He's No Andy Kaufman

I’d like to start out today’s column with a warning: Do Not See the Borat Movie (Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan)! Of course by this time, I’m sure you’ve already seen it or decided not to, but in case you’re still on the fence, just don’t. I’m not suggesting a boycott on moral or ethical grounds, nor am I presuming to impose my taste on you; I’m just saying this: Do Not See the Borat Movie. If you ignore my warning and go see it anyway, you won’t have old Bruck to blame.

I think we’re all familiar with the Borat character and his basic shtick – he goes around posing as a socially backward documentary reporter from Kazakhstan, and films contrived interviews and situations with purportedly normal people, making them look like racists, bigots, or just plain fools in the process. Borat is a character played by the British comedian Sasha Baron Cohen, who also plays other characters such as Ali G, the inept gangster, and Bruno, the over-the-top-gay Austrian fashion designer. Some reviewers claim that he’s making a grand statement about American prejudices and other weaknesses. I think he’s, well, never mind what I think, just don’t see the movie. Or if you do have some irrepressible urge to see it, wait till it comes out on DVD, then watch it with your thumb positioned over the fast-forward button ready for immediate action.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’m here to talk about the original shock comedian / outrageous performance artist, Andy Kaufman.

I think most of you are old enough to remember Taxi, the sitcom about a taxi company in New York that ran in the late 70’s. Kaufman played Latka Gravas, the loveable, wide-eyed, bumbling immigrant from communist eastern Europe. Latka on Taxi grew out of one of Kaufman’s stage personae, “Foreign Man,” and was pretty tame compared to Kaufman’s other characters.

Early in his career, Kaufman had an obsession with Elvis Presley, and is widely credited with inventing the art form of Elvis impersonation and launching that industry. Kaufman is reputed to have made a pilgrimage to L.A. to visit the King, hid in a kitchen cabinet, and jumped out when Elvis wandered by.

In the late 70’s and early 80’s, Kaufman, calling himself the world’s first Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion, maintained an offer of $1000 to any woman who could pin him in a wrestling match. Of the over 400 takers, none succeeded, although a few matches ended in a draw, and Kaufman didn’t always walk away unscathed.

Another of Kaufman’s characters was Tony Clifton, an obnoxious, raunchy, talentless lounge singer. Sometimes Kaufman played Clifton as a warm up act to his own, and sometimes Tony Clifton was played by others such as Kaufman's brother Michael or friend Bob Zmuda. In any case, Kaufman and Tony Clifton never appeared together. There was some contrived controversy over the Tony Clifton character, over whether or not it was really Kaufman, and once, Kaufman purportedly planted himself in the audience during a Tony Clifton act, and loudly heckled him, accusing him of being Kaufman. In another instance, Kaufman negotiated to have Tony Clifton written into an episode of Taxi, but once on the set, Tony Clifton's behavior got him thrown out of the ABC studios..

These are just a few of Kaufman's antics; there were many more, both on and off stage, some of which aren’t printable in a “family-friendly” blog. In fact, his whole life was an outrageous performance – he seemed not to have a line of demarcation between life and performance.

So what’s this got to do with Borat? All the hype about Borat, the movie, the lawsuits, the general notoriety, etc., has got me thinking about the truly visionary lunatic Andy Kaufman again. So basically what I’m saying is if that’s the kind of thing you like about Borat, you’ll do well to rent some Andy Kaufman footage.

Okay, I’ll admit, the way Borat decimated the genteel southern dinner party had me ROFLMBO. I think I got a hernia when, upon returning from a conspicuous trip to the restroom, he asked the hostess what to do with his baggie of stool.

Vintage VOB - Yakitori, the Other White Meat!

Faithful readers - in today's missive, we blow a little dust off of the VOB archives with a retrospective on Japanese culinary delights. The following column was originally published in the VOBNS on November 4th, 2001, following one of Bruck's trips to Japan on company business. Itadakimasu! (Japanese for "let's eat".)


Tastes Like Chicken

Before I left for Japan, young David, son of Bruck, planted a note in my suitcase with a simple directive: Dear Dad: Eat some grose food. Love, David.

We arrived late in Nagoya, having lost two hours in Detroit to a fuel pump repair on our 747. We then took the train to Kobe where we were to spend the night. With no time to catch dinner at any of the local restaurants, I ordered a light snack of fried beef from room service. We discovered the next day that mad cow disease had just struck Japan, but hey, you've still got a better chance of getting hit by a bus.

We've made several trips to Japan by this time, and have noted that our hosts never drive us from the hotel in Himeji to their offices in Tokonabe by the same route. We've speculated with some amusement as to why this might be, but never actually discovered why. That is, until the other day. Mr. Masoto (not his real name) informed us that it's the company's management policy to never follow the same route in commuting during overseas travel, in order to avoid kidnapping or other malfeasance. Evidently they apply the same philosophy to guests traveling in their own country as well, although my vulnerability to kidnap is considerably less than that of getting hit by a bus. The joke would be on them anyway; the employer of Bruck would probably pay them to keep me!

But apparently it was with this same spirit of protectiveness that our hosts sought to shield us from the perils of mad cow disease by taking us to a Yakitori (baked chicken) restaurant. Baked chicken, what could possibly be more benign? We have grown accustomed to exotic and unlikely cuisine, as alert VOB readers have already noted, and some of us, your faithful editor included, have even grown to like it. We do have some minor stipulations on our culinary thrill-seeking. I have a severe allergy to shellfish, so I have to avoid the crustacean hazards. Jay (not his real name) cannot comfortably digest raw fish or meat; Hashim (not his real name) avoids pork for religious reasons; Bob (his real name) inhales all food and drink in front of him like a shop-vac. Other than that, we're pretty flexible, and even somewhat ambitious regarding the variety and state of the proteins we ingest. So we were actually a little taken aback when our hosts informed us that we were going out after work for baked chicken.

With the arrival of the appetizer, we immediately discovered that not all the chicken was going to be baked, or even cooked. It consisted of a small dish of raw, skinless pieces of dark meat, lightly toasted around the perimeter, in a tangy, sweet vinegar sauce with orange caviar. Of course, we must commend the remarkably efficient Japanese for their frugality in not wasting food, and for their resourcefulness in its definition and scope. The skin from the chicken pieces in the first dish of our appetizer appeared, also raw, in the second dish of our appetizer, along with some mixed greens in a light, tangy vinegar and soy sauce.

Proving that God is not dead, although He apparently takes an occasional nap, the balance of the meal was cooked. The first course consisted of small chunks of white meat on little skewers, in teriyaki sauce, and tubes of ground chicken, also on skewers, like city chicken. Had the meal ended at this point, we may have escaped slightly hungry, but with our sense of normalcy still somewhat intact. But this was not to be. With the second course, we embarked on a journey from which we won't soon return. It consisted of little chunks of chicken liver on one set of skewers, and thickly folded pieces of roasted chicken skin on another set.

The third course propelled us further along this trajectory with what appeared to be gizzards on one set of skewers, and a mottled conglomeration of mysterious organic substances of various shapes and textures on the other. The meat on the gizzard skewer was nicely grilled with a pleasant marinade, but was quite chewy. At one point a chunk of it fell out of my chopsticks and bounced a couple of times on my plate. Our hosts claimed that it was the stomach, or it might be the intestine. I still think it was gizzard. The mystery meat had a combination of flavors as strange and unappealing as its appearance, so one skewer was enough for the palate of Bruck. Our hosts, themselves not sure what it was, asked the waitress who calmly and politely identified the round protuberances as testicles. So apparently roosters also actively participated in our meal. "We can't explain what the rest of it is," they allowed. That's okay, we don't think we want to know.

The fourth course consisted of "chicken tails." It was the tail alright, no attempt having been made to conceal the reproductive passageway. It was kind of chewy and pretty fatty, had some cartilage in it, and was otherwise pretty tasteless.

The final courses brought us gently back to reality with skewers of barbecued "normal meat," as our host referred to it, slices of chicken breast on rice with seaweed, and clear soup with a chicken meatball. But at this point our gai-jin appetites had already been stretched beyond yielding.

Dear David: I ate some grose food. Love, Dad. My therapist says that eventually I'll stop suffering from recurring nightmares of being chased by giant roosters with scissors.

WWJB?

I'm asking for a little audience participation with today's post - somebody please explain exactly what message the driver of this vehicle is trying to get across. Click on the pic for a larger image.

Ancillary information: the photo was snapped by the exquisite Mrs. Bruck in Washington, DC, adjacent to the mall (note: in DC, "the mall" is not a shopping mall - it's just a big field with no stores at all) on the Friday after Thanksgiving. The vehicle was a small SUV with Maryland plates, whited out to protect the guilty. We made sure to include the Army sticker in the pic.

By itself, I would think the WWJB sticker was an anti-war statement, using a measure of absurdity to make that point, but what derails my tenuous train of thought is the US Army sticker on the same bumper--these are normally displayed by GIs or close relatives or friends thereof.

So... please help me out here! What do you think? Anti-war soldier? Pro-war humorist (I didn't see a "Give War a Chance" sticker on the same vehicle)? Something else? I anxiously await your advice.