Bacon, our sinful staple

I am trying to think of the one naughty, illicit and dangerous thing I could do morning, noon and night and I keep coming back to bacon.

It wouldn’t work with drugs, which I guess is the long-story-short of shows like “Breaking Bad.”

I remember having some wonderful times trying it with booze and buddies back during my wild heydays some 20 years ago. Oh, the fun we had! We could make it work for as long as we didn’t have to, which back then was about 10 days at a stretch.

I’m confident I’d enjoy sex three times a day, but that’s difficult to achieve within the family dynamic. It’d be a burden on my already over-extended and sleep-deprived wife who’d have to do all the work while I watched TV.

That means I’d need to get a bunch of volunteers -- could we call them “staffers?” -- to do the job or jobs. And I’d be in way over my head with that.

Essentially, I’d be trying to assemble a harem, and I doubt I could keep a harem happy, not when I struggle daily to keep Val happy -- and by happy I mean borderline tolerant.

That leaves bacon, the only vittle that appears on each and every menu around the clock, a dietary ubiquity even salad can’t surpass.

You can have bacon and eggs for breakfast, B w/ LT for lunch, and renown chefs reach for bacon when they want to add an incarcerating flavor to things like scallops and steak.

I’ve never seen it offered as such but in this, the land of the deep-fried Twinkie, I have to imagine someone’s including bacon-based dessert.

It’s already the rectangular staple included in any well-rounded diet for someone eager to eat three square meals a day.

Eat enough of it in that geometric triumvirate and the doctors warn us our torsos will all become rhombus shaped (tapered tops, expansive mid-sections).

Really?

I’d like to give it a shot. I work above a restaurant/tavern and on the days when bacon steakburgers are the lunch special, the heady aroma invades my office and makes it impossible to concentrate. On those days I often stroll zombie-like downstairs to get a bacon fix.

Of course I do that most days with beer. Like bacon, the health scolds all say that’s bad for me, too.

I wonder what would happen if instead of three or four beers, we all substituted three or four thick slices of Happy Hour bacon.

I doubt much would change. We’d all still stay for about two hours. We’d still talk about sports, politics and how our lives would be different if even just a few young, single women ever stumbled into the bar.

That’s the allure of sin binging on bacon.

It still has all the rebel appeal of smoking with none of the expense or stink. And you wouldn’t have to stand pariah-like out in the bitter elements to enjoy bacon.

On the contrary, you’re welcome to eat bacon in all the finest restaurants. The trim waiter will even unfurl a fancy napkin on your lap prior to ordering some smoked Applewood.

So I’m intent on eating bacon three meals a day.

And if I ever do, this will be the very last you hear of it -- unless the stunt earns inclusion in my pending obituary.

Because I don’t want people who restrict their urge to eat bacon to resent me for indulging mine.

We’re a nation of secret sinners. We all get away with as much as we can and don’t like it when we see anyone enjoying more of it than the rest of us.

So bragging about my bacon diet would be unseemly. People would resent me for my excesses.

And being a pig is a poor career move for a guy who’s determined to really bring home the bacon.

What ruined Billy Joel?

We’ve been having the exact same conversation about once a month for four years. One of the kitchen gals comes up to me at the bar and demands to know why I haven’t acted on her literary advice.

She thinks riches will ensue if I write a book called, “Men Who’ve Been Ruined by Women.”

She always says, “Like Billy Joel! He was great! And then Christie Brinkley ruined him! Same with Bruce Springsteen!”

I always say, “Christie Brinkley was with Bruce Springsteen? That tramp!”

She always looks like she’s going to hit me with a soup ladle.

I always tell her I plan on getting around to it after I get to my own pet project: writing a book called “Famous Sons of Famous Bitches.” It’s a title so snappy it’s bound to score.

Then she always says, “Ah, who reads anyway? Reading’s boring.”

Well, I’m relieved you, my friend, don’t feel that way. And I’m relieved she’s never expressed her displeasure at my sarcastic intransigence more vociferously by hocking a loogie in my jambalaya.

At least I hope that’s never happened. Either way, the jambalaya’s always delicious.

