Will the Real Slim Zaidy Please Stand up?

Some people look forward to March because it means Madness –basketball that is, others await the seminal seedlings of spring, but for me it’s a harbinger to the eight days of masticating matzoh. It gets stale.  Although the days begin to lengthen, it is at this time that I find myself most susceptible to Seasonal Affective Disorder.  In early March the Manischewitz items begin to cluster at the fringes of aisles. But this year, I may not be so dour.  If Zaidy's truly is, as the owner quotes on his website, "the best deli/restaurant in 
town?" maybe my spirits have reason to rise while my bread remains flat.

            

But first let’s get clear on semantics: There are two lineages of Judaism, of which, until a couple of days ago, I knew not which I was.  There are the Ashkenazis and then there are the Sephardics.  People ask me of my last name, usually butchering it in the process, "Ades [not Aids or 80’s but Ay-dis]...where is that from?"  And I reply, "Oh, it's Ashkenazic."  At times I feel it rings of more Sephardic undertones and I respond accordingly.  It isn't until a Jewish professor of mine poses the well placed question and I choose to answer, "oh it's either Sephardic or Ashkenazic" that he retorts, "well, it can't be both.”  I guess Ashkenazi and Sephardic are as different as blintzes and crêpes.  So that got me thinking, not enough to find out…just thinking; instead, it’s the possibility of being fact checked that goads me to dig up my roots.  I am a confirmed Sephardic –don’t judge me: Zaidy’s is an Ashkenazic deli.

So when I saunter into Zaidy’s –sans yamakah –I appreciate that they look past my lineage so that we can so seamlessly set aside our differences.  Actually, what I appreciate most is that when I do amble in circa 7:30 (thirty minutes before closing –something I didn’t know) and ask the man behind the hostess stand, vested in a paisley printed sweater, preened but not a fop, “if [you] close soon,” adding, “because I can come back tomorrow,” he embraces me at the forearm and says, “no, no, no,” and ushers me to a booth.  “We are all here,” he holds up his arms and gestures to the staff and other people dining.  The man, Gerard, turns out to be the owner.

He seats me in the booth nearest to the kitchen.  A section partitioned by the same mahogany-like wainscoting that circumferences the entire restaurant.  I choose the side of the booth that overlooks the partially open kitchen.  Zaidy’s is cozy and familiar, enchanting and foreign: Eastern Europe tempered with old-school diner. 

         

Zaidy’s (congenial for Zayde) means Grandfather in Yiddish.  Some other Yiddish terms you should know: shlimazel: someone with constant bad luck, schmendrik: a jerk or stupid person, schmaltzy: excessively sentimental, which comes from the word schmaltz –a term I will revisit, schmooze (you probably already know what this means…you also know if you do it too), and schmuck (to be resevered for those times when some yoyo in a Beemer cuts you off).  FYI: the true meaning of the word is penis –something to keep in mind.

            

But first things first: in reference to the title ‘is Zaidy’s authentic Jewish cuisine?’  Well yes and no.  It’s kind of like strolling through the MOMA, perusing specific galleries fraught with Dadaism (modern works painted on oversized canvas using one primary color that drips into different monochromatic gradations); sure it makes you feel smart, but is it really art?  Let’s face it, no “authentic” Jewish deli will serve you any Reuben sandwich because it’s not kosher –meat and milk just don’t coalesce.  Straight from Leviticus…look it up [7:23].  Seriously…my Zaydies would’ve curdled at the thought. 

            

It’s the same reason Ashkenazic Jews in long ago Eastern Europe cooked with schmaltz (chicken fat/grease –one melts the fat and collects the drippings): because they couldn’t use dairy (i.e. butter) and geographical obstacles precluded them from employing the olive and sesame oils that were available to the Middle East.  For further information on latitudinal consequences of early civilizations refer to Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel).

            

Less fat, more matter –let’s get to the heart of it: is Zaidy’s good food? 

            

Tolstoy begins Anne Karenina: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”  Zaidy’s is a happy family, an ordinary family; you’ll probably be hard-pressed to squeak out eight-hundred pages of a novel but maybe ‘ordinary’ isn’t so bad –perhaps if one plays Pachabel’s Canon enough, it’ll make it more appetizing.  But books and movies aside, who doesn’t want to dine out with a happy family?  For all its straight laces, Zaidy’s strings together some fine doilies.  One must understand the structure (of Judaism) that the deli/restaurant performs within –it’s a little like giving Miles Davis a one-three on beat and telling him to solo: can he still do it?  Sure, but you’ll constrict him and it’s going to sound kinda blue.

            

Most Jewish foods settle in the crepuscule that Teddy Roosevelt deems “the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”  It’s easy to achieve goodness but it’s much harder to be great: it’s equally hard to flop.  Latkes, for example, are difficult to botch.  And in Vermont where the backbeat of legitimate Maple Syrup eagerly waits employment on the top tray of the fridge –they’re foolproof.  But in all of Jewish cooking there is one place where a cook can rise from the rest: the matzoh ball. 

            

The balls are where there is, hands down, the most room for a chef to climb up.  The beauty of the matzoh ball is that one can’t insert many froufrous to fluff it up.  The foundation starts with eggs but from there, butter can’t assist (by kosher standards) and sugar can’t supplement.  And while the soup can provide some support, the matzoh ball must maintain a sense of hydrophilicity –a mostly impermeable membrane that circumvents sogginess.  The taste of an excellent matzoh ball is tricky to reify, it’s like Keats’ ‘Grecian Urn’ –only through paradox can it really be dissected: ‘Beauty is matzoh ball, matzoh ball beauty’.  Of the three sects of Judaism: Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox, I think the one thing we unanimously agree on is that the only thing worse than a daedalian matzoh ball, one that strives for airy perfection but dishevels into its own self-destructive murkiness, is biting into a dinky, dense one.  

