In the past few decades, I’ve been inside a church maybe two dozen times, mostly for weddings and funerals, a few times to marvel at the soaring nave or the intricately carved chancel of a cathedral, and once or twice just to sit in silence and pray.

“Xavier,” I said. “I’m going to be Michael Xavier Tallon.”

He beamed with joy and effused about “Francis Xavier, that wonderful saint. Wonderful saint! The children loved him and he loved the little animals! Wonderful saint!”

I hadn’t the foggiest idea of whom he was speaking. I’d chosen the name Xavier for two reasons. First was my nascent political identification with civil rights warriors like Malcolm X.  Second, and probably more important,   was my teenage fascination with Professor Charles Xavier, mutant leader of The Uncanny X-Men.

That fairly well describes my level of commitment to a religious worldview which even as a teenager I wasn’t much inclined to support. It was all so limited and parochial, and the whole idea that most people in the world are damned for eternity just seemed foolish. Moreover, there were times, like when Father John asked our CCD class to write letters to his friend and colleague the exorcist, that it positively creeped me out. And, yes, this did happen, complete with EXORCISM and DEMONIC POSSESSION spelled out on the chalkboard to help us along. Twenty 5^th-graders in a room writing some version of “Dear Father Whatever-Your-Name-Was, I hope you had a really nice exorcism today. Your friend. A Very Frightened Child in Upstate New York.”

But a few of the parables did stick with me. Particularly one that Father John shared with us in a sermon. It was the story of the widow’s mite.

If you’re Christian, you’ll probably recall it, even if you can’t pull up the chapter and verse. It’s a story actually told by two of the Evangelists: (Mark 12:41-44, Luke 21:1-4). Jesus is at the temple, teaching his disciples, fielding questions from the assembled and checking out the rich guys dropping gold and silver into the treasury when an old woman arrives and places two small copper coins (mites, according to the King James Version) into the offertory. Presuming the ridicule to be cast upon her by the rich men, Jesus called his boys into a huddle and reminded them that, “this poor widow hath cast more than all which they have cast into the treasury, for all they cast was of their abundance, but she cast in all that she had . . .”

The old woman gave of her substance, not of her excess.

The central lesson that it is of greater moral worth to give in such a manner made sense to me from the first time I heard it. It’s part of the reason I taught high school in Brooklyn for 13 years, rather than pursuing a more lucrative career. It’s part of the reason a billionaire giving millions of dollars to charity doesn’t impress me very much. And along the way, I learned that this lesson has no cultural boundaries, most profoundly while sharing a meal several years ago with a Muslim friend in the middle of the holiest of Hindu cities on the Indian subcontinent.

And that’s a story worth telling.

By the time I reached Varanasi, and met my friend Pappu, I’d been traveling in India for about a month, though it was my first stop as a proper backpacker. The previous four weeks had been spent with an entourage assembled by the mother of one of my closest friends who had recently died. The family had lived in New Delhi when my friend John was a teenager and his father was the United States Ambassador to India. To say the least, it was an interesting way to travel through the subcontinent. Most nights we were either guests of the Maharaja of Jodhpur at one of his palaces, or out on an archeological mission for National Geographic Magazine or the Smithsonian Museum. Christmas Day was spent with a world renowned economist, the publisher of one of America’s great newspapers, family friends, and an old diplomat with whom I became very close over our few weeks together, Jagat Mehta.

No matter how long I live, I don’t expect that Christmas Day to be topped for sheer strangeness. At dawn we flew from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer in the far west of Rajasthan near the Pakistani border. Eighty-three-year-old Jagat and I were on camelback, riding out onto the dunes of the Thar Desert where we were to meet the rest of our party and a group of 200 tribal musicians who had been arranged to present a concert on our behalf near an oasis. Jagat, who had been the first man hired by the Foreign Ministry of a newly independent India back in 1948 — and had ultimately risen to become the Foreign Secretary — turned to me and said with his exacting, senatorial, High-Indian English accent, “Michael . . . Michael, old boy. Have you yet met the Dalai Lama?”

To hear a demo from Grimm’s upcoming, as yet unnamed album, click here. Unless you use Firefox, which blows and doesn’t integrate for shit with this website.

All in all, Happy May Day compadres. Now go tear down a system or two, would ya?

Photo by Juan Moncada

For all you folks who’ve not made it down to Antigua for a visit, take a look at what you’re missing, courtesy of this lovely video, Luna León by El Gordo, shot from the roof of Café Sky (you can see our buddy Les, one of the owners, drinkin’ and smokin’ in the background.) Methinks we should get this fella to play at Café No Sé.

Grifter Moon by Matthew Grimm

The Birth Of the Book – A Holy Rant

For almost 2000 years, on our half of the planet, when you said you were reading The Book, everybody knew which one you meant. And, it’s one Hell of a Book if ever there was, filled with subtext below subtext below subtext. Just take the first words of John. Not me, but the Evangelist.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The Word was with God? Then the Word was God? Forget the Song of Solomon, that’s some suggestively sexy scripture. By my reading, The Word and God got at it through some glorious, hermaphroditic auto-eroticism of self-pollination and ontological orgasmus, but begetting what?

