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Friday, October 6th: Sam Salem headlines the Yoo-Hoo Room and I am there too!
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I hope you’re all tricking or treating yourself into this brand new October we’re experiencing.
I was briefly and secretly on the east coast this weekend for a cousin’s wedding and it tore me apart a bit to be in Kensington, Maryland for a few hours and *not* send out my typical bat signal of “I’m here! Ya wanna eat/run/walk/drink/cut my hair?” (you all respectively know who you are and this will likely be the only time it ever happens for better or for worse).
But I really did have no down time and I thought it might be annoying (though typically Julian) to announce “surprise! I’m nearby and cannot hang, just wanted you to know.”
Anyway, one thing that did happen while I was in The Original K-Town (citation required) for a few hours was: I was walking back from Antique Row and I saw the local Gas Station Dunkin’ Donuts is getting in on the Pumpkin Spice La-Craze.
I should have taken a picture but I didn’t so you’ll have to trust me that this sign said in big letters:
UPPIN’ THE
PUMPKIN
and then in smaller letters (but still pretty big):
MÁS CALABAZA
I was, to put it as dramatically as I damn please, absolutely floored.
This was a piece of copywriting on a gas station Dunkin’. Copywriting, in some circles, is the lowest of low, or at least the most uncreative of uncreative, forms of writing.
Its definition (or my definition of it) is basically “writing that *has* to be done for some reason other than writing itself.”
Of course there are circles (often the circles in which people are copywriters or managers of copywriters) who would disagree. They would say that there really can be some creativity to it. They might even go so far as to say that having the parameters of something needing to be on a sign, a brochure, a corporate blogpost, or what have you (writing for those sort of things is probably a more precise definition of copywriting) is the *purest* (purity in a pound for pound/potency sense) form of creativity because you can so plainly see the non-creative borders of the thing and therefore have to marvel at what creativity was even achievable in such a precisely confined space.
Add the fact that this is not just a gas station, not just a Dunkin’ Donuts, but a gas station Dunkin’ Donuts and I was really not expecting to find, once my eyes grazed over it, one of the the most evocative translated works I’ve ever encountered in my entire life.
Okay, okay, perhaps that’s overdramatizing again. But to be clear, this is not a literal translation. “MÁS CALABAZA” means literally “MORE PUMPKIN.” And the way you say “UPPIN’ THE PUMPKIN” in Spanish is (per the Williams College Layden-Milliken Center for Decent Conversational Spanish) “SUBIENDO LAS CALABAZAS.”
And while that’s a very fun think to say, it lacks the vaguely slant-rhymey patter of Uppin’ and Pumpkin. So instead of just keeping g a one-to-one translation, they turned to the simpler and slightly rhymier Más Calabaza (the “ah” in Mas repeats in the first two syllables of Calabazas).
This is a dedication to whimsy and accessibility that I do not expect to see in some gas station donut copywriting, and it gave me a real sense of pride in… the world?
Maybe that’s *too* dramatic. But at least pride in the supposedly uncreatives of the world, those we expect to be phoning it in and shrugging off the general duties of an artist to make a work with as few barriers to entry as possible.
And it made me a little weepy at and about language and translation in general! Without the translated version, I bet I may have completely missed the intent of “UPPIN’” to even rhyme in the slightest bit with “PUMPKIN.”
It made me realize that, in the past, I’ve considered the job of the translator to be to water down the work that you’re translating as little as possible. Be as honest as you can be, but mostly just try to not to have your work fuck up the meaning or let the original work be (this is why we have the phrase) “lost in translation.”
But what the Uppin the Pumpkin/Mas Calabazas sign taught me is that things aren’t always lost in translation. Sometimes they can be… found.
Wow, ending that sappy? Hell yeah, we are.
Oh also, I actually found a picture of one of the signs:
Special K. Song. Try as I might, I just can’t shake Broward County, Florida rapper BLP Kosher. If you like Florida rap and/or 2 Chainz-level wordplay, I think you’ll love him. If you don’t specifically love Florida rap or 2 Chainz-level wordplay, you will quite possible hate him.
Creativity Inc. Book. Last week, I recommended buying a book for a friend. This week, I have read enough of said book and I enjoy it! It was described to me by the person who got it for me as a “Business Book,” and it does get into management styles, but it also is a fascinating memoir of one of the founders of Pixar.
The Golden Bachelor. Show. I’m gonna be honest, I thought this “old person version of the bachelor” where the lucky lad is 72 years old was mostly boring.
That being said, in the “This season on” preview at the end, you see Garry (said Lucky Lad) crying to host Jesse that “this is the second worst day of his life after the day my wife [pretty suddenly] died! And it’s a ***damn close second.”
I don’t think this is good, but that is an astounding moment to happen even on reality television and perhaps shines a bit of light on the trauma we are societally putting these people though.
This is not *really* a cause I care deeply about and I loved the entire VH1 “Love” franchise (Rock Of, Flavor of, I - New York, Real Chance at etc etc etc) which were likely more exploitative. But The Bachelor has always been two sides of the same coin with the NFL and I think it’s about time we start at least acknowledging the emotional CTE we’re thrusting upon these people.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. Short Film. This Wes Anderson adaptation of Roald Dahl’s short story of the same name is a one-to-one adaptation (I.e. the entire story is read word for word over the course of the film). It is also very Wes Anderson in a lot of fun ways. I’m still thinking about it, but I like the idea that a film adaptation of something can be an (extremely) elevated audio book. He adapted at least three other stories and they all appear to take the same approach. I assume you can’t really go wrong with any of them.
Alrighty! I hope you spend this week putting whimsy and creativity into even the tightest parameters you’re provided, and finding things where they’re more often lost.
Much love!
Julian
P.S. I spend anywhere between two and twelve hours a week on the Sternal Journal. If you enjoy receiving it (and are RICH) consider becoming a paying subscriber. For just a few bucks a month, you can provide me with a bit more time to come up with fun topics, poems, and interviews; and you with probably fewer typos.