Words Cannot Describe It

"Words can't describe how I'm feeling." Really? Well if you're not Pablo Picasso, you'd better find some words or we'll never know what the hell is going on. How did we get to the point where when the largest events happen, great or tragic, we react with such appreciative amazement when someone says, "Words can't describe what I saw"? No words at all for it, eh? Wow, that must have been something else... We shouldn't appreciate that, we should be infuriated.

This empty, canned, meaningless phrase has suddenly become our paramount superlative. When seemingly nothing is left, people default to "can't describe it." Is it that we can't or that we won't? It's either pathetic lack of vocabulary, i.e. complete idiocy, or sheer laziness. "Why should I think of what to say? You figure it out."

People even use it in romantic terms. "Words cannot express what I'm feeling." But words just expressed that you're a verbally impotent, slack moron.

I'm going to apply for a job at Hallmark, and on my first day on the job I'm going to blow everyone's minds by creating the quintessential, universal, unstoppable predator of greeting cards, and then I'll leave them to ponder my greatness. Upon opening my card, it will read: "Words cannot describe what I'm feeling." Done. I'm out.

Mine will be the greatest selling greeting card of all time because the people who are shopping for greeting cards already have no ability to think/say/speak/write for themselves or are too lazy to even give it a shot, and they are so enamored with the "beyond words" poetic illusion which rationalizes their ineptitude that they'll scoop up my card to perpetuate the circle-of-ignorance that is strangling our country.

The typical receiver of such hogwash will close the card, hold it up against his/her chest as a tear falls away from under eye and think to themselves, "I have no real idea what that means. But at least he/she spent $2 and licked an envelope."

(Yes, I anticipate receiving no birthday cards this year now.)

With an anniversary of 9/11 coming up, I know once again I'm going to be watching important, reverent documentaries full of videotaped on-the-street interviews with people, eyewitnesses to history, who will be giving the ol' "words can't describe it" to the historic record. I would rather hear someone say, "Thing go boom," or, "I'll get back to you on that" than, "Words couldn't describe it."

Many of you know that I was a high school English teacher for several years. For some of those years I taught English as a Second Language. I realize now that after teaching some of the initial basics, "yes, no, stop, go, please, thank you, my name is..." I should have taught "Words can't describe it." It's called assimilation.

Beyond that, I spent four years of evenings teaching the Verbal half of SAT prep classes in the South Bay. Why was I wasting my time when the key to brilliance and depth would soon become "Word cannot describe what I'm thinking"?

I've hit the wall. Words cannot describe my frustration.

They Call Me Steely McBeam

If I told you that my nickname in college was "Steely McBeam," then you'd assume that I had a pretty interesting and fulfilling dating life. If I told you that my SAG professional screen name was "Steely McBeam," you'd think that I was doing fairly well in my porn career, and you'd do a Google image search as soon as you got to a computer in private.

Though I do now plan to slyly incorporate the name Steely McBeam into my most intimate conversations with the opposite sex, I will not be able to claim sole ownership of it. The Pittsburgh Steelers have introduced a new mascot, a yellow skinned, five o'clock shadowed, hard hat and flannel shirt wearing steel worker recently named by a contest winner as Steely McBeam.

The idea of a mascot has been the subject of controversy amongst Steelers fans for their entire 75 year history, as divisive there as the concept of "Reagan Democrats." Before McBeam, the Steelers had set themselves apart as a team of stark simplicity, a simple two color uniform scheme with the iconic U.S. Steel Corp. logo placed on only one side of the helmets, the other side staying fully black. Who needs all the decorations? (See the Buffalo Bills who add another stripe or stroke somewhere on the uni every year to no avail.) Helmets are for hitting the other guy in the head. There were never cheerleaders, and the previous attempt at mascotting the club in the 80's was run out of town on a barge down the Ohio. Rumor has it it's calling bingo games at a retirement home outside Louisville.

This year, to highlight the organization's 75th anniversary, they brought the mascot idea back. Kids may respond to it, as they do Barney and Weird Al Yankovich, but we adult fans are very uncomfortable with the change. Steeler football has always been about football, no playful distractions beyond Bill Cowher's domineering chinbone or spit shower of fury. Steeler Nation is the largest nationwide fan base in the NFL, often enough to make away games feel like home games. Kids love the Steelers because they dominate. They win. They play hard and look tough. They are among the few things in pop culture that have not gone cartoony or given into the infantilization of the modern era in which everything has to bring us back "to our childhoods" as if American adults are afraid to ever feel more than arm's length away from the security blankets of our toddler years or the musical mobile above our cribs.

The defenders say, "Kids like it." But I say kids need to learn to admire things that are purely for grown ups on a grown up level. They go to church and they have to sit there and shut up. No giant, stuffed smiling Jesus needed to appease them. They learn respect. They have to go to school and shut up and learn. Teachers don't put on hand puppets and squeak like Pee Wee Herman to hold their attention. (The ones that do should be shot.) They don't need to have professional football angled towards them like a Kool Aid commercial. The game is awesome enough, spectacle enough. The players are amazing enough. Look at them, those mighty Steelers, and learn to emulate their relentless, dominating, enemy crushing ways.

My fear is that kids will be asking for a Steel McBeam doll for Christmas when they should be asking for helmets and cleats. When I was a boy, every year I begged my parents to buy me a Pittsburgh Steelers uniform for Christmas. I used to play one-on-one football with a kid down the street named Tim. Much to my horror one year on the day after Christmas, he showed up to play wearing an entire Miami Dolphins uniform, the home whites in kids size, head to toe, helmet and all. He couldn't have been more pleased with himself. His father was the neighborhood dentist. All of us kids' crooked teeth had paid for that uni. And there I was, in my many layers of sweatshirts, thermal underwear and dungarees, unsafe with no head gear at all but for my red and blue hand-me-down stocking cap. But I won that day, cleverly taking advantage of the way his slightly large helmet limited his peripheral vision. I won with speed and cunning and flat out muscle. I won the Steelers way, pretty boy. And Timmy's uniform got filthy, and he got in trouble.

The following Christmas, I got a set of Steelers pajamas, gold pants and a white pullover with a Steelers helmet on the chest. Believe me, I seriously considered wearing it a top my layers of sweatshirts and pants the next day. But fate helped me make the better decision not to so as to avoid the lifetime of derision that surely would have followed that choice.

Forget the mascot, Steely McBeam, and his jaundiced skin and bibbed overalls. Why is he wearing ski pants? And Steelers fans, please stop referring to him as a coal miner. That would make no sense whatsoever. Plus, he has no lamp on his helmet and still has a glimmer of hope in his eyes as if life has not yet completely destroyed him, so he can't be a coal miner (or a lonely writer of blogs).

Well, it could be worse. We could have what the Baltimore Ravens have: > See Ravens Pride.