Andy Rooney's Eyebrows - A Mini-Rant

Andy Rooney = Grumpiness and social nit-picking
elevated to prime time art form.

I never thought I'd say that I really need Andy Rooney.

Oh, when he first popped up at the end of 60 Minutes back in 1978 I liked him well enough.

Andy was an amusing old guy.

He singled out absurdities in the consumer society including poorly designed or silly products and illogical ways in which we behaved.

He wasn't so much a curmudgeon with a scalpel edge as a dull paring knife. An everyday whiner like the rest of us.

And he came at his critique from the angle and predilections of the oldtimers, people who grew up in those white picket fence days of pure Americana and came of age during World War II and now they wondered what in tarnation was wrong with everyone with their Pepsis and loud music.

But Andy began to wear on me. He complained about the lyrics to Michael Jackson's song "Bad." Andy's great insight, which he shared with the 60 Minutes audience by writingon a chalk board  the entire lyrics to the song, was this: "This song is repetitious. All the Great Gloved One says over and over is...":

"I'm bad. I'm bad. I'm really really bad."

Andy missed the point. No one except him cared about the lyrics to this song. "Bad" was not the national anthem, It wasn't Cole Porter. An MJ song was for dancing.

After that I started watching Andy's eyebrows. They seemed to grow even as he spoke on TV. I decided that if they were a country they would need their own military and domestic staff, especially skilled Japanese gardeners.

And people were making fun of Andy on Saturday Night Live, a sure sign that, like Barbara Walters (Barbara Wa-Wa per SNL) he had ceased to be an innovative bit of TV programming and was now just another institution ripe for parody.

Nowadays I'm not allowed to watch TV, but even pre-VWP I had stopped getting off at the CBS whistle stop called 60 Minutes. I hear that at age 92 Andy is still doing his thing at the end of the show. If so, more power to him and it's time to make a small confession.

I do have a bit of an Inner Andy Rooney.

You see there are some annoyances that plague my life. They lead to my private pathetic whinings. Grumblings that won't make one iota of difference. Cranky old man mini-rant. I have three of them.

Two leaders of the free world meet to solve the global crisis.

1- People Who Greet Me With "Hey!"

What is going on here? This supposed salutation is nearly as bad as the absurd "Whas-up?" It used to be that "Hey!" was what you said when you wanted to get someone's attention.

"Hey! Your fly is unzipped!"

"Hey! You're about to press the wrong button and make the nuclear reactor melt down!"

"Hey! What's this quill in your bed? Last night when you were drunk did you have sex with a porcupine?"

Now this half-hearted exhalation of not exactly real verbiage is directed at me whenever an acquaintance sees me.

"Hey, Al."

"Excuse me?"

When I asked around, someone suggested to me that "Hey" is a Southernism. Southerners are famous for condensing language as if it takes the same BIG effort to speak as it does to set down the sweet tea, get out of the porch swing and amble out into the sunlight and see if that's a coon or a cat up in the tree.

Personally, I think "Hey" is ubiquitous in places other than south of the Mason Dixon Line. This makes it a national problem. Okay, I know we're not supposed to care about such matters in our democratic, it's-all-good, casual, rumpled shirts and pants, no pretenses society, but, "Hey!" think about it. This word doesn't sound very intelligent or articulate, does it? We already have a surfeit of wrinkled wardrobes (see any J. Crew men's catalog). Do we have to have wrinkled greetings?

Guess who has the gall to tar me with the gimmicky "guy"?

2 - Restaurant Servers Who Call Us "Guys"

This began not long after servers took to introducing themselves by first name. "Hello, I'm Courtney. I'll be serving you tonight."

That didn't bother me. Research shows that people leave a better tip when they feel like they're dealing with a person with a name, a life, and rent to pay and maybe even porcupines in their bed. I believe the server ought to make a decent living.

But do they have to call my wife, son, and me "guys"? We're not a football team ("You guys need to run it up the middle, then kick the field goal"). Strictly speaking, one of us is not even a "guy." The assumed familiarity is jarring, but worse is the style of it. "Guys" bespeaks beer, pizza, and a leather couch from Wal-mart, not fine dining.

The golden era: She knew to have a good
day (or not) without anyone commanding it.

3 - Cashiers Who Urge Me to "Have a Good Day!"

I've long thought that much of what passes for conversation in our society is just what I call "tail wagging behavior." It's how we approach one another and signal that I'm okay with you and I'm not going to bite and, all rightie now, I'm going to leave you.

"Have a good day!" is tail wagging behavior par excellence. It's a gray flannel piece of verbiage.

I've heard rumors (unconfirmed) that it was invented in a good manners factory in Peoria circa 1976 when someone realized that we had long ago become too secular to say goodbye to strangers with a simple "God bless!" or "God be with you!"

What should fill the gap? How could we show that we wished the person well?

Maybe "We salute you, heroes of commerce!"

No, no. There had to be something better and more bursting with imperialistic designs upon the emotional state of millions of strangers.

"Have a nice day!"

Although this has morphed into "Have a good day!" it remains stupid and intrusive and nonsensical. And I'm not even talking about how the cashier will say "Have a good day!" at 9 p.m. when I go to the store for ice cream and the day is essentially over, is it not?

The real problem is that every single day I'm supposed to have a good day? And what would that look like? What if I don't want to have a good day? Is America going to decline? Will the American Dream turn to nightmare?

Let me ask this: Is a good day for every citizen that necessary to one's health and welfare? Is my having a good day really the only option? Maybe I want to have an excellent day or a challenging one or even a bluesy 24 hours that has a lot of texture and sad songs and chocolate built into it.

So it's time to pose the following impertinent question. Why should a person whose chief retail skill is passing items over a scanner be told by his or her employer that they're supposed to attempt to make a contribution to my psychological state of mind upon leaving the store?

Also, not to be overlooked is what this phrase does to a person who is actually, perish the thought!, already having a bad day. I can't begin to describe the nails pounded into flesh feeling I had when this phrase was mindlessly trotted out everywhere I went the week my mother had died and I was trying to stagger my way toward her funeral.

A Solution?
I believe if we apply ourselves can nip these Andy Rooneyistic terrible tongue tropes right in the bud. It will involve some assertion and photocopying.

To lead to a utopia of sane speech, I have prepared a convenient form that you can distribute to key people you're about to interface with. If they can read words on a page, our problems may be solved. If not, try sending them a text or a tweet. Something has to be done! - V.W.

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The Girl with the Dragon Coffee Mug

Since the Van Winkle Project is about avoiding not just the news but everything "new," I've tried to not know about product launches and cultural phenomenon. This has included books just appearing on bookstore shelves.

Giving up fantastic books that have appeared on the scene in the last 340-some days of my project would be difficult if it were not for the fact that there are already so many old ones lying around my house that I need to read.

So I finally got to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (first appearance in English 2008).

I'd heard the buzz about this book. I'd heard it might very well keep me up all night.

I misunderstood.

I thought the fans of this "international publishing sensation" meant by "buzz" that everyone was saying "You've got to read this!" and "Get ready for the film version!" I thought  "up all night" had to do with the high suspense factor of this book.

Now I know. They were actually talking about all the coffee.

Literary Beverages and More...
I seriously like coffee, so the coffee motif in TGWTDT was something I could not overlook as I read it. Fact is, if I even smell coffee, I'm like a hound that has a whiff of bacon. But even someone like myself who fires up the coffee maker twice a day was taken aback  by what Larsson was doing.

Now I know what you're going to say: "It's just coffee!" But you haven't seen an addictive substance abused like this before.

It's true that Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises was the literary equivalent of a well stocked bar and wine cellar with it's copious references to characters drinking absinthes, beer, whiskey, champagne, and other libations.

Hemingway pours the booze.

In the liquor department John Cheever was no slouch either. His businessmen, all of them templates for the cable series Madmen, were equipped with a briefcase in one hand a whiskey soda or rye or martini in the other.

John Cheever: Armed for action...

Lastly, you can't read J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey without starting to have your eyes water from all the cigarettes being lit and the smoke rising into the air.


J. D. Salinger: Light me another one!

But I believe the late Steig Larsson outdoes all these literary gentleman. You have not seen coffee like this ever before.

The brazenness of preparing it over an open flame on the stove. The lacivious push of the lever of the pump pot.The sheer quantity swallowed and all those Adams apples dancing with delight.

If you're shy and not comfortable around these matters, do not (I repeat) do not read on.

Kaffe Spelled Backwards is Effak
Steig Larsson has a lot of tricks, surprises, and reversals lying in wait in his clockwork-like plot, but the coffee is right out in the open. The naughtiness, in fact, begins unpologetically on the first page:

Then one gets caught up in the story and hardly notices, but the references come often.

