The days of the hat are numbered.
I say this not because I dislike hats but because, on the contrary, I realize that I have become a hat person.
I have, I was surprised to recently discover, at least 23 hats in my possession.
Let me tell you a little story. When I was a child I had a particularly traumatic experience that resulted in a day off from school, spent with my mother – shopping, in Berlin, Germany.
Don’t get the wrong impression. I am not a child of wealth. I was not flown to Germany for this occasion. My father was in the Air Force and we were ‘stationed’ there.
In any case, concerned with my emotional state, my mother asked me if there was anything I would like to buy, anything. This, you should know, was before the age of $1500 EBay offers for Playstation 3. There were very few toys, at that time, which required loan approval before purchasing.
Mom was not taking a big risk.
Still, I knew that this was in all likelihood a one-time offer, and that I should take full advantage of it.
“Anything”, I asked her, looking for a firm commitment?
“Anything”, she said.
“Beatle Boots”.
I wanted a pair of the black, boot-like shoes with the elastic uppers, which the Beatles wore in ‘Hard Day’s Night’.
So off we went, in search of Beatle Boots.
Do I need to tell you that there were no Beatle Boots in all of Berlin? Do I need to tell you that, in all likelihood, there were no Beatle Boots in all of Europe?
What I need to tell you – my point, is that I am not what the trend watchers would call ‘an early adopter’.
I am in fact, someone who is behind the curve, off the edge, a trend-ender.
Not that I care.
It’s a safe and secure feeling, to be out of the loop.
When you are a trend-setter, on the cutting edge, and in the loop, you take a lot of criticism.
When you always lag a few steps behind the latest and the greatest, on the other hand, you get treated with the kind of patience reserved for the very old, or for small pets.
A trend setter may be considered ‘odd’, a trend-ender only ‘quaint’.
And trend-enders tend to be loyal longer. That is, those who are obsessed with the latest, often are the first to abandon their ‘love’, while those who come to the appreciation of a thing after a long and slow courtship tend to be faithful.
I love my hats: not with the hot, obsessive fervor of youth, but with the warm, enduring love of maturity.
The trend-setter may have two or three audacious hats that he, or she, wore every day for a few months. But I – as I told you, have at least 23 hats, which I only don when the mood is just right.
One of my favorite hats is a dark blue, all wool Tibetan that can be collapsed in to an almost normal look, or expanded, straight up, for nearly a foot. It’s a winter hat though, and I refuse to put it on unless there’s snow on the ground or the Dali Lama is in town.
I also have a wide-brimmed straw hat which I acquired at Sturbridge Village that I have only worn once – to the great amusement of friends and family. This is a hat that will probably always be out of fashion – which suits me just fine.
I have a beret, somewhere, though I haven’t seen it in years.
I have a gray wool Kangol that I have had a hard time wearing since I let my hair grow long. It still fits, but all that hair sticking out from each side is hard to live up to.
Of course I also have a number of baseball caps. My favorite, I think, is the one I got at my son’s college. It is an all-wool, old-style ball cap with a white felt ‘C” sewn on the front and no other adornment. It is a bit worn though, and not exactly clean – but it is the kind of hat that you are supposed to wear out and wear down.
I refuse, by the way, to purchase a hat that has been ‘pre-distressed’. I prefer to take the time to pick out a hat I really like and actually wear it. For that reason many of my hats are ‘like new’, and should last until hats are have regained their currency.
I did however, recently acquire a Red Sox cap that is designed to look like the style Ted Williams wore in his rookie year, 1939.
I am not sure exactly why, but I believe that there is an ethical difference between trying to make something new look old, and buying a new version of an old style.
Then again, I went ballistic when I heard about people paying $100 and more for classic Rock & Roll tee shirts that had been ‘re-created’. I used to have an old black ‘Who’’ tee shirt that I wore until it evaporated.
It’s existentially ‘in bad faith’ to pretend you were part of a trend that, in a real sense, has not ever completely disappeared from the marketplace.
A trend should have to be dead and buried before it can be brought back again, at a significantly higher price. To wear a new version of that old Who tee today would seem to me, ghoulish.
It is issues like that which would prevent me from becoming an early adopter – even if I cared to join their ranks.
A trend-setter cannot analyze: he or she has to be like a hermit crab. When the new styles come out, they must immediately jettison the old shell and put on the new one.
I am like an old bear looking for a new cave: I am not too concerned about the style, or the amenities, or the neighborhood. But after a few months of hibernation, I tend to become attached to the cave I have chosen.
I have become attached to my hats.
Trend-setters take note!
Saturday, January 13, 2007
In No Particular Order
Every year at this time we (meaning the collective we, who allow our lives to be controlled by what other people (other than we?) appear to think) make up lists of things that are allegedly the best or most significant of the past year.
If that was going to be the subject of my column this week you’d have every right to stop reading right here. After all, in terms of other people (meaning the others who are or at some point were on somebody else’s list of significant people) I don’t really qualify as one of the better or most significant people who every year at this time make up those lists.
But I’m not going to do that – not exactly.
Instead I’m going to list those things, people, events, and random occurrences that during the past year (or whenever I feel like it) had meaning for ME – meaning the actual me, not a royal me, or an omniscient me. Just me: an admittedly egotistical me who’s annual lists of the best and worst don’t usually coincide with the other’s lists.
Person of the Year
It’s unanimous. Once again it’s Mary, my wife. The bread winner, the bread
maker, the shake your money maker. I could go on, but she would kill me.
Beer of the Year
The Old Speckled Hen. It comes in those cans that have a nitrogen dispenser built in to the bottom, so you get a real creamy head. Man that was good, Bob.
Year of the Year
I believe we’re on a 35 year cycle. That is, fashion – in music, clothes, and the arts, repeats itself every thirty five years. So this year was really 1971, which was a very significant year for me. I was 16, the Stone’s Exile on Main Street had just come out, and my dad was in Vietnam sending home articles about the dangers of marijuana use.
Sports Event of the Year
It has to have been my first round of golf in ten years. I went out with two brothers-in-law and a friend, and managed a very respectable 126 at Waverly Oaks. If I continue to play once every ten years, I know I can get it down to the high 110’s or so.
Gadget of the Year
Heelies. I know the school custodians don’t like them, but I see them as a kind of crowd control device. Did you ever notice how kids with heelies are quieter than other kids? I’d be in favor of building heelie parks, where large groups of pre-teens could glide silently back and forth for hours and hours while their parents golf. I wonder if someone could invent gloves that light up and quietly hum when you softly clap them together?
Fast Food of the Year
I haven’t had any, but I like the idea of those bowls that KFC offers, layered with just about everything they make. I have this idea for a restaurant chain called “Left Overs”, where everything on the menu is meant to taste like leftovers. Everything would be made in advance, and put together later. Our slogan would be ‘Not Just Comfort Food, Left Overs!’
Car of the Year
My vintage 93 Escort Wagon. The back left door doesn’t open, the trunk is a bowlful of rusted water, it doesn’t even have a cassette player, loses traction in a quarter inch of snow, makes a god-awful whining, grinding noise if you don’t give it an hour to warm up, and smells like the inside of a Clean Harbors truck - but it starts up every morning and takes me across the bridge to the sanitarium.
Our old Camry came in a close second: it looks better than the Escort and drives well, but cost me over two thousand to keep on the road this year.
If my well had wheels it would have been the runaway winner.
Movie of the Year
My movie rating system usually does not go beyond three levels. At the bottom with one kernel of unpopped popcorn is Not That Bad, followed by two kernels of unpopped popcorn which translates to A Waste of Time, followed by three kernels, which are only given out to films that reach the pinnacle of my diminished expectations – Remarkably Bad. This year the film Lady in the Water received an almost unheard of four kernels of unpopped popcorn. It was, truly, Worse than I Expected.
Song of the Year
My rating system for songs, is similar to my rating system for movies. I’m really only interested in talking about songs I dislike. If I like a song, I don’t want to talk about it, I want to listen to it.
That said, Death Cab for Cutie’s morose and melodic I’ll Follow You Into the Dark is a remarkably indulgent embrace of meaninglessness. For no particular reason, with a muddled philosophical perspective, and with bright and cheery acoustic guitar accompaniment, this song looks forward to the day when the singer will gladly join a generic ‘love’ when her cosmic GPS malfunctions and she ends up spending eternity at a rest stop on the Afterlife Interstate.
It’s a Rod McKuen meets the Grim Reaper kind of song: MacArthur Park on the Day of the Dead.
I could go on.
Lord knows I could go on and on.
But I know you probably need as much time as you can find, for the other lists that the others are asking you to consider at this time of year: the disaster lists, the war lists, the signs of the Apocalypse list, and so on.
Somebody should be put in charge of making an official master list of lists, that busy people like yourself could consult at their leisure.
After all, at some point, we’ve got to stop making and reading lists, and start living again.
Put that somewhere on your list.
If that was going to be the subject of my column this week you’d have every right to stop reading right here. After all, in terms of other people (meaning the others who are or at some point were on somebody else’s list of significant people) I don’t really qualify as one of the better or most significant people who every year at this time make up those lists.
But I’m not going to do that – not exactly.
Instead I’m going to list those things, people, events, and random occurrences that during the past year (or whenever I feel like it) had meaning for ME – meaning the actual me, not a royal me, or an omniscient me. Just me: an admittedly egotistical me who’s annual lists of the best and worst don’t usually coincide with the other’s lists.
Person of the Year
It’s unanimous. Once again it’s Mary, my wife. The bread winner, the bread
maker, the shake your money maker. I could go on, but she would kill me.
Beer of the Year
The Old Speckled Hen. It comes in those cans that have a nitrogen dispenser built in to the bottom, so you get a real creamy head. Man that was good, Bob.
Year of the Year
I believe we’re on a 35 year cycle. That is, fashion – in music, clothes, and the arts, repeats itself every thirty five years. So this year was really 1971, which was a very significant year for me. I was 16, the Stone’s Exile on Main Street had just come out, and my dad was in Vietnam sending home articles about the dangers of marijuana use.
Sports Event of the Year
It has to have been my first round of golf in ten years. I went out with two brothers-in-law and a friend, and managed a very respectable 126 at Waverly Oaks. If I continue to play once every ten years, I know I can get it down to the high 110’s or so.
Gadget of the Year
Heelies. I know the school custodians don’t like them, but I see them as a kind of crowd control device. Did you ever notice how kids with heelies are quieter than other kids? I’d be in favor of building heelie parks, where large groups of pre-teens could glide silently back and forth for hours and hours while their parents golf. I wonder if someone could invent gloves that light up and quietly hum when you softly clap them together?
Fast Food of the Year
I haven’t had any, but I like the idea of those bowls that KFC offers, layered with just about everything they make. I have this idea for a restaurant chain called “Left Overs”, where everything on the menu is meant to taste like leftovers. Everything would be made in advance, and put together later. Our slogan would be ‘Not Just Comfort Food, Left Overs!’
Car of the Year
My vintage 93 Escort Wagon. The back left door doesn’t open, the trunk is a bowlful of rusted water, it doesn’t even have a cassette player, loses traction in a quarter inch of snow, makes a god-awful whining, grinding noise if you don’t give it an hour to warm up, and smells like the inside of a Clean Harbors truck - but it starts up every morning and takes me across the bridge to the sanitarium.
Our old Camry came in a close second: it looks better than the Escort and drives well, but cost me over two thousand to keep on the road this year.
If my well had wheels it would have been the runaway winner.
Movie of the Year
My movie rating system usually does not go beyond three levels. At the bottom with one kernel of unpopped popcorn is Not That Bad, followed by two kernels of unpopped popcorn which translates to A Waste of Time, followed by three kernels, which are only given out to films that reach the pinnacle of my diminished expectations – Remarkably Bad. This year the film Lady in the Water received an almost unheard of four kernels of unpopped popcorn. It was, truly, Worse than I Expected.
Song of the Year
My rating system for songs, is similar to my rating system for movies. I’m really only interested in talking about songs I dislike. If I like a song, I don’t want to talk about it, I want to listen to it.
That said, Death Cab for Cutie’s morose and melodic I’ll Follow You Into the Dark is a remarkably indulgent embrace of meaninglessness. For no particular reason, with a muddled philosophical perspective, and with bright and cheery acoustic guitar accompaniment, this song looks forward to the day when the singer will gladly join a generic ‘love’ when her cosmic GPS malfunctions and she ends up spending eternity at a rest stop on the Afterlife Interstate.
It’s a Rod McKuen meets the Grim Reaper kind of song: MacArthur Park on the Day of the Dead.
I could go on.
Lord knows I could go on and on.
But I know you probably need as much time as you can find, for the other lists that the others are asking you to consider at this time of year: the disaster lists, the war lists, the signs of the Apocalypse list, and so on.
Somebody should be put in charge of making an official master list of lists, that busy people like yourself could consult at their leisure.
After all, at some point, we’ve got to stop making and reading lists, and start living again.
Put that somewhere on your list.
First Footing
• Fresh!
• Best Used by December 31, 2007.
• From Scratch.
• No fillers.
• Like new.
• No, actually new.
• Unheard of!
• Newly minted.
• Still warm.
• Off the top of my head?
• Out of thin air.
• Working without a net.
• A leap of faith.
• Boldly going where no one has gone before because, well, it wasn’t there yesterday.
• A shock to the senses.
• A break from the past.
• Startling.
• Un-nerving.
• Out of the ordinary.
Sounds expensive, doesn’t it?
Ah yes, the New Year holds such promise.
