Impromptu Speech

My Accent Inventory

The Heat Is On

The thermostat in Korean heaven is set at the same temperature as in my personal hell, a fact that has uncomfortably come to light over the past two weeks as fall begins to lose its grip to winter.  I have copious amounts of evidence to prove my incompatibility with Korea's love for all spaces warm.  But before I get to my hard evidence let's first taxonomize the levels of inferno, kind of like a scale of wing sauce temperatures.

No Warm
This level is called No Warm because it's not cool, and it's also not warm:  it's nothing.  This temperature does not really exist because it usually fails to be noticed at all.  On a degree scale, it's probably close to 70 degrees, or whatever 'room temperature' implies.  You can leave cheese and butter out in No Warm without fear.  You can really do anything you want in no warm, and you can wear your most comfortable clothes in this temperature.  It is No Warm.

Warm
When you put a palm on someone's forehead checking for a fever, you're really checking for Warm.  You can't really say a forehead is ever hot, not in the sense that it would burn the person touching it.  A warm forehead probably isn't a good sign, but in most other cases Warm is a nice descriptor.  A warm personality.  A warm smile.  A warm relationship.  Aside from global warming and foreheads, warm almost always has a positive connotation. 

When I lived in Nepal I often waited till mid-afternoon to take a shower, once the water in the rooftop tank had a bit of time to warm.  A 7am shower was too cold, and sometimes ended with my hair freezing into mini icicles. 

Goldilocks liked her porridge warm for a reason.  Because warm doesn't burn your mouth or give you brain freeze.

Grandpa Warm

There is warm, then there is Grandpa Warm, which is the temperature that my Grandpa Guilfoyle liked to keep his room over at the assisted-living facility where he lived. The only way to describe Grandpa Warm is to ask you to imagine being wrapped in an electric sleeping blanket, but this sleeping blanket is no ordinary blanket; it's made of air.  So it's all around you, and it has no zipper.  Grandpa Warm is great if you, for example, had been out walking on a cold day, in Russia, or you had just gone skiing, and the chairlift had suspended you in midair for an entire sunless morning.  Grandpa Warm can resuscitate any limbs in danger of frostbite.  In summary, though Grandpa Warm greets you with a hug you might get from a longtime friend, it doesn't stop hugging you and only reluctantly lets you go.

Korean Warm 
Korean Warm can only be understood through an anecdote. Outside it's an overcast day and the temperature is in the mid-fifties, right on the border between Cool and No Warm. I could sleep outdoors in this weather. I could play or watch almost any sport at this temperature; it's dry and comfortable.  Nara and I are boarding a bus bound for the east coast of Korea.  We've walked up a few flights of stairs from the subway platform, and we're carrying a few bags, not heavy ones but sizable enough that you wouldn't want to lug them around a city as big as Seoul.   I'm wearing jeans and a fleece jacket with a t-shirt underneath, but once I'm on the bus I know I've stepped into Grandpa Warm.  The fleece is too much, and it has to come off.  At first I think this to be the result of carrying bags around and walking up a few flights of stairs, but even after jettisoning the fleece the warmth persists, pushing the outer reaches of Grandpa Warm. 

In the five minutes we sit and wait for the bus to depart, passengers fill up the empty seats.  Each new passenger brings another degree of human warmth onto the bus; the windows begin to steam.  Even when the full lengths of the windows are saturated with steam, no one takes their jacket off, and I notice a few women who are still wearing scarves or winter hats.  Meanwhile, the anaconda of Grandpa Warm is tightening its grip around me.  The bus roars into motion, and we're off.

Thirty minutes into the ride and I have already complained to Nara seven times about the heat.  She sympathized with the first few complaints but now she's getting annoyed.  "You should understand Koreans," she says, "They like warm places."  I threaten to take my shirt off if the bus driver doesn't turn down the heat.  I press against the window, looking for a latch, some portal to the cool world beyond the window. We are riding in a sauna on wheels, and someone just keeps pouring water onto the hot rocks in the bus's engine.

But this is not yet Korean Warm.

Engulfed in hot human steam, I make an unexpected discovery.  Just as I'm about to register my eighth heat-related complaint with the only person who will listen to me, I reach my hand up to the vents and realize that there is, in fact, no air coming out; the heat was not even on.  Minutes later, the vents rattle to life.  A strong blast of furnace-grade air washes over me, over all, and I can see the Koreans bathing in it as I burn.  This must be it, I think, this must be what they call Korean Warm:  I have cast layers aside, absorbed the oppression of Grandpa Warm, and pressed my face up against a fogged window.  There is no means of escape.  But when the bus reaches our destination and we make our into the Sol Beach resort -- yes, quite fittingly our hotel was named Sol as in Sun, as in Hotter Than The Sun Hotel -- I realize that while on the bus we were only being driven to the gas chamber.  We had yet to experience Korean Warm.

