I AM NOT DICK NIXON!

In the immortal words of Dick Nixon (the woodchuck at my friend's house and not the president ... maybe not really the woodchuck because woodchucks would chuck wood but they probably won't be giving me personal advice):  I AM NOT A COOK.

Let me get that out there right away.  I have a few staples I run to whenever anyone needs a meal, but generally speaking, if I were to describe my cooking style it would have to be "pathetic."  I cook the same few things over and over again, and I try to mix it up once in a while with limited success.

But today I am adventurous.  I decide to take out my crock pot and some random stew recipes, throw everything together with some actual meat and veggies, and see what sticks to the wall.  I flip through my options and go for the Beef Stew and Beer recipe.  I chop, cut, slice and dice the few ingredients of spices, beef, onion, mushrooms, bay leaf, and beer.  When I look into the crock pot, I am unhappy at what I see.  The mixture seems lacking somehow.

I open the fridge and start taking things out to add:  carrots, potatoes, Hosin sauce, Worcestershire sauce, some more beer (and then I drink the rest of the bottle), etc.  I am in maniacal mode, throwing things in that sound good like paprika and extra bay leaves.  I cook the concoction for hours, add some small pearl onions, then decide to thicken the sauce with a cornstarch mixture.  I add some Gravy Master for flavor and coloring.

Honestly, I am not a cook.  This cannot possibly end well.

My eldest stops by on his way home from the train (the station is across the street), and he claims it smells good in the house.  I convince him to try a bit of the stew with me while I prepare to taste my own bowlful. 

Damn.  I mean, DAAAAAMN.

This is the best damn stew I have ever tasted in my entire life.  I polish off three bowls full of the stuff without even coming up for air.  This stew tastes better than the family recipe I slave over, better than the giant batches I haul to lacrosse games to share with the players and their families at post-game dinners.  In short, this is the greatest recipe ever thrown together.

Except that I cannot remember it because I threw the stew together rather randomly.

This is the way my life goes.  When I create something horrible for dinner, everyone remembers; when I create something wonderful for dinner, I can't remember shit about how I made it. 

I do have the original recipe I started with, and I am reasonably certain that I would work on autopilot if I were to make it a second time.  In the meantime, I am not a cook nor am I a culinary genius.  I'm just someone who got lucky in the kitchen. Wait.  That didn't happen, either.  I mean, I got lucky with the recipe.  Wait.  Strike that.  I had good fortune in the combination of ingredients in the crock pot.

Damn.  And I do mean DAAAAAAMN.

HOME DEPOT DEBACLE

I am feeling guilty about blowing off the beach until the six o'clock news comes on the television.  I planned on going to the beach a few times this week, and so far it hasn't happened. 

Don't get me wrong: I love the beach and I really do have good intentions of getting there more often than I actually do.  The beach and I are like this (pretend you can see me crossing my index finger over my middle finger and accompanying it all with a really interesting facial expression).  I even have the whole day planned out and it revolves around the three hours I plan on spending at North Beach.

But I toss and turn this morning, unable to get back to sleep, because my To Do List is gnawing at me while the summer clock ticks down to my Ground Zero -- The First Day of the School Year.  I still have not gotten my passport, nor have I cleaned the basement, finished the spare room, painted over the stains in the living room ceiling from an ice jam a few winters back, reviewed Spanish for the language exam I must pass this fall, nor turned on my school laptop to teach myself how to use the SmartBoard program.

I decide that my day at the beach will only turn into me watching the clock and thinking about all the things I should be doing instead of lounging around enjoying life.  Grudgingly I get into regular clothes and head out to Home Depot. 

Today I will replace the window shades that are so old most of them have broken and no longer open without serious machinations, loops of yarn, and other homemade contraptions.  I have been to Home Depot before to solve this dilemma, but they never have the cheapo shades I need because I'll be damned if I am going to replace the mounting mechanisms and start from scratch.

Damn.  I've been damned.

