Wishing You Success this Feb. 14
You too can be a winner this Valentine’s Day.
I have been so informed twice this week, and not only by Ed McMahon.
Yeung Lap Ming wrote to tell me, from far afield by the looks of the name, that he has a lucrative business proposal for me. But John Zidek also emailed to let me know me that I have already won 1.5 million pounds sterling (I added the sterling myself just because I like the way it sounds) in the Liverwood promotion. Does anyone know John?
I also like the Englishers’ funny symbol for their money, £. Where they get a “pound” out of that I am not sure. It must derive from the French word for pound, livre, if you interpret the English funny symbol as some sort of L with a flourish. That could be French in origin, by the looks of it, via the Norman conquest.
But financial success can be important to your Valentine, in any language. I know it was to the country girl, because she said it wasn’t. I learned in retrospect to interpret the meaning of her words, the opposite of whatever she said, so don’t you be slow on the uptake, too.
Instead, follow these examples, because we have some real winners to announce in this very paper. I gave that assignment to our anonymous Now Eat This restaurant reviewer (well, he has been a little upset about Bunny taking over his anonymous restaurant review—that means it is not even anonymous anymore, he complained to me), and you know what that means, so here goes—I hope you can follow:
Hi, sports fans (that surprises them, because they think I am an egghead), Anonymous here, and there are lots of ways to win. We can even make raggedy, not to say ugly, winning look good.
Witness: 21-0 must equal three TDs to none! Not exactly, more like 5 field goals, a TD and a missed PAT for Alabama. That is still better than what LSU got, as neat and crystal clear as that was.
I noticed the Giants got 21 in the Super Bowl, too. So they were clean with three TDs, weren’t they? No? A safety, a TD, two field goals, another TD, and a missed two-point conversion, you say, in that order? Well, the good news is there are lots of ways to win this Valentine’s Day, in short order.
You can still look good, with sportsmanship and respect for all participants--unless you are a country girl with no class at all--then you would revert to character and tell the Patriot’s receiver, “Glad you were cut from the roster the day before the big game,” and to the Giant’s tight end, “I’m glad you tore your anterior cruciate ligament in your right knee.” I’ve heard her lash out like that myself and it’s not what a nice person does. And she would go Giselle one better, because she would not be shy to criticize if you did not throw and catch your own passes, too.
That can make for a very long Valentine’s Day indeed, in 2011.
But here we are in 2012, and on to the anonymous announcement of the winners, fresh from the vineyards:
Yvonne Tenorio won the Now Eat This: El Barrio quiz outlined in Out of My Head by correctly stating the allusion to the Jack Nicholson movie (remember El Barrio means neighborhood roughly, but the true Castilian concept is a place where like-kinds congregate, but the author specified he was not talking about a certain Asian persuasion, but Hispanics, instead, in El Barrio, stupid!), but Anonymous gives it away when he concludes his own story of twisted personal entanglements, and Aztec-Castilian-Moorish fusion cuisine, with: “Forget it. It’s El Barrio, Jake.” Of course, Jake is the name of Jack Nicholson’s character in the movie alluded to, and Jake, or Jack, was chomping at the bit at the end of that movie to go after famous Hollywood director John Huston (Noah Cross is his name in the movie) after the police shot Faye Dunnaway (or was it Mia Farrow, I get those skinny angular chicks confused sometimes) through the eye in front of her daughter-sister fathered by her father, said John Huston, on the front seat of her car when she tried to get away from her Oedipal father (Huston again- -well he didn’t direct the movie--Roman Polanski did, but Polanski had to get out of town for something eerily similar--so Huston can still do whatever he wants because he is a director, and the cops are always on the take, after all), but Jake’s friend restrained him (or Jack’s friend, in reality, though we are not really sure they really were friends off the set), intimating that such a rash act would be vain and fruitless in the arcane, corrupted, and clandestine underground world of....drumroll, please...Chinatown, silly! Don’t tell me you haven’t seen that movie yet. Now what’s that got to do with Mexican food? Hey! It’s just an allusion. So sue us! Yvonne won a Sportplex membership instead of complaining and bellyaching. Besides, we told you it’s not that kind of Mexican food!
Mallie Ireland won the gift certificate to Mudtown for divining, without any coaching, the philosophical Descartes allusion in Now Eat This on the subject of Café de Paris: When Anonymous said Bunny is happy and therefore he is (does he mean he is happy, too, or just that he exists--that is the epistemological question--or $20 question, in the vernacular), he thinks (that is, he thinks he is experiencing the aforementioned condition, whatever it is- -existence or happiness, as it says in the Declaration of Independence--or will perhaps reach such a felicitous conclusion to his meal, but well you know that even though our friend Descartes pinpointed our existence in this universe by our very act of cognition, that does not mean a woman cannot come along and change the whole equation and you better agree with whatever she says, however ridiculous, or else you are not going to be happy tonight, mon frère, that is one thing in spite of quantum mechanics that’s certain), Anonymous was referring to Descartes’ famous dictum, “I think, therefore I am.” (or as Anonymous correctly translated when he first had a thought, probably about food, pop into his head, Je pense donc je suis, in the original French, before Bunny--or maybe it was Chef Serge Pambo--made him think better of it, yes, better to just lie low, without complicating things by revealing your crude male thoughts in the face of superior female beings who may even be clairvoyant, so better not even think it, he thought to himself or did it leak out into the vast expanse of the universe to be saved on St. Peter’s hard drive and downloaded to his cosmic balance sheet, or just intercepted by a gaggle of gals in the little girls’ room gossiping about him?). But if he keeps talking like that, he’d better just forget it. Just be direct.
In response to the challenge in last week’s Letters to the Editor which followed Scarlet’s letter, Shelley Lauterbach won dinner at Ocean for simply knowing, not necessarily in the Biblical sense, the true identities of Anonymous, the Country Girl, Scarlet, and Bunny. Now wouldn’t you like to know all that information? Does anyone know who the new girl in town is? Nah! Forget about it! Which is just another way of saying, “Get out of town!” Which is exactly what Scarlet said to the Country Girl, but with a different tone and meaning, of course.
Words can be so confoundedly complicated. And revealing, as well.
How about in this week›s issue, we give out a $25 Ocean gift card to whomever can tell us what The Nutcracker and Swan Lake have in common besides the Alabama Ballet this season (and don›t say ballet in general, or ballet dancers, or a libretto, like some kind of Pharisee or divorce lawyer--give us some meaningful, relevant information about what they share), as well as the line that is also identical on the resumés of the Alabama Ballet›s artistic directors that pre-dates their presence here in Birmingham. Give us both pieces of information, if you can follow us thus far, and you can score some shrimp or scallops that are out of this world, and that will help you know for sure, like Descartes says, that you are in it, unless you sometimes dream of seafood...
Then you can’t be too sure. But remember to be careful what you utter over the table at that romantic Valentine’s dinner, but if you are with that country girl, don’t believe a word she says. She was lying last Valentines’ Day too.
OK OK, thank you Anonymous.
This is Stephen again (I learned to switch back and forth from the crazy girl, but that is another Valentine’s story). We will have to cut off right there due to space limitations. But we will have more advice about achieving your Valentine’s objectives next week. Meanwhile you can write in after Tuesday night’s festivities and let us know how you made out in the next week’s issue.
That could be useful because, as you know, you can learn a lot by watching the film that is not revealed by the final score of the game.