Food I love #3: Hot dog cart dogs

      So here's the question: if the ideal hot dog is charbroiled — and it is — then why would anybody ever want a hot dog that has been floating in hot water for a few hours?
      If you want your bun toasted on the grill — and you do — then why consume a hot dog slapped in a roll that has been steamed over the self-same hot dog water?
     Answer: it's a mystery. You just do. A hot dog cart dog is a gestalt — the boiled dog, the warm moist bun, the cheap mustard, eaten from a sheet of wax paper or, as above, crinkled paper nest, standing up in some strange city.
    That has to be a factor — just as a crowded ballpark ennobles a hot dog in a shiny foil-like wrap that you'd be hesitant to touch, never mind eat, in any other situation, so hot dog cart franks have a built-in romance and a splendor. 

     And rarity. Chicago has virtually no hot dog carts, another mystery, one I delved into 30 years ago, in a column that ran under the way-dull headline, "A New York Tradition we're healthier without." 

     NEW YORK CITY — Within an hour of arriving, my wife and I celebrated our being in Manhattan by sharing a potato knish bought from a cart at 46th Street and Broadway. It was great.
     So, too, were the hot dogs from a metal wagon in front of the Plaza. And the hot, sugared almonds from a nut stand on Fifth Avenue. And the big, salty pretzel purchased minutes later.
     Frankly, we would have gotten more food on the street — falafels, Mister Softees, cream sodas — but we also were eating three meals a day in restaurants. And more. We went directly from dinner at a funky restaurant in the West Village to the city's single outlet for Krispy Kreme doughnuts, a southern institution that has just invaded Gotham to great fanfare.
     I am not ashamed to say that eating a 45-cent original glazed Krispy Kreme doughnut, hot from the oven, was one of the outstanding experiences of my life.
     Well, maybe a little ashamed.
     Food on the street is just one of the many things that makes New York very different from Chicago. Writers are always wringing their hands over loss of diversity. They see the Starbucks and Gaps and Hard Rock Cafes popping up everywhere and conclude that all cities are now all the same and the entire world is merged into one vast Anyplace.
     But this is simply not true. Uniqueness still exists. New York is so different from Chicago that a glance at any 10 feet of storefront is usually enough to tell you which city you're in. Even the garbage cans are different in New York, and they're at curbside because the city doesn't have  many alleys. The little stores are different — New York has its bodegas, with ziggurats of fresh fruit out front. The street signs are different — New York has all those barking signs, "DON'T EVEN THINK OF PARKING HERE" and this simple, almost lovely one: "Don't Honk."
     In general, New York has a tougher, more armored look — more sliding metal grates, steel doors and security cameras.
     New York certainly sounds different. In Chicago, certain streets are filled with foreign languages — French tourists, Russian and Hispanic immigrants, whatever. But in New York half the time when I overhear foreigners, I can't even figure out what kind of language they are speaking. Again and again I puzzled over some mushy blast of whirling verbiage, all harsh consonants and spittle. What is that? Macedonian? Urdu? Pathan? No clue.
     Since New York drivers don't pull over to let firetrucks pass, the way we do here, they have a lot more of that piercing, pulsing death scream strobed out by emergency vehicles as a desperate last resort.
     Which is perhaps why people stay up all night in New York, packing the streets. In Chicago, we sleep, because we can.
     Lest someone misunderstand, I should stop right here and state, clearly, that I am not praising New York. I have this image of walking by a softball game and hearing somebody yell, "That's him! The guy who likes New York! Get him!" then being chased by 20 big guys waving aluminum bats.
      For the record: Nothing about New York is better than Chicago.
     Different, yes. Particularly those street food vendors. I kept wondering about them. Why so many in New York — four at a street corner, in places — and absolutely none in Chicago?
I took a deep breath and plunged into the bureaucracy.
     "There is no such thing as a hot dog cart with a wash-up sink," explained Tim Hadac, spokesman for the Chicago Department of Public Health. "Where does the food handler wash his or her hands?"
     Another city official speculated that a strong Chicago restaurant association had something to do with our lack of food carts. He, of course, didn't want to be named.
      I then wondered, if food vendors are so pestilential here, how do they pass muster in New York?
     Taking two deep breaths, I plunged into New York's Health Department. Spokesman Fred Winters said that New York vendor carts have sinks and running water and precautions are taken.
     "Our vendors use rubber gloves or wax paper," he said.
     Winters couldn't let that bit of naivete float in the air too long, however. He quickly added, "They don't always do it."
     The vendor who sold me a hot dog in New York certainly didn't. I had flinched when he lifted a bun out of the package with his bare hand and used his thumb to split it open. Where had that thumb been? And I flinched again as Chicago's Hadac waxed poetic on the perils of food carts.
     "The person is handling money and currency, which is soiled," he continued. "The person may be shaking hands with someone. And then there is the issue of where does that person go to the bathroom?"
     So why, in his opinion, do they permit them in New York?
     "Maybe this is a quaint tradition," he said. "Maybe if New Yorkers want their hot dogs and sauerkraut they're not going to let anything get in their way."
     "Not going to let anything get in their way" – that's the motto on the city seal of New York, isn't it?
               — Originally published in the Sun-Times Oct. 13, 1996

