Manhattan Transfer

Chanson D’amour, ra da da da da, play encore, here in my heart, ra da da da da, more and more. Chanson d’amour, ra da da da da, je t’adore, each time I hear, ra da da da da, chanson, chanson, d’amour …………….

There are enough of them out there, believe me. I call them sixth sense losers. They have this uncanny ability to find the line of least resistance. Without much concern where that will take them tomorrow, as long as it avoids some difficult choice today.

Or even someone who might make that difficult choice for them. Like me.

Let’s say you’re rolling carefree down a freeway in big rig with Donald Trump taking a free ride on your trailer, and everyone’s waving and smiling, they are all supporters, you know you’re headed in the right direction, there will be challenges, but you’ve studied the map, and the road goes exactly where you want it to go, which is New York.

You come to the point where it’s time for Sarah Palin to join the Donald on the trailer because there is this part of the road that she can help you navigate better than anyone else. The part being from here on in all the way to the Californian primary on June 7th and beyond.

Back on the road, you’re headed the same direction, nothing has changed, there is waving and smiling like before, but some are now looking at the new team and working frantic hand signals that suggest the road ahead is blocked, that you should take the next exit, and find another way.

But you’ve checked on the map, and this exit ends up back where you started, in Miami. So why are these people who support you, your load and your message more than any of the others out there sending you the wrong way?

This isn’t so complicated. They quite liked you where you were before, so they don’t mind if that’s where you end up again. They know the road back to where you were before has no challenges or obstacles, no dangers, not to you or them, they tell themselves it’s the line of least resistance for them, so they want to presume it must be same for you. But that presumption is based around their weakness and fears, and their short term interests, not yours.

That’s when Sarah Palin jumps off the trailer, approaches this really nice guy called Paul Ryan who you could have sworn was 100% behind your truck after you sent him a free stalking horse t-shirt to celebrate his ambivalence, and heavily threatens him. Why?

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She’s been forced to take the wrong exit before, with John McCain back in 2008. McCain, thoroughly softened up in a Vietnamese concentration camp after being captured by the enemy like anyone who survived long enough would be, forgot his opponent was more Alinsky communist camp commandant than fellow American with honorable intentions, and failed to apply the thumb screws to get at the truth. Or maybe there was some subconscious surrender to a superior foe, a reflex to soak up the punishment rather than go for the kill. Palin’s dissent was over-ruled, so it was especially galling to hear those who’d muzzled her in the first place also blaming her when they lost. That’s McCain’s legacy of shame, and where his war experiences counted against him.

So now our truck is back on the right freeway again thanks to Sarah Palin and our independent driver, there is waving and smiling but no hand signals pointing at exits, just some wearing glum expressions with their hands by their sides who know they must face those difficult choices this time around. Only now as well there are some cheering wildly from the sidelines, who know if those threats aren’t faced now, they will soon become too big to face at all, by anyone. Which is why they wanted Donald Trump on the trailer in the first place.

Were there any other close shaves on the Miami to New York freeway?

There was an accident encountered earlier in the journey, just a week or so out of Miami, when this guy racing a fancy truck behind us with Cruz and Kasich taking a ride on the trailer suddenly saw something that made him deliberately jackknife his truck and bail out.

In the ensuing accident, both passengers got flung onto the tarmac right in front of our tuck and there was nothing that could be done except allow them to go under the wheels with a satisfying bump, bump ………. bump, bump. One of these wise guys had courted the endorsement of Sarah Palin. The other should never have been on that trailer in the first place.

Our truck had to pull over, the police came, and the media of course, and the driver had to make a statement about what had been seen in the usual way, but it was only later that a minor detail was remembered. Someone had replaced the tag team campaign graphics on the side of the crashed truck with a depiction of Cruz and Kasich in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide, and Hide especially starring Cruz looked rather, well, strange, and out of place.

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Is catching sight of that disturbing image on the trailer what sent the driver over the edge? Not according to the police, who said the driver claimed an Eagle Owl had swooped across the windscreen in such a way as to convince him his truck was doomed (owls can be harbingers of death according to Shakespeare), and that his only escape was the jackknife which ended up in the backs of Cruz and Kasich.

Just like in the cartoons, and this is a make believe world we’re travelling in now unless we’re talking in metaphors to season the truth, Cruz and Kasich rose from the dead to face the cameras later on, but apart from some muttering refused to press charges, preferring to blame each other rather than the driver for the unfortunate crash, which suggested the driver had paid for the truck and was paying for the fuel, or knew the person who was, so there wasn’t much his passengers were prepared to complain about.

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The Eagle Owl, harbinger of death by leverage.

But an Eagle Owl? How many of them do you see flying around in broad daylight just South of Washington DC? That driver needs to have his eyes examined. What was he doing driving those two clowns around in the first place anyway? At least we know he won’t go back to them. I wonder if they know. Maybe they get told there’s another trailer waiting, to kick the revenge can down the road out of harms way. Hell hath no fury on a politician’s cry to continue spurned. It must be hard watching Bernie go all the way to the convention. If the Progressive Socialist mafia don’t get him first. That’s the nature of the beast, it devours its own and any sympathisers once they’ve served their purpose.

Well, all’s well that end’s well, and after that there were no other trucks on the road to offer distractions as New York got closer, just the waving and smiling and gesticulating and cheering, the road was blissfully and unexpectedly clear, all the way into New York and down Park Avenue, with a brief stop for a selfie and the Manhattan Transfer.

Me, You, We.

A poetic tribute to Mohammed Ali. A poet warrior like the Prophet, a man of his times, who never found you after he found me, which left him a little binary and vulnerable out of the ring, when he got to Malcolm X and we. But in the ring with boxers or chat show hosts or journalists? Simply awesome, with the Ali shuffle and the smartest left right poetic combination ever, ‘Me, we!’.

Music is important, when you’re spending all those hours in the cab you can go a little mad, and did you know Chanson D’amour was sung by Manhattan Transfer? Nor did I, and it has nothing to do with the business at hand, there’s not much more to say, they watch me ever day, I’ve got to New York so I chose the right fork, I’ll do it my way, which is the freeway, you might be bigger than Frank Sinatra, I’m just me, an Unsolicited Partner, we’re in a big rig heading to a small gig, take it away, let it soar into the New York skyline, it’s getting close to party time, and put it all on the line.


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