Remember When You Didn’t Hunger For The Hunger Games?

Yesterday’s “Today” show featured Jennifer Lawrence, the star of “The Hunger Games,” the movie version of the latest series of books for adults who like to read kids’ books. I was all set to scoff until they started showing clips of the film, where kids have to do battle on television in a dystopian future. The story seemed so compelling that I wanted to read the book and be that guy who tells everyone that the book was better than the movie.

My library had no copies on the shelf, and when I tried to put myself on the wait list the librarian led me into a room in the back, where, she said, I would “have an opportunity to borrow the book.”

In this room were 11 other library patrons. We were told that there was one copy of “The Hunger Games” and that we were going to have to compete for it in a series of events. I wanted to ask why they had jettisoned the usual wait list procedure, but a bell rang and each of the other contestants picked up a bow and arrow. I picked up mine, and was a little worried because the last arrow I shot had been four inches thick and had “Nerf” printed along its side. But when everyone started running into the main part of the library, my animal nature took over.

Like every time I go into the library, even the times when I’m not doing battle, I headed to the fiction section. I always like to look at the classic novels that I haven’t read, and imagine that I’ve read them. An arrow came flying at me, but I blocked it with a copy of “Ulysses.” Then I fell and rolled over to some Cormac McCarthy books, and was so entranced by the lyrical descriptions of the west that I forgot about the people trying to kill me. I guess they forgot about me too, because a little later I was told to return to the room in the back. Now there were only six of us, all trying not to look at the pile of bloodied library cards in the corner.

The next event involved a pool of raging water in the east wing of the building. I never noticed this before, but now I understood why the budget vote had been so close. We were told that the first three people to swim to the other side would be lifted out of the pool, while the remaining three…the librarian held her nose and pantomimed sinking. That bell rang again and we all jumped in the water. Luckily for me, my wife doesn’t let me wear shoes in the house, and so I wear loafers for convenient de-shoeing. These loafers I easily kicked off before getting in the pool, and was the first to reach the other side while the others were delayed untying their laces.

For the final event I was placed at a round table with the other two remaining contestants. We were each handed a copy of “Ivanhoe,” and told that the first one to finish reading it would be the victor. The previous trials had been nothing. “I don’t think I can do it,” said one of the others, a middle-aged man. The woman to his right kept shaking her head, tears coming to her eyes. I, too, thought I would die before I got through this book again. And then I remembered how my English teacher schooled me on it after I proved to have not read it very closely. I could just pretend to read it. This I did, and passed the quiz at the end with flying colors. The other two contestants barely even tried.

I came home with my copy of “The Hunger Games.” As I kicked off my shoes in the doorway, my wife asked me if she could read it after I was done. I told her that I was probably just going to see the movie.

Posted on 22 March 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 12

Remember When You Didn’t See Those “26.2” Stickers On Cars?

I was on my way to Lowe’s to complain that I couldn’t push the walls of my house like the people in that “Never Stop Improving” commercial, when I saw a sticker on the back of a car that read “26.2” in bold black print against a white background. I’ve nearly gotten into accidents trying to decipher these cryptic stickers.

One time it was “ADK” that challenged my intellect on the New York State Thruway.

“All Dieting Kangaroos? Ankles Do Kink?” I said aloud. “Albert David Kaufman?” It wasn’t until I arrived home and checked the Internet that I learned that “ADK” was short for “Adirondack,” something I should have figured out from the frame packs and scruffy beards.

A few weeks later I was on the Long Island Expressway, gripping the steering wheel in one hand and rosary beads in the other, when I saw a sticker that read “OBI” in the same black print on white background. After I accelerated a bit to confirm that Alec Guinness wasn’t driving the car, I decided that I needed to know what this “OBI” meant. At the time I was conducting a one-man boycott of the Internet for giving me too much information about the Olsen twins. Determined to solve the mystery, I put on my Scooby Doo hat and followed the car.

