By Tom Piazza

 A review by James Scott Cullen

Tom Piazza wants to show you something…  something “just underneath the surface,” and maybe “a little too close for comfort.” Take you somewhere.  Through “small makeshift barrelhouses” populated by “itinerant musicians” that suggest all the protean possibilities, the optimism, of the Great American Experiment.  A vast new continent with dispossessed kings, Moses-like, gazing on the Promised Land that they know they can never enter.  A savior who offered no “answers” but instead “pointed to larger questions about the nature of life,” fully knowing his salvation lay in leaving “the garden.”  Into the darker alleys of experience where the emulsion of America has, “in the centrifuge of the accelerating world… separated out,” the tensions, which held it “in solution,” now promising to “blow off the roof.”  And literally it was, “as Katrina tore roofs and walls off houses and scattered people’s most personal belongings… into public view,” along with issues of race, poverty, inequity, and “a government that had broken its promises.”  Murky waters filled with “new and unfamiliar information” where “provisional sense” was the only sense possible, but where “the faith to hang” in leads, thankfully, to a measure of “grace.”

If Devil Sent the Rain is New Orleans writer Tom Piazza’s own personal “fever chart of the past fifteen years,” it could be argued that it is our Nation’s as well.  He improvises, feints, and jabs, struggling with the questions that our nation has always struggled with:  the role of art and artist in society; individuality and “the fluidity of identity” in an increasing monotone world; whether to “Trust the song” or “the singer”; the tensions of race and class held tenuously together; the understanding of place and acceptance within that place, and what it means to the individual, and to society; what happens when that place is lost; how do we – can we ever really – start over or attain grace?  Alternately – and often concurrently — incisive, funny, obsessive, elegiac, and ultimately optimistic, Piazza’s collection sings the body electric in the best tradition of Whitman, and commands place and time in a way that would surely make Mailer smile.

Piazza begins the collection in Part I by examining the dual depression era stories of Jimmie Rodgers, a white country singer, and Charlie Patton, a Mississippi Delta blues musician.  Contrasting, in separate essays, the fluid and popular Rodgers, with Patton, “who left an aftertaste that burned,” Piazza’s sets the tone for everything to follow.  We are introduced to the individual and the cult of personality.  To the sacred and the profane.  To the prescient element of danger, the “dark, rough, uncut sound” that would become rock and roll.  The understanding that all this energy left to “percolate under the surface” was inevitably headed “to a boil,” a subterranean gas that was a lit match away from all hell breaking loose.

As we roll through the South, freight train-like, we encounter a series of Promethean characters, all, in some strange way, promising salvation, authenticity, and a salve for a civilization that seems increasingly opaque.  We meet Reverend Morganfield, Muddy Waters’s cousin, who notes with no irony that “when (he) went on and started preaching… everything began to fall into place” as he opens the door to his Lincoln Town Car.   In one of the best stories of the collection, we are introduced to Jimmy Martin, the “unknown” King of Bluegrass, preternaturally gifted yet the proverbial fart in church, the “corn liquor at a polite wine tasting,” bereft of his kingdom, and the acceptance of the Grand Ole Opery community.  And we are charmed by Carl Perkins, “The Lost Man of Rock and Roll,” who never suffered from fame, yet managed to find grace.

At the physical and spiritual center of the collection, Piazza treats us to a series of essays on Bob Dylan, the embodiment of “possibilities for both personal and societal transformation” as well as a unique idiom of “American artist(ry).”  The struggle of the artist — the individual — replete with all of the consequences “of choice” and “judgment” is central to this discussion.  This is where the song and the singer become inexorably linked, where “the human heart is revealed, striving after that which will heal it, ennoble it, and, finally, save it from itself.”  The genius of Dylan, and what makes him a seminal figure, is not simply his artistry, but his humanity.  This is something Piazza will bring into sharp focus in Part III in “The Devil and Gustave Flaubert” as he examines Flaubert’s “weakness of character” despite his “literary genius.”

Devil Sent the Rain really becomes electric, however, in Part II, as Piazza tries to navigate a world gone wrong, frantically searching for connection and order in a post-Katrina world.  The steady backbeat of New Orleans that anchored Piazza’s social and artistic improvisations had stopped.  The exoskeleton had been torn asunder, replaced with “new and unfamiliar information,” and order was whatever you could make of it.  In “Charlie Chan in New Orleans” Piazza mordantly recounts his attempts at “provisional sense” by obsessively watching Charlie Chan videos.   Two musical pieces, “Blues Streak” and “Going Back to New Orleans,” the stories of Jelly Roll Morton and Joe Liggins, respectively, give voice to the not only the historical but continuing importance of New Orleans.  Morton is the “Johnny Appleseed of jazz,” cross-pollinating American music with a style forged in “the hothouse environment of Storyville.”  For Liggins (and seemingly Piazza) “as for so many, New Orleans was a place where he could connect all the different parts of himself.”

The intensity and outrage continue to build in subsequent pieces on post-Katrina New Orleans as Piazza defends “a small model of all the best of America” against the cries of those who wish to blow the trumpets at her walls:  religious zealots; sophists; tax-concerned citizens who clearly forgot the “United” in States of America; eugenicists; and profiteering politicians and corporations wanting “a shiny monument to their own power and ego.”  Throughout these attacks Piazza “wields his politeness like a sword,”  revealing the truth about not just about New Orleans, but the state of our nation, still in our infancy and filling our collective “diaper” without the sense to realize we are sitting in our own excrement.

If all this is too much, and I can see how it might be, take heart.  Tom Piazza is an optimist.  I need no other proof of this than his continuing residency in the City of New Orleans.  And Devil Sent the Rain:  Music and Writing in Desperate America is far from despairing, because even at its darkest moments, it is always rife with the possibility:  the possibility of grace in unlikely places.  This is illustrated poignantly in “Norman Mailer:  A Remembrance” from Part II and “Note in a Bottle” from Part III.  While I don’t want to give too much away, the former starts with a letter, and ends in a friendship, while the latter explores the connection between love and understanding, faith and grace against the backdrop of old 78’s.  Together, they are a kind of coda, a way of understanding friendship and love, a “thank you” for “grace” that “no one has a right to expect in life.”

If, Flaubert’s fatal flaw is “his cynicism” that has “left a wound in all of us who followed him,” Piazza’s saving grace is his boundless humanity.  Devil Sent the Rain is rich with detail, perspective, and place.  Its true richness, however, is its empathy, its understanding of our common condition, as we, as New Orleans, as a Nation, try to reclaim the path to grace.

The case of P&J was particularly heartbreaking, as the business was struck with tragedy after tragedy, from Katrina to the BP Oil Spill, and now, the opening of the Morganza Spillway, which will flood freshwater into the oyster beds, leading to a mortality rate of 50 percent.  This is devastating news to a company who has already had to abandon using only locally sourced Louisiana oysters for a combination of Louisiana and Texas oysters.  A company that had to lay off everyone who was not immediate family.  And a company that was grooming a son to take over a businesses that had been passed down from his great grandfather; that son now sits in a hospital, at 25, battling depression as he sees his legacy, and all that he has ever known, lie on the verge of extinction.

Nothing lasts forever.  We all know that.  We all accept that, some more than others.  And I don’t think it is the change itself that scares us, but the rate of change, the ground that stood firmly for so long now constantly shifting under our feet.  The institutions of our youth not surviving into our adulthood, the technologies of last year already obsolete, and the values we thought immutable now relative, we are navigating uncharted waters.  The same waters that P&J find no longer nourish the oysters that they have harvested for 135 years, and expected to harvest for 135 more.

Yet amidst the change we still have things.  More things than we have ever had before.  We are drowning in things, and the things we have are constantly being replaced, exponentially, by the next best thing.  Yet while the next best thing may be the object of desire, at least temporarily, it is not the object of yearning.  No one yearns for the fruits of impermanence, the technology of yesteryear.  Instead, it is the spirit of what is lost they desire.  Not the ’57 Chevy, but the freedom that came with it.  Not the rotary phone, but the sense of wonder that was felt on a first phone call.   Not the letter, but the tangibility of something you could save, put in a box for your grandchildren to discover when the time was right.

And not P&J the business, but P&J the institution.  The commitment.  And the continuity of family.  This is what is lost when a young man sits despondent in a hospital ward somewhere in Louisiana.  And this is what BP and the US Government doesn’t understand that all the money in the world can’t fix.

