Presidential Very Hopefuls

It's a good idea to compare yourself to this guy

I’d recently been wondering which current candidates admired which real presidents. Luckily, NPR read my mind and asked several candidates this important question.

Fred Thompson, Barack Obama, and John McCain all had a chance to point out the best presidents, and cleverly hint at how they were similar. In a gutsy move Thompson endorsed George Washington, because he “never returned to the capital” once he left office, exactly what the former senator is trying to do. The visionary bringer of change, Obama, chose Lincoln. McCain, who has apparently read a history book, chose the first sixteen presidents, Teddy Roosevelt, Reagan, and Truman.

This told me a lot about these candidates. Anyone can look at some cash and ramble about the greatness of America and make a politically acceptable answer. But I would have preferred an unexpected answer.

I would have chose William Henry Harrison, for his unbelievable courage for, at age sixty eight, delivering his two hour inaugural address, followed by a parade, in the cold rain without wearing a cloak. He reportedly told aides, “I am Old Tippecanoe, and I am the decider, and I am not going to wear a cloak.” He died of a cold a month into his presidency. That’s what I call staying the course.

Caption Contest Tuesdays

"Your beard is the best."  

"No, Senor, it is you who possesses the best beard.  And where did you get those shades?" 

"Oh these, just got them at Walgreens."  

"My friend, the collared shirt with a little bit open at the top, it is fantastic."  

"I was going to say the same thing."

Ernest and Castro.  

Email us.

Please.

So lonely.

Historical Investigator Investigates History

(Me, NOT James)




Tune in next week when I investigate why the A in "Capital" is mysteriously whited out and continue milking this topic for every possible piece of material.

The other day while on my way to the Paramus, NJ Ikea, I passed a sign on the highway telling me that Northern New Jersey is the Embroidery Capital of the world, and has been since 1872. Some hasty research yielded a more specific central seat of embroidery government—Union City.

I was immediately filled with questions. Why 1872? Who decided that Union City would be the Sofia, Bulgaria of the spool, the N’Djamena, Chad of the needle, the Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina of Stitch? (I have about seventeen more of these, email monoclesgalore@gmail.com) It was clear that I needed to “thread” together city lore with fact and research, thus creating a complete “tapestry” of truth.

I decided to call up the office of the City of Union City, and while alternating between being on hold and being transferred to different people who knew the whereabouts of some guy named Gerard who was supposed to know all about this, I decided to do a little thinking on my own.
What happened in 1872? Ulysses S Grant became president. Did he have something to do with this? Susan B Anthony voted for the first time in this year. Women spend a lot of time embroidering, and as one, I would know. Might she have somehow been involved? There was also a meteor shower. As everyone knows, meteor showers often signify a transfer of power, such as Caesar’s death or the rise of the Dark Lord. Could they also signify the transfer of embroidery capitals?

And what happened before 1872? As it turns out, a lot, but surprisingly little of it was embroidery related. There was the sew-down between Arachne and Athena, but that was weaving, which is done on a loom and is completely different and thus irrelevant (OR: which everyone knows is completely different and also completely retarded). Other irrelevant things that happened before 1872 include ancient Rome, ancient Greece, the creation of the universe, nearly all of human history, and the birth of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House books. Exciting and event filled as all of that was, there is no evidence that suggests that there was a previous embroidery capital or any kind of transfer of power.

Can you really just decide to be the capital of something? My mom makes really good Christmas cookies. Do you know what would happen if I just decided to refer to my apartment as the Capital of Christmas Walnut Balls? Exactly: complete chaos.

And furthermore, what if there is some other place that already considered itself the capital of embroidery? Because last time I checked, a place deciding it is the capital when there is already a capital is called secession and thus a civil war. However, my research does not suggest that there was a previous embroidery capital, so this can’t really be considered an embroidery civil war. Question four is irrelevant.

