30

Nov

In Sluggish Economy More Poets Turn to Discounters

NEEDHAM, Mass.  Curtis Bascomb, Jr. is a third-generation family business owner, so he has more than just his time and money invested in his workplace.  “Grandad founded this place on a promise,” he says with a trace of a lump in his throat.  “He believed no poet should ever go without a figure of speech because of high prices.”


“I’m looking for a synechdoche for wine.”

And so the Poets Discount Supply House was born, a harmonic convergence of New England thrift and the historically impecunious nature of the poet’s trade.  “I’m entering my coming-of-age collection in twenty chapbook contests at an average of $22.50 a pop,” says would-be poet Todd Heftwig, who prowls the aisles looking for bargains.  “If I can pick up a slightly-used simile or metaphor at half-price, I may be able to recoup my investment.”

 
“There’s a size 7 and a half sestina back here with seagulls in it.”

In addition to garden variety figures of speech such as similes and metaphors, the Poets Discount Supply House carries more exotic forms such as synechdoches and metonyms, as well as a deli case stocked with onomatopeia and tropes.  “We buy this stuff fresh every day,” says Bob Vibeck, who started with the company when it was run by Bascomb’s father, Curtis Sr., in the 1960s.  “That’s why poets come back to us even when they hit the big time, which is really still the little time.”

 
D-I-Y po-et-ry

The store is located in an undistinguished warehouse off a busy commercial street, part of the family’s business plan to keep costs down.  “We can sell you a package of three generic themes–seagulls, unrequited love, the effect John Coltrane’s music had on you in college–at half the cost of the high-end retailers,” says Curtis Senior.  “That’s our sweet spot.”


“If you need a rhyme for the word ‘love,’ line up on the right.”

This is the busiest time of the year for the family, as shoppers stop in for a turn of phrase for a Christmas toast, or get ready for Valentine’s Day, when the family will bring in temporary sales help to handle the crush of smitten but unlettered Romeos.  “These guys come in here with something scratched on a cocktail napkin looking for le mot juste,” says Curtis Junior, shaking his head.  “I tell ‘em you can’t bring in your own stuff, you got to buy it here.”

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29

Nov

Ireland Agrees to Drop Lucky Charms for EU Bailout Money

BRUSSELS, Belgium.  In a sign that the European Union will exact harsh concessions from countries that receive bailout funds, the government of Ireland today agreed to end its sponsorship of Lucky Charms and Irish Spring soap, two consumer products that have irritated both member nations and the United States for many years.

 
“Why don’t you ask the Greeks if they want some?”

“While Ireland’s fiscal troubles can be traced to improvident commercial real estate loans, we will use our leverage to impose broader social reforms,” said Olli Rehn, EU economy commissioner.  “I’d like to take a ball peen hammer to that stupid Lucky Charms leprechaun, but unfortunately we outlawed capital punishment.”

 
National Honor Society members try Irish Spring Body Wash for some responsible excitement.

Irish Spring is a unisexual, gag-inducing deodorant soap that keeps birthrates low in Ireland.  In America, it is used by female high school yearbook editors whose mothers won’t let them wear perfume in order to attract the sports editor of the school paper or the bass player in the “combo” that was runner-up in this year’s Battle of the Bands.


Foustanellas

The European Union took harsher measures against Ireland after men in Greece, the first eurozone country to receive aid, continued to wear the foustanella, a skirt-like garment with 400 pleats, each representing one year of Turkish rule over the Greeks.  “It is no wonder Greece went bankrupt,” the EU’s Rehn said.  “Do you know how much it costs to dry clean one of those things?”

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28

Nov

North Korea: We Bombed South to Impress Jodie Foster

PYONGYANG, North Korea.  The state-controlled Korean Central News Agency today took the offensive against international criticism of its bombing of a South Korean island, saying the attack was necessary in order to impress Jodie Foster, an American actress.


“Stop doing stupid things to impress me–I don’t like you!”

Last week North Korea rained down artillery on Yeonpyeong, a fishing island in the Yellow Sea.  “Our response was proportionate to the threat posed by South Korea’s breach of the northern limit line,” said Choe Tae Bok, chairman of North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly.  “If you are going to impress an Oscar-winning actress, you’d better fire all of your guns at once, as American rock group Steppenwolf used to say.”


