Mail Privilege

Who loses when the United States Post Office closes up shop for good? Is it the troubled dog chewing his problems away on the femur of a terrified mailman? Or the little kid, a veritable Johnny-come-philately, inexplicably collecting stamps in the digital age? Is it Hermes, with his satchel and winged sandals, who’d suddenly have nowhere to fly?  Is it the lonely hermit residing deep in the woods, whose only contact with the outside world is through intricately constructed care packages? No, it’s all of us.  

You rarely envision the importance of the mail. But it’s quite the sanity maintainer, ain’t it? Mail gives us joy, while email gives us anxiety. Every single person with a P.O. box or mail slot would be incalculably poorer should the postal service cease production. FedEx isn't the answer. What gives them the right to wear purple - the color of royalty in a republic? 

The mail is more than junk, much more than catalogues and glossy promotions. It’s a connection to the outside world – a reason to get up and open the door in the morning. You can check your email on your phone – in the bathroom, in your bed, wherever. But getting the mail is exercise. It's a religious ritual that dates back to the days of Stampin' Sammy Osgood, the first postmaster general of these United States.

 

Society fetishizes Kringle and his coterie of crafty compact carpenters, constantly contravening copyright laws contenting Christmas customers country-to-country. But what is Santa Claus if not a would-be mailman who works just one day a year? He’s celebrated like the second coming, while real mailmen who don’t have the ability to fly above the snow. They must trudge through it, sans reindeer and sleigh, delivering packages without any holiday fanfare. Instead they’re out there battling black ice in an unsightly truck with the steering wheel on the wrong side. They have no elves to assist either, but the occasional gnome to twist their ankle.

 

Do we need the mail? Maybe not. But we’d sure miss it. There’s nothing like a bursting mailbox to get that daily dopamine rush. Try writing a postcard sometime. They'll be confused at first, but grateful down the road - after they've properly disinfected the card and sealed it off for a minimum of 14 days. 

Stamp on. 

A Stinking Life

Once there was another pile of garbage here, and now it is gone. There are almost no traces of it anymore, but millions of us know it existed, because we smelled it: the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island.

 

It was garbage, as Ippolito “Izzy” Annunziato of Teamsters Local 831 once said, that “you could stack high enough to reach the [expletive deleted] moon or fill the Grand [expletive deleted] Canyon if that sort of thing is more to your liking. Anyways, it was a ton of effing garbage, ya know?” Hundreds of millions of tons, to be exact. They can keep Machu Picchu and have their Taj Mahal, because you got all of this. It was a time when you just had to stick your head out of your window on Emmons Avenue to hear the horns blaring from the Belt Parkway with steaming, smoldering piles of trash. You watched as the seagulls circled the massive mounds in the landfill, thinking this must’ve been what Neil Armstrong felt like when he ambled across the lunar surface for the very first time. You fell asleep to the melodies of sanitation workers weaving obscenities together like Penelope at the loom.

 

You woke up holding your nose in the summer heat, knowing exactly what your neighbors ate for dinner, as well as what they didn't. You knew the difference between a halibut and a salmon simply by aroma. The wafting scent of rotting fish rolling down the boulevard on a breezy afternoon transports you to that place. Bags used to break all the time back then. There was no compost. At least not like now. If you didn’t like something, you threw it over an embankment. No one recycled. You sorted vinyl records, not refuse. You collected baseball cards, not cans. 

 

All over your garbage route, sanitation workers would hang off the back of trucks and everyone knew their names. You didn’t donate things. You burned them in a pit or tossed them into an open manhole when no one was looking. Cashiers never asked, “paper or plastic?” That landfill is gone now, compacted into itty-bitty cubes by time, machinery, corruption, and fun. You forgot what it tasted like when the barges cruised on by, spilling excess debris into the city's twin estuaries. Kayakers had to watch out for these toxic bogies, skillfully paddling to avoid contamination. Dumpster diving was a one-way activity in those days – if you went in, you never came out. You were better off on the sidewalk, admiring the heap from a distance. 

