Wonderful Absinthe
All in all, absinthe’s a bit of a disappointment. In case it escaped your attention, the green fairy, which has been illegal in the United States for most of the 20th century for its supposed hallucinogenic and psychopathic effects, is now legal. It turns out, in fact, that it’s been legal since Prohibition’s repeal but nobody noticed. Since that time, absinthe has been banned from the U.S. for containing a chemical compound that determined European importers have recently proven never existed in the wormwood-derived liqueur. So what of absinthe’s reputation for murder, mayhem and gothic artistic inspiration? Guilt by association, it turns out. It’s kinda like blaming bourbon for country music or Colt 45 for drive-by shootings.
That sober analysis takes much of the fun out of drinking absinthe, which can now be found in select liquor stores and bars in one of three brands, with more (supposedly) on the way. I’ve been sampling a bottle of the French Lucid today, which tastes like a mix of sambuca and liquid Tylenol. Forget Victorian romance, or Vincent Van Gogh’s missing ear, my favorite absinthe story can be found in Dave Van Ronk’s posthumous memoir, “The Mayor of MacDougal Street.” In the collection of anecdotes from NYC’s late-fifties folk scene, Van Ronk tells of some sailor friends who smuggled several dozen cases of absinthe out of Japan on the even of its prohibition there, hoping to make an underground score back home. When the mob wouldn’t touch it, the sailors were reduced to bartering their illicit booze for places to sleep. I’ll let comrade Van Ronk pick up the story:
As a general rule, I tried to avoid getting mixed up in this kind of convoluted skullduggery, but ever since I was a teenager, I had been reading about Lautrec and absinthe, Modigliani and absinthe, Swinburne and absinthe – naturally I was dying to find out about Van Ronk and absinthe. Also, there was the sheer joy of conspiracy for its own sake. What can I say? I have always been a hopeless romantic…
The next day my two smugglers dropped by Judy’s place, and over glasses of guess what, I got the discouraging word: my guy had bought a few cases for himself and his friends, but basically his position was, “Look – you know what it is and I know what it is, but nobody else ever heard of the stuff. Who are we going to sell it to?”
“Gee,” I said, “the Mafia sure is hard on honest crooks.”
By way of consolation, I took five more bottles off their hands. Hell, they were selling it cheaper than Irish Whiskey. For the next few weeks, the nabe was awash in absinthe. Everybody I knew must have picked up a few jugs. Then it was gone…
It must have been about ten years down the line that I happened to be doing a gig in Provincetown, and a publican in Wellfleet invited Paul Geremia (the world’s best blues guitarist and singer) and me to a high-class bash at his Victorian Gothic “cottage.” Paul and I were sitting there jamming, when our host approached us with two glasses of a familiar-looking opalescent fluid…
“I’ll bet you guys’ll never guess what this is,” our host said, as he handed me a glass.
I took a sip, ostentatiously rolled it around my tongue and replied, “It tastes very much like Japanese absinthe.”
“Jesus, how could you tell?”
I arched my eyebrows in my very best William F. Buckley imitation. “To the truly sophisticated palate,” I intoned, “there are no mysteries.”
Now, that is exactly the kind of absinthe experience I was hoping for! Not necessarily a hallucination, but at least some good old-fashioned conspiracy. But now that everything is twice as legal and half as fun, I can only hope that the humorless American commissars, who are supposedly seething at this subversion of their authority, will find a way to make absinthe illegal once again. Then my bottle of French absinthe would take on some illicit quality, and comrades could gather around my liquor cabinet for some rarified naughtiness. In the meantime, if you’re curious what all the fuss is about, but don’t want to shell out the big bucks for your own bottle, you’re welcome over to the Kew, comrade, to sample some of mine.
In Defense of the Blond Beauty Queen
Miss Teen South Carolina, Lauren Caitlin Upton, seems to be the internet joke of the week for her rambling, incoherent response to the token political question lobbed at contestants in this weekend’s beauty pageant. The blond beauty queen was asked to account for why, according to “recent polls,” one-fifth of Americans can’t locate their country on a world map.
For the sake of posterity, here is the transcript of her response, which I had already read on two websites and the video of which was forwarded to me by five different people before I finished my morning cup of Irish Breakfast tea:
“I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some… people out there in our nation don’t have maps and, uh, I believe that our, ah, education like such as in South Africa, and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., or should help South Africa, it should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future, for our children.”
Now, if the statistic is correct (and I would like that verified, comrades) then the odds are that at least nine of the other contestants would have fared just as poorly as Miss Teen South Carolina in naming a bunch of countries other than the U.S., which is to say nothing of the audience. Call me elitist, but I wager the kind of people who would spend their Friday night watching a sexless teenage beauty contest aren’t exactly our best and brightest. Could they find the U.S.A., or Iraq, South Africa or even one Asian country on a world map? And yet a question meant to highlight the collective stupidity of our nation was twisted into an easy “dumb blond joke.”
In Miss Teen South Carolina’s defense, what the hell would have been an appropriate response to this question? I mean, what would have been an appropriate response in the “I would wish for world peace, I believe the children are our future” world of beauty contests? Was she supposed to decry a property tax system of funding local school districts that produces woeful inequality between cities and suburbs? Denounce the high cost of tuition that leaves college out of reach for too many? Or was she supposed to crinkle up her nose, look slightly distressed and coo something about inspirational teachers?
I like to imagine an alternative scenario in which Ms. Upton really took the issue head-on:
I personally believe that Americans (or, I should say, U.S. Americans because our fellow North Americans in Canada are a bit more globally savvy) are unable to find our nation on a world map because of a conspiracy between our media and our government to keep us blissfully unaware of the world outside of our big screen high definition TVs, sport utility vehicles and McMansions, except when there’s a country that’s a “problem” that we have to “fix” or “help,” like such as Iraq or some of the Asian countries. If we knew, for example, that half the world’s population–three billion people!–live on less than two dollars a day while the 20% of us in the developed nations consume 86% of the world’s goods, well, we might not be so silent or complicit in the imperialist agenda of our government which supports our unsustainable lifestyle.
Something tells me if the blond beauty queen gave a response like that it would still be fodder for morning chat and gossip, albeit with a far different spin.
It’s the Hair, Not the Ho
Not to belabor the point, but Barbara Ehrenreich doesn’t get it. Writing in the Nation (online edition), she declares, “Of course it’s the ho, not the hair, part of Imus’s comment that hurts.” Actually, it is the hair that hurts.
Once again, Barbara can’t see past her white, middle class nose to define an issue for what it is. In this case, it’s a blatant case of racism as Imus was contrasting the looks of the Rutgers players with the cute, blonde Lady Volunteers. You don’t have to be black to know how culturally sensitive hair is. Just look at the beauty products that are advertised to black women – the hair relaxers, the weaves, the weird blonde dye – all designed to satisfy white standards of beauty. Look at the handful of books and poems by black artists that we are assigned in high school (out of some token notion of diversity, so that we can look past our white noses). There’s Langston Hughes’ “high yaller” girl. There’s Lorraine Hansberry’s Beneatha Younger, whose brother scorns the afro that she grows. There’s Toni Morrison’s Soaphead Church, who prizes his mixed blood and “good hair” and takes pity on an “ugly” (and delusional) black girl who wants to look more white.
Hell, just take that term “good hair.” Google it and you will see the tortured relationship that black women have with their natural kinky hair. You’ll find salons and hair products to get rid of the nappiness. You’ll find African-American chick-lit about “moving on up.” You’ll find websites dedicated to empowering black women. Somewhere along the way, you’ll find a far more articulate essay on this subject by Malena Amusa on hair weaves and black women’s self image.
The fact that Imus could be so casually derogatory about something so sensitive to black people is what makes his remarks so offensive. It’s the racism that gave this controversy legs.
Pride of the Nappy-Headed Hoes
There was an enormous protest today on the traditional women’s college campus of Rutgers University over Don Imus. Imus, of course, disparaged the University’s second place NCAA women’s basketball team in crudely racist and demeaning terms about two weeks ago. The controversy, which has raged across the country and which threatens Imus’ career, started out with very little notice here: a “dart” to Imus in the Daily Targum newspaper’s traditional “Darts and Laurels” Friday editorial. Today’s rally, however, seemed to attract the majority of the student body of Cook and Douglas Colleges, and cleared out the staff from most of the offices.
The women’s basketball team’s success in the Final Four tournament united the women and the bleeding hearts of Rutgers University in a way that the comparable success of the school’s football team – which came at the expense of budget cuts to academic programs and less popular sports – never could. Such feminist support was underscored by the signs that protesters carried, which read “Rutgers Women R Strong Women” (Imus described the team as “rough-looking” tattooed women and “nappy-headed hoes” and expressed a preference for the “cute” Lady Volunteers of Tennessee). But Imus’ racism – no matter how much he insists he is a “good person” – is clear and unmistakable. Kinky hair and eurocentric standards of beauty are enormously sensitive topics and the rooting for “white” over “black” is the very definition of racism. And yet, this racism bubbled up and spilled forth so effortlessly, coming from the same dark pit (more like a shallow ditch) as Michael “Kramer” Richards’ “joke” about lynching niggers who dare to talk through his set, or as your crazy uncle’s “jokes” about black moms and velcro.
I’m inclined to agree with the protesters (most famously Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson) who complain that Imus’ apology rings hollow, and call for his termination. Our media and politics have coarsened to such a point that a great number of shock jocks and pundits profit by saying outrageously insulting and offensive things, and if any of them result in a controversy that proves dangerous to their careers, they quickly apologize and claim it was a joke. But what was the joke here? That Don Imus doesn’t really think the Lady Volunteers were cute? That the Rutgers Scarlet Knights are actually blonde, light-skinned and unmarked by tattoos?
There was no joke. Just mean-spirited taunting, the kind that is casually tossed around in talk media. Examples should be made. Don Imus made the poor choice to elect himself to serve as that example.