Illustration by Juan Pablo Canale Banus

It wouldn’t be fair to describe my upbringing as Pagan. Paganism implies that one worships something, be it the Sun God Ra, the trickster Pan, or Zeus, God of Thunder and Lightning. No, my formative years were largely devoid of religion. Specifically, my family aligned itself with a brand of Unitarianism that required no actual religious practice of any kind. It was beautiful, really. We could call ourselves Christians and eat ourselves into a comatose state on all the relevant holidays, but we could also shoplift and engage in guilt-free masturbation.

We did celebrate the holidays, too. Easter was all bunnies and chocolate eggs, and Lent was a word I had heard somewhere. But as a family, we did (and still do) buy into Christmas a bit more than the other big days on the Christian calender. It is after all the most important, what with the birth of Christ having been arbitrarily placed on December 25th in order to coincide with the already popular pagan mid-winter festivals, thus easing the conversion of the peoples of eastern Europe.

So every year we get a tree and put lights on it and decorate it with a variety of hideous ornaments that my brother and I created through sheer talent and will power during the long, hot hours of our preschool craft time.

We top our tree with an angel, and every year as my mother pulls out the realistically-rendered, red-robed heavenly guardian she bought about ten years back (and I push hard in favor of the chintzy, haloed female figure my great-grandmother made god-knows-when out of gold wire and a plastic champagne glass) my father clears his throat and asks: “Did I ever tell you the story of how the angel got on top of the Christmas tree?”

It is one of my most cherished Christmas traditions, and one I would like to share. So allow me to present, to the best of my ability, my father’s story of How the Angel Got on Top of the Christmas Tree.

It was Christmas Eve at the North Pole, and Santa Clause, as is not unusual for a man of his carriage in a high stress position, was on the verge of a massive coronary. Or an aneurism. Or possibly both. He had just discovered 653 pages of the naughty – nice list wedged between the cushions of his sofa, and while most of the children on it were naughty, he was still short almost 17,000 gifts. He was contemplating reinstating a plan he had used once years before wherein toys already belonging to naughty children are stolen and re-gifted to nice ones, when a gruff, older elf approached him carrying a rocking horse fitted with a saddle made from old glow-in-the-dark watch hands.

“Uh…Santa?” Said the elf.

“Yeah, what is it?” asked Santa, turning to look. “Great God in Heaven! What were you little morons thinking?!”

“Well,” said the elf, “ever since this whole Indiglo thing came up, we don’t really have a lot of call for the old glowing hands, so we thought maybe, you know, this might work. They’re a little pointy, but…”

“They’re not just pointy, you nit-wit! They’re radioactive!” He slumped down onto a nearby bench. “Christ, if that one ever gets out…”

“Now Santa, not a single cancer-related death was ever positively linked to our watches. Besides, remember in the 50’s? We used to stuff stockings with cartons of Lucky Strikes.”

At this Santa sprang back to his feet, suddenly fuming. “It doesn’t Goddamn matter about one rocking horse! I’m THOUSANDS of gifts short!”

“Well, why don’t you just take them from the naughty kids again and…”

“And have INTERPOL back up my ass?” Bellowed Santa. “They’re still after me from the last time! Get out of here! Get that thing away from me!” At this the elf tucked the possibly leukemia-inducing rocking horse under his arm and scurried out of sight. Santa paced back and forth, breathing deeply, lacking even the patience to go out and check the reins on the sleigh, an act that usually calmed him down.

Just then one of the little Christmas Angels approached him. Santa disliked this particular Angel quite a lot. A little, vacuous, blonde thing named Tiffany with a habit of talking about incredibly inane subjects for long periods of time without ever pausing, even to breathe. “Santa! Santa!” she shouted. “Santa, Vixen is sick so she’s not givin’ it up and Blitzen, you know how he gets frustrated quickly, well, he got to feeling a little randy and he tried to hop up on Prancer which pissed Dancer right off even though Dasher told me that Dancer told him that things between he and Prancer aren’t even going that well lately and he’s thinking about asking for a new place in the lineup but anyway he socked Blitzen a good one and…..”

“ENOUGH!” roared Santa! “Just grab the cattle prod and tell those sniveling sacks of crap to get their game faces on! It’s Christmas freaking EVE!” The little angel staggered back a few steps, eyes wide, and then skittered off through the nearest door. Santa found himself alone once again, but couldn’t calm down. He stood with clenched fists and shouted at nobody.

O

Most of these guys made a killing mocking their culture and generally pissing on everything they saw in the world from their mountain perch in the Catskills Mountains – the famed Borscht Belt. And, as all of them performed before the rise of “observational comedians” like George Carlin or… ehhhhgggggg…. Jerry Seinfeld, their acts consisted largely of actual jokes.

