yustyoking

The Games Begin!

            Hi, everybody! Greetings from London, England, home of the XXVII ^th  Olympic Summer Games! In the States, they keep writing about “rainy London.” Balderdash! We’re having perfect summer weather, temps in the 80’s and sunny! One of the things I have noticed is that they’ve moved the Marble Arch. When I visited in 1986, it was eight blocks from our hotel. Today, it’s clear on the other side of town!

            Seriously, these new hotels are hyper-modern, facing The Docklands, the air punctuated by only the merest hint of fish. Behind the Japanese screen beside my bed, I found a blank wall. We’re on the 22^nd floor, which isn’t bad— a non-smoking corridor. The wind howls at night, shaking the panorama window. Using a walker, my 91-year-old mom takes the elevator everywhere she goes. The “In case of fire” signs are very pretty, but if the place gets torched, she ain’t goin’ nowhere. They offered to put us on the third floor, but with my canine sense of smell, if anyone has smoked in a room since its creation, my sinuses scream bloody murder.

            The first time I visited London was in 1968 on a photo expedition with classmates from Moosegrave College. “Swinging London,” we stayed at a hotel under renovation, the bathtubs filled with chunks of plaster. I smoked cigs on the Tube, got clubbed on the head during an anti-war demonstration in front of the American Embassy and scraped a London taxi with our rental car. “Wha’s your bloody problem, guv’nor?” roared the taxi driver.

            “Help! We’re SO SORRY!” I yelped back through the open window of our auto.

            “Oh! Yanks!” he replied. “Try t’ learn t’ drive onna left side a the road, guv’!” he suggested, threading his way through the roundabout.

            Reaching for still another cigarette, I was bathed in sweat. 

            But enough about me! You want to know about London! First thing Sunday morning, out of nostalgia, I took the Tube and a bus over to my old haunts. Russell Square! I knew I was in the right neighborhood, since every square inch of grass is covered in dog poo.

            Even as I watch, a stolid matron, with Fido on a leash, stands waiting while he does his bidness. Giving me a haughty stare, she turns on her heels and leads him away, continuing their morning constitutional.

            I duck into a local greengrocer to buy some Cadbury milk chocolate bars. It’s a “when in England…” thing. There’s only the one check-out aisle and about ten people in the queue. I’m busy fingering my British currency as I near the girl at the till. Suddenly, an Indian woman approaches, waving a bottle of dishwashing liquid. She pantomimes her desire to crash the queue. Smiling sickly, showing a mouth full of gold teeth, she gives me an imploring look. What the hell… I let her in.

            “Daft bugger!” the tall man in a pin-striped suit, in line behind me, complains.

            “She’s only got the one item!” I protest.

            “Ho ho ho!” he retorts.

            Approaching the counter, the Indian woman reaches under her sari and pulls out two oranges, a packet of crisps, a carton containing a half dozen eggs, a quart of milk, a six-pack of loo paper and a full-length floor mop!

            “My bad!” I remark to the people in line behind me.

            “If you don’t know the customs, keep outta the way!” a prim lass admonishes me.

            I promise her I will.

                                                    – – –

            The Olympics are my meat, I’ve had tons to do with them. My older sister Carol dated a U.S. Olympic kayaker named Helmut Schmidt in high school. You can imagine how my folks felt about our Jewish American Princess dating a kraut. Helmut did what he could to show respect. There was Carol, her nose in the air, parading around Oxburg, Maryland in 1963 in a “U.S.A.” sweatshirt from the Olympic team assortment. What a joke!

            The 1972 Olympics were a big year. When the Israelis got murdered in Munich, it only took me three weeks to crank out a cheap, fast novel based on the events. Stationed in Mannheim, Deutschland, once again I erroneously believed myself to be in possession of information no one else had: how Palestinian terrorists think, what it is to be a Jew, the German mentality. Hier spricht man Deutsch, I truly thought I nailed it. Totally worthless trash, no publisher would even consider my opus.

            I was an official at the Police Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden in 1999 (full name, WPFG, World Police and Fire Games). The organizers paid us in signature clothing from the event, covered in logos advertising the games. For a week’s work, I got a T-shirt, a parka, a windbreaker and a pair of jogging trousers. They also fed us.

            In 2008, I fell in love with petite blond American gymnast Shawn Johnson, same as everyone else. Her picture was on milk cartons! No longer competing, she is covering the current Olympics for NBC’s TODAY.com. 

            I also remember in 2008 when Michael Phelps broke Mark Spitz’s record, winning eight gold medals in a single Olympic Games. Where do they get these guys?

                                                   – – –

            I’m hammering on my laptop. All is not lost! Sunday afternoon, I went to Hyde Park and saw a performance by The Razzles, a drum ‘n’ bass Rastafari ska band from Jamaica. They played for an audience of 30,000 enraptured fans, the smell of weed pungently wafting through the air. Finding a pretty blond girl, I thought, “YES!” I sidled up to her in the crowd. “Hi!” I chirped.

            “Hi!” she replied, giving me a radiant smile. Something about the accent…

            “Where are you from?” I asked jocularly.

            “San Francisco! You?”

            Shit! I didn’t come to England to spend time with a Californian, no matter how pretty a young thing. After a few short sentences, I continue to wade through the crowd, blowing her off.

            On my own for dinner Sunday night, I ate in a Chinese restaurant that is famous among journalists. This storefront cube with its plastic silverware and grimy tables has no British sobriquet. Its name is spelled out in three Chinese characters, in neon, over the entrance. In the window, a side of pork rotates on a spit, a side of beef rotates on a spit and a whole chicken rotates on a spit under the relentless glow of heat lamps. The wizened, toothless, bearded owner behind the counter speaks only Cantonese. Pointing and shaking one’s head, however, functions sufficiently to get him to slice off chicken, pork and beef, piling them on a greasy paper plate. He then scribbles in pencil on a scrap of Chinese newspaper the amount owed in pounds sterling. The only possible reason to eat here is because it is guaranteed the cheapest meal in London!

            I found out about it in the 1980’s from my best friend, a journalist from Malta. He used to live in Brixton. Since retiring, he has moved back to Valletta, the capital of Malta. He insists on speaking solely in Maltese, a semi-Arabic language (think “Tunisian plus”). So we really have nothing left to say to one another.

