East Coast Offense

A few years ago, ESPN radio morning show hosts "Mike and Mike" initiated using the term "man up" to describe acts of fortitude. One day, searching for an antonym for this term, Mike Greenberg tossed out the phrase "woman down." A trickle of complaints came in to ESPN offices, and Greenberg responded with extreme contrition, offering a heartfelt on-air apology.

I suspect that no one remembers this anymore. The only reason I remember it is because of what I saw on an on-line forum shortly after the incident. People were outraged--not at Greenberg's statement, but the fact that anyone would take offense to it. This depiste the fact that there was no fallout from the incident; unlike the Don Imus situation that occurred around the same time, Greenberg was not punished, and there was no lengthy public debate. Reading people's reactions, it was obvious to me that there was something bigger in play than this one comment and subsequent apology.

I came to the same realization this week while reading about a song and youtube video made by students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The song is entitled "What's a Coastie?" and then proceeds to answer that question by describing a certain type of female UW student: out-of-state, from a priveleged background, attention-seeking, and obsessed with materialism and fashion. The most controversial lyrics single out the "Coasty" as Jewish: "East Coast Jewish honey" and "Jewish American Princess, baby."

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel ran a story about the song and video, and invited reader comments on a forum. A minority of posters found the song offensive, but most were vehement in attacking anyone who would take offense to it. Here is a sampling of responses:

Big Deal. Who Cares. Get over it. Find something interesting to print. Quit trying to be sensitive about others feels. I am Polish and never attempted to stop someone from telling a polish joke. Stop being so dam PC.

To those who took offense, I guess we can’t decide what does or doesn’t hurt your feelings but maybe grow some thicker skin?

My God, everyone needs to relax! This was a light-hearted song about the differences between east and west coast kids and kids from the midwest.

Give me a break!! It a silly song and not meant to hurt anyone!! All of the "political correctness" we endure in this country is absurd!!

Should be a harmless song in most people's eyes. If one is looking for a reason to be offended, one will undoubtedly be offended.

These comments show that 90% of people are in favor of the song, and 10% are on a quest to ruin the song for everyone else.

This literate morons at UW who are offended will have a lot more to cope with when the get out of Fantasy Island South and enter the real world.

The people who complain about this need to get a life.

Give me a break. This country is so full of overly sensative babies, that shriek victim at every possible turn. Frankly, I'm sick of it. Get over it, already. And why are you SEARCHING for reasons to be offended.

I think those offended by this should get a life - they must not have enough to do in their lives if they have time to be offended by what is obviously a joke.

The only people who would complain about this either have absolutely no sense of humor or just like to hear the sound of themselves whining.

Anyone who seriously thinks the whole idea of "coasties" is based purely on what your religious heritage is, is a complete idiot. Get over yourselves, and find a hobby. You clearly have WAY too much time on your hands.

Please find something else to complain about. Or better yet, quit complaining all together.

Of course, there is a lot of irony in these statements. Those who are complaining about people being offended sound pretty offended. Those who complain that people have too much time on their hands seem to have some spare time themselves. And the cacophony of voices that bemoan a lack of humor demonstrate little wit of their own.

Yet in amongst the anger and vitriol, I detect a hint of fear. And I find this to be understandable. People know enough to ascribe the term "political correctness" to the phenomenon they are observing. But the scary thing for them is that they don't know who the guardians of "poltical correctness" are; there is no rule book to describe what is in-bounds and out-of-bounds, and as such they are subject to criticism or censure for any utterance, or even any "slip of the tongue" (which is apparently what happened to Greenberg).

Making this fear and frustration more palpable is that in the "Coastie" video there is no overt offensive content. If there was a picture of Hitler right after the video flashed the star of David, the reaction would have been much different. But what's wrong with simply showing a star of David and using the term "Jewish princess"?

