Here we are counting down the last 2 1/2 years of this presidency, 29% of us high enough to still be satisfied with things. But for the rest of us, I ask the following:

How much of this is Clinton’s fault?

Recently, a Jerry posted a link, “Bill licks Bush.” Evocative, yes, but the point being, given a choice most Americans choose Bill on all counts. Clinton nostalgia only increases as each new scandal comes to light, as Bush continues to rule via his gut instead of his head.

This came up on Saturday. A liberal friend of mine (I have liberal friends, you’d never guess, would you?) held Clinton responsible for the disastrous Bush presidency. If he could’ve just kept his zipper up, friend argued, Bush would never have made it into the White House in the first place. Gore would have won in a landslide (so he says).

Some thoughts:

1. Bush didn’t win the elections, either of them. Do I have to wear a tinfoil hat to say this? I know a lot of people working in the television industry; even comedy shows have a tough time doing a story on Diebold. “So corrupt we don’t know where to begin. And we’d face less lawsuits if we ran a Scientology expose.” The first election Republicans won not so much through a Supreme Court decision but by using a scrub list. That strategy exposed, in the second round they went straight to the machinery, leading to election outcomes staggeringly different than the exit polls suggested.

2. Could any of us really have known how bad this presidency would be? I was never keen on Dubya, but prior to the election he was advocating humility in foreign relations. Bush’s win didn’t make me happy to say the least, but had I known how bad it would get, I might have taken up heroin. Sometimes, ignorance is mercy.

3. I’m not comfortable making judgments about people’s sexual lives. We’re all sinners here. I know, I know. “It wasn’t about sex, it was about perjury.” Bullshit. At best that’s insincere. It wasn’t enough to prove that Clinton and Lewinsky played with each other’s privates, we had to learn that he got her off with his cigar, that she gave him blowjobs during phone calls, and so forth until I knew more about Monica’s sex life than I did about mine. Long after his point was made, Ken Starr mined for salacious bonus tracks.

I think we can all agree that Clinton’s judgment here was wretched. I bet he’d agree too. If Dubya is a man who knows no regret, Clinton has many. In a radio interview that I can no longer find he listed three: the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, another, I think, was welfare, and the third, I can’t remember the third. But I do remember that he was self-reflective, admitting as much of embarrassing personal conceits as of failures in aptitude or strategy. There were no excuses then.

That question was phrased politically, so he did not list Monica. But that brings us back to square one: should he have? Yes, the political ramifications of the affair have been enormous. Count every dead soldier among them. Still, I can’t personally bring myself to blame these deaths on the man whose hand in history unwittingly led us to where we are now. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes the fate of the world rides on it. I suppose he should have known the difference, but, I mean, really. Back then, McCain wasn’t courting Jerry Falwell. Bush advocated sensible spending. It was just a little oval office sex. Could anyone have predicted Guantanamo?

Meanwhile, Dubya, barring kingship, will graduate from the White House just pleased as punch that he caught the world’s largest perch. Note to Dubya: not admitting mistakes isn’t the same as not making them. And to you I ask, can we blame the idiot, or is Clinton the man that gave him the job?

A friend has invited me on a taco marathon, so just before 4 I head off. 59th and 5th, the email says, and I head from Hell’s Kitchen (Manhattan) to 59th St. and 5th Ave. (Manhattan). Outside the General Motors building, I make a phone call. “I don’t see the place.” “Where are you?” “Across from Crate and Barrel.” “In Brooklyn?” Crap.

R train to 59th St., Brooklyn. When I get off the train, it makes more sense. Two-and-a-half-story homes with bay windows and stoops to the front door, packed against each other like books on a shelf. Signs on door fronts, “Dr. Rodriguez, dentist.” “Salsa dancing, Thursday night 7-11.” I meet the peeps at an outdoor taqueria; introductions, all that. Picture sunny day, 73 degrees. On the menu, they offer pork tongue, marinated pork, fried pork, salted pork, special pork and just pork. I thought the menu said pork tail, but, well, on reflection, it’s probably a matter of my Spanish. We order in Spanish. Actually, they order in Spanish. I don’t—cat got my tongue and I point at the menu.

The tacos are small—either the width of a wine bottle or a little smaller than a sand dollar, depending which size you order. I go for the sand dollar. I’m starving.

