Thanks Given for Pumpkin Chiffon Pie and Pro Wrestling

Greetings blogolytes.

I enjoyed Thanksgiving more this year than any other here in Chicago because I finally found a restaurant at Water Tower Place with a terrific holiday buffet.  The turkey was actually moist, not the dry and overcooked bird I usually confront, however, the side dishes were the high point, especially the squash stuffed ravioli and the slabs of macaroni and cheese.

And then there was the Pumpkin Chiffon Pie--a slender bottom layer of pumpkin pie filler with chiffon piled on it.  With your typical pumpkin pie, you get a thick layer with a dab of whipped cream on the top, but this Pumpkin Chiffon Pie was a work of royal art.  I was so impressed that it appeared in a dream a few days later, setting on a plate, radiating charismatic piehood.

(I'm sounding as food obsessed here as my ex Wall Street Journal/Europe boss Seth Lipsky.  More on him later.)

I dined with  the notorious Father Satan, his close and charming friend and sparring partner Ms-phistopheles and her brother (who likes to wear a yacht boating cap like the one L. Ron Hubbard favored) and her sister and her husband.

The sister of Ms-phistopheles and her husband are fellow travelers around "The World of [Pro] Wrestling" by French philosopher Roland Barthes ("Wrestling is not a sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of Suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque" [Barthes here refers to characters in neo-classic French plays by Molière and Racine]). 

Our discussion centered on the Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner brawl in 2014 on TNT Impact Wrestling and how the WWE's Bray Wyatt deteriorated from a backwoods Southern shamanic threat straight out of a Flannery O'Connor story into a glorified jobber (one who exists only to lose).  Fascinating conversation, indeed.

I want to thank all involved for leading me to this cornucopian discovery.  Your company made my Thanksgiving.

Uh, that is, until ... but later for that.  Time to introduce a regular feature:

The Kook of Seth  Part One

For years, followers of the exploits of a former boss of mine, one “Seth Lipsky”, have suggested that I write about my experiences working with him at The Wall Street Journal/Europe in Brussels back in the late 1980s.

To finally meet these suggestions then, future installments of this blog will run my serialized history of experiences with Seth and his nepotistic and deluded trophy wife, one “Amity (Ville Horror) Shlaes”.

These experiences were so curious and outrageous, not to mention wickedly clownish, that this nut actually ends up haunting my dreams from time to time, wearing his outdated fedora and demanding that I admire his garishly expensive watch.  Hopefully, this history will extract him from my subconscious for good.

First off, a disclaimer.  Seth Lipsky was not my worse boss ever.  No, not totally wretched (he could be an amiable and even an amusing sort, you know), but troubled, annoying and such a self-bloated caricature that he would eventually addle and disturb everybody who suffered working for him.

Our Dutch secretary, after discovering Seth’s dirty socks on his desk, once told me that Seth was “the little man with the big mouth.”  With that editorial opinion in mind, let’s turn to a capsule profile of the man, the myth, the mouth:

Seth Lipsky was my second boss during a stint working as a copy editor on the conservative editorial page of the WSJ/E.  A mere day into his arrival, he began announcing loudly that he was a “hawk,” and “hardliner” then declared that we should “lock and load” during his tenure. A stout defender of the state of Israel (oh, yeah, almost forgot, he’s Jewish), he occasionally came close to writing that the Palestinians should be bombed back to the Stone Age.

To Seth, the Tinker Toy Star Wars space defense project was “slicker than snot on a bottle”.  He raved about nuke missiles that would miraculously leave buildings standing after repelling the Communist hordes poised to invade Western Europe (they were all the fad with conservative military types during those days, though they never explained how, even if buildings were left standing, people could return to live in them while radiation clouded the strike zone, go figure).

A recent example of his tormented prose:

It would be wrong of Mr. Obama to go to Hiroshima if his aim there is to apologize. There is no doubt that innocent Japanese — children, in the main — were among the 140,000 who perished in the first strike with an atomic bomb (another 80,000 died at Nagasaki). Their deaths, though, came in consequence of Japan’s own tyranny. What needs to be expressed by any American president is gratitude for the American heroes who brought the war to an end.

Maybe the U.S. could have demonstrated to the Japanese what this terrible weapon did to a remote deserted island?  War-weary, depleted Japan might have caved at the sight (though Seth would probably have gloried at watching the mushroom cloud bloom). As for innocence, a nagging afterthought.

Seth once wrote that he “missed the Cold War” because that “era had a moral clarity” (unlike nepotism and greed, but we’ll get to that in future installments).  And, in those days, to use one of his timeworn clichés, Vietnam was the real “corker”.

The war, of course, was Vietnam.  While Nixon was scrambling for peace with honor, a Democratic Congress, in a betrayal of free Vietnam, voted against resupplying Vietnam’s military. It resigned America to the communist conquest that cast Indochina into the long dark night of communism.

Ever notice “Made in Vietnam” on the label of an All-American T-shirt?  And that nostalgic Cold Warriors can now freely vacation in Vietnam and enjoy long dark nights partying on the beautiful beaches of the fallen domino?  Naw, let’s get some American heroes to finally avenge the communist conquest.

I’m sorry, gentle blogolytes, why can’t I get on topic?  Okay then, time to lock and load it up:

So what’s really eating Seth Lipsky?  Is it because he’s short?  And bald?  And has a sublimated complex about it all that makes Napoleon look like LeBron James?

Nope, it’s because he’s a pudge.  A manic obsessive over food.

Witness this year’s “humorous” Thanksgiving column about cranberries.  Yes, cranberries:

When it comes to inedibility, after all, the cranberry is in a league of its own. How this poisonous pustule fetched up in a holiday aimed at giving thanks is a mystery.

Then, after a miserable anecdote about how one of his kids feeds the family dog a cranberry, causing the dog to hilariously “suck his whole body into his own mouth,” Seth suggests that:

It’ll just take one alt-right agitator to look up from his turkey and call me a communist for favoring immigration. Or one leftist lugnut asking how I’m going to account to posterity for endorsing the Donald.

“Aw, come on,” I’m going to say, “it’s Thanksgiving. Try some cranberries.” Then I’m going to reach under the serving table and hand him the real thing.
Then, as the politics-spouting guest is rolling around the floor trying to extricate himself from his own sourpuss, I’m going to offer a new prayer of thanks.

She who is Amity once told me that Seth acts this way over food because of a knee-jerk, atavistic reaction to Judaic dietary laws.  I guess, maybe … anyway, some examples of Seth with food:

·      “Hook, what’s that you got on your desk that you’re eating?”  “A piece of pumpkin chiffon pie, Seth.”  “Hook! Pumpkin Chiffon Pie!” “That’s it all right.”  “Is it as good as a piece of deep dish pie bursting with apple filling and with an oozing mound of vanilla ice cream on the side ready … just ready … to melt in your mouth, Hook?”  “Better Seth.”  “Better?”  “Better than a nuke shoved down a Commie throat Seth.” [uh, I didn’t really say that, until now.]

·      One time, my coworker and I invited Seth to Rick’s Café, a restaurant in Brussels that served American food, for all you can eat rib night.  After the first order was placed on the table, Seth dug into the ribs like those apes gorging on meat and bone for the first time in 2001: A Space Odyssey. “These are the best ribs I ever ate,” he told us.  So we ordered another helping.  Same deal with Seth, same munching, same gnawing.  We finished it off and ordered another serving.  The waiter brought it, and then Seth looked up and accused the waiter of delivering the ribs on smaller plates in a devious ploy to fool customers into believing they were getting “all you can eat” when they weren’t.

·      Thus, we were introduced to Seth and his antagonism toward waiters. Calling a waiter “garcon”, Seth would methodically order food or a drink, make sure in bad French that the waiter had the order straight, then, as the waiter was walking away, Seth would shout “garcon” and beckon him back to his table to change the order.  Never failed.  He regularly blamed the slowness of European waiters on the lack of a “tip incentive”, what with gratuities always included in the total bill. To Seth, the invisible hand of Adam Smith never left its profound mark on waiters in Europe.

·      When it came to food, Seth often suffered for the pleasure.  For example, after the rib fest, he arrived at the office and said to me “Hook, I’m sick as a dog. No, I take that back, a dog couldn’t be as sicker than I am.”  Not even a dog who ate a cranberry?  And, during Amity’s frequent episodes of pathetic anorexia, she forced Seth to share her agonies by submitting him to cruel diets.  “You know what I had for breakfast this morning, Hook?” he would say. “Two thin crackers and a glass of water.  Not four, not five, not even six crackers, but two, Hook.  They gave concentration camp prisoners more food for breakfast than I had this morning.”

