HEY RON! CALL ME! They fixed the broken parts in my head!

Blackout
Copyright (c) 2003 by Ron Bizer, All Rights Reserved
Permanent Collection, Dwingeloo-2 Galactic Portrait Gallery
Hoon

Today's Wild Goose Chase, and Mother Of All Snipe Hunts, is me trying to find my Old Army Buddy Ron Bizer while he and his family gambol and cavort somewhere which is about a 4-hour drive from my town.

But where, exactly? And does he have a cellphone? And what is its Number?

No matter. I have today tardily replied to him by e-mail, left a message on his home phone in the USA state shaped like the palm of the right hand, and begun badgering and pestering nice strangers in the Poconos Mountains with bizzare phone calls trying to extrude help from them.

I will find Ron while he gambols in the Poconos. Resistance Is Futile. If necessary I will just drive down to the Poconos and stand in the middle of a big intersection at noon holding a huge sign:

PLEASE HELP ME FIND
MY ARMY BUDDY
RON BIZER!

Ron and I are the Last of the American Draftees. (Everybody's a Volunteer now. Dictionary definition 13.p. of "volunteer.")

Unlike young friends we knew, we both were lucky. We lived through our ghastly ridiculous useless Scoundrel War and returned to civilian life with all our body parts in working order, and have ever since enjoyed the pleasures, beauties and Good Things of civilian life, with our share of the usual hassles and duck-peckings.

I just haven't eyeballed the schlub in a few decades, and now I have the chance, and I will make it happen.

But maybe in an idle moment whilst on holiday, Ron is opening up a laptop and checking Vleeptron_Z. This ought to get his attention.

For Army Buddies purposes, I go by the alias Sergeant Joe Schlobodewski, every poor wife's husband's old Army Buddy who makes annual phone calls, usually on Veterans Day, often with the assistance of alcohol, and weirds out the kids.

Hey Ron! Hey Mrs. Ron! Hey Kids! It's Me, Joe Schlobodewski, your dad's old Army Buddy! Remember that time we? And what was that guy's name who used to? Wanna listen to my Vanilla Fudge LPs?

Meanwhile, back to Ron. Every time I publicly expose him with elements of his Artist Biography, he politely replies that I am getting Everything Wrong.

So suffice it to say -- with the Visual Aid reproduced above -- that he is quite a brilliant and original visual artist who began chiseling his name in Art Posterity at an astonishingly young age, with some screwy art that children all over Planet Earth absolutely adored, and old men still weep nostalgic about on the Internet.

I have in recent years contaminated his once-innocent æsthetic with my pathetic achievement in the visual arts, Postal Art, Mail Art, Art Stamps -- I didn't mean to, it was an accident -- and ever since, he has been sending me wonderful Faux Postage Stamps, like the above, previously undisplayed, but now part of the permanent collection of the Dwingeloo-2 Galactic Portrait Gallery.

RON!!!!! CALL ME!!!!!! I got the truck all gassed up and I got my sleeping bag and my tent! Or drive up here, like "National Lampoon's Summer Vacation"! You and the family can merrily wile away the hours playing

I love my love with an A because she's Apoplectic.
I love my love with a B because she's Apoplectic and Bulemic.
I love my love with a C because she's Apoplectic, Bulemic and Catatonic.
I love my love with a D because she's Apoplectic, Bulemic, Catatonic and Delirious.
I love my love with an E because she's Apoplectic, Bulemic, Catatonic, Delirious and Eccentric.
I love my love with an F because she's Apoplectic, Bulemic, Catatonic, Delirious, Eccentric and Flatulent.
I love my love with a G because she's Apoplectic, Bulemic, Catatonic, Delirious, Eccentric, Flatulent and Geriatric.

Want to add more? Have many more hours to kill driving down the Interstate? LEAVE A COMMENT. Or make a Faux Postage Stamp out of it and e-mail it to moi. Your Love can be a He or an It. No Zebra Love.

I first learned this traditional childhood and station-wagon game in the beautiful movie "Julia," with Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Fonda, Maximillian Schell (he got an Oscar I think) and, as Dashiell Hammett, Jason Robards Jr. It is about many things: Friendship, Childhood, the Terrible Dark Things that befell the people of poor Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, Love, Loss, Grieving, Courage, Resistance to Monstrous Evil, Leftie Politics, Mysterious and Frightening Train Travel. The screenplay was written by Alvin Sargent, from the true memoirs by the playwright Lillian Hellman. Rent it and watch it tonight.