Current Events 1918-2008

Dear Friends,   

The Hard Taco song for April is called "Sloppy." This song will allow you to channel your inner pigeon and bob your head quasi-rhythmically.

I've been spending the weekend with some relatives, so I took the opportunity to outsource this month's Hard Taco Digest to them. Each of them was asked to write a poem about something from the news the year he or she was born. Here are those poems, in reverse chronological order.

2008

by Malcolm London (son)

SpaceX!

SpaceX!

You did it!

Hooray!

You launched Falcon 1 without any delay.

You showed NASA that you can do it yourself

But I hope you find room on your trophy shelf.

2007

by Shaina Wolkenberg (niece)

Walking along the sidewalk

Backwards because the snow

Only made it across one block

Because of the blizzards we all know.

Through Denver and Chicago

Then Kansas gets a blow

From a tornado spinning fastly

2007, here we go. 

2005 Haikus

 by Scarlett London (daughter)

Hurricanes are bad

Katrina was terrible

Lots of people died

Many people fled

They did not want to perish

In the hurricane

It was very sad

Because lots of people died

In the hurricane

Lots of lives were lost

In hurricane Katrina

They were very sad

The hurricane struck

People sprinted for their lives

To escape the storm

It was very sad

When the hurricane happened

Because there was death

Dogs and humans died

In that nasty hurricane

Most everyone's dead

It was very big

It was category five

It was scary, too

Lots of pets perished

The owners were very sad

Then the owners died

Everybody died

In hurricane Katrina

It was quite quite sad

1976

by Lauren London (lead singer)

COD WARS! The conflict scarcely known

Just who could own sweet abalone.

In North Atlantic waters cold,

Did Iceland stalk her coasts, so bold.

But British schooners also claim'd

those famous fisheries untam'd. 

Oh! Fishers brandishing their spears,

Jeering temper'd trawlers' leers.

Thrice the parties met in ire!

With fish a-floppin' to acquire.

Just smell the mighty drying pile

of pescatorial carcass vile.

Thrice did Iceland get its wish

Oh, fate befalling chips and fish!

But peace in '76 returned,

And Celtics each their cod have earned. 

1950

by Nina Schwartz (mother-in-law)

Joseph McCarthy, or "Tail-Gunner Joe"

Demagogue, liar, and everyone's foe

Started the Red Scare by claiming to know

A who's who of commies. It just wasn't so.

He stated the U.S. Department of State

Was harboring pinkos, in fact, quite a spate

Said he had a paper, right there in his hand

And the House forced some good guys to take the stand.

Charlie Chaplin, Helen Keller, Fred Zinnemann, Pete Seeger

All came under their gavel eager

He finally earned censure in 1954

And we thought the the big lie had been killed evermore.

1949

by Bob Schwartz (father-in-law)

78s are breakable

45s are stackable

We make that change

In 1949

Song would have more runtime

But for music, not a fun time

Pop tunes a drag

In 1949

U.S. leaves Korea

Stalin says, "We'll see ya."

The boys come home

In 1949

Mao says, "I rule China."

Gives Chaing Kai Shek a shinah

So he takes Taiwan 

In 1949

Russia tests its big tomato

The U.S.A. and pals form NATO

It's two armed camps

In 1949

Then George Orwell has a vision

Sees the future with precision

Guns kill folks but lies kill even more

His book is his prediction

It isn't only fiction

Suddenly it's 1984.

1948

by Carol Wulfson (aunt-in-law)

The most amazing news

Was the ending of diaspora for all o the Jews

And even though we were celebrating

Different wars were gestating

Why is there never peace?

1948

by Roberta Wine London (mother)

It is post World War Two and and the babies are a boom.

The year is 1948,  and peace can't come too soon.

With the Soviets West Berlin a blockading

And the musical South Pacific Broadwaying

TVs now number over a million sets

Velcro is invented, and 33 rpm records....but not yet cassettes.

Polio is affecting kids more and more

Famous people born thIs year : James Taylor, Andrew Lloyd Weber and Al Gore.

The game of Scrabble is invented by a guy named Brunot

And Porshe is founded...but not Pugeot.

The bikini is finding a body of support hardcore,

And there were earthquakes in Turkmenistan and Ecuador.

The UN is busy with post War insights

Including The World Health Organization and the Declaration of Human Rights.

Soldiers back from the War are making up for lost time

Harry Truman is President during the birth of Roberta Wine.

1918

Thelma Gordon (grandmother-in-law)

Spanish Flu...

