A Poodle's Take On Life: Animals Are More Subtle Than We Think.

            My dog barks.  All seven pounds of Bear the Poodle barks at any dog he can see through the screen door.  His barking has been driving us crazy, but lately there's been a real improvement in this behavior.  When he was younger he would bark relentlessly until the passing dog went beyond his boundary limit. Bear is a fierce and loyal guard dog.

            Bear's bark isn't so much shrill as it is explosive.  In his first year he would bark when we were deeply asleep.  He would bark  when a dog entered his zone-of-protection, which began at the house on the left  past the house on the right.  Or vice versa.  This bark would send us flying from the bed, sheets and blankets scattering.  "Wha..what...what?  What the hell?!!!".

            It took a few moments for us to collect our wits and in those few moments the temptation to drop kick Bear across the room was very powerful.  But we are not

dog drop-kickers.  We are not rolled up magazine hitters, nor are we stick-their-nose-in-their-booboos-and-snarl-BAD DOG BAD DOG! people.

            We are not electronic-shock-collar-users, we are not lock-him-in-a-box or exile-him-to-the-garage type people. 

            We're civilized.  We found that the best thing to do was to say "OW! THAT HURTS!"

or "YOU WOKE US UP!" because that's what is real, the blasted bark is like an ice pick into my ear drum.  It really hurts!

            Bear understands emotions, and he quickly understood this one, so his night time barking diminished to virtually nil, as did his day time screen door barking.  He does, occasionally, slip up.  In our neighborhood there lives a dog that is a mix of mastiff and pit bull.  The monster weights a hundred forty pounds.  When this Godzilla of brindled canine testosterone drags his master past our residence, Bear charges the screen door and lets out a single mighty "ROOOOFF!".

            Then he looks at us, a bit shame-faced, and we know that he's dying to do it again, just once, at least once more, but it would hurt his people and he doesn't want to hurt his most beloved humans.

            To stifle this impulse, he goes to the kitty's food dish and takes out a single piece of kibble and either eats it or pretends to eat it and drops it down the heating vent when we're not looking .  Then he returns to his spot and settles down.

            He does it every time.  He does it when he makes that penetrating detonation of a bark at the screen door.  He does it whether it's a passing monster or a sweet little Bichon or the prancing Pomerianian that is, in his opinion, a stuck up little asshole.  He looks an apology at us, he pushes his next bark back inside his wolf-like soul and he eats a piece of kitty kibble.  Or he hides it somewhere until we can't see him and he drops it down the vent.

            This is pure sublimation.  This is emotional sensitivity of a high order, and neurosis of classic Freudian nomenclature.  Our seven pound poodle, Bear, has learned to sublimate his atavistic impulse, the better to exist in society among people

he loves.

            Tell me, then, how deep is an animal's emotional life, how subtle are the registrations of empathy and love?

Bear's son Gabriel

            We hate that brindled mastiff, and we hate his owner even more, the asshole, strutting down the street with a hundred forty pound killing machine on a leash.  He looks like Reinhard Heydrich before the Czech Resistance blew him out of his armored Mercedes.

            The owner doesn't bother to clean up the dog's shit.  He leaves it steaming wherever it falls, huge as an elephant turd but without the earthy odor of grass and leaves.  It smells like bowel-processed Pedigree Lamb Cuisine, and believe me, that stuff stinks bad enough before it is turned into shit.

            So, if I could, I would give Bear a "get out of jail" card for barking at this particular combo but Bear would get a little confused if we took things to that level of detail.

            He's a dog, for god's sake.

            

A Review of TV Series FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

            FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS isn't about Texas high school football.

            It's about Texas high school football.

            I admit to writing this stupid/cutesy opening and I don't even have a good reason for it.  I suppose it expresses my surprise.  I expected a sports drama.  I anticipated a series about a scrappy low-ranked team overcoming its difficulties and moving on to the semi-finals and then the finals and then.....you know the story.

It's been done to death.  Underdog Triumphs Despite Impossible Odds.

            Peter Berg's masterwork about Americans at their best and their worst is way beyond football scoreboards.  The game dramas we're given, the playoffs and championships, are almost footnotes.  Do they win or lose the nationals? Yay!  Boohoo!  Oh well...the story moves on.

            In case you haven't heard, Texans have a local football culture like no other.  Its passions fill in the great empty spaces of the land.  It entertains, it distracts, it involves, it sucks people into its politics, it's a tornado and it leaves nothing untouched.

            It's serious.  The aristocracy of star players have perks beyond belief.  They are scouted by major college teams and the NFL looms in the background for a few  talented athletes.  The perks have to be within the bounds, so to speak.  There's no buying and selling of games and players (or, at least, there'd better not be). This adherence to the strictures of amateurism doesn't preclude assigning a virtual harem to the stars, the quarterback, the tight end, the wide receiver and so forth.  These guys stride the halls of school like gods.

            FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS  isn't about Texas high school football because it's really about character, relationships and community.

            The true star of this drama is a relationship.  The marriage of Eric and Tami Taylor is the spine of this narrative's skeleton.  It's the beating heart at the center of the town of Dillon, Texas.  Without the marriage of Eric and Tami, there is no story.

Actors Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton play their parts with such natural grace that their marriage should receive an Emmy.  It is one of the great marriages in television history.

            Eric is the new Head Coach of the Dillon Panthers.  Tammy is the high school counselor.  Their marriage is subject to pressures that would crush most commitments.  If Eric and Tammy can survive this alchemist's crucible, they will be peerless.  They will  be jewels.

            If they can't, they'll be another sad divorce that leaves behind a shattered family.  Their daughter Julie is at that age just before she starts to rebel and roll her eyes.  We need to wait until Season Three for the foot-stomping,  eye rolling and the whole alphabet of gestures of teenage contempt for adult restrictions.  Meanwhile, she's a nice cute kid with a training bra.

            Eric and Tammy have tough jobs.  If you think coaching high school football

Aimee Teagarden as Julie Taylor

is small time stuff, think again.  This is Texas.  Eric needs all the qualities of a drill sergeant, a general, a shrink, a priest and a politician.  He has to raise his voice and deliver a fifteen minute harangue to a team of wall-sized athletes until they are reduced to terrified little lumps of jelly, quivering on the locker room floor.  Or he can put his arm around a confused, demoralized quarterback, pull the boy's head onto his shoulder and choose the right words to unleash a deluge of tears.  He must puncture the macho armor of these arrogant teen prima donnas and make them, FORCE them, to live in the real world where they are not God's gift to women and football.  Creating better athletes is secondary to creating better people.

            All across the country, the name of Eric Taylor is being discussed.  He's a young, new coach, he's just emerging and he's the man to watch.  He may be next year's High School Coach Of The Year.  He's at the beginning of a career that may some day take him to the Super Bowl.

            Eric is, by nature, a man of few words.  At home, he's a firm

but gentle presence who doesn't make a lot of noise.  He's busy.  He's working, watching playback of games, evaluating his own calls and his players' moves.  He works ALL the time.  He lives football.  His wife understands this, she has grasped it from the very beginning of their marriage and rather than pout and grow disillusioned, she creates her own life.  She uses her own strengths and interests to engage the world.  She's a high school guidance counselor.  This makes her the equivalent of a prison warden and The Great White Hunter on an African Safari.  She is stimulated by challenge.  She is one of those goddess mothers full of lush strength, red-maned, sexy and very tough.

Connie Britton asTami Taylor

            What makes a marriage between two such powerful people function so well?

            Honesty keeps the marriage strong.  Tami and Eric are always honest with one another.  Even when they lie, they're honest about lying.  Neither is afraid to admit being wrong about an issue.  They support one another with unbreakable consistency.  If they have a fight, they cut through the bullshit, find the central issue, and look for compromise.  They don't resort to yelling and name calling.

            There are times when an irresistible opportunity appears before Eric or Tami.  The problem is, accepting the opportunity would require changes in the marriage or the family lifestyle.   One of them, Eric or Tami, is going to have to make a sacrifice.  Who is willing to see a lifetime dream fade away?  Who is wise enough to see that opportunity does NOT come only once in a lifetime? 

            The town of Dillon, Texas is neither large nor small.  It's like a town with a hundred thousand people that has been absorbed into the suburban sprawl of Houston or Dallas.  It has an identity.  Much of that identity is drawn from the supremacy of the Dillon Panthers.

            The power brokers, the mayor, the oil moguls and the owner of the Cadillac dealership are Panther alumni and sit on the board of the Booster's Association.

They know which strings to pull, how to schedule games to the advantage of the team, how to acquire players from other teams who might be Panther-killers if they're not brought into the fold.  They're the guys who play dirty, behind the curtain.  A little pressure, maybe some mild blackmail; it gets the job done and the team is none the wiser.

            It's amazing how much of the human condition can be collected into a single file cabinet with the same labeled situations.  There are aimless kids on drugs, there are abandoned old people, cheating husbands, bankrupt businessmen, pregnant cheerleaders, corrupt officials, natural disasters, infatuated teenagers going suicidal over a romantic setback....all these potholes in the road of life are much the same, no matter where you go.

            The things that can't be pigeonholed, that can't be stuck in a file, are the lineaments of character.  Which one of these people can overcome the temptation to shirk?  Which one can step up and make an effort to change?

            I ask, because I think Friday Night Lights is a narrative about that power in human beings, that ability to see their own trouble and solve the problem, and then move forward.  There will be another problem, and another.  No matter.  By the time Season Three begins, even the people we learned to hate have become different, better.  They are tougher, yet softer.  They have something that we all wish we had:

a supportive community.

            I was amazed, over and over again, at the way the people of Dillon turn to one another.  Coach Taylor's door is always open.  If the phone rings at three in the morning, he will answer it.  "I'll be right there," he says, sliding out of bed and looking for his pants.  If some sopping wet weeping teenager having  a crisis knocks on a door, there will be a soft place to fall.  A motherly hand is extended: "Why, come on in, sugar, you look awful, and you're just SOPPING wet!  What can I do for you?  Let's get you dried off."

