Yesterday after I sent in my rejoinder to Dr. Doty the Budgeteer’s editor Jana Peterson mentioned that if I had a different portrait shot I could send it to her otherwise they could use the one they have on record for me. I wrote back that I’d been advised that their current mug shot made me look villainous.
Jana kindly replied that she thought that was an overstatement but admitted it did make me look like I had a little “attitude.” She offered to take a new picture of me but when I called her office I was told she and her photographer had just rushed out the door when a report cam in that the Hells Angles were mixing it up at the Casino a few blocks to the east. I joked with the secretary that I hoped Jana was wearing a flack jacket. I added that Jana could call me on my cell if she returned soon because I was headed out to buy some remedies at the pharmacy for my poor ailing Tan Man. I got the call back from Jana while I was looking for acidophilus pills and promptly zipped over to get a new face.
When I got downtown Jana told me that the report was a bust. A bicyclist had been hit by a car and by the time she was there everything had settled down. The report of the streets being blocked had put some-one’s imagination into overdrive because of all the hyping the Hell’s Angles big party has gotten lately. I got a laugh out of her when I said I was a little surprised to hear that the Angels had been mixing it up with the Casino’s senior clientele.
Jana is a pretty sober person and I think its fair to say she initially regarded Red Plan opponents as bitter enders. “Those ink wells were good enough for me and besides I liked dipping girls pig tails into them.” Over time I’ve come to value her fair mindedness as much as I’ve come to disdain one of her columnists self righteous petty mindedness. She joked that she thought my old mug shot made me look like a tough minded professor. Yeah, the sort who would give a student a failing grade for turning in a paper with a missing punctuation mark.
she took a couple quick informal pictures out on the street. They weren’t great but at least I was smiling. That’s much more consonant with how I feel at the moment. I may be in the trenches but I’ve got a lot of good George M. Cohen tunes to sing. I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy!
