RENDEZVOUS by Claude LeLouch

Back in 1984 a french friend bought a fiendishly fast KZ 1100 cc bike. We were sitting smack at an African transvestite after-hour bar in Les Halles, le Savanne. Dawn was an hour away. The streets of Paris were empty. Erik dangled the keys in from of my face. “How you like to take the monster for a ride?” My survival instinct had been rendered to zero and I took his keys. The pre-dawn streets were slick with winter rain. As high as I was my death wish was low and I drove the bike underneath Les Halles maze of parking garages. It’s been in plenty of films since then. I got the bike up to 120 kph on a straight-away. The RPMs coasted at 3000. A twist of the wrist redlined the dial. 160 in a second. I let up on the gas. This morning was not the time to die in a stupid crash. I returned to the bar at a conservative 40 kph. I had been gone five minutes. Erik with a junkie smile, “Fast?” “Very.” On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9. A friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drove at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris to meet a beautiful blonde. The film was limited for technical reasons to 10 minutes; the course was from Porte Dauphine, through the Louvre, to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur. No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit. The driver completed the course in about 9 minutes, reaching nearly 140 MPH in some stretches. The Benz was an automatic. Lelouch added the sound from a Ferrari to pump up the adrenalin. The driver ran about 12 red lights, nearly hit a few delivery trucks and pedestrians, and drove the wrong way up one-way streets without any hesitation. Upon showing the film in public for the first time, Lelouch was supposedly arrested for speeding, although critics have calculated that the top speed never broke 160. The same as me underneath Les Halles. The director has never revealed the identity of the driver, and the film went underground until a DVD release a few years ago. The title of the film is RENDEZVOUS. To see this short film please go to the following URL and hold onto your hair. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO8gMXrrESk

WRONG SIZE SHOES by Peter Nolan Smith

Twenty-five minutes after the stroke of Twelve New Year’s Eve 1982 a masked assassin shot dead the main investor a block away from the Continental Club on West 25th Street. The FBI and NYPD’s Internal Affairs investigating Viktor Malenski’s murder quickly drew lines between the dots. My ex-girlfriend was living with the dead man’s partner. My boss had been wearing a wire. I had paid bribes to cops in patrol cars. The scandal hit the papers. My name had been mentioned twice. Everyone thought I knew something. They were more right than wrong.

I avoided turning state’s witness thanks to a phone call from a Paris nightclub owner. He offered me a position of ‘physionomiste’. My inability to speak French was considered a plus. A ticket was waiting at the airport and I left New York without leaving a forwarding address. 

Paris was a relief. The nightclub on the Grand Boulevard was popular. I got free food, drinks, and the right to treat the French as rudely as necessary. They loved me for this rude behavior. It was the perfect job for an American in Paris. Any time I thought about returning to New York, I would call my friends. They said the Internal Affairs investigation was in full swing. The FBI has asked several people my whereabouts. Paris was home and I made the best of it. Young models from foreign lands and svelte dancers from the Folies Bergeres dragged me to flats throughout the various arrondissements. My troubles seemed 3000 miles away and I had no intention on settling down. 1982 became 1983 and 1984 arrived without any commitment to a conventional life. All that changed when a mischievous teenager with a froth of golden brown hair accompanied me to my hotel room in the Marais. I attributed our having sex five times in one night to her half-Puerto Rican/half Jewish blood. Candia didn’t leave the next morning and two days later the long-legged model/actress asked me to live with her in La Ruche, an artist commune. Staking my heart on the whims of a girl fifteen years my junior was dangerous, however the atelier in the distant 15th arrondissement overlooking the Lost and Found bureau of the Paris Taxi Commission was a welcome change from the Marais Hotel. Famous artists had lived on its ground. I started writing a novel about pornography in LA.

My friends. Albert and Serge, opened a dance club in the Bastille. I was the doorman. Black Jacques the bouncer. We were a good team. The Nouvelle Eve was popular with the young rich. Candia modeled in Germany, Italy, and Paris. We laughed, fought, made up, and went on vacations. Life was bliss. The summer was spent in love. Our lust tapered off in the fall. After an October trip to Milano, the phone rang at odd hours. If I answered, the caller hung up. Candia slept far from my touch. The art dealer Vonelli said that the happiness of a relationship can be measured by the distance between a man and woman in bed. Ours was a meter. There was someone else. I said nothing. She would have resented my accusations. The well-bred girls frequenting La Reve offered solace, yet I remained true to Candia, hoping one day she would respond with the same dedication.

Two days into 1986 Candia left Paris for a photo shoot in the Alps. Three days later she phoned to say her boss had invited the fashion team for a ski trip to Isola 2000. Having heard her opinion that skiers were too poor to vacation in the tropics, I bit my tongue and spent the weekend drinking heavier than normal. Candia called on Sunday to say she was staying an extra day. I envisioned her naked in bed with another man.

She hung up and I told myself this was just a fling. Candia would come back and everything would be like it was before, otherwise she would have never bothered with the call. On the day of her return I cleaned the apartment, bought flowers, chilled a bottle of champagne, and sprayed a perfume on the bed for a night of coaxing her heart into my arms. She arrived late. The shimmering silver fur coat accented cinnamon skin untouched by the alpine sun and my heart crumpled like a cheap beer can. The telephone rang and she snatched the receiver out of my hand. After several whispers Candia announced, "I have to meet a client at the Hotel Crillion for dinner."

Stopping her was impossible. "Go ahead." She left without mentioning what time she'd arrive home. I went to my nightclub. By 3AM I had drunk myself partially deaf and dumb. My partner stopped my dancing on a stool to Chic’s LE FREAK. "What’s wrong?"

"Nothing another whiskey-coke wouldn't cure." I shouted for a refill and Serge annulled my order. "Why don't you go home and sleep this off?"

"Because a house is not a home." I staggered to the entrance. A runway model from Baltimore accosted me with an obscene proposition. The redhead was beautiful. My girlfriend was probably making love to another man. The hotel across the street charged 200 francs for a room. I opted for the high moral ground. "Another night." "Another night?" She blinked in disbelief. No male in their right mind had ever refused her favors.

Leaving the club I weaved through the errant snowflakes to the Seine. The water lay like between the two banks like an oil spill. Candia’s betrayal shielded me from the cold. Nearing the 15th arrondisement, I realized while I might not forget this trespass, I could forgive her sin. I just needed a chance. 

On the Impasse Dantzig I lifted my eyes. The lights in the atelier were off. She might have stayed at the hotel. I prayed she was asleep in bed. She had chosen another course. Inside the door lay a pair of shiny Gucci loafers. They were not my size or style. A man’s moaning answered any question about their ownership. I charged into the bedroom with a wounded roar. A balding man lifted his arms too late to deflect my fist. He tumbled unconscious off the mattress.

The venom geysering through my veins transported me 300,000 years to a fire-lit cave. I seized Candia by the hair and threw her on the floor. The girl nursing my cold, the lover cuddling me after sex, the dinner companion laughing at my jokes were gone. “Why?”

“If you have to ask why, then you will never know the answer,” she spat with an unrecognizable hostility.

I envisioned a deadly blow, police, and trial. Her infidelity wasn’t worth a life sentence in the La Sante prison. I chucked her Mickey Mouse telephone through the window into the street and I scourged the naked couple from the apartment with the frayed wire.

Once alone I packed my clothes, journals, tape deck, camera, and photos. The man’s suit and shoes went out the broken window. The pettiness of the act felt good. I imagined police sirens in the distance and hurried from the apartment. On the nearest boulevard I hailed a passing taxi. The hour and my bag explained the story. The unshaven driver shrugged knowingly, “Un hotel?” “Ouais, le Hotel Louisiana." The stuttering images of my girlfriend’s infidelity accelerated my breathing and the driver asked, "Mssr., vous etes okay?"

"Ouais." It was the one word I could managed betwen the gasps for air. I lowered the window. The cold air failed to pluck the splintered razors from my lungs. A bottle of sleeping pills was lumpy in my coat. Overhead the sky glowered with a miserly gray dawn. The driver stopped at Rue Du Seine. I paid with a 100-franc note and said to keep the change. He drove away without a merci.

Waking the old woman at the hotel desk was almost a sin, except I had almost broken the 5th Commandment. I rang the bell. She blinked several times before recognizing my face from a previous stay. "Ah, Mssr., je imagine que vous voulez une chambre." "Une chambre pour un nuit." A room with a bed and bath fulfilled my physical needs.

"Chambre 312." She passed over a brass key and pointed to the elevator.

The room was clean. The bed soft.  I dropped two sleeping pills and saved the rest for a more desperate occasion. Sleep collapsed on me as heavily as a tombstone. Five hours later I woke more from a coma than sleep. My first thought resurrected Candia’s infidelity.

