I Stand Corrected

It has come to my attention that my post of a couple days ago about hats (see below) is in need of a slight revision. The aspersions that I cast on the wearing of a beret, while in general quite called for, and for which I stand by wholeheartedly, should not, and from henceforth do not, naturally, encompass or include any beret-wearing member of the United States military (i.e. anyone who could kill me with his or her bare hands while being polite about it and calling me "sir" repeatedly). If ever a beret had a rightful, righteous place on somebody's head, it is on the head of a member of the armed services. It says might with elan, which if that isn't a solid definition of America, find me a better one (now if that doesn't get the specters of Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler and Marion Mitchell Morrison aka John Wayne out of the waking and sleeping nightmares I've been enduring all week, maybe I'll consider the French Foreign Legion). A beret on a civilian head, meanwhile, says twee with self-consciousness, which if that isn't the definition of sartorial carnage, find me a better one (of course, speaking of standing corrected, any pretty woman wearing a raspberry beret and coming in through the out door is granted a lifetime cool pass).

But enough about berets. While I'm doing so, and this being Lent and all, I might as well correct a few other slight mistakes with regard to what I've said and/or written over the years. Yes, when I was a teenager back in the glorious late 70s, when fashions had run amok and designer jeans were all the rage, I declared (and thankfully, technology being what it was back then, there is no video of said declaration to haunt me) that no one over the age of 25 should be allowed to wear jeans. Ah, youth. Brash, self-righteous, finger-pointing youth. Nevertheless, I'm still adamantly against any jeans that cost more than a half-tank (well, I guess I better go a full tank, these days) of gas. Side thought: Do you think that with the proliferation of "business casual" and the heedless march of evolution, one day, maybe thousands of years from now, human babies will be born wearing jeans?

Another faux pas, not so much spoken/written as committed: As a little kid, I once shovelled the snow off of the front yard and onto the driveway so that I could enjoy another game of solo football, complete with simultaneous play-by-play and color commentary. Every shovelful of the white stuff I've hoisted ever since (and here in Cleveland on April Eve we're not out of the snowy woods yet, as yesterday's Old Man Winter's dying wheeze showed) I believe has been payback for such a winter transgression (sorry mom and dad).

To Terry Montague, my former English student: I apologize for taking a point off one of your essays for misspelling the word traveler. Yes, traveller is an accepted variant spelling. I stand corrected of my mis-correction. I believe the additional point would have bumped you from a B+ to the A- you so fervently craved. I apologize for any wrath you might have endured in your home for the grade, privileges that might have been withheld, and any remuneration you lost out on. The damage to your GPA is regrettable; if you missed out on any college admission or career advancement opportunity as a result, I'll wear my hairshirt in your honor throughout April.

Similarly, I apologize to my sixth period class that day when, in the middle of pontificating about something or other, I answered "yes" when asked, "Are we going to be quizzed on this?" You see, I had it on solid intelligence that the Head of School was going to be prowling the halls that afternoon with a Major Donor in tow, and I wanted to make sure my classroom looked properly academic to passing eyes. Any carpal tunnel damage and useless destruction of the environment caused by all of your scribbling note-taking is regretted. That said, I do not now, nor will I ever, take back anything I ever said, or will say, about Mr. Darcy. The man's a freakish fop and would probably wear a beret if he were strutting around today.

Finally, as an addendum to another recent post (see below, further), yesterday I mistakenly placed a book about bonsais on the plant shelf. Later I looked down and saw a bevy of bonsai books on the trees and shrubbery shelf. Although I did re-shelve the book, I still regret my flora/fauna ignorance.

There, that feels great. Weights and weights off my shoulders and conscience. Gee, if I had to stand corrected every day and actually did make the corrections, I would feel like The Plain Dealer.

What's In A Name? Cruel Irony: Alfredo "Al" Fresco Dead At 56

Alfredo "Al" Fresco, the man who time and again famously, and infamously, proved that he was the world's most horribly mis-named man, died at his home in Cleveland yesterday. He was 56.

