last moments

I'm sitting here at JFK, using the free broadband, drinking milky coffee and eating my last American carbohydrate (a bagel sans cream cheese).  I'm no doubt a couple of kilograms heavier and my LDL has probably shot up through the roof.  My main pack is loaded with Hershey chocolate, for myself and as payment/bribery for various Alice friends.  I can say with pride that I've avoided all Starbucks coffee (I have a personal moratorium on their coffee) while in the States, tho not Starbucks itself as I accidentally ordered a hot chocolate from them in Barnes and Noble (not realising their cafe was actually a branch of Starbucks).

Over the past few days, I've been doing an assortment of freebie (and not so freebie) museum and gallery type activities, as well as just wandering through assorted districts such as Greenwich Village, the area around Union Square and Brooklyn Heights.  The highlights were probably Cloisters and the Fort Tyron area, and going to a talent quest in Harlem.  Cloisters is part of the Met.  It's a small medievalist museum, set in a mock-abbey on a sort of promontory with waterways on either side.  There are fragments of frescoes and other medieval adornments along with some familiar tapestries on display, including the famous unicorn (if you saw it, you'd recognise it immediately).  This appealed immensely to me, especially since I had my period of being into all things medieval, though I was never one of those girls with a postcard print of the unicorn stuck on their folder.  Cloisters was particularly striking in the cold, with the winter chill in the air, icicles hanging off rocks and denuded tree branches.  I have no idea what it would be like in the summer.

Last night I went to Destiny Night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.  I felt it was very much a tourist event -- lots of Japanese and Europeans in the audience.  The American contingent otherwise seemed to be black.  It was a lot like watching the Idol heats or whatever that bit's called at the beginning where the panel travels round the country, hearing out talent that's very bad or slightly less bad.  There were a series of acts including a stand-up comedian satirising the woes of being a big black woman, a sexy young thing playing a wishbone-shaped violin, a group of rapsters, a couple of serious singers...most of it was incredibly bad, which was the point. An applause-meter of some description backstage measured the audience's levels of enthusiasm for the contestants, four of which pass on to the next round.  A section of the audience decided to clap wildly for a teenager singer who looked as if he had Downs syndrome so he'd progress to the next stage, which he did...I wasn't too sure whether this was cruel or encouraging.  They randomly chose audience members to perform (fortunately I was up on the mezzanine level), a contest which was won by a shy Japanese girl in a smock and ugg boots who performed a remarkable impromptu rap routine, complete with back flips.

Anyway, it's hard to believe I'm going now...and hard to believe that I should be back in another six months' time.  The US has become my home away from home for a little while...  I enjoyed NY much more than I have on any of my previous visits, partly because I didn't get sick this time but also because I spent a reasonable period of time here. I feel in many ways that I'm a hopeless tourist -- I'm always missing or not quite making it to things, especially in the cold.  I planned to go and hear Woody Allen play one night, but missed his bracket because I became so entranced by Barnes and Noble, I ended up staying there a couple of hours. 

I tried to get to a theatre one night in time to get a last minute ticket but got utterly lost in Greenwich Village somehow (the street sign names kept on changing -- my excuse), so missed that early box office curfew they have here. There was a queue forming outside an arthouse cinema nearby so I joined it and bought a ticket to the film that was screening at the time.  It was called something like Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days.  As soon as the film started, I realised with a lurch that it was an abortion movie...I thought, oh god, I don't know that I'm up to another abortion movie.  It was a Romanian film, very much in the character-driven realist mode of the French new wave and Iranian cinema, with some possibly extraneous scenes and dialogue in the name of fey realism...  There were a few grisly, even heart-stopping moments in this film but what I liked about it was that the 'issues' were subordinate to the dynamics between the characters -- a student attempts to arrange a backstreet abortion in Communist/Catholic Romania for her flatmate but finds herself caught in a strange triangle between her friend and the somewhat sinister and opportunistic abortionist they engage.  The film centres on the way in which the abortion impacts on the girl who organises it rather than the pregnant woman herself (there's blood but refreshingly, nobody dies). The issues are exposed through these dynamics rather than workshopped and tub-thumped, as in the somewhat parsimonious and preachy Mike Leigh number about the cup-of-tea-toting granny abortionist (with Imelda Staunton doing one of her terribly hammy performances in the title role).  So if you feel you can stomach it, this Romanian film titled Four Months and something or other is worth a look.

Still waiting to board the plane here...there's been a 'slight delay'.  It's interesting flying via Tokyo; there's quite a different passenger clientele on this route.  Lots of Japanese and American business people.  At the moment, I feel like a total dag: I'm wearing cycling leggings that are supposed to work in the same way as TEDS (i.e. anti-DVT stockings), with a long black jumper over the top and RM Williams boots. Each of these things would be okay with other clothes of a similar genre but not together.  (FXH wouldn't want to be seen anywhere in my vicinity.)

