Hello. My name is Joe Robb and I live on the south bank of Cincinnati.

I don’t know what you know about Cincinnati.

When I used to live in Boston, I met people from the East Coast or the West Coast who thought my hometown–the mighty metropolis on the coast of the Ohio–coasted through a flat sea of corn, and that it was a town, small and rural, full of twang. They were surprised by my accent, and to learn that my city was big, and ugly sometimes, but beautiful at other times, so seeped in odd history that when you step on the pavement of Cincinnati, stories leak up through the cracks in the asphalt and the smells of malted barley and pigflesh flood your nose.

Was that too much?

Cincinnati is the Queen City, The ‘Nati, The City of Seven Hills, The Beer Capitol of the World, and Porkopolis. Cincinnati is the birthplace of Roy Rogers, Bootsy Collins, Doris Day, Stephen Spielberg, Sarah Jessica Parker, and King Records, but not Jerry Springer, although he served on our city council from 1971 until 1974 when he resigned, admitting he had hired a prostitute with a personal check . . . that bounced. The... more »

I got caught up in my past again today thinking of a favorite commercial, because, during the day, I am a drudge, making my mind mine, you see. And for you who know me, you will not be stupefied to know that my thoughts turned to food.

Dairy, in fact.
All wares milky, in fact, but particularly the rinded.  
(For the next paragraph, imagine it is being spoken in  Superman 3’s narrator’s voice. For those of you who, for whatever reason, lost the brain cells that made up your memories of the eighties, I offer an example:)

My hobbyhorse is writing and food, my fetish. Separately developed, it seemed that the twain were never to meet, but one fateful day, far in the past, as  Saddam
Hussein hung his jacket on the second floor coat rack of the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar for the six hundredth and sixty-fourth last time, as George W. choked on his pretzel Laura had slipped playfully into his mouth, the twain met and had cocktails. The liquor went straight to their heads and they copulated wildly on the bed of James Tate’s poem, The Wild Cheese. My loves became one love and I became a creative monogamist.

Why am I telling you... more »