Some seven years later, rapper Clive Flatenbad in Swedish rap duo realPfft revisits President Trump’s anti-immigrant wall in southern Texas. Only to get interrupted by a phone call from the White House!
And once again, Clive’s rather nutty younger brother Tim has painstakingly moved Heaven, Earth and megabytes to edit and package the mucho raw footage which Clive & Friends brought home from their location shoot outside El Paso.
Based on the saying “Everybody likes a pretty girl,” Tim has even plundered realPfft’s photo archive, seeking images of beautiful women.
God help me, what a crew! As their manager, publicist and music publisher, I am guilty as charged for distributing this hilarious wideo creation.
“I love the smell of Victory Gin in the morning,” Todd Harrison said, sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling on his socks. Outside the window, bright yellow sunlight promised the start of another glorious Spring day. The roar of omnicopters rattled the windows.
“You are such a piece of work,” Erin swore angrily. “I come here, give you what you want— what you claim you need— and never do I hear a word of thanks!”
Red hair and green eyes, she was out and out fuming.
“I wonder if they’ve chosen a parade route free of disruption this year,” Todd pondered. “Last year was such a disappointment.” He was a flag carrier in Big Kahuna’s annual birthday festival and military parade.
“You swine—”
A mile deep into Proletown, they were in a rented room on the second floor of a shop on a grubby side street littered with rubbish. The name on the shop window said Ye Olde WatchRepair, but the letters themselves had faded into ghostly outlines. On the walls upstairs, bucolic scenes of a pre-war nature sat in wooden frames, alternating with cracks in the plaster. Over everything hung the pungent odor of mice.
If they climbed upon the roof and looked south, they could see the cranes being used to build the 250-foot-high Victory Arch on the Isle of Dogs.
“I love the Orange Thunderbolt as much as any man,” Todd insisted, balancing on one foot and pulling on his trousers. “Fourth term notwithstanding, he’s the guy. Listen, they can have a 95-year-old PM if they want, but sometimes the Party makes life all but unbearable.” Searching the rickety nightstand for a smoke, he asked “Why is there a giant banner of Big Kahuna hanging on the Ministry of Injustice building? What’s up with that? Has he become a law & order freak in his old age?”
Working in the Lit Department of Miniprop, the Ministry of Propaganda, Todd had a way with words.
Erin just glared.
Th hollow clatter of a transport drone passed by overhead. “We’ve got to get out of this place, if it’s the last time we ever move,” Todd proposed.
“Again??? Blimey! ’Nough said. I’m not hearing nought!” Erin muttered, pulling the dingy bedsheet up around her chin, round as a tennis ball. Todd loved to kiss her chin, cupping it in his hands and slobbering on it.
On the flip side, sometimes it took all of her wiles just to get Todd to look up from his cellphone.
A half-read novel lay on the nightstand. “Elephant Hunting in Deepest India” screamed the title in lurid red letters. On the cover, a scantily clad damsel rode atop a wayward elephant. Todd had the disquieting sensation that he might have unknowingly contributed bits to the large language model used in the story’s creation. Some of the flowery descriptions matched his prose.
“We need to find a more secure location for our trysts,” he insisted.
“No shit, Sherlock!” sang Erin, jumping from the bed buck naked and marching to the washstand to sponge herself.
Todd heard voices from the street below. “Hoo, hoo, Big Kahuna is watching you!” they chanted, but Todd knew it was just rowdies letting off steam.
“Can you loan me any money?” he asked, not for the first time. Checking the fly strip, he plucked away the dead bodies of flies with his fingers and threw them in the rubbish bin.
“God damn drunk!” Erin griped, her Irish accent as clear as a morning breeze in May. “I never should have taken up with you!”
“It’s all O’Bannon’s fault,” countered Todd defensively. “If he hadn’t introduced us—”
“Yes, yes, blame it on an Inner Party member, why don’t you?” hissed Erin. Wiping the sponge vigorously between her legs, she worked up a lather.
“Ye Irish are as thick as thieves,” Todd commented. “I still wonder what he’s up to, y’ know.”
“I’ll tell you what he’s up to, that wanker. Free love is what he’s up to. Disseminating it among the ranks, so that his own sex crimes will look minor in comparison,” she exclaimed. Throwing the sponge into the washbowl, she marched to the dresser and pulled on her summer frock. Dressed in pink, she looked bleeding gorgeous, barefoot, her hair wild, eyes shining. Todd, hands extended like an eagle’s claws, chased her around the room, drooling. “Just you wait!” predicted Erin. “O’Bannon will throw us under the wheels of the bus, sure as beeswax.”
“I think not,” Todd claimed, only too aware that in politics, Erin was much more perceptive than he.
That’s when there came a click at the washstand and the mirror sank to the floor with a thud.
“Hey, what’s all this!” Todd howled.
The more practical of the two, Erin marched to the washstand and pulled it, screeching, along the floor. The glassy eye of a peeping tom video camera stared at them, the lens covered in dust. “Bastards,” she cursed.
“Yes, bastards!” came a cranky voice over a speaker embedded in the wall.
“Kiss me arse!” she added.
“Yes,” squawked the voice. “Kiss ye arse!”
There was a crash at the window and suddenly the room was filled with guv agents in macks and masks, storming in from window and doorway. “Hup tight! Stand thee with hands behind head!” roared a drill sergeant, teasingly drawing his truncheon down Erin’s spine and along her hip, tapping it meaningfully between her legs. “Tick tock, tick tock,” he joked. “Cat’s got paws, where’s the pussy?”
Todd and she stood helplessly still, trembling, while the guvs milled ‘round. One knocked Erin to the floor.
“Up ye go, lass,” suggested another, helping her to her feet, after which they smashed poor Todd on an elbow and knocked him on his bum.
“All right, that’s enough larking about!” O’Bannon said, coming into the room hurriedly. “Let’s wrap this up.”
“Aye, I thought t’was yer voice I heard,” Erin observed.
While Todd was lifted to a standing position, O’Bannon put on a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and read from a printed green card, “Under Article Eight, Paragraph Two of the Charter for the Isles of Britain and Ireland, you are hereby accused of sex crimes, domestic terrorism, insurrection, thievery, bribery, unauthorized handling of explosives, conspiracy to attain handguns and attack drones, printing of unlawful leaflets and doxxing. Each charge specifically or all of the above. Now, strip!”
“Strip, is it?” complained Erin. “Aye, and we what just now got clothed,” she declared, making everyone except Todd burst out laughing.
“Take them to the Ministry of Hygienic Love,” commanded O’Bannon. Black cloth bags were placed over their heads and they were led, stumbling, downstairs and outside to a waiting van.
2
In a chilly room with steel walls, where every noise had an echo, Todd was tied up and strapped to a contraption that resembled a cross between a dental chair and a barber stool.
A busy bureaucrat, O’Bannon left him there, viewing a series of video tutorials filled with trumpeting fanfare and titled “Oceania in the Age of English Socialism.” Not surprisingly, Eastasia and Eurasia were the bad guys, while life in the British Isles resembled a kind of Garden of Eden. The fourth in a series of five was titled “Big Kahuna Is Watching You.”
Afterward, O’Bannon came back in view and in an almost kindly fashion explained the situation.
“Attention, Todd! Consider yourself privileged,” O’Bannon exclaimed, looking surprisingly morose. “I could leave your interrogation to A.I. and it wouldn’t be pretty. You will be amazed at how effective our robots have become. It’s the perfect match, soulful militants against soulless machines. Guess who wins, each and every time?
“I am taking a personal interest in your case, mostly because I know Erin’s parents, two stalwart revolutionaries of the Old School. I don’t do rehabilitations anymore unless they affect policy. So, whatever else, take these formalities seriously and consider yourself honored to be here and getting my personal treatment.”
“My bad,” agreed Todd.
“As long as we are here, let’s see if we can make some progress,” stated O’Bannon, folding shut the hand-tooled brown leather case to his cellphone, a status symbol limited to members of the Inner Party. “The alternative is seven grams of lead in the head,” he added.
“I would like to forego that eventuality,” Todd replied, croaking like a crow.
“I have been following your vlog. Who gave you permission to stream the Special Olympics?” asked O’Bannon.
“I wasn’t aware that I needed permission. I just repost with ironic emojis,” Todd explained. Eyeing various punitive torture devices hanging from the ceiling, he asked, “Is this a wax museum or what?” Only half-joking.
“You seem to have a penchant for the dog poo emoji,” O’Bannon pointed out.
“I told you, I am being ironic.”
“Why do you only have 38 followers?” O’Bannon wondered, waving away a technician in a white lab coat who seemed intent on speaking to him.
“The Net is a closed system, as you know,” Todd explained. “British Isles Only. You try scraping together followers in the UK, where everybody religiously follows Cheltenham F.C. but nought filthy else. Me followers online are a crew of dodgers. Bloody shy, thanks to your lot breathing hot and heavy and such.”
“Why post on a vlog if you don’t have an audience?” O’Bannon queried, genuinely curious. “What is this about Big Kahuna’s hair-loss remedy? Do you actually know something or is it just click bait? Is your podcast sending secret messages in code to an erstwhile opposition? Vox clamantis in deserto. You are a voice crying out in the wilderness.”
“It’s a hobby. I can’t be working for a foreign power because you can’t find a foreign power in London to save ye arse. I wasn’t aware that being a futile bloody failure online is illegal.”
That’s when O’Bannon hit him in the mouth. Once. Hard. When Todd had recovered enough to speak, he said, “I take that as a typical example of trolling.”
O’Bannon’s face went red, but at least he didn’t hit Todd again. Instead, he stood massaging his knuckles. His hand was sore. “Room 35B,” he said.
“What the fuck?!” Todd protested. “I’m British. Some rights and permissions we have. Read the Magna Carta. Bloody Irish!”
“Room 35B is the worst thing you can imagine,” heckled O’Bannon. “It varies from one individual to another. We use an algorithm to determine what you find most reprehensible, based on your online viewing history. In your case, Todd, it is listening to political speeches. As incredible as this might sound, you never participate in political rallies nor Hate Week, although you hoist the colors in Big K’s yearly procession. Why is that? Do tell.”
“No. Aye. Yes. As you say, I really hate listening to harangues. Too many family troubles growing up and like that. ‘The revolution eats its own,’ as they say. Now that we have that nailed down, how about we go to a Wimpy’s and grab some burgers?” he suggested.
“You jest,” said O’Bannon, “but this is not a jesting matter.”
“I don’t jest!” Todd protested. “On me dear old mother’s grave, I hate speeches and I love a Wimpy Triple Quarterpounder Bacon & Cheese. Now that’s a burger!”
“Untie him!” O’Bannon indicated and the technician came scurrying over in his white lab coat. He struggled with the knots.
Traversing the city in a green Ministry of Works van, avoiding the pro-Kahuna flash mobs in City Centre, they stopped off at the Ministry of War where a surly tattoo artist inked a barcode across Todd’s forehead. “Welcome to the Tribe of Ingrates,” O’Bannon announced, smirking. “The State gives you everything and you are still not satisfied.”
Once the novocaine wore off, Todd’s forehead itched terribly.
At the fast food joint, O’Bannon sat over a cup of java, brooding, while Todd fed his face. “Would you mind paying?” he asked O’Bannon. “We left our loft in such a hurry, I forgot me wallet.”
O’Bannon, sure-footed but immensely bored, plucked an evidence bag from his briefcase and handed Todd his wallet.
“Uh, now this is embarrassing,” Todd admitted, “but I don’t have any coin, you see. I’m skint. Penniless. Stony-broke be the bloke.” Holding up his wallet, he showed it to be empty.
Sighing, O’Bannon waved to the waitress. When she came over, he paid for the burger and the coffee.
“I wonder what Erin is doing right now,” Todd mused.
“Don’t worry yourself on her account,” answered O’Bannon. “A wench like that always lands on her feet. She’ll go home to Eire and get a job tending golf links.”
“Now about these charges against us,” Todd proposed, wiping his mouth daintily with a crinkly napkin. “I can understand that you are angry. Then, too, there’s all the things we said when we were at your flat in Russell Square, all that cal about throwing acid in the faces of babies, the joy of anarchistic drone attacks on municipal housing estates and such drivel, but you need to understand that Erin and I were putting on an act. We didn’t ska mean all that blarney.”
“Then why should I believe you now?” O’Bannon asked stonily, his face dour and furious. He propped an oily grey guv-issued M1911 automatic pistol on the Formica tabletop next to his cellphone. It looked enormous, sitting there among the cardboard tray, plastic utensils and paper wrapper left over from the burger.
Staring at the gun, alarmed, Todd stammered, “All I am saying is give me a chance. Seriously, mate,” he pleaded, “I really do love Big Kahuna. Carrying the banner at his birthday parade is a sure sign of my devotion, I can assure you. Only…”
“Only???” spat O’Bannon, leaning menacingly across the table. “Only what?”
“You are Inner Party, you see, old chum, while I am Outer Party. You gents get the more part of the booze and the capers and all the good stuff while the rest of us poor sods have to put up with Victory Gin, crumbly chocolate and your leavings. It says—”
“WHAT SAYS?” roared O’Bannon, bringing the waitress at a run. He waved her away.
“In the archives. At work. There’s a wine in France called a Bordeaux.”
“Yes? So?” hissed O’Bannon.
As if on cue, three rowdies, unshaven and quite drunk, stumbled through the street door, their black bomber jackets plastered with football badges. One look at O’Bannon and his pistol sent them on their way.
“Life is short,” Todd declared. “If I could procure a supply of something as meaningfully fulfilling as Bordeaux wine, Big Kahuna has in me a trusted servant for as long as we two shall live! It would affix me a place on the black market and such, you see. Ta! I have said my piece.”
Stymied, impressed and immensely irritated, O’Bannon told him, “Come to my flat next Tuesday and we’ll sort you out once and be done with it.”
Tears of gratitude pouring down his face, Todd found he really did love Big Kahuna.
