Humor

Twang, twang, twang ~

/ Marilyn Davis / 2 Comments

I grew up in St. Louis, the heart of the Midwest, where most of the natives lack a heavy regional accent. We possess the kind of vocal blandness that broadcasters are trained to achieve. Yet it appears that when I sing, at least some of the time I’m…uh…twangy.

I’m so ashamed. Even worse, because the accusation comes from my voice teacher, B., I have to take it seriously.

Last Thursday night, I ran through my newly assigned piece, a little slip of a song called “Fade Into You.” It’s dense with diphthongs: vowels that meld one vowel sound to another in the same syllable, like the long A (“late”), the long I (“line”), the long U (“lute”), and the vowel that can be expressed as oy (as in “loiter”).

Diphthongs are the heart and soul of twanginess. Without diphthongs there could be no country music. And here a disclaimer is needed: I have nothing against people with twangy accents or twangy singing voices. Truly. Don’t send me hate comments. Although I’m generally not a country music fan, I love Hank Williams and Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash. But in my voice lessons, twanginess is a Very Bad Thing.

Having run through the song my first time, I looked at B. expectantly. She scooted to the end of the piano bench and faced me. My tone was very good, she said, and my vibrato was rich. I started to relax and smile. Then she said, “But you’re killing the song. You’re killing the vowels because you’re twangy.”

She did a little imitation of me. “FAYYYD into YEWWW,” she sang.

“That is a gross exaggeration,” I protested. “I don’t sound like that. I’m not twangy.”

“You’re twangy,” she said flatly, and I could tell there was no point in arguing.

We worked on “fade.” She wrote down how she wanted me to pronounce it: basically like “fed,” with just a bit of the long A sound at the end. She demonstrated. “Hear how I’m almost singing ‘fed,’ but it still sounds like ‘fade’?” she said. I did hear, sort of. I asked her to sing the line as if the word actually were “fed.” She did. The difference between the two was barely discernible. I then realized that she essentially wanted me to un-diphthongize the diphthongs.

Oy!

I sang the song again, concentrating so hard on clipping the diphthongs that my voice sounded distorted and unfamiliar. Indeed, it sounded disturbingly like a computer voice. I finished and looked at B. tentatively. “Was that better?” I asked.

“Much,” she said. “You were getting worn out at the end, but it was much better.”

“My voice sounded weird,” I noted.

“No it didn’t,” she said.

“And very deep,” I said.

She replied, “I think we need to do this in a higher register.”

OY!! Un-diphthongizing higher up the scale?! Please, no. But I tried it. I had to, because B. said so.

I try not to give this young woman too much grief. She knows her stuff—classical, jazz, Broadway, blues, pop. Plus, there is the consideration that she can always fire me as a student.

If I ever get around to practicing this week, I’ll do my best to avoid “FAYYYD” and “YEWW.” But Patsy Cline, I’m sure, would have scoffed “CrAAYY-zy!” Then she would have packed B. down to Kentucky or Tennessee so that she could hear what real honest-to-god twanginess sounds like. It might be quite a shock.

Cold confession ~

/ Marilyn Davis / Leave a comment

Having written about one of my addictions below, I feel it’s only appropriate to write about my other one and get the dirty deed over with. (Reading, being as necessary as breathing, does not count as an addiction.) Unlike Scrabble, this second addiction is a completely solitary pursuit, and unlike Scrabble, it is a vice.

I’m talking about frozen Cokes.

A couple of years ago my sister noticed that the local Burger King was selling frozen Cokes, or Icees, as they call them. Neither of us had had one since we were teenagers, so we went for nostalgia. They tasted wonderful. We returned to BK the next day for more. We discovered the delights of frozen frozen Cokes—that is to say, putting frozen Cokes in the freezer, then pulling them out later, letting them loosen up a bit, chopping through them with a straw, and sucking the icy mix from the straw. This pleasure boosted my consumption dramatically.

