I was sitting in Dick's Pizza the other night, nursing a glass of Harp while the metropolitan area was being blanketed by ice. I know, I know, drinking and driving on ice-sheeted roads - I may as well have had unprotected sex with a brace of hotel call-girls. Gimme credit, though, because I considered that option but nixed it in favor of The Loved One's delicate sensibilities and the fact that the roads were too slick to drive to a hotel.
Anyway, sitting next to me were two lovely gentlemen expounding loudly about how Barack Obama not only profited politically from the current financial Armageddon but that he more than likely caused it. I should add that I was leafing through the New York Times at the time.
Naturally, this inspired the two men to express themselves in full voice about the state of the news media.
The fellow nearer me - let's call him Voltaire - harrumphed and launched into his thesis. "How 'bout this Gether or Guyther guy? I don't know what his fuckin' name is," he asked his compadre. "Fuckin' guy's gonna be in charge of the IRS and he doesn't even pay any taxes."
The compadre - we'll call him Thomas Paine - shook his head and snorted. "It's a god damned shame," he said. "A dirty god damned shame. It figures, don't it? That's change, huh?"
The reference to Obama's campaign buzzword aroused Voltaire even more than he already was, which was a great lot. "That's all the fuckin' media talks about. Change," Voltaire tsk-ed. "Why don't they talk about how Obama's settin' up all his rich friends?"
I resisted the urge to remind him that the correct anencephalic complaint about the new president is that he's a socialist. I bit my lip and turned the page loudly.
Paine was just getting started. "And the media doesn't say a thing about this Gether or Guyther or whatever. Not a thing! You can bet that if he was a Republican, they'd be all over it. It woulda been on every front page in the country."
Suddenly, I felt both pairs of eyes on me and my newspaper, whose front page, by the way, carried yet another in a series of daily stories about Timothy Geithner's tax troubles.
"These are bad times we're comin' to," Paine said, dolefully. "Bad times. They're takin' over, slow but sure." Here, I was moved to ask who was taking over - millionaires? Socialists? Tall, skinny men? Chicagoans? Again, I resisted.
"They sure as hell are," Voltaire agreed, leaving me feeling inadequate for not grasping things as readily as he.
"Well, fuck them," Paine announced. "They ain't takin' me over."
"Nope," Voltaire concurred.
"Y'know what they're gonna do?" Paine asked.
"What?"
"They're comin' for the guns next."
"Oh, yeah."
"That's right," Paine said. The men finished paying their tabs and dropped a few coins apiece on the bar.
Voltaire stood up and put his jacket on, bumping me in the process without apology. He remained close to me, too close for my comfort. I shrunk in the opposite direction, turning my pages as if I were sitting on a crowded el train.
Paine provided the coda for the proceedings: "Well, you know what they say...."
"Oh, yeah."
"... they're gonna have to pull my gun outta my cold, dead hand."
"That's right."
With that - and an extra hip check courtesy of Voltaire - the two men strutted out of the place.
I watched them as they said their goodbyes outside the front door. They laughed and shook their heads. Who knows what amused them? Had Voltaire said, Hah, how about that pussy, reading the New York Times? We showed him! Or had Thomas Paine said, I think he bought it. Man, we were good!
If I hadn't invented the latter option I'd have fallen into a funk on an icy cold night.