 

You tossed anything and everything into the river – with the driftwood from a decaying ship and the bodies from the latest mob war. You can still litter today, but it’s not the same. Someone’s always there to pick it right up. Strangers scold and lecture you about the environment, imploring you to care. But you couldn’t spell “environment” if your life depended on it. Not with that first "n" rubbing elbows with the word's sole "m." Raw connoted sewage, not sushi. There weren’t any blue containers. Commingling meant carousing on Bell Boulevard when you’d exhausted every haunt in South Brooklyn. And going green only happened when you ate a bad clam.

 

Fresh Kills having seen one too many fresh kills, is a burgeoning greenspace. When that final transformation takes place, you will mourn the bygone filth and forgotten swill. You will remember the stack for what it was, and for what it wasn't. The city doesn't need more park benches or nature trails. It has enough of those. But a place for our garbage, our mistakes, our regrets, our past - that's too much apparently. 

That garbage is hidden now. In jet black bags, scooped up late at night by quiet men in overalls. It may be camouflaged, but it’s still there. You can’t escape it. Under bottle caps and plum pits, electronics that aren’t supposed to be thrown out and CO2 canisters from your new soda stream - strewn across the five boroughs. On corners and stoops, in gutters and old cars.

 

Fresh Kills wasn’t the only landfill, it was just the best. Garbage was everywhere – once. I suppose the whole world is a landfill now. In the not-too-distant future, garbage may be eliminated. Vaporized. Sent down a wormhole garbage chute to a distant galaxy, or reanimated by the tireless work of underpaid, though well-unionized robot garbagemen. Whatever happens, you’ll miss it when it's finally gone. You’ll vividly recall the guy eating buffalo wings on the subway, licking his fingers and tossing bones on the floor for others to worry about. There will be some New Yorker futilely attempting to conjure up images of empty soda cans, crinkled plastics and egg cartons - a long lost city with more garbage than God.

 

Will you remember when our cans and crates were left overflowing on the curbside? Will you tell stories of backyard leaf burning parties during the first days of Autumn? You can get rid of plastic bottles and plastic bags, shame people for using plastic straws, but what about us when we're gone? We're sustainable, to a point. Compostable, in a way. But mostly, we're garbage, too. No better than the rusty soup can or the coffee-stained envelope. No worse either. 

Remember to recycle yourself. 

RIP

Let's agree to agree

When you put it like that, it makes total sense. I never thought of it in that way. It’s a good thing you did though – someone has to. You don’t leave any room for doubt. That’s what’s so great about this kind of thinking. There’s no room for doubt. It’s as if you politely knocked on doubt’s door, not barging in or anything, carefully pushing aside dirty socks and comic books. You just leaned through the crack and said, “hey buddy, it’s time for you to go. We’re at capacity. With the kids back from school and my in-laws staying in the guest room, our griddle can’t possibly accommodate all the pancakes that are now expected of us. You understand? I knew you would."

Because every day there are new problems, new issues, new news. I rarely know what to make of it - any of it. Unless it involves sandwiches or parking, I’m significantly out of my depth. But you won’t see me in the public library scouring ancient periodicals in a pitiless search for context. I’m not here to look into facts or research any further. Information is anathema to me. I want to know what to say and exactly how to say it. I don't need to know why. Please, tell me what to think.

Each morning I walk downstairs in one of my many expensive robes and check the steps for mail. It’s not a newspaper exactly. It’s a script. I could have opted for the email version but for something this long and complicated, you’re better off with a hard copy. I find it's easier to digest that way. The good thing is that my lines are already highlighted for me. Thanks? 

Every subject you can imagine is in there, updated daily to adjust to whatever social mores have shifted in the dead of night. Sports, politics, world affairs, cooking, gardening - it doesn't matter. My lines are in there regardless. There's even stage direction. What a relief since I never seem to know what to do with my hands. Of course on some subjects, I don’t get any lines. They’re not for me. Beards, for instance. Without one, I can’t ever comment on their obvious itchiness. How they trap food and insects, how they deserve shampoo like the rest of you. How they've become a tired cliche, the last refuge of a man without ideas. Sorry. I checked the script. And the beard section is curiously blank.

