Confessions of a parmesan addict

I’m glad that among the many qualities of parmesan reggiano cheese, not many are common with heroin. Living in Oak Park, just off the western edge of the great metropolis Chicago, I occasionally get to share an el train ride with junkies on their way to score on Austin Avenue, said to be the nation’s biggest heroin wholesale district. (That could just be the city’s everlasting boosters saying that, however). That’s always a treat, seeing people barely hold it together in search of their next fix.

I must say that although I do not get the sweats, nor pangs of withdrawal, nor suffer any other physical dependence on the stuff, there is one commonality between heroin addiction as treated in the popular cinema and -literature and my addiction to parmesan: willingness to engage in crime to obtain it.

Any time I am tasked with parmesan application to the top of dinner piled on a plate, I’m sneaking chunks of it to eat. If I’m merely cleaning up after dinner prep, and putting the parm away, I’m sneaking chunks of it to eat. If I know there is parm in the fridge, awaiting dinners to catch gratings thereof, I will sneak chunks of it to eat. It speaks to me the way cookies had my brother’s attention (also, and more famously, the eponymous Monster’s).

When I was a mere slip of a boy, parmesan came in a comforting green tube and lived in the fridge next to the ketchup. I quickly learned to spin the top to the mouthy opening instead of the sprinkly opening so I could get more than my fair share of it. In my largely-unsupervised pre-teen years, when my stepmonster would be upstairs sleeping through another day while the thyroid meds wore off, I’d be heaping piles of parmesan on English muffins to be toasted with hunks of butter.

Now that I’m a worldly soul, and joined in the bonds of matrimony to a pretty (comma both omitted and used) dedicated foodie, parmesan is something all the more alluring. It comes from the Cheese Man, our clever name for our local cheese shop owner. He sells us aged Italian Parmagiano-Reggiano. It’s like going from tic-tacs to pure heroin.* Every time I’m in the shop I consider buying a whole wheel of the stuff and riding it home.

I’d have to get one of those big wooden mallets, and a giant cheese-chisel, but in the end it would be worth it. Maybe even lederhosen. For some reason pounding away at a giant wheel of cheese seems to call out for lederhosen.

For reasons that have been explained patiently to me many times, the name we use for our cheese is wrong somehow. We came to know it as Stravecchio, and we speak of it like he’s a dear friend, or an Italian leprechaun (without the mischief). When I hover before the cheese counter, entranced at the array of delightful old milk on display, I intone the name like a fangirl waiting at the stage entrance for a glimpse of her idol. At which point the cheese-cutter behind the counter corrects me to say that the name is "sarvekio" or some other ugly appellation. I wave away the execrable noise and repeat my plea for Signore Stravecchio.

With the distant Mona Lisa smile that most people give me when I’m being infantile, the help normally hacks off a hunk of the goods and nobody gets hurt.

Now if you’ll excuse me we’re out of Stravecchio and I’m going to go rob a bank to pay for the next hit.

*Except for all those ugly negatives one usually associates with heroin, of course. Just in terms of strength. I confess I don’t really know the effect of taking heroin. I’ve had plenty of tic-tacs in my day (not nearly enough to improve my breath, sadly), but I’m just guessing from all the trouble horse-users go to to get their horse, I have to figure that stopping off in the local convenience store for some tic-tacs just isn’t cutting it.

Alaska update

There once was a gov’nor named Palin
Whose future looked like sweet smooth sailin’
She made enemies
While droppin’ her g’s
And now it seems she is failin’

Something is Right with the news!

First of all, there is a big story going on in Tehran and the MSM are covering it! With the help of Twitterers (Twats? Persons who Twit?), that is.

Second, the NYT reported a sensational and eye-popping story from Pakistan involving the kidnapping of a reporter. The twist is that they did so only after he escaped: they kept mum about a big-selling story so as not to profit from the demise of their reporter, David Rohde. Wowza!

I'm impressed with the NYT's maturity and forbearance. More so with this particular reporter, who put the story ahead of everything. This is not his first capture: he was held in Bosnia in the 90's while investigating massacres there during their ugly post-Tito period of devaluing human life and depriving one another therof.

Of course, along with Mr. Rohde an Afghan reporter, Tahir Ludin, and their driver, Asadullah Mangal were also held captive and only Mr. Ludin escaped with Mr. Rohde. So in the end one fella seems doomed.

The NYT might argue that the guy is "only" a driver, but in Afghanistan it is not entirely impossible that driving an NYT reporter is a very good job, and that any guy who scores that gig might well be a highly-capable and valuable person. Perhaps one worth keeping mum about, lest he be stilled, to the detriment of fragile Afghanistan, which can ill afford to lose capable people.

Still, though, it is a good sign for those of me inclined to despair about the low state of journalism that maturity is possible.
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Word-picture of the week

Yesterday your humble correspondent got the kind of phone call that deserves to be shared.

 

By way of background, this reporter is married to a veterinary pathologist, a kind of James Herriot for dead animals, if James Herriot looked more like a supermodel.  In that capacity, she dismantles all creatures great and small for the three zoological institutions in and around Chicago, among other things.  Continuing with background story, this particular vet is 7+ months pregnant.

 

So she calls yesterday to relate the following incident from Riverdale Zoo (name changed to protect the innocent):

 

Working in the necropsy* room about to dunk a bunch of tissue in formalin (a fixative agent related to formaldehyde), Red knocked the formalin off the table and into her lap.  Thinking and working quickly, she stripped off all her formalin-soaked clothing.  If it gets to your skin, formalin basically pickles you.  The more gets on you, the more pickled you get.  And pickles tend not to be terribly lively. You don't want to bathe in formalin. Or have it touch you.  Not conducive to good health.

