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There was a time in America when soccer was considered to be a Commie sport and that’s why the kids on the west side of Chicago in the mid-to-late fifties and early sixties did not play soccer.

Maybe that’s why. I’m not sure. The fact that none of us had ever seen a soccer ball, let alone have access to one, might have had something to do with it. A contributing factor could have been that nobody knew anything about soccer back then. We also didn’t have a lot of large green spaces on which to play the world’s most popular sport.

Communism or the mere threat of it was at the root of most of American fears back then and our parents wanted no part of us playing any of the Commie games, with the possible exception of Cossacks and Thieves, which was sort of a Stalinist version of Monopoly except that it was played outdoors without dice and no possibility of property ownership. Commies, we had learned, were those terrible people who won that part of WWII that we didn’t. They threatened us with nuclear bombs, although our safety from such attacks was assured by the wood-and-steel desks we were instructed to hide under.

While this was what many of us had heard, nobody knew from whom we heard it. I actually don’t remember ever having a discussion about soccer with my parents. I don’t know that they had an opinion about soccer or its politics. I don’t know that they knew what soccer was. Nor do I remember having any discussion about any sport that might have involved politics of any stripe. We played ping-pong knowing only that China seemed to be a faraway country seemingly in desperate need of all the broccoli American children wouldn’t eat. Nobody ever mentioned Mao.

We had a guy in our neighborhood who sold snacks and candy to local stores. He wasn’t French, but he had a French-sounding last name, sported a modest handlebar mustache, wore a beret and lived with his wife in a small house on a corner lot. A lot of us hung out at his house for the free snacks and to watch soccer matches on the 9-inch black-and-white television that sat on a small table in a corner of his finished basement. The matches were broadcast on a UHF channel in Spanish, and featured a one-camera view of the action that seemed a mile or so away from where the actual camera might have been. Bob, the French guy, got excited when somebody maybe scored. It was hard to tell.

None of us were inspired to play soccer after watching these games.

In school, our mandatory recesses and physical education classes involved our playing dodge ball, kickball, climbing ropes, shooting hoops, tumbling and, after a requisite number of calisthenics, wind sprints. If any of us failed to pay proper respect to the prescribed regimen of activities, we ran laps until the hour was up.

Exercise was–in my era–punishment. In many ways, it still is.

The extra-curricular activities in the alleys of my neighborhoods included shooting craps and pitching pennies, both of which were potentially profitable. Stoop ball and stick ball were popular as well. We also played sandlot baseball on vacant lots, which was every boy’s favorite game in those days.

None of this prepared me for the late 1980s when, as a father in suburban Los Angeles, I was forced to become a soccer dad. Geri went along with this and we bought a van which allowed us to participate only as chauffeurs for Courtney’s team. A couple of years later, everybody in our neighborhood had bought a van and the competition to do as little as possible in pee-wee soccer became more intense.

I was late by mere minutes to the organizational meeting of Daniel’s first introduction to soccer. I was hoping to provide snacks, first-aid, shuttle service or condom distribution, but my tardiness was rewarded with the job of assistant coach. Jay, the head coach, was a great guy who golfed more than Trump and loved sports with a passion typically reserved for more intimate activities.

“Uh, Jay,” I said, sheepishly, “I don’t know anything about soccer. Nothing. Nada. Besides, I think it’s a Commie sport.”

“Oh, Jim,” he said, as he slapped a clipboard against my chest and hung a shiny whistle around my neck, “this will be fun.”

And then he gave me that reassuring one-arm shoulder hug and requisite pat on the butt as he renewed his promise that “We’ll have fun.”

Although not quite as amusing as girls T-ball, six-year-old boys soccer provides an entertainment value equaled only by watching small outbreaks of crowd bedlam. Practices were interesting, with each of the team’s members exhibiting unique abilities to focus on certain tasks for upwards of 6-7 seconds. Of course, every kid wanted possession of the ball. To that end, they played something we called “Swarm Ball,” in the which the entire practice squad gathered around the ball and moved it inches at a time in various directions.

In time, the boys started to look like actual soccer players, despite the occasional lapses into daisy picking or somersaulting.

Put 22 six-year-old boys in shiny jerseys on a very large grass field, toss a soccer ball somewhere in the middle and you’ve got the equivalent of a FIFA match: four or five players actively involved in kicking, dribbling, advancing the ball; the rest waiting for something to come their way.

At some point I became something of an avid soccer fan, even to the point of getting daily updates on Facebook about the various goings-on of AC Milan.

In 2006 we traveled to Italy, where every kid we saw had a soccer ball. We noticed that there were stores selling soccer stuff on almost every block in both Rome and Florence. Kids practiced their ball-handling skills up and down the Spanish Steps.

At dinner one evening in a delightful trattoria north of Florence, the telephone rang and great excitement ensued after learning that members of the national team that would represent Italy in the World Cup were on their way in for dinner. A small group soon arrived with what appeared to be girlfriends and hangers-on. We got to meet a couple of them, including Marco Materazzi, the only player to score for Italy and the man who received the headbutt from France’s Zidane. We also met Fabio Grosso, who scored the winning penalty kick.

Perhaps that is when my interest in the Beautiful Game peaked.

I like the balletic qualities of the sport, the athleticism and the robust attacks on the ball. I like that the sport requires patience on the parts of both player and viewer. I also like the bad acting required to draw a foul and how quickly that player recovers when the foul isn’t called.

I picked France to win this year’s World Cup, which is scheduled to start in mere minutes. Vive la France!

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Beef Stew with Dijon & Cognac

¼ pound salt pork, diced
1 large onion, finely diced
3 shallots, chopped
2 to 4 Tbs. butter, as needed
2 pounds beef chuck, in 1-inch cubes
2 Tbs. flour
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
½ cup Cognac
2 cups beef stock
½ cup Dijon mustard
4 tablespoons Pommery mustard
4 large carrots, peeled and cut into half-moon slices
½ pound mushrooms, stemmed, cleaned and quartered
¼ cup red wine

Place salt pork in a Dutch oven or a large heavy kettle over low heat, and cook until fat is rendered. Remove solid pieces with a slotted spoon, and discard. Add onion and shallots and cook over medium heat until softened but not browned, 8 to 10 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer to a large bowl.
If necessary, add 2 tablespoons butter to the pan to augment fat. Dust beef cubes with flour, and season with salt and pepper. Shake off excess flour, and place half of the meat in the pan. Cook over medium-high heat until well browned, almost crusty, on all sides, then transfer to a bowl with onions. Repeat with remaining beef.
Add Cognac to the empty pan, and cook, stirring, until the bottom is deglazed and the crust comes loose. Add stock, Dijon mustard and 1 tablespoon Pommery mustard. Whisk to blend, then return meat and onion mixture to pan. Lower heat, partially cover pan, and simmer gently until meat is very tender, about 1 1/2 hours.
Add carrots, and continue simmering for 30 minutes, or until slices are tender. As they cook, heat 2 tablespoons butter in medium skillet over medium-high heat, and sauté mushrooms until browned and tender.
Stir mushrooms into stew along with remaining mustard and red wine. Simmer 5 minutes, then taste, and adjust seasoning. Serve with egg noodles or mashed potatoes.