I probably didn’t deal directly with racial issues in any manner until I went to college.  I had two friends that were African-American football players, and they were probably my only black friends at a predominantly white Boston College.  I was struck by a number of things during this time.  I was struck by how closed off the black and white communities were from each other.  I was also struck by my interactions with my friends, and how they would act differently around me then their black friends.  It was never lost on me that there is a tremendous pressure to either act “white” or act “black” depending on the social situation.  It was also not lost on me that race does play a role in how we view the world on a very basic level.

Most white people wouldn’t consider themselves racist, especially in the Northeast.  Folks in the northeast are above racism. That stuff happens in the South, or at least that is a punchline to a lot of jokes.  Having spent time in both places, I can make a frank assessment that racism is alive and well in both; it is the manner in which it is presented that is different.  In the South, racism is more  upfront.  You are more likely to hear a racial epitaph in the South, or see a symbol of the old Confederacy. Curiously, however, you are also more likely to find integrated neighborhoods in the South.  I have always found it interesting, that while while people can hate each other as groups, they can deal quite well as individuals and even friends.  There is far more interaction among black and white Americans in the South than in the North, and I would say far more understanding. They have many common problems, and share the same concerns about the economy, crime, and the direction of their government.  Yes, there is still racism, but there is also understanding.

The North on the other hand talks a good game.  We are more liberal, open minded, and progressive.  We are also far less likely to occupy the same neighborhoods or socialize with one another.  The North has an elaborate coded language with terms like welfare, bad neighborhoods, property values, school systems etc. to couch it’s underlying racism.  In NYC, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia neighborhoods are sharply divided along racial and economic lines.  White people have abandoned whole towns in the North like Newark, Camden, and large parts of Cleveland.  Cities that were once populous and thriving economically are now ghost towns roamed by gangs and drug dealers, many of whom are black.  That reinforces the perception among many white Americans in the North about back people.  They fail to realize, however, the massive vacuum that was created during the White Flight of the 60′s and 70′s.  Jobs and businesses were lost wholesale, and that always effects the poorest and most vulnerable in society.  Many African Americans relocated out from the South only to find conditions almost as bad in the North.  Things do not happen in isolation, and many of the current problems we face were born out of fear.

Still, in my heart, I would like to believe that most Americans, white and black, want to find common ground.  I would love to sit here and write that I am above racism, but I know that isn’t true.  This is not to say I am a racist or a biggot, but I can’t recuse myself either.  Because of my frame of reference, I have laughed at something a black person wouldn’t find funny and probably did judge Michael Vick more harshly than Rothlisberger.  I will admit to feeling intimidated when confronted by a group of kids late at night that look “gangish.”  I am sure I called a black gang member that killed a white cop an animal.  I would say anyone who claims they have never had a racist thought is a liar.  But there is a difference, between accepting race as a fundamental issue that needs to be dealt with honestly and openly, and being a racist, which is a philosophy or supremacy.  I certainly know I don’t feel the latter.

So where are we now.  Well, we have a black president.  That is a huge achievement in a country where many thought that would never happen.  Whether or not you agree with the politics of President Obama or not, the fact that he sits in the White House is proof enough that we have come a long way.  Yet in other ways, we have gone backwards.  Both young blacks and white have a sense of entitlement that belies the hard fought struggles of the Civil Rights era.  They are behind in education, especially in math and science.  The work ethic and sense of achievement has seemingly been replaced by a malaise.  In the gap between the wealthy and the poor, we have also regressed, as their has never been a greater disparity in income, with black Americans especially taking the brunt.  Also, Civil Rights was born out of non-violence, yet unfortunately too many black neighborhoods are afflicted with gang violence, besmirching the efforts of the majority of people who just want to live in peace and prosperity.  And there is still the issue of war, to which a disproportionate amount of poor black kids give their lives for, while wealthier white kids go to college.  We have come a long way, and we have a long way to go.

In the end though, it comes down to honesty.  I think honesty is how we break down walls and overcome fear.  The truth will set you free.  It is important not to be complacent.  ”Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  When we think about the world, we need to lose our myopic vision, and understand that we are all dependent on one another, or in the words of a much wiser man:

All I’m saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated, that somehow we’re caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I hope you all have a peaceful and reflective day.