Now, since we’ve filled these pages with tales of woe (from broken hearts to broken governments to suicides to violence and mayhem in our host nation) we figured we’d include one of our favorite old jags. Cause sometimes a joke is Just Damn Funny.

And so we bring you one of the many Tales of Moishe and Levy.

One day an old Jewish man is reading a newspaper while sitting on a park bench on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, when another old man approaches him, pauses for a second, and stares at the seated gentleman for a moment, scratching his head. Then, hesitantly, he said, “Moishe, is that you?”

The man reading the paper, recognizing the voice, looked up and with tears in his eyes, said, “My Goodness, Levy, is that you?”

He struggles to his feet, the newspaper falling from his hands and blowing away in the wind, and the two men embraced and kissed one another on the cheeks two times.

“Oh my, Moishe, how long has it been?”

“Seventy years, if it’s a day, Levy. I haven’t seen you since I’m a boy,” cried Moishe. “Levy, Levy, my old friend, how have the years treated you?”

“Oh, not so bad, Moishe. I’ve got a beautiful wife, and seven kids I have. Nineteen grandchildren. Good business. But, other than that, it’s been a quiet life.”

They both laughed and Levy said to Moishe, “And you, my old friend, tell me of your years.”

Moishe smiled and said, “My wife, god rest her soul, was barren. So I’ve got no children, but I have led an amazing life. I’ve traveled to every country in the world, and I may be the first man in the world to know absolutely everyone.”

As if to emphasize the point, two young black teenagers skateboarded down the avenue calling out, “Moishe! How you doin’, homey?”

Moishe gestured with a “see, I told ya” shrug, and said again to Levy. “I know EVERYBODY.”

Levy now remembered Moishe as a kid, always telling stories in the shtetl, always exaggerating.

“Moishe, sure, you know two black boys, but that ain’t everybody,” said Levy.

“Levy, you’re still the same. But I’ll prove it to you. Who do you want to meet?” said Moishe.

Levy scratched his head and said, “I’d like to meet Mayor Bloomberg. Nice Jewish boy, him. And very successful.”

Moishe pulled out his phone, hit the speed dial, chatted for a few minutes with the voice on the other end, and within two minutes a car pulled up in front of their bench. The driver got out, opened the back door, and Mayor Bloomberg got out of the car, embraced Moishe and said, “My friend, it’s been too long. Why such a stranger?”

Moishe kissed him on his cheeks and said, “Mikey. I’m a busy man.” They both laughed as he gestured to the park bench where he’d been seated. “Oh, and Mikey, this is my old friend Levy. He wanted to meet you.”

The mayor said, “Any friend of Moishe’s is a friend of mine. Here’s my card and my private number.” He kissed Moishe one more time, and got back in the car. “Great to see you, Moishe. Come by this shabbas, we’ll pray.”

And he was gone.

Levy, still a doubter, said, “Sure, Moishe, two black boys and the Mayor you know, but that ain’t everybody.”

As I walked toward my regular pillar to wait, I passed a young Japanese couple. He was on the payphone, while she wandered in what seemed to be aimless circles around him.

I paid them little mind, took my spot, and stared at the ground. The air was awfully thick down there. After a few minutes of staring at the ground and making occasional pointless glances in the general direction of my watch, I noticed that the Japanese girl was on the move. Her boyfriend was still talking to someone on the phone, but her wanderings were now taking her down toward the far end of the platform. She was swinging her head to the left and right as she walked, as if looking for something.

“Miss?” a middle-aged woman shouted after her. In her slacks and Polo shirt, she looked like she was on her way to “casual day” at the office. “Miss?!”

The young woman stopped and turned around. “Yeah?” she shouted back.

“Are you looking for your bag?” the older woman asked. They were still some 30 yards away from each other, so they had to yell past me. “Did you leave it down here at this end?”

“Yes! Do you have it?” The girl was jogging back toward her now, smiling, clearly relieved.

But as she drew closer, the middle aged woman told her that the bag was no longer there, that the police had come and taken it away.

“What?” The girl froze in her steps.

“The police took it.”

“Ahh!” the girl cried. “But – but can I… where can… Ahh! Frank!”

Then she bolted up the stairs, emitting a small, panicked grunt with each step. I watched her go. Where exactly she planned to start looking up there, I couldn’t really say. Her boyfriend continued talking to whoever he was talking to for a few minutes longer. He seemed more annoyed by all the shouting than anything else. Then he hung up and headed toward the stairs to follow her. He didn’t seem nearly as excited as her. Perhaps he just didn’t care.

