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“AXE ME NO QUESTIONS… AND I WON’T END YOUR LIFE!” |
Look… I’m sick as a dog so this is gonna be brief and not very funny. Really. Why? Because I’m sick as a dog! Pay attention. By the way, (funny seeing it all written out like that isn’t it? Refreshing isn’t it? No? Well then, go to hell.) Anyway… Language can be useful… or not.  I personally am not of the “language police” persuasion. I don’t believe language needs to be static or rigid in everyday use. In fact, it can be downright, good old-fashioned child-like fun to just mess around with words for the heck of it… in informal situations. In other words… when it really isn’t important. When there’s nothing riding on it. When it’s just between friends. When does it matter? At work. In business. Committing any of the countless transactions we engage in daily at stores and restaurants, government agencies. You when it also matters? When you’re an actor onstage reciting or singing lines written by someone else. Some time ago I attended a touring production of Rice and Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” perhaps the greatest humanist treatment of the story of Christ ever written. (Or not, depending on  whether or not you hate that sort of thing.)The actor portraying Pontius Pilate, having the privilege of singing multi-award winning lyrical maestro Tim Rice’s words, chose, strangely (and in violation of stage craft ethics) to interpret Pilate as some sort of raving effeminate stereotype and to change the words in the song “Pilate’s Dream” from “I asked them to say what had happened…” to “I AXED them…” That’s right. A grown man purporting to be a professional actor singing words by an English lyricist actually said “AXED” when the word the script called for was “ASKED”. Now at first, neither I, nor my friend Deb Shaw nor anyone else in the theatre that night could believe what we were hearing. With an almost audible SNAP! an electric buzz of low key indignation and hostility thrummed in the air. Surely this was a mistake. Surely that a**hole up there didn’t just reduce the lyrics of Tim Rice to the level of Ebonics (which exists on a linguistic continuum somewhere between Farting Infant and Retarded Five Year Old). But then it happened. The next line “I asked again…” was coming up and then it arrived. “I AXED again…” sang the a**hole. And that was when I felt it for the first time, that rarest of Canadian cultural phenomena: A palpable, seething, unifying hatred from pretty much every civilized decent, docile person in the room. For a brief moment I found myself looking about for an anachronistic fire axe behind glass somewhere. I didn’t see one. But I’m fairly convinced that I did see a lot of other people looking for the same thing. Lucky for a**hole, I guess. Had there been one I could readily have envisioned him getting AXED in the head, repeatedly. (It might even have been justifiable homicide given the way that TMZ/American Idol-era cast of “Look Ma! It’s my moment to SHINE!” wannabes MURDERED JCS!) And speaking of murdering the language…  Can somebody PLEASE reverse the tide of linguistic obscenity that has been assaulting me at every McDonald’s, Tim Horton’s, Wendy’s or other fast food outlet? If I have to stand in line and hear someone yell “Can I help who’s next?” once more I may go looking for that AXE. The first time I heard this particular brutalization, I was genuinely perplexed. I looked around trying to see who they were yelling at, to see who it was that was somehow blaming them for the order of the line. Today I was at the Pharmacy. “Can I help who’s next?” Came the cry. Inside me the reply boiled up like a volcano of rage. “No! You can’t ‘help who’s next’. Line order is BEYOND the scope of your powers. But you know who you can help? ME! I’M NEXT! Now gibbe by damb zinus bedication and ged be oudda here before I hit you widd an AXE! |
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