Your Guide to a WASP Bar Mitzvah

PRIDE’S CROSSING, Massachusetts.    In this exclusive enclave north of Boston, Saul Levenson says he feels a little out of place.  “There are more horses up here than Jews,” he says with a laugh that one might almost characterize as nervous.

 

Saul and his wife Sarah are part of a growing movement among parents of children approaching the age of responsibility under Jewish tradition (thirteen for boys, twelve for girls) to curb the growing excesses of the bar and bat mitzvah on display in the movie “Keeping Up With the Steins”, in which two families compete to throw the more lavish ceremony for their sons.

 

            “That movie was an exaggeration,” says Sarah, “but believe me, not by much.  We recently attended a bar mitzvah where they had the Rolling Stones for the adults, ‘Fall Out Boy’—whoever they are—for the kids, casino gambling tables, a two-story water slide, Indy-formula race cars and a live rhinocerous.  It must have cost a quarter of a million dollars!”

 

Rhinocerous:  Available by the day, or weekly with security deposit.

            So at the suggestion of their rabbi, Jonathan Shapiro, they’ve come to this town where WASPs—white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants—predominate to consult with Asa and Polly Endicott, an old-line Yankee couple, on how to stage a bar mitzvah party for their son Jacob that will be both tasteful and reserved.

 

            “I met Polly at an Interfaith Council meeting,” says the rabbi.  “She brought day-old donuts for our Thursday morning coffee, so I knew she was one of your typical New Englanders with a highly-developed sense of thrift.  A cheapskate!” he adds with a laugh, but Polly doesn’t contradict him.

 

            Asa and Polly are Unitarians, the American denomination with the least emphasis on religious doctrine and ceremony.  “The last time anybody heard the words ‘Jesus Christ’ at our church was when the janitor fell down the basement stairs,” says Asa, and with his deadpan sense of humor, it’s hard to tell whether he’s kidding.  As a result, the Levensons felt comfortable that the Endicotts would confine their suggestions to party planning, and not veer off into religious matters.

            “The first thing you must remember,” Polly tells the Levensons, “is that every penny you spend on your guests is that much less you can spend on your horses.” 

 

Asa and Polly both ride at the Myopia Hunt Club, one of the few venues in America where polo is played.  Saul and Sarah laugh at first, but stop when they realize Polly is serious.

 

“She’s serious about the horses.”

            “And don’t do your own cooking,” Asa says with a grouchy tone.  “The first time I let Polly throw a dinner party all she did was put a roast in the oven and come back between cocktails to see if it was burned yet.”

            Asa is a member of the third generation of the Endicott line that has lived off inherited income, holding positions in law or investment firms but not for the money.  “If I don’t get him out of the house in the morning he’s underfoot all day!” Polly says with exasperation.  Saul, a successful real estate developer, admires Asa’s sense of grace.  “He doesn’t have to hustle, so he doesn’t,” Saul says with a shrug.  “I wish I could do the same.” 

          The flip side of inherited wealth is that the Endicotts are tight with money.  “Don’t touch the principal!” says Asa with emphasis, and indeed the most work he generally does in a day is to clip an interest coupon off a gilt-edged bond, or check a computer he bought recently (”On sale”, he is quick to point out) to monitor his stocks.  “Asa throws nickels around like they’re manhole covers,” quips Polly, a comment that causes her husband to turn defensive.  “That’s an exaggeration,” he says.  “I do it more like it’s the 8-pound shotput,” a track-and-field event he excelled in at Groton Academy, his prep school.

 

            Over time the Levensons develop enough confidence in the Endicotts to place the entire responsibility for planning Jacob’s bar mitzvah party in their new Protestant friends’ hands.  “On the day he becomes a man,” says Sarah, “the last thing I want to worry about is the food!”

            And so, after Jacob reads from the Torah (the five books of Moses) and the Haftara (the books of the Prophets), and gives a d’var Torah, or discussion of that week’s Torah portion, he and his family and friends retire to the Endicott’s country club on the North Shore of Boston for the party.

 

            As family and guests stream into the ballroom Saul is concerned when he sees no tables set for dinner.  “Never, ever have a sit-down dinner for a big social event,” Polly says with a tone of authority.  “Stick to cocktails and finger food, or your friends will eat you out of house and home.”

            “Okay—I guess,” Saul says as he looks over the hors d’oeuvres arrayed on a folding table covered with a worn damask cloth.  The offerings include limp celery stalks, olives, pickles, some mini-carrot sticks, Wheat Thins and sliced cheese.  “Is that it?” he asks.