A virtual shut-in since the tragic events that occurred at his 12th birthday party, Fresco leaves behind a smattering of acquaintances, two cacti, an 8" x 10" glossy autographed by Terry Gross, a collection of Fresca soda bottles the guy down the hall estimates could fetch "mid-three figures" on eBay, several large-scale unfinished pieces of art, an apartment the EPA is looking into immediately, and, of course, the sad legacy of his name, which Fresco long-maintained cursed his life.

For his 12th birthday party on July 17th, 1966, "my first grown-up party," as Fresco described it in an interview he did with Interview in 1996, the pre-pubescent Alfredo was able to plan the details himself, "within reason," he later ruefully chuckled, alluding to the iron hand wielded by his nanny at the time, Sojourner Hoyden. Having been given a set of encyclopedias the previous Christmas, Fresco was well-stocked with ideas to celebrate his birthday in style. He wanted a dinner of fettucini alfredo served outside at the backyard picnic table, to be washed down by bottles of the at-the-time new soda sensation, Fresca.

Who knows what kind of environmental allergen perfect storm got whipped up that hot afternoon, but the combination of nasty smog, a high pollen count, a rather lumpy, sitting-out-in-the-sun-too-long alfredo sauce, and, well, just plain Fresca, proved to be a too-potent mix for the young man and his admittedly sensitive constitution. To make a too-often told, rather gruesome, and only intermittently entertaining long story short, after the ensuing commotion in the Fresco backyard, fumbling-in-the-dark medical treatment to find out what had happened and why and how to fix it, which included, among other stabs, an iron lung and leeches, on his 18th birthday Al Fresco was presented with his ultimately correct, and ultimately ultimate, diagnosis: he was severely allergic to fresh air and fatally allergic to alfredo sauce. Unbelievably, he was by then also addicted to Fresca. Unbelievably but also cruelly: not only couldn't Fresco stop drinking the stuff, whose taste he despised (about the only normal thing about Al Fresco, by the way, his distaste for the taste of Fresca), but his coterie of doctors realized that the daily drownings of Fresca actually helped alleviate the noxious effects of any fresh air that seeped into Al's now carefully controlled environment. For not only was a trip outdoors right out, but an open window, a draught through a crack in the floor, a John Denver song, a guest appearance by Carol Channing on the Dinah Shore show, a Boys Life article on the money raising efforts of scouts in Topeka to help out the poor people of Bangladesh--any and all literal or figurative gusts, or even breaths, of fresh air could wreak such havoc on poor Al Fresco's health that ravenous gulps of Fresca could only band-aid, at best.

So Al was left to a life indoors, watching helplessy as his younger brother Michael took over the family's import business empire. Sensing he needed a hobby to stave off insanity, Al naturally took to painting frescoes, but his insular life had made him even more of a neurotic and he became a perfectionist with his art work. He never completed a fresco. All of them reached the point where they were "just two or three dabs" away from completion before they were abandoned. As time wore on, Al felt the need for staler air, so (not being able to smoke the things himself) he hired a chain-smoker he knew, Wes, to come to his apartment and smoke cigars and cigarettes for four hours a day. Any hopes of true companionship were scotched, though, when Wes, one week into the job, tripped over an unfinished fresco. The resultant blow to the head rendered Wes a deaf mute, but eventually he recovered enough to reclaim his job, showing up daily to smoke in silence as Al talked incessantly (Wes never bothered to learn how to read lips).

