I’m Going to Disney World!

Posted on February 5, 2007 by Jim

Well… isn’t that’s what you’re supposed to do when you win the Super Bowl?  Sometimes you get to go to the White House, too.  And have a local parade.

I’ll pass on the parade… and going to the White House would be an honor… it’s just that the current occupant is not a person I care to see…

But… I’m always up for Disney World.  It’s like the “holo-deck” in Star Trek come to life… the ultimate trip to a wonderfully artificial environment.

Actually… I’ll let Peyton Manning take the trip without me.

Still it was supemely satisfying to see my Colts take the “big prize” this year.  You may ask, “why the Colts?”  How did I become a fan?  And what about them leaving Baltimore for Indianapolis?

It’s not like I’m from Baltimore, or Indianapolis for that matter.  I grew up in New Haven… and the closest team in those days were the New York Giants (they were actually called the New York football Giants to distinguish them for the New York Giants baseball team).  But it’s not uncommon for a kid to take a shine to a team from beyond his home region.  Witness the number of Cowboy fans throughout this country, ferinstance.  The team is usually a good one… with a star player, or players… and then they gotta have a cool uniform.

In 1958 the Baltimore Colts were a good team.  They had a star player in Johnny Unitas.  And their deep blue and white uniforms, helmets with a riveted horseshoe… real cool looking.

In my case, pledging my allegiance to the Colts was made easier by my Dad or Paul having no specific attachment to New York Giants.  Or, if they liked the Giants it was far less clear than their liking of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

I guess it was a matter of luck to come of “fan age” (circa age eight) when the Colts played in the historic overtime Championship game against the Giants… a game that would go on to define the NFL.  Our family listened to that game on our car radio when we went to Stowe, VT for a skiing vaction.

Johnny Unitas, Lenny Moore, Alan (The Horse) Ameche, Raymond Berry, Gino Marchetti, Gene (Big Daddy) Lipscomb, Art Donovan… I could name that entire team.

This was in the day before the AFL… before the Super Bowl.  When the NFL Championship was for all the beans.

The Colts would remain a good football team for better than a decade.

But they would suffer the ultimate disgrace… they were the first team to take it on the chin from the upstart AFL in Super Bowl III.  This was like an elementary school team beating your middle school team in softball.

The New York Jets and Joe Namath beat my Colts in 1968.  From that day on I have hated the Jets… and when the Jets had a 1-15 record several years ago… I was not quite happy enough.  I don’t know who I hate more… Joe Namath, the Grand Inquisitor, or that jerk who wears the green fire helmet and leads the Jets cheer at home games.

Two years later the Colts had a measure of redemption in winning Super Bowl V against the Cowboys (another team I don’t care for… although without the same malice I have reserved for the Jets).  It was a sloppy game filled with turnovers, and I think it is regarded as one of the worst played Super Bowls.

It’s OK, I’ll take the “w”.

I don’t think there was a Disney World in 1970 for the victors… maybe there was.

I was still in college then… still didn’t think too much about parades.  And I wouldn’t have wanted to go to the White House then either.  Although I find it hard to believe that I would ever find myself thinking that there could possibly be a more wretched President than Richard Nixon.  Thank you George W. Bush… you are like finding a team that I hate worse than the New York Jets.

Well… it’s been a long time between “drinks of water.”  The Colts finally win another Super Bowl in another sloppy turnover filled game.

It’s OK, I’ll take the “w”.

The Colts have moved from Baltimore to Indianapolis.  But it wasn’t like I have a connection to the city itself.  They are still the Colts… same neat uniforms, same history.  I have the luxury of continuing to be a fan without suffering the sense of desertion that folks from Baltimore would feel.

The Colts had a considerable stretch of time when they were awful… but they have returned to playing good ball again… they have gotten close to the big dance over the past four years.  They have a terrific Head Coach in Tony Dungy.  A person who I greatly admire for the way he carries himself.  A great Quarterback in Peyton Manning who calls his own plays… the way that Johnny Unitas did.

This was their year.

Who knows?  They might even do it again next year.  Me?  I’ll think about how much fun it will be to take another mental trip to Disney World.  But, I’m not greedy.  I hope they continue to play well… and I’ll be OK… as long as those son-of-bitch Jets don’t win. 

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National Groundhog’s Day

Posted on February 2, 2007 by Jim

Look at our calendar.  It’s filled with “holidays” that are flawed in one way or another… and I think it is sapping our National strength.

First… let’s define a holiday.  A “proper” holiday is a day when banks are closed, National, State & Local Government agencies are closed, the financial markets are closed, schools are closed… and (this is important) people over 21 have the day off. 

Second… there are not enough proper holidays in the calendar.  And, as noted above, too many of our holidays are built on fundamentally weak frameworks.

All those holidays based on religion are at root horrible.  The sweep of history is filled with violence carried out in the name of religious beliefs.  And so we declare a day a joyous occasion… we decorate, we toast, we cheer, we celebrate, exchange gifts perhaps, we say thanks… and for those who don’t follow our precepts we will burn at the stake.

Then we have holidays based on war and its aftermath.

Or “holidays” that are product of the very powerful FTD Florist/Hallmark Card/Godiva Chocolate lobby, turning beautiful sentiment into a contrived exercise.

Even a neutral holiday like “Labor Day” has its problems.  Once a signal to the end of Summer & Summer vacation, it is now in most parts of the country an interuption in the regular school calendar.  Its connection to “labor” is largely lost… and when the rest of the European connected world celebrates labor on May Day, we let our paranoia for socialism show below our hem and run for cover.

And let’s take a closer look at Thanksgiving… an American holiday… our holiday.  Don’t forget that the celebration is built on a Puritan background.  You remember the Puritans and the Pilgrims?  Hey… you get caught looking up a dress and you were punished… severely punished.  No stern talking to, or a slap in the face… you were put into stocks or a ducking stool.  No wonder we were a supressed people. 

Then the Native Americans teach us how to eat lobster with sweet corn and make a clam bake… and how do we say thank you? How do we repay them?  We give them small pox.

And then we buy Manhattan for $26 (after rejecting New Jersey for $4.38… as it was written, “we were offer’d the lands & rivers of The Jersee; but it smelled of swine & foul oil).

So let’s raise a glass, stuff ourselves on turkeys that have been raised in cruelty and give thanks… and pray that the Detroit Lions produce a competitive football team for a change.

400 years after the fact, the Mashantucket Pequots are saying thanks… from their casinos.

A tad hypocritical, no?

I think it is clear that we need some quality holidays… celebrations not based in death & discrimination. Holidays without political attachment.  Holidays that do not promote over-indulgence.  A day that has no “sales days”.  A day where there is no need for cards, flowers or candy.

I know what you’re thinking… “that doesn’t leave alot.”

Well my friends… I am here to tell you that there is a day at hand… ripe for the picking.

The origin of Groundhog’s Day goes back to the Celts of Germany and France circa fifth century.  It was beleived that animals had supernatural powers that came into play on certain days or times of the year.  On the cross-quarter day (the day that is half way between the Winter Solstice and the Vernal Equinox), marmots and bears emerging from their winter dens would beat a hasty retreat if they saw their shadow… and there would be six more weeks of winter.  Cross-quarter day: February 2nd.

Early Christians called this Candlemas Day, or Hedgehog Day.

Earliest reference to this day in America can be found in the diary Berks County, PA storekeeper James Morris… his entry for February 4, 1841: “Last Tuesday, the 2nd was Candlemas day, the day on which, according to the Germans, the Groundhog {a large member of the marmot family} peeps out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he pops back for another six weeks nap, but if the day be cloudy he remains out, as the weather is to be moderate.”

Well… there you are.  Simple enough.  It’s a grand day! Totally fun!  We don’t kill the little beast and eat him… we just watch him!  How good is this?

No songs.  No baked goods.  No cards. No post-holiday blues!  The perfect Holiday!

Well… almost a perfect Holiday.  We just have to elevate the day to National Status.  To take it beyond the borders of Punxsutawney, PA (home to the famous Groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil). 

We have to close government offices, close the banks, close the schools, close the financial markets… and then most important… a day off for everyone over 21.

I can see the fibre of this Country being restored already.

And now that we have that settled… we can move on to New National Holiday #2: “The Monday After Super Bowl Holiday.”

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Laughing with my Dad

Posted on January 26, 2007 by Jim

I love music.  It’s ironic…  now that I have a car with a good radio, I have decided to drive in silence during my 55 minute journey from Woodbury to Norwalk and back.

My day is filled with sound of one type or another.  Yes, music; but mostly it’s the spoken word.  Incessant sound.  So my drive in quiet solitude has become a cherished part of my daily routine.  Thoughts come and go, ideas drift in… old stories, old conversations.  Or they can be new… looking for a better way to describe a young Chianti I had just tried.  I think of things that make me sad… and I think of things that make me happy.

And last night I thought of something that made me laugh… laugh hysterically… which is perfectly OK.  Laughing out loud in an outrageous fashion, when driving alone… is like singing out loud alone (off key).  Who cares?  Not that I have ever worried too much about laughing out loud outrageously in public (which will be in evidence later in this story).

This is how it starts…

In February of 1962 my Father took my Mother on a trip around-the-world.  Their journey began in Hawaii, proceeded to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Manila, Thailand, India, Israel, Greece, Spain… and maybe London & Paris, too.  Official photography for the trip was a shared responsibility.  The “simple camera” was relatively new and the entire trip was shot in slides (favorite shots would be turned into photos later).

My Father also brought a new camera along… perhaps as back-up.  The instamatic may have been shared; but this one was his.  It was a Minolta or Minox… I forget which; but the key here was its small size.  It was smaller than a six inch ruler & no wider than a stout cigar.  At the time it was the smallest commercial camera by miles.  It looked like something 007 would use.  The camera had a small tan leather case and a “watch chain” that you could clip to a belt loop and slip the camera into your pants’ pocket.

Dad was proud of that camera.  Although he never impressed me as being a “shutter bug.” 

If the camera was small… the film size was ridiculously small.  Micro film really.  But he wasn’t shooting secret files purloined from the Kremlin… he was photographing the Taj Mahal.  And since a slide is nothing more than a positive image of a negative… the size of Dad’s slides looked like a computer chip.  So when his film was developed, we had to get a special projector, which had this magnifying attachment so that you could see an image from a decent distance away.

Mom’s slides had no such difficulty… and I guess I must have seen her slides a half dozen times before we had the right equipment for Dad’s…

We finally get to view Dad’s slides.  I’m looking at shot after shot… Dad explaining this or that.  And then we get to a staged photo of Mom and Dad standing before a Thai Temple in Bangkok.  Dad must have asked a passer-by to take the shot… Mom is in a light coloured sleeveless top and a skirt.  She is standing at an angle facing Dad.  Her feet are positioned in that classic pose… one foot slightly in front of the other, and pointed slightly out.  She has a beautiful smile.

My Father is wearing an English lisle polo shirt, a silk foulard tied around his neck, light grey tropical worsted slacks and cordovan penny loafers.  He is facing slightly toward my Mother, and the empty leather camera case (having given the camera to the passer-by for the shot), attached by the strap to his belt loop, was hanging about crotch level.

My Dad takes a look at the slide and lets out a serious chuckle, “Jesus, it’s looks like I have my pecker on a leash.”

Then I crack out a laugh at this comment.  My trouble is… I can’t stop laughing.  And then of course Dad picks up his laughter pace, too.   And there the two of us were unable to call a halt to the laughing.  Mom left the room saying if she stayed she was going to pee in her pants.

That’s the way it was with me and my Dad.  Boy could we laugh… and poor Mom would have to scurry from the room lest she pee in her pants.

I thought about this story a couple of years ago… don’t ask me exactly how I arrived at the recollection.  We were in Taos for Fan and Chipp’s Wedding… after the service we were gathered on the patio of this wonderful place trading stories… enjoying a drink, taking in the view… And I am sure that Paul and I got to talking and it was probably mentioned that it would have been great for Mom and Dad to have been there, too…

I guess that’s how I connected to the “pecker on a leash”.  And geeze, if I laughed hard with my Dad… I laughed harder with Paul.  Because I had a much better understanding of the improbability.  And the more I thought about it… the harder I laughed.  The clear image of that photograph came back in highest detail… Mom and Dad, although casually dressed, dressed impeccably… standing in front of a magnificent Holy Shrine… and it looked like my father’s penis is hanging out of his fly, and it was on a wire tether.  This wasn’t like some smart assed teenager giving the finger in a sneaky way or something.  This was my Father!!  How improbable is this? 

Eventually all my laughing gets the attention of others on the patio.  And I mean I am laughing! Pictures were taken.  It looks like I might be in pain, or maybe just threw up.  Paul’s expression is one of bemused toleration.  If anybody asks me about the shot, I’m going to tell them that Paul had just farted (or peed in his pants) and I was creating a ruckus to cover his embarrassment.  Yeah, I think that’s a good bluff.

Last night, the silence of my drive was broken… like I had hit a pocket of turbulence on Route 136.  The picture of my Father and Mother standing in front of that Temple in Thailand came back to me… And I laughed once again… harder and harder.  This time it was about the caption.  I mean sure, it’s a funny shot; but maybe only funny if you knew what to look for.  And even if you knew what to look for, the hysterical part was the “caption”… the name Dad had coined off-the-cuff… pecker on a leash. 

My Father was a master at the Title.

So… I had a good laugh with my Dad last night.  Pecker on a Leash?  Isn’t that a Pub in London?

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Vegetables thru the Ages

Posted on January 22, 2007 by Jim

We have all heard it. “You’re staying at the table ’til you finish your veggies!”  Or, “I see that brussel sprout behind the mashed potato, young lady!” Or, if you were lucky you were subjected to greater artifice and creativity… “Look, why don’t you pretend that the broccoli is a tree from the Triassic, and that you are a Brontosaurus eating 100lbs of nourishing greens to get strength to beat Tyrannosaurus Rex.”

“Apatosaurus.”

“What?”

“Apatosaurus, Mom.  They changed the name of Brontosaurus to Apatosaurus.  Othniel Marsh put the wrong head on the mounted fossil skeleton in the Yale Peabody Museum and when they finally discovered the mistake they had to change the name.  And it’s the Jurassic and not the Triassic… and Tyrannosaurs didn’t arrive ’til the Cretaceous.  And besides, nobody beat Rex.”

“Go to your room.”

So much for demonstrating superior knowledge at the dinner table.

Enjoying vegetables is unnatural… we all know it.  It’s something we learn to do as adults, like driving cars, filling out tax forms & suppressing a fart in an elevator.

Look at our ancestors.  Vegetables on their diet?  I don’t think so.  We killed our food… and before it was food, it walked, flew or swam.  We rounded out a meal with nuts and fruit.  That’s it.  And that’s the way it stayed until we invented wine 7000 years ago.  Our chemical make-up was meant to process meat and not greens!  Vegetables?  The animals we killed ate the vegetables!  That’s how we got our vegetables!  We let them eat it first!!

When Louis and Mary Leakey made their discovery of earliest human life in Olduvai Gorge, fossil evidence showed that Homo Erectus dined on mammoth 2 million years ago.  No evidence of vegetables… but at the same level in the walls of the gorge — tangerine seeds, apple cores & peach pit remains have been found.  A cap from a G.I. issue canteen, also found, has been discounted as a historical anomaly.

But let’s not kid ourselves.  Vegetables have been around a long time, too.  And they are here to stay… even for us “hunter-gatherers” (by the by, I do my hunting and gathering at Costco). Culinary vegetables can come from any of the major plant parts: root, stem, leaf, flower, fruit or seed. Here is a short list of the other food.

Tomato.  Originally domesticated by the Maori of New Zealand.  The great war leader Pomare was succeeded by the “peace chief” Heke, who burned all weapons of war, turning spears into tomato staves.  From then on, aggressive behavior was confined to throwing tomatoes at each other.  This worked for hundreds of years, until the competing Titore tribe found the way to extract the highly toxic blood of the blister beetle, which would then be spread on a tomato.  A hit from a tomato meant sure death.  The Maoris were virtually wiped out.  It is why today, no one from New Zealand would even think of looking at a tomato, let alone eating one.

Jicama.  Central American Natives would take this taproot and mash it up and ferment it to create a highly intoxicating hallucinogenic pudding.  It would be consumed on festival days, the celebrations sometimes lasting a week or more.  When hardened, the pudding becomes a very reliable building paste.

Eggplant.  Known as “aubergine” in much of the world, it was produced solely for the attractive colour, feminine form and beauty.  Princess Eugenie of France loved to look at decorative arrangements of eggplants and made sure there were eggplants in every room of the Palace in Versailles.  Royal Dye-masters were put to the task of replicating the unique colouring for the Empress’ cashmere shawls and flocked wallpapering.

Asparagus, Carrots, Celery & Pickled Cucumbers.  These vegetables were put on a restricted list in Victorian England.  Markets throughout the Empire had an “adults only” section that was curtained off from the central display area.  The above mentioned vegetables (referred to, in polite society, as “unmentionables”), along with hot dogs, bananas, crullers and baguettes were discreetly kept out of view and only sold in private… And would never be consumed in public… in polite society.

Radicchio.  Pliny the Elder wrote extensively of radicchio’s medicinal properties in his Naturalos Historia.  Radicchio was good for treating heart ailments, swollen joints, hearing loss, insomnia, erectile dysfunction & athletes foot.  Some of the side effects could be hair loss, sustained headaches, uncontrolled sweating, painful gas & permanent loose bowel movement.

West Indian Gherkin. This small relation to the cucumber was appreciated by the Caribe Tribe for its fertility properties.  When ripe the gherkin was first peeled, then cut in vertical strips, dipped in the urine of the sacred goat, grilled on a stick, and then while still hot placed on the forehead of newlywed brides on their wedding evening.

Gefilte Fish.  Long associated with Jewish people, who would take great satisfaction in knowing that there was in fact no fish called a gefilte fish.  The word “gefilte” is derived from a German word that meant “stuffed”.  Some assume that this “delicacy” is a combination of three different fish: pike, white and carp… chopped and formed into a large irregularly shaped “fish meatball.”  This is not the case.  The origin of this dish goes back to France circa 1000 AD, where it was known as faux poisson. It was in fact a combination of chopped parsnip, rutabaga and horseradish.  Crusaders traveling from France brought this dish with them as they made their way across Europe to rescue Jerusalem from the Infidel.  In Central and Eastern Europe the name evolved into gefilte.  The fact that this is a vegetable dish has been an culinary insider’s  joke for centuries.

Strawberry Twizzlers (re-classification from USDA pending).  Finally!  A vegetable that us hunter-gatherers can finally enjoy with gusto!  And you nay-sayers who raise an eyebrow because the maker of Twizzlers is a wholly owned subsidiary of Haliburton with ties to the present Administration… well, T for tough!  I’ll have another helping of Twizzlers please.

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