I
Hate
You!

With warmest regards,

Zach

The Five Finger Discount

Dear Friends,

There are five words in the title of this month's Hard Taco song, "Blood Is Thicker Than Chlorine." The song is in 5/4 time, which means it has five beats per measure. This makes it easy to dance to, as long as you have two-and-a-half legs.

In honor of all of this five-ness, I also wrote this poem/numerological prophesy:


A LIST OF THINGS THAT COME IN FIVES

Five are the lines on a musical staff
The composer composes a score on
Five are the oceans, and five the Great Lakes
Five are the protons in boron

Five are the Jacksons, and five the Maroons

Five are the number of bandages

You'll need to attend to a starfish's wounds

After twisting off all its appendages

Five are the letters that make the word Harry

So five points for Gryffindor! (Potter's house)

Five are the Spice Girls from Sporty to Scary

And Vonnegut's favorite slaughterhouse

Five are the senses and stages of grief

And the biblical booklets of Moses

Five are the types of Chanel you can dab

On your five little fingers or toes-es

The five-second rule can apply to all five

Of the food groups, which I find incredible

Five seconds turns something dropped on the floor 

From delicious and pure to inedible

All zip codes consist of five numbers, my friends 

From the five New York boroughs to rural Maine

"Precarious" has all five vowels, and also

Describes the fifth class of a hurricane

Five are the cents in a Jefferson nickel
The five-dollar bill has Abe Lincoln

So come and take five
And slap me high five
And raise up a fifth and start drinkin'

With warmest regards,
Zach

Auto. Correct.

Dear Friends,

Autological is a word or phrase that describes itself, such as polysyllabic, English, staccato, buzzword, fifteen-lettered, or mispelled. 

That Hard Taco song for February, “Impressive,” has an autological title. It is impressive! 

Several songs in the Hard Taco back catalog have autological titles, as well. I recommend listening to Worth the While, or at least Not Really a Bear. Those are certainly more pleasant than Ugly, Everyday Mess, and Not Illegal But Frowned Upon. Occasionally, I’m in the mood for Moderate Rock, but sometimes, I don’t want to hear Idiots Who Think They’re Happy, so I just play Something Else. They can’t all be winners, I guess, but I heard That’s the Way it Goes.

Autological is one of many English words with the Greek prefix auto-, meaning self. A plane on autopilot flies itself. This allows the human pilot to lock the cabin door and treat himself to autoerotic asphyxiation until it’s time to land.

A biography (left) is written by a dispassionate historian and is thus more likely to acknowledge someone’s huge ugly head than a sugar-coated autobiography (right). 

Here are some other things to which you can apply the prefix auto-.

HARP

CLAVES

PSY

CROSS

GRAPH PERTAINING TO MICHAEL JACKSON

MOTIVE

MAT

MOBILE ALABAMA

BUS

BOT

With warmest regards,

Zach

Nine Movies in Ten Sentences

Dear Friends,

The Hard Taco song for January, “Pando,” is about my love for the largest and oldest living thing on the planet, Pando. Pando looks like a forest of aspens, but he Is actually a single organism with a network of underground roots throughout 106 acres in Utah.

Countdown Stories

Lauren and I have a homegrown road trip game we do with the kids. We try to tell the synopsis of a popular story in exactly 10 lines, with each line one word shorter than the last. The first line is 10 words, the second 9 words, etc., and we have to finish the story by time we get down to the final 1-word sentence.

Here are some Countdown Story retellings of some of my favorite classic movies.

Historically speaking, merpeople and humans don’t hang out very much.

“History my ass,” Ariel says, rescuing hunky unconscious guy.

She swaps her voice for... what’s that? Legs.

Calypso music, we discover, is quite romantic.

The prince learns a valuable lesson:

Never trust hotties named Vanessa.

The ship shanks Ursula

Making witch kebab.

Teenage wedding?

Sure!

Luke grudgingly befriends a hermit. They overpay a glorified cabbie.

The hermit disintegrates, but the princess with Cinnabon earmuffs

Fits Luke with a size small orange uniform.

Some X-shaped spaceships attack a moon-shaped base.

A disembodied voice tells Luke,  “Relax.

Turn off that targeting computer.

Envision murdering womp rats.”

Thanks, dead hermit.

Thanks, cabbie.

Kaboom.

A mopey beauty, whose soulmate allegedly perished, goes horseback riding.

Three guys with different accents and BMIs kidnap her.

