Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t about food or wine. I wouldn’t want you to nod off on me.
Given my workload lately, my columns have taken a dryer tone. I was burning out, like R&B artist Shaggy when he ran out of songs to sample.

But after some time off, I’m feeling back to my own rambling, irreverent self.

I recently rode on the metro in Northern Virginia. Can you believe I’d never been there? Technically I visited D.C. in the eighth grade, but since it was school-related and all we saw were museums and monuments, I don’t count it. I had far more fun on the metro than I did visiting the war memorials or the Holocaust Museum. I bet that reads pretty terrible.

I don’t know—I guess I fail to equate monuments with the tragedies they represent. I recall the Holocaust Museum moving me to tears. Sure, it was powerful, but I could get the same effect cracking open a book about the Holocaust (or by watching Mike Nichols’s cancer-tearjerker Wit). I prefer to cry alone or with my on-again, off-again friend bourbon.

The metro literally moved me. I can’t get that from a book or a Nichols film. My girlfriend and I sat facing the front of the train, so that we were moving backward. She grew up in what many a college kid calls “NoVA”; it was mundane stuff in her book. Me, though—I was entranced. We went underground and above ground in a vehicle that moves without wheels. I was jolly.

The organic food stores depressed me. Whole Foods offers expensive products that I’m convinced are no better for me than the bruised, pesticide-coated produce I buy at Wal-Mart. Organic food always depresses me. I’m terrified that, someday down the road, that sacrosanct fear of death that only builds with age will lead me to forget my reservations and jump on the organic bandwagon. I’m not going to live forever, and neither are these wackos who won’t eat an apple unless they paid top dollar for it. But I’m being discriminate.

We found a good, cheap wine at Trader Joe’s in Arlington. It’s $2 wine for four bucks. Four bucks beats 20. It’s no Tempranillo, but the day I find a $4 Tempranillo is the day Joe Biden stops looking like Satan. (Although if you do find a bottle at such a price, and considering you buy it for me, I’ll never malign Biden or his countenance again.)

I had a swell holiday excursion. Despite a rise in cigarette intake (*cough*) and nightly nightmares about work (a testament to my exhaustion), I’ve returned. Like Jesus before me, I have risen from the ashes of the old, replenished. I can’t turn water into wine, but I can turn wine into urine.

And I can write a whole bunch of b.s. and pass it off as something pertinent to your eyes. The whole point of not writing about recessions, discrimination, the political race, or Paris Hilton’s physical resemblance to an exotic animal is to give something back to the Voice’s readership. What I give as thanks is a break from the same-old-same-old. At this point, who cares what anyone has to say about politics? The topic’s gone stale. The recession? Duh, like we didn’t see that coming.

Honestly, I’m more interested in my trip on the metro. I’d rather read about an out-of-shape grad student smoking cigarettes and griping about organic foods than read about the lengthy list of problems we’re facing. What’s the point? I’m tired of the point. And maybe you are, too.

Thanks to you, the Voice readership. May you shower our lovely editor Tim Jackson with praise and cash moneys—or, if you lack cash moneys, shower him with turkey gravy. He’ll understand. Times are hard, after all. Just don’t serve it hot.

Charles Smith was happy to get a bit of a break over the holidays. We look forward to seeing his irreverent wit more in 2009!