Maybe a nice mass rally would impress her

Foster is an American actress and director who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in “Taxi Driver.”  John Hinckley, Jr. became obsessed with her, and on March 30, 1981, attempted to assassinate U.S. President Ronald Reagan in order to impress her. 


Barbara Stanwyck

The notoriety Hinckley gained from his crime inspired other similar incidents, including the attempted shoe-bombing of a U.S. commercial airline flight by Richard Reid in order to impress Kimberly, the Pink Power Ranger, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq under President George W. Bush to impress Barbara Stanwyck.  Stanwyck was already dead, but appreciated the gesture.


Yeonpyeong:  “We’re having smoked salmon for dinner.”

Yeonpyeong was beginning to return to normal four days after the bombing, according to Shin Yu-hun, a 53-year-old fisherman who has lived there all his life.  “I count my blessings,” he said as he cleaned cabbage to make kimchi, a spicy condiment often used as filler in crossword puzzles.  “We are grateful North Korea was not trying to impress Miley Cyrus.”

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27

Nov

How to Hypnotize Women

Readers of a certain age–or more precisely, male readers of comic books of the sixties–may recall an advertisement that appeared regularly alongside come-ons for sea monkeys, correspondence courses in ventriloquism, and X-Ray Specs.  It depicted a cool-looking guy, his hair slicked back with Vitalis or Wildroot Cream Oil, squiring an attractive girl with a pageboy hairdo while a less cool guy fumed in the foreground.


“You are getting very . . . horny.”

“What’s he got that I haven’t got?” the headline blared above the picture, and below, the lothario’s secret: “The Power to Hypnotize Women!”

I never availed myself of the educational opportunity this ad presented, perhaps inhibited by my Catholic upbringing in which boys and girls were separated into different lines on their way to bathroom break so they wouldn’t think impure thoughts on the way.  Or maybe it was the sense that resort to the awesome power of mesmerism wasn’t sporting; like hunting deer from a tree stand, it gave the predator an unfair advantage.

 
Elizabeth Smart

The subject of women held in thralldom to men by mysterious powers came to mind the other day when I read the story of Elizabeth Smart, author of the prose poem (or the poetic novella) By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, a perfervid retelling of her infatuation and affair with George Granville Barker, a poet who had achieved success at the age of 18.


George Barker: What’s he got that you haven’t got?

Smart stumbled upon Barker’s work in a London bookshop, and conceived a love for the man before she’d ever met him.  She began to tell people that she planned to marry Barker, even though he was already married.  She posed as a manuscript collector and in 1941 offered to fly Barker and his wife to California from Japan at her expense; Barker accepted, fearful he would be drafted if he returned to England.  Their affair began shortly after they first met.

Grand Central Station is a short work, 120 pages long.  You can read it in one night, even if you take intermittent breaks to check the score of a Boston Celtics-Toronto Raptors game, as I did.


Celtics v. Raptors:  Curiously, there is no “By TD Banknorth Garden I Sat Down and Wept.”

Smart’s paean to her lover is so self-abasing it would be embarrassing were it not for its beauty; drawing on Biblical sources (the Song of Solomon and Psalm 137, from whose first lines the title is adapted), Catholic liturgy, Shakespeare and the Greeks, Smart recounts how she and Barker commit adultery right under Mrs. Barker’s nose.  Smart seems to be alternately discomfited by this fact and resentful of Mrs. Barker’s prior and legal claim on the man she loves.


David Hume:  What’s he doing in this post?

Grand Central Station fell–as David Hume might say–stillborn from the press.  The first edition ran to just 2,000 copies, and Smart’s mother bought many of them to suppress the work’s spread.  The Smarts were a socially-prominent Ottawa family, and her mother arranged to have the book banned in Canada as well.  It sank into obscurity until it was republished in England in 1966 with an introduction by Brigid Brophy that declares it one of no more than “half a dozen masterpieces of poetic prose in the world.”


