American Fez

Three Weekend Memories: Fading Ink Scrawled Across A Dusty Notebook

1. The following is a sample curriculum for a correspondence course in Japanese Cultural Studies that I am proposing to that venerable New England citadel of learning, the internationally famous Old Scrotum Community College.

Questions of Japanese Theater, Part One: "Tradition, Perception, and Banzai"

Section A:
What part of Noh don't you understand?

(a) All of it.
(b) The loud bit in the middle.
(c) Do I get free tea with this?
(d) Where are my shoes?
(e) Seek out and destroy American fleets in the Pacific

Answers are available by mime (mode francais) or jester (jaunty English style) and can be delivered via mutual rapid nodding or a straight saliva swap (Gaelic model in transition).

Section B:
If you have not received Section A Sub-Section IV you cannot continue with the lesson. Please contact Professor Mesmer in the gymnasium after lunch, or send a SAE to the address printed on the piece of paper slipped between pages 273 and 274 in the rather battered and dog-eared copy of 'Yukio Mishima A Life In Blood' that I left in the College Library two weeks ago.

Section C
Has Akira Kurasowa ever heard of Andrew Lloyd Webber? If not, who cares, and why? Do you think he'd be better off filming one of those sorts of things rather than adapting all that Shakespeare? Discuss. Get into argument with peers. Go home.

Section D
If you were Japanese would you be sick to death of all this Anime or whatever the Hell it's called that they are doing these days. Do you think Godzilla could beat the living crap out of them all. Illustrate your work with reference to traditional raw seafood preparations.

Section E
I'm sorry you've failed. That'll be $60,000 please. Make check payable to: Department of Foolish Studies, Old Scrotum Community College, Old Scrotum, Vermont.

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2. Laundry
"They toil not, neither do they spin." - a famous Biblical remark concerning the lillies of the field, but also very true of the dryers in the laundromat near my house, which are apparently always Out Of Order. There are eight million triple-loader washers in there and only six dryers, two of them broken; people hanging about waiting for hours with sopping wet clothes like refugees who have doggy paddled themselves all the way from Cuba.
So I don't know what to do about the laundry situation.
Fortunately there is always the mythical washer woman who kneels by the river's edge, eternally scrubbing bloodstains out of the clothes of the recently dead. Maybe I'll ask her to do mine as well, she might be cheap.

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3. West Is So Best

I have to say that West is Best if only because we have developed superior cutlery.
Consequently, in an Ethiopian Restuarant recently: "I'm very sorry but in our country it is the custom to eat with the fingers and the bread."
"That's all very well, but I also have customs, and one of them is eating with a knife and fork."
In the end, I went to the Pizza place next door and got some plastic utensils. Can't decide whether this makes me narrow-minded, snobbish, or both. Probably just pig-headed. But they are the ones losing out, culturally and musically: I mean, what happens to aspiring players of the spoons growing up in Asia? They have to leave home to pursue learning their instrument.

Friggin' Frigga's Day Again Already!

The weekend comes creeping around the corner as usual. So predictable! Yawn.
Hey, calendar people, how about a freekin' surprise once in a while?

Meanwhile, Outer Life has been rattling on about identity theft. But you probably know that since I'm sure that everyone who reads my site also reads his and also reads, etc. Anyway, he caught me - "Colonel Stephenesque in the Comments Section with the Keypad" - thinking he might be naiive enough to reply to some spam email pretending to issue forth from his bank,of course he isn't and it was just me being dense (and over-protective of my blogging chums) - but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, exactly what identity does he possess beyond "Outer Life"? - that's what we want to know. Who is this mysterious exterior person?
Meanwhile, I am reading Old Calabria by Norman Douglas. Brilliant stuff.

Memoirs of a Male Model

Memoirs of a Male Model: An Excerpt

I was over the moon when my agent informed me that Casper David Friedrich wanted to use me as a figure in something allegorical. This, I thought, is going to be my big break.
My mother had always said I would come good in a symbolic landscape, although my dad – typecast as a rather gloomy and bald St Jerome in countless pencil studies by the followers of Carravagio – had always wanted me to go the classical route.
Of course, I had worked with famous artists before: “Gawain Tenders His Neck To the Green Knight” type genre work for Burne-Jones every now and then; and an extremely embarrassing period as Francis Bacon’s “Screaming Nude Youth In Grid” - I didn't even tell my parents about that one!
But that was all in the past, and working with Casper David was the big canvas with gilt ornamental frame as far as I was concerned.
“It’s an interesting job. A great opportunity.” my agent said, “Casper David doesn’t normally do people. He’ll probably hire his own wardrobe mistress, but it wouldn’t hurt if you packed a few outfits of your own just in case. I’m thinking lederhosen and feathery hat for any gay woodsman stuff he might be looking for, and possibly a rustic shepherd type smock, that's always an appealing costume.”
Despite my agent's advice, however, the sitting, alas, did not turn out exactly as I had hoped. For one thing, Casper David was an absolute tyrant.
When I arrived at the location Casper David had chosen for my picture, I discovered that he intended to paint me – with my back to the viewer, if you please! - standing on this craggy rock jutting out over this bloody great chasm in the effing fog.
“You vill be The Wanderer” he said, pompously.
“The only thing that’s wandering around here is your mind if you think I’m getting up on that rock.” I told him, locking my thumbs through the shoulder straps on my lederhosen, puffing out my chest, and pouting, “I wouldn’t do it even if Velasquez offered to do me as a Seated Dwarf at the court of Phillip the Multi-Chinned.”
“You vill change out of zis ridiculous clothings! And you vill mount up on ze rock, zis very instant!” Casper David shrieked back.
Eventually we settled on a frock coat and leggings, and Casper David agreed that I could balance myself on the rock with a walking stick. However, by this time, all the fog had receded back into the valley and so the tech people had to crank up a smoke machine while tried out a bunch of different postures.
Anyway, later, about 1840-ish, the picture, entitled The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, was varnished and ready for hanging.
“It’s not bad.,” my father sniffed when he saw the painting unveiled at Frau Grendel’s Tuesday Night Salon-a-thon, “Might work as the cover art for a book of philosophy or something.”
It was about this time that I met a man named Bosch who was looking for models who had no problem with nude work and were willing to squat on the back of a giant bird while a grinning demon poked them in the bum with a stick. Naturally I was very interested ....

