"The blog has made Glab into a hip town crier, commenting on everything from local politics and cultural happenings to national and international events, all rendered in a colorful, intelligent, working-class vernacular that owes some of its style to Glab’s Chicago-hometown heroes Studs Terkel and Mike Royko." — David Brent Johnson in Bloom Magazine
I got my first cell phone in the summer of 1997. At the time, I was one of the few who had one. Everybody, back then, had land lines. In fact, you weren’t even allowed to list a cell number as a contact on official documents or applications. The thinking went, if you didn’t have a land line you were either homeless or somehow deranged.
So, I’m not being Luddite here. Truth is, as far back as the mid-1980s, when I was starting out in the freelance writing racket I had the idea that there should be a teensy, battery-powered telephone that one could carry around at all times. See, I couldn’t stand the idea of sitting home all day long waiting for sources or editors to call me back. I wanted to be out and about and still able to catch important calls. I imagined that teensy phone to be something I could fit in my shirt pocket as I strolled down North Michigan Avenue, outside the Wrigley Building, on a sunny spring day.
I don’t need to tell you that my mid-’80s musing has become an early ’20s reality. Today, I know few people who still have land lines, mainly those who, shall we say, are d’un certain âge. Again, I’m not Ludd-y. Rather, I’ve been a seer, at least as far as mobile phone tech goes.
All this is preamble to an anecdote. I was bartending at Club Lago, working the lunch shift, in…, oh, I’d say the spring of 2002. The joint was packed, as always. I, of course, was behind the bar and Giancarlo, who with his brother Guido ran the place, was greeting customers at the door and seating them.
Giancarlo was always the most voluble character in any room, especially when the room was his own, literally. He had a wisecrack, a compliment, a philosophical observation for everyone who’d come in the door of his restaurant. This day, three guys, businessmen, judging by their dark suits and purposeful strides, entered Club Lago in a single file. Giancarlo asked, “How many?”
The first held up three fingers. He couldn’t talk, as he had a cell phone pressed to his ear. So did the guy behind him as well as the one behind him. Giancarlo planted his feet and put his hands on his hips. “Why,” he asked, almost dumbfounded, “are you guys together?”
The Apex of Mobile Technology, c. 2002.
Two of the three laughed. The two put their phones in their pockets. The third guy kept rambling into his device, his business clearly either that of a world renowned neurosurgeon advising another such practitioner, wrist deep in gray matter, in the nuances of microsurgery. Either that or he was a member of the US Air Force’s emergency response team and he was giving orders to a B-52 wing to cool its heels at its fail-safe point before turning it loose to incinerate a half dozen Russian cities. He hadn’t the time nor the inclination for laughter.
Anyway, I tell this story because I laughed deeply at the time and it endeared Giancarlo to me more than ever. Why, indeed were the three guys together, going out to lunch, if all they were going to be doing was yapping on the phone to three different people? It was ridiculous, right?
Only it’s de rigueur in the year 2022.
And, yeah, I’m old. But I swear to you, I’m not a Luddite. Not much, anyway.
In the wake* of the death of host Alex Trebek, I’ve learned the correct Jeopardy!answer is, “What is robbing the cradle?”
Jean Currivan (L) and Her Husband, Alex Trebek.
[ * You’ll pardon the pun.]
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Customer Service
When I worked as a bartender for Club Lago, a delightful Italian family restaurant in Chicago’s River North neighborhood, one of the owners, Guido Nardini, said to me one night, “There’s a reward beyond money in serving people.”
Now, a cynic might respond that’s a boss’s way of saying “You should learn to be happy with the peanuts I’m paying you,” but, no, I earned a nice chunk of change pouring drinks at Lago. No complaints there; from the sheer volume of customers to the fact that a lot of people used to love to throw c-notes around as tips, I was able to stash big piles o’cash in my home safe.
Guido meant what he said because he and his co-owner bro., Giancarlo, loved to serve customers well. And, yes, it did please me to please my customers. I treated everybody with great respect and care regardless of what I thought their largesse capacities were.
At the Book Corner ( ✯ more on that later) I continue to take great pride in going out of my way to satisfy customers and nobody (except for one guy — I’m looking at you, J.D.) tips me. I like to call myself “the book detective,” often standing on my head to find something rare or out of print or unheard of for customers. When they tell me they appreciate my efforts and I see the looks on their faces, that’s a reward in and of itself.
So, I’m particularly attuned to people’s customer service skills. The following are some encounters I’ve had recently. I’m not complaining or indicting, simply observing.
“COME HERE OFTEN?”
I saw my oncologist last week. As an aside, I’m right at the time when I should be declared cancer-free. It’s been five years since my bout with squamous cell cancer leading to malignant lymph nodes. You may recall my long series herein called My Olive Pits™. For five years I’ve existed in a limbo the docs call remission. Once my latest PET scan results are in, it is to be dearly hoped, I’ll get my parole. Anyway, there’s an impromptu check-in desk positioned down the hall from the oncologist’s lair where a masked receptionist takes patients’ temperatures and grills them about possible COVID symptoms. I wheeled up (Aside #2: Yes, I use one of these⬇︎ now because my hip arthritis has reached crippling dimensions)…
…and presented myself to the woman at the desk. The first thing she said was, “Do you come here often?”
Well, jeez, that’s a straight line if I’ve ever heard one. Besides, I’m always nervous as hell when I visit either my oncologist or my ENT doctor so I look for any excuse to lighten the mood. I responded, “Ha! Is that a pickup line?”
The woman stared at me.
Being met with a stony face is the ultimate negative feedback when delivering a joke. And, sure, the joke was lame and predictable. I wasn’t looking for reassurance that I’m the liveliest wit in South Central Indiana, just an acknowledgement, a sign of bonhomie, I guess. So I doubled down.
“That was a joke,” I said.
The woman continued to stare at me.
Rather than retreat then and there, I pushed further into the realm of red-faced-ness.
“Which you didn’t get,” I said, nearly sotto voce but not quite.
Her stared bored a hole through me.
Somehow we got on to the business at hand. My temperature was normal and I swore I had no coronavirus symptoms, so she passed me through.
In her defense, I’ll admit it’s a little more difficult these days to tell if a person is smiling or grimacing under the mask. But a smile is as readable in the eyes as it is by bared teeth. The woman’s eyes were not smiling.
Someone might say, “Well, maybe she thought it inappropriate that you were coming on to her.” Which is utter nonsense. I’m a crippled old goat with hernias galore, a bald head, barnacles on my scalp, and an implanted defibrillator in my chest. Only the most neurotically sensitive 20-something could interpret the joke as a come-on from the likes of me. Here’s a bit from Curb Your Enthusiasm, where Larry tells an attractive receptionist he’s talking to her because human-to-human contact is the goal, not because he’s hitting on her. (Go to the 1:30 mark of the clip for the exchange.)
Have I ever mentioned I believe Larry David is a dybbuk that resides in me and that my growth as a human depends on expelling said dybbuk?
On to the next encounter.
GO WHEREVER YOU WANT
Last week was an orgy of doctors for me. I’ve finally been okayed to go into surgery for my right hip total replacement. I’d originally been scheduled for surgery on June 8th, only a cancer-related CT scan the week before revealed I was suffering from pulmonary emboli. These obstructions in lung arteries usually are caused by clot particles that travel up from the legs. They are life threatening and usually cause breathing distress and syncope. Sometimes the first symptom is the sufferer simply drops dead. Serious stuff. Mine apparently were caused by my inability to walk much anymore so clots formed in my legs. That’s all cleared up now, thanks to a daily regimen of an anticoagulant that has turned my blood into something more akin to a fine mist. At this point I begin to bleed simply by thinking about blowing my nose.
So, I visited my orthopedic surgeon last week to get the ball rolling again. He turned me into a pretzel to see where things hurt the most (answer: everywhere) and then brought out a model of the hip joint as well as the prosthetic ball and socket joint he’d be hammering into me. His nurse then came in and gave me a new date for surgery (December 21st) and told me about all the things I’d have to do before and after. Included is a month or two of intensive physical therapy with my new hip in place.
“You can do your physical therapy here,” she said. The IU Health Orthopedics and Sports Medicine complex just off Sare Rd. on the south side has a big gym/PT center. The she added that if this particularly facility was too far away from my home I could do my PT elsewhere.