Smart, in her later years

The irony, when considered sixty-five years after its publication, is that Smart’s work of self-abnegation has surpassed that of her erotic master; Barker is largely forgotten now, while the reputation of Smart’s one work of genius–however misbegotten–seems secure.  In his lifetime, however, Barker cut a wide swath through the ladies; he had four children by Smart, who raised them herself, and eleven more by several other women!  For fans keeping score at home, that puts him ahead of Calvin Murphy, the all-time career leader among NBA producers of illegitimate children.

 
Murphy: Fourteen children by nine women?  The poet laughs at you with scorn.

I mention all this for the benefit of guys like myself who do not have the skills, the height and the vertical leap to make it in the NBA.  You don’t have to be a basketball star to score with chicks–you can hypnotize women with poetry!

I hope you won’t think it too crassly commercial if I mention at this point that my first book of poetry–The Girl With the Cullender on Her Head and Other Wayward Women–will be published in December.  Ladies–if you’d like me to autograph your copy, just give me a call before you come over.

I’ll be on the couch, watching the Celtics.

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27

Nov

Pardoned Turkey Kidnaps Chick, Goes on Rampage

DUBOIS, Indiana.  “Apple,” the turkey pardoned by President Obama as part of traditional White House Thanksgiving Day festivities, led Indiana State Police on a high-speed chase over narrow state roads before holing up in a corn crib at the farm where he was raised, accompanied by a young chick he seized at an all-night convenience store in nearby Jasper, the county seat.


“If I let you go, will you promise to stay out of trouble?”

“There is enormous risk with any pardon,” said Greer Nilson, a professor of political science at Indiana University’s Muncie campus.  “When Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich in the last days of his presidency all the other fugitive commodities traders who cut deals with Iran during the hostage crisis were outraged, asking ’Where’s mine?’”


Patty Hearst, in full revolutionary regalia

Police believe the chick is unharmed, and that she may have succumbed to “Patty Hearst Syndrome,” a malady named after the newspaper heiress who grew sympathetic to her kidnappers, a left-wing radical group of the 1970s known as the Symbionese Liberation Army. 


Duns Scotus:  Barely relevant, but I thought you’d enjoy the cool hat.

“Victims of Patty Hearst Syndrome tend to be art history majors whose fiances are graduate students in philosophy,” said Milo Houston, an expert on obscure stuff other people don’t pay attention to.  “The constant droning on and on about their dissertations can cause their mates to seek refuge with undesirable characters–anything to get away from thoughtful discussions of Duns Scotus,” a medieval philosopher.


Weed and Hearst:  Constant whining about his dissertation drove her mad.

Hearst was pardoned by President Clinton without incident, but the escape of Apple may or may not cause future presidents to be more cautious in handing out pardons.  “You can do psychological profiles and background research and still have somebody turn out to be a real turkey,” noted Nilson.

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26

Nov

Billy Joel Stable After Quadruple Hip Replacement

NEW YORK.  Pop singer Billy Joel is in stable condition following quadruple hip replacement surgery last week, according to an assistant to a friend of his spokeswoman.


Joel:  “When you’re as hip as me, there can be complications.”

“Billy is resting comfortably,” said Elena Mastricola.  “The operation was a first of a kind procedure that was needed to correct congenital hipness.”

 
“I’ve removed ‘Piano Man’–the bleeding’s stopped.”

The majority of human beings are born with two hips, but Joel is a Grammy Award-winning singer who was once married to Christie Brinkley, a so-called “supermodel.”  “With these two additional risk factors you can get multiple hipeloma,” said Dr. Melville Lynch, the surgeon who performed the operation.  “It’s a good thing he doesn’t have any tattoos or he might have needed a quintuple bypass.”


Brinkley:  “He’s okay?  That’s super!”

Joel has been hospitalized once before, in 1970 after drinking furniture polish in an attempt at suicide. “I drank furniture polish,” he said later.  “I should have used Lemon Pledge, the all-purpose furniture polish in the spray can that gives home furnishings that lemony-fresh scent.”

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26

Nov

Imported Beers of the Romantic Poets

She is a thing of beauty.  Stella Artois ad, depicting woman drinking beer

 

A Thing of Beauty is a Beer Forever, John Keats

A thing of beauty is a beer forever:
Its foamy head increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will leave
A residue upon the glass, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, belches, and late-night peeing.