Food I love #2: Pork chops

     Confession time.
     In the years I regularly patronized Gene & Georgetti with my pals, the check was inevitably picked up by someone else, a Springfield lobbyist type, or law firm partner, or utility bagman, or top Sun-Times editor with a bottomless expense account. Whatever my regular dish, the "Schultz Special," aka filet mignon on a piece of toast, cost — say $35 — was not my concern. Nor the bottles of wine, nor the carrot cake dessert. My problem was getting back home in half decent condition after spending an long afternoon with Steve Neal and Dan Rostenkowski and half a dozen other hale fellows well met. A bar I did not always clear.
     But sometimes, on rare occasions, I would find myself the host of my own lunch at Gene's — thanking a colleague perhaps. And then, knowing the knee-weakening check arriving, eventually, would be my responsibility or, worse, I would have to try to expense it, I would rein in the dogs of appetite. Sometimes I would get their garbage salad — an oval platter piled high with lettuce and cocktail shrimp — or their pork chop.
     A pork chop is both steak lite and a bargain. At Gene's 20 years ago they were $19.99, which seemed less of a gut punch, bill-wise. On the lunch menu now, a petit filet mignon is $67, a double pork chop $38. Twice the food for half the money.
     Much cheaper and honestly, still quite good — a pork chop is the love child between a t-bone steak and a chicken breast. 
     Now that I have diabetes, I run through pork chops. Zero carbs. Zero sugars. Toss a couple on the grill. I'll have them for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, though not all three on the same day. Not yet anyway. The cheapest steak you can find runs you $7.95 a pound, on sale at Jewel. Pork chops are $2.99 a pound, and if they're trying to unload them, they'll give you two for one. As I said before, I'm a man who likes a free chop.
     I don't want to give the impression that cost rules my culinary habits. I am still employed, and would not eat as much L. Burdick's chocolate as I do if that were the case. But there is ... treading carefully .. a certain Stockholm Syndrome effect at work, and over the years, I have gotten more practical. So I enjoy a thick pork chop, dusted with tarragon, both sides, eaten along with a nice cup of all natural applesauce.

     And yes, I know at this point there is one reader, or a dozen, who is scratching vigorously behind his ear thinking, "Heyyyyy, wait a sec. A pork chop? Ain't ya, you know, Jewish?"

     Yes I am. And I've addressed this before, and recently too. Too many times — there must be some kind of perverse pride at work. I must like poking the empty stereotype. But for you newcomers, despite what you read on the Daily Caller, Jews are not a mass of conformity, with our beards and black coats and secret handshakes. Jews get to be individuals — it's one of the redeeming qualities of the faith. 

     Actually, everyone gets to be an individual; Jews just are less good about ostracizing the oddballs — if we were, there'd be no one left. I'm speaking of the more liberal branches. The Hassidim seem to have no problem imposing uniformity. No pork chops for them. Which is fine, in my opinion. That means more for me. 