Tuesdays@Gunga Din's.

Stefan Beck's young head may find easy purchase in an Irish matron's bosom, but here at Stephenesque we prefer the sylphlike shake of a classic American cocktail waitress's jingle-jangle braclets as she, silver tray of icily colorful drinks balanced aloft in her right palm, parabolas between our tables with all the graceful expertise and lissome elegance of an Egyptian bellydancer.
Indeed, after I recently mentioned - in this very space - the invention of my own birthday cocktail, the truly mindbending "Gordian Knot" (Brandy Alexander with a little Guinness Stout tipped in), Pamela Siska of the Robert Benchley Society, wisely - nay sagely - suggested the creation of a drink with a similar theme which would be named an "Occam's Razor".
But what would be in an Occam's Razor?
Gin, it sounds like to me, with ... pineapple juice and ... what?
Any ideas, people? And how about some more cocktail name suggestions and recipes!
Thanks.

The Revolving Door

No sooner has Enoch Soames returned from his long, Cisternian exile than those earnest and learned folks at Social Affairs Unit Blog have vanished into thin air (not an easy thing to do for lovers of Beef Stewed in Wine).
Perhaps they are simply too busy presenting theoretical papers at some important conference: "Staging Hamlet: New Approaches to the Character of Osric" or something like that I should imagine.

Radical Movement

I have a radical notion:

Instead of electing all these rictus-grinned, bug-eyed Washington Punch and Judys whom nobody really likes, we should institute "Government Duty".
This public obligation would be exactly the same as Jury Duty, only citizens would pass epoch-making legislation for a month instead of passing not guilty judgements.
All the big pressure groups and lobbies could have their representative "yea" or "nay" a particular citizen who has been called for Government Duty in much the same manner as defense and prosecution counsels currently "yea" and "nay" prospective trial jurors: those who are deemed acceptable to all parties then have to serve in Government until all the laws and decisions under review have been dealt with for the period.
Just think!
No more pompous Presidents, sanctimonious Senators, creepy Congressmen, or insignificant State-whatever-they-ares!
It would truly be Government for the People by the People, just like those merry Ancient Greeks chucking their colored pebbles in the urn!
All in favor say "aye".

Round Up (The Usual Suspects)

Enoch Soames is propped up once more against his favorite British Museum desk, head buried in the dustiest tome he can find on the most cobwebbed shelf; apparently he had locked himself in the toilets and could not get out. I bet he discovered a lot more about "fungoids" from his long hours in there than he bargained for. So expect another volume soon.
The Crack Young Staff also claim to have returned from their sundry adventures, although I am not so sure that they were ever really away. A case of "We're off to Rome and Madrid for our summer hols!", but really just hiding down in their gloomy dorm room with only thirty year old copies of National Geographic for company. I know, I did it too when I was their age.

Live From The DNC

A bearded man shod in sandals climbs to the top of a hill with the aid of a stick, and murmurs grimly to nobody in particular, "And so it begins."
But I don't mean Gandalf here, oh no, just some other badge-festooned smelly hippy with far too much time on his professionally annoying and grimy hands who has arrived in Boston for the Democratic National Convention, slouching across the city, blown forward through the streets by the propulsive properties of his own granola-powered flatulance.
And that's all I have to report so far, since I am not attending any of the functions or speeches. But that's pretty much what it looks like from my end of town.
Clinton speaks tonight! Have these people never heard of Pepto-Bismol?

Ole!

The Russian balletomane Nijinsky famously challenged his equally Russian promoter Diaghilev to a bullfight;
and, ah, one thinks, if only the highly American political adversaries Bush and Kerry would enter into a similar spirit of competition. Indeed, both of these Presidential candidates seem to have something of the look of a Spaniard about them, even if is only a drop of the Don Quixote seeping in to the campaign promises they make.
At any rate, a Presidential Bullfight would certainly liven things up a bit.

The Bartender's Birthday

My birthday. I have invented a new cocktail to mark the occasion, although it is really just a manly Brandy Alexander with some Guinness tipped in: I have dubbed it 'A Gordian Knot' as in:
"Hey, bartender, cut me a Gordian Knot and make it snappy."

History: A Personal Exploration of World Shattering Events

Nineteenth century French children used to ask their fathers: "Daddy, what did you do in The Terror?"
"Well, son, I used to bale the hay that fed the horse that pulled the cart that transported the condemned ..."
Indeed. Everyone has their important role in the great events of the day. This is the Trickle-Down Theory of Spear-Carrying, even if the spear is just an old broom handle with some arrowhead-shaped piece of cardboard painted silver and taped to the top of it.
But although many are chosen, few are called, it's like: "Daddy, what did you do in the Second Punic War?"
"Well, son, I am bloody well Hannibal, aren't I. What do you think I did? Sit around on my big fat Carthaginian bum all day like you? No. Not bloody likely. Back in my day we marched up and down with all the elephants and frightened the living beJupiter out of all the bloody Romans. That's what I bloody well did in the Second Punic War, you cheeky, lazy, insolent little so and so. Now go upstairs and clean your bedroom."
Obviously, from such hazy historical questions many conclusions can be disputed: the Albigensian Crusade was really just a blackberry picking expedition that went horribly wrong; the fabled city of Troy was in truth merely a wattle and daub hut belonging to an old woman called Mrs Merlin de Bozoom and she only used it on weekends; the Barnum and Bailey Circus started the First World War; I really, really, am absolutely no Victor Davis Hanson, no sir, not by a long shot.

Heaven and the Daddlands

"A dialogue between two infants in the womb concerning the state of this world, might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in Pluto's den, and are but embryo philosophers." So wrote the wise and learned Sir Thomas Browne.
As for me, when I was a very young boy, I was pretty convinced Heaven would look something like this picture by Samuel Palmer, and to some extent, I'm still hoping that it will: ah yes, those nineteenth-century Welsh rustics never had it so good.
Mind you, I used to believe that the Tooth Fairy collected teeth so that other fairies might build gleaming ivory palaces out of them. But that only applied to the bright white baby teeth, old rotten yellow ones were used for constructing makeshift sheds to keep their bikes in.
Now, of course, I realise that inside these yellow sheds are actually stored the chestnuts from which Queen Mab's carriage will be made. Just ask Richard Dadd, and he'll tell you all about it.

