“Saturday Night Fever” Remembered

The film “Saturday Night Fever” opened in New York City on this date (December 14) in 1977. As assistant arts editor, I had the first read on the original manuscript, “Tribal Rights of the New Saturday Night,” written by British journalist Nik Cohn and illustrated by James McMullan, that appeared in New York magazine on June 7, 1976.

The magazine’s staff attended the film’s premiere and then we all headed off to Tavern on the Green for the first-night party and dinner. What fun!

We were not required to wear the platform shoes and the garish polyester outfits favored by the Bee Gees, who composed the score and performed the songs, and the disco dancers of the day. 

Mozart

The 35-year-old Mozart died on this date in 1791. “The greatest tragedy in the history of music,” said the distinguished musicologist H.C. Robbins Landon. In the months leading up to his death, Mozart composed a prodigious catalog of swan songs: The Magic Flute, his final piano concerto and string quintet, the Clarinet Concerto, Ave Verum Corpus, and the unfinished Requiem. Did any other artist ever finish on a more exalted note!

JFK and Roger Staubach on Life

John F. Kennedy, the 35^th President of the United States, was assassinated on this day (November 22) in 1963 in Dallas. People around the world remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the tragic news. One such person was Roger Staubach, at the time the junior quarterback of the U.S. Naval Academy.

“I heard people screaming in the hall that the president’s been shot,” Staubach told Joe Trahan of WFAA in Dallas/Fort Worth in an interview that ran on wfaa.com back in 2013. “And as I’m walking to class down Stribling Walk, people were yelling back and forth that [Kennedy’s] been shot and it doesn’t look good.

“Everybody was sick. You didn’t care about football. You didn’t care about the Heisman. You didn’t care about anything. Just wondering what the heck is going on here.”

Staubach had met the president a year earlier, at Navy’s preseason football camp, and then spoke to him when JFK visited the Navy team locker room following its victory over Army near the end of that season.

“He became really close to our team, relatively speaking, on a good basis,” Staubach told Trahan. “It was pretty neat having him there. Just [the president] being at the game was great.”

Life Replaces Staubach With JFK

Staubach was inextricably linked to JFK in another, perhaps less-well-known, way. As the nation’s best college football player (he would be voted the winner of the Heisman Trophy), Staubach was the cover subject for Life magazine for the November 29, 1963 edition. The issues, a reported 7 million of them, were recalled after the print run when Kennedy was assassinated. A photograph of JFK replaced that of Staubach on the cover with new editorial content added. Staubach talked about that in a conversation I had with him a few years ago.

“That’s correct,” Staubach said. “That Friday afternoon, the magazines were on their way out, and [Life] pulled them back. I have a few copies, but most of them were destroyed, and they just redid the whole cover.”

Staubach went on to make his mark in football and in Dallas. He graduated from the Naval Academy and fulfilled his military service requirement (including a year in Vietnam). In 1969, as a 27-year-old rookie, he joined the Dallas Cowboys, who had drafted him in 1964. He led the Cowboys to nine consecutive winning seasons, including their first Super Bowl championship in 1972, for which he was named the game’s MVP.

The First "Hail Mary" Pass

Staubach was well known for his ability to rally the Cowboys, directing them to 23 come-from-behind victories in the fourth quarter, including 14 in the final two minutes of regulation. Less well-known perhaps is the fact that he threw the very first “Hail Mary” pass. 

“That term had never been used by the press or anybody else,” Staubach said. “In the past, if you threw a pass at the end of the game, it was the alley-oop or the bomb or whatever you wanted to call it.

“We were playing the Vikings in a playoff game and were behind 14-10. Drew Pearson made a heck of a catch—it wasn’t a great throw—and went in the end zone and we won 17-14. After the game, the press asked me what I was thinking about at the time.

“When I threw the ball I got hit. So I said, ‘I just closed my eyes and said a Hail Mary.’ The next day, the press wrote ‘Hail Mary Pass Wins Game.’ ”

Not Mean Enough

Staubach revealed one other secret during our conversation. Remember the commercial with ex-Pittsburgh Steelers great Joe Greene and the little boy who famously offered Mean Joe his bottle of Coke? That aired during Super Bowl 14. It was a memorable spot. Less memorable is the footnote that Staubach was the original choice for the Greene role. The All-America quarterback, however, projected the wrong image.  

