NOTES FROM THE DUMP

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Racing to meet a (nonexistent) deadline

…has taken on new meaning and a life of its own; the first time it was ever explained to me was in Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor about the notorious Civil War prison where if a prisoner stepped over a line he stood to get shot, which in a number of cases was preferable to the miseries of Andersonville, a good book to reinforce your anti-war credentials even though it’s an anomaly as you may be reading of these horrors poolside or with a mint julep at hand…well, nobody said life was going to be fair or easy. Your good/bad luck today could change dramatically overnight.

…my deadline is less permanent, hardly carved in stone, I’m just trying to reach the end of a page so I can send it off to you…see how selfless I am? It’s all one to me whether I send it tonight or tomorrow night or not at all…it’s a good read is NFTD but it’s not exactly blood plasma without which you’d croak, whereas for me that’s exactly what it is…my raison d’etre and bete noir rolled in one, best of both worlds…
…I look forward to seeing you, hearing from you, reading your e-mails and looking at the world through your lens then filtering it through mine…in the aggregate all is well…

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Lest You Mistake the Drunken Lawyer Albee

...for the real thing, ask yourself: could there really be such a person who held himself in such low self-esteem while drunk on white wine, beer, vodka, and a myriad of drugs that he would take a half-gallon empty glass jar of Tropicana and, holding one hand over one end and the other hand over the other end, smash himself so viciously across the forehead that he shattered the jug, and its razor-like shards slit his forehead to bloody ribbons? And who appeared the next day in court (as an advocate not in this instance a defendant) swathed in bandages around his head looking like he'd just survived the storming of the Bastille?

…he could only be fictional.

...in real-life (whatever that is) it's hard to imagine anybody - drunk lawyer or not - drinking six six-ounce glasses of mixed liquors straight and when he passed out 45 minutes later never put his hands out to stop his fall as he tumbled from the Carrie Nation's bar stool to the parquet, slapping his brain-dead head on a railroad tie-cum-foot rest, first thing to hit, WHAM a nosedive...he was his own worst-case scenario.

...at his wedding he instructed the ushers to fleece the coats hanging in the coatroom of the church because he'd drunk up all the money he'd intended to give them for helping at his wedding, so he told them, 'Just plead dumb if anybody says anything...they'll believe it.' We, ah, THEY didn't find much.

...at his wedding reception before anyone got so much as a slice of it someone absconded with a 35-pound steamship round, which so angered the groom he went racing back to his office and, after grabbing a lever action 32.40, ran down the steps (in his tux) and into the streets, dashing into the notorious Nation's where he scattered the dazed clientele when he shattered the quiet by snapping off a few rounds figuring the scoundrel with his - Albee's! - side of beef, had to be in there and if he wasn't, well...this is Carrie Nation's - who's gonna notice? Or care...

…could there be a drunken lawyer Albee who babbled like a fool in the bars but next day sober at the bar of justice was erudite and cosmopolitan, a veritable Solon? Stay tuned to NFTD for the lowdown on the comings and goings of the nefarious denizens of Carrie Nation's...the sleazy dive the state's most powerful politicians couldn't close...the cremma della cremma rubbing elbows with the nastiest of vermin and you often couldn't tell one from the other...

…yes, from the outset I claim Albee the lawyer as total fabrication, absolutely the figment of imagination, no way does he remind me of, nor is he based on anyone I may have known in my life, I hastily add to distance myself from any litigation for libel against me in the unlikely event that he should get un-disbarred and come back at me with a vengeance. Who needs all those dorky shnooks from Lake Woebegone? That goody-goody two shoes, powder puff fluffy yuppie nonsense? Sheeee-it…gimme them hard-drinking, hard-riding, drunken stumblebums anyday!