Of course, now my brain goes straight to Theresa every time I hear Billy Joel and I’m left to wonder just what the hell happened to Billy Joel.

She wasn’t my favorite supermodel -- all hail Stephanie Seymour! -- but being ruined by Christie Brinkley wouldn’t be a bad way to go.

I was on board with him from the 1977 release of “The Stranger” clear through the mid-1990s. And I had as much fun listening to him as I did to Tom Petty, The Rolling Stones or any other big band from rock’s golden era.

He rocked with the very best of them.

There was “You May Be Right,” “Only The Good Die Young,” “Piano Man,” “Big Shot,” “My Life,” “Goodnight Saigon,” “Pressure,” and “It’s Still Rock ‘n’ Roll To Me,” to name just a few of his 33 top 40 hits.

He’s the third best-selling American solo artist in history behind Elvis and Garth Brooks.

His videos were the best back when that really mattered. He ditched the woman for whom he’d written “Just the Way You Are,” to date supermodel Elle Macpherson and left her for the supermodel for whom he’d write, “Uptown Girl” and “That’s Not Her Style.”

His concerts kicked ass. Still do, from what I hear.

I read when he was in Pittsburgh about two years ago he came out all bald and dumpy and looking as rock star as Peanuts-creator Charles Schultz. He played two or three songs and then announced, “Hello, Pittsburgh! I’m Billy Joel’s father. Billy would like you all to know he’s doing well and that he still has all his hair.”

Hilarious.

His biggest hit was his last.

“We Didn’t Start The Fire” was released in 1990 and became an American sensation. It remains a catchy and inspired romp through 50 of the world’s the most tumultuous years. It’s the kind of song that should by law be updated for high school history classes every 20 years.

The last I saw of him was a CBS Sunday Morning profile of him building custom boats on Long Island. The “Innocent Man” seemed to be pretending he was a happy man. He’s since married and divorced a young pretty who was 32-years his junior.

It seems clear he likes to drink and drive and I’ve read he’s battled depression his whole life. In fact, he once tried to commit suicide by guzzling household poisons. His quote: “I drank furniture polish because it looked tastier than bleach.”

It makes me sad to know this man who’s brought me and so many others so much joy seems so sad.

I wish I could get him to come visit me in Latrobe. I’d take him to The Pond and order him a big bowl of jambalaya.

I’d introduce him to Theresa.

Maybe meeting her and hearing just one shrill harangue about how he squandered his life with supermodels and global adulation might cheer him up.

I know hearing creative career advice from her just once in my life instead of on a monthly basis would leave me a whole lot less glum.

Kinzua's 70-year-old stunt secret

Fell into a really fun travel story that ran on msnbc.com this week. It's about the historic railroad bridge at Kinzua State Park in northcentral Pennsylvania. The 123-year-old bridge, once considered the eighth wonder of the world, was toppled by a tornado in 2003. On Thursday, the state opened a spectacular new see-through skywalk on what remains of the trestle.

During an interview, the PR director told me the story of Odo Valentine who in 1939 flew a biplane perpendicular through the 64-foot-wide center section of span.

And never told a soul. Fearful he'd lose his pilot's license, he kept the secret -- and an evidentiary picture -- to himself for nearly 70 years.

It's a great story and I thought I'd share the picture (click to enlarge) and the story here.

Thanks a million to Ed Bernick of North East, Pennsylvania, for sending to me.

A new vertigo-inducing see-through skywalk at the Kinzua Bridge State Park will remind awestruck visitors at the northcentral Pennsylvania park why the structure was once the eighth wonder of the world.

And if they time it right, they might get to meet the man who today qualifies as a world wonder unto himself.

That would be 96-year-old Odo Valentine.

First some history about a structure that’s properly historic.

The Kinzua railroad bridge was built in 1882 to speed trains loaded with coal and timber to market via the Great Lakes. At 301-feet above the valley -- 24 feet higher than the Brooklyn Bridge -- the bridge traversed a 2,053-foot gulf of sylvan splendor.

It pulsed with commercial railroad traffic six days a week, but on Sundays it was crowded with pleasure riders who came from all over to experience the tracks across the sky.