Begetting: The Book.

Book.

Book, The Finite Infinite.

Book, The Bound Unbound.

Book of Winged Pages.

Book both Demonic and Devine.

Book that delights itself between the covers and was (one presumes from its first breath) an enfant terrible, telling embarrassing truths about its parents (particularly God, that stuffy old patriarch) in front of the guests. Both parents, Word and God, must have feared Book’s pagan and patricidal tendencies from the start. In the ancient, ethereous aeons, long before Sophocles sat down to scribble, the rumblings of Oedipal rage echoed through the halls of heaven.

God probably would have been safe enough until Book started spending time with His other scion — Man. Man and Book soon grew beyond Word and God, creating New Men and New Books with every passing generation. Books became companions to Men. And New Men were the ever multiplying audience for New Books. The physical unity of Book and Man mirrors that of Word and God — that sublime, textual, sexual, terrible and terrific shared existence between idea and reality, between potency and existence, between essence and descent.

Thank you, T.S. Eliot. Thank you, Word. Thank you, God.

Thank you, Book.

Book, without you, Man is a terrified and lonely creature. Book offers Man answers to the unanswerable and allows him to reach beyond himself, beyond his limited time. Book gives man his history and allows him to write his future. It is different than his relation with The Word or God. They are the progenitors. He and his Book are the present and coming generations — and Man abandons Book at his own great peril.

They are one.

The Death of the Book – A Temporal Contemplation

Recently it occurred to me that the book, the physical book, with a cover and pages, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, like God. And as with God, the worship of books may soon become an anachronism of tinier and tinier cults as decades pass on.

This would be sad beyond sad. I’ve learned to live without God. According to Nietzsche, he was gone a good 100 years before I showed up on the scene. Even though I was raised religiously, the whole process seemed cultish and reliquary — more sepulcher than cathedral. But the real soup in which I’d swum since my childhood was a hopeful nihilism, always buoyed by words, pages, libraries and bindings.

I’m not sure I can live without the book. Books give me hope and already (though I’m surrounded by parchment and print) I can already feel the cold, digital gloss as we communally click our culture into a world more virtual than visceral.

Give me the tangible! Give me something that does not require a battery or a plug, something that does not hum! Give me something that does not offend the beach or the hammock, or the stars or a pace that encourages both lingering and malingering! Give me a book!

Though the e-book has been around for several years now, and though we have all become accustomed to getting our news, communication and entertainment from our laptops or some permutation thereof, the decline of the book in public spaces did not hit me until recently. I was in an airport waiting to catch a flight and there were hundreds of other people waiting at their gates, too. I took a book out of my bag, a dog-eared Cortázar, and began to read. I felt peculiar, but I didn’t understand why. I almost felt shabby. Then I looked about and then saw it: No one else was reading a book, just me, the quaint, slow to evolve, soon to be extinct Luddite.

There were a few people thumbing at magazines but most everyone else was checking their iPhones, or pecking away at laptops. They were all part of the great universal hug of over connectedness. I felt very out of place.

A week later, back in Antigua, I went to my coffee shop, Y Tu Piña También for lunch. The place was full. I again looked about and saw that no one, not one person, was reading a book. Most were propped in front of laptops, emailing and Facebooking. One woman was reading a on a Kindle. Someone was reading a back issue of this magazine. But no one was reading a book. At a coffee shop!

Five years ago this would not have been. Some, many, most of the travelers enjoying an afternoon in my coffee shop back then would have been reading books, talking about books, exchanging books, connecting through books.

I noticed the same thing a few months later while riding a subway in New York. Nearly every person on the train was texting or reading from smart phones. Ten years ago one would have seen The City reading to itself even during rush hour. The subway ride used to be one of the most oxymoronic experiences of the urban world: in the most public space in NYC, everyone could retreat into privacy to read for an extended length of time. Alternatively, you could look into a fragmentary window of The City’s soul by peering around the train at the covers of the books your fellow commuters were reading — Bibles, self-help books, technical manuals, legal texts, romance novels, Dan Brown. By looking at the cover of each of their books, you could know something about them and about your world. They were part of our shared space, signposts in the urban wilderness.

And each book’s cover was a sly invitation, a conversation starter, part of the stitching that held the old, odd quilt of a culture together.

The Book was.

Some might say the incipient disappearance of the book is no big thing, especially as digital media are allowing us to transport whole libraries in devices that weigh nary a few pounds. Some will say that people are still reading — perhaps more than ever — and now they have greater access to any text ever written.

True. As far as that goes — and I’ll stipulate that it goes a long way. But that is not the point.

