In case you haven’t already heard, I must with heavy heart relay to you the sad news that Segway company owner James Heselden rolled off a cliff on his Segway and died yesterday in London.  He is not to be confused with the Segway’s creator and original company owner Dean Kamen.  Naturally the ‘net is already splitting at the seams with wisecracks (“maybe he was showing the post office that Segways can be used for air mail”). Even prior to this tragic event Youtube already featured a plethora of home vids depicting “Segway dorks,” “Segway nerds,” etc, etc. 

James Dean behind the wheel of his Porsche racecar. He died in a crash on the way to a race on September 30, 1955.

Well, I’m here to flip this thing upright and tell you that dying on a Segway doesn’t make Mr. Heselden lame, it makes him a motherfucking badass.  So you can run and tell that, homeboy.  You heard me.  Don’t believe it? I share as proof some private cell phone footage of my one and only Segway ride, a tour with friends through DC on April 29, 2007. Perhaps if you’ve got the guts you too will take command of a Segway someday and feel its gyroscopic power rumbling beneath your feet — unless of course you’re too chicken.

[Photos via telegraph.co.uk and theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com.  Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf.]

WHAT:  Material v. Memory, A Walk Through 11 Perishable Events 

WHEN: Tuesday 9/28/10 at 6:34pm sharp (early start due to loss of sunlight; this is an outdoor event)

WHERE:  UPenn’s Kelly Writers House in the Arts Cafe; 3805 Locust Walk, Philadelphia,  PA 

COST:  This event is free and open to the public; no reservations required

You will be taken on a short and lovely evening walk across UPenn’s beautiful campus, stopping along the way to see site-specific performances 3-5 minutes long. I have written and will be performing “Dream Me Up a Bartender” in an old trolley car, a darkly comic monologue about fear, fathers, drinking and the meaning of nightmares.   In keeping with the event’s theme all pieces will be performed one time and one time only, then they’re gone forever with the sinking sun.

Sanford girl hospitalized after reported bullying on school bus

James Willie Jones defended his daughter who suffers from cerebral palsy

Florida - “Deputies said that on the morning of Sept. 3, Jones boarded the school bus headed to Greenwood Lakes Middle School in Sanford because several boys on the bus were allegedly bullying his daughter.  Jones told deputies the boys had placed an open condom on his daughter’s head, smacked her on the back of the head, twisted her ear and shouted rude comments at her, the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office report shows.  He told deputies he has complained to school administrators in the past, but nothing had been done about the alleged attacks on his daughter.”

There goes my hero
Watch him as he goes
There goes my hero
He’s ordinary

CONT’D AT ORLANDO SENTINEL>>

[photo via Orlando Sentinel; lyrics from Dave Groll]

I was thrilled to return to the verdant and lonely shadowland that is the New Jersey Pine Barrens for Labor Day weekend. Three days a’campin’ in the sasquatch-infested Bass River State Forest where I went a’hikin’ and a’fishin’. I kept a big pickerel and threw back a coupla baby cats along the squatchy shores of Lake Absegami.  No cryptids — neither a squatch nor his winged cousin the Jersey Devil (pictured right) — reared their ugly heads, and I searched in earnest, including a night walk around the lake and some daytime recon along the Barrens’ many isolated footpaths for my next visit.  Bigfoot had given me the brush-off, but I did find some sasquatch scat on the Batona Trail. Or was it a load of horse shit? I never can tell.     

More to the point, summer ended with a lovely weekend outdoors.  

Some visual foreshadowing above Lake Absegami. The cloud fish foretold of my...

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...reeling in a keeper moments later.

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*[photos via coasttocoastam.com, cryptomundo.com, and me]

My friend John tossed me this book to review for monthly arts and politics journal The Brooklyn Rail about one of the 20th century’s first women playwrights, crime reporter turned dramatist Maurine Watkins, author of Chicago, which was a biting, satirical straight play long before it was a Kander, Ebb & Fosse musical.  Enjoy the review, or, more importantly, enjoy the book.

Douglas Perry
The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired ‘Chicago’
(Viking, 2010)

Close on the heels of Deborah Blum’s The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York (Penguin, 2010), comes Douglas Perry’s true crime history The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago, which turned out to be a welcome companion piece.

The former is a dissection of New York City’s use and rapid improvement of nascent forensic medical techniques during the Prohibition era.  Murder after murder is lovingly recreated—especially those involving poisons—and then deconstructed by über CSI experts. The latter book takes us to Prohibition-era Chi-town, where the weapon of choice wasn’t poison but pistols, and the bad guys were bad gals.    **MY FULL REVIEW CONT’D AT THE BROOKLYN RAIL>>

See?  I told you sasquatches are real.  I’ve known this ever since two friends and I had a Class B encounter with one a few summers ago in the Blue Ridge Mountains while sitting out late to watch the Perseid meteor shower.  Now finally there’s proof in what’s being called the McKenzie River video (you can watch the whole thing here).  The mysterious “McKenzie River figure” is most certainly a Bigfoot, this is indisputable. I’ve done my own thorough velocitogigantoanalysis (I slowed it down and zoomed in) and can confirm as much:

On second thought, I see a senior citizen day hiker (there are lots of ‘em, folks) with a cane wearing a yellow or khaki colored cap walking on a path along the riverbank.  Rats.

(Absurd how if two humans go by in a boat the Bigfoot community can’t first assume that a third figure enjoying the scenery from the shore might also be a human.  This is a well-traveled area with, yes, paths.  It might not be Grand Central Station but it’s a well-traveled area.)