A parody, some good words, and a 103-year-old charter New Yorker subscriber
Becoming compendium, November 14, 2022
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Go slow now. Take time, feel gratitude, forgive.
Remember what matters: Spirit, authenticity, justice, words.
Every day: Watch things grow. Live with silence. Reflect.
Badass quotation 1
~Carolyn Hax~
Carolyn Hax writes a daily advice column for The Washington Post, and her insights are the best in the business.
One thing about me is that I’m always wanting things to work out. I’m the classic Myers-Briggs “J”—someone who likes closure, with all ends neatly tied up.
That’s why this advice from Hax is so important that it’s posted on the inside of my front door, where I can see it every day.
Is this really a problem?
Must it be solved?
And, if so, is it my problem to solve?
In the column of March 18, 2021, Hax added, “Few things pass this test, in my experience.”
Yes. I need to remind myself, as I leave my apartment every day, that some problems—maybe most—are best left to sort themselves out.
Badass quotation 2
~Tyler Merritt~
Tyler Merritt is a Nashville-based actor, comedian, vocalist and creator of The Tyler Merritt Project.
This is from I Take My Coffee Black, the audiobook, narrated by Merritt with humor and verve. He’s dead serious when he says this, though, with measured cadence:
In this moment, I want you to hear my voice—and really hear me.
I believe in you.
I need you to bring that thing into the world that only you can.
Please, for your sake, for the sake of all of us.
So many things are packed into the context of these few brief words: his religious values; the influence of his southern-raised parents, who could be both gentle and intimidating as the occasion arose; his awareness of how is a 6 foot 2 Black man takes up space in America.
One creation of The Tyler Merritt Project is a video in which he describes himself—a vegetarian Christian who hates spiders but loves hockey, who knows boatloads of rap lyrics and Broadway musical songs, and whose nieces and nephews come in a wide range of colors.
“I just wanted you to get to know me better,” he finishes calmly, “before you call the cops.”
Humor is subjective. Yeah, right.
~Get ready to laugh~
Here’s how my sense of humor works. I think Airplane! is the funniest movie ever made. And I think “The Shooting of Dan's Guru” is the funniest piece of writing I’ve ever read.
This poem, which dates from the 1970s, was written and often recited by performance poet Mikhail Horowitz. When I contacted Horowitz to ask if I could share his poem, I learned that he’s spent most of his career in New York’s Hudson Valley, where he worked as a journalist and later as a publications editor at Bard College before retiring.
Horowitz, now 72, spent some time in Beaverton (once a suburb of Portland and now the sixth-largest city in Oregon) back in the ’70s. He and his partner billed themselves as Null & Void, a metaphysical standup poetry team.
Maybe 25 years ago, I was researching a hipster standup comic, Richard Buckley, known on stage as Lord Buckley,* when I came upon a webpage dedicated to His Lordship. And there was Horowitz’s poem, a parody of a well-known piece by Robert Service,** “The Shooting of Dan McGrew.”
*According to Wikipedia, “Buckley hit his stride with a combination of exaggeratedly aristocratic bearing and carefully enunciated rhythmic hipster slang. He was known for wearing a waxed mustache along with white tie and tails. He sometimes wore a pith helmet.” The webpage, Lordbuckley.com, lovingly curated by Michael Monteleone, is still extant.
**Robert Service (1874-1958) grew up with family wealth in Scotland before decamping to the Yukon Territory to become a cowboy. “The Bard of the Yukon,” was famous as a writer of easy to digest doggerel like “Dan McGrew.”
A veteran reporter at The Oregonian, Virgil Smith, was well-known for quoting Service at length whenever the occasion required it, which was often.
The Shooting of Dan’s Guru
A bunch of the monks were whoopin’ it up in the Mantra Mute Saloon,
And Jimmy Wong who whacks the gong was boomin' an OM-time tune;
Back of the bar in a lotus squat sat Dangerous Dan’s Guru,
And diggin’ his light was Wilma White, who used to be a Jew.
When out of the night an anchorite schlepped up to the temple door,
Out of the drain of the Bardo Plane, the dregs of a psychic war;
I’ve ne’er seen a seeker more moldy or weaker, a real metaphysical mouse,
But his loincloth was droppy with oodles of rupee, and he cried out for RICE ON THE HOUSE!
Now us monks couldn't place the yogi's face, though we searched our past lives for a clue;
But we blessed his treat, and the first to eat was Dangerous Dan's Guru.
Now there's men what somehow grip your mind and hold it like a rock,
And such was he—he looked to me like an old zen cuckoo clock;
Kabuki hair and the crimson glare of an aura what's out of control,
And was it sweat, or tears of jet, that he dropped in his begging bowl?
Then it suddenly hit me who he was, and why he was out of sorts;
And watchin' him sup, just over her cup, was Wilma White, nee Schwartz.
His eyes went rubberin' round the room, he seemed to be Feldenkraised,
Until they fell on the temple bell, and he muttered, "Saints be praised!"
Now Jimmy Wong had left the gong, there was nobody else on the stone,
So the old monk picks up the kid's boom-stick and man, did that gong groan!
Were you ever alone in the Astral Zone, where apparitions wail,
And all space bleeds, 'til your whole life reads like the Book of the Dead, in Braille?
And Time itself is the cutting-shelf, and aeons flash like knives,
And you manifest as a garden pest for your next 900 lives?
While high above, the cosmic love that crowns your Guru's head
Rides right through, and dazzles you, and leaves you there for dead;
And yes—your Guru cuts you loose, though you chant for your very life,
Says, "See you later, meditator," and walks off with your wife!
Then of a sudden the booms resumed, so loud you scarce could hear,
And all of the monks crept under their bunks and froze with a holy fear,
As incense fumes obscured the room's severe and dreary view;
"The man's gong sounds like Vishnu's schlong," said Dangerous Dan's Guru.
The OM-ing stopped, the gongstick dropped and clattered to the floor;
We trembled then like naked men in the brothels of Bangalore;
The devotees he faced with ease, his eyes now clear and calm,
But he tilted up a miso cup and raised a toast to Ram,
And "Boys," said he, "ya'all do tai chi and don't pay me no mind;
She broke my heart, my karma won't start, my third eye's goin' blind;
Now I'd like to stay and humbly pray to Krishna's flute with you,
But one of you here is a mother-fakir, and that's one's DAN'S GURU!"
The room went black, and crack! crack! crack! two ghats burned in the dark;
The lights came on, their souls were gone, and both lay stiff and stark;
Pitched on his side—pumped full of bad vibes—Dangerous Dan's Guru,
And the anchorite lay where a double dorje*** had chopped all his chakras in two.
Well, that's the sutra, sutra self—I’ve told ya what I've seen;
They say that the yogi who shot Sri Sri was Dangerous Dan Levine;
Seems Dan was the wag left holding the bag by that self-same Guru,
And Wilma spoke, through the sandalwood smoke, but all that she said was, "So, nu?"***Okay, another synchronicity. I’d never heard of a dorje, but I just saw one. It was a plot point in the last season of “The Good Fight,” a TV lawyer comedy/drama headlined by the supremely watchable Christine Baranski. (She breaks the one loaned to her by her physician/ therapist/ fantasy love interest.)
You can stream “The Good Fight” on Paramount+ or catch the reruns on CBS.
And we have it on video
Michael Monteleone. the Lord Buckley maven, was kind enough to point me to a low-res clip from 1996 of Horowitz reciting the poem. It has a different texture from reading the words.
Here’s the comment button again. What do you think is the funniest movie ever?
Here at The New Yorker
~With a note about customer service~
You’ve probably noticed that it’s nearly impossible to talk to anyone about anything anymore. Got a question about an app? Need help with a purchase? Visit a website where you are invited to type in a question and get a lot of irrelevant answers. Or you are invited to a chat then turns out to be with a robot that doesn't understand your question. Or you call a number and must answer a daunting bunch of questions and are then told hold time is 2 hours.
