ALTANTA DEMOCRATS UNITE WITH REPUBLICANS DEMANDING RALPH WAXMAN LEAVE GEORGIA IMMEDIATELY

In a rare show of unity not seen since Henry Aaron came to town, members of Atlanta’s democratic and republican parties held a joint press conference Wednesday at the Hyatt Regency demanding that controversial political rabble rouser Ralph Waxman either leave Georgia on his own or be escorted out by state police.

“Please, just get the hell out of town and go back to your own troubled city, “ said Stacey Abrams, Georgia’s leading voting rights activist. “While we appreciate his concern, his very appearance here is causing problems we just don’t need now.”

Waxman, a big time admirer of Abrams, was stunned by her statement. “Perhaps, Stacey is hitting the bottle, again,” Waxman suggested. “If that’s the case, then cool. Tell her to come to my room at Perry’s 6.5 Motel and I’ll have the Pappy waiting.”

Waxman had road tripped - and I do mean “tripped” - from his home in the Highland Park sector of Los Angeles to Georgia on a strange path that took him through Arizona ,New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and in a drunken stupor he headed for the wrong Georgia and spent three days in the Gronzy, City Jail in Chechnya.

His arrival this week to the American state of Georgia was met with both excitement and concern. Waxman has an ability to get out the vote by his sheer determination and persistence. He will knock on your door and talk and talk and he will talk and just to get him to leave you will vote for whoever he says to vote for. In his most celebrated - nearly mythical - “vote switch” he convinced an elephant peace activist to vote for the great Carthaginian General Hannibal Barca for zookeeper before his 218 BC. Alps crossing.

Abrams, thinking local news would love a story about a San Diego native who works for Nancy Silverton, thought the media should focus more on the actual candidates rather than on Waxman. “We need to focus on these candidates, not Waxman, Though if that Pappy offer is still good, tell him I’ll be at the Motel 6.5 at about nine thirty. He’ll love it when I call him “Pappy”. They all do. And tell Perry to put on some clean sheets.”

ARPINE, THE YOUNG WOMAN FROM ARTSAKH WHO WON'T BE GOING HOME

For 26-year-old Arpine Harutyunyan the start of the war was not as earthshaking as the end of it.   

On that terrifying morning of September 27 Arpine was awakened – like most Artsakh (Karabakh) residents - by the sound of explosions. At her family’s home in the village of Kolkhozashen about 18 miles from Martuni, she gathered with her mother, sister and two brothers and sought shelter.

Within 48 hours, she was a refugee, living at a hotel in Goris. Her brothers were on the frontline. For six weeks she languished and anguished, mostly at the Mirhav boutique hotel which Trip Advisor says is the best place to stay in Southern Armenia. Not for Arpine ( pronounced AR-P- Neh) who was born in 1994, the year the first Karabakh war ended.

Then in the early morning hours of the 45th day of the war, it was suddenly and shockingly over. “I was heartbroken. I knew I could not go home.”

##

On October 28, the 32nd day of the fighting, I saw her sitting alone and thought immediately of my young friend Ida. They looked so alike. i told her that and she smiled warmly. Then she had a sad and beautiful look as she echoed Angelika Zakaryan, the CivilNET reporter, when Arpine said she hated being at this hotel and she couldn’t wait for the war to be over so she could go home.

The day we met, she was sitting alone at a wooden table in a pleasant garden, a pomegranate the lone food on her plate, a Lenovo ThinkPad on her lap. She didn’t look like a war refugee, rather a young woman on a weekend getaway.

She talks of her life, a life born weeks after the magnificent victory in 1994, a war she would learn that nearly killed her father.

“My mother was pregnant with me when my father was seriously injured in May 1994, but he struggled and miraculously survived.  I was born after the victory in September 1994 and lived for 26 years in unrecognized Artsakh, but with the psychology of a winner.”

That “psychology of a winner” was embellished knowing the great Monte Melkonian fought heroically near her village.

“I would not be wrong to say that every conscious Artsakh citizen knows about Monte. To me, Monte is a patriot, a man who knows how to love and dedicate himself completely.”

