Saturday, October 25, 2008

"What Fucking Language Is This?"

That is the title of an email I received from Don and Kim M. in reference to the latest Plaschke cut to drop.

Here are the first four lines -- like the 30 free seconds you get from iTunes. These are unedited:

On Brett Favre Pass, a legacy catches hell.

Barely makes sense.

It is a dead end street, but a sports bar there is a thoroughfare of debate.

Does not really make sense.

What's he doing? Where was he doing it? Who called whom? Why Brett why?

Does not in any way make sense. Sub-Seussian nonsense.

On Brett Favre Pass, some folks are wishing he had thrown his last.

No.

Bill? The English Language is on line 1. It wants to know why you hate it so much.

[Edit: I woke up this morning to several hundred million emails defending Plaschke, and insinuating that what I failed to understand is that Brett Favre Pass is an actual street in Green Bay. I knew that. Even if I hadn't known that, I could have determined it from context. It's capitalized, for God's sake.

What I object to are clauses like, "...a legacy catches hell." Which: ??? And "...a sports bar there is a thoroughfare of debate." What the fuck is a "thoroughfare of debate?" A thoroughfare is a road, or highway, as I understand it. A highway of debate? That makes zero sense. What he means is "a locus of debate" or "an epicenter of debate" or something. But that wouldn't match up faux-poetically with the fact that Brett Favre Pass is a dead-end street, so he went with "thoroughfare," which is nonsense.

As for the last two lines, I object to: the goofball poetry, the overblown musing, the whimsical Dr. Seuss rhythms, and the unpleasantly haughty linguistic transmogrification of "Pass" into "pass."

The only person in America, apparently, who assumed I knew that Brett Favre Pass was the name of a street and had something else to comment on was John M., who wrote:

I...wish you would have included this sentence, which is not only vintage Plaschke, but also would have given you an excuse to use the food metaphors tag:

"Whatever, it has been the equivalent of a warm farewell followed by the guy changing his mind, barging back through the front door for one last piece of pie, spilling that pie on his lap, dropping messily asleep on your couch."

For you, John M., the world.]

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