Tough Talk - 8.5

Hit this to Talk Tough Yourself or this for the current Tough Talk . Hit this for the first tough talkers, Tough Talk (1), or take the 'A' Train to Johnny's Lounge, Part Nine or to Part Eight or to Part Seven or to Part One or to Part Two. Maybe you want to look at The Jukebox or look down on the street or listen to some Table Talk or do some Table Talking Yourself

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I was home for the holidays and realized as I always do how important it was that I left there. We come together for a few days and I leave on the 27th or the 28th and return to the city to pack for New Year's in New Hamphire or Vermont or out West, whatever the current situation is. If I had stayed back there and never left, my life would be smaller and cramped. My life now is a form of emancipation where I am free to follow my impulses with no repercussions at all if I play it right. There's nothing wrong with living this way, I just couldn't ever do it back there.

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Shrewdness is overrated as a virtue. To me, shrewd men are like slicked smiling weasels and have no appeal whatsoever. They're repulsive, especially when they're tanned.

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MRF gives us a lowlife cartoon cliche and calls it sexy.

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To me they are sexier than very nice hotel rooms. A clean, downscale non-chain is best, owned by a trashy married couple, one with pink or blue neon over the office and extending in one line to the right and left, above all the doorways. A room with a window or two you can open.

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Rainy gray Saturday afternoon. It's odd to find the Tough Talkers of Johnny's Lounge focusing on Nathan Hale, stand-up guys, and other high forms of male behavior . . . in this place of posturing, corruption, brutality, leering, and lies, this place of no hope and low light.

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The greatest appellation for a man is "stand-up guy." Among the best men, this is the most admired quality, more than shrewdness, athletic skills, or cash in the bank.

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My girlfriend and I had a long lunch this afternoon, and near the end, after many glasses of wine, she proposed that we change "the terms of our relationship" to sex only. This is just one of the many things a woman will do when she wants to stir things up and force a crisis. It's a trap, of course. The moment you agree to it, she's outraged.

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Servan-Schreiber doesn't know that I was a frontiersman myself and gave long years of distinguished military service to England. I encountered Nathan Hale soon after escaping from American captivity. I did my job on him quickly, efficiently, and lethally. I was loyal to the Crown. Since then, I have come to suffer guilt for betraying his confidences, because Nathan Hale was only 21, a youth of promise. He had honor that was real. Now I place my confidence only in such men, regardless of their nationality.

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As a Free French fighter loyal to DeGaulle in WWII and as the longtime editor of Le Monde, I would say that Nathan Hale the American was a better man than Robert Rogers, the more urbane and experienced Englishman.

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The full story is only now being revealed about Nathan Hale's capture and execution one day later as a spy. When I met him, he was behind our lines on Long Island operating as a spy, after being the only American volunteer for the job. I remember him as tall, hearty, athletic, and confident. I gained his confidence by suggesting to him that we were both confederates, doing the same thing. My presence as a confederate of his was so strong that he told me everything. Then I led him into a trap and we captured him.

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We grind our knives sharp on the stones, and our women wear silver bracelets on their long, thin wrists.

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That's right, I'm queer. Do you have a problem with this? If you're interested in the Sabine women you must rent the delightful musical, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

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This is the true and full story of the Sabine Women.

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Roman Historian, you are low-quality and omit important details. It happened more like this.

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Yes, that's basically it. During the reign of Romulus, eary in the city's history, there was a shortage of women so the Romans invited the Sabines to visit. They took them to the Circus Maximus, where they abducted and raped all the women, then threw the husbands, boyfriends, and fathers out of town. Upon the return of these men, organized to fight, the Sabine women let it be known that they'd grown fond of the Roman men and didn't want them harmed. This story has gone out of favor in our time of heightened sensitivity to the plight of oppressed women. Several progressive historians have argued that it didn't happen this way, and that the true story of the Sabine women was covered up by male storytellers. The revisionist historians say that the Sabine women mounted a powerful resistance to the Roman rapists, killing many of the brutes and emasculating others, there in Circo Massimo for all to see.

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After a long crime spree full of thrills and cash to burn, I fled here to Capetown where I know I will not be captured.

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I don't know anything about history. What happened to the Sabine women? Did the Romans abduct and rape them, then, when the Sabine men came to the rescue, did the Sabine women intervene on behalf of the Roman men? Is that what happened?

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With one or two exceptions, Johnny's women from Part 1 to Part 8 are all the same. It's a parade of sameness with different names. This applies to the narrative also. I was curious after reading the article in Slate, but must say that I am very disappointed.

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I drive a Euro-Urbano around Manhattan, and in the smartest parts of town women come up to my window and squirm as they chat me up.

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"Good writing is precision work, and when the writing is also inspired it can rise to the level of art." That's what the review of Johnny's in last week's Slate said, and after looking at Johnny's for myself, I agree.

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American foreign policy is "We will blow your rughead ass up, and then we will put a bounty on that rughead." Surely as Americans we deserve better than this.

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I agree with Miranda Prospero. Film Noir Johnny's Tough Talk, which once crackled with life, is now a relentlessly humdrum spot bereft of imagination and barely breathing. What happened here? Who are these enervated people so full of pass-the-time-of-day cliches and banal musings?

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You can say what you want, but women develop an attachment to a man's car.

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Part of me is still in love with him and part of me is so glad it's over. Time and distance will do the job for me. It's not like this is the first time.

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I'm just in from work and heading out. Are all these men blind to the idea that we're not attracted to what they drive but to qualities we may find within the driving man?

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Man you ride on yo mama's black ass.

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I live in Manhattan and ride standing up on a Segway HT, a machine made with the precision of a Swiss watch or a Porsche and which costs only $5000. This attracts brainy women, not silicone-enhanced ones who look like strippers, the ones who are impressed by a Lexus or an Escalade or a Mercedes-Benz. This form of locomotion attracts a higher caliber of woman. Since I started riding this scooter it's been pussy galore. Memorable mornings, afternoons and nights of romance with women in linen skirts and snug white panties who talk about Umbria and the roots and barks in Campari.

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I live in Montana and don't own a car. Wherever I go it's on horseback, and I ride two different horses. One is a big American-style racehorse built exactly like Secretariat. The other one is a dappled gray Percheron warhorse I bought two years ago in Belgium. I ride the Percheron hard, and when we trot or canter or gallop into town the other riders make way, and so do all the cowboys in pickups and SUVs.

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That's right, Miranda, and on Saturday my money will be on Empire Maker and my heart with Funny Cide. One way to look at it is I can't lose. I go to the track almost daily, I make my living this way, and I have a bookie who deserves renown, who would be the toast of the town if somebody wrote a story about him for New York Magazine.

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This location has become consistently inane and operates at the drivel level. People here discuss the worth of commonplace observations. It's hillbillies, horserace people, one who does the perp walk, and admirers of Ric Flair.

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I love border ballads like "El Paso" and "In a Little Cafe" just the other side of the border. She belonged to Bad Man Jose. And when we started to dance in my arms she felt so inviting. I also love "Ode to Billie Joe" and "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia." Don't trust your soul to no backwoods southern lawyer.

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I agree with the West Viginia head about it. Two weeks ago I did the perp walk in front of the TV cameras and the reporters, escorted by several groups of uniformed officers who have seriousness of purpose in public. You could look at it like I was a disgrace for being charged and paraded around in cuffs and the orange jumpsuit, but you could also look at it as a triumph because I was articulate and composed before the cameras and made my case well. After that, the public have to be on the side of this perpson. They might as well drop the charges, because I am innocent.

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It's all in how you look at it. My grandfather often told me this when I was little. You can look at the same situation in all kinds of ways, so most often the shape anything takes is your own responsibility, not somebody else's.

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The script of the movie I'm writing begins mythically, with the beautiful fast car on the blacktop road and a man inside listening to "96 Tears" by ? and the Mysterians. He's dancing around in his seat and smoking and he's on a quest.

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Horse Man is in the dark. Empire Maker will be back for the Belmont Stakes, recovered from his hoof bruise, in his great glory, with all his racehorse power, and the world will finally see the most dominating horse of the past decade unleashed, unencumbered, and in action. He will win pulling away like a great machine. Good god! Look out!