But that is not to say that the song and video is not problematic. Check out these other two reactions from the Journal-Sentinel forum:

I find this hilarious. I am midwestern transplant from Milwaukee now residing in South Florida. "Coasties" are everywhere down here. And yes, down here it does pertain to the priviledged east coast women who sport the Ugg boots in 90 degree weather. Jewish? probably. But Remember, Delray Beach is a southern borough of NYC. They also hang with the shaved-head, tattooed-laden, beater-T wearing, dirt-bag poseur guys at Starbucks, who sit on their laptops, smoking cigarettes acting all important while they are unemployed.

Coastie song? One. Hundred. Percent. Accurate. The only problem is that it narrows the scope to females. The coastie dudes are as insufferable, if not moreso. Summer is the only time to visit Madison--when they're all gone.

One doesn't need to be a Freudian to find some truth in his observation about jokes--that they are a way for people to work out taboos and sublimate troublesome conflicts. A further reading of the forum indicates that there really is and historically has been a cultural clash between "Coasties" and "Sconnies" on the Madison campus:

When I was in Madison a decade ago, they were called Easties. I guess the people from the west coast weren't nearly as conspicuous back then.

As far as I know, the term "coastie" wasn't around in the late 80s/early 90s when I was there, but the stereotype sure was. We all got along more or less, and had some fun at each others' expense, some inappropriate in hindsight. Looking back, what bothers me most is that the coastie/sconnie communities rarely if ever interacted - it was like two completely separate groups that might show up in classes together, but ate, lived, and partied in different quarters.

I attended UW Madison in the late '70's. There were many Jewish students from the east coast living in my dorm. I didn't have a stereotypical name for them, but they had one for me. Because I was from Wisconsin I was a hick.

I went to UW for undergrad and then grad school earlier in this decade, and I must admit that the Coasties were often a source of debate and frustration. They seemed to want attention by talking loudly during lectures, whether to each other or on their cell phones. They liked to flaunt their wealth, be it through Juicy Couture outfits, North Face puffy jackets, or even Range Rover SUVs. They acted like they were better than everyone else, and in the Midwest, most people will not condone that kind of behavior.

While I have no doubt that the authors/artists involved in "What's a Coastie?" amused themselevs and others, I would assert that it is only funny to those who have experienced this cultural conflict (hence a number of other comments on the forum questioning why this is newsworthy).

Ultimately, if humor is a method by which we work out conflict, there will inevitably be humor that will be disturbing. And disturbing humor could potentially be counterproductive to actually addressing the conflicts. The key to making such statements (or as in this case, products) productive would be to engage in dialogue about A) what makes them funny, and B) what makes them potentially offensive. Unfortunately, although there is a whole lot of dialogue being generated, very little of it is focused on either of these two categories. We get assertions like "This is funny," and "This is offensive," without any further exploration, and then the discourse very shortly degenerates into lamentations about "political correctness."

I'm rather pessimistic that such a productive dialogue will be forthcoming. I wouldn't anticipate that Internet forums will become outlets for enlightenment anytime soon, so the failure of the Journal-Sentinel website to serve as a gateway for dialogue isn't a disappointment. But the institutional failure of University of Wisconsin to facilitate a better negotiation of an ongoing cultural divide that has persisted though generations strikes me as a more troublesome phenomenon...perhaps even one that could inspire offense.

The New Old Celebrity

Although the relentless news cycle around Tiger Woods continues to remind us that we live in an era preoccupied with celebrity news and gossip, it bears mentioning that this phenomenon pre-dated the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle. Even though Perez Hilton and TMZ weren't around in 1932 to cover the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, it was still the cause celebre of the media. According to a 2008 story in Lindbergh's hometown's newspaper:

"Governments fell, nations warred, industrial empires toppled, and yet the stealing of an infant from his crib in the Lindbergh home in the lonely Sourland hills of New Jersey pulled on the heartstrings of the world as probably no other happening in recent decades," reported the Associated Press.... That was the unanimous judgment of 17 AP editors "over whose desks flow 75 million words of copy a year." They named it the top story.