    

Food I love #1: Beef and broccoli

     I'm still on vacation. I could have easily extended "Meet my Metaphors" for another week, but thought, "enough already," and decided to tack in a new direction. Writing about food is fun and easy. As for reading about it, well, you tell me.

     Business took me to the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab last month — that story is coming. My appointment was at 2 p.m. so, responsible journalist that I am, I of course had one thought: get downtown early, swing by Star of Siam for lunch.
     The Star of Siam has graced Illinois Avenue, tucked just west and below Michigan Avenue for ... I'm going to hazard a guess before checking: ngggg, 32 years.
     Not close: 42. The Star of Siam opened in 1984, the same year I started writing, freelance, for the Chicago Sun-Times. Fashions come and go, but we icons soldier onward, defying time.
     When with a group, I'd start with chicken satay and peanut sauce, and am passionate about their Pad Thai. But by myself, and with Mr. Diabetes standing over my shoulder, clucking disapproval, I went with my. go-to: beef and broccoli.   

      Fresh, firm, bright green broccoli. Succulent marinated strips of beef. Shards of ginger. An oyster sauce. Eaten with chopsticks — that's part of the fun, and I have my pride. A splash of red sauce to keep things interesting. Meat and vegetables — I can tell myself it's healthy, ignoring all that oil glistening over it.
      No rice, of course, no big glass of super sweet Thai iced coffee. (What's the Stones song? "Dancing, dancing, dancing so free/Dancing, Lord, keep your hand off me/Dancing with Mr. D..." A song not up to the Stones' elevated standards, critics felt at the time, but I'll take my symbolism where I find it. I should have put it on my list of diabetes songs — Mick is singing about death, not elevated blood sugar, though the two do intersect, uncomfortably.
     Beef and broccoli is not Thai, but Chinese — well, Chinese-American that is, concocted in California chop suey shops about 100 years ago, according to what little is known. Just as spumoni is unknown in Italy, so beef and broccoli isn't really a thing in China. Or so I'm told.

     I order beef and broccoli 90 percent of the time I'm in a Thai or Chinese restaurant. Maybe 95. Which is a point of amusement for my wife and of concern for me. Where is the adventure of life? And I do occasionally order something that is not beef and broccoli, just to show I can. But am inevitably disappointed because, well, if you really want beef and broccoli, anything else is something less.
     Speaking of which. I probably should add that, last time I was at Star of Siam with my wife, she felt the place was not up to their previous standards. I demurred. It was fine. Was she right? I'm not the one to tell. I tend to like what's put in front of me, particularly when it's beef and broccoli. But even if she is correct — and she usually is — well, even noble Homer dozed, and the best can have an off night, like the rest of us. I'm hoping to get her to go back. This most recent visit, I found it especially good, cleaned the plate with gratitude and appreciation, then headed off to my appointment.

Flashback 1999: Crudity in eye of beholder

 

Uffuzi Gallery

     In looking up M.C. Escher references, I reread this column. Note the unashamed pointy-headedness of the opening. Young, and showing off. It also ran on a Tuesday, in the features section, where my columns were briefer: only 550 words, compared to the column today at almost 800 words.

     When the subject of the crudity of our day arises, as it so often does, I like to tell this story from Herodotus:*
     An Egyptian army mutinies, fleeing toward Ethiopia. The pharaoh, Psammetichus, finds out and confronts the soldiers, begging them to reconsider. Think of your wives and children back in Egypt, he says.
     At that, a deserter pulls aside his tunic** and says, "Wherever I have this, I will have wives and children."
     That's a crude story — charmingly crude, in my eyes, because the macho bluster resonates over the eons and makes the anonymous Egyptian foot soldier seem very real.
     I tell this as introduction to a letter I received this week. A lone person who wrote to object to my defense of Niles North presenting the risque musical "A Chorus Line" and to argue that vulgarities in school are wrong.
     "Please tell me, how is that supposed to be helpful to our young people?" he asks, listing the various off-color details of the play. "It seems that there is a complete loss of any kind of standards here."
     My purpose is not to embarrass the reader, whose letter was erudite and well-reasoned. I believe that he speaks for a large number of people who look around and see a world in 1999 very different from the world in which they grew up, and who aren't pleased with the changes.
     And "A Chorus Line" isn't the half of it. We see things now that we would never see, even a few years ago. For instance, Simon & Schuster is publishing a book, aimed at teens no less, with the newspaper-unprintable title of "The - - - - -Up."
     This is far from what our letter writer wants schools to teach. He quotes Samuel Johnson:
     "The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things — the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit." He adds: "There is nothing in Johnson's words about barnyard epithets."
     Or is there? This is where he lost me. I would argue that, as in the case of our anonymous Egyptian soldier, or "A Chorus Line," there are instances when, to be good and genuine, to reflect real people, a work also needs to be somewhat obscene.
     After all, is not life itself often obscene, messy, crude? The more you delve into the real lives of people, the messier it gets. The degree to which this mess is reflected in the culture is dictated not by questions of right or wrong, but by fashion.
     Many fail to see this. They view culture as an endlessly descending staircase, like one of those M.C. Escher prints, that goes down and down but never bottoms out.
     It doesn't bottom out because standards do tighten, though we seldom notice. For instance, certain words that could be sung out on a high school stage in the 1940s — say in a minstrel show — would not be sung today. Our sensibilities changed.
     The most important thing, whether you find something offensive or artistic, is to remember that being crude and being bad do not always go together. Sometimes evil hides in the guise of high culture, as the great Dr. Johnson himself noted:
     "Most vices may be committed very genteelly: a man may debauch his friend's wife genteelly; he may cheat at cards genteelly."

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 6, 1999

*  From "Speculations about the Nile," Herodotus, II. 19-31, translated by D. Grene, quoted in Michael Grant's "Readings in the Classic Historians." 

** The exact phrase is, "...one of their number showed him his prick and said, 'Wherever I have this, I will have wives and children.'" I don't recall if I tried to get that published and failed, or didn't bother. But it remains unprintable in the Sun-Times, then and now. Their loss.

Meet my metaphors #6: The M.C. Escher staircase

"Ascending and Descending," by M.C. Escher

    When people find out I am that most exotic of beasts, a newspaper columnist, the common reaction is an uncomprehending stare, as if I said that I shave butterflies for a living. No, I exaggerate. The common reaction is to not even process that I've said anything. The expression never changes. It's as if I muttered some garble: "I flemulate klaxons." 

     Every now and then, though, the first word, "newspaper," does register, and in order to say something, they latch onto that familiar first word and roll with it, managing a question along the lines of, "So how is the newspaper doing?" 

     At that, I pretend to think, then deploy the following well-worn observation, almost a koan: "Journalism is like that M.C. Escher staircase that keeps going down and down but somehow never reaches the bottom."

     It's true. Newspapers have been collapsing like so many ancient towers since my senior year in high school, when the great Chicago Daily News was liquidated because ... well, I'm still not sure why.

     By the time I've finished invoking the above staircase, my audience, who wouldn't know what i was talking about even if they had been listening, has already turned and gratefully fled. It isn't as if they really care about the answer. So I never get the chance to explain that I am thinking of "Ascending and Descending," a 1960 lithograph by the Dutch master draftsman M.C. Escher, who was all the rage in the 1960s and 1970s.  I certainly was a fan, so much so that as a teen I bought two expensive books,  "The Magic Mirror of M.C. Escher" ($6.95) and "The Graphic Work of M.C. Escher," ($5.95) which have sat on my shelf, barely touched, for 50 years, waiting for their moment to shine.

    In the second book, Escher explains the image in "Ascending and Descending" with charming detachment, as if he had come upon a real scene instead of inventing it himself:

     The inhabitants of these living-quarters would appear to be monks, adherents to some unknown sect. Perhaps it is their ritual duty to climb those stairs for a few hours each day. It would seem that when they get tired they are allowed to turn about and go downstairs instead of up. Yet both directions, though not without meaning, are equally useless. Two recalcitrant individuals refuse, for the time being, to take any part in this exercise. They have no use for it at all, but no doubt sooner or later they will be brought to see the error of their nonconformity.

