Two Fer
T.G.H.A.F.
Published on: Wednesday, 4/21/1982, Style section,
edition, zone, B07
The 'Chariots' Are Driving Me Crazy!
By Henry Allen
Da deedle-ee dum dum.
It's the song of the year, the anthem of '80s uplift, the synthesizer soundtrack for Reaganomic resurgence, whenever that might happen to be. It is, in short, the theme from the movie "Chariots of Fire," and it's pumping out of car radios, clattering through apartment walls, and cluttering up television sound tracks during the New York Marathon and the space shuttle landing with Muzak sure to be next, filling elevators and airports with glorious optimism.
Enough, already. How much triumph and transcendence can we take? The album is No. 1 on the Billboard magazine hit list, it's on radio stations from easy-listening to hard rock, the hit of the year, instantly identifiable from the drone of the very first synthesized notes of it, MWEEERRAAUUNGGG . . . and then, da deedle-ee dum dum, it's impossible to keep it from reverberating through the synapses all day.
I say, give us a break. I've been saying it since I saw the movie. I'm now going crazy with this music, and the unmitigated nobility of it all.
The problem, I think, began with the first minutes of the film, which I initially mistook for an underwear ad, all those guys running down the beach in identical white shorts. I figured the Munsingwear Corp. was buying ad time at the Tenley Circle theater, to reach the art-house/jogger/anglophile crowd with a pitch for boxer shorts.
Other people hear the theme and they think of glory. I think of underpants. That and dental problems. After I got over the underwear misapprehension, I began to think that the movie was about two guys who figure out that you can run faster if you run with your mouth wide open, gaping, as if you've got a toothache and you're chasing the dentist around the golf course, trying to get him to check it out. Every race the two heroes run, you're looking at molars when they cross the finish line.
The effect here is compounded by the synthesizer sound of the music which sounds like a dentist's drill when you're semi-comatose on nitrous oxide, and noises become strange cosmic abstractions for a few happy moments before the pain sets in.
Which describes this music perfectly.
At best, listening to it is like eating Triscuits--never quite as good as you remembered, but you keep on waiting for some kind of ultimate rush.
At worst, it's dangerous. We thought we'd stamped this kind of thing out with a quarter-century of rock 'n' roll, and its snarling, cavilling, slump-shouldered, drug-crazed complaints of being misunderstood. The theme from "Chariots" is not only cheerful but uplifting, a moral sermon, a reminder that triumph comes from being good for goodness' sake. It's the kind of thing they'd sing (yes, there's a vocal version now, too, sung by Melissa Manchester) if another Crusade was announced--an anthem.
What if this is just the first of hundreds of hymns to integrity and perseverance? What if this is a movement that relegates rock to the dusty corner of history that also houses swing and crooning? Maybe all the style and flash of discos will be replaced by the triumphal virtues of herds of people trampling up and down beaches in their underpants. Will everybody have their mouths gaping open or just the people in front?
HWARREEEANNGGG da deedle-ee dum dum. As "Feelings" was to the Me Generation and "You Light Up My Life" was to the born-again types, so "Chariots of Fire" may be to whatever we're stuck with being in the early '80s. It's no doubt already wending its way into Las Vegas lounge acts, and surely there's a place for it in Wayne Newton's repertoire--maybe right behind "Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast."
I take comfort in the fact that my natural cynicism and Irish despair have been assailed unsuccessfully for years by anthems of uplift and optimism, and I reflect, as I have often reflected, while listening to jukeboxes in out-of-the-way bars through the years, that if we could survive Sgt. Barry Sadler's "Ballad of the Green Berets" and "God Bless America," as sung by Connie Francis, we can make it through anything.
© The Washington Post
Published on: Wednesday, 3/28/1984, Style section,
edition, zone, B01
The Beef Stops Here
By Henry Allen
Here it is, the conversation of the future:
"Where's the beef?"
"I can't believe I ate the whole thing."
"Bet you can't eat just one."
"What are you, some kind of nut?"
"You 'n' me, babe."
It's been creeping up on us for years--designer conversation, franchised phraseology, quick-frozen quips, fast-phrase communication, McWords.
For years now we haven't had to think to talk any more than we've had to cook to eat. Just pick out the ready-to-say words of your choice and, at last, an end to those annoying pauses in conversation.
Generic talking!
We're talking cliche's, we're talking the pits, we're talking we're talking, and sorry about that, but not to worry at this point in time, right?
Wrong.
The problem is that the ad agency that does that nice work for the Wendy's hamburger people has come up with a slogan so stupendously popular it could change the English language forever.
Already it's been used to win votes, with Walter Mondale using it to taunt Gary Hart, and it's becoming the universal wisecrack, not to mention T-shirt slogan.
It's all-purpose. It's dirty, it's clean, it's insulting, it's seductive, it means everything, it means nothing. It's the great white shark of cliche's.
You can dress it up, you can take it out, it melts in your mouth. It isn't even smarmy, like "Have a nice day."
The magic in the phrase derives from the word "beef." It's got all the makings of a universal noun. Remember how they used to ask "How's your bippy?" on "Laugh-In," and Steve Allen used to ask us about our ferns?
Now it's your beef.
It could get so popular that other ad campaigns will stick it in their slogans whether it makes sense or not.
Imagine it:
Nothing comes between me and my beef.
Ring around the beef.
Beef is it.
And the Panasonic company will be slightly ahead of its beef.
It's only a matter of time before the Washington Federals rename themselves "the Beefs." It's better than having people walking around Monday morning saying, "How 'bout them gerbils?"
It fills in so many blanks.
It's a question that answers so many questions.
Ever wonder what Rodin's "The Thinker" is thinking about? Where's the beef? And what is it that baseball managers say to pitchers when they walk out to the mound: Where's the beef?
Instead of asking their students to tell them the sound of one hand clapping, Zen masters can now simply say: Where's the beef?
Now you know what to say in singles bars and what the personnel director is going to ask you in your job interview.
Even the past could be rewritten. Now we know what the aliens meant in "The Day the Earth Stood Still" when they said, "Klatu barata nikto"; we know what Stanley really said when he finally found Livingstone in darkest Africa; and what Marie Antoinette answered when told the people had no bread: Where's the beef?
Ridiculous.
Imagine it in literature, with Juliet looking down from her balcony to ask: Where's the beef?
Faster than a speeding beef.
It's got a good beef and you can dance to it.
All you need is beef.
Light my beef.
Coffee, tea or beef.
The All-Beef Handbook.
Close encounters of the beef kind.
What, me worry? Hey, what do I know? Except that we have seen the future and it may be beef.
© The Washington Post
