Da bulls

The headline read, “4 gored during annual Running of the Bulls.”

 

It’s hard to say how many people were surprised when they saw this. I’m guessing it’s somewhere in the vicinity of zero. Now, if the headline had been, “4 abducted by slug-like space aliens during annual Running of the Bulls,” that would have come straight out of left field.

 

Fortunately, I can approach the issue with some degree of levity, because none of them sustained life-threatening injuries during the weekend’s festivities in Spain. One of them took a horn near an extremely sensitive area recognizable to any self-respecting proctologist, but he’ll supposedly be fine – assuming there aren’t any long plane rides in his immediate future. If there are, he may want to bring his own inflatable seat cushion in the event of turbulence.

 

If this seems like a cavalier take on an attack by a 1,700 lb. beast, consider what prompted the incident. Six toro bravo cattle, each one of which will likely be killed by matadors in the evening’s bull fights, are placed in corrals in Pamplona. A rocket is set off to mark the beginning of the run, and the corral gates are opened, exposing the bulls to a fevered throng of locals and tourists, who start running because … well, there are bulls loose. They’re big and they’re angry and they have weapons on their heads that make nightsticks look like homemade slingshots. A mighty chase ensues, and is somehow considered fun. Apparently Spaniards have yet to be introduced to the winning combination of dart boards and grain alcohol.

 

It’s not like these four unlucky celebrants were gored while shopping for espresso machines at WalMart. They were gored during an event in which the goal is to not be gored; they just weren’t very good at it. So no, the headline wasn’t exactly surprising.

 

What’s surprising is that the tradition has lasted as long as it has.

 

“Tradition” is really the key word, here. As a piece of language, it’s used as a one-size-fits-all defense of some pretty bizarre behaviors; various cultures will rationalize certain outdated practices simply by invoking their claim to tradition. If it was tradition, for example, to paint all newborn babies like footballs and play pass with them in an Olympic-sized swimming pool filled with Jell-O, there’d be a group vehemently arguing that we should maintain the ritual solely because it’s been happening for a while. Never mind that it’s humiliating, pointless, and a total waste of perfectly good Jell-O.

 

Not to knock the whole concept of tradition. Some of our traditions are benign and serve as nice cultural calling cards. I grew up in a French-Canadian household, and one of the heritage’s traditions is to use a pair of spoons to play percussion along with a piece of music. Typically, you hold the spoons loosely together like a pair of chopsticks and bang them lightly between your free hand and your thigh, producing a tinny clack-a-lack sound reminiscent of loose peanut shells rattling around inside a coffee can. It’s an off-beat musical instrument, to be sure; spoons groupies are pretty rare, and you don’t exactly see Eddie Van Halen toolin’ on the spoons during “Running With the Devil.” But it’s a sweet and harmless way to connect to French-Canadian culture, and it evokes a pleasant reminiscence of the community’s roots. It’s a tradition worth keeping.

 

Others have been ditched, and rightly so. For about 1,000 years, from the 10th Century to the early 20th, foot binding was a common tradition in China. It was horrifying, and generations of young girls were victimized by it. As early as age 6, and sometimes earlier, a girl’s toes would be broken and then wrapped in bandages that had been soaked in a mixture of herbs and animal blood. This was to prevent the feet from growing and developing normally. The girl’s feet would break and become highly deformed, typically not growing beyond 4-6 inches. When the practice was thankfully abolished, you can be certain there remained a contingent that said, “But wait! We’ve been doing this for a thousand years. It’s tradition!”

 

Well, so was human sacrifice, which was arguably even more odious. A lot of ancient civilizations practiced sacrifice, but it was something for which the Mayans and Aztecs were especially notorious. The ritual went something like this: Tobey, the god of bad haircuts, was angry one day because everyone in the Mayan village of Boogersnot got really awful buzz cuts with lightening bolts shaved into their temples. Tobey had to be appeased, and how do you appease an angry god? Why, you whack someone, of course! Not quickly or painlessly, either. Burning, beheading and burying someone alive were all popular options at the time, and if there was an active volcano handy, then woo-doggy, it was party time in Mayaland. It was like the ancient version of a community block party, only a virgin died and there was no barbecue. So it wasn’t like a block party at all.

 

Ritual sacrifice is a lot less common now. I’ll be bold and call that a good thing.

 

How is it, then, that the very concept of tradition is used to justify these senseless and outdated antics? Granted, letting bulls run loose through a downtown neighborhood is less offensive than, say, burning Helga at the stake for wearing sandals on a Saturday. But there are animal rights issues to consider, not to mention the unspeakable wound in that pour tourist’s derriere. The fact that festivities end with an animal being slaughtered for entertainment isn’t exactly a point in Pamplona’s favor, either.

 

Maybe we ought to just give the bulls some spoons and let them perform an outdoor concert. That, my friends, would be a tradition worth holding onto.

 

Chestnut roasted

Ever heard of a guy named Joey Chestnut? Sure you have. It’s one of those names that sounds vaguely familiar, though you can’t quite place it. With a name like Chestnut, you’d think he was a Christmas-themed character – Santa Claus’ head elf, perhaps, or the guy who’s illegally sheltering Frosty the Snowman so he doesn’t get deported. But no, our pal Joey is a different kind of oddity.

 

He’s a competitive eater. Currently, he’s got a contract with an entity called Major League Eating. And yes, that’s an actual thing.

 

Starting to ring a bell? If not, here’s the final piece of the puzzle: Chestnut is the eight-time defending champion of Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, held annually in Brooklyn’s Coney Island. In 2013, while devouring his way to a seventh straight title, Chestnut crammed down a world-record 69 hot dogs – with buns – in a hair over ten minutes, which is pretty astounding in a retch-inducing, hand-me-the-nearest-bucket kind of way. During a single event, he downed more wieners than I ever have in my life, all in the time it takes to watch one-and-a-half Bugs Bunny cartoons. 

 

Frankly, I’d rather watch the cartoons. Seeing Elmer Fudd get a pie in the face has never resulted in my clutching a toilet bowl and sobbing.

 

There are a few things that are disturbing about this whole competitive eating business. The first and most obvious is that it’s gross. Just for giggles, let’s assume that a single hot dog constitutes a standard lunch. Actually, strike that – this is America. Let’s assume two hot dogs constitute a lunch. That means, during his 2013 run, Chestnut choked down over a month’s worth of meals in an astoundingly tiny window. Since I’m feeling generous, I’ll go ahead and call that an accomplishment; after all, some sort of training or preparation had to take place in order for him to set that particular record. What that training entailed, exactly, I’m not quite sure. Whatever it was, I’m hoping it involved a lobster bib and a candy dish filled to overflowing with high-strength antacid tablets.

 

Worse than the ick-factor, though, is the overwhelming waste of it all.

 

I’m about to say something trite. Ready for it? Here it comes: People around the world are starving. It’s one of those statements that induces eye-rolling and groans of “Oh, please,” but it also happens to be true. We have the luxury of swatting away that assertion like a fly because, all told, we lead fairly cushy lives; even those of us on the bottom fringes of a dwindling middle class have a near-guarantee of cheap eats at the local supermarket, providing we don’t spend our grocery budget on malt liquor and Twizzlers. (Which is easier said than done, granted.) We’re able to ignore hunger because it would take a catastrophe for us to experience it ourselves.

 

Yet the reality of it persists. Statistics reported by the World Hunger Education Service indicate that, from 2012 to 2014, 23.8 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa was undernourished. I’m no math whiz, but that’s close to a quarter of all men, women and children. And while you might expect numbers like that from a region so impoverished, southern Asia isn’t that far behind, at nearly 16 percent. Not to be depressing or anything, but for the love of Garfield, that’s an awful lot of people.

 

Meanwhile, there’s Joey Chestnut, tossing ballpark food down his throat not for nourishment, but for a blue ribbon and a handshake on ESPN. Something’s wrong here.

 

The problem is partly one of money – specifically, advertising dollars. Feeding hungry people doesn’t generate revenue because it’s not a source of entertainment. But a hot dog eating contest? Boy howdy. That’s the kind of thing Budweiser execs salivate over, because nothing washes down a dog (or 70) like an ice cold beer – rendering Nathan’s audience particularly vulnerable to subliminal messaging. Both Nathan’s and their advertisers can practically hear the ka-ching of the cash register, which wouldn’t be the case if the oodles of hot dogs prepared for the contest were delivered instead to, say, Namibia – where poor nutrition causes roughly half of the deaths of all children under 5.

 

That’s not the whole story, though. Largely, it’s about a culture of excess.

 

I was at a friend’s house for a cookout a few weeks ago. It was a glorious summer evening, the grill fires were burning, and the meat was overflowing – literally. Walking an enormous pile of food to his backyard picnic tables, our host looked like he was about to bestow an expansive feast upon the knights of King Arthur’s Round Table, with juice from the beef practically dripping over the sides of his tray. There were at least two burgers and hot dogs per person, plus a bevy of sides that, if dropped to the ground from a helicopter, would cause a crater the size of an Algerian nudist colony. We didn’t come close to finishing everything. We ate until we were barely able to walk, then slipped into semi-lucid food comas while the remaining grub went cold and neglected. Did the residual meat up as leftovers? One only hopes. It would be a shame to think it all went to our grillmaster’s dog, who gets quite enough nutrients from his regular diet of Alpo and rodent droppings.

 

But that’s the American way. Too much is never enough.

 

It’s frustrating to consider that, while one nation feasts, another is mired in famine. The arithmetic is lopsided. Fortunately, most of us don’t eat competitively, so the best way to assuage any guilt over cultural gluttony is to simply eat one’s fill, and no more. It won’t earn us any highlights on SportsCenter, but then again, we weren’t exactly headed there to begin with, were we?

 

Apologies for not being enthralled with your dubious legacy, Mr. Chestnut. But next time someone brings me a wheelbarrow full of hot dogs, I’m stopping at one.

Sky rockets in flight

Note: Originally published in the Journal Tribune prior to the Fourth of July.  In case you find yourself thinking that somehow I missed the boat.

 

 

 

Burning your earlobe with a white-hot sparkler isn’t something you forget very easily. I was 6 when it happened, and the incident still retains a crystalline clarity in my mental Rolodex of life experiences – which means it was either 1) an important event, or 2) I was some sort of child genius who, at some point, sacrificed his uber-memory to the golden god of Heineken. Either way, it hurt.

 

It’s surprising it doesn’t happen more often. Far from engaging in anything out of the ordinary, I was merely doing what kids do: Waving the sparkler around in the air and trying to draw words and boobies with the light tracers. One sweep of my arm was a little too grandiose, and the low-grade firework slipped from my hand and landed on my right ear, inflicting what I remember to be a pretty painful singe. Years later, professional boxer Evander Holyfield had part of his lobe chomped off by an apparently malnourished Mike Tyson; when it happened, I recall knowing roughly how Holyfield felt, minus the residual crazy-man slobber.

 

At that age, I was too young to ruminate on the ways in which we celebrate our nation’s birthday. You’re not exactly reflective at 6. It stung for a while, I was comforted by doting parents, and minutes later I was back in my play area with a stack of scrap paper and a box of crayons. Drawing boobies, probably. I was a very committed child.

 

Now, though, I can take a step back and regard the whole sparkler-lighting ritual with some modicum of objectivity. It’s sort of a strange pastime, this whole fireworks thing.

It would be disingenuous of me to claim any real expertise on colonial America. To be an expert, you need credentials, like a show on the History Channel that isn’t filmed in a pawn shop. But anyone possessing even a glancing familiarity with the nation’s origin knows that the whole saga of America’s birth – from the first shot fired at Lexington to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia – was pretty solemn stuff. People sacrificed their lives to secure our autonomy from England. Fireworks, which ostensibly replicate the whiz-bang explosions of those long-ago rockets and bombs, seem like an odd way to mark the occasion. It’s like commemorating V-J Day by dropping a giant rock on a diorama of Hiroshima.

 

Fervent patriotism has never been my thing; in particular, I’ve always been confused by the slogan, “Proud to be an American.” Pride, as legendary comedian George Carlin pointed out, “should be reserved for something you accomplish on your own.” None of us, save for immigrants, accomplished being an American. We were born here by accident. It’s not a skill, like juggling pomegranates while tap-dancing “Annabelle Lee” in Morse code. But I’m happy to be an American. It was an undeniable stroke of luck that I was born in a country that allows me the freedom to say what I want, think what I want, and purchase any number of fine edibles from the dollar menu at Wendy’s. That being the case, I’ve always reminded myself to be thankful for the men and women of the military, who remind me daily that the bravest thing I’ve ever done was to return soup at a restaurant. It’s thanks to their heroism that I don’t have to say words like “bloody” and “wanker,” unless I’m recounting the time I got in a violent car wreck with Joe Wanker. They carry on a tradition started by the militiamen of our embryonic republic, and they deserve mad respect.

 

Blowing things up is an odd way to show it.

 

Don’t get me wrong – despite my random sparkler attack, I like fireworks. They’re fun. Sure, the dog might get scared and high-tail it to the nearest Ramada Inn (true story), I might come close to setting the front-yard evergreen ablaze with an ill-placed Roman candle (also true), and I might get a smidge too exuberant and melt part of my head (see above). But despite all that, I’ve got some genuinely nice fireworks-themed memories. They were a tradition in my family. Morning glories were always my favorite; many an evening I stood leaning over our porch railing with two or three in hand, anticipating the sudden change from steady, white-hot fizz to multicolored pop-snap crescendo. There was always a faint melancholy whenever the last firework petered out and was snuffed by a warm summer breeze; I can still smell the sulfur, still see the pockmarks left in the grass by Roman candles and their ill-gotten ilk. Totaling up each of these instances, how much of my life have I spent waving sparklers around on that porch? Twenty minutes? Forty? A blip in time, yet each moment now seems somehow important, treasured fossils of a receding past.

 

So I can’t exactly recommend that we stop it with all the light shows. There’s too much of my own childhood at stake, and besides, the practice is too ingrained – too much a part of the Fourth’s celebratory nature – to put the brakes on now. It all just seems not enough somehow, like there’s something additional we could be doing that doesn’t necessarily invoke the blood of heroes.

 

Powdered wig party? Appropriate, but weird and lame. Cookout? We already do that. A viewing of “Rocky IV,” in which an American flag-clad Rocky Balboa pounds the snot out of a genetically enhanced Russian? Maybe. Let’s see how we feel after steak and beer.

 

Mostly, it’s important to take a moment to remember what the holiday is supposed to be about – not the battles, but the freedom they won. Me, I’ll be at the lake, celebrating America’s lax censorship laws by drawing boobies on a sketch pad in a hammock.

 

Because if unabashed chauvinism and sexual perversion isn’t American, then our noble republic simply has no hope.

AC doozie

It’s not that I was eavesdropping, necessarily, but when two people are having a loud conversation a mere 10 feet from where you’re sitting, it’s hard not to notice what they’re saying. The dialogue was between two men, and went something like this:

 

“Boy, it sure is a scorcher today, isn’t it? It’s almost too hot. It’s not comfortable.”

 

“Yeah, but I’ll take this over cold and snowy any day.”

 

Of course he would. He’s not insane.

 

As New Englanders, most of us have repeatedly expressed some version of that sentiment; it resurfaces every year, when we have to remind ourselves that humidity and stuffiness are still preferable to not feeling our feet. Without giving it too much thought, it would be easy to assume that people living in the South and Southwest have it easy, what with year-round pool parties and Thanksgivings in shorts. Kinda makes you want to track down a Floridian and punch them for sheer chuckles. Or that could just be me.

 

There’s a rub, though. The easy comfort of southern locales is a relatively new phenomenon, brought about by a technology that’s quietly changed the course of history.

 

Air conditioning.

 

We tend not to think of AC as being a history-changer; most of the historical events that become calcified in our collective memories are brought about by great violence, great triumph, or great singing performances in front of a panel of TV judges. When we flip on the AC to beat back the most oppressive of summer heat, we’re usually not saying to ourselves, “Wow! A hundred years ago my only recourse in sticky weather was to strip to my skivvies and jump in the ocean!” We also don’t think of ourselves as wearing “skivvies” anymore. That may have something to do with it.

 

Yet consider modern life without air conditioning. It would be a drastically different world. There’d be no indoor malls in Texas. Office buildings would be infested with oscillating fans. You’d either see be a lot more convertibles driving around, or a lot more sweaty forearms dangling from open car windows. And really, there’d just be a lot more nakedness all the way around, which sounds great until you realize one of those naked people would be Larry King. Thank you, AC, for keeping Larry King in suspenders.

 

According to the History Channel documentary series “How the States Got Their Shapes” – yes, I’m citing a TV show – nine of the 10 most populous American cities at the turn of the 20th Century were located in the North, with Los Angeles the only western locale to make the cut. Currently, only three of those northern cities – New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia – remain in the top 10. All of the others are in the South or Southwest, with three in Texas (Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston), three in California (LA, San Diego, and San Jose), and one in Arizona (Phoenix). This massive population shift was made possible by air conditioning. You don’t get people to relocate to your burg when the air at the post office is as thick as chicken noodle soup.

 

History plays out differently if this migration doesn’t occur. If, for example, Dallas never becomes a major metropolitan area, then an American President named John F. Kennedy may decide it’s not worth making a swing there in November of 1963. That means no motorcade through Dealey Plaza, no Lee Harvey Oswald perched inside a book depository, and possibly no successful assassination attempt. Which means Lyndon Johnson may never become president. Which means the civil rights movement of the ’60s may play out differently. And so on down the line, until the country wakes up one morning in 2015 to the announcement that President Engelbert Humperdinck has declared No Pants Day a national holiday. Because air conditioning was never invented, we’re all at work in our underwear. Which is probably just as well, since it’s so damn hot.

 

During the country’s infancy, stuffy climes were double trouble. Have you ever seen the way our founding fathers dressed? It could have been the height of a sweltering summer, and they’d still be decked out in thick vests, long-sleeved jackets and flared-put pantaloons with roughly the heft of an aircraft carrier. Whether due to popular style or a cultural dedication to modesty, you never saw John Adams dressed in, say, cargo shorts and an undershirt. The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia – which took place during a hot spell, apparently – might not have been taken so seriously if Washington and Franklin had showed up in bathing suits and flip-flops. With AC, their overdressed, buttoned-down styles wouldn’t have been an issue; just crank it up, Jefferson, and pass the lemonade. As it was, their sequestered meetings may well have taken place in a Saint Bernard’s crotch, for all the relief they got. One wonders if they forgot to include a Bill of Rights on the first pass because they were eager to adjourn and take an Atlantic dunk in full-on birthday-suit mode.

 

For one reason or another, AC never got its due. It heralded a revolution in the way we live, but the only time we really acknowledge it is when we grouse about lugging out our heavy window units, or complain when it’s on the fritz. Yet everything would be different without it. Las Vegas would be a tiny, forgettable desert settlement. Florida would be a sparsely populated swamp. There’d be no such thing as summer blockbusters; movie houses would be ghost towns in July and August, its patrons toting coolers to the beach and stuffing ice cubes in their bikini tops.

 

It’s been a cool one so far, but that’ll change. Nights will be sticky. When that happens, and it’s time to crank the ol’ cold-box, I plan on taking a moment to be thankful that we’ve come to this point, having acquired mastery over the spit-thick air of another soupy summer.

 

Anyone been south of the Mason-Dixon line lately? I hear it’s lovely indoors this time of year.