The Ice Storm

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SO LET ME dish you this comedy about a family I knew when I was growing up. There’s a part for me in this story, like there always is for a gossip, but more on that later.

First: the guest room, with the orderly neglect of all guest rooms. Benjamin Paul Hood- the dad in what follows — in the guest room. In the house belonging to Janey and Jim Williams, just up the street from Hood’s own comfortable spread. In the most congenial and superficially calm of suburbs. In the wealthiest state in the Northeast. In the most affluent country on earth. Thanksgiving just past and quickly forgotten. Three years shy of that commercial madness, the bicentennial.

No answering machines. And no call waiting. No Caller I.D. No compact disc recorders or laser discs or holography or cable television or MTV. No multiplex cinemas or word processors or laser printers or modems. No virtual reality. No grand unified theory or Frequent Flyer mileage or fuel injection systems or turbo or premenstrual syndrome or rehabilitation centers or Adult Children of Alcoholics. No codependency. No punk rock, or postpunk, or hardcore, or grunge. No hip-hop. No Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or Human Immunodeficiency Virus or mysterious AIDS-like illnesses. No computer viruses. No cloning or genetic engineering or biospheres or full-color photocopying or desktop copying and especially no facsimile transmission. No perestroika. No Tiananmen Square.

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