So there's a game this weekend

At least one local restaurant is closing early on Super Bowl Sunday.

The sign on the door didn’t indicate why — maybe they’re hosting a private party — but my guess is so employees may enjoy the Super Bowl with their families, a riff on similar wording used for holidays.

Super Bowl Sunday might as well be a national holiday; it has most of the characteristics. On that day, people hold soirees that would put Jay Gatsby to shame, fall off the diet wagon, drink too much, stay up too late and call off sick from work the next day. Just like Christmas.

Retailers advertise weeks in advance, construct special displays of soft drinks, beer and snack foods, and offer insane discounts on electronics, especially behemoth big screen televisions so that viewers may enjoy up-close-and-personal views of the coaches’ nose hairs.

That sounds charming, yet in my usual curmudgeonly way, I don’t know if I’ll watch this year.

I don’t hate professional sports, but I am indifferent to them. Most people don’t see the distinction. If you’re a man who can’t rattle off at least half a dozen useless facts about a player’s yardage, passing percentages and hamstring injury people tend to view you with suspicion, probably categorizing you as a closet tree-hugger, communist, or classical music aficionado instead of a red-blooded, camo-wearing, Bible-thumping American.

I learned this during my years in sales, where it was detrimental to my bottom line to see customers on a Monday morning without some knowledge of what went down on the national gridiron the day before. My usual procedure was to lie (hey, it WAS sales, after all), either by claiming I had family obligations that kept me from watching -- I had a lot of sick grandmothers who needed visiting -- or by rattling off one or two key plays that I saw on the morning sports wrap-up.

The latter was dangerous, as any follow-up question would reveal my complete ignorance of professional sports. In all honesty, beyond the Ohio- and Pennsylvania-based franchises, I doubt I can name more than a handful of teams in all professional sports, and even then, I can’t distinguish between baseball, football and hockey. It’s just not my forte.

That said, I have watched a few Super Bowls, sometimes for the inventive commercials and the halftime entertainment, but mostly because it’s kind of neat to recognize that, in a nation of 314 million people (give or take a few hundred thousand), so many are engaged in doing the same thing, at the same time.

Such universal entertainment used to occur more commonly, back in the days before DVRs, Hulu, Netflix and the fracturing of the popular-entertainment audience. With only three networks from which to choose and no easy way to watch a program missed, viewers engaged in communal experiences via television in percentages that are difficult to imagine today.

For example, the final episode of “M*A*S*H” was watched by over 60 percent of households with TVs in 1983, good for about 106 million viewers, still the top-rated, non-sports broadcast. Even the almighty NFL couldn’t beat that until 2010, when Super Bowl XLIV topped the record by about half a million more viewers.

Outside the Super Bowl and major breaking news covered by all networks simultaneously, it’s hard to conceive what sort of event these days might draw so many eyeballs at the same time.

Even so, I probably won’t watch this year. Too many news stories about the dangers of concussions in the NFL, too many players dead before their time, and too many athletes behaving badly on and off the field have tainted what little enjoyment (emphasis on “little”) I derive from the sport.

If the game is on at all in my house, it will be pure background noise, something to glance up at from time to time from whatever book I’m reading or set of papers I’m grading.

But I’m glad some local restaurant workers will be able to enjoy the game with their families and friends. Nobody should have to work on a holiday.

This originally ran before the Super Bowl in 2013. I guess not much has really changed about my opinion regarding football. Since Cincinnati is in this year's game, I'll watch a little more attentively. Maybe.  

Remembrances of food past

Have you ever craved food that nobody makes anymore?

I don’t mean in the “nobody makes gravy like grandma” sort of way, but rather in the “manufacturer discontinued it” sort of way, that sinking feeling you get when your favorite dish has been unceremoniously dumped from the menu, or when the spot where the item used to be on your grocer’s shelf has been filled by some imposter product.

Take the Arch Deluxe. With much fanfare, McDonald’s introduced it as an uptown version of the venerable hamburger, the sandwich equivalent of the girl you wouldn’t be ashamed to take home to mother.

Released during the height of my own McDonald’s mania – before I was concerned about what all the calories and grease were doing to my weight, not to mention my heart – the Arch Deluxe quickly wormed its way into my good graces. It became a destination sandwich, one I would forgo all other fast-food fixes to buy and savor. Honestly, I was eating two or three a week.

Then, one day, it was simply gone. Little did I know that the quarter-pound of 100 percent domestic beef, cradled lovingly between slices of a home-style bakery bun and a special “secret sauce,” was costing the company a fortune (some $300 million by one estimate), and that there weren’t enough of us patty connoisseurs to keep the curtain from ringing down on a marketing misfire. (But such a tasty misfire!)

One website purports to offer the Arch Deluxe recipe, including ingredients in the secret sauce, so that diehard devotees can experience it once again. I don’t believe it. It’s like kissing the photograph of an old flame 20 years after the fact and wondering why it doesn’t feel the same. I’ll let the Arch Deluxe be a happy memory from the days before calories really counted.

(As an aside, a visit to an urban slang website taught me that “arch deluxe” has far naughtier connotations than I can hint at in a family paper. The over-18 crowd may want to check it out.)

Another food that’s gone AWOL is Micro Magic French fries. Each red box with the yellow Micro Magic logo contained one serving of Idaho’s best. The user would peel back the lid, tuck it beneath the box and expose the shiny foil innards to the heat of the microwave oven. A minute or two later, a greasy mound of crinkled potatoes beckoned. Along with ramen noodles, they formed the staple of my bachelor’s diet.

Like all good things, Micro Magic went away with marriage. A few years later when a nostalgia craving struck, I was dismayed to learn they were still available – but only in Japan. Not having a passport or access to a nonstop flight to the Land of the Rising Sun, I reluctantly bid sayonara to the fries.

The unkindest cut of all, however, is Kellogg’s abandonment of grape-flavored Pop Tarts, which I ate for breakfast daily from childhood right up to the day when the purplish boxes disappeared from store shelves. Thus began my quixotic quest from store to store, including some in other states, with no success.

Amazon.com lists the item, along with a photo reminder of the glory of grape Pop Tarts past, but urges shoppers to “sign up to be notified when this item becomes available.” One frustrated grape nut, D. Bowman, wrote on the site in 2007, “I’ve been eating grape Pop Tarts (and only grape!) since I was a child. Now it’s the only Pop Tart my children will eat. Little by little they have faded from our stores. The last two boxes we’ve had I’ve gotten off of Amazon and paid way too much. But I guess it was worth it seeing as how we’ll no longer have the chance to eat them again. I hope Kellogg's will reconsider retiring this classic Pop Tart.”

Me too, D., me too.

During this season of thanks, I know I shouldn’t whine about foodstuffs past and should instead focus on those comfort foods still readily available – the Red Robin gourmet cheeseburger (sans cheese, of course), Keebler Soft Batch chocolate chip cookies (three cookies, 32 seconds in the microwave – never 30 seconds! – equals bliss), and Snyder’s of Hanover sourdough hard pretzels.

Eat ’em while you’ve got ’em, boys, for tomorrow they may have gone the way of the dodo bird – or the late, lamented Arch Deluxe.


This column originally ran in 2009. Based on the reference to "this season of thanks," it was probably in November. If I wrote this today, I probably wouldn't say that all good things end with marriage, because they don't. And I'd think twice about "the sandwich equivalent of the girl you wouldn’t be ashamed to take home to mother." I'd also note that Wild Berry Pop Tarts are a good substitute for my still-missing grape variety. 

A new metaphor for love

All language is metaphorical, and the language of love is no exception.

Red and pink, especially in February, make most of us think of love. Those two colors dominate Valentine’s Day cards, candy boxes and other items designed to separate us from our money. But why?

Red is the color of the heart, I suppose, and the heart is the organ most closely associated with love. Well, it’s the organ most closely associated with love that can be named in a family newspaper, anyway.