Consider how much is being lost. The medium, the specific technology of a book, is so much more than the words its binding contains. A book is a totem, a talisman, a memento, a badge, a quiet comfort, and old friend, a personal extension, an aspiration, a piece of art, a legacy, a traveler. It is something to love, to covet, to care for and to come back to. It is a physical thing that can be bartered, abandoned, hunted down. Books are old loves and new ones. They are measures of self. Of what else do we say with such relish, “I was too young when I tried that book. Maybe I should give it another chance,”? Books are constancy and change. Inspiration and exhalation. Books respire, perspire and they can expire. They live. Their backs can be broken, and in the right hands, they can be brought back to life.

With its cobbled streets, leafy courtyards, and views of three sexy-ass volcanoes — one of which sporadically erupts in an endearingly sinister way — Antigua wields a strange power over the foreigners who live there.

For those who think they are just passing through, pah! Don’t be so sure. Slip into something more comfortable and succumb to the kingdom of fairytale friendships, lost boys and eternal spring. But beware, for this is an enchanted land and things are not always as they seem.

Time has no meaning here. There is no past, there is no future. Months will slip by unnoticed. You won’t even realize you are forgetting where you came from or where you are going, but if you pass the event horizon it will happen, gradually. Relentlessly and gradually. Your contact with the outside world will become less and less important. Wider political and social consciousness will ebb away into dreamlike insignificance as you enter a parallel universe of mute-colored one storey buildings and working both of your buttocks off for free.

Within the first couple weeks of arriving in town I was hanging out in the doorway of the Black Cat Hostel making a bracelet out of string (the sort of carry-on which is only legitimate if your worldly possessions are kept in a duffel bag) when I met a guy who told me he was on his way to the airport. As far as he was concerned he was definitely, one hundred percent, leaving.

That was two years ago. He is still in Antigua. He has become one of the town’s big names: a member of the Café No Sé inner sanctum, a component of that central core of individuals who are as much a part of Antigua as the children with little silver teeth and the phrases “Guate, Guate!” and “Meet you at the fountain.”

I long since came to the conclusion that in some dark and forgotten past, a mezcal-sodden pact was sealed with the gods dictating that, were one of this sacred circle to depart, the foundations of the city would crumble, a wide tear would split the time-space continuum open and John Rexer, publisher of this magazine and one of the default captains on this ship of fools, would have to go work in a bank.

Yet, despite this strong community of “permies,” Antigua is, by nature, an extremely transient place. Those who set up shop here quickly learn, in the interests of self-preservation, that forming attachments to people who aren’t planning to form a part of the central massif isn’t a good idea — and a sort of distrust and avoidance towards “short-termers” evolves. Don’t take it personally. You’ll either be gone or, rather more likely, will become one of us soon enough.

The opening question when meeting newcomers becomes, “How long are you planning to stay?” If the response is less than six months, then unless you are extremely attractive in that why-not-let’s-have-a-root sort of way, or if you make us laugh so much a little bit of wee comes out, the general rule is that you will be shunned by the permies.

It just gets a bit tiring saying goodbye all the time. Plus, the average parting gift from a nomadic mate usually involves them spreading the contents of their traveling sack across the pavement and generously inviting you to take your pick between a lacrosse t-shirt which has certainly seen better days or a sweat/piss/beer stained copy of The Life of Pi.

And what actually happens when somebody leaves town? No one knows. When you are on “the inside,” it seems to be one of life’s great mysteries. You’ll hear people talking about those who have left in the same way one might talk about someone who has died — reverently and with hushed tones. “Ah, you do remember how Nick used to love this song . . .” or “Hannah would have loved this if she were here.”  You see, once the Antiguanisation process has been initiated, it is difficult to imagine a world which exists beyond the Lake, let alone Flores. London? Certainly not.

I think many can identify with the idea of there being clearly defined chapters in the life-cycle of your average ex-pat Antiguanite. These differ from person to person, but the crucial and common denominator of each of these intense phases is consuming. This leads to the distinct impression one’s whole life has been spent within the city’s boundaries and makes it hard to think back to what came before. Or comprehend what could possibly come next.

After my obligatory “learn Spanish and salsa while climbing Pacaya and living with a host family” stage, I moved into my “I’m such a cool penniless traveler” honeymoon period. I spent mine in a shack-like dwelling on what may reasonably be referred to as the shadier side of the calzada. Sharing a bed with two Argentineans, one Brit and a dog called Jack, we slept under towels and used pillows we later found out to be stuffed with sawdust and straw.

For me, and for many others before me I’d imagine, the romanticism of living on microwaved eggs and Lucky Strikes eventually gave way to “get serious, get a proper job and find a house with an oven that was actually connected to the gas.” And so on it went.

At each level, I became further embedded, living in symbiosis with the town and with the people around me.

But then, one day, flaunting my carefully reviewed selection methods, the first of my great companions, one of the people I’d shared this experience with from the beginning, decided to embark into the unknown. And they were not just going to the next city along the Gringo trail, but were actually, properly, leaving for home. It was sad, but not such a groundbreaking deal at the time, I thought. Yet, from that moment on, the boat was irrevocably rocked.

I started to wonder — to wonder what existed beyond. This wondering turned into a restlessness, which turned into claustrophobia, which turned into little things about the place annoying me as much as once they had at first been a delight.

So, after a few more months of obsessing about “the future,” I left.

All of a sudden, really.

I took the plunge, paying extortionate amounts of money to transport blankets that cost four shillings, along with pieces of “interestingly shaped wood” found on the beach, back home, and I flew. Up, up and away.

The volcanic landscape gave way to the flat plains of Texas, to the Atlantic Ocean, to the agricultural grid of Europe. Touching down on the runway, I floated through baggage reclaim in a dream.

“Welcome ’ome,” said the pancake-faced woman at Heathrow customs, “You ’av a good trip?”

I stared at her blankly. If awards were given out for the most ridiculous questions ever asked, it should have been brought forth at this point. I realize I am crying. She motions me through without further interrogation.

Weeping pathetic, silent sobs, I flip-flopped my inappropriately flip-flopped feet through arrivals to be greeted by a conspicuous absence of chicken buses and people selling chewing gum for a Quetzal. Where are all the people selling chewing gum for a Quetzal? I want to buy chewing gum for a Quetzal!

It is grey and cold. I start to think that maybe, possibly, I have made a bit of a mistake . . .

The immediate period following my departure from Guatemala was almost identical to grieving a broken romantic relationship: The comfort eating, the getting-my-hair-done an unnecessary amount of times, the distracting myself with nights out on the razz. Yet, all the while, the same niggling doubts went round and round through my head:

Have I done the right thing? Should I have given it another go? Maybe I was too hasty. Crikey, I bet I’ve been replaced by now. I bet I’ve been forgotten already. Maybe Antigua is already sleeping with a new bird! Already!

Things would be different if I went back, maybe I could make it work this time? I think I’ve changed, maybe we both have? Antigua, I can’t stop thinking about you. ARGH!

Fuckity-fuck. Antigua, what the hell have you done to me?

A strange sort of desperation took over, with Facebook adopting on a whole new significance in my life. I spent hours endlessly “liking” any statuses involving chat about avocados or hints of the latest La Raiz banter. What is going on in Guatemala? Who is sexing whom in Guatemala? SOMEONE GET ME BACK TO GUATEMALA!

I started to do that thing people do when that can’t get over an ex-lover. I was meeting up with anyone and everyone who had even a remote connection to my former amor, which in this case just happened to be a faraway place between the hills, nestled gently in the Panchoy Valley. Any average old Joe who knew about La Merced, or La Cuadra, or that Rosa de Jamiaca wasn’t the cousin of that hot guy who works at Nandos, was hugely appealing. Compelling.

My parents even orchestrated an intervention in the form of a lunch with a random Mexican family — not even Guatemalan, Mexican — in the hopes that the Central American proximity would help revive me.

Though they were lovely people and whipped up a mean prickly pear pie, it didn’t.

In the end, I have had to shift to another country entirely in a bid to move on. And I’ve gotta be honest, despite an abundance of carpentry and tea, Turkey ain’t cutting it so far.

So, I don’t know what to tell you, really. Get out now, possibly? Leave while you still can, maybe. Because I promise you, nowhere will ever be the same afterwards. You will never be the same afterwards.

But maybe it is too late already. Perhaps, by now, “home” is as faraway a concept to you as it had become to me, vaguely associated with blurry figures who knew your name once upon a time. In that case, the breadcrumb trail you carefully scattered behind you has long since disappeared.

You’re lost. You’re one of us.

Welcome to Never Never Land

Every year I’d begin my classes the same way.

“First, I know with almost absolute certainty that by the end of the year, we’re gonna be friends.”

That would usually scramble a few heads in suspicion, or at least mild disbelief.

“I’ve been at this for a long time, and I’ve learned that with damn few exceptions — and none of you look like ‘exceptions’ to me — I like my students. And, from what I can tell, they think I’m all right, too. We’ll see, but I’ve got faith.”

I’d walk to the back of the room, trusting their heads would swivel, their bodies twist and their eyes follow. There I’d pause, and take a seat on the bank of radiators. I’d gesture for them to follow and then thumb their attention to Washington Cemetery, the graveyard that sat four stories below down on 20th Avenue in Brooklyn.

“The second thing I know is this: by the end of the semester, without exceptions, we’re all going to be five months closer to our graves. No matter how much longer we all have left on this planet, fifty years or only a few, that is undeniably true.”

It was my way of introducing them to “The Conversation.”

Predictably, the kids would buck. Telling teenagers that they’re going to die is not the normal way to begin a high school social studies class. Usually one of the kids would be brave enough to voice a complaint, and in Brooklyn that generally took the form of, “Yo, Mista, you nasty. Why you gotta be sayin’ that for?”

The response was prepared in advance.

“First lesson in economics, my dear. As supply decreases, value increases. The less you have of something, the more you want it. The fewer there are of something, the more precious that thing becomes. Everyone get out a pen.”

Kids would head back to their desks, bags would unzip and fresh three-ring binders would clatter open.

That would be a very good sign. They were engaged, on edge.

“How much did you pay for that pen in your hand? Write it down! A dollar? But what if your pen was the only pen in the world? What if all the presidents and all the poets needed that one pen! What would they pay you for it? What if there was only one pen in the whole world and you owned it? How much would it be worth then?”

“Yo, Mista, probably a lot, but people don’t write with pens no more. They use computers.”

The class would laugh, I’d roll with it. Good. They’re with me.

“Be that as it may, you get the point, yes? The shorter the supply, the greater the value. Simple economics. And it works with doughnuts or days on Earth just as well as it does with pens or peacocks. Every day, every moment you’re on this planet is more valuable than the last. Every single day. There’s no way around it. Life always becomes more valuable, unless you’ve figured out a way to live forever!”

I’d pause and then thumb back down to the graveyard below.

“Just ask them.”

If I’d timed it right, the last sentence would hang in the air as the bell rang. Then they’d gather their things and head out into the hallway wondering what the hell that was all about, and I’d smile, thinking that another strange and beautiful year was underway.

It is indescribably cool to hear tumblers click into place deep inside a 15-year-old’s brain. And no matter what you’ve heard, “kids today” are just fine. They could use a lot more support, but their brains are as thirsty as human brains have ever been. And if I’d learned anything in my years teaching, it was this: if you wish to engage students about something important — like ethics, morality, rage, mortality, resentment, betrayal, or hope — all that stuff that actually comprises human history, all you have to do is ask and then give a damn about their answers. They’ve got a lot to say if you are willing to listen.

As a teacher, I long thought that curriculum was a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. Education professionals who don’t understand that miss the central point of our profession. In my view, the main point of education — the important part that will stick with them for years and encourage them to continue seeking — is to engage kids in thought, engage them in The Conversation. It’s the same conversation that has been flowing through human history since we were bumping our heads on stalactites and cursing the appetites of saber-toothed tigers. It’s the discourse between Socrates and Plato. It’s the debate between Pilate and Christ. It’s the mutual ruminations of Jefferson and Madison as they wondered what to do about King George, and it’s the argument between Malcolm and Martin as they tried to forge a new world of justice and love. But it’s also the conversation that two serfs had after the king’s horse just knocked them off the path and into a pile of manure. It’s the one that two Brooklyn teenagers have after they’ve just been rousted from their favorite corner by some cops just for hanging out and looking young. It’s the vernacular of the town square — be it Tiananmen, Tahrir or in your hometown. It’s The Conversation to which I was first introduced by Bill Burns, my high school mentor and Shakespeare teacher, as he taught us about King Lear’s crisis on the moors or Prospero’s maturation through the storm. It’s The Conversation that I’ve been having with my father now for thirty years, since I was old enough to understand that the essence of citizenship is found in questioning how to build a better world, and then setting your soul to doing so every day. In the end, The Conversation is the one we share whenever we honestly discuss the world in which we live, and it is one in which kids are eager to participate; you’ve just got to know how to invite them in.

The Conversation is one of those things in life that makes the always-dwindling minutes worth spending. And in a school system fixated so intently upon easily-gamed test scores, it’s one of the many things we don’t do nearly well enough.

In my small way, I tried to fix that over the years by engaging in The Conversation with my kids whenever possible, and I’m remembering one such class now.

In the fall semester of 2001 I had a non-English-speaking American history class that met during fifth period. Non-English courses were stopgap measures the school used to shore up our beleaguered bilingual education program. Fifty-five languages were spoken at FDR High School when I taught there, and while we tried to provide bilingual support for all of our students who were transitioning to English, we just didn’t have the resources to serve them in all in their native tongues. So when space in classes given by our Russian, Urdu, Chinese, Spanish or Polish-speaking teachers ran out — or for students who spoke a language for which we couldn’t provide support — the school would create a non-English class.

As you can imagine, one class could have dozens of languages, none of which were understood by the teacher.

They were interesting courses. The teachers needed to be creative in approach, and moderate their expectations and methodologies to account for the difficulties of communication — but generally the kids were super polite and eager to engage. Professionally, I really liked teaching these kids.

In the fall of 2001 that fifth-period class was a perfect example. They were incredibly nice students. What was strange, however, was that nearly all of the students (28 out of 30 if my memory holds) were Muslim. That fact took on much greater meaning after the attack of September 11 of that year. Normally a non-English class would be fairly representative of the school’s immigrant population overall. It was unusual to have a majority Muslim class. It wasn’t a problem, but it was unusual.

The first day of class I’d introduced the “economics of existence” lesson, and by using some students in class to translate for others, the substance and the strangeness of the message got through. It also allowed me to identify who had stronger language skills and who would be in need of more attention. One of the kids I noted first was Eddie, a 17-year-old Palestinian boy. He was bigger, older and far more Americanized than the rest of the kids. He spoke English reasonably well, and I was pretty sure he’d be a good classroom ally. I liked him at first sight.

