NEW YEAR’S EVE IN THE JUG
When I came home for
Christmas break during my senior year in college, I knew it was my last
Christmas break ever—after this, I was officially a grown up, forever. I made a
real effort to call as many of my old high school friends as I could and
planned for one final adolescent winter blow-out. It was going to be the stuff
of legends.
As it happened, virtually all
of my old high school friends were out of town, visiting their girl friends,
hitting the ski slopes, or too broke to do much of anything. In the end I
managed to get hold of Zack, who had been the other worthless teenage temp at
the Passaic County I.D. Bureau when I’d spent a summer there, filing finger
prints and photographing autopsies. Zack was surprised to hear from me, since
we barely exchanged a word the entire summer.
It turned out that he had gone
back to work at the I.D. Bureau after graduation and was now, he said, in
charge of the drunk tank. “You should stop by,” he said. “The drunks don’t do
Irish ballads any more. They do, like, show
tunes.” Number One on the Drunk Tank
hit parade at the moment: “The Impossible Dream.” This did not seem to me like
a good reason to stop by the drunk tank. Quite the
contrary, in fact, and I said as much. Well, Zack said, in any case there was
going to be quite a blow out at the I.D. Bureau on New Year’s Eve and I was
welcome to stop by (with a bottle of the bubbly) if I were so inclined. I said
I’d try to make it at some point during the night’s festivities.
As New Year’s Eve approached,
the I. D. Bureau began to sound like a distinct possibility. I was not being
overwhelmed with party invitations. Humiliatingly, my parents were getting more invitations than I was. It got to the
point where I checked the TV guide. Channel 11 was ringing in the New Year with
“They Saved Hitler’s Brain.” I gave up and went to the supermarket to stock up
on corn chips. Me, corn chips, and Hitler’s brain.
Hello, 1976!
And there, among the corn
chips, was my cousin Low-Low. He had roughly 500 pounds of chips in his cart.
“Comin’ to the party?” he asked.
“No,” I said. I had long ago
learned that there was no point in keeping my options open when Low-Low was
involved.
“It’s at the D’Amato’s house
on
“And you’re picking up the
snacks for the party?”
Low-Low looked puzzled. “I’m
just doing the Wednesday shoppin’.”
“Ah,” I said. “So what time
does the party get rolling?”
“Nine?” said Low-Low.
Question mark and all, it sounded better than “They Saved Hitler’s Brain.”
And yet it wasn’t. I know
this for a fact, because the
I had not seen Janine in
nearly ten years. When I was 12, she’d been the spooky beatnik girlfriend of
Calvano’s older brother Duff. It hadn’t occurred to me at the time that she was
closer to my age than Duff’s—she didn’t attend public school, but
“Janine!” I said.
She clearly didn’t recognize
me. “Jeff!” I said. “I used to hang out with Duff and his brother.”
“Duff!” she said, and laughed
uproariously. Apparently she wasn’t Duff’s spooky beatnik girlfriend any more.
In fact, she didn’t look spooky. She looked great. She was maybe two years
older than I was, and I was still young enough to think that was exciting. She
noticed I had my jacket half on and asked me if I was going to a party that
didn’t stink. I said I sure was, did she want to come?
My heart was going “badda-chunk-whack-BAM-badda-ba-chunk,” like a box of pots
and pans being dropped down the cellar stairs.
The only party I knew about
was at the I.D. Bureau, so that’s where we were headed. I grabbed a bottle of
what turned out to be Tom Collins mix. On the way she told me she’d just busted
up with her boy friend Rudy last week and she wasn’t even going to go out
tonight, but she was glad she did, and another bag full of pots went flying
down the cellar steps.
“Party? Oh yeah, party’s down the hall,” said Zack. “Did you
bring some libation?” I held up the Tom Collins mix so he couldn’t see the
label, but nothing else looks like Tom Collins mix. He led us down the corridor
towards the drunk tank. “This is pretty wiggy,” said
Janine. I put my palm gently on Janine’s back, just like The Playboy Advisor
recommended.
Technically the party was
Zack and three drunks sleeping it off. “When that guy wakes up, he’s gonna start
singing ‘The Impossible Dream,’” said Zack. “Here, pull up a stool.” I let
Janine have the stool. Always the gentleman. “Aren’t
you supposed to mix this with something? Like, oh, alcohol?”
“You don’t have to,” I said.
“Fine.” He took a swig, made a face. “You want to man the
hose?”
“Okay,” I said.
“What’s with the hose?” asked
Janine, taking a sip from the bottle.
“In case somebody throws up,
I hose them down. Unless you want to do it.”
Her eyes were wide. I thought
she might say something like, ‘Gee, this is the best New Year’s Eve party
ever!’ but she didn’t.
FIRST
CHRISTMAS TREE
It was Thursday after
Christmas—garbage day. There was no recycling in 1967, so the curbs were lined
with enormous unflattened cardboard boxes, already broken toys, and dented
metal garbage cans stuffed with unbagged wrapping paper and rotting party debris.
Calvano and Picarillo and I were winding our way through the streets of Little
Falls, checking out the trash to see what our friends had received for
Christmas.
“What is this?” said Calvano. In front of Steve Novak’s house, there was a
box that looked like it had been ripped open in a frenzy.
It had contained an electric guitar. Not a toy electric guitar, but an actual musical instrument. Another box
had the words “Amplifier” stenciled on it. That box looked like Novak had torn
it apart with his teeth to get at the contents.
We weren’t sure how to react.
We’d been making snarky or approving comments all morning about how our peers
had fared this Christmas—the unfortunate Kenny Krall had received a toy truck,
like he was an eight year old or something. But Novak had gotten stuff that was
totally off our Christmas radar. He was our age but he’d gotten, like, teenager presents. We couldn’t have been
more dumbstruck if he’d gotten a car. We weren’t sure what an ‘amplifier’ was,
but we knew it had something to do with the guitar. And an electric guitar was
obviously cool. It wasn’t like he’d gotten a, you know, flute or something. You know, some stupid
instrument your mom made you practice.
An electric guitar was as cool as a drum set.
We continued silently along
Someone had thrown out a
Christmas tree. Two days after Christmas.
“Wow,” said Picarillo.
“It’s crazy. Nobody throws
out a Christmas tree now. Something
must have happened,” said Calvano.
I shook my head. I would
think of this moment years later when I was reading Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. He writes about a
speech Stalin gave before the Party Congress in the thirties, and of course it
was received with a standing ovation. The ovation went on for half an hour,
because everyone was terrified to be the
first person to stop applauding.
And in the same way, nobody
wanted to be the first person to throw out the Christmas tree. In my home town,
Christmas trees stood rotting in the living room at least until New Year’s Day,
and often well into mid January. One family on
“This is just wrong,” said
Picarillo. “Look, there’s nothing the matter with this tree.” It did seem to be
in excellent repair.
“I have to think there was some
sort of accident,” said Calvano. “Probably the father was electrocuted when he
plugged in the lights. The mother couldn’t bear to look at it the tree any
more. Yeah,” he said, nodding, “It’s gotta
be something like that.”
“It’s not the tree’s fault,” said Picarillo. “I could
see throwing out the lights…”
“There’s just no accounting
for the actions of a grief stricken widow,” said Calvano. “I saw a show once
where this guy dies, and then his wife goes nuts and chops up the sofa with an
ax. Fact.”
“Was there something inside
the sofa?” asked Picarillo.
“Nope. She was just nuts.”
“Whoa,” said Picarillo. “So
then what do they sit on to watch TV?”
“I don’t know,” sighed Calvano.
“Well, all I know is, I’m not
leaving this hear. It’s not right.” Picarillo grabbed hold of the trunk near
the top and tried to drag the tree out of the gutter, but that didn’t work very
well. In the end it took all three of us to drag the tree to the end of the
block. We stopped there. We had no idea where we were going or what we were
doing. We just knew we couldn’t leave the tree in the gutter. Not two days after Christmas.
We left it (temporarily)
against the fence of the School # 1 playground, and went to our homes for
lunch. We’d made no specific plans to meet again that afternoon, but at 1 PM we
all found ourselves standing in front of the tree, and we had a kind of a plan.
There was a creek that ran
through the woods behind the houses on
That was the plan when we
started, anyway. By the time we’d breeched the sticker bushes, we had revised
this considerably.
Over the next few days, we
borrowed some shovels and spades from our various garages and chopped out a hole,
about a foot deep. We stuck the bottom of the tree in this, and filled it up.
The packed dirt didn’t hold the tree up very well, so we hauled large rocks out
of the creek bed and braced them against the tree. Eventually, the tree stood
up without any of us holding it, although it listed severely to one side. Had
anyone been watching, I suspect they would have been confused. I suspect they
would have been even more confused had they seen us watering the tree, which we
did faithfully all through January and February. We trudged with our buckets
past Steve Novak’s house. He’d mastered “Ghost Riders in the Sky” by
Valentine’s Day.
“The tree should be totally
okay by the spring,” said Calvano. “It’s like when you put a dead fish in the
water. It wakes up. Same deal.” When
spring came and the ground thawed a bit more, the rotting tree fell over.
Calvano was furious. “I don’t see what happened,” he said. “We did everything
right.” It was baffling.
Turns out the fish thing
doesn’t work either, by the way.
DONNA’S NEW CAR
I just looked it up, and winter does not begin
until
Which brings me, believe
it or not, to Donna Tillman and her GTO. This is my favorite lawsuit of the holiday
season so far. Donna won a 2004 GTO on “The Price Is Right,” back in June 2004.
According to Reuters:
“She was told after she
paid the taxes and license fees that the vehicle that appeared on the stage had
mechanical problems… When the car was delivered about eight weeks later, it was
not the model that had been displayed on the show and it had more miles on the
odometer than the car she had been promised… Several months later when Tillman
took her prize for a service at a dealership in her hometown of
I probably wasn’t going to compete on “The Price
Is Right” any time soon any way, but now that I know they make you pay the taxes and license fees on the
stuff you ‘win,’ forget it. Either I win it, or I don’t. You may think that if
I get a car for the price of the taxes and fees I’m getting a great bargain,
but I WASN’T DRIVING A BARGAIN, I WAS WINNING A CAR.
(I’m using the editorial “I” here).
I always preferred the other show, the one where
you’d guess what was behind door number three, and sometimes it turned out to
be a new kitchen, and other times it turned out to be a 600 pound peccary. It
seems to me that’s a more exciting concept than
guessing how much a box of Brillo costs. Also, I understand that if you win the
peccary, they give you the option of taking cash instead, and they strongly
advise you to take the cash. And if you’ve ever seen the tusk on a peccary,
believe me, you’ll want to take the cash.
In fact, always
go for the cash option. Maybe Donna Tillman wasn’t offered a cash option.
Or maybe she really wanted that GTO. I sympathize, but go back to that
paragraph from the news story and count the red flags:
(1) She’s getting a 2004 GTO
in June 2004. At that point, the 2005’s were just about ready to ship to the
dealers.
(2) The vehicle she actually
saw on the show had “mechanical problems.”
(3) The vehicle she got was
a different model. The story doesn’t
say what model it was. If it was, say, a ’92 Ford Escort, that counts as like a
double-dog-dare-sized red flag.
(4) It had more miles on the
odometer than it was supposed to.
Despite all that, I’m also sympathetic to the
idea that if you win a (more or less) free car, maybe you shouldn’t whine too
much if it turns out not to be absolutely cherry. Don’t get me wrong—I
understand the underlying legal concept here, which is that there was this
something or other and then blah blah blah but it turned out that yadda yadda
instead.
To put it in layman’s terms, let’s say you win a
date with Jessica Alba. Only when Jessica shows up, it’s actually Angela
Landsbury. The dealership keeps insisting that it’s really Jessica Alba, but
you’ve got your doubts. But you’re not totally sure until you take Jessica in
for x-rays and the doctor says, this is Angela Landsbury, dude. Angela may be a
great date, terrific anecdotes, snappy dresser, knows
what Roddy McDowell was really like, etc.,
but you’ve got a right to be miffed.
Also, I have to admit I really like the idea
that “The Price Is Right” took some $1200 lemon, polished it up, and tried to
pass it off as a 2004 GTO.
If indeed they did. Because buried in the text
of the article is this throwaway line:
“Calls
to the vehicle delivery service were not immediately returned.”
Which makes
me wonder if there’s a delivery guy with a spiffy 2004 GTO in his driveway who
figured “It’s a chick! She’ll never figure out this is a Chevy Nova!” ADDRESSING THE ISSUE According to what is probably
my favorite poll ever, 94% of all drivers rate themselves as “excellent.” This
result was so absurd that the pollsters conducted a second poll to find out
what all these excellent drivers meant by the word “excellent.” It turns out
that if you are a very careful driver, being careful is the Most Important
aspect of driving. If you are a very skillful driver, skill is the main thing.
If you can’t turn the corner without taking off somebody’s side view mirror,
the number of mirrors you collect becomes the measure of excellence. Really,
it’s a wonder that only 94% of us think we’re great. I am, of course, an excellent
driver, being careful, skillful, and the proud possessor of several dozen side
view mirrors, but my main claim to excellence is my courtesy. My bumper sticker
says “Après Vos.” Road rage is not in my lexicon. Honk at me and I wave
jauntily. Cut me off and I chuckle. Courteous, that’s me, and calm. Because nothing annoys people
more than courtesy and calmness. This weekend I was driving
past a strip mall and there was a gentleman in a Chevy waiting to pull out into
traffic. So I yielded to him. He was dumbfounded. He
goggled at me. I smiled and gave him an ‘after you’ motion with my hand, like a
friendly maitre d’. He continued goggling, and made a ‘what the heck?!?’
gesture, pointed down the road behind me, where there was no traffic
whatsoever, and then, shaking his head, he pulled out. Well, I’m used to people
being surprised by my courtesy, but they generally aren’t quite so emphatic about being surprised. Usually
I get a raised eyebrow, a smile, a nod, a tip of the hat. Well, we all react to
courtesy in our own way, I suppose, just as we are all excellent drivers in our
own way (except for that inexplicable 6%). Five or ten minutes later I
pulled into a convenience store to get a cup of coffee, and as I was unclogging
the sugar dispenser, a man in a windbreaker said, “You’re the fellow just waved
me out of the parking lot.” He was still goggling a bit, but not as much as
he’d been. Apparently he always had a bit of a goggle going on. “Yes,” I said. “It was my
pleasure.” “You know,” he said, “there
was nobody behind you for about a quarter of a mile. If you’d just driven past
me, I’d have been out of there about 2 seconds later. When you stop and give me
this wave and there’s nobody behind
you, you know what that does? That slows me down. I have to think, ‘what’s
going on here? Why is this guy waving me in when there’s nobody behind him?’
How long did all that waving and counter waving take? 15 seconds? However long
it was, I’m never going to get it back. Neither of us is ever going to get it
back.” “You’re welcome,” I said, but
that turned out to be the wrong thing to say. He explained that he wasn’t thanking me. He was letting me know I’d cost
him some time he was never getting back. He went on to say that if there had
been a line of cars behind me, it would have been a nice gesture to let him in like that, but as it was, it just slowed
the two of us down for nothing. I pointed out that if I had
not waved him in back there, we would not be having this scintillating
conversation now. He replied that we were not having a conversation; he was
just letting me know how it was. I
thanked him. That seemed to end our
interaction, but at least twice more before I managed to pay for my coffee, he
said, “And another thing…” Only it wasn’t another thing, it was precisely the
same thing, in just about the precise same words. I sensed he was looking for
some kind of closure. So I said, “I promise, in the future, I will not yield
right of way to you again.” “It’s not just me,” he said.
“Don’t do this to anybody.” “Okay.” “Unless there’s a line of
cars.” “Okay.” “At least three. Less than
that, and I can still pull out in less time than it takes for you to stop and
me to figure out what the heck it is you’re doing.” “Understood,” I said. “I mean it,” he said. All the way home I kept
expecting my cell phone to ring and I’d hear, “And another thing…” That didn’t happen, but what
did happen was this: I opened my mail when I got home and I got one of those
‘free gifts’ from a charity I don’t contribute to—a page of address labels. My address was wrong. How is
it they got my address right on the envelope they sent to me but wrong on the
address labels inside? Well, they didn’t cost me
anything. I could just throw them away. But I asked myself: What Would The Jerk
In The Windbreaker That I Yielded To Do? He
would call that charity and give them a piece of his mind. ASK THE ROCK HARD
ABS IN SIX WEEKS EXPERT GUY DEAR ROCK HARD ABS IN SIX
WEEKS EXPERT GUY: I had to write and tell you
that the routine in last week’s column was totally the best core body work out
I have ever tried, and I have tried them all. The only thing is, that fourth
exercise, the Reverse Crunch Performed With Knees Hooked Over
the Chinning Bar? There is no chinning bar in my living room so I tried it with
my knees hooked over the back of the couch, but when I don’t brace the legs of
the couch against something the couch falls on top of me when I’m at the peak
of the crunch. And then when I do brace the legs of the couch I hit my head on
the radiator. Every
time. I’m okay going down but on the way back up, WHAM! And you say
to do 5 sets, with 10 reps in each set. So the couch is busted, the radiator
leaks, and my head is killing me. What is your advice? (signed) LOOKING FOR A SUBSTITUTE FOR
THAT ONE DEAR LOOKING: My advice: get that radiator
fixed, dude, it’s December! No, seriously, that needs to be taken care of, and
you should think about a new couch. And as much as I admire your determination,
a new head wouldn’t be a bad idea, either. Concerning a substitute for the
R.C.W.K.H.O.T.C.B., it was designed to be exercise
4 in that 7 exercise routine and
if you don’t have access to a chinning bar, you need to change to a different routine. Check out the “Best
Ab Toner Routine Ever” column from three weeks ago. * DEAR ROCK HARD ABS IN SIX
WEEKS EXPERT GUY: Is a six pack the best we can
hope for? Is it possible to get an eight pack? What is the absolute highest
number we can have in our pack? (signed) MORE! DEAR MORE: First of all, let’s define
what we’re talking about. The so-called “six pack” refers to the way the rectus abdominus muscles look on a well-defined midsection. The muscle is divided into 6 (or more) sections that
look like the tops of beer cans, only without tabs. The fact is, no one knows how
many ‘cans’ you can divide your abdomen into. Eight packs are relatively
common. I have seen one or two people with ten packs. I’ve seen photographs of
12 packs and 14 packs. But at some point, a paradox kicks in. In order to have,
say, a 28 pack, you would need a substantial
amount of abdomen. You would need an abdomen roughly the size of a Buick,
in fact. And if you have an abdomen big enough for a 28 pack, you are not about
to get a 28 pack or even a 6 pack. (Although
you could get a 2-Pac if you order a
copy of “All Eyez on Me” from Amazon.com) (Um, it’s a CD by Tupac Shakur) (Dead
rap guy.) (He was nicknamed “2 Okay. Some guys, eager to
have more ‘cans’ in their pack than anyone else at the gym, have resorted to
cosmetic surgery and had their abdominal muscles reconfigured but this is not a good idea. You really don’t want
somebody slicing and dicing your stomach muscles, trust me. If you’re that
desperate (not to say impatient) (not to say rich) you might as well get
abdominal implants—which I regret to say, actually exist. * DEAR ROCK HARD ABS IN SIX
WEEKS EXPERT GUY: Who! Abdominal implants
actually exist?? So I don’t have to do all these stupid sit ups and crunches
and reverse wood choppers?? I can just BUY abs?? Where?? How much?? (signed) SIGN ME UP! DEAR SIGN: Just Google “abdominal
implants” and you’ll find dozens of doctors willing to perform this ‘service’
for you. But you really want to think this through. This is surgery. They put you under general anesthesia. It involves cutting. It involves sticking foreign
objects underneath your skin. This is
insane. Unless you are a girl and
we’re talking about a boob job. And by the way, Sign Me Up, one question mark per question will
suffice for even the most frantic question. * DEAR ROCK HARD ABS IN SIX
WEEKS EXPERT GUY: What is that song in the
diamond commercial that goes, “I've seen the path that your eyes wander down /
I wanna come too / I think that possibly maybe I'm fallin' for you”? (signed) WANT TO KNOW WHAT THAT SONG
IS DEAR WANT: It’s called “Coffee Shop.” I
know it sounds kind of like the guy who sings the song in the candy commercial
about how the specks in our eyes are perfectly aligned when we kiss but it’s
somebody else. * DEAR ROCK HARD ABS IN SIX
WEEKS EXPERT GUY: I sure don’t want to get cut
up to get my six pack, but on the other hand I don’t want to do these abdominal
exercises, either, and in any case six weeks is a loooong time. What if I want
to get my six pack, say, tomorrow, but don’t want to
go under the knife? What are my options? (signed) Impatient DEAR IMPATIENT: One possibility is ‘façade
work.’ Many celebrities who look like they have six packs
really have ‘façades.’ How does
it work? Surely you have seen ‘fake brick’ façades—buildings are coated with a
sort of plaster, and then ‘bricks’ are carved into the surface, and then
painted to look as much like brick as possible. You often can’t tell the
difference unless you’re standing six inches away. Well, your typical lazy-I’m-too-good-to-read-the-Rock-Hard-abs-in-Six-Weeks-Expert-Guy
celebrity has his mid section coated with a similar substance, which is then
‘detailed,’ and is indistinguishable from a real six pack, except for its total
immobility. * DEAR ROCK HARD ABS IN SIX
WEEKS EXPERT GUY: I recently started a yoga
class, and the instructor said something that kind of shook me up. She said,
“We want abdominals that are strong and flexible, like a cat. We’re not going
for a six pack. Have you ever seen a cat with a six pack?” Well, I never have.
Is she on to something? Should I stop doing all these crunches and forget about
the whole rock-hard abs thing? (signed) NO SIX PACK YET AND MAYBE
NEVER DEAR NO: Your yoga teacher needs to
get out more. I have seen MANY cats with a six pack. And
quite a few chicks, too. Secret Beatnik
Carpet I was, I think, about 7 years
old when I decided I was going to be a beatnik. I started saving up for a set
of bongos and dropped the word “like” into my sentences at random. I still drop
the word “like” into my sentences as random, and I own a set of bongos—several
in fact—but the demand for beatniks dried up when I
was about 8 years old (or anyway, that’s when they stopped printing up entire
magazines full of beatnik cartoons). I slowly came to accept that I would end
up doing something else. Ten years later, I became a
movie usher. Problem solved! Aside
from the minor drawback that it paid next to nothing, it was the greatest job I
could imagine. I got to watch movies for free, over and over. Since my middle
name is “Inertia,” I would still be ushering happily today if the Park Theater
had not burned down on I fully intended spending the
rest of the summer getting back to my beatnik roots—wearing the same gray
sweatshirt day after fragrant day, reading comic books in the basement by the
light of a candle jammed into the neck of a wine bottle and so forth— but my
dad insisted that I look for work. I felt this was unfair; I’d had a job, the job had ended because the place burned down
through no fault of mine (probably),
so I should be allowed to hang out in the basement for the rest of the summer
listening to Miles Davis records. Q. E. D. My dad didn’t see it that
way. He thought I was goofing off. But it wasn’t as though my
post-conflagration summer was unproductive; my friend Dave had dropped by the
basement, like often. His heart also beat
in time to the pulsing of the bongos, and we spent much of July and the early
part of August producing some absolutely excellent beatnik comic strips and
cartoons. I can’t vouch for the quality at this late date, not having seen them
in more than 30 years, but the sheer volume was mind boggling. We must have
turned out 500 pages in three or four weeks. How did we do it? In the immortal words of Norman Mailer: “You can produce any amount
of work at all, provided it’s not the work you’re supposed to be doing.”
Word to that, as my daughter would
say. So I would get up in the
morning and find the classified section of the paper neatly folded on the
breakfast table, with three or four ads helpfully circled. For the first few
days the circles were lightly tossed off with a ball point pen but they got
thicker and thicker and by the end of the second week it looked like my dad was
using a laundry marker. One afternoon he stomped down into the basement while
Dave and I were inking the word balloons of a particularly hilarious comic
strip—I don’t remember anything but the punch line, which was, “Like it’s not my aardvark, man.” I thought, well, this
is it, my dad is going to throw me out and my beatnik days are over again. That may well have been my
dad’s intention, but he was stopped in his tracks—overwhelmed, I guess—by our
comic strips, or perhaps just by the sheer mass of them. We had dozens of them
tacked to the crappy fake wood basement paneling. He stood there on the bottom
step with his mouth agape, staring at them. Then he said, “Meet me down at the Dave and I looked at each
other. Neither of us could imagine why my father wanted us—both of us, mind you—to meet him at the So we drove to the “I’ve got a job for you, if
you want it. This has pretty much had it,” he said, and the carpet-thing was
certainly in bad shape. “We’ve been shilly-shallying around, talking about
hiring somebody to make a new one. Well, I just spoke to Warry Blauvelt, and he
agrees with me that we want to get this done sooner rather than later. We want
one just like this, only better.” Dave and I nodded. My father
probably thought those were very clear instructions, and so did Dave and I. The
Masons would pay us 200 dollars, and of course provide the materials. We agreed
to start work the following morning. We began work at When my father had said,
“…just like this, only better,” he meant he’d like to see somewhat better
draftsmanship. The design itself was unimprovable, as far as he was concerned. Dave and I had assumed that
by “…only better,” he wanted us to swank it up a little. To
add stuff. The kind of
hilarious stuff my dad had seen on the walls of the basement which gave him the
idea to hire us. Half naked girls, gangsters, flying saucers,
and of course beatniks. I think we were in the middle of painting a
beatnik on the third “step” when Warry Blauvelt gave us the heave-ho. I’ve often wondered whether
the Masons ever found anyone to complete the project, and if so how it came
out, but my dad never volunteered the information and somehow I could never
quite bring myself to ask. In which I interview my daughter about
the meaning of Thanksgiving… ME: I’d like to do an
interview with you this week, on a, um, Thanksgiving theme… EMMA: Well, you need to also
interview Alexis. We should do it right here, right now, because I can’t get
any cell phone reception in your apartment. ME: We’re in the Dollar Store. I don’t think… EMMA: They won’t care. Ooh,
look, cat wands! Only a dollar! ME: What is it? It looks like
a cat o’nine tails, only colorful. Kind of mod,
actually… EMMA: I can’t believe you
said that. There is a technical name for this. ME: What does it do? EMMA: Devra and I went to a cat agility race where they used these.
Different breeds of cats respond to different types of wands. ME: Cat agility… EMMA: The winner was a
Burmese named Zoom. Very appropriate as he was the world’s fastest cat. But
there’s a technical name for these things. Wait. It’s the same name as the
things on Jennifer Aniston’s sash in “Office Space!” ME: What? EMMA: Did you see the movie “Office
Space?” There’s a scene where they tell Jennifer Aniston that she doesn’t have
enough of these things on her sash,
and whatever it is they call these things, it’s the same as the technical name for a cat wand. I remember thinking that
when they talked about the cat wands at the cat agility race. ME: I don’t understand a word
you just said. EMMA: She’s an actress. She
was in Friends. It’s a TV show. ME: Well, I know, but… EMMA: Wait. I have to call
somebody about this. [Dials cell phone] Yo, it’s me. ‘S up.
Yeah, I know I don’t talk like that, it was totally
for my father’s benefit. Anyway, listen, in the movie
“Office Space,” do you remember they tell Jennifer Aniston she doesn’t have
enough somethings on her sash? Do you remember what they were called? FLARES!
YES! Thank you. [Hangs up]. They are called Flares. I’m going to get two of them,
one for each cat. Although they would work better if the cats
were Burmese. ME: But what do they do? How do you use them? EMMA: If you aren’t going to
pay any attention, there’s no point in carrying on a conversation. [Dials cell
phone] I’m going to use the three-way calling, so we can all hear each other.
Do you think they have coffee makers here? ME: For a dollar? No. EMMA: Alexis? Hi. Do you want
to be interviewed now for something? …I have no idea. …I have no idea. Maybe. Something about Thanksgiving.
Okay, hang on, I’m going to get my dad. [Dials me. Shortly we are all connected]. Alexis, did you
see the movie “Office Space?” ALEXIS: No. EMMA: Well, then the first
twenty or thirty things I was going to say won’t make any sense. Tell me
something. Is it or is it not totally unfair that animals can not compete for
the Academy Awards? ALEXIS: What animals do you
think should win Academy Awards? I can’t think of any. Well, wait, what about
the monkey on “Friends?” EMMA: That’s TV so it would
be an Emmy. Marcel the Monkey. BUT. He was also the
monkey in “Outbreak,” with Dustin Hoffman. ALEXIS: I don’t remember a
monkey in that. EMMA: He’s the whole movie!
