MOON OVER ATLANTA

The Grand Staircase at the Westin Hotel in Buckhead.

Here’s a chance to test your Bloggy Knowledge: From left to right - Who are these people?

This photograph is as good as any for a Caption Contest. Let’s hear your best shot in the Comments.

GYM NAUSEAM

My friend Gary, like me, knows the Protocols and Etiquette of the Men’s Locker Room. You go in, take your shower, dry off, get dressed. Eyes above waist level. No unnecessary talking. These are The Rules. Unwritten they may be, but nonetheless engraved as if in iron.

But once in a while, someone will violate The Rules spectacularly.

I’m not talking about pissing in the shower (generally rude if there are no partitioned shower stalls, otherwise OK) or shaving in the steam room. That last one is usually frowned upon by Gymnasium Management, with signs posted prominently to that effect, but often ignored by those who know that there is no finer shave on the planet.

No, I’m talking about Freaky Behavior. Not the kind that will get you arrested, or punched in the cojones - but jes’ plain freaky.

And Gary seems to run into more than his share of these nutjobs.

Last week, he was in the locker room, cleaning up after a Sweaty Workout. And he noticed a guy who was using one of the blow dryers.

This, in itself, was not strange or unusual. The Management provides blow dryers so that their Male Clients may dry their hair after a shower.

But this guy was drying all of his hair.

Head hair. Armpit hair. Nutsack hair. Yep, he actually propped his foot up on a bench and started drying the Crotchly Area with that blow dryer.

Friends, this is simply not done.

But all Gary could do is shake his head in bemused wonderment. To confront the man would have violated the “No Unnecessary Talking” rule, which takes precedence over the “Do Not Gross Out The Clientele By Drying Your Nuts With The Blow Dryer” rule.

And besides, this is not the most heinous Locker Room Activity Gary has seen.

One time, as he was taking his shower, he noticed a gentleman get into one of the nearby shower stalls while still clad in his Tighty-Whities. OK, Gary thinks - some guys are modest. But this is where things get strange.

Once in the shower, the guy removes his briefs, then proceeds to soap them up (OK, this may be legitimate, too - washing your shorts in the shower isn’t too weird) and then uses them as a washcloth to wash himself. Armpits, ass, crotch, face, the works.

Eeeeeeeewwwwwwwww.

And when the guy finishes his shower, he steps out, wrings the pair of undershorts out, and puts them on again. Then he gets dressed, in a business suit, no less...with those damp, wrung-out (but presumably clean) briefs on underneath.

For my friend Gary, a real WTF Moment.

Just Damn!

BOGUS BUX

“It’s Crackers…to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide.” – MAD Magazine, late 1950’s

The obscure quotation above is supposed to mean “It’s crazy to pay off a cop in phony money.” It’s one of the bizarre catchphrases with which the MAD Magazine of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s was sprinkled...along with gems like “Potrzebie,” and “Osgood z’Beard.”

Most of us don’t ever see phony money, except for the occasional bad check. Fake currency is rare, but there’s an ever-evolving Arms Race between the counterfeiters and the people who print our greenbacks. As copier technology has become more sophisticated, the security devices incorporated in our currency have had to keep pace.

Today, at the local supermarket, I paid for my purchase, as is my custom, with my debit card. Since I needed to replenish my Portable Liquid Assets – folding money, you know – I asked for $20 cash back.

[Pernicious option, the old Cash Back. So easy it is, to tap into the Font o’ Funds right at the source, as it were. It’s a path that is fraught with danger…but I digress.]

The cashier handed me my Double Sawbuck...but immediately, I sensed that something wasn’t right.

The bill felt strange, as though the paper had a fuzzier, softer texture than the crisp bills we usually see. I held it close, the better for to eyeball it. It was one of those newfangled peachy-greeny twenties, the ones with Andy Jack’s smiling phiz unencased in a frame. But the colors were off...muted, they seemed.

Closer examination showed that the engraving was slightly blurry, lines broken. It didn’t look at all like the razor-sharp steel engraving on genuine currency. The color-shifting ink used to print certain devices on the face of the bill was absent. The watermark – a feature used for many years on many foreign currencies but only recently incorporated into ours – was missing, as was the thin plastic security thread.

I told the cashier, “Please give me a different $20 bill. This one is counterfeit...and you might want to let your management know.”

I got my (real) cash, and the bag boy took the bill over to the service desk. The manager looked at it and quickly agreed that it was bogus. I suggested that he report the matter to the police.