In the end, I was never transferred to Gerard. I wrote this entire thing while on hold. I was even told by two separate people that Gerard does not exist. But that doesn’t matter. Because I thought of something really good. But then I was put on hold again and I forgot what it was. It was probably pretty funny though. Oh wait, I remember: the Canberra, Australia of Cross Stitch.

Week In Perspective

If intern Mike brings me sugar instead of Splenda, I get grouchy.

A lot of people ask me what we do around the MG offices all day (nobody asks me this). Besides doing research for my writing, watching reruns of The Hills on mtv.com, and ordering Intern Mike to go buy me more Fat Free Vanilla Jello Pudding Snacks (60 calories and 0 guilt—so why am I always crying?), I also spend time throwing out pieces that just aren’t working. Realizing it’s time to let go of a joke or idea is one of the sad but important parts of writing. In an earlier draft of what you are reading now, there was even a joke right here. Most recently I said goodbye to the piece that started the whole idea for this site in the first place, The time the guy I was hooking up with hooked up with my foul ex-friend Violet, by Henry James.

Initially, it was fun to experiment with the Henry James voice and figure out how he would write about a trivial college story. It started:

In the small American town of Middletown, Connecticut, named for the place it inhabits between the cities of Hartford and New Haven, there is a university, as there are in many such towns in New England, full of trees and house parties, and, as we are often warned, young men of a particular type, who feel entitled to particular things, and sneak about with a very particular type of girl, girls that other girls feel it is in their best interests never to speak to again, try as they might to get back in their good graces.

However, I soon I realized it made me look cray-to-the-crazy insane and sad and alone and bitter and fat. But so much of the MG experience has been about James and I being honest with each other, and just like I told James that I honestly thought his sweater looked like something a blind baby with no hands who was raised by wolves had knitted, he told me that honestly this piece was way too long and overall a huge mistake, both in the writing and its intentions. So I’ll just think about how much I hate her and her fugly pleather Steve Madden imitation Christian Louboutin shoes, instead of writing about it on the internet.

Oh wait.

PS Speaking of me being famous, here's what that week in Ikea was about (ME!!!). Don't forget to visit friend of the site Mark Malkoff's page at Marklivesinikea.com.

Our Favorites on Screen: TJ and Oscar Wilde in The Rock

Sean Connery is well versed in combat and literature

I first saw The Rock starring Nicholas Cage (and directed by the pride of Wesleyan University, Michael Bay) when I was ten. I immediately pronounced it the greatest film ever. But after watching it for the first time in a few years, it got better. Already a subtle film with an intricate plot, it has many excellent jokes. (some of the best feature twitching corpses) But Sean Connery's joke in the clip above, which I had missed before, put it over the top. Maybe I missed the joke because I didn't know who Oscar Wilde was the last time I saw it, or I was distracted by Ed Harris's swift 'bow to Connery's neck. I guess I should have expected a witty Wilde reference in a Hollywood blockbuster about a renegade group of marines who hold San Francisco Bay for ransom with VX poison gas missiles, the country's only hope being a science nerd and a washed up James Bond.

To Have Alcohol and Have Not Alcohol

Ernest demonstrates one of the difficult psychological aspects of alcoholism--extreme suspicion of the loved ones around us.

Feeling the pressure to get wasted when it’s really not your faves? Or, for those of us that aren’t complete lames, sick of being the last one to leave a party, and also why do your friends insist on doing “interventions” and reusing cliché phrases such as “your drinking is becoming a problem” and “you smelled like a Dubra factory in The History of Scientific Thought from The Ancient Greeks to the Enlightenment this morning which was a Tuesday’?”
Fear not. There were plenty of historical figures that chose to lay off the sauce, but also tons who boozed like champions. Whatever your cup of tea (Earl Grey or Grey Goose), you’re in good/well-known company.

