Hotel Hair Ball
Dear Wally:
I have just been given two cats to take care of for an extended, undefined period of time. They belong to my new daughter in law (our relationship is still fragile) and they are normally NYC apartment dwellers. She and my son are off to Africa and need us to care for them. Does this make me a ‘cat lady’?
-Anonymous
Dear soon to be ‘cat lady’:
People give other people cats to ‘care for’ when they don’t like those people. Let’s discuss your legitimate concern about becoming a cat lady. The ‘cat lady’ is a noble, selfless lover of all things feline who has made what some might say is the ultimate sacrifice: She has exchanged a traditional life of interactive human relationships, hygiene and even sometimes the proper use of the English language itself for a house full of hairballs and decapitated mice. But cat ladies are now part of our cultural fabric, albeit the fabric we prefer to keep under the outerwear, and though often mocked, we must respect their sacrifice in the name of animal welfare. The question is, do you have what it takes to do this hard job? Let’s start with the end.
Usually when cat ladies pass away, the cats turn on them and devour them. When all’s said and done, as thanks for their life time of giving, they are consumed, ‘processed’ and then buried like O’Henry candy bars in the same kitty litter they used to change (or not change).
It’s a slippery slope to Cat Lady status, but that slope has to start somewhere. And it sounds like 2 cats on your doorstep is the ticket. I’m not trying to scare you but just to let you know how greasy and slick this path can be. Hypothetical scenario: A couple of cats are ‘left’ with you by a relative. That relative ‘moves’ to someplace like Africa (a likely story by the way) and promises to fetch Snowball and Mittens as soon as they return. (Look on your calendar for the 15th of Never, pal, and mark it). Let’s also say they sweeten the deal by saying they’ll cover the vet costs and food. Then they conveniently get caught up in packing and rushing for the flight and conveniently forget to hook you up with the few thousand dollars behind the promises. (I see this happen everyday!) Yet another unfunded mandate.
(By the way, telling the city cats they are either going on a ‘drive to the country’ or ‘going to spend some time on a relative’s farm upstate’ is mafia-speak for getting whacked. Don’t be surprised if Mittens jumps if you slam the door too hard.)
Anyway, the relative neglects to mention that Mittens and Snowballs (‘balls’? Plural? Oh boy…) screw like jackrabbits every night and haven’t had their plumbing ‘fixed.’ Before you know it, Mittens is in a family way. Reality check: You are now a cat lady. Not just a cat lady but soon to be a cat grandmother which is a whole other magnitude of cat lady. Sure the kittens will be cute and tug at your blinds. You will scratch their bellies and laughing, hold them up to the ceiling. They will claw playfully at the telephone cord attached to the phone you keep using to reach the full voice mail of relative who rightfully owns them.
Soon you are the night manager at the Hotel Hairball.
Before you know it, you have converted the 3rd floor of your house to a makeshift kitty play pen. You will have maxed out the good will of your husband by asking him to move his office downstairs (Him: what the F%#@??) and then make a jungle gym out of 2x4s for them (You: But honey, they’re soooo cute!)
One fateful day, one of the 15 cats misses the litter box and soon it’s chaos. The next day no one of the 60 cats is using it any longer and you pretty much have to staple up greenhouse grade plastic to keep the stench in. After 2 years (your husband has long since moved out and your friends are scarce) you decide to open up the 2nd floor. “Grand opening everyone! Come on down! Great Grandpa Snowballs who has sired you all will be wearing a tux and tap dancing!” After all, 200 incestuous cats need to stretch their 800 legs!
You still have the downstairs to yourself, except for the 15 or so cats who have brazenly figured out how to julienne the plastic with their razor sharp claws and get in. And so long as they don’t actually step in the lasagna pan (at least too much), it’s still ok by you.
You are not sure if you have early onset tinnitus or if it is just the incessant, maddening din of meow. The stereo can’t play Tom Jones loud enough! Life is good!
Or is it?
You can see where this is heading. You will be the grand matron of an appreciative feline dynasty (that is, before they turn on you). You will enjoy the spoils of a heavenly return on investment for your earthly sense of animal welfare once at Saint Peter’s great gates (which will have angelic purring cats coiling around them and sharpening their claws on the harp strings, no doubt). But it will cost you in the here and now.
