(For free downloads of the Hot Plate! show, please email karlstraub@hotmail.com. He'll respond pret-ty quickly, unless he's in the shower or something. Even that loophole will close soon, as he's looking into a new app that allows extreme entrepreneurs to retain full phone functionality even in the shower.)
My son was sitting with me in a diner. Pat Buchanan was on TV, looking much more grim than when I'd seen him last. I couldn't hear Buchanan because the sound was off; I couldn't hear Max because he had laryngitis.
A kid at a nearby table was more than audible. He had that kind of carrying voice a lot of kids have, sort of like a Fun Size Carol Channing. I knew my son wouldn't get the reference, so I went with the more accessible punchline. "You could hear that kid from space," I said. Ignoring the obvious scientific flaw in my statement, Max pantomimed a big sitcom laugh. (No doubt if I'd been talking to a detail-oriented guy like John Cook, my assertion about space would have been authoritatively parsed at some length, to determine its verisimilitude.)
I told him I was frustrated I couldn't hear what Buchanan was saying. Max whispered, maybe it's better that you can't hear him. I said, well, usually I'd agree with that, but it's Pat Buchanan, and I've been fascinated by him forever. He worked for Nixon.
Then it occurs to me to ask Max if he'd seen the framed photo of Pop Pop standing behind Nixon as the soon-to-be-beleaguered President signed some legislation. And THEN it occurred to me to tell him about the even more amazing artifact I'd rescued from Pop Pop's apartment-- a framed and autographed photo of J. Edgar Hoover!
I bet you don't even know who Hoover was, I said. Max whispered "FBI," and then started gesturing wildly as if he were playing Charades. I rolled my eyes, recalling his earlier attempt to convey "Michigan" by pointing to his hand. But he was determined to communicate non-verbally, so I gave it a whirl.
Max shook his head violently from left to right, then leaned his face down right by his hand, as if he were Sherlock Holmes looking through a magnifying glass to determine the coloring of a rare Egyptian insect.
"You got that right," I said. "Hoover was no detective."
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