            

Zaidy’s pulls it off.  After my first bite, I am quick to kvetch that it lacks salt but by my third, I comprehend the syncopation from which the perfect mouthfeel ensues –how the diaphanous solution with its glistening, golden ripples of chicken fat mingle with a modicum of salt to compliment and espouse the balls, fully rounding them off.  Before my patiently awaiting kreplach cools, I finish my matzoh ball and guzzle down the remaining soup.

            

Kreplach is like a wanton –it is postulated that it was either brought by the Jews trading in China, who learned to make them there, or that the Khazars brought it to the Polish lands.  The dough consists of vegetable oil, salt, water, and flour: the filling is made up of a variety of vegetables usually combined with beef.  Zaidy’s kreplach shines in its own subtle way but again a structure that smacks Jewish, fetters the wonton.  It’s like matriculating into a college with an entire grading system based on pass/fail…no you didn’t invent the system but good luck when you apply for jobs.  If that metaphor means nothing to you, perhaps it’s like a figure skater who flawlessly performs an easy routine (if there’s a Frenchman on the judging committee, metaphor not applicable).  Kreplach can either be fried or boiled and I go with the boiled kreplach placed in chicken soup.  The dough is thin while maintaining enough tensile strength to brace the beef.  The meat filling consists of the meat, garlic, carrot, celery, onion, and oil.

            

I order the potato latkes for my entrée.  Syrup is not served as a side dish but sour cream and strawberry applesauce are.  FYI: really applesauce is the classic dressing, I (and most Jewish Vermonters) just impose syrup onto them.  These latkes are good –I taste no unwanted flavors and my sweet tooth can forbear until dessert; further, the strawberry applesauce quells my fleeting urges for my homeland’s syrupy substance.  A layer of grease, that I would prefer came as a side dish, anoints the surface of the pancakes; it’s a little unpleasant but more unnecessary.  Some people like such lubricants but my favorite latke experience comes from Laurel’s Kitchen (a cookbook): her usage of yeast while expending thrifty amounts of oil creates an airy texture that evokes the full flavor of the yeast and potato.

            

In addition, Zaidy’s makes a smorgasbord of sandwiches, eggs, steak, lox, blintzes (thin pancakes filled with cheese or brisket), kugel (either noodles or potatoes cooked in egg, butter, sugar, and other additions), and knishes: a dough filled with potato and spinach or kasha (buckwheat).

            

I haven’t mentioned my khaver (friend) until now…he is good company but brings little to the table; he orders a cheeseburger.  My Uncle often says to me, “you can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose.”  You can’t pick what they eat either.  When I ask him how his burger is he comments in the same laconic manner that I would’ve responded fourteen years ago to my parents’ question, “how was your day at school?”  “Good,” he says.

            

I don’t think it’s by a simple twist of fate that the women behind me lamenting unemployment, choose to dine at Zaidy’s: with its reasonable prices (four dollars for a cup of soup, five for a bowl, and averaging $8-9 for an entrée), Zaidy’s caters kindly to our wizened economy.

            

A TV mounted above the deli makes the diner milieu even more apparent.  It broadcasts American Idol.  Gerard cleaves his attention between his customers and the show, every now and then leaving his place behind the stand to get a closer look.  I personally have never been a big fan of the contest –the blinkering, blabbering façade that is Simon Cowell has always seemed distasteful to me.  But with the volume turned to a considerately low level and Cowell’s own recent defection, it doesn’t disturb the ambience. 

         

Wishing that my friend wasn’t ushering me out as quickly as Gerard had guided me in, afraid that our post supper pandiculations were overstretching our welcome –it is eight forty-five, there is no time for dessert.  As we leave, I give a closer look to the pictures on the walls, the framed photographs that adorn the columns, expecting to discern subtleties alluding to Times Square and the Lower East Side (outside of Israel it has the largest Jewish population in the world; it is also where my father grew up).  But in these pictures, I see unsuspecting signs of Denver from many years ago and I realize that Zaidy’s isn’t meant to be a New York Deli facsimile; it is a Denver Jewish deli/restaurant and that is as it should be.  As I walk past the stools that line the counter, I peek through the two display cases near to the door: one exhibiting delicatessen, the other flaunting pastries.  The case is unostentatious; rather, it’s the baked goods inside that attract the eye (distill your own life metaphors from this).  My friend pokes me.

         

I walk by Gerard, we shake hands, and thank each other.  To him, trivial is the time on the clock when sampled with our enjoyment of the meal and the service.  The two other dawdling customers stand tethered to the TV, watching as American Idol wraps up.  We leave them behind, evading the status of rotten eggs (last ones to leave). 

