Remember When You Could See Around Most Vehicles?

We’d come to the end of another Saturday lunch at P.F. Chang’s, and I was chewing gum so that if I got pulled over at a police checkpoint my breath wouldn’t smell like gluten-free ginger chicken with broccoli. I turned the ignition, adjusted the rearview mirror, released the emergency brake, popped in my “Drive Time Gaelic” compact disc, and put the car in reverse. And then I realized I couldn’t see to my left because we were flanked by a van that had plunged my gluten-free sedan into night.

“How am I supposed to see around this thing?” I asked my wife who was gazing into a compact mirror by the light of her smartphone. The van had a sticker on the rear right passenger bay window. It said, “I brake for large objects.”

Then I remembered a scene from the World War II movie Saving Private Ryan. I asked my wife for her compact mirror. Then I took the gum out of my mouth and stuck it to the back of mirror. I affixed the mirror and gum to the snow scraper that had been lying idle on the floor of the backseat, opened my window, and stuck the whole apparatus out and angled the mirror so that I could see around the van. It was the most use the scraper got all season.

“I think I can pull out after this Honda and Panzer tank,” I said.

“Okay, Field Marshal. But you’re buying me a new mirror.”

I got pretty handy with the scraper-scope. Any time I needed to see around a Suburban or Avalanche or Hummer, I just stuck the scope out the window and ignored the birds that came to perch. Sure there were stares from passerby, and even a few inquiries from police officers who wanted to know which facility I’d escaped from. But soon everyone recognized me, like you recognize that guy who drives around with a flag on his antenna that says, “Make Lemon Bars, Not War.”

Then one day I noticed other people with scraper-scopes. Except they didn’t all use scrapers and compact mirrors. Some used dentist’s mirrors. Others used shaving mirrors with metal accordion extenders. I even saw someone who had trained his dog to stick its head out the window, carrying in its mouth a long bone that had been wrapped in reflective foil. We the oppressed…we the downtrodden…we the great unwashed masses of coupe-, sedan-, smart-, and zip-car drivers were united in our quest to behold the other side of sport utility vehicles. When we passed on the highway we would waive to each other with our scopes.

It was another Saturday afternoon and I was in my car, savoring the interplay of the gluten-free “Buddha’s Feast” with the flourless chocolate dome. As usual my car was in eternal night thanks to a Dodge Durango and a minivan with seven gables. I stuck out my scraper-scope, angled it to see what I could see, and just happened to focus the mirror on the mirror of another scope sticking out of a Civic three spaces down. The two mirrors instantly produced an infinite number of smaller and smaller reflections inside each other, ending in a point of light so blazing that I was unable to see for a few moments.

And when the purple splotches finally cleared from my vision, there was nothing left of the compact mirror but some smoldering dust.

“Well, that’s it,” I said to my wife. “That was our only hope of getting out of here. Now we’ll have to wait until our sun becomes a super nova and swallows up all the SUVs on Earth.” I started looking for something good on the radio.

“Is that all?” she asked me.

I thought for a few seconds.

“Or I guess I could always back out slowly.”

Posted on 16 April 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 2

Remember Trapper Keepers?

Everyone had one and I wanted one too. It was called a Trapper Keeper. A plastic binder with sliding plastic rings and a flap that folded over the front, so that all the notes were “trapped” inside this latest assault on parents’ school budgets.

I remember when I sat my parents down and told them I wanted a Trapper Keeper. “So it’s just a binder with sliding plastic rings and a Velcro flap?” they asked.

“No, it also has a picture on the front. Jimmy has one with a Ferrari and I’d like to do something similar. Not the same exact thing, of course.”

“Of course.”

I chose a Trapper Keeper with a Ferrari on the front. I liked to sit in class and flip the switch that slid the plastic rings in and out of each other. The Establishment didn’t understand what an innovation that was. The metal rings in regular binders snapped together with a loud and irritating snap—if the rings snapped together at all! After a few days the male and female parts of the metal rings would fail to line up, and you would have to use your finger to bend the metal and force the rings closed.

The Trapper Keeper closed with a whisper. I would sit in class, opening and closing the plastic rings like a latter-day telegraph operator. I also liked to work the Velcro. Over and over again I would rip open the Velcro flap, open the front cover of the Trapper Keeper, open the plastic rings, close the plastic rings, close the front cover, and seal it with the Velcro flap.

“Mark, do you need to sit in the back of the room?” my teacher said, “Why don’t you choose one state for your folder and join the rest of the class? We are listing all the different uses of manila paper.”

I thought I could give her one pretty good use of manila paper that was not on the list, but then I remembered something Oscar the Grouch once said on Sesame Street: “Discretion is the better part of valor.”

I rejoiced in the feeling that my notes on the Civil War—also known as the War Between the States and the War to End Mutton Chops—were secure in style. The Trapper Keeper even accelerated my transition from carrying all my books in a backpack to the far more efficient method of carrying all my books in my arms, as I wanted all the world to behold my glorious plastic portfolio emblazoned with a red Ferrari. And as I traveled throughout my little school, I imagined that I too was that Ferrari, fast and sleek, until I was yelled at for running in the halls and had to appear in traffic court.

At home my infatuation with my Trapper Keeper was no more subdued. I would sit on the couch with the pretense of working on my thesis on the influence of Casio watches on youth culture. But all I did was open and close the Trapper Keeper, open and close its silent plastic rings, remove and inspect and reorder and replace its folders with the pockets on the sides, and sit and look at the way its plastic cover captured the glint of the twilight sun coming through our bay window.

And then one day the unthinkable happened. One of the plastic rings did not line up. I quickly realigned the ring-halves, but it was only the beginning. The other two rings started having their problems, too, and I noticed that the beautiful folders with the side pockets were getting mushy at the corners. Even the plastic cover had started to tear, and the Velcro on the front flap had a coat of orange cat hair. Father Time had not forgotten my Trapper Keeper.

I looked to my classmates for support, but they had all moved on to ever more efficient ways of keeping their notes together, such as folding them up into little squares and shoving the little squares into pocket books or duffel bags.

It was time to say goodbye to my Trapper Keeper. I opened and closed the plastic rings one last time, gently using my fingers to help them lock with dignity, folded the flap over, the Velcro fibers barely catching anymore, ran my hand over the Ferrari as a final salute, and laid the Trapper Keeper to rest in my parent’s basement where it could spend eternity next to Candy Land.

Posted on 12 April 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 9

Remember When Sugar Wasn’t the New Cocaine?

Last week Sixty Minutes aired a segment titled “Is Sugar Toxic?” that reported scientific evidence that the added sugar in various foods causes a variety of ailments such as heart disease, cancer, and looking like a whale. One neuroscientist, Eric Stice, stated that his studies show that the effects of sugar on the brain are similar to the effects of cocaine. I pictured frenzied people tapping out Domino packets onto pocket mirrors and snorting lines with plastic coffee stirrers.

When did sugar get to be so dangerous? Was it really that bad? I remembered summer camp when a fellow camper put 19 packets of sugar into her tea and spent the rest of the day in a spin-art machine.

Years ago, when I was a young and impressionable smart-aleck, Nancy Reagan told me to “Just Say No” to drugs. “It stands to reason,” I said to myself after the Sixty Minutes segment ended and segued into a commercial for Keebler fudge cookies, “that if they were still printing those green t-shirts with the ‘Just Say No’ printed with the line across it, sugar would be included in the campaign.” I decided that I was going to clean myself up for good, and eliminate sugar from my diet.

That night I created a “Quitting Sugar” event on Facebook and announced to my friends and family that I was quitting sugar, and that under no circumstances were they to give me any, even if I asked them pretty please with sugar on top. I had one last sugar blow out in my kitchen, feasting on Kit-Kats and Pixie Stix and the candy corn left my basement by the previous owners of the house.