Since I was old enough to read, a book has always filled me with wonder.  I distinctly remember my first library card, eagerly consuming the works of Beverly Cleary and then C.S. Lewis.  While other kids were out playing, much to the chagrin of my parents and later myself (I was the fat kid until I discovered basketball), I was most likely found reading a book.  A naturally shy and introverted kid, worlds opened up to me and friends that were painfully hard for me to make were made within the pages of each book I read.  I remember always reading more slowly towards the end, not wanting the story to end, and then eagerly returning and checking out another book.  Fiction, travel, culture — you name it — I was interested in them all.  Years before I ever stood in the shadows of Notre Dame or walked along the Thames, through books I had already traveled the world.

As I got older, this carefully cultivated love of a good book grew into the love of a good bookstore.  It wasn’t enough to simply check out the object of my affections.  I now needed ownership.  This passion peaked when I attended Boston College, and was fortunate enough to be paired with a roommate who loved a good book as much as I did.  Although his tastes leaned more towards history and I was more of a literature man, this was no object as we were set free in the single greatest city of bookstores in America.

To say Boston (and by extension Cambridge) was a cornucopia of bookstores in the year 1990 would be an understatement.  With it’s wealth of colleges and universities, Boston probably had nearly as many bookstores as bars, and great bookstores.  Not the antiseptic bookstores of the strip mall, but bookstore located in basements and small alleyways.  Used bookstores and academic bookstores.  Bookstores dedicated solely to one genre like poetry or mysteries.  Stores that has a certain smell; a mustiness that smelled like the collective wisdom of an entire culture. Upon entering a store like this my lungs would relax in the same manner as a smoker as I took a deep drag.  A peacefulness would wash over my body.  I can still recreate that feeling in my mind when I feel stressed.

The proprietors of these stores were also always curiosities.  Like the ex-pats that sat along the Seine in Parisian cafes following WWI, these men and women always had a wild an unkempt look about them.  They were most often surly, crusty individuals who worked purely on the basis of love.  The dollar I paid for a copy of Absalom, Absalom certainly never made them rich.  They were part of the character is much as the building and the books themselves, irreplaceable fixtures from a time long gone.

And the books themselves; I almost forgot.  Rarely did we, as poor college students go to the new bookstores, favoring the used stores that dotted the streets of Cambridge radiating out from Harvard Square.  We would spend hours going from store to store with our meager allowances, occasionally buying, but often just browsing.  Like I said, they never got rich on us.  The attraction of course was the books.  First the smell hit you as you opened the door.  Like the smell of a hickory fire in the winter, it had a certain comfort to it that is indescribable.  We were ineluctably drawn to the basement stores, where this was even more prevalent.  Fanning out in the aisles, we would carefully study the stacks until something caught our eye.  Then pure excitement.  That first touch, soft, with a sublime velvety feeling, like touching a woman’s cheek or hair, the pages of the well-worn book had that instant jolt of excitement mixed with calming comfort.  Often the books would be inscribed with a name, a clue to previous ownership and the lineage of the said tome.  There was a feeling of connectedness, as if we were the recipients of wisdom being passed down throughout the ages.  It was almost impossible not to take home at least one old paperback during our travels, and I can safely say I still have them all, even the one’s I never read.

Which brings me back to the present, and Border’s.  The fact that any bookstore is shutting down is troubling, but even more troubling when it is a large chain.  If the big boys can’t make it, what hope does that hold out for the small independents.  In two cities I hold close to my heart, New York and New Orleans, there exists Three Lives Booksellers and the Faulkner House Books, which I fear for on a daily basis.  These small stores are everything a good bookstore should be.  Intimate, well staffed, intelligently stocked, and friendly.  Unlike some people who fear of ruining a good spot, I tell everyone I know about them, hoping to send enough business their way to stave off extinction for another day.  Where others are excited about the Kindle and other readers, I am fearful that sooner rather than later print will become a thing of the past.  Instead of turning pages, reading will become one monotonous scroll.  All the culture that goes along with reading will be lost as well, bookmarks and bookshelves, and maybe even the very term bookworm. That well worn feeling will also be lost, as everything will be in a state of constant newness.  No more dog-eared pages or underlined passages, or falling asleep with the book open on your chest.  The smell of aged wisdom gone, another step towards solipsism.

