Alberty's Blah Blah Blog

Vindication!

Some of you may have read my previous posting on the evils of Silly Bandz; a delicious evil that I was party to bringing about upon some unknowing friends, parents to two youngsters of elementary school age. And, as was my devilish plan, they became obsessed with the rubber outlines.

Well, yesterday I was furnished with a memo sent to those parents from their kids’ elementary school, entitled, innocuously enough, “Important Announcement.”

The memo began, “As you are aware ‘Silly Bandz’ have become quite popular with our students.”

Now, I worked in the community school system for twelve years, so I know the strange taxonomy of typography within the world of middle level educators. I know, for instance, that the superfluous use of quotation marks around a word is simple indication of snarky indignation. But to pull out the boldness of superfluous quotation marks with italicization, well, that is something that only the most righteously indignant are able to pull off with distinction. Now, some might think that all caps is really the pinnacle, but I can tell you that, at least in the world of education, all caps is merely an indication of authorial douchebaggery.

So, seeing “Silly Bandz” really piqued my interest. I scanned: “very inappropriate game,” “impact our school environment,” “linked to sexual overtones.” Seriously?

Oh my god!

Okay, so, according to someone, the color of the “SILLY BANDS” apparently equates to some kind of touching desire all the way from yellow (meaning hand holding) to black (meaning brown-chicken-brown-cow). Or, perhaps it means that they have already participated in that activity, like the elementary school version of the prison self-tattooed dripping tear under the eye. Suddenly “I killed a man in prison, mmm hmmmm, can’t you see my tear tat?” has become “I rubbed knees with Billy Brogan, like, can’t you see my aqua-colored Princess Fiona ‘SILLY BANDZ’?”

Okay, I’m not sure how much stock to put into this thing, though I love the whole let’s-not-let-the-kids-pull-one-over-on-us paranoia of it. I too would have been right in there banning the “BANDZ.” After-all, I am the teacher who forced a kid to turn his “Senior Rita’s Fish Taco” shirt inside-out causing him, according to his mother, undue humiliation and social damage. We found out later that she had purchased the shirt for him. My administrator had to explain the, shall we say, pejorative nature of the phrase, at which point the mother’s head exploded indignant momma-bear-ituded all over the administrator’s office. I never heard whether she recanted her indignation when her precious snowflake proved his understanding of the phrase’s pejorative nature in the downstairs bathroom with a willing sophomore coed. But I digress.

Anyhoo, I went online to check out this sordid tale and found a couple of quotes I would like to relay to you:

They are made of rubber like rubber bands i mean what can they possibly mean. The point i am trying to make is that silly bands don’t mean anything.

or the poignant and enigmatic

They dont mean anything there [sic] just fun bracelets that every one can no matter your age . But jelly brace do mean things

and my personal favorite

Silly bands are made of people. People!

and I believe from FoxNews

I dont think they mean anything but i think they cause skin cancer =(

or the one that encapsulates the thoughts of half of all middle school boys

All colors mean sex

and the other half of middle school boys

blue

then the one with the prison motif

They do meen something but its not just about the color for example if you where [sic] a black leopard it means you killed someone. So yeah.

and the quote that I think clarifies the school’s position

They dnt mean nothin them boyz r just nasty lol

and finally, the one that clarifies my position

Oh dear lord. There is a check spelling button for a purpose!

So yeah. I think that’s cleared it all up for me.

By they way, honey, I’m wearing my red fireman hat “SILLY BANDZ” band. Were you coming home for lunch?

Popularity: 8% [?]

I just finished listening to the audio book version of Bonk, by Mary Roach. I have read her Stiff and Spook and quite liked both.

So it was with great anticipation that I slipped the old USB for my iPod into the USB receiver slot in our car as my wife and I took off for our trip to Chicago.

She — Mary — did not disappoint.

I had thought about cursing my Puritan forebears, but I actually think their snooty, easily offended blood coursing through my veins made the listen that much more titillating. There were moments in the car when I had to pretend I was alone. The embarrassment was delicious.

My wife began the trip by grading homework, but was soon driven to such distraction that she sat open-mouthed, her students’ papers curling ever so slightly in the growing humidity of the car.

Oh, yeah, the book is about the study of human sexuality. She — Mary Roach — pulls no punches. She uses most of the slang you might hear in the halls of a large high school. She is generally unrepentant about her own research. Thus the bubbling of my Puritan blood.

First let me say that I love Mary Roach’s style. She is willing to take the cheap joke or pun and I like that. She also goes off onto what my wife calls tangents, but I call hypertextual clarifications. She includes these little footnotes, like the little links I add to my posts. They often have little to do with the topic at hand, but feed into my own personal curiosity about the little tidbit of information.

For example she might say that researcher so and so said the methodology of his experiment was much like darts. “Aim for the red spot and see what happens.” She would then footnote something like, “The Greater Red-taint Bonobo of southern Gabon has nether regions which, when the animal is aroused, engorge themselves with blood, doubling in size causing a pronounced red pouch, giving new meaning to the phrase ‘aim for the red spot.’” I love that stuff.

Her structure reminds me a little of another favorite author of mine, novelist Nicholson Baker who does the same sort of wonderful footnoting, only within his fiction.

The first time we went through a tollbooth, my wife turned the iPod off. I thought this was sort of cute, and when I asked her about it she demurred a bit. I was able to convince her that we may gain more from the trip when, while paying a toll to booth master, the audio book may say something like, “the longest phallus on record was held by Manley Hammring from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, coming in at a staggering fifteen inches…flaccid.”

She agreed, so we spent most of our toll-boothing in a state rapt anticipation instead of our usual cursing of the tollway system. Unfortunately, the timing was usually off, or it was so loud they couldn’t hear a word.

Then there were the little side bets we would wager with each other. Each time we stopped the car, we would state our hoped for first word. “Penis,” she would say with great gusto. “I’m going with penis,” always taking the easy choice. I would usually bet on something with risk like labia majoris or vulval vestibule — a phrase I have since come to enjoy greatly. Once, I played it a little safer, taking stock of the chapter heading and kept putting all my eggs into clitoris: those guesses usually paid great dividends.

There were a few times I would ask my wife to write some things down —since I was busy driving. I was very excited at the word teleclitoridians, which means Female of the Distant Clitoris. What a great phrase. I’m not big into sci-fi, but it kind of makes me want to write a short story about the race of tall beings called Teleclitoridians. [Trust me, I could go on for a long time about this one, but I know some of you are squeamish, if you are still reading.]

Then there was her turn of phrase “a manly hammering,” which I thought could be the name of the starship captain of the Teleclitoridian fleet: you many notice that used his name earlier.

This book was an absolutely delightful, interesting, informative read/listen. I think I probably gained more joy out of listening to it than I may have reading it. The embarrassment was fully in my face with the hearing of it.

I highly suggest Bonk by Mary Roach. If you have the guts to subvert the little Puritan inside you. That sounded dirty.

Popularity: 35% [?]

Okay, so I was pretty excited to try Gumrai Thai in Arlington Heights. It wasn’t too far from my hotel and Thai food is one of all my all time faves. And Urban Spoon gave it a great rating: 91%.

Now, I was a little disappointed at first when I found that it was in a strip mall. But Bandung Indonesian (in Madison) was also in a strip mall and it blew my shoes off. So, I went in excited and hoping for the best.

The interior could have been any Asian, Asian-fusion restaurant in the Midwest. The dark oak bar was front and center. Some sake bottles perched upon it. There was muzak, which has never boded well for pleasant digestion.

The best part of the ambience was a vibrant discussion between a woman and her seemingly luckless “man-friend.” They were discussing her relationships and views on men. He was essentially agreeing with her, injecting, “I’m a nice guy, but I get where you’re coming from,” and “Yeah, I’m a nice guy, but I can totally see you’re point,” and “I know, what a dick, I’d never do that.” And finally, “You know, if Jeff would drop you it would be a blessing.”

Now, as my friends know, I’m pretty relationship dense, but I’m pretty sure there was something going on there that she was totally missing. Or maybe he was missing something. I don’t know. You know how I am.

Anyway, they have a $7 lunch which includes entrée with soup and appetizer. I was waffling between the Pad Thai and the Panang Curry, both of which I love. I opted for the Panang Vegetable Curry, because I figured some of you would mocked me if I went to a Thai Restaurant and wrote about Pad Thai.

The soup was a chicken Tom Kha. It was okay. It had a first bright hit of lemongrass and cilantro. Then it settled onto the back of my tongue with deep fish sauce, which wasn’t too overbearing. There was dark luscious cloud of flavor floating in the bottom of the soup, which was also quite nice. The two strips of chicken, however weren’t so good. The soup would have been better without them. They were overcooked and were clearly cooked out of the soup. They tasted like unspiced chicken cooked on my George Foreman at home.

The appetizers were a Crab Rangoon and an Eggroll. The Rangoon was pretty good, it was a crispy baked wonton, not fried. It was very light in crab flavor, but there were discernable crab (imitation crab) bits in the filling.

The Eggroll was heartbreaking. My favorite Vietnamese place in Cedar Rapids has eggrolls to die for, so I have kind of a high standard. But the insidious nature of Gumrai Eggroll is that the initial bite is a wonderfully crisp crackling that then produces little flavor at all. I did not finish it.

The Panang Vegetable Curry came and I was instantly disappointed. The smell was not nearly as full and intoxicating as I had hoped. The curry was thin as a soup. It smelled only slightly of curry and coconut and the taste was a slight heat forward on the tongue, but it did not finish at all with much flavor. Mostly heat … and not much of that.

The vegetable were over-steamed, limp and sopped in the sauce that slipped right off when lifted from the plate. Again, I did not finish it, which, if you know, is, I’m sure hard to believe.

My reason for not finishing it was that I was thinking, “I’m just going to Mitsuwa and order that BiBimBop that is so outrageously good.” I was in the car and half way back to Mitsuwa before I admitted that I might get my eating out privileges revoked if I had two lunches in one day. So I turned around and …

Oh, my god. Some guy dressed as Santa Claus just came into the coffeehouse, taunted the barista — whose name is apparently Sam — saying, “Do I fucking look fat now, you son of a bitch?” Then he turned and left through the door, which ironically enough has rusting sleigh-type bells hanging on them. The barista called after him, “Mike! Mike? Come on!” Fascinating. It way makes this excursion worth it.

…So, anyway, I turned around and drove back to this little coffeehouse that was across the street from Gumrai’s strip mall to write my impressions.

So enough about Gumrai Thai. No need to go there, if you are thinking about it.

Here is the odd thing, though. As I was sitting there writing some notes about the soup into my little memo pad, a young woman came with her laptop open and sat down a couple of tables away from me. She looked around and began typing. Seriously.

Then, as I was trying to park at the coffeehouse, I nearly ran over another young lady who had stepped out into the road so she could get a better photo of a restaurant front.

Seriously? Have food bloggers really become so ridiculously ubiquitous as to have become a stereotype?

Wait. Here comes Santa again. I’m going to pack up and go. He makes me uncomfortable.

Popularity: 4% [?]

I love Mitsuwa in Chicago. Actually it’s in Arlington Heights, but what the hey.

It’s like going to Asia for the price of gas.

And one of the many golden shrines for me is the bakery. They are masters of the filled donghuty-type thing, though to call it a doughnut is like calling Olivier an actor: I mean, sure he’s an actor, but so is Keanu Reaves. So it’s a relative thing.

This morning I consumed two puffy confections. The first is called Coffee Cream. It’s a flat football shaped hollow bread, so moist and delicate that it melts in your mouth. The exterior is a deep caramel brown that glistens like it’s been lacquered with age, which I’m guessing isn’t a good simile for a food product — but it’s beautiful, is my point.

When I bite into it I am shocked by three things. First is the thin delicacy of the bread. It is like a layer of croissant without the crackle.

The second surprise is the amount of custard filling: it is immense, especially when you take into account it’s American brethren, usually hiding, off-kilter somewhere in the second or third bite of your chocolate topped Bismarck.

The third, and this is the one that keeps me coming back, is the sweetness. Nearly every American doughnut I have ever eaten is so sweet that it makes my teeth hurt. It is an imperative that one must consume them with milk or coffee, some acidic beverage to bring the tongue panting back from the abyss of overload. But this hand-sized little cabochon is sweet without being so Americanly cloying. It is a pleasant sweetness with just the very hint of a sweetened, creamed coffee. I was walking back to my hotel when I first bit into it. I stopped to have a moment. It is that good.

I saved the second confection for right now. It is called An Pan Pie, though there is nothing remotely pie-ish about it. It is about the size of my fist. It is wrinkled little guy, he looks a little like Mylar ball with the some of the air out of it. He seems to be made of a croissant dough. Look at the little fellow. I kind of think he’s cute in a sad sort of way.

But he’s packed with a surprise: red bean paste — about as un-American as you can get, culinarily speaking. It’s ugly, thick, with a non-uniformed texture, and least American of all, subtly sweet. It’s a taste I just can’t place, other than … well, red bean paste.

Another bite. Mmm… see there, I just got a whole bean in that bite. If I got this from a McDonalds, I would have assumed it was small hard-shelled insect. I might have been able to sue them and pay for my son’s college. But, alas, I know that it is a bean.

The sesame seeds on top add a burst of toast flavor to the thing that really makes this An Pan wonderfully complex.

I’ve only got about three bites left. I’m savoring this.

You, know — Julie don’t read this — about twice a year, maybe three times, I am overcome by the Hy-Vee bakery smell. I stand at their doughnut case and debate, but usually succumb to purchasing a chop-suey doughnut or an apple thing —fritter, maybe  (I don’t remember what it’s called, but it looks like glazed brains —mmmm, braaaains, and glazed).

And in the car with a mix of nearly debilitating guilt and great joy I bite into it. I might have two bites of the thing before I just can’t eat any more. I actually hate them. I don’t know why I can’t remember that, but it’s true. It is that single note of mind-numbing sweetness just bashing me over the molars. And yet, twice a year… maybe thrice, I go back.

The An Pan is that joy fulfilled.

I have two bites left. I’m going to bite the what’s left of the outside first, so my last bite if from the middle with just a little bit of sesame seed.

Mmm.

It is so good.

I was planning on hitting a supposedly famous breakfast place tomorrow for my other favorite breakfast, Eggs Benedict. But I think I might just rake the pebbles in my Zen garden again with the simple pleasures of a well-wrought An Pan.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Yesterday I made the mistake of telling a friend of mine that I had once been employed as a balloon clown.

I’ll let that sink in a moment.

Actually, it is a bit of a misnomer. I was a balloon courier, and part of my job was creating a balloon clown. This was while I was an undergrad — twenty years ago — so things are a little foggy, but I’m pretty sure that I named myself Spinko, which, if I remember correctly comes from an old high school thing involving a character named Spinko the Id.

Anyway, as I said, the balloon clown was simply a part of a larger insidious era of my nearly forgotten past.

I once was a “stand-in” for the owner who was “ill” one day. It was a sunny day in August. My “stand-in” job was to go to the University of Iowa Pediatric Oncology wing, dressed as a gorilla, and hand out balloons. I’m pretty sure that my boss was “ill” because she knew what special kind of hell a gorilla running loose with helium balloons in the PedOnco wing would unleash. Did I mention it was August. I also wore glasses at the time.

Eye glasses in an enclosed, fake fur gorilla suit in the middle of August have a tendency to fog over. My hands were in gorilla gloves. I am a fat man. It was hell in there.

Mercifully, I can’t remember how far into this debaucle, a nurse — I think she was a nurse, I couldn’t see her — said, very sweetly, “Thank you. I think you can go now.”

I was able to hold off until I got into my car — a black, heat-soaking ’84 Mercury Topaz — before I totally broke down. It was perhaps the worst day of work I have ever experienced. I felt a little like perhaps my boss had some sort of sick vendetta on kids with cancer. “I know, I’ll send a terrifying gorilla to scare the shit out of them and taunt them with objects that could explode at any moment! That will be fun!”

You know how sometimes stand-up comics say, “I worked that out in therapy,” or some such line?  U of I Student Health helped me out with that one.

The second major memory of this otherwise forgettable period of my life involved Spinko the clown, a German philosophy professor, and a Lake Macbride overlook.

I was contracted to work a child’s birthday party at a lovely home outside of Solon, Iowa, right on Lake Macbride. It was autumn, and the drive was gorgeous, even though I was driving my Topaz dressed like a clown: which, by the way, is a long-held harbinger of death.

The kids were okay, though they were disappointed at my serious lack of balloon artistry. I could make a dog, a flower, and a sword, but that was about it. And the dog looked a lot like my sword, which looked very much like my flower.

The parents were German. I am only guessing this, I suppose they could have been Austrian or Belgian or Swiss, perhaps from Lichtenstein, but I’m an American, so everyone with that accent is German, right?

Anyway, the parents were German. And — I am not making this up — they were dressed in black (father in pants, mother in long skirt) with gray turtlenecks. This was pre-Deiter, too. The father has closely cut dark hair and round god-rimmed glasses. The mother was painfully beautiful with a nose that could pop a balloon.

They welcomed me, “I zee you are the clown. Pleaze enjoy yourzelf. Ven you are done pleaze come in for zome cake und coffee, ja?” Yes, they actually said, “ja.”

So I spent the pre-paid thirty minutes boring the kids and reluctantly went in to thank them for the work.

They were very gracious and invited me into their living room. It was a sunken affair with sweeping windows overlooking the lake. There was a brushed steel and glass coffee table in the middle surrounded by steel and leather Mies Vander Rohe chairs.

“Please, zit,” the father said, handing me a small, disturbingly thin china plate with a large piece of red velvet cake — my first red-velvet cake, my first Meis Vander Rohe .

I sat down.

The mother brought over the tiniest cup of coffee I had ever seen, on a tiny saucer with a tiny spoon.

“Zugar?” she said unsmilingly.

I declined and sipped the coffee, which nearly killed me. It was my first real espresso.

They sat down along with a couple of friends who said nary a word during this whole event.

“Zo,” said the father, “How long ave you been a clown?”

“Oh,” I said, pulling my red plastic clown shoed right foot onto my left knee, “I guess it’s been about five months.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s okay.”

“Yez, of courze.” He sipped from his little cup and never stopped looking at me.

“What do you do?” I asked.

“I am a visiting professor of philozovy. Ve have only been here zinze the zummer.”

“Ahh.” I took a bite of the cake, which nearly made my teeth melt.

He set down his cup. “Tell me vat you sink of life. Here you are, dressed as a clown, mit dose shoes, drinking from a demitasse. Zis must be unique for you, ja?”

I’m pretty sure that right now you are questioning the veracity of this story.

When I told my friends later that day, they all said, “You can’t make this shit up.”

I suppose you could make this shit up. But I don’t ingest mushrooms, so I am not making this shit up.

Sadly, that is the last thing I remember. I’m not quite sure why my memory of that event ends there. But often, that is how my fragile memory works.

It wasn’t the worst job that I’ve had. But it is not something I would want to do again. And I would have reserved this whole job experience as my worst ever, but that crazy German professor saved my memory of this job.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Okay, I do not deny that I am a juvenile prat. I am, after all, a male of a certain generation. But I was shocked — SHOCKED! — when a teacher friend of mine notified me that my blog site had officially been blocked by his school web administrator. Well, shocked and a little giddy, I must admit.

The only other time I have really been censored was for my high school commencement address, but that’s another post.

Anyway, I can only assume that the offending member (if I may use that phrase) was the name, “Hymen.”

Now, Hymen has a glorious past. It pops up throughout history. The first Hymen that I can point to comes to us from those whacky Greeks: Hymenaios, the god of marriage. He was the singer of the “hymeneal,” the Greek wedding song that led the bride to her groom’s home.

Scientifically, the “hymenium” is a thin layer of tissue on “fungal fruiting bodies,” which I guess are mushrooms. As I understand it, the hymenium bursts open to release spores into the air. But then again, I’m not a botanist. I’m just a juvenile prat.

Continuing on, “Hymenoptera” is one of the largest orders of insects. I guess this is the one with flies and ants and bees and stuff. It comes, of course from the Greek: hymen, meaning membrane and pteron, meaning wing. On a side insectoid note, “Hymenopodidae” is a family of the mantis order; like a praying mantis, whose post-coital pick-me-up is often the head of the male, eaten by the female, just moments after … you know.

I guess this post will be blocked now. I’m guessing the phrase “post-coital” doesn’t’ get much play on institutional servers.

One of America’s most famous gangsters was Bugsy Siegel, who was born Benjamin Hymen Siegelbaum. He was busted for killing an informant named Greenberg, but was acquitted and eventually became the father of Las Vegas. But someone fingered him for a hit and he was killed in 1947.

Now, I know many of you won’t believe this, but I chose the name “Hymen” for my previous post, “My Babylonian Muse,” almost at random. I have a list of names that I enjoy, mostly because of the way they sound: Flenoil Lane, Dick Butkus, Felicia. But those did not fit the ancient warrior ethos that I was going for. I knew I couldn’t use Marduk, because he was the name of my muse.

Honestly, if I can’t use Marduk, I always for Hymen. For some reason the two just work together for me. They are both funny sounding. And the name Hymen always conjures up a little pleasant Jewish man, sort of a non-anxious Woody Allen with a smile and some good advice. That’s why a warrior named Hymen just made me laugh.

Granted, perhaps I miscued on the spelling. I also know that it is spelled Hyman, of which there are many.

There is Dr. Hyman’s Blog, from Dr. Mark Hyman, who’s known as “a frequent presenter at conferences and workshops worldwide, to audiences of both laypersons and professionals.” Laypersons and professionals.

And of course, for movie or acting aficionados, there is the character Hyman Roth from The Godfather Part II, played by acting legend Lee Strasberg.

How about the New York City furniture store Harry Hyman and Son’s?

Not to be outdone, there is Dick Hyman, well-known pianist, arranger, and organist. Organist.

Oops. Forgot Hyman’s Seafood in Charleston, South Carolina.

If Dick and Harry Hyman got together would they be Hymans or Hymen? That’s a ponderable.

See, the world is filled with Hyman/Hymen, just waiting to be discovered by high school students the world over. I would hate to think that I might be the creator of the impediment to their search for knowledge.

Popularity: 9% [?]

My mother is turning 70 this year. While that’s not really old these days, everything is relative. And I’m relatively sure she’s forgetting the flavors of my youth.

My mother used to be a good cook. Not a great Barefoot Contessa mother — we didn’t get duck and bacon wrapped asparagus. But she had five or six dishes that she absolutely owned: Indonesian sauté, nasi goring (an Indonesian fried rice), tacos, spekkoek (a Dutch cake), rum cake, and enchiladas. Of these, her enchiladas were the best.

But over the years something has happened. It was gradual, like some insidious disease. Her enchiladas stopped tasting as good as I remember.

Sure, you can chalk it up to nostalgia. But, honestly, I hate nostalgia. I have never been one to enjoy the past. The past just usually wasn’t that good. But her enchiladas?

While I was in college I would only be able to get home about four times in a nine month period. What would I ask to eat? Enchiladas.

I don’t really know what they are; they’re not like any enchiladas I’ve seen anywhere else. They are more like a Mexican savory torte: layers of corn tortillas and beans and meat and cheese and sauce and love.

But the taste? Gone. They are now a bland mess.

I first took this change head on and asked what she changed in her recipe. My mother likes to respond with as much martyr-filled defensive negativity as possible. I guess it keeps things interesting. Needless to say, that question did not go over well. But something had changed. And I don’t think it was my taste buds.

After all her Rum Cake is still to die for. Then again, it’s the only cake that gets me drunk so maybe the flavor has changed and I just can’t tell.

Anyway, about the enchiladas, I’ve been working on recreating it. And I think I’ve done a pretty good job. But here is the problem. It takes forever and it is kind of a complicated dish. It is the kind of thing that I want someone else to make. But alas. I think the generation has shifted on this one, and it makes me a little sad.

Here is the recipe, as well as I can figure it out. Stay with me on it. There aren’t many specifics here. Dashes and pinches and stuff.

My Mother’s Enchiladas

1. Put the beans and their juice in a sauce pan and heat to bubbling.

2. Saute onion in skillet, the brown the beef, then add the spices to desired flavor.

3. In another saucepan (this recipe will use all four of your stove burners) heat the enchilada sauce with the jar of Ortego Taco sauce added — just the sauce, not the actual jar.

4. Put about an inch of oil in another skillet. The skillet needs to be large enough for a tortilla to fit into it. Heat the oil over medium heat.

5. Heat corn tortilla in oil until it becomes soft, remove and drain on paper towel.

6. Place cooked tortilla onto plate, then add cooked meat, beans, sauce, and cheese.

7. Repeat two more times for a stack of three.

8. Eat

Now, my suggestion is to add the beans and meat together, even the sauces to make the interior. You can keep this is fridge for a couple of days. They can make a burrito later with the addition of some tomatoes and lettuce.

Because of the way it’s made, people will not be eating at the same time (bummer #1). Also, it’s really a lot work to go through for just one serving (bummer #2). And clean-up is epic (bummer #3).

But sometimes I have to eschew my dislike for nostalgia and bite into it with this piece of my childhood.

Popularity: 4% [?]

I, to put it simply, am a failed homicide. I have tried to take lives and have, ultimately, failed at every attempt. I am, in fact, attempting a murder as I type this manuscript. It is going quite, as you might imagine, unsuccessfully.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” he says to me.

I smile at him.

The corners of his thin and pinched lips curl up, the center of those penciled mucus membranes unmoved by the surrounding flesh.

I despise him. And yet, he is my brother.

“Just get the fuck out of here.” I throw this at him. In his world it might as well be a frying pan, a shoe, a dictionary.

“Fuck, is so strong. It is such a harsh and unpleasant word. Is that really what you want you want to say: “fuck”? What if your mother was around? Your grandmother?”

I turn from him.

My main homicidal ideation comes in the form of simple neglect. I neglect him. He asks for food; I pretend not to hear. He stands over my shoulder; I pretend not to feel him near me, though his presence in a room is unmistakable. He whispers in my ear; I swat as if he were a gadfly. I starve him. I make him thirst. Sometimes I simply do not work, because work brings him out and calls him like the matin bell. And sometimes, sometimes, he is all I can hear. He beats at my skull. He beats with his words, so simple, so poisonous.

“Why don’t you just stop?” he says. “Nobody cares what you have to say anyway.” He almost always begins in this syrupy and condescending way.

I usually snort at this and move ever forward in my work.

“You really should pay more attention to what you have written already. Go back. Reread it all. It sounds like shit right now. You really should fix it”

I press forward.

“Go back!”

“Would you please be quiet,” I his at him. “I know what I’m doing.”

“You have no fucking clue what you’re doing.”

At this I always breathe deeply. Take a moment to pretend he no longer exists, and begin diligently working again.

Sometimes at this he leaves the room. I hear him banging in the kitchen, fixing that awful and bitter African red tea he loves so much.

But he always comes back.

I lament, as I am sure you can guess, as to why I did not receive one of the beautiful Greeks to lounge in repose upon my shoulder and whisper the secrets of the universe into my waiting ear. Do I not deserve a child of Mnemosyne, or at least a cousin, thrice removed.

I’m not asking for Melpomene or Thalia. I’ll even take a temp-Muse.

I’m pretty sure that mine is a cut rate Babylonian, angry to be assigned to a fleshy, pink chair-ranger with a propensity to lyrical hyperbole.

Okay, Marduk, or whatever your name is, try this on for size:

The singing scimitar scythed through Hymen’s neckbone, his head falling back, the neck gaping like a blood vomiting mouth as his body hung for a moment stunned at the sudden loss.

Barduth swung the scimitar back, slicing away Hymen’s right arm for good measure, as the body collapsed like a crushed yurt onto the dusty ground.

He stood for a moment feeling Hymen’s steaming blood gush over his feet and sandals while thinking

okay, I gave it a try. It’s not quite me.

Isn’t there a place I can go to hire a new muse?

Popularity: 7% [?]

Okay, so twice today — TWICE — people have interacted with my fifteen-month-old son in this manner. They smile broadly at him, as if he is the sun on a new day in April, breaking through the month-long glowering darkness, they lean toward him like sunflowers and say brightly, with a vaguely pinched baby-talk voice, “Are you out with Grandpa?” And then in a little higher register, a little slower, and with a broader smile, “Are you out with grandpa?”

Seriously?

Look, I am not making this up.

Take a gander at the photo to your left. I am not that old.

Now the second infractor, I don’t know, I guess I can dismiss it. He was a shriner asking for money at our local grocery. He was about eighty and wasn’t wearing glasses, so he probably lost them in the cushion of his Barcalounger lift chair. I can forgive him for that.

But the first one — come on!

We were at local park playground — where we are frequent visitors — and it was packed. I was the one guy in a sea of about ten women, ages from twenties to fifties, and about twenty kids.

We had been there, maybe twenty minutes. We played on the fire truck. We played on the little kids’ jungle gym and had a foray on the big kids’ jungle gym. We even played a little run and chase with a big piece of mulch that he became disturbingly fond of.

Then we went to swing. There was no one on the swing set at the time. I pushed him and sang the “Alphabet Song,” “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and “Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey,” when a young mother placed her daughter in the next swing over.

If I were not a married man, I might say that the mother was perhaps smoking hot. But I am married, so all I really noticed was that she was dressed perhaps too formally for the park.

I was wearing my customary t-shirt, open button-down, denim shorts, brown Earth shoes and black socks. I also had on my brown woven fedora. It is what I usually wear. It is nothing out of the ordinary.

So, as I was swinging my son next to this nondescript mother, I saw that her daughter was experiencing strong puerile joy at swinging. She was smiling and giggling and looking at my son, who seemed to be trying to calculate the arc of the swing in relation to the inverted v-bar structure, which held the swing in place.

The ordinary looking mother said to her open-mouthed daughter. “Are you catching flies? Are you catching flies?”

I thought this was pretty funny.

I said, “She sure looks like she likes to swing.”

The mother looked at me as though I said something she didn’t quite understand. Then she leaned toward my swinging son and said brightly, with a vaguely pinched baby-talk voice, “Are you out with Grandpa?” And then in a little higher register, a little slower, and with a broader smile, “Are you out with grandpa?”

My son clapped. Then he giggled.

“Yes you are. Yes you are,” she said.

She was dressed way too formally for the playground.

Now, I know that I am a non-traditional father. But I also know that I cannot be the only father who’s popping knees wakes his kid up. Sometimes, I admit, it is the popping of my ankles, but mostly it is my knees.

Also, by the time she called me Grandpa, two more guys had shown up at the park. One of them was at least older than I was. The other one did look like a Special Forces operator, but are we really going to compare like that? I certainly hope not.

Anyway, I usually don’t care what people think of me or the way I dress. But, I have to say, I have a bit of a new hang-up. I’m already concerned about being 58 by the time he graduates high school and dead by the time he has his own kids. But this Grandpa thing has added a whole new wrinkle.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Silly Bandz. Seriously?

Serious like death. Oh yes, my friends. I have cast a pall over my near future as sure as if I had grasped the monkey’s paw and wished for the dead to come back to life, as crushed in the machine as he was. I can now only imagine what waits for me, banging on the door of my parental future.

I first learned about these Silly Bandz in a Time Magazine article that began with the line, “The Bandz are now contraband.” It was essentially about how these “Bandz” have overtaken the minds of children all across the land, filled them with obsession, and become the ubiquitous bane of our nation’s elementary schools.

Principals and teachers have come out en masse to decry the rubber outlines. Tired parents have grunted acquiescence to their child’s mania taking only the shortest time to look up from their spoon, thimble, or beer can collections.

Somewhere Ron Popeil and P.T. Barnum look knowingly at each other and nod in communal satisfaction.

I don’t understand it. It’s the new Tamaguchi-Pokemon-Trollz-BeanieBabies-must-have-of-the-minute. And I’m not sure why.

I guess we live in a world where people follow Paris Hilton, so I shouldn’t be surprised. And, also, it’s not like it’s meth. And it’s only five bucks a package. So what’s the harm?

Doesn’t it seem like it should be harmful, though? Or is it just that we have an innate desire to collect things?

Another thing I’ve noticed about collecting, in general, is that the things people collect are usually pretty frivolous. My grandmother had about 300 Avon bottles. Why?

We are inundated by tchotchkes. There are whole industries created on things we simply don’t need. Probably whole cities in China are founded on that principal.

And I know that some day my son will ask for a package of Gazigbo MegaGame cards or the new Frimbi action figure, or perhaps the hottest selling Whakafunk Gak Ball. And I’m guessing that my saying no to him will be a vain attempt to ward off the voodoo marketing of American consumerism.

It is simply a matter of time before he ends up with the Whakafunk Gak Ball. I know as the day is long that it will find its insidious way into my home. That it will seemingly mate in the dark hours of the night. And upon waking in the morning I will find another … and then another … like tribbles of shame excreted onto the beige carpeting of our living room.

And I know that one day my son will have a meltdown because he can’t find Whakafunk Gak Ball #13. “The one with the blue line and the red eyeball! No, the red eyeball! I hate you, Daddy! Where is my Whakaaaaaaaaaa Baaaaaaa!” I can see it as if it has already happened.

How do I know this? Because I believe in karma. I so much believe in karma that I swore I would never accompany students on a school trip. “What goes around comes around,” as my southern mother likes to say — if the dog goes hunting and the creek don’t rise.

It is a karmic imperative that my son will have a Whakafunk Gak Ball because I am a shameful ass.

The proof? After reading said Time Magazine article, I smugly ran right out and purchased three bags of Silly Bandz for our best friends’ daughter.

Oh, that one moment of self-satisfied gifting. And it was her favorite gift! I knew it would be. I was so smug and self-congratulatory. But that moment will wreak revenge threefold upon our collection-free house.

I have lately seen that daughter’s mother eyeing my son, measuring his age and his growing susceptibility to trendy obsession. Then she looks at me, and curls up that crooked, knowing smile, as if to say, “I’m just waiting. I hear the Whakafunk Gak Ball is only a year away from hitting the store shelves. I got time.”

I tremble at my frailty, my stupidity. It makes me think of what Shakespeare wrote of the smug French and their ultimate defeat at Agincourt, “Shame and eternal shame, nothing but shame!”

And until the day that my friend gains revenge by seeding my own son’s obsession, I shall wear that shame like a princess shaped band around my trembling wrist.

Popularity: 9% [?]