Benny Jay: Avatar

I finally see Avatar.

My younger daughter drags me to the 9:30 show on a Wednesday night – she’s got no school on Thursday cause she’s done with finals.

They charge us extra – $14 – cause it’s one of those 3-D shows and they give us the glasses at the door.

If you haven’t seen Avatar, here’s the deal: These bad guys fly to this distant planet where they make life miserable for the good guys, these blue-skinned natives. One of the bad guys joins the good guys and leads an uprising against the bad guys.

That’s pretty much all you need to know about Avatar other than the hero – the bad guy turned good guy – is a dead ringer for my nephew Ryan. Which, now that I think about it, you don’t really need to know at all….

Anyway, right in the middle of the movie, the theater door opens and this lady and a kid – no more than five, maybe six — walk up the aisle. They don’t have 3-D glasses.

Right away I get it. They saw a different movie that just let out and now she’s sneaking into Avatar cause she wants to see it without paying $14 like the rest of us chumps.

They sit directly behind us and start talking. Just carrying on a conversation like, you know, they’re on a playground or something.

I can’t hear everything they’re saying – more like a word here and there. But it’s enough to drive me crazy.

So I turn around and say — shh.

And the lady says to her kid, shh. And the kid says, what? And the lady says, shh. And they’re quiet for about ten seconds. And then the kid says, mommy, is this Avatar? And I think: No, kid, it’s Laurence of Arabia. And mommy says, yes. And the kid says, Mommy, is this the jungle? And I think – no, kid, it’s Brooklyn. And the lady says, yes. And the kid says….

On the screen a fight breaks out. Guns blazing and everything. The kid mimics the sound of the machine guns: Twi-twi-twi-twi—sheer. Or something like that.

That’s enough for my daughter. She moves to a seat in the back of the theater.

Then he starts mimicking the sound of the airplanes: Yearyahhh.

That’s enough for me.  I move further down the aisle.

Their voices disappear. I get back into the movie, when I hear a sound that’s hard to describe. Sort of like the faint murmuring of a babbling brook….

Oh, no, it’s the guy behind me. He’s talking and there’s no one responding. The lunatic is talking to himself!

Is this possible? First the kid, now this nutcase!

I take off my glasses and scan the theater. I get up and walk to an empty seat about ten rows up.

Finally. No muttering, no murmuring. No babbling brook. No kid talking to mommy. No mommy talking to kid. Just the movie. The guy who looks like Ryan’s making it with this beautiful native babe….

I feel something at my side. I look down. What the fu….

It’s the kid! He’s rolling down the aisle. He rolls past me and comes to the end of the stairs and just lies there talking to himself. Then he comes back rolling up the aisle. The little creep’s getting quite a workout. I’m thinking – it’s closing in on midnight on a Wednesday night – doesn’t the little shit have school in the morning?

Next thing I know here comes mommy. Marching up the aisle….

“C’mon,” she says.

“I don’t wanna go….”

“C’mon….”

“No, mommy, no….”

“Let’s go….”

“Waaaa….”

The little twerp’s wailing!

The mom walks out the door. Realizing his mommy can’t hear him, the kid stops wailing, gets up and walks out, the door slamming behind him.

Up on the screen, there’s a war going on:  Planes roaring, guns blazing, bombs exploding, mayhem, violence, death….

But in the theater, kid and mommy have left.

Ah, peace at last….

Big Mike: A Zinn Meditation

Truth, whatever the hell that is, is a commodity today. It’s sold in supermarkets. Chicagoans call their supermarkets — the food kind — Dominick’s and Jewel. Here in Bloomington, we call them Kroger and Marsh. Everybody professes loyalty to one or the other. So it is with Truth supermarkets, only the stores are a bit more numerous and they go by names like The O’Reilly Factor and Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

Each of them peddles The Truth. Their competitors, they say, are either pawns of some tyrannical colossus, just plain dumb, or flat out liars. So you make your choice. Dominick’s or Jewel. O’Reilly or Olbermann. If they sell it, it must be good. And true.

Me? I’ve always shopped in any store that had the best prices, the crisper lettuce, the redder meats. I go to both Kroger and Marsh. Yet when it comes to news and an historical perspective, I stay away from the supermarkets altogether. Even if O’Reilly, improbably, served up what seemed to be a palatable tomato, the rest of his selection is so rotten that I’d have to think twice. And Olbermann seems hell bent on selling anything O’Reilly doesn’t, even if it’s not edible.

Truth consumers, though, are fiercely loyal. If O’Reilly utters it, it must be true. And if Olbermann names you The Worst Person in the World, then there it is. I suppose people need some illusion of stability, a pretend foundation upon which they can build their beliefs.

Maybe it all started back in elementary school when our history teachers told us fairy tales about America. This country, they fibbed, always welcomed the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses. George Washington couldn’t tell a lie and Abe Lincoln always returned a penny. This nation only ever used its military might to advance liberty and democracy around the world. And every single one of those men who donned Union blue was willing to shed his blood so Negro slaves could be free.

What kind of idiots did those teachers think we were? In our defense, we were only nine and ten when they fed us all that silliness. We’re grown now but most of us still want to lap it up.

One guy who famously wouldn’t lap it all up was Howard Zinn. The old bird died this week and that’s a shame. He was one of the last of the real liberals. What passes for liberal these days would have been the man in the gray flannel suit in an earlier day. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton? Puh-leaze! They’re considered liberals only because Newt Gingrich and his gang stole the term and turned it into a pejorative. If Gingrich, Karl Rove, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, or any of the others ever came face to face with a real liberal, they’d suffer the vapors.

Zinn was no softie. He served as an Army Air Force bombardier in World War II and even was one of the first to drop napalm on civilians. Unlike chicken-hawks Rove and Dick Cheney, he saw the ugliness of war firsthand. He fought because he wanted to defeat fascism. That experience turned him against war. War, that is, as fought by the American empire after World War II. War in some far off jungle against a shadowy enemy that had no real quibble with this holy land.

War, in other words, waged by a big bully.

Zinn was always on the side of the little guy. He saw himself as a little guy even though he spent his life in college lecture halls. The more he studied, the more he delved, the more Zinn came to the conclusion that from the beginning America was a nation of a few big bullies pushing around a lot of little guys.

His crowning achievement, the book “A People’s History of the United States,” occupies a proud and prominent place in my bathroom library. In it, Zinn argues that Christopher Columbus was a homicidal sadist and Abe Lincoln was a racist. I don’t believe that these assertions and many other such controversial pronouncements in the book are The Truth. But they all represent truth — with a small T

Abraham Lincoln, the man who wrestled with his own feelings that brown human beings were intrinsically inferior to white ones yet still found it morally imperative to wage war against slavery, is a far more fascinating and honest character than the dope who chased some dame down on foot for three miles to return a penny to her. Zinn’s Lincoln is a human being.

My sixth-grade history teacher — just like the loudmouths in The Truth supermarkets — gave me cardboard cutouts.

The choirs are filled up but now there’s an opening for a new soloist. I hope someone out there picks up where Howard Zinn left off.

Randolph Street: Art Institute–Reflections On The New Wing

All photos © Jon Randolph  2010

Benny Jay: Dog Crazy

The last time I wrote about dogs I got myself in a heap of trouble, so you’d figure I’d know better then to write about them again.

If you recall, I recounted my showdown with a neighbor who got upset cause my dog crapped on his lawn, even though I cleaned it up and everything.

After that blog bit ran, Big Mike – the Barn Boss himself – sent me an email to proclaim that he was 100 percent behind my neighbor.

Thanks, pal.

As far as Big Mike’s concerned, dogs should not crap or pee on lawns. They should either do their business in alleys or not do it at all. Big Mike’s sort of tough about these things — that’s why we call him the Barn Boss.

“How would you like if it I came over to your house, pulled down my pants and took a big, steaming dump right on your lawn?” Big Mike asked me.

After I managed to get that image out of my mind – and, trust me, it wasn’t easy – I wrote back:

“So long as you cleaned up after yourself, I really can’t complain. Though my neighbors might be upset.”

Still, he had a point. Dog lovers are so infatuated with their dogs they think they can do no wrong. I’m reminded of this by a picture I saw on my friend Eric’s Facebook page. His dog, Daisy, is lying on the sofa looking like the Queen of Sheba.

Of course, it’s hard for me to criticize Eric for pampering Daisy cause even as I write this my dog is lying on my bed, licking her paws and occasionally looking up as if to say – hey, when you gonna feed me!

I should kick that mangy cur off my bed. But all I can say is — aw, what a good, wittle doggie.

Reminds me of the time my parents, my daughters and I took, Muttle, their old Dalmatian, for a walk along the lake. Another dog – off the leash, in violation of the leash law, I might add – ran over and attacked Muttle. Bad move. Muttle was one tough Dalmatian.  By the time my father had dragged him back, the other dog was bleeding.

Figured that would be the end of it since the other dog had 1.) been off the leash, in violation of the leash law, and 2.) started the fight in the first place.

But, no, the other dog owner actually took my parents to court. Tried to make them pay her  veterinarian bills and maybe even have Muttle put to death for being a menace to other dogs who attack him while running off the leash. By the way, did I mention that the other dog was violating the leash law?

We wound up before a judge in a courthouse in Skokie. The judge called my older daughter — then all of eight years old — to the stand to describe what she had seen.

“The other dog attacked Muttle,” she said.

“Muttle?” asked the judge.

“That’s our dog’s name….”

“Oh….”

After my older daughter finished, it was my younger daughter’s turn.

“How old are you?” asked the judge.

“Four,” said my younger daughter.

“Hmm,” the judge replied. “I think we can do without your testimony today.”

Somehow or other the case dragged on to another hearing before a different judge in another courtroom out in Skokie.

“So let me get this straight,” this judge said, after scanning the complaint. “Two dogs had a fight?”

“Yes, your honor,” said the complaining dog owner.

“Was your dog killed?”

“No, but….”

“So we’re here because two dogs had a fight?”

“Yes, but….”

“And for this I went to law school?”

So ended that case.

The whole thing proves my larger point: Dog owners are crazy. But, then, why should we be different from anyone else?

Big Mike: This Revolutionary Was A Chicken

Bronson and I were a couple of Chicago kids who found each other at Fenwick High School in Oak Park. Most guys who attended Fenwick, which was all boys until 1991, were suburban kids who came from money. The kids from Chicago came from blue-collar families, their parents having scraped together the then-astronomical yearly tuition of $675 any way they could.

Class distinction asserted itself early on so I wound up hanging with the Jungle Man, my old pal from elementary school, Dago Mike, whose family owned a tiny Italian restaurant, and Bronson — all of them city boys and all of whom would be the first of their families to attend college.

Bronson wasn’t Paul C.’s real name. He insisted on being called that though. It was his homage to a TV character, the protagonist of a short-lived Friday night drama, “Then Came Bronson,” about a drifter on a motorcycle who rode from town to town, always finding trouble and always figuring out how to rectify it. Bronson — my Bronson — wore a woolen watch cap pulled down low over his forehead, just like his TV nickname-sake. He also saw himself, similarly as a modern day cowboy, a loner, a disaffected outsider, never knuckling under to The Man.

I saw myself that way, too. When I learned Bronson wasn’t Paul C’s real name, I decided I needed a meaningful nickname as well. At the time, I idolized Abbie Hoffman. He was the first political figure-as-standup comedian. He wore an American flag shirt. He wrote a book called “Steal This Book!” (I was too chicken to actually steal it so I bought it.) He was one of my heroes of the Chicago Eight (that’s right, Eight — people forget that Bobby Seale was one of the original defendants until Judge Julius Hoffman separated him from the others — that is, after he had him gagged and chained to his chair — I wonder how thrilled Bill O’Reilly or Glenn Beck would have been over that one had they been around.)

So I became Abbie. Only I misspelled it Abbey everywhere I wrote it. That’s all Bronson called me.

One Friday afternoon Bronson yelled from from down the hall between periods.

“Hey, Abbey! Wait up!”

“What’s up, man?”

“Let’s go to the basketball game tonight.”

“What basketball game?” I was puzzled. We were freaks, hippies (albeit with short hair and wearing school ties.) We never talked sports, only Jethro Tull and The Who, pot and other topics befitting young rebels attending an exclusive Catholic suburban college prep school.

“The Fenwick game, you variose knafe!” Bronson had a habit of inventing imaginary, quasi-medieval-sounding insults.

“Aw, I don’t wanna go.”

“You have to. It’ll be a trip. I’ll pay,” Bronson insisted.

Even though I was barely 16, I knew enough never to turn down anything free. Bronson picked me up in his father’s aircraft carrier-sized Buick deuce-and-a-quarter at six-thirty. I slid in and Bronson was positively giddy. “This is gonna be so fuckin’ great!” he said, grinning.

He shifted into park and said, “Hold on, Abbey. I got somethin’ for ya.” Bronson dug into his jeans pocket and fished out a little tinfoil packet. “Acid,” he said. “Let’s drop!”

I’d done it a few times before, every time feeling as though I was on the verge of losing what little sanity I had to begin with. But I figured I’d be with my pal and if anything went wrong — say the fabric of the cosmos suddenly started tearing itself open — Bronson’d know how to catch me before I fell through the tear.

We arrived at the Tony Lawless Gym well before game time but just as the acid kicked in. Never had the Friars‘ black and white looked so colorful. Strangely, Bronson began heckling everyone and everything the moment he stepped into the place.

“Bronson,” I hissed. “Cool it, man! We’ll get busted!”

Bronson waved at me dismissively. “Fuck that, man.”

We climbed to our seats in the top row of the bleachers which, under the circumstances, seemed to be somewhere near the orbit of the Moon. Bronson heckled and jeered and shook his fist as the players from both teams came onto the court. I wished I could shrink to the size of a field mouse (which I believed physically possible at the moment) but instead grew to the size of a rhinoceros. Acid, right?

Anyway, the game began and Bronson screamed and waved like a madman, complaining about every call, insulting all the visiting players, pooh-poohing the accomplishments of the home team.

“Bronson! Please!” I begged.

Again, he waved me off.

Toward the end of the first half, someone called a timeout. As the players huddled, Bronson went into high gear, screaming, jumping out of his seat, challenging players to come up and fight him. My eyes were rolling in my head, imagining being jailed for tripping and then being thrown out of school.

Suddenly, Fenwick’s dean of discipline, Mr. Chmiel grabbed a microphone and demanded Bronson stop causing such a ruckus. It only made Bronson redouble his efforts. Mr. Chmiel, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes slits, stood staring at Bronson.

Finally, Mr. Chmiel barked into the mike, “If you don’t stop it up there, I’m gonna throw you outta here!”

Bronson stood up. “Oh yeah?” he yelled. “Whyncha come up and make me?” I inched away from Bronson, praying that no one could see me.

Mr. Chmiel took a few steps forward and, without the mike but as loudly as if he was still using it, roared, “Why don’t you come down here?”

At this point, the top of my head spewed lava. Bronson leaped up and dashed down toward the gym floor. My jaw collided with my sternum. Bronson reached the gym floor and yelled, “Try and catch me!” With that he began running around the court with Mr. Chmiel in hot pursuit. My eyes became saucers. The two ran around and around until Bronson decided to climb up a scaffold, the top of which was even higher than our seats. Mr. Chmiel followed. Now I was starting to wonder what it would feel like to wear a straightjacket.

Now the two reached the top of the scaffold, There was the sound of scuffling and then, a flash! The figure of Bronson, legs akimbo, his woolen watch cap still pulled low over his forehead, came flying off the top of the scaffolding. It spun around like a child’s pinwheel. Several women in the crowd shrieked. A couple of men gasped.

That’s it, I said to myself. I’ve now lost my mind. Too bad. I’m only a teenager. I would have liked to be able to move out of the house eventually. Instead, it’s the mental institution for me. I hope I don’t pee in my pants too much.

The figure of Bronson hit the floor with a sickening thud. The place went deadly quiet. Then both Bronson and Mr. Chmiel popped their heads out from on top of the scaffold, waving and laughing. They climbed down to the laughter and cheers of the crowd, stopping and waving triumphantly every few feet. One of the equipment managers ran out on the floor, picked up the lifeless dummy dressed up as Bronson and carried it away.

When Bronson eventually got back to our seats, he slapped me on the back. “How was that, Abbey?”

I didn’t answer. My jaw was still fused to my sternum. The idea that the hard-assed, no-nonsense, absolutely humorless Mr. Chmiel would engage in such planned antic with a freak like Bronson would have been mind boggling even if I weren’t under the influence of a psychedelic drug. As it was, I was certain I’d sleep that night either in a lunatic asylum or a rabbit hole.

After a few long moments, Bronson turned to me again and said, “Well?”

I narrowed my eyes. “I’m never ever gonna do acid with you again, you fucker!”

Benny Jay: Billy `The Kid’ Harris

It’s late at night and I’m walking the dog, when the text message comes in from my old friend, Johnny Reaves, self-taught professor of all things Chicago.

“Billy `the kid’ Harris died,” he writes. “Call me as soon as you can.”

I push redial on my phone.

“Is this for real?” I ask, when he answers.

“I’m afraid so – I just got the word from a buddy….”

“Damn….”

“Heart attack. He was only 58-years-old. Another brother gone too soon….”

In the background, I hear the cackle of a dispatch radio. Johnny works security out by O’Hare Airport. They got him on the graveyard shift, driving the company security car up and down the streets.

He starts in where we left off the last time we were talking about Billy. Seems we’re always talking about Billy, loving basketball the way we do. Billy Harris was the greatest playground basketball player we’d ever seen. And we’d seen a lot – especially Johnny. He’s pretty much seen them all.

“First time I saw Billy was the summer of `67,” Johnny recalls. “He was going into his senior year at Dunbar High School and I was home from the Air Force. It was a pickup game on an outdoor court at Pershing grammar school, over at 31<sup>st</sup> just east of King Drive. He turned the place out. Throwing up shots left and right and talking a mile a minute: `I’m as good as the best and better than the rest.’ `You can’t cover me with a gun.’ He told one guy – `you can’t stick me with a knife.’ Billy could talk some trash.

“He had some of the greatest shoulder fakes I’d ever seen. He shake them shoulders and guys would automatically jump in the air. By the time they hit the ground, Billy had knocked down his shot. The boy could shoot. His jump shot was a thing of beauty. Just years and years of practicing in the projects. When you growing up in the projects all you got is time to shoot.

“I saw him play at Marshall High School – must have been his senior year. This was before they built the new court – still had that old court. They had all those different lines for tennis and volleyball and stuff. A long shot at Marshall is what they call from the double green, which are the lines on other side of the half court. Billy hit a shot from the double green. He got a standing ovation from the Marshall fans. Listen — when you shoot a shot from the double green, you get instant props at Marshall.”

The dispatcher comes in. “Hold on,” Johnny says to me. Then he tells the dispatcher: “I’m at Harwood by Clover.”

He comes back to me without missing a beat. “The Bulls drafted him but they cut him without really giving him a chance. He talked too much — and you know they had this thing about inner-city players who talked too much. Norm Van Lier told him – `just shut up and play.’ But Billy said – `I can’t shut up.’ They basically cut Billy cause he talked too much. It’s a damn shame cause Billy could have been a star. The man was born to play basketball. I guess he was either born too early or born too late.”

I try to sneak a word in – cause, you know, I got something to say — but Johnny’s on a roll. “I wrote a poem about Billy,” he continues. “I got it right here in my pocket.”

He clears his throat, then recites his poem: “Good bye, Billy. You got next in the big gym, my brother. You left a legacy for a lot of players in the game that never knew you but should have. The game missed out on the playground prince who preceded the AAU system when the game was pure. Before the shoes and the agents. When it was just ten on the concrete. Go on and be with the legends and may all your jumpers hit nothing but net. You got next, Billy.”

We’re silent for a moment. “That’s pretty good,” I tell him. “You’re a poet and you don’t know it.”

“Yeah, well, it ain’t Shakespeare, but I wrote it from my heart….”

Letter From Milo: Hard Times Hit Third City

Due to the fiduciary incompetence of Big Mike, the Barn Boss of this scabby, barely literate outfit, and his equally hapless pal, Benny Jay, The Third City Blog site has fallen on hard times.

The sad truth is that The Third City is broke. My last two paychecks have bounced. Yesterday, someone posted an eviction notice on the door of our Michigan Avenue corporate office. Our fleet of company cars has been repossessed. The company tab at the neighborhood bar has been cut off. The local whorehouse won’t take our checks anymore. And, worst of all, my drug dealer won’t return my phone calls.

I never thought it would come to this. When I left my last job, as Ethics Professor at the Moody Bible Institute, to join The Third City, I thought I was set for life. After all, Big Mike had assured me that The Third City was one of the most popular and respected blog sites in the world, averaging close to a million readers a week. He told me that the site was on the short lists of both the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize committees, in several different categories, including news, sports and porn.

“Stick with The Third City, kid,” Big Mike said, when I was hired. “The sky’s the limit.”

Well, the sky has fallen in on us. The Third City is in dire straits. Sadly, this may be the last blog we ever post.

But, I’m not a quitter. I refuse to let The Third City go under. This blog site is too important to the American people. In the words of some political dumbass, The Third City is “too big to fail.”

That’s why I’ve decided to hold a fund raiser. Yes, if NPR, Jerry Lewis and the Kiwanis can hold fund raisers, why can’t The Third City? We are every bit as deserving of feasting on the public tit as the above named organizations.

I have been working hard to keep this site afloat. I’ve been in contact with the new owners of the Chicago Cubs about using Wrigley Field as the venue for a fund raising benefit. My good friends, U2, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan (all great fans of The Third City), have agreed to appear. Prince Charles is considering acting as emcee. Steven Spielberg has offered to create a 60 second TV spot to publicize the event. Monica Lewinsky has offered her services, in a capacity yet to be determined. Celebrities from the entertainment, sports and fashion industries are lining up to participate.

Despite the big name talent that has offered to help, it’s going to be you, our faithful readers who will make the difference. It is your contributions that will help keep The Third City a beacon of civilized discourse in a world of idiotic chatter.

That’s why I’m asking each and every one of you to reach into your wallets and purses, pull out a 20 dollar bill, place it in an envelope and mail it to me. I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to Big Mike or Benny Jay. I want to, ah, surprise them.

I’m counting on you good folks out there to come to Third City’s rescue in this time of need. Just put that 20 dollar bill in a plain white envelope and address it to Milo Samardzija at 262…

HOLD IT! This is Mrs. Milo. I was just passing by Milo’s desk, saw what he was writing and chased him away from the computer with a broomstick. All he’s doing is trying to scam people out of money. Anybody that sends him money is a bigger idiot that he is. As for that crap about company cars, I doubt if Big Mike, Benny Jay, Milo or that creepy Jon Randolph have enough brains between them to pass a driver’s license test. And the only corporate office they have is the corner coffee shop. Jeez, what a bunch of losers.