Verbal rapier
Hamilton Nolan was in top form with his latest Jaguars Junction:
As the poor Pennsylvanian proved himself a rube, the Jacksonville resident, dressed in a rakish Savile Row suit, would shrug apologetically and, with a smattering of cosmopolitan remarks, assure his London host that not all Americans are so painfully uncultured. As the Jacksonville man, pausing only to refill his pipe, won over the room with a series of digressions on the legacy of the East India Company, wandering Philadelphians would periodically interject:
"DUHH ... GIVE ME MEAT SANDWICH!"
... requiring a tour de force of diplomacy from the Floridian to save the day.
I don't get paid for this and therefore cannot be compelled to do it on anyone's artificial timetable. No one at Defector is the boss of me, least of all Tom Ley. To his frequent wheedling emails begging me for more copy, I now have a standard response: "DELETE."
While Philadelphians can be accurately portrayed as slovenly, angry provincials who would violate any number of laws in exchange for a small paper cup of beef drippings, I think of Texans more as flinty-eyed lawmen with drooping mustaches, ostentatious belt buckles, and a quasi-religious belief in their own ability to determine which minority their unforgiving god wants them to violently attack. Both are despicable. But it would be dishonest to imply that the dangerous, fundamentalist despicability of Texans is identical to the dangerous, drunken despicability of Philadelphians. I could not in good faith graft my perfectly honed disembowelment of one directly onto another without changes that would render it a completely different quip.
To my loyal audience: I apologize for keeping you on tenterhooks, but my commitment to quality is paramount. I can only promise you that your time spent anxiously awaiting my next missive will be time well-spent, especially since you would otherwise just be wasting it playing video games and hoping silently for death's tranquilizing release.
To the editors of this column who seek to throttle the rambunctious freedom of art with the straitjacket of the calendar: I owe you nothing.
My dissatisfaction with this delay is leavened by my faith that it will not be long before the rabble of Philadelphia once again commit some grievous offense against public taste that will serve as the perfect excuse for me to unsheathe my verbal rapier and wield it against them.