Happy Grounding Day, 1998. It’s time for a midsummer stretch — wallow in the overripe heat and ventilate your brain with a cool gin breeze. There is less time than you think.
It’s a good time to sit back and listen to a story. Relax, there is more time than you think.
Dedicated readers of the Star Chamber will remember a piece from way back in October of 1996 called Spider-Baiting. Avoiding for the moment the obvious joke that this was centuries ago in web time (though the venerable StarChamber was already six months old), it was a time when search engines were still called spiders. The idea of the piece was that a search engine would read the lascivious text-between-the-lines of our innocent story about canoeing on the Ipswich river, and then horny teenagers from around the world would bombard our site with page requests.
Clever enough, only it didn’t happen that way. Recently, we received (from one Alan H. Martin) the following email here at the Star Chamber executive editorial offices:
Cute.
However, I just hit the page with the following AltaVista query:
+”ipswich river” +canoe*
(since I just bought topo of Eastern Mass./RI and want to find the location of the canoe rental place my group at work used years ago on an outing…)
/AHM
In other words, the only person who found the page with a search engine was actually looking for someone to help him innocently canoe down the Ipswich river! And, by the way, he found what he was looking for (through no assistance from us)… so if you’re ever in eastern Massachusetts and you’re looking for a good place to outfit a canoe trip, try the Foote Brothers. And tell ’em Paracelsus sent ya.
This week we are honored and delighted to publish in this space a contribution from a long-time friend of the Star Chamber, Pandora. It’s a great big world, and it’s getting bigger every day.
by Wendy Gulley
The line at the concession stand for the local cinema megaplex was moving excruciatingly slowly. I was vainly hoping to buy some goodies before the previews started in my tiny booth they call a theater. As I inched closer, I discerned why it was taking my fellow moviegoers so long to make their purchases. The helpful young man behind the counter was wearing a button that says “Ask me about the SUPER COMBO.” But there was no need to ask, because he greeted each new customer with “Welcome to Loew’s. Would you like a Super Combo tonight?” Some customers didn’t miss a beat, but most customers were caught off guard for a few seconds before they decided to go ahead with their original order.
No one in line that night actually ordered the Super Combo (which consists of a very large bag of popcorn and a very large drink), despite his dogged persistence. But the helpful young man didn’t stop with just that question. When a customer went on to order a small or medium-sized drink or bag of popcorn, he immediately asked if s/he wanted the next largest size for only x cents more. I must have looked especially thirsty to him, because he asked me TWICE if I wanted to upgrade my drink to medium-size. “Look, I know it’s a bargain,” I said to him impatiently. “But the medium drink is too big for me to put my hand around!” He then gave me my small drink without further cajoling, and it fit in my hand just right as I raced back to the already darkened theater.
Fitting in my hand was one of the reasons I didn’t want a medium drink that night at the movies, despite its “better value”. The other reason is that I simply didn’t want to drink that much liquid! But recently I’m beginning to think that I am the only American that thinks smaller can sometimes be better.
The super combo costs $5.75, while a medium drink and medium popcorn total $6.24.
Size Matters
Perhaps it all started, innocently enough, with the “Big Gulp” 15 years ago. In addition to the ordinary small, medium, and large paper cups for fountain drinks, 7 Eleven Stores began offering gigantic cups that could hold 40 ounces of your favorite soda. For only pennies more, you could get twice as much Coke as a large cup would hold! Big Gulps were quite successful and remain so today, but does anyone actually ever finish all 40 ounces? Is it a bargain if you only drink 20 ounces before the ice melts and it’s too watery and warm to finish?
In the years since then, more and more everyday products are being packaged in bigger and bigger sizes. Ironically, this trend has happened at the same time that the size of the average American household is declining dramatically. Does a household of 2, 3, or 4 people really need to shop at BiggieMart to get giant boxes of cereal that could feed an army? But to get big sizes, you need not go to these special, buy-in-bulk stores that have sprung up like giant weeds in the past 10 years. At any ordinary supermarket, supersizes abound for any type of product. You can now buy a 64 oz. bottle of ketchup instead of the standard 20 oz. size, or a 24 oz. bottle of salad dressing instead of the standard 12 oz. size. Or buy a 45 oz. jar of Ragu sauce, instead of the usual 26 oz. For your cleaning needs, Dawn dishwashing liquid now comes in a 64 oz. bottle that is too big and heavy to conveniently squirt on your dishes. And Tide detergent now comes in a 200 oz. container (12.5 pounds!) that will give you a hernia to tip into your washing machine. But what a bargain. As you pant and heave with the Tide container for the next two years, try to focus on how you saved $2 with your smart shopping.
The trend towards abandoning standard sizes is a puzzling one. In the past few months I have unwittingly purchased: 1) a toothbrush that’s too fat for the built-in toothbrush holder in my bathroom; 2) paper towels that are too wide for the paper towel holder in my kitchen; and 3) soap that doesn’t fit my travel container. My contact lens solution, always a heavy bottle to take on trips, is now only available in a size that is yet a third heavier than before. Take a stroll down the toilet paper aisle in your local chain grocery store and you’ll see that 4 roll packages, the standard size for generations, are now in the minority. Bulky packages of 8, 9, and 12 rolls line the shelves. Perhaps you have been wondering why the sales of large vehicles (SUVs, minivans and pickups) now equal the sales of “standard” cars in the U.S.? Sure, family size is going down and studies show that SUVs put us at greater risk on the road. But we need supersize cars to hold our supersize groceries, not to mention our supersize butts (more on that later). That must be the reason for a couple I know from Indianapolis who has one child and TWO minivans.
Better Value, but at What Cost?