“Well,” I asked, “what are my alternatives.”
“You can go anywhere,” she said.
I resisted the urge to quip, “So, can I do it at the library?” I’d already struck out once with mild humor in a medical setting. Still, I pressed on.
“Where are other facilities?”
“They’re everywhere.”
“Okay, I live off SR 446. Which one would be closest to that?”
“Oh, they’re all around. Go wherever you want”
We were getting no place fast. “Fine, I’ll do it here,” I said, and she duly marked that down in her notes.
All the way home, I fixated on the exchange. Why wouldn’t she tell me where another gym/PT center was?
I chewed over this for a few days until it occurred to me that all these different IU Health facilities are run as discreet little revenue centers. Individual doctors, or groups of them, have ownership stakes in their facilities. In the interest of fairness and convenience for the patient, the nurse felt compelled to tell me I could get my physical therapy anywhere but she really, really, really wanted me to do it at her place because that’s where the insurance payments would be sent.
Okay, fair enough. But it wouldn’t have hurt for her to say, “Y’know, we like to keep everything in-house. It’s easier for insurance and for record-keeping.” She might even have admitted her facility had an interest in getting the insurance payments. I’m an adult; I know how business works, even if that business calls itself nonprofit.
Instead, I was left wondering why she couldn’t tell me where other gym/PT centers are. Like Larry David, I obsessed over that question for far too long. I told you he’s a dybbuk inside me.
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✯ Farewell, Book Corner–For Now
I’m taking a leave of absence from the Book Corner because 1) the pain in my hip has become unbearable and 2) I don’t want to catch COVID and have to reschedule surgery again — or die.
Both The Loved One and Patty, the manager, have told me time and again I’m deranged for going in to work three times a week with this hip. TLO has shared horror stories about people suffering from the coronavirus with me in an effort to scare me off going in. At last I’m listening to them.
You won’t see me at the store until February at the earliest. I’ll miss the hell out of the books and the people. I’ll also miss the rush and madness of Christmas there. A big family comes in every Christmas Eve. Each member, from grandma and grandpa to the littlest arrival, gets to pick out a number of books as their Christmas present for the year. It’s become a tradition. And grandma always brings in a huge stash of holiday sweets and treats that I do my best to take an unfair share of home with me. I’ll miss the hell out of them, too.
But, truth is, I won’t cry too many tears over it all because by the 24th, I’ll be sitting on a brand new hip and I won’t be a crippled old goat anymore.
Add this myth to the ever-expanding list of commonly-held falsehoods: the holidays are a significant cause of suicides.
George Bailey, Preparing To Jump
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Yep, you guessed it. It ain’t true at all. It’s so untrue that, in fact, the exact opposite can be argued — the holidays prevent people from committing suicide. That’s what figures from the Centers for Disease control indicate. The CDC tells us fewer suicides occur in November and December than any other time of the year.
So flush this one down the toilet along with the full moon causing mayhem and people using only 10 percent of their brains.
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Food Folderol
I’ve patronized Chipotle ever since I arrived in Bloomington mainly because the place serves the kind of ginormous burritos I’d become accustomed to in my Chicago days. Back in my beloved hometown, there’d be burrito joints and taquerias seemingly on every corner. There was even a place that advertised “Burritos As Big As Your Head.”
The truth is if you can find a burrito as big as my coconut, you’ll enjoy an extraordinarily filling repast indeed. Perhaps two.
La Bamba Burritos
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Anyway, Chipotle has been the source of a number of foodborne illness outbreaks in the last calendar year.
You might say the company has been the victim of bad luck. There’s a dizzying variety of ways colonies of bacteria can grow in foods at restaurants and grocery stores. From preparers who neglect to wash their hands after using the bathroom to servers who violate time-temperature guidelines, the food you eat could, at any moment, pack a wallop of microorganisms on your forkful that’ll have you hugging the white bowl for days at a time. In fact, pretty much every single forkful of food you shove into your mouth contains scads of sickening germs. Your body’s natural defense system usually takes care of all the invaders entering your gullet. That is, unless the sheer number of microorganisms overwhelms your defenders.