En route to the next location, I accidentally re-introduce myself to the girl who sat next to me at the table. Pretend her name is Leslie.

At the next bar (we are alternating between booze and tacos—combining the two where we can), the bartender wears a buxomy white tank top dress. On the bottom it comes just past her ass, on the top, her breasts are squeezed up and to the middle—you could use her cleavage as a penholder. She’s maybe in her 40s. She’s adorable. My friend asks about an unlabeled and unusual bottle tucked alongside the tequilas. It is filled with chopped dark brown stalks, like tree bark, and a liquid almost clear. She pours us a little. It’s potent but smooth, with a hint of anise, and although I generally despise anise, its not bad. Against the doo-wop music, the name she gives for it sounds like “papa guana.”

Most of the tour group chats at folding tables further in, but my friend and I stay close to the bartender. Make of that what you will. She has embraced us, for whatever reason, and hell, we like her back, especially when she pours a generous stream of tequila into our second margaritas. Two minutes later, the rest of the party rises from cafeteria chairs and heads to the next taqueria. I’m about to leave my drink behind when the bartender calls me back: a to-go cup is procured. A to-go cup. Outside, Leslie asks to take a picture. I tell her that I don’t do photos. My name is Penelope, by the way. What’s hers?

The next bar is not as far away, but the rain forecasters predicted now seems imminent. Or maybe there is no rain, maybe the day is getting late. Can it really be growing dusky? They’ve only been to six places, and I’ve only been to two. There are so many tacos in the world, and so little time.

Taqueria #2: four waitresses, one of them thin, but all of them wearing black tank tops and skirts insufficient to cover their asses. What is this with assless skirts? The taqueria owner gets up and offers to buy everybody a beer. He shouts and shouts, but no matter how frantically I raise my hand, cervezas cero.  At least I have my to-go-cup margarita, from which my friend is now taking sips. Some dude behind me wants to dance, and is being persistent no matter how much I turn my back to him. The waitress scolds him for harrassing me. He asks me to dance again, she comes back and shoves him in his chair back against the wall, with a thud as he hits the panelling. Our tacos take forever but when they arrive they are delicious. As we eat, the waitress dances with the dude who was behind me. He has his hand on her ass. She’s a much better dancer than I would have been.

I introduce myself to Leslie again, just for old time’s sake. Now she is drunk and doesn’t seem to mind.

By the time we leave, the sun has set.

At the last bar, we have the following beer options: Schaeffer, Budweiser, Coors Light, Coors, Miller Lite. We ask for Schaeffer but the tap has broken. Maybe because there are only six people left, Leslie comes over to talk to me. Naturally I introduce myself. Leslie is having a really great time (as are we all!), and we talk about ... something, which I don’t remember because I am apparently having a really great time too. In the attached party room, a boy in a lavender suit is celebrating his confirmation, stepping choppily to music that doesn’t match the oldies playing in the bar. Voyeurs us, we stare unrepentently through the round port-hole window as a line of family and friends wait their turn for tacos. Tacos! There are still three more taquerias to hit! Put your empty glass down, everybody, let’s go. Got everything? But Leslie likes it here, wants to stay. There are only six of us left, she says, do we really need more tacos? But Leslie, there are three more taquerias, three more bars, and it’s only 9:30. Me, I’m sadly headed for the R train—a friend has commanded me home. As I say goodbyes, Leslie gives me her card. “OH! You’re Leslie!”

Leaving for work this past Monday, I found the most alarming sign posted to the door of my tenement:  “From now on, make all rent checks payable to So-and-So Property Management, P.O. Box 12345, Los Angeles, California.”

California? Nothing against the state, but its not a good sign when you live on one coast and your landlord lives on the other. 

We are (as you know unless you’ve been living under a viaduct since 1997) living in a global age. This website is I suppose one happy end of it; the unhappy aspects include outsourcing to India, cross-continental hallway maintenance, and the endless swath of box stores sprouting along the newly sodded 8th Avenue. We’ll easily forsake the local (bodegas and burger-beer bars, and okay, peep shows, gentleman’s clubs) for a four-story Staples with third-world prices and a 7-11. I realize I cannot stop this. I can mourn this, I can regret my part in it, I can boycott Staples (do not, I say, do not make me forsake the mystery-flavor Slurpee), but I cannot stop it. Fine. So let it be.

