American Fez

The Ravages of Time

In my early twenties, I looked like a Nazi athlete; the sort of elegant silver figurine you'd find draped around the dial of an Art Deco clock, or standing sentinel, kouroi-like, at the entrance of the most intriguing Worlds' Fair pavilion.

My profile would have made an excellent hood ornament for some sleek European sports car. 

I could drink Bacchus under the table. I could lick a smorgasbord clean without ill effect. I could run a marathon then perform cartwheels all the way back to the beginning. Such, such were the joys of being me in my early twenties.

Thirty years later and any kind of over indulgence will floor me for a week.

Instead of standing sentinel, I now must lean against a pillar for support. The only car hood I'm likely to grace these days is the hood of the car that knocks me down because I'm too slow crossing the road.

Time's remorseless hammer and chisel have hacked proud Adonis into an unremarkable ectomorph barely held together by advances in medical science. Imagine a weary, etiolated Vitruvian man slouching inside a trapezoid. 

And yet another new year approaches this coming weekend!

Once again I am dragged by what hair remains to me into an increasing less personally attractive future.

Not that I'm in any way vain, of course, but I do wish Time might throw me a bone this January 1st. Preferably a bone that won't need resetting or replacing by mid-July.

The Frostbound Bum

Crossing the busy main road on my way to work, I spot a vagrant wearing a Christmas necktie rooting around in a trash can on the corner. It's bright red and decorated with smiling snowmen, dangling amid the heaps of Starbucks cups and discarded styrofoam as the vagrant goes about his grimy business. 

Did he choose this festive accessory himself? A shrewd attempt, maybe, to garner sympathy and goodwill from the crowds of Christmas shoppers when he switches to the surely more profitable pursuit of begging for spare change. 

I chide myself for unseasonal cynicism. But, truth be told, I'm more worried that such characters might actually turn out to be my very own Jacob Marley; that guy from accounting we fired six years ago, perhaps, returned from the professional grave with a gloomy Yuletide message of impending unemployment unless I change my ways.

Chastened and, I admit, just a little bit concerned for my future welfare, I reached for a dollar from my wallet, only to remember I very rarely carry cash these days. A sign of these debit card times for mendicants, Salvation Armies, and their potential benefactors alike.

But as the vagrant was wearing a Christmas tie rather than phantom chains and manacles, I consoled my frustrated altruism with the thought that he was probably more Santa's elf gone-to-seed than Dickensian harbinger of doom.

Nevertheless, there and then I decided to keep a few coins and bills about my person for just such charitable occasions; and that would be my New Years' resolution for 2017, provided, of course, that I didn't lose my job by early February.

Impressions at Christmas 2016

We once played the old "riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma" international parlor game. Ah, but those were simpler times! 

This year we are confronted by a tangled web stuffed into a Chinese puzzle box disguised as a decorative snow globe that's hidden behind an iPad streaming twenty-four-hour fake news reports.

There is a red star atop the Christmas tree and a maniacal Santa Claus rides his sleigh bare-chested. An orange-haired Krampus wipes his feet on the vanquished Ice Queen then strides uninvited through your house with his sack of plastic coal. 

Meanwhile, in the middle east, Herod is busy with his slaughter of the innocents. Such murder gets easier and easier each year thanks to new weapons technology. Rockets and missiles made in the USA, the only things that are these days. All he wants for Christmas is his two front war. 

There might not be a war on Christmas but there are definitely small skirmishes from town to town. Who put that Darth Vader action figure next to the manger in your nativity scene? The Magi's gift of gold turns out to be only gold-plated, the frankincense and myrrh are both well past their sell-by dates, and if you stay up late enough on Christmas Eve you might see Joseph's donkey being led away to the glue factory by an Archangel singing his last Noel. 

Season's greetings everyone (batteries not included)

My Text Today

"In my father's house are many mansions." John 14:2 

The first time I heard this architecturally confusing Biblical verse -- at the funeral service of a relation who'd always lived in a hospital bed as far as I was aware -- my immediate thought was of the residential equivalent of Russian dolls' houses. Specifically, one outer Buckingham Palace which revealed progressively smaller Buckingham Palaces hidden within the larger palaces, Buckingham Palace being the most mansion-like building I knew of at the time.

Later, as I came to understand the workings of the world, the palace was supplanted by an image of many nested Blandings Castles, complete with lords, ladies, pigs, and winsome gels and their unsuitable young men. I have yet to decide whether God is Lord Emsworth or P. G. Wodehouse himself. 

