Ironisphere

The Wasabi Incident

2007-06-20T21:34:00.000-04:00

Setting: My office throws me a birthday party at a sushi bar.

Context: Rita unwittingly gives Jim, our favorite hillbilly from Arkansas, a heaping spoonful of "avocado." Neither one has ever been to a sushi bar, much less tasted wasabi . . .

Memorable lines: "Oh, s@#%, that was wasabi!"; and "Rita . . . Damnit!"

Eye Spy

2006-04-06T15:50:00.000-04:00

We celebrated New Years' Eve at the Oceanaire Seafood Room Indianapolis. It's got this cool, between-the-world-wars, art-deco vibe to it. Really my favorite period (like I would know . . . ) Anyway, I love this photo because of Jemima's eye that sneaks in between our heads. Cheeky little monkey.

One-Horse Open Sleigh?

2005-12-21T09:55:00.000-05:00

Can't lash a Christmas tree to a rag-top. So we had to put the SUC (Sport Utility Convertible) to good use again.

It's amazing what you can stuff into a convertible . . . An added plus: I've now got a fresh pine scent without hanging anything goofy from my rear-view mirror.

Wonka, Elvis and the Old Lady

2005-11-01T11:42:00.000-05:00

I was minding my own business Saturday night at a friend's Halloween party, when my mates dragged me to a costume contest at a local riverboat Casino. Of course I resisted, cause I'm so shy (what, can't you tell?)

The good news is that I won the $500 first prize. The bad news is that it barely covers the cost of my costume!

We had a ton of fun.

The ironic moment, however, was when the second place winner--an old lady with humped back--removed her rubber mask to reveal: an old lady!

We also had an "Elvis with Marilyn" sighting, which is I think a fairly accurate depiction of what he might look like today.

The 40-year-old (marathon) Virgin

2005-10-24T18:02:00.000-04:00

When my old college roommate, Doug, threw down the gauntlet to run the Chicago marathon with him, there was no time for hesitation.

Once you complete a marathon, the next thing you have to do is tell (i.e., brag to) everyone about it, right? I mean, what else is it really good for?

The good news is that I finished in front of about 13,000 runners. The bad news is that I finished BEHIND about 20,000 runners. Which means I finished about like I did in law school: somewhere below average!

Ah, but my self-important blog, where I am never average. Maybe marathoners and bloggers have a lot in common when you think about it . . . Ergo, ego. Or ego, ergo.

When I returned to my office after the race, I was wearing my marathon medal hidden underneath my suit jacket. I announced to my staff something like this: "Now some may say that running a marathon is a pointless, narcissistic exercise in shameless, attention-seeking behavior for the sole purpose of self-promotion. But I disagree . . . " [whereupon I open my jacket slightly, enough to reveal the medal hanging around my neck] "The fact that I completed a 26.2 mile marathon has not changed me in the slightest . . . That said, however, each of you shall henceforth address me as 'Marathon Man.'"

A Dog and his Blog

2005-10-05T10:08:00.000-04:00

I think my wife is trying to tell me something. She posted this cartoon from the New Yorker on our refrigerator door . . .

It reads: "I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking."

Touche.

My Favorite Quotes

2005-09-11T19:34:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite quotes goes something like this:

"From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step . . . "

It is often attributed to Napoleon, after his emperial army gloriously conquered Moscow, then suffered a humiliating retreat. I think it captures the essence of human frailty and folly.

Unfortunately, I am reminded of this sentiment often; like when my Jag convertible broke down with a busted radiator a couple of years ago. You look pathetically absurd, helpless on the side of the road with a gorgeous, smoking car. (I am James Bond in my own mind; more like Austin Powers or Johnny English in reality.)

And this gem, from one of my favorite writer/philosophers, Albert Camus:

"Everyone would like to behave like a pagan, with everyone else behaving like a Christian."