She shoves her masked rescuer into a chasm.

A fanged capybara gnaws on his shoulder.

Suction cups leave him mostly dead.

Who will stop this wedding?

The unintelligible rhyming giant?

Either mustachioed protagonist?

Fred Savage?

Anyone?

Bilbo goes sightseeing with Gandalf’s little buddies whose names rhyme.

Though small, Bilbo outsmarts trolls, goblins, spiders, and elves

Plus, a shriveled riddler with dissociative identity disorder.

The dwarves covet jewelry above meaningful relationships.

So, as it happens, do dragons

And pretty much everyone else.

Hobbits have hairy feet,

But they’re sweethearts.

Where to?

Home.

Professor Jones is on sabbatical, doing fieldwork in South America.

Is getting tenure really worth tarantulas, boulders, and blowguns?

And when will he finish his big grant?

Never, with the Nazis constantly scooping him.

The academic world is ridiculously cutthroat

It’s literally publish or perish

And during the Depression

Funding is tight.

Aw, crap.

Snakes.

Forrest has short hair, loves God, and joins the army.

He does not embrace the excesses of the 1960s.

Jenny, however, represents everything wrong about liberal counterculture

She’s promiscuous. She’s anti-war. She uses drugs.

The lesson is hippies get AIDS.

Obviously, it’s all conservative propaganda.

Gump even wears a

Red trucker hat.

Forrest Trump.

#sad.

Doc’s time machine requires stolen plutonium to generate 1.21 gigawatts

Libyans in a Volkswagen Microbus want their plutonium back.

Marty escapes to 1955 and coaches his parents,

Preventing them from becoming alcoholic loser dorks.

He teaches Chuck Berry rock music,

Then harnesses lightning to return,

Producing flaming tire tracks.

Now where’s Doc?

Uh oh...

Libyans!

A paleontologist, paleobotanist, and chaos theorist ride a customized Jeep

It’s storming when Messy Fat Guy unleashes some dinosaurs

Who devour Samuel Jackson, except for one arm.

Aren’t they hungry enough for both arms?

Dinosaurs spit on Messy Fat Guy

Before ravaging him off camera

That’s what he deserves

Because he’s evil.

Pure evil.

Newman!

Balding psychiatrist and his wife have been growing apart recently

Because (spoiler alert) he kicked the bucket last year.

Everyone who ever died in Philadelphia harasses Cole.

He’s lucky he doesn’t live in Beijing.

Fortunately, he (spoiler alert) learns something.

I saw Haley Joel Osment

On Buzzfeed last week.

He’s no longer

(Spoiler alert)

Cute.

Mikey’s searching for One-Eyed Willy, which is not a euphemism.

Mouth speaks Spanish, Chunk Hebrew, and Data broken English.

They disarm booby traps thanks to piano lessons.

Once, Chunk feigned puking off a balcony.

Mikey uses his inhaler too often.

Mama Fratelli makes Corey Feldman

Spit out the pearls.

Sloth love Chunk

Chunk reciprocates.

Hugs.

With warmest regards,

Zach

The Escapegoat

Dear Friends,

   The Hard Taco song for December is called, "Idiots Who Think They're Happy." Paul McCartney once sang, "Let's all get up and dance to a song that was the shit before your mother was born." He was referring to this song, because it is just that good.
   Don't tell my parents, but music recording hasn't exactly been a money-making venture. Keeping the Hard Taco website going costs about $5 a month, and sometimes I have to replace broken guitar strings. Fortunately, I replace them with other broken guitar strings, which doesn't cost much.
   But the real cost of having a home recording studio is the loss of potential income. As long as we're using the spare bedroom for music-making, we can't rent out the room to sleepy travelers. The idea of taking on boarders is tempting, but I don't like the idea of strangers sleeping in my house. Think about it this way. The average person swallows eight spiders/year during sleep. If I rent out my spare room to travelers, they'll probably swallow some of myspiders. Spiders that might otherwise have crawled into mymouth at a later date. I might not make it to my full quota of eight by New Year's, and that is not acceptable.
   So the solution is to rent out the extra bedroom, but only during the day. And the best way to do that is to turn it into an escape room. And just like every good escape room, the spare bedroom is already partially furnished and full of bric-a-brac. The only additional expenses that I anticipate are a combination lock and a goat. 
   The goat ties in with the theme of the room: EscapeGoat.  
   Hopefully, I can find a used goat that is well-mannered. (Petting zoo experience is preferred.) We'll put the guests and the goat in the room and lock the door with the combination lock. Then I will slip a piece of paper under the door that says, "The combination is... 32-4-31." The goat will know this is coming and will eat most of the paper before anyone gets a chance to read it. The guests will wrest the saliva-soaked note from the goat’s mouth only to realize that the animal swallowed the most important piece of information.
   "That stupid goat messed up our one chance to get out of the room," they will say to each other. At this point they will totally get the theme. People love themes!
   They will spend the rest of the allotted time looking around the room, trying to make sense of the bric-a-brac, but there won't be any other clues. Just some recording equipment and broken guitar strings. 
   And, of course, 8 suicidal spiders for each member of my household.