Of course, Lindbergh was a different kind of celebrity than those we encounter today. I can't think of any celebrity explorers. Maybe Steve Fossett has achieved that status, but only posthumously; he followed the sad rock star route of achieving fame only through mortality. The only living celebrity aviator I can think of (Chuck Yeager) belongs to a different era. (I wouldn't consider Sully Sullenberger to be a celebrity, as there doesn't seem to be much interest in his life outside of the cockpit).

On the flip side, every type of celebrity that we have today also existed in Lindbergh's era. The Hollywood star, the athlete, the politician, the criminal/outlaw, the military hero, and the musician are all basic types that just keep repeating through generations. Even the Paris Hilton/Kim Kardashian variety of celebrity is nothing new; the concept of the debutante has been around for centuries.

Lindbergh, of course, wasn't the only person to achieve stardom by blazing a trail. Edmund Hillary appeared on money in his native New Zealand while he was still alive. Ernest Shackleton was literally the toast of Britain . John Glenn cashed in on his fame to become a U.S. Senator, while Neil Armstrong (fairly recently) had to sue his barber for selling a lock of his hair for $3,000. Jacques Cousteau has inspired both rap lyrics and New Age compositions.

The other category of celebrity that seems to no longer exist would be the scientist/inventor. Thomas Edison got a nickname similar to one earned by the NCAA's all-time winningest (in terms of championships) basketball coach. Albert Einstein became a household name by writing things that households wouldn't comprehend. Carl Sagan developed a pop culture catch phrase. (I suppose Stephen Hawking would qualify as a living scientist/celebrity; it helps that he wrote an accessible best-selling book).

Some might argue that people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have attained stardom based on their ability to innovate, but it seems to me that they are recognized primarily for their enterpreneurial skills, which again puts them in a lone line of iconic American businessmen (Carneigie, Rockefeller, etc...)

So will we ever see an explorer/scientist/inventor celebrity again? A couple factors conspire against such a possibility. I'm sure if we ever make it to Mars, the astronauts who land there will be lauded and feted. But short of that, we are running out of places to explore. And as for inventions and discoveries, it is now more likely that recognition will be shared by a group of collaborators, rather than an individual.

But I can foresee at least one potential opening. If somebody were to actual invent an automobile (or any other form of transportation) that could legitimately displace the status quo, and if he or she were to take the new invention on a spin around the country or the world, that person would make everyone forget about Tiger Woods.

The Big Reason Sports is so Popular

When I was a wee lad, I made an effort to watch every athletic event that was broadcast on my television (or at least those that were aired before my bedtime--there were some football seasons when I would tune into ABC every Monday night but never see the end of the game). Though this might have been a tad obsessive, it wasn't actually as bad as it sounds. My family didn't have cable, so my sports viewing was pretty much restricted to weekend days and the occasional weeknight (even local broadcasts were limited in those days).

Sometime around fourth or fifth grade I was introduced to the concept of scoring baseball games. But lacking a true scorebook, I devised my own system for use in a wide-ruled spiral bound notebook. And shortly thereafter, I created my own system for keeping score of football games and basketball games. It wasn't long before I was dedicating certain notebooks to the sole purpose of scoring games. This evolved into keeping a table of contents in the front, numbering my pages, and eventually assigning volume numbers to the notebooks. I also decided that this series of notebooks should have a title, and given my somewhat literal mindset at the time, I settled on The Sports Notebook.

In the early days of The Sports Notebook, I fantasized that one day as an adult, I would be sitting in a den (which looked a lot like Ward Cleaver's den), surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of spiral-bound notebooks. And as I was unable to predict the emergence of retrosheet.org, I actually thought that my notebooks would be of interest to historians and scholars. (To that end, I made sure to update an "About the Author" section in the back of every few volumes). Even as my illusions to the import of my work were divested, I continued to maintain the notebooks until about the midway point of my senior year of high school, eventually ending up with over 30 volumes, which I still possess to this day.

