CHARLIE

He nails his marks
After nights of excess
He has an ego
The size of Texas
His career is becoming
The Great Train Wrecxas
Whoever can I mean?
It’s Charlie Sheen

The power of his mind
Can take him far
He’s a genuine bona-fide
Rock star from Mars
He drives extremely
Snazzy cars
Young Charlie Sheen

At two mil an ep
He’s underpaid
Got pornstar girlfriends
When he wants to get laid
He has it made
In the shade
That Charlie Sheen

He delivers his message
With violent love
Like an iron fist
In a velvet glove
Says, “Haim, take this job
And shove...”
He’s Charlie Sheen

You can’t process him
With a normal brain
All the fools and trolls
Crack under the strain
Come in, Charlie
It’s beginning to rain
Hey, Charlie Sheen

TRICKY: A 100-WORD STORY

It was during a fearsome storm that Richard Nixon’s plane went down in the mountainous wilderness of Papua New Guinea. By some miracle, the pilot saved the fuselage from being smashed to flinders in the dense palm forest; the passengers and crew, five in all, were able to clamber out of the smoking wreckage with only minor bruises.

They were alive but terrified. Everyone was aware that they were in mortal danger: It was common knowledge that the jungle teemed with headhunters and cannibals.

Nixon, however, was safe. Even cannibals knew enough to avoid a nasty case of Tricky Dickinosis.

YOU BET YOUR SWEET ASS I AM

Life moves on
At a snail’s pace
For the bearer of plastron
And carapace

Slow and steady
Wins the race
Says the wearer of plastron
And carapace

Some call it sloth
Some, Amazing Grace
There’s salvation in the plastron
And carapace

Life in the fast lane
Is such a waste
To the bearer of plastron
And carapace

Take life in its measure
With dignity and taste
Thus do honor to the plastron
And carapace

THE TEEVEE CHEF: A 100-WORD STORY

Her Food Network show was getting stale, they said. People were sick of southern cooking, they said.

Reinvent yourself, they said.

Fine, she thought. I’ll give ’em something they’ll never expect. I’m gonna start cooking Eastern European Jewish food.

Amazingly, it worked. She was in demand like never before. Her chicken soup with matzohballs was a sensation, her rugelach a crowd pleaser. Books featuring her recipes for chopped liver and gribenes flew off the shelves. Even Michael Symon and Bobby Flay started cooking brisket with onions.

But disaster struck when critics rendered an exceptionally harsh judgment against Paula Deen Kasha.

[There’s a bilingual pun hidden in this story. Can you find it?]

MARGARET MEAD IN SAMOA

We just spent a lovely couple of days visiting Eli (hizzownself) and Toni down in their Florida winter hideaway. Among the amusements and activities was a side trip to a spot in Florida that I never knew existed... a place with a bizarre, alien culture.

No, I’m not talking about Gibsonton. Also known as Gibtown, Gibsonton is home to mutants and carnies during the off season - it is, as Velociman put it once, “where all the real freaks live when the circuses and fairs are in hibernation.” That place is meat for a complete anthropological dissertation on its own... but I will save that for another occasion.

I’m talking about a place that’s even more sinister and bizarre. I’m talking about The Villages.

A massive retirement community carved out of the desolate mangrove swamps and savanna-like grasslands of Central Florida, The Villages bills itself as “Florida’s friendliest hometown.”

You’ve watched the movie The Truman Show, which takes place in a town possessed of a certain creepy conformity? That was filmed in the Florida Gulf Coast community of Seaside. Now (as the Missus puts it), imagine Seaside on steroids and jacked up on methamphetamine, and you’ve got a tiny idea of The Villages.

It’s like a permanent Disneyland for elderly folks. Elderly folks with money, anyway.

You approach The Villages by traversing the seedy small towns of central Florida. Old pickup trucks on blocks in the front yards. Body shops. Hair salons offering tax preparation services. Bail bondsmen. And then, of a sudden, you realize that you have crossed an Invisible Boundary. Restaurants! Shopping! Hotels! More restaurants! More shopping! Golf courses! And hordes of tanned, wrinkly Q-Tips populating them all.

As we drove deeper and deeper into The Villages, a feeling of having been transported to the midst of an Exotic Culture came over me. It was, I thought, much the same feeling anthropologist Margaret Mead must have had amongst the Samoans. We were strangers in a strange land. A very strange land.

