Am I Crazy or is it Hot in Here?
By Celluloid Junkie

Greetings and salivations, from your corpulent captain of clichés: C. J.
My goodness! Has another month gone by already? Jesus, I guess it's true what "they" say about time speeding up progressively as one ages. I have no movies to review for this month's offering because I haven't seen any worth talking about, except for ones you're probably already sick of hearing about, so I'll spare you that redundancy. I will say that I've been waiting excitedly for an entire year since I first read the details of Todd Solondz's new opus, Storytelling, which is being released nationwide today. But who the hell knows when this backwater will get to see it (one may have to venture to the St. Pete art house theater to catch it, but keep your eyes open)? Anyhoo. What's new in your world? I've recently reconnected with a long lost friend from my past with whom I haven't spoken (and still haven't - e-mail only so far) in over 15 years. After getting the abridged e-mail version of the last 15 years of his life, I can say happily that it appears there are still plenty of devotees to the anti-career out there!
As for my long lost bud ... well, he's been a dedicated musician and the leader of various bands since high school and is still rocking HARD. This guy is literally a musical (among other disciplines) genius. He taught himself to play blues harp after reading one "how to" book by Tony Glover. Not one lesson. If you've ever tried to play the harp you know how amazing a feat that truly was. He and I used to be in the "gifted" program together back in elementary and middle school. I was always one of the dumber kids in those classes, as I've always managed to wield my verbosity in overcompensation for my modicum of virtuosity. It's funny because in a room of average people I can play the "smart guy" pretty convincingly, but as soon as I venture among really bright people, they see right through my bullshit and I start to feel as uncomfortable as Shaquille O'Neal attempting to spell a two-syllable word. I've always known there's a latent "mo-ron" lurking in those gray, gelatinous folds just below the charged surfaces of my neural pathways. Just a few more years of television and I may be able to bring him out for good!
Being too hyperconscious of my cerebral limitations has definitely been a difficult thing to deal with at times. However, it's not all bad living on the intellectual rung just above mediocrity, and this is where I'm inserting my tenuous transition to the topic I really intended to write about. Here it is: Since I'm not a genius, and "they" tend to say all that stuff about the fine line between genius and insanity, I'll probably never become a schizophrenic! There you go! What a segue! I know, you're saying: "What the hell is he talking about now?" Well, I'll tell you what "he's" talking about. He's talking about growing up being a slave boy, he's talking about learning how to give head when you're five years old ... oops, sometimes I get carried away listening to those Butthole Surfers. Actually, it's about a man named Rich Couri. Now, I know that name probably doesn't mean anything to you, but if you asked any of the denizens of Brookline in Pittsburgh they could tell you exactly who he was. You see, in my old neighborhood we had a plethora of personalities that fit into that special category of "touched" people (as my Grandma called them) and Rich Couri was Elvis among that group. He was a bonafide superstar. Especially to the guys in my crew.
Rich was so unique that he's the untapped inspiration for a character in a screenplay that has yet to be written. Physically, he was thin and short with sharp features. He had a very Mediterranean/Southern Italian look, complete with the Roman nose and chin. If you looked up "swarthy" in a dictionary, guess whose picture you'd see? Rich wore his hair shorn like an Auschwitz prisoner and always had a heavy five o'clock shadow (thicker than the hair on his head) which accentuated dark eyes sunken beneath a prominent brow, bushy black eyebrows and cheekbones. If you didn't know about his harmless nature he could be quite scary. He was infamous for his poor choice in fashion, for reasons of both practicality and taste. In the winter, during the coldest months, Rich would walk for miles and miles wearing nothing but thin, ill-fitting women's dresses that were 10 years out of style, or cut-off shirts and cut-off jeans - often barefoot or just wearing women's summer sandals. In the sweltering summers, when temperatures hovered in the mid to high-90s, he hit the streets in heavy winter wear complete with ski caps, heavy coats, gloves and galoshes. Often times he could be seen sitting on top of the large stone edifices which housed aluminum garbage receptacles and sported signs bearing insipid phrases like, "Keep America's Number One City Clean."