The so-called “4-Day War” of 2016 brought fear briefly, but that winner’s psychology prevailed, and by 2017 Arpine was working as a statistician at the Caroline Cox Rehabilitation Center in Stepanakert. The next year, Instigate Mobile, a Yerevan-based software engineering company, announced it was offering programming courses. This was Arpine’s field of expertise and soon she was working for them. She still does.

Then, on the morning of November 10 the war was over. Just like that. Over.

She was in bed at the Mirhav Hotel when she woke up.

“Usually, I don’t get up in the middle of the night, but today I had a strange feeling,” she said. “I woke up at 1:00 AM and opened Facebook for some news. First, I saw Nikol Pashinyan’s post regarding my homeland. I can’t explain what I felt that moment. I didn’t want to believe it. I was trembling all over my body. I thought about my brothers who are on the frontline in Artsakh. I thought about my village Kolkhozashen where my father is buried.”

Hours later she heard about her brothers, Mihran, 24, and Tigran, 19. They were both alive. The surrender agreement gave to the Azerbaijanis the areas they had taken control of. Arpine’s village had not been “taken”, but much of the area around it was under the enemy’s control.

“Yes, it’s good to stop fighting. It can save my brothers’ and other people’s lives. But nobody has the right to give Artsakh to the enemy. It is an insult to our living soldiers and our fallen soldiers. I can only say that they died for the sake of the homeland and now we are alive and homeless.”

Four days after the Russian brokered ceasefire, she’s still at the Mirhav and reflects on the war and what she calls “one signature”.

“I want to be honest. From the first day of the war, I realized that it was serious, that victory would be a miracle. But I did not expect such a result. I did not expect that we would lose Artsakh with one signature and the rest would hang in the air. 

“My village is still ours. I want to thank God. There were 250 residents. At the moment, the women have left with their children, but all the men are still in the village and they will stay there, including many of my relatives, but I personally cannot do that now. I want to repeat that I have lived in unrecognized Artsakh for 26 years, but I will never live in a defeated Artsakh.” 

Arpine Harutyunyan takes back her use of the word “defeated”.

“Or rather not defeated Artsakh, but betrayed. Monte's mission was not continued, and the Armenians closed the last page of history for this land with their own hands.”

READ More on CIVILNET, the Armenian News Agency here; . -
https://www.civilnet.am/news/2020/11/14/In-Goris-Artsakh-refugees-reflect-on-a-land-lost-with-one-signature/408058

THREE CHILDREN WAIT OUT THE KARABAKH WAR IN A STEPANAKERT BOMB SHELTER

4 November, 2020

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, three children I visited earlier this week are not war refugees. That’s because although they were forced to flee their homes because of war, they did not cross into another country. Instead, they went across town to a solid structure with a reinforced basement that can better protect them from falling bombs than their own dwelling could.

With their mother leading the way, they fled their home in Stepanakert, the capital of Karabakh, where war erupted the morning of September 27.  For the past month they have been at this fortified school that doubles as a bomb shelter and a rest stop for soldiers. The children’s father, a baker, has stayed at his bakery making bread for the troops.

Officials estimate at least 60% of the region’s population of roughly 150,000 have left their homes because of the war, some to the homes of family in Yerevan, some to abandoned buildings, some to a building that can take the punch of an explosion better than their own home.

Compared to those squalid camps you may have seen from the war in Syria, this converted school is not miserable, but the heart still aches, especially when you see your own family in the faces of these “non-refugees.”

The first two I meet, a 6-year-old Maneh and her sister Mary, 9, remind me a lot of my own family. Maneh is the name of my goddaughter, my nephew Mesrop Ash’s daughter and Mary is a live ringer for my cousin Greg and Lorenza’s daughter Francesca. I stare into their face and envision my goddaughter and niece in a bomb shelter. It is a sad vision. Maneh and Mary are sitting on a bed, staring at a hot plate warming a large pot of Tanabur (aka Spas), a traditional Armenian yogurt soup with wheat berries and herbs.   