Victor Davis Hanson: Am I Like Him At All?

If only I could boast a mind capable of writing scholarly tomes about Greek history. Alas, it is avenue of endeavor forever closed to my miniscule - yet charming - collection of brain cells.
Perhaps I possess a little more knowledge than average about Hoplites and Aristotle, but nowhere near as much as Victor Davis Hanson.
But, oddly, some of my colleagues think I do, if only because I refer to the narrow run of steps that lead to our CEO's office as "The Stairwell of Thermopylae": a joke that must, it seems, always be explained.
"You're so highbrow." they tell me. Alas, the only thing about me that is highbrow is my vinyl copy of Peter Warlock's The Shrouding of the Duchess of Malfi- which is, I reckon, a pretty highbrow record to own. All other culture that I consume (and I use the word advisedly) can - usually with great generosity and charity - be described as, sadly, ultra middlebrowish. So the answer to the original question posed by this post is: absolutely nothing like Victor Davis Hanson at all.
And so the point of all this is .... no, no, sorry, I'm really too dim and my thoughts so uncoordinated and abstract for anything I write to actually have a point. You must look elsewhere

Social Affairs Unit Watch

Dead of night and the moon is low and the gas lamps hiss. An exhausted, emaciated horse drags the coffin-maker's cart through narrow, blood and urine splattered streets. A blind beggar rattles his cup, unaware that the street is empty and only desperate men are abroad tonight. From barred Workhouse windows above comes a distraught women's wailing. Meanwhile, an angel-faced but hunchbacked child with rickets coughs and sighs his last, expiring alone and unwanted against the bolted door of the smoke-blackened church.
But hark! "Hahahahaha!" Who comes hither? From whence arise these mirthful cries of merrymaking and good cheer? Wait! Here they come, these three fine, jaunty Regency gentlemen arm in arm.
'Pon my soul, 'tis The Social Affair Unit Bloggers on their nightly visit to the theater, led towards their destination by the alluring light that shines forth from the stage door, the smell of grease paint, and the easy glamor of all things thespian: seats in the Royal Box, no doubt, to see actress Dame Cyril Luvvie's latest triumph, entrancing London as Lady Oik in Pardon Me Vicar, Could You Pass The Beef Stewed In Wine.
"A triumph" writes Stefan Beck of The New Criterion

"Blimpish nonsense" adds James Delingpole of The Spectator

"Bastard" concludes Red Ken who can't write proper like all them toffs.

"It's all rather good, actually. But I can't resist making fun of it all the same." admits Stephen of Stephenesque

Impression: Somerset

I am currently reading Jeffrey Meyers' biography of Somerset Maugham, in a manner similar to Goya's Man Reading Book (Prado, 1785). I find the book very interesting, but sometimes, in need of rest from all the gratuitous references to famous paintings, I have to put it down on my couch, patterned like Green and Purple Abstraction (1910, MOMA. Gift of Mr and Mrs C. Arbuthnot). I borrowed the book from the Boston Public Library, the building on Boylston Street that is pictured on Postcard:Greetings From Boston (Unknown Photographer. Tremont Street Souvenir Store, 2004). So far I have read up to page 212, a collection of black letters formed into sentences and printed on white paper cut in rectangular shape, a motif that visually recalls Contract With Publisher (Knopf and Meyers, 2004) .... etc.

The Portrait

For reasons connected with my election as President of the Napoleonic Posture Club, it became necessary to have my portrait painted in oils so that a likeness of myself could be hung in the Club’s Robing Room.
Since I was not personally acquainted with artists who could undertake such an important commission – (my wife restricts her talents to watercolors, and the sort of man who is elected President of the Napoleonic Posture Club does not haunt the confines of Bohemia) – to expedite my search for a reputable palette and brush jockey, I found myself thumbing through the classifieds advertisements in the back of The Yellow Book of Pages, a gazetteer of artistic life in which the bearded and paint splattered promote their various services.
A certain Joshua Reynolds had commandeered a full-page spread for himself – “Consultancies By Appointment Only”. There was another called Gainsborough – “we specialize in children, small boys and rich ladies”. And yet another called Romney, examples of whose work all seemed to be pictures of the same woman. Obviously these were no good to me, and so I settled on someone called Franz Hals, despite his foreign sounding name. He was very business-like on the phone, and we agreed upon a reasonable price with principle sketching to commence the following Tuesday.
Now. What to wear? After much thought, I decided to have myself immortalized in traditional Bavarian hunting apparel with a huge ear trumpet clasped to my ear, a nice touch, I thought, symbolizing the fact that I am a good listener. My other hand would rest upon a spinning globe with lambs of innocence gamboling around my feet and the doves of peace encircling the crown of laurel leaves on my head. Obviously, I would be straddling an enormous and ferocious, fang-bearing snow leopard with the motto “Pax Stephenesqus” inscribed on a golden scroll hanging in shreds from the beast’s jaws. In the background, I decided on a simple montage featuring all my vanquished and supplicant foes in the Presidential Elections of the Napoleonic Posture Club.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, despite my elaborate preparations and suggestions, this Franz Hals just painted me in a black cloak and black floppy hat, looking slightly drunk against a field of plain gray. So I never paid the miserable Dutch hack.

Destiny

Is it really me who will be the first to leave some foolish comment on the Social Affairs Unit weblog?
Yes it probably will be be. For instance, these learned men seem to spend an awful amount of time at the theater, considering the fact that they really should be elbow-deep in statistics concerning unemployment and single parent families in Glasgow.
Meanwhile a lovely shank of beef stews on nicely in its Vintner's broth.

Irreversible Decline of the Sea

Standing at the water's edge, shading one's eyes from the sun with the flat of one's hand, it is hard to accept what has happened to the ocean, its emerald depths once teeming with Neptune's mermaids, the Flying Dutchmanm and spiced Phoenician ships, sunken Spanish galleons and their treasure chests protected by pop-eyed octopi, Jonah swallowing whales, talking dolphins and Marine Boys, giant squid, Victorian deep sea divers in brass helmets and lead boots, stampeding seahorses, Captain Nemo's submarine and the aquatic-Bauhaus designed bases of super villains on the seabed itself.
Now it's just full of pollution and fat people from New Jersey.

