Tim Kaiser was the classic schoolyard bully, an overgrown ogre projecting his self-loathing on anyone smaller in stature. Tim was a mischief mastermind, as evidenced by his decision to strategically position himself on the opposite side of a picnic table before calling me the unholiest of unholies.

I was well aware that my height and weight were grossly disproportionate, my rail-thin big brother never missed a chance to opine on the dichotomy and my mirror never failed to parrot his opinion. My weight was, as Tim would soon learn, the key to unlocking my inner simian.

Despite repeated commands to cease and desist, Tim continued calling me “Fatso.” Dead set on doing him grievous bodily harm I gave chase. He eluded my pursuit by simply circling the table again and again. Eventually we came to rest, still on opposite sides of the table. I picked up a golf ball sized stone and dared him to call me “fatso” again. He did. I made good on my threat, leaving him with one less tooth to neglect brushing.

My mother arrived at the principal’s office in hysterics. Tim’s mother, on the other hand, remained calm throughout the ordeal. Her contributions were few, brief and mostly meant to downplay the gravity of the situation. I suspect that as his mother, no one was more aware what an asshole Tim could be when he put his mind to it, and ambivalence was her way of saying, “I’m sure my son did something to set Christopher off,” without siding against her own kin.

Due to our ages school officials swept the incident under the rug. My mother did not follow suit. She made me buy Tim an apology gift despite eyewitness testimony that he had provoked my attack. The gift was a toy car, red with yellow racing stripes and substantially larger than a Matchbox. Financing the compulsory peace offering cost me two month’s allowance. Adding insult to injury I was forced to wrap it and pen an apology. If I had had the wit then that I have now (and a way to sneak it past my omnipresent mother) I would have bought Tim a boxer’s mouth guard and wrote in the accompanying card, “Just in case you didn’t learn your lesson.”

Sharpen to a Point

Several years ago I auditioned to be a contestant on the Game Show Network’s family-friendly program, “Lingo.” I came across their ad in an industry trade publication and picked up the phone. A production assistant instructed me to procure a partner.

Having been in LA just shy of a year my social circle spanned a hula-hoop’s circumference. My days were spent juggling two jobs and my nights commuting to open mike nights across Southern California. Don was a new hire at the hotel. In a department that is 90% middle-aged Mexicans it was only natural that two young “jueros” would gravitate towards each other; However, I knew nothing more about him than his name and age when we partnered for the aud.

The studio was located on Sunset walking distance from the CNN building. Don and I ascended a flight of stairs into a spacious, rectangular room furnished with several picnic tables. Six two-person pairs that had arrived before us were well into their paperwork. The Production Assistant gave an orientation spiel. Moments later the Casting Director emerged from a door marked private.

The game basically consisted of solving a quasi crossword puzzle before the buzzer. Each puzzle contained five words all beginning with the same letter. Teammates were subjected to a short, joint interview before playing. Don and I were the last up. We gave our names, our hometowns and our employer. The Casting Director inquired what specifically we did for work. I explained that Don and I were Banquet Servers, our hotel’s tuxedoed, fine-dining servers. Our interview had been chugging along nicely when Don abruptly derailed it. The CD asked what we dislike most about our job and Don reflexively replied, “Jewish Weddings.” What he meant was Orthodox Jewish weddings because they require hours of preparation and their use of outside caterers diminishes our gratuity, but what came across was, “The worst thing about our job is working for Jews.” Before I could open my mouth to clarify Don added, “They’re a real pain in the ass.” While I am capable of explaining away his Anti-Semitic sounding remark I cannot even venture a guess as to why he followed it with an expletive. A palpable bad vibe filled the room. Don was the only person who did not notice. I implored him to “Shut the fuck up!” with my eyes but his attention was fixed on the Casting Director. Just when I thought the worst was over Don huffed, “And they never tip.” Our previously vocal fellow auditioneers now sat stone silent. The CD soldiered through the remainder of our audition in a tone confirming that she was as put off by Don as the rest of the room. As for me, well, I was so vexed by the incident that I forgot the game’s rules. I stood mute and motionless until our time elapsed.

Outside of the studio I abruptly bid Don adieu. I ran to my car and dove for my cell phone. I dialed the Lingo hotline as fast as I could. It was now late in the afternoon and my call went unanswered. I left a protracted message fervently apologizing for recruiting a bigot as my teammate. My call was never returned. Needless to say the Don and Chris duo did not make the cut.

Sharpen to a Point

Michael Caruso was different. For starters, he knew things that he didn’t learn in class. He read books at home, which, where I’m from, is a crime that carries a minimum mandatory sentence of ostracism. In all fairness, Caruso’s manner did not lend itself to making friends. Even at eleven he had a put-upon, condescending way about him. He was the quintessential know-it-all, and though I have no clue what became of him my guess would be that he works in tech support and sighs dramatically every time he’s asked a question.

One day, midway through the school year, Caruso announced that he was moving to Arizona, which was met with our then standard reply of, “So? You think you’re cool? You’re not.” As best I can recall, his mother had already relocated to the Grand Canyon State and he and his father were scheduled to rendezvous with her in a few short weeks. Fast-forward a few, short weeks. Minutes before he was to board his flight, a distraught stranger randomly chose Michael to hold hostage at gunpoint. In the end the gunman surrendered peacefully and no one was harmed.

A few days later, out of left field, our teacher announced that Michael would be paying us a visit, his move having been postponed for obvious reasons. Her announcement was met with shrugged shoulders, until she revealed that a local news crew would be dropping by to shoot an expose about him. With that, Caruso’s approval rating rocketed from the depths of the red to the heights of the black. See, back then, American children worshiped their TVs the way American adults worship them today, and in a pre-YouTube, pre-American Idol era, news was the only medium for anonymous imbeciles to become instant celebrities. I immediately set about increasing my odds of being chosen as an interviewee. The moment my teacher resumed pedagogy I stealthily withdrew my markers and surreptitiously whipped up a colorful sign reading, “Good luck Caruso!”

When the news crew arrived they shot some B roll, interviewed our teacher and randomly chose three kids to comment on Caruso’s character. I was one.
Suffice it to say that my characterization of our class pariah sounded like those press junkets for summer blockbusters where the actors jockey to one-up each other in a ego stroking orgy, “Insert director’s name here is so brilliant he should be perched atop a mountain in Tibet!” What I said about Michael that day was to hypocrisy what Michael Phelps’s performance at the last summer Olympics was to sport swimming. What I wouldn’t do to know what went through Caruso’s head when he arrived at his old stomping grounds to find a welcoming family where an angry mob once stood. If he was surprised he never let on, he was far too busy basking in the spotlight. From the moment he arrived he was subdued yet ebullient, as if he’d lived one thousand lifetimes since we last saw him. His recitation of the narrative was pure pretense: He had not been the least bit frightened, as his kidnapper had confided early on that the gun was not loaded. According to Caruso, he simply bided his time. In fact, as he told his tale, he actually strolled past our desks tipping nods as if to say, “I remember when I was but one of you, a mere groundling.” I’m certain that, despite their cherubic smiles, the same thought was running through every kid in that classroom’s head, “Me too, it was one week ago.”

Idiot Rain

“Idiot Wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves, we are idiots babe, it’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves.”
—Bob Dylan

My characterization of mankind, generally speaking, is unkind. I believe that, far more often than not, society’s socioeconomic stratifications stem from a grotesque disparity of intelligence rather than isms, glass ceilings or divine intervention. To anyone who disagrees or takes umbrage I offer the following anecdotes: Recently, while driving though LA proper, I saw a billboard (presumably sanctioned and financed by the city) discouraging the public from firing guns to celebrate New Year’s. Not long ago the radio was running public service announcements advising the public to think twice about what they post online because, apparently, someone somewhere was shocked when the nude photos he/she posted on the World Wide Web wound up on the World Wide Web. Remember that famous Newsweek poll from which found that nearly 2/3 of Americans believed Iraq/Saddam Hussein had a hand in 9/11?