She had brought back her lover on purpose. My hands mimicked the act of strangulation. Thin air was no replacement for a seventeen year-old’s neck. French court had never convicted a man of a crime de passion, but I was only a murderer in my most grievous thoughts.

I tore up the photos of Candia naked in the changing cabinets of the Piscine Deligny, singing in Clermont-Fernand, and visiting her grandmother in Vichy. The shreds built a pyre of dead love in the hotel ashtray. I set them on fire. The flames wrinkled her face and body. An acrid fume corkscrewed into my nose. Fearing Candia's soul had invaded my body, I flushed the flaming photos down the toilet, then left the hotel.

I needed a drink and the icy wind hurried me down the Blvd. St. Germain to the Cafe le Flore. No one was braving the sidewalk tables. I sat on a chair behind a glass wall. The waiter took my order of a cafe au lait, croissant, and a single shot of Calvados and disappeared inside. Waiting for my breakfast, I viewed each passing couple with a jealousy bordering on hatred. Three Calvados numbed my disapproval, the wet wind, and my girlfriend’s betrayal.

After the fifth Calva I barely noticed my partner sit beside me.

Serge looked like he had just woke up. "I've been looking for you."

"Why?" Rubbing my face was an ineffective method of erasing the effects of the alcohol.

"I called your house this morning and spoke with Candia." Serge lit a cigarette and signaled to the waiter to bring us another round.

"More like my girlfiend." Dropping an 'r' from friend was lost on the Frenchman. "What the bitch say for herself?"

"She is very worried about you." My partner’s eyes pursued two schoolgirls.

I blew into my hands. "If she cared about me, why she bring home that man?"

"You Americans treat women as men. They are not. They are women and we have to protect the double standard, otherwise the battle between man and woman will be lost." Serge waved to a model on her way to a casting call. "You allowed her to have affairs and she concluded you did not care about her."

"Not care? I almost killed her." My fists clenched white.

"C'est vrai, and now she appreciates you care about her. A woman is a horse. You hold the reins tight and the horse will throw you. Too loose and she will runaway.” His eyes beamed with macho pride. "You showed her that you are a real man."

"That's insane." My parents had reared me to not hit a woman.

Serge inhaled deeply on his cigarette. "The caveman drags a woman by the hair to the cave. They have a little corps-a-corps. She stays with him. Not the man who lets her have an affair with another caveman."

The only examples of a caveman dragging a woman by her hair had not painted in Neolithic caves, but stretched in TV cartoons, however man's dominance over woman needed no historical anchor for its machismo in France. "This is the almost the 21st Century.”

“Eh, alors, even more reason you must establish a ‘rapport de force’." Serge stubbed out his cigarette. “Yell at her, hit her, and make love. She expects you to act like a man, not a mouse. If you let this wound bleed, you will be no good for the next woman you meet and believe me you will always have another woman. A plus tard."

To prove his point Serge stalked a fashionably attired woman in her thirties. Within a few paces she rewarded his boldness with a smile.
He was right and I shambled to the boulevard, foreseeing my kicking in the door, only every taxi was occupied by other couples. The chances of winning back Candia smoldered in the icy drizzle and I returned to the hotel room.

I was alone. I would never love again. I sat on the bed. Twenty sleeping pills would provide an eternal blanket. My head fell into my hands and I spotted a photo on the floor. It had been taken almost twenty years ago.

My grandmother sat on the porch of her house in Westbrook, Maine. A simple string of pearl circled her neck. A cameo was pinned to her black dress. The stacks of the SD Warren paper mill rose over the neighbor's roof. I could smell the sulfurous stench from the mill with my eyes closed.

Maine was calling. People there spoke with my accent. My grandmother made the world’s best beef stew. I’d sleep in a four-poster bed under warm covers. My bank account was full of francs. I’d skate on Watchic Pond and sled down Blackstrap Hill.

I called the nightclub and told Serge I was leaving town for a few days, then bought a one-way ticket to America from a travel agency on the Boulevard St. Germain. A taxi got me to Charles de Gaulle Aeroport with an hour to spare. The change in my pocket weighed a ton and I fought the urge to phone Candia. We had nothing to say. Finally the ground staff called for the passengers to board and I left Paris, knowing I was headed for the USA. The 747 fought the winter headwinds across the Atlantic and made landfall over the coastline of Maine. I peered through the plane's porthole. Watchic Pond was an icy white dot beneath the wing and I followed the white snake of the Presumpscot River to the SD Warren Mill in Westbrook. I took out the picture of my grandmother and turned over the yellowing photo to check the date.

The picture had been taken on the 4th of July of 1965.

I remembered the day minute for minute.

My brother and I were vacationing with my grandmother. We went to the lake for the weekend and came back to Westbrook on the 4th. I went into the drugstore to buy a comic book. The counter girl asked me to walk her home. I almost lost my virginity along the Presumpscot River. The girl laughed at my fear and i ran back to my grandmother's house. She had explained the birds and bees as she might to a grown man and we watched THE SEVEN SAMURAI that night. Neither of us said anything to my older brother.

I landed at JFK and stepped out of the terminal. People wore snow parkas, hats, and scarves for survival. I hadn't crossed the Atlantic to appreciate the Tri-State weather and boarded the A-train to Penn Station, where I rode the Northeast Unlimited to Boston, arriving at Route 128 near Eleven O'clock. A taxi drove to my parents' house. They both asked if everything was all right. I lied about Candia and said I wanted to see my grandmother. They exchanged a secretive glance and my father announced, "Your grandmother is in a nursing home on the North Shore near your aunt."

"Why didn't anyone tell me?"

“Your grandmother didn't want you to worry being so far away." My father was clearly worried about his mother. This was more than a cold or flu.

"Can I visit her?" I planned to free her from this old age prison.

"We'll go tomorrow. She's weak, so we can only stay for a short time."

"That's all right. I still want to see her." I spoke with my parents for a few minutes. We were tired and bid each other goodnight. I went upstairs to my bedroom. The airplane models, books, pictures, and trophies belonged to a stranger. I slept in the musty cellar. In the morning my father and I went to breakfast. He had divined the state of affairs in Paris. "You should come back to Boston and settle down with a nice Catholic girl."

It was easy for him to say. My father had married the woman he loved, raised six children, and worked for the same company thirty years. "I'll keep that in mind."

"How many more years you intend on messing around?"

"I don't know." I verged closer to tears.

"I'd expect 'I don't know' from a kid, not a thirty-two year-old man. Life goes fast. I’d hate for you to find yourself ten years from now, thinking it was a waste." My father wasn't the type of man to witness his son’s breakdown and paid the bill at the cash register. As we walked to his car, I asked, "How's grandmother?"

"She has cancer."

"How bad?"

"Terminal. She had a lump and let it go."

“She must have known it would kill her.” My grandmother had been a nurse.

“Probably.” He didn’t understand her neglect either.

The full extent of my grandmother’s condition had to wait until the nursing home. She was resting on a bed facing a window. Her breathing was pained. A morphine tube was attached to her vein. While she had lost weight, her face was a mirror of the woman in the photo sitting on the porch. She smiled with a drugged gentleness. "There’s a sight for sore eyes."

My father bent to kiss his mother and I held her frail hand. They spoke for several minutes and he said, "I have to speak with the nurses."

Once he left the room, my grandmother patted my face. "How's Paris?"

Her time was measured in days, not months. "Paris is Paris."

"You forget I met your grandfather in Paris during the Great War. We were young and in love, so don’t tell me Paris is Paris." Her opiated eyes delved deeper into me. “You can tell me your problem. It might be one of your last chances for my help.

"Don't say that."

"It's the truth, of course the doctors say I'll live to ninety.”

“They do?” I remembered my mother lying the night of her mother’s death. She had said it was to soothe my Irish grandmother and Nana had accepted the lie to alleviate my mother’s sorrow.

“They lied to me. The end is closer than anyone says." She brushed her hand against my face, the skin smelling of lavender. "Let me guess. Your romance in Paris has ended."

“Romeo has no Juliette.” I blurted out the entire story. At the end my grandmother said, "Hitting a woman is wrong no matter if she did something wrong."

"I didn’t hit her.”

“You came close.”

“It’s not the same thing.” The madness in my blood was only defensible in a French court and my grandmother frowned through a mask of pain.

"What did you expect from such a young girl anyway?"

"She said she loved me."

"Maybe she did in her own way." My grandmother coughed and I stood to fetch the nurse. She said, "Not yet. Please give me a glass of water."

I gave her a few sips and she closed her eyes. I worried she might not wake up, but after several seconds the agate green orbs flashed with life. "It's been thirty years, since your grandfather passed away, but I can remember the first days we met and our years together as man and wife.”

“Maybe I’ll never have that.”

“Let me tell you a story. You remember my friend, Marie."

