It’s the Devil, Stupid (a 30:30 report)
How about the Devil? Bobby Belinski was in the clubhouse with Julius Jesus, Rennie Silva, Daphne Duckness, and Queenie Levesque. Call them a cool crew. Bobby asked the kids, you know that saying, the devil made me do it? Here go heads shaking, butts waving, high fives and Belinsky bows just about everywhere, all yes sirs from the crew. Then why, young Belinski retorted, isn’t anybody blaming the devil for the shit show going on? Huh? And it was that query which ran its inevitable and slightly spiritual course much of the rest of the afternoon.
So, now — Hear me children.
First, because he was lining up to hear what figured to be a rather long soliloquy thingy, Julius asked for a time out and ran off to the kitchen, back in a few with a mixture of dark rye bagel and pesto smeared on the plate, which he described to his fellow cadets as a Feng Sway of righteous goodness, which caused another group excitement, but that was it for pre-listening preparations and it went from there that Bobby B leaned back in his ancient recliner, feet up, and ran off about 25 minutes on the history of the devil and devil worship and devil t-shirts and even some heavy metal music you can count on it influenced by old scratch, which is an endearing term for someone so – say it – negative, like do you really want to sit next to the devil at a bar-b-que or other socially safe gathering and Bobby was damn clear he sure didn’t and this was cause for a collective head shake in the affirmative, as in damn skippy I ain’t parking my ass next to that punk – another general agreement – while partaking of a fine char-burned hot dog and excessive portion of potato salad.
And it came to pass at the end of those 25 minutes the group got going with – here’s the real deal – the goal of wondering aloud and open to all brainstorm suggestions, knowing there was no editing or commentary allowed – that the devil, when you conjured up the non-glamorizing images but what that cat was truly all about – here is an incomplete list which includes – pain, misery, torture, suffering, harm, flood, war, pestilence, disease, viral experiences of the sick and dying nature, jealousy, more misery, and for sure racism and bullying and minute-to-minute meanness, and all agreed when it was Daphne saying that if you went far back enough in time, in the history of it all, there’s no doubt it was the devil who was behind even what seemed usual now like child abuse and spousal abuse and even stealing shit from your downstairs neighbor, and maybe there was a 45 second debate if becoming a drug addict had anything to do with the devil or not and this brought up the idea of free will which led to a different talk about if the devil was sneaky (he was) and could get in your head (yeah) and there was no proof that if you spent half your life on the corners of this city or that waiting for what Lou Reed called the man (oh great electric banana) that it was 100% the devil could in fact do and cause all that shit on the low down,
Whereas ain’t a human or a pet dog or even a house fly would be made aware of his presence – and here is a sidebar though in fact this did manage to own a number of powerful minutes in a break which was informed by the leftist leanings of Queenie Levesque which went something like this – no fuckin’ way the devil is a girl, nuh-unh, that dude for sure be a man because the experience of anyone paying attention in life is that women deep down have it more gentle and with more what gets called compassion – though both Queenie and Julius agreeing with her that you could call it “feel” and it would work better – no, for sure, the devil is a dude and maybe he has a tail or horns or both of them or maybe not maybe he looks all the time like Cary Grant, which was Rennie bringing up that example, ironic sort of as Rennie does have a Cary Grant poster up on the wall in his walk-in, the point is we don’t have to know what he looks like to know that he “is”, which was a foundation statement from Bobby Belinski way back in the beginning of his just under half hour Chautauqua thing.
And here he gets back to the original premise which is why aren’t we hearing every hour of every day that things are so fucked up now directly due to the devil causing that shit, like whispering in the ear of half the people in so convincing a way, with a sweet tone and using words they liked back when they were kids, so as to turn them into what Bobby likes to describe as truly dumb motherfuckers and everyone agreed that dumb motherfuckers are everywhere, and especially here in the States where there is some exponential quality to the accumulation of that sub-species, and maybe this becomes when you think of it in very scary terms like a zombie apocalypse thing where if there are two truly dumb motherfuckers on your street when you go to bed on a Wednesday night it’s not only possible but highly likely that there will be five by Sunday morning,
And here Julius began humming that easy like Sunday morning song which did elevate the mood about a minute before Bobby hopped up and out from his used furniture-mart recliner and began pacing, the world is fucked up, he’s saying, and our country once again leads the way and the truly stupid are taking over and people can’t even love who they want without getting stomped or denied being able to get a check-up for a cold or pushed back in line at the DMV for being one of them, and hardly anybody could get to vote and probably they were dumping votes into the Flint River or the love canal or one of those places of pollution which that explains a lot and Bobby was sweating a little which Daphne (secretly) found a little sexy but not Queenie, who leaned more toward finding Daphne’s perspiration a moisture producer – I’d call that a commercial break, be right back –
And when it was all over, the originally 25 minute gathering of verbal premise from young Belinski and maybe 45 more minutes of give and take and back and forth and moaning and howling and some degree of yelling even and sacred sobs and whimpers and let’s not forget the pinky swear blood brother (and for sure sister) vows that this here particular cadre – the five of them – were all in on kicking the devil’s ass when the time eventually came when that asswipe slipped up and became visible or outed himself some other way and they already had stored a few weapons of gunnery vintage away – that’s just fucking common sense, yo – and today now they are as a team agreeing to secure more in the line of end all be all done with the devil methods of extinction because –
Yes!! – we do remember that saying, Bobby – “The Devil made me do it!!” – and we know that is what’s behind all of this never-ending crap nowadays, which it is crazy no one talks about but we aren’t looking for what might be called validation when for us is we know this, we get it, it sucks and people not being able to love who they want or snuffed out just for who they are, like that old Marvin Gaye going on song – that shit has got to go and we are the kids gonna lead the way.
And when it all came to an end, the festival of words and reasoning and heavy feeling, the topic turned to dinner and if it was going to be pizza again – which not surprisingly is usually pretty cool with the five of them – well, let’s try that place next to the gas station on Pacific, which Julius Jesus has heard rules.
That was Fire man!! Truly hep cat Kerouac beat!
Your fucking incendiary bro – I.cant keep up with the out put of material nowadays
but when I can, what I read. is as Stormin’ Norman Mailer would say “ A pearl”!
Was wondering just what I was going to say about the fascination this holds despite–or I guess because of–its lightning speed, but I can’t top “tongue in cheek slippery truth telling.”
Tongue in cheek slippery truth telling. Pay attention oh ye who reads!!!