It has occurred to me that the secret to having a successful garage sale is to not have one.

Thirty years ago, we hosted one at our home in Los Angeles in preparation for our move to Montana. Last weekend, I attended one my daughter and her husband were hosting.

That’s a vast span in which to have a complete understanding of the culture and practice of garage sales.

I was also able to access information offered by the National Association of Garage Sale Enthusiasts, a little-known division of the federal government’s Department of Economics, Business and Other Things. It’s overseen by the EPA and administered by the IRS, the latter of which has more than 26,000 agents trying to collect taxes from people wanting a little cash in exchange for their junk.

Garage sales have an interesting history dating back to ancient Egypt, where they were known as لِتَصْليح السَّيارات. Most of the people who died in those times had their most precious belongings buried with them…things like a favorite hashish pipe or a medal of valor. The rest of the stuff—like cookware and shards of broken pottery—was hawked by greedy relatives on the major boulevards of cities and towns that most of us can’t pronounce.

The typical Egyptian had a great sense of humor, which is not widely known. Typically, the dead relative was mummified and placed in one of the not-so-great pyramids in suburban neighborhoods, while the garage sale leftovers were scattered hither and yon for 20th-Century archeologists to discover and make up stories about how others once might have lived.

In reverential respect for our Arab forebearers—although, being Jewish, this is a stretch—our garage sale in 1991 provided tables full of crap we no longer wanted, needed, or didn’t want to transport 1,200 miles. And to be completely accurate, it was a driveway sale, considering that our garage was packed with precious belongings we were bringing to our new home.

In that driveway, we had on display hundreds of things for which we had no use—and certainly didn’t want to move.

The preparation for a yard/driveway/garage sale involves weeks of separating useful stuff, wanted stuff, unwanted stuff, and garbage. Then you spend an entire day moving the assorted stuffs to tables and arranging it in little displays that would rival a Walmart display of its crap.

When then opening hour of 9 a.m. arrives, you’ve already hosted 19 people who are confused about clocks. Seven a.m. is not the same as 9 a.m., and yes, I understand the urgency behind hoping that the 1973 June edition of Playboy missing from your collection might be hidden amongst the porcelain creamers in the shapes of cows.

In Los Angeles, garage sale attendees came in parties of fourteen people packed into a single car. They unloaded like a circus act of clowns. Most seemed interested in buying back-to-school clothing for children who weren’t in the car. Then there were the two ladies who pulled up in a Rolls Royce, poked around things for a few minutes and proceeded to steal a toy telescope my daughter was hoping to sell for a dollar.

Maybe that’s how one must live to afford driving a Rolls.

Last weekend, which apparently was a bad weekend to have a garage sale because it was a holiday, I happened to make some rather astute observations. One woman asked me if I was in charge of the sale, to which I answered that I was mere “eye candy.” She moved away from me quickly.

Men who came by themselves seemed mostly interested in tools or decorative stuff for what would only have been appropriate for the proverbial “man cave.” Men who were accompanied by a significant other seemed to be there against their will. Women who arrived solo were efficient and fast, rifling through things with knowing eyes for bargains.

Obesity seemed a common thread, as did the propensity of really nice cars. Perhaps buying other people’s soon-to-be-refuse is the secret to affording a late-model Subaru.

All garage sales end the same. Whatever doesn’t sell gets loaded into a truck and driven to a thrift store or a green box for disposal. Not all of one man’s trash is found to be another’s treasure. In the end, it’s junk.

But the host of these sales has toiled long and diligently to disperse once-cherished items for redistribution to a community desperately in need of more stuff.

By the way, the average American garage sale nets the host(s) about $83 or, to put it more succinctly, about $1.37 an hour.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Shrimp Creole

3 Tbs. butter
1 small onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. paprika
2 tsp. dried thyme
2 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. cayenne
1 1/2 c. chicken stock
2 bay leaves
1 (15-oz.) can whole tomatoes, crushed
2 green onions, thinly sliced, plus more for garnish
2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 1/2 lb. shrimp, peeled and deveined
Cooked white rice, for serving

In a large skillet over medium heat, melt butter. Add onion, pepper, and celery and cook until soft, 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add garlic, paprika, thyme, oregano, and cayenne and cook until fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes more. Add chicken broth and bay leaf and bring to a boil. Lower to a simmer and cook until reduced by about 1/4, 6 to 8 minutes.
Add tomatoes and cook until reduced by half, about 10 minutes. Add green onions and Worcestershire sauce and cook until thickened, about 10 minutes more. Season again with salt and pepper if needed, then turn off heat and stir in lemon juice.
In a separate large skillet, heat oil. Add shrimp and cook until pink and opaque, about 2 minutes per side. Season with salt and pepper, then add prepared sauce to shrimp. Garnish with green onions and serve with rice.

There is probably nothing more defining of a culture than its food.

I’ve always thought of myself as an adventurous eater, but some recent conversations have centered around foods that I wouldn’t even want to be in the same room as, let alone find on my plate.

There are a lot of foods that sound disgusting, but are actually quite tasty—like Rocky Mountain oysters, lamb’s tongue, and tripe. My grandmother used to make a delicious soup using the shredded lung of a cow.

I’ve eaten any number of livers, prepared in numerous ways, and broiled kidneys. In Milan, Italy, I had osso buco made from a horse’s shank. In Iceland, I was goaded into eating fish eyes (the trick is to not bite down; just swallow). At a friend’s house in Los Angeles, I was served “century” quail eggs (once you get past the odor of hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, they’re not bad at all). They look odd, however, with the yolk a dark green and the white a dark brown, translucent jelly.

The most popular cuisine in America is Italian, most of which is southern with its deep tradition of garlic, oregano, and tomatoes. In Sardinia, known as the island of 100-year-old men (blame the wine), there are two kinds of cheese made that are the stuff of nightmares: Casu marzu and Su Callu Sardu. Translated as “rotten cheese,” Casu marzu is a sheep’s milk cheese that contains live maggots that promote an advanced level of fermentation to break down the fats. When the cheese reaches a point of decomposition, it’s ready to eat.