The next morning I grabbed a giant garbage bag and went around collecting oatmeal creme pies and Yodels and pretty much anything that came individually enclosed in a little clear plastic wrapper. I took the giant bag out to the garage, recited a farewell sonnet to Little Debbie, and then spent the next hour trying to figure out if the products should be placed in a landfill.

The first few days without sugar were not that bad. I have an armchair that is really good for gripping, and there is a clinic nearby that dispenses free doses of Equal, no questions asked. But the addict does not die so quickly.

I started inventing reasons so that I could just “so happen” to have to put sugar in my food. “Isn’t tilapia supposed to be eaten with maple syrup?” I asked my wife over dinner. “I’m pretty sure I saw that on Rachel Ray. I don’t make the rules.” I would suggest an office ice cream party as a team-building exercise, and then resign myself to eating ice cream since there is no “diet” in team. I said that I just ate sugar at parties, and then crashed the birthday party that my neighbors were throwing for their 4-year-old son, attacking the cake in the kitchen while he was opening his presents.

Yesterday I came home to an intervention. My family members each read pieces they had written about how my sugar addiction had torn me away from them and made it hard to fit my entire body in the viewfinder of their cameras. There was a professional counseler in the room, who patted me down for sucking candies and then explained how my family was sending me to rehab where I could get the help I needed.

And that is where I am right now. I just finished picking at the plate of broccoli they slid under the door, and in a few minutes I’m going to a group session where I and the other residents will talk about the nightmares and shakes and disgusting taste of plain water. I know I can’t expect instant results. But as long I never enter a supermarket or restaurant again, I know my future’s looking bright.

Posted on 9 April 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 12

Remember When We Were Slaves in Egypt?

When I was a kid we didn’t have television or hand-held devices. We had to make bricks from bitumen and pitch. My friends and I liked to say “bitumen” over and over until our mothers yelled at us for being obscene. She said we didn’t even know what it was. But we found out soon enough.

I remember what it was like having to build the pyramids. Talk about a fat-burning exercise. There wasn’t even any Snapple. If we were lucky our Egyptian taskmasters would give us water, and sometimes Gatorade when the Pharaoh and Players’ Association were able to work out a contract.

The work was horrible. We had to mix straw with this sticky black stuff by stomping on it all day long for days and days. At first it was kind of fun, and I would sing songs to go along with the stomping. Then a taskmaster whipped me and told me to sing something in a lower key.

Then they had me moving these giant blocks on rollers. On the third day I developed a persistent ache in my left calf and asked the nearest taskmaster where I could find some cortisone.

“You Hebrews are always complaining,” he said. “Get back to work or I will whip you to death and then make a note in your file.”

“But why do these blocks have to be so big?” I asked. “Couldn’t you build pyramids with small bricks? Or maybe wood planks or vinyl siding? I hear vinyl siding does very well in the desert.”

The taskmaster raised his whip again and I made the sound of it cracking and threw myself back violently, leaving the taskmaster looking confused.

In the evenings I would hang out with my friends. It was always a big debate about where we would go.

“How about your place?” I would ask my friend Yaakov. “What’s going on there?”

“My parents are sitting around exhausted from back-breaking work, and are praying for the deliverance that is supposed to be coming.”

“What about you, Naftali? Anything cool going on at your hut?”

“My parents are sitting around exhausted from back-breaking work, and are praying—”

“Okay, okay. Hmm. Let’s see who’s at the Dairy Queen.”

It wasn’t easy coming of age during this time. Everyone was depressed because we were slaves, and the rumor that we were going to be saved by divine intervention was starting to sound like one of those stories parents tell their children when they won’t go to bed. I myself was pretty skeptical and suggested that we Hebrews all go on strike until we were released from the house of bondage and given a lower co-pay on our health insurance.