“Somebody asked me about that and said that I turned it down,” Staubach said, “but that’s not the case. I would have loved to do it. Some creative guy must have evaluated the concept and said, ‘Hey, we need a mean guy. It would be better to have Joe Greene than Staubach because Staubach’s a nice guy.’ 

“It probably made more sense, gave a more cuddly feeling to it, to have this big old tough football player give his jersey to this little boy. It turned out, I guess, it was the right decision, but I would have loved to do it.”

Staubach retired in 1979 with the NFL's No. 1 passer rating. Six years later, he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Albert Camus at 100

“Politics and the fate of mankind are formed by men without ideals and without greatness,” wrote Albert Camus, one of the indisputably great literary minds of the 20^th century.

Born 100 years ago today (November 7, 1913) in French Algeria, the brilliant and eloquent humanist (he refuted the label of existentialist to describe his philosophy) was a journalist and member of the Resistance who publicly denounced the German occupation of France during World War II. More famously, Camus was an influential novelist, philosopher, and dramatist whose life ended absurdly at age 46 in a car accident.

“You know what charm is,” poses the judge-penitent in The Fall. “A way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.” In The Rebel, Camus asks, “What is a rebel? A man who says no.”

In 1957 Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize “for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times.” His best-known works, including The Stranger, The Plague, and The Myth of Sisyphus, continue to offer insights into our attempts to find meaning in everyday life.

Why We’ll Miss Mariano

• He never shot an imaginary arrow into the air after the final out.
• Cameron Diaz didn’t feed him popcorn at the Super Bowl.
• He never threw a jagged bat barrel at Mike Piazza.
• He didn’t drink beer and eat wings in the dugout when he wasn’t pitching.
• He never carried an unlicensed handgun in his sweatpants into a nightclub and shot himself in the leg.
• He didn’t change his name to Metta World Peace.
• He never shimmied and pirouetted off the mound after the final out.
• George Steinbrenner never called him “a fat pussy toad” or referred to him as “Mr. May.”
• He didn’t hold a press conference to announce that he was taking his talents to South Beach.
• He never backflipped off the mound and spiked the ball.
• He didn’t marry a Kardashian.
• He never had to testify before Congress about steroids or HGH.
• He didn’t name his children “North” or “Apple” or “Ivy Blue.”
• He never buttfumbled the ball.
• He didn’t bore the pants off anyone by discussing sabermetrics or his fantasy team.
• He never angrily untucked his jersey after the final out.
• His obliques were not hidden behind layers of fat.
• He never jogged a double into a single.
• He never bit off part of an opponent’s ear.
• Suzy Kolber didn’t have to ward off his attempt to kiss her.
• He never called anyone “dawg.”
• He never guaranteed a victory.
• He didn’t get a tattoo on his calf while vacationing in Hawaii.
• Fireman Ed never sat on his shoulders.
• He never blew on his finger after a third strike or mimed holstering a gun after the third out.
• He never said of the Yankees, “The ship be sinking.”
• He didn’t father multiple children with different women.
• He never appeared on Dancing With the Stars.
• He tolerated countless clown questions from beat reporters.
• He never told us that TBS is “very funny.”
• He never called an umpire “the absolute pits of the world.”
• He never uttered a primal scream after the final out or pounded his chest to declare he had heart.
• He was never less than a credit to his number, his team, and his profession.

Goethe, Child Geniuses, and Youth Basketball

“If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses,” wrote Goethe. Contrary to literary theory, the magisterial author of Faust was not alluding to the youngsters’ academic success but to their athletic prowess.

When I first read this, I concluded that Goethe must have had considerable experience as a youth sports coach, and attributed the quote to one too many unpleasant confrontations with disgruntled parents over the coach’s deployment of their basketball-playing sons.

I’ve been there, Johann. Looking back on my 22 years (and counting) as coach of sixth-grade basketball, I recognize that I haven’t heard everything. But I have registered a fairly comprehensive category of outlandish claims by delusional moms and dads of the putative excellence of their offspring.

Just last March, shortly after my undefeated regular-season basketball team lost in the county playoff finals, I received a text message and email from the enraged father of one of my players. I telephoned him.

“How,” he demanded, “could you have taken out [his son] at crucial moments in the game when you would not have been a .500 team without him!” He added, “Why did you stick with a 2-3 zone when it wasn’t working. You were never in the game.”

Channeling Thomas Jefferson (“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances”), I argued with dad’s math. Overall, the team was not .500 without his son; it was 1.000 in the three games the boy missed. Dad then proceeded to throw two of his son’s truly talented teammates under the proverbial bus for the loss.

I wondered (as I often did at these moments) if he had been watching the same game I had been watching. How else to account for our widely disparate points of view? We were never in a 2-3 zone, I told him, but a 1-2-2 and then man-to-man, although that might have been hard to discern because of the freelancing style his son was playing.

As for our uncharacteristically poor play in the first half, we were down four at the half and immediately answered with a basket off a set play at the start of the second half. So much for never being in the game.

I knew dad was not hearing what I was hearing. Otherwise, he would have caught the bitter curse his son hurled at me and my two assistants after I removed junior a second time, early in the second half, for repeatedly abandoning the game plan and undermining his teammates on offense and defense.

“He was NEVER going back in the game after that,” I told the father.

Dad, however, promptly checked with his son about the veracity of my claim and then confidently reported that, no, his son never said what I (and my assistants and the fans in the first few rows) unmistakably heard. But quickly dismissing that, he returned to his original question while I thought to myself, “Who was it who said that there are none so blind as those who will not see?”

Years earlier, after my decidedly outsized and underdog team had surprisingly held its own only to lose to the defending state champions, a huge thorax attached to a tiny head and bright red face accosted me at the team bench.

“My kid only played 5 minutes,” he said, sputtering. “IT BETTER NOT HAPPEN AGAIN!” His kid was a starter who played major minutes that day and in three or four of the previous games. It took me major minutes to process the implied threat before I asked him to be more specific about it. Namely, what he intended to do about it when it would happen again?

Like all bullies when confronted, he stomped away. There was never a second outburst.

Other confrontations over the years have been less, well, disagreeable. File the following stories under the fearsome category of “Overly Protective Mothers.” I fondly recall one telephone conversation:

“I don’t think you realize that my son is a point guard,” said mom No. 1. I tried to put a positive spin on it, telling her, “I think his strengths lie elsewhere.”

“Did you know that [he] was personally trained by [NBA Hall of Famer] Nate Archibald?” she asked. I told her I was unaware of that while silently calculating that her son had probably been to a summer camp at which Tiny had impersonally addressed the entire assembly.

Earlier that season, with the same team, mom No. 2 quickly sized up the roster and correctly concluded that one Joey Karabbas, an 11-year-old recently relocated to the town, presented a direct threat to her son’s playing time. She did a little private investigation, learned that the newcomer was not a registered parishioner, and turned him in. Like the rabble in the New Testament, she cried to the pastor, “Give us Karabbas.”

We all think that our children are special and uniquely gifted, and they are in different ways. I try to remain evenhanded and cool in the face of so many subjective and less than clear-eyed appraisals of their child geniuses. My friend Terry, who for years ran the local Babe Ruth league, had a brilliant practical approach when dealing with complaints from players, coaches, parents, umpires, and others.

“Profess concern and do nothing,” Terry said.

I remember the first time I had a chance to test that philosophy. During warm-ups before an inconsequential game one season, the father of one of my players buttonholed me on the sideline. He offered an unsolicited three-pronged formula for success that day that revolved around his son. I listened respectfully, nodded conspiratorially, thanked him for the game plan, and retreated to the team bench. My friend and assistant coach at the time, Mike, overheard the entire monologue and gleefully remembers that I turned to him and said, “We’re not doing any of that.”  

But it was not always possible or an effective counterstrategy to profess concern and do nothing. One season, at half-time during a mid-January early-afternoon game, a parent strode purposefully across the court toward me. Because my first-place team was comfortably ahead at the time, and because I had a history with this parent (having coached his two older sons), I wondered what—if any—was his problem.
He got quickly to his point.

“Mike needs to score four points in the second half if the [New York] Giants are to win [their NFL playoff game] later today,” he said. He wasn’t kidding. Understand this: (1) Mike was not his son, (2) he did not explain the transcendental alliance between an 11-year-old’s CYO point production and its significance to the Giants’ odds of victory or (3) how I was to insure that this symbiotic relationship would successfully enable the Giants to take their next step on the road to the Super Bowl.

He conceded one major point, donating his own son’s second-half minutes to Mike to further facilitate the cause.

As it turned out, Mike scored just two points in the second half. Chagrined at having won with St. Margaret’s at the cost of a Giants’ victory in a game that had not yet started, I approached the superstitious parent with some trepidation at the final buzzer. He waved me off. “Mike had an assist to go with his one basket, so he was responsible for four points after all,” he said. I was off the hook and the Giants’ success validated in advance.

In Goethe’s masterpiece, Faust confidently made a bet with the devil, believing that his own spirit was so restless that he, Faust, could never be enticed and tied down by one fleeting earthly pleasure. He wagered his soul, telling the devil,

“When I say to the moment flying;

'Linger a while—thou art so fair!'

Then bind me in thy bonds undying,

And my final ruin I will bear!”       

Unlike Faust, I have willingly tied myself down to the pleasure of coaching and working with young players. When that becomes fleeting, I will not linger.

All Dogs Go to Heaven?

“You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in the late nineteenth century.

Apparently, Stevenson, the author of such thrilling adventure novels for all ages as Treasure Island and Kidnapped, was not a jogger. He certainly never encountered the dogs I’ve met on my daily run. Otherwise, he might have given pause to a few of my canine acquaintances.

There’s Chewy, a hyperactive little white terrier who shares none of the same benevolence of his fellow Scot Stevenson. Chewy would be sitting blissfully in his front yard, or sniffing about on the property, when he’d hear my approach. He’d race frenetically to the bottom of the driveway, only to be brought up short by an invisible electronic fence.

One day, he broke through the barrier and chased after me. Fearful of tripping over him or being nipped on an ankle, I stopped. His insistent yapping, and my attempts to mollify him, eventually brought forth his owner, who unconvincingly assured me that Chewy likes to play and would never bite anyone. When the same interruption happened again, I found it less troublesome simply to redirect my course.     

Chewy, though, must have emitted a secret, kindred signal—some kind of ineffable animal magnetism, like a silent alarm whistle—to his doggy neighbor around the corner. Shortly after I had replotted my course, I was greeted by an aggressive spaniel, who stopped playing with his chew toy when he spotted me—a real, live chewable plaything. I never caught the spaniel’s name, but his owner likewise explained that this was the dog’s way of showing that he liked me. Thanks, but I’d like him better if he were on a leash, I thought. The dog has since come running out two more times to frolic with me.

Finally, last week, as I was in the final uphill stage of my course, a mastiff, on a leash and starting out on his own bit of exercise, made an aggressively hostile pass at me. His owner, initially unprepared for the surge, barely kept his hold on the leash as the beast lunged. I had stopped short, irritated by the interruption but thankful for the quick handling by the owner, who refastened his grip and then punched the dog viciously on the top of his head.

I thought to myself at the time, “What kind of memories do dogs have? How will this one process the blow he just received? Will he now associate pain with my presence? Are we forever destined to be incompatible? Should I make another course correction?” It’s hard to run while looking over your shoulder.

Stevenson’s elegiac poem “Requiem,” inscribed on his tomb in Samoa, says as much about the author in death (he died much too young, at age 44) as it does about him in life:

          Under the wide and starry sky,
          Dig the grave and let me lie.
          Glad did I live and gladly die,
          And I laid me down with a will.
          This be the verse you grave for me:
          Here he lies where he longed to be;
          Home is the sailor, home from sea,
          And the hunter home from the hill.

With apologies to Stevenson, whose outlook I admire, in my case when the time comes, substitute “jogger” for “hunter.”

We Interrupt This Lesson...

One thing I learned as a substitute teacher for elementary school children is to be prepared for interruptions—interruptions that start while I’m trying to take attendance before the morning announcements and flag salute and interruptions that continue during lessons, collaborative work, quiet reading time, tests, assemblies, and conferences, and during walks to and from the library, gym, music and art room—at any and all times throughout the day.  

Some interruptions are for attention or because of inattention, others for real or imaginary illnesses and injuries, and still more for no reason whatsoever. I have pledged myself, like Faust, not to linger awhile over any fleeting moments but to keep a straight face, make a judgment call, and continue to keep the life of the classroom moving on to the next pleasure. It’s a juggling act at times, but the trick is to try to keep all the different balls or objects in the air even when a new one is unexpectedly introduced.

The younger children have not yet learned how to filter the information traveling from their minds to their mouths. I have been innocently informed, apropos of nothing, of some alarmingly personal details of life at home: “My dad had to sleep in the car last night because he and mommy were arguing.” “My mom loves wine!” “Daddy got a ticket for speeding.”

