American Fez

Whale Of A Time

Smutney Galleries, dealer in collectible coins and printed ephemera, is closed for the coronavirus season. There is not enough elbow-room to achieve adequate social distancing and, let’s face facts, the yellowed lithograph and oxidised money trade is hardly an ‘essential business’ in anyone’s book.

Nevertheless, peering through the grimy, almost opaque windows, squinting into the interior gloom, I can just about make out the Rockwell Kent woodcut illustration of Moby Dick I’ve been coveting. It still hangs on the back wall in an art deco-ish silver frame which adds a significant amount to the asking price. But I wouldn’t want the picture without the frame, and probably vice versa: they complement each other perfectly. 

My fear is that extended closure will force Smutney Galleries into unresolvable bankruptcy. Then the object of my desire will be forever lost to me: indifferently cataloged in some obscure auction lot far away, receiving no bids and condemned to the local landfill, or sold as novelty dining decor to a philistine seafood restaurateur. Woodcut Moby Dick will be one more unknown victim of the current pandemic instead of gracing the vacant space above my kitchen table.

To be honest, I’m not bothered about the gallery owner’s livelihood, as I believe it’s just a hobby job for him anyway. Judging by his limited opening hours, he can’t even approach earning a living wage from selling vintage travel posters and Victorian pennies on the weekends, so he must possess another, regular and substantial source of income. Probably a trust fund or an indulgent and successful spouse. 

I guess I should have bought the picture when I had the chance. But I didn’t plan for these retail store shuttering quarantine contingencies. Perhaps I could have run down there just as the owner was locking his door for the final time. “Please let me in. I don’t exhibit symptoms and I know what I want. It will only take a minute and I’ll pay in cash.”

Of course, even cold, hard cash is feared these days. Your old crinkled greenback might be diseased, it could be the Typhoid Mary of currency, so beware the bacteria where the pyramid meets the eye. George Washington’s face should be replaced by a biohazard skull and crossbones on the one dollar bill. Now that would be interesting printed ephemera for display.

Such, Such Were The Joys

There is no 'echoing green' outside my front door, but a gang of pre-teen kids once congregated on the street corner, deciding what to do with their day. Running up and down the busy road while shouting was the usual consensus. Such random exertion was obviously a competitive game of sorts although its rules remained a mystery to me despite having taken part in similar activity at the same age.

Coronavirus has now confined these kids to their homes, of course, since the parents whose risk management policy apparently allowed for their offspring dodging speeding cars and trucks are afraid of invisible Covid 19 infection. I suppose a covert enemy always increases paranoia, but still ... the threat of Martian invasion when I was young would not prevent my father from forcing me to go out and get some fresh air. Can Coronavirus really be more deadly than the synthetic world of the 1970s? 

Discretion is the better part of valor, however, and my neighbors are right to follow the latest precautionary advice about social distancing and so on. I've seen some of them at the supermarket is full Hazmat gear. Our sidewalks are not six feet wide so I cling to the curb while they shrink into the shadows of apartment buildings if I pass them when walking my dog. It's possible they're afraid of my pandemic mask. It's modeled on those worn by ancient Greek thespians, albeit with tight-lipped features rather than an openly bewailing Theban mouth, but still unmistakably the grim face of a tragedian. 

Gazing down at the now deserted and silent street corner from an upstairs window, I feel like an audience of one impatiently waiting for the curtain to rise on the second act. God knows this intermission has lasted long enough already. My seat in the stalls is unbearably uncomfortable; the theater bar has run out of both food and booze; and the less said about the toilet paper situation in the restroom the better. So turn the streetlamp spotlight on and let the kids resume their endless pantomime. It's a noisy, incoherent play but it's better than just sitting here in the window watching nothing like a lugubrious Edward Hopper painting.

Modern Doxology

It was in the Year of the Virus, after a take-out feast of Szechuan crispy pork with brown rice and wonton soup, when I discovered my lucky numbers were seven, twenty-three, forty-nine, and Infinity-plus-one.

Fragments of brittle cookie lay scattered across the table surrounding a small, oblong paper fortune that fell out when the cookie was cracked open. I picked the paper up and read its short, pithy prognostication: You will have a pleasant surprise, it proclaimed. Well, that was good if not especially specific news. What could the pleasant surprise be and when would it surprise me? More to the point, would my surprise be big enough and so agreeably pleasant that I'd immediately recognize it as the pleasant surprise foretold by the cookie, and not just some easily overlooked, random, everyday lucky event?

