They Could Be Voice-Cousins

I watched C-SPAN on Friday night; a live Senate broadcast. Last time I tuned in I came to appreciate how very much John Boehner sounds like Tom Hanks. Like, a lot. This time: more discoveries. First, Al Franken can play boring. Also, Ben Nelson is a very ugly man. I don't know that this is widely appreciated, and I don't want to be mean, but that's an unfortunate appearance. However, the phenomenon I am most interested in is that Dick Durbin sounds like Marty Funkhouser (Bob Einstein) of Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's not pitch perfect, but I really think they could be voice-cousins. I think you hear it best if Durbin is speaking with some passion, so listen to this clip (tune in at twenty-seven seconds) to hear the resemblance to good old Marty. One of my regular pastimes during t.v. or movie watching is to come up with three-person composites for who people look like. I think C-SPAN has turned me on to a new kick. I gladly call on you all to submit your congressional (and other unintentional) sound-alikes.

However, the biggest question is what to call these coincidences. We have doppelganger, double, and look-alike for visual resemblances. What, however, do we do about sound? That is, what do you call someone who sounds like somebody else? Or, as in the Durbin-Funkhouser example, the somewhat-alike occurence? Has this been investigated? Has the word-hunting back page of The Atlantic been alerted to this need? Is the United Nations awere? And if we find the right word, would it be really important or not important? Is this neologism ready to be the unfriend of 2010? I say Impressionist/Impersonation is out of the question because that involves an effort that is totally absent from look-alikes. Similarly mimic and all words that tend toward self-awareness on the part of the double. If my internet translating skills are sharp, the German equivalent would be doppelgesunder - double-sounder. Could that catch on? I kind of wish it would; Imagine walking through a mall and actually thinking, "Whoa, that lady is totally Mrs. G's doppelgesunder." This foray into German also raises the question of whether other cultures have already put this issue to bed. And, what if the plain term sound-alike is all we need. My fear then is that our culture doesn't care nearly as much about sounds as we do about appearances. And so it wouldn't matter one way or another what we call it, because voices are second bananas to faces. What, I ask, are we to make of voice-cousins?

Read more!

Books in Brief

As insanely busy as ever, so in lieu of a reflective meditation, here is a snapshot of books I'd love to read right now. I am understandably on a big history kick these days, as I have been teaching global history for the past four months now. Thoughts on the books? The only one I've even started to read is Decade of Nightmares, which I feel confident recommending as political junkie crack. Jenkins saturates every page with a cultural gestalt of seventies and eighties America. A total rush. I listened to a Talks@Google address by David Plouffe that piqued my interest. My interest in Kagan's book is also audio-related. He has a Greek History course from Yale (2006, I think) that I loved. The Vertigo Years is a book I've had my eye on for a while now; I think I liked the New Yorker "In Brief" write-up. I'm hopeful that Lears' book has something new to say about America's endless reinvention narrative. I only found out about The Victorian Internet a couple of days ago--an Amazon recommendation, I think. I just taught the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and feel that Friedman can deliver a page-turner on this. If 1776 is good, I'd love to start reading more McCullough; this book is also a hedge against having to read Gordon Wood's six-hundred some-odd page tome on the revolution. In teaching the Middle East to my ninth-graders these past eight weeks I also became really interested in the Ottoman Empire for the first time; Fromkin got several references in an "intro-to" style book about the region, so I hope it's a good starting point. Pathfinders: this is a book I saw on an uber-history-buff friend's Amazon Wish List; if he's interested, I'm interested. Bergen: I just heard him on NPR's Fresh Air--or was it some other talk show?--and I was impressed. As for Dostoyevsky, do you ever need a reason? I guess I single out "Demons" because I've yet to read any of these new translations, and I'd love to see how they read. If I remember, our bloggin friend III is a big fan.
Until next time, dear readers.

The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900-1914 (Phillip Blom)
From Beirut to Jerusalem (Thomas Friedman)
Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920 (Jackson Lears)
The Victorian Internet (Thomas Standage)
The Audacity to Win (David Plouffe)
1776 (David McCullough)
Decade of Nightmares (Philip Jenkins)
Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (Donald Kagan)
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (David Fromkin)
Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration (Felipe Fernandez-Armesto)
The Creation of the American Republic (Gordon Wood)
Demons (Fyodor Dostoyesvsky - Pevear/Volokhonsky translation)
The Osama bin Laden I Know (Peter Bergen)
1776 - (David McCullough)
Read more!

For All You Visual Learners Out There

By way of Talking Points Memo: Take a look at this sweet--supposedly DOD-commissioned--graphic organizer on the path to victory in Afghanistan. Not exactly "Mission Accomplished" but I think the basic take-away is still there. I'll find a way to work this into my class on the Post-9/11 Middle East; I'll post student reactions when we get to that lesson.

Read more!

Riding the Tiger

I had fun listening to this bit of Tiger Woods joke analysis from NPR on my drive home tonight. It's a light meditation on how jokes spread after a scandal--especially in the age of Twitter--with special attention to "public domain" humor (i.e. amateur jokes). I know it's a little teacherly of me to say this, but I thought I'd like to hold on this for class use some day. Given the shelf life of topical humor, though, I better try to work it into my Middle East unit for maximum effect. Anyone got any good Israeli-Palestinian conflict jokes?
Read more!

Naming Names

In a semester of busy days, this last week has been even more consistently hectic than usual. I've had to resort to a sliding scale of little sleep. Sunday I slept from two to five in the morning, Monday midnight to four, Tuesday ten to two, and last night eight to three. Tonight...I guess it's about bedtime now as it nears six, but I'll stick it out a little longer. Anyhow, I just wanted to check in with Gimme the Mic for a sec to relate two brief matters about names.

For this anecdote to work I will have to ask you to indulge my conceit of anonymity on this blog; that is, you must that my last name is Jimenez, though it is not. Especially as a group of my seventh period girls recently told me they were Googling me, it's best to keep up the facade (though, admittedly, they said that not knowing my first name made the search difficult). I ask you to do this because I have gone through a lifetime of having my name mispronounced with some regularity. Not a lot, but it happens; people can't wrap their tongues around that opening J. I expected this would happen often during this semester of meeting so many new people. Yet, I think I may have had only one instance of a student getting my name wrong. Over and over again it's just right. There are only a handful of Hispanic students I am aware of at the small school, so it's not familiarity, I don't think. Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised by this, but I've been impressed with the consistency on this point. Should this hold less interest for me? It was on my mind today because one of the teachers I know a little bit seems to have forgotten my name. And speaking of Googling, he now calls me Mr. Rivera (f.y.i., another pseudonym), which surprised me because that's M's last name, and so is one of the more common things I get called now when I take care of some business for her. I'll keep my ear out for any other signs that I'm being cyber-stalked.

My other bit of name news is that the teacher for whom I student teach recently told me that her husband is a state trooper. It just so happens that she has an unusual name (though I haven't heard any students making the obvious prophylactic-themed jokes). As I was driving home, I had a flashback of when I was recently pulled over on the highway because my window tint was too dark. I am like 40% sure that it was her husband who pulled me over.

Read more!