A Journal of Humor and Verbal Anarchy

 

trumped

Rising over the gray waters of Cayuga Lake, the 1500 ft high Trump Ithaca pierces the low lying cloud cover that hangs over this small upstate NY community 298 days of the year. On a clear day, however, the view from the observation deck on the top floor of the tower is matchless, taking in not only the entire city of Ithaca but the fabled Cornell campus as well, which appears from your imperial vantage point, like some kind of matchbox village cluttered with rival architectural styles.

"This is where the guys who made their quick $200 million in the market come to look at the buildings they endowed over there on East Hill," remarked Fred Skickel, Trump Ithaca manager. "Before the Donald put up his hotel, there was no place for these high rollers to stay when they visited Ithaca. You expect some guy who gets picked up for work every morning in a 40 ft. long stretch limo to stay at the Hilton Garden or Holiday Inn?"

Skickel has reason to be proud of Trump Ithaca's paradigm of ostentatious consumption. Each of the 50 luxury apartments housed on the top floors of the tower boasts a 60 ft swimming pool, wood burning firepaces, a fully stocked Victorian library, authentic 19th Century paintings, canopied beds and other amenities designed to flatter the most jaded robber baron. Every weekend, the lobby is home to a special Farmer's Market where succulent organic beauties culled from the local micro-farm boutiques are available at prices designed to put a Mercedes in the poorest dirt farmer's garage.

Mayor Carolyn Peterson, seen here with her predecessor, Alan Cohen, at the Trump Ithaca groundbreaking, has been criticized for bestowing what some consider absurd tax abatements to a billionaire developer like The Donald, is unrepentant about her administration's emphasis on upscale projects at a time when unemployment is high and rural poverty is deepening for many of the community's residents. "Folks don't come to Ithaca to see bums picking cans on the Commons." Mayor Peterson smiles and pats her prim social worker's coif, adding, "They come here to get away from the rat race of New York City for a weekend, check out how their Nathan or Amber is doing at Cornell, or reminisce about Slope Days of yesteryear. Ithaca needed a real high end hostelry. People at that level need to feel that Ithaca understands and appreciates their lifestyle. After all, they're likely to donate a building to Cornell or IC, or buy a parcel of land upstate to build the perfect retirement nest. Ithaca is no only gorges, it's money." Peterson grins demurely and glances over at the signed photograph of Donald Trump perched on her desk.


When asked how this boundless generosity targeted at a jet-set dealmaker like Trump impacts Ithacs's poorest residents, Peterson shoots back, "Look, there is a definite trickle down effect. I'm told that you have to get a ticket to scour the dumpster behind Donald's building. Just like a butcher shop!" Mayor Peterson claps her hand gleefully at her analogy. "You can't get filet mignon at Loaves & Fishes." Peterson was referring to the local soup kitchen which feeds over a 100 guests daily.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 3:51 AM

 


Woodpecker Madness

What's all this fuss about an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker? Big f-----g deal, as they say in the extinction business. Ez has to laugh. Does Cornell have one of these?

So some guy at Cornell discovered a woodpecker in the swamps of Ga. or someplace? So what. The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker has only been thought to be extinct for the last 50 or so years. Hey, this nifty little specimen has been flying around Ez's backyard for the last 2 million years. What do you think it eats? Corn chips.Not just any corn chips. Fritos Flavor Twists Cheddar Ranch Flavored Corn Chips. Ez also puts out a bucket of medium hot salsa. The Ez makes a beehive back to the house. No way would Ez want to linger in the flight path of this sucker.

At first, you think the sun might have temporarily ducked behind a cloud. That would explain the sudden change of light. Then you notice the shadow cast by its 50 foot wing span splayed across the lawn. Then you hear this sound like a Boeing 727 is going to land in your back yard. You dont' know what to expect. And then you see it.This giant gas from the past is parked in your yard, its long pointed beak calmly going about it's business, scooping up a billfull of corn chips, dipping them into the salsa, then kicking its head back like a robin sucking up a nice juicy worm. Within seconds, lunch is over.

