MIZZOU-RAH!

The reason this Missouri University mascot looks like a deer in the headlights is that even he can't believe we're #1 in the nation. At the moment. Possibly until tonight. Tonight we play Oklahoma for the Big 12 Championship. If we beat that team that already beat us once this season we'll go to the national championship bowl game! That sounds unbelievable to you? It sounds unbelievable to us, too.

As a NYT columnist wrote this week:

Imagine Albania playing for the World Cup title in soccer, or an amateur golfer approaching the final hole with the United States Open at stake. Think of Adam Sandler as a nominee for best actor at the Academy Awards. . .Over the past four decades, Missouri football has sent reporters thumbing through their thesauruses to find new ways to describe the Tigers’ football futility.

We're not even insulted. We understand. We're in shock, too.

Please root for the undertiger tonight!! We're such undertigers that a friend of mine has changed her cheer to, "Go, Tiggers!"

Go, Tiggers!

Yo? No.

Recently, I saw a movie that was set in the 60's, and a couple of things grated on me.

One was that a character said to another, "T'sup?" Nope. That's a recent locution. You wouldn't have heard it in Harlem, Haight-Ashbury, or Kansas City.

The other telling, and wrong, detail was the way in which a character pronounced, "cool." Oh, we said "cool," back then, but it was pronounced very differently from how it is said now. Then, it was just a straightforward, "cool," in the way you'd say, "We have cool weather." Cool car. Cool girl. Cool party. But there was no special inflection, there were no extra syllables, just. . .cool. It wasn't used as a single word either, but only in a complete sentence. "He's so cool!" "What a cool car!" I think its meaning was a little different then, too. It was all about popularity and/or attitude, not so much about voicing approval or agreement. ("Want to go get drunk and throw up?" "Sure. Cool.") The preppy (also not used then) quarterback of your high school team might be cool, but so was James Dean. (They were also "dreamy.") But nothing was "coo-uhl," or all the other inventive ways the word is pronounced now. It's cool the way it's used now. I like it. But it's different from how it was used back in the day (which is also a phrase you would never have heard in the 60's). There was no such thing as the word "uncool," either. Neither was there a "chill," except in the air, or a chill-out.

It's tough to get every detail right when you're doing a period piece, whether in a novel or a film. I don't like to watch Vietnam era movies anymore because we're far enough away from it that the portrayals tend to be just off, or way off. Simply playing "White Rabbit," wearing tie-dye, and saying groovy a lot doesn't do it. (There were several different ways to say groovy, btw, much as there are for "cool" now.) It's the same with the Fifties. Sometimes I can barely recognize the time they think they're depicting. Makes you wonder about movies about the French Revolution, doesn't it?

You probably think I'm leading up to some point with this, don't you? Ha! I guess my only point is a plea. . .if you're writing about a time when you weren't here, and there are still people around who were, check it out with them. They can tell a cool from a coo-ul, and a what's happenin' from a T'sup? and a Brother from a bro. Some of you may remember that when I was writing Virgin I asked on the Booman Tribune blog if anybody remembered if boys called girls "hot chicks" back in the eighties. Thanks to your input, I decided to say it another way. Things like that can make a difference in leading the reader to trust everything else you tell them.

And thass a fact (which was also not said back then in the same way that it's used now).

Pull up a chair, 2

Family Man requested recliners for the Corner Coffee Shop, so I went shopping. What do you think?

Pull up a chair

Dream house?

Seeing Beth's photo of farfetched's pretty home the other day made me wonder, do any of you live in your dream house? If not, do you have a dream house in your fantasies? I never used to have one, but lately, I know exactly what mine looks like. If I could draw, I'd show you, but basically. . .

Drive up a gravel drive until you see the small wooden house with flowers in front of it.

Get out of your car and walk up about five wooden steps to a wide front porch and notice the friendly rocking chairs, enough for several friends to sit there all at one time.

Come on in the front door, and step inside to the living room.

If you stand there and look forward, you'll see the breakfast counter and past that the very small kitchen. If you walk to the right past the kitchen, you'll pass a booth big enough for four people--cause I love kitchens with booths. If you walk to the left past the kitchen, you'll pass the small laundry room.

Behind the kitchen is the bedroom and bath.

Out the sliding glass doors on the other side of the bedroom is the wide deck.

Beyond that is a very small yard, the detached garage, and a lot of trees.

That's it. Basically two rooms, plus kitchen, plus front porch, garage, and back deck. There's no guest room, but the couches in the living room fold out into beds, and you're welcome to stay if you don't mind sharing the bath.

What does yours look like?

Happy Birthday, Farfetched!

Have you ever. . .?

Did you ever will yourself to get well, and you got well? Or will yourself to do anything that was totally mind over matter?

I'm thinking of that, because on Sunday I had the privilege of sitting in the company of a Tibetan lama who has healed himself of injuries and ailments. (His story is here.) We shouldn't feel bad if we can't do what he has done, however. He meditates about ten hours a day and received healing practices from the Dalai Lama, so he was mended in a first-class Tibetan ER, you might say.

Personally, I have no trouble believing these things happen, because I've experienced minor examples in my own life. The first was in my early twenties soon after I began living on my own, away from my parents' home. One day I began to get that feeling you get when coming down with the flu. You know that feeling? Achy, feverish, etc. I caught myself thinking, at a barely perceptible conscious level, "Oh, good, now my mom will take care of me and bring me crackers and chicken soup." The moment I caught that fleeting wish, I thought, "Wait a minute! I'm not at home. My mom won't be here to take care of me!"

I got well so fast you'd have thought somebody had waved a magic wand.

It was pretty funny, and pretty darned instructive.

How 'bout you? Ever heal yourself? Ever see somebody else do that? Do you believe it can happen?