I didn’t really want to accept Roscoe’s invitation for Cerise and me to party with him at Dick Cheney’s Undisclosed Location the night of Valentine’s Day. When I told Cerise, though, she seemed to be convinced that visiting a place that calls itself “the most exclusive Washington nightclub that’s not in Washington” would be fun.
“You’ve only taken me there once,” she reminded me, “and I’ve never had a chance to see the HUD Booty Call Pole Dancers.”
Well, that was true. I was a bit nonplussed, no doubt, to learn that my girlfriend was interested in seeing the house dance act, consisting, as it does, of buxom, nearly naked women cavorting on metal poles to rhythmic music which is thickly laced with synthetic sounds and nearly devoid of melody. I had heard that Condi Rice argued for a Chippendales-style male act to, as she put it, “balance the ticket,” and that George W. Bush had been, rather unexpectedly, an enthusiastic supporter of the proposal. Dick, however, put the kibosh on the idea because “It would probably draw a [expletive] load of queers, and I’ve had enough trouble managing George’s behavior around them already.”
“Okay,” I relented, “but instead of Valentine’s Day, why don’t I call Roscoe and tell him we’d rather meet him there the night before? That way, we can do something quiet and intimate on Thursday.”
Cerise agreed, and so did Roscoe, and so there we were, on what you could call Valentine’s Day Eve, yesterday at about nine p.m. It turned out that Exxon Mobil had booked the place for entertainment after a big, hush-hush, ultra-secret meeting they were having about their South American operations. That was no problem for Roscoe, however, since he owns a big chunk of Exxon Mobil stock – big enough so he and any guests he wants to bring are always welcome at Exxon Mobil shindigs, world wide, cloak-and-dagger or not.
And, of course, since the place was chock full of oil men, Dick Cheney himself was there, schmoozing and glad-handing, smiling like the cat that ate the canary in the coal mine. He even stopped by our table to say hello.
“Did you hear why Bob Gates couldn’t make it tonight?” Cheney’s eyes twinkled mischievously.
“Sure, Dick,” Roscoe played along, “I’ll bite! Why?”
“You know that ice storm last night? That dumb [expletive] was walking to a hearing on Capitol Hill, slipped, fell down and dislocated his shoulder! We were supposed to split the top-level [expletive]-kissing chores tonight, and now I have to do it all by myself!”
“Oh, Mr. Vice President,” Cerise cooed seductively, batting her big beautiful blue eyes, “I’m so thrilled to meet you! Could I have your autograph?”
Cheney was obviously delighted to receive some attention from a young, healthy and good looking woman instead of a worn out, sagging, lesbian incubating, Holstein wrinkle bag like Lynne. Further grousing about the inability of our august Secretary of Defense to negotiate an ice covered sidewalk more successfully than a four-year old child was obviously out of the question as Cerise pulled her autograph book from her purse and handed it to Cheney along with a Montblanc pen I gave her for Christmas a couple of years ago. “Make sure you stick around for the floor show finale,” Cheney proudly admonished us as he inscribed his John Hancock with an exaggerated flourish, “I’m in it!”
So we did. There were drinks and dinner first, of course, and the floor was open for about an hour after that, as an Air Force dance band provided some salsa and standards for the crowd. At eleven on the dot, the band concluded their last number, a dozen shiny metal poles descended from the ceiling, and the HUD Booty Call Pole Dancers took over for a ninety minute grind, during which, I will admit, all three of us got pretty lit up on four or five bottles of Cristal Brut.
Intensely curious to hear Cerise’s reaction, I inquired, “So what do you think, dear?” Wildly applauding, Cerise turned to reply as the BCPD’s tossed off a show-stopping coda.
“I think that, at last, I finally got to see my tax dollars at work!”
So, Dear Reader, the next time somebody flatly states that no woman would want to watch other women in thong bikinis do improbable things on metal poles while gyrating to thumping Technodisc vibrations, tell them Tom Collins saw to it that you know better. As promised, the show went on, too. While the BCPD’s were doing their unnatural acts out on the dance floor, another band had been setting up behind the stage curtain, and when it went up, there stood The Mighty Chickadee and all sixteen members of The Mighty Chickadee Calypso Androgyne and Esso Steel Band.
