined each week by an expert who critically examines “the tech industry, the powerful people who helm it, and the products and services it unleashes on the world.” Separating tech from politics, says Marx, “has consequences for us all, especially the most vulnerable.” I’m looking forward to reading books by two recent guests, Malcolm Harris (Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World), and Edward Niedermeyer (Ludicrous: The Unvarnished History of Tesla Motors). Niedermeyer introduced me to the useful word autonowashing, “the practice of making unverified or misleading claims which misrepresent the appropriate level of human supervision required by a partially or semi-autonomous product, service or technology.” (More -washing compounds here.)
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Do hobos still ride the rails in America? Indeed they do, and City of the Rails, a new podcast from journalist Danelle Morton, gives you a firsthand look at their lives. Danelle had a personal reason for her quest: Her daughter left home to hop freight trains as soon as she received her high school diploma. Between attempts to locate “Ruby” (yes, nerds, Ruby on rails), Danelle investigates the history of the railroads, talks to current and former hobos, and seeks answers from train engineers and rail cops. New episodes drop on Wednesdays; prepare to listen to a couple minutes of ads before the podcast begins. A personal note: Danelle and I go way back, to the beginning of our journalism careers, and she got in touch a couple of years ago when she was brainstorming a title for the podcast. I’m delighted at the result! Available wherever you get your podcasts.
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Have you read my latest story for Medium? It’s about my attempts to use Chat GPT and other AI tools to create brand names and taglines. This friend link will bypass the paywall.
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Happy Festivus, the holiday for the rest of us! I don’t have the traditional aluminum pole, and this year I’m sparing you my Airing of Grievances. (But you can air your own grievance on FestivusWeb.) As for the other primary tradition, I discovered this year that there’s a Feats of Strength cocktail, which sounds kind of like a hot toddy. Did you know that English toddy comes from Hindi tari, which means “palm sap”?
“Festivus-infused” maple syrup from family-owned, Vermont-based Runamok. You can buy it at REI.
Read my previous Festivus posts.
And here’s a year-end link roundup:
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Merriam-Webster chooses its words of the year based on the number of dictionary lookups. The 2022 winner, gaslighting, saw a 1740% increase, “with high interest throughout the year.” Runners-up include omicron, oligarch, and queen consort.
Gaslight (1944): “Strange drama of a captive sweetheart!”
And bear in mind Benjamin Dreyer’s sage counsel:
If we’re talking about fucking with someone’s sanity, it’s gaslighted. If we’re talking about a Victorian theater, it’s gaslit.
— Benjamin Dreyer (@BCDreyer) May 26, 2019
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