Page 2AThe Battalion/Wednesday, May 25, 1988
Opinion
Students, take heed: Shop using the Royko
An old friend
stopped by re
cently and went to
the refrigerator to
get himself a beer.
He took the
beer but stood
looking inside the
refrigerator for
several seconds.
Then he opened
the freezer section
and looked at that
for a while.
Of course I eat. I eat to much.
“Ah, then you eat all your meals in
.tanrants ”
restaurants.
No, only lunch. And dinner out
maybe once a week. The rest of my
meals I have at home.
“But there’s nothing here to eat. I
don’t understand.”
Mike
Royko
And he began opening kitchen cab
inets and looking inside. Finally he
shook his head and said:
“Are you moving or something?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
He looked in a couple of more cab
inets, then said: “You don’t have any
food in this place. I mean, absolutely no
thing.”
I nodded. He was right. There wasn’t
a thing to eat in the entire kitchen. Not a
morsel. Not a crust of stale bread. Not
one can of tomato soup or a spoonful of
peanut butter to be scraped out of the
bottom of ajar. Nothing.
He shook his head. “You don’t even
have a can of stewed tomatoes or things
like that. Everybody’s got an old can of
something or other in his kitchen, but
you don’t have a single thing. Don’t you
ever eat?”
Most people don’t. So I explained the
Royko System of Food Shopping for the
Single Man.
It works on a very simple principle: I
buy groceries once in a while. And in
large quantities, too. But then I don’t
buy another thing until everything is
gone.
My friend happened to come along
the day after I had eaten the last food in
the kitchen — a can of tuna and a frozen
waffle.
“What is the advantage of your sys
tem?” he asked.
There are several advantages, and
they go this way:
First, you don’t have to go shopping
very often. At most, I make one shop
ping trip a month. I’ve gone as long as
two months between trips.
Second, you don’t accumulate things
that begin piling up in most kitchens —
those extra cans of stewed tomatoes and
soup gathering dust in a cabinet; the
smoked Korean oysters; the packages of
frozen chicken in the back of the
freezer; the half-filled jars of Welch’s
grape jelly, side by side in the refrigera
tor door.
Under my system, you cannot accu
mulate cans of stewed tomatoes because
you have to eat them before you can
shop again.
“You must have some peculiar
meals,” he said.
There have been a few unusual
meals, yes. One evening, I found that
the last edible items in the kitchen were
three eggs, a half-stick of margarine, an
onion and some flour.
I could have taken the easy way out
and had three fried eggs. But I was
more creative than that.
It seemed to me that if I mixed a cup
of flour with an egg, some margarine
and water and chopped onion, I would
have a form of dough. So I did.
I spread the dough on a pan and put
it in the oven, hoping it would become
some kind of bread.
As it turned out, my creation became
something that resembled onion pan
cakes. Then I fried the other two eggs
and put them on top of the sort-of pan
cakes.
“It sounds awful,” my friend said.
Well, Julia Child wouldn’t recom
mend it for a dinner party, but it did get
me through the night.
The advantages to this system are ob
vious. It’s economical, because you
Pity the poor columnist:
Grizzard doesn’t have
Carson’s eight writers
It was big news
that Johnny Car-
son returned to
“The Tonight
Show.”
Know why? Be
cause he had to do
the show without
benefit of his eight
writers, who are
on strike.
reer out of telling jokes that aren’t very
funny. It’s his delivery that makes you
laugh.
But some poor newspaper columnist
sits over a typewriter (or computer
screen) half a day at The Daily Planet
trying to think of a thousand words that
make at least some sense and/or evoke a
chuckle.
Eight writers?
Johnny Carson
Lewis
Grizzard
has eight writers for the short mono
logue he does at the beginning of each
of his shows.
The column runs the next day and
the managing editor doesn’t like it, and
just like that, the columnist is back on
the copy desk.
It only took a few more than that to
write the Bible.
What I’d like to see Johnny Carson do
— or anybody else used to having a sta
ble of writers — is write a newspaper
column for a while.
But Carson said he couldn’t stand be
ing off the show any longer and would
come back even if it did, indeed, mean
he had to write his own stuff.
Not every day. Let’s just say three or
four times a week.
Here’s the way that works:
I think Johnny Carson is funny, and
I’ve been a fan of his for years, but
whafs all the fuss about a guy who
makes 20 million a year having to write
his own material for a change?
You’re sitting there. Alone. There’s
nobody to turn to. There are no eight
writers to help.
Why don’t I have eight writers to help
me with this thing?
You glance through the paper
looking for an idea. There’s Jimmy
Swaggart, but you wrote about him two
weeks ago. Reagan? You’ve worn him
out, too.
Why don’t I have just one writer?
“Gildenham,” I could say, “I’m off to
the golf course. Finish my Friday col
umn and leave it on my desk before you
go home.”
Think of all the material newspaper
columnists have to come up with all by
themselves day after day, week after
week and month after month.
I don’t know a one of them who
makes in a year what Carson pays in al
imony each month.
And let’s say Carson’s eight writers
have a bad day. Nobody could think of
anything funny for him to say.
No problem. Carson has made a ca-
The Battalion
(USPS 045 360)
Member of
Texas Press Association
Southwest Journalism Conference
The Battalion Editorial Board
Richard Williams, Editor
Sue Krenek, Managing Editor
Mark Nair, Opinion Page Editor
Curtis Culberson, City Editor
Becky Weisenfels and
Cindy Milton,
News Editors
Anthony Wilson, Sports Editor
Jay Janner, Art Director
never buy anything you don’t eventually
eat. And it forces you to be innovative. I
remember the night I had nothing left
but two pouches of frozen creamed
spinach, three small potatoes, and a fro
zen chicken leg. I made a stew. I don’t
remember how it turned out, but it was
surely high in some kind of vitamin.
“But what about your children?” my
friend asked. “Isn’t this rough on
them?”
of the memory of the evenins
youngest son came home and fourj
in front of the TV set with a bowl
lap.
"What are you having lor siij
he asked, looking hungry.
“Raisin Bran,” I said. “There’ll
some left in the kitchen.”
r
By
T
Deadline is getting closer. You sweat.
You put another handful of Maalox tab
lets in your mouth. You wonder why
you didn’t go to law school like your
parents wanted you to.
Actually, my sons were partly respon
sible for my approach to food shopping.
I discovered a law of eating, which I
call Royko’s Law. It goes this way:
Young people will always eat anything
that is convenient, then wait until you
buy some more convenient foods, and
they will eat them, too.
In other words, if I went out every
week and bought five pounds of chicken
pieces, five packages of spaghetti, five
jars of Ragu sauce and 10 frozen pizzas,
they would eat the 10 frozen pizzas and
leave the rest. And the next week, they
would do the same. Eventually 1 would
have stacks of chicken pieces, bales of
spaghetti and cases of Ragu sauce, and
they’d still be eating the frozen pizza.
So under my system, when the frozen
pizzas are gone, they either eat what is
left or they don’t eat.
“That’s kind of sadistic, isn’t it?” my
friend asked.
Yes, but then, what else are young
people good for? I am particularly fond
he
gems on
million co
He looked in my bowl and said. 0 f a ne\
there’s no milk. It’s just dry building.
Bran.” Pphe ha
“It’s not bad,” I said, scooping
of it into my mouth with myiir.|Lj[|j ()n .
“But some does tend to fall ot cosl | jul v
shirt.” increased
My friend shook his head ant Tht Boai
“Your sons must be getting skirJB^.dOO
hell." ,0 f 0 ™P''
vt l rest ol th<
No, that s not so. My systemji finally
courages them to make theacquair| a icr date
of young ladies who have moresnl
tial qualities than mere prettv i
When they meet girls, they
questions like, “What’s your sip,
“Say. do you come here often?”
more likely to say: “Hi, you doni
pen to know how to make a goal
roast and dumplings, do you?"
My friend went back to therefi
tor and said: “I notice there’s no
age of l>eer, so you must do some
shopping for that.”
"As an ancient wise man oncesa
told him, “man does not livebyli
Bran alone.”
Copyright 1988, Tribune Media Senicah
groi
I’m a rookie in the column business
— 11 years. But many others are still
going strong after much longer than
that, and they’re still responsible for all
their material, even what they steal.
A colleague once said, “Writing a
newspaper column is like being married
to a nymphomaniac. The first two
weeks, it’s fun.”
Give me eight writers and I’d be on a
permanent honeymoon.
Copyright 1988, Cowles Syndicate
Mail Call
Baseless and false
EDITOR:
I am writing in regard to an article titled “Monkeys,
Malaysia make summer memorable,” written by Wade See,
published in the May 5, 1988, issue of At Ease. The
statement “Moslems hold cattle and oxen sacred, so people
don’t bother the animals,” given in the article is baseless
and false. On behalf of all Muslims, I would like to protest
the printing of such a false statement in The Battalion’s
weekly magazine.
Regarding the first part of the statement in question,
the truth is that Muslims do not hold cattle or oxen sacred;
as a matter of fact, we are allowed to eat the meat from
these animals. As far as the latter half of the statement is
concerned, not bothering the animals has to do with the
culture and not with Islam. An observer may find cattle
wandering on streets in many eastern countries of the
globe, and the situation in Malaysia is not unique.
Nadeem A. Chaudhary
public relations, Islamic Community of Bryan-College Sta
tion
A fraud by any other name
EDITOR:
On May 5, I was selling back my old books. I neededi
sell back, or get rid of, a bowling instruction book. I tool
my bowling book, pages clean and all intact, to Universii'
Bookstore at Northgate. I took my book there because or. T
the windows of the store, in approximately two-foot
letters, it reads: “We buy ALL books.”
I thought this meant ALL books, including my $6
bowling text. WRONG. I was told that if I brought in “a
few good books” they could possibly offer me 50tf to|2l
it. When your store makes a huge — two feet huge —p® I
of advertising a service, you should follow through on it ;
Lisa McClain ’91
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