            

But even as my friend and I remove the front wheel from my bike, I’m still addled by this question of authenticity.  I want the schmaltz, the taking of the challah (another sign of kosher), and why is someone turning seventy watching American Idol?  I realize that I am the curmudgeon unaccommodating to change.  I remember reading a quote from Joan Nathan’s Jewish Cooking in America, on the ‘taking of challah,’ a sacrificial gesture in which the baker sets aside a piece of the dough, “You’ll often see that sign [challah has been taken] in a kosher bakery.  Jews seem to be masters at imbuing ordinary acts with symbolism.”  Maybe Nature has genetically bequeathed to me my schmaltziness.  Maybe it’s the difference between Sephardic and Ashkenazic.  Probably not.  Regardless, don’t pass over this jewbilation because when the end of March rolls around, I surely won’t.  There I will sit, enjoying Zaidy’s perfect matzoh balls on the patio where the umbrellas already sit tuckered into tables waiting to unfurl for that first glimmer of sun or for those willing to brave the cold.  But I will not open these umbrellas because during the eight tasteless days, I need the shades of sun to shield my susceptibility to SAD.  The real slim Zaidy, you need not stand because you are old and probably tired and I already know where to find you (121 Adams Street).

Chef Zorba's: The Full Catastrophe?

My neighbors are Greek.  Their protected names are Alex and Harice.  They shuffle along the edges of eighty.

I am cleaning out my Grandma’s gutter –she passed away four months ago –which hadn’t been cleaned in years, when my other neighbors –a gay couple across the street –offer me a leaf blower “id-uhl goweh mutch fast-irh we-ith this,” he tells me.  He’s from Arkansas.  True to his word, everything is going great until I get to the gutter on the North facing side, adjacent to the Greeks.  Three years worth of coagulated, composted leaves instantly slather the side of their house.  Oops.  I get down from the roof, walk next door, and knock.  Alex opens it, “Hey mahn.”  He speaks in an accent that seems more Jamaican than Greek.  “It smells good,” I tell him.  “One sec,” he says and scampers to the kitchen.  He brings back five pieces of a baked Greek good (notable ingredients: spaghetti squash and butter.  Read spaghetti squash doused in butter).  Delicious of course.   

I gather everything into a pile and then go home.  When I come back the next day to remove the pile and thank Harice for the food, she appears at the door frocked in her apron.  I begin thanking her when she holds up a finger and leaves me stranded.  She bustles back with three rolls and a paper plate adorned with Greek pastries; my neighbors have taught me to be more thankful.  She tells me not to worry about the pile of composted crud –she will get it. 

            
In relationships (even that of a writer and reader), I believe in full disclosure –here are my other Greek associations: there is the overly obnoxious, strongly feminine (meaning she would actually assert her opinion, which at the time was too much for me to handle) girl who lived on the floor below me freshman year –it is reasoned that she doesn’t know how to use a telephone and that is why her voice could be heard hollering at the other end of the hallway.  Then there is the Greek “student” (use that term loosely) who lived on my hall.  He is short, stocky, smokes a lot (cigarettes), hogs the ball in soccer, consistently wakes up at two o’clock in the afternoon missing most of his classes, takes forty-five minute shits, and all of this would've been alright if it weren’t that his roommate revealed to me (post facto freshman year) that once in his infantile stages of REM sleep, he awoke to Aph –as we called him–masturbating at his PC.

The above has no importance other than to demonstrate the smorgasbord of associations that scatter my platter: that there’s no such thing as a clean plate.

I went to Zorba’s (I would later learn that the owner was not titled as such) seeking a refuge from my inundation of shaky associations with the Greek culture.  So when I pull onto East Twelfth from Monroe and discern no Zorba’s, I wonder whether Greece just isn’t for me.  But no, “come home with your shield or on it.”  I see a boy and a girl (early twenties –does that make you a man and a woman?) smoking outside of a liquor store and ask them if they know where it is.  I subtly direct the question at the cute girl.  She doesn’t know but her boyfriend seems to, “It’s either on this block here or further down the road.”  I had already checked the block, so I thank them and head yonder.

Four blocks down I stop at a crosswalk to ask another man and woman (this time it appears to be man and mother, though it could’ve been a cougarous relationship). It is the woman who responds, “Keep on going,” and as I bike off into the night she calls out, “we were just there.” 

And there it is, Chef Zorba’s; not exactly the Parthenon of “hipsters” –although I have yet to fully dissect the meaning of that word –but Congress Park does have a good feel.   Unless you approach the restaurant face on, where a blue and white eavesdrop announces the casa of cuisine, you will only catch sight of a sign that juts from the side with unexciting black and red scribbles imposed on a dimly lit opalescent background.

But let’s face it, not every sign is as captivating as the

swiveling neon one christening Duffy’s Cherry Cricket and because it isn’t hard to apply the metaphor of judging books by their cover to signs of a restaurant (or even the title of a review for that matter); I take a deep breath, unsuccessfully attempt to expunge my Greek prejudices, finish my breath, and saunter in.  Seat Yourself.  I acquiesce.  I take a once over of the establishment and sit down at a table next to three men –the Denver equivalent to hillbillies.  

Booths border both sides of the restaurant, which is divided by a house-like wall with windows (perhaps an import from the Mediterranean); booths also align this Berlin Wall-like structure; tables aisle the two sets of booths.  Not cramped but cozy.  The kitchen can be seen through a rectangular window, matted by a brick-like façade remnant of Magritte.  Greek Music plays softly in the background; not loud enough to drone out the discourses of the three tangible men seated at the table over but too loud for my auditory lobe to process a theoretical conversation of a group of hypothetical girls I wish were sitting to my left.  

