Lent and Mardi Gras

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When my various treatments begin, I will have to give up a lot of things. I’ll have to give up hot/spicy food when I’m on chemo, because it will upset my stomach. Also caffeinated coffee. Also fatty foods. Most of all I will have to give up alcohol, because it would both irritate my throat (which will be irradiated five days a week) and interfere with some of the medications. One of the Comprehensive Cancer Center people told me the other day: “We’ve tried accommodating people with alcohol, and it just doesn’t work.”

Good goddamn!

My friend Joanne said, in response to this: “Pretend it’s Lent.”

This is excellent advice. Lent is forty days (not counting Sundays), roughly the period of my chemo/radiation therapy. People generally give up silly things for Lent, like chocolate and popcorn. I will be giving up my beloved curries, and hot sauce (which I put on pretty much everything!), and my evening drinks (which calm me tremendously).

But the treatments haven’t begun yet. I probably won’t start them until mid-October, once my feeding tube has been installed and my dental work is done and my facial swelling has subsided. (When you undergo radiation for throat cancer, they make a mask to hold your head in exactly the right position. If they make the mask before my dental work, or while I’m swollen, the radiation won’t be directed accurately.)

So I now have approximately three weeks of no rules at all, before the treatments begin. Three weeks of Mardi Gras.

And what happens during Mardi Gras?

All hell breaks loose.

I have had curry three days in a row now. I drink nightly. I’m eating ice cream as I write this.

When I begin the treatments, I hope they prescribe me a lot of soothing medication, for Partner’s sake and my own.

Remember what Bette Midler said to Kramer on “Seinfeld,” when she wanted her black-and-white cookie:

BETTE: Get me one of those Black and White cookies.

KRAMER: Yeah, all right, yeah…. (hangs up) They don't have any. But don't worry I'm going to get you one somewhere.

BETTE: Good. Because if I don't get a Black and White cookie I'm not going to be very pleasant to be around.

KRAMER: Now that's impossible.

O I assure you it’s possible.

Happy Mardi Gras!

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The cursed restaurant

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There is a small restaurant right across the street from my office building. When we first got there thirteen years ago, it was a luncheon counter / bar, and it got pretty regular business, and you could buy lottery tickets there. It was grimy-looking inside and out, and gave the impression that it had been there for years.

 

 

And suddenly, after a few years, it closed.

 

 

The building stood empty for a couple of years. Then two young entrepreneurs bought it and turned it into a club (upstairs) and restaurant (downstairs). The club did very well, and is still going strong (I find lots of broken glass and car keys and discarded compacts and cigarette wrappers in our parking lot on Monday mornings).

 

 

The downstairs restaurant flailed around for a few years and finally closed.

 

 

Then it redecorated, and put out new signs. It was now a cute little Italian restaurant! Partner and I ate there once, and it was excellent. We made a resolution to eat there again, but before we knew it, it was gone.

 

 

Then it became a “Latin grill.” The few people who ate there said it was pretty good. Then I spoke to someone who said he’d eaten there the week before and it was pretty bad. Then, a few days after that, they closed.

 

 

Now I see it’s Jamaican/Caribbean.

 

 

How long do you think this incarnation will last?

 

 

Some people think that there are buildings that have curses on them. Remember Babu’s Pakistani restaurant on “Seinfeld”? Babu didn’t succeed, and neither did anyone else in that venue.

 

 

It’s a curse, I tell you.

 

 

(So: do you feel like Jamaican food? If so, act quickly! In a few weeks, it’ll be Korean!)

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Spaghetti tacos: a meme the whole family can enjoy

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Until yesterday, I’d never heard of spaghetti tacos.  Now I can’t stop thinking about them.

 

Apparently the concept was introduced as a joke on the Disney tweener show “iCarly.”  It caught on.  And why not?  Frankly it sounds wonderful.  Partner has caught me eating cold spaghetti sandwiches in the kitchen more than once, so obviously I’m a presold audience.  But really, why not?  Tacos usually have something starchy like beans in them.  Also tomatoes.  Also cheese.  Also meat.

 

Sorry, I got carried away. 

 

Anyway: it’s no longer a joke.  Kids liked the idea and began asking for them.  There are now recipes and everything (although I have a hard time imagining that you’d really need a recipe). 

