Sensitive: Will cry at the drop of a hat.

Upbeat: Takes antidepressants.

Healthy: Herpes in remission.

Lonely: Needy.

Smart: Doesn’t use hairspray in pits, brush with KY Jelly.

Intelligent: Can and will misquote Shakespeare for all occasions.

Sleepless In…: Has seen too many Nora Ephron movies to be trusted.

Romantic: Spend lots, spend often, or else.

Enjoys Finer Things In Life: And you thought “Romantic” was expensive.

Spiritual: Will latch onto every New Age trend du jour; owns extensive self-help library. Has crystals collecting dust atop Celestine Prophecy in closet.

Sincere: Self-absorbed as hell, but coated in a veneer of “caring.” Makes eye contact, nods appreciatively. Big whoop.

Serious Replies Only: Marry me, or else. These are the people who, after a one-night stand, will tearfully exclaim, “But I thought we were going to get married!”

No Head Games, Please: (1,f) Hasn’t read The Rules. (2,m) At 36 or so, finally figured out that being a jerk wasn’t getting him anything but his underwear dumped on the front lawn.

Classy: Brassy. Spreads champagne on hot dog buns, wears furs with sneakers.

Sunny Disposition: Takes herbals instead of Prozac.

Mensch: Jewish version of SNAG (Sensitive New Age Guy). Keeps kosher and puts the seat
down.

Eclectic: Has amassed huge collection of crap calculated to impress you. Or just couldn’t spell “eccentric.”

Discreet: Extramarital affair wanted.

Mature: (1,m) Will buy tampons with a minimum of fuss. (2,f) Won’t clean toilet with your toothbrush after minor spats.

Daredevil: Does the damnedest things given just the right amount of alcohol.

Handsome: Preens for everything, including own reflection.

Hopeless Romantic: (1) Sap. (2) Thinks this date was important for some reason, will buy roses just in case.

Seeks Attractive…: Shallow.

Looks Unimportant: Sure. Neither is size.

Princess: Need we say more?

Adventurous: Does dumb things to look younger.

Old-Fashioned: Hates sex, listens to AM radio, thinks woman’s place is in the kitchen. Usually racist and/or homophobe.

Godly: Won’t sleep with you. Ever.

Slim/Trim/Thin: Insert eating disorder of choice. Weighs ten pounds, can’t be seen when standing sideways, but still asks, “Do I look fat in this?”

Sexy: Flirts shamelessly, especially when drunk. Wears tight, ill-fitting clothing appropriate to someone ten years (or more) younger.

Call-Or Else: And if you don’t, you’ll find your dismembered pets in baggies in your freezer.

Caring: (1) Martyr. (2) “But s/he loves me!” Relationship equivalent of a handyman. Finds people in varying states of disrepair, brings them home to “fix.” Shows them off to friends, who smile politely and wonder to themselves why their friend didn’t just hire a professional.

Harley Rider: Usually found in bowling alleys. Will gladly compare tattoos with you. Smokes like a chimney, can drink you under the table. And the men are even worse.

Seeking LTR: Still alone after having collected enough phone numbers to cover the men’s room at Port Authority (concourse level, by the George Segal sculpture); figures the game might be up.

Marriage-Minded: Lost last 29 significant others due to a pathological fear of commitment; afraid if they don’t find someone right now, they’ll die alone in their attic, surrounded only by cats.

Year-End Special: (varies; often seasonal) “Holy shit! It’s New Years’/Kwanzaa/Boxing Day/Yom Kippur, and I’m still single! And getting older!” Equal parts desperation and cry for help.

Young At Heart: Arrested development case, aged 55-75. Wears leather, has pony tail (but more hair in nose and ears than on head); uses outdated slang to appear “hip.”

Survivor: (1) Will gladly inform all and sundry how they’ve “triumphed” over anything and everyone who’s slighted them in the least since age two. Expects to be saluted for excessive navel gazing and reading of self-help books. Will tell you how hard they worked to get here ($4.75/line, 32 characters/line max., punctuation included). (2) Cubs fan.

Accomplished: Managed to get to their 40’s or so without a nervous breakdown, and anyway, it sounded better than “Survivor.”

Freaky: Maladjusted.

Muse Wanted: Looking for a sugar daddy.

Seeks Professional: Inbred yuppie social climber.

Exotic: Sounded better than “funny looking.” Often refers to self as “Mysterious.”

Mysterious: Deliberately obtuse.

Very Attractive: Then what are you doing in the personals?

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And it’s not always the same guy, either. Different people. It’s really disconcerting when you’re trying to pinch a loaf and there’s someone 2 1/2 feet away just getting to the bridge of “My Heart Must Go On.” I mean, really now. Is this necessary? I can still detect (how could I not) what smells like you’ve dragged a rotting corpse into the stall with you, and I can still hear, over the humming, what sounds like a fireworks display, or like you’re violating the aforementioned rotting corpse. Enough, already!

On that note, I’m off to find the Times and a set of earplugs.

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10/9: House of Blues, LA (8pm)
10/11 and 10/12: Fillmore East (the venue formerly known as Irving Plaza), NYC (9pm)
10/14: House of Blues, Chicago (7:30pm)

Tickets available via TicketBastardMaster.

(nb.: Tickets for the Irving Plaza show are SRO, and are priced $25; not sure about the others, as I don’t live within striking distance of Chicago or LA)

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Voices of Time: A Life in Stories by Eduardo Galeano, translated by Mark Fried. Metropolitan Books, 2006.

Reading Eduardo Galeano is like the literary equivalent of Pablo Neruda via Wire’s “Pink Flag:” Short, sharp vignettes, each with a lovely economy, abound over many of the Uruguayan author’s best works, from the Memory of Fire trilogy through his 1998 bestseller Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking Glass World. There’s a certain anger here, but it’s anger as well-directed as it is deeply felt; and it’s suffused with a warmth for those who’ve gotten the short end of the stick, without stooping to condescension.

But there’s also a certain danger in reviewing Galeano, especially if you enjoy his works. There’s the temptation to just quote your favorite bits, and let them stand in for the whole, sort of like a film trailer. Having said that, I’ll open with one line that could easily stand in for the collection: “Reporters don’t cover dreams.”

It’s true enough of the nightly news, but not of the author’s work; dreams have been Galeano’s beat for years, in tandem with–and sometimes jostling against–the waking world that he chronicles. And for every famous name encountered in the stories, from Caetano Veloso to Diego Maradona or Sebastiao Salgado, it’s the quotidian details of the lives of everyone else–blue algae, ants, pensioners, bartenders, and strangers met along the way–that give the book its real heft.

And whereas the Memory of Fire trilogy encompassed the history of the Americas, Voices in Time starts with the beginnings of life itself, progresses through (but, fittingly, does not end with) death, and takes the scenic route to a number of points in between.

There’s probably much more that could be said about this book, but nothing that would add to the work itself. Suffice to say that the collection is like life itself: sprawling, messy, sometimes sad, often funny, and ultimately, entirely too short.

Pursuit, by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza.

This is the fifth, and perhaps final (but perhaps not), installment of bestselling Brazilian author Garcia-Roza’s Espinosa series. I’ll forego the customary pull-quote hyperbole (“An enchanting, riveting read that will hold you completely in its thrall from start to finish!”) since there’s plenty of that to be found on the dust-jacket.

But don’t begrudge the author his accolades; he’s earned them. At a time when detective fiction/mystery seems to consist of either A: Softcore porn and a handful of dead bodies, or B: recipies for baked goods, a cat, a few chaste kisses, and a handful of dead bodies–and yes, I’m aware that there are exceptions, but please, go to the Mystery section of your local bookstore and see if the selection doesn’t bear me out–this is a rare bird: creative, thoughtful, literary, and sometimes given to flights of fancy.

And that, I suppose, could apply equally to the series’ protagonist, Espinosa. This isn’t a hardboiled detective in the tradtion of Chandler, Cain, or Hammett; he’s something else altogether. Rather than try to do the writer, and his character, justice, I’ll let Espinosa give a thumbnail description of himself:

“I’m not a warrior, I’m a cop; I’m not a hero, I’m a public employee; and I’m no philosopher, despite my name.” If you can picture a less-neurotic Woody Allen channeling Sam Spade, you’d still be out in left field, but at least in the ballpark.

In a recent interview, Garcia-Roza stated that he was through with the Espinosa series–for now–and that a new series, with one of the current series’ characters as its protagonist, would begin to appear soon. My money would be on Welber, the most fully-developed character in the series apart from its protagonist; that said, I wouldn’t be surprised if that–like so much else in this series–is another red herring.

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1. Snapple sodas: It used to be you could get something fizzy made “from the best stuff on earth.” Creative flavors, too. In addition to having a credible root beer (ie. good, but not as good as Stewart’s), they had flavors like Peach Melba, Cherry Lime Rickey, and Chocolate soda. Now that I think of it, any chocolate soda I’ve liked, from the Snapple to the inferior one put out by Arizona for a short time, has vanished from the shelves.
2. Doritos flavors: It’s bad enough that they changed the formula for Doritos, so much so that they now taste closer to every other nacho chip out there. What’s worse is some of the past types that they don’t make any more. Some varieties’ passing–eg. pizza–I can’t say that I minded so much. But others, like Jumpin’ Jack flavor (much better than the current Pepper Jack) I really miss. The other old favorite, referenced in song* and story, is Taco flavored Doritos. They come and go like an old flame. They’re there for a bit, just long enough to get your hopes up, and then they vanish again, leaving you feeling cheated and just a little pissed.
3. Peanut Butter Boppers: I’m not sure quite how to describe these. Think of… uh… well, it looked like a turd festooned with cookie crumbs. Maybe somebody was raiding the Keebler Elves’ outhouse or something. But still, they were tasty, and for a couple of years, I went through them like I now go through cigarettes… probably the reason that I am the fine, strapping specimen that I am now.
4. Chicken Gyro, circa 1996: I’m not saying that you can’t walk into practically any place owned/run by Greeks or anyone else from the vicinity of the Mediterranean and get a chicken gyro. I’m saying that this chicken gyro would have made God Himself salivate uncontrollably. This, you see, wasn’t just a bunch of mechanically separated chicken,** formed into a cone and sliced onto a pita with some wilted lettuce, sad onions, and tomatoes stiffer than this morning’s erection. Oh, no. This was marinated chicken chunks, fresh greens, hummus, tabouleh, and tahini, expertly piled onto the pita by some Algerian guy in a little place in East Rutherford that became substandard Sushi takeout soon after. This was the sandwich-as-religious-experience.
5. Dinner at Grandma’s: Whether it was fish dinner on Fridays (what do you want from a family of Irish Catholics?),�her rice pudding, or a spaghetti that I have tried to duplicate but couldn’t (and this even using the same ingredients, as far as I can remember), I think that this is the one I miss the most. This isn’t to say that my grandmother was Julia Child; but I’ll miss those potato pancakes long after the taste of all the supposed “fine dining” has faded.

*Song, at least: “Fish On” by Primus.���������

**Like they use in Slim Jims. I shit you not; read the ingredients.

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