King of the Lanes
I’ve got good news and bad news, folks.
The bad news first: I’ve decided to become more political.
But don’t worry—my decision to become more political has nothing to do with politics. In fact, I only said that to catch your attention, and you fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Boy, I bet you’re angry with me now. I just know you’re so furious that you’re fuming foam from the folds of your facial features while frowning foppishly with flapping fandibles [Note to self: find another f-word to go at the end of the sentence. “Fandibles” is just “mandibles” with an f at the beginning, you hack. Maybe the readers won’t notice]. Or maybe you’re not and you’re just wishing I’d stop with the ridiculous alliterative sentences and get to whatever the hell I’m supposed to be talking about.
Okay, fair enough—here’s the good news: this post is going to be about the enormous, bloated, complex mass known as the English language. Doesn’t that sound enjoyable? No? Well, here’s a fun fact: English has four trillion words, more than all the atoms in the observable universe. Really? No. But those two false, freakish, fraternal, friendly, forward facts—okay, I’ll stop—demonstrate one of the English language’s greatest powers: you can use it to lie. Hmmm. Maybe now we’re getting somewhere.
What, exactly, is the goal of language? For most people, English is pretty helpful in forming grocery lists, texting friends, reading recipes, and conducting other basic elements of being alive. For me, it’s useful to churn out these posts so I can get that sweet sponsor revenue on my website [Note to self: make sure to mention that today’s post is brought to the reader by Mountain Dew Baja Blast SuperCharge Xtreme]. For Doctor Gonzo, language is a good tool to avoid paying his taxes because of the loopholes in the criminal code. “It’s all about percentages,” he explained to me one night in his study, while I cowered in fear beneath his desk. “I make sure my income is split into so many different divisions the government gets too confused to charge me anything.” I nodded, avoiding the bear traps he keeps under the rug.
I’d also argue—and this, dear reader, is the thesis of this post, so if you’ve been falling asleep, wake up and pay attention—that the English language, on some fundamental level, is a vehicle to linguistic beauty. Sure, 99% of the time, it is used in a purely functional way—calling your mom to tell her you dropped a watermelon in Super Saver again, forging hate mail in your worst enemy’s handwriting, arguing with strangers online about the relative merits of Poland’s calvary in World War II—we’re all so used to those kinds of things that we forget the basic building block of language at all. But that remaining 1% holds some pretty wonderful stuff.
Me when I see a particularly gorgeous sentence. Go English, baby.
Don’t believe me? Let me offer a few examples to prove the hidden glamor of words.
1. K. Evelyn Dean and I were enjoying a fine evening in a fine establishment—Madsen’s Bowling Alley and Billiards Hall—a few weeks ago, when a line from a film I had seen recently came to my overworked brain. “King of the lanes,” I told her, jumping from my chair and almost spilling my Budweiser on my extremely fashionable bowling shoes. “What?” she asked, bowling her fifteenth strike in a row. “‘King of the lanes!’ Don’t you remember? From Stranger Than Fiction.” She sighed and hit a 7-10 split blindfolded.
For those who are as confused as she was, Stranger Than Fiction is the 2006 Will Ferrell movie where he plays a guy who’s a character in a book being written by another character, and the writer of his life wants to kill him. If it sounds convoluted, it is, particularly since I may or may not have seen it too late at night to be fully awake for it [Note to self: remember to add the disclaimer that The Gonzo Papers does not condone, endorse, or otherwise purport to represent the effects perpetrated by any number of mind-altering substances, including but not limited to caffeine, alcohol, opium, etc. [Note to self: finish this list later]]. Anyways, what jolted me into awareness was when Dustin Hoffman’s character—a literature professor trying to help Will Ferrell determine what kind of story he is in—asks Will Ferrell if he is king of anything. Ferrell responds, “What?” Hoffman says, “King of anything. King of some imaginary fantasyland. King of the lanes at your local bowling alley. Anything.” Ferrell responds, incredulously, “King of the lanes?” He then says, though I could be misremembering this, “All zebras are horses, but not all horses are zebras.”
