On this everyone can agree – O.J. Simpson really messed up.
No. Not that he killed his ex-wife Nicole and her boyfriend Ron Goldman in 1994. The college and professional football legend had nothing to do with their demises. Rather, O.J. tempted fate and got severely scorched by it when he crossed the Mojave Desert into Nevada in order to retrieve memorabilia he believed still his. Continue reading Presentable People
Two men. Indeed, both as different as night and day. One loved hearing the sounds of certainty in his voice. The other wove a narration that threaded plenty of the Old West into our modern Golden West. Continue reading Town & Country
Our Covid-19 nightmare vexes us.
Perhaps if Donald Trump in his ultimate pique against America hadn’t dismantled the apparatus established by Bill Clinton, then improved upon by George W. Bush, then these further bolstered through Barack Obama, the United States’ situation wouldn’t be so dire. Continue reading Real Horrors
We never called Anne the Modigliani Girl or even “Shadow,” her stripper alias, to her face. Klanger and I should’ve. She might’ve gotten a kick out of it. Continue reading The Ménage of the Modigliani Girl
Las Vegas evenings into mornings can be arbitrarily unkind as well as exceptionally rewarding. Throughout April 2017 I encountered or heard about five women who had experiences running the gamut from high to low, induced remorse, or whose initial reticence entering an endeavor produced joy.
Not all Las Vegas doormen and valets are lazy, slit-eyed, money-grubbing opportunists. Several might be decent, honest, observant and caring people. Naturally they’ll seldom pass up a chance to make an extra buck, but doing so won’t plunge them into rat-bastard unscrupulousness.
A few of these stalwarts worked the portals during the nights in question. None have yet to ever mind speculating about guests habiting their respective properties.
Through eloquence the couple riding in the taxi’s darkened backseat elevates their smut into an elegance unusual to Las Vegas. Most of what the driver Lewy hears during his night-into-day shift is worse than repetitive. It’s boring, demonstrating a lack of inventiveness as well as class. Lewy considers himself doubly fortunate. Not only is the fare lengthy, but the pair seated behind him mark early morning miles with intricate rather than mundane or raunchy conversation. To put a cherry atop all this they also converse in Italian. Before the ride commences, Lewy gauges his passengers. Under hotel valet lights he appraised them, then once they climbed inside from the rearview mirror. Somewhere in their 50s, he intuits that while together they aren’t an established couple. His workweeks consist of seeing many pairs who’ve used the “anything goes!” behind Las Vegas to temporarily sidestep propriety and fidelity. Fortunately, he never put much stock in morality. Especially others’ morality. Continue reading Just Listen/The Jane and Her Whore Happy New Year! Ancient Greeks would’ve most appreciated Bill Cosby’s contretemps. Mightn’t his plight have become their meat? From it a Greek playwright might’ve scribed then bequeathed us one tragedy which not only could’ve still informed us today, but presented a template to the sullied comedian’s fate. Let there be no mistake. What has befallen Cosby is fate. Continue reading American Fly Vernon waited too late. A cousin, he now wants to assemble our family tree. A branch of it at least. One comprising our mutual matriarchal entities. The moment to have done this was decades ago when enough generations still stretched among us to weave that narrative together. My grandmother Alice, his aunt, was born in 1908. Hers would’ve been a fine memory to excavate. She could’ve provided his enterprise’s bones. After all she was old enough to have known ex-slaves. Ex-slaves. Talk about history coming to life. It’s one thing to watch Skip Gates’ Finding Your Roots or Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary. It surely would’ve been more immediate to have such recollections lent voice from a listener who heard them directly from people who underwent those indignities. It’s no stretch to any imagination in Alice seeing her own grandparents as having once been chattel. What prompted Vernon’s late, nearly futile search? Edna Long. Edna Long piqued him. Continue reading Edna Long Left Questions Just Listen/The Jane and Her Whore
American Fly
Edna Long Left Questions