Daily Office Thursday
As they say in Texas: “All awning and no produce.”
¶ Matins: Pretty soon, Manhattan’s square footage will be too pricey for groceries. We shall be forced to subsist on caviar and foie gras. Bottled water? Forget it! Dom Perignon or die!
¶ Lauds: Kathleen and I were to check in, I thought, at about seven. By the time we actually connected, at about eight, I’d been through a full cycle of dread and despair. It turned out that Kathleen thought that we would talk when she got back from a cocktail party. The moment I heard her voice, of course, I forgot my worries.
¶ Tierce: Gail Collins predicts that Barack will lose interest in the fight before Hillary does: “I say her strategic desire to keep fighting trumps his strategic desire to put the lid on it.” Read her hilarious Op-Ed piece, in which “The Uncle Al Show” has nothing to do with a former vice-president. Â
¶ Nones: Édouard visits Foxwoods in the universal language of photography, so you can see the nightmare for what it is. Scroll down a bit, through the sylvan pictures, until you find yourself asking, “What the hell is that?” It’s a casino, that’s what. In the middle of a forest. Una selva not nearly oscura enough.
¶ Compline: This isn’t news, I don’t suppose, but I just heard about it: all of Mad Magazine on two DVDs.
Oremus…
§ Matins. Good grief, there’s a Wikipedia entry for Gristede’s. The brand is in even worse shape than I thought — and they don’t tell you what I’ve always wanted to know: What kind of a name is “Gristede”?
I do mean “always.” There was a Gristede’s in Bronxville, just oppposite the station (on the wrong side of the tracks). I cannot remember its not being there when I was little. They sold Pablum, in great big boxes, stacked on high shelves that could only be reached with special grippers. The butcher, whose name I forget but who, to my juvenile mind, bore a strong and cheerful resemblance to Don Ameche, was always happy to pass me a slice of the most delicious salami in the world. They simply don’t make it that way anymore. (Trust me: I’ve been complaining about this since I was thirty.)
Once upon a time, the store in the picture was a Grand Union. At some point in the late Eighties (I think it was), high-end designers, including Milton Glaser no less, were brought in for a re-think. An enormous pear (la grosse poire) was affixed to the façade; it may still be there, hidden by the floral subcontractors who steal business from my guy across the street, Nicky at Hybrid Florist. But I doubt it.
To appreciate fully the sheer improbability of the enterprise, consider that the grocery store is one storey tall. In the middle of Yorkville, the most densely populated &c &c.
In the rez de chaussée of our building, on the Second Avenue front, a Food Emporium has been slogging along for well over a decade, getting worse and worse — more limited in its stock — by the week. It’s supposed to be as high-end as the old Grand Union re-think was, but it is simply expensive, and special in no other way. I shop there less and less, and never just because it’s about two inches closer to home. All right, so I don’t have to cross a street to get there; that’s a consideration.
I don’t know why I don’t think to take European visitors to our local “supermarkets.” They’d feel right at home, or perhaps even a little sorry for me. As for Americans from the rest of the country (including the Bronx!), they’d — they’d — they’d move away! Sooner than put up with our Krushchev-era options.
§ Lauds. But the cute thing was that when we talked at bedtime we couldn’t hang up. We were like not-even-newlyweds. We kept saying “I love you,” “Sleep well,” “Call me when you get up,” “No bad dreams,” and all the other endearments, until we realized that we were carrying on as though we were back in the second year of law school (twenty-nine years ago, folks).
§ Tierce. I remain agnostic. The Democratic Party continues to shear in half; like the hull of the Titanic, it cannot sustain the intensification of conflict between its idealists (who support Mr Obama) and its populists (Ms Clinton). Everyone I know is an idealist: we would all be Republicans if Republicans were a progressive party instead of a reactionary one. Unlike real Republicans, though, we’re incapable of holding our noses and supporting the candidate most likely to win — most likely to win because his or her supporters hold their noses. Â
Does that make us childish, deserving of comparison to the kiddies running around in Uncle Al’s studio long ago in Cincinnati? I’m afraid that it does. This isn’t the Student Body Presidency we’re talking about.
§ Nones. I’ve never been to Foxwoods — or to any casino. As part of a mobile summer camp, in 1963, I saw Las Vegas by daylight. It was simply sordid then, not yet monstrously and monumentally tacky. Édouard’s little junket has me wondering what it would take to get me to go to such a place now. Once upon a time, I’d have thought it was a hoot to go. Now, I’m fairly sure that I should probably run amok. When I try to think of Things Wrong With the World Today that aren’t manifest in some way or another at Foxwoods, I’m stumped.
§ Compline. I was never as nuts about Mad as the other smart kids, and in fact it never occurred to me that smart kids were Mad‘s only readers. That’s because it wasn’t such a good idea to be smart, in that sense, c 1960. Not at all. It was great to be “smart” in the way that produced great test scores, but those of us who were on to that racket made a point of not trying. Well, I did, anyway. And look where it got me. (What it got me was a lapel button from my daughter that reads: “Does it irritate you that I’m always right?”)
Half the time I was worried sick that I wasn’t smart enough to grow up to be an intellectual. The rest of time I was horrified that I would — because intellectuals were known to be careless about personal hygeine.
Nevertheless, I was an avid consumer of Mad. Some things I liked more than others, but such is the state of my memory that I am going to have to wait for the DVDs to arrive before telling you what they were.