Welcome to the restroom of Mort's Deli.

     "I'm just wondering, with all this talk about transgendered people using the washroom, I want to know, who is going to be doing the checking? How do they plan on enforcing the law?" 
                                                                           —Phone message, April 29, 2016


     "Good evening. Welcome to the restroom of Mort's Deli. Please feel free to avail yourself to a stick of Wrigley's spearmint chewing gum or Lifesaver mint. But only one, please.
      "Why yes, I remember you, too. You asked for blueberry bagels last year. There is no such thing as a blueberry bagel. Not at the Steinberg Bakery which is closed for a month. Being remodeled. We are installing new, crazy expensive terrazzo counters and tile floor. The contractor said two weeks which means four. In the meantime, I told my brother Morton that I'd help him with the restroom duty at the delicatessen when I wasn't overseeing the work. You have to watch them, like a hawk you do.
      "It is not easy, the rest room duty. Believe me. Now a nice gentleman like yourself, there is no need to ah ... examine the package. But younger men, teenagers, they can be very smooth-skinned and fair. The way they dress nowadays. Hard to tell the boys from the girls....
     "No, I have not had a lady come in here yet a, how do you say, transgendered individual. But I've only been here a week. Morty's sister, Alice, is in the ladies room. She had someone she was certain was a man. I mean, there were shoulders, a mustache....
     "No, no, we cannot touch the patron. That would be assault.  All we can is ask. Insist. Alice asked the lady to ... well, see the goods. This lady, she became very offended, and left before the police could be called. Which is good, you are supposed to call the police, because it is a crime, to go into the men's room with the equipment of a woman, and versus vice.
    "Turns out, Mort said later, it was indeed a woman—Mrs. Berkowitz's sister, visiting from Cleveland. She had never been here before, which is why Alice didn't recognize her. Her own fault, really, for not being a customer. Still, an unfortunate incident. Not only did the sister get mad, but Mrs. Berkowitz too. A good customer for 20 years. She'll come around. Where else can you get such garlic pickles? Nowhere. Mort makes them himself, from Polish cucumbers raised in oaken tubs.
    "But the law is the law. 'The Illinois Restroom Safety and Decency Act.'  It's framed right there on the counter, next to the bottle of Old Spice. Please feel free to avail yourself to the Old Spice. It's bracing.
     "The law requires that the act be framed and prominently displayed, though I think that Moishe would do so anyway. He doesn't want his customers to think that he cares ... about ... you know ... what they have ... down there. He only cares that you order a corn beef sandwich, or something, enjoy your lunch, and not linger. Sometimes people linger, eating the rolls and pickles—the best!—for hours. But what can you do? You can't throw them out. Even a cup of coffee. That was the biggest problem Mort had, people who get a club soda and think they're entitled to a basket of rolls and a jar of pickles.
    "But times change. Mort has had his deli here for, what, 50 years? More. Since 1964. Before it belonged to our uncle Sol. It was called Sol's. But Sol became ill, and had no children. Well, two girls, but no boys to pass the business onto. Girls have no sense for the business. The girls had no interest in the delicatessen, went to school somewhere and got jobs, one became, I don't know, a physicist, the other a pilot.