Although I did not score well on the “spying” section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, I managed to tail the car pretty well by pretending that it was driving from a wedding ceremony to a reception, and that I’d left the directions in the yarmulke basket. Eventually the car came to rest in the parking lot of a strip mall. The driver went into a burrito joint adjacent to a nail salon and one of those stores that charges no more than a dollar for items worth 99 cents.

I got in line behind him, and pretended to study the different combinations of beans, rice, and guacamole that the establishment offered. But I was really listening for any clues as to what this “OBI” might mean.

“I’d like a chicken burrito, please,” the man said. Maybe this was an attempt to throw me off the trail.

“Black or pinto beans, sir?”

“Um, pinto. Wait, no, black.”

So this guy wants to play games, I said to myself. He moved towards the register and out of earshot. I would have stayed closer but I was in the midst of a crisis in choosing between mild and medium salsa.

I was, however, able to get a seat next to him at a long high table against the storefront window. Unfortunately, all I could make out was chewing, and when he left I couldn’t follow him out, owing to complications that arise when one loses focus while eating something wrapped in tinfoil. When I returned home from the Emergency Room, I called an end to the Internet boycott and discovered that “OBI” stood either for the Oak Beach Inn, an infamous Long Island beach club, or for Ordnugsgemässes Beschaffungs-Institut.

With this history, I tried to ignore the 26.2 sticker staring at me as we inched along in Saturday afternoon traffic. I knew that guessing would make my brain hurt, and I couldn’t take out my iPhone and check because not surfing the Internet while driving was one of the conditions of my re-admission into the International Brotherhood of Men Who Can Do Only One Thing At A Time.

But the number kept gnawing at me, and with the stop and go traffic I felt like I was running a mara—

That’s it! I said aloud. A marathon is exactly 26.2 miles. I was impressed with myself, but the feeling didn’t last. I wondered why this person needed to show off to the rest of the doughnut-inhaling nation that he can run 26.2 miles without the aid of a car or helicopter. Perhaps it was time to do some showing off of my own.

The next day I slapped on my own “26.2” sticker, circled the decimal point, and drew an arrow running from the decimal to the space two digits to the left.

Posted on 19 March 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 20

Remember Julius Caesar?

What can be said about Julius Caesar that has not already been said? He was a very good tipper, routinely going over 20% and making everyone else at the table feel cheap.

One time, when we were in Gaul fighting the Celts over whether their name was pronounced with a hard or a soft “C,” Caesar parked his chariot in the space reserved for a local chieftain who had 20 years of service and special sticker.

“Well I didn’t see any sign on the space,” said Caesar, but the man’s feathers were ruffled over this breach of etiquette. He didn’t care if Caesar was there to make war or not, and Marc Antony’s attempts to smooth things over with a few talents of gold and some raspberry-passionfruit wine were not successful. Eager to please, Antony remedied the situation his own way, which led to even greater disappointment.

“You told me to take care of it!” Antony said, waving his hands in the air.

“Well you didn’t have to chop his head off right there in front of everyone,” said Caesar. “How can I go to the supermarket now? It’s really awkward.”

Caesar also loved going out to new restaurants. But he made it hard for everyone because he always wanted Italian.

“But we had Italian last night,” Antony complained once. “Can’t we try that new barbecue place?”

“Yes,” said Cicero, “I heard the food was good but the service slow and desserts overpriced.”

Caesar was almost persuaded, but the omens for barbecue were bad, and he made them all get Italian for the third night in a row.

There was the time he returned from Egypt and discovered that he’d forgotten to pay his credit card bill. “It was one lousy day late!” he shouted to a scribe from the bank who was recording the entire message for quality purposes. When the credit card company refused to take off the late fee, Caesar had the scribe crucified and asked to speak with his supervisor. The late fee was taken off but the interest was, unfortunately, already chiseled in stone.

Julius Caesar was so excited when he invaded Britain. He didn’t even mind all the rain. “The savages are so polite,” he wrote in his journal. His observations were so poignant and witty that I was as surprised as he was when he couldn’t get any publishers in Rome to do even a limited printing. Caesar was told that travel memoirs had been “done to death” and the market was looking for young-adult paranormal romance.

People misunderstood Caesar’s desire to become an absolute dictator. They called him a tyrant. “I’m really not a tyrant,” he would lament. “So I want to divert a river. Big deal. Look at how it bends in the map. Don’t you think it would look better if it flowed in a straight line?”

He even got criticism for changing the calendar. He was only trying to give his daughter the perfect wedding.

“Ah, you see, there’s absolutely nothing left in June,” the wedding planner said, consulting his stone tablet. “Everyone wants to get married in June. So that takes into September…”

“But I don’t want to get married in September,” his daughter said. “Daddy, you promised me I could have a wedding worthy of Minerva.”

“Did I say that? All right. And so you shall!” Caesar said, and created the month of July, thus clearing up a few more weekends for his daughter choose from. He still had trouble getting invitations printed up, though, as the scribes weren’t used to writing the name of the new month, and took several drafts to get it right.

But all things in antiquity have to end in tragedy so that writers have something to write about. I told Caesar not to go to the Senate that day. Nothing was on the agenda expect for a routine appropriations bill for vomitoria, and a total puff-piece of legislation formally recognizing that being eaten by a lion was more humane than being eaten by a bear.

“But I heard they are going to serve cake,” he said.

“Sir,” I said to him, “you are the absolute ruler of Rome, the most powerful man in the world, a god among men. You can have cake at home any time you want.”

“Yes,” Caesar said, gathering up his toga, “but the cake at home is just not the same.”

Posted on 15 March 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 10

Remember Renting Movies At the Video Store?

The video rental store near my home had a room in the back that you entered through a pair of saloon-style swinging half-doors. The room was low-lit with a reddish tint and greeted customers with a sign, set at eye-level for the average 11-year-old boy, that read, “Must Be 18 or Older to Enter This Room.” My under-18 friends and I would pretend to be really interested in the titles adjacent to this room.

“Oh, wow, I didn’t know that this, uh, French film was available already,” I would say, studying the cover of the movie and glancing sideways every few seconds like I’d been electrocuted.

My friend would mosey on over to me. “Ah,” he would say, touching the side of a different movie while he looked over the swinging doors to our neighborhood’s slice of Bourbon Street. “This is supposed to be really…uh…interesting. Isn’t it starring someone famous?”

“Yes,” I would answer, pointing to yet a different movie while I peered through the slats in the swinging doors. “I think this is supposed to be John Candy’s best work.”

But physical video stores started to die long before Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy. When Netflix hit the market, I was one of the first to sign up. I remember creating a spreadsheet that would show me how to maximize the number of movies I could see in a month. After a well-spent hour of my employer’s time setting up the queue of movies I wanted to see, the only step left to execute was to watch the movie the moment I saw that red envelope in my mailbox. It was perfect.

Perfect, that is, until a movie arrived that I did not want to watch at that particular moment. When I was choosing the movies, I always had very high standards, and chose movies that close friends had informed me that I absolutely had to see if we were going to continue being friends. But sometimes, after a hard day in the cubicles, I did not feel like digging in to “Breaking the Waves” or “Mulholland Drive,” but instead wanted to watch a few hours of people on television yelling at each other.

So I would go one day without watching the Netflix movies, and then another day, and another, until I was so depressed about not watching it the moment it came in that I couldn’t even think about the movie without getting sick. Why, you ask, did I not just return the movie without watching it? Because that would have been a waste of money.

All that Netflix dysfunctionality is behind me, however. These days I use Redbox. Just go to my local supermarket, approach the giant red box, select my movie, and swipe my card. The movies cost between $1 and $2, and even if I’m late I’m charged only another dollar per day. I get the instant gratification of Blockbuster, with the low prices of Netflix. It’s so ideal that I’m wondering how long it will last.

Because history teaches us that convenient and inexpensive sources of movies don’t last. The price of a Redbox movie will start to climb, or the selection will get worse, or there will be stories of people being swallowed alive by the giant red boxes, and I’ll have to go off in search of another source of movies.

And as I drive around the neighborhood, maybe I’ll come to stop in front of my local movie theater. As if under a spell, I’ll get out of my car and walk in and pay the exorbitant sum for an adult ticket. And I’ll sit in the theater, and let the movie envelop me, and I’ll forget all my worries about where to get movies.

Posted on 12 March 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 17

Remember the President’s Fitness Test?

When I was in elementary school and completing my gym fellowship, after the square dancing seminar but before I had to defend my thesis on crab soccer, we were advised that we would all be participating in something called the President’s Test on Fitness. The President’s Test, as we called it, was a series of five events by which we’d all be embarrassed in front of our peers: the shuttle run, pull-ups, sit-ups, the sit-and-reach, and the mile.

The shuttle run sounded interesting at first because it contained the word “shuttle.” This was a more innocent and simpler time in America, and shuttle launches had yet to become boring. I and my cohorts all had being an astronaut on our “when I grow up lists,” usually just behind baseball player, football player, and He-Man.

The shuttle run, however, was nothing like going into outer space. A pair of erasers was placed at one end of the gym, and a starting line at the other end. One by one we would sprint from behind the line, grab one eraser, run back to the starting line, deposit the eraser in hand behind the starting line, sprint back to the other eraser, grab it, and run back to the starting line before you could hear the other students making fun of how slow you ran.

Pull-ups involved taking an overhand grip on a horizontal bar set higher than you, letting your feet dangle for a few moments, and making it look like you were making a diligent effort at doing a pull-up without making so many funny faces that you became known as the kid who makes funny faces when he is trying to do a pull-up. Today the pull-ups are probably done in a private room so that only the gym teacher gets to laugh at the funny faces. But in those days public humiliation was one of the five food groups.

Sit-ups were easy. You just had a partner hold on to your feet while you did as many sit-ups in a minute as possible. I used to gain a competitive edge by playing with my partners Velcro sneakers, unfastening and re-fastening the noisy fibers over and over to disrupt his rhythm. Or if he came from that sect who wore KangaROOS, I would search for the little hiding place in the footwear that held the student’s milk or drug money.

The sit-and-reach was something that if on television today would say “Do Not Attempt” at the bottom of the screen. The subject sat on a mat with legs straight out, and a wooden box with scored measurements was placed at the end of the feet. The student would then be asked to bend forward and stretch his or her arms as far as possible past the feet. The performance in this event would be measured by the farthest measurement the student’s fingertips could reach on the wooden box, divided by the number of screams emitted as the gym teacher pushed on the student’s shoulders, shouting “Come now, you can reach farther than that! Don’t let those European kids beat us! You owe it to your country!”

Because that was the original purpose behind the President’s Test. The council that eventually created this wonderful opportunity for American children was established in 1956 by then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower after he saw a study that showed European children to be more fit than American children. I, however, did not know or care about the patriotic origins of the requirement that I trip along a dusty track, heaving and wheezing and flailing my arms like a whirligig, taking enough staggered steps in my Velcro sneakers to hopefully add up to a mile.

The President’s Test has probably been redesigned to include meditation and yoga and an exercise where you try to name as many vegetables as you can in under a minute. The tests are all done in private rooms, and everyone passes. And most of all, true to the origins of the test, the mile is only a kilometer.

Posted on 8 March 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 16

Remember When Television Programs Didn’t Have Animated Promos For Other Programs?

When I was a young whippersnapper and could eat at McDonald’s three times a week without a health care proxy, there was a separation between television programs, the commercials that funded the television programs, and the advertisements for upcoming television programs that would attract more sponsors, who would fund more televisions etc. I could watch an entire episode of Growing Pains without being distracted by a tiny Tony Danza plugging Who’s the Boss in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, berating Samantha for buying a $300 pair of boots with her modeling money. I watched shows to be distracted from my life. I did not need a distraction from the distraction.

The only superfluous animation on television then was the channel with the stock-ticker, and I was subjected to that only on days when school was closed and my grandfather came over to watch me while my parents worked. I guess he never got the memo that the kids were supposed to choose the show.

But no channel these days leaves the house without distracting animation at the bottom of the screen. It would be like walking around without pants. During a show about an elite fighting force that infiltrates terrorist cells by offering discounted driveway sealing, there’s a little bride-to-be trying on a wedding dress in the bottom-right corner. During a show about how to make zucchini casserole in a coffee cup, there’s a tiny cupcake wearing an even tinier smiley face. During a sit-com about teenagers mouthing-off to their parents, there is a two-inch promo of a sit-com about teenagers mouthing-off to their parents.

I’m sure that when the networks decided to add the moving miniatures at the bottom of the screen, it was after careful market research that showed the average viewer’s brain could handle this level of multi-tasking. For to absorb the full meaning of the television program and the promo, the nervous system has some work to do.

In the same amount of time that Derek Jeter has to decide whether to swing at a pitch, the average television viewer has to decide whether the promo is worth the transfer of primary focus from the airing program. In the time that Derek Jeter has to move his arms, legs, and torso simultaneously to connect the bat squarely with the ball, the average viewer at home has to make note of the name, date, and time of the upcoming show without missing any of the witty dialogue or dramatic irony of the current show in which the viewer has so heavily invested. That so many millions of people can do this for four to six hours a day without going crazy is a testament to the nobility of the human mind.

I, however, have never been able to do that. Yes, I am one of those poor souls who was born with a brain incapable of focusing on more than one thing at a time. I cannot even go through the preliminary decision-making stage without shifting my mono-focus. If I watch a program, and a tiny video or animated graphic appears at the bottom of the screen, I am compelled to convey my full attention to the promo, whether I am interested or not.

And when the brief interlude is over and I just as automatically return my focus to the program I was watching, the program is not the same as it was. The show is duller in comparison to the new and shiny show that was being advertised at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes I even forget what I was watching, and can’t remember until I see a promo for the current show during the airing of the promo-ed show.

And then a commercial comes on and I forget about both shows, and focus only on buying something.

N.B. This is a digitally remastered version of an earlier post on the same topic. MK

Posted on 5 March 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 14

Remember When There Weren’t All These Fitness Devices?

It seems like every time I have to move my belt out another notch there is another fitness device being marketed.

My first introduction to exercise devices was watching my grandfather use the stairs. He was the original stairmaster. Whenever he and my grandmother came to visit us for Mother’s Day or Rosh Hashanah, my grandfather would spend time each evening going up and down the short staircase from our foyer to the living room, climbing up the three steps and then immediately climbing down in reverse, over and over again, until my grandmother told him to knock it off and sit down for their evening dose of gin rummy.

In my twenties, when I was single, I decided that the only obstacle to true love was that I did not have those six-pack abdominals. So I invested $19.95 plus tax and shipping in a device called the Ab Wheel. The Ab Wheel consisted of two small wheels pressed together, maybe ten inches in diameter, with a small axle running between and handles on either end of the axle so that you could grip it with both hands.

The starting position was flat on you stomach, gripping the axle with your hands. Then you pulled the Ab Wheel, rolling it towards your midsection, while keeping your toes in the same spot so that you simultaneously bent at the waist and stuck your rear end in the air ever so briefly before going back to start and repeating the exercise. It was like imitating a folding table, and would have been the perfect device if I’d been able to do more than one repetition before collapsing on the floor.

Then I saw an infomercial for something called the EMS-7500 Muscle Stimulator. It consisted of four electrodes connected to wires that ran into a small computerized console. You stuck the electrodes on to your stomach, turned on the computer, and without your doing anything, electrical impulses would be sent to your abdominals at regular intervals, causing the muscles to twitch and in so doing burn off the fat that was hiding millions of sexy stomachs across America. I could see that the advantages of the Muscle Stimulator were that you did not have to leave your chair or bar stool, and you could pretend to be the subject of a scientific experiment.

For a few moments I considered getting one. Then I realized I would be paying to electrocute myself. If I was going to get in shape, I was obviously going to have to work at it, day after day, in good weather and bad. That’s when I decided to go to law school.

Just the other day I saw an advertisement for a new weight-loss device. Except it’s not a device at all. It is a powder that you sprinkle on any food, and it magically reduces the caloric value. The commercial showed some very in-shape people prancing around a breach and sprinkling this product on hamburgers, pizza, and ice cream.

This must be the greatest invention of all time. No gym, no running, no electrocution. It is as if finding the right device came down to simply finding something that would help a person lose weight without requiring any effort. No more lifting weights. No more crunches on those giant beach balls. No more trying to figure out what to do with your keys and wallet.

Of course, it is only a matter of time before someone decides that there is a market for a device that doesn’t require any sprinkling. The infomercial will show a black and white video of someone sprinkling the magic diet powder on their fudge sundae, and the voice-over will say, “Tired of all that pesky sprinkling?” as the black and white image is crossed with a giant red X. “Well, now you don’t have to. Try the ‘Being Comfortable With Your Body 9000’ and you’ll never have to sprinkle again.”

There will be testimonials from people who have tried the Being Comfortable With Your Body 9000, and they will all say how it transformed their lives. They will also all have the bodies of Olympians. But the customers at home won’t care about that. All they will care about is the smiles, and that the product doesn’t require any effort, or electricity, or ingestion, but only a positive attitude and three easy payments of $19.95.

Posted on 1 March 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 8

Remember What Made You Fall in Love With the Movies?

Last night I swallowed my cynicism and watched the entire airing of the 2012 Academy Awards. There ought to be an award for watching the whole thing. I think I would at least get a nomination for Best Academy Awards Watcher in a Supporting Role, but would probably have had to read my prepared acceptance speech to only my mother, during my after-party at Applebee’s, after I lost to someone who did not throw up in his mouth a little bit every time an Oscar-winner used the word “incredible” to describe someone they worked with on the film.

My favorite part of this year’s Oscars, other than that commercial for Hulu where the streaming television service melts someone’s brain, were these little montages, sprinkled about the broadcast like tarragon, of famous actors like Reese Witherspoon, Brad Pitt, and Barbra Streisand, fawning about how they fell in love with the movies. I was grateful that these busy celebrities took the time to remind me of the power of movies to take me someplace far, far away from $15 and three hours of my life.

The montages got me thinking about the movies that I saw as a child that made me fall in love with the movies. If I had been sitting in front of the camera and shown a cue card with “SAPPY GUSHING” written on it, I would have had to say something about “Gremlins,” a 1984 Christmas movie about these little cute furry mammals that turn into medium-sized menacing reptilian monsters with homicidal tendencies and depraved indifference to human life.

“When Mrs. Peltzer shoved that Gremlin into the microwave and hit the power button,” I would say, looking slightly off-center, eyes tearing just enough to glisten but not quite filling to the brim, “I knew that these movies…these films…these…moving pictures on moving film had a way of bringing imagination to life and then exploding it all over the inside of a microwave oven. From that point on, I was hooked.”

Or perhaps I would talk about “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” a partially animated movie about a cartoon rabbit, the eponymous Roger, who is framed with a murder and has to go on the lam with a human detective named Eddie Valiant.

“That scene where Roger Rabbit and Eddie are handcuffed together,” I would say, leaning in towards the camera and shaking my hands, “and Eddie is trying to saw the handcuffs off with a hacksaw, and the box he’s leaning on keeps wobbling, so Roger Rabbit takes his hand out of the handcuffs to hold the box steady, so that now Eddie is sawing off handcuffs that are attached to only his hand, and Roger Rabbit sees that Eddie notices this and that Eddie looks mad, so Roger Rabbit quickly slips his hand back in the cuffs, and smiles, and Eddie yells at him, ‘You mean you could’ve taken your hand out of that cuff at any time?’ And Roger Rabbit replies, ‘No, not at any time. Only when it was funny.’

“Now,” I’ll say as I nod my head and point with my index finger at nothing, “that cartoon rabbit’s honesty in that scene is, to me, the essence of what it means to be an actor. That and sunglasses.”

But if I had to pick just one movie that hooked me onto cinema that I can watch in my home for free years after the theater release, it would have to be “The Wizard of Oz.” I am told that I saw that movie for the first time when I was three years old, and that when Dorothy wakes up at the end, in her home in Kansas, surrounded by loved ones she feared she would never see again, and says, “Oh, Auntie Em—there’s no place like home!” that I started crying, crying the tears of innocent joy that could be brought forth only from that perfect union of human truth and human emotion that is the hallmark of the movies.

Or maybe I knew I was being watched and wanted to give my parents a cute story.

Posted on 27 February 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 6

Remember When Mr. Coffee Was the Only Coffee Maker?

The mustachioed man in the center of the room took a drag of his electric cigarette and began his story.

“Beatrice bought me a Mr. Coffee when we had first started dating. This was before we were married. Up until that time I had to get my coffee by crashing the lobbies of Holiday Inns and taking advantage of the complimentary coffee they serve to people they believe are guests. The Mr. Coffee changed my life. Just put in the filter, scoop a few scoops of coffee, and pour in the water. So easy a caveman could do it.

“But an easy life has a way of becoming more complicated, and married people have a way of become less married. One day Beatrice was gone, and it was Janice in my life with pouty lips and Cuisinart coffee brewer that grinded coffee beans and kept track of appointments. I thought that this was the one, the coffee brewer that would make coffee that when I drank it, I could taste it, just like Quentin Tarantino’s character in ‘Pulp Fiction.’

“Yet it was not to be.

“When the thrill of assembling the seventeen-pieces of the grinder/feeder/cannon at 6:00 a.m. had worn off, I realized that the Cuisinart grinder was too high-maintenance. Time to say toodle-oo.”

He took another drag of his cigarette and adjusted his scarf, and I remembered that I was supposed to be taking notes. I had a notebook but nothing to write with except a pink highlighter. I wrote with it anyway. Beggars cannot be choosers.

The mustachioed man continued.

“I brought Mr. Coffee back from the basement and used it instead of the Cuisinart. When Janice asked me what I was doing, I told her that the Cuisinart was too complicated and poured in a dollop of my Silk soy creamer. The next day there was a Dear John next to the filters, and Mr. Coffee and I were alone again. But not for long.

“Noreen moved in with a French Press. It had been a gift from her mother for learning how to reply to the sender of group emails without replying to all. The French Press may have made excellent coffee. I would not know because I never figured out how to use it. I did not get any coffee, and succeeded only in proving Boyle’s Law with respect to Medium Roasts.

“Grimka—oh, Grimka! I remember your big eyes. Your graceful, slender back and tendency to give answers in the tone of a question. But mainly I remember your percolator. One of the two tenets by which I lived my life was that the more cups of coffee you made at once, the better the coffee tasted. The other tenet was that the the Powell family episodes of “Charles in Charge” better than the Pembroke family episodes.

“The percolator was so easy to use and made delicious coffee. But when I dumped the grinds down the garbage disposal, for two nights running the garbage disposal could not get to sleep, and had to keep getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.

“This time,” said the mustachioed man, unfolding, smoothing out, and then refolding his monogrammed pocket handkerchief, “I skipped that phase where there’s two coffee machines on the counter at once. One day it was the percolator, and the next it was Mr. Coffee. Grimka saw it, glared at me once, and then walked out of my life, sending her cat back for her clothes and Playstation 3.

“I knew then that I would never switch from Mr. Coffee to another coffee-making device. Even if the device cleaned itself. Even if the coffee tasted good. Nothing would pry me from grips of my friend, my Mr. Coffee.

“Until I met Penelope. We spent many weekends and holidays together. I’ve never felt so close to anyone in my life. True, Penelope was just a peel-off hologram that came with a bottle of Metamucil Fiber Caplets. But she told me about the Keurig single-serve coffee. I tried it and I have to admit, I love it. You just pop in a cartidge, push a button, and drink. The only thing to clean up is the little single-serve cartridge. No filters. No grinds. No required data plans. That coffee machine is the best thing that has ever happened to my morning.

“Of course, I could not say this to Mr. Coffee. After all our years together, I did not want to break his heart. So at first I put the Keurig on the counter next to Mr. Coffee, but a little ways back. And I would use the Keurig only two days a week, and sometimes on the weekend. Then I stopped using Mr. Coffee but kept using the Keurig the same amount. Then I kind of turned Mr. Coffee away, towards the commemorative plate collection, so that he wouldn’t see that I was using the Keurig five to seven times a week.