“There were no airplanes so if anyone wanted to experience what it was like to fly, they’d take a Sunday train across Kinzua,” says Linda Devlin, executive director of Allegheny National Forest Visitor’s Bureau. “It was world renown.”

It was rebuilt in 1900 by famed French railroad engineer Octave Chanute, who would become better known as the Wright Brothers tutor and was eulogized in 1910 as the father of aviation.

Upon completion of the Kinzua restoration, Chanute boasted the bridge would stand 100 years.

He was off by three. A tornado blew down 11 of the 20 towers on July 21, 2003.

Today the Kinzua skywalk perches atop six now repaired towers and concludes with an octagon-shaped skywalk with reinforced glass views to the valley below.

And maybe the only thing more incredible than the view is the story of Mr. Valentine, a barnstorming pilot determined to make his mark.

“When I was a kid just starting to fly, I told my dad one day I was going to fly through Kinzua bridge,” Valentine says. “And he said, ‘Son, if you’re going to do it, you’d better have someone take a picture ‘cause no one’s ever going to believe it.”

On July 4, 1939, he flew a propeller-driven biplane with a 32-foot wingspan perpendicular between the 64-foot center spans at 110 mph. One gust, one slip, and Valentine would be leaving a different sort of mark on Kinzua.

He deliberately chose July 4 because he knew everyone would be at a nearby holiday parade.

He immediately began squelching rumors of the stunt when he learned bridge owners were livid and determined to sue if they ever caught the reckless pilot, who was sure to lose his license.

For 70 years the high flyer laid low. He never told a soul. He swore the cameraman and another witness to secrecy.

No one ever found out. He never lost his license and went on to be a decorated pilot trainer in World War II and the Korean War who enjoy friendly associations with famed aviators Eddie Rickenbacker and ballplayer/ace Ted Williams.

“When the bridge came down, I thought I’d see if I could find that picture up in the attic. I was sure my wife had thrown it away.”

She hadn’t and Thursday, Valentine will be the guest of honor at the bridge were fame’s been deferred more than seventy years.

Will wonders never cease? Apparently not at Kinzua.

Wingin' it at The Pond

I’m convinced homelessness will be eliminated when Habitat for Humanity begins using discarded chicken wing bones to construct residential dwellings.

This occurred to me yesterday afternoon when I watched one of the Regular Joes run through a plate of hot wings like his pants were on fire, which I suspect they were about 20 minutes after he’d consumed them.

As I’ve pointed out before, there are six Regular Joes in my bar and they’re all conveniently named Joe. It’s as comforting as it is confusing.

This is the manliest of the Regular Joes. He constructs and repairs 1,500-degree furnaces in the local steel mill. He’s so manly even dweebs like me begin to feel marginally manly when he lets us sit within four bar stools of him.

He’s the kind of guy who douses things like bananas and ice cream with Tabasco so it’s always fun to watch him ramp up a menu item that’s already described with the adjective “hot.”

First he applies a 40-second dusting of pepper so thick it begins to eclipse the sunset-colored wings.

The real fun begins when he reaches for the Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce. It’s a kind of rectal rocket fuel favored in Thai restaurants where they want to kill off their customers.

It has a banty rooster on the label and when Joe squeezes the bootle you can almost hear the rooster scream. He shoots a pencil-thick stream of the stuff all over the plate until the appetizers resemble a hearty sort of soup.

Then he begins to do what looks like orally dry clean the bones. You don’t want to tell a guy like Joe this but, man, the guy really sucks. I’m always surprised when he doesn’t eat the bones just to teach them a lesson.

Four minutes later and all that’s left is a pile of bleached bones so white it looks like they spent a month in buzzard country. We instinctively begin inching away in case he’s still hungry enough to seize one of us by the neck and squirt Srirachi up and down our arms.

I’m mystified by our national wing mania.

Hooters Restaurants estimates it sells more than 30 million pounds of chicken wings each year, which is odd. I thought people went to Hooters for breasts.

And how did a meal as messy as chicken wings become a finger food?