Early on, I decided that The Sports Notebook needed an introduction, in order to inform the (very hypothetical) reader of the series' raison d'etre (though I wouldn't have used that term at the time). I don't have the exact date I wrote this introduction, but it appears in The Sports Notebook Volume 2, between a Bucks/Nets game from December 2, 1988 (The Bucks won 103-92 behind 32 points from Terry Cummings) and a Broncos/Raiders game from December 3, 1988 (won by the Raiders 21-20, a game in which I record John Elway making two punts, which I suppose is possible). So it is about 21 years to the day since I wrote the following:

The reason I keep this notebook is because on the interest [sic]. Sports is one of the most interesting things around. The big reason sports is so popular is its just plain exciting. It's exciting to see Joe Montana at the 3 yd. line with 2 seconds left and down by four. He throws a 97 yard bomb to Jerry Rice! It's exciting to see Rob Deer, Jose Canseco, and Mark McGwire shell the baseball 500 feet. It's exciting to see Michael Jordon [sic] sail through the air and jam the basketball in the hoop. It exciting to see the great Gretzkie [sic] score the game winning goal with :05 left. Since the beginning of time fans enjoyed wrestling. In England rugby was invented and turned into football. This one boy who loved to make up games put down 9 bases and used a stick and a stone with some of his neberhood buddies. He lived in Cooperstown, NY the site of the baseball hall of fame. The game he invented was baseball. The one man who invented basketball originally had normal baskets. Then there where the ones who turned it around: Curley Lambeau, George Halas, Babe Ruth, Cy Young, Lou Ghereg (sic), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt the Stilt, the Great One, and Bobby Orr. And the memorible moments here is just a few miracles of sports:

-Dwight Clark and "The Catch" which gave the 49ers a Super Bowl victory [sic].
-"The Drive" Where in the 1986 AFC championship the Broncos where on the 2, down by 7 and less than 5 min. left. Elway and company ledd to a TD and a victory in OT.
-And who could forget the ice bowl. In the NFC Championship in 1968 [sic] the Packers and the Cowboys. Simaler to the drive Bart Starr marched the team 95 yeards [sic] and ran it in on an outstanding block.

In basketball Wilt the stilt scored 100 points. It was an awesome show of power and a record that may always stand. And then lets get to baseball perhaps the most memorible sport. Di Majio's 56 game hitting streak. Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth's all time home run mark off Al Downing.

Something happened in the 1988 world series. Can you guess what it was? I'll give you a hint. Remember the '88 film "The Natural" [sic] It was a baseball movie. Robert Redford starred. The Knights where in the series when Redford was spending most of the game in the locker room with an injury. In the bottom of the 9th he came in to pinch-hit and blasted it out of here [sic].

Kirk Gibson of the Dodgers limped up to the plate in obvious pain. 3-2 out of here. He limped 360 feet and the Dodgers won.

As I read through this, I'm obviously amused by much of it (not the least of which is my name checking poor Al Downing. Why didn't I feel the need to also mention that Gibson hit his home run off Dennis Eckersley?). But I'm also intrigued by the fact that pretty much everything I mention is second-hand knowledge. One would think that someone who poses the question "Who can forget the Ice Bowl?" remembers the Ice Bowl himself. But not only was the Ice Bowl played before I was born, I misidentified the year that it was played, and embellished the yard total on the Packers game-winning drive.

Here is a list of other people or events that I laud about which I failed to witness myself, even on TV: The Montana 97-yard bomb to Rice (which never actually happened to the best of my knowledge), 500 foot home runs, a Gretzky game-winning goal (or even Gretzky playing at all--I had never seen an NHL hockey game on TV at the time), Lambeau, Halas, Ruth, Cy Young, Gehrig, Wilt the Stilt (and his 100 point game), Bobby Orr, "The Catch," DiMaggio's streak, Aaron's record, and "The Natural" (I never actually saw the movie as of this writing, hence my misstatement of key plot points).

And the people or events that I did witness: Jordan slam dunking, Abdul-Jabbar (though he was old and past his prime by the time I saw him play), and "The Drive" (though I didn't really understand what I was watching). As for the Gibson home run, I actually watched the start of that game, but was in bed by the 9th inning.

And I also show a curious interest in the genesis of sports. What made me feel the need to mention the historical significance of wrestling, and to mention the evolution of other sports (even to the point of repeating the false myths of Abner Doubleday's invention of baseball, even though I apparently couldn't remember Doubleday's name)?

Taking into consideration the three elements of my manifesto: heroes, (exaggerated) feats, and origins, I realize that this is the same formula that comprises the narratives of mythology. In hindsight, I was interpolated into not only internalizing this mythology, but wanting to inscribe it for others. And while I'd admit that my prose lacked polish, I would also have to assert that much of the discourse of sports produced by adults is not inherently smarter than that produced by a fifth grader.

What NASCAR and Rap Have in Common

We have a little more than a month remaining in the decade, and I've already burned my "decade retrospective" blog post. But over the last couple weeks, I've found myself thinking some more about how the world today is different than it was ten years ago. It is easy to point out mainstream phenomena that exist today, but didn't exist ten years ago (i.e. Wikipedia and Facebook). It's still relatively easy to point out things that existed in the past, but have only become mainstream in the last ten years (such as the use of cell phones). But it is not as easy to notice when something has been "de-mainstreamed."

Last weekend, a NASCAR driver won a fourth straight championship, an incredible accomplishment by the standards of any American sport. Yet if you were to say this guy's name ("Jimmie Johnson"), perhaps a majority of Americans would picture a football coach who hasn't coached since Bill Clinton was president, while many others may think about sandwiches. Yet it wasn't that long ago that NASCAR was regarded as having achieved mainstream popularity, the "fastest growing spectator sport in the nation," with TV ratings that exceeded those of traditional American sports, and revenue through the roof. Now, ratings and revenue are in a free fall.

Meanwhile, last week I asked students in a college class to raise their hands if they were a fan of rap music. Not a single hand went up. This would have been unthinkable at the turn of the decade, when rap had crossed over into the Top 40, seemingly every hit song in every other genre had a trace of hip-hop elements, and most music videos were styled on what was going on in rap videos. Perhaps the best example of the unlikely mainstreaming of rap was when Snoop Dogg (who when he wasn't rapping about marijuana, was making porn films, and if he is to be believed, working as a pimp) was filmed for a cameo in "It's a Very Muppet Christmas Movie" (although the scene was left out of the final cut). Now, even with all music sales down, hip-hop has taken a bigger dive. In 2006, no hip-hop album made the year's top 10 for the first time in 12 years, and overall sales dropped 21% in one year (compared to 6% in the industry as a whole).

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that NASCAR and rap have dropped out of the mainstream (relatively speaking), but that they ever achieved such success to begin with. Both of them come out of decidedly non-mainstream milieus. What made an art form born in gritty, urban, black America into a commodity eventually embraced by soccer players? What made a sport born in southern rural white America into a commodity eventually embraced by stockbrokers?

While a book could be written (and probably has been) in response to these questions, a cursory examination reveals the strong influence of single individuals who could bridge the chasm between the original culture and the mainstream culture. When one tries to think of a rapper who could accomplish this, the obvious figure that comes to mind is Eminem. A white rapper with "street cred," he forged a cross-cultural gateway through which other rappers (and record companies) were ready and willing to come charging through.

It's not as obvious to think of a NASCAR driver who had such an obvious cross-cultural appeal, but upon reflection, the two most popular drivers of the early 2000s may have fit the bill. Jeff Gordon was born in California, raised in the Midwest, and appealed to Madison Avenue. He served as a fill-in host on Regis and Kelly and hosted SNL. However, he stayed connected to the original NASCAR base by marrying a southern girl and referencing God in every interview. Meanwhile, Dale Earnhardt Sr. was southern through-and-through, but he had a touch of Hollywood flair (he was nicknamed "The Intimidator") and as the architect of Dale Earnhardt Incorporated (DEI), he demonstrated a business acumen not traditionally associated with a southern "good ol' boy." And semioticians would say that even the cars these guys drove, Gordon's "Rainbow Warrior" and Earnhardt's black number three, hinted at an openness to cultures that were not traditionally associated with NASCAR.