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On Tuesday nite we watched the great Ric Flair, Nature Boy Ric Flair, the greatest wrestler of all time, Ric Flair, eventually lose the hard-fought battle to a much lesser man -- Triple H.

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When the Tango Boss grips me with firmness and takes me into his arms and begins to guide each move I make, to force me into ochos, I warm to him. My mouth parts, I squirm, I begin to feel the tingling sensations that I crave.

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Here over coffee, just after dawn, I have a powerful feel for the upcoming performance of Funny Cide in the Preakness. The New York gelding will win large, with Scrimshaw second but far behind, setting the stage for a dramatic runaway victory in the Belmont Stakes to join the other great winners of the triple crown. This is my vision as the fog breaks up, and it will happen as I predict.

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What have you concluded about Marc Antony? Focus your response on his attitudes, priorities, and on the inner conflicts (if any) you believe he struggles with. Comment on the following statement: "Cleopatra is essentially a self-absorbed sensualist who is motivated by an attraction to power and influence." Describe the methods used by Iago to influence Othello. What have you concluded about Iago's motives? What brings about the downfall of Othello?

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Horse Man is so attuned that he got nothing right.

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Hot Derby Picks: Ten Most Wanted (6-1) will win, Offlee Wild (30-1) to place, and Buddy Gil (8-1) to show. The prohibitive favorite at 6-5, Empire Maker, will come in maybe 6th at best. You can forget about Empire Maker in this race. No triple crown for Empire Maker, not a Derby win, not a Preakness win, not a Belmont win. I have horse-race gravitas, and gamblers from around the world seek me out for the highest-quality handicapping available to man. I maintain these powers because I am attuned to the animals, to horse energies, horse reserves, horse excitements, horse rhythms.

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Low riding is a way of life. My car is a fully restored '58 Chevrolet Bel Air hardtop with all original GM parts. I have extra-thick pneumatic shot-rods to pump it up. El mas chingon, mi chava. No chinges con migo.

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I got a boss named Ross I got a girl named Pearl I got a home like a dome and my table is unstable. Barahona Boca Chica Cape Engano Villa Blanca Puerto Plata boppa Hutu boppa hoodoo. Boppa Hutu boppa hoodoo. Low Morocco high Morocco sizzle-poppin' sound girls they got the shake-o when they do the walk around. Tattaglia Barzini Pomodoro Ciccio Clemenza Corleone fa-Firenze Julio. Milano Roma Napoli. Milano Roma Napoli. Mosulnazza kandahar kaboola timbuktu shababba poppa coppa mamma skyzza Katmandu. Moolah mulla backa jella bazza shappa kool parachutta chair-aparra hozni ta-tabool. Boppa Hutu boppa hoodoo. Boppa Hutu boppa hoodoo. Signifyin' monkey in a coconut tree, Mobutu Sese Seko takka shop-a-lahtee. Corcovado Ipanema bossa nova honeymoon p'ta-ta shaka-na-na la-la-mumba Congoloon. La-la-mumba Congoloon. La-la-mumba Congoloon. Ride around Rwanda with some Hutu at the wheel. Ride around Rwanda with some Hutu at the wheel.

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She's a reefer-headed woman.

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The greatest Shakespeare characters are Jaques in "As You Like It" and Hotspur in "Henry IV, Part I."

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I'm gonna light up, Jack. I think I'm gonna send myself. I'm the Queen of All Vipers, I mean I smoke my weed. Weed, weed, weed, all day long, love it good and strong. Dreams come from my weed, all day long, puts my heart at ease, in sweet dreams, oh how that tea sends me. Dreams come from my weed, all day long.

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Do any of these people have ordinary names?

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I out-bop the buzzard and the oriole.

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I'm wild for the Richard Ford story, "Great Falls." I'm also wild for the Dire Straits song, "Sultans of Swing."

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Ruffy Keats writes coffeehouse-sophomore incantations.

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April night in the forest deep, the sounds of many tree frogs, the silhouettes of the nightbirds, and an owl filling the thick and thin air. The bobcats and mountain lions are on the prowl.

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Outside the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, headquarters for the international press corps. Diehard snipers across the street, coming to the TV cameras and firing on American troops. Cameramen and reporters running after the Marines as they capture four of the shooters.