The same restaurants that hawk chicken wings -- and there’s a joke in there somewhere -- would eject any customer that ate spaghetti with their hands, but it wouldn’t be any messier than eating sauce-slathered wings.

And the concept of flying chickens always confuses me. Is the chicken evolving into a flying bird? Or did it once have the ability to fly and is losing it?

Certainly, there’s no danger of ever seeing airborne chickens again, not with us gobbling all their wings.

I guess a chicken can fly, but it can’t be very far or very high, not without the assistance of a Joe-sized slingshot.

My 10-year-old daughter can step over chicken fence and I guess chicken fence was designed by crafty chicken farmers to contain wanderlust-stricken chickens.

I might not mind it so much if it wasn’t for the waste. I see all those bones and the recycler in me becomes restless.

Native Americans, as cited here from this June 29 post, used every bit of the buffalo they slayed. We nibble at the measly meat and pitch the bones.

Cluckbucket.com says if you lined up all the wings Hooters sells every year it would encircle the earth at the equator, a pseudo-fact which, if you’re like me, is already beginning to brain barnacle for future useless retrieval.

That sounds like a lot of fun, but lacking in any practical application.

That’s why I’d like to see my idea of using chicken bones to construct residences for the homeless.

We can call it “Bones for Homes.” I think it’s an idea that’s bound to really take off.

Yes, take off like a chicken.

An alphabetically ordered world

I was hashing out the first week of school recently with a high school English teacher friend of mine. He said the year’s off to a great start.

The kids seem interested, well-behaved, etc.

Who’s in your home room, I asked.

“A good bunch. They’re engaged, respectful --”

That’s not what I’m talking about. What letter kids do you have?

“I have the As. I always get the As. My room is the first one in the hall and that’s where they put all the As.”

See, that bugs Rs like me. While the As could just coast right into their room, I had to walk much farther down the hall.

The extra distance naturally gave me less study time, fewer opportunities to catch up on homework and left me starting each day sweaty and fatigued from the extra exertions.

I blame the As for conversely adding to the reasons why I’ve never gotten very far since high school.

So I’ve never liked As, much less earned any.

I asked my friend if any of the Gs, Ms, Ts or other students called his room the A-hole.

He said no, but I think he’s going to defensively recall our conversation the next time some unruly kid glares at him and mouths, “A-hole!”

I wish more of the world went by alphabetical order. It would ensure we’d meet a better cross section of people.

For instance, I drink in a bar with some Bs, some Ss, some Ms, a pair of Ps, some Ks, a U or two and surnames covering just about every letter in the alphabet except perhaps Q and Z.

And the owner doesn’t discriminate. It’s not like if a neighborhood Quatrini or Zelmore walked in and the owner, a fair-minded C, would say, “We don’t serve your kind in here.”

But while our last names may be varied, we are alike in nearly every other regard. We’re all white, middle-aged, paunchy and have bad haircuts.

There ought to be bars that are ordered just like our old homerooms. It would be a boon to diversity.

That way I’d drink with a Spanish Rodriguez, a Jewish Rabinovitz, an Irish Rafferty, an African-American Robinson and maybe a Korean Rhee.

It would bring me into friendly contact with a whole rainbow of humanity, at least those whose last names begin with R and enjoy getting all pie-eyed every night from 5 to 7 p.m.

The start of school and homeroom order always has me thinking of Theodore Zyzak.

He for more than 40 years was the last name in the 1,853-page Pittsburgh phone book. He may have been the last name in all America. You have to figure if they started calling roll of everyone in America it would take until at least 2019 until he’d get to raise his hand and say, “Here!”

He always fascinated me because I knew in high school some mean boys -- I swear it wasn’t me -- who’d crank call him and ask was it was like to always be last.

Years later, I asked him that very same question in a professional setting for a Pittsburgh Magazine story I did about him and what it was like being first in last.

“Ah, it was awful,” he said. “I never got to enjoy those idle moments after they call your name. No, they’d call my name and it would be, ‘Okay, open your books to page . . .”

The worst, he said, were the inoculations. He’d have to sit there through escalating anxieties as kids were alphabetically summoned and would howl in pain or faint dead away.

He said the only time he ever got called first was when some sergeant felt creative and reversed the alphabet and ordered Zyzak into hazardous duty in Okinawa and later in Korea.

A proud Pole, he said he never considered changing his name to something like “Byzak” or taking the coward’s dodge and having his phone number unlisted.

It’s been years since we talked. I wonder how he’s doing.

For all I know, this noble elderly gent may have recently passed on and is awaiting heavenly summons.

I just hope this time the poor guy doesn’t have to wait an eternity to hear them call his name.

Still waiting for an Iraq War apology

The interview could have taken place on any number of cable news programs involving any number of Capital opinion mongers. This one happened to take place Saturday on MSNBC with Pat Buchanan.

I agree with almost nothing the far right Buchanan ever has to say, but I listen to him because he’s thoughtful, witty and unafraid to challenge GOP dogma, as evidenced by his lone wolf opposition to the Iraq War.

The weekend was awash in poignant recollection of the 9/11 attacks that so unified the country as few of us had ever seen.

What happened to that unity, Buchanan was asked.

“I think you started to see it come apart on the night of the 2002 State of the Union address when President Bush started talking about the Axis of Evil and began laying the ground work for war with Iraq,” he said.

Is there anything that can be done today to restore that national unity?

Buchanan immediately began to descend into Beltway babble. He began spouting nonsense about middle grounds, shared interests, blah, blah, blah. A 1988 GOP presidential candidate, he couldn’t come up with a sensible answer.

Or maybe I just tuned out when he didn’t blurt out an answer so obvious it goes unaddressed.

Just apologize.

Somebody needs to say they’re sorry. Say you made a mistake, a real whopper.

I think it would be beneficial to the national unity if even just one of the cheerleaders for the $3 trillion Iraq War would just say, “Oops!”

By now, they’ve all -- Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Rice, Wolfowitz, that whole smarmy gang -- published their blame-shifting books. But no one’s said they were sorry.

This may seem a precious sort of point along side the grim statistics (4,400 U.S. soldiers, 32,000 injured; more than 100,000 Iraqis dead), but my feelings are still hurt over what was said about those of us opposed to the war.

John Ashcroft said anyone who dared to question the Bush administration about the motives for the war was a traitor.

Chicken hawks Cheney and Rush Limbaugh hinted that anyone who opposed the war was what hard men in locker rooms call a “pussy.”

I don’t think I’m a traitorous pussy.

Ten years ago today I was consumed with blood lust. I wanted vengeance. I wanted Osama bin Laden’s head on a stick.

We all felt that way. Hell, the whole world felt that way.

The tragedy of the Bush administration is how it never chose to finish the one job with which the entire country entrusted it.

Imagine how Bush would be viewed today if he’d have kept his eye on the ball, killed bin Laden and cleaned up Afghanistan before dividing the armed forces in another treasure-sapping foreign conflict.

Bush’s speech at Shanksville was marvelous. It made me recall when he stood atop the rubble vowing revenge we all craved.

The only conclusion I can come to as to why they got so far off track was Karl Rove needed a 2004 re-election strategy.

And war in a Iraq was a dandy because a still-scarred nation would rally around our soldiers and woe to anyone who said whoa to politically manufactured war hysteria.

So it would be nice if someone would apologize for calling us stooges for believing Hans Blix, Scott Ritter and the United Nations when they said they needed more time to verify WMD were in Iraq.

I’d like to hear someone apologize to Valerie Plame for ending her career at the CIA because her husband was disputing Cheney’s murky contentions about yellow cake uranium from Niger.

I’d like to see Toby Keith go on the air and say, you know, in the heat of the moment maybe it was a little crass to beat up on the Dixie Chicks for expressing a heartfelt opinion.

I’d like to hear anyone who made fun of anyone like me who said it just might not be the cakewalk they’re saying it’ll be say, man, you were right. It’s been a bit of a bitch.

I really think that would help elevate the national discourse, because I’m ready to forgive you.

But without that apology, it just seems like you all went from cheerleading a historic fiasco and straight into Tea Party birther movements without acknowledging you were dead wrong on the single biggest issue to face this entire generation.

The Iraq War has been a disgraceful mess from the start and it was all your fault.

And if I’m coming on a wee bit too strong at a time when we’re all straining to recover the unity and common ground of post-9/11 America, let me say I’m sorry.

Try it some time. You might feel better.

To hell with ethics, eat at Claddagh Irish Pub!

The assembled journalists were asking pointed business questions of our hosts at Claddagh Irish Pub at the South Side Works in Pittsburgh.

“How do you plan to use the new Fall menu to drive sales?”

“How satisfied are you with current market penetration?”

Because I wanted to look like I fit in I figured I’d better ask a question, too, or risk collegial embarrassment.

“Can somebody bring me another free beer?”

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Few readers know it but for 20 years I’ve kept in my wallet some form of my first freelance business card. It’s a peach-colored dandy with a lovely motif intended to convey a tropical idyll.

Across the top reads: “Palm Features.”

It has an intentional double meaning. On the surface I want respectable business associates to know I write sunny travel features for prestigious publications.

The subversive meaning is for over 20 years my palm has been out, up and reaching for any freebies I can get my hands on.

You have to understand my background. I began freelancing as a full-time correspondent for National Enquirer where it was institutionally frowned upon any time I was busted doing anything that might be construed as ethical.

Yet over the past 10 post-Enquirer years or so I’ve become fastidious about ethics. Many of the organizations who run my work refuse to run stories based on free trips, meals, etc. So on that side I’m obligated to refuse freebies.

That’s why the rise of this deadbeat blog has been such a welcome boon.

This blog has no ethics.

So when a friendly VP with a Chicago public relations firm called and said he’d seen www.EightDaysToAmish.com and wanted me and a guest to enjoy a fall menu preview at the Claddagh I didn’t hesitate.

Being one of the South Side’s most enthusiastic social ambassadors, I was already familiar with Claddagh. It’s great.

See, I reside in Latrobe, but I live -- and I mean really live -- in Pittsburgh.

It’s rather rare.

I’ll never forget watching the news in the bar my Latrobe bar the day after the Steelers won the 2009 Super Bowl. A buddy of mine stared up at the South Side revelry and said in wonder, “You know, someday I hope to go to Pittsburgh and have just one beer on the South Side. It just looks like so much fun.”

Dissect that statement and you’re to be forgiven if you conclude I do my drinking with 8 year olds. But this guy was 50 and he’d never been to Pittsburgh’s South Side an hour away.

I decided such petty parochialism needed demolition. Within a week we had a van, a designated driver and about a dozen of us bound for the ‘burgh. Now we do it once every six months or so.

I’d already enjoyed Claddagh, but not like last night. They had trays of salmon cakes, beer-battered shrimp and chicken pot pie all served to the lilting strains of a four-piece Celtic band.

Authentic Irish touches abound. Claddagh not only imports fine Irish whisky, it also imports fine Irish people. Restaurant manager Paul Kennedy is an Emerald Islander who was brought over to run the restaurant. He couldn’t have been a more engaging host.

I’m convinced he’d have kept pouring me Jameson all evening if Val and I hadn’t had to split. And that would have suited me just fine.

It would have been a near-perfect evening even if someone had had the audacity to present a steep bill to a guy with a Palm Features business card.

As we drove home, my wife and I marveled over how the South Side has evolved. Thirty years ago it was a dangerous ghost town.

Then saloon-keeper Bobby Pessolano had the vision to open one red hot tavern, Mario’s, and launch a renaissance that turned the South Side into Pittsburgh’s most lively destination. It’s my favorite neighborhood in my favorite city and if you’re ever in town you call me first and we’ll do it all up right.

We’ll drink beer in Nadine’s and Jack’s, chow on paella at Mallorca, smoke cigars in Bloom’s and spend many enchanting hours in Claddagh where they lavish even humble bloggers with charm and cheer.

Claddagh and the rest of the upscale South Side Works shows just how someplace once so desolate and godforsaken can one day mature and become prosperous.

I wonder if that’s ever going to happen to me.