But then Dale Earnhardt died. Jeff Gordon divorced his southern belle, quit talking about God, and married a European woman named Ingrid (and he also quit winning). Eminem pulled an Axl Rose and disappeared from public view. And NASCAR and rap music lost their cross-cultural equilibrium. (As a footnote, the artist formerly known as Slim Shady recently put out a comeback album that achieved modest success, but did not do much to renew the artist's stature. It appears that in this case anyway, Fitzgerald's famous quote about "no second acts in American life" is accurate).

So if there is something to this theory, we might be able to predict the next cultural phenomenon to drop out of the mainstream. First we can ask "What is currently in the mainstream, despite being more characteristic of a subculture?" One possible answer: golf. I suspect that although golf has long been regarded as mainstream, it is because the core group that it has historically appealed to has also been the core group that wields more power than any other group in American society: affluent white males. Yet I would also argue that over the last 10-15 years, golf has become legitimately mainstream. And it doesn't take a genius to figure out who can be credited with causing that.

So as we head into the final month of the decade, the big question is whether the events that happened outside of a Florida mansion at 2:30 in the morning on the day after Thanksgiving represent a temporary blip, or whether they signify the beginning of the end for golf as a part of mainstream culture.

Escape vs. Alternative

Back when I was a young Green Bay Packer fan, I would mute the volume on the TV during games and listen to the local radio broadcast team of Jim Irwin and Max McGee. This wasn't because I felt that the local guys were more skilled broadcasters. Jim, the play-by-play guy, would often have to wait until watching the television replay before he would know who it was that made a play. I doubt that Max, the analyst, could have named more than a couple guys on most teams around the league. But what they offered was something that the national broadcasters couldn't: partisanship. In broadcast parlance, they were "homers," and that is precisely what I was looking for. I might have been less informed listening to them, but the trade-off was that I was more entertained.

Though I personally stopped this practice when Jim and Max retired after the 1998 season, I know that some fans still would rather listen to Wayne Larrivee and Larry McCarren than the network broadcasters du jour. I recently saw a message board thread in which someone asked for help in figuring out a way to technically synch-up the radio feed with his cable system. He got some helpful responses, but he also get this unsolicited commentary:

I've always thought fans who dislike network broadcasters need to look inside. If you feel like the network is biased against your team, chances are you're too blindly biased for your team to realize the nature of its true weaknesses.

I find it more interesting to notice when national broadcasters are wrong than be fed propaganda for a team I'm already a fan of. I don't need some guy paid by the team to tell me a guy isn't failing when he really is.

This post intrigues me. I'm intrigued by the notion that the original poster needs to "look inside." Does one's choice of which football broadcast they are to consume really call for introspection? I'm also intrigued by the implications of the second paragraph. Even granting the premise that a broadcaster paid for by a team is spreading "propaganda" (which I think is a bit of a stretch), would that really be a problem? Now, when it comes to news coverage, I'm very much against the idea of state-run media. It is obviously preferable to have an independent fourth estate. But must we be looking for the same standards in sports coverage?

But all that aside, probably the most intriguing part of the post for me is the idea that one could find it "interesting to notice when national broadcasters are wrong." Isn't the game entertaining enough? Must we have a secondary game of trying to internally prove our own intellectual superiority over the broadcasters?

In considering these questions, I find myself also contemplating the recent debate about instant replay in baseball. Given a rash of umpire mistakes in this year's play-offs, there has been an increased call for incorporating options for the use of replay technology. Baseball commissioner Bud Selig has been steadfast in resisting such proposals, saying that reviewing umpire calls would disrupt the flow of the game.