Ecclesiastes in Washington

Banality of banalities, saith the Political Pundit, banality of banalities; all is banality.
What profit hath a citizen of all his voting which he taketh under the sun?
One election campaign passeth away, and another election campaign cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
The fool also ariseth, and the fool goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
The hot air goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the hot air returneth again according to his circuits.
All the opinions run into the record; yet the record is not full: unto the place from whence the bad ideas come, thither they return again.
All things are full of lobbyists; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun except John Kerry's latest opinion on abortion.
Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is sense? it hath been already exposed as nonsense, which was before us.
There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

The Self Deceived

If there isn’t a guru sitting on top of the mountain then it’s not worth climbing, that’s what I always say. That’s where all those Everest expeditions went wrong: no holy man sitting cross-legged and tight-lipped at the summit and suddenly - whoops! - it’s complete disaster and everyone freezes to death in an avalanche. I learned that at the ashram of Swami Krishchrosh, author of Bhagavad Vita Brevis, Somnium Longa.
Originally, I only went for the free salad, nose paintings, and Tuesday afternoon belly dancing lessons (all are welcome regardless of experience), but after the first couple of drugged soy milkshakes I began to realize that the Swami had something really interesting to teach - “there is a sucker born every minute and he attains enlightenment by becoming as one with his sucker status, so give me all your money.” - and my soul has gained great comfort by chanting that simple refrain seven times per hour every day.
The Swami has told me that after I die, I will return to Earth as a strand of straw in a basket weaving competition, and this way the single becomes part of the whole on its path to transcendence. Apparently, in a previous life, I was one of Odysseus’s Odor Eaters and consequently I have a lot to learn.

Piano Transcription

Everyone knows that during a performance, the lid of a piano is always elegantly propped open at an angle, but how many people know that this acoustical necessity can cause many difficulties for the unwary or forgetful pianist. Even such a legend as Franz Liszt often suffered from the problem of his drinks sliding off the piano when he accidentally placed them on the lid while playing an especially pretty tune. It was a predicament that tortured the great composer, and can be heard in his mournful “Gin All Over the Floor Again Sonata” and also the “I Have Ruined The Duke's Carpet” section of his famous Hungarian Fling Suite.
Glenn Gould instituted the modern practice of employing a second page-turning assistant to both pour and hold drinks at his recitals, and it was common at Gould's concerts to observe women in evening dress shaking Martini mixers on stage during the third movement of Bach's immortal "The Brandenburg Cocktail".
Of course, most pianists today remain steadfastly ... er ... tea-atonal?

The Somnambulist

Since I have been blogging superb material for the past seventeen years I am surprised that I have not yet been summoned to the Pentagon to provide a Presidential Committee with my important views on foreign policy and the UFO problem. And just where I might justifiably ask is my book deal and offer of a regular column in the New York Times? Doesn't Donald Trump read my blog?? What's going on!
Never mind, I am going to be far too busy for such commitments anyway, since I am embalming the corpse of my mother-in-law this week as you know. Typical of the selfish cow to use my wife’s inheritance to build a huge memorial pyramid tomb in France for herself at the expense of my children’s education. Still, my wife and I will be doing the actual embalming of the body so that should save a bit of money. We will be using traditional Egyptian techniques so she’ll be a Mummy-in-law. Ha ha. We had a good laugh about that, the police and I.
Anyway, fortunately I was a big-deal Nubian priest in one of my past lives so I know all about the embalming process: yank out the organs – be careful not to drop them on the floor, that liver’s a slippery fella! - arrange them in a vase with some spices and all that. Naturally, we will have to make do with regular pharmaceutical bandages and gum arabic, but I don’t think Anubis will mind.
That de Chirico came around again last night with his new designs for the gazebo we want to erect in our Garden of Earthly Delights behind the patio. Unfortunately, de Chirico's plans are based on all these slopes and angles and weird perspective surfaces, which means that all our drinks will slide of the tables when we put them down at parties. Sent de Chirico back to the drawing board... again.
Meanwhile, there has been a terrifying demonic hound haunting our gated community recently. Someone must have been naughty! I’ll bet it’s that nice John Edwards next door who has just been added to the Democratic ticket. He’s a dark horse, that one. Probably sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for political power, I’ll be bound, and now Old Nick has come to collect.
Well folks, that's all the blogging I have time for today. Even a busy Somnambulist like myself has got to jump back in his cabinet once in a while.
Always remember you can email me here: [email protected]

White Rabbit Beside The River

The vagrant came furtively skipping and hopping from the river’s edge with trousers soaked to the knee, clasping his latest redeemable discovery -a large plastic coke bottle - securely to his grimy chest, as if afraid some water sprite might rise from the depths to demand the immediate return of whatever discarded bottle or can the man had claimed for himself. Despite the evident layers of grease and grime common to his kind, he could surprisingly boast a dazzlingly Alpine peak of snowy hair that cascaded across his shoulders in an avalanche of curls. A dislocated version of Alice’s White Rabbit he seemed to me, though fallen upon hard times, his pocket watch long since pawned away, such a grand time-piece obviously redundant in a world that no longer demanded his punctual appearance at important dates.
I watched him scamper towards a patch of covered ground, where, fashioned from a palisade of concrete pylons sunk deep into the no man’s land of grass verges beneath the Mass Ave Bridge, he had made a camp for himself. Here, in this travesty of domesticity, his assortment of blankets, shabby overcoats and spare pieces of rags were hung out to dry on the metal frames of several heavily battered shopping carts with missing wheels, and amongst this graveyard of objects he stored his precious collection of cans and bottles like a rabbit might horde food for the winter in its burrow. One could easily imagine that the vagrant himself had dug deep below the surface, excavating a dark, winding, subterranean maze of passages that lead to his secret, cobweb strung anti-cellar: rows and rows of new-fangled clear plastic bottles, opaque brown and green glass bottles of rare vintage, dented cans, cans with infinitely varying patinas of rust and dirt, gleaming cans, all rattling and clanking together in a deafening cacophony when disturbed by the relentless rumble of the traffic overhead.