But when we enter room 412 at Sol Beach Resort, only then do I know what Korean Warm is.  It is quite simply this:  walking up to a thermostat in a hotel room and seeing that it has been set to 30 degrees celsius.  This is, and I had to look it up, 86 degrees fahrenheit.  This is the temperature that they want you to feel when you first walk into the room, the temperature that is supposed to make you go 'ahhh.'  And I have no doubt that for 95% of the clientele, 86 degrees is heavenly.  But for me, 86 degrees should be reserved for the beach in July, or the ballpark in August, not for constant room temperature when it's 60 degrees outside. 

The definition of Korean Warm also comes with a qualifier; it only qualifies as Korean Warm if there is no way to change the temperature; in other words you must be trapped.  The thermostat at the Hot Flames Hotel, of course, could not be altered, no matter how many times I pushed the down button. And I pushed it many, many times.  My only option, then, was to open the sliding door to the balcony to let gale force winds into the room; these winds, also appalled by the temperature in the room, tried to escape via the crack in the front door, creating a high-pitched whistling noise that I think must have been the sounds of tiny molecules of cool air dissipating in our room's inferno.

None of this should have been a big surprise to me.  I should've remember my Korean friend Jay, who once tried to bake me alive at a Days Inn near Niagara Falls, and who later had a Thermostat Battle Royale with Navin, our Nepali guest whose preferred temperature is somewhere between Cave and I-Can-See-My-Breath-Inside.  I should've known from living in Korea for more than two years.  So what was it?  Maybe in my four months back in the U.S. I had acclimitized too well; maybe I'd gotten used to spending time in rooms in which you're not worried about singeing your arm hairs just by leaning up against a wall.

Whatever the case, it's sad to know that even if I get into heaven I won't be able to see my Korean friends there; no, they'll be a few floors below me, kicking their feet up on a steamy bus or reclining atop a scalding floor of hot coals, all while wearing their snuggest wool jackets.   

Prelude to an Engagement

Everyone likes to hear the story of how two people got engaged.  This is not that story.  This is a slightly shorter and less thrilling story about the days and hours before I got engaged, but in some ways this story is just as important because the story ends with an engagement therefore everything leading up to it is part of that story.  It's like the first part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or something like that.



Getting engaged is cause de etra celebratione, in any nation.  Or so I thought until I found myself sound asleep within a half an hour of getting engaged here in Korea.  I could blame jet-lag, but I think the post-popping-of-the-question deep sleep was more the result of decision-lag: you spend so much time thinking about making a big decision -- getting married, moving abroad, buying a new house -- that when the actual moment arrives it sets you free in a way that you did not expect.  The celebration is in the open landscape of a future; the clouds have cleared and your plane can take off.  Why rush right into the future; there's plenty of time for a short nap.

An engagement in Korea is set in motion by the marrying couple but only becomes official when the two sets of parents sit down to decide how to carve up the marital turkey.  Once the date is set, the couple can announce their plans publicly, in other words they can make those precious calls and tell the story of their engagement: "Our parents met, and they said April 12th was fine."  Hooray!  Nara says that because the meeting of the parents takes precedent over everything else, Korean men often will not even technically propose in the sense that they may never utter the words "Will you marry me?"  Sometimes the woman will make light of this at the wedding, refusing to say 'I do' till her husband-to-be asks her to marry him first.  I think this has to be a point in favor of gender equality, and should be studied further by feminists.


So even though I apparently didn't have to propose, since it was going to be impossible to set up a parental summit I decided to take matters into my own hands.  On the flight from Chicago to Seoul via Tokyo, I found myself occasionally digging my hand into the bag carrying the ring, which was also transporting a bag of Chex Mix, Cool Ranch Doritos, and an already half-eaten bag of Sour Patch Kids.  These snacks plus the ring were my four most valuable possessions, ones that I could not risk stowing in my checked luggage.  When I began to fill out the customs card, I wondered whether I needed to declare the ring (since it's so valuable and precious and especially expensive).  But that immediately seemed like a stupid presumption.  Any woman could wear a ring on her finger and wouldn't be required to declare it at customs much less to take it off of her finger in the security gates.

I also felt compelled to tell someone about the purpose of my trip.  I did not feel like a regular passenger, and thought maybe I should try to get an upgrade to business class or economy plus at the very least.  Instead I was seated next to a large man wearing safari clothing.  When I sat down I immediately felt a rush of hot air sweep into my nostrils; it was as if I'd opened the morning hot-breath oven and inside the oven last night's dinner was still roasting.  The flight from Chicago to Tokyo is 13 hours, and suddenly those 13 hours seemed a lot longer and quite a bit hotter.  No, this guy would not be the person I'd select to share my news.  Fortunately the row of three seats in front of me only had one passenger in the window, a young Asian woman, and I seized the opportunity to gain a little more breathing room.

A moment after I was settled in my new seat, I felt a poke on my right shoulder coming from the finger of the hot-breath man behind me.  "Was it something I said?" he asked with a smile on his face.  Disarmed by his friendliness, I grasped for the right humorous excuse, one about me having long legs or being a loud snorer.  He seemed to accept, and surely he didn't mind the extra room himself.  The Asian woman sitting next to me turned out to be from Thailand.  She was heading home to visit her family while her American husband sorted out their next destination; they had both graduated from business school and were deciding whether to look for work in the US or relocate to Asia, maybe to Singapore where he had a job offer with Price Waterhouse.

