Sunday, August 15, 2004

Herkys, Mediocrity and Deepthroat

A weekly email newsletter I receive asked what its readers thought of the three zillion herkazoids littering the sidewalks and parks-- providing photo op's for the super eager parents of kids here for freshbeing orientation (am I gay, lesbian, bi , a tranie?). I've been wondering if the Herkys might be edible after their tenure frightening small children in and around the Iowa City/Coralville vicinity. Many people in the poorest nations in Africa survive on a root vegetable called manioc that has no nutritional value to speak of but does fill the belly and provide a smidgen of carbohydrates. Manioc is boiled and then mashed into a moderately edible paste.

I emailed a few University and Iowa City big wigs about the possibility of doing something like this with a Herky or four but I never heard back from anyone. I was shocked. In Washington, DC, the city is up in arms about the Pandas they've got everywhere. Hell, The Washington Post is covering the story. I think what we've got happening here is one big Herkygate. We need a Carl, a Bob and our very own deepthroat. With all things, all you really need to do is follow the money.

Any takers? My reputation around here is bad enough. Of course, that might be the very reason I should take this on. What do I care what people think anymore. Okay, the truth is I suspect most people who've known me for as long as I've been around actually think fairly highly of me. Maybe even a few new friends, as well. My real hope at the moment is that most of my readers find these silly Herkys as ridiculous and as big of a waste of money that could have been spent on real human needs as I do (phew, what a bear of a sentence).

Hey, way to go to the University Tennis team for having to be thrown off the courts by the police before the bulldozers came in to mow down the only outdoor courts in order to make way for the bigger, brighter, new & improved Kinnick stadium. Jeez, I hate to sound like such a WASP but tennis is such a beautiful and dignified sport. I'm about the worst player you will ever meet. My idea of a successful game is keeping a volley going--actually hitting the ball to the person on the other side of the net and having them return the favor. It's preferable if you've got a foursome who share a similiar definition of a "good game" because then you end up running around less and have more people around to laugh at how pathetic your game is. Tennis one of the few sports I love to watch others play (basketball & soccer being the others). My father has played all his life and still gets a round in every morning even at age of 72. I used to love watching him dash around the court, esp. with my "Uncle" John (he's actually my uncle about 4 times removed). They were amazing and when they played ping-pong you couldn't even see the ball it moved back and forth so quickly and with such precision. My friends and I watched in awe. We'd take a whirl at it when they were done, play miserably and then head up to my bedroom to set up Barbie's Dream House, her Camper and put Ken at the wheel of her red convertible.

The thing about tennis is that no one is crushing anybody else. There's no tackling, no hitting of one another, no pumped up, excessive muscle groups. In that sense it was akin to playing with Barbie and her pals --Ken, Midge and little cousin Skipper. Sure, every once and awhile we'd get wild and have Ken crawl on top of Barbie and have at it but that's about as daring as it ever got. Ultimately, Barbie and all her friends got haircuts and dye jobs from yours truly. Too bad punk didn't make it to the suburbs of Charlotte as quickly as it did NYC. Eventually I got wild and more daring. Charlotte was too small town for me. I headed north as often as possible, hitting some of the holy grails of the NY nightlife scene --CBGBs, the Peppermint Lounge, Elaine's (shitty pesto, fyi) -- when I probably should have been learning advanced calculus or something more useful than how to cop an eight ball. Hey, one time when a friend and I were staying in Times Square, "Deep Throat" was playing in the theater across from our hotel. There's a nice wrap for this little post although I have to add I have not been to NYC in almost 15 years and someone told me recently that Times Square has been completely Disney-fied which made me rather sad. Mindless, family fun schlock that serves to reinforce mediocrity and the status quo. I'm trying to remember which transcendentalist poet-philosopher warned that mediocrity would be the downfall of democracy. I want to say Emerson but I don't know if that's correct. It sure sounds like something he'd say, no?


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