     "In all that time, there was never trouble with the restroom. Well, sometimes a parent would order their kid the Jumbo Atomic Hot Fudge Sundae, and let the child eat the whole thing—it's supposed to be shared with four people—and he would rush into the bathroom and, well, let me tell you. My brother told me it was like somebody pulled the pin on a grenade in there. There was throw-up on the ceiling. 
    "But as far as men dressed as women lurking about the stalls, pouncing upon the customers doing their business, that was never a problem. Which is what makes the law so strange to me. Now Mort, he says it isn't about restrooms, really. Me, as a baker, I'm used to silly laws. We have to have the kitchen checked for rodent activity, as if that were possible in an establishment of such unsurpassed cleanliness as the Steinberg Bakery. But in other places, yes, so I go along. I try to be a good citizen. Which Mort does too. Though he has a theory. He says, with the Internet and cell phones and freedom, it gets harder to kick the people you hate. Time was, you could, literally, you saw somebody you didn't like, a schwartz, a fairy, whatever, you could walk over, give 'em a kick. And what were they going to do? Nothing. Nobody cared what happened to them.
    "Now, oh boy. Everybody cares. They post the video and everybody cries. Suddenly there are no people ashamed to show their faces in public. They get to ride the bus, use the bathroom, wherever they please. It's a new world. But some people, they don't like it. They have the itchy toe. They're still itching to give their kick and, blocked one way, find another. Not me. I hate no one. I am a businessman. You come in, I sell you butter cookies, no matter how loathsome an individual you happen to be when you are not buying my cookies. It isn't my business. My business is selling you cookies, so give me the money, and get out. Four weeks. Six tops.
    "This law. This stupid law. So now somebody has to sit in the bathroom, checking. In every public restroom with more than two stalls. Sadly, Mort's Deli has three, though he's going to hire my contractor—Sheldon Finkleman and Brothers, the best!— to rip one out. As soon as they're done at the Steinberg Bakery. By June, God willing.
    "Until then, well, here I am. Trying to make the best of it. Not so bad. I got the newspaper. There's the radio, easy listening. Part of it is nice -- like the old days, when there were clubs. The Chez Paree, the Trade Winds. I once saw Tony Bennett at the Double Door. You can't imagine. There was always a colored fellow in the bathroom, handing out towels and brushing off shoulders. Mort should have an actual colored fellow, but it isn't so easy to find one who'll sit in a restroom and guard the mints. Besides, for the enforcement of the law, that requires a certain finesse, a certain authority. Which is why Morty turned to me. I am a figure of respect at the Steinberg Bakery, and run a right ship here. Still, most people are the gender that God intended them to be, and are just answering nature's call, and since I'm here anyway, I try to make it a little elegant for them, for all of us, with the fancy lotions and the music and the aftershave and the combs in blue water. Here's a towel. Please deposit it in the wicker basket. People can be pigs. I know. Here, help yourself to a stick of Wrigley spearmint gum, but only one. Some people scoop up the tray. And thank you -- some gentlemen, they take the gum but leave nothing. Which is their right, but leaves a lingering bitterness. Still, it takes all sorts to make a world. Let me tell you. A little kindness goes a long way. I wish more people knew that.

