The first six cards of ‘I Grog and its alternatives’ are concerned with names and naming. Owen Land’s name changes are the first obstacle to an engagement with his films. It seems somehow a joke, an incongruity, something less than authentic, but in these first sentences, he is standing up for the changed name, perhaps as a punk used to have a moniker – Polystyrene, Sensible, Lux, Poison Ivy, to deconstruct the family history of The Law, but maybe it is something a little more subtle. The first six jokes set up the way to meet ‘Owen Land’ away from ‘George Landow’

These jokes are set in the 18^th century colonisation of America, its religion, social elite and slave trade, the history of names for things, groups of people, disease and wildlife. He questions the fatalistic emergence of etymology. What if sailors drank pee rather than grog, elite society men attended cocktail parties wearing foreskins rather than tuxedos and the guppy fish were a crab or bear?  How might we live today?

Following this are two religious’ jokes at the expense of Christian sects that fled Europe to America in the 18^th Century, with a Yiddish slant, Landow himself of conservative Jewish upbringing. He became a Christian convert with interests in Gnosticism, Messianic Judaism, Christian Fundamentalism, Scientology, Hinduism, Buddhism and finally as P.Adams Sitney (2011) wrote “his own fusion of Christianity and Tantra.”

THE FIRST SIX JOKES

1 Grog got its name because the admiral who first served it to sailors wore a grogram coat. What if he had worn a pea coat?

2 The guppy got its name from R.J.L. Guppy, who introduced it to England from the West Indies. What if his name had been Byrd, Crabb, Bear, Lyons or Katz?

3 The tuxedo got its name from the town where it was popularized, Tuxedo Park, NY. What if it had been popularized in Fawnskin, CA?

4 [?] Mennonites got their name from the first name of their founder, Menno Simons. What if his name had been Paris Simons?

5. The Amish got their name from the surname of their leader, Jacob Ammann. What if his name had been Jacob Nebel?

6. Lime disease was named after the town of Lime, CT, where it was discovered. What if it had been discovered in Tombstone, AZ?

Card 1. We are “pissed as a newt”, when inebriated and go out for a night “on the piss” in the UK and in Australia, but are angry, or “pissed at someone”, in USA English.

Admiral Edward Vernon had the idea to water down the rum rations for his sailors in 1740 during manoeuvres in the West Indies, it seems to reduce the severity of yellow fever casualties amongst his men, which made them pissed. They called the drink ‘grog’ after the clothes Vernon wore. He was known to parade on deck in his Grogram coat. Grogram was a corded fabric with prominent transverse ribs, this kind of material lent itself to the peculiar lustre of ‘moire’ patterning when pressed.  

A year before, in 1739, Vernon and his fully-proofed crew captured Porto Bello, Panama from Spanish colonial possession. This is a curious link, as Land became obsessed with palindromes, citing:

A man, a plan, a canal, Panama

Card 2. R. J. L. Guppy was a naturalist, married to the daughter of a plantation and slave-owner on Trinidad, to descendants of French aristocrats who fled the French Revolution guillotine. He discovered the guppy fish in Trinidad and introduced it to the UK. This fish is used as a modal organism for experiments in fish genetics because of its short lifecycle and ease of breeding, producing two generations per year. They are used in experiments of genetic drift over many generations and the effects of in breeding, also in behavioural studies, sexual selection and evolution. The history of this fish sounds terrible, a reminder of the horrors of colonialism.

Land’s first alternative is ‘Byrd’. The Byrds were folk rockers, but William Byrd (16^th Century) was an English Renaissance composer who moved from Anglican to Roman Catholic religion.

My favourite alternative here is ‘Crabb’. Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb was an alcoholic navy frogman who vanished during a reconnaissance mission for the MI6 in 1956. He was inspecting the screw of a soviet cruiser berthed at Portsmouth. A body was found decapitated and handless 14 months later, but no proof was ascertained. The story and surrounding conspiracy made news headlines for years. ‘Buster’ Crabb was the eponym of the American two-time Olympic swimmer and screen actor, Buster Crabbe, playing ‘Tarzan’, ‘Flash Gordon’ and ‘Buck Rogers’.

To be continued…

P.Adams Sitney (2011) Passages: Owen Land. Art Forum [Nov 2011]. Online at:

https://www.artforum.com/print/201109/owen-land-29195 [last accessed 2/2/2022]