Su Callu Sardu, is made by taking the stomach of a baby goat, which is then tied at one end with a rope and left to mature with all its contents of mother’s milk. The cheese is then aged for at least two to four months and is served—along with its casing—on bread.

A popular street food in Sicily is pani ca ‘meusa, which is a soft bread roll filled with chopped spleen and lung that is then fried in lard.

And to think that in only the most touristy of places in Italy, will you see pineapple and Canadian bacon on a pizza.

In many places around the world, penis is featured on menus. Many cultures believe that by eating penis, of any kind, it imbues the diner with virility, health, and power, as well as a source of lean protein. Bull, ox, yak, and buffalo are among the most common to be eaten, particularly in eastern cultures. Oddly enough, the dik-dik is not on the list, although snake penises are. Who, but herpetologists, even knew snakes had penises?

According to those who would know about such things, penis tends to taste tough and sinewy, and benefits from being braised or slow cooked before being used as a prop in an elaborate practical joke.

Throughout the Pacific Rim and Asia, including Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, fried fruit bats are a common food source, due to their low fat and high protein content. They are prepared in a number of ways, cooked with green chiles, or deep fried whole. In Guam, Mariana fruit bats are considered a delicacy, while the flying fox bat species was listed as endangered due to being hunted there.

It’s been noted that they taste like chicken, but smell like urine. And how does one hunt bats?

Reptiles taste a lot like chicken as well.

In much of the southern United States, alligators go on and off the protected list based solely on the number of children, pets, or golfers they’ve consumed in recent months. One year at the Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans, they were off the list and being served in a spicy tomato sauce from a food stand in the infield of a racetrack—one of the sites of the festival. I stood in line for what seemed to be an eternity. Forty-five minutes after my first serving of gator, I had my second.

It tasted like chicken that had been brined in an algae-rich swamp. Turtle tastes nothing like chicken, but is delicious in the Bookbinder’s soup that was once served at Chicago’s Cape Cod Room.

Rattlesnake, which I’ve only had as the main component of chili, tastes like chili.

All sorts of creatures have become part of our diets, from Surströmming (fermented herring from Sweden), Cuy (roasted guinea pigs from Peru), and Hákarl (aged Icelandic shark).

Durian is the infamously stinky fruit from Thailand, described as being similar to rotten onions, turpentine, and raw sewage. Due to its persistent odor, the fruit has been banned from many hotels throughout Asia.

And how could we omit Kopi luwak, or civet coffee, from the list? Made from partly digested coffee beans eaten and defecated by the Asian palm civet. Fermentation occurs as the berries pass through a civet’s intestines, and after being defecated with other fecal matter, they are collected and brewed into one of the world’s most expensive coffees.

There are lines drawn in the sand for most of us when it comes to experiencing culinary traditions from around the world. I could no more eat a dog than fly. But I also recognize that dog has been a common animal protein for ages and ages. At least once each week, I am solicited to sign a petition to end the consumption of what we think are pets and they think of as food.

I wonder if the people of India circulate petitions for Americans to quit butchering cattle.

For being part of the Western world and probably the most respected of cuisines, the French came up with a dish so horrifying that when eating it, the diner covers one’s head with a towel or napkin so that God won’t have to witness this afront to one of His creatures.

The food is a delicacy known as ortolan bunting, a tiny songbird that is netted as it attempts to migrate south for the winter. It is then kept in darkened crates and force fed to increase its bulk. Finally, the bird is drowned it in a vat of Armagnac brandy.

Once the ortolan is dead and marinated, it is grilled, plucked and served. It is eaten in a single bite. The practice was ended in 1999.

Our food traditions are vast and varied, our tastes as well. Personally, my lines in the sand end at broccoli and peanut butter. Yuck.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Chocolate Mousse

1 pkg. gelatin in 1/4 cup cold water
3 oz. dark chocolate
1 cup whole milk
½ cup powdered sugar
Pinch of salt
1 Tbs. triple sec
2 cups heavy cream

Melt chocolate in a double boiler and add milk, beating until smooth. Remove from heat, add gelatin. Add sugar & salt, stir until blended. Cool slightly and add triple sec. Cool until beginning to set. Whip the cream until fairly stiff. Blend with chocolate mix. Pour into ramekins and chill.

Like the song says, “I love a parade.”

Actually, with the exception of the little parade we have each July 2nd in my adopted Montana hometown, I don’t much care for them at all. And even our little parade is growing less enjoyable as there seem to be fewer kids on bicycles decorated with red-white-and-blue crepe paper and more commercial displays from businesses, some of which don’t seem to have any local connection to the community.

There was a time when everybody with a horse or a farm implement proudly paraded down Livingston’s Main Street without much fanfare, merely smiling and waving imperiously from their chosen seats—saddle or tractor. Bagpipers from around the state led and followed, their kilts lending authenticity to the drone of their pipes. The Shriners rode their tiny cycles in little circles while the members of other fraternal organizations tossed candies to the children at the curbsides. The American Legion and the V.F.W. were represented with uniformed color guards, their numbers noticeably fading with each passing year, their members growing longer in the tooth.

It all made for a pleasant afternoon—one that was respectful of our nation’s history and traditions.

Today there are precision riding teams with uniformed riders, and the only tractors or combines on the route seem to be brand new and advertised as available for purchase at the implements store on Park Street. Things change.

But the Shriners and the bagpipers and the Rotarians and Lions, the Scouts and the 4-H still come out each July 2nd to remind us that what we have as a community is worth hanging onto, that our small-town identity is far more than something seen as precious by the visiting out-of-towners who flood the area at that time of year, and to remind us that, for the most part, our shared values are worth honoring. The politicians appear as well, their minions delivering paper handouts along the sidelines intending to remind us how worthy they are of our votes. For the most part, I’ve observed, we’re polite and accepting.

Since 1924, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in New York City has been a spectacle designed to usher in the Christmas buying season, all to the benefit of Macy’s, which only makes sense since Macy’s foots most of the bill. The parade was designed as a commercial endeavor with no sense of charity or community.

The Rose Parade, which made its debut on Pasadena’s Colorado Boulevard in 1890, was a commercial endeavor without a single sponsor since its inception. Everybody pays. It was created to help celebrate the Rose Bowl, a collegiate football championship game once held between the top finishers of the Big-Ten and Pac-10 conferences. I’m not sure who plays in the Rose Bowl game anymore. But the New Year’s Day parade, unless January 1 happens to fall on a Sunday, is the nation’s most prominent parade spectacle.

Clearly, the standing of the Tournament of Roses parade was placed briefly in jeopardy by the promise of President Trump’s salute to himself with a proposed $12 million Veterans Day spectacle along Pennsylvania Avenue, the cost of which would be offset by the president’s canceling peacetime war drills with South Korea.

In the grand tradition of such dictator states as North Korea, China and Russia, Trump would take his place on the dishonor roll with a rollicking show of our military strength, with which most of the world is already quite familiar. His five service deferments notwithstanding, he would stand proudly on the review stand as Commander-in-Chief, no doubt costumed for the day in a uniform lavishly decorated with campaign ribbons and medals.

That is unless he opts to name himself Grand Marshal and ride on the back of a convertible Chevy with Sarah Huckleberry Sanders.

But then things along the parade route went south when an unnamed Pentagon official leaked some fake news to the fake media that the parade’s estimated costs had ballooned to $92 million. It turns out that the news wasn’t fake and that it was the mayor of Washington, D.C., who would be blamed for raining on Trump’s parade. The estimated bill for the city’s services—including what seemed to be an extraordinary amount for bottled water—would be about $22 million, which would have increased the cost of the parade to around $34 million.

That left $58 million in parade costs unaccounted for. The parade plans were scrapped, with Trump and unnamed Pentagon officials saying that a target date was being set for next year.

Nobody is more disappointed than Moses Lester, an underling in Trump’s “kitchen cabinet” whose job title is “guy in charge of parades and warrantless spectacles.”

“I’m also the guy in the bunny costume at the Easter egg hunt,” Moe said from a windowless basement office in the West Wing of the White House.

“You must be disappointed,” I suggested.

“In a way,” he said, adding that he sensed the parade’s costs would become prohibitive. “Do you have any idea how much it costs to fly a tank to Washington, let alone dozens of them?”

I had to admit that I didn’t.

“I got shot down pretty early,” Moe said, “but I suggested corporate sponsorships from the Day One.”

Moe continued to say that the less the Tasteless Trump Tribute (his words) would cost the American taxpayer, the more palatable it would be to the public. But, he added, Trump argued that the tax cuts afforded the richest of the rich should not be taken back to pay for the parade.

“It’s the public’s duty to foot the bill to honor me,” he allegedly said.

Moe said that he was proud of his plan and disappointed that little of it was even seen by the powers-that-be.

Hobby Lobby was going to be the official sponsor and would have naming rights. Macy’s was on board for the donation of giant, helium-filled balloons of Trump, his children, wives and cabinet members. Papa John’s would cater the whole shebang.

“I had Kanye West hosting and headlining the show at the end of the parade route,” Moe said. “Kid Rock and Ted Nugent were on board as well.”

Fox News was reportedly in negotiations to be the sole broadcasting outlet and retain film rights for the movie Dinesh D’Souza would be making.

“It sounds like you had a pretty good handle on things,” I suggested.

“I think so,” he said. “I even had a commitment from the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus. Have you heard their version of ‘I Love a Parade’? Killer, absolute killer.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Well,” he began, “the midterm elections are just five days before Veterans Day. If the Republicans lose the House, the Senate or both, the President probably wouldn’t be a very happy camper at his own party.”

“But what if the Republicans retain control?”

I heard the click of Moe hanging up on me.

Just-In-Case Crow Pie

2-3 crows
1/2 cup carrots
1/2 cup peas
1 stalk celery, chopped
1/2 cup boiled potato, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
2/3 cup milk
1 tbs corn starch
2 frozen pie crusts

Prepare crows as you would any other game bird.
Boil prepared crows for 4-5 hours. Let cool.
Remove meat from bones and chop.

Preheat oven to 350.
Mix cornstarch with milk, and stir until smooth.
Add carrots, peas, celery, and onion.
Add chopped crow meat and mix well.
Pour crow mixture into pie shell.
Cover with second pie shell.
Seal edges and pierce to allow steam to escape.
Bake for one hour, or until crust is golden brown.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

It was a cloudy mid-winter morning–June in Montana, in other words. Snow threatened against a skyline without buildings.

Weird, I thought, wondering how Hemingway would have handled the moment, this situation with the train being late to the platform. He stood with a wife whose name he couldn’t remember. She held the cardboard valise full of memories from his afternoons of drinking crème de cassis in cafes on the Left Bank of a city without distant mountains on its skyline. He wrote about the War–all of them, actually–in longhand. Cursive, no doubt. Today’s schoolchildren will never know.

Paris in February is no fun. Cardboard valises melt in the winter rain, their words falling between the platform’s cracks into oblivion. It’s cold and it’s damp, that’s why the lady…oh, wait…that’s California.

“April in Paris” is nice. “Da-da-da-daa-daaa,” I sang to myself as the aromas of veau cordon bleu danced in and around my nose.

I shook the cobwebs from my head, slapped my left cheek awkwardly with my right hand (will I ever learn?), and reminded myself that I was in Montana. No song came to mind, though in the distance I thought I could hear some nasal twangs and a banjo against the insistent crackle of a campfire.

The telephone rang and it scared me half to death because that telephone–a pink rotary Princess model an uncle I barely knew had bequeathed me, along with a concertina and his remains in a brass Turkish urn–had been disconnected from service nine years ago and I just hadn’t bothered to remove it from my desk and throw it away because it had become somewhat useful as a paperweight for the papers I’d written but never read but were stacked nonetheless on the desk’s northeast corner which is the very direction from which our worst winds and weather come.

I answered it anyway only to discover in four more very similar paragraphs that I’d since torn from the tablet, crumpled and thrown into the recycling bin that I wasn’t in fact channeling Faulkner despite the lack of punctuation. I was just writing sentences that couldn’t be parsed, let alone diagrammed.

Take that, Flo Swanson, you grammar slut!

“Hello,” I said. I paused to wonder if that answer might deserve a question mark, as in “Hello?”

I determined it did, so I started from scratch.

“Hello?” I asked in a deeper voice, the last syllable rising a bluesy minor third, or maybe a flatted fifth or an augmented seventh. I wasn’t sure. I’m still not. These are confusing times. Ask anyone.

“You don’t respect farmers.”

I found the moment odd, briefly recalling Steinbeck and wondering at the same time about what in my life warranted such unsolicited scrutiny over a telephone that presumably didn’t work.

“Excuse me?” I asked, confident that I at least was asking a question.

“You don’t respect farmers.”

I wanted to protest, to vehemently deny any sense of agricultural bias, but I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly.

I thought for a moment. Maybe two. Moments of shame passed briefly through my head. I thought of people I had forgotten. Did they remember me?

I had heard her correctly, however. It was an accusatory statement in a woman’s voice—a voice that sounded like snow sliding off a metal barn roof with a steep pitch. I don’t know what that means, but it seemed at the time more poetic than saying that she sounded like Neil Young without vibrato.

