We Speak Your Name...

I have become fascinated by Barkevious Mingo. “Keke” as he is called, was drafted by the Cleveland Browns in the just completed 2013 NFL Draft. I’m not all that interested in his stats or the “speed he’ll bring to the Browns defense.” It’s his name. Barkevious Mingo...it sounds like a name Elmore Leonard might make up. But frankly, it is so far out there, so unimpeachably unorthodox, so faintly illuminated by the light of the distant sun, that no one, no matter how brilliant, could make up this name. The best names I could make up were “Gunther Littlechurch,”  “Tilman Hopkirk” and “Desire Slaughter.” I like the name Desire.

And Barkevious Mingo is not the only unusual name in the NFL. The previous title holder was D’Brickashaw Ferguson, of the New York Jets. D’Brickashaw? Barkevious? What in the  name of mild sanctification is going on? What brute could look at their sweet, innocent little newborn and decide that "D’Brickashaw" was a good name? Or "Barkevious?" And their wives actually went along with this? On the night Barkevious was born, did the neighbor’s dog keep everyone up and the Mingos took this as a message from the spirit world  what to name the baby? How did the nurses who filled out these birth certificates keep a straight face?

I once heard that basketball player Anfernee Hardaway was supposed to be named Anthony, but his mother spelled it “A-n-f-e-r-n-e-e.” Anfernee it is then...

To top this all off, I stumbled upon nameoftheyear.blogspot.com, where they were tallying votes for the Name of the Year. It was a throwdown between Barkevious Mingo, and a young woman named Iris Macadangdang. 

Barkevious Mingo won, 54% to 46%.

More Moniker Madness

If you can believe what you read on the internet, there are 750,000 people in this country named Thomas Davis. That's a whole slew of us Thomas Davises. There was a Congressman from Virginia named Thomas Davis. There is a linebacker for the Carolina Panthers named Thomas Davis who besides playing football, recently designed and debuted a submarine sandwich called the "Big Hit." In Dublin Ireland there is a statue of Thomas Davis. I recently spent a rainy Saturday afternoon looking at online mug shots from all over the country of people named Thomas Davis.  I was surprised; not a lot of big time crime. Most of the Thomas Davises had been busted for being drunk, drugged up, or for unseemly comportment with women.

Tom, Tom, Tom Tom, Tom Tom Tom...really?

Well, I’m here to tell all 750,000 of you Thomas Davises that there are two towns in West Virginia named Thomas and Davis that are so close together that you see “Thomas Davis” on the map. Look in the northeast, near where western Maryland hooks over the W. Va. panhandle. Odds are some of you 750,000 Thomas Davises already know about this but your writings on the subject have not come to my attention.

Many of you readers might already be aware that in 2011, I rode my motorcycle 1400 miles total from Chicago into the mountains of West Virginia to visit Thomas and Davis.  But you probably don’t know that  this trip was the culmination of a lifelong quest. 

I have known about Thomas and Davis since I was eleven years old, attending Belmar Elementary School in Pittsburgh. My sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Daley told me about them. Mrs. Daley was best known for bouts of red-faced, high-volume apoplexia directed at anyone unfortunate enough to have gotten her pissed off. Her tirades were often followed by merciless ear pulling, and vigorous swatting of the buttocks with a long wooden paddle. And yet I have quite fond memories of her spasmodic version of the ”Twist,” accompanied by the lyrics: “Do it!!...Do it!!...Do...your...homework!!!”-all delivered when appropriate, at ear-splitting levels, a deranged smile on her face, elbows flying, accompanied by the swish of her flowing 1960‘s-era skirt. She cared a lot about her students and she was willing to whack some booty as well as shake her groove thing to get us to do well in school.

I was quite surprised one day while exiting her classroom, to have Mrs. Daley stop me and tell me that she had been thinking about me all weekend because she had spent the weekend in between two little towns in West Virginia named Thomas and Davis. I was shaken. Mrs. Daley hardly ever paid attention to me except to loudly express her disapproval of my bird call skills. After I got over the initial shock of not being yelled at, mangled, or beaten, when I got home I looked at a map of West Virginia and sure enough, there they were: Thomas and Davis.

After I moved on to middle school, I never heard anything more of Mrs. Daley. I have to assume that at some point, she got down with the “Twist” one last time, straightened her skirt and walked out of Belmar Elementary for good. Maybe she spent her final years living near Thomas or Davis.

For the next forty years, this knowledge of Thomas and Davis became something to joke about, or something to impress drunk girls in bars. It was insider knowledge that my name was on the map. It made me feel special. I took this feeling with me from Pittsburgh to San Francisco. While working at KPIX in the eighties, I even remember seeing on a CBS network sports feed, murky videotape of a motorcycle enduro race that had taken place in Thomas or Davis. There was a guy in a crowd in one shot who fixed his eyes on a point in space, jerked his head out and snapped his teeth together as if he was snatching a fly out of the air with his mouth. 

I don’t remember when I decided to actually go to Thomas and Davis, but this journey became something of an obsession. For years and years I would get out our huge world atlas, crack it open to the map of West Virginia, and gaze longingly at  Thomas and Davis. When we moved from San Francisco to Chicago, the obsession deepened because now I was closer. When could I take the time to go? How would I get there? Who would I go with? What would I find there? Would some backwoods meth cook kill me for trespassing and bury my corpse in a shallow grave in some remote defile? What if I fell in love with a vegan hippie chick that sold crystals out of a small shop and I spent the rest of my life making dreamcatchers? I had to know.

So in May of 2011 I packed up the motorcycle and I rode there. First I went to Covington, Virginia to visit my aunt Evelyn Spurlock in the little town where my mother grew up. I had not been there since I was about fifteen years old. I also visited Joe, Marsha and Jordan Kristoff in Grottoes, Virginia. But Thomas and Davis were ultimately my goal. And I was quite pleasantly surprised by what I found there.

Evelyn Spurlock

Thomas and Davis are located high in the mountains amidst state and national forests. Surrounded by pristine land, the area is a summer haven for kayakers, mountain bikers, motorcyclists, hikers, hunters, fishermen, and, with 200” per year of snow, a winter destination spot for skiers. Both towns featured ample lodging, good places to eat and drink, and little boutique craft shops. Instead of pickups with gunracks, the place was infested by Volvos and Subarus with Washington D.C. license plates and canoes lashed to the roof.

See? There's a Volvo!

Thomas, West Virginia

Then came God’s little inside joke.

I have had quite a few close encounters with the health care system over the last few years. Lately, not so many. One of the things that has consistently bugged me is this.

When you go to a new doctor, they have you fill out a form. They ask for your last name, then your first name, etc. You fill out the form, turn it in to the receptionist and wait. After a few minutes, someone else will call you for your examination. But repeatedly, they would call “Mr. Thomas? Davis Thomas?”  This happened all the time. I mean come on! These are your forms! Don’t you read them before you give them to people? Davis Thomas!?!? Don’t you think that sounds weird?  Wouldn’t you figure this out after, like, the second form you read? I complained about this long and loud to anyone who would listen.

The radiation clinic got my name wrong. The office where I got chemo got my name wrong. The surgical units got it wrong. The robots that leave voicemail messages reminding me about appointments got it wrong. I got so exasperated that I thought about changing my name to Davis Thomas. Then they might get it right. But I have since calmed down. It would be a lot of work to officially get everything in my life changed to Davis Thomas.

So, while touring these eponymously named little towns, I went by the local middle school. And what was the school called? “Davis Thomas Middle School.” Oh, I thought, this is rich! I was suddenly overcome with a sense of elation. A smile spread over my face and I took lots of pictures of the sign. I couldn’t explain it, but was this what I had come to find? I felt like I  I had found my own personal treasure trove of irony, hidden away in the piney woods of West Virginia. Thomas Davis had obsessed over Thomas and Davis, seethed over being called "Davis Thomas" and had finally come to Thomas and Davis only to find another "Davis Thomas." I had to laugh out loud. Good one God! 

And at that moment I knew that somewhere, ghostly Mrs. Daley was looking down, smiling her deranged smile, dancing her spasmodic “Twist”,  elbows out and her diaphonous skirt swirling around her ankles, yelling "Do it!!...Do it!!!..."

Mozi the Tiger

                                         Mozi the Tiger 

     

I have been fortunate to work in the television and news business all of my adult life. From San Francisco to Stockholm, to Soddy Daisy, Tennessee, I have lugged, leapt, yanked, climbed, slept on the floor, hunched, been ordered away, ducked, fallen, crawled, been warned, cranked, glued, grabbed, been accused, laughed at, sweated, frozen, pulled, run, been hit on the head with a fly ball, and held my pee longer than I ever thought possible, in order to bring the news to the public. The ‘88 Earthquake, the Oakland Hills Fire, floods, droughts, landslides, the White Night riots, the Zodiac killer, politics, Jonestown, Oaktown, the Hells Angels, the Guardian Angels, crack, smack, hookers, onlookers, the SFPD, the OPD, the DNC, the FBI, the Bash Brothers, the Pope, Gorbachev, the Sex Pistols, the Super Bowl, the World Series, a sweat-soaked rabbit’s foot, and a talking T-bone steak, I have vivid memories of them all. But none of these stories and events are as strange and strangely memorable as Mozi the Tiger.

I was assigned to videotape Mozi for a show on my channel called “Your Courthouse At Work.” It featured segments about various aspects of the 19th Judicial Circuit in Illinois. It was produced by the judges themselves. You wouldn’t  think it, but the judges are the biggest cast of characters in the government. They are fashion conscious hale fellows well met, and generally a happy, life-loving crew. Their show features cooking segments, history segments, horseback riding, mock trials, and a segment on animal law, which is why we were going to visit Mozi the tiger. 

Judge John Phillips was our animal law guy. Working with him, I had videotaped racoons, dogs, ducks and geese, and now a baby tiger. This particular segment was about exotic pets: how it is generally not a good idea to have them, and how you are responsible for any havoc they create. The ongoing hunt for Burmese Pythons in the Florida Everglades is just one example of exotic pets gone wild to deleterious effect. The Xanax junkie chimpanzee in Connecticut who ripped off a woman’s face is another example. You’ve got to figure there’s a good reason why dogs and cats have come down through the ages as the most reasonable pets.

Judge Phillips was friends with Juergen and Judit Nurgles who had just come into possession of a baby tiger: Mozi. The Nurgles  have a “lion tamer” act with Juergen as the lion tamer, adorned in a  skin tight sequined body suit,cracking the whip in a cage full of big cats, while Judit prances around as eye candy. Juergen and Judit somehow escaped from East Germany back when it was the western bulwark of the Soviet empire. Juergen chain-smoked while quietly staring off into some distant future. Judit was a rail-thin blond who seemingly had adapted better to living in the moment. 

Just a word of caution here. Do not Google “Nurgles.” This is NSFW (Not Safe For Work) It will bring up a porn site called “Nurgle’s Nymphs” that features a bunch of big-lipped porn stars that wear a little too much makeup and will have future back problems, if you get my drift. There’s a bunch of other really, really weird stuff. Now, in my life, I have seen some weird stuff but as we all know, when it comes to really weird stuff, the internet has no equal.  I sacrificed and thoroughly checked this out so that you all don’t have to. You’re welcome.

The Nurgles lived in a trailer on a run-down old circus animal compound in Richmond Illinois. Outside the trailer a yellow Corvette roadster was parked on the grass. Their compound was smack in the middle of a recently developed housing subdivision. You drive past all of these new mini-mansions, that are surrounded by infant trees. But then, as you approach the compound, the scenery changes drastically. You see a huge stand of old-growth trees, surrounded by a thirty foot high chain link fence that is topped by razor wire, designed to keep curiosity seekers out, as much much as to keep something else inside. The property resembles nothing so much as a massive mohawk thatch on the crew cut landscape. 

I turned into the driveway and was stopped by a locked gate on which there is a sign that read: “Extreme Danger!! Do not enter unless accompanied by staff. If you have no business here, it’s best that you turn around and get the fuck out.” Or something to that effect.  I rang a buzzer that was mounted on a pole and spoke to someone on an intercom. They were expecting me. Juergen rode up on a bicycle after a few moments, unlocked the gate, and immediately locked it once my car was inside. He then motioned for me to follow him.

We drove across a field and past an enclosure that looked like the t-rex cage from “Jurassic Park:” rusty, telephone-pole sized bars enclosing a large open space adjacent to a dilapidated barn. I later learned that this was an old unused elephant enclosure. There were no elephants in sight, but I could hear the roar of big cats.

We stopped outside of a cluster of more dilapidated structures. I asked Juergen to use a restroom, and he directed me to a room at the end of a long hallway through a deserted building.

This building was really dark and creepy. Room after deserted room, full of broken furniture, peeling paint, shadows and  broken windows, all overlaid with the not-so-distant roar of big cats. The building would be the perfect setting for a zombie movie. I half expected to be jumped by a goalie-mask wearing assailant wielding a bloody axe. I kept a wary eye over my shoulder while I relieved myself in a filthy urinal.

Back out in the sunshine, we were introduced to Mozi. She was inside a small wire enclosure, eviscerating a poor stuffed teddy bear.  Her modus operandi was to stalk, seize the bear by the neck and chomp down, while raking teddy’s guts out with her rear claws. She was about the size of a German shepherd and just as cute as she could be. Poor teddy was looking much the worse for wear. She had also recently mangled and chewed up a folding aluminum lawn chair.

Someone had actually thought that it was a good idea to try to have Mozi as a pet. After all, I bet all the girls in the park would run up and coo about how cute she was and want to scratch her head. But I guess when your cute little tiger starts to teethe on your  furniture and playtime is spent practicing how to kill you, it doesn’t seem like such a good idea any more.

Judit put Mozi on a leash and took her out of the enclosure. Mozi lunged after a house cat that was hanging around the trailer. The house cat got big eyes and split. That was the last we saw of the house cat for the day. I miked up Judit and Judge Phillips and we went off into the grass to do the interview. Mozi now took an interest in me. She fixed me with that deadly cute stare, crouched down in the grass, then lunged in my general direction. Judit was doing her best to keep up a conversation with Judge Phillips, but when Mozi lunged, Judit was nearly yanked off her feet, like her coat had gotten caught in a departing taxi’s door. After one or two of these lunges I started to have doubts whether Judit’s shoulder could take much more, and I mentally prepared an escape route back to the safety of my car. Forget the camera. I can get another camera. A neck free of fang marks and an intact abdominal cavity are much preferred over any videography gear.

As the interview ended, Juergen emerged from the trailer, cigarette dangling from his lips, and inquired if we would like to see him work out the big cats. We readily agreed, and decamped to a barn-like structure with a huge cage built inside. There were millions of flies in this building; more flies than I had ever seen in my life to that point, and more than I’ve ever seen since. It could have been the motherland of all flies. The buzzing was incredible. There were buckets of raw meat, cut into cubes, sitting on a table by the door.

I set up my camera close to  the cage, where I could get a clear shot with no bars in the way. Juergen casually warned me to back off.  Sure there were bars, but the cats could reach through the bars and grab me so It would be best to be out of the reach of the cats, he explained. Seemed prudent.

At this point, Juergen entered the cage, armed with a whip, a long pole with a hook on the end, and wore a bucket of meat attached to his belt. He motioned for his helpers to release one of the cats.

A male lion shuffled into the cage, nonchalant and unconcerned. Juergen cracked the whip yelled “Caesar!!” and made a quick snapping motion.Caesar, all 600 pounds of him, easily  hopped up onto a platform that was about six feet off the ground, just like your kitty hopping up onto your sofa at home. I immediately felt a weakness in the knees. A human being, bereft of weapons, wouldn’t stand a chance against one of these in the wild. Welcome to the lower links of the food chain.

Juergen then motioned for more cats to be let into the ring. One, two, three, four, they just kept coming until there were ten tigers and Caesar inside the ring. Juergen ran them through their paces. At Juergen’s command, they stood on their hind legs,hopped and begged. They laid on the ground in a row while one of them leapt over the other’s backs. They leapt through flaming hoops hung from a structure ten feet off he ground. They vomited (hey, they’re cats, right?)  They wove their bodies through an elevated obstacle course. Each completed task was rewarded by a chunk of meat stuck on the hooked pole and given to the tiger. I guess Juergen may have been crazy enough to get in a cage with these things, but he wasn’t dumb enough to stick a hand in the big cat’s faces while holding a meat snack. The tiger might not recognize where the snack ended and Juergen began.

I was fascinated by the cats. But I guess I do have a survival instinct built into my brain and it was yelling: “Out...NOW!!”. My red alert alarm klaxon was going off big time.  My heart was pounding in my chest the whole time. I was ten feet away from a 400 pound meat eating predator that was doing tricks for a cube of raw meat. 

Plus, there was no way that I could use this footage that I’d shot. The interview was fine. But what possible connection, however tenuous, could justify airing a rehearsal for a lion tamer act on a government channel?

As I drove home I thought about what I’d just seen. I realized that watching a group of 400 pound tigers prancing around made me feel like I feel when I look at the starry sky at night: immensely irrelevant and small. What could my outrage at a parking ticket mean when a mountain-sized asteroid gets bumped out orbit between Mars and Jupiter, and heads for Earth? Against the backdrop of the Milky Way, my problems do not even register in any infinitesimal manner. Stars go supernova and do not materially affect the clockwork of galactic rotation. Being so close to these beautifully striped agents of my demise made me realize how irrelevant my life could become in an instant. The tiger would not care if I was depressed about going bald, worried about my kids, pissed off at my stupid neighbor who constantly parks his car in front of my house, or still sad because Jimi Hendrix died before he reached his true potential. Nope. To the tiger, I would be just one more meal, one that didn’t have sufficiently acute senses to warn me of the tiger’s presence, was too slow too run away, and was unable to do anything to defend itself once the tiger got ahold of me. Even the tiger’s infant offspring could strangle me and filet me like a trout. 

I often make jokes about how I am glad that I was born in 1951 instead of 1851 because I would have a lot of trouble living in a world without automobiles, indoor plumbing and underarm deodorant. To that I have to add that I am glad that I wasn’t born anywhere that big cats roam around at will.

R.I.P. Achilles

Around 10:40 AM on Saturday April 20th, Achilles the Cat went through the cosmic cat door, never to return again. He had been getting sicker and sicker, going from a robust 20 pounds down to a skeletal 6 pounds. The veterinarian thought he might have hyperthyroidism. We gave him anti-nausea medicine, and another medicine to regulate his thyroid. But nothing seemed to help him get better. He could not keep food down, and it was extremely painful watching him gag and drool.

He was not a lap cat. Neither of our cats are all that cuddly. But it was Achilles who would greet you at the door, and then feign that feline indifference to your presence. He always wanted to be with us, whether we were cooking, watching a movie, catching a nap in the recliner, or entertaining company. There he was, keeping an eye on the humans.

He had a rather extensive cat vocabulary. You could talk to him for minutes at a time, and he hardly made the same sound twice. For a while, I thought I could teach him how to say “ham” and he worked at it really hard.  But he never got it right. I guess you need lips to say “ham.”

Friday night, we all watched him suffering. We knew he was not getting better and it was time to face reality. The next morning, I called the vet and said we needed to put him to sleep. As I spoke to her, the words suddenly caught in my throat, and I couldn’t say it, “put him to sleep.” But I finally did. We held him and talked to him while he slipped away. Then we drove home in silence.

Back at the house, I washed out his bowl from his last meal. Then I went downstairs to put away his cat carrier. There is his empty bed at the top of the stairs. I still feel sad when I think about him. He was a good friend. It makes me want to believe that maybe we’ll be together again someday.  

So I’ll just say “See you soon pal!”