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Saddam's underground bunkers being entered and filmed. Orderly looting going on. Smiling, happy looters under the bright blue skies of Mosul and in the streets of Baghdad. Firefights popping and suicide bombers at checkpoints. Burning ministries. Doctors carrying semi-automatics and AK-47s guarding hospitals from looters. Mobs hacking two mullahs to death in the Imam Ali Mosque. Saddam and his cartoon thug regime off to Tikrit for the final battle, maybe, or maybe safe haven in Syria where some are reportedly showing up in the Mediterranean beach town of Shafaffa Sharif.

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Saddam at the end looking sort of drugged and slow, in the video from the streets of Baghdad, but going through the Saddam motions and trying to walk the walk. His favorite move is "Scarface," and it looks like he's going to go out like Tony Montana. His Minister of Information, Mohammad Saeed al-Sahaf, is saying that American troops and tanks are not in Baghdad and that the airport hasn't been taken. "It's an American movie trick," he's saying to the nation of Iraq.

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And when those cotton balls get rotten you can't pick very much cotton, in them old cotton fields back home.

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Saddam maybe alive, maybe dead. Puffed-up Iraqi military thugs giving briefings filled with conjured stories and wild lies, maps and pointers to make it official. Minister of Information and inner-circle henchman, Mohammad Saeed al-Sahaf, the rooster with the rimless glasses and the big asymmetrical Turk nose jutting out at three different angles. The oily Tariq Aziz. Video of the high-stepping Fedayeen in their black masks and black uniforms, sometimes white, now fighting from Toyota trucks like the technicals of Somalia. The grizzled and fierce Pesh Merga Kurds of the North who fight like the Mujahadin of Afghanistan. Chamchamal, Umm Q'asr, al-Mosul, Basra, Baghdad, and Razazza Lake.

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I cant stand Tobin Lime. Nobody gonna make me.

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King David tarried in Jerusalem, his city in a land of tribes and warfare. One morning he walked in the roof garden and beheld Bathsheba upon her roof, sunning the skin of her face and arms and looking out over the city. David inquired about Bathsheba, and he found that she was married and that Uriah the Hittite, a warrior, was her husband. First he summoned her to him, and he offered her wine and he began to caress her with the palm of his hand, and it came to pass that on that day they continued unto sin often and with recklessness of spirit and without dread of the Lord's might. On the third day, after he had placed new kisses upon Bathsheba's lips, King David commanded that Uriah the Hittite be sent to the front lines for certain death in battle.

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Discussing the power dynamic of romance is not sexy, but we are scientists and this is what we do. Women are compelled by specific thin filaments within their DNA and by the make-up of their Cro-Magnon limbic systems to squirm and make the sounds and gestures which stir men by reaching deep into the corners of their nervous systems. Since women are physically impressive but physically weaker, they will use their knowledge of this phenomenon to influence the outcome of events. Most of the time it is behavior that comes naturally and mindlessly to them.

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Islamic women wear the bahooz and have dignity. American women are desperate for sex-attention and show it all to any thug on the street, their hair, arms, mouths, calves, thighs, and assashabazz. America is the land of Naked Karaoke, Girls Gone Wild, Wal-Mart, office romance, Oprah life, weather hysteria, liposuction, duct tape, and rappers. Americans have nervous white teeth eager to please.

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I have a fondness for English Majors. They're basically useless, but I like them more than any other group. If they also know something about science they can be terrific.

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Ray Leonard, Roy Jones Jr., Cassius Clay, Thomas "Hit Man" Hearns The Motor City Cobra, Joe Louis, Hector Camacho, Shane Mosely, Alexis Arguello, Archie Moore, Oscar De La Hoya, Pernell "Sweet Pea" Whitaker, Fernando Vargas, Aaron Pryor, Felix Trinidad, Carlos Monzon, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Julio Cesar Chavez, Sugar Ray Robinson, Emile Griffith, Mike Tyson.

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Most of our social ills and afflictions, from serial killers to general neurosis, are rooted in systemo-ultracontrairo: living a mass rootless life instead of in a tribe, the natural social unit for cro-magnons.

