When I am really honest with myself, this is what I would love an Italian grocery store to be…
They would carry everything you need. Maybe not everything you want… but definitely everything you need.
(Baccalà!)
Pasta, bread, cheese, meat, onions, garlic, peppers, tomatoes, oregano, basil, rosemary… maybe some fruits and nuts.
(Castagne arrostite!)
They might also have a few little things extra.
Espresso percolators…
… Italian playing cards…
… pizzelle irons.
My first wife, Susan, and I were right around the corner from such a place when we lived in St. Clair & Dufferin neighbourhood in Toronto in the late 70s.
(Frutta e verdura!)
What I wouldn’t give to live once again a 2-minute walk from a place like this!
When I am in The Heart of the Old World[1], there is a certain pervasive sound you hear… a kind of omnipresent background music… a gently swaying ‘bed track’ to the place. It is a general all-encompassing soundtrack permeating the entire area… made up from the voices of hundreds of Jewish girls and women.
It is useless trying to explain a symphony with words,. I will at least give you a tiny taste of some of the lyrics. Try to imagine the sing-song tones blending in and through each other, above and underneath each other, mixing and intertwining, separating and repeating, like a Bach fugue.
Those who know what I am talking about are well familiar with the melodies, counter-melodies, tempos and keys. To the uninitiated, I can only say that one cannot describe a colour adequately with words… it must be seen to be fully understood. Similarly, like a Shakespearean play, the words are meant to be heard, not read. [2]
At the grocery store, on the sidewalk, in the coffee shop, in the parking lot… it binds us and keeps us together. It forms a warm comforting blanket around us.
And now… let us listen… and hear those precious voices all around us…
Boruch HaShem! Im Yirtzeh HaShem. B’ezras HaShem!
It’s all shtuss. It’s just a bunch of shtuss.
Yes, bli neder. Absolutely, bli neder! Of course, bli neder!
Make a brochah, Shmuley. Did you make an after-brochah?
Chas v’sholom! K’neine hora! Lo aleinu!
You hold by that? We don’t hold by that! Who holds by that?
Look at that punim! What a shayna punim! Can you believe the punim on this kid?
Where are you for Shabbes lunch? You’re coming for Shabbes dinner, right?
Where does he daven? What time do they finish davening over there?
She lives in Beit Shemesh now. Ramat Gan. She’s in Bnei Barak.
Now before you have visions of berserk toddlers going on a murderous rampage, let me assure you that is not the case. Well, at least not here.
(Somebody is NOT happy!)
It was more like…
“Toddler’s refusal to give up the microphone during a
family karaoke evening started a quarrel that left
two men hacked to death with a meat cleaver!”
(Are you ready to rumble??)
OK, here’s what happened. A couple were celebrating the Qixi Festival (i.e. China’s Valentine’s Day), with a singing session at a local karaoke parlour. So far, so good. Trouble starts when the parents’ four-year-old son hogs the karaoke mike and the doting parents were indulging him. [1]
(Beijing… we have a problem)
Mayhem ensues when two of the karaoke kid’s uncles berate the father for having raised such a spoiled child; a “Little Emperor”, as the Chinese say [2]. Push literally comes to shove, then shoving proceeds to punching. A nephew grabs a meat cleaver and hacks the uncles to death.
(The problem solver)
Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. Karaoke-related violence is a real problem in the East.
Other karaoke massacres have taken place in the Philippines, where the Frank Sinatra song ‘My Way‘ has had to be removed from many songbooks after sub-standard renditions provoked a string of killings.
(Clearly a trouble-maker)
In Thailand, meanwhile, a man shot eight of his neighbours, including his brother-in-law, after tiring of their tuneless reprisals of John Denver’s ‘Country Roads.’
(An incitement to violence)
In the United States, a woman punched a man for continuing to sing Coldplay’s ‘Yellow’ after she had told him he was not up to the task.
(It would have driven Mother Teresa to violence)
In her defence… it WAS a karaoke version of Coldplay’s ‘Yellow!’
[1] NB: Karaoke is taken very seriously, not just in China but throughout Asia.
[2] There is no shortage of criticism inside China for the bad behaviour of the Little Emperors, the children raised under the strict one-child policy and doted on by their parents and grandparents.
One night when I was driving down from Canada to Arkansas, I stopped at Jackson, Tennessee.
A few months before, an old girlfriend of mine, LK, introduced me to a wonderful place in Jackson called Casey Jones Village and I thought I would pop by to see if it was still open.
As I pulled in and parked, I could tell they’d had some kind of festival or concert there and, sadly, it looked like I’d missed it. Everyone seemed to be packing up. Rather than head back out on the highway, I decided to get out and stretch my legs and have a bit of a poke around.
I’ve never had bad luck meeting people in The South.
I headed toward the Old Country Store & Restaurant as there was group of musicians gathered there just to the left of the store. Looked like maybe they were a family. Two young ladies on violin. Two older gents on guitar. A stand-up bass. A banjo. Perhaps a harmonica.
I’d almost reached them when they lifted their instruments.
And that is when I heard it.
That small group of musicians started playing the beautiful Tennessee Waltz.
I just froze in my tracks, taking it all in. I was transfixed.
I’m not sure if any of you have ever experienced a perfect moment. I did that night at that place.
The music. The night. The mild night air. A gentle breeze blowing the long blonde hair of one of the girls playing the violin.
I was in awe.
It was like looking at a Norman Rockwell painting come to life.
Although I know it’s not possible, it seems to me I held my breath the entire time. I was so afraid that if I spoke, if I moved, if I did anything… I would spoil the absolute perfection of the moment.
I’ve always liked the Tennessee Waltz. But on that exact night at that exact time and place… it was the most beautiful tune I’d ever heard.
When they finished, they began packing away their instruments.
As I quietly came forward, I noticed a big old mason jar with some money in it. Not a lot of money, I’m sad to say.
I took all the cash I had on me and rolled it up, put a $5 bill around the outside and placed it into the mason jar. It must have been around $400, I think. And I actually felt guilty for not being able to pay more… to pay them as much as they were worth in my eyes.
You see, I wasn’t giving them money. I was merely trying to pay back a small token amount of what they had given to me that night.
You can’t put a dollar value on perfection.
I’ll always remember that night… and The Tennessee Waltz.
One of the things I miss most about The South is the Stars and Bars.
Otherwise known as the Confederate Battle Flag. [1]
Now I am mindful of that fact that this particular flag is a controversial image. There have been protests and petitions trying to get the Stars and Bars removed from state flags and even to stop flying the flag on schools, government buildings and other public property.
I’m not a part of that history. I wasn’t born in The South. I’m not even American. The baggage associated with the Stars and Bars is something I don’t carry. I can have positive feelings about that flag because I can pick and choose the things with which I associate it.
And I am the first to admit that my associations with the flag have virtually nothing to do with reality and everything to do with a fictional romanticized concept of what I personally feel the flag and The South was, is and should be.
I am sometimes met with a mixture of righteous indignation and moral outrage on this subject. “How would you feel if someone expressed positive feelings about the swastika and Nazi Germany?” Truth be told, I probably wouldn’t feel too good about it. That’s probably because I have a connection to that symbol and what it means.
But all that doesn’t seem to have any effect on me when it comes to the Confederate Battle Flag. Maybe it should… but it just doesn’t.
All the times I’ve been down in The South… all the people I’ve met and befriended… all the places I’ve been to while I was there… all have been positive experiences for me.
When I think of The South, I have nothing but good memories and good feelings. When I think of The South, I remember friends and loved ones.
When I think of The South… I picture the Stars and Bars.
In fact, I’ve been one since the days I dated my first real girlfriend, LK, who also liked many of Barry Manilow’s songs. [1]
This was in the sunny, wonderful, joy-filled era before disco music cast a pall over the otherwise civilized world in the late 70′s.
And this very cultural tragedy forms, for me, the clear demarcation line in the Manilow Songbook.
1977 reared its ugly head and spit the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack at us, infecting our ears. The Brothers Gibb pounded disco into our brains. It was as relentless as it was repulsive.
But, I consoled myself, there is always Manilow… the romantic crooner… the master of the love song… the one who writes the songs that make the whole world sing.
E tu, Barry?
Even a betrayal of this magnitude was not enough to shake my love of his love songs.
I adopted a strict policy of active ignorage. I simple refused to acknowledge that Barry Manilow had anything to do with the song ‘Copa Cabana’ or other such musical abominations.
And yet, however dark a year 1977 was, for me the silver lining was that the year ended with Barry Manilow’s ‘Just Another New Years Eve’…
…a song I’ve sung to myself on each of the 35 New Years Eves since.
So yes… I am a Fanilow. Listening to ‘Weekend in New England’ is my idea of a good time.