And it's not just our hero Blomkvist. It's our heroine Lisbeth Salander, too.

Together or alone, these 21st century sleuths are drinking coffee. And so are the people they meet.

Larsson's murder mystery and milieu are marinated in coffee.

Sweden Rocks (and ABBA Spelled Backwards is ABBA)
I've said already that I like coffee and I'll admit I like Sweden, too. We were once serial Saabs owners.

And I just remembered...I like Swedish pancakes. And I once went through an IKEA phase when all I could afford in my home was furniture held together with hex screws. And Alfred Nobel (a Swede!) invented dynamite. Then there was ABBA and they definitely did not rock, but we'll table further discussion of that...

The larger mystery Larsson brings to mind is one about Sweden itself. What's going on up north with the coffee? Are the Swedes as a people not getting enough sleep to make it through the day?

Whatever the answer to the riddle, others have noted the TGWTDT coffee phenomenon and written about it in cyberspace. One writer (who must have had an e-Reader making it easy to do a word search) found the word "coffee" 92 times in the novel. By her reckoning "coffee" occurs twice as many times as the word "murder."

It's nice to know that Steig Larsson had his priorities in order.

Coffee Futures
I'm wondering now what the impact of Larsson's so-called Milennium Trilogy has had on the world coffee market. Are people drinking more of the black stuff? Are they seeking out the Swedish roasters (Gevalia is the biggie in the U.S.)? Whenever they feel stressed, for example, feeling as if someone might be sighting them in with a moose rifle and drawing a bead on their cranium, do they shake the awful feeling with a good spoon-stiffening shot of coffee?

I guess my biggest concern is whether the average person who is not really initiated into and innoculated to coffee can withstand such large doses of what Mr. Larsson pours out of his pen.

This is a dark novel, in every sense of the word. To enjoy it, my advice is to stay the hand that would pour the cream or add the spoonful of sugar. You must either take the story as it is or keep your distance. Salander is raped and tortured by a S/M enthusiast. Blomkvist falls into the iron dungeon lair of a serial killer whose crimes are recounted in nauseating detail. This is stern stuff, but I think it's nothing compared to the coffee, oh, the coffee, the multiple cups of coffee...

Scalding. Black. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is an excellent mystery, well told with memorable characters. If you haven't read it, proceed at your own risk. If, on the other hand, you think you can handle it, pick up a copy, cue up the suggested soundtrack below, and start to enjoy. - V.W.

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The National Nudity Considered

I've commented quite often on posts at The Van Winkle Project that it's difficult, if not impossible, to filter out all the news.

Bits and pieces of news stick to me like lint to a sweater.

- A word in a headline briefly glimpsed.

- Something accidentally overheard in a conversation.

- A bumper sticker innocently read that turns out to be fraught with timely implications.

Or even a T-shirt--like the those the Dallas Mavericks fans were wearing back in early June...

Latest Indiscretion
Recently our family was on vacation. This is usually a time when even under non-Van Winkle conditions I fall out of touch with the news. Vacation is about living in the moment and getting out and doing new things instead of being tied to a computer or a TV or having a daily newspaper arrive on the doorstep.

Still, I had problems this vacation.It began with the now ubiquitous flat-screen TVs in the airports, all of them tuned to 24/7 cable news and with their volume turned up loud; if you plug your ears, there remains the visual assault of the crawl at the bottom.

Later, as I hung out with relatives the pollutant became words and phrases dropped into conversations.

"What this country is coming to."

"Trillions. It boggles the mind!"

"Government broke."

And, yes, like a monk who has resolved to give up women but who still has to go into the city, I glimpsed the equivalent of some cleavage and legs courtesy of the newspapers lying around my sister-in-law's house.

My Speculation
Okay. So I sorta think I might know kinda what's going on back in Washington the past couple of weeks. On the other hand, I don't have any details or why or wherefore.

When I went to "sleep" back last September the economic and political talk was still of 1) the unemployment rate, 2) bailouts,  and 3) health care. I honestly don't remember "trillions" of anything being in the conversation.

But times bring change. Maybe America is waking up with a big hangover. A collective national problem. For years we've been ignoring this problem, covering it over with a fig leaf if you will.

Now the leaf has dropped. Citizens are stirred up.So imagining that I've intuited what this news must be about I've dreamed up an op-ed piece.

My apologies if I've garbled reality. Perhaps I have misunderstood?