Even though Home Depot.com claims the store has the shades, I've always been unable to locate them.  Today I am determined to re-shade or bust, only there will be no busting this time.  I'm not leaving here until I have the shades I need.  I wait and wait and wait for someone to come along, and then she has to cut a rug (literally, as in truly cut a length of carpet on a giant bladed machine, not dance around the store) before she can help me. 

Cue the grumpy old guy.

Grumpy Old Guy is not the person scheduled to work that department today, but he agrees to help me.  He convinces me that if I really want to go cheap, mini blinds are the best bet.  I've had mini blinds before, even put them up myself, but I remember they are dust magnets, especially in the spring when all the pollen gets into the house.  In the end, I am far cheaper than I am lazy, so I go with the $5 mini blinds.  I need eight of them.  Good deal.

Until Grumpy Old Guy discovers I need two of them cut to size.

Of course the ones to be cut are the $15 blinds.  They can't cut the cheap ones because they are the cheap ones.  It turns out that half my total bill is for the two cut blinds

Pissah start.

I get the blinds home and realize that the directions are too convoluted to follow.  They're done in pictures.  I am not a visual learner.  To make it worse, the two expensive blinds have totally different directions than the cheapo ones. 

Pissah again.

I realize that I don't have all the supplies I need because my children have pilfered my tool cabinet over the years.  I do not have a single Phillips head screwdriver left out of the half dozen I've owned over the years.  I scour the house and eventually find one, so I get to work with the flimsy Phillips head screwdriver on the brackets, first taking the old brackets out by hand and then putting the new brackets in.  Sixty minutes later, one window is finished.

Halfway through the second window, I realize that living in an old house totally and completely sucks ass.  One reason is because the walls leak cold air in the winter.  Another reason is because it's infested with silverfish, which I find offensive and disgusting and absolutely hideous.  But mostly this old house sucks ass because it is completely plastered.  The guy who owns it is an exceptionally talented Italian artisan who plastered this house old school style.  As soon as I start trying to work on hanging the blinds, plaster dust is everywhere. 

I give up and go get the electric drill that I own.  It's cordless, and I've only used it a few times.  I can't even remember how to work the damn thing, so I peruse through the directions again while the battery charges.  Instead of an hour, this time it takes me forty-five minutes to get the blind in, but I'm starting to get the hang of this whole fiasco.

By the time I get to windows #3 and #4, I am a two-fisted drilling monster who can remove a screw as easily as plant one into the alabaster-like finish.  I don't even care that paint is chipping away as I go.  Fuck it.  The landlord should've used wallboard, paper tape, and mud (joint compound) like normal people and French Canadian contractors (which I suppose somehow implies that the northern contractors are not normal, which may or may not be entirely untrue) do.

The only problem now is that the cheapo blinds are short.  They're not 30" like the box claims.  They're 29".  Here's where some of you say, "Oh she shoulda known better," to which I respond by putting my hands around your collective throats and squeezing.  I should've assumed since it was probably packaged by men, that anything written on the outer box would be a gross exaggeration of one's … uh … length … yardage, YARDAGE, I meant. 

By windows #5 and #6, I am taking the old brackets down first --- brrrrp brrrp brrrp brrrrp --- easy pickings for the electric screwdriver.  Then I switch back over to a drill bit, mark the spots for the brackets for both windows, then --- brrrrrp  brrrrp brrrp…  Twenty-five minutes later, the blinds for both windows are up and secure.

Windows #7 and #8 also go great … great, I tell you  … until …. until I turn funny while stretching to reach one of the screws.  I accidentally tweak my left knee.  It hurts, I mean it really totally and completely hurts, and I cannot put any weight on it.

Pissah once again.

I limp upstairs because I know somewhere up there I have a Velcro knee brace.  I locate it, wrap it around my knee, and try to get back up onto the chair to finish the installation.  I'm so close, so very close, to marking this project off my To Do List.

I finish all of the windows while watching the news and my heart stops for a moment when I hear, "Shark spotted at Wallis Sands…"  That's just north of where I would've been swimming, and by "just north" I am talking probably a mile or two.  My biggest ocean fear.  Shark.  In the waters off Rye/Hampton, NH.  Again. 

This is why I scoff at people who laugh at me when I tell them I only go waist deep in the water.  Lately I've been venturing deeper, getting more daring, trusting that I won't be the shark's first meal choice.  Or last meal choice.  Or dessert.  Or any damn choice at all.  This is why I swim in clear pools.  (If it's any consolation, I'm not overly fond of leeches, either, so I avoid ponds and lakes that look reedy or skeevy.)

I am suddenly looking at my blinds in a new light.  Well, that and because they are light-filtering blinds so more light is going to be filtering through.  Now my blinds are not only making the windows look bitchin' but they may well have salvaged my limbs for me.

Except my knee.  Apparently I have sacrificed my knee to stave off sharks.

I can hear myself now explaining this one to the orthopedist.  "Well, ya see, Doc, it's like this.  I was going to go to the beach but I decided to put up blinds today and then I tweaked my knee because sharks were going to eat it anyway."

 To  put it into medical terms, the blinds saved my ass.  Er, my knee.  Wait, no.  Blinds broke my knee.  Okay, my ass.  Blinds did save my ass.

Pissah at last.

I no longer have any lingering guilt about giving up a perfectly good beach day for the sake of a bunch of blinds.  But I will say the effect is bitchin'  Such a difference from broken paper accordion shades being held open with scraps of yarn and trim.  Maybe I'll hit the beach tomorrow.  Time's a-ticking and my To Do List is shrinking, and that, kids, is what's really pissah, wicked wicked pissah.

FULL-CONTACT GROCERY SHOPPING

I have decided that grocery shopping should be a full contact sport.

The grocery store should be like Black Friday every single day, where we can smack people with our carts and not even have to apologize for it because it's just the way life is that day.

People who leave their carts in the middle of everything while they block the aisle looking at spices -- Smack 'em.

People who stop their carts right where a palette of boxes are being opened so no one can get by in either direction -- Smack 'em.

People at the deli getting ¼ pound of this and ¼ pound of that and just a smidgen of those and just a slice or two of these -- Smack 'em.

Kids running loose and/or spreading out into a tactical formation so no one can get by without being spit up on or kicked or screamed at -- Smack 'em.

The weird guy who smells of urine and wants to talk to me right as I'm standing all alone in front of the Tampax -- Smack 'em.

The old lady who asks me the best kind of cat food to feed her half-blind, half-lame, extremely obese Calico -- Smack 'em.

The foreigner who touches every single bean because he doesn't have the glossy green ones in his country since the ban of GMO's and he's never seen a mutant vegetable before -- Smack 'em.

The person in front of me unloading her carriage who shoves the gallon of milk to the end of the belt over and over and over again just so I cannot unload my groceries to go through the checkout -- Smack 'em.

The guy who sneezes and wipes his hand across his nose right before picking through the fruit I need -- Smack 'em.

The employees standing around and blocking access because they're the big cheeses and I can't tell them to move because they get paid by the hour so they'll stand there as long as they goddamn well feel like it (even the executives who walk the store) -- Smack 'em.

And this, my dear friends, this is why most people and especially my own children will not be seen in a grocery store with me.  All of these things happened to me just this morning on one shopping trip. 

Okay most of them happened today.  The smelly, peepee-coated guy was last week, as was the guy shopping all alone with six beautiful boys all under the age of nine.  That was hilarious because dad was completely oblivious as the older ones kept kicking the younger ones back into play every time they ran off trying to escape.

I either need anger management classes or else someone needs to turn shopping into a full-contact sport with referees roaming the aisles.  It certainly would be more interesting, and there would be a helluva lot less fighting in the aisles.

CAROUSEL HUNTING

When I go into Boston, I have a bad habit of walking great distances.  I do not quite know why I keep doing this, but it has helped me learn my way around the city a little better as I am severely directionally challenged.  Also, it provides some physical fitness, which I promptly cancel out by drinking ice cold beer.  This walking plus the addition of beer bring to light one final advantage to my wandering: I am getting to know where every public toilet is in the city of Boston.

