Suburban Kamikaze

An optimist sees the chair as half empty

from our winter clearance sale: A Blizzard Runs Through It, Cold Play, The 5 Stages of Winter

Forecast calls for cold winter in Chicago; wet oceans

Forecasts in Chicago can be very confusing to newcomers. But after you have lived through a few Chicago winters, they start to make even less sense.

This year for example, we have been told to expect "extreme cold." Which is easily confused with "bitter cold."  Or sometimes referred to as "very, very cold." Which is virtually indistinguishable from "really very fucking cold,"  regardless of what the old-timers say.

No matter how you try to dress it up in scienc-y words, the experience is not something that can really be captured by meteorology. Once you can no longer feel your face or your hands or see your car, the actual snowfall and/or temperature are meaningless. 

Not that there aren't subtle differences from year to year. 

Our first Chicago winter was so cold and snowy we had to move all of our dinner parties indoors. Where it was still too cold, but less snowy.

 

But the winter after that we didn't have to move a single party. We had completely lost our will to entertain.   

 

There are years where you spend the entire winter dreaming of Miami. These are known as "Miami winters"  until the point at which your capacity for irony has frozen over. 

 

"Bitter" cold is when Miami winter dreams mutate into dark fantasies in which the entire southeast coast of Florida is submerged beneath shark-infested waters as the result of global warming. Now who's living in paradise?

The momentary pleasure spawned by these thoughts is known as schadenfroze.

  

One winter it was too cold for hot chocolate, though this was hushed up and rebranded by the tourism shills, who called it "Frappuccino Winter."

 

Last winter included one storm so severe that salons called women to have their highlights and bikini waxes touched up. This is known as an  "Extreme Beauty Winter."

This year, according to the professionals at Accuweather, will be known as the winter "Chicago Residents Will Want to Move Away," which distinguishes it not at all.

 

From the endless winter archives: A blizzard runs through it, The Five Stages of Winter

Driveway buffet sets new standard in no-frills entertaining

Photo: Actual, unretouched photo from a neighbor's children's party. Martha Stewart never really caught on in the Midwestern suburbs. Garnishes are strictly accidental.

Trash talk from a woman wearing an apron

My neighbor, the one I call "Mary" because they're pretty much all named Mary in these parts, gives me about five minutes notice.

"We're coming over for margaritas, baby girl," she says. "Get your lime on."  She's bringing the one they call "Kate." 

"I'm going out for drinks in the city," I object. "With grown-ups."

"We're grown-ups," she says.

Yeah, they're grown-ups all right. Grown-ups with about 11 kids between them. Some of them theirs, some of them strays. I have never seen her with fewer than four.

"How many?" I say.

"How many what?" she asks innocently.

"How many children are with you?"

"They will just play in the backyard," she says, an evasion that suggests double digits.

"Fine," I say.  "But I can't drink margaritas in the afternoon and go out for drinks in the evening."

"And you call yourself Irish," she says.

"I call myself Kamikaze," I say. "I'm pretty sure that's Japanese."

She sits on my deck a minute later drinking Mexican cocktails in a woodland-themed apron she has worn deliberately to provoke me into saying something about Midwestern women. As if her shoes weren't enough. 

I refuse to take the bait. Even when she starts telling me I made the drinks too weak. "Someone needs to teach you how to make a margarita," she says. 

But I do take her picture. She's adorable. She looks like she should have a tray of cupcakes in her hand.  They would be terrible cupcakes, and she would break them into little pieces and scatter them among the children like chicken feed, but still.         

 from the Something about Mary archives: Some people claim that there's a woman to blame

Midwesterners are not a shiny people

Picasso's mommy leaves a message on my voice mail:

"I'm calling to find out where at your house you would like me to leave the glitter bomb I am making for you. Please direct me to the least convenient spot possible, because that is where all the glitter in my house has accumlated, thanks to you. As soon as you've got your spot picked out and properly coated in glue I will drop it off."

Look, I tell her, if you send me your first-grader for the afternoon, things are going to get glittery. I thought I made that clear.

I didn't spend the equivalent of an Ivy League tuition payment at Overpriced Craft Extravagana Incorporated just to let that shit sit on the shelf.

I am not responsible for the "glitter bomb" that went off in your house any more than I am responsible for the fact that little Frida Kahlo went a little heavy on the stuff in creating her masterpiece, Glitter on Glitter, 2011. 

Inspirational, maybe, but not responsible.

I am not the type of parent to come between a first-grader and her artistic vision. Not with all this glitter just sitting here!

Those two surly teenage postmodernists who replaced the adorable little Impressionists who used to live with me? They couldn't care less about glitter these days, unless it is in the form of currency or nail polish. So yeah, you send me your little Jackson Pollock and I am going to open the glitter studio.

I am bursting with repressed glitter ideas.

If there is anything more satisfying than a day spent doing elementary school arts and crafts, I don't know what it is, although hearing you describe the glow that our project brought to your office comes very close.

And maybe it's just the margaritas talking but if there is anything in your office worth more than your child's creative impulses, it may be time to rethink your unshiny Midwestern priorities. Maybe you could make me another margarita while you're at it?

Look at the bright and sparkly side, I tell her. When I sold the house in South Paradise where my children spent their arts and crafts years, it was worth twice what we paid for it. I have to think all of the glitter crusted into the tile grout had something to do with that.  You should be thanking me.   

"Midwesterners are not a shiny people," she says. 

Really? Then how do you explain this?

Glitter seashore with ice cream, Midwestern first-grader, 2011.

Things that did not survive the winter

Also, my belief in winter as an institution.

Photo: Dead palm trees can be used to create a seasonal centerpiece that sets exactly the right tone for your Easter buffet. You're welcome. -SK

Midwestern Winter Diary: A blizzard runs through it

Feb 1: The snow is thigh high in places and we are dangerously low on Cotes du Rhone.  

  

There is talk of having to drink the chardonnay, but we pray it does not come to that. 

Outside, the hearty Midwestern people shovel the snow from one side of their houses to the other, and back again, in a ritual it seems even they do not fully understand... 

Inside, the middle school girls have tracked in enough snow to build a sledding ramp.

I am haunted by daughters.

 

  

From the winter archives: I shouldn't have done it

Storm warnings call for a little Midwestern pluck

I was inclined to discount the increasingly dramatic weather warnings as hype.

Then I get a call from the salon suggesting that I move my bikini wax up because a blizzard is on the way.

Now I am scared.

I lived through three decades worth of hurricane preparation in Florida and never once was I instructed to have my pubic hair removed.

You cannot match these Midwesterners for preparedness, apparently.

 

From the Midwestern Diary archives: Heartland Horoscope

Five stages of winter

1. Denial - The permanent state of longtime Chicago residents: "This is nothing. When I was a kid, we played outside until it hit 40 below."  

2. Profanity -Why the fuck do I live here? Why the fuck does anyone live here? I fucking hate everyone in fucking February.

3. Bargaining - The Lord & Taylor Clearance Center boot sale: At these temperatures can you really own too many pairs?

4. Soup Making -  Is there anything better than avgolemono?  Other than airfare?

5. Resignation -  Also known as "freedom from layering."  What is the point of dressing like the Michelin tire man? I will never be warm again...

Photo by Rick McCawley

Neighborliness gives way to trash talk as competitive raking season opens in the Midwestern suburbs

 

More from the Midwestern Diary:  The Corn Whisperer, Study: 30 percent of fall leaves end up in house

This week in Cheese

I haven't even shaken the sand out of my suitcase when the invitation comes to pack it up again.

The South Side girl is headed to Lake Geneva with a trio of 12-year-old girls and wants some drinking age company to offset the Justin Bieber soundtrack.

I really should get back to work but I have never been to Switzerland, so how can I say no?

It turns out that Lake Geneva is actually in Wisconsin, which is way closer. And full of cheese. I am a fan of cheese, so there is one more obvious reason to put off my return to bra-wearing the non-vacation life.

Besides, short notice cheese tourism is one of the few benefits of earning your living as a secret agent figure skater sketch comedy writer and freelance journalist. And by "earning a living" I mean making enough money to buy truck stop cheese in the shape of Wisconsin. Because that is how cheese tourism is done.

There is also a cheese wine, but the South Side girl shakes her head so violently when I pick it up that I have to return the bottle to the shelf.  Now, as you can imagine, I am kicking myself.  It would have made a nice entry in the wine log next to Key Lime and Mango Mama - two sentimental favorites.

She makes it up to me later by taking me out for better wine and coaching me on the art of picking up sailors.  I get one on my first try. He is just a cartoon sailor, but it's a start. 

Heartland Horoscope

"Midwesterners make the best of any situation. It's just in our nature." -  From the Chicago Tribune's 365-part series:  We Are the Best People Anywhere and Not Just Because of Our Humility

You Born Today (or on any other day in any part of the 12-state region that includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin), are predisposed to make the best of any situation. It is part of your nature. Not like those flighty, preening, whiners on the coasts or in any of the other 38 states where people cannot be trusted. Today is a good day to just go about your life with the steady, uncomplaining humility that makes the region's 66 million people so gosh darn unique. Make the best of things.  Write a book, run for office, invite some people over for dinner.   

Others who share your horoscope: James Frey, Rod Blagojevich, Jeffrey Dahmer

Your cardigan says Merry Christmas but your pedicure says ho, ho, ho.

I am folding laundry in my sweat pants when the phone rings.

I am adjusting the straps on a plunging red push-up bra when the phone rings. 

"I am a little embarrassed to be asking you this," she says.

I am laughing before she even gets the words out. She wants to know what I am wearing.

"Don't talk dirty to me unless you mean business," I say.

But she is serious. She wants to know what I am wearing to the party. "This is not fair," I whine. "I promised Mr. Kamikaze I would stop making fun of Midwesterners and you guys just keep serving this stuff up. What am I supposed to do?"

"I know, I know," she says.  "But seriously."  

"That is what makes it so funny," I say. "You know we aren't required to do this anymore, right?"  I say. "It's right there in the manual under 'grown-ups'. Oh wait. There is an asterisk here ... something about a 12-state region between the coasts..." 

Still, I take pity on her. I share with her some tips from my forthcoming book The Underachiever's Guide to Holiday Party Dressing in the Midwestern Suburbs:  1. Build from the shoes up.  2. Make them fabulous. Go tall for house parties where you won't have to do much walking. 3. If you feel you simply must wear your appliqué Christmas sweater, make sure that at least your toenail polish says slut.

Then  I say, "I have to go. There are people I need to call to start mocking you right away."

"I know," she says. Then she adds, "But it seems to me that you have actually put some thought into what you are going to wear to a Midwestern Christmas party. Why couldn't I make fun of you?"

"Don't be ridiculous," I tell her. "You don't even have a blog."

My heart is a ripe red tomato

I am not finished pining for you, Greater Miami-Fort Lauderdale Metropolitan Area where the air smells like Key limes and coconut, even in heavy traffic.

But I have to confess. There is something in this pasty-faced, corn-fed Midwestern culture to love. To dream about even. To cultivate ripe, lusty, garden-fresh fantasies over.

And I am wondering, Greater Miami, did you ever in our 10 years together, leave a bag of fresh-picked backyard produce on my doorstep?

My friend Dianne, who has family in Nebraska, says that you cannot leave your car doors unlocked there this time of year without coming back to find that someone has filled your passenger seat with 50 pounds of something just picked. 

Where I come from, the backyards are elaborately paved over to resemble Venetian courtyards, with palm trees in pots, accent lighting by Target and a cathedral's worth of Pier One candelabra. They don't generally cultivate anything edible unless it grows from a low-maintenance tree that was already there, drops into our laps and can be used to make guacomole or margaritas.

As far as I know, nobody in Greater Miami ever returned to an unlocked car to find it filled with margaritas and guacamole. Not counting the stomach contents of dead hookers.

Here, every third house has a backyard patch of something high-maintenance and ridiculously good. Yesterday, I opened the front door to find a bag of backyard tomatoes, one as big as a softball and so beautiful I wanted to have its nude portrait painted.

Instead, I sliced it and piled it on a bagel spread with cream cheese and capers. It was so good you could have recorded an adult film soundtrack in my kitchen. Oh god.   

That must be what is meant by food porn.

An idea so bad, it could only have been spawned in a Midwestern suburb

The Wildcats haven't sunk a single basket yet and already I am bored.

Whose idea was it to drag nearly a dozen moms and their fifth-grade daughters to a crowded Midwestern theater for a showing of High School Musical, Infinity?

I am pretty sure it was the woman they call "Mary," but trust me, I intend to find out.

The girls are sitting in a separate row, so this does not even count as a mother-daughter outing.

They pay us absolutely no attention except to tap us on the back of the head when their $4 sodas run out or when they need an escort to the bathroom.

"Again??" we hiss across the back of our seats before bumping our way past the 32 people and four gallons of soda perched between us and the nearest exit.

No one has thought to bring any liquor, so we sit low in our seats groaning at dialogue so bad, it could only have been written by high schoolers.

"I think I've run out of goodbyes... I love you Wildcat, but I think I need to stay where I am."

And: "You may be ready to say goodbye to East High, but East High is not ready to say goodbye to you."

We are so ready to say goodbye to East High. (Principal: Busby Berkeley)  But when I look back at my daughter during a particularly gooey love duet, she is glassy-eyed with adolescent ardor.

"You realize," I want to tell her, "that a choice between the Juilliard School and the University of Albuquerque is no choice at all?"

Photo: High school seniors Gabriela Sugarcoat and Troy Biceps take a break from the suffocating angst of having to choose between true love and the Ivy League. Adam Larkey / Disney

Having a ball in the Midwest

After my Iowan sister-in-law introduced me to the "walking taco," I was prepared to believe anything.

If someone had told me that fried Cheez Whiz on a stick was a staple of the Midwestern wedding buffet, I would not have questioned it.

Once you have accepted the fact that people will eat ground beef out of a Doritos bag, what is left to doubt?

Even so, the ham ball had me grabbing for my notebook in disbelief.

We were sitting around the kitchen table drinking wine in one of those far-flung Midwestern suburbs few outsiders will ever visit, when our hostess threw out a strange warning.

"Don't make me get the ham ball," she called to her husband, whose unfinished workday was keeping us from our dinner reservations.

Her husband came soon enough and we were spared whatever danger the ham ball posed.

But I had to know.  Ham ball?? 

"The ham ball," she repeated, looking to the two other Midwesterners at the table, who nodded in recognition of what is apparently both a popular hors d'oeuvre and a threat in these parts.

"Okay," I said, flipping open my notebook. "I have to know."

"How much of the Buddig?" our hostess asked her friend.  They debated, then settled on an amount.

"The Buddig" it turns out, is a package of Carl Buddig ham, which according to its label, has been "smoked, sliced, chopped pressed and cooked."  When I was growing up, we called this stuff lunchmeat.  It was piled artlessly between slices of bread and eaten with mustard, or perhaps mayonnaise.  The aesthetic possibilities went undeveloped.

But when chopped into bits, mixed with 8 ounces of slightly softened cream cheese, a couple of chopped green onions and a little bit of Worcestershire, the Buddig is transformed into edible clay from which the "ball" or  any number of other shapes can be molded. Footballs (with processed cheese spread laces) are popular and there is one reported case of a ham ball sculpted into a bust of someone's mother. This is accepted as an unironic tribute in the heartland.

It is a staple of the buffet and the block party, where I am told, the baked Brie goes untouched in favor of the ham ball.    

 "Cream cheese," our hostess confided, "is what holds Midwestern housewives together."

She added: "If you want to get really fancy, you chop up some more of the Buddig and you roll it in."

"We don't do that," said the other woman. "We're riffraff."

I may be getting in touch with my inner Midwesterner. I so want to make a ham ball.  But  this recipe is not going to cut it for me.  Any suggestions?  Wine pairings?  Party invitations? I'm bringing the ham ball.

Photo: Midwestern party starter.

The Corn Whisperer

They grew up in towns with names like "Normal" and "Hometown."

I came from a place people went to escape indictment normal, hometown-type places. Where thongs and tequila flew off the shelves like underwear and hard liquor. Where you could not step out for a latté without tripping over the players in some international intrigue involving suitcases full of cash, or body parts. Where the word "exotic" had lost its meaning.

Where were the tattooed, Margarita-swilling, motorcycle driving mommies like the ones who ran the PTA meetings back home?

Everywhere I turned I was subjected to stories extolling the character of the hard-working, unvarnished Midwestern people. 

It was cloying, annoying, but taken as truth: these were the best people in the entire country.

It was going to be a long winter.

And so, though I knew it would not be easy, I had to learn to communicate with these wholesome, sincere, incorruptible people.   

When I first came to be among them it was nearly Halloween.  The best of the holidays. At what other time of year can you count cobwebs and dustballs as decor? Go door to door trick-or-treating for cocktails? Dig a grave in the backyard without arousing suspicion? 

But alas, such traditions had not spread to this little corner of the suburban Midwest. As the day of haunting drew near, pyramids of tastefully arranged hay bales tied with orange satin bows sprouted on lawn after lawn.  Does Martha Stewart have to ruin everything? 

I still had my wig in my hand when the first trick-or-treaters showed up. It was 3 p.m.

"What are you doing?" I asked, squinting into the sunlight. "It's not even dark."

"There is a curfew," one of them answered politely.

"A curfew?" I said. "It's  Halloween. You are teenagers.  Show some self-respect."

They looked at me blankly.  "Oh for the love of Satan," I  said. "Do you even have any eggs?"

They did not.  I sighed.  It was almost certainly a hopeless case.

But, as they say, it takes a village.   So I explained to them what was expected and sent them on their way with a package of toilet paper and a dozen extra-large.

It wasn't just the children who needed my help.  Their mothers had knitted themselves into lives of corn-fed desperation. Their social lives were built around product parties and school fundraisers. Married to men who had their hair cut every three weeks, they avoided liquor, tattoos and high-heeled footwear as impractical, unnecessary and dangerous. Especially on ice.

They were dying on the inside, even if they didn't know it. 

The first woman to confide in me said she'd stopped ordering wine in restaurants after her husband had complained about the expense.

She ran herself ragged to be the perfect mom.  But she had no idea how to play the Game of Wife.   

"You are doing it exactly backwards," I told her.  "Order a second glass of wine.  But leave it mostly untouched."

She took my advice and improved upon it; fingering the stem of her glass, sighing deeply and gazing into its overpriced depths. "The thing about a really nice Bordeaux?" she told her husband,  "one is not enough and two is too many..." 

But she was from the South Side, so it didn't really count.  Those women take to bad like a Midwesterner to green bean casserole.

If I was going to do any good at all, I had to reach the PTA members, the tea drinkers, the Women Who Mulch Too Much.

In hindsight, the tattoo party was probably too much, too soon.

And I blew it with the Tupperware clique when I asked them what they did for fun. They were having fun, apparently, right there, surrounded by the latest in jewel-toned plastic food storage. "I mean, other than this," I said quickly.  But it was too little, too late.

But I am this close to talking the book club into a two-drink minimum. 

And X-rated scrapbooking?  This could be my best idea yet.  On paper at least.

 

Photo:  Pssst. Over here. You know you want to...

www.oznet.ksu.edu/fieldday/kids/crops/corn.htm

Out of milk and Into Thin Air

CHICAGO -Abandoned carts of shoppers who failed to summit the Jewel-Osco parking lot.

He was sure this city would have won me over by now

...even without his relentless campaign.

Everything is so much better here, he says.

“You should be getting a check from the Midwest Visitors and Convention Bureau,” I say.

“You should stop being such a whiner,” he says.

But we are no closer to resolving our geographic differences.

Our positions have hardened like the crust of dirty ice hanging off the bottom of my car.

The colder it gets, the more he pretends to love the weather.  The more he pretends to love the weather, the colder I get.

“I love this weather,” he says, almost every day. “It feels so fresh.”

I make a mental note to check out EPA air quality studies for Chicago vs. Miami. “Yeah, it’s fresh,” I say.  “These are fresh tears frozen to my cheeks.”

In the morning, I scan the newspapers for weather-related mishaps.

“Look at this,” I say. “A man was killed clearing snow off his car.”

He takes the paper from my hands.

“He was shot,” he says.  “People get shot in Miami.”

“Yes,” I say. “But they die warm.”

Overnight snow has left the driveway impassable. “Wake up winter boy,” I say.  “I need to get the car out.”

But he cannot be broken. He gets up and shovels the driveway without complaint.

What will it take, I wonder, to make him see things like I do? 

He looks out the window in the morning and he sees a Currier & Ives print. He walks to the train station in icy rain and thinks how lucky he is not to be stuck in traffic. 

“Isn’t it nice being in a place where the seasons actually change?” he says.

“From snow to mud?” I say.

But he never gives up.  He puts in heated floors and buys me palm trees.  “So I can watch them die? I say.

But they don’t.  And neither do I.

The truth is, I am struggling with my commitment to hate this place.  I blame the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Greek restaurants, Michigan Avenue, Second City and men in long black coats.

Also, it turns out I look good in boots.

Photo: Some see the world through tulip-colored glasses. 

R.S.V.P.: My Lesbian Pool Party

To My New Friends and Neighbors in the Suburban Midwest: 

Please don’t take this personally.

But your social gatherings? They make me want to kill myself.

At first I thought it was really clever how all of your invitations arrived with their themes ironically concealed beneath irreproachable Hallmark card sentiments.

But then I showed up for the "Ladies Ornament Exchange" with my resin penis Christmas ornament and realized you were completely serious: it was a party where grown women exchanged Christmas ornaments. And not a single one was shaped like a dildo.

I swear to God.

And the "adults only" gingerbread house party? Not one person got naked. At a gingerbread house party.

It was as if someone had secretly replaced all of the women in the suburbs with their great-great grandmothers. From the boring side of the family.

(Before I forget, Dear Wondering If I Am Free for Tea: I am checking my calendar for the year 2052 and it is completely open. I hope to see you at my 90^th birthday bash later that same year! Yours, SK)

Still, I don’t want to be a hypocrite. What have I added to the local social circuit other than a few bottles of very good wine and a heaping casserole of disdain?

That is why I have decided to host the Midwest edition of my now famous Lesbian Pool Party. I know what you are thinking: "But Suburban, you don’t even have a swimming pool."

Really? Is that what you were thinking? Because I am wondering where the hell I am going to find lesbians in this neighborhood.

Just kidding. There is no way I am going to find lesbians in this neighborhood. But that is not the point.

As an experienced party hostess, I can tell you that a successful lesbian pool party requires neither lesbians nor a pool. Actual lesbians, in fact, do not always appreciate being used simply to liven up a guest list. This puts a lot of pressure on them that is, frankly, a little unfair. I recognize this and I apologize.

But the party must come first.

And there is nothing like a good lesbian pool party to separate the tea drinkers from the people who will, if invited to a pool party in Chicago in the middle of February, leave their sensible shoes at home and arrive wearing a thong and bearing fruit-flavored Caribbean rum.

These are the people you want to know in the cold, bleak days of the Midwestern winter where 80 percent of the conversations you will have with anyone over the age of 11 will be about the weather and the other 20 percent you will not be able to remember.

I hope you can make it.

 

Sincerely,

The Suburban Kamikaze

photo by Rick McCawley: Please leave your sensible shoes at home.

© 2007 P.M. Dunnigan/Suburban Kamikaze

New Year's Resolutions 2007

10.  Alienate in-laws

9.  Seek out prospects for meaningless affairs before global warming brings about  disappearance of men in long, black wool coats.

8.  Find U.K.-accented man for meaningful telephone relationship.

7.  Stop trying so hard to be "the perfect wife."

6.  Learn to distinguish $200-a-bottle wine from $175-a-bottle wine.

5.  Resolve to say "fuck off" to any and all Midwestern retail employees attempting familiarity.

4.  Find my "inner Midwesterner."  Tattoo her.

3.  Resolve to leave empty toilet paper roll on holder until someone else in family takes initiative or until empty rolls accumulate to height of shower head.

2.  Refuse any and all social invitations unless there is at least a reasonable prospect that police will be called.  (Sorry,  I will be unable to attend the "Ladies Ornament Exchange this year...)

1.  Less small talk. More wine.

Photo by Rick McCawley

Corn Fed Up

If you care about the members of your family, have never robbed a bank and regularly put in an 8-hour day without complaining – you are obviously of Midwestern stock.

I say obviously because these attributes are so widely recognized as inherent in the good hearty people of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio that the very word "Midwestern" is shorthand for such virtues.

If you spend any time at all in the Midwest, you cannot escape the conclusion that these humble, trustworthy, family-loving, down-to-earth people are simply the country’s best.

Did I mention that they are humble?

I know this because humility is always on the list when Midwesterners describe their special qualities. It is one of the key qualifications of the quintessential Midwestern enterprise.

"Our humble, highly-educated professionals emulate Midwestern values…"  says one Midwestern firm under the home page headline "Our DNA."

You can’t acquire Midwestern values; they are either in your genes or they are not.

But if they are, you can use them to promotional advantage.

"There are a lot of correspondent clearing firms out there (who knew?) – so why would you choose ABC Clearing Firm?" asks one solidly Midwestern company. It’s a rhetorical question. The answer is "Midwestern Service Culture."

Duh.

"ABC lives up to its Midwestern values such as honesty, integrity, responsibility and a strong work ethic."

Successful food chain executives in particular, exemplify the Midwestern man, according to the website of a Midwestern executive search firm that specializes in food chain executives. They "exhibit a solid, quiet integrity. They are not flashy. They have a work ethic second-to-none and recognize the value of putting a shoulder to the wheel for the long haul."

You’d have to be an idiot to send your business to one of those flashy, dishonest, irresponsible, lazy outfits from one of the "destination states."

I am tempted here to use the words "Archer Daniels Midland," but that is no doubt because I am from one of those cynical, argumentative coastal states.

That could be a hurdle in my Midwestern job search, because, according to one search firm "in the job market, Midwestern Values Always Count!"

Here is their description of a guy who got the job: "What put him over the top was his quiet, self-effacing but firm presence. From top management down, people sensed this was a man of strong core values, who could be counted upon through thick or thin to do his best. From any point on the business or personal compass he epitomized Midwestern Values."

Can’t you just picture him? Exuding competence and humility as he stands shoulder-to-shoulder with his team of other middle-aged, mostly white men. They are wearing off-the-rack business suits and their hands are all crossed over their…

Wait, that is just the picture in my head. No one is saying you have to be white, or male or middle-aged to "epitomize" Midwestern values.

Though it does help, apparently, if you went to a university that has "a barn somewhere on campus."

That's the outside-of-the-box criterion used by one company to find job candidates who share its "small town Midwestern values," according to a post on the web site of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

It goes without saying really, but the company’s employees are all "very bright" but "modest about their achievements."

For some Midwestern institutions, such inherent modesty poses a marketing challenge.

"Out of Midwestern humility, we are sometimes reluctant to talk about our achievements," the University of Iowa avers bashfully on its web site.

At least it is not seen as "tooting your own horn" to tout your Midwestern modesty.

(Unlike those sneering coastal types, Midwesterners do not shy away from the use of folksy cliches.)

My husband for example, a Midwesterner who humbly embraces the concept of Midwestern superiority, recently used this expression to recommend a job candidate to his editor. "He’s a real Midwestern, salt of the earth kind of guy…"

I overheard this. It wasn’t calculated to irritate me, unlike this recent exchange over the morning newspaper:

Humble, Yet Superior Midwestern Husband: "Who said , "If I had to choose between government without newspapers and …."

Sneering Coastal Wife: "Thomas Jefferson. Who was not, by the way, a Midwesterner."

Humble, Yet Superior Midwestern Husband: "But he would be, if he were alive today."

He was attempting to ratchet up my irritation at the fact that the 2008 presidential race is already teeming with candidates eager to brandish their Midwestern credentials.

"Here they come," writes (warns?) Chicago Tribune national correspondent Tim Jones. "…corn-fed, solid citizens from the Midwest, bursting with heartland values and Main Street common sense…"

(Herbert Who-ver?)

But why not?

There is no political capital in being a sushi-fed, latte-drinking politician from the coast. After six years of Karl Rove, everyone knows you can’t like sushi and share heartland values.

Sushi is the food of those pretentious crybabies who live along the coast whining into their lattes about their Volvos and….

Anyway, it’s a safe bet that Shonda Rhimes does not like sushi.

Rhimes, creator of the television show "Grey’s Anatomy", has "an appetite for hard work" according to a Chicago Tribune story that makes it perfectly clear that Chicago-born Rhimes owes her success to a string of "very Midwestern qualities."

They include:

A "no-nonsense" attitude

Ability to learn fast

No diva behavior

A "grit your teeth" mentality

"Less snooty"

with "more normal tastes" than someone who grew up in New York or Los Angeles

(Can I just say "Jeffrey Dahmer" here?)

Tribune theater critic Chris Jones also subscribes to the idea of the Midwest as a giant swath of normal people even as he dismisses the movie "Borat" for playing to stereotype.

(Humility, yes. Irony, no.)

As Jones sees it, it is no coincidence that the Cambridge-educated comedian Sacha Baron Cohen "predictably bypasses the Midwest … that great swath of workaday America."

By leaving all the normal people (read: Midwesterners) out, the movie "functions very nicely as a smug celluloid confirmation of the cheap and ignorant Western European view of a homogeneously ugly America."

If only more Western Europeans could be dragged into the Royal George Theater Cabaret to see "Leaving Iowa!"

Chicago Tribune Theater Critic Chris Jones: "If Midwestern values mean family, nostalgia, good humor and a general lack of pretension, then the on-going run of the sweet comedy "Leaving Iowa" is surely a better bet for your out-of-state guests than those darn Untouchable Tours."

(For the record, he said "Untouchables." Not me. I have not mentioned the Midwest’s "family business" once. I could have done it. Right after "quintessential Midwestern enterprise." But that would have been a cheap shot, don’t you think? )

Anyway, go see "Leaving Iowa" and bring all your snobby Western European friends with you.

Thursday is Rice Krispie Treat night.