Like any Exotic Culture, this big game preserve for silverbacks has its own societal norms. The first one that strikes you is the amazing plethora of tricked-out golf carts. Residents of The Villages must own golf carts, presumably because there are areas off-limits to street-legal vehicles... but to call some of these things golf carts is to damn them with faint praise. No: These rides have been pimped. Your average gangsta rapper in the ’hood, with his diamond-studded grille, flashy hoopty, and Excessive Bling, could be schooled by these oldsters.

Some look like little Hummers, others miniature Rolls-Royces or vintage Chevys. On almost every one, the names of husband and wife are prominently displayed, always in the same script lettering... and (Eli informed me) when one of the spouses keels over, the replacement’s name is carefully painted over the former one.









In a mating display reminiscent of the peacock’s great fan of tailfeathers - or the gorilla’s chest-thumping - hundreds of these golf carts thunder past, cruising the squares and main streets of the Villages, looking to impress tourists and the occasional unattached female. It’s quite impressive, really.

We stayed long enough to enjoy a movie (the cinema palaces at The Villages are exceptional, complete with gold-plated faucets in the Gents’ Room, and a tuxedo-clad cologne- and towel-distribution agent) and a fine meal at one of the local establishments, then made the hour-long trek back to Chez Eli. Back to some sort of normalcy.

She Who Must Be Obeyed is ready to pick up and move to The Villages. I told her she could... after I’m defunct. Disneyland is fun, sure, but as a daily diet it would get tiresome in a big hurry, don’tcha think?

DR. SINGH

I knew a man named Dr. Singh
Who tried to teach me just one thingh:
Be thou gracious, be thou kind,
And if you Sikh, then you shall find.

NIGHT VIGIL

The ever-vigilant Hakuna guards the family room at night.

The mice, they never stand a chance
When she does her “Catch the Mousie” dance.
But late at night, she sits and stares
And dreams, perhaps, of catching bears.

CAN YOU BEET THIS?

Roasted golden beet salad.

The Missus thinks I’m obsessed with beets.

Can’t say I blame her. I’ve been cranking out one or both of these beet salads almost every week. She won’t go near ’em; the job of consuming them is left to me, alas.

When you roast these babies up, dice ’em, and doctor ’em up with sherry vinegar, tarragon, orange zest, olive oil, and a few blood orange segments, they no longer taste of the dirt they grew in: They taste of ambrosia.

But this is ambrosia with some horrifying side effects on the excretory system - appearance-wise, anyway. More than that would be TMI for a family blog.


Roasted red beet salad.

Beets. Can’t beat ’em!

LIFE IN THE LOVE LANE

Valentine, circa 1938, from collection of SWMBO’s late Dad.

I’ve been living life in the Love Lane for a long time now.

She Who Must Be Obeyed and I enjoyed our first Valentine’s Day together thirty-five years ago. My gift to her at that time was a cartoon of myself exposing a horrifyingly broad tongue, a cartoon that resides somewhere in the Elisson Archives unto this day. Nobody would have guessed, given such a vaguely inauspicious beginning, that we would still be together three and a half decades down the road.

Last night we celebrated the Sacred Occasion (sacred, at least, to the manufacturers of greeting cards, chocolates, and condoms, not to mention restauranteurs) by enjoying a candlelit dinner for two, courtesy of the Elisson Kitchen. An arugula salad with avocado and sherry-mustard vinaigrette. Sautéed mushrooms with smoked paprika. Grilled asparagus spears. Roasted cauliflower with garlic and capers. Char-grilled T-bone streaks with port marchand de vin sauce. A nice Barolo with which to wash it down. And, for dessert, homemade blackberry tea ice cream.

For romance, home-cooked beats a restaurant meal every time... especially if you’re with the right person.

Speaking of which, have I told you about my Valentine? Sure I have.

We’ve been together through thick and thin. These days, rather thinner than thicker, which is all to the good.

Thirty-five years of putting up with each other’s crap, laughing at each other’s jokes... and, together, laughing at our own foibles. Thirty-five years of mortgages, bills, children (wonderful children!), happy moments, scary moments, restless nights, restful nights, sickness, and health.

Thirty-five years of Life in the Love Lane. It’s the best way to travel!

NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN

“Mother Gue, the Rocky Mountains is the marrow of the world.” - Del Gue, in Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

Actually, it was a night on Starr Mountain, but I’m sure Mussorgsky - were he still walking the planet - would not mind the hat-tip.

Yes, Starr Mountain. Some of my Esteemed Readers will remember last year’s cold-weather camping adventure with Eric, the Tennessee Renaissance Man. For sure, one person did... and, in a veritable barrage of text messages, expressed his desire to be In On The Deal this year.

That’s when we realized that the window for getting in some decent cold-weather camping was getting smaller by the minute. And so we made some hasty plans to do the Mountainy Thing while there was still frost on the pumpkin. Alas, the Veloci-Instigator bailed out at the last minute, leaving Eric and me to our own devices.

There were only two problems. One, the night we selected to be on the mountain was the very same night a winter storm was supposed to sweep through the entire area, depositing anywhere from one to three inches of White Stuff from Tennessee all the way to Atlanta and southwards. She Who Must Be Obeyed was skeptical. “You’re gonna get up there on that mountain and you won’t be able to get down!”

Women, practical beasts that they are, have no Spirit of Adventure. They’re also not Bull-Goose Loony.

The other issue was that Eric had somehow contrived to pull a shoulder muscle, not a helpful thing to have happen right before you plan to lug thirty or forty pounds of gear up a mountain trail. But Eric, being a Marine, wanted to tough it out: “Pain is just fear leaving your body.”

And so it was that, throwing any possible residuum of common sense and caution to the winds, Eric and I arrived at Starr Mountain Wednesday afternoon. As we did last year, we drove a few hundred yards up the dirt-paved mountain road until we reached the foot of a dirt bike trail - a convenient parking alcove. We shouldered our packs, then, and marched up to the summit of the mountain, well past last year’s campsite. At some point we realized that if we continued much farther down the trail, we would be losing altitude that we would only have to make up later, and so we made camp in an area where a recent tornado had laid waste to numerous trees. What our campsite lacked in scenery (last year we had a beautiful view toward the east) it more than made up for with plentiful firewood.

Within minutes we had pitched our tent and Eric had started a campfire - this time without the help of the trioxane accelerant he used last year. All we had to do then was crack open our jars of pot roast and start warming them up on the portable propane stove.

Pot roast, SWG-style.

Nothing sharpens the appetite like a hike up a mountainside on a chilly day... but Eric’s pot roast and the cornbread that accompanied it would have been delicious under even the mildest conditions. And to help wash it down we had an ample supply of single malt.

Came nightfall, and the crackling fire (along with the Scotch) kept us warm and comfortable as occasional flakes of snow began drifting down. Then, at 9:00 p.m., right in accordance with the weather forecast, the snow arrived for real.


Eric surveys the fire by the light of his headlamp.

We abandoned our campfire (and a half-full jar of leftover pot roast) to the tender mercies of the storm and clambered into the tent, settling into our respective sleeping bags. Snow pattered on the fly of the tent; we would dislodge the accumulation with an occasional thump of the thumb. And in the morning, we awoke to see the world transformed by an inch-thick blanket of fluffy, crystalline snow.

A restorative cup of hot coffee and Eric was ready to set about the business of rebuilding the campfire... fast work, thanks to a chunk of trioxane this time, and the extra firewood we had stockpiled the night before. After breakfast - a rock-hard Clif bar in lieu of oatmeal - it was time to break camp and head on down the snow-shrouded mountain. The roadways were clear at the bottom, the snow having been of the accommodating sort that is enough to be beautiful but not enough to be dangerous or annoying.

“Mother Gue, the Rocky Mountains is the marrow of the world.” Thus spoke Del Gue in Jeremiah Johnson, and thus spoke Eric as we hiked down that frozen trail. Starr Mountain is no Rocky, but it is, nevertheless, at a healthy remove from our quotidian lives: marrow enough.

Back at Eric’s place, we thawed out the remains of the previous night’s pot roast and devoured it happily. Another fine day of cold-weather camping was now in the Memory Book. A few hours later, back home in Atlanta, a few traces of that same snowfall remained... a quiet reminder.

More photos below the fold.

BREAKFAST WITH BENTLEY

Here’s something you don’t see every day...



A spanking-new Bentley parked at an IHOP.

“Jeeves, transport me at once to the local International House of Pancakes. I feel a craving for a Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N Fruity® coming on, and I shall not be denied. Do you suppose I may have one with a side order of foie gras?”

THIS IS WRONG

I stopped off at the local Food Emporium to pick up a few chili peppers with which to make my own supply of pertsovka, the fiery Russian pepper-infused vodka.

The recipe is pretty simple, according to Yankee at Midwestern Exposure. You simply take a couple of nice red chiles, hack ’em up and throw ’em in a jar with a half-inch chunk of peeled, sliced fresh ginger and twenty-five lightly crushed black peppercorns. Then dump in 750 ml of vodka. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy - don’t use Grey Goose or Belvedere, Smirnoff or even (gag) Wolfschmidt is just fine - as long as it doesn’t have a paint thinner pong, it should be fine. Seal the jar tightly and let all this stuff marinate together for a few days, shaking the bottle every so often. When it tastes strong enough, filter the solids out and chill it in the freezer.

But as I wandered the aisles of the food store, a display caught my eye and would not let it go. It was an entire pyramid - nay, two pyramids - of those infernal Biscoff cookies.

You know those Biscoffs if you’ve ever flown on Delta Airlines, where they are occasionally given out as an in-flight snack, an alternative to the Ubiquitous Nut-Sack. And they’re obnoxiously tasty, with a warm, Christmas-spice flavor complementing their caramel crunch. Fans of speculoos (AKA speculaas), the traditional Belgian biscuit, will immediately recognize the Biscoff cookie.

I love the damned things, but I am allergic to them. They cause me to break out in Ass-Fat.

Thus it was that I managed to tear myself away from the twin Biscoff-Pyramids of Doom, only to encounter this:



Good Gawd! This is even more insidious and twisted than Nutella!

The jar shows the spread being applied to a bagel. Presumably, this makes the bagel taste like a great big honking Biscoff cookie. Shoot me now!

Spreads like this one - and like Nutella, for that matter - are like the culinary equivalent of porn, with not much in the way of nutritionally-redeeming values. Unlike socially acceptable nut butters like peanut and cashew butter, these products combine ridiculous yumminess with stratospheric calorie-to-nutrient ratios... just right for giving you a serious Food-Boner and a case of Cottage Cheese Thighs.

No, I did not purchase any. But can you imagine how fast I’d empty one of those jars if I did?

SHINY, BUT NOT TOO BRIGHT

I haven’t put up any photos of me attired in my favorite style of perforated metallic headgear in a while...

...so here you go, courtesy of a somewhat embarrassed She Who Must Be Obeyed.


Oooh, shiny!

I’ve been trying to come up with an appropriate caption. Dick with a Van Dyke, perhaps?

HOT AND COLD

Our friends Barry and Malka recently returned from a trip to Berlin and Budapest. It was in the latter city that Barry picked up a couple of half-pint flasks of Kecskeméti paprika vodka... and last Friday evening at dinner, he trotted one out after having put it in the freezer to chill for a few days.

Paprika vodka! Leave it to those nutty Hungarians to come up with something like that.

There are two kinds of paprika in the spice aisle: sweet and hot. This stuff was most definitely made with hot paprika... and if any additional confirmation were necessary, it would have been provided by the whole orange-red pepper that was crammed into that little half-pint bottle.

Served ice-cold, paprika vodka has a surprising degree of heat - a combination of spice and alcohol. It delivers a powerful, peppery kick. I can imagine drinking shots of it alongside a bowl of paprika-laden Hungarian goulash... or using it to make a Magyar Mae - Budapest’s answer to the Bloody Mary.

I have no idea where to score a bottle of this stuff hereabouts, but it reminded me of my favorite Spicy Tipple, a liquor that, unfortunately, seems to no longer be available in this country: Stolichnaya Pertsovka. It’s a vodka infused with pepper - both capsicum and peppercorn - and ginger, and it packs a flavorful, fiery wallop. I first had it some 35 years ago, when a friend brought a bottle back from the USSR, and I fell in love with it. I’m not sure about how it matches up with Russian food, but nothing goes quite as well with Szechuan cuisine.

Now, if you want peppery vodka, you’re stuck with Absolut Peppar, which tastes like a combination of lighter fluid and burning tires. Or you can make your own pertsovka by infusing vodka with chile peppers, peppercorns, and ginger for a few weeks. That’s what I’ll be doing. I’ve also got a jar of vodka in which are marinating a couple of hacked-up serrano peppers. That oughta be strong enough to peel paint.

And, like revenge, pepper-infused vodka is a drink best served cold. Very cold. Stick it in the freezer until it becomes almost syrupy, and then it’s ready to drink. Amazing how something that cold can be so hot!

BUTT-DIAL

In this Highly Technological Age, most of us are familiar with the phenomenon of the Butt-Dial, or Butt-Call... not to be confused with the Booty-Call, another matter entirely.

