Babies, Worms, and Other People

It is with some small guilt that I post to an almost-abandoned blog. BikeSnobNYC missed merely a week for the birth of his child, so I can't legitimately use the birth of Batboy as an excuse, since the blessed event eventuated itself blessedly more than two months ago and almost four months since the previous last substantive post (gifts on his natal anniversary will be accepted in his Cayman bank account any time during the temporal window thus described, though he shares a birthday with Theobald Böhm
[a childhood hero of mine]).

Given the fact that even BSNYC's doing it, I'm tempted to suggest that the childbearing scene is now full, and babies are no longer hip. My opinions on popular culture, however, are about as widely interesting as in-depth discussions of the nature of historiography in Hellenistic Judaism.

Anyhow, the big surprise of duogeny is the interaction between Bat Jr. (now 4 and a half, by her reckoning) and Batboy. The other day Bat Jr. was talking about how a friend of hers was showing off a worm he'd found. "I held it!" she said proudly "It was wiggly." "Much like Batboy," I thought.

And as so often, when I think ridiculous things, my second thought is how ridiculous they're not: worms and babies are both wild animals; they don't do--because they haven't yet learned--the range of social behavior that we expect from others. And yeah, a lot of funny things that kids do are funny because they don't yet know about social norms ("Mommy, mommy, I lit a candle in the bathroom because I pooped and…"--"Sweetie, you really just have to say, 'I lit a candle in the bathroom,' Mommy will know why."), what makes worms and babies interesting is that they do socially unexpected things while you're holding them in your hands.

It's really a strangely intimate thing: this ability to surprise someone with physical contact. Most of our physical interactions are highly socially structured, even ritualized: shaking hands, hugging, high fives. Even our pets get trained to certain types of contact (or at least we get used to their untrained behavior). But babies and worms wiggle on.

April Fool's!

I'm making a blog post today.

Oh, THAT'S where my keys were!

Seen upon arrival--oh, a mile and a half or so after unlocking the
bike and trailer.

Happy New Year!

The Dingbat is alive, and perhaps posting more this year. Several other 2010 resolutions may outweigh the "post daily to the blog" commitment.

Incongruity

Looking for a bibliographic reference recently, I searched for "Saint Paul Jewish tax" in a popular search engine. And wound up with a bunch of non-profits based in St. Paul, Minnesota.

"The Jewish Community Council of Greater Saint Paul" has a very odd ring to it, doesn't it? (Two odd rings if you listen to the juxtaposition of "greater" and "Paul")

How do you do this again?

R. Levi son of Rabbi says: A pure menorah came down from heaven. For the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses, "And you will make a menorah of pure gold" (Ex 25:31).
Moses said to Him, "How shall we make it?"
He said to him, "Of beaten work [shall the menorah be made]" (ibid.)
Nevertheless, Moses still found difficulty with it, and when he came down he forgot its construction.
He went up and said, "Master of the Univers, I have forgotten how to make it!"
The Holy One, blessed be He, showed Moses again, but he still had difficulty.
He [God] said to him, "Look and make it," and finally He took a coin of gold and showed him its construction.
Still he [Moses] found its construction difficult.
So He said to him, "See and make it" (Ex 25:40) and finally He took a menorah of fire and showed him its construction.

Yet in spite of all this, it still caused Moses difficulty.
Said the Holy One, blessed be He, to him, "Go to Bezalel, and he will make it."
He went down to Bezalel, and the latter immediately constructed it.

Midrash Tanhuma, be-Ha'alotkha 6, quote in Steven Fine, Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World, p. 101

Style

I recently came across a CD of the soundtrack to That Thing You Do!, a movie I didn't see when it came out in 1996 or now. I vaguely recall having seen previews for it, and thinking, "oh, another cute Tom Hanks movie." (Is it at all interesting that looking at the release date, it came out the weekend before I met Dr. Fledermaus? Two weeks later and it could have been our first date!)

The premise of the movie is that it's about a (fictional) US rock band in 1964--the rise and fall of a one-hit wonder. And, of course, there's a bunch of music--the title track, of course, is the one hit.

Now, this is where it gets interesting: By vague recollection (again), I think that the music, when it was made, wasn't a bad facsimile of pre-British-Invasion pop, but now, my God! it is straight out of 1995 and couldn't possibly have been made any other time. Not that it's bad, it's just 1995 pop through and through, with a bit of a nod to the early sixties.

Stylistic dating. It works. (Whoa, wait, that sounds like an internet dating service ad.)