With warmest regards,
Zach

Bargain Haunting

Dear Friends,

The Hard Taco song for November is called, "The Undead." If you are one of the trailblazers reading this on November 1, drive immediately to the nearest Babies 'R' Us for some amazing deals.

On fake blood and fog machines.

You see, there is no such thing as Babies 'R' Us. The franchise closed its doors in June 2018, and these were not just any doors! They were lead-free, phosphate-free, and had slats no more than 2-3/8" apart to prevent toddlers from trapping their heads. Those neurotically safe doors are now closed forever.

The Babies 'R' Us bankruptcy left dozens of strip mall vacancies all over the country, and it is not easy for developers to find new tenants for 40,000 square feet of retail space.

That is, until September, when the pop-up Halloween stores moved in, replacing every Babies 'R' Us sign with a vinyl one that says, "Spirit Halloween" or "Halloween City." For the first day or two of November, these ephemeral ghost-towns will offer deep discounts on everything in their be-warehouses.

Now here comes my Shark Tank pitch. Sure, the temporary Halloween store has been a successful business model, but could it be better? Babies 'R' Us is only one of many retail giants who filed for bankruptcy in the last few years. I propose that pop-up Halloween stores focus on specialty merchandise that takes advantage of the rich commercial history of their temporary locations.

Here is where you would shop for your Halloween specialty items, sorted by abandoned retailer.


Payless Shoe Source ->
Payless Boo Source
What to get:  Discount costumes, like a used white sheet with some holes cut out of it

Radio Shack ->
Radio Shriek
What to get: A bowl that screams when someone takes a piece of candy

Sears ->
Scars
What to get: Gory makeup

Circuit City ->
Haunted Circus City
What to get: A freak show clown costume

K-Mart ->
Passed Away Mart
What to get:  A variety of home goods, but checking out takes forever, because the cashiers are all dead.

Brookstone ->
Spookstone
What to get: Fake grave markers to make your front yard look like a cemetery

The Sports Authority ->

The Sports Atrocity

What to get:  A zombie football player costume

Pier 1 Imports ->
Fear 1 Grim-ports
What to get: Anything you want, but just like it's predecessor, all merchandise would be handmade by children in Myanmarese sweatshops.

Blockbuster Video ->
Block Monster Video
What to get: A DVD about the Creepers from Minecraft

F.A.O. Schwarz ->
R.I.P. Schwarz
What to get: The toy superstore founder's exsanguinated remains

Babies 'R' Us ->
Babies 'R' Stabbing Us
What to get:  Chucky dolls

With warmest regards,
Zach

Editor's note: I removed the part about The Limited being replaced by the Limbless Dread, because nobody would get it.

Postcards from Panama, Part 9

Dear friends,

The Hard Taco song for October is called, "Delightful Romp," and it is the first song to address the topic of happiness since the song, "Happy," which I did not write.

Meanwhile, and at the same time, here is the latest dispatches from our favorite cringe-worthy expatriate, Michael. The backstory, if you could call it that, can be found here.


10/1/18
Dear Karen,

I have lived in Panama a large number of years now, but I am not afraid to learn new facts about the people and the economy. One item that you will be delighted to know is that Panama outstrips American innovation in three areas: adhesives, cement, and small bitter bananas you can cook with.

P.S. Do you remember on August 1, 1989 when we made the unbreakable promise that if we were single 20 years hence, we would marry each other? We were quite young at the time, but old enough to understand the durable nature of such a promise. I suspect you have you managed to remember this conversation over the years because of its extreme importance. I have too! But on that day, I also created a mnemonic device to ensure retention. The elaborate coding technique is the word MAKO, which is a kind of shark. The M and A stand for marry, the K for Karen, and the O for '09, which is the year we were supposed to get married if we were able to reconnect, hopefully by a series of postcards.