I actually had a wonderful customer experience recently. I called the CS number and was not asked to state my question to a robot “who can understand complete sentences” but of course does not. No, I was connected directly to a human, who quickly handled my problem. He didn't ask many questions. He just gave me a refund for an item that hadn’t been delivered.
And this wonderful corporation was … Walmart!
Now, I despise Walmart for its role in destroying small-town American life. I was just using it as an alternative to Amazon, which I am trying to avoid whenever I can. I mean, Walmart is big, but not as big as Amazon.
But what I really want to talk about is how I can't get hold of anybody at the The New Yorker. I have this really interesting story to tell them. But it's not a poetry submission or a letter to the editor or a fiction submission, and the website doesn’t invite any other contacts. I tried calling customer service, but the agent there was totally not interested in my story.
So here it is:
Subscriber since 1925
~But is she old enough?~
In Rose Schnitzer Manor assisted living, where I live, there is a resident who just turned 103. Her name is Grace Kent. She is the last surviving charter subscriber to the New Yorker magazine. I'm sure of it. There’s no other way the math works out.
She is not old enough herself to have started a subscription in 1925, when the magazine began to publish. She was born in 1919. But her husband, Seymour Kent, was 12 years older than she, so he would've been about 18 in 1925. Grace says he bought the first edition on the street and started subscribing with the second issue.
They got married, they kept subscribing, and, now that Seymour is gone, Grace still reads and enjoys The New Yorker.
I think The New Yorker would be interested in this story, but I don’t see a way of letting them know about it.
So this is probably the only place Grace’s story will be told.
Oh, well.
I have more to say about The New Yorker, but that’s for later.
Check in, the you version
How’s the writing going? Having trouble getting motivated? I have some more ideas for you.
Sushi!
My friend of mine, an intuitive, once taught me a way to get excited about writing. “What’s your favorite food?” she asked me.
“Sushi.”
“Then think of sushi,” she said, “Whenever you want to write. Remember how much you like to eat sushi and remember how much you like to write.”
She was right. It works! I think… sushi… and remember how good it tastes. Salmon skin roll. Unagi. Silky yellowtail. And writing! The fullness of words, the slick slides of the cursor, the meaning that underlies it all, sturdy like the rice and the nori.
The way I more often back into writing
Mostly, though, I don’t need sushi or other prompts. My daily writing exercises often begin with word association. I’ll start with an evocative word, say “copper,” and let it evolve: cracker, crab, crabapple, co-op, crop, pop, prop, propeller, expeller, reteller, retailer, retail, new tail, new tale, nutty. I just keep going until something sparks. And then I veer off on that tangent. Twenty minutes later and I usually have a fully formed idea for an essay or a story plot.
If you really want a prompt
But sometimes, just for fun, I do use a prompt. And I have a foolproof way to come up with one. You don’t need a book. You don’t need to find someone to email you a prompt a day.
All you have to do is find a piece of writing.
It can be anything. An ad in a magazine. Knitting directions (seriously! I’ve done that). A recipe. Just find some print—a book, newspaper, junk mail, a magazine. And use the first few words you see.
I have on the table next to me a translation of the Tao Te Ching by Stephen Mitchell. I open it at random. I see a line in #44: “Be content with what you have.” I could write about that.
If you do this, don’t try too hard. Pick up a publication and use the first thing you see. The Economist, in an ad, “Geography powers possibility.” See any possibilities there?
How to Do Nothing, a wonderful book by Jenny Odell. Open it at random. Page 132. The first words I see: “Actually, it wasn’t straightforward at all.” Hmmm.
You can have fun with this. And that’s what writing should be for you. Fun. Delicious. Something you want to taste again and again.
Like sushi.
I am really looking forward to your posts each week. Humor is so individual. My favorite comedy film is a tie between Court Jester and The Producers (the original with Zero Mosel and Gene Wilder). I did laugh at loud at parts of Tyler Merritt’s I Take My Coffee Black and teared up at other parts.