The Boxer

Boxed wine used to be the equivalent of "cheese food product." What it lacked in edibility, it made up in volume.

There has been an ongoing evolution in wine packaging, not always for the better. For starters, they tried replacing the cork, offering a whitewash of disparate reasons:

1. "Cork is natural. Harvesting natural things is bad for the environment."
2. "Plastic corks are more stable and protect wine better."
3. "Screw tops create less waste and provide a better seal."

First, cork is not a living thing. It is the byproduct of a living thing. Trees miss their cork like my bathtub misses the hair in the drain.

Plastic corks are indeed more stable: they can survive in a landfill for 20,000 years. And they make wine taste like plastic corks.

Screw tops make complete sense, except that they are inextricably linked to Boone's Farm Country Kwencher. I liked Country Kwencher just fine as a kid, but even then I was bothered by the spelling. If you are marketing to hicks, why not go all the way: Kuntry Kwencher? (Okay, I see why.) You find Boone's Farm proudly displayed in convenience stores that don't sell wine, which is an ominous give-away: although it is in a wine bottle, Boone's Farm is not wine. It is a "malt-based beverage," which is to say it is wine-flavored beer. This is the poster child of screw top bottles.

Wine connoisseurs claim they can tell by the taste of a wine the region from which the metal screw cap was mined. This distinct taste is referred to as ferroir.

Yes, corks go bad. Yes, they can spoil expensive wines. Yes, they often crumble into the bottle. Or break in half, leaving an irretrievable plug. With wine, that is the whole point. If everyone could open a wine bottle, what would be the fun of being a snob? The pageantry and fussy corkscrew are part of the fun, despite the gnawing awareness that it would be more easily accomplished using safety goggles and a cordless drill.

A cork may give clues of what's to come. You don't sniff the cork, like they do in the movies. Just look at it. Is it moldy? Is there foul gunk on the end that is nowhere near a wine color? This is not esoteric. You use the same procedure when buying a loaf of bread: if it is green or covered with fur, you put it back. You don't need to sniff it. While adopting a kitten you happen to notice that its anus is crusty and miscolored, you pick out another kitten. Perhaps this is where we get the word analogy.

Today, box wine presents tempting advantages. First, it gives you four bottles of wine for the price of, and in the space of, three. What comes out of the box tastes very much like wine. There is no cork or screw top to complain about. There is no top at all. And this brings me to my favorite part about box wine: it comes out of a spigot.

The empty package is cardboard, more recyclable than glass. But it is hard to fold flat. It is sealed together with the same inseparable glue they use now to seal a bag of chips, the kind that makes you look stupid when the entire bag explodes, leaving you holding only the intact sealed edge.

The bladder-like bag inside a box of wine is recyclable, although unsightly. They claim this collapsable bag helps wine last longer, because no air gets in while you drain it. This is a boon to those mythical people who don't drink their wine all at once.

As I remove the plastic bladder and notice how much wine is still slopping around in its wrinkly folds, my Scottish roots compel me to squeeze it out, which is about as charming a maneuver as wringing a placenta. But the result is an extra half glass of wine, which I consider my reward for bothering to recycle.

The only downside to box wine is that, like the giant 12-pack of toilet paper, it is embarrassing to buy. But once you get it home, it's wine-on-tap. And if fussy friends come over, you can always fill that decanter you never use.

Model Behavior

My mom is selling her house. She and dad bought it in 1961, and began raising five, then six kids in it. I was two years old when we arrived; I never knew any other home. She lived there for 48 years.

My lasting contribution to the home was a big orange stain of modeling paint, spilled into the carpet while finishing a race car model in my room. It was the kind of day-glo orange a nine-year-old kid would pick out. I dabbed some of it up with a rag, then gave up and left the rest to dry. I never told anyone about it, and it became a permanent part of the house.

My favorite models were the Revells. A latticework frame held tiny, intricate pieces I'd break off and use to assemble an AMC Gremlin Funny Car or P-51 Mustang Fighter Plane. My most ambitious project was a complete Saturn V rocket with an Apollo module on top, that opened to reveal the Lunar Landing Module. I built this while NASA was building the real one. I learned a lot about rockets and modeling glue.

I followed every tidbit about the Apollo missions. I flew my LEM in front of the television as Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. Even as a kid I was amazed that someone had the foresight to install a camera on the landing module, and I was baffled that, for all the required breakthroughs in technology, the historic video was broadcast upside down.

I learned that Moon was the maiden name of Buzz Aldrin's mother. I didn't know she had committed suicide only a year before his historic flight, because they didn't tell kids that.

