Why Couldn't It Have Been the Butter Face Lady?

I know I mentioned a while ago on here that, as a child, I routinely read the obituaries in The Philadelphia Inquirer, I would joke, "to see if I'm in there."

I was only half kidding.

Today, I sometimes spend a little time sifting through the obituaries in The New York Times for a slightly less bizarre reason. I like to learn about interesting people. And it's funny how most interesting people, similarly, in fact, to uninteresting people, don't seem to get much attention until after they're dead. Sure, there are heaps of feature articles on Susan Boyle or whatever, but how many in-depth pieces do you remember reading about Peter Falk until recent unfortunate events?

Today, I got to learn a little bit about Norma Lyon and, because I found her interesting enough to read about, and write about, you're going to learn about her, too.

THey called her the "Butter-Cow Lady", and it's not because everything about her was awesome, but her cow. It's because she devoted a significant portion of her life to replicating animate and inanimate objects out of, you guessed it my little honors track student: butter.

The Iowa State Fair was a far creepier and more wonderous place with Ms. Norma around, because she would routinely enter gigantic, often life-sized sculptures in the fair, and I doubt she had much competition.

She was a devoted wife of 61 years, and mothered and raised 9 children, and yet she still had time to make a grade AA salted butter version of "The Last Supper," a full-sized dairy cow, and a 23-pound sculpture of Barack Obama's head to accompany her (solicited) 60 second radio endorsement while Obama was running for office.

"He knows our kids need opportunity here in Iowa so they don’t have to leave home to follow their dreams," she said in the ad. "Even if that dream is 500 pounds of butter shaped like a cow."

Hey, it sounds like some of the dreams I've had after eating chips and salsa too late at night.

It might seem like I'm poking fun at the late Ms. Norma Lyon, but really I have nothing but the purest admiration for not only her talent, and her passion, but for achieving mastery. That's something I've never done-- at anything. Certainly there are things that I'm good at, things at which I can admit I do well, but I've never achieved mastery at an art form, or mastery at a job-- I always leave too soon. Norma Lyon crafted things out of butter, and she was no amateur at doing so, and I respect and admire that.

I used to think that being a professional meant you got paid to do something. I don't know how the Iowa State Fair worked out its arrangement with Norma Lyon, but, whether she got paid or not, she was a goddamned professional. A couple years ago, I was cast in an industrial film to play an insensitive prick doctor to teach medical students how not to be insensitive prick doctors, and I got paid $20-an-hour for a week-long shoot. There was a make-up artist and a costumier, a film crew, a lighting crew, a sound guy and even a director flown in from California.

"I have to split the shoot in two, guys," he told us around the dinner table, "so I can fly to France to shoot Salma Hayek in a perfume commercial."

As I bit into my leaky wrap, I laughed quietly in my head as I pictured this guy shooting Salma Hayek. Then I quietly pictured things I wanted to do to Salma Hayek.

The point I'm trying to make here is that, while I got paid for this film, there was nothing "professional" about it, least of all my performance. I hope that, one day, I will achieve mastery at something. It may be being a husband or a father, I don't think achieving it as a son or a brother is going to pan out by this point, or it may just turn out to be at a craft. We'll have to see.

One thing is for sure-- today I will be thinking about Norma Lyon, aged 81. The Butter Cow Lady.

Norma: this pad's for you.

Tell Me About Yourself

No wonder nobody reads newspapers anymore.

I found this article in The Philadelphia Inquirer today. Its title: "The One Interview Question Many Dread." Funnily enough, "Tell me about yourself." isn't a question at all. But we'll let that slide. Because we're so nice here.

The article proceeds to describe the anguish and dread interviewees ostensibly feel when being presented with this bad boy at a job interview.

"Tell me about yourself."

In a series of thoroughly uninspired paragraphs, the writer goes on to advise folks in America who are currently seeking jobs (10.2%, last time I checked) on how to handle this non-question at a job interview, for those people who are lucky enough to land one.

"Be ready with your own personal 'mini commercial,'" the article wisely advises, "The message: hire me."

Well, no shit, brainiac. It's a job interview, not a lap-dance.

I've been on my fair share of job interviews in my life (I wish I could say I've been on more, actually) and I fail to see what is so hard about some dewy, balding prick from HR wearing a wrinkled Today's Man shirt-and-tie combo about yourself. After all, they're not asking you to recount the woeful tale of your first handjob or what you do in the basement at night when nobody else is home. Telling this schmeggegie about yourself is the whole fucking reason you're there, isn't it?

The problem, I suppose, comes when people feel the need to lie. Or "puff up." Or "exaggerate." Or any of the other colorful synonyms for "to lie" that you are privileged to know. Answering questions is only hard if you're not telling the truth. As long as you don't molest cats with frozen garden hoses or shit yourself to keep warm, I don't think telling someone about yourself at a job interview should be such a daunting and cataclysmic event. Get over yourself. You're just a loser like the rest of us, except that you happen to be an unemployed loser.

That's okay, though. I still love you. My little loser-boo.