    Given that, it seems I've misunderstood the image all these years. Most of the monks aren't going down. They're going up. Not like journalism at all. 
    In a letter to a friend, Escher is less whimsical:

    That staircase is a rather sad, pessimistic subject, as well as being very profound and absurd. With similar questions on his lips, our own Albert Camus has just smashed into a tree in his friend’s car and killed himself. An absurd death, which had rather an effect on me. Yes, yes, we climb up and up, we imagine we are ascending; every step is about 10 inches high, terribly tiring – and where does it all get us? Nowhere.

     Oh, I don't know about that. Fun was had. The lithograph is still intriguing. As a young man, I believed Escher's work hinted at life's secret connection and essential mystery of life, the hidden world of unknowable complexity and beauty, the unseen gears spinning. A natural partner to a profession spent probing beneath the shiny surface, glancing behind the backdrops and stage scenery.

     I found the Camus letter in a 2015 Guardian article prompted by a Scottish show of Escher's work. The article said that Escher was inspired by a classic 1958 paper published n the British Journal of Psychology "Impossible Objects: A Special Type of Visual Illusion," by Lionel S. Penrose and his son Roger. Though the paper cites Escher on its first page, so perhaps they were inspiring each other. They triangle they discuss is known as the Penrose Triangle, not the Escher Triangle, so the Brits are probably the true pioneers here.

     Maurits Cornelis Escher was born in the Netherlands in 1898, the fourth son of a civil engineer. He became a somewhat successful artist in his 30s, traveling the continent, including Spain, where the tiles at the Alhambra influenced his work, which was to include elaborate geometric surface divisions, along with his growing fascination with reflections, Möbius strips and other odd takes on the world as befits a left-hander.

     Journalism isn't the only quality I set upon Escher's endless staircase. In 2007, when Dennis J. Hastert driven from Congress, I noted, "While politeness in politics is like that M.C. Escher staircase that always goes down and yet never reaches the bottom, it's obvious that things are even worse now than a decade ago."

     I had no idea what was coming. In 1999, in a column on crudity that I'll repost tomorrow, I noted:

     After all, is not life itself often obscene, messy, crude? The more you delve into the real lives of people, the messier it gets. The degree to which this mess is reflected in the culture is dictated not by questions of right or wrong, but by fashion.

     Many fail to see this. They view culture as an endlessly descending staircase, like one of those M.C. Escher prints, that goes down and down but never bottoms out.

     Escher himself was not only a meticulous artist but a fastidious person. He was in his mid-60s when his work was embraced by the counterculture, a hug he did not return. When Mick Jagger wrote him a fan letter, suggesting he design a cover for a Rolling Stones album, Escher wrote back tartly to the rock star's assistant, "“Please tell Mr Jagger I am not Maurits to him.” He died in 1972.

     Now that I think of it, I have never seen an M.C. Escher print in a museum, not that I recall, not even in the Netherlands. In that regard, he's a Dutch Norman Rockwell — a master craftsman shunned by the art world, perhaps for being too popular. Though the Art Institute just got its first Rockwell, so maybe Escher will get his due. Doing that checking thing, speaking of journalism, I see The Art Institute does own a variety of Escher prints. Perhaps they'll get around to putting one on display someday. I'd like that.