It’s a do-over, a cosmic Mulligan, a last minute reprieve from the ‘Governor’, a get-out-of-jail free card, a pass go and collect $200 and moon the ticket taker as you fly by kind of feeling.
• A Gold Card with no limit.
• The key, as Willie Dixon sings, to the highway.
Or it’s hell.
• The Highway to Hell.
• No Exit.
In the play by Sartre, the lesbian loves the woman who loves the man who loves the lesbian – and they have only each other, for an eternity of New Years.
• A vicious cycle.
• A closed loop.
• A windowless room.
• A revolving door.
• A bummer man!
• The same old same old.
• A nauseating ride on a Merry Go Round and Round and Round.
In Scotland the old folks take New Years very seriously. They have a holiday, of sorts, that they call ‘First Footing’.
You know how it goes: if you get off on the wrong foot, if you get out of bed on the wrong side, if you step on a crack it’s not just your mother who is going to pay.
I was once riding as a passenger in the front seat of a Plymouth Valiant that turned up a hill in Braintree in to the last rays of the setting sun and one spear of sunlight caught the windshield at precisely the right angle so that it seemed to snare itself on a small, almost imperceptible gouge in the glass – probably where a small stone had glanced off it some time before, and the gleam caught my eye and, before I knew what I was doing – like a bullfrog snapping at a shiny lure a sadistic boy had dropped in front of it, I tapped the illuminated spot lightly with just the tip of my right index finger and the crack made a high pitched moan and instantly spidered out across the entire windshield.
Know what I mean?
Have you ever run out onto an icy pond and realized, at the last moment, that the ice is a bit on the thin side?
Have you ever heard the ice singing, like whales sounding the deep, and realized that what you were hearing was the sound of gaps, fissures, and imperfections in what you thought was a solid mass: the sound of its slow, but inevitable destruction?
That’s what can happen, the old Scots believe, if you don’t treat the New Year with respect.
Those first few hours of the New Year are fragile.
In the first dawning of January reality has just come out of the oven of the universe and needs a few weeks to cool and set up properly.
• Disturb it before it has set and, nothing good can happen.
• Walk on it too soon, and it will give way.
• Laugh too loudly and your appliances will begin to fail, one by one.
• Your well will run dry.
• Your tires will all go flat.
And so these superstitious folk make special preparations for the New Year, and for the first visitors who come to call.
They may never entertain another soul the rest of the year but the first person to come through their door in the New Year is treated like the prodigal son: lavished with gifts, given the best whisky to drink, the chair by the fire, even allowed to hold the remote.
They err on the side of caution.
Even paranoid people are not wrong all of the time.
Who knows who this visitor really is?
That first friendly face may hide a demon, in disguise.
Or an angel on the lam.
A neighbor they want to impress.
Treat him or her or it right and everything that follows will be dewy and fresh and sparkling, and you will feel the same the entire year.
Slip up and those visitors may never leave.
Do you have a friend, or a family member who happened to show up on New Year’s Day and has never left?
Or a stray cat that wandered in that day?
• Squirrels in the attic?
• Turkeys in the yard?
Did you have a good year?
Make sure you get off on the right foot.
• Best Used by December 31, 2007.
• From Scratch.
• No fillers.
• Like new.
• No, actually new.
• Unheard of!
• Newly minted.
• Still warm.
• Off the top of my head?
• Out of thin air.
• Working without a net.
• A leap of faith.
• Boldly going where no one has gone before because, well, it wasn’t there yesterday.
• A shock to the senses.
• A break from the past.
• Startling.
• Un-nerving.
• Out of the ordinary.
Sounds expensive, doesn’t it?
Ah yes, the New Year holds such promise.
It’s a do-over, a cosmic Mulligan, a last minute reprieve from the ‘Governor’, a get-out-of-jail free card, a pass go and collect $200 and moon the ticket taker as you fly by kind of feeling.
• A Gold Card with no limit.
• The key, as Willie Dixon sings, to the highway.
Or it’s hell.
• The Highway to Hell.
• No Exit.
In the play by Sartre, the lesbian loves the woman who loves the man who loves the lesbian – and they have only each other, for an eternity of New Years.
• A vicious cycle.
• A closed loop.
• A windowless room.
• A revolving door.
• A bummer man!
• The same old same old.
• A nauseating ride on a Merry Go Round and Round and Round.
In Scotland the old folks take New Years very seriously. They have a holiday, of sorts, that they call ‘First Footing’.
You know how it goes: if you get off on the wrong foot, if you get out of bed on the wrong side, if you step on a crack it’s not just your mother who is going to pay.
I was once riding as a passenger in the front seat of a Plymouth Valiant that turned up a hill in Braintree in to the last rays of the setting sun and one spear of sunlight caught the windshield at precisely the right angle so that it seemed to snare itself on a small, almost imperceptible gouge in the glass – probably where a small stone had glanced off it some time before, and the gleam caught my eye and, before I knew what I was doing – like a bullfrog snapping at a shiny lure a sadistic boy had dropped in front of it, I tapped the illuminated spot lightly with just the tip of my right index finger and the crack made a high pitched moan and instantly spidered out across the entire windshield.
Know what I mean?
Have you ever run out onto an icy pond and realized, at the last moment, that the ice is a bit on the thin side?
Have you ever heard the ice singing, like whales sounding the deep, and realized that what you were hearing was the sound of gaps, fissures, and imperfections in what you thought was a solid mass: the sound of its slow, but inevitable destruction?
That’s what can happen, the old Scots believe, if you don’t treat the New Year with respect.
Those first few hours of the New Year are fragile.
In the first dawning of January reality has just come out of the oven of the universe and needs a few weeks to cool and set up properly.
• Disturb it before it has set and, nothing good can happen.
• Walk on it too soon, and it will give way.
• Laugh too loudly and your appliances will begin to fail, one by one.
• Your well will run dry.
• Your tires will all go flat.
And so these superstitious folk make special preparations for the New Year, and for the first visitors who come to call.
They may never entertain another soul the rest of the year but the first person to come through their door in the New Year is treated like the prodigal son: lavished with gifts, given the best whisky to drink, the chair by the fire, even allowed to hold the remote.
They err on the side of caution.
Even paranoid people are not wrong all of the time.
Who knows who this visitor really is?
That first friendly face may hide a demon, in disguise.
Or an angel on the lam.
A neighbor they want to impress.
Treat him or her or it right and everything that follows will be dewy and fresh and sparkling, and you will feel the same the entire year.
Slip up and those visitors may never leave.
Do you have a friend, or a family member who happened to show up on New Year’s Day and has never left?
Or a stray cat that wandered in that day?
• Squirrels in the attic?
• Turkeys in the yard?
Did you have a good year?
Make sure you get off on the right foot.
The American Wii
I’ve got my Wii, but it wasn’t easy, or should I say, it wasn’t easii.
I struck out using the traditional methods of shopping – that is, going to the store and saying, ‘I’d like one of those, pliise’.