 

A recent article in the Times discusses this phenomenon as an example of a viral meme.  (A “meme,” in case you’re not familiar with the concept, is an idea or concept that gets passed from mind to mind.  A catchy song, an interesting concept, a fad – all of these can be considered memes.)  Memes are themselves ideas, but they manifest as behavior.  Not many creatures can “catch” them; human beings do, along with other primates, dolphins, and birds.  But we humans are clever little monkeys and we just love imitating things.  So we catch ideas in much the same way (and just as frequently) as we catch colds.

 

I tend to visualize science concepts in cartoonish terms.  For me, a flu virus is an ugly purple blob with a frowny face, that wants to get into my body and muss up my various organs.  In the same way, I visualize the average meme (for example, Train’s overplayed megahit “Hey, Soul Sister”) as a fluffy little bunny that hops into my brain and wiggles its nose at all of my angry little synapses; if the bunny is cute enough, my synapses will get all gooey and sentimental and melt away, and the bunny will get in and start laying colorful little Easter eggs up and down my cerebrum.  And then I will be singing “Hey, Soul Sister” for the rest of the day.

 

Here’s my contribution to the science of memetics: a meme, to be successful, should be polyvalent.  By this I mean that it should be appealing in more than one way, so that it can get into your brain through more than one gateway. 

 

So what’s so polyvalent / successful about the “spaghetti taco” meme?

 

Imagine the “spaghetti taco” bunny hopping into a kid’s brain.  I see the kid going through something like this process (though very little of it happens consciously):

 

1.      I like spaghetti.

2.      I like tacos.

3.      I like the idea of icky foods (like Gummi Worms) my parents might disapprove of.

4.      I don’t really like icky foods themselves, as I’m still a pretty picky eater.

 

And not least:

 

5.      I like imitating stuff I see on TV.

 

And hop! goes the bunny.  And now little Rudolphus wants spaghetti tacos for dinner.

 

The same Times article mentions Festivus, the “Seinfeld” alternative to Christmas, as another TV-generated meme.  Here’s my take on the polyvalency of Festivus:

 

1.      I like holidays.

2.      I hate Christmas.

3.      I like the idea of doing something that mildly outrages my parents / family.

4.      I don’t really want to do anything really outrageous.

5.      I like the idea that I can make this stuff up as I go along.

 

And again:

 

6.      I like imitating stuff I see on TV.

 

Boing!  Break out the aluminum pole and the airing of grievances.

 

Some memes aren’t successful, for whatever reason.  Some, like the Ebolavirus, burn themselves out in a flash.  (I think the Hula Hoop may have done this, actually. My sister Susan loved it for about fifteen minutes, back in the day.)  Some memes just get in there and itch.  (“Seinfeld” was full of these annoying ideas.  George memorably said this of himself: “You know the way I work, I'm like a commercial jingle. First it's a little irritating, then you hear it a few times, you hum it in the shower, by the third date it's ‘By Mennen!’”  Frankly, however, I have never been tempted to eat a candy bar with a knife and fork.)

 

If “memes” aren’t new enough for you, brace yourself for the “teme.”  This is a newer-than-new concept which I frankly barely understand, but I think it goes something like this:

 

·        Genes replicate.

·        The most successful genes replicate most successfully (yes, I know, tautology).

·        The most successful genes end up structuring themselves in a way that maximizes their success (yes, I know, anthropomorphism).

·        Genes end up “creating” unicellular and multicellular organisms.

·        Some of those multicellular organisms (go look in the mirror for a clue to this one) can hold ideas, and pass ideas along.

·        The ideas (called “memes”) start replicating, using human beings as their host.

·        We’re not very efficient hosts.  We’re okay,  but we’re not perfect.

·        The memes somehow blindly prompt us to create better transmission and storage systems, so that they can reproduce more freely.

·        Like TV.  And computers.  And . . .

·        I get lost at this point.  Go read Susan Blackmore’s article.

 

I shouldn’t even comment on a theory I don’t understand.  But did you notice that, when I listed the polyvalencies for spaghetti tacos and for Festivus, both lists ended with “I like imitating things I see on TV”?  I tried telling people in the office today about spaghetti tacos, and it was a real non-starter.  But apparently when TV tells you something, it sounds really good.

 

So is TV actually a higher-grade meme-delivery system?

 

And, if so, is TV already coming up with ideas of its own?

 

I love this theory.

 

I love it so much that I want to spread it around and get it into your head, so that you can think about it and talk about it and spread it around into all your friends’ heads too.

 

Spaghetti tacos, anyone?

 

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