Jonathan

It's always nice to get a recommendation from a friend.
"You have to hear this!" --- "Read this immediately." --- "Get in your car and drive to the theatre TONIGHT." --- "This is the best thing since the reverse Oreo." --- et cetera --- et cetera
A good recommendation is simply a friend saying to you the best thing that a friend can say: This is good. You are good. You will see that this is good.
And so the devastatingly sad thing is that the only "recommendations" I get these days are really just lists of stuff, which lists are culled from the occasional scan of twitter-feeds, facebook updates, g-chat statuses, and the rare and treasured personal text-message.
And yes, this means that I am an embarrassment. And yes, you do the same thing, and I know it. It is shameful, and we need to start talking to one another again, and we should all probably have a barbecue or a bonfire and sing the actual songs and tell the actual stories, but for now I'm just going to finish writing this blog entry, if you don't mind, thank you very much.
At some point during the day, I slink away to the bathroom and, while seated, begin scanning the pantheon of digital avatars of various friends, family members, and other characters whose personal tastes and interests satisfy my need for recommendations of a certain standard.
Friend Jonathan is almost always included in that initial sweep: both because of his exceedingly flinty taste and his unparalleled commitment to updating his g-chat status. So, that particular day, when Jonathan's status read "[Jonathan] . . . thinks IGEL is the enemy," I knew that I would think IGEL was the enemy too, goddamn them, and I needed to know what we were fighting against.

So I googled it.

This is a composite graphic of the first five images that appeared that afternoon, and yes, they are shocking. My spirit broke when I saw that center photograph (obviously taken by an undercover journalist or squirrel). Yes, the hedgehogs are the enemy, and if they developed advanced gas masks, then they must be testing biological weapons of some kind, and if the hedgehogs are testing biological weapons, then you know they're going to use them, and so I find myself pummeled with one question over and over again:

Do I really want to live in a world where hedgehogs are the enemy?

I mean, my God, they're so cute. Can the concept of evil be so pliant as to include among its legions the single most adorable animal ever? Can a hedgehog be the enemy?

At the end of the whole thing, I needed someone to tell me what to do. I couldn't come up with the next step on my own, I needed . . . a recommendation. So I called my brother and told him the whole thing.

"What should I do?"

"Did you say reverse Oreos?"

"Yeah, I think I did."

"Are you sure that's what they were called, because I can picture the packaging and I'm pretty sure that they had a different name. Golden Oreos? I think that might be a different product altogether. Are you sure it was Reverse Oreos? Do you really know what you're talking about here?"

"Maybe they had a different name, I don't know, it's just this hedgehog is wearing this . . ."

"Uh-Oh Oreos."

"What?"

"That's it. Uh-Oh, Oreos. There was a plot line, something about a mix-up at the Oreo factory. Probably the Keebler elves screwed stuff up or something. Uh-Oh Oreos. God those were good, I haven't seen them in years, do they still have them? Were they limited time only? Did they fix the mistake at the factory? Oh, I want one. I really wish I could have one right now; I mean my lips are just aching as we're talking I want one so badly. I would literally break a man's arm right now for an Uh-Oh Oreo. I'd break it. Just for one. I can't even imagine, and I mean I literally probably couldn't imagine, the things that I would do for an entire package."

"Yeah, they were pretty good."

"So are they still around?"

"You know what, I have no idea."

And I didn't know.

So I googled it.