THE PROBLEM OF THE NATIONAL NUDITY

by Seymour Sitazon

America is a great country! One that is built on the idea of ongoing opportunity leading to prosperity for as many as possible. Yet we recognize, almost instinctively, that prosperity and the big wild good life ought not to derive from an excess of nudity.

In the past America has approached its national nudity with caution. When there was too much nudity the government acted and brought redress. The national nudity declined, although it never went away entirely.

It is notable that during the Reagan years the national nudity began to rise for the first time in a most alarming way. President Reagan implemented tax cuts, but he did not cut nudity. Nudity, in fact, became a way of playing with our toys today and deferring the costs of those toys until tomorrow.

Some of the toys the national nudity made possible were quite large: houses, SUVs, hot tubs, and everything at Sam's Club.

Surprisingly, it was President Bill Clinton who gave us a glimpse of what it might be like to see a decline in the national nudity. It may have been his policies or it may have been luck, but he proved to be no fan of nudity. Not even Monica Lewinsky could deter him from doing something about the national nudity. In fact, as the economy grew along with tax revenues during Clinton's watch there was the hope of decreasing the national nudity once and for all.

Then came two expensive wars abroad and a financial collapse.

The national nudity is now of extreme proportions. When you add it up, day by day, there must be trillions of instances! It seems we'll never be rid of it. Our children's children's children will inherit nudity that staggers the mind. How will they end up? Totally tragically naked?

Having laid out this problem I'd like to end by making an unexpected turn. What if the national nudity is not the rampant evil we suspect?

I mean look around you. Have you noticed thats even with such high levels of national nudity the people of this nudity-ridden nation still lead normal lives?

They drive down the road. They stand in the check-out line at the grocery store. They eat their hamburgers at McDonalds. We have national nudity, but we function. Indeed, as a people we seem to smile a lot.

The other day I was at a baseball game, eating a foot-long hotdog, and thinking about the rampant national nudity.

I looked up at the cheering fans--men, women, boys and girls. I looked at the handsome boys of summer. "So much national nudity!" I said to myself. Then "Crack!" the bat made contact with the ball and we all went "Aw!"

That's when I had an epiphany.

National nudity is as American as baseball. It's ingrained into the American skin like a wavy tattoo of Scooby Doo. We don't need fig leaf solutions to national nudity dreamed up by Congress or the president.

We need another hot dog with mustard and relish. And if I can't find my wallet to pay for it, well, blame it on the national nudity and let's get back to watching the game!

- V.W.

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Men's Neckties: The Trial

Father's Day is less than a month away.
Of course, a traditional gesture for that occasion is to gift Dad with...a tie.

Here at The Van Winkle Project we are sharing the following in the hopes that it might be received in time to prove helpful to our readers. And maybe to some dads...

Ties - Guilty or Innocent?
I was cleaning out my closet the other day, getting rid of shirts and pants that I seldom wear.

I noticed a row of ties, That's when a little fantasy popped into my head...

Suddenly, in Kafka-like fashion, I was transported to the inside of a courtroom where a trial was being held. A male lawyer was standing before the jury box and making his opening statement. Except this man didn't look like the lawyers one sees, on TV, for instance, on Law and Order. He wore a suit, but it was paired with a white T-shirt, and no tie.

 The lawyer looked kind of like this...



Meet my dream lawyer...
sans tie!

 And the lawyer was saying:

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let me begin by asserting that the accused--these neckties--have caused years of damage to the plaintiffs in this case, Mr. Van Winkle and other men around the globe. They have grasped men's necks in a choke hold and brought undue distress to their persons.

What have the neckties offered in return? Very little. As the evidence will show, these neckties are guilty of being dangerous, superfluous affectations. They should be found guilty and condemned to be banished from closets forever!


The lawyer presented evidence in the form of two photos he passed to the jury. Since I was the representative plaintiff in this fantasy class-action lawsuit, the photos documented how my parents had their three sons dress up every time we traveled on a train or an airplane. In the parents' minds there was some kind of strict etiquette. Perhaps they had inherited their sensibilities from olden times. They believed that if people are going to see you, you need to put on your Sunday best.


Placed in Evidence:

Photo No. 1 - Family is traveling by ferry. Suits, ties for the boys!

Placed in Evidence:

Photo No. 2 - Family in the nation's capital. Suits, ties for the boys!

The laywer continued:

How do you think having to dress in this manner made my client feel? I will tell you. He felt uncomfortable and dorky! You can see it in these pictures. Is he smiling? I don't think so!

But I want you to realize that it is NOT Mr. Van Winkle's parents who are on trial today. It is the very idea of a man's tie. What is the point, I ask you? A dangling little piece of cloth that is supposed to provide a slash of color, you say? It is a traditional fashion accessory like a woman's scarf?

All right, but at what cost? A HIGH cost, I say. Have you priced ties? Let me present you some more evidence and ask: Are any of the following worth $35 to $85? A price that is as much or more as the cost of a men's pair of khakis?

TIE NO. 1 - $35

TIE NO. 2 (from the Jerry Garcia Collection) - $55

TIE NO. 3 - $85

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I leave the final decision in your intelligent hands, mixed metaphor and all. For the sake of comfort and economics, the silly fashion of men's ties must finally be banished for all male persons. I am sure you will do the just thing.

The Verdict
Well, the fantasy trial ended at that point. Without a verdict, I began thinking of how our 13-year old son loves suits and he has no problem wearing a tie either. It his personal counter-reaction to an American culture where a vast number of people dress in a way that in the past would have been called "sloppy." They delight in making themselves appear to be wrinkled, untucked, baggy peasantry fit only for strolling in Wal-Mart or drinking beer on the patio. Or so would say any fashion snob worth his/her salt...

But I'm not one to react against "casual." Having grown up with a sport jacket and tie as required attire every Sunday when we went to church, I've had my fill of formality. A suit, a tie? They don't make me feel well dressed so much as constrained.


It's all context-sensistive, I suppose. I have to say those NBA coaches in their suits on the sidelines look dynamite. So do most politicians. And I wouldn't want to be represented by a lawyer who dressed in glad rags like a tattooed Johnny  Depp.

But as I stand at the threshold of my closet and I'm left with the echoes of the mock trial, I bring down the gavel and I decide. I am keeping exactly one tie. It will be for weddings and funerals. May there be many of the former and few of the latter--until they hold the biggest funeral of all. For the tie. - V.W.



BONUS FEATURE: The real purpose of a tie revealed!

State and Main (2000) is a film written and directed by David Mamet. The movie tells what happens when a Hollywood film crew comes to a small Vermont town to shoot a movie.

The story reveals how the Norman Rockwellish townspeople aren't really much different than the Hollywood folks. Everyone is interested in making a buck and bending the rules to suit themselves.

Even the old, venerable town doctor who walks down the street carrying a alligator valise as if he still makes house calls is a bit of lush and he has a tart tongue. At one point he waxes eloquent about why a bow tie is inferior to the other kind.

               DOC WILSON
               It's the truth that you should never
               trust anybody, wears a bowtie.  Cravat's
               sposed to point down to accentuate the
               genitals, why'd you wanna trust somebody,
               s'tie points out to accentuate his
               ears...?


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My Official Request to be a Blog of Note

Update May 16, 2011: I'm shocked and amazed that Google/Blogger has not responded to the request below. Perhaps they are still working on their software problems. For that reason I am extending my deadiine by 24 hours...

AN OPEN LETTER TO GOOGLE

From: Van Winkle
Re:   Your Recent Outage

Dear Google:

You are one of the most successful entities in the world and the owner of Blogger. I am writing to you because even though my current project places me in a status as one who is “sleeping,” I am not in a coma. I am aware when the ground has trembled beneath me.

Tremble it did on Thursday and Friday of this week.

I am referring to the massive service outage at Blogger.

If I were reading the news (which by terms of this project I am not allowed to do) I can only imagine the headlines:

          BLOGGER BLOWS IT

          ANOTHER BOOGER FOR BLOGGER

          GOT POSTS? BLOGGER DOESN’T

          GOOGLE GLITCH BOGS BLOGGER DOWN

          CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE? YOU KIDDIN' ME?

          BACK TO NORMAL SOON…YEH, RIGHT…

As you know, a whole nation of bloggers around the world suddenly were unable to publish on their blogs. Here at The Van Winkle Project, I was one of them. Therefore, I am with this letter asking you for appropriate compensation.

It’s very simple. You owe me. And there's one way to take care of it: Let me become a Blog of Note.

Why This is a Reasonable Request

Your outage precluded my sharing with the Internet population of Planet Earth a wonderful, amusing, one-of-a-kind post that was designed to set up my weekend activity of attending a 5.5 hour performance of Wagner’s Die Waküre.

