Category Archives: Words of Others

I didn’t watch the Golden Globes last night, but immediately after on Twitter I started seeing references to host Ricky Gervais’ closing words, delivered as the camera was pulling away, with the last words coming just as the credits began to roll:

• Thanks to everyone in the room for being good sports. Thanks to NBC. Thanks to  Hollywood Foreign Press. Thank you for watching at home. And thank you to God for making me an atheist. Thank you.

Wow. Very funny, delivered totally deadpan and with perfect timing.

Apparently Gervais’ whole performance is being panned as obnoxious. (The New York Times has an article about some of that.) I don’t care about these awards shows or who is making fun of which celebrity, but I thought the atheist thing is pretty funny.

This is the best video I could find of it; don’t know how long it will be up for:

For more on Gervais and atheism, he wrote an interesting lengthy piece for the Wall Street Journal’s website last month that echoes a lot of my own thoughts on atheism, especially his conclusion on how you don’t have to believe in God to have a reason to do good:

“Do unto others…” is a good rule of thumb. I live by that. Forgiveness is probably the greatest virtue there is. But that’s exactly what it is — a virtue. Not just a Christian virtue. No one owns being good. I’m good. I just don’t believe I’ll be rewarded for it in heaven. My reward is here and now. It’s knowing that I try to do the right thing. That I lived a good life. And that’s where spirituality really lost its way. When it became a stick to beat people with. “Do this or you’ll burn in hell.”

You won’t burn in hell. But be nice anyway.

Of course, he wasn’t too nice lat night. But we’re all sinners, right?

The article is here: A Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais: Why I’m an Atheist.

When I’m in the mood to listen to a Bruce  Springsteen album (which is pretty often), I frequently forget about The Rising, which was his response to 9/11 and the album that got The E Street Band back together. They’re put out a few really good albums since The Rising, but I don’t always remember how good The Rising is. It was especially good at putting to words a lot of scary emotions after the attacks, but it holds up surprisingly well more than nine years later. Maybe it’s partly because it’s been a pretty crazy and violent nine years. (At least it has been for people my age, who grew up in the relatively tranquil and trouble-free late 80s and 90s.) And it’s probably partly because although 9/11 was a human loss on a staggering scale, there are smaller routine moments of death and loss every day. It’s life.

On The Rising, the song “Empty Sky” evokes the loss of a loved one, and the complicated sense of longing for the one lost and the need to hold someone responsible for taking them away:

I woke up this morning
I could barely breathe
Just an empty impression
In the bed where you used to be
I want a kiss from your lips
I want an eye for an eye
I woke up this morning to the empty sky

“I want a kiss from your lips. I want an eye for an eye.” The past nine years, in two lines.

As I mentioned last week, I read William Gibson’s most recent trilogy last month. Gibson really has a way with words. This passage, in the first chapter of the third book, Zero History, was very nice. It also included an unknown word. Cabinet is the name of a private hotel:

• “From the Cabinet side, now, down the stairs with the widdershins twist, cascaded the sound of earnest communal drinking, laughter and loud conversation bouncing sharply off unevenly translucent stone, marbled in shades of aged honery, petroleum jelly, and nicotine.”

The American Heritage Dictionary defines widdershins as: “In a contrary or counterclockwise direction.” The OED offers a broader, more interesting, definition: “Moving in an anticlockwise direction, contrary to the apparent course of the sun (considered as unlucky or sinister); unlucky, ill-fated, relating to the occult.” (The OED also offers the alternate spelling withershins. I like widdershins better.)

The AHD etymology: “Middle Low German weddersinnes, from Middle High German widersinnes, from wider, meaning back (from Old High German widar) + sinnes, meaning in the direction of (from sin, meaning direction , from Old High German.”