For a Chinaman or Sumerian, 250 years can go by like a heartbeat. That long ago, an amazing thing worth celebrating took place in the Independent Municipality of Concord Vine in southern Massachusetts. A fidgety gentleman of the name Paulo Riviera, lantern held high, rode his black stallion by night down the cobblestones, shouting “The British are coming! The British are coming!”
Sure as foretold, by next morning a delegation from the Royal Assessor entered the rather crabby confines of the village and called to meeting the burghers thereof.
“Wine and ale shipments leaving the Port of Boston are to be further excised to finance the war on the Continent,” exclaimed Adolphus Middlemarch on behalf of King George, holding his wig atop his balding pate with a palsied hand.
“Aye, but not bloody likely!” slurred the same slovenly-dressed Paulo, now smelling markedly of gin. Cravat askew, his clothing in disarray, he pushed through the assembly and bumped up against the magistrate. “Haven’ you read the pamphlet which I have written titled Common As Dirt?” he demanded.
“Who is this man?” howled Adolphus, deeply offended.
“Don’t pay him no mind, he’s the town drunk!” explained Hiram Walker, the mayor, apologetically. “We put up with him ‘cause he’s an excellent blacksmith. Does like the sauce, though, must be said.”
“All right then, now about these stamps,” exclaimed the magistrate, pushing aside the cantankerous smithy, who was promptly sequestered by a pair of redcoats.
“Hardly seems fair,” complained the townsfolk. “We’re right heavily taxed, as is.”
“Es una indignación,” insisted Paulo, swaying like a larch in a typhoon. “Have you tried Concord Vine’s signatura claret?” he added consolingly, under the needling of the redcoats.
Say whast man will, Paulo was a patriot, one whose backstory deserves mentioning on this Semiquincentennial. Loaned out as a boy to the pristine Slocum Plantation on Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, it was the hope of Paulo’s Andalusian immigrant parents that by helping him learn a trade, they would ensure their son’s future. Which they did. Assistant to the plantation blacksmith, Paulo became an excellnt artisan. All might have gone well, save the Slocum family’s second daughter, a striver and mischievous lass who bedeviled the Young Man incessantly. “My braids require your steady hand!” she could declare on a humid August afternoon, appearing in the doorway of the smithy, while crickets chirped in the fields and thunderheads gathered on the horizon.
“I c’n shoe yo’ horse fo’ yo’,” invited the boy, climbing up the ladder into the hayloft behind her attractively swaying buttocks.
“Aren’t you the tease!” she giggled, her apple cheeks blushing red as a Macintosh.
“Here now!” he protested as one of her clawlike hands latched on to his britches and pulled him atop her. “Wayload!”
Protests to no avail, she had her way with him, leading to a life of sloth. Such was oft’ the fate of our young and obstreperous nation.
Also, pirates steered their frigates into the bay, rowed ashore their longboats and plundered the plantation. Not a born militiaman, young Paulo raced to the main house, drew a sword from the Slocum family arsenal and rushed an equally junior rapscallion among the stinking pirate horde. Poor Paulo got his butt sorely whipped by the mercenary intruders, while the Slocums sought refuge further up the bay at the estate of Geo. Washington and family in Westmoreland County.
Let this be a lesson to us! Although a fairly mundane part of Colonial life and ranked high in the history books, such doings steer not our daily discourse in the halls of Congress. Light a sparkler for freedom! Blow the state budget on fireworks.
Some readers are downloading the 8th edition of Peace Now? Very Funny from this blog. Here is a newly edited 11th edition on pdf for your enjoyment. The writing is more descriptive and some repetitive material has been removed.
Nothing will ever be the same since October 7th. Written in 2016, this is a tale from a gentler time.
The Palestinians want all the land of Israel, full stop, dooming every attempt at the peace process. And amidst their foot-dragging, an Israeli game of attrition has developed where, for every year that passes, less and less of the “Occupied Territories” remains available for a Palestinian State.
Jewish writer Barry Lipowitz has decided to write about that, in a major apologia to the long-suffering Palestinians. By being born after some great Jewish writers and before some others, sandwich-man Barry has the good fortune to be christened “the greatest Jewish writer of his generation.”
He has moved to the Big Apple, home of the big publishing houses and magazine headquarters, who pay him major coin for his brilliance.
So, gathering a coterie of like-minded leftists, he and his Israeli wife Erit depart for the Promised Land, desperately determined to confirm their personal convictions, even in the face of daunting evidence to the contrary.
Unfortunately, this novella is based on a true event.
Flying into a brick wall, a small black bat fell at my feet. It seemed like an ill omen. Something ethereal in the bat’s nature made me suspect that this flying rodent consisted of more than met the eye at first glance. Having had some experience in the vivisection of inert bodies as an anatomy student at the University of Uppsala, I gently raised the creature in my gloved hand and stared into one of its glassy eyeballs.
“New life!” I cried aloud in the inky white fog of a London night. The scuttling of rats rose in reply. Eerie footsteps and murky shadows populated a street dripping in condensation. The wings of the bat fluttered, its tiny teeth gnawing on the black leather of my glove.
I was in London for a fortnight’s sojourn at the behest of Professor Otto Penn, renowned physician at Eep’s College, Brixton. When landing at Heathrow, I had been required to declare all items above the threshold of £135, then sign a promise that I would not undertake employment while in the U.K. and finally swear that I have never had any dealings with Jeffrey Epstein, Esquire.
Having left Stateside my betrothed Lenore in the provincial backwater that we call home, I hoped that my recently completed monograph on the derivation of the Irish banshee might win me a teaching fellowship at Eep’s. A laboratory assistant at a glue factory, I wouldn’t mind coming up in the world. Memories of Lenore’s hot, prickly breath made a havoc of my thought processes.
What with both ICE and the Border Patrol on the warpath, God only knows what will happen when I try to return to the States. Airports have become dangerous places. I can check my credit rating, but how do I check my ICE rating? Has some protest march I participated in during college left an indelible signature in the Border Patrol database? Am I on a Watch List and, if so, whose? Has a contribution to the ACLU gotten me listed as a domestic terrorist? What if my next door neighbor’s dog is a subversive? I don’t want to end up in a detention center in Bayou Blue, Louisiana just because my neighbor Bill’s Pekingese has been spying for the Chinese Communist Party. Scary stuff!
Fortunately, although an American down to my bootstraps, my family has a wee connection to the British Isles. Humble brag, one of my maternal great great uncles designed the loos on the battle ship HMS Dreadful.
I know myself to be something of a throwback. Every Victorian drama requires a mad scientist who electrocutes inanimate objects with the hopeful conjecture “It’s alive!”
Administering the Kiss of Life, exhaling into the bat’s jagged mouth, it fell from my hands. Growing in shape and bulk, a mysterious figure four feet in height dressed in a black peacoat took its place on the flagstones, its face a pale blur. Scared shitless, a rash of goosebumps ran down my back. I could feel my hair standing on end. “What the fuck?!” I wailed.
“Have no fear,” commanded this strange apparition.
“Fuck you ‘have no fear,’” I complained. “I got plenty of fear.”
“I am but a weary traveler,” he insisted. “Thee has no idea the extent of my afflictions,” he assured me. “Among other things, I am tormented by the curse of spasmodic recollective memory. Fragments of the past come upon me unbidden, mocking and plaguing me, laying siege to my soul, filling me with ennui and regret. Think of it! Now consider that for 600 years, I have occasioned such emotions.”
I must say, he did look mournful, standing there in the shadows. I found myself unable to look away from his baleful stare, pointy ears, weird nails like spikes and frightful comb-over. There was an Old World slovenliness about him. He stank of sloe gin.
His Mitteleuropa accent assured me that he did not come from any shit-hole country. Still, one can never be sure. He may own a yacht off the coast of Africa.
“Ah, thee be American!” he cried gaily, spreading his claw-like hands in a welcoming gesture.
“Yes,” I admitted, “I am.”
“I could tell thee a tale about a world leader who is sucking the lifeblood out of his country,” the fellow exclaimed, wagging his head playfully, “but I won’t.”
What to make of him? Was he even 9/10th’s of one percent real or simply a bad hallucination brought on by a bout of indigestion?
“Have thee ever considered mindfulness?” he queried, swaying from side to side so violently, I felt compelled to steady him with a hand. “Close thy eyes,” he suggested, “put thy hand over thy heart and imagine all of the enemies thee can vanquish with a swipe of the longsword. Hacking off their limbs! Hacking off their heads!” he shouted with glee, his eyes aglow like two burning embers.
“I think most people are focused on peace,” I objected.
“Oh, yes, peace,” he croaked, as if discussing an inferior brand of laundry detergent. “Naturally, peace speaks to the soul of the populace, but, really, it is no part of human nature. Human nature eggs us on to conquer and subjugate. That’s the way of it.”
“You seem a bloodthirsty lot,” I felt impelled to point out.
“Now thee confuseth me with the Ottomans,” he insisted.
“People need to stick together,” I replied warily, the corporate motto at my place of employment. “All I am saying is give peace a chance.”
“Don’t make me list the unappetizing catalog of military misadventure carried out within the last decade,” he insisted, burping a mouthful of breath that smelled like swamp gas. “There is always someone attacking or bombing their neighbor somewhere upon this sorry globe,” he observed. “Thee need fight like hell or thee won’t have a country anymore. No politician should be elected to high office if they have not studied Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Nothing compares to the gory, glorious warfare we waged 600 years ago upon the field of battle, our barbarity fully on display for all to see. VladȚepeș I was christened in the popular mind, ‘Vlad the Impaler,’ a glutton for dead meat. Anorexic, a banquet of food lies before me, yet I cannot eat. Blood I crave and blood I shall have,” he chuckled, falling flat on his face.
“I say,” I commented, helping the midget to his feet, “I fail to see the connection between bats and you.”
“Creatures of the night,” he grumbled in a voice like thunder rolling down a Transylvania mountain top. His peacoat reeked of mold and sawdust. “I am the greatest vampire in history! Everyone knows Count Dracula, ‘Son of the Dragon.’ That’s me!” he howled. “In Romania, they think I am a hero. They make vampire fangs, keychains and shot glasses in my honor. Suveniruri, jucarii. Souvenirs, toys. Look me up online!”
As he spoke, he began flickering like a faulty lightbulb. Once… twice… and then… poof!
He was gone.
I waited around in the dank night, hopping from one foot to the other to keep warm, but it didn’t seem like he would reappear. Well, I thought, that’ssomething I can tell my grandkids about, one fine day.
I was filled with equal parts relief and trepidation. As I turned to go… blink!… there he was again, clear as a video on YouTube and twice as real. Shivers went up my spine and, let’s face it, I experienced a sense of irritation and major disappointment that I hadn’t shaken loose from his companionship. It began to feel as if I might spend the rest of my life standing on that chunk of pavement. And not in a good way.
“The hour grows late,” he said, as if nothing had transpired, leaving me to ponder whether he even realized that his spectral image had, in fact, shorted out. “So much to do and so little time before sunrise.”
“So what brings you to England?” I wondered, making the best of a bad situation.
“I have purchased an abbey,” he exclaimed expansively, seeming to grow an inch or two in height. “Downton Abbey it is called, but I think of it as Rundown Abbey. Sadly neglected by the previous owners, it needs a lot of work. Still, I expect to make something of it. I am renaming it Vlad’s Hideaway. I have already had the name affixed across the front of the building. So far, the earthmovers have only demolished the east wing. I live in a suitcase— well, a coffin, if thee must know— so, by necessity, I call wherever I hang my coat home. However, buying a property gives me somewhere to exhibit my store of gold objets d’art. Gold ornaments are only worth having if one can flaunt them.”
“I really wouldn’t know,” I insisted.
“More is the pity,” he lectured me. “One can never get enough gold. Thee knows the old saying, ‘Me, impotent? Hogwash! Just behold the golden trophies upon my mantelpiece.’ Klemens von Metternich said that. Or was it Napoleon?”
Listening to him rant, without a doubt, I found Vlad to be a man of deep conviction. “I suppose you are supernatural…” I guessed.
“Eh! Supernatural,” he grimaced, his mouth turned cruelly down. “That and four pounds ninety-five will get thee a salted caramel milkshake at Wimpy’s. I do not drink… wine.”
“I say, are you rich?” I blurted, surprising myself. “Where does your money come from?”
“I thought thee knew,” parried Vlad. “I have made a fortune in real estate. One never loses money in real estate, old boy.”
“Do tell,” I quipped, keenly aware from the cinema that I mustn’t let my guard down for even a minute, lest I find the vile creature at my throat.
“As the world goes kaputt, I would like to secure my position in the structure that remains,” he explained, sounding like a stockbroker.
“Apparently, 600 years have given you opportunities to acquire multiple talents,” I surmised.
“Yes, yes, I haven’t been asleep all the time,” he confirmed. “I donate money to blood banks across the globe. It never hurts in times of trouble to have a reserve.”
He paused, seeming to parse his words. “Every hundred years, I reboot the system,” he claimed. “I could tell thee more, but we do not yet know one another all that well.”
Evidently, vampires don’t share.
“Question: Is it true that you have a harem of female vampires?” I wondered, titillated by the very idea. One sees so much speculative nonsense at the movies.
“Like the Muslims and their 72 vestal virgins awaiting every martyr in heaven?” he grinned. “I think not. If thee seeks the Bride of Dracula, her name is Miruna and she lives on a goat farm at the base of Mount Moldoveanu in the Transylvanian Alps. The altitude raises the level of hemoglobin in the goats. She drove me crazy. We are estranged,” he declared with chauvinist distaste. “All that I got out of that relationship was an exceptional stamp collection.”
I checked my watch. Time to go.
“Doth thou wish to join the Eternal Order of Vampires?” he proffered, taking my drift. He made it sound like a gym membership.
“Who, M-M-ME?” I stuttered. “No way, José.”
“One does feel duty-bound to ask,” he all but apologized. “European custom.”
“I am so done here!” I stammered, breaking into a cold sweat. “Really, I am not the type.”
“Blood types!” he rejoiced, clasping his hands emphatically. “Don’t get me started on the merits of the various types of blood. Type A for kings, type B for queens, type AB for aristos and type O for commoners,” he recited categorically, as if he were listing paint samples. “Bloody confusing until one gets the knack,” he acknowledged. I got the feeling he was trying to sell me on the whole concept of vampirism.
“No, no, no,” I insisted, stamping my foot, which made him look down his nose at me and laugh. Was I afraid? Damn straight I was afraid! “Make a habit of flying into walls, do we?” I asked, now doubly curious.
“I am a vampire,” he sighed, shaking his head woefully. “Alas, when I suck the blood of someone who is hammered, the alcohol enters my bloodstream, poisoning my organs. It is toxic. I become intoxicated. Thee has thyself witnessed the result.” He stared at me cross-eyed. Raising his gnarled hands with their grotesque nails, fingers splayed seductively, he intoned, “Look into my eyes, deep into my eyes,” which I did, only to wonder at their bloodshot condition.
“Ach so?” I asked.
“Well, maybe not,” he muttered.
As bad luck would have it, one of London’s urban foxes chose that moment to come trotting around the corner of a near-by building. Sensing us, the red fox froze in its tracks, but it was already way too late. Down on all-fours, Vlad had become transformed. Coiled like a puma, a feral monster, he emitted a low, ferocious growl, drooling a pool of saliva onto the flagstones.
“WAIT! STOP! NO!” I screamed, but my entreaties fell on deaf ears. The vampire leapt through the air and pounced upon its prey. Amid horrendous yelps and the crunching of bones, the fox was not so much killed as physically obliterated. Never will I be able to erase the frightening image of the vampire, crouched on the ground, glowering at me dementedly from the edge of the building, the dead fox hanging lifelessly from its maw.
In shock, I collapsed onto the pavement and lay gasping as vampire and fox disappeared into the darkness. How long did I lie spread across the flagstones, an oily blackness tinging my sight, my throat a dry and aching hole, my heart thumping hollowly in my chest? Who knows.
About the time I struggled wearily to my feet, Vlad returned, standing erect and assiduously wiping his mouth on a sleeve of his peacoat.
“There’s a nip in the air,” he commented. “Still, rain makes the grass grow.”
The casual banality of this utterance was so unexpected, I found myself doubting my own senses. Didn’t he just attack and drain a pint of blood from a woodland creature? Did he or didn’t he? The night had become surreal.
“I consider myself a connoisseur,” he bragged. “I have traveled the world tasting the blood of yaks, mountain goats, musk ox, bison, water buffalo, elephants, dolphins, mountain lions, lions, snow leopards, marmots, grey squirrels, voles and hummingbirds. Hath thou ever tasted the blood of the horseshoe crab? Quite the treat. It is blue. A remnant of prehistoric times, the crab’s blood is copper-based. You should try it.”
“I find the idea of me drinking blood thoroughly repugnant,” I confessed.
“Warm blood, chilled blood, a blood aperitif. Blood daiquiris. Blood red tomato juice,” he bantered. “The Belgians have the right idea, a different glass beaker for each kind of beverage, fitting the glass to the libation. Blood pudding! Thee will eat blood pudding, but thee won’t drink warm blood. How quaint!”
Giving me a defiant look, Vlad turned on his heels. “Beastliness, brutality, cruelty, depravity, inhumanity, savagery, wickedness,” I heard him curse as he hastily walked down the high street. As if drawn by a magnet, unable to resist, I followed in his path. Reaching a pub, he peered through its green glass window. “I shall drink the blood of yonder drunken sods,” he declared, pulling me past the doorway into the barroom proper.
“More blood?” I asked helplessly, but to no avail.
Hot and noisy, the air was thick with the smell of ale. As Vlad made his appointed rounds among the patrons, a fulsome blond trollop with a painted face waylaid me. “Love me!” she cried gaily, grabbing my codpiece in a vice-like grip. Her eyes, blue orbs all but drained of color, stared hungrily into mine, a playful smile flitting upon her lips. These goings-on pleased me. Having been through hell, I felt I had earned a respite. Quaffing a lime and lager, feeling young and virile, I decided to postpone a return to my lodgings.
Leaning heavily against me, coyly unbuttoning her blouse, a mammary protrusion of salty white flesh filled my mouth. “Ucksayeyemayipplesnay,” she commanded in a well-rehearsed cadence of pig Latin. What can I say? I did as requested.
Later, untangling me from the arms of the trollop, Vlad declared “Come, it is time for second sleep” a concept with which I am only too familiar. An overactive bladder, I only get four hours of shuteye before being forced to rise from my bed and visit the lavatory.
Outside on the pavement, Vlad looked me up and down, as if considering whether to share a particularly ribald joke. “Illegitimi non carborundum” he declared, disappearing in a cloud of ill-smelling grey smoke. Don’t let the bastards get you down.
That’s right, annex Antarctica! It’s Christmas Eve and freezing cold in my House, so I have some Perspective on this issue. What looks like a maxi-chunk of ice is in fact an integral part of America’s Defense Posture. For entirely too long, this vital link in America’s chain of World Domination has been blithely and willfully ignored. Fortunately, there are Republican politicians who truly understand President Donald J. Trump’s fixations and they are willing to go that Extra Mile in understanding just how essential Antarctica is to our National Security. Let us take a Voluntary Position to make Antarctica an integral part of the U.S.A. Any Sleazeball Democrat bleeding-heart Antifa scum who opposes us should be tried for treason! Congress must ratify the selection of a Special Envoy to the icy south, rather than throw out the baby with the bath water. Yes, it’s cold down yonder, but if it is worth doing, it is worth doing right!
Five different species of Penguins be damned. They have been Ripping Off America entirely too long! Yes, they are cute, but they are also totally worthless when it comes to manning machine gun nests or firing HIMAR anti-tank missiles. We have run tests. Nor do they spend anywhere near 3% of Antarctica’s GNP on their own defense. All that penguin guano is chock full of nitrates which could be fertilizing soybean fields in Iowa. It’s shameful that we have let them hitch a Free Ride on America’s coattails for far too long, but we are Good People and, as the Ice Shelf melts, we will save their sorry asses from oblivion.
Don’t let the Southern Elephant Seals fool you, they are all Radical Left Lunatics!
Instead of getting their house in order, the whale, seal, petrel and penguin denizens of Antarctica’s frozen wasteland have depended on International Treaties that claim Antarctica as a nuclear-free zone and pacifist redoubt. No one wants to live there! You have to pay people to overnight. Poo-poo on your international treaties, you softies at the U.N. You typically Fuzzy-Headed Bureaucrats! It is time for you to put the horse before the cart and ensure the survival of the Snowy Albatross. Read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge for details. As Coleridge wrote, “I fear thy skinny hand!”
Redemption is at hand! Redirect the Seventh Fleet. Ship Heavy Weapons to McMurdo Sound and preserve the ice sheet. What’s not to like? The driest, coldest place on the planet, they have nine months of winter and a volcano. We already have a footprint in the region: There are burger bars, pizza ovens, stir-fry and burritos in the cafeteria at McMurdo Station. Grab your moon boots and an AR-15! We must protect the civilian population of research scientists and our $110 million yearly investment. We can use Christchurch, NZ as a staging area. If Pakistan can sell more than $4 billion in military equipment to Libya, what’s the problem? Besides, if we don’t do it, China will label Antarctica as the Final Destination on the Silk Road and invade. We have the aircraft and we have the storage lockers, it is only the will to Invest in Antarctica’s Future that is currently lacking in Congress and among the American people. This will change! I am certain of it.
In October of 2021, during one of their most productive periods, Swedish rap duo realPfft released “Fettuccine Western.” Their take on Sergio Leone’s glorious spaghetti westerns, the vocal may sound like it was recorded off a DVD, but that’s actually Clive channeling Clint Eastwood. “Hang him by his bootstraps! Lazy varmint!” When it comes to theatrics, Clive is always available.
Hi! Waiting for TuneCore to finish distribution of realPfft’s latest hit song, I continue to curate their back catalog. My blog gives me daily reports on which music files you readers are downloading and what countries you come from. This allows me to direct your attention to sometimes forgotten gems. I woke up this morning and thought, “Classic! That’s a great instrumental. Why aren’t I showcasing it?”
Taking his inspiration from Mason Williams’ April 1968 hit “Classical Gas,” Mutte has created his own symphonic pop masterpiece. It’s a classic.
In 1967, the same Mason Williams created an art installation titled “Bus.” A life-size color photograph of a Greyhound bus in 1:1 scale, this unusually large poster mural measures 10 feet by 36 feet.
In celebration of Williams’ artwork, Kuny— who does realPfft’s cover art— designed, photographed and labeled his “Classic” box. Dimensions: 4 inches in height by 5 ½ inches wide by 3 ½ inches deep. Kinda puny, no? Signed prints are available.
I live in Oxburg, Maryland. A local boy, I haunt the Lost Seagull Café. If you are hungry and drive far enough north on Rockville Pike, there it is, next to a Greek deli in a strip mall, one mile short of the broadcast antennas. Don’t let the Chekhovian name fool you, the café is Russian-Jewish. Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, I miss the old days, thirty years ago, when Chevy Chase was one of the places in Maryland where you could pump quarters into a mechanical kiosk at the bus station and purchase an English-language edition of the Yiddish newspaper Forverts. Our synagogue even had a stack of free Russian-language newspapers parked by the door.
I drive a silver-colored 2004 Toyota Camry XLE with a moonroof. It has real leather seats in gray, a CD player and a stitched leather shift knob. A people’s car, Toyota must have sold half a million of them.
Pulling into the parking lot, I have to brake hard to avoid hitting a single lonely demonstrator, his sign proclaiming “Genocide is a Lie!”
You walk into the Lost Seagull, the bell mounted atop the door goes tinkle, tinkle, thud! The staff is a handful of Russians, with accents from St. Petersburg, the Caucasus, Murmansk and Vladivostok. Their parents, Soviet refuseniks harassed by the KGB, left Russia to rid themselves of Moscow’s meddling. Atop the cash register, a sign in Hebrew lettering says Eydish geredt, “Yiddish Spoken.” And behind the register, a line of matryoshka nesting dolls alternates with Alenka brand Russian chocolate bars. Plaintive balalaika music plays in the background, but so softly, it’s virtually inaudible. The same cassette tape plays over and over 24/7. You need to travel to Maryland’s Eastern Shore to find anything quite this authentic.
I choose a smallish table near the back and order silver tea, which is boiling hot water for people arriving with their own teabag. I intend to leave a big tip, which is why they let me do this once a week. Nobody ever said that the water in Maryland tastes like wine.
I’m a music publisher for a Swedish rap band, a bedroom recluse trust fund babe in Chicago, a Calypso combo from Trinidad heavy on steel drums and 160 other equally desperate music artists. They create tracks in over two dozen genres, things like heavy metal dance music, country indie pop, jazz rapper funk, techno trance nu metal, Ladino punk rock, Latin sludge metal, electronic body trap, psychobilly aggrotech, unblack crust punk, beatdown microhouse, melodic brostep dream pop (think a male Katy Perry) and a host of other equally esoteric styles. You may not know how to describe it, but you’ll know it when you hear it. Music publishing is what I do.
We are online and off, Backpack Giant Music, LLP, a subsidiary of Large Egg Entertainment. (Previously Large White Eggs Entertainment, but modified to alleviate cringy references to white supremacists.) The music business requires constant prodding to get anything done, it’s not for the faint of heart, no one ever got rich hoping for a miracle. Let’s be clear, the songwriter owns the track. My job is to sell it, licensing songs to films, adverts and streaming media. I also defend ownership of the copyright. Preferably, a buyer will purchase an artist’s complete catalog, rather than a single hit song. His or her past, present and future output. Plastic pick to guitar strings, sticky fingers to piano keys, drumsticks to batter head, scratchy pencil to notebook paper, humming and strumming, music is born! Everybody in the publishing biz is looking for the next Taylor Swift, but — a unicorn in a haystack — it is difficult to find her. I am neither starving nor loaded. I make a living.
I share the business with Barry Guildenstern, who can trace his lineage all the way back to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. His specialty is club dance music, supplying tracks of electronica exclusive to his brand to DJ’s all over the planet. With a stable of computer nerds supplying endless product, Barry runs the biz as a subscription service, guaranteeing him a monthly income.
In the Stone Age, Barry and I were journalism students together at Moosegrave College. Recently, he decided to write a book titled Jews in the Music Business. When he went to do interviews, every music person hearing the title promptly threw him out on his ear. “Nobody wants to paint such a bull’s eye on his back, you klutz,” Saul Wasserman told him. Since the start of the war in Gaza, we Jews have become even more circumspect. “What, me Jewish?” I tell people. “Never heard of it! We’re Russian Orthodox and I have the liturgy to prove it. Payem paruski?” As for Israel, right or wrong, I support the homeland, but even I find the Israelis guilty of criminal negligence when it comes to October 7. How could they have let this happen??? AGAIN! I’m still smarting from losses in the 1973 war with Egypt.
To show solidarity with the Palestinians, I have been bedding a raven-haired young lady from Rafah named Sandra, a graduate of Al-Quds University. A pharmacist, she works behind the counter at the local drugstore in Oxburg. Equipped with a wicked laugh and coal-black eyes, she is amazingly seductive and only slightly crazy. As long as I bring her Greek halva, she lets me climb into her bed. A political refugee granted temporary, tentative asylum, her refugee status hanging by a thread, who knows what kind of bomb-throwing student activism got her on an IDF shit list? At first, I felt guilty, an older man taking advantage of a young person in dire straits, but Sandra didn’t seem to mind. Until the day she announced that she needed to send thousands of dollars to her family in Rafah and I should give her the money. “I don’t have thousands of dollars in disposable income,” I told her.
A typically devious A-hab, she had an entire game plan worked out. “Hold a rock revival,” she commanded. “AC/DC, John Mellancamp, George Thorogood, ZZ Top, Bon Jovi. You’ll never get rich if you don’t give the people what they want. My cousin wants to lease a trawler and outrun the Israeli blockade of Gaza. With the Israelis holding the Global Sumud Flotilla under a magnifying glass, the way is now open for independent actors to strike! You can finance it.”
“I’m not going to finance it. It sounds like a lot of shenanigans in the Middle East. You Philistines are all alike. I met Yasser Arafat when I worked at —”
“Borrow the money!”
“Arafat —”
“Mortgage your house.”
“Uh…”
Samson and Delilah, the Jew and the Philistine, Sandra is only slightly crazy. As stated.
Half the equation has to do with our current domicile. A dour Russian by temperament, I am always going to feel a little out of step with sunny, boisterous, cantankerous Americans in a country of immigrants where John Brown is white and John White is black.
Barry, my business partner, has it easier. His new book is titled Zoroastrianism For Dummies. He hopes to get it published soon.
At the Lost Seagull, I eye the laminated Rosetta Stone of a menu, its items listed in Russian, Yiddish and Henglish. Across the top, in a cursive font, amidst a spray of flowers, a heading announces in English “Everything fresh daily.” There are maybe 20 items on the menu. Pirogi. French toast. Chicken Kiev. Blintzes. Apple strudel. Potato pancakes. Rugelach. Pickled pig’s feet. The margins of the menu are decorated with semi-erotic doodles, supposedly drawn by Marc Chagall. (Who knows? We weren’t there.)
I don’t want to say too much about politics during this sensitive period, but a shout-out is in order to Olga and Maxim who own and run the café. In interior décor, they don’t shy away from the 74 years of Soviet rule, but neither do they make a fetish of it. The occasional hammer and sickle grace the walls, but most often as part of something bigger, a portrait of Lenin, a black and white photo enlargement of a May Day parade from the 1950’s or a colorful and dramatic painting of the storming of the Winter Palace. Their family and mine share both the honor and the burden of Menshevik forebears. Social Democrats, our families chose the notoriously wrong side of history, ending up in Siberia and, later, Sweden, Israel and America. In Sweden, Yiddish is an official minority language.
It was that prick Vladimir Lenin who in 1903 coined the terminology Bolshevik (“the majority”) and Menshevik (“the minority”), nefariously distorting reality by claiming more popular support for his aggressive, aggrieved wing of the Social Democrats than he actually possessed. Lacking modern day polling, popularity was whatever he said it was.
And in spite of choosing the wrong side, we Feingolds haven’t done too badly. Before decamping to Australia, my South African cousins owned gold mines.
The café is filling up. “So what are you, a recluse, a bum?” demands Morrie Merlin from a large, round table in the center of the room. He is dressed like a Talmudic scholar in a boxy suit jacket in Hasidic black, baggy pants and an ancient tartan sweater. His beard is flecked with gray. A woven, beaded kippah on his balding pate, he waves me over. “You join our coffee klatsch,” he exclaims, “we offer you a special introductory rate. You pick up the tab three weeks in a row, then you are one of us.”
In addition to Morrie, there is also from my synagogue Professor Yuri Orlov who functions in Washington, DC as a shaliach, an emissary representing the Land of Israel before the multitudes. Apparently, this pays the rent. Also present at the table is Haim Shampoo. Haim is someone I know. Clean-shaven, with hollow cheeks and bloodshot eyes, he’s thin as a reed and blows the shofar on High Holy Days. People say he is CIA, but I wonder what his family name was before they changed it to Shampoo? A collection of old geezers, this gang seems to have oodles of time to loaf in the middle of the day.
The pretty waitress brings us blini and strawberries on a tray. I am salivating on the tablecloth. She is short, with a compact little body. Dressed in white, a silver cross on a chain nestles upon her ample breast. She has plucked eyebrows and flaxen hair tied up in a bun. As she plunks each dish onto the table — plunk! plunk! — there transpires a long, raucous discussion in Russian about which delicacies are fresh daily. My Russian ain’t that great, but I am led to understand that the chefs have been slaving away since 4 a.m. and “Everything is guaranteed fresh daily,” yadayadayada.
When my mamele, my mom Rosa, still walked among us, she spent her days in the kitchen with the TV tuned to RT, a channel which began its existence as “Russia Today.” They had a parade of gorgeous blond anchorwomen bitching endlessly about the evils of American capitalism. When I pointed out that their content verged on total propaganda, mom replied, “Sure! I know that, but I make allowances.” By the end of his career, even Larry King was broadcasting on RT. After becoming an ever more strident mouthpiece for the Kremlin, however, RT got banned by the U.S. Government.
Once we have enjoyed the blini and some potato pancakes in applesauce, we eat borscht. Beets and sour cream. Morrie is busy nattering in my ear, one hand on my shoulder like a crab’s claw. Here’s the deal: He and his crew are fundraising for starving Russian Jews living like peasants in small towns and villages back home in Rossiya. The recipients are in Russia, but this being a registered American charity — The Potemkin Kropotkin Undergarment Foundation — smart lawyers have found a way for the yearly Required Minimum Distribution from my IRA to be paid directly into their coffers. Money makes the world go ’round. “We have a website online,” Morrie assures me, waving his phone in my face, “but for us, vos iz dos far amishegoss?” he says in Yiddish.“What is this for craziness? Give me traditional fundraising, where you can still smell the mop sweat.”
I keep expecting him to break into melodious Russian, but apparently he feels at home with work-a-day English and the Yiddish of Hester Street, the pushcarts and New York’s Lower East Side. Maybe Yiddish is making a comeback among Millennials, but that’s not us. If Jews have a head start in life, it’s not that we are smarter than other people, it’s that we are the People of the Book and multi-lingual.
“Excuse me for asking, but how did you manage to register a 501(c)(3) charity with such an outlandish name?”
“Ah,” Morrie smiles, showing blackened teeth. “That is a story worth telling. We went into the IRS office and told the lady behind the counter, ‘Listen, this wild moniker shows that we have nothing to hide and that we are legit. We know this name is crazy, meshuggah, but historically, Grigory Potemkin and Peter Kropotkin were the greatest men of their era, so we celebrate their achievements. My Bubbe belonged to the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. The I.L.G.W.U. As we say in Yiddish, “If my grandmother had balls, she would have been my grandfather.” If it’s in the name, there’s a reason why it is in the name!’ That spiel convinced the tax lady that we knew what we were doing,” he cackles. Pausing, he nibbles on a pastry. It sits like a brown stone in his incredibly gnarled hand. Either he has arthritis or he is 100 years old. “We take multiples of 18,” he proposes. I get it, $18, $36, $54, $72… Eighteen is chai in Hebrew which means “life” or good luck.
“I understand your philanthropic activity here in the States,” I remark, “but does any of the money make its way across the water to Ukraine?” Actually, I mean “Russia,” of course, but I can’t very well say “charity to Russia” at this time in a public setting in America. I would get pummeled with stones, drawn and quartered, burned at the stake. Thank you very much, Vladimir Putin. It’s not just that he wants to annex Ukraine. A former KGB agent, Putin wants to reconstitute the entire Soviet empire. He says as much in his speeches.
Sighing to beat the band, Morrie gives me a verbal mission statement: “We have high overheads and low ratings, this is undeniable. If a squeaky clean 2% in revenue reaches the worthy recipients, I feel it is all in a month’s woik. Our mission is tikkun olam, heal the world. We try. We woik four-hour days, three days a week. Twice that much on Sunday. Do I criticize you? No, I do not. Charity Navigator, CharityWatch and BB Gun Wiseguy Giving Alliance, these organizations that rate charities should be of themselves ashamed. It’s all politics and who you know. We contacted one such organization, openly and without embarrassment. I wondered how much, under the table, I should provide to get a pristine rating. Nu? If someone is getting it, someone is paying it. I don’t see any ratings bureaucrat standing in line at no soup kitchen. The young man hung up the phone! What a schmuck, I tell you. Yemach shemo, may his name be blotted out.”
“You want money, make me a bizness proposition,” I suggest, waving away an errant housefly that’s been divebombing the pastries. “I manage a rap band. What can you offer me musically?” I demand, purposely acting rude, since I feel I am being taken for a ride. My tea has grown cold in the cup. “Eeny meeny blini,” I complain. “Where’s the bourbon smash bar? Where are the go-go girls scantily clad in cowboy apparel?”
“Klezmer music,” he ventures. “Name the band Hamas. You’ll get boatloads of free publicity.”
“I hate klezmer music.”
“You can be influencers,” Haim suggests, swaying excitedly in his chair, shining as bright as a 60-watt bulb. “Online, every 24 hours is the start of a brand new day! With a band named Hamas, you can run a disinformatzia campaign. Blame October 7 on sleeper cells left over by Osama bin Laden. Blame Covid on drug traffickers from Venezuela. Demand a Congressional hearing!”
“Thanks, but not in my lifetime.”
“Gib mir your pen,” Morrie insists. On a paper napkin, he writes “polar bear, pivo, pajamas, pfft.” Handing me this geheimnisvoll document, he explains, “A secret word code I use at my bank. I prostrate myself before you. Let no secrets come between us!”
I groan aloud. “realPfft is the name of a rap band I represent,” I point out.
“That and tsvey dollar gets you mandel bread at the bakery counter,” he rumbles, hoping I’ll treat him. “What we do, we do to alleviate the suffering of the oppressed,” he declares and I get an itchy feeling in my boots that Bible-thumping is also part of his repertoire. “What kind of Jew are you, not to help your co-religionists?” he growls, furrowing his brow menacingly like an old-time prophet. “Isaiah 41:10, ‘Do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.’ You gotta earn all that! Remember Job. ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. He who…’ whatever!” A born salesman, when all else fails, Morrie is trying the biblical approach, to shame me into making a contribution. Except, he’s panting and I’ve heard it all a thousand times before, Ethiopian Jews in Gondar, Armenian Jews, Jewish ladies in South America forced into prostitution, needy South African Jews, needy North African Jews, Friends of the IDF, Friends of the Magen David Adom Israeli Red Cross, the Hadassah women’s organization, synagogues in Prague, the Jews of Moldova, Jewish braille, Yiddish books. An accountant clever at tax deductions, my momma Rosa gave to thirty different Jewish charities. We kids used to say, “Isn’t it fantastic what an $18 contribution can do? According to these appeals, without mom’s money, the world itself will go under!”
I’m not a judge on The Voice, but dealing all day long with bad singers singing lame songs, I have developed a good ear and a jaundiced view of what comes out of people’s mouths. It’s an occupational hazard. I judge not only what people say, but how they say it. So far, Morrie has only reached 2 on the Richter Scale. “By relieving their bitter agony, you too shall dwell in the House of the Lord for all eternity,” he promises me. Is that all? Muslims promise that 72 vestal virgins await martyrs in paradise. “Your tax deductible contribution will be a wise, noble and lofty undertaking,” Morrie all but thunders, banging his hand on the table for emphasis. “I will swear with my right hand on the cover of a pornographic magazine regarding the righteousness of our cause. Truth, justice, mercy,” he mutters.
“Kevin’s being difficult,” Haim chimes in. “Show him the brochure,” as if this will quiet my misgivings.
Eyeing me stolidly like I am fresh roadkill, Morrie reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a well-thumbed four-color pamphlet. He throws it down on the table dramatically. On the cover is a photograph of some futuristic-looking building.
“Smells like something out of a bad sci-fi movie,” I suggest.
“Our research institute in Kazakhstan,” Haim chirps proudly. “Within spitting distance of the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Ever been to Alma-Ata? Tashkent? Ever ride a camel on the Silk Road? You can hitch a ride to Mars.”
“Has anybody actually been to this institute of yours?”
“What? You expect us to go all the way to Kazakhstan just to inspect a building?” gripes Haim. “Go sit at another table!”
“Make a virtual tour of the facility,” I suggest. “I assume that your institute is where mad scientists are using A.I. to create the next golem and end all life on Earth,” I joke. The pamphlet’s text is in Russian and I can’t be bothered to translate it. Waving for the waitress, I tell her that I’ll cover the tab for the entire table. I am pretty sore, this has not been my idea of a relaxing afternoon.
History’s wheel is turning and, like it or not, we are part of a major churn. Olena, the new teller at my bank, is a refugee from Ukraine. Slava Ukraini, I keep expecting her to give me change in Ukrainian hryvnia.
“You don’t like what we have on offer?” Morrie asks, leaning to within an inch of my nose, a last desperate lunge at a solution. “Hokay! Instead, we have a virtually flawless plan to stop Sweden’s Greta Thunberg and her Turkish friends in Greenpeace from outrunning the blockade of Gaza.”
“Greenpeace isn’t trying to outrun the blockade of Gaza. The Global Sumud Flotilla —”
“We need a hundred million dollars or so to get an American destroyer located in James River, Virginia out of mothballs! Steam engine tech don’t come cheap.”
“Not my problemo.”
Obviously, we have all been reading the same newspaper stories about blockade runners.
Paying the bill, I don’t say goodbye, I just leave.
In the parking lot, where the cars are lined up in a row facing the building, four masked individuals in black combat gear surround me as I put my key in the car door. I gotta laugh. “No, really?” I demand. “Don’t tell me you’re from ICE?! I don’t even speak Spanish.”
“You got any identification?” an agent asks gruffly.
Pulling out my wallet, I proffer them my driver’s license and Medicare card. Oy vey is mir,” I laugh. “No hablo español.”
It turns out they tagged my car but misread the license plate. Same number, wrong state. “Not a big deal,” I assure them. “Anybody can make a mistake. Have a nice day.”
Halfway home, I have to pull over to the side of the road and puke. I am trembling with rage. I try so hard to be nice, but this country is rapidly going downhill. We’re in the midst of a government shutdown, but law enforcement still has the resources to hassle people.
Conflicts here, conflicts there, conflicts everywhere. This is so not good.
yustyoking 
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