So proceed cautiously with any more than 1 cat with reproductive capacity right now. And verify that your daughter in law has a legitimate (roundtrip) ticket to Timbuktu or wherever she claims to be going or you will become the cat lady you fear.
Hope this helped.
Got a question for our advice columnist or a spade, outdoor, female proven mouser who can sing and dance AND act for his new Off Broadway (by 100 miles) production about farm life? Contact him at cwn4@aol.com
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Dear Wally 70 Post Office Ira
Dear Wally,I really enjoy your column. I am currently a postal employee and have been for many years.
Why do so many people buy 1 or 2 stamps at a time instead of buying 10 or 20? I realize that money is tight these days, but it amazes me that people will make a special trip to the post office for one simple purchase and then complain about the price of a stamp. Do I need to point out that driving to the post office uses gas, wear and tear on your vehicle and time? It’s more costly to make one special trip than to stock up. Like so many things, this makes no sense to me.
The other thing that boggles my mind is how rude people can be. They come in telling us how sick they are and in the next breath cough and spread their germs all over. YUK!! Dealing with the public can be interesting, rewarding, challenging and frustrating. Wally, do you think I’m losing my zip or just being anal?
Also, do you have an Ask Wally fan club? If so, I would like to join.
IMP, A fan and admirer from Kerhonkson, NY
Dear IMP:
First, let’s establish props--You are the collateral damage in the domestic war on germs and for that you have my deep condolences and sympathy. I often wonder how it is you postal employees are not laid low with disease each of the 365 days a year. You have nowhere to hide from the hacking public behind that faux-mica counter, do you?
(I also wonder if you were blindfolded, could you match the body odor or foot shuffle or throat clear to the customer? Do you postal guys have secret names for us like ‘Captain B.O.’, ‘Buzzard Breath’, ‘Nice Hair Piece’ and ‘Don’t You Have a Job?’)
Anyway, for those intent on rudely sharing their communicable airborne diseases with innocent government employees who have been further victimized by being forced to wear robin’s egg blue uniforms, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. IMP, you are an easy target. If you chose to wear a HEPA-95 respirator to work, or just not show up to work at all, I wouldn’t blame you one little bit.
Because you can’t conduct business behind a sheet of booger-proof glass, which would be a job requirement for me by the way, and because it’s every (post)man for himself, I think the solution is to make yourself repulsive.
How about going to a novelty shop and getting one of those giant, stick-on moles with a 3 inch curly black hair coming out of it. Slap it on your nose or something. Or get some imitation drool that you can smear on the side of your mouth. Some fake blood on your hand will do wonders in keeping people (both sick and healthy) nice and far away.
Remember, you personally just need to make yourself look less attractive than your hottie co-workers and let gravitational human nature take care of the rest. (This principle is used with roach management in NYC all the time- make your apartment less inviting than your neighbor’s and the problem necessarily goes down the hall).
You complain about the frequency and inefficiency of visits by the public-- i.e. driving the gas guzzling cars to the post office for just a stamp or two when they could easily buy a book and not have to mug through their purses every day for 44 dirty pennies. The postal office muthaship must be hip to this because they began peddling the Forever stamps- which, like grenades of SPAM, have no shelf life. Obviously our collective fear of commitment has been tickled and the once great idea of postage-purchase efficiency has worked like a potato in the tailpipe.
I think there may be more going on here. It may be that the public can’t get enough of your predictably sunny dispositions. I know from experience that I have never been treated rudely at a post office (except the 53 times when I was in NYC). Quite the opposite, it’s usually a pleasant enough conversation about the weather, which is a perennially safe and mostly enjoyable topic. A typical exchange might go:
Me: “Nice weather we’re having today.”
Postguy: “Oh yes!”
Me: “They say rain tomorrow.”
Postguy: “Yes they do.”
Now why wouldn’t I keep coming back for that? How tenderly rare and special is it to go somewhere public and not be given the finger? So thank you IMP and the rest of your colleagues.
Consider that in these days of economic uncertainty and political/ social divisiveness, we all know that your countertop acts as an ideologically inert watering hole of pleasantness as well as being a safe house for at least one non-combative commercial transaction during the day, if I may mix a few metaphors to make some roundabout point.
