misfitS pOLITICS
We talk. We write. We entertain. Or so we think.
|
Alexandra Fulin Baldwin
Welcome back to "Ask Alex", where I answer all of your stupid questions with even dumber answers. Have a question you need answered? Tweet it, email it or submit it here and I will get to it (maybe) next week.
-------------------------------- We have some pretty random stuff this week, collected during the moments this week when Alex wasn’t using “rich lawyer” as a pejorative or “taxsplain” as foreplay… We’ll start with some restaurant history, courtesy of Daryl’s never-ending interest in Boston. Then we will explore reasons to avoid One World Government Death Cults, discuss holding grudges and reasons that I am a terrible person before moving onto a couple of people who insist on gendering their dogs. Finally, some history, where you learn where my fake name came from, and why Baldwin IV was the coolest Baldwin brother, by a long shot. And then, Kanye, bitches... Submitted by: Daryl What is the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the country...and have you ever eaten there? Well, Daryl, I am glad you asked...let’s do some restaurant history! In Newport, RI there is a restaurant called The White Horse Tavern that first opened as a tavern in...wait for it...1673! For 100 years, it served as a restaurant, tavern and the meeting house for the Rhode Island Colonial General Assembly, Criminal Court and City Council. In 1702, notorious pirate William Mayes, Jr. succeeded his father as innkeeper, protected by the townspeople and causing much embarrassment to officials of the British Colony. The tavern acquired its current name in 1730, and things got a little awkward in 1776 when the innkeeper moved his family out rather than live with the Hessian mercenaries forced upon him by the Brits...but then he came back after the war and all was cool for another 100 or so years. In 1895, the family sold the Inn and it became more of a rooming house and apparently stopped selling food. Yada, yada yada, by 1954 the structure was nearly condemned until it was purchased by a public trust, restored and re-opened as a restaurant. That makes it the oldest...but not continuously operating...restaurant in America. In 1762, on the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets in lower Manhattan, Samuel Fraunces opened a tavern in his newly acquired home. A favorite haunt of the Sons of Liberty, this served as the staging point of a raid by Patriots, dressed as Indians, to dump tea into the harbor in protest of the tea acts...in 1765 (8 years before the much more famous Boston Tea Party). It also served as the location, on December 4, 1783, of General George Washington’s farewell feast for the officers of the Continental Army, and then as the offices of the Departments of Foreign Affairs, War and Finance before the national capital moved to Philadelphia. The building then changed hands, had some fires, was renovated, added to and redesigned so much that no one knows exactly what it looked like in Colonial times anymore. There seems to have been a restaurant there for most of its history, but it has moved around within the building and so has not operated continuously. The building was rescued through a gift from the Grandson of Benjamin Tallmadge in 1904 and became the museum that it remains today. Pretty noteworthy: FALN (Armed Forces for the Liberation of Puerto Rico) set off a bomb at Fraunces Tavern in 1975, killing four people before FALN’s leaders eventually earned a whole bunch of pardons from Bill Clinton and at least one commutation from Barack Obama. I guess we are just letting bygones be bygones... Back to the question, and moving forward to 1776 and north to Essex, CT, we get to the Griswold Inn. Founded by three brothers, and having been run by only six families since then, the Inn has operated a restaurant or taproom or other similar dining facility ever since. I’m going to dock them some serious points for being a central point of the temperance movement before prohibition, though, and for operating as a liquor-free establishment even when they didn’t have to. Thankfully, they have come to their senses... All of which brings us to Boston’s Union Oyster House, operating as a stand-alone restaurant in its current location continuously since 1826. It is only sort of a tourist trap (you should go if you’re in Boston) and yes, I have eaten there on numerous occasions. One special bonus? Along with Doyle’s in Jamaica Plain and a couple other old Boston haunts, the Oyster House is on the Boston Beer Company’s short list of test locations, so they often have a bunch of Sam Adams products that are unavailable anywhere else. And you can sometimes get Sam Summer even in the Winter! (Spoiler alert: it’s not as good.) Known mostly for its famous diners, including anyone who ever mattered in Massachusetts politics, the most interesting patron was probably Louis Phillippe, exiled king of France, who lived on the second floor and taught French lessons for some part of the four years he spent in the