Meanwhile, here is a report from our new Doper radar. Doper radar is unique to the BLOW Channel in that other radars have a delay of seven minutes. Doper radar is not only showing you what is happening now, it also shows you what is not happening. See on this screen where there are no color bands moving in circles. That’s County Mayo in Ireland and there’s nothing happening there. But if you look over here to my left, actually it’s my right, it’s your left. I think I’m right. Anyway you see the bands circulating. The pink blobs are heavy rain, the green ones are winds blowing palm trees.
Now see this little yellow swirly dot? That’s a palm tree in front of 275 W. 388th St., and it’s being blown by the wind. Oh. ... What? ... Oh, sorry, that’s not a palm tree. That’s a black olive. And it’s... what’s that? ... Oh, sorry, the tree on his 389th St. So you folks up in Hollywood are going to be hit in about 30 seconds by a squall that may have mini squalls in it. See, now it’s 25 seconds, now it’s 20. Do you feel it up there? Did the wind blow your umbrella upside out? Now you people out near 441 should be feeling this in about seven minutes. So make sure you take your umbrellas down.
And now one of our politicians wants to warn you that the storm that’s not coming is not coming, but stay tuned and be sure to vote for him and don’t pay any attention if you see his name connected to the voter fraud that’s been all over the news. The fact that the 6,000 absentee ballots were all in his wife’s name has nothing to do with the storm that’s now missing the Florida Keys and will miss us by more 100 purple blobs and at least 35 green ones.
We just got the 7 o’clock update on the storm that’s not coming. It still isn’t coming, but this storm is very unpredictable and we want you to stay tuned to the BLOW Channel. Now here are the possible tracks the storm may take. You see how big it is. This graph which looks like celery stalks shows the various models and how many places this huge storm may not be coming. What’s that? ... Oh, sorry. ... I’m told those are not celery stalks, they’re rhubarb. Do you think the rain will hurt the rhubarb? Heh. Heh. Couldn’t resist a little levity there.
But this is really serious, because if it isn’t you might turn us off and venture out and try to go surfing before the winds that aren’t coming die down. And we are going to bring in five more politicians. The five who were here just got arrested. You can see this white streaky thing with the blue stripes. That’s the police van taking them to jail. But don’t worry, we’ll have five more here any minute. There’s nothing that brings out the weatherman in a politician like a good storm that isn’t coming.
Oh, I’m just told that this orange blob that’s moving so fast toward the Palmetto is a young woman whose umbrella did not collapse and took off with her hanging on. That’s why we want you to stay tuned. And here’s a report from up north. A palm frond fell off a tree in Fort Pierce. That shows how big this storm is, and even though it’s not coming, it could still be dangerous. We’ll be back with the latest rhubarb stalks after this commercial.
We only saw Phyllis Diller live on one occasion. It seems not very long ago she worked a bash in Palm Beach. She was very good. That night, and last night when her death was reported, we thought of Gene Perret. Back in the 1960s we had graduated from the sports department to a general column at The Delaware County Daily Times, a suburban Philadelphia newspaper then located in Chester. A reader named Gene Perret called one day and said he found the column amusing, and asked that we check out his standup comedy routine. He was at the time working as a technical writer for General Electric, and comedy was a sideline. He invited us to see him work at a local Polish American Club, or something like that. The young man’s performance that night was intriguing. His material was funny, but the audience reacted only mildly.
When he asked what we thought of his routine, we were honest. The material was good, we said, but standup work did not seem to be his calling. We added that we could almost hear somebody like Bob Hope telling the same jokes and destroying the house. He told us that in fact he was trying to break into the big time writing jokes for established comedy figures. He had already done stuff for Phyllis Diller. He said he got five bucks a gag.
“That’s my ambition,” he said, “to write for Bob Hope.” He also gave us a short course in gag writing. Gags are different from humorous story telling, the kind of thing Mark Twain, and more recently Dave Barry and Jimmy Breslin specialized in. A gag, he explained, consists of three parts. First there’s a premise, then there’s a setup line, and then you flip the thing and people laugh. It sounded simple, like flipping pancakes, but making it work is more art than science. Most of Phyllis Diller’s and Bob Hope’s jokes were virtually one-liners.
Bob Hope came to Chester at about that time. “We had a great flight into Philadelphia,” he said. “I wanted to fly United. But the stewardess wouldn’t go for it.”
We left the newspaper for magazine work, and it seemed only a few years later (it was actually 1969) that we heard Gene Perret was working for Bob Hope. It was the beginning of a relationship that continued until Hope retired in his mid-90s. For the last 15 years he was the lead writer on Hope’s staff. And along the way Gene Perret became one of the best behind-the-scenes men in TV comedy, writing and producing stuff to divert us from the trials of life. In addition to Phyllis Diller and Bob Hope, his bio lists many of the most famous comedy shows and performers of our time. "Laugh-In," Bill Cosby, "All in the Family," Carol Burnett. The list is long. He won three Emmys.
And he wasn’t always behind the scenes. His success made him a sought-after speaker and we saw him a few times as a guest on the late-night shows. And the man who did not seem terribly funny years before at the Polish American Club made us laugh out loud. He must have gotten a better writer.
There was a time when if a reporter wanted to talk to a source at the Florida East Coast Railway, it would take a week or two for a return call, and when it came it was from the president of the railroad. He was a crusty old bastard, likeable through his bluntness. “Nah, Mac, we are a freight line. We don’t want passengers.” The FEC did not even have a PR guy.
That changed when the FEC was bought from St. Joe Paper Company, and is now in a third stage of ownership. What also changed was the current company’s attitude toward passenger trains on the tracks that Henry Flagler built to develop Florida.
A few years ago Hussein Cumber invited us to take a ride on a Florida East Coast freight train. His purpose was to point out the potential of the route for a passenger line. Cumber was a spokesman for the FEC at the time, and we told him he was preaching to the choir. Gold Coast magazine has been pushing this idea since the 1970s, and we have frequently written that Tri-Rail should switch some of its service to the more eastern tracks which cut through all the downtowns on Florida’s Atlantic coast.
Cumber left the FEC for some time with the Department of Transportation in Washington, but has returned to the FEC and was the man quoted in The Miami Herald last week announcing that the FEC, through its real estate division, plans a train from Miami to Orlando, which would not involve public money. Wow. There is hardly a passenger train anywhere which does not take government support. The reason for this historic move is obvious. It is a real estate play. Cumber’s announcement, released so subtly that the Sun-Sentinel did not even pick up the story, included a plan to take a 9-acre tract in downtown Miami (the location of its original passenger terminal) and turn it into a major development.
Our guess is that this is just the first move in a grand concept to redevelop the entire FEC line, positioning stations in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach where the FEC owns land that can be developed into high rise buildings. Cumber said the FEC can make money on this train. Doubtful. Unless you count real estate.
And when you count real estate, start thinking New York’s Madison Square Garden, built above the underground tracks of Penn Station, or Penn Center in Philadelphia, blocks of what are a second generation of high-rise offices above an underground station which was once an above-ground terminal of the old Pennsylvania Railroad.
And when the FEC says it will fund this privately, it doesn’t take a great cynic to suspect that this service can become so vital to the cities along the tracks that Henry Flagler’s old railroad will eventually be rebuilt to accommodate fast trains. That means eliminating grade crossings, dozens of them between Miami and West Palm Beach alone, by either elevating tracks or building bridges. That will cost money, and if public funds are not eventually involved, then the FEC management is a lot dumber than we think.
There is nothing wrong with this. The original railroads were built with much public money, in terms of land grants and tax incentives. It was an investment that has been returned many times over in economic growth. Ask Abraham Lincoln. He got it started while fighting the Civil War. The only thing wrong with the FEC’s plan is that it is 50 years too late.
We got to the airport way early, so early that we decided to walk around and see all the new stuff that has been added over the last 50 years. For starters, we got there by commuter train, which comes in practically to the departure gates and gets you to center city in 20 minutes, and can take you 30 miles out in the suburbs in about an hour. Every airport should have one.
After going through the screening we had more than an hour to kill and we wandered around, up one ramp and down another. They seemed to be sticking out like the spokes of a wheel, and it was in fact a mall. We saw all kinds of shops including some pretty pricey ones and a wine bar where you can get an imported taste for only $12. And so it came to pass that when we figured our flight would be called, we were lost.
We thought we came back the way we went out, but somehow that appendage dead ended into the wrong airline. So we walked back and tried another route, with the same result. Ramps seemed to be crossing and recrossing each other, like the streets in Washington, D.C. We were about to break down and ask some English-speaking person for directions, which would look ridiculous, especially for somebody who has used this airport since the Wright Brothers. We finally recognized a store we had passed on the outbound journey, and we figured they wouldn’t have two stores selling imported crystal in the same airport. To make a long walk short, by the time we found the right gate the plane was already loading.
When we found our assigned seat, it did not exist. At least a good part of it did not. There was a woman in the middle of the row with a backside the size of the Everglades. The arm rests, which fold down and afford a small sense of privacy, were not available for either our side or the poor chap in the aisle seat. But at least he could lean into the aisle for breathing space. Our only option was to get out on the wing. We estimated the width of the seat back in front of us at about 18 inches, and this tub next to us required at least 5 inches more.
Squeezing into our half seat, already frustrated by being lost for an hour, we said something to the woman.
“You know something, honey? You’re fat.”
Actually, we did not say that, but we thought about it for the next 2.5 hours, a good part of which was consumed while waiting in line to take off and the time it took to deplane all these people, including the fat woman. We felt blessed that the flight home was relatively short, and we wondered what it would have been like had we been headed to India. We also thought about the idea recently publicized that people of size ought to pay more for special seats to accommodate them, or at least pay by the pound, and use that surcharge to offer consolation discounts to the people forced to sit next to them.
When you think about it, everything else that is shipped is paid for by size and weight. Why should people be different? And a big package shipped by air doesn’t even offend a smaller parcel by getting in its space and forcing it to sit on the wings. Of course, the argument will be that offensively large bodies should not be discriminated against, even when they offend those of us with beautiful taut figures.
Of course, in this era of GPS there ought to be a discreet way of telling over a computer or telephone if a person has special needs, such as room to spread out, and automatically provide a seat built to size and shape, and charge accordingly without the necessity to say, “know something, honey…”
The big bad news story today is the Postal Service is in danger of being shut down. We have an emotional attachment to this issue, having once labored for the Postal Service. That is, if you count the days when college kids used to pick up handy change by working to back up the pros for the Christmas rush. The trick was to try to stay on the clock for 24 hours straight. That was possible, but rarely achieved because there was always some full-time party pooper who would find us sleeping in the basement around 4 in the morning. He would wake everybody up and make us clock off, but about an hour later the trucks would roll in with bags and bags of new mail, and shortly we would be out on the street with the first delivery.
That usually took a few hours, and each time you worked the same route it got a little faster. Then, if you chose well, which meant a route in your own neighborhood, you could walk home and catch a few hours sleep before you had to check the designated box and start out on the day's afternoon delivery. That took a few hours, and by the time you got back to the office, trucks were lined up bringing the next day's mail for sorting. If you had the right connections, and we did (Dad knew Mr. Loyons, the postmaster) then you could stay on the clock and help with the sorting. That lasted well into the night and was educational. You learned to use modern miracles such as a machine that wrapped string around bundles of mail. When that job was completed, you went into hiding, in the basement, with maybe a dozen other savvy guys – until the party pooper caught you and insisted on clocking everybody off. But 22 out of 24 hours wasn't bad. Especially when you knew what you were doing was important to people.
Alas, today's mail seems not so important. The combination of package delivery services, and the Internet have cut severely into Postal Service revenues, so much so that we face a question of whether this great institution can service, or should? Our vote is that it should, and a possible salvation combines two concepts we have covered in the past. The answer is one word. Trains. And specifically commuter trains. They are making a comeback, all over the country. You can now get from New York to Philadelphia in a little more than an hour. With that speed, the Postal Service could enjoy a new birth, with same-day delivery. That would not compete with the Internet, but it sure would compete with the package delivery companies, and we all know that is a big part of mail today. As state after state, including Florida, began to recognize the value of trains for short- and mid-range trips (say Fort Lauderdale to Orlando) it will be possible to make those trips in a few hours. Going back to the old system of sorting on trains, made infinitely faster by the lights of technology, it should be possible to off load delivery vehicles at various stations (perhaps 20 miles apart), which can reach the destinations before the sun sets.
There is clearly a market for fast delivery. Anybody in business knows that speed counts. Sales people have the urge to get things out immediately, and not worry about the cost. The package delivery services, offering next-day delivery, have proved it for years. Which is why commuter, and the growing number of mid-range trains, connecting cities within a few hundred miles, offer such opportunity. Not only could same-day delivery produce the revenues to make such trains less of money losers, and possibly even profitable in high-traffic markets, they are positioned to serve the areas where most packages and high-priority mail is headed.
This idea of meshing two needed services, fast passenger rail and fast package delivery, is not unrecognized. A proposed inter-city service in the Midwest has factored the idea into its proposed operating plan. And not long ago we had a conversation with an important Tri-Rail figure. It was an informal meeting, so his name should not be used, but when we threw out the idea of using Tri-Rail for same-day package delivery, his response was immediate: "That," he said, "is an interesting idea." Is it interesting enough to save the Postal Service?
Proposed new law: Any contribution to a political candidate, a candidate’s campaign, a candidate’s mother, a candidate’s wife, a candidate’s mistress, or a candidate’s mister, when applicable, that exceeds $250 and especially if it exceeds $50 million, shall be deemed an attempt to bribe the candidate. Offenders shall be dismembered digit-by-digit, fed to crocodiles and punished to the full extent of the law.
In this divided country it would be hard to get agreement on such wording. You know somebody would slip in an amendment saying “this only applies to the other side.” It is, however, increasingly apparent that money buys elections. Is there any other reason that, as the papers are reporting, all these organizations with good government or patriotic names are raising money in the sneakiest way possible, money that is hard to trace but it is invariably used to support their friends or, more likely, attack people with whom they differ? And why is that all the big money comes from big entities, such as major corporations, or secretive groups of people skirting campaign laws by hiding their identities. The reason is obvious: They either want something from the candidates they support, or want to stop candidates they think will hurt their agenda to do something controversial, such as polluting the environment to make money, or bringing in big-time gambling.
There are some who think that giving money to a politician, hoping to get something back, is a bribe. But when that gift is a campaign contribution, and the beneficiary knows he can live off those contributions and, as we have seen, make all life’s expenses seem legitimate costs of running for office, then it is OK. And it is especially OK if the entity making the contribution can hide behind some name such as “Honest Floridians for Dirty Crooked Government.” We throw that invention out, confident that we will not be infringing on any established trademark.
It has gotten to the point where the influence of money is so strong that even after the latest shooting tragedy, neither of the two men running for president of the United States is willing to condemn a law which permits the sale of military weapons to nut cases. They know such a position could cost them the election. And how do you define a nut case before he shows up in court with international-orange hair and a stare that is right out of “Guadalcanal Diary”? Well, any civilian who feels a need to own an assault rifle might qualify as a nut. But don’t say that if you are running for office.
Would a simple law changing the word “contribution” to “bribe” change anything? Maybe. But only until The Patriotic Committee To Make Bribes Politically Acceptable for All Americans pays off its boys to advocate repeal. By gun-point if needed.
After a dark and stormy night, especially after a dark and stormy night, somewhere between 5:30 a.m. and 6 a.m., even with the air conditioner humming and the overhead fan spinning, you could hear the stop-go of the car, and then the sound of newspapers landing. Plop, plop. Plop. Sometimes even three plops. The third plop would be The New York Times. This went up and down the street; practically every house had at least one plop.
That did not seem long ago, but it was probably 15 years, maybe 20. The plop of newspapers being delivered was as predictable as the sound of aircraft starting their day from the airport, and you knew that within a few minutes the sun also would rise. Last week it was different. The papers were late, and we were waiting on the porch. The car (actually it was a small pickup) eventually came by, with the sun beating it by minutes, and there was a plop-plop and the Sun-Sentineland Herald made their arrivals. Then there was silence, as the vehicle went down the street for a block or two, turned around and headed north. That covered about 15 houses, all inhabited by credit-worthy souls. Yet there was only one more “plop” within earshot. That was the big house on the corner, owned by a prominent banker-builder. His plop was probably the Sun-Sentinel, but it would not be surprising if it were the Times. The Times is an ego feeder, even if the ego rarely reads the whole paper.
This is the state of the newspaper business, here and over there. On our street almost nobody gets a paper, and that has something to do with the fact that the death of August Urbanek, which once would have been front-page news, was confined to the paid obits. August who? That’s the problem.
The story goes back to the 1980s, when Carl Mayhue, who made his money in the liquor store business, led a campaign to build a theater in Fort Lauderdale. People thought he was crazy; the location he was pushing was west of the FEC Railway tracks, in the oldest section of town. It had turned into a bum-in-the-doorway section. Nobody went there. And yet Mayhue saw a spot on the bend of the New River, which gave its name to the Sailboat Bend neighborhood, that would make a great site for this facility, which he thought could be a catalyst to revive the entire section.
August Urbanek, a Czech immigrant who had made a fortune in development, was a known philanthropist and a natural target for a contribution. When Mayhue called, Urbanek said he was good for $3.5 million, providing Mayhue first raised the seed money for the campaign. Mayhue did, to Urbanek’s surprise, and when Mayhue called to say he had the money, Urbanek delivered his check the next day. Thus was born the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, a remarkable cultural facility for a city the size of Fort Lauderdale. And, as Mayhue envisioned, the once-seedy neighborhood has turned into part of the Riverwalk commonly known as the Arts & Entertainment District.
Joe Amaturo, who was a major contributor himself (the Amaturo Theater), recalls a dinner related to the Broward Center when Urbanek asked if he could sit at his table. “Sit at my table?” said Amaturo today. “I would be honored to sit at his table. And when it came time to recognize people, nobody mentioned him. Well, I had been asked to say a few words, and when I got up I spent about three minutes talking about him. Without Augie Urbanek, I don’t think we would have the Performing Arts Center today.”
August Urbanek spent his last years in Boca Raton. He died at 92. You would not know it if his family had not paid for the obit in the paper. But then again, when the plop-plops disappear day by day, maybe it doesn’t make any difference.
Our beloved congressman, Allen West, has complained that the media has distorted his meaning when he likened social security to slavery – to the extent it makes people develop a heightened sense of dependency, also known as entitlement. The media does that a lot to West, which tends to happen to people who say weird things.
For instance, some might think he meant that anybody who is on social security is a slave, a notion reinforced when the managing editor walked in and said, “Boy, you call that PR girl about the boat show special? Ain’t you on social security? You think you’re entitled to lay around all day drinking beer like a schmuck? You do your blog yet, boy? You know it’s Tuesday, and I need your stupid blog on Tuesdays.”
Back on topic. Congressman West complained that around 3.2 million people went on social security disability since 2009, suggesting there are lots of louts looking for any excuse not to work. Now that gets close to home because one of our brother slaves, a highly skilled engineer whose had an ability to dominate young engineers who worked for him, wound up on the street when too many of his slaves complained to the boss man. So he applied for social security on the grounds that because his boss would no longer let him treat his engineers like slaves, he was unable to work, i.e. disabled. He got his check.
We started getting ours the legitimate way a few years later, and this has been going on for a decade. We feel pretty guilty, even though we are still paying FICA, even after 60 years. FICA is the money they take out of your paycheck every week as long as you work so that you can feel good when you starting getting some of it back when you are too old to spend it.
Which prompted a call to our CPA to find how it is going into FICA compared with our monthly check. He got on his computer and ran a bunch of numbers and said, “Understand?" and we said no, and he ran more numbers and we were even more confused. Then he said, “One has nothing to do with the other – if you had the money you gave the government since you were 15 and put it in a mutual fund, you’d be a millionaire.”
That really made us feel like slaves, and we began to understand Congressman West’s point, and that depressed us so we went to a bar and when we came back the managing editor said, “Boy, you call that PR girl back?” and then, a little groggy and set upon, we fell asleep and dreamed we were somewhere far away and people were rounding us up and putting us on a boat.
“What’s up?” we asked.
“We’re shipping you out, boy. You’re a slave.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means you get a check from the U.S. Treasury every month for doing nothing.” The nice man put down his whip and handed us a check for more money than we had ever seen.
“Boy, I like this job!” we chirped.
“And you get one like this every month, and every year it goes up with the cost of living over there.” We thanked him profusely and pushed aside people who were fighting to get on the boat. And as we sailed into the sunset, we heard the nice man shout: “Bon voyage, and tell them Allen sent you.”
A federal judge has killed the Florida law prohibiting doctors from asking if patients have a gun at home. Docs vs. Glocks, the wise guys called it. That’s a blow, but not all is lost. The state of Florida, a subsidiary of the National Rifle Association, may appeal and that would be good because it provides a way to spend all that extra money which is lining the lanes of Tallahassee.We still have our assault rifles, which are really useful if you get caught in the cross fire of a drive-by shooting in Miami. We also hope the state will support a new organization we are trying to form. The NRRA is the National Recoilless Rifle Association. Our goals, developing as we type, include having a recoilless rifle in every home, school, church and doctor’s office in Florida.
For those too young to recall, the recoilless rifle was a long tube shaped like a long tube, which was developed before World War I. It was designed to give the average G.I. Joe a chance against a tank. In theory it would shoot a big bullet, usually about 84 millimeters – the same size as the famous 84 millimeter gun and instead of recoiling like a typical field artillery piece, it would offset the sudden-forward motion by blowing stuff, sometimes called countershot, out the rear. It has been commonly supplanted by more modern hand held rocket launchers, which can bring down airplanes. The problem with the recoilless rifle, which was tried during the Korean War, is that it never worked too good, even when mounted on wheeled vehicles, boats, donkeys, etc. The first models, when mounted on vehicles, had their trunnions set too far back, and sometimes the tube swung around and shot the person firing it. The crew sometimes took off the trunnions and put them on Philadelphia cheese steaks. Not too bad with tabasco.
A use was occasionally found for recoilless rifles it in fighting avalanches (this is true), which are rare in Florida, but it was never effective in warding off hurricanes. Despite their dubious value, the army ordered a lot of them, and as a result there are more of them on the surplus market than collectors of famous failed weapons can absorb. Which is why we have formed the NRRA. We are hoping that some of the 900,000 people in Florida who have concealed weapons permits would apply for permits to carry a concealed recoilless rifle. Now some may say a six-foot tube is too long to conceal comfortably. Maybe on the actually body, but they could conceal them on top of their cars. Besides a lot of readers of this piece have deep pockets, or at least golf bags, which would facilitate concealment. Also a box of golf balls might make more effective ammunition than the big bullets the rifles originally shot. There’s precedent for that. Early cannon shot 105 millimeter balls capable of knocking a body in half at hundreds of yards, but they also used grapeshot, which was basically a bunch of golf balls glued together which came apart over sand traps and hit everybody hiding there.
Well, if none of these ideas come to fruition, at least we have a new organization called the NRRA. Maybe state government can come up with a use for it. They’ve had dumber ideas.
We had been in Washington, the D.C. one, where there are a lot of monuments. After the obligatory visit to the National Air and Space Museum, to visit our Messerschmitt Bf 109 G, we took the grandkids to see some of the better known. There is the Washington Monument, that striking spike in the sky, and the Lincoln Memorial, which looks like an art museum and would embarrass the late president, an extraordinarily modest man for one so famous, and of course, the Vietnam Wall.
From the mall we pointed across the broad Potomac to where Arlington Cemetery is located, and not far from the Marine Corps War Memorial, the famous flag raising at Iwo Jima, and we told the kids if they looked carefully they would see at the top of the hill the former residence of Robert E. Lee, which had, and still has, the best view in Virginia of the nation’s capital. We also corrected the impression, apparently inherited from their mother, an alleged history major, that Lee commanded the Union Army. She is in Ireland and unlikely to see this. When you speak to a native Irishman about the Civil War, they ask “which one?”
Which brings us back to W.C. and those of us who did nothing. Nobody keeps such records, but there are millions of us who put in time in the military, trained and ready to be forward observers (a dangerous job at the time) but who were never asked to fire a shot in anger, or try to duck one. In fact, our outfit, the legendary 446th Civil Affairs Company, Upland, Pa., Col. (later a general) Clarence D. Bell commanding, was thrown out of the army at the height of the Tet Offensive in the 1960s. We were considered useless, and why would anyone in their right mind argue that a unit studying Arabic and solving water problems in the Middle East had any reason to exist? Anyway, they disbanded the whole damned unit. It hurts, and it hurts millions of guys who are in the same boat, those of us who did nothing. Why are we not remembered in some memorial in Washington, D.C.? Washington has memorials to everybody. Statues of generals, including some who were not very good, are all over the place. These are tributes to people who would have been better off doing nothing, but there is nothing to remember those who truly did nothing.
Fueled with indignation, and a few martinis, we went to visit the secretary of monuments. They made us check our assault rifle at the door, which is probably a good thing. “Mr. Secretary,” we screamed, “why no monument to the guys who did nothing? Do you have any idea how many of us are having nervous breakdowns – post-traumatic, do-nothing stress?”
“Calm down,” he said. “We are working on it. We have the support of Presidents Clinton, Bush (the younger) and Obama – all of whom did nothing like you great guys. In fact, they did less than nothing. Anyway, we will do it. “
“We need a name,” we said, “and a location. How about close to the congressional offices, filled with people who do nothing?”
“Beautiful,” he said.
“We need something that will knock their socks off. Like a riderless horse they use when the CIA kills a president. “
“That’s overdone,” he said. “How about a giant beer bottle, flanked by a regiment of blue martinis? With the names of all the people who did nothing engraved on ceramic olives?”
“Too costly,” we said. “How about a horseless rider?”
“How tell?”
“A guy like he’s on a horse but there ain’t no horse, get it? Just a guy up there, bouncing up and down, swinging a freakin’ sword in the air and nothing under him. The image is perfect. It captures our frustration. It would keep people from having nervous breakdowns.”
“How do you do that? There’s the law of gravity.”
“You bureaucrats have no imagination. We put a man on the moon. People were floating around all day in them space capsules. We can certainly put a horseless rider up there. Helium. We have a friend in Florida who has a company – Helium Is Our High. He can figure it out. All these kids would love it.“
The secretary had to break off for a lunch date, and he left saying he did not know what he could do to remedy this remiss, but he promised he wouldn’t do nothing. We also serve who only stand and wait.