The only problem with having a peterodactyl in your backyard is when it comes time to go on vacation. You don't. This isn't a low maintenance type of bird. Forget to feed it one day, and it'll visit the bird feeder in the neighbor's yard. Ez made that mistake once. The stupid sucker ate the neighbor. A pair of gardening gloves and a sneaker was all that was left. Shit!



Hey, Cornell, get the maximum mileage out of your silly, garden variety woodpecker. Like people really care about woodpeckers. What they really want is something to keep them amused. When all is said or done, Ez will have the final clucking rights. Truth is that Ez is in the process of working out a deal with the Smithsonian and Disney World. Jurrassic Park, Ithaca Style. Imagine this.

THE EXPERIENCE OF A LIFETIME. RIDE THE 2 MILLION OLD PETERODACTYL. ONLY IN ITHACA!

What the Cardiff Man did for Syracuse is a drop in the bucket compared to what Ez's corn chip munching Peterodactyl will do for Ithaca.


Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 3:55 PM

 
Ithaca Sucks 60's Page

Let's face it, fellow babyboomers. You're getting old! You're on 5 different medications, chugging down Centrum Silver, being harrassed with constant junk mail from AARP, retirementvillages.com, funeral homes; your My Pictures file is filled with baby pictures of the grandkids, your garage or attic is a vertitable archaeological dig,filled with ten layers of junk. You check your IRA accounts daily, asking yourself, will it be enough? A latte will cost $15 by the time you reach 75. You won't be able to visit your kids unless they live next door because of the friggin' cost of oil. You've lived through the Kennedy administration - Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II. Oh, Ez forgot Eisenhower, not that he matters. America, thanks to tv and the internet, is beyond the point where someone who looks like IKE could ever get elected. We have become a youth-oriented society, if you hadn't noticed.

You reap what you sow, suckers!



What happens when people get old? They wax nostalgic. Oh, the good ole' days when I was dropping 15 tabs of acid a day, changing the world with my buddies and thousands of others who had bussed into town to rock the boat, flopping around the mud at Woodstock, all those other concert venues where they never had a decent shitter, getting laid regularly or consistently not getting laid, staying up all night on pills and cheap vin rouge, living in barely habitable apartments where the roaches were unionized, ridiculing the old, yeah, those old farts. Hell, I'm not going to live past 30. Surprise!

That's your brain at 60. Actually, it's the brain of someone who didn't do a fraction of the acid, mescaline, hashish etc that you did. Your brain looks an avocado left in the trunk space of a Volkwagon bus for five years. See all the clouding that looks like a Gatorade spill? Well, dudes, that is the white matter of your brain turning to mush. Your synapses just aren't as perky as they used to be. They want to sip some warm milk and go to bed. They don't want to read Hegel and Schlegel. Learn Portuguese. Or,alternately, your neurons want to cuddle up and linger over those fuzzy images (while they last) of a golden era when revolution was in the air, the Beatles were constantly playing on the radio, when every surface was painted with glorious color and peace symbols, before the world wide web and pop up windows, when someone with as little talent as Britney Spears couldn't even a job as a backstage groupie at an orgy, when things were real!



Up at Cornell, people teach courses on the 60's. People have been writing books about the 60's since the 60's, trying to explain the 60's. As if the 60's needed any explanation. A few people even try to relive the 60's but they don't have much success. Except in Ithaca, New York. Ithaca has been described as a pleasant stop along a time warp. There's a little guy shooting around Ithaca in a motorized wheel chair, oxygen tank strapped to the carriage, who looks like the spitting image of Jerry Garcia, give or take a few pounds. Frizzed out hair, tie-dyed shirt, beads, porkpie hat. He calls himself Silent Thunder. Ithaca is like that, the 60's die hard. Guys still get away with calling themselves shit like that, Seven Song, Sparrow, (Ananda for chicks.) There are two head shops in Ithaca. There's a woman walking around who looks like she might be Jack Kerouac's widow. She has that distant look of someone who has been trapped in a fog bank for the last 40 years. Who knows, maybe she runs through Stewart Park late at night, calling, Jack, Jack, come back.

