These two names popped up in the news this week:

Joel Smallbone

David Pecker 

Now, wouldn’t you love to see them form a law firm:  

Smallbone and Pecker

*   *   *   *

I don’t know if you’ve been following this 30 million cash heist in LA, where they can’t figure how it was done, who did it and why there wasn’t any real security to prevent it. Especially, how they broke into a massive safe to steal almost two tons of bills.

I had the sudden idea that maybe the cash just wasn’t in the safe when they broke in, that it had already been stashed in boxes for easy grabbing.

Well, obviously, one way or another, there was inside planning, but it would be much more clever if the safe-break was a false lead.

*   *   *   *

A convoluted tale of broiled mushroom caps.

Over 30 years ago, Linda and I were friends with Goetz and Luci Mayer, an Austrian couple who married in 1941 and fled the Nazis to South Africa. 

Goetz, then in his late 80s, had been a friend and roommate of playwright Bertolt Brecht in Paris during World War II, and wrote wonderful scattershot stories of his life for the Philadelphia Welcomat (while I was arts editor), that he called “Suitcase Memories.” Luci, then about 90, was one of the finest people I’ve ever met, a force of nature with an interest in almost everything, an interest that never waned.

They came to dine with us a few times when we lived on Baring St. Once, on whim, I decided to whip up broiled mushroom caps for dinner. I’d never dared this before, had no idea how to approach it, so, as usual, took a seat-of-the-pants culinary approach and added everything I could think of to the stuffing that might create a good mix. Somehow, the caps not only worked but were – by my and Linda’s and the Mayers’ telling – wholly delightful.

Thing was, I didn’t write down the “recipe.” Was I depending on my memory for later? Good god, I should have known better. Over the years, I’ve tried my ever-lovin’ best to duplicate those fungal wonders, but have never succeeded. Come close a couple times (including last week), but the perfect balance is lost to time.

Luci died of cancer in the late 1990s, one of the few times I’ve cried over a death. Goetz never admitted, to us, how heavily he was hit, after their close to 60 years together, but his health slid steadily with neuropathy and whatall else. He would sit across from us and say, simply, “Everything hurts.” He failed to wake up two years later, on the second anniversary of Luci’s death.

I don’t remember if I cried when Goetz died, but dammit, I still cry every time I fail to make the perfect broiled mushroom caps.

*   *   *   *

The abbot was asking the gardener if he had seen the missing monk assigned to oversee evening prayers.

Replied the gardener, 

“Oh, the monk? He wrapped his tail around the flagpole.”

*   *   *   *

In Catholic elementary school (starting in fourth grade), we ended each school year doing not much in the classroom. Instead, we were asked to take our textbooks home and clean them up as a favor to the following year’s class – erase underlining, put on new dust jackets, that sort of thing.

This set fire to the obsessive-detail side of my pinched mind. Laying the books out on the kitchen table at home, I’d cut new dust jackets from paper shopping bags, and fold them over so that I could insert the hard-bound text covers. Egad! I was a nerd before the term was even invented.

And the underlining!

Did I underline texts myself in those days? Not that I can recall. Ever the neat freak, I’ve never liked underlining anything I’ll ever look at again, and lord how I cringed when I dribbled tea on Thomas Pynchon.

But many of the school books had not only simple pencil underlining, but deep-blue pen slashes. Determined to right all damage caused by Paper Mates and Parkers and Esterbrooks, I’d page through each text with a saucer of bleach at hand that I would apply to every last pen underline, using a matchstick, delighting as the illicit smudges vanished, or at least mellowed to a gentle pink.

I wonder now how the students of succeeding years reacted to books that disintegrated into isolated strips of text. Chlorine bleach is a remarkably active substance when applied to paper.

[This is a segment of a revised and rearranged character study from the first novel I attempted, decades ago. Most of that would-be book was crap, but I think Rylla is worth it. Hope you do. And whether you do or not, I’ll likely bludgeon you with more of her later. X-rated material unapologetically included.]

“What’s that girl doing over there?”

Isa Roswald pointed his chin at a young, frizzy-curled someone performing a series of rapid motions with a contained nervousness that was almost electric. Her eyes held an alert, slightly mad look.

“She’s working on the mechanism for the production of glycine, Strudle explained. “That’s an amino acid. She’s one of the horizontals. I’m a vertical.”

They approached the bench. The girl was immersed in her work with an intensity out of all proportion to what she seemed to be actually doing. When Strudle spoke to her, she snapped her head back like a poorly articulated marionette.

“Rylla, this is Mr. Roswald. He’s from the government. He’s taking a tour of the project, and I thought you might give him a quick rundown of what you’re up to.”

Her expression, looking at Roswald, seemed to encompass both the experiment and herself. “Oh! Well. Each of these test tubes holds a concentrate from a different hormone, all to be tested for the same length of time… after the hormone has been added. To the solution. Thirty minutes. We test for how much glycine is produced – that’s an amino acid. What I do is take the concentrate and – ”

She snapped off a rapid-fire synopsis of each step in the process, finishing her sample as she spoke. Her accent was distinctly Irish, but there was no time or place in her express-train delivery for brogue or lilt. It poured out with an intensity that both dazed Roswald and etched every abstruse sentence into his brain. She finished her discourse in the corridor and looked across at him with nervous expectation.

What do I say now? “Uh, you… you’ve been doing this for long?”

“A furlong is at race tracks. About six months. Here. I might, would like to take up biochemistry as a profession. I never finished university but I’m going back now. Manchester. Part time. Then I’ll be able to… understand better what I’m doing.”

“You seem like you understand it well enough. A lot better than I understand what I’m doing, most of the time.”

“I mean, I already know the terms and things, but I want to know how it all fits together. Don’t you?” A shyness, almost unworthiness, seeped in. “Excuse me, but I have to get back in. To the lab.” She turned without further word and closed – almost slammed – the glass-paneled door.

Roswald paced back to Strudle’s office, where they traded bland observations, the kind that reminded him it was time to scrub his bathroom sink. “Thank you very much, Mr. Strudle. This has been a most enlightening visit.”

“You’re quite welcome. Can I show you the way out? It’s a bit labyrinthine, as they say.”

“No thank you, I think I’ve got it all right.”

Roswald snaked through the ranks of cubby holes, set for a quick exit, when he almost plowed into the girl again. She was pulling a cigarette from her mouth like unplugging a cord from a socket. He stood in her line of vision, afraid of upsetting a balance he couldn’t define, but the effect was as dramatic as before. She popped backwards, almost spilling the beaker she was holding with the non-cigaretted hand.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”

“I shouldn’t be smoking, you know. They give me hell. Once I dropped a big ash into a flask and fouled the reading. Wow did they give it to me that time.”

“You do get a break?”

“Twenty minutes. I try to stretch it to thirty, half an hour, when I can.”

“Maybe we could talk for awhile for the other ten?”

“Oh, that sounds such fun.”

“It does?”

“Doesn’t it?”

They walked down to the lounge, where Roswald learned that her name was Rylla McKinna, from somewhere he couldn’t pronounce outside Dublin, that she had an opinion on everything imaginable, and that that opinion was likely not one he had heard before. She approached technical matters with a brash naïveté that splintered topics into fine particles according to her fancy, reassembling them as personal visions near an internal juncture between fantasy and cosmic relevance.

At the moment she was in an uproar about the sense of smell. Her instructor at Manchester, Swengdon, had posited that identifying odors was a response to stimuli excited by molecules that fit into microscopic niches in the upper reaches of the nose.

“Can you believe that? Tiny bumpy things floating through the air that just happen to be the right shape to fit into holes in your nose? That’s such – I wanted to dash up and ask him where he could come up with such an idea. But that didn’t seem a wise thing to do.” She puffed her cigarette and gulped another blast of coffee as though preparing to meet her fate. “Oh lord, I’m late, we’ve been three-quarters of an hour. I’ve got to go. Really.”

Roswald wanted to delay her by any means. “Is there anything funny going on here? Strudle acted like I should be followed by security.”

“That’s probably because of me. We’ve been… going out, together, and he’s getting, I guess, possessive. I don’t like that, it makes me nervous. How do I get into these things, I’m not his – you don’t want to hear about it, I’m sure. Well, goodbye, I wish we could talk more…” Her face slipped into a haunted vision of personal conflict, but through it he still glimpsed an overriding sense of purpose.

