Something In The Air This Time Of Year

So I turn on the computer this evening to get back to this blog (finally) and before I can even get to Google to Google my name to find out just where my blog is located, I'm hit with an avalanche of news items that made me think The Onion had usurped my homepage from MSN.com. Just what's going on out there? The controversy over the blowing of the vuvuzelas at the World Cup games in South Africa is threatening to push the BP spill off the front pages. Now I must admit, watching the U.S. vs. England match on Saturday was a challenge what with the swarming bee noise of those incessant vuvuzelas, but once I heard people wanted to ban them from the games, I was all for them. Especially after hearing the name of the horns and actually seeing it in print--vuvuzela. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of a more beautiful, evocative, even suggestive looking word, let alone sounding, in any language I'm conversant with (which is only one, but it's the mighty American English language). Keep me away from the beer, because if I had a couple and sat and stared at the word vuvuzela for a spell, I might just convince myself to say and write nothing but vuvuzela for the rest of my life. And how about this embarrassment of riches? Wiki says vuvuzelas are also known as lepatatas. Makes me want to come up with an exotic joke about two strippers, Vuvuzela and Lepatata. Surely one can stand the noise (100+ dbs, supposedly) and nuisance of anything named vuvuzela, right?

Maybe this guy Jonathan Metz could have saved himself some trouble if he had been wise enough to chant the word vuvuzela in his time of need. Seems that said Metz (foolishly, if you ask me; basements are not to be toyed with) went down to his (what he described as his "underground basement") basement last week to fix the furnace (that's two strikes against the guy, who gets little sympathy from me: going down to the basement and attempting to fix a furnace). Well, as anyone half as paranoid about anything as I am can guess, sure enough, Metz got his arm wedged into/behind the furnace and couldn't get it out. The upshot is he self-amputated most of his arm in order to try to free himself. But don't take my word for it. You have to watch the video of his press conference today:

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Is it just me or is this guy a young (pre-balding) John Malkovich, totally in some twisted character, enjoying just a little too much his time in the limelight? Quite frankly, if I get myself into some stupid predicament (and here's a sensible suggestion to everybody--no matter how trivial, before every trip to the basement, unlock a door and call a nearby friend to inform him or her that you're going down to the basement and that if you don't call back within fifteen minutes for them to call 911 for you) where I have to partially amputate anything off my own body, I ain't holding a press conference to tell the world about it, and I'm certainly not going to revel in the gory details like this guy seems to me to be doing.

Now if you've watched the Metz video, you might have seen a couple of interesting items on the crawl: a judge has apparently said poor Gary Coleman's body will be cremated no sooner than Wednesday. This is news? Burn the guy already.

And then there's the tidbit that All-American artist of light Thomas Kinkade has been arrested for suspicion of DUI.

To top it all off, the famous "Butter Jesus" (because it looks like it was carved out of butter; alas, Kinkade had nothing to do with this piece of art) sixty-foot statue of Jesus in southern Ohio was struck by lightning and incinerated last night. The mind reels.

So what's going on here, some infernal harmonic convergence? Nah. It's simple. Tomorrow is June 16th, only the most significant date in 20th Century cultural history. For it was on that date (tomorrow as I'm writing this) that James Joyce's epic Ulysses takes place, in 1904 (which in non-fictive actuality was the date on which Joyce met his future wife, Nora Barnacle [now there's a woman who didn't have to think twice about assuming her married name]), and it was on that date in 1965 that Bob Dylan recorded the equally epic "Like A Rolling Stone" (though some misinformed folks will say it was today, June 15th). What a day. No wonder the world gets a bit topsy-turvy this time of year, to salute the imaginative explosions of Joyce and Dylan, no doubt.

Now I'm no Joyce scholar, but I'd bet he never used the words vuvuzela or lepatata, but that he's spinning in his grave right now for the chance to. As for Bob, there's still time, buddy. Happy June 16th everybody; do something groundbreaking in homage.

David Byrne-What A Day That Was