June 24, 2006

SUPERJEW BATTLES LAUGHING SCHMUCKO (Part One)

Clark Klutz is sitting in the newsroom of The Daily Forward, composing an article on the Ten Best Jewish Singles Bars in Mineola when Lois Latke walks over and sits her skinny butt on his desk.

“Clark, our editor, Perry Weissman, wants to see you in his office.”

“Uh, uh, Lois, I have two tickets to the new gangster movie, “Burglar on the Roof” and I was wondering if you’d like to…”

“Before you go any farther, I have to tell you that my heart belongs to SuperJew and I could never be happy with a rundown dreck like you.”

She stands up. “Get a new suit, you bum, and try working out in the gym a little bit.

“Look at you, with your fat gut hanging out of your shirt, and all greasy! You look like a chopped liver sandwich that’s been standing in the counter too long.

“Women want money, and what have you got to offer? If I get involved with a moron like you, instead of shopping for Perla lingerie at Harvey Nichols in London I’ll end up tying a knot in my cut-rate knickers that I bought on Brighton Beach Avenue.

“Nobody loves a poor Jew.

“With SuperJew, money is no problem. He can dive into the ground and emerge with a huge rock of gold, or crush a piece of coal in his hand until it turns into a diamond. Heck, if SuperJew wasn’t such an ethical person he could open up the U.S. Mint like a can opener and fly away with all the money, and the government with all its artillery and atomic bombs wouldn’t be able to stop him.

“SuperJew is a real mensch.” She walks away.

"Uh, uh, thank's for the advice, Lois."

Clark walks into Perry Weissman’s office. Weissman is sitting at his desk, chewing a cigar. “Well, it took you long enough, you schlemiel. What, did you stop by Grey’s Papaya for another hot dog?”

“No, Chief.”

“Well, that’s what your shirt looks like, ya putz! AND DON’T CALL ME CHIEF!”

“O.K, Chief.”

“Lissen, I got a tip that The Falasha Bagel has been stolen from The Metropolitan Museum of Art.”

“You mean the ten-foot, solid gold jewel-encrusted bagel that was discovered in King Solomon’s Mine and formally presented to Mayor Bloomberg on Israel Independence Day by the last Chief Rabbi of Ethiopia?”

“How many gold bagels are floating around New York, you dork?” Perry Weissman raises his eyes to the sky. “I must have been meshuganah to hire you for a cub reporter!”

“What is this cub reporter jazz? I’m forty-seven years old.”

"Did I say 'cub reporter?'  What I meant to say was 'schlub reporter.'  But where can you find a sucker who's willing to work for $400 a week?"

"Money isn't everything, Mr. Weissman."

“Anyway, get your fat butt over to The Metropolitan Museum before Page Six gets wind of it, or they’ll scoop us again.

“And no taxis. Take the subway if you can still fit through the door, fatso!”

Clark Klutz runs, huffing and puffing, out of The Daily Forward, muttering, “Fatso, huh? I’ll show them!

“This is a job for SuperJew!”

He runs down to the subway, but instead of going through the turnstile, he runs to a deserted part of the station and, when he is totally alone, he yells out in a very loud, clear, Chuck Scarborough-type voice:

“JERUSALEM!!”

And, in a flash of blinding light brighter than ten thousand menorahs, the fat, greasy, nebbishy schlub is transformed into the rock-hard superhero who is the dream of every woman in Jew York City, his blue and white, caped superhero suit bulging with thick, rock-hard muscle. Flying back up to the street, he ascends to the heavens like a sidewinder missile, and in a second is streaking above the bustling metropolis.

People raise their eyes, transfixed.

“Look, up in the sky!”

“It’s a duck!”

“No, it’s a schmuck!”

“No, it’s SuperJew!”

SuperJew! Faster than a personal injury attorney. More powerful than a Reuben sandwich. Able to jump subway turnstiles at a single bound. It’s SuperJew!

Disguised as a mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, he magically transforms himself into the Man of Steel to fight the forces of evil and defend Truth, Justice and the American Way!

Born on the planet Kreplach, SuperJew was just a baby when somebody put meat and dairy on the same plate, initiating a nuclear reaction that tore asunder the planet’s crust and caused the population to perish in an eruption of red-hot, molten borscht that engulfed every man, woman and child on the planet, but not before his parents put the baby in a rocket and sent him hurtling into the heavens.

The rocket crashed to earth one summer night on the beach at Coney Island, where it was found by an elderly couple, George and Martha Klutz, who took the baby home to Bensonhurst and raised him as their own son.

Young Clark quickly learned he had extraordinary power not enjoyed by other boys. He found he could fly and run the hundred yard dash in one second. Instead of playing with toy cars, he played with real cars. He learned he could see through walls, causing him to spend many hours hanging out outside the girls’ locker room at the Brighton Beach YMHA.

Elderly George Klutz urged his adopted son to hide his gifts in order to fit in better. “If people see you flying around Brooklyn, you’ll never get laid,” he advised. “The only job you’ll get is working as a moving target at the Shoot The Freak attraction at Coney Island.

“Take my advice: if you want to fit in with normal people, you have to behave like a moron.”

Clark took his father’s advice and behaved like a goofball, and was very successful. But one day when she was walking home from the Gristedes on Macdonald Avenue, his mother, Martha, had her handbag stolen by a junkie, which so enraged her that she bought some fabric and sewed Clark his first superhero suit.

“Go out and fight crime,” she told him, “but keep it under your yarmulka.”

On that day a legend was born.

As SuperJew zoomed through the stratosphere, he was amazed to hear a voice calling from behind him, “SuperJew, wait up!”

He instantly stopped and turned in mid-air. The voice belonged to a muscular young man in a black body suit, a black overcoat and black Lubavitcher fedora. The young man pulled up to SuperJew and the two conversed in mid-air.

“SuperJew,” said the young stranger, “I’m here to apply for the job of your superhero sidekick.”

“I don’t recall placing an ad.”

“Please, you have to let me come along. I have no place else to go.”

“One thing arouses my curiosity. Where did you learn to fly?”

“I was doing anthropological research among the black Jews of Zimbabwe, who are the descendents of Jewish traders from Aden. When I came down with malaria they fed me a secret potion derived from the secretions of a small frog. One night, while I was suffering from delirium, I was attacked in my bed by an army of fire ants who bit me all over my body before my friends could save me. Miraculously, the combination of the frog venom and the fire ant venom cured me and gave me secret powers that I was able to harness by studying the kabbalah.

“I want to use those powers to protect the Jewish people, but I don’t have any superhero experience, and I need somebody to teach me the ropes.”

“What do you call yourself?”

“Well, my real name is Hymie Furtzwangler but I call myself Mitzvah Man.”

“Mitzvah Man, eh. That’s pretty cool. I like the alliteration of it, Mitz-vah Man. Mitzvah Man. That’s real professional. Let’s see what you can do.”

“Here, check this out. See that bird?” All at once one of Mitzvah Man’s long sideburns, or payases, shot out like a tentacle, wrapped itself around the bird and, curling around and around itself like a yo-yo, retrieved the bird to Mitzvah Man’s hands. He released the bird and it flew away.

“Far out!” said SuperJew.

“Also, my hat is like a buzz-saw Frisbee. I can fling it at an attacking Korean ICBM from a distance of a thousand miles away and it will slice the missile in half and return to my head like you see it right now.”

“You look pretty muscular, too.”

“If you think this is good, you should see the Hebrew National salami I'm packin' in my superhero tights.”

“Do you have a day job?”

“I sell cameras at D&H Photo on West 34^th Street.”

“I hope you’re not one of those religious guys I see hanging out in the parking lot smoking reefer when I pass by there.”

“SuperJew, there’s nothing in the Jewish bible against smoking pot.”

SuperJew reflected on that. “True, true. Kid, I like your spirit. Look, I’m not making any promises. You can tag along for the case I’m working on now. We’ll take it day-to-day.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Anyway, we’re wasting time talking here. We’ve got to get to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mayor Bloomberg is waiting for us.”

“Wow, the mayor!” exclaimed Mitzvah Man.

The two superheroes flew off side-by-side.

When SuperJew and Mitzvah Man arrived at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they found Fifth Avenue blocked off with police cruisers, their lights flashing, and the museum ringed by a cordon of police in riot gear.

A burly sargeant blocked their entry at the door. “You can go in, SuperJew, but not this guy,” he said, gesturing at SuperJew’s unfamiliar new partner.

Mayor Bloomberg emerged from the entrance at that moment. “It’s all right,” he said to the cop, who stepped aside and saluted smartly.

SuperJew said, “Mayor Bloomberg, I’d like to present my associate, Mitzvah Man.”

Mayor Bloomberg said, “Any friend of SuperJew is a friend of the Jewish people. However, we’ll have to postpone the introductions. We’ve got a major crisis on our hands!” The mayor led the two superheros to the Ethiopian exhibit. “Sometime during the night a thief broke into the museum while the guard was on his break and stole the Falasha Bagel.”

“How is that possible?” exclaimed SuperJew. “The Falasha Bagel weighs ten tons of solid gold. A thief would need to use a wrecking ball to punch a hole in the wall and a construction crane to steal such a massive sculpture.”

“Maybe it was an inside job,” suggested Mitzvah Man.

“Mayor Bloomberg continued, “And just to add insult to injury, “Look at this piece of junk the thief left in its place!”

On the Doric marble column where the Falasha Bagel once took the place of honor now rested a crudely constructed papier-mache parody of the famous objet d’art.

The mayor reached into his pocket and withdrew a piece of paper. “This note was pinned to it. It’s addressed to you, SuperJew. He handed him the note.

SuperJew read the note out loud:

SuperJew, the joke’s on you

But in the end the world will see

The joke’s on all humanity

SuperJew put the note in his pocked, saying, “I’ll have this note analyzed and it’ll provide me with the clues I need. This crime, rather than being a simple crime of greed, seems to be the work of a deranged individual.”

Mayor Bloomberg said, “Whatever the case, you must retrieve the Falasha bagel in time for The World Bagel Festival, which starts next week. All of the world’s great bagel tasters will be here for The Bagel Olympics, and we need the Falasha Bagel for the opening ceremony.”

“We’ll certainly do our best, Mayor Bloomberg.”

“That’s not good enough, SuperJew. In a time of trouble and turmoil, when country is pitted against country and race is pitted against race, humanity needs a unifying symbol more than ever. Thy the ancient Ethopian Jews, who are the inheritors of King Solomon’s wisdom, chose the circular shape of the bagel to bake their bread, to represent the universality and interconnectedness of the human race.”

The two superheros watched, transfixed, as the mayor, normally a serene man, spread his arms and spoke passionately, like an evangelist exhorting his flock. “Why do you think the bagel, unlike any other form of bread, is first boiled before it is baked? To unify the four classical elements of the natural world – water, fire, air and earth.

“But there is a fifth element that is represented by the hole in the middle, and that fifth element is love, and the universal brotherhood of all mankind!

“So go forth, SuperJew and Mitzvah Man, and retrieve me the magical Golden Bagel of Ethiopia.

“And don’t forget the cream cheese.”

And inspired by the mayor’s words of wisdom, the two Jewish superheros lifted up out of the gallery and into the sky!

SuperJew and Mitzvah Man on the attack!

[TO BE CONTINUED]

Tags:   None

© All rights reserved.

Posted on 6/24/2006 ( Permanent Link )
Read 454 Times
 Send to Friend

  0 COMMENTS ON THIS ENTRY

June 18, 2006

HOW DO I LOATHE THEE? LET ME CUNT THE WAYS.