In addition to knowing this, I have mastered the Waterfont area and Faneuil Hall via the Rose Kennedy Greenway.  The Greenway -- you know, the lovely lush green and landscaped areas that were tramped and destroyed by that whole Occupy Boston Movement. 

The place where the carousel is.

Now, I know darn well where the carousel is because my nephews rode it recently when they were in Boston for a visit, and I led them there.  Yet for some stupid-ass reason, three of us walking around cannot find it.  Well, let me speak my piece here: I am told that we may be searching for a new carousel, so I am confused by this whole thing.  Remember, I am directionally challenged to start.

This carousel, unlike others, does not have horses.  It has things that make sense to children and Boston, like foxes and lobsters and owls and whales.  My friend has been informed that it is on the edge of the North End at Christopher Columbus Park.  We are fascinated by the possibilities of weird New England creatures instead of ceramic saddled horses, so of course we are on a quest to find it.

We walk until we hit a construction fence, then we enter Christopher Columbus Park and look around.  We see the trellises, the archways, the garden, the lawn -- we can see all the way to the Harborwalk on the other side, but we cannot see any merry-go-round.  We see a young woman who is wearing a Boston Strong t-shirt and working one of the vending carts along the street.  When my friend asks her about the carousel, the girl denies knowing what the word even means.

We cross back over to the construction fence, a huge wire contraption with green material strapped to it and some random signs hanging off of it, and we sit in the benched area that explains all the islands.  We discuss the great possibilities of taking a harbor cruise and seeing the islands, which I did years ago and would gladly do again.  While sitting and looking at the large displays of the different islands and the things you can do there, my daughter, who is also with us, Googles the carousel.  The search reveals it is down near Pearl Street, the exact direction from which we have already come.

We walk back down the few blocks until we have passed where we first arrived, the place from which I would've sworn on my life that I saw something like it when we first arrived.  We re-Google the carousel, and this is when we discover that it is not a new carousel but a refurbished one. 

Aha!  This I know. 

So we trudge back through the throngs of people, the hot summer afternoon, and the Rose Kennedy Greenway, until we are face to face with the construction fence again and the Greenway ends.

What the hell.  Seriously. 

We hear people talking about the carousel, but it is nowhere in sight.  Damnation, I took my nephews here with my brother and sister and their families.  I know goddamn well that the carousel is directly across from the entrance to Faneuil Hall.  We spin around a few times until one of us, I cannot even remember who, finally decides to read the GIANT signs tacked to the fence: "Coming soon … the new carousel…"

Honest to freakin' gawd.  We were recently standing right in front of the fence for five whole minutes before we turned to go to those benches and read all those harbor island signs.  As a matter of fact, the bench on which we sat?  Perfect view of one of the many, many signs that say "Carousel … coming soon."

I have two evil thoughts at this point.  Thought #1 is why the hell are they rebuilding the damn thing during the summer and the height of the tourist season?  Thought #2 is that I want to rip the Boston Strong t-shirt off the girl standing less than twelve feet from the fence and sign all day long selling frozen lemonade, and explain to her that she has no right to wear Boston anything if she doesn't know shit.  My friend, being much calmer than am I, simply crosses the street, explains to the girl that a carousel is a merry-go-round, points to the GIANT sign that stares the girl in the face, and laughs about all of our ineptitude.

Meanwhile, we lift the ripped parts of the green material to stare through the fence at the not-yet-completed carousel.  What we can see, though, is really, truly incredible.  I cannot wait to see the finished product up close and personal to see all the new stuff on it.  Yet part of me will miss the carousel horses, who each had names and unique bridles and saddles to distinguish them.  As excited as I am to watch the spinning lobster and owl and fox et al, I sincerely hope they've kept a horse or two or three.

Is it worth the convoluted trip to see the carousel?  Absolutely. 

Do we walk six miles all over the Waterfront district?  Absolutely.

