The Writer's Poke

If you knew before you began that your statistical chance of failure was 40%, would you still dive in? Considering the fact that the divorce rate in the United States has been around 40% for years now, isn’t it surprising that the institution of marriage hasn’t gone extinct? And at least in the United States, couples continue to subscribe to the fantasy that marriage is about commitment and love. Ideally, maybe, but when the going gets tough, the weak get divorces. Maybe it would be more appropriate for commitment and love to come with expiration dates, because quite frankly, who can say with any sense of certainty that the person you commit to loving this week is the same person you can remain committed to and love for the next 65 years? Marriage is the ultimate leap of faith in a society than no longer believes. So why do the majority of couples continue to tie the knot? Simple: knots can always be cut later. Well, except in Vatican City and the Philippines, two places in the w...

In 1973, Bobby Riggs challenged the top-rated women’s tennis player to a match, and he easily defeated her: 6-2, 6-1. To add insult to injury, the match occurred on Mother’s Day. Today, who remembers that match or Riggs’ opponent, Margaret Court? But people still remember the match Riggs had the following September. If Riggs could so handily defeat the #1 female player in the world, surely he could defeat Billie Jean King. Riggs was 55, and King was 29, but his defeat of Court, 30, proved that age was no obstacle to “male superiority.” King had won back-to-back Wimbledon titles, and while Riggs had won Wimbledon himself, his victory occurred in 1939. Unlike Riggs’ match with Court, the Riggs-King match would follow standard tennis rules – three sets to win. And King was understandably worried. If she lost the match, she felt like “it would set us back 50 years.” In other words, King wasn’t just playing an exhibition match; she was playing as a representative of the entire fem...

So women don’t actually talk more than men. Chew on that idea for a minute. According to a generally-accepted stereotype, women do talk more than men, but according to Deborah Tannen, women actually engage more in “rapport talk,” whereas men prefer “report talk.” And in the end, women do not talk more than men. Tannen observes that men are more apt to talk in public. I find this to be an intriguing notion, and it makes me wonder if that is why female public speakers appear more “masculine.” I always assumed, for example, that Hillary Rodham Clinton gets the “masculine” label because she is a strong woman, but perhaps she is a strong woman because she speaks in the public (e.g. male) sphere. Note, too, that a woman like Clinton is not engaging in the “rapport” style of communication, either, which may explain why critics view her as “cold” or “frigid,” terms not as often used to describe men, to be sure. What are words for? Seems like such an easy question, but “to communicate” i...

If gender is socially constructed, then our definition of what it means to be “all boy” is obviously made up. You and I and everyone in society have developed an unspoken definition, and every boy learns what it means to be a boy. Or at least boys do their best to pretend that they know. Why can’t a boy have a purse? I remember asking my mom for a purse when I was in grade school, and I was old enough to “know better.” My mom told me as much, but then she took me purse shopping. I certainly didn’t want a feminine purse. What I was looking for was something “masculine” in appearance. I figured carrying a purse was little different than lugging around a backpack, and I found a small all-black purse that had a number of compartments – useful for carrying around pens and candy and gum and army men and so on. As soon as mom bought it, however, I knew that I could never use it, and it ended up being forgotten in the back of mom’s closet. Why can’t a boy’s bicycle have a basket? My c...

Sometimes I want to publicly apologize to my students. Forcing them to read essays and novels will never cause them to develop a true love for the written word. I wish that it would, but I have the sense that it has the same effect as demanding my daughter eat her broccoli. I want her to be happy, and so I usually cave in and offer her a piece of candy for eating a few bites of broccoli. In truth, I know how horrible this approach is, as it never instills within her the knowledge of broccoli’s intrinsic value.   She needs to eat her broccoli to be healthy, not just because I want her to be “well rounded,” and yet, she can live for years on candy, at least in theory, before she may even recognize that a little broccoli is good for the body. Hey, some people even admit that broccoli tastes good, but it’s difficult to make that argument to a three year old when she has cinnamon rolls on the brain, let alone sticking out of her mouth. Having spent the better part of the last ...