I for one do not want to see this happen.  As surely as the artisans who stood in the way of industrialization were doomed to failure, I don’t expect to succeed on the large scale.  I am almost certainly bound to fail.  Yet, if I can keep one or two stores alive through my patronage, and preserve a little of the old ways, maybe, just maybe, they will last long enough until everything old becomes new again.

We live in an age of cynicism, and materialism.  Our hearts grow harder by the day as we try to achieve a life where success is defined in terms of titles and material comforts.  We spend more time at work than with the family, and become so immersed in our own problems that we forget about the problems of others.  We look at the homeless, the indigent, and the sickly as someone else’s problem; maybe the government will take care of them.  We live in a mean-spirited age, where the weak or different are bullied and picked-upon.  Where the elderly are easily discarded. Where kids grow up too fast, and still, unfortunately, too many don’t grow up at all. Yet amidst all this despair, there still exists the faintest glimmer of hope known as the human heart, and the human spirit, as I have seen it myself.

Yes Santa Claus, there is a Virginia, and her lovely daughter Kiarra too.  A week ago, I didn’t know them, and now I will never forget them, and what a dreary world it would be without them.  They are the mother and daughter I met at the Starlight Foundation Santa Claus Breakfast, the day I learned the true meaning of Christmas.  The Starlight Foundation helps bring joy into the hearts of seriously ill, often terminally ill children.  It helps them cope with the isolation and loneliness, the pain and suffering, and gives them a chance to share in the joy of childhood that we all take for granted.

The Santa Claus breakfast is the only Christmas some of these children have.  Many of the families are decimated financially from the costs incurred through medical care.  Most have woefully inadequate coverage.  Thus, to see these kids light up, and be kids for just a little while, was magic enough.  To see kids that have spent an interminable amount of time in waiting rooms, hospital lobbies, and operating rooms sitting on Santa’s lap and grinning ear to ear found Christmas in my heart in a way that all the gifts I have ever received never could.  It was blindingly pure.  It was a Christmas miracle.  And then there were Virginia and Kiarra.  My first and best gift of the season.

Yes Santa Claus, there is a Virgina.  She is from the “Boogie Down Bronx,” and she is the devoted mother of an adorable wheelchair bound six year old who loves the Food Network and cooking in her kitchen.  Over the course of a car ride back into NYC, I was able to get to know her and her “miracle baby” Kiarra.   She told me how important Starlight was to her family, giving them hope year round.  We never discussed illness, although it was something they both dealt with daily. Instead, I was floored by her optimism, her boundless joy, the love their family shared, and the complete lack of self-pity in her words and mannerisms.  She understood she had been given a great gift.  A perfect love in an imperfect world.  One that transcends the physical limitations and touches the heart.  It touched my heart.

I realized at that point that I had been shown something very special.  I was allowed to play Santa Claus, and finally understood what it meant to be Santa Claus.  To give selflessly, to bring joy into the lives of others, and to give something that cannot be wrapped or topped with a bow. To have the Christmas Spirit, the Human Spirit, is to spread your light to all around you.  That day, I thought I was giving to them, but in retrospect, I was given the gift.  The gift of goodness, of faith in a faithless time, of charity, and of hope.

Yes Santa Claus, there is a Virgina and a Kiarra, and it is precisely because of them that we need to let joy into our hearts, and let our light shine in a troubled world. Merry Christmas, my friends.

This is not to say I don’t see the flaws of the season:  The rampant and often obnoxious commercialism.  The overindulgence in food and drink, forgetting that too many have too little, while we have too much.  The materialism, and the competitiveness.  The seemingly endless obligations.  Not to mention the bad sweaters.  I understand all of that, and I can see why some are not so fond of the season.

For me, however, Christmas is comfort from the past, and hope for the future.  It is friends and family gathering to enjoy one another.  It is passing down food and traditions from one generation to the next.  It is a place and time that is both rooted and forever fluid.  It is my family’s nativity under the tree, A Christmas Story on TV, and a mix of foods that always starts with a fish fry on Christmas Eve and ends with a mix of Italian and classic American dishes on Christmas Day. And now it is my son as well, old enough to understand for the first time, and being able to see the holiday anew through his wide-eyed excitement.