But red is also the color of blood, and blood isn’t all that romantic unless you have a vampire fetish. Which is far more common than you might think, if the Internet is to believed. (And who doesn’t believe the Internet?)

But, Chris, you say, red is also the color of roses, and what is more romantic — or expensive — than a dozen of those crimson beauties, their petals open like an inviting pair of ruby lips?

This brings me to my point. Well, to one of my points, anyway. What is so inherently romantic about a rose? Who was it who decided that this particular flower was joined so intimately with our belief in love?

Scottish poet Robert Burns — “Bobby” to his friends — famously wrote, “O my Luve’s like a red, red rose/ That’s newly sprung in June,” but the rose/love connection goes back much farther than the eighteenth century. It stretches all the way back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, who equated the flower with the goddess of love.

But roses have thorns, and thorns cut and scratch and poke. Roses also die. Now, depending on your significant other, maybe your love cuts and scratches and pokes, too. And if your relationships aren’t all that stable (or if they cut and scratch and poke too much), some of them likely die. Not literally, of course, unless you’re a graduate of the Hannibal Lecter School of Lovemaking.

Still, a beautiful, sharp object with a limited shelf life doesn’t sound all that romantic to me, so I’m introducing a new metaphor for love.

From now on, my love is like a mossy rock.

Think about it. A rock is strong and stable. Rocks are found in all climates and cultures; so, like love, they’re universal.

Moss is a living thing, far more hardy than a rose, so it better represents a stable relationship. It is green, representing life. Moss also grows on a rock, the way two partners grow on one another. After all, the nail biting or nose picking that seems so weird in the early days of a relationship becomes rather endearing in later years.

So this year, I’m bypassing the expensive roses and candies and cards to give my wife a gift straight from the heart — a new metaphor for love created especially for

her. That’s right, she’s getting a mossy rock.

If you want to beat my time and give a similar gift, borrowing my explanation the way Christian stole the words of Cyrano de Bergerac to woo the beautiful Roxane, go ahead. You’d be smart to do it this year, though. By next Valentine’s Day, I expect the cost of rocks and moss to triple because of the demand. I’m nothing if not a believer in capitalism.

However, in these early days of the rose/rock transition, don’t be surprised if your special someone is less than thrilled to receive a stone in lieu of flowers. It took millennia for the rose to win its place in our hearts, so I expect it might take, oh, two or three years for my more-fitting metaphor to replace it.

In the meantime, though, expect that your love might take your gift of a rock for granite...er, granted.

Ouch. Love hurts.

Originally published in The Alliance Review in February 2014. 

All the sins of literature

There’s child abuse in "Huckleberry Finn."

Regicide in "Macbeth."

Profanity in "The Catcher in the Rye."

Suicide in "Things Fall Apart."

Domestic violence in "The Color Purple."

Rape in "A Streetcar Named Desire."

Gang violence in "A Most Beautiful Thing."

Adultery in "The Awakening."

Grave robbing in "Frankenstein."

Incest in Greek mythology.

Drag racing in "The Outsiders."

Witchcraft in "The Wizard of Oz."

I’ve taught using every one one of these works in the last 20-plus years, and never have I suggested that students partake in any of the above activities. Nor has any student, to my knowledge, ever murdered a king, joined a gang, or taken part in any of the other behaviors just because they’ve read about them.

Addressing tough topics in school isn’t the same as advocating them. Most kids understand this. Some adults, apparently, do not.

Case in point: In Tennessee recently, the McMinn County school board voted 10-0 to remove Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel “Maus,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, from an eighth-grade unit on the Holocaust because it has a few cartoon depictions of naked animals and a handful of swear words.

Spiegelman’s book recounts the story of his interviews with his father, who in turn tells his harrowing story of survival in Poland and Czechoslovakia in the 1930s and 1940s. It’s not a pleasant read, and it’s not supposed to be. We are talking about the Holocaust, when more than 6 million Jews were murdered.

The author depicts all the people in the book as animals. The Jews are mice; the Germans, cats. It’s a brilliant metaphor and a powerful testimony, worthy to stand alongside other essential works of Holocaust literature, including Elie Wiesel’s “Night.”

A story by David Corn in Mother Jones explains how the board decided to ban Spiegelman’s book. According to Corn’s recap of the meeting, one member admits he hasn’t read “Maus,” and suggests that the volume is “only the tip of the iceberg” in terms of allegedly inappropriate material.

Another board member suggests works like “Maus” could be part of an attempt to “normalize sexuality, normalize nudity, and normalize vulgar language.” He also hints that such books are a way “to indoctrinate somebody’s kids,” as though teachers in Tennessee are chortling at their desks as they hatch a subversive plot to destroy America’s youth by teaching the truth about the Holocaust.

And children need to learn that truth. The U.S. Millennial Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey in 2020 revealed that “11% of U.S. Millennial and Gen Z respondents believe Jews caused the Holocaust” and some 59% believe something similar to the Holocaust could happen again.

(Conspiracy proponents ready to pounce on mask and vaccine mandates as contemporary examples should sit right back down. No valid comparison can be made between curbing a pandemic and killing millions.)

Focusing on only nekkid mice and a few swear words misses the point of “Maus,” in the same way that focusing on only the bloody daggers in “Macbeth” misses the larger themes of unchecked ambition and crushing guilt in the rest of the play.

Far from normalizing negative behaviors, works that deal with challenging subjects provide teachable moments. After my class read “A Streetcar Named Desire,” I invited the director of the local domestic violence shelter to speak. She demonstrated how Stanley Kowalski, the male protagonist, met most of the characteristics of an abuser. At least one student recognized behaviors in a current relationship that met the criteria for emotional abuse. It was a realization that happened because of the intersection between literature and real life.

I doubt McMinn County teachers are drilling down on the nudity and swearing in “Maus,” and I doubt their students are titillated by cartoon drawings, situated as they are within a non-fiction horror story and guided to an understanding by professional educators.

Take any passage of almost any book, story or play out of context and you could question its suitability. Stitch all those passages together and you could reach the troubling – and erroneous – conclusion that U.S. schools are awash in blood, gore and smut.

The Tennessee board reached a similar mistaken conclusion about “Maus.” Let this be a lesson to all voters to elect sensible people to boards of education, candidates who support high-quality literature and don’t just go looking for dirty pictures and words.

Or, at the very least, board members who will read an entire book before deciding to ban it.

Everyday Olympic events for the rest of us

This first ran in The Alliance Review last July for the Summer Olympics, but works just as well for the Winter Games. 

Tired of the usual Olympic events? Try these lesser-known competitions:

The Scoop — Schillig is in good form today. He’s got the dog on a leash in one hand, the pooper-scooper bag in the other. He goes down for the canine deposit, but the bag’s covering only three of his fingers. He’s bending, bending, got it! Nothing left behind in the grass! It’s a clean grab, but that open finger — what a mess! The sacrifices these athletes make for their sport!

Propane Estimation — The US team has no idea how much fuel is left in that tank with a tray full of hot dogs and hamburgers to grill and a table full of hungry people. It’s going to be close. The flames are sputtering — they just went out! That burger’s no better than rare! All the spare tanks are empty too! What a tragedy! Looks like a fourth-place finish.

The Multitask — Team USA is texting while weaving their cart through the store, talking on speakerphone and snagging a six-pack of craft beer off the top shelf. Yikes! They just sideswiped an old man on a scooter — that’ll cost them precious seconds. Looks like the Canadians are going to make it to the checkout first! Wait, they were distracted by the candy bars. Team USA just sent the text and coasted to the register. That’s good for the gold!

Straight Arrow — Schillig is back for his second event. The goal here is to keep his mowing lines straight with no deviations and no swerving into the neighbor’s lawn. Oh, no! He has the blade set too low; the mower is clogging. Geez, the belt just snapped — for the third time this summer! Those repairs will cost almost as much as the mower itself. What a disappointing finish. Look, he’s crying tears of frustration. What a pity.

Couch Hypocrisy — This is a sedentary event, with the winners determined by how ridiculously they can complain. There’s a lot of griping on the court, but mostly low quality. Hold on! That jerk is criticizing elite gymnast Simone Biles for withdrawing from competition — and the last time he did anything athletic was a split when he slipped on ice taking out the trash. Oh, yeah, that’s podium-worthy hypocrisy there! I’d say he’s sewn up the gold with that performance!

Suitcase Stuffing — Vacation is only hours away and clothes are still in the washer and dryer. Team USA already has the suitcase filled, and they haven’t even added the toiletries. And how are they ever gonna get shoes in there? Where’s the carry-on? What, it’s already exceeded the airline’s weight limit? O, the humanity!

QAnon Conspiracies —Alien lizards in the government? That’s so 2019! No way they’ll medal with that hoary theory. Biden and Harris arrested and Trump reinstated as president on Aug. 13? But wouldn’t that make Pelosi president? That’s even more far-fetched than reptiles in the Capitol! The entire team is disqualified. That’s OK, they didn’t believe the Olympics were really happening anyway, just that they were being faked from a Hollywood soundstage. The entire event is scratched!

Pate Pass — It’s Schillig’s third and final event. Which competitor can reflect the most light? Schillig has an edge here: The poor guy is completely bald. It looks like he oiled his head with vegetable shortening. Here comes the sun from behind the cloud, Schillig races onto the field, the rays are striking that chromedome, bouncing off and … Holy moly, he just incinerated the judges’ eyes, right through their sunglasses! That’s good not only for the gold, but for a new world record! Team USA! Team USA!

Self-checkout lanes are a test of love

Want a great test for the strength of your marriage?

Try the self-checkout lanes at your favorite grocery store.

The do-it-yourself checkout option began for those with more confidence than items in their cart, for those stalwart customers who believed they could scan and pay faster on their own than by placing their trust in employees who run registers for a living.

Eventually, when both technology and customers proved capable (and when it became obvious that a UPC scanner, unlike an hourly employee, would never ask for bathroom breaks or cost-of-living increases), employers started replacing traditional checkouts with more DIY stations.

I generally avoid such lanes. If I have to wait in line a few more minutes for a traditional cashier, I rejoice. The break allows me to play on my phone (“Word Cookies” is my current BFF), see whatever Lady Gaga or the Kardashians are up to the covers of various tabloids, or just stare into space, tapping my foot to the elevator-muzak version of “Stairway to Heaven.”

My wife, however, believes differently.

This is where the marriage test comes into play.

She will ask, ever so sweetly, if I really want to wait in line, pointing to the sole open register among twenty-six lanes at our local Big Box Emporium, where an octogenarian customer methodically unloads a year’s worth of mac-and-cheese and Mucinex for the septuagenarian employee who drags each item slowly across the scanner, while somewhere in the distance a dog howls plaintively and grass grows in graveyards.

Wouldn’t it be ever-so-much better, my wife keens, if we used the self-checkout lane? We can be out long before we would even reach the conveyor belt in the traditional lane.

This is a dangerous offer. In the early days of self-checkouts, we naively sojourned there, but my wife’s just-take-charge attitude, coupled with my disdain for criticism, led to serious fights when she accused me of bagging too quickly and I accused her of scanning too slowly. We soon ended up with a cart half-filled with paid and unpaid items (and no idea which half was which) and a flashing light above the register, calling attention to the fact that we were, in fact, too stupid to self-pay.

But this was years ago. Now, we have brokered a certain measure of peace at the self-checkout, mostly because we have learned to specialize. Under our new, assembly-line system, my wife takes items out of the cart, I scan and bag them, and she puts the bags into a second cart, one which we procure solely for the purpose of maintaining our equanimity.

Still, though, I recognize this is a dangerous time for our marriage, and that I’m always just one can of peas or box of corn flakes away from a major meltdown.

So when she asks which line I prefer, I always counter with the same question: “How strong is our marriage today?”

Her answer is always the same: “I think we can do this. I’ll be good.”

