I don't this this photo is photoshopped, but it's doesn't represent a cock but a dildo.
This was for women's golf, right?
Remember that old interview of Johnny Carson with Jack Nicklaus' wife.
Johnny - You do anything for good luck before Jack plays.
Wife - I kiss his balls.
Johnny - That must straighten out his putting.
CUT TO Ed McMahon laughing.
A good college friend re-connected me via Facebook.
We hadn't seen each other in a good 35 years. I remembered our time together at Boston College like it was two weeks ago and wrote him the following message to rekindle the soul connection.
"hank, good to hear from you. I'm living fort greene nyc. I was telling someone just the other night how we used to drive our checker cabs into the combat zone at 1:30 for last call. A long-necked beer and that band in the corner; organ, bass, and drum. Naked girl on stage. Last call. Another beer and then back into the taxi to drive a stripper home. We'd meet back at 15 malbert road for a pizza, more beer, then play table hockey before crashing on the sofas.
"those were the nights." he answered.
And that was the truth.
I've had a good life.
Which I owe to my friends like Hank.
I haven't cut my hair in months. It's growing, but slowly. The front locks almost reach the end of my nose. My hopes of rehippiedom are seemingly only a dream, but if my tresses get long, I will never bun it or put it in a top knot. I'm just not that kind of guy and this look can be mistaken for an overaged stripper, when wearind a headband.
At least that's what I see looking at my friend's head.
Damnation too.
Last Friday the GOP released a memorandum written by the staff of Republican Congressman Devin Nunes accusin the FBI of using questionable practices to investigate the the Kremlin's interference in the 2016 Presidential election. Security departments throughout the government criticize the release of the unproven document. I tried to read the memo without any success. The writing was indecipherable Washingtonese. No one in the public can read it.
Not me.
Not anyone.
So it is as meaningless as an empty beer can.
Every single word.
I could have taken State Road Seven straight away by picking it up west of West Palm Beach, but because the old two-lane highway was used primarily by truck traffic barreling for Miami's back door, into Hialeah, I stayed on U.S. 1 all the way to Boynton Beach before searching for a through road to make the cutover. I got lost for a few minutes and made several aimless circles where new blacktops had been crushed down for a subdivision called inappropriately Ocean Pine Terraces (miles from the ocean, no pines, no terraces), but when I finally reached the state highway, it was freshly paved, and the truck traffic wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected.
The rain, mercifully, had stopped.
The Burnt Orange Heresy. New York: Crown Publishers, 1971. Willeford's first hardcover original.
In The Burnt Orange Heresy, the critic -- James Figueras -- gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to interview a reclusive French “Nihilist surrealist” named Jacques Debierue. A collector tells Figueras where he can find Debierue, asking only one thing in return for the information -- that Figueras steal one of Debierue’s paintings for him. In fact, thanks to a variety of circumstances (e.g., a fire that destroyed much of his work), not a single one of Debierue’s paintings is known to exist; his reputation as an artist is entirely due to earlier critics’ interpretations of his work over the years. Figueras agrees to steal the painting, knowing that if he can interview Debierue and see some of his work, he could then write an article that would firmly establish his own international reputation as an art critic.
What follows is a gripping, dense plot that includes several twists readers won’t necessarily anticipate. In order to execute his plan, Figueras ends up having to bluff several people -- his girlfriend, the art collector, Debierue, among others. In the end, the novel puts forth the idea that all art is in a way a kind of bluff. As is art criticism. And everything else, really.
I never bothered to see MIAMI VICE. The movie.
Guns, girls, and crime. Tubbs and Crockett.
I had been to that Miami Beach; Wolfie's Deli, Little Havana, the Ace of Spades Bar, cocaine, cheap hotels, and fast boats. My friend found a kilo of blow on the beach and gave it to the local drug dealer rather than the cops. Miami PD was stressed on steroids and zoot. Columbian cowboys weren't as twitchy. The city was fun as long as you could stand adrenalin rushes.
It's gone now. Trendy. The height of uncool.
My local bootleg DVD dealer came into the bar two nights ago and offered, "MIAMI VICE. 100% ching."
New movies usually took a month to get a good copy.
"No, I don't want it."
"I saw it at the movies." My friend Nick volunteered.
"I don't need to see it. In fact I can tell you all about it without seeing it." Feature remakes of TV shows were formula plotlines tied together by senseless scenes of violence and FX.
"200 baht says you're wrong." Nick liked betting. 200 baht would cover the tickets for him and his girl. 200 for me was a phone card for my wife. I was confident and said, "It's a black/white guy thing. The white guy has long hair. The black guy razored to the skull. Both have face hair."
"You've seen the trailer."
"No, just the ad."
"The good guys always hit their target."
"Bad guys never shot straight in the movies." Nick was after specifics.
"The good guys have to infiltrate a drug gang led by a acne-scarred gaucho."
"Half-right. The leader is a girl. Beautiful too."
"White guy always gets the chick."
"There's a car chase that turns into a bat chase where no one gets caught."
"Not really."
"They say that they're losing the war on drugs." I didn't have a clue about the plot.
"Not a chance."
"Or that they should legalize blow."
"Give me the 200."
I had lost the bet, but knew also that MIAMI VICE was going to be given a a miss, especially since I had SCARFACE at home and nothing says Miami in the 80s like Tony Montana and yeh-ho.
Two old men are living in Miami Beach. Their hotel is undergoing renovations. The entire neighborhood has been transformed by young people. Izzy and Moishe sit on the terrace of the Breezemore Hotel and watch the parade of revelers. They are feeling their age and Izzy says, "You know Moishe, we've had a good life, but I've been wondering about what's next?"
"What's next is we die. One of us first the other second." Moishe was more pragmatic than his friend. He had been an accountant. Number added up to a total sum. No more. No less.
"What about Sheol?" Izzy had been a lawyer. He still believe in good and evil. His wife Miriam had been good. Her mother was evil incarnate.
"A bleak afterlife, feh?" Moishe was too pragmatic to be pessimistic.
"What about Olam Ha-Ba?"
"The world to come where we are rewarded for our good deeds. Feh. And Gan Eden is a fairy tale."
"But what if there really is a heaven and hell?"
"I don't know." Moishe had no questions, but there was always doubt, especially at the age of 87. "Listen, I tell you what, if one of us ides and there is a heaven or hell, the one who dies should come back to tell the one staying whether there is a heaven or hell. Is it a deal?"
"For you, anything." The two friends went back to 1st grade in Brownsville.
Neither man thinks anything about the oath until Moishe dies two weeks later.
"At least he went in his sleep." Izzy tells the children who are transporting the body back up north. No one gets buried in Florida. The ground is tref.
A week goes by, then another. A month and then more.
A year to the day of Moishe's passing, the curtains of Izzy's windows billow inward without a breeze. The temperature was in the 80s, but the room is freezing. Moishe can see his breath and asks, "Izzy, is that you?"
"Of course it's me, who else were you expecting?" The voice sounds like it's coming from across the universe.
"Only you, so tell me, are you in heaven or hell?" Moishe is eager to hear the answer, since then he can tell Izzy that he was wrong about heaven and hell.
"Neither."
"Neither?" Moishe hadn't expected this response. "So what do you do all the time?"
"I eat, I fuck, I eat, I fuck, I eat, I fuck, and then I go to sleep."
"Well, aren't you in heaven?"
"No, I'm a rabbit in Montana."
