2016 Mid-Term Report

It’s As Bad as You Would Think It Is

It’s that time in the summer when the tomatoes come in. I had about forty on my desk and was trying to break them up into groups. I have a slicing group, a sauce group, a desiccate in the oven and freeze group, and then a bunch that I leave on the kitchen window sill to rot and provide habitat for fruit flies. You might not know this, but the fruit flies in my kitchen consider me a god.

Joe was in his chair watching the Rio Olympics on his iPad. He was saying to himself, “One…. two… three… and over the boat goes.”

I said “What are you watching, an Olympic disaster highlight mashup?”

“No”, he said, “I’m watching it live.”

“How did you know that the Romanian pair was going to catch a crab and capsize their shell?” I asked, “That never happens at the Olympic level.”

“I knew because I bet on the race,” he said.

“The fix is in with the Olympics?” I asked.

“The fixes are in with the Olympics,” he said laughing, “From start to finish the Olympics are like a field day for corruption.”

“What about the picking of designers for the team outfits. Those choices were made on the merits of the outfits, don’t you think?”

Joe had stopped listening. He was watching some 20-year-old from Santa Barbara play ping-pong.

“Table tennis,” Joe said, “They call it table tennis, not ‘ping-pong.’”

“Leave me alone,” I said. “I hate it when you read what I write as I’m writing it.”

I went back to sorting tomatoes. There was a giant black krim that I was admiring when Sam Hughes walked in.

“Getting ready to make an artisan bloody Mary, Gutbloom?” he asked.

He had breezed into the office in the way that only a giant man with an outsized head, hard shoes, and a tweed jacket can “breeze.” Then he threw something on my desk. Right on top of the tomatoes. It looked like this:

“Wow,” I said, “You actually had it printed and gave it a perfect binding this year? Why didn’t you just bury a link to the .pdf somewhere in the “About Us” section of the web site?”

“Turn to page 5,” he said.

I know that when Sam Hughes isn’t willing to be gregarious I’m in big trouble. I turned to page five.

“Hey,” I said, “This is the same chart as last year.”

“The financials are exactly the same as last year and it was after 4:20 in the afternoon when the accountants finished the numbers so there was no chance the art department could make a new one.”

He picked up one of the tomatoes on my desk, looked at me and said, “do you mind?”

I didn’t say anything in reply, and, taking that as assent, he bit into the baseball sized tomato as if it were an apple. A huge bite. It never occurred to me that you could eat a tomato like that. He took out a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to stop the juice from running down his chin. As he was chewing he said, “You’re fucked, Gutbloom. You didn’t do anything you were supposed to do. You didn’t create any native advertising for Seidner’s mayonnaise, Bess Eat’n donuts, Tab, or Junket… you haven’t run the chumboxes, and you haven’t let the bots do the work. You are out of money, and this is traditionally the time you come and start begging for cash to have some kind of stupid late summer ‘party.’ Hey Joe, what are the odds that Gutbloom is going to get to have a Septemberfest this year?’”

“Thirteen to one,” said Joe. “A two dollar bet pays $28 if he has the party.”

Hughes gave me a satisfied side-eye and turned his attention to the tomato again.

Not to be outdone, I picked up a softball sized Burbank and held it before me as if to inspect it. “What you don’t know, Mr. Hughes,” I said, “Is that I have declared my candidacy for Mayor of Medium and the Septemberfest will be a ‘legitimate campaign expense.” I bit into the tomato. The juice went all over my jacket and trousers.

Hughes laughed his loud, deep-chested laugh. “Joe,” he said, “What is the average contribution to the Gutbloom campaign?”

“Twenty seven dollars,” Joe replied.

“And how many contributions has he received?” Asked Hughes.

“Three,” said Joe.

“You see, Gutbloom, you’re fucked. Run the fucking chum box will you?” He threw the core of his tomato into the waste basket. “And stop writing about Clinton. There’s nothing funny about Clinton. Even the bots know that. And they don’t understand humor.”

The light on the ASS42000 on my desk lit up. Hughes walked out. I was too busy cleaning up the tomato spooge on my lap to watch him go.

“What are we going to do?” Asked Joe. For a supposedly savvy guy, Joe doesn’t see all the angles. Not at all.

“We’re going to change Septemberfest to a field day.” I said.

“A field day?” Joe asked.

“Yea, if everyone in the world can make money on amateur sports, so can we. We may have to switch the pinata court back to a badminton court and get the ping-pong table out of the basement.”

“Table tennis table,” Joe corrected.

“Tell the Swede that we need the turnbuckles back and tell Persephone that she has to brush hog the sheep’s meadow and cut new cabers.”

“Should I run the chum box,” Joe asked.

“Sure,” I said, “It can’t hurt.”