One thing I am grateful for, though, that I realized after reading this article, is not that I have a job, but that I have a wife. I haven't been on many first dates in my life, but they're pretty unbearable by and large, and the main reason I feel that way is that you have to tell your life's story (edited for time constraints and content, of course) in some dark, noisy restaurant-- and that gets old fast. Like, after three minutes, I'm ready to thrust the salad fork into my adam's apple. Most peoples' lives are an amalgam of at least mildly entertaining anecdotes that have been retold at family dinners and social gatherings and in the local newspaper's police blotter that we tuck away and bring out once again on first dates-- to impress, to amuse, to engage, to prevent mass suicide and to indulge in the ritualized behaviors of "the first date."

You tell me about you, I'll pretend to listen while I look down your blouse.

I'll tell you about me, you'll pretend to listen while you stealthily look me up in the National Crime Information Center database on your Blackberry under the table.

For those of you out there who are still dating: I'm sorry.

For those of you out there looking for jobs: I'm very sorry.

That said, the dumb article I read said that your "personal mini commercial" should be no longer than 300 words. I thought I'd give it a try.

Ready? Here goes it:

Hi.

My name is Mr. Apron, but you can call me “Brotha.” I really want to work here because I am unemployed, and have been wearing the same underwear since last Thursday. I have exhausted my pantry’s food supply, except for a box of raisins, which nobody under the age of 87 eats of their own free will, and I have steadily moved on to raiding the dog food container for sustenance. The dog does not mind, as I ate him two days ago.

I think you should hire me because I make really good Xerox copies and my skin tastes good. Want to try? No? Okay.

See, what had happened was, I was born a long time ago. And my mom is a tree, so that’s kind of cool. Throughout my childhood I used to eat gravel and organize Edwardian costume balls on the playground at recess. In middle school, I got super interested in aeronautics. And synchronized vomiting. Unfortunately, I had to give that up when my parents told me that wasn’t an Olympic sport. I was bummed, but my teeth were rotting out of my head, so I guess it’s good I stopped.

Anywho, after I was excused from high school for coming to my Western Civ class dressed as Herman Goring, I decided to explore some career options. And my navel. I ended up inventing Silly String and the world’s first ever burlap thong panty, (last seen being modeled by Dr. Oz on the Oprah Winfrey Show) and I went on to become the only Methodist-impersonator ever to fly from Alabama to the 213km into the Indian Ocean on a 19th century commode.

I’m proud, also, to claim myself the first person to ever receive teeth-transplant surgery with dentition donated from a recently-deceased Bonobo.

Hire me.

DAMN! 300 words on the dot, bitches. Your turn!

Oh, Man-- Not Another One...

I'll be honest, some mornings, I'm just plain out of gas.

I got nothin'.

Those of you who blog (wait-- that's, like, all of you, isn't it?) know what I'm talking about. If you blog every day, chances are, one day or another, you're going to sit at your computer and stare at the monitor and go, "Shit. That's what I've got. Shit."

Bloggerblock. Sounds like a game you can download for your cellphone for $7.00.

When I get bloggerblocked, I tend to turn to newspapers for inspiration. Since I live in the 21st century, I don't actually get the newspaper, so I go to www.nytimes.com because I like to pretend that I'm highbrow, and oftentimes there will be a headline that will pique my interest enough to read a paragraph or two. Today there was a piece in the Automotive section about how, to prevent pedestrian injuries, hybrid vehicles may be fitted with "fake vroom vroom engine noises" so blind people and regular assholes who just aren't paying attention or are listening to their iPods won't get creamed by the next Prius or Insight that comes careening around the block at 60mph-- like hybrid motorists drive like that anyway.

And I thought to myself-- yeah, I could write a blog post about that.

But I didn't feel like it.

That's what writing for no boss and no deadline and no money gets you. Writers who "don't feel like it." What would happen if Andy Rooney just "didn't feel like" doing his 3 minute schtick every Sunday night? Oh, right-- they'd just air one of 7,000 re-run clips. I don't think anybody would notice. I don't think Andy would notice.

If nothing moves me sufficiently in the realm of the New York Times, I will turn my attention to the lesser, local offerings of the Philadelphia Inquirer and, if I'm really wandering the acrid desert, the Philadelphia Daily News. Well, the old DN came to my rescue, and speedily today, for I have struck gold with the following headline:

"Another Hunter Finds a Body in N.J. Woods"

When I read this headline, I read it in kind of a world-weary, exasperated way, as if to say, "Another Hunter Finds a Body in N.J. Woods." I mean, from the tone of the headline, the simple use of that word, "Another" leads one to believe that you can't even go for an hour's hike in New Jersey without stumbling over some human skulls or finding the Brower kid.

I have to say I was very disappointed when I read this article and found that, in the past year, only two hunters have come across bodies in New Jersey's wooded areas. From the tone of the headline, I would have thought this was happening every week. Or more.

