Don’t eat dogs. Just don’t.

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I would never eat a dog. This goes without saying, but I’m saying it anyway to broadcast loudly that I would never eat a dog. Or a cat for that matter. But this is about dogs, a bit broached by a new law in South Korea banning the consumption of dogs.

In a brief from today’s newspaper: “Breeding, killing and selling dogs for their meat will be banned in a country where it has fallen out of favor. Hundreds of thousands of the animals were still being bred for human consumption.”

The first sentence fills me with joy, relief and pathos.

The second sentence renders me a clenched fist of disgust, outrage and sorrow.

The story goes on: “A person who butchers dogs for human consumption could face three years in prison or a fine of 30 million South Korean won, or about $23,000 … The breeding and selling of the animals would be punishable by two years in prison or a fine of 20 million won.”

Not nearly as draconian as it should be, but a start. 

While South Korea joins Hong Kong, India, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan as places prohibiting the trading of dog meat, millions of dogs are still slaughtered for their meat in Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam and other barbaric regions.

I know first-hand about the trade in Vietnam. Some years ago, riding on the back of a ramshackle moto-bike in Hanoi, my makeshift guide decided to swing by an open-air market where cooked dog remains — whole torsos, heads and tails — were displayed. 

He then took me to a “dog restaurant,” where a trio of giggly, visibly drunk male diners beseeched me to join them for some bubbling dog stew (I waved them off). It was nauseating. (Of course later, the guide and I feasted on a cobra that was slaughtered in front of us. This was not a banner day for animal welfare.)

Thank god I saw none of this sort of atrocity, dogs caged like chickens:

The newspaper story has a link to Four Paws, an animal welfare group out of Australia, to which I just recently and coincidentally donated $100 and plan to drop more. I implore all animals lovers to do the same. Look at the site. It will break your heart, hopefully not your bank.

Sicily and beyond …

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My brother and I bought our widowed stepmom a two-week trip to France for April, which makes an unbroken streak of family travel, as my brother just returned from Madrid with his brood, I go to Sicily in February, and my brother and his wife hit Italy this spring to visit my nephew, who will be studying in Rome. 

It sounds all jet-setty, but it’s pure coincidence. We’re hardly the Roys of “Succession,” or the Kardashians of depression. We’re strictly economy — zero legroom and chicken curry meals swathed in foil. 

But it works. It gets us there. No matter if I don’t sleep a wink during a nine-hour redeye. They say it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. Bull dookie. It’s totally about the destination when you’re flying United. 

I go to Sicily in a month. Never been, but I anticipate the ancient splendor of Rome and the graffitied scrappiness and coastal beauty of Naples. It’s “Godfather” country, once infested with mafioso, and I’ve booked a tour that’s actually called “No Mafia.”

Yet, if you’ve seen the Denzel Washington action flick “The Equalizer 3,” which unfurls in Sicily and is operatically violent, you might think the Italian mafia, namely the homicidal Camorra, are alive and killing. “No Mafia”? How about “Uh, I’m Afraid-So Mafia?”

Harbor of Sciacca, Sicily

Though I’ve been to Italy a few times, I’m re-learning some basic words and phrases, like “Do you speak English?,” which is a big one for me. I ask that constantly in foreign countries, often in plain English, which is both foolish and boorish. In Sicily I will politely approach a local, clear my throat nervously, and ask, “Parli inglese?” (That’s: par-lee-inglesy.) And then, most likely, be promptly bopped on the nose.

I’m really not such a klutz in my travels. I tread lightly, mindfully, and rarely find myself in awkward tangles. I keep my trap shut, until I’m desperate for a small pointer. (“Mi scusi,” I might begin. “Where is the toilet?”)

We are travelers, my family and friends. I returned from Budapest and Kraków in October and I’m already greedily charting a post-Sicily trip. Where? I haven’t a clue. For the second time, I seriously considered Ireland, but research has again left me cold and bored. Besides Guinness and grass, what is there? A plethora of pubs? Some castles? Rain? Sheep? Elves?

I read an article, “20 Cool Destinations to Escape the Summer Heat” — ditching the heat is a huge selling point for me — and it includes Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Norway, Chile, South Africa and more. 

Chile sounds aptly chilly and attractively off the beaten track. (I’ve only been to South America once, Buenos Aires in July 2022 — our sweltering summer, their swooning winter.) At a glance, Chile in July offers snow skiing, wineries and temps in the low 60s. Heavenly. I used to ski madly back in California. Though if I try to ski at this late date, I’ll wind up with two broken femurs, four cracked ribs and a neck brace. 

Meantime, Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean, beckons. It’s awash in zesty history, a strange (and strained) relationship with mainland Italy, world-class cannoli, singular pizza, and a people I hope will brook a humble tourist’s blundering attempts at speaking Italian. A tourist who, spongelike, yearns to soak it up, metabolize it, then, months later, jump to the next place with almost juvenile impetuosity.

As the cliché goes, I’m like a shark: I have to keep moving or I die. That’s glib, but rather true. And if it is, I’m definitely a Great White — tenacious, voracious, and dying for an authentic pizza margherita.

Short-form genius in the press today

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Pork’s perfect proportions

“She notes that her husband’s family used bacon slices as bookmarks.” — from a review of Anne Glenconner’s memoir “Lady in Waiting,” in The Times

Good question

“What Do I Buy My Stepmother Who I Kind of Hate?” — Amy Sedaris’ advice column in New York magazine

Great — or grody

“Cocktails Are Sandwiches. Now Deal with it.” — headline on trend piece in Grub Street, in which drinks taste like subs, paninis and hoagies

Say again?

“I love being immersed in water, but I don’t like being wet.” — actress Tracee Ellis Ross in The Times

Tea-bagging, literally

“The pet I’ll never forget: Moon the gorgeous, stupid doberman, who scalded his testicles in hot tea” — headline in The Guardian (from a funny essay here)

Eaten by earworms

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Two songs from the early ‘80s are banging about my brain and I can’t purge, flush or exterminate them. I go to bed with them, and they alternate, like an A-side and a B-side. And I wake with them, wailing away while I brush my teeth, shower, get dressed, make coffee. Such are pesky earworms, those maddeningly sticky tunes that get jammed in your head like taffy to teeth.

I won’t name the songs, because they’re obscure hard rockers that long ago went poof in the annals of music history. They’re sort of embarrassing. (Heard of the defunct bands Violation or Vandenberg? Thought not.) 

Yet somehow my teenage lizard brain fished out these tunes from the primordial goo of the ’80s and decided it would be nostalgic fun to hear them over and over again. The songs are notable for dynamic drums, which as a fledgling drummer I studiously emulated. (I still enjoy the drums on both tracks, but they don’t inspire me as they used to. Feh, I say now. I can do that.)

So my head burrowed into the random past and found these songs, and now I can’t shake them. It’s been a full week and they won’t go away. I finally listened to them on Apple Music, a grave mistake that merely branded them further into my brain. 

Earworms can be joyful or torturous. Classic torments are the Chili’s “Baby Back Ribs Jingle” and anything by Barry Manilow. Happy ones are, say, the Chili Peppers or anything by Abba. I’m spit-balling here.

My vexing earworms fall between good and evil, the gray zone that’s almost worse than flat-out terrible. Earworms — that’s what they call ‘em. But these are more like ear boa constrictors. They suffocate you before they devour you. Whole.

This week’s astounding headlines

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‘turro de force

Onstage, John Turturro is a frothing, frenetic vortex, spewing barbed-wire invective, spittle flying, making you cringe and laugh all at once. He’s Mickey Sabbath, retired puppeteer, devout deviant, a 60-ish sybarite of unbound lusts, a Vesuvian id raging in the night (and day and morning). I recently saw this crackling Off Broadway performance of “Sabbath’s Theater,” adapted from Philip Roth’s acclaimed, notoriously naughty novel, and while the small cast is a marvel, it’s Turturro as Sabbath who harnesses the show’s electric eros, whipping us along on a ride of pathos-kissed perversion. Everyone — he too — leaves exhausted. 

‘Home Alone’ 2023

In the “classic” Christmastime movie “Home Alone,” a little brat played by little brat Macaulay Culkin — in one of the most implausible plot twists in cinema history — is accidentally left behind when his family goes to the airport to fly to Paris for the holidays. So Culkin is all by his lonesome in the big empty house, until two bungling burglars show up … and yada-yada. This year I’m that little brat, home alone for the holidays, my friends flung around the country, and my immediate family jetting to Madrid on Christmas Day. With my parents passed, I’m left with Cubby the magic dog, a pair of impish cats, and, if I get lucky on Xmas Eve, when goodies will be gifted, a tiny tank of swirling Sea-Monkeys, my Proustian madeleine conjuring the age of Pet Rocks and the Fonz. I’m a loner at heart. I spent 10 Christmases solo in Texas, so this is actually my comfort zone. Leftovers, tipples of egg nog, a CBD gummy, a great old movie. I’m set. It might even snow. And there, the tableau is complete.

Mamet’s mad

Though repulsed by his latter-day conversion to all things alt-right, I will listen to nearly anything playwright/screenwriter/director David Mamet preaches about the craft of writing. The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (“Glengarry Glen Ross”) has written a zillion books about writing and directing theater and film, as well as penned movies like “The Verdict,” “The Untouchables” and “Wag the Dog,” and written and directed 10 of his own movies, from “House of Games” to “Homicide.” Mamet’s been through the Hollywood wringer, and he’s pissed. His new memoir, out this week, is “Everywhere an Oink Oink: An Embittered, Dyspeptic, and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood.” I just got it, and though not quite a swashbuckling thrill through the fraught Hollywood jungle (see William Goldman for that), it’s peppered with Mamet’s signature biting commentary. Producers are venal scum (“Are none of you idiots paying attention?”). Race and gender are never off limits. Errant grumpiness is rampant (“If you put cilantro on it, Californians will eat cat shit”). And fascinating insights into arcane movie lore abound. Mamet can be astringent, but anyone who calls “School of Rock” a “wonderful” picture can’t be all bad. 

Packing my bags 

So, Sicily it is. My next journey is a return to Italy — no! To Sicily. For locals, the distinction is vital. I quote: “People from Sicily consider themselves Sicilians first and Italians second. Though Sicily is a part of Italy [the big island beneath the boot] the region has its own culture, traditions and dialect, and Sicilians are incredibly proud of their heritage.” I go in February, after the chilly holidays, before the heat sets in, and before spring religious rites flourish. The history-drenched capital Palermo is home base, with day trips to the ghoulish catacombs and the dazzling mosaics of Monreale Cathedral, plus food and culture tours and lots in between. Tips? Phone lines are open … 

Fido’s funk

It’s raining and the dog went on a walk and got damp and now he smells like a giant corn chip. He’s needed a bath for some time, and the drizzle has activated a slightly fetid doggy odor that happens to recall a processed dipping snack. Pass the Ranch?

Holey sheet!

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

There is a hole in my bed sheet, a vast and tattered Dickensian hole, through which my foot pokes each night and touches the mattress pad, and it makes me feel derelict, woebegone and like a pauper of improper bed linens. And it’s true. I have allowed my sheets of some 20 years to come to this! I sleep on rags and do nothing because, face it, they’re still pretty comfy and, well, I’m lazy.

Until now. The other night my left foot slipped inside the ragged hole and got caught. This, in the wee of the morning. I pulled and twisted my foot, but it was, to all intents and purposes, stuck. 

Despite the late hour, say 3 a.m., my rage awakened at my entangled foot and I swore out loud. And I yanked my foot out of the rupture with such violence, I compounded it, tore it into a massive aperture so grave it could never be remedied. It was catastrophic. And yet, miraculously, I still dozed off into the ether, likely dreaming of silky 800-thread count Egyptian cotton sateen sheets. (Either that or BBQ wings.) 

I woke up almost happy my wretched old sheets were at last finished. When I say they were 20 years old, I really mean … they were about 15 years old. Still. They were cheap. Now they’re a heap. 

On Thanksgiving night, taking full advantage of one of those Black Friday mumbo-jumbo sale thingies, I ordered shiny new sheets from a reputable linen company and I saved 39 bucks in the bargain. No fewer than two days later the sheets arrived, folded yet fluffy, nary a hole to be found. 

Color? Graphite. Style? “Classic Percale Core,” which they compare to 5-star hotel threads. I don’t know what half of that means, but I’m embracing it. I don’t stay at 5-star hotels. Trust is involved.

A couple days later, I am washing the new sheets — they say you should rinse out factory dust, lint and chemicals before using them (alarming, yes). Currently, they’re in the dryer and I’m making a martini, chillaxing during my ongoing linen adventures. By the time they’re done, warm, soft, and sound, I will hopefully be three sheets to the wind. 

The hole, like Hell’s maw.

Chick lit

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“The idea of meeting someone in a library, in the aisle of a bookstore or while reading on the subway, for instance, remains stubbornly high on the list of many people’s romantic fantasies.” — from The New York Times (link below) 

I admit there are few things more alluring to me than an attractive woman reading a book or browsing in (or working at) a book shop or library. It’s a smashing combo, a kind of electrifying alchemy that I can’t quite explain.

For instance, in the 1946 noir “The Big Sleep,” I’ve always been partial to the bespectacled bookshop proprietress played by Dorothy Malone than to Bogart’s famous glamor squeeze Lauren Bacall — a nerdy example of my bookish bent.

My personal history of amore is lucky with literature. There was blue-eyed Guen, who brought on our first date a copy of David Mamet’s “Writing in Restaurants,” just for me. Laura, who made my knees buckle from afar, was toting the poems of Herman Hesse (we were soon a couple).

One of my biggest crushes was on the girl who worked at the hippest book store in Austin. Then there was the woman who, after a little wine, insisted we go browse the local used book store and buy each other a volume. Now we’re talking.

On the flip-side, I once invited a date to my place. She looked around at the Rothko print and various vintage movie posters, all without comment. Then she eyed my bookshelves and scoffed, “You have way too many books.” Deal-breaker!

Like movies, books are crucial to me, and a shared passion for them is just that — shared passion. It’s something in common, hot to the touch, and can be the bedrock of something more intense, meaningful and feverish.

All this was stirred up reading the above mentioned story in the Times titled “Is Reading the Hottest Thing You Can Do as a Single Person?” (Answer: yes.) 

Check it out HERE.

Dorothy Malone, bookshop owner, face to face with Bogart in “The Big Sleep”

In Eastern Europe, a chain reaction

~ Chris ~ 4 Comments

The free-market floodgates of post-communist Budapest have let in the Wicked Waste of the West, from Burger King and McDonald’s to Starbucks and KFC.

My genial young guide on the Budapest Jewish Quarter tour last week let slip his attitude about the tawdry chain invaders when we passed a Hard Rock Cafe and I made a snarky quip. “I won’t even talk about it,” he huffed with a wave of the hand, as if fanning away a stench.

This, of course, is nothing new in my travels, or even in our very own USA. There’s a festering resentment of western chains encroaching on native businesses with crass venality. 

On another tour in Budapest a few days ago, the guide took aim at Starbucks’ coffee, explaining proudly how inferior it is to almost any local cafe offering. (True. I tried some.)

Grumbling about foreign corporate chains is a vigorous sport among the educated classes in Europe, bashing them and their ostensibly shoddy, unhealthy, unethical food products, sold with such vulgar aggression. (Apple, Gap, Nike and other mega-retailers get a breezy pass. A Mac is hip; a Big Mac not so much.)

Traveling in two post-Nazi, post-communist countries in recent days — Hungary and Poland — I enjoyed the dissonance of Old East banging heads with Newish West. I’m a wuss, sort of taking both sides in the argument, leaning toward the European stance. (I happen to think most fast food is execrable poison.) 

Now, beyond carping about capitalism, here’s a few pictures from a wonderful journey to a slab of the world I find beautiful, fascinating and unfailingly friendly. The trip — filled with head-spinning history, humbling humanity and killer cuisine — was a knockout.

The most famous “ruin bar,” called Szimpla Kert, a huge, arty pre-war ruin in Budapest’s hip Jewish Quarter
Budapest’s iconic Parliament through the window of a Danube River cruise
The infamous gate at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in Poland. Yes, some dolts took selfies there.
Main Market Square in Old Town, Krakow, Poland
Main Market Square, Krakow, from my hotel window, about 6:30 a.m.

To CVS, and into the void

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

So today I went to the nearby CVS to get my annual flu shot and my sixth Covid vaccine since the great outbreak of 2020. I try to avoid this CVS and its florescent scuzziness if I can, but this errand had to be done sooner or later, and this store is the most convenient option.  

Like most chain drug stores, CVS dizzies with its heaving array of stuff. I waded through a chaos of clamoring consumerism, everything jostling everything else: sacks of Halloween candy, weepy Hallmark cards, laxatives, reading glasses, and, perplexingly, a tall inspirational/Christian book rack abutting, with nary a blasphemous blush, the celebrity-exploitation magazines, those tawdry journals blaring rehab stints, venomous divorces and flashing the spray-tan décolletages of washed-up starlets. The men in these screeching glossies, lizardy leches all, fare no better.

Cutting through the garish gauntlet toward the pharmacy, I notice that the store is in critical need of fresh carpet — its ratty blue pelt looks like it belongs in a beer-soaked basement with a cracked pool table and a Doritos-dusted Xbox — and that most of the products on sale plunk me into a sad funk. (50% off gargantuan bags of Funyuns? Pass the strychnine.)

Why, I wonder, does everything in this store look worn and near its expiration date? Shelves gape with spaces where products are long sold out. And much of the inventory appears coated in dust and/or placed in the wrong department. (Flintstones vitamins next to the Trojans? Huh-hum.)

After my journey down miles of aisles, I make it to the vaccination check-in counter and the store’s overall complexion magically changes. At first it’s a little hectic and scarily unprofessional. The guy assigned to administer the vaccines looks about 19, and he’s distracted and aflutter. 

“Ah, let me sneeze,” he says, turning his head. I allow him to sneeze. He sneezes. 

But when it comes down to business — i.e., when he walks me over to the vaccine area and jabs both arms with needles I’d rather not be jabbed with — he proves a steady-handed pro. And affable, to boot. 

Somehow it comes up that he is from Syria, and I tell him I’ve been there briefly (though he’s from Damascus and I went to Aleppo). We share a chuckle at the expense of the mountains of Halloween candy spilling onto the floor — so soon, more than a month away! You buy some of that, no way it’s going to last! If the kids don’t eat it, you will! Ha! I realize this is third-rate banter. 

Anyway, things go as good if not better than they could, even in this semi-wretched drug store, where I bet their discount passport photos are disastrous, unusable. My guy is swift and smooth and painless with the syringes, and he neatly bandages up the holes. I thank him, he thanks me. 

And, after a few mandated minutes sitting down post-shots, I’m back in the Aisles of Death. It’s not that bad, of course. I notice that, hey, some of these prices actually are good deals. CVS stands for Consumer Value Stores (for real), and as far as what I came there for — which wasn’t for the greasy carpet or the dirty Advil boxes — this consumer got his value.

CVS? Totally.