"You should see a podiatrist about those... amphibrachic feet!!!" Or: "N WAV was yesterday, dude!"

"Matt Bauman!" Several people I know (girls mostly, it seems) refer to me by both my first and last name. Is this because Matt is such a common name and they need to differentiate me from other Matts they may know? Is "Matt Bauman" an especially snappy phrase? To my mind it doesn't really roll off the tongue, but I've been hearing it for like 21 years, so maybe I'm biased.
When I was in 7th grade, my hero was Charlie Brown. I was awkward and unpopular, couldn't get the girl to save my life, but a book of Peanuts comic strips reassured me that somebody else out there felt my pain. I bring this up because he too, that loser of baseball games, misser of footballs, ruiner of Christmas plays, was referred to by both his Sur- and Christian name. Perhaps - as the title of my post suggests - it has to do with prosody. Both "Charlie Brown" and "Matt Bauman" constitute a trisyllabic foot. "Charlie Brown" is an anapest (short short long). "Matt Bauman" is an amphibrach (short long short) aka: the foot used in limericks. Is there something about the unstressed first syllable that makes people want to tack a couple more on there just in case? Something else interesting: contained within the aforementioned set, Girls Who Call Me "Matt Bauman" is the subset "Girls Who Don't Want to Date Me". It seems like the ladies with whom I have established a platonic relationship are most inclined to use my full name, though that hypothesis is based on the most casual of observations and may well be bunk. I will further investigate this phenomenon and hopefully come to a greater understanding of the Conditioning Effects of Meter in Nickname Selection.

"The first time I heard 'Peggy Sue' I was twelve years old..."

Since I lost my faithful laptop a few weeks ago, my iTunes library has consisted mostly of CDs of my dad's that I like and have copied onto my computer. Among these is Simon & Garfunkel's 1966 classic Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme. The closing track of which, "7 O'Clock News/Silent Night", I find strangely compelling.
Normally I am against voice-overs/ spoken word tracks in pop-music (cf. Rowan "Mr. Bean" Atkinson's excerpt from "The Song of Solomon" in the shitty Cold-Play-esque number played over the closing credits of Keeping Mum or Belle & Sebastian's "I Dreamt I Had to Go to Mars), but I make an exception for this one. It's not the "arty" juxtaposition of the news anchor's objective, almost cynical delivery of the day's tumultuous events against the innocent serenity of the Nativity, but the way the song preserves the Zeitgeist on so many levels (though allmusic.com somewhat rashly dismisses this effect for "dating" the album). For starters, the fact that something like this could be considered (by industry bigshots!) innovative enough not to be a throwaway B-Side.
This particular 7 O'Clock News comes from August 3, 1966 (I assume this is the date, since that's when Lenny Bruce died) and it preserves for us a view of the 60's from someone who doesn't know if it's going to all be ok, even though the original master has probably long been lost to "deep-storage". I am told the kids call these "primary sources".
The first real jolt comes in the very beginning of the song, just after the anchorman fades-in enough to be audible over Simon's sparse acoustic guitar arrangement. What kind of country is this where an equal-opportunity housing bill can't even get past the House Judiciary Committee? Did this actually happen in America? Living in a time where black people are no longer openly fire-hosed for trying to have a sandwich with white folks, the idea that such a bill would have "no chance from the start", moreover that "everyone in Congress knew it" quite simply boggles my mind. What really got me started on this post, though, was the phrase "former Vice-President Richard Nixon". Don't you guys know! Watergate? China? The Madman Theory! Of course they don't know. Of course they don't. Neither do they know that Martin Luther King Jr. will be shot dead almost exactly 19 months after this newscaster informs us of King's plans to protest housing discrimination in Chicago, even in the face of the Illinois National Guard. In the end of course, the song turns my thoughts to the future. We don't know if it's going to be ok. What will people in 2046 (assuming there is one) find unconscionable when they come across the 2006 news? Of course the Iraq - Vietnam parallel can be drawn, but in forty years will the United States be stuck in an unwinnable war against Zimbabwe? Will we celebrate Barney Frank Day after he's gunned down fighting for gay rights? And will we be too jaded to listen when Paul Simon's Head In A Jar tries to tell us about it?

CALLING THINGS GAY!

*Today the car I got 2 months ago started making an insufferable clunking noise (it's definitely a high, back vowel), rendering it temporarily undriveable. Thankfully, the dual-zone climate control still works.

*I hear where you're coming from, John Kerry, but can we please talk about it later?

*My new laptop is not as well equipped for recording as I thought.

*Apparently, if your band is a four-piece, drums/ guitar /bass /hot, indie female lead-singer, Gibson wants you to have a Thunderbird bass.

*The Food Network is opposed to marshmallows on sweet potato pie/casserole; forget that noise!

An overseas blog you can rely on!

"An overseas blog? How original," you say. "Also, you are not overseas. What gives?" Well, mostly I just wanted to snap up this catchy url, before anyone else got to it. I am hoping for a buyout offer from Leno. But until then, dear readers, this will be the place to keep yourselves abreast of each and every morsel and droplet of personal intrigue, which I deign to let pass from my fingers to your monitor. Hopefully, by the time I actually do leave for Germany on February 28th, I will have enough practice with these newfangled inter-nets that you will actually read this out of rapt anticipation rather than boredom or sense of obligation.