            “Why, of course not,” Polly says.  “There’s a cash bar over there.”  Saul looks in the direction indicated by his hostess and sees another table stacked with quart size bottles of hard liquor, a cooler of beer and two wine bottles.  “What’s all that booze for?” he asks.

 

            “That’s the WASPy way!” Polly says cheerfully.  Saul picks a shriveled pickle from the table, puts it in his mouth and spits it out.  “What the hell’s the matter with those pickles?” he asks, his face puckered up as if he has swallowed a lemon.  “That’s a gherkin,” Asa says.  “A sweet pickle.”

 

            “You couldn’t find any kosher dills?” Saul asks. 

            “I don’t really like them,” Asa says.  “Too sour.”

            Rabbi Shapiro joins the group to meet the host and hostess.  “It is such a mitzvah what you have done for Saul and Sarah!” he says to the Polly with happiness.

           “Are you the fellow who’s going to remove the young man’s foreskin?” Asa asks after Polly introduces the rabbi.

           “Why, no,” Shapiro says, a bit puzzled.  “That was taken care of many years ago.”

           “Good planning,” Asa says with admiration.  “It would have been a mess with the buffet all set up.”

            By now the guests have begun to grumble and Sarah expresses her concern that there isn’t enough food to feed everyone.  “You never read the part in the Bible where Jesus multiplies the loaves and fishes?” Asa asks with a mischievous grin.

 

“I’ve got some nice whitefish . . .” 

            “Uh, no,” Sarah replies.

            “Just pulling your leg,” Asa says.  “We got a good deal from a caterer.  A daughter of a friend of ours.  She’s very downwardly mobile, a typical path for a WASPy woman who graduates from a Seven Sisters school and wants to do something ‘creative’ with her life.”  Asa makes a pair of quotation marks with his fingers as he says the word “creative” to let the parents of the bar mitzvah know what he thinks of such foolishness.

 

            “Well, where is she?” Sarah asks.

            “She has a dinner party to do first, then we get her for the rest of the night at half off her regular price.”

            “Okay—I guess,” Saul says as he looks at his watch.  A tired-looking combo is playing songs from the Big Band era—”Begin the Beguine”, “Stardust”, “Rosemarie”–in a somnolent style, providing guests with some diversion as the growls from their stomachs grow louder, like a pride of lions waiting for a herd of gazelles to pass by.

 

            “There she is!” Polly says cheerfully, and the Levensons’ heads turn to the swinging doors of the kitchen, where a young woman—Brittany Oliver–in a chef’s toque emerges pushing a cart with food—glorious food!—even if it is in the form of canapés.

            “Thank God you’re here!” Saul says to her.  “What have you got for us to eat?”

 

            “Well, over here we have a honey-baked ham, then there’s some shrimp . . .”

            “Asa didn’t tell you we needed something kosher—not trayfe?” Saul asks.

            “Guess I didn’t mention it to her,” Asa says with a note of regret.

            “Wait,” she says,  “I did bring something else . . .”

            “What?” Sarah asks hopefully.

 

            “Scallops wrapped in bacon!”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman

Jack ‘n Jill Shotput Catches On With Country Club Set

WELLESLEY HILLS, Mass.  In this affluent suburb of Boston where the median home price hovers around $800,000,”keeping up with the Joneses” can be a difficult task.

“You have the traditionalists, who sail and ski and play golf and tennis,” says Marci Upham, president of the local PTO.  “Then you have the radicals, who snowshoe and cross-country ski, or go hiking and kayaking,” she notes with a scowl.  “Too sweaty in the winter, and too many bugs in the summer.”

Marci says she and her husband Dan were looking for a compromise between the traditional country club scene and what she calls the “crunchy-granola” set.  Their solution?  Jack-and-Jill shot-putting, using an 8.8-pound weight for the women, and a 16-pound shot for the men.

“It’s great exercise,” says Dan, “and you have plenty of time for chit-chat while people are getting ready to throw.”  Unlike golf, it is unusual for a putter to get the “yips” and ask for silence once he or she enters the circle.

Tonight, Dan and Marci are entertaining a couple they met through their children, Jack and Sarah Billings.  “Everything revolves around the kids’ soccer and hockey games,” laughs Sarah, as she hoists a shot onto her shoulder and prepares to go into her “glide” style of throw.  “Jack can pull off the spin move, but not me!” she says as she pushes her hair back with a plaid headband she purchased for the occasion at the local Talbots store.

“Give her a go, sweetie,” Jack says.  It is customary for guests to throw first, and for women to precede the men.

“Okey-dokey, artichokey!” Sarah replies as she plants a kiss on her husband’s cheek.  She crouches low, cradles the shot against her chin, steadies herself, and pumps backwards across the circle, turning at the last moment to release the shot.

“Wow,” says her hostess.  “Nicely done!”  Dan Upham grabs the tape measure, pulls it out to the point of impact, and calls “Forty feet!” back to the rest of the party.

“Sarah–really!  That was fantastic!” Marci says with genuine admiration.

“Thanks,” Sarah says modestly.

“Great put, honey!” Jack says as he kisses her sweaty forehead.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say somebody’s been taking–STER-OIDS!” Dan says with a skeptical look on his face.

The foursome erupts in laughter at the jeer first used to greet slugger Jose Canseco at Fenway Park when he ballooned up in size as a result of performance-enhancing drugs.

“Nope–all I’ve been eating is Total cereal and a little wheat germ on my yogurt,” Sarah says.

“C’mon, Sarah–you know the rules!” Dan says with mock sternness as he hands her a plastic cup.  “I’m going to need a urine sample, or you guys are buying drinks next time at the club!”

“All right,” Sarah says with good humor.  “I had to pee anyway.”  She takes the cup and starts to enter the Uphams’ house when she turns to add one last jibe at Dan.  “You know I’m a shy whizzer, so I may not be able to fill this up!”

The others laugh, and Dan relents.  “Do the best you can!” he says graciously.

It is now Jack’s turn, and he puts some resin on his hands before he enters the circle.  A former college hockey player, Jack is powerfully built from the waist up, and after he settles himself at the back of the circle, he spins and grunts as he releases the shot.

“Wow!” Marci exclaims as she sees the metal ball go flying.  “You guys have really been working out!”

“I think I bulked up helping Courtney,” the Billings’ daughter, “move her stuff into Dana Hall,” a local private school, Jack says by way of explanation.

 

Dan takes the tape and measures the distance of Jack’s throw.

“Holy cow!” he says as he looks down at the tape.  “Fifty feet!  You guys are going to be hard to beat!”

“Aw, you’re just being nice,” Jack says.

“No, seriously.  That was something!” Dan says.  “Here’s your cup.”

“Thanks,” Jack says, as Sarah emerges with her sample.  “Here you go,” she says with a sly smile as she hands it to Dan.  “Don’t get it mixed up with the chardonnay!”

They all laugh as Marci prepares for her turn.  “Sarah, you’re such a stitch!” she says.  “I can’t keep a straight face with you around.”  She stays out of the circle for a moment until she can stop laughing, then composes herself and gets ready to throw. 

As she does so, Sarah takes out a camcorder.  “Look at my new toy!” she says with glee.

“Neat!” Dan says.  “You’re going to tape this for posterity?”

“We love to play home videos,” she says with a note of sentiment in her voice.  “It brings back such fun memories!”

Marci readies herself as Sarah adjusts the focus on her new video camera.  “All set!” Sarah says after a moment, and Marci starts her glide across the circle.

The shot flies out of Marci’s hand and Sarah tracks its arc with her camcorder.  “My goodness!  Look at that!” Sarah says with excitement as she presses the “Fade Out” button while Dan runs to the spot where the metal ball lands.

“I think that’s a personal best, sweetie!” Dan says as he stretches his tape measure out.  After a second, the shock of recognition sets in.  “Forty-two feet!  Way to go, Marci!” he shouts as he runs to give her a big hug.

“I got it on tape!” Sarah says, and the host and hostess gather round as she plays it back.  “Uh-oh, Marci,” Sarah says as she watches the action again on her screen.

“What’s the matter?” Marci asks with concern.

“Looks like you fouled–see?” she says, and sure enough, a slo-mo replay shows that Marci’s shot-put skirt touched the top of the toe-board, a no-no in this competitive field event.  “Sorry,” Sarah says.

“That’s all right–fair’s fair,” Marci says with a forced smile.  “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Here’s my pee-pee!” Jack says as he emerges from the house.  “What’d I miss?”

“I fouled again!” Marci says with a tone of self-reproach in her voice.  “I need to take some more lessons.”

“More lessons!  Please–we have a mortgage to pay!” Dan says with mock concern.

The group explodes in laughter knowing that the Uphams’ house is worth around two million dollars and was purchased eighteen years earlier for approximately $450,000.

“Your turn, Dan,” Jack says, as he hands Marci his urine sample.  “Try not to break a world record, okay?”

“I don’t think you have to worry,” the host says, and indeed, his throw flies outside the white chalk lines that the Uphams have laid down across their well-tended lawn, and across a neighbor’s wooden picket fence.

“Oops,” Dan says with a smile, but the group’s laughter is cut short as the squeal of an injured dog is heard.