You see, if I am going to subject myself to 330 minutes of operatic bombast and possible aural and visual torture, it’s only because like any blogger desperate for material I am able to tell myself, “At least I’ll get a post out of it!”

Now my plans have been hampered. I couldn't generate interest in advance of my going to the opera because I couldn't blog about it! Which means you have jeopardized my ability to generate more compelling content to keep my EIGHTEEN FOLLOWERS coming back to my blog with bated breath...

On the other hand, if you make me a Blog of Note , I will likely receive TENS OF THOUSANDS of new visitors. That’s not bad compensation.

Please Consider Also…

1 – My blog is attractively designed

2 – It is well written and carefully proofread

3 – It’s not sloppy and sentimental

4 – It’s not cranky or political or religious or
    atheistic or an axe looking for meat to cleave
4a -It's eclectic, sort of a Chex Party Mix genre of blog
    with something for everyone

5 – There are no naked cats, wild ferrets, or cute babies

6 – This request is, as the Brits say, “cheeky” and one
    can easily admire such boldness and temerity

7 – If no one else has asked, then that puts me at the
    head of the line, right?

Optimist that I am, I will expect you to respond to this request within 48 hours. Need I remind you that until this happened we had a beautiful relationship? Now that you have become “available” again, let’s move past this temporary setback and make the most of it, eh? I’ll have the champagne chilling in the fridge.

Sincerely,

Van Winkle

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Hit the Wall - Project's Over!

Let me begin by saying I'm not angry at the NYT.

I'm not going to blame the NYT. And I'm not posting this to diss the NYT.

But after what happened, I've reached my limit. I'm declaring an end to the Van Winkle Project.

I guess it's fair to say the NYT was the catalyst.

A Brief History of Times
I've always liked the Times. I read the Times when I was in college where it was dropped each morning with an emphatic slap on the hardwood entryway outside my dorm room while I still lay in bed. I groggily claimed those newspapers and leafed through their many, many pages.

Maybe Robert Redford reads the NYT,
but would Jay Gatsby?

Some people opine that the Times leans politically to the left, not in an up-with-the-proletariat fashion, but in way that represents the interests of the moneyed, ultra-educated, morally decadent elite.

If life were a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, some suspect  the self-made, romantic, sunny Reaganesque millionaire Jay Gatsby would get his news from Fox or the Wall Street Journal. The Ivy League, polo playing, adulterous Tom Buchannan would read the Times...

I don't know about that.

Frankly, my favorite part of the newspaper, at least on Sunday, has nothing to do with coverage of domestic politics. I love the Arts and Leisure, Book Review, Style, and Magazine sections. I want to read about Broadway shows, interviews with choreographers and movie directors,and learn what's turning heads in fashion. I dip into consideration of new novels and nonfiction. Such riches!

All of which will no longer be denied to me.

The Sudden Arrival of Excessive Angst
As if my deprivation hadn't already bad enough, the NYT went and did something on Monday and I'm collateral damage. They sent me an email with this heading:

Important notice about your New York Times subscription

Well, I had to open and read this email, didn't I? Maybe I owed them money.

That's not what the email was about. Instead, I was learning that something that had been bruited about for a long while was finally coming to pass:

     As of Monday, March 28, The New York Times
     is charging for unlimited access to NYTimes.com
     and our NYTimes apps.

I understood immediately Anyone wishing to read any Times material on-line beyond the home page is going to have to "pony up" and put some coins in the change jar.  This is a very BIG deal, I realize, to much of the world. In the balance rests the future of newspapers and how can they make money. On the other side there's readers who have had the equivalent of a free lunch all these years.

But guess what. That wasn't my problem and did not lead to my ensuing crumbling resolve to remain news-less.

You see, the Times' policy shift doesn't affect me. I already subscribe to the print edition of the Times on Sundays which means under the new regime I automatically get access to all on-line content without further charge.

Lucky me!

A message from the publisher...

My actual problem arose when I followed the email's suggestion at the end:

     P.S. For more information,
     click here
     for a message from Arthur O.
     Sulzberger Jr., publisher
     of The New York Times.

So I clicked. And I read, "Blah, blah, blah, this change...necessary...blah, blah, valued, subscribers, blah, blah...

THEN THIS:

    As you have seen during this
    recent period of extraordinary global
    news, The Times is uniquely
    positioned to keep you informed.

What! What's going on? I'm Van Winkled and that means I'm asleep and I'm not supposed to know about that. You pair the words "global" and "extraordinary" and what am I supposed to think?

