New York Stories

New York Stories

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 17 seconds

A trip to New York City is never just a trip to New York City. You see things you never intended to see and the stories you tell when you return home are not the stories you planned to tell on the way there.

Erin and I made a trip to the city Monday, taking along Ryan, a copy editing intern from Kansas City staying with us for the summer. It was his first trip to New York, which made me think back to my first time.

I was 25 and New York was one of Erin and I's first ventures into a large city alone. I remember being half excited, half nervous for five days straight, it being the first trip where my wallet went from my back pocket to my front pocket while I was still at the airport.

I remember seeing Times Square, overwhelmed by the consumeristic cacophony dancing, flashing and buzzing to the point where it all becomes silent and you just can’t stop looking up or snapping photos, trying to fill your camera with the enormity of the city. To me, Times Square is everything a first trip to New York is about. You feel like you’re at the epicenter of the universe, and you are.

But on our way home Monday, riding the MetroNorth line back into New Haven, we weren’t discussing the Statue of Liberty and how much bigger or smaller Ryan thought it was going to be. We didn’t talk about the view from atop of the Brooklyn Bridge, and the panoramic line of skyscrapers long enough to fill dozens of large cities. And we didn’t talk about how this was the first time where “What is this, Grand Central Station?” was a legitimate question.

Rather, we talked about the things we never expected, like the father on the subway who had to nearly fight off the old man trying to feed a giant pretzel to his 3-year-old daughter.

“It’s OK. No thanks. Please. No,” the father said, his hand shielding the face of the child to prevent the man’s hand from forcing the pretzel into her mouth. At one point the seemingly-normal-but-probably-nuts old man tried to reach around the father’s head and feed the kid from behind. The old man just smiled the entire time, oblivious to the father's paternal sense of peril.

My concern grew when the force-feeding pretzel man ended his zealous attempt with the girl and sat next to me. I sat nervously for the remainder of the ride, knowing that a giant piece of pretzel could be stuffed into my face at any time if I let my guard down.

We rehashed our dinner, where we descended a flight of stairs in Chinatown to enter a tiny, no-frills, Zagat-rated restaurant where we shared a table with a man whose crusty yellow eye infection produced a cloudy blue glaze over his left eyeball. As he answered his pesky cell phone with god-knows-why statements like “Fat Sal’s Pizza!” I couldn’t help but stare at the pale discolored ring around his unsightly chapped lips.

Before his shaky hand and unsure grip spilled a glass of water all over the table, he ended his last cell phone conversation “Can’t a guy eat his last meal in peace?”

It’s a question I normally would assume is asked sarcastically, but judging on how this guy was literally oozing with sickness, we all thought there was an outside chance he was serious.

Central Park was, of course, brought up on the ride home as well. Not for its thrilling example of city planning genius or its calming, oasis-in-the-city lake views or the solace of its intricate trail system. It was the nearly nude sunbathers, the deformed horns on the goat at the petting zoo and the handful of couples making out so vigorously that they approached NC-17 territory as we strolled past.

In the short term, it was the crazies that dominated our New York stories. It was the proselytizing subway rider who pleaded that you “make peace with your maker before you meet your undertaker.” It wasn’t the jutting dominance of the Empire State Building, the reality of the World Trade Center site or the bedlam of Times Square at night.

I’ll never forget seeing and experiencing these landmarks for the first time. After six trips to New York, the first one is the one I remember most.

But after you’ve seen all the sights in New York, it’s the craziness, the unexpected, the unplanned that forces you to return. After a few trips, you leave your camera at home and return with nothing but a handful of stories you never imagined telling.

The Butt Of The Joke

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 12 seconds

Recently me and a friend of mine that I work with were discussing his home state of North Dakota. How cold does it get there? What do people from North Dakota do for fun? Why would anyone possibly have reason to visit North Dakota?

The conversation then gravitated toward who North Dakota's interstate rivals are and the states North Dakota looks down upon.

Namely, if a North Dakotan is telling a joke and needs a dumb character to jump out of an airplane without a parachute, screw in a light bulb in a haphazard fashion or outfit a submarine with insufficient windows, which state will this person reside?

The obvious answer to me would be South Dakota. I figured both Dakotas would claim to be the better Dakota, the real Dakota.

Rather, he said, the accepted states to utilize are Minnesota and Montana. (My first thought was what could be funny about Montana? Ranch hands? Mountaineers? Are there any glacier jokes floating around out there? A Google search produced this gem: Why is North Dakota so windy? Because Minnesota sucks and Montana blows.)

How North Dakotans feel toward Minnesota and Montana reinforces the notion that who the butt of the joke is changes by when and where you live and doesn't always make the most sense.

I was discussing this concept a few years ago with two friends of mine, one from Mexico, the other from Bolivia (An American, a Mexican and a Bolivian walk into a bar . . .). They said that when they need someone to be the butt of the joke, they use people from a place in Spain called Galicia. To me Galicia is a place I'd never heard of but presume is on a map. To them, it's where all the dumb people from jokes live. Who knew?

When I was in my golden joke-telling years (grade school, 1983-1989), the butt of the joke was always a Polack. Always. Sometimes the adjective "dumb" was added, just in case there was any confusion as this particular Polack's intelligence. As in, Did you hear about the dumb Polack that froze to death outside a theater? He was waiting to see the movie "Closed for the Winter." Ka-Blam! Whew that one was funny the first time I heard it.

Why a Polack? I have no idea. Probably something involving World War II. But to this day, I still see Polish people in a light that should probably be a tad brighter than it is.

Around this same time, a slew of Ethiopian jokes began to spring up, thanks to a historical famine in the African country from 1983-85. If there's one thing that makes for great laughs, it's famine. These jokes mainly had to do with hunger, starvation and the hilarity of being dangerously skinny.

Like this choice joke, which I might add, I learned from my brother in 3^rd grade: How many Ethiopians can you fit into a bathtub? None. They all slide down the drain.

Horrible, I know. And probably too soon.

Why other famished African nations never got the same treatment, I don't know. I'm still waiting to hear a Kenya joke or something that skewers those rascally Algerians.

But then something funny (not ha-ha) began to happen. Not only were Ethiopians targeted for famine-related humor, suddenly they got caught up being the dumb person in the joke. Take one joke for instance, also told to me in elementary school, likely at recess. The premise is three people walking through the dessert. Each has one item that will either keep them cool or nourish them in some fashion. The first guy has water, the second guy has food. And the third guy has a car door so that when it gets hot, he can roll the window down.

When that joke was told to me, the guy with the car door was an Ethiopian! That's not necessary!

I was also told a joke that consisted of people going down a skunk hole to see how long they could stand the smell. One by one they would go down the hole, each staying longer and longer before the smell forces them out. Well, when it was the butt of the joke's turn to go down the skunk hole, they waited and waited before the skunk finally came out complaining of the awful odor.

What type of person would smell so bad that even a skunk would abandon its home to flee the terrible stench? According to this joke in the form in which is was told to me, an Ethiopian.

So because of mass famine, Ethiopians wind up being made fun of for being skinny and ravenously hungry, which progressed into being made fun of for being dumb, which ballooned into flat-out, mean-spirited contempt.

Most of the time, the butt of the dumb joke is understandable. Not justified, but understandable, formulated from a regional rivalry, xenophobia or long-standing stereotype. Hippies, aggies, jocks, blondes, Polacks, Montanans.

But Ethiopians? They were starving, skinny and malnourished. And according to our jokes in the mid-80s, they were dumb too.

Getting Kids To Read

Would anyone argue that books don't command the attention of America's youth as much as they once did?

With TV, DVDS, video games, instant messaging, text messaging, social networking, virtual worlds, camera phones, organized sports, organized play groups, organized snack times, forced and unforced naps, theme restaurants and ADD epidemics, is there even time for anything else? And if there were time, what kid would spend that time reading?

Sixty years ago, kids read because the only other option was listening to plays that featured a bunch of bored foley artists and came from a radio the size of a professional wrestler.

Once TV came along, books took another hit. But teachers and parents told kids to read, and being children of past generations, they did as they were instructed.

If you want kids to read in today's climate, you need to embark on some serious strategy being that it takes a bit more attention, effort and focus to read a book than to space out while watching someone else's zany cat bat at the air on YouTube.

You tell your kid to read now, you'll be lucky if he pauses his game of Guitar Hero before he tells you to F-off. Imagine how teachers feel as their assigned reading is likely bring a slew of cease and desist letters from parents' attorneys citing cruel and unusual emotional distress thrust upon the too-busy-to read-are-you-kidding-me students.

Battling students who'd rather read some random hottie's MySpace profile, unsupportive and uninvolved parents, all but the best teachers would rather just show the kids the movie in class than have them read the book (and for Romeo and Juliet, they pass on the 1968 classic for 1996's ultra-hip, modern vernacular, Leo DiCaprio version.).

To get books into the lives of children, educators had to go a step further. Call it creative enticement.

They could bite the bullet and just trade reading for cash, but in addition to studies that point out that this doesn't really work, it also wouldn't suit today's ever-slim school budgets. They could reward kids with cheap prizes or go with the standby school-wide ice cream or pizza party for students who meet certain literary goals. But since contemporary children eat Chuck E. Cheese whenever they damn-well feel like it and demand and receive DQ each time they pass it in the car, those once sought-after foods have become a drab burden more than anything.

Eschewing unadulterated bribery, schools with principals willing to take one for the team have resorted to another mode of reading enticement: voluntary public humiliation.

This can come in many forms, but taking on an embarrassing hair style seems to be most popular: a shaved head, a mohawk or some variation of socially unacceptable hair dye.