     
   

      

     

Meet my metaphors #5: ConAgra

     Most people leave few traces. An heirloom vase. A nice watch. A self-published family memoir that slumbers in a drawer unread. An amateurish painting. No great tragedy. Even the most famous person quickly sinks into obscurity. To the upcoming generation, Bruce Springsteen is an old guy occasionally glimpsed on YouTube video chuckling with some talk show host they also never heard of.  Probably not even that. Long-lasting fame beyond a person's life doesn't help the actual person. Mark Twain isn't happier in heaven than Petroleum V. Nasby because his books are still read.
     While I can't say I am pleased that my writing leaves the smallest ripple the day it's published, sometimes, then sinks to the bottom of a very deep pool and is promptly forgotten forever, I do accept it. There's not a lot of choice in the matter. Plus I've known too many guys, particularly older men, who spend what's left of their lives blowing off their big bazoos about what a big honking deal they are, if only in their own minds. It's a bad look.
     So it's fitting that a favorite metaphor of mine is one that speaks to this very situation. I wish could have reached some kind of currency, but didn't, because nothing I write does.
     It was in the post on Dec. 30, 2017, recounting "The State of the Blog," a particularly self-indulgent flop into the stats of this web site. I was pointing out that a post comparing a song by Amanda Palmer to a song by Pink got 50,000 hits. Without — I almost said "shamefully without" but I hope it was an oversight and not obfuscation — my mentioning that the reason it got 50,000 hits was because her then-husband, fantasy writer Neil Gaiman, retweeted it to his two million followers. I tried to move on, talking about how the Metropolitan Museum of Art had enhanced the blog's visual presence by putting 375,000 images "available for free and unrestricted use." Then I circled back to the subject and uncorked this confession:

     I'm painfully aware of what small ball the blog is, on the scale of kid toy testers raking in millions on YouTube. I must admit, when I see Sheldon Cooper taping his poignant "Fun with Flags" on "The Big Bang Theory" I squirm a bit in recognition. Counter-intuitively, the big numbers generated by the Amanda Palmer post were more disconcerting than encouraging, because they reminded me what the blog isn't: a significant cultural force. It's a whisper in a hurricane of screams. Then again, my vegetable garden is not ConAgra either, yet I still plant tomatoes every spring. Small is fine if it makes you happy, and in general, EGD does.

    The "whisper in a hurricane of screams" isn't bad either, and a reminder that it's best, when coining metaphors, to limit yourself to images the reader is familiar with. But I particularly like the garden metaphor, even though it depends on knowing something about Conagra Brands (they lowercased the A in 2016, ahem, the year before I wrote this, when the company moved to Chicago, as an attempt to deemphasize the "agriculture" part of their operation), a $20 billion food processing behemoth employing 18,000 people. 

     Started in 1919 as Nebraska Consolidated Mills, it milled grain and sold cake mixes, founding the Duncan Hines brand in 1951, then branched out into a dizzying array of brands and products, from processed turkey to tires. They changed their name to ConAgra in 1971. (It's Latin, meaning "With Soil.")

     Headquartered in Chicago, I see — I really should phone them up, invite myself over, arrange a field trip to a farm. How would they respond? Silence, probably.

      See, that is the value of being known. Yes, popularity is a salve to the old ego. But it is also practical, a sort of grease to help slide you into ConAgra and out to the farm, which would be fun. Without it, we push forward, our sagging undercarriage scraping against the bare concrete, throwing sparks, the binding gears shrieking and seizing up. To coin another metaphor.

    Let's not end on that note. Before I let you go, I want to underline a sentence in the above that is too easily overlooked, especially by me: "Small is fine if it makes you happy." Your choice, not theirs. If you need applause, you put control of your mood in the power of people sitting with their hands in their laps. Can't blame them — they never noticed you, way in the back, holding a spear, singing your heart out.

     The smart path is to focus on the work, how good it is, how doing it makes you feel. Not the professional approach, true. But one that works out far better in the long run.

    

     

Meet my metaphors #4: Smack into the mitt

     Not being a sports guy, I don't use many sports metaphors. It's never fourth and long in my world. I seldom swing for the fences.
     That said, I do have select favorites, as revealed in this 2012 column that artfully dances around something that would never get near the paper today, for a variety of reasons. First, because we have to buy our own phones now. And second, well, you'll see.

     A batter who decides to not swing at a ball lets it smack into the catcher's mitt — I don't have to explain that, right? The beauty of sports metaphors — everybody understands them.
     The original headline was "A smart phone king of the hill." Make sure to notice the game metaphor in the last sentence.