Get a bottle of Clorox, a bandana and stand your ground. It’ll all work out! Remember your motto: Neither rain, nor sleet, nor communicable disease, nor hammered 401k, nor loitering, nor unbathed, lingering customers shall keep you from delivering the mail. In fact, the only thing that might keep you from delivering the mail is that little 1960’s Iron Curtain crapbox on wheels they make you guys deliver the mail in because it is broken down on the side of the road and they stopped making parts when the Berlin Wall was constructed.
-Wally
Got a question for our advice columnist or just want to join his fan club? (Believe me, there’s still A LOT of room). There is a non-refundable initiation fee of $1,000 (please get a postal money order from the guy with the hairy nose mole!
Why do so many people buy 1 or 2 stamps at a time instead of buying 10 or 20? I realize that money is tight these days, but it amazes me that people will make a special trip to the post office for one simple purchase and then complain about the price of a stamp. Do I need to point out that driving to the post office uses gas, wear and tear on your vehicle and time? It’s more costly to make one special trip than to stock up. Like so many things, this makes no sense to me.
The other thing that boggles my mind is how rude people can be. They come in telling us how sick they are and in the next breath cough and spread their germs all over. YUK!! Dealing with the public can be interesting, rewarding, challenging and frustrating. Wally, do you think I’m losing my zip or just being anal?
Also, do you have an Ask Wally fan club? If so, I would like to join.
IMP, A fan and admirer from Kerhonkson, NY
Dear IMP:
First, let’s establish props--You are the collateral damage in the domestic war on germs and for that you have my deep condolences and sympathy. I often wonder how it is you postal employees are not laid low with disease each of the 365 days a year. You have nowhere to hide from the hacking public behind that faux-mica counter, do you?
(I also wonder if you were blindfolded, could you match the body odor or foot shuffle or throat clear to the customer? Do you postal guys have secret names for us like ‘Captain B.O.’, ‘Buzzard Breath’, ‘Nice Hair Piece’ and ‘Don’t You Have a Job?’)
Anyway, for those intent on rudely sharing their communicable airborne diseases with innocent government employees who have been further victimized by being forced to wear robin’s egg blue uniforms, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. IMP, you are an easy target. If you chose to wear a HEPA-95 respirator to work, or just not show up to work at all, I wouldn’t blame you one little bit.
Because you can’t conduct business behind a sheet of booger-proof glass, which would be a job requirement for me by the way, and because it’s every (post)man for himself, I think the solution is to make yourself repulsive.
How about going to a novelty shop and getting one of those giant, stick-on moles with a 3 inch curly black hair coming out of it. Slap it on your nose or something. Or get some imitation drool that you can smear on the side of your mouth. Some fake blood on your hand will do wonders in keeping people (both sick and healthy) nice and far away.
Remember, you personally just need to make yourself look less attractive than your hottie co-workers and let gravitational human nature take care of the rest. (This principle is used with roach management in NYC all the time- make your apartment less inviting than your neighbor’s and the problem necessarily goes down the hall).
You complain about the frequency and inefficiency of visits by the public-- i.e. driving the gas guzzling cars to the post office for just a stamp or two when they could easily buy a book and not have to mug through their purses every day for 44 dirty pennies. The postal office muthaship must be hip to this because they began peddling the Forever stamps- which, like grenades of SPAM, have no shelf life. Obviously our collective fear of commitment has been tickled and the once great idea of postage-purchase efficiency has worked like a potato in the tailpipe.
I think there may be more going on here. It may be that the public can’t get enough of your predictably sunny dispositions. I know from experience that I have never been treated rudely at a post office (except the 53 times when I was in NYC). Quite the opposite, it’s usually a pleasant enough conversation about the weather, which is a perennially safe and mostly enjoyable topic. A typical exchange might go:
Me: “Nice weather we’re having today.”
Postguy: “Oh yes!”
Me: “They say rain tomorrow.”
Postguy: “Yes they do.”
Now why wouldn’t I keep coming back for that? How tenderly rare and special is it to go somewhere public and not be given the finger? So thank you IMP and the rest of your colleagues.
Consider that in these days of economic uncertainty and political/ social divisiveness, we all know that your countertop acts as an ideologically inert watering hole of pleasantness as well as being a safe house for at least one non-combative commercial transaction during the day, if I may mix a few metaphors to make some roundabout point.
Get a bottle of Clorox, a bandana and stand your ground. It’ll all work out! Remember your motto: Neither rain, nor sleet, nor communicable disease, nor hammered 401k, nor loitering, nor unbathed, lingering customers shall keep you from delivering the mail. In fact, the only thing that might keep you from delivering the mail is that little 1960’s Iron Curtain crapbox on wheels they make you guys deliver the mail in because it is broken down on the side of the road and they stopped making parts when the Berlin Wall was constructed.