Back to food items, and fast food in particular. McDonalds and Burger King now offer “value meals”, which make it cheaper to get medium or large fries and a medium drink with your sandwich than to get small fries and a small drink. Or if this isn’t enough to fill your belly, just say “supersize it” and you’ll get supersize fries and a large drink for only 39¢ more.
Let’s look at some sample meals. If you want to eat a modest McDonald’s meal, you might order a basic cheeseburger, large fries, and a medium drink. There is no value meal in this case; you must purchase the items at their individual prices, which total $3.47. If however, you decide to splurge and get the “two cheeseburger value meal”, you’ll pay only $2.99 for TWO cheeseburgers, large fries, and a medium drink. That’s right, pay 48¢ less and you’ll get an extra cheeseburger. Or “supersize it” (two cheeseburgers, supersize fries, and a large drink) and pay $3.38, still 9 cents ahead of the one cheeseburger/large fries/medium drink meal.
Meanwhile, at Burger King, a similar meal of a cheeseburger, medium fries, and a medium drink will run you $3.97. But for the same price ($3.99) you can get a double whopper value meal, consisting of a double whopper, medium fries and a medium drink. Why eat that small cheeseburger, with only 380 calories and 19 grams of fat, when you can, for the same price, clog your arteries with the new supersized whopper, which has 870 calories and 56 grams of fat? If you add in the fries (21 grams of fat), you’ll have more than enough fat for your entire day, all accomplished in one meal for less than four dollars!
Of course, breakfast at these fine dining establishments offers bargains as well. At Burger King you can buy a biscuit sandwich and coffee for $2.38, or add hashbrowns to the meal and pay 20% less ($1.99). Why, you’d be a fool not to eat a heavy breakfast at these prices.
Given the Star Chamber’s highbrow readership, I’m sure many of you are smiling at this point, thinking to yourself: “I never eat at these burger places, so I won’t be enticed into eating bigger meals.” But a recent study comparing a typical (better than McDonald’s) restaurant on Long Island to a typical restaurant in London shows that portion sizes weigh about a pound on Long Island and half a pound or less on the other side of the Atlantic. And in addition to the huge portions, Long Island diners also get items such as a bread basket and complimentary appetizers.
Bigger Is Not Always Better
Next time you’re in a busy public place — at the mall, at the BiggieMart, at the Lard-Hut — try collecting some interesting data: what percentage of people you see around you are seriously overweight? I’ll save you the trouble: a lot.
Americans are the fattest people on earth, and they’re rapidly getting fatter. According to the Seattle Times (May 29, 1998) 54% of Americans are fatter than is healthy, and this percentage has grown by about a third in the past 20 years. 1 in 3 adults in this country is obese, as are a fifth of children; these rates have also risen dramatically in the past 10 to 20 years.
Medical researchers view Americans’ increasing obesity as nothing short of a big, fat epidemic. As well they should, since obese people face a 60% greater risk of death, especially from diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. The number of Americans who die annually of obesity-related diseases is 300,000. (For tobacco-related diseases the figure is 400,000.) $100 billion is the estimated annual cost of lost workdays and medical care for obesity-related illness in this country.
And what are we doing to fight this epidemic? Eating supersized portions of food, encouraged by restaurants and food manufacturers. The Big Mac and the Whopper are no longer the big kids on the fast food block. Now we have the Big King, the Double Whopper, the Bacon Double Cheeseburger, the Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and the soon-to-be-released-and-overhyped MBX (McDonald’s Big Extra). All at cheap prices.
Some Americans are undoubtedly eating healthier these days. Or trying to. But beware, healthy eaters, of two other food trends: bagels and lowfat foods. Many of today’s fresh-baked bagels pack 500 calories or more. And studies are now showing that people who eat lowfat foods often suffer from the “I deserve to indulge later” syndrome, consuming more calories in the end.
Americans could certainly improve their health by eating more fruits and vegetables, the natural nonfat foods. But only 22% of us eat the recommended five or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day. If farmers could only grow those peas and carrots in supersizes, maybe people would eat them.
Keep your eyes out for more examples of supersized objects, bombarding us in every direction. The new Godzilla, the FleetCenter (47% of its seats would fall outside the physical confines of the old Boston Garden it replaces), the effects of Viagra (albeit short-lived), and finally– THIS ARTICLE.
Ah mayonnaise. The Viscous Muse.
Mayonnaise, like hollandaise, was invented by the French to cover up the flavor of spoiled flesh, stale vegetables, rotten fish. Beware the sauce! Where food comes beslobbered with an elegant slime you may well suspect the integrity of the basic ingredients.”
— Edward Abbey, “The Fool’s Progress”
Part I. Bert
Bert, 74 years old, refused to retire, and through some bureaucratic quirk, it was impossible to make him go. Here is what he did: in the morning he worked on the crossword puzzle and circled real estate classifieds, and in the afternoon it was his special task to drive Marian absolutely insane. Marian was a brisk and efficient secretary for the little Air Force Liaison office that I frequented. She spent the morning undoing the trouble that Bert stirred up around base the day before. In a world where some people pull their own weight, and others manage to pull only a fraction thereof, Bert was a great beached whale. You would swear he was senile but for the fact that he could righteously defend his position as nimbly as a politician in heat. I feared his fat grabby hands, his thick glasses, his bad synthetic creased suits, his slicked back mobster hair. I feared his anecdotes, because if he got me in his office he would spend a half hour telling me about his engineering exploits with the German rocket designers just after World War II. In short, he was a fascinating old man. In short, he was a mayonnaise scooper. Do you know any mayonnaise scoopers?
Part II. Mayonnaise.
Let’s face it, mayonnaise tastes good. Dry stringy turkey on cheap bread, crumbly bacon on wilted lettuce and dusty toast, what are these without the ennobling powers of the magic white spread? Mayonnaise is extraordinarily fatty, so a little will go a long way. And most importantly, if you absolutely HAD to, you could live years and years on nothing but mayonnaise. Of course you would be a changed person. Think about it: after a while, your complexion would become pale and glossy. Like any addiction, you’d soon be reduced to defending your supply, sprinting furtively from jar to jar. Suppose you had a choice between hard work (let us say, what you do now) and a life of empty leisure fueled solely by mayonnaise. Which would you choose? I thought so. Yet every year, thousands and thousands of people choose the Pride of Hellman’s.
You could argue that this is just another phrase for laziness, for goldbricking. But the truly lazy are fat drippy cats who will pour through the gaps in your arms if you don’t hold them just so. Mayonnaise-scooping is more complex; we’re not talking about the simply unmotivated, the slovenly. We’re talking about someone who is not only clever enough to know better, but still cleverer: they can rationalize and relish every drop of unearned goody that comes their way. They can actively take advantage in a predatory premeditated way that eludes mere bums.
Part III. Examples
1. Across the base from Bert’s Air Force Liaison Office was the building where Lt. Holt worked. Everyone who worked with him knew that he wouldn’t complete a project if you pulled him through it on a big metal hook, yet he was the most decorated junior officer in the building. Why? Because he spent all his time writing recommendations for ribbons and commendations which he would then pester senior officers into signing. See what I mean? That’s a lot of effort, and it suited him. But if the earth swallowed him whole tomorrow, he would not be missed for a week.
2. Marilyn takes two hour lunches, of which she is fiercely protective. She takes the elevator up and down past two flights of stairs. She leaves work at four, announcing to anyone who will listen that she’s now going home to her REAL JOB—taking care of her wonderful children. She spends so little time in the office, it’s no wonder she can’t be bothered to answer her voicemail. Yet she dispenses professional advice with the self-importance of a brain surgeon. Do you know anybody like Marilyn?
3. Think about that kid who comes by to badger you into buying something so he can win a trip to Disney World. Magazine subscriptions, chocolate bars, you can’t even tell what he’s selling, because he’s asking you earnestly “Don’t you want me to go to Disney World?” Let on that you aren’t necessarily concerned about his vacation plans, and he’s liable to snarl and bite off a finger on his way to the neighbor’s house.
Part IV. Identification in the Field
What are the characteristics of a Mayonnaise Scooper? Wounded righteousness and a quick left hook.
Suggest to a mayonnaise-scooper that they perform a task that appears in their job description, and you are likely to get a look of blank hatred.
Part V. Mayonnaise Futures
Hard times at work are cruel for the lazy, but they can be strangely exhilarating for the inveterate scooper of mayonnaise. So the question I have been pondering of late is this: will the wired world of the future favor or penalize these perversely lazy shirkers? Wherever you can see the structure that supports an organization, whether it’s a copy room or a warehouse, there is the opportunity to scoop booty. As the structure required to support an organization shrinks due to improved technology, the space in which to hide gets smaller. But these people are good at adapting—even now they’re looking forward to the challenge of being lazy in new and different ways. The slobs are in for trouble, but when it comes to mayonnaise, my money’s on Bert.
Footnote:
I was doing a little web research on mayonnaise as I wrote this. An AltaVista search revealed (at http://www.nomayo.com) the great Edward Abbey quote displayed above. At the same time, AltaVista exhorted me to “Search Amazon.com for top-selling titles about mayonnaise!” How could I resist? There were nine matches, of which, it may interest you to know, the best match was “Mayonnaise and the Origin of Life: Thoughts of Minds and Molecules” by Harold J. Morowitx.
Paracelsus went on vacation last week. Did you? Do you wish you did? Have you ever returned from a vacation that needs another vacation just to recover from the excesses of the first? Like the ad campaign says: “Life is short. Play hard.” Then again, why? Sigh.
Continue reading “Sucking Out The Goody”
In the cool night air of mid-May somewhere in the canyon-cut hills near Prescott, Arizona, Paul Rossetti leaned back in his worn-out aluminum deck chair and scanned the heavens with a big pair of binoculars. Friends used to tease him about the irony of a one-eyed man using binoculars, until eventually Rossetti affixed a jaunty black paper patch over the left exit tube of his favorite binoculars. Every night when the weather permitted, which was often, he would tune the radio to KFCS, the local country music station, lean back and comb through the skies for anything new. In particular he was looking for a distinctive faint fuzzball of bluish light. In particular, he was looking for a comet. It was not an idle occupation — across twelve years he had narrowly missed getting his name on a comet three times, twice losing to Shirou Shikakura. His one claim to the record books was Comet 1989 II Shikakura-Ortiz-Rossetti, a dim bulb of a comet that was never visible to the naked eye. He craved bigger game.
When it finally swam into Paul Rossetti’s field of view, his eye widened and his stomach tightened with excitement. As soon as his laptop’s modem dialed in, he tapped out a hasty email to Kurt Drovecki at the Smithsonian Observatory in Cambridge:
Kurt:
I've got an object in Leo right next to Sigma Leonis, have you seen it? RA 11h 21m 12s, dec 05deg 45min 03sec.
After fifteen excruciating minutes of checking for new messages, he was about to pick up the phone when he got a reply.
Hi Paul,
You're the first to spot it, and I've verified its existence with Joanne and her south skies survey crew in Chile. Looks like you got yourself a comet :-) Interim designation is 1998 VII.
By that time, Paul Rossetti had been following the tiny incandescent fuzzball for some twenty minutes. Comet Designate 1998 VII, soon to be known as Comet Rossetti. “Comet Rossetti” he announced quietly to the tall saguaro cactus near his driveway, to his satellite dish, to his sunburned Chevy Suburban. He stood up, his heartbeat beginning to gallop, and screamed “Comet Rossetti!” to the city of Prescott, Arizona, to the Smithsonian Observatory in Cambridge, to the approaching Comet 1998 VII somewhere inside the orbit of Saturn.
Rossetti was still savoring a celebratory Scotch in his living room at 4 AM when the phone rang. Drovecki, calling from Cambridge, wasted no time: “Look, Paul, I ran some numbers on your comet and it, well it looks like there’s a good chance it’ll hit Earth next June after it hooks around the Sun. It’s… it looks like a big boy. Obviously I’m running the calculations every way I can think of, but I wanted to let you know right away. Why don’t you sit tight on this one till we get a little more information.” There followed a tense jargon-filled interchange which served to convince Rossetti that his planet would likely be smashed beyond recognition before he could pay off his Chevy.
He sat perfectly still and listened to the dial tone that Drovecki left behind. For perhaps a full minute, his mind was jammed, clogged with the inconsequential details of an inconceivable event. As the details sifted slowly down to dust, he was overcome with a soul-eclipsing loneliness. It swallowed him like the horizon-to-horizon shadow of a fast-approaching storm. Immediately his thoughts went to his ex-wife Karen. He thought not about how they met at the university bowling alley, not about the ridiculously expensive wedding in Louisiana, or the corrosive hateful lies they told each other in their last bitter year together. Instead, he thought about how they made love a month after the divorce was final. He thought about how he knew, even as it was happening, that they were both going to regret it terribly, but in fact they never had.
Now that moment hung in his mind like a glowing jewel. If Comet 1998 VII had any sense of justice, it would have smacked him then, in that moment of pure burned-over joy, perched between known misery and unseen despair. He had set out with unfeigned relief the next day to give his full attention to the skies, the rational skies, the lonely skies. Now five years later at this singular moment he was choked with a desire to hold her, but she lay in someone else’s arms.
And this was his reward: a snowball the size of South America bearing his name set to eliminate civilization. Not simply life as we know it, but perhaps life, all life, forever. Only now was it starting to reach him, setting in with a wave overpowering nausea — this Doomsday missile will be called Comet Rossetti, with him playing the role of, what? Executioner? Betrayer? No, it was as though he were the doctor delivering a terminal diagnosis to an entire planet. No future for him, for the his parents, for the inhabitants of Prescott, of Los Angeles, of Moscow, no future for the birds, the fish, all silenced forever. The name Rossetti eternally synonymous with doom. Staggering to the bathroom, he vomited into the wide toilet mouth the remains of a vegetable burrito and his celebratory Scotch.
Of course, it might not be. The calculations might have come out wrong, or it might be somehow avoided. But the stupefying dead weight of bleak pessimism let in no light. He dragged himself outside and slumped into the old battered chair and there he wept.
Some time near dawn, he became aware of the ringing phone. It was Drovecki.
“Paul, I’ve been trying to reach you for three hours. Listen, the numbers check out. I’ve had five different teams working this and it looks damn bad. We found some plates from last March that confirm the trajectory. We’re getting ready to hold a press conference, and…”
Rossetti’s knees buckled; he hit the green carpeted floor of his house with a thump, cradled his forehead, watched a viscous string of drool dangle downward. Through the phone he heard whining printers, ringing phones, anxious voices, shuffling papers. A room pregnant with the message that would change everything.
“Paul, are you still there?”
“Yeah.”
“I need to know, Paul, do you want your name on this thing? Because we can still take it off.”
This caught him off guard, pulled him straight up, stanched his tears. He glimpsed a brief but clear and potent mental image of the planetary ballet, Sun and Earth, Earth and Moon, Sun and Comet 1998 VII, all bowing and dancing exactly as they had ever been meant to dance, all spinning along their paths in arresting perfection. He saw a small tired man shivering in a canyon house near Prescott, Arizona, drooling on his phone as the rising sun colored the desert.
“Paul? … Paul?”
“Make it mine,” he said.
Happy Groundhog Day!
Groundhog Day is a welcome cross-quarter day — halfway between the winter solstice and the first day of spring, it’s a reminder that warmer days are really coming, even if you don’t quite believe it yet. It’s opposite
Grounding Day (August 2) on the calendar and as part of its official celebration, good citizens everywhere join to rip down and destroy any faded Christmas decorations left up by their lazy or misguided neighbors. We at the StarChamber would like to encourage our readers to participate in the celebrations: discharge your civic duties and pull down those browning wreaths and rotting strings of twinkling lights wherever you find them. It will relieve that midwinter depression, your neighborhood will look so much better, and you’ll get to enjoy the traditional Groundhog Day martini with your fellow revelers. And that’s what it’s all about, after all.
This week’s contribution is a joint effort of Paracelsus and zaP, just in time for your winter trip to sunnier regions.
Continue reading “The Star Chamber Mexican-Spanish Phrasebook”
Happy 1998. Have you read “Into Thin Air” by Jon Krakauer yet?
As far as my highly scientific survey can tell, soon every man, woman, and child in the country will have either read it, heard it aloud, or been lectured to at length about it by some well-meaning bore. If you have evaded this trend so far, I can tell you that it is a truly gripping story of danger and death on the slopes of Mt. Everest. Go read it and tell all your friends about it. Curiously, another best-selling book this season, “The Perfect Storm” by Sebastian Junger, is a tale of man battling the elements for survival, this time in fishing boats during an enormous New England hurricane-force storm.
Why the sudden popularity of these life-and-death books? Perhaps people in this comfortable age feel more removed than ever from the flesh-biting Real World. Perhaps they long for an adventure to ground their lives in meaning. But then again, people have always bought adventure books. So is there anything new here?