Sometimes the interruptions are for attention and because of a perceived injury. At least once a day a kindergartner would approach.

“Mr. K., my finger hurts.”
Let’s have a look.
She shows me an unblemished pinky.
Where does it hurt?
She points to an invisible dot.    
Run it under the cold water. That will make it feel better (which it always does).

Occasionally, unforeseen circumstances interrupt the students’ ability to perform. One day, filling in for a teacher on sick leave, I was checking the second graders’ work for the week: homework, handwriting pages, math and spelling sheets, and so on. One little boy’s portfolio had fewer pages than those of his classmates.

Where is the rest of the work, Raymond? I asked.
“Oh, I was absent for two days,” he said.
I see. Were you sick?
“No, I had diarrhea.”

Gibberish and Journalism

The essay “Politics and the English Language”  (https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm) is as relevant today as it was when George Orwell wrote it in 1946. Within the theme of the essay about the deleterious effects of ugly and slovenly language and thoughts, Orwell offered a prescription that should be administered to professional language manglers until they are cured of what he labeled “doublespeak,” his term for language that deliberately distorts or obfuscates meaning.

In the essay are his rules for writers:
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

“These rules sound elementary,” Orwell wrote, “and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable.”

Alas, there are journalists who have grown used to writing and speaking in a style now as fashionable as it is incomprehensible, oblivious as they are to the difference between clarity and the latest jargon, gibberish, or doublespeak that is in vogue.

Gibberish

A sideline reporter last season referred to the “enormity” of basketball at Kentucky. Was she really alluding to its extreme wickedness, which is the literal meaning of the word? Batiatus (Peter Ustinov), the unctuous slave trader in the film Spartacus, inadvertently got it right when he addressed the politically devious Roman general Crassus (Laurence Olivier) as “your enormity.” A New York Yankees broadcaster uses the redundant “and also...as well” in one sentence, giving new meaning to the phrase “triple double.”

“Modern English, especially written English,” wrote Orwell, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation.” Exactly. Case in point: At one time, “low-hanging fruit” was an original metaphor to describe easy picking. It stopped being original the moment it was first copied. Shortly thereafter, it became a cliché.

Need other examples? Going forward. Moving the needle. Pushing the envelope. Under the radar. At the end of the day. Bottom line. On the same page. Iconic, systemic, organic, granular, viral. If these words and phrases are part of your vocabulary, or if you find examples of your work in this encyclopedia of clichés (http://www.squidoo.com/businesscliches#module3436417), put down your pen and step away from the laptop.

If only Orwell were still alive to save us from stories about “How Journalists Can Measure Engagement” (http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/digital-strategies/209695/how-journalists-can-measure-engagement/).

Unreadable Journalism
“The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read,” said Oscar Wilde. That was written over 100 years ago but may as well have been yesterday. On a similar note, Mark Twain wrote, “Those who do not read good books have no advantage over those who cannot read.” The trouble is, bad writers never read good writers. If they did, they'd recognize how inadequate their own prose is. In a speech to Associated Press sports editors last June, Frank Deford addressed his concerns about the decline of good sportswriting and of the class of “optionally illiterate” created by new media who have “chosen not to read or write.”

Where are the editors and broadcast executives to save us from the banality? Many are unqualified or ill-equipped for the job; others, no doubt, are like mahouts trying to coax a rogue elephant across the street on a green light. It’s hard to try to convince the recalcitrant writers to act in their own, and the readers’, best interests.

“Media is a word that has come to mean bad journalism,” wrote Graham Greene a generation ago. And that was before there were media watchdogs, surely the most expendable staff position on any newspaper. Do we really need media coverage of the media coverage? It’s the bland leading the bland. Is there anyone more fatuous than a newspaper media columnist, nitpicking a broadcast, who cannot write? More lapdogs than watchdogs, they save their venom for obvious or politically safe targets and curry favor with others more influential.

Jargon
Jargon is what dull writers employ to couch their own insecurities, to try to give the impression that their subject matter is decipherable only to a select few of them who truly understand the arcane vocabulary. Did you know that people no longer watch TV? Instead, we are told that eyeballs (that is, viewers) now consume media. Of course, much of what they consume these days in media causes indigestion.