She seemed like the perfect person to tell about the ring in my bag.  After we'd talked long enough to be embarrassed that we hadn't properly introduced ourselves, she told me her name in what I know to be standard Thai-to-westerner fashion:  first you tell a westerner your real name - the one with 30 syllables - then, after the foreigner's eyes grow wide, you shorten those 30 syllables down to one easy-to-remember syllable.  I made her write down her given name (she is, after all, part of an important story): Pastraporn Rittikosi Nichols. The Nichols part I could handle, and probably could've just called her Nichols if it were socially appropriate.  Fortunately she did read the 'Try Again' message in my eyes and quickly shortened her name to Pap.  This I would not forget.

Pap became my trans-Pacific confidante.  Though she really had no choice but to listen unless she pulled a swim move to extricate herself from the window seat, she listened to the story of how I ended up on a flight back to Asia to make one of life's biggest decisions.  Sometimes it's just easier to tell a story like this to a total stranger, maybe because the story takes on a fresh, untold quality ripe with opportunities for enhancement and embellishment.  There were no such embellishments in my story to Pap, except for a fudging of a few details -- like me not having a job, a detail which, though the subject of a story in itself, would break up the flow of the romantic tale I was weaving for Pap.  It helped that Pap had a similar story of her known.  She had met her husband while in the U.S. as a student, and in some ways her story was mine, only in a different setting.  As in my relationship, the origin and development of her international relationship was all about timing.  Had she decided to study in Bangkok or New York instead of Boston, had she majored in finance instead of economics, had she deferred her enrollment as she thought she might once, she would not have met the man who would become her husband.

Timing also shaped the arc of her relationship, how fast it could progress, and what could be shared with others.  She and her husband, for example, had lived together prior to getting engaged for nearly six months, which she decided was a fact best kept from her mother and father in southern Thailand.  For the sake of everyone involved, it may be true that the cultural onion can only be peeled back one layer at a time.  I had to learn this in my relationship, too, pacing the meetings I would have with Nara's family, putting the brakes on plans we made in the first month of dating.

To Pap, my story was a page-turner mostly because she understood it from every angle.  As a woman, she could identify with Nara's feelings of apprehension and anticipation; as an Asian woman, she knew the dynamics of a communal culture and the norms which guide a family's opening up to any outsider; as the wife of an American man, she heard in my story the same struggle to find that geographic and cultural middle place from which to start a new cultural thread.

Because she understood me so well, I offered her a few of my Sour Patch Kids.  She declined, pointing to a toothache.  But I sensed that she appreciated the offer; the Sour Patch Kids were, after all, my second or third most valuable possession.

In Tokyo, Pap and I searched the departure information screen for our next flights.  Her flight to Bangkok sent her to the right while my Seoul-bound flight catapulted me to the left.  She thanked me for being a good seatmate and I thanked her for listening.  I found gate B18 and waited to board my flight to Seoul, where Nara awaited my arrival.  It was up to me from here on out. 

I found the right place

 

And I found the right person

THE END

Schmucks: I joined 'em!

It's 2pm on a Wednesday. You're out on the road again, and you're not alone. There are others like you, plying the afternoon trade, taking care of the business of the day. You know who you are. You, sir or madame, are a Schmuck. And these days, so am I.

After all these years of making disparaging remarks about Schmucks, I discovered the Schmuck within, and have learned to embrace it. Slowly but surely, I'm learning the tricks of the schmuck trade. By no means is it an easy road, Schmucking; it takes effort, and quite a bit of tactical cunning. Here are some of the key tenets of living a fulfilling life as a Schmuck.

Bumper Riding

How do you recognize a Schmuck? It's not about appearance, or clothing, or any particular sense of style or taste. To lure a Schmuck out of his hiding spot, you need only drive the speed limit or a few miles over it. Within seconds the Schmuck will reveal himself, and he will be right on your bumper, so close that you can see him leaning over his steering wheel, angling for some daylight to pass.

More so than language, driving posture is the preferred mode of communication for Schmucks. And it's actually a very easy language to pick up because there are only a few phrases to learn. Riding your bumper like tightie whities jammed into a butt-crack after a long journey, for example, means "I'm better than you", "I'm more important than you," "I have places to be," and "My car is nicer than yours." It's also the Schmuck's way of simply saying hello, so remember to return the favor when you notice someone observing the legal speed limit.

Midday Arguing

Schmucks like to have arguments in broad daylight. Here's one example.

Last week I encountered a Schmuck while dining at Whole Foods - a haven for Schmucks like me. I was placing a healthy plate of green beans, squash, and curried turkey into the microwave when suddenly a middle-aged woman with a graying pony-tail emerged from the shadows. Actually, I should clarify something about Schmucks: Schmucks hate shadows or any dark places -- they prefer to be seen -- so let's say she didn't emerge from anywhere, she was just there.

"It's a shame what you're doing to all that fresh food," she said, "Just zapping the nutrients right out of it."