   The lucky ones feel a deep sense of belonging. They know why they’re here, and that sense of belonging and purpose informs how they live their lives. This doesn’t always happen all at once, this feeling of belonging, but it can develop over time. It can take root, and it can blossom. Do you know why you’re here, or are you simply going through the motions for the time being? Perhaps “for the time being” has been going on for quite a while? Even going through the motions can be a positive kinetic experience. Every day at the gym, I see dozens of people working hard, going nowhere. These are the treadmill enthusiasts. Me, I prefer doing my walking on a real track, but whether or not walking around in a big circle is superior to walking in place is debatable. The point is to keep moving. Don’t stagnate. Don’t allow yourself to die a little bit more inside each day. We all have the power within us to achieve greatness. This isn’t a cliché. Reaching one’s potential is ...

The 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress indicated that only 13% of American high school seniors achieved “solid academic progress in American history.” I would assume that there is a simple explanation for this. Students don’t read history books, they don’t take history classes, and the culture doesn’t reinforce the value of knowing historical information. Did you take history classes in high school? I took two full years of history classes, but I was the exception. Some of us took history during the summer, but a lot of the people in that class simply wanted to complete in six weeks what would normally take a full academic year to sleep through otherwise. In other words, some just wanted to “get it over with.” When I took Modern and Medieval History during the regular year, almost everyone in there was simply looking for a place to hide. All of my friends were in Honors and Advanced Placement classes, and these History classes were filler classes, at best – a wa...

Joseph Campbell is one of my personal heroes. This week, I stole some time to re-watch his amazing interview series with Bill Moyers, and I was reminded that many people live a life of excuses. Campbell mentioned the ending to Babbitt , the classic novel by Minnesota author Sinclair Lewis. Babbitt's son tells him that he doesn't want to continue college; instead, he wants to drop out and work in a factory. To this, Babbitt responds: "I've never done a single thing I've wanted to in my whole life! .... But I do get a kind of sneaking pleasure out of the fact that you knew what you wanted to do and did it.... I'll back you. Take your factory job, if you want to. Don't be scared of the family.... Nor of yourself, the way I've been. Go ahead, old man! The world is yours!" Babbitt supports his son's decision, even if it's one that society might not understand. In terms of Campbell, his son is "following his bliss." It might se...

Prior to 9/11, water-boarding had long been described as “torture” in The New York Times . After 9/11, however, when the U.S. started using this “intensive interrogation technique” against “persons of interest,” the paper dropped the word “torture” from its description. For some reason, The New York Times determined that it was appropriate to describe how suspects were being interrogated by CIA agents, but that it was not appropriate to call such methods “torture.” Why? This might seem like a small example, but what’s really at issue here is a form of censorship. Whether or not the paper still accurately describes the process of water-boarding, the fact remains that its decision to no longer label it as “torture” is significant. It’s not unusual for The New York Times to be attacked as part of the “liberal media,” so why wouldn’t an organ of the liberal media want to continue using the word “torture” if doing so would make the Bush administration, the administration that ha...

Part of me just wants to say “Girl Power!” but another part of me wants to say, “Why are we being asked to condone the promotion of junk food for the brain?” In Sady Doyle’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fangs: The Unwarranted Backlash Against Fans of the World’s Most Popular Vampire-Romance,” focus for one moment on the key word in the subtitle: “unwarranted.” For something that is “unwarranted,” Doyle certainly does spend quite a bit of time showing why the backlash may be warranted. In truth, she cannot defend the Twilight series. All she can do is defend the girls that like the series. She is probably right that it’s not fair to attack the fans themselves, but defenders of culture shouldn’t have to do that. Tearing down the books is easy enough to do, and the books are poorly written. Simple. And Doyle admits as much. At the same time, she claims “they speak to a legitimate need.” That may be true, but what exactly is this “legitimate need,” and should we simply accept Twilig...

I had a chance to watch Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables this weekend, and it may be one of the best movies ever made. Think that’s a bit of an exaggeration? I thought so too, until I started thinking about how much it reminded me of a true American film classic, 12 Angry Men . Doing a quick Internet search, I find that I’m not the first reviewer to draw this connection, either. So, other than the fact that both movies feature strong ensemble casts, what is it that makes them so much a like? Both ultimately reject the idea that people are expendable. In 12 Angry Men , Henry Fonda’s character is the only one of twelve jurors who wants to give a young man accused of murdering his father a fair hearing. Over the course of the movie, Fonda is able to show the other eleven jurors that no one is disposable. Life has a value that must be respected. In The Expendables , Stallone’s character is a mercenary. He seems like a nice guy on the outside, but he views himself...

Jones Soda has a gimmick. Customers can submit pictures, and if Jones likes them, the company will use them on its bottles. On facebook this summer, Jones has also been posting pictures from its “road trip” across the country. One picture that stood out to me is what I refer to as “The Jones Girls.” These five young girls are situated in, on, and next to a British-style Royal phone booth. The girl inside the phone booth looks as if she ended up with the short end of the straw on this assignment. The two girls in front seem innocent enough. But it’s the two girls on top of the phone booth that make the picture feel slightly provocative. At least that was my initial impression. So since my English students are working with visual responses this semester, I decided to show it to them for their reactions to see if they jived with my own. Most didn’t venture to offer a verbal response in front of their classmates, but it seemed clear that the picture did make a few of them feel uncom...

People like to compare themselves to others. That’s no big surprise, but are we more likely to make “upward” or “downward” comparisons? That is, are we more likely to compare ourselves to people that are more successful or less successful than ourselves, that are happier or sadder than ourselves, better or worse off than ourselves? Perhaps it is not an “either/or” question at all, but if not, then it is worth pondering why we use “upward” comparisons in some cases and “downward” comparisons in others. What, in other words, are the functions for each sort of comparison? After all these years, I still enjoy watching the first few audition shows of American Idol. I’m not so much interested in who will receive golden tickets as I am in who is willing to humiliate themselves in front of millions of viewers. Even more impressive, for some reason, are the auditioners who don’t recognize just how bad they actually are. They genuinely believe they have talent, and nothing the judges sa...

It hadn’t rained in days, and the grass was dying. Some of our neighbors started to water their lawns, but the effort was futile. Meanwhile, the weeds survived. Weeds always survive. We stopped using the lawn service a couple of years ago, and the first year off the chemicals, the grass managed to look pretty good. The second year, however, the weeds took over. This year it got so bad that I almost gave in. Instead of going back to the lawn service, though, I decided to spray the weeds myself. I sprayed them in May, and it looked like they died. By the end of July, they were back in full force. And they brought some of their friends. Weeds always bring reinforcements. And at that point, I decided that I don’t mind weeds. I would live with them in peace. Who decided that a lawn should be 100% uniform grass anyway? For my daughter, weeds are treasures. She picks them and finds beauty in them. Each weed is an offering to mommy. Each weed, in her eyes, is a way to make mommy...

  After the 1979 season, the Houston Astros signed pitcher Nolan Ryan to a 4-year, $4.5 million dollar contract.  This made Ryan the first major American sports star to earn a million dollars a year (not including endorsements).  Fast-forward to 2011. The Philadelphia Eagles signed quarterback Michael Vick to a 6-year, $100 million dollar contract. Actually, Michael Vick is the only player to sign two contracts worth over $100 million dollars, as his 1994 contract with the Atlanta Falcons was a 10-year, $130 million dollar deal.  While $100 million might sound like a lot, keep in mind that this averages out to just $16.7 million, annually. So, not surprisingly, Vick isn’t the highest paid athlete in the NFL. The highest paid quarterback, for example, is the Indianapolis Colts’ Peyton Manning, who earns $23 million a year. Major League Baseball pays its top stars the best, and seventeen of the top 30 best-paid athletes play baseball; by way of comparison, onl...

Please visit http://www.offthemark.com -- it's cool The dad of one of my best friends likes to play golf. As long as I have known him, he has worn Polo shirts, driven a nice car, and held true to his Republican and Presbyterian ideals. He has two sons, including my friend, both of whom have gone never against family tradition. As adults, both maintain the same upper-middle class lifestyle, and both now live on golf courses. Their political and religious beliefs remain pretty much in line with those they “inherited” from their father. Rebels and “degenerates” and “black sheep” get all of the attention, but my suspicion is that most children are heavily influenced by those that raise them. They, in fact, in ways conscious and unconscious, become reflections of their in-home models. Most children embed the behaviors, attitudes, and flaws of their parents or guardians, whether they are biologically related or not. That’s my theory. And at the same time, forces outside of the...

Early in 2011, WWE held a press conference in Mexico City to announce the signing of one of Mexico’s most popular professional wrestlers, Mistico. When WWE signs wrestling talent, it’s not unusual for that talent to be “rebranded,” and at the press conference, it was announced that Mistico would perform under the name Sin Cara. The Lucha Libre style is much different from the American style, and apparently Mistico never adapted to expectations of WWE. The Internet Wrestling Community commented weekly on how many in-ring moves Mistico “botched,” as well as when WWE would reshoot entire matches due to Mistico’s mistakes. Over the summer, Mistico was suspended for 30 days for failing WWE’s talent wellness policy. Mistico immediately went public to explain that his WWE-sanctioned doctors had given him a legal substance, and it was this substance that had registered on the test.  The suspension itself was never acknowledged formally, and WWE explained Sin Cara’s absence as due to i...

In John Updike’s classic short story “A&P,” Queenie never asks to be judged. Not by the manager, and not by Sammy, the boy that defends her. Even Sammy’s defense is based on a form of prejudice, as he assumes her to be something that he has no way of verifying one way or the other. If it’s been a while since you’ve read the story, the basic premise is this: Queenie and her friends are walking around a grocery store in their bikinis. None of the customers seem to notice, and only Sammy and the Manager “confront” the situation head on. Another character, the butcher behind the meat counter, leers at the girls, but in no way does he seem offended that these young girls have entered the store in “inappropriate attire.” The Manager makes the point to the girls that he expects them to dress “decently” when they shop at his store. Queenie picks up on the term when she responds: “We are decent.” Again, there’s no indication that these girls are attempting to be provocative. There’s al...

What has happened to the average thirty minute sit-com? I don’t mean quality. I think the quality of the best sit-coms on TV today is every bit as good, if not better, than any series from the past. What I’m referring to is the run-time allotted for the actual show. I did a little investigative work just to affirm my theory, and here’s what I discovered. Leave It to Beaver (1957-1963) had an average run-time of 25 minutes (run-times include opening and closing credits; M*A*S*H (1972-1983), 24-25 minutes;  Cheers (1982-1993), 24 minutes; Frasier (1993-2004), 24 minutes; Scrubs (2001-2010), 21-25 minutes;  Big Bang Theory (2007-current), 21 minutes. Granted, this is a rather informal survey, but my thesis is: sit-coms are getting shorter, and this is a rather recent development. The standard sit-com length appears to have remained between 24-25 minutes for 40 years. Only in the past decade has the content time dropped, but the loss of an extra minute (or five) is quite no...

People around the world still generally view Mother Teresa favorably, but Christopher Hitchens and others have tried to take her down a notch or two. Hitchens, a noted atheist, believes that “Religion poisons everything,” and so it’s clear that he sees the “hero worship” of Mother Teresa as dangerous. Pointing out her flaws, exposing her “hypocrisy,” stripping away her sainthood, is essential as it allows people the opportunity to be truly enlightened. To blindly venerate Mother Teresa, then, is to relegate the power of reason to the garbage can. According to Hitchens, “To ‘choose’ dogma and faith over doubt and experiment is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.” We shouldn’t fear doubt; we should embrace it. We shouldn’t blindly accept the purity of the messenger, no matter how much we like the “purified” message. In fact, we should be willing to question just how pure the message is, too. Mother Teresa performed a lot of good with her life, ...