All this is to say, to quote B. B. King, "You upset me, baby." The NYT got me agitated. It started me wondering and worrying.

And finally? I snapped like a stale pretzel that had lost all its salt.

All the News That's Fit to Ignore?
Of course, I have confessed on this blog that there have already been news "leaks." These have come from remarks that have dropped from the mouths of people in a public situation where I couldn't cover my ears in time or gracefully walk out, e.g. church.

Now, thanks to Mr. Sulzberger's way with words, I'm thinking there's likely more that I'm missing than I realize. Paradigm shifts? New generations arising? Old ones slipping away? The very planet groaning at its moorings?

I remembered that a friend emailed me mid-February and recalling his words added fuel to my emotional fires:

     All I can say is you picked quite a year to take a nap. You will never catch up.
    You will be reading books about this year not just newspapers.

I don't know what this is all about. I've begun to feel like a sort of dim bulb who is walking around faking his life, pretending that I know why people are acting the way they are these days. They seem a little bit bothered and distracted. Or is this just my imagination?

So if you were me, could you continue to go on?

Certainly not! I quit!!! - V.W.

Wait a minute. I just checked today's date. Delete the post title and most of the above paragraphs. April Fool's!

So I'm still "in." I'll find out about this extraordinary global stuff on September 11 as planned. But I just want to say to Mr. Sulzberger that when this project ends my subscription will be money well spent. I'm going to pig out on the news, so to speak. I hope, though, I don't get a stomachache - V.W. (for real)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Galactic Writer's Block

Last week it was Douglas Adams' birthday.

It happened on March 11, to be precise, and I wouldn't be surprised if at that anniversary moment somewhere in England a man was lying down in front of a bulldozer trying to prevent his house from being demolished. At the same time he was scheming how to slip off to the pub for a pint just before the entire planet is blown up...

As for the rest of the world, I'm sure some of us took notice as well. Adams was a writer and a successful one with books in his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series selling over 15 million copies and continuing to sell to this day.

Douglas Adams was less successful at living his life as a long, sustained series.

A native of Cambridge, England, he moved to the palm studded west coast of America in the 1980s. He died in Montecito, California, of a heart attack while working out a private gym in 2001. He was 49.


ROBOTS ARE STAND-UPS

Something that interests me about Adams was that he didn't much like to write. It started with churning out the original BBC radio scripts of The Hitchhiker's Guide. Adams was often still writing just hours before the actors had to record an episode.

Our well loved, beat-up,
former library copy

Still, he did well, leading his readers on a Monty-Pynthonesque romp through the nether regions of outer space,  highlighting humanity's absurdity along the way. Adams dared to suggest that:

• The most important thing a space traveler carries is his towel.
• The answer to the ultimate question about life, the universe and everything is "42."
• The third worst poetry in the universe is written by an ugly, pompous species called Vogons. Their poetry is so bad that to be forced to listen to it amounts to unspeakable torture that will cause any enemy to confess and give up all his secrets.
• The very worst poetry in the universe has been written by Paula Nancy Milstone Jennings of Sussex, England who died when the Earth was destroyed because it was in the path of an hyperspatial space lane that was being built.

I came to Adams' work rather late. I was looking for entertaining material to read to our son at bed time when he was around nine years old. A friend, who is a computer programmer, had been reading Adams' "five book trilogy" to his daughter and so I thought, Why not?

Soon my favorite character was Marvin, the perpetually depressed and irritable robot. Marvin was a sort of tin Eeyore or silicon chip Henny Youngman who said things like...

   "I've been ordered to take you down to the bridge.
    Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask
    me to take you down to the bridge. Call that job
    satisfaction? 'Cos I don't."

A WRITER LOST IN SPACE
When people had ideas about how Adams could make a lot of money if he would only rewrite his radio scripts in book form and sell them globally, he had difficulty disciplining himself to sit down and put the words on paper.

According to Adams' lore, his editor had to lock Douglas in a hotel room for three weeks to force him to finish So Long and Thanks For All the Fish.

With this I can sympathize.

It can be much more fun to read books than to actually write them. Or to spend delightful time planning and thinking about the writing of one's books.

Even writing something less extravagant than the marathon of a composing an entire book can cause one to rebel.

It's time for another blog post? And it should be ready today?

ON THE PLANET FROZEN MUSE
If you should ever find yourself "stuck" as writers like to say (we're never "mired," just "stuck") and unable to write anything from a novel to a love letter to a memo to your boss, here at The Van Winkle Project we've been passing time compiling a useful short guide to overcoming your writer's block.

