Sometimes, it's helpful to be the dumbest guy in the Zoom | MARK HUGHES COBB

Things I shouldn't like:

• Babies crying and screaming. Maybe because I don't have to deal with 'em full time, but I find the sound energizing, even relaxing, depending on day, mood and location.

• Books I've accidentally dropped into water, bloating them out of shape and into something like a diseased mushroom with crispy, hard-to-turn thin-sliced leaflets.

• Being the only one awake. That's carved from all day long being the catcher in the rye. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? I may as well. I'm up.

• Teal and turquoise. Sure, I'm a dude, and thus supposed to only think in black and white, and maybe red, but what strikes you, strikes you. I may be superstitious because Ocean Pacific was hot when I was a kid ― and thus fit and invulnerable ― but I wore a teal-turquoise OP shirt that got whistled at more than thrice. Of course it coulda been the guy inside the shirt, but let's be real: Sometimes you have to buy your dazzle.

• Antiheroes. Who's the real heart of the "Star Wars" universe: a saintly whine-boy dirt-farmer who believes all the religious hoopla heaped on him, despite that getting everyone he loves murdered, or the scruffy nerf-herder who shoots first, asks questions never? The billionaire dark knight who's impossible to buy for, as all he wants for Christmas is vengeance and parents, or the god-like boy scout who, sure, lost an entire planet -- that he didn't live on long enough to recall -- but was raised by kindly farmers which, stop whining Clark, makes them HIS ACTUAL FAMILY? Kinda like the true spark of "The Princess Bride" is neither Wesley nor Buttercup, but the damaged sword-wizard who spent his life questing to kill the six-fingered man who murdered his father, Domingo Montoya. Saintly is so uncanny valley. Most of us are neither saints nor sinners, but complex grab-bags of neuroses, needs, shortcomings, burdens, reflexes, dad jokes, and grape jelly.

• Being the dumbest guy in the room.

That happens more often than I'd like in this University of Alabama town. It's an opportunity to learn, is how I massage my ego as I realize I'm utterly unprepared to interview two world-class musicians who know Leonard Bernstein as Lenny, and Samuel Barber as Sam.

You're forgiven if, like me, you were thinking Kravitz and Spade. Or "... and Squiggy" and Malone. Or "...and Carl" from "The Simpsons," with Sam who croons "As Time Goes By."

Luckily, as so often happens, the smartest guys in the Zoom were not just erudite, worldly and accomplished, but also funny. Normal, for a given value of that term. Excellent communicators.

Not just better at their jobs than most, but probably, let's face it, better at most things than most folks.

Back when I first started with The Tuscaloosa News (insert concentric spiral, smoke and mirrors, or Wells-ian steampunk time-travel jalopy here), our Sunday paper rolled into a yule log fat as that of our flagship, The New York Times. We had multiple features sections to fill, including one solely devoted to the arts.

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In addition to a full-time crew of roughly 50, we ran words by contributors, stringers, columnists and reviewers. Atop that pyramid was Dr. Frederic Goossen, a composer and professor in the UA School of Music for more than 25 years, teaching composition and theory, and serving as director of graduate studies. His column ran in our arts section for more than four decades.

I still don't feel worthy of the night I saw him at The Globe Restaurant, and called him, of course Dr. Goossen, on which he told me "Mark, for goodness' sake, you've known me 20 years. Just call me Fred!"

Here's how Fred wrote, in his last column for us, June 14, 1998:

“A society without art would be a society of slugs. Who would wish to join them? … Art is one of the profoundest sustaining forces in life, whose rewards amply repay any effort. Art repays the open mind, the attentive eye and ear, the committed spirit. Its riches are inexhaustible, awaiting only the engaged celebrant to reveal themselves. Place yourself among the celebrants.”

My column that week went something like derpy-derp duh-huh Spice Girls autotune Phantom Menace.

Talking with conductor-flutist Ransom Wilson and violinist Glenn Dicterow the other day, for a story promoting Thursday's Huxford Symphony Orchestra concert, felt somewhat familiar as I've interviewed Dr. ... Ransom ... before, as I have his brother Evan, a renowned painter, and Sam, his brother who thoroughly and loving restored the historic Old Center Church. In 2022, I undertook the challenge of writing a tribute on the passing of their father, Charlie Wilson, an entrepreneur and civic leader.

Though each of the Wilson offspring has distinguished themselves — their dad described them as like "six only children" — through the arts, education and other fields, Evan and Ransom, the two eldest, sound the most alike to me, a comforting familiarity.

For Mr. Dicterow ― I'll work up to Glenn in a few years ― I started with an obvious question, one of my magic techniques for warming up: Do you pronounce your name like E.L. Doctorow, except with an "ii" sound?

Score. Not only was that close enough for rock 'n' roll, but Dicterow had actually met the famed writer of "Ragtime," "Billy Bathgate" and "The March," several of whose novels and short stories were adapted to stage and screen. Back when the violinist and concertmaster was living in New Rochelle, the novelist lived nearby.

"One day ― I knew what he looked like of course ― I was out taking a walk, and we passed each other. All of a sudden, we both spun around at the same time: 'Dicterow'? 'Docterow'?"

I should have asked if this was before or after David Letterman's "Uma/Oprah" bomb at the 1995 Oscars, but Dicterow-Docterow works better as shtick, in any case.

What I forget to remember? Cool people are mostly cool all the way down.

Mark Hughes Cobb is the editor of Tusk. Reach him at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Excellence in one's field doesn't limit the best | MARK HUGHES COBB