I mean, I don't know-- I've never gone hiking in New Jersey, and I've never gone hunting anywhere, but now I'm kind of creeped out about what's lurking in New Jersey's woods. I know Jersey is "Sopranos" land, but they just whack people in the middle of the street and in Italian restaurants and leave them there-- badabing! Two to the head, you're fuckin' dead. They don't take the trouble of dragging the corpses of these poor bastards into the woods for hunters to find.

Who does?

Well, according to this article, in December of last year, some stupid little whore paid her boyfriend to have him kill her father, "because he was mean to her." Honest to God, that's a direct quote from the Daily News article. They tried to economize Daddy's body with a chainsaw, but they abandoned the idea, probably because it was too much work, and they ended up dumping his body "in the woods on opening day of shotgun season for white-tailed deer."

I mean-- who knew, right? God, when you're a murderer, you've got to think of everything!

My mother likes to say that, "everything happens for a reason." I think that, if you're a white female and you've reached the age of sixty, you are required by law to adopt this way of thinking. I think, if she's reading the paper this morning, she would read this article and say just that-- that these idiots dumped that body in the woods on the first day of shoot-em-up season so they could get caught, that this crime happened because this woman and this dude needed to be in jail, removed from society. I think she would also say that these hunters were meant to find these bodies, for whatever reason. She might even go so far as to say that, when you go into the woods to do violence, eventually, you're going to stumble upon violence.

She'd definitely say that about hunters who get iced by other hunters who mistook them for prey.

I probably would, too, if I thought that everything in life happened for a reason.

Are You Sure You're a Reporter?

Despite what people say, print journalism isn't dead. Sometimes, though, I think maybe it should be, and then have its corpse violated.

Take, for instance, this "article" that appeared today in "The Philadelphia Inquirer," which is, supposedly, our fair city's high-brow newspaper. I've taken pains to bold the "appetizing" portions of the article:

Pizza-eating police nab three suspected thieves
By Kathleen Brady Shea
Inquirer Staff Writer

Hungry thieves in West Whiteland Township were no match for detectives with an appetite for crime prevention, police said yesterday.

Three township detectives were having lunch in the Peace-a-Pizza shop in the Main Street shopping center about 12:10 p.m. Tuesday when they noticed a woman peering into customers' purses, Sgt. Martin Malloy said.

Fearing that she might be seeking a different type of dough, the detectives - Sandy Smith, Kristin Lund, and Scott Pezick - followed her as she met up with two other women and drove to the other side of the shopping center, Malloy said.

Two of the women left the car and went into the Babies R Us store, while the third stayed in the car. The detectives split up and continued their surveillance, Malloy said.

Eventually, the women were questioned, and police said they learned the three were concealing $180 worth of merchandise with no receipts. Lakisha Mitchell, 22, of Newark, Del., and Violet Washington, 18, and Deneisha Wright, 20, both of Wilmington, were arrested for theft, receiving stolen property, and criminal conspiracy, Malloy said.

They are not the first alleged victims of the dining detectives, Malloy said.

In May 2007, Lund and Pezick were seated at the Cosi restaurant in the same shopping center when they noticed a woman using fancy footwork to move a nearby diner's purse that had been placed on the floor. They watched as the woman removed credit cards and cash before returning the handbag to its original location.

Her subsequent arrest might have given the detectives an insatiable craving for culinary crime-solving.

-------------------

I mean-- wow.

Now, let's be up front with each other here: I'm no journalist. I admit that. But, after reading this, I think you will agree that neither is Kathleen Brady Shea. I did take a journalism course in college, and the first thing we were taught by our instructor is,

"Always be asking yourself, 'is this news?'"

I think Kathleen Brady Shea might have forgotten to ask herself that question before she wrote this "tasty little piece."

If she did, in fact, ask herself that question and the answer she came up with was, "Yes, this is news," then this is how the story should have read:

"Three West Whiteland Township detectives arrested three Delware women on suspicion of theft, receiving stolen property, and criminal conspiracy."

That's a piece of news. The article that preceeded this was a piece of shit.

We in America have a long, deeply-entrenched tradition of thinking of cops as sitting on their fat asses eating. Think Norman Rockwell's "The Runaway." The hulking mass of cop in that picture looks like he's about to chow down on the boy's piece of pie. Thanks for the stereotype, Norm.

We get our bullshit ideas about the world from pop-culture-- depictions in TV and film, we're not supposed to get them from the newsmedia. It is the responsibility of journalists to present fact-based accounts of the news. Newsprint is not a medium for making fun or making light, or for presenting stories in a cutsey, tongue-in-cheek way littered with vomitrocious aphorisms. The thing is, we have three detectives who made a triple arrest, and they're being treated in a condescending, patronizing manner, calling them "Pizza-eating police" and "dining detectives," bringing to mind a 300 lb cop with melted mozzerella hanging out of his mouth.

Maybe Ms. Shea thinks she's still writing for her high school paper.

By the way, if anybody sits around on their asses eating all day, it's more likely to be writers, not cops.

Incidentally, Ms. Shea put her email address at the close of her little journalistic offering in case anybody has any comment they'd like to make about it or her writing.

It's kbrady@phillynews.com.

Why not drop her a line and let her know what you think?

I'm going to!