By sundown I’m basically off-book and ready to have an intelligent conversation should one pop up in the hours between dinner and bedtime. The only trouble is, there’s a new script the next day that may negate much of what I previously committed to memory. But it’s all about doing the work, right?

Life is so much easier now that I have each conversation planned out. I don’t have to worry about ever saying the wrong thing or presenting the appearance of confusion. I couldn’t agree more with what you have to say before you even say it. It's quite freeing. You should try it. It sure beats thinking for yourself. 

Pray for me

Under normal circumstances, I would never ask for them. I realize that prayers are special. They are like cuts of exotic meat stuffed in the back of the freezer behind ice packs and TV dinners, staying put until the time is right. When the moment arrives that you’re too tired to cook, you’re overcome with joy at the prospect of not preparing something overly complicated. But I have problems – problems that won’t be solved by simple thawing methods. I need help. Where am I going to get it though? From you?

Too many people are selfish, only thinking of themselves. They don’t stop and consider my problems, my needs, my demands. They’re trapped in their own heads worrying about their own day-to-day. It’s incredible when you think about it. Here I am, in need of counsel, and they’re more concerned with how they’re going to fix the gutters or put food on the table. Recently, I met one of my closest friends for a game of midnight croquet. The sound of a traditional wooden mallet hitting traditional wooden balls bathed in the moonlight, amid hooting owls and hollering mental patients, is restorative in ways that are only rivaled by the latest pharmaceutical breakthrough.

My friend began lamenting how he had to dry dock his yacht. He  barreled on, ticking off the problems with the toilet on board, the rusty anchor, and the warped floorboards in the captain’s quarters. I listened, astonished at how oblivious a person can be. My yacht is somewhere in the Gulf of Aden, sold at a loss to pirates a few years back. It’s a sensitive subject for me. Yes, I still have several helicopters, a few small planes and a teleportation prototype I won from a diplomat after a heated game of Go Fish. However, none of those are suited for water. Except one of my planes, which is a seaplane. The sound of pontoons touching down on a placid Alaskan lake is restorative in ways that are only rivaled by binging on a formulaic procedural legal drama. The fact remains, I’m a boatless man in a world mostly covered by water. My friend should’ve known that. Should’ve realized that. How was I supposed to play croquet under such duress?

I got home from the match, supremely irritated and decided to make pasta – something I’ve done millions of times before. When I finished cooking and sat down to indulge in a traditional, post-croquet carbo-load, I noticed something quite disturbing. The pasta was overcooked. I made it again. Not good enough. And again. Still not right. I couldn’t get it. I wasted dozens of boxes of perfectly good pasta trying to get the ideal texture. Not al dente, but not dente either. 

In my steaming haze, I found myself thinking of Al Dente, the man. An anxious man who would eat his emotions by the bowl. Disturbed by the texture of his Sunday dinners, he began scooping out linguine from a boiling pot. This dangerous practice led to burns, skin grafts, bone-chilling shrieks, hospital visits and violent protests from family members. He didn’t stop though. He wanted something that tasted better. His family tried everything – diets, rehabs, hypnosis. None of it worked. He began eating pasta straight out of the box, claiming at least there, it was “untouched by the sins of man.” This wasn’t true, of course. Who did he think put it inside? This was long before robot pasta makers. 

In the darkest days, you’d see him walking down 2^nd Avenue, having heard him a few blocks before. The rhythmic sound of raw noodles tapping against naked cardboard makes anyone who knew him tear up to this day. It was unmistakable. Don't let become another Al Dente. I don't have nearly enough aloe for that lifestyle. 

Odd job

So you want to be my personal assistant, eh? I should warn you though: it’s a tough gig. But if you’re dying to join the thousands of applications piling up in my study to dangerous heights, go right ahead. I can’t turn my ceiling fan on anymore for fear of losing some great candidates to the unforgiving spinning blade. Here’s what you should know.

You can’t email me, can’t apply online or enter into some encrypted portal. This is, strictly speaking, an old school process. But what you’re going to do is really quite simple: in every city across America there are a handful of remaining pay phones. On every single one of them (including that weird one under a bridge in Youngstown, Ohio), I’ve hidden a key. The key unlocks a PO Box somewhere nearby. In the PO Box there will be a self-addressed stamped envelope with your application inside. This helps separate people who are genuinely interested versus those who just want a little padding for their resume.

