Friday, Jun. 20, 2003 - 3:24 pm
Um... I'm sorry.
This relationship just isn't working for me.
I'm at www.dailypreciousness.org now. So change that bookmark.
A monkeypox upon your house!
He never lived to see the new Harry Potter book come out. But I did. I outlived the miserable old fu(k. I spit on his grave, like I used to spit on his truck... whenever he'd double-park it in the lot behind the coffee shop. Damned flashy-@ssed jerk.
Don't believe the media hype. Gregory Peck was no saint. He was just another Joe who happened to have good hair and a lantern jaw.
Did you ever hear the one about Peck going into the bar? No? Well, you’re about to.
Well, It was around 9 p.m. on a stormy Tuesday night here in D.C. Gregory Peck peeped into this smoky, nearly deserted strip bar, Zigfield's, and asked, "You open?"
"US OPEN!" yelled the half-deaf bartender, who was about as intellectual as Dr. Frankenstein's monster, despite the fact that his gym-chisled form obviously required some knowledge of anatomy and body building.
David Brinkley sat there, bitter and enfeebled as a can of tumeric flavored Geritol. He took another sip of his beer. He was probably reaching his limit for that evening. (He was never happy about the choices in his life... and the choice to sequester himself away in a crumby strip club in a burned-out section of Washington probably wasn't helping matters. Brinkley was wiped. The bartender should’ve cut him off long before. But fame has its perks.
Slurring his words, Brinkley trumpeted, in his best Spanish, "Hoy es el dia del padre!" This was apropos of nothing. Perhaps this was an inside joke between the two men.
Peck was a hulk of a man – an absolute hulk. He lumbered in, with the swagger and spunk of a young David Beckham. He was an absolute wreck, though.
It's a pity; he was never the same after the horse-racing incident. I think that whole affair made him a little loco or something.
It wasn't pretty... he would just ramble on and on. He never made much sense. He wanted to harm people because he never felt his sense of humor could measure up with other people's. The guy genuinely wanted to harm people that had a sense of humor. He called it wanting to commit "funny cide" or something like that.
Weird.
I think losing big on that horse race was difficult for him to accept. That and the whole ballet slipper fiasco. (But don't get me started on that....)
Poor guy... he'd go on and on about "funny cide" and there wasn't a thing you could do to shut him up. Except maybe buy him another drink.
It was during his last relatively healthy days -- sometime in January 2003 -- when he started having a weird psychic thing.
He would shout "A monkeypox on your house!" It was strange, because the whole monkeypox phenomenon didn’t take place until the last few weeks and days of his life. It was like he KNEW it was going to happen. And he wanted to curse the rest of us for outliving him. That gnarled old tree root of a man! Well, I had to respect him, because he gave the best pedis of all of my washed-out movie star friends. He even gave them to Brinkley before things grew sour between them. That night -- the last time I saw them together -- was when I heard Brinkley's cryptic reference to father’s day. I knew it had something to do with the Belmont Stakes affair. After that, things between them were never the same.
Peck was a lady's man. He never had time just to hang with me and Brinkley. Except when either Brinkley or I had scored a ounce. When you had that, he was your best friend in the whole world. Man, the guy was like a conversational firework when we would light those things up. After a few tokes of the silly smoke, he'd be telling stories like you wouldn't believe. He would devour an entire bag of cheetos in one sitting. And he had the big, hand-wiped T-shirt stain to prove it. Yep, he wore them like orange badge of courage.
Idiot.
I miss him, though. It's funny missing somebody after they're gone. After you've mourned him and said your goodbyes. Now, he's just a big empty space. And the petty strains and stains that kept you at arms' length -- like Peck and Brinkley kept each other apart -- those things just don't matter so much anymore. And the only thing you miss are the good parts. And the negatives are just an insignificant echo in the distance. Now I just think of his charisma... his cheerful outlook, the way he ate, peckish and bird-like and the way he always bet against the odds.
The times he owed me big for a horse that came in last... I just have to laugh and drink a few pints to him. But the good times really stand out.
Like for example... (and I told him this) He was the only man I ever knew that didn't look ridiculous in chaps. He was the only guy who could seriously hold his own opposite of Audrey Hepburn or Ingrid Bergman. (I mean, come on, who else has the gravitas for that?!?)
Well, here's another $2 bet for you, buddy! I'll put a double on "Funny Cide" for you!
