Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living (2 page)

* * *

U
ncle Don had the most throbbing boner of a vehicle you could have in 1978—the Pontiac Firebird with the phoenix on the hood and the T-top. It was so badass. He would take us for a treat to Shorewood, the near suburb of Joliet, to the Tastee Freez to get ice cream. I’d get a vanilla cone dipped in cherry—whatever that cherry candy shit is; it’s the greatest. And he’d play Frank Zappa, which was forbidden.

We had a very decent household. We weren’t allowed to watch
The Three Stooges
. Our TV was governed pretty closely. There was a ban for a while on
Tom and Jerry
, but eventually that was lifted. My parents didn’t want their kids to see things with violence in them, which is so hilarious and sad now. (Looking at you, video games where one can chop the heads off prostitutes. [Which is my own surmise—I don’t know if that actually exists, but I’m pretty sure you can find it.]) So something like Frank Zappa singing, “Don’t eat the yellow snow,” and having to puzzle out the meaning of that was an early awakening of the notion “I like that use of language.” My neighbor Steve Rapcan lived next door on another three-acre parcel. His parents were slightly more licentious and he was allowed to have things like
KISS
and Eddie Murphy records. My folks did not know that we would hole up in his bedroom and listen to Eddie Murphy over and over. We’d lie back on the floor, and as I’ve now damn near gotten into a stand-up career of my own, I think how astonishing it was to me that someone like Eddie Murphy could talk hilariously about eating pussy in public and get paid for it. The amazing thing is it sparked something in me that remained an ember for a couple of decades. It never occurred to me that “humor” was remotely something I could aspire to.

* * *

B
y the age of eight or nine it began to dawn on me that I wasn’t exactly like the other kids in Minooka. I remember my fourth-grade classroom well. I had Miss Christensen, one of many top-drawer teachers in our school. She was just an admirable woman, with whom everybody was in love, of course. Fourth grade was a big reading year, and there was a contest called “Battle of the Books,” for which we would read titles like
Caddie Woodlawn
,
My Side of the Mountain
, and
Island of the Blue Dolphins
, and then compete by answering questions about the subject matter. We were learning the rudiments of plot, theme, and vocabulary, and one of our vocabulary words was
nonconformist
. I just dug that word. I heard the explanation, the definition, and I felt like I had just learned about a new hero in a kick-ass Marvel comic book. I raised my hand and I said, “Nonconformist. That is what I would like to be.” This was met by a bemused smile by Miss Christensen, who was probably already aware of my status as a creative thinker but couldn’t have imagined how far I’d take the execution.

It didn’t take me long to discern that I had essentially announced to the world, “Excuse me, everyone? I am a weirdo.” But no matter. The die had been cast.

I also recall a moment in second-grade art class. We were given a piece of wood and a little paper cutout of a clown head. (The assignment was to finish the wood with stain, then glue the clown head to the wood after coloring it in with crayons, then varnish the whole shebang.) I adorned my clown head with color and glued it on with the clown’s head cocked to the right. My teacher gave me a C.

I said, “What the fuck are you talking about? This is so much better than what the rest of these squares made.”

And she said, “You glued it on quite crookedly.”

I replied, “He’s got his head tilted at a rakish angle, asshole!”

I remember thinking, “You don’t fucking get me. This is my art! This is my shit!” I recall being outraged, thinking, “I don’t understand. Don’t you realize mine is uniquely creative and therefore way better than these other dipshits’?”

I simply knew that I was peculiar and that I was a puzzle to those around me. I was also learning that this weirdness was a part of me that was not to be extinguished.

* * *

B
ut for the time being, Minooka and the family farm were all that I needed. In the summers, when we would get together for family picnics, we would have enough people to field two teams of ten and play softball out in the meadow. I was charmed that half of the participants would have their beers out in the field. You’d have old people saying, “I’ll go out and play right field. I can’t do much.” It’s something that’s unfathomable today. To even suggest to the teenagers, or anybody now, “Let’s go play a sport.” They’d say, “Are you crazy? We’re watching the football game.” Or, “We’re playing our Wii.” All we needed back then was a bat and a ball.

We would amuse ourselves with what we had on hand. After dinner, we would get on the hayrack, and everybody would ride around and look at the crops. It was a recreational ride, sitting on hay bales, singing songs. It was so heartwarming, and all it cost was the price of the fuel. We didn’t have to do anything to have a good time. It’s an incredible gift to be able to make your own fun.