-Wally
Got a question for our advice columnist or just want to join his fan club? (Believe me, there’s still A LOT of room). There is a non-refundable initiation fee of $1,000 (please get a postal money order from the guy with the hairy nose mole!
Dear Wally 68 Earth Day
Dear Wally:
Earth Day is coming up. I know that we all have much to be thankful for and there’s much to be gained by sharing and celebrating our commonality, though it seems a hard sell these days to culturally weave that encompassing reality into something that doesn’t resemble a very flimsy g string. Statistics and warnings and film clips of melting icebergs and polar bears clutching life rafts are losing their punch as we numb to their repetitious exposure. What do you think? I feel the world’s people scratching their paunches, ho-humming and going back to life as they know it in their corners of a flat world. Tell me we are all connected, please?
-An earth lover feeling alone.
Dear Earth lover:
With a little bit of eavesdropping, a few questions, Google and some speculation, I’m ready to prove, once again, to those who still don’t believe it, that the earth is round, and we are connected. And as my friend who knows I get lost all the time says, don’t worry, you’ll eventually get back where you started because the world is round. You’ll meet a lot of folks on the way, but you’ll get back. The earth’s roundness is our connectivity, our complexity and our commonality, illustrated in part through the seemingly simplest of actions- drinking a cup coffee.
I am in a NY coffee shop-- In my hands, a hot cup of coffee. I consider the roundish shape and global implications of the bean we worship.
OK, I worship.
In the corner of this small shop, which is owned by a Spaniard, are rough burlap bags of coffee beans grown in Guatemala and picked in part by Hondurans.
The 100 pound sacks are loaded onto a Japanese-designed truck which runs on diesel. This fuel comes from Venezuela and is refined in the Caribbean. The truck travels to the seaport where the beans are offloaded into a container made of Indian steel. The container is loaded onto a cargo ship which was financed by the Austrians, made in the Netherlands, captained by an Australian, crewed by Indonesians, fueled by the Saudis and registered in Panama. The ship has just arrived from Singapore by way of the Portuguese Azores and all on board are relieved to have successfully avoided Somali pirates.
The captain wears a ring that is made from the gold and diamonds of two African countries. The setting was handled by an Israeli jeweler in Istanbul. It reminds the captain of his New Zealand wife whom he misses and so calls on a Korean cell phone (which was made in China) to say he is alive and well.
The shipping manifest for the coffee bean that makes up my coffee is written on a laptop designed in the US and manufactured in Taiwan with finally assembly in Mexico. A satellite with Czech avionics tracks the cargo as it makes its way north.
In America it is offloaded by enormous Norwegian cranes operated by an American born Kenyan who smokes an illegal Cuban cigar. A heavy duty Swedish truck with tires from Brazilian rubber takes the container to a distribution center, and it makes its way to a Vermont operation that uses natural gas from Canada to run the bean roaster.
Then it’s back on a truck driven by a UPS man in a brown uniform made in Thailand and brown boots from Senegal . He drops the roasted beans off with the coffee shop’s nice English manager (of Lebanese and Asian heritage) who signs for them with a pen made in Bangladesh while she serves A Russian man Irish coffee with a hint of Madagascarian vanilla. He hopes he doesn’t spill it on his Egyptian cotton shirt.
If the wood from the coffee shop’s frame could talk, I’d have proof from the way it says, Ehhh, that it was milled in Quebec, even though the logs are from New Jersey.
The manager takes the beans and drops them in a French made grinder before putting them into an Italian latte machine. She rings a small bell made in Tibet which signals that my order is up.
I take the coffee cup to my table, cup it in my hands and happen to look in the corner—Whaddya know! a few burlap bags of coffee beans from Guatemala!
As the caffeine works its way into my body, I become even more aware of a reason to celebrate.
Happy Earth day, indeed you round world!