 

The next item on Red's agenda was finding something to wear beyond bra and panties.  The necropsy room at Riverdale has a couple of offices in it, and a closet with scrubs and other duds to cover whatever while you are dismantling whichever exotic beastie has given up the ghost.  The larger mammals require a team of vets and others to beetle their way through all the tissue to get to the parts which excite pathologists (and no one else except maybe the French).  The scrub tops would not fit over the belly.  The coveralls would not cover all, but could only zip to just below the equator of Red's Death Star. Picture a pregnant nudie frantically trying on scrubs and coveralls like she was in a blue-collar Filene's Basement.  No luck on top coverage in the closet.  Only choice was to head to the office next door.

 

So there she was, almost in the buff, waddling pregnantly around the suite normally home to great gobs of ghastly gore looking for something which would cover her burgeoning bod.  From the closet to the office she went, knowing that there is a rack of Riverdale Zoo shirts (all labeled "Mike" in honor of Red's boss, bought back in the days before Riverdale had bi-annual layoffs and quarterly budget cuts).  With a pair of scrub pants cinched up under her belly, she found a Mike shirt that only just buttoned over the bump (though it was spattered with blood from a recent guest in the suite).

 

From there she went on with her day as if nothing untoward had happened.  Wouldn't you?

 

*Greek for "seeing a dead body", this is the term used in veterinary medicine to describe what in human medicine is an autopsy which itself is Greek for "thing which looks at itself". So I autopsy myself every morning when I shave.  Apparently Greek is not an exact science.

GM bankrupt

Uhmurrica likes its symbolism plenty. And we are getting to indulge in it but good with the long-expected bankruptcy filing by General Motors.

Cars for some (many? Gawd I hope not) are extensions of themselves, kind of an exo-skeleton or Transformer they become when driving. This is certainly true in my family. My Pops was super-gaga for vroom-vrooms.

He drove BMWs and lil' Japanese pick-ups at the end of his time, and I will not explore the meaning of that here. That's between me and my shrink (who doesn't exist, but if she did, she would be played by Lorraine Bracco) (or maybe Lorraine Thomas). When I was a slip of a boy, Dad drove a Datsun 280Z 2+2 (the last bit his hilarious and ineffectual attempt at parenthood - he got the "extra" two seats so we kids could fit in his tiny sportscar).

That beautiful and snazzy gold metallic outside with the black leather seats, rosewood shift knob and steering wheel was pure Dad. He spoke in awed terms about his inaugural car, a Buick roadster from 1935, the year Dad rolled along the old assembly line, too.

My first car assigned me by Dad was a 1983 Pontiac Phoenix. GM seemed bankrupt to me back then. Where the hell have you all been for 26 years?
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Bracing

Had some drinks last night with some good people. Couple of guys I worked with over at CARE and a scattering of folks from other non-profits around town.

One of the ladies mentioned these here pages, this hallowed space of great and good thoughts, imperfectly expressed though they are. This reporter never fails to blanch when confronted with a reader. One's thought immediately turn to the most reprehensible things one has published here, and one's bones turn to jelly. The lady pointedly mentioned that she prefers the early days of DannyWanny to the more recent and geo-political work.

Fair enough. When a body is browsing the Intertubes for snippets of worthy prose or poesy (if loosely enough defined to include this site), one probably is seeking respite from tales of layoffs or bombings.

This reporter needs to reconnect with the funny. Message received.

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Talent

Take it from somebody without any - talent is a rare commodity. Musical, athletic, whatever. Some folks have it and I don't. It's okay, really - I have some good points (I'm punctual, for instance) - and not being in grade school my prowess in kickball is entirely beside the point.

This week Red and I watched my boy play some bball under the auspices of the Lake Bluff Baseball Association. The league has a tryout system and a travel team, and theoretically the teams are balanced.

All the House League teams have snazzy MLB-copy unis and a smattering of Travel players. My boy is on the Marlins. Some fellow Marlin parents were grousing to me about the Red sox being scary good, and it was all I could do not to laugh at them.

Little guys are pretty hard to read outside the dandelion-pickers and the Lil' Ted Williamses. The in-betweeners go from wildly competent to utterly hopeless all in the same play, to say nothing of the growing and learning they do in the course of a season.

How the boys themselves feel is, of course, a BIG part of their aptitude. My little man is a wee bit diffident and thus painful to watch. His coach's kid has tons of swagger and not much call for it. Some boys just get it and play ball like pros.

Wednesday's game featured the Tigers, of whom the other boys speak in hushed tones. "ALL of 'em can hit!" said one little Met. "Alex Brown's son plays for them," said a Marlin, "and he's only in First Grade!"

The game itself was a bit like dentistry for the viewing pleasure, but it was briefly tied at 6, so that was something. Mr. Brown himself, with his wife and daughter, was in attendance, and I was mighty proud of all the parents not to be too impressed with themselves for having this brush with fame.

For his part, Mr. Brown seemed plenty pleased to be just another Dad out with the fam. His son, it should be noted, is a terrific young man, and a superb athlete. He was more mature than all the other kids. (Also me).

The best part was that his dad just was smelling the roses and enjoying the game. No tension, other than wanting his boy to do well (like all of us) but humble withal. When MY son was in first grade, baseball was a distant dream. He needed a teenaged minder assigned to him to get him to pay attention to tee ball!

Talent will out, most of the time, and I do not lament its apparent and relative lack in myself. At least I'm on time...
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