I started a recent piece with a recitation of things I’m exceptional at--none of them particularly enviable--but I left one out: digressions. I’m pretty sure it’s a genetic imperative, as my mother was a tangential storyteller of the first order. I like to think this was in her and is in me the product of an active, generous mind, one that grabs and illuminates the shiny objects that often pop up in mid-story because hey, you like shiny objects too and neither my mother nor I would want you to miss out.
Her tale tendrils often stretched foodward, because that’s where her mother’s spent most of their time. In her 90s, my grandmother would be telling a story about anything and never waver in her lifelong recall, inclusion, and recitation of, no matter how long ago the meal or how many diners, what everyone ordered and whether it was any good. My mother expanded the oeuvre by weaving more people and fewer provisions into her digressions, and I like to think I’ve turbo-charged the family tradition by allowing all manner of matter to send me off-topic.
I understand the upside of totally linear thinking and speaking, I just can’t pull it off. And so, in the interest of science and discovery and all things possible and unlikely, I will now attempt to write an entire essay of as yet undetermined length entirely composed of digressions. I’ll give you a second to digest the majesty of those words before we begin our journey into the unknown and, more to the point, the unnecessary. And I realize this little preamble has rendered the essay not all digression, but the way I hear it, context is king and shit.
I’ll start with a thought I had today that I liked a lot, to wit: Coming up with something is almost always preferable to coming down with something. I say almost because sometimes it isn’t, as in the re-emergence—that’s up, right?—of the lonely mustache look (that’s sans beard). I grew a mustache in the 1980s when I lived in Minnesota: 1) just to see if I could, and 2) in the ignorant hope it might help with overall warmth, which it not only failed at miserably but added a slightly disgusting touch–-the hair would freeze when I went outside in the winter, then melt when ushered back into the sub-tundra. I’m sure the pandemic had a lot to do with the stache’s to-me-unwelcome return, as facial hair shifting was an easy way to combat boredom, but it should have gone away about the time we stopped wiping our groceries down with Lysol. It has not, and speaking of, given its customary moniker as a porn star moustache, why is it that everyone who’s ever worked in porn is considered a star? Are there no porn character actors?
Speaking of foolish choices in facial hair, my wife and I have a running gag about Pedro Pascal, who for a while you simply couldn’t turn anything on without his mustachioed mug popping up. I could never remember his name, calling him Pablo Pascual or Pascal Patron or other misnomers, but it wasn’t racial, or cultural, or personal; I just can’t remember anyone’s name anymore. But here’s an objectively handsome man with an objectively awful mustache, and while I want to like the guy, the only message I can take from his stache is “I’m so goddamn good-looking I can put this caterpillar on my upper lip and still be mobbed at In and Out Burger.” Actually that’s among the better reasons to grow a mustache, certainly better than mine.
While we’re on human head accessories, I have way too many baseball caps, and probably so do you, as it’s not hard to have too many of something no one really needs any of. A previous digression of mine centered on the notion of a spectacularly gifted baseball player who simply could not abide having a cap on his head, perhaps because he wildly overprocessed sensory stimuli or had a traumatic cap-related incident as a child, the possible scenarios of which I leave to your fertile imaginations. So with a cap on his head he’s maybe a good high school player, and cap-free he’s Babe Freaking Ohtani? Would he be allowed to play naked headed? Turns out the answer is yes, for while you must wear the uniform, I’ve now discovered one of the most surprising ways playing major league baseball is unlike going to synagogue, as there is no official mandate to cover your noggin during the proceedings. What is still uncovered is why so many millions of humans cover their heads with baseball caps. I understand they’re good for sun protection, but if we were serious about that we’d all wear those floppy 360-degree hats, one of which I bought but have not yet had the stones to wear outside. And they are yet another reasonably effective personal message board, but maybe if they weren’t so everywhere already we might have dodged the MAGA cap craze, and while it’s merely a pimple on the pillar of authoritarian dumbfuckery the MAGA-millions have wrought on what used to be an okay country, I could certainly do without the geeky red hats and, as a lifelong redhead, I think I have standing in this matter.
Speaking of standing, so I’m standing outside at a Starbucks because sitting aggravates my ischial bursitis, when a bonus smile arrives thanks to the sight of a kid in a Pokémon shirt just enjoying the hell out of a grilled cheese sandwich. Sue me, I’m a sucker for generational culinary continuity. But the way my mind moves these days, it turned immediately to what genius first thought to melt cheese and put it on something. Turns out we owe a massive debt to a bunch of 13th-century Swiss cow herders who softened blocks of cheese by campfires and then scraped it onto bread or boiled potatoes. It would be six blissful centuries before someone got the idea to make soup out of tomatoes and despoil the whole grilled cheese experience. What a golden age that was for humanity.
Speaking of humanity, am I the only one who thinks menopause could use a rebrand? I realize having not actually experienced it may lessen my effectiveness as a messenger, but it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere and so maybe someone could put a more positive spin on some of its elements? Fortunately, a quick google reveals plenty of podcasts devoted to menopause makeovers. The top search item landed me on Rebranding Menopause, hosted by three Long Island women who if the chronology weren’t impossible I might have thought were the inspiration for Mike Meyers’ Coffee Talk on SNL. But there’s also Reimagining Menopause, Hello Menopause! and The Sweaty Pillow, among many others. So I can stand down on this one, which is good because I’m thinking it’s one I likely never should have stood up on in the first place.
Speaking of first place, I watched the trophy presentations for the US Open men’s and women’s singles champions, and while they are always way too long and largely silly, because the top players these days seem surprisingly gracious and lovely human beings, I often like to hear what they have to say. My mild annoyance with a couple of them racing to their bags to put on their sponsors’ six-figure watches the moment the matches were over was washed away by their genuine joy over all of it, especially, for some reason, their embrace of the crazily ornate, shiny AF sterling silver trophies. It made me recall my likely mild annoyance with the trophy inflation of my children’s childhoods, which ushered in the era of the participation trophy. But my views have flipped, as now I think we should all be giving each other trophies all the goddamn time. Read the entire front section of the paper without punching a wall? Trophy. Get through a three-hour zoom meeting without drops of blood forming on your forehead? Trophy. Get your recycling bins back in before even one nasty neighbor look? Okay, maybe just a ribbon.
Speaking of rebranding, I think we should rebrand funerals into FUN-erals and have them for each other long before we die. And while I can’t prove it, nor does it matter, I had the idea before I saw the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where Albert Brooks throws himself a funeral while not only very much still alive but downright bossy. My dad did us the kindness of writing down his memorial service desires in a column in the Hollywood Sun-Tattler, but I do think he would have enjoyed being there, both to lap up the nice things people said about him and rebut the few he might have taken issue with.
Speaking of finality, endings are hard to fashion even when they arrive organically, and I think we both know there’s been nothing remotely organic about this enterprise, and as such it would be off-kilter to try and tie things up neatly at the end with a bow and stuff.