Perhaps it is because I arrive at seven-thirty but the place seems vacant; soon departing couples dust the corners.  Whether or not the rush came when my navigational facilitators were dining or whether Monday night doesn’t goad the Foodies, I can’t say –I am not an oracle.  What I can say is that regardless, the service is exceptional.  Besides the existential waverings of where to sit as well as my water glass remaining half empty (it still had ice) for protracted periods of time, I am coddled and cared for.  Note: The day after I reviewed the restaurant, I had my first meeting with a book group (all men, classics only –so as to preclude the subtle infiltration of Oprah’s Books onto the reading list).  I told the group about my visit to Zorba’s and a fellow bookworm asked, “Did they fill your water glass?  That is how I determine a good restaurant.”  I laughed and then explained the situation.  A filled cup of H₂O is more important to some than it is to others.

If you expect to find a waitress with a napkin creased across her wrist, you won’t find it here; what you will find is a family-like staff well acquainted with the menu and adequately versed in Greek dining.  The “regulars” are nestled into the bosom of this family, which is homey to think about until I realize that I barely cling to the branches of the extended relatives.  Still, I have the inkling that if I were to visit frequently enough, I'd be invited to the reunion. 

The three men though, have already wiggled their way into the nucleus.  The waitress talks to them about her “football injury” not by playing but by watching.  She talks of the “Favre-Manning bowl” both names I know but then goes on to other references that are all Greek to me.  She skirts to another table and chats with two women.


The owner, a bespectacled man of modest height donning jeans and a polo shirt with skimpy stripes, occasionally emerges from the kitchen to peruse the floor.   Not a floor man but a loiterer dispensing selected attention to certain people.  Case in point: he provides a Serbian woman and her husband, whom he approaches for the reason that he identifies her as such –she seems dazzled by the feat, with two Greek pastries on the house for which I want to reprimand him because if you don’t have enough for everyone than you shouldn’t share at all.  But I don’t because his was a nice gesture. 

         “It was fantastic,” remarks the husband of the Serbian.
         “Ah fantastisk,” repeats the owner “thanks.” 

Eventually, assisted by the waitress I get the attention of Jimmy; it is true, we share the same moniker though I don’t feel the need to mention it.  He tells me about the history of the restaurant, how it used to be two doors down – “and then they moved here and opened the next day,” the waitress adds from around the partition.  He tells me how he partnered with the Greek fellow and together the restaurant has been in operation for twenty-five years.  As for the American, Mexican cuisine it’s as one would assume, a world that circumvents specialization in an age that whistles for a more generalized one.  I look at the menu, giving the “Classic Dinner Entrees” (American concoctions) less of a glance than girls bestow to me on a crowded summer day striding down Sixteenth Street.  I give the Mexican a once over –long enough to see the Chicken Chimichanga –and then I move on. 

The waitress comes over two times before I am ready to order and then before the third, from a distance, she teeters her thumbs between the “ups” and down position and rather than just nodding, which I didn’t think of until after the fact, I awkwardly stick up my two thumbs.  I decide on the “Spread of Greece”: “Four Grecian dips with pita bread.  Taramasalata, Skordalia, Hummus, and Tzatziki.” 

The Tzatziki could use more dill, it is too thick for what I prefer –still, far past the point of pleasantly edible.  The Taramasalata, “a Greek caviar of carp roe whipped and blended with spices and extra virgin olive oil,” is something that I have never had.  It is savory but bland –my taste buds tell me that it adds a nice layer of lubrication to my arteries.  The Hummus, of which you could probably muster five hundred different and decent recipes with one Google search, settles somewhere closer to good than great on Aristotle’s Golden Mean.  Muffled comes to mind.  If I were making it, I would go with a more garlicky flavor, a fluffier texture.  Bordering the three other dishes is the Skordalia, a culinary preparation of garlic, mashed potatoes, and olive oil (in such plentitude that I later found out upon dismounting from my bike and disrobing my backpack that it had leaked from the container and into my bag–that’s a positive);  with its abundance of garlic, it pleasantly compliments the hummus. Take all of the above with a grain of salt (indeed, the hummus probably could take some as well) because I am not Greek nor have I ever ventured to the land of Hellas; I have only eaten at Greek restaurants and I have Greek neighbors. 

Originally thinking about getting the “Gyro Plate” for the entrée, the waitress suggests that I get the Spanakopita because it includes the gyro.  I concur.  The plate is delivered with spinach and feta cheese inserted with baked layers of flaky phyllo, the gyro, pita bread, and French fries.  Yum (that’s for the French fries).  Actually, I'd be flattered had they decided to keep these frites on the children’s menu.  In addition, a standard Greek salad, a pleasant accompaniment but nothing to write home about, escorts the meal.  The Spanikopita is tasty.  The gyro is wittily carved to a slender succulence: thin enough to be tackled by the incisors.  I am sure Sam I Am would eat it with green eggs and ham but I have it on the pita with tzatziki and it is splendid. 

In the end, I give Chef Zorba’s three dots out of four: not because the food is solid (which it is), but because the atmosphere and service sometimes trump the main course (Dominoes, this doesn’t apply to you).  And of course the price (twenty two dollars with ample food to pack up), which is completely affordable to even the stingiest of college grads (as a boy Bar Mitzvahed and two years out of school, I collect both categories).  In fact, the service –the vibe… the Duende is so comforting that I tip over the standard gratuity, which given my two aforementioned characteristics, says a lot.  Three dots out of four because of hope, hope that one day I will return in the summer, sit out on the patio, and –in the words of a musical artist who had a flickering fling, a thing of the past with our own American version of Nike –“soak up the sun.”  In the end, it was not at all a full catastrophe; rather, like the song of the Sirens, I just wanted to tempt your attention.

The Story of a Girl (Title rethinking in Progress): PART III

           What is the difference between self-consciousness and self-awareness?  Can we entwine the two strands into a double helical structure that make the positive and negative connotations less discernible?  How can we say that the former can’t induce the latter through a trickling prickle of fear titrated slowly enough that the side effects don’t overwhelm the subject?

            It isn’t that he doubted the presence of self-consciousness but he wondered whether he had just as well attained the state craved by all women where a man totters the edge of awareness.  If he wasn’t in that state he wondered what it was and how he could get there; almost as though he had a driver occupying the back seat of his mind repeatedly asking the question, “are we there yet?”  But how do you know when you've arrived when there are no road signs welcoming you? 

            ‘Now entering awareness.’

            ‘Safe travels.  Hope you enjoyed consciousness.’

            If he had attained this woo woo state, the girl seemed not to notice.  If I may also interject here, it is thought to be true that if one is indeed thinking about awareness the state will elude him; nonetheless, kudos to him who tries:

It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly...who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Likewise, it is not for the narrator to critique the protagonist.  Although the two are intertwined, they are inseparably parallel: both to be headed in a forward direction, neither to cast his sidewards glance upon the other.

            Although we are unsure as to whether the boy had a positive or negative effect and if that effect swung overwhelmingly, or only moderately, one way or the other, she did respond to his question, "I like art, I like to play soccer.”  It seemed she would continue but possibly upon reflection, considered this enough to divulge to the stranger.  Her voice gradually descended into a silence, like a band that discovers no more creative way to conclude a song than to overzealously repeat the chorus again and again in deluded self-adulation until it slowly fades to an overly anticipated silence.

            As a narrator, I am disturbed by the aggregate popularity of abbreviating sentences.  Whether her particularly shortened sentence came from the erroneous misperception that I -mid sentence- already knew what she meant thereby establishing a connection; or rather, that she had no desire to establish any connection and that an abrupt stop would be the most effective way of conveying this sentiment -nothing on her face reflected a flicker of thought that signaled an upcoming conclusion.  Another example of how our hero maintained his stance despite the gusty winds that tried to knock him off balance.

            But his public speaking class had prepared him for moments just like these and provided him with the necessary toolbox to hammer on, despite the lackluster material he was given; the class he took first semester of sophomore year taught him that he already had all of the Jenga blocks necessary to construct a conversation.  He found art, or at least the intellectual idea of it, fairly interesting and he decided, as the alpha male, that the intercourse would take this conceptual fork.  It coincidentally coincided with his proximity to his head, which left him in a favorable place from which to conduct this academic conversation.

The Story of a Girl (Potential for Title to be Changed to More Creative Name): Part II

"What interests you?"  He asked.  In all honesty, the boy can't actually recall his exact words; it is an educated approximation.

A little alarmed that the person sitting next to her hands-on-admirer had broken from his stupor of silence and entered into her auditory ingress of awareness, not through a staggering presence but rather because the fluctuations of his sound, which had been up until that point closemouthed, triggered the hammer to hit the anvil, creating subtle waves of frequency within the cochlea where the reverberations trickled to the auditory lobe and ferried via action potentials and ion channels where her brain processed his verbal gesticulations. 

A similar concept is how one person, it is almost always the one with the croakiest, tone deaf voice combined with a profound self-consciousness, decides to postpone his entrance into happy birthday until the coming of the second line because he erroneously believes that his delayed crooning will thus go unregistered –yet, if only he had thought it through he would’ve realized that our brains work not by a process of selection (we can’t choose what we hear) but by a process of differentiation: which allows the person living in LA to acclimate to the sounds of sirens and the Vermonter to acclimate to the sounds of silence.  It is the reason why we can walk down a familiar road and rarely recall the colors of the buildings, the reason why you probably would be hard pressed to name the president on the face of a Nickel, and unfortunately, why the murmurs of a man trying to mask his voice become even more noticeable.  If only he had thought through this, he could’ve concealed his epiglottal yelps and the ensuing embarrassment. 

What is even sadder is that most sixth graders in symphonic band know the unnecessity of a delayed entree: lack of skill can be adequately eclipsed by the bellows of the other instruments.

Although one could suggest that given her supporting role as a waitress her ear would’ve been even more attuned to these subtle changes of frequency, we can only postulate that the reason for her rotation –the degree to which she rotated is known with certainty (20 degrees) –is the same reason that a deer cuffs its ear in the woods.  It is also known with certainty that as she concluded her rotation the word "what?" simultaneously flowed from her mouth (to be exact it also flowed with assistance from her nasal cavity). 

She assumed he was talking to her and she was correct in her assumption but her full, undivided attention, which he had not factored into his causal analysis, gave him no ballast to steady his keel and threw him off balance.  It was this anchor of attention that made him even more self-conscious as he was forced to repeat the question.  Although some may think it advantageous that he already knew the question (because he had rehearsed it seconds ago), he saw himself as disadvantaged because he would much rather escape into thought about how to break the silence with other filler questions.  The words, through no great virtue or accomplishment of his own, eventually stammered their way out (a larger percentage of airflow than preferred dripped from his naval cavity).  The only thought that evaded autopilot was that it would be cloddish to reiterate the same exact sentence so he rephrased it. 

"What do you like to do?"

Had he not taken public speaking in high school, we are unsure if he would've acquired the impromptu skills to think on his feet.

The Story of a Girl (Potential for Title to be Changed to More Creative Name)

Part I

 

This is a not really fictional piece of my crush on a particular girl who coincidentally and inconveniently has a boyfriend. FYI, I am, for the most part, the he/him/his (rarely does it actually work to conceal one's identity through fiction) but I am unsure who the narrator is.

Why is it that the chapter in The Brothers Karamazov, "The Grand Inquisitor", a chapter addressing the innate evil of human kind, is robbed of its context, the umbilical cord severed from its origins and published by itself while the chapter on Father Zosima, the benevolent monk that believes in the innate goodness of humans is, if it hasn't already been ripped from its binding, torn from the manuscript only to be heaved into the garbage –not even recycled. My point is that we choose evil over good –that we secretly enjoy watching people fail. Take a deep breath. My story, although its denouement is not yet known, is one that will most likely end in your enjoyment; my defeat. Does this makes me a martyr?

If the girl could remember that she had told him last Saturday that she would be working at Washington Ave Bistro, that she would have to work at seven O'clock that night - two hours after she finished her other job at the gallery –maybe she would've found it creepy that one week later he, donning his finest finery, would be sitting down with his father and friend to dine at this very same place.

She would not be his waitress but the smile she gave him as she looked up from the table she was bussing, would suggest otherwise. Isn't it possible that she told him where she worked because she wanted him to visit? Yet, could it not also be plausible that she would’ve been warier but was skeptical that such information would be assimilated and employed at a later time. But alas, the astute bird gets the worm; it’s that simple.

That’s why he visited the gallery; she was working at a bar, the Franklin - sometimes referred to as the Frankie, and she had suggested that he come visit between ten and three thirty. It was the first time he had seen her and like most girls who worked at the Frankie –and coincidentally, at most of the galleries –she was gorgeous. A friend of his, who knew her from playing in a soccer league, stood up from his stool and placed his hands on her hips and smiled longingly into her eyes. Perhaps he looked too long because one by one she removed each of his fingers. This little piggy went...The friend sat back down. Unshaken, still smiling. The boy, who will also be referred to as the astute bird, decided to take a different approach.

Sun Valley City Council Candidate’s Master Debate

Of the five contestants only three have high enough IQs to even be considered.  The first candidate, David Baravetto, a former architect ran on the platform of minimal expansion while making Sun Valley more accessible to tourists.  Milt Adams, sitting to the right of Baravetto, made the point that he himself was a “great analytical thinker but also was a creative thinker.”  The moderator, who wasn’t running, sat next to the loquaciously outspoken, unfortunately inarticulate Adams.  To the right of the moderator was Steven Poindexter.  As a worker of the graveyard shift for the Sun Valley Resort, he ran on the non-sensical platform that businesses in Sun Valley need to be open later, ‘at least until ten.’

  

It was uncertain if Poindexter chose his platform because he was fatigued with late night guests continually asking him what there is to do at night, or if there were other motives for his impractical platform.  If you have ever been to Sun Valley (distinctly separate from Ketchum, which is one mile down the road) what is most comical about his proposal is that besides Sun Valley Ski Resort, Sun Valley has very few businesses and it seems quite plausible for the company just to keep its own bars and restaurants open later without it becoming the main reason of someone’s candidacy.  The illogical part of his platform is that stores have cut back on their hours because there isn’t enough business; keeping stores open later would only add an unnecessary burden on the weight of their shoulders, plunging them to the basement through already rotting floorboards. 

  

The two most intelligent candidates congregated at the right.  Ironically, it would seem that the candidates were seated according to their political affiliation –just an astute observation on my part.  Baravetto seemed the most left, Milt couldn’t really articulate what exactly he was, and the Ribi/Youngman ticket both ran on platforms of economic growth.

  

The floor was opened to the audience after the reporters asked their questions.  When I was called on, I attempted to jumble three questions into one: concerning the environmental implications of building a new airport in Sun Valley, how one would deal with Sun Valley Ski Resort, the biggest provider of tourists and jobs but also its biggest provider in pollution and destruction: in a study conducted on seventy-seven western ski resorts by an environmental firm based out of Colorado, the company was shown to be among the worst ski resorts with respect to the environment.  The moderator realized my gasps for articulation and upon finishing my lengthy question she aided me in condensing and clarifying it and then asked me, ‘if that is what I meant?’  I told her ‘yes, but’ and then decided to tack on another question impugning the seeming implausibility of keeping businesses open later when they were already floundering to keep afloat.

  

The question was first tackled by Poindexter who remarked in exasperation, “Wow,” and then explained how Sun Valley needed an airport for access but as a front desk worker of the graveyard shift he sometimes had to ‘make decisions on the spot’ and that the “town of Sun Valley really needs to be considerate and consider the needs of its guests.”  Ribi pointed out, among other things that we need to think about the economy.  Bob Youngman uneventfully agreed with Ribi and said nothing more. Baravetto mentioned the reality of the environmental implications but ‘what we need to focus on now is accessibility’.

  

When the time came for Milt to respond he crossed his arms and said, “I’m going to pass on that question because it’s not understandable.”  If I was more witty I would’ve told Milt that if he couldn’t hold two co-existing thoughts in his head he shouldn’t be running for city council but instead I simplified the question by shortening it to the environmental implications of building an airport.  Still ruffled Milt reluctantly responded, “well when the time comes, I am a creative thinker but then I also can do analytical thinking and I will be able to deal effectively with the issue.  If it is an issue an all.”  That’s reassuring.

  

When the time came for candidates to pose questions to the others, Ribi asked the candidates to divulge their greatest strength and what would be their greatest challenge as a member of the City Coucil.  Baravetto wittily responded with, “weakness?”  People laughed and then he described how as an architect he learned to work well with others but sometimes he is too impulsive and doesn’t think through all of the options. 

  

Milt tried to follow Baravetto’s act by using his material -any comedian could tell you that this is a sure fire way to crash and burn.  Milt did not have such foresight.  Because of the lack of creativity, it seemingly questioned the first part of his answer when he spoke of his strengths as an analytical thinker and in creative thinking; the unoriginality combined with horrendous timing left the crowd quiet after Milt said weakness?  Silence ensued for at least five seconds and it made me wonder if Milt wasn’t joking at all but was serious.  But then he continued, “weaknesses, if I have any weakness, would probably be that” and then he did one of those things where he listed another strength as if it could be a weakness (i.e. I work too hard).  It was too bad that he chose this route because the translucency of at least two obvious weaknesses –humility and being stupid (it would seem that as creative and analytical are on opposite sides of the brain, you couldn’t be strongest in both –besides the fact that Ribi was looking for a strength not strengths) his unwillingness to admit these areas of improvement also left him with one more weakness: disillusionment.

  

Poindexter reiterated that as a worker of the graveyard shift he sometimes had to make quick decisions (I can only imagine what they would be –whether he should allocate an additional towel to a guest, what to do if there are people in the hot tub after eleven (although maybe he would extend this curfew as well), and what he could say to placate a rampant guest shaking an empting vending at 2 o’clock in the morning.

  

Pizza was provided.  You remember when you were young and your parents used to excitedly (and buffoonly) point out to you as you wearily staggered through the door from your job as a dishwasher that “now you know what you don’t want to be when you grow up!”  If I gained nothing else, with the exception of a few thousand more calories from the pizza heavily clad in cheese, I realized at least one person I didn’t want to be when I grow up.

  

Rock the Vote,

  

Jimmy

A Treatise on Hygiene (Reporting from the Boulder Library)

Part II (from Lulling Philosophical Nonsense)

My laptop has been in a deep, slumbered sleep and unplugged for the past four days; I remain dependent on an electrical source and am not allowed the full liberation of movement only a freedom of choice -to place the computer on my lap or the table. The layout of the upstairs library “tree fort” provides a number of options: squeeze in between two people located at the tables mushed together in the center or take up a seat at the smaller tables spaced intermittently on the perimeter of the room. Given the recent outbreak of Swine Flu and that the kumbaya conglomeration of tables in the middle of the room would put me within arms reach of ten people all possibly harboring the disease, I opt for the outskirts. In defense of my paranoia, I will provide a metaphor: eating the fish lowest on the food chain has the least chance of Mercury poisoning. Why? 

Biological magnification. At each level of the food chain there is a tremendous amount of energy loss and thus, a predator must eat a large amount of prey in order to meet its daily energy quota. Because fat soluble substances cannot be diluted, broken down, or excreted in urine they accumulate in the fatty tissue of an organism and this fat accumulates in the gut of the predator. Mercury is efficiently absorbed but slowly excreted by organisms and is thus stored in the adipose tissue. Algae absorb Mercury, Zooplankton eat the algae, larger fish eat the Zooplankton; by the time salmon are ready to feast, its prey has already accumulated 10^ of the its place on the food chain. It explains why herring contain mercury at approximately 0.01 ppm and shark contain mercury at greater than 1 ppm (EPA 1997).

A person sits down at a table full of early risers (all more likely to have Swine Flu for their lack of sleep). After much deliberation, these people decide to take a study break and five other people sit down. By the time this person decides to have lunch he has now made contact with at least ten other people and if one of them is infected, he will then transfer it to everyone else who sits down.

And then there is always the tumult and distraction of crowded tables

My healthy choice thumbs me to a new page of adventure: sit next to a male student at the left table, sit next to a female at the middle table, or sit next to the homeless man to the right table. Each have their costs and benefits but carefully weighing each, I find the middle table just right.

She looks up, smiles, and returns to her screen. The ruminations of whether I have agitated her by occupying the additional space and empty seat are quelled when she grabs the folds under her chair and politely jiggles it to the right. It is a gesture that scientifically leaves the chair in exactly the same location but warmly suggests that there is adequate room for both of us. My failed foresight manifests itself when I realize that this table provides no electrical outlet and I am forced to grovel to my number two and ask him if I can plug into the socket under his table. His charming acquiescence conceals any grudge he might be holding against me and I am impressed by his resiliency.

I sense my table mate’s amiable disturbance by the wiggling of her screen that might be loosely connected to my typing but is more attributable to the lousily constructed tables; it is reassuring to know that the man at the table adjacent to mine holds no obvious hostility. Tangentially, through my recently honed skill of telekinesis, I am aware of something that disturbs her even more than the subtle wobbles of her screen.