The class had its jokers and its geniuses. It had some girls who were more interested in putting on makeup than they were in mercantilism. And it had other girls who wouldn’t doff their hijab in public if their lives depended upon it. It had some boys who were more interested in the girls than anything else and it had others who were more interested in video games than girls. In the end it was a pretty normal Brooklyn class, if you overlooked the religious factor. And even given that they were almost all Muslim, they were still an incredibly diverse group. These kids came from every part of the Greater Middle East — their countries of origin stretching across Northern Africa all the way to Afghanistan. In class were Moroccans, Egyptians, Palestinians, Persians, Yemenis, and a whole bunch of kids from Pakistan and Bangladesh. And they generally got along pretty well.

With a few exceptions, The Surly Bartender has held his tongue for the better part of the past year, but like a carbonated bottle of rage into which the world has dropped too many Mentos of crazy, it’s time to explode.

We’ll get to that later, but let us start with politics north of the Rio Grande, which have recently centered on lunar colonies and state-mandated vaginal probes. Now, as regular readers know, I’m a fairly Progressive Surly Bartender and inclined to find a Republican / Conservative worldview lacking in clarity, depth or logic — but this time around it really does seem like their candidates for the presidency should be touring the nation in a mini-car, and emerging onto the debate stage wearing squirt-daisies, clown shoes and big rubber noses.

As of this writing, there are still four candidates in the race, and given the eradication of campaign finance laws, there will likely be at least three candidates for the foreseeable future. First in current national polling is Rick Santorum — a latter day Savonarola, seemingly unable to stop obsessing about the m-m-m-moral d-d-d-decay of a sex-sex-sex-ually libertine society. Good lord, I’m glad I don’t live in that man’s head. He’s like a pre-hooker Billy Bibbit, full of repressed lust and desire, tortured by pangs of guilt every time he catches a glance of a woman’s (or, if you think it through, maybe a man’s) body.

Second in the polling is the frontrunner (hrrrmmm?) Mitt Romney — a politician who simply must be an invented character, one I’m imagining has been conjured from an unpublished novella called The Stepford Candidate, written as a lark by George Plimpton and forgotten on a voodoo priestess’ altar during a trip to Haiti in the middle part of the last century. How do you explain his utter inability to behave like a real human being? Easy! He’s only 40 robotic pages long! Double Spaced!

Third is Newt Gingrich, the aforementioned lunar colony enthusiast, whose chronic overuse of adverbs makes me want to frankly, literally, fundamentally kick him in the balls.

Rounding out the field is that old coot, Ron Paul, who, for all his posturing as a different kind of Republican is actually pretty loopy himself, though we’ll largely give him a Surly Pass this time around. We do so with the caveat that, if he’s still around this summer, he’ll receive his very own Surly Analysis.

To understand the depth of the dislocation from reality on that side of the political spectrum, two things must be taken into consideration — and they are intertwined. First, all of the candidates (in fact, most of what remains of that once great political party) are ideologues, and ideologues are the death of legislative governance. That they are ideologues who continue to scream, that “It’s really the Democrats who are crazy socialists” matters little. Even if the major media outlets in the States are unable to detach themselves from the narrative of false equivalence in political debate, facts are facts. Republicans, not Democrats, have purged moderates in lieu of true believers from their ranks. To pretend otherwise is to deny objective reality. Which, of course, is Republican bread and butter.

The second, and related, consideration for understanding Republicans in the early 21^st Century is that they have become unmoored from any sense of actual, factual reality.

Newt Gingrich will bring gas prices down to two dollars a gallon by increasing domestic production, denying the existence of an international oil market, AND the reality that domestic production has increased significantly during Obama’s first term. Mitt Romney assures us that Iran will get a nuclear weapon if Obama is reelected, and will assuredly NOT get one if he is president. What? Does he have anti-nuclear superpowers somewhere hidden in that perfect head of hair? Such a statement goes beyond rhetoric and dive-rolls directly into the land of delusion. Why isn’t it mocked publicly? Why isn’t it discarded out of hand, even before noting that his entire foreign policy team is comprised of the same neo-con cretins who deluded themselves into believing a war in Iraq would cost no more than 60 billion dollars, would be paid for by the Iraqis themselves, and that our soldiers would be met as glorious liberators by the rose-tossing citizens of Baghdad?

They all, to a one, wail that America under Obama is being overrun by “illegals,” while ignoring the quantifiable (and reprehensible) reality that the current president has deported twice as many undocumented workers as did President Bush before him.

And then there is the outright denial of science as it pertains to evolution or global climate change. Good god, is this really the best they have to offer?

It appears that the short answer is: YES.

I’ve opined on this before, but it is true: In the past forty years Democrats have made the transition from being a party guided by an overarching vision of the-way-the-world-should-be, to one that is at its root pragmatic. Take, just for example, the observable facts that the most recent big-picture policy initiatives of the Obama administration come directly from conservative think tanks. It was not The Earth Liberation Front who came up with Cap and Trade as a method to limit the emission of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere; it was a market-based alternative to governmental regulation of pollutants put into the political conversation by C. Boyden Grey, a member of the very conservative Federalist Society when he was working in the Reagan administration. It was not Saul Alinsky who drafted the basis of the current Affordable Care Act (dubbed ObamaCare by its detractors); it was a policy modeled on a Republican idea — one designed by the Romney administration in Massachusetts. Further, the mechanism to guarantee broad coverage in both plans, the much maligned “individual mandate,” was conceived within the walls of the ultra-right Heritage Foundation as a way to keep dirty, hippie, liberal free-loaders from taking advantage of the system. As such, it was championed by Newton Crazyhead Gingrich for 20 years.

As has been often noted, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once observed, “We are each entitled to our own opinions, but no one is entitled to his own facts.” Facts speak for themselves; Republicans of this generation just choose to avert their eyes.

Democrats have, for better or worse, been pragmatic in their design of legislative remedies to complex sociopolitical problems over the past several decades. And what have they received for their efforts? Increasingly more vociferous assertions that they wish to unilaterally disarm the United States and allow godless socialism (with an Arabic accent) to take over our society and jail good, patriotic Republicans in Sharia-socialist gulags wherein they will be force-fed tofu and hummus, while listening to New Age music.

Madness, delusional madness! And yet it surges forth.

As a concerned parent and outraged citizen, I am concerned and outraged over the drinking problem among our college youth.

“Drinking,” he says, “can be dangerous, and the young deserve to be instructed in its uses just as they are taught to swim and drive a car.”

Exactly.

And as a lifelong expert in the field, I’m naturally applying for a full professorship. Indeed, I’ve already drawn up my lecture notes for my first class in Drinking 123a (no prerequisites required).

“Good morning, students. Welcome to Drinking 123a. Let me begin by warning you this is no snap course. You may have easily mastered integral calculus, Etruscan epic poetry and advanced thermodynamics, but you now must face the greatest challenge of your academic career: learning how to drink.

“The first seemingly overwhelming obstacle you must surmount in learning to drink alcoholic beverages is that they don’t taste good. Not to the beginner. And my advice to you on this point is to choose the beverage you dislike least. For example, some beginners find they dislike Scotch less than they dislike bourbon, gin or rye. Thus, by mixing twenty-year-old Scotch with ginger ale, soda pop or cherry cough syrup, they find they can get it down with only the very mildest of shudders. Just remember that with liquor, the taste is the thing. And you can avoid it if you really try.

“Now, then, let us turn to the effect alcohol will have on you. It is not true that alcohol merely makes you dizzy. It also makes you stupid. Some improperly motivated students, feeling stupid and dizzy, will quit right there. Don’t be a dropout! Persevere and you will be rewarded by becomingly completely irresponsible. Not to mention violently ill. Of course, becoming violently ill doesn’t sound too pleasant. But actually, you’ll find you’re so dizzy, stupid and irresponsible at this point that it won’t matter a whit. It’s the next morning that matters. There’s no point in describing in advance the sensations you’ll feel the next morning. For one thing, they’re indescribable. Just keep in mind the legend of Robert Bruce and the spider. And each time you fall flat on your face, pick yourself up and try again.

The course will also cover such related subjects as dry sweats, cold sweats, headaches, tremors, personal injury suits, the Penal Code and various symptoms of the manic depressive. The final exam will be a simulated cocktail party at which you will be asked to down seven lukewarm martinis while listening to a two-hour speech in Urdu. Now, then, as to the delirium tremens . . .”

No, I can’t face it. It’s a hopeless task, I say, to lead our militant young people to drink — much as it would contribute to peace on our campuses. Let’s be tolerant and let them go on getting even more involved in politics. That way they’ll be driven to it.

This story was written in 1967 and first appeared in the Perfect Solution to Absolutely Everything by Arthur Hoppe. but with all the do-goodery swarming about our campuses and town squares these days, we felt it merited new light. We first read it in a great little compendium entitled Drinking, Smoking and Screwing, Great Writers on Good Times.

Well, even though our buddy Joe is dead, we just can’t get enough of him.

The La Cuadra editorial board (a.k.a. Mike, John and a bottle of Mezcal) decided to run one of those essays in this issue. Maybe reading this will encourage a few of our readers to pick up any of Joe’s three remarkable books. Along with Waltzing, Joe also published Deer Hunting with Jesus — Dispatches. From America’s Class War, Broadway Press, 2008, and Rainbow Pie — A Redneck Memoir, Scribe Publications, 2011.

For readers who’ve come to know Joe through La Cuadra, well, here’s another little treat for you.

Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball is currently available for Kindle through Amazon and in paperback if you happen to be in a bookstore in Australia.

Let it be known: we’re offering a free bottle of Ilegal Mezcal to whomever first brings a copy of the book down to Café No Sé. Together we’ll raise a glass to our absent friend.

This essay was written in the Spring of 2005.

Raise your glass to the hard working people

Let’s drink to the uncounted heads

Let’s think of the wavering millions

Who need leaders but get gamblers instead

Salt of the Earth, The Rolling Stones

I stopped into Larry’s Gas ’n Grubs for my regular morning commuter coffee mug refill and lo and be damned! There was my hirsute 300-pound friend Poot working at the counter. I said, “What the hell are you doing ringing up my coffee at this crap stand? You’re supposed to be a welder, fat boy!”

It turns out that Poot, who’d lost his job with a metal fabricator, took on a little private contracting work. However, he couldn’t afford to get his contractor’s license and was busted for working without one. And got thrown in jail for it too. Somehow I would have thought it was a lesser offense than that.

Now he is on jail work release to work at Larry’s Gas ’n Grubs, an area 6-location chain of convenience stores that regularly hires work release labor at super cheap rates. By court order Poot must work there at least until August and pay the great state of Virginia a big chunk of his wages for the privilege. This represents nothing less than chattel slavery under the local judicial system, impressments of the same sort as have always been practiced on blacks and poor whites here in the slave states. Throw them in jail, and then farm them out on work release to local industry and businesses in cahoots politically with local law officials and courts. In fact, in a new twist on the game, the masters of our little Virginia banana republic brought in a huge regional jail. It is now a provider of cheap local work release labor, even as the taxpayers foot the bill for housing and feeding the jailbirds, and the jailbirds seldom return to their hometowns up nawth, choosing instead to shack up with the fetching local wenches. You Yankees have no idea what Bush’s election has kicked off in the American South. Our congenital penchant for punishment and press gang labor has ushered in a new era of prison building unseen since the days of Uncle Joe Stalin. Down here we know what to do with uncooperative folks like the hapless Pootie and the dope fiends our prison industry imports in from seven other states: Lock ’em the fuck up and make a profit on ’em. Rehabilitation, Republican style.

But getting back to Poot. When crap happens to working people, it’s usually a domino line of crap. It is bad enough that Poot lost his apartment when he landed in the hoosegow, and will have to find a new one in August, along with a new job, unless he decides to starve to death by remaining at Gas ’n Grubs. He also lost his truck along the way. I am almost willing to bet that his life will never recover from this setback. Meanwhile, something even worse has come of this run-in with American penology’s gulag system of white trash labor: By court order Poot cannot set foot in Burt’s Tavern until August. He may not survive such a blow.

That was a week ago. Now it’s Friday and there’s nothing stopping me from making the usual ass of myself at Burt’s, with or without my fat hairy friend. Aaaaannd of course there he sits over in the corner of the bar! Stupid me. I should have known no court order could keep that 300-pounds of redneck sin out of a tavern. So there sits Poot explaining to Nance Kelly his talent for hooking up with the wrong woman. For the record, the wrong kind of woman is any woman: 1) whose name does not match the one on your marriage certificate, 2) who is middle aged and taking both progesterone AND thorazine or 3) speaks in tongues at church. Whatever the case, Poot has a snowball’s chance in the Sahara of ever hooking up with Nance. Poot’s “Drink until you want me” approach is not going to work on her.

Nance is 32, hillbilly cute, and raising two kids with the help of her mom. She drives a “deep reach” machine on the loading dock at the local Rubbermaid plant. For the benefit of you patricians out there, a deep reach is a kind of forklift that can reach 30 feet up and into stacks of pallets. They are usually driven by men, which makes Nance a “women’s libber” by working class labor standards. Active in her fundamentalist church, she does not drink and seldom dates, yet strangely enough she comes in here occasionally and sips on cokes (I don’t even want to know the psychology underlying that little game). Her coworkers call her “Termite” because of her stature, but we old farts in the back booth call her “Magnum Muff,” and when she parks that tush of hers on a barstool, well, we old geezers at Burt’s are reduced to humble wonder. Quite a few young ones too, I would suspect. But we are supposed to talk politics in these columns, aren’t we? (sigh)

Politically, Nance is anti-union, anti-abortion and vaguely aware of N.O.W. (National Organization of Women), which registers in her mind as “A bunch of lesbians out on the West Coast.” Nance is a Republican much as a fish is a creature of the ocean. Because of her caste in America (lower working class, Southern, high school educated, semi-fundamentalist Christian), she does not know a single registered Democrat. We’ve discussed it and neither of us could think of a Democrat she personally knew. “I know you,” she offered. “That doesn’t count,” I replied, “because I am a godless commie.” But the point is that for many working class Americans it is possible not to know a single person of liberal persuasion in daily life — which must seem inconceivable to urban and metropolitan Americans. A night in any tavern in this town shows why this is possible. Can you spell American C-L-A-S-S system?