I wanted to be an astronaut. I was told I didn't have a chance because, at age 13 and only 130 pounds, I was already 6' 2", too tall to fit a jet or rocket. I was also very interested in gymnastics—especially the parallel bars—but again, I was too tall, they said. I also considered being a forest ranger, because I heard they gave you a truck, a radio and a cabin, and left you alone all winter. That sounded good, and you could be as tall as you pleased. But I was told that nobody from Nebraska would get into forestry school.

So I majored in philosophy, until one of my professors jumped out a 13th-story window. I switched to psychology, a department that had no height restrictions and was in a lower building.

While I was in college, 6' 2" gymnast Bart Conner won a gold medal on the parallel bars in the Olympics. He was in one of my classes.

That same year, 6' 2" astronaut Jim Weatherbee piloted the space shuttle Columbia, eventually becoming the first astronaut to command five flights.

When someone buys my mom's house, I bet first thing they will do is tear up that spoiled carpet. Of course no one will ever forget the Apollo astronauts. But what will be lost is the legacy of one boy who dreamed of becoming one of them them, but whose only mark in space exploration was an orange stain.

A Bang Up Job

They call it The Peanut.

But it's a peanut that's 230 feet wide and 90 feet across. By my calculations it would make 37,000 jars of peanut butter, except that everybody has driven all over it and it is made of concrete.

Technically, the Peanut is a roundabout, in a round-about sort of  way, because it isn't round. It sits at the intersection of North 50th Street and Seward. And Country Club Avenue. And North Saddle Creek Road. And Happy Hollow Boulevard. Amid eight weaving, intersecting lanes, it is an octopus of befuddlement. With the addition of those little triangular traffic islands, there are a total of fifteen ways in and out of The Peanut. It was designed to simplify a difficult intersection.

The Peanut was initially covered in cinderblock, later replaced by grass in a beautification project. Because so few people can navigate its zig-zaggy bends, the grass has mostly been run over.

Behind a big white commercial van, I began to enter The Peanut. But the van stopped in front of me. Halfway in, I had barely started my turn when I saw his backup lights come on. He wouldn't.

The two horn buttons on my old Honda Accord are each about the size of a quarter. Banging on the center of the steering wheel doesn't do anything but deploy the airbag. The horn buttons are hard to find when you're driving straight. When you're turning, honking becomes a game of Whac-A-Mole.

My horn never did make a noise. His big truck had a backup beeper, but it barely got out one beep before he T-boned my door. Mr. Van Man took off, and I took chase. My first thought: "Your fat-ass van got nuthin' on my Honda." I was almost disappointed when he pulled over in a parking lot. We got out and expressed our mutual opinions of each other's driving.

He accused me of following too closely, which on any given day could be true, but I reminded him I was sideways. When another driver pulled up and offered that he saw the whole thing, Whitey Van Man got nicer. After promising to take care of things, he took off again, leaving only his first name and a cell number, which of course he is no longer answering. So the cost of my car repair will now include a couple of police citations.

The other culprit we don't know is Who Designed The Peanut. I have orated on the need for a big plaque honoring the designer of The Peanut, so we can refer to it by its more proper name, like The Bilbo Bongwater Roundabout Debacle, or The Horatio Huey Hootenanny — Huey Hooey for short. Instead of cursing it generically, I'd like a more personal touch.

A few days later, after no response from Boobus Van Hittenrun, I staked out The Peanut to see if he might drive by again. There I sat, dark glasses and everything, scrutinizing every car. People avoid you when you just sit in your car in an empty parking lot. It's fun.

Navigating the serpentine legume, one out of every three cars bounced over a curb, one hundred percent of those cars had drivers who were on the phone, each one exclaiming "Shit!" amid their blandulous blather about what's for dinner.

The Peanut would be a metaphor for life, except life doesn't have someone to blame for it.

In The Bag

I would get home, peel out of my Halloween costume and toss it aside. I'd lean up against the heavy wooden door of my closet, and peer into my bag of loot.

Gripping the paper bag by the string handles, I opened it wide and put my face inside, taking a long, deep sniff. The smell of Halloween.

My mother didn't stock a lot of candy around the house. She wasn't particularly opposed to it, but with six kids it was barely worth the bother. The first of us who got wind of it would eat it all and hide the evidence. I didn't much like red licorice, but I'd eat it anyway just out of principle, because I knew my siblings would do the same.

Mom wasn't against candy. If I bought it myself, she figured I was entitled to it. After school I'd head to Bob's Kwik-Shop with my friend Harold, where we'd blow all the money in our pockets on candy bars: big fat chewy ones, sometimes three or four. Usually I'd get a few standards—Snickers, Nestle's Crunch, Mr. Goodbar, Reese's (there were no "Pieces" back then, and the chocolate/peanut butter pie was noticeably bigger)—and then branch out, try something new. The Cherry Mash looked pretty good, and I remember it being the most disgusting thing I ever put in my mouth, after goat cheese.

I'm not that picky. In fact, I consider myself a food slut. To this day, goat cheese is the only food that I have physically wiped off my tongue.

Tootsie Rolls took a little thinking. A popular commercial of the day featured a wise owl extolling the virtues of licking your way to the chewy center. I began to feel guilty about crushing the Tootsie Pop between my molars, and always tried to suck my way into it. Leave it to me to create rules about candy. Perhaps once or twice I actually licked to the middle, only to discover a slobbery Tootsie Roll inside, which I could have just chosen in the first place.

We'd go back to Harold's, because both his parents worked and we had the house to ourselves. We'd eat all our candy while listening to his Man of La Mancha soundtrack or some other show tunes on his record player. At the time, that seemed perfectly normal.

So after a few long, exultant breaths, I'd pull my face out of the trick-or-treat bag and dump thine holy contents onto the carpet. There were always a few eyebrow-raising standouts: Scored a Salted Nut Roll. A whole, regular-sized Hershey bar. Who were these people? What do they do for a living, that they can give this stuff away to strangers? I wanted to join their family.

There were the obvious turds in the punch bowl. The apple: I appreciate what you're trying to say, but keep your Lefty politics off my Halloween. Do you think I'm dressing up in disguise and shaking down my neighbors with threat of tricks because I want to do the right thing? Necco Wafers: near as I can tell, it's candy made from colored baking powder. You'd only give this to kids you hate, so I see I have enemies. A religious tract: it's inevitable that someone takes the chance, hoping some eight-year-old kid will stop in the middle of his Pixie Stix and say, "I have emptiness in my heart, and I'm asking Jesus to come in." I was church-raised, but if I had emptiness in my heart and I was facing a tiny Jesus cartoon book and a King Size Kit Kat, I know what I'd reach for to fill it.

The sorting begins. The "individual size" candy bars go in the keeper pile, even though to me the big Hershey bar was individual-sized. Today, Halloween candy bars are about the size of a thumbnail, and they're called "Party Size," which I might understand if it were made of Ecstasy. But for a candy bar, it's the equivalent of a birthday cupcake.

Tootsie Rolls, chocolate bars, Kisses, candy corn: into the keeper pile.

Out: Circus Peanuts, those spongy tan things that don't taste like a circus or a peanut. The hard, no-label candy wrapped in orange and brown wrapper. Peppermints. Candy necklaces. All these go into a separate "Out" bag.

For popcorn balls, I couldn't resist taking a bite, surprised every time that the colorful sphere was a sticky, gummy ball of stale Karo Corn Syrup. Toss the rest into the Out bag.

About then, my mom would walk in. "It would be nice if you would share with your brothers and sisters," she'd say. "You're the only one young enough to trick-or-treat."

"I know, Mom, I was already going to," I'd say as I handed her the bag.

Thanks, Bookworm!

Omaha's best locally-owned bookstore, The Bookworm in Countryside Village, is now stocking my book Are You Going To Eat That, for those of you who like to support local retailers. If you go in, tell Beth and the gang thanks for having a local writer section! Because the book is humorous and more-or-less unoffensive, they report a lot of people are buying it as a fun gift.

The Masked Pretender

I love Halloween because 1) I cling to childish things, 2) I get to dress funny, and 3) it means my house is full of candy bars.

I hope with my many years of experience, the whole day will go smoothly. Last year didn't, so much. It went something like this:

