yustyoking

 

            I work for a 35-year-old lady mover and shaker in New York City named Mandy. She wants to see her cousin Stuart, his wife and his kids in southern New Jersey over the weekend. On Saturday, we drive down the Garden State Parkway. This is also the weekend of tropical storm Andrea. Days of sun interspersed with torrential rain. Eight inches of skyfall. Friday and Monday, flood warnings are in effect on the eastern seaboard from Florida to Maine. Crank out the ark! Thanks to global warming, monsoons are the New Normal. We get caught behind a Schmidt Baking Company truck. “Pretty Schmidty weather!” comments Mandy.

We arrive at the Rosenthal’s bucolic cul-de-sac in a fresh-faced suburban development. Cousin Stu comes out to greet us. Think Billy Bob Thornton in black motorcycle boots and leathers. His wife Jenny, orange hair, looks like Cyndi Lauper.

“We got tickets to our daughter Rihanna’s modern dance recital,” Stu tells us, flashing the tickets and instructing me where to park. Eventually, a white, shiny 28-foot stretch limo pulls up. The black driver behind the wheel has a shaved noggin and the shoulders of a linebacker. Hmmm. We’re riding to a 7-year-old’s dance recital in a stretch limo?

We sit in the back, chugging a light, refreshing Polish ale called Tyskie. In brown bottles. Puttin’ on a buzz. The television, in a teak cabinet over the bar, features an infomercial suggesting what cosmetic surgery—”For both men and women!”— we should use to “feel better about yourself.” How about doing some hard work? A feeling of accomplishment might make people “feel better” about themselves. I grind my teeth in frustration. I feel like I’m on “iCarly.” Some people bring out the best in me. I’m not so sure ’bout this crew.

What does Jenny say? “Oh, I’m so sorry we haven’t had time to see you, Mandy. Stuart and I were, of course, in France. Then on to Italy— and the alps— where we skied. The casino in Monaco was exciting. We used our winnings to visit Hong Kong. Busy is as busy does, dear.”

To quote Marcus Aurelius, “Our life is what our thoughts make it.”

She goes right on nattering: “You realize, of course, that it was at the 1972 Munich Olympics that Sweden’s King Carl Gustaf met his prospective bride Sylvia Vrethammar. Eleven Israeli athletes were held hostage and then murdered by Palestinian terrorists. While Carl Gustaf was busy flirting with an Olympic hostess. He later married her and she became Queen of Sweden. The King’s courtiers had great difficulty teaching her Swedish.”

I am lost for words.

“Is Samantha Power good for the Jews? Do we really want an American Ambassador to the United Nations who would pit the U.S. Army against the Israel Defense Forces to protect the Palestinians? What would Jesus do? Why did Condoleezza Rice’s little sister Susan become the new national security advisor? Nu, couldn’t they find anybody else?

“Was it Lady Sybil on Downton Abbey who died of eclampsia?  Sometimes I think that’s me in a nutshell. Douse me with Valium, people! I’m already on three anti-depressants.”

Stu hands me a 24 oz. jar of Marky Ramone’s Marinara Pasta Sauce™.

“What’s this?”

“It came with the tickets. ‘A free gift with every purchase.’ “

Ingredients: Imported Italian Plum Tomatoes, Olive Oil, Onions, Tomato Puree, Salt, Garlic, Basil, Black Peppers, Oregano. Drums not included.

I wanna be sedated.

“Why,” Stu asks, “is NASA collecting data regarding the phone records of millions of Americans?  ‘Space, the final frontier’ and all that. But phone records?”

“You idiot!” I seethe. “That’s the NSA, the National Security Agency. NASA is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. One flies people to the moon, the other snoops.”

“Oh,” Stu replies doubtfully.

“We now have enough digital storage capacity to archive every telephone conversation on earth,” I explain. “Including phone sex.”

As we pass a golf course, Stu informs me, “My wife kisses my balls to make my putz go straight.”

Okay-y-y.

            Dividing her time between texting and yakking on her cellphone, Mandy says, “Pam, uptown, reports that everything’s trending light. It could be a consequence of the weather. Don’t worry, things’ll pick up by this afternoon. We live in exciting times! Some periods are more Orwellian than others. PRISM allows the NSA to read everyone’s emails, but who would want to?! The Israelis have developed a crowd-sourced app called Waze for gathering traffic data. It’s a voice navigation system that tracks members’ phones, indicating the flow of traffic. In addition, whenever a driver sees a jam-up, an accident or a road repair, he or she adds it to the mix. This is a very popular service in Israel. Google has purchased it, but now comes the tricky part: European Union officials are terrified that, if implemented, the location of drivers on the roads will fall into the hands of the American NSA. Talk about paranoid! Theoretically, if we use Waze, the NSA could trace the whereabouts of this very limo.”

“Shit!” complains Stu.

Mandy’s my boss and she pays me, but no one ever accused her of having a scintillating personality. “I never thought I was important enough to track,” I joke.

“Oh. I am,” Jenny insists. Presto! Instantly, silence reigns.

            On some forested New Jersey back road, Stu picks up the gray hand mike on its curly black plastic cord, pushes the red button and tells the driver, “There are speed limits in New Jersey, dude!”

The limo pulls to the side of the road. “You insulted the driver,” crackles over the intercom. “Get outta the car.”

“Hey, dude!”

“We ain’t movin’. You a-pol-o-gize,” booms the black man’s voice.

Aristotle told us, “Anyone can become angry— that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way— that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”

“Shit! I just meant— ” Stu stammers into the microphone.

“Yo’ apologizin’?”

“Geez, I’m sorry,” Stu sighs.