I feel bad for the cashier. The bill somehow had landed in her drawer, most likely by her accepting it from a previous customer. If somebody was going to be out $20, it was likely to be her. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that counterfeiting is a victimless crime.

I’ll cop to being a bit of a Coinage and Currency Nerd, but this is one time I’m happy to have been paying attention to my money. How about you? Could someone pass you Bogus Bux?

CARNIVAL OF THE CATS #96

The lovely and talented Meryl Yourish hosts the 96th Carnival of Kitties...this time, without the assistance of The Incredible Hulk.

NICE SHOES

Eric, the Straight White Guy, is notably proud of his Fancy Footgear, and I can see why.

Not everybody has the wherewithal to purchase Serious Shoes like Eric. I’m talking Big-Time here: exotic leathers, handcrafted construction, with an extreme level of Attention to Detail.

Picture this: a pair of lace-up Saddle Oxfords. “Brown” does not do justice to their rich, mellow tone, a color midway between burnt sienna and raw umber. Heels and toes are covered in buffalo hide. No, not just buffalo hide. Water buffalo hide, tanned with the finest Old-World techniques and New-World technology, with a Mohs hardness approaching that of feldspar. The saddles are done up in Wyoming elk leather, a rare and expensive alternative to the more common Bull Moose.

The real attention to detail shines through when you look at the eyelets. Each one is painstakingly hand-crafted from the carefully harvested Ringmeat Muscle of a free-range organic brown rat. Sure, farm-raised White Rat Sphincters are much less expensive and far easier to obtain, but at a trade-off in durability. Who wants frayed eyelets after a few thousand hours of wear?

The laces have the tensile strength of suspension bridge supports. Not surprising, since they are braided from the nose-hairs of wild goats that have been fed a diet rich in Steel Cans.

A pair of shoes like this will set you back a few bills, for sure. But Eric will tell you all day long, it’s worth it. No other shoe will hold up under the extreme conditions of his lifestyle. No other shoe is equally at home at the elegant bar at The Palm in Buckhead – Atlanta’s tony entertainment district – and the shit-filled back alleys of Bangladesh. No other shoe makes the ladies swoon and the men fume in envious rage.

Hush Puppies? Fuck’m. Hush Puppies are for poseurs, and Merrells are for Girlie-Men. These babies are shoes for Real Men. Even Manolo’s Shoe Blog agrees:

Manolo says, the Eric, he is the Man who is knowing the Manly Shoe, the Shoe that is so manly that it makes the Manolo to make the Painful Hemorrhoid from the excessive excitement.

You want a pair just like ’em, you say?

Get your order in early, and be prepared to unlimber your wallet. Them free-range rats is mighty hard to catch this time of year.

HAVEIL HAVALIM #54

The latest edition of Haveil Havalim, AKA “Vanity of Vanities,” is up at Random Thoughts.

CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES #75

is up at Morning Coffee & Afternoon Tea.

Perfect. Morning Coffee, Afternoon Tea, and Evening Kishka. Yummers!

PILLOW TALK

Oh, you were wanting to use this?

So sorry, it is occupied. Please be so kind as to wait whilst I simultaneously warm your pillow to a pleasant 90°F and deposit a quarter-pound of Cat Hair upon it.

Thankyew.

PARTS IS PARTS

...quoth the Perdue Chicken Man.

And all Parts is created equal.

But, as George Orwell might have said, some Parts is more equal than others.

Even if they’re not really Parts...but items parted from us.

I speak, of course, of William Shatner’s kidney stone, that self-same Stone that fetched upwards of $25,000, as reported just a few days ago. The happy owner is the GoldenPalace.com online casino, with the proceeds earmarked for donation to Habitat for Humanity.

[You can’t make this shit up, folks. Had it been April 1, I would have been convinced that it was a gag. But no.]

Not a bad price for a stone. Its former place of residence in Shatner’s ureter makes this unassuming lump of calcium oxalate more valuable than a water-white diamond.

With this precedent firmly established, think of the possibilities.

• Leonard Nimoy’s ear wax. [Given Spock’s huge ears, supplies should be more than sufficient to meet demand.]
  
• Mick Jagger’s nasal mucus.
  
• Michael Jordan’s toenail clippings.
  
• Britney Spears’s used tampons. [SOLD]
  
• Catfish’s hemorrhoid.

Heck, I might as well offer my parched, withered soul up for sale after having written this...because, like these other Objects, it is clearly a Mere Superfluity.