Do we stop and drink cold beers when we get back to our starting point?  Absolutely.

Do we feel like dingbats? Abso-freaking-lutely!

Did we have a blast in Boston?  The better question would be, "When don't we?"

I'll leave you with the annoying ditty that has been playing through my mind while writing this blog post:

Merry-go-rounds quickly turning,
Quickly turning for you and me
And the whole world madly turning
Turning, turning 'till you can't see
We're on a carousel
A crazy carousel
And now we go around
Again we go around
And now we spin around
We're high above the ground
And down again around
And up again around
So high above the ground
We feel we've got to yell
We're on a carousel
A crazy carousel …

               -----   Jacques Brel, from "Alive and Well and Living in Paris"

(My mother would be so proud; my siblings will want to kill me for reminding them.)

APPARENTLY I AM STUPID

Apparently I am really, really, really stupid. 

My mother was an art history major.  I grew up with art books and paintings in the house, including Degas prints in my room.  When I went to DC at age thirteen, I came home with prints I bought from the National Gallery of Art shop.  I'm a huge fan of M. C. Escher, and I have a sincere appreciation of all kinds of art, including unusual, modern, conceptual, and contemporary.

But this … this shit is just too much.

I visit the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston for the very first time in my life.  I have been to the ICA before many times, but I have never actually stepped inside.  My friend has two daughters who work nearby, it's our favorite parking lot area because it's a stone's throw back to the highway, the views of the city both by land and sea are spectacular here at the wharf, and it's where the cliff divers leap into the harbor (from the ICA roof). 

Today, though, admission is free all day long.  I can finally see all the treasures inside and not have to spend a single dime to do it.  I am exhilarated, the anticipation killing me.  I just came off of two trips to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and a full day at Salem's Peabody Essex Museum.  This place sounds cool, its name is cool, the glassed in views of the harbor are cool.  I mean, it's contemporary, man, right?  Cool.

My daughter and my friend come with me.  We get dropped off at Oak Grove, hop the orange line of the subway (well, we try to -- Sal apparently is ticket-challenged and has to pay and extra $2 to get through, and even then, the gates smoosh her as she screams by), and change to the blue line at State Street.  It's a short walk from the Aquarium, and it's a beautiful day.  We walk into the ICA, find no lines (which is crazy on a day a Boston museum opens for free), and promptly put on our disposable tags to prove we are official patrons of the arts. 

Expecting four floors of displays and a few hours of contemplation, we are surprised to be told we must report to the glass elevator:  The ICA only holds one floor of art, the fourth floor, so move along, children, move along, move along, move along.  Like cattle being prodded to the unknown branding, we dutifully step into the small lobby area and wait for the next … the only … elevator.  There are two smaller elevators behind us, but guards are standing there.  I guess those elevators are too important to carry passengers.  Perhaps they are part of the art.

As soon as we step off the elevator, we are greeted by several young, hip, happening-type guides, who are presumably more versed on the art than are we.  We discover quickly that the ICA is not a museum.  It's a series of rooms that house a few artists at a time, showcasing their work that presumably moves on to another gallery somewhere else.  This makes for an interesting show if you like the stuff, and a deadly show if you do not. 

The first piece of art we encounter consists of five photos, one of which has some red lines on it from a magic marker, printed out on an ink jet, and taped to a piece of glass.  Honestly, it looks like it took the artist less than five minutes to put together.  There was some hooey about why the artists did this, but I lost interest when I came across the modge-podged white paper.  That's right, you heard me: blank paper covered with glue to become a brittle blank piece of paper.  Ta-da! 

Yeah.  So far, not impressed. 

It went on and on like this.  Pictures that were printed off a computer, artwork that looked like a really pissed off kindergartner did it, and stuff that said profound things on the plaques explaining the art, such contemplative words as "This art represents the vacuum of reality" or "I like to dump entire buckets of acrylic paint onto canvases and see what happens.  This is what happens."  I mean, really.  I could've done that.  Doesn't anyone have creativity anymore?