When I start asking questions, first of Maneh and then of Mary, they have that unblinking stare that seems to say ‘unless you are my mother or bringing me some food what could you possible say to interest me?” It’s not a mean look at all. It’s adorable and sweet, but it definitely says “you’ve got nothing for me.”  Mary’s looks says: I am in a rough situation here, I’m dealing with suicide drones and you’re asking questions? Really?   

Little does she know that although I might not have anything for her, it turns out I do have something for her little brother.

As Mary stares, with a seemingly permanent smile, Edward, 5, wearing pants and a sweater, comes up to us and starts singing. He is wearing the world’s cheapest sun glasses, worse than the type you get after your eyes are dilated. I reach into my computer bag and pull out my sunglasses and tell them all a story, which my fellow journalist Angelika translates.   

“These sunglasses have been with me in my darkest hours. In the worst times they have brought me comfort. When I cry,  I put them on and no one can see my tears. And when I sing I put them on and I look cool. I want you to have them.”   

I hand them to Edward who slowly takes them after looking at his sisters, then puts them on with much enthusiasm, Maneh has to straighten them. Edward beams and swings from side to side. He looks like a 6-year old Armenian Ray Charles. And then he starts to sing.  Lika translates.

I was a violet in a garden.

And you were a dream

You were born on a dark night

But now you are a violet only for me.

As Lika translates for me, I wish I had those sunglasses back. Edward hands them back to me, but I let him know they are for him to keep. I look over at his sister Mary. She’s still staring, but I think I catch her nod ever so slightly. I think I showed her something.

As we leave, without my sunglasses, I hug them all goodbye. I stick my hand out to Edward and he slaps it hard. Kid got cool fast.

And to come clean, those sunglasses never hid my tears. I bought them last week in Yerevan.

And don’t let the United Nations fool you. These kids and the tens of thousands of others, around the world, are all refugees. Seek out an organization you trust and help them out.

WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE STEPANAKERT

30 October, 2020 19:40

By Michael Krikorian

“Riding high in April, Shot down in May” – Frank Sinatra line from  “That’s Life”.

April to May? Hell, at least it took Frank a month to do what Angelika Zakaryan heartbreakingly did right before my eyes in a 15-minute journey from ecstasy to agony.

Angelika, also known as Lika, 26, is a journalist from Yerevan-based CIVILNET news agency who has been writing a personal daily diary of the war in her native Nagorno Karabakh for the last month. Her columns are brutally raw, innocent and heartfelt.  

I met her on Day 27 of the war in what has become her new home: a school with a sturdy basement that has been converted into a bomb shelter. Our meeting had been prearranged by Salpi Ghazarian, the director of the Institute of Armenian Studies at the University of Southern. Before I left Los Angeles,  Salpi said “You’ll like Lika.”  I said nothing, but thought to myself  “No, I won’t.”  I almost never like anyone who someone else says I will. But, in this case, I was wrong and Salpi was right.

Angelika has this engagingly bright smile, the kind that nearly closes the eyes, that now often masquerades her sadness and anger. But, that smile also makes her darker thoughts all the more powerful when they break past her inherent goodness. When a kind person wishes ill will on someone, it hits much harder than when a commando says he will slaughter the enemy.

We engage in some small talk before we hit the streets of Stepanakert.  It’s no surprise - if you know me even a little - that “Casablanca” comes up. And Lika loves that movie, too, and even quotes one of the lines from Ilsa, aka Ingrid Bergman. “I hate this war so much.” 

She also says the war has introduced her to Joan Baez and the song “Donna Donna”, which I’ve never heard.

Our first stop is another school converted to a bomb shelter. There are children here. After an hour or so, we leave to get some lunch.

On the way, in our van driven by Arshak, a veteran of the war here in the 1990s, Angelika gets news that sends her spirits soaring, sends her “riding high”.  Her brother is home from the front. Arshak speeds the Honda van to her house. As we get near, another car is pulling up and a man is getting out. It’s her brother.

“Stop! Stop!” she screams . “That’s my brother.” I slide open the van’s side door and before I can even get out, Lika is climbing over me and onto the street. She rushes to her brother and they embrace for a long, silent time.

Lika’s brother has been on the front since the beginning. His closest friends, all volunteers, have previous army experience. They have all survived so far, though several other young men they fought alongside, near Martakert, have been killed. Angelika hardly says a word as he and I talk briefly. She’s beaming, bouncing on her toes, hands either clasped behind her back or touching his shoulders.

She says we will go to the best store open and bring back some things to eat. Less than 15 minutes later, we are at a store called Gurman, a corner market type of place the size of a Seven-Eleven. I wander around, grab some chocolate bars and notice that Lika is off by herself near the toothpaste shelves. She’s on the phone.   

When she approaches me a minute later, she’s not the same jubilant young woman I was just with. She looks like another person. I’ve never seen anyone “shell-shocked”, but I’m guessing they look like Angelika now. Her mother just called to tell her that her favorite cousin has been captured by the Azerbaijani military.   

“I don’t know what to think,” Lika says. “I can’t even cry.”

She stands numb in the little market as men in army uniforms pass by. “I’m so afraid. He has a heart of gold. I’m so afraid of what they will do to him. Beat him. Or worse.”

I don’t know what to say. What can I say? I don’t say anything.

##

Yesterday, I left Stepanakert. I had to say goodbye to Lika, so I go to the school-turned-bomb shelter, three-blocks from my room at the Park Hotel.

At the school, two metal doors are locked with thick iron chains. My phone doesn’t work. I call out her name. Then loudly. Then I yell. Nothing. Then, I think, hell I’m in a war zone, and from the ceiling of my lungs, I roar out “Angelika! Lika! Angelika.” I think of Terry Malloy yelling for Edie Doyle in “On The Waterfront”. Then I see her appear through the dirty windows. She is so relieved to see me. “I thought they were yelling for me because the Azeris were coming to get me.”

That is her worst fear, she tells me as we go downstairs into a converted classroom where she sleeps.

“I would be more afraid of Azeri hands than Azeri bombs. If a bomb fell on me, I wouldn’t be afraid. I wouldn’t have time to be. But if they got their hands on me? The things they would do to a woman. It’s not that I don’t fear the bombs. If you are a human being you have to be afraid of bombs. But, I think they would do the most horrible things to me. But, still, as much as I hate this war, I am here.”

Lika reports her brother is back at the front. There is no further word about her cousin, although the International Red Cross has been alerted.  

She drifts off in thought and comes back.

“Do you remember the fires in Australia a little while ago?  The world was so worried about the koala bears that were hurt and killed in the fire. I love koalas. But I wish people would care about Armenians like they care abut koala bears.”

Soon, we say our goodbyes. I go sentimental and steal a line from Casablanca. Swapping out Paris for Stepanakert. She walks back to her new home.

That night, in the calmness of a Yerevan hotel room, I look up the Joan Baez song “Donna Donna” and I understand why Angelika Zakaryan loves it so much.

Calves are easily bound and slaughtered

Never knowing the reason why.

But whoever treasures freedom,

Like the swallow has learned to fly.



A GLENDALE DOCTOR ON THE KARABAKH FRONT

27 October, 2020 23:40

By Michael Krikorian

The good Scotch flowed smoothly in a spacious Glendale backyard on Saturday night a month ago. It was September 26 and Dr. Alexander Gevorgyan, a surgeon who specializes in facial reconstruction, was enjoying his friends’ tales of hunting in the mountains near Bishop, California as they indulged on a Macallan 18 year-old scotch whiskey and the even more rarefied Macallan 25.

Then someone’s phone rang. It was Sunday morning in Karabakh and war had erupted. Azerbaijani forces were bombing the eastern towns of the mountainous region populated almost solely by Armenians. 

By Monday, Gevorgyan was organizing efforts with his co-workers to send relief supplies to Armenia and on to the frontline. Blankets, bandages and coats were among the essential items they gathered to send. But, considered the most urgent supplies to sent were tourniquets, that dreaded battlefield dressing vital to stopping extreme blood loss.

For the next several days, Gevorgyan, who was born in Gyumri in 1979 and moved to Yerevan following the devastating earthquake in nearby Spitak in 1988, anguished over what he could do to help. But, deep down he knew he had to go help the wounded. He told his wife, Anet.

Anet was silent for several seconds. Then she swallowed and said, “You know you have kids.”

“I know,” he said. “I have a country, too.”

The couple hugged and he rationalized his case. “You and the children will be safe in Los Angeles. But there are a lot of children fighting and they will need my skills. There are 18, 19-year-old boys fighting. They are our kids, too.”

Anet knew she couldn’t stop him. The only thing she could do was make him promise to come home safely.

Gevorgyan, who has lived in Glendale since arriving in America in 2010, landed in Yerevan Oct. 9 and arrived by car to Karabakh the next night.

####

Tuesday afternoon, a man wearing a black outfit that matches his beard and hair is walking up a narrow dirt path away from the hospital towards a narrow, partially paved street. A dirty van turned into a makeshift ambulance races by the man walking. It is taking two soldiers whose bloody wounds have been staunched at this site to a more sophisticated hospital in Stepanakert or maybe even Yerevan.  As the van drives off, two explosions are heard in the distance. Soldiers and workers implore a journalist not to give the location of the hospital. They don’t think the enemy would bomb here if they were aware of the hospital location. They know it.  

The man in black is Dr. Gevorgyan and, as he is about to sit down on a concrete block, a soldier hurries over and respectfully puts down a red blanket.

The doctor stares at a reporter for couple of seconds. “I heard there was a journalist here who wanted to interview me, but I didn’t want to leave the hospital to talk to anyone. I am not a star. But the commander told me the journalist came from Los Angeles, so here I am.”

He looks around the dusty corner where three soldiers stand guard.    My photojournalist team of R. Ezras Tellalian and Gevorg Haroyan shoot what they can, careful not to photograph anything that could give away our location.

“This is where I arrived that first night. It was absolutely pitch black and there were probably a million stars in the sky above, but I only looked up for drones,” he says. “You can hear them. Then came vans with the wounded, speeding up and making this turn,  down this hill to the hospital. It was chaos. In my training and at work of course I have seen bleeding patients after car accidents, but the quantity of bloody people I saw that night is something you only see in a war zone.”

Morphine and its relatives are used liberally.

In the nearly three weeks he has been here, Dr. Gevorgyan says relatively few of the soldiers who’ve been brought to the hospital have died. However, he says heartbreakingly, some of the soldiers “do arrive with wounds that are not compatible with life.” He stops talking and looks at the blue sky above. In the distance several more explosions are heard.  “Sometimes doctors can’t do god’s work. We are only doctors.”

The teams of doctors and nurses perform their duties with resolute efficiency, he says. “Everyone knows what they need to do and they just do it. Stopping bleeding and extreme pain is the first steps. Number one thing is to stabilize them. I don’t even know their names. We don’t have time to chit chat.”

He gives utmost credit to the special group of people whose job is to go to the actual battlefields – be it a city street or a field – and pick up the wounded. They often have a red cross painted on their car, but lately that doesn’t protect them from being attacked.

The thought that a car with a red cross painted on it is targeted, the thought that he has to tell a journalist not to say their location because the hospital will be bombed, starts to enrage Dr. Gevorgyan.

“I hope this story helps spread the word about what is going on here. To the world. Why is Azerbaijan, a country with 10 million people, getting help from Turkey, a country with 80 million people, getting sophisticated attack drones from Israel, getting Islamic mercenaries from Syria, Libya and Pakistan to fight a Armenia, a country with three million people? Do you know why? I do. It is because those motherfuckers are afraid of us.

“And who is helping Armenia? Is America helping their fellow Christians?”

He stands up. “Tell the story. I have to get back to work.” And Dr. Alexander Gevorgyan walks back down a dusty dirt lane toward a hospital somewhere in Karabakh.

Michael Krikorian is a writer from Los Angeles. He was previously a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and for the Fresno Bee. He writes under the pseudonym "Jimmy Dolan" for the Mozza Tribune. His website is www.KrikorianWrites.com and his first novel is called "Southside".