Charles River Vignette

Near the metal footbridge that joins Fairfield Street to the esplanade, quietly removed from the cycle path that runs alongside the water lily lagoons flanking the Charles River by an expanse of grassy turf, stands a sculpted reminder that the transcendentalist poet Oliver Wendell Holmes once lived across the way. Ideally viewed at dusk, but neglected now it seems, except by curious tourists and the slumbering drunken figures that sometimes drape themselves across it: a memorial bench formed by an arc of thick, gray weathered stone facing an attendant pedestal arranged within a glade encompassed by tumbling trees and overgrown bushes; architectural and natural features that, when illuminated by the fall of ambient moonlight, recall the landscapes of Salvatore Rosa, or, when the evening grows darker still, those colored illustrations accompanying penny-dreadful tales of demons and ghosts. Certainly, dismiss the litter and roar of traffic on Storrow Drive from your mind and it does not require an Olympian feat of imagination to envisage some doomed and shrouded phantom revenant slowly arising from the leaf-strewn ground in misty, magenta twilight. And perhaps the shade of Dr Holmes would find eternal peace were it not for the vile contagion of rusting tin, grimy plastic, and derelict humanity that plagues the scene, as if vomited here by the polluted, sickening river God before he staggered off towards the sea and his voluntary self-termination.

Indoors With Heat Stroke

As if regular readers of this page could not tell already, let me announce that I have been in rather a daft mood lately, the result, as Juvenal might say, of hatless exposure to the profane and giddier rays of Apollo and His Book of Puns and Rude Limericks For All Saturnalian Occasions: (Hours of fun! Amuse your friends at the expense of your slaves. Only four dinarii plus P&P).
Additionally, this weekend I also - while waiting for those promised summer storms that never broke - watched a DVD of Wodehouse Playhouse, delivered to my door by prior arrangement with the excellent company of Netflix and Sons Ltd.
Produced in the middle of the nineteen-seventies, starring some woman called Pauline Collins (good at playing braying, horsey gels) and her husband, John Somebody-or-other (good at playing curates), Wodehouse Playhouse is heavy on the Mulliner and infinitely superior to the dreary Jeeves and Wooster of modern times, mainly due to its emphasis on being plain funny rather than evoking period style and giving mannered performances at the expense of the jokes. Indeed, the sets are extremely cheaply designed - recalling the look of staged amateur theatricals in church halls, which makes them somehow highly appropriate for Wodehouse material - and the show includes traditional visually jarring BBC-type filmed "exteriors" which (marvellously) don't match the studio video at all. Amongst these cardboard surroundings, the actors bumble around delivering their stuttering lines with amusing charm in the true Wodehousian spirit.
I am glad to say that there are several discs-worth of Wodehouse Playhouse in the vaults at Netflix, since I cannot recommend it too highly.

Where Be Your Jibes Now?

The varieties of court jester or "licensed fool" were undoubtedly the first professional exponents of political satire. These rictus-grinned paragons of cap and bells were followed by the French mime, reduced to silence by Royal edict and consequently required to perform his criticisms with elaborate gestures rather than words.
However, recent scholarship suggests that primitive man may also have adopted a formal system of artistic comment upon tribal affairs, the so-called "cave spoofs". It has been claimed by learned authorities that hitherto unexplained prehistoric paintings of men and creatures at Lascaux and other Stone Age locations could have satirical implications. Could these early visual expressions actually be political cartoons to which the modern mind can supply the captions:
"Chief Hunter Kragnagar is a pile of wooly mammoth turds."
"Head Gatherer Bruggna couldn't organise a berry gathering in a bushal."
And so on...

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The preceeding was an excerpt on the history of political satire that I was writing for The New Croutonian, a magazine devoted to promulgating conservative theories of salad dressing preparation (pro Reaganomian Ranch, very anti Newman's Blue Chomsky).
As you can see, I lost control of my material in the second sentence. With my rejection letter, I received a polite note from TNC's editor, Stilton Creamer, suggesting that perhaps I should seriously reconsider my attitudes to red onion and horseradish as a neo-Stalinist reduction of traditional Norwegian sauces. I agreed to disagree.

Random Thursday Oddness

Since my previous light jazz combo, Spoil Sport, have broken up, I'm now playing lead guitar and bass sousaphone in a general business band called The Tichborne Claimant.
We do covers mostly. Some nineteenth century German songs about crib death. Some early Bowie. You know the sort of thing they like at weddings. The Beatles are always very popular, but we don't know any of their stuff.
We do a few of our own numbers from time to time. I write the lyrics. Joelle provides the rockin' tunes. Here's one I'm working on for this Greek Orthodox annual picnic gig we're doing next Saturday. It's called "Conquistador of Love":

Oooh! Dusky maiden with yer nut brown boobs
Yer grass lingerie and banana flavored lubes.
Yeah. My dusky maiden
Where do yer sleep in rainy monsoon season?
Whose shoulders lay yer lovely knees on?
Yeah. My sweet dusky maiden
Oooooooh! I'm gunning for yer gold!
Gunning for yer gold!
Aaaaaaaah! Dusky maiden!

It's sounds pretty good with lots of echo and reverb and the twenty-three minute sousaphone solo.

My Cultural Index

1. Hardy's poetry or Hardy's prose?

2. Patrick Hamilton or Nathanael West?

3. Frederic Church or Albert Bierstadt?

4. Arthur Hacker or Arthur Hughes?

5. Hiawatha or Sitting Bull?

6. Minotaur or Cyclops?

7. Bald Men or Fat Men?

8. Secret Police or Regular Police?

9. Death or Coma?

10. Oh God I'm bored of this already too .... still, it's better than some that I've seen.

11. My cultural index or the Terry Teachout one?

Children's Classics

It is rumored that the fabled and much sought after recipe for Duck ala Monte Cristo was lost to illustrated recipe books (suitable for ages 5 and up) when the Last of the Mohicans was finally lain upon his funeral pyre, and the secret ingredients engraved upon his Indian brain were burnt to the finest ash along with the rest of that noble redskin. It was said that Duck ala Monte Cristo could serve a Swiss Family Robinson of four or five with some left over in the pot, and these slops were awarded to Lassie, the dog, after he had entertained the fairy folk with his amusing tricks.
Custom demanded that when dining on Duck ala Monte Cristo, the men partaking of the dish should wear the traditional "iron mask" to conceal their identities.
Robinson Crusoe, perhaps the world's foremost authority on Treasure Island cuisine, claimed that Duck ala Monte Cristo should really be fried in a special "peter" pan, on a bed of spiced wendy. Gulliver, however, in his famous "travels" records another method of preparing Duck ala Monte Cristo, although the modern gourmet should be warned that the resulting portions are rather small - about the same size as a frozen Chicken Lilliput that you can buy in your local Little Piggy's Supermarket.
Aside from a few menu scraps discovered amongst the papers of Robinson Crusoe, today's chefs are ... can I really be this bored???

