Four
degrees of Suckeration. You
know, the verb "to suck" has taken over
the world. When I used to say, 15 years ago,
"I suck at Asteroids", women actually
got offended. Now everyone says it on family
shows and "Meet the Press". The one
thing they haven't adopted from our old 1960's
New York slang is the traditional
"this" response. Example. The priest
says "Dominus vobiscum", and you say
"Dominus THIS, Padre", and grab your
crotch. This works on all occasions and as a
response to any comment. (Or, as an alternative,
you can grab your crotch and say "I'll give
you your Dominus right here, Padre", but my
friends found this variant too verbose.). To
relate this to the "suck" verb, one guy
would say "your cigar sucks", and the
other guy would grab his crotch and say
"suck THIS", and there you have plenty
of merriment and an instant Algonquin Round Table
of witty repartee for all occasions.
Now
my point here is that the co-opting of
"suck" by the mainstream culture leads
to a lack of gradations. Is it fair to say that
Cher's singing sucks, when this is the same way
you would describe Yoko Ono? Of course not. So I
therefore propose four degrees of suckeration. To
stay on the musician theme for a minute, here's
how it would work.
- First
degree of suckeration. People who are OK,
but not really as good as you might
expect from the success they've achieved.
An example would be Jewel. If you got all
your cousins together, Jewel would sing
about as well as the best one. She has a
pleasant voice, can carry a tune, knows
some guitar chords, looks good. She's OK,
you just can't quite figure out why she's
a star and 100 million other equally
talented women are not.
- Second
degree of suckeration, people who really
aren't good enough to be doing this
professionally at all. If you assembled
your cousins together and had a karaoke
contest, they would finish in the middle
of the pack. Cher and Jerry Vale would be
in this category.
- Third
degree of suckeration, people who don't
have a clue how to do what they are
supposed to be professionals at. Your
most incompetent cousin could do it as
well. Sid Vicious belongs in this group.
- Fourth
degree of suckeration, people who are so
bad that they not only can't do what they
are supposed to be good at, but they
cause nausea and/or laughter when they
try to do it. If these people were your
cousins, you wouldn't even admit it. And
if you had a family karaoke contest,
you'd have a kindly aunt distract them to
another room to look at baby pictures.
Examples would include Carol Channing,
Yoko Ono, and Shatner.
Now,
"ruling" requires the same degrees.
Let's talk about these women we have here every
day. These are imprecise and arbitrary, but
you'll get the idea.
- Courtney
Cox and Lucy Lawless rule about first
degree.
- Portia
de Rossi rules about second degree.
- Cameron
Diaz and Zeta-Jones rule about third
degree.
- Casta
and Jolie and maybe a few selected others
rule fourth degree, as Basinger and
Bisset did in their primes.
I'll
start using these terms from time to time, and
therefore will not identify suckiosity or
rulitude unless I specify the degree of such. For
example, I pointed out above that Shatner is a
fourth degree suck as a singer, but he is only a
second degree suck as an actor. An example of a
fourth degree acting suck would be Bob Dylan.
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