The Bad Trevor Noah Blues

The Bad Trevor Noah Blues

Court jesters should be funny
That’s how we want them to be
Now they should never tell a joke
that is offensive to me

I saw the man who got that job
said something bad about a Jew
Not a joke that’s never been said
but it was disappointing to me and you

I saw the man who got that job
said something bad about a girl
Not a joke that’s never been said
but it made people want to hurl

If we’re going to hold our comics
to be authentic and with pure soul
We’re going to look a long long time
for a funnyman to fill that hole

Always hungry for vigilance

It was great to see local food truck Ray Ray's Hog Pit get some national attention in an Esquire article that called it, "some of the best damn ribs in the country."

Where Josh Ozersky, the author of the article fell short was in the tone of the piece. Ozersky was recently in town for a James Beard presentation and he spent some time with Jeni Britton Bauer of Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream. I'd like to know how a line like, "it's a truck in a random parking lot in a city considered dull even by some Ohioans," came to be? Columbus may be dull to idiots from, say, Cleveland. We may be a bit thin skinned when we get dissed for no reason, but dull? Nah.

The praise of Ray Ray's is very much deserved. The food is worth it. Obviously Ozersky did not have much other time to explore the city otherwise the article's closing line of, "a city that barely knows what barbecue is," would not have been typed.

Over four years ago, food writer Michael Rulhman appeared on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. With wide eyes he appeared amazed to be having world class Japanese food in Columbus. After a lot of internet comment, including my own, Ruhlman changed his mind about this "Land of Applebees" as he called it. I'm hoping with some well intentioned reason that Ozersky can reach the correct conclusion.

Potato salad and circuses

I'm down with some trends. I've seen plenty of crowd funding projects in my day. I've seen millions of dollars spent to develop an app that just says, "Yo."

The outrage of the day, which we will all forget about next week the way we love Ani DeFranco or Bryan Singer again is that some dude in Columbus wanted to make some potato salad.

(if I was not so lazy, I'd download a picture of a pop culture icon eating some potato salad at a picnic in this space)

The dude's from Columbus, I do not know him. I'm sure he's a fine young man. I have nothing against him.

(Here's where I'd make a meme linking Game of Thrones to potato salad)

The dude started a Kickstarter in which he would accept donations from people to make potato salad.

(Here's a picture of James Dimon eating potato salad, or maybe drinking a smoothie)

The fund link went viral and the guy at one point had raised over twenty thousand dollars. Not bad for a guy who just wanted to hang out, maybe watch the World Cup and chow on a side dish.

(here's a shot of Lebron James from his Ohio days, at a picnic)

Meanwhile other people who have begun their own Kickstarter campaigns for their own business dreams are struggling to comprehend how some guy is raking in much more coin than they.

(put Marlon Brando from Streetcar Named Desire on the curb staring up at a window with Lana Del Rey photoshopped in place of Vivian Leigh)

Meanwhile food pantries are struggling to stay stocked while people donate to a man's quest for a potato salad recipe.

I'm not hating on the player, the guy found a niche and is running with it. The game though, it's a mess.

Watch it or do not, choice

For me it happened on my seventh birthday - when you see something for the first time that is much bigger than you thought it was.

The World Cup is in full swing, there have been little tragedies and heroic acts of physical ability in the soccer stadiums of Brazil.

While this is going on, people of Brazil are being trafficked, exploited and displaced by their government in a corrupt embrace with FIFA, I'm well aware of this. I'm well aware of the tax folly that is Nationwide Arena and the hypocrisy of college athletics. I'm disgusted by the bloodsport that the National Football League is turning into, which is causing many lives to end prematurely. I'm aware of the bread and circuses that happen around me daily.

Trying to be authentic, to not support those who exploit others in any way is next to impossible in this consumer society. This computer I'm using to type this was probably made by wage slaves, on a good day. There's blood on this keyboard and I'm not sure if I still have to hate Ani DeFranco now that Gary Oldman is the latest celebrity target of I do not like him anymore.

When I went up that ramp on that June day in 1971 and saw a blue sky, that huge scoreboard I'd only seen on 19 inches of black and white television screen, the greenest and largest field of grass in the world, I thought.

Loved the game, the sport but when you're small, weak and have glasses that fly off your face at any impact, it was impossible to find a niche. I was horrible at bat, average at best in the field, could run a little. My last softball game was about twenty years ago, when a ball struck me square in the face, I think it cracked my sinus cavity.

So I watch. A lot of football, a good deal of hockey, and some baseball. It took me almost twenty years to attend a major league game in person after the strike of 1994. For a year after I did not read a single box score or watch a game. It's taken me a long time to get over that.

I watch a lot of soccer now. been to a few Columbus Crew matches, even went to a game in Glasgow, which was not the same as here and amazing all at once. The culture of the sport in Europe is completely different, which is why the World Cup is such an incredible event.

And it can be violent, there is no denying that. But it can also be sublime, jaw dropping and incredibly sweet.

At the end of a day, or in the middle of a bad one (or even a good one) sometimes you just need to sit, zone out, and watch the greatest athletes out there do their thing. Do not attempt to guilt trip me into a while this match is going on a few miles away from the coliseum something bad is happening. Because, where I'm typing this, a few hundred yards away, I'm sure something bad is happening too.

And that's why I type this. Because remembering the first time I stepped into Shea Stadium and wanting to keep doing that keeps me going.