Perpetually distracted by such thoughts, I've never appreciated the religious implications of "in my father's house are many mansions," if, indeed, there are any. In fact, contemplating the subject only raises more questions:

Are the mansions all Tudor constructions, like Blandings, or will there also be Elizabethan halls, Jacobean courts, Gothic piles, and so on? 

Is it just the mansions themselves or do we get the gardens, water features, gazebos, Temples of the Winds, decorative fountains and all the other picturesque embellishments? 

Will there be domestic servants and kitchen staff in the mansions? It takes a great deal of labor to run a great house, after all. I mean, has God even watched Downton Abbey?

All things considered, surely even the most zealous of Jesus freaks must admit this "many mansions" phraseology does appear to be a rather unrealistic view of the real estate available in Heaven. Or at the very least it is an inadequate, antiquated translation of the original from a less overcrowded age. The world's population has increased unimaginably since King James gave his seal of approval to the edition of the Bible that bears his name. Even if there are many, many mansions in God's house there still wouldn't be enough room for everybody. 

If you ask me, a twenty-first-century rendition of John 14:2 should read something along the lines of "In my father's house are many futons." Alas, I think anyone under fifty will understand what that means for the afterlife and its probable comforts.

Here endeth the lesson, although I don't exactly know what we were supposed to learn from it. Still, how very much like listening to a real church sermon such uncertainty is! Amen.  

The Humble Plastic Bag

My dog frequently defecates on the sidewalk when we are out walking. I realize this an unprepossessing opening to a blog post but please bear with me. 

Anyway, being a good neighbor, I take great pains to remove these turds from wherever they may fall -- most often right in the middle of a busy street -- utilizing one of the old grocery store plastic bags I collect for this especially unpleasant and embarrassing chore.

Hunched over my squatting dog, plastic bag turned inside out on my hand like some a hazardous waste disposal mitten, I have never felt more like a social outcast. Only the wheezing vagrants retrieving spent cigarette butts from the gutter receive more disapproving looks than the blushing pooper-scoopers such as I. 

Nevertheless, once the wretched bundle has been swiftly and discretely deposited into the nearest trash receptacle, my municipal obligations are complete and my torment is over. The dog and I can march on our merry way as if nothing had happened and I thank my lucky stars for the modern convenience and versatility of plastic bags: a simple, effective solution to a filthy problem. 

So last week I was aghast to learn that our "going green" town government had banned the distribution of plastic bags by local businesses. Consequently, the neighborhood grocer must pack my fruit and vegetables in brown paper bags, which, let's be honest, lack the non-porous durability to cope with even the two or three tiny fingers of fresh excrement a small dog can produce. 

This means my supply of plastic bags will be exhausted before too long and I have no idea what to replace them with. I suppose I'll be forced to buy one of those "park service" litter picker-upper type things with flexible jaws on the end instead of a spike. But curbing an excitable dog amid all the distractions of a city is an ordeal in itself, never mind operating an array of unwieldy specialized tools as well. And what of those imminently bankrupt plastic bag manufacturers and their soon to be laid-off employees? 

I'm as eco-friendly as the next man, but surely Mother Earth can overlook a little landfill to indulge the rest of us in our plastic bag habits?

Fairy Tales Reconsidered

Today, an Ugly Ducklings would simply adorn its unattractive plumage with provocative tattoos and beak piercings, adopt coulter-cultural interests and anti-social behaviors, rather than meekly acquiescing to the demonstrable truth of its own grotesquerie.

Such an Ugly Duckling would, alas, probably die of a heroin overdose before realizing that it was destined to transform into a beautiful swan, or at the very least just get very fat and self-harm, ruining its looks for good before running away to join a Brechtian theater troupe touring the barnyards of Eastern Europe.

But this is clearly the graphic, unromantic fate of all old-fashioned fairy tale characters in the age of Reality TV. The sentimental, olde-worlde imagination of Hans Christian Anderson, after all, is not well suited to the unequivocally unpleasant qualities of modern life.

One can too easily foresee the Little Mermaid drifting into casual prostitution, or Thumbelina being crushed by the careless step of a drunken hooligan's size twelve Nike sneaker as he blunders towards the nearest bathroom. And an Emperor with new clothes, upon discovering his own nakedness, would surely use the occasion to send lewd pictures of himself to the smartphones of female members of other royal households. 

So I would hesitate, if I were you, before buying that wonderfully illustrated compendium of fairy tales for a child this Christmas. Even the most innocent of twenty-first-century four-year-olds is too osmotically streetwise to take that old soppy nonsense seriously anymore.