This Schmuck meant business, and being a Schmuck-in-training, I knew I couldn't possibly battle a Schmuck of this caliber. I backed off. "Oh I'm just gonna heat it up for a few seconds," I said.

But she wasn't appeased. "Doesn't matter," she persisted, "Even a few seconds kills all the nutrients."

Though I should have capitulated and lived to Schmuck another day, this lady really brought the Schmuck out in me. "Well," I said, noticing that she had just added some cream to her coffee, "You probably shouldn't be putting Half and Half in your coffee." Then I went for the Schmuckular by adding, "It'll give you cancer."

Probably that last comment was beyond what any Schmuck would say. It was mean, but it was all I had. It was like calling the bully on the playground fat because it was the only thing you knew might put a chink in his armor. In this case, it worked. The gray poly-tailed Schmuck was disarmed by my comment and attempted to inject a little humor into our exchange. "I'm old," she said, "and I only have two vices left -- coffee and sex!"

At that point I worried less about my food and my feelings and started to wonder whether she was propositioning me. Schmucks are interesting like that; one second they're telling you how to live your life, the next second they're trying to get you in the sack.

Drive everywhere, and buy a drink wherever you go

Schmucks like me love going around by car, and our main task is to perform as many errands as possible during the late morning and afternoon hours (if you haven't figured it out yet, Schmucks do not currently have jobs). Errands are easier to perform with a drink in hand, most often a coffee or coffee-based drink but sodas (in particular diet sodas) will also suffice. Schmucks love Jamba Juice.

Drinks perpetuate the life cycle of the Schmuck.Wherever I go, I must have a drink, and the inverse is also true: whenever I have a drink in hand, I must go somewhere.  Sometimes, as a card-carrying Schmuck, I go somewhere just to get a drink, spend some time in the store drinking my drink, and then go back home.  I could easily make the drink at home but it's the getting of the drink that gives a Schmuck his purpose in life.

Drinks, and empty drink receptacles, are staple crops in Schmuckville.  Drink up, Schmucks!

Gary & The Rutabaga Garden: The Clearing in the Corn

Three fresh, purple rutabagas in hand, Gary and his mom raced through the back of the garden toward the corn fields and under the flight path of all of the planes taking off from the airport.

"Gary!" yelled Gary's mom as they ran through bushel after bushel of corn, pushing the thick green stalks out of the way to clear a path, "Run just a little more, up to that clearing!"

Gary cleared the next stringy stalk from his view and noticed an open patch of green grass in the middle of the corn.  It seemed an odd place for such a wide open space. Why didn't corn grow here?  Once Gary and his mom reached the clearing they stopped for a moment to catch their breaths.  Gary's mom knelt down to the ground and breathed heavily for a few moments, then looked up toward the sky.

"Gary, do you see it, right over there!" she said.

At first all Gary could see was endless blue sky, but then he heard the familiar puttering and sputtering of his favorite little plane, the Twin Otter.  The Twin Otter wasn't like other planes. It didn't have long wings or a giant silver belly.  Gary always knew when it was near because of its sound:  putt-putta-putt-putt, putt-putta-putt-putt.  It was a tough little plane, that Twin Otter, and it wasn't afraid to fly anywhere.  It could fly up high in the sky or down below, skimming across the tops of trees or even much lower near the corn fields.

Crouching low to the ground next to his mom, Gary heard the putt-putta-putt-putt sound of the Twin Otter and looked over the rows of corn for it.  Suddenly the sounds got louder -- PUTT-putta-PUTT-PUTT -- and Gary sensed it was near.  Moments later there it was, a white-bodied Twin Otter with a long red stripe across the wings.  It seemed to be circling around, looking for something or someone.

"Are they looking for us, Mom?"  Gary asked, starting to worry if they were safe in the wide, open space in the corn fields.

"I don't think so, Gary, but, for now, stay down just in case," said Gary's mom.  Now she was clutching his hand tightly.  The red-striped Twin Otter continued to circle around the sky, little poofs of grey smoke appearing in its tracks, and one time it flew low enough that Gary thought he could see something through the plastic hatch on top of the body of the plane.  It was the same red cape that he had seen from the rutabaga garden earlier in the day, only now it wasn't on the back of a hairy creature.  No, instead it was flying out the back of the little cockpit of the plane, right where the captain would sit.

"Mom, what's that red thing up there? Did you see it?" Gary asked.

"Oh you better believe I saw it," she replied, "And I have no idea what in tarnation it could possibly be, nor do we even want to guess."

Before she could even guess, the putt-putta-putt-putt of the Twin Otter grew louder and louder, this time it sounded more like a lawn-mower engine roaring away in the summer grass:  PUTT-PUTTA-VROOM-VROOM!  PUTT-PUTTA-VROOM-VROOM!  The plane flew lower and lower, towards the ground and the patch of open grass where Gary and his mom were squatting. This time the Twin Otter was not circling - it was going to land!

"Gary look out!" yelled his mom, grabbing his arm and pulling him back towards the thick and bushy stalks of corn.  Gary leaped from the ground and jumped toward the corn just as a strong whip of wind came through the clearing and lifted up everything in its path -- grass, corn, twigs, sticks, and dust scattered through the air as the Twin Otter came thundering to the ground - BAM! The plane hit the ground and bounced twice before it came to rest in the corn.

