Lots of good things come in three: Musketeers; Stooges; ‘s Company. And while I’ve never pretended to be a camp, 1970s homosexual in order to maintain a living situation (it just comes naturally), and I think that candy bar dollars spent on feather-light nougat are better spent on peanut-studded logs of caramel, I do have a soft spot in my heart (and at the crown of my skull) for slapstick. Continue reading
There is a statue in Harvard Yard, ostensibly of John Harvard, that is sometimes called, by tour guides and other scoundrels looking to make a quick buck, the Statue of Three Lies. The lies are thus:
Babies, as I understand it, are free to drink vast oceans of beer, so long as it’s weak, second-runnings beer. This is what I’ve been told by Byron, our tour guide at Red Hook and, even though it would probably be generous to describe his advice on child-rearing as “suspect,” or even “outright harmful,” I’m inclined to agree with him on this point.
At the very least, most children are like drunk little adults anyhow: fascinated by things that glitter (strippers) or spin (also strippers) or make unpleasant noises (strippers, or maybe karaoke singers), Continue reading
Consider the oyster, or the erster, if you will. A bivalve mollusc reminiscent of nothing more than an ancient, gnarled stone, a better fit on the otter’s belly than on your dinner table. And yet we eat him in vast quantities, slurped with Tabasco (better: Cholula) or cocktail sauce, or with mounds of horseradish piled on top. Continue reading
They say that nature makes wine, but only man can make beer. Now, I’m a big fan of beer, but not such a fan of man, and I’d like to say that I’m a fan of nature, but let’s be honest, sometimes nature does perplexing things, like leaving great piles of rocks where there ought to be a perfectly pleasant place to take a walk and, for example, have a beer or three. Continue reading
The Summer road trip is an American tradition: load the car with a case of jerky, six pairs of socks, and however many loved ones you still have room for, and hit the road (along with a hundred thousand other meat-addled iron-jockeys). As we discovered today, though, the secret to a high-speed, low-odor road trip is threefold: