American Fez

Skyclad

Many years ago, in the early days of the TSA, just as I stepped through the airport metal detector after removing my belt and watch, I realized I'd forgotten about my cufflinks and tie-pin. Buzzzzzz!

An officious looking gentleman loudly ordered me to go back and send these offending articles through the carry-on bag scanner, then return with my floppy shirt sleeves and necktie askew to face the detector again. I can still recall the incredulous stares of fellow travelers waiting in line behind me, most of whom were stuffed into baggy sweatpants and oversized hoodies. "Look at that fancy-pants jackass," they muttered. "That's the kind of schmuck who buys perfume and a hand-held buttock massager from the SkyMall magazine."

I remember thinking that my satin pocket square probably cost more than their entire outfits. But while I was still fumbling around re-attaching my numerous accessories after security, they commandeered all the convenient seats at the gate, bought the last edible sandwiches in the departure lounge, and drained the sole Starbucks of all its coffee. For all my efforts at Sprezzatura – I was flying to Rome, after all – I was stuck with a slice of stale carrot cake and lukewarm hot chocolate in a styrofoam cup. To add insult to injury, there was even a lonely lump of misshapen marshmallow bobbing around in my drink. At least that's what I hope it was. 

The lesson here is obviously: When in Rome do as the Roman do but on your way there just do what the other Americans do.

On my next flight, I sanely decided to wear blue jeans and a crew-neck sweater. Smart casual. But that happened to be the day the shoe removal regulation took effect, and of course my feet were wedged into six eyelet boots that took forever to unlace and wriggle off while everyone else was shod in slippers and flip-flops.

These days I've begrudgingly invested in TSA Pre-approved status. Anything to avoid flying in one-piece romper suit, which is where I fear TSA inspired travel fashion might be heading.

The Prospect Before Us

"Ignore it and it will go away" is a piece of advice I've always ignored; but it has never gone away.

Despite its profoundly evident untruth, this insipid little injunction endures. If it is supposed to provide comfort and assurance in times of stress, it fails miserably. I would even suggest that's it's superficiality adds insult to injury.

Alas, certain things are impossible to ignore, no matter how deep and impenetrable the sand into which you stick your head. You try not to think about such things but there they are nonetheless, undeniable and demanding attention, like a skid mark on the underpants of your existence. 

Take, for example, reality television. I refuse to this wretched form of entertainment, yet via some kind of digital osmosis of the airwaves I possess an almost intimate knowledge of its various protagonists and antagonists. Indeed, one such reality television personality, whose mind-numbingly vacuous show I made a particular point of avoiding, is now President of the United States of America.

I tried to ignore the recent election but it did not go away. 

It was the ne plus ultra of reality television. Kim Kardashian's lecherous and sleazy uncle versus one of those cold-hearted, cutthroat mothers who groom their browbeaten children for endless Irish step-dancing competitions. A ubiquitous train wreck of a national spectacle beyond the depraved dreams of the most unscrupulous of realty TV production companies. 

And its Grand Guignol sequel is on every channel with no hope of anyone sane finding the remote to turn it off.

The Prime of Miss Jean Bartleby

Three times have I witnessed female colleagues from my office reduced to inconsolable grief after visiting a hairdresser at lunch. 

Unable to concentrate on the trivial tasks of the working day while their fringes are lopsided or with too much taken off the back, hour-long emergency restyling sessions commence in the bathroom with Stella from accounting. Alas, nothing can be done and so the female colleagues flee their desks in despair and go home early.

Alas, nothing can be done and so these disastrously coiffeured female colleagues flee the reception desk in despair and go home early. I specify 'reception desk' because the female colleague in question is always our recently hired young receptionist.

So it's all for the best, really. After all, no efficient office lobby should echo with the sound of uncontrollable sobs. No client's valuable call should be accidentally dropped by a weeping and croaking operator who cannot focus on the job at hand.

Some of my more conservative colleagues suggest that such unprofessional shenanigans are grounds for dismissal, but mine is actually a sympathetic voice at the water cooler for the following reason.

A young woman usually gets her hair done in the middle of the day because she has an important date in the evening, and the success or failure of this date can have grave consequences for the young woman's well-being for weeks to come. So, as someone who believes a happy worker is a good worker, I feel it is in the company's best interests that the date concludes with the promise of romance, howsoever misguided or star-crossed it may eventually prove to be. 

This is why, to adequately prepare for their evening trysts, I advocate giving female receptionists under the age of twenty-five the entire day off. Then maybe Stella from accounting will finally be able to get those spreadsheets done instead of playing Miss Lonelyhearts all afternoon.

In fact, I'll agree to anything if it means I can avoid listening to that pitiful sniffling on the intercom.

The Truth About Your Retirement

Upon reaching the age of fifty, American half-centenarians are invited to join the American Association of Retired Persons; even if, like most of their fellow citizens, actual retirement is a psychotropic pipe dream requiring the most elaborate of ceremonial hookahs. 

In fact, when optimistically planning the remote possibility of my own retirement I usually imagine myself confronted by the hashish-imbibing, mushroom dwelling Caterpillar from Alice's Adventures In Wonderland. 

Like many people in America, I won't be able to consider retiring until I'm just a brain attached to electrodes in a jar of formaldehyde. My meager pension savings will hopefully run to paying for some robot to keep the formaldehyde topped up, but that's probably about as far the money will go. And I'm one of the lucky ones.

So when an American Association of Retired Persons membership form addressed to me arrived in the mail, I tossed it aside.

Until I noticed the free insulated tote bag they were offering as part of their $15 sign-up package. This insulated tote bag appeared to be quite sizable in the picture supplied, containing a veritable cornucopia of edible delights and able to keep a bottle of water cool.

Now, I wasn't born yesterday – I'm obviously fifty or wouldn't be receiving American Association of Retired Persons literature in the first place! – but I figured it might be worth wasting the $15 subscription fee just to see how absurdly unlike its alluring picture the free tote bag would actually prove to be. 

You're no doubt thinking I'd be better off depositing that $15 in the paltry pension fund I've been complaining about. But the satisfaction of knowingly being ripped off is often how I get my cynical kicks in these days of middle age.

Anyway, six weeks later, the free tote bag duly arrived along with my American Association of Retired Persons membership card. Although not quite as capacious as pictured, its dimensions were surprisingly reasonable and even well-insulated for $15.

True, such a bag wasn't big enough to be employed for family picnics, but I could certainly cram a lunchtime apple, banana, and a can of sardines within its confines. The whole business was a bit of an anticlimax considering I'd expected – nay hoped for – an outrageously tiny and worthless piece of polyester junk that I could ridicule on this very blog.

But then I suppose after years of the daily grind actual retirement must be an anticlimax too; of which my free American Association of Retired Persons tote bag is obviously an insulated harbinger. 

Rhyme of the Ancient Blogger

Philip Larkin's "groping back to bed after a piss" is the line of poetry I recite most frequently these days.

Sometimes I might mumble Shelley's "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings" under my breath if I observe office hubris receiving its comeuppance. 

Or I'll dramatically declaim John Keats' "The Eve of St Agnes, ah bitter chill it was" into the frigid air as I venture out on a cold winter evening. 

And once in a while, I will even attempt William Butler Yeats' gloomy "Cast a cold eye on life, on death. Horseman, pass by" when I want to be left alone. Although I doubt anyone knows what I'm talking about.

But it's Larkin's "groping back to bed after a piss" that I quote every night of the week without fail.

It wasn't always thus. I once knew Shakespeare's sonnets and Byron's She Walks In Beauty. I supplied roses with Christina Rossetti's words and I did verses of John Donne.

Alas, no more. How soon the romance of youth is superseded by the bladder problems of middle age.

Voyage To The Bottom Of The Cauldron

It is impossible for me to behold a bowl of steaming soup at lunch without thinking of "the" Primordial Soup.

I imagine some half-formed amphibious creature emerging from the broth and crawling across the dinner table, leaving a trail of viscous footprints and lentils in its wake. This is particularly true of Italian wedding soup, the most prehistorically swamp-like soup of all. 

Various bisques, stews, and goulashes, however, seem more mysterious; the murky domains of unknown creatures of the deep. Who, after all, from time to time, has not envisaged the Loch Ness Monster's head and humps surfacing in a tureen of beef and barley? The creamy depths of New England clam chowder, likewise, make a suitable lair for our old friend the Kraken.

And I simply cannot conceive what unmentionable horrors dwell within the bubbling contents of a mushroom casserole.

So, on the whole, I favor an overcooked meat and boiled potatoes formulated meal, where vegetables are visible to the naked eye and not submerged in opaque gravy or oil-slicked sauces. Indeed, I am happiest when my lunch can be mistaken for a diorama of the Gobi desert. (Although I draw the line at pies, which are essentially swamps concealed beneath deceptively arid surfaces. Pies are the quicksand of the culinary landscape if you ask me.) 

This aversion to soup and soupy by-products stems, I believe, from a traumatic event I suffered during the spoonfed, pre-solid food nightmare of my infant years. Like a heavily censored scene from The Blob, I dimly recall my little face becoming engulfed by an unstoppable oozing mass of apple-flavored mush as I sat imprisoned in my high chair. Perhaps I shouldn't have upended the disgusting bowl of mush over my own head in the first place. But how else could the poor, defenseless baby that was me protest his bondage to the diaper and the sippy cup?

No doubt some bearded psychoanalyst could cure my soup neurosis with hypnosis and auto-suggestion, but I refuse to fork over thousands of dollars for the sake of mulligatawny and gazpacho.

I'd rather chew on a stick of shoe-leather tough salami. I can jam that up my nose if I need to make a point and there's no mess to clean up afterward. 

No Caption Required

The only creative talent I envy is the ability to draw pictures.

I can do a decent square - drawing's equivalent of knowing how to boil an egg - but that's about as far as my artistic skills stretch. Asked to extend my square into a cube, I'd probably produce M. C Esher's idea of a Kafkaesque Euclidian Hell. 

Light and shade, significant form, perspective, different types of pencils: all these I've studied and practiced until my pink eraser is reduced to mere rubber crumbs on a crumpled page.

At this point, I might know more about the art of the sketch than Michaelangelo, yet my figure studies still resemble inchoate crayon scribbles on scrap paper taped to the fridge by an indulgent mother.  I recently tried to draw my dog curled up by the fire, for example, but the result looks more like a stegosaurus flattened by a meteorite.

My brain knows what the right line to follow but my wrist and hand would rather take a detour. 

Without a doubt, this is because I'm a natural cartoonist who subconsciously wants to turn every portrait into an Edward Gorey ghoul or an Addamite grotesque.

John Ruskin's excellent 'Elements of Drawing' at my side, I attempt to trace the contours of my own face in the mirror but my effort automatically becomes a moon-shaped minimalist caricature before I'm even aware of what I'm doing.

Saul Steinberg once described himself as "a writer who draws." Well, I suppose I like to think of myself as a cartoonist who blogs. 

My only regret is that I might have made a reasonable fist of a career from cartooning if I could actually draw.