The Democratic National Convention in Denver. Denver's a cow town. Doesn't mean what we're going to see here is the milk of human kindness. Means like what's coming is a large load of bull. Having covered these rah-rah sis-boom-bah hoo-has since Lincoln's day, I tell you Denver's a real thrill. Especially since it recently plummeted to 100 degrees. The only little cool air comes from bumping into a Hillary supporter.
Denver's wonderful. Nice air. Unlike New York, you don't even see it. Your eye can find the sky. Your eye can find the sun. But besides that there's not lots to see. One of the highest structures around is a silo. --Cindy Adams, Page Six, New York Post, August 25
Smell that? That cloying stink of morbidity, gin-soaked taffeta and Geritol? Yeah, that means the New York Post’s very own Page Six Crypt Keeper has descended on our fair city to talk shit, embarrass herself and piss me off. She’s written three columns about Denver and the DNC since arriving in town, each of them done in the choppy, borderline-retarded style of prose she invented while writing stump speeches for Lincoln back in the day. I’ve collected a few of her best nuggets:
Denver. Zero humidity, zero dampness, and, some say, zero culture. However, I, naturally, would never say such a thing.
Right. New York has the Met, MOMA, the Guggenhein, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Carnegie Hall and the Tribeca Film Festival. It’s got opera and Broadway and some of the greatest restaurants in the world. Well, we’ve got green chile – which means you can take your culture and shove it up your Guggenhein. We win.
Also, someone who owned a dog boutique at Macy’s (Jazzy’s of Park Avenue, no lie) ought to be careful who she accuses of having a lack of culture. And I know it’s gotta be tough to see much of the city, its culture or its silos (we have silos?) what with your head shoved so far up the ass of every two-bit celebrity and slack-jawed political operative who wanders by your stool at the bar, but you could at least try. Pop that melon out, scrub down the wig and give it a go, huh? Might be fun. Maybe you could actually see something beyond those tired, New Yorker clichés, you crone.
Not that I would ever say such a thing.
Okay, so not too many people come from here. India.Arie comes from here. Tim Allen comes from here. But even the people who come from here don't stay here. They just come from here.
Except, of course, for the people who do stay here. Cultural wasteland though this may be, we seem to be pretty full up with folks who like it just fine—many of whom would list among their reasons for staying that living in Denver puts them safely one thousand seven hundred and eighty-odd miles distant from your neighborhood, Cindy. Putting aside the fact that your canonical list of famous Denverites seems a little light, I know a lot of ex-Coasties living here now who will never go back. I’m one of them. My defense isn’t a native’s, it’s a transplant’s. I’ve been both places. I heart N.Y. big time. But I intend on staying right here.
A welcoming event for journalists was the party at Elitch Gardens, an outdoor Coney Island-type amusement park. Everything was free - rides, games, prizes, food, drink, dessert. But, let's not talk about the food. Bull meatball? I reached for one interesting-looking hors d'oeuvre. What is it, I asked? ‘Fried bull testicle,’ the server said. I went for the celery stick.
Now this is just stupid. I was there, too, Cindy. I was there when you were denied entry into the VIP area. I was feeding from the same trough, so to speak—sucking down free beers and snacks laid on by Epicurean Catering in the waterpark and beer garden. And while no, this was not the best grub in the world (it was passed apps and buffet food for thousands, Epicurean digging in like an army division on the Western Front and feeding the multitudes to many compliments), I was also there in the Escape to Colorado zone where you were, and the bull testicles? Not too shabby. Panko breadcrumbs, Stilton sauce. There were also buffalo meatballs in mushroom gravy (which were better than the buffalo meatballs being served elsewhere in the park) and skewers of Colorado lamb. But that’s cool, Cindy. You stay with the celery sticks and then bad-mouth the grub anyhow. And if you get a little peckish at any point before the convention ends, feel free to drop by the office and lick my balls whenever you like.
And although the bags took so long to arrive at the airport that we weren't sure we'd get them before the next convention, there were flowers in vases at the luggage carousels. That was nice especially when some luggage got badly bollixed. One arriving planeload found its suitcases coming in on another flight altogether. A voice behind me muttered, ‘This is really irritating.’ Trust me, New Yorkers don't do irritating well.
Oh, don’t sell yourself short, Cindy! I’ve only known you, a New Yorker, for the space of a few thousand words and I already find you irritating as hell.
It's just that the city hasn't enough infrastructure, practice or smarts to suddenly accommodate a few tons of wild politicians on the hoof. New York moves this many subway-riders every day.
Yes, but unlike your subways, our city doesn’t smell like piss all the time. Like cow shit now and then when the winds are right. Occasionally like dog food when the breeze comes across Commerce City. But your tiny island nation corners the market on bum pee.
This being a cattle town, some imports who arrived from the East wanted a steak dinner. What did the locals recommend? New York chain joints like Morton's, Palm, Capital Grill, Gallagher's. And forget fine dining this week - that is, unless you consider guacamole and chips, pretzels and mayonnaise-y tuna salad that soaks through your paper plates an Emeril Legasse [sic] experience.
Actually, Cindy, it’s all a conspiracy. Before you out-of-towners and miserable, skulking, complaining New Yorkers showed up, we all had a big meeting and decided that, since we wanted to be able to eat something, too, while you all were in town, we would only tell you about the chains—thereby leaving the real restaurants free for us locals. Capital Grille (that’s the correct spelling, and by the way, it began in Providence, Rhode Island, not New York) is a damn fine steakhouse, my favorite in town, but choked with yuppies and power players on a normal day, so we surrendered it to the visiting team for the duration. Meanwhile, the rest of us are giggling behind our hands at how easy it is to get a table anywhere outside the DNC Green Zone. Apparently our plan worked.
I don’t want you to get me wrong here, Cindy. Please don’t misunderstand my anger. I know it’s your job to be snarky. I know it’s your job to be mean and, ostensibly, to raise the profile of your paper by creating your own brand of third-grade playground controversy. But I don’t think it’s your job to be dumb -- to work these exhausted clichés and worn-out Western states slurs like a tired-out old pole-humper strapping on the same shoes and bangles for the hundredth consecutive show; to get up there under the greasy lights to shake it, lazily, one more time, praying to god that the suckers who paid good money to see you take it off can’t see the bruises, welts and vapid, idiot boredom showing through the makeup.
And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe stupidity, near-illiterate goofiness and a lack of even the most basic eye for detail is written into your marching orders these days. Perhaps it no longer matters to anyone who reads your drivel that you’ve crossed some line between describing what is actually happening within the frame of your cataracted and Vaseline-smeared lens and what you merely imagine to be conveniently happening in some Cindy Adams-centric universe where you are the sole witness, author and audience for your wit.
But goddammit, you hack, I have spent enough years here in the West, listening to you and all your brain-dead, mouth-breathing, cooler-than-thou, low horizon East Coast ilk trade the same stale jokes back and forth about a West that isn’t, and never really was, this shit-heeled, overall-wearing cow town that you and yours seem to delight in assuming it is, and I am tired of it. You don’t like it here? You feel the pinch of agoraphobia when leaving Manhattan for our big skies and open spaces? Good. Go the fuck home and don’t come back. More oxygen for me and mine.
My mother and I have never seen eye-to-eye on much, but one wise lesson she taught me? It’s not a choice between saying something nice or saying nothing that one should be careful of, it’s a choice between saying nothing or saying something that will make you seem a fool. You, Cindy Adams, would’ve been wise to have said nothing in this instance. You, with no story to tell and nothing but a light bag of wasted platitudes, wrong facts and misspellings to your credit, should’ve just taken the week off and called in mute. -- Jason Sheehan