My mind wandered (again) as I wondered (again) if Neil Young and Ethel Merman might have been related. And if they had been, wouldn’t they still be even though Miss Merman is dead? We all have relatives in the past tense, after all. I briefly entertained my fantasy of hearing Neil sing “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” And how would Ethel have handled “Down By the River” or “Old Man”?

“We need to talk,” she said.

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?” I asked. The question mark seemed secure in its current use.

“In person,” the snowy, vibrato-less voice said, icily. “I’ll send a plane.”

Emerging from the Uber Subaru with great trepidation, an overhead stowable carry-on bag and wearing shoes I had smuggled into Canada and back again, I approached the tarmac at the local hilltop airport with even greater trepidation but still with the same bag and contraband shoes. I wondered how it, the tarmac, differed from asphalt or surfaces other than linoleum. The snow prevented further inspection and so I turned my attention to the Gulf Stream D-382587867-LXIV standing before me. It was a sleek beauty of a plane that I’d read about in Aviation Tomorrow just yesterday. It was parked near a row of fourteen, aqua-tinted stand-alone Dr. Johnny port-a-potties (urbandictionary.com offers a significantly different take on these, by the way) with crescent moons cut in the doors. I looked around for Fellini. No sign. I marveled at the plane’s sleek design, its silver shell, its dual exhausts and overhead cams, the Hurst tranny and the snow chains on its tires, and wondered why the windows were shaped in that almost-ovoid shape that all airplanes seem to feature. I also wondered how many evangelical pastors it might hold.

Little did I know that I would soon find out. Three is the short answer, by the way, but just as interesting is the fact that “pastor” is a word derived from the Spanish that means “herdsman.” Suddenly, everything made perfect sense in an imperfect way that in some way would always involve sheep.

Then I wondered why the Uber cost the same as a Yellow Cab, although we have no Yellow Cabs in Montana. I thought this was supposed to be a deal, I said to myself. Next time, I noted, Lyft.

A four-wheel-drive, off-roading stretch Jeep limousine appeared out of nowhere, emerging from a shimmering curtain of heat like one sees in desert war movies. Except there was snow. And it was cold. Go figure. Puerto Rican flags blew stiffly from the front bumpers, falling limp when the limo stopped and released its passengers: two disreputable Congressmen, a cabinet Secretary/Realtor who speaks frequently of his days balancing a beach ball on his nose as some sort of seal, and the Secretary of Education.

As we shook hands I remembered that I had forgotten to bring a package of hand sanitizer wipes. I was suddenly reminded of the Golden Globes and Harvey Weinstein. I felt dirty in a not-so-good way.

“Madam Secretary,” I said, as we settled into the over-stuffed seats of the aircraft.

She cut me off with a wave of her hand.

“I don’t know why they call me ‘Madam Secretary’,” she said. “I don’t take shorthand, I can’t type, and I’ve only met Heidi Fleiss a few times at Republican fundraisers.”

She saw me roll my eyes.

“Well, we’re meeting today because I need you on my side top help reform education in the public schools.”

“You must have me confused with somebody else,” I offered. “I’m not an educator.”

“But I’ve seen your Facebook posts opposing teaching elementary schoolchildren to be little farmers.”

I shrugged.

“I think you’re wrong,” she asserted. “And I think you’re wrong about not wanting to teach them how to iron clothes, change a tire, balance a checkbook, perform first-aid, change the oil, make beds and load a dishwasher.”

“But if we taught them to read wouldn’t that give them the basic tools necessary to accomplish those everyday tasks?” I asked.

“There’s nothing in the Good Book about those things and that’s the only book our nation’s children need,” she said.

I thought briefly and had to admit that “vacuum” does not appear in the Bible as a verb. Nor does vacuous, which somehow reminded me of the Secretary.

“Besides, workplace skills are what we should be teaching from Day One. No productive member of society needs poetry or music or literature to distract them from the tasks at hand.”

“But shouldn’t there be opportunities to help them understand the world they live in, to process and interpret information, to think critically,” I asserted, adding quickly the idea that the arts tend to bring both joy and inspiration.

“Well, of course,” she said. “That’s why we need charter and private schools, so the rich children continue to have an advantage. Poor people can’t afford the opera.”

“And the less fortunate, the disenfranchised, the powerless?”

“They need task-oriented training and to learn obedience to God and country,” she said. “The last thing we need is for them to be thinking about anything.”

Portrait of Evelyn by Courtney A. Liska

The only thing predictable about the weather in Montana is that it has a tendency to change every ten minutes or so–for better or for worse.

When we moved here almost twenty-five years ago I was looking forward to four distinct seasons–something I missed during the seventeen years I spent in Los Angeles where the weather tended to vacillate wildly between hot and hotter. I had grown up in Chicago enjoying and/or enduring the seasons: the orderly progression from spring to summer to fall to winter and its attendant climactic changes expressed in light, color, humidity, wind speed and temperature. What took me by surprise in Montana was that those four seasons frequently occur over the course of just a few days.

I have seen it snow in every calendar month. I have also seen temperatures in the 60s in every calendar month as well. And the wind? Well, it is a constant that runs the gamut from “what a nice cooling breeze” to “did your house blow over last night?”

So without consulting either a calendar or a Smart phone, the only way we really know that it’s summer in Montana is by the proliferation of cowboy hats being worn by people in Bermuda shorts and sandals (with or without socks). We affectionately call these folks “tourists,” and they start appearing about now–Memorial Day weekend, which is the official start of the summer season and the very moment in time that gas prices reach a high that won’t abate until the official end of summer on Labor Day.

I’ve observed a lot of changes over the years here in the Last Best Place. We don’t seem to get those long stretches of sub-zero temperatures we used to endure–those couple of mid-winter weeks during which an old rancher told me the best thing to do was to sit close to the wood stove and read a good book. We also don’t see a lot of cowboy hats. Unless they’re going to church, out on the town, or to the bank, the modern rancher is more likely to be seen wearing a baseball cap than a Stetson.

And while I can’t recall ever seeing (or even imagining) any of the ranchers I know wearing Bermuda shorts or sandals, neither of which offer much protection from rattlesnakes, I’d be willing to bet that not one of them would choose to complete the outfit with a wide-brimmed felt hat.

The cowboy hat trade is suffering, its mainstay customers coming from the ranks of country music performers and tourists visiting places that promise glimpses of the Wild West.

