kiss kiss, bang bang

This morning I woke up thinking about three things -- or rather, three people:
Shakespeare, Nixon, and a friend I knew in college.

In my June 9th blog post I mentioned the time I was in an armed robbery in Boston -- (I've only been in one of those in my whole life -- that's plenty, thank you - !) -- and along with that I remembered a phone conversation I had that same day, with my friend L whom I'd known since the first day, freshman year, in the "dorm." When I described the guy with the gun going, "Where-za percodan, man, where-za percodan??!" L responded, in a tone both blasé and surprised, "They robbed a store for percodan?"

She was a person who actually took drugs, sometimes, so she had another slant on the incident. Apparently unimpressed with the recreational possibilities of Percodan....

One of the policemen who arrived after the incident was over and took the report said there had been raids and confiscations of -- real drugs -- the illegal ones, whatever, so there was a "shortage on the street" and that was probably the reason behind a rash of drug store robberies.

I was thinking about Shakespeare because of Congressman Weiner. With the media batting "sex-scandal" talk around like energetic felines with a new catnip-toy (whack-a, whack-a, race-chase-pounce!) it made me think about how media and advertisers use "Sex" to get our (the public's) Attention, all the time.

It's like the movies, and television -- sex and violence, sex and violence, sex and violence, and now & then, for a change, violence and sex.
Shakespeare said, "The audience takes irresponsible delight in vigorous events."
That's why they use the "vigorous events" to get our attention.
"Kiss kiss bang bang" was the title of a book of Pauline Kael's collected movie reviews.
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[excerpt]:
(In her note on the title which begins the book, Kael asserts that these words are "perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies. This appeal is what attracts us, and ultimately what makes us despair when we begin to understand how seldom movies are more than this." The title itself is a reference to the character of James Bond, who was often referred to as "Mr. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" in international markets.) ------------ [excerpt from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]
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And last but not least, Richard Nixon, president from 1969 to 1973, and vice president during Dwight Eisenhower's administration in the 50s: the reason I started thinking about him was also rooted in this week's sex-photo-congressman-hysteria -- because my first awareness in my life, of taping people's private conversations and then how weird they can sound if other people listen to them, occurred when I was still a child and Congress started asking for then-President Nixon's tapes. And it was in the news all the time. (I didn't even watch the news, or read papers, I don't think -- it just seeped out and into your consciousness...).

When investigators in the Watergate case started listening to Pres. Nixon's tapes, and transcripts of some of the conversations became public, there would be this phrase "(expletive deleted)" to fill in where somebody had said a curse word or obscenity.
Late night TV comedians had a field day for a while with "expletive deleted" -- and the thing is, when you, as the listener, or reader, who was not present in the conversation when it took place, when you experience all that "expletive deleted" second-hand, like that, it seems worse than it probably was, for some reason.

It was like -- you ended up having the impression that all those high-level people in the White House simply -- sat around swearin' all the time - !
And if you think about it, you know that wasn't the case. But the colorful (or offensive) language is what jumps out at you, and it's what stays in your mind.
And it's because, I suppose, of the magnetism for us, as humans, of the
kiss kiss bang bang.
That's what grabs our attention.

-30-