A few minutes later, the dust began to clear, and Gary and his mom slowly opened their eyes.

Gary and the Rutabaga Garden

A young boy named Gary lived near the airport, and from the steps on his back porch he could always see the planes coming and going.  When the planes flew overhead, the wind would pick up and Gary's brown curly hair would flap in the wind and fly in front of his eyes.  To keep his eyes on the plane, Gary liked to wear a yellow headband with his name written across the front.

On most days he saw the big 747s and 777s blazing thick white trails through the open skies.  If he was lucky, Gary would spot his favorite plane, the Twin Otter, flying low over the nearby corn fields.  He always said that if he could fly any plane, it would be the Twin Otter.  He liked how it could quickly ascend and descend, and with his hands Gary would imitate the Twin Otter diving and swooping like birds snatching fish from the sea.

One day Gary was in his usual perch, gazing up at the sky when something strange caught his eye.  As a 747 passed overhead, Gary tilted his head back to see the belly of the plane and he could have sworn he saw something attached to the belly of that plane.  Not wheels or stripes or landing gear or anything he normally saw but some THING, a thing with long hairy arms outstretched, clinging to the bottom of the plane.  That thing, whatever it was, had something red on its back, a little red bag or maybe a cape like the kind that superheroes wore. Gary really could not be sure what it was but he needed to tell someone right away.

"MOM!" yelled Gary, running from the porch through the back door and into the kitchen. 

Gary's mom was there in the kitchen slicing and dicing rutabagas she had picked from the family garden.  She stopped her slicing immediately when she saw Gary rush through the door, his brown curls bouncing along above his yellow headband.  

"What is it Gary?  What'd you see out there?" she asked.

"I saw a . . . a .... " Gary was breathing hard.  He slowed down to catch his breath.  Finally he said, "A thing!  A thing on the bottom of the plane, Mom!"  

"What do you mean 'a thing' You mean the wheels, Gary?"  

"No, not the wheels!  Something with arms and legs and a red backpack or a cape, Mom!"

"Well that sounds very strange, Gary," his mom said as she sat down at the kitchen table.  "Very strange indeed."  


But Gary's mom had no doubt that Gary was telling the truth as Gary rarely told lies or even exaggerated.  And Gary's mom had another reason to believe Gary:  just a few days earlier she had seen the very same thing while she was out planting rutabagas in the vegetable garden.  And that was not the first time she had seen it.  In fact, every day that she tended to her rutabagas she noticed that suspicious hairy creature on the bottom of a big plane.  She thought it was odd to see those long hairy arms and legs stretched across the belly of the plane but she had managed to convince herself that she had only imagined it.  Now, she knew it must be real.  They had both seen it.  

By now Gary had caught his breath and was looking up at his mom, waiting for her to snap out of the long spell of silence.  

Finally she spoke.  "Gary," she said, "grab three of the freshest rutabagas from the garden, the purplest ones you can find, and follow me. We've got to find that THING."  

Inspecting the City

On November 5th, 1975, Columbus residents awoke to the news that Mayor Tom Moody was reelected for a second term with a landslide 63% of the vote.  'Moody Wins Easily' was the front-page headline of the Columbus Dispatch.  The same day, a less heralded but equally moody Columbus resident emerged onto the local scene, making news in small print on page A-18 of the city's birth statistics:  "Mr. & Mrs. Jay Iams, 795 Clarington Ct, Boy."   For years I had quietly blamed my dad for my incurable moodiness, but this discovery seems to have exonerated him; I was born under the reign of Moody, and therefore I am.

The former mayor, who passed away last October, is remembered less for his moodiness than his progressive vision for the city during his nine years as the driver of the 'Bus.  Two-thirds of the current skyline reportedly went up under his watch, including the Huntington Center, One Nationwide Plaza, and the AEP building.  Moody also used his political savvy to set aside land for construction of Route 315 which, in an apparent tribute to Moody's legacy, is still under construction 34 years later.

Though history appears to have been kind to Moody's contributions as a mayor, he is remembered more, um, endearingly, for an incident that occurred during his final term in office.  He was out for a late night drive, perhaps after having a few too many drinks, and was involved in a car accident that is less noteworthy than the explanation he provided when asked why he was driving around at that hour:  "I was inspecting the city," he said at the time.

Given the opportunity to drive back in time with Mayor Moody, seat-belts fastened of course, what would Columbus have looked like?

City landmarks such as the Nationwide Plaza were under construction, and the Rhodes State Office Tower had been completed the year before, which at 692 feet surpassed the LeVeque tower as the tallest building in Columbus.  The old Ohio Penetentiary, the source of childhood nightmares for any kid unlucky enough to get a glimpse of it through a car window, was still nine years from its ultimate demise. The ghost of Sam Sheppard, the Ohio doctor who allegedly murdered his wife and whose story was the basis for the movie The Fugitive, may have still been roaming the Pen as Mayor Moody drove by.

On that day in 1975, when Moody's mandate to inspect the city was renewed, the citizens of Columbus were dealing with some of the same problems and questions as today's residents.  A sluggish economy led to a spirited national debate over the role of the government in getting things back on track.  One column in the November 5th edition of The Dispatch supported a recent speech by William Simon, then the secretary of the treasury, debunking the idea that the government can "identify, solve and somehow pay for all of the problems of society . . . a path that will inevitably lead to socialism in the United States."

Over at the Horseshoe, Buckeye fans were seeking redemption in the 1975 season after losing the January 1st Rose Bowl to USC by a score of 18-17.  Ohio State, with returning Heisman trophy winner Archie Griffin in the backfield, was ranked #1 in the nation at the time and with a scrappy Illinois team coming to town the following weekend,  the pressure was on coach Woody Hayes to have the team playing up to preseason expectations.  Sound familiar?

Non sports fans in Columbus had the option of heading over to the Southern Theatre to see Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby star in "Let's Do It Again" while those searching for a little more spice could have opted for the Busty Russell Amateur Night over at the New Garden Burlesque at 5th and High. The burlesque house opened daily at 10am, meaning there were probably at least a handful of patrons checking out Busty when I was born at 2pm that day. The Garden Theatre still stands today, though it appears to be searching for a new owner or a wrecking ball.

Learning about Mayor Moody - and the city he inspected -  inspired me to go out and inspect the city for myself.  My city-wide inspection began last night with a trip to the Newport Music Hall to see Mat Kearney, an up-and-coming singer and songwriter who wears a fedora.  Between songs Kearney noted that the Newport is America's "Longest Continually Running Rock Club."  Though I couldn't confirm this claim, I can say that the smell in the bathroom alone was all the evidence that I needed:  the Newport has been around for a while, at least since Moody was reelected.

My friend Chris went along for the inspection.  As we walked into the Newport we worried aloud whether we'd be the only relics from the 1970's attending this concert, and then we spent nearly the entire opening act looking at every single person in our field of view and categorizing each person as 'older than us' or 'younger than us.'  It was satisfying to find an equal number of people in each category as this allowed us to feel neither young nor old, just somewhere in the very gray and confusing middle.  We also wondered if other people might be playing the same game; was someone out there giving us the once over and adding us to their own statistical survey? Who else was here on a city inspection?  We tucked in our bellies and maintained our cool.

Of course, a city inspection is not without its dangers.  Sometimes when night falls and beer spills, the wild animals come out to hunt. (See:  Cougars)

At one point, we had to avert our eyes when we noticed a pack of local Cougars belting out the lyrics of one of Kearney's songs.  They were high-fiving each other, too. Somehow it made us feel less cool to be howling the same lyrics that Cougars might enjoy, and we started to worry that if we sang too loud the Cougars would hear the sounds of fresh meat and pounce on us from the shadows of a nearby pillar.

But tonight, there would be no attack, no car accident, no stirring on the streets of Columbus.  We mouthed the words to Kearney's songs, keeping one eye on the stage and the other on a swivel.  Moody would've been proud of the guy who was born on his re-election day; on this night, the city was at peace under my watch.

The Day Ohio Went Dry

Saturday’s big game between Ohio State and Southern Cal gave me a front-row seat to the wondrous effects of alcohol on the human mind. Little else can explain the sight of a young man with a painted face muscle his way through a crowd to confront an elderly couple wearing USC colors and yell “You suuuuuuuuuuck!”

It makes you wonder: what would life be like without alcohol? Once or twice I’ve stopped drinking for a few months for different reasons – medication, general self-disgust – and found that I sleep better, lose weight, and save money. But when I'm face to face with the golden glow of a frosty draft or the velvety, seductive tones of a glass of red wine, I always give up trying to give up alcohol.

If it’s hard to imagine giving up drinking for a month or two, it’s even more difficult to fathom that there was once a time in American history where the government tried to make everyone give up drinking. Forever! These were the days of the Anti-Saloon League and Prohibition. Given all of the recent arm-wrestling over health care in this country, can you believe that the government once worked together long enough – it took almost a year to get the required votes – to pass a constitutional amendment banning the “manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors”? You really have to care about public health to get that one passed.

Unfortunately, the idea proved to be so terrible, or at the very least impractical, that it became the first amendment of the constitution to be wiped off the books when it was repealed by the 21st amendment, aka the That Wasn’t Such a Great Idea After All Amendment.

As I watched thousands of Ohioans get drunk on Saturday, I wondered whether they knew of Ohio’s deep roots in the nation’s effort to ban alcohol at the turn of the century. The national Anti-Saloon League had grown from the efforts and organizational strategies of Anti-Salooners in Ohio, more specifically of Howard H. Russell, a lawyer and divinity student in Oberlin in the 1880’s. Russell and others had concerns about the emerging influence of brewers nationwide who had figured out how to produce, transport, and refrigerate their product in large quantities. Middle-class workers began to drink the cheap, readily available grog during their lunch hours, sometimes having the beer delivered in pails by local school-children.