                                                    – – –

            Left to my own devices, I bundle my mom into a cab Monday afternoon and take her to Harrods. She buys four of those ridiculously elaborate gold-colored Christmas Present Gift Boxes with Harrods’ world-famous logo on the front for her lady friends back home. I buy two dress shirts. When in Harrods…

            As soon as people discover I’m American, they want an explanation of James Holmes. Veddy British, they then lecture me about the prevalence of gun violence in “The Colonies.”

            That night, at a pub, I mention to some university students who are deep into their lime-and-lagers how much I enjoyed Sunday’s music. I’m scraping by on ginger beer. “Wha’?” they ask me. “Sunday at Hyde Park? The Razzles? Blimey! Were you there? How c’n that be? We didn’ see you!”

            30,000 fans, stoned out of their gourds.

            “Yeah, yeah,” I assure them, careful not to let them spill any lime-and-lager on my new Harrods shirt. “I didn’t see you either!”

            “Ya wan’ a go t’ Stonehenge?” they ask.

            So, Tuesday, we go to Stonehenge, a “megalithic monument” from 2800 BC on the Salisbury Plain. A Druid astrological calendar built out of boulders, it’s a two-hour drive 90 miles southwest of London, on the way to Exeter.                      

                                                     – – – 

            Hello! Stonehenge. We rented a microbus and drove here this a.m. My young companions smoked dope and laughed all the way down the M3 and onto the A303. A cohesive group, even the ladies wore Leeds United football jerseys. Only a little terrified at driving on the left side of the road, it felt like old times. Student architects, my passengers’ school assignment was to chart “the ‘henge.” Being the wanker most steady on his feet, I did the pacing off. “That’s 128 steps!” I called out, the girls brandishing clipboards, the boys busy sketching on portable easels.

            A rather strange, tall lady in a tartan coat, peasant skirt and brown leather boots, her yellow hair braided into pigtails, wandered in the opposite direction. We kept running into each other.

            “Sláinte!” she offered.

            “I don’t know what that means. Are you looking for a stairway to heaven?”

            “You’re the cropper!” she laughed. “Want a tumble?” Gad! I just noticed the blood-red fingernails, the creaminess of her skin, her hazel eyes.

            “What?” I teased. “A quickie behind the monoliths?” She couldn’t be serious…

             Freud would have a field day!

            She let that pass.

            When my classmates completed their drawings, we cracked open the hamper and brought out the chicken sandwiches and bottles of brew.

            “What are you drinking?” asked Penelope.

            “It’s Fentimans Ginger Beer. Very potent stuff!”

            She snickered.

            I went to my wandering waif and asked her to join us. “What’s your name, by the way?”

            “Willow, by the way,” she blew into my ear, her pointy white teeth nibbling on my earlobe, a hand exploring inside my leather jacket. By the time I backed away, she had unbuttoned three shirt buttons!

            “Hey, everybody, this is Willow!”

            “Come eat!” they chorused.

            When we finished, they rolled and lit more joints. It was obvious how they intended to spend the afternoon!

            “What are you doing out here?” I asked Willow, the two of us wandering off by ourselves.

            “Ah, but that would be telling!” she chuckled, hanging onto my jacket lapels with both hands. “Naw, I’m here with my fiancé. Big painter named Stig.”

            Huh? “So where is he?”

            “He’s out on Salisbury Plain painting the ‘henge in its entirety.”

            “In its entirety.”

            “In its entirety,” she repeated, pulling me down on top of her on the grass.

            “You have to stop doing this!”

            “Otherwise… what?” she croaked, smirking, her eyes huge, only an inch from my face.

            “I’ll eat you alive!”

            The Salisbury Plain is mucho flat. People could see us from every whichway. Cars on the road. Tour groups!

            Never-the-less, I was mightily aroused.

            Willow was three steps ahead of me. Her busy, sure hands made quick work of my apparel: Jacket, shirt, tee, belt, fly, pants. She peeled me like an onion. “Where’d you get that shirt?” she asked. “Harrods?”

            “Yes… Right… Harrods.”

            “Eh!” she grunted. “I was attempting a stab at humor.”

            Not bothering to answer, I kissed her fully on the mouth, our tongues wrestling for dominance.

            “You’re the sharp kisser!” she noted. “You taste of chicken.”

            “You taste like honey,” I told her truthfully.

            “I sucked a mint,” she smirked, mounting me adroitly.

            We did the down and dirty right there among the stones, barely hidden from view. The wind kicked up brown dust. Rutting like dogs in heat, I was a little too engrossed to consider whether a school class of children might wander upon us, whether we might receive a visit by the law or some other such cal. Mercifully, nothing like that happened.

            “Now you can say you completed a pop pass at Stonehenge!” Willow chuckled. I felt my heart flutter. “I’m not bawdy, I simply have Druid blood,” she explained.

            “You have very nice blood,” I corrected her, nuzzling her golden hair and biting an ear. I loved her pointy, British nose.

            “Aren’t you the one!” she drawled. “I think I’ve awakened a kraken!”

            “I know what that is!” I exclaimed. “That’s a sea monster!”

            Dragging me with her, we marched across the plain about half a mile to her fiancé Stig. He was busy at his easel, painting. Your usual bearded bohemian, he was a dynamite painter! I was duly impressed. “Damn good!” I marveled.

            “Didn’ keep you from doin’ my missus,” Stig growled, eyeing me balefully.

            “No.”

            “No, what? No, you didn’t? Or no, you did?”

            “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m afraid I did,” I told him sincerely.

            Long pause. A grimace. “No bother!” muttered Stig.

            Willow guffawed. Yanking my arm, she called, “We’ll be at the parking apron. Leastways I will!”

            “I’ll see you at the car!” replied Stig, painting madly in the afternoon sunlight.

            “C’n ye ag’in?” Willow asked me, reverting to Scottish, breathing happily in my ear.

            “Let’s try the floor of the microbus. I think the seats fold down.”

            I’m telling you, this I never expected in Merry Olde England, moments before the Olympics.  

            I get the feeling this country is playing games on me.

                                                         *

The Anecdote Contest

 

            Ha ha ha! Those bozos at The National Herald are holding an Anecdote Contest. Write a funny story, max 500 words, win $500. That’s the whole megilla.

            A nationwide publication, they have no business running competitive events. They’ll get 15,000 entries. No newspaper can process 15,000 entries. It’s inane.

            The contest, such as it is, all comes down to one man, the publication’s humor writer. A fat, maudlin, middle-aged Jew, with as many— if not more— insecurities as the rest of us Members of the Tribe, he entered the business in the 1970’s. When newspapers “had a license to print money,” in the memorable words of David Halberstam. With fucking hard times upon us, Mr. HaHa’s weekly humor piece don’t cut it. The company has him, in addition, running the Weekly Word Game, doing Special Events, and any other such errands as may arise. Fielding phone inquiries. Emptying wastebaskets. Sharpening pencils.

            It’s hard times, guys!

           Watching now, it is difficult to envision that The National Herald was the newspaper who, in the 1960’s, led the way in defining the difference between a “shiftless Negro” and sickle cell anemia. Death by a thousand budget cuts has left the rag a mere shadow of its former glory.

            Ayn Rand could point and say, “I told you what creeping Socialism would do!” Wrong, Ayn! How about globalization and free trade? When all the manufacturing jobs get shipped overseas, because it’s cheaper, we are left in a post-industrial Hell. Changing the name from “outsourcing” to “offshoring” hasn’t helped at all. Ugh!

            Amidst so much spiraling entropy, how can Mr. HaHa maintain his self-esteem? Fortunately for him, the 150 regular contributors to the Weekly Word Game worship the very ground upon which he walks.

            This makes entering the Weekly Word Game— or now, the Anecdote Contest— something of a disappointment. The regulars of the W.W.G. have their own Facebook account. They e-mail, text and tweet one another. They meet for yearly dinners. They go fishing together on weekends. These are HaHa’s friends! So when three entries to a word puzzle arrive from three corners of the region, and are strikingly similar, our mighty HaHa chooses the one from Carlo Ponzi of Annapolis, Maryland. After all, Mr. HaHa knows Carlo. Nary a contest goes by, but Carlo sends in some clever contribution, some bon mot. Only human, HaHa succumbs to this temptation.

            Everybody likes Carlo!

            Meaning the other two entrants— not personally known to HaHa— get left out in the cold.

            Aware of this tendency, HaHa & Co. make a big fuss whenever they actually print a newcomer’s creation. “Novice Champ!” trumpets The National Herald. The staff feel so proud of themselves! Until next week.

            The latest deal is to print a lot of entries from Australia and New Zealand. Favoritism? Ridiculous! Cronyism? No way! Nepotism? Well, I never…! Look here! We print Aussies and Kiwis. They live on the other side of the world! Never broke bread with ‘em for a minute! Never flown Qantas. Christchurch is but a mystery.

            Say what?

            Because, being located in Washington, D.C. only complicates this latest “Anecdote Contest.” This is a company town. The name of the company is The U.S. Government. An entry from the vice president’s wife or the president’s daughter, the wife of a Supreme Court justice or the darling child of a senator— 250 words, high school level— calls for a clearing of desks and a major editorial conference! The bosses’ circle has spoken! Ignore it at your peril! Insecure, the newspaper worries over Senate briefings, Supreme Court deliberations and access to the White House.

             You don’t bite the hand that feeds you, your family, your creditors and the bank holding your mortgage. This makes the true purpose of the contest to reward those in power and demonstrate the newspaper’s good intentions.

             The deck is totally stacked. Woe unto the poor schlubs who send in their written compositions with the naïve conviction that their creative talent will be judged on a level playing field with everyone else’s.

             Ha ha ha! That, my friend, ain’t gonna happen!                                          

                                                      *

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

  

            Life is unfair. I don’t expect anything different. 

            I worked my tail off in the military, but that’s me: My work was my passion. I was good at it, I loved it. We were hardly war lovers, but we loved bringing peace and stability to a war zone. Eliminating the bad guys. Creating a breathing space for the locals. A lot of us were Type-T personalities, thrill-seekers, civvy life paled in comparison. Some of my buddies loved their careers to death!

           You would think that when I retired, a grateful nation… Ha ha ha!  Pul-lease! What planet are you living on?

           Admiral Richard Dexter, one of my mom’s bridge partners, retired and became an executive vice president at an oil company. He made $60,000 a year, spent 10 years doing that and still complains that he felt undervalued!

            No way was anyone hiring me as an executive vice president! Once out of the military, one of my early gigs was driving taxi. Listen, you got in my cab, you had a valet at your service! Obsequious to a fault, kind and humorous, I hefted your bags, carried your gear, waited on you hand and foot. I drove you wherever you needed to go. Businessmen used the back seat of my cab as a portable office, making calls and punching the keys on their electronic calculators. Guys from the C.I.A. had me pick them up at the office and deliver them to “no known address.” State Department people regaled me with tales about Israel. “Nowadays you can have dual citizenship,” one explained. “That was never U.S. policy. American citizens could not swear allegiance to a foreign power. If you did, you automatically renounced your American citizenship. You lost it. One day, everybody wakes up to discover that there are 100,000 Americans living in Israel who have become Israeli citizens. Without losing their American citizenship! So much for the rule forbidding dual citizenship.”

              I was not a sullen taxi driver. I could not do that. Early on, however, I discovered why taxi drivers are sullen. Forget people throwing up in your cab, drinking and fornicating on the back seat, tearing up the interior— just  for fun— or robbing you at knifepoint. Drivers hate taxi driving because you work your tail off from 4 a.m. to 12 midnight six days a week and only earn $32,000 a year! By the time you give the taxi company their share and pay gas, that is what you have left. And that includes tips!

              “Just drive people from point A to point B,” said Ernie, my dispatcher.

               “Anybody can do that!” I countered. “I like to provide high-end service. Give me a stack of the company business cards and I’ll double our customer base.”

               “Jesus Christ!” he complained, but within a month, I had a client list as long as your arm. People constantly called in and requested “Kevin the Swede.”

               A comer, Ernie took me aside and said, “My cousin has a limo. It’s a sweet ride. If I borrow it and set you up, you drive only for me!”

              “Sure! I’m driving only for you now.”

              “I mean you don’t drive for the company! You drive for me.”

