MODERN WISDOM
NUMBER 298
MAY 2023
Copyright 2023 Francis DiMenno
dimenno@gmail.com
http://www.dimenno.wordpress.com
1. AMBITION
PART SEVENTEEN: GETTING HEP WITH THE JIVE
Dear Bill,
It may shock you to learn that, as an undergraduate, on one memorable occasion, I actually experimented with marijuana. With Barnes.
It all happened so casually, like it was the most natural thing in the world. One sunny afternoon, I met Barnes in his room. Oddly, he had placed a bath towel at the bottom of his door. As I took a chair, he stood over me and lit a crooked cigarette. “Want some?” he said.
“What is it?”
“Muggles. Tell me my brother, are you hep with the jive?”
“I’ll try anything once,” I said, and took the crooked stick and inhaled deeply, as I had seen him do.
“There are troubled times we live in,” said Barnes, after we had finished and he had put the remnants of the extinguished reefer in his shirt pocket.
“How so?”
“Tell me what YOU think.”
“Well…the hydrogen bomb could kill us all I suppose, now that the Russians have got it. The government is riddled with State Department cookie-pushers and pinkos. Truman is a dud. We might not even have a chance to grow old and gray and die peacefully in our beds. So we might as well live it up. There’s no sense in trying to clean up the mess in Washington, because it’s endemic. Germany is divided, China has gone red, the Middle East is in an uproar, France is going its own way, the Russians are rattling their sabres, and Britain has grown old and sick and is too feeble to mind the store, so we’ve got to step up. I would say that things are going swimmingly, wouldn’t you? Oh–and the Friday Night Fights are fixed.”
“Not the Friday Night Fights!” Barnes said, in mock dismay, putting his hand over his mouth like an embarrassed teenage girl. “But Ed–you forget the long view. You’re young. Your mind is not fully formed, so–“
“I resent that,” I said. “I represent that.” And then I started to break into giggles. Everything started to feel warped and absurd, but in an entertaining funhouse way.
“Your mind,” Barnes insisted, “is not fully formed, and so of course you believe what you are told to believe; notions put about by people whose names I will not mention–because you never know who might be listening in. Do you think for one minute that even half of what goes on gets printed in the newspapers? No. Only the jive. Is that the right word? The jive. An enormously useful concept handed down to us by our colored friends. The jive. You know. the juicy stuff. Spelling bees. All-American corn. Hero dogs who give their lives for their masters. Lunch meat stuffed with crushed pineapple. Imagine? Household tips. Cultivate your roses. The wisdom of the very old. Squabbling in Asia. Banana Republics. Bwanas and their native guides. ‘Bring ’em Back Alive!'”
“You might as well read nothing as read the newspaper,” I said, and started to giggle at my own heresy. “It’s nothing but ads.”
“What bites me,” said Barnes, “is that the news is different, depending on which paper you read. Paper A, the tabloid, is tailored to dolts. Only the most commonplace opinions are found on the editorial pages. Always conservative. With a populist spin. ‘Don’t raise our taxes.’ ‘How much will it cost us?’ ‘Will it create new jobs? ‘The transit system is a joke.”We must have a strong defense.’ I do declare, they must have an old colored man chained to a bedpost who churns out this guff for the crusts they throw to him.”
We both laughed hysterically at this image.
“And then you have Paper B. It’s just like Paper A, only it supposedly represents an enlightened point of view. ‘The plight of our farmers.’ ‘Shower the common people with gold.’ ‘Automation is turning us into machines.’ These elitist ideologues really give me the inside meemies. Half of them are pinkos and the other half are out-and-out commies. I’d like to gather them up in a stadium and drop a big bomb on them. Next, we come to Paper C. It’s not a tabloid. Much more respectable than that. But it’s filled with more wishy-washy liberal mush. ‘Our children must be educated.’ ‘More public transit means less traffic.’ ‘The need for more taxes and necessary improvements.’ ‘We can improve the world.’ And finally we come to paper D. The Voice of G-d. The light and hope of the world. The editorials are unreadable. Practically incomprehensible. Hell, the articles are also unreadable. Five-hundred words, when ten would do. And always so serious and pompous. I tell you, it’s almost enough to put a Christian off his feed. Say, did I ever tell you that I ran away from home? Once, when I was sixteen? I hitchhiked to Philadelphia and slept in the train station, and every morning at 5 am a cop would come along and hit me on the foot with a nightstick. I got pretty tired of dodging pimps and whores and pilfering food, so I called my father and had him wire me the money for a ticket home. My father was all for letting me starve–that would ‘learn me’ a lesson–but my mother woke up from her alcoholic stupor just long enough to insist that my old man shell out the dough.”
“I guess your folks treated you pretty crummy.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. They did the best they knew how. Most people, you will discover as you grow older, just aren’t very bright. They’re myopic; they tend to focus on the wrong things. Look at the ‘newspaper of record.’ Nary a word about rural poverty or urban squalor. You hear about the TVA, but not about the inbred hicks who eat clay to fill their bellies. You hear about slum clearance, but not about the life expectancy of kids who live in the ghetto, which is roughly paleolithic. EVERYTHING in life is an unacknowledged surrender to entropy; to rot and decay. And the job of the newspapers is to plaster it over with cheesecake. Let some of the truth slip in; but only as an object lesson. Go, thou, and do not do likewise. Zim boom zing! ‘Movies are better than ever.’ Look: right now, the liberals are in the ascendent. They are the winners. But soon there will be fresh new disasters. And then the conservatives will take over. It’s human nature; to jump back and forth. The conservatives will be seen as the winners. And then whose side will you be on, boy? Best to ditch the liberals now, while the getting is good. Because you will need powerful friends in the good fight. No man in this country has ever been electrocuted for being too conservative. It all comes down to this: Who cares what the people want? The only people who should matter to you are the people who will help you get to where you want to be. Those are the only ‘people’ you should feel responsible for. All this useless mush about the poor. Do you know WHY they’re poor? Because they’re of no use to anybody! If they could find some way to be indispensable, they wouldn’t be in their rut, now, would they? No–nobody is ‘poor’. They’re just lacking in enterprise. Why should WE support THEM? I’m not saying we should let them starve. Don’t try to pin that on me, Muggsy. I’m not one of those ‘let them eat cake’ guys. But really, think about it–you wouldn’t train a dog by giving him a treat every time he does something you don’t like. So why give handouts to selfish bums? Women and children, all right. But any man who isn’t a cripple or a moron should be able to find SOMEthing. Let ’em join the Navy. We don’t need them hanging around drugstores and newsstands, blocking traffic and annoying our women.”
“They need to put down the bottle and get…a job.”
“They need to get something, that’s for sure. And they’re not going to get it by standing around on street corners and stabbing each other with switchblades. But I don’t see much hope for these police characters. As Einstein said, the half-life of stupidity is infinite.”
“Einstein never said any such thing!”
“Well, then maybe it was Hiesenberg. Or me. Me. I said it. Me. You see, it’s hard to be smart when you’re not smart, and it’s easy to be stupid when you’re stupid. Or even if you’re smart. But there are certain levels of stupidity that a smart person cannot fathom. Stupid ugly people are usually surrounded by other stupid ugly people. All they ever think about are the things that surround them, and that’s what they become. And that’s why they’re poor.”
“Precisely! They are little better than clowns.”
“Most people are,” said Barnes. “They’re ugly–so they try to be helpful. Oh, yes, they’re nice, they’re kind, they’re the salt of the earth, they’ll share what little food they have and give you the filthy shirt off their backs in the bargain–and that’s why they’re poor and they stay poor. Because they drag each other down. When you don’t have money, then what you need is friends. Friends who will do you favors. Help you stick up a gas station. Maybe even hide a body. The prisons are full of such ‘friends’. Why are there no rich people in prison.? Because they can hire people who will do their dirty work, for a fee. They don’t need to rely on their stupid friends! And a rich person doesn’t need to rob a gas station. He owns the gas station, and a whole lot else besides.”
“And robs the customers,” I said, a bit too quickly.
“That’s one way of looking at it,” said Barnes, and he laughed.
“So–you’re saying that we persecute the innocent, and protect the guilty.”
“That’s G-d’s motto,” said Barnes. “‘The innocent must suffer.'”
“Well,” I said. “That’s an original thought. But…it’s no good being original if nobody wants to copy you.”
“Ha!” said Barnes. “We ought to go into vaudeville.”
“Vaudeville,” I said drowsily, “is as dead as…vaudeville.”
“Sure,” said Barnes. “You can see it for free on television.”
“And who watches…television.”
“Dolts. I don’t think television is any big deal. From what I’ve seen of it, it’s a big ‘So What?'”
“Yeah. But the hoi polloi really dig that crazy jive.”
“Zoobie Doobie Abba Watta Watta.”
“Be Batta Batta Be Bop.”
“Ze Dope De Dope De Dope Dope Dope.”