Passing The Time

Voice Over Written To Accompany Post-War Travelogue Film

The pastoral peasant village of Leggluss. Deep in the heart of the Schloscht Valley. Agricultural capital of the Sudentenland. This is wine country. Some of the world's finest grapes ripen and mature with mouthwatering robustness on the vines of the Leggluss region. Yes. It's no wonder purple is the color of Emperors and their concubines. During the war connoisseurs of the globe's greatest vintages grew green with jealously upon hearing that Adolf Hitler and his army of Panzers had invaded the Sudentenland, since this Bacchanalian mecca area offers such untold riches for discerning wine-lovers of all political stripes. The former German Chancellor could be relaxing now with a glass of Zinfandel Auf Milkenmaid had he not also invaded Russia.
Never mind, Adolf. There's always another harvest as the plucky Leggluss peasant saying has it. Here we see members of the victorious Red Army treading grapes in the specially made wooden vats. Let's hope Ivan has washed his feet lately. Yes. It's been a long and hard fought march from the frozen wastes of Stalingrad to this verdant vintners heaven in the peasant village of Leggluss. Deep in the heart of the Schloscht Valley.

Politique

That old whore Kerry Edwards just managed to wriggle her fat ass into the tight red, white and blue leather mini-skirt, hiked her fishnet stockings up and then adjusted her fake tits: it was gonna be another hard night of strutting her aging stuff across the DNC floor.
Staggering across the room in six inch high heels, she attempted to convey an air of nonchalance by blowing bubbles with a piece of gum that had spent more time in her mouth than Fat Boy Clinton's Little Fella - and that was a lot of time - but as usual, the bubbles burst all too quickly.
"Hey Sweetie!" an old timer called from a table in the corner "And just what might your name be?"
"Miss Kerry Edwards." Kerry replied in her best affectation of a Southern Belle's cute singsong voice, flashing a smile at the old timer.
"Well Miss Kerry Edwards" the old timer said, "Why don't you just come over here to your Uncle Sammy and give him a nice little lap dance?"
"I'll be right over Uncle Sammy" Kerry Edwards gushed, "You just stay right where you are." And then she groped her way over towards Uncle Sammy's table and hopped up into his lap, dug her heels into his thighs and started to mambo.
"Agggh! Not like that you stupid bitch!" Uncle Sammy screamed, pushing Kerry Edwards back onto the floor. "When I said lap dance I didn't mean dance ON my lap, you ugly cow. You never done this before, or what?"
"I'm so sorry." Kerry Edwards cried, and she staggered off towards the bar in search of another sucker.

Preserves

In the interests of archiving my "work", I have excavated these two examples of Stephenesque novelty writing from the files of eternity:

1. The Unrequited Phantom

I was clanking my chains around the Christmas party punch bowl, trying to project a little ectoplasm into Dora's glass when the fat woman saw me. She screamed and dropped her Egg Nog. Pointing a trembling finger in my direction she sank to the floor babbling on and on about what she had seen. Typical. We ghosts have a saying: "It's only the people you don't want to see you who actually see you. The people you want to see you never do." How very true that is, I mean, why would I want to get in touch with the fat woman? I had no important messages from the Other Side to impart to her, and it is not as if we have anything in common: she is very substantial and I am not. It was pale and thin Dora I wanted to communicate with. She is much more my type, although apparently about as psychic as a bag of cement.
The other guests had gathered around the fat woman and Dora went to fetch a glass of water for her, striding right through me on her way to the kitchen. I tried to catch Dora's eye as she rushed by, no easy thing because our heads are on different levels. Mine is tucked under my armpit and hers is in the normal place.
Of course, nobody believed the fat woman's story. They slowly drifted away from her in smaller, whispering groups. Someone said she was drunk. Too much rich food, somebody else explained. Chocolate fondue makes her go all wobbly and she starts dribbling down her chin, they all agreed.
Dora was wonderful with her. She is very good at dealing with the living, not so good with the dead. Probably gets nervous around people she doesn't believe in.
Dora and I had met, if you can call it that, twice before. The first time, indirectly, when I was acting as Spirit Guide at a séance she was attending at her mother's instigation. They were trying to contact the spirit of Dora's Uncle George. Why they would wish to undertake such a course of action, I cannot imagine: Uncle George is a restless spirit in more ways than one, and gets on my nerves with his annoying fidgety behavior. However, Dora was very different and I knew instantly she was the girl for me. Unfortunately, the medium came out of her trance before I got a chance to put my best pick up lines across, and all I had a chance to say was the usual banal and meaningless stuff: "Your Uncle George is very happy with us on the Other Side" ...which may have been true, but as I said before, we on the Other Side were not very happy with Uncle George, farting and belching his way around the astral plane like some kind of disembodied Frat Boy.
The second time we met, Dora was part of a group experimenting with one of those Ouija boards. I had just managed to spell out "SWM. Deceased with GSH seeks" with the planchette when this know-it-all lesbian interrupted, saying a "malevolent spirit has entered the circle" and I couldn't finish my sentence. Then they started playing Monopoly instead.
Obviously, both meeting were what you might call unsuccessful. Consequently, the appearance of Dora at the Christmas party was an opportunity not to be missed.
Fortunately, in possession of special knowledge, as it were, I knew that Dora would be at the party and so had spent the previous week practicing my seduction techniques: "Hi Dora, remember me? I was the cold damp spot on the floor at the séance last week. You know, if you were dead too, we could make beautiful chain clanking noises together. You'd look great in spectral white and we could walk through walls arm in arm. So what do you say ...your tomb or mine."
Alas, I suffer from lack of confidence, much as I did in life. I have phantom neurosis and find it very difficult to believe in myself, so never think others will believe in me either. Of course, convincing arguments can be made for the survival of the spirit after death: an impression in the fabric of time, for example; or a sort of Monet-ish dab in the ether. That seems reasonable enough. But, according to the fat woman, when she saw me I was dressed in some sort of Edwardian shooting outfit, which, however plausible, doesn't make a lot of sense when you think about it. Of course, Tweed is famously very durable, but it is hard to believe it lasts beyond the grave, however excellent the tailoring might be. And how do you explain phantom shoes? Are they are doomed to stalk the Earth forever searching for the shoe trees that abandoned them in life. It seems unlikely.
However, summoning all my courage, I picked up a sprig of mistletoe and drifted over to where Dora still leant over the fat woman, "Dora, Dora, Dora." I whispered, breathing my ectoplasm in her lovely ear.
"Ugggh. I think Agnes is being sick." Dora cried.

2. Beauties and the Beast

For the past few months the Beast had been abducting all the women in town. The Beast had started with the most beautiful woman and had swiftly moved on down the beauty chain.
Bill Price's wife was the first to disappear, as you might expect. "The Beast has good taste," we all agreed. Then Tom Fisher's wife went, which was reasonable enough if you liked redheads, and the Beast certainly did. Dick Powell's wife was next. "The Beast has obviously never heard of implants," we all sniggered.

Meanwhile the abductions continued. Eventually, by mid-September, only Ed Foot's wife and my wife were left. It was unkindly suggested that maybe our wives were not beautiful enough for the Beast.
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." I told people.
"Yeah. But the Beast's eye isn't too choosey," they replied.

Ed Foot actually forced his wife to hide in their house and pretend that she had already been abducted. But that fooled nobody. As for my wife, I told everyone that the Beast must be a connoisseur and was saving the best for last.
"Not bothered about scraping the barrel, you mean." They said.

I sometimes saw Ed Foot outside the hardware store on Elm Street. We never spoke, just nodded silently to each other and wondered which of our wives would be the last woman in town to be carried off to the Beast's lair.

Several days passed and there was no sign of the Beast. It seemed the Beast really wasn't interested in my wife or Ed Foot's wife after all.
"Must be too ugly." People said.
"I'm sure the Beast will stop by and abduct her any day now." I told them.
But the Beast never did.

Many guys became pretty smug after the Beast abducted their wives and drove around with bumper stickers bearing slogans such as 'My Wife Was Sixteenth' and 'Proud Husband Of Number Thirty-Seven'. But as time progressed they began to miss little things like home cooked meals and clean bed linens. Consequently, a motion was put forward at a Town Meeting that something should be done. It was proposed and passed that the Beast should be killed and the wives returned to their homes where they belonged.

We had heard eyewitness descriptions of the Beast on local news radio, and everyone knew the Beast wore knee britches, buckled shoes, a frock coat and a powdered wig on his head. "The Beast is a big fag," everyone said. Killing the Beast would be easy, it was agreed.

However, according to the ancient scrolls that were discovered stuffed behind the cistern of Professor Herbert's downstairs toilet, the Beast could only be killed with this root thing that you had to special order from Peru. Apparently you needed to whittle the root down until it became a sharp pointy stick, and then you had to fire the pointy end into the Beast's ear at close-range using a blowpipe or an old-fashioned peashooter. There was also this mystic oil stuff that you needed to anoint the pointy end of the root with, and that was an additional cost.

Bill Price and Dick Powell had been talking pretty big at the Town Meeting before the scrolls were found.
"We are going to find out what kills the Beast and we are going fill a big truck with it." They said. "And then we are going to drive the big truck all over town. And when we find the Beast we are going to unload the big truck. And then we are going to cram two-tons worth of whatever kills the Beast right up the Beast's asshole. That's what we are going to do."
Back then they thought either a simple wooden stake or a flask of holy water would do the trick. A few really gung-ho guys like Tom Fisher even suggested melting down Reverend Miller's silver Jesus to make silver shotgun pellets:
"I'm going to give that Beast both barrels through both his big hairy balls." He boasted.

Of course, when everyone found out about the root and the mail ordering and the postage and the international currency exchange, they all suddenly changed their tune. People stood around with their hands in their pockets muttering to themselves: "I'm gathering a mob brandishing flaming torches and we are going down the post office tomorrow. Or maybe next week. Whenever it is convenient. Soon as I can arrange a day off work I'm going to buy those air-mail stamps and send away for that root and the mystic oil and show that Beast who is the Boss around here. Any of you folks know where I can find the nearest Bureau De Change?"

A few days later it was rumored that the Beast had purchased three hundred and sixty-five tickets for an amateur production of Evita in a nearby town.

Irradicable Ink Stains

Attracted by a speech bubble joke on the cover, I purchased my first copy of Private Eye more than twenty years ago from a grizzled news vendor imprisoned, or so it seemed to me at the time, amid ceaseless swirls of cigarette smoke in an upright rabbit hutch unceremoniously dumped on the corner of Shatfsbury Avenue, never be released, I decided, until he had sold his daily quota of magazines and candy.
I must have been about fourteen years old then, impressionable, but I have continued to buy the "Eye" ever since, even though it is only available from a single source in Boston and a special pilgrimage must be undertaken every Sunday to obtain the latest issue. Later I would add the New Yorker and the Spectator to the weekly roll of print wedged under my arm and carried in this manner from cafe to cafe in Harvard Square and then off home again.
Alas, the cafes have been vanquished now by the Mallification of our public shopping zones, but the magazines still remain, even if they do disappoint from time to time.
Private Eye, in particular, has lost the irreplaceable contributors Peter Cook, Auberon Waugh, Willie Rushton, and Richard Ingrams (grazing in the fields of the Oldie), but it has gained the remarkable Craig Brown, in my opinion the funniest man currently putting pen on paper.
The New Yorker is generally pretty dreadful these days: the fiction is unreadable; the funny bits aren't funny, even Ian Frazier has lost the talent to amuse; the new stories are concocted from gossip and hearsay; and the reviews ... why bother?
The Spectator, meanwhile, despite also losing Auberon Waugh, includes a weekly dose of Paul Johnson (you can almost home-school your kids using only the books that man has written!) and Mark Steyn writes the film reviews. So it remains, I think, the best weekly magazine in the world. And it only costs $4.50.