With much cajoling from his rapidly dwindling circle of friends, Al decided to take a trip for his 35th birthday (figuring that he would live until the median mortality age of 70, he thought a mid-life trip would be best). Of course for Al there was only one destination: San Francisco, Frisco. Logistical problems re fresh air exposure pushed the date of departure a few months past his actual birthday, but by late October, 1989, after having reserved a room in a most desirous musty motel room, Al made the journey from his apartment to Cleveland's airport with a paper bag over his head. After a rather uneventful flight to Oakland's airport (cheaper than flying to Frisco's) Al unfortunately was riding in a fetid cab crossing the Bay Bridge when the earthquake hit. It would be three years before Al could even look out a window again.

Since by then even scenes of fresh air made Al itch and gasp for breath, he had unplugged his TV and become dependent on the radio for his sole contact with the outside world. One evening, while fiddling up and down the dial, he came across the greatest sound he had ever heard: the voice of radio host Terry Gross. Al was instantly smitten. So unprepared in his reverie of true bliss was Al that when Terry signed off for the night with her signature, "This is Fresh Air," Al nearly died. Intrepid he proved to be, though. Braving the mine fields of Terry's siren-like "This is Fresh Air!" Al listened religiously with his hands at the ready on the sides of his head to block his ears whenever Terry wound up and started to purr, "This is--" got it in time, thank God.

In recent years, Al took to running the website oxygenisdeath.com and subsisting on Girl Scout cookies, which he bought by the truckload, froze for three years, thawed, and consumed, washing them down with the requisite flagons of Fresca he despised. The coroner has ruled his death accidental, the result of his having gone to sleep with his iPod on random shuffle and the device cruelly skipping incessantly on the phrase, "Breathe deep," from the crazy poem at the end of "Nights In White Satin" by the Moody Blues. "After five or six straight hours of subconsciously hearing that phrase," coroner Stan Pype declared, "the poor man's body just shut down." At a private service last night, Wes smoked a Cuban he had been hoarding since 1959.

If I Had A Hat To Hang, Maybe I'd Feel More At Home In This World

I saw a guy in a beret today, and I instantly had one of those thoughts you have every once in a great while, one you've never consciously thought before but that you know is a lifetime thought--always been there, always will be. The thought today was, I will never wear a beret in my lifetime. Now I suppose I could say something nasty like, some guys can pull off the beret look; the rest of us are men, but it's Sunday in Lent, and I don't mean to be nasty. The truth is, some men can pull off the beret look without looking like a fool. I, and most other men, I would argue, are not in that club.

The further, more personal, truth is, as I've written somewhere before, I have searched my life for the appropriate hat. Now those who know me know I don't sweat the details of fashion all that much. I love words like sartorial and haberdasher, but the idea of "personal style" is not one I mull too much. Still, though, the idea of the appropriate hat is one that somehow has always appealed to me. But just what kind of hat? Certainly not a beret. Stetson? Fedora? Bowler? Derby? Pork pie? On and on, hats have some great names, and, worn on the right person, they simply but profoundly complete that whole person's aura. Jimmy Durante was naked without his hat--that's what I'm talking about. A hat so me that without it people would say, is that really you, Mr. spitoutyourgum? I'm not talking functional, everyday hats like a baseball one for the summer or a knit cap for the winter, but a hat to wear, to inhabit, not just use.

In the fantasy game, what would I say to Bob if I ever met him, the one all Dylan fanatics play, I have a set, unchanging answer/question: Bob, how important is the appropriate hat? I'd ask this because Dylan is one of the few people who can pull off putting on any kind of a hat and still look great, like the particular style of hat was made just for him. I'd hate to see it, but I'm sure Bob would look great in a beret. To my eyes, the only hat that didn't look right on Bob was that black cap he sported in his early New York days and on the cover of his first album (the cap writers are seemingly legally-bound to describe as a "Huck Finn" cap, which makes no sense to me as I could never picture the heroic Huck Finn wearing one of those caps, a Greek fisherman's cap, in my way of explaining [which reminds me of the great Arlo Guthrie line about songwriting being a lot like fishing, and too bad for the songwriter fishing downstream from Bob, he catches them all--somebody should write a song using that line]).