One of the more interesting aspects of Krakauer’s book was the mention of Internet websites reporting from the slopes of Mt. Everest. When things got ugly, people all over the world knew about it instantly. We all listened in as Rob Hall talked to his pregnant wife in New Zealand even as he was freezing to death on a mountain in Nepal. There is a voyeuristic fascination with tracking the deadly and the evil minute-by-minute, whether it’s the Ebola virus, the Oklahoma City bombing, or United Flight 800 making an unexpected descent.
Voyeurism isn’t new, but it’s getting cheaper all the time. Professional Hollywood pornographic films have lost much of their market to amateurs with video cameras. Anybody can make a movie these days, and if it’s sexual in nature, people will pay. Soon enough, anybody will find it easy to launch a website. Tabloid television and network news, slick as they are, may find themselves competing with the gritty realism of eyewitness gladitorial websites filed by people on the scene, such as those who saw Rodney King being beaten senseless. Krakauer’s book is a terrific achievement, but in itself it doesn’t represent anything new in popular writing or society at large. What is new is the ease with which horrifying details can be reported by eyewitnesses from the burning building, the murder site, the erupting volcano. We should brace ourselves for an onslaught of badly-written but inescapably compelling eyewitness websites, because the tools of mass media are in the hands of the masses.
And now, for your further reading pleasure, a touch of voyeurism.
what’s the sexiest thing you ever saw in your life?
whoa! that’s a tough one. let’s see…. I guess… wow, what a question! nothing really jumps out at me. I don’t know. what’s the sexiest thing you every saw in your life?
you go first. I asked you first.
sure, but you already have an answer to the question, right?
she smiled a slow maybe-yes-maybe-no smile. it started bold and provocative, then melted into a shy friendly smile. she felt self-conscious and looked at the beer-wet napkin next to her glass. she tilted her head back slightly, lightly ran her fingers down her stretched neck; her second boyfriend had always said that drove him crazy. funny how these things stick with you. she looked back at him and considered his small frame, his boyish face. she wanted to reach across the table and touch his arm, but instead said:
maybe I do. but you have to answer my question first.
he tipped up his beer, drank. replaced it, looking past her down the empty twilit diner. she enjoyed putting him on the spot.
okay. I have an answer. the summer after my freshman year, I went to Amsterdam.
this should be good.
believe me, it wasn’t a wild trip. I was pretty straight-laced in those days. well, I still am, I guess. so no stories about women in the red light district or smoky hash bars or anything like that. I was in this big park called the Vondelpark one afternoon. I was there by myself, because the guy I was traveling with, this French guy named Henri, was getting on my nerves. he was constantly smoking these stinky Gaulois cigarettes and talking about Marlon Brando movies. he’d seen them all like 50 times. so I’m sitting there on one side of this little pond soaking up the afternoon sun, and this woman with short spiky blonde hair, very Euro, very Dutch, I guess, walks up to the other side of the pond, just across from me, right? and she puts down a blanket and sits down on it, and I’m thinking ‘you don’t suppose she’s going to take off her shirt?’ and sure enough she does. and she just sits there half-naked right there in front of me.
did you go talk to her?
right! I don’t even know if she spoke English. no, I didn’t go talk to her. it would’ve ruined it to talk to her. it was perfect just how it was. actually she wasn’t even that good-looking, in the magazine sense, I mean. she was sexy because she was just so matter-of-fact about it. she knew what she wanted to do, she didn’t care who saw, and that was that. one of the things that made it so great was the fact that I saw it coming just soon enough to have this moment of anticipation, of prediction, even. we never met eyes, but it was if there was some sort of connection there.
his eyes were shining now. he continued, nodding, I remember that very clearly… it was like an electric jolt went through me. I had never seen anything like it before. later on that same trip I went to places, Munich, Nice, where there were naked people just everywhere. you really only get that moment once, you know?
what happened, then?
that’s it — end of story. it’s not much of a story, after all. she just sat there enjoying the sun, and then, after maybe ten minutes the shade reached her, and she pulled on her shirt and left. okay, it’s your turn now. what’s your answer?
can you see my car from here?
what? he looked out at the old blue Mustang across the parking lot. yes… why?
stay here, she said, I’ll be back in a little bit. she stood up and walked out the door toward the car. disbelief mingled with the smell of the beer. he fiddled with the tip money, then squinted out the window again.
she strolled slowly to the car and took a long look around. his shadow shifted in the window where she had been sitting a minute ago. the late afternoon sun was in his eyes, but he could see her clearly enough, stepping into the front seat. she inhaled sharply and then pulled off her shirt, and after some small awkwardness removed her bra. the seat vinyl was still hot. she could feel his eyes on her, and she pictured his hand lying in his lap. he shifted his posture again.
she closed her eyes and listened to the sound of the cicadas. action at a distance. telepathic phone sex — hello, operator? give me Amsterdam, please. an excellent thing, the summer afternoon two-beer buzz. fun to imagine his throat dry, his heart pumping, his eyes straining. she tilted her head back and touched her neck lightly. her second boyfriend had been a rude son-of-a-bitch. she put her small bare feet up on the dashboard, well apart, and leaned back.
the grinding gravel of a walking car bent her quickly over the steering wheel. the car, black and predatory, was crawling across the lot into the spot next to hers. she hugged the steering wheel and started the engine even as she realized it was, in fact, a state trooper. she wheeled out of her spot, wondering what the trooper had seen, wondering if he would feel compelled to get back in his car and follow her. she was pulling past the front door of the diner gathering speed when her friend stumbled into the slanting sunlight looking dazed. she hit the brakes hard, reached across and threw open the passenger door. he looked at her, then at the approaching trooper, who was by now walking toward them. he looked at her again, his mouth beginning to form a wordless slow-motion question.
hop in, you big dummy! she called out. he hopped, and she accelerated, throwing gravel as she pulled onto the road. the trooper looked down the road and puzzled for a moment. his stomach growled longingly. he shook his head briefly and went inside, sat down and ordered a big slice of pecan pie and a cup of coffee. the seat he chose seemed unusually warm.
or Things That Go Bump and Grind in the Night
by St. Frank
Author’s note: I have travelled across vast oceans and journeyed through distant continents; I have witnessed great savagery, seen exquisite beauty and have thrown up in over twenty different urinals… there is little of these adventures that I remember, for I am an old man and my memory is not what it once was. But there are some things one can never forget, no matter how hard one tries.