It seems the proverbial unattended bag, threat to us all, had struck again.

Jesus Christ.

It was only then beginning to dawn on me that the train was late. No, it was worse than that. Since I’d been down there, no trains – neither uptown nor down – had come through the station. Not a one. And now I knew why. They were either holding them one station away or rerouting them until they knew for sure that the danger had passed, and that the Japanese chick’s bag wasn’t loaded with TNT or anthrax or cow dung. It also occurred to me that even though they were keeping the trains a safe distance away, they seemed to have no problem at all with letting the rest of us wait down there on the very same platform where that potential bag full of death was found.

Not that I was concerned about anything like that – I just found it interesting. Another facet of the MTA’s cut and run policy for handling emergencies.

Now consider for a moment the two major forces at work on the platform that morning: On the one hand you have someone so desperate, so intent on being a Good Citizen and getting a pat on the head from the cops that he or she was all too willing to drop a dime on a neighbor. Or in this case on an unattended purple Hello Kitty knapsack whose owner, in all likelihood, was nearby.

(I can’t say for sure, by the way, that it was a purple Hello Kitty knapsack – but I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if it were.)

And on the other hand there’s Ms. Oblivious over there. I realize it was still mighty early – not even 6 a.m. yet – and that not all of us are quite together yet at that hour, but my God. How out of it do you have to be to not only leave your bag on a New York subway platform and wander away, but to not even notice when the cops show up, scrutinize and securing the bag, and take it away? I’m amazed she’s remembered to breathe for this long.

I don’t like the fact that we’re told every time we turn around that we’re supposed to be all jittery about forgotten bags. I consider it useless and dangerous and unnecessary. But we are told that, and people are awfully susceptible. Given that, putting a bag down and wandering away is just plain stupid, and she deserves to have her iPod taken away and stomped on for it. But on the other hand, people who can turn stoolie so fucking easily just sadden me, and cut one more chunk out of my meager faith in humanity.

In a struggle between the criminally witless and those people who can’t ever seem to mind their own goddamn business, who wins? Not me, that’s for sure – I was the one who had to wait an extra half hour for the train that morning on account of their foolishness.

Assholes, both of them.

Later that afternoon, I found myself standing on a different subway platform. It was warm down there, too. It was warm all over.

When the train finally arrived and pulled to a stop, I began heading toward an open set of doors. The conductor was hanging out of his window scanning up and down the train.

As I passed him, I heard him mumble something. Figuring he was just mumbling to himself, I ignored it and kept walking.

“Excuse me?” I heard him say. “Sir?”

Still not sure he was talking to me, I stopped and turned. Then I walked back to him.

“That’s a hot car,” he told me. “This one over here’s got air.”

I looked back where I’d been headed initially, and saw the people lined up to get in. Man, they were going to be an annoyed, stinky bunch before too long…

I thanked the conductor, not exactly sure why he’d chosen to let me in on this, and stepped into the air-conditioned car.

I suppose it was a kind of snitching, sure, a sharing of privileged information. But at least this time the intent was decent.

Jim Knipfel is a free lance writer living in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of the memoir, Quitting the Nairobi Trio, the Novel, The Buzzing and several other works. His new novel, Unplugging Philco (Simon & Schuster) hit the streets on April 14th of this year. His weekly column, Slackjaw, can be read at www.electronpress.com

In other words, we could not find another gigglemaker like it, although we’ve searched high and low – mostly low. Even after several 12 hour, multi-location, editorial board meetings (a.k.a. “a pub crawls”), we have admitted defeat and accepted that if we are going to do this thing, we will have to run imperfect material.

But what, exactly?

A few on the editorial board argued for pure smut in the “Sand Paper Sally” tradition. Others suggested something more topical, maybe with a political corruption angle. One drunk voice at the end of the bar even suggested a “pun page” with a picture of a “Page” reading limericks to a laughing knight. Rest assured, the owner of that voice has since been silenced. Permanently.

Finally, we agreed to bring in our semi-fictional San Pedro reporter, Rocco Dooley, Jr. to choose a direction and run with it. That way, we, the editors, are not responsible for his material. All he told us was that he wanted to “Go sacrilegious,” on the premises that only “seriously crazy” religious people are offended by jokes. “Like them wacky, Stab-a-Danish-Cartoonist jihadi ijits,” and concluded that “we need way fewer of them people, anyway.”

Rocco, we couldn’t agree more. He calls this joke, Superhero Jesus.

One day, after going to the gym, Superhero Jesus was out walking around his old neighborhood in Nazareth.

They love him in Old Nazareth and he loves them. He feels comfortable here; he can breathe here – away from all those pestering disciples with their “Rabbi this and Rabbi that…” Back home in Nazareth, he is with his people. He can relax and get in a good workout every day before healing some lepers or raising the dead.

“It’s nice here,” thinks Jesus.

As He passes the temple, He waves a holy hello to Hadad the Grinder and pats the cute little Benhadad on the head. Up ahead there is a group of citizens gathered in the main square. Jesus decides to go on up and see what’s shaking.

“It’s not market day today, is it?” Superhero Jesus wonders.

But the sun overhead warms his soul and the worry passes. Jesus thinks to himself, “Ahhhhhh…. nothing could go wrong today….”

Even Superhero Jesus should avoid thinking things like that.

When Jesus is about two blocks from the market, he starts to hear heavy, intermittent, arhythmic thumping – each blow being followed by a woman’s wailing.

“Shit,” Jesus thinks to himself. “What is it with these Nazarenes and their stonings? They’re like a bunch of Ninavehian children with the stoning.”

Superhero Jesus breaks into a uphill sprint. As he reaches the market he executes a perfect flying lotus hurdle over Jediel’s vegetable stand, lands with a diving shoulder roll, springs to his feet and pushes his way through the crowd.

Once in front, Jesus shields the woman’s body from the crashing stones. It is clear from her dress and her ruddy makeup that she is a prostitute – a sinner. But Jesus comforts her nonetheless, brushing away her tears and helping her to her feet. She begins to revive.

Still shielding her body, Jesus turns sharply to the crowd and in a resonant baritone he bellows, “MAY THE ONE OF YOU WHO IS WITHOUT SIN CAST THE NEXT STONE.”

Silence strikes the assembled. They shuffle on their feet. Jesus hears the sounds of stones being dropped to dusty earth.

“Just as I thought,” thinks Jesus as he lowers his powerful arms from around the woman’s head.

Just then a rock sails from the crowd and smacks the prostitute right between the eyes, again knocking her senseless. She falls limp in Jesus’ arms.

Superhero Jesus looks up and scans the crowd for the one who threw the stone. His eyes settle upon an old woman slowly removing her veil.

He looks the woman dead in the eye and says, “Mom, sometimes you REALLY piss me off!!!”

Cue the rimshot: Ba, dum, dum, chisshhh…

Have you ever had a conversation

Reformed drinkers can be interesting, but teetotalers give us insight into a hell beyond Dante’s: one of platitudes, clichés, and an eternity of tedium. Arguably even worse than the non-drinker is the “moderate” drinker, whose conversations center around the decency of their lives and the danger of yours. They are the worst.

This is why I own a bar. I like people who drink: barflies, sots, tipplers – that sort of folk. Since in the end we are all playing Russian Roulette with loaded revolvers, I prefer to spend my rapidly passing hours with those quick on the quip – and the more bungled and botched the better. Most drunks have something to say, Thank You Jesus. And don’t give me shit for bringing El Señor into the conversation. He did turn water into wine, not the other way around.

For years I have been collecting quotes by drinkers. Non-drinkers are rarely witty enough to give you a belly laugh that eases the pain of this capriciously wonderful life.

My favorite line, simply because of the scorn, is, “I only drink to make other people interesting,” by theater critic George Jean Nathan.

Another is by Dean Martin: “You’re not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.”  That’s funny. And Dean’s careless and carefree joie de vivre pose is an ideal worth staggering toward.

Here are a few more that are atop my list. Keep this page on your refrigerator and give it a glance when you have doubts. Remember you are not alone. You are on the right path. Giving up drink is as bad as being born again.

T.S. Elliot – “Gin and drugs, dear lady, gin and drugs.” — When asked about inspiration

William Butler Yeats – “The problem with some people is that when they aren’t drunk, they’re sober.”

Henny Youngman – “When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.”

Humphrey Bogart – “I never should have switched from Scotch to Martinis.” — His last words…

Rodney Dangerfield -”I drink too much. The last time I gave a urine sample it had an olive in it.”

Robert Benchley – “Why don’t you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?”

Winston Churchill – “My rule of life prescribed, as an absolutely sacred rite, smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.”

Ross Levy – “Drinking provides a beautiful excuse to pursue the one activity that truly gives me pleasure, hooking up with fat, hairy girls.”

Now isn’t that last quote a delightful and inspiring rumination? But the quotes above are all by famous and dead drinkers. Let me give you some from local denizens, frequenters of Café No Sé, several of whom do not wish to be identified. They are not all about drinking, per se, but are bon mots uttered during Divine Intoxication or the morning thereafter:

Let’s begin with one from my good friend the Surly Bartender. One morning, as I stepped from my bedroom, I saw him standing in the garden in his boxer-shorts. His hands were on the shoulders of a very attractive young woman with whom he had spent the night. In a tone of anguish he said, “What you have to understand is that adult male mammals don’t just like to cuddle.”