With warmest regards,
Michael


10/2/18
Dear Karen,

Another item of plausible interest to you is that Panama's first classic rock band, Austeridad Calva ("bald austerity") did not form until 2002, almost 40 years after the classic rock was discovered in the United States.  If you ever want to hear a song that is known for its disciplined grooves and conservative guitar solos, download the complete works of Austeridad Calva.

What are you up to!

(That sentence was supposed to end with a question mark, not an exclamation point, but I didn't want to waste this postcard, which has a beautiful picture of two of our three great innovations: cement and cooking bananas.)

With warmest regards,
Michael


10/6/18
Dear Karen,

As you are aware, 2019 will start on a Tuesday, which is amazing news for my neighbor, Dignidad, who I have told you about. He still has his wall calendars from both 2002 and 2013, which also started on Tuesdays. He is lending me the 2002 one so that neither of us has to purchase a new wall calendar this year. He is very thoughtful.

Not that I necessarily deserve to be described as thoughtful, also, but I ordered you a diverse selection of 2002 and 2013 calendars from an online auction house. They will arrive sporadically over the coming weeks. Let me know when you get them and which one(s) you will select to keep track of your 2019 appointments. Feel free to save the ones you don't use until 2030, which will be the next non-leap year that starts on a Tuesday.

With warmest regards,
Michael


10/12/18
Dear Karen,

You and I have not had children together as of the time I am writing this postcard. That said, we may one day have conversations (filled with honesty) and mutually decide as a couple that we want to start a family. Thus, I decided to make an appointment with a pediatrician to start relationship-building now.

There are two pediatricians on staff at the local children's clinic. According to the website, Dr. Sosa specializes in "preventive care." In his picture, he has a lazy eye and gray hair. I love this combination! It suggests that he has overcome the adversity of misaligned eyes for many years. Or, less likely, he has failed to overcome the adversity, and this caused his hair to turn gray prematurely.

They don't have a picture of Dr. Molina on the website, but I decided to make an appointment with her. Anyone who can interact with a lazy-eyed person every day without it getting awkward must have a great bedside manner! She also specializes in preventive care.

With warmest regards,
Michael


10/22/18
Dear Karen,

On the taxi ride to Dr. Molina's office, I was listening to Panama's #1 classic rock radio station, Caliente 97.1. Apparently Austeridad Calva is planning a reunion tour, followed by two farewell tours. I'm sure that you agree that this combination of tours solidifies their status as a classic rock band.

Dr. Molina was running behind, so I sat in the waiting room for 20 minutes. They have a freshwater aquarium with fake plants and no fish. They were also playing Panama's #1 classic rock radio station, Caliente 97.1. I will not need a mnemonic device to remember the Austeridad Calva is planning multiple farewell tours, because I have now heard about it twice.

I will tell you about the visit to the pediatrician on a different postcard. I ran out of space on this one because I tried to draw the letters in "Caliente 97.1" as lightning bolts, like they do on their promotional T-shirts. 

With warmest regards,

Michael

10/22/18

Dear Karen,

Dr. Molina's first question, which was very astute, was why I didn't bring any children to the appointment. I thought this might come up, so I showed her the 2002 wall calendar that Dignidad gave me, which features the works of world-famous baby photographer Anne Geddes. I explained that babies in the calendar were not mine, but similar in size and shape to the children that my fiancé Karen and I would one day have. She was not familiar with Anne Geddes and did not understand why the babies I showed her were dressed up as water lilies and peeking out of buckets.

I also explained that since the calendar is from 2002, it is likely that most of the babies are now on the cusp of adulthood and would need to transfer their care to a specialist in adult medicine. But again, since they were not actually my children, this important transition would probably take place in Australia, or wherever Anne Geddes lives and works. Dr. Molina and I agreed that we did not need to discuss this further, but by then there was only a few minutes left to delve into the importance of preventive care.

Before I left, I promised Dr. Molina that when we were ready, the three of us (Dr. Molina and the two of us) would have a mutual discussion, filled with honesty, about whether our children should have the specific vaccinations that she (Dr. Molina) recommends.

With warmest regards,
Michael


10/24/18
Dear Karen,

I'm just looking ahead at my wall calendar for next year and appears the Winter Olympics will be in Salt Lake City. Should we consider meeting there for an in-person discussion? It would be fun for you to enjoy professional quality ice dancing in your own country. Please write back and let me know!

With warmest regards,
Michael