Jack
Lippman
(“Chrissy Frost” is an entirely fictitious creation. My apologies go to anyone who might happen to share that name, and I know there are some of you out there.)
It
was quite a gathering. Everyone was
there to celebrate her 75th birthday. Herman Blotz, her agent from New York had
flown down. Sam Fink’s widow, Estelle,
was sitting alongside of Dr. Tobias Fink, the shrink specializing in off-beat
remedies who had cured Crissy’s elevated cholesterol problem. Actually, he was a second cousin of her late
husband. In fact, this evening, he was
wearing one of Sam’s old maroon blazers.
Dr. Lopez was there too, as was the antique expert who had confirmed
that the tin bell Chrissy always carried in her purse was actually four hundred
years old. Seated at the head table with
Chrissy was Cleopatra Cohen, now a Regional Director with the Drug Enforcement
Agency. Of course, Chrissy’s
sister-in-law, Stella, dressed to the hilt was there too, running from table to
table, showing off her jewelry, most of which wasn’t real.
Some
of the folks from Valencia Heights where Chrissy and Stella still lived were
there. Chrissy didn’t play cards or do
much in the place, but they all were proud that the brightest star in the
galaxy of performers who entertained at the weekend shows during the “high
season” at the many retirement communities in Palm Beach County was one of
their own. The MC who had introduced her
when she made her first Florida appearance in a retirement community was still
around and had donned his old tuxedo. He
stepped up to the microphone and a hush came over the audience. “Ladeeeeez and Gentlemen,” he intoned, “Presenting, Miss
Chrisseeeee Frossssssst!”
A
pink spotlight settled on Chrissy who stood, waving at everyone. “Time After
Time,” they shouted, and Chrissy complied with the song that had made her
famous from West Palm Beach to Boca Raton.
The applause was deafening. After
doing a couple of encores (“You’ll Never Walk Alone” and “Goldfinger”), Chrissy
looked over across the ballroom and was amazed that she had made so many
friends in South Florida. And it all
started back when she was sitting tearfully in Herman’s crummy office in
Manhattan and that poster with the palm trees advertising the Sunshine State
caught her eye. And here were at least a hundred people who thought enough of
her to have made four and five figure donations to a cancer-fighting charity to
enable them to be with her as she celebrated her 75th birthday at
Mar-a-Lago.
The
lights dimmed and the dance music the orchestra was playing ceased as a
spotlight fixed on a door off to the right.
And through it he walked, a little stouter than most expected him to be,
but wearing his elongated red tie and his tangerine-colored mop.
“Chrissy,”
he said, “People call me all the time telling me how truly great you are, and
now I can see what they are talking about.
Too bad we didn’t meet a few years back when I could have put you on a
really major TV show.” By now he had
walked across the ballroom, as the smartphone cameras clicked away, right up to
where she sat. Putting his hand, which
was a bit sweaty but not really small as some folks have said, on her back a
little too tightly, he looked down at her and said, “I have a great surprise
for you on your birthday, Chrissy!” He
looked toward the door at the left of the ballroom and pointed at it. As a spotlight focused, four uniformed guards
came into the room, leading two men in orange jumpsuits.
“Nutsy!”
Chrissy screamed, running up to the shackled newcomers. “You almost killed me on that beach, you son
of a bitch,” she cried out as she tried to spit in his face. Nutsy, still agile even after two years of
his prison sentence, quickly ducked, her spit landing just above the knot of
the long red tie worn by the man who had thought he was doing Chrissy a big
favor by getting Nutsy flown in from Leavenworth Federal Prison for the
evening, along with Rocky who was attempting to smile at Stella.
After
he finished wiping the spittle from his chin, he tuned to Chrissy, his face
turning the color of his hair, “I thought I was doing you a favor, but I guess
you’re just another bimbo. Get out of my
damn place! Whoever let you ever book
your damn event here in the first place?
You got no class! But don’t try
to ask for a refund. We don’t give ‘em,
baby!”
Meanwhile,
Cleopatra Cohen had gotten up and
grabbed Chrissy with one arm and dragged her away, latching on to Stella with
the other. “We gotta get out of here
fast, girls!”
Flashing
her DEA badge and shoving aside the bewildered security people in the room,
Cleopatra Cohen headed for the door with her charges and once outside, jumped
into her waiting SUV and headed over the bridge crossing the Intracoastal
Waterway. Thirty minutes later, she
dropped them off at Valencia Heights.
Over
the next week, when their friends tried to contact Chrissy or Stella, they
found their house completely emptied out and no trace of either one of
them. In fact, when anyone inquired
about either of them, all they got back were sideways shaking of the head.
Meanwhile,
in what she thought was a luxuriously furnished DEA safe house somewhere in
Lower California, Chrissy sat doing her nails.
Turning to Cleopatra, she asked “How come the government has the money
to keep this wonderful place down here in Mexico while they never had enough to
run a decent operation in the States to catch those drug smugglers?"
Cleopatra
smiled. “Whoever said this place was a
government operation? And what do you
think ever happened to those forty million bucks worth
of drugs we captured on the beach?"
Chrissy
finally understood. “If I’m hearing you
right, we can never go back to the United States,“ she replied.
“That’s
right! And since they’re building a wall, that would be pretty difficult
anyway. Chrissy, you’ll have to learn
to sing in Spanish!”
And
she did.
* “Una y otra vez, me digo
que soy, tan afortunada de estar amandote … “
*“Time after time, I tell
myself that I’m, so lucky to be loved by you …”
JL
* * *
How a Negative Becomes a Positive
A story in Thursday's Palm
Beach Post pointed out that while Republicans feel that they will easily
defeat Biden in Florida in 2024, some national Democrats feel that the
Republican adoption of MAGA principles there will serve as an example of how
fascism can endanger democracy and motivate independent and undecided voters in
other more competitive States to vote for Democrats. Their seeing an
'Urban-style' leader close-up promoting fascism on their doorstep, as DeSantis
provides for them in Florida, can be a crucial wake-up call to the rest of the
country, if the Democrats use it properly.
What clearly is a ‘negative’ in Florida might turn out to be a
‘positive’ for Democrats nationwide.
Check out the article BY CLICKING HERE. Or copy and paste https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/politics/2023/05/18/biden-may-not-win-florida-but-states-maga-policies-could-help-him/70169062007/ on your browser line.
JL
*
* *
After Spring Training, Southeast Florida Lacks
Baseball Fans
During the first month of this year’s baseball season, league-wide per-game attendance averaged 27,267 according to the baseball statistic sources. Not a bad number, considering each team plays 81 home games.
Marlin attendance will probably increase this summer when they start letting hundreds of day camp kids in free for afternoon games. Also, their ‘bark in the park’ afternoons do not include counting dogs in their attendance numbers which I am sure they would like to do. The worst thing that could happen would be for the Marlins to qualify for the playoffs, playing before a sparsely filled stadium, with the upper deck still in mothballs, for all to see. This would be an embarrassment for the team and the region it represents.
The best move for them, as I see it, would be to move to Mexico City. (After all, the American League has a team out of the country, in Toronto!) They might start off playing half of their home games there, where there already is a fine new baseball stadium seating 20,000, a very adequate number considering what they presently attract. If that works out, their full schedule can be played there and a bigger stadium built or the present one expanded. Adios!
JL
*
* *
Flipping
Party Affiliation Again
A few years back, fed up with the ineptitude of Florida's Democratic Party, I switched my voting registration to 'No Party Affiliation.' I am now switching back to the Democratic Party because of importance of the battle against the Republican foes of democracy in which we are engaged. That demands an 'all hands on deck' mobilization and sitting on the sidelines no longer serves a purpose.
With this in mind, here's a quote from David Leonhardt' 'Morning' opinion column in today's New York Times in which he included the words of Times' Washington correspondent, Carl Hulse:
“There has been a sea change in the way Democrats view and talk about the Supreme Court. Democrats used to respectfully disagree with the justices. Now they call them illegitimate and corrupt, partisan and extreme.”
That's another reason why I switched back my registration, our politicized Supreme Court. Enough Democrats must be elected to change its composition so that it is in sync with the interests of the American people.
JL
Two Disgraceful Floridians - And You Thought DeSantis Was Bad
Two names in Florida’s history should serve as inspiration to its current governor who apparently is dedicated to eliminating embarrassing details from the Sunslime (not a typo) State’s history.
One is Confederate General Nathaniel Bedford Forrest, who after the war became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and whose statue was removed in 2021 from being Florida’s contribution to the Capitol Building’s Statuary Hall in Washington. (It was replaced with a statue of Mary McLeod Bethune.)
The other is Florida Governor John Milton, who was so dedicated to the Confederacy and all that it stood for, that in 1865, he committed suicide rather than see Florida rejoin the United States after the South was defeated. He made the same decision as was made by two other war criminals, Hermann Goering and Josef Goebbels, at the end of the Second World War, using a bullet rather than cyanide poisoning.
I wonder if paintings of these two traitors are hanging somewhere in the present governor’s offices, as he battles to destroy democracy in Florida, under the guise of providing more freedoms, regardless of how undemocratic the results of doing so might be.
JL
* * *
Housekeeping on the Blog
Email Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time
there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and
we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might
suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. (You can pass those email addresses to me by email
at jacklippman18@gmail.com . )
Forwarding
Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you
think might benefit from reading it.
If you
want to send someone the blog, exactly as you
are now seeing it, with all of its bells and whistles, you
can just tell folks to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or by providing a link to that address in your email to
them. I
think this is the best method of forwarding Jackspotpourri.
There’s another, perhaps easier, method of
forwarding it though! Google
Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that
possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom
of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email
addresses to which the blog will be forwarded, along with a comment from
you. Each will receive a link to the textual
portion only of the blog that you now are reading, but without the
illustrations, colors, variations in typography, or the ‘sidebar’ features such
as access to the blog’s archives.
Either
way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or
clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting, but I
recommend sending them the link.
Again,
I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from
reading it.
Have a
nice day!
* * *
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