Alas, fortune cookies don't contain a second slip of paper answering such Frequent Asked Questions, and there are no customer service contact details either. Typically inscrutable Chinese soothsaying was at work, obviously. Oh well, I turned the paper over and made a mental note of the lucky numbers printed on its reverse. Maybe simple, unambiguous mathematics would provide a little more practical information.

The number seven wasn't particularly exciting. After all, seven is considered to be an all-purpose lucky number for everybody, so I'd been pretty much cheated out of an exclusive slice of serendipity with that allocation. Numbers twenty-three and forty-nine were also somewhat disappointing, as $23.49 was the total of my take-out order. What the Hell did that mean, then? That I'd be 'pleasantly surprised' to not get indigestion from all the MSG in my dinner this time? I guess so because my stomach did feel unexpectedly non-dyspeptic. So only the dubious Infinity-plus-one remained as a functional integer of good omen, if such an abstract notion could be considered an integer.

Having been dealt this poor hand of lucky numbers, I decided Infinity-plus-one was the ultimate trump card as it must contain every other number. Therefore I could make my own luck by bestowing fortunate properties on whatever combination of numbers I came across. Four, nine, thirteen, Pi, the square root of forty-nine, anything divisible by sixty-three. In my mind, all numbers were indicators of glad tidings now, even 2020, which would be a pleasant surprise considering how the year has begun.

In which regard, let me just say glory be to yesterday, today and tomorrow, as it was in the beginning, and now, and ever shall be, world without end, plus one.

There's No Appeasing Some People

Ancient man performed sacrificial offerings to appease his angry Gods, usually by casting these annual tributes into whichever volcano or waterway their priests believed the God resided. Poor beasts and blameless humans were flung into fiery Krakatoa, submerged beneath the surface of sacred ponds, or swallowed whole by the peat bogs of Northern Europe.

Perhaps tribes possessing the technology might even have catapulted sacrificial victims into the clouds to pacify their sky God? If so I guess they'd need to explain why these airborne offerings fell back down to Earth again, apparently rejected by the deity aloft. Did the ungrateful God in question require much fatter cows than those chosen to be discharged into the heavens? That would mean building a larger, more powerful catapult which might not be practical. Ugh, what a quandary for a Bronze Age brain.

Which makes me wonder how ancient man would face placating a modern God of Coronavirus. It can't be easy to submit your sacrifice to an invisible mist of respiratory droplets. Then again, we know ancient man was keen on wearing masks and other types of protective gear, so viruses probably weren't a problem for him. Ancient man was, however, beset by deadly plagues and pestilence, and any God unleashing plagues and pestilence is a vengeful God who won't be placated by simply slitting the throats of a virgin, some random goats, and a selection of cattle. A vengeful God desires to wipe out the entire tribe and no amount of ritual slaughter is going to stop him.

The contemporary God who merely dispenses viruses among his people seems rather apathetic by comparison. A divine power who merely wishes to exercise a little Adam and Eve-thinning. He coughs into creation and sits back to see where the chips fall. Maybe his contagion will kill a few here and there, maybe it won't, whatever. Like everything else these days, it's a hit or miss affair. We are truly made in our own God's image.

I, Survivalist

The city is filled with wild animals during Coronavirus curfew. Mostly furry rabbits that our ancestors once fashioned winter hats from, and large, aggressive turkeys of the kind you see eaten in pictures of the first Thanksgiving. No doubt both feel safer simply because it's Spring, never mind the current dearth of predatory humans walking the streets after dark.

There are possibly coyotes around also, but being infamous tricksters they probably disguise themselves as the mailman or the UPS guy. And let's not forget that Sasquatch I saw behind the garbage cans. Although I guess that might be just my neighbor with his shirt off. It has been unseasonably warm the past few days.

It's the squirrels and rats I feel sorry for. Their traditional urban territory has been invaded by strangers from far afield, literally. The country mouse is here to steal the city mouse's discarded Chinese take-out.