I always liked Thomas Hardy way better than that Jane Austen.  Jane Austen, she had to wrap every story up like it was a jigsaw puzzle.  Always an Elizabeth, always a Darcy, but how ever will they find each other? Oh, that’s how. There, put that piece in. Snap! Doesn’t that feel good? Everything’s as it should be. 

Hardy on the other hand lived in a universe more familiar to me (mine not so dramatic, but eh, I occasionally clutch my bodice and stand on old rocks). In this world, when your nun beats the crap out of you, nobody pulls up on a horse. When your parents stash a lottery ticket in the junk drawer, it does not eventually solve the family estate crises but ink faded, becomes a convenient place to jot a phone message. When a guy shows no interest in you, it means he’s not interested. In Hardy’s novels, the reality of sex (and it was a reality, not the gentle bosomy heaving sort best solved by a wise marriage) slapped the faithful in the face. Even the good were wretched. These cynical conclusions were reached by way of demonstrating the tumult of industrialization; the farms, the slow small life, tradition, devotion were challenged by the realities of poverty and a changing, scarred world.

Which explains why I’m feeling like Tess a bit lately. Should I take up dairy farming? Really, though, it’s hard not to think of the themes discussed in our high school English class: “Well, yeah, there was this industrialization thing, and it just wreaked havoc on the farming class, who were pretty much at the mercy of fortune, their means of living no longer viable, their land taken from under them ...”

The neighborhood I live in is the backdrop of another tragedy, West Side Story (sing it with me, “When you’re a jet you’re a jet all the way ...").  It’s the alleys of the theater district; the old guard is composed of former chorus girls and middling playwrights and stagehands.  The relationship I had with my landlord and super reflected the nature of a community of strugglers.  I paid the rent to them by knocking on their door; if I was late, they said, “What’s three days? Don’t be silly. I know where to find you. Did you see my new wig? Check this out.  What do you think about this stenciling I did on the walls? Listen, Harold in 1C complained about noise but don’t listen to him, he’s crazy.”

That super died last year; her son has been super-ing since.  After the announcement, he whispered to me (they’d sent a property inspector by, and the boy didn’t want to be overheard), “They’re asking me to go. They suck. They’re terrible. Stop by later, I’ll tell you.” He handed me a sheet given to him by the new owners:  “ALL RENTS MUST BE PAID BY MAIL BY CHECK BY THE FIRST OF THE MONTH.  CHECKS MUST BE RECEIVED AT THE CALIFORNIA OFFICE BY THE FIRST OF THE MONTH, NOT POSTMARKED BY THE FIRST MONTH. THE POSTAL SERVICE IS NOT OUR PROBLEM. ALL LATE CHECKS WILL REQUIRE A $50 FEE. FOR COMPLAINTS CALL 800-555-1234 AND PRESS 4 AT THE FIRST OPTIONS MENU.” Caps theirs.

Increasingly, realty companies in California and China and Vegas and Europe are purchasing the five and six story neighborhood tenements that have been here since the Civil War for the purposes of constructing in their place 50-story “luxury high rises.” What is luxury? Luxury is, for $2,500 a month, 500 sq. feet, a doorman and a dishwashing machine. $2.00 laundry facilities on premise. Welcome, progress.

So I keep thinking, since I’m not Tess of the D’Urbervilles, maybe I can rewrite Tess of the D’Urbervilles ...

In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the condo, the apartment to rent rarely coincides with the hour for renting.

But if I’m going to finish this, I’ll need a large mystery-flavor Slurpee.

Greetings, fellow brethren, comrades, soldiers of satan, pinko hippies, rednecks, toothless mofos, zoo animals, and ladies of the night.

At long last we present you with the new Fat Jerry. We built this from scratch; offer us your patience while we work out the kinks.  Much time has been spent to get here.  If you want to send thanks, Spazmo has a wishlist.

Thanks to Spazmo, in addition to the links, we have a few new features:  for one, in this space we’ll feature a daily read (interviews, satire, editorials, serial melodramas involving pygmy unicorns). Want to share your genius?  Write an article on your own, and submit it using the special article submission process (link).  We’ll only be posting one reading a day, so although we won’t use everything we receive, we look forward to your entries.

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