I’m pretty stubborn: I actually spent a week going from store to store, thinking that was how it was done.
The clerk at the Wal-Mart just laughed and turned awii.
The associate at Target actually looked a little perturbed.
The Geek at Best Buy looked furtively from side to side, and then gave me her business card.
“No problemii”, she whispered, then winked.
Humiliated and running low on gas, I gave up.
When I got home from my last attempt to physically shop, I went online and typed in the URL that the Geek had on her card.
A brand new Wii, in an unopened box, could be had for just $1100.
I passed.
The next morning I got up at dawn and drove Plymouth’s very own ‘Green Mile’: you know, the ten mile strip of national retail box stores that stretches from Long Pond Road, to Route 80, down Colony Place, and up to the Kingston border.
I was looking for the tell-tale signs that a Wii may have been spotted nearby.
The Five’s were totally Wii-less.
Circuit City and Wal-Mart were quiet, too quiet.
Best Buy was closed, but around the backside of the mall I found that Target was encircled by a long line of carefree teens, disoriented grandparents, and well meaning but late-arriving fathers – in that order.
Pathetically, I joined the line and waited for an hour until the official announcement that they had only 15 units to sell.
I felt like Marlon Brando in ‘On the Waterfront’: beaten down, left out in the cold, not even a contendah.
What’s a guy got to do to get one of those things?
Where was Karl Malden when you needed him?
I drove home and immediately called my Tech Guru, PeeVee: my sister’s thirteen year old son.
PeeVee was kind, though I sensed that he too was smirking, on the other end of the line.
Reluctantly, he told me about a special ‘bot’ that constantly scoured the Internet for Wii tracks, and reported every sighting via email.
“But you have to be quick,” he said, like a Vet delivering the bad news about old Fido, “or they’ll be gone.”
Despite PeeVee’s pessimism, I endeavored to persevere.
I logged on, signed up, and waited.
Five were spotted at Amazon.com, but before I could click on ‘Add to Cart’, that phrase disappeared, replaced momentarily (I swear) by “Too Slow, Old Fahrt”.
Seven were spotted at Best Buy’s Web Site, but when the page loaded the image wouldn’t click.
I rolled my mouse from top to bottom, hoping that they had left a minute section of the image clickable, but the pointer never changed.
Four were available on E-Bay, but the price was still above my pay grade.
After an hour of that particular torture, I was ready to give up.
A Playstation 2 could be had for cheap money, I told myself.
There were X-Boxes aplenty, stacked up behind the glass door.
Instead of giving up though, I made one last try.
I went on the ‘Black Net’, and used the illegal search engine “Gurgle”.
I typed in “Wii Wii Wii, All the Way Home”.
The screen went black, a synthesized fanfare sounded, and a web site that appeared to originate from Inner Mongolia appeared on the screen.
There was a picture of a Yurt – the round, portable home that nomadic Mongolians live in, and in the middle of the one big round room a family of five was playing video games.
…
So I got my Wii, but I think I got much more in the bargain.
It’s like I have a whole new familii.
I don’t see much of Lao-Tsi, his wife, or their three kids, but we stay in close touch as he travels the country, buying the hottest items.
I provide the cash, as needed.
He’s got it all over the competition – even well-to-do teens. He and his family can camp out for weeks, if need be, in their Yurt.
When the goods move to another store, or another mall, the Yurt and family pack up easily on to three ponies.
And with five family members, even being restricted to one Wii, or Playstation, or Elmo per customer, has no effect on our profitability.
I know a lot of people are upset that illegal immigrants are taking our jobs, using our services, crowding our schools.
But you’ve got to love a people willing to stand in line so you can stay home and play video games.
It’s the American wii.
I struck out using the traditional methods of shopping – that is, going to the store and saying, ‘I’d like one of those, pliise’.
I’m pretty stubborn: I actually spent a week going from store to store, thinking that was how it was done.
The clerk at the Wal-Mart just laughed and turned awii.
The associate at Target actually looked a little perturbed.
The Geek at Best Buy looked furtively from side to side, and then gave me her business card.
“No problemii”, she whispered, then winked.
Humiliated and running low on gas, I gave up.
When I got home from my last attempt to physically shop, I went online and typed in the URL that the Geek had on her card.
A brand new Wii, in an unopened box, could be had for just $1100.
I passed.
The next morning I got up at dawn and drove Plymouth’s very own ‘Green Mile’: you know, the ten mile strip of national retail box stores that stretches from Long Pond Road, to Route 80, down Colony Place, and up to the Kingston border.
I was looking for the tell-tale signs that a Wii may have been spotted nearby.
The Five’s were totally Wii-less.
Circuit City and Wal-Mart were quiet, too quiet.
Best Buy was closed, but around the backside of the mall I found that Target was encircled by a long line of carefree teens, disoriented grandparents, and well meaning but late-arriving fathers – in that order.
Pathetically, I joined the line and waited for an hour until the official announcement that they had only 15 units to sell.
I felt like Marlon Brando in ‘On the Waterfront’: beaten down, left out in the cold, not even a contendah.
What’s a guy got to do to get one of those things?
Where was Karl Malden when you needed him?
I drove home and immediately called my Tech Guru, PeeVee: my sister’s thirteen year old son.
PeeVee was kind, though I sensed that he too was smirking, on the other end of the line.
Reluctantly, he told me about a special ‘bot’ that constantly scoured the Internet for Wii tracks, and reported every sighting via email.
“But you have to be quick,” he said, like a Vet delivering the bad news about old Fido, “or they’ll be gone.”
Despite PeeVee’s pessimism, I endeavored to persevere.
I logged on, signed up, and waited.
Five were spotted at Amazon.com, but before I could click on ‘Add to Cart’, that phrase disappeared, replaced momentarily (I swear) by “Too Slow, Old Fahrt”.
Seven were spotted at Best Buy’s Web Site, but when the page loaded the image wouldn’t click.
I rolled my mouse from top to bottom, hoping that they had left a minute section of the image clickable, but the pointer never changed.
Four were available on E-Bay, but the price was still above my pay grade.
After an hour of that particular torture, I was ready to give up.
A Playstation 2 could be had for cheap money, I told myself.
There were X-Boxes aplenty, stacked up behind the glass door.
Instead of giving up though, I made one last try.
I went on the ‘Black Net’, and used the illegal search engine “Gurgle”.
I typed in “Wii Wii Wii, All the Way Home”.
The screen went black, a synthesized fanfare sounded, and a web site that appeared to originate from Inner Mongolia appeared on the screen.
There was a picture of a Yurt – the round, portable home that nomadic Mongolians live in, and in the middle of the one big round room a family of five was playing video games.
…
So I got my Wii, but I think I got much more in the bargain.
It’s like I have a whole new familii.
I don’t see much of Lao-Tsi, his wife, or their three kids, but we stay in close touch as he travels the country, buying the hottest items.