That’s what happened to hundreds of people, Chipotle diners all, on five separate occasions in 2015. Once is a simple occurrence, twice a coincidence, five times a pattern. Chipotle foodborne illness outbreaks this year have affected poor souls in at least 10 states. The causes of these mass horkings have included E. coli, salmonella, and norovirus, three unrelated invaders, indicating the fast food operation has a big problem on its hands.
Chipotle, of course, crows about its local food sourcing and all-natural ingredients. Well, everybody does, but Chipotle was on it early and big, the first national corporate entity to jump on that bandwagon. Chipotle’s “mission statement” (ugh, I detest corporate-speak) claims it offers “Food with Integrity.” (Double-ugh, I detest — almost as much — profit-making under the guise of altruism.)
McDonald’s Corp. was a big investor in Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. from 1998 through 2006, a period of time during which C. grew from a modest-sized Colorado chain to a 500-location coast-to-coast juggernaut. It’s ironic, natch, that a McDonald’s-owned outfit would succeed based on an appeal to the “natural” palate. Mickey D’s “food” is about as natural as that bottle of soap scum remover under your bathroom sink.
A secret: I still, on rare occasions, indulge in a Big Mac. Sue me.
Guilty
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Somehow, Chipotle overcame the negative image of its corporate overlord and actually became known as a crunchy, New Age-y, safe place to eat. College students went gaga over the place. They could eat fast crap while convincing themselves they were still protecting their holy temple bodies. Chipotle told customers its food was free from GMOs and other weapons of mass destruction.
Yet, five times in the last year Chipotle’s food has caused hundreds of folk to invert their maws. Yuck.
Now comes Henry I. Miller, bio-researcher, former food and drug regulator, and a Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, to say Chipotle’s problems with foodborne illness are a result of its natural, crunchy, New Age-y practices. Miller says locally-produced food is not safer, “pesticide-free” crops actually are rife with potentially dangerous bug-killing substances, organic grains often are tainted by toxins and parasites, and using natural fertilizer — read: animal shit — increases the odds of foodborne illness eightfold.
And it’s not that Chipotle and the like would argue with Miller. Here’s a line from Chipotle’s 2014 annual report (p. 14):
We may be a higher risk for foodborne illness outbreaks than some competitors due to our use of fresh produce and meats rather than frozen and our reliance on employees cooking with traditional methods rather than automation.
In other words, our methods suck — and are dangerous, to boot.
If you spend your time gathering your food info from profit-driven media or, worse, “natural” websites, you’ll become convinced there are only two types of food in this world:
Magic food that’ll make you healthier, stronger, happier, more orgasmic, and will help you live to the ripe old age of 152.
Evil food that’ll cause cancer, heart disease, obesity, rashes, shingles, warts, poverty, pollution, crime, slavery, and Donald Trump’s hair.
In our ultimately unfulfillable quest to live forever, we’ve latched onto food as the magic pill in recent years. Now, not only is it unwise to ingest Drano, cyanide, nail polish remover, and gasoline, it’s considered almost as rash to eat a slice of bread or enjoy a cob of genetically modified corn. Conversely, if we only buy squash from the organic farmer down the road, we’ll live long enough to see humankind populate Mars.
Here’s a truism from an inveterate talker: People talk too much.
Miller concludes:
Although the crops, meats and other foods produced by modern conventional agricultural technologies may not bring to mind a sentimental Norman Rockwell painting, they are on average safer than food that reflects pandering to current fads.
In the words of my favorite cook ever, Chico of Club Lago, shut up and eat.
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[Gasp] He’s Naked!
Okay, ready for Evidence Item #33 gazillion that we, the species Homo Sapiens sapiens, are flat-out psychopathic? Here goes.
Some poor schmuck tried to wade through the shallow waters of the Mediterranean Sea the other day in an attempt to get around the barbed wire fence that separates Egypt from the Gaza Strip. He was a Palestinian and he wanted to get out of that god-foresaken apartheid hell and perhaps breathe the relatively freer air of its neighbor to the south (emphasis on relatively).
Egyptian border guards opened fire on him, dropping him like a sack of flour in the surf, errant rifle rounds plucking the waters around him and raising little up-splashes. Huzzah, the sovereign state of Egypt had been protected.