There are people in Ithaca who think John Lennon is still alive and shacked up with Yoko in the Dakota. They haven't picked up a newspaper in 40 years. Reading the Ithaca Journal or Ithaca Times doesn't technically qualify as reading a newspaper. At the dentist's office, they are more likely to pick up a copy of Popular Mechanics or Inside Sesame Street than Newsweek or Time. They don't know that the 60's are over. That the music died. They still believe in a guitar heaven. They float their dead guitars on rafts in Cayuga Lake in some ritualistic form of instrument sati. These are the kinds of people that sent their kids to school with Peter Paul and Mary lunchboxes. That sang Puff the Magic Dragon in the shower well into their 50's.This place is 60's hell. Dante didn't know, died too soon. Or, he would have added another circle.





Hey, need costumes and party supplies for your next 60's bash, check out this cool website: www.c-boom.com/ big0_party_60s.htm
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:57 AM

 
The Official Ithacasucks Ex-offenders Registry


Name: Al Cohen
Occupation: Ex-Small Town Mayor, Restaurant Owner
Address:Unknown, probably staying expense-free with wealthy land developers
Offense(s)Selling Ithaca, New York out,opening the flood-gates of development, aiding and abetting in the proliferation of big box stores, being a slippery politican.

Note:This offender is to be considered extremely dangerous, armed with an incredibly facile tongue, well-honed political skills, a disarming charm irresistible to voters, women and developers. Attention: Do not approach or attempt to apprehend unless you are prepared to be sucked into a large scale development project on the Ithaca waterfront.

Mr. Cohen is known to be involved in the eminent domain seizure of prime real estate, the construction of an 11 story hotel/office building, both inappropriately scaled and aesthetically repulsive, in the heart of downtown Ithaca. He is reputed to have been involved in making deals with developers, giving away chunks of Ithaca at fire sale tax rates, destroying the downtown shopping district by inviting multiudinous big box retailers to build megastores on Rt 13 that compete unfairly with high priced local boutiques. Mr. Cohen's over-generous tax abatements to giant retailers has caused congestion, increasing incidents of road rage, pollution, and a President's Day feeding frenzy among consumers on said Rt 13.

Mr. Cohen is reported to hang out at the Boatyard Grill on the Waterfront, Simeon's on the Commons and other watering holes around Ithaca where he is provided with free drinks, meals and accomodations. Since leaving political office, he has been known to contribute editorials to the Ithaca Journal, encouraging more development madness,the distribution of tax abatements to wealthy corporations, and the despoilation of Ithaca's natural resources. Before and after images



KNOWN ASSOCIATES: (SEE IMAGES BELOW)



disclaimer: The above is intended simply as a parody and does not claim to be a factual representation of Mr. Cohen's activities in or out of office. The editorial board of Ithacasucks, Ithaca's premier, cutting edge humor blogspot, made up of one weird crackpot named Ezra Kidder, disavows any connection with the Republican or Green party, both of whom he regards with extreme ridicule. No money was taken for this ridiculous and futile waste of a Sunday morning. No small furry mammals were hurt during the writing of this blog. Anyway, if you eat at McDonald's, why would you care?
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:05 AM

 
Founders Day

Ithaca needs more parades. Everyone loves a good parade. Even Ez, eternal cynic, self-imagined iconoclast, and self-elected pisser on other folks' parades that he is. Ez used to love watching newsreels of the May Day parade in Red Square in Moscow. That endless procession of ICBM's, vodka-complected veterans of the Great Patriotic War, the Internationale blaring from loudspeakers, wigged out and furry-hatted party leaders in their dotage waving wanly from the top of Lenin's tomb.
The Gradys could organize something like that. You bet. A Peterbilt tractor towing a 40ft long float with a scale replica of the Triphammer Recruiting Center, befreckled Irish holding a huge banner that reads "Remember the St. Pat's Four." Phalanxes of anti-war demonstrators carrying placards and symbolic coffins. Hell, you could include a Bloodmobile or two, the IPD Swat van (more on that in a future blog.) Green Star would want to get in on the action. Probably bake up a giant block of tofu carved into the shape of a peace symbol. Don't get Ezra wrong now. He's against the war as much as the next guy. That's the problem. But organizing a peace rally in Ithaca, New York is preaching to the converted. It would take more moxy to hold it in Groton.

