When BFF Had Meaning

I am definitely in a nostalgic mood after visiting two great high school friends in San Diego.

I think of my dear friend Philip as a gem among my friends.  During those high school years—the ones that seem so awkward in retrospect they make you cringe—he was the kind of true friend upon which a girl could always depend.  We both studied French, which made us members of a very small club.  In South Florida, where everything was bilingual as a matter of law, you were considered foolish or misguided if you studied anything other than Spanish.  My father’s cousin, Pearl, was the French teacher at our high school.  In order to study French, I was sworn to protect this information from becoming public because there was no option but to have her as my teacher.  I had become smitten with French as a young girl because of a children's record that Pearl produced.   I had always planned to study French in high school; it was an odd and unforeseen coincidence that Pearl ended up moving to Miami just to teach in our new school.

Although Philip and I were in lots of classes together, we became buddies in Pearl's French class.   We discovered kindred spirits who love language, literature, art, music, and fine French dining.  When Philip spent his summers in New York, we wrote letters back and forth until he returned for the beginning of the school year.   It seemed that we were never at a loss for things to jabber on about.  We stayed in touch through college, always making a point of getting together during vacations to seek out a local creperie or an authentic French restaurant. 

After college, Philip headed off to Denver for graduate school, settling into an impressive high-powered business career.  When I moved to San Francisco, I would occasionally visit Denver on business—affording us the opportunity to keep in touch.  Right on cue, our conversations invariably turned to food.  We both evolved into “foodies” with a meticulous cooking esthetic, so it was no surprise to me that Philip ended up following his heart and enrolling in culinary school.  Today he is one of the most sought after restaurant managers in the country.  The busy Oceanaire Seafood Room in San Diego is lucky to have him as their GM.

I met Philip at his restaurant during the Saturday afternoon dinner prep.  There is no lunch service, so we sat at an elegantly appointed table and shared a bottle of San Pellegrino.  I could sense the electricity in the kitchen beyond the swinging doors.  After twenty years, catching up with him was like sipping a warm bowl of chicken soup. 

I define a great friendship as this:  no matter how long it has been since you have last seen each other, you just pick up where you left off.  Certainly we had a lot of catching up to do, but it was the easy, relaxed conversation of close friends.  We laughed off our respective signs of old age (the years look better on him).  His kitchen staff took turns approaching the table to confirm the legends of his erstwhile hair.  And we asked enough questions to ascertain for ourselves that the other is happy in this current stage of life. 

There is one “Philip moment” that I will cherish always.  When I got married, thirty years ago, Philip sent me a gorgeous piece of art glass made by renowned artists in Colorado.   The gift arrived just days before the wedding, and deep inside the thousands of Styrofoam peanuts was an even greater gift--a letter that I have kept all these years.  It makes me laugh to this day as it did when I first read it.  I am sure he wouldn't mind if I share it:

“Dearest Ellen & betrothed Tom—

Ellen, Ellen, Ellen, Ellen. . .you’re such a little kidder!  The cute invitations, the calligraphy; it’s all to wonderfully aesthetic to be, shall we say, la verité?

But, can it be??!  Is our “petite Ellen” tying the proverbial marriage knot??  In what mischievous direction has Cupid shot his love-tainted arrow?!

This man, Thomas, (presumably in the prime of his youth) has absconded with our little treasure, the Chopin, if you will, of the Blintz and Gucci circuit!!  Well, if it feels right—don’t think twice!!  So let the heavens rejoice, the nymphs dance, Falstaff drink, Pan play his merry fife, and me faint, for the bells are ringing and the stars are shining for Ellen!!                                                                                           
Much love—P”
 

The Boy in the Band

Thanks to Facebook, I am now in touch with many folks from my hometown that I last saw when we were just kids.  I left North Miami Beach for college and quickly became a New Englander, returning only rarely in the intervening years.  Although my high school class has formal reunions every five years and informal ones periodically, living this far away means that I rarely connect with old friends.  Even rarer is the opportunity to see people who were school friends but happened to be from other graduating classes; they attend different reunions, if at all.