Don Tono (a.k.a., the Ambassador, a.k.a., His Excellency) – “I have diplomatic impunity.” when stopped by the police after a slow speed chase  through Antigua. Don Tono, by the way, was driving backwards.

A Local Musician -”Those aren’t rolling papers, that’s my business card.”

Anonymous -  “He’s getting close to her bedtime.”

Anonymous– “The next time I go to a doctor, it’ll be for an autopsy.”

Another Local Musician– “I left my hands in my other pants. I can’t play tonight.”

Anonymous– “There are three kinds of people in the world, those who can count and those who can’t.”

A plumber – “What if there were no rhetorical questions?”

Alaskan Richard – “My third and fourth wife.”  Interjected into a joke that someone else was telling, the set up of which was, “What’s the difference between a bitch and a slut?”  Richard has been married eight times.

Here’s one last one. One night a good friend and I were sitting at the bar. He asked me why I had all these insane ventures – the bookstore, a nonfunctioning theatre, a bar, etc. I told him jokingly that with them I was going to save the world, wait and see.

I said, “I have a messianic complex.”

He shook his head.

“You sure as fuck put the “messy” in messianic,” he said.

Cheers to that!

Simpkins and Captured Hippie

International Hippie experts are at odds over the causes, but all agree that the once thriving Hippie population of San Pedro de Atitlán is in serious decline.

Bernard Simpkins of the International Hippie Observational Consortium (IHOC) stated at a recent press conference that, “…unless radical steps are taken to support the San Pedro Hippie, this once noble creature my go the way of the dodo bird and the digitally animated polar bear.”

The press conference came at the end of a creatively planned – but poorly organized – three day “World Hippie Forum.”

“We really should have thought about sanitation.  I mean, our field of expertise is the legendarily dirty Hippie… you’d think that we wouldn’t have missed that one…” said Simpkins.

On the Streets:

On Saturday, forum participants interacted with several dozen common street Hippies that had been trapped for the event.  Simpkins assured this interviewer that no Hippies were harmed in the course of their capture.

“We used a standard hash-tar box trap,” he said as he flipped a piece of banana bread into one of the Hippie’s mouths.  “Both IHOC and the WHF have taken a strong stand against any form of Dredlock trapping.  We’re here to protect the Hippies, not harm them.”

Simpkins paused, scratched a Hippie behind the ears and said, “Beautiful creatures, aren’t they?  They’ll be given a full physical, tagged and then released Monday morning.”

When asked by a passerby why, exactly, one would want to preserve the Hippie population of San Pedro, Simpkins went on the offensive.

“Why?” he shouted, “Why do people consider these glorious animals to be nothing more than pests or vermin?”  Pointing directly at the questioner, and with a look of righteous zealotry in his eyes, Simpkins issued a challenge.  “Name for me one, just one animal that is as adept at co-opting and trivializing the traditions and art forms of non-Western cultures as the Hippie?  Think about the thigh band tattoo once found exclusively on the Marquesian Islands that told of a family’s battle history?  What of the Celtic braid, first used by Irish artists to represent the unending indefinable?  Or the Navaho dream catcher?  Without the intervention of the hippie, these cultural signifiers would have maintained their meaning, their significance.  But now, they are widely available to the global human population, bereft of their unnecessary baggage and significance.  The noble Hippie, transforms any society it touches.  It commodifies culture!  It brings the world to you!”

The questioner looked in this reporter’s direction, rolled his eyes and made a swirly motion around his ear with his right index finger before proceeding to walk down the hill, away from the press conference, and into the first bar he passed.

Sightings:

On Sunday evening several members of the Venezuelan delegation reported a sighting of four wild adolescent male Hippies playing hacky-sack, laughing, and repeatedly brushing their hair out of their eyes.

Parker Gorman, an expert on the Central Asian Desert Hippie claimed to have communicated with a mid-twenties, female Israeli Hippie.  However, his claims to have “gotten her cell number” were viewed with deep suspicion when Gorman failed to convincingly imitate their distinctively call when challenged by other experts.

Three representatives of the Coalition for the Renaming of Children Victimized by Hippie Mom’s were observed from afar while they were counseling two local Hippie pups, Star Rover Berkowitz and Forest Oak Isaacson.

In the Conference Rooms:

While events on the street were, by turns, baffling and colorful, pungent and poignant, inside the chamber’s darkened conference rooms real work was being done.

Not a small number of readers

Well, in the first place it all goes to show that participant observation can be a grueling experience in the contested, multivocal and polysemic sociopolitical reality of the modern fieldwork site. Anthropology’s not all just taking notes in a comfy air-conditioned library, y’know!

But quite apart from the ‘metatext’, what we see depicted here is a scene from a traditional Guatemalan loa known in certain parts of the altiplano as ‘La Pasión de Sta. Inés’ or ‘La Cortesana’, but most commonly by the name of Las Diablas (The She-Devils).

Loas are a form of dramatized moral tale of the struggle between Good and Evil, often accompanying festive processions, and featuring Biblical characters, devils and angels, together with anthropomorphic animals and personified virtues and vices.

Of medieval European inspiration, these moral vignettes were introduced by the Spanish friars as part of the evangelizing endeavour. Their spiritual orientation and subject matter found resonance in a similar pre-Columbian theatrical tradition however, and so contemporary performances – like the masked dance-drama – are thus fusions of pre-Hispanic and Old World influences, as well as later Colonial-period elements.

As the photograph clearly shows, The She-Devils, in common with other loas, features protagonists from both Christian and indigenous Maya mythologies, but, unusually, the majority of roles are taken by women, thereby constituting the performance as a celebration and propitiation of female emancipation through an anti-hegemonic enactment of feminine empowerment and reproductive energy.

In this particular scene Christian orderings of moral space – sinister and dexter – are preserved in the respective orientations of the forces of Good and Evil: La Borrachera (‘Drunkenness’, portrayed as an indigenous woman), is tempted into sin/waywardness by The She-Devil and Bull-Headed Woman on her (weaker) left, while the Virgin Mary tries to draw her back towards the path of righteousness.

Here, the Virgin gives birth not to the Infant Jesus, but instead to Maximón – regarded in Santiago Atitlán as the brother of Christ. It is said that she wears a blindfold so she cannot see that the Christ-child has been substituted by his sibling, the Mayan deity of ambiguity and lasciviousness.^[1] The substitution of a Mexican beer for the more traditional fermented maize drink, chicha, likely dates from the late-nineteenth century migration of ranchers from the north.

While loas are performed chiefly around Christmas, Las Diablas has recently been gaining in popularity as a vehicle of cultural reaffirmation at ferias and titular festivals as well as “despedidas de soltero,” known some miles north as “Stag Parties.”

Holy Leg Humpin’ Jesus,

So imagine my deflation when I recently bumped into my old friend, Malcolm, whose first words were “the last issue of La Cuadra was all doom and gloom.  How’s ’bout a little more levity next time around.”

I tried to explain that it was well leavened doom and gloom, but he was having none of it.

And I suppose he’s right.  If you’re gonna have 34 pages of torture, violence, moral turpitude, and tragedy, you should at least throw in a few fart jokes to keep the readers’ smiling.

Well, I haven’t heard any good fart jokes recently, so I’ll have to rely on  an old stand by.  The Tale of the Talking Dog.  This joke, like all classics, is all in the delivery.   My guess is Malcolm still won’t like it.  Prat.

Guy walks into a bar and orders a shot and a beer. As he’s sitting there he sees a sign taped to the mirror behind the bar that reads:  “Talking Dog, $10″

He’s kinda interested (and generally bored) so he asks the bar owner what it’s all about.

The owner says, “Yeah, I got a talking dog.  He’s in the back room.  You wanna see him?”

Guy says, “Why not.”

“It’s the last door on the left, just past the pool table.”

So, the guy walks back past the pool table, hooks a left and sees a dog dressed in a velure running suit curled up in the corner.

He hesitates a bit, shifts back and forth on his feet, and finally says, “Uh, Hi.”

The dog rolls over, looks up and says, “Hey.  What’s doin?”

The guy, shocked says, “Holy Shit!  So this is for real.  You’re a talking dog.”

The dog distractedly says, “Yup. talkin’ dog.” and he curls back up to sleep.

The guy says, “Wait, sorry to bother you, but, well, I’ve never met a talking dog before.  I mean… like… how’d you become a… you know…”

The Talking Dog scratches some fleas and says, “To make a long story short, I’m a military project.  I was trained from a pup to be a spy.  I was taught basic tradecraft, and of course, how to speak.  I picked up the language pretty quickly, top of my class, believe it or not, and worked for 7 years in the Soviet Union, gathering information and then passing it freely across the borders, because, of course, no one ever suspects a dog.”

The dog, misty eyed and reminiscent, looks up at the man and says.  “Hey, buddy, do me a favor and crack me one’a them beers.”

The guy looks around, spots the cooler and grabs a Budweiser.  He pops it, and holds it out to the dog.

“No thumbs,” says the Talking Dog, and he gestures with his snout towards his bowl.

The guy fills the bowl and waits for the dog to continue.

The dog laps up half the bowl and says, “after the collapse of the USSR, I worked along the fringe in the radical Islamic movement, tracking terrorists, organizing counter insurgency operations.  Lots of deep cover work.  I tell you, man, I lost some good friends along the way… so much pain… and I started to blank it all out with drugs, snorting heroin mostly.  Somewhere in the mid 1990s I hit rock bottom and I just ran.  I ran as far as I could, and ended up as part of a traveling circus, entertaining kids and the like.  It was good work, but I just couldn’t get off the shit.  I could hardly thinks straight and one day I snapped at a kid.   The booze, the bad dreams and the guilt were damn near killing me.  I really thought about blowing my brains out, but, hey” he lifts up his paws, “… no thumbs.”

“Then one day, this guy shows up. Vietnam Veteran.  Maybe he recognizes some of his own life in my eyes, so he takes me home… here, to this bar.”

Guy says, “Wow, that’s one hell of a story.”  He excuses himself and heads back to the bar, practically shaking with excitement.

He says to the bar owner, “That’s incredible… He really can talk.”

Bar owner says, “If you want him, it’ll be ten bucks.”

The guy pulls out his wallet and hands the guy two fives, but as he’s doing so he says, “I’ll take him, but I’ve gotta know, why only $10?”

Bar owner says, “He’s a fucking liar.  He hasn’t done half of that shit.”

Thanks folks, I’ll be here all week!  Try the roast beef!

For those of you who did not know Brendan

There was “you cunt” which usually signaled a fight was about to ensue. (Brendan was one of the more famous pugilists to pass through this town.) Then there was “bloody cunt” which more often than not was an expletive like “Oh, shit.” And then there was “right cunt” which was sort of a compliment. It meant you had balls, you were an asshole, and you were – through a combination of the two, plus a knack for turning a phrase – entertaining. And this was Brendan.

As Brendan would say, ¨Profanity is the refuge of lame intellects and inarticulate motherfuckers.¨ He was also quick to note that James Joyce used the word “cunt” and that, because he, Brendan, had been born in Ireland, where the word is apparently as popular as Guinness, he had every right to sling it about.

Brendan was brilliant. I say was, because he is no longer here. We had to send him away. A one way ticket to Shanghai. It was for his own good. People wanted to kill him, and with good reason.  Lot’s of people. But that’s another story.

After 3 years of knowing Brendan I was not entirely sure I knew him at all. He was a vortex where truth and fiction met. Perhaps he was pathological. Perhaps everything he said was true. Perhaps he never let truth get in the way of a good story and embellished his past here and there. Who knows, and for that matter who really cares.

His CV seemed far fetched. But if you live in Antigua long enough you come to know that the bizarre is often factual. As the tale is told, he had been jailed in New Orleans for beating a judge’s son senseless in a bar fight. His experience in the slammer was unkind to his hindquarters.  He had revenge on four of his prison mates after he was released. Let’s just say those prison mates are no longer amongst the living. Then Brendan went to Iraq and was in the first Gulf War as a sharp shooter, or in intelligence, or ballistics. After that he went to Tulane and got a masters degree in Rhetoric. Then he was a wine distributor in Napa. The perfect resume for coming to Antigua, as far as I was concerned.

While here, for every friend he made, he made twenty enemies. Others might argue that I have that wrong by a factor of ten. You had to be a certain kind of masochist to like Brendan; and for some reason we loved him. His way of meeting you for the first time was to publicly insult you, to push you to a breaking point, to make you cry or fight or doubt all that was good in the world. He was like a junkyard dog that pissed everywhere to mark his territory; and if you befriended him, you felt compelled to pet him, feed him, slake his thirst – always wary that he might some day bite off your arm.

By way of illustration let me mention the night when one of Antigua’s more infamous dandies entered Café No Sé with his pet Chihuahua nestled in his arm. The Chihuahua had a collar studded with gleaming faux gems. A woman was heard to say, “Oh, what a precious dog.” Brendan abruptly pitched around on his barstool and growled, “That’s not a dog. That’s a rat with a good publicist.”

“You’re horrible,” the woman said.

“And also a drunk,” Brendan fired back. “But you are an ugly twat. And tomorrow I’ll wake up and be even more horrible, but sober for at least an hour or so, and you, YOU CUNT, will still be an ugly twat.” His spontaneous plagiarism and reworking of Winston Churchill’s famous line to Lady Astor was typical of Brendan’s wit, and one of the reasons we would endure him when he had gone way too far.

There was another time, in the very early days of the cafe, when a new bartender leaned across the bar and said to Brendan, “If you don’t stop insulting customers I’m going to throw you out.” Brendan was about to let loose on her when I put up my hand and said, “Brendan if you stop insulting customers, I’m going to throw you out.” So much for my business acumen; I figured if you didn’t get Brendan, and couldn’t handle him, then you did not belong.

As for his drinking, it was, and I’m sure still is, prodigious. And like heavy drinkers he often repeated himself. One such mantra was, “I’m not an alcoholic; I’m a drunk. Alcoholics go to meetings. I go to bars.” Another was, “It’s one beer that gets me drunk. I’m just not sure if it’s the 16th or the 17th.”

Brendan did nothing by halves. (You should see the legendary tab he left behind.) If his goal was to shock you, or piss you off, he did it well. If things were getting a little dull Brendan would put a cigarette out on his own neck in mid-sentence and without batting an eye. You’d hear the sizzle and smell the burned flesh. Or he’d stab himself in the shoulder with a fork until he bled through his shirt. New customers would scream, or get up and leave. But the regulars would barely take notice.

If he was doing a shot of tequila, he’d first snort the salt – and we use coarse sea salt in the bar- then toss back the shot, and then squirt the lime in his eye. Then he’d ask someone to smack him on the back of the head, for what reason I was never quite sure. I think it may have been his way of trying to identify other right cunts in the vicinity, like looking for brethren who knew the fraternal hand shake.

One late night I was doing my best to keep my customers quite. I wanted them to speak to each other in a whisper. We were sort of operating the joint as a speak-easy at that time. Trying to quiet the place was like herding cats, a no win proposition. Brendan, unasked, decided to come to my aid. He walked over to a burly Australian who had recently arrived to town and said, “Shut your fucking mouth, you kangaroo humping cunt.” The Aussie responded, “Fuck off, mate. Can’t you see I’m chattin’ up a Sheila?”  Brendan raised his fist. I jumped in between and somehow both sides cooled down.

The following night Brendan was perched on his regular bar stool. It was late and the Aussie was sitting at a corner table drinking a Victoria. Brendan had already put a cigarette out on his own arm and had offended half the customers. I was counting quetzales and wondering how on earth I was going to stay in business. Brendan asked for a shot of tequila. I poured it for him and he cut a Scar Face size line of sea salt on the bar top. Here we go, I thought. Brendan snorted the line, drank the shot and squirted the lime in his eye.

“Smack me in the back of the head,” he shouted at me.

I clapped him on his skull.

“That’s not a smack, give me a proper smack.”

I hit him a bit harder.

In New York City’s last days - before the Disney-fication of 42nd Street, before we were all Starbucked and mind-fucked into paying 6 bucks for a cup of coffee, before Rudy, before the smoking ban, before studio apartments in Brooklyn cost two thousand arms and a ball, one last glimmer of light shone forth from the dying embers of that pornographically beautiful, almost Roman metropolis.  That light was Spy Magazine, but sadly it, too – eventually – succumbed to the overwhelming tide of sameness that invaded and killed the country.

We at La Cuadra, refugees of that time and place, like to think of ourselves as an illegitimate, bastard son of Spy – and as we’re pretty sure that an out of circulation magazine from another continent and century won’t be able to sue us, we’re going to reprint a story or two of theirs over the coming months.

We’re pleased to be able to inaugurate this theft with a holiday classic.  It is a scientific look at the feasibility of jolly old St. Nick.  It’s probably best that your 5 year olds don’t get a peek at any of our pages, but if they (or you) still think the fat man squeezes down the chimney come Christmas Eve, you should definitely keep this one out of reach.

The Editors.

No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

There are two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn’t appear to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total – 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes there’s at least one good child in each.

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second.

This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75½ million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.

This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second – a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 35 miles per hour.

If every one of the 91.8 million homes with good children were to put out a single chocolate chip cookie and an 8 ounce glass of 2% milk, the total calories (needless to say other vitamins and minerals) would be approximately 225 calories (100 for the cookie, give or take, and 125 for the milk, give or take). Multiplying the number of calories per house by the number of homes (225 x 91.8 x 1000000), we get the total number of calories Santa consumes that night, which is 20,655,000,000 calories. To break it down further, 1 pound is equal to 3500 calories. Dividing our total number of calories by the number of calories in a pound (20655000000/3500) and we get the number of pounds Santa gains, 5901428.6, which is 2950.7 tons.

The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that “flying reindeer” (see above) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload (not even counting the weight of the sleigh) – to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison – this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth. 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance – this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each.

In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion: If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.