7:30am: Wake up.
9:30am: Wake up again. I'm late. Shit!
11:00am: Go outside to replace burned out porch light. Drop new bulb from six-foot ladder. It was the last bulb in the box. Go to store.
11:45am: Return from store. It's time for lunch. Discover I don't have anything to eat but pumpkins. Go back to store.
1:00pm: Carve pumpkins. Pop seeds into the oven to roast for a snack, even though they never turn out any good.
1:30pm: Set out trick-or-treat candy. Discover there are only six pieces left. Go back to store.
2:45pm: Return to discover kitchen full of smoke. Pumpkin seeds are on fire. Dammit! Put billowing, charred cookie sheet ouside on the back porch.
3:00pm: Answer phone. It's next-door neighbor, who thinks my back door is on fire. "Didn't that happen last year too?" I tell him to shut up.
4:30pm: Try on costume. Discover I can't see out of the mask. Walk head-on into edge of open bathroom door.
5:00pm: Regain consciousness staring at the ceiling. Where am I? Who am I? Look down at myself and deduce that I am someone from Sesame Street.
5:30pm: It is time for kids to come trick-or-treating, which means is time for shot of tequila. Tequila bottle has only three drops in it.
5:31pm: Another trip to store interrupted by doorbell. "Trick or treat!" Hand out candy. Ask kids if any of them has tequila. One does. He won't part with it.
5:35pm: Swearing, rush back to store, leaving peel-out marks on the driveway. Stop to apologize to neighbor for nearly running over his six-year-old at end of driveway. Promise to replace flattened jack-o-lantern bucket.
6:00pm: Candy handing-outing now fully underway. Seems like more kids than usual because knot on my forehead is giving me double-vision.
6:30pm: Another shot of tequila. Double vision cancels itself out. Neighbor kids complain that I'm not scary enough. Pull off Beaker mask, revealing giant purple knotted head. They run screaming.
7:00pm: Find original Frankenstein movie on TV.
8:00pm: Older kids start showing up at the door. They are all football players and hobos. They all optimistically hold open pillowcases. Decide to stop answering door and keep candy for myself, because, hey—at least I dressed up.
8:10pm: Crash into bathroom door again. Not wearing mask. Swear off the tequila.
8:15pm: Head to Halloween party. Car honk reminds me to take off my Beaker mask. Discover I'm driving on the wrong side of the street. Definitely scary.

1:30am: Happy. Exhausted. Sugar-buzzed. Wide awake.

7:30am: Wake up.
9:30am: Wake up again. Late. Shit!
9:40am: Look at naked self in mirror. Either I ate too much candy or I got knocked up overnight. With Halloween, you never know.

So—hello, November.

Le Bark

I'm learning a new language.

I worked hard at Spanish. I learned a lot of words. But the Spanish speak in such a machine-gun monotone that no matter what they say, I respond with, "¿Excúseme?"

Italian was much easier. The words were about the same as in Spanish so I had a head start. And real Italians all speak as clearly as the people on the Beginner's Italian recording. Best of all, they don't automatically hate me for being American, which helps.

I like to be good at things. If I'm not immediately darling at something I usually give it up. I don't even bother to try any of the languages where the letters are upside down and backwards, the sentences read right to left, or they draw words using a branch.

I have two cats, and Cat is a snap to learn. Basically, there are only two phrases:

1. "Rowoo." = "Be a good chap and open me a can of Friskie Delights Sardine Pâté, would you?"
2. Blank stare. = "You are tiresome."

With those two phrases, my cats and I understand each other pretty well.

I am caring for my girlfriend's dog Phooey for a few days, and I am getting an immersion course in Dog. I speak a little Dog, from my days working at the Humane Society. I once stopped by the kennel of a particularly beautiful Australian Shepherd, considered among the smartest breeds. He lifted my hand with his elegant nose, and tossed it onto his soft head, as if to say, "Scritch it, would you?" I did, and he was pleased. He repeated the motion, guiding my hand atop his head with his nose. I skritched. "Very good." Then he lifted my hand again, only this time he set it on the cage door latch. His eyes said, "Get it?"

The trouble I'm having is that Phooey is not an Australian Shepherd, but a purebred Shih Tzu. Not only is his vocabulary much smaller, but he was bred in one of those countries that writes with sticks.

Here's what I have figured out so far:

1. Jumps up on my shin, dances and spins on the floor. Go potty, do tricks, walkies, ride in the car: anything seems to be the right answer.
2. Low grumble, then sneezes snot on me. This means something like, "I am not getting through to you!" He never does. By some quirk of evolution, he never runs out of snot.

When Italians speak with foreigners, they continue in Italian as if you understand them. They presume that the beautiful sound of their language will carry the message well enough. Americans reply with either "Gratzee" or "Skoozee."

The Spanish look at you with an expression that conveys, "Why did you even bother to come here, if you can't speak our language?" Then they speak to you in English that is better than yours.

The French will say, equally well in French or English, "I don't want to talk to you."

When Americans talk to foreigners, we TALK LOU-DER AND SLOW-ER WITH MORE DICK-SHUN, as if the listener were equal parts foreign and retarded.

Phooey and I are currently at a standstill, both of us looking at the other, tilting our heads left, then right. Normally, I like to communicate with animals, but I have a nagging suspicion that if I succeed in learning the Shih Tzu dialect, I'd end up leading the life of a beleaguered hairdresser.