Soon I noticed disturbing similarities between my frozen Coke habit and a drug addict’s habit:

  • My consumption kept increasing, and the weekly sums I was willing to spend on my new habit kept pace.
  • I began making solitary trips to Burger King, sometimes late at night dressed only in my pajamas, that I did not confess to. Since my sister and I don’t live together, this was easy to get away with.
  • The drive-through attendants at BK began to recognize me. I learned their names. One of them discussed with me whether frozen Cokes were a gateway drug, but we decided they were not; they were already the ultimate frozen treat high.
  • I became willing to drive longer and longer distances to sustain my habit. The machine at the local BK often broke down, and the machine at the BK across town often produced soupy frozen Cokes. I learned the location of other BKs in Southern Illinois and would sometimes vary my driving routes to take me past these places. I located other sources, too, principally Moto-Marts and other convenience stores, some of which had acceptable frozen Cokes and some of which didn’t. I frequently drove the 12-mile round trip to a neighboring town for the sole purpose of obtaining frozen Cokes.
  • I became a connoisseur. Just as someone who smokes pot discriminates readily between different varieties and strengths, I can (and worse, do) hold forth on frozen Cokes obtained from various sources in terms of cola concentration, sugariness, texture, granularity, and relative ability to remain in the semi-frozen state for a given period of time.
  • I hid the evidence of my habit from passengers in my car by frequently emptying the trash bag and picking up soda straw wrappers.
  • I repeatedly voiced my intention to reform. I would cut back my consumption for a couple of days, perhaps even a week, then return to my habit at an even higher level. The notion of going cold turkey was unendurable.

These classic signs of addiction couldn’t be denied, but I felt powerless. The icy lure of frozen Cokes kept overcoming my scruples. I wondered, might there be enough other addicts to form a local FCA (Frozen Cokes Anonymous)? Should I go into treatment with a therapist who specializes in treating addictions? Were there other recovery options?

Thus far, I’ve done nothing. But my latest lab tests show that my triglycerides are too high. Not alarmingly high, but unacceptable. So once more unto the self-deprivation breach: I’m going to try to limit frozen Cokes to a weekly treat. Wish me luck; hold me accountable. It’s a powerful enemy I’m battling, and I’ll need all the strength I can muster.

Hard Scrabble life ~

/ Marilyn Davis / Leave a comment

Most people of my generation, I suspect, will have heard this phrase wearisomely often over the years: “Working hard, or hardly working?” Had my father been alive to hear my shrieks when I began playing Scrabble seriously, he would surely have said, “Playing hard, or hardly playing?”

In the beginning I was hardly playing, though I didn’t realize it. When I bought an iPod Touch a couple of years ago and cluttered it with (mostly free) apps that I (mostly never) use, I was delighted to begin playing Scrabble against the computer. I didn’t bother to check out the app very thoroughly; I just started playing. I was pleasantly surprised that I usually won my games. That was before I realized that I was playing on the “Normal” level. (My dad would have had a derogatory joke to make here as well.) I promptly switched to the “Hard” level, despite the icon’s grim red face, and my eyes were opened.

Hard-level games bore little resemblance to the family Scrabble games of my childhood. Words I had never seen before, much less heard anyone speak, began popping up over the board like a rash, and I began losing by massive margins. Here’s what I wrote at the time on Facebook:

In short order I was pelted with unfamiliar words (pintle, anyone? qintar?), questionable plurals (zeals? muttons?) and spellings (gapy?), words cribbed from other languages (jeu), words that looked like Germans were trying to pronounce English (ichnite!), and what I am convinced is Klingon (gttyma).

The Hard level was mopping the floor with me. But I was learning, albeit painfully. Eventually I discovered the pleasures of playing actual people, from my ever-persevering, sweet cousin-in-law-once-removed to a Pakistani man who lives in Toronto and used to play in tournaments (I beat him perhaps four times thanks to stunningly good tile draws; he beat me perhaps 20 times thanks to stunningly good ability). My memory, I’m sorry to say, is not what it used to be, but I’m hanging on to the meanings of as many unfamiliar words as possible. Zori? Check. Chon? Check. Dol? Check. Most new words, however, I promptly forget.

I’m not a Scrabble expert. The dirty truth is that I’m now a Scrabble addict. I check my ranking obsessively and keep several games active all the time so that I usually have at least one play to make at any given time. Most telling of all, I have actually purchased a book about playing Scrabble. For my sister and some of my friends, this is going too far. But forget support groups; forget interventions. Don’t take my words away from me. Instead, help me celebrate the fact that a few days ago I bagged my first triple-triple bingo, droppers, for 158 points. Now that’s a rush.