     "Can I turn Neil on?” she asked. I contemplated her ­— blonde, expectant — while weighing my response.
     Sometimes your whole career can teeter on a knife edge. The person to whom she was posing the question — a technician standing by me — said nothing. I gazed at an imaginary spot floating in the air about a foot above my head and to the left, and simply waited.
     “I’m going to let that one smack into the mitt,” I said, taking refuge in sports metaphor. They both looked at me blankly.
     “Sometimes you have to just leave the bat on your shoulder,” I elaborated. Another long pause.
     “Ohhh...” she sad, getting it, or pretending to. “Turn on” — an antiquated phrase that old people use. Shades of “Tune in. Turn on. Drop out.” An inappropriate 1960s drug/sexual reference. All three of us busily turned our attention to the device that she had called by my given name. Its actual name is a Samsung Galaxy S II or, to use the vernacular, a phone.
     Smart phone week at the Sun-Times, and we all trooped up to the 10th floor to meet our new devices — our second selves, apparently. I don’t want to make too big of a deal about this woman calling my phone by my name. Lots of products have been anthropomorphized over the years. Hats, for instance. Freud wrote an essay arguing that hats are symbols for men, a common sentiment a century ago. “Your hat is YOU!” one company advertised.
     We aren’t that direct about our phones, but their impact on the murky nether worlds of the id and the ego are the same. Some of my colleagues received Apple iPhone 4s, the rest of us got Galaxies, and, vain as newspaper columnists tend to be, I instantly focused in on the pecking order aspect — was this an indication of status? Am I “out”? Have I been slighted? Apple of course is the platinum, ne plus ultra electronic device. I could see a sleek white iPhone 4 box with Rick Telander’s name written on it. Of course. The best for the best. The Samsung box, meanwhile, is half yellow with rainbow discs. It looks like something made to contain a cat toy. Was I not Apple-worthy? If my phone is going to be me, shouldn’t it — shouldn’t I — be the best possible? I raised a weak protest ­— could I not just take Rick’s iPhone instead? He doesn’t care. He doesn’t need status from his phone. I do.
     No, no, the tech folk said, obviously used to such pleading. These decisions have been made high above. The Apples are for people ... well ... who need Apples. The Samsungs....
     “Yours is bigger!” the tech guy said brightly, subtly returning to the object-as-a-man motif. Indeed it was but .... well, let’s move on.
     I was booted over to a third tech person, an earnest man in his 20s who had the tech guy outfit right out of Central Casting: blue jeans, plaid shirt, unshaven, newsboy cap. He pointed out the button used to turn the phone on, instructed me how to press that button, then became lost in trying to link to the network.
     I watched. An odd moment — the phone wasn’t even mine yet, but already on the fritz.
     “For the record, I haven’t done anything to it yet!” I announced to the room.
     “Play with it!” he enthused, continuing the metaphor, shooing me out the door. “Try new apps!”
      A few pokes and the apps popped up. Books. Lewis Carroll. “Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her, and to wonder what was going to happen next.”
     You and me both, Alice, you and me both.
     An hour later, back in my office, the new phone surprised me by ringing. I took the Galaxy out of my pocket, fumbled to the phone screen, and tapped the green button. And tapped. Yet it didn’t answer. Later, my 14-year-old son — who has had this phone for a year— explained, “You have to SLIDE it.” Oh, of course. Why didn’t anyone tell me that? Seriously. At least tell us how to answer the phone. At lunch, I met my brother.
     “Got a new phone!” I bragged, then told him about the Apple v. Samsung crisis.
     “This is better,” he said, and gestured down to his phone ­— a Galaxy S. Now, I don’t know much about phones, but I know that the S II is better than the plain old S. His has a tiny keyboard that slides out — obviously a technological dead end.
     “The S3 is coming out,” my brother said. “I’m not sure when, but I might get it.” Until then, I have the best, most up-to-datest. I immediately checked to see how long I’ll enjoy the Alpha Dog Samsung. Until June 21. That’s when the new S3 arrives. Two weeks. This technological king of the hill is a losing game.
    — Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 6, 2012