The Wizard Of Mooch

Long ago in a far-away land a man named Frank Baum published a series of books intended, as he put it, “solely to pleasure the children.” Mr. Baum had a particular concern that kids’ books of the era were too violent in nature, and this was his attempt to combat the issue with gentler stories that included dismemberment, death by crushing, chemical warfare, an apparent acid-bath killing, and dognappings by creepy old ladies. Seriously, Frank?

As you may have guessed, the series was wildly successful, and in 1939 elements from several of the fourteen books were blended into a single script that became the film classic, The Wizard of Oz.

By far the most insidious aspect of the movie plot involved the forced servitude of a young girl who is coerced into doing the dirty work for a cowardly community. Before the town’s local authority, or “Wizard,” will grant Dorothy her wish to go home, she is required to commit a felony against a feared denizen of the realm.  It’s like having the DMV require you to steal a mobster’s prize limo before they'll issue you your learner’s permit.

The Wizard does not act alone - among his henchpeople is a “good” witch, who shares a secret with him: the girl already has her ticket home, in the form of a pair of snazzy pumps. Yeah, baby, take a gander! We’ll give you the password later. In the mean time, watch your back, cuz green witches can be nasty.

As is the case with most campaign promises, the Wizard reneges on his to take Dorothy home, after her deadly exchange with the western menace nets him a coveted broomstick. Having duped as well as traumatized the child (she inadvertently commits murder, in the third degree, it should be stated for the record, in the course of a burglary gone sour), the Wizard remains unmoved, having never had the power to grant her wish in the first place.

The charlatan’s true colors are finally unearthed by Dorothy’s Cairn Terrier (take care of your pooch and he’ll take care of you) as the outed mere mortal delivers one of cinema’s great lines: “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”

Well the curtain has once again been peeled back, this time by Mother Jones, and the wizard pulling the levers on the appreciative members of the Lollipop Guild goes by the name of Mitt. It is perhaps not the most elegant of monikers for a ruler manqué, but check out that committed jawline! And while I think most of us living in Munchkinland realize there’s a double standard in play across the kingdom, it’s still something of a eye-opener to find one’s self transported for a moment inside the privileged walls of the Emerald City to see what the secret mover/shaker society really thinks of the little people.

Even more revealing is the shocking ignorance of the insiders. Or is it that? Can these characters really be buying what their wizard is selling? Are they that hubris-engorged? Because after the stealth video hit the yellow brick road (having been sequestered since May) it took all of a couple of minutes for Mitt’s claims of the existence of a massive, hapless, militantly entitled parasite class to be debunked by those infernal fact checkers. Most damning of all was the fact that many of the described moochers were self-avowed Mittsters.

But does it really matter to the insiders what the truth is? Because Mitt could be up there singing to the Boca Boy’s Club, “Cut cut here, spend spend there, stash some money off-shore, ha-ha!” and it wouldn’t matter as long as he delivered the goods to these folks after the election.

Let’s cut the Bumpkins of Trailerville some slack, for these well heeled clowns turn out to be the most prolific moochers of all. An astute bean counter recently ran the numbers on one of Mitt’s chief monkeys, Sheldon Adelson. Most normal humans would be aghast at the amount of chips Sheldon has tossed onto the game table thus far, just as they can’t begin to imagine how much more he has in reserve. But more important than that, the amounts he’s tossed and may still toss at this election is not a donation to the cause of good governance. It’s a business investment. And if it pays out, it will pay out big time. How big time? He and his cronies will have bought the kingdom, and you with it.

That’s one thing the talking face on the wall understands. The Wizard of Mooch knows far too well how to take other people’s money and turn it into a comfortable living for himself and his ilk. It’s the only game he knows how to play. The rest is just big fat lips wagging, with a smoke effect thrown in for shock and awe. Which is why I’m hoping a tornado tears the House apart this November, and drops the debris on the Wizard of Mooch.

How To Survive A Zombie Apocalypse

Hard to believe it’s come to this. Never have I seen such a sorry group of simpletons, so undone by woozy bands of narcoleptic vegetation. Still, humans need sympathy and guidance, and I’m here for them. So let’s go over this so y'all can sleep at night without waking your Teddy Bears.

First let’s keep in mind while planning our zombie apocalypse survival strategy that the enemy is the easiest-to-outwit foe on the planet. There may be oodles of them, but they’re listless, limp-wristed, incapable of concerted planning, have a known Achilles’ heel (their spongy skulls), forgo weapons of any kind, are distracted by anything that so much as farts, and are motivated only by the occasional desire for a hot meal. Sure they want to consume you alive, but so do mosquitos, so lets get real.

The ineptitude of these half-dead meatbags is rivaled only by that of their sole nemesis, the hapless hillbillies of the Deep South. Were I a surviving member of that inbred contingent, this is what I hope would occur to me while I was busy stashing my beef jerky where no one else could find it:

To survive, I need potable water, food, shelter and clothing. Thankfully these items are a snap to acquire during a zombie apocalypse. Even so, the featured Mason Dixon misfits will hazard a trip into town for home pregnancy kits and hootch, while neglecting to pick up a fresh set of panty liners. Jesus, do they need a punch list? I’d trade Barney Fife and that bovine quack lush for a competent bean counter any day.

Every mall in America is full of the stuff these clowns need to survive, and they remain oblivious to the fact. That spousally abused doormat hasn’t changed her shirt since the series pilot. If you ask me, that’s why the zombies keep surfacing: they can smell her greasy tits from the next county.

A safe water supply is simple during your modern end-of-the-world scenario. Countless jugs of it have been bottled in the biggest retail scam of the century. A lifetime supply of designer H₂O is waiting throughout the nation at 7-Elevens, Super Stop & Shops, and in stalled trucks along the interstate. You can afford to be particular. Still feeling patriotic? Poland Spring comes straight to you from some landfill in God’s country. If your taste for the tasteless runs more exotic, there’s Fiji (we can forget about carbon footprints at this juncture). Got erectile dysfunction? Go with Jennifer Anniston’s brand.

In the time it takes to drown yourself in esoteric hydration, learn to sink your own damn well. I‘ve done it myself. Water is everywhere, flowing under your feet. But if you’re lazy as a zombie, by all means head to the river and collect it. There are filters that will protect you from the runs at Home Depot, which is now open twenty-four hours a day and has a great sale running right now: everything off everything. No coupon required.

Thanks to modern technology, enough hermetically sealed astronaut food has been prepared to keep you till you learn to fend for yourself. Here in the mean time are some ideas for what to do with your leisure time. Teach yourself to hunt, fish, and forage amongst the vast fruit and vegetable agribusiness tracts that will continue to self-pollinate for decades to come. You’ll probably find a lifetime of canned food in every town you pass, but you might want to augment your diet with some fresh stuff. Trespassing is allowed.

Learn to read. The library is open. Survival guides, subsistence gardening tips, how-to books of every ilk abound. Porn will require a special stop, but take heart. Zombies don’t get turned on by anything but a whiff of your sorry ass.

Safe shelter given the limited capabilities of zombies is easy, since every industrial facility in the nation is surrounded by structures designed to keep out more capable riffraff. You can thank Homeland Security for keeping such a tight lid. Which is to say thank yourself, taxpayer, for being so afraid of the boogeyman.

Zombies, as we have seen, can hardly manage the latch on a picket fence. You could set up shop in an ex-municipal utility fortress. These cocoons of capitalism are generally equipped with independent power generators that are easy to manage. All you have to do is make a run for diesel every month or so. Better still, drive a tanker onto the compound. Everything is free for the picking during a zombie apocalypse. Frankly I’d welcome a zombie apocalypse, and by the looks of the recent field of presidential wannabe’s we’re halfway there.

Proper communication is important. Fortuitously easy forms of communications are everywhere, though TV humans still can’t seem to keep track of their own shadows. What they need to do is get to a Radio Shack and pick up some walkies. Add rechargeable batteries and solar chargers to the order and you’re good to go. Here’s the great thing. You don’t have to fork over your family history to complete the transaction.

This should all be fun. Instead, non-walkers insist on splitting up, getting lost in their back yards and flipping cars as if they’ve never driven before, which is all hillbillies ever do, all the time, usually while swilling Jack Daniels. Makes you wonder what the “Walkers” would call them if they had minds as sharp as a possum’s. “Tards” would be my guess.

Shall we talk self-defense? Seriously? Because this show should be called “Toss Me Another Clip, I’m Batting A Thousand.”

The Deep South is riddled with gun shops. Just Google “ammo” with your crosshairs on downtown Atlanta. The hits will obliterate the map. Oh, that’s right, Internet is unavailable during a zombie apocalypse. Thankfully, zombies don’t read, so pick up a copy of the Yellow Pages next time you set out in search of self-enlightenment in the middle of the night, douchebags.

Regarding transportation, need I say it? You want a Maserati? The keys are in the ignition. In this case though, a Hummer might finally make practical sense. One caveat: your fuel supply will start to sour in a couple years unless you plan ahead a little. In any event you have time to learn how to get around in some other fashion down the road. Bikes abound. Horses used to work too. You’re Southerners. Mount up.

Much is made of the fact that zombies can only be killed with a head wound. But it’s clear their bodies are eminently wreck-able, and respond to the same physical affronts we do. Break a zombie’s legs and it becomes a pile of pulsing guts on the lawn, hardly any more a concern than the gator out back in the community pond. So lighten up, folks. These aren’t the Taliban you’re facing here.

I would eschew the shotgun, which is bulky, carries few rounds, and is really loud. Plus the kick can bruise a gal’s shoulder. No, this is a silly TV weapon designed for guys who come up short in the caliber that counts. A better choice would be a small handgun that is either silenced or makes little noise (22’s sound like a kid popping his gum), is easy to carry and will do the trick without alerting the Michigan zombie contingent. As for the crossbow, listen Tonto, whatever blows your loincloth up. The guy and his lone arrow? That’s not a weapon, that’s a fetish.

Also useful when you get those pesky large batches of trespassers are high-speed automatic weapons, for mowing down hordes of zombies when they respond en masse to a random noise like a helicopter fly-by. The Uzzi is superb, and there are many others of similar merit (check out FPSRussia on YouTube for entertaining suggestions). The spoils of a single gun shop should keep you in business through the current zombie hunting season.

Speaking of helicopters, I really don’t care who was flying it. What caught my attention was how he caught the zombies’ attention. They headed for his exhaust note like guppies for flake food. But we’ve always known this about them, and the hillbillies keep forgetting, popping off their weapons during target practice, no less. Here’s a thought, Gomer: drive to the other side of town for your GI Joe exercises, and the Zombie Tide will start heading for Vermont at two miles per hour while you double back and “hunker down, cuz ’ats whut hillbillies do, in the Everglades or whichever swamp you feel comfortable sweating like a damn varmint in.

Let’s steel ourselves with the knowledge that zombies only need to die one more time, so think of it as a carnival arcade game to knock off the waddling duck population while you reconsider the meaning of life. I can see you’re struggling, what with all the sexual tension (looks like Southern gals will bed down with just about anybody) and the mixed feelings you have about staving in the head of what used to be Grandma. It is kind of poignant how you ache for new human contact, only to torture and kill it whenever it shows up. I guess no one can be trusted with one’s feelings in a zombie apocalypse. Hey, what’s that acrid smell? Could it be the stench of hack writers trying to teach us a lesson about human nature?

We’d like to root for you goobers, but you’ve got to shake this morose attitude. Stop hoarse-whispering about your lack of choices, Barney, which is hillbilly code for "I feel compelled to always make the worst choice available to me." And clean the zombie shit off your face. There are ladies present, but that's not how to get laid.


Admit it, y'all: you still have it better than most of the Third World. They’ve got real problems, and they tackle them with far more equanimity than you at your bucolic countryside estate. For everyone’s sake, start behaving like adults.

J Lo Dislodges G-Spot

(fabricated news inspired by the pop icon) 

Jennifer Lopez suffered what doctors described as a severe dislocation of the vagina while on location filming her latest music video at the Acropolis in Athens. According to eyewitnesses, during a particularly challenging set of high-speed abdominal undulations something appeared to go awry, and the sexy singer/dancer/kind-of-actress/retailer/talent judge dropped to the ground writhing in what was later interpreted as agony.

A crewperson in charge of the wind machine had a clear view of the mishap from nearby. “One minute she’s going at it like a Jack Russell in heat. The next she’s in a ball on the ground holding her whatsit. After a while we start to think something’s up, so I go over to see if I can help out and she clocks me! At which point she’s on her own as far as I’m concerned.”

A medevac unit airlifted Lopez to a private airport, where she was then transported by chartered military stealth bomber to the Hospital For Special Patients in Manhattan. There Dr. Herman Hyman, chief admitting surgeon, was the first to observe her condition.

“Vaginal lateral percussive dysplasia. That’s what I’m calling it. Never seen anything like it. Everybody pretty much knows where a vagina goes. Hers wasn’t anywhere near there. Never seen anything like it before. I might’ve said that already.” He made the decision to call in a specialist group from the Mayo Clinic headed by Dr. Harold Kuntner.

“I’m not sure why we were brought in, actually. This isn’t usually our sort of thing, though Dr. Hyman and I were fraternity brothers in med school. When we heard of the unusual circumstances, the team and I agreed to come have a look-see.”

The surgical team requested copies of the video to aid in their diagnosis. “We were told the incident had been photographed by three separate high-speed, ultra-high-definition cameras, and we were anxious to get our hands on the footage. In fact the hospital conference room was packed for the screening, as there were a lot of staff members hoping to gain some insight into this rare condition.”

A hospital administrator who requested anonymity described the sequence. “It was stunning.  The patient wore a shear gold lamé toga hemmed just below the crotch. Gorgeous. A satin ruby sash was cinched at the waist. Nice Detail. Period-style sandals with braided leather straps rising above the knee. Absolutely to die for…"

Dr. Kuntner interjected, “Technically the traumatized area was covered, but we got a pretty good peek at what was going on. We continued to review the footage until we heard the nursing staff was waiting for us with the patient in the OR. I’m not sure we learned anything from the screening, but I feel it was the right decision to make an effort."

“I’ll never forget what I saw up on that screen,” commented maintenance worker Herbie Hind, who’d happened by the open door of the SRO conference room. “I had to be by myself for a while after that. I used the room where we store all the mops, by the slop sink.”

Lopez had been attempting to nail a particularly demanding section of the eagerly awaited companion video to the song, “I Got Something I Think You Want Boy, So Come Get It Quick Before It’s Gone.” She’d enlisted the talents of the legendary choreographer Miss B for the project. Miss B, still visibly shaken by what he’d witnessed, agreed to speak with reporters.

“Hon, ain’ nobody shakes it like my sweet Lo. We wanted something super special for this video. I mean it’s the Acrapolis and all, birthplace of love goddesses and whatnot. I went way deep on this one. Anybody on the planet gonna pull this off, gonna be my girl J. I guess she just wanted it too bad. Oh my. To think of the ironicness of the title now.”

Miss Lopez was on the operating table for seven hours as the surgical team worked to relocate internal organs wrenched out of place by what might have been the most physically demanding dance sequence attempted since Beyonce’s “Put A Ring On It”.

Miss Lopez is said to be recuperating at an undisclosed location more fabulous than could be provided by the hospital. Says Dr. Kuntner, “I think the procedure was a success. We’ve never done anything like this before, so we’re playing a wait-and-see game right now. And I'd wait before I took a look if I were you.” He added that what the mega talent needs right now is plenty of R&R. “Obviously any kind of sexual activity either real or theatrical is out of the question.”

“We’re all pulling for a quick recovery so we can finish up the video,” said J Lo’s long-time agent and confidante, Tina Lola. “Naturally, we’ll only let her do moves she’s comfortable with. We’re already reworking the choreography, and the search is on for a body double to handle the more rigorous stuff, which is going to be the real challenge. We might need three or four different bodies to give us a good match for all the featured parts. I don’t know where we’ll find another signature backside like that, though. We’re presently in negotiations with James Cameron's people to see if a computer generated J Lo would be the more cost-effective way to go."

Rumored current boyfriend and back-up dancer Casper Smart, when asked to comment about Miss Lopez’s current condition, had this to say: “Naturally my main concern is for her health and well-being. But if things don’t turn out to line up jus’ right and sh*t, I’ll be needin’ to get me my sumpt’n from somewhere’s else real soon, aw’ight?”

Reality: What A Concept

It must be really hard for a conscientious TV programmer to come up with the next bright idea, one that blends the poignancy of the human condition with the piquancy of zero-cost production value.

I’m here to help. Here are my ideas for shows that haven’t been tried yet. Nope. Nothing like them that I’ve ever seen. Most of these you could shoot with your iPhone and air by the end of the workday. All you need are maybe two college interns that come with their own cars and petty cash.

Paul's List of Bona Fide Blockbusters:

All America is Lip-Syncing

Dust Bunny Hunters

Wait, I’m Going To Cry Any Second Now

Real Morticians of Reno

Top Grocery Clerk

Extreme Leisure Addicts

Polka Planet
Fridge Contents Gone Bad

Returns Desk Altercations

Out Of Control Quadriplegics

Jigsaw Puzzle Wars

Mom Is A Cheese-aholic

Thirty Minutes To Waste

Survivor: Akron

Guy Versus Another Guy

Look Who Plays The Kazoo!

Race For Last

Myth Believers

Pimp My Chest Of Drawers

Fattest Man Standing

World’s Most Monotonous Jobs

Laid-Off Lumberjacks

Battle of the Network Has-Beens

Junk Food Chef

Outdated Records Elimination

Undercover Amnesiacs

Library Detective Stories

This Old Condemned Rattrap

Useless Garbage Road Show

Picnic Mayhem

Reptile and Amphibian Whisperer

Celebrity Napping

Skip That Challenge

Emergency Locksmiths

Bad Weather Avoiders
Really Crappy Mechanics

Parking Lot Sagas

Some Couple With No Kids

Following Eric Estrada Around

That’s A Woman’s Job

Tool Shed Tinkerer

Obscure Historical Accidents That Turned Out Okay

Caught On Security Cam Minding Their Own Business

My nod for celebrity judges for any show that needed them would be that stutterer from Iron Chef, the ghost of Farrah Faucett Majors channeled through John Edward wearing the orange swimsuit, and needless to say, anyone who's fabulously gay.

The End of Us All

I find myself daily deluged by supporters of the “America Is Awesome” movement. We are, its rabid supporters froth, the most greatest country on the Earth in every which way, and if you don’t think so you’re a commie socialist and should leave forthwith.

This flies in the face of all empirical evidence, not the least of which is the pap we nightly choose to ingest on TV.

The guys who maintain my building (we live in a co-op in NYC), a great bunch, by the way, despite the fact that they are to a man Yankee fans, were filling me in on what passes for awesome entertainment these days. While I consider Louie the pinnacle of fine art (and not just because I draw a paycheck from the production company), I was told that what I really should be watching is The Walking Dead. I tried to explain that neither zombies nor any other iteration of raving preternatural creatures compels me to tune in. This includes all manner of superheros, even those played by Robert Downey Junior while he’s clean and sober.

Nothing in the manner of childish fantasy gore attracts my interest. Aside from their mandatory requirement to feature thick strands of hanging drool, I find it a sad commentary on the American fetish with the sickeningly banal. Dexter? Eat me. Or rather, please don’t.

But no, seriously, this zombie show is way different. It isn’t about zombies so much. It's more about, you know, like,  serious human emotional stuff, when the zombies aren’t hot on the scent of a raw meal. Oh… well then.

After the lecture concluded, I walked outside and was immediately presented with the image of a bus plastered with ads for The Walking Dead. Then another one. The second bus was accompanied by a running commentary from a young couple walking ahead of me. The male was waxing euphoric over what a remarkable series it was. I nearly severed his Achilles tendon to get a clean listen of his review. The female said it was incredible how totally excellent television had gotten in recent years, and to support her argument she had a fine ass.

Perhaps I was missing something. I looked again at the bus, now stopped in traffic. I saw words used to describe the show. Words like “Powerful” and “Provoking” and “Powerfully Provoking.”

The words all had one thing in common: they were cloaked in quotation marks. Here’s another word dressed up the same way: “Bullshit”.

Whose words were these? The words of network flacks, of course. I went home after these visitations and Hulu’d the only show available (zombies rule  Internet streaming), the Season 2 premier. It was an hour of gross hokum dressed in grisly production value. Which didn’t stop me from passing the virus along. My wife was the next victim, and from there it was a wave of genetic retribution.

We ended up watching Tivo’d shows at Deb’s sister’s home. I was amazed we all endured the carnage. A fifteen year-old was allowed to attend, and I was there too. My cheap-seat commentary would normally be enough to clear a room.


We’ve since seen everything that has aired to date. It's all nauseating, to say the least. Not to mention incredibly stupid, which cannot be mentioned enough. Incredibly stupid. It would shame me to say I wrote for this show all the way to the bank.

The atavistic attraction is inexplicable unless you look up the word "atavistic."  I occasionally find myself drawn to closer inspections of road kills, and I'm always sorry for it. There is no respectable reason to watch this show unless you're working on a doctoral list of every way to kill a person from the neck up and wish to check your list off against this benchmark.

What can zombies do? They can do whatever their metrosexual authors desire them to do. If required to be clueless, lethargic lawn ornaments, that is what they will be. If they need legions of bags of protoplasmic ooze to silently materialize out of thin air, loaded to the gills with highly attuned feral senses, they will oblige. They will take just as much time to level a barrier, be it of cinderblock or cellophane, as is required by the featured humans to decide on the worst possible choice of retaliatory action.

And the humans? Their antics are even more noxious to swallow. They manage to incite unfounded empathy in the worst of us even as they act in ways more disturbing than an over-baked Winnebago full of Pennsylvania pigskin coaches.

The show’s first Jump-the-Shark moment (were I a shark I would need a bigger ocean) comes way too soon in Season 1, when a despicable hillbilly (every human in this show is reprehensible enough to deserve a sickening on-camera death, particularly the hillbilly sheriff, who insists on wearing his Dudley Do-Wrong costume no matter how entrail-caked it becomes) who really deserves to die, so he’s left to do so by his compatriots, he handcuffed to a thin rod on the rooftop of an Atlanta building (in this world there is only Atlanta and the woods), with nothing to comfort him but his military training memories and a conveniently placed hacksaw.

Given the choice of hacking through the rod (piece of cake), or perhaps the handcuffs (harder, but doable, a cop friend tells me),  he chooses a third option: the removal of his own hand, thus providing a more compelling visual for us to return to after the station break. 

The hand is all our remorseful rescue team discovers, after having risked their dubiously calculated lives to save the rat-bastard. Which means he’ll show up again down the road, like a bad penny, or Newt Gingrich. Count on it.

Confessions of an Up Home Country Boy

What follows is a review of a review of a song entitled “Barefoot Blue Jean Night”.  Said music reviewed by the dyspeptic, bed-wetting reviewer Ben Foster. His diminutive piece can be read here:

http://countrymusicreview.net/2011/05/10/jake-owen-barefoot-blue-jean-night/

Here's to bad behavior repeated ad infinitum

If there’s one thing I think all Americans can come together on, it’s that there’s nothing so deliciously cheesy, so self-referentially anthem-driven, so eminently mockable as Country Music. To label a “Nashville” song derivative is to accuse the sky of being blue.

Toss a couple of indigenous ingredients in front of the wind machine: simple-minded pride and home-grown pick-ups, backwoods babes at beer-sodden barbecues, faithful dogs and the holy wurd. Package in Tony Lamas, fire up the wind machine and hit the slo-mo button. Time to review the lessons our Momma done taught us.

We breathlessly tune in and pretend these affected crooners are yodeling about their own lives. Yes Carrie, I feel your formulaic pain as you sidle across the salt flats in a gait lifted from some NYC catwalk. Gotta love the pipes on that gal, though, and the gams are fine too, funky stride notwithstanding. What’s her wagon train hitched to? Why Mr. Paisley a’course, his Fender plugged into nothing in particular. Be still, their cheatin’ hearts.

As a biblical sage once observed, “There is nothing new under the sun,” and he figured that out a couple millennia ago. So do we really need another ballad defending the simple virtues of country living? Or a wailing lament from the same honey-throated honky-tonker who can’t wait to hightail it out of his or her  pissant town?

No sir, nor do we need the observation of some crayon wagger who figures one hillbilly template has finally been tapped for good. Seriously, guy? I was just plain befuddled at the level of derision slung at a song I’d recently listened to a whole bunch of times in a row because it was so dang catchy and the girls was so spankin’ hot. Please do check out “Barefoot Blue Jean Night” y’all!

All I was looking to do was find out if Jake Owen did his own water stunts. What I googled into was a hissy tirade by a wannabe kritic with a mess of personal issues. Maybe he’s got a thing about hygiene, as Mr. Owen does seem to go light on the shampoo. And I think he spat at me during that first stanza too.

But our writer guy is disingenuous to argue that his is not a personal attack ignoring the fundamentals of legitimate criticism, and he protests too much by defending the indefensible to every comer calling him out. Finally, his school girl use of emoticons makes any man with a pair want to puke his guts. Yup, I speak for everybody past the age of fourteen everywhere, Benny boy.

It most certainly is about right and wrong, son. Get your process right, or take up the juice harp and feel free to show us all how it’s done.  ;)

This Great Nation

I was sitting in my car waiting for the Enterprise carnival barker to finish his insurance pitch to my sister-in-law. She’d just been t-boned by a clown from the Bronx who’d taken issue with her having run a green light on him.

It turns out her car was drivable, but she’d only discovered this after the grease monkey the Keystone Cop forced her to use (the responding officer must take charge of the accident scene, I was told by the precinct ticket-taker, despite the fact the other driver, a male, got to call AAA) boosted it onto his flatbed, effectively robbing a traumatized woman of her transportation, the thieving putz.

It further turns out resetting a car deactivated by airbag deployment is a cinch if you know which buttons to push, but then the towing company, whose owner in all probability is porking the sister of a Lake Success gumshoe, would be out three hundred bucks in extortion fees. So Tip Top Auto Body of Garden City Park can kiss my cash-only ass (and as a side note, one should avoid any company that insists on calling itself some literary form of “Super Duper”).

Prices exclude taxes and surcharges

Ditto public servants who do what they can to flee the scene of an accident so they can score Krispy Kremes while they’re still hot. I look forward to the next crank call from some public servant making six figures plying the seatbelt infraction racket, as he solicits funding for his PAL T-ballers.  I’ll gladly pass along Tip Top’s number.

So I’m sitting there, a handicap space directly to my left, when an SUV the size of Oklahoma pulls into it. Well let’s see what kind of ailment we have here, I’m thinking.

SUV is an acronym for “sport utility vehicle,” not the kind of thing you’d expect to be piloted by an edema-sodden invalid. I strained to get a look at the driver through the smoked glass. She looked to be in her mid thirties and was affixing the requisite tag to the rearview mirror. Hey, maybe she was short a limb, having lost it in a violent shopping spree. Maybe she was allergic to asphalt. Maybe fuck her, the lazy bitch.

I’ve become sensitized to this scenario. The plenitude of this prime real estate would make you think handicappers outnumber healthy Americans. When the slots do get occupied, they rarely go to actual victims of poor health. More often they’re commandeered by the kind of assholes who make this nation a legitimate terrorist target.

She hopped out of her Cadillac Escalade, went to the rear side door and occupied herself with something out of view. Hey, maybe she was assembling her walker. Maybe her osteoporotic grandmother was folded over in the cargo area. Maybe… She picked something up and moved with no sign of an asthmatic condition past the front of the car. At that point I could see she was toting an infant carrier with normal effort. Clearly nothing wrong with her twat.

Newborn in tow, our handicapper trotted into Red Hots Spa. Hey, maybe she had a skin problem that made her emotionally unstable. Maybe without the ameliorative effects of that parking spot she’d feel compelled to toss her offspring into a pond and bolt for the nearest Equinox. I certainly can understand the urge to throw someone into a pond.

I looked back at the tag hanging from the mirror and then noticed a sticker lower down on the windshield. Ah! NYPD. There was the answer. The wife of a cop felled in the line of duty, dunked by too many donuts. Case closed.