DRINKERS
1. Tiberius
In The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius writes that this emperor of Rome drank so much that instead of Tiberius Claudius Nero, people called him “ ‘Biberius Caldius Mero’—meaning: ‘drinker of hot wine with no water added’.” [1]

2. Ernest Hemingway— This friend of the site has been described as having “a relentless appetite for long drinks and pretty women.”[2] His favorite drink was Gordon’s gin[3] , and everyone knows that gin is for serious drinkers. A Hemingway biographer described Ernest’s fishing boat as “kind of a floating whorehouse and rum factory.”[4] So basically Hemingway invented the Booze Cruise, and for that we salute him.

3. Edgar Allen Poe—Unlike most alcoholics, Poe didn’t drink all the time. In fact, one writer makes sure to point out that “Poe was not an alcoholic,” but then goes on to say, “Poe was an impulsive binge drinker who, once he started drinking, could not stop until he was out of money or passed out.”[5] Spoiler alert: most historians agree that alcohol lead to his death. He was drinking with friends, and then was found in a gutter unconscious six days later, and he died soon after. If he had died in the era of Facebook, how many groups do you think would be made after his death called “Nevermore?”

4. Early (better) Eric Clapton.
In Wonderful Tonight, Patty Boyd writes about being married to both George Harrison and Eric Clapton (both!!!!!!!!), and describes Clapton lurching around their house blackout basically all day, coming to bed with a drink and pouring himself another as soon as he woke up. Obviously our friend Slowhand is still awesome, but I was hoping for lovable wild and crazy drunk, not drive away your friends drunk.
(See also: Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, every cool musician ever)

NOT DRINKERS
1. Julius Caesar
It was said "Caesar was the only sober man who ever tried to wreck the Constitution.” [6]

2. Augustus
The first Emperor of Rome “was also a habitually abstemious drinker. During the siege of Mutina, according to Cornelius Nepos, he never took more than three drinks of wine-and-water at dinner. In later life his limit was a pint; if he ever exceeded this he would deliberately vomit. ”[7] Augustus is thus the first recorded practitioner of the boot and rally.

3. Late (not as good) Eric Clapton
After their divorce and Clapton’s end of alcohol abuse, Boyd writes “I was amazed at the difference in him. He was sober…in the old days, time had been of no consequence. Now, everything was precise and organized.”

5. All the people that were into the Temperance movement.

Clearly the not drinkers seems a little less, how shall we say, fun, but they also seem a little less to have ruined relationships with the people they love or drank themselves to death. But my mom always says the best people are in hell, and if this hell is just a place where I get to drink with Clapton and Poe, put my name down and booze me up.




[1] Tiberius 42
[2] http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly/story/0,,1013324,00.html
[3] http://www.ernest.hemingway.com/oldman.htm
[4] http://www.ernest.hemingway.com/oldman.htm
[5] http://www.usna.edu/EnglishDept/poeperplex/alcoholp.htm
[6] Julius Caesar 53
[7] Augustus 77

Week in Perspective

The first week of the life of Monocles Galore has been a whirlwind for us, so here’s a look at what happened on our side of the internet. We started this site because we love everything in the sidebar to your right; essentially, dead white men and what they wrote. We’re like the kids history class who made snide remarks about the lectures, except we kept it to ourselves, until now. Right now, I’m like one of those no name guests on the WGA strike version of A Daily Show; I’m so happy to be here I can’t form a coherent point.

Along with getting the site off the ground, (it took lots of time for me to write the code) it has been a busy week in the (proverbial) Monocles Galore office. Sophie has spent more time in IKEA than most people do in their entire lives, and she hasn’t even bought as much as a Nyttja (picture frame, $2.99). And I went to White Castle.

For the past week, Sophie has been a PA for the comedian Mark Malkoff’s film Mark Lives in Ikea, in which he lives in Ikea. check it out.

As for me, aside from demolishing White Castle cheeseburgers, I recently came across a passage in Brideshead Revisited in which a drunken college student yells out the window at passersby lines from The Waste Land. I feel this is cooler than anything I’ve ever done in college, and is an example of something we love; a poem about the tragedy of lost traditions in a book about the tragedy of lost traditions. So if you’re into that kind of thing, keep checking for new posts, and if you’re not, keep checking and soon you will be.