Yes, I am a fan of Christmas.  Cue the nog and the carols, the old religious songs, the jazz classics, and Bing Crosby and Andy Williams.  Let me torture my loved ones with Fogelberg for a few weeks more.  Let us celebrate the passing of another year where we were all together.

I should say that the dry-brine technique works best for a bird in the 12-18 pound range.  Anything bigger takes too long and is better done in a liquid brine.  The method is easy:  you rub a flavorful salt mixture over the Turkey, let it sit for a minimum of one day, but optimally two to three, then rinse the mixture off, pat dry, and roast.  I also augment this method by putting a thyme compound butter underneath the skin just before roasting, ensuring a moist and flavorful bird.

The ratio of salt to turkey mass is one tablespoon for every five pounds.  To offset the harshness of the salt, I also add about a teaspoon of brown sugar for every tablespoon of salt.  The most important thing about this method is to make sure the turkey is completely covered in the salt cure.  Furthermore, no additional seasoning is needed before roasting.  Just rinse the bird and pat it dry, and roast.  As I said above, I like to use a compound butter under the skin for additional moisture and flavor, added right before putting the turkey in the oven.  I make mine simply of unsalted butter and fresh thyme.  I also find that it is helpful to run the skin with olive oil or butter for even color.

I made a dry-brined test turkey last night, and it was fantastic.  Below is the recipe I used for the dry-brine for a 15 lb. turkey:

Ingredients:

3 Tbsp. kosher salt

1 tsp. brown sugar

1/2 tsp. black pepper

1/2 tsp. paprika

1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper

1/8 tsp. white pepper

1 tsp. dried thyme

Zest of one lemon

Method:

Mix ingredients together well.  Coat turkey thoroughly, especially breasts.  Put turkey in a large plastic bag or in a dish large enough to hold and cover with plastic.  Let cure for 2-3 days depending on the size of the bird.  The day of, rinse the bird and pat dry, and let dry uncovered in fridge.  Take it out an hour before ready to roast.  If using, add compound butter at this point.  For roasting instructions see my previous post, Talking Turkey:  http://jscirish27.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/talking-turkey/

I can’t watch TV anymore, especially reality TV and the commercials.  It seems as foreign to me as it would an aborigine.  I don’t understand how giving a bunch of obnoxious twenty-somethings a lush pad and carte blanche is reality or why I would want to take a closer look into the life of a Jersey-shore denizen.  I don’t understand why low class has become something worthy of promoting.

The commercials are a whole other story.  I feel like I am constantly under attack by fast food, alcohol, cell phones, and pharmaceuticals.  Yes, while sitting down for a meal might be nice, it is better to get a sausage wrapped in a pancake so you can eat it on the go and not miss a beat.  Why would you want a measly 1/4 pound of beef when you could get a 1/3 of a pound of beef raised inhumanely and pumped full of antibiotics.  Why would you want to eat something regular when you could eat something “bigger and newer, now packed with more X.”  Why would you actually want to sit down with your annoying family and feed them something prepared with love and care when you could all just eat a hot pocket and go on your merry way… and they wonder why kids shoot up their schools these days.

Booze is just as bad.  I am really supposed to believe Miller Lite is now Chateneuf de Pape because they put grooves in the bottle.  There is a little captain in me?  He is telling me that Captain Morgan’s is crap rum.  A hot girl will fall in my lap if I “cue the Cuervo?” Please.  I will still be the same overweight guy, just drunker, talking to a similar guy at the bar about whether “dead ball era” statistics in baseball are valid… it is practically like Spanish fly.

Cell phones ads are another thing that freak me out.  DROID ads have this strange noir Blade Runner motif where the users are turned into cyborgs and become a model of efficiency; if this is the future no thank you.  The Iphone gives you an App for everything except common sense; it gives you the tools to you live your entire life without actually living it.  The importance placed on having the right piece of technology to have a purposeful life is frightening to me.

Don’t even get me started on the pharma ads.  Since when, with your vast medical expertise, would you be so presumptuous as to go to a doctor and suggest which medication you should ingest based on something you saw on TV.  This is the most base form of advertising I have ever seen.  While I may need Lipitor, it really should be my doctor’s suggestion, not mine.

