How do you snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? By winning on the battlefield and losing at the peace table. That was my critique of the gigantic struggle against apartheid when compared to the economic and political situation that prevails in the Republic of South Africa today.
One evening after work Plantman saw a man in a rumpled uniform of sorts bounced out of the Cave Guy bar.
The man made a vain attempt to stand, then let his body crumble to the gutter. On closer inspection, Plantman was shocked to discover that this poor drunk was none other than The Manager of The CityPlex.
His uniform was soiled and unbuttoned, his hair uncombed. He was a mess.
“Manager, can this be you?”
It’s that Ebeneezer and Grinch time of year. Hooverville. The great American fat crocodile tear with stories of legless troops getting a bag of groceries and free big screen TV and compact car. All those bags under our collective eyes watching brute felon sports professionals (sic) run by their brutish Mafiosa coaches and owners. We are ready for that extra 15 pounds, those romps in those wonderlands of Consumopithecus Anthropocene union-busting box stores, those nanoseconds looking at the homeless, pennies for their crimes. We will feel good about Tis the Season.
Creators collaborated under ultra-violet light. Writers, artists, designers composed the mythic City, created the New Literature of The Nation. Comix, graphic novels, network animations.
but they still believe the Sun revolves around the Earth . . . and, well, that US of Amerika is the best country since, well, Eden!
“Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward all research.”
-Malcolm X [el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz]
“If you don’t know history, it is as if you were born yesterday.”
-Howard Zinn
Career peak at the suitably virile age of forty-two. Past becoming. Don Coyote, The Star, had arrived.
The Star owned an apartment in The City. Plantman tended it year-round, entrusted with the key. When The Star was in The City, he and Plantman shared brandy, cigars, talk. As close to friendship as their relative stations would allow.
Epics of the Deep, Coyote’s first serious role not blasting trouble with an automatic, or bedding tough, winsome, wise-cracking femme fatales, might garner awards, he mused.
Starlette Nova landed in The City to promote—herself. Appeared on Television and Radio talk shows; nearly every newspaper and magazine in The City was privileged with an interview (questions limited to her stunning performance as “The Missing Girl”) and (no costumes or serious poses: five minutes of scripted ‘real time’) opportunity to photograph the starlet, Starlette.
Epics of the Deep was the box-office sensation of the Summer.
Starlette Nova, who played “The Missing Girl,” and Don Coyote as “The Mad Cetologist,” covered every magazine that profiled celebrity entertainment interviews and idols of The Nation. Talk. Talk. Talkety-talk. shot straight through the eyes and ears of Citizen-consumers from sea to sea. Powerful, powerful talk engendering excitement, illusions of important, almost Sacred Time, and a desire to spend money. To partake in or own part of the buzz.
Precaution. Stop shifting the baseline. Stop mucking around because you have no common sense but plenty of computer engineering ADD-ADHD or what have you, on that autism spectrum. What have you, stop enlisting these money changers and game changers to define community.
The CityPlex was dense with movie-goers. BEING and Music queued for soda, snacks.