“Poodie!” an old woman cries.  “My dear little Poodie!”

“Sorry about your dog, Mrs. Keezer” Dan yells as he suppresses a grin.  “I’ll get you a new one next weekend.”

“You goddamn social climbers and your McMansion!  I hope you rot in hell!” the old women screams as the revelers turn back to their drinks.

“She’ll be fine,” Marci says with a dismissive air.  “As soon as her kids get her in assisted living!”  The group’s embarrassment fades away like morning dew beneath the bright sunshine of Marci’s effervescent personality, and they return to their cocktails.

“Let’s see,” Sarah says as she notes the distances on a cute plaid scorepad that Marci picked up at a local stationery store.  “We won both the women’s and the men’s events, right?”

“Not so fast,” Dan Upham interjects with a mischievous grin as he holds up a test tube.  “I think I’ve detected some Clomid in Jack’s urine sample!” he says, referring to the female fertility drug that is used by professional athletes to mask the presence of steroids.

“What you’re seeing is perfectly legal,” his guest replies.  “It’s the cheap gin you put in your martinis!”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman

Yuppies Fight Callous Image With “Tap Your Laptop” Day

BOSTON, Mass. Trip Masefield is a bond trader at an investment bank, the sort of young urban professional, or “YUPPIE”, usually derided as a self-centered striver, unconcerned with making the world a better place.

“That was certainly me a few years ago,” he says. “I’d come out of the office after having a big day and literally jump over homeless guys on my way to Crickets”—a popular Quincy Market watering hole among Boston-area singles.

Quincy Market

But a freak accident changed all that. “I was at my desk one day and stood up to yell when I made a big sale, and I knocked my laptop over,” he says. “Four years worth of muffin and donut crumbs that had fallen into my keyboard shook loose on my desk—it got me to thinking about those less fortunate than me.”

So Masefield started “Tap Your Laptop Day”, an event that is spreading as twenty-something professionals heed the call to fight hunger by donating the debris of meals eaten at their desks. “All it takes is to turn your laptop or desktop keyboard over once a week, give it a little tap, and you’ll probably knock out several ounces of good, if slightly stale food,” he says. Donors scoop the crumbs into prepaid envelopes and mail them to his home address, where he rolls them in grease drippings from hamburgers to make pocket-sized snacks that resemble the suet logs that parakeet owners hang in their pets’ cages. “Maybe you or I wouldn’t eat the stuff,” he says, “but somebody who’s hungry would really chow down on it.”

Relief workers in drought-plagued areas of Africa, where the tasty, homemade products are distributed, agree. “People in Djibouti find that the Laptop Energy Bar is a vital supplement to their daily diet,” said Elena Marascovitch of the World Health Organization. “Every now and then we’ll find a fingernail in one of them, which the women use to make jewelry.”

Pappagallo

Masefield’s efforts to relieve world hunger have inspired some of his office mates to start charities of their own. Marilyn Reath, a statuesque hedge fund manager, organized a “Pappagallos for the Poor” campaign that collected over a thousand pairs of summer pumps and espadrilles, which she will be distribute this winter to single mothers who head low-income families. “There is nothing to brighten a dark winter day like a colorful pair of ‘fun’ shoes,” Reath says.

“I’ll take the pink foulard!”

At the next desk over from hers, Tyler Hanson says he’s organizing a “Hermes for Haiti” benefit that will encourage his co-workers to donate their slightly soiled power ties to be shipped to that poor Caribbean nation. “I read in The New Yorker that Haitian politicians give ‘burning ties’ to their opponents. They tie them up, put tires around their necks and set them on fire. ‘Hermes for Haiti’ will try to bring peace to that impoverished country by teaching men to live in harmony through mutual compliments of each other’s neckwear.”

Masefield says his involvement in charitable work has given him a new outlook on the downtrodden that he encounters as he makes the rounds of Boston’s singles bars. “I try not to be judgmental,” he says. “If I’ve had a big day, I give them five bucks and say ‘Go buy yourself a glass of merlot—it’s not as subtle as a pinot noir, but it’ll stick to your ribs.’”

Pope to Name Young Girl Patron Saint of Self-Restraint

REGGIO EMILIA, Italy.  This industrial town in the north of Italy is getting a sprucing up in anticipation of a visit by Pope Benedict XVI to celebrate the canonization of St. Luciana, a young girl who will be the named the patron saint of childhood self-restraint.

Luciana: “No, I don’t have to go yet.”

“Luciana, she was the most wonderful little girl we ever had here,” says Sister Mary Agnesita, her first-grade teacher.   “She never once aska to go to the bathroom except atta assigned breaks.”