I provide the cash, as needed.
He’s got it all over the competition – even well-to-do teens. He and his family can camp out for weeks, if need be, in their Yurt.
When the goods move to another store, or another mall, the Yurt and family pack up easily on to three ponies.
And with five family members, even being restricted to one Wii, or Playstation, or Elmo per customer, has no effect on our profitability.
I know a lot of people are upset that illegal immigrants are taking our jobs, using our services, crowding our schools.
But you’ve got to love a people willing to stand in line so you can stay home and play video games.
It’s the American wii.
All I Want for Christmas
All I want for Christmas is, what: intellectual justifications, emotional rationalizations, and the big box of all-purpose excuses?
Those would be good, but I want more, a lot more.
I know, I know, I want too much. But what’s wrong with that?
Maybe if they had waited until Christmas to announce that Bolton was going to resign, that Rumsfeld was headed out the door, and that Frist’s Presidential campaign was over before it had begun, I might have been satisfied.
You know how it is with your kids: if you open up any presents early, they’re still going to want the same amount of presents under the tree. You’re not going to be able to argue with them reasonably, because the great gift of childhood is the absence of reason, or logic, from every facet of their lives.
And, to be perfectly frank, that’s what I really want for Christmas: that feeling that anything is possible, no matter what.
I want it not to matter whether I’ve been good or bad.
I want it not to matter if I’ve been naughty or nice.
And so it doesn’t really matter what I get: I just want the gift of feeling that I can ask for anything.
Okay, so I accept that this sounds a bit pathetic, a bit too much like the guy who suddenly wakes up on his fortieth birthday and has an uncontrollable desire for a Porsche. But I swear it’s not like that.
Maybe it’s like that new fangled laughter therapy.
I personally don’t think much of a bunch of middle aged people getting together on the beach and pretending to laugh.
I look at those people and think, laugh now, but as soon as you get home from your Laughter Course, the phone is going to ring and it’s going to be the police saying that your kid’s been picked up for speeding and..
I don’t think you can fake laughter.
I don’t think you can fake tears.
But you have to start somewhere.
For adults it’s easy to get out of the habit of laughing or crying, or asking for things we can’t afford.
But I think there’s a point in just asking.
I believe there is a value in understanding and then openly expressing your desires.
There may be nothing worse than losing touch with what you really want. Because if you do, and suddenly someone or something reminds you what it is you really want – you’re going to be angry and looking for someone to blame.
So I am going to make a point this year of asking - out loud, for things I really want: whether there’s any chance they’ll be in my stocking Christmas morning.
Ready?
I want a Karmann Ghia.
I once heard someone call it, the ‘poor man’s Porsche’.
But it’s less than that.
The Karmann Ghia is a kind of automotive transvestite.
It’s a Volkswagen Beetle trapped in a sport’s cards body.
It’s a slow, unsophisticated antique of a car, but I’ve always loved the way it looks. I like cheap things that are well made. Like a toy ray gun that makes a cool whirring noise and lights up: the Karmann Ghia is the toy raygun of cars.
I want to go to India – for at least a month.
Yes, it’s a mess of a country, with hundreds of millions of desperately poor people, a history so rich it makes ours look like the footnotes on a baseball card, and beauty that I fully expect would overwhelm me.
But I like being overwhelmed.
I’d like to record a blues album. I say this to my friends, fairly regularly, and they don’t take me seriously. But I have a feel for the blues, a passable voice, and friends that are musically gifted.
Instead of blowing a few hundred dollars on a few hours of golf, let’s get some studio time instead.
Which reminds me: I’d like to take saxophone lessons.
I once sat outside the Baltimore Civic Center and realized that the screech of tires that I heard echoing through the concrete city plaza where we were recovering from the intensity of the concert that had just finished, sounded very much like the notes that saxophonist Wayne Shorter had voiced earlier that evening.
The saxophone, I thought at that moment, was the voice of the world: it could sound like a woman in love, a man pretending not to be afraid, a car rounding a corner, or a distant rain cloud perforated by lightning.
Oh, and I’ll need a saxophone too.
Time Travel.
I want to go back in time to several places where I was not able to say just what I wanted, or express myself with sufficient clarity at a critical time: the places where I disappointed myself.
On the afternoon a few days before Christmas in 1975 - for example, when my mother first became sick and, lacking the proper words, I instead made her a grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich that she promptly threw up;
On the day of my best friend Mike’s wedding when, as Best Man, I was supposed to say something meaningful;
In Chestnut Hill, when Mary and I first decided to get married and I just took it for granted we would.
I guess I am philosophical enough to accept that I was young and stupid – once, but I’d still like the ability to go back and, at the very least, apologize for my lack of eloquence.
It would be nice, too, to have a little shack out back, in the woods behind our house, where I could devote myself more seriously to asking for things.
I’d like to tell my friends Mike and Patty how much I love them,.
I’d like you to know how sweet my friends Dan and Sally are.
I’d like to be better father, a better husband, and have the time to hike the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine.
Yeah, I know, I want a lot: but it feels good to want so much; it makes me feel like a kid, again.
Who could ask for anything more?
Those would be good, but I want more, a lot more.
I know, I know, I want too much. But what’s wrong with that?
Maybe if they had waited until Christmas to announce that Bolton was going to resign, that Rumsfeld was headed out the door, and that Frist’s Presidential campaign was over before it had begun, I might have been satisfied.
You know how it is with your kids: if you open up any presents early, they’re still going to want the same amount of presents under the tree. You’re not going to be able to argue with them reasonably, because the great gift of childhood is the absence of reason, or logic, from every facet of their lives.
And, to be perfectly frank, that’s what I really want for Christmas: that feeling that anything is possible, no matter what.
I want it not to matter whether I’ve been good or bad.
I want it not to matter if I’ve been naughty or nice.
And so it doesn’t really matter what I get: I just want the gift of feeling that I can ask for anything.
Okay, so I accept that this sounds a bit pathetic, a bit too much like the guy who suddenly wakes up on his fortieth birthday and has an uncontrollable desire for a Porsche. But I swear it’s not like that.
Maybe it’s like that new fangled laughter therapy.
I personally don’t think much of a bunch of middle aged people getting together on the beach and pretending to laugh.
I look at those people and think, laugh now, but as soon as you get home from your Laughter Course, the phone is going to ring and it’s going to be the police saying that your kid’s been picked up for speeding and..
I don’t think you can fake laughter.
I don’t think you can fake tears.
But you have to start somewhere.
For adults it’s easy to get out of the habit of laughing or crying, or asking for things we can’t afford.
But I think there’s a point in just asking.
I believe there is a value in understanding and then openly expressing your desires.
There may be nothing worse than losing touch with what you really want. Because if you do, and suddenly someone or something reminds you what it is you really want – you’re going to be angry and looking for someone to blame.
So I am going to make a point this year of asking - out loud, for things I really want: whether there’s any chance they’ll be in my stocking Christmas morning.
Ready?
I want a Karmann Ghia.
I once heard someone call it, the ‘poor man’s Porsche’.
But it’s less than that.
The Karmann Ghia is a kind of automotive transvestite.
It’s a Volkswagen Beetle trapped in a sport’s cards body.
It’s a slow, unsophisticated antique of a car, but I’ve always loved the way it looks. I like cheap things that are well made. Like a toy ray gun that makes a cool whirring noise and lights up: the Karmann Ghia is the toy raygun of cars.
I want to go to India – for at least a month.
Yes, it’s a mess of a country, with hundreds of millions of desperately poor people, a history so rich it makes ours look like the footnotes on a baseball card, and beauty that I fully expect would overwhelm me.
But I like being overwhelmed.
I’d like to record a blues album. I say this to my friends, fairly regularly, and they don’t take me seriously. But I have a feel for the blues, a passable voice, and friends that are musically gifted.
Instead of blowing a few hundred dollars on a few hours of golf, let’s get some studio time instead.
Which reminds me: I’d like to take saxophone lessons.
I once sat outside the Baltimore Civic Center and realized that the screech of tires that I heard echoing through the concrete city plaza where we were recovering from the intensity of the concert that had just finished, sounded very much like the notes that saxophonist Wayne Shorter had voiced earlier that evening.
The saxophone, I thought at that moment, was the voice of the world: it could sound like a woman in love, a man pretending not to be afraid, a car rounding a corner, or a distant rain cloud perforated by lightning.
Oh, and I’ll need a saxophone too.
Time Travel.
I want to go back in time to several places where I was not able to say just what I wanted, or express myself with sufficient clarity at a critical time: the places where I disappointed myself.
On the afternoon a few days before Christmas in 1975 - for example, when my mother first became sick and, lacking the proper words, I instead made her a grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich that she promptly threw up;
On the day of my best friend Mike’s wedding when, as Best Man, I was supposed to say something meaningful;
In Chestnut Hill, when Mary and I first decided to get married and I just took it for granted we would.
I guess I am philosophical enough to accept that I was young and stupid – once, but I’d still like the ability to go back and, at the very least, apologize for my lack of eloquence.
It would be nice, too, to have a little shack out back, in the woods behind our house, where I could devote myself more seriously to asking for things.
I’d like to tell my friends Mike and Patty how much I love them,.
I’d like you to know how sweet my friends Dan and Sally are.
I’d like to be better father, a better husband, and have the time to hike the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine.
Yeah, I know, I want a lot: but it feels good to want so much; it makes me feel like a kid, again.
Who could ask for anything more?
A Few Good Words
Got any good words that you don’t want other people to know about?
Come on, you can tell me.
I’ve got some of my own, that maybe I could show you, if you’re nice: and if I trust you.
I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.
Just a peek?
Oh no, I understand. I feel the same way. There’s so few good words left that haven’t already been, what would the word be – appropriated?
Conservative? No way.
Liberal? Yikes!
Insurgency?
Just a few years back, ‘insurgency’ was a pretty good word: nice shine, fairly rare usage, with a certain pungent tone that reminded me of the way Hoisin sauce sets off roast duck. Used to be that when you heard ‘insurgency’ your ears stood up, and your pupils dilated.
But then they took it, strapped it down, and beat it until it gave up its secrets – or what passed for secrets. And now, who the hell knows what insurgency is supposed to mean?
Language used to be the last frontier: a remote, vast plateau of natural wonders that seemed impossible to encompass in a single life. And maybe it still us, but like the thieves who cut down rare cacti to sell to garden centers or landscapers, some of our best words are being chopped down and burned on the bonfires of politics.
It’s not funny. It’s very serious. Remember the rainforest: we may be the first generation to see vast forests of language cut down, stacked up, and turned into what the British call ‘bumf’ (I got that word out of my secret stash)
How can this be happening?
Perhaps it’s for the same reason that there are people who still believe, wholeheartedly, that we never went to the moon – that government officials staged the landing on a soundstage in Hollywood.
Most of us haven’t experienced those distant worlds, or visited the outer realms of our own language, so we are vulnerable to the re-definers.
The re-definers?
I made that word up. Yeah, I could do better, but it does have a certain crass, direct quality I think, and that fits my purpose.
Re-definers are not interested in subtlety. They are not interested in using words for greater understanding but, rather, for a specific understanding.
They take words to the slaughterhouse, then grind them into hamburger, then add all sorts of fillers and seasoning until it suits their purpose.
So there is perhaps a certain irony that the latest word to be rounded up, is ‘hunger’.
God, I may be dating myself, but I can remember a time when ‘hunger’, the word, was almost as powerful as actual hunger: when mother’s scolded their children with stories of millions starving in India.
Of course that’s’ the point of language, isn’t it? Words are supposed to have power.
In time all words are stripped of their power, through overuse, or other cultural factors – and when that happens they are blown from our consciousness as easily as dust off the furniture.
But most words live for a great long time, for hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years, evolving with the times.
Hunger, of course, is an ancient word that has stood its ground (from the Old English ‘hungor’) – and a word that has survived for obvious reasons. How can the word disappear, when its meaning persists in our reality?
How is that possible?
And yet, according to a government report, hunger doesn’t exist.
According to the lexicologists in the Bush Administration 35 million Americans no longer are hungry but, instead, have “very low food security”.
According to former Banking Industry lobbyist Katie Coler – appointed by Bush to be an Undersecretary of the US Department of Agriculture, the intent was to end the confusion as to whether the numbers cited in their annual report on ‘Food Security” estimated the number of people who were actually hungry, or those experiencing difficulty ‘accessing’ food.
“I think it passes the common sense test,” Coler told ABC News, “in that it does identify there is a need, and we do recognize that there are individuals in this country who face need from time to time.”
So by “need”, we are left to wonder, does Coler mean hunger, or food insecurity?
And by “recognition”, does Coler mean the kind of recognition that we experience when we see a homeless person on the street, and step over them, or the kind of recognition that a ‘Food Insecurity Specialist’ has, when they are confronted with a large number of the shelter-challenged, and step over them?
And by ‘thumpin’ does President Bush mean to say his administration was rejected, or beaten, or repudiated? Or is he really a bit more sly than that, and in fact deliberately using a soft, colloquial expression, so he can shuffle his feet, and smirk and pretend that nothing serious has happened to him, and that nothing serious is going to happen to the 35 million hungry, or the 45 million uninsured, or the 150 million who owe more to the credit card companies than their parents every earned in an entire year?
Which brings us back to insurgency.
No, not the alleged insurgency of those poor saps in Iraq, but of the poor saps at home.
Insurgency, as in ‘active revolt’.
Insurgency, as in the sea, ‘rushing in’.
Insurgency, as in the need to reclaim our words – and our world, from the politicians and the marketers; the need to recognize what is going on, rise up, roll in, and wash away these ‘re-definers’.
Or maybe what we need is a civil war.
I guess it depends on how you define it.
Come on, you can tell me.
I’ve got some of my own, that maybe I could show you, if you’re nice: and if I trust you.
I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.
Just a peek?
Oh no, I understand. I feel the same way. There’s so few good words left that haven’t already been, what would the word be – appropriated?
Conservative? No way.
Liberal? Yikes!
Insurgency?
Just a few years back, ‘insurgency’ was a pretty good word: nice shine, fairly rare usage, with a certain pungent tone that reminded me of the way Hoisin sauce sets off roast duck. Used to be that when you heard ‘insurgency’ your ears stood up, and your pupils dilated.
But then they took it, strapped it down, and beat it until it gave up its secrets – or what passed for secrets. And now, who the hell knows what insurgency is supposed to mean?
Language used to be the last frontier: a remote, vast plateau of natural wonders that seemed impossible to encompass in a single life. And maybe it still us, but like the thieves who cut down rare cacti to sell to garden centers or landscapers, some of our best words are being chopped down and burned on the bonfires of politics.
It’s not funny. It’s very serious. Remember the rainforest: we may be the first generation to see vast forests of language cut down, stacked up, and turned into what the British call ‘bumf’ (I got that word out of my secret stash)
How can this be happening?
Perhaps it’s for the same reason that there are people who still believe, wholeheartedly, that we never went to the moon – that government officials staged the landing on a soundstage in Hollywood.
Most of us haven’t experienced those distant worlds, or visited the outer realms of our own language, so we are vulnerable to the re-definers.
The re-definers?
I made that word up. Yeah, I could do better, but it does have a certain crass, direct quality I think, and that fits my purpose.
Re-definers are not interested in subtlety. They are not interested in using words for greater understanding but, rather, for a specific understanding.
They take words to the slaughterhouse, then grind them into hamburger, then add all sorts of fillers and seasoning until it suits their purpose.
So there is perhaps a certain irony that the latest word to be rounded up, is ‘hunger’.
God, I may be dating myself, but I can remember a time when ‘hunger’, the word, was almost as powerful as actual hunger: when mother’s scolded their children with stories of millions starving in India.
Of course that’s’ the point of language, isn’t it? Words are supposed to have power.
In time all words are stripped of their power, through overuse, or other cultural factors – and when that happens they are blown from our consciousness as easily as dust off the furniture.
But most words live for a great long time, for hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years, evolving with the times.
Hunger, of course, is an ancient word that has stood its ground (from the Old English ‘hungor’) – and a word that has survived for obvious reasons. How can the word disappear, when its meaning persists in our reality?
How is that possible?
And yet, according to a government report, hunger doesn’t exist.
According to the lexicologists in the Bush Administration 35 million Americans no longer are hungry but, instead, have “very low food security”.
According to former Banking Industry lobbyist Katie Coler – appointed by Bush to be an Undersecretary of the US Department of Agriculture, the intent was to end the confusion as to whether the numbers cited in their annual report on ‘Food Security” estimated the number of people who were actually hungry, or those experiencing difficulty ‘accessing’ food.
“I think it passes the common sense test,” Coler told ABC News, “in that it does identify there is a need, and we do recognize that there are individuals in this country who face need from time to time.”
So by “need”, we are left to wonder, does Coler mean hunger, or food insecurity?
And by “recognition”, does Coler mean the kind of recognition that we experience when we see a homeless person on the street, and step over them, or the kind of recognition that a ‘Food Insecurity Specialist’ has, when they are confronted with a large number of the shelter-challenged, and step over them?
And by ‘thumpin’ does President Bush mean to say his administration was rejected, or beaten, or repudiated? Or is he really a bit more sly than that, and in fact deliberately using a soft, colloquial expression, so he can shuffle his feet, and smirk and pretend that nothing serious has happened to him, and that nothing serious is going to happen to the 35 million hungry, or the 45 million uninsured, or the 150 million who owe more to the credit card companies than their parents every earned in an entire year?
Which brings us back to insurgency.
No, not the alleged insurgency of those poor saps in Iraq, but of the poor saps at home.
Insurgency, as in ‘active revolt’.
Insurgency, as in the sea, ‘rushing in’.
Insurgency, as in the need to reclaim our words – and our world, from the politicians and the marketers; the need to recognize what is going on, rise up, roll in, and wash away these ‘re-definers’.
Or maybe what we need is a civil war.
I guess it depends on how you define it.
Pet of the Month
I’ll bet you didn’t know I own a penguin?
No, not the new Korean hybrid that gets 60 miles to the gallon: the half bird, half fish that is all the rage this year.
We call him ‘Stud’, which if you knew me, wouldn’t surprise you.
It has nothing to do with his procreative abilities, but came about in a typical round-about fashion.
The only penguin I knew, or at least knew of, before Stud, was Tennessee Tuxedo – a cartoon penguin from the Seventies, not a real one.
I can’t remember much about the cartoon, but when I hear the name Tennessee Tuxedo, the cartoon’s jingle replays in my brain.
So when he first arrived, and we let him out of his wooden box, and watched him amble about the house in what seemed a damn good imitation of the way John Wayne careened across the screen, Stud seemed the perfect name.
That is, like a thoroughbred, we named him Tennessee Stud, by way of Tennessee Tuxedo and John Wayne – and so ‘Stud’ for short.
Of course we liked the irony of the name too, as apart from his Wayne-like amble, Stud was decidedly un-masculine. Fish and birds have genders of course, but not in the same way that mammals do.
Know what I mean?
Actually maybe penguins can be masculine, but you wouldn’t think so.
You wouldn’t think penguins would make a good pet either, would you? Well, actually, they don’t.
But what makes a good pet does not necessarily make a popular pet.
Pets used to be companions, but I think that definition is passé, today. Now pets are like tattoos, or motorcycles, or painful piercings: a personal statement of general indifference to both the world at large, and other people in general.
What better way to say ‘screw you’ to the world, than by parading about with a strange pet that is no pet all.
Penguins are just the latest version of the Pot Bellied Pig, and the Ferret, and the Boa Constrictor.
Remember how cool it once was, to own a Constrictor? No?
When I was a boy, shy kids had Boa Constrictors. They couldn’t parade them about, but they could invite people into their rooms to watch as they fed them live rats.
Pets have always run interference for their owners. But in the past there was at least the illusion that pet owners loved, or admired, or appreciated their pets.
Not any more.
So anyway, whatever the cultural implications are, I’m excited to be the first one in town with his own pet penguin.
We’ve actually owned ‘Stud’ for a few years now, but we never used to tell anybody about him because we were concerned what they would think.
Now everybody wants to have their own penguin – and can’t.
It’s illegal, for the most part. You have to get a special permit, or run an aquarium, or a circus, or show proof you’re a working animator.
But our penguin Stud is grandfathered in: meaning that we got him before they had laws saying we couldn’t.
Kind of like Timothy Leary, doing LSD at Harvard before anybody knew anything about it.
I actually was thinking about naming our next penguin, if we could get one, Timothy, or Tiny Tim, or Tennessee Tim..
I actually started out thinking this column would be a kind of guide to having a penguin as a pet.
We’ve learned a lot since we got Stud
For the first few months we didn’t know that if penguins don’t get in the water for a long time, they get kind of mangy looking. We thought Stud was sick, but he was really just dirty, in a penguin way. All we had to do was get him his own little inflatable pool and, in a few weeks, he was back to his oily penguin self again.
And as an added bonus, we don’t have to take down the inflatable pools we buy every summer, when the cold weather hits. And now the grubs that live under it – in that moist, smelly mange that used to be uncut, waxy grass, along with the creatures that fall into the stagnant water, save us a lot of money that would otherwise go to feed Stud.
Fresh fish are way too expensive.
And most everything else we’ve tried to feed him – even bits of choice gristle left over after family barbeques, didn’t interest him at all.
He likes it live, and wriggling.
Once a neighbor brought over some live bait, put it in his pool, and sure enough he went right in after it.
But nowadays he’s kind of lackadaisical about his food.
I don’t know what age he is, in penguin years, but lately he has a permanent bored, stupefied, ‘I-stayed-up-real-late-watching-bad-movies’ kind of look.
I guess you can’t blame him.
My older son tells me that some of the local kids feed him Slim Jims and beer when we’re away for the weekend.
And apart from the occasional snow, his dirty little rubber pool, and the squeals of the neighbor’s twin two-year olds, South Plymouth is not very Antarctic-like.
To be honest, I don’t think Stud’s long for this world.
Maybe we’ll have one last neighborhood barbeque before the cold weather hits – so we can show him off. Then we’ll drive him down to the Long Pond landing, and leave the door open.
It’s really too bad.
Just when Penguins are hot, old Stud’s about to feel the Big Chill.
I’m thinking about getting a tattoo in his honor.
“Stud”, inked in a heavy, black, gothic font, right beneath the one I got when we came home from the Caribbean cruise and found “Art Gecko” had passed away.
I may be old and in the way, but I’ve always had cool pets.
No, not the new Korean hybrid that gets 60 miles to the gallon: the half bird, half fish that is all the rage this year.
We call him ‘Stud’, which if you knew me, wouldn’t surprise you.
It has nothing to do with his procreative abilities, but came about in a typical round-about fashion.
The only penguin I knew, or at least knew of, before Stud, was Tennessee Tuxedo – a cartoon penguin from the Seventies, not a real one.
I can’t remember much about the cartoon, but when I hear the name Tennessee Tuxedo, the cartoon’s jingle replays in my brain.
So when he first arrived, and we let him out of his wooden box, and watched him amble about the house in what seemed a damn good imitation of the way John Wayne careened across the screen, Stud seemed the perfect name.
That is, like a thoroughbred, we named him Tennessee Stud, by way of Tennessee Tuxedo and John Wayne – and so ‘Stud’ for short.
Of course we liked the irony of the name too, as apart from his Wayne-like amble, Stud was decidedly un-masculine. Fish and birds have genders of course, but not in the same way that mammals do.
Know what I mean?
Actually maybe penguins can be masculine, but you wouldn’t think so.
You wouldn’t think penguins would make a good pet either, would you? Well, actually, they don’t.
But what makes a good pet does not necessarily make a popular pet.
Pets used to be companions, but I think that definition is passé, today. Now pets are like tattoos, or motorcycles, or painful piercings: a personal statement of general indifference to both the world at large, and other people in general.
What better way to say ‘screw you’ to the world, than by parading about with a strange pet that is no pet all.
Penguins are just the latest version of the Pot Bellied Pig, and the Ferret, and the Boa Constrictor.
Remember how cool it once was, to own a Constrictor? No?
When I was a boy, shy kids had Boa Constrictors. They couldn’t parade them about, but they could invite people into their rooms to watch as they fed them live rats.
Pets have always run interference for their owners. But in the past there was at least the illusion that pet owners loved, or admired, or appreciated their pets.
Not any more.
So anyway, whatever the cultural implications are, I’m excited to be the first one in town with his own pet penguin.
We’ve actually owned ‘Stud’ for a few years now, but we never used to tell anybody about him because we were concerned what they would think.
Now everybody wants to have their own penguin – and can’t.
It’s illegal, for the most part. You have to get a special permit, or run an aquarium, or a circus, or show proof you’re a working animator.
But our penguin Stud is grandfathered in: meaning that we got him before they had laws saying we couldn’t.
Kind of like Timothy Leary, doing LSD at Harvard before anybody knew anything about it.
I actually was thinking about naming our next penguin, if we could get one, Timothy, or Tiny Tim, or Tennessee Tim..
I actually started out thinking this column would be a kind of guide to having a penguin as a pet.
We’ve learned a lot since we got Stud
For the first few months we didn’t know that if penguins don’t get in the water for a long time, they get kind of mangy looking. We thought Stud was sick, but he was really just dirty, in a penguin way. All we had to do was get him his own little inflatable pool and, in a few weeks, he was back to his oily penguin self again.
And as an added bonus, we don’t have to take down the inflatable pools we buy every summer, when the cold weather hits. And now the grubs that live under it – in that moist, smelly mange that used to be uncut, waxy grass, along with the creatures that fall into the stagnant water, save us a lot of money that would otherwise go to feed Stud.
Fresh fish are way too expensive.
And most everything else we’ve tried to feed him – even bits of choice gristle left over after family barbeques, didn’t interest him at all.
He likes it live, and wriggling.
Once a neighbor brought over some live bait, put it in his pool, and sure enough he went right in after it.
But nowadays he’s kind of lackadaisical about his food.
I don’t know what age he is, in penguin years, but lately he has a permanent bored, stupefied, ‘I-stayed-up-real-late-watching-bad-movies’ kind of look.
I guess you can’t blame him.
My older son tells me that some of the local kids feed him Slim Jims and beer when we’re away for the weekend.
And apart from the occasional snow, his dirty little rubber pool, and the squeals of the neighbor’s twin two-year olds, South Plymouth is not very Antarctic-like.
To be honest, I don’t think Stud’s long for this world.
Maybe we’ll have one last neighborhood barbeque before the cold weather hits – so we can show him off. Then we’ll drive him down to the Long Pond landing, and leave the door open.
It’s really too bad.
Just when Penguins are hot, old Stud’s about to feel the Big Chill.
I’m thinking about getting a tattoo in his honor.
“Stud”, inked in a heavy, black, gothic font, right beneath the one I got when we came home from the Caribbean cruise and found “Art Gecko” had passed away.
I may be old and in the way, but I’ve always had cool pets.
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