Said Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, quoted in "'Twain hated bullies.' Conan O'Brien receives Mark Twain Prize at the Kennedy Center" (NPR).
I'd love to hear a lecture demonstrating — with lots of quotes — Mark Twain's hatred of bullies. I have a Kindle copy of "The Complete Works of Mark Twain" (only 99¢ at Amazon!), so I can easily do my own search, though it's hard to do a search for the word "bully," since many of the occurrences are in things like "Bully for the lion!" — shouted by "young ruffians" during a tour of the Coliseum in "Innocents Abroad" — an archaic usage.
But how can you delve into Twain and his times when you've got Trump... and your "shame" for showing up in what was once an arts paradise and is now the humbled plaything of that garish clod who is remaking everything in his own horribly orange image?
I'm reading "Conan O’Brien told Danny Masterson ‘you’ll be caught soon’ in resurfaced 2004 clip after 30-year rape sentence" (NY Post)("Speaking in court, the victims testified that Masterson handed them drinks that would make them pass out before he violently rape[d] them... in his Hollywood-area home in 2003 at the height of his fame").Danny Masterson sentenced to 30 years to life for raping 2 women….Conan knew pic.twitter.com/KEE596oqdl
— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) September 7, 2023
"After O’Brien heard [Robert] Preston’s showstopping song 'Ya Got Trouble' for the first time, it wormed its way into his brain. 'I always wanted to play the Robert Preston part and do the "Trouble" song,' he says. 'I just love the "Trouble" song.' O’Brien’s other fixation was the work of filmmaker Irwin Allen, who produced disaster movies like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. They all stuck to a specific formula, and they were all entertaining as hell. 'The beginning is always great promise,' O’Brien says. '"We built this wonderful skyscraper!" There’s a lot of talk about the skyscraper, and then there’s always a dire warning: "You should worry about the electrical system and the smoke alarms." Don’t you worry about that! Then, there always comes the moment where all the celebrities are being brought in for the big grand opening.' Then, it all goes to shit. 'Somehow, all those things are swimming around in my head,' O’Brien says. It just took a space-age train to bring them together. 'It unfolds really naturally because once you have the idea of a Music Man selling you a monorail, you know Homer’s for it, the town’s for it. … Well, who’s going to be against it? It’s either Marge or Lisa, because they’re sensible. For me, it was Marge. She’ll be the voice of reason who senses this isn’t wise. The first part is Music Man. The second act is an Irwin Allen disaster movie.'"
"... with the country losing 400 artisanal bakeries a year since 1970 — a decline that is especially significant in France’s rural areas, where supermarkets and chains have overtaken traditional mom-and-pop bakeries. To make matters worse — and in a sting to French pride — sales of hamburgers since 2017 have exceeded those of jambon-beurre, sandwiches made with ham on a buttered baguette."
The article links to this 2007 discussion of the deep cultural meaning of bread:
Just watch the trailer and you'll easily see if this movie is for you:
We laughed a lot. I especially liked the big scene early on that had a lot of celebrities — including Andy Warhol (played by Conan O'Brien) and Salvador Dalí. Rainn Wilson plays Dr. Demento, and Jack Black plays Wolfman Jack. Madonna is an important character — played by Evan Rachel Wood. Al is played by Daniel Radcliffe, and Weird Al himself plays a stern record executive.
We streamed it on the Roku Channel, and it was interrupted by commercials — as you might expect, a ton of political commercials. I don't know how I put up with it, because I normally watch zero commercials — other than in front of YouTube videos, like that embedded clip itself. I saw an absurd number of commercials related to Mandela Barnes... and don't remember a damned thing about them. Why would I vote based on commercials?
For Father’s Day my kids regifted me a cold and distant stare.
— Conan O'Brien (@ConanOBrien) June 19, 2022
The bit about "Macdonald’s deadbeat persona" feels like an error to me. Did he really pose as a man who refused to pay his debts? Does "deadbeat" have some other meaning? Did he mean to write "deadpan"?
He couldn't write "deadpan," because he'd just used the word 3 sentences ago — "his zonked-seeming deadpan," in a paragraph I didn't quote. I'm dismayed when The New Yorker gets any language usage wrong. I subscribe in part because for half a century I have looked to it as an exemplar of high-quality writing.
And there's this aspirational stretching toward words that the reader might not even know yet. For example, the very next sentence after what I quoted is: "And he gave off lambent joy about his art." That's asking us to trust them and to get better at language and not to call bullshit. There's a part of me that wants to admire the writer's way with words and a part of me that's about to blurt — to paraphrase George W. Bush — What the fuck are you talking about, lambent?
If The New Yorker is going to make gaffes like "deadbeat," I'm going to have a lot more trouble going along with things like "lambent."
"Lambent," from the Latin word for "licking," evokes a licking flame. It's a word you can use instead of "radiant"... if you want to seem fancy or you'd like to make less learned readers feel as though they don't belong here.
In context, I'd say Heller wanted to sound effusive praising Macdonald — to give him a tongue bath. But if you want me to give a sympathetic reading to your pretentious usages, don't make mistakes like "deadbeat."
ADDED: Nathan Heller responded in email that he's given me permission to publish:
Dear Ann,
I am an intermittent reader and a big admirer of Althouse, and am always thrilled to see something I've written mentioned there. I'm also a huge fan of pedantic posts about language usage, so I read your criticism of the way "deadbeat" and "lambent" were used in a recent New Yorker remembrance of Norm Macdonald with an enjoyment verging on glee. Imagine my surprise to find that I was the author of the offending text. I was about to write myself a sternly worded note; then I looked in the dictionary.
Merriam-Webster's first definition of a deadbeat is a "loafer." This is also, in slightly different terms, the first definition in the New Oxford American and the second definition in the American Heritage. The Oxford English Dictionary—which has the disadvantage of being British but the advantage of being pretty comprehensive—defines "deadbeat" as "a worthless idler who sponges on his friends; a sponger, loafer; also (originally Australian), a man down on his luck."
Now, whether Norm Macdonald's comic persona was that of a loafer; a sponger and a loafer; a sponger, a loafer, and a worthless idler; or simply a man down on his luck is a matter I'll gladly turn over to the authorities. (On the sponging charge, I might note that Macdonald has insisted, at the mic, that he goes to parties solely for the cocktail sandwiches.) What seemed clear to me when I wrote that sentence, however, is the same thing clear to me now, which is that "deadbeat" is an exact term for the family of qualities in question. It is true that many people know, or think they know, the meaning of "deadbeat" from the phrase "deadbeat dad." But the dictionaries are clear that debt-related concerns are a narrow sub-case, not the meaning of the word. The O.E.D. gives "deadbeat dad" an entry of its own.
After identifying the "gaffe" of "deadbeat," you go after my use of "lambent." You fret that this term reflects "aspirational stretching toward words that the reader might not even know yet." (To say that in a less high-flown way: the reader might—of all things—have to look it up.) "Lambent," as you note, comes from the Latin for licking, but dictionaries make clear that it's most often associated with certain qualities of light. Here's Merriam-Webster: "1) playing lightly on or over a surface: flickering; 2) softly bright or radiant; 3) marked by lightness or brilliance especially of expression." Here's the O.E.D.: "1a) Of a flame (fire, light): Playing lightly upon or gliding over a surface without burning it, like a ‘tongue of fire’; shining with a soft clear light and without fierce heat. . . . 1c) By extension, of eyes, the sky, etc.: Emitting, or suffused with, a soft clear light; softly radiant. . . . 1d) Figurative: Of wit, style, etc.: Playing lightly and brilliantly over its subjects; gracefully sportive. . . ."
I used it in the phrase "lambent joy." Joy is a bright thing normally, but I was trying to describe the joy of Norm Macdonald. As anyone with any exposure to Norm Macdonald knows, his joy was not of the blazing, luminous variety. (He was, in fact, a comic with a small repertoire of suicide-related jokes.) If you had to describe the quality of joy in Norm Macdonald, you might call it dim but pure, playful, gentle, flickering in and out of view. I didn't call it "lambent" because the word seemed passable. I called it "lambent" because the word is precise.
I, too, am dismayed when The New Yorker gets any language usage wrong. Fortunately, there are a lot of us—writers, editors, and copy editors—living our days on high alert to make sure it happens as rarely as possible. In any case, thanks very much for reading, and, as ever, for your post.
