Category: Remarks on Color

It’s not the blue of melancholia, nor is it the blue of frigid, icy waters surrounding some lovely Scandinavian fiord, nor is it the Muddy Waters kinda blues where somehow that wild and necessary music determines the arc of one’s life and experience. It’s a kind of blue that has never been described and to which I have become accustomed (not, as some haters might say, afflicted)—I got me a serious case of the Biden Blues. It’s not apathy, nor is it a malaise, but more like a sadness ringed in gratitude. Biden’s is a stalwart, inscrutable blue, a blue for all time—a blue for the ages, the kind of blue that will not be dissuaded, bullied, or derailed, not even by its complimentary color, orange. The only thing it can be likened to is perhaps the blue of the ocean, eponymous and everlasting. Biden’s Blue will be remembered long after he is gone BECAUSE he singlehandedly balanced the budget, restored the United States as the anchor of the free world, eased the partisan divide, and unified NATO—not to mention forgiving more than 1.2 billion dollars in student loan debt to hundreds of thousands of struggling Americans. I’d much rather have the “Biden Blues” than the “Orange Trots,” and if I had to choose, I’d rather go down with the inveterate ship than burn in an arsonist’s wet dream. After all, blue is the color of thoughtfulness and tranquility, of calm waters and serene winter nights, and of deep-seated integrity. So, when I say I got me a solid case of the Biden Blues, I pronounce it proudly and from these collective rooftops, in praise and in gratitude not only for all he has done for this country but for the sake of humility alone!

Bill Clinton leads with his nose— always has and always will. Not that his nose really minds being the center of attention—the first one to enter a room or the first one to greet the onslaught of cameras as the press push closer in for another, better money shot of the “great proboscis.” Some (Pejoratively) refer to his nose as Rudolph (as in the famed Reindeer) because his nose is almost always red.

Over the years, many people have weighed in on this phenomenon, attributing the redness alternately to rosacea, rhinophyma, heavy drinking, allergens, windburn, spider veins, or a simple allergic reaction to politics. But in the end, no one really knows for sure why Bill Clinton’s nose is so red.

His nose is rapidly becoming the stuff of legend and myth. Some even go so far as to claim Clinton’s great nose is an omen, a symbol, an emissary of great (or at least red) things to come! And man has that nose stood witness to some of the greatest moments in history, and some less illustrious too—from Rhodes Scholar to Monica Lewinsky—that nose has certainly seen it all, and with each new brave world and conquest, the redness of his nose, deepens. Some have suggested that Clinton ate too many burgers, and his nose now pays the price. Others claim, like Pinocchio, that Clinton told too many lies and in a strange twist of fate, his nose, instead of growing lengthwise, simply turned red.

The question is, did it impede his time in office, or did it instead empower him to even greater feats of political acumen? No one will ever really know the truth, and perhaps Clinton’s schnozzle was the impetus for his striving tirelessly to become the forty-second president of the United States, which, these days, seems less and less united! Perhaps what we need now is an irreverent nose, a fierce and fearless outlier of justice, a courageous proboscis to lead us bravely into victory!

Before you, Teddy, there were no clever names for the president’s house, folks calling it The President’s Palace and the Executive Mansion—neither of which has any real descriptive character. Then you came along, the Trustbuster, the sickly boy who made good on his father’s suggestion to engage in more physical activities, including rowing and boxing. So, it’s safe to say that you transformed from a dark horse to a gleaming white steed in the span of only a few short years.

Everything about you reads good-natured affability, a clean white slate of a man—a man with principles in a time when culpability was rampant and everyone had a scheme up their sleeve. Your sleeves were decidedly snow white despite your days as a “rough rider” cowboy. Then there was that day in 1899 when, donning a pair of white swim trunks, you swam through shark-infested waters to explore a shipwreck off the coast of Gibraltar.

The first U.S. President to win the Nobel Peace Prize, yet again, you were bathed in white light, heralded as a hero, brokering an end to the war between Russia and Japan. Shot in the chest by an angry saloonkeeper in 1912, you refused to go to the hospital until you had finished your speech and so bled straight through your once crisp white shirt. Your influence is far-reaching. Even a child’s stuffed white bear was named after you by a famous toymaker, who, upon learning you had once saved a cub from slaughter, promptly named the toy “Teddy” in commemoration of yet another good deed.

The White House was not always white. Made from Red Seneca sandstone, it once sported a distinctly red tinge, yet by the time you took office, the stately building had been painted over 100 times with more than 950 gallons of white lead paint. Leave it to you to state the obvious as the once Executive Mansion became the White House we know today. It might seem like a simple deduction, yet as with everything that concerns you, Teddy, it was, in fact, a stroke of pure genius, calling it what it is—the great White House!