Now that you’ve gotten the application process rolling, I should cue you into the expectations.

Let’s say you get the job. God Bless. I might take weeks, even months to contact you. That’s part of the job. Patience is something they don’t teach in schools anymore, so I’ll teach it by proxy.

You are never to show up to my home.

You must pet stray cats, feed stray dogs and play with stray pigeons. Although, aren't all pigeons stray? You’ll adopt one to disprove this sad reality. Naming it “P. Jean” and taking it for vigorous walks around the neighborhood.

Compensation will come in the form of French francs and other pre-Eurozone currency.

You should know how to whistle well but abstain from snapping. You can hum, but only after asking permission.

You’ll get three hours of vacation the morning of Thanksgiving to brine a turkey without interruption.

You can sleep, but it’s by no means mandatory.  

You will never refer to friends by their given names. Instead, you will adopt my preferred nomenclature. For instance, my buddy Bailey “Skip” Von Bismarck who tightens the wires for acrobats at a traveling roadshow will be known forthwith as “circus boy.” Alternatively, my old pal Phineas T. Franco, the scion of a sausage empire, should be referred to only as “hot dog boy.” Understand? This is a security measure that I expect you to respect.

You don’t need to know a foreign language. In fact, English is not a prerequisite. Most of your meetings will with be with animals anyway.  

When I ask you to “get coffee”, I don’t mean for you to go down to the corner bodega for a big gulp of piping joe. I mean, though I’ll never say it explicitly, for you to take the next flight to Bogota and only return when you can fill a small aircraft with the finest beans.

You must understand the difference between a World War I doughboy and the Pillsbury doughboy.

I will expect you to have an encyclopedic knowledge of classic rock and make regular song requests on Q140.3, whenever I’m feeling creatively spent. Remember: Seger sustains. Additionally, I should see you building a strong rapport with the deejays to such an extent that I worry if you’re seriously weighing a career in radio.

Sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, huh? It sure is. Especially after OHSA intervenes and limits roof jumping as a now non-essential trust building exercise.

Bonne chance. 

A fish out of water story

“Could you please try and sit still for once? You’re always flopping around. It’s very distracting,” said the boss.

“But I’m a fish. What did you expect when you hired me?” said Joe Pesce.

He expected a hard worker. Pesce had come highly recommended from a friend, who also happened to be his friendly, neighborhood fish monger. Like most local fishmen, the monger was connected to organized crime. Filleting and deveining are just two more rackets for entrepreneurial young wiseguys. If he was honest with himself, which he rarely was, none of this would have been a surprise. The boss was the kind of fella who when he ordered dessert at a fancy French restaurant, he claimed he did it to make the lonely pastry chef in the back feel better. It was a form of charity, that’s all. Not because he’d ingest chocolate mousse intravenously if it were socially acceptable and scientifically possible. No, of course not. The boss got a thrill from being on the periphery of a world most people only saw in the movies. But what do 500-pound tunas know about graphic design?

“I expected someone who knew how to use Adobe,” said the boss.

“I told you I’d learn. It’s taken some time getting used to the mouse. I don’t exactly have hands,” said Joe.

“This isn’t working out,” said the boss. “You know it, I know it. Anyone who’s had the misfortune of watching you try to pour coffee knows it. Just yesterday I heard you were sleeping inside the lobby fish tank.”

“Technically, I wasn’t asleep.”

“But you were definitely out of office. And did your email auto reply reflect that? I don’t think so,” said the boss.

“I needed to clear my head a little. You know I’m not a cubicle guy.”

The boss knows that there are many different paths into advertising. Not everyone needs to attend ad school. However, Joe didn’t seem to possess any quality you’d want in an employee, even one a little rough around the gills. He was good for the occasional quip, entertaining colleagues with stories about plankton and fights with fisherman.

“The first account we put you on you refused to work for out of some strange moral objection. You know how many people in this building would gladly trade places with you, simply for the chance to work for that client?” said the boss.

“It was a canned tuna fish account. Did you honestly not see a slight conflict of interest there?" 

“I figured you were a team player. Look, I’ve written copy for FIFA and I think soccer, along with fascism and communism, is one of the three greatest evils perpetrated on mankind. But you should see the beautiful work I got to put in my portfolio. Life requires a certain amount of compromise, Joey,” said the Boss.

“That’s hardly analogous, sir,” said Joe.

“I’m gonna have to let you go,” said the boss.

Joe kept flopping, soaking the Herman Miller desk chair. What was once several grand was now garbage. You know how hard it is to get that fish smell out of leather? 

“Rocco’s not gonna like this,” said Joe, shaking his head.

“Rocco not my concern,” said the boss, now standing up, pacing behind his desk.

“And he shouldn’t be. But Rocco has friends. Good friends. Friends of mine. And should I be sent packing for reasons that are deemed unwarranted, then my enemies become their enemies,” said Joe.

“Are you threatening me?”

“Huh? I’m explaining to you how friendship works. Or maybe they didn’t teach you that in ad school.”

“I wanted this to work out, Joey. Really, I did.”

Joe stopped flopping for a second and picked up a picture of the boss and his son on a ski vacation.

“You ski much?”

“I try. That was taken in Vermont. A lotta people say the powder out west is better, but I dunno. I can’t drive to Utah for a quick weekend."

“Me? I’ve never skied. Looks fun though. Works all the muscle groups. It’s gotta be good exercise,” said Joe.

“It is. As I’ve gotten older, it’s one of those things I hope to keep doing. I’m not the golf or tennis type.”

“I hope you keep doing it, too. But the human body is a finicky machine. You never know,” said Joe, trailing off.

There was brief silence.

“It’d be a real shame if something were to prevent you from enjoying ski trips with your grandchildren. God, I’d hate to see that. I’m getting a little lightheaded. Mind if we cut this short?”

“No, of course not,” said the boss.

“I’m taking the rest of the day off."

Joe had no interest in learning photoshop. He took this job for the W2, so he could finally show some legitimate income on his taxes.

“I think it’s probably for the best if I didn’t come into work for a while,” said Joe.

“I couldn’t agree more,” said the boss.

“But you’re gonna keep paying me every week. That’s still our arrangement,” said Joe.

“You won’t regret it,” said the boss.

“I sure hope not,” said Joe.

Capital crimes

English wasn’t always this standardized, with this many rules and regulations. There was room to grow and make mistakes. Even as America entered its early gestation period amid copious amount of spilled (wasted) tea, most of the Founders embraced irregular spelling. Washington was Washingtone, Jefferson was Jeffersone, Franklin was Big Boppin’ Frankie Baby with that smooth electric kite. Everything was up for debate and nothing was written in stone. An extra vowel here, an extra consonant there – it wasn’t the point. 

The closest thing that existed to modern day spell check was the domineering little man (Giuseppe X. Ortographia) who crouched under your desk with a red pen, ready to place a squiggly line under any word he deemed in error. This early editor didn’t have much by way of knowledge, but he had passion, verve, gusto and other words you'd find in your Thesaurus. His lines were the capricious marks of a crazed grammarian, who knew as much about language as you did. Only from his huddled hideaway was he that much closer to the page, getting eye-to-ink before informing you of a grave blunder.

Grammar has become much too complicated. You need a tax attorney to complete a proper sentence these days. This wasn’t always the case. We need to return to a time when everyone writes their own personal English. The easiest thing to do for the individual is to adjust your capitalization techniques. This is something 18^th century scribes knew all too well.

I do it without thinking. I’ve been capitalizing Sandwich and Bocce since the 5^th grade. There are other words that figure into this new paradigm like Paradigm and Porch, Chair and Bagel. They are all integral to my current lifestyle. But as much as capitalizing words that have endured as lowercase for centuries is a worthwhile endeavor, what’s more pressing is to to cut down those unnecessary words that have received praise and fame for undeserved prominence. It's why I’m done capitalizing connecticut. 

It’s what the Founders would’ve wanted. And I should know. I practically raised half of them. John Jay lived at my house for most of the 80s, reading my books, eating my cereal, petting my dog. But that’s a tale for another Time.