-Wally
Got a question for our advice columnist ? Just want to argue that the Earth is flat? Or yell at him because he forgot to mention Greece? Email him at cwn4@aol.com
Earth Day is coming up. I know that we all have much to be thankful for and there’s much to be gained by sharing and celebrating our commonality, though it seems a hard sell these days to culturally weave that encompassing reality into something that doesn’t resemble a very flimsy g string. Statistics and warnings and film clips of melting icebergs and polar bears clutching life rafts are losing their punch as we numb to their repetitious exposure. What do you think? I feel the world’s people scratching their paunches, ho-humming and going back to life as they know it in their corners of a flat world. Tell me we are all connected, please?
-An earth lover feeling alone.
Dear Earth lover:
With a little bit of eavesdropping, a few questions, Google and some speculation, I’m ready to prove, once again, to those who still don’t believe it, that the earth is round, and we are connected. And as my friend who knows I get lost all the time says, don’t worry, you’ll eventually get back where you started because the world is round. You’ll meet a lot of folks on the way, but you’ll get back. The earth’s roundness is our connectivity, our complexity and our commonality, illustrated in part through the seemingly simplest of actions- drinking a cup coffee.
I am in a NY coffee shop-- In my hands, a hot cup of coffee. I consider the roundish shape and global implications of the bean we worship.
OK, I worship.
In the corner of this small shop, which is owned by a Spaniard, are rough burlap bags of coffee beans grown in Guatemala and picked in part by Hondurans.
The 100 pound sacks are loaded onto a Japanese-designed truck which runs on diesel. This fuel comes from Venezuela and is refined in the Caribbean. The truck travels to the seaport where the beans are offloaded into a container made of Indian steel. The container is loaded onto a cargo ship which was financed by the Austrians, made in the Netherlands, captained by an Australian, crewed by Indonesians, fueled by the Saudis and registered in Panama. The ship has just arrived from Singapore by way of the Portuguese Azores and all on board are relieved to have successfully avoided Somali pirates.
The captain wears a ring that is made from the gold and diamonds of two African countries. The setting was handled by an Israeli jeweler in Istanbul. It reminds the captain of his New Zealand wife whom he misses and so calls on a Korean cell phone (which was made in China) to say he is alive and well.
The shipping manifest for the coffee bean that makes up my coffee is written on a laptop designed in the US and manufactured in Taiwan with finally assembly in Mexico. A satellite with Czech avionics tracks the cargo as it makes its way north.
In America it is offloaded by enormous Norwegian cranes operated by an American born Kenyan who smokes an illegal Cuban cigar. A heavy duty Swedish truck with tires from Brazilian rubber takes the container to a distribution center, and it makes its way to a Vermont operation that uses natural gas from Canada to run the bean roaster.
Then it’s back on a truck driven by a UPS man in a brown uniform made in Thailand and brown boots from Senegal . He drops the roasted beans off with the coffee shop’s nice English manager (of Lebanese and Asian heritage) who signs for them with a pen made in Bangladesh while she serves A Russian man Irish coffee with a hint of Madagascarian vanilla. He hopes he doesn’t spill it on his Egyptian cotton shirt.
If the wood from the coffee shop’s frame could talk, I’d have proof from the way it says, Ehhh, that it was milled in Quebec, even though the logs are from New Jersey.
The manager takes the beans and drops them in a French made grinder before putting them into an Italian latte machine. She rings a small bell made in Tibet which signals that my order is up.
I take the coffee cup to my table, cup it in my hands and happen to look in the corner—Whaddya know! a few burlap bags of coffee beans from Guatemala!
As the caffeine works its way into my body, I become even more aware of a reason to celebrate.
Happy Earth day, indeed you round world!
-Wally
Got a question for our advice columnist ? Just want to argue that the Earth is flat? Or yell at him because he forgot to mention Greece? Email him at cwn4@aol.com
Dear Wally 69 rude public behavior
Dear Wally,Last night I attended a very nice live performance at the Rosendale Theater. Wally, I was
appalled at the conduct of some of my fellow audience members. The family owned theater sells small bags of popcorn. It is an understandable custom at a movie house, but Wally,there was a live thespian upon the stage and the play's author was inattendance. This was not an over amplified cinamatronic offering. Itwas a small and intimate live performance and the sound of cracklingpaper popcorn bags was enough to drive one to go postal. One womanbehind me was folding hers into an elaborate origami construct whileblissfully unaware of the distainful looks I was sending her way. Andthen there was the late-coming soup-slurper. Why couldn't she haveeaten her dinner in the lobby or awaited the intermission? Surely amember of our overfed society could have postponed her oralgratification for a more appropriate time?I was sincerely hoping for a post performance discussion period so Icould arise from my seat and excoriate these people but alas it wasnot to be. In my brief discussion with the playwright I did refrainfrom apologizing for their actions but should I have approached themindividually to chastise them?Just sign me,Outraged
Dear Outraged:
No better way to curdle an otherwise buttery theater experience than to have the folks on our flanks, the very ones we are haphazardly plopped next to in theaters by the gods of bad parking spaces who make us late, dive headlong into their Happy Meals until the din they create from munching and folding resembles a cicada-infested meadow on a July night.