Actually, I don't believe that this is true. Behaving "like a pagan," whatever that is, carries with it a high price. Ask Keith Moon. (I can't say that Keith was a "pagan"; but his public persona probably was.)

Which reminds me of something funny that I think I can attribute to myself (remember I said I was self-important):

"It's not good to be a miser; but it's sure good to be related to one."

I came up with that one in the context of my God-fearing grandmother who, God bless her, lives in a nursing home at the age of 98. She and her extended family managed to wrest a lot of money out of the dirt in the hills of Eastern Tennessee, with hard work, frugality and faith. They managed to keep most of it.

Surely someone else (someone famous) has said something similar. Someone like Woody Allen, Oscar Wilde, or Will Rogers. If you are ever in a quiz show, and have to name the person who is credited with a humorous quote, you can't go wrong guessing one of those guys. Or Winston Churchill.

The Jemima Story

2005-09-11T17:15:00.000-04:00

The irony in my daughter's name is fairly self-evident to those of us in the United States. I was almost violently resistant to it back in 1998 when my pregnant wife and stepdaughter recommended it. (It was suggested to them by the little girl, Jemima Potts, in Ian Fleming's "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.")

Our pastor, a mountain of a man with a towering intellect to match, pulled me aside after church one Sunday. He urgently whispered, "Don't let her do that to your unborn child.". (Hell, the name Jemima is even in the Bible: see last sentence of the Book of Job, for those of you following along at home.) It means "turtledove" in ancient Hebrew.

The lines became drawn so fiercely that I suggested putting the issue to Oprah Winfrey for arbitration. I figure, if it doesn't offend Oprah, then maybe I can live with it. Of course, since I didn't have Oprah's cell number (or email address for that matter), this wasn't an option.

Then I remembered my best friend from U.S.C., who had long since made it out of the Lambda Chi house and is now a successful screen writer (best known for "Spy Game" with Redford/Pitt).

First I got my wife to agree in principle to abide by my friend's verdict, which for me was a foregone conclusion. (This guy is a rarity: a conservative in Hollywood!.) When I reach him on the phone, you can imagine my shock when he says, "You won't believe this, but I've typed the name 'Jemima' about a thousand time in the past 6 weeks!"

Unbeknowst to me, he was adapting a John LeCarre novel for the big screen, involving a sexy female character by the name of Jemima Marshall. Then came the coup de grace, "I was going to name my son that if he had been born a girl!." Sheez.

I put down the phone with a face that looked like it had just seen a ghost. My wife simply said, "Good. Jemima it is."

So this is the story I tell at cocktail parties when it invariably comes up. For those of you from outside the United States, you probably will not understand the stigma associated with that name. In England, the name is rare but not unheard of: Take Jemima Goldsmith, for example, one of the most beautiful women in the world.

But in the U.S., it was used by propagandist Southern literature following our Civil War. A myth was started about a household slave, freed by her Southern masters after the war, who chose to remain on the plantation to serve up pancakes to the returning Confederate soldiers. Basically, a female "Uncle Tom."

Then, nearly a hundred years later, an advertising firm on Madison Avenue thought of naming the first instant pancakae mix, "Aunt Jemima." The rest, as they say, is history. It was an example of brilliant marketing ("slave in a box") that is now quite offensive.

I thought at the time that I simply did not want to offend African Americans. (I have yet to meet any who are offended, by the way.) But maybe, just maybe, I had been programmed with "white guilt." Or that I did not want to confront that shameful chapter of American history, or dignify it with my daughter's pretty face. At any rate, all that is forgotten, because I lost and won at the same time. She's the only Jemima at her school, if not the entire South/Midwestern United States, and I love her all the more so because of it.

The Lost Colony, Sir Walter & Queen Elizabeth

2005-09-08T22:24:00.000-04:00

Recently I took my daughter Jemima to see the musical/play called "The Lost Colony" on Roanoke Island. (www.thelostcolony.org). It's the longest-running outdoor production in America. (Native son Andy Griffith famously got his start there, starring as Sir Walter Raleigh, circa 1940.)

