Books You May Not Like -- I am America And So Can You, by Stephen Colbert

I got a call last winter from an old friend. Her friend was going to be competeing in the 13th annual Putnam County Burlesque/Poetry Slam/Musicale/Pancake Eating Constest at the Krazy Kat on old route 9, and my friend wanted me to go with her to help offer moral support.

Her friend's strategy was daring: instead of doing a Burlesque routine first, she was going to start with by reciting a poem about what hell must be like for diabetics (it strangely resembles Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory), and then do a jazz piano rendition of Josef Hyden's "Austria", capped off by a wicked pole dancing routine that was sure to leave the male judges absoltely speechless. The hope was that by making a good last impression she would carry enough points into the pancakce eating constest, and it would be enough to beat Old Mad Mary McMacintoshovich who was particularly strong in the pancake portion of the competition and thanks to that had won the past 7 years running.

Now I know what you are thinking. That is grotestque and sexist and just plain wrong. How could you even think of going?

Well, for one, it isn't true. But on the other hand, I ask you: if you are a man (or even a woman), how many times in your life will a woman ask you to attend a strip club with her? Especially if you are for the most part a stand-up guy and the people you hang out with are for the most part very mild-mannered and morally conservative? If you have any respect for probablity at all, mathematically you have to do it.

Now, if actually propositioned in such a manner, will moral concerns eventually carry the day? For me, absolutely.

Still...

At any rate, I hopped on a plane (because Putnam County is a damn good bit away) and off I went. But God had other ideas, and he punished me for my wicked ways by unleashing frozen Hell in the form of a massive snow storm, leaving me stranded in Purgatory - I mean, Philadelphia. There was no way out of the airport, so I hunkered down for the night. It's probably just as well. On the list of things you don't want to see naked people do, participating in a pancakce eating contest is way up there (incidentally, the top of the list: sneezing a mighty sneeze).

So there I was. I tried to make friends, and ended up eating supper with a group of Tea Partiers on their way to a Glenn Beck Rally. You would have thought that God might have smiled upon them, but he obviously felt that punishing me vastly outweighed the solid moral bedrock of their cause.

We ate with gusto. Their leader was one Mr. Jack Abram, a large man with a ruddy face who kept asking that we pass around the 2 liter bottle of coke, to encouarge conversation. "Mr. Chalamy, the bottle stands by you, Sir!" he would bellow, and then we would pass around the bottle and fill our glasses until he would call out to a shrewish man who was standing lackadasically against a column "Killich! Killich there! Go down to the Hudson News and open up another bottle of Coke."

"Excuse me, Sir" one of the teenagers in the party finally said. "But Mr. Blakely said you ate dinner with Glenn Beck at the Nile Pizzaria, over in Shephardstown."

Mr. Abram collected himself and said "Indeed I did. I was a young man then, not much older than you are now. And Mr. Pillings...Pillings was still a snivelling middle schooler, still yearning for the peace and quiet of the fourth grade". This cracked a smile on a tall, lanky man with a scar across his face that I could only assume was Mr. Pillings. That must have been some knife fight.

"Did you speak with him sir?" asked the teen. "What's he like?"

"I have had the honor of dining with him twice", Abram said, leaning back in his chair. "He spoke to me on both occaisions. A master speaker and a man of singular vision."

"He always said in a debate," Mr. Pillings offered in a rich baritone, "never mind the rhetorical flourishes. Just go straight at'em."

"Some would say not a great intellectual, but a great leader" said a woman to my right.

"He's America's only hope if Pelosi and Reid pass Obamacare" said yet another.

"Sir, might we press you for an anecdote?"

Abrams looked into his glass of coke, once again full, and he tried to suppress a smile. "The first time he spoke to me, I shall never forget his words. I remember it like it was yesturday. He leaned across the table, he looked me straight in the eye and he said 'Abrams! May I trouble you for the Parmesean Cheese?'".

The entire table crakced up into laugheter, and the one laughing loudest of all was old Abrams, his red face, addled with caffeine, beaming with pleasure.

"I've always tried to say it exactly like he said it, as he did twice." And with that a fresh peal of laughter rang around the table, except for the poor young man who had asked the inital question of Mr. Abrams, whose face flushed red, having been made a fool.

"The second time" said Abrams, composing himself. "The second time he told me a story, about how someone offered him a jacket on a cold night after a huge rally. He said no, he didn't need it, he was quite warm. His zeal for God and Country kept him warm.

"I know it sounds absurd, and were it another man you'd cry out 'Oh what pitiful stuff' and dismiss it as mere enthusiasm. But with Beck...you felt your heart glow."

There was silence, until finally Mr. Pillings raised a glass and said "To Mr. Beck!" and all did the same, repeating his name with great reverence. Someone started singing "I'm Proud to be an American", and even I couldn't help but join in, even though I really don't like that song.

The dinner was over. I needed something to occupy my time for the rest of the night, so I asked Mr. Abrams if he could recommend a book, and he naturally recommended The Overton Window by Mr. Beck, which he assured me was very good.

But when I got down to Hudson News I saw a copy of I am America And So Can You, by Stephen Colbert, and I bought it instead.

Hillarious.

As Sir Francis Bacon would say, this is definetely a book to be tasted, not to be taken too seriously. But you will be laughing all the way. And if you find a rare dull spot, I found this book to be deliciously skimmable.

Enojy.


Acknowledgements: I am indebted to Seinfeld, in which when George gets super smart becuase he is not having sex, but then finds he has an opportunity to have sex with a Portugese waitress, he calculates the odds and decides it must be done. So he does it, even though it means he goes back to being and idiot.

Though, this actually did happen to a friend of mine in college (being asked to go to attend a strip club with a woman...a whole buch of women actually). I told him mathematically he had to do it, and I think to he did.

Secondly, the whole thing about Glenn Beck not needing a coat becuase his love of God and Country keeps him warm (though I have no doubt that that is indeed the case), is a total rip off of Master and Commander. The dialoge is from the movie, but the scene appears in one of the 20 books by Patrick O'Brian that the movie is based on. They are WONDERFUL books and I can't recommend them highly enough. No doubt you will be seeing them on the books you might not like feed as I finish them later on this year.

The Wiccans are Coming!

It's September. The mid-terms are a mere month away, thank God. Normally I would begin the post by hoisting my colors (I guess since I am a left leaning person it would be colored Red...or maybe pink? Maybe rainbow colored?) and lay in a rhetorical broadside against the Glenn Becks, Sarah Palins, and Newt Gingrich's of the world.

But not today. Good people, the present climate has left me a little disillusioned with politics. I woke up this morning and everyone is talking about this Anti-wanking wiccan who wants to go to Washington. That was enough for me. It's time to take a step back. I need a break for a few days before the Republican's unleash their newest contract with America. Oh, you can be bet I will be reading that.

Look, as to the witchcraft thing, I really don't see what the big deal is if she did dabble in something she ultimately rejected. But watch out! She might be a wiccan in a Christian's clothing. If we aren't careful, those wiccans are going to overrun our great Christian nation and soon our children will be praying to Triple Goddesses and Horn Gods. Horn Gods!

As for the other thing...it just shows how lots of people on the right (though not all, let us be fair) want government out of everything EXCEPT for our bedrooms.

Well, enough. I said I wasn't going to do this. Besides, last week I found myself touched in a very personal way by politics.

It seems that President Obama was in the Philadelphia last tuesday to deliver his back to school speech to kids everywhere. Now, did you know that when the president is departing from an airport pretty much the whole airport is shut down, and that any planes in route will have to sit in a holding pattern until the president leaves?

I didn't, until last Tuesday when I got stuck in a holding pattern over philadelphia so Mr. POTUS could fly out of philadelphia.