There are the awkward dimensional paintings made up of someone squishing paint from tubes, even cake bags, we are told, and even cookie cutters.  Yeah, no shit.  I can see the cacophony from across the room, and I don't even have my glasses on yet.  There are two old chairs stuck to the wall because the artist likes the thought that things can become … things.  I frigging shit you not.  That's his artist statement that things can indeed become, well, you know.  Things.

There are weird movies by a woman dressed in white with black lines and things poked into her eyes and occasionally with body parts and body hair made out of yarn stuck to her in various places as she spouts WWI poetry.  This is creepy and scares the hell out of my adult daughter, especially when the performer stares at the camera, large black holes for eyes, and starts rhyming about murdering people. 

Yeah.  Art.

There is room after room by a graffiti artist who believes that even if you own property you suck and he hates you, so he will tag your house because you don't really own anything.  He is obviously a Communist.  Good for him.  But let me assure you, if he tags my property, I will tag him right back with a .22 slug in his ass cheek.  That will be MY art.  Maybe I'll use buckshot and make a pretty pattern in his rear-end, and if a few pellets get wedged into his crack, I can tell him he doesn't really own that crack; I have a right to tag it with my shot gun.  Maybe I'll get my own show, too.  He has animated set-ups of himself tagging property with his paint, and he has a sculpture using shelves that showcase his old spray cans.  He has photos of himself destroying and defacing public property, but, hey, he's an artist who suffers for his art.  He tags your property because he's a dickhead.

The other depressing part of the show is a room full of paintings that look like the whole room of art took less than 24 hours to complete.  It is a room full of half-painted floated faces of white men sticking out their tongues.  Why?  Well, according to the artist's statement it is because black Americans were lynched. 

Say what?!  I mean, truly say fuckin' WHAAAAAAT?! 

So are you as an artist laughing about that?  Are you saying that floating white men's faces with tongues sticking out are responsible for it?  You think this dark part of our country's history is subject for your ridicule and a chance at an art gallery?  Tell me the truth, artist, you just made that shit up to make your art appear provocative so you could get picked for this gallery show, right?  No way are you equating tongue-wagging, clownish, half-finished white painted heads on two dimensional canvases to be a political statement that throws the race card.  Are you?

The most disturbing thing I see, though, is the video of the tongues.  Yes, apparently this show is enamored with tongues.  The "artist," and I really do debate this label for this person, taped models (because lord knows their tongues must be gorgeous for the camera), videoed women licking colored sugar off a glass plate.  The music is equally disturbing.  For the musicians out there, it is G (wait about five seconds) then F sharp then it repeats every five seconds like that ad nauseam.  While licking.  Licking.  Licking colored sugar.  Off the plate.  Art.

For the most part, I am not fascinated, enthralled, nor impressed with this art.  Some of it actually makes me physically sick.  There is the painting of the woman with the massively misshapen breasts, one the size of a fist and the other one sticking up in the air and large as a watermelon.  The statement says, "I wanted to represent women's bodies as they really are…"  Sweetcheeks, I can assure you I know no women with such boobage.

Some of it, very, very little of it, is truly fascinating.  I like the television pyramid for some reason, possibly because I've owned many of the old model TVs on display.  The inside of the garbage dumpster is a life-sized animated artist tagging the women's room with graffiti.  How do I know it's the woman's room?  It's clean, there are multiple sinks, and it's all stalls with no urinals.  For some reason, I find this attention to detail to be humorous, almost like the male artist made a mistake.  Either that or he's a pervert.

All in all, the art is not that exciting, and the artist statements are laughable.  A guide finally comes over to enlighten us about some of the stuff we are dissing.  "Ladies, the artist who created this awful, babyish smooshy colored blob was very angry that the university threw out her 300-foot long comic strip she drew as her thesis."

Really?  Threw it out?  Must've looked like shit, then, if someone thought her thesis was leftover crap.  I'm terribly sorry and I hate that it happened to her, but seriously, she's pissed off so she throws acrylic paint at square canvases?  Oh, but it's layered, it's textured, this represents her multi-faceted anger, the guide tells us.  Yeah, it's layered all right; layered under a thick load of bullshit.

