A Life Bereft Of Croutons

Catapult! said the mizzenmast. Crouton! said the sailor salad! It's Fourteen Buffet Days again in downtown Akron!

All the televisions are left on fire for the clearance sale, & former Olympic bronze medal winners play erstwhile superstars on gigantic heterosexual parade floats, masking their musk by wearing magical cologne to keep the locals' loins itchy & raw. The crowd is not what it used to be but weighs nearly twice as much as it ever did, & fried things are offered at ridiculous prices to those who don't yet have something in their hands nor a prescription drug habit. Someone feels unexplainably sad until the Fire Marshall accidentally shoots a stray dog with a stray bullet.

Later, over a shrimp cocktail & a highball, Mayor Wilt Chamberlain (no relation) weeps into his hands when he is informed of yet another government subsidy going to nearby Youngstown. He whispers into his iPhone & rattles off a rhyming response to Youngstown Mayor Larry Bird (no relation either) which manages to insult not only his parents & children, but also an ancestor that Chamberlain read about who enjoyed finger-fucking the Ohio state animal, the White-Tailed Deer. He seems satisfied, although later in the night a sheriff from Youngstown named Kobe Bryant (unbelievably, no relation), claiming to be acting alone, shits on Mayor Chamberlain's front porch, puts a bag over the Mayor's head, & sets him & the house on fire.

Shaquille O'Neal (no relation - you know), a cub reporter at the Akron Daily Bells & Whistles, leaves the Akron Zoo, where he had been writing his weekly piece about Mama Bear & her children, at the behest of his editor, who also has the name of a famous basketball star but I am tired of writing "no relation" so I won't bother telling you. The editor gets O'Neal into an interview room with Bryant, but accidentally shoots him with a tranquilizer dart when Bryant notices that O'Neal is packing, & tried to show him how to properly clean his gun. Bryant, unfortunately, is allergic to the tranquilizer, which is part codeine & part Seven-Up, & dies in O'Neal's arms in a kind of "Pieta" pose that O'Neal remembers whenever he can't maintain an erection.

Word reaches Cleveland as the Fourteen Buffet Days come to an end, so the crack reporting squad from the Plains Dealer decide instead to drive over to Chicago for a girlie show & prostitution in the naughty part of town. What they could have discovered if they had instead just driven once around Akron, which has some passable strippers if you don't look at the deep unhappiness in their eyes! We're talking corruption in some of the middest of levels! We're talking the manufacture of pre-packaged faith for consumer gnawing of a flavor nearly as bitter & despairing as that a few miles over in New York City! We're talking people still wearing slacks to bowling nights!

Do not blame young reporter O'Neal. The first visit from the authorities scared him, but when he was warned by the fellow at the 7-11 who had never spoken a word to him before in English, he knew there was a conspiracy & that his name had been added to a list of "fuck you" by people who have a moderate amount of power but almost no sense of humor. (He knew, as we all do, that they think pain is funny, but that's about it.) So he returned to the bear beat. But he did write an email to a stand-up comedian who taught improv to people who head injuries in Canton, in which he mentioned something about the day's events in passing, & the comedian promptly received a head injury of his own. O'Neal got the message, & allowed Mama Bear to maul him two days later.

Parades appear something like panacea to the people of mid- to small-town America, & so they're planned to the last detail, much like carnivals, to appear amateurish, shabby, & tedious. That they sometimes turn deadly should not be surprising. That no independent Parade Movement hasn't appeared to confront & contrast despicable events like the Fourteen Days Buffet is also not surprising. Nothing should surprise you. That's how they win.