The Ithaca Festival parade just doesn't cut it. Let's face, a Volvo ballet. Why don't they just advertise for General Motors while they're at it. Or sneak in some more interesting models like the one below.
Saddam Hussein, according to sources, received $1.8 billion in contracts from global companies like Siemens and Volvo while the people of Iraq starved. More recently, Volvo received $30 million in contracts from the US puppet government of Iraq to supply construction equipment. Yeah, let's help Volvo out with some free advertising, Ithaca.

Another popular feature of the IF parade are the social work floats. Ithaca is, after all, the social work capital of the US with more case workers per capita than any comparably sized city. Ez is surpised that DSS doesn't have a float like Loaves n Fishes, with case workers handing out public assistance forms to the crowd.

Ez envisions another kind of parade. He's been talking about it for years. Ithaca needs a Founders Day parade. Ithacans have spent a lot of time talking about renaming State St MLK Blvd. Ez has no problem with that. If there is one figure that stands out in the long course of American history, head and shoulders above the babykillers, union busters, enemies of the poor, warmongers, etc that we include in the pantheon of national heroes, it's Dr. King.

But how about General John Sullivan? That vainglorious, ever-contentious, black haired lawyer from New Hampshire. After all, isn't John Sullivan the real founder of Ithaca? Sullivan was the man charged by George Washington with solving the "Indian" problem in the northeast. A little background is in order for the history-challenged. The Iroquois Confederation, the loose polity of nations
that made up the indigenous presence in this part of the world, waffled between siding with the British or the colonist upstarts during the American Revolution. By means of reprisal, Washington ordered Sullivan into Iroquoia with a large contingent of troops. Between 1778-1779, Sullivan pillaged and burned a wide swath of territory between what is now Pennsylvania and New York. Sometime in Sept, 1779, a detachment of Sullivan's army led by Lieut.-Colonel William Butler burned down a Tutolo settlement, then called Coreogonal, in the vicinity of Buttermilk Falls near what is Bostwick Rd. The poor Tutelos had previously been forced out of North Carolina by advancing white settlements and had been absorbed into the Cayuga Nation.

Now Coreogonel happens to be on land owned by Eco-Village. That's right, folks. The iconic Eco-Village, poster child of sustainable capitalism, where condos go for upwards on $100K, Yuppie Paradise. Where alpha males with greying pony tails, wearing $250 pairs of coveralls, grow organic squash that they then sell at the Farmer's Market for $12 per lb.to other alpha males and their families.

Outside of the obvious place names and the occasional historical marker, Ithacans have been rather ambivilant about recognizing their huge debt to the indigenous peoples whose land they now occupy. It took over 225 years to come up with a park commermorating the poor Tutelos. Ain't that a nice gesture.

Ez is no bleeding heart liberal. What is done is done. There is no point in giving Ithaca back to the descendants of the Tutelos or Cayuga Nation. They wouldn't want it, anway. Too many potholes. The Cayugas would take one look at Rt 13 and, either puke at what white Ithaca has wrought on their flood plain or go into Wal-mart to buy something for the kids. Perhaps, we could consider giving them a little land to open a gambling casino. Ez recommends that parcel of land next to Eco-Village as an ideal location. Imagine driving up to the new Coreogonal Casino and Amusement Park,having your Volvo valet-parked, and be ushered into the casino by a gentlemen who looks like this -



So let's start planning that parade now. Who could we get to play Gen. Sullivan? Caroline Peterson, Dan Hoffman, no, I got it. Al Cohen. You know, there is a slight resemblance when you get down to it. Al was one of Ithaca greatest mayors, a fine restauranteer to boot. He once considered purchasing a wooden cigar store Indian figure for the entrance of Simeon's but was talked out of it by his staff. Ez thinks we was misguided. We should always follow our first instincts. Being politically correct is a cop out, the last fig leaf of the liberal conscience. What did political correctness ever do for the poor Tutelos. Don't you agree?


Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:54 AM

 
Non-intelligent Design

Ez recently recalls reading in the Ithaca Journal that the president of Cornell University, in an address to the faithful, otherwise known as the State of the University, weighed in on the issue of intelligent design. Rawlings claimed that intelligent design was not science. Now, some would claim that the reverse, as well, was true. This possiblly explains how science could be suckered into splicing together a device that, in a flash, could undo the work of millions of years of unintelligible plodding by Mother Nature. Well, intelligent design might be repackaged creationism, but Rawlings faith in science is slightly misplaced.
No, this is not a photograph of the Theory Center at Cornell. It's a photograph of Chernobyl after the meltdown. But, to Ez's knowledge, the University, thank goodness, doesn't have any enriched uranium. Nor do they have a reactor capable of producing weapons grade plutonium. Which is a load off Ez's mind, right? You can let the Iranians have that shit, just don't let Big Red near it! Can you imagine that? If Cornell had plutonium. It would bring intercollegiate rivalries to a new all time low. See the headlines? BIG RED STOMPS DARTMOUTH.

Anyone interested in the idea of intelligent design should attempt to drive down State St. hill at 8:30 am. As you wait at the interesection of Mitchell St for every friggin' SUV and Sports Utililty in Tompkins County to wend their way up to Cornell, you appreciate the life in the shadow of Big Red doesn't always conform to rational expectations. What would it cost them to put in a traffic light? Really now? Here are cars backed up Rt 79 as every one who lives on the other three hills tries to make it to work on this one. Stupid! Hey,remember the Octopus? Google Octopus and Ithaca some day but watch out for the all the shit that comes at you from the Dewitt Historical Society website. I mean, there are more popup windows than Carter had liver pills, which, for those of you born after 1970, is a figure of speech and ingenious form of advertising from a gentler, less complicated period in history - a time before the drug companies started producing products that could control every aspect of human behavior and functioning. What did Grandpa do before they produced Viagra? Before the acronym "E-D" entered everyday usage? Well, Ez will save you the trouble, looking up the Octopus. The octopus refers to the convergence of Rts. 96, 89, 13A and 79 at the inlet. At one point, thanks to a bridge built by Mayor Kiley, the bridge of Frankenstein, you might call it, all four roads crossed the inlet at one spot. Imagine that. Intelligent design at work for your tax dollars. It took nearly 35 years for the city of Ithaca to fix the problem by constructing another bridge. Anyway, Ez inevitably has lost the thread.

We're talking about the Masters of the Universe up on the Hill. The folks who are sucking Cayuga Lake up East Hill in a giant straw. And, when no one is looking, dumping who knows what back in the lake. Could that be why Cayuga Lake has that irridiscent glow at sunset?

President Rawlings claims that Cornell is really working at being a good academic citizen of an interconnected world, his words. Ez thinks that Cornell is just interested in making money and to hell with the consequences. He(Ez) has talked to you many times about some of the two headed cats that CU has let out of the bag: the milk cow with 40 tits, the fat-free pig, the broccoli with a genetically imprinted bar code that CU designed for Wal-Mart's grocery division, the car that runs on cow flops. You've head it all before in this blog. Who the hell else would have given up a promising career as an illustrator of braille books to give you the scoop on Big Red? Well, nothing Ez has told you previous rivals the information he's going to give you now. This is disturbing. The images you are about to see are disturbing. Not intended for children or sex offenders. But, Ez has stumbled upon reports of secret research that Cornell scientists are conducting on the human genome. That's right, guys,who don't believe in intelligent design, are screwing around with the mysteries of human life.
So, if you're out on spring break down in Daytona Beach, hanging out with buddies, doing funnels and all that shit that college students do, ingesting massive amounts of alcohol, burning through condoms like they were kleenex, you might stumble upon these examples of intelligent design in action.

Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 5:10 PM

 
buddha bucks

In case you're wondering, the third largest industry in Ithaca next to education and parking, is Buddhism. As evidence, Ez offers this excerpt from a news item in the Jan 6 issue of the Ithaca Journal,

"A proposed 13,000-square-foot monastery, which would house the Namgyal Monastery Institute of Buddhist Studies, received preliminary site plan approval from the Town of Ithaca earlier this month.


To be located on the east side of State Route 96B (Danby Road) across from Sesame Street, on a 27-acre site, the estimated $850,000 construction project would comprise multiple buildings, including a main building, monks' residence and student dormitories, according to planning board documents. Parking for 66 vehicles is included in the plans, as well as five seasonal cabins, a bath house, a maintenance building, lighting, trails and new stormwater facilities."





We're talking Dharma Disneyland. This is a Lama Theme Park. Bring the kids. Ride the Tonglen Tornado. Get reborn a hundred times. Test your karma on the BuddhaMeter.You may be reincarnated on the board of directors at Greenstar.

If you think that Americans' sum interest in Buddhism amounts to the sound of one hand clapping, think again. More like ca-chink, ca-chink,that's right, we're listening to the sounds of the cash register. Type in Buddha and store in your search engine. Ez dares you. A hand-carved Shakyamuni Buddha sells for $45 on one website. Then you add the prayer mat, the beads, the incense, the books, the cd, the kinky saffron lingerie for the mistress, the greeting cards around the holidays ( Yes, in answer to your question: Buddhists celebrate Christmas and Passover.) The wheel goes around and around just like on TV. There's no end to the money you can make off Lord Buddha and American's fascination with things vaguely non-occidental. All this stuff about dharma and karma, it's mind sushi. Intellectual takeout.


Right behind Kinko's on the corner of Meadow and State, you'll notice another
example of Ithaca's thriving Buddhist industry. The home of Snow Lion Publications. A large, nondescript corrugated roofed warehouse next to Booze Barn or some similiarly named beer outlet. One of the world's largest purveyors of Tibetan Buddhist materials, Snow Lion has been an Ithaca landmark for over 20 years. At one time, they had a tiny little office across from Immaculate Conception. Now, the three guys who started Snow Lion all rank up there as millionaires. "it's not hard work if you can get it, get it if you try." Or so the song goes. They have the monks do the work, they reap the profits. What is the starting salary for a Sadhu,a guy who has renounced the world, lives off the charity of relatives and patrons, walks around in a thin saffron robe?

Ezra sees a connection here. Seems like the key to success in Ithaca is to control your labor costs. Perhaps that's what the 12 Tribes and the Buddhawuda business community have in common. You recruit people who work for next to nothing.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:05 AM

 



The Ezra Code

Did you know that Ezra Cornell spent the last 25 years of his life trying to get his grubby hands on the Shroud of Turin? No, you probably didn't know that. You probably thought that he was tied up, creating a major aggie echool for gentlemen farmers and their scion on money stolen from the indigenous peoples of Wisconsin. That's right, the Morrill Land Grant bestowed on Ezra and his cabal of upstate fatcats thousands of acres full of prime wooded real estate in the cheese state. Ezra chopped the trees down, sold them to the railroads and his own companies for rail ties and telegraph poles, pocketed some of the money and donated the rest to Cornell U. Of course, you have to ask yourself where Congress got the land in the first place.

More than likely, you also didn't know that the Mr. Cornell sent his close friend, Andrew Dickson White,later first president of Cornell University, to Rome to dicker with the Pope. That was back in 1865. The first casino had opened in the capital city of Monaco the year before, and it is rumored that Pius had a healthy stake in the Seabath Company which owned the exclusive gambling rights in that tiny principality. Pope Pius IX,who, at the time, was feuding with Napoleon III of France and Victor Emmanuel, while attempting to hold on to his temporal possessions in Italy, spent a lot of his time in Monte Carlo and racked up huge gambling debts. Pius IX was actually known as the 'gambling Pope.' White offered the Pope the then impressive sum of $75,000 for the Shroud. A fortune in those days. The price of a fully equipped Cadillac these days. Can you imagine, choosing between the face of Jesu Christi and a Caddy? This Ez doesn't want to offend any Catholics out there - he was one himself, has the physical and psychic scars to prove it. But he thinks he would choose the car. You can reproduce your own Shroud of Turin with a black velvet art kit purchased at Wal-Mart. Anyway, Pius was mighty tempted by Cornell's offer. In the end, however, he passed on the deal and White came back empty-handed.

But Cornell didn't give up that easy. The next year, he secretly sent White to Venice to meet with the leader of a ring of notorious art thieves with possible link to the Sicilian mafia. Things got pretty hairy for the staid and respectable White. For one, he had a wild gondola ride, pursued by agents of the Italian government. He ended up, ducking into a boat house attached to a rundown, dilipidated pallazo owned by no other than the illegitimate daughter of Lola Montez and King Ludwig of Bavaria. If you didn't know, and who would expect you to know since almost no one knows anything about history these days except who won the World Series last year - Lola Montez was the Irish-born dancer who made a name for herself as world-class adventuress, ultimately capturing the affections of King Ludwig I, not the mad king Ludwig who later emptied the Bavarian state treasury to build Disneyworld-like fantasy palaces.

Anyway, to make a long story short, White, model Victorian that he was, quickly became besmitten by the fetching Lola II, a young temptress with a perfect hour glass figure so admired by the Victorian lecher class. White soon was checking out Lola's clockworks first hand in an upstairs bedroom of the pallazzo. White's personal diary, recounting their first and successive nights of unbridled and unexpurgated passion, is now safely hidden away in a secret vault somewhere on the Cornell campus. The same vault contains Ezra Cornell's manuscript copy of the Codex Hermaphroditus, a crumbly old document,supposedly written by an 11th Century member of the Cathar clergy somewhere in medieval France, that claims that you know who had a homosexual relationship with Judas Iscariot. According to the author, of which virtually nothing is known except that he was burned at the stake, the relationship went sour and Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver. Nothing would surprise Ez. It is well known that the Cathars were squeamish about sex, and, in fact refused to eat anything produced by sexual reproduction. The first vegans. Gay sex would certainly have been in a different category for folks who rejected the limitations of the brutish physical world.

Getting back to the steamy bedroom scenes between Cornell's future president and Lola 2, it is important to remember that Victorian gentlemen of White's ilk were notorious for their obsessive preoccupation with back room sex. The respectable mask of Victorian gentility was riddled with cracks. Read Frank Harris' My Secret Life for details. Ez is so happy that he has turned the corner from lambasting Ithaca and its institutions to providing educational content on the web.

After disengaging himself from his lust pot,White finally did rendezvous with the ring of art thieves. He offered them $75K to steal the shroud which was housed in the cathederal at Turin. The offer was glady accepted and the thieves went to work.All good Catholics, however, what they went to work on was creating a fake. In those days, with no internet and spotty news coverage, White had no way of verifying that the real shroud had left the posession of the archbishop of Turin. And, besides, he was busy, painstakingly exploring the rotundities of the ever ravishing Lola 2. With the fake shroud tucked in his valise, $75K lighter, White painfully separated himself from his Venetian paramour, and returned to the States.

That is the real story of how Ezra Cornell, self-made millionaire, philantropist,
Ithaca's eternal benefactor, came to own a fake copy of the Shroud of Turin.

Aint't that interesting?


Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 11:11 PM