The monkey starts the outbreak in
“Outbreak.” ALEXIS: Oh! And it’s the same
monkey? EMMA: If it’s not, he could
make a living going to parties and pretending to be Marcel the Monkey. They are
that close. Other Oscar worthy
animals, it seems to me, would be “Baby” the leopard in “Bringing Up Baby” and Toto from “The Wizard of Oz.” Oh, you know
what? I just saw that the other night, for the first time in years, and you
know at the beginning, when she’s on the farm in ME: [silence] ALEXIS: [silence] EMMA: Also, the cattle from “ ALEXIS: I would nominate the
bears in “Grizzly Man,” or anyway the bear who ends p eating him. He was great.
Also the fox who steals his hat. He was like an animal method actor. EMMA: Exactly, yes! Now what
about cartoon characters who deserve Academy Awards? ALEXIS: Much more interesting. ME: I feel we’re getting a
little off track. EMMA: What about the adult Simba [in “The Lion King”]? He’s
always reminded me of Dawson Leery. ALEXIS: Oh God, Dawson Leery
is the worst character ever! EMMA: YOU know what I have
never understood about him? Season after season he has awful hair, awful hair, awful hair… ALEXIS: … and that dopey
smile… EMMA: And then in the last
season, he has legitimately great hair and no more dopey
smile. Plus that really hot permanently unshaven thing. ALEXIS: EMMA: Now what about Flounder
[from “The Little Mermaid”]? ALEXIS: I like him, but I
don’t know about an Oscar. EMMA: You know that song Ursula
sings when she’s looking in the mirror? I met this girl in ALEXIS: I don’t believe that. EMMA: No, of course not, but
isn’t it a great story? Do you remember when we were talking on the phone in 8th
grade and we both turned on our Spice Girls albums at the exact same second? ME: You know, we really haven’t touched that much on Thanksgiving per se
here… EMMA: I am thankful for creepy ALEXIS: Very creepy. EMMA: Oh, and that reminds
me. That girl in ME: Eww. That’s a creepy couple. What is he, like
40 years older than her? EMMA: No. You’re thinking of
John Rhys-Davies. He was the dwarf in “Lord of the Rings.” But they did it with
special effects. He’s a faux dwarf. ALEXIS: Let’s see the Cholera
move anyway. Adjudicate This I wanna say right up front
that this new law allowing idiots and insane people to vote was totally not my idea. Yes, I know that in theory nothing has changed except the
language of the state constitution, and if you were too stupid or too crazy to
vote before, you still are. Well, in theory this Ab Exerciser that costs just three easy payments of
$19.95 (plus shipping, which is where they really nail you) was going to melt
away these love handles. In reality,
however, (a) it didn’t, (b) I didn’t pay the shipping because I found it on the
curb on big clean up day, and (c) even though it was in the Ab Exerciser box it
turned out to be part of one of those lamps you sort of clip to the edge of
table, which is why I had so much trouble putting it together and probably also
explains (a). It’s exactly the same deal with this so-called mere change of language. Now, instead of ‘idiot or insane person’
it says ‘person who has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction
to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting.’ HELLO?? First of all, that
doesn’t even make sense, since ‘adjudicated’ means something like ‘resigned
from being the king,’ like when the king of SECOND of all… Well, there is no second of
all. That was all I had to say. But as long as I’m here, I
want to make it clear that I was in favor of HALF of this law. I agreed that
the language about idiots and insane people should be changed. Maybe they actually
used those terms when the law was written back in whenever that was, but
nowadays it is totally archaic. The proper term for idiot (in the state of Similarly, nobody says
“insane person.” The correct term is “maniac.” If they were going to amend the
language to read, “No voting for morons or maniacs,” I would’ve been behind it
100%. No, wait. I would have been
behind it about 80%, because I do not favor banning ALL morons and maniacs from
the voting booths. Just the really stupid morons and the really
crazy maniacs. If you’re wearing a tin foil hat to keep the CIA from
controlling your thoughts with their mind control satellites, I have no issue
with you. In fact you have probably written some of my favorite episodes of
“24.” On the other hand, if you’re standing in front of the drug store arguing
with the gum ball machine, I feel you should find some way to occupy your time
on Election Day that does not involve a voting booth. That’s all I’m saying. Technically, morons can be
divided up into three categories. (1) Morons. They drive 10 miles under the
speed limit on Rt. 519 but otherwise they’re usually fine people. (2) Frikkin’ Morons. 15 miles under the speed limit, and
they hold up the check out line looking for exact change even when the frikkin’
total is $64.97. (3) Total Frikkin’ Morons. You know who you are. It’s the same for maniacs,
but one problem here is that in the state of Tavern with his underpants on
his head, we all went, “What a maniac!” And when he drank a beer through the underpants, which were still
on his head, we all went “What a frikkin’ maniac!” And then Donny Nortangelo
set Bob’s underpants on fire and the bartender had to douse him with a pitcher
of ale, we shook our heads in awe and declare that Donny was a “total frikkin’
maniac.” So while a total frikkin’ moron is at the bottom of the moron scale, a
total frikkin’ maniac is pretty much the king of the maniacs and should not
only be allowed to vote but should probably be on the ballet. But still, there are some maniacs involved in non
underwear-on-fire related activities which should be actively discouraged, and
in the interests of public safety I would have supported an amendment saying
‘no frikkin’ morons and no frikkin’ maniacs.’ Now I know what you’re
thinking. There’s a slippery slope. Once they start banning
the frikkin’ morons and the frikkin’ maniacs, what’s to stop them from banning the
frikkin’ mooks? And this is an
important issue, because let’s face it, if you ban the frikkin’ morons, the
frikkin’ maniacs AND the frikkin’ mooks from voting in Maybe we need to draw the
line before that. Maybe I’m dead wrong about the frikkin’ morons and the
frikkin’ maniacs. It’s like that old saying: “They came for the frikkin’ morons, and I did nothing, for I am not a moron. Then they
came for the… oh, never mind. Actually, they got me when they came for the
morons.” Too Many Movies This week I threw out more
than 50 of the best movies ever made. I needed the space for light bulbs, paper
cups, and disinfecting wipes. I don’t feel bad about it, but I am a little bit
bewildered. When I was four years old, my
dad unpacked an elderly 16 mm projector from the attic, set up a screen, threaded
a silent “Our Gang” comedy through the projector mechanism, and turned off the
lights. For a few seconds—maybe three— I watched a blurry figure sit on a bunk
bed and yawn elaborately. I never found out who this was because the projector
bulb burned out before my father had time to focus. We didn’t have spare
projector bulbs so that was it; the show was over. And although I had an
incredibly low threshold for frustration when I was four and might have been
expected to burst out yowling, I did not. I was too amazed at the idea that we
had an actual motion picture in the house.
It didn’t seem possible. It didn’t seem possible to any of my friends, either,
because when I told them about it the next day they didn’t believe me. I had to
show them the projector, still sitting on the card table in the dining room,
and when I did, they were absolutely staggered. They were as unconcerned as I
was that the movie couldn’t be shown—the very fact of its existence in my house
was a near miracle Some time during the next
year or so I noticed that the back pages of “Famous Monsters of Filmland”
magazine were full of ads for monster movies. I brought these to my father’s
attention, and he explained that these were 8mm movies, and they wouldn’t fit
on our (defunct) projector. In addition, he said, reading the ad copy, these
movies (which retailed for $4.97 each, plus postage) were 15 minute
‘condensations’ and silent to boot, with silent movie-type dialogue ‘title’
cards. Most of the available movies were from the Universal Pictures
library—the various Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr. vehicles from
the thirties and forties, and a few of their more science fictional fifties
fare like “Creature from the Black Lagoon” and “Tarantula.” That Christmas the family got
an 8mm projector from Santa, and a few of these movies. For the next several
years, every birthday and Christmas brought at least a couple of black and
white silent 15 minute monster movies. I showed these to my friends at any
opportunity—at Cub Scout den meetings, or when our Little League games were
rained out—and the cachet I got from this would astonish you. It was incredible
that we owned these (mostly awful) (and thoroughly butchered) movies and that
we could see them any time we wanted. Kids would watch these over and over with
me, even though these movies were rerun endlessly on TV every afternoon on
channel 11 and channel 5 and channel 9. Once 8 or 10 kids showed up to watch my
silent, brutally truncated version of “Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman” even
though the real thing was on TV that very afternoon, intact. Of course by the time I was
in 5th or 6th grade the novelty had largely worn off and
threading the projector and setting up the screen and so on no longer seemed
worth the trouble. Around this time I noticed that now entire movies were
advertised in the back pages of some magazines—silent, public domain stuff like
“The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” and “Metropolis”—but these cost between sixty and
seventy five dollars—the equivalent of several hundred bucks today. It was
totally beyond the pale. And yet I wondered—was it possible that someday I
would own a complete movie? Less than ten years later,
some friends of mine bought the earliest video tape machines—huge reel to reel
jobs that had to be threaded and lubricated. One of my friends managed to tape
almost an entire movie with one of these dinosaurs—he was missing about five
minutes, at the point where the tape ran out and he had to thread up a new
reel. This all seemed to too labor intensive to me, but now I was certain that
eventually I would have my very own movies. Maybe a couple
dozen, in time. And then there was the
excitement of getting my first VCR, and taping all this great stuff off the old
AMC, uncut, uninterrupted copies of
“Bringing Up Baby” or “Strangers on a Train,” and buying ‘budget videos’ of
Betty Boop cartoons and “The Third Man,” and occasionally even watching them. Occasionally. Well, some of them. Once or twice.
Well, once. I’m not sure when I realized
that although I never watched my copy of “Bringing Up
Baby,” I always watched it when it was on TV. And I have no idea what this
means. That’s not true. I have some idea what it means. It means that I
have maybe… 200? 300? movies that I don’t watch unless
they happen to pop up on TCM or something. Movies that I can’t even give away, because anybody who wants
them can get them even more easily than I did. They can TiVo them, or shell out
12 bucks for a remastered DVD with a bonus disc containing two alternate
versions and three behind-the-scenes documentaries, or get a used copy on eBay
or Amazon for a couple of bucks. So when I
needed space, the movies— not all of them, but a lot of them—went. I had them outside in a “FREE!” box over the weekend,
but I might well have been giving away free botulism. You know, forty years ago I
might have predicted that someday I would own 200 movies. But I’d never have
guessed I wouldn’t care. Geez. The Day after Halloween It had not been a good
Halloween, and the following day was worse. Of course we felt a little
sick the next morning. We always felt a little sick the next morning. How can
you devour 3 or four pounds of candy in 45 minutes and not feel a little sick
the next morning? “I have no sympathy for you,”
said my father, after commenting upon the unusual shade of green my face turned
when I got a whiff of the breakfast bacon and eggs. “You and your idiot friends
were too old for this trick or treat nonsense five year ago.” “Four,” I gasped, lurching
back to the bathroom. We were in 8th grade. The fourth graders still
came to school in their costumes. Therefore we were only four years too old for
trick or treating. Q. E. D. Two Halloweens ago (that is,
two years after we were too old for trick or treating), Calvano and Picarillo
and I had actually been refused candy at some houses because we were so big,
although Mrs. Ferguson had given us extra candy because she thought we were
‘special’ children. Most kids would have been sufficiently humiliated at that
point to renounce trick or treating forever, but we were not most kids. For one thing, we were both
world class stubborn and world class stupid, which is a lethal combination. For
another, we had just pooled our funds to purchase an Official Don Post Studios Deluxe Genuine Latex Rubber Over the Head Werewolf Mask with real hair from an ad on the back cover of Famous Monsters of
Filmland Magazine. It cost us 25 dollars plus shipping, a small fortune to 11
year olds in 1966. And it was worth every penny. It was the same mask used in
the film “Orgy of the Dead,” which we’d read about in (how’s this for an
incredible coincidence?) Famous Monsters of Filmland
Magazine. (At the time I couldn’t understand why “Orgy of the Dead” never
played at the local movie house, although when I finally saw it 30 years later
on cable—it was the “Embarrassingly Bad Nudie Movies from the Sixties Featuring
Strippers in Werewolf Masks and No Plot at All” Channel—I pretty much figured
it out). We calculated (I have no idea
how) that we’d have to each wear the mask on 5 Halloweens to make it worth the
25 bucks. In other words, we would be trick or treating until we were 26 years
old. Last night it had been
Picarillo’s turn to wear the mask, and it did not go well. No one wanted to
give us candy, not even Mrs. Ferguson. We were too big even to be mistaken for
‘special’ children. On the other hand, we weren’t
too big to be attacked by even bigger kids. We made excellent targets. The
surly teenagers who, in past years, had ignored us as unworthy of their
attentions, this year did not. They chased us with the idea of stealing our
candy, and when they caught us and found out that we didn’t have any, they were
not happy. They were not happy, and they had eggs. They had eggs, we had
underpants, and I don’t think I need to say anything further. So we cut the evening’s
festivities short and went back to Picarillo’s house to change, and then we
binged on the left over candy. The Picarillos always bought 8 or 10 pounds of
candy more than the number of trick or treaters visiting strictly required. We
always over did the candy eating on Halloween, but this time we really outdid
ourselves. We were all still green when
we met up the next day at the World War I Tank Memorial in the park. The town
had soldered the hatch shut, so we were unable to get inside. Our Famous
Monster Magazines and some rubber monster hands were in there, so we chiseled
it open a few days later, but for now we settled for climbing on the turret and
being green. “I think this might be it,”
said Calvano. “I don’t think we can trick or treat any more. I think from now
on if we go out for Halloween, we hafta be teenagers and scare little kids or
something. Nobody’s gonna give us candy.” “I don’t want any candy,” I
said. “Me neither, but we’ll feel
differently about it once we stop wanting to throw up,” Calvano said wisely. “What about the werewolf
mask?” I said. “We could wear it when we’re
chasing little kids. Or maybe at costume parties.” “There’s a problem,” said
Picarillo. We stared at him. “They got egg on the mask. It got in the hair.” “So? Wash it.” “I tried that. It isn’t
coming out.” We told Picarillo how
worthless he was and went to his house to assess the damage. It was bad.
Although the Don Post Studio werewolf mask had ‘real hair,’ it was in fact real
‘synthetic’ hair. Whatever petroleum byproduct it had been made from had
chemically bonded with the eggs and it was just a mess. Picarillo was soaking
it in the sink but it did no good. We went to his laundry room and tried to
figure out how to work the washing machine. The directions seemed self evident.
We put the werewolf mask through the wash cycle and watched a William Bendix
movie. Most of the egg had some off.
Also the hair. It no longer looked like a deluxe
genuine latex rubber over-the-head werewolf mask with real hair. “It’ll
probably look like its old self when it’s dry,” said Picarillo, audibly on the
verge of tears. He put it in the drier. That turned out to be a mistake. What came out of the drier
was unspeakable. We should have thrown it away then. Instead, Calvano cut it
into three pieces. We argued about who would get the piece with most of the
fangs. In the interests of fairness, Calvano sliced out all the fangs and threw
them away. None of us wanted what was left. Halloween was over forever. Lock Out Mulberry Street Joey Clams
was hurt when I told him I wouldn’t drive him to “That’s real generous of you,
seeing how it’s your idea and your van,” I said, “but the answer is still no.
Let me show you something.” I retrieved an issue of Sports Illustrated from the
john. It was full of lists—the 10 worst this in the NFL, the 10 best that in
pro hockey, and so on. One of the lists was “Worst Fans.” It read: 1. 2. No 3. Other 4. City 5. Even 6. Comes 7. Close. 8. We 9. Mean 10.
It. It was accompanied by a Jack
Davis drawing of bleary eyed, hulking, inbred troglodytes wearing Fliers and
Phillies caps, throwing (and in some cases eating) broken beer bottles. They
got letters about this. “My experience backs up the
list and the picture,” I said. “And you’re going to wear your Mets hat, aren’t
you?” He replied in the unprintable
affirmative. “Forget it,” I said. “I’m not
going. Have fun.” “You don’t hafta come to the
game. You could just sit in the van.” “Thank you, no,” I said. He brooded. We both knew
there was no way he was going to drive himself to Actually Mulberry Street Joey
Clams’ driving style—which involved sudden bursts of speed, riding with two
wheels up on the sidewalk, knocking the side mirrors off parked cars, etc.—
probably accounted for whatever interest the police showed in him once he got
behind the wheel. In the end, Mulberry Street
Joey Clams decided he would take the train. He would make a mini vacation of
it, in fact. He booked a hotel room. He would see not one but three Mets-Phillies games. And I was going to be in
charge of the Custom Neon Sign Shop while he was away. He gave me his keys. “I
have keys,” I said. “These are the real keys,” he said. “Not just the shop,
but my apartment. I need you to water my plant.” “You have a plant?” “Yeah, it’s a wachamacallit.” “Ah,” I said. “You know the word!” he snarled,
shaking the keys in my face. I did not know the word. I had never been to
Mulberry Street Joey Clams’ apartment, but the key had a piece of masking tape
on it with “43 Spring Street, The adventure began bright
and early when I arrived at the shop the next morning and opened up with
Mulberry Street Joey Clams’ key. Or tried to: the key seemed to be a little sluggish
and promptly snapped off in the lock when I tried to force it. I was not upset, much. As
usual there was no work to be done at the shop; we had not received an order
for nearly three weeks. Mulberry Street Joey Clams would probably call the shop
to check up on things, but when he got no answer he would eventually try my
apartment and I’d let him know about his crappy key. Meanwhile, I did what I
always did when faced with circumstances beyond my control. I walked to The door to the building
worked fine, but when I got to I couldn’t imagine what to
do. I had seen all the Kung Fu movies I could manage for one day, and I knew no
other way to deal with frustration. I wondered about the three other locks on
Mulberry Street Joey Clams’ door. Did one key open them all? Did he leave the
rest of them unlocked? Were they decoys? I was suddenly exhausted. I leaned my
forehead against the door. It swung open. None of the
locks had been locked. He’d jammed a piece of cardboard between the latch and
the doorjamb to keep the door shut. “He’s out of his mind,” I muttered. I
walked in, expecting a booby trap. Multiple booby traps. His apartment looked nothing
like I had imagined. It was clean,
for one thing. The furniture was like old
lady furniture, with those little rugs on the arms. I was astounded. I
looked for his ‘plant.’ In fact, he had what amounted
to an herb garden. He was growing parsley, rosemary, all kinds of things. I was
certain he made his own tomato sauce, from scratch. After I watered his plants I
plopped myself down in his overstuffed chair and turned on the TV. My soap
opera (The Bold and the Beautiful) was long over but I found the Mets. Maybe
I’d catch a glimpse of Mulberry Street Joey Clams. I found some Neapolitan ice
cream in the freezer and was just getting down to business when the old lady
who actually lived in apartment 4B
walked in from next door, where she’d been visiting
with her neighbor, and began screaming. She threw something at me that bounced
off my head and I tore out of there. Several other things bounced off me before
I cleared the building. When Mulberry Street Joey
Clams returned a couple of days later we got a locksmith to take care of the
key broken off in the lock. His plant—in fact a Chia Pet—had survived in
reasonable shape without being watered during his “Why didn’t you tell me the
number was wrong?” “Yeah, right, like this is my fault,” he said. “Can I tell you
something? You gotta learn to admit it when you’re wrong, you know?” “That’s excellent advice,” I said. We glared at each other. Everything we’d
said for the past ten minutes had been said through clenched teeth. Our cheek
muscles ached. Neither of us would unclench for several days. It was the
October When Nobody Unclenched. My face still hurts when I think about it. GYPPED OUT OF MY NOBEL
PRIZE AGAIN!!! Every year, the night before
the Nobel Prize for Literature is announced, I take the tux out of the closet
and hang it up on the back of the bedroom door. Then in the event I am awakened
by a reporter from Reuters or the Associated Press calling to tell me that I am
indeed this year’s laureate, I can, after feigning total surprise (“I had no idea I was even under consideration!
I’m all but speechless!”) and getting off the phone,
take the tux to the dry cleaner that very morning, before the inevitable deluge
of interview requests and TV appearances makes such mundane tasks impossible. The Prizes are handed out on
December 10th. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, if any one
happens to be throwing a party that evening, feel free to invite me. I do not have a prior engagement in It has certainly been an
interesting decade for the Literature Prize. Among the laureates since the turn
of the millennium: Orhan Pamuk, Elfriede Jelinek, Imre Kertész, and Gao Xingjian. I mean, seriously, are those actual names? Or did the Swedes just get a
monkey to pick random letters out of a Scrabble set? Maybe I should change my
name to kflkMng
Scbhdó2w. In fact, better make that Ms. kflkMng
Scbhdó2w. So once again I put the tux
back in the closet and went to the bar—a place where, generally speaking,
excellent literature is appreciated,
unlike certain Scandinavian countries I could name. I was grousing to the guy
next to me about getting stiffed again, and he said, “Did it ever occur to you
that maybe these people they give the award to might be better than you? I mean, did you ever read any of their books?” “A random handful of Scrabble
tiles can not write a book. And if
some of these Scrabble tiles actually have produced books, the odds are they
are not in English.” “Well, the woman who won this
year writes in English,” said the guy. “Really?” I said. I announced to the entire bar that the
gentleman next to me appeared to be familiar with the oeuvre of Doris Lessing. (I believe my exact words were, “This guy
reads chick books!”) That pretty much ended the conversation. But it got me to thinking.
Perhaps I was being unfair. I decided that I would make a concerted effort to
familiarize myself with the new Laureate’s books. A visit to Borders put the
ka-bosh on that idea. Some of her
books are really thick. I skimmed a couple of them, but I gave up quickly. It’s
been my experience that if the werewolf doesn’t show up by chapter three, the
werewolf is not going to show up. I’m sure there are exceptions to this, but
not many. And certainly there are excellent books which do not contain
werewolves. But there are no books, no matter how excellent, that would not be
improved by the addition of at least one werewolf. Fact. My next stop was the thrift
shop, where I did not find either a skinny Doris Lessing book or one with the
words “Blood” or “Moon” in the title. Instead I picked up a copy of
“Four to Score” by Janet Evanovich, which had been recommended to me since the
main character is a lady bounty hunter who lives in Well, it was a perfectly okay
lady bounty hunter book, at least until page 49, when I read the following
sentence: After
graduation, she’d gone on to become a professional cheerleader for the New York
Giants. Now, according to her bio,
Ms. Evanovich grew up in And it goes without saying
that there were no werewolves. It also goes without saying
that I was totally gypped out of my Nobel Prize. I can’t believe they gave it
to somebody who doesn’t even know that the Giants don’t have cheerleaders. Well, the chick who actually
won didn’t technically write the book
where the Giants have cheerleaders, but still. It’s the principle of the
thing. THE LAST JACK O’LANTERN The little kids—you know, the first graders, the second, third and
fourth graders—had to paint their jack o’lanterns with acrylic paints. The teachers
spread newspapers over the You didn’t get to carve until
you were a big kid—a fifth grader. In fifth grade, they gave you knives and let
you go nuts. But our fifth grade class
didn’t get any knives. It turned out that last year Bruce Ekroat had sliced
open his thumb, and now they were saying no knives till sixth grade. When I reported this to my
parents, it led to some friction at the dinner table. My mother thought it was
awful that Bruce had cut himself, and said it was a good idea to wait until we
were a little more mature before they let us run amuck with knives. My father,
in contrast, felt that cutting one
thumb open was not even worth talking about (“That’s why you got two”) and said
if they weren’t going to let us handle blades in 5th grade they
might as well make us wear tutus and practice saying ‘Hello, Sailor!’ “Hello what?” I said, but he declined to elaborate. He had a
lot of reservations about the educational system. He said if we just dumped
every kid into the wilderness at the age of seven with nothing but a Bowie
knife and a carton of unfiltered Camels, they’d educate themselves but quick. I asked him to intercede with
the principal to get those knives into our hands as soon as possible, but he
did not. So we began our We had been designing our
jack o’lantern all summer long. In one respect, at least, the year’s postponement
had been to our advantage. The jack o’lanterns we’d designed last year were far too elaborate and complicated. We’d never have been
able to carve them during a single art class. This summer we had gone back to
basics, concentrating on fangs and sinister slanting eyes. Our one baroque
touch was a lightning-shaped scar that was supposed to extend from the upper
orbit of one eye socket to the top of the pumpkin. A tributary scar snaked from
the main scar down to the corner of the scowling mouth, and we’d established to
our satisfaction that we could pull off this tour-de-force without violating
the structural integrity of the pumpkin. Notice that I say “our
pumpkin.” Although Picarillo, Calvano and I would all be expected to carve our
own pumpkins, we’d designed a couple of perfunctory jack o’lanterns that would
be executed quickly (we estimated 3 minutes each), freeing the three of us to lavish
all of our skills on the pumpkin that mattered. But Calvano and I had doubts
about Picarillo. Since the school year had begun, he’d been spending less and
less time practicing his pumpkin customizing and more and more time ‘train
wrecking.’ ‘Train wrecking’ does not
actually involve trains or wrecking. It involves food. You’re sitting at the
lunch table and you casually ask the person next to you, “Wanna see a train wreck?”
and when that person says “Sure!” you open your mouth to reveal your chewed up
food. Now, no one appreciates a
good ‘train wreck’ more than I do, but the law of diminishing returns sets in
pretty quickly. One train wreck every two weeks is excessive. Picarillo was
wrecking 5 or 6 trains every lunch period. No one had said “Sure!” for weeks but this did
not stop him. On the plus side, you could
get Picarillo into a near-panic by asking him for a train wreck when he wasn’t
eating. Once at Calvano’s house he tore a page out of the phone book and
frantically chewed it to produce the requested disaster. “I sense this is
something I can make use of,” Calvano said to me at the time. In a sense he did, but the
results were not what he anticipated. Despite all our misgivings,
when the time came at last to carve our pumpkins, Picarillo was focused and
energetic. Because the art room was being painted, our class met in the library
across the street, in the vast children’s section, with newspapers spread over the
entire floor and tarps covering the book shelves. As I said, everything was
going fine. Then Calvano said, “Hey Picarillo—let’s see a train wreck.” Picarillo popped a small
amount of pumpkin pulp into his mouth. He was smart enough to realize he didn’t
even have to chew, but not quite smart enough to anticipate that Calvano would
whack him on the back, causing him to swallow the train wreck. Of course the train wreck is
generally swallowed, but the train wreck does not generally consist of raw
pumpkin pulp. There was a brief pause, and then Picarillo and the pumpkin pulp
parted company. I had never seen anything quite like this before, and did not
see anything like it again until I saw Linda Blair in “The Exorcist.” But where
Miss Blair required a battery of special effects people to achieve her
aesthetic triumph, Picarillo managed his unaided, unless you count Calvano’s
whack on the back. Art class was abruptly
terminated. We were the last 6th grade class ever handed knives
during school hours. From that day on it was all
painted pumpkins, forever. See Through Frogs A couple of week ago in this space I mentioned— very nonchalantly— that (1)
my birthday was coming up, and (2) that I did not happen to own an iPod.
Apparently I was a little too nonchalant. Not one of my readers seems to have
made the proper connection between these two facts, or even figured out that
there is one, even though I mentioned these two facts in the same sentence. So that upshot is that my birthday has come and gone and I still do not
have an iPod. But that’s fine. I’m an
adult. I had an excellent birthday.
My daughter took me to lunch at a Chinese buffet. She forgot her wallet, but
she’s going to pay me back. I don’t want anyone out there to feel guilty about
not buying me an iPod for my birthday, in return for all the countless hours of
pleasure I’ve provided you with this column. I don’t want an iPod anyway. I want a transparent frog. If you are around my age (52 since last Friday, my birthday, when I didn’t get an iPod) you probably recall
“The Visible Man.” This was a plastic model you assembled from a kit. The outer
body was completely transparent, but you were supposed to paint the internal
organs before you glued everything together, so when you were done you could
see the skeleton, the digestive tract, the lungs, and so on. I believe there
was even a plastic brain you were supposed to stick inside the skull, even
though the skull wasn’t transparent. (There was a “Visible Woman” to go along
with the Visible Man, but she wasn’t nearly as ubiquitous, nor was she
advertised as aggressively on TV, perhaps because even a transparent naked lady
with a visible large intestine was still a naked lady). The Visible Man remains a plastic model, but the Visible Frog is here. Professor Masayuki Sumida and his team at Hiroshima University have bred
mutant frogs with transparent skin. I’m not making this up— go online and
Google “transparent frogs” and you can see the actual photos. The skin is
really more translucent than transparent, but you can see the muscles and the
icky little frog organs very clearly. The British journal where I found this
story kept calling them “sunroof frogs” but I’m not sure if that’s what the
researchers call them, or if the writer (one Lewis Page) was just being madcap.
