THIEF

     The pizza place that the Gresge and I delivered for was next
to a self-service car wash.  Sometimes, kids would not wear much
and put in the dollar or whatever it took and stand in there,
letting the hose dance around crazily.
     Between the pizza place and the car wash was this huge
dumpster.  One day, one of the cooks there was trying to sell Ralph
an unregistered .45 automatic.  I don't know the law exactly, but
I do think that you are guaranteed a jail term if you're caught
with a gun like that--five years mandatory if the gun was used in
a crime.  I think.  Regardless, the Gresge was skeptical.  He
didn't believe the gun was in working order.  So the cook took him
out to the dumpster and fired into it.  It did work.  The Gresge
bought it for three hundred bucks and added it to his arsenal.    
 He was also big on buying junky cheap-shit cars and working on
them, cannibalizing them, anything.  He bought this awful station
wagon for two hundred from this high school kid.  He never drove
it, never worked on it.  It reminded us of that guitar in Spinal
Tap.  "No, don't look at it.  Don't even think about it."       
One day, Gresge woke up and the car was gone.  Stolen.  He very
calmly got his .45 and sat on the porch in the rocking chair and
waited.  Sure enough, a few hours later, the car came back.  Ralph
went down to it and showed the gun to the driver and then got in. 
Turns out to be the kid who'd sold it to him.
     "Shit," said the kid.  "Fuck.  I kept an extra key.  Shit man,
stop looking at me like that.  I just wanted to buy some groceries
for my mom.  Shit.  C'mon man."  
     "Drive."
     He made the kid drive to the Ithaca police station and turn
himself in for "grand theft auto".  Of course, this whole time,
Ralph's gun was a much more serious offense than what the kid had
done.  But the kid got out and raced into the police station.     
So Ralph got the car back.
     But the best thing is:  he ate all the kid's groceries!



          I DON'T KNOW ART, BUT I KNOW WHAT I HATE

     We had an interesting assortment of students in that house
junior and senior year.  Myself, the Gresge, a fine arts student,
that one girl, and two physics guys, one of whom I'd gone to high
school with.  The artist was always trying to drag us with him to
these awful downtown ubiquitous-people parties.  
     Once, the Gresge and I tagged along to a party that was being
held for a student who'd just sold a painting for some five
figures.  The place was packed.  Wall to wall black turtlenecks and
clove cigarettes.  I spotted my avant-garde theater prof there, as
well as the French Intellectual History big gun.  On the walls hung
art by the guy who the party was for.  Ralph and I stood, in jeans
and t-shirts, drinks in hand, staring at some hideous abstract
Expressionist triptych that the guy had painted.  Onto it he'd
pasted random newspaper headlines.  
     While we were staring at it, trying to look knowledgeable,
some guy walked over, stood between us, and said, "So, whaddaya
think?"  I could see my fine arts housemate mouth the words "He's
the artist" to me, but I knew Ralph hadn't seen him.  The room was
oddly quiet and I could feel numerous dark, bloodshot eyes looking
at the three of us, waiting for the Gresge's pronouncement. Ralph
rubbed his chin and took his glasses off and said, way too loudly, 
"It looks like a hastily-completed compromise."
     Like a grenade there was a moment and then my artist housemate
began the laughter that was still going strong when we grabbed some
munchies and snuck out.

--baRANGus!