entrée libre

Just past North Hollywood High by a small pool of water on the sidewalk lies a mouse, stomach slightly distended, pink toes softly outstretched to the side.

As if fallen from the sky she appears, a magical contra-Claus shrunken into her 70s teetering on chicken bone legs, grasping in each hand garbage bags overstuffed with plastic jugs and bottles. Riding hands free requires surf skills lacked even by many So-Cali young, so, after a few shaky stops and starts, she sits on edge of seat, back still towards me, stressfully pulling back obstructions as the quizzical squeak by, until time to drag clotted treasures of ubiquity through exit for inevitable liquidation.

In a 1960 episode of the Twilight Zone, Art Carney plays a hard luck boozer whose once a year financial boost comes from role as department store Santa.

Suit and beard cannot hide the breath-stink as he stumbles late into work of boosting kid consumerism. Canned to the street, a magical bag appears that conjures gifts for tenement tots whose parents aren't quite the Miracle on 34th Street Macy's-Gimbels merchandise wish-fulfillers with cash flows maintaining the essence of black Christmas. Formulaic Irish Officer Flaherty accuses tattered Kringle of thieving to mimic some slum squashed Robin Hood. In exoneration, sack reveals tin cans and alley cat--holiday gift-giving becomes phantasmagoria of the exterior.

For the holidays, everything must go.

choo-co-cheap-aholics

In Leçon 24 of French in Action, Robert, l'Américain un peu naïf, wonders whether the train always arrives on time in France.

Mireille, la jeune Française sage, replies: "Évidemment, les trains sont toujours à l'heure. En France, les trains sont très ponctuels. Ils partent exactement à l'heure, et ils arrivent exactement à l'heure."

I thought of this last summer when Dad considered taking Amtrak from Simi Valley, home of Soviet style Ronald Reagan shrine, to catch a plane flying out of San Diego the same day.
"Dad, rent a car," I said. "This isn't France."
I could hear him grimace.

Reaganites like Dad gorged on the anti-effetist mythology of monster government pickpocketing hard worker Joe America to destroy private enterprising efficiency. Of course, under private enterprise U.S. passenger rail quite efficiently went to rot by the 1950s while Europeans taxed and spent their way to rail rider Valrhona 70% dark.

So when Parade middle America Sunday milquetoast magazine asks: "Will rail travel resurge?" Our answer: we prefer Hershey's, "The Great American Cardboard Bar!"