Jive, Drive, Stay Alive

This freakish ghost has nothing else to wear
But some cheap crown he picked up at a fair
Grotesquely perched atop his bony corpse.
Without a whip or spur he drives his horse…

Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers Of Evil

Sunday night in Knox Vegas was full of rainy drizzle and lukewarm chill – lucky enough for the denizens of the East Tennessee valley; the Smoky Mountains of lower Appalachia were the only barrier keeping us from a certain death by ice. The weather reports streaming in via my pocket sized NOAA weather alert tranceiver told tale of an entire East coast ravaged by some hellish icestorm of the Furies, replete with requisite madness, mayhem and shortages of skim milk and white bread.

Atmospheric considerations aside this evening had already kickstarted with overtones of savagery. The usual late Sunday round table grew violent amidst the bleary eyed cacklings of an overly boozed Ruby Tuesday bar crowd. Discussions started tame along with casual beer sipping but fell stiilborn with the rise of one poor fools mention of the State of The Union address. Simple enough I bleated, It was NOTHING, zip, zilch, donut…a mere annunciation of Dubyas Republican candidacy – an election year schpeel. This answer was not to the liking of Mr. aforementioned “Me Republican, You NoT, You-Against-Society-as-we-know-It.” I tried mending this bipartisan fracture with a few ramblings of democracy and free-speech-for-all-style aphorisms – but too late, I was getting the evil eye, that evil red eye of the Terminator Ahh yoo Sarah Connah horrible pre-violent shooting scowl.

Fueled by half drunk self preservation instincts and coupled with my inherent disdain for these bastards, I snatched up my sketchpad and made haste triple quick time for the exitway bouncing a wad of cash and change all along the top of the bar, tossing my hat on my head, and dodging the the remainder of the addled horde – all in one cuestroke motion.

Out the door my feet made wet slaps on the pavement as I scampered toward my auto – a 1968 Ford LTD 390 – or as referred to by terrified locals “The Beast.” I tapped the accelerator smoothly as I drove past the building front, catching a couple of silhouettes in the rearview though the rain and glaring crimson neon made it difficult to tell who they were. With consciousness directed sternward I almost smashed the Beast painfully into some muted form staggering roadside – a little precision brake slamming slid the LTD within three inches of the figure before clicking the gears into Park.

Immediately I recognized him: Kimble, a local crackpot fixated with the notion of hardcore term limit applicability especially in terms of local mayoral politicking but certainly not excluding the national scene. He was called Kimble, I was told, as a result of some severe neurosis causing him to relate to the world around him as one continuing ungodly episode of the old show The Fugitive. Hell he even had the mannerisms of a David Janssen symbiote (perhaps one on Crystal Meth). Get In Fool.. I bawled his way, Better get your dumb ass off the road before you end up in a ditch.

Of course Kimble was drenched and seeping into the seats. In his lap was a muddied trash bag, wrapped tightly around something the size of a small raccoon. OK, whatever that is it better not be RABID. Kimble emits a slavering laugh before revealing a smallish boom box. He acknowledged my dumbstruck gaze by jamming a finger on the PLAY button. Instantly a pterydactlyian YEEEAHHH YEEEAAAHHH YEEEAAHHH shrilled from the speakers, I almost swerve from the rainslick highway. The blast persevered: …and then CALifornia, and then TEXAS, and then WASHINGTON, and MICHIGAN, and SOUTH DAKOTA all the way to the gawddim WHITE HOUSE….YEEEEAAAAHHHHH!!!! YEEEEAAAAHHHHH!!! Then I knew – Kimble had some slice and dice remix of the Howard Dean Iowa outburst speech, a grinding reloop of Dean’s garrulous yell, this was blasting at 800 decibels and all in my ear.

Soon enough the fetishism subsided and the ranting began; Kimble’s New Hampshire analysis: why Kerry can’t hold, why Dean NEEDS to feed on “the yell”–push it to its philosophical limits, why Clark will resurge in the South, why……but the tirade bounces off my torpor and I jam the pedal down and assume the grin of the parking lot attendants from ‘Ferris Buehler’s Day Off’ as they go skyrocketing down the freeway…..