The story is legendary, and one would think where money is concerned, or even mentioned at all, one would find a swath of olive-green bills stacked high on the president’s desk, but The Buck Stops Here sign was in fact not green at all, but mahogany! This is a little-known fact, and probably a well-guarded secret in some elitist circles, but the famous sign, made by the Federal Reformatory at El Reno, Oklahoma, and ordered by Fred A. Canfil, then United States Marshal for the Western District of Missouri, and a dear friend of the Pres., was meant as a token of friendship, but also, and more importantly, as a warning for folks to TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for their God Damned actions.

The sign itself was classy with a burnished brown facade with lettering reminiscent of classic 1930’s New York Times headlines, but it was the sentiment itself that really struck a chord. Everyone who ever sat down across from Harry S. Truman in the great Oval Office, saw it there like a small brown mirror, reflecting back at them all the small and seemingly incidental human hypocrisies that punctuated their lives—hat time in grammar school when John Roy Steelman, Truman’s chief of staff, looked up Mary Joe Stanton’s skirt, or the lies Vice President Alben Barkley told his mother, pretending to attend a boy scout’s meeting when really he was kissing Jack Shifford in the coat room. That infamous sign was a truth serum if ever there was one, and those who gazed upon it recognized it’s power.

Even the illustrious Bess Truman, whose outward appearance radiated good faith and political zeal, looked upon the small brown sign with suspicion, only to succumb to its influence, finally raising her voice after years of silence and pretending at “social graces,” exclaiming, upon encountering a ghost in The White House, “Now about those ghosts. I’m sure they’re here and I am not half so alarmed at meeting up with any of them as I am at having to meet the live nuts I have to see every day in The White House!”

To be sure, George Washington was an honest fellow by all accounts, smart and upstanding, and yes, his father did buy him a hatchet when he was six years old—hoping perhaps his son might become a lumberjack, or at the very least, an arborist. Instead, Washington employed it to chop down a cherry tree. Never did Augustine Washington, an iron ore industrialist by trade, imagine that his son would one day cavort across the world’s stage sporting a mouthful of dead men’s teeth! Really the only aspiration dear Augustine had for his eleven year old was to throw a nickel across the Potomac, and well, yes, he did that too—in addition to regularly carrying hefty burdens on his back for an undisclosed number of miles and then chopping wood for 12 days straight! But really, these feats pale in comparison to having to silently suffer the unseen pain of dental disease for the duration of his life.

Embarrassed by the faded and stained dentures made from hippopotamus ivory and horse teeth as well as the teeth of cadavers, Washington spent his life searching for the perfect set of choppers that wouldn’t tear his mouth to shreds—teeth so luminous and white, he could finally open his mouth to speak without suffering complete humiliation. But sadly, the best he could do were a set made by his dentist Dr. Greenwood, who claimed to have personally pulled the “set” himself from the mouths of 12 enslaved men while they were still alive. But Washington, who was no abolitionist, didn’t care. He needed those teeth!

By the time of his inauguration, dear George had but one tooth left, showing great strength when giving the inauguration speech despite his bloody malformed dentures. You can go visit his “Pearly Whites,” stained not only with port wine and tobacco but the blood of enslaved men, proudly displayed at the Lady Society in Mount Vernon.

John F. Kennedy’s back was almost as famous as he was, having survived the sinking of PT-109 and the saving of several fellow sailors for the freezing waters of the great Pacific. A true hero, Kennedy’s back was awarded the prestigious Navy and Marine Corps medal, but that didn’t stop the constant pain, and the midnight spasms as the president reached for yet another handful of Demerol. Many wondered how the president’s back carried him through those 1000 days, but on a stormy night in Hyannis Port, Kennedy’s doctor Janet Travell, suggested he invest in a rocking chair to ease the pain. The chair became his constant companion, even traveling with him to various foreign countries. Some might say that that rocker was as useful an aid to the president as Robert McNamara or Dean Rusk, though much less vociferous.

It’s a little-known fact that the quintessential rocker was featured prominently in practically every room in the White House, and no one else was allowed to occupy that esteemed seat of comfort. Constructed from golden brown wood with a wicker seat and back, the chair became synonymous with Kennedy’s Camelot, but no one ever talks about the fact that the rocking chairs stood witness to any number of infidelities, inscrutable plots, squabbles, and backroom dealings not to mention the Bay of Pigs. To say those rocking chairs held so much more than Kennedy’s weight, would be an understatement as time and time again the boyish prez succumbed to desire, vitriol, and all manner of rages, all from the cozy comfort of his favorite wicked wicker brown rocker.

Decisions were made and hearts were broken as from that esteemed seat, Kennedy gave the order to do away with dear Marilyn once and for all. Only the rocker knows what was said that day and who did the deed, but it’s a well-known fact that chairs are the keepers of our darkest dreams and most wicked secrets.

Maladjusted Magenta is a card-carrying malefactor, having graduated from the school of malefactions for the perpetually maleficent. Maladapted and malcontent, Maladjusted Magenta is both a true malcontent as well as an expert on all things malodorous—from rotten eggs to brackish water, to the butthole of her favorite Persian cat.  Maladjusted Magenta is a veritable Master of Mathematics, an expert at Mahjong, and identifying poisonous mushrooms. Mischievous and often merry, Maladjusted Magenta can be found scrawling obscenities into the margins of her Calculus book during lunchtime which infuriates Melanie McCorkle, her eight – five-year-old math teacher.

Maladjusted Magenta works at the municipal building in downtown Milwaukee where she regularly sorts through piles of hate mail for the district attorney. Occasionally she comes across a love letter which she secretly opens, pretending it was written to her from a secret admirer, auspiciously named Melvin Maloney. Often magnanimous, though sometimes quite moody, MM donates her time at the local aquarium where she volunteers as a docent twice a week, readily identifying marine life to sullen, vaguely menacing children who pick their noses with great abandon and have absolutely no interest in the Molly fish, Macmaster’s Dwarf Cichlid, or the Milksop Pygmy Angelfish. Still, this fails to quell her belief that human beings are essentially noble creatures who are sadly and often perversely misguided.

Little is known about the inner feelings, inspirations, and motivations of Maladjusted Magenta for whom the world is a constantly shifting and sometimes confusing landscape of vaguely purple and strangely red machinations – neither this nor that nor here nor there. Sometimes mercurial and, more often than not, magisterial, yet always and forever mellifluous and MELODRAMATIC.

The end of the world is upon us, according to Apocalyptic Apricot, whose outlook on life has been called bleak, grim, dreary, hopeless and downright cataclysmic. Proceeding from the standpoint that the entire planet is doomed and that if there is any “goodness” left to be had, only dolphins and hippopotamus’ have access to it, and the rest are, to put it bluntly—fucked! So, how does one proceed knowing there is absolutely no future and the world as we know it could end at any moment? With lots of whiskey, an endless supply of pot brownies and fifteen candy bars a day!

Prunus Armeniaca has a real chip on her shoulder, and quite literally, a huge pit in her stomach. In fact, she is mostly made up of pit, or “kernel” as she is called in more supercilious circles, where her body has been used as a remedy for everything from constipation to eye infections as (apparently) the lutein she produces is a natural balm for lens health and inflammation. Truth be told, Apocalyptic Apricot doesn’t care one whit if folks are constipated or suffer reoccurring vaginal ailments, all of which can be treated with apricot oil. As a matter of fact, she resents having to give up her not only her independence, but her very life in the service of human panaceas.

She knows the end of the world is nigh, and because of this knowledge, she wants to live as robustly as possible before the final towel is thrown into the ring. Apricots are not to be underestimated for when they join forces, watch out. You may just wind up buried alive in the garden or worse, chocking to death on that ever ubiquitous and fearsome little stone.

Meriwether Blue decided to become a nun and start her own order separate from the Archdiocese, but more aligned with the high-flying nuns of Costa Rica—those avid, though seldom seen, forest dwellers for whom the soul can only be awakened in accordance with the sky. To say she encountered great resistance would be an understatement as several high-profile cardinals in Rome put a hit out on her, even going so far as to track her flight patterns with infrared light and high-powered drones. But she was much too agile for them, even wearing that damnable Whipple!

As a newly sanctified believer, Meriwether Blue got to work building orphanages for children in Somalia, administering free medical care for pregnant women in Niger, and hiring engineers to bring fresh water to the smallest villages in Burundi. All in all, it was very satisfying work indeed. She even started giving flying lessons to the local Macaws whose wings had grown sad and weary. These were the most exhilarating moments of her life, and certainly the most holy! As an experiment, she offered communion against a fierce and luminous sky rather than in the old smelly pews, downing the usual stale crackers and cool aid. She wanted to spice things up, to send the sparrows spinning in the air and the fantails dizzy with anticipation. 

Never one for proselytizing, Meriwether Blue tried to recruit only within her immediate flock, those taciturn fliers for whom the daily pains of living had simply gotten to be too much, and the divine rarely lit up the heavens. These were the birds that needed her the most, though there was one grumpy old fart named Walter whose daily protestations and vegetable throwing fits, really chapped her hide, but even Walter was capable of earning a place at that much coveted table in heaven, even if he pooped as he flew at lunchtime above an open air restaurant, strategically aiming for someone’s beet salad!