I was barely past my teens when I lived in New York City and I must have had a look about me that said, “Ask. I can help.” Complete strangers would stop me on the sidewalks to ask for directions. You could tell they were tourists not just by their odd manner of dress (what is that about tourists, anyway?), the cameras slung from their necks or the mis-folded maps they clutched that were, apparently, useless. No, you could tell they were tourists because they stopped strangers on the streets of Manhattan. In those days, before Rudolph Giuliani turned Times Square into Disneyland, confined drug addicts to Rikers Island, and sent the criminal element packing off to the outer boroughs and New Jersey, New Yorkers did not do that sort of thing.

Not only did we not talk to strangers, we didn’t even risk making eye contact with them.

I am to this day perplexed by the process, or lack thereof, that people use to choose who to ask for recommendations and directions. For the life of me I don’t understand it. Perhaps it is just random.

Checking into a hotel after a long day of driving, Geri would frequently ask the desk clerk for restaurant recommendations. Why? These clerks tended to be very pleasant young people working at a minimum wage job and whose life experiences and bank account balances probably did not provide for dining in nice restaurants. Predictably, Geri’s question would evoke responses that typically included a short list of favorite drive-thru restaurants–frequently punctuated with menu highlights. (“The strawberry milkshake is to die for!”)

“Of course, if you’re looking for something fancy,” they’d say, my hopes rising in expectation, “there’s always Sizzler.” Oh.

And how does one know who to ask for directions? You can’t be sure that you’re not asking another tourist who may be as lost as you.

In New York I found great fun in mis-directing people. While you may think that was a mean thing to do, I believe that I was adding value to their visit by, for instance, sending them to Greenwich Village despite their having asked directions to Rockefeller Center. After all, the West Village, with its web-like maze of funny streets with curious shops, bars and restaurants, was far more entertaining than a big office building in Midtown–with or without the Rockettes.

My amusement, of course, was mostly imagined in that I never saw the results of my deeds. And it was a safe amusement because there would be zero chance of running into those people ever again.

In Montana, one can’t really get away with such shenanigans because it is very likely you will see your victims later.

Tourism is a large and vital part of Montana’s economy, accounting for $3.4 billion in annual revenues. According to the Institute for Tourism and Recreation, one-in-nine Montanans is employed in businesses supported to some extent by out-of-state dollars. More than half of the annual revenues are earned from the sale of fuel, food/beverages, and lodging. The residents of the Treasure State could benefit greatly from a sales tax, but that’s another story.

There is a long history of tourism in Montana. Just thirteen years after Custer took his last breath at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876 the Montana Lodging and Hospitality Association was formed. While it’s not clear exactly what the association did back then (or does now, as far as that goes), somebody thought such a trade lobby was important.

What might be more important would be to form an association to help tourists navigate the vagaries and pitfalls awaiting people on vacation. While many of the missteps of some of these temporary vagabonds are indeed humorous to observe, they lead to my wondering if they have this much trouble on holiday what must their everyday lives be like.

The misconceptions about Montana are perhaps what attracts so many to our borders. For the record, few of us live in log cabins or tepees. We have countless miles of paved roads, but dirt roads are easy to find. Most of us walk around unarmed. Traffic signals here carry the same meaning as they do wherever you’re from, unless you’re from Italy. Few of us own cattle. Cowboys spend more time on ATVs than on horseback. Most restaurants offer gluten-free and vegan options. Few of our art galleries offer paintings of bugling elk. We have as many television channels as you do. We have cellphones, the Internet, ATMs and indoor plumbing.

Montana is Big Sky Country and it is a spectacularly beautiful place. We are blessed with a landscape of rugged mountains, mesmerizing high plains, pristine alpine lakes and innumerable rivers that run through it. Our bookends are Glacier National Park in the north and Yellowstone in the south. There is abundant wildlife that should be viewed with great awe and never bothered. Montanans tend to be a friendly lot and most of us won’t purposely give you bad directions.

If the idea of a “big sky” seems foreign or nonsensical, you should come up and see it for yourself.

Don’t forget your cowboy hat.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

In its solemn duty to provide daring and courageous coverage of all-things-Oscar, ABC-TV, with fashion model/anchorman David Muir at the helm, will be offering any minute now an “in-depth, insightful,” and not-to-forget “exclusive” interview of an immigrant kitchen worker who is “inspiring America” as he makes pot stickers of edamame and black truffles for tonight’s Academy Awards dinner to which I was not invited.

This might have something to do with my having once suggested to Wolfgang Puck that lima beans and button mushrooms work just as well at four-percent of the cost. His knowing giggle told the story I can’t repeat.

Have I mentioned that I covered—on-site—three Academy Award extravaganzas?

My first assigned coverage of the annual event in which hundreds of movies stars leave their palatial mansions in rented limousines to air kiss, pat each other on the back (unless Harvey Weinstein is in the room), and feign excitement about the “honor of just being nominated” was in 1980. Puck was still on the line at Ma Maison, a wonderful French restaurant favored by music executives with expense accounts. By the time I returned to the Oscar trenches in the mid-eighties, Puck had sold his stake in Ma Maison, met Barbara Lazaroff (behind every celebrity chef is an aggressively adoring publicist) and opened Spago, a pizza joint that specialized in putting stuff on pizzas that no self-respecting pizzaiolo would ever even think of doing.

Actually, Spago specialized in making people feel unwelcome and impoverished.

I like movies, especially those I can watch at home where popcorn doesn’t cost the same as a cab ride from mid-town Manhattan to LaGuardia. Movies are one of the many interests Geri and I share, although we don’t go to them much anymore. Rather, when we see that Wheel of Fortune is a rerun, we pop in Sleepless in Seattle, which we’ve seen in the neighborhood of 278 times, but only the first 30 minutes. And when it comes to the Oscars, Geri likes the Red Carpet stuff and is excited for this afternoon’s figure skating exhibition that will feature Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski skating outside the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard as they critique designer gowns we will thankfully never see again.

I plan on being at the Bozeman Symphony concert during all of that and will mercifully be spared the spectacle. Unless it snows. Later, I’m hoping to stay awake long enough to see if Knife Skills wins for Best Documentary Short Subject. It is the only nominated picture I’ve seen this year, which is one more than Geri.

Roger Ebert, the film critic who I once engaged in conversation at a social gathering at the University of Illinois (he was an alum; I was still a student), let me know that my taste in movies would benefit greatly from some kind of knowledge of the form. Apparently it wasn’t enough that we both admired The Godfather, my favorite movie. My assessment of the film as a historical document—albeit fictionalized, sort of—that depicted an era and its situational morality informed by an immigrant mentality in response to ignorance and prejudice paled in comparison to his being able to name the film’s Key Grip.

He seemed only mildly impressed when, in my best Brooklyn accent, I quoted chef, procurer of mattresses and hit man Peter “Fat” Clemenza: “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.”

I then asked if he had a preference for Jujubes or Milk Duds.