Now, an “Esso Steel Band” is actually the type of band that comes to mind when the subject of Calypso music is mentioned – “steel bands” in general feature musical percussion instruments made from steel oil barrels, and I would imagine that nearly everyone recognizes the distinctive tone color those instruments produce, and associates that sound with Calypso music. The “Esso” part really just amounts to saying “classic,” “genuine” or “authentic,” since the very first such Calypso bands preferred instruments made from Esso oil barrels. Those unfamiliar with the history of the petroleum industry may not know, however, that Exxon, the forerunner of Exxon Mobil, used to be called “Eastern States Standard Oil,” or E.S.S.O. Back in the days of Ethyl High Test gasoline, unfiltered Lucky Strike cigarettes and beehive hairdos, Americas drove their Buick Roadmasters to Esso Service Stations, where, as incredible as it might sound today, a fellow wearing an Esso uniform pumped your gas, washed your windshield, read your engine oil dipstick, checked your dynaflow automatic transmission fluid level and topped off the air in your tires to the correct pressure – all free of charge, even if you only bought a dollar’s worth of Esso gasoline, which, by the way, at prices around the legendary 29.9, usually amounted to about three gallons of the stuff. Now, if you’re an American, I’m going to risk ruining your day by reminding you that inflation has sucked so bad since that halcyon time, when adjusted for it, gasoline costs about the same in 2008 as it did then, when you could buy a complete prime steak dinner with decent cocktails and dessert for five bucks instead of fifty. And, considering the fact that there’s nobody at the Exxon station these days but a clueless third-world immigrant who won’t even come out of the bullet-proof booth to do something about the nightmarish mess you found in the rest room, I’d say it’s obvious, even adjusted for inflation, we simply don’t get our money’s worth anymore. And that’s what they’ve been calling progress for the last three and a half decades or so; since Esso changed its name to Exxon in 1971.
They made the change because their public relations department discovered that “esso” had a large number of “negative meanings and semantic connotations” in languages other than English. These ranged from the risqué but amusing “[village water] pump slut” in the Jekavian-Shtokavian dialect spoken in northeast Montenegro, through the frankly disgusting “suppurating carbuncle” in Chilean Indian West Mapuche, to the incomprehensible, yet nevertheless oddly disturbing “[he who] licks straw donkey ears” in Central Mountain Hainan Cantonese.
So Esso spent eleven million dollars (in 1971, when a million dollars was a serious amount of money and not, as it is today, simply the sum an upper-middle class professional couple might pay for a house in Potomac, Maryland) finding a new name that would, demonstrably, not offend anybody, anywhere, in any language. The moment of triumph arrived when a guy in a lab coat emerged from the laboratory with the stupendous news that the research team had discovered that the double-X pattern occurred in only one language on Earth – Maltese – and only in a word that roughly translates as “supreme virtuoso of apiary husbandry,” or “honest green-grocer,” depending on how one pronounces the double X’s. So “Exxon” was born, and, two years and another one hundred and twenty five million 1971 dollars later, the name change was complete.
The change did not, however, extend to the names of the many and varied Esso steel bands, every one of which stuck with “Esso.” Not a single, sole, lone “Exxon steel band” ever appeared, anywhere. That’s because, while they may be radical and wild in matters of politics, economics, social conventions, clothing, sex and intoxicants, it is a simple matter of fact that musicians, regardless of what kind you’re talking about, are all, universally and without exception, extremely conservative about one particular thing – music. Not that The Mighty Chickadee Calypso Androgyne and Esso Steel Band has been around since Paul Hume panned Margaret Truman’s caterwauling; no, quite to the contrary – they only released their sophomore album last year, and I doubt there’s anybody in the group who’s over thirty. So, presumably, none of them ever lived in a time when “Esso” meant anything other than “the best steel drums money can buy;” although I have heard that “esso” does mean something rather naughty in Mandingo, the Trinidadian Yoruba Creole dialect of English in which Calypso is traditionally performed. Maybe that’s the real reason they are so fond of the name.
The Mighty Chickadee, no matter what gender the Mighty Chickadee might be (and far be it from me to attempt a guess), cuts an imposing figure, exudes an exotic, extremely potent, slightly menacing charisma and sings Calypso as well, or perhaps slightly better than Harry Belafonte. The Mighty Chickadee’s Esso Steel Band is likewise remarkably formidable, exhibiting an impressive musical mastery that encompasses reggae, ska, soca, junkanoo, son-batá, tambú, jing-ping, bélé, dub-rara, Niyabinghi, zouk, pichakaaree, rapso, Chut-Kai-pang, extempo, yahdees, kont, plena, gwo ka, kandans, seú, goombay and ringbang as well as all the traditional Calypso styles.
Suffice it to say, it was less than a minute before the dance floor was jammed with jumping Exxon Mobil executives and Bush Administration petroleum industry lackeys, all moving to a truly irresistible beat. Blue-blooded, inbred Mayflower New England trust-fund twits directly related to Henry Cabot Lodge, bona fide redneck, pink-faced West Texas honkies and tenth-generation lily-white Mississippi iron lacework Spanish Moss plantation-house crackers who, five minutes earlier, had never danced a step in their entire lives, were out there shaking their Ton-Ton gully roots and callabaka breadfruit puddings like rum-crazed, lust-maddened barefoot Caribbean piabas celebrating the sugar harvest. And yeah, Cerise, Roscoe and I were out there, too – I just couldn’t stop my body from going bananas to the beat. I swear, it was like we were all zombies, completely in the Mighty Chickadee’s throbbing, hypnotic thrall.