 

She Burps in Beauty, Like a Frog, Lord Byron

She burps in beauty, like a frog
Who sits on lily pad so green,
Resounding nightly in his bog
But to my beery eyes unseen;
Thus mellow’d by a Stella Artois
I urge her not to make a scene.

My Luve’s Like a Cold, Cold Beer, Robert Burns

O my Luve’s like a cold, cold beer
That’s newly poured for me;
O my Luve’s like an I.P.A.
A barkeep gives to me for free.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
Another to me is more dear:
I drink you in with thirsty eyes
But still I need imported beer.

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24

Nov

Outbreak of Jazz Hands Has Health Officials Concerned

CHICAGO.  O’Hare Airport here remains the busiest in the nation, which is why local public health agencies moved swiftly this morning to contain a potential pandemic of ”jazz hands,” an entertainment-related ailment for which there is no known cure.

“We have plenty of hand sanitizer, um, on hand–so to speak,” said airport spokesman Mary-Margaret Tournquist.  “There is no reason for alarm even though the movie ‘Chicago’–which has jazz hands in it–is about Chicago.”

 
That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!

The term “jazz hands” refers to an extension of a performer’s hands with palms toward the audience and fingers splayed.  The disease is commonly associated with especially exuberant performances such as musicals, cheerleading and youth dance recitals. 


Spirit fingers, or jazz hands?  You make the call.

The strain that appears among cheerleaders is sometimes referred to as “spirit fingers,” although leading cheerleading leaders take issue with the implied comparison. “A big pet peeve of mine is when people confuse Bob Fosse’s stiff jazz hands for spirit fingers,” says Julie McIlvene, head cheerleader at New Trier South High School.  “Ugh, I like totally agree,” said Natalie Cooper, first alternate head cheerleader.


Schweitzer:  “Maybe if you turned your hands upwards, like this . . .”

Jazz hands decimated large segments of the populations of equatorial countries before a vaccine for the disease was developed by Dr. Albert Schweitzer. 

Schweitzer won the Nobel Prize for his work, and later played organ with Paul Revere and the Raiders when keyboard player Paul Revere retired due to the onset of cheesy rock band hands.

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23

Nov

Understanding Poetry, the Hard Way

There are two types of people–those who “get” poetry, and those who don’t.  My immediate family and all of my close friends are proud to be included in the latter group.

I’m a member of the former group, but not by choice.  My relationship to poetry resembles that of Patty Hearst, the newspaper heiress, to her abductors.

You may recall that Hearst was kidnapped in 1974 by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a band of leftist revolutionaries, at a time when she led a life typical of newspaper heiresses; quiet nights at home being bored by her philosophy major fiance, clipping interest coupons off of gilt-edged corporate bonds.


Hearst as “Tania”:  “Scan your f**king sonnets, you pigs!”

Within a few months after she’d been spirited away from her apartment in the dark of night Hearst had abandoned her “chosen career of art history” (her mother’s words, in an open letter to her daughter).  She adopted a new, more daring look, and a nom de guerre–”Tania,” which she borrowed from Che Guevara’s lover.  Thus transformed, she could often be found in suburban banks screaming “GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR MUTHERF**KING CAPITALIST PIGS!” to customers in an effort to let her jump the line and make a non-negotiable withdrawal request.

In high school, my junior English teacher forced me to memorize 200 lines of poetry–over spring break–for some minor violation of classroom decorum that isn’t even a misdemeanor in most states.   This made for some curious interactions between my sister and me.


Sir Walter Scott:  “I think I’ll write a poem that will ruin some kid’s vacation 167 years from now.”

SISTER:  Do you want to go on the Tilt-a-Whirl?

BROTHER:  “Breathes there a man with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said . . .”

SISTER:  Okay–how about the Mad Mouse?


Mad Mouse:  Keep hands in car, DO NOT recite poetry until ride ends.

At first, I resisted the torture of my 200-line forced march through Sir Walter Scott, Browning and Wordsworth, but after awhile–like Hearst–I grew to accept my fate, and even to embrace it.   As a result, I “get” poetry in the sense that a prisoner of war “gets” torture, psychological abuse and a limited choice of menu items.  What follows are the basics of poetry, from one who learned them the hard way.