“We could do it during the holidays,” I said. “All the last-minute shoppers will be screwed. The store owners will lose millions!” But then the elders cited a law that said any striking Hebrew would be tossed into the Nile and then barred from attending the annual picnic.

And then one day we were told to pack everything up because we were leaving. Apparently this guy Moses and his brother Aaron had performed some dog and pony show for the Pharaoh and gotten him to agree to let us go.

“Go where?” I asked.

“To the Promised Land. The land of our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

“Well my father’s name is Steven,” I said, “and his land is right over there behind that pile of animal dung.”

But it was true—we were leaving Egypt and I had to spend the whole day going through all the boxes filled with all my notebooks and artwork from school.

“Mom, look,” I said to my mother who was racing around the kitchen shoving food in cloth bags. “Here’s a story I wrote in second grade. Didn’t I have fantastic penmanship?” Then she shoved a piece of unleavened bread in my mouth and told me to hurry up.

I’ll spare you the boring details of the days that followed. It’s all written down somewhere anyway. We left Egypt and wandered around the desert for years and years, and I was surrounded by all these smarmy teenagers who knew nothing of the Pharaoh or what had been like to be slaves. I tried to tell them about it, about the history of our people and what it meant to be free.

But all they cared about was their rock music and who was going to the Dairy Queen.

Posted on 5 April 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 17

Remember When the Police Couldn’t Track You With Your Cellphone?

Note: A brief glossary follows this post, Mom and Dad. MK

I just read an article about how a number of local police officials are tracking cellphones, often without warrants or Hollywood scripts.

I wonder what the police would think if they tracked my cellphone. “Okay, he’s in the embroidered washcloth section of Target. Let’s move!” Would they have to fill out a separate report for every call I made?

Tuesday, 5:39 p.m. Call to “wife” from supermarket. Asks whether they already have enough “potatoes” and if he needs to pick up a vegetable. Subject reports that he does not care for “peas” and would rather have another starch. “Wife” states that subject needs to learn to like vegetables.

I wonder if what the police mean by “tracking.” Is it just phone calls and traveling? Or does it include other uses of the cell phone? Right now I bet there is a prosecutor somewhere putting together a case where the principal evidence is going to be the defendant’s time playing Angry Birds. “And so, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you, did the defendant,” he says, pointing to the defendant—who in turn points at himself with a “who, me?” expression and then looks around the courtroom as if the prosecutor meant someone else—“did this defendant just happen to toss multiple giant birds at the deceased’s head until her skull caved in like flimsy two-dimensional shelters?

“Or was this a premeditated crime, performed in cold blood, immediately after the undisputed nine hours the defendant spent playing Angry Birds on his Android, known as a ‘Droid in street lingo? I believe, ladies and gentlemen, that the facts speak for themselves.”

Perhaps new crimes will have to be invented. Like second-degree lying to your friends about prior engagements. One day soon we’ll open the paper and read that, “Ms. Smith, of Sycamore Terrace, was arrested early yesterday morning when it was discovered, according to filed court documents, that she had told her “friends” on her Facebook app that she was too sick to attend a birthday dinner, but in fact was really watching an episode from the first season of “Game of Thrones” on an HBO app. Ms. Smith’s attorney could not be reached for comment.”

Most likely, however, this is more about local police trying to protect the good citizens than about an invasion of privacy. If there is an intruder in your home, brandishing a kitchen knife and wearing that ghost mask from “Scream,” of course the first thing you are going to do is text your best friend about it. Murderer in my home. TTYL 🙂

Just think of the possibilities. With cellphone tracking, cops will be able to go undercover, offering iPhone users free downloads of jailbroken apps—that is, apps not available at the Apple iPhone app store—and then arresting them as soon as they enter their passwords and start the download. Even Miranda rights could be transmitted via push notifications to save time.

Of course, it will only be a matter of time before the cellphone users and app-designers wise up and figure out ways to block the police tracking. There will be apps that will make the police think the user is in one place when in fact the user is in another place. A text will go out, “Big shipment at the docks! Bring ca$$$$$$h!” and the police will run to the docks, sirens blaring, while the user is at home downloading pirated movies.

But maybe the user won’t matter by that point. Maybe we’ll just put the cellphone on trial. It will sit at the defense, with its lawyer, and a pitcher of water in case it gets thirsty. And if convicted it will go to cellphone jail, where it will download court cases to work on its appeal…and wait for its user to jailbreak it.

Glossary

App: Short for “application,” a software program loaded onto a smartphone.

Smartphone: Those cellphones that people keep taking out and dragging their fingers across while you are trying to talk to them.

Angry Birds: An app for a smartphone; a video game where the user must calibrate a slingshot’s speed and angle to launch large irate birds at comatose pigs in stacked hut-like structures. Points are earned by smashing the structures and annihilating the pigs.

Push notifications: Oy. Don’t worry about it. Just one step at a time.

Posted on 2 April 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 6

Remember When There Weren’t All These Mediums?

The other night I caught a show on TLC called “Long Island Medium.” Being from Long Island myself, I thought that this might be a show about the first Long Islander to pass on the largest size of food or drink offered at a restaurant. But no, it was about the life and work of a woman named Theresa Caputo, who goes around speaking to the deceased and asking them if the parking situation is any better in the afterlife.

Mediumship has been around as long as there have been human beings willing to connect with their departed loved ones and pay a medium’s hourly rate plus expenses. I’m sure that if we had a video of Ancient Athens, we could see a medium walking into a fish market, and saying, “I’m feeling something…some here recently lost someone…who was into togas. Am I right? What can I say? It’s a gift.”

Communicating with the dead reached a peak in the 19^th Century, especially in the English-speaking countries, where spirits were found hiding in Ulysses S. Grant’s beard and books by Charles Dickens. Although there were some high-profile hoaxes—most notably one where a medium went several months without bathing and convinced clients that the arresting body odor was their deceased relative reeking from the Other Side—a large group of believers remained.

Perhaps it is because of the popularity of medium John Edward, who is also from Long Island and is particularly adept at channeling television ratings, that it seems like mediums have staged a comeback in recent years. Reality television has certainly facilitated the growth, and I’m waiting for a show where spirits compete in a series of physical trials and then vote each other out of the afterlife.

My own experience with mediums is rather limited. As I once traversed the grounds at a local fair after a harrowing experience with cotton candy, I was called to by a woman standing in a tent.

“Sir, have you recently lost someone?”

I told her that I wasn’t interested in any coupons, but she was insistent that I had recently lost someone. I told her that I had not.

“Really? Are you sure?”

I again answered that I hadn’t lost anyone. She bit her lip and furrowed her brow for a few seconds.

“Are you absolutely sure you haven’t lost anyone recently?”

“All right, all right,” I said. “You got me. Yes, I recently lost someone.”

“I knew it,” she said. “Now tell me, was this person into…uh…eating food?”

“It wasn’t a person. It was a squirrel. And yes, the squirrel liked to eat food.”

“See? I knew I was feeling something. Now, did your squirrel pass after a very long illness?”

“He was flattened by a Civic.”

“Ah yes, that was going to be my next guess. Well, the squirrel wants me to tell you that it’s okay to let go, that it wasn’t your fault.”

I thanked the medium for her time and didn’t tell her that the reason the squirrel was in the way of the car was because I had thrown a handful of Honey Bunches of Oats into the street. I thanked her for her time and gave her a handful of Honey Bunches of Oats.

Despite all of the evidence that spirits are all around us and giving the endings of movies that we haven’t seen, I remain a skeptic. If there is an afterlife, where you can float around to wherever you want, see and hear anything without having to look around for a bathroom…why on Earth would you want to talk to the living?

Posted on 29 March 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 7

Remember the Etch A Sketch?

I’ve been hearing a lot of people talk about the Etch A Sketch lately. What a fantastic toy. A plastic rectangle and knobs for kids who couldn’t deal with crayons and paint. I loved how the advertisements for the Etch A Sketch always showed works of art that could hang in the Louvre next to the Caravaggios. All I ever drew were clusters of curved lines that looked like something prison psychologists ask serial killers to look at and interpret.

My parents arms’ came directly out of their heads in the family portraits I drew as a child, and my hand at the Etch A Sketch was not any more deft. So I had to resort to drawings that could be made by repeating a few simple maneuvers with the magnetic stylus. The best sketch I etched I named, simply, “The Spiral.” I created it by taking the stylus around the perimeter of the screen, and when I reached the starting point, I moved it towards the center just a tad and repeated the perimeter, going around and around, getting closer to the center until I had a rectangular spiral just perfect for making adults seasick. It was Thanksgiving Day that I finished “The Spiral,” and I staged an impromptu showing for my captive relatives.

“Oh, uh, that’s really wonderful, Mark,” said one uncle. “Wow, I think I’m getting a headache.”

So proud was I of my gritty lithograph that I couldn’t bear to shake it up and lose it forever. So I placed it on a table and announced that no one could touch it for the rest of eternity. About ten seconds later my mother started to move it to make room for the stuffing.

“My work!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”

“Honey, your work is in dinner’s way,” she said.

I took the Etch A Sketch up to my room where it could be cloistered in a corner. The cretins to whom I was related just didn’t appreciate great art. Perhaps I would have better luck amongst my peers at school.

“What are you doing?” I shouted to a “friend” of mine who was trying to pry the Etch A Sketch from my hands as we waited for the bus on Cyber Monday before it got the Cyber. “You’re going to shake it up!”

“Isn’t that the point?” he asked.

“I just wanted to show you my work.”

“It’s stupid,” he said. “My six year old sister could have done that.”

I kept the Etch A Sketch in my school bag, which I carried flat, in my arms, so as not to disturb the delicate arrangement of aluminum filings. While the teacher tortured us with sums or yet another project involving construction paper and glue, I would periodically peek at the plastic mural in my bag.

“Mark, I don’t see enough glitter on your Santa,” the teacher said. “I think you need to focus.”

At lunch time I had to be extra vigilant. By now everyone knew I was guarding a secret in my bag, and I couldn’t just leave it in the classroom. I would be so nervous that my magnum opus would be defaced by some juice-box-drinking bandit. So I took the bag with me, and set it on the cafeteria table, and balanced the Styrofoam tray on top of it with my square pizza, pretzel rod, and milk.

“Mark, why are you eating your lunch on top of your school bag?” everyone asked me.

“Um, the Surgeon General says it prevents rickets,” I said. “Didn’t you hear?”

Like any kid who walks around school guarding something in a bag, I became a minor celebrity. As we lined up for the buses at the end of the day, some classmates encircled me, their intentions not completely benign.

“All right,” the ringleader said. “What do you have in that bag?”

Perhaps I had misjudged them. Perhaps they would be as entranced by the beauty of “The Spiral” as I was. So I took it out and showed them.

“That’s it?” they said. “An Etch A Sketch?”

“Not just any Etch A Sketch,” I said. “I call it ‘The Spiral.’ Isn’t it grand?”

“I could do better than that,” he said. And before I could stop him he snatched the Etch A Sketch from my hands and shook it up. Before I knew what I was doing I was at his throat. A teacher had to separate us, and of course the thug who ruined my work said that I started the whole thing. Then I had a chance to explain what happened. At last, someone would understand what I had gone through the whole day.

“And then he just shook it up, erasing my drawing,” I said. “It’s like the drawing never happened.”

The teacher looked at me, and looked at the Etch A Sketch, its red plastic chassis glowing in the afternoon sun, and said, “But isn’t that the point?”

Posted on 26 March 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 8

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