*
...Politey being the antonymous designation for Rudy, the cartoonlike gentleman who spends much of his life in this apartment window, which is located 7 feet east of a Joe Pye Weed and dwarf coreopsis growing between my driveway and my fence, on West Healey Street in Champaign, Ill. Rudy has inhabited this planet for a full 67 years as of today. Coincidentally, also on this date in 1959, the first episode of The Twilight Zone aired on CBS. Also appropriately, he shares a birthday with Richard III (1452), the allegedly deformed, hunchback English king who served as the objective correlative in the children's nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty," and was probably seriously slandered by Shakespeare on behalf of the Tudor monarchy a century after he died; Groucho Marx (1890), who was somewhat less funny than Rudy during his career; George McFarland (1928), the runt called "Spanky" in the Depression-era Our Gang/Little Rascals film shorts; and Maury Wills (1932), a National League base-stealing speed demon during mid-century previous.
Rudy's favorite expression is "What're you doing?!?" His favorite pastimes are lurking in his window waiting for Billy Goat Gruffs to carelessly trespass, reporting hallucinatory sightings of nonexistent species of birds patrolling our feeders, and making shit up as he goes along. He coins at least four neologisms every week, and believes that each and every one of them have been part of The King's English since Humpty Dumpty roamed the earth.
I offer all of the above observations in complete earnest, but without so much as a microgram of disrespect. He is an sweety-pie American Original, and by far the least generic neighbor I've ever had. Happy birthday, Fatso!
whoa-- roasted!
ReplyDeleteBO: no, I'd need to tow him out the the Clinton reactor to have any hope of roasting that guy.
ReplyDeleteLoved your post. I think your neighbour would too. If he manages to move away from that window and log on.
ReplyDeleteWhat part of you is in cross section or don't I want to know?
Barry: thanks! Rudy doesn't go online, but he does like to show me and my sons the pornographic animated GIFs his brother sends him by phone. The simple things in life give him the biggest kicks. Also, the cross section is my right rotator cuff, scanned about 4 years ago; don't know the medical nomenclature for the view, but it's basically looking down on me lying on my back.
ReplyDeleteGood to see there is still a good piece of Americana sprinkled around out there among the rubble.
ReplyDeleteYou ever need a good shoulder or knee surgeon for that "cross section" I highly recommend Dr. Alison Toth at Duke Sports Med, if you can make the trip. Duke is one of the top sports med facilities in the country. Lots of athletes and others come from all over for treatment.
Toth is a former basketball standout at Yale who rebuilt my daughters shredded ACL two years a go with a partial hamstring and cadaver ligament that is now twice as large and stronger than her original. We call it the "bionic knee."
it's possibly a coronal section of the shoulder. Or more likely a photo of RC in utero during his manatee stage.
ReplyDeleteadmin: thanks for your comment and recommendation. It always makes me feel good when someone new posts a comment. Re the rotator, fortunately we have an ortho wizard in town, and he really came through for me about four years ago... after my main clinic missed the diagnosis for 6 months and the torn muscles retracted into stubby little shadows of themselves. But the surgeon put me together enough that I work well. I'm a lucky guy!
ReplyDeleteanon: Why, I oughtta...!