I make no such promises, but I usually am. I’d like to believe I’ve matured in the same way DIY technology has.

Some couples go to expensive therapists. Others take part in trust-falls or play the gratitude game or go on long weekend retreats to reconnect. My wife and I just go to Walmart — save money, live better, strengthen your marriage. If that’s not the store’s motto, it should be.

Anyway, in a few years, we’ll be arguing about who has to pick up the groceries on the front porch after the drone has dropped them there.

Thanks to technology, this too shall pass.

This was originally published in The Alliance Review in May 2017. In the five years since, I have become more comfortable with self-checkout lines, to the point of preferring them over lines with a traditional cashier. Go figure. Also, the drone on the porch thing is closer to reality in some places, huh? 

The Circle of Life injures a real-life cat

People ask my wife and me how we’re doing as empty nesters.

Better than the cat, I respond, because he’s suffered a concussion as a result of our daughter’s departure.

It happened during a rousing reenactment of Disney’s “Lion King.” (Hey, what does YOUR family do for kicks?)

You know the scene where the ugly monkey hoists lion cub Simba into the air while the “Circle of Life” plays? The song uses a lot of authentic dialect (“Ingonyama nengw’ enamabala,” it repeats), but in our house we sing, “Wing-ah-nada! Hey! Wing-ah-nada!” Roughly translated, this means “We don’t know the words. Hey! We really don’t know the words!”

My wife was playing the monkey (not often I get a free pass for saying THAT) and lifted Oliver the cat into the air, chanting our homemade lyrics to much acclaim, right up to the point where she forgot that the ceiling fan was turned on, making the soundtrack more like “Wing-ah-nada! Hey! Wing-ah-THUMP!”

Dazed, Oliver stumbled under a bed, likely seeing stars. Although as an indoor cat, he doesn’t know what stars look like, so maybe he saw dancing clumps of kitty litter or pink salmon hairballs instead.

The whole Lion King reenactment was a tribute to our daughter, who often raised cats to the ceiling to worship at the altar of her dread lord, Walt Disney – long may he remain cryogenically frozen in the sewers beneath the Magic Kingdom! But she never ground up an animal in the fan blades.

Before you call the Humane Society to report animal cruelty, be advised that because we own four cats and a dog, the SPCA already has a branch office in the basement, which irritates me because their employees use all the hot water before I get a shower.

We believe the cat is concussed – is that a real word? Spell check didn’t reject it – because of his odd behavior later in the week. Maybe we can chalk it up to his confusion at having to sleep alone at the foot of the bed he used to share with my daughter before she selfishly decided to go to college, make something of herself and not spend the rest of her life sponging off her parents in the technological wonderland she calls her bedroom.

(Really, what sort of punishment is it to send kids to their rooms that are tricked out with high-speed Internet connections, mp3 players stuffed with music, and cable TV? “You’re forcing me to watch ‘America’s Next Top Model’ on a 19-inch screen? I hate you, Dad, I hate you!”)

So Oliver is sleeping solo, and he is so starved for human contact (or so confused from his scrambled egg brain beating) that he actually deigned to rub against me – me, the guy he usually runs from like poison because I’m on “eye booger” patrol, charged with the unenviable task of wiping dried black stuff out of his tear ducts with a warm washcloth. If you want to endear yourself to a cat, that’s not the way to do it.

When he rubbed against me, a move I took for approval, I petted him and told him things would be OK. He hissed at me and ran off. It was a high-water mark in our relationship.

Nevertheless, I’m feeling so kindly disposed toward him that I’m looking for a cat-sized football helmet. Because my wife is getting that look – the one that means she’s missing our daughter – so it won’t be long before she’ll take another stroll down memory lane with a “Circle of Life” encore.

Don’t judge her too harshly. It’s the empty nest syndrome again. I just hope she uses a stuffed animal this time, or that the SPCA guy in the basement gets all the fan blades taken down before the next King of the Jungle is christened.

I'm not sure when this originally appeared in The Alliance Review, but I'd guess it was around 2010 or so.