To me there's still something magical and mysterious about this story, especially on a balmy summer evening under the same starry sky gazed upon by the first English-born Americans.

Since my blog is dedicated to life's little (and not so little) ironies, my favorite part in the play is when Raleigh presents Queen Elizabeth with the tobacco and potatoes that he "discovered" in Virginia (now the Outer Banks of North Carolina).

The Queen takes one whiff of the smoke and gags; one taste of the potato and scoffs. She curses him for presenting her with such lowly treasure, having expected something valuable to swell the crown's coffers. The year is around 1587, so perhaps she can be forgiven for having more pressing concerns of defending England from the imminent menace of the Spanish Armada.

But when you think about it, those New World products certainly had the last laugh. It's difficult for me to think of more profitable enterprises in the history of mankind than tobacco and french fries. Addictions are easy to sell, what say?

Pictured are Jemima and Queen Elizabeth at the cast party after the performance. Sorry I can't remember the actresses' name. She wore a dress that cost $15,000.00 and weighed something like 20 pounds. With make-up, she was Her Majesty personified. A fun night and good history lesson for all of us.

New Jag XK

2005-08-29T23:11:00.000-04:00

Ford has released photos of the hotly anticipated redesign of the Jaguar XK, which will be a 2007 model. The design has remain essentially unchanged since 1997.

The task of redesigning the 1997 to 2006 XK would not be an easy assignment for anyone. It would be a lot like asking an artist to give the Mona Lisa a new look.

The irony here is that I am only posting the car's best views. It is too painful for me to look at the front intake, which is sadly reminiscent of a Ford Taurus. Just as well, since I will not be able to afford a 2007 model until about 2015! Oops, strike that. My daughter will be going to college about then . . . Until then, my 1997 Mona Lisa purrs in the garage, graying gracefully.

President Bush was right

2005-08-29T22:37:00.000-04:00

Irony of the day:

President Bush (senior) was right about Iraq. In his memoir from 1998, "A World Transformed," he explained that he decided against marching to Baghdad at the end of Operation Desert Storm because it would involve "incalculable human and political costs." Here is what he wrote:

BEGIN QUOTE: Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome. END QUOTE.

Pretty prophetic stuff. Except of course for the part about "apprehending [Saddam] was probably impossible."

I like George W. Bush. I even voted for him once (in 2000). But I'm afraid his father was right on this score.

I admire and value the job our men and women are doing overseas. They are not dying in vain. That said, I have to agree with President Bush, Sr., that we are now an "occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

It's a shame that this debate is so polarizing. I've tried to find a middle ground between Red and Blue; something "maroon."

The attack of 9/11 made our administration (and our nation) forget about the need for an "exit strategy." Somtimes I think that we just wanted to kick some (Arab/Islamic) ass so badly . . . and Saddam was a willing and convenient whipping boy. But at what cost? And where does it end?

Cheers to my new blog!

2005-08-27T01:21:00.000-04:00

I've toyed with starting my own blog for some time, like most self-absorbed digital junkies.

The inspiration for me to actually do something arrived from an unlikely quarter. It was Rachel Fuller, Pete Townshend's gorgeous (and talented) singer/songwriter/girlfriend.

I am a bit of an Anglophile and recovering Who-addict. I visit Townshend's site often, because he is intelligent, controversial, and never boring. When he urged his fans to check out Rachel's blog, at rachelfuller.blogspot.com, I couldn't resist. Now I'm hooked.

She made her blog appear so effortless and simple, I thought "why not?"

I made up the name "Ironisphere" because . . . well, all the good names that I could think of were already taken. But the name combines one of the most over-used (and mis-used) words ("ironic") with the word "sphere" (which suggests something blog-like). So, the title for my blog is at least as self-important and pretentious-sounding as I am!

My goal is to write a thing or two that is human, or at least human-sounding, about anything that's interesting . . .