ANOTHER CEASEFIRE HAS CEASED IN KARABAKH

26 October, 2020 23:10

By Michael Krikorian

“What ‘cease’? says Gevorg Haroyan, a CIVILNET photojournalist, with a very rudimentary knowledge of English, allowed to go to one of the fronts of the war here. “Only fire.”

As he stood Monday afternoon on a ridge overlooking a valley a few kilometers from the embattled town of Martuni, Haroyan and a team of journalists from seven countries, accompanied by several soldiers, watched and sensed / experienced as explosions of varying significance detonated, some outgoing, some incoming.

Another ceasefire had ceased. 

At 8:00 am, local time, Monday, October 26, a ceasefire between Armenians and the attacking Azerbaijani forces was to go into effect throughout Karabakh, which has been a war zone for a month. The ceasefire had been announced the day before with much fanfare. Even the heretofore-silent American President Donald Trump publicly referred to it in a campaign rally.   

But, this ceasefire hadn’t even officially begun when, inexplicably, the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan accused the Armenian forces of “grossly” violating the agreement. How does one violate an agreement before it starts, social media asked. The Azeris quickly deleted this statement, but it did not help their credibility and supported skepticism about their commitment to a ceasefire.   

Shortly after the 8:00 am start time, the Ministry of Defense of Artsakh announced that the Army was strictly adhering to the agreement.

By early afternoon, this was all a moot point as the artillery shells were heard throughout the region.

The van carrying the journalists was forced to continue traveling by soldiers and came to a stop near an abandoned store. From near a 20-foot wide crater in the adjoining field. A single German shepherd appeared and curled up against a twisted metal fence. Whenever an explosion was heard, the solders went quiet, the journalists worried and the dog yelped loudly, then put his head back down.

A crusty, silver-haired man about 65 years old with a Kalashnikov slung across his back walked by the group. He smiled big time at one journalist and said “Fuck them” about the other side in this war, and walked down the road.

Another Kalashnikov carrying man, this one 34, overhears the older guy’s comments and laughs. He is a history teacher in peacetime, but since September 27, he has been in battle. He looks forward to the day he can return to the classroom and teach his students about this particular bit of history. He says he will teach this chapter “with a lot of pride.” When asked who are some of his favorite people of all time to lecture about to his history students he quickly said “Hannibal”, referring to the great Carthaginian general who fought - and the defeated the Romans famously in 216 BC. at Cannae and in 217 BC. at Lago Trasimeno just a few kilometers from Panicale, Umbria. He laughs again and says “You know General Hannibal was Armenian. And he treated his soldiers with much respect.”.

Read this and other stories on Civilnet, the Armenina online newspaper. click or copy and paste this link https://www.civilnet.am/news/2020/10/26/Another-Ceasefire-Had-Ceased/404220

Michael Krikorian is a writer from Los Angeles. He was previously a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and for the Fresno Bee. He writes under the pseudonym "Jimmy Dolan" for the Mozza Tribune. His website is www.KrikorianWrites.com and his first novel is called "Southside".

IF YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT YOURSELF, DON'T BE AROUND NANCY OR MOOKIE

If you’re a journalist and you are about to go cover a war and you want to talk about it to people so you can vent some nervous energy because you’re a tad concerned you might be blown to smithereens and maybe talking about it will calm you down a smidgen, well, there’s two people you should not be around while you’re trying to express yourself; Nancy Silverton and Mookie Betts.

Right now I’m on an Air France flight to Paris and then to Yerevan, the unsung capital of Armenia and from there I’ll make my way to Artsakh, aka Karabakh, where the Armenians are at war with the Azerbaijanis. Can’t explain that now.

But, last night, that Nancy Silverton, the revered chef and, more importantly,  my girlfriend of almost 20 years, says we are going to a “socially distant” dinner party at our relatively new friends Jackie Applebaum and her husband Stephen over in Beverly Hills, up there in Trousdale Estates. 

So we get to this sleek house and everyone is very nice. I’m talking to the bartender – of course, I am. Glen a Mexican German. Serious. He father was in  the American Army. Had a German wife. We’re  talking and Jackie and Nancy saunter over.

“Tell Jackie where you’re going?” Nancy says.

“Nah. This isn’t the place.”

“Why?” Jackie says. “Where are you going?”

“Tell her,” Nancy says.

“Armenia.”

Jackie knows about the situation. “I saw the demonstrations on Wilshire. So why are you going?”.

“I’m gong to go cover the war “

Jackie stares at me for a second, then slowly turns her head toward Nancy.

I know what she’s gonna say to Nancy, a version of “Are you okay with him going to cover a war?” or “Did you try and talk him out of going?”

So Jackie looks intensely at Nancy. And she says, “So I hear you’re doing an event on October. 31st at the Ojai Valley Inn.”

Jeez, lady,  I’m going to dodge cluster bombs and you’re more interested in Nancy giving tips on how to grill a ribeye.

About 20 minutes later, I’m in the front room and Game 7, Dodgers/Braves is on a 80, 90 inch TV. A party guest walks over.

“Wow.  I just heard you going to go to Armenia and report about the war. Are you scared? Who you writing it for? Should be fascinating. What are you thinking?”

Right then, Mookie Betts shows up,  He’s racing back to the outfield fence, he leaps, robs an Atlanta Brave of a home run. What a catch.

“Holy shit! Did you see that?  Mookie made the same catch yesterday.”

He starts to walk away, to the dinner in the backyard, but turns back to me and says “We got ‘em by the short and curlies.  Yeah, we got ‘em by the short and curlies.”  

Me, I’m thinking “Fuck your short and curlies. I’m about to go to a war zone and you’re talkin’ about short and curlies.”

As for Mookie Beets. Damn that was a sweet catch.

Anyway,  I’m flying over someplace called Rouyn-Noranda in Canada now and I’m off to cover a war.  Who knows what will happen. One thing I know for sure, though. I gotta be back October 31. Nancy is doing an event at the Ojai Valley Inn.

THREE FRENCH LAUNDRY CUSTOMERS SERIOUSLY INJURED LIFTING NEW MENU THAT CREDITS ALL WHO HELPED THOMAS KELLER

When the late, nearly mythical French chef Joel Robuchon was charged last week - in absentia - for not properly giving credit to the line cook who, in anger, ( don’t ask why), put way too much buerre de baratte in what turned out to be the master’s most famous dish. pomme de terre, aka mashed potatoes, chefs around the world knew it was time to share the spotlight.

In fear of lawsuits - or a slight concerned that creamer hacks would attempt to slam them - chefs began crediting employees for any contribution they may have had to a dish. That, hopefully, reached its crescendo in Napa Valley this week at one of the most acclaimed restaurants in the world.

The French Laundry unveiled its new menu which. on chef/owner Thomas Keller’s orders, credits every one who had even a remote connection to any item listed on the menu.

Unfortunately, the menu turned out so heavy, 52 kilos (114 pounds), that three French Laundry customers were seriously injured navigating it. One, a woman, who requested anonymity, pulled a right spleen and required not only surgery, but counseling. The other two, males, both suffered pulled neck and jaw muscles, separated shoulders and sprained wrists. One of the males, Florida congressman Ted Yoho, is not expected to survive.

Due to the cost of printing ink this publication cannot reprint the entire menu. However, we will include a section of the menu’s listing of one of Keller’s most famous dishes, the first course known as “Oysters and Pearls”. which was formerly listed as a "Sabayon of pearl tapioca with Island Creek oysters and white sturgeon caviar”. The oysters would vary, as would the caviar since you might get the good stuff from the Caspian if you are known.

FROM THE FRENCH LAUNDRY

OYSTERS AND PEARLS - BY THOMAS KELLER WITH SPECIAL CREDIT GIVEN TO THE FOLLOWING

ROBERT ABLE, who shucked most of the oysters this week until a cut wrist sidelined him.

DALBERT PUJOLS - Taught Robert how to shuck oysters. ( A good, though clearly not great teacher)

BOBBY VASQUEZ - Swept and mopped the kitchen floor so Able and Pujols could shuck oysters and not do so on a messy floor.

SYLVIA VASQUEZ - - Tired of her husband Bobby drinking and watching “Breaking Bad”, told him to “get a friggin’ job” which led to Bobby Vasquez landing the gig at the Laundry of cleaning the kitchen floors..Thanks, Sylvie!

MORTON “MORT” or “MORTY” GOLDSTEIN - Made much of the tapioca.

SANDRA CORE - Baby sitter for runner Luis Ramirez who couldn’t have come to work with an innocent conscience if Sandra didn’t watch his four -year old, Manny, (who likes cold french fries more than cereal).

The menu goes on to credit 43 other people for this delicious dish, but I have to get to a funeral, Fuck you.

TRUMP ORDERS MICHAEL SINGER STATUE REMOVED FROM ST. LOUIS PROMENADE, BUT PROTESTERS BLOCK NATIONAL GUARD

When President Donald J. Trump ordered a statue of a revered American journalist best known as a fighter for the downtrodden to be removed from the promenade of St. Louis’ Gateway Arch, authorities thought it would be a simple “Tank and Yank ”, the term the National Guard uses for wrapping a thick iron chain around a monument, attaching it to a M-1 Abrams tank and yanking it down.

But, it sure didn’t go smoothly Tuesday in St. Louis as thousands of protesters, many from organizations including Journalists Matter, gathered near the statue of investigative reporter/producer Michael Singer and prevented the National Guard from removing it.

Pro-Singer demonstrators gathered in the early morning hours near the Missouri side of the Gateway Arch and surrounded the 17-foot tall Singer statue - known locally as Mike’s Perch - as the sun rose over the Mississippi River and the National Guard began assembling for the take down. With speakers blaring blues harmonica legends Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson II, the crowd began chanting slogans such as “Singer Singer We’re Gonna Cling here” and “So he’s a little cranky, he’s tougher than your tanky”.

The pro-Singer Statue crowd, estimated at 13,000 people, were vocal, but mainly peaceful. Many carried signs, including dozens which read “United for Singer”, “Mexican Farm Workers For Singer” “Black Panthers For Singer” and “Armenian Americans Usually For Singer”. One woman, being interviewed on CNN, carried a sign which read “If Ruth Reichl Knowingly Lives With Him, How Bad Could He Be?”

As the National Guard and Missouri State Police tried to force their way to the base of the Singer Statue, one young man stood in the tank’s way. It was Nick Singer, Michael Singer’s son.

“That young Singer went Tiananmen Square on those motherfuckers,” said Stan Musial, a local baseball player. “He went ‘Tank Man’ on those robots.” Musial was referring to the famous incident on June 5, 1989 when a lone young Chinese man stood face-to-tank on Chang’an Avenue in Beijing during student pro-democracy protests. (As an aside, Fox News reported that while the younger Singer was confronting the tank, a Russian made T-72, he received a text from a Monica Albu which read as follows - “How long r u gonna stand in front of stupid tank??? ‘Woman Under da Influence' starts at 6”)

Meanwhile as this was unfolding, Trump tweeted furiously about the failure to remove the statue and, according to White House sources, spent much of Tuesday in the Oval Office toilet. “Knowing that little creamer bitch, he probably was gassing all day,” said White House Director of Laundry, Debbie White.

Among the pro Singer marchers was Tammie Featherstone of Atlanta, Georgia who drove down to help prevent the tank and yank. “Singer is a good man who fights for those who need his voice,” said Featherstone, whose nephew Jimmy Atchison was shot to death by an Atlanta policeman in January, 2019. “My nephew was killed and a week later D’ettrick Griffin was killed. Singer spoke up for them, Tweeted for them long before it was the right thing to do. It’s still the right thing to do, of course, but Singer been doing it for his whole career. “

One man seemed perplexed about the whole situation.

“I mean i know the dude’s bool,” said Cleamon “Big Evil” Johnson in a phone interview from Men’s Central, using the Bloods word for “cool”,. “But the thing is why he even have a statue in the first place? The man ain’t dead. Statues are for the gone. The long gone. Singer alive and kicking. You feel me?”

Singer, who turned 80 today, could not be reached for comment. He is said to be in quarantine somewhere in the South Bronx.

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