One of these is my friend, Seth, with whom I have been reunited, corresponding now and again through the magic of Facebook.  Thank goodness we found each other, because he and I have so much in common.  By that, I mean I am incredibly jealous of him for having, in my opinion, the best job in America.  He is CFO of the San Diego Symphony—need I say more?  On our recent trip to San Diego, my husband and I were fortunate to be able to join him and his lovely wife for an al fresco dinner in Little Italy.  It was wonderful to discuss the good old days, recollect a legendary trip with the marching band, and to compare notes on our collection of grown children.  The longer we reminisced over spicy pasta dishes, the more ancient neurons sparked, bringing forward in our brains long-lost memories of youthful escapades.

Seth was a year older than me, but we became acquainted in our early teens through a common interest:  my beautiful friend, Cindy.  One night, Cindy was sleeping over my house while we were babysitting my much younger brother.  Cindy saw this as an opportunity to stage a rendezvous with that rascal, Seth.  She let it be known to him that my parents would be out, informing me that he would be heading over.  This left me with a dilemma.  How could we get a precocious youngster to bed at 9pm when it was only 6 and the sun was still shining? 

I knew that my baby brother could never be allowed to lay eyes on Seth, as he would certainly betray our mischief to the parents.  We came up with one of the worst ideas, the kind of thing that seems brilliant in youth but utterly ridiculous in adult hindsight.  In our family’s kitchen was a large wall clock hung high above the window near the ceiling.  Climbing up on the kitchen counter, I turned the clock forward to 9pm and then tried to convince the rambunctious kid that it was his bedtime.  He was not easily convinced, jumping in and out of bed every 5 minutes.  It was hard to be tough on him for his behavior given that we were the ones misbehaving.  Seth arrived, sneaking into my backyard to be admitted through the back sliding doors.  I ended up running interference between two hectic vignettes at different ends of the house:  the wide awake kid who needed special handling, and the two horny teenagers who, of course, kept two feet on the floor and their hands in their pockets.

I had not thought of that evening in forty years.  That’s the fun of reconnecting with friends from your childhood.  Youthful indiscretions are ties that bind.  Conjuring these stories is like taking a trip in a time machine.  I was instantly transported back to the days of my teenage angst, when I was  trapped between what I wanted to do and the fear of getting caught doing it.

How nice that this story has a happy ending.  Seth found his soul mate in Karen; their chemistry is palpable even after decades of marriage.   But there is more.  Because we took the time to renew our friendship we have brought it from our past into our present, enlarging it to encompass our spouses, and endowing it with the promise of days to come. 

Countdown

There have been a lot of milestones since embarking on this blog-a-day project.  When I completed my first month of blogs, I remember how proud I was to see the Blogger template close out the month of January and begin posting blogs for February.  There was a rush of exhilaration when my hit counter reached the first 1000.  After 122 consecutive blogs, I was thrilled to realize that I was 1/3 of the way toward my goal. 

Six months into this enterprise, my beleaguered spirit was lifted by passing the halfway point.  I was even more invigorated at the unexpected support and encouragement of my friends.  The number of you who read consistently humbles me.  I am buoyed by your sweet comments—some public, some private.  It is interesting to see which stories push various buttons across my diverse array of friends.  It has become a game of sorts to predict who will react to the story of the day.  The breadth of your collective interests helps me to expand the realm of my thinking, searching for yet another inspiration to make it through yet another day.

So here we are on September 23^rd.  This blog marks the beginning of the 100 day countdown.  After today, the quest is reduced to double-digits.  It may seem like the home stretch, yet all I can think of is one endless night as a young girl.  Packed on a sweltering school bus with a bunch of Girl Scouts, I was introduced to the classic, “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall.”  Exhausted and quite a bit punchy on the long bus ride home from camp, the group of us endeavored to count all the way down.  One by one, the scouts abandoned the song, causing the last songbird to leave off somewhere in the thirties.   Since then, I have been involved in dozens of attempts to make it through the full ninety-nine bottles.  To this day, I have yet to discover how this song is supposed to end.  Perhaps only the “counting sheep” know the answer.  As for me, I hope that as we ring in the next New Year, I will at least know how this challenge ends.

In the meantime, I am not only searching high and low for daily blog topics, I am also making a list of the many things I will undertake once this commitment draws to a close.  Several writing projects have now presented themselves, and I am eager to take off on a new creative path.   If I consider the hours I have been able to devote to personal writing this year, I now realize that there is always time to do something that you really want to do.  I have also learned, much to my chagrin, how much I depend upon the rigor of deadlines and the specter of public humiliation to keep me disciplined.

Those of you who have tagged along on this journey, I hope you will continue to stick with me through this final countdown. 

Beyond Your Wildest Dreams

I awoke spontaneously to find the sun shining through a narrow opening in the blackout curtains.  My husband was asleep beside me, so deep in slumber from the time change and the luxurious feel of hotel linens.  I tried once, twice, to nudge him from his deep sleep but he was completely non-responsive.  Good, I thought.  He needs the sleep.

I rolled out of bed and was instantly dressed.  I sensed that I had completed my ablutions but had no memory of having done so.  I took a few steps and realized I was no longer in my hotel room.  I was cruising the shops in a busy mall.  The people moved past me at such speeds that they were all a blur.  Only the area immediately in front of me was in focus. 

The location was not obvious.  It was not Burlington or Natick—the places I frequent near home.  Nor was it The Water Tower in Chicago or The Mall of America outside Minneapolis.  There was no Nordstrom or Bloomingdales or Macy’s anchoring the major entrances.  But there was a seemingly endless wall of interesting shops.  Instead of Forever 21, or Gap for Kids, or PacSun—stores that held no interest for me at this stage of my life—there were stores that featured handmade crafts, gallery-worthy objets d’art, home accessories, and beautiful art jewelry confections spun from colorful jewels and threads of silver and gold. 

However I got there, I did so without bringing my purse.  Placing my hands on my hips, I discovered my American Express Platinum Card deep in the pocket of my jeans.  I wondered if my husband would ever find me in this place.  Was it attached to the hotel?  Was I still in the same city as he?  I looked at my hand and there was my iphone.  Without stopping, I texted him that I couldn’t sleep and went shopping.  For some reason, that message seemed a sufficient explanation.

The first shop that caught my eye had a collection of architectural elements and old grillwork reminiscent of things I picked through at the Clignancourt flea markets in Paris.  Old wood pieces betrayed remnants of old paint, the hints of color clinging on as a reminder that these were once shiny and new.   The crusty, rusty metal pieces—a fleur de lys here, an old letter there—showed a period elegance that survived despite the weathering of the surface.   How much more I preferred the character forged of age and experience to the newer reproductions.   I thought of my own children who, in adulthood, are so interesting now that the wrinkles and folds of their personalities have settled into their permanent forms.

With a turn I was in another store that featured hand crafts—baskets, small sculptures, functional items.   I picked up a small basket and examined its imperfect shape.  I ran my fingertip along the woven stitches, instantly visualizing each one as the manual labor of a faceless woman in a far off land.  The patterns of alternating colors revealed by the weave made me wonder what she was trying to express.  Was this symbolic of her culture, or of her struggle for life?   Did it reflect a competitiveness to create an object that would attract enough attention to be bought and sold?  Or was it simply the embodiment of the work itself, the pattern conveying the rhythm of the maker's skillful hand?

Before I could reflect, I was blinded by color from every direction.  There was a shiny object in my hand.  I squinted until glasses were in place on my face, bringing the small beads and intricate silverwork of a fragile necklace into focus before me.  It was then I realized that my cell phone was missing from my hands.  Looking up, I saw the strange man retreating into the crowd, my iphone’s distinctive aqua case clearly visible in his hand.  I cried out for him to stop, shouting that he had my phone.  Instantly, the crowds parted, revealing an open aisle between me and this man.  The crowd pushed him back into the store, where he surrendered a phone in the same greenish case.  But when I looked at this object it lacked my phone's normal integrity.  The shiny, rigid face was in place, but it squished from side to side in the hard-backed case when the buttons were depressed.  Peeling the face forward, I found the phone to be missing its guts, filled instead with some substance midway between Jell-o and clay. 

It was then I became aware of the need to contact my husband, whose location—and mine, for that matter—were a mystery to me.  I started to run from store to store, but then wondered about the strange man who had taken my phone.  I looked back at the jewelry store only to see him perched on a stool leaning over the display cabinet, chuckling at me through the glass storefront. 

Coffee shops!  That’s where I would find my husband, I reasoned.  Turning up my senses, I fought to find the smell of roasting beans, or fresh brewed espresso.  The first shop I passed was empty, except for the creepy phone-snatching man, again poised on a stool—this time sipping a coffee leisurely.  He looked up at me and raised his cup, as if in a toast.  I turned and ran again, this time finding an establishment with a long line stretching out into the mall.  People definitely vote with their feet.  At the end of the line was my husband, standing and reading the newspaper as he waited patiently.  I showed him the remnants of my phone.  Without verbal communication, he took off running with me, suddenly abreast of the entire saga and sharing my indignation at the assault of my iphone.

We passed a store that sold beautiful leather shoes and handbags.  I stopped to point out a purse with the longer straps that I prefer, its beauty and utility somehow eclipsing the urgency of the pursuit.  I looked up and saw our man-target through the window, standing at the cash register inside.  He put his hand to his ear, his finger and thumb extended in pantomime, his message clearing mocking, “Call me!”  My husband dove at the shop door and found it locked.  We pulled and pounded, but the customers and salespeople did not react, apparently blind to our demonstration  of urgency and deaf to the racket we were making.

Discouraged, we headed back to the original jewelry shop for no particular reason.  There we began telling anyone who would listen about the strange man and the purloined iphone.  Did he still have my phone intact, or did he remove some essential elements of the phone and return the unnecessary remains to me?  It never occurred to us to consider why he was still hanging around or why he was fixated on me.  Then the store manager came up and admonished us for harassing the man who took the phone.  I did not understand.  Couldn’t he see that I was the victim here?  He pulled my husband aside to talk “man-to-man” beyond the range of “the little woman.”  My outrage made me heady; the bright jewels in the shop added an otherworldly quality as the room spun in circles.

Suddenly everything came to a stop:  the moving shop, the noise, the customers who crowded and clamored.  My husband approached me in a scene oddly reminiscent of Rosemary’s Baby.  “We are going to leave him alone,” my husband said, as if there was nothing more to say.  I looked up at him, not speaking but clearly communicating with my facial expression, “But why?”

At that moment, the store manager lifted his hand.  All of the people mulling around the shop became flattened and were now just scenery painted on a wall.  With one movement, the manager pushed the wall and a rectangular space opened to nowhere, rotating around like a secret compartment.  We were looking at a flat-screen monitor.  An unknown camera in an unknown place was following the creepy villain as he ran through the depths of some very dark place.  He began to limp.  His clothes, which had once been crisp and fashionable, were now filthy and tattered.  He looked over his shoulder suspiciously, as if aware that he was being watched.  His ramp descended until soon there was water splashing up in his path.  Then there was some metal-worked architecture flanking the downward sloping ramp.  Were they lockers?  Gates?  Railings?  Was there something splashing beyond?  Beneath?  It was too dark and too distant to see clearly.

Suddenly, the man stopped, glancing once again in the direction of the camera, and by extension, at us.  He dug through his pockets until he found what he was looking for.  As a beam of light reflected upon it, we could see clearly my iphone, pristine in its aqua hard case.  He leaned over and held out the iphone, extending his arm through the metalwork and toward the splashing.  In an instant, there was an ungodly crash and a scream.  Then the strange man began running as fast as he could, yelling all the way, “I’m free.  I’m free.”  In the remaining light, we could just see that his arm had been severed above the wrist—the same arm with which he had offered out the iphone.  Despite what must have been unbearable pain, the sound in his voice was one of jubilation.  He ran away, but his scream got louder and louder and louder.

It was the alarm clock, waking me for the day.

(Note to self:  do not get on the phone with Verizon Wireless before bed and especially not the night before the release of a new iphone.)

Birth, Mirth, Girth, Worth

What do Bill Murray, Larry Hagman and Stephen King have in common?  They are all celebrating their birthdays today.  In all likelihood, Bill Murray will spend his on a golf course.  Larry Hagman will enjoy some sort of vegan smoothie.  And Stephen King will remain low-key and reclusive in his Maine home.

Today is also Tom’s birthday.  It will be a work day like every other.  Approaching full-fledged workaholic status, my husband scheduled himself into a corner.  He planned a 3-day CE course for oral surgeons from around the world that runs all weekend.  The fact that the course would consume his birthday escaped his notice entirely.  When it was finally called to his attention, he simply shrugged good-naturedly and moved on.

It is fun to surprise such a gentle and unassuming man.  He expects nothing and is never disappointed if that is what he receives.  The first of his birthdays that we celebrated together was his 25^th.  As it happened, his birthday fell on the inaugural day of my graduate program.  Fortunately, the Public Health School, where I was a student, sat next door to the Dental School, where he was a student.  At that point in his program things were very intense, combining back-to-back lectures with long hours in the lab.  Thanks to some help from his classmates, we were able to convince one of the professors to end class early, making a pretense of directing the class down to the basement lab.  In the meantime, I had ordered a large German Chocolate Cake from the tragically-defunct Baby Watson Bakery.  Getting to the bakery well in advance of their normal business hours, I picked up the cake and then transported it on my lap on the bumpy Medical Area Shuttle Bus.  Surreptitiously, I slipped down back stairs at the Dental School so Tom could not see me from his lecture hall, storing the cake in the nasty basement refrigerator. I reached my opening day classes in the nick of time, running back to be at the Dental School by the stroke of twelve for the big surprise.  It was adorable to watch his obliviousness dissolve into as he slowly realized that the impromptu gathering was for him.

Tom’s thirtieth birthday occurred while he was a junior resident.  It came and went uneventfully under the stress of harsh working conditions.  In those days, no one imagined that residents would someday be allowed to work a mere 80-hour work week.  It was easy to forget birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine’s Day, even lunch.  For his thirty-fifth, I was pulled out of town for a client presentation, leaving him to play Mr. Mom with our young son.  Such was our routine.  We bought a house within striking distance of Emory hospital in Atlanta so that Tom could assume the bulk of the child-taxi duties.  I was busy accumulating Frequent Flyer Miles like they were going out of style.

In spite of the mayhem that characterized our lifestyle, we were happy and productive.  Each birthday was a joyous occasion, reflecting our contentment in life and marking the passage of another year.  In the blink of an eye, however, Tom was forty.  What used to be a festive or mildly-uneventful day took on a weird note.  Tom came out of the operating room to find that his staff had filled his office with black balloons and depressing sayings.  He had never taken the time to notice that he had been climbing a hill; suddenly he was over it.

Only at fifty did Tom finally take the time to pause and reflect.  It was a particularly bittersweet day—a milestone that his own father never reached, having been taken away in his mid-forties.  I asked if he would allow me to make him a party, to which he quietly acquiesced.   What he did not anticipate was the extent to which friends and family would pitch in to make this a special day for him.    As if he were George Bailey himself, people came out of the woodwork to toast Tom.  We had college roommates, wedding attendants, classmates, colleagues, former residents, old friends, new friends, --even family members who travelled the 3000 mile distance from Oregon.  Those who could not attend sent letters and well-wishes.  Tom’s brother and sister-in-law, who make their living drawing for Marvel Comics, created a superhero in the image of Tom that we dubbed “Half-Century Man.”  It was a rare opportunity for a man who has done so much for so many—albeit quietly and under the radar—to be the center of attention.  As in all things, he wore it graciously.
 

Tonight, Tom will be exhausted after a long day of teaching a technical topic to a non-English-speaking audience.  He will want to spend time in the evening polishing up his presentations for the next day.  Whether or not he stops to consider the passing of his 56^th birthday, no one will know.   If you ask him, he would probably say, “It’s the next birthday that’s the important one.”

Happy Birthday, my love.  I hope we can spend many, many more next birthdays together.

The TV Week of Yore

As a child, the Fall season brought an electricity of anticipation.  I was too young to be keenly aware of specific dates and events, so I could not tell you whether my excitement peaked during the week of Labor Day, or the week before, or the week after.  I just remember that as the long hot days of Miami summer drew to a close we became very busy completing our back-to-school shopping, discussing new teachers and classrooms, and perching in the “Florida room” after dinner for brand new television shows.  For weeks, we endured network teasers of fresh shows featuring unfamiliar faces and exciting new entertainment vehicles.  Then, all at once, there would be a brand new broadcast schedule—one show after another of never before seen scripts.  It was an embarrassment of riches.   There were new episodes of all my returning favorites interspersed with completely new instant classics.  Together, these shows promised weeks and weeks of sensory delights for good girls who finished their homework and piano practicing.

So predictable and complete was this annual phenomenon that I could watch my favorite "Plan A" shows religiously from fall through the winter school break and then switch to  the less compelling "Plan B" shows (those that ran against my favorites on other networks) during the first post-holiday re-run season.  Having ignored the Plan B shows through the fall, they were entirely new to me.

We had only one family television for the house.  For years it was an old black and white encased in a maple cabinet with four mid-century legs and a pair of “Martian antennae” on top.  My father would not spend hard-earned funds to replace a working appliance, so we endured the black and white technology years after colored TVs were in vogue.  Eventually, my mother saved hundreds of books of S&H Green Stamps—given with each purchase at the local market—and traded them for a colored television.  She always had a work-around when my father dug in his heels.  As long as she abided by the letter of the law, she was free to take liberties with the spirit.  It was a funny ‘Rob-and-Laura’ game they played.

With only one television, it was mandatory that we reached agreement with the viewing schedule.  As the youngest in the household through most of my childhood I had little clout when it came to picking shows.  My brother and my uncle favored shows like Outer Limits and Night Gallery, which gave me nightmares, or Dragnet and Adam 12, which scared me with guns.  I tolerated Star Trek because there was a woman on the bridge, and because—let’s face it—Mr. Spock rocks.   I preferred the shows with girlie girls and kids like me, such as That Girl and The Brady Bunch.  One of my all-time favorites was Get Smart—the farcical cold-war comedy from Mel Brooks and Buck Henry.  I loved to parrot the predictable cartoon-like dialogue (“Sorry about that, Chief!”) and emulate the James Bond-like gadgetry (“Pardon me while I get my shoe phone”), but at my age I completely missed the larger joke of the opposing powers, Kaos vs. Kontrol.  When the one-way chemistry between Agents 86 and 99 finally turned to love, I became obsessed with this show.  Although the romantic story line was a typical jumping-of-the-shark, it made the whole pretense of the show relatable to the little girl that I was.  I waited with butterflies in my stomach to see if the inevitable kiss at the end of one season would spark a lasting romance in the next. 

(Obscure TV trivia:  There was only one episode that revealed a name for Agent 99.  In that episode, she was dating a man named Victor who turned out to be a Kaos spy.  He called her by the name Susan Hilton.  But at the end of the episode, she whispers to Max that it is not her real name.)

There were other shows that were so good I never minded watching them in reruns.  In fact, the opportunity to see them again and again (usually at least three times in a year before the fall returned) was rewarding.  Some of the more controversial shoes—like All in the Family—were so surprising in the moment that you had to see them multiple times to appreciate the journey on which the writers had taken you.  The moment when Sammy Davis, Jr. kissed Archie Bunker, for example, is a classic moment that paid off only because of the years spent exploring the depths of Archie’s unflinching bigotry.  And the tender moments—Gloria’s miscarriage and Edith’s breast cancer scare—were made all the more poignant because we were rarely treated to a glimpse of Archie’s heart.

These days, the jostling of television shows across hundreds of networks has destroyed the tradition that was Fall Premier Week.  There is no longer a new show season.  The original big-3 networks make a feeble attempt to unveil new shows around Labor Day, or after the Emmy Award broadcasts, but it just does not raise goosebumps like it used to.  We have drama series that start in the spring, run for a few weeks, and then disappear until summer when we are treated to a few more episodes.  We have other networks that run just 8 or 10 shows during the summer.   Even football no longer waits for Fall to make an appearance.  And to make matters worse, in an election year like this one, we have events like conventions and debates that so disrupt the flow of episodes that some networks wait to roll out the heavy hitters until after the inauguration.

My economics professor explained that television broadcasting was an example of an industry that would run more efficiently by monopoly.  Rather than networks competing head-to-head with like programming, thus splitting the target markets, a smarter approach is to plan a range of different programs in the same time slot, allowing the schedule to fulfill 100 percent of the market’s tastes.  In the seeming randomness of today’s network/cable scheme, we are approaching this now.  Rather than throwing all the new sitcoms and high budget dramas at us at once, they are revealed one by one.  Whereas we once had a limited new show season and a lot of fanfare to call us to attention, we now have to study the offerings constantly to find our favorite shows.  And because of the market optimization efforts (Dexter in the fall, True Blood in the summer) there is no planned down time for viewers.

At least we have DVR.

Colbert Rapport

I have become a latter day fan of Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert  Report.  I first caught this show by accident while channel surfing, not knowing what to make of it.  Initially, I was unaware that the ‘actor’ Stephen Colbert is playing a ‘character,’ also called Stephen Colbert—a spin off, apparently, of a character he assumed on The Daily Show.  I now understand the hysterical rantings of this would-be conservative idiot pundit who makes everything worse for his cause merely by trying to make it right.

Watching the back-to-back conventions through Colbert’s lens made the frustration of today’s political landscape nearly tolerable—even entertaining.  He got Jon Huntsman to tell tales on his own party after he declined to attend the Republican National Convention.  Huntsman not only had his hat in the ring for a short time during the primaries, but he is actually a cousin, of sorts, to Mitt Romney.  (He descends, he explained, from one of Romney’s grandfather’s other wives.)   He complained that the powers-that-be asked him to be in New Orleans during the Tampa-based convention.  “When they decide,” he said, “to be a little more inclusive and broaden the footprint...” Colbert interrupted, “Why aren’t they including white guys like you?”  When a serious Colbert suggests that Huntsman sounds like he is running for president, the former candidate insists, “my presence on your show would suggest otherwise!”

Colbert also brought in Stanford Professor Jennifer Burns, an expert on Ayn Rand, to explain the rational self-interest of objectivism—the ideology that, by Paul Ryan’s own account, inspired him to go into politics.  The VP nominee bragged on the campaign trail that Atlas Shrugged remains required reading for all interns in his office.  Colbert steps in, “If I may summarize [Rand’s philosophy]. . . ‘I got mine, Jack.’”  Burns concurred, explaining that contrary to Rand’s being “the gateway drug to life on the right,” Rand’s definition of morality is the opposite of altruism and Christian values.  Amused, Colbert responds, “That’s good.  I get so little back when I give a bum a quarter!”  Ayn Rand remains a mainstay of the conservative right, Burns explained, because of her support for unregulated laissez-faire capitalism.  Nonetheless, in reality, Rand was sharply against combining religion and politics and was avidly pro-choice.  Colbert feigns confusion, insisting that “the Republican Party is the party of G-d—we know it is!”  Burns continues that Rand would look down on people who use government favors to advance their careers.  “So, politicians?” Colbert asks with feigned innocence. 

The fun of the Colbert show is in watching the host as he tries to throw off serious guests who have serious positions.  It is not scripted.  He coaches them before the show to stay true to who they are no matter what his idiotic alter ego says or does.  The dynamics depend upon this formula.  Everyone is fair game—although his choice of targets and conservatively poised babbling betrays his more liberal leanings.  In the end, his shenanigans are perfectly calculated to reveal hidden truths, even as he insists otherwise.

This is what made last night’s show so remarkable.  The guest was none other than Harvard’s president, Drew Gilpin Faust.  It seemed so incongruous that I pressed the INFO button on my remote control to confirm what I thought I heard.  It was true.  Colbert looked into the camera, making a display of crossing his fingers on both hands, saying, “I hope she’s bringing me a thick envelope!”

Faust was, in fact, promoting her latest book, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the Civil War.  Colbert used the opportunity to bring up one of the latest gaffes by Rick Santorum, asking Faust if she is one of “those smart people” who will never be attracted to the GOP.  He tried in several different ways to get her to acknowledge his comments about “dumb people,” but Faust would not dignify the label, claiming “it’s never dumb to get an education.”  Undone by her poise and intense eye contact (she never looked away—not once) Colbert had no choice but to talk about her book, even trying to rope Faust into admitting that the Civil War was “a downer.”  She averted the slang, but went on to explain that the 750,000 deaths to Americans back then would equate to 7.5 million today.  A downer, indeed!

Colbert’s comedic quickness and wit is truly genius, but last night he was bested by a higher intellect.  And no one was more surprised than he, being forced to allow his guest to deliver her message and fulfill her agenda.  He was visibly dazzled by this remarkable woman to the point of being tongue-tied.  It was a rare moment of television to behold, as sublime laid waste to the ridiculous.