Enough with the Michael Jackson already! Let’s talk about a subject we can really sink our teeth into: Mike Tyson.
A recent interview with Mike after his crushing loss to journeyman boxer Kevin McBride gives me the chance to introduce a new category to readers of The Tattered Coat, one that is sure to please our crack team of commenting (and cunning) linguists:
As a “Parse This” participant, your job is to tease out, from the offered quotation, the subtle shades of meaning that make it sublime.* Or, to put it another way, to explain to us what the hell it is really saying.
Because this is our first “Parse This” Event, I’m offering five Tyson quotes for the price of one. I should note that quote #3 led to the creation of this category, and most rewards close analysis. The others may be considered background (a few of them require no explication), but feel free to parse as many as you wish.
Ready? Here we go.
1. “I want to throw down your kid and stomp on his testicles, and then you will know what it is like to experience waking up everyday as me. And only then will you feel my pain.”
– Mike Tyson, undated
2. “I’m just a dark guy from a den of iniquity. A dark shadowy figure from the bowels of iniquity. I wish I could be Mike who gets an endorsement deal. But you can’t make a lie and a truth go together. This country wasn’t built on moral fiber. This country was built on rape, slavery, murder, degradation and affiliation with crime.”
– Mike Tyson, undated
3. “This is a weird feeling in my life I have to deal with, not being a violent man anymore when my whole life’s reputation was built on being extremely violent. I just don’t know how to deal with that right now. I don’t even go to strip clubs no more. I don’t know who I am sometimes, but I am not the guy I used to be. I’m not an angel or anything. I’m still lascivious, periodically. I’m just looking for some balance in my life.”
– Mike Tyson, June 11, 2005
4. “You’re smart too late and old too soon. I just got caught up in that suction cup. I feel like Rip Van Winkle right now.”
– Mike Tyson, June 11, 2005
5. “I guess I’m gonna fade into Bolivian.”
– Mike Tyson, undated
* For the purposes of this Event, we will take our definition of the Sublime from the Grove Online Dictionary of Art, which defines it (in part) as that which is “vast, irregular, [and] obscure.”
4 Comments on "Parse This: Mike Tyson"
Mark:
When you can’t even enjoy violent lust for strippers, it’s time to hang them up.
publicorgtheory:
1. ” It’s not a good idea for your children to sleep in my bed.”
2. Dunno. Add an acoustic guitar and a nasal twang and you’re channeling classic Dylan.
3. Joshu (A.D. 778-897) was a famous Chinese Zen Master who lived in Joshu, the province from which he took his name. One day a troubled monk approached him, intending to ask the Master for guidance. A dog walked by. The monk asked Joshu, “Has that dog a Buddha-nature or not?” The monk had barely completed his question when Joshu shouted: “MU!”
4. Second verse of the aforementioned Dylan song.
5. I’m moving on to cockfights in La Paz. As a contestant.
Suzy Shedd:
1) Needs no translation, except that the “my pain” being felt is the PAIN I’M CAUSING, not “the existential pain of living in an imperfect and essentially unjust world.”
2) With all due respect to publicorgtheory, I think this is rap, not Dylan, though it needs a refrain or an echo or something. The “founding of our country” section is from the NSA Manual, “Interrogation, American Style.”
3) “Look, I’m a brain-damaged guy trying to say out of prison so this is what I’m supposed to say…is that barbecue sauce on your ear?”
4) “I should have quit while I was behind.”
5) “MU!”
Mikhail:
1.”To understand the pain that is my life, imagine me stomping on your kid’s testicles every morning, day in, day out. I am the modern Sysyphus.”
2. “I’m a yankee doodle dandy. A yankee doodle do or die!”
3. “I’m working on myself right now — trying to be the best Mike I can be.”
4. “Washington Iriving was a great American author. His tales of a mythologized American experience remind us that hindsight is 20-20 and that if you spit into a suction cup it sticks much better.”
5. “I am compelled to move to Bolivia and live my life in quiet solitude on a coffee plantation.”
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