Big slurping cow tongues, smacking lips, relentlessly grinding molars, crinkling wrappers. Uggggghhhhhhhh! Talk about a horror movie in Surround Sound!
I recently went to a big ‘multi-plex’ where the theater sells bulging tankers of popcorn larger than the water troughs we fill for the horses. No human should be allowed to eat this much in a sitting, even if it is a so-called bargain. In its thin defense, however, when the jumbo-tub is finished, or at least when the comatose consumer has reached his explosion bending moment, all that the rest of us hear is the single dull thud of empty container being released to the floor by an unclenched hand, unlike the irritating paper bag folders who seem unable to litter politely or discretely.
As for the live performers, they too must not like these crackling, munching, slurping audience offerings much. Or anything else that distracts. ( I’ve been pelted with my fair share of vitamin C-rich citrus and leafy vegetables while onstage. I’m only appreciative in that I have yet to get Scurvy. But who’s laughing last when I clean up after the show and get to take home an entire free salad bar?! HA!)
I guess annexing the theater as one’s own personal dining room is a logical extension of the immediacy and intimacy we’ve come to expect. Doesn’t make it right though. Plus there’s something repulsively glutinous and passively indulgent about the smoking, bucking conveyer belt of chow that publically terminates in America’s collective mouth. So we’re hogs AND we’re rude about it. Bad combo. Not all of us, but enough of us that someone like you has to write someone like me and grouse.
The problem with chastising the noise makers directly, as you wondered, is that if you aggravate the wrong person whose blood sugar is tweakin’ from the Twinkies, Mr. Vigilante Man, you might find confrontation beyond your ability to control it. And frankly, you sound like a skinny guy. You corner the wrong theater piggy and call them out, and they might just put you in their popcorn tub upside down, add salt and eat YOU! I’m just saying be careful.
Here’s a short, non-exhaustive list of public ‘don’ts’ on which I’m sure we all can agree: If you go to a theater, and you have to eat, eat discretely. No soups, baby back ribs, no bouillabaisse. As a rule of thumb, nothing that requires a hibachi to prepare it.
Now, especially if the show is live, please pay attention: there is no eating at all, capezio? The exception being the dinner theater. And one’s ample punishment is having to eat the institutional breaded chicken and watch Oklahoma! (their exclamation point not mine).
If folks somehow missed this public behavior nugget growing up and don’t find it rude to eat at a live show, then read on for some more helpful hints: It is rude to clip one’s toenails in public (I almost had my left eye put out by a rogue clipping that shot out like shrapnel from someone’s poorly controlled nail clipper as I walked by them on a park bench). It is rude to scratch one’s privates in public. I’d personally like to say to the guy at the gym that it is rude to flatulate in public places, especially when you then walk out with feigned disgust and righteous indignation and leave others to wallow in your business and falsely conclude that it was my doing. ( Oh, you KNOW who you are).
It is also rude to kick the seatback in front of you on the plane, especially when the thing in front of you looks a lot like the back of my head.
My list of unacceptable public behavior far exceeds the spatial allowance of this column (or even this entire paper) but the above represent a choice select few. Hopefully this helps reign in some improper public behavior and your theater experience henceforth starts to improve. If not, consider buying the theater yourself. I’m not being flip--it’s for sale—Own it yourself and you’ll get to make the rules!
