Fred Van Assche

Post Modern Gonzo Journalist
Blog Post

Antoine, Eddie and Me: A Summer Tale

  • By Frederick Van Assche
  • •
  • 22 Aug, 2019
  • •

Look deep into the April face

A change is clearly taking place…

Lookin’ for the Summer


The eyes take on a certain gaze

And leave behind the Springtime days…

Go lookin’ for the Summer


The time has come when they must go

To play the passion out that haunts them so…

I’m still lookin’…

Lookin’ for the Summer


Chris Rea



Originally published on vandalnation.blogspot.com

6/6/2008 at 7:45 pm Eastern Daylight Time



The Blue Ridge Mountains, without preamble or warning, surrendered winter in a single grandiose weekend with all the stunning finality and drama of a late round Joe Louis left hook. The brisk Northern breezes gave way to the sudden springtime sunshine, baking the face and arms, an old friend come back to visit. And again, for at least one more year, reminding us that even in this seemingly endless and frigid season, with spring comes reason, floating gently upon a soft rhythm that is pleasing to the ear; an uncomplicated rhyme that’s easy to hear.


Most of my ring necks and stately wood ducks have yet to return, although I believe I’ve spotted Eddie the Alpha Duck. He has apparently scouted ahead in advance of his crew and has reestablished himself as the Duke of Duckdom, the Big Wheel water fowl on this little portion of the lake. He is truly a magnificent animal, his iridescent feathers of indigo blue and deep green shine like a bright neon light in the sparkling sunlight as he maneuvers effortlessly through the placid waters. He remains confident of his preeminent position, preening and emitting the occasional righteous squawk accompanied by an Oscar winning, wing fluttering warning at some perceived trespasser. He is, I fear, more form than substance; more noise than nobility. His message, however contrived, is always loud and clear; do not fuck with this duck.


In a Single Malt induced haze several summers ago, because of his aggressive and provocative nature, I named him Eddie after a long forgotten high school acquaintance named Eddie Yast, a hockey player at the neighboring South Lake High in the late ‘60’s. And it was through Eddie that I met and came to know, briefly, a very strange young man named Antoine Saggat. So listen. Let me tell you a story of a different time and place, the fabric of which has worn old and thin, an almost forgotten shadowy memory, nearly lost to us. Like the summer belongs to children, this was our season, a time that belonged to us when life was still all shiny and fresh and brimming with the excitement of inexperience and foolish youth; a story of a time when the music was transformative (before it’s icons cashed in to make Chevy commercials) and influenced the culture of an entire generation in a unique yet different way. It is story about Eddie and Antoine and that fateful early summer night long ago in 1968 when Eddie convinced Antoine to blow up the Draft Board building in Ann Arbor, Michigan. But wait… I’m getting ahead of the tale.


Actually, Eddie did play some hockey when he wasn’t suspended or in trouble with school authorities or some law enforcement agency or on the “lam.” (He remains the only individual I have ever known who, from time to time, was a lamister.) Eddie was of medium build, quick and menacing and intelligent in a wily, wounded wild animal sort of way. I am not sure if Turrets Syndrome was even a diagnosable disease 40 years ago, but I am convinced that he was the first person I have ever known who had it. Eddie’s vulgarity was as prolific as it was legendary, throwing “F” bombs, the “C” word and stringing together myriad other obscenities in a seemingly endless display of pornographic imagery that to this day still reverberates in my memory. He was the Picasso of profanity, a true genius in his medium, using coarse and offensive language the way an artist would work on a canvas in oils, acrylics or water colors.


In today’s government public school educational gulags, Eddie would have been pumped up with enough psychotropic drugs to give a respectably sized circus elephant hallucinations. Every psychologist and counselor in his school would have been assigned to him on a full time basis and of course gulag administrators would feel obligated to provide grief counselors for all those victims that Eddie so creatively threatened, beat up or scared nearly to death. But 40 or so years ago we were woefully ignorant of how uncaring and thoughtlessly callous our society really was and so, for the most part, they treated Eddie like a selfish, self absorbed reprobate, just another wise-ass punk, which of course was exactly what he was.


In fairness, it should be noted that Eddie never really had much of a chance, right from the get-go. His twice divorced father paid Eddie’s mom (with whom Eddie lived) the princely sum (in 1968) of $1200.00 a month “stay away” money to live in a modest home and be supplied with all the vodka she could drink. And drink she did… 24/7. From the exterior the home was a well maintained 3 bedroom brick affair in a reasonably nice area, but the interior was a wreck, a complete shithole. Dirty dishes piled up 2 feet high in the kitchen, literally dozens of empty and discarded fifths of Smirnoff strewn about the house in virtually every room. Except Eddie’s bedroom, which was immaculate; bed fastidiously made with sharp military corners, carpet vacuumed, clothes hung in the closet, all perfectly aligned. “You have a personal maid or something,” I asked upon one of my rare visits. “Nope. My dad says a sloppy bedroom is a sign of weakness and a disorganized mind,” Eddie replied in a surprisingly lucid non-profane or confrontational manner. This was a somewhat puzzling revelation in that Eddie, to show his appreciation for all the profound patriarchal advice and financial support given by his dad, would routinely drive his old Plymouth every other week or so to his Pop’s condo 10 miles away and knock off a side-view mirror or an antenna from his father’s 225 Electra. His tool of choice for this hardware removal was a cut-down Dick McAuliffe Model Louisville Slugger. Once, en route to some party, I was an unsuspecting witness to one of Eddie’s outbursts. “Just gonna stop off at my dad’s for a second” he said. Out of the car, he grabbed the Louisville Slugger and got down to business, banging away at his father’s ride. “Fuck” (slash) “You” (slash) “You” (slash) “Fucking” (slash) “Prick.” Totally out of wind, Eddie hesitated momentarily, collecting his composure. Then in one final fiery outburst he attacked the deuce-and -a -quarter with a vengeance; “This and this and this you fucking prick,” And with one last gasp…”and this” and then, completely spent physically he gently laid the bat (a gift some years before from his father) in the backseat and said …”Fuck it, let’s go,” .


While Eddie clearly had some anger issues, he was also possessed of an oddly, seductive and persuasive charm often found in bi-polar and schizophrenic people and other fruitcakes with some form of mental aberration .With a canary-eating twinkle of the eye, he constantly appeared to be bemused at some private joke that he might let you in on if the mood struck him. He was also abrasive, irrational, disloyal to a fault, manipulative, capable of extreme violence without warning and, with the wary eye of an individual who believes in absolutely nothing, trusted absolutely no one. At the tender age of 17, I thought he was the most exciting guy I had ever known and, for that winter and spring of ’68, before his insanity completely outran him, he was exhilarating to be around.


Eddie was, in fact, as crazy as a shithouse rat and particularly crazy when it came to…well, virtually everything, really—but certainly when it came to the game of hockey, which he basically considered to be little more than the World Wrestling Association on ice, only with real chains and chairs. And with an added bonus of legally getting to carry your own personal weapon, in full view of spectators, school administrators and referees and use it for a variety of purposes, including whipping a rock-hard rubber disc at the head of an unknowing opponent (or teammate for that matter) with whom he may have had some sort of disagreement. Yes, Eddie had a profound love for the game of ice hockey.


Once in a tournament game at old Olympia, he and his teammate (and gullible old pal) Larry Robberts, in a totally unprovoked action, pulled bicycle chains (I am not making this up) out of their hockey pants before official even dropped the puck the for the opening face off at center ice. No one was seriously injured in the fracas, although the sharp edged bicycle chains were being waved overhead, lariat style, dangerously close to eyeballs and teeth. One unfortunate wingman, apparently unaware that opening face-offs included bicycle chains in the circle, sustained a gash on the forehead which by all accounts bled profusely, causing a hospital visit where he received 6 stitches.


Eddie, being Eddie, did what he always did when he was caught inciting havoc: he ran. Or, more accurately, he skated (he was quite a strong skater) with all the officials and opposing players in hot pursuit. When he was booted from the team for the third and final time Eddie laughed it off. Hockey, after all, without mischief was not much of a game. Larry, who also was booted and who actually wanted to play hockey was crestfallen, inconsolable, drawn into another complicated web of misfortune once again by his good buddy.


As you may have guessed, Larry was not exactly the brightest bulb on the chandelier and this certainly was not the first time he had been manipulated by Eddie. Larry, however, had several qualities that could recommend him. He was an affable young man, just over six feet, handsome in that large lipped, heavy browed knuckle-dragging Cro-Magnon fashion and what was seriously impressive about the lad, girls -- inexplicably-- simply fell all over him. A young fellow with a sharp eye could make a pretty good living just off old Larry’s leftovers.


Perhaps Larry’s most intriguing quality was (from my standpoint coming from an all boy Catholic Prep School) …he got laid on a regular basis. And not by some dirty-legged East-Side skanks either. By real girls. Cool girls. Pretty blondes. Stunning brunettes. All high-assed and long-lashed, smelling sweetly of citrus and cinnamon. Girls so attractive that even the idea of conversing with them would catapult me into spasms of fright so overwhelming that I would nearly shit in my hat or blubber nonsensically, a hopeless Gomer Pyle attempting to explain the theory of relativity to a physicist. The idea that a guy my age could be a PLAYBOY and could command women to do his bidding for his own personal gratification was an epiphany, a fantastically novel revelation that could deliver me from all that religiously induced guilt and testosterone build-up that plagued me on a daily basis. Crack Larry’s “Secret,” unlock the mystery that was female, and the world would be my oyster; life would take on an entirely unfamiliar yet gratifyingly agreeable dimension. Daydreams of adoring, pouty-faced, scantily clad chicks lounging about, visions of velvet smoking jackets in studies with mahogany covered walls, Meerschaum pipes and drinking Cold Duck out of long stem glasses occupied my every waking moment. (At that age, Cold Duck was universally believed to be the finest wine on the planet; my how relentlessly ignorant we truly were.) While I was wasting my time working on those lame cornball pick-up lines to use on these little snotty chicks at those ridiculous “Sock-Hops,” humiliated and reduced to some groveling dimwitted Don Juan, a pathetic back-seat beggar in my mom’s Mustang, this guy, without even trying, was literally bursting at the seams with a superabundance of split-tail.


When asked the secret of his success, Larry, never known for his loquaciousness, would just shrug his husky shoulders, unconsciously lay his thick fingers over his crotch and wrinkle his massive brow, creating the impression that the effort expended in even this minimally introspective thought process was stretching the synapses in his brain to the breaking point, giving him a headache. “Dunno,” he would mumble thickly, sounding like a mildly retarded James Dean. “I’m just here...then they come here and …” slowly the thought would float away and he would abandon his hopelessly inept attempt at explanation. One might well have asked a honey bee to explain the pollination process. His secret, whatever it might have been or from what source it originated, much to my disappointment, in the end, would never be revealed.