               So that’s how we did it. I got some great customers. Ernie rented a van and had me pick up a German rock band called Fasching at BWI. Your typical black leather jacket krautrock. For four days, I drove them all over D.C., schlepping their guitars and luggage, helping them rent amplifiers, speakers and a mixer board, helping them set up at clubs, sharing hotel rooms and groupies with them. “I watch you,” said Simon, their drummer, his brown hair cascading off his shoulders. His specialty was inviting lassies up to the room to help him wash his hair! “You choose very young girls,” he observed.

              “With girls that young,” I explained, “you don’t have to deliver. They’re very oral. Lots of heavy petting. Period. If you touch their breasts, they’re outta here.”

              “O-kay,” he said, shrugging.

              “They vacate the premises. Vamoose. They leave.”

              “Auch so!”

               When I informed Ernie that the band was tipping me $150 a day, he said, “Cripes! I should put you on the phone here in the office and do the driving myself! I bet they get girls all the time, right???”

               “They aren’t lonely,” I deadpanned.

               When I was in the Army, I never knew how to tip people. Taxi drivers live for tips. Tips pay the rent. Ever since my experience driving a cab, I tip everybody. The auto mech changes the oil in my car, I tip him $5. The state inspector does my yearly car inspection, discreetly, I tip the man $5. The furnace and A/C guy does his twice-yearly checkup on my mom’s equipment, I tip him $5 each time. My philosophy has become, “Anybody provides me with a service, I tip!” Mom and I tip 20% at restaurants.

               I didn’t intend to spend the rest of my life behind the wheel.  One of my fares was a black headhunter named Jerome Whitney. “I can’t believe someone with your background is driving a cab!” he said, giving me his card. He passed me to a recruiter named Sue Morgan. She was hiring for the Drew Peterson Institute of Public Opinion. “You’ve got a great voice,” she remarked, the two of us sitting on either side of her gunmetal desk in a glass and steel office building in Bethesda.

             “This isn’t your regular office,” I remarked.

             “How did you know that?” she asked, laughing.

             “No personal touches.”

             “Well, that’s true. I’ve only been hired to recruit for the company. Once that’s done, I move on to my next assignment somewhere else.” Rosy-cheeked, a chubby, middle-aged matron, her concerns surprised me: “Can you work evenings?… Can you work weekends?… Can you work holidays?”

             “Yes, yes and yes. For God’s sake, Sue, I am driving a taxicab. We work all day, every day.”

             “Because with your military background, you’re a shoo-in for this job.”

             There were forty desks in the Call Center. A typical morning would be spent telephoning subscribers to The National Herald and asking if they had seen the full-page ad on page A7. “It’s in orange… If you saw it, what product was displayed?” In the afternoon, we telephoned registered voters and took the pulse of the nation: “Do you think Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? How strongly do you agree or disagree with the following sentence: George W. Bush is doing a good job as president. Is Bush running the White House or Vice President Cheney? Do you favor or are you opposed to tax cuts? Do you think America faces an imminent terrorist attack?”

             We also threw in control questions: “Who is your favorite movie star? Do you believe in UFO’s? When did you last visit a movie theater?”

            When we got the contract for the John Kerry campaign, we went nuts trying to offset the media bias roasting our candidate. No, Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, wasn’t an insane woman! No, Senator Kerry wasn’t some lamebrain anti-war activist. “Are the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth credible? Or are they actually stalking horses, secretly representing the Republicans? Is John Kerry a hero?” At the time, V.P. candidate John Edwards was a glimmer of light on a dark and stormy sea.

            After stomaching a year and a half of public opinions, I quit. “Not to worry,” Skip Evans, my boss, assured me. “The burnout rate among telemarketers is 30% a year!”

                                                      *

            You can always tell when school ends, there are teenagers wandering around every store and shopping mall. Eventually, they get their routines in order and swarm less. Three hours ago, parking my car and heading for a grocery store to check out the DVD’s, I stumble upon a teenage gang— two guys and three girls— dressed in shorts, tees and sneakers, sitting on the curb in the sun, doing absolutely nothing. Which makes them twice as interesting as “Snooki & JWoww.” One of the girls is crouched against a drainpipe, trembling from head to foot.

            “Is she all right?” I ask the guys.

            “We puffed some stuff last night,” one of the guys tells me.

            “She’s just upset because it’s Friday the 13^th,” says the redheaded girl, her face a sea of freckles.

             “Ah! I know the scientific name for that. Paraskevidekatriaphobia. Fear of Friday the 13^th,” I tell them.

             They laugh.

             “Go away,” says the girl by the drainpipe.

             Standing, facing the highway, I envision her making a scene. I don’t want to get arrested. I leave them, thinking, “I don’t want to get in trouble, but I also don’t want to live my life in fear.”

              It’s easy to do. Paul Simon once said, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”

              I’m as paranoid as the next person. My fear is getting arrested for pedophilia or sheer bloody-mindedness.

              My mom is afraid no one will show her any affection.

             Admiral Dexter and his wife fear not keeping up with the Jones’s.

             My neighbors are terrified their money will run out.

             It’s Friday the 13^th, but I don’t consider myself superstitious.

             So what do we have?

             The average American family has lost 35% of their wealth in the last five years, while a clueless president wants us to reelect him, so he can provide more of the same.

             Sixty percent of the country is suffering the worst drought in 25 years, but Congress refuses to acknowledge global warming.

            Massacres plague the Middle East, but the Russians enjoy playing one regional power off against another.

            The more U.S. troops we bring home from Afghanistan, the stronger and more aggressive become the Taliban.

                                                        *

No wonder I horse around with young girls, adult life is an abomination!

                                                        *

A First Lady Appeal

  

            Dear Ms. Feingold,

            I know a soul sistah like y’all gonna enjoy the full-color, signed photo o me an my fambly enjoyin pork ribs. Mmmm, love them ribs! I wouldn send this here photo t’ whitey, they’s gettin a different photo altogether!

            But the miracle o micro-targeting keepin it jus between us sistahs, I thinkin y’all like this downhome’un. We black folk gotta hang together, cause nobody gonna take care o us but us!

            Now Rose, reason I writin is cause o my man, course, he need our help. Unlike that white boy Mickey Rodney who only care bout hisself, my fambly and I care bout the entire country! No matter our ages, backgrounds or stations in life, we want the country t’ do well an reelect mah husband! We CARE about this great nation! Sho nuff! Did I mention challenges? So how bout that vote, honey?????

            Mah husband know wha it be fo a fambly t’ struggle. He got a compelling fambly history. What with his momma bein a hippie an all. Y’all read bout it in his books. (Y’all pays retail, we preciate that! We be rich.) As a father, mah husband don’ want no limitations on his daughters: They grows up an be presidents. Tha’s the goal. Yeah, mah husband, he want it all!  

            Rose, I enclose a plastic card what says how my Blackie done in the last three years. Rose, people always askin: What y’all been doin? Well, here tis! From the first moment he enter the White House on Day 1, mah husband…

             He save Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase an a passel o other brokerage firms on Wall Street. He save Bank o America, AIG an some other too-big-to-fail institutions.

             He end America’s military involvement an brought the troops home from Mali!

             He kill Osama bin Lahtis.

             He expand health care, implement economic recovery, create 3 million jobs at a time when this great country of ours only lost 6 million.

             Yes, Rose, he a man— an all men is swine— but thanks to Girrl Power, the question be: Does we go forward an do a whole lot mo promises or do we go back t’ them Republicans an they’s do-nothin ways?

             Y’all choose.

             Husband can’t do it alone, Rose, ah askin fo a donation! Y’all give us $25, $50 or $100, we can make a whole lot mo promises! Tha’s what we do as Americans!  We promise

• Equal Pay for Equal Work
• Improving Women’s Health
• Protecting Women’s Right to Choose
• Ending Insurance Company Abuses
• Keeping Premiums Low
• Expanding Access to Care
• Closing the Medicare Prescription Drug “Donut Hole”
• Job Creation (again)
• Save the auto industry from collapse (again!)
• Create nearly 3 million jobs in the private sector (AGAIN!)
• Out-Educate the Rest of the World
• Out-Innovate the Rest of the World
• Level the Playing Field
• Make Everyone Do Their Fare Share
• Remain Focused on Iraq
• Remain Focused on Iran
• Remain Focused on al-Qaeda
• Remain Focused on the economy
• Remain Focused on Israel
• Remain Focused on the Taliban
• Remain Focused on Veterans an Their Famblies
• Remain Focused on getting reelected!

              So y’all see, Rose, there still be a whole lot t’ do! I ain sayin we gits it all done on Day 1. I ain sayin we gits it all done in the first week— or the first month— or even the first year of a second term. I simply sayin, Y’ALL DON’T REELECT US, WE CAN’T DO NONE O THIS STUFF!

              Tha’s all!

              So what you say, Rose? Y’all send us some money, we gonna use it t’ win!

                               From mah fambly t’ your’n!

                               First Lady Madeleine Diamond

                                                         *

                                              –  from the upcoming novel

 

Electrifying!

  

            “I hope to pass away like my grandfather. He died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming in terror, like the passengers in his car at the time.”

                                                           –  B.Y.U. humor

                                                        *

            Friday, June 29, is the hottest day of the year. The newscast reports temps of 104 degrees at the airport. At 9:40 p.m., I’m sitting in the living room, reading the newspaper and formulating my complaints about the president: He doesn’t know what he’s doing. According to Marc A. Thiessen of the American Enterprise Institute, the current administration makes investments in ecological, “green” technologies, but the companies they loan the money to, all too often turn belly-up. Leaving us taxpayers holding the bag.

            Billions of dollars!

            Solyndra, whose out-dated technology cost taxpayers a cool $535 million in loan guarantees.

            The president’s people made a $33 million grant to Raser Technologies to build a power plant in Beaver Creek, Utah. The company now owes $1.5 million in back taxes and has filed for bankruptcy protection!

            ECOtality received $126.2 million in taxpayer money in 2009 to install electric car chargers in five states. The company has since incurred $45 million in losses. They themselves say that they don’t believe the company will ever reach profitability!

            Nevada Geothermal Power received a $98.5 million loan guarantee in 2010. With their cash reserves depleted, the company is in economic turmoil and may go under.

            First Solar: $3 billion in loan guarantees for power plants in Arizona and California. They just burned through $401 million in restructuring costs and fired 30% of the workforce.

            Abound Solar received a $400 million loan guarantee to build photovoltaic panel factories. The company halted production in February and laid off 180 employees.

             SunPower received a $1.2 billion loan guarantee and, in January, owed more than the company is worth.

             Brightsource: A $1.6 billion loan guarantee has been followed by losses totaling $177 million.

             Too many of these people either contributed bigtime to the current president’s campaign or are major donors to the Democratic Party.

             We’re seeing crony capitalism lead to dud investments. I’m tired of the president playing mutual fund manager. He’s no good at it! When I have shares in a mutual fund saddled with bad management, I liquidate my holdings.

             Other things that get my goat:

             The “McCain-Feingold” legislation, allowing campaign finance reform— cleaning up a veritable cesspool of politicians for sale to special interest groups— received only a tepid response from the current occupant in the White House.

             The 54,000 soldier “surge” in Afghanistan in 2009 – 2010 put over a third of the task force—20,500 Marines— in Helmand province, where they had very little work, instead of plopping them in Kandahar, where the insurgency is mushrooming.

             As Commander In Chief, the prez failed to back the State Department and Richard C. Holbrooke’s peace initiative, which could have made a deal with the Taliban and ended the Afghan conflict with “Dayton”-style accords. Instead, Mr. Passive-Aggressive, the president let bureaucratic infighting and one-upmanship overshadow a possible solution. Our boots on the ground continue to be killed while millions of dollars go into a wasted war effort.

            In this election year, the Democratic incumbent sides with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is little more than an American puppet. One of Hamid’s brothers runs “The Helmand,” a restaurant on North Charles Street in Baltimore featuring Afghan cuisine. A Pashtun, touchy and corrupt, Hamid himself heads a cantankerous regime in Kabul. It’s nice for Hamid Karzai that he has U.S. backing, since his fellow Afghans in the countryside feel no affection for him.

           Bailing out the banks, the Wall Street brokerage houses and the auto industry, our leader has let Main Street wither. As home values and share prices tumbled, the average American family lost 35% of their net worth in the last five years! The average wealth of a family of four is currently $66,740, according to the Census Bureau.

          My mom has three additional issues:

          We’ve got a “liberal” president who is a closet lackey of Big Business. The Republicans have a “Big Business candidate” who is a closet liberal.

           Now that the Muslim Brotherhood won the election in Egypt, no one in the U.S. Congress is petitioning for one penny of the Egyptian aid appropriation to be released. Sharia law is not the American way. With this president, however, you never know: He may decide the Muslim Brotherhood will like us better if we send them the one billion dollars in aid money.

            Our dear president favors the Canadian tar sands project. Extracting oil from the sands requires three times as much water as oil produced. Once used to clean tar sands, the contaminated water returns to the earth, poisoning the water table for generations to come. By 2030, drinkable, unpolluted water, H2O, will be the scarce commodity over which countries go to war. As such, the Canadian tar sands project seems both shortsighted and incredibly foolish.

                                                        *

             What I hear first is the roar. A jet plane? A semi? Opening the front door, I see wind and rain propelling tree branches up the street. I close the door and return to my chair and the newspaper, but the air conditioning is struggling. I get up and turn it off. Then the lights go out. They come back on for one second, go out, come back on, go out. Then they come back on for one final second, before dying for good.

              Ugh!

             A photog in my youth, I spent endless hours in the darkroom. I don’t have any trouble retrieving a flashlight from the basement in the dark, feeling my way. I unplug the dryer, the TV sets, the cordless phones and my computer. Then I take a seat on the back porch.

             The storm is called a derecho, a freight train of wind and rain tearing across several states. Words of Spanish derivation, where a tornado signifies turning air, a derecho blows “straight ahead.” We have a warm air mass hugging the ground and a cold front blowing in above it. Warm air rises, cold air sinks. As these air currents pass each other, the friction— on a molecular level!— generates electrical charges.

            For forty minutes, I sit and watch the sky alight in lightning bolts every five seconds. After only a minute, I go inside and get my sunglasses. So now I’m sitting in the dark, in sunglasses, watching the sky light up! Twelve times a minute. Four hundred and eighty lightning bolts. I am definitely freaking out, waiting for the alien spaceships to land!

             Since this is mom’s house, every room has a cordless phone. No electricity = no phone. I go to the basement, using the flashlight this time, and dig out a rotary phone I keep on hand for emergencies. I plug it in. The wind has died down, as the storm blows up the coast. I light two yartzeit candles, one in the dining room, one on the back porch. Candles in glasses are almost as effective as hurricane lamps.

            The phone rings!

           Mom has been to a show with her friends. They are now sitting in the foyer of the retirement community where the friends live.

            “Stay there!” I tell her. “Don’t try to go anywhere. Wait until the storm passes.”

             “The news reports say there are trees down everywhere, blocking the roads,” she tells me excitedly. “Driving here, the street lights were out at all the major intersections! The highways are a madhouse.”

              She is at one tony retirement community, but fate— and the power company— don’t play favorites. There’s no electricity there either! Mom’s talking to me on her cell phone. Aha! We agree that she’ll spend the night there.

              At one o’clock in the morning, I don my aquatic shoes and walk the streets. Every hundred feet, there is a tree blocking the road. They look shaggy, strange in the darkness. The only other people I meet are busy loading possessions from a pitch-black house into two cars. Thoroughly pissed off, they don’t look very friendly. I give them a wide berth. Wandering home, I am amazed to find the telephone pole at the top of the hill has snapped like a matchstick! The crossbar and the top third hang, toy-like, in the electrical wires.

             What a mess.

              In 2005, the Washington area got hit by two major hurricanes. Around here, during the second storm, an oak tree became uprooted mid-block and pulled down the power line. Our grid, a block long and three blocks wide, was without power for five days! On the third day, the Town Council sent politicians around to hold neighborhood meetings. A videographer tagged along, filming us with a large, professional-grade rig. “Yeah, yeah,” groused Morton Reilly, one of the most patriotic of my neighbors, “Is that so you’ll have evidence to use in court if we physically attack you?”

              The reps from the Town Council weren’t amused. “Look,” they reasoned, “your wiring can be transferred to underground culverts. No more storm damage. We’ve done the math. It is going to cost each household $1,000. It’s your call.”

              “That’s my vacation money!” complained Morton and three other family fathers. I just looked at them. So we never took the municipality up on their offer. The “cottage community of Oxburg” was built in 1927. Guess what? We have the same spindly telephone poles as they had then. (When we were kids, we watched every summer as the creosote tar preservative leaked out of the wood.) Except for storm damage, nothing has been replaced! Nothing.

              In the last ten years, the cable companies have shown up and strung their green cables and hung their signal boxes on the existing poles!

                                                      *

             Saturday morning, the sun is up, but the electricity is nowhere to be found. Mom gets home about 11 a.m., full of her adventures. “The streets are a catastrophe! I lost 30 minutes easing through intersections. The radio says to treat downed traffic lights like a four-way stop.” She has me close up the house, hopefully to keep the cool air inside. Right away, I notice that without the attic exhaust fan, the upstairs gets hot and musty, as a constant wave of dry heat radiates from the ceiling.

             We return to a more primitive existence. We plan before opening the refrigerator, so the minimum of cold air will escape. (In 2005, I got two bags of ice every morning and put one in the freezer and one in the fridge, mopping up smelt water several times a day.) We don’t try to do a whole lot. I spend most of my time on the back porch, cleaning up old papers and news clippings. Mom sits inside and sweats, complaining that my junk clutters the basement.

             “It’s too dark to sit down there anyway,” I point out, but she’s ornery and upset, so I let it go.

              While I eat lunch on the back porch, a cardinal flies across the lawn. He’s as bright red as a stop sign, with a black mask like a bandit. He comes hopping along the porch ledge, foraging. Since mom and I don’t chase away the animals, our birds, squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits have become very aggressive. They all but crawl onto my lap, not always a pleasant experience.  

               Pamela, next door, is abandoning her house until the power comes back on. Her hubby, the college professor, is out of town. “Can you,” she asks, “turn on the generator if it rains? We’ve got a new generator to operate the sump pump in the basement.”

              We go to look. I help her fill the gas tank. She shows me how to turn on the fuel valve, how to flip the switch, the “eco filter” I need to couple in after three minutes’ running time. My eyes grow large as I devour the two outlets marked “120 volts/20 amps.”

              “Sure,” I tell her, “but can I run an extension cord from our house, plug in my refrigerator and run the generator for an hour, just to cool down our fridge?”

              “Will an hour be enough?” she asks.

               “An hour will sure be better than nothing!”

               It’s while I’m positioning myself to pull the stove away from the wall to get at the refrigerator cord that I notice the yellow light streaming from the kitchen lamp.

                ???

               I rush to tell my mom, “The power’s back on!”

               It’s 6 p.m. I go next door and tell Pamela. She’s packing to leave. Grabbing flashlights, we descend to her basement and throw the power switch from “generator” to “mains.” Nada. Nothing. “Shit!” I exclaim, embarrassed that we have power and she doesn’t. And for using an expletive.

              Disappointed, Pamela heads to her sister’s place in the District. “She still has electricity.” I promise to keep an eye on her place and start the generator if it rains.

              Strange brew. We have electricity. The neighbors on Algonquin don’t. How do I know? Mike McGraw’s generator is still noisily chugging on his driveway, spewing gas and producing wattage. Mike is admirably handy with electric saws, weed whackers and power mowers. He lives by the light of the orange, outdoor extension cord.

              The deal is, we’re all supposed to be on the same grid! Our backyards face one another. There’s already dissension over speed humps. So the natives aren’t happy when mom and I return to civilization and electrification, leaving most of them stuck somewhere in the Stone Age: Living in their basements to keep cool. Going to bed at dusk and rising at daybreak because they lack artificial illumination. Throwing out tons of defrosted food.

               It turns out the crews from Pike, who came up from Georgia to help in 2005, split the grid in two. Now there are haves and have-nots!

               Some locals even lack potable water. How do you boil the water when you have no electricity?

                                                       *

               The Town of Oxburg, being a separate municipality, has a contract with Mepco, the Maryland Electrical Power Company, one of the smaller entities in the electricity business. When I finally get through on my cell phone at 10 p.m. on Saturday night and tell the young lady about the snapped telephone pole, she replies, “Mepco isn’t responsible for telephone poles. The municipality owns those.”

                I’m ready to strangle her.

               “But the three houses closest to the pole are still without power!”

               “Oh! Well! Power outages are our province. I’ll file your report.”

                On Sunday afternoon, July 1^st, the Maryland Electrical Power Company holds a town hall style press conference at the local elementary school. This is the same locale where I spent last year battling my neighbors twice a month over speed humps. I oppose speed humps! I lost. Being back among the toddler-size furniture of the library makes my skin crawl. Jim, the black dude representing Mepco, starts by explaining in rudimentary detail how electricity runs through substations to utility wires before entering our homes.

                 I hear myself groaning. I consciously force myself to clam up.

                After a halting opening statement, Jim turns out to know his stuff: “Right now, we’re working on getting the substations up and running. After that, breaks in the utility wires can further delay us getting that electricity into your home!”

                I couldn’t have said it better myself.

                He takes questions from the audience.

                Groan! “Please, God,” I murmur. “No speeches! Please, God!”

                The first question comes from an irate middle-aged woman with an executive demeanor: “This is the United States of America!” she declares.  “Founded in 1776, we are the leader of the world. Here in the nation’s capital, I would expect an infrastructure that is capable of carrying the most basic goods and services to the people! What are you doing?! How dare you let this power outage drag on for days! Someone must pay for this incredible incompetence! What am I supposed to tell my children? That we are powerless in the nation’s capital? Are we back in the 1970’s, when America was viewed piteously by the rest of the world as a helpless giant unable to bring our enemies to heel?

               “This is unacceptable!

               “Mark my words! Heads will roll!”

               Oh! I am thinking. Someone made a speech.

               Jim does what he can to answer.

               Next questioner: “Uh, as I understand it, this thing that hit us,” he says, “is called a derecho. The Washington area has been attacked. We’ve been blown out of the water. We’re shut down! We’re on an emergency footing!”

               “Yes?” asks Jim.

               “So when are we going to war with Mexico? Intern the illegals and let’s get on with it! How much longer are we expected to wait?!”

                “For the power to come back on?” Jim suggests helpfully, trying to stay on message.

                                                       *

                Over a million and a quarter people have been without electricity. By Monday, only (only!) 350,000 households remain without power. A khamseen, a warm wind, is blowing throught the region, making people act crazy.

                                                       * 

                Tuesday, July 3^rd at 7 p.m., the last of my neighbors in Oxburg get their power turned back on. We eat late, as usual. Mom asks me if I intend to run the dishwasher.

                “Thunderstorms are predicted. I’ll wait for the weather to pass.”

                When I finish cleaning the table and the kitchen, I sit on the back porch, watching the lightning approach. It begins to rain. A blinding white flash lights up the night, followed by a hollow ka-pow! Ah, folks? The same neighbors whose homes were restored two hours ago…? Their houses go dark. I turn and look at our kitchen door. Yellow light streams from behind the venetian blind! This could get ugly.

               Another flash of light, another explosion. Our power goes out!

              “See,” I murmur. “What did I tell ya?”

              This time I hook up the old-fashion rotary phone and dial the 1-800 number pronto. Cars driving down the hill light up the neighborhood. I pop open the front door and sit on the floor in the living room. On hold, listening to an endless chamber music recital, I see three white utility trucks drive by and turn onto Algonquin. I hang up, grab my aquatic shoes and walk down the hill to have a look. I find a snazzy dude talking beside his car with one of my neighbors.

              “Seen any utility trucks?” I ask, introducing myself.

              “They drove thataway!”

                I walk to the end of the block. A man and a woman are pulling into their driveway. I ask them.

               “Up on Chancellorville. There are three trucks. They’re working gangbusters,” the gentleman drawls in a southern accent so thick, I can barely understand him.

               What I find is a telephone pole containing a full substation rig and a lot of guys in white hardhats, shaking their heads. “We’d just finished,” one explains. “We intended to mount a metal cover tomorrow morning. It never occurred to us that it might rain and short-circuit our handiwork!” He doesn’t apologize, but by the time I get back home, we have electricity. The rest of my neighbors are back on-line within fifteen minutes.

                I run the dishwasher.

                                                       *

               People in the Washington, D.C. area are going nuts. We’re not turning into zombies and werewolves, but still… Pepco has notified the District, Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties that power will first be fully restored by 10 p.m. on Friday, July 6^th! A full week after the storm. It turns out, Pepco has been doling out dividends to its shareholders instead of doing the upgrades they promised the public after the debacle in 2005! Dominion Virginia Power tells Virginians that they will be back on-line by Wednesday, July 4^th. The National Guard is clearing debris. Crews from neighboring states have joined in to saw up fallen trees. 

                We’re in the middle of a heat wave. Electric signs on the Interstate say “COOLING SHELTER NOTICE, DIAL 211.”

                Look, I grew up here! Scorching summers were part of living in the Washington area. We didn’t have no A/C in the 1950’s, we had electric fans. When it was hot and muggy, everyone suffered equally. The idea that people are forced to seek malls, libraries and other locations with A/C in order to survive is quietly frightening!

                Ain’t no air conditioning after the apocalypse, people! We killin’ the planet, weather gonna get extreme. It’s hot in Hell! Get used to it!

                                                       *

                 We spend July 4^th across the street, with Billy McCluskey and his family. I take snow crab legs, corn, potato salad, cole slaw and ginger beer to their house. Then I help my mom cross the street. She walks with a cane. Ninety-one years old, she’s definitely slowing down. “What’s this?” she asks. “Everyone has an American flag out front but us!”

                 “I didn’t know you wanted one!”

                 “Yes, but look! Everyone but us!”

                 “Don’t you see?” I ask her. “They are competing! They’re showing off. ‘My flag is bigger than your flag! My flag flies stiffer than yours!’ I can come back to our house and hang out an American flag, if you want.”

                “Do we have one?” she asks.

                “We have several! Gifts from the veterans’ organizations you’ve contributed to. Of course, all our flags are manufactured in China!”

                “Oh, yeah?” she grunts. “Forget it!”

               Billy tells me to stop fretting over the economy: “To paraphrase Ronald Reagan,” he suggests, “it’s a recession when your neighbor is unemployed. It’s a depression when you are unemployed. And it’s an economic recovery when the current bum in the White House is unemployed!”

                He explains to me that the U.S. remains a major shareholder in General Motors. “If we sold our shares today, we’d take a financial loss of $40 billion.”

                “Ouch! ¡Ay, caramba! ”

                 “To paraphrase Ronnie Reagan…”

                 “Again?”

                 “This administration is spending like drunken sailors. Only that’s an insult to drunken sailors, who, at least, spend their own money! “

                 As mom and I return to our house, the sky lights up. “We’re watching the Oxburg Towne Fireworks Show,” I point out.

                 “A waste of taxpayer money, if you ask me!” she retorts.

                  We’re in a recession.

                   A silver cluster is followed by a yellow shower. “Welcome to Bosnia-Hercegovina!” I suggest.

                                                       *

                   According to the newspaper, Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, the head of the U.N. observer mission in Syria, feels the violence has reached “unprecedented” levels.

                  In Libya, after 50 years of Gaddafi, the country is truly a neophyte democracy: There are 2.8 million registered voters. They are electing representatives to their 200-member National Assembly. There are 3,700 candidates, 142 parties. Amidst a welter of posters, pamphlets and TV ads, most voters admit that they have no idea what the candidates stand for. Members of the former regime are ineligible to run. No risk of Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, becoming Prime Minister!

                Meanwhile, in Mali, Islamist rebels are tearing apart the ancient Sufi shrines of Timbuktu. The rebels are ethnic Tuareg fighters from Libya. 

              Everywhere I look nowadays, I see the new “It” girl.

              Katy Perry.

               This is a lady I discovered while watching Saturday Night Live in 2010. She sang “Teenage Dream.” Not completely dense, I understand that Lorne Michaels specializes in booking all the pop genres, including gangly girl-women like Sweden’s Robyn, Lily Allen from the U.K. and our very own Ms. Perry. Musically, I love SNL. It introduced me to Sweden’s The Sounds. It also drives me crazy on occasion, featuring bands that are heavy on attitude and short on material. Nothing is as embarrassing as a great band— Coldplay, anyone?— who have ground out some smashing songs— performing on SNL long after their creative juices have evaporated.

               Ouch!

              After seeing her on TV, I buy a copy of Katy’s Teenage Dream CD. This is a 25-year-old who dresses like she’s eight-years-old. Dressy-uppy party clothes. She sings about “shots” of hard liquor, beachwear and guilty pleasures. For the 18-year-old and younger demographic. Little ‘tween daddy’s girls see her and Kei$ha as role models. (God help the next generation!) We had the Beatles and James Dean. 

               Gen-X had Madonna. Britney Spears.  Even Paris Hilton… sorta. The lady could pout, but she couldn’t sing! It’s Katy’s turn. She gets a front cover and an article in Parade Magazine. Forget Jan Wenner’s Rolling Stone and the other music mags, this signals that Katy has now arrived. Mainstream. Bigtime. Middle America, come look upon your daughter!

                On July 4^th, I watch her performing live, across the East River from Manhattan, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard as part of the Macy’s 4^th of July Fireworks Spectacular on NBC. Dressed in a sparkly, sequined American flag outfit that does no favors to her chunky figure, she belts out tunes that drive the midshipmen wild. Later that night, there she is again— her hair dyed purple— on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Either teleportation has reached unprecedented levels of development without my knowledge or the Kimmel broadcast, from the West Coast, was pre-recorded.

               And she’s just as cute and amazingly empty-headed as you would expect from someone in the pop industry. Aside from her natural beauty and her chops as a performer, Katy exhibits a serious case of arrested development. Must everyone in America be young all the time? When I was a kid, I dreamt of becoming a rock star! Ho, ho, ho!

                Mishegoss.

                July 5, 2012 is another scorcher. That night, neighbors up the hill— who have fireworks left over— put on a display for the rest of us. Red and green  explosions rip the darkness. Bam! Bang! Zoom! Pow! I feel like I’m back in a war zone.

                                                        *