He included a footnote when he mentioned Hiroshima University which reads,
“There's no connection between local availability of mutant frogs and the 1945
bucket of sunshine from the States, apparently,” so I’d say it’s even money
either way. Ostensibly, the idea here is to facilitate all sorts of biological and
medical research—if you want to know how this or that new drug affects a frog’s
gall bladder (assuming frogs have gall bladders), you’ll no longer have to
dissect the frog. You just shine your penlight at the gall bladder and look.
This is definitely good news for the frog. In the normal course of things you’d figure we’d be able to stock up on
cheap see-through frogs in the pet department of Target in 6 months, but
Professor Sumida has figured out a way to keep his amphibians from being
bootlegged. While he was fiddling with the skin pigment, he was simultaneously
diddling elsewhere, and although the children of his frogs are viable, the
grandchildren are not. So the price is not going down any time soon. I still want one, though. All of the articles I’ve found on the subject insist that there’s no way
this sort of transparent skin modification can be made to work with
non-amphibians, but I don’t believe that. I guarantee you that within five
years there will be ‘skin clearing’ parlors, where you’ll be able to
transluscify large or small areas of the old epidermis to afford the rest of us
a glimpse of your gorgeous pancreas. Maybe you’ll have the option to make these
windows permanent or temporary, like henna tattoos. I bet they’ll have stuff
you can drink to make this or that internal organ glow for a few hours. I’m not sure if I’m looking forward to it or not. Will Chuck’s day-glo
appendix distract you from his love handles, or will it just give a whole new
meaning to “keep your shirt on, Chuck?” I don’t know. At any rate, that’s all still years in the future. The
transparent frogs are here now. It’s too late for my birthday, but Christmas is just around the corner. LOTS OF FUN AT FINNEGANS
WAKE One morning I woke up and
realized that I was not ever going to play right field in Yankee Stadium. I
don’t recall what triggered my little epiphany that morning. I was 47 years
old, so the thought probably should have occurred to me a little sooner. And I
suppose if you had asked me about it earlier that same week, or even that same
decade, I would have said, “Why no, I don’t imagine I ever will.” On the other hand, if the
subject had come up when I was 27 or 28, I would probably have told you, “You
never know. It just might happen.” Considering
that I didn’t even play high school baseball, this was… I was going to say
‘unduly optimistic,’ but ‘stark raving bonkers’ is probably more accurate. Playing right field in Yankee
Stadium was one of the many things on my ‘that would be cool’ list. A ‘that
would be cool’ list is like a ‘to do’ list, except you don’t make the slightest
effort to accomplish anything on it. Since most things that are really cool
require a considerable amount of effort, nothing on the ‘that would be cool’
list ever comes to fruition, but it would
be cool if one of them did. You might think a ‘that would
be cool’ list just gets longer and longer, or at least stays the same, but it
is not so. When you are 47 and wake up and realize there are no 47-year-old
rookies in major league baseball, for instance, all the major league baseball
related items on the ‘that would be cool’ list must be moved to the ‘that would
have been cool’ list. That list isn’t as much fun to read. In fact, it’s a little
depressing. Of course, things do get
added to the ‘that would be cool’ list from time to time. Some of these things
come from other lists. Guys like me
make a lot of lists. Some are the kind of lists everybody makes—shopping lists,
lists of bars where I don’t owe any money, lists of movies where Jamie Lee
Curtis is naked and what the exact time is on the digital readout when it
happens, etc. Some of my lists are real ‘to do’ lists, both short term (“Scoop
green stuff off tomato sauce before pouring into sauce pan”) and long term (“Get
new sauce pan”). When something stays on the long term ‘to do’ list long
enough, it’s transferred to the ‘that would be cool list.’ Which
brings us to “Finnegans Wake.” “Read ‘Finnegans Wake’” was
on my long term list for 35 years. For 35 years, that is, since I was 17 years
old, I have been telling myself that one of these days I was going to get
around to reading ‘Finnegans Wake,’ [No apostrophe, by the way] James Joyce’s monstrous
half-million word dream book, despite the fact that maybe two thirds of those
words are not English. (Wikipedia’s plot synopsis begins with this: “Because Joyce's sentences
are packed with obscure allusions and puns in dozens of different languages, it
remains impossible to offer an undisputed and definitive synopsis…”). I made a
few attempts at it over the years, unsuccessful ones, but I figured eventually
I’d have the maturity, patience, and brains to plow all the way through it. And I really wanted to, because, even though I never got very far in my expeditions
into deepest “Finnegans Wake,” I thought it was pretty funny. For instance: Mutt—Mukk’s pleasurad. Jute—Are you jeff? Mutt—Somehards. Jute—But you are not jeffmute? Mutt—Nono. Only an utterer. Jute—Whoa? Whoat is the mutter
with you? Mutt—I became a stun a stummer. I’ll put up with all kinds of trouble for any book that uses the term
‘jeffmute.’ But the sad fact is, your brain cells start flaking off like dandruff when
you hit 30 and I hit 52 last week, and I hit it good and hard. I think I have
to accept that I am not going to get any smarter than I am now, and right now I
am barely smart enough to make it through “Assignment: Nuclear Nude” by Edward
S. Aarons. So “Finnegan” moves to the ‘That Would Be Cool’ list. I’m afraid
I’ll just have to make due with “Finnegans Wake, The Movie.” Which actually exists. I’ve never seen it, but I’ve owned the sound track LP for over 30 years,
and in celebration of “Finnegans Wake” moving from my long term ‘to do list’ to
the “That Would Be Cool’ list, the fine folks at WFMU have permited me to post
this album to their website as part of the 2007 365 Days Project. If you go to The WFMU Blog
you can not only download all 50+ minutes of the music and dialogue, you can
read all about where I found the record, my (so far) fruitless search to view
the movie itself, and what I was able to discover about it. Which is not much. If you don’t want to read the book or even sit through the soundtrack, I
have taken the liberty of preparing an abridgement of “Finnegans wake”myself,
based mostly on random pasages I didn’t understand at all and several extremely
uneducated guesses. I may have left out some details, but space is at a
premium. And since this is an Irish book, I’ve written it in Limerick form: Said Shemus to Shaunus, “’tis troublin’ “An oddness has come over Dublin! “My brother, it seems “We’re in one of Pop’s dreams—” --Whorezat? Shib your grop and Schtüp
mubblin! SPIDER SEASON Whenever I write about
spiders here, I get letters. I am, in general, in favor of
spiders. I like the webs, the bigger the better. The symmetrical ones are my
favorites, but there’s also something to be said for the really berserk ones
that look like they were spun after the spider had one vodka tonic too many. (Just as I like Mozart better than Charles Ives, but I want both of
them on my iPod). (Or I would if I had an iPod, which I don’t) (My
birthday is September 21st). (That’s Friday). I like the markings on
the backs of the spiders. I like the way they move. I like that they stay out
of my way, mostly, except for the rare times when one of them will suddenly be
dangling from a single filament right in front of my face. I get the impression
that the spider is thinking, “Yeah? What are you looking at?” And since I outweigh the average spider by a
factor of approximately 800 zillion percent, I like that cocky attitude, too. But some people just don’t
want to hear anything nice about spiders at all. If you say (as I did a few
years ago) “I saw a pretty cool spider web last week,” you’ll get some very
angry mail. “Do you know what those spiders do
to the things they catch in those webs? How would you like to be caught in one? Do you know the spider’s jaws go the wrong way? Do you know how gross that is?” Et cetera.
The only times I have gotten angrier letters were (1) when I wrote a column
suggesting that one way to lose weight would be to eat less food, and (2) when
I wrote a column that argued maybe, just
maybe, cats might not be the bestest,
most wonderfulest creatures in the whole world. Spider haters are not as,
um, excitable as cat lovers (and they
are far more likely to use the spell-check feature on their computers), but I
still have no wish to rile them. And yet… As the weather grows brisk,
which it has been doing recently, the average spider begins to think about
moving indoors. I believe this was the proximate cause of the phone call I
received from my daughter last week. My daughter has been spending
the summer living in a tree house. I’m not sure why, but she is. The tree house
is in the woods. Around Just how big is this spider?
I asked. And she said, It’s as big as my hand. (Now, this is the point where
you have to remember my position vis-à-vis spiders.) Wow, I said, Cool! This was not, it was swiftly
apparent, the thing she expected to hear from a loving father. When she stopped
screaming, I said, well, look, if he is trying to get in—and he’s probably not,
he’s probably just, I don’t know, checking out the view—he’s not going to be
interested in you, anyway. He just wants to get in some place where it’s warm. She did not find this
comforting, probably because the warmest place in the tree house was under her
quilt. Do you think he’s making a
web in the window? She asked. I asked her to describe the spider, and from the
sound of it, her guest was a wood spider. Actually, I said, I’m not sure wood
spiders use webs to gather food. I think they might be jumping spiders. You know, she said, you aren’t
really helping matters here. So I’m going to hang up now. Good night. I was really impressed with
how I was able to understand every word, even though she was clearly speaking
through clenched teeth. The next morning the spider
was gone, and so far it has not returned to the tree house. (One of the other
things I’ve always liked about spiders is the way they can usually tell when the
welcome mat has been rolled up). I wasn’t sure if Emma had been exaggerating
how big the spider was, but she says not. She says that she could tell it was
quite hairy, that the hair was both black and brown (in a kind of striped
pattern) and that she could count the eyes. When you can count the eyes, you
are dealing with a substantial spider. And I must admit, that’s a little too substantial even for me. They’re cute
when they’re little, but if it looks like we’re going to be wrestling over who
gets the last drumstick, no thank you. Once the spider is bigger than my thumb,
I’m afraid I get a little brusque and I tell it, “Your money is no good here,
my friend. Finish your drink, take your flies, and hit the bricks.” If I were the kind of guy who
felt guilty about letting his daughter tough it out all night with a giant
spider in her window, I’d be feeling pretty guilty right now. Fortunately, I’m not. So you
can save your stamps. Collect Call “You need to get out more,”
said Mulberry Street Joey Clams. There was Coca Cola dripping from the walls
and ceiling of the Custom Neon Sign Shop. Also from I had been teaching myself to
juggle for the past few months, and slowly progressed
from three bean bags to three rubber balls, to three 12 ounce soda bottles. A
few months earlier I would never have dared tossing soda bottles around, but
the Coca Cola Company was now using plastic bottles. O Brave new World! I no
longer had to worry about muffing my overhand cascade and ending up with an
explosion of carbonated liquid and shattered glass. It turned out that what I’d
needed to worry about was Mulberry Street Joey Clams not screwing the cap back
on. “I don’t wanna spend my life screwing it OFF and then screwing it ON,” he said,
in answer to my polite query on the subject. “Well, why didn’t you just
leave the cap OFF, instead of resting it on top of the neck and making it look like the bottle wasn’t open?” “Some guys see an open bottle
a soda and they can’t resist taking a swig,” he said, wiping soda from the
screen of the portable TV we used to watch Mets games and “The Bold and the
Beautiful.” “Well, other guys see a closed bottle and can’t resist juggling
it,” I said. “I’m betting they can now,” he said. “Anyway, you’ve been
promoted.” He pulled open the drawer of his desk. The drawer made an
interesting sound, as various pencils, paper clips and erasers swished around
in a tiny ocean of cola. He removed a dripping sheet of paper. “These are accounts overdue.” All of our accounts tended to
be overdue, since our customers often refused to pay the balance of their bills,
once they plugged in our signs and they blew up. Some of them even wanted their
deposits back. “You want me to call these
people?” “Naw, we’re way past that. I
want you to pay them a visit.” The sinister way he
pronounced ‘pay them a visit’ made it sound like these deadbeats would take one
look at me, swallow nervously, and fork over the money. I had my doubts. In general,
people were not intimidated by me. Even when I was not
dripping with soda. “Start with the church,” said
Mulberry Street Joey Clams. “They never paid for that ‘Bingo Every Tuesday’
sign we made.” “Well, it shorted out and set
the curtains on fire, Mulberry Street Joey Clams. They want us to pay for
recharging the fire extinguishers.” “Yeah, fat chance. They used three fire extinguishers to put out one
lousy set a curtains? I don’t think so. Anyway, go over
there and tell them to pay up or else.” “Or else
what?” He signed. “Look, I’d do this
myself, but I’m Catholic and I could get in trouble if I come on too strong,
you know? You, you’re, you know, whatever you are…” “Uh-huh…” “So you’re toast already, as
far as they’re concerned.” “Um…” “I’m just saying. I mean, let’s face it, you
aren’t even from The logic was indisputable. Or something. So I went home to shower and change, and then
stopped by the church. Father Jimmy was not one of those Bing Crosby or Spencer
Tracy-type priests. He was kind of a Steve Buscemi-type priest (think “ “Well, I guess, or else, you know,
uh, no more bingo signs.” “What’s that smell?” “Coca Cola,” I said. “I
couldn’t get it out of my shirt.” “Don’t you have any other
shirts?” I was wearing my purple
Hawaiian shirt with chartreuse palm trees despite the fact that it had been saturated
with soda, and despite the fact that it was a purple Hawaiian shirt with
chartreuse palm trees, because it was still the least objectionable shirt I
owned. “Not really good ones,” I
said. “What’s that piece of paper
you keep looking at? It looks like it went through the washing machine.” “It got Coca Cola all over
it, too. It’s our, uh, list of overdue accounts.” “Son, you’re a mess. Lemme
see that. How did you get soda over everything?” “I was juggling and I didn’t
realize Mulberry Street Joey Clams hadn’t screwed the top on the bottle.” “You should always realize that, son. MULDOON owes
you money? Muldoon of the Muldoon Saloon?” “He won’t pay for the
‘pointers’ and ‘setters’ signs we made. They didn’t blow up or anything,
either.” “Why don’t
he pay?” “Well, technically they don’t
work. I mean they don’t glow. But you can still read them.” Father Jimmy rapped a single
knuckle on the edge of his desk. “You juggle, you say? Can you do it without
drenching the whole room with soda?” “Sometimes.” Rap. Rap. Rap.
“Okay, I’ll tell you what. This Saturday for the Youth Group fund raiser, you
do your juggling—nothing involving any kind of fluids—and I’ll get Muldoon to
pay up. Deal?” “Um…” “Say DEAL!” “Uh..
deal.” “Excellent. We had a clown,
but he punched a cop in I went back to the Custom
Neon Sign Shop and told Mulberry Street Joey Clams the church was a no-go, but
Muldoon was going to pay up. “I’m impressed,” he said. “And I can’t believe
you’re still wearing that shirt.” “I scored a juggling gig, too,” I said. Rescue of the Summer
Pumpkin My daughter told me she’d had
three incredible dreams that she’d be happy to share with me, so that I could
share them with my readers (you). But as always when anyone is about to share a
dream with me, I had something extremely important to do and just no time to
listen right now. So I hung up and
took care of business—I believe the forks in my utensil drawer needed straightening
out—and didn’t give the three dreams much thought until four or five days later
when my deadline was looming, and the column I was writing wasn’t really
gelling (it was about the utensil drawer). So I figured why not? Maybe they’ll
be interesting. But when I called, Emma
couldn’t talk. “A dump truck just dumped like 3 tons of dirt on Monty and I’ve
got to dig him out before he dies.” Click. If anyone else had told me
that a dump truck had dumped 3 tons of dirt on Monty I would have been
concerned, even though I had no idea who Monty is. But that’s one of the things
about my daughter; I knew it probably wasn’t a matter of “who” so much as
“what.” My daughter compulsively names every inanimate object she owns, and
many that she doesn’t. I had a pick up truck she named “Jello,” for instance. I know you’re thinking, well,
a lot of people name their cars and their houses. And so they do. Emma names toasters. She names… well, she names
everything. Let me tell you about St.
Penny’s College, for instance. One morning about many years
ago I pulled back the curtains in one of the upstairs bedrooms and on the
window sill there were several stacks of pennies. It was a fairly wide sill, so
she—I had no doubt that this was the work of my daughter, as it proved to
be—had been able to arrange these stacks
in a series of concentric semi-circles. These stacks, I later learned, were the
classes at St. Penny’s College. I don’t recall the curriculum, though I do
remember that there were far more than four classes. St. Penny’s campus clearly
included a graduate school and perhaps several of them. Eventually the stacks
of pennies would work their way to the front of the semi-circle and from there
make their way out into the world. There were always new students matriculating,
since I didn’t empty the change in my pockets into a safe every night. The
scariest thing about all this—well, one of the scariest things—was that Emma
had named each individual penny. Being a conscientious parent
I considered getting her some sort of help, but it turned out that this
required explaining to the therapist why I thought she needed help, and I just
couldn’t bring myself to say the words “St. Penny’s College” to another adult.
So she went on blithely naming everything that crossed her path, and graduated
from high school, and then college (NYU, not St. Penny’s) and that brings us to
the dump truck dumping all that dirt on top of poor Monty. Her mother confirmed that a
lot of dirt had indeed been deposited on their property, and by a dump truck. I
have no idea why. Apparently some people need dirt, and other people need to
get rid of dirt, and her mother happens to be one of the former, while the guy
in the dump truck happens to be one of the latter. It’s one of those things,
like the St. Penny’s curriculum, that I don’t understand and never will. By the time I got over there,
all the excitement was over. It had taken her two days, but Emma had rescued
Monty, who turned out to be a pumpkin. She also rescued a second pumpkin to which
she had no yet given a name, maybe because it was still green. “All right,” I said, “So tell
me about these dreams.” It turned out that while a
couple of the dreams were interesting, especially the one where she gave birth
to a litter of kittens, and also the one with Lauren Bacall, they were not
really appropriate for my column, since my column does not run in—well, I can’t
even print the name of a magazine
that would run a column about these dreams. “Look,” I said, “You said you had
dreams I could share with my readers, and you didn’t, and now I’ve got an hour
and a half to write my column. I need some content.” “I don’t think I can help you,”
she said, brushing some top soil off Monty. “Maybe I could write about
how you name every drab-dram thing you lay your eyes on,” I suggested. “It’s your column,” she said. “Maybe I could write about…
St. Penny’s College,” I continued. “You wouldn’t dare,” she said
with a smirk. “Anyway, no one would believe you.” “Yeah, you’re right. It’s
just too crazy,” I said. ASSIGNMENT: SIX BOXES OF BOOKS One night more than 30 years
ago I was driving along a back road somewhere in I don’t recall the answer, or
if there was one. My friends and I had already internalized the call, and for
years afterward we could send each other into uncontrollable fits of laughter
by saying “I consider myself something of an expert…” This constituted the whole of
my relationship to Edward S. Aarons and his collected works for over 30 years. Until this
past week, when I accompanied my daughter to an auction. They were auctioning off box
lots of books, magazines, and ‘ephemera’ that had belonged to a recently
departed collector of same. My daughter was mostly interested in the
‘ephemera,’ specifically an 8 X 10 of Arnold Schwarzenegger from his late
1970’s salad days, although she also had her eye on a 1952 issue of LIFE
magazine with Marlon Brando on the cover. I was a little surprised at her
interest in the Well, she got neither the lot
containing the She would bid five dollars
(which was the floor the auctioneer set), and usually someone else would immediately
counter with ten, and she’d be out, but eventually, on a lot consisting of six boxes of paperbacks, no one else
bid, and she was suddenly the owner of six boxes of paperbacks. After I loaded six boxes of
paperbacks into the rear of the car, I had a pretty fair idea of why no one
else bid on the six boxes of paperbacks. The boxes were delivered to my apartment,
since paperbacks would not find the climate of the tree house where Emma is
spending the summer congenial. We set about cataloging the books, and swiftly
found they broke down into x categories: (1) books-one
of-us-was-interested-in-reading-type books (approx. 4 books each); (2)
books-we-figured-we-could-sell-on-eBay-type books (approx. 30 books) (She’s
already got “The Man from P.A.N.S.Y” by Don Rico and “The Coven” by E. Howard
Hunt (cover blurb: ‘A sensational novel of Washington intrigue and witchcraft
by the Watergate conspirator’ up on eBay as we speak).; (3)
books-where-we-couldn’t-figure-out-why-anybody-figured-it-would-be-a-good-idea-to-write-this-book-type
books (approx. 5 and a half boxes), and (4) EVERY FREAKING ‘ASSIGNMENT’ BOOK BY
EDWARD S. AARONS. A quick check online showed
that these sell for about 10 cents per hundred, which normally would be a
one-way ticket to the recycling pile, but somehow I can’t bring myself to do
it. For 30 plus years, without my having read a word of them, these books have
been bringing me pleasure, albeit a really stupid
pleasure. Bundling them up to be pulped and reconstituted as next week’s issue
of People Magazine just seems wrong. So unless I can find them a home—and I
mean a good home, not some place where they’re going to end up chained to the
radiator—I guess they’re going to remain here, boxed up, behind the kitchen
door. Perhaps I will be tempted to read “Assignment: I will resist the temptation. Well, except for the nuclear
nude one, which I started this afternoon. But all the
other ones, absolutely. Probably. Black Velvet Elvis,
And Me When
I was 15 I cultivated an air of sophistication and cool urbanity. My strategy
was simple. I refused to admit I was impressed by anything, no matter how
impressed I actually was. Yes, this new Kubrick movie is good in its way—not up to his early stuff, of
course, but not nearly as bad as I’d
anticipated. I
really said things like that. It’s amazing that I lived to be 16; every one I met
must have wanted to throw me off a roof. The
only way you could get me to abandon my been-everywhere-seen-it-all-and-it
doesn’t-quite-come-up-to-my-standards persona was to shock me. You had to show
me something I’d never seen before, or even heard about. Which
is what Dave Willinski, who sat behind me in Earth Science class, did when I
dropped by his house one day after school. I probably came over to make a few
condescending remarks about the guitar playing on his new Led Zeppelin album or
something, but when I walked into his living room, I saw something amazing. His
parents had just returned from a trip to Despite
the fact that it was an incredible painting, Dave explained, his parents had
paid next to nothing for it. “The frame cost more than the picture!” he said.
“You know why it looks so different?” I shook my head. “Touch it.” It
was not painted on canvas. The incredibly beautiful picture was painted on
black velvet, and Mr. 15 year old Urban Sophisticate was blown away by it. The
Willinskis’ painting had probably been produced in the black velvet painting
factory in Within
a matter of months, it seemed, cheap black velvet pictures were everywhere. The
Willinski’s picture went from being an exotic novelty fit for the living room
wall to the visual equivalent of a can of aerosol cheese. The painting came
down and asking about it was a sure way to get the fish eye from Mrs. Willinski. After
that I don’t know that I gave black velvet painting any more thought at all
until Elvis died. That
was 30 years ago last week, and suddenly black velvet Elvises were everywhere. It was like congress had passed a law
declaring that if you were going to paint Elvis, it had to be on black velvet. I
was not nearly as pretentious and insufferable as I’d been at 15, but I was
still too pretentious and insufferable to own a black
velvet Elvis. And I’ve paid the price—thirty straight years without a black velvet Elvis. I
started to admit to myself that I wanted a black
velvet Elvis about 15 years ago. What is it about Elvis—and, I think, no one
else—that absolutely demands black velvet? Has anybody else ever looked so
perfect on black velvet? So as
the 30th anniversary of the passing of Elvis rolled around I started
looking for one. Well,
they’re out there, but I discovered something: Elvis has been trademarked. The
Elvis estate apparently owns Elvis’
image. Or at least aspects of Elvis’ image. There have been tons of lawsuits,
but the upshot, if I’m reading these decisions correctly, is that you can’t set
up a factory producing black velvet Elvises without the permission of the Elvis
estate. Here’s
the thing: I don’t want an authorized black velvet Elvis. I’m not sure why. There’s
just something about it that rubs me the wrong way. And
on the other hand, I sure don’t want to buy an unauthorized
black velvet Elvis if it means I’m going to lock horns with the Elvis estate.
They are very aggressive about
defending their trademarks. So
that would seem to be that—but a kind of compromise occurs to me. All those
black velvet Elvis factories that have been out of action because of the Elvis
estate need a new subject, and I think I’ve got an excellent one. Me. It
may be argued that I have not achieved the iconic status required for black
velvet. But it won’t be argued by me. It’s
true that my face does not precisely scream to be reproduced on black velvet
the way that Elvis’ face does, but on the other hand, I will not send an army
of bilingual lawyers with restraining orders to shut you down. The
black velvet Jeff is the black velvet future, and the future starts now. Start
sending them in. Roman Shades I was dining out, and I put
my bleach stick on the table, right next to the salad fork. If you’ve ever seen
me eat, you know why. And what’s more you’ll always know why, because the image of me going to work on a bowl of
tortellini in marinara sauce is absolutely indelible. Anyway, one of the other
folks at the table commented on my bleach stick. Not in a snotty way—just a
good-humored remark about how if I had to have that thing within reach like
that, maybe nobody at the table was safe; just how much collateral damage should be expected before my pasta was consumed?
I chuckled appreciatively, and then vanished in a blur of tomato sauce and
grated cheese. When I was done, there were
no more attempted drolleries about my bleach stick, just polite requests to
borrow it. One person contented herself with dabbing at the marinara with a
napkin dipped in water. “To tell the truth, I’ve ruined way more blouses with
those things…” –Meaning my bleach stick—“than I’ve saved. But I did get a nasty
stain out of my Roman Shades with one.” Believe it or not, I was not
familiar with the term “Roman shades.” As the conversation progressed I
realized they are window shades, but initially
I pictured Marcello Mastroianni in “8 ½,” wearing those glasses with the big
thick black plastic frames. The rest of this column is
going to concern those glasses, but before we leave the subject of bleach
sticks entirely, I want to say that as far as I’m concerned bleach sticks
represent the greatest scientific advance made in the 21st Century.
They allow vigorous eaters such as
myself to wear classy shirts (= retails for at least $25) in Italian
restaurants without fear. They are the greatest thing since The Salad McShake,
which was the best thing McDonalds ever came up with. You got a salad in a big
clear cup, with a tightly fitting dome cap. You poured your dressing over the
salad, snapped on the cap, and shook it up for about 30 seconds, and every fragment of the salad had dressing
on it! Needless to say McDonalds jettisoned this idea after about 45 minutes
and went back to regular stupid salads in a bowl. We must not allow this to happen to the bleach stick! Where was I? Oh right,
glasses with thick clunky frames. You know the ones I mean. Buddy Holly wore
them. Now if it had been just
Buddy, Clark, and Dennis’ dad, we could safely say that these were the glasses
you got if you wanted to look like a geek. But Marcello and Cary were not
geeks. Marcello was, in fact, the ne plus
ultra of Cool, and Incredible as it may seem,
glasses with big clunky black plastic frames were considered the epitome of
style for ten years, from the mid-fifties to the mid-sixties. Simple! Elegant! Clunky! Molded from Today’s Miracle Substance, Cheap
Plastic! Buddy Holly wasn’t trying to look like a geek; he was trying to
look cool. But those glasses were so intense, so overwhelming, that they
eclipsed your entire face. You had to have a face like Marcello or Cary to pull
off looking cool with those glasses. Otherwise, you were basically the mayor of
Geektown. All this is obvious with 50
years of hindsight. It wasn’t obvious at the time. Then one day circa 1966, (maybe
the same day everyone realized that the cheap wood paneling they’d put up in
the basement looked like cheap wood paneling), everyone in Well, not everyone. Cary
Grant, for instance, didn’t seem to notice anything was amiss, since he
continued wearing his hideous glasses for another 20 years. And my parents
didn’t either, since they continued forcing me to wear geek-frames until I was
in high school. My dad insisted that only ‘hip cats” (SIC!) wore anything but
clunky plastic glasses, and he wasn’t about to have a ‘hip cat’ living under
his roof. The only reason they relented was because Bill Bixby wore aviator
frames on “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father.” “See?” I cried, pointing to the
screen. “HE’S wearing really sharp glasses and he’s not a hip cat!” So I got aviator frames, just
like Bill Bixby and my cousin Bill Beckwith (who was an aviator). As I got
older, I got different frames from time to time, but always metal ones with
thin earpieces, and while my glasses may not have always been at the cutting
edge of style, they suited my face. But now, after decades of
eyewear sanity, big clunky plastic frames are making a comeback, and they’re
being marketed as DESIGNER FRAMES. Don’t fall for it! You will look like a
geek, unless of course you look like Marcello, and you don’t. And I don’t either, so I’ll
look like a geek too, because after the big clunky black frames have been in
style for ten or fifteen years I’m going to break down and get them and I DON’T
WANT TO. Don’t let this happen. First
they’ll take our aviator frames, and then they’re going to come for our bleach
sticks. We’ve already lost our Salad McShakes. It’s time to draw a line in
the sand. Letters from Home Everybody needed paper, and I
was the guy who had it. My mom was a judge’s
secretary and we always had thick yellow legal pads all over the house. I drew
my monster comics on them, and also posters for non-existent monster movies. A
lot of the comics were about giant insects or flying saucers, since I could
draw pretty good insects and flying saucers, but inevitably the bugs or
Martians would attack somebody who turned out to be… a werewolf. I drew great werewolves, and it just seemed crazy
to draw an entire two or three page comic without including one. This was not a seasonal
thing; I drew my comics all year long, summer included, and saw no reason not
to draw them at summer camp, so I brought a dozen legal pads to Then one evening, just before
the marshmallow roast, our Scoutmaster Mr. Appledorn called the entire troop to
attention and told us how disappointed he was in us. “You scouts are not
fulfilling your scout duty,” he said, stabbing the air with his foul stogie. (Every
time Mr. Appledorn said “duty” half the guys in Troop 11 cracked up because it
sounded like “doody”). “You have all promised
to send your parents at least two letters a week, and so far only two scouts
have sent one letter! The only scout
who has sent two letters—in fact he’s sent four,
and is an example to all of you, is Raymond Melville. As for the rest of you—I
want to see a letter from every one of you after breakfast tomorrow morning,
stamped and addressed and ready to mail! That is all! DO YOUR DUTY!” “B-but Mr. A.,” said a kid in
the Fox Patrol, “What if we don’t have any paper?” “WE can help you out there!”
cried Calvano. “Come by our tent and we’ll fix you up!” He nudged me. “We’ll
clean up,” he whispered. Calvano’s first idea was
simply to charge a nickel for a sheet of paper (my paper), and a dime for a sheet, an envelope and a stamp. But the
second kid who came in complained that he had no idea what to say, and Calvano
told him that for a quarter, we’d write
the letter for him. “Done!” said the kid—his name, alas, is lost to history—and
that was it. We were ghost writers. And then we realized we were
faced with exactly the same problem the kid who’d commissioned us had been
faced with—we had no idea what to say. “Well,” I said, “we don’t want to get
too specific, because we may have to write a bunch of these…” “Right, right…”
“So we say, you know, I’m having fun, the weather’s been nice…” “Wait, let me write that down…” “…Uh, and I miss you. Guys! I
miss you guys.” “That’s good. The ‘guys’ makes it not mushy.” “Exactly,” I
said. Soon we had what amounted to templates for two different letters. “This is like a license to
print money,” said Calvano. We figured everybody would be coming to us for
their letters once word got out, but either word didn’t get out, or most scouts
decided they’d rather save a quarter. Only George Miller, a 14 year old thug we
called “Bluto” because, well, he looked like Bluto, chose to take advantage of
our offer, mostly because he’d been too busy to write a letter; he’d had to tie
up and gag Ray Melville and leave him under a running shower head. But Miller didn’t want to pay
us a quarter. He wanted us to write his letter and supply a stamped envelope
for free. He didn’t come right out and say there were plenty of unoccupied
shower stalls available if we’d rather not, but that was clearly the subtext. At first Calvano and I were
disheartened and wrote out a perfunctory ‘having fun, miss you guys’ letter,
but then Calvano starting to think about what a REAL letter from George Miller
would be like. He wrote one, which went more or less: Dear
Mom, Keep
this under your hat, but I killed Ray Melville and chopped him up and put him
in six paper bags and left him all over the woods. It was fun but don’t tell nobody, this is strictly on the Q. T. George P.S.
I mean it, don’t talk or else. This ‘mom’ stuff cuts no ice with me. We thought that was just
hilarious, but our second version was even better: Momsie, I am
so lonely! I miss you so much! I cry myself to sleep every night! I wish I had
a pink stuffed bunny to sleep with! I would call him Mr. Snuggles!! Please
mommy buy me a pink bunny! I am so sad and lonely! Your
sweet Bunny Boy Georgie We laughed ourselves sick and
stuffed that in an envelope and mailed it in the morning, the entire time
knowing that when Miller got home and found out about the letter, he would kill
us. And in fact, that’s exactly
what happened. He tried to make Calvano and me eat the pink stuffed bunny his
mother had bought him (his mother apparently had a great sense of humor). In
fact, I’d have to say he succeeded in making us eat the pink stuffed bunny. It
was almost worth it. Almost. END OF
THE GOLDEN AGE The golden age of journalism
is officially over. The Weekly World News, which is arguably the greatest
publication ever – and inarguably the
greatest publication ever to feature the World’s
Biggest Baby on the cover (many times) – ceases publication
with the next issue. I blame myself. I have deliberately joined
the longest line at the supermarket checkout, sometimes even seeking out old
ladies pushing carts filled to the top with individual
cans of cat food, just so I could flip through the Weekly World News while
the cashier tries to explain that the “Save $2 on Nine Lives” coupon doesn’t
have anything to do with all these cans of Fancy Feast and even if it did it
expired 6 months ago. By the time the cat food cat
fight is over, I’ve usually finished the entire issue. Which
means I have no reason to buy it, so I put it back. Of course if Bat Boy
was on the cover, I plunked down my three bucks, but otherwise I freeloaded. And the result? No more
Weekly World News. No more “Arkansas Duck Hunters Capture Hitler.” No more “Nine
Month Old Baby Gets Black Belt in Karate.” No more “Big Foot Kept Lumberjack as
Love Slave” (sub headline: “Outraged Wife: He’s No Longer the Man I Married.”) Of course, as sad as the
passing of the Weekly World News is, the paper is a pale shadow of what it once
was. When the WWN began in 1979, it wasn’t much different from the rest of the
supermarket tabloids—or rather, they weren’t much different from the Weekly
World News. There were UFO abductions, demonic possessions, and 200 pound
infants everywhere. Then for reasons that have never been clear to me, the
other tabs put more and more emphasis on celebrity gossip, diets, and various things that maybe actually happened.
They all turned into sort-of trailer park versions of People Magazine. It makes
no sense to me—Paris Hilton is not nearly as interesting as Big Foot, and he doesn’t even exist (or anyway he doesn’t
teach Kindergarten in When I was younger and even
stupider than I am now, I read the Weekly World News ironically. I blush to admit
that I thought there were people out there who really believed that the stories
in the WWN were true, and I had the twin pleasures of enjoying the hilarious
stories for their own sake while at the same time feeling superior to the
morons who fell for them. Eventually I came to the realization that nobody fell
for them. The morons was me. And in time, the WWN lost
some of its edge. The stories didn’t seem quite so dead pan any more. No one
could pretend they were getting the jokes that went over the heads of the hicks
any more. In 2004, they began running a disclaimer at the bottom of the
colophon: “Weekly World News articles are drawn from different sources and most
are fictitious. WWN uses invented names in many of its stories, except in cases
where public figures are being satirized. Any other use of real names is
accidental and coincidental. The reader should suspend disbelief for the sake
of enjoyment.” Yeesh. Is there a better way to kill a joke than to keep
reminding people you’re telling a joke, and it’s really funny? No wonder that circulation declined from 153,000 to 83,000
between 2004 and 2006. So now it’s over. But it seems to me that the
niche I spoke about, which the Weekly World News filled so well for so long,
and then maybe not quite so well for a while, still exists. And it remains for us to fill it. ‘Us’ as in ‘you and me,’
I mean, not Same thing with space aliens.
And we haven’t had a good
Mysterious Beast in these parts since the Nocomixon Panther was on the loose 20
years ago. At the time, I remind you, I insisted that there was plenty of
evidence it was a were-panther. Did
something overturn your garbage cans this week? Can you prove it wasn’t a were-panther? I didn’t think
so. Well, write and tell us about it. And if your letters rhyme, so
much the better. My Fabulous
Harry Potter Adventure I was visiting my home town
this past weekend and after lunch I accompanied an old Buddy to the local
bookstore, where he was going to pick up the new Harry Potter book. It was
quite a scene. There were four or five tables piled high with copies of the
book, and there were several employees who did nothing but bring out more
copies as the ones on the tables were depleted. I picked up a copy of the
book and opened it. This was the first time that I have ever been in contact
with a Harry Potter book, although I accidentally saw 10 or 15 minutes of one
of the movies one afternoon while I was clicking around the dial. (I mistook the Harry Potter movie for one of
those werewolf movies with Kate Beckensale in a skin tight leather cat suit).
(Now that’s magic). I’ve heard the books are excellent
but I haven’t read them because, well, I just haven’t. For reasons that are
unclear to me, many people seem to find this unacceptable. “Oh,” said one
friend of mine, “I guess you think you’re just too good to read Harry Potter.” Speaking as someone who owns DVDs of
“Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter” and four
(4) movies about Mexican wrestlers fighting werewolves, mummies, and vampires,
I can truthfully say that no, I do not think I am too good to read Harry
Potter. Anyway, I turned to the end,
cleared my throat, and announced, “I will now read the last page of the new
Harry Potter book, unless I get 20 bucks.” The reaction was gratifying. Some
people smiled indulgently, some groaned, some rolled their eyes, and my friend
Chuck grabbed me by the elbow and more or less frog marched me into the cook
book section before I knew what was happening. Rachel Ray has written a lot of cook books. “Hey!” I said. “I just saved your life,”
said Chuck. He kept me away from the Harry Potter tables for ten minutes or so,
by which time the crowd had turned over completely and no one who had witnessed
my brush with death remained. Like many immature borderline
psychotics, I learn absolutely nothing from any of my mistakes and repeat them
over and over again, until either the police arrive or I run out of tomato
sauce. (Many of my mistakes involve pasta, usually the ones shaped like little
radiators). So as soon as Chuck was
safely on line, I picked up the book and said exactly the same thing again.
This time an enthusiastic young woman of 89 or so hit me with the book. This
was not one of those playful ‘oh you,
you’re such a caution, tee-hee’ taps. This was pretty much an all-out
Babe-Ruth-swinging-for-the-right-field-wall sort of whack, directly to the back
of my skull. You know how in cartoons
people get hit in the head with a baseball bat and they see stars and hear
tweeting birds? I can vouch for the stars. I didn’t hear any tweeting. The
birds were saying, “If you want some more of that, go ahead and read, smart guy.” Well, just one bird. Actually it was the old lady
who had just decked me, although she looked more like a peccary in orthopedic
shoes, or would have, if her tusks had been a little less prominent. Regular readers of this
column know that I am not the kind of guy who can be intimidated by anyone, and
especially not by some crazy old
lady. Not unless she’s holding a
five pound Harry Potter book and has shown that she’s willing to use it. “Okay,” I said. “The second
she puts that book down, I’ll show her a thing or three.” I’m not sure if I
said this out loud, because my brain (or what passes for it) was still
ricocheting around inside my skull, but she got the message all right. Because
she never put the book down, she just got on line, bought it, and left. When
she pulled out of the parking lot, I said, “Oh yeah, that’s right,
that’s right, you’re lookin’ at it.” I wasn’t sure what this
meant, but I sounded kind of like Christopher Walken, so I assume it was
something I heard in a Christopher Walken movie. Later Chuck was telling me I
was an idiot and I had to agree, because I realized that what I should have
said when I opened the book to the last page was, “What?? ‘To Be Continued?’” That
would have gotten a good reaction I’m sure. Also: “What?? It was all a dream?!” If you happen to find
yourself in a bookstore in the next few weeks, you can use those. You don’t
have to give me credit. THE BIG
RUMBLE Shortly before deadline, my
daughter Emma phoned to say she had a scoop for me. –“I was at the Mets game
last night—it was Ralph Kiner night—and there was a rumble. I’m going to get my
friend Ally on three-way calling. She can corroborate what I’m saying. She was
with me, in the middle of the rumble. I’ll call back in a minute.” While I was waiting for the
return call, I did a quick online search for news about the rumble. I had no
trouble finding accounts of Ralph Kiner night at Shea and of the Mets-Reds game
played that evening, but somehow the rumble escaped the notice of every news
source I could turn up. EMMA: Okay, I’m back. Ally? ALLY: Yes, I’m here. ME: You know, I couldn’t find a word about this rumble… EMMA: Which is why this is a
SCOOP. Okay. Let’s start with some background. Ally likes David Wright. Put
that in. ME: Who? ALLY: He’s amazing. EMMA: Put that in bold too.
Okay. So we were at the Mets game, and there were 51,743 people there. Fact.
They announced it. ALLY: The crowd at Shea was
really mean. When Carlos Delgado popped up, someone yelled “What are we paying
you for?” I think he cried when he went in to the dug out. EMMA: The guy in front of us
looked like Skeet Ulrich. We yelled ‘Skeet!’ ALLY: And there was a guy who
looked like Prince William, only ugly. The same features as Prince William,
only ugly. He had man boobs, too. EMMA: What was really creepy
was he had a side kick who looked like an ugly Prince
Harry. It was very disconcerting. And the third baseman for the Reds had a name
like an elective medical procedure.
What was it? ALLY: Norris Hopper. EMMA: Exactly! And
immediately after the game, there was a rumble on the subway. Fierce. We almost
got sucked into it but we did not. I
kept my composure. ALLY: She has an amazing
amount of self-control. Now which rumble are we talking about? EMMA: We’re talking about the
one on the subway. Even though there were 51,743 Mets fans there, we got on the
train effortlessly. Then the trouble started. The doors are about to close and
these people get on. ALLY: The conductor said,
“Get in,” and this girl was straddling the door. She was holding it for a gang. EMMA: An entourage of
annoying people. Annoying drunk people. I mean, how
can you get drunk at Shea Stadium? They charge $7.50 for a small bottle of
beer. ME: Do they sell beer in
bottles at Shea now? EMMA: Yes. Little plastic bottles. Because glass bottles
would become dangerous flying objects in the hands of drunk annoying people. ALLY: They’re very cool
little bottles. EMMA: Cool and yet edgy. ME: Wait, let me write that
down. “Cool, and yet edgy.” Okay, go on. EMMA: It was this drunk girl and her drunk posse. They were having a
conversation and they wanted everyone to know
they were having a conversation. They had that thing. ME: What thing? EMMA: That thing that drunken
gangs have. Didn’t they Ally? ALLY: Yes, absolutely. ME: But… EMMA: There was a girl near
me with no chin and she said she was going to punch them, they were so
obnoxious? But I didn’t believe her because she had no chin. You need a strong jaw
line to back up those kinds of proclamations. ME: You do? EMMA: Yes. Then one of the drunk guys starts bragging that he was the smartest guy
ever. I paraphrase. ALLY: What he said was, he
was awesome and knew all the state capitals. EMMA: He said he totally
nailed the state capitals quiz in 5th grade. This guy was pushing 30. He had this edgy receding hairline,
though. ME: Edgy? EMMA: It was like… let me
see. Like Dawson Leery’s dad’s hairline on ALLY: It wasn’t as good as EMMA: No, no, no, it was
buzzed. It was a good receding hairline. I approved of the hairline, but yes,
it wasn’t that amazing. So one of the drunk wenches
says, ‘you think you know all the…’ ME: Did you say ‘wenches?’ EMMA: You’re killing my
momentum here, killing it. She says, ‘You think you know all the state
capitals?’ and she starts naming states. ALLY: It started out more
general than that. EMMA: It started with ALLY: He said the capital of EMMA: Can you believe it? ALLY: And I said ‘What’s the
capital of EMMA: If you were going to
pick one city to be the capital of ME: When you say 20 million
dollars, do you mean “a really high number,” like a gazillion? EMMA: No. I would be willing
to pay up to 300 dollars for a ticket. As would most people, I believe. If you
want tickets you have to sign up to be picked to be in a lottery, just to have
the opportunity to buy tickets. You tell them which city you want. This one girl
I know said she was going to put in for ALLY: Then this girl said
“What’s the capital of ME: Was this the girl who’s
going to see the Spice Girls in EMMA: We’re way past ALLY: We theorized he would
not know the capital of ME: I believe I was aware of
that. EMMA: I’m sure you were. Do
you know which state Capital is closest to ME: Well, the obvious answer
would be EMMA: ALLY: When they left, somebody
yelled “Go back to ME: What about the rumble?
When does that start? ALLY: I didn’t have a shower
today. I’m baby sitting a miniature Doberman named Chimi. Short for
Chimichanga. EMMA: Ingrid takes two showers a day out of boredom. ME: Ingrid who? EMMA: You know, if you aren’t going to pay attention, you shouldn’t do
these interviews. BOCCE FEVER! Once summer vacation began,
my mother threw me out of the house after breakfast and didn’t let me in again
until dinner time unless I had to go to the bathroom. My friends all operated
under the same rules. That was how it worked then. At dinner my dad would ask
me what I did all day and I’d say “hacked around,” and he’d snort and ask
somebody to pass the lima beans. “Hacking around” could mean
damming the creek that ran behind the backyards on Second Avenue and emptied
into the Peckman River, or spitball fights at the library, or following the
railroad tracks out of town and around the abandoned quarry, or catching
crawfish and salamanders. It very seldom meant pick-up games of baseball
because you needed so many kids and so much space, but every now and then the
stars would swing into alignment and we’d manage. We played these either on
asphalt in the School Number One playground, if the janitor forgot to chain the
gate, or on grass in the park next to the firehouse. Sliding was murder on the
asphalt but if you didn’t slide you got called “Betsy” for a week, so everybody
slid. This changed when I was about 11 and we
discovered the edge of town was lousy with abandoned baseball diamonds. There
was one with an enormous backstop just beyond the junkyard across the railroad
tracks. The grass was waist high in places and it was full of debris that had
drifted down from the junkyard. We guessed it had been abandoned 50 years
earlier, although the fact that the bases were still intact and even the
baselines were discernable through the weeds argued that it was more like a
year or two. A second
diamond—slightly weedier but mostly free of garbage—turned up near the banks of
the Peckman, just upriver from where the Little Falls Laundry jettisoned its
soapsuds. I had vague memories of
having watched twilight ball games at this one at the dawn of time, when I was
4 or 5—perhaps the high school team had used it before they bulldozed the woods
behind the cafeteria and built new playing fields. (And yes, I was roaming around
town at twilight even at 4 or 5. Boot the kids out of the house after breakfast
and don’t let them in till dark for 12 or 15 summers and you don’t have to
worry about any obesity epidemics.) We decided to use this one
for our baseball games. Most families were now using gas-powered mowers, but
everybody had an old rotary mower in the garage as well, and we dragged a dozen
of these down to the diamond to get it into playing condition. The high weeds kept jamming
the (dull) blades and fouling the gears, and we stirred up a lot of very hungry
flying insects, and when we sat down to rest, we stirred up more of them, and
it felt like it was 110 degrees, although possibly it was not. Even if we
hadn’t really done much real mowing, we had done a lot of tromping, and judged
the diamond to be ready. During the third inning of
the first game, a kid named Gary Rinfrett overshot second base, sliding feet
first into some overgrowth we had theretofore ignored, and dislodged a wasp’s
nest. Nothing good happened after
that. Wasps can both bite and sting, and these guys
did. I got away with just one nasty welt but at least two kids required medical
attention, beyond the iodine- and-a-Band-Aid that the rest of us got. There was an uproar, or what
passed for an uproar in my town circa 1966, and the town sent the road crew
down to take out the wasps. They also took out the baseball diamond. What followed still amazes
me. The town council decided we kids needed safe outdoor sports facilities. Less
than two months later, not far from the formerly wasp-infected former baseball
diamond, they officially unveiled… a bocce court. In fact,
two bocce courts, about 20 feet apart. No one—certainly no one
connected to the town council—was ever able to explain how or why the bocce courts
came about. Letters to the local paper suggested darkly that the mayor had a
controlling interest in a bocce-court building company; that the bocce people
had bribed the town council; that we should all shut up because bocce fever was
about to sweep the nation and for once we were ahead of the curve; that the
town had considered a baseball diamond or basketball court but a bocce court
was about 100 times cheaper and almost maintenance free. Bocce is a game with a long
and storied history. When I lived in As far as I know, there were
no elderly Sicilian gentlemen in my home town, which may explain why I never
saw anyone at all playing bocce in our bocce courts. Not in the summer of 1966,
when I was 11. Not in the early 1970’s, when I was in high school. Not in the
1980’s and 90’s, when I would bring my daughter to town to visit my parents. A
few years ago, after four incredible decades of bocce-free existence, the two bocce
courts were converted to flower beds. It was a sad end to a
glorious tradition. SPIRIT OF
THE BACK STAIRS At a very early age I found
that I was possessed by what the French call esprit d’escalier. This sounds like it means
“The Ghost on the Escalator,” and I wish it did, but the best English rendering
is probably ‘The wit of the Backstairs.’ It means that when I lose an argument,
I keep replaying it in my head until I think of exactly what I should have said
in order to have won it. In “Let me tell you something,
Mr. Blauveldt,” I say in a deceptively gentle voice. “Number one: you r
argument is strictly ad hominem, and therefore logically worthless. Number two:
‘hopefully’ is an adverb. And number three, that necktie is simply appalling.” An appreciative murmur runs
through the crowd. Someone gives a low whistle. Blauveldt blinks and stars down
at his ugly necktie. I chuckle at how foolish Blauveldt must be feeling now. Actually, though, Blauveldt
is probably not feeling very foolish since he made me look like the village
idiot in front of 20 or 30 people, while I demolished his argument somewhere on
Rt. 287, where only the fuzzy dice hanging from my rear view mirror could
appreciate it. I have occasionally tried to
shrink the gap between the time when the other person stops talking (let’s say
Tuesday, But it seemed useless. From
my first argument (the first I can recall anyway, at age six or seven) right up
until today, I have almost never come up with the right words at the right
time. Take that earliest argument,
for instance. In many ways it’s typical. I was wearing a Lone Ranger hat and a
fellow I’d never seen before sauntered over to me and asked, “Do you like the
Lone Ranger?” “You bet!” I cried. “Well, you smell like dog
doo,” he said, and sauntered away while I gaped after him. Hours later the proper response
occurred to me (“Eat lead, varmint,” followed by six bullets in the gut) but by
then it was too late. As much as I hoped for a continuation of the discussion,
I never saw the kid again. But there was one occasion when I responded instantly
with exactly the right words. I was driving along one
Sunday afternoon last summer. It was a sweltering hot day. There was a car in
the breakdown lane ahead of me, and half a dozen or so burly youths were trying
to flag down passing motorists. I coasted to a stop. One of the guys ran up to
my window and said, “Do you have a spare?” “A spare
tire?” I asked. Now in retrospect, seeing how
hot it was and assuming that these guys had been stuck there quite a while, the
testiness of his response is understandable, but at the time I felt it was
uncalled for. He said: “No, a spare HEAD, you [explicative deleted] moron.” Normally I would have gawked
stupidly while the other guys laughed at their buddy’s great put down, and then
I would have driven slowly away and waited—hours? Days?
for the reply to develop but this time the words came
instantly. “Sorry,” I said. “I have a
spare tire, but no spare head. (pause) I can see why
you’d want one, though.” The rest of the gang howled.
I stepped on the gas. And
immediately stalled out. What followed is something of
a blur, I’m happy to say. There are some advantages to
not being quite so fast on your feet, after all. Farewell to the
Couch For a long time I used to plan
my year around the annual Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon. I’d start laying in
bags of Doritos and cases of diet soda with the spring thaw, and shortly after
the Fourth of July I’d send out invitations to everybody I knew who might
plausibly want to spend Labor Day weekend at my place, staying awake, gorging on
junk food, and watching a sleep-deprived Jerry Lewis edge ever closer to a
total psychotic breakdown. But eventually I realized it
was time to put away childish things (I was 47 years old) and I had to find
something else to give some structure to my pathetic (but none the less highly
entertaining) life. What I found was Big Clean Up Day,
the Saturday each June when all the residents of I always look forward to
strolling around town and counting all the treadmills, exercise bikes, and ab
machines. I bet most people figure out that they are never going to use that treadmill
within an hour of delivery. But it seems so wasteful
to throw out a brand new treadmill. So they let it sit in the basement, curing
like a ham, for 5 or 6 years before they can bring themselves to heave it. This year I didn’t have a
disposable treadmill, but I did have a couch with which I no longer wished to
cohabit. I wrote about this a few weeks ago. I was unable to fit it through my
door, so it was sitting on my back porch. I broke off the legs on one side
trying to force it through the kitchen threshold and had it propped up on
phonebooks. I was proud to have something so large and worthless to put out for
Big Clean Up Day. Well, a week or so before the
couch was going to make its public debut on my curb, I got a phone call from my
cousin Low-Low. He opened with the words, “Read your article about the couch.
Want it.” I was a little taken aback—after all, if he’d read my article, he
knew the couch was broken. But then all of his furniture is broken—Low-Low last
saw 300 pounds 30 years ago, and it was rapidly receding into the distance even
then. Maybe he figured the couch was pre-broken,
like the brand new blue jeans you can buy already frayed at the cuffs and worn
at the knees. I told him sure he could have
the couch, as long as he took it before Big Clean Up. He told me I could bring
it over to him whenever I wanted. I laughed heartily and hung up on him. He
called back and said he’d be at my place Friday, on Big Clean Up Eve. If you were out and about
that evening and you saw what looked to be an enormous beach ball, dressed in
bib overalls, with a human head balanced on top, that was Low-Low. He backed
his pick-up truck to my porch around Anyway, by Around “What are you doing?” I said. “Found a better one, but no
room with this thing inna truck.” Truth to tell, I was not
surprised that Low-Low had found a couch more to his liking somewhere in the
streets of “Thought you’d want it back.
It’s your couch.” I said okay, look, just pick
up that end and we’ll drag it over to the sidewalk. He said I could do that myself,
it was getting late and he had to snatch the other couch and get home. So I
stole his car keys and kept swatting him on the butt with my baseball cap until
he helped me drag the couch out to the sidewalk. Half an hour later he rang my
bell. He wanted help putting MY couch back on the truck. “What happened to the BETTER
couch? Somebody take it while you were busy being a moron over here?” He said that while the other
couch looked good, it smelled bad. Like it had been used for a cat box. I
nodded. While we were chatting I emptied a can of clam chowder into a sauce pan
and heated it up. “We eating?” he said hopefully. “Oh yeah,” I said. I took the
chowder off the low heat, went outside, and dumped it over my couch in a criss
cross pattern. “Now let’s get this thing on the truck,” I said. “I’ll see if I can find
another one,” he said. “Good idea,” I said. I slept in on Saturday and
puttered around, and went to the gym and did some grocery shopping, and
sometime in the late afternoon, long after all those orphan treadmills and
obsolete computers had been hauled off, I detected the scent of clam chowder emanating
from the rear of my place. The couch was sitting on my back porch. Low-Low, a
subsequent phone call revealed, had hung around So I have my couch until The
Next Big Clean Up Day, and it’s already attracting a
lot of attention from the neighborhood cats, thanks to that clam chowder
patina. I don’t know if Low-Low ever
found another couch to his liking somewhere in the streets of Fat Camp “I can’t wait to see my new
summer pants,” said Picarillo. Calvano and I couldn’t wait to see them either.
Every year, as soon as Picarillo got home on the last day of school, the
Picarillos crammed themselves into the Picarillo station wagon and drove out to
the ancestral Picarillo homestead on But of course Picarillo
couldn’t go in his school clothes. His mother always had some incredible summer
ensemble laid out on Picarillo’s bed. This year she had outdone
herself. The legs of the Bermuda shorts were two different colors—one was chartreuse,
the other a sort of day-glo purple, and each one had a hula girl. Those shorts
remain the ugliest article of clothing I have ever seen. “Wow!” said Picarillo. A few minutes later Calvano
and I waved goodbye as the Picarillo-mobile vanished down Early Sunday afternoon, less
than 48 hours into our summer vacation, Calvano and I were so bored that when
my Uncle Tug asked us to hose off his back porch we jumped at the chance. There
were some strange hard globs all over the steps, like blisters “What is this
stuff?” said Calvano. “It smells like Chow
Mien when we turn the hose on ‘em.” “Could be. I’m a little hazy on the details,” said Tug. “But I
know they weren’t here when I moved in. That was right after In the end Calvano and I had
to scrape the emulsified Chinese takeout from the porch with a lawn edger. Tug
nodded his approval and went back to his newspaper, which he was reading in a
lawn chair at the edge of his pool. He hadn’t filled the pool yet. Some years
he didn’t get around to it at all. “Is that today’s paper?” said
Calvano. “Can we have the comics?” “You can have the whole thing,”
said Tug, “but there’s no comics. This is the New York
Times. No comics, no late sports scores. Should be ashamed to
call itself a newspaper.” We didn’t believe him. A
Sunday paper without comics? Ha! We took the paper and repaired to
Calvano’s basement. No comics. Finally we came across the Times Magazine and
decided the comics must be in there, but they weren’t. We were reduced to
looking at the ads, since none of the articles concerned werewolves or hot
rods, which were the only things we were interested in. “Look at this,” I said. In the last dozen or so pages of the magazine, there were endless
ads for summer camps. But all the kids in the ads were fat. “All these kids look like Picarillo,” I said. “Yeah, said Calvano. “’ “It’s the first letter I ever
got,” he said. “But it’s just a picture of a fat kid in a canoe.” He took out
his wallet and unfolded the clipping he’d been carrying. “Hmm,” said Calvano. “Very interesting. You know, I bet this means your parents
are planning to send you to fat kid camp.” Picarillo looked horrified.
“I wanna go to Boy Scout Camp, with you guys, like every year!” “Well, why else would you get
that in the mail, Picarillo?” Picarillo thrust out his
lower lip and insisted he wasn’t going to fat kid camp, but he had already
convinced himself that he was. That was the great thing about Picarillo. When
you wanted to drive him crazy, he did all the work for you. Right after the Fourth of
July we were all scheduled to go to Boy Scout Camp for two weeks with the rest
of the Troop 11. For a week or so before our departure date Picarillo began to
think maybe his parents had changed their mind about Fat Kid Camp, but Calvano
suggested that they might be telling
him that he was going to Camp Altaha so he wouldn’t give them any trouble about
getting in the car. In fact, Picarillo’s dad
drove the three of us to “Look,” he said, unfolding
the ad for the 8,000 time. “They got volley ball. We don’t have volley ball
here. And their canoes have hawk heads
painted on the sides!” Finally, two days before the
end of camp, Picarillo asked, “Why do you think they changed their mind about
Fat Kid Camp, you guys?” “Well, Fat Kid Camp is
probably really expensive,” I said. “Maybe your parents couldn’t afford it
after all.” “Yeah,” said Calvano. “Probably what happened is, your dad lost his
job.” Picarillo gaped. “Aw geez,” he said. “Now I’ll never get to Fat Kid Camp!” SUBLET
I was picking up two
Wednesday Lunch Specials at Buffa’s Luncheonette—the tuna salad platter for me
and the antipasto for Mulberry Street Joey Clams. I think it came to eight
dollars and change with the sodas, and I paid with a twenty. Buffa gave me a sour
look. He did not like twenties, or perhaps he simply did not like me. “Hang on
a minute there, Diamond Jim Brady,” he said.
He turned the twenty over and scrutinized it as though he was looking
for a ‘Made in Taiwan’ sticker, and then ostentatiously played the beam of an
ultra violet penlight over my Andrew Jackson for what seemed like several
minutes. “It seems to be legit,” he
muttered, and slowly made change. The transaction was nearly complete when I
was poked in the back with a rolled up newspaper. “Jeff! My man! My main man! My numero-uno cat!” I had met Ray Storch in high
school, and later he had started a package tour company called Good Buddy Tours,
operating out of the “What’s the good word, my
man?” “Eh do note sprick Engrich!”
I said, and bolted out the door. When I got to The Custom Neon Sign Shop I
pulled the shade on the door down and said, “Mulberry Street Joey Clams! You
know that guy Ray I told you about?” “The guy who owes you all the
money?” “Yeah! He was at Buffa’s!” “Hey, great. Did you get the
money?” “No! Of course not! I
pretended I didn’t know who he was and hightailed it
out of there!” “You know,” sighed Mulberry
Street Joey Clams, “traditionally, since he
owes you money, he’s the supposed to be hightailing. When you run away from him,
it’s a breach of etiquette. Not to mention really stupid.” “You don’t understand…” “Yeah, yeah. So where’s
lunch?” “Um,” I said. “I, uh, left it
at Buffa’s.” There was a rap on the
window. There was Ray, holding the bag with our lunch in one hand and waving
with the other. “Pretend we’re not here,” I
said. “He’s looking at us,” said
Mulberry Street Joey Clams. He opened the door. “Hey, that’s a classy suit!” “Shark skin,” said Ray. “When
I told that guy Buffa I’d deliver your lunch, you know what he said? ‘Go ahead
and take it, but don’t eat the tuna salad. I put something extra in it!’ Funny
guy.” “I told you,” I said to Mulberry Street Joey Clams. “You said it was
my imagination, but I know Ex-lax when I taste it.” “Yeah, yeah, cry me a river.” “This is a sweet little
location,” said Ray. “You ever think about subletting? You’ve got a lot of
unused space here.” “We don’t have any unused space here,” I said. “You
lose your lease or something?” “There were… some issues with the folks at the “Well, of course,” said
Mulberry Street Joey Clams, “This would have to be a cash-only arrangement…” “Of course…” said Ray. I began pounding my head
against a tank of compressed air. After a while I stopped. I couldn’t make the
tank explode and my head was starting to hurt. “You know,” said Ray, “In
addition to the rent, I could throw you guys some work from time to time. As
tour guides. You know the city, right?” “Absolutely,” said Mulberry
Street Joey Clams. “Are you out of your mind!?!”
I said. They both looked at me. “Which one of us are you
talking to?” said Mulberry Street Joey Clams. I had to think. I wasn’t
sure. Mulberry Street Joey Clams was crazy for thinking about working for Ray.
Ray was insane for thinking about hiring Mulberry Street Joey Clams. It
canceled out. “Never mind,” I said. Two days later, Ray moved his
file cabinet into the Custom Neon Sign Shop, and a few days after that,
Mulberry Street Joey Clams took his first tour group—three dozen Japanese
tourists—out to see the sights of Manhattan. Ray’s first hint that
something was amiss came when the bus driver showed up at The Custom Neon Sign
Shop, without the bus. “I went to the bathroom at the Automat, and when I came
out, everybody was gone. Clams, Mr. Yakamoto, the bus, everything.” “How long were you in the
can?” asked Ray. “Three minutes. Well, maybe
five, because somebody shoved a chair under the door handle and I had to holler
for help to get out.” Four hours later, Mr.
Yakamoto, the head of the tour group, arrived in a taxi. “Mister Clams dropped us off
at a video arcade in Five hours after that,
Mulberry Street Joey Clams arrived. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. “I made a
few changes in the itinerary,” he explained. “You dumped all the tourists
in a video arcade.” “That was one of the
changes.” “Uh-huh. Then what happened?
Where did you go? Where is the bus?” “You ask a lot of questions,
Storch.” “Yes I do.” “I had some time to kill, so
I took a bunch of people to “That’s nuts!” cried Ray. “No, they got casinos there now.” “Wait a minute. You took my bus and ran your own tour while you were supposed to be taking my group on a tour?” “Hey. What I do on my own time is my business.” “How do you figure you were
doing this on your own time?” “The way I figure it, if I’m
doing something, I’m on my own time.” “I see.” That was essentially the end
of the sublet. Ray did not want to pay for the week he’d been there, especially
not in cash, but since Mulberry Street Joey Clams knew where the bus was, he
did. The New Couch You can bond with a couch in
ways you can bond with no other piece of furniture. You spill a can of beer on
the bed and you’ve got to gather up all the sheets and blankets and cram them
into the washing machine, and hope the beer didn’t soak the mattress,
and what were you thinking you idiot, drinking
a can of beer in bed? You spill a can of beer on the couch,
you turn over the cushion and get another can of beer. When the cushion has
been turned over enough times, the couch gets moved into the basement where it
will have a long, pleasant retirement. The deep recesses of the couch will
continue to yield dimes and quarters till the end of time, like the bottomless
purse in a fairy tale. You’ll find Doritos and pretzels and Cheezits, too, and while
they may not be pretty, they’re still edible; downright tasty, in fact, if the
Giants are fourth and goal with 8 seconds on the clock and no time outs left. (If
you find, say, old potato salad or pasta under the cushions you probably want
to steer clear). (Unless it’s a playoff game). I was
on a couch the first time I saw the Beatles, the first time I stayed up to
watch election returns, the first time I was slapped by a girl. I was under the couch when I discovered dust
bunnies are nowhere near as delicious as they look. Now that I think of it, I
was on a couch (or under one) when anything of the slightest interest happened
to me. If you have a couch, you
don’t need any other piece of furniture. It can fulfill the function of a bed,
a chair, a step ladder, a trampoline, a dinner table, a coat rack, a pantry,
and a work bench. If you have relatives who drop by without advance notice, you
can kick all your underpants under the couch while you entertain them, or you
can hide behind the couch till they leave. When the couch cushions fit tightly
into the bed of the couch, the spot between the cushion and the arm rest
provides a secure holder for cell phones, TV remotes, and beverages. I have been without a couch—a
real couch—for nearly five years. I had a pretty good couch,
with a busy enough pattern to alleviate the need for turning over the cushions
every time I spilled the duck sauce. The problem was comfort. It was too
comfortable. I’d wake up on Sunday afternoon, and my daughter would be sprawled
out on my couch reading one of my books. The TV would be on, because she is
incapable of sharing a room with a dark TV, but in “mute” mode. And although
the written word has no greater champion than your humble undersigned, I would
have much preferred it if she’d been watching a TV show, even one with a
talking car or precocious twins, because TV shows like that end in thirty
minutes while books can drag on for hours if not months. So I threw out my
comfortable couch and replaced it with the world’s most rear-end unfriendly
love seat, and the next Sunday my daughter sat down, said “Eeww!” and went off
to college for four years. At that point, it was pretty much “mission
accomplished!” and I could have ditched the love seat and gone after another
comfortable couch, but I didn’t. For one thing, my middle name is inertia. For
another, if I got rid of the love seat I’d have to deal with all the underpants
I’d kicked under it and I really didn’t want to. But a couple of weeks ago my
ex-wife called me from an auction. The contents of a bed-and-breakfast were
being sold, and she thought the couches—there were
three identical ones—might go cheaply. “Okay,” I said. “If you can get one for
fifty bucks, I’m in. If it’s 100, no. In between, call
me.” Well, fifty bucks it was. And how I would love to be
telling you that I’ve already bonded with it. That the
couch and I are Bee Eff Effs. That I’ve rotated the cushions 14 times
already and the smell of the spilled soy sauce has exactly canceled out the
smell of the crashed cheese doodles. But there’s another aspect to
the couch thing I haven’t touched upon. They tend to be on the large size. My largest exterior doorway
was not adequate. At first it seemed about three quarters of an inch too small
in the vertical direction. Following a great deal of tilting and nudging, we (Pete,
who delivered it, and I) figured half an inch more would do it. So we unscrewed the edging of
the aluminum siding that framed the doorway. And even though that gained us
more than half an inch, the couch was still half an inch too tall. So—and I do not recommend you
try this at home—not at your own home, anyway, but if you have a relative you
dislike, you might try it at his
home—we unframed the door. With a crowbar. We now had
three inches more leeway in the horizontal plane and an inch and a half in the
vertical. But we did not count on the
Incredible Expanding Couch, which was still half an inch too tall. It was now
obvious that if I enlarged my doorway by running a freight train through it,
the couch would still be half an inch too tall. So we walked the couch back a
few yards and tried to force it through the doorway like a battering ram. This
is the couch-moving equivalent of trying to get someone who doesn’t speak
English to understand you by yelling at them (in English). As my father
discovered many times (but never fully accepted), this does not work, and
neither did the battering ram strategy, although we did manage to snap off one
of the legs. Which still
did not give us enough clearance. So we put the house back
together—more or less—and I left the couch out on the back porch, substituting
a pile of phone books for the missing leg. It really is a comfortable
couch, and I actually took a nap on it out there the other night. But I woke up
with this… well, raccoon, sitting on my chest, giving me this sort of ‘so what
do you think you’re doing on my
couch?’ look. So I don’t think I’ll do that
again. All About
PULP Few things are as disturbing as the sudden realization that the
thing you just put in your mouth is, in fact, not the thing you intended to put
in your mouth. You know what I mean—the potato salad that turns out to be
cottage cheese, the spoonful of raspberry yogurt that turn out to be 16 weeks
past its expiration date, the toothpaste that turns out to be pimple cream, and
so on. We’ve all had this experience. Some of us have it several times a day,
at least during football season. I mention all this because I just found myself with a mouth full of
defective orange juice. By “defective,” I mean it contained pulp. In fact, a quick perusal
of the carton revealed that it contained “EXTRA PULP.” It’s like advertising that a leg of lamb has “EXTRA GRISTLE” or
that a meatloaf “NOW CONTAINS 20% MORE UNIDENTIFIABLE GLOBS!” And yet when I
tell people I accidentally bought a carton of orange juice full of pulp, they
don’t say “Eeww! Gross!” Almost invariably, the reaction is, “Oooh, I love
pulp!” And when I respond by saying that I don’t, I get this look. Sometimes I get a little lecture about how pulp is the
best part, and how healthy it is, and so on. I’m not surprised that some
people like pulp. It’s a big world. You can probably find somebody out
there who says, “Hey, this check engine light is a great idea! I feel so much
safer knowing that this thing will pop on if I look at it sideways and then I
can pay 60 bucks to get somebody to turn it off.” But it’s not some people
who like pulp. Everybody wants pulp in their orange juice except me, apparently.
I feel like I just found out that everybody else in town is a werewolf. And not
only is everyone a werewolf, they’ve always assumed you must be a werewolf too. They’re confused,
maybe even shocked that it isn’t so. “Jeff, it’s a full moon. How come you’re not
wolfing out, dude?” “Uh… I’m not a werewolf, Russ.” “Ha! You had me going for a minute there, dude. You slay me.” “No, seriously—I’m not a werewolf.” “Seriously? But… why? I mean,
you get all covered with hair, you get this cool little snout, and these excellent teeth…” “Yeah, I see…” “You’re up all night, your knees bend the wrong way, and you smell
like a wet dog. I mean, it’s awesome!” “Ye-ah…” “So you want me to bite you? Just a nip on the
shin? And next moon, you’ll be wolfing it up. You’ll love it!” “No thanks.” Actually that’s not a very good analogy because I’d really like to
be a werewolf, but you see my point. So what’s to be done about this problem? There will always be the
chance that someone will accidentally buy the pulpy orange juice because the
cartons are the same size and they sometimes put the pulpy ones right next to
the unpulpy ones. My solution? I’ve already written my
congress person suggesting a ban on retail sales of pulpy orange juice. But wait, I hear you say. Shouldn’t people be allowed to have pulp in
their orange juice if they want it? No. We tried that, and it just didn’t work. The time for a total
ban has come. But wasn’t the carton
clearly labeled? Isn’t the problem that you weren’t paying attention at the
grocery store? No, the problem was that there was pulp in my orange juice. The long term solution, of course, is to develop an orange without
pulp, the way we’ve developed poodles that grow their fur so it looks like
they’re wearing little tutus. If science can do that, surely it can come up
with a pulpless orange. In fact, for all I know there already is a pulpless
orange. Maybe the pulpy orange juice comes from one kind of orange and the
pulp-free variety comes from the other. Maybe the only reason we have to put up
with this insanity is because no one has had the guts to stand up to the PULP
lobby. Until now. Together I think we can do this. Just say it with me: “NO MORE
PULP! NO MORE PULP!” And then maybe we can get started on the werewolf thing. Snouts! Yeah! THE SEVENTH ANNUAL EMMA
GRIMSHAW LETTER WRITING CONTEST Every summer my daughter Emma holds the annual Emma
Grimshaw Letter Writing Contest… Emma: The letter writing
contest is starting. So what I need you to do… Me: Yeah, I know. Announce in
the paper that… Emma: …Buy me some sealing
wax. Me: What? What’s wrong with
your ceiling? Emma: [pause] We’ll just pretend you didn’t say that. Me: You know, I really used
to think it was ‘ceiling wax’ with a ‘c.’ The first time I ever heard about
‘sealing wax’ was in “Puff the Magic Dragon.” My second grade teacher played it
for us and I think we all thought it was ‘ceiling wax’ with a ‘c.’ Because who ever heard of sealing a letter with wax when
you’re 7 years old? Emma: Whoever heard of wax
for the ceiling? What does that even mean? Enough about your horrible childhood
anyway. I just saw “Basic Instinct.” Who’s the killer? Me: Um. I think… Jeanne
Tripplehorn? I mean it’s been 15 years since I saw it, but isn’t there a blonde
wig or something? Emma: That could have been planted. By Sharon Stone. I think Sharon
Stone did it. Because, look, everybody she knows turns out to have killed their
family. Not just the lesbian lover, but also Hazel Dobkins. Seriously, I need
sealing wax. Me: Who? And where am I supposed
to get sealing wax? Emma: Hazel Dobkins. The old
lady. Michael Douglas is following Sharon Stone, and she goes to this house to
visit an old lady. When he checks on who she is, it
turns out she killed her husband and three kids back in the fifties. Me: I don’t remember that at
all. Do they show this in a flashback? Emma: Nooooo. Look, forget
the movie, which clearly you already have, and just focus on the sealing wax.
If Sharon Stone didn’t do it, what’s with the ice pick under the bed at the
end? Me: You know, I’m still a little vague about how your letter-writing
contest works. Emma: It’s
working fine. I’ve got 14 letters already and it’s only the second week of the
competition. Me: People just write you
letters, and the one who writes the most letters wins? Is that it? Emma: No. You enter the contest. You say, “Emma! I
want to be in the letter writing contest!” Then I write a letter. Then you
write back. Then I write back. The person who writes back the most times wins
an autographed copy of your book. Me: You have an autographed
copy of my book? Emma: You are to supply that. Me: Ah. You know, it occurs
to me that you could control who wins by writing back quickly, or not. Emma: That’s true but I
wouldn’t do that. Me: Of course not. How many
of these letters are actually worth reading? Emma: Many of them. I’ll read
you Steele’s letter. He’s a good writer.
[Clears throat.] “Dear E. E.: It is I—that Monopoly-master / Hockey God,
Steele. When I got your letter I was a bit nervous, as my epistolary skills…” Me: Enough. That’s just
brutal. Emma: Is that like your
ancient hippie slang for really good?
Me: Not exactly. Emma: We have a couple of
cheaters this year, one of them deliberate, the other not. The deliberate
cheater is Rachel. The reigning champion.
I don’t see why she feels the need to cheat. I sent her a letter on Tuesday
morning. I got one on Thursday. It’s technically possible. BUT. Me: Let me write that down. But. Emma: Exactly. So I was
suspicious. For one thing, she didn’t reply to anything in the letter I sent.
So I text messaged: ‘No reply till Monday.’ And you know what? Me: No. Emma: I found a secret dog
run. Apparently Rudy Giuliani converted a garbage dumping site into a dog run.
There’s a plaque that says it was part of the urban renewal project of 1995. It’s
next to the Me: Restriction sight? Emma: A lot of dog runs have
signs saying you aren’t allowed without a dog. But not this one. It’s like, once
I went swimming in the creek with Andi? And the next week they put up a sign that said ‘no swimming in the creek?’ Me: It’s exactly like that. Emma: Rachel disavowed
cheating but she admitted to writing the letter beforehand. But didn’t mail it till she got mine. So it’s still
cheating. Me: Did she cheat the year
she won? Emma: Don’t’ be ridiculous. She
was in Me: Couldn’t she just have
sent an email? Emma: An email would not have
been eligible. Me: But the scanned copy sent
via email was? Emma: No. It was so sad. In
the Second Annual Emma Grimshaw Letter Writing Contest, the winner sent only
two letters. This year I anticipate several people breaking into double digits.
We’ve got entrants in 4 countries and 10 states so far. The Me: I’m guessing there’s no
sealing wax within 30 miles of me. Emma: Great. Now you’re going
to make me go to Kate’s Papery. They
have my French sealing wax. Me: I can’t believe you seal
all letters with sealing wax. Emma: Yessssss. This is not
your mother’s letter writing contest. And I stamp the wax with my “E.” Me: I’m sure my readers would
love to enter your contest and get a letter with that lovely “E.” Address,
please? Emma: Emma Grimshaw (slash!) 329
East 94th Me: Who don’t you just melt
the bathtub crayons and use them for sealing wax? Emma: We’re done. Ask the Thirty Second Meal
Expert Guy Thanks to all the readers who wrote in after
seeing the Thirty Second Meal Expert Guy co-hosting E!’s
"100 Biggest Celebrity Pigouts" last Friday evening.
Yes, that was an Armani jacket I was wearing, and no, I
did not get to keep it! And please, people—I (and my
celebrity co-hosts, Tina Yothers and that Italian guy whose name
I didn’t catch) had nothing to do with selecting the clips
for the show, or for ranking them. We just read the TelePrompTer,
kids. I totally agree with everyone who felt that the clip of Joy
Behar and Tony Danza polishing off six plates of calamari in less
than 7 minutes should have finished in the top ten at the very
least. Anyway, it was a wonderful experience, and I’m glad I
did it, but I’m thrilled to be back. "There’s no
place like home," as Judy Garland says at the end of
‘Cannonball Run II. And how right she was! And now to this
week’s column. DEAR THIRTY SECOND MEAL EXPERT GUY: A lot of your "30 Second Meal"
recipes call for ‘ingredients’ that are already
complete meals, like last week you had that ‘Peking Duck on
the Go’ recipe that called for ‘one serving of Peking
Duck’ (and step two was "put in microwave until
hot." I mean come on!). Isn’t this cheating?
Shouldn’t your recipes start from scratch? But if they did,
they wouldn’t be 30-second meals, would they? The Peking
Duck would be about a 5-hour meal, wouldn’t it?
WOULDN’T IT? (signed) GET REAL DEAR GET: The Thirty Second Meal Expert Guy’s ARE
from scratch. But even in the ‘scratchiest’ recipes,
many ingredients are pre-prepared. When a recipe calls for salt,
you don’t expect the recipe to begin, "Get a pick and
shovel and drive to the salt mine," do you? When it calls
for a tomato, you’d be a bit put out if the recipe said,
"Prepare a 10 X 10 patch of soil for planting. Plant some
tomato seeds. Wait about 2 months," wouldn’t you?
Really, let’s don’t be ridiculous, GET. DEAR THIRTY SECOND MEAL EXPERT GUY: Time and time again you have made the claim
that "any meal can become a thirty second meal if
you’ve got a Cuisinart (or a cheap knock-off) and the will
to make it so." This is flat out not true. It took me nearly
4 minutes just to chop up a single serving of pot roast and get
it in the blender. Just what kind of cheap knock off do you have
that will get the job done in 30 seconds or less? (signed) Calling You Out on This One DEAR CALLING: ME-ow! Is it just me, or are some of my
faithful readers just a leeeeedle bit JEALOUS that the Thirty
Second Meal Expert Guy got to hobnob with the lovely Tina Yothers
and that Italian gentleman last week while wearing an actual
Armani jacket? Put your claws away, people! YES, you’ve
caught me. If you want to cram a 48-course meal into your
Cuisinart, it WILL take more than 30 seconds. Boo-Flapping-Hoo.
But please remember, gentlefolk, that sometimes when we say
"Thirty second meal," we mean a meal you can EAT in 30
seconds rather than PREPARE in 30 seconds. And sometimes we mean
the meal you eat after the thirty-first meal but before the
thirty-third meal. The Thirty Second Meal Expert Guy is nothing
if not flexible! That’s all the time we have for letters
this week. Now, on to the heart of the column—the recipes! I
hope you brought your appetites! * THIRTY SECOND
OPEN MEAT LOAF SANDWICH Ingredients: 1 slice meatloaf 1 slice bread 1 tablespoon ketchup Preparation time: 8.53 seconds When properly executed, this provides you with
a sandwich you can carry around in your pocket all day, although
if it’s after Memorial Day and you’re wearing white
trousers, you’ll want to go easy on the ketchup. Perhaps an
additional slice of bread is worth considering as well. In fact,
it’s advisable to add a slice of bread each time you replace
the THIRTY SECOND OPEN MEATLOAF SANDWICH in your pocket. * THIRTY SECOND
STRAWBERRY-FLAVORED GELATIN DESSERT WITH CHUNKS OF PINEAPPLE Ingredients: 1 can of pineapple chunks packed in water
(already open) 1 packet strawberry flavored gelatin dessert
mix 1 aerosol can artificial whipped cream Preparation time: 15 seconds The most time consuming aspect of gelatin
dessert mix preparation usually involves adding the mix to
boiling water and then allowing the resulting mixture to
‘set’ in the refrigerator. But this step can be
entirely omitted once we realize the gelatin dessert mix is already
a delicious strawberry flavored powder. Because the dessert
mix powder is condensed and therefore the flavor is so intense it
will make your brain melt and shoot out of your ears if eaten
straight, we do not advise consuming it unless you add the
pineapples and aerosol whipped cream. * THIRTY SECOND
PASTA SURPRISE Ingredients: 1 cup commercially prepared pasta salad 1 tsp. grated Parmesan cheese 1 jar tomato sauce A pinch of oregano Preparation time: 28.67 seconds NOTE: Some commercially prepared pasta salads
come already garnished and therefore there is no reason to add
cheese and oregano. If this is the case, omit steps 2-4. A BUNCH OF
BUMS Every spring we were forced to raise money for
the PTA. Sometimes we sold magazine subscriptions door-to-door;
one year they stuck us at intersections with traffic lights,
where we were supposed to walk up and down the line of stopped
cars with orange plastic buckets. The orange plastic buckets
matched our orange plastic vests. The whole thing was mortifying,
at least as far as Calvano and I were concerned, but Picarillo
loved his orange bucket and his orange vest and he moved from car
to car with a bounce in his step and a smile that seemed somehow
larger than his head. He was terrifying. Calvano and I sat on the
curb watching while Picarillo tapped on car windows.
"Yoo-hoo!" he cried. "We’re collectin’
money for the STP!" Abbreviations were not Picarillo’s
strong suit. Most drivers were confused. These days
it’s not unusual for adults to force children to beg for
money in busy intersections, but it 1966 it was practically
unheard of. It was one thing for kids to raise money by selling
candy bars so ancient and musty that they tasted like cardboard,
but it was totally beyond the pale for them to simply beg for
money from stopped cars. Some drivers asked Picarillo what he was
selling. "Nothing!" he cried, and extended his orange
bucket towards them. If there were small children in the
backseat, Picarillo tap on the rear window. They would cower, and
sometimes burst into tears. "You want something for nothing,"
yelled Mr. DeLorenzo, the town plumbing inspector. He looked
remarkably like his pet bulldog, Sam Huff, who was sitting in the
passenger seat of his pick-up. "Yes!" Picarillo said, delighted that
somebody finally understood. "Put the money inna
bucket!" "You’re a bunch of bums," Mr.
DeLorenzo snarled. Sam Huff also snarled. Mr. DeLorenzo pulled
over to the shoulder. He was stopping just to yell at Picarillo.
I nudged Calvano. This was going to be good. "You should be ashamed, you bums. What
would your parents say if they knew you were out here begging for
money from honest working men?" As a matter of fact, out
parents had pretty much signed off on this idea as soon as it was
proposed. Certainly the Picarillo’s were not about to agree
to another chocolate bar sale, not after Mike had eaten his
entire allotment and stuck them with a bill for nearly 30 bucks
as a result. "It’s a disgrace, you bums in your sissy
orange blouses!" I couldn’t help but notice that Calvano
and I were included in this sweeping indictment. "Well,
we’re not begging. Just Picarillo," I said. Mr.
DeLorenzo was silent for a moment, as if trying to figure out
whether being too lazy to beg made us better or worse than
Picarillo. "Bah," he said, climbing back in his
truck. Sam Huff’s stumpy tail beat a tattoo on the seat.
"You should all just get some Sterno and head out to the
railroad tracks, like bums. Because bums is what you are!" "What’s this ‘Sterno’
stuff?" I asked. "Puh-thetic! It’s liquid fire. Fire
in a can. Bums use it to keep warm and cook the food they beg off
honest working people, just like you’re doing. They sit on
the tracks and warm their hands over the Sterno, that’s what
it is." "Liquid fire," whispered Calvano. "Bah!" said Mr. DeLorenzo. He put his
truck in gear and the transmission made a noise like a bag full
of tin cans thrown down the stairs. Sam Huff gave one gravelly
bark as they drove off. "Did you hear that about the Sterno?"
I said. "Yeah. Where do you think we can get it?
You think you have to be a bum to buy it?" mused Calvano. "I doubt it. It’s not like they have
membership cards. But maybe you have to be a grown up." "We can handle that," said Calvano.
He and I checked our pockets. We had about two dollars and eighty
cents between us. Calvano looked in Picarillo’s bucket, but
he’d only managed to get 65 cents. "You stay here,
Picarillo, we’re gonna check out this Sterno thing." Calvano and I walked down East Main Street in
search of Sterno. We found it at the hardware store. At first Mr.
Joworsky was reluctant to sell it to us, but Calvano explained it
was for Mr. DeLorenzo. "He’s the new Scout
Master," he said. "Why, what happened to Jim Appledorn? I
thought he was your Scoutmaster." "Um," said Calvano, thinking fast.
"He’s in jail. And um, Mr. DeLorenzo says we need a
book of matches." I’m glad it didn’t occur to
Calvano to say that Mr. DeLorenzo said we need a few sticks of
dynamite to blow up some tree stumps, because he probably would
have gotten it. We went back to the intersection to collect
Picarillo. I think his total was holding steady at 65 cents. "Come on, Picarillo, call it a day,"
I said. "You guys didn’t get any money at
all," said Picarillo. "We got something better. We got
Sterno," said Calvano. We hiked to Montclair Ave., where the commuter
train line that ran parallel to Main Street all through Singac
swung south into the woods. We walked along the tracks until we
couldn’t see the street any more, and sat on the tracks in
our orange vests. Calvano lit the Sterno. It smells a bit like
the lighter fluid our dads squirted on the charcoal briquettes at
summer barbecues. The flame was blue. "Whoa!" said Picarillo. We nodded and
watched the flame. After a while I said, "Well, now
what?" "Now I guess we’re bums," said
Calvano. "Cool," said Picarillo. We nodded
again. We sat on the tracks for a while being bums. Then Calvano
put a rock on top of the Sterno can and put out the fire. Then we
stopped being bums and went home. POSTER KIDS Unless the Park Theater threatened to sell out,
the balcony was officially closed. We had a pair of thick velvet
ropes, three feet or so in length, which we clipped into place at
the foot of the two stairwells that led upstairs. You could step
over or slip under these without much trouble, but most people
didn’t bother to try. Those who did were rewarded for their
trouble with uncomfortable seats that were in even worse repair
than the ones downstairs, which is saying something. Aside from the balcony itself, there were three
rooms upstairs. The projection booth, of course. Then there was
the popcorn closet where pre-popped popcorn was stored in clear
plastic 55 gallon bags. I worked at the Park for nearly two years
and some of the same bags were up there during my last week that
had been there during my first. I wouldn’t be surprised if
some of that popcorn predated the invention of the plastic bag. The other room, directly across the balcony
from the popcorn closet, was a small storage room. We kept old
posters and one-sheets there. The Park Theater had started life
in the first decade of the 20th century as a
vaudeville house before converting to a movie palace sometime
after World War I and there were posters in that room that went
all the way back to the beginning—advertisements for long
forgotten comedians and chautauqua circuit performers, for silent
movies by D. W. Griffith and Allan Dwan, all the way up
to—to down to—the lobby card for "Dirty Little
Billy," a movie about Billy the Kid starring Michael J.
Pollard. We threatened to show this during my first summer at the
Park but never made good on our threat. I’m not sure the
movie was even released, but it existed, because we had the
poster. The progression from "Lillian Gish in Broken
Blossoms" to "Michael J. Pollard in Dirty Little
Billy" was interesting, although not entirely pleasant to
contemplate. By the time I arrived at the Park Theater in
1973, it was functioning as a revival house, with split week
double bills—the movies changed every Saturday and Tuesday.
We sometimes used posters from the closet instead of getting new
ones from the distributors. This may have been a money-saving
strategy, but I think all of us loved pawing through the old ads
and it was always a thrill when we turned out to have the poster
we were looking for. We showed a Humphrey Bogart triple bill once
and all three posters came from the Park Theater’s personal
collection—at least on the first night. The poster for
"Action in the North Atlantic" reeked of mildew and we
had to ditch it. Since we didn’t have time to order a
replacement, we took another poster from upstairs, and my fellow
usher / draftsman Frank Mancinelli and I copied the
"Action" poster pretty much line for line on the back
of it. We did a spectacular job if I do say so myself. I believe
the poster we used was for a wiggy little b- picture called
"Gun Crazy," and if you can find a poster for it
without our drawing on the back you can probably put your kid
through college with it. (If you find the poster with our drawing
on the back, you probably can’t put your kid through college
with it). We had such a great time making the poster that
we started doing it on a regular basis. There was absolutely no
reason to use a priceless collectable from upstairs for this;
there was a stationary store a block and a half away, and you
could pick up a sheet of 5 foot by 3 foot posterboard, guaranteed
completely mildew free, for about 85 cents. But hey—the
stuff upstairs was right there, and it was free! Some of the movies that Frank and I (and Mike
Sidorak) made were not really coming to the Park Theater any time
soon. Some of them, like a remake of "King Kong"
starring Al Pacino and Bruce Dern, did not even exist and never
would but the poster looked really good. Some times we had what
amounted to a competition—two posters for non-coming
attractions in opposite corners of the lobby. Frank and I fumed
when Mike’s poster for "Russ Meyer’s ‘Vixen
in Vegas’" attracted considerably more attention than
our poster for The Marx Brothers ‘long lost classic’
"I’ll Say She Is." Ours was clearly the superior
poster, while his was nothing but cleavage. I mean come on. When these faux-coming attractions had been on
display for a week or so, they did not go back into storage. Mike
and Frank and I gave them to the Park Theater candy girls. (Which
got us exactly nowhere with them, by the way). They gushed over
our bee-you-tee-ful drawings and took them home, and, we later
learned, flipped them over to decorate their rooms with the
original vintage posters. I would feel considerably worse about rendering
all those historical posters worthless if the Park Theater had
not burned down, on Bastille Day 1974, completely destroying all
the historical posters we did NOT render worthless. And the ones we drew on—they aren’t
really worthless (assuming they still exist at this late date).
After all, those are original drawings on the back. If I
become a world famous artist, those are going to be worth a lot
of money. Get that look off your face. It could happen. THE GREAT UNJUMPING It has been a while since I organized a symposium,
where several congenial souls join me for several hours at a
diner—preferably one featuring a Bottomless Cup of
Coffee—to hash out some question of enormous import. This past Monday night we convened to discuss
whether or not there were too many NFL teams now, and should they
be allowed to move around all the time instead of staying put
like they used to. In attendance were Rory, Chuck, Toby,
Toby’s friend with the puffy vest whose name I did not
catch, myself, and Max, who is no longer Rory’s 22 year old
buddy as he was when we discussed the proper sequencing of the
Beatles’ "Let It Be" album 4 years ago. Now he is
Rory’s 26-year-old buddy. But he still lives with his mom
and we invited him in case we were thrown out of the diner like
last time (the discussion of the true meaning of "MacArthur
Park"), when we were able to continue the discussion in
Rory’s mom’s basement. The rest of us are slightly over
than 26 and our moms will no longer let us bring our friends over
to hang out in the basement all night. This time we did not get thrown out of the
diner since the diner where we agreed to meet was now an Indian
restaurant and (a) was closed since it was Monday night and for
some reason lots of restaurants close on Monday nights and (b) probably
did not feature a Bottomless Cup of Coffee. Toby’s friend with the puffy vest knew
about a sports bar that also probably did not feature a
bottomless cup of coffee. But it was deemed semi-appropriate
since this was going to be a sports-related symposium. FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS was to order a big
bucket of Buffalo wings. Max did not want Buffalo wings because
he does not eat meat. I on the other hand do not eat Buffalo
wings because I am not 100% sure that they are meat. As
far as my palate there is not much difference between a bucket of
Buffalo wings and a bucket of Buffalo chips, if you follow my
drift. Max and I split an order of nachos, which I mention
because various members of the Buffalo wings faction of the
symposium managed to consume roughly 40% of the nachos, in my
estimation. Rory opined that we should be discussing major
league baseball rather than football, as it was baseball season.
He pointed out that one high definition TV was playing the
Yankees at Minnesota while on another the Mets-Phillies game from
earlier was being shown. Toby replied well do you think there are
too many baseball teams? Rory said no. Going around the table it
turned out that none of us thought there were too many baseball
teams, which, Toby pointed out, would make an account of a
symposium on the subject pretty dull. At this point the TV showing the taped Mets
game was changed to "24." I said: by show of hands how
many of us think there are too many football teams? Chuck said
Shh, they’re going to nuke Fayad’s country. And by the
way, we need more dipping sauce for the Buffalo wings. And more
nachos. Toby said that first of all he didn’t care
if they nuked Fayad’s country because nobody seemed to know
the name of the country, including the president who was nuking
the country and the ambassador from the country. Second of
all, this season "24" has jumped the shark. Too many teams? I said. Or just about enough
teams? Chuck said he agreed that "24" had
jumped the shark but if any show could UNjump the shark, it was
"24" and he had a feeling tonight was night it would
unjump. Rory said he thought the expression "jump the
shark" had pretty much jumped the shark. Toby’s friend
in the puffy vest said you can never unjump the shark. He said
"24" was now at the point where the writers were so
desperate that either Jack Bauer was going to adopt a spunky 8
year old street kid through whom Jack would learn to get in touch
with his own feelings, OR they were going to start having a lot
of celebrity guest stars playing themselves, like when "Will
and Grace" really started going down the toilet. The rest of
us all pretended we had never seen "Will and Grace" and
had no idea what he was talking about. Take Jacksonville, I said. If Jacksonville is
going to have an NFL team, why not Pohatcong, for crying out
loud? Wait till this is over, said Rory. Jack Bauer
is biting Fayad on the arm! He’s wrapping a chain
around Fayad’s neck and hoisting him up off the ground and
telling him ‘Say hi to your brother for me!’ Gentlemen,
said Rory, I believe we have seen an UN-JUMP. But, said Chuck, we have not seen MORE-NACHOS. That is correct I said. And as long as
we’re off topic, and apparently going to stay there, I just
want to say that while "Grindhouse" is the best movie
ever, I was still disappointed because the N Y Post said that
Rose McGowen and Rosario Dawson both have guns for legs, but they
don’t. Just Rose. Rosario isn’t even IN that part of
the movie. Max said whoa, that’s bogus because
Rosario would have an awesome gun for a leg. Yes, I said. It was like when I saw "Alien
Vs. Predator" and the ads all said, ‘Whoever wins, we
lose,’ when in fact if "Alien" won we lost but if
"Predator" won we also won. But on the other hand, that
was a pretty crappy movie, whereas "Grindhouse" is the
best movie ever. It only made 11 million this weekend, said
Chuck. It was only number four at the box office last week. How can that be? said Rory. Doesn’t it
have flesh-eating zombies? It does, I said. Gentlemen, said Toby, I have grave fears about
the future of our nation. An Awning of Our Own The Custom Neon Sign Shop had an awning, but
Mulberry Street Joey Clams did not realize this until the shop
had been open for about 5 months. Then one afternoon he was
standing in the doorway checking out the new meter maid. It was a
warm day and he was wearing his Brooklyn Dodgers T-shirt and he
sort of stretched his arms up ‘casually’ and leaned
them against the metal crank sticking out of the side of the
building a foot or so over his head. He felt this interesting
and, from the look of it, extremely uncomfortable pose showed his
physique off to good advantage. In my opinion it did not, but he
did not ask for my opinion so I did not offer it. In any event the new meter maid did not so much
as glance in his direction while she wrote out a ticket for the
Buick parked across the street, so Mulberry Street Joey Clams
pressed his arms against the metal crank with a bit more
force—to "show off the muscle definition better,"
he explained later—and the crank moved with a noise rather
like the one the Tin Woodsman’s rusty elbow makes after
Dorothy oils it for the first time. "Wuuggg!" cried
Mulberry Street Joey Clams as he stumbled forward. The awning had
come unfurled about a quarter of an inch, but that was enough for
Mulberry Street Joey Clams to see that it was an awning. Or, as
he excitedly said to me seconds later, "Somebody stuck one
of those things on the front of the place!" "One of what things, Mulberry Street Joey
Clams?" I asked. "With the stripes," he said,
and dragged me away from the sign I was making to see for myself.
"Why would somebody do that?" he said. My first impulse was to tell him that the
awning had been there when we opened for business and probably
for several generations prior to that, but I had learned early on
never to go with my first impulse while talking to Mulberry
Street Joey Clams. "The awning people probably delivered it
to the wrong place," I said. "They’re always
screwing up like that." He nodded. "Well, it’s ours now,
that’s all there is to it." He eagerly set about
cranking awning. This would have shown off his muscle definition
to the new meter maid even better than just leaning against the
crank if he’d had any muscle definition and if the meter
maid had still been across the street but he didn’t and she
wasn’t. The awning was no longer making Tin Woodsman
noises. Now it produced a sound more like the screeching made by
the giant flying reptile Rodin when he’s trying to
intimidate Godzilla in the classic Japanese film "Godzilla
versus Rodin." Well, Godzilla was not intimidated and
neither was his American counterpart, Mulberry Street Joey Clams.
In less than half an hour the awning was open. It was unbelievably ugly. Yellow and green
stripes, and the words "BEST SAUSAGES" in what might
have been red before the sun got to work on it. Now it was a pale
violet and looked really striking against the yellow and green
stripes. "Woo-hoo!" said Mulberry Street Joey
Clams. "The sausage people are gonna be furious when they
find out we got their awning!" "Absolutely," I said. "But what we gotta do is get some paint
and change that to "CUSTOM NEON SIGNS." I said okay, but I was seeing some problems
with the repaint-the-words-on-the-awning plan. The awning was in
the kind of condition you’d expect in a very old awning that
had been rolled up for years, including several very wet ones.
There were holes, there was mildew, there was evidence that birds
had set up housekeeping in it from time to time. And, you don’t paint awnings. "Great idea, Mulberry Street Joey
Clams," I said. "What color do you want the
letters?" "Well, what’s good with green and
yellow stripes? I guess some other kind of stripes to go with
that." "Absolutely." "Only the stripes should go in the other
direction, so people don’t get confused." "Good thinking, Mulberry Street Joey
Clams." He was silent, and for a moment I thought maybe
I’d gone too far. Sometimes when I told him his ideas were
really good he got suspicious. But he was just pondering. "Black and white," he said at last.
"Simple. And we don’t have to buy the white paint. We
can just leave that part blank." This seemed like another
excellent opportunity to say nothing, so I did. I did convince him to purchase only a quart of
black paint, which was lucky since the awning turned out to be so
rotten that the black paint might as well have been sulfuric
acid. This lead to a decision to remove the awning entirely. This
lead to a fairly large chunk of the building facade separating
itself from the building. "We can touch that up with the black
paint," said Mulberry Street Joey Clams. "It’ll
look fine." We stuffed the awning, including the mechanism
for opening it and closing it, or as much as we had managed to
rip out of the wall (and quite a bit of the wall) into the back
of The Custom Neon Sign Shop van, and went looking for a dumpster
in which to deposit it. We found a suitable one alongside an old
factory being gutted prior to condo conversion. Most people go through life and don’t
really deal with awnings, aside from standing underneath them now
and then. You don’t think of them as being incredibly heavy
and awkward, yet they are. And when you add mildew and fresh
black paint to the equation, you’re talking about a Day to
Remember. We managed to hoist part of the awning over the
edge of the dumpster but it snagged. Mulberry Street Joey Clams,
still clad in his Dodger t-shirt (for the last time ever, thanks
to that mildew and black paint), pulled himself up the side to
disengage it and gave out with an exclamation of sheer delight.
"WHOA!" he cried. He jumped into the dumpster.
"Mulberry Street Joey Clams?" I said. "Just drop that thing," he said.
"Look at this!" ‘This’ was a sign—not neon, but
a large plastic sign that said simply: CLAMS! Later we learned it
had been thrown out by Umberto’s Clam House when the
management suffered a momentary attack of good taste. "This is no accident," said Mulberry
Street Joey Clams. "What are you going to do with that?"
I said, as he loaded it in the back door of the van. "You know what the problem with the Custom
Neon Sign Shop is?" he asked. "Nobody likes the name.
It needs a new name. Something CLASSY, and that tells people
exactly who’s running the place." "Like ‘Clams!’" I
suggested. "You read my mind," he said. For nearly a month The Custom Neon Sign Shop
was called "Clams!" We had a spiffy plastic sign and a
facade that looked like it had (just barely) survived a mortar
attack. Towards the end of the month Mulberry Street Joey Clams
got tired of telling the people who came in to buy clams that we
didn’t have any. And then we went back to being The Custom
Neon Sign Shop. THE UGLIEST THING I OWN, PART 37 What is the ugliest thing you own? I ask because once again it’s time to do
the spring-cleaning. And every year I try to get rid of the
ugliest thing in my apartment. This was a tradition my college
roommate introduced me to over 30 years ago. It seemed to be
predicated on the idea that most people don’t have that
much really ugly stuff, and in (say) 10 years, your home
would be ugly-free and a veritable shrine to good taste. You
might argue that if you were capable of telling the difference
between ugly stuff and non-ugly stuff, you wouldn’t have any
ugly stuff in the first place, but I don’t think that’s
true. Some ugly stuff we buy because we need an electric pencil
sharpener, and the one shaped like a woodpecker is actually 8
bucks cheaper than the rather elegant art deco number, so why
not? Then we spend 3 weeks sticking our pencils in the
woodpecker’s open beak, and despite the unquestioned
excellence of the sharpening, we realize that’s why
not. Other ugly stuff is given to us by relatives, and you
aren’t allowed to get rid of it for at least 2 years (if it
cost less than 20 bucks) or 5 years (more than 50) unless
it’s so ugly it makes the vein on the side of your head pop
out every time you catch a glimpse of it. So for one reason or another, there is never a
lack of really ugly stuff on the premises here at Chez Jeff.
Every year I go through this ritual. This forces me to look at
everything here, and invariably I find that the competition is
fierce. Well, not invariably. One year there was an oil
painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware that I bought
at a yard sale for 25 cents. George’s head was about three
sizes too big, and there were other questionable aspects as well.
I thought it was pretty funny so I bought it, but it turns out
that something can be ‘pretty funny’ at a yard sale and
‘what in the name of God was I thinking’ when you get
it home. The only reason I didn’t throw it out immediately
was the sure knowledge that it would make my annual ‘what is
the ugliest thing in my apartment’ decision effortless. This year I think my Niagara Falls souvenir
plate is the one to beat. It is the Babe Ruth of ugly. I got it,
you will not be surprised to learn, at a souvenir stand in
Niagara Falls. I was working as a tour guide for the company I
call "Good Buddy Tours" when I write about it, and the
bus driver I was saddled with had a kick back deal with pretty
much every souvenir shop and tourist trap on either side of the
Falls. When I figured this out—it didn’t take me long,
but it took longer than it should have—I made a stink, and
to placate me, he had the manager of the stand where I was
stink-making gift me with the Niagara Falls plate. It was
breathtakingly ugly, even by the standards of souvenir Niagara
Falls plates, but the clincher was that "Niagara" was
spelled "Niagra." It was love at first sight, and
second and third. It differed from the George Washington oil
painting in that I didn’t ask ‘what in the name of God
was I thinking’ when I got it home. I knew exactly what I
was thinking. My problem now is that I’m not sure it
qualifies as the ugliest thing I own for technical reasons. It
was the ugliest thing I owned in 1999, when I put it up on eBay
and sold it for 4 dollars. I immediately came down with
Seller’s Remorse and refunded the money, claiming that
I’d broken the plate while packing it up. So the ugly prize
reverted to the runner-up and I threw out a flashlight shaped
like a smiling whale. In 2003, I once more convinced myself that the
plate had to go. I tied it up in a garbage bag and put it
outside. In the morning, I saw the perfect outline of the plate
pressing against the side of the bag. I slit the bag open with my
penknife and retrieved the plate. I brought it in and washed it
thoroughly, and then restored it to its place of honor beside the
whale flashlight from 1999, which I had also retrieved the day
after I threw it out. In fact, the only ugliest things I have ever
thrown out and NOT retrieved are the George Washington oil
painting and a paperweight shaped like a 1955 Chevy Belair. I rooted around in the garbage for 45 minutes
but I just couldn’t find the paperweight. The bag was
ripped, I thought at the time by a cat or something, but maybe
somebody else wanted the paperweight. Why, I have no idea. It was
incredibly ugly. Some people are just nuts, I guess. Post script one This was almost a column about me going to the
supermarket with a little Tupperware container full of pennies
and nickels, with the idea that I’d dump them all into the
coin-counting thingee there and use the proceeds to pay for my
groceries. And how the coin thingee wasn’t working so I just
stuck the Tupperware container in my cart and did my shopping and
blah blah blah, and it was starting to get dark when I was
loading the groceries into the car and I *cough* seem to have
left my Tupperware container full of coins in the shopping cart.
I’m not sure how much I had in the container, but if anyone
out there happens to have found it, please don’t tell me.
The reason I didn’t write the column about that is, I
couldn’t figure out how to do it without making myself sound
like an idiot. Post script two Thanks to everyone who read the column about my
Ed Wood Zone songs two weeks ago and stopped by the WFMU 365-Day
Project website to download them. It was a roaring success, and
you can still visit it at http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/03/365_days_76_the.html. The fine folks at the 365 Day Project are
interested in some other items in my collection of * cough *
musical treasures, but unfortunately these are on vinyl and I
have no way to rip mp3’s from them. If YOU happen to have
both a turn table and a computer and can use the latter to make
mp3’s from records played on the former, and you’d like
to help me and the 365 Day Project, please send me an email at jgrimshaw@blast.net with "Rip Your Vinyl" in the subject line,
and for your troubles you will receive profuse thanks in both
this column and on the WFMU website. THE MEANING OF FAMILY The first winter storm of 1971 dropped 8 inches
of snow over everything, and school was canceled. Just after 9 AM
it began to snow again. By early afternoon another two inches had
been deposited. Around three o’clock my father came into
my room and asked me was I going to get out of bed or what. I said I didn’t think so, and went back to
the book I was reading. "Let me ask you something," said my
father. "Why is it that every book you read has a picture of
a floating eyeball on the cover?" I opened my mouth to answer but he held up a
hand. "No, I don’t want to know. Just get dressed. Your
Uncle Tug was just here and he wants you to dig his car
out." "He walked here?" "The phone lines are down." "Where does he want to go in the
car?" "That’s not the point. The point is,
you’re going to get dressed and dig the car out." Uncle Tug had a ’55 Bel Air, a beautiful
car which for some reason he had been trying to destroy for
years. He hauled rocks in it, drove it into ditches, and ran it
without oil for weeks at a time, yet it refused to die. I remember vividly sitting in the front
passenger seat, absolutely terrified as Uncle Tug drove the car
through a row of small trees and bushes just off the shoulder of
the road. When I say ‘drove through,’ I mean he plowed
right into and over each tree and bush. "How do you like that, you miserable piece
of garbage?" he yelled as bushes went "whump!" and
trees went "snap!" The Bel Air threw a rod in 1974 and
died for good. Tug cried for a week. Anyway, I went to Tug’s house, 10 blocks
away, to dig out the car. "What kept you? Well, you’re
here. Good, good. Go to it, kiddo." He shoved a 5-dollar
bill into my hand, which astonished me. Usually the honor of
working for Uncle Tug was considered payment enough. Intoxicated by the five bucks, I set to work
with a crazed intensity and had the car liberated within ten
minutes." Good!" cried Tug, pushing another five into
my hands (now I was really baffled) and off he drove. Where the
Be Air had been was a Bel Air-shaped hollow, the only curbside
parking visible on the street, with four feet of snow piled
around it on three sides. On the way home I realized that with the phones
out, Uncle Tug couldn’t call his bookie. He had to drive all
the way to John Dark’s barbershop in Paterson and get his
bets down in person. Shortly after dinner, Uncle Tug showed up at
the house looking like a storm cloud. "I need the kid.
Kid—get in the car." We drove back to his street. There was a car
parked in the spot I had carved out. "The dog-faced boy took
our spot." The ‘out’ in that sentence was not lost
on me. "What do we do, kid? I went next door, I said my
nephew dug out that spot, it’s mine. The dog-faced boy said
hey, it’s a free country. You like that, kid? It’s a
free country, so he can steal our spot. He says if I
don’t like it I can call the cops. So. What are you gonna
do, kid?" "Me?" "You dug out the spot, right? You did the
work, now the dog-faced boy has the spot." The guy next door was not, of course, a
dog-faced boy. Tug called all his enemies ‘the dog-faced
boy.’ I don’t know why. "Well, I don’t see what I can
do." "You can do anything. You’re a
juvenile. Plus, they probably won’t even catch you." "Uncle Tug!" "Okay, fine. Forget I said anything. The
man insults your family, so you let Uncle Tug take are of it.
Fine. Just remember—no matter what the cops tell you,
it’s against the law to testify against your uncle. Fact.
Unnerstand?" I figured I’d be reading about Uncle Tug
soon in the National Enquirer (this was before the Enquirer began
concentrating on celebrity weight loss and rehab, and instead
featured four or five ax murders per issue—the Golden Age of
the Enquirer). But Uncle Tug didn’t make the Enquirer. He
set his alarm for 1 a.m., went outside and built a fourth wall of
snow around his neighbor’s car. Now the car was in what
amounted to a four-foot deep hole. The Tug hooked up his garden hose and filled
the hole with water to the level of the car door handles. It was
about 10 degrees out then and dropped to 5 below shortly before
dawn. The dog-faced boy awoke to find his car encased in a block
of ice. "Crazy weather, eh?" said Tug, while
his neighbor stared at the ice bound car. "Well, it just
goes to show ya." The car would remain there until late
March. Later that day, Tug stopped by the house to
take back one of the fives. "The second one was in case somebody took
my spot—which he did—so you would do something about
it—which you did not. So you own me five. Also I got to look
at his stupid car every time I look out the window now. So
technically there’s no spot in front of the house and you
owe me the other five, too, but we’ll forget it. After all
this is family, right?" RETURN OF THE ED
WOOD ZONE! One rainy Sunday afternoon in the late spring
of 2000 I was poking around on the old MP3.Com site looking for
songs from Milford. MP3.Com allowed unsigned artists to upload
their music to the Internet, and you could search by song, by
artist, and even by town. If I found anything from Milford or
Frenchtown, I was going to do a column about it. Eventually some
local folks did post music there, and I did write about it, but
that Sunday MP3.Com suffered from a dearth of music from the
Delaware Valley. So I typed the name "Tor Johnson"
into the search engine. I don’t know why. Tor was the
enormous Swedish wrestler who appears in several movies by Ed
Wood, lurching around with his eyeballs rolled up and tripping
over the cardboard tombstones. I like to think I’m not the
kind of guy who types "Tor Johnson" into a search
engine apropos of nothing, but maybe I am. To my surprise, there was a song on MP3.Com
called "Tor Johnson!" At this point I think most people
would have said, "Imagine that!" and called it a day,
but I am not most people. I typed the names of other actors from
Ed Wood movies, and the names of the movies themselves, and I got
hit after hit. There must have been 5 different bands named
"Plan Nine" or "Plan 9"; there were not one
but two different songs called "Orgy of the Dead," tons
of songs about Bela Lugosi (virtually all of which, I discovered
upon listening, were largely concerned with his Ed Wood period),
songs about Vampira, about Criswell (including a great song
called "Criswell’s Corpses" from a band called
Kill Machine out of Phillipsburg). In 40 minutes I’d
assembled maybe a dozen Ed Wood songs. This became the first
version of my Internet radio station, The Ed Wood Zone. (The
Mp3.com "Internet Radio Stations" were really playlists
with options to "play all" or download selected
tracks). Of course everybody knows about Ed Wood now, 15
years after Johnny Depp played him in a big budget Hollywood
movie and his movies have been released in an angora-lined box
set, but I’d been fascinated by him ever since I was a film
student at NYU 30 years ago. Ed Wood was the ultimate
There-but-for-the-grace-of-God example for all aspiring
moviemakers. It wasn’t so much that the movies were
bad—lots of people make bad movies, and his were a lot more
entertaining than most of them. No, there was a story about Ed
that haunted all of us: supposedly he’d shot a sequel to
"Plan Nine" but it had been sitting in the lab for over
20 years because he didn’t have enough money to pay the lab
fees. At age 19 I could not imagine anything worse than making a
movie that remained unreleased for 20 years because I was broke.
Could the story possibly be true? Not quite. It was really a sequel to
"Bride of the Monster." It’s called "Night of
the Ghouls" and decades after Wood’s death some
enterprising fan paid the lab fees and put it out on VHS. It’s incredibly bad. Well, it’s from
the mind that conceived "Plan Nine from Outer Space,"
after all. Do you remember what the ‘plan nine’
in "Plan Nine from Outer Space" was? Why, it was the
plan to reanimate a couple of dead bodies and make them stumble
around a Hollywood cemetery so the earth people would be too
scared—or something—to develop a solaronite bomb (don’t
ask). I’m guessing ‘plan eight’ was setting a bag
of manure on fire on somebody’s doorstep and then ringing
the doorbell and hiding in the bushes. Yet as bad as all the Ed Wood movies
are—and without exception, they are very, very
bad—there’s something there. The same demented
enthusiasm that makes them ridiculous saves them from being
contemptible. Or maybe not. But enough musicians found something to respond
to that I never ran out of Ed Wood songs on MP3.Com. I was
constantly finding new ones. The denizons of MP3.Com were so cool
they not only wrote about Ed’s famous science fiction
debacles, and of course his proto-gender-bender "Glen or
Glenda," but about his later forays into cheesy exploitation
movies ("The Violent Years," "Orgy of the
Dead") and even his berserk novels ("Killer in
Drag," "Hell Chicks"). When I ran out of Ed Wood
movie titles, I typed Ed Wood related phrases into the search
engine— I’d recall, for instance, the cardboard
tombstones flapping in the breeze in "Plan 9," or
Martin Landau battling with a totally inert mechanical octopus in
Tim Burton’s Ed Wood movie because nobody remembered to
bring the motor. I’d type in "Cardboard Tombstone"
or "Octopus Motor"—and I’d find
"Cardboard Tombstone" by The EndS or "Octopus
Motor" by SpEnt FiXer. Both groups had odd ideas about where
capital letters are supposed to go but they wrote great songs. In
fact, a lot of the songs in The Ed Wood Zone were really
good—not "so bad it’s good," but genuinely
good. Yeah, some of the folks in the Ed Wood Zone were teenage
metalheads with 3 chords and the inability to come up with a
rhyme for "Wood," but others were wonderful musicians.
And I... well, maybe "loved" is too strong, but I was
really happy to have them all in the Ed Wood Zone, from the kid
who called himself "Trashface" and posted a song called
"Jailbait" (it was 45 seconds of wordless grunting and
screaming) something like 40 minutes after I complained in my
weekly update that nobody on MP3.com had recorded a song called
"Jailbait," to the Trenton-based classical composer
Dennis Bathory-Kitsz, whose contribution "Brand Nine from
Outer Space" was a 5 minute chamber piece scored for piano
and string quartet. And some people actually wrote songs specifically
for the Ed Wood Zone—not just the aforementioned Trashface,
but the group Prewar Yardsale, and a fellow called Godmonster (he
came up with three numbers!), and the 16-year old wunderkind
Naomi Hall, whose totally off-the-wall "Bride of the
Monster" is my favorite Ed Wood Zone song, bar none. Eventually I had so many great Ed Wood songs
that I felt I must share them with the world. So I selected an
hour's worth of my favorites, added some Ed Wood-related songs
from elsewhere, and sent a proposal and a CD-R to Rhino Records.
I felt Rhino was an ideal choice because they’d recently
released the aforementioned angora-lined box set of Ed Wood
videos. Rhino sent my CD-R and my proposal back with a
polite note. When I opened the letter I must have had that look
on my face you see on American Idol contestants when they find
out for the first time that they’re totally tone deaf. How
can this be?? Not long after that MP3.Com was sold and the Ed
Wood Zone came to an end. BUT. This Saturday [March 17th 2007], as
part of WFMU’s 365 Day Project 2007, The Ed Wood Zone is
back! If you go to http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/365_days_project/index.html you will find not only my liner notes but SIX
GREAT ED WOOD SONGS FROM THE ED WOOD ZONE! (you’ll also find
all the other stuff from the 365 Day Project, and boy will you
be sorry). Yes, you can download them and make your very own Ed
Wood Zone CD, and there’s even a spiffy cover illustration
by the cartoonist Libby Reid, and you can download that too. And
you don’t have to rush. It goes up Saturday March 17th
(Day 76) but it’s going to be there forever. Or at least as long as "Night of the
Ghouls" was locked up in the lab. IS THERE SMOKING AFTER DEATH? I was visiting my sister last week because,
well, for one thing it’s been a while since I visited, and
for another I kind of wanted to get out of my apartment.
I’ve been having a little trouble with the plumbing.
Something’s amiss. Every so often—maybe once or twice
every 7 minutes or so—my toilet makes a gurgling sound and
suddenly it smells like a couple cubic tons of raw sewage was
just deposited in my kitchen. The plumber is scheduled to drop by
as soon as he finishes up his current job. For the past couple of
weeks he’s dealing with a flooded basement. In Aruba. So there I was, talking to my sister Pam and
her husband Wayne and there was a lull in the conversation. As my
readers know, when there’s a lull in the conversation I can
be counted upon to get things moving in the right direction
again. At such times my brain works, I’ve
discovered, just like The Terminator’s brain in the first
Terminator movie. You may recall the scene where The Terminator,
following an unsuccessful assassination attempt, is in the
bathroom of his fleabag hotel room cleaning the wounds he’s
received, evidently a procedure not entirely devoid of odor,
since the manager of the hotel knocks on the door and asks,
"Hey Buddy. You got a dead cat in there?" At this point
we get what amounts to a Terminator’s-Eye-View of his
own thought process: a green-tinted fish-eye lens shot of his
immediate environs, with a grid superimposed upon it (presumably
to facilitate accurate terminating), and to the right, a pull
down menu of a half-dozen possible responses to the
manager’s inquiry. One of these suddenly glows like the
"check engine" light on your dashboard, and that’s
the reply he makes to the manager, who shrugs and wanders away.
The verbatim response can not be printed in a family newspaper,
but it was clearly Le Mot Jus. And that’s exactly how my mind works.
There was a pause in the conversation, so I quickly glanced to
the right side of my own target grid and selected the
‘amusing anecdote’ best suited to the place and the
present company. And believe me, it was glowing like a
son-of-a-gun. "Funny thing about my toilet," I
said, "It makes this gurgling noise, and then..." My sister got this look on her face she often
gets when I’m discussing my toilet, and cut me off.
"Sometimes Wayne and I smell smoke," she said. I nodded. This was plausible. Sometimes I smell
smoke as well. For instance, when something nearby is burning. I
couldn’t see what this had to do with my amusing adventure
with the plumbing, though. Which is what I told my sister. "No, no," she said. "We smell cigarette
smoke. Only we don’t smoke. And nobody on either side of
us smokes. But we smell it, definitely." She leaned in
close. "We think we’re being haunted. Because you know
who smoked?" Well, I am over 50 years old and I know of
quite a few people who smoked. Humphrey Bogart. FDR. The guy who
drove the Number 4 Singac bus I used to take to the Willowbrook
Mall when I was in high school. "Mom and dad," said Pam. This was true. My parents did smoke, and pretty
heavily, although my father stopped a few times for 4 or 5 years,
and they both quit more or less for good after my daughter was
born. I say "more or less" because my mother used to
sneak cigarettes in the basement now and then. "I’m absolutely sure that Mom and Dad
are haunting me," said Pam. I usually try to keep my head
totally free of thought as all times, but several thoughts
occurred while I was listening to my sister, despite my best
efforts. Is there smoking after death? I suppose the health
issues aren’t particularly pressing at that point. I
don’t happen to believe in ghosts, but in most of the ghost
stories I know—the ones purporting to be true, at any
rate—ghosts haunt specific places rather than specific
people. My sister lives a good 15 miles from the Old Grimshaw
homestead. I could understand my ectoplasmic parents stepping
outside for a smoke so as not to annoy the new owners, but
stepping 15 miles outside? Few things annoy my sister more than
smelling smoke, and she made this known to my parents pretty
early in the game (around 1956 if I recall correctly). I
couldn’t see any reason why my parents would schlep 15 miles
to stink up my sister’s living room. Unless they wanted to annoy her. I don’t believe in ghosts, but if I did, I
would totally believe that my parents were haunting my sister as
payback for all those faux-coughing fits at the dinner table, all
the "pee-yews" and "icks!" and
"Eeeewwws!"and the Readers Digest articles about lung
cancer and left open on the coffee table. Although I never cared for the smell of smoke
myself, I never annoyed my parents that way. I hardly annoyed
them at all, I’m sure. Oh sure, every now and then I’d
ask one of them to pull my finger or something (I always
knew how to take care of a lull in the conversation), or I’d
fire off a flurry of arm-pit ‘fra-blaats’ when my
dad’s boss was over for dinner, but it was all in fun.
I’m sure they didn’t mind. And if they did, they
certainly wouldn’t come back and haunt me with unfiltered
Camels. The fact is, I can’t think of any appropriate way to
haunt me. And I’m not going to worry about it. I
have my own problems. The toilet is gurgling like a son-of-a-gun
and the smell is puh-ritty intense. I WROTE THAT! One of my favorite news stories from last year
concerned one Paul Van Valkenburgh, who died in September at the
age of 68. His obituary (prepared by his widow) mentioned that he
had written the immortal hit song "Yellow Polka Dot
Bikini" as a teenager, using the pseudonym "Paul
Vance," though he’d never collected any royalties
because he’d signed away the rights. The Associated Press
picked up the story, and shortly thereafter the real Paul
Vance, the one who really did write "Yellow Polka Dot
Bikini," had the strange experience of opening his local
newspaper and reading "Author of ‘Yellow Polka Dot
Bikini’ Dies at 68." (This was doubly confounding
because Mr. Vance was 76 and if he’d been dead for 8 years
somebody probably would have mentioned it to him earlier). Mr. Van Valkenburgh had been dining out on his
authorship of the song he didn’t write (and the subsequent
non-signing away of the rights he never owned) for decades. His
widow was so adamant that her husband was the mastermind behind
"Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" that Mr. Vance, whose
extensive list of songwriting credits includes "Catch a
Falling Star" for Perry Como and a dozen or so other million
sellers, felt compelled to produce not only his royalty
statements for "Bikini" but testimonials from
collaborators, officials of ASCAP, and so on that he was the real
deal. The widow’s final word on the subject—"The
more you stir this up the more you'll smell."—would
seem to indicate that she’s not totally convinced. I hadn’t given the story any more thought
since the flurry of stories died down, until this past week when
someone mentioned, apropos of nothing in particular, the song
"My Baby Loves Lovin’" on the WFMU website.
Shortly thereafter, "Listener Bell" commented: Well, you see where this is going.
"Listener Bell" was informed, politely, that "My
Baby Loves Lovin’" was written by the team of Roger
Greenaway and Roger Cook, who also wrote, among many other
things, "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress" for the
Hollies, "Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart" for
Gene Pitney, and "I’d Like to Teach the World to
Sing" for the Coca-Cola Company. And "Signs" was
the product of Les Emmerson, who was the lead singer of The Five
Man Electrical Band which took it to number 3 on the charts 20
years before Tesla’s redo. Two thoughts: (1) If you’re going to claim
authorship of a Greenaway and Cook song, why would you pick a
stink bomb like "My Baby Loves Lovin’" when
"Long Cool Woman" is available? (2) How many other guys
are there out there claiming to have written hit songs for which
they receive no royalties because they signed away the rights? My
guess: lots of them. After some consideration, it makes perfect
sense that Matt chose "My Baby Loves Lovin’" to be
one of his tragically ill-compensated hits, rather than something
better and more famous. If you tell someone, "That song they
just played, ‘Long Tall Woman in a Black Dress’ by the
Hollies? The number one hit that hasn’t been off the radio
since it was released 35 years ago? I wrote that. Got screwed out
of the rights, though," they’re going to answer,
"Yeah, great, Matt. Take this grilled cheese to booth
5." But "My Baby Loves Lovin’"? Much more
plausible. Nobody even knows who’s singing the thing (a
group called "White Plains"). Claiming two hit songs
might be pushing it, but I like it. It shows some thought. I
imagine Matt had a pretty good rap about how getting burned twice
made him steer clear of the music industry forever.
"Signs" doesn’t have much in common with
"Lovin’" but they’re both pretty much
cheese-in-a-can (albeit from totally different cows). I also like
that "Signs" would seem tacitly dismissive of
intellectual property rights. How ironic. In contrast, Mr. Van Valkenburgh was a
one-trick pony with just the one goofy novelty song to his
credit. I bet some girl in his drivers ed class noticed the
"Paul Vance" writing credit on her copy of "Polka
Dot Bikini" and brought it to his attention (I have a hard
time imagining a 16 year old guy buying that record) and saying,
"Wow, Paul, for a second I thought it said ‘Paul Van
Valkenburgh,’ not ‘Paul Vance!’ It’s
ginchy!" The news stories say he was working as a salesman
when he met his wife and the "Polka Dot Bikini" story
must have been a great icebreaker. Maybe it was playing on an
oldies station during their first date and he remembered that
song writing credit and made up the story on the spot. Then he
was stuck with it for over 40 years. I wonder if they had
arguments about it. "It’s on the Coppertone
commercial, Paul! At least talk to a lawyer!" "Aahh,
been there and done that. The contract was ironclad." Both Matt and Paul instinctively hit on the
"I signed away all my rights" gambit. This has two
functions. It explains why you’re still cleaning tables at
the Taco Bell despite turning out hit songs, AND it makes the
whole thing a bit more plausible in that you’re telling a
self-depreciating story about yourself ("I’m such an
idiot! I sold all the rights for 50 bucks!") rather than
bragging. And of course there is no shortage of true stories
about composers and performers signing extremely bad contracts
with record companies and music publishers. The question I mostly ask myself about this is,
why did it never occur to me to do this? I have an
encyclopedic knowledge of bad pop songs, with special emphasis on
the years I was in high school, and I lie at the drop of a hat. I
could have spent the last 30 years telling chicks in bars,
"’Smokin’ in the Boys Room’ by Brownsville
Station? That’s one of mine. I sold all the rights when I
was 17. I was a moron. Got less than 500 hundred bucks and it
went to number 5. Ah well. Bartender, another beer for the young
lady who just told me I’m totally full of crap." I haven’t figured out what my other hit
song is yet, but I think I definitely wrote two. REMOTE
POSSIBILITIES Until he died last week, I’d never heard
of Robert Adler but he was one of the three or four most
important people in my life. He was the co-inventor of the TV
remote control. It was first marketed in 1956, when I was a mere
tike, but I did not actually hold one in my hand until I was 8 or
9 years old, and my Cub Scout den was meeting at Billy
Fincher’s house. The Finchers’ house had an outdoor deck
you could reach only via sliding glass doors in the living room
and a hi-fi system that played reel-to-reel tapes rather than
clunky old vinyl. Mr. Fincher had mounted the speakers high on
opposite walls of the family room, and you could not visit the
Finchers without getting a demonstration of the incredible stereo
separation. All the reeds and horns in the Gil Evans Orchestra
were playing in the right speaker, and the rhythm section was
bopping away in the left. Like wow! On this particular day, Mr. Fincher did not
turn on the stereo. He stood grandly at one end of the room, held
his hand out towards the TV set at the other end of the room, and
the TV sprang to life. "Sprang" may be pushing it a
little, since in 1964 TV sets required a little warm-up time. But
we were staggered. We knew about TV remotes because they
were a staple of late fifties and early sixties situation
comedies (a favorite trope involved someone with a new remote
inadvertently switching the channels of the next door
neighbors’ TV, to their total befuddlement). But we never
expected to see one in action, in real life. Mr. Fincher
graciously allowed all of us to take turns switching the channels
from across the room. It was incredible. When I switched from
channel 5 to channel 7 I got what, a decade or so later, I would
have called "a rush." Naturally this (the remote control, not the
rush) was my main topic of conversation at the dinner table that
evening. "What on earth would anybody need something like
that for?" asked my mother. "Apparently," said my father, "George
Jetson [his pet name for Mr. Fincher] can’t deign to get
up from the couch and turn the channel himself, like a normal
human. He needs a shiny new toy to do it for him." My father
took a sip of his coffee and extended his pinkie. Sipping coffee
with an extended pinkie was his way of subtly expressing his
disapproval at the dinner table. If he were feeling especially
jocular, he would add, "Very petite, Betsy, very
petite." Yes, here at the Grimshaw homestead men were
men and did not need any new-fangled remote controls to turn the
channels! By gum, when we were watching a program, that channel
stayed put to the bitter end, no matter how lousy the show was!
We didn’t go flippity-flapping around the dial like a bunch
of dad-burned Finchers! This was my introduction to an ironclad rule of
life: anybody who buys a new piece of technology before you do is
a flibbertigibbet who can’t resist spending good money on
flashy, expensive junk he doesn’t need. (The flipside of
this is that anybody who doesn’t buy a new piece of
technology that you already own is a pathetic Neanderthal with
his knuckles grazing the ground, subject to taunts about how it
must be great living in the Coolidge administration). I do not recall my father ever getting up from
the easy chair to change the channel. That was my job, or, if I
were ill, my sister’s. If my sister and I happened not to be
home when the channel needed changing, I’m not sure what
happened. Maybe he called around to see if one of the
neighborhood kids was available. My father was not done critiquing the
Finchers’ new folly: "What is the point of changing the
channel from across the room when you have to get up and tune it
anyway?" My younger readers—those born after the
Coolidge administration—may be wondering what he could
possibly have meant by that. Well, once the channel was changed,
there was the matter of adjusting the rabbit ears on top of the
TV to get a clear picture. For channel 2, the rabbit ears had to
be canted slightly towards the northeast and set to a form a
"V." Channels 5 and 9 meant a bit more of a
north-northeast tilt, and the shape was more of a sloppy
"L." Channel 7 was a total prima donna, requiring
different shapes and directions depending upon factors we could
not guess, and it often took more than two minutes to get an
acceptable picture. We rarely watched channel 7. Once the channel was changed and the tuning
adjusted, if I did not scramble out of the way quickly enough, my
father would rumble, "Sit down. You make a better door than
a window." The fact that I made a better door than a
window may be why my father finally succumbed to the siren song
of the remote and spent the last 25 years of his life with one
more or less permanently glued to his hand. Needless to say it
was usually the wrong remote, but that was all decades away.
"The Finchers’ remote adjusts the rabbit ears,
dad," I said. My father raised his eyebrows, but otherwise
did not respond. I’m not sure he believed me. In a few years it would all be moot. Antennas
would come off the roof, TV sets would be constructed without
rabbit ears, neighborhoods would be wired for cable, and TV
stations would multiply. Once we went from 6 channels to more
than 50, the remote went from a cool novelty to a necessity. Unlike my parents, who could sit in front of
the television and watch—believe it or not—the same
show for an entire hour, I have the attention span of a gnat and
have not seen more than 8 consecutive minutes of any TV show or
movie since 1979. When I was a teenager I would annoy my parents
by pointing out the plot holes in their favorite shows. Now I
don’t annoy anyone, because I can’t sit through a show
long enough to figure out what the plot is. And I have the late
Robert Adler (and his partner Eugene Polly) to thank for it.
Here’s to you, fellows, for making my life infinitely
richer. NIGHT
OF THE NAPKIN NINJAS When I was 13, I was the senior patrol leader
of Boy Scout Troop 11. One night I discovered that I had just
presided over a 90 minute awards ceremony (during which I had
presented more than a dozen scouts with an assortment of merit
badges, certificates of merit, and Order of the Arrow sashes) in
front of more than 60 scouts and their parents with my fly down.
I was mortified. "What are you sulking about?" asked
my Uncle Tug. I explained. "Ah, that’s nothing,"
he said. "You didn’t see anybody laughing or anything,
did you?" No, I agreed, I had not. So did that mean nobody
had noticed? "Nah, everybody noticed. You couldn’t miss
it. They weren’t laughing because who cares if your fly is
down? After all," he concluded, "who the hell are
you?" I was confused. On the one hand, I felt that I
should have been relieved. On the other hand, I wasn’t,
because after all, "Wudda ya mean who the hell am I?
I’m the senior patrol leader!" "Nobody cares," he said. That
certainly gave me pause. "Everybody’s the star of his
own movie. You’re a bit player in everybody else’s
movie. You’re not even ‘Jeff’ in most of them,
you’re ‘boy scout number seven’ or something.
Believe me, in 20 minutes nobody is gonna remember your fly was
down, including you." I was flabbergasted. Could that possibly be
true? NO, of course no. He was totally wrong. That
was nearly 40 years ago and I’m absolutely sure that
everybody who was there that night remembers my fly was down, and
they all probably talk about it all the time. I have been told
over and over again by well-meaning people (so called) that
‘we would worry less about what people think of us, if we
knew how seldom they did,’ but once you’ve presided
over an awards ceremony with your fly down, that simply does not
apply, ever again. The most recent occasion to which it does not
apply was a wedding I attended this past weekend. The wedding was so classy I was lucky they
didn’t confiscate my invitation and send me home when they
saw my tie. My tie was red, with a lot of little white hearts,
which I thought appropriate for a wedding in February. Or at
least I thought so until I had occasion to visit the men’s
room. Which was not labeled ‘men’s room’ but
rather ‘accommodations for men.’ There were ornately
carved oak doors on the toilet stalls, and the most
distinguished-looking washroom attendant I have ever seen. I had
about 50 bucks on me, and I wasn’t sure it would cover the
tip if he handed me a towel. "I’m the fodduh of the bride,"
he said when I tried to discreetly hand him two dollars. As it
turned out, he was the father of the bride for a completely
different wedding than the one I was there to celebrate. I knew
the reception hall was huge, but it hadn’t occurred to me
that it was so huge that multiple enormous weddings could be
going on simultaneously. Usually when you have multiple weddings
going on simultaneously the minister is dressed like Elvis. "Maybe you don’t want to keep
standing next to the towels like that," I said. "Yes I do," he said. His arms had
been folded across his chest but now he fidgeted with his tie,
which was purple, with a green palm tree on it. I felt better
about my little white hearts. If worse came to worse, I could
follow the lead of the fodduh of the bride and fold my arms
across my chest. Well, the wedding took place, and the reception
followed, and I forgot about my tie. There were champagne toasts,
and I noticed something odd. I’d have my napkin on my lap,
protecting me from the lobster bisque, and someone would propose
a toast and I’d stick the napkin on my chair while I stood
up. But when the toast was over, the napkin would be perfectly
folded and back under my cutlery. Huh? After the second or third time this happened, I
whirled around in the middle of the toast and caught a waiter
refolding my napkin. Until then, I hadn’t noticed there was
a waiter lurking at the edge of my table, just out of my
peripheral vision. This was not the waiter who’d brought the
wine, nor the one who’d filled the water glasses, nor yet
the one who’d brought the bisque. This was apparently the
napkin-folding waiter. Could there really be such a thing? He moved silently, almost invisibly, like a
ninja. As long as I left my napkin on my lap, it was safe. If I
happened to place it on the table, it would be perfectly refolded
the next time I looked at it. It was uncanny. The technique must
have taken years, perhaps decades to perfect. I was tempted to play around and untuck just a
fraction of a millimeter of a corner, just to see what would
happen. What happened was the napkin was refolded while I was in
the middle of a blink. Everyone at my table was in awe of the
napkin-folding ninja waiters. Everyone but me, because by this
time I had realized what was going on. "It’s very impressive," said one
of them. "What I don’t quite understand is why they do
it. What’s the point?" "Isn’t it obvious?" I said. "Not at all." "They’re making fun of my tie,"
I explained. "Your what?" I pointed to the little white hearts. "What about it?" he asked. "Yuh," I said. So not only were the
ninja waiters mocking my tie, so were my tablemates. Nice. I
couldn’t make up my mind which was worse—openly making
fun of tie by endlessly refolding my napkin, like the ninja
waiter, or pretending not to notice the tie, like my tablemates. "You don’t really think all this is
about you, do you? Honestly?" asked a woman across from me. "No, of course not," I said.
"It’s obviously about my tie." I excused myself and returned to the mens’
room, stationing myself next to the towels. I was going to miss
out on the swordfish, but that was okay. Maybe I’d be
mistaken for the mens’ room attendant, but that was okay
too. I wasn’t too proud to hand out towels. I might even
pick up a few dollars. OLIVIA’S
PARTY Ostensibly—it’s remarkably how many
columns about my daughter open with "ostensibly,"
isn’t? —I called my daughter to see if she’d seen
the Super Bowl opening kickoff run back for a touchdown. ME: Hey, did you— EMMA: You know, I’ve just about had it
with this whole drunk roommate thing. I don’t like having
drunk roommates. You can’t leave them alone. They don’t
cope. You live on liquor and pizza and believe it or not
you turn out to be not so good at reacting to real life
situations. ME: I thought you just had one drunk roommate. EMMA: The other one has social issues.
If the drunk one tells her to get drunk, she will. How do you
peel a blood orange? I’m having trouble. ME: Is it different than a regular orange? EMMA: Dunno. That’s what I’m asking.
It’s... ah, there we go. Why is it a blood orange? I
thought it was going to be red inside. So anyway, Drunk
Erin’s radiator hisses. It hissed when Mal lived there, too,
but Mal would just ignore it and turn on the fan. But Erin pulled
the knob out of the radiator and SUPRISE! All this hot steam came
boiling out. Who would have thought, huh? It was like a sauna.
She screamed and cried and she told Ingrid to call 911. Ingrid
does whatever she’s told so she started to dial and I said
don’t be insane, just call the super, it’s his job. So
Erin tried to put the knob back in and burned her hand. So I
called the super and he came up and fixed it. He was just
staggered that Erin tried to put the knob back in. He said,
"That knob is like M. C. Hammer. Don’t touch
this." ME: What? EMMA: I think there’s an M. C. Hammer song
called "Can’t Touch This." ME: So he should have said ‘can’t
touch this,’ then. EMMA: Don’t tell me, tell him. So... ME: Wait. I’m still trying to process this
M.C. Hammer thing. How old is your super? EMMA: I don’t know. He’s Spanish, so
he could be 20, he could be 50. ME: M.C. Hammer was big when you were, what?
Six years old? EMMA: How do I know? I was six. All I remember
from when I was six is my baby sitter told me to buy New Kids on
the Block, and then she got pregnant. So listen. I had a birthday
party for Olivia. ME: Who? EMMA: Olivia! My cat! The cat you’ve
written about 80 columns about. I should have a co-author credit
on these. She’s 8 years old. She was in the shelter for 7
years so she probably never had a birthday party before. Since
she’s named after Detective Olivia Benson, played by Mariska
Hargitay, I felt it was appropriate to hold it on Mariska’s
birthday. ME: That’s M-a-r-i-s-h-k-a? EMMA: I knew that was coming. No, it is
not. The "h" is unsilent. ME: What? It’s the opposite of a silent
‘h’. There’s no ‘h’ in it, but you
pronounce it anyway. It’s some kind of Hungarian thing.
Don’t judge. They probably think the second ‘f’ in
‘Jeff’ is ridiculous. ME: Or the second "m" in
"Emma." EMMA: Oooh, slap! The blood orange looks like
my bruise when I gave blood at the high school and the guy who
took the blood had the shakes. Do you remember that? It took him
three tries to find the vein and I had a bruise from wrist to
elbow. I named it Philbert. ME: You named what Philbert? EMMA: The bruise, Philbert the Bruise. The guy
who took blood had the shakes, and also I think he may have been
‘special,’ if you know what I mean. I knew three other
people who had huge bruises because it took him three or four
tries to find the vein, assuming he ever did. I invited... let me
see. Ten or fifteen people to the party, and I said bring
animals. Stuffed ones. Not real ones, because Olivia doesn’t
like real ones. But we felt it would be psychologically
beneficial to have a good animal-to-people ratio. So it
wouldn’t freak her out. ME: Did you say ‘freak her out?’ EMMA: We watched the 1996 Olympics Women’s
Gymnastics finals and listened to music from the nineties. ME: Huh? EMMA: We wanted to hear what we would have
played if it was like our 8th birthday parties.
Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls, and Mariah. Olivia just sat on the
red sheet on the side of my bed and ignored every one. Three
people brought cards. Devra got her a cat sack. ME: A cat sack? EMMA: It’s like a crinkle bag, only with
no mirrors or peepholes. ME: But... oh, nevermind. EMMA: She didn’t pay any attention to it.
I told people to bring milk rings. The plastic rings from when
you open a gallon bottle of milk? She liked those. Those were the
only thing she liked. However: Two stuffed animals were left
behind, and I have it on good authority it was deliberate. People
brought over stuffed animals they were tired of and just
abandoned them. In my apartment. I am not happy. My cat’s
birthday party was not a ‘Toys for Tots’ event. ME: So are you throwing them out? EMMA: I’m thinking I might cut the heads
off and just mail the heads back to the people who sent them.
Actually it’s just one person. Both the animals are hers,
but she had an assistant bring one. ME: An assistant? Who was this, Anna Wintour? EMMA: Quiet, please. Alternatively I might put
them in a box and leave it at their door, with a note pinned on
the animals that says, "Emma touched me down there
and I want to come home." I’m trying to figure out
which is more disturbing. I think there are a lot of good
arguments to be made for both. ME: I think you’re right about that. EMMA: Yes. Oh, and Weenie Brian has a new girl
friend. It turns out that she is my platonic soul mate. Item: she
also saw "Spice World" three times in the theater.
Just like me. Just like me, she knows the names of all 100 U.S.
Senators. And just like me, she knows that the Magnificent Seven
is not some crappy western with Ernest Borgnine, but the 1996
Women’s Gymnastic Team featuring among others Shannon
Miller. ME: Ernest Borgnine isn’t in The
Magnificent Seven. EMMA: That’s very interesting. You should
do an article about all people who aren’t in The
Magnificent Seven. Ooh, commercial. I heard a rumor the naked
sheep from last year’s commercial will be back. Must
go! ASK THE ICE ON THE WINDSHIELD EXPERT GUY DEAR ICE-ON-THE-WINDSHIELD EXPERT GUY: Every morning for the past I don't know how
many days I've been getting up and there has been ice on my
windshield. Sometimes it is only a little ice, & that is okay
because I can just scrape it off one-two-three with my plastic
scraper, but sometimes it's a quarter of an inch thick & then
I am kind of stuck because the plastic ice scraper won't do the
job. Is there some kind of way to keep the ice from forming on
the windshield in the first place? (signed) Sort of sick of all this scraping DEAR SORT OF: There are two main ways of keeping ice from
forming on the windshield. Number one, you can leave the car in
the garage. Number two, just leave the car running over night
with the 'defrost' switch on. The only downside to number two is,
some cars can sustain engine damage if you keep the motor running
for long periods of time without depressing the gas pedal. But
this is not a problem if you have kids; just work out a schedule
where one kid goes out to give the car some gas every 15 minutes
or so. * * * * * * * DEAR ICE-ON-THE-WINDSHIELD EXPERT GUY: I heard that if you rub an onion on the
windshield, this will prevent ice from forming. True or false? (signed) Wants to give onions a shot DEAR WANTS: The Ice-on-the-Windshield Expert Guy had never
heard this about the onion, but he is an open minded guy and
doesn't like to dismiss any theory, no matter how stupid, out of
hand, so he went out and bought an onion, and he spent about 20
minutes rubbing it on the windshield like a son-of-a-gun, and as
far as he can tell, it made no difference at all. * * * * DEAR ICE-ON-THE-WINDSHIELD EXPERT GUY: You are supposed to SLICE the onion first. (signed) Maybe I Should've Made Myself a Little Clearer DEAR MAYBE: Okay, okay, okay. The Ice-on-the-Windshield
Expert Guy has now sliced up the onion and rubbed it on the
windshield. Only then the phone rang so he went in to get the
phone and it was this guy Herb who wouldn't let him off the phone
for like 20 minutes and when the Ice-on-the-Windshield Expert Guy
came back out the two halves of the onion he'd been using were
both frozen to the windshield like big yellow warts and that is
where they still are and the Ice-on-the-Windshield Expert Guy
certainly thanks you for this excellent suggestion. * * * * DEAR ICE-ON-THE WINDSHIELD EXPERT GUY: Perhaps your readers will learn from an
unfortunate experience of mine. When the windshield on my station
wagon was far too iced over for the scraper to be of use, I took
a hammer and gently tapped the ice. This worked extremely well;
16 little taps, 16 large slabs of ice slid off the windshield.
However, on the seventeenth tap, not only did a slab of ice fall
off, but a small, web-shaped crack appeared in the windshield. In
fact, I noticed that all together there were 17 small web-shaped
cracks in the windshield. In fact, some of them were not so
little. In fact, I am giving serious thought to replacing the
windshield, or would, if my station wagon were worth more than
the 300 bucks it would cost for a new windshield, which it is
not. (signed) Name Withheld So Nobody Knows Who This Is DEAR NAME WITHHELD: Thanks for the tip. * DEAR ICE-ON-THE-WINDSHIELD EXPERT GUY: What about onion juice on the windshield?
Because it would seem to me that if you rub the sliced onion on
the windshield and that prevents ice from forming, it's not the
onion per se, but the juice of the onion that's doing the job, so
what if you just pour onion juice over the windshield? Good idea
or what? (signed) How about the Juice? DEAR JUICE: Great idea. The Ice-on-the-Windshield Expert
Guy recommends that everybody toss a dozen onions into the
blender and use onion juice instead of windshield wiper fluid. I
myself can not do this because my onion is kind of bonded to the
windshield, but I tried it with tomato juice and that won't cut
it. You end up with red ice. But by all means use this onion
juice idea, I'm 100% sure it will work. * * * * DEAR BIG SHOT SUPER GENIUS ICE EXPERT: Last week you advised us to "just heat up
some pennies in the oven and toss them at the windshield, and
that ice will crack and fall off with no effort at all."
Well, Mr. big shot super genius ice expert, that’s what I
did. It turns out that half the pennies end up in that grill
under the windshield wiper and make the car sound like a cement
mixer every time you turn on the heat. And it didn’t do
diddly about the ice on the windshield, which I ended up scraping
off with an ice scraper anyway. Thank you so much. (signed) Grateful DEAR GRATEFUL: We aim to please. Thanks for writing. The Devil’s
Earhole I woke up the morning of the Winter Weekend
Jamboree and immediately checked the outdoor thermometer in the
breakfast nook window. If it said 25 degrees, which is what it
had been saying every morning for nearly eight days, this was
going to be a miserable camping experience for the Panther
Patrol. Winter camping meant perpetually cold feet and a
perpetually full bladder. We’d be driving tent stakes into
rock-hard ground and tying tautline hitches and sheet bends to
adjust the guy-lines. You can’t tie a tautline hitch or a
sheet bend with mittens on. The thermometer read 5 degrees. This was actually good news. Below 20 degrees
meant that we’d be in the hunting cabin, which had bunk
beds, a kitchen, and a fireplace. I put my Scout uniform over my
thermal underwear, grabbed my knapsack, and hiked to
Picarillo’s house, and Mr. Picarillo drove Picarillo,
Calvano and me to the campsite. Picarillo had a pair of ice
skates on his lap. The ice skates had hand-rendered lightning
bolts on the sides. Calvano and I looked at each other, but we
couldn’t say any of the things the lightning bolts demanded
because Picarillo’s father was right there. It was murder. Perhaps if we’d been able to express
ourselves verbally on the ride up, the horrible events of the
weekend would never have occurred. A few hours after arrival Calvano and I were
gathering firewood and we came across what seemed to be an
abandoned truck tire near the picnic tables. When we moved
it—maybe we were hoping to find the rest of the truck?
—we uncovered a flat, recessed circle of earth, slightly
bigger than a manhole. I suppose it had been a flowerbed, and the
tire had served as a border. "We can use this," Calvano said. "The tire?" "No, no—this circle. I think we need
to bring Lightning Lad here. Later. I’m getting an
idea." We brought the firewood back to the cabin, and
prepared dinner, and all the time Calvano’s brain was
clickity-clacking away. Picarillo brought his skates to the
dinner table and was proudly showing off his lightning bolts
("I drew these myself!"). Calvano and I volunteered for
kitchen clean-up. Calvano filled a gallon jug with water, and
grabbed a packet of the pink powder we added to water in order to
turn it an undrinkable ‘fruit-flavored’ concoction
universally known as ‘bug juice.’ Once we’d stowed
away the pots and pans, Calvano went outside. In theory he was
disposing of the garbage; in fact he was filling the round
flowerbed with bug juice. One gallon of water was not enough,
even though the circle was only an inch or so deep, and Calvano
had to make a couple of surreptitious return trips until bed was
iced over to his satisfaction. That night, as we roasted marshmallows in the
fireplace and took turns reciting Bill Cosby routines we’d
memorized word-for-word from his LPs, Calvano told the story of
The Devil’s Earhole. "It’s right around here
somewhere—a strange, perfectly round pond. Nobody knows how
deep it is. Once they stuck a 60-foot flagpole down it and it
never touched bottom. Another time, some pilgrims tied a rock to
a rope and threw the rock down. The rope was 500 feet long, and
it just kept going down, down, down! When it got to the end, they
tried to pull it back, and they couldn’t! It was like
something grabbed the rock! Something huge, with bat wings and
tentacles! But maybe it was just stuck on something. Nobody
who ever fell in it has ever been seen again. The Indians called
it ‘Mooka Kahlua Mocha’—‘The Devil’s
Earhole.’ Some say in the winter, it ices over and the ice
is red.." etc. etc. It was just before lunch the next day when
Picarillo came bounding into the campsite crying, "Guys!
Guys! I found the Devil’s Earhole!" "You’re an idiot, Picarillo,"
said Calvano. "There’s no such thing. It’s just a
made-up story." But eventually, we let Picarillo persuade us
to follow him to the circle of crimson ice. Unfortunately, the crimson was not apparent to
my uneducated eye, but at least the ice was totally opaque.
"You know, Picarillo, it’s so cold, that ice must be a
couple of feet thick. You could go skating on that thing.
There’s not much room, but you could do one of those
twirl-around things." There was a sentence on the tip of my tongue
about how it was too bad Picarillo forgot to bring his tutu that
I forced myself to repress, at enormous psychic cost. Picarillo said, oh no, he wasn’t
getting on that ice, and Calvano said he didn’t blame
Picarillo a bit, he’d be scared too, and Picarillo said he
wasn’t scared and Calvano said he believed him, and
Picarillo said well let’s see you stand on the ice,
and Calvano stood on the ice and said he didn’t think
Picarillo was a big chicken for not doing it, and then Picarillo
gingerly stepped onto the ice, and just as his body language
seemed to indicate he was over his nervousness, Calvano tossed
the truck tire at him and yelled, "THINK FAST!" Picarillo caught the tire and the ice made an
audible "TISCH!" There was a single crack running
through the ice. "Don’t move, Picarillo!" I said.
"Don’t take any chances. Hand me the tire." I took
the tire from him. "We’ll come back with help,"
said Calvano, but Picarillo said "Nnnggghh!" so we each
grabbed one of Picarillo’s arms and pulled him from the ice.
"You know," said Calvano,
"you’re probably the only guy who ever stood on the
Devil’s Earhole and lived to tell the tale." "Yeah," said Picarillo. Back at the cabin, our scoutmaster Mr.
Appledorn had some news for us. Somehow we’d run out of
water, and the pipes were frozen, so we’d be eating the
‘emergency grub.’ This was okay with us, since
‘emergency grub’ was Boy Scout talk for ‘Cheese
Doodles.’ "But it would be nice to have some water so
we could make the hot chocolate for later," he said. Picarillo’s fear of The Devil’s
Earhole was trumped by his love of hot chocolate. Without
confiding in the rest of us, he returned to the scene of his
near-disappearance with a bucket, figuring on chipping away
enough ice for hot chocolate. To his amazement, the entire circle
came up in two large pieces, and beneath it, there was dirt! "Guys! The Devil’s Earhole is all
filled up," he whispered to us as Mr. Appledorn set about
melting the ice. "I even stood on it!" "You’re out of your mind," said
Calvano. "Go see for yourself," said
Picarillo. "Okay, come on." "I’m not going out there again,"
said Picarillo. This was the best of all possible answers.
Calvano went out by himself and returned a few moments later. "It’s water," he said.
"There isn’t even any ice on top. But I think I heard
something. Something from under the water." "What?" "It sounded like, ‘Tell the fat kid
to come back. We’re hungry.’ But... it might have been
the wind." Picarillo refused to have any of the hot
chocolate made with water from The Devil’s Earhole (which,
inexplicably, had a faint undertaste of bug juice). "You know, I should feel really bad about
that," Calvano said to me, years later. "And yet I
don’t." Have I Kept My New Years
Resolution? With each passing year, I do my best to make my
New Year’s resolutions easier and easier for myself. I
don’t mean I go the traditional *ahem* humor columnist route
of making resolutions I can’t possibly fail to keep, such as
"This year I will not learn to speak Polish" or "I
resolve not to eat Brussels sprouts except at the point of a
gun." Nor I do mean that I make resolutions so vaguely
worded that success can’t be measured by any objective
standard—"I will try my best to become a better person
this year." As my sixth decade dribbles pathetically down to
its conclusion—still a good many years distant, thank you
very much—I make resolutions that are concrete, measurable,
and well worth doing. They are also few in number. Once upon a time I
would spend part of New Years Day sitting across the dining room
table from my sister, and the two of us would compile a full page
of resolutions on our identical legal pads. When you have 30 or
40 resolutions, it’s very unlikely that all will have been
kept when the year ends. The odds are that one or two will have
been broken by the end of the week, if not the end of the day. This year I made just one: I will not go to
bed until the dishes are done. Simple. Direct. Do-able. It’s satisfying
to hit the sheers with an empty sink and a full dish drainer.
(Possibly it’s even more satisfying to hit the sheets with
an empty dish drainer, but let’s not go nuts here). I kept this resolution for 11 days. It’s
not as impressive as it sounds: I had a couple of dinners at the
homes of friends, a couple of nights out, a night or two with a
box of pizza. I don’t want to give the impression I was
suds-ing up the pots and pans for a 12 course dinner 11 nights
running. But still, for 11 nights I was doing what I set out to
do. On the 12th of January, I got into
bed, started reading a book about this detective who figures out
that the killer he’s been searching for since 1988 was
hiding under the bed of his murder victim, and that the
victim’s mother has kept the room untouched since then and
that the killer’s fingerprints might actually still be on
the floorboards or the bed slats. At that point I realized I’d left the pan
and the pot from my dinner—and the colander—in the
sink. I got out of bed, went into the kitchen, and took care of
business. I felt pretty good about myself. I dodged a bullet
there. If I’d gotten up in the morning to a sink full of
dirty dishes, I would not have been happy. So the fingerprints were under the bed,
and it turns out to be this guy who wasn’t even a suspect in
1988. The next day I was bragging about how I’d
managed to keep my resolution at the last possible minute, and
the guy I was bragging to said, "Hey, Dude, no way. You
broke your resolution." I looked perplexed, I suppose, so he
explained that I went to bed without doing the dishes. Then I got
out of bed and did the dishes. In his strict reading of my
resolution, there was no difference between my getting out of bed
to do the dishes after 10 minutes and my getting out of bed to do
the dishes after 8 hours. I said that was a ridiculous way to
look at it. He said that I was responsible for the wording of my
resolution, he wasn’t. If I’d said ‘I won’t
go to sleep before the dishes are done,’ I’d
have been fine, resolution-wise. But the fact is, I’d gone
to bed, and then I did the dishes. So I blew it, Q. E. D. "Look at it this way. Let’s say you
resolved, like, ‘I will not shoot anybody unless they shoot
at me first.’ So you shoot this guy, who doesn’t even
have his gun out of his holster. But you shoot him anyway, and
you turn to leave the bar room, and with his dying breath he
manages to yank out the gun and fire at you. Did you keep your
resolution?" I wanted to know, when he fired, did he hit me,
but this was waved away as somehow irrelevant. "By your
logic, you kept the resolution because he fired at you and you
shot him, and it doesn’t matter what happened first, even
though it says it does in your resolution." "Well, no," I said, "For one
thing, in the actual dish washing event I fully intended to do
the dishes all along, I just forgot. In this gun fight scenario
of yours, I’m just walking in and capping this guy for no
reason." "I didn’t say that. For all we know,
he provoked you. Maybe he provoked you to the point where no man
could have walked away and still called himself a man." I was silent for a moment. I was trying to
picture this. I kept picturing Chuck Connors instead of me,
though. And Lee Marvin as the guy I shot. "The fact that the man you shot had it
coming..." "Lee Marvin," I said. "What?" "Nothing, I’m sorry. Go on." "Well, it had nothing to do with whether
you kept your resolution or not. You flat out did not. It
doesn’t mean you did the wrong thing. It could mean you made
a badly thought-out resolution. Maybe it should have been ‘I
won’t shoot anyone unless provoked beyond measure’ or
something. But that’s not what you said." "What I said was, I’ll do the dishes
before I go to bed." "Precisely." We left it there, not because I feel that he
won the argument but because I was starting to like the idea that
I’d blown a hole in Lee Marvin and it made me a little
uncomfortable, like when I found out I liked the taste of
asparagus after 40 years of making "eeewwww" noises
every time it was mentioned. So I leave it to you: I feel I certainly kept
the spirit of the resolution, if not the letter of the
resolution, but is that good enough? Did I crap out on my one and
only 2007 New Years resolution already? And if so, does that mean
I don’t have to worry about it any more and I can just let
the plates pile up in the sink till April? I need to know. So let me hear from you at [Editor’s note: Mr.
Grimshaw originally included the editor’s home phone number
here, but we’re not falling for that again. You can
email him at jgrimshaw@blast.net with "New Years Resolution"
in the subject line and let him know what you think about it.
Results will be published here in the unlikely event that there
are any]. CEREAL KILLER I hope you’re all sitting down. I have
some terrible news: Cereal City USA, home of the world-famous cereal
museum, is no more. It closed its doors forever this past
Friday. When I read the news I couldn’t believe
it. "No world famous cereal museum? Now what am I
going to do on my vacation?" I muttered. Actually, traveling 1000 miles to visit a
closed and shuttered cereal museum would be an improvement on my
last vacation, which commenced with my toilet sinking into the
basement and concluded with my purchasing a tube of acne medicine
in the belief that it was toothpaste, a mistake I did not notice
until I had been brushing with it for three days. It may not surprise you that a man who can
brush his teeth with pimple cream for three days was totally
unaware of the existance of the world-famous cereal museum until
it was gone. Then every newspaper, magazine, and cable news show
in America ran a story on its demise. And they all went with the
same headline: "Cereal Museum Loses Snap, Crackle
and Pop." Not really. A couple of papers went with "Snap
Crackle Flop." You know what they say about great minds
thinking alike. The museum was located in Battle Creek,
Michigan, which is where all the big cereal companies are
located. I guess if you’ve lived your entire life in Battle
Creek and you’ve never been anywhere else, you might think
that people everywhere are just fascinated with the very concept
of cereal. You might think, ‘Hey, you know what would be
great? A museum dedicated to cereal! It would be like a
license to print money!’ I myself am a big fan of cereal. I eat a lot of
it, I suspect more than any adult I know. I have 7 boxes of
various cereals in my kitchen cabinet as we speak, and while they
tend towards the crunchy unsweetened end of the cereal spectrum,
I have been known to go on the occasional Count Chocula binge. I
grew up glued to the TV and made little or no distinction between
Bugs Bunny and The Flintstones on one hand, and Sugar Bear and
the Lucky Charms Leprechaun on the other. They were all part of
the same endless Saturday morning cartoon show as far as I was
concerned. I am, I suppose, the ideal patron for a cereal museum.
Except for one thing: I have no interest whatsoever in
patronizing a cereal museum. I like to eat cereal. I don’t
care about the history of cereal, or how cereal is made, or
anything else you would discover in a cereal museum. I bet
that’s true of most of the ideal patrons of the cereal
museum, which is why we never bothered to drop by. Well, that,
and the fact that we never heard of it. Perhaps I’m being unfair. It wasn’t
just framed boxes of cereal and statues of John W. Kellogg. Every
article I read about the demise of the cereal museum mentions
"interactive exhibits." Unfortunately, nobody mentions
what they were. If the interactive exhibits were bowls of cereal,
and the interaction consisted of eating them, all well and good.
That’s just about the only way I’m interested in
interacting with cereal. Maybe if I’d lived 10 minutes from
the cereal museum, I’d have dropped by from time to time to
interact with the cereal. If I lived 12 minutes away, I’d
have to think about it. Any further than that, and I would have
stuck with the cereal museum in my kitchen cabinet. But geez, the thing was in MICHIGAN. I’ve
never been to Michigan, but I did visit Minnesota once, and I
believe they’re in the same general area, to the left of
Pennsylvania and then up a few ticks. Minnesota was really cold,
and there were all these Swedes. They weren’t
actually from Sweden, they were two or three generations away,
and yet they were still totally Sweding it up,
"Ve-a’re-a pleesed tu meet yuoo, Jeffff! Velcume-a tu
Meennesuta! Yuoo’re-a frum Noo Jersey? Du yuoo knoo Tuny
Spurunu? Ha-ha! Joost keedding. Bork-bork-bork! Nu sereeuoosly,
du yuoo?" I’m sure Michigan is basically the same
deal. No wonder nobody visited the cereal museum. You go all the
way out to Michigan and you’re stuck on line with 15 Swedes
going "Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom" every time you open your
mouth. Who needs it? The answer, given everything I’ve said to
this point, may surprise you. WE need it. The town of Milford. We could
probably pick up the cereal museum for next to nothing. My guess
is that Battle Creek is so heartbroken about its failure that
they’d be willing to pay for the shipping. And then we could
get it up and running again. In Battle Creek, Michigan, it’s
just a cereal museum nobody wants to visit, but in New Jersey,
it’s this cool ironic cereal museum. We could hire
some not-quite A-list celebrities to hang out there and have
parties where they eat cereal. Ironically. It could be a reality
show. I’m serious. I don’t see why this wouldn’t
work. Milford has already passed up the opportunity
to buy the late cannibal Ed Gein’s farm and ship it here
from Wisconsin. When that happened, I figured, okay, Milford is
totally over for yet another millennium. But here’s
another chance to join the 21st century, folks. Some people see what is and ask,
"Why?" Others see what might be and ask,
"Yuoo’re-a frum Noo Jersey? Du yuoo knoo Tuny Spurunu?
Ha-ha! Joost keedding. Bork-bork-bork!" I AM A DINOSAUR 2006 was the year that I realized I was a dinosaur. If you phone me and I don’t pick up, you’ll get my voice mail message, which goes, "Hi, you’ve reached 908-995-****. I’m not able to take your call right now, but if you leave your name, number, and the time you called when you hear the beep, I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks. BEEEEEEEP." That’s the same message I’ve been leaving on my answering machines and my voice mail for about 20 years. When I first got an answering machine, I left entertaining little skits or snatches of songs on the tape before you got to the beep. You’re spared an example because I don’t remember any of them. I just know they were killer. Wait. I do remember one. I said, "Hello," and then paused for about 8 seconds, during which time (I hoped) the caller, thinking that I’d picked up the phone myself, would begin talking. Then I said, "Oh, wait, wait. You think I’m here right now, but I’m not. This is just a recording. Leave your message when you hear the beep." At least three people fell for it. Like I said, killer. A lot of people had funny recorded greetings back then, in the late 70’s and early 80’s. And if you didn’t have the chops to make up your own funny answering machine message, you could buy one. Maybe you still can, but for a while it was an industry. You could buy a package of ‘outgoing message’ cassettes with a dozen different wacky greetings, just to show your callers what a nutty, free spirited person you were—not some dull old ‘square’ who just told you his name and asked for your number and a good time to reach you. (I put inverted commas around ‘square’ so you’ll know I didn’t actually say ‘square’ in real life back then). Some of these wacky greetings went on for 30 seconds or longer. Some of them were pretty funny. Once. And then, one day—it really seemed like it happened overnight—everybody realized they didn’t want to listen to any wacky skits or funny songs when they called, they just wanted to leave a message and get the hell off the phone. My epiphany came when I was calling 15 or 20 people one afternoon to tell them that a party invitation I’d sent out had the wrong date on it. Somewhere around the third madcap laugh-a-minute answering machine greeting, I realized that making these calls was going to take all afternoon instead of 15 minutes. One guy played a full minute of "Light My Fire" before he said, "Wait for the beep." You really don’t appreciate how long a minute is until you spend one waiting say, ‘The party’s on Saturday, not Friday. Bye,’ while you’re listening to ‘Light My Fire’ Another answering machine had a message from the couple’s cute four-year-old, complete with blown takes and audible prompting from the proud parents. That was probably only 30 or 40 seconds but it was the longest 30 or 40 seconds in the history of the universe. When I finished with that, I erased whatever side-splitter I had on my machine and recorded the earliest variation of the message currently on my voice mail. Simple. Direct and to the point. And it seemed to me that most of my friends, in fact most of the people I called in any capacity at all, did the same thing. Wacky answering machine messages were as dead as Disco, which at that point—1986, 87 at the latest—was pretty dead. Of course just as there was always some girl in your building who continued playing "I Will Survive" and "The Hustle" right through the turn of the millennium, there were still a few souls out there who expressed their creativity through the medium of answering machine greetings. One gentleman of my acquaintance opens his greeting with an acapella rendition of his ‘theme song’ (to the tune of ‘Wabash Cannonball’), "My Name Is Chuck M******." He sings two verses before you get to leave your message. During the holiday season he sings "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." In a way it’s almost charming, like the old beatniks who used to live in my neighborhood on the Lower East Side, still wearing berets and goatees decades after even MAD magazine had stopped printing beatnik jokes. But mostly it’s just annoying. So I was talking to another friend, mentioning Chuck M’s Christmas greeting and how I just wanted to leave my message and get off the phone, and he said, "So why do you have all that junk on your message?" Junk? I said. Why, I just say my name, and tell them when they hear the beep, leave— He asked me did I think they would leave their name before the beep? Did I think they wouldn’t leave their name if I didn’t tell them to? Um, I said. He had a point. All that boilerplate made sense a million years ago when many people weren’t used to answering machines and you had to explain what was going on. Older people especially had a problem with answering machines. They just didn’t get the concept. My mother used to call and leave 15 messages in an hour. "Oh, you’re still not home... I’ll try again later..." Later being maybe 7 minutes down the road. It used to drive me crazier than the wacky greetings. But everybody, even folks born during The Spanish American War, now understands that you wait for the beep and you leave your message. And if I don’t have your number, it’s a good idea to leave that, too. Which is why when you call somebody under 30 your apt to hear something like, "Hi, it’s Jen! BEEEEEEP!" And that’s what should be on my machine (only "it’s JEFF," not Jen). Instead everyone sits through my pointless instructions looking at the clock and making the same face I was making 20 years ago while I was listening to that cheesy instrumental version of "Light My Fire." I should change the message. I should do it now. But somehow, just barking out my name and going right to the beep seems... wrong. Which is how I realized I’m a dinosaur. * Return to The
Crystal Drum Page
EMMA: He’s on the Mets. She likes him. Put that in bold.
EMMA: Few people realize that
EMMA: Hel-LO. We just covered the whole
thing, start to finish!
One of the downsides of being a grown-up is that you no longer have the option
of spitting out the Magical Mystery Food, at least not if you want to be
allowed back at the sports bar. (Exception: you are allowed to spit out the
pimple cream, unless you’re one of those people who do their tooth-brushing
while wandering around the house picking up underwear and socks).
...and some Recent Columns...