A Dearth of Leslies

With the passing of Leslie Nielsen (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/movies/05scott.html) I am now alone. That’s an exaggeration of course. But how many guys do you know named Leslie? I’m probably it. Of course, if you’re reading this from England you’ll say that you know plenty of us. But I live here in the US where men are men and women are Leslies. Or they’re Lesleys.  (And no, I have no idea how to pluralize Leslie or Lesley correctly so I’m just tossing on an S and hoping I’m right. Feel free to correct me.) And if you're a Brit you also make all the Leslies into Lezlies. Actually, you say that z so long it deserves an extra z (or zed): Lezzlie. I've always preferred hearing Leslie like Wesley (a name some people choose to hear when I give them my full first name--I rarely correct them). Anyway...

I liked Nielsen not only because he made me, (somehow literally forced me), to laugh in spite of myself at some very silly movies like Airplane, but also because he was the one male Leslie that most people had heard about. I liked that he existed. He no longer does so I’m just left to be the un-famous oddity I already was but now without a helpful referent.

Now, most people call me Les. It’s much easier. I know of no female Leslies or Lesleys calling themselves Les. Guys are Leses. (No, I don’t know how to pluralize the shortened version of myself either.) But, of course, when I meet someone and tell them that my name is Les they look at me for a second. I watch them calculate. They wonder if I’ve said the word yes. And that momentarily confuses them. And then I watch the light click on in their face, oh, yes, Les, of course, that old name from the 1950’s or some era like that. How odd that you have this name. (Yes, I see all that in their face. I do a bit of waiting when I meet people.) And this is ok. It really is fine with me. What it not so great is when young people (now officially anyone under 30) write my name. They ALL add an S. Every one of them want to make me Less than I currently am. I’m already 5’7” with skinny wrists and freakishly small feet (but, thankfully, with normal-sized hands) and ever Lessening hair. Please don’t make me an adjective—especially that one, thanks.

I used to have Les Paul to help me out but he died on me too, just last year (http://www.lespaulonline.com/).  He was great. He used to play every week at the Iridium in New York, right up until his death. Now that was a major Les. Oh to be as great as that Les. Oh well…

I recently learned from my mother that if she had it to do over she’d have made my middle name Preston which was my grandfather’s middle name. She gave me my father’s name, Leslie William Gilbert. Growing up, I sometimes thought about going by William. But this is America where everything gets cut so I’d either be a Bill Gilbert or a Billy Gilbert. And these would be destined to become BilGil or Billy Gilly. I wanted to avoid those. And I didn’t know about the Liam option. But I grew up in the Midwest where I’d have probably been beaten daily for being a Liam. Being a Leslie was already tough enough thank you. But Preston would have been pretty good I must admit. Though that too would have been shortened to Press. So I’d still have that pause from people, especially at parties: Hi I’m Press. They’d calculate—did he just say Yes? Oh, now I got it “Hello Les, nice to meet you”.

So what do I do, you might ask, with my name on a regular basis? What do I do when I order a café au lait and I have to wait? (Isn’t it cool how lait and wait nearly rhyme? Are you with me?) Well, I admit—this name has made me creative. There is no rule that one must use their legal name when waiting for fancy drinks or food to go. I often make up names that have lots of syllables—names that are much more fun than my given one. My favorite is Fernando. If you say it with gusto, everyone smiles. And the prettier the girl behind the counter the more gusto I give it (I roll the r a little for the really beautiful ones and try not to laugh as I do so). If they smile knowingly, I tip them well. If they write it down with no expression, well, they get a quarter or two. 

Here it is; my first blog post

I've resisted entering this particular fray for quite a while becuase there are so many opinions, words, and thoughts floating around on this very big soap box, why should I add my hot air? Well, I've come to notice that reasonable people (of which I hope I'm one) have very little voice among all the vitriol, polarization and unreasonableness that permeates the air and the media including and especially the Internet.

As Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert have grown in popularity I've thought that they could be the spark of reason in our country. And I believe, to some degree, they are. They're smarter and more entertaining than I am so they reach many people with their nationally televised shows and on their media rich websites than I ever will on this little blog and I'm happy about that. But not everyone watches these geniuses eventhough I happen to think that everyone should. And I hope for a large turnout for their rallies this October 30th in Washington. I plan to be there. But as much as I love these guys, they do lean a little further left than I do. They (Colbert in particular) are also very tough on religion and I admit that I cringe just a little when the jokes flow about faith. I'm a Christian. I think of myself as a moderate, non-fundamentalist who believes in the saving, healing power of Christ. I have seen lives changed for the better by the Christian faith. But my fundamentalist brethren seem to genuinely hate certain groups of people and they are quite loud about it so I can hardly blame people for thinking that most of us believers are like that. (For the record, we really aren't.)

So, while I find those two smarties on my TV to be the current lonely outposts of political reason in our country there appears to be a gap that I'd like to help fill; the gap of reason and faith (not in the giant, philosophical sense of the old faith versus reason debate, but in the sense of being politically reasonable or generally centrist and holding to a certain faith). I'd like to be one voice on the topic and would love to hear from others about it as well.

I'll write in this blog on an irregular basis. I'll forget to post things for periods and other times I'll post too often. I'll talk about all sorts of stuff that seems unrelated but I'll try to keep it to the contrarian theme of reasonableness in a very unreasonable world. And just so you don't think this will all be tepid lecturing from just another guy on the web, here are some of the things I'm thinking about and hope to discuss in the near future:

- Moderate Muslims SHOULD build a center near ground zero if only to prove to Islamophobes that there are such people as non-violent, productive Muslims who love this country.

- Our country's polarization is a sad sign of a lack of creativity in America. Honestly, big corporations (yes, I used the C word) are not evil. Some people who lead them are stupid children who ride them into the ground and try to get away with whatever they can. But big companies employ many of us. Sadly, they seem to have become less innovative and they foolishly think that consultants from large consulting companies should tell them what to do (wrong, wrong, wrong).

- Social media is really cool and wonderful but can also be very creepy at times. I believe that, like any tool, it can be used for good, bad or silliness.

- One of the best shows on TV was The West Wing where it was said several times that education is the silver bullet for our country's ills. They were right.

So. I hope you will drop in on occasion and read my stuff and reply. I welcome debate but don't welcome nastiness. There's enough of that and plenty of other sites and talk radio shows where you can display your ugliness. Let's try to stay above that here.


Last item: The name of the blog comes from a quote from Pindar which says "O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible". Unlike Mr. Pindar, I do aspire to immortal life but if I were to try to gain immortality by my actions I would surely miss it entirely and I'd also miss out on this amazing world we live in. So, my hope is to daily attempt to exhaust the limits of what is possible. I also hope that this forum can help do exactly that.
All the best,
Les.