I don't know what all this means, just that I confess to craving the appropriate hat to complete my personal non-style and that today I have consciously, definitively, crossed the beret off my list. That isn't really progress, I know, but at least it saves me from ever following some ill-conceived notion and trying one on. Bob, if you're out there reading this, please advise.

                                                                        no

                                                                   hell yes

                                                                        yep

                                          even in a makeshift hat, Bob wears it great

                                      not many can make this headwear look this cool

                                             no one does the Jewish-cowboy                                              imitating an Amish farmer better

                                                             yes, somehow

                                                                yes, eternally

An American Nightmare

I had a dream.

It was a dream firmly rooted in the twin American nightmares of being called to testify before a Congressional Hearing and being subjected to the power of suggestion by the media elites (I've been spooked for days by this Onion blurb about Microsoft putting a blue squiggly line underneath every word that might be too difficult for the average reader to comprehend understand get). In the McCarthyesque dream the ten most literate bloggers were subpoenaed to appear before a Senate Select Commerce Committee Hearing looking into the perceived pedantism problem on the Internet. I was the sixth blogger to testify. Here is my recollection of a good portion of my testimony (subject to correction once the Congressional Dream Record is published):


Senator A: Why do you blog. sir?

Me: You look at things that are, and say, "Why?" I look at things that are completely random and say, "Why not?"

Senator A: Why did you name your blog spitoutyourgum?

Me: Because, much to my chagrin, expectorateyourgum had already been trademarked by Major League Baseball.

Senator B: What do you make from your writings?

Me: Make, sir?

Senator B: Get, what do you get from your writing efforts?

Me: Same as any writer, I guess. Headaches, paranoia, guilt, a profound yen to chuck it all and move to Zaire. And viruses, a lot of them.

Senator A: Do you know the definition of the word "arcane"?

Me (chuckling): Yeah, the family has a lot of "buffers."

Senator A: I'm sorry, I didn't catch that.

Me: My point, exactly.

Senator B: Moving along, sir. Is it not true that at your place of employment, your so-called "day job," you have unlimited access to dictionaries of obscure and obsolete words?

Me: Not anymore, sir. See my previous post.

Senator A (gavel gavel): We'll have none of your shameless plugs here, sir. Have you no sense of decency?

Me: I'm a blogger, Senator. Nothing shameless about me. I have oodles of shame.

Senator B: What is the aim of your blog?

Me: Somewhere between the middle brow and the slapped knee, sir. On a good day, I'm 50-50.

Senator A (looking through a stack of papers): Am I correct that you once took an entire blog post--and the resultant precious cyber-bodily bandwidth it takes to archive it--to expound on the word desuetude?

Me: That's pronounced des-wi-tood, Senator. Sue's not involved in that word at all, and she resents the insinuation. Anyway, yes, but I don't use that word anymore; in my lexicon it's fallen into desue-- ah, I no longer employ that word. Budget cutbacks and all.

Senator B: What in the hell are you talking about?

Me: Oh, I'm sorry, Senator. Aren't you familiar with that term, "budget cutbacks"? Would you like me to define it for you?

Senator B: Who do you think you are?

Me: Pertaining to that specific question, the counsel in my head advises me that I should respectfully invoke my Constitutional right to take the fifth.

Here the dream suddenly shifted to a liquor store setting where I was buying a bottle of Absolut from a bikini-clad Sigourney Weaver and discussing the word putsch with the ghost of Charlie Weaver. I'll keep the rest of the details to myself. I guess I should stop eating a box of Girl Scout cookies before my mid-morning naps.

I Know My Oxy From My Moron, But Not My Parsley From My Shrubbery

I learn by going where I have to go.
         --Theodore Reothke

The boss today said it was either good news or neutral news. I'm not discounting the possibility that in time it will be good news, but neutral it is definitely not. There is nothing neutral about panic. The news is that I'm being moved from running the reference section at the bookstore to the cooking/gardening section (those who know me can stop laughing any hour now).

Reference felt like home: dictionaries, thesauri, trivia books, literary criticism, writing manuals, educational texts. Basically my bread and butter (jeez, less than one day into it and I can't stop with the food references). Now I'm headed into the two-nook shelves of Rachel Ray, paella, perennials, and landscape design. Things couldn't be more confusing for me right now if I (colorblind as I am) were put in charge of blending at a Sherwin-Williams store. I've said it before: my culinary expertise extends to clearly enunciating my order into the drive-thru squawk-box so that I don't have to repeat it, and no further. The only cooking reading I do or have done is reading the fine print to determine if I take the burrito out of the plastic bag or not before nuking it. Sure I cut a decent lawn, but colorblindness or not, I know my thumb is not close to being green. But what the hell; I can do this. If George W. Bush could go from whatever it was he did pre-2001 to being President of the United States and the Union held, I believe I can do this (sans my own personal Karl Rove, I might add). It's going to be rough at first, though. When the boss pointed out the shelf labeled "whole grains" I had to ask what the hell are those; is there such a thing as a half-grain? Upon further inspection of my new domain, I discovered that under my aegis I now also have responsibility for the Weddings and Etiquette shelves (friends, insert your own paragraphs of hilarity here). So long, Roget, hello Emily Post.

So, stay tuned. I'm sure some new insights re Martha Stewart and bonsai maintenance will be coming your way soon. All I know is I have a new-found respect for the word neutral.

What Do You Say?

The other day at work there was a young kid hanging around the cash register admiring a Homer Simpson key chain; he knew a lot about Homer, as he was spouting scores of lines from The Simpsons while his parents idly shopped nearby. Finally, like one would think Marge Simpson would do one of these days, the kid got tired of Homer and propped his little elbows up on the counter and looked at me. "What'dya say?" I asked. The kid looked at me and said, "Thank you," with a hint of a questioning inflection. "That's a good one," I replied. "Please?" "Another ace in the hole." "You're welcome?" Now for some reason, mainly because the kid seemed so Simpson-literate, I hadn't expected him, who was seven or eight, I'd guess, to take so literally in the adult-to-child prompt manner my question about what he had to say. "How about, 'Okay, I'll eat my spinach now'?" I offered. The kid thought for a second. "I don't say that too much." As if any self-respecting person under the age of fifty does.

It got me thinking about those conversational calisthenics we utilize all the time to recognize another human being's presence and open the door to possible conversation. How's it goin'? Howya doin'? What's up? Hey. Usually these are nothing more than empty calisthenics, verbal stretches, with no intended further activity; the common response is yet another one--"What do you say?" "Hey, how's it goin'"--as the two people go their separate ways, like the proverbial ships passing in the night (as opposed to stopping and actually having a conversation, a gam, as Melville so majestically digressed about in Moby-Dick, where the ships would drop anchor side-by-side, exchange captains and first mates, and spill beans for a couple hours; imagine the response if, after exchanging hollow Howya doin's and What's up's you grabbed the other person and said, "Hey, not so fast, let's gam awhile"--a slap in the face, probably). Which is all fine, merely exchanging a verbal stretch or two--who doesn't appreciate his or her presence to be acknowledged? What throws you for a loop, though, is when the person actually takes seriously your hollow, merely stretching here, question. I mean isn't the question, "Howya doin'?" meant to be a simple either/or question--fine or crappy--and not some higher degree's oral exam? I once worked with somebody who invariably reacted to my rather hollow, but still humane, "Howya doin'?" question with a hesitation and actual thought that was physically apparent. "Well," she'd begin, twisting her head this way and that way and rubbing her chin, obviously assessing her eventual reply as if I had asked her her opinion on the current situation in the Middle East--all the while as I was trying to charge full speed ahead toward the horizon and leave her in my wake--"actually, I'm not doing all that well." Drop anchor, Dan, damn.

Worse than the literalists, when it comes to responding to conversational calisthenics, are the fey ironic-literalists, the people who quickly reply to your meaningless "What's up?" with, "the sky," or "the rent." Those people need to be slapped.

My two favorite conversational calisthenics partners were two unique guys. One was a stocky, perpetually cheerful, though not cloyingly so, co-worker who used to greet you with a jovial "Howdy howdy" all the time. You couldn't help but smile and feel worthy to be in his presence. The other was an old Jesuit Brother who always answered anyone's "How are you doin', Brother?" with a wizened but happy, "Breathing in and breathing out" (until one day he breathed out and never breathed in again; which reminds of his antithesis, a tiny, wiry Brother who was always muttering and angry about something; the story goes that one day, curious like the rest of us, someone asked the cantankerous man of the cloth why he had joined his religious order; as elevator doors closed upon him, the old cuss looked at his inquisitor and stated bluntly, "to save my fucking soul"; calisthenics be damned, this guy was perpetually fighting a championship bout).

Despite the irksome fey ironic-literalists, my only real pet peeve with all of this empty conversational nonsense is what I call the Misanthropic Mute. The person who, when obviously spoken to, completely ignores you. We've all known them. You pass by them and, already intimidated by their dour aura, you usually dispense with the warm-up Howya utterances and move straight to the more formal, "Hello." Nothing. More often than not the person actually looks right at you as you hit the O of hello and nothing registers on their sad face and they just keep on walking. "Hey, twit," you want to scamper after them, nipping at their heels, "I just recognized the fact that in outward appearances at least you seem to be a fellow human being and I offered you an aural, nay, a humanly verbal acknowledgement of your human existence, and all I'm asking in return is a little human reciprocation, a grunted "Hey" will suffice to assure me that I, too, am human, still breathing in and breathing out, just trying to get through another ten seconds here without worrying about the fate of my effing soul, what'dya say?" But instead I usually just mutter silently, trying to send telepathic waves their way, "trip, trip, trip," until another person comes along muttering to me, "What's up?" I think from now on I'll accost all the known Misanthropic Mutes I encounter with a gregarious "Howdy howdy." That should shake 'em up good.

Okey-dokey, bye bye now.

A Great Day To Be Uncle Fester

So what kind of solace do I receive after a rather long, loony week? I wake up this morning to my radio telling me today/tonight is not only a full moon, but the closest the moon will be to the Earth in 18 years. Unfortunately I have to go to work today, so I can't take refuge underneath my covers all day from the lunar assault. I guess it's going to be a long day dodging craters (aka potholes) on my way to and fro work, calmly helping off-kilter customers look for things like a Pop-Up version of Naked Lunch, the graphic novel of Helen Keller's life, an audio book version of the Marcel Marceau coffee table tome, and a box set of Richard Carpenter's complete solo recordings, and idly wondering if the Moonies are all happily mass-married and when they're planning their big media comeback.

It all makes me wish I could be Uncle Fester for a day and a night. With his electricity-conducting capabilities, his faithful blunderbuss ("I'll shoot him in the back"), and his fool-proof scheme for fishing--use dynamite--the guy had it all together. In addition, according to wiki's entry, in the original sitcom where he really came to life, Uncle Fester was Morticia's maternal uncle, making his full name Fester Frump. Does it get any better than that? But of course the members of the Addams Family were known for their love of moon-bathing, so I dedicate whatever goofy, lunar-related trials I encounter today/tonight to their enjoyment of the moon's closeness, especially Fester's, just because.

Could the key line ("something in the moonlight still hounds him") in Bob Dylan's vastly underrated song "Handy Dandy" be actually about Uncle Fester, rather than Prince, as has been claimed? I wonder if the rate of college kids exposing their buttocks will rise exponentially today? Enough, the palms are starting to itch and I suddenly need a shave really bad.