yustyoking

 

Correct you are that I should not always pipe up after the fact. Keep you informed I should of my whereabouts via Twitter, making pithy comments straight from the battleground. Only I get so wrapped up in the experience, it isn’t until hours later that I can gather my thoughts and express myself in words. Unlike Katie Couric, I seem to be experientially dyslexic: I know what is happening right in front of me, I just cannot find a way to simultaneously describe it.

Put simply, Suzanne— a bud from my college radio daze at dear old Moosegrave— invited me to visit her in Scottsdale, Arizona. We’re both retired: I retired from the Army, she retired from her marriage to a dot com titan whose development company makes video games and gets listed on the Fortune 500. I shipped my golf clubs. Last Monday, I flew out west budgiprop. It seems I never learn. The weather is in the mid-50’s, Denver has snow, and I’m chasing my golf game.

Here’s the drill. Tuesday is sunny. Appropriately attired in windcheaters, we play 18 holes. During lunch, I get a text from Jimmy, also an alumnus of our 0 watt college megastation, piped into the dorms via the electrical outlets. “Glad 2 hear U 2 R back together,” he twirps from Torrance, California. “Since U R in Arizona, go 2 preview of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Wed. Dec. 16, Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, 12 noon, International Air Response hangar. Be there! Love ya, Jimmy.”

On the upside, plagued by ADHD, Jimmy utilizes his X-ray focus to suss out stock quotations. He has actually scored over a million dollars in profits day trading. That takes talent. On the downside, Jimmy does suffer from ADHD. Suzanne calls him “Wildman,” which was his disc jockey persona, DJ Wildman Willard.

“What does Wildman want now?” she grouses, busily munching a country club bacon cheeseburger and an extra portion of southern style fries in guacamole. How does she do it? This girl never puts on an ounce.

“He wants us to go to the new Star Wars movie in Phoenix.”

“I don’t like downtown. Besides, weren’t you a Trekkie?”

“This is at the airport.”

“Which airport?”

“Phoenix-Mesa.”

“Oh. That’s in Mesa,” she says, latching onto my phone to read the message herself. “I thought the movie opens on Friday.”

“This is a preview.”

What to wear? Too cheap to spring for a lightsaber, I take a 46-inch fluorescent tube and duct tape a wooden handle from a broken golf umbrella on one end and the black plastic cap from a cold cream jar on the other. Ta-ta! A lightsaber… facsimile. Dyeing an old bedsheet brown, I fashion it into hood + cloak. I wear gray sweatpants and a red sweatshirt under it, securing my “robe” with a 1  3/4-inch black leather military belt from the former Soviet Union, replete with a brass buckle exhibiting the hammer and sickle inside the star of the Red Army. Black leather boots leave me stranded in appearance somewhere between a Tatooine dirt farmer and a Knight of the Rebel Alliance.

Suzanne dresses in a black leather jacket, a ballerina skirt and pink platform heels, her hair dyed purple. Blackening her teeth, she proclaims herself “Princess Hee-Haw of the Clown Colony.”

When we drive to the airport, the gravel parking lot is a madhouse, which well it should be. We are, like, two hours early and the line still snakes around the hangar. Not that many people in costume. Also, not the demographic I expected, too many blue-haired matrons and stuffy older gentlemen, a lot of rednecks and dudes in camo. I have read that ticket sales have broken all records and that white males have been the chief purchasers. I don’t know enough about Arizona to judge. “Any Hillary haters?” shouts a vendor, hawking buttons that say “Hillary for Prison.” Maybe this is what going to the movies is like in Arizona.

As we shuffle through the metal detector at the security checkpoint, the Rent-A-Cop in his stylized western police uniform grabs my lightsaber and asks, “What is this?!”

“It’s a lightsaber. You know, Star Wars. We’re here for the movie. I’m Captain Ad Hoc and this is Princess Hee-Haw,” I say, giving the Vulcan salute.

“Uh… What movie? This is a Donald Trump campaign event, y’ know.”

“Oh, well. Oh! That’s brilliant! Gad, why didn’t I think of that? Total synergy. You put together the Donald Trump crowd and the movie crowd and you double the audience. Smart!” Turning to Suzanne, I can see that she also is impressed by this marketing ploy.

“Wait over there to the side,” the cop tells me worriedly, calling for a supervisor. A dude in a nice suit with a walkie-talkie approaches, looks us up and down and asks, “Code Pink? No? Let me guess… Black Lives Matter! Not, God forbid, the Muslim Brotherhood???”

“The Rebel Alliance!” I inform him. I mean, don’t these dudes know anything about the Star Wars universe?

“White supremacists?”

“No, just movie enthusiasts.”

“What movie?”

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

“There isn’t any movie scheduled.”

“Of course there’s a movie! It’s a sneak preview. In conjunction with the Donald Trump rally,” I explain. Suzanne and I did both eat Alaskan King Crab legs on Tuesday night, followed by wild lovemaking, so I’m sure we smell both fishy and funky.

“O-o-o-okay,” sighs the supervisor. “First I heard about it. Say something from the movie.”

“Luke, I am your father. Now will you let go of the drainage pipe or do I need to cut off your pecker?”

“Okay, you can go in. Don’t cause any trouble!”

Not only do they let us pass, I even get to keep my “lightsaber.”

The crowd is enormous, the tension both thrilling and palpable. This is the famous Trump Crowd the commentators natter about. People who are fed up, in search of a fight. Shades of Nazi Germany, the crowd has roughed up protesters at previous rallies. A mean-looking dude in camo gives me the hairy eyeball. “What’s with the robe?” he asks, grimacing, telegraphing distaste. “You think you’re Lawrence of Arabia or somethin’?”

“No, no. Star Wars.”

“Star Wars?!” he yelps. “Best damn anti-ballistic missile program ever devised by man. Missiles from space. Pure genius! All Ronnie Reagan needed to do was threaten the Soviets with it and they went broke trying to keep up.” Happy with the association, he stands there beaming. Regally, I touch him solemnly on each shoulder with my lightsaber and declare, “May the fudge be with you!”

I love the back wall of this hangar, it must be 150 feet long and 60 feet high. Colossal! Crank up an IMAX digital projector and we are in for one heck of a show. Gangbusters!

Meanwhile, Suzanne— of French derivation— has accrued a posse of hungry males, drooling and teasingly yanking on her skirt. Exasperated, a liberated woman, she turns around, pulls down her skirt and moons us through per delectable pink panties. Applause all around, from both men and women. A lady for any occasion, we’re buds because she’s such a great bitch to hang out with.

Amidst deafening rock music, Donald Trump’s plane taxis up to the hangar. As Trump makes his way to the podium, people’s right arms shoot into the air… hoisting their cellphones to photograph the event. Then there’s a pause while The Donald gives an interview to Fox News, using us as his backdrop. Smart move.

Here’s a dude in buckskin and a coonskin cap. At least we’re both in costume. I start to say “Brilliant minds think alike,” but he’s one jump ahead of me. “You takin’ a gander at mah squaw?” he demands, thumping me on the chest with his balled fist. That’s when I first notice his lady— maybe five feet tall—  decked out in pigtails, leather fringe and moccasins. His own personal Pocahontas.

“Not that I know of,” I tell him. “May the frost go with you!”

Suzanne intercedes and, smiling ferociously, drawls in Californ-eye-ese, “Y-Y-You-u  le-e-eave  mah  b-b-boyfriend  alo-o-o-one!”

At the podium, Donald Trump tells us how his crowds are so much bigger than anyone else’s.

“Dump Trump! Dump Trump!” shout a contingent of protesters, fists in the air, pressing their way through the crowd. Jeering, whistling, booing Trump supporters give them a quick boot outta the arena.

Suddenly, for no particular reason, there’s a boneheaded redneck hissing in my ear. “What kinda get-up you wearin’?” he wants to know. Glancing at his pimply face, red hair and the dozens of holes in his greasy jeans, I could ask the same of him. His teeth are stumps. He has an Arizona twang that all but screams “Poor white trash!”

“Let me listen to Trump— ” I suggest.

Latching onto my shoulder with an enormous paw, he burps, “Is that an Arab robe or somethin’?”

Distracted, I stupidly tell him, “A thawb? No, it’s not a thawb.”

“You is a slimy A-rab,” he seethes, looking bloody murder at me. “We worship Jesus, you worship Osama bin Laden!”

“Obama— ”

“I hate Obama! We should run all o’ you Mos-slimes outta the country! And that includes Kenyaboy!”

People to our left and right edge in closer and shake their heads in agreement. Shoving me discreetly, they kick me in the shins. Shades of fraternity hazing, everybody gets to take a poke at Captain Ad Hoc! As we say in the Army: Wear the uniform, bite the bullet. “Ours is a nastic movement,” I exclaim plaintively. “Some would even say thermonasty!” To no avail.

Suzanne is also getting the treatment. While she and I are being pushed around, Donald Trump says, “You know, I’m at 43 and the other guys are at two and three and seven.”

Boy, so much for being the “other.” People be angry. I’m confronted by a lady dressed in black lace like Madame Lafarge. My badge says “May the Fluff Be with You.” Hers, fully four inches across, says “Fuck Iran!” Eyeing me like she is a frog and I am a tasty fly, she croaks, “The silent majority sides with Trump!”

“Wisdom great should you find,” I explain Yoda-style. She wallops me with her handbag. Wow, am I relieved when security comes rushing over! They escort a furious Suzanne and me from the hangar.

“We’re the victims here,” Suzanne insists. Trump is still talking, but people have begun to vacate the premises.

“We knew youse was troublemakers from the get-go,” a helpful officer informs us. “We shoulda impounded Gonzo’s lightbulb, but we was tryin’ t’ be nice!”

“You’re a New Jersey transplant?” I guess. “Here for the weather and the golf?”

“Yeah, so? What about it?” he responds, very fast and hot under the collar.

“Whoa, wait! I think it’s a great move. I’d do the same. No, I just meant us Jersey boys should stick together.”

“No way! Where you from?” he scoffs.

“South Orange.”

“If’n youse from South Orange,” he asks, “why you causin’ trouble?”

You got me.

“I should have gotten an Emmy for ‘The Apprentice,’ ” says Donald Trump.

“Can we go in when the rally is over and they start the movie?”

“There ain’t gonna be no goddam movie!” the New Jersey cop insists earnestly. “I asked! No one in the Trump campaign has heard anything about a movie. Not even a campaign movie. They don’t intend to show a movie.”

Uh-h-h, boy! Wildman strikes again!

“I don’t want to be a nasty guy, but I don’t care anymore! I don’t care!” shouts The Donald as the masses depart.

Using Bing on Suzanne’s smartphone, we find a coffee shop at a Comfort Inn where like-minded Star War fanatics are getting juiced on triple lattes and constructing our own Most Desired Screenplay.

*******     Stud Wars: Balls Out on the Long Island Expressway     *******

Our tale chronicles the adventures of Tab Soho, a New York taxi driver who refuses to drive South of Houston. Together with his hairy dispatcher Chewin’ Tobacca and the Princess Nee-how (Chinese for “hello”), they battle the marching stormtroopers of the Uber Empire. These stalwart champions of free enterprise are aided by The Thug Boy Three who sing in a band when not beating people up and, vice versa, beat up people in bands when not singing. And they are the heroes! Horns honking, subwoofers blasting, pedal to the metal, much mayhem ensues. This is gonna be a great movie! There’s even an homage to Abdel Gamal Nasser, although we do get in a fight over who receives the primary writer credit.

 

 

The cold weather is nipping at our heels. I wanted to write about ISIS, but I’ve got this legal conundrum. I’ve spent the day trying to figure out how to put the situation in the best possible light. You guys who know me are gonna be pissed! I blame it on the goddam picnic tables.

Oxburg, Maryland has three schools, Pierce Elementary— where both my younger bro’ Tim and I went to school— H. L. Mencken Middle School and, of course, Oxburg High. Long may the purple and yellow (yech!) wave victorious! “Oxburg, Oxburg, who’s gonna buy the slurpees?” as our cheerleading squad used to chant at football games.

My current legal battle has gone on for a month. As Tim says: “If Maryland is my lover, why am I ducking for cover?” It was only this week that my case came up on the docket.

The library sits next to H. L. Mencken Middle School. And there are these wooden picnic tables where, cloudy or bright, sweet young girls hang out after school. I mean, this is a given. Mindless maidens, noses buried in their smartphones, nobody using the library pays them any mind. Separate worlds. Fridays, however, are a problem. Predatory Friday, suddenly our young damsels are looking for a sugar daddy to finance their weekend activities. I came out of the wrong door at the library, and there were two young ladies waiting to pounce.

Sandee has hair three colors of blond, any one of which may or may not be natural. All this wavy blond hair cascading off the shoulders of her fire engine red outfit. Okay, I’m a pushover for girls with painted eyes. She had me right there. “Hey, mister,” she called in the cracked, nasal voice of adolescence. “Whaddya gonna do this weekend? Julie and I want to have fun but we don’t have any money, tee hee hee! ” Waving a hand, kicking her foot, smirking, she kept me enthralled with those dynamite blue-green eyes. This was a sad situation. I hoped her braces would demure me, but instead, they just made her seem all of 13 years old— which she is— and I found that strangely attractive. Kind of like revisiting my misspent youth.

Her girlfriend Julie was no help. Your foxy brunette with tight, tight blue slacks that showed off her exceptional hips and a round little rump, she wore a patterned blouse that somehow drew my glance upward to that laughing face of hers. “How much money ya got in yer wallet?” she guffawed.

(I need to stop grinding my teeth while writing about this, but read on!)

“No, really, guys, I — ”

“How old are you?” lisped Sandee, pointing at me with her whole hand. Her red lacquered nails resembled ice picks.

“I’m 42,” I lied, shaving 15 off my age.

“What year were you born?” Julie immediately countered, a smart cookie.

I, too, am nimble at math. “October 12, 1973.”

“L-L-Listen,” Sandee insisted, “It’s so warm out! Take off your jacket!”

Just kidding around, I took off my jacket and dumped it unceremoniously on the table.

“Lemme see yer wallet,” cracked Julie, both hands held out in front of her like an Egyptian maiden.

“No way!”

“Way!”

“Give her your wallet!” laughed Sandee.

God help me, I handed Julie my wallet.

My life is so barren of romance, the girls’ teasing had me swollen like a blimp, pressing achingly inside my pants. It’s been too long. Sandee and Julie gave each other a look of “Oh, wow!” while examining my crotch with wolfish grins.

“Now take off your shirt!” Sandee commanded.

“Oh, come on…”

With Sandee laughing, waving her nails in my face and kicking her legs, I found myself compelled to comply. Once I had my shirt off, of course, every Tom, Dick and Harry in the neighborhood was gazing, appalled, at my pale torso. Customers from the bank across the street, school personnel, neighbors on West 31st Road. Very quickly, I did a few Arnold Schwartzenegger poses and pulled my shirt and jacket back on.

Julie, meanwhile, took advantage of my little exhibition to relieve me of the $38 in my wallet: A twenty, a ten, a five and three ones. Foosh! Quick as The Flash, all gone!  “Here! Take yer wallet,” she drawled, tossing it on the table. Love that Maryland accent!

Sandee laughingly suggested, “Get down on all fours and bark like a dog!” That’s when the police arrived. I was busy tucking in my shirt tails, under my jacket.

“Okay, don’t move,” two male policemen instructed us, approaching edgily, looking larger than life in their brown uniforms.

Droooop, I lost that erection muy rápido! “Is there a problem?” I asked.

“Show your I.D. and shut up!” suggested one police officer. I really liked the way his partner unclipped the flap on his holster. Did they actually feel threatened?

“WE’RE JUST TALKING!” Julie insisted.

Sandee’s porcelain white skin had already turned a whiter shade of pale.

While one cop kept me under surveillance, his partner went to their cruiser and put my particulars into the computer.

The blacks in Baltimore are rioting in protest over police violence. Here in lily white Oxburg, the local gendarmes divide their time equally between investigating burglaries, directing Saturday traffic at the synagogue and Sunday traffic at the mosque, and running a series of speed traps along The 1812 Highway.

“So what’s it all about?” asked the first officer when his partner came up empty. “Do you know these girls?”

“It’s literally nothing. We’re playing. I work really hard, so when they saw me and I saw them, we decided to joke around.”

“Somebody called and said there was a streaker. Was that you?”

“THERE WAS NO STREAKER!” Julie volunteered, but I shushed her with a wave of my hand. I think she was ready to get in a fistfight with the cops.

“I told them about training on a Nautilus at the gym and they wanted to see my muscles, so I took off my shirt for a second. Bodybuilding poses. Half a minute at the most.”

“Okay, we’re charging you with pedophilia. You can explain it to the judge.”

“There’s no law against talking to people, officers.”

“Tell it to the judge! You did a lot more than just talk! Now shut up!”

BAM! Just like that, I and my book bag are loaded into the cage in the back of the police car and I am driven to the precinct house, fingerprinted, and put in a holding cell. My one phone call is, naturally, to my mom. She, in turn, calls her estate lawyer, who practically has a meltdown over the phone. Eventually, a chubby criminal lawyer named Richard Pope comes to my aid. Standing outside my cell, briefcase in hand, he’s sprung me! When the guard opens up, Richard shakes my hand. “I know who you are! I’ve seen the golf trophies. I graduated twenty years after you at Dorkburg,” he tells me, a big smile on his face.

“Long live the purple and gold,” I breathe.

******

I get several unpleasant telephone calls from the parents. They do not appreciate our little charade by the picnic tables. Sandee’s mom calls me a child molester. Julie’s dad accuses me of being a Muslim terrorist. “If you ever show your ugly snout around my daughter again,” he informs me, “I’ve got a gun and I’m prepared to use it!” They are out for blood. I find anything and everything I say only sets them off. So I stop trying to explain my concern that the girls not be traumatized by a court appearance. They’re good kids. We adults may be full of bilge, but there is no earthly reason to put them through such an ordeal. Thankfully, Richard agrees with me. He convinces the prosecutor to take oral depositions from each of the teenagers. These will be used in court.

******

My argument is that in a world where angry, radicalized shooters massacre innocent people once a week, what possible harm does it do if two young girls and I clown around?

“Firstly, you are not a legal expert, so your lay interpretation of the law interests the judge not at all,” Richard tells me, totally deflating my trial balloon.

Ouch!

“Secondly, you cannot put an equal sign between other people’s behavior and your own. The judge is concerned primarily with the letter of the law. Have you violated existing statutes? Only in extremis does the spirit of the law enter the picture at this level. We’re not talking Clarence Darrow pleading before the Supreme Court here. You are remanded to district court, the lowest rung on the legal ladder.”

Ga-a-a-a! At $250 an hour, I give it another shot: “There was no public nudity to speak of. No one touched anyone else. There was no intention of anyone doing any touching. Who took the ‘innocent’ out of innocent fun?”

“You’re not listening, Kevin! Think of the law as a game with a very intricate set of rules. All we servants of the court practice it daily. You cannot show up with neophyte opinions and ‘win’ against paid professionals. All you can do is lose. That’s why you pay me. To minimize the damage.”

Yikes! I feel like I’m on my way to San Quentin.

******

Richard is very good in the courtroom. I can’t quote the judge without risking a boatload of legal grief, so I’ll merely describe the issues. The county prosecutor charges me with pedophilia and contributing to the delinquency of two minors.

“Pedophilia presupposes a sexual motive behind the actions of the accused, which has in no way been substantiated,” Richard points out.

The judge lectures us: In nine out of ten cases of adults misbehaving in the presence of a minor, predation is the motive. A legal precedent is already in effect.

Richard objects that this hasn’t been proven in the current case.

The prosecutor insists that the charges stand.

Richard offers to take the case to trial.

The judge does that “please approach the bench” thing. I sit and sulk while the three of them confer. When Richard returns, he’s smiling ever so slightly. “They want to hit you with a $500 fine and give you a year’s probation.”

“Shit! Sure,” I tell him. “It’s a storm in a teacup. There wasn’t any ‘there’ there.”

“Hell, even I know that,” Richard insists.

“What about my first amendment rights? Certainly there’s no law against talking with a member of the younger generation.”

“You should have thought of that before you took your shirt off, Kevin!” he admonishes me, a less than amused look on his face.

“I acted like an idiot,” I agree.

“We won’t tell the judge that, he’d up your fine.”

******

“Hey, mister!” Sandee and Julie shout, waving from a distance outside the library this last Friday. It’s sunny, but the weather’s turned cold. We’re bundled up. “No hard feelings, huh?”

“You never did a bad thing in your life!” I shout back, waving.

They laugh.

I laugh.

******

The End. I hope.

 

***************** Ambiguous Law Enforcement *******************

The good news is, I was not arrested and I am not pro-pedophilia. The purpose of the story is to show how difficult we find handling ambiguous issues. While the local police in San Bernardino, California were issuing traffic tickets and investigating local disturbances, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik purchased 4,500 rounds of ammunition and assorted bomb components without awakening the interest of either the FBI or the San Bernardino police. Farook and Malik were not members of the military, law enforcement or a gun club. Why did they need 4,500 rounds of ammunition? While the police were going about their daily business, Farook and Malik killed 14 people and wounded 21 others. We need to get our priorities straight.

 

 

I just want to say “hi” and assure you that the flight to Florida on Whippoorwill Airline went fine. Since they don’t serve peanuts, we passengers stuffed ourselves on cashews until we felt ready to hurl. The movie, however, distracted us from all that. Great film! An Indonesian / German co-production, basically it was a Sound of Music remake with Predator as von Trapp and the cutest, palest little face-sucking Aliens as the singing von Trapp children. Surprisingly, they can carry a tune! Who knew?

“This film,” the title card on the overhead monitor informed us, “has been modified from its original format to fit this screen. It has been edited for content and language. It has been modified to fit into this platform’s viewing window. Additionally, it will be shown at high speed (+50% normal) to give you the viewing experience without taking up an inordinate amount of your time.  —  CinéFux 5 Productions”

After that, it was kick back and watch the splatter. “The world is alive… Ka-chunk! ” I’ll say it is. Truly a movie for our time!

Florida was great. Very sunny weather, amazingly mammoth crowds, try finding a parking space between Miami Beach and Cape Canaveral. Really, I swam in the ocean until I was ready to drop. The beauty of Hollywood, Florida is all those miles of sand and not a single lifeguard! Nobody telling me my swimsuit’s too baggy or admonishing me to apply more zinc paste to my nose. And no sharks! Although I rarely get to swim without a crab pinching a big toe on my right or left foot. Small price to pay for all that freedom!

The porpoise of the trip was to spend some quality time with my younger bro’ Timothy, his wife Jenny and their children. We’re great buds, but I never seem to get out to Provo, Utah. A green-eyed redhead, Jenny plays down her innate good looks, but come on! Everywhere Tim and I take her, we can see the men— and some women—  scoping her out. Her kids call her “Carrot Top.” Like me, Jenny converses with animals. She complains bitterly about their earthy language, but what does she expect? They’re animals! We adopt these enigmas as children. Then, as adults, they become part of our canon. We never analyze them to see if they have any logical reason to exist. Her latest tale of woe regards a coyote.

Jenny works in the subscription department of the Daily Herald. “I was getting complaints from the Rock Canyon neighborhood in Provo. Every morning, someone on the same block was missing the paper. I finally received a phone call telling me the neighbors had conversed and someone had seen a coyote carrying a copy of the newspaper back to his lair. You know how coyotes love to skulk! So I drove out there, asked around, and was directed to the Gunnerson place. Old Man Gunnerson took me to the edge of this amazing property, a real sagebrush ecosystem, where the coyotes have their lair. Cornering the alpha male, I made my point. ‘Listen, Wiley,’ I told him, ‘if you intend to read the Herald, you gotta pay for it! ”

By now, Jenny’s kids were guffawing and rolling their eyes. “Ignore her, Uncle Kev’, she’s crazy!” they implored me. Jenny was blushing, but I understood where she was coming from.

Cruising solo in downtown Miami, I saw it was business as usual: Corner entrepreneurs offered stolen tickets to the jai alai matches. Very small but exquisitely pretty Latinas gave me “come hither” glances over their shoulders and trailed their legs provocatively. Not wanting a hassle from their pimps, I invited the entire crew— girls, pimps, hangers-on— to an impromptu feast at a taquería food truck.

“What y’all call prosties, we call ho’s,” a black pimp in high-end sweats informs me helpfully, the butt of a pistol protruding from the waistband of his pants.

“Nice outfit,” I said, admiring the bulges.

“Clothes make the man.”

Leave ‘em laughing, brother.

Our three day, two night package included, of course, Dizzy World. I’m probably too old to appreciate the sheer razzamatazz fun of it, but here are notes from my $30, 7-inch Emerson chrome tablet:

• Futureland – Why the holographic, ten-story high mounds of urban trash?
• Colorful street signs but unfortunately only in Arabic.  😦
• Bavarian biergarten cute. Beer terrible. Fraulein promised to bring me an Icelandic Egils, but came back with Coors Light.  😦
• We adults shaded my nieces’ and nephews’ eyes when biplane flew overhead towing aerial advert for Dixie’s Late-Nite Topless Lapdance.
• Car got towed.

Hope U had a fab Thanksgiving!

– Kevin

 

          I’ve been so self-absorbed and depressed lately, I haven’t written about last summer’s Bicycle Spokes for Peace tour. A hanger-on, a sometime participant and a hireling, I accompanied the famous cyclist Terry Reid to thirteen venues in 24 days.

Part speechifying, part “cycling with the star,” we raised money for world peace and any particular issue of importance to the location we temporarily inhabited.

Here’s a summary taken from my diary entries:

We begin in New York City, God only knows why. Crazed New York cyclists almost miraculously peel Terry apart from me, their elbows as sharp as carving knives, their hands as subtle as meat cleavers. Uga, uga, caveman style, they snottily drawl “Welcome tah New Yawk! ” Then they laugh at my awkward silences. The guys keep raving about how pretty their girls are. When I try to converse, I find the damsels are less mean-hearted than in New Jersey, but still more interested in themselves than they are in me.

Outside Washington, D.C., Terry cycles laps around FedExField in Landover, Maryland. The heat is sweltering. The humidity forms a thick miasma that clogs our sinuses and makes our eyes itch. “First heat wave of the summer!” my fellow Marylanders assure us. Not helping.

The guys who show up to cycle with the champ are all of a type: slim, self-assured, dressed in black cycling shorts, a jersey and MTB shoes with insets that fit the clipless pedals on their bikes. Watching them, I wonder when I last smirked and strutted with such self-congratulatory pride. Were we that way when we were 30 years old? Or is this particular to the cycling culture? I need to do like Marty McFly and grab a time machine back to my golden youth. When I slip up and call them “bikers,” I get strange, hostile glances. Nobody wants to be confused with motorcycle gangs.

Their brightly colored jerseys bear various high-end logos. Jaggad, Kirschner, Louis Garneau, Canari, SUGOi, PEARL iZUMi. Some dudes even wear jerseys printed in Cyrillic, advertising bike-a-thons in St. Petersburg, Russia or Sofia, Bulgaria. The farther west we travel, the more Asian and exotic the logos.

And, of course, they sport polystyrene helmets in every style and color: Moon Professional lightweight racing helmets, Bell Javelin contoured racing helmets, Giro heavy duty helmets, Mavic Syncro ventilated low wind resistance models, Nutcase touring, bern helmets you can sit on without denting them. You name it. Everyone has a well met helmet.

Female cyclists, bulging with muscle, blatant as gypsies, are even more focused than the men. Trying to flirt is totally wasted on this crowd.

In Detroit, the city center resembles a cross between the shanty towns of South Africa and the bombed out rubble of Syria. Our local guide leads us on a quick biking safari, shouting over his shoulder, “Don’t worry, we own the road! No one ever comes here anymore.”

In Milwaukee, we cycle a tour of the city early on a Sunday morning. Averaging 30 miles per hour, everyone rides in a pack, forcing automobile traffic into the left lane. “Isn’t this a little dangerous?” I ask Terry, stopped at a traffic signal.

“More dangerous than what?” he replies, that hollow, other-worldly look in his eyes an indication that our man is once again zoned out on his own endorphins.

I long for a Schlitz, the beer that made Milwaukee famous.

When he sweats, Terry glistens with a preternatural sheen. “The otter” his fans call him with great affection.

Everybody’s on a $4,000 bicycle but Terry and me. They ride brands like Yeti, Fuji, Storck, Giant, Merida, Bianchi, Orbea and Cannondale. Terry’s custom built velocipede tops out at $50,000. My classic 26” Schwinn is occasionally on sale at Target for $149. When the local cyclists don’t leave me in the dust, Terry’s security team keeps shunting me to the back of the pack “for my protection.” It makes me wonder what instructions Terry’s manager has given them.

In addition to getting me out of the house and out of my funk, the Reid Organization is paying me an obscene amount of money. Into an off-shore account. Things can’t get better than that. I’m in.

Hey, Maryland’s former governor Martin O’Malley is running for president. Like I always say, anything is possible in America!

I write a daily blog post for Terry’s site and grind out press releases for the local newspapers. I’m the wordsmith. Another SUV contains the TV production crew, a group of professionals who record the epic video of our travels. “How ’bout narration?” I ask their director, Freddy Prince, at lunch one day.

“We’re filming cinema verité,” he explains, slightly bored. “Everything else of a pertinent nature will be shown in subtitles. Location, time of day, ‘day eight of the tour.’ We’re in the digital age. No one uses narration anymore, old man.”

This has the desired effect of sending me back to my side of the hotel dining room.

I know bicycle enthusiasts are by now gnashing their teeth over what a hash job I am making of this piece. I’m not a cycling writer. I claim no expertise in the sport. I know derailleurs only by name. I have been invited specifically to handle press relations. The whole doping scandal thing left over from the Tour de France has to be buried. My only credentials: I was a journalism major in college and a spokesperson for the U.S. Army.

Terry trusts me since I pulled his Aunt Penny out of Grenada in October of 1983. It’s not like I was on my own. We had 1,900 US troops and were accompanied by 300 soldiers from Barbados and Jamaica.  Invading the island, we threw out the Revolutionary Military Council of General Hudson Austin, allowing Eric Gairy’s GULP political party to come out of hiding. My biggest firefight took place around a woodpile. Feel free to google additional irrelevant details.

Military operations are not a competitive sport. It doesn’t matter who gets over the finish line first, as long as you bring everyone home.

Apparently, as a friend of Terry’s family, traveling in the convoy is as close to fame as this weasel is going to get.

“Hiya!” Terry announces from the podium at every event. “I am not running for president!”

Once he gets a laugh, he offers his aphorism of the day.

New York City: “You are going to take a trip to the seaside.”

Philadelphia: “No man is Rhode Island, cut off from Maine.”

Washington, DC: “The mightiest oak in the forest is just a little nut that sprouted roots.”

Tallahassee, Florida: “See ya later, alligator. After awhile, crocodile.”

Detroit: “If you don’t succeed today, let nothing deter you from tomorrow.”

Milwaukee: “Beer is a gift given to us by the gods.”

Chicago: “Be smart, but never show it, Obama baby.”

San Antonio, Texas: “A man finds wealth in the oddest places.”

Tucson, Arizona: “A gun in the hand is worth 20 to life.”

San Francisco: “Your household will soon experience a blessed event.”

The tour practices yin and yang. The yang is what we’re in favor of: world peace. The yin is some particular issue we oppose. For example, in New York, it’s domestic violence. In Philadelphia, it’s limiting access to women’s health care. We’re opposed to that. (I didn’t know this was such a big deal in Philly, but apparently it is.) In Washington, DC, we oppose right wing agendas. In Tallahassee, failing to curb man-made climate change. In Detroit, we’re against the forces of darkness blocking national legislation for equal pay. We demand handgun safety in Arizona! Our shopping list goes on and on: We oppose discrimination against the LGBTQ community and I don’t even know what the “Q” stands for. Queer? We oppose wage stagnation for working stiffs. Rising health care costs. Anti-abortion groups. Tehran getting the bomb. People with German surnames getting all the breaks. (Naw, I made that last one up!)

At these rallies prior to the bike ride, we spout all the facile, light-hearted, do-gooder bullshit that appears self-evident to any lib. The fluff. Unattainable, yes, but hardly brain-busters. You are opposed to gun violence. Oh, really? What’s the alternative? To be in favor of gun violence??? I… don’t… think… so. Spread love, not hate. Don’t beat up on others. Well, d’oh. I guess I’ve become cynical, but I feel like I’m back in third grade.

Terry’s fans love him. I know that he is popular in Europe, but I had no idea how important he is to the American cycling community. I harbored hopes that by being part of his entourage, some of Terry’s gold dust would sprinkle onto me. Not happening. I’m reminded of the poor schlub in the rockumentary who’s always bleating “I’m with the band!” and never gets a nibble. C’est moi. “I’m his press agent,” I brag to a Lithuanian legal immigrant who sits astride his English racer. He sports a ponytail and a washed out jersey displaying a caricature of Mikhail Gorbachev.

“Oh?” he comments. “Presse? Where’s your hat and cigar?”

Grinding out press releases on my laptop in the back seat of the van, I face each new day in a blur of activity.

“Dateline: Chicago. National cycling icon Terry Reid spoke out today against wage stagnation among the middle class. ‘Our middle class is shrinking as economic inequality rises. It’s time to make our voices heard. Demand livable wages. Demand income equality!’ Terry suggested to a crowd of several hundred biking enthusiasts, here to experience the Bicycle Spokes for Peace tour and take a ride through the city with their champion.”

I am free to roam backstage, but if I ever approach Terry in public, a beefy guy in a suit always intervenes. Placing one huge paw on my shoulder, he murmurs a polite “Sorry, sir…” as he pushes me out of the way.

Halfway through the tour, I announce my clear intention to turn on my heels and go home. Not even a pep talk from Hal the Manager can dissuade me, until he unleashes his secret weapon: Agnetha, the Swedish masseuse. She begins sharing my bed on a bi-nightly basis. Her busy fingers arouse and deplete me with the efficiency of a milkmaid, which I believe she might have been in an earlier incarnation. More bleary-eyed than ever, I agree to stay.

“Today,” Hal assures me grandly, flashing gold rings and a diamond-encrusted Pearlmaster 39 Rolex Oyster Perpetual wristwatch, “everything Terry does is non-profit.”

“That’s it?”

After a lengthy pause, he adds sotto voce, “Thoroughly off-the-record, the tax breaks for non-profits are astronomical.”

I promise him I will spin this concept appropriately. In no way am I involved in the monetary aspects of the tour: the sponsorships, the individual and corporate contributions, the fundraising that so obviously accompanies us on our travels.

“You don’t wanna know,” Hal insists, dictating a daily statement which I include verbatim in that day’s press release.

“Play the Lottery. Lady luck rides with you,” Terry growls the one time I mention finances. “What is your problem? Hal can cut you a check today. Concentrate on sportsmanship. I do.”

Terry is so touchy, I never bring up the subject again.

Standing in the back of the crowd by the lake in Chicago, I watch as a young lady in a black dress, brown sweater and shawl approaches. Listening to Terry, she turns and asks me, “A political rally?”

You would think the sea of bike helmets would indicate otherwise. “It’s a bike tour,” I explain. “That’s Terry Reid, world-famous winner of the Tour de France.”

She frowns.

“You’re Muslim?” I ask gently, pointing with my notepad at her shawl.

“Palestinian.”

“Oh,” I exclaim, excited. “This will interest you!” Nodding at the phalanx of parked bikes to the side of the crowd, I say, “It’s the Bicycle Spokes for Peace tour!”

With a look of total disgust on her face, she asks me, “When have you ever seen a Palestinian on a bicycle?”

Touché.

A lady named Morgan Bach has written an indignant and inadvertently hilarious blog about this very issue.

If you give a Palestinian the right to bike in the Jordan Valley….

For us, on tour, every night ends in a local tavern, where the riders propose endless toasts, quaffing craft beers and IPA’s, Indian Pale Ales. Non-alcoholic O’Doul’s, Buckler, Clausthaler, Beck’s and Kaliber allow me to party with the best of ’em. Don’t tell mom. Do the boys and girls pair off, follow each other home and make endless love? You better believe they do!

I’m just grateful to have a room of my own. Originally, I was supposed to share with Hal, but he decided— thank God! — that he wants his privacy.

On a Wednesday night, as the crew becomes ever more blotto, I stoke up my courage and edge my way up against a short, stocky blonde. She has gorgeous freckles and a cute face. Rule No. 1: Never start with a question. That makes you seem nosy. “Lime and lager is worth a try,” I suggest, as if we’ve been comparing drinks for the last hour and a half.

“I know that. It’s British,” she drawls in a flat Midwestern accent. This girl is the full package, a total poseur, every gesture as theatrical as Rita Hayworth. Fingernails bitten to the quick, she waves a little white hand in my face and asks, “Whaddya ride?”

“Peugeot. Definitely Peugeot,” I extemporize, based on an article I read in a biking magazine, circa 1999.

“A Peugeot PX10 or a Peugeot Reynolds 531?”

“PX10. All the time PX10. How ’bout you?”

“What… do… I… ride?” she asks, expanding her eyes with every word. A total turn-on, she’s got me. Hard as a rock, I ain’t leavin’. “Kestrel. It’s a great bike for the money.”

Her name is Suzanne and after horsing around with a company van to transport her Kestrel home to her folks’ house on the roof rack, and helping three dudes unload their gear from the van, she and I finally end up in my hotel room at         1 a.m., sitting on my bed. “How old are you?” she asks coyly, reaching for my crotch.

“As old as the day is long. Old as the river. Old and horny.”

“Oh, goody!” she squeals. My kind o’ girl, Suzanne! We tear off our clothes, both fully aware that it’s the woman who cries “Rape!” Men never take women to court alleging rape. So while I am gentle, she has me on my back, putting her pedal to the pavement. She rides me. Except for the 30 years’ age difference and not sharing a single common interest, it’s a great first date!

By now, a small mountain of used towels and accumulated laundry fills the back of the SUV in which I reside, giving the tour a slightly putrid air. I ask Hal if we’ve scheduled a time-out to run laundry. “Sure,” he assures me breezily. “We’ll take care of all that stuff as soon as we get Terry and you on the corporate jet to Belize.”

It seems biking in Belize is the key to resurrecting Terry’s brand. I know all about branding. The Playboy brand gets 40% of its revenue from China, a country so prudish, they cannot even sell the magazine there.

Departing the dear old USA, we arrive in Belize. At airport customs and immigration, stocky five-foot tall military commandos in olive green uniforms thrust rifle barrels in our faces. American greenbacks mollify them.

Once we’ve set up the event, Terry speaks extemporaneously to the crowd— mostly eco tourists—  telling them “Ancient Chinese civilization attracts you.”

I’ve never understood the concept of bicycling in the jungle. Belize is beautiful, but Terry spends most of the afternoon posing for snapshots and carting his set of wheels through shoulder-high foliage. At the sea shore, I get overrun by iguanas.

From Belize, we fly to the final leg of our travels, Bolivia. Here, we ride in protest over military coups. Bolivia has had over 180 military coups since 1841.

Terry’s aphorism in Bolivia: “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”

“I don’t get it,” I finally tell him, holed up in our hotel lobby in La Paz, awaiting our posse. “Who writes your fucking aphorisms?”

“Oh,” replies Terry, his slacker persona fully on display. “I get these deep thoughts from Chinese fortune cookies.”

Less than cerebral, he will cycle halfway around Lake Titicaca at an altitude of 12,507 feet.

Impatient, I go outside to scout up our vehicles and drivers. The street in front of the hotel seems eerily empty. Suddenly, I get shoved rudely from behind. A scratchy gunnysack smelling strongly of coffee is roughly pulled over my head and tightened at the waist. “I prefer espresso!” I bellow, which muffled by the burlap probably came out as ” Mmmf! ” My abductors frog march me, tripping, to the curb and tip me into some ramshackle vehicle belching fumes and misfiring on at least two cylinders. We take off with a roar and head outta town.

When next I see daylight, I’m tied to a chair in a shanty. My three captors wear homemade hoods with eyeholes sloppily cut in the fabric. They speak surprisingly good English, but with heavy accents. “You have been kidnapped by FART,” their presumptive leader announces, legs spread wide and arms crossed in front of his chest. I guess to make himself look more authoritative.

“You mean FARC.”

“No,”  he replies, very angry now. “Not FARC. We are FART, Free Anarchists of the Rural Terrain.”

If these guys are jungle guerillas, I gotta say their leader—  in his raggedy clothes— looks less like Che Guevara and more like Sancho Panza. “Aha! You mean like Shining Path in Peru or the Tupamaros in Uruguay?” I ask.

“You are bicycle star. We demand big ransom!” he grunts.

“Oh, shit!” I groan. “You grabbed the wrong American.”

“You are wrong American?” he gasps. “Where is bicycle star?”

“Back at the hotel? Out at the dog track?”

“You make jokes! We torture!”

Somehow it seems a bad idea to tell him that just smelling him is torture enough. I keep silent.

They telephone the hotel on a cell phone and seem dumbfounded to hear that no one is prepared to pay any ransom for me. My market value equals zero.

I can’t believe how they keep arguing among themselves. This bodes ill for yours truly!

“I keep trying to tell you,” I plead. “Yes, I am an American, but I am Mr. Nobody. I’m your ordinary dude walking down the street. The average wealth of an American family of four in 2012 was $66,740 according to the Census Bureau.”

“¡Ay caramba! What are you saying?”  screams their comandante.

A blow to the back of my head knocks me out. I awaken in a ditch by the side of the road, headachy and vomiting. Once I get to my feet, I walk toward what I hope is civilization. Passing cars all but bowl me over. When I wave frantically— ¿cómo no?  — they wave back. Two miles of trudging later, I reach the edge of town.

“Where have you been?” Hal demands when I stagger into the hotel. “Ugh! You need a bath and a change of livery.”

“I got kidnapped!” I bleat unhappily.

“C’mon, don’t clown around,” he admonishes me. “We’re on a really tight schedule at this point and won’t have time to bail you out if you wander off again.” Dressed in his sun hat and alpaca suit, he looks like a bad Hollywood portrayal of a plantation owner.

Sighing, I go upstairs to fight with the centipedes and scorpions for possession of the shower stall.

The Reid Organization is so pleased with the tour, they add Brazil to our itinerary!

Once again, I do not understand bicycling in jungle, but we do protest the decimation of the rain forests.

It is deep in the jungle of the Amazon, hanging out with blowpipe toting, slings and arrows Stone Age people living in trees, that I finally find myself at peace.

Eventually I return home to Maryland $10,000 richer from a month’s work. Tax free. I thought this was a righteous amount of cash until I read about the Newark, New Jersey school system that— upon receiving a $200 million grant— burned through the money by hiring $1,000-a-day consultants.

Hey, guys! I’m over here!

As I exit an airport taxi at my front door, my joints audibly creak. It’s 10 a.m. of another beautiful day, the sun a glorious yellow orb rising above the tree tops. In the house, my mom sits in her favorite chair, glowering. “We need to go grocery shopping,” she informs me. “The freezer’s empty and I’m tired of subsisting on canned goods.”

“Let me take a shower,” I protest.

That afternoon, we buy a ton of groceries, including tortillas and Coca Cola that is Hecho en México.

 

This weekend, I got invited to a Capitol Hill cocktail party. Scheduled months in advance, a little deluge from Hurricane Joaquin wasn’t going to put a damper on things. Our host was Duane Atkins. He and I went to high school together. He’s a lobbyist. You and I could never afford an apartment like that: stained glass windows, in Georgetown, overlooking the Whitehurst Freeway. I also served in the Army with Duane’s younger bro’ Stewart. Affectionately, they call me “Our Swedish terrorist” after I tried to take an engraved artillery shell casing through customs at JFK back in the 1980’s. Guess if the customs people unleashed the cops on me.

Duane has invited me specifically to run the video projector. Being a gentleman, however, he includes me among the guests rather than the catering staff. That’s called tact. The video program Duane wants to show us is entitled “ ’Payback is a bitch’ — Islamic State propaganda.” Basically, it’s five minutes of commentary and 25 minutes of beheadings. Although I suspect the guests don’t yet realize that.

Right away, I see Margaret “Maggie” Carlisle, recognizable by her often photographed flaming red hair, lustrous green eyes and that gorgeous Grecian profile. This is the same Maggie Carlisle who sculpted a bust of President Jimmy Carter, gave testimony in the Iran-Contra scandal and has worked for years as Chief of Staff to Senator Hiram Greene. She is dressed in a Navy blue skirt and a pink blouse whose cleavage borders on the pornographic. Well above my pay grade, I give her a wide berth. Besides, there is already a dude in pinstripes talking with her, gushing fulsomely, quaffing beer from a glass boot. “I worked on the Mark Salinger campaign in Iowa for three months,” he brays. “I must say, that was the most exciting time in my life, driving the corn fields and small towns of Iowa. I was heartbroken when campaign headquarters called and told me the coffers had run dry. I’ve always been doubtful about measuring political campaigns in dollars rather than popularity. ”

Everyone sucks up to Maggie Carlisle. You don’t want to be on her enemies list and it never hurts to have a well-placed friend in Congress. Look, I get it. Anyone as gorgeous as Maggie just assumes people are going to suck up. It’s practically part of her job description: “Washington bureaucrat, a power player, wielding an unusual amount of influence, expects high levels of suck-upism.”

The evening is lubricated by mimosas, Bloody Marys and whiskey sours. A falling-down drunk earlier in life, I don’t drink. Attempting to give a Congressman my card, he eyes me sardonically and says, “This is the ticket to your parking garage. It says ‘You are parked on Level G3.’ Anything you want me to do with this?”

“My bad!”

A lawyer announces, “I’m representing a divorcé who had a major stroke and forgot he was divorced.”

“Ist das wahr?” archly asks a diplomat in a Giorgio Armani suit, nursing his drink.

Duane and I eye one another helplessly.

A dweeb from the Library of Congress asks, “Have you ever noticed how those black bookends in crossword puzzles are shaped like a handgun?”

Not a member of the NRA, the IRA or the IRS, I do not comment.

And after everyone finishes complaining about the way rootin’, tootin’ Putin has made a total fool of Obama by bombing our allies in Syria, Maggie Carlisle suddenly spots me and exclaims, “Kevin! Hello!”

I say hello.

“I need to thank you,” she explains. “Your dad got me my first internship in Senator Greene’s office.”

Yes, okay, fine. I already know this, a tale redolent of the nepotism in Maryland politics. My father Bernie was a personnel director in the federal government. When he could, he helped young people in their careers. He was also among the first to break the color bar in Jim Crow Washington and hire blacks to managerial positions in the federal government.

“You had me at hello,” I tell Maggie. “I grew up on this stuff.”

“I owe my entire career to Bernie,” she insists. “He was a wonderful man.”

As gently as I can, I tell her that he was a godsend to innumerable souls, yes, but he was catastrophic to live with. Everything bothered him. He made me sleep in the carport shed if my grades sank below a 2.5 average or I mowed his lawn poorly or I sassed back and acted surly. I don’t tell Maggie that. I merely point out that public life and private life are two very different animals.

Then, because it is annoying me— and it was Maggie who flagged me down and not the reverse— I start venting over the horrible mess caused by Tom Winslow giving away the farm to the Iranians. “Secretary of State Tom Winslow is an egomaniac, trying single-handedly to win the Vietnam War, untie the Gordian knot in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and now opening a can of worms vis-à-vis Iran!”

“I’ve known Tom Winslow for years,” insists Maggie. “When he got back from Vietnam, I mimeographed the testimony he gave before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He’s a wonderful man.”

Huh?

By now, we’ve attracted an interested group of Washington insiders who are shocked— shocked — that someone is talking back to Maggie Carlisle and giving her a hard time. No one ever does that.

“This treaty,” Maggie explains, “will guarantee that the Iranians do not have a nuclear bomb in the next 15 years. The only alternative is to let them plow ahead and develop nuclear capability. Then we’ll be forced to attack them militarily, leading to war.”

What was I thinking? Of course Maggie defends the Iranian nuclear agreement.  “C’mon,” I complain, “The Iranians are gonna cheat. They are Persians. They’ve had a thousand years to refine their bargaining technique. Nobody ever wins an argument with a Persian.”

“When Tim Thompkin’s presidential campaign was floundering in the year 2000,” confides Maggie, “I told him he needed a Persian rug merchant to sell his message.” She assures me that Iranian atomic physicists will act as whistleblowers and report any chicanery, and that 21 days before an inspection is much too little time for the Iranians to haul away any culpable evidence and get it off-site.

Maggie thinks the inspections and treaty specifics are going to work. I think the Iranians are going to build a bomb clandestinely. Within five years.

“There are all these Iranians who go on the Internet and want a normal life,” Maggie points out.

“Yes,” I counter. “They all live in Tehran, belong to the intellectual elite and constitute only 14% of the population.”

Give her credit, Maggie laughs. “Listen,” she tells me, “Tom Winslow was deeply scarred by watching his boat mates die in Vietnam. His attempts to broker peace in the Middle East and to defuse Iran are specifically aimed at saving lives!”

I’m not a Republican and I’m not a naysayer. “All right,” I agree, “but this is the first time I have heard about Tom Winslow’s trauma over dead comrades. I mean, has he written a memoir about it and I’ve missed it?”

“I’m in touch with Tom Winslow all the time,” she replies. “No, he has not written a memoir. He tried to broker a deal between Israel and the Palestinians because no one else in the State Department was doing anything about it. Listen, Kevin, we are all friends of Israel! When Israeli peacemaker Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Senator Greene carried dirt from the grave of John F. Kennedy to the funeral in Jerusalem and sprinkled it on Rabin’s coffin.”

Talk about symbol over substance! “That’s very nice,” I say, “but Rabin is dead and we are facing World War Three. If the Secretary of State is so fired up about bringing peace and saving lives, at least tell his press secretary to portray the man that way. Right now, the public thinks he’s a megalomaniac.”

Smiling wanly, Maggie Carlisle says, “You are the first person to ever call Tom Winslow a megalomaniac.”

“Wait a minute, wait a second,” I protest. “If I call Tom Winslow’s office and say ‘You need to explain what’s motivating the Secretary of State,’ I’ll get written off as a crank. At least if you tell them that there’s a perception gap, they’ll take the comment seriously.” By now, I am virtually pleading.

“I don’t think there’s a problem,” declares Maggie Carlisle.

End of discussion.

Dead silence.

“Uh,” suggests our host Duane Atkins, “perhaps you’d like to start the video program, Kevin?”

The world is a sorrier place because the people in a position to do some good are so full of themselves, good things seldom get done.

 

 

          Naturally, I am delighted that Pope Francis is coming to see me! His is a hectic schedule. Rather than selfishly insist on a private audience, I have— in the name of Christian hospitality— decided to share my experience with an additional 49,999 other people outside the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

I feel it’s the least I can do!

Lest you think I am simply name-dropping here, allow me to elucidate.

I graduated from Oxburg High School with Cecilia Pope (no relation to the pontiff).

In our Army unit, before every deployment, Catholic school graduate  Dougie McDonnell would remind us that “There is no hope without the pope.” In battle, I admit, this got bastardized into “There is no dope quite like the pope.” (Full disclosure: My mom feels this is terribly offensive and I should delete it. What to do?)

Our family has had a lasting relationship with the Holy See.

My Grandma Esther, my mom’s mother, took the Queen Mary from New York to Europe in March of 1965. When she reached Italy, ornery and difficult to deal with, she wrangled herself an audience with Pope Paul VI. Unfortunately, Esther got into an argument with His Holiness over the Roman emperor Constantine’s calling of the Council of Nicaea in 325 to refute the heresy of the Egyptian priest Arius. Esther agreed with Arius that while Jesus was divinely inspired, he was not necessarily a blood relation of the Deity. Not a first cousin, not a son. It was Esther’s conviction that with the unassailable establishment of The Holy Trinity, the Catholic Church has never been quite the same.

Pope Paul VI, a deeply evangelical man— named after the Apostle Paul— disagreed.

Theology was not the reason, however, for the meeting. In compensation for Pope Pius XII’s alleged collaboration with the Nazis during World War Two, Esther felt the Church could donate some of its land holdings in Poland to us, the Zakroiski clan of Bialystok. “We lost 34 cousins,” declared Esther. “Some Christian charity would salve this wound.”

It wasn’t as if Esther wanted to move back to Poland, of course. No way! Esther intended to sell the land and use the proceeds to acquire a nice condominium in Miami Beach, Florida. In any case, “Nope,” said the Pope.

Thus, sadly, to this day, I lack a baronial estate on the river Vistula in Poland. (Hint! Hint!)

When I heard that Pope (påve) Johannes Paulus II intended to visit Sweden (Sverige) in 1989, I wrote a letter to the Vatican suggesting which neighborhoods he should avoid: Places like the Stockholm suburbs of Alby and Jordbro, where the Turks and Assyrians are so militantly Muslim, a Catholic prelate might not receive such a warm welcome. I’m told the Pope’s visit to Sweden went swimmingly.

I had great hopes during the reign of John Paul, nicknamed “the Polish pope.” His given name was Karol Józef Wojtyła. Originally from Wadowice in Poland, he officiated in the Vatican from 1978 to 2005. He traveled the world. You know what we used to say, “John Paul, George and Ringo.” Alas, when my phone rang, it was never the Vatican on the line. 

So what do we have here? In the year 2015, President Obama snubs the prime minister of Israel, but for the pope, he rolls out the whole megillah. So much for the separation of church and state!

It is my sincerest hope that this papal visit will spread the word on the importance of the Jumbotron.

Thank you.

Kevin Feingold, XYZ

September, 2015