“You really ARE hep to the jive!”“Yes,” said Barnes. “Let this be a warning to you. Muggles is the devil’s weed.”We both thought this comment was hysterically funny, and I, for one, laughed until my jaw ached. But then I grew serious. “No wonder this stuff is illegal. What if,” I said, “What if everybody walked around like this all of the time?”“My Dad,” said Barnes, “used to smoke it, during prohibition, when he couldn’t lay hold of booze. It never did him a lick of harm. Where did he get it? He used to hang out with Satchmo.”“No kidding!”“Well, him and Louis Armstrong were like THAT. To hear him tell it. He knew all those old jazz cats.”“Really!”“Yeah–but he never brought any of them home.”“Well….” I said.“There’s…a limit,” said Barnes. “You know,” he said, extracting the stick of muggles from his pocket and lighting it, “Everything we love will someday burn.”I took a drag on the stick and croaked, “Yeah?”“It’s a law of physics. Einstein said it.”“Or was it Heisenberg?“You’re a sick boy, Lax,” said Barnes, “but funny sometimes. Tell me–have you ever taken your own measure?”“No–I have a tailor to do that.”“Don’t be cute. You know what I mean.”“Nay, I knoweth not what thou meanest.”“There comes a time when your disguise won’t save you–you melancholy boy.”“That’s crazy talk,” I said.“Crazy people often have a lot of insights. It’s a fact. I learned that on the streets of Philadelphia. A bum walked up to me and said, ‘Go back to where you came from.’ Now. how did he know that?”“The truth will out,” I said. “You looked out of place down on Skid Row.”“Skid Row was near Franklin Square. They called it the Bum’s Park. Right across the street from the Sunday Breakfast Mission.”
He grew contemplative. “Seems like every hundred years we always recreate the same mistakes.”“We?”“Men.”“Well…a hundred years is living memory. And most people don’t read history. They just goes by what they’re told.”“And who tells them?”“Men.”“Exactly. History is an end game. The people who really seem to know it are routinely ignored.”“Like Cassandra.”
“Yeah. But Cassandra didn’t help her cause–she was one crazy bitch. At least, according to Shakespeare. ‘The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows: they are polluted offerings, more abhorr’d than spotted livers in the sacrifice.'”
“Got to watch out for those spotted livers.”
“What history shows us, as far as I can tell, is that most people who act are vicious and selfish. You don’t have to be like them–but you have to be aware of them.”
“That’s a jaundiced point of view,” I said.
“Either that, or they’re fools. take your pick.”
“I’d rather be in the middle.”
“Monkey in the middle,” he said.
I pretended like I was mortally offended. “Maybe I should go,” I said.
“He snatched the cap from off my head, which startled me. “I’ll take your hat,” he said. “You can’t go anywhere without your hat.”
So I stayed, and he produced another stick of muggles, which he said the whores on Vine Street called “reefer.”
“Amnesia is beautiful,” said Barnes. “Radio discovered amnesia as a plot device at just about the same time as reefer hit New York. I’m not saying there’s a correlation. But I’m not saying that there isn’t.”
“I’d sing you the chorus to ‘Amnesia the Beautiful’,” I said, “But I forgot it.”
“A sudden jolt will refresh your memory,” said Barnes, as he lit the third of his marijuana cigarettes.
“I thought you didn’t smoke,” I said.
“Reefer doesn’t count,” said Barnes, and he took a drag and held it in. “You ever read Tacitus?” he croaked.
“No,” I said.
“Me either.” And he exploded with laughter.
When he recovered, he said, “Television is just the stupefying palliative we need in these troubled times.”
“Amen,” I said.
“I hate television,” I said.
“So do I.”
“Like you said, television is for the lowbrows. The knuckle-draggers. It was never intended for such as you or I.”
“Thee or me.”
“I love only thee and me…and I’m not so sure about thee,” he said, and we burst into inexplicable laughter at the old saw.
“Everything’s going to shit,” said Barnes. “I need to buy some land…out in the country…far away from the psychos in the glittering city and hidden well away from the murderous cavemen in the hollows. Somewhere to be safe and dry when it all comes down.”
“When what comes down?”
“Society. Society can’t last. You know your history. What empire has ever lasted? Germany had 12 years. Ha! ‘The Thousand Year Reich.; We’ll, maybe they’ll make up the remainder on the back end. Clever boys, those Germans. Too clever by half. Always pissing people off. It’s fun in the short term, but it’s a lousy long-term strategy. You could tell that Hitler was a dud, just by looking at him. And those ghastly people he surrounded himself with! Fat Goring…cadaverous Goebbles. Amd Himmler, who looked like a martinet school teacher. Those guys must have been a helluva lot of fun at cocktail parties. Demons…petty thugs, really…who would be Gods. ‘Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour.’ The funny thing about the Nazis was that they got their wish, and it destroyed them. But it was inevitable that they would fail. They were led by a madman. But…Hitler was right about a lot of things. I’m not saying the Jews. But like any good dictator, he was against people having fun. He didn’t want people to go off on their own head of steam, committing criminal acts, acting as spies and saboteurs, fucking indiscriminately, betraying their positions of trust, willing to sell out their own government for a brass farthing. He didn’t want the stupid people, in other words, to ruin everything. So instead there was a crackdown. And the old slippery slope. Things that were once perfectly legal became absolutely Verboten. The Gestapo could get you for a pound of butter! Though, more likely, they would cut you loose, But that’s a valuable lesson to keep in mind–THEY CAN ALWAYS GET YOU.”
“‘Any excuse will serve a tyrant.'”
“Good. Shakespeare?”
“Aesop.”
“The first thing the Nazis did was to outlaw novelty dances. The Bunny Hug. The Hippo Hop. The Terrapin Toddle. The Bacchanalian Waltz. The Salome Dance. People don’t take kindly to being told how they have to dance. Of course, only teenagers and morons are truly interested in such things. But…those are the people you have to keep happy if you expect to run a country and not run it into the ground.”
“You said a mouthful,” I replied.
“The people,” said Barnes, “are like a great big friendly dog. And the role of the government is to say, ‘Get DOWN, dog, get DOWN!” I see the television as just another rolled-up newspaper. Beer and skittles. ‘Don’t think because thou art virtuous there shall be no cakes and ale’.”
“Shakespeare?”
“Kee-rect. And while we’re on the subject, where is the Shakespeare of the television? Sweet William doesn’t stand a chance these days, unless you dumb him down. Falstaff is now a loudmouth bus driver, and Hamlet is a neurotic private eye. And Coriolanus is near-sighted Mr. Magoo. What I’m afraid of is that before long, television will be…ubiquitous.”
“There’s a five-dollar word.”
“Big words signify, you know…. They show that you have a superior education. It’s fun to baffle the lowbrows. They think you’re insulting them, and, as a matter of fact, you are, even if you don’t mean to. But we must speak plainly amongst our own kind. It will never do for them to think you’re putting on the dog. Some of those boys can make you or break you. Some of them like to dress down, but they’re richer than old Midas. Only they have their little fantasy that they’re human, just like everybody else. Nyet, Comrade! You think a gorgeous woman marries a pot-bellied baldy with liver spots because she likes the cut of his job? Guess again. The super-duper rich like to disguise their dough. Camouflage. Protective coloration. The King in disguise surveys his Marketplace; his Fiefdom. You get the drift. But you only have to take one gander at his consort to see if he’s a Mister Gotrox. If she’s a boofur lady, then she’s managed to hook Mr. Moneybags. If she’s a fatty, dripping with pearls, then she’s still The Mother of His Children, a long-suffering Saint who pretends not to notice what he’s getting on the side. How I’d like to live like that! Have a love nest on the East Side with a French servant at my beck and call.”
“You said a mouthful.”
“You see rich people on the television. But you never see rich people WATCHING television. They’ve got other fish to fry. Television is for the dese dem and dose guy. The loudmouth on the train. The boozehound at the local groggery. It’s an electronic fireplace for the 20th century caveman.”
“Well, I never watch it.”
“Yes; but you must never say so. Any more than you’d correct the grammatical errors of a sixth-grade dropout, or mock the crippled gait of a tired old lady. You see, such behavior is seen as just being mean.”
“Nobody likes it when you profess to scorn their stupefying palliative.”
“Precisely. I can see that YOU’RE a dab hand with the five-dollar words.”
“I was brought up right.”
“Yes. We have been taught, from our earliest childhood, that rich men must never give out pennies.”
“Dimes or nothing. Like old Rockefeller.”“The King distributing his largesse amongst the multitudes. It’s an old trick. I have never known it to fail,” said Barnes. “Not to sound like a stuffed shirt or anything–““Not for the world.”“–But, uhh, I forgot what I was going to say. Oh, right! Money gets results. Cross my palm with silver, and I’ll give you your heart’s desire. You want liquor delivered? Girls? Tip the bellboy. You want tickets? A reservation to a top restaurant? Money is your friend. You want anything at all, and a liberal application of palm oil will get it for you, brother. That’s another thing that rich people know that poor people don’t. It doesn’t pay to be cheap. Everything that’s any good at all costs money. If it’s free, then it probably isn’t worth your time.”“Time is money.”“Exactly. And money…money is the compressed extract…of time. Time that might otherwise have been spent in doing something else. Like fucking.”“Or watching television.”“Exactly! Fucking is the poor man’s television.” “That’s going to be on your family crest,” I said. “What do you suppose is on television right now?”“Wrestling on channel two. A cop show on channel three. Amd a western on channel four.”“Same old bullshit,” said Barnes.“With a symphony orchestra thrown in to appease the highbrows.”“All four of them,” said Barnes.“Let’s not forget vaudeville.”“It’s as dead as a mackerel, but somehow lives on. Like Frankenstein.”“Frankenstein is actually very funny.”“The angry villagers were just a bunch of soreheads,” said Barnes. “Dracula was hep to the jive.”“Plays a mean stand-up bass.”“Probably a pretty decent guy, except for the biting people on the neck.”“They just hate him because he’s an aristocrat.”“Sure–if he wore blue jeans, he’d be all right.”“Except for the blood drinking.”“Jerry Lewis is the most terrifying monster there is.”“Dean is his keeper. He’s the only one who can control him.”“Those movies aren’t comedies. They’re horror movies.”“Jerry is undead,” said Barnes.“Exactly! That’s why he never gets the girl!”“He’s beyond fucking.”“He’s a carnival geek. Eats raw chicken guts. Like Tyrone Powers in ‘Nightmare Alley’.”“They clean that part up for the movies,” said Barnes.“In any purge, he’d be the first to go. BUT…h
ow do you kill Jerry Lewis?”
“With a stake through the heart,” said Barnes.
“He’s a pretty needy guy.”
“An emotional…vampire.”
“He was born in the dark of the moon,” I said. “At…midnight.”
“In the shadow of a graveyard. And nobody was laughing.”
“Do you think he’s a lavender lad?”
“Him? He has a wife.”
“So?”
“Maybe the wife is…a beard.”
“What’s that?” I asked, though I hated to admit that I didn’t know.
“A beard is a woman who shows up as window dressing. Hollywood is full of them. Half of them are employed by J. Edgar Hoover.”
“Another vampire,” I said.
“Well, let’s face it–they’re all vampires, when it comes right down to it. If you pay attention to them, you can see it.”
“Wee,” I said, “I rather like Jimmy Stewart.”
Barnes wrinkled his nose. “He;s probably the worst one of them all. All that corny aw-shucks nonsense; that Pennsylvania accent. I’ll bet he’s a secret fiend–inspiring people to be weak and decent so they can all be rounded up. A Judas Goat. The worst kind of collaborator.”
“He was a war hero.”
“According to who? The perfect disguise,” said Barnes. He looked at me to see if I was shocked. I wasn’t, but he said “Ahh, but I’m only kidding.”
“Freedom isn’t free,” I said, sententiously, though my marijuana haze.
“You said it,” he said. “It’s all class A insanity, any way you look at it. Someday,” Barnes said, seriously, “They’ll come after you. Asking if you want to be a Judas Goat.”
A long silence ensued, which I finally broke. “OK. Suppose I accept your premise. So tell me…what do I do?”
Barnes considered. “You thank them very much. Tell them you need to think about it overnight. And then, the very next day, you wake up bright and early at 5AM, because none of those characters ever sleep, and you tell them that you’re honored by their offer. What you say next is up to you.”
“That’s helpful,” I said sarcastically.
“This is no joke,” said Barnes. But he smiled as he said it. I didn’t know what to think, and I told him so.
“If you don’t know what to think,” said Barnes, “then think of something else for a while.”
“Jane Russell. Va Va Voom!”
“A cheap tart.”
“Rita Hayworth.”
“A tawdry whore.”
“Dorothy Lamour.”
“Caught in a web of her own making.”
“Sophie Tucker.”
Barnes burst into uncontrollable laughter, which was infectious. “You’re a sick man,” he said, “but funny sometimes.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“Just remember–if you’ve got something to sell, then sell the hell out of it.”
“Amen,” I said.
“Enough about the news. Shall we listen to some music?”
I said yes.
“Are you hep to the jive?” said Barnes, and he put on a record called “Moody’s Mood for Love”.
In my heightened state, King Pleasure and Blossom Dearie’s volcalese sent me into a trance.
I had never much cared for popular music before, but from that day forward, Barnes could mark me down as an avid jazz enthusiast.
But I never smoked marihuana again. The initial experience p[roved harmless. But “Once, a philosopher. Twice, a pervert.”
So for going on eight days now I’ve been in the Intensive Care Unit–that’s what they call it, as though it might make you feel any better to be in intensive care as opposed to the good old ordinary kind–and the Doctors, as is their wont, won’t tell me what’s going on, but I have a pretty fair idea. Apparently, I died on the operating table–not once, but twice, and my heart sustained a great deal of damage, which would no doubt surprise Eddie Jr., who for many years has maintained that I do not have one. A heart, that is. Apparently, I don’t have a soul either, for when I “died,” I did not see a tunnel, or a funnel, or a bright light, or the pearly gates, or anything at all which matches the description of a traditional near-death experience. All I experienced was–not a nullity, exactly–a bright red clamor. No doubt the blood pooling in my brain. Thank G-d we don’t live under a regime of socialized medicine. I would probably be dead.
I’m a believer, as you well know, and my faith has been steadfast, though I’m well aware that prodigal sons tend to accumulate unearned advantages. What did the prodigal’s brother say? “Where’s MY fatted calf?”
I am glad that at least I have a writing pad to record my thoughts. A man can only sleep but so much, and if I had to watch ten to twelve hours of television every day, I believe I would go stark staring bonkers, if, in fact, I’m not already slightly nutty, and fit only for the Honor Farm at the Laughing Academy.
I recall one occasion when my wife was having a big party, and one of the servants, Margaret Tierney, an extremely elderly lady whom we employed as a housemaid and seamstress, was found dead in her room right in the middle of the festivities. I think that one of the guests had discovered her while he drunkenly barged in looking for a place to throw his coat. Fortunately, he had the presence of mind to inform Penelope, and, even more fortunately, her first instinct was to seek me out–not among our brilliant guests, but in my bedroom, where I had temporarily sequestered myself, as I had an enormous headache. “What do we do?” she said. She was understandably distraught.
I immediately knew what the course of action should be, though I made a pretense of ruminating over the matter for a long minute. “You’re quite sure she has passed away?” I said.
“No pulse. Not breathing.” Penelope had been a volunteer Candy-Striper at the Hospital. She knew her way around a corpse, so I trusted her assessment.
“You held a hand mirror over her mouth.”
“Yes. And she wasn’t breathing.”
“Then we do nothing for now. Let the party go on. There’s no profit in disturbing our guests.”
“But won’t we get in trouble?”
“What the Police don’t know won’t hurt them.”
“What if someone else goes in there and finds her?”
I considered this. I walked over to my dresser and took a shirt cardboard out of one of my pressed and folded dress shirts. I got a black felt-wicked pen and wrote on it, in big block letters, “MAID’S ROOM. DO NOT ENTER.” I then procured a thumbtack and went to the Maid’s room and posted the sign on the door.
I rejoined Penelope at the party which was proceeding in full swing in the main room. She gave me a wan smile and resumed chatting up some stuffy society matron who was a large contributor to the charity which I run, and I built myself a drink of Scotch with only the barest moiety of seltzer, and then settled into a nearby armchair to peruse my thoughts. It wouldn’t do to leave the Maid there all night, although I couldn’t come up with a better plan. On what pretext would we inform the police that we noticed her missing and went to investigate? I thought some more and decided that, in fact, we would have to leave her there. The pretext would be that she was quite regular in her habits and, when she didn’t come down to breakfast, I became concerned and decided to investigate the matter. I could plausibly inform the constabulary that I discovered her at 5:30 AM. Technically speaking, that would not be an utter falsehood. Or, at least, not a grievous one.
The Police, as it turns out, weren’t particularly interested in why an extremely superannuated live-in retainer happened to meet her demise in our domicile. The case was ruled as a natural death with no foul play; her distant relatives in Ireland who were her whole sole family were notified; we did the decent thing and paid for the interment, and that was the end of the matter.
It might have seemed unduly cold of me to have handled the matter in this fashion, but really–it was the party of the year, and what would have been the point of disturbing our guests? Had we done so, the death of Margaret Tierney would have been all that they remembered or talked about.
Years later, Eddie Jr. reproached me for the incident in a letter. He was eight years old when it happened, and, apparently, little pitchers have big ears. Apparently, he was standing in the doorway and listening during my strategy session with Penelope. Unbeknownst to me, he and Elizabeth Tierney were grand pals, and he would often bask in her wise presence for an hour or more. You might have thought, to have seen the two of them as she regaled him with tales of her girlhood in the Auld Sod, that they were grandmother and grandson. Eddie Jr. seldom saw his own paternal grandmother. She claimed, my mother did, that small boys gave her “a headache.” And I never pressed the matter.
Me, I hardly spoke two words to Elizabeth Tierney. Usually, these were “Good Morning.” The Maid was Penelope’s responsibility, and I made it early on my policy to act as the eminence grise of my household; but seldom, if ever, to interfere with any of the servants, except for the Cook, the Chauffeur, the Gardener, and the man who kept the stables and groomed our horses, a perfectly respectable Irishman and former jockey named “Little” Eomann Murphy.
I only mention him because he and Elizabeth Tierney were pals, and attended Church together. A practice which I heartily approved of. Of course, they didn’t go to the same Catholic Church as we did. They would trouble themselves to take the trolley into Irishtown and attend the St. Patrick’s Church there…while we attended the beautiful and far less humble Basilica of the Immaculate Conception.
2. UNTRUE PROVERBS
100,000 MEN AND 100,000 DOLLARS ARE NEVER WRONG.
THE DEVIL IS A HERO.
FREE WILL IS NEITHER WILL NOR FREE.
HUNGER IS BETTER THAN A LAUGH.
THE WORLD IS A PLAYGROUND WHERE MADMEN GROW DIZZY.
OK, we’ll call this one The First law of Urban Legends:
Dolts will drool over every wheezy conspiracy theory if you sex it up.
Like this one:
“Boys on the Tracks”- Two teenage boys killed in Arkansas by police who laid
the two boys on railroad tracks and said they fell asleep after smoking to
much grass.
Or this one: ca. 1967 there was this report that two students had gone
blind from ingesting LSD then staring at the sun….
Trouble is, the first incident actually happened.
Which leads us to sometimes ask, “What if the conspiracy theories are actually all true?”
But I’ll bet virtually nobody says this about the followers of the enigmatic Lyndon LaRouche.
Of course, the followers of Lyndon LaRouche believe that the Queen of
England is responsible for importing drugs into the U.S. I guess the
Luccheses and other mobsters were just taking her marching orders…
It occurs to me that if the Larouchites were serious about getting their
ideas heard, they wouldn’t call themselves Laroucheites. They’d call
themselves nuts. Your average aluminum-foil-hat-wearing lunatic has at least
30 per cent more street cred than your average Larouche soldier.
Where does all the money come from? IS the Queen of England funnelling vast
reservoirs of heroin-tainted lucre to the states in order to fund a bunch of
lunatics who CLAIM she is doing just that?
And who is that hooded man who’s staring at me through my window? He–
3. ANGER IS BETTER THAN A CHEAP LAUGH
Let us discuss the “laws” which white people believe pertain to Persons of Color:
The Law of Tokens: All Black men who wear suits also speak with perfect
diction.
The Ice T Law: If a Black man speaks with less than perfect diction, he’s
street smart.
The Law of Similars: All Black men, everywhere, unless they are unforgivably
“establishment”, are “down with the homies”, because they automatically
speak “the language of the streets”.
The Law of the Vernacular: What Black men lack in erudition, they more than
make up for in the imaginative use of their colorful argot, which, in many
respects, is preferable to correct (but staid) formal English.
Conclusion: The most harmful belief systems stem from unexamined
assumptions.
4. THE PEPPERMINT TWIST
Joey Dee & the Starliters’ “Peppermint Twist” from the album “Live at the Peppermint Lounge” beats out “Twenty Flight Rock”, though just barely, because of its utterly faithful adherence to all of the tropes of rock songs of the classic era (roughly 1954-1964):
1) Repetition
2) Lyrical inanity
3) Topicality, and, as a bonus,
4) a link to a popular dance craze; finally
4) an utterly slavish adherence to blues conventions (as in the opening phrase, “Welllllll….”)
Plus, as a bonus, we are given a cheesy organ vamp and some gratuitous shouting followed by an utterly wild guitar solo. And the whole thing clocks in at well under three minutes! What more could you ask?
5. THINGS PEOPLE PROFESS THEY LIKE, EVEN THOUGH THEY DON’T, REALLY
Sea salt
Bristishisms such as “Cor, blimey”.
Wal-Mart.
December 26th sales.
Service warranties.
Bonsai.
Supermarionation.
Ventriloquists.
Parrots.
Child actors.
The Old Testament.
The Atlantic Monthly.
Any folk music sung by toothless hillbillies.
Any folk music not sung by toothless hillbillies.
The Kama Sutra.
Yoga.
Jazzercise.
Gatorade.
Brainstorming.
Zinc lozenges.
Editorial cartoons.
Novels with false and lying narrators.
Orson Welles as genius.
Detectives with exotic handicaps.
Informal staff meetings
Presidential Pardons.
Presidential Libraries.
Tribute albums.
Ceremonial occasions.
Indian reservations.
G.E.D.s.
Hillbillies.
Coal miners.
Edward Norton.
Model U.N.s.
Debate societies.
Scrapbooks.
Mobiles.
Art made with construction paper.
Fingerpainting.
Precocious children.
Arthurian legend.
Mort Sahl.
Holocaust memoirs.
Dennis Miller.
Unpretentious, salt-of-the-earth Working-class Joes who will “give
you a piece of their mind” and “tell it like it is” with “the bark off”.
Very Special Episodes.
The idea of a Palestinian State.
Iraqi Democracy.
Carp.
Jazz.
Harvey Pekar.
The Four Seasons.
The 12 Apostles.
Ringo’s solo albums.
Post 1971 George Harrison.
Post 1972 John Lennon.
Post 1973 Paul McCartney.
Post 1976 Bob Dylan.
Post 1981 Rolling Stones.
Post 1977 Who.
Sherry.
The invariable scenery chewing of Al Pacino.
The now-classic slow burn signalling incipient violence of Joe Pesci.
British comedians who have achieved worldwide fame.
Political conventions.
Bilingual signage (in the United states).
The lack of bilingual signage (in foreign countries).
Jell-o and other gelatin desserts.
Boiled peanuts.
Diet colas.
Zoos.
Intelligent dolphins that bark and beg for fish.
American philosophers.
Bidis.
Brechtian alienation.
The plays of Eugene O’Neill.
The theatre of the absurd.
Dogme 95.
Surrealism.
Fran Drescher.
The NSC.
Reduced-fat muffins.
Carob.
Don DeLillo.
Giuliani as possible Republican nominee.
Aquaman.
Jai Alai.
Chinese Checkers.
Dachshunds.
Aloe Vera.
Cynara.
Trout Mask Replica.
Canned salmon.
Lesbian smooching.
Rainbow afros.
PVCs.
Vinyl Siding.
Microfiche.
Beards.
Bears.
Diversity.
Freedom.
Reggae.
Frank Zappa.
Cape Cod.
6. SIGNS THAT A MAN HAS GIVEN UP ON LIFE
Ramen noodles.
Perpetually bloodshot eyes.
Parroting Rush Limbaugh, etc.
Buying booze in bottles with plastic handles
Paying for sex
Getting a post office box (without owning a business)
Shaved head with a hoop earring.
Eating breakfast and lunch off a “roach coach” every day
Smoking BASIC cigarettes
Drinking Fleischman’s anything
Growing a moustache
Wearing pants that accentuate their gunt/gock
Having a gunt/gock
Letting their lawns grow out of control
Plates of food under the couch and bed.
The dumpster behind a fast food joint gets cleaned out more than their car.
They wear hats that say things like “#1 Grandad” or “I love to fart”
Wearing sweatpants in public
Empty fast food wrappers obscure floor of the car…usually passenger
front side.
Disney character/warner bros character/native american mirror art clothing
Elastic waist jeans
Wearing a batman/highlander 2 (I’ve seen both) letterman’s jacket or
some other such oddity that screams ‘Savers’ or goodwill in a non
ironic manner.
Black high top sneakers
Any high top sneakers
Waiting for the bar to open, standing outside smoking butts…on a
weekday…you don’t work there…
Buying more than $5 worth of scratch tickets per week (or month….)
Always, ALWAYS knowing what the powerball jackpot is up to.
Sleeping all day
Being on disability with an ailment of a dubious nature (ie ‘Pawtucket
syndrome’)
Old plates of food under their bed or in their room
Posting a personal ad on Craigslist (unless it’s for arranging
business trip/vacation away game etc)
Bare mattress with only a bedspread; no sheets
3 liter bottles of generic cola or other sodas in their fridge
Filthy home especially bathroom
Jorts
Beards
Claim they “hate people” in a general fashion
Garfield/Looney Tunes clothes
Crocs
Searching through trash cans for already-scratched scratch tickets
Breakfast at Burger King.
Mandals.
Having more pets than people in their life.
Blame their lack of decent paycheck on the fact that they are white
and not connected enough.
Swanson Boneless Pork TV dinner for lunch
Not cleaning up the cat puke right away because they’re hoping maybe
the cat’ll change its mind and re-eat it, saving them from having to
clean up.
People who only have one story. Generally involving how they were the
guy who put salt in the ocean.
7. DEATH
Death, or “Deathie” to his friends is the funniest thing going. It’s the ultimate banana peel on the road to all your foolish good intentions. Only think–you spent your whole life doing good and helping others and learning new stuff and providing warm, loving caring mentoring relationships and rescuing sick dogs from the animal rescue league and patting furry bunnies and eating a sensible diet and staying out of smoke-filled rooms and yet, no matter how good and kind you’ve been, death comes, and not only that, death is not kind…oh, no, my friend, death is not kind. Death is nothing at all. And you are nothing. And that’s all there is! Haw! Everytime I watch an old movie and see a dog I say to my wife, See that dog? That dog’s dead now. And then we’re both sad for a minute. And then we fuck. But it still doesn’t change the fact that THE DOG IS DEAD!!! Or perhaps we change the channel to PBS and watch a ballet. See that dancer? Pretty ballerina, right? GUESS WHAT!!!! SHE’S DEAD NOW! GAW HAW HAW!!!
Death is funny. Everything about it is a barrel of laughs. I wish more people could see that. Like, what’s with the maggots that feast on your putrifying flesh when you’re supposedly “at rest” in your coffin? “At rest”, ah hah hah, that’s a good one. Yeah, I always take a quick 40 winks and wake up refreshed ONLY TO DISCOVER MAGGOTS ARE OOZING OUT OF MY JELLIED EYE SOCKETS! AAARGH! GET EM OFF! GET EM OFF!
Hey, and another thing that bothers me about death is the organ harvesting–I don’t mind donating my fingers for science or whatchamacallit, but why should I give up my pristine liver and kidneys for some blotchy-skinned coma bum who boozed it up for 40 years and now expects my poor body parts to carry their weight for another 20 years of whoop-de-doo. WHY CAN’T I DECIDE WHO GETS MY ORGANS?? And for that matter, I WANT THE MONEY UP FRONT, SCHMUCKO!!
(This one’s for my British friends.) Oi! …and another thing about death that’s got my goat–anaerobic microbes! I say that if the wee daft fuckers don’t have the courage to attack me when I’m in a position to fend them off, they ought to have the bollocks not to fester in my guts after I’ve croaked and it’s no go the white blood cell count. Cor!
Oh, death, where is they sting? Or grave thy victory? Isn’t it funny that our bodies are 70 percent water and yet we’re afraid to get wet? And isn’t it downright hilarious that death is all around us and yet we’re afraid of the one thing which is powerless against us once it has finally claimed us and we go back to where we came from, free at last?
Thank you. You’ve been wonderful.
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