The Butt-Dial (AKA Pocket Dial or Pocket Call) is what happens when a cell phone is accidentally activated in someone’s pocket or purse, resulting in an inadvertent phone call. It’s not something that used to happen in the Landline Era, when phones were not something carried around on one’s person where they would be subject to random bumps and jiggles.

Most cell phones have protections against the Butt-Dial, but - depending on the specifics of one’s gear - those protections are not 100% foolproof. Flip phones are less vulnerable, but that type of design seems to have fallen out of favor in the last few years.

Because of the way cell phones work, the most common recipients of butt-dialed calls are people you have recently called, and people at the top of your speed dial list. Random phone numbers, because of the long sequence of accidental keystrokes required, rarely get hit.

Butt-calls are mostly inconsequential, unless (as happened to me recently) you get a string of them all at once. Since the caller is not aware he is calling - and since his line is engaged - it’s hard to get hold of him to tell him to knock it off. But once in a while, a butt-call can be a conduit for embarrassing information... like getting ready for a press conference and finding out the hard way that the mike in front of your face is live. Remember Ronald Reagan’s microphone gaffe in 1984? “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” Other examples are legion.

I am happy to report that this has never happened to me. To my knowledge, anyway.

But what got this whole train of thought started was a butt-dial I received yesterday from my friend Barry. I had just spoken with him a few moments before, and we had concluded our telephone conversation. Moments later, the phone rang again; this time it was immediately obvious that Barry had no idea the phone had been activated. (His phone - an HTC 4G - seems to be especially prone to the inadvertent redial.) After about a minute of listening to muffled words exchanged between him and his wife, she noticed that the phone was displaying my picture, indicating that there was an active call in progress - which she promptly cut off.

I could not resist calling back to tell Barry about his having called me unbeknowingly. “Were you aware that you had butt-dialed me?” In retrospect, of course, he was.

There’s an Elissonian Moral to all this - of course there is!

Let your fingers do the walking...
...but don’t let your tuchus do the talking!

ANOTHER MODEST PROPOSAL

SWMBO, circa 1977.

Thirty-four years ago
(And without too much booze)
I made her an offer she didn’t refuse
She saw something in me
What it is I can’t say
And she has been with me
’Til this very day

Thirty-four years ago today, I proposed marriage to She Who Must Be Obeyed... and, as we all know, she accepted. Hooray for me! Hooray for us!

I SCREAM

It was a cold, raw, rainy night here, with a chill that penetrated the multiple layers of my storm coat. I could perhaps be forgiven for doing a double-take when I noticed a man at the food store checkout wearing nought but a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers. Standard workout gear, but nothing that afforded any protection against the elements.

Either I was a wimp for bundling up against the cold, or this guy was certifiable for risking pneumonia. It had been sleeting only an hour ago, so I decided in favor of Option B.

On a rotten night like this, you need a bit of creature comfort. And that’s why we had this for dessert:



Homemade blueberry ice milk!

Yes, a few days ago we went and got one of those little Cuisinart machines, the kind where you stick the bowl in the freezer before making your Frozen Dessert Concoction. And I’ve gotta admit, it beats the crap out of our old rock salt ’n’ ice machine.

Experimentation is the order of the day. The ice milk shown above is a reduced-fat and -sugar version of a Chez Panisse ice cream recipe, and it is superb. Pretty soon we can play around with other exotica: Greek yogurt, honey, tea, mango pulp, et cetera. Sure, we can make plain old ice cream, but where’s the fun in that?

Lest we go too far, when I start making tasty flavors like Beet Chip and Duck Fat Ripple, kindly take the machine away and bury it in an undisclosed location, OK?

BEEF LOAF

A conversation in the Family Room this evening...

SWMBO: Did Meat Loaf die recently?

Elisson: No.

SWMBO: Well, some musician died not too long ago.

The Mistress of Sarcasm: Captain Beefheart.

SWMBO: Oh. Meat, beef, whatever. I knew it had something to do with dinner.

RUB-A-DUB

Layers of spicy flavors, carefully combined according to Billy Bob’s secret recipe, make up our brisket rub.

A few days ago, I espied a nice rack of beef ribs at the local Food Emporium. I love ribs, and I am especially fond of great big meaty beef ribs. These were by no means of Fred Flintstone dimensions, but they looked sizable enough... and so I brought them home.