After serving his school suspension for the “Bicycle Chain Affair” (as it came to be known) and with no hockey practice and time on his hands, Eddie was at loose ends, which was always a dangerous place for him to occupy. As it turned out, a young, well meaning and hopelessly naive high school counselor got Eddie a job as a cook at a “Clock” restaurant where the counselor dined frequently and knew the proprietor. The job was a condition of his return to school, where all Eddie’s friends were killing time. Under the theory that Jesus made everyone good at something, it was not surprising that Eddie, too, had a special gift. As it turned out, Eddie was a terrific short order cook, having picked up the skill working in his uncle’s restaurant for a few summers. Never one for real work, Eddie maintained that the real reason he actually took the job with his uncle was to case the operation to see if an opportunity existed to rob the place. But Eddie’s uncle or aunt, aware of his rakish quasi-criminality, always opened and closed and deposited the cash receipts nightly and even Eddie would stop short of strong arm robbery of a relative… if he could easily be identified.



Over the next several weeks Eddie excelled in his new position. Glowing progress reports were forthcoming from the various shift managers for whom Eddie worked. They reported on his dedication, reliability, trustworthiness and respectful demeanor. In short, all the character traits for which Eddie was not known. Now, anybody who was even slightly acquainted with Eddie’s background and warped view of society should have known something was up. Anyone, that is, who wasn’t drinking the Kool-Aide and buying into all the bleeding heart collectivist commie claptrap would know, would have to know, that something was terribly, terribly, amiss.


What was amiss was that Eddie would routinely piss in the pickles and spit in the various dishes he would create with such reportable diligence and ingenuity. In a master stroke of debauchery, his “piece-de-resistance,” he cut his soups with dishwater and disguised the taste by added extra spices. What Eddie enjoyed the most was the more he screwed with their food, the more the patrons raved about all his dishes, especially his “Soup de Jour.” While he was an equal opportunity food saboteur, he always made a prodigious effort whenever whipping up a “Blue Plate” special for one of his “special” friends, namely the shift managers who had so lauded his performance or the counselor who got him the job in the first place. Whenever Eddie would doctor-up the entrees for one of his special buddies he would give one of the busboys a quarter to play A-3, his favorite jukebox tune (in those days they had juke boxes in every joint.) It was a Motown (what else) cover of “If I were A Carpenter” and Eddie would peer with the intensity of a poet into the winter darkness out the huge window facing Mack Avenue and watch the snowflakes fall, as big as silver dollars, and listen to Smokey’s soulful rendition:


“If I were a carpenter, and you were a lady

Would you marry me anyway

Would you have my baby…

If a tinker were my trade

Would you still find me

Carrying the parts I made

Followin’ close-up behind me…”



And while he may have pissed and spat in their food, one could never say that Eddie didn’t take care of his friends. Such was the essence, the soul of the boy. He was truly bad to the very bone.


The counselor, obviously unaware of his prodigy’s real performance on the job and believing Eddie to be making tremendous progress, was proud of his apparent success in turning around the life of a young man and decided to expand his fledgling “School/Work” program. As history would illustrate, hubris led him to make his fatal mistake.


As the story goes, another of his “problem” kids was one Antoine Saggat, a 19 year-old glue sniffing high school junior who had elevated underachievement to a noble art form. Antoine had shoved so many toxic chemicals into his body in the previous 5 years he would have been eligible for an EPA Super Fund clean up grant. Another irretrievable loser, Antoine also came from an ill-fated background. His mom was a tiny, sometime employed hatchet-faced woman, mean as a snake. She had the annoying habit in conversation of finishing the last several words of each and every one of your sentences, speaking along with you. The poor woman was a true religious whackjob who attended mass daily and had more Blessed Virgin candle altars scattered throughout the house than an East Side Italian family expecting the Pope for dinner. His dad was a hapless traveling sewing machine peddler, a perennial steak-knife set winner in the Singer Company sales contests, whose territory covered a piece of geography ranging from southeast Michigan all the way up to South Dakota. On one road trip made during the dismal depths of a Midwest winter, upon arriving in some small town in Wisconsin en route to Pierre and having sold not a single machine, gave away his sample unit and just kept on moving, following the sun in a westerly direction. It was as if he were just chucking all the bad Samsonite he’d been dragging around his whole unhappy life; just put it down and moved on. If one could encounter this much crushing heartache by the time you hit Racine, how much more could one man take by the time he stumbled into Pierre? As the story goes, his freedom secured, he was never heard from again.


Basking in his first success, the foolish young counselor implored the restaurant owner to take on another young man. The owner was ecstatic; of course he would take on a second project, even if Antoine had absolutely no marketable skills. They agreed that every man had to start somewhere and the jumping off point for Antoine would be bussing tables. From there he would begin his meteoric ascent up the Hospitality Service ladder to the kitchen where he would graduate to the lofty position of 2nd dishwasher. After that, his future life plan clearly delineated, for Antoine, the sky would be the limit. They also agreed that if he was half as talented as Eddie, he would be quite a find. The restaurant owner thought he was fortunate indeed to have this young counselor supplying him with cheap, hardworking, first class, white American labor, what with all these crazy Negroes burning down our cities and the hippie scum agitators infesting the entire nation like vermin. Yes, the restaurant owner could count his blessings. It really was great to be an American.


Antoine was desperate to remain in high school as a 19 year-old senior, even at a marginal level to avoid the draft. In dire need of some form of cash flow to feed his ever burgeoning glue habit and in trouble again with the authorities for using gasoline to light another low-life miscreant’s head on fire in a drug misunderstanding, Antoine sucked it up and reluctantly accepted the position.


Although Antoine had sampled the full range and variety of mind expanding pharmaceuticals that the ‘60’s had to offer, his drug of choice was still Testers glue, used primarily by young American dweebs to build plastic model cars and airplanes. Antoine developed his glue habit at the gentle age of 13, and his addiction was, in and of itself, the stuff from which legends are made. In a moderately stressful day, Antoine was known to inhale upwards of 6 jumbo tubes of Testers, sniffing the sticky substance from an ever present plain brown lunch bag which he carried around constantly. In order to divert teacher attention from the real purpose of the lunch bag, the sack also contained several pieces of half rotten fruit and a sandwich that was made in 1965. No matter. Antoine, thin as a reed, seldom ate any real food, subsisting solely on Frito’s, Black Crows and Mellow Yellow.


Although in the middle ‘60’s sniffing was not illegal, Antoine had purchased so many tubes of Tester’s from various area hobby shops over the years that the shop owners, in a cursory effort to cover their asses, had begun to require him to purchase a model of some description along with the tubes of glue. This ridiculous rule was implemented, ostensibly, to ensure that he was actually using the glue to construct model airplanes, destroyers and little hotrods. It is impossible to believe, however, that any adult, not sniffing glue themselves, could mistake Antoine’s intentions, as his very appearance, (red-eyed, pale and as hyper as a speed freak doing shots of Espresso at Starbucks) belied his true purpose. Unfortunately for Antoine, on his best days, he did not have the ability to concentrate or focus long enough to follow the opening credits of “Gilligan’s Island,” much less actually construct something with more than 5 parts. Which was probably why his bedroom was literally filled from floor to ceiling with unopened boxes of plastic models. While the glue purchase by itself was not exorbitant (about 65 cents per for the family size tube) 6 tubes per Diem was nearly $4.00 daily. Throw in even the least expensive model at $2.50 per day and Antoine’s weekly glue tab came to just under $48.00per week, not even taking into consideration his weekend marijuana and LSD expense. This, as some of us can recall, was a fairly serious piece cabbage back in the day. The opportunities to steal from his mother’s purse or cookie jar or shake down some punk freshman for  chump change were becoming less frequent as he was still on probation and being closely scrutinized as a result of that unfortunate head incineration incident. He had previously tried selling various drugs (mostly marijuana) with little success. Not that Antoine was a bad drug salesman. Antoine, unfortunately, had the one bad habit one apparently cannot overcome in the drug selling business: he got high on his own supply. Like a farmer eating his seed corn, there was never enough product leftover to even cover his initial investment. Without a regular independent source of income, Antoine could not come close to meeting his chemical financial obligations. It was almost enough pressure to make a man switch to heroin.


Antoine’s urgency for money was like the Federal Government: constant, carnivorous and insatiable. His drug habit simply grew with the amount of revenue that came across his palm every week. A month after Antoine accepted the Clock “posting” and was bringing home a fairly regular paycheck, he would have to borrow money to put gas in his 15 year old Ford Galaxy convertible. “You just got fucking paid,” Eddie would complain when Antoine would inevitably hit him up for a few bucks. “No,” Antoine would shake his head solemnly, “the hobby shop got paid.” Irritated, Eddie would scream “you fucking start the fucking week broke, you work all fucking week then spend all your fucking cash on glue and LSD and at the end of the week you’re dead broke again, you piece of dogshit.” “Yes,” Antoine would nod his head gravely, “it’s a vicious cycle.”


The chance meeting of Eddie and Antoine at the Clock was a pre-ordained event of fate, a Karmic collision of convergent destinies, an incredibly unlucky roll of the cosmic dice. It was the perfect recipe for a perfect storm. The seemingly smallest of events in life have a way of creating large and unmanageable scenarios. In this world there is no coincidence, only a series of separate and apparently unconnected events that lead ultimately to an inevitable conclusion. A bird flaps its wings in Africa and a week later an airliner with 300 people burns on the tarmac at Miami International. Go figure. One needs only to follow what appears to be a random chain of events.


As the story goes, the chain of events began with an unrelated first link when that unlucky hockey player took a bicycle chain to the melon from Eddie at Olympia some six weeks before Antoine took the job at the Clock. The hockey player was a cousin of the unfortunate young man who was victimized by Antoine in the cranial combustion donnybrook. Because there is no room for coincidence in this story, and as fate would have it, Antoine had advanced $70.00 worth of drugs to the poor unfortunate several days prior, with the explicit understanding (or as explicit as Antoine could possibly be given his permanent self-medicated condition) that the money would be forthcoming several days hence. The young man who accepted the drug consignment (and who had already consumed the entire stash) was planning to get the money from his cousin, the luckless hockey player, who, at that very moment of the evening assignation with Antoine, was in the emergency room receiving 6 stitches to the head and was unable to supply the needed funds. Antoine, in desperate need of cash became enraged and taking his fiery revenge, tempted the stars which, unfortunately for him, were in a perfectly ill-omened alignment. Thus the series of events coupling the two was put into motion and the circle of chance completed. In the universal scheme of things there really was never any prospect of any other outcome; it was in the lap of the Gods all along.


So, Antoine and Eddie became fast friends at the Clock, their lives inextricably intertwined. Within a few weeks Eddie had the older Antoine under his spell and the two were thick as thieves. Eddie, bored with school and seeing no end of his education in sight, decided to drop out. Antoine followed in suit and life was moving along swimmingly until Eddie received his notice from his draft board. Eddie, who was now 18 and eligible for the draft, having lost his “school deferment,” had ignored the three previous letters he had received from his draft board. This one was the big one; a final notice demanding his appearance for his physical or suffer the consequences of being a Federal Government fugitive. Eddie became enraged and went on a culinary sabotage rampage the likes of which no restaurant of any description had ever seen or will ever see again. He spat and peed until he was dehydrated. He developed unspeakable new and improved methods of dining desecration, sparing no patron his righteous wrath. All the while Antoine looked on with awe. Never had he seen anyone in his pathetic life that was so driven. Here was a man with a purpose; a true trailblazing anarchist one could follow anywhere. Antoine had found his Hero.


Eddie continued to duck his draft notice and, as his rage grew toward the draft board, he knew he had to take action. The service, he knew, was certainly no place for him. Now, as some of us nearing 60 will remember, the regular army of the middle and late ‘60’s was not the volunteer gung-ho “Be All You Can Be” organization filled with rosy-faced All American Pat Boone types. It was more of a “Stay Alive As Long As You Can” outfit, and it was not the ideal place to be. At least in the Marines the troops signed up to be an elite Jarhead, and the guy in the foxhole next to you took a certain modicum of pride in being a Marine. The regular army (not a volunteer arrangement in those days) was largely comprised of a variety of misfits and malcontents, most of whom did not want to be there. If you can imagine wandering through a rain forest with a bunch of wired-up hallucinating hoodlums at your rear who you didn’t know and who would shoot your white butt just because they could, looking for camouflaged encampments filled with well-armed wild-ass Asians you can kind of get the flavor of that whole wretched scene. Talk about Esprit-de-corps all you want; there was a reason that the average life expectancy of a 2nd Lieutenant in Vietnam was just over 23 minutes. Living in a jungle with little to do, fragging (of officers and enlisted men) was the pastime equivalent of bowling when you were in-country.


Slowly Eddie began to formulate a plan. When Antoine told Eddie that he had a friend, a “vet” who claimed to have Special Forces training, an idea crystallized deep inside Eddie’s fertile mind. This veteran, Stoney, so named because he was a first class stoner who existed on a steady diet of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Tylenol 3’s, claimed he had actually worked with explosives. In truth, Stoney was a first class section 8 and wasn’t in the army long enough to get his parking validated, washing out of boot camp because even the Drill Instructor at Ft. Bragg could not get Stoney to make his bed. Apparently Stoney had read a book or two on the making of explosives using a variety of chemicals, including fertilizer. His favorite explosive device, however, was the always dependable Molotov Cocktail, fashioned out of a super-sized Coke bottle, which he reminded Antoine he had employed with remarkable success several years before at a South Lake Homecoming game while Stoney was still a sometime student.


Eddie now put his action-plan in place. He convincingly reminded Antoine that it was only a matter of time before he, too, would be served his induction notice. During an all weekend LSD marathon, Eddie laid out the plan. The only way to ensure their freedom, Eddie insisted, was to destroy all record of their draft registration. This of course meant destroying the entire building in one Herculean Dresden-like firestorm. But even if the records were not destroyed, Eddie reasoned, they would be making a statement—(striking a blow) for the movement. Antoine, who was as political as a bag of hammers, probably didn’t know who the President was and his awareness of current events stopped at knowing what hobby shop had the best buy on Tester’s glue. But something in Eddie’s argument stirred Antoine’s soul, creating the watershed moment in his heretofore wasted existence, instilling in him for the first time in his life the sense that he could be part of something larger than himself. Probably the 8 jumbo tabs of California Sunshine he ingested in that 48 hour period had something to do with it as well, but Antoine, without reservation or hesitation was onboard. He would begin work immediately with Stoney to develop the appropriate ordinance and in doing so would scream his statement for the struggle. Antoine was down for the righteous cause, to give power back to the people. Or whatever.


As the story goes, Antoine and Stoney began work in earnest on the appropriate hardware to pull off the master stroke. Because Stoney was relegated to living in a tiny shed behind his mothers garage, the real science was done in the fruit cellar of Antoine’s mom’s basement, where even there, several candle altars had to be repositioned. As it turned out, Stoney was not as proficient as advertised with respect to fertilizer-fueled bombs and several failed attempts using miniature prototypes resulted in a semi-catastrophic blow-out that knocked out Antoine’s mom’s water heater, flooding the entire basement, taking out all the repositioned Virgin Mary Altars, which created a spiritual blow-back from which Mrs. Antoine never recovered.


Eventually Antoine and Stoney, because they could not find a stable combination of fertilizer and combustible chemicals in a single experiment and had exhausted all known areas to blow up, settled on the Molotov Cocktail approach which was simple and had proved so successful at the Homecoming when Stoney was a perennial underclassman at South Lake. After several successful trials the two geniuses informed Eddie that they were ready to deliver the decisive blow. At the same time Eddie, after much diligent research, determined that the downtown Detroit draft board offices were too heavily protected and elected the easiest target of opportunity to be the draft board offices in Ann Arbor. And so, as the story goes, the date for Eddie’s earth shaking event was set for early June, 1968.


On that warm and humid June night, the cicadas singing their soft summer song, Eddie, Antoine and Stoney piled into Antoine’s old Ford and made their way to the draft board building in Ann Arbor, seven large Coke bottle Molotov Cocktails riding precariously in the back seat. Eddie, sans souci, driving, the balmy night air blowing in through the open convertible. Life, as they say, was good. The 45 minute trip to Ann Arbor was filled with smoking dope, bottles of long neck Stroh’s and the sounds of Terry Knight’s “Season of the Witch,” on the eight track. Although their plan was not completely developed, their prospect of success was fortified by chemicals and alcohol. Besides, the promise of another wasted night hanging out in Angel Park on the Detroit River sharing a few bottles of Boones Farm Apple wine with the Hippie Scum would be the equivalent of screwing the pooch. The collective decision by this brain trust was to move forward; destiny was calling.


Arriving in a parking lot near the draft board building in Ann Arbor, Eddie parked the Galaxy at a safe distance, directing the two air-brained anarchists to the target site. Grabbing the jumbo Coke bottle Molotov cocktails, the two proceeded to the spot where Eddie had determined they could safely deliver the ordinance. Stoney, who had mixed the Blue Bombers with Stroh’s and Tester’s (always a lethal combination), missed the designated spot, settling on an area that looked fairly close to the building. Placing the gasoline filled Coke bottles at their feet, they each grabbed a bottle, Antoine doing the lighting honors, his zippo trembling with anticipation in his hand.


His large Coke bottle lit, Stoney hefted it above his head, throwing it like a German hand grenade. His depth perception chemically challenged, he threw it 15 yards off the mark, hitting a WWII monument near a huge Elm tree. Due to the super-size bottle with which the boys had not trained, the home-made bomb detonated against the monument and the Elm tree with a violent burst of explosive flame, startling even the anesthetized Stoney, and downright scaring the shit out of Antoine who was in the process of throwing his own bottle, hesitating at the top of his arc like Louis Tiant throwing a change-up. As he hesitated due to the unexpected fire-bomb, the large Coke bottle poised high above his head, a trickle of gasoline leaked downward landing directly upon his head and, ironically, igniting his long blonde locks in a fiery chemical reaction which enveloped his entire head in flames. In a panic, Antoine dropped his Molotov cocktail, thereby breaking the other bottles that lay on the ground creating another terrifically huge blast that enshrouded both of them in a blazing maelstrom. Thinking that the first off-the-mark bomb was a direct hit and did some serious damage to the building, and their legs on fire, the two hot-footed it (literally) back to Eddie and the waiting get-away convertible.


Eddie, attempting to view the attack in the darkness from a safe distance, saw the first and then the second larger explosion and in the ensuing confusion assumed that they had scored two direct hits. Suddenly, from the general direction of the conflagration, Eddie watched as Antoine and Stoney came screaming out of the darkness, partially on fire. Eddie’s Turrets raced into overdrive as a string of obscenities flew out of his mouth in a virtual rhapsody of profanity. “What the fuck, you stupid motherfucking assholes, Jesus Christ on a bicycle…” Eddie quickly grabbed the musty old blanket from the backseat that they used to cover the now exploded jumbo Coke bottles and raced over to Antoine, covering what was left of his hair, smothering the fire. All three quickly jumped into the car and raced off into the moonless night.


Outside of his burned hair and singed jeans, Antoine was, remarkably unscathed. Stoney sat in the backseat in a stupor, mumbling cryptically to himself nearly catatonic from fear, clearly not the foxhole veteran he had previously claimed to be. “Some big-time fucking bomb expert, you fucking jackoff,” Eddie lamented, looking at the damage to his pathetic platoon. Antoine, unaware that the blast, while apparently destructive, did virtually no damage to anything, spoke up. “No shit,” he croaked, the gasoline fumes still hanging heavily in his throat. “We hit it on the money…we blew the bastard up.” Eddie, believing that the two fires he witnessed were actually the building on fire and still seeing the flames as they drove away shook his head “We gotta get out of town… now.”


So, as the story goes, Eddie, after helping himself to the cash drawer that night at the Clock restaurant, once again took it on the lam and split for parts unknown. Stoney simply retreated to his shed behind his mom’s house to await the authorities for what he was convinced would be the inevitable pinch. This, of course, never occurred. In point of fact, the entire ill fated fiasco barely rated a mention in the local Ann Arbor newspaper, much less The Detroit News or Free Press. It was believed to be the prank of some misguided youngsters; the youthful indiscretion of some delinquent vandals. The very idea that this could have possibly been the terrorist act of some villainous anarchist was never even seriously contemplated.


And Antoine…Antoine hurriedly packed his things that night and took the Windsor Tunnel to Canada, where he was quite at home. As it turned out, Antoine was never in any jeopardy with regard to his draft status. For one thing, he had never actually registered for the draft (a small detail that, as a result of his Testers induced separate reality, he had apparently overlooked) because he was not even an American citizen. Antoine Saggat, drug dealer, black sheep, prodigal son and hellion was born in Ontario and never having been naturalized, was a Canadian citizen. This, when one reflects upon it, may have been the simple answer to the genesis of his enigmatic personality all along; he was a fucking Canuck. As the story goes, like his vagabond father, he was never heard from again.


Once, about 15 years ago on my way back to Florida at a quick lunch meeting with some clients at an Atlanta airport Bennigan’s, I thought I recognized Eddie cooking in the open kitchen area. He looked older and drawn, but he caught my eye with that wise-guy private smile, staring for a long moment. When the waitress came by for our lunch orders, I remember I was preparing to order the onion soup and sandwich when some indefinable sense drew my eye back toward the kitchen area where the cook whose strong resemblance to Eddie was peering at me with a strange intensity. “I think I’ll just have a light beer,” I said closing the menu. “In a bottle…and sweetheart…let me open it at the table, OK?’ One can never be too careful.


Now some readers of this tome may question the veracity of this narrative. While many of the details and particulars have been obfuscated through time, recollection and research, the basic facts of the story actually did occur those many years ago Although many readers may recognize some of the characters in this historical yarn, the names have been changed to protect the innocent and guilty alike. And anyway, what is real truth-- or what passes for truth today? When it comes to fidelity and accuracy I personally agree with Mark Twain who said “…the truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.” And for those of you cynical cyberland snotty sons-a-bitches who think you have identified the truth, or something akin to it, call me—no—better yet, call Mike Wallace. I think you might have a pretty good “60 Minutes” story.


In the meantime, I’ll catch y’all next time.


Freddie Van

(a veraciously unimpeachable child of god)


Oil Beach Scene - Brutta Matta

   SKI: A REMEMBRANCE

By Frederick Van Assche • 08 Aug, 2023

                                                                                                                                      

How do you thank a guy for a lifetime of memories? A thousand laughs? Certainly a few written words could never capture the essence of John Kosinski, a man who managed to jam several lifetimes into his 71 years on the planet. But even the gilded words of the gifted poet could not contemplate the profound void created by the death of an old friend. But I can try.

 

In the summer of 1963 (perhaps the last year of relative normalcy before the cultural tectonic plates began their ponderous yet inventible shift into the dizzying, unrecognizable world of assassination, incivility and social decay), I met John for the first time on the roof of Ferry elementary school while we were engaged in throwing tar soaked rags at an unsuspecting rival gang (if a collection of boys hanging out on the mean streets of upscale Grosse Pointe could be characterized as a “gang”.) Having just moved from the City of Detroit, he was the new kid in the neighborhood, maybe a little rough around the edges, as his style of dress, attitude and language boldly announced. Smartly attired in an untucked and wrinkled mustard-stained Detroit Tiger tee shirt that barely covered his 11-year-old embryonic pot belly, khaki shorts and unlaced Chuck Taylor high tops, he was bellicose, blaringly boisterous and a charmingly deranged dynamo hurling insults to the tar stained kids below.

 

But John’s most commendable attribute at this tender age was his unparalleled and extensive vocabulary in vulgarity – a tour de force in profane performance art. He was a virtuoso in his employment of obscenity, using crude, shockingly indecent language and foul-mouthed idioms that stretched the limits of the lexicon and expression the way Jackson Pollock would work with acrylics on canvass or Leonard Bernstein would conduct a symphony.  He was the most curious person I have ever known (a trait he maintained into adulthood) and was like nobody I had ever met; we became fast friends.

 

That summer it seemed like the Yankees were in town every Ladies Day, (Wednesday was Ladies Day at old Tiger Stadium – all bleacher seats $.75) and on several occasions we took the bus (Kercheval Deanhurst – one transfer) which dropped us at Michigan Avenue a few blocks from Tiger Stadium.  We would walk to the stadium, baseball mitts dangling from our belts (brought on the off-chance a blast would be hit in our direction) excited to see our hometown heroes Kaline, Cash and Colavito with the bonus of seeing Mantle and Maris.

 

One Wednesday, Mantle, batting left-handed hit a bullet that Jake Wood actually made a leaping attempt to snag at second base on a ball that never climbed higher than 15 feet and cleared the right field fence by three feet as it was still climbing. Ski and I had a 60 year running argument on who was on the mound; Ski said the right hander Paul Foytack, I insisted that Old School Manager Charlie Dressen would never let Mantle face a right hander and the Lefty Don Mossi was pitching. I suppose we could have googled the game to determine if either one of us was correct – but then we wouldn’t have had the decades-long discussion.

 

The time passed. We grew up - different High Schools, interchangeable groups of friends - but our paths crossed through the years through college and into adulthood. Me to Florida to finish college and chase my fortune, he to Medical School and to his practice in Marquette where his brilliance was evident. Although separated by 1500 miles, life moved on and we would catch up with phone calls, weddings, Christmas parties and funerals, with a whole lot of living in between. Later, we found time to visit he and Kris in the UP and he made the occasional sojourn down south – despite his abhorrence of Florida  –  to Lakeland usually during Spring Training to see our revered Tigers.

 

On my last visit this summer, we spoke in his backyard garden in that soft ethereal twilight of a U.P. summer evening. We spoke of the ephemeral nature of life and - facing the end of the runway - what was all this about anyway? What did it mean? That evening there was a quiet melancholy about him, a reflective quality at odds with his explosive, larger-than-life persona, a quality that I had recognized in him even as kids. As a surgeon, John had more than a nodding acquaintance with death in all of its dreadful configurations.  He was a man who had come to realize that we are all prisoners of our own reality, fair or not, and understood the limits of loss and love – and that oftentimes one is the price of the other.  

 

He was a paradox of pluralism; he was self-effacing and vainglorious; he was impetuous and thoughtful; he was fanatically rational and fantastically eccentric; he was infuriatingly argumentative and incomprehensibly conciliatory; he was steadfastly dependable and demonstrably irresponsible; he boldly traversed the summit and plunged headlong into the abyss.  He lived big. He loved big.      

 

He was eminently human.

 

The past is but a shadow, a hazy penumbra eclipsed by time and the movement of the earth…but always with us.  In the words of Faulkner “…the past is never dead, it’s not even past.” In the end, it is not the past that haunts us. It is we who haunt the past.

 

Goodbye Buddy. See you on the other side.

Freddie Van

(a child of god)

A Christmas Present for Stevie

By Frederick Van Assche • 27 Oct, 2021
  We used to never say never
                                                        Used to think we live forever
                                                        Flying free beneath the sun
                                                                     
                                                         Days go running and hiding
                                                         The weeks go slippin' and sliding
                                                         Years leave quicker every time they come
                                                          Remember when we were young                
 
                                                                                                     Passenger
                                                                                                     When We Were Young
                                                                                                             
 
 
Time. Whether an artificial man-made chronographical construct of measurement or an immutable universal principle of the cosmos, the idea visits more often these days. In those seemingly halcyon salad days of puerile youth the concept of time was relevant only in the microcosm of the seasons; winters were cold and dark, spring was new life and baseball, summer was freedom and autumn was football and school. Wash, rinse - repeat. The routine, the minutia of the day-to-day business of life distracted us from any thought of the larger constraint of the concept of time.
 
But eventually, the hours began to pass with a conspicuously ferocious velocity - the click of the clock cannot not stop. Perhaps it was the first realization as a child of how suddenly one particular Summer raced by and a flicker of consternation fluttered through our vestigial lizard brain - but did not light - chased away by our primal fear of the inevitability of time running out. The very thought was dismissed, safely stuffed way back in that deep subconscious, that dark place that allows rationalization to thrive. But in that seminal moment - that flash of reality - it lingered - lurking, waiting - confirming the dread that there is an end to everything. As Paul Newman famously said in the movie Hud, "...horses, dogs and men - nobody gets out of life alive."
 
In many ways, the process of aging is one of subtraction - the taking away or casting off - of most things cherished. The tendency to focus on the end of the runway is inevitable at times. Seven jaded decades have molded a world view - hardened the heart - that allows adults to navigate all manner of shit that life sometimes throws at us. While life can only be understood backwards, it must be lived forwards and, despite the ravages and loss of aging, our  humanness compels  us to look to the future, to find those touchstones, those reminders that allow us to recreate that wonder and serendipity we knew as children. One of my touchstones many years ago was Stevie Van Elslander.
 
Stevie was a child who marched to the beat of his own private drummer and had a remarkably whimsical fascination with flags that flied high and birds in the sky. I first met Stevie Van over 20 years ago at the Lochmoor Invitational. Along with his mom Cindy, he would follow his dad on those rare occasions when Gary would make the Sunday finals, getting ripped apart by his opponents like a sock puppet in the mouth of an angry Pitbull in his ever illusive quest for his 15 minutes of Warholian golf fame. What conceivable transgression the poor kid could ever have committed to be subjected to that sort of corporal punishment, only God knows. Thankfully, the boy was too young to completely comprehend the carnage he was compelled to witness.
 
Stevie reminded me of Danny, a younger cousin I had growing up, also a boy who was "different", who listened to his own silent tune and, by the standards 60 years ago, he was judged to be a child of a lesser God. To many in my extended family, Danny was a problem child - except to my grandmother, who, much to the chagrin of the other grand-kids, took a special interest in the him. No doubt, the current enlightened modern medical geniuses would have doped the kid up with more drugs than a lab rat and pronounced him cured.
 
Once, at the annual family Christmas Eve party at one or another uncle's dreary knotty pine basement - a mad house with a broken down rent-a-Santa, a besieged assemblage of stressed adults consuming vast quantities of adult beverages and a pernicious pack of 40 screaming cousins (a testament to the Cambrian explosion of prodigious, postwar procreation), my Grandmother was cleaning up little Danny, who had gotten into another little girl cousin's Christmas gift - a finger paint set. Apparently Danny used it to cover his face in brightly colored war paint in an effort to compliment his Native American Chief's feathered war bonnet, (clearly a gift that today would be considered a disgraceful form of cultural misappropriation).
 
The 6-year old girl cousin's whose gift was pillaged was watching our Grandma clean up Danny and was understandably unhappy and articulated her outrage between spasms of uncontrollable, stuttering gasps. While she did not understand Grandma's well known solicitous soft spot for Danny, she was certainly well acquainted with our Grandmother's rigid rules of grandchild behavior and decorum. (To characterize Grandma as merely a "strict" disciplinarian would be like describing Jeffery Dahmer's cannibalism as an eating disorder.)
 
   
 "You love him more than you love us," blubbered the little girl cousin to our Grandma in a less than respectful fashion that would have normally elicited a stern rebuke - not simply for the tone of the statement but because it drew a clear distinction between "us" and "them" - always a no-no with Danny.
 
"Well," Grandma said softly, "if I love him more it's because he needs it more," she replied in an uncharacteristically subdued voice. That was more than 60 years ago, but I never forgot what she said that night.
 
On a visit to the Van Elslander home in the summer of 2001, when Stevie proudly displayed his personal flag collection, giving an impressively detailed description of each flag by shape, color and function, I had an idea. On my return to Florida, I contacted a specialty store and ordered a bespoke flag emblazoned with his name in big letters specially for him along with a whimsical little poem about flags flying high and the simple joys of childhood. In turn, he sent me pictures of him proudly flying the flag high atop his lakefront flagpole. I truly got a kick out of his enthusiasm for the present.
 
In the spring of 2002 while playing in a golf tournament in Jamaica, I saw a beautiful, island-made birdhouse in the shape of a lighthouse, hand-carved of Jamaican Cottonwood - and I immediately thought of Stevie.Upon my return to the States, I had a sign made that identified it as "Stevie's Fly-Inn Bird Hotel", wrote another simple poem about the precious summer days of youth, had it packed up and sent it off Fed EX to Stevie Van - quite certain that he would love this surprise gift and I would hear from him or his mom in short order.
 
After several weeks, however, having heard nothing from Cindy I reached out to FedEx on several occasions. Of course they claimed the package was delivered and signed for and, as I quickly realized, arguing with Fed Ex customer service is like arguing with a Forever Trumper - unpleasant and unproductive for you and pure obstinate rapture for them. I surmised the package was signed for and inadvertently misplaced by one of the numerous Van Elslander minions employed on the grounds, and, as the gift was designed to be a surprise and never mentioned, I figured it would turn up sooner or later. So, as adults do, I got busy with the business of life - weeks became months which in turn morphed into years. From time to time I would wonder whimsically about the mystery of the missing "Stevie's Famous Fly-Inn Bird Hotel".
 
Then, several weeks ago while standing in line with my wife at a Bed, Bath and Beyond (yes, Bed Bath and Beyond where I learned quickly that if you are so hapless to be coupon-less, the middle aged women in the queue will gaze upon you with pity one might reserve for fools and imbeciles), Jeri receives a call from Cindy Van Elslander and, after the obligatory friendly salutations, immediately hands the phone over to me.
 
"Did you send Steve a big birdhouse" Cindy asks?
 
I'm puzzled for an instant as the cognitive tumblers click into place...Stevie's Famous Fly-Inn Bird Hotel! "Yes I did - about 20 years ago," I reply.
 
"Well," Cindy says excitedly "it's here!"
 
Apparently, the neighbor next door, some type of hoarder, signed for the package and stashed it, unopened with the rest of his swag, only to be discovered when the old guy was moving and clearing out his house.
 
And so, on December 1st, 2020 in the year of the Covid, Stevie Van read the words I wrote to him about the enchantment of those tender years of ageless youth, not as a child - but as a young man. Stevie is doing quite well these days. He is an Equestrian, employed at Grosse Pointe Equestrian stables, riding and tending to his cherished horses. He is, happily, living his best life.
 
And, in an ironic twist of Kismet, the very gift meant for Stevie turned out to be, in a year so fraught with apprehension, anxiety and an appalling lack of human interaction, a gift for me - a reminder that at times when our own light is extinguished, it can be rekindled by the simple spark from another person.
 
Freddie Van (a grateful child of god)
December 25, 2020
 

ONCE UPON A TIME IN DYSTOPIA

By Frederick Van Assche • 27 Oct, 2021

December 24, 2051 Celebration of the Solstice Eve

As I weave the intricate narrative of her family history on this cold winter evening by the fireside, my seven-year old great grand daughter Danielle (my daughter's granddaughter) gazes at me with that mixture of quizzical disbelief and comical condescension usually reserved for elder citizens and idiots. I imagine it was the same reaction I had nearly a century ago when my Grandpa related the stories his Grandfather would spin about trading with the Chippewa Indians on the shores of Lake St. Clair in what was once called Grosse Pointe (renamed years ago Big Point due to cultural appropriation violation).
 
"Careful Dad," my daughter Katie leans close and whispers to me softly. "Her school gives regular 'Social Quizzes' and the teachers take notes."
 
While the Federal government has abdicated virtually all of its responsibility regarding border security, national defense and civil rights protection over the years, through Executive Orders and virtual single party legislation, it has ramped up its draconian enforcement of Hate Speech,1st and 2nd Amendment "violations", Federal government education mandates and Disinformation Crimes. I forget sometimes that virtually every State has different school curriculum in "Historical Truth", a significantly modified history of the old United States which permeates every discipline from math to geography and is completely un-tethered to any historical truth. Deviation from the proscribed teachings is frowned upon, especially in Katie's home State of Maryland and usually leads to Social Credit adjustment.
 
"What can they do to me," I ask stupidly. "I don't even live in Maryland. After all these years, I still bristle at the dystopian shithole this entire continent has become.
 
"It's not you  we're worried about," Katie replies cryptically. " We  have to live there." Her family lives just outside of Baltimore in a state that has some of the most restrictive "Citizen Freedom and Equity" statutes. In winter I am still in Florida, a state claiming to be the least restrictive of all the States in the country - which I'm quite certain is a claim made by virtually all the remaining States - and, of course, is a completely fabricated prevarication. Freedom and Liberty - as I understood the term in a previous life - no longer exists...anywhere.
 
For the last 35 years we have summered in Michigan, also considered a restrictive State where civil liberties have been limited for years, and now legislation is actively discouraging ownership of private property.   For the final time I have gathered the family together in Michigan for this Solstice Celebration, because the State has recently passed yet another law during the last session of the legislature and, effective January 1, 2052, I am considered a "non-resident alien". The " N on-Resident Alien Equitable Property Act"  authorizes the State to invoke Eminent Domain to acquire the property - offering me about 20% of the current market value - despite the fact that there is no indication of "public use". I suspect by this spring, some well connected faceless political apparatchik will be enjoying my beautiful sunrise views.
 
There is little celebration this "Solstice Holiday" week (all holidays are secular with no religious affiliation) as my wife and I are essentially inventorying and packing up our personal effects from our summer home of more than three decades. The State has determined that the furniture, artwork and any chattel are part and parcel of the real property and must stay with the house. In anticipation of this draconian demand, I had my boat shipped to Florida before the final ruling of the Alien Commission Board, essentially a rubber stamp for the State. Perhaps the Board will determine that the boat is personal chattel and not deduct the value from the pittance they will pay for the real property. I am not hopeful.
 
Several friends who are in similar circumstances approached me to mount a law suit challenging the new law, but included in the "Resident Alien" statute is a state government indemnification - Michigan cannot be sued for these Eminent Domain claims. These heretofore un-imagined trans-formative laws over the past three decades were all implemented with such rapidity the change was on us before we knew what was happening. As crazy as it sounds, I fear this is merely the logical extension of the national trend of Federal confiscation of all  private property, which was once the backbone of our governmental, cultural and economic system.
 
Gazing out at the desolate winter lakefront landscape, I see the beauty "...in the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is" ** and am gripped by melancholy. How did it ever come to this? But frigid winter nights by the fire are made to tell tales - so listen... let me tell you a story. It is a story of a time and place and a way of life that no longer exists, destroyed by a people who did not know how to protect it.
 
After another summer of rioting in the cities, by the summer of 2021 with COVID raging, Capitol riots, after the impeachment of former President Trump and over 50 arbitrary Executive Orders issued in the first few weeks of the Biden administration, the social and cultural fabric of United States was torn in two. Within four years, the border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada were flooded with 16 million "undocumented" aliens. In the same period, tax-paying citizens and businesses fled, decimating the tax base while creating a true welfare state full of unemployed illegals and Social Justice Warriors. A portion of these new arrivals were dispersed to the interior of the country, never returning for their asylum hearings. Of course, these immigrants were eligible (thanks to several of those famous Executive Orders) to receive full health and welfare benefits and achieved full citizen status within a year. (After the 2024 Presidential elections, the demographic nature of the voting population irrevocably altered, a secession referendum held simultaneously in those four border states overwhelmingly voted to secede from the United States and formed a new country, now known as La Raza Nacion. An additional plebiscite on that referendum codified the official language in La Raza as Spanish.)
 
By 2023, COVID relief, Medicare for all, Social Security along with numerous other gratuitous transfer payment social programs had drained the U.S.Treasury and, with the Fed crazily printing worthless money, (11 Trillion  dollars in two years), the unprecedented record inflation and corresponding rise in interest rates was not only predictable, but  predicted  by nearly every economist who was not employed by the New York Times or CNN. But the geniuses at the Biden Economic Advisory Committee were dumbfounded - their long discredited tax and spend Keynesian theory of economics failed once again. Guaranteed Universal Income was passed, income and corporate taxes were raised and, because money has no home, capital fled - along with the jobs.
 
Not surprisingly, our "guaranteed" U.S. Treasury bonds were as worthless as a degree from the long defunct Trump University. There were no buyers and no market ...not even China. The once omnipotent economic powerhouse of the United States of America, for the first time in over 250 years, defaulted on its debt. The worldwide economic tectonic plates had irrevocably shifted, creating a new reverse paradigm; China, now  the  Global Superpower, flaunted its hegemony with the largest navy and standing army in the world. The Yuan became the official global currency and China used its now muscular purchasing power to flood Asia with cheap American imports produced by low wage American workers.
 
By the late summer of 2024, in the midst of this financial and cultural chaos, the Biden administration was reeling and, despite an obviously biased media narrative, was polling poorly for the November election and desperately scrambling for some miracle "October Surprise". But the Political Gods seemingly smiled upon the Democrats when, through a Biden campaign operative leak, they learned of the Genome Project.
 
The Genome Project was a  parallel shadow research program, funded by the Trump administration and conducted in conjunction with the development of the Pfizer COVID vaccine. The project essentially analyzed chromosomes contained in DNA to identify the genetic code and isolate (and edit) genes that breakdown in the body's immune system as we age - a revolutionary "youth vaccine" designed to mitigate age related diseases in an effort to maintain a healthy aging cohort - ostensibly to reduce the Medicare for All policy that was swiftly developing into a fiscal and policy mega-disaster .
 
Racing to avail itself of this apparent panacea, the Biden administration rushed to take credit for the discovery. In an effort to mollify the disenchanted "fixed income" Seniors who had suffered the most as a result of these ambitious Progressive fiscal and tax policies, the normal testing protocols were circumvented (via Executive Orders) and the Administration immediately approved (and encouraged despite serious concerns of prominent bioethicists) the vaccine to be distributed to any American citizen 65 years of age in the same fashion as the COVID vaccine - compliments of the Federal Government...and of course, Uncle Joe.
 
Pfizer, having been indemnified from any possible negative side effects and anticipating another huge payday was totally on board and hurriedly churned out millions of Genome Project vaccine doses. With the now efficient COVID vaccine infrastructure still in place and (despite being a bureaucrat-run government program) operating like a well oiled machine, millions of Seniors (virtually all  Baby Boomers) dashed to queue up to receive the miracle youth elixir.
 
Then, in a perfect storm - a colossal collision of calamities and consequences unintended and, for reasons the vaunted medical "experts" never identified, the Genome immunization affected 40% of seniors receiving the vaccination by aggressively attacking  their immune system. Of those, 80% died within 12 months - the majority after the 6th month of receiving the vaccine - with such alacrity that by the summer of 2025 the medical system collapsed nationwide. The new plague struck swiftly, killed by the millions and was no respecter of age or health, gender or wealth. There was no curve to flatten - just death on a pandemic scale.  Pfizer immediately yanked the Genome Project vaccine off the market forever and despite the indemnification given by Biden's ill conceived and politically opportunistic Executive Order, were the target of the largest class action suit in history and quickly filed for bankruptcy.
 
But all this carnage occurred after the Democrats won the '24 election and, in an outrageously overreaching, ironic twist of kismet, the Democrats never needed to juice the deal with the Genome Project vaccine to win the election. The Republican party, with their typical history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, jumped the shark when Donald Trump, the true Teflon Don (who in cat-like fashion used up another one of his nine lives by escaping the New York Attorney General investigation with only a fine), again received the nomination. With fabulously minimal reflection or consultation, he recklessly announced that his nominee for Vice-President was... the My Pillow Guy. The choice created a rift in the Republican Party with mainstream Republicans forming the American Patriot Party - a collection of decorous, dignified, propriety minded Moderate, Rino and Neo-Con "Conservative" apologists. These Republicans refused to default to sanity and their overwhelming choice for the nominee was Mitt Romney, another old white-guy retread. The outcome was never in doubt and no true Conservative has ever been elected President since.
 
Due to the Mail In Voting and National Voting Standards Act of 2021 , (which essentially codified Mail-in voting, eliminated voter ID, the Electoral College and Federalized all elections, allowing the Democrats to maintain control of government in the '22 mid-term elections), no clairvoyant was necessary to predict the monumentally massive fraud that accompanied this legislation. By the '24 elections, all three parties figured out how to game the system and mastered the technique of vote harvesting, managing to generate 250 million votes between them - 80 million votes more than the total number of ballots cast in the record breaking 2020 election. Voter fraud had become institutionalized - endemic in the free election system. What was once recognized as the pillar of the Democratic election process had become a punchline to Banana Republic bad joke - welcome to the Third World.
 
Amid the violent protests throughout the country, the Biden - Harris ticket, free from the cumbersome restrictions of the Electoral College, claimed victory with 40% of the popular vote. The formal Inauguration ceremony was done virtually - behind the fenced and guarded barriers surrounding the White House (which still stand to this day) as Washington D.C. burned. The virtual event was not surprising as "Hiden' Biden" did not make a single campaign appearance in person, locking himself down in the West Wing watching reruns of Matlock - reliving his salad days of 50 years before when he practiced law for 15 minutes. In the previous two years, for the first time in over a century, only a written State of the Union was submitted to both Houses of Congress. In 2025, perhaps because of the rumors swirling around Biden's cognitive impairment and possible Alzheimer's, the White House announced the State of the Union would be given in person.
 
In a much anticipated televised evening event, the President began his stumbling address, reading off the teleprompter like a hostage reading a ransom note. Suddenly, due to a teleprompter malfunction, the President stopped, staring straight ahead, a deer in the headlights, became frustrated and angrily lashed out at the technicians - a classic Sundowner's Dementia Syndrome melt down - all of this on live TV. All networks televising the event pulled away - except Fox News, which carried the President's angry incoherent rantings for several minutes. (The FCC later fined Fox two million dollars for violating the Disinformation in Broadcasting A ct  for failure to go dark.) In a pitiable and pathetic display, Biden was helped off the podium and shuffled off stage, still irritated and muttering unintelligibly. Later that evening it was announced that the President had suffered a stroke, was in stable condition at Walter Reed Hospital and the 25th Amendment would be temporarily invoked. Several weeks later, amid heroic fanfare for Biden's 55 years of service to the country, it was announced that due to the severity of the stroke, he would retire and Vice-President Harris would assume the duties of the office. This totally anticipated event triggered another pandering, disingenuously spontaneous round of phony heroic celebratory distraction commemorating the first Female/Asian/Black President. Although Joe Biden lived another five years, he was never seen in public again, dying in relative obscurity secluded in his Delaware home. Donald Trump outlasted him by six years when he succumbed to a stroke while choking on a Door Dash delivered Big Mac at Mar-A-Lago. Trump's final wish of receiving a State funeral was denied by President Eric Swalwell.
 
Over these 30 years, life in what was once America has become unrecognizable. Big government and big Corporations are indistinguishable, controlling every aspect of life and culture. What at one time was identified as "censorship" has become so ingrained in the day-to-day life of the citizenry it is invisible - there is not even a word for it in the lexicon, the actual term having been banned years ago. All forms of internet communication are strictly monitored - if not by the government (Ministry of Truth and Disinformation) then by the disingenuous and biased fact checking organizations, wholly owned subsidiaries of the corporations that own the platforms. The major electronic and print media deny the well documented violent mayhem of the past and present that occurs daily on the streets throughout the country, altering our history in real time. Publishers have ceased publication of any material deemed to contain "disinformation, misinformation or speech in violation of authorized Ministry of Truth guidelines" under penalty of felony prosecution. America (what's left of it) exists in a constant state of McCarthyism, (a term banned 20 years ago) which was an historical reference to a period of governmental tyranny - and of which my grandchildren are completely ignorant due to the revisionist "Critical Race Theory and Historical Truth" curriculum now taught in all schools. Simply questioning - in any forum - the accepted conventional orthodoxy, regardless of the subject matter, is automatically considered Hate Speech - a felony.
 
The right to bear arms as codified in the Second Amendment has been so diluted through state and Federal legislation it has become superfluous - initially by a firearms national registry and then in stages; by limiting the production and sale of ordinance, then by government civil litigation of retail firearms sales and finally criminal prosecution of the gun manufacturers. The fools that obligingly registered their guns soon realized that they were the target of confiscation by the authorities - who knew exactly who owned the guns and exactly where they were located. Eventually governmental confiscation became the order of the day but, of the 375 million guns in the U.S., less than 300 thousand were retrieved - the vast majority of which were the recent gun purchasers who were frightened by the complete lack of police protection in the cities. Despite the draconian penalties for firearm possession, like the Prohibition era Volstead Act of the last century, gun control was largely ignored as weapon ownership had become the primary means of self protection. With no funding to maintain police protection, riotous urban areas have created two tier policing; sociologists who respond to oftentimes dangerous domestic situations armed with only Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs theory or "incentive based" law enforcement - roving packs of of armed, uniformed "officers" who are essentially shake-down thugs targeting any business owner, citizen or potential criminal on the street who may have the ability to pay.  
 
I will be 102 years of age this coming year. Good genes, tremendous advances in modern medicine and dumb luck aside, that I have lived so long is pure serendipity and, in no small measure, due to the Genome Project vaccine. In truth, this longevity is equal parts Godsend... and curse. I am blessed that my wife survived the Genome vaccine debacle along with me, a scenario not as common as one may think. Those of us who survived the second pandemic with our partners are referred to euphemistically as "Pas de Deux" couples - The Dance for Two.
 
If Boomers were vilified as selfish, greedy and self absorbed 30 years ago, today we are easily the most despised assemblage of people since the Trump Derangement Syndrome era. Scorned by the Gen Xer's and the Cancel Culture Millennials (neither of whom were eligible for the short-lived Genome vaccine) for our Boomer reluctance to adhere to the group-think mentality and our refusal to acquiesce to their demand that we confess to our virulent racist and xenophobic tendencies, we are the symbolic Judas Goat, using up the scarce financial and medical resources while leading the unvaxxed to their demise. They anxiously await our final dirt nap and are quite candid and vocal about faulting us for the utter failure of Medicare For All - which, as also predicted 30 years ago, is actually Medicare For None. These princes of the New America, prisoners of their own ideology, are a symptom of the tribal decay into which this place has finally devolved - in which there is never enough blame to go around. But there are still millions of us and, joylessly, we are having the last laugh as we bear witness to America's final, death-rattling last gasp. We are outliving our children and even our grandchildren, with some older Boomers who received and survived the Genome vaccine still alive at 112 years of age. We are condemned for our music, our cultural norms and our refusal to embrace the victimhood in which the Millennials and Gen Xe'rs revel. We are a constant reminder, to those old enough to remember, of what once was.
 
The right to grow old in the same familiar country that we grew up in was never a guarantee and, clearly, a benefit that that will never be afforded us. I am old, but I know things: I know I steadfastly believe we are a freeborn people with an innate distrust of government built into our DNA. I know that any government that did not bestow upon us this freedom does not have the authority to take it away. And while the very nature of life is constant change, these last three decades have borne witness to a transformational upheaval, a never-before-seen metamorphosis to our way of life - culturally, financially and socially - from which there is no recovery.
 
I recognized long ago that I would never significantly change the world. Looking back, I can derive a small measure of satisfaction that the world has not significantly changed me.
 
Freddie Van
(an aging child of god)
 
** From the poem "Snowman" by Wallace Stevens 1921 - Cancelled 2026 by Ministry of Disinformation.
 
 

Fear, Loathing and Alienation in the New America, or How I learned to Love Social Distancing

By Frederick Van Assche • 20 Mar, 2020

Day #1 Coronavirus quarantine

It was only 10 days ago we laid to rest our old friend Jack, on a cool, clear and brilliantly sunny Saturday morning. The sort of morning certain Michiganders - for months subjected to the bitter deprivations of winter - may break out the clubs and hit the ill-manicured links for what passes as "winter rules" golf in this neck of the woods. I am quite certain that Jack, an inveterate linksman, would have been first in line had it not been for the decidedly inconvenient circumstance of being ensconced in the very casket I was helping to carry to the hearse. Later we gathered at Country Club of Detroit, one of Jack's favorite venues in all the world, where we drank wine and ate large shrimp and finger foods - Jack would have loved it. Later, people took turns telling Jack stories and saying nice things about him, which for me, was as effortless as slipping on an old pair of jeans: He was a kind and gentle man, whose motives were uncomplicated, navigating this world with the simplicity of achild and without a hint of guile. I will miss his laugh and his sometimes clumsy social graces, (like standing in the shallow end on the edge of Fossee's pool in Florida, reading his i-pad with his shirt on and butt naked from the waist down...full Porky Pig mode). I will miss my friend.

 

But that was 10 days ago, a lifetime ago, and the dissimilitude between that bright sunny Saturday morning and the world today is inexplicably impossible believe. It is a world that is going sideways in a hurry, the type of world in which my friend would not fair well. As the hyperbolic craziness progressed over that hysterical week and a half (and continues to grow as exponentially as the reported statistics of the virus itself) one wonders what, exactly, is behind all this charlatanry. Has this country simply devolved into a pack of whiny, self absorbed snowflakes, afraid of contracting a flu that, (for the vast majority of those without underlying complications), while very contagious and perhaps somewhat more precarious than a simple flu...is still the flu ?

 

Or, is something more sinister at work here. Not a big fan of conspiracy theories. I think Alex Jones is a crackpot, Lee Harvey Oswald probably acted alone, 9/11 was not an inside job and I seriously doubt that I'll ever run into Elvis at a CVS in Belize. All that said, are we completely shutting down a vibrant economy because of a minuscule fraction of the populace? I write this with the full knowledge and understanding that some will interpret this as a callous, uncaring, unempathetic and probably criminal, policy. Fuck 'em. It should be pointed out that we live with statistical realities every day. The actuarial guys will tell you that they cannot predict who  will die, but they will proudly tell you, with uncanny an d unempathetic accuracy, how many  will die.

 

Nearly 40,000 people die each year from auto accidents. One could accurately surmise that if legislation was implemented to reduce the speed limit to...say, 20 miles per hour, the fatality number would be greatly reduced. How about 10 miles per hour - 5 miles per hour? We could save thousands of lives.Of course, a ridiculous policy like this would have an incredibly deleterious effect on the economy, would not be tolerated by the people and would be laughed out of an governing body to which it was proposed  

 

Established science has agreed that smoking (and secondary smoke) is the primary cause of lung cancer deaths, which exceed 140,000 per year. If we are serious about the safety of all Americans, let's outlaw all tobacco products, thereby sparing tens of thousands of lives. Forget about the fact that doing so would shut down the revenue stream to the Federal government, who still collect billions in taxes from Big Tobacco and whose DOJ attorneys chased those companies like they were a pack of ambulances leaving the scene of a horrendous accident to sue them for billions, which they are still collecting.

 

 And let's not forget the 84,000 deaths caused by diabetes annually. If "... saving lives of Americans" (God, I am tired of that trite and meaningless banality) why not get all the overweight and out of shape diabetics off the dime and create some mandatory, federally enforced diet restrictions. Why not compel those affected to eat according to the government outlines?

 

And please, let's not forget the regular flu, which sends upwards of 50,000 Americans to the Grim Reaper annually.

 

 

I have yet to read or hear (with the possible exception of Facebook paranoia) any material that indicates this virus, once contracted by those individuals not at high risk, requires mandatory hospitalization, is that much longer in duration, is more lethal to healthy individuals or has long lasting consequences when contracted. Discounting, for now, any possible nefarious undercurrents in all this, (the guy who could possibly have enough juice to pull off this world wide scam would make George Soros, Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg look like a pathetic troupe of cut rate street corner grifters), and understanding the need for some "at risk" (a category in which I would be included) individuals to protect themselves, is it worth ruining this giant economic engine for our lifetime and our children's lifetime while we watch as this place turns into a third world economy? In an effort to protect an infinitesimal percentage of 'at risk" people? Really? Are we that afraid of the flu that we'll roll the dice on this plan - this poorly thought out piece of sophistry that may not even work - for a problem that may not even approach the epic and dire predictions of self-serving bureaucrats?

 

The question, at this juncture, is how long an entire nation of free-born people will tolerate anti-constitutional expedience and infringement on their civil liberties before impatience and disgust take over.

 

That's all for today, I'll be checking in with my daily diary as long as this pernicious pandemic persists. Stay calm and carry on.

Fear, Loathing and Alienation in the New America, or How I learned to Love Social Distancing

By Frederick Van Assche • 19 Mar, 2020

Day #2 Coronavirus quarantine

Beautiful morning on Park Ave.in downtown Winter Park to meet up with my normal coffee klatch crew. Only one shows as the streets are as deserted as if a category 5 Hurricane was 20 minutes away. Our regular coffee shop indicates that "in an abundance of caution," they will be closing after today. As we are the only two patrons, this move is economically understandable, despite the fact that the proprietor just opened two weeks before after sinking a ton into the renovation of the trendy, upscale establishment. The young man will certainly take a haircut. Bad JuJu - bad luck.

 

Trump is on the TV again in one of his loquacious, meandering word salad attacks on the English language, struggling as always with constant repetition while employing the few adjectives he has in his limited lexicon of superlatives. He is a man, even on the teleprompter, who never read a sentence he couldn't mangle beyond recognition while boorishly applauding his own extraordinary efforts. Although at times he looks a little shaky, I have to give him credit for handling the pressure over the last three years. His sidekick, Corona Czar V.P. Pence - who has the constipated pinched face appearance of a man who hasn't taken a good dump since he came to Washington - is blathering on about ventilators, respirators, medical masks and various equipment which he squeezes in between the fawning plugs praising Trump's efforts. The reporters in the press room could give a shit; the media goons are waiting with the patience of a spoiled self indulgent brat itching to tear open his Christmas presents. They shout over the top of each other to hurl their ridiculous accusations at Trump, - clumsily disguised as questions - about (what else?) RACISM, because Trump has saddled the virus with the moniker "Chinese." This despite the fact that virtually all these viruses are named after the area of origin.

 

With my entire golf club shut down (course, fitness center, pool), I motored down to Dick's Sporting Goods to purchase a bench and weights for "quarantined" workouts. Dick's was shuttered along with the rest of the mall. Went to Publix and bought a broomstick and 4 one gallon jugs of water. Found a 4 foot piece of plywood and a concrete block and BINGO...my journey on the road to Adonis-ville remains unencumbered. I suppose this is how the convicts do it in prison.

 

The rumblings that the cure may be worse than the disease are beginning to resonate; the people are getting restless, as well they may. Prior to this Black Swan event, this generation of Boomers have experienced three watershed events in their lifetime that became part of the collective consciousness of the nation, either with terrifying suddenness - the Kennedy assassination and 9/11 - and the Vietnam War. While Vietnam gradually crept onto our national radar and severely affected an entire generation, Kennedy's assassination and 9/11 shocked the nation - but none of them caused a panicked media to lose all perspective and the Federal Government to shut down the entire country - on scientific information that is sketchier than an Al Gore movie. This phony, kinder, gentler, pseudo-morality that has taken hold of this country and brought us to this marshmallow clouds and rainbows safe space - where the naive idea that assuming any risk of losing anyone is intolerable. Let's not kid ourselves - there will be pain.

 

That's all for now. I'm falling behind in finishing these posts because...well, because I'm basically a layabout. I'll catch up. Please click on the link below to give you an idea of how this shutdown strategy is the greatest scam since the Clinton (Crime) Family Foundation.

Fear, Loathing and Alienation in the New America, or How I learned to Love Social Distancing

By Frederick Van Assche • 18 Mar, 2020

 Day #3

My wife was not the first person in my life to accuse me of the occasional battle with the iniquitous vice of procrastination, (although my naturally indolent nature dictates that simply postponing the battle is much more expedient than fighting it now.) So, imagine my justifiable chagrin when, finding myself with plenty of time on my hands, I made the admiral effort of cleaning the small 2nd story balcony in the back of our townhouse, (something that's been on my "mini bucket list" since moving in nearly two years ago), she was decidedly unimpressed with the effort. My righteous indignation demanded an adequate explanation, considering I had just braved the perils of the corona virus by spending the better part of a half hour in the hot sun, (who knows what malignantly lethal microorganisms are flying around in that potentially deadly air), cleaning "her" balcony - the place she frequents regularly for morning coffee.

 

"Well," she replied with that haughty, imperious attitude adopted by people who are convinced of the virtue of their position, "it took a potentially civilization-ending, world-wide, pandemic for you to finally get it done!" I would remind her that old aphorism that nobody likes a smartass, but for me it's kind of a "kettle calling the pot" meme.

 

Later in the afternoon, having accomplished the above mentioned Herculean task and finding the shelter-in-place lifestyle not only stifling but abjectly stupid, I meandered over to the only golf facility in the area still operating, Goat Hills Golf and Trailer Park C.C. to hit some range balls. GHGTPCC is a facility that, when built, ruined a good swamp. The dress code is, essentially, "clothes optional," where, if one were attired in a pair of ripped cargo pants and a bleached out "Cold Play Tour '96" tee shirt, one would be considered woefully overdressed. The golf carts appear as if they did a few tours in Afghanistan - a faded monkey-shit brown in color, replete with ripped seats and balding tires that are (as my North Carolina buddies were so fond of saying) "slicker than deer guts on a doorknob."

 

But they have a driving range...of sorts. The range balls are golf balls in the notional sense of the word - they were at one time round, white and once actually had some component of compression. What passed for grass on the dismal teeing area of the range was the pathetic occasional clump of dried out weeds, where every iron shot resulted in a puff of dry dust and an erratic ball flight that resembles a hummingbird dodging a shotgun blast. Gone are the good old days (day before yesterday) when I was practicing with shiny, brand new, out of the box Titleist tour practice balls at my club...that solid feeling that moves from the hands through the entire body as a nine-iron meets the ball precisely, leaping off the face. The high, perfect parabola of the shot as it gently slides a little left at the apex, hangs for an instant and falls gently to earth - a sensation so pure it makes you feel like you could live forever.

 

We will not, any of us, live forever. But we surely will die an ignominious, spineless and humiliating death if we hide like children from a Bogeyman that may not even exist.

 

 Catch y'all tomorrow. In the mean time - don't give out, don't give in and NEVER, EVER, give up!

 

Stay Calm and Carry On.

Fear, Loathing and Alienation in the New America or How I Learned To Love Social Distancing

By Frederick Van Assche • 17 Mar, 2020
Days #4, #5 & #6

(The lost Weekend - Some days will be condensed. When the highlight of your day is driving 4 blocks to the Publix, even Stephan King would find it a formidable task to create a compelling narrative for any protagonist.) 

You wanna talk desperation? I'll give ya desperation right here...played nine holes at Goat Hills Golf and Trailer Park with my wife this weekend!. I thought the driving range was rough...until I saw the greens. In the '70's, I had a shag carpet that was smoother than these babies. Hit it three feet on a 167 yard 3-par - the putt squirted left from the giddyup - missed the the hole by 6 inches. Good news, however. Jack Nicklaus Grand Cypress Golf course near Disney (usually at least a 35 minute drive in season - now maybe 15 minutes) opened for play. Individual carts, no touching flagstick, all bunkers played as waste areas (no rakes to touch), rangers are there solely to monitor the six foot rule. 

This new normal is the inevitable and logical result of the general direction technology has been driving us. Tethered to our machines and relying on them as virtually the only mode of communication has created an alarming inability to actually connect with other humans. Why go through the inconvenience of actually talking to someone when texting, while not as accurate, will suffice. And while all age groups are guilty of this behavior, Millennials and and the so-called Gen Z generations are clearly the most affected. At least with the AIDS virus in the '80's, the level of alienation was controllable; if two consenting adults wanted to get inter-personal and bump uglies, prophylactic protection was available. Is there any doubt this "no touch " culture will effect the way we interact with other humans. Will the birthrate decline even more propitiously with Millennials and Gen Z? Will they even care? 

Several months ago, smoking a cigar and sipping a MacCallan's 15 on the patio at my golf club, I overheard some junior members (perhaps early thirties) excitedly recalling a round at Augusta National that apparently all three had played the day before. As I listened to them recount an extremely detailed, hole by hole replay of their round, I wondered whose ass a couple of puerile, non-partner attorneys had kiss to gain entry to the storied home the Master's. I was fortunate enough to have played it over 30 years ago (when these kids were still shitting yellow) and I understood the level of difficulty involved in gaining access. When I asked them if they had an opportunity to walk through the stately clubhouse (oftentimes part of the Augusta guest protocol), they stared at me dumbfounded; the Augusta National they played was a giant video game with a wrap around screen at the Titleist booth at the PGA show, complete with sound of chirping birds and breeze blowing through the pines, and, if you so desire, the roar of the patrons.To these kids, who have been playing video games all their lives, this seemed to be as satisfying as the real deal. What happens when the virtual reality becomes indistinguishable from truth? Which, of course, is a question better answered by someone who understands the reality of life, say...a TV Doc like Dr. OZ. 

If one needs any additional proof of our devolution, if the new word abbreviation protocols for text and email isn't enough of a perversion of the language and communication skills, think about the prevalent use of emojis as a communication device. From Egyptian hieroglyphics to emojis in only 3 millennia - real progress. For those hipster individuals who think there's no difference - that a symbol is a symbol - try to convey the feeling and emotion of any of the great pieces of literature...with emojis. 

Frustration with the preposterous "run and hide" reaction to this virus continues to grow as American economic viability and wealth continues to circle the fiscal drain. Congress is throwing around trillion dollar bailouts like Bloomberg buying a quarter page political ad in a high school yearbook, deceptively burying Green New Deal and carbon footprint buy backs for airlines deep in the bill. if this pandemic concludes with a fatality number that is less than or equal to previous year's death rate, who will take the responsibility for this boondoggle? Where will these possibly unnecessary trillion dollar relief packages come from? Those hopeful Democrats who believe this is the end of Trump, may be correct. But the reality is that this just the beginning of an entirely new and perilous relationship between the individual and the Federal government, which is the silent price of the bailout money. No matter how this fiasco concludes, the face of the nation will surely change as Government intrusion will be an integral component of everyday life. 

Life moves on, sometimes the cultural tectonic plates shift. As much as we may want to, nobody ever promised we had the right to grow old in the same country in which we grew up. Truth be told, I don't know that I even care to coexist with a society that tolerates cheesy Medicare commercials with Joe Namath as the pitchman (YES , BROADWAY JOE )  and who don't even comprehend the significance of the hook line at the commercial's end when Joe intones, "...call the number - you'll be glad you did.. .I guarantee it! " 

 Oh well. As Jimmy Hendrix so eloquently prophesied - "Ain't no Life Nowhere." Catch y'all down the road.

Fear, Loathing and Alienation in the New America or How I Learned to Love Social Distancing

By Frederick Van Assche • 15 Mar, 2020

Day # whatever

 

Have never been a big "rear view mirror" guy, believing that the most under-appreciated word in the English language is "NEXT"...next deal, next day, next dream. Looking back was the give-up- artist's mode of surrender, a rear guard action - a fighting retreat against whatever time one may have left. However, in this era of coerced uncertainty - when any future runway available to us grows more transitory by the quarantined day - reversion seems the only viable course available. So, who would've thought on my birthday 50 years ago today, I would be a 69 year old man under quarantine in Florida, with the dystopian media predicting the end of civilization while depicting joyless, depressing sepia colored video vignettes of the deserted streets of New York City with cheesy, melancholy background music. When not displaying these spurious Orwellian and totalitarian images, the cable networks bring on their charlatan TV Docs to help us deal with "...the anxiety and fear of isolation," as if we were children who lost their security blanket and are desperately seeking a safe space. While this Corona virus seems to play perfectly into the narrative of this new America - that is, you're nobody until you are a victim. However, this pandemic allows - EVERYBODY TO BE A VICTIM   which, in turn, reduces the value of victimhood, the currency of the snowflake mentality. What the everyday, off the rack, pre-virus regular victims are learning is that when everybody's somebody, nobody's anybody.

 

Leaving my domicile on Saturday, (how long before "papers" will be a requisite to move about freely), to pick up a script for my wife at Costco, I notice for the first time the taped off lines on the floor indicating the compulsory 6-foot social distancing mandate while in line at the pharmacy. While the mind reels at the opportunities to contract this virus in this sad sea of humanity - even at six feet, the fear of some of these people is visceral. The woman behind me was taking no chances; although the outside temperature is pushing 90 degrees, she is ridiculously costumed in a surgeon's cap, a respirator mask, rubber dish washing gloves that cover her forearms and (I am not making this up), some sort of cotton booties over her footwear - in the event, I guess, that little viruses are leaping up on our shoes like so many fleas. A slender, rather mousy woman, she resembled those actresses from the black and white movies in the '50's when, apparently, it was de rigueur to sport pointy breasts - as if two snow cones were fastened to her pigeon-like chest.

 

The Latina woman in front of me, when finally arriving to the pharmacist's window only to find that her script hadn't been called in, began a rant a la Rickey Ricardo - part Spanish, part English (a form of spanglish) directed at the pharmacist, cursing the poor young man relentlessly.The rest of the Octogenarians in line, already scared half to death by, well...by fear of death from a virus and the constant dread that the conservatives (those faceless, nameless malevolent rabble) will use the Corona virus to steal all their social security and Medicare, simply cowered, averting their eyes. She was in her middle 40's, huge breasted and, at one time perhaps a genuine dark-haired beauty - but now just a chunky, high mileage, B list midnight Bootie call Senora beat up by the disparate inequities of life. A real man hater, she had the classic female "I need" line - a distinguishing crease that ran from the middle of her forehead to the bridge of her nose and let you know she could spew enough venom to make some unsuspecting man wish he had corona virus. As she paused momentarily to catch her breath, she turned around in time to see me shake my head and gave me a look she had probably used her entire miserable bullying life. I held her gaze, wagging my finger in a "make my day sweetheart" pantomime.

 

She turned away briskly, her stiletto heels clicking on the concrete floor. The pharmacist greeted me at the window with a sheepish smile. "Maybe," I said with only a hint of sarcasm "there's a reason for this virus."

 

The velocity of the recent societal transformation has a startling semi-permanent and Cambrian explosive quality to it that has perilous overtones. The arrogance, however, of a society that jeopardizes the immediate future and its children's future by tampering with the deciduous nature of life is astonishing. It is a cosmic reality; at maturity, some leaves will fall from the tree. Despite the constant media propaganda that saving every life is an imperative, I am unpersuaded.

 

Life is, indeed, changing. I realized many years ago that I would not significantly change the world. I am gratified however, at this stage in my my life, that the world did not significantly change me.

 

See y'all down the road. Stay well.

Kamala Switches Teams

By Frederick Van Assche • 15 Oct, 2019

Washington D.C. 6/3/19

 VandalNation Exclusive

(For Immediate Release)

 

In a hastily called press conference, Juan Rodriguez, campaign manager for Kamala Harris announced that the candidate will now identify as a lesbian. “In order to better serve and understand the long standing victimization suffered by the LGBTQ community, Senator Harris will, as of this date, identify as lesbian,” said Rodriguez in front of a boisterous, cheering crowd of LGBTQ, including a vocal contingent of Lipstick Lesbians.

 

Douglas Imhoff, Harris’ husband of 12 years, apparently surprised by the unexpected announcement, refused to comment.

 

The move immediately catapults Harris several polling positions in the Identity Politic Intersectionality Championship of the Democratic presidential primary race, leapfrogging both Pete Buttigieg and Cory Booker. “As a lesbian, the Senator now accumulates victimhood points in several categories - having faced discrimination as a woman, as African American and now, as Gay,” said Rodriguez. “The fact that she also has that youthfully attractive MILF appeal only adds to her likeability - while still maintaining the fundamental grievance issue,” he said.

 

The announcement did not go unnoticed by several  other candidates. Mike Schmuhl, campaign manager for candidate Pete Buttigieg, (the only other announced Gay candidate in the race), quickly responded via twitter. “We believe it is critical that the Democratic National Committee immediately initiate an investigation into the substance of this specious and highly suspect claim made by the Senator" he tweeted. “The Senator needs to provide dispositive evidence to the American public of this claim as to exactly; 1.) when Senator Harris had cunningulus, 2.) where Senator Harris had cunningulus and, 3.) most importantly, with whom Senator Harris has had cunningulus,” Schmuhl tweeted. “The American people are entitled to know if their leaders only claim to be Gay when it suits their needs.”

 

In an unrelated event, Chasten Buttigieg, the husband of candidate Mayor Buttigieg, locked himself into the restroom at the Buttigieg campaign headquarters in South Bend, Indiana, weeping inconsolably at the Harris announcement, apparently distraught at the prospect of having his husband share the Gay spotlight with another candidate. Grief counselors were summoned and the situation was resolved without further issue, according to people familiar with the matter.

 

Under the condition of anonymity, a spokesperson for the Elizabeth Warren campaign, (which has been relying solely on female victimization and experiencing difficulty overcoming the candidate’s “whiteness"), rejected any potential Gay claim by the campaign, indicating that senior staffers are contemplating an assertion of Transexuality. “We think the Tranny route is much more believable and while we’re not ruling out a possible bi-sexual claim, it just doesn’t have the victim impact and won’t get us where we need to be polling-wise,” said the source.

 

Frontrunner Joe Biden, on the campaign trail speaking to a small group of somnolescent, old, white and embittered retired United Mine Workers, was asked if he had any intentions of asserting a Gay claim, responded assertively. “C’mon man. I’m old school. You guys have seen Old Uncle Joe in action on video for 30 years - grabbing’ and sniffing’ - but y’all never saw me sniff a male - just women. Sure, I sniffed a few old ladies, but that’s just politics. Any male grabbin’ was manly grabbin',” exclaimed Biden with uncharacteristic testicularity.

 

The Biden campaign, suffering from a lack of any meaningful grievance issues and covering no intersectionality bases, is scrambling to establish some victimhood claim. "As an old, white, mainstream political moderate, I'm in the only class of Identity Politics that is discriminated against because we have no victimization claim. In fact, we are victims of not being victims!" Biden exclaimed with circular logic.

 

Asked if Bernie Sanders, also old and white (in addition to being bitter) faces the same lack of victimization status, Biden replied, "at least Bernie's a Jew - he could get some discrimination mileage out of that if it didn't alienate his base," referring to the openly, virulent anti-Semitic posture of the Progressive wing of the Democratic party.

 

Sanders, in a lunch diner on the campaign trail making his 205th visit to Iowa, refused comment with an angry, dismissive grunt as he sent back his cold soup.

 

Corey Booker, reportedly furious with his campaign staff for prematurely outing his relationship with actress Rosario Dawson amid swirling rumors that he was a closeted Gay man, was heard by campaign staffers to have said “...I could have been a victim of racial discrimination, Black and Gay." Experts believed such a scenario  would have put him within margin-of-error distance to Senator Harris impressive claims of racial discrimination, female, Black and Lesbian credentials - the Grand Slam of victimization.


While the White House press office had no official comment on the Harris announcement, a mid-level staffer, under the condition of anonymity, responded. "President Trump currently is lazer-focused on doing the work of the American people, ensuring that the intricately nuanced Fox News subtext continues to portray him as a beleaguered, yet unifying  Christ figure and trying to figure out how to put together a three-way with Senator Harris and Stormy Daniels in the Mar-A-Lago Presidential suite." 

 

Senator Harris will kick off her "Gay Daze"  whirlwind tour, with rallies at 50 Gay/Trans nightclubs in 50 days. Venues and showtimes will be available to the public on line at: divein69@GayDaze.com

                                                           

 

 

 

 

   AFTER THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE 

By Frederick Van Assche • 22 Aug, 2019

Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die

Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die

It takes a lot to change a man

Hell, it takes a lot to try      

                     

                    Jason Isbell                        

Show More
Share by: