tabloidExtra! Extra! Read all about it! Ezra will once again attempt to fill the void in his readers’ consciousness known as Sunday. He knows you’re hurting, Ithacans. Ezra feels your pain. During the week, you punch out for lunch and race over to Center Ithaca to get a free copy of The Ithaca Urinal, hoping to find one lying on a table, pristine and virginal as the moment it rolled off the press. Occasionally your hopes are crushed as the only copy unattended resembles a 3-D menu with gobs of lo mein book marking the editorial page and curry smudges effacing the sports scores.
On Saturday you wrestle with the 30lbs version of the Urinal loaded with all those advertising inserts from the big boxes out on Rt 13. Ok, for 15 years you were part of the choir, waving your fist at the big retail chains that threatened your little ecotopia. But, now there’re here so you might as well load the kids into the Ford Explorer, head over to Target or Wal-mart or wherever. You rationalize that it’s raining, how many times can you visit the Sciencenter or the Museum of the Earth and you need some ice melt anyway because another 45 inches of snow is predicted for April. Oh, and by the way, you get to be a good citizen of the earth by recycling the Ithaca Urinal at the dump along the way.
But Sundays, crazy Sundays. There’s nothing to do in Ithaca that you haven’t already done on Saturdays. Back in the days when there was very little grey in your ponytail, you’d head out to Plum’s where the Mahogany Grill is now on Sundays to hear Peggy Haines and the Low Down Alligator Jazz Band reprise the New Orleans sound right there on Aurora Street. After a few bloody mary’s and cantaloupe rounds, you’d swear you had stepped out on Bourbon Street except that streetcar named Desire was really a pick up truck with a VFW decal on the bumper, honking his horn at you.
Peggy Haines left to work for Cornell and buy up all the Victorian cookie cutter mansions on East Hill. The Mahogany Grill is just another rich college kid bar with no class, no music on weekends, and the same basic menu as Ponderosa. But the real truth is that the Ithaca Urinal doesn’t publish on Sunday. Not that much ever happens in Ithaca, New York to fill up a whole Sunday issue. What would you put in a Sunday edition ? List all the Labrador Retrievers in Tompkins county side by side with their photographs and you still wouldn’t fill up one section of a Sunday paper. Somebody would make a fortune if they came up with a Sunday Ithaca Urinal cover sheet that wrapped around the NY Times or Syracuse Post Standard! Imagine coming in from Omaha and seeing that sucker on a newsstand? Until you opened the paper, you’d think you actually were somewhere! Surprise!!!!
A couple of years ago, if you recall, Ezra tried to launch his own Sunday rag right here at Ithaca Sucks. It wasn’t quite journalism – call it gestalt shock therapy – and it didn’t catch on – like no one eve wrote in to complain that a virus had eaten their copy of the Sunday Ithaca Sucks. Nobody cared! Ezra never quite got over that disappointment but --getting over doesn’t matter – what counts is getting even! So –
Extra! Extra! Get your first issue of the Ithaca Sucks Outhouse! Ithaca’s own lurid tabloid style journal of hyperreality, mytho-conscious bullshit, lies and UFO sightings.
Read all about it! Nostradamus predicted that Ithaca would get a Wal-mart, that Cayuga Lake would be sucked up in a big straw and that a race of small men, read robots, would appear in the early 21st century somewhere in upstate New York. That damn Nanotechnology center!
Read all about it! Martin Bormann actually lived in Ithaca, New York for 5 years starting in 1951. He taught German up at Cornell and ate sauerkraut and hotdogs everyday at the Rosebud. The Outhouse has exclusive photographs.
Read all about it! A 50ft high violet and green dragon-like creature has been sighted repeatedly swimming around Cayuga Lake by fishermen and boat owners. Nessie, move over. The Outhouse has the only reliable snapshot taken by a Trumansburg couple who were illegally dumping their garbage at the time.
Read all about it! Scientists at Cornell University have cloned a chicken with a tofu pup. Watch out, vegetarians!
Read all about it! Research into early settler accounts has revealed several possible UFO sightings in Tompkins County around the 1830’s. One particularly detailed account describes what might have been a crop clearing on East Hill. Ezra Cornell might have been a Martian! Does that explain things? Those astrophysics dudes are sending shit back home!
Read all about it! Carolyn Peterson is really Al Cohen! Or vice versa! This explains why smiling Al has not been seen around town lately. The Outhouse has studied the photographs, obtained fingerprint samples and talked to confidential insiders. We are going public for the first time with the news! His honor is really her honor. Read all about it next week in the Outhouse!
Exclusive to the Outhouse! Michael Jackson owns a house along Cayuga Lake! Do you want to see pics showing what Michael does when he’s visiting? Send $1,500.00 to POB#47124, Ovid, New York.
Outhouse News Extra! The Pope isn’t dead. He was sighted at Friendly’s on Rt 13 this morning! Read all about it!
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 11:28 AM
