Fuck yeah!

 Winners. Fuck you John Iwaniszek.

A story from my past in honor of Black History Month

When I was a kid, before my mom died, we lived in the Smith Homes Housing Projects in Detroit, Michigan.  Our family was one of three or four white families that lived in about three blocks of government subsidized homes.  The rest of the families who lived in those projects were black.  My best friend was a black kid named Aaron Lewis and as far as I knew, everybody on the planet lived in a sea of black people, I didn't know any different.

One day one summer in 1969 I was walking somewhere with my brother Charlie.  I spotted a black kid around my age and we walked up to where he was hanging out.  When we got up to him I asked him how old he was and he said he was the same age as me, 7 years old.  Wanting to show off for my big brother, who frankly never seemed impressed with anything about me or anything that I did, I said to the kid, "Yeah, well I'm 7 years old too and I bet I can beat you up."  The kid looked at me and I handed my glasses to my brother.  The kid told me if I wanted to fight then I should go right ahead.

I took one swing at him and it missed horribly.  He then proceeded to kick my scrawny skinny lily white ass.  He popped me in the face and before I knew what happened next he had me on the ground and was getting ready to wail on me.  My brother stepped in and told the kid I to leave me alone because I was stupid and a weakling.  After the black kid got off me I asked my brother why he didn't step in sooner and hit the kid, he told me it wasn't his fight, it was mine and that I was lucky he stepped in to stop it or else that kid would have really kicked my ass.

That was the last fight I got into willingly.

Vacation Tales

It's full on crazy ass hot and humid here in Johnson City now and that means summer is here, no matter what the calender says. The advent of summer means vacation to most people and I'm no exception to that rule. So all summer long I'll be doing posts from time to time about vacations from my past. Some vacation posts will be fun, some not so much.

The first summer vacations I remember were the ones where I didn't go anywhere, but all my brothers and sisters did. They would get packed off to go stay in the country with my crazy aunt who would one day take us in after my Mom died. They'd all go out to the farm in Howell while I got to stay back in Detroit with my Mom.
It may not look like it to you but this was heaven to me. I had my Mom all to myself, no siblings to fight for her attention, and it was peaceful and quiet in our little home for a few weeks. I got to play with my buddies, watch as much baseball on TV as I could stand, hang out with the grown ups when I wanted, and we'd gorge on cheese pizza, liver loaf sandwiches, ginger snaps, Kool-Aid, Cokes, store brand Twinkies, and A&W drive in food. I got to stay up late, play with everybody's toys, and read all the comic books and magazines my brothers and sisters hoarded. I was happier than a pig in shit that I was the youngest and that Mom kept me back from going to Aunt Rageaholic and Uncle Adultery's place because she wanted some company and was concerned that I'd get hurt or something on the farm.

All good things come to an end some time and I'd hate to see Aunt Rageaholic's big Buick station wagon drive up and disgorge my brothers and sisters. Sure they'd come back tanned with stories about all the fun they had and how cool it was out in Howell, meanwhile I was silently counting the days when they'd be packed up and sent back and I'd have the place to myself and I'd be the alpha kid who got all the great junk food and all the attention.

All this came to an end period when we got sent to live at the farm in Howell after my mother's sudden death and then vacations took a drastically different turn for yours truly. Stay tuned for more vacation stories and memories as the summer progresses.

That boy ain't right

So Willard Mittens Romney is gone now, he's "suspended" his campaign. Is suspended Mormon speak for "quit?" Or is it the new right wing buzz word?

It really should come as a shock to anyone that he spent so much money and got so little in return for it. Look at the guy, what does he look like to you? He looks like a used car sales manager to me. He looks like the guy who "approves" the great deal the other slimy slaesperson just made you on that '79 Cordoba you've had your eye on. I'll say one thing for him though, he gets his "pack up and quit" gene from his father. He's his daddy's boy in that regard all right.
Willard's daddy was a Michigan businessman who ran for Governor of my home state in the 1960's. He won and for all the world for a time he looked like just the man to break the grip LBJ and the Democrats had on this country. He talked openly about how he'd use his business acumen to fix this nation if he were President. He started going around key states in 1967 on speaking tours and he finally confirmed later that year that he was going to run for President in 1968.

But then one hot summer night in 1967 in Detroit something happened that made the bottom fall out of his Presidential plans, the city erupted in race riots. A Rutger University website about the riots gives this nice summary of the early events, "The Detroit Riot of 1967 began when police vice squad officers executed a raid on an after hours drinking club or “blind pig” in a predominantly black neighborhoods located at Twelfth Street and Clairmount Avenue. They were expecting to round up a few patrons, but instead found 82 people inside holding a party for two returning Vietnam veterans. Yet, the officers attempted to arrest everyone who was on the scene. While the police awaited a “clean-up crew” to transport the arrestees, a crowd gathered around the establishment in protest. After the last police car left, a small group of men who were “confused and upset because they were kicked out of the only place they had to go” lifted up the bars of an adjacent clothing store and broke the windows. From this point of origin, further reports of vandalism diffused. Looting and fires spread through the Northwest side of Detroit, then crossed over to the East Side. Within 48 hours, the National Guard was mobilized, to be followed by the 82nd airborne on the riot’s fourth day. As police and military troops sought to regain control of the city, violence escalated. At the conclusion of 5 days of rioting, 43 people lay dead, 1189 injured and over 7000 people had been arrested."

I was alive during those riots and I remember how the city was on lockdown for months afterward. It was like a war zone and everyone's nerves were frayed as we all waited for the other shoe to drop. Almost over night white folks began their flight out of the city and into the suburbs and as things grew more and more tense in the city itself people began to question George Romney's handling of the crisis. He showed himself to be a friend of the upper classes when he saw to it that places like Grosse Pointe were heavily defended against the maurauding black folks while the inner city, which was where I lived at the time, was left to smolder and burn.

Not long after the riots ended the national press wrote off Romney and he quietly scaled back his speaking tours as he tried to mend his reputation by attending to things in Michigan. No one blamed him, well no one in their right mind anyway, for being behind the riots but many blamed him, and rightly so, for his clumsy handling of the situation during and after the riots.

So basically when the going got tough, George Romney bailed on his Presidential plans, just like his son did. Sometimes it's too true that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. So long Mitt! I'm hoping you'll come back for the 2012 or 2016 Presidential race, maybe by then you'll be the left wing independent you were back in the days of Saint Ronnie and when you tried to run to the left of Ted Kennedy. Either way, I know the blood of a long line of quitters and losers runs through your veins.

Comedy influences (the early years continued)

In our home when I was a child my mother put a great deal of emphasis on us all learning to read as quickly as possible, I suspect that she did it so we would stick our noses in a book and be quiet for a while so she could have some peace. Since I was the youngest of five children I read the hand me down books and magazines my brothers and sisters bought.

My favorite magazine when I was a young lad was none other than Mad Magazine. Weekly Reader sucked balls because it was so skimpy, I usually had mine read before the teacher finished passing them out to the other kids in class. Boy's Life really sucked ass because I was not in Boy Scouts, I refused to join them because of after you were a Cub Scout you were then forced into something called Weblos after you graduated from being a Cub Scout and even at a very young age I did not want to be in any group that said that it's members blew. Highlights magazine also sucked it was too "goody goody" for my tastes, hell I was already reading the Detroit Free Press by the time I was reading Highlights. And finally, I did not like Jack and Jill because they refused to publish the joke I sent in to them when I was 8 years old.

But Mad stood head and shoulders above them all. It was funny, topical, and it had cartoons in it. And not just any old cartoons but illustrations by Dave Berg (For a little while when I was young I was convinced that my father was secretly Dave Berg's alter ego Roger Kaputnik, the resemblance was, to me anyway, uncanny. Look at Dave Berg's drawing of himself as Roger Kaputnik and then scroll down and look at my Dad. You can see why I was a bit confused.), Al Jaffee, Mort Drucker, Sergio Aragones, the great Jack Davis, and Don Martin.

I read Mad as soon as it came through our front door, when my big brothers finished with it, that is. I devoured it and wanted more. I loved the movie parodies, the snappy answers to stupid questions, the crazy fold ins on the inside of the back cover, and every other thing they put in it with the exception of the letters to the editor. I learned tons of stuff from Mad about the politics of the day and our society in general. It was also the first place I learned about things like anxiety, drugs, alcoholism, and patriotism.

I remember vividly the time they stuck a folded poster in one issue. It was around the time when All in the Family was just becoming popular. On the poster written in that hippy dippy style of lettering was the Pledge of Allegiance and I proudly read it off to my Mom and a neighbor who was visiting at the time. I read through it and then I came to the end and it said, "And liberty and justice for all, even for Blacks, Jews, Wops, Spics, Chinks, and whoever else we got in this country now." They both busted out laughing as I read that part and I started laughing as well, as soon as I got the joke.

We gobbled up everything Mad put out. The monthly magazine, the annuals, which were nothing more than reprints of stories and stuff we had already read, and the paperback books they put out. The jokes were groaners sometimes but we loved them all.

I stopped reading Mad regularly when I hit my teens but sometimes I'll buy a copy and read it and it always takes me back to when I was a tow headed scamp. I got the nerve up a few years back and I sent in some story ideas and jokes but they never did publish them. Although I did get a nice letter from the editor in chief once telling me that they almost bought one of my articles. I was flattered that they considered buying it but I would have appreciated the cold hard cash more. It's all good though and like one of my childhood heroes always said, "What? Me worry?"

Hall of Fame

When I was a young lad still living in Detroit, I just knew I was destined for bigger and better things than living in Smith Homes Housing Projects (that's right boys and girls your beloved Dr. Monkey is from 'da 'hood') the rest of my life. At first I thought my ticket out was going to be with the Detroit Tigers. I was sure I was going to grow up and play second base for my hometown team.

And not just play for them mind you, but win all sorts of Gold Glove awards for my stellar fielding as well and maybe win a batting title or two just for good measure. And I knew that all of my years of great play for the Tigers would be remembered forever and I would be inducted in the MLB Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Why, I'd be so well thought of that they'd put my plaque right next to Al Kaline's.

As the years went on my skills diminished, I made the JV team but since there was no other JV team in our area, I had moved to southwest Virginia by then, we never played a game. I never made the varsity team due to the fact that I could not hit or field worth a damn and because I deep down inside hated the other guys on the team, I thought they were insensitive assholes who degraded any one or any thing that was the slightest bit different than them.

Slowly my dream of making the MLB Hall of Fame died. But as it did and as my baseball playing skills flew the coop I discovered I had something that not a lot of other people had and certainly the asshole jocks did not have. I discovered I had a sense of humor and the intelligence to know when to use it. It was exhilarating and empowering to know that I could make people laugh and not just by telling the same old stupid jokes that they told in the locker rooms, but by coming up with witty one liners, by making jokes about topical events, by pointing out hypocrisy, and by doing accents and impressions.

As I progressed through high school, college, and life in general I read more and more. I paid attention to the current events of the day and I developed the skill to think for myself. All those things contributed to my sense of humor.

When I joined an improv comedy group in Knoxville TN, I thought that my humor skills were finally put to good use. I performed with the improv group for about ten years and I must admit I held my own with the best members of the group and I contributed more than my share of one liners, characters, and off the cuff jokes that made our shows good.

Then one night in August of 2004 my improv days came to an end when all those years of eating fatty foods, smoking Marlboro Lights, and not enough exercise caught up to me and I had a massive heart attack. A month later after my quadruple bypass I mourned to myself that I no longer had my comedy outlet. I had to content myself to cracking jokes to my girlfriend, which of course she became tired of and rightly so, to my friends via email, and to the house plants here at Casa de Monkey.

Then one day on Crooks and Liars I followed a link and it led to this post. I read it and laughed my ass off. I thought to myself, "Wow, is that the kind of things people do on blogs these days?" I had previously thought that blogs were for whiny self absorbed narcissists who wrote about their pedestrian thoughts, their inconsequential daily doings, and their plans for their most assuredly wretched futures. Dr. Zaius showed me that blogs could be funny and political and damn well worth reading every day. So a few weeks later and after a few less than stellar starts, I started this blog.

I use my sense of humor, my outrage, and my vast amount of trivial knowledge to come up with the things I post on here. And sometimes others find them as amusing or as insightful or as important as I sometimes do.

And sometimes some people find some of my posts to be good enough to be enshrined. I scrolled all the way down to the bottom of the first page of
the other day and I saw that Station Agent has his own blog post Hall of Fame. And I discovered that I was in there, not once, but twice. So my dream of being in a Hall of Fame has come true. And you know what? Being in this Hall of Fame is way more gratifying because I got there by using my smarts and my wit, the two things most jocks never use. And I proud of the company in the Ice Station Tango Hall of Fame, we all share the same progressive outlook and ideals, unlike most of the guys in the MLB Hall of Fame who were or are right wing reactionary Republicans.

So thanks Station Agent for making my dreams come true, you sir, in your Antartic fortress, rock harder than most anything else.

Heroes and others

The news that Michael Vick, he's the quarterback for the NFL Atlanta Falcons for those of you who do not know, is involved in dog fighting got us to thinking about heroes and assholes.

When we were a small monkey (if that turn of phrase doesn't make our old English teachers tear their hair out then we are not sure what will, but screw them anyway since this is our blog and not theirs) we were taught to idolize people who made a difference. Now since we also loved baseball and those were some of the glory days in Detroit Tigers history, 1968 through 1973, so we also idolized one of the team members. Most white kids idolized Al Kaline, and believe me he was damn good, he's a Hall of Famer after all, but our hero was a black guy with a little pot belly who played left field by the name of Willie Horton. He could do it all in our opinion, he could slug the hell out of the ball, he could field well, and he was gracious in his dealings with the media and with fans. He seemed to us to be a stand up guy.

We stopped being a huge Tigers fan when they traded Willie and when we moved from Michigan to Virginia but our love for Willie only grew through out the years. We found out many years later that during the first nights of the race riots in Detroit in 1967, which we lived through, so that means yes, we're in our mid 40's, so bite us, that Willie, at huge personal and financial risk to himself, saw fit to try to stop some of the rioting. What he did was put on his uniform and he went out onto the streets to try to talk people out of looting and rioting. What he did was astonishing because it was against team policy, the Tigers management told all players to stay out of the mess that was engulfing the city. If he had been hurt during the fracas, then the Tigers surely would have fired him or cut his salary, this was in the dark days of baseball before free agency liberated and protected players so the team would have easily gotten away with whatever they wanted to. So for Willie to have put everything on the line to help stop the violence was an extraordinary and heroic thing to do.

It also came to our attention that Willie was born in a place, Big Stone Gap, Va, that is not too far from where we live now, Johnson City, TN. Sadly however there is no plaque or any type of honor for him at the city of his birth because Willie is black and the population of Big Stone Gap is mostly lilly white.

It came to our attention a few years ago that Wille has adopted the Boys Club as his charity of choice and that he sponsors a golf tournament in our area each spring that raises money for said club. What makes this another reason to admire Willie is that his old pals from the Major Leagues come and play in the tournament and they mix and mingle and sign autographs for any and all duffers who sign up to play. The man is still giving back, and that's why we still admire Willie so much today.

But if Willie is someone to admire, then his evil opposite must be Michael Vick.

The rundown on Michael Vick is as follows:

• He left VA Tech early to chase the big NFL bucks.
  
• When he got busted for possessing pot he lied his way out of it and he hired an army of lawyers to protect his ass.
  
• He picked up a woman using the alias 'Ron Mexico,' had sex with her, gave her herpes, and then tried to deny it.
"Viva unprotected sex with groupies!"



• He refuses to accept any blame for not leading his team to a Superbowl victory, and remember this is the team that pays him millions of dollars to do just that.



• He thinks it's okay to force dogs to fight and kill each other for his and his buddies amusement.
  

It's a crying shame that the media wants kids and NFL fans to idolize Vick when he does crap like that. And it's an even bigger shame that someone like Willie Horton, a truly good and decent human being who is a true hero, is forever confused with that murdering rapist thanks to Bush the elder. But thank goodness that we were taught who to idolize and who to vilify.