I’ve seen Ted Cruz speak in four time zones, over 12 years, maybe 13. The first time, he was Texas’s solicitor general, quickly winning over a breakfast crowd at a conservative convention (I think in New Orleans) with stories about defending a veterans’ memorial in the desert. The most recent run-in: Richmond, Ky., on Saturday, when Cruz flew in to support Kelly Craft’s campaign for governor. I was just outside a wedding venue, next to “BBQ straight from Texas” for the event (I’m quoting the sign on the tablecloth), when I heard the line and texted a friend from the 2016 campaign.
“He’s doing ‘vote ten times.’”
Cruz, like anyone who speaks publicly and frequently, has some classic bits. One is his version of The Ask, when a politician urges the crowd that drove in for photo and a speech and in this case Kreuz sausage (two per toothpick) to go forth and do something useful.
“I want you to vote—” brief, dramatic pause — “ten. Times.” Mutters in the crowd, some laughter. “I'm not encouraging voter fraud.” More laughter, still light. “I saw two reporters pull out their notepads — Cruz urges multiple felonies from the stage!” That does it, and there’s a light-hearted laugh at the media. Almost quaint. We started hearing this before we got used to candidates like Kari Lake, who’d go off on the laptop-n-lanyard crowd at the back of the room until the mood curdled, like when Lenny Bruce would read transcripts from his trial.
This was part of a very normal campaign weekend, driving from Louisville to Elizabethtown to Owensboro, then pinging around central Kentucky, talking with candidates and the voters who love them. I met a hype-man for Attorney Gen. Daniel Cameron, who drove to his coffee shop stops to name seven of his best qualities, because “seven is a perfect number and Daniel Cameron is perfect for governor.” State legislators joked about the “beta male” governor vetoing a ban on gender medicine for minors, and how protesters with “green hair” screamed inside the capitol but couldn’t stop it; only when that was over did I notice that the caterer handing out bottled mini-waters had dyed her hair green, too. I watched another candidate patch up the a/c on his 2015 Chevy Silverado, seen above.
Fun way to end the week. Just have to turn it into a story. I used the little downtime I had in Kentucky, a lull after early voting was over, to visit the National Corvette Museum, which was better than I could have hoped. I parked my mini-SUV with Florida plates — the sigil of the rental — across from the long line of CORVETTE ONLY spots. I started at a surviving, dissected model of the first corvette and ended in the atrium that stands over the sinkhole that swallowed eight irreplaceable cars in 2017, an obvious omen. The car that moved me belonged to Roy Orbison; the car I really wanted was the 1953 basic model, all curve and no edge.
Too busy for much else, except Ben Smith’s book party, conveniently down the stairs from my desk. The bad mood I wrote about last week didn’t last. It helped that I’ve followed fashion into reading the stoics, a self-help that I can’t get embarrassed about. “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” Keeping “Meditations” on the Kindle app and looking at it when I start to ruminate has felt like a crutch, but crutches work.
Read more than that, and didn’t buy anything new. Speaking of:
The Best Thing I Read: John Gardner’s “Grendel,” a warped copy I’d gotten for $4 from the front of a big-box store. It was a “Fantasy Masterworks” edition, part of a line of affordable paperbacks with new covers and random numbering, aimed at the male nerd’s obsession with list-making and collectibles. I know the mindset — I’d been on a hedonic treadmill, buying used Library of America editions of stuff that I couldn’t possibly read now — but didn’t need to own these books forever.
“Grendel” felt familiar, because I’d seen the Robert Zemeckis uncanny valley adaptation of “Beowulf” 16 years ago, on a date, and didn’t recognize that version of the story. Zemeckis’s Grendel, voiced by Crispin Glover, was tortured by the ballads played by the Danes, and attacked their great hall defensively. This was straight from Gardner, who writes from the monster’s perspective: “I should have cracked his skull mid-song and sent his blood spraying out wet through the mead hall like a shocking change of key.”
Almost as fun: “The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature.” This is a real artifact, a collection of McSweeney’s short stories written as if by a pretentious gonzo journalist adored by everyone he came across. Fantastic bad writing throughout: “Cuba glistens in the distance, like a glistening jewel.” Two perfect meta-chapters that imagine the author going on Oprah, where the celebrities genuflect to him, and collect fake blurbs, like one from Russell Simmons that calls Pollack “the man to save hip-hop from itself.”
Both hard but necessary giveaways, and it’ll be good for someone else to read them. Didn’t think much of David Yurkovich’s “Less Than Heroes,” loved Michael Kupperman’s “The Autobiography of Mark Twin 1910-2010,” which sends an immortal version of author out on moronic adventures. He has the ability to travel through time if hit in the head — that sort of thing.
The Best Thing I Saw: “Dragged Across Concrete,” the last S. Craig Zahler movie, in which mildly bigoted cops played by Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn chase a professional thief for a corrupt payday. This will sound pat, because it just topped the “Sight and Sound” list, but a lot of Zahler’s decisions reminded me of “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.” He lets moments pass in single spaces, without dialogue, long enough to stir the nervous instinct when no one’s talking. There’s a short story dropped right in the middle, about a woman who came back from maternity leave on the worst possible day, that’s so sad you regret seeing it. Fresh trauma, for anyone who needed more.
The fiancé and I saw the new “Guardians of the Galaxy” on a date night, where I became convinced that the artificial butter at the Loews AMC (which nobody should eat, certainly not me) was rancid. We liked it fine, too long but with enough actual set design — a lab-planet grown from organic tissue, the Guardians slashing into its skin like horseflies — that I enjoyed myself.
The Best Thing I Ate: Hash brown casserole at Elizabethtown’s Back Home restaurant, one of those places that gives you a Dead Zone flash of how retirement will feel. I mean that in the nicest possible way; it was lovely, and it sold this, a variation on the South Dakota dish “cheese potatoes,” crisped and smashed instead of scalloped. Ungodly.
The Best Thing I Heard: Ryuichi Sakamoto’s final playlist, “funeral,” very heavy on Debussy and as minimalist as his film movie. I listened to it while writing this and I’ll finish listening after I send. Enjoy.
Tough that you had to move from one of the great areas of the US (philly) to Kentucky. The Cruz bit strikes me as one of those promos a pro wrestler can pull off as a heel and get a reaction, but if management switches them to a face it'd not work as well. I liked the section on the corvettes, the sinkhole line.
I'm a sucker for short stories, so I'll give the collection a look. AMC popcorn has never been my choice, I was always a sno-caps guy until they discontinued them a few years ago, but the other offerings like pretzel bites over the years I feel have jumped the popcorn.
I used to watch the dead zone TV show cause they had that ds9 lady on it and only found out later that it was based on a Stephen King book. It was the good kinda syndicated tv schlock. The cheese potatoes sound superb.
The Playlist sounds nice. Hope next week is good for finding eats too!