Retro in a rut
August 25, 2003 | 12:00am
Before anything else, here’s one for Ripley: Prof. Thelma Arambulo, my successor as chairperson of the UP’s Department of English and Comparative Literature, applied for a US tourist visa last month, plunked down the P5,300 application fee, and gamely queued up on her appointed day at the US Embassy for the obligatory interview with the consular officer. She was going to the US for a very short visit for personal reasons – more of an annoying necessity for her than anything.
It wasn’t as if Thelma was raring to visit the Grand Canyon or shop at Saks Fifth Avenue. She knows more about America than most Americans, as our department’s specialist in contemporary American literature; she took her MA at the University of Pittsburgh, taught at Virginia Polytechnic as an exchange professor, and has visited the US several times as a USAID grantee; she could’ve found a way to stay there like so many others, but she returned when she was supposed to, every single time. She now serves as the treasurer of the American Studies Association of the Philippines, and even emceed the recent launching of the US Embassy-sponsored book on the Thomasites. To take the cake, I’ve often kidded Thelma about her unapologetically pro-American stance in the Iraq War – just about the only one among my friends to so openly profess.
But none of this, apparently, was good enough for the American consul who chose to ask her the usual questions about how much money she had (knowing the silliness of laying claim to any kind of fortune as a UP professor, Thelma, in turn, chose to tell him about her brood of pigs) and who didn’t take two minutes to deny her visa application.
A woman of inimitable poise and charm, Thelma didn’t know whether to fume or laugh, but she kept her composure, and walked out ruing only the loss of her nonrefundable application fee. When she told me her story over lunch a few days later, I was more appalled than she seemed to be. With misjudgments like this, I thought, how does the US hope to keep the goodwill of its friends, never mind winning over its enemies? I don’t think we’re under any illusion that US visas are automatically handed out to anyone – especially after Sept. 11 – but denying a tourist visa to a frequent US visitor, an American-studies specialist, and the chair of the country’s largest and finest English department seems nothing short of madness. With the dry irony she’s known for, Thelma could only smile and say that "I might’ve stood a better chance if I’d applied for flying school."
I hope that someone with more sense and authority at the US Embassy looks into this incredible gaffe and sets things right.
I was on the bus going home from a faculty conference in Subic last week-end when I received a text message from my friend Peewee Leynes asking me, of all things, if I thought the word "groovy" was just about right for the year 1963. (Peewee’s one of those kindred spirits who save a day or so of every month for a return trip to the ’60s.)
I scanned my memories quickly for the earliest register of that word. I was nine years old in 1963, and while I remember the day Kennedy died, I couldn’t get a fix on "groovy" for that year. Not too long afterwards, however, came A Groovy Kind of Love – yes, boys and girls, the song was first recorded not by Phil Collins, who did a cover version only in 1988, but by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, in 1966. And 1966 was the same year that Simon and Garfunkel released The 59th Bridge Song, better known and more easily remembered by its subtitle, Feelin’ Groovy.
So I had to tell Peewee that "groovy," as far as I was concerned, was probably mid-’60s, although it could very well have turned up earlier. How much earlier, we didn’t realize, not until another of Peewee’s friends, Jed Natividad, sent him a longer explanation culled from the Internet. (I did some digging myself and found the source on Michael Quinion’s website, World Wide Words (www.quinion.com/words).)
Here’s what the experts had to say to a similar question from a certain Roberta Richardson, who asked: "I’m a product of the ’60s when we used the word groovy constantly. I thought that my generation invented the word. I was surprised to discover recently while watching the original movie trailer for Miracle on 34th Street, which was produced in 1948, that the word groovey was used in one of the big graphic headlines which scrolled over the video. I’m sure that you will have an amusing and edifying explanation of how old this expression is, and how it came to be?"
Quinion: "I’ll just give you the facts, ma’am… It’s even older than 1948, I have to tell you. The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated 1937. It comes from jazz, when to be groovey (the original spelling) was a shortened form of ‘in the groove,’ meaning that somebody was playing brilliantly or easily, perhaps like a gramophone needle slipping along a groove, or making music as perfectly as a needle does in the grooves of a record. Tom Dalzell, in his Flappers 2 Rappers, quotes from the San Francisco Chronicle of March 13, 1938, in which Herb Caen is in turn quoting Bing Crosby: ‘In the groove means just right, down the middle, riding lightly and politely, terrific, easy on the ears.’ Mr. Dalzell suggests that ‘in the groove’ was not replaced by groovey until about 1941, and that the latter only really caught on from about 1944—5 for a period of less than 10 years. So the mid-Sixties usage, in its slightly different spelling, was most definitely its second time around. Now, of course, it can only be used as a deliberate anachronism or by the terminally out-of-touch."
There’s a longer and even more fascinating discussion of the word on the Slate website (slate.msn.com/id/19066) in a 1999 article by Cullen Murphy, part of which observes that:
"Groovy’s staying power – it has maintained its meaning and its presence for more than six decades – points up the robustness, and even the relative antiquity, of much of what seems like linguistic ephemera. Out of sight, meaning ‘incredibly wonderful’ or ‘extraordinary,’ is as current as ever; it goes back not to the ’60s but to the ’40s – the 1840s. Cool has experienced a change of intonation in the 1990s, becoming nearly bisyllabic, but it has been widely used over diverse demographic terrain for most of the 20th century, and it goes back as a term of admiration (‘That’s right [i.e., very] cool’) to the first half of the 19th century. Duh, an interjection indicating stupidity or obviousness, emerged from 1940s animated cartoons, but its period of greatest efflorescence is probably occurring right now. It enjoys life not only as an interjection but also as a noun (‘The movie’s real duh of a raison d’être’ – Village Voice) and an adjective (‘That’s so duh you’ve got to smile’ – Los Angeles Times). Bummer, one 1960s word that really did get its start in the ’60s drug culture, is also proving its hardiness, a testament both to the term’s euphony and to the ubiquity of bummers in the world at large.
"Cat, dig, and hipster are enjoying a resurgence. So are bitchin’ and stoked. Every generation insists on having its own new words for the most aggressively up-to-date aspects of life. (Well, duh.) But it’s also true, as never before, that the archives of sound and image constitute a continuous retro loop that people can – and will – draw on. The situation is oddly appropriate: The idea of retro in a rut restores grooviness to its original meaning."
Be so advised, linguistic hepcats.
More donors have stepped up for Dionisio Ulep, the driver whose cause we’ve taken up as a private initiative. These blessed people include UP High batch ’67, writer Babeth Lolarga, the old SGV-CSG staff, my PSHS classmate Mel Gaddi, old pals Fidel Rillo and Art Sampana, Sister Tess Malinis and her congregation, Reliv distributor Cindy Chan, as well as others like "Joan" who have chosen to remain anonymous, or whom I may have inadvertently forgotten and will make sure to acknowledge next time.
My special thanks go to the gracious Dr. Aileen Riego-Javier, deputy executive director for Medical Services at the National Kidney and Transplant Institute, who has been very helpful in preparing the paperwork that Dionisio’s transplant and its funding from the PCSO will require.
Please keep giving if you can, because Dionisio will continue to need help with his medication if and when he gets his transplant. Kindly deposit any amount directly to the BPI savings account of Florita Ulep, No. 0375-1338-22, or text me at 0917-5300951.
Send e-mail to Butch Dalisay at penmanila@yahoo.com.
It wasn’t as if Thelma was raring to visit the Grand Canyon or shop at Saks Fifth Avenue. She knows more about America than most Americans, as our department’s specialist in contemporary American literature; she took her MA at the University of Pittsburgh, taught at Virginia Polytechnic as an exchange professor, and has visited the US several times as a USAID grantee; she could’ve found a way to stay there like so many others, but she returned when she was supposed to, every single time. She now serves as the treasurer of the American Studies Association of the Philippines, and even emceed the recent launching of the US Embassy-sponsored book on the Thomasites. To take the cake, I’ve often kidded Thelma about her unapologetically pro-American stance in the Iraq War – just about the only one among my friends to so openly profess.
But none of this, apparently, was good enough for the American consul who chose to ask her the usual questions about how much money she had (knowing the silliness of laying claim to any kind of fortune as a UP professor, Thelma, in turn, chose to tell him about her brood of pigs) and who didn’t take two minutes to deny her visa application.
A woman of inimitable poise and charm, Thelma didn’t know whether to fume or laugh, but she kept her composure, and walked out ruing only the loss of her nonrefundable application fee. When she told me her story over lunch a few days later, I was more appalled than she seemed to be. With misjudgments like this, I thought, how does the US hope to keep the goodwill of its friends, never mind winning over its enemies? I don’t think we’re under any illusion that US visas are automatically handed out to anyone – especially after Sept. 11 – but denying a tourist visa to a frequent US visitor, an American-studies specialist, and the chair of the country’s largest and finest English department seems nothing short of madness. With the dry irony she’s known for, Thelma could only smile and say that "I might’ve stood a better chance if I’d applied for flying school."
I hope that someone with more sense and authority at the US Embassy looks into this incredible gaffe and sets things right.
I scanned my memories quickly for the earliest register of that word. I was nine years old in 1963, and while I remember the day Kennedy died, I couldn’t get a fix on "groovy" for that year. Not too long afterwards, however, came A Groovy Kind of Love – yes, boys and girls, the song was first recorded not by Phil Collins, who did a cover version only in 1988, but by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, in 1966. And 1966 was the same year that Simon and Garfunkel released The 59th Bridge Song, better known and more easily remembered by its subtitle, Feelin’ Groovy.
So I had to tell Peewee that "groovy," as far as I was concerned, was probably mid-’60s, although it could very well have turned up earlier. How much earlier, we didn’t realize, not until another of Peewee’s friends, Jed Natividad, sent him a longer explanation culled from the Internet. (I did some digging myself and found the source on Michael Quinion’s website, World Wide Words (www.quinion.com/words).)
Here’s what the experts had to say to a similar question from a certain Roberta Richardson, who asked: "I’m a product of the ’60s when we used the word groovy constantly. I thought that my generation invented the word. I was surprised to discover recently while watching the original movie trailer for Miracle on 34th Street, which was produced in 1948, that the word groovey was used in one of the big graphic headlines which scrolled over the video. I’m sure that you will have an amusing and edifying explanation of how old this expression is, and how it came to be?"
Quinion: "I’ll just give you the facts, ma’am… It’s even older than 1948, I have to tell you. The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated 1937. It comes from jazz, when to be groovey (the original spelling) was a shortened form of ‘in the groove,’ meaning that somebody was playing brilliantly or easily, perhaps like a gramophone needle slipping along a groove, or making music as perfectly as a needle does in the grooves of a record. Tom Dalzell, in his Flappers 2 Rappers, quotes from the San Francisco Chronicle of March 13, 1938, in which Herb Caen is in turn quoting Bing Crosby: ‘In the groove means just right, down the middle, riding lightly and politely, terrific, easy on the ears.’ Mr. Dalzell suggests that ‘in the groove’ was not replaced by groovey until about 1941, and that the latter only really caught on from about 1944—5 for a period of less than 10 years. So the mid-Sixties usage, in its slightly different spelling, was most definitely its second time around. Now, of course, it can only be used as a deliberate anachronism or by the terminally out-of-touch."
There’s a longer and even more fascinating discussion of the word on the Slate website (slate.msn.com/id/19066) in a 1999 article by Cullen Murphy, part of which observes that:
"Groovy’s staying power – it has maintained its meaning and its presence for more than six decades – points up the robustness, and even the relative antiquity, of much of what seems like linguistic ephemera. Out of sight, meaning ‘incredibly wonderful’ or ‘extraordinary,’ is as current as ever; it goes back not to the ’60s but to the ’40s – the 1840s. Cool has experienced a change of intonation in the 1990s, becoming nearly bisyllabic, but it has been widely used over diverse demographic terrain for most of the 20th century, and it goes back as a term of admiration (‘That’s right [i.e., very] cool’) to the first half of the 19th century. Duh, an interjection indicating stupidity or obviousness, emerged from 1940s animated cartoons, but its period of greatest efflorescence is probably occurring right now. It enjoys life not only as an interjection but also as a noun (‘The movie’s real duh of a raison d’être’ – Village Voice) and an adjective (‘That’s so duh you’ve got to smile’ – Los Angeles Times). Bummer, one 1960s word that really did get its start in the ’60s drug culture, is also proving its hardiness, a testament both to the term’s euphony and to the ubiquity of bummers in the world at large.
"Cat, dig, and hipster are enjoying a resurgence. So are bitchin’ and stoked. Every generation insists on having its own new words for the most aggressively up-to-date aspects of life. (Well, duh.) But it’s also true, as never before, that the archives of sound and image constitute a continuous retro loop that people can – and will – draw on. The situation is oddly appropriate: The idea of retro in a rut restores grooviness to its original meaning."
Be so advised, linguistic hepcats.
My special thanks go to the gracious Dr. Aileen Riego-Javier, deputy executive director for Medical Services at the National Kidney and Transplant Institute, who has been very helpful in preparing the paperwork that Dionisio’s transplant and its funding from the PCSO will require.
Please keep giving if you can, because Dionisio will continue to need help with his medication if and when he gets his transplant. Kindly deposit any amount directly to the BPI savings account of Florita Ulep, No. 0375-1338-22, or text me at 0917-5300951.
BrandSpace Articles
<
>