As I mentioned last week, I recently read David Halberstam’s The Longest Winter, a history of American involvement in the Korean War. One of the things I really liked about the book was its breadth of subject matter, covering both the military and political maneuvering involved, as well as the personal stories of the men who did the fighting. This week’s Words of Others comes from one of the chapters on politics, specifically a foul-mouthed quote from Senator Joe McCarthy in a paragraph describing his place as a Commie-hunter:

• “He was the great political roughneck of the era, a populist playing on fears generated by a new and uncertain atomic age. He gloried in how in his own mind he had become the very embodiment of Americanism. ‘If you want to be against McCarthy, boys,’ he told two reporters at one instant press conference, ‘you’ve got to be a Communist or a cocksucker.’”

Remember that next time someone says politics today is coarser than it has ever been.

One of my friends at work, Mike Mudd, has a great saying:

Sometimes you have to feed the mayonnaise straight to the tuna fish.

He uses it when he’s talking about going straight to whoever can make a decision, rather than mincing around with protocol, red tape, chains of command, and other things that slow down decision-making.

He adapted the saying from the 1982 movie Night Shift. I haven’t seen the movie, but IMDB has the quote from Michael Keaton’s character, Bill:

Bill: What if you mix the mayonnaise in the can, WITH the tunafish? Or… hold it! Chuck! I got it! Take LIVE tuna fish, and FEED ‘em mayonnaise! Oh this is great.
[speaks into tape recorder]
Bill: Call Starkist!

You can follow Mike Mudd on Twitter (@mudd4goals). He got me interested in Twitter and is one of the most interesting regular guys I know on there.

I started reading Helmet for my Pillow today. It’s the World War II memoir of Robert Leckie and is one of the books that the HBO miniseries The Pacific was based on.

So far, it is terrific — well-written with a sense of humor and a really good eye for detail. I could probably write daily Words of Others items from it, but I’ll just share the passage that made me laugh the hardest today. Leckie is writing about the U.S. Marine Corps training on Parris Island in South Carolina, and the complete lack of privacy:

Even the food packages from home were seized by the drill instructor. We were informed of their arrival; that the drill instructor had sampled them; that he had found them tasty.

What! Now you are aroused! This is too much. This is tampering with the United States Mails! Ah, my friend, let me ask you this. Between the United States Mails and the United States Marines, who do you say would win?

As I mentioned last week, I am reading  Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan, by Ronald H. Spector. In the chapters about the war in Burma, India, and China, there is this great passage about a British commando leader:

In late 1942 Wavell had formed a large commando force called the Seventh-seventh Long-Range Penetration Brigade under Brigadier Orde Wingate, a brilliant eccentric and a veteran of irregular warfare in Palestine and Ethiopia. Wingate, with his magnetic personality, ascetic appearance, and far-away expression, was part visionary, part lunatic —  but all soldier.

This week’s Words of Others follows up on the theme of last week’s: songs about not giving up.(Next week I promise to be less inspirational/mopey/whatever.)  This week, here are some lines from “Everything’s Magic” from the Angels and Airwaves album I-Empire.

I really like the first part of the chorus, about remembering to look for the magic in the world:

So hear this please,

and watch as your heart speeds up endlessly,

And look for the stars as the sun goes down.

Each breath that you take has a thunderous sound.

Everything, everything’s magic.

I also like this verse:

And do you ever lay awake at night?

And do you ever tell yourself don’t try?

Don’t try to let yourself down,

Don’t try to let yourself down.

Here’s the song’s music video. The full lyrics are on the song title link above.

Great, funny writing by A.O. Scott in his New York Times review of Sex and the City 2:

Stanford (Willie Garson) and Anthony (Mario Cantone) have made honest men of each other, giving the four main female characters, their male companions and the director, Michael Patrick King, a chance to wink, nod and drag out Liza Minnelli to perform “All the Single Ladies.” Her version is in no way superior to the one in “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel,” and it is somehow both the high point of “Sex and the City 2” and a grim harbinger of what is to come. The number starts out campy, affectionate and self-aware, but at some point turns desperate, grating and a little sad.