A Slight Delay

Waiting for a bus one day in Elizabeth, I see a guy in his seventies coming up the street. He stops next to a guy sitting behind me.

“Can you tell me how to get to America? I know it’s around here somewhere, but I’m lost. Which way to America?”

I don’t overhear the reply. He continues, to me this time: “Do they believe in Jesus there? I heard some talk about Jesus over on North Broad Street there, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.” A pause, then: “You know, they gave us sandwiches before. Mine was bologna and some cheese on two slices of bread, white bread. Had mine with some mustard and some mayonnaise. Boy, was she good!”

I wonder if he’s found it yet. Sometimes I’m not sure if I recognize it myself.

My grandfather was a bit old-fashioned, and we’d get reminders once in a while, like when he met my friend Phil.

“So, Bill. What’s your last name?”
“Yurchuk.”
“Bill Deerchuck. What kinda name is that?”
“Oh, it’s Russian.”
“You don’t LOOK Russian.”
“Well, I’m half Russian. My mom’s Puerto Rican.”

“Oh.” Long pause, then: “Well. Nothing wrong with them…. They’re good people. Good, fine, people…” And you can tell that something in him is telling him he’s dug himself a nice, deep hole. “Very hard-working.” Phil and I, meantime, know that if either one of us looks at the other, we’re both gonna lose it.

He was also an old-school Catholic. You’d have thought that the Catholic Church was a travel agency, and all those church visits were racking up frequent flyer miles. And if, for some reason, you needed a reminder of that fact, you only had to look at his Buick.

Some people are happy enough just to put one of those Jesus fish on the trunk, or slap a bumper sticker on. Grandpa had rosary beads hanging off the rearview mirror, a St. Christopher medal on the dash, a saint or two fixed to the dashboard with some kind of adhesive, a bottle of holy water in the little caddy, a little bible in the glove compartment… that car looked like a rolling botanica. And if you ever sat in the car when he drove, you knew why he needed all that stuff. Picture a New York City cabbie in slow motion: all the bobbing and weaving and cursing, but without the punctuality. He’d be talking to his beads as he went, too, so the typical ride went something like this:

“Our Father, who art–SLOW DOWN! Ah, ya sonofabitch. Who art in heaven, hallowed be thy–ah, shit! name…”

And you’d be praying, too, but not for the same reason he was. To this day, I think the first joyful mystery is that we always got where we were going in one piece.

Citing low ratings–again–CBS is pulling the plug on its apocalypse opera, “Jericho.” This is, of course, the second time the network is cancelling the ratings-challenged show; the last time, CBS was beseiged by fans sending in thousands of pounds of peanuts. There’s no word yet whether those same fans are now back to hoarding Planters.

The first season of Jericho looked promising, building on the premise of a middle-American town coping with the aftermath of a limited nuclear war. But the series’ first-season flaws were only magnified in the second season; we’ve seen Jericho–the show and the town–devolve from a plot and character driven ensemble show, to soap opera, to B-movie-grade action. By now, it seems as though the writers can’t decide whether to emulate “The Day After,” “The X-Files,” “Days of Our Lives,” or some awkward combination of the three.

The show hasn’t been helped by its time slot, the writers’ strike, a truncated seven-episode season, or the fact the second season picked up after such a long layoff. If another network picks up the show, which is always possible, there’s much work to be done if “Jericho” is to live up to the promise it showed early on.

WASHINGTON (AP): A source close to the president, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed widespread rumors of a coming toast shortage. Urgent pleas have been lodged with the Toast Producing and Exporting Countries (TPEC), whose members are expected to hold an emergency summit in Yemen (motto: “White or Wheat?”), during which solutions are to be discussed, and ways found to keep prices low at the toaster.

In the meantime, the United States Department of Agriculture has recommended toast rationing, especially in urban centers, retirement communities, and truck stops, where recent toast consumption has far outstripped the rates of both import and production.

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke does not expect that the shortage of toast will further dampen the currently bearish market. President Bush, speaking at a press conference earlier today, sought to quell consumers’ fears, alluding to America’s 257-billion bushel stockpile of emergency surplus toast, held in reserve on a military base in Arizona, whose hot, dry climate makes it ideal for toast storage.

Another letter, sent after the one below:

Mr. Wetauba,
 
It is with great and sincere regret that I read this missive on the loss of  your dear client. It is with further regret, however, that I must decline your generous offer.
 
Even a cursory inquiry, you see, would reveal that my credit is somewhat less than Sterling. It is, in fact–in the going financial parlance–something closer to “rust.” The road to this unfortunate set of circumstances is long, circuitous, and probably dull to the uninitiated. Therefore, I will lay it out in detail. Someone of your financial experience and acumen, I’m confident, cannot but be impressed. (more…)

I use Hotmail, the filtering on which is generally halfway decent. That’s a good thing, usually, but one side effect is that I don’t get those Nigerian letters anymore. If you’ve ever taken a class, or read a book, on creative writing, you know that they’re big on “writing prompts,” ranging from traditional exercises to things that could almost pass for Zen koans; those letters were great writing prompts. Here’s a reply that I wrote to one of them:

Mr. Oko,

I’m so sorry, but I’ve been burned so many times in the past giving to lost causes. I sent something to the order of seventy-five thousand dollars for hunger relief in Ethiopia, and they kept starving. Same with the Biafrans, back when aid to Biafra was all the rage. I’ve given to the Rotarians, the Moose Lodge (only to find out that the closest they get to a moose is the one over the fireplace; and here I thought they were helping those poor animals. The bastards). Even donated a substantial sum of money for a friend’s breast augmentation, because I knew it would make him happy… he changed his mind after others had also chipped in no small fortune for the hormones and the rest of the surgery. You can imagine our disillusion. (more…)

  Hooray! The cardboard is gone! So what, you ask, does John Heartfield have to do with sports nutrition?