Eat Red Meat

Unless you’re an ignorant fool (creationist), you’ll have noticed that a great deal of attention is being paid to humankind’s evolution over the millennia, especially with regard to our diet.

According to science and smart anthropology types, our particular mammalian species evolved into sentient bipeds who learned to develop and then employ tools to further the domestic comforts of their caves. We then learned to advertise and sell these implements to one another. The progression is easy to track: the hammer—the spearhead—the flyswatter—the Clapper—the Xbox—the perfusion catheter.

As we human-folk learned to kill and eat other animals, we came into a period of social development that I would liken to the “Quickening” of
Highlander
fame. The added proteins in our diet turned us into physical specimens the likes of Sigourney Weaver, Schwarzenegger, and, at the very least, Ringo Starr.

In short order, with knives of obsidian (a brief fad) and then sharpened steel, we learned to butcher animals in such a way as to garner the tastiest portions of their musculature, or “meat,” for eating. Then we learned to cook those muscle scraps over an open flame. Then we learned to apply sprigs of rosemary and thyme to the offerings. We learned to “rub” our seasonings into the flesh. Then we added garlic and butter to mashed potatoes, and then we invented barbecue sauce, and that creation, gentle reader, finally seems worthy of a restful seventh day. If there is a God, no part of the Bible or Christian doctrine will convince me of his existence half as much as the flavor of a barbecued pork rib. It is in that juicy snack that I can perhaps begin to glean a divine design, because that shit is delicious in a manner that can be accurately described as “heavenly.” I have never had need of a firearm in my life, not remotely, but I’ll happily sport a bumper sticker that reads, “You can have my rib eye when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers,” or even write a bit of poetry.

The Bratwurst: A Haiku

Tight skin flute of pork.

Juices fly, explode in mouth.

A little mustard.

Ready for some controversy? I can actually understand the factions of people like those in the PETA organization when they raise hell about any time an animal is treated cruelly. I think mistreating animals is a shameful practice, and bad for one’s karma, to boot. When I talk about the mistreatment of animals, I’m thinking of some brute kicking a dog, or beating a horse, or, say, the countless horrors enacted upon the chickens, hogs, and cattle in the meat factories that supply the bustling shit dispensaries we call fast-food chains.

And therein lies the problem. Fast food. For God’s sake, and also the sake of Pete, if you don’t respect your own body enough to keep it free of that garbage, at least PLEASE STOP FEEDING IT TO YOUR KIDS. Read
Fast Food Nation
. See the excellent documentary
Food, Inc
. If your excuse is a lack of time, then you need to get your priorities straight. There is no part of this country where one cannot find a source of fresh, organic meat and produce. I’m not talking about Whole Foods, I’m referring to farmers’ markets and local butchers and fishermen and -women. If you can’t find a source for fresh produce and eggs and/or chicken, bacon, and/or dairy products, by Christ, become the source! What more noble pursuit than supplying your community with breakfast foods?! If you want to read more about this notion, by actual smart and informed writers, pick up some Michael Pollan and some Wendell Berry.

I have no intention of ever ceasing to enjoy red meat. However, I firmly believe that we can choose how and where our meat is raised, and I’m all for a grass-fed, happy steer finding its way to my grill long before a factory-farmed, filthy, corn-fed lab creation. It’s up to us to choose farm-to-table fare as much as possible until it becomes our society’s norm once again.

One of the most tried-and-true methods by which we humans can collect our own protein from the land is that of fishing. My family doesn’t hunt (except for Uncle Terry—Aunt Micki’s hubby—who takes one or two bucks a year, usually with a bow and arrow, and keeps us all happily in venison, jerky, and sausage), but we fish like crazy. Between the family households, we have cabins in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Indiana. Fishing is the default vacation for the entire family; if there’s a break, you can find us out on the lake. I have had the opportunity over the years to take some assorted friends on these Offerman/Roberts family fishing trips, and nothing gives me more pleasure than teaching them to clean their own fish.
Of course
it’s unpleasant in comparison to being served a delicious white fillet of sole in a butter sauce with capers, but every one of my students has expressed a primitive satisfaction in the knowledge that they can harvest their own meat from a lake or river, should “the shit” ever really go down. I admire my uncle for his hunting discipline, because he doesn’t do it for the fun of killing an animal, and he doesn’t do it wastefully. It’s simply a choice to fulfill some of his family’s grocery needs in the larder of the forest rather than the Albertsons. Among the other advantages of harvesting this meat himself, Uncle Terry is keeping himself from getting soft. We may hear more on that topic a bit further into these woods.

Everybody knows, but many deny, that eating red meat gives one character. Strength, stamina, stick-to-it-iveness, constitution, not to mention a healthful, glowing pelt. But take a seat for a second. Listen. I eat salad. How’s that for a punch in the nuts, ladies? What’s more, as I sit typing this on a Santa Fe patio, I just now ate a bowl of oatmeal. That’s right. Because I’m a real human animal, not a television character. You see, despite the beautifully Ron Swanson–like notion that one should exist solely on beef, pork, and wild game, the reality remains that our bodies need more varied foodstuffs that facilitate health and digestive functions,
but you don’t have to like it.

I eat a bunch of spinach, but only to clean out my pipes to make room for more ribs, fool! I will submit to fruit and zucchini, yes, with gusto, so that my steak-eating machine will continue to masticate delicious charred flesh at an optimal running speed. By consuming kale, I am buying myself bonus years of life, during which I can eat a shit-ton more delicious meat. You don’t put oil in your truck because it tastes good. You do it so your truck can continue burning sweet gasoline and hauling a manly payload.

Hail Mary, Full of Beans

M
y family was, and still is, very involved in St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Minooka. Now, let’s get off on the right foot about religion, especially Christianity and the Bible. I generally think that organized religion has a lot of great attributes, and I think the Bible is largely an amazing and beautiful book of fictional stories from which we can glean the most wholesome lessons about how to treat one another decently. I’ll have some rather different-seeming opinions later in the book. These opinions have to do not with Christians in general but rather with ways that I believe people misuse Christianity in modern society, or ways in which people in our democratic government try to use a religious text to influence legislation. I disagree with these specific notions, and we’ll talk about that in a bit.

But for now, I’ll say that growing up as a contributing cog in the clockwork of St. Mary’s had many excellent benefits for me. I was an altar boy by age eight or nine, and I quickly learned that I could make the people in the congregation, or “audience,” laugh into their missalettes if I were I to, say, sniff the unstoppered cruet of Eucharistic wine and deliver an unpleasant review of its bouquet with a wrinkling of the nose, coupled with a raised eyebrow, a look I had been practicing tirelessly in school in emulation of my hero, John Belushi. My dad had a differing opinion, as you might well imagine, of my first attempt at comedy (which pretty much killed—sorry, Dad). He made it quite plain that he was not interested in any further display of opinion on my part from the altar. Thus, my surreptitious cultivation of the deadpan style was born. From the Catholic proscenium I had to find a way to entertain my loyal following of cousins and friends whilst remaining undetected by those joyless adults. I mean, come on, who doesn’t want a good laugh in the middle of boring old church?

My family went to church every Sunday. There was no discussion or vote. Sometimes there were tears. Our hair was cut regularly and without mercy, so as to appear presentable in church, and you can bet your fanny we wore our Sunday clothes. Little sister Carrie, our only blonde, was allowed to grow her locks long, and she is still the prettiest of us, as well as the finest at belching, beating out older sis Laurie by the merest decibel. Church was where the community would countenance and then assess one another on a weekly basis to make sure we were all well scrubbed, well clad, and well barbered.

When I began “serving mass” as an altar boy, the priest was Monsignor Seidl, an old-school (and also just plain old), venerated frog of a man. Great guy, just looked a bit amphibious. Things felt very institutional on his watch. It was easy to understand that our diocese (like a Catholic precinct, if
NYPD Blue
was about church) was directly connected through an ever-ascending chain of command to Rome and the Vatican.

There were ten of us altar boys manning a strict schedule, serving in different permutations of three altar boys at a time. We’d cover a mass on Saturday evening and three more on Sunday morning in addition to the baptisms and funerals and weddings that peppered the calendar. The manning of special occasions was a highly coveted gig, because they usually involved a handsome cash tip from the families. That’s what church is all about, right? The $$$?

As I was saying, the proceedings under Msgr. Seidl’s reign were very august. The mood was very somber, with a deep sense of respect for the dogma of the mass. That’s when I learned my trade. Handle the water and wine, hold the book, ring the bells, the whole nine yards. Hold a strange long-handled tray beneath the communion hosts (the Body of Christ) as they traveled from the priest’s chalice to the mouth of the believer. I definitely enjoyed the theatricality and ceremony of the Catholic mass.

The best thing the altar boys got to do was ring the handbells. The servers would jockey for position to be the guy who rang the bells. Sometimes one guy would ring the bells first and then hand them over so a second server could get a taste of the good stuff. It kinda tells you all you need to know about church if three seconds of bell-clanging is the high point of the action.

