A Journal of Humor and Verbal Anarchy

 

falafel madness

Can you feel it, baby? Does it re-arrange your atoms?

The excitement, the pulsing energy, the sheer exhilaration out there on the street? We're talking Festival now. Mardi Gras up north, way up there in the land of bagels, good times there are seldom had ( but don't say a discouraging word. Ithacans take their Festival seriously. You'll get run over by a rusted Volvo --Christsake, the driver can't see for all the blankityblank bumper stickers - if you badmouth the Ithaca Festival. )

But hoola hoops? How retro. Yeah, they're regressing to the '50s. Breaking out the hoola hoops again. Does this mean that Ithaca is finally getting over its preoccupation with the 60s? That we're be going back to sock hops, drive in's, root beer floats, girl bands, leather jackets, greasers, the prom, 57 chevies? No more Age of Aquarius? It's finally over? Ithaca is going backwards. The patient has finally woken up from his long nightmare of history. The falafel is slouching towards Bethlehem. Yo, Yeats.

Yeah, baby. Ez ain't saying that the Ithaca Festival ain't pretty. That it doesn't bring people together. There must have been thousands of Ithacans on the Commons Friday, all grooving to the beat of bands trying to sound like Neil Young or the Middle Eastern gyrations of belly dancing. (Those dancing beauties, comely honies, gearing up to overcome gravity and middle aged spread.)

If a third of those folks bopped downtown on a regular basis, would ya have so many empty store fronts? Would Logos and the former CVS be vacant reminders that, at heart, Ithaca is a ghost town in the making? They don't have Ithaca Festivals up at the mall. Only car and boat shows. This is a community.

Without a cutting edge.

Ez's compadre, RB, name withheld to protect the guilty, put his finger on it precisely. There are no sharp surfaces, no edges. (The whole town of Ithaca is on a suicide watch.) Nothing coming up from the hot steamy subterranean kitchens of the culture. No new dance craze. Just a rehash.

RB is right. He comes to Ithaca from the City. You go over to Central Park on a Saturday afternoon during the summer and you see at least two things that will be the next big phenom in a couple of months. It's something someone is wearing or something that someone is doing. The rawness of culture in formation. Under the volcano.

Hoola hoops? Maybe we're just too far north.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:25 AM