Look, if this is talent then I'm wicked talented, too. 

I am a writer and a literature teacher.  I can create connotations where none exist and call it a research paper.  I can pull shit right out of my ass and sound profound ("e.e. cummings' 'In Just Spring' not only talks about the goat-footed boy, the whole poem is shaped … LIKE A GOAT FOOT!" to which Dr. V's eyes opened really wide and he replied in awe, "I never noticed that before!")  Profound, I tell you.  Wicked, wicked, deeply profound.

This place, the ICA, might as well be the Unreality Zone.  For every professional art critic nodding knowingly and praising this show at the ICA, you've been duped.  This is not art, contemporary nor provocative. This art is sad.  That's all.  Sad.  And while all the make-believers ooooh and aaaah their way through the galleries, pretending the white glued paper has real-world significance, we realists are left with nothing but logic and creativity clashing together trying to make sense of what we are seeing here. 

Sometimes white paper is just white paper.  Sometimes a bag is just a bag.  Sometimes making too intense a statement leaves you nowhere but alone in the deep end, and you realize you probably should've grabbed that life jacket after all, but you didn't so you just make shit up to keep you afloat.

Sometimes the Emperor has new clothes, and sometimes I am part of a trio that has no problem pointing out that the Emperor is stark raving naked

FARIS WEAR BOOTS

How tired am I with the week of grad school plus having a portfolio due?

I keep taking wrong turns, forgetting where I am going, and then totally blanking out on why I am where I am. 

And then there's the reading problem.

That's right, the reading problem.  I am so frigging tired that letters are jumbling themselves and changing on me.  The alphabet may have 26 letters, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe I should watch Sesame Street to reacquaint myself with the American language.

One of the grocery stores where I shop is located in a strip mall.  There used to be a Brigham's Ice Cream Shop two stores over from the grocery store,.  It was like a Friendly's or an old HoJo's, but in addition to specialties like grilled cheese, you also had a choice of New England's own Brigham's ice cream flavors.  I am sorry even now to see that it closed. Brigham's is one of those companies helping to keep our unstable northeast corner of the country viable and employed.

But Brigham's is gone, replaced by Fari's Diner.

I have tried to do some research on Fari's Diner, but I only get one semi-coherent review.  It could be a lovely place; I've no idea.  It's my understanding that it's closed by 2 p.m., and I don't get out of work until 2:45, making me not one of their target customers.  Not really sure who is available 8-2 p.m. every day to be their clientele, but blue-hairs come to mind.

Anyway, combine the name of the diner with my extreme fatigue, and I misread the sign coming out from grocery shopping.  See the sign, I re-read it several times, and then I shake my head and try to read it one more time.

Why, for the love of all things reasonable, why why why would anyone name their restaurant this?  What in the hell is the matter with people?  Are they insane?  Do they think they're being creative or cute or clever?

Start with my bad eyesight, add in extreme fatigue from prepping my portfolio, and mix it all together with a short attention span.  These are the conditions under which I notice the sign for the first time while shopping.  I stroll out, pushing my carriage full of groceries, look up, and see:

"FART'S DINER"

Holy shit.  Literally (and I mean that literally), holy effing shit.  Who in their right mind would eat at FART'S DINER?  What do they serve?  Baked beans?  Corn?  Chili?

It takes me three rubbed-eye looks before I realize that the giant T is really a giant I for FARI'S DINER.  It's all good; no one is intentionally causing the patrons' gastric distress.

Fari's not FARTS, though I'm starting to wonder.

I know it's the exhaustion setting in, but how cool would it be to have Fart's Diner, and they only serve gastronomically rejected foods!  Liver and onions would finally have a home, Brussel spouts would find a place to shine, and, of course, FART'S DINER is probably having a special on, oh, I dunno … beans?

No matter. 