-Wally
Got a question for our advice columnist or want to find out how you can help buy (and preserve) the beautiful, historic Rosendale Theater? Email him at cwn4@aol.com
appalled at the conduct of some of my fellow audience members. The family owned theater sells small bags of popcorn. It is an understandable custom at a movie house, but Wally,there was a live thespian upon the stage and the play's author was inattendance. This was not an over amplified cinamatronic offering. Itwas a small and intimate live performance and the sound of cracklingpaper popcorn bags was enough to drive one to go postal. One womanbehind me was folding hers into an elaborate origami construct whileblissfully unaware of the distainful looks I was sending her way. Andthen there was the late-coming soup-slurper. Why couldn't she haveeaten her dinner in the lobby or awaited the intermission? Surely amember of our overfed society could have postponed her oralgratification for a more appropriate time?I was sincerely hoping for a post performance discussion period so Icould arise from my seat and excoriate these people but alas it wasnot to be. In my brief discussion with the playwright I did refrainfrom apologizing for their actions but should I have approached themindividually to chastise them?Just sign me,Outraged
Dear Outraged:
No better way to curdle an otherwise buttery theater experience than to have the folks on our flanks, the very ones we are haphazardly plopped next to in theaters by the gods of bad parking spaces who make us late, dive headlong into their Happy Meals until the din they create from munching and folding resembles a cicada-infested meadow on a July night.
Big slurping cow tongues, smacking lips, relentlessly grinding molars, crinkling wrappers. Uggggghhhhhhhh! Talk about a horror movie in Surround Sound!
I recently went to a big ‘multi-plex’ where the theater sells bulging tankers of popcorn larger than the water troughs we fill for the horses. No human should be allowed to eat this much in a sitting, even if it is a so-called bargain. In its thin defense, however, when the jumbo-tub is finished, or at least when the comatose consumer has reached his explosion bending moment, all that the rest of us hear is the single dull thud of empty container being released to the floor by an unclenched hand, unlike the irritating paper bag folders who seem unable to litter politely or discretely.
As for the live performers, they too must not like these crackling, munching, slurping audience offerings much. Or anything else that distracts. ( I’ve been pelted with my fair share of vitamin C-rich citrus and leafy vegetables while onstage. I’m only appreciative in that I have yet to get Scurvy. But who’s laughing last when I clean up after the show and get to take home an entire free salad bar?! HA!)
I guess annexing the theater as one’s own personal dining room is a logical extension of the immediacy and intimacy we’ve come to expect. Doesn’t make it right though. Plus there’s something repulsively glutinous and passively indulgent about the smoking, bucking conveyer belt of chow that publically terminates in America’s collective mouth. So we’re hogs AND we’re rude about it. Bad combo. Not all of us, but enough of us that someone like you has to write someone like me and grouse.
The problem with chastising the noise makers directly, as you wondered, is that if you aggravate the wrong person whose blood sugar is tweakin’ from the Twinkies, Mr. Vigilante Man, you might find confrontation beyond your ability to control it. And frankly, you sound like a skinny guy. You corner the wrong theater piggy and call them out, and they might just put you in their popcorn tub upside down, add salt and eat YOU! I’m just saying be careful.
Here’s a short, non-exhaustive list of public ‘don’ts’ on which I’m sure we all can agree: If you go to a theater, and you have to eat, eat discretely. No soups, baby back ribs, no bouillabaisse. As a rule of thumb, nothing that requires a hibachi to prepare it.
Now, especially if the show is live, please pay attention: there is no eating at all, capezio? The exception being the dinner theater. And one’s ample punishment is having to eat the institutional breaded chicken and watch Oklahoma! (their exclamation point not mine).
If folks somehow missed this public behavior nugget growing up and don’t find it rude to eat at a live show, then read on for some more helpful hints: It is rude to clip one’s toenails in public (I almost had my left eye put out by a rogue clipping that shot out like shrapnel from someone’s poorly controlled nail clipper as I walked by them on a park bench). It is rude to scratch one’s privates in public. I’d personally like to say to the guy at the gym that it is rude to flatulate in public places, especially when you then walk out with feigned disgust and righteous indignation and leave others to wallow in your business and falsely conclude that it was my doing. ( Oh, you KNOW who you are).
It is also rude to kick the seatback in front of you on the plane, especially when the thing in front of you looks a lot like the back of my head.
My list of unacceptable public behavior far exceeds the spatial allowance of this column (or even this entire paper) but the above represent a choice select few. Hopefully this helps reign in some improper public behavior and your theater experience henceforth starts to improve. If not, consider buying the theater yourself. I’m not being flip--it’s for sale—Own it yourself and you’ll get to make the rules!
-Wally
Got a question for our advice columnist or want to find out how you can help buy (and preserve) the beautiful, historic Rosendale Theater? Email him at cwn4@aol.com
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