Has anyone ever tried explaining what a dag is to an American? I used the word 'dag' offhandedly the other day with C, one of my fellow Gopherites, then tied myself in knots, trying to explain. (I also managed to use the word 'thong' in unexpected circumstances during the same conversation, commenting on how one of the male Gopher lecturers had worn 'thongs' during the summer residency.  'How did you know?' C said, eyes widening.)

'A dag is like the anti-thesis of "cool" in Australia ... someone who isn't cool.'

'Yes,' said C, 'But some people who think they're cool aren't particularly cool -- or nice -- at all.  Whereas some people who aren't cool are cool.'

'I know what you mean, but not that.  A dag is someone who is kind of gauche and wears the wrong clothes and is a little out of things...They're sort of like a dork or a nerd...except neither of those, exactly.  Nerds are cool these days.   A dag's not necessarily a term of derision, either: it can be used affectionately, as in 'she's a dag" or "you're a dag".'

I tried to explain the entymology of the word to C, how it was originally used to refer to the shit caught in the wool round a sheep's bum.

'Oh,' said C.  'So a dag is someone who comes at the rear of things?'

Now, that's not such a bad interpretation

I see there's going to be a 44 C day in Alice next week, tho it is to be accompanied by a 'possible thunderstorm'...so here's hoping it will break soon enough.

Comments

[Jonathan Shaw]

Yes, I've tried too. In the late 80s in Massachusetts, I was asked to explain the Castanets T-Shirt I was wearing, which featured the text, "Dags with Heart". (The Castanets were a Newcastle-derived band that included at various stages Mikey Robins, The Sandman, Shirley Purvis: they developed from an earlier group The Musical Flags (Dance Between Them), which would have been just as hard to explain.) I tried to liken dags to nerds as well. I don't think I had a lot of success, but we had an interesting conversation about nerds as moral heroes. This was some years before nerds became cool, even before The Revenge of the Nerds.

[Coy Lurker]

Sounds like a nice NY itinerary to me -- I'm envious.
Re: dag. I've also tried to explain the term in the US. It's hard to find an equivalent that isn't more pejorative, and which suggests the dag's potential fond acceptance in different social groups. To me the term nerd has too much of a connotation of a Harry high-pants ostracised in the corner of the playground with others of his/her kind. I would imagine Yiddish must have a term that comes close, though "nebbish" seems too much like "nerd" and a "schlemiel" is probably more of a loser...?

[Pavlov's Cat]

Great post. I particularly enjoyed the phrase 'refreshingly, nobody dies'.

Your disquisition on dags reminds me of the lovely moment in a Helen Garner essay (can't remember which, alas) where one of her sisters (I think) is wearing what the family has traditionally referred to as 'old duck sandals' and one sister says to another 'They're so daggy they're almost CLEVER.'

[Laura]

I went to talent night at the Apollo too - and 'daggy' is a pretty good word for all the contestants. Japanese tour groups must be a fixture.

[Francis Xavier Holden]

aah the 50s beatnik look in Melbourne. Black Sloppy Joe Jumper over black leggings. Cleverly updated to the late 90s with blunnies.

Still a favoured look coming in from the hills down around Apollo Bay in winter or Daylesford/Castlemaine anytime. Usually teamed with a perennial drum rollie and a fetching old footy beanie. Blunnies often swapped for rubber boots.

[Francis Xavier Holden]

Sorry. I do know RMs aren't blunnies. RMs would signify discreetly academic /writer to those in the know. Squatter to others.

Or Prime Minister
http://landownunder.blogspot.com/2006/12/call-me-kev.html

[Kirsty]

I saw Four Months etc at the Brisbane Film Festival and like you didn't know it was about abortion beforehand. I went with a couple of friends and none of us could just go home afterwards, we needed to do something life affirming, even if that was just hanging out and drinking wine. As you say, a really effective film.

[Mikhela]

"Shy Japanese girl doing impromptu rap with backflips"?
Methinks the shyness is a clever front for a wildly exhibitionist nature.
What an exotic life you lead.

[elsewhere]

Re: dags: part of the problem seems to be that it's an uber-set of social otherness which can encompass other subsets like nerd, dork, prat, etc, without being reduceable to any one of them. And none of these terms quite convey the sense of laconic affection that CL notes.

When I was in England, I used to use 'prat' instead of dag and 'naff' instead of daggy, but neither of these are quite right ('prat' has more the connotation of 'pill'). The English are, however, somewhat more familiar with the word 'dag' because of their enthusiastic Aussie soap watching.

FXH -- I don't think the Melbourne 50s beatniks would have had lurid fluoro stripes down the sides of their leggings. If I wore a pair of jodphurs, maybe I could blend in at Apollo Bay with some of the latte matrons. I used to dress like this in my impoverished student days *with* Blunnies.

Mikhela -- it often seems fairly humdrum to me.