United States, and may be responsible for the name of the town of Orleans on Cape Cod (the town split from Eastham during his visit, and the name is possibly in tribute). Also possessor of the single greatest pickup line in the history of maleness: “Hey. I’m the exiled King of France. You want a French lesson?” Funny thing about the Oyster House, though, is that it is within spitting distance of the Bell in Hand (est. 1795) and the Green Dragon (1654 - of Paul Revere fame). Neither of those is in its original location, although the Bell in Hand moved just across the street and still has its original bar, while the Dragon has bounced around a lot more and isn’t necessarily related to the original. The point, though, is that there are some really old bars in Boston... Submitted by: Kane lives in Death Alex, why haven’t you joined the Brotherhood of Nod? Because I am an atheist. I don’t believe in fairy tales, regardless of whether you call them God, Krishna, Allah or Kane. I mean, c’mon...this guy claims that he came to Earth from some unknown planet 8,000 years ago to raise humanity out of its pre-civilized state? That sounds an awful lot like Dianetics to me, L. Ron. And if he was so intent on leading humans to the enlightened promised land, why’d he go fucking around with Joseph Stalin for 20 years? Like the Masons and the Illuminati, the Brotherhood was way cooler when it was still a secret society. Once the Masons started running ads on the radio, it became just a bunch of real estate agents trying to drum up business, and once the Brotherhood came out of hiding, it was just another Progressive super government wannabe that thought it was the only group really enlightened enough to rule the world. Sure, it was cool when they dismantled the UN Global Defense Initiative, but they didn’t restore humanity to its Nation States and local rule, they just replaced the GDI with a whole other Unified Government, this one secular and more fanatical. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. And let this be a lesson to you, Gamers...whenever a government tells you that you need to cede power, freedoms and control so that it can “keep you safe”, you need to be extremely suspicious. This is true in video games, it was true of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, it is true in Harry Potter, and it will remain true for the rest of human history. Government is not you friend, especially when it says that it is! Submitted by: Cookie Monster Is there an accepted amount of time to pass before one should absolutely let bygones be bygones? At work the other day, im in backseat of passenger van,at the door. It's 12°F and wind is blowing. It's colder than the Head Nun's heart,who was boss of where i attended middle school and got my ass whipped regularly,but i digress. So i l look out window and see a couple of civilians freezing and i recognize one that had been a real bastard when he was in uniform and treated is underlings quite shabbily. That was 15 yrs ago. I started to open door to offer shelter but then thought,"fuck that bastard" and continued savoring the warmth of van heater. Is 15 yrs too soon yet to let bygones be bygones? This is the second time in this column that bygones have come up, which brings up an interesting question...can bygones do anything other than be allowed to be bygones? I’m not sure it has any other use in the English language. No one ever talks about “reliving all of those great bygones”... Anyway, if we go by the standard set above, then yes, I think it is time to move on. I mean, if the statute of bygones for murder is somewhere between 23 and 30 years, then the statute on being a real bastard has to be shorter than 15 right? Like maybe 3-5 years, unless there was physical violence involved? However, as we have all established, I am a bitch, and I can hold a grudge like no one’s business. I have some family members who can vouch for that, and you can find a couple of former online friends who will probably willingly testify to my bitchiness. Of course, if they do, I will remind you that they are, alternately; a member of a cult, raising the baby their wife had with another man, or a chick with a mustache...oops. A couple of cousins and aunts “borrowed” some money from my little sister about 13 years ago and I haven’t spoken to most of them since. One called me once to ask if I could help her get a job (she knew that my best friend worked in a hospital she was applying for a job at) and I told her to fuck off. Not figuratively, I mean I actually used the words “Fuck off”. So, really, I encourage you to hold onto that grudge for as long as you’d like! In my defense, two of those family members apologized, returned what they could and seemed legitimately contrite...I forgave them, sort of. I’m not totally opposed to second chances. But I don’t give them out automatically. I, therefore, support your grudge-holding. I wouldn’t necessarily wish bad things to happen to the person...actually, who am I kidding, of course I would! Actual things that I have thought at some point in my life:
What can I say? I’m not nice. Submitted by: WhiteLiar Alex, I have a girl dog, but she's got a deep, loud bark and I tell her she sounds like a boy dog. Will my misgendering her bark do lasting no damage to her psyche? Submitted by: Lady Catherine My girl dog pees on poles. Should I remind her that she is a girl dog or will that do lasting damage to her little psyche? How dare you, the both of you, try and assign a gender to your dogs. You have literally no idea what they are going through or how they identify. You think just because she has 8 teats and no red rocket that she’s automatically a girl? Do you even gender identity?!? Next thing you will be trying to tell me that she can pee on any fire hydrants she wants, even if that means that big, hairy male Wolfhounds are peeing right next to little French Poodle puppies! You are both monsters. MONSTERS. Like, literally, you’re worse than Hitler. I can’t even with you two… I applaud you both for worrying about your dogs’ psyche...canine mental health is one of America’s great under-reported social threats. Without actually checking any data, I am going to assume that it is the #1 cause of lung cancer among non-smokers, and was directly responsible for roughly 80% of the atmospheric carbon added in the last two years. (The stressed dogs eat more legumes, they get gassier...it is a complicated ecosystem). What I simply can’t abide is your insistence that your female dogs are either a) female, or b) dogs. There are literally thousands of genders, and your dog could be any one of them. Sure, it could be a female, but it could also be a male, a subcontinental Hijra, a femme, transsexual, queen, sissy, pangender, agender, bigender, androgyne...you should be appropriately shamed at this point, so I won’t go on. But that isn’t even the worst of it. Earth is populated with millions of species, and just because your companion comes in a body that looks like a dog doesn’t mean it is dog. In fact, it could be a ladybug, or a blue-spotted stingray or even an Asian Royal Fern. Most alarming? It could be a human, which means that by owning the dog, or really any pet, you are literally owning another human being and its offspring. That’s right, all pet owners are basically the same as slaveholders. So, yea, you think I was kidding about the Hitler comment? No way… Submitted by: Simon Which Baldwins are decent? None of us. We are all pretty terrible people. Actually, you know who was decent? Baldwin IV, the Leper King of Jerusalem (TrueFact: Alexander the Great, the Emperor Fulin and Baldwin IV...put them together and you get my name...get it?). So, first of all, major bummer, Baldwin was born with leprosy in 1161, which totally sucked. Or, maybe he acquired it at a young age...it’s hard to tell. He also acquired the throne at a young age, 13, and the mother of all enemies, legendary medieval battle commander and Muslim leader Saladin. In 1177, Saladin, fresh off ruining a bunch of Europe’s great armies in their ill-conceived crusades to the Holy Land, set his sights on Jerusalem and its child king. Baldwin, though, was no flappy-skinned child...in fact, he was pretty well prepared for this. Using the education acquired from the Archbishop of Tyne (one of the eras great intellects), Baldwin raised an army, solicited the help of the Knights Templar, organized the defenses of the city and beat back Saladin’s Army. {Longer version: he and the Templars were both so badly outmaneuvered by Saladin into a seemingly impossible position that the Muslim commander totally lost track of him and Baldwin’s cavalry caught Saladin’s Army by surprise at Montgisard and decimated the battle-hardened 26,000 man force so thoroughly as to force Saladin and the remnant of his force all the way back to Egypt. It was the worst military defeat of Saladin’s life.} For this, 15 year old Baldwin became a hero of his people, defender of Christendom and inspiration to everyone born with Leprosy, I guess. {Epilogue: the real hero of this story is probably Saladin, who regrouped in Egypt, returned with another army, defeated Baldwin In several places, destroyed several Templar strongholds and forced Baldwin to ask for peace. He then won a whole bunch of wars against different Crusaders, conquered almost the entire modern Middle East and finally, in 1187. Then Richard the Lionheart showed up and kinda beat the shit out of Saladin, although he offered to stop if Saladin would agree that his brother convert to Christianity, marry Richard’s sister Joan and then the two of them take Jerusalem as a wedding gift.} ----------------- Alex’s random old song of the week For no reason at all, other than his super obnoxious personality sometimes causing us to forget that he is kinda awesome...Kanye and the horribly offensive, impossibly catchy Gold Digger.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
MisfitsJust a gaggle of people from all over who have similar interests and loud opinions mixed with a dose of humor. We met on Twitter. Archives
January 2024
|
RSS Feed