10-06 rubbermice.com

	FAQ
	Archives
	Cast of Characters
	Definitions
	Contact
	Home

Archived Entries (October 2006)

10-29-06         Habit
10-27-06         Pay
10-23-06         Pretty Far
10-15-06         Sunshine
10-12-06         Lots of Chrome
10-09-06         Wale the Third
10-03-06         Wicked

TOP

10-29-06 Habit

Ah, Halloween! The Saturday before it is always one of the most enjoyable nights of the year to drive a cab. That's when everyone gets in costume and goes to the club. What club? Any club.

Of the myriad costumes that shuffled in and out of my cab tonight, three sets of passengers stand above the others

The Country & Western Singer: Accompanied by a really drunk butterfly (who'd lost a shoe and broken a wing) he was dressed in a cowboy hat, leather duster, boots... the whole regalia. After he slid the door shut I asked, "So are you a cowboy or Country & Western singer?" He answered irritably the latter. After a bit, he followed, "Sorry I snapped at you, man.... It's just that everyone's been calling me Brokeback all night." I couldn't help but laugh. "Nah, dude," he complained. "It isn't funny. It ain't right."

I kept on laughing. "It might not be right, man, but it's funny as hell."

Miss Piggy and Gonzo: I picked them up outside Lynaugh's. Originally I was looking for Manny and his eses who were dressed as pirates, but I guess they boarded and comandeered another taxi before I got there. Instead I got Piggy and Gonzo. Piggy was dressed in a turban, a wrap around gown & shawl, pig nose and ears. Gonzo in a purple face paint, a rumpled suit and that distinctive nose. Sometimes costumes are obscure, but this was an easy read. As they settled into the back, I asked, "So where is Kermit?"

Without missing a beat, Piggy deadpanned, "Kermit's not in the picture any more. I am with Gonzo, now."

The Bearded Nun: By far, the best of the night was the bearded nun. Not actually a passenger of mine, I saw the nun between Limestone and Upper as I drove down Main. Full old-school nun habit with a thick lumberjack beard. I say the beard was authentic because... well, you've heard of "dropping a bad habit"? Okay, the bearded nun would lift her bad habit... and show you his pope and cardinals.

TOP

10-27-06 Pay

Well, I don't care if it rains or freezes,
Long as I got my plastic Jesus,
Sittin' on the dashboard of my car.

Comes in colors, pink and pleasant,
Glows in the dark 'cause it's iridescent,
Take it with you when you travel far.

For the past couple weeks, Kevin and I have kept track of what our individual calls average each night. Over the course of the evening we will text the tallies to one another. Overall, we have found that my average call tends to be about 2/3 the size of his average call ($12-14 vs. $18-20.) On the flip side, I tend to run twice as many calls as he does.

Sometimes there are fluctuations, things that throw the ratios all out of whack. For example, the other night almost as soon as I came out I picked up an easy c-note for helping two shady truckers get a freight through an I-75 weigh station just north of Georgetown. My average spiked from $11 to $55.50.

And, then, sometimes there are strange-o calls that just don’t quite calculate at all. Tonight I texted him: “One call for dashboard jesus & a joint. Might monkeywrench my average. Can I get a ruling?”

Three years ago today…

TOP

10-23-06 Pretty Far

A tongue-in-cheek quip from a random (and he's definitely random) cab driver: "I wouldn't trust Wale as far as I could throw him ...and as Junior proved: that's pretty fucking far."

TOP

10-15-06 Sunshine

As sometimes happens, last night a college girl offered to show me her tits in return for a free ride. As usual I replied, "Nah, but I might give you a discount."

"What kind of discount?"

"It depends on the titties. Show me and I'll tell ya." Never forget: it's a buyer's market.

If she flashes I always give some sort of a discount. A damn fine precedent to set, I encourage this type of behavior. It's at this age young women need to learn the value of spontaneously exposing their titties. I say reward them. Let them know titties are like sunshine: days are gloomy without them, cocks don't crow, flowers don't grow.

The amount of discount I give depends, naturally, on whether I like the girl or not (and you thought I was going to say size, didn't ya?) If she is laughing and happy and having fun I usually give a nice break. If she is smug and snotty I like to kick the pedestal out from under her. Last night, the girl was pretty and knew it. She was All That. I instantly disliked her. The way she carried herself. The way she made the offer as if hers were made of gold. The attitude. Her titties were nice, though. A touch on the small side, but well within the nice gamut.

"So what kind of discount do I get?"

"For them little bitty things?!"

Sometimes she laughs and get in, and my opinion of her changes instantly. She has a sense of humor. I might even give her my card when I drop her off. Of course, sometimes she acts like I threw cold water on her and won't even get in the cab. That's what happened last night. Indignantly: "Uh! Well, we just won't ride with you then. You won't get our money!" And bitch slammed my door. Hard.

That's a'ight, honey. I get my payment through the snickers of your friends.

Four years ago today...

TOP

10-12-06 Lots of Chrome

I picked up three fellows from the Elkhorn Ramada night before last. Gents from out in the state, they were in town on bidness, and after dark bidness is conducted at titty bars. Upon piling in the cab they quizzed me about what we had available.

I told them: Solid Platinum is the classiest joint in town, the cream of the crop: top-notch girls, good security, often put on the Shave Show early in the week. Pure Gold is just as good, but it's hell and gone OUT of town. On Tuesdays, Cowboy's is the place to go. (Everyone else is running B-girls that night, while Cowboy's sticks with their starters.) The clientele at Cameltoes East & West can get a little rough at times and the girls are a definite step down in quality, but those things are usually offset by the girls' tendency toward extra friendliness. And, if you want ghetto nasty go to any of the joints on Winchester Road.

This was a once-every-couple-years thing for them and they wanted the best. So away we went and a few minutes later we were turning in off New Circle Road. One of the guys read the sign in front outloud: "Solid Platinum: Stylish Adult Entertainment." After a pause, he followed, "Stylish? What makes it stylish?"

I chuckled and looked over my shoulder. "No cigarette burns on their titties."

Three years ago today...

TOP

10-09-06          Wale the Third

Another exciting dispatch nightshift:

9:00 pm – Relieved #23 as dispatcher. Wayne is out of jail and working for us again as Driver-Manager while awaiting his trial for… whatever. Depending on who you listen to it could be for any number of things. Apparently, while he was in the can, Dallas and Truitt rubbed their heads together and decided to make an anonymous call to the cops telling them that they saw him trying to dispose of a body a couple weeks before he was arrested. I don’t even know what to believe any more.
            Drivers I/S: #12, #37 & #39.
            Lizards: #24, #26, #51.

9:15 pm – I went outside and fed the company cat, a friendly white stray that has attached himself to us, sleeping beneath various crashed cabs. I have temporarily named it Wale the Third (since there is already a Junior.) Wale doesn’t like this at all. He is adamant about not wanting the cat in any way associated with him or the company. I wonder if his virulent reaction comes from some Nigerian cultural superstition about cats.

9:50 pm -- #51 left the airport to take a call in Zone 5 (The Pub around the Corner on Anniston Dr.) I don’t really know #51, our newest driver. A surly middle-aged black man, he spends most of his time at the airport.

9:59 pm -- #39 took a call in Zone 9 (Walgreen’s on Richmond Rd.)

10:00 pm -- #37 took a call in Zone 7 (Wal-Mart on Nicholasville Rd.) She got the pleasure of helping six Asian students transport nearly $800 worth of merchandise back to UK’s campus. Good times.)

10:53 pm -- #51 took a call in Zone 9 (Northside Wal-Mart.)

11:00 pm -- #39 marked out of the Greyhound Station enroute to London, about sixty miles to the south. If Sandy couldn’t catch the bus there, she was taking her passenger on to Knoxville. I was on the phone with Kevin when she marked out. I wondered aloud to him about what the remaining Dutch Boy would do with the other out of town for a few hours. He suggested that she would likely end up coming to the base to groom the cat. I observed that there was a joke there somewhere, but I wasn’t going to be the one to make it.

11:45 pm – Upon completion of the Chargers/Steelers Sunday night game, I re-commenced painting operations. Every Sunday night for the past month, I have been slowly painting the office—here a door, there a wall—out of boredom. After repeatedly trying to get Wale to bankroll the project with absolutely no success —I told him if he would buy the materials, I would do the work at no cost—I just decided to do it out of pocket. My reasons for this are myriad: (1) it really needs to be done, (2) this type of painting is a skill I picked up in the Navy and enjoy doing, but really haven’t had an opportunity to use since, and (3) when Jenn and I move to a new place next spring, I plan on donating my 7-foot poster of the Taxi Driver to the base and don’t want to hang it on a wall that looks like someone wiped their ass on it.

12:07 am -- Kevin dropped his lease and got in quite the fucking snit when I wouldn’t let him behind the counter where drivers aren’t allowed. After storming off, he returned a few minutes later to drop off the roll of toilet paper I asked him to donate to the base for the common good (read: so I didn’t have to rip lawyers out of the phone book again.) He moodily tossed the roll (the expensive cottony type) into the open door of the office and zoomed back off in his cab. This prompted me to text him with the message “What crawled up your ass tonight?” He replied “I vant to be left alone.” Well, you fucking got it, Ms. Garbo.

12:14 am -- #37 took a call in Zone 1 (Goodrich Dr.)

12:15 am -- #26 dropped his lease. Stupid oozes from Jolly’s very pores. On the radio he gustily announces “RO-GER!” (pronounced with a long o: Rō-ger!) after almost everything he says. It’s gotten to the point that some of us have begun to mimic him as comic relief during our own transmissions. If he's listening when that happens he invariably comes back with a “RO-GER!” of his own. He makes my fucking head hurt.

12:42 am -- #37 took a call in Zone 9 (Shell Station at the corner of North Broadway and New Circle.) I don’t know how they do it but no one in the company gets as many rotten fares as the Dutch Boys: runners, pukers, shitters, etc. This one was no exception, either. He was a runner, but not a very bright one. When Kris realized he wasn’t coming back to pay her after “just running inside to get some cash” she went through the stuff he left in the cab as collateral: a pair of pants, a microwavable chicken sandwich, a disposable cigarette lighter, and… his credit card.

2:00 am -- #37 took a call in Zone 4 (Camelot Dr.)

2:41 am -- #26 & #51 went Out of Service (O/S). This acted on me like aspirin: my headache went right away.

2:44 am -- #24 dropped his lease and I immediately sent him to Wal-Mart to fetch me more paint. (Usually I have Ms. Garbo fetch my painting materials but tonight I didn’t feel like having paint thrown at me and Dennis was handy.) Oh, Dennis won his second professional fight a couple weekends ago. The result was the same as his first fight: he KOed his opponent in the 2nd round. Tongue-in-cheek, in his thick Nigerian accent, Dennis claims “One of these days they are going to find me a man to fight.”

3:44 am – the Dutch Boys dropped their lease.

4:00 am -- #37 took a time call in Zone 3 (Dudley Ave.)

4:15 am -- #39 took a time call in the UK Zone (Eldemere Dr.)

4:20 am -- #20 came In-Service and took a time call in Zone 7 (Palmetto Springs Way.)

5:04 am – Before stopping by the base, Rick texted me: “Need anything?” I replied: “A joint?” Sadly, he had none so there was no Signal-36 for us this early morning, no joy in Wale-ville.

5:28 am -- #20 dropped his lease and the lease for #11. (Once he realized Dallas wasn’t coming back from Jihad Taxi, Willie changed his driver number (#38) to match the one on his cab.)

5:31 am -- #20 took a time call in Zone 7 (Twain Ridge Rd.)

5:48 am -- #39 took a call in Zone 7 (a mini-lottery call from a Versailles horse farm to Keeneland.)

5:52 am -- #37 took a call in Zone 1 (University Inn on Waller.)

6:15 am -- #20 took a call in Zone 3 (Owsley Ave.) This caller was a complete gem. He was not pleased when I told him we’d have a cab there in fifteen to twenty minutes (incidentally, the shortest wait time in of any company in town.) Fifteen to twenty minutes just wasn’t good enough: He had a flight to catch and expected the cab there in five minutes.

I just laughed at him and said, “Well, I guess you should’ve fucking planned ahead then, huh? Where do you think you are, anyway? New York?—where you can just walk outside and fall over a cab? jenn

This is Lexington and I don’t have a magic taxi lamp I can rub and *poof* there’s one outside your door. Now, it’ll be fifteen to twenty minutes. Do you still want the cab?”

He did, but wanted me to make sure they "stepped on it."

God, I hate people like this.

6:42 am -- #20 took a call in Zone 5 (Richmond Woods Apartments on Todd’s Rd.)

7:00 am -- #23 releived me as dispatcher. Since I was leaving my cab at the base to have my brakes worked on, Jenn picked me up and we came home.

Three years ago today…

TOP

10-03-06 Wicked

I have spent the past week reading Gregory Maguire’s revisionist novel Wicked that provides the back-story for the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum’s masterpiece of children’s literature The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Considering how the Wicked Witch of the West is one of my all-time favorite screen villains, not to mention how many positive things I have heard about this novel and the stage musical adapted from it, I was thoroughly disappointed after finishing it last night.

Jenn puts it on par with bad fan fiction. Now, while I won’t quite go that far in my critique, I do have to admit that, like most fan fiction, Wicked does swim in the shallow end of the literary pool. I am appalled and disgusted at how much more clever it could have been. That is not to say that there weren’t parts that I thoroughly enjoyed, because there were. As with the film The Cooler, much of my frustration comes not from the fact that Wicked was necessarily bad, but that it could have been soooo much better (and with very little additional work, at that.)

Without further ado, here are some of the issues I have with this text:

There is no character growth for the Wicked Witch. She is a static character: Wicked is presented in five separate segments, each an important episode in the life of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. Between each of these episodes lie varying spans of time, usually spans of seven or eight years a piece. This is not an uncommon way of organizing a novel with one primary main character; in fact, it’s very common due to its usefulness. Authors provide insight into a character’s make-up and background by showing critical snapshots of their past life and skipping over the less interesting, slower paced parts. By contrasting the main character’s thoughts, beliefs, and actions against those from earlier periods in the story, we see how the character has grown.

Where Wicked fails in this regard is that after the first two episodes—Elphaba’s childhood and college years, in which Maguire did a remarkable job in fleshing out the character and personality of the Witch of the West—there is absolutely no character growth or personality change whatsoever in Elphaba until she comes unraveled toward the end of her life and the book. After her abrupt departure from college at the end of the second episode, Elphaba becomes involved in a failed anti-Wizard plot, endures the tragic loss of her lover, bears his son while a penitent in a monastery, and loses or is betrayed by almost every person she ever cared for. And she goes through all this while remaining the same callous, idealistic, surly, sharp-tongued, green girl she was when she left school. At the beginning of each episode there she is, a few years older but completely unchanged from the last time we saw her before we turned the page.

An obvious example of this is the fact that her rudimentary magical abilities (that we learn she has from a very young age) never develop. Over the years she acquires a flying broom, a blown-glass bauble she sees visions in, an ancient tome of magical spells, and several familiars—seemingly everything one would need to begin witching—but she never learns to use any of them properly except the broom (and that purely by accident.) Instead, she picks up the title of Wicked Witch of the West basically, aside from being green and ugly, as a play on her sister’s title of Wicked Witch of the East (which she got more through unpopular political moves as rightful ruler of Munchkinland than through unpopular sorcery.)

Right here is where Wicked apologists will say that Maguire was exploring the nature of evil (as there are several pseudo-intellectual discussions on that topic throughout the novel) and showing that even though Elphaba was seen as evil (in the other texts) she really wasn’t, she just looked that way. She wasn’t really a witch, she just looked like one. Likewise, the Wizard only appeared Wonderful when, in fact, he was a cruel blood-thirsty tyrant that ruled Oz with an iron fist. The effective themes of the book that come out are: evil is what you make it and appearances can be deceiving.

Sadly, the novel doesn’t live up to the themes it puts forth. By concretely locking the Witch into the role of the Good and the Wizard into the role of the Evil in the reality of this story, Maguire takes away the only support his theme has: perspective. Readers still have perspective as they can compare Elphaba to the movie and original novel versions of the Witch of the West, and likewise with the Wizard, but internal characters have no such perspective. The characters in the story only know what they see which, ironic considering this is Oz, comes only in black & white: the Emperor is evil, the Witch is good (once you get past her looks.) We have to rely on sources outside the text to gain the necessary perspective to prove Maguire’s themes. The novel tells us that there is more than one way of seeing things, but doesn’t show it, doesn’t prove it. And, as we all know, an argument without proof is as hollow as the Tin Woodsman’s chest cavity.

Wicked does not adequately live up to the cultural legacy of the original: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900, is one of the most popular children’s stories in history and, since the 1939 debut of the film, has grown in importance beyond anything L. Frank Baum could have possibly imagined, until now it has become an integral, ingrained part of American culture. It is as American as apple pie and baseball.

Having been in public domain since 1956, there is a reason it took most of fifty years for a revisionist novel to be published: it’s a damned daunting task. And deserves (requires) more than Maguire’s 400 fluffy pages. It’s not like writing a sequel to one’s own novel which one has complete creative and artistic control over. Oh, no. To write a creative response to the enormity of what The Wizard of Oz has become to our culture, one is responsible for a lot more, to a lot more people.

There are two aspects of Wicked I want to focus on here: Maguire’s subsequent handling of the sexual and political importance of The Wizard of Oz. Maguire, in my opinion, only gets one of the two (partially) right and fails miserably on the other count. Let’s start with what Maguire did partially right: sexual issues.

Sexual/Gender Issues: Along sexual and gender lines there are two things Maguire needed to do in Wicked to keep it in line with The Wizard of Oz’s legacy and pay homage to the original artists. The first thing he needed to do was to give positive representation to alternative lifestyles. Why? Because, since the premier of the film in 1939, The Wizard of Oz has developed a queer cult following like no other. Largely this was due to the film’s major association with it’s leading lady Judy Garland, easily America’s first major Fag Hag. (Married to screaming queen Vincent Minnelli, the pair actually spawned Liza who has set Gay Policy for the past 35 years—much like Alan Greenspan did with the Federal Reserve.) This adoption of Wizard by the gay community grew to the point that back in the day when it was far less common to be openly out of the closet a common way of find out another’s orientation was to ask if they were “a friend of Dorothy.”

This was what Maguire did right, very right. Throughout Wicked, almost every major character expressed homoerotic leanings to some degree. Were Elphaba and Glinda more than friends? Probably not, but the mutual feelings are hinted at. Were Crope and Tibbett gay? Obviously, but the words weren’t used. Were both of Elphaba’s parents involved with Turtle Heart? Assumably so, it’s strongly implied in a few places. Maguire never comes out and says a character is gay or lesbian, or has bi-leanings, he finesses the information across. I like this for two reasons: (1) When The Wizard of Oz was published in 1900, the notion of homosexuality (term coined in 1869) as identity instead of as a sodomitic act had only just begun to develop, being first openly championed by Oscar Wilde in the 1890s. The language to describe it just wasn’t there. So Wicked, was very in keeping with the original in this sense. A nice touch. (2) Because of the Hayes Code homosexuality in film was censored until the 1960s, with hardly any substantive gay or lesbian representation until the late 70s. How Hollywood got around this ban was through coding their characters—certain characters had vocal or visual signifiers that those in the know caught, without the mainstream (read: straight) audience ever the wiser. This is what Maguire did in Wicked. Another nice touch: a nod to the film.

The second thing Wicked needed to do was promote gender equality. Why? Because L. Frank Baum was an active supporter of the women’s suffrage movement in this lifetime (I guess that makes him a “suffra-gent”) who championed the cause not only in his journalistic efforts, but espoused them in the Oz he created.

Maguire fails miserably here. Even though almost every main character is female, none are especially empowered or empowering. Elphaba would be the strongest of the female characters. Of course, it’s hinted that she might also have male genitalia. Not that it matters, only a nominal witch (never developing any real magical or political power) the strongest thing about her is her spirit, which repeatedly gets crushed until she completely unravels. She isn’t even rewarded for her spirit either: she meets defeat for each endeavor she undertakes in life. She has no epiphany, gains no insight into the questions that plague her, no relief from the ghosts that haunt her or demons that taunt her. And at the end of it all is Dorothy’s fatal splash.

Glinda? Glinda is a simpering twit of a “witch” who went to college to get her MRS. Nessarose, the Witch of the East? She is so insecure because of her lack of arms that leans on her religion so heavily the joy is sucked from her life, and that’s just how the rules Munchkinland: joylessly. (And all this is before someone drops a fucking house on her.) Dorothy? Dorothy is the physical embodiment of Innocence. By definition she is weak. All in all, Wicked is a complete utter failure in regard to women’s issues.

Political Issues: Maguire chose to break from the original’s form as a children’s book and make it an adult work. The main way he did this was through his representation of sexuality. He builds on this by giving the land of Oz something of a political dimension. In order to promulgate his themes of (1) evil is what you make it, and (2) appearances can be deceiving, Maguire gives us a peek into the geo-political landscape of Oz.

But a peek is all we get. We know that the Wizard rules Oz with an iron fist from his stronghold in the Emerald City. We know that the Wicked Witch of the East rules Munchkinland and has turned it into something of an oppressive religious state. Through vague references to Glinda’s past in the north, we find out that Gilliken is a mercantile state. By following Elphaba west, we see that the Vinkus is a harsh land ruled by the nomadic tribes that roam that rough terrain. And, that’s all Maguire gives us: that basic outline, nothing more.

What I just summarized is literally all we get from the text of Wicked about the political landscape of Oz. We have no sense of the history of Oz, how the different regions have interacted with one another—trade-wise, religiously, culturally, militarily, etc.—over the years. We only get superficial knowledge about the peoples that inhabit each region, never finding out what differentiates one people from the rest. All we ever really learn is that the Wizard is evil and wants to rule all of Oz. He has death squads and people disappear in the middle of the night for being dissenters against his regime. We never even find out what they stand for, only that they are outspokenly anti-Wizard.

The closest Maguire comes to giving us a sense of people or culture in the different regions of Oz is through the three religions in Oz. There are three different belief systems in Oz: Unionism (which acts much like Christianity in contemporary Western society), Lurlinism (a paganistic religion, much like our Wicca), and the Pleasure Faith, represented by mechanized (tiktok) entertainments that seem to foretell the future (a nod at the modern tendency to turn away from spiritual instruction of any kind in lieu of spending hours worshipping in front of the TV.) That is a great foundation to build from, but again Maguire falls short in his representations. Never does he show how the beliefs have developed over time. Never does he show why the different believers interact with one another as they do. Never does he show how religion works differently (or the same) in the various regions of Oz.

It seems to me that Maguire could have done so much more with Wicked by using those blank spaces between episodes in Elphaba’s life to flesh out more about the culture and history of Oz. Not only would this have given the political landscape of Oz more depth and meaning, but it in itself would have developed Elphaba’s one-dimensional flat character into a multi-dimentional static one. Hell, we would have at least found out what she was fighting for, what historical circumstances colored her actions. It could have even given meaning to why Maguire made Elphaba the powerless and “emasculated” character she was.

I guess that’s what irritates me the most. Not that Wicked is a bad novel. On the contrary, it is quite entertaining and fun to read. But there is no depth. It is all superficial entertainment, as hollow and devoid of meaning as the Pleasure Faith. It could have—and with very little work, at that—been so much more. And given the exalted place The Wizard of Oz holds in this society’s collective consciousness, I feel cheated. We deserve better than this.

Four years ago today...

TOP