It was the best of weather, it was the worst of food. It was Isla Vista. Here is where the Legend begins; a small band of rogue intellectuals, known as Physics Grad Students, roamed the land espousing their own twisted ‘Weltanschauung’ on the unsuspecting Undergraduate populace.
Among this group of brigands was Alan ‘the Gash’ Lash, a Teutonic brute who stood well over Six Feet, four, whose gigantic wit was excelled only by his obscenely large liver. He was impervious to extreme cold, toxic levels of whiskey and Mark Sperling. Alan was an ‘odds’ man; his specialty: Fillies.
Another well-known n’er-do-well about campus was Jean ‘SCUM!’ DuBoscq, a shadowy figure from high in the Basque Pyrenees. It was rumored that he could eviscerate forty sheep while dancing a Can-Can… and still keep his beret on. It was also a well known fact that his body odor could make a Frenchman faint. Jean was a practical type; his specialty: Smoke and ‘mirrors’.
Then, of course, there was Chris ‘I love it when you call me Big Papa’ Felix. He was a mountain of a man; He once laid waste to a cafeteria, leaving only a bowl of Velveeta and a stunned food server behind. He could fart the national anthems of fourteen different countries and burp those of another twelve. Chris was omniscient; he knew everything and would tell you, too… those who were lucky escaped before anything by Douglas Adams could be discussed. His specialty: Lasers and ‘the Dance!’
These three Physicists formed a mighty Troika, a legendary threesome whose presence on campus sent ripples through the student body. (Their combined weight was well over 600 lbs.) They were a culture in and of themselves; they associated with like-minded individuals, they shunned style and good taste, but despite all this, they welcomed into their fold a certain undergraduate. This was not just ANY undergrad… he was a Poli-Sci major! That undergrad was me.
I was allowed into their world; and what a strange, bizarre world it was. I saw pocket protectors, I ate nachos until I felt like I would die; I drank vodka, cheap vodka, late into the night, playing insipidly clever word games. I listened to MATH JOKES! Occasionally, in an cathartic burst of energy, we would hurl obscenities at well-dressed Undergrads. All this time I had to feign interest. I had also to feign intelligence, for I had no idea what was being discussed when the conversation turned to Physics, which it invariably would as the hours wore on. The one thing this twisted gang of three did that even remotely interested me (besides the booze that is) was gambling. Oh, how they loved to gamble; the “probabilities”, the “odds” the statistical-freakin’-anomalies! I didn’t care, I was there to learn and to win… I wanted their money, but alas, rarely did I prevail… I had no head for probability.
It was through countless nights of drinking, gambling and inane Physics stories that I eventually gained their trust. It was this trust that led Alan, Physi-Goth, to confide in me a story; a story whose basic facts would send me reeling, searching for something, anything, which I could grab onto and anchor myself in reality. I listened as he explained a night not unlike many others we had spent together. On this particular night, the carousing and gambling took a perverse turn: There was dancing, naked flesh and grinding bodies. I listened to him, but I could not believe it; I thought it was perhaps a test of my loyalty. After all was said and done, I soon put the whole sordid tale out of my mind… I was after all by then working in a coffee shop and this took nearly all the concentration I could muster in my waking hours. I was to spend several years in the pursuit of the perfect double espresso and my connection with the Physics Gang all but disappeared.
As I said, I had all but fallen out of touch with the core group of Physics gangsters… we had scattered to the three corners of the earth (The Fourth corner would have nothing to do with any of us). I did stay connected with the Teutonic Knight of the Newton order, who had, in the meantime, broken ranks and joined another sect: Mathematix. It was the Teuton, Al, who was the most preoccupied with ‘probability’ and also the one who had told the strange gambling story.
As a Mathematiker, as they were known, he became more and more obsessed with numbers. This was demonstrated on a visit he made one holiday weekend. He arrived with his girlfriend, Lonnie, at our house in Richmond, California. It was raining pretty hard that weekend, so we resigned ourselves to just remaining indoors. After about two minutes, Al got bored.
“We need to gamble to take our minds off this boredom!” he said None of us were up for a poker game, so Al suggested craps.
“How are we going to play craps without a table?’ I protested. Al got an insane gleam in his eye; he ran over to the coffee table, shoved all the magazines off the top and flipped it over.
“Here, we’ll make a craps table out of this!” he bellowed. What could we do? We were stuck in a house with a madman… we went along with him. Within a few hours we had a craps table that vaguely resembled a real one. We spent the rest of the weekend throwing dice and loose change at each other. We had even gone so far as to include the ‘Don’t Pass’ and ‘Don’t Come’ bars on the table. In addition to that, ‘The Field’ was a panopoly of colored numbers…12 pays Triple! When Lonnie and Alan left at the end of the weekend, we turned the table back over and thought no more of it.
The months went by, and we got news that some of the original Physics Gang was coming out to the West coast for the Christmas Holiday. We arranged to have everyone over for New Year’s Eve, mainly because they were no longer showing the Village People on New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.
Finally, the big day arrived. My wife, Deirdre, and I spent the whole day preparing a meal and a reception befitting such an august group. The Christmas tree was a shimmering gem that was slightly too large for the room it was in, but it’s beauty made up for any inconvenience it may have caused. There was a roast in the oven, whose heavenly fragrance filled every room in the house. Hors d’oeuvres and drinks were at the ready.
Alan and Lonnie were the first to arrive, and Alan wasted no time before sprinkling the room liberally with Wild Turkey 101. It was as if he was blessing our living room, except some of THIS ‘holy water’ wound up in our mouths. Lonnie immediately headed for the safety of the kitchen, where if the Teuton should enter, she could fend him off with beer.
Al cornered me in the living room and asked me if the coffee table still held its alter ego to its underside. I replied that it did, and offhandedly suggested we might throw some dice after the meal. The telltale gleam returned to his eye, but before he could utter another word, The Basque and Mr. Felix himself arrived.
The Basque went to the kitchen to survey the goings-on… he had an incredible talent for cooking, but had let it remain unnoticed for fear that if his roommates ever discovered it, they would chain him, naked, to the stove and force him to commit depraved culinary acts. The meal seemed to meet his approval and with that we all sat down and began fighting for food. Despite the wrangling and jockeying for bits of food, we all enjoyed the meal. The banter flowed as freely as the wine and soon we found ourselves talking about the old times; reliving the Glory Days as it were.
“Remember that time we almost left ‘Carny’ Dave on the beach, drunk and vomiting and sure to drown in the first wave that reached him?”, The Basque reminisced.
“Yeah, I remember that… No one wanted to put down their drinks so they could carry him”, Alan said. “It’s a good thing we put together that impromptu Rochambeau.”
“I always wondered what you guys would’ve done had I been the slob passed out on the beach,” I said with a nervous laugh.
“Well… uh,” The Basque muttered.
“We would’ve, uh, you know…” sputtered Al.
“Hey, does anyone want that last potato?” Felix interjected, effectively changing the subject.
I couldn’t help but notice a collective sense of relief in all of their eyes.
We made it through the meal without any more awkward situations or injuries and decided to retire to the living room for some coffee. Al suggested we flip the coffee table over while we waited, so we did. Almost immediately, Deirdre and Lonnie moved to the other side of the room, with a look of foreboding clouding their faces. I, of course, thought it was their usual reaction to a bunch of guys getting ready to drink (not coffee either) and gamble. I suspect they had some intuition that something bad was going to happen; something so horrible, that their survival instincts took over and tried to move them as far away from that table as possible.
So, the women had moved to the other side of the living room, as the Physix geeks and I prepared to roll the mighty dice. Preparations included pouring large, stiff drinks and searching every inch of the house for small change, as none of us, with the possible exception of Teuton Al, were gregarious enough to wager more than 50 cents on any given bet. I would like to interject for a moment to point out another coincidence or bit of synchronicity: Small change is not just something we were throwing around that night; ‘small change’ would later play a major role in the events that would later unfold. (Check your old albums).
In any event, we gathered around the makeshift altar, er, craps table and proceeded to play. We had to wedge ourselves between the fireplace, the couch and the Christmas tree. Chris, being the largest of the group, got the space next to the tree. The flickering candles and Christmas lights added that glitzy Vegas feel. The regular rules of craps applied, of course, with the small exception here that the ‘House’ rotated. That meant, that I started out playing the ‘House’ while the other three placed bets. When it came time to pay out the winner, I had to do it. This went on until the shooter crapped out, and in this case the responsibility of house would pass in a clockwise fashion. The house always retained the option to allow larger bets, double odds (or even triple odds), and side bets.
As I said, I started as house and play began. Jean the Basque was the first shooter and my primary goal was to get him and the other players to throw as much money as they could on the lamest bets.
“Come on now guy, how ’bout a Yo bet, bet that eleven, we gotta new shooter comin’ out!” I wailed in my best croupier’s voice. “Let’s go, let’s go, whatta ’bout those hard ways?!”
“Shut up idiot. Throw ’em Jean!!” was Felix’s response to my attempt at easy money.
I had forgotten already that I was in the company probability freaks, and it hit me like a sucker punch that in all PROBABILITY I was going to lose my shirt… or at the very least my socks. Little did I know how close I was: Clothes would be lost that night.
The Basque’s roll lasted through a few numbers. He made little because his bets were relatively conservative. Al, on the other hand, despite being obsessed with odds, could not help throwing money at the YO, all the hard ways and occasionally into The Field. Felix was reluctantly being drawn into Al’s slowly emerging insanity. Finally, inevitably, the Basque’s roll ended and the dice moved to Al.
He came out with bets on the Seven and Eleven, promptly lost those and, undeterred, kept placing Come bets to amass more numbers. We made sure to keep our glasses at a healthy level, and soon the level of play and that of our VOICES were on the rise. It began to get difficult to follow the action. The dice were passing hands quite frequently now, and there was a definite increase in absurdity: Amid the cacophony of voices and music, someone asked, screaming, why the hell there was no space for Avogadro’s Number on the board. Then someone else, Felix I think, piped in on the side of Pi… “What about Pi??” The next thing I know, a punch was thrown and the lights went out.
I opened my eyes and had the feeling that I had been away for a while, but with no recollection for how long. When I regained what little composure I had, I went back to the table to find that my stack of change was considerably smaller than I remembered… apparently I had made some unwise bets while I was out.
I resumed playing (and losing) and realized that the K.O. was not an isolated incident, but a turning point in the game. There was no rhyme or reason to any of the bets, except perhaps that they were all uniformly bad, and then Al jumped in to stop everything. Felix at this point was the House, and Al asked for permission to make an unusual bet.
“Chris, I want to bet The Naked Felix. Will you cover it?” Al asked.