The whole incident was caught on video. The Arabic version of Al Jazeera aired the vid and tut-tutted the tragedy. Only the Palestinian guy had been stark naked as he splashed through the surf, perhaps as a way of showing he wasn’t carrying any arms or weapons of mass hysteria into that ancient land. So, even though we see in loving detail a man’s life being snuffed out in a hail of bullets, Al Jazeera producers protected their viewers from seeing the poor bastard’s cold-turtled junk as well as his bare buttocks by pixellating these horrifying locales.
Praise Allah — We Can’t See His Penis
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Yes, the Earth, where terrestrial evolution’s highest form is more scared of nudity than bloody homicide.
I do not smoke. I’ve tried to start at least a dozen times in my life, all between the ages of 16 and 24. Oh, and once I tried to start when I was 43.
Most of the time, I smoked Parliaments. I had very good reasons to choose them. They were mild, relatively tasty, the package was a nice blue on white, and the very word Parliament is cool because of George Clinton.
Cool
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The main reason I wanted to take up smoking was because people who smoke look great doing it. Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. Robert DeNiro in Goodfellas. Bette Davis in All About Eve. There’s something about lighting a smoke, taking a drag, even snuffing it out in an ashtray that punctuates a line of dialogue so right, so perfectly, and at times, so sexily.
I’d stand in front of the bathroom mirror, cigarette in hand (unlit, of course, because, hell, all that smoke is so irritating, no?) practicing my hold, my overall look, my jabbing with the cig hand to make a point, my pause to inhale before delivering a devastating bon mot.
Man, I looked good.
I never smoked at home because, well, what’s the point? But I’d smoke at all the hot spots in town: the Double Door, Neo, O’Banion’s, the Matchbox, Simon’s, the Tiny Lounge, O’Rourke’s — any joint where I could do the moves I’d practiced in front of my bathroom mirror. Good looking dames who also smoked would sidle up to me. “Big Mike,” they’d say, “I didn’t know you smoked!”
“Me? Yeah. No big thing.”
And then a substantive conversation would ensue. Back in those days I always was eager to engage in substantive conversations.
Every once in a while some non-smoking acquaintance would give me one of those finger-shaking looks. “Big Mike,” they’d say, “you’re smoking!”
“Um, er, uh….”
And that’d be the end of our colloquy. No matter, I never could stand scolds.
My forays into the smoking world would last, at most, three months at a time. Usually my “habit” would only last a few short weeks. I never could get the hang of it. Oh, sure, I looked great. At a couple of points in time, I even rolled up my boxes of Parliaments in my T-shirt sleeves. Motoring down Michigan Avenue on my Suzuki GS 1100 with a box of smokes rolled up in my T-shirt was the best aphrodisiac money could buy. Any number of times, strange young women would come up to me at red lights and ask if I’d give them a ride. Gentleman that I am, I never refused them.
One-Half Of The Formula
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Nevertheless, the headaches, the dizziness, the gagging, the occasional bursts of nausea — all brought on by attempting to inhale — would quickly turn me off the practice.
Mike, can I borrow a cigarette?
Me? Nah. I don’t smoke.
I thought you did.
Nuh uh. Not me.
My beloved hometown legislated against smoking in bits and pieces from the ‘eighties through the year 2006 when Chicago finally outlawed the practice in bars and restaurants. I’d been a bartender four nights a week at Club Lago in the trendy River North neighborhood for a couple of years prior to the bar ban. Every night after my shift, I’d peel off my duds and be amazed at how strongly they reeked of smoke. My whole room would stink of cigarettes and I’d never lit up a one.
Club Lago
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I figured I’d inhaled the equivalent of a couple of packs a week simply by being in the presence of my smoking customers.
Still, I always found those smoking bans and all those non-smoking finger-waggers to be annoying. Natch, I know smoking kills. I’ve seen all the pix of the blackened, crumbly, necrotic lungs of smokers who died of this cancer or that pulmonary disease.
Yeah, Yeah, I Know
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People might say, But what about my kids? Because, you know, whenever people want to shame you, whenever they want to win an argument, there’s always The Kids to fall back on. My retort? Keep your kids out of drinking and smoking joints.
Anyway, one of my primary maxims is Never trust a person who doesn’t have a vice.