The philosopher Marshall McLuhan once compared modern society to a car driver barreling along at 90 mph while looking through the rearview mirror.

He wrote this at a time of comparatively primitive technology, when computers were the size of a house and a transatlantic telephone call had to be reserved in advance. Still, social philosophy was at that time relatively liberal compared to the reactionary thinking that prevails today. If McLuhan were alive today he might change his observation to say that we are traveling a thousand miles per hour with the windshield totally blacked out.

Modern age has totally put the lie to the old adage that form follows function. Just to cite an example, the rock n’ roll of the fifties and sixties developed because musicians and recording engineers were inspired by new technologies to stretch the limits of art. A sterling example of this stretch might be seen in the films of Michaelangelo Antonioni like “Red Desert” and “Blow Up,” and music of the Who and Pink Floyd who attempted to expand the content of art to exploit the new technologies.

But then, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future. The reactionary classes, threatened by a new culture that considered them irrelevant, and new social democratic politics that they feared would cost them money, mobilized the working classes, whom the artistic elite had not even bothered to consider at all, to mount a ferocious counter-offensive against anything even remotely reminiscent of modernity.

The reactionary onslaught is so ferocious that even athletes are not exempt from it. Any athlete who profits from the new training technologies and technology to break through barriers is now immediately suspect of being “on something.” That’s all you hear from these morons: “This guy’s on something.” “That guy’s on something.”

One night years ago I did a comedy routine at the Tripple Inn on West 54th Street. I had a very good night with the audience. After my act I went over to the manager, who was standing at the bar.

“How’d you like that?” I asked him.

The prick gave me a sour look and sneered at me, “Whaddaya, on something?”

Story of my life, folks. I hate to tell you how many comedy bars I have been thrown out of because I wasn’t traditional (read: shabby) enough.

So I am in the tank and a lifeless idiot like Seinfield, with all his stale shit about bagels and can’t get a girl, is worth a hundred million bucks. Sure I’m pissed off.

I have a cousin, a regular moron. He posted an interview with himself on the internet saying that the reason he decided to become a “conservative” was that he wanted to find a way to differentiate himself from all the West Side Zabars liberals. That’s how he literally put it.

How’s that for the philosophical underpinning of social consciousness? Later for Socrates, Cicero, the Renaissance, the Reformation, Rousseau, Voltaire, John Locke, the French Revolution, Victor Hugo, Zola, Charles Dickens, Upton Sinclair, Marx, Freud, Einstein. This pineapple elected to become a reactionary because it would differentiate him from the old liberal bubbies and zaydies who stuff their faces in Zabars, would make a regular Marlboro Man out of him.

This genius even wrote a book, called “In Praise of Nepotism,” about how great it is to be born rich. This fantastic original concept tanked right out of the gate like an old nag.

When it comes to promoting an atmosphere of destructive reactionism, last year’s insults are old hat. Pat Buchanan and his vile language used to be considered cutting edge but he was elbowed out by Bill Reilly. The current champion in the make-me-puke sweepstakes, the bulimic, hatchet face phalangist bitch Ann Coulter, never hesitates to smear people with terms like communist and traitor. If she were a man, she would definitely be in danger of having her teeth knocked out, so the very person who has no compunction about labeling somebody a coward is, in the final analysis hiding behind her own weakness and frailty in an age when really cool women are bodybuilding and boxing. If she were really as tough as her rhetoric, she should at least be able to back up her vile language with muscle against the legions of tough, liberal women who would surely love to get their hands on her.

Ann Coulter amazes people by her vehemence. I have heard the question posed, “Why is she so angry, a woman who grew up in Connecticut in the lap of luxury and never had to endure any kind of adversity?”

The answer is obvious – she is a fascist, who would not be out of place in fascist Spain of Milosevitch’s Yugoslavia, an Axis Sally who would love nothing better than to operate a concentration camp like the fat broad in Lina Wertmuller’s film “Seven Beauties,” torturing prisoners and drowning them in vats of shit.

The obvious conclusion about these fascists, or “conservatives,” is that they are not motivated by reasoned thought or even ideology, but by visceral violence, the need to punish a victim.

The right is painting itself into a corner by the inflationary expectations of its rhetoric. Once the public internalizes the rhetoric of “traitor” and “coward,” the parasitic demagogues who make a living from inflaming the public discourse are going to have to become even more extreme in order to have an impact. They don’t have that much wiggle room left, and eventually, like Milosevitch in Yugoslavia, they are going to have to start calling for civil war and police repression to meet the expectations of their audience. If the situation continues to deteriorate in Iraq, as it certainly must, those events will play into the hands of fascist demagogues.

The most laughable aspect of the extreme right is its defiant attitude of rebelliousness. Their edgy attitude in defense of the establishment enables them to strike a pose, as Madonna would put it, in defense of a power structure whose rallying cry is “no new taxes,” or rather “no taxes at all.” Some rebels!

What’s pernicious about it is that they portray themselves as being under siege by the liberals. Any time a liberal happens to object to the agents of reaction, reactionaries, who are remarkably thin-skinned considering the insults and invective that is their daily diet, react with alarm and dismay. It’s like; we’re not supposed to talk back.

They particularly detest George Soros, whom they consider to be a traitor to his class for funding left-wing initiatives. According to their primitive logic processes, if you have money you are supposed to align yourself with the reactionary class, and it is particularly galling to them that Soros funded the Michael Moore move about Bush and supports legalization of marijuana, the marijuana laws being a convenient weapon for the right wing to wield against liberals just as it used to be against Mexicans that they wanted to deport.

Where all this is going, I do not care to predict in this article, except to say that ancient Rome degenerated into civil war at the height of its wealth over issues that might seem laughable to us today.

Tags:   None

© All rights reserved.

Posted on 6/18/2006 ( Permanent Link )
Read 461 Times
 Send to Friend

  0 COMMENTS ON THIS ENTRY

June 15, 2006

MUNDIAL DE PATOS!!

Los australianos ganaron porque saltaron como canguros en las cabezas de los robots japoneses, que habían roto los huesos de los coreanos a golpes de kárate.

Para los mexicanos, después de haber bebido un litro de tequila, cavaron un túnel permitiéndoles entrar en el gol de los iraníes sin que la policía iraní se diera cuenta, en el momento de salir preguntaron al portero, "es que llegemos en Los Ángeles?"

Los americanos perdieron el sentido de la orientación debido a problemas con su satélite geoestacionario que controla su GPS.

Marcando un gol botando la cabeza de un infiel, los saudíes aprovecharon de sus alfombras volantes para volar sobre los tunecinos, que habían debido parar el juego cinco veces para hacer sus oraciones.

Los suizos hicieron una pausa para regular sus relojes mientras que los franceses intentaron sacar los pans francés del culo.

El equipo Trinidad y Tobago intentó fumar el césped, pero cuando los holandeses les han ofrecido una mota mejor, tuvieron que posponer el juego.

Los ingleses no tenían animo debido a la mala comida, y los italianos se han visto obligados a volver en la cárcel a 18h.

Y los brasileños, que tienen siempre dificultades a seguir siendo tranquilos un momento, persiguieron a las mujeres en la muchedumbre, arrancándoles sus biquinis, antes de declarar la guerra al argentinos que, a su vez, intentaron comer el balón.

Tags:   None

© All rights reserved.

Posted on 6/15/2006 ( Permanent Link )
Read 748 Times
 Send to Friend

  0 COMMENTS ON THIS ENTRY

June 15, 2006

MONDIAL DES FOUS!

Les australiens ont gagné parce qu’ils ont sauté comme des kangourous sur la tête des robots japonais, qui avaient brisé les os des coréens à coups de karaté.

Pour les mexicains, après avoir bu un litre de tequila, ils ont creusé un tunnel leur permettant d’entrer dans le but adverse sans que la police iranienne ne s’en aperçoive, au moment de sortir ils ont demandé au défenseur, « Est-ce qu’on est arrivés a Los Angeles ? »

Les américains ont perdu le sens de l'orientation à cause de problèmes avec leur satellite géostationnaire qui contrôle leur GPS.

Ayant marqué un but avec la tête d’un infidèle, les saoudiens ont profité de leurs tapis volants pour voler au dessus des tunisiens, qui avaient dû arrêter le jeu cinq fois pour faire leurs prières.

Les suisses ont fait une pause pour régler leurs montres pendant que les français ont essayé de sortir leurs baguettes de leur culs.

size="4">

L’équipe Trinité-et-Tobago a essayé de fumer la pelouse, mais quand les hollandais leur ont offert une meilleure herbe, le match a dû être reporté à plus tard.

Les anglais n’avaient pas d’énergie a cause de la mauvais nourriture, et les italiens ont été obligés de rentrer in prison a 18h.

Et les brésiliens, qui ont toujours du mal a rester tranquilles un moment, ont poursuivi les femmes dans la foule, leur arrachant leurs bikinis, avant de déclarer la guerre aux argentines qui, à leur tour, ont essayé de bouffer le ballon.

Tags:   None

© All rights reserved.

Posted on 6/15/2006 ( Permanent Link )
Read 471 Times
 Send to Friend

  0 COMMENTS ON THIS ENTRY

June 03, 2006

PAULETTE'S REVERIE (Excerpt from 200motels novella "A Symphony of Fear")

Paulette regarded herself critically in the full-length mirror of her bedroom, still trying to decide if it was absolutely essential for her lingerie to match her street clothes. Nothing was more essential for her than to be perfectly put together even when walking her dog (though she couldn't remember when was the last time she had actually walked him herself) or rushing for a quart of milk at the Korean deli. As far as she was concerned, a thoughtlessly composed exterior betrayed a person's inner confusion, and a poorly attired person was not to be trusted in other, more important aspects of life.


Her hair was a radiant explosion of natural shades ranging from light brown to golden blonde. She had gotten the idea from a magazine photo of a quiche that she had observed while waiting her turn at the beauty salon. Her nails were two-tone raspberry and silver, with the raspberry color exactly matching her lipstick. Her eyelids were purple, exactly matching the little purple flowers on her French push-up bra and panties. Her make-up was applied with amazing subtlety. The natural look, as it was called, the desired illusion being that no make-up was being worn, and that the perfect complexion, betraying just the first blush of sexual awakening, was the woman's natural state. She took a quick inventory of her assets with the same attitude of invincible entitlement as that of the Rock Hudson character in "Giant" when overlooking his oil wells. Breasts, legs, buttocks, arms - perfect. "Son, some day all this will belong to.." Belong to whom?!!


All this perfection was more than any man had a right to expect. To Paulette's way of thinking, American women had broken through a barrier of physical desirability that had left their males holding the bag, so to speak. First of all, women didn't have all those superfluous muscle groups, which were essentially useless in the modern world. A lower intensity of training, combined with precision surgical enhancement, was needed to bring a woman to her peak of perfection, while men were having to waste precious time and energy to arrange all that mess into something resembling order. Sure, a man could eventually build himself into a pale imitation of what nature had intended for him, but what would he be then? Some kind of a useless, statuesque eighth wonder of the world, a Schwartznegger unable to run around the block for fear of tearing a hamstring, incapable of employing all that useless muscle mass to a useful end, which might involve a ripped bicep or glute.


She winced at the thought of it. Man was a beast of burden, a throwback to an earlier stage of evolution, an anachronism. When life was elemental the world needed men to do all the nasty, brutish things: carrying, building, killing. Life was all about getting and keeping the products of the sun's energy - meat, plants, organic objects. Then economies became more refined and the sun's energy came to be symbolized by money. Instead of trading eggs for a knife, you sold them for money and bought the knife. Still men had been useful.


But into today's electromagnetic world of energy impulses, what good were men. Instead of going out and catching reindeer, they had been reduced to going out and capturing digital pulses, which could be just as effectively done by women, or even children. Every week there was another story about a kid who broke the bank on Wall Street. Some of those kids’ video games were being used to train fighter pilots. Men had come down a lot. Their inability to keep their obsolete bodies in tune was killing them off and they were leaving their money to - women!


Paulette was certainly well-heeled! She had inherited all her daddy's money. All those years of him sweating, grunting, stealing and chiseling, until at the end his whole life could be summed up by some little handbag clasp that he had been able to bring in from China for a quarter. The warehouse filled with boxes of useless peaked caps that he had finally liquidated for six dollars a dozen so that they could travel half-way around the world only to get hijacked by some gang of thugs at the Estonian-Russian border, ending up on the head of a peasant kid in Khirgistan, all the rays of the sun which had started off as plant life, eaten by dinosaurs, putrified into petroleum, refined into polyester, woven into fabric, sewn into a Saint Antonio Spurs hat and sold for dollars which were now zeros and ones in a computer account with her name on it!


Paulette fell into a rapture of contemplation. She would never have to break a nail. She had a job, if you could call it that, as a real estate agent showing East Side apartments to star-struck out-of-towners. This career Paulette had planned with meticulous precision. No way did she need the money, but is was a prestige situation, the cream of world society practically on their knees, begging for a Manhattan pied à terre, ready to kiss her firm, gently rounded butt in Macy’s window for the chance to get gouged for a dark, cramped cubicle on the East Side for a couple of seasons. Then their country’s currency would collapse and they would be forced to return to Malaysia or St. Vincent, freeing up the apartment for the next wave of happy wanderers.


Yeah, Paulette was in the driver’s seat. She was like a sheep shearer, standing at the airport terminal gate along with all the other New Yorkers, clippers at the ready for the next load of out-of-towners who would run through, sheared clean, and sent right back through the “Departures” gate. The process would have run much smoother if everybody just stayed home and sent their money in. A micro-diagram of the world economy at the time of this story might look like this: imagine a pool table built on a slant with only one pocket at the bottommost corner. That pocket could be labeled New York, because all the balls are going to end up there anyway. It doesn’t matter if you came here or not, because your money was damned sure going to end up here no matter what happened!


The mayor, whose names was Keynes, gave an interview shortly before he took his midnight flight to Montevideo. He was asked to reflect on the city’s historically ongoing housing crisis, to which he had contributed as mightily as anybody else in history. “Of course they’re flooding in!” he exclaimed with a magnificence of spirit that only the grandest of thieves is capable of marshalling, and which had endeared him to New Yorkers for years, even as his larcenous nature stuck out in plain sight, “Where the hell else are they going to go?” Nobody in New York can live on his salary. There is always stealing and chiseling involved, right up and down the food chain. That is why New Yorkers are such humorless fucks. Everybody is only thinking about eating, about capturing a little part of the sun’s energy. If New York City had a national animal, it would be the seagull, which is a totally humorless animal. When was the last time you saw a seagull laugh? That most maritime of birds would rather steal than catch his own lunch because you get a double whammy, you eat without working, which is every New Yorker’s dream. The way Paulette had it figured out, all she had to do was sit tight, keep things down to a dull roar, and let Pops keep figuring out her investment strategy. That way she would go out of this world on the plus side of things. She would leave her children more than had been left to her, which is appropriate thinking for any decent American.

Tags:   None

© All rights reserved.

Posted on 6/3/2006 ( Permanent Link )
Read 508 Times
 Send to Friend

  0 COMMENTS ON THIS ENTRY