Let's all play Ted Cruz connect-the-dots

     Remember connect-the-dots? I do, which is scary. Pages covered with numbered dots, plus a few embellishments that pretty much give the game away unless you're a particularly dim child. Grabbing your squat blue pencil, you draw a line from one dot to the next, using your newly acquired counting skills. An image emerges. Oooo.
     Long gone now, I imagine, another victim of computers.
     Still, we can play connect-the-dots by relating disparate news items until a picture forms.
     Dot 1: Woke up Thursday morning to WBBM radio playing a Ted Cruz campaign commercial — right, Indiana, our slice of the Southland next door, is having its primary Tuesday. The Cruz ad does its own little connect-the-dots, taking the common fear of transgender people, marrying it to Donald Trump, who in a rare moment of common sense, said "people go, they use the bathroom that's appropriate." Cruz offers that as his plea for your vote.
     Rex Huppke wrote a bold explanation in the Tribune this week of just how cowardly, offensive and un-American Cruz is for singling out a long-besieged minority for further abuse. Readers know I am not in the practice of touting the competition, but such considerations are a trifle compared to the welfare of the nation, and must be set aside so long as there is the threat, no matter dwindling, that Cruz could prevail. He's worse than Trump, and that's saying a mouthful....

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Behind every successful man is a woman, laughing at him

     When the Tuesday results came in, and Trump had swept the Republican primaries in all five states—Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island—suddenly it seemed very real. The man could really be the Republican presidential candidate in November.
      And while that most likely means Hillary Clinton will dice him like a Veg-o-matic, nothing is certain in this world. People certainly hate Hillary Clinton, for ... well, whatever flimsy surrogate they wave around—Benghazi, emails, the death of Vince Foster, if they're Republicans. The war in Iraq, Goldman Sachs, not being Bernie Sanders if they're left wing Democrats. 
     As to where her gender fits into all this, well, it'll take a sharper mind than mine to sort that out. It's easy to assume the GOP hates her because she's a woman since they do seem to go out of their way to scorn women, like Ted Cruz's already-notorious commercial that's about women's restrooms but is addressed to their lords and masters, men.
     But Bill Clinton isn't a woman, and Republicans hate him just as much as they do Hillary.
     Trump came pretty close to denouncing Clinton for her gender Tuesday night. Flush with victory, he lit into his opponent-to-be for what one can assume is her most glaring fault. 
    “Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don't think she'd get 5 percent of the vote,” Trump said, during a rambling speech that he turned into a news conference when he ran out of things to say. "The only thing she's got going is the women's card. And the beautiful thing is, women don't like her."
    How that is germane ... well, it goes without saying, though within hours the Clinton campaign had a strong video response online, taking Trump's words and ramming them up his ass, where they belong.
     What Trump is groping at, I think, reflects the common bully belief that oppressed groups are really entitled. Just as Republicans said Obama became president because he was black— since African-Americans just show up and leapfrog into seats of power— when the truth is he became president in spite of it, so many voters aren't embracing Clinton because she's a woman, but they're overcoming their unspoken disdain they have for women and supporting her anyway, because she's smart and talented and the best person for the job.
    To me, the most telling aspect is that Hillary had a speech prepared, while Trump winged it. That's why his fans love him, I know. But a thinking person does not want a president who wings it when preparation is a possibility.
     She certainly is a flawed candidate. But like Democracy as defined by Winston Churchill as "the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried for time to time," so Hillary Clinton is the worst candidate, except for all the others that are trying right now. Compared to them, she's Moses and Jefferson in one except, as Trump keeps pointing out, female.
  

It's not just for topiary any longer

     I was standing in a bar in Jerusalem with the newspaper publisher's wife. Having traveled Israel together for a week, we had run out of things to say a few days earlier. So we silently watched the TV over the bar which, at that moment, was showing a Kotex commercial.
     "There's an interesting story about how Kotex was developed . . . " I began.
     "And I suppose you're going to tell me," she said.
     That stung. I know I can be a bore. But certain stories fascinate, such as how 100 years ago Kimberly-Clark, the Wisconsin paper mill, ramped up to make Cellucotton, which went into gas mask filters in the First World War. The war ended abruptly, tanking the gas mask market, so Kimberly-Clark had to figure out what to do with all that Cellucotton. They developed two new products, thin sheets they called "Kleenex" and thick pads they called "Kotex."
    The challenge of selling Kleenex tissues was figuring out what to do with them. Originally they were sold as a way for ladies to remove their makeup. But a nurse suggested sneezing into them, and an industry was born.

     The challenge of selling Kotex was two-fold: first teaching reluctant women — who up to that point used rags — to try the product. And second to push squeamish retailers into selling it. At first they packaged it in plain white boxes....

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"The saving grace of Kumamon"

Repairing Kumamon Castle, part of which collapsed.

    

"Fight on Kumamon, You're Strong, Kyushu!"

     When I heard that powerful earthquakes had rocked Kyushu, Japan's southwestern island, earlier this month, my first thought was, "But I was just there!"
      A natural sentiment, I suppose, a human reaction, though not a particularly laudable one. I always worry there's something shamefully egocentric about focusing on your remote connection to some distant disaster: Way to make an immense tragedy all about you, Neil.

This cartoon hoped for pets to be reunited with their
families and invoked "the saving grace of Kumamon."

     My second thought seemed even less appropriate: "Send in Kumamon!" A reference to the jolly bear mascot whose birthday party I attended in Kumamoto last month, as part of my research for an article on cuteness I'm writing for Mosaic, the London web site of science and health. He's the most popular yuru-kyara, or "loose characters," representing every town and city, region and company in Japan.

     I momentarily thought of tweeting words to that effect, as a message of solidarity. "This is a job for Kumamon!" Better than the generic "You're in our prayers."
     Then I reconsidered. People were dying: 45 dead, more than a thousand injured. The material loss is tremendous—Toyota, which has a factory there, alone will endure $250 million in lost sales due to interruption of its production lines. 
      So I kept quiet, not wanting to play glib with their tragedy.