Principals and teachers have been known to kiss pigs, allow themselves to be dunked in pools of water or slime, take pies in the face or ingest something so clearly disgusting it forces other adults in attendance into a bout of dry heaves.

Still waiting to emerge is the principal who takes the humiliation reward too far, like promising to take shots to the groin from every kid who meets their goal. After getting a solid moon boot to the testicular region, the red-faced and sweating principal is doubled-over in pain as he gathers the composure to force the words "Thanks for reading William!"

The reasoning as to why this approach seems to get kids to read when nothing else will is simple. As a reward for completing a task, children get to watch an authority figure stripped of his power, losing a bit of dignity and thus being brought closer to their level.

He is no longer Principal Wilson; he's that goofy guy with the mohawk who personally invited the giggles and scorn.

So this tactic will work for the time being, that is until someone produces a video game that, using uploaded images, creates an animated digital version of their own principal. Students will then be able to play games where they are free to assault the principal with pies, water torture, sleep deprivation and, of course, countless kicks to the crotch.

Ready For The Real World

Estimated reading time: 24 seconds

They sit through the entire commencement.
And with a final word,
Students are dismissed for the last time.
After sixteen years, school is over.
It is a fleeting moment so pure, so exuberant.
Graduates, accomplished and uncontained,
Send their caps blissfully into the air.
But one keeps his on
To protect himself from falling caps.

Cool Rabbits

Estimated Reading Time: 4.5 seconds

If I were a rabbit, I’d be one of those cool ones. One with the wristbands.

Some photos

I have gone back through the years and pulled together some photos from various places Erin and I have traveled: Europe, New York, Chicago, St. Lucia, Mexico and elsewhere. You can view them here

Tacorral: So bad it's good

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes 4 seconds

The name Tacorral should have been warning enough.

What kind of restaurant gets its name from the awkward combination of a structure and a popular food item?

Would you eat at Burri-tower or Hambur-garage?

But the name might be the Mexican restaurant’s high point, considering the food was as authentic as a Taco Bell Cheesy Gordita Crunch, its walls were ripe with stereotypical Mexican knickknacks and its décor could only be described as naco.

After being seated in the sparsely-populated dining room, the first thing that came to our attention was the music. The best way for a fake Mexican restaurant to mask its fakeness is by piping in some authentic Mariachi.

Not Tacorral. Instead of anything remotely Mexican, Tacorral opted for music that sounded like something off The Brady Bunch. In a particular, one of those whacky Brady Bunch scenes where Peter’s science fair volcano display violently overflows, Tiger the dog runs through covered in soap suds and Alice somehow ends up getting a pie in the face.

I didn’t mind the music – primarily brass instruments playing upbeat songs half jazz-half showtune. I loved it, actually. But hearing it at a Mexican restaurant just made the place seem goofy and pathetic.

Amidst the near-neon blue and orange paint, piñatas hanging from the ceiling and serapes and miniature sombreros drooping from the walls, we kicked things off with an order of chips and sauce. When we got our chips and sauce, we discovered why the restaurant had chosen the word sauce in lieu of, say, salsa. Accompanying a basket of taco chips was a smooth red sauce that tasted distinctly like Ortega Taco Sauce. Not that I don’t like Ortega Taco Sauce, but I think if I were serving tortilla chips to guests at my house, even I would be too embarrassed to offer Ortega Taco Sauce.

Next was the main dish, a beef burrito for me. Considering the Brady Bunch music and the Ortega taco sauce, the burrito was exactly what you’d expect. Loaded with cheese, the meat had the distinct and familiar flavor of Old El Paso, the seasoning mix, not the venerable Old Texas town. By regular food standards, it was somewhat tasty. By Mexican food standards, it was laughable. It was at this point that I just sort of felt sorry for Tacorral and its so-bad-it’s-good production of Mexican cuisine.

Upon leaving, I commented that Tacorral was like a Taco Bell where you have to wait to be seated. Because people don’t go to Taco Bell for Mexican food. They go there for cheap, tasty food that happens to served inside some form of a tortilla and has vague connections to Mexico.

A friend who has also visited Tacorral suspects the restaurant is merely a front, citing the reality of white people serving bland, inauthentic Mexican food in a place that by most accounts is always virtually empty.

The only way Tacorral makes sense to me is if someone told two Americans to create a Mexican restaurant in one afternoon. Based on their misguided knowledge of Mexican culture, they’d rely on the clichéd images of piñatas and sombrero-wearing, mustachioed Mexicans catching a siesta while propped against a donkey.

They’d paint the walls colors they thought were Mexico-ish but were more suited for Miami’s South Beach. Their meat would be seasoned via spice packet and each dish would be loaded with cheddar cheese. For some reason the grocery store would be out of salsa, forcing them to go with taco sauce instead.

They’d head to Target in hopes of finding a last-minute Mariachi CD and end up settling on something called Gil Savagio’s Brass Orchestra, based on the false conclusion that his name sounded somewhat Hispanic.

It’s an explanation as good as any.