Jonathan Cheng, of the Wall Street Journal, Hunts the Origin of Poutine

Jonathen Chang, of the Wall Street Journal

A graduate in History from Princeton University, Canadian Jonathan Cheng takes antiquity seriously. With his broad archival perspective, he makes the perfect reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where he has earned the Ludwig von Drake Award for Pensive Reporting five years in a row.

Because of his Canadian heritage, Mr. Cheng has taken upon himself the challenge of chronicling the history of Poutine -- that calorie-crammed, starch-infested, gravy-swaddled ethnic dish that not only is served at most major hockey arenas but actually tastes like most major hockey arenas. 

Mr. Cheng became enamored of the subject as a child, when he would follow the wandering cabanes a patates from town to town, fascinated by their deep rich smell and the traditional cry of the driver: "Excelsior!"   His parents, horrified that he would grow up with Poutine as an idee fixe, becoming an itinerant Poutine Bum, forbade him to ever sample the stuff. Naturally, as a rebellious adolescent, he did partake of the forbidden fruit, so to speak, and now has Poutine flown in from CanLan Ice Sports Arena in Toronto to his office in Seoul once a week. 

His research so far has revealed that the origin of Poutine probably occured in 1955 near the town of Drummondville in the Centre-du-Quebec region. Mr. Cheng was instrumental in having the Canadian Intellectual Property Office put up a brass plaque stating this discovery on a telephone pole outside of the major Canada Post store in town.

But Mr. Cheng's celebrated Poutine research has not been all skittles and beer. There are dark forces at work, wishing to discredit his discoveries. The neighboring towns of Warwick and Princeville are determined that the accolades of Canada and the entire world should be theirs for inventing Poutine -- and they have launched a smear campaign against Mr. Cheng, manufacturing canards and fake news to the effect that Mr. Cheng prefers Tater Tots over Poutine, and regularly pours ketchup over his Poutine, eschewing the brown gravy. This recently led to a lynch mob from the Canadian Embassy in Seoul converging on Mr. Cheng's office, wild-eyed and reeking of Molson, ready to string the intrepid reporter up. Luckily it was Mr. Cheng's day off and he was holed up at the Hello Kitty Cafe safe from the howling mob.

Mr. Cheng is also engaged in reenacting the Battle of Guju using miniature models carved from horse chestnuts. These are on display at the Tate Gallery in London. 

Mr. Cheng replied to his new profile by email, thus:

Um, thank you! This is...wonderful!

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A letter to Madel Paddle

Hey there, Madel Paddle -- what's cookin', good lookin'?

I used that phrase on a shapely brunette that just moved into our apartment building two weeks ago, named Marilyn, from Cleveland. She has a little pointy nose, cute as a bug's ear, and she towers over me by about four inches. I met her the other morning over at Fresh Market while I was picking up my morning bagel. Unlike all the other old fossils that inhabit these wrinkled halls she still looks to be in the prime of life and ready for a little action. I wouldn't mind obliging her; squiring her around to dinner and a movie and maybe a little canoodling afterwards. But she is continually flanked by a phalanx of termagants and harpies who claim to be 'showing her the ropes' but in reality are keeping her away from amorous old geezers like me. Curse their rhinoceros hides!

Oh well, I'll chat her up tomorrow during the Potluck. I'm making Hungarian Goulash and she has told me she just loves Hungarian Goulash, so I'm gonna elbow my way into the seat next to her for a little tete-a-tete and offer to share my recipe with her if she wants. We'll see where that gambit gets me. Probably nowhere fast. Just when I start getting romantic notions my body betrays me by starting to fall asleep before my brain does. I went to the doc yesterday for a skin biopsy and he tells me I now have Hypercalcemia, whatever the heck that is, and will probably have a recurrence of kidney stones and may start suffering from narcolepsy. The endocrinologist I'm supposed to see to get this fixed, by the name of Soubhi Nizim, is in Mumbai visiting his parents for a month. Drat!  

I find myself in a horrid mood today, Saturday. Sarah and the kids were supposed to come over to help me go shopping for a new shower curtain, bath mat, and wooden salad bowl -- I am obsessed with obtaining all three items immediately. But she had to cancel cuz of some dumb refurbishing project she's working on with a wooden chest of drawers -- she can't finish it today and take me shopping at the same time. Phooey on her, I say. I was all set to enjoy their company and now I won't see them -- well, not until this coming Monday, anyway, when Sarah is doing our FHE out in the lobby on how to make krumkake. So really I shouldn't be cranky at all -- but I can't convince myself not to be owly today. (I see you just played 'leach' for 22 points on the FB WordPlay game we've been doing for the past week -- and that makes me MADDER STILL.)

I have no earthly reason to be grouchy this afternoon. I just got back from shopping at Fresh Market. I love shopping for groceries, and I always buy whatever strikes my fancy, no matter what it costs. This afternoon I bought a charcuterie sampler pack that cost fourteen dollars -- just a bunch of different kinds of French salami slices. But I had to have it, and now I'm gloating over how good they'll taste on a plain buttered bagel, with a large slice of brie cheese on the side. And I found an old Bob Hope movie on YouTube that I've never seen before -- My Favorite Blonde, from 1942, when Hope was still doing good sight gags. The movie even has Jerry Colonna in it --- one of my favorite character actors. So that should make me feel good -- but it doesn't. 

Of course it's cloudy and cold here today, but I like cloudy weather; the sun and I are no longer on speaking terms. So that shouldn't make me moody.

I slept fairly well last night, so don't have a sleep deprivation headache today. When I say I slept well I mean that I fell asleep reading a book last night at 8:30, woke up at ten, put on my pajamas, went back to bed and slept until 11, then got up to pee and soak my feet in a tub of water I keep handy by my living room recliner for when my feet feel on fire (which they do about twice a day), then snuggled into my recliner with a soft blanket and pillow and slept until 2, when I had to get up to pee again, and took 2 aspirin, and then got back into bed, waking up at 4:30 to pee once more and drink a glass of chocolate milk cuz I was so thirsty, and then went back to the recliner and dreamed about baobab trees until 6:30 and then got up feeling so good that I wrote a beautiful peace of humor about Jo Craven McGinty, a statistician for the Wall Street Journal who is a big fan of my verses. I posted it and sent her a copy and she replied by saying you can't have too many bezoars (you'll have to read the post to understand what she meant by that.)

So I can't use lack of sleep as an excuse for my bile. In fact, it's two in the afternoon right now and I haven't had a nap yet -- that's amazing cuz usually by eleven in the morning I'm in a semi-coma and stumble back to bed for an hour or two of sawing logs. 

Perhaps it's because I didn't shave today that I'm feeling out of sorts. I feel like a bindlestiff when I don't shave -- but the growth they shaved off for a biopsy yesterday is on my right jowl and it's still oozing blood, so I didn't want to irritate it any further until it stops bleeding completely. 

The fact of the matter is that I can't think of a single thing right now that would make me feel better. Except, perhaps, to call you up for a pleasant conversation. But that would mean this letter has all been a waste of time. No, I'll send this as an email and won't call you, and so continue to feel crummy for the rest of the day. 

Typical male thinking.

Take care, my little jacamar.  

Ever thine, Dad.  

How Jo Craven McGinty Overcame Her Mathemaphobia

Jo Craven McGinty, of the Wall Street Journal

It has been a long, hard struggle for Ms. McGinty and her congenital mathemaphobia. As an infant she screamed in terror at the sight of wooden blocks with numbers painted on them. As a child she had but a garbled conception of the numeric system, singing in an innocent voice:

"One, Five, a big bee hive."

"Eleven, nine, the old log pine."

"Three, zero, a big fat gyro."

In grade school her arithmetic scores were so abysmal that she was put in a Special Learning classroom that consisted of her and sixteen garden gnomes from neighboring homes. And she still got the lowest score in the class.

Worried about her future, her family did their best to prepare her for a career where math, or even just the ability to count sequentially, was not needed. They encouraged her to either run for Congress or become a banker.

Unable to face the bleak future her family predicted for her, Ms. McGinty ran away from home at the age of sixteen to join the circus as a ticket seller. Her manner of selling 'ducats' (circus lingo for tickets) was so chaotic and bizarre that she inevitably shortchanged her customers -- who preferred to lose a few dollars rather than endure Ms. McGinty's explanation of how 7 goes into 28 thirteen times. 

Circus management was not slow to recognize her unique business acumen, and consequently raised her salary and gave her a private table in the cook tent. Her future was assured, until she accidentally spilled a plate of pork and beans on the show's star attraction, Swami Herzog. The Swami was so incensed that he immediately cursed her with the algebraic genius of an Einstein -- and her circus career was dead as a door nail. 

Abandoned to perish on the side of the road by the heartless circus brass, Ms. McGinty was saved from starvation by a kindly reporter from the Durham Sun, who brought her to his home, cleaned her up, and gave her a job at the paper counting subscription revenue. From there it was only a hop, skip, and a jump, to her current position as numbers specialist for the Wall Street Journal. 

Her advice to young reporters just starting out in analyzing the numbers behind the stories is:  "Count your blessings, then make sure to deduct the sin tax." 

When not caressing her abacus, Ms. McGinty likes to collect bezoars. 

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Maura Judkis, a Modern Day Hungerkunstler.

Maura Judkis, of the Washington Post

When Ms. Judkis graduated from the University of Southern California in 2011 the world was not just her oyster but her Oysters Rockefeller. Working for the Washington Post as a chronicler of food, culture, and belle arti, her motto was: "Eat, drink, and be merry -- for tomorrow we get to do it all over again!" 

She collected awards for her journalism the way other people collect bottle caps -- effortlessly and constantly. 

But then, in a sudden attempt to better her artistic sensibilities, she began studying the work of Kafka -- and that was her undoing.

She started with his short story "A Hunger Artist." In it, a nameless protagonist explains the art and philosophy behind prolonged fasting. His fasting technique is so well received that he is locked up in a cage and put on display. At first he is treated as a celebrity, but gradually over the years the public loses interest in his long fasts and one day his emaciated body is callously removed from public view and just before he dies he confesses that the reason he went hungry voluntarily was that he could never find any food that he really liked. 

This strange tale struck Ms. Judkis like a thunderbolt, because it made her realize that she, too, had never found any kind of comestible that she really enjoyed. Tokay wine tasted like thin vinegar to her. A crusty baguette, direct from the oven, seemed but a puffed up Saltine cracker. Kyoto beef was indistinguishable from a Slim Jim. And a Grand Marnier souffle was as insubstantial and unfulfilling as a strand of gossamer. 

Her whole existence, her vibrant joie de vivre, was but a farce and a sham. Retiring to her country estate in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, Ms. Judkis reexamined her priorities and dietary excesses. She read extensively from the Bible, the Quran, and the Bhagavad Gita. And at last, after several months of inner turmoil and spiritual kerfuffle, she emerged with a new sense of purpose and an artistic maturity that startled her colleagues and amazed her readers. No longer the giddy sybarite, she now writes with a philosophical calm and penetrating insight about deep subjects like eating a burrito from the middle and the vagaries of candy corn that leaves the critics breathless.   

Her one remaining vice is a fondness for White Castle hamburgers washed down with a Big Red creme soda. She donates her entire salary to the Zez Comfrey Music Preservation Society. 

After reading this profile, Maura Judkis emailed me her response, thus:  I love this, Tim! You nailed it. Thank you for the great start to my weekend :)

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New York Times Reporter Held Hostage by Pigeons!

Andy Newman, pigeon hostage

It all started on a mild spring morning last year, when Andy Newman, a reporter for the New York Times, was taking his daily constitutional through Central Park. Skirting a viaduct and gamboling gaily through a gazebo, Mr. Newman was as lighthearted as a jelly donut. But his life, which up until then had been one of unexampled jubilation, was about to take a very dark turn.