It is that she so amicably receives my invitation to plop down next to her, putting the two-person table at its maximum seating capacity, and I have transported –like the burrs of a burdock flower that stick to one’s clothing –the putrid smell attached to me, into our communal space; she has no problem distinguishing the this fetor emanates from my half of the table. I can tell that this smell only adds to the bleak realism of the rainy still life framed by the flimsy, new-age, polished aluminum that she looks at every time she takes a break from the oppression of the harsh light and tiny characters that pervade her screen. On a relevant side note, the smell from my socks conveniently overpowers the smell extending from the crotch region of my green corduroy pants (I still have control of my bowels but this smell is a naturally occurring process to all pants which haven't been washed for prolonged periods of time).

The socks are not mine but my friend’s. I have been using them for two and a half days and I would’ve used the socks reluctantly given to me the day before by her boyfriend, but it was snowing when we went to watch the elk bugle in Estes National Park and I had gotten them wet trying to rile these massive creatures (P.S. Don’t rile them, how would you like to be challenged when you are with your harem). I bit the bullet –or more appropriately, plugged the bullet up my nose –and with reluctant compliance slipped into these socks that poorly aromatized with age.

The ebb and flow of her computer screen continues and I kindly take my Mac from the table and put it on my lap (another friend of mine once forwarded me a New York Times article confirming an argument I didn’t believe of her’s –that using a computer in one’s lap would decrease one’s sperm count; this further ennobles my action). My neighbor makes no acknowledgment of my expiatory sacrifice.

Her ingratitude combined with my swelling concern for the hazardous effects of my magnanimous effort leave me with the obvious option of quickest relief; I put my computer back on the table where I seek a novel gratification in the back and forth synchronicity of the wobbling of her screen with the rhythmic typing of my fingers. It isn’t my fault that the designers of her flimsy computer didn’t forebode the downward pressures of finger pecking onto an equally flimsy table (Steve Jobs paid me to say that).

Amidst the wheezing, I realize that if she is a recovering or current hypochondriac (depending on the ratifications of the new DSM manual, I might be one myself), it is my frequent sniffling, intermittent cough, and occasional hacking fit finaleed (spelling?...Even a word?) by the hock of a loogie that bothers her most and displaces the scent of my crotch and my causal causation of the wiggling of her screen to second and third, respectively: sticks and stones may break your bones but smells will never hurt you. 

But Swine Flu can hurt you and if she erroneously assumes that I have this pig born illness, she is probably harboring a good deal of unnecessary anxiety.

Her anxiety dwindles upon our moment of reconciliated rapport when I receive a tweet in the lower left corner of my browser and it makes an absurd noise (I don’t know how to disable this) –the noise resembles something between a high-pitched squeak and an uncoordinated, sick person attempting to gargle salt water.

She laughs but it is not for the right reason: it is a release of tension and not because she finds it genuinely funny –like the mismatch when a person’s cell phone rings in a library and the internal part of you wants to hit them but instead, you give an external chuckle (you settle for leaving a hate note when they get up to go to the bathroom...the pen is mightier). Wanting to avert any resentment, I plea technological ineptitude and explain that I somehow regretfully accepted these tweets but don’t know how to put an end to it. Her smile changes to a genuine look of disinterest and the eyes that roll inside her laugh alert me that she just wants to return to her work.

She puts a wrapper to her mouth. Slides her gum to the tips of her lips and spits it out. I am disgusted –has all sense of decent hygiene been mouth washed away?

Lulling Philosophical Nonsense

I realize that I have made one of the biggest blogosphere faux pas of my seminal career: not writing for a stretch of one week within the first two weeks of launching off my blog.  It is well accepted among the innermost cubicle of elite bloggers that the infrequency of posts within the early stages of birthing a blog is one of the big blunders that one can commit in this intangibly ethereal space in which the blogo-universe exists.  At the beginning of any decent blog on “How to Blog” you will find the words ‘consistency’ and ‘quality’ or any word synonomically akin.  Know that I sacrificed consistency to uphold a seal of quality (particularly a Vermont seal of quality).  This reference to quality alludes to an experience I had yesterday in a Boulder Deli where the saran surrounding a Boar’s Head cheddar cheese was stamped with a “Vermont seal of quality.”  I strained myself to find any relationship between Boar’s Head and Vermont more tenuous than the curdled whey that flagellates to the surface.

So this is the seal.http://www.vermontagriculture.com/buylocal/images/AG.jpg  Know that anything of mine with this seal I stand behind and anything not bearing this seal, I do not endorse and moreover, protect my identity as a writer with a thick wax encasing that separates me from the cheese I cut from my inky ass.

I find my way through the Boulder Library.  A friend of mine, who majored in Psychology, did her thesis on the differences of spatial awareness between men and women.  Surprise, surprise she found that men were spatially superior.  Moreover, her findings included that video games played 1-8 hours each week could enhance this component of awareness.  Although it has been months since I have jostled the joystick of an N64 or aimlessly whacked the air with a Wei wand, with fairness to both the arguments of Nature and of Nurture, I probably rank a seven or eight on the scale of spatial awareness.  I digress so that you can understand how I so flawlessly located the single person study rooms that were already occupied, which ultimately lead me to an open area that my Boulderian friend erroneously described to me in her abstractly artistic and aesthetically airy way as “being in a tree house”. 

Rather, it is much like being on the second floor of a building and looking out of a window.  The fact that I look onto trees is hedonistically satisfying but in no way suggests any similarity to being propped up by three branches protruding from the same trunk, enjoying the open air whistling through the bowed two by four pines stacked non congruously on top of each other while remaining wary of nestling into any nails popping through.

It was in these corridors that I decided to rest my legs and wrest my brain for fabric fine enough for posting.  The content of my post will follow soon.