“Tha’s better!” says the driver as we get under way again. We continue to a local high school. Lots of people milling around in the sunshine. Talk about crossing a line! There must be 600 people in this crowd, yet I can’t find a black face among us. In fact, the high school is located on a flood plane, flat as a pancake, yet the only black person in sight is our limo driver, arms crossed, wraparound sunglasses, leaning against the side of the car.

It takes awhile for things to get organized. I end up reading the limo driver’s comic book cover to cover: The Amazing Adventures of Supperman! The Gourmet Superhero!

                        “Look! In that restaurant, that diner, that fast food joint.

                        As featured on The Food Network. It’s Supperman! Able

                        to polish off a seven-course din-din at a single sitting.

                        Able to single-handedly gulp down an entire six pack. Able

                        to rise to his feet afterwards! No doggie bag. Supperman!”

We march into the auditorium, where 86 young ladies of varying ages put on 24 dance routines in glittery costumes before the Intermission and another 23 acts afterwards. None of the girls is older than 18. They do jazz dance, ballet, soft shoe and tap. Pedophile heaven! The only things missing are a little pole dancing and some lap dancing. Young girls in stage make-up! Bright red lipstick. Eye liner. Rouge. Sequins sprinkled in their hair. Bumpy little breasts. Round thighs. Curvy, muscular arms and legs. Young bodies writhing rhythmically. Help!!!

And they’re good. Some exhibit a technical proficiency that rates a 10 out of 10. The show-stoppers have not only mastered the technique, they flow with the rhythm. They are music brought to life. Arms and legs gyrating. Torsos swaying and twirling in total immersion. Enormous smiles on their cherry-red lips.

Rowr!

The younger generation lives life at 130 decibels. I tear up facial tissue and stuff it in my ears in lieu of earplugs.

Nor is this the land of the blondes. Brunettes, raven-haired beauties and redheads predominate.

The dance segments have titles like “Hit the Road, Jacques” and “Care of the Eye, I Care” and “Kinky Boots Are made For Walkin’.”  The music doesn’t always match the label, but it’s hard to judge a misnomer, since I don’t know my Broadway musicals.

Even when the entire ensemble takes the stage, some little darlin’ stands out based on sheer physical beauty. Another girlie dances with such abandon, you have to give her extra points for spontaneity. No one, however, is keeping score. The audience consists of proud mommies, daddies, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles. An enthusiastic crowd, we applaud madly after the biggest production numbers, hooting, stamping our feet and whistling. Cranking noise makers. Bellowing. Tooting compressed air bullhorns. Blat! Blat! Tossing empty plastic water bottles into the air. Firing starter pistols. Ka-blam! Waving lit sparklers in the darkened theater, acrid white smoke wafting toward the ceiling. Pummeling one another with plastic hammers. The shrieking grows so intense, you might imagine that Christians are being fed to lions. What a crowd! Such enthusiasm.

The girls’ costumes are right up there with the Broadway stage. In fact, one of the reasons this dance studio has stayed in business over 30 years is location, location, location: Broadway lurks right across the river. These dancers have somewhere to go.

“I’m sorry to put you through all this,” comments Jenny during the Intermission.

“Not at all. I feel like Czar Nicholas II of Russia. With his Fabergé eggs. Where else can I see 4-year-olds dance ballet?”

“My dad believed that ‘Only through suffering can you become great,’ ” Jenny tells me. “So he made us all miserable.”

The wizened geezer sitting next to me, a face full of hair, explains that he moved from NYC to the Jersey Shore. “If I’d known I was going to outlive my savings,” says he, “I would have planned my life very differently. Who knows what Obamacare will do to our Medicare benefits?”

“Well,” I suggest, “Bloomberg News tells us Hillary Clinton is fading in the polls while Chris Christie surges ahead. What do the pollsters expect? Hillary is no longer in the public eye as Secretary of State, while Christie continues to govern New Jersey.”

“Thank God for that!”

Welcome to the Republican State of New Jersey.

Far from being a let-down, the second half features choreography that is ever more complex and compelling. Lots of 60’s rock. “For Your Love” by The Yardbirds. “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” by Little Richard. Dion’s “Teenager in Love.” The Hollywood Argyles singing “Alley Oop.” Even “Dream On, Baby” by Wolfram und der Jetzt. Plus lots of show tunes. When they throw in a techno recording, I feel for the girls. Stripped down to bare beats, the music becomes as challenging to dance to as a metronome. Not a lot of feeling to grab on to there.

The choreography is by Ms. Atomica Barstojani. From Tehran. Microphone in hand, she comes out on stage to take a bow. A portly blonde, she dresses like a suburban housewife. “Thank you!” she breathes. “Huh! What a fruit salad of emotions. We’re not portraying Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, children. The challenge is bringing out the rationality behind the theatrics. Our dancers nailed it!!!”

We give her a thunderous ovation.

Afterwards, in a hallway full of admiring families proffering flowers to high school ballerinas, an older couple try to explain to their granddaughter that “Our dances didn’t shimmy like that!”

The young lady rolls her eyes.

On bridge tables, the staff is selling computer-generated photos of the dance troupe, “Dancing Bear Studio” T-shirts, autographed pillowcases (?!) and more dance-related tjochkes than you can shake a stick at.

“Great costumes,” I gush. “Great production numbers!”

“They should be,” the grandparents assure me. “A hundred thousand dollars in dance lessons, the quality should be top drawer!”

“Is that what it costs?”

“We have no idea, but knowing our daughter, it wouldn’t surprise us,” says Gramps.

Eyeing me crabbily, Grandma asks, “Are you waiting for a bus?” Great standup comedienne.