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How tiresome. What a never-ending parade of limpwristed pontificators, pronouncers, and staters-of-the-obvious these Tough Talk people are.

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Rap videos are demonstrations of basic animal behavior understood intuitively by all.

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Ultima Thule (pronounced "too-lee") is the sacred northernmost point. Some believe Ultima Thule is an island at this northernmost point on the globe, yet "you can make wheat grow there and breed bees." Others say it's a place outside this world, "another world in the deep north where there are no law-courts." An imaginary north is hard-wired into the mythic consciousness of Russians, Celtic peoples, Western Europeans, Scandinavians, and it also exists within Northern American Indians and even within many Euro-Americans. In all versions of the story, you must row into the blue U. Thule Bay.

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The women flirt shamelessly, pressing their thighs against mine, their eyes shining. They squirm and quiver.

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To deep fry the turkey, you buy a 10-gallon King Kooker. You inject the turkey throughout with seasonings and marinade it overnight. For the injections you use a Grande Injector, which looks like a big hypodermic. The cooking is an outside job, and you'll need at least three gallons of peanut oil. Before suspending the bird in the boiling oil, you rub it hard with crushed pepper, salt, and more seasonings of your choice. Use only peanut oil, for the flavor and because peanut oil has the highest smoking-point. If a delicate one allergic to peanuts is present, this person can make a cheese sandwich. This is the best turkey ever prepared on earth.

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I read the October Harper's description of Film Noir Johnny's in their "New and Notable" column and got the address there. That's how I arrived here. This is simply world-class writing and worth every moment within the many hours I have spent exploring said American website. I want more people and places and stories re gangster bad!

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We didn't get to Film Noir Johnny's by mistake Girl we got the address and raced here with fast feet. We want Johnny to kiss us. We hear he has the finest superfine lips.

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Why does noone here have an ordinary name? Who are these people who send in this Tough Talk?

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I too discovered this site by accident, and like Billy Reuelle I have taken great pleasure reading it. My squeeze, who is very selective, reads it too, and she quotes it to me at appropriate moments. There can be no greater praise.

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Channy's rooph garden sounds like something on a Pottery Barn catalog cover or an illustration in your dizzy aunt's cozy book, and every woman is the same - they're all narcissists, and in addition to that they have no loyalty or they're darkly neurotic or both. Channy has distorted perceptions about women.

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I happened to come upon this site as I was doing a search on Google for something else. I have enjoyed reading about the adventures of Film Noir Johnny. I was a flyer in World War II and don't have much time left. Some fighter pilots and flyers of my generation have described an almost paralyzing fear that was overcome by adrenaline and the knowledge that you must do this. The possibility that I could be killed was in my mind, but as we were firing up the Corsair's mighty engine what I felt was more like glee.

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There may be some truth to what "Eye" says, but he does not know Islam's ancient heart and soul within himself, within his spirit, as we do.

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The recitation of the battle of Camerone is sacred to Legionnaires. I was in Djibouti and onscreen for more than 16 minutes in the prize-winning 1999 Legion movie, Beau Travail. I remember nights in the tarpaper juke-joints of Djibouti and the long Imam necks of the Ethiopian women who came there to dance.

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So what happened to the comments from Shad Roe, the ones that were in transit?

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As we have observed, the Islamic fanatic's way is to command the world stage, die spectacularly as he strikes, and then enter legend among his people. They are revered among their people, whose sensibilities are ancient yet here they are in the modern world.

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Bobby Darin was a great performer, and if he hadn't died at 37 he would have a place in American history greater than Elvis or Frank Sinatra.

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[Comments in transit via Globo-Nettini Italia, Pomodoro: Barzini%Zb:_Tattaglia%3intl*_Pentangeli**_Solozzo+%_Tessio_%Clemenza*#_Cicci]

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It's Sergio Leone in August.

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That's right, these are the rules.

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Johnny has Adirondack chairs in his roof garden and they are painted "lime neon green." Ha.

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Yamama's Tambien is a fun movie, but it's full of contrivance and it falls apart in the last fifteen minutes.

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Johnny has a monologue going in here.

Hit this to Talk Tough Yourself or this for Tough Talk (1) or this for Johnny's, Part Eight or hit this for the most recent Tough Talk (8)