Northerners like me can spend their entire lives under the misconception that “barbecuing” is the same as “grilling.” Throwing a few hamburgers, hot dogs, or steaks on a grate over hot charcoal is an excellent way to prepare these meat-products, but it is barbecuing in no way, shape or form: It is grilling.

Having lived in the South or in Texas most of my life, I know better.

There are, I suspect, as many ways to barbecue meat as there are small towns in the South and Southwestern United States, but the common elements are slow cooking and smoke. You don’t have them, you don’t have barbecue - you have Faux ’Cue.

Some styles involve slathering the meat with a sauce or mop before or during cooking, the sauces ranging from sweet goop to thin, vinegary tomato-based fluid. The style I favor is one I learned from my father-in-law Billy Bob (of blessèd memory), a Texan through-and-through. That means no goop on the meat - at least, not until serving, and only for those who prefer it. The meat is seasoned by the liberal application of a dry rub mixture, after which it is smoked s l o w l y over charcoal with mesquite and hickory. The rub, heat, and smoke work their alchemical magic; the result is tender meat packed with flavor.

Barbecued beef ribs à la mode de Billy Bob, as prepared at the Straight White Compound last November. Photo: Erica Sherman, photog extraordinaire.

I’ve used one dry rub recipe - with only minor modifications - for the past 30+ years. That’s the one I got from Billy Bob, and I think of him every time I make barbecue. Or eat barbecue, for that matter.

And, sorry, you cannot have the recipe. Family’s gotta have some secrets.

HAKUNA: SURLY GIRLIE

Hakuna wears an especially surly expression, perhaps from knowing that the limelight shines on Marmota Monax today.

Groundhog Day? Screw that. When’s Caturday?

DIES MARMOTA MONAX

©2006 King Features Syndicate.

Or, the Day of the Land-Beaver. Groundhog Day.

To call Groundhog Day an actual holiday may be a bit excessive. Nobody gets the day off, nobody gets time-and-a-half, no special festive meals are prepared and consumed. Call it, rather, a Folk Celebration... and a rather ridiculous one at that, in which a bloated marmot is assumed to have weather prognosticative abilities. Statistics would seem to indicate otherwise.

I’d say, “Only in America,” but that’d be inaccurate. Our Canadian friends observe this silly-ass occasion, too.

The day received a shot in the arm from the eponymous 1993 film, in which Bill Murray’s character, a newsman sent to cover the festivities in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, relives February 2 over and over again until he “gets it right.” [By “gets it right,” the film script apparently means “figures out how not to be a Gaping Asshole any more.”]

I‘d be horrified at the prospect of reliving one day over and over again. Like this guy:



Thank goodness everyone knows that’s impossible...





©2006 King Features Syndicate.

Or, the Day of the Land-Beaver. Groundhog Day.

To call Groundhog Day an actual holiday may be a bit excessive. Nobody gets the day off, nobody gets time-and-a-half, no special festive meals are prepared and consumed. Call it, rather, a Folk Celebration... and a rather ridiculous one at that, in which a bloated marmot is assumed to have weather prognosticative abilities. Statistics would seem to indicate otherwise.

I’d say, “Only in America,” but that’d be inaccurate. Our Canadian friends observe this silly-ass occasion, too.

The day received a shot in the arm from the eponymous 1993 film, in which Bill Murray’s character, a newsman sent to cover the festivities in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, relives February 2 over and over again until he “gets it right.” [By “gets it right,” the film script apparently means “figures out how not to be a Gaping Asshole any more.”]

I‘d be horrified at the prospect of reliving one day over and over again. Like this guy:



Thank goodness everyone knows that’s impossible...





©2006 King Features Syndicate.

Or, the Day of the Land-Beaver. Groundhog Day.

To call Groundhog Day an actual holiday may be a bit excessive. Nobody gets the day off, nobody gets time-and-a-half, no special festive meals are prepared and consumed. Call it, rather, a Folk Celebration... and a rather ridiculous one at that, in which a bloated marmot is assumed to have weather prognosticative abilities. Statistics would seem to indicate otherwise.

I’d say, “Only in America,” but that’d be inaccurate. Our Canadian friends observe this silly-ass occasion, too.

The day received a shot in the arm from the eponymous 1993 film, in which Bill Murray’s character, a newsman sent to cover the festivities in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, relives February 2 over and over again until he “gets it right.” [By “gets it right,” the film script apparently means “figures out how not to be a Gaping Asshole any more.”]

I‘d be horrified at the prospect of reliving one day over and over again. Like this guy:



Thank goodness everyone knows that’s impossible...