The holiday sugar coma of a Kit Kat Cottage

 

The delirium of social media delivered an appealing idea: instead of building a ginger bread house for the holidays, you can create a small log cabin-like home using Kit Kat bars. The idea on its face was sound: Kit Kat bars are more delicious and are easier to eat than plain gingerbread.

I mentioned the idea to my daughters, looking to incorporate it into our holiday traditions. We can feast upon the Kit Kat Cottage with our eggnog amid the dulcet tones of holiday music. Their agreement was a positive reinforcement I didn’t really need to make additional plans for holiday gluttony.

The kits available online would not be delivered until after the holidays; it was time to buy the raw ingredients and make do. The kits come with larger-size Kit Kat bars, sometimes of different flavors of chocolate to help with variety such as having a roof of a different color.

I did not have the easier work of the Kit Kat Cottage Kit – I had to work with the raw ingredients as they were normally bought in a store. A box of 36 Kit Kat bars from the local BJs (BJs is like Costco or Sams Club and stands for Berkley & Jensen – flashing your BJs membership card will only get you the pleasure of buying in bulk) provided more than enough basic building materials. Regular and white chocolate chips to melt for our cottage cement, and thin peanut butter cups and a small tube of decorative green frosting to make wreaths and we had what we needed.

We began construction on Christmas Eve, expecting that the house would come together quickly, but it was not to be. We had to glue the normal-size Kit Kats together with melted chocolate so that the pieces would be big enough to create a cottage of respectable size. The regular chocolate chips didn’t melt into a strong enough adhesive, so we had to switch and re-glue everything using the white chocolate chips. Then once those dried we put together the cottage. Time dragged on, especially with the builders having to eat all the spare and broken Kit Kat pieces, both to ensure we were not poisoned and to not leave any crumbs that would attract insects. We had to finish the cottage on Christmas evening.

After a third round of dedicated construction, including the last-minute addition of a chimney and peppermint crunch Andes candies as windows, our Kit Kat Cottage was complete. As a house it is a dilapidated shambles that Willy Wonka wouldn’t piss on, but as a dessert is a commitment to decadent deliciousness. We admired our creation, but it was too late to begin eating on Christmas night.

The day after Christmas my children and I began eating the Kit Kat Cottage. It is taking us longer to do than I had anticipated. Five days later, after several desserts with my children and a few rare solo desserts specifically dedicated to making progress on this thing, we still have a way to go.

We will literally be eating this thing into the New Year. The sugar and preservatives are such that there are no signs of this dessert going stale. I can possibly bequeath the remains of the cottage to my future grandchildren, though by then such foods may be outlawed.

The Kit Cat Cottage is delicious, but it reminds me why I cut down on sweets except for special occasions. I want to make progress and not let this effort go to waste, but my body is not accustomed to eating sweets regularly and I fall into a sugar coma that makes me feel sluggish and useless.

The Kit Kat Cottage may be a tradition that is here to stay. Or it may be a holiday tradition that can be forgotten quickly and succumb to the need for better health. Wish me luck.

Embrace being politically homeless

 

I remember standing in the Atlanta airport the day after Election Day in 2004, watching John Kerry and John Edwards give concession speeches. I was dumbfounded that America could vote for a second George W. Bush administration. How could any thinking person cast their ballot for such a vacuous disaster as that?

George W. Bush had neither the intelligence nor the dignified manner to hold the office of president. He was tested in his first term by the enormous events of September 11, 2001 and failed miserably by falling prey to his coterie of ambitious and careless advisors. His invasion of Iraq got thousands of Americans killed needlessly; it further destabilized the Middle East and made the mullahs of Iran more powerful.

Four years later, John Kerry was not a perfect candidate, but he wasn’t George W. Bush, and that was all that mattered. The infuriating absurdity of the George W. Bush presidency was compounded tenfold by a public that took this empty suit seriously; many even thought it was some kind of patriot duty to vote for him.

So when Donald Trump won re-election earlier this month, I felt like I understood people who were morally outraged and angry at their fellow Americans. When your opposition candidate is an unqualified absurdity, a high level of moral outrage is natural. I’ve been there.

But I no longer rank among people emotionally swayed by election results. I’ve embraced political homelessness, and with that comes great freedom.

Maybe it’s a certain level of age and experience, or a knowing cynicism that has crept into my worldview, but I don’t see the world in the same black-and-white landscape of good and evil that I did in 2004.

Maybe it is my background working as a financial journalist that allows me to look at issues and policies more clinically and with a sense of emotional detachment. I’ve learned to look at what people actually do and what facts on the ground are, and pay little attention to rhetoric.

I’ve come to expect the worst from everyone and so I’m rarely surprised or disappointed. Of course, the government is going to abuse its power, it wouldn’t have attained power if they hadn’t planned on using it. I’m often saying to my friends, regardless of their political affiliation, “Your side did this too.”

So I went into the presidential election predicting that Donald Trump would win and confident that I wouldn’t be happy with either outcome. I’ve seen Democrats and Republicans sacrifice principles for political advantage repeatedly, over multiple election cycles, to the point that I know neither is capable of keeping its word or staying grounded.

But while I have lost whatever faith I had in the American political system, I have not lost faith in America. If anything, our country shows us over and over again that it is resilient and capable. America exists in a superior plane far above our wretched politics. George W. Bush and his cabinet of incompetents deserve to smolder in the ash heap of history, but the people who voted for him were mostly decent people who loved their country and felt wounded by being attacked. The Trump supporters who put him back into office have seen their grocery bills triple.

There is so much more consensus on vital issues than we’re led to believe, and in the real world, if people are able to meet on their own terms, they can build meaningful bridges with neighbors and political opponents. It’s being done on the local level around the country every day.

So, if you’ve become frustrated and disillusioned, political homelessness may be for you. It won’t cure all frustration and aggravation with American politics, but you won’t blow a head gasket when the next unqualified hot mess takes the Oval Office.

America’s greatest tennis hero is a pro-wrestling manager

 

The U.S. Open has recently concluded here in New York. It is one of the tennis world’s grand slam tournaments and makes dreams come true for thousands of fans. Tennis discovers new heroes and heroines and celebrates the champions crowned on the court of Arthur Ashe stadium.

Despite being exposed to tennis on a grand scale every year, I never think of a tennis player when I see a tennis racket. I think of Jim Cornette.

Jim Cornette is a professional wrestling personality who has been an inside player at the top of the pro-wrestling world for decades. I became a fan of Cornette’s watching wrestling on TV as a kid in the 1980s. Cornette was a terrific heel (bad guy) manager, and his character was that of a spoiled rich kid who brazenly bragged about the support he got from his momma. His principal prop was the ubiquitous tennis racket he always carried.

The tennis racket in Cornette’s hand was not just a totem of perpetual un-earned wealth that flaunted his status above the rank-and-file working-class wrestling fans, it was also a constant threat of illicit violence, and Cornette didn’t hesitate to use it against opponents of his wrestlers.

Cornette, like other great heels of his day like Rowdy Roddy Piper (my personal Greatest of All Time), got audiences to hate him passionately. When Cornette was eventually smacked down by one of the baby faces (good guy wrestlers), the crowd cheered loudly. Cornette made being hated look cool, and wrestling fans love him for it.

In addition to his career as a wrestling manager, Cornette served as a promoter and creative director, working behind the scenes during some of the most historic events of pro-wrestling history. He still has a hand in the wrestling world, and hosts podcasts.

As a commentator, Cornette combines a folksy Southern persona with a razor-sharp wit, and levels devastating criticism with an inside knowledge of pro-wresting that would shame most fans.

Pro-wrestling was born from the world of the traveling carnival circuit, and retains a patina of carney culture. Fans are “marks” and wrestlers stay in character by “keeping kayfabe.” A truthful interview or a real fight is a “shoot.” Despite the millions of dollars spent on production values of today’s top wrestling promotions, wrestling has never party with the shifty underworld of the carney life.

Almost every behind-the-scenes documentary about pro wrestling involves shady business deals, rampant substance abuse, broken bodies and early death.

Cornette serves as both pro-wrestling’s greatest source of inside insight while being one its most stalwart defenders. He lets us in on how the sausage is made, while also advocating for its more old-school customs and traditions. He has little patience for the tabloid, lowest-common-denominator approach that became popular a few decades ago.

Cornette will not hold back if he sees something wrong, and some of his real-life feuds have become more famous than any scripted in-ring storyline. Do an internet search for “Jim Cornette shoots on…” and you’ll find a trove of strong opinions dished out with well-said sarcastic aplomb.

Jim Cornette continues to be a great asset to pro-wrestling, and because of the boundless joy he brought to fans as a classic bad guy, the tennis racket will always mean Jim Cornette to me.