·       Finally, Let’s Do [Your] Lunch.  Years after I left the Journal, Seth and his rich cronies 

     tried to resurrect The New York Sun newspaper as a print edition (it still has a web presence).  It lasted a few years or so, before dying when the rich cronies [see photo below] finally got sick of watching their charity case lose money.  In the obituaries for the newspaper, rumors were circulated about how lunch contributed to its downfall. 

 To quote Gawker:

           There are still stories about Sun founder and editor Seth Lipsky that are maybe worth your attention. Like did you know he stole everyone's lunch?

           At one point, he was widely suspected as the culprit responsible for stealing staff lunches from the office refrigerator.

            Ha ha it's funny because Lipsky was also famous for supposedly expensing his lavish lunches to the struggling paper. Lunch brought down the Sun! Spread the word!

Alas, unlike coming across many Internet hits exalting both Seth’s and Amity’s questionable accomplishments, it’s hard to discover inside scoops like the above.  I tried to locate the whole story behind the stolen lunch caper, but the link Gawker cited is dead.  No matter, I can see Seth Lipsky haunting the lunchroom of the New York Sun regularly and pillaging brown bags.

Oh, there’s more to Seth Lipsky ... and Amity Shlaes.  Nepotism.  Greed.  Gossip.  Backbiting. More dirty socks. Chainsmoking.  Fountain pens.  Creepy love affairs with French teachers.  But only if you want it.  You stand warned. 

 

Father Satan Tries (and Fails) to Stick in the Pitchfork

 After the last installment's complaint about the unholy alliance of Father Satan and Taylor Swiftian popular music, I thought, hey, cut him some slack already.

After all, here is a guy who, over the years, has given me records (still cherish that Pink Floyd Relics album) and intriguing books (like, that pocket volume of East German clothing fashion that looks like it was designed during a bad day in a Sears bargain basement). 

And coming up in a future blog installment: my review of his enduring gift of that profound chronicle of US involvement in Vietnam and Southeast Asia "Five Women I Love: Bob Hope's Vietnam Story".  They carp on Al Franken on USO trips when old Ski Nose apparently laid it on like loving napalm in the morning.

But all that took a turn for the worse when Father Satan once again snorted at me. 

At Thanksgiving Dinner, I gave Father Satan the excellent current issue of Chicago magazine, mainly for its nostalgic look at the history of Medusa nightclub--a legendary new wave teenage wasteland where alienated youth could escape their suburban gulag for nights and early mornings of twisting and shouting and spiking juice bar drinks with Dimitri vodka.

He liked the article but then noticed a piece about how rock critic Jim DeRogatis was using his investigatory reporting skills to uncover a sex slave operation run by some false rapper named R. Kelly (no, he isn't Irish). 

According to Jim, R Kelly has installed naive young women in places like Trump Tower here in Chicago where they, basically, answer to sordid whims that would make the abuses of Harvey Weinstein look like a chaperoned date with Flipper the Dolphin.

Because Father Satan relishes real-life crime stories and ridiculing the chubby DeRogatis (a kind of professional fly in the ointment who calls attention to himself by, for example, claiming that the Stones' Satanic Majesties Request is better than Sgt Pepper), I later thought, well, Father Satan would probably appreciate more details about this.  So I emailed him a more extensive item about the R Kelly affair I found in Flavorwire.

His response?

Just read Dostovefsky "The Grand Inquisitor" chapter of "The Brothers Karamasov." This interests me tons more than R. Jelly's lifestyle. There will always be his kind. Not sure why he should be of interest to me

Uh, maybe because you said it was of interest to you?

Oh, to hell with it, these matters can only be solved in the squared circle.

So I'm leaving Father Satanic matters to Ms-phistopheles from now on.  She knows how to handle him.  After some rabid disagreement where he mispronounces her name as Ms-topholese, she challenges him to a Texas Chainsaw Barbed Wire Cage Match.  She always wins, exposing him as just another jobber.

Seth Lipsky and Father Satan.  I'm drained.  Time to submerge myself into tomorrow's office holiday party.  Later, blogolytes!