Suppose it were Friday cxxxvii: motive's feast

Handle the ground beef as briefly
as possible - in other words, 
don't knead the meat - because o-
verhandling changes its texture,
moistness, and flavor. Shape the
meat firmly into a uniform patty
about one and a half inches thick.

Brush both sides with olive oil
and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Brush the grill lightly with olive
oil, and grill over a medium flame
about 5 to 6 minutes on each side
for medium rare.

Add dried thyme to 1/4 cup olive
oil and brush the ciabatta, tomato,
and onion slices, each 1/2 inch
thick, with the thyme oil. Salt
and pepper the onion and tomato;
grill all lightly on both sides.

This is Michael Lomonaco's take

on the hamburger that made '21'

famous, before his own years as

Chef at this power trough on the

near-West Side of Manhattan. With

the place's impossibly rich chick-

en hash, this open-faced concoc-

sion underwrote social standings

for visitors from all over America,

not for being especially witty, but

for being prohibitively expensive.

Yet it kept alive a gastronomic ac-

cident which has fueled prolific

invention ever since, and shows no

sign of withering in cachet. After

meetings of ACT UP each week, the

present writer would repair to the

bar at Jeremiah Tower's version of

'21,' for his superlatively simple

hamburger with a jigger of pepper

vodka. A pleasure denied is resis-

tance without a cause. This is why

repression can always be beaten.

Michael Lomonaco
The '21' Cookbook
  Recipes and Lore from
  New York's Fabled Res-
  taurant
Doubleday, 1995©

Jeremiah Tower
Jeremiah Tower Cooks
  250 Recipes from an
  American Master
Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2002©

Irritants

Through his random suppurations,
the President holds a following
whose attachment is as adamant as
a patch of scabies. Some fragment
greater than 1 in 3 citizens, the
same measure as flunks out of Har-
vard Law in the first year, will
follow him to the end of the end.

This reality argues for refusing
distraction by a lingering lie, 
that he is some eccentric with-
in his own species. When support
is this vast, there can be no
blinking that it is genetically 
intact, to be vanquished as the 
repulsive horde it is. Having 
brought him so far, that brave
Party is now in no position to 
peel away its infestation by way
of individual exculpation. There
are no pretty faces to be pluck-
ed free by self-revision. Look
to the means to expunge them all.
Prosecute their conspiracies.

Age of awe, age of memory

It is difficult to avoid
namedropping in times of
epistolary stress, invok-
ing others to sustain a
matter to be personally
confessed. It revolts us
to observe that habit ad-
opted as a fetish, in-
famous among disciples
of William Buckley. Yet
even low church patriots 
were taken into schools,
where the catechism ad-
mitted their memory for
just such times as ours.
Sometimes the ages wink.

Has anyone ever seen a
caricature of such im-
becility as now is giv-
en us every day, by the
most dangerous man on
Earth? Yes, at least in
the last 300 years.

And the hell of it is,
it's easy to remember.

             High on a gorgeous seat, that far outshone

             Henley's gilt Tub, or Fleckno's Irish Throne,

             Or that, where on her Curlls, the Public pours

             All-bounteous, fragrant grains, and golden showers;

             Great Tibbald sate: The proud Parnassian sneer,

             The conscious simper, and the jealous leer,

             Mix on his look. All eyes direct their rays

             On him, and crowds grow foolish as they gaze,

             Not with more glee, by hands Pontific crown'd,

             With scarlet hats, wide waving, circled round,

             Rome in her Capitol saw Querno sit,

             Thron'd on sev'n hills, the Antichrist of Wit.

             

Under these variations

of acute mental complex-

ity, we do not know, at

any given hour, what pon-

tification to expect of

our exalted idiot. As of

the moment, Nazis were

back in vogue, and the

gentle art of public as-

sembly was being upheld

as their right against

dissidents of violence.

This exuberant invention

is bound to be revised,

pending its recital anew,

in future moments of in-

vincible rapture in fury.

Our Tibbald has vowed it.

Let's just keep the lan-

guage open, to illuminate

his wondrous manuscript.

Alexander Pope

The Dunciad Variorum

  Book the Second

  i-xii

1728

John Butt

  editor

The Poems of

  Alexander Pope

op. cit.

Wagtail at the dam

As much as I respect the in-
centives and the challenges
of pruning one's shelves of
volumes of no foreseeable
further use, not to mention
enjoying the false compas-
sion of palming the stuff
off on the nearest charity
or shut-in, I have to count
myself among the many who
suffer for that lapse of vi-
sion. Only the other day, I
found myself pining, out of
thin air, for a book I pick-
ed up in the '70s, the way
we all used to do back then,
on a speculative browse in a
well-worn, trusted bookshop, 
deep among spines of note.

Provenance is always a part
of things, I admit, but it
was for its content that I
felt myself rather wounded,
and the airy designer maxim
of editing the habitat felt,
I have to confess, an irrit-
ating poultice. By all means
it is the worst, for no one
else to blame, such as an ef-
ficient parent, disposing of
an unhandsomely worn address
book in calf, marred by au-
tographs of every baseball
great in the National League
in one's childhood. Who'd im-
agine re-reading the signature
of Sandy Koufax, some quiet af-
ternoon in Summer, somewhere?

From time to time an available
vengeance seizes the better of
anyone in this predicament, and
the search goes forth at the u-
sual sites, to retrieve a fac-
simile of the original. I was
prompted in this way, not long
ago, to track down a volume I
missed acutely, compiling no-
thing more than Letters to the
Editor of The Times (London),
from the first 75 years of the 
previous century.

The spirit of observation, now
desolatingly lacking from pub-
lic comment, to say nothing of 
an élan of disputation, equally
moribund, merge in these letters
with an aspect of responsibility
to community which, to our ears,
enriches familiar vanity with its
inherent grace note, of comedy.
But perhaps I merely recite, in
this way, the qualities of the
English Cocker Spaniel.

I give you, for example, a modest
intervention from the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, soon to become
more eminent in another Ministry -

               January 24, 1933

               Sir,

               It may be of interest to record that,

               in walking through St James's Park to-

               day, I noticed a grey wagtail running

               about on the now temporarily dry bed of

               the lake, near the dam below the bridge,

               and occasionally picking small insects

               out of the cracks in the dam.

               Probably the occurrence of this bird in

               the heart of London has been recorded 

               before, but I have not previously noted

               it in the Park.

                    I am your obedient servant,

                         Neville Chamberlain

Kenneth Gregory

  editor

Your Obedient Servant

  A selection of the most witty,

  amusing and memorable let-

  ters to The Times of London,

  1900-1975

Methuen, 1976©

Nicolas de Staël

Voiliers à Antibes

1954

All travesty is local

I purchase my wines from one of two
shops, each no more than a hundred
yards from where Donald Trump's fol-
lowers murdered a resident of Char-
lottesville on Saturday. Not two
hundred yards away, is the bookshop
where I purchase poetry, Wodehouse,
and the occasional history. I host
my friends at an al fresco French
restaurant, down that very street,
on the premise that to dine out-
side, is not, technically, a vio-
lation of the masthead's dark view
of such conduct. I happen not to
believe, that a gentleman dines in
restaurants, but less contentious-
ly, until the present government,
I have always believed the nation
is constituted against mob rule.

Now one finds, the daily life of
discrete discretions that Char-
lottesville supports is, to the
menace of Trump, what an assump-
tion of immunity is to a virus:
an almost aggravated assault. 

His Katrina moment

         August 12, 2017

         Charlottesville

         

  

Willy Vanderperre