Pope Benedict:  “She may be a saint, but only the Pope gets to wear this special hat.”

Children in Catholic elementary schools are allowed to leave their classrooms to go to the bathroom with permission from the teacher, but they are assessed a “venial” or minor sin for doing so.  “We give the children a choice,” says Sister Mary Joseph Arimathea, principal of St. Rocco’s, which Luciana attended until her death.  “We tell them, ‘It’s up to you–you can wait until lunch, or you can go to the bathroom now and burn in purgatory until the end of time.’  It makes them think twice.”

“I loeuvre you!” 

Pope Benedict is said to be looking forward to the celebration as a pleasant diversion from the routine of the Vatican, where he is buried in paperwork much of the time.  “Every now and then when he needs a break he’ll go out on the balcony and practice his Celine Dion imitation,” says His Eminence Cardinal Francis Arinze, a Vatican insider.  “He’s got her down cold, even the Canadian pronunciation of ‘love’ as ‘loeuvre’.”

Dion: “Hey Pope–get a load of this balcony!”

Three verified miracles are required in order for a person to achieve sainthood, and in Luciana’s case she had ”more than enough to push her over the top” says Emilio Rossetti, who handicaps sainthood races for L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper.  “In addition to her remarkable ability to avoid bathroom breaks, she once returned a boy’s Valentine because it had X’s and O’s on the envelope,” he recalls with pious admiration.  “And she used to volunteer to take names when the nuns left the classroom.”

 

“Luciana, if you write me up you’ll never see your hamster alive again.”

Luciana died at the age of twelve when her sixth grade teacher, Sister Gabriella Marie, left the room to elope with a seminary student and did not return.  The young girl was found with a burst bladder in the class cloakroom.

NFL Agrees to Demands by Mothers Against Peyton Manning Commercials

NEW YORK.  NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell emerged from a tense, four-hour meeting with children’s television activists last night to announce that the league would place limits on the number and duration of Peyton Manning commercials in future broadcasts.

Goodell:  “They made some good points, now I wish they’d just dry up and blow away.”

“We are gratified that the Commissioner understands the risk to our nation’s youth of a constant barrage of mindless advertisements” featuring the Super Bowl XLI MVP, said Alicia Hartsell of Mothers Against Peyton Manning Commercials.  “The average American child will watch 972 hours of Peyton Manning ads by the time he or she is four, for an average of 1,215 minutes per month and a Quarterback Viewer Rating of 101.3.”

Not another!

Manning is currently featured in national advertisements for Mastercard, Sprint, Sony, Gatorade, Rocco’s Texaco and Smitty’s Bait and Tackle of Muncie, Indiana.  The push to limit commercials aimed at children was started by Sesame Workshop, a non-profit producer of several educational children’s programs including Sesame Street.

Cookie Monster:  “Me have strong side curl-to-flat responsibilities in 5-2 Monster Defense!”

Sesame Workshop produces educational content for a variety of media, including on-line math quiz questions such as the following: 

“I’m full–I had some celery last year.”

Tom, Gisele and Bridget need to cross a lake in a canoe to go to a picnic.  The canoe will only hold Tom, the picnic basket and one supermodel at a time.  Q: What should Tom leave behind? A: The picnic basket–the supermodels can survive on a celery stalk between them.

Giants’ Place Kick Holder Asks: Where’s My Book?

EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey.  Jeff Feagles, veteran place kick holder for the New York Giants, stormed out of the team’s dressing room today after accusing reporters of ignoring his contributions to the franchise’s incredible 9-10 record over the past two seasons.

Feagles:  “How long must I labor in obscurity?”

“You guys have written a book about everybody on this team from Eli Manning to Christine Procops,” the Giants’ chief financial officer.  “What do I have to do to get a little ink around here–become a CPA?”

Crunch Time:  A Season Running the Numbers for the New York Giants, $24.95.

Feagles’ frustration boiled over after reading a story in Sunday’s New York Times that listed eight books published about the Giants this fall, a statistic that other teams around the league cited as evidence of east coast bias by national media outlets headquartered in New York.  “We won the Super Bowl last year and there were only three books published about us,” complained Rod Zucker, Vice President of Marketing for the Indianapolis Colts.  “The New York media is like a drunk who loses his car keys and only looks under the street lamp because that’s where the light’s best.” 

Steelers license plate holder 

Other teams joined the chorus of complaint.  “There were no books published about the Steelers after we won Super Bowl XL,” notes Pittsburgh Communications Coordinator Dave Lockett.  “We got a license plate holder.”