The Bleeding Heart

Working, as I do, in the role of secular Chaplain in an asylum for the criminally insane – a term I abhor – it has been my good fortune to encounter some of the most notorious serial killers and mass murdering psychotics the world has ever known. And I have noticed how very different these poor creatures actually are from the picture that is generally painted of them by an uncaring and vengeful society as gibbering Bedlamites, crouching naked and shivering in the Stygian depths of padded dungeons smeared with their own feces while reading love letters from wealthy spinsters. What a travesty of the truth that image truly is. Indeed, you may be surprised to learn that many of those spinsters actually have only a few thousand in the bank.
But what of the patients themselves, you ask. Well, on the whole, I could not have hoped to meet a more charming, witty, erudite, and intelligent set of fun and freedom loving characters.
There is Peter Stakenive, for instance, known to the vultures of the gutter press as “The Dresden Butcher”. Most people think him of him as merely a murderous collection of evil neurons racing around a horrifically deformed, and bestially hirsute body. But he is in fact a thoughtful and polite companion – at least that has always been my experience after he has been heavily sedated and securely strapped in to the Lobotomy Machine.
There is also Fred Godtoldmetodoit, the so-called “deranged bathroom plunger killer” with whom I enjoy a relaxed and non-threatening game of chess every week, over the internet.
A lovely man, it seems to me, judging by the numerous amusing emails he sends me: “Your queen has been taken. I am the Grandmaster. Ha ha ha. Do you resign yet, rabbit – TTFN Fred.” and so on.
And what of Jurgen Naut, imprisoned for life for his part in the “Hypnotist Murders.” I meet with Jurgen every day and I can assure you that – even when I’m not feeling sleepy – I believe Jurgen to be one of the most wonderful and saintly people I have ever met. Surely he should be released back into the world as soon as possible so that others may benefit from his amazing powers.

Conspiracy Collage

Portions of the following article have previously appeared in magazines and books edited by bearded men throughout the English speaking world.

How The Two Dollar Bill Became Queer And The Washington Insiders Who Outed It

According to former Ford Adminstration staffers and to informed sources like my brother Vladimir, it was on July 4th that the British spy, George Washington, secretly engineered a plan to flood the United States with one dollar bills bearing his own traitorous image. Before this date - that will live in infamy as soon as everybody buys my book and reads about it - America had exclusively used the two dollar bill as legal tender.
However, Washington and his covert cadre of cronies, the Political Wing of the Founding Fathers (PWFF), reduced confidence in the two dollar bill with an elaborately planned homosexual smear campaign: "the two dollar bill is queer", they announced in specially chosen television channels throught the Philadelphia NBC catchment area. Surely one of the most dastardly cases of "outing" in the history of decimal coinage.
Furthermore, painstaking historical research conducting by myself and outlined wherever anybody will let me get a word in edgewise, has revealed the existance of a so-called "Fourth Man", Jimmy Carter, whose real name was Ali Baba, a longtime associate and sidekick of the Original Peoples of the OPEC Countries And Amalgamated Open Sesame Growers(OPOCAAOSG).
Meanwhile, hidden in an attic in the red light district of Amsterdam, a man known only by his code name "Roosevelt" (from the Dutch for "Manly Money") was tucking into Thanksgiving dinner with an assortment of international bankers, tycoons, economists, and stockbrokers, all of whom were keen to prove their sexual conventionality by paying twenty hetrosexual dollars a time for a session with the notorious Madame Keynes.
By means of concealed communication equipment called the Informational-Money-Fone (IMF) that he kept strapped to his wheelchair at all times, "Roosevelt" was able to inform his spymaster, Washington, that the balance of payments was "straight".
If this does not make any sense to you, you are obviously a Capitalist Stooge.

For Your Consideration

British comedian Rik Mayall of the Young Ones and The New Statesman reads Evelyn Waugh's first novel Decline And Fall on BBC Radio 2 tomorrow.
You can, of course, listen via the internet.
Again and again the BBC has proved itself to be a truly irreplaceable source for great programming. Those who criticize it - and their dreary, whining number are legion - should be spanked to death.
(BTW - if you want to argue about the licence fee I will argue about the licence fee - it IS the best way to fund television by a country mile.)

Oh Dear

As promised earlier, printed below you will find the first few paragraphs of “Jeeves and the Final Outrage”, my P.G Wodehouse Travesty. It contains a few characters I have appropriated and a few I have made up. Although I have attempted to maintain the Wodehousian tone, obviously the subject matter forces the intrusion of Stephenesque-isms. The embryonic plot is satirical, symbolic, Soviet social realist, questionable in polite society, and ultimately sophomoric.

JEEVES AND THE FINAL OUTRAGE

Despite God being in His heaven and the poor man being at his gate and so on, I found myself not wandering dreamily amid fragrant gardens, but unable to tear myself away from the rim of a distinctly unfragrant throne de toilette. For Bertram wooster was experiencing a slight malfunction of the sluice gates operating the formerly peachily pristine Wooster derriere. What my old chum Gawain Gaye-Eernibble used to call “a case of the licorice.” Or in terms more familiar to the layman, I was suffering from a severe bout of diarrhea. A condition brought on my dining on bread rolls discovered in the Drones Club beneath the mighty posterior of Sir Launcelot Cushioncrusher.
“Jeeves…” I called from my porcelain perch through the open door - never let it be whispered in non-hygienic circles that Bertram Wooster is one who sports the bathroom oak – “I say, Jeeves…”
Alas, there was no reply from that stout wiper of unhappy and disconsolate bottoms.
And then an extremely disagreeable and unshaven memory socked me in the old Wooster gray matter with a brass knuckle duster: in the tradition of a certain Iscariot J., my man Jeeves had trousered his thirty pieces of the silvery stuff and hightailed it to the village of Parson’s Knee to administer his patented soothing balms to the formidable forehead of my Aunt Agatha; the old relation had been head-butting the beasts of the field again, one of that considerable personage’s favorite pastimes.
So ailing, berefted Bertie would be playing a man down for the whole week! But never fear. Stiff upper lip and all that. Although it has never been Wooster tradition to apply the family lips to whatever trumpet we might possess and blow a fulsome family fanfare, neither are the Bertrams of this world famous for piping that melancholy Italian military tune known as “The Retreat.”
No. In the absence of Jeeves, that able manipulator of the dexterous elbow and wrist, I would wipe my own bottom with a flourish that would shame even the most fabled of wipers whose bronze statues line the marbled halls of the Academe Mysterioso Posterium.
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Continues in the same vein for two hundred pages while Bertie attempts unsuccessfully to wipe his own bottom until Jeeves returns– includes hilarious sequence featuring newts nesting in an unusual place!