Nathan
--
NATHAN HELLER
Staff writer
The New Yorker Magazine
The “Nirvana Baby” lawsuit has inspired me to seek millions from my parents for this picture: pic.twitter.com/aYtbkeAV8x
— Conan O'Brien (@ConanOBrien) September 4, 2021
So Ivankas story about her son building a lego model of the WH model is most likely a lie. She used the same story herself about Trump Towers.https://t.co/fISo2Gy45k— Call Me Prez🌊🗽🔥🆘🍑❄️💪 (@lunaticopresid1) August 28, 2020
... here's the video of ivanka telling the story about her building a lego trump tower from an old episode of late night with @conanobrien.https://t.co/fQ7zD1gP09 https://t.co/zKFIO9OYLG— fake nick ramsey @ 🏡 (@nick_ramsey) August 28, 2020
Nice mix. Good use of Fern. Tells Trump what for. 8/10 @dananessel pic.twitter.com/bhTQMDy2dM— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) April 19, 2020
Nice pad. Lived in. Livable. Still nice to look at. Points for cat. 9/10 @arwaCNN pic.twitter.com/edE3NW8N3g— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) April 18, 2020
We are going to revise previous ranking. -3 for color coding books. 5/10 @FoxReports pic.twitter.com/OOVUYofQbw— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) April 18, 2020
Conan. Is this a Holiday Inn Express? 2/10 @ConanOBrien pic.twitter.com/gQ2qoILffM— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) April 18, 2020
If you look at the ceiling you may miss the blood on his hands. -2/10 @StephenMoore pic.twitter.com/xbyA7eZkYn
— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) April 18, 2020
— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) April 19, 2020
If only my parents had given me a memorable first name. https://t.co/LX7FWRk9nr pic.twitter.com/t2LDseg0N6
— Conan O'Brien (@ConanOBrien) October 20, 2019
“One of the things that makes him one of the greatest biographers of all time is he’ll write about Lyndon Johnson, but when he encounters another character who’s interesting — Coke Stevenson — he will drop everything and go down deep, incredibly deep, into, ‘Who is this man really?’” he said. “He’ll find all this deep rich ore, which, once you know it, it’ll make the whole story that much more powerful. Whereas other people would dispense with those characters in a paragraph or two.”...Great topic for a NYT article. Credit to the NYT. And I love the illustration. First class. The NYT at its best.
As he continues his quest [to get Caro to appear on his show], Mr. O’Brien said he will draw on what he has learned from Mr. Caro’s epic series. “Like Johnson, I have an incredible drive and a complicated relationship with my father,” he said. “I’ll stop at nothing.”
During the 1990s, the media's usage of the word "indie" evolved from music "produced away from the music industry's largest record labels" to a particular style of rock or pop music viewed in the US as the "alternative to 'alternative'". Following the success of Nirvana's Nevermind (1991), alternative rock became a cultural talking point, and subsequently, the concept of a lo-fi movement coalesced between 1992 and 1994. Centered on artists such as Guided by Voices, Sebadoh, Beck, and Pavement, most of the writing about alternative and lo-fi aligned it with Generation X and "slacker" stereotypes that originated from Douglas Coupland's novel Generation X and Richard Linklater's film Slacker (both released 1991). Some of the delineation between grunge and lo-fi came with respect to the music's "authenticity". Even though Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was well known for being fond of Johnston, K Records, and the Shaggs, there was a faction of indie rock that viewed grunge as a sell-out genre, believing that the imperfections of lo-fi was what gave the music its authenticity.Rap is only mentioned in the "See also" links at the bottom of the article, as Cloud rap ("Cloud rap (also known as trillwave or based music) is a microgenre of hip hop music... typically characterized by its 'hazy,' lo-fi production") and SoundCloud rap ("SoundCloud rap is a music genre that originated on the online audio distribution platform SoundCloud... characterized as 'simplistic, subdued beats, often with snippets of strings and sometimes complemented with emo chords, paired with lyrics that ping-pong between braggadocio and nihilism, with lots of sex and odes to heavy narcotics').
In April 1993, the term "lo-fi" gained mainstream currency after it was featured as a headline in the New York Times. The most widely-read article was published by the same paper in August 1994 with the headline "Lo-Fi Rockers Opt for Raw Over Slick"....
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