I followed Ebert’s advice and procured a copy of Understanding Movies (Prentice-Hall, 1972). I had read more interesting books, by the way, and stopped reading (and high-lighting significant passages of the book in that yellow high-lighting stuff that I’m not sure is really ink) when I got to the section on “cross-cutting” in D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation.

I resigned myself to merely appreciating those movies I happen to like for reasons I cannot begin to fathom. My Austrian therapist finds something troubling about some of my emotional attachments to certain films, wondering aloud what it is that leads me to include both Luis Buñuel’s 1929 silent classic, Un Chien Andalou, and Happy Gilmore on my Top-Ten list. However, Dr. Von Schvink and I share in common an undying admiration for John Waters’s Pink Flamingos, the 1972 transgressive comedy that defines the very concept of tasteless depravity.

THERE WERE TOO MANY celebrity-packed limousines around the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the 1980 edition of the Academy Awards for me to get my powder-blue Ford Pinto station wagon anywhere close, so I parked a few blocks away in a seedy part of downtown Los Angeles where cars like mine were sneered at by the resident car thieves. I made my tuxedoed way to the Red Carpet on foot where my first observation as an entertainment journalist was to note that Bo Derek, who surprisingly hadn’t been nominated for her role in 10, appeared to be about four-feet, eight-inches tall and have a waist that measured maybe seventeen inches, which only seemed to exaggerate her other vital statistics. Having barely recovered from that first observation, I made my way through a labyrinth of the almost-recognizable to a press room unlike any I had yet to see in my journeyman years.

In the world of crime and politics (note how I make no differentiation?) barely tepid coffee was served in waxed cardboard cups to the press, whose collective dress would seem amusing even to the color-blind. At the Academy Awards we all wore tuxedos. We were required to. Although my rented tuxedo was suitably well-tailored, its sartorial effect was somewhat diminished by the dozens of plastic-coated credentials hanging from stretchy lanyards around my neck. Whatever.

Once inside the press room I looked at the gently arced rows of tables, a typewriter and telephone in front of each of the plush armchairs lining each row. Huge television screens hung from the room’s walls like so many grandiose, albeit flickering, paintings. There was a buffet table whose inviting offerings would have rivaled most hotel wedding receptions and the gratis bar was stocked with top-shelf brands.

Johnny Walker Red on the rocks sloshed gently against the sides of my Oscar-etched glass as I scanned the room and noticed Irv Kupcinet sitting quietly by himself in the middle of this fabricated Wonderland that would serve as a “news” room for a few hours.

Irv Kupcinet chronicled the comings and goings of the rich, the famous and the infamous for the Chicago Sun-Times. Unlike today’s journalistic preoccupation with celebrity, his columns told brief stories that seemed to have some depth beyond their inherent lack of substance. (What is it that makes me want to say something about the Kardashians here?) Anyway, there weren’t as many stars during his pre-reality entertainment era as there are today and those fewer stars seemed to have burned more brightly and for much longer. Publicists, whose jobs required them to do whatever was necessary to ensure their clients’ immortality, were called press agents back then and the bad behavior of their clients provided pretty tame fodder by today’s standards: Sinatra is seen with dark-suited Italians; Sinatra has drinks with a busty starlet; Sinatra punches somebody; Sinatra does more of whatever Sinatra did. All of it was pretty genteel. I grew up listening to my mother read “Kup’s Column” to the family over breakfast. This was TMZ for the timid, the tame, the literate, as there were no photos or illustrations, save for the occasional black-and-white head shot. When Kup wrote of a low-cut gown, one had to imagine both it and the starlet who was wearing it.

Kup led a pretty glamorous life (I don’t recall his reportage ever taking place at a diner in a bad part of town; his well-tailored tuxedo was not rented) and we, my family, although perhaps not as a family unit, aspired to sit at the best tables he regularly occupied at the best restaurants, clubs and showrooms in the Windy City—the Empire Room, the Ambassador East, the Chez Paree, the Scotch Mist.

I was mere moments away from learning that Irv Kupcinet was not the friendliest guy I would ever meet, but then again, I was young. It’s not that he was mean or anything; he just didn’t seem to have the time nor the interest to make small talk with some kid, by now camped next to him, who was somewhat in awe of his new-found surroundings. He didn’t mind my refreshing his drinks, however, and he became friendlier as I became more jaded. And we both grew more cynical as the night wore on and on and the liquor wore heavier, and we were sharing guffaws at the crap we were filing about stuff that didn’t matter. (I saved the Bo Derek item for here, by the way. Thirty-eight years I should wait.)

By then, I was on a one-third-of-his-last-name basis with him.

“What does matter then, Kup?” I slurred, perhaps seeking some secret insight to the human condition that might be revealed in the context of an awards show.

“How the hell would I know?”

He raised his glass.

“Here’s looking at you, kid.”

I had yet to see Casablanca. I had no idea what he meant.

Cannoli

There are countless recipes on-line for cannoli shells and if you’re interested in the rather arduous process of making your own, go for it. Commercially made shells are just fine and are generally available in better grocery stores.

The filling is what matters and this is the simple recipe I’ve been using for longer than I can remember.

Slowly mix one pound of drained ricotta cheese with 1/2 cup of baker’s sugar (superfine) until the sugar is dissolved. Add 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract, the zest of one orange, and 1/4 cup mini chocolate chips. Blend together and fill a pastry bag with the mix. Fill cannoli shells. Sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar. Buon appetito!

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

It was just 38 years ago that I had my first Super Bowl experience of any consequence.

It was Super Bowl XIV at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, where the Pittsburgh Steelers (12-4) met the Los Angeles Rams (9-7). I was not among the 103,985 people who attended that game to watch the Steelers prevail 31-19.

That meant, of course, that I also did not have to endure the 12-minute halftime performance of 430 incessantly smiling Up With People folks dressed like Perry Como as the performed their tribute to Sixties music. It should be noted that the show had to have been better than at the very first Super Bowl, where the halftime entertainment was a polka band with sixteen Miss Wisconsin contestants churning butter on the back of a hay wagon.

But in the weeks of manic lead-up to the Big Game I attended many events as a newspaper color commentator of stuff only football wives appreciate.

While I’ll admit that that might sound sexist, it didn’t at the time. Today, I’ll bow to the pressures I place upon myself to be oh-so-PC (yeah, right) and amend the comment to “stuff nobody appreciates” and add, “or even cares about.”

My colleagues in the sports department of the Los Angeles Daily News—where I wrote about jazz music and interviewed two-headed turtles and other anomalies—got to interview great players with names like Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris and Lynn Swann of the Chuck Noll-led Steelers. They wrote critically analytical stories about Pat Haden, Cullen Bryant, and Elvis Peacock, a first-round draft pick who is best remembered for having the coolest name in all of professional sports history.