The first step is to realize that you've landed in a mental and emotional space that is equivalent of a uninhabitable planet. We call this "Planet Frozen Muse." There is no likelihood that you will be able to rehabilitate this planet by warming it up, sowing seeds, etc.

Instead, you must remove yourself from the planet ex post haste and return to fertile fields elsewhere in the writing galaxy. To stay on Planet Frozen Muse is to be condemned to never write more than a few words of unbearable Utter Drivel.

So how do you lift off from Planet Frozen Muse? You read the "guide" and learn techniques and useful information that can help secure your freedom and get you writing again.

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO GALACTIC WRITER'S BLOCK

Adams, Douglas: Successful writer who died not writing but doing sit-ups at the gym. It is debatable which might be the more painful way to perish.

Writing: The act of heading in the possible direction of Utter Drivel (see below) and (if you're lucky) missing it entirely.

Writer's Block: [ ? ]

Paper:  The bright white dwelling place of every brilliant thought and marvelous character and inventive thought you'll ever have, demanding only that you squint hard until you see characters start to form on the page. Then you trace over them and voila!

Pen: A tool with a pointed end that is useful for pricking oneself until blood pours forth. Painful, yes, but the blood gives you something to put on paper. Now you're writing! (See "Walter Wellesley 'Red' Smith, quotes by.)

Cafe: A place where some writers are known to order drinks and sit at a corner table and quietly write. (See Paris, 1920s.)

Bar: A place some writers frequent, order drinks, and never write. (See any airport, 2011.)

Coffee: A beverage found in all known corners of the writing universe with the mysterious property of  causing the imbiber to write words without having to press as hard on the pen or the keyboard; at its best a sort of cruise control for the wordsmith.

Muse: May manifest itself in frozen or liquid form depending upon circumstances beyond one's control. If encountered in frozen form you are at risk of  writing Utter Drivel (see below); apply blow torch immediately and hope for lift-off.

Drivel, Utter: An oversupply of words already written, and therefore redundant or cliche; or words that never should have been written in the first place. Writers must alertly avoid Utter Drivel which masses in layers like asteroids belts. Colliding with Utter Drivel will surely doom any writing project as it sucks all the oxygen and life out of it.

Loathing, Pure: What every good writer feels for his or her early or failed drafts. Utter Loathing is a ready-to-hand blow torch. Direct toward one's words or frozen muse and BURN...

Book: Someone else's success. Almost always depressing. If the book is very good, it shows the would-be writer how far there is to go before becoming an John Updike or an Annie Dillard. If the published book is Utter Drivel, it reminds you that if you wrote this badly no one would ever publish it, so what is going on here?

Time: A critical item for success. Almost never will enough of it be taken by bad writers which leads to lightweight or poor literary productions. (See Drivel, Utter above.) Good writers always want to take too much time. (See Adams, Douglas  above.)

Keyboard: A series of Chiclet-like plastic, springy thingies with alphabetic characters on them that when pressed randomly generate horrible writing and when pressed intentionally, more often than not, generate Utter Drivel. A keyboard should never be trusted.

Delete Key: The master control switch that allows one to leave Planet Frozen Muse in a flash. Using this key in conjunction with "Select All" will remove all traces of Utter Drivel and immediately launch one in new directions. (See "Restaurant" "Bar" above.)

Justin Bieber: Person with odd surname in the early 21st century about whom too much Utter Drivel is being written. All writers should use force field protection in presence of J.B. U.D. to avoid contamination of thought processes.

Rave Review: Whatever one's mother and one's friends always say about your writing.

ItTrulySucks.com: Imaginary website where you have nightmare visions of capable critics posting their honest opinions of your best-intentioned work.

Short Story or Poetry Contest: Opportunity to submit one's writing and a $20 fee in order to fund someone else's writing success.

Sanity: Rare among first-rate writers who seldom or never frequent Planet Frozen Muse. Sanity may be an ideal quality if one wishes other people to be around you, but it will get in the way of one's writing like a locked escape hatch.

Van Winkle Project: A frail, outer-galactic writing vessel of the variety "blog" which at least twice a week has successfully (so far) dodged Planet Frozen Muse, but its pilot's hands are white from gripping the wheel and he just requested another cup of coffee be brought to the bridge while muttering beneath his breath, "Don't panic!"

- V.W.

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