Author: odd man out

New tickets to paradise from PA Lottery

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lottery

Nothing says lower-class desperation as clearly as state-sponsored lotteries:

A new Pennsylvania Lottery game debuts Tuesday, while other longtime drawings are getting new names. The new game is called PICK 2, a twice-daily drawing that allows players to bet on any two-digit number. Other daily lottery drawings, in which players choose three to five digits, are being rebranded under the “PICK” name. The 38-year-old Daily Number, the lottery’s first daily draw game, will now be known as PICK 3…

And no one appreciates this desperation more than the hustlers who organize the lotteries and the politicians who use lotteries and casinos for back-door taxes, because they’re too crooked and cowardly to raise taxes on the well-to-do.

I thought of these guys today when I ran to a convenience store to steal NyQuil for my sick friend Swamp Rabbit. One employee was ringing up overpriced junk food and another was collecting money from the faithful after taking their numbers and printing their lottery tickets. A crusty chap in a Cowboys cap intoned his numbers, as if the right combination would open the treasure chest: “4-6-9. 6-9-4. 9-4-6. 6-9-5…”

Then I had to fax something, my machine is beyond repair. I ran to one of those dirty little bunkers — there are chains of them — where people who can’t afford bank accounts buy money orders or place bets, or both. Same story here, except the employees work from behind a sheet of glass, or plastic, thick enough to stop an RPG. On the wall next to their little bomb shelter are messages on flyers:

Cigarettes
Tokens
Please specify day or night numbers
Sorry, we cannot cancel Cash 5, Powerball, Super 7, Quinto

Back at the shack, I commiserated with the rabbit. I told him using a check-cash joint is one-stop shopping for the doomed — lottery tickets, cigarettes, money orders that cost an arm and a leg. Four-dollar faxes! It’s like crossing the border to the land of the lost. Don’t expect to find your way back.

The rabbit coughed then took a swig of NyQuil. “You done crossed the border, too, in case you ain’t noticed.”

Not for the first time, I wanted to grab him by his ears and toss him in the swamp. “I’m just going through a rough patch, you dumb rodent. Any day now I’m gonna sell my new novel and blow this dive.”

The rabbit laughed until he started coughing again. “Right,” he said. “That’ll be the same day I win a million bucks playing PICK 2.”

If Comcast’s CEO had sucked up to Teddy Roosevelt

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"Did I hear you right? You want Time-Warner? You're a funny guy, Roberts.
‘Did I hear you right? You want Time Warner, too? You’re a funny guy, Roberts.’

Swamp Rabbit had an interesting thought today. You’ve got to wonder, he said, how many media companies Comcast CEO Brian Roberts would have gobbled up if recent U.S. presidents hadn’t been stooges for big business.

Net neutrality is only one of Comcast’s big battles right now: the other is getting approval for its merger with Time Warner Cable. Here, too, Comcast’s lobbyists have close connections in Washington. In fact, the [Wall Street] Journal reports that Comcast actually invited a senior antitrust official with the Justice Department to a party a month before it announced the merger. The official declined. Comcast has also had a relationship with President Obama for some time now. The Journal reports that Comcast employees contributed $337,000 to his reelection campaign and that he’s gone golfing with Roberts.

Imagine Roberts sucking up to Teddy Roosevelt in order to acquire even more riches and power. The rabbit thinks the bull moose, speaking softly, would have denounced Roberts as a malefactor of great wealth, then hit him over the head with a big 5-iron.

“You’re way off,” I said. “Golf is the sport of corrupt cornballs. Teddy Roosevelt didn’t play golf. He played real sports, the kind that get your heart rate up.”

“Whatever,’ the rabbit replied. “Point is, there wouldn’t be no so-called relationship with Roberts. There would be a law against him.”

Footnote: Being a monopoly means never having to say you’re sorry when thousands of customers say you suck.

‘Deflategate’ a bigger story than SOTU

~ odd man out

deflategate

I was on the porch at the shack with Swamp Rabbit, critiquing Barack Obama’s sixth State of the Union address. Obama turned out to be the embodiment of magical thinking on the part of American liberals, I told the rabbit. It long ago became clear he is the consummate insider, good buddies with Jamie Dimon and other elite fraudsters, but put him onstage and he still sounds like a crusader against income inequality:

It’s now up to us to choose who we want to be over the next fifteen years, and for decades to come. Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?

I noted that the questions Obama posed have been answered many times since the Reagan years, when the income gap between the rich and poor began to widen. But our silver-tongued leader obviously enjoys re-asking it, especially now that both the Senate and House are in Republican hands and his opportunity to fight income inequality has come and gone.

“The man is a lame duck,” the rabbit said. “Don’t matter what he says or what you say. How ’bout you git down off that soapbox? There’s real news goin’ on out there.”

I pointed out to him that I was standing on his case of Wild Turkey, not on a soapbox. “What’s the real news?” I said.

It was “Deflategate.” Someone from the New England Patriots, prior to the team’s game against the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday, may have let some of the air out of the footballs the Patriots would use. Slightly deflated balls are easier to throw and catch, so the balls may have been a factor in the Patriots’ lopsided victory. In other words, the Patriots have been accused of cheating. Stop the presses!

“That’s crazy,” I said. “Everybody knew the Patriots were going to win that game. You’re just angry because you didn’t have the money to bet on them, and because you lost money on them the week before. How come the Patriots are news but Obama isn’t?”

The rabbit twitched his nose and spat in the swamp. “Because nobody knows yet how the Patriots story is gonna turn out. That’s more than you can say for the Obama story.”

Pope Francis vs. Bill Maher, pope of snark

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Pope Francis in the PH

Poor Pope Francis, cast into eternal darkness by comedian Bill Maher, host of Real Time and unofficial head of the Church of the Latter Day Snarks:

“I was starting to really like this pope,” Maher said during his monologue on Friday. “He’s dead to me now. Oh yeah, f*ck the Pope. Look, George Bush said it: you’re either with us or against us. Apparently the Pope is not with us.”

Maher was disappointed that the Pope said religion should be off-limits for insults at the same time that he condemned the attack against the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo that left 12 staff members killed.

I say, f*ck Bill Maher. He prides himself on being politically incorrect but his knee-jerk rejection of ideas that clash with his point of view is just the opposite — politically predictable. His snarky act has gotten old.

I don’t agree with Pope Francis on this one — no institution should be “off-limits for insults” — but most of his other social criticisms are on target. Bottom line, he always takes the side of the poor against the obscenely wealthy, the oppressed against the oppressors. Which is more than you can say for Maher and his fellow limousine liberals, who have more in common with hardcore Republicans than with progressives.

Credit where it’s due: Swamp Rabbit just reminded me that Maher’s golden moment as a social critic came soon after 9/11, when he told Middle America that people who crash airplanes into skyscrapers are anything but cowards — that we were the cowards for “lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away.” “Now that was politically incorrect,” the rabbit said.

Correction: When Francis became pope, I thought he’d turn out to be another corrupt figurehead who wore funny hats. I was wrong, except for the hats.

Seeking disaster’s bright side in Atlantic City

~ odd man out

Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian is like Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss, or Eric Idle in Life of Brian. He always looks on the bright side of life, even life in Atlantic City, which has been in a downward spiral for years thanks to corrupt and incompetent public officials and casino executives.

In his State of the City speech this week, Guardian argued that A.C. could get back on the winning track by diversifying its economy instead of continuing to depend almost entirely on revenues from crumbling casino businesses. Fittingly, Guardian made his speech in the ballroom at Caesars, whose parent company had just filed for bankruptcy protection.

Smart people warned A.C. to diversify decades ago, to make it more “family-friendly” before casinos became legal in nearby states and drew away a large percentage of the gamblers. It didn’t happen. Four of 12 A.C. casinos went dark in 2014, throwing thousands of people out of work. Gaming revenues have shrunk to almost half of what they were eight years ago. You might say Guardian is planning radical surgery for a patient who’s already been wheeled to the morgue — unless you look on the bright side.

Give the mayor credit for a good pep talk, even though he hit a sour note when he said, “At least we are not Detroit.” This was like saying we are not London during the plague years, or Dresden after the fire bombs.

Atlantic City is many times smaller than Detroit and should have been much easier to fix. It has a beach and a boardwalk and an ocean, and it once had legions of chumps journeying from far and wide to blow their money on games of chance. It was a test case for the argument that legalized gambling was a good way to jump-start depressed communities.

So much for that argument. Casinos care about casinos, not communities. When they can no longer plunder, they run.

Cat Stevens still can’t abide ‘blasphemy’

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He didn't mean to hurt you... He's just a zealous guy.
He didn’t mean to hurt you… He’s just a zealous guy.

The hippie-era troubadour and Muslim convert Yusuf Islam, aka Cat Stevens, is on the comeback trail and already putting his foot in his mouth. For a recent Rolling Stone article, Stevens was asked about his declaration that “[Salman Rushdie] must be killed. The Quran makes it clear: If someone defames the prophet, then he must die.” He said this way back in 1989, shortly after the Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa against Rushdie for blaspheming the prophet Muhammad in his novel The Satanic Verses.

One might assume that the 2015 version of Cat Stevens, singing and playing again in the secular world, would unambiguously disavow his old statements about Rushdie, who was forced into hiding for many years because of the fatwa. But one would be wrong. Instead, Stevens told RS:

I’m a firm believer in the law… I was never a supporter of the fatwa [against Rushdie], but people don’t want to hear that because they keep saying that I believe in the law of blasphemy. All I’m saying is, how can you deny the Third Commandment? It’s an Islamic principle that you must follow the law of the land where you reside.

Swamp Rabbit and I scratched our heads when we read this. Was Stevens saying that Rushdie shouldn’t be killed, period, or that he should only be killed in countries where Islam and the law are the same thing?

The rabbit took a swig of Wild Turkey — to help him think more clearly, I guess. He said, “Sounds to me like Yusuf ain’t honest enough to admit he talked like a jackass back in the day. He should apologize to Rushdie, or keep his yap shut.”

I almost agreed with the rabbit. Stevens should be able to say whatever he wants to say, but no way would I ride the peace train with a guy who can’t quite renouce the ultimate form of censorship. Even if I could afford the ticket.

Notes on Anita Ekberg, ‘sex goddess’

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News of Anita Ekberg’s death at 83 got Swamp Rabbit and me and other Federico Fellini fans thinking of Ekberg’s small but unforgettable role in La Dolce Vita (1960), her only good movie and one of the greatest movies ever to be shown at my shack in the Tinicum swamp.

I liked the photo of Ekberg in People magazine’s obit, but I took issue with how the writer described La Dolce Vita:

In the Fellini classic, which starred Marcello Mastroianni in what was essentially one long hedonistic romp through the Eternal City, Ekberg ignited her own eternal sex goddess image when she alluringly waded through the Fountain of Trevi in a black, strapless dress.

Calling La Dolce Vita a hedonistic romp is like calling Hamlet a revenge thriller — the description is reductive, to say the least. The movie’s anti-hero, Marcello, is an exceedingly charming fellow who parties non-stop because he can’t think of anything meaningful to do with his talents. His misery is compounded by the fact that he works as a journalist/publicist at a time when the media is evolving into an all-seeing monster that trivializes people, ideas and institutions.

“I don’t like that cat on her head,” the rabbit said as we watched Ekberg in the movie’s famous fountain scene. “But she’s one of them sex goddesses, for sure.”

I explained to the rabbit that Ekberg’s Sylvia is more than a sex goddess to Marcello. She’s the great novel he’ll never write, the undying love he’ll never experience, the faith — and faithfulness — that will forever elude him. Ultimately, she’s like the other loves in his life, in that she embodies his dread as well as his aspirations.

“Whatever you say,” the rabbit said. “But if she ain’t no sex goddess, I don’t know who is.”

Ivan Klima covers the NFL playoffs

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klima

Swamp Rabbit and I were hungry, so we took a two-day job — strictly commission, unfortunately — peddling magical electricity in a suburban mall. There were flat-screen TVs and football fans all over the place. We caught some of the New England Patriots-Baltimore Ravens playoff game as we worked. The rabbit had bet on the Patriots to win by seven points, but they only won by four, so he lost his bet and was in no mood to join the Patriots fans as they cheered.

But the fans quickly shut up and went back to gawking at the shiny toys in the mall. Tom Brady is a great QB, I told the rabbit, but who really cares about the Patriots where we live, in Philadelphia Eagles country? In fact, who cares about the Eagles? They’re done. Show me the next distraction, please.

“In the end, it’s all garbage,” I added.

No one was looking to consume magical electricity, so I pulled from my backpack a dog-eared copy of Czech novelist Ivan Klima’s Love and Garbage and read to the rabbit a relevant passage about consumers:

They fill the streets, the squares, the stadiums and the department stores. When they burst into cheers over a winning goal, a successful pop song or a revolution, it seems as if that roar would go on forever, but it is followed at once by the deathly silence of emptiness and oblivion.

“Don’t give me no high-falutin’ lectures, I ain’t in the mood,” the rabbit replied. “I just lost fifty bucks on them freakin’ Patriots. Now I gotta stand here and watch these here consumers consume all them toys I can’t afford.”

I told him all is good, the toys won’t make the consumers any happier than he is, not for more than a few minutes. “What these people need, they can’t buy at the mall,” I said.

I added. “You’re just looking to fill the void inside you where your soul should be.”

“You got that right, Odd Man. Any liquor stores in this dump?”

We folded up our table and left the mall, still hungry. On the way back to the swamp I stole some wieners at the SuperFridge and a liter of Wild Turkey at Tinicum Beer & Spirits.

“Here you go, rabbit,” I said, handing him the Wild Turkey back at the shack. “But this garbage won’t fill the void.”

He guzzled straight from the bottle and said, “Maybe not, but at least it’ll stop the shakes.”

Regarding Rushdie and the limits of satire

~ odd man out

Salman Rushdie has issued an eloquent denunciation of the fanatics who murdered eleven in Paris in the name of their god:

I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. ‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.

I showed Rushdie’s statement to my friend Swamp Rabbit and said, “That pretty much sums it up, don’t you think?”

“Almost,” the rabbit said. “But this story ain’t about old-school religion — Muslims and Christians and whatnot. It’s about somethin’ bigger.”

We talked it out. The rabbit’s point was that the murderers in Paris are political ideologues more than they are religious fanatics. Their religious convictions, if they have any, are bound up in their socioeconomic grievances. They and their fellow fanatics want to punish the West — not so much for disrespecting Muhammad as for disrespecting them. They profess to be killing on the behalf of the powerless. Religion isn’t really the primary issue in this story, any more than it was in Northern Ireland during the time of the troubles.

The rabbit noted that old-school religions have run out of steam in the West, except among Bible-thumping Republicans in red-state America. That the dominant religion in the modern secular West is free-market capitalism. That hardcore capitalism continues to widen the gulf between the world’s haves and have-nots, setting the stage for a large-scale backlash on the part of the have-nots.

“Yes, but at least we Westerners are free to criticize, satirize and disrespect capitalism and its high priests,” I said. “Capitalist fanatics don’t shoot people for making fun of the Koch brothers or Wall Street or ExxonMobil.”

The rabbit opened the door of my shack, letting in the cold air. “Wake up, Odd Man,” he said. “Capitalists run the government. They own the TV and newspapers and all that. They ain’t gotta shoot no critics. They just drown ’em out with propaganda and use the propaganda to start wars against the have-nots.”

“They’ve done a good job of that,” I conceded. “But I think you underestimate the power of satire.”

Maybe so,” he said. “But not as much as you underestimate the power of money.”

Outlaw bikers with badges and benefits, aka NYPD

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swamp rabbit

Is it possible to be paranoid and arrogant as hell at the same time? Sure it is, if you’re a cop.

Swamp Rabbit asked me how I could say such a thing. I told him to check out the NYPD goons who turned their backs to dis New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio at the funerals of their two slain comrades. As if the mayor somehow inspired the loony who killed the cops. As if he was expressing solidarity with cop killers when he addressed the concerns of people who feel victimized by the city employees who’ve sworn to protect them.

The rabbit tossed some twigs into the wood stove and said, “Git a grip, Odd Man. Screamin’ at me ain’t gonna stop cops from killin’ guys who sell loosies, or bring back the kid with the toy gun who got blasted by some Barney Fife in a playground.”

I slammed the wood stove door and said, “I know that, you stupid rodent. All I’m saying is it shouldn’t surprise anybody when cops turn their backs. That’s what most cops do.”

The rabbit took a swig of Wild Turkey and tried to pass the bottle to me. I shook him off. He said, “I still don’t get your drift, Odd Man.”

“Well, get this. You ever call the cops when there’s a domestic dispute? When your bike gets stolen or your car window smashed? When somebody breaks into your shack and walks off with your flat-screen? When some nut job down the block threatens to stab your first-born? Cops take two hours to show up. Then they laugh at you. Then they threaten to lock you up if you make a fuss. Then they turn their backs and walk.”

He accused me of exaggerating. “You’re just talkin’ about that rotten neighborhood in Philly where you grew up. Most people like havin’ a police department.”

I threw an empty can of black-eyed peas at him. “Cops aren’t a department, they’re a tribe. They’re like outlaw motorcycle gangs. They don’t rat on their brothers. They watch out for each other. They think in terms of us versus them. They hurt people who mess with them. Half the time, they lock up the wrong people. They exist outside the law.”

“You make it sound like all cops are bad guys,” the rabbit said. “That’s like sayin’ all bus drivers is bad.”

“You’re right, rabbit, there’s good and bad in all professions. But bus drivers can’t shoot people or strangle them just for looking at them funny.”

“Them’s just the bad apples,” the rabbit insisted. “Most cops ain’t like outlaw bikers.”

“Right again,” I said. “Cops wear badges and get great benefits and pensions and can retire before their hair turns gray. Bikers don’t get benefits.”

I would have kept my rant going, but the rabbit turned his back on me and hopped out to the swamp.