“She’s still alive?" Marie chain-smoked and drank two bottle of rose wine daily. She was hard to forget.

“Marie will outlive me. Guess her drinking was her fountain of youth.”

"You're not gone yet." I wished my caresses might cure her.

"It's only a matter of time, anyway Marie had been a beautiful woman. She married young, acceding to her father’s wishes. Her husband wasn't capable of giving her romantic love, but people stayed together those days because it was the thing to do. After the Great War Marie accompanied her husband to Germany. One trip she met a sea captain and fell in love. This time for real. Of course it was unrealistic. She was married and the war came. He served as a U-boat commander. When Marie heard he was missing in the Atlantic, she went to pieces and began drinking. Her husband tolerated her behavior. Guess he loved her in his own way. Anyway he passed away a year ago, making Marie a free woman."

Fearing she was ranting from the drugs, I fidgeted on the chair and she admonished me, "That is the problem with you young people. Always in a hurry for the ending, so you miss the good parts."

"Sorry, grandmother."

"You should be. Anyway Marie was sitting in her house and the doorbell rang. She opened the door to this old gentleman. Marie mistook him for a friend of her husband. He had a German accent. Only one man in her life did. It was her sea captain. He hadn't died during the war. He had married his childhood sweetheart. After her death he sought out Marie to tell her that his only desire was to spend the rest of his life with her. And they are living happily ever after. So as sad as you are, one day you’ll love again. Now give me a kiss and fetch that nurse."

I kissed her forehead and brought a nurse to the room. My father said it was time to go and in the parking lot he read the sadness piled atop whatever had happened in Paris. He had to say something. “Your grandmother wouldn’t like you hurt.”

“I know.” She would want me to live in order for her to exist in the future.

"She loves you very much."

Marblehead Harbor was mirror flat. I had sailed it with my grandmother in my uncle’s little Sunfish. Soon she would only exist in memories of Maine.

“She loved you too.”

"How about a plate of fried clams?" He opened his door.

"Sounds good to me." Winter wasn't the best season for fried clams and my father's offer wasn't a soothing hand on my brow, however fried clams were a good remedy to the sight of another man’s shoes, especially if the Barnacle in Marblehead was open for lunch.

My grandmother was right.

One day I was going to love again and until that day I would have to live like that moment might be the next or else it would pass me by and I was too young to wait as long as Marie to find love again. When was only a question of time.

I Still Like Ike

Eisenhower speaks from the grave with grace. A great American president. He ended the Korean War, reduce federal deficits, opposed Israel in the Suez Canal, rejected helping the French suppress the Vietnamese, secretly stopped the proto-fascist Joe McCarthy, built the Interstate system, enforce desegregation of schools, and had a decent golf game. He was Supreme Allied Commander in World War II, despite never having commanded more than a battalion prior to Pearl Harbor. From Wikipedia On January 17, 1961, Eisenhower gave his final televised Address to the Nation from the Oval Office.[80] In his farewell speech to the nation, Eisenhower raised the issue of the Cold War and role of the U.S. armed forces. He described the Cold War saying: "We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose and insidious in method..." and warned about what he saw as unjustified government spending proposals and continued with a warning that "...we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex." No one ever mentioned his affairs. Like Dorothy in THE WIZARD OF OZ, Ike hailed from Kansas. He never had to click his heels to get home.

FEATHERS by Bryan Le Boeuf

The Louisiana artist Bryan LeBoeuf has completed a new series of paintings. I've appreciated his realist style since walking into his Williamsburg studio in 2002. HIs painting of THE MOSH PIT captured my admiration and his unswerving dedication to this representative genre has attained new heights with his new offerings. I never say to myself, as I do about an abstract painting. "I could do that." And his paintings speak a narrative, although sometimes not the one he had intended. FEATHERS reminded me of a bloody tale of love between two men. Back in the last century new heights a gay friend of mine was having a late-night fight with his lover. Something to do with who was on top and who was the bottom. Gerald was a little queenie and his boyfriend was rough trade. Gerald got the worst of punishment. A broken nose and blood streaming down his chest. A pillow had been shredded and the feathers stuck to his body. The boyfriend threw him out of the apartment and Gerald ran outside to shout expletives from the sidewalk. A police car rolled up to the curb and the window of the cruiser rolled down. Gerald turned to the cops and said, "What? You've never seen a naked man in a pillow fight before?" The neighborhood was the West Village. It had been gay forever. The cops looked at each other and drove off to the docks. Tranny hookers were easier to deal with than a naked queer covering in feathers. I know I'm not supposed to say 'queer'. But I'm old school and so is Gerald, even if he does lie about his age. To see more of Bryan's work please go to the following URL http://www.bryanleboeuf.com

Do Svidaniya AK47

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The AK-47 or Kalash was the assault rifle of choice for insurgents, rebels, revolutionaries, and armed forces since its introduction by the Soviet Army in 1946 to maximize close combat firepower. It was light, easy to operate in wide variety of conditions, and packed a punch. A silhouette graced the flag of the Red Army Faction. It was that popular, although considered the first choice of terrorists, because of its accessibility. "Remember one man's terrorists is another man's freedom fighter, so we all sort of think, oh boy, we've got a little bit of Che Guevara in us. And this accounts for the popularity of the (AK 47) weapon. Plus I think that in the United States it's considered counterculture, which is always something that citizens in this country kind of like ... It's kind of sticking a finger in the eye of the man, if you will." Larry Kahaner, author of AK-47: The Weapon That Changed the Face of War Not any more.  Yesterday Russian army has announced the cessation of orders for the AK47, while awaiting a better weapon. An end of an era. Only for the Russkis, because there are enough AK-47s around to last till 2012. We'll need them for the apocalypse.

SEX MACHINE / Sly and the Family Stone

Sly and the Family Stone launched funky soul in the late 60s with the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, and Parliament-Funkadelic. The group hit mega-gold with their 4th LP, STAND and its # 1 hit everyday people. Success was no a friend to Sly. His cocaine habit infected the other band members. He was a no-show at many concerts and passed out at others. Audiences rioted in response and Sly and the Stone had earned a reputation for trouble, but on July 7, 1974 the group headlined an outdoor show at Boston’s Franklin Park. Richard Pryor opened the day to be followed by Donald Byrd and the Blackbirds, The Hues Corporation, and Tower of Power. 20,000 fans had paid $5.50 to benefit the Elma Lewis School of Arts. Few expected Sly to perform that evening. He had missed a third of his concerts in 1971. My friend AK attended the concert and to this day says that Sly’s performance was unforgettable. I missed the show, because I was working in Cape Ann as a waiter in a gay restaurant over the town line from Gloucester. It was a dry bar. Customers had to bring their own bottles. The owner fed the staff liver and left-overs. I was fired later in the month for eating a an off-limit dessert. I can still taste that pecan pie. Sly’s musical effort dropped down the Billboard charts, although songs from STAND were a mainstay of 60s rock revival radio stations. By the 80s he had vanished from the scene. In 2006 Sly appeared at the Grammy Awards to play I WANT TO TAKE YOU HIGHER. At the end of the song, the once-time superstar walked off the stage and drove off on his motorcycle. Future outings across the world amplified the singer’s embrace of failure. Gone were the money, the mansions, the cars, and the acclaim. Sly was back in the news with the media excoriating his fall from grace. Sly Stone lives in a van. His neighborhood is Crenshaw in LA. Friends support this life style. He maintains that he is happy. 
Straight too. The newspapers reported his present state with joy. Those that can't love nothing better than to see a high-flyer descend from heaven, but only if they come from the masses. CBS and Fox News aren't waiting for the collapse of the banks. They love the rich. But not the nigger rich. They get what they deserve. Da money come and da money go. Sly was no exception, but I'm sure he had a good time. All I wanted now is for him to have a happy ending, because listening to SEX MACHINE is a gas. To hear Sly and the Family Stone's SEX MACHINE Please go to the following URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cffPwrmx6KE

Yee-Hah Texas

Last year Texas executed 18 men. Their punishment was ordered by the state for the crimes of murder. 2011 is on track to beat that number. The 11th man to lay his body on the injection cross had heinously murdered a black man in 1998 by dragging their victim behind his Ford pick-up truck. A rope had tied the black man's feet together and the killers slung a chain through the knot, so they could drag their catch to the nearest black church.This lynching had been carried out by Lawrence Russell Brewer and two friends to inform their community that the KKK was back in town. Jasper, Texas was founded in 1824. The main industry in the Deep East town has been lumber. In 1998 the population was split between black and white. It was not a rich town, but Jasper not Philadelphia, Mississippi and 1998 was not 1964 when the Klan killed 3 civil rights workers. Brewer and his partners were arrested for hate crime and murder. Brewer rightfully received the death sentence, as one of his partner's in crime. The third man got life. He must have gone state's witness. Brewer received his punishment this week. His last meal was a big one. Two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a meat lover's pizza, a pint of ice cream, and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts. He declared that he wasn't hungry and went to his death without taking a single bite. His loss of appetite was not uncommon. The state prison chaplain said many men decline to eat their last meal. "Very few - I'd say less then 10% - ate all that we brought to them." A state senator was appalled by this murderer getting such a feast and called for the abolition of the an ancient tradition dating back to the Greeks and Romans. The director of Texas prisons was in the same mind. Classics be damned. The last meal will now be the same as any other inmate on death row at Livingston. Last year the condemned went on strike, because of bad food in their unit. One way or the other Texas will kill the dead men walking. It's the law and Rick Perry is governor. His favorite food is popcorn. Yee-Hah Texas.

Viva Tony Montana

The USA is my homeland.

I care about apple pie especially since no one can make it like my late mother.

I also believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which is why I live in Thailand most of the year.

The life is good under the mango tree in my front yard. I'm free to say whatever I want, because no one understands what I say. And I can pursue happiness without anyone saying, "No."

With the exception of my loving Mam.

I'm presently living in Luxembourg. Far from Thailand. Far from the USA. Both countries are suffering from economic down swings, but the USA has dug itself a gigantic hole with a trade deficit to China. Billions and billions. And the Chinese don't want to buy anything from us. The situation reminds me of the British before the Opium Wars. The Celestial Kingdom had no use for anything from Manchester or London, while the teabags couldn't live without a 'cuppa'. Some bright Limey tai-pans decided to deal opium to the Chinese. Its popularity was instantaneous. End of trade problems and China was thrown into the gutter. The more things change the more they stay the same. The Commie wanted to hear nothing about buying baseball bats, since they are made in China, but I have a proposal to save the US economy. Legalize of cocaine everywhere in the world but white suburbs. That way we can declare the 'war on drugs' won and start dealing blow to the Chinese. A nation of a billion. Maybe 100 million would become users. At $5 a day that’s $15 billion a month.

I know it's a radical idea, but if I get the contract, then I'm franchising Carlos Blow Emporiums.

1-800-blowjob.

If MacDonalds can sell crap, I don't see why I can't deal zoot. The only other option is to sell fat American girls to Chinese men, who outnumber females by 100 million thanks to China’s one-child policy. Even better sell cocaine and fat girls. Think of it as one big fat farm for American females. Fat Farm China Jocko Weyland thought this was a good idea, but expressed reservation. “Though I disagree with your premise– ‘We’ do have something the Chinese want. They’re called ‘Ideas’. They don’t have those here.” Jocko’s not half wrong, but I’ve been in the USA four months and the only good idea I’ve heard in that time was Midget Golf. Last evening Joey I visited the Kit Kat Club on Belvedere. The strip club has a 2-4-1 Happy Hour. “You want a lap dance.” Vera asked waggling her flapjack breasts. “No thanks.” My back couldn’t handle Vera. She weighs about 260 and smelled of big woman sweat. “You know Vera’s a good candidate for Fat Farm China.” “What’s that?” Vera had failed Jenny Craig 12 times. I explained about shipping cocaine to China along with fat girls to save the American economy. “You we get to do blow?” “Why not?” I hadn’t thought about that aspect. “Then where do I sign up?” Vera recruited three other strippers from the Kit Kat. They’re big girls there. Watch out China, here we come. Fat girls and cocaine. Viva Tony Montana

Yee-Ho Coke

Corporations complain constantly about paying taxes to the federal government and the head of Coca-Cola has accused the White House and Congress of setting up a less than friendly atmosphere to sell their product in the USA. Coca-Cola was invented in Georgia in the late 1880s as an elixir. Five ounces of coca leaves were distilled for each gallon of syrup. It packed quite a kick. Cocaine was removed from the process in 1903, although ‘spent leaves’ remain part of the secret recipe for Coca Cola. Its New Jersey plant is the only factory in America authorized produce cocaine flavoring. The popular soda earned $7.2 billion selling their narcotic mixture. The corporation paid 6.5% on that profit. Company executives disputed those numbers, however according to the Financial Times Coca-Cola has rarely paid more than 2 percent of its yearly U.S. income since 2000. In contrast Home Depot shelled out 30% of its income to the Feds. This break isn’t enough for CEO Muhtar Kent. “In the west, we’re forgetting what really worked 20 years ago. In China and other markets around the world, you see the kind of attention to detail about how business works and how business creates employment.” Coke’s head is more interested in China as the ultimate buyer of America’s iconic tonic. Wait until they break the code of the secret recipe. Good-Bye Coca-Cola, hello China Cola. It will have cocaine in it too. This time straight from Medellin. Yee-Ho for the masses. Not an opiate, but an up.

Payback of the Geeks

Nerds and geeks have been targeted by bullies throughout history. Sand was kicked in Socrates’ face by a nameless. Galilleo was given a wedgee by a callous bastard son of a Vatican cardinal, and Einstein was forced to do the homework of a Viennese strong-arm thug. Bullying the weak or different has been a feature of childhood in almost every culture and there’s nothing a bully disliked more than a smarty pants. Bullies got the girls. Nerds got cooties. Ivy League jocks succeeded on Wall Street, despite their peanut-sized minds. Their cerebral shortcomings caught up with America this last decade, as the masters of the universe put a bullet into the American Dream. The entire financial system has been ruined by these idiots and now like a bully turning to a geek at the day before the final exams for help in a test, Wall Street and the other investment centers around the world have enlisted the aid of PhD mathematicians to rescue the global economy before the masses reject capitalism for another -ism starting with a C. Investment institutions are increasingly interested by algorithmic formulae to supplant the guessing and hunch technique of the glory boys of derivative trading and leveraged buy-outs. The high-frequency program tracks trends in the rise and fall of stocks based on statistics. Massive computers generate decisions within nano-seconds as Wall Street switches over to cruise control, allowing bankers and traders to blame a computer for an error in the system rather than their son-in-law, while they all vacation in the Hamptons. On May 6, 2010 the Dow Jones tanked 700 points or $800 billion in 15 minutes thanks to these QUANT programs. The losses were recovered by other mathematicians creating zombie accounting packages to obscure the depth of the disaster. Wall Street refused to reject the robot traders. They don’t get sick. They don’t want bonuses. They don’t sleep with their bosses’ daughters. 20% of trading is in the hands of computers controlled by geeks and nerds. The big bosses reward the boy geniuses, but none of them seem worried about the effects of bullying on a childhood mind. Geeks hate jocks and the best payback is the wallet. Beware of the Revenge of the Nerds. It could break the bank.

Chek Bin Carpe Diem

Three weeks ago Fabo and I were sitting at the garden bar of the Welkom Inn on Soi 3. I hadn't seen the Belgian oil explorer in a year. Both of us had suffered exile from Pattaya. His place of banishment was the North Sea. I was stuck in New York. We were equally glad to be away from either. He greeted me with a kiss on the lips. The girls on the patio regarded the gesture with disgust. They only liked straight men. Preferably newcomers to Thailand. They spent money like bankers on a cocaine binge.

"Papa." Fabo thought that we resembled each other.

"My son." I didn't see the likeness, but I drink San Miquel. It's made in the Philippines. Heineken is my pseudo-fils' beverage of preference. He was 31. I had been in Brussels at the age of 36 in 1988. A Walloon girl had taken me home to her parents. They had made breakfast for us in the morning. Her mother was glad that I was white.

"Welcome back home." His skin was tanned from the sun's reflection off the sea. Fabo looked healthy. He had been a month without a drink. We ordered beers. The time was noon. Loso was playing on the radio. He told me about his months of the oil rig in three seconds, "No fun. No beer. No girls."

"New York. Cold beer. No girls." Six syllables to his seven. The economy of age.

"One plus. Two negatives." Fabo had once shown a photo of his mother. The skinny punk girl with wide eyes looked familiar.

"Now we're here." His nose had been mashed by too many accidents, but his eyes were arctic blue. Mine were high Nordic steel.

"Paradise." Saying that I felt like Adam waking on the day after his maker created 'woman', except the almighty hadn't the heart to destroy his previous failures. The line-up at the Welkom Inn's entrance had a woman for every man's desire.

"You can say that again." I was blind to their allure. Mam dominated my libido. She was too cute for words. Fenway's mother knew that I was here. Trust. I had no choice, but to he true. I ordered another beer. The first bottle died after 47 seconds. The heat of May gave any human a thirst."

"Paradise, and I blame it on our position." He didn't speak about his wife or the German. It was better to not say SS Tommy's name.

"The equator?" I had heard his hypothesis on more than one occasion. My one attempt to explain it to Mam had met with her contempt. She had little patience for 'tawh-lay' or bullshit. All women say the same about men.

