Joe Dog Software

A few years ago, Your JoeDog was with Mrs. JoeDog in McSorley’s Old Ale House.  For those who’ve never been to McSorley’s it’s an interesting place. The East Village pub is well-known for its very large beer selection. The choices are overwhelming. Since 1854 they’ve been serving McSorley’s light and McSorley’s dark. Truth be known, the “dark” is just light with added syrup. But here’s the cool part: a “beer” is actually two beers. If you and a companion order a couple, the bartender brings you four.

McSorley’s etiquette holds that tables should be shared. You shouldn’t sit at an empty table unless all the others are full. On that late Saturday afternoon a few years ago, Mr. and Mrs. JoeDog sat beside a man from Frankfurt, Germany. We engaged him in a conversation about German cars and German beer. Finally he said, “All you Americans want to talk to Germans about is cars and beer.” Basking in the warm caress of a second round Your JoeDog said, “And after a few more of these, we’ll probably ask about you-know-who.”

It turns out there’s more to Germany that cars, beer and Hitler. Who knew?

Recently Your JoeDogs found the tables turned when they went to London to watch their beloved New York Jets defeat the hated Miami Dolphins. The game was part of the NFL’s international series. London pub culture is a lot like McSorleys. Table sharing isn’t mandatory, but it’s pretty common. It didn’t take long before we noticed a trend similar to what that German man discovered in America. There’s one thing Londoners seem to want to discuss with Americans. That one thing is guns.

Why do you have so much gun violence? Why do you have so many guns? The answer is: I don’t fscking know. Now if Your JoeDog had a modicum of interest in guns these inquiries may have been amusing. He may have enjoyed the engagement. But like that German in McSorley’s Old Ale House, Your JoeDog grew tired fast. Yes, America is armed to the teeth. Yes, America loves its guns. Your JoeDog is not part of that culture. The most lethal weapon he’s ever fired was a toy water gun.

Can we talk about German beer and German cars instead?

When it snows, the snow is everywhere. It’s on the roads, it’s on the sidewalks but it’s also on the media. Local news covers it. National news covers it. Cable news and newspapers cover it. If you want to know about non-snow issues at the height of a snow storm, you’re fscked. Everybody’s covering snow.

They report it because people are interested and it’s easy to do. Send a reporter into the street. See that white shit falling on his head? That’s Goddamn snow! How much is going to fall? We don’t know, between one and a million inches.

The pope is in the US right now and he’s on all the channels. There’s probably newsworthy events also taking place — you know, things that affect our lives — but we don’t know about them. Why? Because everyone’s covering the Goddamn pope. The pope is basically snow.

Last night, NBC News covered a bus accident in Seattle and devoted the rest of the broadcast to the pope. Did he cure a leper? No, he got in his stupid Popemobile and cruised down Fifth Avenue to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. What did he do when he arrived there? He went inside.

Is this newsworthy? Your JoeDog’s not a religious sort but he’s pretty certain the pope’s been to church before yesterday. He pretty much lives in one.

It’s cool that the pope recognizes climate change and irritates the moralizing wing of the Republican party but Your JoeDog can’t wait until he gets back on that plane to Leipzig or wherever the hell he’s from…

The Times posed this question a few days ago but Your JoeDog is catching up: “Whatever happened to German-America?” The short answer is this: two Goddamn global wars. After those bitter conflicts they didn’t feel like being German any more.

In the late 80s, Your JoeDog moved into an Upper East Side apartment in Yorkville. That’s a Manhattan neighborhood also known as Germantown. It stretches from the East River to Lexington Avenue. It was there that he witnessed first hand the dying of the German-American light.

Back then, it was filled with German stores, delis, bakeries and bars. The Viennese were there, too. Their pastries could brighten any morning. With two exceptions, these businesses were in their dying throes. The owners were old and the help was even older.

On Third Avenue, there were yellow pre-war tenement buildings. On top of those buildings you could find swastikas formed with brown bricks against a yellow background. They remained on those buildings until the early 21st Century. When they were laid by German-American construction crews, Hitler was not yet revealed as evil. Yet they remained on display long after the world knew he was a monster. The brown emblem was eventually blasted away but you can still see the Nazi symbol thanks to its brick outline.

Now almost nothing is left of Germantown except the venerable Heidelberg Restaurant on 86th and Second. Your JoeDog still visits that bar several times a year. A little while back we met an old Czech woman at the bar. She nursed a Jaegermeister with a beer and finished both drinks at the same time.

She was an ethnic German from the Sudetenland. In 1945, she hid under a bridge as the Red Army marched over it. She was there with her sisters and a cousin. The Red Army was raping its way across Eastern Europe then. We weren’t sure if she was unscathed but they didn’t find her on that particular day.

She emigrated to New York in 1948 and never lived more than a few blocks from her original apartment. I told her Barack Obama — a German-American — lived in this neighborhood, about a block from my old apartment. This greatly excited her and she announced it to everyone at the bar. Then I reminisced about the Old Neighborhood and that made her even more excited. Finally she met someone who still remembered it.