With a name like that, I'm not sure I'll ever venture any closer to it than a whiff from the parking lot.

WHICH WITCH

I am sitting in Salem, Massachusetts, enjoying a little lunch with friends.  It is overcast, gray and ominous, but we take a chance anyway and sit outside on the restaurant patio.  Good gamble; the weather holds.

From my seat at the table, I have a perfect view of the street, and a perfect view of the back of a woman who is sitting on a nearby bench with a huge rolling suitcase.  I become fascinated with a large glass bottle she has sitting on her luggage.  It is clear glass, so I can see the contents, gray and brown water with rags of some kind floating in it.  It actually looks like a jar of garbage water, or the morning after a party when the beer bottles are ripe with leftover cigarette butts floating in the liquid residue. 

The longer I look, the sicker it makes me feel.

The woman is clutching something, a cane I think, but it turns out to be a long crooked, forked stick, like a primitive diving rod.  I try not to stare, but I am morbidly fascinated and repulsed all at the same time. 

Suddenly she reaches up and grabs something from under her upturned collar.  Her thin and bony fingers clutch a nest of gray straggly long hair, and she shakes her head until the mass tumbles into a frizzed ball of string around her shoulders.  She starts to turn around, probably sensing someone watching her, so I quickly return my attention to my friends, the menu, the sky.  Anything but this woman.  Her horrid mess of silver dry locks reminds me of my own hair before I cut it all off more than a year ago and again a few months before this when I realized I was sporting the Mad English Professor look on the top of my head.  It is a look that compliments no one, man nor woman, and this haggard bench-warmer is no exception.

I notice that she is dressed in black, hunched over on the bench in the middle of Salem like a spectacle.  A witch spectacle.  Part of the colorful landscape, no less.  For a brief moment, I wonder if she can sense my eyes on her, knows I am staring and wondering and imagining about her character.  Perhaps she might put a hex on me.

But I know the truth.  I am the one with the witches in the family tree (and hanging from it, to be honest).  I am the real deal.  She is nothing but a caricature, a model, an archetype of the myth that has become Salem, a showpiece, a trophy, a hobbit, a troll. 

Her showy glass jar with its ridiculous rags (possibly even her laundry) soaking, her rolling dark zippered valise, her stereotypical black clothing, her laughable gray hair -- she is a pawn in the game that was once a vibrant and normal village.  I realize that she has crawled under my skin not because she frightens me but for a different reason: she offends me. 

Every October for an entire month, the city of Salem becomes a tourist trap, a joke playing on and because of its history.  To those of us who lost family members because of the hysteria, to those of us with broken branches in the family tree, it's not funny.  It's not a profitable opportunity.  Knowing that damnable whacko Judge John Hathorne is buried within spitting distance of our dining table makes me mad with centuries-old rage.  And here, cluttering up my view, assaulting a perfectly fine afternoon out, sits an unstable woman who fancies herself a witch.

I've read the accounts of the trial of one of my great-great-etc.-grandmothers.  She is guilty, all right, guilty of being old, guilty of being cantankerous, guilty of being opinionated, and guilty of standing her ground.  As a matter of fact, it sounds like she's guilty of being me. 

So forgive me if I find the petty devil-worshipping of the ignorant to be offensive to my Salem roots and my historical senses.  You people have it wrong, all wrong, all goddamn bloody wrong. 

Salem isn't the joke; you are. 

You may laugh at the tourists and the locals as you rake in the money for your fakery.  You may laugh at those of us who've lived it, who have had the reality and the facts and the legacy passed down to us.  We with these deep-cutting Salem ties are not laughing with you; we are laughing at you.

Will you please go buy yourself some real clothes instead of traipsing around Salem with a black shower curtain tied over your shoulders.  Will you please go to the salon, for the love of god, and do something about your hair.  Will you please learn the history and understand that being a Salem Witch is to be a victim not a beggar in a Halloween costume. And will you please put that glass jar out of sight from the restaurant patio lest I lose my lunch and add my already-been-partially-chewed pulled pork to your park bench menagerie.