pop riddle 5

Follow the path
Under the weeping tree
Into Hamelin
Or Bee Ess One Four Ess Bee
Triangulate your position
And where will you be?

[Outside research is always allowed on riddles, and is often necessary. If you'd like to guess the answer, please post it in the comments box. If you want a clue, or want me to give you the answer for free, post your request in the comments box.]

aphorism 1

Rhetoric is falsehood posing as truth. Theater is truth posing as falsehood.

[Drunk with Chad and Nandini, early hours of Labor Day Weekend 2008, accidentally telling my life story again.]

In which Matthew makes a pun and a gaffe

My Facebook profile, a few minutes ago:

Matthew was Biden his time, but now he's Palin in comparison. Also, we're fucked.

The punny level here is, granted, high, and it prompted a couple of friendly "dude you're a comic genius" comments from some old friends. But out of left field Joe of all people called me out for being politically irresponsible here: the choice of Palin is a publicity stunt, and a lame one, and only is effective if it actually succeeds in scaring liberals. A kind of "if you let the bastards scare you then they've already won" approach. Which, from the man who coined the now-popular "tell me what your dissertation is about and I'll tell you whether it's gay, and by gay I mean retarded," was a shock of seriousness indeed. So I've switched it up:

Matthew knows that McCain's choice of Palin is as hollow and fake a gesture as Palin's smile.

And I challenged Joe to come up with something bitchier. Because hey, bitchy is what we do. I've also just sent an email to the parodist behind Welcome to My Home, Deven Green, asking her to do to Sarah Palin what she's done to Brenda Dickson.

Ladies, start your engines.

pop riddle 4

In the 90's, I searched for what matters, but I needed to win slow.

In the 80's, I searched for what ties, but I needed the key: tons.

In the 70's, I looked for it all, but I needed the bunkers.

But really, every time I searched, I found the most important thing. What was it?

[Outside research is always allowed on riddles, and is often necessary. If you'd like to guess the answer, please post it in the comments box. If you want a clue, or want me to give you the answer for free, post your request in the comments box.]

pop riddle 3

The beast had the haunches of a lion, but when the cask-maker looked into its eyes he saw the face of an eagle.

“Dost thou remain amongst the List of Five-Hundred?” asked the cask-maker.

“Son of Man,” answered the beast, “This is not only the beginning of a new year, but also of a new season.”

And every time the beast spoke the name of the Son of Man, there was a shot in the distance.

But which year, and which season, and where did the beast and the cask-maker stand?

[Outside research is always allowed on riddles, and is often necessary. If you'd like to guess the answer, please post it in the comments box. If you want a clue, or want me to give you the answer for free, post your request in the comments box.]

In which Matthew speaks gibberish

I'm using a mini-recorder to take notes as I read these days. Sometimes it works very well. Sometimes it doesn't, as today: "02. 005 quote. The flora Hanna at. Before-it's self. Three hyphens ending subject?."

But then, I've also read the following bits directly out of the book I'm taking notes on: "'utopia of universal genitality,' the 'utopia of full orgasmic reciprocity'"; "a relationship of homology, that is, of diversity within homogeneity reflecting the diversity within homogeneity characteristic of their social conditions"; "In short, the art of estimating and seizing chances, the capacity to anticipate the future by a kind of practical induction or even to take a calculated gamble on the possible against the probable, are dispositions that can only be acquired in certain social conditions, that is, certain social conditions." I am beginning to wonder about the rational capacity (or the short term memory?) (or the rational capacity?) of the translator/editor of this text. And so, if my mini-recorder screws up, how am I to really know the difference?

In which Matthew documents real life

On Facebook a couple days ago, this woman randomly appeared who I met once or twice in high school. We'd met at a speech and debate tournament in Philadephia; I would have been fifteen at the time. I can't imagine how she remembered me, or found me on Facebook, in the first place. Then again, I am shockingly attractive, so the ladies tend to keep me in mind even after the most brief of meetings.

Shockingly.

It took a bit to jog my memory. Was I on the forensics team in high school? Didn't we meet for dinner at Windows on the World (the restaurant at the top of Tower 1) when she and her mom visited New York? I had long hair, right? And didn't I go off on her when her mom told me she'd given up the chance to see Rent while she was in town? Ah:

I've definitely never been able to pull off long hair, but it was long*er* at that point: it took a while for me to realize that I couldn't pull it off. And YES, now I remember -- that dinner was the first and only time I've ever eaten rabbit, and the second and last time I ever had occasion to be in the World Trade Center. Your mom is a nice lady, if memory serves. Rent remains one of my old favorites, though it's lived on Broadway well past its expiration date (as has, well, everything).

Jonathan Larson lives on, and on, and on. His short life's work (the life was short, not at all the work) is still going weak on the Great Multiethnic Way, but man, that shit is catchy. It's been twelve years now, and still Ara and I are like trained monkeys: the simple (and quite common) phrase "it's true" turns us Pavlovian. It JUST happened today, actually:

SHE: Are you aware that you haven't done the dishes?
ME: I am.
SHE: This is your turn to do the dishes, right?
ME: It's true.
SHE: I'm leaving now for Santa Fe. It's true you're with this yuppie scum?
ME: You said you'd never speak to him. Again.
SHE: Not now.
ME: Who said that you have any say in who she says things to at all?
SHE: Please stop, I hate it that we do this every time.
ME: Who said that you should stick your nose in other people's--
SHE: Who said I was talking to you?!

We used to have this fight each night. He'd never admit I existed. Wait. I mean: the whole rhythmic-talking-whining thing has just been set into our blood, and years after a Spice Girl and an N-Sync boy have both played lead roles and gone on to host a reality show together, we're still locked in as Rent rats.