"Only 1200 miles south of here."

"I know." I had crossed the equator in the jungles of Sumatra. The relative speed of the earth's rotation is meant to send more blood to your head. "Speed."

"Not speed. The reformulazation of the theory of gravity." These words were spoken in French. Fabo loved the idea, but recognized his conjecture was full-on mad or 'bah mak' as say the Thais.

We argued about acceleration measured in m/s2, air resistance, and the downward weight force. The 3rd beer cured the affliction of banality. We were happy to sit at a bar. Happy the phone wasn't ringing. Happy heading toward drunk. The afternoon stretched east. We watched the men run the gauntlet before the entrance of the Welkom Inn's bar. The interior was night. The mama-san played any song from any year. The male clientele liked 1977. No matter what the nationality everyone knew the words.

We had been surprised by the arrival of four Mideastern men. Jeans. White shirts. No robes. They normally frequented the smoking bars at the end of Walking Street.

"Egyptian." Fabo sniffed the air. Strong tobacco.

"Turkish." They weren't speaking Arabic. Neither did I, but I had heard enough Arabic in Paris to know the difference. I bet Fabo 500 baht on their country. They sounded too Roman.

An hour later they exited from the bar to the warm wishes of several girls. They had barfined eight of the hostesses. One produced a bottle of Sky Whiskey. Half-done. Another flourished a handful of banknotes. The colors were strange.

Not dollar green or the green, blue, red, and purple of Thai currency.

One girl looked over her shoulder. Prueng. A shortcake angel with soft hair and small breast. The tomboy was almost 24. 6 years older than the first day she worked the Welkom. Her girlfriend worked at a big hotel. Preung saved money to pay for her girlfriend's penis operation. 200,000 baht. She lifted a thick fist of money in the air. Her co-workers cheered her order for more whiskey.

Five minutes later she brought two glasses of whiskey-coke to the bar. We were too polite to say no. Preung slapped the foreign money on the bar. It was a big pile. Many zeros. Zaire Francs. Value almost zero. Fabo was frozen on his seat. Someone had to pop her balloon. A bottle of Spy Whiskey was close to 500 baht at the Welkom. I was down to 300. Preung reached for the free drink bell. There were about 33 people with the range of its peal.

Drinks for everyone.

"Don't."

She didn't ask why. I read the finance section of the Herald Tribune, studied currencies, and scanned Karl Marx. An exchange rate came to my head.

“62 baht per million.”

Preung was holding ten million.

The buffalo herd for her father was kidnapped by disappointment. Her daughter was banished in the hicks or ban-nok. Her girlfriend stayed a woman. 600 baht for a short-time trip to heaven was the asking price at the Welkom. Her math was good.

"I not win. I not lose." Preung dropped her hand from the rope hanging off the bell. "It was nice rich one minute. You want go short-time?"

Preung was asking me, but Fabo seized the gauntlet. He had been at sea three months. No fun, no beer, no women. I was one hour late for Mam.

"Another step closer to a million." His arm encircled Preung's waist. She was no longer an heiress. A common girl. One with a good heart and smooth skin. Fabo paid the bill. 300 baht was tomorrow's breakfast or five beers tonight.

Paradise.

I was heading home. Fabo and Preung strolled to room 101. It was the closest. He did look like me only me from six years ago. I had been only 51.

Not young, but younger and therefore rich, because youth was always worth billions in both dollars and baht.

But never Zaire Francs.

Brooklyn Tony ON MATH 101

Teacher asks her class: "If there are 5 birds sitting on a fence and you shoot one of them, how many will be left?" She calls on Brooklyn Tony.

He replies, "None, they will all fly away with the first gunshot."

The teacher replies, "The correct answer is 4, but I like your thinking."

Then Brooklyn Tony says, "I have a question for YOU. There are 3 women sitting on a bench having ice cream: One is delicately licking the sides of the triple scoop of ice cream. The second is gobbling down the top and sucking the cone. The third is biting off the top of the ice cream. Which one is married?"

The teacher, blushing a great deal, replied, "Well, I suppose the one that's gobbled down the top and sucked the cone."

To which Brooklyn Tony replied, "The correct answer is ' the one with the wedding ring on,' but I like your thinking."

Mr. Wizard was an animated character from the early 1960s cartoon TOOTER TURTLE. The show ran a mere 39 episodes, however the main protagonist's call for salvation from an impossible dilemma remains a popular cry for the desperate. "Help Mr. Wizard." The magical lizard solved problems with wisdom and magic. His advice at the end of each episode was the same. "Be just vhat you is, not vhat you is not." The world economies are searching for such help as Greece teeters toward bankruptcy. The austerity programs forced on the taxpayers and civil employees have failed to stimulate a nation lost in the current financial maelstrum. The IMF has proposed a 50% reduction of the debt incurred by the Greek government during the heyday of money madness. This drastic measure is aimed at preventing a wide recession becoming a depression with the accompanying social ills of such as disastrous downturn. 50% is only halfway to the real solution which is International Write-Off Day to the banks, since their insistence on zero-interest to gain access to easy money in order to finance their greed is a major factor in the collapse of the international economy. Without relief Greece's debt's will go unpaid. And the Greeks are asking, "So what?" or "ʾĀmīn." Whatever will be will be. Recession followed by tax revolt and violence against the banks. Social services are cut to the bone. Greeks fend for themselves. Banks are nationalized. The Euro is abandoned. Recession becomes depression. Rebellion against corporate fascism. Repression by the forces of wealth. The rise of the working classes. The triumph of revolution. "Helpl Mr. Wizard." If only he were real.

How So Europe

The bar is now featuring ABBA GIMMIE GIMME GIMMIE A MAN AFTER MIDNIGHT. I feel so very 1979. And last night I danced to IT'S RAINING MEN at the RAF Luxembourg Grand Ball. Europe. The Old World. And me. To hear GIMME GIMME GIMME, please go to this URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfPEbWu-4Gc

Friends, Fiends, and Countrymen

as packed with Russians and the gamblers playing 21 looked like losers. 1000 Euros would vanish fast in a bad crowd. We retreated to the Hotel de Paris and I drank a gin-tonic. Alex Cohort opted for an Armagnac. It had been bottled well back in the last century. Charles glowed with the osmosic influx of our joy. Neither Alex nor I had ever dreamed of sitting in such an elegant setting back in Brooklyn. We were like kids in a firework factory, but both of us were married and the working girls assessed our value to be not worth the trouble of any gesture more than a smile. Definitely not my style. I wished them well upon retiring to the Hotel Hermitage. Alex and I were in the same bedroom. We insisted on separate beds, although by the fourth night we were too blasted to worry about what the hotel maids thought about two men in their 50s sharing a room. Luckily our snoring didn't break the sound barrier. I didn't write a single word during those days and I told Charles and Alex that I would get to work in Luxembourg, except the internet in the Residence is useless. My apologies once more. Tomorrow I shall put the seast of my trousers to the seat of the chair in the embassy. Back to work. Thanks for your patience. PNS

The Last Executioner of Thailand

Books are much better than DVDs. While used ones cost about 160 baht as opposed to 100 baht per DVD, movies rarely last longer than 2 hours, unless you hit the fast-forward button. The BLACK DAHLIA flashed before my eyes in less than 12 minutes. It sucked.

Reading a book is a journey of days unless the book was no good, however I was recently lucky enough to find THE LAST EXECUTIONER by Chavoret Jaruboon, the last prison executioner on Thailand.

The frunctional writing recounts Mr. Jaruboon's life as a teenage rock musician, soldier, prison guard, executioner, and finally monk. Neither of the first three prepared him for the 55 executions performed at Bang Kwang prison.

To him the job of poo sam-re?t toht or executioner meant more money.

2000 baht.

He outlines the crimes that led the condemned to their fate. Their crimes were often heinous. On the day of execution they were tied to a crucifix and shot up to 15 times by a machine gun. This humble man respects the dead, for fear of their ghosts. In the end Khun Jaraboon is glad to see the deadly fusillade replaced by fatal injection.

His last job was on 12/8/2002.

8 bullets into the back of a murdering rapist.

After that Jaruboon became a monk.

His favorite band was the Beatles.

One more thing.

Paperbacks are better than hard-covers. You can swap mosquitoes with them.

Dead Man Walking Dead

The State of Georgia executed Troy Davis on

September 21, 2011. The method of death was injection with lethal dosages of chemicals. His last words protested his innocence. "I'm not the one who personally killed your son, your father, your brother." Davis paid the ultimate price for the death of an off-duty policeman at a Savannah Burger King in 1989. The officer had attempted to interfere with the pistol-whipping of a homeless man over a bottle of beer. Troy Davis was accused of this crime and the state court ignored various statutes to attain the death penalty. Witnesses testified about a black man in a white shirt. Bullet casings were matched to another shooting and the jury took two hours to deliberate over the evidence before finding Troy Davis guilty of murder. Years of legal struggles delayed the execution, but the last appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court fell on deaf ears and the warden green-lighted the death process. There is a good chance that this was another execution of an innocent man. The State of Georgia preferred to reject any doubt with the certainty of an eye for an eye even if the eye belonged to someone else. One dead black man is as good as another. North or South. America the Land of the Free.

If This Is Bruxelles, Then____

On Saturday morning I left the residence in Luxembourg for Bruxelles. A lovely train ride through the southern forests of Belgium ended with a graceless entrance into the capitol city, but my good friend, Vonelli was waiting outside the Central Terminal in a Citroen Picasso mini-van. We hadn't seen each other in a good decade. 10 years was a long time. Enough to transform us into old men, if we were the type of men to look in a mirror. "You look the same as ever. It's a miracle." Vonelli bore his 60 years with dignity. His art deals had earned him enough money to rest between wearying bouts of international travel. "Same as you." He resembled the same man I met with Christa Worthington at Le Privilege in Paris some 30 years ago. My myopia blessed my friends with untouched beauty. We embraced with relief. Many of our friends had retired to the ether. "It's good to be in Europe." It was good to be most anywhere in the world. I had money in my pocket and Nick, my doctor, had cleared me for a long voyage away from the USA. His care was the only medical plan available. We went back to European History 101. Boston College Fall Semester 1970. It was a blessing to have old friends. "You look like you're ready to take on the world." He knew me from my years as a doorman in Paris. I had been tough as nails back then. "Not me." My tough years came to an end years ago. " I'm a family man now." "That may be so, but you're in Bruxelles now." "What's the best thing I can do he now?" It was lunch time. "I know a great restaurant. The last true bistro in Sablons. "A classic meal. Sausage and mashed." "I'm Irish. Lead the way." It wasn't good to be back in Europe. It was great. Just like Tony the Tiger said,

Near-Lethal Fart

Passing gas has been a great source of humor since Adam's first fart aka the undivine wind. Comedians throughout history have eked jokes from this human frailty. My best ie worst fart was at the Ritz in New York City. Public Image was on stage. I had eaten a bad oyster and my intestines gurgled with an exiting vapor. Richie Boy and Werthel were standing next to me. I told them both to vacate the dance floor.

"Something bad is in my gut." How bad can it be?" Werhtel was the meanest man in the world and wanted to know if it would kill members of the audience. "Bad, but not deadly." "How bad." Werthel was cruel. "Bad enough to clear where I'm standing by ten feet in each direction." I was dying to cut loose. "Werthel, let's go." Richie Boy had a big honker

We had spent many evenings eating BBQ, drinking beer, and watching Monday Night Football and they recognized the urgency of my warning.

"We'll meet you in the balcony." Richie led Werthel to the stairs.

Two seconds later the fart ripped through through my jeans. I ran to the stairs and joined my friends at the railing. Public Image was playing behind a screen. The crowd was getting angry. They wanted a show not shadow theater, then the crowd parted in the center of the concert hall exactly where I had been standing. Their faces were contorted with disgust and their eyes searched the nearest faces for the guilty party. No one stood in the circle of death for a good two minutes after which the anger at Johnny Rotten's band overwhelmed their sense of smell. Bottles flew through the air to the stage.

"Nice fart." Richie Boy was proud of me. Werthel could only laugh, but not everyone these days considers a fart so funny.

A SC motorist was arrested for drunk driving. The police drove the guilty party to the station. At one point the drunk man farted in the proximity of the arresting police officer. It was so bad that the officer charged the DUI offender with assault and battery.

Crime in America today.

Luxembourg 1988

During the 80s Iceland Air had one of the cheapest flights from New York to Europe. Maybe $300 with a stop-over in Reyjarvik. I took them several times and here's a photo of the Luxembourg Gorge from 1988. It hasn't changed much, but the Iceland flights were dropped in 1999. Nothing stays the same. Other than Luxembourg.

Statehood / Falsehood

In 1947 the newly formed United Nations divided Palestine into several parts. The Zionist state received the greater slice of the pie and the Arabs fought several wars over the next six decades. None succeeded in either returning the lost land or granting statehood to Palestine. The UN is on the brink of holding a vote to address this issue by a vote in the General Assembly, since the USA has vowed to veto any attempt to recognize the 'pariah nation' to placate the fears of the Zionist entity. The special envoy Tony Blair has completely failed to bring the various parties to a table, as the former British PM is seen as a lackey of the Christian Zionist movement. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has attempted a last-minute deal to avoid the veto vote, but the Arab bloc and several European nations are committed to recognizing Palestine. Turkey has also taken up the flag after the Israelis killed 9 Turks on a peace mission to break the Gaza blockade. The GOP has vowed to cut funding to the PLO and Hamas. Palestinian authorities have little options left on the plate. It is time for statehood no matter what the religious right desires for the Middle East. Their greatest dream is the Second Coming of Christ, only that will never happen, because like Elvis their savior has left the stadium for good. And he ain't coming back, because no one has returned from thin air.

Phillipe Waty Show / PARIS

I'll be there on the weekend

Lost in Orbit

This summer NASA mothballed the Space Shuttle fleet in favor of a plan for private enterprises to supply the International Space Station, after the GOP and Fox News convinced the American public that over 25% of the federal budget belonged to the space agency. The real number is about 1%. This amount remained too much for Bible Belters who believe that the only angels should carry the faithful into the heavens. President Obama refused to save the program and to congressional pressure and the Space Station had to rely on Russian rockets for supplies. The crash of an orbiter forced the Kremlin to curtail any launches for the time being, thus forcing three of the 6 cosmonauts to abandon ship on one of the two Soyuz capsules attached to the ISS. None of the private corporations are ready to fill the gap and by November the remaining three spaceman might have to ditch the ISS, since the capsules have a six-month life span. One small step for Mankind is in danger of being erased from the sky. Like Daedulus' wings melting in the sun. No more to the stars. Thank you GOP.

Fucking Robin Hood

The Heritage Club is not an online shopping organization. The Washington-based think tank has been a leading source of information for the media since its inception. The official home page has declared the non-partisanship of the group, while holding the same values as the GOP and the Cato Institute. On July 19, 2011 the Heritage Club attacked the U.S. Census Bureau for reporting that over 30 million Americans were living in “poverty” by accusing the poor of not being poor. “The overwhelming majority of the poor have air conditioning, cable TV, and a host of other modern amenities. They are well housed, have an adequate and reasonably steady supply of food, and have met their other basic needs, including medical care.” Deprivation of materialism was not a suffering point for the under-classes of America in the minds of the two reporters writing this article. Poor by the standards of the Heritage Club was the inability of families to procure decent food and shelter. Living on fast food and living in squalor was a tradition of the past. One of their scholars declared that “The poorest Americans today live a better life than all but the richest persons a hundred years ago.” I was not living at the turn of the century. One half of my family belonged to the privileged class of New England and the other was living in the West of Ireland. Both sides had houses and I can’t recall either of my grandmothers telling of starving children, however my Nana left the Emerald Isle at the tender age of 12 to work as a serving girl in a mansion north of Boston None of her brothers or sisters or those of my Hibernian namesake graduated from high school, while my Yankee ancestors were educated to professionals. My grandmother edith met her husband in France during the First World War. She was a nurse and he was a doctor. Their romance made the local papers in Maine. None of the Boston papers mentioned the union of my mother’s parents. Poverty can not defined by the accumulation of Chinese products purchased on credit despite the findings of the Heritage Club. Poverty is not an exaggeration in America. Wages have not kept pace with the massive accumulation of wealth during the Lost 00s. Fox News analysts ignore the displacement of working class families from their houses. The GOP assail unions as a drain on society. Teachers are targeted for their extravagance. Any attempt to tax the ultra-rich is labeled as ‘class warfare. Of course the Heritage Club’s treatise has avoided the reality of 2011. The percent of the pollution living under the poverty line of $22,000 before taxes has increased to 15% of America. The highest rate since 1993 when America was recovering from 12 years of GOP voodoo economics. The total number within a few hundred thousand is 46.2 million people. Middle-class families suffered with a slight drop in income, which has remained steadily in favor of the rich for the last 30 years, while the wealthy have increased their stake in the money pot by over 40%. On a personal note my income remained flat for the last three years, as the son of my boss bought two new houses in Vermont and Montauk. “My bonus is your job.” And Richie Boy isn’t really rich. Neither is his father Manny, but his arrogant statement mirrored the mentality of the global ancien regime. They hate anyone who isn’t them from the lower-upper class to the bottom rung of society. White trash, blacks, Hispanics, blue-collar workers et al are lucky to be alive, as Ron Paul announced in a debate to the applause of his audience that anyone not able to afford medical treatment should follow the tradition of the eskimo elderly and drag themselves into the harsh winter to unburden the nation. President Obama has proposed a job package to stave off massive destitution. Public works to revive the infrastructure and tax breaks to small businesses who hired new employees, while taxing the rich and pulling the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. The GOP section of Congress sat on their hands during his speech. They like things fine the way they are. Austerity is their mantra. Cut food stamps. Cut education. Cut Medicaid. I witnessed the devastating effects of poverty as a child in Maine. Schoolmates lived in tar-paper shacks. Their fathers worked for SD Warren paper mills. Their children had heavy shoes, warm clothing, and thick hats. Maine winters were savage in the late 50s. The other necessities were lacking. Diana Swayer came to Pinewood Elementary with two slices of white bread. She was one of eight kids. I gave her half my baloney sandwich. She didn’t like peanut butter and jelly. My best friend said my generosity was based on her having blonde hair like Marilyn Monroe. Best friends know their friends better than they know themselves. Pinewood Elementary was a small school. An infestation of lice swept through the grades. Boys had their hair cut to the flesh. Girls were given lye shampoos. None of us stopped itching for months. In a February morning of 1959 the entire Swayer clan missed school. It wasn’t because of the croup. The methane heater in their shack had exploded during the winter night. Diana was the only one to survive the conflagration. I saw her at the funeral. Nine bodies were lowered in the frozen ground. They were her family. “Can I come and live with you?” I said nothing, because I already knew the answer. We were not poor, but my father worked extra hours to support a big family. Diana was placed in a foster home. I never saw her again. Her fate awaits millions of children in America should the GOP triumph in their Terrorization of the Poor. I’ll do my damnedest to stop the motherfuckers. I’m half-Irish. We like a good fight and so did the other half of my family. It’s time to see the 2nd Coming of Fucking Robin Hood. Steal from the rich and keep it for yourself. Sooner better than later before there is nothing left to take.

Return to Normal

Two weeks after the collapse of the Trade Towers the wind shifted from the west and a southern breeze directed the funereal plume of smoke into Lower Manhattan. The fumes were thick with poison and smelled of BBQ. I caught a train north to Boston. My sister put me up in her basement. On the weekend she suggested that we drive to Newport. The yacht club was holding its annual boat show and her husband was thinking of purchasing a new boat. "I supposed life must go on." The TV had resumed its normal broadcasting and baseball was in the final stages of the wild card race. The Red Sox were too far out of first to gain a spot in the play-offs. 2nd place to the Yankees felt good after 9/11. "I'm not really into boats." "I'll bring my bike and you can ride around Newport." My sister understood my mindset. We were family. "That'd be nice." I hadn't been to Newport since the 1969 Jazz Festival. Led Zeppelin closed out the show. My older brother and I left during DAZED AND CONFUSED to beat the traffic. The bass line thundered for miles, as we drove away in the night. That Saturday was a tribute to a New England autumn. Clouds dotted the sky and the southern wind bore a balmy breeze. We dressed for the season. My sister's husband drove to Newport in his 3 year-old Audi. Work at his law firm had resumed several days after the planes hit the Trade Towers. The cars on the highway drove 10-15 miles over the speed limit. The radio was playing Gloria Gaynor's DON'T LEAVE ME THIS WAY. I sat in the back seat with my 4 year-old niece. She was talking about her doll. Its name was Shirley. I listened to every word, wishing my name was Shirley too. Anything to get the image of a burning man hurtling out of Windows of the World. We arrived in Newport around noon. The parking lots for the Boat Show were packed with gleaming Benzs, SUVs, and sports cars. I unloaded my brother-in-law's bike from the roof rack. My sister suggested a ride around the peninsula. "We'll meet you back here around 4." "It won't take him that long to bike around Newport." My brother-in-law liked doing things fast. He had graduated from Harvard. "I'm in no hurry." I had finished BC without any honors. I took my time. These days rushing around seemed senseless. "Uncle Bubba, wear a helmet." My niece was well-trained in safety measures. "For you always." I tugged on the plastic brain basket and waved good-bye. I looked over my shoulder passing Brenton Cove. The Jamestown Bridge gleamed in the sunlight. It had replaced the ferry in the 70s. I quickly circled stone walls of Fort Adams. Several families were picnicking on the lawn. The aroma of hot dogs wafted through the park. People were having fun. Farther along I passed the Country Club. Men and women stood on the fairways dressed in colorful clothing. A solid whack signaled a good drive for an older man. The ball flew through the air to the green. He wore a broad smile, as he handed his iron to the caddie. Upon reaching Ocean Avenue I headed east along the rocky shore and wheeled into Goose Neck Cove toGooseberry Beach. The shimmering white sands were empty. The lifeguards had retired for the summer and swimming was prohibited by law. I ditched the bike in the dunes and swam in my underwear in the Atlantic. The water felt good and the cold sea brought back memories of childhood visits to Newport with my parents. I toweled dry with my teeshirt and continued on my route past the mansions of Bellevue Avenue. Surfers dotted the break beneath the Marble House. The waves stretched like corduroy to the horizon. I had fried clams at floe's Clam Shack. The fried batter complimented the clams' taste and I washed down the traditional New England repast with a Narragansett beer. It was 3 and I headed back to the Yacht Club. The day was winding down and many of the visitors were relaxing around the tables of the bars set up for the Boat Show. I rested the bike against a chain link fence and sat at a bar. The nearby conversations were mostly about boats, but a trio of overweight men in their 40s were talking about 9/11. The subject narrowed to revenge. "We should go over there and kill them all." A bald-headed man spoke in strident tones. He looked as if no one in his family had left the USA since World War II. "Why go anywhere?" His friend was red-faced from either drink or sun. "Press a button and nuke them to the Stone Age." "And who are we attacking?" I was curious as to their choice. The list of usual suspects had been rounded down to two by the president and CIA. Their accusation came too quick to be the whole truth. "The Iraqis and Saddam." The more athletic of the group pointed in my direction with suspicion. He wanted more than an eye for an eye from the perpetrators of 9/11 "How many Iraqis were on the planes in 9/11?" I knew the answer. "Ten." It was a guess. "None. Not one." "Bullshit." He was convinced on their guilt by the wrath of politicians and TV news reporters. America was out for blood. It didn't really matter whose blood. "Not bullshit. The truth. 15 were Saudis and the rest from anywhere else but Iraq." "Saddam financed it through those towel-heads in Arfghanistan." The jock had a decent sense of geo-politics. The Taliban were sheltering the enemy. None of the pilots were Saudi and something was fucked up about that, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. “Why do you think we were attacked?” “It’s unimportant. Fucking the Arabs is what we have to do. Tora Tora Tora just like the Japs at Pearl Harbor." "No mercy." I was into revenge too. The buildings had fallen less than a mile from my apartment on East 10th Street, although I wasn't giving the president a carte blanche for total destruction of the Middle East. "They deserve whatever they get." They clinked plastic champagne glasses and hooted like owls on steroids. My brother-in-law motioned for me to join him. I left the bar without any good-byes. "You have a good ride?" His hand was filled with brochures. "It was a good day for it." And so were the days after it, for I was alive and alive was a good thing for anyone believing in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It was the American dream.

Raking the Fallen Leaves

Written 9/13/11

My family home on the South Shore bordered on a small woods. Every October the trees beyond the old stone wall turned brilliant reds, yellows, and oranges. The glorious explosion of color lasted several weeks. The wind ripped the weaker leaves from the branches and they fell by the millions into our back yard. My brothers and sisters loved running through the rustling layers of decay, but come the weekend the fun ended with my father ordering my older brother and me to rake the leaves into piles. Once the lawn was visible my father lit our labor afire. The smoke of those leaves filled the yard with the fragrance of burnt autumn offerings.

The next morning the leaves were replaced by their cousins. Less than before, yet millions still and my brother and I reaped another harvest of leaves. Another fire. The Sisyphean ritual was repeated until the trees were bare.

I hated raking leaves. The task seemed as senseless as mowing the lawn. A chore my father demanded from us and his sons performed his command without question. Young boys in the early 60s were prized for their devotion to obedience. Merit badges and gold stars paved the avenues of success. My older brother followed the path through university and law school.

I rejected the lawn, the station wagon, the two-car garage, and raking the lawn.

The East Village was my home in the late 70s.

The tenements were wrapped by concrete sidewalks and the the wind disposed of the leaves from the ornamental pear trees on East 10th Street. I didn't touch a rake for most of my adult life and loved this freedom from the fetish of neatness tormenting the suburbs, although I missed the smell of a good autumn fire as did many conventional New Yorkers.

My good friend AP told of an Easthampton client who ordered the landscapers to blow errant leaves from the estate's 20-acre lawn. Before the crew finished the job, the billionaire came out of his mansion and requested that the workers pick out the finest leaves for a pristine pile of leaves for his children to run through after school.

"That's the way of the rich." AP deals with such people all the time as a architect.

We laughed at their excess. That 1% knows how to spend the 95% of the wealth.

After hearing that story I went to shoot baskets at my local park on deKalb Avenue. No one was on the court, but several park workers raked leaves. I thought about my father and the East Village and then the rich guy in Easthampton. No one could escape raking leaves and upon leaving the park I commented to one worker about this task and he said, "Yeah, we're bringing them to another park, so the kids can run through them. They love that."

Same as rich kids in Easthampton.

And me too.

It does make a pretty sound.

For the rich the poor and the in-between.

Viva La Revolucion

The victory of Mexican liberals in 1861 led to a revolution against the debts incurred by the previous governments to the European banks. France invaded Mexico backed by the Roman Catholic clergy and the conservative upper class. The French installed an Austrian archduke to oversee the monetary and military rape of the nation. The debt was an unpayable amount and the common folk revolted against the foreign oppressors. The archduke was executed by a firing squad. The end of foreign adventure, however the ensuing dictator resumed the financial obligation. Portfiro Diaz later rued this decision and once said, "Poor Mexico so far from god, so close to the USA."

Worse than the USA in the present age are the international banks. Their financial mismanagement during the past decades have required scores of countries to save free-market capitalism from ruination. The burden of this salvation has been placed on the backs of their citizens, who are threatened a drastic reduction in services. $200 billion has been sacrificed from the common good to shore up banks in Ireland and Spain. Other European nations are close to joining the disaster train.

Students and labor unions are protesting the draconian measures of the fiscally conservative governments. The police are in the streets. Freedom of speech has been curtailed in favor of the wealthy elite's anti-Robin Hood tactics.

"Rob from the poor to give to the rich."

And everyone at the wheel in America says nothing other than to blame the poor for the crisis, but then their brain stems have been neutered by the media and fast food and corporate drugs.

Living zombies, but happy with big plates of fake food and crap TV.

If only I could be so lucky.

But then I was always a fan of Pancho Villa and Emilio Zapata.

Viva la revolucion. It is the future.

Hail Mary Move

No matter how long you live in a country, it's difficult to become a native. My Swedish friend Jonas is a Michigan fan. He posted this on Facebook along with his Swedish friends' comments; A guy just approached me and said pointing to my Michigan hat, "I hate everything that hat stands for". Smiling at him I said, "You saw the game last night?": Jonas Gustavsson I like how the game played out last night Sven Flodin Was he an American Hooligan :) Håkan Lindell And did you defend the colors of your team............... Is he still alive? Jonas Gustavsson One of the most exciting games of any sport I have ever seen. In the last 2 minutes the winner of the game changed at least 3 times, but Michigan prevailed and won over Notre Dame. Clare came up with the funniest comment though. Michigan used a move to win called "The Hail Mary move", a term used in catholic faith, ironic that Michigan would used the move against a catholic college. Peter Nolan Smith hail mary pass - most famous doug flutie BC versus Miami Peter Nolan Smith November 23, ‎1984 - final score 47-45 Flutie flushed.........throws it down.........CAUGHT BY BOSTON COLLEGE! I don't believe it! It's a touchdown! The Eagles win it! —Brent Musburger calling on the final play. Peter Nolan Smith Hail mary pass indeed. Not hail mary move. Those silly Swedes.

Mission Delta 88

People drove big cars in the early 70s. My father bought a four-door Delta 88 Royale in 1973. Only 7000 were made that year. The overhead-valve high-compression V8 engine owed its existence to muscle cars such as the GTO.

The Delta 88 was no family car. A heavy foot on the pedal rocketed the ton of steel to 100 mph with ease. The V8 begged for gas. My father rarely let me drive this Detroit monster. It was a bad story waiting for a beginning. The tundra of the back seat was designed for teenage submarine races. The Delta 88 was dangerous at all speeds.

Even zero.

Early winter of 1975.

My cousin Cindy had fallen in love with a student from Oxford. His family had hailed for Rhodesia. His uncle had founded National Geographic. A step up from her previous beau, Joe, who had given her a V-8 engine the previous Christmas.

Cindy was flying to London to meet Oliver. Her parents had forbidden this trip. She was 22 and free to come or go as suited her heart.

Goodbyes ran long at her house in Wollaston, Massachusetts. Aunt Helen cried a salty Neponset River. My mother joined the current of tears. The two sisters were very close, but the clock ticked overtime on their theatrics. Her father didn’t want to say good-bye. Uncle Dave looked at his watch and tapped the glass.

12:10.

Cindy’s flight was at 12:45. The distance to Logan Airport was 14 miles away. Cindy ran to the front door. Someone had to drive here to the airport fast. Uncle Dave looked around the room. His son was too young. My older brother was in law school. His eyes fell on me. He held up his car keys.

An Impala.

"They’ll never make it in that." My mother shoved the Delta 88's key into my hand. My father opened his mouth. My mother's regard stop any words of reproach.

"Get her there on time."

"Not a problem." I had driven taxi three years during college. My diploma read ‘sin laude’. No one booked more money on the weekend than me. Boston was my city. I pocketed the keys and cleaned my prescription glasses.

"Get here there in one piece.” Uncle Dave said what my father couldn’t say in front of my mother.

"I'll call from the airport."

12:11 I started the car. The V-8 had been tuned by Dennis Halley. The Vietnam vet was the best mechanic on the South Shore. He loved big engines. 303 cubic inches zroomed like a jet turbines. I goosed the gas and turned on WBCN. The FM deejay was playing BALLROOM BLITZ by Sweet. My two sisters wanted to come along for the ride. My mother stopped them.

"Better only two." She tapped her watch. Time was an issue. Speed was the cure.

My cousin kissed her mother and jumped in the front seat.

"No red lights." Cindy fastened her seat belt. She was in love. Women are funny in that state. They have no fear.

"No red lights." My mental map counted four. The Quincy cops changed shifts at noon. Their schedule worked in our favor. The Delta 88 peeled rubber from Anderson Street. Cindy said one word, "Faster."

The Delta 88 fishtailed onto Newport Avenue and I lead-footed a straight line to North Quincy through light traffic. I burned two light. Cindy and I had protested against the war in Vietnam. She pulled out a joint.

" I obeyed the old adage.

"Yellow meant faster. Red meant pedal to the metal."

Horns blared at our passage. We had warped into another time zone. Nothing was in my rearview mirror, but empty road. We smoked the joint in peace for several seconds.

"Keep your eyes open." We whipped into Neponset Circle like Bonnie and Clyde. The lunchtime motorists were not prepared for outlaws. I stomped on the gas. The V-8 honored Detroit with power. The Delta 88 hit 100 up the onramp of the Expressway.

"12:17."

Cindy had a Cartier watch. Her beau had given the family heirloom to her as a token of his love. The watch kept good time.

WBCN's DJ segued to Slade's 'Mama Weer All Crazee Now'.

Cindy was more into Cat Stevens, but TEA TO THE TILLERMAN was not written for this ride.

No traffic on Route 3. No cops either. I hit 110 all the way the Mass. Ave exit.

"12:20." I was ahead of schedule. The odometer had gained 8 miles. Only 6 more to go.

"You see any cops?"

Cindy had better eyes than me.

“No.”

The Delta 88 topped 110 on the elevated Central Artery. I dropped down to 60 through the Sumner Tunnel and we arrived at British Airways' terminal at 12:26. Cindy jumped out of the car. She was carrying one bag. A wave and my cousin was inside the terminal. A state trooper appeared from the right. My trembling hands tensed on the steering wheel. The plastic melted into my flesh.

"Move the car, sport."

"“Yes, officer."

I drove away according to the traffic laws of the Massachusetts Commonwealth. I stopped at a bar on Mass Avenue. Kelly's. They had 50 cents beer. Three of them brought me back to earth.

I didn’t returned back to Wollaston until 1:30.

"Did she get away okay?" My aunt was wanted to know if her daughter had arrived safely at the airport.

I recounted the trip intown.

None of them believed the trip could be completed that fast. They had never seen DEATH RACE 2000.

"What about the red lights?" My father believed in defensive driving. He had never gotten in an accident during forty years of driving.

“There were none.” I had totaled two cars in my short life. Three counting the Mustang I had t-boned at Roxbury Crossing the previous summer.

"And what about the police?"

"They were busy somewhere else."

"So she got away good?" My Uncle Dave lit cigarette for Aunt Helen and himself.

"Yes."

"Thanks." Uncle Dave rewarded me with a beer and I was grateful for the power of a Delta 88. It was pure America in 1975 and still is wherever there are now.

Just like the driver.

100% Zroom.