I found myself in a mini-mall in Des Moines, Iowa earlier today and happened to notice the following hand-lettered sign in the window of a Thai restaurant:

 We Now Offer Sushi!  Delivery Too!

As someone whose definition of happiness is sharing a large platter of sushi and a couple of Sapporos with one or more good friends, this sign bothered me for any number of reasons.

First, people, it was a Thai restaurant.  Would you eat sushi at a German restaurant? Then what is it that makes a Thai restaurant any more plausible as a vendor of raw fish, seaweed, and rice, other than the fact that Japan and Thailand are both in Asia, albeit many thousands of miles and radically different cultural and culinary traditions apart?

Second, the sign was scrawled in black magic marker.  At restaurants that specialize in sushi, the chefs train for years.  For some reason, the unwilligness of this restaurant to invest 29 bucks in a professionally printed sign suggested to me a rather shorter training period, and a decidedly less rigorous dedication to quality.  [Read more →]

Tags: diatribes, recipes & food by Michael Antman
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Paula: One thing I appreciated about George Bush’s speech last week about the government bailout was the effort to explain the crisis in simple terms. Part of what bothers me so much about the financial crisis is that I don’t understand it, something that I feel particularly insecure about. I don’t even know how to ask the questions required in understanding it.

  Robert: As a former newspaper reporter, I can say that reporters live for the challenge of making anything more understandable. I think the science writers sometimes have the hardest time. But this subprime mess has reporters utterly struggling to make sense of it for a general audience. I listen to “market place,” an excellent NPR business show, and they talk about struggling to understand the crisis, not just to explain it. [Read more →]

Tags: conversations with Paula and Robert, money by Paula Marantz Cohen
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So, we’re on our way to get a couple of Cuban sandwiches yesterday, and suddenly hear on the radio that it’s National Family Health & Fitness Day. We didn’t do anything healthy or fit yesterday. Did I mention, we were going to get Cuban sandwiches? Later, we see on TV that the upcoming week is ABC’s National Stay-at-Home Week. We’re not planning to stay at home, because even though we watch some ABC shows, we have a DVR, so we can come and go as we please. Who makes up these national and international days and what’s the point unless there are some teeth behind the idea, to enforce it? Don’t declare national and international days of anything unless you have the power to make it so. Either we do things as a mob, or we just do them when fancy strikes, as individuals. Like the International Talk Like a Pirate Day that we apparently just missed. Well, we didn’t talk like pirates that day, so it’s not international, is it, because we weren’t part of it, and we are an integral part of the world population. If you’re going to nationalize and internationalize, do it properly, with some muscle, to make sure everybody participates.

My husband says that anyone can declare any day a national or international day of anything, and that I could declare an International Cuban Sandwich Day, if I wanted to. Well, maybe I would, if I had an international army big enough to help me force a Cuban sandwich down the throats of everybody in the world, including vegans and carbophobes. He also said something about instituting an International Gimme a Dollar Day, but I think there are too many people in the world who don’t have a dollar, so that’s just unrealistic.

Since I don’t have an international army to back me up, anyone is welcome to make their own Cuban sandwich, the way they make it at the Cuba Bakery in Union City:

Cuban bread, fluffy and crusty
mayonnaise
slices of Genoa salami (apparently, that makes the sandwich Miami-style, but we don’t mind)
slices of roast pork loin

Cut the bread lengthwise, spread enough mayonnaise on the halves just to moisten, lay the salami on the bottom half, then the pork, cover with the top half, heat through (like an Italian panino) in a sandwich press. Cut in halves crosswise, on a slant. Never mind the health and fitness — Cuban sandwiches aren’t slimming.

Tags: diatribes, recipes & food by Olga Gardner Galvin
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An article in the Chicago Tribune has me chuckling this morning. It seems that law makers in Nebraska got more than they bargained for when passing recent ‘Safe Harbor’ legislation designed to protect unwanted newborns.

Parents are abandoning teenagers at Nebraska hospitals, in a case of a well intentioned law inspiring unintended results.

Over the last two weeks, moms or dads have dropped off seven teens at hospitals in the Cornhusker state, indicating they didn’t want to care for them any more.

While this latest snafu by law-makers shouldn’t really shock anyone, I am sure it is raising a few eyebrows. Those on the right will be grinding their teeth and muttering about Family Values and the destruction of the traditional family unit while secretly wondering if they can talk their mistresses in to relocating, while those on the left will surely be cheering the ‘alternative parenting model that frees parents to reach new heights of self-actualization’ or some such tripe.

I think this whole situation is hilarious. Parents who would give up the kids probably shouldn’t have had them in the first place and the kids will be better off out of a home where they are not wanted. Plus it is sure to give the elected officials many sleepless nights, and that is never a bad thing for politicians.

Meanwhile, parents across the nation who are feeling overwhelmed when dealing with recalcitrant teens can be heard yelling, “One more outburst like that and we are moving to Nebraska!”

Tags: family & parenting, on the law by David "Preacher" Slocum
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Part Two:  The Dead Return 

A week ago, when I posted the first half of this reminiscence of my very brief career in my twenties as a performer, I had intended the follow-up to be a light-hearted account centering on one of my two objectives back then in pursuing acting: meeting girls. 

But every time I tried to write that story, the face of one actress in particular, and her unimaginably horrific story, kept materializing like an admonishing wraith, and I realized that this instead was the story I needed to tell.

[Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, creative writing by Michael Antman
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Dear Ruby,
I have a job people often envy.  I am a writer in advertising.  My friends think I’m cool.  However, my boss re-writes everything I turn in.  Today, after weeks of research on a new client, I turned in a great bunch of headlines for a magazine ad.  She re-wrote them, but obviously had not done the research.  Do I give her notes on why her version sucks?  The guy next to me says to face the fact that I’m an art whore.  I never was a very good whore, so I’m not super comfy with that.  What to do?

Thanks,
Peach

Peach, honey,
I think maybe someone doesn’t want to be a very good whore.

Bosses, teachers, editors, pimps — they’re always telling you to do stuff you don’t want to do and then sometimes they’re not even very nice about it. And sometimes they’re dumbasses. If your boss is really a dumbass who’s rewriting your great stuff and turning in her own crappy stuff (and hopefully not passing it off as yours), the market/management/clients will eventually correct her.

My advice: keep lovely laser copies of all your own great stuff, build yourself a bitchin’ portfolio and get ready to move up when she gets canned or maybe start dreaming about your own piece of street corner.  But, remember this, even if you’re really good, even if you have the greatest stage name ever — even if the john is Richard Gere — Peach, you are a filthy whore, like everyone else. We all sell stuff to buy other stuff and we all have to deal with the difficult people on top from time to time.

Be a better whore. Work on your technique. Take it with a smile. Keep good records. And let old Ruby know how it works out.

Does Ruby know what’s best for you? Just ask.

Tags: advice, all work by Ruby Mac
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Is battery on a police officer a felony? If so, Jose A. Cruz is in a lot of trouble.

A West Virginia man who police said passed gas and fanned it toward a patrolman has been charged with battery on a police officer [...] “The gas was very odorous and created contact of an insulting or provoking nature with Patrolman Parsons,” the complaint alleged.

The AP reports that Cruz claims that he didn’t “aim gas at the patrolman.” That’s right — “aim gas.” Like it’s a chemical weapon we’re talking about, some deadly toxin like sarin gas.

Speaking of disgusting bodily functions, sometimes they actually do cause harm. In what is being characterized as a prank, “[p]olice say members of an Arizona State University fraternity vomited milk from a campus bridge and caused a car crash that injured two people.” Throwing (up) projectiles from an overpass to an active roadway is not a prank. It’s a crime.

Tags: ends & odd, on the law by Scott Stein
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Um, readers, just so you know, When Falls the Coliseum is, like, totally interactive. So how ’bout interacting with it?

Fred Siegel has been posting hilarious descriptions of his actual dreams. He invites you to write in with your interpretations. Feel free to comment on any of them — all of Fred’s Dreams are here. Let’s help this fine young man make sense of the chaos.

Ruby Mac is ready to give you some good advice about getting cheap thrills and getting by, especially welcome in these troubled times. You can ask her for advice here and she may reply in her column, just like Ann Landers, only funnier. And less dead. You can read all of Ruby’s “Advice for the Rest of Us” here.

All of our posts in all of our categories are open to your comments. So join the conversation.

Tags: announcements by Coliseum
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July 18, 2008
I dream I work in a fancy mall/office in northern New Jersey where many duplicate pieces of magic apparatus are used for clerical purposes. A ne’er-do-well dressed as a lawyer follows me to my home office through the mall/town, and I can’t shake him. He follows me inside and tries to look at all my papers and sit at my desk. I insist that he show me his lawyer ID, and he reaches into his crotch and pulls out a pair of socks.

[Read more →]

Tags: Fred's dreams by Fred Siegel
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Paula: Having read the discussion of how teaching evaluations affect tenure in universities in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, I was struck by the implicit assumption on the part of the aggrieved teachers and of the reporter that it is fine to air personal political views in class — that this is part of the initiation of students into various viewpoints.

But it has always been my assumption that the role of the teacher is to hold back — at least to some degree — on personal views so as to give the students a chance to explore more objectively. I suppose this is the conventional, traditional view, though as some profs point out, the seemingly “objective” view can also be implicitly politicized.

Still, I see objectivity — or nonalignment (perhaps a better way of putting it) — as the ideal. I do think that so-called “enthusiasm” is sometimes a euphemism for zealotry. When enthusiasm is linked to a particular political position it is not a positive value in a teacher and can instead be a form of bullying and coercion — and students can rightfully resent it.

 
  Robert: I want to challenge the premise of your statement above. [Read more →]

Tags: conversations with Paula and Robert, education by Paula Marantz Cohen
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