“And then one day, I had company coming over, and needed to make room on the counter for someone’s apricot trifle. I had to prioritize my kitchen appliances, and it was clear that Mr. Coffee was not going to make the cut. I covered his brew basket with a paper towel, took him in my arms, and carried him down to the basement where he would live out its days on a plastic shelf next to the newspaper-fueled mixing bowl my entomologist got me for Christmas.

“I don’t regret my decision. But sometimes, just sometimes, when I’m asleep, I think I hear something in the kitchen, like the sound of a plastic brew basket cutting a black electric cord. I run downstairs but see nothing but the Keurig, safe and sound. And I walk up to it, and put my arms around it, and whisper into its blue LCD screen that as long as we’re together, everything’s going to be all right.”

Posted on 23 February 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 11

Remember When No One Cared Where Their Food Was From?

When I was a kid I didn’t care where my food was from as long as it wasn’t from off the floor. Food falling on the floor is one of the worst things that can happen to you in elementary school. In later years we would learn about the “five second rule,” which I once mixed up with the “five minute rule” and almost got left back for poor attendance. But in elementary school, if there had been a little more room on those menus magneted to every refrigerator in the land, the description of the lunches would say something like “Not Dropped On the Floor Sloppy Joe.”

At restaurants today it is taken for granted that food is not dropped on the floor, or that if it is, no one will tell you about it. Instead, the menus emphasize the geographic origin of the ingredients. Everyone wants to know if the vegetables are locally grown, or if the chickens were raised on local farms, enjoying the fresh local air and tasty local feed, taking in the local theater and shopping at the local boutiques, before their necks were wrung ever so humanely.

Wikipedia describes the local food movement as a “collaborative effort to build more locally based, self-reliant food economies—one in which sustainable food production, processing, distribution, and consumption is integrated to enhance the economic, environmental and social health of a particular place.” There is a Taco Bell five minutes from my home that I’ve often relied upon, parking my car behind the dumpster so that my wife wouldn’t see it while she shops for fresh vegetables and couscous. But I don’t think that’s what they mean.

My first exposure to the local food movement was when my wife and I attended a farmer’s market near our home. The vendors had set up tables with their wares, and offered so many free samples of local tomatoes, local cheese, local bread, and local meat, that it was not long before I was looking for the local bathroom.

One table was offering locally made gourmet peanut butter. The options were far beyond the traditional chunky and smooth. There was chocolate-pretzel peanut butter, cookie-dough fudge peanut butter, jalapeño peanut butter. We were impressed. Then I looked at the price tag, and realized why choosy moms choose Jif. Panko-crusted animal-cracker peanut butter mixed with goat cheese and leeks may be great for dinner parties, but I had to conserve my cash for the parking attendant.

Local food, however, is about much more than nutrition and economics. There is controversy about what constitutes “local.” The United States Congress, in the 2008 Farm Act, defined “locally or regionally produced agricultural food product” as less than 400 miles from its origin. That means that “local” covers an area of 502,655 square miles, or, as Tom Hanks’s character in “Cast Away” would have put it, “twice the size of Texas.” Under that definition, I could secure a lot more free time by telling my wife I’m going out to run a few local errands.

I’m no member of Congress, but, to me, “local” implies that a chicken could have its head cut off and still be running around in my shopping cart when I’m swiping my frequent shopper card. Politics is truly the art of compromise.

But these lofty concepts and global disputes rarely affect my daily life. I eat whatever food I can find in the refrigerator or cupboard, with no thought of the journey it took to my gullet, and whether it paid tolls with E-Z Pass. The only time the local movement enters my decision-making process is when I’m at a restaurant, and I am given the choice between meats raised on local farms or meats from origins unknown. It is such a hard decision to make, that I already know I’m going to be reaching for antacids later on that night…antacids that are, fortunately, the most local food of all—right on the nightstand, next to my bed.

Posted on 20 February 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 26