That went on for about an hour. Then the Mighty Chickadee gave Dick Cheney a rousing introduction and the crowd went completely nuts as he walked out on stage.
“In honor of this occasion, I’ve written a Calypso number,” Cheney proclaimed. “Those of you who have heard that famous hit, ‘Matilda’ will know how it goes immediately, but if you haven’t, just listen to it a bit and you’ll catch on right away.”
With that, the Mighty Chickadee did a quick count off and the band launched into Dick’s song, which the Mighty Chickadee performed while Dick directed the audience responses:
Hugo Chavez! Hugo Chavez!
Hugo Chavez, he’s a fat little Commie and he runs Venezuela.
I say it again!
Hugo Chavez! Hugo Chavez!
Hugo Chavez, he’s a fat little Commie and he runs Venezuela.
Billions of dollars Exxon lost:
Mobil cannot pay the cost –
Hugo Chavez, he’s fat little Commie and he runs Venezuela.
Sing along with me!
(Hugo Chavez!) Sing out the chorus!
(Hugo Chavez!) Now sing it out louder!
Hugo Chavez, he’s a fat little Commie and he runs Venezuela.
Once again please!
(Hugo Chavez!) Kissy-huggin’ Castro –
(Hugo Chavez!) And a Kennedy named Joe!
Hugo Chavez, he’s a fat little Commie and he runs Venezuela.
In the Orinoco Belt,
A big double deal he dealt,
Hugo Chavez, he’s a fat little Commie and he runs Venezuela.
Everybody!
(Hugo Chavez!) It’s beyond belief –
(Hugo Chavez!) He’s a common thief!
(Hugo Chavez, he’s a fat little Commie and he runs Venezuela.)
Gimme ‘nother time!
(Hugo Chavez!) Let’s make him do the limbo!
(Hugo Chavez!) On a water board at Gitmo!
(Hugo Chavez, he’s a fat little Commie he runs Venezuela!)
All that oil stays in the ground
While Chavez fools around.
Don’t you know, that crazy Hugo
He take all the Orinoco?
Everybody sing again!
(Hugo Chavez!) This ill-advised expropriation –
(Hugo Chavez!) Will mean his total annihilation!
(Hugo Chavez, he’s a fat little Commie and he runs Venezuela!)
Come on, let’s have some more!
(Hugo Chavez!) Hooma locka chimbo!
(Hugo Chavez!) Naomi Campbell is a bimbo!
(Hugo Chavez, he’s a fat little Commie and he runs Venezuela!)
Let me hear all the SUV Drivers!
(Hugo Chavez!) Down at the Citgo service station –
(Hugo Chavez!) He’s rippin’ off our entire nation!
(Hugo Chavez, he’s a fat little Commie and he runs Venezuela!)
Now all the airline riders!
(Hugo Chavez!) Let’s make him a frequent flyer –
(Hugo Chavez!) Into explosive missile fire!
(Hugo Chavez, he’s a fat little Commie and he runs Venezuela!)
Exxon Mobil say “Never again!”
See all that they did in vain?
For it they got nothin’ to show
So I say that Hugo’s got to go!
Hey, come on now!
(Hugo Chavez) It’s true without no doubt –
(Hugo Chavez) Got to toss the Red Menace out!
Hugo Chavez, he’s a fat little Commie and he runs Venezuela.
Now the people with oil heat!
(Hugo Chavez!) Just listen to that bastard scoff!
(Hugo Chavez!) While he’s freezin’ our assets off!
(Hugo Chavez, he’s a fat little Commie and he runs Venezuela!)
Now the Exxon Mobil stockholders!
(Hugo Chavez!) Oom, ba-locka-chimba!
(Hugo Chavez!) String him up in Tulsa!
(Hugo Chavez, he’s a fat little Commie and he runs Venezuela!)
Hey, sing a little softer!
(Hugo Chavez!) Tell about the bad man!
(Hugo Chavez!) Stop the Marxist mad man!
(Hugo Chavez, he’s a fat little Commie and he runs Venezuela!)
Everybody!
(Hugo Chavez!) You got to sing out the chorus!
(Hugo Chavez!) So he can hear it in Caracas!
Hugo Chavez, he’s a fat little Commie and he runs Venezuela!
As might be expected, Dick’s novelty number ended with utterly tumultuous cheering and applause, during which I turned to Roscoe and yelled “Fantastic! It’s like a Calypso musical version of ‘There Will Be Blood!’”
I guess Roscoe couldn’t hear my entire comment over that deafening din, though, because all he said in reply was “Damn right! And plenty of it!”