One thing that Ohio taught other states leading the charge to prohibition was the value of holding ‘local-option’ elections which enabled voters to decide, on a town-by-town level, whether the town should be wet or dry. This grassroots campaign to rid the nation of sweet, sweet beer was driven in part by the efforts, publications, and propaganda of the American Issue Publishing Company based right here in Westerville. Eventually American Issue became the most widely circulated publisher of temperance literature, with over 300,000 copies of its journal published in 1907.

The literature printed and distributed from Westerville included newspapers, fliers, magazines, and cartoons promoting the voice of the temperance movement and highlighting all of the wretches of drinking. One section of American Issue published fictional, cautionary tales for young people tempted to drink. The best one I read was called “Pasture Gossip,” about two horses named Gypsy and Barney hanging out in the pasture swapping stories about the local drunks and the saloon keepers conspiring to keep them drunk. In the end, they conclude that it’s much better to be a horse, where at least your mind is safe from the poisonous ale plaguing the townspeople.

American Issue also composed songs to be sung at prohibition rallies throughout Ohio and the rest of the country. The chorus of one song called “The World Is Going Dry” goes like this:

We’ll work for prohibition
Wherever men are found;
We’ll fight the liquor traffic
In earth’s remotest bound;

Come join the mighty army,
Help raise the battle cry!
Rally now with us,
Be up and ready,
We’ll make the whole world dry!

As a means to stir up support for a cause, this song was not all that different from the one I heard sung by 100,000 people Saturday night at Ohio Stadium, where the world was not going dry:

And when we win the game,
We’ll buy a keg of booze,
And we’ll drink to old O-hi-o
Till we wobble in our shoes!

The origin of this song dates back to, you guessed it, the early 1900’s around the time that the brewers were gaining strength and the teetotalers began to fight back with songs of their own. When the eighteenth amendment was ratified in 1919 banning the production and sale of alcohol, the words of the Ohio State song – which was actually a patchwork of other songs from other schools, including Michigan of all places – were changed to:

And when we win the game,
I’ll tell you what we’ll do
We will yell for old O-hi-o
Till we wobble in our shoes!

On Saturday night in 2009, exactly one hundred years after American Issue was wallpapering the state of Ohio with anti-alcohol admonitions, Buckeye nation confirmed that the warnings have fallen on deaf ears as 100,000 Ohioans drank, yelled, and, when the game was over, wobbled their way out of the ‘Shoe.

Just Say Yes

One of the advantages of living in a place like Korea is the option of being linguistically clueless.  Conversations sometimes involved little more than pretending to understand local taxi drivers and convenience store cashiers.  Pretending was easy: I maintained eye contact, occasionally nodding my head and making a short ‘hm’ sound every thirty seconds.  My students used to do this when I would explain Noam Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar.

           

But here in Korea, there’s a tacit agreement:  I’ll pretend to understand you if you pretend to understand me.  You talk for two minutes, then it’s my turn.  All questions must be of the yes/no variety, and should predictably call for a yes answer.  One time a taxi driver had asked me a series of questions over the span of our short drive, to which I dutifully responded yes.  He seemed content with all of my yes’s until one yes left him startled. Whether he had asked if I wanted to turn right or if North Korea should be bombed, the answer clearly should not have been yes. 

            “Yes??!” he said incredulously.

    
     

“Oh, I mean…no!” I corrected myself.

           

“Yes, yes,” he confirmed, smiling, and continued to talk with no further questions.

           

Back in America, I'm finding that the yes/no conversation rules aren't followed.  Here, it's all about making snappy comments to show off our wit.  Though I can't prove this scientifically, this is especially true among men.  Our conversations tend to go like this:

A:  Witty comment

B:   Witty retort

A:  Touche!

B:   (Scurries away before next witty comment)

Nowadays I find myself on the losing end of these verbal jousts. My witty remarks don’t seem to come to me until long after the moment has passed, much like George Costanza’s Jerkstore line.

A few days ago I got a verbal frappacino from the barista at the local Caribou coffee.  I walked in around 9am, well before the first intelligent thought had passed through my head.  The barista had been downing shots of espresso for hours by then.  When he noticed my blue t-shirt adorned with a picture of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello home, it was game on.

“Thomas Jefferson! 3rd president of the United States, author of the Declaration of Independence, though he did own more than 500 slaves," he exclaimed.

“Yeah…um.” I responded.  As a graduate of Mr. Jefferson’s university in Virginia, I should’ve had something to add.  I did a little Google search of relevant information in my brain, but it returned zero results.  "Quite a guy," I mustered.

“So what can I get you this morning?”

“Just a coffee?” I ask, wondering if it’s too late for this.

“Big one, small one, fat one, tall one?” the barista rhymed.

“Ummm."  I produced the 'whatever is fine' look.  Though I'm 6'3" I felt much shorter at this point.

“Thomas Jefferson would go with a large,” he concluded.

I let out a single, labored ‘ha’, slowly stepped away from the queue, and immediately wondered why I had left Korea.  Sometimes it's nice to live in a world of complete and total ignorance.

Tis' the season to be irrational

It’s three weeks before Ohio State kicks off against Navy and our season tickets are nowhere to be found. As an unemployed 33-year-old living in my parents’ house, I make myself useful by lurking near the mail slot every day around noon, peering out in anticipation of the postman’s arrival. Sometimes I spot his blue sack ambling down the street, then resist the temptation to walk over and request a peek into his mailbag.

In fact, one set of tickets had already arrived, a pair of faculty tickets in C-deck. But another set, two prized A-deck 50-yard-line tickets, were missing. These tickets had been in our family for as many years as my dad had worked for Ohio State, thirty and counting.

 These were the tickets that allowed me to see Keith Byars rush for 274 yards and five touchdowns in a 1984 game against Illinois, to watch as Eddie George eclipsed that mark by steamrolling the same Illinois team for 314 yards in 1995. Three decades of memories from the Horseshoe were embedded in these tickets; the anticipation of their arrival began in the spring when applications for tickets were sent out. The day of their arrival was looked forward to with as much zeal as Christmas morning.

Today could be the day. When the postman reaches our house, I stay clear of the windows lest he see me and discover what a ticket-stalker I’ve become. I wait for the sound of the mail swooshing down through the chute, then I make my move toward the slot. But the hunt returns no bounty. The magic manila envelope bearing a red-lettered return address never arrives.

Now, two weeks till kickoff and the whole family is starting to sweat. Repeated phone calls to the Ohio State ticket office end in a familiar refrain: The tickets have been mailed out, we’re told, and they’ll be there soon. The trouble is, the tickets were all mailed out a week ago. Friends and fellow Buckeyes have already received their season tickets, which only compounds our fears that ours have been lost.

We begin to assume the worst: our prized tickets have been fumbled, perhaps intercepted at the line of scrimmage. But who? And how? Can they be recovered? Another call to Ohio State answers the latter question: even if our tickets never arrive, they can be reprinted with new barcodes and picked up at will call on game days.
This is very reassuring, but then this thought occurs: the original tickets are still on the loose. Two real Ohio State season tickets, somewhere within I-270. I am no longer a mail stalker – I’m now part of a CSI Columbus investigation.

My sister Sara becomes my co-conspiracy theorist. One afternoon we sit down to hash out the crime and its web of consequences. We agree on a couple of things: the original tickets have definitely been stolen, must be en route to a local ticket broker. Those tickets are officially hot, and, if Stub Hub’s current prices can be trusted, the set of two could fetch as much as $4000 on the open market. For the USC game alone, comparable tickets are going for almost $1500 for the pair. There is a lot of money at stake here, so we follow the money down its dirty trail.

Sara and I imagine this scenario: Someone pays $1500 for tickets to the Ohio State – USC game. An exorbitant price, yes, but maybe it’s a once-in-a-lifetime purchase, an anniversary gift or an extravagant birthday present for a Buckeye fan from someone who really, really loves this Buckeye fan, knows what it means to go to this game. The new owner of the now-voided tickets makes preparations for game-day. A full day of tailgating in the shadow of the ‘Shoe, of reveling in fall’s glory, of hoping aloud that the tickets are worth it, that they’re OSU-Miami worth it and not OSU-Florida worth it. This is the year, the night that we will reverse our fortune.

Night falls and voices rise as fans make their way toward the stadium. The illegitimate ticket-holder arrives at the gates and is told, sorry, you can’t come in, that these tickets, worth so much only minutes ago, are now worth no more than the cardboard they were printed on. A week of game-day dreams vanishes in a poof of scarlet and gray. Somewhere in the deep and dark forest of Craigslist, the seller reclines on a bed of cash.

Sara and I hope this all can be avoided, and we really hope the buyer of the black-market tickets won’t track us down. We consider sending out a blast email to Columbus area ticket vendors, telling them not to buy or sell these tickets; maybe a public announcement in the Dispatch could prevent it all. But we try to be realistic: this will not end well for some unlucky Buckeye fans. It may not end well for us.

It’s five days before Navy and Ohio State take the field. Though our new tickets are guaranteed, I have no leads in our investigation of the lost tickets. The case has stalled. We fear an inevitable confrontation at the seats, maybe with a guy who had too much to drink, got in the stadium somehow, wants to find out who is sitting in the seats he paid for. It won’t be pretty.

Back at home, the phone rings. This could be the break I’ve been waiting for, the one piece of information that will help me crack the case.

“Hi Steve, it’s Mom!” says the cheery voice on the line. She’s always cheery, no reason to think she has a lead.

But there is news, a suggestion for me to check an envelope that has been sitting on her desk for a few weeks now, the one containing the C-deck faculty tickets. Cordless phone in hand, I walk toward the desk, knowing what a discovery of the tickets would mean: the irrational flu has stuck again. I find the envelope, feel its thickness, know immediately that it’s fatter than one set of tickets should be. I reach in, pull out, and unfold not one but two sets of season tickets, all attached in a series of perforated sections.

“They’re here,” I tell my mom, and we both acknowledge how collectively stupid we feel as a family.

Maybe we were stupid for not checking, for letting our minds wander down such a sinister path when the tickets were in our presence all along. But maybe we were just being irrational, as irrational as we all get when football season comes to Columbus.