POETS Day! Ogden Nash

Photo: ABC Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s that wonderful day again. The phrase comes from the north of the British Isles and the acronym is disputable. Some say it’s Punch Out Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Others claim it’s Pinch Out Early. I think both of those are anodyne shite. Per the Commitments: Say it loud, say it proud. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

This week’s attempted escape from work early is less an escape than a lack of return. It’s a rearguard maneuver, but it’s simple and should be easy for anyone who’s conversational with the boss.

Find out what fascinates him or her. If it’s NASCAR or Indy Racing, dive down that rabbit hole with them (I have a cousin that writes about Formula Un and know a guy whose Bar-B-Q place might as well be the sponsor for the southeastern racing world – these guys go crazy on the subject.) Maybe it’s romance novels or collectable dolls. That’s great. Roll with it. If your boss is into ninja weapons you may want to back off, particularly if he or she has an abundance of heavy metal black t-shirts and owns a snake or more than one aquarium but otherwise, do your research.

You can pretend to share an interest with the boss [Andy from the Office tv link is now unavailable but there’s this great personality mirroring bit that I wanted to share] and you can pretend to have met a third person who shares that interest, and the missed half-day is forgiven as you were enraptured by the insights this stranger might reveal. You skip out on the job and sit at the bar watching baseball and no one is the wiser.

I eat lunch at a particular place maybe once or twice a week. There’s a group of us that does so. We don’t co-ordinate. We just show up and there’s some combination of the eight or so of us sitting at the bar having lasagna or ziti and we form a quorum.

It’s funny how people identify themselves. There are two Vietnam vets, both train work retirees, and both from Connecticut. That’s an odd coincidence in Birmingham, AL. We have a private eye, a former chef turned gay rights activist, and a woman that runs a house cleaning service. There’s a city planner who’s a Knight of Columbus and a housewife that has made it her mission to right the wrongs the school board caused. We even have a spook – a guy retired from the CIA after handing out money to Libyan warlords and passing messages around Northern Ireland. I haven’t seen him in a while but there was the most gym addicted electrician you can imagine – muscles on muscles. He’d sit next to the accountant/AA councilor. There were others, mostly lawyers, that pass through on the by and by. There’s a former offensive lineman that managed to hit four years at Alabama where Bryant didn’t win a National Championship.

It’s a fun group, if it’s a group. It’s very loose. We never all happen to be there on the same day but there’s company and we all know and ask about each other.

Today I was chatting with one of the Vietnam train workers when out of the blue he mentions that he used to work for National Lampoon. I was gobsmacked.

Turns out this innocent restaurant-goer came about to rescue prose from cocaine or whatnot as a proofreader in the magazine offices. He knew Douglas Clark Francis Kenney. He hung out with P.J. O’Rourke. He saw an early draft of the Animal House script. Strangely he never met Michael O’Donoghue.

That’s not a conversation I’m leaving to go back to work. I can quote Matty Simmons for damn’s sake. National Lampoon is a fixation.

Find your boss’s fixation. Tell him or her on Monday that you got into a fly fishing discussion that touched on men’s footwear or some such and why only butlers wear black socks.

The point is that we all have obsessions. Find your boss’s obsession and use it. Mimic it. There are things you cannot leave and people get that. Your boss will understand that there was a conversation you could never leave.

Up for the POETS Day confabulation is Ogden Nash. He was a bit of a people pleaser.

Composer Camille Saint – Saens, there’s an umlaut over the “e” but I have no idea what that means as far as pronunciation, existed. No one else knew what the umlaut did either. Camille apparently carried a grudge because no one could properly speak his name in whatever monarch’s nasal tone he expected to be proper. I picked up this little tidbit in an essay by Joseph Epstein. As best I can tell it’s “sans-sans.” But people put forth all manner of anti-Frankish pronunciations like “saynt – seens” and worse denying a noble heritage. Quislings.

One who got the pronunciation right was Ogden Nash, so he got to write, years post facto, the verse to Camille’s musical “The Carnival of Animals.” It’s a silly bit of nothing, but it made his name. I’m not blown away, but my name is not emblazoned in the Ogden Nash tier of wordsmiths, so take his word(s) over mine.

Ogden Nash wrote beyond the Camille whatever-his-name is said. It was mostly stupid and whimsical stuff, but I love stupid and whimsical stuff. It’s hard to be stupid and whimsical and memorable but if you pull it off you were really good at being stupid and whimsical and that sets you above a bunch of other people. I admire that.

God bless the achievers, but give them leave. Sometimes they hide until they reveal something and become the person you wouldn’t expect was there all along. But when you realize you damn near would sell out so many to sit alongside them at a bar. There are stories I want to hear.

A Drink With Something In It

Ogden Nash (1902 – 1971)

There is something about a Martini,
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow Martini;
I wish I had one at present.
There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth—
I think that perhaps it’s the gin.

There is something about an old-fashioned
That kindles a cardiac glow;
It is soothing and soft and impassioned
As a lyric by Swinburne or Poe.
There is something about an old-fashioned
When dusk has enveloped the sky,
And it may the ice,
Or the pineapple slice,
But I strongly suspect it’s the rye.

There is something about a mint julep.
It is nectar imbibed in a dream,
As fresh as the bud of the tulip,
As cool as the bed of the stream.
There is something about a mint julep,
A fragrance beloved by the lucky.
And perhaps it’s the tint
Of the frost and the mint,
But I think it was born in Kentucky.

There is something they put in a highball
That awakens the torpidest brain,
That kindles a spark in the eyeball,
Gliding singing through vein after vein.
There is something they put in a highball
Which you’ll notice one day, if you watch;
And it may be the soda,
But judged by the odor,
I rather believe it’s the Scotch.

Then here’s to the heartening wassail,
Wherever good fellows are found;
Be its master instead of its vassal,
And order the glasses around.
For there’s something they put in the wassail
That prevents it from tasting like wicker;
Since it’s not tapioca,
Or mustard, or mocha,
I’m forced to conclude it’s the liquor.

The people you meet at a bar. I hung out with a guy that hung out with Doug Kenney.