Well, here’s the thing: I don’t always have time to eat breakfast, or find myself needing a little something to pick me up during the day. I thought, a long time ago, that “sports nutrition bars” might be the way to go. And I would see the bars in health food stores, at supermarkets, and in train stations, all promising flavor with a burst of energy. Sounds good.

But what it tastes like is something else altogether. Power Bars, for instance, taste as though someone has bound pine needles, rat ears, tree bark, eye of newt and the bones of some saint or other together with high fructose corn syrup. Zone, Power Bar Pria, and others taste about the same; less like food than the byproducts of some industrial process or other. The only energy generated by these things comes from the calories burned when you discreetly rid yourself of (or spit with tremendous force) the offending mouthful. I invariably feel, in other words, like one of the hapless individuals in Heartfield’s montage.

But I keep trying. They can’t all taste like you’ve licked the floor at a bad Country and Western joint (ie. sawdust and peanut shells), can they? The answer is, they don’t. Clif Bars (roughly a buck at your local Trader Joe’s) have a great texture, and a taste that’s maybe a little too good. Take your pick: Cherry Almond, Crunchy Peanut Butter, Peanut Toffee Buzz… not a dud in the lot. Even flavors like Chocolate Brownie, Banana Nut Bread, and Carrot Cake taste like the things they purport to represent. No more cardboard!

Trader Joe’s
Clif Bar
The art and life of John Heartfield, courtesy of Towson University.
And you can find a more substantial post on Heartfield (minus the oats and fiber) here.

Slight shakeup over at MSNBC. Tucker Carlson’s eponymous show in the 6 PM slot is out, replaced by David Gregory’s Race For the White House. What difference will this have? Well, for one thing, Tucker packs up his bow tie and continues with the network as a correspondent-at-large. For another, David Gregory could now plausibly lay claim to the title of “Hardest-Working Man in News.” In addition to covering the White House for NBC, he’s anchoring the aforementioned show, and still making regular appearances on NBC’s Nightly News.

So, for practical purposes, what does it mean for the lineup from night to night? On one level, it does mean that the cable net is more tightly intertwined with its broadcast parent. This is especially clear on the nights of primaries and caucuses, when the likes of Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Tom Brokaw, and Gregory share airtime with the usual suspects. On another level, it replaces Carlson’s feisty conservative bent with Gregory’s more centrist presentation, drawing on the same cast of characters that tend to appear on the other programs: Air America’s Rachel Maddow, Eugene Robinson (associate editor and columnist for the Washington Post), NBC Political Director Chuck Todd, ex-Congressman/current MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, and Carlson. (more…)

I really don’t like Saint Patrick’s Day. There, I said it, I feel better.

And I’m Irish. Which is probably one reason I don’t like Saint Patrick’s Day. Maybe it’s the hundreds of people wearing shirts, buttons, badges, hats, glasses, lounge pants and scarves that say, “Kiss me, I’m Irish!” Maybe it’s the green ice cream, pancakes, beer, et cetera. Or maybe it’s the fact that every third person you see uses the day as an excuse to get ridiculously drunk, ‘cause, you know, it’s the “Irish” thing to do.

On second thought, maybe it’s the fact that people insist on asking why I’m not “dressed” for the holiday, why I’m not piss-drunk, and why I turn my nose up at any foodstuffs that have been dyed the same color as the Incredible Hulk. I’m not the politically correct type, but it sticks in my craw that a bunch of people have reduced Irishness to a bunch of tired stereotypes.

So I’ll chill at home, put on the Dubliners and the Pogues loud enough to wake the dead, read some Yeats, and have myself a nice pint of Guinness… the proper kind that looks like 10W40, thank you very much. And if anyone asks me why I’m not wearing green, why my stout is that lovely brown, or if I would please turn down If I Should Fall from Grace with God, I will tell them, in no uncertain terms, to kiss my Irish ass.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.

Mike Doughty, Golden Delicious. ATO Records.

Anyone that’s been in “the business” long enough, whether it’s music, art, literature, or anything else creative, gets it sooner or later: someone’s going to tell them, either face to face or in print, that they liked them better when they [fill in the blank].  By that measure, Mike Doughty has arrived.

Golden Delicious doesn’t immediately sound like Soul Coughing, nor does it sound entirely like any of the singer’s previous solo efforts, Skittish/Rockity Roll, or even his “proper” ATO debut, Haughty Melodic. And for that, he’s taken a bit of a beating. Some of the critics, it seems, liked him better when he’d slipped his moorings/was still addicted to drugs/still sounded like the bastard stepchild of Roni Size and Billy Strayhorn.

Tough.

Yes, on the surface, this is a much sunnier album. It doesn’t have the drum n’ bass flourishes and bent atmospherics that characterized Soul Coughing, and it’s certainly more polished than his earlier solo offerings. And that, to my ears anyway, ain’t necessarily a bad thing. (more…)