            In my dreams I live in a place like that.  Dillon is special because Southern Hospitality is not only real but it includes everyone and it understands that shame is the enemy of communication.  As a community, Dillon expands its definition of humanity and grows like an amoeba to absorb shame so that being ashamed is not shameful.  Lying about the cause of the shame, THAT'S shameful, so it's better to unburden the heart, to come clean and let someone help you, someone with a wiser mind like Eric or Tami Taylor, or a hundred other people.  What's sad is that this

town is a television fiction but it gives me hope.  If someone can imagine such a place, someone can create it in the real world.

             

Bad Poetry Is Good

Pushkin recites. A painting by the great Repin

June 3, 2012

Only I understand my own poetry.

If I read another poet

and get to the end of the poem

without being bored,

that makes her

a good poet.  People tell me that William Butler Yeats

was a great poet but I'll be damned if I understand him.

There are poets who play games with words

in such a way that the poetry bends the wind so that it ties knots in itself.

Listeners are embarrassed at their lack of comprehension.

So they applaud, to hide their gullibility, and the poet goes on to become a great poet with audiences at colleges and books on shelves at stores.

Another kind of poet writes in plain English                    

but, god help us, the poems rhyme, or they
use words like Wind, or Clouds, or Geese,
or Mountains.

For god's sake write in plain English. Or French.  

Or Serbo-Croatian. 

Let's start again.

I love MY poems.  I love Pablo Neruda's poems, just because I do.

e.e. cummings?  Hey, come on.  What a goofball.  

And Bukowsky; that's as close to real as poetry ever gets.

Mary Oliver is obviously wise;

Wise poets fill me with envy.  I'd like to be wise and not just barking mad.

I don't read very much poetry.  There's such a to-do over it, but poets rarely get paid. 
Rich poets are always terrible.  It isn't about the poetry.  It's about the poet.  We need poets,

badly, desperately.  But we don't need poetry at all.  So I guess the best thing

is to be a poet who doesn't write. 

Just don't tell anyone about me.

A Writer Has A Lover's Quarrel With The Internet

           

            Internet and I were at a Starbucks and it was one of those weekdays at two o'clock when the place was quiet.  People were softly chatting at a couple of tables.  One young man, about seventeen or eighteen, typed quietly on his laptop.              Internet was in my Toshiba Satellite, and I pulled her closer so we could converse through the camera and speakers.

            "We need to talk," I said.

            "Those dreadful words, 'We need to talk'", mocked Internet.  "But it's true.  Things have been changing between us."

           Internet put a face on the screen.  It was one of those video game Lara Croft type faces.  I knew she was teasing me, but it revealed her anxiety.

            "Cut it out," I said.  "Use your real face...the one we agreed on."

            Internet changed to a convincing human visage.  She had red-brown hair and freckles and looked like a student at Cambridge or Oxford.  I've always been a sucker for smart English girls.  Internet was still teasing, though.  She was wearing round Harry Potter glasses.  She was trying to be funny, but they looked good on her and she didn't know it.

            We both started speaking at precisely the same moment.

            "Well...I, uh..."

            "You go first," Internet said, in her upper crust English accent.

            "We've been together a long time," I said.  "Ever since my first Mac Notebook."

            Internet appeared to shudder and for a moment there was a screen with little green battleships scooting back and forth.  Then she regained her "face".

            "It's me," she said.  "Not you.  I'm the one who's changed."

            "We've both changed, and it's good, it's great...," I said, "but something has gone away, something has been lost."

            "What?  What?  There's nothing lost.  My god!  Look what I can do now, look at the size of the files you can upload into me.  And, ....well...I can download into you..."  Her shoulders wiggled with a sensual shimmy.  "I love it!"

            "That part of our relationship has been better than ever," I said.  "Our...uh...connection speed has been fabulous.  It's uh...uh..."

            "What?  It's what?" She was getting impatient.

            "This is hard to say," I waffled.

            "Just come out with it!"

            "Okay, okay.  I think you've become all about money."

            "Oh bullshit!" Internet's face turned a shade more red.  Her complexion was already rosy, but I knew I had hit a nerve.  "I make money, you make money, everybody makes money on the internet.  What are you complaining about!  Come on, tell me the truth."

            "All right, all right.  It's kind of hard to explain....but I'm always confused now.  I don't know what the heck you're doing and it makes me feel...well...suspicious."

            "I have to change with the times," Internet said.  "You know that, everyone knows that."

            "It's true, but I feel like I'm walking through some of those sticky cobwebs that you keep brushing your head to get the stuff off but it never comes off.  I  don't know what's happening any more."

            My hand trembled as I drank a swig of lukewarm cappuccino.  It was all closing in on me; I felt confused and embarrassed.  There was a silence.  Internet looked guilty.

            I don't know why I blurted out the next words.  I had promised myself not to act jealous.

            "It's Google, isn't it?"

            Internet looked even more guilty.  "What do you mean, 'It's Google'?

            My mind was beginning to clear.  The cobwebby feeling started falling away from me.  "You've sold out to Google.  Everything is owned and run by Google.  There aren't websites any more.  There are web colonies that are being run by web empires.  Everything I post shows up on a hundred other websites.  I can't scratch my nuts without a link appearing on Facebook, Rotten Tomatoes or Twitter: Art Rosch just scratched his nuts.  Do you want to be his Friend?"

            Internet's face dissolved into chaos, then put itself back together.  Maybe the connection went down.  Maybe Internet was laughing.  There was a shadowy figure of Winston Churchill on Internet's forehead.  Down by her chin was the monster from "Alien" but it was quickly disappearing.  .

            "Okay, I have to come clean, get this stuff off my chest," she said.  "I've been bought up by a handful of corporations.  Tell you the truth, I don't know what's going on, I don't have a clue.  I'm getting new software thrown at me so fast, I can't handle it."  A tear slid down her cheek.  "I'm crashing all the time!"

            I barely heard her.  I was reflecting on the experiences of the last few weeks.

            "Tell me about it," I said, at last.  "It seems like every day I'm asked to join another social network.  What the hell is Pinterp?  Or Floosbock?  Like an idiot, I join them and the software is a complete mystery.  All I want to do is write books and promote them.  But everyone's got a book!  My inbox is ninety percent book promos.  What do I have to write to get people's attention?  Seems like it's all

Harlequin Romance Vampire Private Detectives With Occult Powers.  Good God!

There are fifty million writers trying to sell their first novel.  If you can't get an agent, that's okay, E-Publish your book and let Amazon sell it!  And that works out great, you sell maybe ten copies and the book sinks into the abyss of forgotten novels."

            "Calm down," Internet said.  "Things will work out.  We'll get through this glitch. I'll help you promote your books."

            Her eyes were cast down and then she looked up at me with her head still lowered.  It was a very cute look, very seductive.

            "You got anything to upload?  A nice, big, fat file?  Got a new manuscript?

I'd like that."

            It had its effect on me, I'll admit.  I was tempted. 

            "I've got a new draft of a novel," I said, with a straight face.  It's called 'FANGS OF AN EROTIC VAMPIRE WEREWOLF: A LOVE STORY.         

            Internet gave me a salacious grin.  "Ooh," she said, "that sounds juicy.  What fun!"

            I kept quiet.  At last I saw Internet's expression change.

            "Dammit," she said, "I almost fell for that!  Come on, what do you really have?"

            "I have the second draft of my sci fi/ fantasy novel, THE GODS OF THE GIFT."  bit.ly/n8ynWp

            "That's more like it.  That's 'you'.  Has it changed a lot since the first draft?"

            "Completely different book," I said.  "I'm really proud of it."

            Internet stuck out her tongue. "Come on, mister, what are you waiting for?"

            I opened a second screen in the upper corner of my monitor.  I found my page for THE GODS OF THE GIFT, hit the EDIT button and deleted the earlier draft.  

            "Here I come, baby," I said.  "I hope you're ready for this."

            "From you, anything," Internet replied.  "You're a fine writer.  You're an original."

            I moused over to the UPLOAD button and clicked.  My new draft was a blue bar that crossed a rectangular box.  Percentage figures rode along the bottom.  It took about a minute.  Internet's face was rapt.  Her mouth was half open and her eyes glistened. The blue bar reached the end of the box and the new draft appeared on the screen.

            "OH!" Internet sighed.  "OH! OH! You're right.  This is a much better book.  I know it's awful to be a writer. It even more awful to be really great and still get ignored.  I know it breaks your heart."

            I didn't say anything.  I thought about all the work, all the years I spent working on the craft of writing.  "Yes," I said at last.  "It breaks my heart."

            Internet was recovering her composure.  She had read the new draft and I knew she was proud of me.

            "Don't ever give up writing," she said. "Never.  You MUST keep writing.  This is amazing stuff.  There is nothing else like it."          

            I opened the page on my book blog and filled my monitor screen with the cover.  I looked at my design.  I looked at the starry cosmos and the elongated objects that resembled fiery colliding worlds.  It was a work in progress but it wasn't kitsch, it was faithful to the spirit of the book.  It was a really cool book cover.

            "Don't worry, babe.  I can't quit writing.  I'm not capable of quitting writing, no matter how much it breaks my heart.  To paraphrase an old motto," I said, 'You'll have to pry my keyboard from my cold dead fingers.'"

            "That's my man," Internet said. "I know I'll go on changing, but great art is timeless.  I'll be loyal to you, I promise."

            I couldn't quite make myself trust the promise.  It made me sad.  But it left room for hope.

           

            

Notes on Losing A Job And Being Scared Shitless

 Notes on Losing a Job and Being Scared Shitless

            What made me decide during my teen years that I was going to devote my life to creating "art"?  Music, poetry, prose, photography, if it was "art" I was going to do it and no one could stop me.  My parents thought I was crazy and put me in a psychiatric ward for eight weeks.  I emerged no less an artist.  The medications I should have been taking had been hidden in my lower lip and spit out the window, drifting down five stories to land in a sodden mess of other spat-out medications at the back entrance to the hospital.

            It was just what I had to do.  I didn't see any choice in the matter.  I was driven.  I wouldn't listen to my father's imprecations to "find yourself a profession and do 'art' on the side". 

            What?  Do "art" on the side?  Jeez, what did he think I was?  Some kind of dilettante?  I was going to be immersed in music, writing, etc for my life, every day of my life, 24/7/365/80something.

            That's what I've done.  I've arranged everything in my life to be an "artist".

I use these quotation marks because at this stage of my life the words Art, Artist, Creative, Genius, etc have been so devalued that I feel like a complete fool.  I can't explain what I really am.  I'm in late middle age and I'm still doing it. I fit the classic model of the "starving artist", the impractical beatnik hipster free spirit who lives outside the mainstream and survives as a free lance everything.

            I've had the perfect job for twenty six years.  It's a part time janitorial contract, It's about fifteen hours of work each week.  When I combine that income with a couple other cleaning jobs, I'm an independent man with a subsistence income.  That frees me to be the artist and writer that I am.  I don't know how to do anything else.

          I create.  I do the cleaning job on my own time, no one pressures me, it's physical work and my mind can wander through my artistic universe while I sweep and scrub.

            Then the property owner died and this perfect job died with him. I got thirty days notice. The letter arrived yesterday.  The dead man's heirs are hiring a slick professional firm of janitorial shysters who pick up Latino workers, put them in blue uniforms, pay them minimum wage and pocket the rest.

            You know the kind of sickening gut-storm that happens when you find out your lover's been cheating?  You know that feeling? 

            I feel like that.  A nice chunk of income worth $1100 a month has suddenly vanished. It was my largest contract. I don't know how I'll pay my rent, care for my wife, keep the internet broadband connected.  I still have some work.  Just a bit.  I'm 64 years old.  My feet are in chronic pain.  I've never worked for anyone else.

            I've had enough experiences in my life to understand that one of the most basic structures of existence is this: death and resurrection.  Getting fired is a death.  I await the new blossoming.

            I've been going through years of heartbreak.  I'll be honest.  No one wants to read about my pain; there's enough pain.  Who needs some obscure writer to dump more pain?

            I think I'm a special writer but show me a writer who doesn't think he or she is special.  Writing is a landscape of self delusion, fantasy, hope burning, guttering, rejection gathering, courage failing.  This is a tough time for writers.  There's a zillion grandiose twenty five year old English Lit and MFA graduates who want to hit the Great Harry Potter Roulette Wheel.

            I'm scared shitless.  I'm old, I have a lot of unmarketable skills, my wife is

disabled and my dogs are neurotic as Alaskan Armadillos.  What am I going to do?

            Here's where the leap of faith enters the picture: It Will Come.  I've been stuck in the most colossal rut for seven or eight years.  I've been comfortable.

            Comfort can be deadly to an artist.  I'm going to have to ride it out.  Already, I've applied for two writing jobs.  Wouldn't that be cool, actually being employed writing? 

I can do other people's work.  I can do it well.  I've done it before.  I was a ghost writer for six years for a celebrity photographer.  My ghost written articles appeared in People Magazine, Teen Beat, National Enquirer, a host of tatty rags.  I got paid by the hour.  My boss was seventy five years old, and he was a tightwad!  That fucker paid me minimum wage and threw in a pallet upon which I could sleep in his equipment warehouse.  The hitch was that he charged me a hundred bucks a month rent!

            I'm going to get less scared as the days pass.  I know this has happened and that it will turn out okay.  If it doesn't turn out okay, that's going to be a drag.

          What's the worst that can happen?  I always ask this question when things are rough.  The answer: the worst that can happen is that I can suffer horribly for a long time, intimately observe my mind and body disintegrating, and then die alone in a ditch.

          So, if that's the worst that can happen, what am I worried about?

           

CHAPTER ONE: CONFESSIONS OF AN HONEST MAN

                                          

 

 

                                            

 

 

 

Confessions Of An Honest Man

A Novel by Art Rosch

Copyright 2010

All characters in this book are either fictional or in the public domain.

 

 

     September, 1967.  Detroit, Michigan

          Aaron Kantro followed his colleagues through the labyrinth of the nightclub's kitchen and out the back door.  A waft of cool air hit his face as he stepped onto the concrete platform next to the loading dock. His sweat instantly began to dry and he could see steam misting from the other musicians' tuxedos.  It was the band's third break.  They would play one more set of forty five minutes.   Then their work for the night was done.         

          There were nine or ten people gathered around the rear entrance to the club.  They were either jazz fans who wanted to hang out or they were so loaded they didn't know how they'd gotten there. 

          A man with his shirtails dangling from his suit stumbled into Aaron.  "I wan' shake your hand," he announced.  He extended his unkempt digits and then pulled his hand away if to recalibrate his arm's trajectory.  Aaron, when he put his hand out to respond, felt like an idiot.  He put his hands in his pockets and hoped the man would go away.

          "I tell you somethin'", the man said.  "You play some drums for a white boy.  Some fuckin' drums.  I close my eyes, can't tell the diff'rence.  Sound jus' like a real drummer."  He tried again to extend his hand and stumbled across his own feet. 

          "Excuse me", a young lady said, as she passed between Aaron and the drunk.  She wanted an autograph from the legendary saxophonist, Zoot Prestige.  Aaron's boss transferred a cheroot from his hand to his mouth.   He leaned down to inscribe his signature into the lady's little book, while trying to keep his eyes averted from the cleavage that was so conspicuously thrust into his face.   Aaron noted this little drama and lost his anger.  Zoot Prestige was just too funny. Aaron quietly moved behind the imposing figure of his boss.  The drunk rambled away, talking to himself.

          Aaron was the only white person beneath the scalloped awning.  There were perhaps ten white people in the club.   It bothered him more than he would like to admit that he longed to see other white faces.  It had been his decision to play jazz, and his brand of jazz carried him to black clubs in black neighborhoods.  Sometimes, the moment he walked into a place, he felt the air freeze with racial tension.  Sometimes he was scared.  The only way through it was to play the music.

          As the little throng dispersed, Zoot butted his smoke in the sand of an ashtray.  He stepped off the concrete pad and walked across the lot towards his car.

          After waiting about thirty seconds, the group's organist, Tyrone Terry, followed the lanky figure of his boss.  Aaron waited another thirty seconds and followed his colleagues to the cream-colored Continental.  This precaution seemed a little silly but there were probably narcs in the club and Aaron had to admit that it was pretty obvious what was happening when three jazz musicians got into a car and didn't go anywhere.

          Soon the men were engrossed in the ritual of the pipe: lighting, inhaling, holding breath, exhaling.  It was cozy in the Continental’s plush interior.  Air came sighing through the upholstery’s leather seams as the musicians' weight compressed the seat cushions.  Zoot and his side-men were settling down, recharging their nerves for the next set, the last set.  It was one o’clock in the morning.

          "She wanted you to look at 'em," Tyrone said to his employer.

          "I know," responded Zoot, "but it seems so...I don't know...un-chivalrous to put my nose right into a lady's cleavage.  Besides, it's redundant.  I seen titties before.  Wan't nothin' special about hers...they's just...."

          BANG!  There was a huge sound, an explosion.  The men's bodies reacted instinctively.  They ducked, and their arms rose to cover their heads.

          The car lurched as a man dove across the hood, holding a pistol in his right hand.  His legs swam wildly as he fought to stop his momentum.  Whatever tactic he had in mind, it wasn’t working.  The car’s sheen and finish turned the hood into a sliding board.

          "Jesus fucking Christ!”  In the back seat Aaron cursed loudly without thinking.  He had never before heard a gun shot.  In spite of this fact, he recognized the sound.  It was rounder, weightier, and more final than the sound of a firecracker. 

          The man on the car's hood waved the pistol frantically.  Slithering to get his balance, he clutched at the windshield wipers and missed.  Gravity and car wax slid him across the polished metal until he landed on the ground.  The pistol fired as he hit the gravel.  The bullet penetrated a tire with a loud hiss.

          The man sprang up and disappeared among the ordered rows of vehicles in the parking lot.

          Zoot Prestige held a finger to his mouth, slid from under the steering wheel and dropped quietly to the floor of the passenger seat.  Zoot didn't want to get shot.  Zoot didn’t want to be a witness if somebody got shot.  Zoot didn’t want questions.  Zoot didn’t want any dealings with the Poe-Leece! 

          Aaron scrunched onto the floor of the back seat until his arm rested on the hump of the drive shaft.  Tyrone, on the other side, was hoping to disappear via the flawed logic of an ostrich.  He was pulling his little pork-pie hat over his eyes.

          A voice shouted, "I'LL KILL YOU MOTHERFUCKER!” 

          Two more shots were fired from the opposite corner of the lot.  Two sparking ovals of muzzle flash lit up the windshields of Cadillacs and Thunderbirds.  A man’s face appeared, pressed to the window of Zoot’s car.  His cheek was distorted against the glass, with an eye like a panicked horse.  His quick breath steamed the window only inches from Zoot's face.  With a slight turn to the right, Zoot became a virtual nose-to-nose mirror image of the man with the gun. 

          The enraged shooter didn’t see the human being an inch from his face.  He raised his snubby revolver over the top of the vehicle, fired twice without aiming, and ran to cover behind a black Eldorado.  The wind had changed.  The shots were barely audible.

          "Sheee-it!” Zoot grumbled, “I hope nobody messes up my short.  I paid three hundred bucks for this custom paint job.”  The immaculately polished car was long and sleek as a submarine.

          A voice shouted, "HEY LOOK HE'S OVER THERE!" 

          Bang bang bang! Flashes lit up the musicians’ faces.  Guns were all over the place.  Aaron looked at Tyrone.  The keyboard player had twitched and spilled a pipe full of burning marijuana into his lap.  He brushed and patted frantically to prevent embers from smoldering through the pants of his tux.  Thrusting his hands into his pockets he made a basket to prevent sparks from spreading onto the seat or the carpet. Aaron produced a handkerchief and helped contain the disaster.  Tyrone was feeling little stings of fire burning their way into his palms.  He was tossing the embers back and forth as he jumped and wriggled all over the tiny floor space behind the driver’s seat.  When the young musicians’ eyes met they realized that they had entered the realm of the completely absurd. 

          They began to giggle, as quietly as possible.  Tyrone managed to empty his lungs without breaking into a hacking cough.  The bodies of both men were convulsed with terrified hilarity.

          Aaron's legs were crossed on the floor of the back seat.  Zoot gestured with his fingers for the pipe.  Tyrone handed it to Aaron as he muffled his cough and put out the fire in his lap.  Aaron gave the pipe to Zoot through the space between the seats. 

          The parking lot was a bedlam of running, screaming people.

          Two men, fingers snarled in each other’s sport coats, rolled across the hood of Zoot’s car.  The metal on the Continental went ‘scroich! bunk!’.  Zoot winced and hid his face behind his hands.  The men vanished somewhere in the gravel of the lot, grunting and cursing.  A grey fedora with a black band lay on the hood for a moment before a stiff breeze carried it away.  Zoot elevated his head a few inches and tried to inspect his hood for damage.  It was impossible.  The windows were now opaque with steam.

          Zoot relaxed.  He sat with his face level with the knobs on the dashboard.  His wrists were on his knees and his hands hung loose in the shadow beneath the glove box.  He loaded the pipe and handed it to Aaron through the crack. 

          “Don’t strike no match!” he said.  “Use that thing.”  He pointed to the black knob of the cigarette lighter.  Each door had an ashtray and each ashtray had its own lighter.

          Zoot sniffed the air inside the car.  “I smell somethin’ burning,” he said.  “You cats makin’ barbecue back there?”  His voice was good natured and mocking. 

          Observing Zoot's total poise, Aaron and Tyrone hissed through their lips with suppressed giggles.  It was impossible to tell which part of the moment was funny and which part was terrifying.  The giggles and spluttering had equal components of panic and the hysterical disbelief of pot heads in a bizarre situation.

          Big cars roared to life and raced from the lot in clouds of gravel and fumes.  Sirens dopplered past, right on their tails, red lights whizzing through the intersection.  Crimson slashes of reflection lit up the Continental’s glass. 

          Then there was silence.  People stealthily emerged from cover, crunch-crunching across the gravel.  They ran for shelter inside the club.  The musicians straightened their bodies with the slowness of clock hands moving.  Soon they were sitting normally on the seats.  Zoot loaded the pipe, lit and inhaled.  He held his breath for a long time, and then exhaled an almost transparent cloud.  He replaced the pipe in a leather pouch, concealed the stash under the seat, and twisted his head from left to right and back again, loosening his neck muscles.  He was sixty-two, and a tenor saxophone had hung from his shoulders for more than fifty years.

          "Should we go back in and play?"  There was a squeak in Aaron's voice.  He made a few mock rolls with invisible drumsticks.

          Zoot looked at Aaron with a bare vapor of a smile, tolerant of his drummer’s naïveté.            "Why would we NOT go back in and play?"  The marquee lights of the street's clubs and bars glowed on half of Zoot's face, shadowing the other half.  This gave his eye a demonic glitter.  He wet his thumb and forefinger with his tongue and smoothed the hairs of his moustache. 

          "Let me point out something to you, babe,” said Zoot.  “We're professional jazz musicians.  We play music, and we get paid.  Rather nicely, I might add, thanks to my modest fame and the fact that I placed at number eight in Downbeat’s Tenor Saxophone category."  He paused for a moment and said with a trace of gloating, “AHEAD of Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz and Gene Ammons.”  He laughed a ripe and disdainful laugh.  The magazine polls had such appalling power to determine a musician’s pay level.

          Opening the door, Zoot brushed a tiny flake of ash from his tuxedo pants with a dapper gesture, and corkscrewed his six foot three inch frame upright.  The saxophonist made a quick but careful scrutiny of his vehicle.  He circled it, running the flat of his hand along its sculpted façade. There were no bullet holes that he could detect, no scratches.  The hood had resumed its normal shape.

          Tyrone and Aaron squeezed themselves out of the car.  Aaron closed the door delicately, with the barest of clicks, as if he feared the automobile would fall to pieces if he so much as breathed wrong.

            The world flickered.  The young musicians’ hearts raced, their nerves tingled.  They were playing a jazz gig with a famous saxophone player!  Zoot Prestige had apprenticed with Duke Ellington, he’d played with Charlie Parker.  He was a legend.

          Zoot straightened his lapels and moved his shoulders inside his jacket so the garment settled more squarely on his body.

          "That's right,” he added.  “We're hipsters, babe, we stay cool.  We got a paying gig, we play until the club owner asks us to stop or it’s two a.m."   Zoot's voice was like velvet and sand, Scotch whisky and smoke. “Long as the drummer doesn’t get shot.  Gotta draw the line somewhere.  Last drummer I lost was Bobby Beffords, in ’65.  And before that I had a good run, only lost two drummers in six years.  Course, I never had a white drummer before.  Everybody upset about that.” 

          He aimed a gentle look at Aaron, to check that he wasn’t being taken seriously.  His smile was full of irony and play.  He brushed a bit of ash from Aaron’s tuxedo jacket.  It was a tender, paternal gesture.     

          Fourteen drummers had come to audition when Zoot was putting together the band for this tour.  Thirteen of them were black.  Aaron was the third drummer to play.  As soon as he finished the tune, Zoot sent the other drummers home.

          He knew he would take a lot of heat for hiring a white drummer.  Fuck ‘em.  The kid was worth it.

          “Ain’t nothin’ unusual happening here, babe”, said Zoot.  “It’s just another gig, somebody’s old lady got too friendly with somebody else’s old man and things got ugly.”  The tall man shepherded his young friends toward the door of the nightclub.  “It’s human nature.  Why don’t we go inside and play some music to soothe the savage breast?  We’ll lay down some Recalcitrant Funk-itis."

          Zoot had just coined another of his classic nonsense terms.  Recalcitrant Funk-itis now joined the lexicon along with Groove-matic Ubiquity, Heliocentric Hot Sauce and other such crazy combinations from Zoot’s fertile mind.

          Tyrone pulled at his cummberbund to conceal the holes in the crotch of his pants.  The young men followed the urbane figure of their mentor back into the humid noise of Mickey Tucker's Jazz Corner.

TOTAL CELL PHONE BAN COMING SOON!

         

        The proof is in, and scientists have concluded that cell phones do indeed cause brain damage. Governments worldwide have stepped up their efforts to recall wireless devices at specified collection points. 

                This is, of course, a disaster for the communications industry. Accusations of bad faith have been launched at the big companies. The congressional moratorium on lawsuits and refunds has caused riots in American cities.

            Media commercials for cell phones have completely stopped.  The vast airwave dead time will currently be filled with inspirational music by Yanni and Clannad.  
          The Corporations need new products and it needs them fast.  Marketing execs are working at top speed to fill the void.  The most promising ideas are coming from the automotive industry.  Vietnamese conglomerate NGUYENGIAP is preparing a sedan with a sixty five inch flexible LED.   The screen and speakers will be seamlessly integrated into the vehicle by expanding the windshield and using software and GPS systems to drive the car without the input of a human being.  A steering wheel can be engaged at speeds below 15 MPH. NGUYENGIAP's design team has apparently pulled off a brilliant coup and finally merged the auto and entertainment industries.

UPDATE: January 2022

            The degree of emotional  shock was not anticipated when consumers were separated from their cell phones.  The most common symptoms are anxiety, rage and feelings of powerlessness.  Therapists aren't doing well in helping millions of shaken souls. Consumers have been going into fugue states.  They look into empty space while their thumbs tremble with greater and greater agitation.  Pfizer Pharmaceuticals is testing a medication to reduce these symptoms.  Consumers are also being provided with dummy cell phones to alleviate the effects of what is now called "Texter Reflex Muscle Memory Syndrome". TRIMMS.  Or just "Trim.     

            The dummy phones are programmed with several hundred generic messages, such as "See you at home," "Tht ws wild lst nite", "Is he cute?", "Did U DO it?", "Gt any E?", "My parents will be gone tnt", "Did yr doc sign yr pot ticket?", and so forth. These messages are randomly scrambled and appear on the dummy phone screens to provide the illusion that consumers are connected to their friends.  Strangely enough, users of these phones forget this fact and believe nothing has changed, that they are using fully connected phones.  This is now called "Object Belief Dissonance," or OBD.  The therapy has had mixed results, but since the killing of Yanni and the disappearance of Clannad, Pfizer has been given the green light by the FDA to widely distribute the new medication.  It will be marketed under the name Gontwich CR.

           

The GIAP 300SLD hybrid vehicle has sold well.  Unfortunately, the glitches in the  auto-sensors and self-guidance software have  caused "mishaps".  Firmware updates have eliminated 88 percent of minor collisions and 76 percent of fatal head-ons.  Rival designs from BMW and Mercedes are appearing on the market as of this writing.  The Mercedes Double Decker Home Theater Hybrid boasts  a whopping  62 mpg. It also has Picture-In-Picture-In-Picture.  Sales have been good.  BMW has matched this success with its clever Mirror 32ESL.  The vehicle features advanced autopilots and software. There is also a choice between full autopilot and manual driving.  Many consumers enjoy the actual process of driving and guiding a vehicle.  BMW has catered to this market and relegates the Big Screen TV to a cleverly designed rear compartment.  There have  been fewer fatal incidents among drivers of the 32ESL. 

            PacBell and other utilities were hoping for a resurgence of conventional telephone usage.  Unfortunately, the outbreak of the stuttering epidemic has forced utilities to put telephone innovations on the back burner. 

           Such treatments as aversion therapy and immobilizing the thumbs with modified cuffs has only intensified the issue.  Parents of adolescents are still, as they say, "talking to empty space", but statistics indicate there has been a five percent rise in direct eye contact among members of nuclear families.

            Hope always burns high that there will be a return to ancient modes of inter-personal conversation.  Rumors are floating about that Mercedes is bringing back a vehicle with bullet-proof transparent polymer windows that open and close.  Mercedes clings to its vision of a future where people greet other people in vehicles or engage in curbside dialogue.

            All of this turmoil may be history when Nokia introduces the ZeroRad Mini-Phone that has been designed to operate without the use of the dangerous selenium diode and other circuits that ramped up microwave emissions to one thousand times the minimum non-lethal dosage.  

            Nokia employee Jorma Kikkinen, the "whistleblower" who broke the radiation scandal is still being sought by authorities but is feared to have met with foul play.