New York publishers denied the accusation, saying they commission books based on anticipated demand and are not prejudiced against other regions of the country.   “I asked several people I know, and they all said they’d be more likely to buy a book about the Giants than the Tampa Bay Orioles,” sniffed Armand de Borchgrave, a third-generation editor at Farr, Wilkinson & Sanford, which will publish a cookbook of tailgating recipes by Giants’ fans for the holiday book market.

Saul Steinberg’s famous New Yorker cover:  Does the rest of America really matter?

New Yorkers are notorious for their condescending attitude towards the rest of America, as memorably portrayed by Saul Steinberg, the cover artist for The New Yorker magazine whose map depicting Manhattan looming as large as the rest of the country became an instant classic.  “After the Steelers won the Super Bowl in 2006 we commissioned David Halberstam to write a book about Giants’ fans reactions to the game,” de Borchgrave recalls as he wipes a tear from his eye.  “He had only written about 760 pages when he died this year.”

Halberstam:  “For a Steelers fan, perhaps the most important consideration is what a New York writer will say about his beloved team if the Giants do not make the playoffs.”

The NFL’s licensing office said they would work with New York publishers to introduce them to markets beyond the Tri-State area in the unlikely event that the Giants’ dynasty comes to an end in the near future.  “We need to educate them,” said Phil Burns.  “People in Indiana will read something longer than a throw pillow if you give them the chance.”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman

Starbucks to Require Customers to Order in Esperanto

COLUMBUS, Ohio.  On the heels of a national backlash against immigrants that caused a Philadelphia cheesesteak joint to post a sign requiring customers to order in English, Starbucks today announced that it will refuse service to patrons who do not observe the coffee giant’s Esperanto-based protocol.

“We get yahoos who wander in here thinking we’re no different from Dunkin’ Donuts,” said Alison Wurzel, a fine arts major who dropped out of Oberlin College and now makes espresso-based drinks for the Seattle-based chain.  “I’m a barista, not a waitress.”

“A soy chai grande frappucino?  Yes, my gecko is in excellent health.”

Starbucks divides drinks into “tall”, “grande” or “venti” depending on size.  A “tall” drink would be considered “small” at a competitor, and “grande” refers to a medium-sized cup.  “Venti”, the largest size offered, means “air duct”.

Air duct, with extra foam.

A typical Starbucks order expressed in Esperanto would be “Mi dezira en granda kafo, bonvolu,” which translates into English as “My parrot admires your fedora, you fishstick.”

Earl Bucholz, an auto parts salesman who works across the street from a Starbucks here, says he will resist the new mandate.  “Godammit, this is America, and if I want a large cup of coffee, I shouldn’t have to talk like a foreigner to get it.”

Zamenhof:  “I said half-caf decaf, not half of a calf.”

Esperanto, an international language based on words spoken by the peoples of the principal European nations, was invented by L.L. Zamenhof, a Polish oculist.  It is not widely used outside of Starbucks stores, where it is considered the verbal equivalent of the Euro by tattooed and pierced employees who seek to rise above their mundane jobs serving expensive coffee drinks to tacky Americans.

“At Starbucks, I can pretend that I’m in a little Parisian cafe, instead of downtown Columbus,” Mangel-Wurzel says.  “I may be stuck in a dead-end job, but I can dream, can’t I?”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman

China Tries Late-Night Sports to Control Population

BEIJING.  Faced with the failure of its “One-Child” policy to curb overcrowding in urban areas, the People’s Republic of China is considering a wholesale expansion of televised sports in order to slow the growth of its population, already the world’s largest at 1.3 billion.

“Uh, actually I was going to stay up and watch Game 3 of the Chengu Dragons-Tianjin Bulldogs Divisional Championship Series.”

“Human fertility can be managed by robust bi-coastal rivalries such as the New York Knicks-Los Angeles Lakers from the late 60’s to the early 70’s,” noted Li Changchun, Senior Population Officer of the Communist Party of China.  “When teams play on the western border, guys in the east stay up too late to have sex.  When teams play on the eastern border, it ruins dinner in the west and the little woman gets all pissy and goes out for rice wine with her girl friends.”

Willis Reed:  Responsible for decline in New York birth rate, 1969-1973.

While a link between late-night sports and declining birth rates has been suggested for many years, the evidence was largely anecdotal until a longitudinal study of the Boston Celtics-Los Angeles Lakers rivalry in the mid-80’s was completed.  “Eighteen years after the last Celtics championship you had high school graduating classes in Massachusetts with like four kids,” noted demographer Walter Casner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  “Too many guys told their wives ‘Hold that thought, there’s only two minutes left,’ without mentioning that it takes an hour to play the last two minutes of an NBA playoff game.’”

Bird:  “If it’s a boy, we’ll name him Larry Joe, right?”

China’s One-Child policy is enforced by monetary fines on urban couples who have a second child without a valid excuse, notes Pro Basketball Insider columnist Ernie Povich.  “You have to approach it like the salary cap,” he says.  “Do I want to use my rookie exception on little Xiang-Jiang, or wait a couple of years and give up Ling-Ling for adoption?”

“You guys had better start blocking out on rebounds, or Shanghai’s gonna hit 18 million by the fourth quarter.”

Skeptics say the program is unlikely to succeed until the quality of play in the Chinese Basketball Association improves.  “You’ve got teams who can’t hit the Great Wall from three-point range,” says long-time pro scout Mitch Ross.  “Most guys will eventually come to bed if a game is lousy enough, unless they’ve got money riding on it.”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman

It Doesn’t Take Balls to Be a Tax Collector

News item: Officials in India have used eunuchs to collect unpaid taxes.

HAZARD, Kentucky.  Ray Bob Suggins, a career revenue officer for the Internal Revenue Service in this small town at the confluence of the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers, thought he had seen it all in his thirty years collecting taxes for Uncle Sam.

 

Hazard, Kentucky

“I’ve seized a family’s satellite dish, I’ve put a lien on a guy’s blue tick hound—everything,” he says with a laugh.  But his face clouds up with the latest directive from what he refers to sarcastically as “headquarters”—the national office of the IRS in Washington, D.C.

 

“Hey–don’t take that!  ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ is on tonight!”

“Those guys sitting in their offices back east don’t know the people of Kentucky,” he says with emphasis.  “Where they come up with some of their ideas I’ll never know.”

The idea that has Suggins’ dander up is Rev. Proc. 06-137, which will require IRS regional offices to implement “Project Eunuch”, an attempt to replicate in the U.S. the success Indian officials have had using eunuchs—castrated males who dress as women—to collect taxes.

 

Eunuchs in India.

“You can’t argue with the numbers,” says IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson.  “Hijras“—as eunuchs are referred to in India—”have produced remarkable results through the use of embarrassment, a tactic we have overlooked in the past.”  And indeed in Patna, an Indian city with a population of nearly a half million where only about 2,000 citizens pay their property taxes on time, local officials report that eunuchs collected 425,000 rupees ($9,240) in their first day on the job.

 

Everson:  “I don’t think it’s demeaning–some of these guys look good in a sari.”

In India hijras accost taxpayers on the street—taunting, cursing or touching their hair and cheeks–or set up outside a residence where they chant and dance loudly until a deadbeat relents and pays up.  The eunuchs, who for the most part live in poverty because of their status as sexual outsiders, are paid a commission on what they collect.  “We did a cost-benefit analysis,” says Everson, “and eunuchs produce better results than boring techniques like putting a lien on somebody’s house and waiting for them to sell.  Plus a lot of them are very attractive with all that makeup they wear.”

 

Before.

So Suggins agreed to be a “guinea pig”, subjecting himself to castration at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Louisville in exchange for two years’ extra credit towards his pension.  “I should be able to retire at age 60,” he says as he squirms in his chair due to the discomfort that persists following the operation.  “I figger it’s worth it if I live that long.”

 

After

As painful as it was to lose what he refers to as “the family jewels”, what comes next is even harder in his view.  “I got to dress up like an Indian woman and go door-to-door and jingle my bells” to make delinquent taxpayers pay up.  “That ain’t gonna be easy.”

 

Coffee Pot Cafe:  First refill is free.

After Suggins applies cheap rouge, powder and lipstick, he heads over to the Coffee Pot Café where he know Lyle Oehrke will be sitting with his buddies at their regular table, sipping coffee before he heads out to work—or not—as a used car salesman at O’Connor’s Chevrolet-Buick on South Highway 65.  “Lyle spends most of his paycheck every Friday at the Golden Palomino,” a “gentlemen’s club” just outside the city limits where he is generous with tips for the “pole dancers” and strippers who work there.

 

Where Lyle works–sort of.

Suggins appears at the entrance to the Coffee Pot, spies Oehrke over in the corner, and goes into his carefully-rehearsed “song and dance”, a tribute to the Indian god Krishna in the form of Mohini, a beautiful woman who is a central figure in the culture of the hijras.  “Hey, hey, hey,” he chants as he claps rhythmically, swinging his sari back and forth.  “I’m really gonna make your day.”

Oehrke is at first surprised, then dismissive.  “Well look who’s here,” he says with a knowing grin.  “If it ain’t Sweetie Pie Suggins, lookin’ for a date.”  He laughs and his friends join him, although their nervous tension is apparent.

 

“Pay up now, or I’ll have a cow!”

“I’m from the IRS, and I’m gonna lift up my dress, dress, dress–unless”—Suggins stops for dramatic effect—”you clean up your overdue taxes, penalties and interest mess!”

 

“I wish I could wear somethin’ like that!”

Nae Ann Wingersheek, long-time waitress at “The Pot” as locals here refer to the restaurant, comes to the table for a last round of refills and to present the check.  “You all gonna sit here all day or go out and earn a livin’?” she says with a good-natured jab at the group’s indifferent work habits.  “Hey, Ray,” she says to Suggins when she notices the tax collector, his arms above his head as he rings his finger cymbals.

“Hi Nae Ann,” Ray replies as he scoots back a step to allow her to get by.

“I like that outfit,” she says, referring to the saffron sari which he flirtatiously lifts from time to time, threatening to expose himself but pulling back in the hope that the full range of tax collection remedies permitted by the new IRS procedure won’t be necessary.

“You don’t think it makes me look fat?” Ray asks.

She studies him for a moment.  “From the front—no.   From the back, it looks like two hogs fightin’ under a sheet!”

The table bursts out in laughter which Suggins joins in with good spirits.  “I walked right into that one,” he says with a grin.

The table of regulars starts to pony up and, when Suggins sees Oehrke pull his wallet from his back pocket, he pounces.

 

Krishna says “Pony up”.

“Lord Krishna, all-powerful, crush this deadbeat like a grasshopper beneath your heel—he is about to pay for his meal!”

“C’mon, Ray,” Oehrke pleads.  “You know I got alimony to pay.”

“Alimony, palimony—don’t indulge in matrimony!”

“And I need my car to get to work.”

“Why should I worry about your work, when you treat your fellow taxpayers like a jerk?”

Everyone in the restaurant is watching now; Oehrke’s friends have ponied up, and tax collector and deadbeat stare each other down, mano a former-mano.

“All right, goddamn it,” Oehrke says with disgust.  “Here,” he says as he pulls a roll of bills out of his back pocket and counts off two hundred dollars in twenties.

“The IRS Commissioner thanks you very much,” Suggins chants as he picks up his haul, “but I’ll tell him for the record you were not a soft touch.”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman

Plastic Brain Surgery Latest Hollywood Enhancement

HOLLYWOOD.  Amanda Griffin is an ambitious young actress who’s starting to garner attention beyond the small circle of slasher-flick aficionados who formed her first fan base.  ”‘Nightmare Scream II’ was my first big break,” she recalls, “but my agent says I need to stretch myself if I want to be working ten years from now.”

“Romeo, I love you so freaking much, y’know what I’m saying?”

Amanda has discovered she has a lot of catching up to do if she’s going to compete for the sort of roles playing upper-class women that she covets.  “I ain’t got a shot at a Merchant-Ivory film unless I can talk better,” she says a bit glumly, referring to the award-winning studio known for its highbrow productions.

Merchant-Ivory: “If youse don’t love me, why the hell didn’t youse say so?”

So Amanda will go under the knife tomorrow to have cosmetic surgery to a body part other than her boobs, her lips and her eyes, all of which have been artificially enhanced in the past.  “This time it’s serious,” she says, as a surgical attendant preps her by shaving her head.

“This ain’t no slasher flick, it’s a snooty biopic!”

Amanda will undergo a three-hour operation on her brain that will allow her to speak and understand the sort of complicated lines that are beyond her comprehension at present.  “A year from now I’ll sound like freakin’ Katherine Hepburn” she says with excitement, referring to the classically-trained actress who won four Oscars during her sixty-decade career in Hollywood.

Hepburn:  Her emotions ran the gamut from “a” to “b”.

Would-be Hollywood stars are increasingly turning to plastic brain surgery to enhance their ability to meet the current demand for thoughtful, socially-conscious actors and actresses where their past has left holes in their intellectual resumes.  “I tell young guys starting out ‘Look at Brad Pitt–he’s rebuilding New Orleans while you’re sucking coke up your nostrils every night’,” says self-proclaimed “super-agent” Maury Golden.   ”You better save some money ’cause you may need corrective surgery to improve your sense of social responsibility before it’s too late.”

“Yeah, the situation in Africa (sniff) like totally sucks.”

Plastic brain surgeons say their ability to correct cognitive defects is limited, and that there is no guaranty of success.  “We have a pamphlet in the waiting room that warns patients not to rush off to Africa and adopt a baby right after surgery just in case your immune system rejects an implant,” says Dr. Phillip Polivy.  “Start with a cat, or maybe a turtle.”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman