Whole Milk Married

For the past two days, much of the American political world's attention was on the U.S. Supreme Court as it heard two high profile cases on the subject of gay marriage.  On Tuesday, the Court heard arguments on California's Proposition 8, while yesterday they heard arguments on the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.  But the action was not just in the Court.  Outside the Court, crowds gathered to make their opinions heard, many bearing clever and classic signs in support of gay marriage.  And those who lacked either the geographic proximity or the time to travel down to the Court made their opinions heard online, most notably by turning Facebook into a wall of red equals signs, or variants thereof.
 
Many words have been exchanged on the subject, in the Court, online, in newspapers, and on television, but the most memorable line of the two days came from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, when she said that defending DOMA was essentially saying that there are "two kinds of marriage, there's full marriage and then there's sort of skim milk marriage."  These words will no doubt be among the most memorable of these historic proceedings, and long-time readers know I'm not one to let talk of food and politics pass by without a more thorough analysis.
 
First, there's Justice Ginsburg's choice of marriage-related beverage.  Why milk?  Champagne is probably the beverage most traditionally associated with marriage, but there's no champagne-lite sort of equivalent.  But what about beer?  Traditional marriage could be the Miller High Life marriage, while in comes the nasty-ass Miller Lite marriage offered to same-sex married couples.  Though maybe Justice Ginsburg was avoiding alcoholic beverages to keep things family friendly.  After all, this is marriage we're talking about, and the support of the stable family was a frequent topic of conversation over the two days.  So why not a soda parallel?  "Marriage" and "Diet Marriage" seems a lot easier to say off the cuff.  And let's be honest, much more of the American public would understand a soda reference than a milk one.  Or is talking about soda a political taboo right now after Bloomberg's failed soda ban.

No, Justice Ginsburg went with milk.  Traditional marriage defenders and fans of Freud rejoice, she picked milk!  Milk, of course!  Milk, as in breast milk, as in mother's milk, as in a mother and a father.  Gotcha, Ginsburg!  You've been tangled up in your own words, because the only milk that matters in marriage is the mother's milk, further support for the argument that children need a mother and a father.  Boom.  Seems you've been breasted, Justice.  But wait!  Could there be an argument for milk that would support gay marriage?  Milk that the gay crowd could get behind, huh?  Oh!  How about Harvey Milk, gay rights activist and the first openly gay man elected to public office in America?  (Also notorious Oreo fan.)  So the word choice doesn't mean subconscious support for one side or another after all.

If you think about it quickly, though, what Justice Ginsburg is proposing doesn't sound that bad.  For straight married couples, Whole Milk Marriage.  Gay couples, you get Skim Milk Marriage.  Sure, it's not as rich and creamy as Whole Milk Marriage, but it's a marriage alternative that won't raise your cholesterol and make you fat.  Sounds good to me!  All the health-conscious homosexuals should be lapping this up, right?  But think on it a little longer.  Cooking up a pop-over?  Hope you've got Whole Milk.  A nice rich cream sauce?  Skim's not gonna cut it.  And in the recipe book I've got for my ice cream maker, guess how many recipes call for skim milk.  Zero.  That's right, a Skim Milk Marriage is a marriage without ice cream, and a marriage without ice cream... Well, that's hardly a marriage at all.  At least, it's certainly not the kind of marriage I want.

And maybe Justice Ginsburg picked her milk metaphor knowing just how well it could be carried across to other types of milk and marriages.  It is a fact universally acknowledged that a tall, cold glass of chocolate milk is delicious.  And if we expand Justice Ginsburg's metaphor, Chocolate Milk Marriages have been a legal right since 1967's Loving v. Virginia.  And civil unions?  Justice Ginsburg would simply point to products like Lactaid and Silk.  Sure, they'll tell you a Milk Substitute Civil Union tastes just like the real deal... But everyone knows that's total bullshit.  There's something about that Whole Milk Marriage, and substitutes just don't cut it.

And speaking of Lactaid, there comes the final parallel of Milk and Marriage.  Plenty of people cut milk and dairy out of their diet entirely, or they seek out Lactaid-like alternatives, because they are lactose intolerant.  They can't drink milk.  Their stomachs turn, they get bloated and upset if they consume even the slightest quantity of milk, skim or whole.  And, let's face it, there are people out there who have the same reaction to gay marriage.  Except, here's where the parallel falls apart.  Because people who are lactose intolerant just cut milk from their own diets.  They don't try to go around stopping everyone else from drinking milk.

Not being able to digest milk, so you stop drinking it yourself?  That's lactose intolerant.  Not being able to digest the idea of gay marriage, so you work to stop gay people from getting married?  That's just intolerant.

So, while I raised my glass of crumb-filled 1% for Oreo's birthday, now I raise my glass of hope-filled whole milk that when the time comes I will be able to get Whole Milked Married.

Odd Jobs and Random Tasks

Following on yesterday's report, one reader provided an interesting essay on why some book-to-movie adaptations fall short of our hopes.  (Hint: It's got something to do with the "master" part of masterpiece.)  We'll see if Baz proves up to the test by making something Great this summer...  Another reaches further back into literary canon and provides another Fleetwood Macbeth quote, this from Duncan's ghost's monologue: "I know there's nothing to say.  Someone has taken my place."

As today's Report headline suggests, we're tackling the working world today.  (Sorry for those who thought we were discussing diminutive Bond villainsand their Austin Powers parody counterparts...)  Specifically, we're taking a behind the scenes look at 15 different jobs, from dominatrix to paramedic.  The stories these men and women at work tell provide interesting glimpses at what actually goes on in worlds we may not know about.  Trust me, it's worth pushing through the shocking disturbingness of the dominatrix profile to get to the rest, though hers is probably the only place you will hear "I can be in my dungeon for up to seven hours" today.  The Undertaker's perspective proves HBO's Six Feet Under did its research, while the five year unpaid intern suggests maybe something about the intern system is broken and/or illegal.  Plus, if you don't feel like reading, you can just check out the cute little graphic representations... Though in real life I've never encountered a cab driver who looks like Travis Bickle.

Finally from our continuing Coincidences series, an extended story (to make up for a short report) about a college interview:

Georgetown was the first of my college interviews. I remember feeling incredibly nervous as I pulled up to the house of my alumni interviewer, a local judge who lived in the next town over. I was wearing a newly acquired navy suit skirt (the first time I actually had use for such an item of clothing) and uncomfortable grown- up shoes. I rang the doorbell, hesitantly. A dog started barking wildly from inside.

"Come on in", I hear, " I just need to put the dog away." As I open the front door, I see the alum interviewer struggling to gate off the kitchen in order to keep some large animal inside.

"Oh, that's fine, I don't mind. I love dogs. We have a brown-and-white Brittany Spaniel at home named Molly."

The interviewer stopped trying to wrestle with the dog. He looked a little taken by surprise. I took one step closer, peered  in the kitchen, and saw none other than a brown-and-white Brittany Spaniel.

"Her name's Molly", he said.

It's an odd world!  It's also Nathan Fillion's birthday!  If you don't know who that is, maybe you've seen him at the gym?  No, he doesn't go to the gym. He's just naturally like that.

For the Record Books

I had been sort of planning to continue March Madness tournament coverage this week, but after Friday's embarrassing rout of Georgetown, I'm gonna keep quiet on that topic for a while longer.

Instead, let's talk about adaptation.  Not the Charlie Kaufman film that features a rare good performance from Nicholas Cage.  (For more Nicholas Cage performances, try Nicholas Cage Roulette - "C'mon, Kick-Ass, c'mon Kick-Ass. Damn! Face-Off!")  The practice of adaptation, while often criticized as a sign of creative stagnation, is nothing new in the storytelling world.  Book to movie, comic book to movie, movie to novel based on the motion picture, book to musical to questionably cast movie musical, book to movie to video game, video game to cartoon series, comic book to cartoon series to video game to more modern video game... There is no shortage of examples for all of these, but there is a notable exception to the world of adaptation: The record-to-book or film divide really hasn't been crossed.

Sure, there's Fantasia and sequel, which provided beautiful depictions of classical compositions and an iconic Mickey image, but that's the only feature-length film example I can think of.  In terms of shorter pieces, there's Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf," originally released as song-and-book to teach kids the parts of the orchestra, and since adapted into films.  In that same spirit, pseudonymous author Lemony Snicket has created the song-and-book combination "The Composer Is Dead," which seems to be a more interesting and humorous teaching tool.

Luckily, the Internet is working hard to rectify this situation.  First, artist Christophe Gowans has developed a series of book covers interpreting whatfamous albums would have been had they been released as books.  If the covers alone weren't entertaining enough, he's written up small descriptions of what each book would be.  Highlights include the Queen murder mysteries, Beach Boys board book, and a classic aviation safety booklet.

In the other direction is the Coudal Partners produced "Booking Bands" project, combining famous books with famous bands.  The full list merits thorough giggle-filled examination, and stands out as a piece of collaborative wordplay genius.  But some of my favorites include "Abba Karenina," "Anne of Al Green Gables," "A Christmas Carol Channing," "Neutral Milk Hotel New Hampshire," "Fleetwood Macbeth," and "The Five Village People You Meet In Heaven."  (Should that last one happen in real life, you're probably actually in some sort of Hell.)  Bonus Points for anyone who can produce some sample lyrics from some of these bands...

And finally, on a more serious note: the 33 1/3 series is a series of books written about albums.  I've only read one of these books, in which The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle writes brilliantly on Black Sabbath's Master of Reality.  Still there are many on the list I hope to one day check out.  Particularly If You're Feeling Sinister, Tusk, and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.

That's plenty for today... Tomorrow we'll talk jobs and share a few more coincidences.  

As Fleetwood Macbeth would say, "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow."