Behold My Columnoscopy

So I was just minding my own business last night, walking around Union Market, when this guy comes up to me. He was all excited. He said, pointing and giggling:

“You’re the rotisserie chicken guy!”

As an experienced native New Yorker, I absolutely knew the correct thing to do at this point:

1. De-establish eye contact.

2. Plant a noncommittal smile on my face.

And

3. Beat it the hell out of there.

   —

   But this fella had a wife with him, and everything. He didn’t look crazy. He looked … awestruck.

   “Sorry,” I said, “I don’t know who that is.”

He gave me a knowing side-glance, like, of course I’m gonna deny it. The rotisserie chicken guy can’t go around admitting who he is, or he’d be mobbed for autographs all the time.

The fella whipped out his phone and took a picture of me. “You’re the Costco Rotisserie Chicken Guy, and I can prove it.” He summoned his wife to his side as though to supply a witness, and then searched the Web for the proof.

As he was trying to secure a connection — Union Market is not good for this — he said, “I think you are the coolest old man in the world.”

“Are you calling me an old man?” I said.

His wife said to her husband, soothingly, as though trying to defuse a possible deadly conflict, “I think this gentleman is actually a little younger than the Rotisserie Chicken Guy.’

“Who is the Rotisserie Chicken Guy?” I finally asked.

“He’s viral,” said the man. “TikTok. He wears a T-shirt with the Costco rotisserie chicken barcode on it, so he can buy the $4.99 rotisserie chicken without putting the meat through the scanner machine. He thinks the rays from the machine poison meat.”

The man couldn’t reach the Web but he strongly urged me to Google the Costco Rotisserie Chicken guy when I got home, and then gave me a half-conspiratorial wink, like he knew I knew he knew my real identity.

Some time later, I met up with Rachel at a restaurant. I generally don’t use my phone for the Internet, but she always does, like an actual adult, modern, not-desiccated person, and I informed her about this odd encounter I’d had and asked her to search for the Costco Rotisserie Chicken Guy. She did. Took about five seconds. She stared at her screen, then looked slowly back up at me. Her eyes were wide — filled, I thought, with solace and mercy and, I hope, love.

“Ohh, no….” she said. “Nonono….”

Remember, this is a woman who often has to identify me, in public, as her romantic partner. At this moment she did not want to pass me her phone, but had to, and did.

Here is the rotisserie chicken guy:

And here he is, doing his shtick on TikTok.

@oldjewishmenCostco chicken shirt actually works.

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And he also thinks pastrami prices are too high and also that Costco had better keep the damn hot dogs at $1.50.

@oldjewishmenKeep your hands off the dogs, inflation! #fypシ #viral #nyc #fyp #ootd #pizza #meat

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Also, he has written that he keeps having to get colonoscopies because of the barcode-scanner poisonings.

—-

I do not know his name. Possibly no one does. He is apparently a product, or an invention, or a partner of a site called oldjewishmen.net and its apparently elderly brother substack, oldjewishmen.substack.com. These are fine sites offering many products I can use. I have already purchased the Costco Rotisserie Barcode T-shirt, of course. I’ll model it for you when I get it. They also have Polo Ralph Lifshitz shirts and caps, which will make sense only if you understand the reference, which I will not disclose, and they also sell this cap:

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

— Good

See you in a day or two.

Meanwhile, possibly you feel sorry for me, for having no choice but to write this column today. Possibly you are a kind person with sympathy for writers who — for your amusement — can permit themselves no dignity whatsoever. If so, possibly you might consider upgrading your subscription. Here: