Peace talks? Ha! There are no peace talks at Thunderdome. The mendacious, mad-eyed Orangutan L’Orange — our own homegrown Auntie Entity — has pounded his profanity-spewing chest most emphatically in warning that, in the Middle East, sooner or later you’ll be one of the living or you’ll envy the dead: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you will be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! A whole civilization will die tonight! Praise be to Allah!”
And follow-through is certainly imminent in light of Vance’s two-week cease-fire “negotiations” having totally imploded within only hours. What a shocker. And oh, you lucky boys, each and every one of y’all young American males, 26 and under. Aren’t you the fortunate ones?
Come again now, Howard? Fortunate? How the hell do you conclude that? Well, boys, haven’t you heard? Never again must you youngsters register in person for the draft! Why? Because, come this December, you’ll be automatically registered, regardless: Wave a big hello, recruits, to A.I. facial recognition!
No more physical sign-up requirements needed, at all. No fleeing to Canada ahead of your number possibly getting frontloaded. This ain’t no 1973 redux. (The last year of the draft.) If Trump wants your ass in Iran, it’ll be there. Faster than you can say, “How gay is The Strait of Hormuz?” it surely will.
Can anybody even remember back now when times were actually fun — or at least somewhat serene — before everything started exploding in flames, melting, dissolving and going extinct all at once? Weren’t those the good old days? What’s a good citizen supposed to now do, other than stand back and watch, aghast, as horror unfolds? How many “No More Kings” rallies can one attend, wondering which country is next to be conflagrated by WWIII?
Where did our souls go that we’ve allowed all our fates to be wrist-shackled to the irrational whims of some queasily in-competent, puerile paper tiger adorning himself in potty-mouthed clown makeup? There just must be a cheerier note to land upon, here amidst all this roiling carnage. Heck, even the recent death of my longtime best friend is a happier place to visit than enduring yet another maniacal day inside Trumpville’s posturing lunacy.
How ‘bout it, folks. Shall we?
Indeed, we shall: “Bravehearted” is a word too often taken for granted, overused and ultimately rendered meaningless. A truly kind and bravehearted person is extraordinarily rare in this world. An empathetic individual, void of all malice and guile — that was my friend, Jean Murphy. “Jeanie Beanie,” she called herself; plain “Jean Bean” for short. There was nothing plain about her.
Sparkling. Effervescent. Mirthful. Dazzling. Radiant, with the kindest heart and an on-the-sleeve soulfulness that anyone could be so fortunate to meet. To say that the party didn’t start until Jean showed up would be a gross understatement: Jean did not just enter a room, she ignited it and punctuated it with her unforgettable trademark laugh — a rapturous cross between a deep-bellied guffaw and a choking victim — that preceded her entrance and followed her exit, wherever she went: “Honeeeeeeey! Make mine a white Russian!”
Miss Murphy and I went back well over 40 years, to when I was 19 and a student at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. When I first dipped my toe in downtown’s gay bar scene, at Belle Watling’s, a shouting match erupted between a flossy, hourglass blonde and a mustachioed Rhett wannabe: “He’s mine!” shrilled the blonde, pointing my direction. “I saw him first!” To which Mr. Butler stomped, “Miz Thang, you’re the only genetical female in here. Psychology 101, alone, ought to clue you in that you’ve a pre-folded hand.”
Oddly, I can’t recall where Jean and I ended up that night, but such was my introduction to the Magic City’s most luminary, reigning social icon throughout the entire ’80s and ’90s. Fiercely independent, never married and a goodtime girl to her core, “Magnolia” Murphy’s life-trajectory defied categorization — neither a sassy, brassy modern “steel magnolia” nor a delicate antebellum wallflower. Even at her worst she was never coarse, crude nor even naughty. At her best she was spellbinding.
Jean might petulantly stomp one foot and pout, “Just once in my life, I’d like to have a little fun!” whilst simultaneously tossing an emu boa about her neck, hugging the closest puppy at hand, dabbing Estee Lauder sparkle powder on her cheekbones and boisterously bellowing, “Honeeeeeey, we may all be on the Titanic together, us and Cooter Brown, but I want some coconut cake before the ship goes down!”
Jean, who never possessed even a cellphone or a computer, say nothing of an email address, overshot her century by a hundred years. She belonged to the Belle Epoque — to voluminous silk gowns, ormolu parasols, elbow-length kid gloves, calling cards, quill pens and massively ornate headgear flaunting egret feathers. Jean never played to the chorus, and, despite her thrift store budget, the only way she ever greeted her public was “sumptuously.”
Heaven, to Jean, meant a glossy fashion magazine in her lap, her beloved dogs by her side, piled up in bed watching Oprah, having just blown in from the flea market, then dining on a sybarite’s repast of French onion soup and angel hair pasta in fragrant garlic sauce with sea scallops, finished off with a gargantuan hot fudge sundae: “And, honey, don’t skimp on the whipped cream. I may have lipstick on my teeth, but so does Elizabeth Taylor!”
A real unicorn — that was my friend, Jean. She was the last of them. And as with all persons who are of purest incandescence, Jean left us too soon. But she left smiles on the faces of everyone she touched, those who, just once in their lives, got to have a little fun.
Aaaaaand here we are, back to the hard reality of wringing comfort from the knowledge that people like Jean — persons too good for this Earth — at least won’t have to endure further the consequences of what our once tolerant society has sunk to. Jean Bean, girl, I’m sure gonna miss your everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink laugh. You made it out just before the bottom dropped: “Honeeeeeeey!”
—Howard Lewis Russell
Yeah, well, ho hum, what’s a little violence in the springtime, right? All you newly recruited draftees out there, chins up. Remember, once there in the Hormuz Strait, you’ve a patriot mouthpiece back here on home turf personally tasked to vent your outrage against the machine: AskHoward@dallasvoice.com.
