Homer Makes Contact

Greetings Voignier and Kind readers,

Homer's speech last night was a well attended disaster, as a group of provocative hecklers from The Riverside Park showed up with signs, and banged pots and pans for Hillary Clinton (more in the spirit of hoax, than genuine support). And so, Homer was not able to get a word out, and ultimately lost his temper, turned entirely red about he neck and face, yelled in the manner of a mad man fending off delirium, and rushed the group, swinging an unopened cask of box Rose wine. Homer's flight was captured on digital video by Ryan, who was not just the architect of the Hillary Clinton rally at the Boat Basin, but also its project manager, if you will. Ryan had organized this assault on Homer's speech as the latest volley in an ongoing war of practical joking that periodically brings Homer out of his Central Park town house on a search and destroy mission to The Riverside park in the earliest hours of the morning to find and foul Ryan's sleeping quarters.

As it turns out, we had several VIP (including the daughter of the richest man in Japan) in attendance at the basin for our Martin Ritt Film Rep, who brought with them their own security teams, who were decidedly no appraised of the running joke between Homer and Ryan's band of merry pranksters, which made extra work for Mr. Ito, who was forced to explain and diffuse the situation as Homer moved off the stage toward the group of "protesters" lead by Ryan and his video cams. Events made a rough day for Mr. Ito, who subsequently lost his voice trying to quell the situation.

Homer did make contact several times as he swung his cask of boxed wine. He hit three people in the audience, none of whom were part of Ryan's group of hecklers. The first two heads upon which Homer made contact were a playwrite who goes by the name Purple Onion, and his life partner who is simply known as Just John, a performance artist that Mr. Onion met in Tompkins Park riots several years back, when both men fled the police and ended up sharing a night of romance in the subway system. We were offered the details of their personal histories as they sat with EMS recounting what happened for the NYPD, with the police playing a kind of game whereby each new officer on the scene had been prepped to ask Mr. Onion and Just John to repeat their account of what happened largely for entertainment purposes. It seems that Puple Onion's lisp, combined with the fact that he was soaked with Rose boxed wine, and with an inability to tell the facts of the situation without drudging up a rather lurid historical account of his life each time he was asked, which he fought over with his life partner, Just John, who seemed to disagree with everything Mr. Onion claimed.

Unfortunately, we were forced to sit with Mr. Onion and Just John for more than 2 hours, as the films ran for the rest of our guests. The police required that we provide facts for their report. Just John, who spent much of the night on his cell phone, asserted that he had been talking to his attorney, who assured him that he had a good case against, Homer, Ryan and perhaps the entire Boat Basin, once the criminal aspect of the wrong doing was settled.

And so we sat and sat, along with the third person upon whose head, Homer made contact with that cask of boxed Rose, Alexa Sunday, a adult film star and performance artist who is also the Granddaughter of Reverend Billy Sunday who is famous for his quote regarding the trial of Nicola Sacco, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in the 1920s upon hearing their dubious death sentence: "Give em’ the juice, burn them if they are guilty, I a’m tired of hearing these foreigners, these radicals, coming over here and telling us what to do".

Alexa, of course had her own personal history to share, in spite of our better efforts to change the subject on her, just as we had done with Mr. Onion and Just John. Alexa explained that she had only recently gained enough courage to start going to parties again, having been "phobic" and traumatized after her boyfriend, a drummer for a casino in Las Vegas had run off with the realtor who leased him his temporary housing there. Alexa took great pains to explain that in spite of her job as an exotic dancer at a major venue in New York and "on the web", she finds it hard to meet people who look "beyond the bodacous boob job and tight tooshie" as she put it.

It turned out that this boxed wine fiasco was her first party in 11 months; and she was struck about the head while in the middle of what she described as a great conversation with Mort Waxman, an attorney with whom she said she would have loved to "knock boots." And as if by magic, Mort Waxman, Esquire appeared at Alexa's elbow, where he remained the rest of the night, offering to pay for her to go for a medical exam, and taking digital photographs of her in her soggy clothes, as she sat, giving her police interview. For our part, we tried to remain polite, and assured Alexa several times that none of what she disclosed was suprising, and may be expected, giving the nature of her work. Mr. Waxman, in turn spent much of his time between taking photos asking us who sponsored the event, where Homer and Ryan reside, and who owns the property on which Homer connected with Alexa, Purple and Just John's heads as he flip out and ran amok with his cask of boxed wine. Toward Mr. Waxman, we dummied up, if you will.

We found it odd, that these people, brained with boxed wine, and filing police reports, were so compelled to tell their personal stories, as if driven by some need to be understood or to share their personal narratives; and in doing so seeking a kind of loose justice perhaps. We could not help but to think that their grasp at our ears was a kind of reach for some sort of cathartic state, or perhaps absolution, as if to make the tragic aspect of their condition all the more tragic in light of their personal context.

We sat, patiently, waiting for them to "let it all hang out," if you will, as we effectively missed the first film and most of the meal that our guests enjoyed. Homer was taken into custody, while Ryan and his band of hucksters were released, as apparently it is not a crime to bait an unstable mind into assaulting innocent bystanders. It was a most disappointing time for us, as we counted the seconds to we were permitted to return to our party, our guests and our boxed wines, Vermont and New York state cheeses, smoked meats and roasted vegitables, flavored foul, and Coco Bread served by one of our favorite catering services, Bumba-Clot Catering of West 116th Street, which did an outstanding job. By 11pm our trouble was resolved, and we were able to return to the outing, as the film Sounder had started, one of Martin Ritts best efforts, which is sometimes called "socialism's Ol' Yeller".