Best Medicine: Innovative ways to raise the $60 billion we need, post-Helene

Webster’s Dictionary defines February as “that one month that’s a little shorter, and it’s not very good.” Or at least I assume it does. I haven’t owned a dictionary in years, and you can’t access it online without signing up for Dictionary Plus.

I mean, what is there to actually like about this gray and miserable month? A month where we all feel bummed out by the no-longer-Christmas-time-not-quite-spring vibes. A month where we all walk past the last of the discounted Valentine’s Day candy and feel a gnawing sadness before going all-in on half-price Reese’s Cups. A month where we all beat our heads into the keyboards of our laptops as we struggle to think of ways to make the dying days of winter funny for Xpress‘ “Best Medicine” column. 

Now it has been suggested that I’m projecting my own mental struggles onto you, the reader, but I don’t think I am. I think these are universal feelings we can all relate to.

But fear not, dear reader, for we are only days away from March. Or as I like to call it, “The month that’s a little better than February.” To close out February with a little more pizzazz, I’ve gathered three of the funniest people I know: Greg Benge, Lauren Kriel and Paul Dixon. 

Eric: We’re in one of the worst times for single people: the post-Valentine’s Day haze. The weather is dreary and reminders of romance surround. Asheville is a town that is notoriously hard to date in. What advice do you have for people looking for love?

Lauren: As far as I know, Mr. Rogers never gave dating advice, but given that Asheville was a disaster-dating zone before the hurricane, I think his “Look for the helpers” line applies here. And I know everyone — no matter their relationship status, gender or degree of damage sustained in the storm — had the biggest heart-ons for the far-flung electrical linemen (line people?) from Montreal and Louisiana and other former French colonies. There was just something about them. They really made us feel … empowered. Yeah, that’s it. We need a regular exchange program for dreamy helpers.

Greg: In my experience, a gift of 10 rat pelts is a surefire courtship strategy. Never fails … except when you roll a crit fail. 

Paul: I would recommend if you are lonely this month to get a worm farm and watch them do their squiggly wiggly thing. But if you don’t like little critters, you could affix a big leafy squirrel nest in between your storm window and your actual window and watch their magic happenings any time of the day. That is a lot more fun than watching your boring neighbors who don’t do anything.

Eric: Here’s a little trick I learned. If you don’t date people, they can’t break your heart. It’s elegant in its simplicity, right? You never have to go on a bad date if you never go on a date. Learn from my example. If you take a three-year break from dating, you can tell people it’s a choice, and nobody will know the difference as long as you don’t cry in front of them. 

Eric: Speaking of not crying in front of people, I am definitely dealing with the “We just survived an unimaginable catastrophe blues” this winter. How are you all keeping your spirits up this winter?

Greg: My inner indoor kid has flourished through these cold months by hyperfixating on creating miniature worlds for tabletop role-play. It seems my midlife archetype is not one of motorcycles or fly-fishing but that of a model train enthusiast without the trains. I bring to life tiny Dungeons & Dragons heroes with the flick of a paintbrush and minions of evil forged with the unexpected sting of a hot glue gun. The frigid hours, days and months melt away as I erect a small farmhouse with a thatched roof harvested from my kitchen broom. Is my floor dusty? Sure, but it’s a small price to pay for control over a tiny corner of my world.

Lauren: Spirits? In this economy? I did just finish a box of wine someone so generously donated to the food/toiletries drive at my gym during the immediate aftermath. Bizarrely, my seasonal depression seems to be on sabbatical right now, probably thanks to the HOLY-CRAP-YOU-LIVED-THROUGH-A-CLIMATE-EVENT-OF-BIBLICAL-PROPORTIONS shock vibe. And drawing. And dogs. Color and collars. Oh, and my doctor recommended a B-12 supplement and it tastes like candy. Candy you put under your tongue. Novelty! It’s keeping this winter fresh.

Eric: I panic-bought a nice turntable when talk of the tariffs came about. I’ve been raiding all my favorite record stores in town and stocking my house with sad, weird records. Driving through the destruction of places you’ve gone to your whole life got you down?  Try putting on a nice Kate Bush record and listen to how sad the death of Harry Houdini makes her! Stuck in traffic because yet another politician who doesn’t really care is using your hometown for a photo op yet again?  Try literally any George Jones record! As a wise man once said, when you listen to a George Jones record, no matter how bad you feel, you know at least one man feels worse.

Paul: Speaking of vinyl — in a deep stack of old scratchy records I found my copy of Black Cloud Botulism Breakdown by that Dr. Reverend Trench Mouth and his Barkin Bastards, and it has shined some light and given levity to my saturnine days during these cold, wet February doldrums.  And if that ain’t enough, February is such a dumb month that most people can not even spell Fevurary. I wish damn Halloween would get here already.  But until then I will keep hauling my old records out of my cellar and playing the likes of Bad Backwoods BBQ Boys of Baton Rouge and Jack “Walkin’ Scarface” Phillips and trying to keep them spirits up.

Eric: Post-Helene recovery is slated to cost an estimated $60 billion. So far, only around $4 billion in taxpayer dollars has been approved for assisting us in WNC. How do you propose we raise the rest? Pickpocketing? A really big bake sale? Inquiring minds want to know. 

Greg: To those in charge of rebuilding, I would direct attention to the fact that balsa wood and foam board are still surprisingly cheap per square inch of construction. For the price of one house, we could fabricate a thousand 1:12-scale dwellings. Typing this column from my palatial 3-by-2-foot castle, I am preparing to mount a party of like-minded adventurers. We plan to search the many caverns of Appalachia for a dragon or possibly a wyvern to defeat. Hopefully, our hoards will put a dent in the cost of Mod Podge and Citadel paints.

Lauren: I think if we offer up the civic center’s naming rights again, we could start a bidding war among the oligarchs of this country. No wait, make it a raffle. Only $50 million a ticket, and the winner (Musk? Bezos? Zuck?) gets a rooftop dinner at the Biltmore Village McDonald’s overlooking the consequences of their neglectful tech actions. Too dark? I wouldn’t mind a Big Crafty-sized bake sale. Nobody sells gourmet puppy chow in this town yet.

Paul: Get rich fast?  Well, hell this town was founded on snake oil, tourists, robber barons and the curing of people in top hats of diseases by putting them on a porch in a rocking chair. We can do this Asheville!  

Eric: We build a quick and dirty, half-assed Biltmore Estate somewhere nearby and switch some road signs around and collect the money for recovery funds. BOOM, we got a brand-new revenue stream. Now I know what you’re thinking. Won’t it be expensive to build another Biltmore Estate? Absolutely not, if we avoid permits and completely fake as much of it as we can. Instead of roses and lilies, plant kudzu — give that about two weeks to grow, and suddenly we’ve got gardens! Beyond the gift shop and an ice cream parlor, everything else can be convincing cutouts that we say are closed for cleaning or maintenance purposes. Throw whatever livestock we can find in there to wander around and then we’re done. Instant phony Biltmore Estate. 

Now if you’re worried that we’d be tricking tourists or that they’d see through the ruse, don’t worry.  If they’re the kind of people that we could get to go to the fake cardboard Biltmore Estate in the first place, they were never going to figure out how to get to the real one anyway. They’ll leave happy, with their marked-up handmade merch and their ice cream and their pictures of cardboard mansions, and we’ll all get to rebuild our town.

Now in the eventuality that people find out it’s fake and start to talk, there is a fail-safe built in. It’s all cardboard, so we kick it down and get rid of it. Then, and this is the most important part, we all be cool about it and gaslight anyone who went to the fake one and say nothing like that ever existed. (NOTE: For this to work, there can be no paper trail. So if this makes it into print, that means I either tried and failed to make it happen, or I just got tired and lost interest.)