American Fez

Space Bar

I found my old typewriter at the bottom of a basement closet, ribbonless, buried beneath a box full of other obsolete electronics: a desktop adding machine; an elephantine rotary phone; some sort of portable tape recorder thing stuffed with a plastic cassette labeled "party mix." The archeology of home-office life at the termination of the twentieth century, except that any self-respecting museum would have tossed these worthless relics long ago.
So cumbersome and heavy it all seemed, and what complicated and convoluted mechanisms were involved, almost as if were a collection of the most eccentric and byzantine of Rube Goldberg contraptions, especially when compared to the slimline design, multitasking digital technology nestling in my trouser pocket.
Did I really do my taxes using that ridiculous calculator? How on Earth did I conduct coherent conversations while tethered to the wall by that telephone cord? And more mysteriously, what the Hell party did I ever throw that apparently required such a variety of music to be played? But ultimately it was the typewriter I was interested in.
Many years ago I'd painstakingly tapped out the first draft of Feelin' Positively Existential on this beast. Where was that now? I'd also slaved over a spirited college essay defending the cinema of Ken Russell, much to the neo-realist disgust of my puritan professor: B-minus, I recall, with some degree of bitterness. 
I never did learn to type with more than a single finger, so I suppose there is a little continuity from my Smith-Corona to my iPhone: they both only require one-touch operation. At least this was the joke I made with the man who came from Craigslist, and he smiled politely while handing over the five dollars it was selling for.

The Citizen

Since I have donated so much time and energy to local charities, the city council are building a small municipal park in my honor. It's going to be near that dangerous intersection opposite Dollar Spenda at the back of the toilet rental place. Seems a strange place for a park, if you ask me, but I'm told it's promoting urban greenery awareness initiatives within the community.
The park has room for only one bench and one lamppost, apparently, but they are installing a complimentary plastic bag dispenser for picking up after incontinent dogs; one of the awareness initiatives, I assume. Mind you, I can't imagine who would want to walk a dog there, unless it happened to be a rabid pit-bull that enjoys sniffing plastic coke bottles and old syringes. "All that will be gone," the man from the council promised. And replaced with what, I asked him. "Kids," he said, which somehow wasn't very reassuring.
There is a simple metal plaque screwed into the bench that reads The Salvatore X. Koropt Memorial Park, which I think is a bit odd because my name is Joe Avridge. "Oh that's just what we're calling the park," the man from the council explained, slapping me on the back. "But everybody knows it's in your honor."

The Old Colonial

He'd made a mint selling rhubarb to the Maltese; three guineas per stalk; told them it was "blood celery." But that was before that bad business with the aqueduct business went down. Boiled at source was a terrible idea, the water was always going to evaporate before it found its level, but he still kept the furnace lit and the valve open. You couldn't even dampen a pygmies armpits with what came trickling out of the copper piping. Consequently there was a run on mini-deodorants at the local supermarket, which is where I cashed in. Krugerrands, naturally.

Commedia Dell'Political-Party

The Commedia Dell'Political-Party is a form of theatrical farce featuring mask-wearing actors portraying a trio of foolish and bizarre characters:
1. Croakly, a wizened shrew.
2. Brawn, a human phallus.
3. Independento, a worthless fellow.
The action takes place in the topsy-turvy land of Taxachusetts where the cyclops Kennedy once roamed free and Paul Revere clapped two empty-halves of coconuts together.
The curtain opens and Croakly immediately seeks refuge in negative space while Brawn rolls around the stage on a giant pair of old and beat-up yet trusty testicles. Independento disappears through a trap-door and is never seen again.
There is no meaningful dialogue and the actors mostly speak in grunts and yelps, but at the end of the play Brawn leads the audience in a chorus of The Star Spangled Banner Ad.

The Apes of Washington

"In American they have the Republicans who are the equivalent of our Conservative Party; and then they have the Democrats ... who are the equivalent of our Conservative Party."
So joked Beyond the Fringe over forty years ago, but the same logic still applies to the political egg-and-spoon race currently being run in Massachusetts between Martha Coakley and Scott Brown, both of whom are modern-day equivalents of Jonathan Swift's Tub-thumpers: platitude-spouting representatives of shibboleth-specific issues and causes, shaking their fists at the country's problems without ever achieving anything, except mangling the hopes and ideals they inherited from the framers of our Constitution. My many dogmatic friends tell me that I "absolutely must" vote for one to prevent the other getting elected; but what kind of democracy is that? I might as well vote for a baboon or a parrot for all the difference it will make.
Of course, there is a third candidate, the unfortunately named Joe Kennedy (no relation), but you have to Google the man and then skip to page seven of the results and scroll down to find out any information about him. I have not seen one single television advertisement for Kennedy, yet this morning's broadcasts were stuffed with promotional spots for the terrible twins, Coakley and Brown. Even the furniture discounters with their giveaway 42-inch HDTV's couldn't get a look in on WHDH.
So I don't know about you, but for me change I can believe in will only happen when there is a candidate I can believe in. And I don't believe that is going to happen anytime soon.

The Declaration of Gingivitus

President Mouthwash stood there in his purple socks, staring idly through the White House windows while wiping his nose on a velvet drape. I held out a handful of wooden teeth for his inspection. These belonged to George Washington, I told him. We've matched the wood grain with the former president's dental records and the lab says it's definitely cherry tree coated with Auld Crown varnish.
How the hell did you get in here? Mouthwash demanded. I gave strict instructions that I was only to be disturbed when the big hand was pointing at the twelve and the little hand was whizzing around really fast.
I came disguised as a SpongeBob SquarePants kiss-o-gram, I replied, but apparently your personal security seemed to think I was the restless ghost of Ted Kennedy and they all ran off screaming.
This brought a grim laugh from Mouthwash. I know what you mean, he said, finally letting the velvet drape drop and turned around to face me. Bunch of pussies. I've seen better men than that at a Barbara Bush look-a-like contest. So. How much do you want for the teeth?
This isn't about money, I explained. It's a matter of principle. It's about affordable dental coverage for everyone, establishing free floss distribution centers for the homeless and raising awareness about the high rate of gum disease amongst illegal aliens.
I was about to list the worst plaque-forming foods in an average American's diet, too, but Mouthwash interrupted me with a signal from the palm of his hand. "For a minute there I was worried," he gargled. "I thought you were a messenger from the powerful Whitening Lobby. But it turns out you're just another bleeding-heart tooth fairy. "

A Crime Against Common Regency

There is only one thing the world needs less than Iranian nuclear capability and that is yet another Jane Austen mini-series from the BBC, especially when the adaptation in question is Emma, the Somerset spinster's dreariest novel featuring her least attractive heroine. It seems to me that someone should play matchmaker between star-crossed TV producers and deserving writers whose works remain sadly under-filmed, such as Julian Maclaren Ross, Norman Collins, Delmore Schwartz and perhaps Lloyd Mintern, even if their characters aren't quite genteel.

Real Estate Bores of the Future

We closed on our vacation place on the moon last year; a charming glass-domed pod on stilts in one of the shallow craters. It may be on the unfashionable "dark side," but at least we're miles away from the all the golf tournaments, rock concerts and shuttle landings. Plus it's very convenient for nipping over to the Milky Way Mall when Cyrus needs new gravity boots.
Now I know they acted all smug at first, but I do feel sorry for people like the Robinson's who bought on the supposed "beach star" Alpha Sol. It must have been terrible for them to plan their dream home only to find out that the plot they purchased is actually ninety-eight percent gas and on the edge of a load of anti-matter. They can't even build a mini oxygen-chamber never mind a full laser patio. What a shame it would have been for them to travel all that way at light-speed only to get sucked into a black hole. Thank God for deep space probes, that's what I say.

The Nostril Quivers

The ancient art of perfumery has fascinated me for many years, even though I maintain no great or inextinguishable enthusiasm for manufactured fragrances. Neither, I hasten to add, do I harbor any shameful and secret fetish for genie-shaped bottle architecture. Indeed, to tell the absolute truth, I care not one olfactory nerve about expensive scent, whether it be pour homme, femme or even a particularly specific it. Baking soda deodorant and an occasional sprinkling of sport talc are my eaux de cologne of choice. It's just that I think concocting vast vats of lucrative smells called "Ganymede," "Tonto" or "Tiger Bay" would be a relatively easy business: a bit of elderberry mixed with passion flower, a pinch of spicey stuff from faraway, perhaps a little rose hip, a hodgepodge of Oriental herbs, alcohol base and I'm done. Alas, however, since I'm not already hyper-famous for a glittering catwalk of other fashionable and fabulous activities, my fragrances have got absolutely no chance of being stocked on department store shelves or airport duty-free shops. Still, there's always the automobile air freshener market, I suppose. Drivers only demand quality, not celebrity.

The Undergrind

I once believed that our continual operation of worldwide subway systems disproved the existence of any secret subterranean civilizations of wild men, giant sewer squids, or roaming packs of mutant rat-pigs that might thrive underground. Surely serious confrontations would have been forced by now between rattling commuter trains and whatever underground urban alligator colonies that might thrive beneath the city streets.

Lately, however, I have come to realize that since our subway systems are so timetable-disruptingly inefficient, such tunnel-dwelling monsters could quite conceivably never cross paths with a malfunctioning A-Train, cancelled Green-Line, or whatever other metro transport schedule has been abandoned or re-routed. Consequently, I have decided that when the next subway car I have the misfortune to be traveling on grinds to a juddering and terminal standstill, I will strike out into the darkness on my own in search of a friendly giant sewer squid and ask it for a piggy-back. That way I might actually reach my final destination without a mind-bending amount of delay and inconvenience.

First Flakes

Snow, the white mud. Jack Frost is laying wall-to-wall carpet in his living room. Or is this snow really God's dandruff, drifting to Earth as he combs his intergalactic hair? 
Walking along, a slow trudge is followed by a sudden slip and slide into frozen curbside fjords where subterranean ice-floes flood your supposedly waterproof boots. 
Itinerant snowmen appear, the smug gnomes of winter, and we stagger by, hoping for the sun to wipe the smiles off their faces. Happy new year.