FRIDAY RANDOM TEN

The Eternal Weekly Cycle rolls ’round once again, bringing us to Friday, that most anticipated of days. (Well, among the most anticipated of days.) And thus we are pleased to present this week’s Random Assortment from the iPod d'Elisson:

1. Vega-Tables - Brian Wilson
   
2. Sunflowers - Paul Cantelon
   
3. Twilight - Squirrel Nut Zippers
   
4. Baby, I Need Your Lovin’ - The Four Tops
   
5. Heroin - The Velvet Underground
   
6. I Me Mine - The Beatles
   
7. Look at You Look at Me - Dave Mason
   
8. Wacky Adventures of Abe Lincoln - Laurence Simon
   
9. Good Morning Good Morning - The Beatles
   
10. Uf Dem Anger - Reie Swaz Hie Gat Umbe - Chume, Chum, Geselle Min! - Christian Thielemann, Orff: Carmina Burana
    

It’s Friday. What are you listening to?

SHALOM BAYIT

Shalom Bayit is a venerable Hebrew expression meaning “peace in the household.”

Couples that have managed to stay married for a long time – f’r instance, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I, with a marriage that’s well into its 29th year – generally learn to master the art of maintaining Shalom Bayit.

You learn the art of compromise.

You learn to accept your mate’s minor flaws, and sometimes even a major one or two. [Not you, darlin’.]

You learn to live with your spouse’s leaving piles of mail and filthy clothing all over the house, and he learns to live with the occasional failure to replace the empty Bunwad Roll.

You learn to pick your battles, on those (rare) occasions when battles must be fought. And you learn to never go to bed angry, if at all possible.

If inconveniencing yourself in some way is necessary to keeping your Other Half happy, you do it...and you don’t piss and moan about it.

It’s give and take. Take and give.

It’s love.

Of course, here at Chez Elisson, I make use of some of the many valuable lessons I learned from my mother while she was alive, and those lessons have contributed mightily to Peace in Our Household.

Mom was a Master Shopper. It’s too bad she’s not around anymore, because she and our good friend Laura Belle are cut from the same cloth in that respect: members of the Legion of Those Who Happily Exchange Money for Goods and Services. I would give anything to be able to see the two of them lay waste to one of the local Shopping Malls. It is she who taught SWMBO that if you see something you like, buy it in at least two different colors.

And thus it is that I maintain peace in the household. When the Missus sees something she likes, I tell her to purchase it. Works every time...and my creditors love me for it.

Shalom? Buy it!

FRIDAY ARK #70

The Friday Ark is up at the Modulator.

Stop by...and wish Steve well. If I interpret his Cryptic Alert properly, he’s having some sort of medical procedure that involves General Anesthesia later today.

Based on my own experience, General Anesthesia is not a bad thing. Makes me loopy, and cuts way down on the screaming.

I WANT A NEW DRUG

Quickly, Jeeves! Fetch my medicaments! I feel a bout of catarrh coming on, and I fear that my erysipelas is acting up once again.

Arrgh! This damnèd scrofula afflicts me mightily!

CREATIVE CODING

There’s a collection of hyper-creative pieces of code available at yugop.com. Go there immediately and check it out. In an earlier version of this post, I had a window in which you could watch several of the scripts running, but it was annoyingly noisy. So click on the link.

If your machine has Javascript enabled, you can tinker with the various scripty gew-gaws by mousing over the numbered blocks. Block 04 runs a script (“Claygrid”) that is silent (in case the beeping sound of the “Jampack” script is too annoying), and you can click on “Info” to get some background on what the site is all about. And there’s even more crap in the Archive.

Block 05 (“Amaztype”) is a mind-bender. Type in a search term - say, a band’s name, such as “Beatles” - and the script will gradually build a picture of the search term as a mosaic of tiny images - in this example, covers of albums by that band. Click on any tiny image and you get some basic information about the album - click again, and you go to the Amazon site’s page. Un-be-fucking-lievable.



This is the same guy that came out with the Industrious Clock I featured here several months ago.

Whatever medication he’s on, I want me some.

MARILYN AND ME

Eric’s recent post about Marilyn Monroe got me to thinking about all of that weird Six Degrees of Separation business.

It was May of 2004 and She Who Must Be Obeyed and I were on the Senate floor in Washington, D.C., along with a small army of my college classmates. We were guests of Senator Bill Frist - another classmate - who was in the process of giving us a personal tour of the Senate chamber.