This was captioned "Kumamon, Protect the Children"

      Turns out, I could have invoked the great black bear of happiness. Calling upon Kumamon was a common impulse. It seems as if half of Asia did. Not officially. The Kumamoto Prefecture government, which controls Kumamon (he has a desk and a title, director of marketing) had more important things to do than manage their mascot. So his official Twitter feed, which has a half million followers, fell silent.  
     But others must have really needed him. Kumamon was missed. In Kumamon's absence, people across Japan took to social media to express concern both through Kumamon and for him. They wondered where he was. The Japanese embassy in Canada encouraged ex-pats to send messages of support to Kumamon, and noted manga artists led a campaign of drawing Kumamon to express solidarity and raise money for earthquake recovery efforts. I found them quite touching, and thought I would share a few here. 

A particularly lovely effort from mainland China, whose panda says, "Because we're both bears."

Donald Trump: The rare Republican who believes in evolution

  

     As a lifelong Republican, I enthusiastically support the candidacy of Donald J. Trump. He will make an excellent nominee and, eventually, president, taking his rightful place alongside such GOP icons as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.
     If you ask me why Mr. Trump will be an excellent 45th president, I would point to his moderate, commonsense policy on immigration reform; his strong, consistent stand against abortion; plus his opposition to the PC madness currently roiling the South regarding transgender use of public bathrooms, where decency is making a stand against "repulsive perverts," to borrow Ted Cruz's description, bursting into women's restrooms, terrifying our mothers and daughters.
     Nit-pickers among you might point out that Trump has not always believed any of these things. Within recent memory he was calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists, suggesting Muslims be blocked at the border, and shrugging off the deep visceral horror represented by people using the toilet without the government concerning itself with the state of their sexual organs.
     To which I would reply: That is evolution, Donald Trump style. Or as his senior aide explained to the Republican National Committee in a closed door meeting last week, up to now Trump has been "projecting an image."
     "The part that he's been playing is now evolving," said chief advisor Paul Manafort....

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Good night sweet prince

     When David Bowie died in January, I thought of all Bowie meant to me, since I was a 16-year-old at Camp Wise, and batted out something reflecting that connection. The paper ran it the next day, on the front page.
     When Prince died Thursday... well, not my table, so I said nothing.
     Wasn't missed. The Internet was an explosion of Prince—remembrances, celebrations, praise, reflection, grief.  Surely nobody wanted to read more.
     So Saturday, nothing. The entire Internet had reverted to Prince anyway.
    To be honest, rather than adding something, I would have subtracted. It was too much—in my opinion, as someone who didn't care for him, one way or the other. I missed the other news that Prince was crowding out. Yes, he was dead. Yes, "Purple Rain." The New Yorker tweeted their purple, raining cover minutes after his death was announced. Everyone wanted in on the action. 
    I wasn't interested in him when he was alive. Kinda late to start now...
    But it felt like sour grapes to say that. The songs, well, people do like that sort of thing, obviously. To me, appreciation of Prince hinged on finding him, or his music, sexy, and, without going into details, not my cup of tea, no. 
     I did think of saying that—offer up something for the Prince indifferent, who might be feeling left out and bewildered. There's comfort in knowing you're not alone. God knows the Prince fans are being catered to. Why not whisper, there is no accounting for taste?
     Yet...why pooh-pooh something people genuinely valued in their moment of (apparently) genuine grief? Bulletin: it's not all about me. 
     Better to wait a few days.
     Maybe on a warm Sunday. Who the heck's reading this anyway? Go outside, get moving. Walk in the 80 degree weather in the Chicago Botanic Garden. That's where I am.
    If Prince wasn't your guy, well, I'm with you. A shame he's gone—57, too young—but I would have settled for the news told once, and that's it. Why does every celebrity death have to be given the Full Diana Treatment? Am I the only one getting tired of the media, hungry for hits, keening over every lost celebrity? It's exploitative.
     With the exception of this post, of course.