As he skipped gaily along the sidewalk he nearly stepped on two miserable-looking pigeons, sprawled in his way. Naturally compassionate, Mr. Newman bent down to shoo the two loitering birds out of his path. But they refused to budge, and one of them, after emitting a loud belch, asked him for a cigarette. 

When he told them he didn't smoke the two birds eyed him narrowly, then collapsed in a heap of dirty feathers, moaning softly.

Fearing they were injured, Mr. Newman scooped up the two birds and swiftly returned home, where he ensconced them in a wooden crate lined with jewelers cotton and provided them with a drip fountain filled with Perrier and a silver ramekin overflowing with a selection of grains such as quinoa and teff. 

The two pigeons, of course, were grifters -- and once they realized how gullible Mr. Newman was, they began to take over his life. First they demanded an indoor birdbath and a supply of patchouli bath bombs. Then they kicked him out of his own bed so they could construct a filthy, lice-ridden nest in it. Soon they demanded a cut of his weekly paycheck for liquor, tobacco, and sex workers off the street. And imagine Mr. Newman's horror when he discovered that while he was at work each day, reporting the news, the two dirty birds were dealing drugs out of his flat! When he threatened to go to the police about their nefarious activities, they pulled Kalashnikovs on him and backed him into the linen closet. 

The neighbors heard the entire ruckus and immediately called police for a SWAT team. They broke down Mr. Newman's door and disarmed the two vicious pigeons, but when they released him from the linen closet he refused to press charges and told the officers to get out. 

Mr. Newman had become the victim of Stockholm Syndrome. 

As of today Mr. Newman still caters to the every whim of those feathered fiends. His social life has disappeared and his work at the Times is suffering -- he only shows up on Ash Wednesday and Dominion Day. Co-workers are seriously considering an intervention, but the last editor to venture into Mr. Newman's home was found hanging upside down from the bow of the Staten Island Ferry two days later. It may be too late to do anything at all. 

Governor Cuomo has denied reports he is considering sending in a unit of the National Guard. But an anonymous source in the Governor's office has told reporters that a drone missile strike has gotten the green light from the Pentagon.

Sue Shellenbarger Says All Mothers are Working Mothers

Sue Shellenbarger writes about the conflict between work and family for the Wall Street Journal

"No one ever started a family by themselves" Sue Shellenbarger is fond of saying. The Windy City kibitzer works for the Wall Street Journal, and for many years has examined the tension between working mothers and working mothers (there's no such thing as a non-working mother, claims Shellenbarger.)  

Her own background as a former atilliator and printer's devil introduced her early on to the challenges of how to balance career demands with domestic responsibilities.

"No one ever got rich by being poor" she advises her readers today. And with good reason; that hard-bought wisdom came from a period in her life when money was so scarce she lived on nothing but salted mulch and honeydew from aphids. She is a firm believer that women in the workplace should be paid MORE than men, because they are not likely to spend any of their salary on dipping Skoal or hoarding bottles of Castrol. Her published insights have led to a precipitous drop in bruxism. 

Her many charities include the chairmanship of Bindlestiffs Anonymous and fundraising to help find a cure for carphology.

"Never look a rocking horse in the mouth" she has said on numerous occasions, meaning that children and child rearing are responsibilities she takes very seriously, along with her professional career. She counsels young mothers to read and annotate the first 35 books of The Baby-Sitters Club series (available from Scholastic.) She also thinks that celery goes good with fish -- but nobody's right all the time.

Her latest book, "The Pampers Conspiracy," is due out in the spring. 

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Penelope Green Loves Her Hygge

Peneolope Green, of the New York Times

Say what you want about the New York Times' Penelope Green -- that she is tall or short, rich or poor, bonded in the bottle or free range -- you cannot deny that she has a certain style, an eclat that carries all before her. Her admirers include politician Bujar Nishani, philologist Kunio Kohori, and British Boxing Champion Mushy Pease. And her detractors are even more auspicious: Australian newspaper editor David Penberthy, who called her reporting style "so factual it becomes authentic " - writer Orhan Pamuk, who labeled her work "as ubiquitous as the summer breeze" - and industrialist Fenton J. Mundy, who made headlines recently by stating "I would rather not comment on Ms. Green until after the Midterm Elections." 

She has worked at the New York Times for the past 28 years, which is nearly a record in these helter skelter days of revolving door employees. The reason she has stayed so long, she explains in her new autobiography "I Won't Stand for a Sit Down Strike!" is that the hygge of the office she works in is so palpable that you can cut it with a bolo. Her comrades-in-ink are an affable bunch who often leave their used swizzle sticks at her desk because they know she likes to build birdhouses with them. Her editors practice the art of benign neglect to such an extent that she hasn't seen one moping about the place in a month of Sundays. And each weekday promptly at noon the management has a cart wheeled around, offering champagne infused syllabub, Esterhazy torte, Charlotte russe, and McVitie's Digestive Biscuits. With gallons of piping hot atole to wash it all down with.

Her hygge is further cultivated by the generous salary and benefits she receives. All Times employees are given a free annual tour of the Spangler Candy Company's NECCO wafer factory in South Boston; plus their health care includes paid leave for flatulence. (Don't you wish you worked there, all you WSJ scribblers?)

When Ms. Green is not gloating over her hygge, she can usually be found polishing her scrimshaw collection or knitting her brows. 

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Anne Kadet's Search for Meaning

Anne Kadet, of the Wall Street Journal

By all accounts Anne Kadet was a precocious child. At the age of eight months she said her first word. It was not "mama" or "dada" or even "goo goo." It was "why?" The answer did not come to her until she reached her true spiritual climacteric. 

As a teenager she backpacked her way through the wilds of Manhattan, asking perfect strangers on the subway or at Katz's Deli "why?"  Most of them either shrugged their shoulders silently or mumbled "I dunno, kid; ask somebody at the New York Post." 

So she did. The receptionist at the Post took just enough time to stop buffing his nails, look her over with barely concealed contempt, and reply curtly "We only answer 'what' questions here -- you'll have to go to the New York Times with your 'why' question."  

Anne quailed in terror. Civilians who ventured through the portals of the Gray Lady were never heard from again. But so great was her determination to find out 'why' that she decided on the stratagem of becoming an accredited journalist who would then worm her way into the New York Times, where she would corner an Editor to ask them her burning question.

It took many long years of hard work and study before the suspicious sentinel at the elegant front door of the Times building reluctantly let her in after she defiantly flashed her credentials at him. (She also showed him her Press Pass . . . )

Once inside she made a bee line for the nearest Editor, clearly identified by his beatific smile and saffron robe, sitting under a Bo tree. 

"Namaste" she whispered to him respectfully, her hands cupped before her face in a traditional namaskar. "Tell me, oh sage of the newsroom, WHY?"

"My child" he kindly replied, "when you find out how, you will then know why." 

Banging her forehead on the floor three times, Ms. Kadet retreated from the Editor, who had begun to levitate prior to achieving Nibbana, and quickly found an empty cubicle where she could begin meditating on this wonderful revelation. 

She is still there today, only venturing out for an occasional cup of yak butter tea and a Dharmic plate of braised tofu. And when pilgrims arrive at her cubicle to ask the age old question of 'why?' she joyfully gives them the ultimate answer:

"Why not?"

(Editor's note: Ms. Kadet's doppelganger, who has no enlightenment whatsoever, is currently employed by the Wall Street Journal.)

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Why Amy Argetsinger, of the Washington Post, Has Never Visited Brainerd Minnesota

Amy Argetsinger, of the Washington Post

Ms. Argetsinger is grateful for her degree from the University of Virginia in Political and Social Thought. It has opened the doors of a great many fine opportunities for her, beginning at the Rock Island Argus back in 1991 and continuing to this very day as Style Editor at the Washington Post. She has worked hard for these plum positions and remains optimistic about her career path, despite the debilitating malady that has shadowed her since childhood.

Like thousands of others across the United States, Ms. Argetsinger suffers from megalophobia. A fear of giants. She has struggled with this challenging condition since her ninth birthday -- when an oversized teddy bear she had been given as a present accidentally toppled over on her while she was alone in her bedroom and kept her pinned down five hours before help arrived. There is no known cure for this disease; its victims must simply soldier on in a world filled with jumbo items that could turn on them at any moment. 

Which is why, when Ms. Argetsinger was assigned to visit Brainerd, Minnesota, early in her journalistic career, to report on the trend in Norwegian Waffle Hats, she suddenly developed a mysterious rash that caused his eyelashes to fall out and kept her in bed for a week. She knew, as did all well-informed journalists at the time, that Brainerd is the home of Paul Bunyan Land, a tawdry amusement park that features a towering statue of the folk tale giant that greets each park visitor by name as they enter. 

The terrifying prospect of facing such a creature caused Ms. Argetsinger's body to break down, giving her a legitimate and blameless reason to avoid the ordeal. 

In the years since then Ms. Argetsinger has redoubled her efforts to become a fully functional and successful journalist. The list of awards on her living room wall attest to her accomplishments in this effort. She is one of the most highly respected writers in the District of Columbia, and her podcast and television appearances have bolstered her reputation nationwide. 

Just don't ever chant "Fee Fi Fo Fum" in her presence. 

Paul Bunyan, Ms. Argetsinger's imaginary nemisis

The Untold Story of Lizette Alvarez, New York Times Journalist

Lizette Alvarez, of the New York Times

The untold story of Lizette Alvarez begins in the Florida Keys (doesn't every good story begin there?)

One day in 1997 Manny Honduras, the local kingpin of illicit bay rum operations, was smoking a leisurely Cohiba in the backyard of his luxurious Key West hacienda when the phone rang. Angling out of his chair with some difficulty (for Manny was fond of cazuela de platano and boniatillo, both very fattening,) he waddled inside to answer it. His wife was in Chilicothe, Ohio, for an Arbor Day workshop, and the maid had gone to visit a healthy relative who had money. He was alone in the house.

"Yes?" he barked impatiently into the phone receiver. He was in a bad mood; he did not like having to shift for himself in the big house. 

When he heard the voice on the other end of the line, his face grew pale. Beads of sweat trickled down his furrowed brow and flabby cheeks. He let his Cohiba go out. 

"Yes, of course. Right away!" he whispered meekly and hung up.

Packing quickly, he chartered a plane to take him to Bismarck, North Dakota, and there we must leave him for the moment.

At the same time, up in Miami, a young Latina reporter was tracking down an anonymous tip about a batch of adulterated bay rum that had caused an outbreak of espinillas among professional jai alai players. Her editor had given her carte blanche to follow the story wherever it took her. Going the limit, the vibrantly attractive reporter took a taxi to Etzel Itzik to consult with Mama Bravo, a voodoo priestess known to have dealings with the corrupt underbelly of the city. And there we must leave them for a few brief paragraphs.

For at the very same instant, halfway across the world in war-torn Zagreb, Croatia, the sinister influence of Vladimir Putin was put to use in the murder case of Maslov Maslovsky, recently poisoned with a dose of Deadly Dapperling. Before he had sunk into a lethal coma, Maslovsky had scribbled on the sidewalk in front of his apartment: "Kako sada, smeda krava?"  Interpol was very interested in this cryptic message about brown cows, until they received word from their Moscow operative that it would be best to let sleeping brown cows lie. And there we really have to interrupt our narrative for just a teensy weensy bit . . . 

Because Lizette Alvarez, a graduate of Northwestern University, at this exact same moment decided to cut out all keratin from her diet. Which led, inevitably, to the Helsinki Accords. 

And now you know . . . the rest of the untold story. 

Paul Harvey, who else?


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Ms. Alvarez replied to her new profile by email, thus:

Ha. Love this. You are so awesome. It’s as if you’ve know me my whole life. Keep writing!

Lizette Alvarez

The New York Times

973-508-5595