By thirty-three I was certain that I had seen it all. Indeed, pride cometh before a fall. Recently, I overheard two coworkers— both in their twenties, neither mentally challenged— discussing Noah’s Ark, the Old Testament narrative of a man who, at God’s behest, built a boat (450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high [Gen. 6:14-16]) capable of accommodating his family, some 50,000 species of animals and one million species of insects, then coaxed them all aboard in one week. Two of every animal, from Artic Polar Bears to Komodo Dragons, (hailing from distinctly different corners of the Earth) plus forty days worth of each creature’s unique dietary requirements: forty days worth of uncanned, unrefrigerated food, presumably including the live flora and fauna that some creatures require for survival… Two of every animal whose sexes had to be manually confirmed, many that would have had to have been sequestered to prevent them from preying on their neighbors, plus tapirs, hippos and other beasts that breathe air but spend the better part of their days in shallow water. Who walked these beasts to prevent muscular atrophy? Who filed their hooves and teeth down? Who shoveled the mountains of waste these creatures produced on a daily basis? According to the Bible, a crew of eight. This story really should be titled, “The shit some people will believe!” And after 40 days consecutive days in these conditions, not one of these creatures suffered illness or injury that prevented it from mating successfully? What about birds? Are we to believe that they remained flightless for forty days, or were they permitted one hour a day of exercise like prisoners in solitary confinement?

At the story’s end God self-imposes a ban on global flooding in perpetuity. He even casts a “bow in the clouds” to embody this promise (Gen. 9:16). This passage might pass muster with a child, but adults know that the atmospheric laws of refraction cause rainbows, not God— Is The Bible suggesting that those laws only came into being on that day? I could go on for days about how patently ludicrous this story is from head to toe, but by now I’ve made my point to any rational, right-minded reader. There are and will continue to be people who claim that the sciences, statistics & logistics that render this scenario hopelessly implausible were overwhelmed by God’s will, to which anyone possessing common sense will instinctively reply, “Then why wouldn’t he just use a more efficient method for mass murdering mankind in the first place?!”

Sharpen to a Point

Last Saturday began like any other workday. I clocked in, raised the shutters and waited for my first table to arrive.

My first table consisted of four females in their late teens to early twenties, two Caucasians, one African American and one Asian. Their sweatshirts confirmed my suspicion that they were UCLA students. In an effort to wow her with my worldliness I asked the Asian girl if she understood the Chinese word for “Hello.” She did not. I then inquired if she understood the Japanese equivalent. She nodded comprehension. Although it was never exceptionally warm to begin with, their collective disposition froze over immediately afterward. Lacking any other explanation, I asked the Asian gal if my innocuous query had somehow offended her. She mumbled something suggesting it had. At that point the African-American spoke up, stating that although the group was not especially offended, the question was “weird,” and, “some people would find it offensive. You can’t just assume that every Asian speaks Chinese or Japanese.” “I didn’t,” I promptly corrected her, “I simply asked if she understood a greeting in either language.” “Why didn’t you ask me?” she retorted, “I could have taken a class.” I was speechless. She seemed to be suggesting that if I polled twenty Asian and twenty non-Asian patrons, the non-Asian group would be just as likely to speak an Asian language as their counterparts. Certainly no one with an ounce of common sense could make such an asinine assertion, so how could a college student be making it? Ostensibly, her gripe was that I had made a bigoted generalization akin to, “All Asians look alike.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. I drew a circumstantial conclusion based on observation. Thankfully, millions of people do the same thing every day: When a restaurant patron clutches their throat bystanders assume they are choking and offer assistance. By her logic I should not have assumed that anyone at the table spoke English when I first approached it, yet I did, and no one faulted me for doing so.

My evening/weekend employer for the last two years, a high-end hotel in Los Angeles, frequently caters to large groups of ethnically, racially and religiously diverse groups. I pride myself on greeting guests in their native tongue whenever applicable. When I serve esoteric cuisine I announce it by its culturally common name. Not once has a guest taken offense to this gesture. On the contrary, they are tickled pink that an outsider – an American no less – made the effort to familiarize himself with some facet of their culture. No, every time I’ve found myself at odds with self-deputized officers from the thought police – either as a columnist, a stand-up or simply in conversation – they were always simple-minded Americans marching in lockstep with the canons of Political Correctness. In most cases he/she refused to acknowledge the accuracy or validity of my assertion. In all cases they failed to concede that the US Constitution guarantees me the right to think, hear, say, read or print any idea I choose to. Clearly, what began as a well-intentioned effort to enlighten society has become something akin to Christian fundamentalism’s secular counterpart.