In Your Ear — A Buffet Of Topics

Historical Summer 2016 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.

I’m trying to determine the focus for this column, and I feel a bit like a guy standing in an all-you-can-eat buffet line with really good food, as much as you want of calamari, chocolate-chip cookies, and ice cream.

With Hostess Cupcakes for dessert! That’s my kind of buffet. Sign me up! You see, that’s how it feel when I am contemplating what I’ll write about in this month’s issue, dear reader.

There are many, many thundering topics booming on the horizon. How can I pick just one?

First, and let’s get it out of the way, is The Donald. Yep, Mr. Trump. I’m a bit of a political junkie, so I am fascinated by his candidacy. It’s sort of like when I am driving on the highway and see a terrible auto accident; I’m fascinated by it too.

On a much more local front, there’s news of the derailing of a topless sports bar on Delmar in University City. OK, to be fair, the women weren’t topless; their tops were painted. Yeah, that’s painted, like with paint. No, I am not making this up.

I was a bit surprised at the push-back against this.

I mean, for centuries paintings of naked women were put on canvas and the artists became famous. I’m not making that up either. You can look at painting after painting while walking through a museum and wonder if anyone wore clothes! (This also helps me understand why more people were living near the equator than in Iceland.) Anyway, if it was OK for these women’s bodies to be painted without clothes and it was considered high art, why it less OK for the paint to actually go on the women’s bodies? And why not men’s bodies or on dogs? I’d love to see a paisley Airedale. Part of Delmar’s attraction is that it’s hip and a bit edgy, but we don’t want edgy to be in capital letters. Back in the 1950’s Gaslight Square was EDGY and look what happened to it. And speaking of escapes, sorry, but the whole Donald Trump phenomenon escapes me. Wise political prognosticating perspicacious pontificating pundit that I am, a year ago I predicted that Donald Trump could never be taken seriously and would gain no, zero, traction as a presidential candidate.

I also predicted that the Rams would stay in St. Louis. So here we are seriously contemplating the possibility of Trump being the Republican candidate for president. Holy Cow!

He appeals to people who think government doesn’t work and, you know what, they’re right.

It doesn’t work.

But viewing The Donald as the solution to poor government is a bit like solving global warming by painting your body instead of wearing clothes.

Now there’s a thought – painted bodies everywhere instead of clothing. Think about the possibilities that offers. Wearing paint instead of clothing would be cheaper, and if your budget is really tight, you could forget paint and go the magic-marker route.

It would be much easier to stay in style; just new brush-strokes instead of going to the store. And you can probably get a job working at the sports bar of your choice. Eureka, I’ve done it again.

It seemed like I would have a hard time choosing a topic for this month but it’s jumped on my chest. Forget all of this hub-bub about requiring voter IDs at the polling place. What if we simply said that to vote, you had to come dressed in paint rather than clothing!

I guarantee you that we’d have long lines at the polling booths. You know, it would feel a bit like an all-you-can-eat line at a buffet! Pass me a slice of Hostess Cupcake, please.

Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, Summer 2016.

Read this article in the original newspaper issue.

Original source: SD_Times2016_06.pdf, printed page(s) 8; PDF page(s) 8.