“Are you doing anything for dinner tonight?” Roswald snapped it out on impulse and as quickly felt himself an aging failure. Why am I panting after eighteen year old lab assistants?

“Tonight? That would be good. Yes, it would be fine,” a smile shooting across her face like she had changed masks.

He looked at the tight muscularity of Rylla (when had she shed her clothes? what had he been doing not to notice?), eyes too large, chin too small, but a body that did things, that stood with simmering motion, yet in Victorian terms “pleasingly plump,” roundly sensual. How did she manage all of it, her body forming a deliberate manifestation of herself? Her body must call men down from the trees. It had called Roswald in from the dryness of bureaucracy to the center of himself, though he could not have named that center, and now had no power left to do so.

He reached across and ran his fingers down the lines of that pleasingly sensual, plumply round body. He leapt into the moment with an intensity which blotted all considerations, ground into her, humped, banged, tupped, snorted and screwed. He did not make love. He needed something above and beyond love, verification of an existent self that could interact – the more brutally the better – with another.

They lazed through a long post-coital silence.

Over the days, Roswald grew more gentle in his lust. Once, in the moments before they came, Rylla spoke and continued to speak through climax, gasping around phrases, emphasizing adjectives with her nails, spiraling into cessation with words rolling from her as tickertape spills.

“Women are the dark side of the moon, they’re supposed to be the moon, Diana, huntress, but nobody, men, thinks they’re hunting, they think women have already found, found everything at home or inside, they can’t want but they do want, I want, keep doing it, don’t stop I can talk and still – I’ve wanted everything I’ve ever done, almost done everything I’ve wanted, no, wanted everything I’ve done, even if I’ve regretted it afterwards, years when I regretted every last thing I’d done because I didn’t know how… to… want… oh yes Isa yes… wanted to want the right ones, the ways best for me, I didn’t, didn’t know what to want, I’m beginning to know, frightens men to find a woman wanting, frightened you when you first, first time didn’t it, you had to learn… are you going to Isa are you yes… wanted to know, be able to tell what people were thinking, why they weren’t better than they are, you went ahead like I didn’t frighten you but I did, frightened, all the time, both of going to come, feel it Isa, not like anything anybody says it is because it satisfies, nothing else quite satisfies, inside and under what you are comes up and overwhelms and completes you-u-u-u-u-u-u yes-s-s-s-s I’m crazy crazy let everything fall into satisfaction what are desires why do I have desires when I’m satisfied other parts of me still looking for satisfaction martyrs looked for completion end point so final they could burn out easy while their flesh burned smell themselves roasting… in England executioners roasted entrails still attached to martyrs who knew nothing done in their lives satisfied like that smell satisfied the senses a physical thing in us telling us this is… what happens when I die I find I have a soul that must go roaming or there’s a heaven or I  come back as someone I’ll never know, or I’ll be a man next time to find it no more complete to be a man I thrive on being me thriving… thriving… thriving say a word over and over it’s just noise, dirt and worms, what’s more complete in death if you aren’t complete here you’ve failed a martyr to win every bit back at the last second I want to be satisfied before I die smell in my nostrils flowers living not flowers on a dead-woman coffin so easy to spill into death-asleep the way dreams fit together explaining what they are exactly by the way they are nightmares a different completion we don’t want to face I don’t want to face but good dreams in the night soft not clouds or heaven, heaven is hard night is good… good night…good night. With dreams.”

Rylla fell into sleep as a tree falls, a non-rational rustle accelerating through snapping conscious connections, crashing into the otherland where obtuse angles define the geometry of cubes, her head on his arm, slowly deadening it, the loss of feeling in his forearm creeping up past the elbow where it met the resistance of his biceps. That great muscle fought anesthesia, but lost.

There are three three things that bother me in the construction of most scientific studies, polls and philosophical discourse:

1) the subjugation of the individual to the general

2) the failure to clearly separate thing from relationship

3) the failure to define terms being discussed

I’ve rambled about some of this in snide bits and pieces, but I’d like to get further into them.

This rumin I’ll grumble about number one, and go on to the other two later. I’ll try my best not to be terminally boring, but I’d suggest keeping your finger close to the “delete” key to be on the safe side.

*   *   *   *

Whoops, wait… first, I have to insert my fuckup du jour:

My daughter Erin commented on my last post about our family’s lack of musical-instrument instruction:

“Well… Miquon [my first two kids’ superb grade school] had Morgan and I play the recorder; I took a guitar workshop there too. Mom made me play piano using the John W. Schaum books, and I took flute while I was in Teaneck. I wasn’t good or comfortable with any of them.”

Sorry about my previous claim that nobody in the family took instrument lessons, but sorrier that Erin had to piddle around with stuff that made her uncomfortable.

*   *   *   *

OK, on to the general vs. the individual (see the Eisenhower joke, hee hee?)

Almost all scientific studies are designed to uncover a general principle or mechanism, and almost all opinion polls are designed to identify the general outlook of a given population. Both, by design, ignore or minimize the individual, viewing the specific as irrelevant at the moment.

Scientific principles are general, and it behooves us to discover them in their generality if we want to know what’s going on in the universe (that curiosity thing, if nothing else). This is what hard science – physical science – is about.

But the social sciences (a term that makes me squirm) deal with human populations that are the sum of the individuals that comprise them. Same with those polls that call while we’re eating dinner to tell them what they want to know (I tend to tell them, succinctly, things they’d rather not hear).

Each of us is an individual, but it’s not unlikely that each individual finds him or herself as an unviewed or neutral object at times like these. But there should be ways to see both the individual and the general at the same time, or at least take both into consideration when looking at the results. Because the failure to do so can skew what the results look like, especially in the social sciences.

Example:

I hope you all have more sense than to fill out social questionnaires geared to uncovering political and psychological attitudes. They usually attempt to identify or sort out personal and group bias, yet the studies too often have such bias built in.

How?

It often lies in the order or grouping of the questions, more than in the individual question themselves. (I wish I had saved specific examples, but they piss me off so much I usually toss them immediately.)

The worst are the causist “questionnaires” (lead-ins to a petition or request for donation) which are – purposely – designed to pin you into a narrow mindset where one question assumes you already agree with the organization’s outlook, and the following ones pressure you not to just support that outlook but reinforce it – with no allowance for nuance.

With the actual scientific questionnaires, I don’t think the similar problem is deliberate, but an unconscious leaning in humans to sort items by type. 

A couple examples of questions listed in sequence – made up, but closely reflecting ones I’ve seen quoted :

Yes or No:

1. Do you view men and women as equal in rights and abilities?

2. Do you support the feminist position?

OK, if you’re a decent human being, you will say yes to the first. 

But… there are those, both male and female, who might be ambivalent about the term “feminist” – in part from their individual definition of the term. Yet those who answer “yes” to the first question will almost certainly be pushed toward answering “yes” to the second, whether or not they have personal reservations about the term “feminist.”

Might there be a different split in yes/no answers to the second if the questions were separated or placed in different contexts? I think so.

Dog or Cat:

1. When choosing an an animal for your home, are you more a “dog person” or a “cat person”?

Yes or No:

2. Would you adopt an injured cat from a shelter if it might otherwise be killed?

With these questions presented in sequence, I’d bet the cat lovers would say “yes” more than the dog lovers to the second. But if the second question were placed in a different context that stressed the ideal of “animal lover,” the answers would likely be more equal.

You don’t agree? Good! That only goes to reinforce my idea that such questionnaires tell us nothing useful and should be junked.

 *   *   *   *

As for the proliferating opinion polls – stop taking them! They just codify whatever panic is in vogue at the moment and again, reflect nothing of value while cluttering news space.

The small changes in opinion from year to year, week to week, day to day usually reflect regular fluctuations – as well as, once again, the order and framing of the questions. As in all human activities, opinions change constantly, depending on personal circumstance and social setting, especially given the clothes-drier rollover of social media.

 *   *   *   *

A last yowl, about ignoring and downgrading the young:

The habit of ladling idiot names on ill-defined “generations” over the last few decades is yet another way of denying the importance of the individual. You, kid, aren’t a person, you’re a “millennial” of “generationPDQ.”

 *   *   *   *

“Wild Rose Hips”is listed as an additional ingredient on our bottle of vitamin C. 

Wouldn’t it be a great name for a burlesque chorus line?

[Bits and pieces of what follows have appeared in this very space previously, but never all together, plus I’ve made quite a few additions.]

Realized something odd last night, and it amazes me that I hadn’t consciously noted it before: No one in the last three generations of my family has played a musical instrument: not my father or mother, either of my brothers, myself or my children.

All of us have loved music of one sort or another. Dad would sing variants of what I think were English music-hall songs from the early 20^th century, such as:

I’ve got

Rings on my fingers,

Bells on my toes,

Elephants to ride upon,

My pretty Irish rose.

So say we’ll get married

And next Patrick’s Day,

Be Mrs. Mumbo-Jumbo Gittiboo Jay –

O’Shay

Mom had a record player. Was it a 78? Probably, though it could have been a really early 33. Just a few records, such as Tchaikovsky (sorry, I’ve never been able to take Tchaikovsky), Ravel’s Bolero, a couple others. I don’t recall her ever singing.

No memory of what brother Vic might have sung, though he liked radio songs of the late ’40s like

 With a knick-knack paddywhack,

Give a dog a bone,

This old man came rolling home.

Brother Rod was a puzzle with music. In his late years he’d be wandering his house at 3 am singing “Danny Boy.” Earlier, because he’d do most anything for his wife, Ginny, he’d drive her to Philly’s Academy of music to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra, but he never went in.

Not sure were he wandered during the performances, but likely it had to do with nature and animals, always his great passion (while he spent his working years with Sun Oil in R&D, which never interested him). He also sang annually in Handel’s “Messiah” at St. Andrew’s, our Powelton Village Episcopal church. He had a good, solid voice, but again, this was just to be with Ginny in the choir; he told me more than once that he had no interest at all in what he was singing.

My daughters, Morgan, Erin and Caitlin, have an appreciation of a wide range of music, but if any of them have played an instrument, I’m not aware of it. No piano or guitar or ukulele lessons, and don’t recall that we ever talked about the possibility of arranging any – they will let me know if my memory is in error.

As for me, though I listened to the radio for up to 12 hours a day in the late ’40s when I wasn’t in school, I never got into pop music, and couldn’t stand the last-gasp big bands like Tommy Dorsey. I did like the odd songs that popped up in comedy routines – and, of course, Spike Jones.

I wasn’t much further into pop in the ’50s, though I listened while doing the family dishes, actively disliking maybe two-thirds of what was being played. So why was I listening? Masochism? To this day, I just don’t know. Peculiar, whatever it was. 

I didn’t fully appreciate music of any kind until my college years and the following ’60s “folk revival” (I still love that fold era today, but hate the term, which sounds like some form of disease). Mom’s few records had made me think I hated classical music altogether until, some time in my soph year of college, I heard Bach’s Brandenburg concerti. I sat there, mouth hanging open thinking, “this is classical music?!”

I started to buy piles of classical 33s, mostly $1 cut-outs at a record shop down on Chestnut St. I also took a wonderful course on the history of Western music, which gave me a great appreciation for 12^th-century polyphonics and Monteverdi.

But back then, and in all the succeeding years, I’ve never learned a damned thing about music theory or terminology. I can discuss quantum mechanics with some semblance of knowledge, but have no working concept of time signatures in music.

In the ’60s, I spent many an evening at Manny Rubin’s Second Fret, a coffee-shop near Rittenhouse Square, where he brought in nearly every major folk and blues performer (and many not-quite-major, such as Mark Spoelstra). One of those times in my life when I’ve felt blessed for being where and when I was.

Sometime in there I decided I should learn to play the guitar… or the banjo, or something. I didn’t have the money for lessons (abetted by my universal fear of embarrassing myself to suffocation through acting the fool), so I tried to learn from those big, floppy manuals by Pete Seeger and the like.

Well, I failed to learn to play the guitar, the banjo, even the recorder. I seem to be missing some vital connection between brain and extremities when it comes to rhythm or repetitive motions. Impetus does not lead to performance.

It’s the same way with me when it comes to dancing and most other physical processes. In my workshop, I can design nifty bits of woodworking but mis-measure at least twice before I get the layout right – if then. (But the absence of half my right thumb and index finger are the result of simple carelessness while shutting down the table saw.)

I don’t think any of this, or all of it taken together, proves a damned thing about me or my family. It’s just another of life’s larruping puzzlements. But waiting 85 years to take note of so obvious a familial trait says something about me that I don’t like. Though at least it gave me a topic for another sideways rumination.

[Many of you know Jim from his Welcomat and later NY Press days, by far the best columnist I had while editing the Welco. This new gem of his appears on Patreon, an online publishing site. If you click on the headline below, it should take you there, where, if so inclined, you can join the jolly gang that supports him, as all of us should. He’s not just my friend, but the real reason I still try to write the stuff here. I’ll get back to posting my own rants next time, though I doubt it will be up to what you’re reading here, this week.]

Snippets L (That’s “50” to all you non-Romans): At Blackthorne Manor (Patreon 03/31/24)

In the last collection of Snippets I questioned the validity of the exhausted protest chant, “a people united will never be defeated.” This is, of course, not true and never has been. Now jump ahead about fifty years. At present the reigning politically-minded bumper sticker slogan seems to be “Speak Truth to Power.”

Okay, let’s begin with Socrates in the 5th century B.C.E. and move forward from there. Name a single instance in which “speaking truth to power” has accomplished a damn thing. Speaking the truth has never ever had the slightest effect on power. Power by nature doesn’t give a toss about the truth, considering it a pesky annoyance at best. Throughout history those poor fools who have attempted to present those in power with truth have had a nasty tendency to get disappeared in one way or another. So if you’re one of those socially conscious sorts who’s dropped a bundle on “Speak Truth to Power” buttons, t-shirts and the ubiquitous bumper stickers, well, good luck to you there, partner.

***

You know what skill I never mastered? (Yes yes yes I know, let’s break out the spreadsheet, right?)

Alright, let me try again. You know what skill I never mastered? Spitting. Always wanted to be able to spit well, but never got the hang of it. Whenever I tried, the saliva always just kinda fell out and dribbled down my chin. It’s awfully hard to express your defiance and contempt when in essence you’re drooling.

Well, I’ll keep at it.

***

Here’s a creepy and annoying thought. I’ve never had any time for the idea of “souls,” “ghosts,” or any form of “afterlife.” Silly claptrap invented to keep the sad and desperate masses docile. When you’re dead you’re dead and that’s that. I’ve always found it a much more comforting thought.

Still, sometimes the disassociation takes it that extra step and leaves me thinking, “I wonder if I died awhile back and simply never noticed?’ I’d been in enough sketchy situations over the years it’s certainly possible. After an overdose in the mid-’80s a doctor told me I’d been clinically dead for a couple minutes. What if I never came back from that (or a hundred other close calls), and everything I’ve experienced since has been nothing but the echoed vibrations of the last straggling neurons in a dying brain?

If it turns out I really did die some time back, and it further turns out I was wrong all along and this really is the afterlife, well I want my money back.

I try not to think about this too much.

***

It’s always so sad to see friends get old. This has nothing to do with age. I’m not talking about a few more wrinkles and hair that’s turning gray and thinning out. I have friends in their seventies and eighties who remain more vital, sharp and creative than I’ve ever been. I’m talking about friends my age and younger who seem to lose a little something overnight, a certain spark and glimmer, the creative impulse, a sense of humor. I’ve seen it happen to so many people. One day they’re cracking wise, beer in hand, laying out their latest project, the next they’re focused on Wednesday’s Zoom call with a supplier, ongoing home renovations, the shortcomings of their kid’s soccer coach, investments and lawn care. It’s as if at thirty, forty, fifty, the world finally caught up with them, beat them senseless and turned someone who was once very much Alive into an adult. Adults are no damn fun to be around.

***

This used to be a much longer bit about the insipid low-rent carnival that will bedevil us for the next eight months and far beyond. Then I thought “oh, who the fuck needs that?” and cut it in half. Then I cut it in half again. Then again and again, saying “fuck it” all the while. At last I decided to leave only the last line:

“This is why I always give the big horse laugh to anyone who wrings his or her hands while fretting about ‘threats to our democracy.’”

***

I just read a history of the Crusades. Hilarious to consider the whole flapdoodle began when tens of thousands of Christian pilgrims, thanks to some cockamamie prophecy, descended on Jerusalem one weekend like a bunch of Spring Breakers to await the Second Coming. Justifiably annoyed by this flood of riff-raff pouring into town uninvited and making a mess of things, the Muslim citizens of Jerusalem were rude to them. Big mistake, and there went the next century. So in short the Crusades were all about tourism.

***

When the young autistic waiter returned and set the pitcher down on the table between me and Schizoid Gary he said, “That’s a very nice watch.”

My watch is not an exquisite precision-engineered timekeeping accessory encased in titanium and diamonds. It’s a cheap talking watch I ordered online for $20.

“Thank you,” I said. “Here, let me show you how it works, I held it up and punched the oblong button just above the face.

“The time is three forty-eight p.m.,” the tinny British voice announced.

“I have a nice watch too,” the young autistic waiter said. “It’s a Casio. I like it because it’s waterproof, so I can wear it when I’m washing dishes.”

“That sounds like a much nicer watch than mine,” I told him.

Then he returned to the kitchen.

***

Over the course of 2023, four different reputable, nationally-respected statistical firms declared Green Bay, WI:

1. Home to the Safest Drivers in America.

2. The third most peaceful city in America.

3.The Best Place to Live in America.

And 4. The Drunkest City in America. (Four of the top five cities in this category were in Wisconsin, by the way.)

I’ll leave it to you to fit them all together.

***

In accordance with Standard Operating Procedure, I’d been dropped in a chair in a corner with a beer to ensure I wouldn’t trample any wandering toddlers. It was my grandniece’s third birthday. I’m trying to avoid bitching about being obligated to attend kid’s birthday parties. I think I’ve made my point and it accomplishes little. Bitching was justified last year when this grandniece’s second birthday was held in some kind of nightmare indoor playland for the two-to-five set. This year it was held at my niece’s house in, um, “Hortonville,” so I had no immediate cause to complain. I liked their large and dangerous dog Pluto. Plus I was able to snag my grandniece a child-sized “Taxi Driver” t-shirt for her birthday. I was mighty pleased with that.

My niece’s in-laws are a sprawling and inbred clan. To give you some idea, the entire population of, um, “Hortonville” shares the same last name, and what a last name it is. Whenever anyone in the area throws a party of any kind, the whole town show up.

Apart from one guy who couldn’t run away because his leg had been shattered when a cow kicked him(!), at the Playland thing last year I found it odd that not a one of the Hortonvillians would speak to me. Not a hello, not a peep of any kind. Even if I asked a pleasant and innocuous direct question, they would step away or begin talking to someone else about farm equipment or the best spots to fish for bass.

“Well whatever,” I thought as we were leaving.

As the Hortonville clan began streaming into my niece’s house this year I pushed myself up from my safety chair in the spirit of convivial neighborliness and extended my hand in greeting and friendship. There were dozens of people there, but they either walked past without a word or consciously veered away. It was like I was invisible or a lingering bad smell. Noticing my situation, my sister stepped over and shook my hand, which allowed me to resume my proper place in the safety chair. There I would spend the rest of the afternoon petting the dangerous dog and not trampling toddlers.

.

I was more curious than offended by the Hortonvillians behavior. Was I really that creepy? Were they afraid blindness might be communicable? Were they so uncomfortable around the cripple they found it easier to pretend I wasn’t in their midst? I guess that’s just human. I’d run into it before, but had never been so completely socially quarantined by a crowd this big in such a small space. Employing Occam’s razor , I decided the most logical answer was that I was as irresistibly charming as ever, and they were all a bunch of stupid backward inbred redneck pig-fucking hicks.

My thesis was confirmed when my grandniece opened her presents and I learned no one in the room had ever heard of “Taxi Driver,”

As we were leaving I thanked my niece (whom I adore, by the way) for having us over, wished my grandniece (ditto) another happy birthday, then added “All your in-laws are fucking inbred assholes.”

I may not be invited back next year.