I’ve lived in Bibleburg off and on since 1967, so I’m rarely surprised when one of our wingnut asshats takes his clown act to the national stage. Everyone’s familiar with our most recent Three Stooges revival — Ted Haggard, Jimmy Dobson and Doug Bruce — but I can remember when there was a John Birch Society bookstore downtown, right about where Tony’s is now. And when the Ku Klux Klan attempted a comeback here in the Seventies, I interviewed the local hood-and-sheet club as well as national Kluxer David Duke for the Bibleburg Gaslight.
So color me unsurprised that state Sen. David Schultheis (R-Hyperbole) has used his Twitter account to fart higher than his ass. According to Talking Points Memo, citing Colorado Pols, Schultheis tweeted thusly:
“Don’t for a second, think Obama wants what is best for U.S. He is flying the U.S. Plane right into the ground at full speed. Let’s Roll.”
As TPM notes, “Let’s roll” were the final words of Todd Beamer, a passenger aboard United Airlines Flight 93, one of four aircraft hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001. It crashed before reaching its intended target after a passenger rebellion.
What I don’t understand is, why do we have to import nitwits like this? Schultheis is a transplant from California who didn’t start fucking up in my back yard until 1992. Don’t we have enough of our own homegrown fools to fill key positions in the state Legislature? Where are the Minutemen when we need them?
What Bibleburg needs is immigration reform, the sooner the better. Let’s save these high-paying jobs for our own dummies.
• Late update: The Denver Post has noted Schultheis’ chirpy churlishness, but as of wine-thirty, the Gaslight has not. Another non-surprise.
• Even later update: Racist fool and Birther Lou Dobbs is out at CNN. This does not mean that CNN has suddenly stopped sucking. It only means that henceforth, it will suck a little less.
It was a tad warm — 50-something, and in November — to wear my brand-new VeloNews coat in Winter Park.
Saw a beautiful sunrise yesterday. I’d have taken a picture, but I was northbound at 80 mph surrounded by people who were hellbent on maiming and/or killing me, so I kept my attention focused on the task at hand, which was making it safely to Winter Park for day two of the annual VeloNews retreat.
This required me to get up at 4 a.m., which was not pleasant. Picture the monster arising from Dr. Frankenstein’s table, red murder in his freshly undead eyes. During an unpleasant spell in the early Eighties, when I worked for an afternoon daily in Oregon, I had to be on the job at this miserable hour, and I never got used to it.
But at least there was work to be done. Meetings prevent the doing of work. While you’re sitting there around the big table, giving your tonsils a good airing, the work is waiting patiently for you to get back to it. Unlike you, work has plenty of time. Meetings also provide the illusion of democracy when in fact business is dictatorial. Sooner or later someone in authority will tell everyone to shut the fuck up and get back to work. But never soon enough.
To be sure, the occasional nugget of intelligence glistens in the dungheap: stats on what is selling, what is growing dusty on the shelves and who is buying; hints about where The Company will direct money and resources, and where it will withhold same; the sort of news a guy can get electronically these days, without the need for a six-hour round trip via Subaru.
But one thing a guy can’t get electronically is a free lunch and a nifty official VeloNews jacket from Descente. So I’ve got that going for me.
• Extra-credit reading:VeloNews.com has a sister site devoted to mountain biking, Singletrack.com. It’s relatively new, and doesn’t have a related magazine to drive eyeballs its way, so I’m pitching you this link to get your opinions about the site. Gimme your thoughts on VeloNews.com too. Think of it as a meeting that you won’t get paid for, but don’t have to drive to.
After a couple days of editing video and burning it to discs, Marv’s music is playing more or less non-stop in my head, especially when I run or ride. It’s perfect exercise music. “Nobody Knows You (When You’re Down and Out” is a little bluesy, good for fat-burning or recovery, and “Going to Chicago (Sorry But I Can’t Take You)” and “Some of These Days” make a good soundtrack for an interval session.
A casual Googling unearths about a jillion different flavors of these tunes performed by a wide range of artists over the years. Marv seems to have taken his “Some of These Days” lyrics from an Ella Fitzgerald version. Count Basie could be the source for “Going to Chicago,” but Marv’s version has a whole lot more lyrical meat on its bones, some of which may have come from “Chicago Monkey Man Blues” by Ida Cox.
But that’s folklore for you — every story changes in the telling.
I took this still of Marv playing guitar while we shot a short video of him performing kiddie songs for his grandchildren. We coaxed him into playing a few tunes for the adults in the audience, and you can see that video by clicking the link below.
Our friend and neighbor Marvin J. Berkman died on Monday. I suppose that he had been sick since before we moved in next door, but somehow he never seemed ill, until suddenly he was. And once I had gotten to know him a little, the thought that he might be mortal never occurred to me.
In his 80s — his 80s! — Marv was in two or three bands, practicing and performing regularly on guitar; taking a writing class; driving all over town in his decrepit Volvo (and occasionally to other towns); scouring the thrift stores for useful items; grocery shopping and cooking; helping a friend keep her Manitou Springs house from sliding off its hillside; holding a position of some authority at the church he and his sweetheart Judy attended; doing some casual woodworking . . . I was 30 years younger than the man, and I got tired just watching him.
Listening to him was something else altogether. That was never tiresome. Marv was a self-described saloon musician, a gig he took up as a teen-ager in Chicago, and the stories he could (and did) tell. He played for gangsters, swells and Studs Terkel, among others; served in the U.S. Army Air Corps in the Aleutian Islands during World War II; worked in jewelry and optometry; and somewhere picked up jackleg carpentry.
The other students in his writing class apparently considered him exotic, as did his fellow congregants at the Methodist church he and Judy attended (Marv was a Jew). He was a storyteller who would talk to cats if no bipeds were handy, among them our Turkish, who likes Marv and Judy’s yard better than our own. And if he occasionally repeated a tale, well, so do I. His were worth listening to more than once.
We shared a driveway and a garage, and other things as well. If Marv was braising some corned beef, a chunk would find its way across the driveway to our house. If I was simmering a pot of chili con carne, a bowl would wind up on Marv’s table. Herself helped Marv wrestle with his balky Windows laptop, and I shoveled their walks come winter; he helped us navigate the health-care maze. Living as he did with diabetes and cancer, he’d had plenty of experience in that arena.
But cancer has even more time on the job, and it gradually began to get the upper hand. Judy did her best for him, but Marv came to need more care than she could provide, and he finally agreed to enter a nursing home.
That lasted about seven hours — as is often the case, the place was a Hieronymus Bosch nightmare — and after hollering for help Marv was transferred first to Memorial Hospital’s oncology unit, then to Pikes Peak Hospice, where he had once volunteered a couple days a week, providing the soundtrack for many a final episode as a hall-strolling troubadour.
It was a fine, large room, and he was among friends there. The staff remembered Marv fondly, dropping by in ones and twos to pay their respects; a quick chat, a hug, a kiss, and then tears in the hallway. “You never let them see you cry,” said one. “But if you don’t cry, there’s something the matter. With you.” Another told Judy that it was an honor to be allowed to care for Marv during his last days. A third was stunned to learn that Marv had returned not to play, but to die.
We weren’t there when Marv finally passed on. I took my cue from Marv’s reaction upon awakening from a doze to seeing a half-dozen of us, friends and family, camped out in his hospice room, eyeing him like buzzards in a tree. “Oh, no,” he muttered. The old saloon musician didn’t want an audience for his final performance.
Got awful quiet around here, eh? Sorry ’bout that. Distractions include paying chores and a friend and neighbor who is in hospice and bound for whatever is next. Here’s hoping it includes spicy food, good books and musicians who can improvise.
More of the same is on tap this week, but I didn’t want to dive back in without noting that Dr. Demento was convicted on all counts yesterday and led away in handcuffs immediately thereafter. I understand he faces as much as five years as a guest of the State, and I hope he gets every day of it. As some of you know, Ron Peterson, the guy who went through the good doktor’s rear window when the asshole zipped in front of him and hit the binders, is an old friend and a former Mad Dog. So, yeah, it’s personal.
Be careful out there, and I’ll see you soon.
• Late update: My man Marv’ died last night, I am informed by Herself. More to come later. My sincerest condolences to his family and friends. He will be missed, and not just by us.
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