Oh, and no one proposes a new idea; rather, ideations are the result of thought leaders’ thought processes and mindsets that are rolled out of their thought silos and then ramped up across multiple platforms. If only we could roll these thought leaders into the same silo that Harrison Ford put to good use at the climax of the film Witness.

I have spent the last three years teaching in elementary schools. The compensation for and satisfaction in working with the youngsters on their literacy development are great, or as Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney noted, “The excitement of something coming out right is its own reward.” One thing about children’s language development: It never includes jargon. That comes much later, when innocence yields to pretentiousness.

Dante designated sycophants for eternal damnation. If he were alive today he’d have to add a separate circle in hell for clods who speak fluent jargon. Something is forever being kicked to the curb while someone is always being thrown under a bus. Milton could return and retitle his masterpiece “Paradigms Lost.”

Basic English
But it’s not simply jargon that jars. It’s basic English. We learned in grammar school that the object of the preposition takes an objective pronoun. I stopped counting the instances of reporters saying “between he and I” or “with she and you.” Many of those same professionals do not know the difference between “its” and “it’s” or between possessives and plurals. They assign apostrophes to simple plural words. Even my local tailor has been corrupted by this. The sign in his shop window reads “Tuxedo’s for Rent.” That tux must be one size that fits all.

More abuses: “Disinterested” does not mean “not interested,” “presently” does not mean “now,” and “fortuitous” does not mean “fortunate.” “Intrical” and “physicality” are not words. “Pushback” and “takeaway” are nonsensical. “Decimated by injuries” does not mean “hit hard.”

Fact checking! Who’s got the time for that? And who needs a dictionary when you have spell check?

“Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence,” wrote Kingsley Amis. For lazy journalists, “incredible” is the most overworked adjective, used indiscriminately to describe the most mundane people, things, and feats. “‘Incredible’ and ‘incredibly’...like Chernobyl, should be out of service for decades to come,” wrote Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd in their book Good Prose.

And don’t bother to read another word of any writer who describes being “blown away” by something. That says all you need to know about his imagination.

“Myriad” is not a noun. “Task” is not a verb; neither is “impact” or “gift” or “medal.” One time, after I had interviewed a reclusive personality, I was asked how I “got the get.” The New York Times wrote about “Those Irritating Verbs-as-Nouns”  (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/those-irritating-verbs-as-nouns/?smid=tw-share).

Journalism vs. Public Relations
“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed,” wrote Orwell. “Everything else is public relations.” He never had to deal with sports beat reporters. Remember when they had backbone and did not nod and swallow whole and then regurgitate the platitudes fed to them by managers, coaches, and GMs?

Now, we have beat reporters who cannot think or write and who are too timid or too stupid to ask meaningful questions. I am embarrassed for real reporters when I hear the moronic questions asked by sycophants (with media credentials) at postgame press conferences: “How big was that win?” “How important was this game?” “How [fill in one of these words] surprised/impressed/excited/happy/disappointed/anxious are you?” Who is writing their script—the clubs’ P.R. directors?

Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals had it right when he came face-to-face with an inane reporter.“That’s a clown question, bro,” he said in response to some witlessness. Maybe his statement could be written on a placard that drops from every sports team’s clubhouse—a la the secret-word duck from Grouch Marx’s old You Bet Your Life TV show—any time a mindless question is put to an athlete.

“The point is that the process is reversible,” wrote Orwell. “[The bad habits] can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. The fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.”

Kindergarten

Given the choice during this past school year between teaching (as a substitute) kindergarten or high school, I opted for kindergarten every time. I’ll take the youthful enthusiasm and innate curiosity of five year olds over the grim indifference and monosyllabic inarticulateness of so many teenagers. And with five kindergarten classes in the district, there were numerous opportunities to work with the children.

As an editor, I thought my 35 years’ experience with childish behavior—albeit never with 20 or more writers and artists at the same time all day—would serve me well with kindergartners. At times this year, though, I felt more like a shepherd than an instructor, trying to maintain at least a sense of order and collaboration within the group while staying alert to any individuals tending to wander off (physically and emotionally). 

I am blessed to have what is a tiny role in an elementary school among so many intelligent, compassionate, and dedicated teachers and staff members. Kindergarten teachers, however, are a special breed, with deep reserves of patience and cool. For most of the children, kindergarten represents their first full day of structure. And it is a very long day for them, especially at the start of the fall semester.

 

Not once did I ever witness a kindergarten teacher lose her composure, even under the most trying circumstances. And not a day went by that I was not asked by another kindergarten teacher or aide if I needed anything: assistance, a break, advice, etc. There were times when one of them walked past the open door to my class and laughed. It must have been the shell-shocked expression on my face.

Every day that I subbed in kindergarten brought wonderful and unpredictable surprises from the children. For example:

• While I was bending low to explain something to the bespectacled Anthony, he suddenly looked me in the eye and said, “I think you must like me.” How would that not melt the coldest heart!

• One morning, apropos of nothing, Giovanni started crying. “I miss my mom and dad,” he told me. Shortly after I had calmed him down, he announced, “Mr. K, look—I’m not crying anymore.” For the rest of the day he periodically alternated those two pronouncements.
• “Being bullied is like getting an injury, only your body doesn’t hurt,” said future philosopher William.
• The same William, when asked in June what was the most important thing he learned in kindergarten, told me, “Girls don’t like boys who use potty words.”
• Nathan interrupted a lesson to ask me, “Mr. K, what was your name when you were a kid?” When I told him “Jerry,” he said, “Then why did you change it to Mr. K.?” 
• I asked Nathan, whom I called “Nate the Great,” if anyone else referred to him by that nickname. “Mommy,” he said.

Other unanticipated questions and unsolicited opinions:
• “Do you know how to say ‘ten’ in Japanese?”
• “How old are you?”
• “One time, I got a stye.”
• “You rock!”
• “Whenever I look at a bright, shiny light I get a headache.”
• “What’s your elf’s name?”
• “It’s sad when people die, right? Well, everybody dies—even me”
• “My baby sister is zero [years old].”
• “Blue and red are my brother’s favorite colors.”
• “You know what’s super weird? My grandma gave my mom and dad chocolate candy coal [for Christmas].”
• “I can clap my hands behind my back.”
• “Can I go to the nurse, because I stabbed myself.”
• “It’s not lying; it’s changing your mind.”
• “My dad bites his nails.”
• “Why do you have a ring on your finger?”
• “Who are you married to?”
• “Where’s Mrs. K?”

As the children counted down the remaining days on the June calendar, I had one thought: I wish the school year was not coming to an end.

 

That’s easy for me to say. I never have to create lesson plans; I merely attempt to implement those left for me by the real teacher. I am not accountable to any state board for the progress (or perceived lack thereof) of the students. Nor do I meet with the parents, principal, superintendent, or director of curriculum. But the rewards are great.

The Things That Editors Remember

The recent release of this summer’s Mostly Mozart Festival schedule reminded me of my late friend and former boss at New York magazine, Alan Rich. Mozart, you see, was Alan’s favorite composer. Every January, for many years, Alan would write his annual Mozart birthday article in New York. I miss that feature.

I also fondly remember New York magazine executive editor Shelley Zelaznick from my own too-brief four-year (1975-79) tour as assistant arts editor. It was New York’s loss when Shelley resigned in 1977 after the magazine’s visionary founder and editor in chief Clay Felker lost the property in a hostile takeover by Rupert Murdoch. Shelley was smart, tough, and gentlemanly. I admired him very much. Even on the hottest days he always seemed cool and regal.

Alan, the arts editor and music critic, had great respect for Shelley, whose company he enjoyed dating back to their days together as comrades at the Herald Tribune, from whose Sunday magazine New York had sprung. There was a time in the late 1970s when Alan briefly added theater critic to his duties (and John Simon switched over to film).

 

In reviewing a play (I can't remember the title), Alan referred to an actress as “a female [very prominent and distinguished British actress].” It was a self-consciously silly throway line that I, with first read on the review, would dutifully if reluctantly have to throw away.

“Alan, you can't write that,” I told him.

I clearly recall Alan's impish grin. “Show it to Shelley. See what he says,” Alan said. He was reluctant to give up quietly a line that he enjoyed so much.

So I walked up to the front of the office and gave the copy to Shelley, who dropped what he was doing and read it immediately. He then came back to discuss it with Alan, trying to suppress a smile while affecting a headmaster’s admonition for a brilliant but mischievous student.  

 

The reading had the desired effect. Alan knew the phrase had no chance of making it into print, but he wanted to show Shelley what an amusing line it was and to make him laugh. And then it was O.K. to delete the sentence.