And yet. Last year, Ara's 15-year-old cousin invited us to come see her church youth choir sing. And they sang a series of songs from Rent -- not the annoying (and bowdlerized) medley-mess my high school chorus sang, either. Halfway through "Will I?" I started sobbing uncontrollably.

Think about it: when I was precisely these kids' age, fighting my little endless fight for a queer identity, I saw this very new piece of theater for the very first time, and sang my heart out, and told everyone I met about it... and now, there we were, in a church, and Ara's cousin has two loving gay parents, and her school's homecoming queen and king that year were two boys, and we have just come such a very, very long way.

That's poetic. (That's pathetic.)

pop riddle 2

One of you will be applauded after you bring pain onto yourself from above.

One of you will be remembered as too pure for this world.

And one of you is behind the other two, but you will one day stand in front: and only then will you be honored six times.

Which three men received this prophecy?

[Outside research is always allowed on riddles, and is often necessary. If you'd like to guess the answer, please post it in the comments box. If you want a clue, or want me to give you the answer for free, post your request in the comments box.]

In which Matthew reads Bourdieu

Understandability was never my forte. But I've been working on it.

And ever since life went all blue-screen-of-death in my first year at grad school, I've steered clear of theory for the most part, sticking fearfully, Pigletly close to the text and saving all my worries about social relevance for the classroom, never the library or the field. But my advisor has been leaning on me hard to get through Pierre Bourdieu's The Logic of Practice. It's slow going -- old phobias die hard -- but I need this stuff, and on my third read through the Introduction I'm finally getting why I should care (emphasis mine):

I would never have come to study ritual traditions if the same concern to 'rehabilitate' which had first led me to exclude ritual from the universe of legitimate objects and distrust all the works which made room for it had not persuaded me, from 1958, to to try retrieve it from the false solicitude of primitivism and to challenge the racist contempt which, through the self-contempt it induces in its victims, helps to deny them knowledge and recognition of their own tradition... My inevitable disquiet was relieved to some extent by the interest my informants always manifested in my research whenever it became theirs too, in other words a striving to recover a meaning that was both their own and alien to them.

If you know much about my dissertation topic, maybe you can already see the connections forming. If not: once I get my interview material from Chester online, in which I speak to modern Cestrians about their revival of medieval street theater, you'll see what I mean. I hope.

In which Matthew wastes his twenties on Photoshop

The research trip has hit its end,
but all I've brought home to my friends
are books, receipts from pounds I spent,
and sips of thin white whine;

but it was a good go, well, now that it's ceased --
immensely productive, if tiring, at least --
so: let all your hungry eyes on this to feast --
the Photoshop show is online.

In which Matthew sleeps in a Starbucks

I am too old and too OCD for hostelling; I am too old and too hapless for flying standby. I am a very crotchety and grimacey twenty-seven. For the uninitiated: flying standby means that you pay a reduced rate for plane tickets, but you are not guaranteed a seat -- they sell to you, at a discount, whatever seats are still empty just before takeoff.

But there I was (this is all in flashback: actually, so are my prior two entries, but I've backdated them). I was exhausted, filthy, underslept and undershaven, and embarrassingly homesick, and reeling from a 2 1/2 week, successful and at times bloody fascinating and glorious research trip which took me from Chester (where I viewed and interviewed the amazing participants in the surprisingly good revival of Chester's medieval biblical street pageants, the subject of my dissertation), to Swansea (site of lots of cold fried food and of the 2008 Congress of the New Chaucer Society, where I delivered a discursive but relatively successful paper on medieval Cestrian tourism), to Aberystwyth -- where I was supposed to view a unique manuscript of the Chester Antichrist pageant, but instead looked at the Hengwrt Chaucer (through glass) for as long as I could stand (it was open to the Melibee and I couldn't turn the page!), then headed straight to the Manchester airport, whence I would fly back to SFO.

But I was flying standby. And, infuriated with my accommodations thus far, I'd opted to just spend the night in the airport: I got there at 9pm, and to finagle a[nother horrid] hostel seemed pointless when I'd have to be back there in twelve hours.

And what a long twelve hours it was. And there were only two flights leaving AT ALL for the States, both in the morning. And both were oversold. Not just on that day -- well through the rest of the week, well past when my medication and patience would run out. Turns out I had chosen to fly standby during the beginning of the summer holidays in Britain. Because I'm a fucking Cheez-It of stupidity. Because I'm a schlemihl.

Look it up.

After it sank in that I was out of grant money, broke in general (in debt to my own wedding!), and stranded in a foreign country with no way home, I did what any self-respecting man would do in a public area. I burst into tears and I called Mom.

We found last-minute tickets on Aer Lingus, leaving that evening for a layover in Dublin, then straight to SFO. Another twelve-hour layover. So I slept a second night in an airport, but a much nicer one this time, with a 24-hour Starbucks. By 2am every cushiony or semi-cushiony surface (and there are many -- it's a bloody Starbucks) was covered with a commuter, sleeping awkwardly with a warning arm draped over his luggage and latte. It looked like Yuppies at Katrina.

The flight home was nice -- since I've been on the verge of making sweeping nationality-based generalizations throughout the last few posts, I'll come out and say that the Irish seem to just be better all-around people than you or I. Lauri (kind soul) picked me up at the airport, and riding next to her (in a surprise move, she was supposed to be busy) was Ara. All the baggage which I'd guarded with my life and limbs quickly fell (metaphor?) to the concrete, and I ran to her.

pop riddle 1

What do you call the book ordinarily employed for recording mercantile transactions in a bare, more or less flat tract of land, naturally clothed with low herbage and dwarf shrubs?

[Outside research is always allowed on riddles, and is often necessary. If you'd like to guess the answer, please post it in the comments box. If you want a clue, or want me to give you the answer for free, post your request in the comments box.]