I had, for the purpose of resting my legs whilst listening to the good Senator expound on the Rich History of the room, parked myself at a conveniently located desk. A quick look at the brass nameplate attached thereto established that it was, in fact, Teddy Kennedy’s desk. “Mr. Chappy Q. Dick,” his ownself.

Surprisingly, the desk was located in the back row, instead of being front and center. After all, one of the privileges of Senatorial Seniority is that you get to move to the front of the room, just like an eager kindergartner.

And it was right about then that Frist explained that Kennedy was, indeed, entitled to sit up front based on his seniority, but that he preferred to sit in the back of the chamber - at the selfsame desk his brother Jack had used.

Holy Crap, thought I. My ass was warming the same chair that John F. Kennedy used to sit in back when he was an up-and-coming Senator. [And with JFK, you gotta use the term “up-and-coming” very discreetly.]

Think about some of the Six-Degrees Permutations, chirren:

• My ass - JFK’s chair - JFK’s ass - Jackie Kennedy’s ass.
  
  
• My ass - JFK’s chair - JFK’s ass - Marilyn Monroe’s ass.

The mind boggles, I tell ya.

WHAT DREAMS MAY COME…REPEATEDLY

Recurring dreams are a phenomenon that many of us have experienced at one time or another.

Sometimes the details are different, but the general framework of the recurring dream is always the same. Whether it is a good dream or a bad dream depends on many things: one’s state of mind, what one had for supper that evening, some deep-down psychic hole that is unfilled.

I have dreams from time to time that involve recurring elements. There are the Tornado Dreams and Tsunami Dreams, both of which have been mentioned in posts here. And there’s the Slow-Motion Jet Airliner Dream, in which I find myself flying in an airplane that moves slowly, at low altitude – or, alternatively, zooms along an ethereal Aerial Roller-Coaster Track. Always, always, the fear of an impending crash. Horrible.

But any discussion of Recurring Dreams must include some mention of the infamous School Dream.

The School Dream is one that many of us have experienced at one time or another. You find yourself back in school – college, high school, it matters not. But you are back in school, and it’s obvious that you are Not Prepared, whether it be for an exam, a paper, or some other task that is critical to your success. Scary, not least because the Unpreparedness Factor in these dreams is primarily a distorted mirror-reflection of stress and uncertainty in your Real Life.

I’ve had those School Dreams, too, but there’s a variation that makes mine especially unsettling.

In my typical School Dream, I’ll be back at college. Why I’m there, faced with another four years of degenerate partying grueling coursework, never is completely clear to me. But, regardless, I am there, moving my stuff into a dormitory room, getting ready for a semester’s worth of Ridiculously Continued Education.

As I move my stuff in and wander the campus, I’m disoriented, ill at ease. Something’s not right; the world is out of joint. There’s a terrible feeling of loss, of utter desolation, gnawing at the back of my brain. And it dawns on me:

Where’s my wife? What became of my children?

Why am I here, so terribly alone? Did I even have a family? Or was it some distant, hopeful dream?

And that is usually when I wake up, heart racing. I reach out across the bedclothes, and She Who Must Be Obeyed is there, to my deep and total relief. The School Dream - my School Dream – was just a dream, thank Gawd…until I have it again.

CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES #174

There is no Free Lunch, so they say.

There is no Free Money.

But there is a Free Money Finance, and that is where you will find the latest edition of the Carnival of the Vanities.

POLITICS

Yet another Demotivational Poster.

AN ALL-TOO-OFTEN OVERLOOKED TASTE SENSATION

There’s one item on the Jewish Bill o’ Fare that gets short shrift these days, and it’s time that situation was corrected.

Bagels? Aw, c’mon. Everybody knows bagels. You can buy bagels in Salt Lake fucking City. You can get (gag) a bacon and egg bagel at McDungheap’s. They may not be good bagels, but bagels they are.

Gefilte fish? Maybe. File that one under “Dishes the Non-Jews Generally Don’t Monkey With.” And rightly so, especially if it’s the commercial kind that comes in a jar, complete with plenty of Fishy Jell-O Sauce.

Borscht? Schav? P’tcha? Nope. Too arcane. Plenty of folks know about borscht, that yummy beet soup, but ya gotta be a Master o’ Culinary Cabbala to be familiar with schav (sorrel soup) or p’tcha (calf’s foot jelly, intensely flavored with garlic). My mother was a p’tcha fan, but the recessive gene that confers Love of Weird Crap was not passed on unto mine own Germ Plasm.

I’m talkin’ ’bout kishka.

Kishka, ambrosia of the Eastern European table. Kishka, former Side-Dish Staple, found on every catered wedding or Bar Mitzvah dinner plate, sitting beside the meat in its own little pool of warm, brown gravy, cleverly described on menus as “Stuffed Derma” so as not to horrify the uneducated. Kishka!

Kishka: a kosher beef intestine, stuffed sausage-like with a mass of flour and bread crumbs compounded with Beef Suet, eggs, garlic, and spices. On Passover, the flour and bread crumbs would be booted out unceremoniously, with matzoh meal taking their place. Baked, sliced, and served with beefy gravy, kishka was the Ultimate Indulgent Side-Dish. Like chopped liver, enough of it would stop your heart - but what a happy way to go!

Esteemed Readers, it is time to bring Kishka out of the closet.

I can see it now. On Iron Chef, Chairman Kaga whips back a cloth covering a mound of the secret ingredient: “Ki-shi-ka! Ar-rei Ku-i-jin! [Kishka! Allez cuisine!]”

And then there’s the Bubbe Gumpowski Kishka Company, with their Comprehensive Menu of All Things Kishka: Kishka étoufée; kishka gumbo; fried kishka; baked kishka; kishka Florentine; chicken soup with kishka dumplings; spam, spam, spam, spam, kishka and spam; and onwards, ad infinitum.

If you haven’t tried it, don’t hold back. Starch and grease, ya gotta love it!

Feeling brave? Here’s a recipe for kishka that you can make at home, without the muss and bother of dealing with Lengths of Beef Intestine. Yes: a Kishka-less Kishka, but it’s getting harder and harder to stay completely Old-School in these matters.

Vegetarian Kishka

½ cup vegetable oil
2 stalks celery
2 carrots
1 onion
1½ cups flour
1¼ tsp salt
1 tsp paprika
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

In a blender, puree the vegetables with the oil until you have a thick paste. Empty the glop into a large bowl and add the flour, salt, pepper, and paprika. Mix well; you should have a nice doughy mass.

Roll the mixture into a thick cylinder and wrap securely in aluminum foil. Place the kishka on a cookie sheet and bake at 350°F for 90 minutes. Slice and serve it forth.

This recipe makes a (parve) vegetarian kishka, but if you wanna doll it up with some beefy gravy, be my guest.

Kishka! It’s what’s for dinner!

INTERTWINED DESTINY

At post-Minyan breakfast this morning, I heard a strange tale of intertwined destinies.

Debbie is a regular at our Thursday night Minyan. A group of us meet at the shul, we do a ma’ariv service – the daily evening worship service, for all y’all who are Judaically Impaired – and then go out as a group to have dinner. Debbie’s mother passed away last Friday, alas, and she returned to town yesterday after flying to New Jersey for the funeral. We’ll be holding evening services in her home the rest of the week as she observes the remainder of shiva, the traditional seven-day period of mourning.

But this morning, she came to Minyan. At breakfast, she was describing her flight to Newark, a bumpy affair thanks to high winds enroute, with a fearsome last-second dip of the left wing just as the plane was dropping down onto the runway.

At the funeral home, she was telling one of her cousins about the landing. He’s a pilot for Northwest; scary landings are part of his training regimen, and she was sure this one was one he would have enjoyed.

Said cousin has a twin brother, and therein lies a most peculiar tale.

The brothers, being twins, were always close while they were growing up. Like peas and carrots, you could say. They were never apart from one another until they reached that age when it was time for each of them to strike out on his own.

Cousin One wanted to be an airline pilot, so he enrolled in a flight school in Vero Beach, Florida. At the same time, his brother - let’s call him Cousin Two - ended up working for Smith Barney in lower Manhattan. His offices were in one of the buildings at the World Trade Center complex, albeit not in one of the Towers themselves.

Cousin Two was at his desk the morning of September 11, 2001. He saw the plane hit Tower One, the flames and debris raining down. When the tower collapsed, it buried his building, but he managed to get out alive.

Cousin One, it turns out, had been attending flight school with a number of taciturn Saudi Arabian men, men who generally kept to themselves. Men who, as it turned out, had a grisly mission.

Strange, isn’t it, how the brothers’ lives were tied together by the threads of Fate, despite their geographic distance? What mysterious connection did these twins share? And who knows what secrets are woven into that Mysterious Tapestry o’ Destiny?