3.28.2009

LIGHTS OUT AND SUGAR SHANE

I was sitting in La Verne having lunch, fifty yards from the gym where I work out, the same gym where ‘Sugar’ Shane Mosley is said to show up before fights to shake hands and remind people he’s from here but I’ve never seen him. Not in there.
I was thinking about
‘Lights Out’ James Toney. He sat right behind me at the Nokia Theater last night for the Sam Peter-Eddie Chambers fight, and he looked magnificent.
Somebody yelled ‘Lights Out’, I heard a reply, and I turned around. The Champ was within reach. I gave him a fist bump.
“You’re watching your weight,” I said, acknowledging the career-long battle with size.
“Trying to,” he said.
“You look great,” I said, slapping him on his knee. He nodded. Everybody noticed.
‘Looking good, champ’, ‘Hey, you look beautiful, man’, ‘What’chu been up to?’, fighters and fans passing by on the aisle. He’d stand, give hugs, pose for photos, shaking hands with those big meaty fists he’s used to punish fighters his whole career, laser-sighted missiles those hands, as accurate and deadly as any in the sport.
“You got anything coming up?” I said.
“We’re working on something,” Toney said. Even at his age, nobody is real eager to fight Toney, one of the smartest and slickest boxer-punchers of his generation.
Forty years old now, he sounded eager to fight. Calling out fighters to friends and acquaintances moving down the aisle. ‘Tell him to give me a call, he’s too scared to fight me,’ and it went on like that all night.
I turned to talk to his beautiful wife Angie, telling her how much everyone loved James, and she smiled. Got his weight under control it looks like, I said, and she said yeah, we’re working on it.
He battled weight his entire career. Often I’d see him at the Hamburger Hamlet in Sherman Oaks with his group. He fought between 156 and 168 pounds for six years until he had trouble making weight for Roy Jones Jr. and looked worn out. He moved up in weight. He fought as high as heavyweight, winning the IBA Heavyweight title beating John Ruiz, weighing in at 241 pounds.
He tested positive for a performance enhancing substance after the Hasim Rahman fight and was stripped of his title. It was disputed when his promoter Dan Goossen explained it was a consequence of an inflammation suffered as a result of surgery on muscle tissue in his arm.
“225,” he said to me, about his weight last night. He looked shaped.
“How long will you continue to fight?” I asked. “You look like you’ve never been hit.”
Toney whipped off the amber colored glasses to show his face, framed by two big diamond stud earrings, clear eyes pointed at me in that fierce ‘Lights Out’ stare, but that broke down when I stared back. We both laughed.
“He’ll fight until he gets knocked out,” a guy said sitting next to him.
“He’s never been knocked out,” I said. The guy nodded.
The only thing James Toney was missing was a natural weight class. Fighters starting out at 155 and ending up at 240 over a span of 20 years can’t seem to find a natural ‘walking around’ weight, the weight the body assumes with the natural exercise of an athlete, without the rigorous boxing regimen. Toney went up and down with his famous hamburger diet. But his skills never eroded.
Sugar Shane was always in shape and fought a brilliant career, his most recent win over Antonio Margarito a masterpiece. His career is tainted by a steroid charge, one initially disputed then admitted to by the quick-handed champ. Impressive wins over Oscar De La Hoya, disappointing back-to-back losses against Vernon Forrest, Mosley will be remembered as a great champion, a Southern California fighter who rose to the top of the game. I’d met him, too, once, at a garage where we both had our cars serviced. I asked him a flattering question about the De La Hoya fight and he answered in dead pan. It was just me, no big audience to play for. Sometimes you see and learn more about a man in that intimate setting. I don’t know.
For me, ‘Lights Out’ is a people’s champ. The people showed it last night. And he showed it to me.
“You still fight at Goossen’s,” I asked.
“I train at 360 up in Reseda,” he said. “Come over, check it out.”
The guy who’d given a great version of the National Anthem in the pre-fight ceremonies was sitting next to me. We’d been talking the whole night.
“I handle his website marketing,” he said, pointing at Toney. “T-shirts, signed photos. Bobble-head dolls.”
“Bobble heads?” I repeated.
“Check it out,” he said, and gave me the www.jamestoney.com address.
They’re out of bobble heads. The T-shirts look good. I’ll order a couple. Have him sign them when I show up at his gym. They might be valuable. Signed shirt, one of the oldest world champions in boxing history. Could happen. Keeps doing whatever it is that got him to looking at forty what he looked like last night?
Could happen.
Future Boxing Hall of Fame member. People’s Champ.
It’s all I need.

3.27.2009

'TAKE OFF MY SHOES?'

She was indignant. She frowned at me. “Why”, she said, “should I take off my shoes at an airport?” The discussion at my favorite downtown coffee house was going south. They were all looking at me. I was holding on to patriotic notions that airport security should do its best to prevent further attacks like 9/11. I don’t know, sounded like a good idea to me.
She was an Episcopal Priest. Her friend next to her was a former clergyman. I was surrounded with no where to hide. The best and the brightest, in front of me, grilling me on not just the unconstitutionality of the Patriotic Act, enacted by that ‘idiot’ (their words) George Bush and his henchmen, but it was the sheer inconvenience, she was saying, of having to stand in a line and remover her shoes. I looked under the table. Ordinary flats worn by thousands of middle aged women. No specially anointed brand that I could see, no insignia or label that gave them ‘Divine Right’ or anything like that.
“I don’t want to have to remove my shoes at the airport.” The indignity. Not to mention the ability to listen in on phone conversations and watch internet conversations (as technology permits) to protect us from the terror within. Tap phone calls without a judge issuing a warrant? The coffee house crowd deemed that not only potentially unconstitutional, but un-American. An innocent person could get rounded up! ‘I’m shocked, shocked’, and you know the rest of that famous conversation at another infamous Hollywood-made gathering post.
That was the Patriot Act debate, three years or so ago, and now I’ll be anxious to see the reaction to the new idea floated by Treasury Secretary Geithner, that should businesses display ‘unsound’ financial stability, the government ‘could dismantle (italics mine) companies whose failure threatens the nation's financial stability’. And she was outraged at having to remove her shoes in the name of national security? How are they gonna feel when their company gets padlocked when the government feels they’re threatening national ‘financial security’. Is there a difference?
Slap a retro-bonus tax on overpaid execs, issue union cards to the shop crews and lean on workers to sign up for the ‘union’ without the company having a say (management training routinely tells you that if your shop has a union organizing effort underway, you probably deserve to have your workforce represented), and now Geithner, who issued billions to AIG knowing they were paying execs millions in bonus’, wants the government to step in and, I love this word, ‘dismantle’ companies that threaten national financial security. It’s okay to shutter a business if they’re over the line with bonus’ or toxic loans, but whoa to the poor security guy at the airport with a wand and a metal detector suggesting we all remove our shoes so bad guys can’t fly planes into crowded buildings.
We should all be outraged at the pathetic performance of some of our most revered financial institutions. Some of us took out loans we couldn’t pay, whether for our primary residences or for that ‘second’ note to buy the boat or the timeshare. We know who we are. And I’m not qualified nor do I want to try and compare 911 with the economic meltdown.
What I am here to do is point out the frightening similarities of the national reaction. And, to some degree, the initial reaction of the American public. Post 911, it was all about getting the bad guys. George W stood at ground zero with a bullhorn and we knew he was right. Seven years later he was all but thrown out of the White House.
Post financial meltdown, Obama was swept (by a surprisingly narrow margin, in my opinion) in to the White House and is now leading a series of sweeping reforms. Yes, get the economy back on its feet. My doubts are strong about nationalizing healthcare insurance, but let’s create jobs and get our home loans back on track.
But this back-end ‘let’s go after the financial bad guys’ will bite Barack. It will bite us all. Regulation? Yes. Sound fiscal controls for both Wall Street and the US Government? Absolutely. Taking over financial institutions, ‘dismantling’ them when they show sounds of instability? Let’s wait on that one. True, we haven’t suffered a post-911 911, so I’m okay, and was okay, with the Patriot Act. Soldier on, I say. Take a similar watchdog approach against Wall Street with the power to dismantle, potentially nationalize crippled financial institutions? Careful. You fought the Patriot Act when you thought it too stringent and without proper controls to tether zealous federal agents listening in on phone calls. I want the same careful scrutiny from those that fought the ‘indignity’ about removing her shoes to be applied to the government's ability to take over struggling financial institutions. American’s can’t expect Wall Street to cozy up to financial bailout plans and go along with this idea that the government will take them down if they make a bad loan or write off some debt. GM and Ford have been doing that for years.
If you fought against the Patriot Act under the notion that it gives government too much power, apply the same principled scrutiny to Geithner’s ‘dismantling’ concept.
And try not to talk out of both sides of your mouth.

3.15.2009

BANNING

“It’s ‘old school,’ Detective Doug Monte said about his town. Banning, California. I’d stopped to get water on my way up the mountain to Idyllwild, behind Palm Springs. Up the street from the convenience store, kids wearing blue and gold t-shirts waved and shouted free car wash. My Jeep needed a scrub.
In an open lot on San Gorgonio Avenue behind an old school, dozens more kids, all ages, boys, girls and adults, pointed to a coned-off area, motioned me to a stop. Something was alive in Banning this Saturday morning. Enthusiasm ruled.
I dropped off ten dollars and talked to a woman who explained the event. Police Athletic League. It’s where the kids hang out. The Chief is around somewhere.
Her husband, Detective Doug Monte was in charge today. T-shirt, I asked? No problem, Doug said.
The old part of downtown Banning has a few blocks, a furniture store, an independent market, an art gallery in an old house, a café or two, schools. I stopped sometimes for gas in Banning back up the freeway on my way to Palm Desert or Joshua Tree. Today I found more. The Police Athletic League kids lined San Gorgonio Avenue waving hand-painted signs.
About thirty thousand people live in Banning, Doug said. Old school, he said again. The gym here, he pointed to the beautiful structure with high windows, beams latticed inside the glass way up top, built in 1929. Yeah, still has games every week. School teams, they play there.
Well maintained, a good coat of paint, the kind of gyms that smell like they’ve been used, survived an overtime game or two, all wood, aged, the sound of the ball on hardwood that echoes on an empty floor with sun streaming in, casting shadows from the high beams. Roaring with cheering and screaming when the winning bucket falls in.
That’s not old school, I thought. That’s Main Street USA.
Spent thirteen years in the sheriff department, Doug said. A hundred and twenty kids play soccer on the field back up there. He pointed to the northwest. In addition to the dozens holding signs and spraying water and lathering my Jeep and the other cars lined up in the shade, more kids were playing soccer on this Saturday.
Doug shouted instructions to kids holding rags and buckets and spray nozzles, smiling, nodding his head. Building trust. The kind of guy a kid could go to in a time of trouble or need, someone who was willing to talk with a complete stranger about his town, talk about 'old school' and a wooden gym and a soccer field with over a hundred kids, blue and gold t-shirts.
He gave me a t-shirt. ‘Banning Police Athletics League; Making a Difference One Kid At A Time’. I believe it. Something’s going on in Banning.
We’re here every Saturday, Doug said.

3.06.2009

TRONA LIGHTS

Last night it was dark in the Panamint Valley west of Death Valley, the two nether-world stretches of folded earth that time has to catch up with.

I drove through the Panamint with a car behind me. I was glad it was behind me. It was forty miles to Trona. Twenty more to Ridgecrest.

I turned south onto 178, the truck not far behind. It was flat, I’d remembered. Sixty miles per hour steady, the truck tracking me from a hundred yards back, not crowding me. Sixty-five miles per hour, high beams on, rough road. After several miles my Jeep started to slow and I added some gas to keep my speed. I could tell from the speedometer and the tachometer that I was going up hill. I had no sensation of up or down. Black on black, headlights disappearing just beyond reach.

I felt the Jeep struggling to keep my speed and lights behind me were coming up. I kept my speed, lights reaching ahead to the yellow reflective arrows pointing left, left LEFT and a curve came fast. I braked and turned, swerved and fought the steering wheel, slowing to thirty five.

In the curves now, walls of clay and rock flash by, the lights behind me shining through the edges of little bridges across the draws I must have been driving over on the edge of this desolate valley, the lattice patterns of the bridge rails flashing and tilting from the lights behind me.

Reflective arrows pointed right, right RIGHT and I slowed this time. The walls of the canyon were on me, and the lights behind me played on the rock and scrub brush. I felt the Jeep downshift through the turns, left, right, left right, tight, around the bend, lights behind me throwing patterns on the wall in front of me, reflectors pointing left, right.

I came out of the turns, felt the Jeep still pulling, looked at the tach and speedometer to gauge the vehicles ascent or descent, all sensation of up and down gone, the only sign the tach and speedo to tell me which way the Jeep was heading.

The road flattened out. I could see the tach slowing down under two thousand RPM’s and the speedometer moving above sixty, sixty two, sixty three miles per hour. The road was straight. The headlights were on full, high beams with fog lamps underneath if I dimmed them, but there were no cars. Just a light in the distance. Maybe an approaching car, maybe a motorcycle. Far away, too far to know.

The light was twinkling like a star. Maybe a safety light, a warning for a curve, highway work being done. I headed into the dark night, watching the light. For a moment it seemed like the light was just ahead, coming towards me like a car, moving out of the dark edge of night. No, it was far away. Maybe a light in front of a motel, a sign to turn off, a warm bed and a meal and a shower. The light was so far in the distance, even after watching it for two, three minutes. All the lights I could see; my dashboard, tach and speedometer and the blue ‘high beam’ indicator and the green ‘fog light’ indicator and the light of my headlights and the light behind me and the light ahead of me, I questioned them all. None seemed to be right. My headlights had no reach, the brightest light I had and it fell short of telling me anything. The tach and speedometer were showing I was moving up, down, the shadowed light from the vehicle behind me on the curves throwing ladders of shadow and dim light on the walls of the canyon, and this bright spectre winking at me coming at me down the road, but holding its ground.

I wanted this light in front of me to show itself.

Identify yourself in this midnight valley. Who goes there?

Three minutes, four minutes, what vehicle lights would be visible for three, four minutes, without showing itself as two headlights coming down the road rushing past me? I looked in my mirror for the headlights of the vehicle behind me and there seemed to be another vehicle behind him, another pair of headlights. I looked back to the road in front of me. Still there, moving toward me, the light seemed to be coming down a grade, the strange winking light. I’d been watching it for four minutes or so. In my mirror the vehicle behind me gave space.

There were two lights in front of me. It was a car, a truck, not a motorcycle. It had been in my vision for over four minutes. Four minutes or five minutes. A pinhole of light in the desert of night, Venus coming at me on the horizon. I could not tell the difference. The vehicle speeded past me, two headlights out of the dark. Then they were gone. I drove on. Trona was coming up, its lights steady and distinct, the old plant on the edge of town, I could see it a few miles away. I’d make it.

In Trona I came up on a black Mustang convertible going twenty miles an hour, no more than thirty through town. For five miles I followed him. This driver knew his way home, all the way to Ridgecrest. The truck followed me. The Mustang weaved and hobbled like an old pony with a bad leg, but he knew the way.

I’d come through the dark desert highway. I could go forty, forty five, fifty through the dark, down in to Ridgecrest behind this old pilot. He could be my tugboat captain.

I turned in at McDonalds and ate in front of a family of large people. Their young children were respectful and delighted to sit with their big mom and dad. I heard the girl calling ‘Mom, Mom, come look at this’ and I knew she was happy.

WOLFE'S

He is a big man, too big, and I heard him talk about surgery.
I thought it was a good price, I hear him say, then I eat my sandwich, my mind drifting to writing, sun shine after rain, cars coming in and out of the driveway.
I talked to him.
He is young, friendly, sitting at a small table outside.
‘Market’s been here since the early 1900’s’, he says.
‘Heard it was going to change’ I say. ‘Take out some of the grocery aisles and make it a gourmet market, deli, counters with meat and salads, and not compete with big chains that bring oranges in from South Africa’.
‘But they didn’t’, he says. ‘They talked about it. People have been coming here thirty, forty, fifty years’, he says, ‘they talked to the owner, wrote letters, said they didn’t want the market to change. They know where everything is’.
‘I’ve been coming here for twenty years’, I say. ‘Used to bring Dad here and get sandwiches’. He liked coming here. Reminded him of an old time market, I think.
‘I like the meat counter, the deli sandwiches’, I say. ‘Good quality, good price, everybody’s friendly’.
I have cravings. Corned beef. Brunkhorst’s Boar’s Head beef bologna with American cheese. Nothing else will do.
‘Business is pretty good still’, he says. ‘Economy hasn’t hurt too much. Lots of people only shop here’.
Lot of BMW’s. Couple of Prius’. My Jeep Grand Cherokee. Delivery trucks with breads and produce and a few men walking in and out carrying small bags.
The birds will come back to the small bare trees when they blossom in a few weeks. That’s when I like it. Outside, with a corned beef sandwich. And the birds.