That phrase—king of the lanes—struck something in me, like the sensation Dr. Gonzo described after getting struck by lightning for a world-record-tying eighth time. “It was like getting struck by lightning for a world-record-tying eighth time,” he told reporters. And that’s how I felt. King of the lanes. Say it out loud to yourself. Seriously, do it, and pause between each word. Four perfect syllables. King. Of. The. Lanes. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. The construction of the phrase is so solid it’s like it has roots in something older than language itself. There’s a rhythm, a flow, a strength to it that slapped me in the face and made me pay closer attention to the rest of the movie. Spoiler: Will Ferrell dies. Really? Maybe.
Action shot of me, the Fool of the Lanes, bowling a strike. Yes, it’s really me, and yes, it’s really going to be a strike. Would I ever lie to you?
2. About a month ago I was in dire need of some new music to listen to—a man can only listen to so many hours of “Top Summer Jamz 2013” on repeat before his brain melts out his ears—so on something of a whim I listened to Bruce Hornsby’s 1994 album Hot House. [Note to self: explain, briefly, that in your review of the album for New York Magazine you characterized the record as a jazz-rock post-irony cyber core explosionova experimental reggaeton fusion.] The whole thing had me grooving and then suddenly, on the seventh track, “Country Doctor” (I was doing the dishes, headphones in), the first line stopped me so suddenly I broke three plates and a shot glass. Drum intro → piano riff → introduction of bass line → key change → Bruce breaks in on the and of four with “Deep down in the south county…”
Boom. It was like a lyrical bomb. Deep. Down. In. The. South. County. Go listen to the song right now. That line hits so rhythmically clean it may as well be labeled CDC-approved. And think of how many ideas are contained in it! Six words into the song and you’re already asking a dozen questions. What’s the south county? South of what? Deep in it? Does that imply deep as in depth or deep as in the heart of something? Why do I sense a mystery? Is someone going to die? Is the government putting subliminal messages on the back of Frosted Mini Wheat boxes? (This one I can answer: absolutely.) “Deep down”? Down as in below or down as submerged? Who lives there? Why? For crying out loud, what comes next?
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is very good news indeed. Six words, seven syllables, a million questions, and the English language in all it’s glory. [Note to self: rewrite this later. You must have been drunk, and you even used the wrong “its.” I can’t believe you call yourself a writer.]
Maybe all this sounds like nonsense to you (or you fell asleep three paragraphs ago after I said that shit about zebras). Fair enough, but I challenge you to look for the beauty in words and phrases and sentences that might be hidden just beneath the surface. How about another phrase I came across last week in, of all places, my literary theory textbook: “vote with your feet.” Four insane syllables. Or one of my favorite quotes, which famed American physicist Richard Feynman uttered in 1967: “Nobody understands quantum theory.” Ten perfect syllables—iambic pentameter to talk about the secrets of the atom. Or even Joseph Heller’s rather remarkable 1974 claim that “Everyone everywhere seems to be coming to an end.” Words, man. Just ask Dr. Gonzo. “Language isn’t everything,” he said in a private audience with then-president Bill Clinton—“It’s the only thing.”
For perhaps six years now I’ve kept a running list of quotes in the notes app on my phone, which I add to quite frequently—lines from books I’m reading, noteworthy things I overhear, etc.—and I’d like to humbly suggest you try the same. It’s more fun than you think, and when you hear the right string of words it really can—to me, at least—feel like a bolt of lightning. [Note to self: still debating whether to include the fact that one can experience the same sensation by running through lawn sprinklers listening to INXS’s “What You Need” on full blast. Make final decision on this soon.] I won’t include them all—my list has grown over the past half-decade to include more than a hundred quotes from a vast number of sources—but the best part about English (and this is reflected in my list’s wide array of subject matter) is that every possible idea can be expressed, and often in a way that’s interesting enough to make it worth remembering.
I don’t know. Syllables, words, sentences—are they the building blocks of life or just black lines on white paper? I’ve argued the former, but I suppose you can decide for yourself. In any case, few things have made me laugh harder or think more deeply than single English sentences I’ve read somewhere, and we here at the Gonzo Papers truly believe words can change the world. Take it from one of the greatest wordsmiths of them all, Thomas Pynchon, who in 1997 said this: “Time...is the money of Science.”
What does that have to do with my argument? No idea. I just think it sounds cool. And that’s good enough for me.
[Note to self: remember to delete all the “notes to self” before publication.]
