If I were choosing a restaurant for a business lunch, it wouldn’t be the Occidental. Not that the Occidental isn’t a good restaurant – it is, and a Washington tradition that’s been around so long, it nearly qualifies as a national historic site. The decor is nice, too, but the food, while expertly prepared and providing excellent examples of the menu items, is, in my opinion at least, more than a bit stodgy.
But Grady, the chief lobbyist at the Bay State Tourism Association down on K Street, loves the place and will use any excuse to eat there. I had Bombay Sapphire with tonic ($8.75), the lobster bisque ($10.00), sautéed mushroom ragoût ($9.00), the saffron fettuccini with morels and truffled percorino ($19.00), and the crème brûlée ($9.00) with a glass of Ch Puy Servain-Bergerac 2004 ($12.00). Grady had an Absolute Appletini ($11.50), the jumbo lump crab cake ($14.00), the grilled petite filet mignon with red wine shallot sauce ($25.00), the steamed white asparagus with beet butter ($9.00), and the chocolate soufflé cake with espresso semifreddo and sorbet ($9.00) with a glass of Downs LBV 2000 ($12.00). Then we both ordered coffee (no charge – Grady’s a regular) and got down to business.
“Tom,” Grady began mournfully, “my clients in Massachusetts are very concerned about our image. It’s murder out there, competing with stuff like Disney World, the Grand Canyon, Broadway and Mount Rushmore. Not to mention places like Atlantic City and Las Vegas. And what have we got? Fall foliage tours, the Cranberry Jam-Boree, the Garlic and Arts Festival, the Charles Regatta, Homes and Histories of the Whalers and Pilgrims, the Paul Revere tour, Old Sturbridge Village; hell, we went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival this summer and my kids told me they had more fun than they did at King Richard’s Faire in Plymouth last year.”
“Well, Grady,” I observed, “not every state in the union can be California. When it comes to promoting tourism, you have to do what you can with what you’ve got.”
“Oh, and don’t I know it!” Grady exclaimed. “So the last thing we need is to scare people away. And that’s what’s bothering me.”
“Now there’s a thought I’ve never had,” I replied jocularly, “Massachusetts scaring away tourists. How do you figure that?”
“You remember, back in February, when the whole state went into panic mode after a couple of bozos who worked for Ted Turner put up those… I don’t know, flashing signs, I guess. You know what I’m talking about?” Grady looked at me imploringly. “They were advertising some cartoon show or another…”
“Yeah,” I said, “I know – ‘Aqua Teen Hunger Force.’ It features a talking milk shake, a floating talking package of french fries and a talking meat ball.”
“And that’s what I’m talking about right there,” Grady griped, “whoever draws that thing is obviously on drugs or something.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” I objected, “but I do know that a lot of teenagers with the munchies watch it, including both of my teenage nephews. They think it’s a scream.”
Grady squinted at me. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever watched it?”
“I got to sit through an episode once when my girlfriend got hammered on too much champagne,” I admitted, “I’m pretty sure she thinks it’s funny, too.”
“Apparently it’s not very popular in Massachusetts,” Grady surmised, “since nobody seems to have gotten the connection between those signs and the cartoon show.” Grady shook his head sadly. “Everybody thought the signs were bombs. I mean, you can’t blame them, I guess – they looked like bombs.”
“What do bombs look like?” I asked.
“Oh, you know, batteries, wires, lights…”
“Lights depicting a Mooninite giving everybody the finger?”
“What’s a Mooninite?” Grady stared at me, bewildered.
“Outer space juvenile delinquents,” I explained. “They’re characters in the cartoon show.”
“It was giving everybody the finger?” Grady was shocked. “I guess I missed that part.”
“And that was probably the best part, too,” I opined. “So folks in the Bay State are kind of… jumpy these days, would you say?”
“Damn jumpy. Look what happened today, with that kid from MIT…”
“Oh, yeah, I heard about that,” I told him. “She was reportedly wearing a shirt with some kind of circuit board and battery on the front and the phrase ‘Socket To Me’ on the back.”
“At Logan Airport!” Grady proclaimed indignantly. “Doesn’t that girl have the least scintilla of common sense?”
“I wouldn’t expect her to,” I remarked. “First of all, she’s a college sophomore. Where do you think they got the adjective ‘sophomoric’ from? On top of that, she attends the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, doesn’t she? Now tell me the truth, Grady, when was the last time you met somebody who went to MIT who was normal enough to have common sense?”
“Yeah,” Grady conceded, “you have a point there.” Grady sighed as he signaled our waiter for a coffee warm-up. “Can’t say much for those fools at Harvard, either. But at least Harvard and MIT can’t decide to move their business to Mexico or something. On the other hand, having a couple of college campuses chock full of nuts ‘n’ flakes doesn’t help the tourist trade one damn bit! And that’s the problem, Tom – we’re afraid that if the people of Massachusetts keep freaking out over things like cartoon advertisements and looney shirts that nerds make to attract interviewers at geek job fairs, people who live in the rest of the United States will scratch the place right off their vacation lists. And then,” Grady’s voice cracked slightly, “I’ll be out of a job.”
“There, there,” I assured him, patting his hand, “it won’t be as bad as all that. If there were a slow down in tourism, for whatever reason, I’m sure the Association would axe one of the junior lobbyists.”
“Yeah,” Grady sniffed, wiping his nose with the table napkin, “I suppose so. But it still wouldn’t be good. Which is why I took you to my favorite restaurant for lunch today, Tom. I need your advice. What can we do to avoid having Massachusetts develop some kind of reputation as an open air insane asylum – a bedlam full of nervous wrecks and dithering wackos so irrationally chicken, they make Barney Fife look like Steven Segall?”
“I don’t know how to break this to you, Grady,” I carefully began, “but the rest of the country already thinks Massachusetts is an open air insane asylum.”
Grady’s face fell. “No? Really?”
“Afraid so,” I continued, “but, of course, they think that about the District of Columbia, too. Which is probably why you didn’t notice any difference when you moved down here from Boston.”
“But we’re not really crazy,” Grady declared, “not the people in Massachusetts, or here in Washington. We’re as sane as anybody else!”
“In our opinions, sure,” I agreed, “but you have to realize that most genuinely insane people insist they haven’t even one little bubble in their think tank, the least grain of sand in their gears, not a solitary bat in their belfries, nor a single toy in their attics. And the more they protest their sanity, the more thorazine they get.”
“So there’s nothing we can do but wait for the next embarrassing incident? Just sit there on our hands until the whole state freaks out when someone sees a kid with a strange new video game console, or something like that, and they all think it’s a bomb and Massachusetts ends up a national laughing stock again?”
“Grady, my friend,” I sadly informed him, “Massachusetts cannot end up as a national laughing stock.”
“Why is that?” Grady demanded.
“Because Massachusetts already is a national laughing stock. It has been for decades.” As Grady verged on losing his temper, I elaborated. “You see, the states are like family, and each member of a family has their own personality, their own reputation, in short, their own place and role in that family.”
“Like what?” Grady grunted, now skeptical instead of incensed.
“You got, for instance, Texas – it’s like that loud, brash uncle who bores everybody silly with his pointless, endless shaggy dog stories, bragging about things he’s done, and everyone knows he’s making at least half of it up. You know someone like that in your family?”
Grady nodded his head, smiling. “Yeah, it’s my cousin, though – Marty from Southie. Talks like he’s best buddies with James Bond or something, but he’s really just a clerk at the local FBI office.”
“Sure,” I concurred, “and then there’s Louisiana, for example – that’s the brother-in-law you told your sister not to marry, the one who’s been on television twice, both times drunk as skunk and with no shirt on, a bunch of cops squeezing him into a squad car while all his trailer park neighbors watched.”
“Ah, hell, yeah,” Grady laughed, “but not my brother-in-law; that would be my second cousin Johnny from Wooster.”
“And you got Minnesota,” I went along, “that’s the bachelor uncle who teaches agronomy and goes fishing by himself.”
“Forty year old virgin!” Grady interjected, “Stares at his shoes when he talks to women. You know, I actually have an uncle like that, only he teaches civil engineering at U-Mass.”
“Close enough,” I offered. “Then there’s Virginia, that old hard nosed conservative cousin who still believes in eugenics and thinks income tax is unconstitutional.”
“My great-uncle Harold from Pride’s Crossing!” Grady laughed, “That’s him, all right. Always threatening to move to New Hampshire. But he never does. If he did, what would he have to complain about?”
“And Nevada,” I smiled, “that wayward grand child who parties all night, every night, sleeps with guys at the drop of a hat and never, ever gets pregnant.”
“My cousin Suzy from Saugus,” Grady spouted out, “and you know, Tom, I always thought it was such a wicked [expletive] that she was related to me, know what I mean?”
“Sure do,” I commiserated, “and take Rhode Island, for example, it’s that mobbed-up uncle with the shady connections who don’t pay parking tickets and works for the Teamsters Union doing God knows what.”
“Exactly!” Grady exulted, “I got a mobbed-up cousin once removed, lives in North End. Never paid a parking ticket in his life!”
“And Missouri,” I concluded, “it’s the hayseed cousin who inevitably asks ‘What are all these forks for?’ at Thanksgiving dinner.”
“My mother’s uncle Peter, over in Clarksburg,” Grady said, knowingly, “that’s him, all right.” He leaned forward, curious. “So, then, which member of the family is Massachusetts?”
“Massachusetts is the dotty old aunt who insists she has been abducted by flying saucers and plays Ouija Board with the kids if you ever dare ask her to baby sit.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Grady moaned, “my aunt Tilly in Barnstable is exactly like that – and would you believe, she wears a tin foil hat to keep the Black Helicopters from reading her mind?”
“Of course I would,” I assured him. “So you see, whenever Massachusetts has a holy cow over a moronic advertising stunt for some lame cartoon, or goes ballistic over some clueless nerdess with stunted social skills wearing a totally geeky costume in public, that’s right in character; Massachusetts is doing just what the rest of the family expects.”
“But doesn’t that hurt tourism?” Grady fretted.
“Not really – it’s colorful, that’s all it is. Doesn’t everybody in your family stop by to visit your eccentric aunt Tilly when they go down the Cape?”
“Yeah,” Grady confessed, “she makes the best blueberry cobbler in New England.”
“Right – and nobody cares if she’s a little loosely wrapped when they’re eating it, do they?”
“No, they don’t,” Grady said proudly, “and she’s a dear old thing, really; we all love her.”
“That’s it!” I pointed out in triumph, “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. The other states expect Massachusetts to be… shall we say, eccentric. And a leopard can’t change his spots anyway. If anything, I’d recommend you play it up. ‘Massachusetts – Just Because We’re Paranoid, That Doesn’t Mean Nobody’s Out to Get Us,’ or something like that.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Tom,” Grady shook his head, “like I said, the folks in Massachusetts are all pretty much firmly convinced they’re completely sane.”
“So’s your Aunt Tilly, I bet.”
“That she is, Tom,” Grady agreed, as he signaled our waiter for the check, “that she is, indeed.”