In fact, considering how many footloose rabbits and fancy-free turkeys are wandering around, it might soon be safer to sneak out at night hunting food with a shotgun rather than buying it at a deadly virus compromised supermarket. But can I bring my self to skin and pluck my own dinner instead of simply defrosting it from a package? It's what cutting-edge anthropologists call the Hunter-Gatherer versus Shopper-Microwaver conflict.

At any rate, I've been checking the social media profiles of all my neighbors. If the community does descend into roving packs of post-apocalyptic barbarians, I want to be sure I join the strongest pack. I intend to volunteer my services as a looting and pillaging strategic-planner. After all, if I'm honest with myself, cooking rabbit stew and turkey meatloaf from complete carcass scratch isn't my area of expertise, and I certainly wouldn't want to weaken my pack by poisoning all its members with E-coli and botulism, never mind the pervasive COVID-19 concerns.

Meanwhile, I have enough canned vegetables and sardines in olive oil to make it through the next month. Let's hope the world has returned somewhat to normal by then. I really don't want to put my survival skills into practice unless it's absolutely necessary. So stay safe, reader, and keep your Bowie knife sharp.

The New Influencer In Town

I began binge watching The Barefoot Chef's Chinese Kitchen on YouTube. It's streaming video of some American wannabe-gourmet without any shoes on preparing various rice and noodle dishes. He kung-fu kicks the door open at the start of each show. Other than that there doesn't seem to be anything Chinese about this chef at all, nor any reason for him to be barefoot.

I was up to episode three, the one about chow-mein, when the barefoot chef accidentally dropped a cast iron frying pan on his foot. Should have been using a wok, I thought to myself as he hopped and howled around his kitchen, a wok wouldn't hurt as much. Obviously that episode was cut short, but between winces the barefoot chef promised to return next week.

I wondered if he would rename the show after his injury: The Chef With The Crushed Toenail's Chinese Kitchen, perhaps? But he didn't. The format was essentially still the same except there was no kung-fu kicking entrance and zero filming below his waist. However, alert viewers could hear the tell-tale clickety-clack of protective plastic clogs on the kitchen tiles instead of the usual slapping sound of the soles of his feet. And it's continued that way ever since.

So why the show's title retains the barefoot reference is a mystery to me. It's a show about basic Chinese cooking, after all, not a demonstration of treading grapes or artisanal kneading dough with heels and toes. I guess everyone feels they need a gimmick on the web and lack of appropriate footwear was his. I'm curious because I'm considering starting a YouTube food blog of my own. The theme is homemade Foie Gras using the livers of geese that congregate in my backyard this time of year. I've never force fed birds before but I'm willing to learn on camera.

I just need a gimmick. Obviously the barefoot thing has already been done, albeit badly, so how about barefaced? The Barefaced Liar's Foie Gras Farm, and my catchphrase would be 'Gavage in. Gavage out,' since the foie gras process is called 'gavage." I think that's pretty neat and definitely worth a million Internet hits, making me the world's foremost foie gras influencer.

Jonah Works From Home

Despite being a morning person, I'm still irritated by Jeremy's cockcrow chirpiness. 'Let's make today a great day' he says every day; and it usually was until his arrival. 

Like a human-shaped locust swarm, Jeremy's appearance in the office blights everything. The switchboard jams; computers freeze up unexpectedly and the Internet fails; coffee suddenly goes cold, muffins disintegrate into inedible crumbs; and I haven't checked but I'm pretty certain our sales fall as well.

He is our equivalent of Coleridge's ancient mariner. God knows what occupational albatross he killed to bring down such misfortune on the company. Someone from the mailroom? A corporate consultant? The guy who fills the vending machine in the cafeteria?

'Let's make every day a great day.' Jeremy might as well be invoking an ancient curse for all the good this cliche does. It's actually a howl of neurotic paranoia in positive thinking clothes. Obviously Jeremy thinks it will magically come true if he repeats the mantra often enough. But then he immediately breaks the printer. 

Unfortunately our office is open plan, otherwise we could confine Jeremy to his cubicle. For his own protection, of course, before an exasperated colleague walls him up in the conference room or buries him alive beneath the reception desk. 

Recently, of course, we've found ourselves working from home because of Coronavirus. We can't blame Jeremy for a public health crisis, but it can't be coincidence that our virtual meeting software frequently cuts out when he is talking.