Somewhere around my twelfth or thirteenth year, Msgr. Seidl retired, and a new priest, Father Tony, came. Father Tony was a fashion plate, by comparison, whom I remember as seeming very “Rat Pack.” He was very Italian and an urbane city guy. He had cool horn-rims and a panache that was not of our small town. I was a fan, and I learned the feeling was mutual when he graduated me from altar boy to the role of the lector, a position usually assayed by an older person. I would recite the gospel readings before his sermon, and that was really where I commenced to having an effect on an audience for the first time. I did care about the quality of the storytelling in my readings, and I sincerely wanted to impart the day’s lesson and help get it across, but at the same time, I would maybe just stress certain words that I thought were interesting, such as “Jesus did come hard upon Lake Gennesaret.”

I would linger ever so slightly upon words and phrases that I found humorous, so that my cousin Ryan and six other friends would crack up, but no one else had any idea I was being hilarious. As discussed, I believe it’s where I first learned to hone the art of dry humor.

I became somewhat the hired hand of St. Mary’s. I was the go-to kid, hired to cut the grass and stock the shelves and wax the pews. My cousin Ryan played the trumpet and I played the saxophone, so we also started making some extra bread on the side by playing weddings and such. Again, church seemed pretty cool, with a couple of sweet Alexander Hamiltons in my pocket. The mystical conversion that occurs in every Catholic mass, in which the blood and body of Jesus Christ (our Lord) become wine and, inexplicably, little round white bread wafers, respectively, is known as transubstantiation. Turning my devotion to the church into cash seemed like a much more appealing transformation.

I performed a lot of yard work for Father Tony. He had a house on the Kankakee River, an hour or so south, and he would take Ryan and me to the river to perform yard labor—split firewood and whatnot—and then take us waterskiing behind his boat (not a euphemism). I am sincerely grateful for that time, in which our priest appeared “onstage,” as it were, perhaps as one of the more exciting characters in our community, what with a speedboat and fancy eyeglasses.

We had our version of Sunday school, called catechism. It was terrible, just the worst. By the time you’re seven or eight years old, you get it. I understood the stories of Jesus and his disciples and the values I was expected to glean thereof. Now, there are things I like just fine about church, and I don’t just mean making money. The notion of getting together as a community to remind ourselves why we shouldn’t behave like animals is a fucking great idea. Church was also the place to get a look at all of the young ladies in the other families, the better to determine whose young chests you’d like to target with your clumsy fumbling. It’s all the other shitty parts—like when priests tell you who to vote for in a presidential race, because they’re personally opposed to a woman’s right to choose—that irk me. That’s where church crosses my line. When the clergy get too big for their britches, they take these wonderfully benevolent writings from the Bible and crumble their intended integrity by slathering them with human nature.

I remember sitting in my seat at the far stage-right side of the altar while the congregation would slog through group recitations like the Nicene Creed (“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth . . .”) in the most Pavlovian way. The cultish, soulless tone in which this group of two hundred people would repeat this creed of purpose, meant to resonate like a mission statement, lent no fervor to, nor even indicated any apparent awareness of, what they were saying.
“Now we say this part . . . We get the talking over with so I can get home to the football game.”

One Sunday in my midteens, I really heard them droning on, and I found it quite upsetting. I thought, “Listen to what you’re saying—you’re repeating this supposed profession of your faith and I’ll wager you literally couldn’t tell me what the fuck you’re talking about right now. The words of the creed, as well as this whole notion, are so profound, to re-up your faith week in and week out, but the meaning is utterly lost on you. This is not working. This mass is not working for these people. I’m not interested in taking part in this, because it doesn’t seem to be working.”

* * *

I
n eighth grade, the church community was all abuzz because they were bringing in this hotshot nun, Sister Gesuina, to teach our catechism class. It was very exciting and potentially scandalous because the word was she had unorthodox teaching methods, which included playing us the Billy Joel song “Only the Good Die Young” and explaining that while this popular music was catchy, sure, it disguised a nefarious, satanic message. “You might think he sounds logical and modern, but, Virginia, he’s just trying to get in your pants and knock you up.”

And a hundred times better than even Billy Joel, she also brought in
Playboy
and
Penthouse
magazines!
What? Penthouse
shows pink, in the vernacular of porn mags.
Playboy
, by comparison, does not show pink.
Penthouse
will teach you much more about the biology of a lady’s privates. But believe it or not, she brought in porn magazines. To church class. And she passed them around.

All of us boys thought, “You are easily the fucking greatest nun I have ever even remotely encountered, but you’re also a complete moron if you think you’re going to turn us teenage boys in the throes of puberty
off
to porn by showing us this nice lady’s utterly amazing bush. Holy Lamb of God, I’ll stay at this church class all day long.”

It just dawned on me as I wrote this that all of these people simply didn’t have their shit together, which is understandable, since their task was not (and is not) easy: trying to keep this eldritch, tired dogma relevant for the youth of modern society. All things considered, I really had an amazing time at St. Mary’s, despite the religious parts. The good part about the church, for me, was the people. And the
Playboy
s. Father Tony gave me the opportunity to get up in front of people to begin to fine-tune my subliminal messaging, and he nurtured (even unwittingly) my need to perform. In high school, when I figured out that I would be attending theater school to pursue stage acting, he said to me, “I understand this decision and I think it’s something you might have a shot at. I just want you to be careful, because in the world of show business there’s going to be a lot of drugs and a lot of sex. There’s going to be a lot of temptation.”

And I said, “Yes, thank you!”

Horse Sense & The Bible

The holy Bible. This “good book” is a book of fairy tales.
What?
Yes, folks, for a fairy tale, by definition, is a fictional story that contains some sort of supernatural creature or occurrence. The Bible is chock-full of both. I don’t feel the need to quibble about Old Testament or New, the Gnostics, or any of that crap. My issue is with the exploitation of the entire Bible.

Now, some of the more prevalent supernatural elements in the Bible we are all pretty familiar with: an all-powerful deity called “God” and his charismatic boy, “Jesus” (who has some superpowers like self-resurrection and some cool action like the Wonder Twins, turning sticks into snakes and greatly multiplying bread loaves and fish sticks until history’s first all-you-can-eat experience was invented), plus a burning bush, a cool sea that has a secret hallway that opens and closes for you depending on your race/religion, and your usual mountebank sleights of hand in revival settings. Healings, etc. MAGICKS.

This book of fairy tales has proven to yield a wealth of lessons for people who study it. You know the form; it’s old-school cautionary tale: “Jahedickus did walk him to the woodpile after dark to fetch some wood so that the women about the place could cook for him and the men some whey-cakes, so long as the women be clean and their flowers be not upon them, which would be super gross. Because of the darkness, Jahedickus did notice not the woodchuck resting on the woodpile, until it did bite of his hand flesh. When Jesus heard tell of this in the marketplace, he did laugh his ass off, and then Jesus spake unto the peoples, ‘Gather ye not your fire from the darkness, but instead seek it in the light of day.’ Then Jesus said to his apostle Steve, ‘Steve,’ he said, ‘go thee to the woodpile and put the woodchuck to death, taking care that it not nibble at thy hand.’”

There are at least twenty-seven good metaphorical ways to interpret this famous scripture from the book of Nick, and they’re all sound. Father, by all means, teach me philosophical methods based upon them. I love philosophy; I love to learn creative ways of viewing the world and mankind’s various dilemmas and triumphs. Just don’t fucking tell me we should kill all the woodchucks because the Bible says so. That’s it. That’s all I’m driving at. It’s a book of stories that should be treated as suggestions. It is not a book of rules for the citizens of the United States of America. Do me a favor and read that last sentence again.

A step further. Creationism. If you want to go in so deep as to ignore all of the advances and hard facts that SCIENCE and LEARNING have provided us in the field of biological evolution and instead profess that the creation story, written by men from their holy visions, about how the Christian deity spinning the world together out of the void in the magic of Genesis describes the true origin of the universe, that is your business. Terrific. It’s a cool story, don’t get me wrong; I love magic. Check out Madeleine L’Engle’s
A Wrinkle in Time
, which won a Newbery Medal. For the record, I don’t believe the book of Genesis ever won one of those.

You and your fellow creationists profess belief in a magical story. You are welcome to do so. Sing and chant, and eat crackers and drink wine that you claim are magically infused with the blood and flesh of your church’s original grand wizard, the Prince of Peace. I personally think that’s just a touch squirrelly, but that’s your business, not mine. You will not be punished for those beliefs in our nation of individual freedoms. But I do think the vast majority of your fellow Americans would appreciate it, kind creationists, if you silly motherfuckers would keep that bullshit out of our schools. Your preferred fairy tales have no place in a children’s classroom or textbook that professes to be teaching our youngsters what is REAL. Jesus Christ, it’s irrefutably un-American, people!