A Blog Walks Into a Bar…

The three dots after Bar is called an ellipsis, but you already knew that—otherwise there would be no sense in calling this satire.  Originally, I planned to tell everyone—yes, that’s you—about winning the Southern California Writers’ Association Will Write for Food contest, but decided not to when I discovered the last winner they posted was February.  When my winning essay does get posted I will post a link to it here.  In the meantime, this week will be devoted to that most satirical of all enterprises, the blog.

Writers shop this market for fresh ideas to put
in their blogs (Photo courtesy iStock.com).

Blog is actually shorthand for weblog.  Apparently, back in the nineties, when the web, known as the world wide web (that’s where the www comes from, but even that has become archaic), was fresh and new, some websites were created with the sole purpose of listing links to noteworthy sites.  In a way, these early links provided the infrastructure for the modern Internet and gave rise to portals like Yahoo, Bing and Google.

In the evolutionary process, actual thoughts and information began to replace the list and the links were more purposely designed to create a conversation.  Sometimes these conversations were just a virtual form of dialogue among friends, or people with similar interests, like movies, television shows, sports, politics, knitting and food. In other instances, it was professionals or business people providing a service for their customers, like chiropractors, accountants, grocers and shoe sales people.

The window on the right of the near side is where I
hammer out these gems (Photo courtesy iStock.com).

Besides winning the writing contest this month, attending the SCWA meeting last Saturday gave me the opportunity to hear an enlightening presentation by a young adult author, Elana K. Arnold.  Her blog elanakarnold.blogspot.com features questions she receives about writing and her review of other authors’ work.  Then, there’s Caleb Jacobo, a member of SCWA who has a blog he subtitles, Welcome to My Public Writing Journal at calebjacobo.com and features everything from his economic and political philosophy to middle grade stories.  Another member of SCWA, who self-published her memoir about taking her teenagers to Belize for a year, Freeways to Flip Flops and promotes it at Costco, has a blog, Gutsy Living: Life’s too short to play it safe at soniamarsh.com that includes webinars on ways to market the next great book.

A blog with which I share a special relationship—it’s written by my nephew is These Things I Know at joshrank.blogspot.com who also migrated from the frozen tundra of Wisconsin to Southern California with a momentary detour to Atlanta. His talents expand beyond the blogosphere to a couple of self-published novels, playing guitar and banjo, vocals and brewing a mean cup of java.

How a writer feels after finishing another post
for his blog (Photo courtesy iStock.com).

Finally, if you like to travel, either in the physical world or via virtual or electronic conveyance, then I would highly recommend venturing with my editor, Lisa Findley. Lisa, who I’ve never met in the physical world, but has assisted in bringing my novel to fruition, is currently on her second leg of a world tour.  You can join her in Peru through her blog Greetings from a Stowaway at lisafindley.com if you hurry.

So, do yourself a favor (no I’m not being satirical) and visit these blogs. Be sure to come back and let me know what you think in our comment section.  If you happen to find some other wonderful blogs along the way please share them with us, too.   

Remembering to Leave the Door Open for Elijah

Last year the Spring holidays—Easter and Passover—sneaked in at the tail end of March rather than the more acceptable and weather cooperative (although this year all bets are off with the continuing saga of cold and snow in places not California) month of April.  For some of the more secularly challenged readers, and those who may have missed a few of their religious school classes, the two holidays are linked through a notable historical event.  According to Christian doctrine, right before Jesus was crucified on the cross he met with his disciples at a feast known as The Last Supper.  Most historians, Christian, Jewish and secular alike, acknowledge that since it occurred at the start of Passover (and Jesus had practiced Judaism), the meal was most likely a seder.

Matzos go well with Passover wine.