The Basque and I flashed a look at each other that said, “Wha’?”
“The Naked Felix?” Chris said. “Yeah, I’ll throw a buck on Midnight (the Twelve) and if it comes up, you have to do a Striptease like that time in Santa Barbara. If it doesn’t, you get the buck.”
It might have taken Chris 10 seconds to respond, but in that room, everything stopped; our wives looked over at Chris, not sure if they heard correctly, but damn sure they WANTED to know. I swear to Christ I even held my breath. The Basque, on the other hand, slowly and measuredly began to hyperventilate. A year passed, then he answered.
“Okay.”
Look up the word ‘Pandemonium’ in your dictionary… then throw it away!
I began screaming that I wanted to match the bet, Al was laughing hysterically, the Basque was beginning to sweat profusely and our wives started to get up from their chairs.
“Holy shit, I can’t believe it!” I cried, “Throw the dice! Throw the damned dice!”
“Okay, Okay,” Al said. “So you’re all right with this Chris? I mean…” He didn’t finish.
“Hurry up before I change my mind,” Felix said, as a grin that can only be described as ‘Shit Eating’ crawled across his face.
Of course, it wouldn’t happen. It COULDN’T happen; the odds of a Twelve coming up on a roll are 36 to 1… Only idiot’s and drunks bet on ‘Boxcars’. Of course, we satisfied both conditions with ease.
Twelve.
Go get the dictionary out of the trash and try to find ‘Apeshit’.
The wives were up now, saying in unison, “Oh no! Oh, no!” They knew something bad was about to happen and were making their way to the door leading to the bedroom.
Al was up, “Yes!!! The twelve! Look at it! Look at it! Igotit Igotit! I can’t believe it!”
I was intoning my new mantra: “Oh shit, now what? Oh shit, now what?”
And Chris Felix simply smiled and began getting up from his place at the table. He was chuckling as he stood up and asked, “Well, where am I supposed to do this?”
Al and I sprang into action; he moved the craps table and couch almost simultaneously and, it being my house, I went to the stereo. We would need music for this. What to play, what to play? Ah… What else? My eyes landed on Tom Wait’s CD “Small Change,” which happens to have a picture of a stripper on the front. Hmmm… Here we go, track number 7, “Pasties and a G-String.”
Trying to keep the women in the room to view the spectacle proved impossible. Then we noticed The Basque trying to sneak out with them; He was trying TO BLEND IN with a crowd of two! We grabbed him and placed him between us, unfortunately we were out of toothpicks, so any “Clockwork Orange” analogies would be lost.
This thing had taken on a life of its own; Chris was positioning himself in front of the Christmas tree, our wives were cowering safely in the bedroom and the three of us were standing there waiting… we had created this situation but were suddenly unsure if we wanted to see it through. The only reason I can give as to why we did watch, is to say that it was like slowing down to see a car wreck: You don’t want to look, but you CAN’T not look!
The music started and so did Chris. I had picked the perfect soundtrack; bass drum and hi-hat cymbal… what else did we (HE) need? Felix began to slowly gyrate, seeming a little nervous. After about thirty seconds, his anxiety disappeared, along with his shirt! We laughed uncomfortably as he flung off his shoes and began working on his socks. He was now shaking and grinding and bumping like a pro!
“My GOD! He looks like a human Lava Lamp!” the Basque shrieked.
Felix’s pants came flying through the air. Al caught them and started a victory dance of his own until he realized WHOSE pants they were; he threw them in the kitchen.
Felix was now as close to Totally Nude as you can get. I was experiencing the most bizarre sensation as his body writhed and rolled in front of one of Christendom’s holiest symbols: The Christmas Tree. Good Lord, I thought, this is sacrilege! It’s obscene! Why, we are celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus, and Chris is slapping his cheeks in time to the music!! OH, THE HUMANITY!!
Each time he spun around in this salacious scene, we’d catch sight of his brief’s waistband.
“Jesus! He’s wearing BVDs… Beelzebub’s Vile Drawers!” Al could be heard yelling above the music.
“No,” I replied, “I think it’s HANES: His Ass Nearing Exhibition Stage!”
“You’re both wrong.”, interjected The Basque, “It’s Fruit of the Loom… THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT OF SATAN’S LOOM!!”
It didn’t matter; the skivvies in question were now hurtling toward us and it was all we could do to avoid their violent arc. Chris was now completely naked, after giving his ass a rub-down with the same tighty-whities that almost caused the three of to kill each other in our scramble to take cover.
What do you do when there is a giant, naked man dancing in your living room? Nothing I had learned in four years of college, nothing I had seen in Amsterdam could prepare me for THIS! I could only watch and hope beyond hope that I could someday forget this whole thing ever happened. Obviously, I haven’t…
It ended almost as quickly as it began. The three of us were still frozen in place, like three big, drunken deer caught in a giant, naked headlight. We didn’t know what to do; in a normal strip club, the “Act” returns to the dressing room, maintaining a little decency by being allowed to dress again in private. In this case, we sort of had to help Chris retrieve his garments, then we politely turned away. The only thing to do after something like that was to have a drink and relive what we had experienced, not unlike UFO abductees after a tough night of getting probed. And like so many abductees, when our wives returned to the living room, they didn’t really believe what we told them. Sure, they smiled and laughed along with us, but we knew they didn’t believe… WE KNEW!
In the end, it didn’t matter who believed us. We’d been to hell and back, and the bonds created by such an ordeal will last a lifetime. I’m still in contact with my Naked Felix buddies, sometimes we get together just to reminisce… sometimes, we try to tell others of that fateful night, only to be disbelieved or worse, scorned and ridiculed! I know what I saw… I BELIEVE. I will always believe in the legend.
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