To which I ask: is this trip really necessary? Have you considered video conferencing?

Its not just that the Presidnet probably spent a few thousand dollars in one day to fly to Philly to give a speech and then fly right back. He's the President. I think he should probably stay in the office a little more, at least the one that is on the ground, but he is the President.

But everytime he travels, he snarls up the travel plans of hundreds of people. I did actually talk to one couple that said they had a thrity minute flight into Philly that took 2 hours, all becuase of the POTUS and his little speech.

Now I must say that those people did not look too important. But what if they were REALLY important? You know, like the guy sitting next to you on the plane wearing shorts, loafers, a t-shirt and a blue blazer, reading a copy of Cigar Afficianado? He might have missed the meeting in which he was going to purchase the Landycakes Muffin Company for immense profits, lowering GDP and HURTING AMERICA.

Gosh, see? I can't stop. But I must. So I am going to bed.

Rather Disappointing, this.

An Ode to a Game

Hang on a second.

Do you hear something? It kind of sounds like...brats sizzling on a grill. And it sounds like someone just tossed some hamburgers on as well.

Hear that? It's the sound of someone popping the tab on a Coors Lite.
The sound of pads popping
The sound of the roar of the crowd
It's the sound of freakishly perfect women fluffing pom poms,
struggling to squeeze themselves into skimpy clothes

The sound of fat hairy bald men buying body paint that later
They will smear on distended stomachs and engorged breasts
So they can get on TV, acting like idiots in subzero temperatures

It's the sound of the Hokie Nation groaning in frustrated agony
Oh No! Another Lead Blown! Another change at glory lost in the inky night sky
Blistered with stadium light.

It's the sound of Bret Favre's dog saying "Dude, are you serious?
You said things would be different this time."

Yes, it's football season!

Come on, what did you expect me to say? Its time for the midterm elections? Again I say to you: Come on! But I have to admit if we all ate lots of meat and if there were cheerleaders at the posts and guys doused with body paint at the polls, voter turnout might go up.

Hey...I hear something else...

"Well Coach you played a great game, it was a heck of a battle. How do you feel?"

"Well, I'll tell ya skip, we just feel great to get out of there with a victory. The other team fought really hard and you're right, it was a heck of a battle."

"Things really seemed to go wrong there for a bit coach. What happened?"

"Well, I'll tell ya skip, we just never thought that the Vikings could drag their artillery up onto the high ground like that. I mean, we should have taken it when he had the chance, you know? But I never thought they could have done it. They obviously worked very hard on that one in the off-season."

"Indeed. But how about that young QB you have?"

"Well, I'll tell ya skip he's great. It's always nice to know you have someone who you can lead the offensive line in a complex, flanking assault with tank support. He's a great kid."

"Absolutely. Great things ahead for him. And that 2-point conversion...Brilliant call!"

"Well, I'll tell ya skip they had a sniper in the bell tower and we couldn't get anything done, so we had to go for it, and we got it. But naturally we regret the loss of civilian life..."

Okay. Honestly, I don't buy into this whole "Football is a stand-in for war" thing. But it is dissapointing to me how many of our sports cliches involve war terms. Though if you read Thomas Ricks books on Iraq, its even stranger how a lot of our warriors use sporting terms in their battle and strategic planning. To the extent that that is good or bad, I don't know. But it is interesting.

And that's all I really have to say about football. I was mildly excited about the season started, but now that the Hokies chances of a national title have been diminished, my interest too has dimmed a little.

So thank God for Soccer. Though if you want to blend war and sport, look no further than some of the fans for Red Star Belgrade, who in the 90's formed one of the most notorious paramilitary units to fight and kill in the Yugoslav wars. Thankfully, eventually most people here have to admit its just a game, and I doubt you will ever see a band of Cowboys fans get together to get on a bus and drive north to kill, for example, Canadians.