Just as people may be divided into two kinds, there are three types of poetry.  Regular, unleaded and diesel.  No wait, that’s gasoline.  Poetry is like gasoline–that’s a simile, a common poetic device–in that there are three basic kinds.  Regular, blank and vers libre, or free verse, not to be confused with “Free Bird”, a Lynyrd Skynyrd song with an a-b-a-b-c-d-e-d-d rhyme scheme.


Lynyrd Skynyrd:  Poets of the common, drunken concertgoer.

Regular poetry is the kind you are probably most familiar with, as exemplified by the following familiar verse:

Roses are red, violets are blue,
Sugar is sweet, and so are you!

Note that the words at the end of the lines rhyme, and the lines have the same number of syllables.  So far so good.


Typical poetess

The second type of poetry is “blank” verse.  How is that possible? you ask.  If one is to have poetry, surely there must be something on the page.  How right you are–but silly.  “Blank” verse refers to poems that don’t rhyme, but still have the bump-de-dump-de-dump rhythm of regular poetry, as follows:

Roses are red, violets are blue,
I like licorice, and you can’t skate!

Note the use of colors–red and blue–and particularized images, licorice and skates.  Makes your mouth water, or hurt, depending on whether you think of the licorice or falling on your face in the middle of your long program at the Winter Olympics.

Finally, there is “free” verse, which has neither rhyme nor rhythm, as follows:

Roses are red, violets are blue,
O Captain, My tuna noodle surprise!

Once you understand these basic principles, you will be ready to participate in mail-in poetry contests upon payment of the exorbitant entry fee and submission of three copies of your poem, double-spaced, on one side of the page only.

But you still won’t be able to skate.

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “poetry is kind of important.”

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23

Nov

Some Minority Actors Are on a Good Time Role

SWITCHBACK, Montana.  Shirley Leung, a slight Asian-American woman who stands 5’4″ and weighs only 110 pounds, would seem an unlikely addition to a college football program on the rise, but that’s not the view of Chuck Shelton, coach at East Central Montana State.  “Shirley’s been a key player for us all season,” says Shelton, “even if we don’t have a pair of shoulder pads her size.”


Leung:  “Let’s take the centrifuge scene from the top!”

Shelton’s Mountain Goats are poised for post-season play with a shot at the Campbell’s Chunky Chicken Noodle Soup Bowl, but first there’s the little matter of NCAA regulations that have tripped up other teams with similar aspirations.  “This is my time,” Shirley says with the grim determination of a split end about to run a crossing route through double coverage.  “This is where I make my money.”


“H-2-S-O-4–hike!”

Shirley is a star of “institutionals,” the 30-second, feel-good public service advertisements about student life off the football field that colleges prepare for broadcast during halftime of televised games.  “It all comes down to NCAA Rule 14.3,” says Norbert Winograd, Dean of Student Affairs at ECMS.  “You have to at least appear to care about academics or you can lose a valuable football scholarship,” he says, “so we got some Asians to play the part of actual students in labs.”


“Go Shirley Go!”

Shirley will be busy from now until the final BCS championship game, while Curtis Newbill, a twenty-something African-American, is booked through Super Bowl XLV to be played in Dallas on February 6 of next year.  “What can I say–I’ve got that non-threatening smile thing going on,” he says, and his face lights up as if to demonstrate the truth of his claim. 

Curtis is one of the top “black sidekick” actors in the business, and commands premium rates for retail businesses that want to project a diverse image without scaring away Caucasian customers who are their bread and butter.  “We take our bread and butter very seriously,” says Bob Hallinan, COO of Archie’s, a super-sized hamburger chain, “even if we give the stuff away after the waiter brings you water and takes your order.”


Bring on the burgers!

As Curtis takes his seat along with three other young macho actors in a booth under hot lights for a commercial “shoot,” this reporter asks whether the company has ever considered adding a gay companion to one of its “guys night out” tableaux.  “A gay guy?  I don’t think so,” says Hallinan after conferring with a public relations specialist.

“Hey,” one of the actors snaps from the booth.  “Cut the crap, would you?  We’re trying to eat some burgers here.”

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