And to this day, every once in a while I will put on an old Manilow love song… and maybe I’ll even sing along…
“And maybe the old songs will bring back the old times,” if even for a few minutes.
His music was such a part of me for so many years… and still is.
And yet to a part of me, he will always be that skinny, awkward Jewish kid at the piano. [2]
It makes him even more likeable… and me an even bigger Fanilow!
There was a time in my life when I went down to The South a fair bit.
By this I mean primarily Arkansas, North and South Carolina with a bit of driving through Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. Haven’t yet been to Louisiana, Alabama or Georgia.
As for Mississippi… well, there are people in Mississippi who don’t want to be in Mississippi! (Just kidding. Please don’t shoot me!)
(When you hear them say, “Ah hell no!”… you better run!)
I haven’t been to The South since the Passover/Easter weekend before 9/11.
There’s so much I love and miss about The South.
(1861 Navy Colt – the classic handgun of The South)
One of the most striking things you find down there is the entire gun culture. [1]
It’s not that everyone in The South has a gun. I would suspect that most don’t.
But… there is this general all-round feeling among most Southerners that is in some way supportive of the general idea of guns for personal protection.
There is a gleefulness… and also a kind of playfulness… about this mindset that I find hard to resist.
The over-riding sense is that this attitude of bravado is ‘half in jest – whole in earnest.’ Kind of like, “I’m kidding… but not really.”
Every once in a while I venture to say a few well-chosen words about fashion.
I believe my last foray into beaking off about the world of couture (haute or otherwise) was in my October 26, 2011, article “Fashionate!“
I’m due for another venting.
I’d like to discuss a disturbing phenomenon of which I’ve recently become aware…
People (and by this I mean The Great Unwashed [1]) deriving a sick, perverse thrill from watching fashion models fall down.
And yes, I get the humorous angle at play here.
In The Comedy Biz, it is referred to as a Status Drop. It is as least as old as Graeco-Roman comedies… that is, when the actors weren’t parading around the stage wearing enormous phalli. [2]
The principle at work is this… an exalted person suffers a swift and sudden drop in status. The classic example from silent films is the rich, pompous and usually fat man slipping and falling on a banana peel.
A cheap, easy laugh, to be sure.
But what goes on when The Wretched Refuse watch a fashion model slip and fall is much nastier. There is a meanness of spirit that I don’t believe enters into the old Charlie Chaplin ‘fat banker banana fall’ schtick.
The Huddled Masses LOVE it. There is a fiendish glee that is simply absent when, for example, you see some chunky southern girl destroy an above-ground pool simply by going into it.
The models, people feel, somehow deserve to fall. They’ve earned the humiliation and the howls of derisive laughter. It ‘takes them down a few notches’… it ‘cuts them down to size.’
Ladies, you cannot sit still for this kind of attitude from the common rabble!
It’s bad enough that you’re treated like dogs or glorified clothes hangers from those within the business.
You must reclaim the fashion faux-pas… the runway tragedy… and transform it into something chic and glorious.
Let’s take that frown and turn it upside down, ladies. Find the fun in a bad situation!
I give you… SPAZTIQUE!!
Your slip and fall at Paris Fashion Week Spring 2012? It is no longer clumsy… it isTrès Spaztique!
That time you lost your balance and fell off the runway in Milan? Proprio Spazticamente!
Everyone thinks your ankle-twisting walk on the Prada runway was klutzy? Far from it! It was Totally Spaztique!
Don’t let Walmart zombie shoppers define you!
Be Chic. Be Spaztique!!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
This article is affectionately dedicated to my dearly beloved friend, Chelsea Dagger [3], who is tall, slender, blonde, gorgeous, smart, athletic, fun, funny, generous, philanthropic, kindhearted, sweet… and a totally spastic klutz!
If it’s beside her or near her, she will find a way to knock it down, trip over or bump into it.
Here’s to you, my darling Chelsea. You’re delightfully Spaztique!
[1] (i.e. The General Public) I doubt many in the fashion world experience quite the ‘laugh riot’ when a model twists, sprains or breaks her ankle, cracks her kneecap or fractures her wrist.
[2] See Aristophenes’ deliciously funny play Lysistrata - a hilarious account of one woman’s extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War. The title character Lysistrata persuades the other women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace.
[3] She has, hands down, the coolest name in the world.
(Baccalà!)
(Castagne arrostite!)
(Frutta e verdura!)