Honestly, do you know anybody who doesn’t have a vice? And if you do, how much do you want to tell that person to just shut up about it? Because they always want you to know they don’t have vices.
I started thinking about smoking this morning because my old pal, the crusading attorney Jerry Boyle, points out that a man was beheaded in ISIS-occupied Syrian territory the other day. Acc’d’g to reports, the victim’s head was found with a cigarette in its mouth and a note was attached to his body reading “This is not permissible, Sheikh.”
See, smoking, as well as drinking alcohol, music, swearing, women appearing in public without full-face veil and other horrors are taboo under ISIS’s strict adherence to god’s law. Funny thing is, smoking is huge in many of the areas that ISIS is taking over in the Middle East. Lots of chain-smokers and hookah pipe users are smoking more than ever these days as ISIS nears their homes — they want to get in their last puffs before they, too, lose their heads.
When all is said and done, I’m glad doctors can’t smoke in hospital rooms, travelers can’t light up in airliners, teachers can’t puff away in faculty lounges, and the guy sitting in the next cubicle can’t foul your workspace air anymore. After all, working in a cubicle environment is soul-crushing enough; you don’t need to endure coughing jags and stinky clothes to earn your daily bread as well.
The fact that drinkers at the Atlas bar or Finch’s must go outdoors for a few drags seems utterly nonsensical to me. A bar is a place where we not only indulge in our vices, we celebrate them. No one gives you the stink eye for knocking back a couple or five shots of Pappy Van Winkle. Nor do they tut-tut when people strike up faux-conversations with each other for the sole purpose of convincing each other to disrobe.
No Sin
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My personal message to the clean, the pious, the compulsive rebukers of this mad, mad, mad, mad world: Let us kill ourselves any way we want.
“Touch a scientist and you touch a child.” — Ray Bradbury
♢
SAINT RONALD SPENT LIKE A DRUNKEN SAILOR
I love bits of info like this. Deep thinkers like Ted Nugent, Rush Limbaugh, and John Boehner all would have us believe Barack Obama’s the most profligate president when it comes to spending our hard-earned tax dollars.
Hah!
✍
It really was He Who Has Been Assumed Into Heaven. And our “socialist” Commander in Chief? He’s been the tightest with a buck over the last five decades.
Of course, these are mere facts. Facts, as we know, are meaningless to the electorate of this holy land.
♢
NAILS, 90
A contingent of Bleeding Heartland Rollergirls is gliding down to Bedford this AM to pay respects to Nails Parton.
“Nails” Parton
✍
Early roller derby tough gal Esther Eileen Parton, nee Nail (she incorporated her maiden name into her rink moniker), died Tuesday. She pitched the elbows up and down the eastern seaboard in the late ’30s and early 40s, back when women’s roller derby resembled more a marathon race than a series of short-burst, two-minute jams.
She became the BHRGs’ elder stateswomen superfan when this town’s girl gang was just getting started. For home bouts, the Rollergirls set Nails up with her own special easy chair behind suicide seating.
Bloomington’s skaters have sent a special flower arrangement for the funeral. It’s heavy on BHRG colors, and the vase has been implanted in a vintage roller skate. BTW: Nails and her fellow derby-ists wore wooden-wheel skates.
Delicate Flowers
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Speaking of wheels, dig those gams on Eileen. I bet that dame could move.
♢
BOOM-SHOCKALOCKA
Old Sol blew off a monster flare Thursday. Goddard Space Weather Lab geeks predict the gargantuan tongue of energy will hit the Earth today at 5:14pm, our time.
Burn, Baby, Burn
✍
If we’re awfully lucky and the skies clear, we may be able to see an aurora display late tonight and early tomorrow morning, thanks to the flare.
Astro-nuts say the flare — AKA, a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) — erupted from a sunspot that directly faced the Earth at blast time, meaning our rock will get the full dose of solar wind, magnetic field, and an extreme ultraviolet radiation pulse when the plume hits.
Solar flare events can interfere with our planet’s electrical grid, GPS signals, and high-frequency radio communication. This CME isn’t expected to do appreciable damage.
BTW: Don’t pay any attention to New Agers and woo-woo enthusiasts who might claim the event will affect anything other than the electromagnetic spectrum here. But you’re too smart for that anyway, aren’t you?
♢
SUNSHINE SUPERMAN
By Donovan. It charted in late 1966 and early 1967. This vid features the album version of the song, complete with guitar solo.
♢
✍
Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, games, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.
◗ Hoosier National Forest — Archeological Dig open house, see excavated farmsteads of the German Ridge community; noon-4pm
◗ Stable Studios, Spencer — Bluegrass festival 2012: The Travelin’ McCoury’s, The White Lightning Boys, Rumpke Mountain Boys, Flatland Harmony Experiment, New Old Cavalry, the Stuttering Ducks, The Seratones; 1pm-midnight
The Rumpke Mountain Boys
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◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Bloomington Storytelling Project, “The Shocks & Surprises,” true stories; 7pm
“I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and the old men and the old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.” — Brendan Behan
Yep. The man has (or, more accurately now, had) an albino wallaby named Kimba.
Typical Albino Wallaby
✍
A week ago today, Ron Young let the critter out in his fenced backyard and, next thing he knew, Kimba had taken a hike. Well, actually four hours later, the animal took her hike.
Wild creatures can figure out many ways to escape a fenced enclosure if you give them four hours. Hell, if I left Steve the Dog out in a fenced yard (which we don’t have) and came back four hours later, I’d find the yard empty save for a pair of fence cutters dropped in haste on the grass.
I mean, Steve likes me and The Loved One well enough, but the allure of out there is irresistible. And this is a pampered hound who looks at me as if I’m from the moon when I suggest he go outside in a light mist to do his business.
“I Like Youse Guys But Gimme Half A Chance And I’m Outta Here.”
✍
Anyway, Young is a former director of the Evansville Zoo. You’d think he’d know better. And not just about leaving an animal unattended for such a long period of time.
Just having a non-native animal in Southern Indiana seems rash to me.
Wallabies, I’ll hazard to guess, don’t want to be here. Were we to give the macropods a vote in the matter, it’s a good bet they’d overwhelmingly elect to stay in Australia, New Zealand, or any of the nearby Oceania islands they inhabit.
Which reminds me of an egregious example of humans introducing a non-native species to a strange geographical environment.
A wealthy goofball named Thomas Austin brought a couple of dozen cute little bunnies to his estate in Victoria in 1859. He’d wanted to shoot at them for fun and games. See, rabbits had never before lived in Australia and a man can become bored blasting away at the same old 755 different species of reptile as well as countless platypi, echidnae, kangaroos, koalas, wombats, emus, kookaburras, dingoes, and other mammals and birds native to that land.
Apparently, Austin never bagged his limit because the surviving bunnies did what bunnies do — that is, they bonked and bonked and bonked until they’d essentially taken over most of the continent within forty years.
You might say, So what? What can cute little bunnies do to a continent? The answer: devastate it.
The hundreds of millions of rabbits who now hold sway over the entire landmass have eaten so much foliage that exposed soil and land erosion is now a major problem in many huge swaths of Australia. Not only that but a significant number of plant species have now gone extinct, thanks to the voracious rabbits. And since the plants have disappeared, at least two mammals species, the bilby and the bandicoot, have essentially vanished.
Not that we have to worry about wallabies taking over North America now that Kimba has escaped her pen. She’s probably dead now since wallabies really don’t know how to live in winter climes.
When I was a bartender at Club Lago, an Italian restaurant in Chicago, one of our cooks was a funny man named Chico. He loved to concoct new dishes using only the stuff that was leftover in the kitchen at the end of the night. He’d serve up plates of the scrumptious stuff to the waitstaff and me after we’d locked the doors.
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Occasionally, a new hire might ask before digging in, “What’s in this?” To which Chico would swiftly reply, “Just shut up and eat.”
I found his directive to be sensible and easy enough to follow.
Not that Chico was worried we’d learn he’d been dumping toxic substances into his skillet or pot. His philosophy was if you really love to eat, just eat. The act of consuming comestibles should be enjoyed without worry or fear. Eat!
Admittedly, one might want to question the company that whips up, say, Spam. A wise person wants to know how many species have sacrificed their lives for that rectangular hunk of “meat.”
“Food”
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But Chico’s dishes were made of fresh vegetables, succulent seafood, lovingly-stirred sauces, and prime meats. Just shut up and eat.
Which brings me to a recent study that indicates the food fetishists of this holy land — thousands of whom seem to have settled here in Bloomington — ought to try to hew to Chico’s axiom.
Apparently, according to the study, people tend to think a food is more nutritious, is safer, and is more pure only because it carries labels like “fair trade,” “natural,” or “organic.”
It’s called the “health halo” effect. And it’s pretty much bullshit.
Yeah, It’s Natural — But It’s Still Junk Food
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Now, the organic designation is defined by federal law. It means simply that the grub you’re jamming into your mouth is reasonably free from certain prohibited substances like dangerous pesticides or controversial additives. The organic designation in no way affects the taste or nutritional quality of a food. It’s conceivable, for instance, that Hormel Foods could apply for and receive the USDA’s approval to slap the organic logo on its cans of Spam.
“Fair trade” and “natural,” on the other hand have no legal definitions. I could market cow flop tomorrow, calling it “all-natural” — which it is — and be well within my legal rights. And making sure some Colombian coffee growers get a fair price for their crop doesn’t make my cup of joe any different from yours.
Still, the study found that people will go so far as to believe a piece of fair trade chocolate contains fewer calories than one not marketed under that label.
So, yeah, we’d like to make sure we’re not screwing the world’s farmers to death because we need to stuff ourselves with sandwich cookies. And it’s good to know there isn’t a cupful of Red Dye No. 3 in that package of Jujubes.
But let’s try to be reasonable. Just shut up and eat.
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WHO ARE THE KARDASHIANS?
For the longest time, my mind has refused to retain information about the Kardashians.
The gray mass inside my cranium is like that. It has also prohibited me from understanding basic economic precepts for many long years. For example, I’d ask somebody what the national debt is. Not how much it is, but what exactly it is, as in its definition. Financially savvy pals would explain it to me in excruciating detail and I’d nod my head as if I were taking it all in.
But — swear to god — ten minutes later all those words and ideas would have spilled out of my ear and onto the floor, only to be mopped up by the bartender or busboy at whichever saloon or restaurant I’d just had my lesson in.
Not Even IU’s Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Ellie Ostrom Can Help Me
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Same thing with the Kardashians. I must have asked at least three dozen different people through the years who the Kardashians are and why this holy land knows of them.
And every time the knowledge imparted to me simply departs my brain, leaving no forwarding address.
When it comes to the national debt, I feel bad about my ignorance. But I’m proud of my Kardashian stupidity.
Duh, I Dunno
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Apparently, many others in the Great United States, Inc. also are less than enthralled by the K-clan. This despite the fact that all corporate news outlets must record and recount the family’s every muscle move.
Now I don’t feel so out of touch. On the other hand, who the hell is The Situation?
Um, Uh, What Was The Question?
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WHITE ROOM
Right off the bat, I’m not advocating the use of heroin. Lemme put it this way, back in the days when I and my circle were willing to ingest anything for a high, the very idea of heroin scared the bejesus out of me.
I’d met a young woman when I was about 23 years old. She never missed a chance to extol the wonders of heroin. I asked her what it was like. Her eyes turned dreamy and she said, “It’s the greatest feeling you’ll ever know. After heroin, sex is nothing.”
I vowed at that moment never to try it — and I never have.
Eric Clapton waged a well-documented, years-long battle against heroin addiction. He’s been clean for nearly forty years. But his heroin-free output includes such treacle as “Tears in Heaven” while his “White Room” with Cream was recorded at the height of his horse ride.
All this is preamble to an anecdote. I was bartending at Club Lago, working the lunch shift, in…, oh, I’d say the spring of 2002. The joint was packed, as always. I, of course, was behind the bar and Giancarlo, who with his brother Guido ran the place, was greeting customers at the door and seating them.
So, I visited my orthopedic surgeon last week to get the ball rolling again. He turned me into a pretzel to see where things hurt the most (answer: everywhere) and then brought out a model of the hip joint as well as the prosthetic ball and socket joint he’d be hammering into me. His nurse then came in and gave me a new date for surgery (December 21st) and told me about all the things I’d have to do before and after. Included is a month or two of intensive physical therapy with my new hip in place.
