Clever magazine article titles that play on words and phrases. A sign at the museum at Dumbarton Oaks, "Cross References," above a Christian cross. (Jesus, is anything sacred, immune to such picnic treatment?) Something that involves taking a phrase we all seem to know, like 'happy days,' and making it 'happy daze,' that sort of thing, a pun. And, not always in good taste. I guess it exercises the brain like a cross word puzzle, and so, dumbed down as we are, we click on it. 'Rapper' could show up as 'Wrapper,' nights as knights, but anything, any phrase, 'ham and eggs,' let's say, is fair game. Hot dogs. Tits and ass, that could show up as anything that rhymes with it, say, brits and brass, fits and class... it's all so subliminal, sort of, not really, that we enjoy the brain connection. And if someone should come up with something a bit original, oh, it will be copied in this cheesy way. I don't want to think that a good song Rainy Night in Soho will ever be popular enough to suffer receiving the treatment. And sometimes one wishes that more pithy statements, like Emily Dickinson's 'an admiring bog,' got a little more play, because within the words, a lesson, a point that gets across.

What does this show us? Where does this lead our minds? Sometimes well, but not always.

I think it's a bit of a selfish attitude. The appropriation of one thing, letting that show up as shorthand. We never have to read anything. We just make references to it, to show we're smart. "islands in the stream.' never mind hemingway, and all the work he put into a late novel.

And what does it amount to? Basically, I think, a disbelief, a disavowal, a repudiation, really, of... genius. Yes, this is one big way we put down genius. One more way to say, 'oh, god, he's singing in that voice again.' One more way to say Mozart is this, Beethoven is that, MacGowan is this, Kerouac is that. Dante, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Jefferson...who knows. Masked behind our appropriations of words and phrases, a dismissal. Behind the neat header, a misuse, a smirk at something once said cleanly and purely.

So who do we take to be 'genius' these days? Steve Jobs. I'm sorry, I know we want to think of people as geniuses, that it might help our own business projects, but, really? Yes, he built a better phone, as one builds a better toaster. He, and Bill Gates, and many others, changed the economy, and streamlined, but, the word genius is better preserved, I think, for other folks. Mozart. Maybe Lincoln. Beethoven. Modern culture has gotten quite a bit off as far as recognizing real genius, as much as it would insist that it is vigilant.

The restaurant business, being tough, is, I think, one clear example of what genius must go through. That is my opinion. To be a genius is very demanding. It has odd hours, completely different viewpoints. It is a completely odd life.

And us, now, none of us are all that kind to the geniuses in our ranks and in ourselves. Act a little different, a little funny? March to your own drummer? Guess what kids, you're bound for rejection.