The arts are fine

Ah, here we are again, my homepeople. Welcome to UOPTA. No, I'm pretty sure that doesn't stand for Untrained Orthodontists Putting Teeth Askew, so you can all breathe a sigh of relief. Hey, I have an idea. I'd like to keep having alternate UOPTA meanings each week, but I need your help. If you email me at ptklein@gmail.com with a couple that you come up with (instead of posting them in the comments section), I'll include it in an opening paragraph and give you a shout-out. Sound good? It doesn't have to be today of course, but I think it would be great to have a little audience participation and reader-created content. Let's see what happens.

So today is May 8th. If it were up to me, I'd combine it into one syllable and make it Mayth. It's so rare that we're able to do that with dates, and I want to make the most of it. In fact, I just spent way too long trying to see how many other month-day pairings could be combined in a way that saves a syllable, and it's an amazingly small number. Depending on how you say the number 11, we could either have Aprileventh or Januareleventh/Februareleventh. I don't really make either of those sounds at the beginnings of my elevens, but I'm an equal opportunity...whatever the hell it is I'm doing in this paragraph. Let's move on, shall we?

In Spanish poetry, syllables are combined all the time. If one word ends in a vowel and the next starts in a vowel, they're combined. That makes it even more difficult if you're trying to write with a certain number of metric feet per line. For example, "Como estas" in a line of poetry would be counted as three syllables that more closely resemble, "Co mues tas," if that makes any sense. Throw in the fact that words starting with a silent H get in on this action, and you're making for some crazy times. The best part of learning all of that in college was hearing the word "dipthong" a few hundred times. That never really got old. (That word is so weird. On one hand, if it were a very skimpy undergarment, that would in theory be sexy. On the other hand, if someone called someone else a "dipthong," there would be no doubt that it would be used in a derogatory fashion. How can something do both of those things at the same time while not actually meaning either? Is anyone still reading this? Wow, good for you. I almost bailed on myself a few times there.)

Speaking of poetry, I mentioned in this space a while ago that my friend Jon and I used to write intentionally horrific poems to each other from time to time when we worked together at UC Santa Barbara. I took great joy in writing crappy poems, but I didn't know how much I missed it until a couple of weeks ago. I really don't remember how it came up in my head, but I found myself looking for a rhyme for the word "forgotten." I came up with a few, and then laughed to myself as I created a great horrible part of a horrible poem about looking in the refrigerator:

Potatoes au gratin
Forgotten

Now rotten

I laughed to myself about that and told my lovely wife (who hears things like that from me quite often). I thought that would probably be it, but those lines have popped into my head almost every day since. I always have the same train of thought: "Maybe I'll end up including that in something. In what though? I should call Jon and see if he wants to resurrect the bad poetry writing." I think he's probably grown out of that phase though (as most people would eventually). Oh well. But hey, if any of you feel like writing some intentionally bad poetry and emailing it to me, we can make a whole post out of it someday.

Speaking of weird things that I tell my lovely wife, here's a brief conversation we had two days ago:
Me: The name Eliot is almost "toilet" backwards.
Her: Yeah?
Me: Yeah, it's just missing a T at the end. So "T. Eliot" as in "T.S. Eliot" is "toilet" backwards.
Her: Oh.
Me: And he wrote "The Waste Land."
Her: Hmm. That's pretty interesting.

That last line might come across as sarcastic on the screen, but she actually meant it. I wonder if the whole "toilet" thing is why Thomas Stearns Eliot included his middle initial. I'd try looking up his descendants and asking them, but that sounds like a lot of work (and they might find it disrespectful in some twisted way).

Sticking yet again to the fine arts, I listened to my new sampler cd from Paste Magazine, and one song in particular really stood out. It's by a singer named Bill Callahan who apparently used to perform under the name Smog. I didn't love the melody or the singer's voice particularly at first, but I cocked my head in interest when he sang, "All these fine memories are fuckin' me down." I wasn't familiar with that use of "fuck," and that's really saying something since I've spoken many times about that word's versatility. But the part of the song that really got me and made me want to write about it is this:

I feel back asleep some time later on
And I dreamed the perfect song
It held all the answers, like hands laid on

I woke halfway and scribbled it down
And in the morning what I wrote I read
It was hard to read at first but here's what it said

Eid ma clack shaw
Zupoven del ba
Mertepy ven seinur
Cofally ragdah

That really got me. Especially "hard to read at first," because the narrator seems pretty convinced that he's reading the answers from the perfect song correctly. Nicely done. (If this story reminds you of the story behind "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, then congratulations - your English degree has come in handy.) By the way, the song is called "Eid Ma Clack Shaw," which I had seen on the playlist but not really processed. I tip my imaginary hat to you, Mr. Callahan.

And lastly for this section, a word caught my eye and got me thinking (uh oh) about its pronunciation. The word is "leopard." Why is it pronounced "leppard?" "Leotard" is just one consonant off, but I don't hear people walking around calling it a "lettard." (Ok, in truth, I don't often hear people walking around and saying "leotard" the right way either, but I'm trying to make a point here. Cut me some slack, will ya?) Furthermore, why in the world would someone initially associate "Leo" with a lion when there's another big cat whose name actually starts with Leo? Is it too late to change that? One thing's for sure, Def Leppard knew what they were doing when they named themselves. "Deaf Leopard" looks really weird to me. Does a Deaf Leopard eat a Blind Melon? One can only hope.

And with that, let's take our big and padded claws on over to the Car Watch.

I was behind a car on my way to work yesterday morning that had this license plate: "INVZBL 1." "No you're not," I said aloud. When the opportunity arose, I changed lanes and ended up stopped at a red light right next to the car. I looked over and tried my best to appear that I was looking past or through the car, but the driver never turned in my direction to see me mock his plate. I spent the next couple of minutes wondering if I'd be at fault if I rear-ended that car. "You see, officer, I was just minding my own business when suddenly my car's bumper and hood got smashed in and my airbags deployed." Probably not.

My favorite brother sent me a plate that was a tad on the egotistical side: "1GR8CHK." I don't think you should be allowed to say that about yourself. It's one thing to think that you're great (and I'm all for that really), but it's certainly another to put it out there for everyone to see. I guess she wasn't kidding when she told her friends she was going to get a vanity plate. I suppose it could be a former hockey player who is famous for one particularly great defensive play in which he checked someone against the boards before he could wrist in an empty-netter. (I have no idea if I used any of those hockey terms correctly, by the way. Sure, we have the L.A. Kings and the Ducks are nearby, but I've met two or three L.A. natives in my life who actually follow the sport.)

And lastly, my homey Rockabye sent me this plate: "5BGMACS." My cholesterol went up just reading that. I sure hope that it's a family of five big-boned folks whose last names start with Mc or Mac. If not that, then I hope the driver won the car in a bet that he couldn't/wouldn't eat five Big Macs in one sitting. Yes, that would be disgusting, but at least it would be in the name of competition. And you can't spell "competitive eater" without Peter, naturally.

That's it for this guy right here. If you can muster the energy and creative juices to email me at ptklein@gmail.com with new things for UOPTA to stand for and/or some bad poetry, that would make my week. You want to make my week, don't you? I'll be back here next Friday, but in the meantime...Sunday is Mothers' Day, so I want to wish a happy one to all the moms out there. Ya know what - I'm feeling generous. If anyone's ever called you "a bad mutha," I'm going to say that you're welcome to celebrate as well. So there. Tuesday is my friend Dusty's half-birthday, and he's half-Chinese, so there's a joke in there somewhere. Wednesday is my Grandma Zelda's half-birthday, loyal reader Aunt Lynn's half-birthday, and my friend Dave's half-birthday. I'm pretty sure that adds up to at least one whole birthday, but I'm bad at fractions. Have a great weekend and week, friends.