I think it can be reasonably predicted what type of fan would agree with Commissioner Selig. The same fan who prefers listening to local announcers over the national announcers would tend to be against replay. On the other hand, the type of fan who finds it "interesting to notice when national broadcasters are wrong" are going to want replay.

One could observe that I am dividing fans into two categories: those who want an emotional experience from games and those who are engaged in a more logical/rational approach to appreciating sports. But I think the divide goes a little deeper than this distinction.

We often hear that sports offers an "escape from reality." And I think that for a number of people this is true. But for others, sports offers not an escape, but an alternative reality. For this type of fan, immersion in a single game is supplanted by immersion in the foundations, the machineries, and the complexities of an entire league. This is the type of fan who will understand rules governing the salary cap structure. They will understand the difference between a baseball player being "optioned" and a player being "outrighted." Such a fan is also likely to want to construct his or her own league. So called "fantasy" leagues, for being a "fantasy," often have rather intricate (and even tedious) rules. And in some of these leagues, there is nothing fantastic about the cash prizes awarded to the winners.

I don't think fantasy sports are fundamentally different from multi-player role playing games. And the rise of RPGs has been roughly simultaneous with the rise of fantasy sports and the emergence of this type of sports fan. But I think it is important to note that the popularity of "World of Warcraft" hasn't killed Trivial Pursuit. There are still a number of people out there who would rather play a simple board game than become immersed in alternate worlds. It's easy enough for manufacturers and retailers to account for both of these audiences. But with sports leagues, it might be a more difficult task to satisfy two fanbases. Perhaps a good start would be to make sure that local radio stations employ only "homers."

The Death of the Signature Song

Being a Bob Dylan fan, I find myself constantly annoyed whenever the Bard from Hibbing is covered by the mainstream media. I can live with reporters not having the passion for his music that I do. I can live with excessive attention placed on his iconic nature rather than on the songs that he has written. I can live with constant references to his vocal timbre while his vocal skills of timing and phrasing are ignored. I can live with the obsession with his lyrical prowess while his musical abilities are minimized. I can live with a focus on his 60s accomplishments at the expense of his more recent achievements. What I can't stand though, are all the terrible puns on his song titles that populate seemingly every headline or lead paragraph.

For example, when neighbors complained about Dylan's porta-potty awhile back, news outlets gleefully ran with "Blowin in the Wind" references. A few months later, when he was mistaken by New Jersey police for a vagrant, CNN couldn't wait to reference "Like a Rolling Stone." NPR couldn't resist an entire blog devoted to puns on Dylan song titles after an erroneous report that he would be voicing GPS systems. Probably the most popular song title to pun is "The Times They Are A-Changin." A California paper recently managed to combine that song with "It Ain't Me Babe" by announcing Dylan's new Christmas album with the headline "Christmas Time It Is A-Changin' Babe."

Of course, Dylan is not the only artist subjected to this treatment. I have seen more than enough Beatles puns in my life (oops, couldn't resist). And it isn't necessarily a baby boomer phenomenon. I still remember a ridiculous headline I saw in the mid-1990s in reference to Sheryl Crow: "All She Wants to Do is Win Some Grammys."

However, I don't remember seeing any song title puns recently when Taylor Swift swept the CMAs. Come to think of it, nor did I see any when Kanye West got headlines for interrupting Swift at the VMAs. And for all the times that I've seen Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana's name in print, I don't think I've ever seen a reference to a song title. Ditto for the Jonas Brothers. I've seen Britney Spears's name an awfully lot, and I have seen plays on "Oops I Did it Again," but that song is older than itunes.

I suppose it is not profound to notice that since the dawn of the digital age, there have been few additions to the canon of popular songs. But I'm not sure that I've ever seen anyone draw a link between the digital era and the death of the "signature song." I'd have to say that "Hey Ya" by Outkast in 2003 might go down in history as the last time a musical act and song title were synonymous. (Though I guess one could make a case for "Rehab" by Amy Winehouse).

So what does it mean that it is apparently now possible for an artist to achieve breakthrough success without the benefit of a consciousness-penetrating song? On the downside, record companies will probably invest less in A&R and put even more emphasis on style over substance than they already do. The upside is that we won't have to live with terrible puns anymore. Things Have Changed.

On Concert T-Shirts

Growing up in the state of Wisconsin, I have seen many versions and many permutations of Green Bay Packer apparel. I've seen T-shirts that commemorate Brett Favre (going as far back as the 1993 "Favrecandoit" Fahrvergnugen spoof) and T-shirts that mock Brett Favre (the recent "We'll never forget you Brent"). I've seen T-shirts that celebrate a single regular season game (such as the 1989 shirt that read "After further review, the Bears still suck"). I used to own a "Nitschke never wore an earring" sweatshirt. My wife currently owns a pink A.J. Hawk jersey. And of course, going back to the Super Bowl years, there were any number of "champion" T-shirts (I once possessed a "1995 NFC Central Division Champion" sweatshirt). But one thing I've never seen is a Packer shirt with a schedule on the back.

The very idea of such a shirt may seem ridiculous, but for some reason, it wasn't considered ridiculous when pretty much every major touring rock band of the 1980s put out a T-shirt with their schedule on the back. And actually, as a kid, I remember being fascinated with these tour itineraries. Unfortunately, because they were not sold in retail outlets, my only opportunity to read them involved surreptitiously snooping around behind people's backs (literally). And to make matters worse, the type of people who would wear Def Leppard concert T-shirts in the 1980s were the type of people most likely to intimidate a little kid. (And they were also the type of people likely to have hair long enough to obscure the first couple of dates).

To be clear, I couldn't have cared less about the front of the T-shirt; I had no concept of the finer distinctions between Motley Crue and Poison. My interest at the time was entirely in the geographical aspect of the shirt. I was fascinated to see how the band moved across the country. And I was always thrilled to see a local city (Milwaukee or Madison, or sometimes both) listed among the more foreign locales. This was somehow a personal validation-- the fact that I lived in some proximity to a city that could get listed on the back of a T-shirt that was sold throughout the nation was a boon to my self-esteem.

But as I got older and more cynical, my fascination with these shirts turned to bemusement. I wondered why the fans of a particular band would want to advertise a list of concerts that, save for probably one of them, they didn't attend. Why should a fan care that the band that they saw in Madison on July 9th had happened to play Topeka on July 27th? And why would they care to such a degree that they would want to impart that information to anyone happening to sit behind them in algebra?

But I think this all sounds more ridiculous now than it was then. Today, any fan of any entity (be it a rock band, a movie, or a breed of dog) can go on-line and commune with fans of that same entity, without regard for geographical limitations. But we forget so quickly that it wasn't always like that. Before the Internet, the concert T-shirt was pretty much all there was to unify a fandom. (Unless the fandom was already geographic in nature, which explains why there was no such thing as a T-shirt that listed the Packers 1986 schedule).

But the concert T-shirt fulfilled another need, too. Fans, particular young fans of the pre-Internet era, often had a paradoxical desire. They wanted to be part of something bigger, to feel like the band they were giving their affection to had a cultural relevance. But they also wanted to be unique--it was no good if everyone else was into the same thing they were. The concert T-shirt allowed them to have it both ways. The rarity of the shirt (again, it was not sold in stores) allowed one to possess an artifact that validated one's sense of individuality. Yet the list of cities on the back reinforced that the wearer was a link in a powerful chain, that fans across the nation or the world were united in their adulation.

Yet this phenomena is by now a thing of the past. It has become a cliche that technology has "shrunk the world." It has also shrunk the market for certain products, the concert T-shirt among them. And this is apropos, since most of the shirts themselves, printed on cheap cotton, probably shrunk years ago.