Consulting the Hebrew calendar, I discovered the first day of Passover coincided with what in secular America has become known as Tax Day.  Jewish accountants from sea to shining sea wanted to know what they had done to deserve such a fate. Being a flexible Reform Jew, I chose to skip the first night in favor of the second.  Jewish days, which are plotted on a lunar calendar, start at sunset of the previous day (which makes perfect sense if you are following a calendar dependent on the moon that rises when the sun sets).  Traditional inflexible Orthodox Jews have seders on the first and second night of Passover.  Reform Jews usually have their seders on the first night with an option on the second night.  I knew my brother, a CPA with his own practice for more than 30 years, was not going to quit work until too late the night prior (Monday) to the final day of filing.   He did manage to complete his 300 filings and more than another 150 extensions, so he could join us at a reasonable hour—around 7:00 (Tuesday)— for the four questions and the three thousand year old ritual of reciting the story of Moses and our people breaking free from slavery, the exodus from Egypt after a bunch of plagues and the splitting of the Red Sea.

Gefilte fish with horseradish on top.

In this ancient story, handed down from generation to generation, and from rabbi to rabbi, each one more intelligent than the last adds an additional layer of insight into the fabric of the tale and what it means.  The most profound symbol of Passover is the shank bone that sits on the seder plate and represents the Paschal lamb that was sacrificed and whose blood stained the doors of the Jewish homes, so the angel of death would pass over (thus, the name) these homes while killing the first born son of every other home in Egypt—the most severe of the plagues. However, the most familiar of the holiday symbols is matzoh.  The unleavened bread, which is often confused with crackers, symbolizes the kind of bread the Jews were forced to eat in the desert after they fled Egypt without allowing time for the bread to rise.  To honor this wonderful food I am once again posting the brilliant 20 Things to Do with Matzoh by Michelle Citrin and William Levin.

There are also two substances: horseradish with its sinus clearing strength that symbolizes the tears shed by the slaves and charoseth, a mixture of apple, nuts and wine that is supposed to resemble the mortar placed between the bricks as they built the pyramids for the pharaohs. Then, there’s gefilte fish.  It’s not really a symbol, just a tradition built on grinding the fish at the bottom of the river, blending it with other fish and putting it in a jar. With enough horseradish, it tastes fantastic.

We, also leave the door open a crack so Elijah, the prophet, can join us.

Of course, Sunday there will be eggs, chocolate bunnies and jellybeans for Easter.

You’ve Got To Be Kidding

One thing I learned moving to Southern California from the Midwest is given the human condition we find ourselves capable of complaining about nearly anything.  In my first month here I learned some natives wish there were more cloudy days.  All right, sunshine may get a little tedious at times.  Then, someone started complaining about the humidity. In this part of the country humidity, if you can call it that, arrives in winter.  Most of the time it hovers in the seventy to eighty percent range. When it reaches ninety people start to complain and threaten to leave for the dry lands of Arizona or Nevada (only later did I learn those places have monsoons). Most summers in the Midwest the humidity hovers in the low nineties and in the South its almost always-pushing one hundred percent. The concept of stickiness never really arrived in California before the invention of polyester.

Photo courtesy of DebbieDoesPhotography.Blogspot.Com

Another complaint heard from those who migrated here from other regions is the lack of four seasons. Now, that’s ridiculous. Anyone who looks up on the six days the smog isn’t blocking the view of the mountains can tell you the peaks have snow on them in the winter.  In fact, if you venture up to the higher elevations, even if you don’t plan on skiing, you are likely to find snow on the ground, a true testament to winter existing in Southern California.  The other seasons are a little subtler.

Photo courtesy of DebbieDoesPhotography.Blogspot.Com

For instance, the temperature in fall plummets from the eighties and occasional ninety-degree days of summer to a much cooler seventy degrees.  Instead of forests filled with color, there are eight liquid ambers (I think it’s a designer maple created especially for trendy Californians) that lose their leaves and the dozen people whose lawns are covered, myself included, complain vigorously about having to rake.

There are definitely more clues to the arrival of spring. For those individuals into racing the tracks open for a new season, and if you prefer the four-wheel kind the city of Long Beach hosts an impressive Grand Prix. Of course there is the start of our national pastime with three major league teams—the Dodgers, Angels and Padres—holding their home openers during the last two weeks.

Unlike the rest of the country where spring brings rain and life to the earth, it marks the end of our wet season and a return to irrigation both in farmers’ fields and urban landscapes.  Being in the third year of a drought the desire to see more rain fill up water tables and reservoirs finds Southern Californians petitioning to extend the season before they start complaining about restrictions on the days and amount of water they can provide their lawns.

The rebirth of nature inspires many lines of poetry, one of my favorites being:

Spring has sprung

The grass has riz

Oh, how pretty

The flowers is

Photo courtesy of DebbieDoesPhotography.Blogspot.Com

While the change in temperature is less drastic with thermometers moving from highs in the upper sixties and low seventies into the mid-seventies and low eighties, we always run a chance for an early preview of summer, like we did earlier this week.  When the warmth of the sun caused me to open my windows and the mercury (do they still use the stuff in conventional thermometers; I’m just too digital) touched ninety, my wife first moved to the shade and a short while later came inside complaining it was too hot. You’ve got to be kidding.

Oh, Now I Get It

Growing up my cousin Jim was quite adept at taking the wind out of the sails of those of us who thought we had the ability to deliver a joke. Standing in a small group of between five and ten friends I concentrated on getting through the punch line without snickering or laughing before it was delivered. Relieved to the point of exhilaration when the group responded with a burst of laughter, I figured I was a born comedian with brilliant timing. Then, as everyone quieted Jim would scan the assembled, look at me, and pause long enough to garner everyone’s undivided attention—even those outside the group—and say, “Oh, now I get it!”

"You've got to be kidding. Don't they know everything gets
reduced to a soundbite?" (Photo courtesy of iStock.com)

His impeccable timing is what satire is supposed to achieve in its most effective form.  However, the danger of satire gone awry is not only can it be misinterpreted it can completely backfire.  If you aren’t certain what I’m talking about, then perhaps a definition of satire is in order.  A well accepted definition of satire is “the use of humor, irony, exaggeration or ridicule to expose and ridicule people’s stupidity and vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.”

Sometimes the humor gets lost in the translation. Two satirists with a large following are Jon Stewart on the Daily Show and Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report.  Both appear on the Comedy Channel making the intent of their satire fairly self-evident.  Yet, nothing could be further from the truth with the satirical material Colbert attempted to deliver last week.

I have no objection to the name
the Santa Dogs.

An issue that has confronted American society for some time is the name a sports team takes.  Teams with animal names like the Bears, Tigers and Lions are rarely the source of controversy, except for perhaps when it comes to performance.  In my hometown of Milwaukee we had a professional baseball team called the Braves.  Whether or not that was an acceptable name became a mute point when the team moved to Atlanta.  The replacement team chose a name closely associated with the city’s history, the Brewers.  Marquette University, in the heart of the city, chose to change the name Warriors to Golden Eagles—again, nobody seems too concerned about the rights of animals when it comes to sports monikers. However, one team does seem to raise the ire of a whole nation of people.  The owner of the Washington D.C. NFL franchise, Dan Snyder, has invoked his right as owner to maintain the name. In response to those leveling charges of racism he formed the Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation. To point up the irony of this organization and its name Colbert proposed starting his own Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever.  

"Enough with the stereotypes. We're just two cute kids
on our way to school." (Photo courtesy of iStock.com)

Context is crucial to satire, especially when it is used to ridicule someone or something.  Most viewers caught the intent and saw the humor.  However, when someone from the Colbert staff, not the satirist himself, tweeted the new venture without the relationship to the actual Snyder foundation, a Cancel Colbert campaign erupted on Twitter sparked by reaction from Asian-American activists.  Nothing gives conservatives more satisfaction than watching two normally aligned liberal contingents fighting each other.

To show satire does not play favorites two days ago conservative Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann posted a cartoon featuring a door saying April Fools with people waiting in line to sign up for the Affordable Care Act. The problem was the previous day those enlisting in the program exceeded projections by more than a million.