BowlesSR.dlos@PARC-MAXC.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP (07/13/83)
0 and on
a good day Rhett could ordinarily raise about 9 cents. I been trying to
get Gus, my Bossier City lawyer, to drive over and handle the case and make
a quick hundred, but Gus says, "The Mississippi Highway Patrol is one
thing, but you're talking Garland Police. No way, Jose."
Gus, you gotta understand, is basically a chickenstuff.
From what I understand, they came and got Rhett right there in the
trailer park in front of everybody, and when they got there Rhett was in no
condition to understand the Miranda warning because he'd been smoking all
morning, if you know what I mean and I think you do, and also because he
didn't remember where he'd been from about June 5 to July 3. This made it
difficult when the monkey faces started in on him with the first tough
question:
"Where'd you get those shoes, Mr. Beavers?"
Rhett answered quick as a cat, as usual. "What?"
"Where did you *acquire* the *footgear*, Sir?"
Rhett kind of bent over a little and stared down at his feet. He had
on suede shoes that were red on one side and blue on the other. On the
heel of both shoes was a big number "11" in raised white letters.
"Bought 'em at James K. Wilson," Rhett said.
This is where I understand things started going wrong for Rhett.
"Do you have a receipt?" asked the officer.
"*Of course I do*," said Rhett. (Bad sign when you start to act like
a horse's patoot and you still don't know where you woke up this morning.)
"Could we see it, please?"
"I bought these shoes with my American Express Gold Card." Rhett
pulled a mutilated piece of plastic out of his pocket and held it up to the
light. In the bottom left corner of the card it said
"WANDA BODINE, LE BODINE, INC."
"Mr. Beavers," the cop said, "it appears this credit card does not
belong to you."
Now normally in a case like that the thing to do is just stop talking
and call Joe Bob, but Rhett told the Garland Police to wait while he went
in his bedroom and rooted around in his duffel bag and came back with a
credit card receipt for $337.42.
"As you can see," Rhett said, "I paid for the *alleged* shoes in
full."
Rhett thought they would be impressed by the word "alleged."
The cop unfolded the receipt and took it outside so he could read
through all the blurry ink, but the paper was all stiff and faded from
setting up on Rhett's dashboard for approximately nine years. The
policeman finally made out that it was a receipt for six tires, a set of
shocks, and a battery from Carco. It was dated October the 12th, 1974, and
it was a BankAmericard charge on the name of Billie Sol Estes. Rhett had
signed it "Bruce Lee."
"Mr. Beavers, I'm going to ask you once more. Where did you get the
shoes? Might I suggest a bowling alley?"
"Why do you think James K. Wilson would sell shoes to a bowling
alley?"
"Mr. Beavers, let me review the facts here."
"Uh-huh."
"You are standing before me this moment in a pair of size-11 blue-and-
red bowling shoes."
"If you want to get technical about it."
"Asked where you got them, you first produced a corporate American
Express card registered to another individual. You then produced what is
apparently a fraudulent receipt for automotive products purchased nine
years ago. This same receipt was inscribed with the name of a man who at
the time of purchase was serving a federal prison term for fraud. The
suspicious instrument is, in addition, signed by an East Asian foreign
national who died in the year 1973."
"74."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Bruce Lee -- he died in 1974. Can't you get your facts straight?"
"Signed by an East Asian foreign national who died in the year 1974.
Furthermore, you have produced no evidence which would serve to link the
transaction which allegedly occured on October 12, 1974, with the
particular pair of bowling shoes currently affixed to your rather large
feet. Is that about it, Mr. Beavers?"
Rhett thought for a moment, looked down at his shoes again, and looked
back at the cop.
"That's my story," he said, "and I'm sticking to it."
*
Speaking of Bruce Lee, I motored out to The 183 last weekend to see
the new King of Chopsocky, direct from Hong Kong, Jacky Chan, making the
flesh fly in "Eagle's Shadow." I wasn't ready to believe all the bullstuff
they been putting out on this flick, about how Jacky Chan is breaking Bruce
Lee's box office records all over the map, because everybody knows there'll
never be another "Enter the Dragon" so, hey, what's the point? But I gotta
say, the kid knows his chopsocky. This is no "Mad Monkey Kung Fu," and I
still want to see "Karate Killers on Wheels" this summer before I start
nominating "Eagle's Shadow" for any Drive-in Academy Awards, but we're
talking lethal stuff here.
The plot is about a bunch of Yul Brynner look-alikes trying to destroy
everybody who knows snake-style kung fu -- which is what Jacky Chan does.
Snake-style is so fast that the old man master (Simmon Yuen, the guy who
always plays the old-man master) can kung-fu mosquitoes in his sleep. In
fact, the old bearded guy with goat hair all over his face is the last
living snake-style fighter, so he has to go around dressed like a beggar so
nobody can slice him into cat food. Anyhow, Jacky Chan is a nobody; he has
so scrub floors at the kung fu school, except when the dragon-fist master
tells him to go out and be a human punching bag for this fat little rich
kid who's wasting his time trying to learn how to bust up bricks with his
fist. The old goat-hair guy takes pity on Jacky Chan and leads him out
into the wilderness to get tough and "Rocky"-up for the big snake-style
paint-the-desert-red fistfest with one preying-mantis-style guy and one guy
who dresses up like a priest but actually he's a guy sent over from
Communist Russia to murder Goat-Hair. None of these turkeys realize Jacky
Chan's secret, which is when he combines snake-style stuff with cat's-claw-
style, because if you ever noticed, a cat *can* kill a snake due to its
claws being so fast. (We know this because Jacky Chan watches a cat kill a
snake.) The great thing about the cat's claw is when Jacky Chan grabs his
opponent in the place we can't talk about in the newspaper, if you know
what I mean and I think you do, and when he does that and yanks up, the guy
*dies.* *Painfully.*
We got *15* complete kung-fu fight scenes, including everything from
one-on-one to four-on-one to eight-on-two. We got three complete kung-fu
comedy scenes, including one with a scrub brush that's *almost* as good as
Bruce Lee. We got excellent dubbed thwocks and whooshes. We got minimal
stickwork, one guy who karates three layers of bricks, but no Nunchakus.
No beasts. No motor vehicle chases. Less than one pint of blood. No
breasts. Five corpses. Heads do not roll.
Serious chopsocky. Three and a half stars.
Joe Bob says check it out.
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JOE BOB'S MAILBAG:
"Message for the Mayor"
Raise the Screens!
Nuthin' Personal but if we lose freedom of moving viewing in Texas --
The rest of the world is gonna go down fast.
Scott Meador
Dallas
Dear Scott:
This is, of course, the well-known drive-in domino theory, proven in
Vietnam, where the lack of drive-in screens has already spread to ALL
Southeast Asian countries.
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[Reprinted without permission, Dallas Times Herald, July 8, 1983]
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