They hobnobbed with team owners Art Rooney (Pittsburgh) and Georgia Rosenbloom, a former lounge singer who inherited controlling interest in the Rams after her sixth husband, Carroll, drowned in the Atlantic surf somewhere in Florida just months before. She soon thereafter (perhaps a little too “soon thereafter,” the tabloids whispered) made an accordion-playing Hollywood music bigwig named Dominic Frontiere her seventh husband. No less a publication than the National Enquirer suggested that Georgia might have been in Florida at the time of Carroll’s drowning, as did one of the Rosenbloom sons with whom Geri and I threw darts in a Redondo Beach bar one night.

The circumstances of Carroll Rosenbloom’s death remain a nagging question, but no more nagging than this one: “Why were Geri and I at a bar in Redondo Beach throwing darts?”

In the middle of all of this, Dominic Frontiere, whose accordion prowess eclipsed that of Lawrence Welk’s, was busy scalping as many as 16,000 tickets to the 1980 Super Bowl, raking in a cool half-million dollars for his efforts.

For the record, the accordion player served nine months in a minimum-security federal prison that may or may not have had tennis courts and room service. He was fined $15,000 by the IRS for failing to report his take as income. There was no restitution provision. Do the math. Dominic netted $485,000, which works out to $59K per month for time served. (I’d like that deal now.) He basically disproved the adage that crime doesn’t pay but lent some credibility to the spirit behind the meaning of one of my favorite bumper stickers that I just happened to have mentioned last week: USE AN ACCORDION/GO TO JAIL.

In the great lead-up to that XIVth Super Bowl I got to go to the Rose Bowl and observe scores of technicians from CBS television run cables and wires and cords all over the place and then pass on to my eager-to-know readers that it takes as many miles of television cables to broadcast a Super Bowl as there are miles of highway between Pasadena and Poughkeepsie. (I forget the actual number, but, oh well…I trust that you get the point.)

I had done a similar story about the multiple miles of telephone lines the Secret Service had installed when President Gerald Ford wanted to have lunch with a farm family near Champaign, Illinois, during the 1976 primary campaign. Little did I know that this kind of reportage would become something of a specialty for me. Sharing that information about the telephone lines with Hunter S. Thompson on the press bus might have been what kept us from becoming close friends on the campaign trail.

PACOIMA, A NOT-SO-TIDY COMMUNITY tucked into the northeast corner of the San Fernando Valley, seemed an unlikely place to tend to pre-Super Bowl business, but that’s where I found myself one January afternoon.

I had actually been to Pacoima once before to interview a kindergarten teacher who moonlighted as a stripper. I thought this might be an interesting story just because my kindergarten teacher happened not to be a stripper—and for many a good reason. I was wrong about the Pacoima stripper being a good story. I did, however, find it mildly amusing that the strip club where she worked nights was in a strip mall replete with a Thai restaurant (the best Thai restaurants are always in strip malls, by the way), a tire store, and a beauty salon called Curl Up and Dye. I made that last part up or maybe I borrowed it. There was no beauty shop, but isn’t that a great name for one?

Anyway, it was in a nondescript bar on Van Nuys Boulevard in Pacoima that I met this Pittsburgh Steelers Super Fan whose name I’ve long since forgotten. He was about seven feet tall and weighed—soaking wet—about 108 pounds. He wore a tuxedo and danced at Steelers’s games in a style reminiscent of a spasmodic Tommy Tune, or perhaps a Marionette with a couple of strings missing. He flailed his arms like he was battling killer bees. He was the antithesis of your typical cheerleader and the reason I was sent to interview him was because—basically—he was an alcoholic football fan who ate glass and had a press agent.

He wanted the fifteen minutes of fame that Andy Warhol had promised.

For two or three hours I sat in this seedy little bar watching a tuxedo-clad moron throw back shots of cheap Canadian whiskey and then eat the shot glasses (I am not making this up), washing down the shards of well-chewed glass with squat brown bottles of Lucky Lager, famous for being the worst beer brewed since those produced in 11,000 BC Sumeria. Between really disturbing bites of glass he spoke of the Steelers as if they alone knew the dark secrets of the universe.

Outside of the political arena I have yet to meet a bigger idiot. Just to be on the safe side, I never made a return trip to Pacoima.

The Super Bowl Party was the biggest ticket in town. Passes to the Grammys, Oscars, Emmys and the Big Game itself, were easy to get, comparatively.

But I had been assigned to cover the party and I could not get a ticket, a frustrating situation that led to my learning an important lesson that journalism school hadn’t taught.

“I’ll just write a story about how hard it is to get a ticket,” I told one of the sportswriters who had a ticket and planned on using it only to get drunk and talk to people off the record.

I was channeling my inner Hunter S. Thompson.

“They know how hard it is to get a ticket,” he scowled, looking at me as if at that very moment I was eating a shot glass. “Reading about it is as close as they’re going to get. They don’t care about your problems.”

He was right, of course. To brace myself, I threw back a shot or two (or was it three?) of Wild Turkey. I scrambled, I begged, I what-evered. I was probably slurring. I finally got a ticket. I went to the party, saw the glass-eating imbecile in a distant corner, and wrote about the open bars and a table laden with shrimp that reached from Pasadena to Poughkeepsie.

For the record, the Grammys, the Oscars and the Emmys were much better.

As for the Big Game? I just go for the food.

Super Bowl LII Menu

For today’s big game it’s chili (see “Don’t Mess With Texas” for my recipe) and East L.A. Nachos (see “Double Dribble” for Courtney’s recipe).

If you’re an Eagles fan then salted soft pretzels with mustard, Rolling Rock beer, and Philly Cheesesteaks Whiz Wit are a must. For the cheesesteaks, saute six ounces of Steak-umm Sliced Steaks; stuff into soft hoagie rolls and smother with tons of sauteed onions and huge dollops of Cheez Whiz.

You will jinx the game if you use provolone cheese or peppers. Ketchup is OK.

If you’re a Patriots fan, lobster rolls, clam dip with pita chips, and Samuel Adams Boston Lager should fill the bill. For four lobster rolls, combine 1-1/2 pounds of chopped cooked lobster, with 1/2-cup Hellman’s mayonnaise, 3 Tbs. fresh lemon juice, 2 chopped stalks of celery and 2 Tbs. chopped fresh parsley. Stuff the mixture into soft hoagie rolls. In the New England tradition, you can cheat and substitute the lobster meat with crab meat.

Open the Sam Adams early in the day to make sure it’s flat by game time.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska