Sometimes you are handed a gift, in this case, a funny and talented writer named Papa Joe Grappa. A mutual friend sent me Joe’s Substack column titled “Questions for Jesus When He Comes Back.” It is really funny, as it should be for a guy who was Jay Leno’s head writer for 20 years.
Here’s the thing, as I was reading Joe’s questions, I was hearing Jesus’s answers.
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A lot of people say to me, “Bob, I have this really annoying friend. Annoying, but not so bad that I want to kill him. Is there anything a passive-aggressive person like myself can do about this situation?”
My first instinct is to say, “My friend, you’ve come to the right place. Have you ever considered gifting them a puppy?
I don’t say that, however.
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A young boy named Donny sits by the pond, staring at his lifeless pet turtle, the one that he had named Democracy. The turtle’s legs and head are nowhere to be found. There is just the colorful shell of Democracy.
Donny is inconsolable. He is bereft. The tears are rolling down his cheeks in waves.
His mother comes out and tries to comfort him but he wants none of it. Nothing she says reaches him through the heavy veil of grief.
“He’s dead. He’s dead,” he repeats over and over.
She calls their neighbor and friend, a psychiatrist, but nothing the man says can calms the boy.
“He’s dead. He’s dead,” he repeats over and over.
Finally, the father, Elon, returns home and takes the boy for a ride in his Tesla.
“We will have a wonderful funeral for Democracy. The best funeral. It will be like no other funeral in history. Perhaps the most amazing funeral ever. You can invite your best friends to attend.
“And when the funeral is over, we will have a feast in Democracy’s honor with all your favorite foods and the best cake and ice cream.”
“Really? Cake and ice cream?” asks Donny.
“Absolutely,” says Elon.
“And finally, we will bury Democracy out on the lawn, just below your bedroom window. I will carve a beautiful and expensive tombstone for Democracy and put a little light on it. Whenever you want, you can turn the light on and off from a switch I will install next to your bed.”
The more Elon talked and promised, the better his son, Donny, began to feel. His eyes widened with each promise made by the father until they were like saucers. By the time they returned home Donny was on board.
So the two walked out to the pond, hand in hand, to begin making preparations for the burial of Democracy. In his head, Donny was drawing up a list of all the friends he would invite to the party.
Only, Democracy wasn’t dead.
The turtle was swimming around, as happy as can be. He had all his legs. He had his head, certainly, and he was chasing little tiny fish for supper.
Elon and little Donny just stood there, staring at the turtle. Wordless. Eyes wide. Jaws dropped.
Democracy was as healthy as ever.
Finally, quietly, Donny looked up to his dad with an expressionless face.
“Let’s kill it,” he said.
(I owe you one, James Thurber. The great humorist tells a version of this story in the introduction to “Collected Fables.” In fact, in one version of this story read on the radio, Bing Crosby was the voice of the father.)
The image above is generated by Artificial Intelligence.
“The Mini – Solve in seconds”
That’s the promise, or more probably, the challenge of the daily five-by-five crossword puzzle on the New York Times games page.
Monday’s second row, down, challenge was “Rockefeller Center statue depicting a Greek Titan.” Five letters.
Obviously not Prometheus – the golden, cast-bronze statue in the lower end of Rockefeller Plaza – since it busts the five-letter wall. But that’s the one everyone knows, even if they have never been to New York, because it is always in the frame with the Rockefeller Christmas tree.
Continue readingIt was one of those days when you wake up feeling so clever because a unique word came to you in the middle of the night — opportunipee.
And you wrote it down. In a notebook. In the dark.
And it was legible.
A Jabberwokian euphoria fills your pores.
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“(His) gift for artifice notwithstanding, he’d spun such dense layers of fabrication that inevitably he lapsed into self-contradiction.” – “Fantasia for Piano” By Mark Singer, Sept. 10, 2007, New Yorker magazine.
When the end came, it was a mere shadow of the audacious and raucous life that led up to it.
How sad. Imagine a man who promiscuously craved attention his entire life dying alone in a cold and dark room in a cold and dark dacha in the midst of a most unforgiving Russian winter.
Or nearly alone. With him was the sullen old nurse who spoke little English and seemed to know more about boiling cabbage than ministering to a dying man. In her defense, boiled cabbage was valued more by her people than this corpulent and grotesque American who knew only how to complain.
“Everything,” she often told her husband as they ate dinner in the dacha kitchen. “There is nothing in this existence which is not out to make his life miserable. Just ask him. Jesus Christ did not suffer as much for all Mankind as this man thinks he suffers when the temperature drops just a few degrees.
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He awoke with a sharp grunt. Like someone had kicked him in the balls.
Come to think of it, it hurt down there, too. And he had to pee. Again.
“Driver,” he called to the front of the black town car. “Pull over. I have to piss again.”
“Can you hold it for about 10 minutes, Mr. Trump? This is a pretty bad place to pull over.”
“President. I told you to refer to me as President Trump. I don’t want to say it again.”
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“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
– Leonardo da Vinci
Flying like Superman no longer appeals to me the way it did in my youth. You remember, “faster than a speeding bullet,” – and all that leaping tall buildings with a single bound.
It may be an age thing.
These days, I could use “stronger than a locomotive.” But I’d settle for just a stronger cup of coffee.
The apex of my yearning to fly like Superman came as he streaked around the world counterclockwise until he created enough counterforce to slow its rotation. He did do that, right? I could be conflating my own imagination with some comic book or movie scenario.
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News headline: Hallmark has created 42 movies for the holiday.
Subsequently, House Beautiful magazine gushed about the “comforting predictability of these flicks … No matter which title you switch on, the best thing about a Hallmark holiday movie is knowing that pretty soon you’ll be watching a happy ending.”
I don’t know if people who watch all 42 of these movies get a participation medal or a stay at the sanatorium. And Hallmark isn’t the only one flooding the zone. Somebody, noticing the overwhelming whiteness of characters in Hallmark movies, began putting out ethnic versions with the same insipient stories.
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Great news! I’m breaking into the real estate business in San Miguel de Allende. Has to be easier and less-crowded than local foodie and influencer gigs.
Here’s my first offering: a modestly priced fixer-upper on the outer edge of the hot and trendy Colonia Guadalupe neighborhood. It is a mostly flat, — one, two three, four … — 10-minute walk to Centro. And we all know how incredibly important it is to walk to Centro.
Close to bus lines. Very, very close.
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Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 