Also, are there any men in America that can get an erection anymore?  Judging on the advertising that continually mars my sports viewing, one would assume there isn’t.  Not only that, but why do I need to know about it?  If you know you have the problem, you probably don’t need the advice of the television.  If a space alien ever intercepted our TV transmissions they would be convinced we are a nation that is obese, drunk, addicted to baubles, and incapable of procreating… and sadly they might not be that far off.

I am also sick of language being appropriated and devalued.  The word that bothers me more than most is hero.  If you are playing a fake guitar in your room in your tightey-whiteys you are not a hero.  Hell, if you are playing guitar on stage at the Garden, you are not a hero.  Anyone that throws, catches, or shoots any kind of ball or puck is not a hero.  They may be a great player.  They may be a great guy.  They may raise the hopes of a city.  But they are not heroes.  For me being a hero means giving up something of great value, usually your life, to help those in need.  It is about sacrifice.  As much as I like Derek Jeter, his life is not about sacrifice.  When I think of the cops and firemen that rushed into the WTC during 9/11 and the young men and women that come home in boxes daily from overseas I have a really tough time tossing around the world hero lightly.

Another word is celebrity.  What exactly am I celebrating with Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan? The glorification of profligacy and stupidity?  Why are we celebrating people who’s greatest accomplishment is a fake tan or a homemade porno?  Why do we take our cues from entertainers these days, instead of philosophers, authors, scientists, intellectuals,inventors, etc.?  We have truly become a “confederacy of dunces.”

Of course, this could all be in my head.  It could be senility.  Old people get confused easily sometimes. But there might be some kernels of truth in this as well… or maybe I am just auditioning for Andy Rooney’s job…

I am leery of technology.  I don’t like the disconnect.  Sitting on a crowded subway with everyone engaged in their own private Ipod communion has always freaked me out.  No smiles are exchanged, no conversations, and no community.  We are purposely isolating ourselves, slipping into solipsistic sanctuary, with no regard for the world or people.

I prefer the energy instead, of a semi-busy cafe or bar.  While I may be reading, enjoying some oysters and a glass of sancerre, I always leave the seat next to me open as an invitation.  I want to talk to you, and I am eager to listen.  I enjoy the  exchange of opinions in the best traditions of cafe culture.  I love any gathering of wizened old men arguing on any topic from sports to politics to who makes the best braciole or pours the best Guinness.  I love having maybe one more drink than I should have as I join the fray.  I love the eventual singing of patriotic anthems and folk songs that inevitably follows.

I prefer to walk everywhere.  I haven’t had a car in four years, and I can honestly say I don’t miss it.  I get around just fine, and walking is probably the only thing that stands between me and morbid obesity.  Walking slows the world down; it has to, as I don’t walk that fast.  Walking gives you time to pick up a luck penny from the ground, and to examine facets of architecture you may not have otherwise noticed.  You discover small businesses you never knew existed, and hidden shortcuts and alleyways.  You can also make eye contact as you walk.  Smile and exchange pleasantries.  It is good for the body and the soul.  For those who have never walked from Battery Park to Central Park I highly recommend it.  To see the sundry neighborhoods of New York City unfold like a treasure map is to understand more about the city than any history book could ever teach you; that is if you know what to look for.

I prefer a book to television.  If the TV is on at my house it is invariably Sportscenter, CNN, or background noise.  When I am serious, I read.  Upon visiting a new city, one of the first things I do is find a perfect bookstore, intimate, with a well-thought out selection.  In NYC, it is Three Lives Booksellers (and Kitchen Arts and Letters for all things culinary), in Boston it is the Harvard Bookstore, and in New Orleans it is Faulkner House Booksellers.  A good bookstore has a certain smell, and a certain tempo.  It is paper and ink and a certain mustiness that says knowledge contained within these walls and pages.  It is adagio in an allegro world.  A quiet symphony of thoughts.  It is a place that lowers my blood pressure and raises my spirits, and I shiver to think that one day it is a place that may no longer be as people increasingly read on electronic media.

I have accepted, grudgingly, some of the features of modernity.  That gaslights are indeed impractical and somewhat dangerous; that wine may actually taste better from a corkless bottle; that induction cooking is probably better for the planet and the pans than gas ever could be.  Yet I will not stand for the old ways to be completely set aside, a discarded relative sent to a nursing home.  No one will ever convince me that dinner in a restaurant is better than a home-cooked meal; that non-stick is better than cast iron; that sous-vide cooking is better than a well executed braise; that making money is more important than making friends; that responsibilities to the company ever come before family; that a day at the ballpark isn’t it’s own perfection… and I could go on, because a hopeless romantic always can… and I can accept that.

Now I think I’ll disconnect for the day and go for a walk.  I have just enough time to walk from Battery Park to Central Park if I do it right… if I “rage, rage, against the dying of the light.”

Thus, when I received an invitation to my twenty year High School reunion, I laughed.  There was no way I was going to attend I thought; I didn’t like it back then, why do I want to go now. Besides, it is not like I have more than a handful of friends from High School with whom I still keep in touch.  I was pretty resolute that I would not be attending.  And then a funny thing happened…

Facebook.  Yes, the revolution in social media, which was something else I swore I wouldn’t do, happened to me.  All of the sudden I was reconnected with people from all eras (and errors) of my life, including a surprising number of people from High School.  I was now “friends” with people I wasn’t even “friends” with the first time around.  And now they “liked” me.  Some of them even “commented” to that effect.  Girls that wouldn’t even talk to me in High School were now palling around with me on the internet.  Guys I hadn’t seen in years were now chatting with me across the ether.  I was now immersed in a world that I hadn’t even thought about much for twenty or so years, and I had to admit I was a little curious.  I started taking an informal census on Facebook, seeing who was coming and who wasn’t.  My friends started goading me as well, trying to get me to attend.  This idea, once unthinkable, that I would attend my twentieth High School reunion moved from the realm of possible to probable, and then to inevitable.  I had to go.

And so I did.  On October 16, 2010, I found myself stuffed rather uncomfortably into a suit that fit me perfectly only a matter of two years ago, standing in a hotel lobby nervously trying to figure out where to go.  The Mrs., who should have been much more nervous than I was, walked cooly next to me as we made our way to the event.  We got to the registration table, which had the organization of an Italian Social Services Bureau, found our name-tags, and headed into the main room.

The air rushed out of me like a balloon at that point.  Not because I was disappointed, but because it was exactly as I expected it to be.  Seeing as I couldn’t navigate this night without my old friend gin, I quickly made my way to the bar and order a gin and tonic, and then surveyed the room.  I wasn’t looking at people as much as I was looking at evolution, who had evolved and who had not.  For me, a striking number of my classmates were frozen in the amber, the manifest destiny of the people they always were.  This thought made me uncomfortable and I quickly downed the first G & T only to bury another.  At this point I needed to find a friendly face and make some effort at what other people would deem as normal social interaction.  Years of working nights in hot kitchens speaking Spanish to ex-cons had deprived me somewhat of these skills.  I needed to get them back, and quickly.

As fortune would have it, someone approached me first and broke the ice.  Not a close friend, but a nice person nonetheless.  It took the edge off.  I soon began to slowly circle the room, a slow motion mako, gradually exchanging pleasantries with one person and then the next.  I recognized almost everyone without their nametags.  It wasn’t appearance, but personality that jogged my memory mostly.  I also realized I still had a quiet distain for a few people that I hadn’t seen in twenty years.  Petty.  Probably.  But they still rubbed me the wrong way twenty years later.  That is an impressive feat.

And the night went on, rather quickly, in the same manner.  The Mrs. was a trooper, probably making more friends over the course of the evening than I did in the four years I spent at said institution.  I talked to some people that I will probably never see again, and some that I would like to see again soon.  The irony, if you can call it that because it really wasn’t ironic, is that by the end of the night I was sitting at a small bar table with the group of friends that had convinced me to come in the first place.  We could have had our own reunion, and it would have been just as satisfying to me.

My curiosity satisfied, I think it is a safe bet to say I probably won’t attend my 25 year reunion. This is not because I am a curmudgeon (although I will be by then), but because I did what I needed to do already.  It was a good thing that I went back to a place that I had no particular fondness for, if only to see how far I had come.  It was also good to see the success of others who I genuinely liked and cared for, and make a few new old friends.  As for the rest of it, it just isn’t my style.  I am not someone who likes to work the room, show off my work, or try to relive my past glories.  I like to think I get better every day forward,and that my best work is yet to be done.  Still, for one night, it was good to put aside the resistance of memory, and travel fleetingly back to a place that no matter how much I deny it, formed much of who I am today.