My favorite Rich Couri story (everybody in the neighborhood had at least one) happened just before I moved to Florida. One chilly February night, I encountered him in the local Laundromat while waiting for my clothes to dry. Rich walked right into the place and proceeded to the nearest available washing machine and "dropped trau" to expose a filthy pair of baggy skivvies. The man literally took off his grease and grime-coated jeans (which were accentuated by a half-inch-thick steel chain "belt" that wasn't even connected in the front but merely strung through the belt loops) and threw them right into the machine like it was the normal procedure for anyone doing laundry. Now, in the smorgasbord of legend and myth that was passed on to me about this guy from various neighborhood people, I knew of more than a few unconfirmed stories of sexual advances toward young men, but I honestly never bothered to even think of that at the time because I was so thoroughly engaged in the humor of the moment. He put the pants and chain into the machine and started it up without any detergent, put in his quarters, and started the wash cycle. His ensemble that day was completed by a lovely, long sleeved, fleece sweatshirt of an indiscernible pastel color bearing a badly peeling iron-on picture of Erik Estrada, a pair of holy tube socks that may have been white at some point, and a worn out pair of docksiders. The Laundromat was a tiny place with a folding table and chairs near the entrance and several modular, blue plastic bucket seats facing the room along the front picture window as the only other seating option. The bucket seats were horribly uncomfortable for my ample ass so I was sitting at the table on a folding chair reading the out of date magazines and newspapers. Rich came right on over and sat directly across from me in one of the other chairs, and then the important part begins:
"Hey Rich, how ya doin' man?" I ask.
"Do you remember me?" I continue.
I had spoken with him at least two other times at ungodly A.M. hours in the company of my drunken high school crew, as we engaged him playfully in that irritatingly common way excited teenagers do before they learn the practice of self-restraint and get over the novelty of being out alone at night with friends and a car. I remember vaguely one night when Rich crooned "Blue Suede Shoes" after a few minutes of our pleading and false compliments, added to a handful of cigarettes as a bribe.
"We met you that one time down by the community center. Remember?"
Rich still doesn't respond. It seems that he has grown more wary; perhaps this younger generation of school kids has done worse than molesting him verbally? He appears to have the spotty purple/yellow remains of a black eye on the left side of his face. At this close distance I realize how dirty and frail he really is. His swarthiness and "tan" is completely washable. I also notice that he has no more than two or three remaining teeth. It's impossible to guess his age from appearance since he could be a young-looking really old person or a really old-looking young person. I attempt another peaceful, friendly opening:
"Hey Rich, my name's Tom. You know me. I live right across the street above the bakery. I see you sitting over on the cans by CoGos sometimes. I'm you're friend, man. Remember that night you were singin' the Elvis songs?"
His eyes register recognition at this point. The bushy brow relaxes.
I immediately see him in a different light. It's a life-changing, epiphany-esque type of moment. The feeling I'm getting is almost like the affection you'd feel towards a withered, elderly relative. His story changed for me at that moment from spectacle to miracle.
"You know, it's like 40 degrees out there. Don't you get cold?"
"Nah, I'm strong. I walk all day, all night. I'm tough. Whatcha readin' there?" He asks in a voice that's equal parts Dustin Hoffman's Charlie Babbitt and Harvey Keitel.
"These are just some old magazines. You wanna read one?"
"Nah. I don't like to read"
I wonder if he knows how.
"Hey Rich. You like movies? What's your favorite movie? Have you seen Goodfellas yet? It's fuckin' great, man. A Masterpiece."
Apparently, this proved to be the wrong question for me to ask. Our connection was lost as quickly as it was made. This is all he said, repeatedly, for the rest of our visit:
"Abbott and Costello Meet The Werewolf and Frankenstein. Abbott says to Costello 'What's that? Are you bleeding?' 'Ketchup, 10 cents a bottle.' Ha, ha, ha. Ha."
He repeated this for the next 15 minutes or so, then became silent and pensive. After about 20 minutes he got up and took his wet pants and belt out of the washer, put them on while still wet, and walked out into the night. I tried to give him money but he wouldn't even look at it. He never said goodbye. I suddenly had a need to learn more about him. No one that I knew ever seemed to know any real details about the earlier part of his life other than that he had been "that way" for as long they remembered. He did actually live in a home even at that time (which he went to for sleeping) with a retired man who was his guardian. Obviously the old guy who owned the house completely neglected keeping track of him and seemed more interested in collecting the monthly check than anything else. As of this writing he hasn't been seen in over eight years and is most likely dead. The bit deeper story that I gleaned from the few older people who spoke of him in the neighborhood was that Rich was a Viet Nam veteran who returned from service and settled down to family life, complete with a wife, a baby and a mortgage. At some point shortly after his return, Rich started to have serious problems and eventually ended up divorced and in an institution.
I remember seeing at least a few of these types of people in downtown Tampa when I first moved here back in the late '80s. I started thinking about Rich Couri recently because I've noticed there don't seem to be any of these "regulars" around anymore. Where have they gone? Recent news stories have proven the indigent mentally ill certainly don't get free hospitalization anymore, so where have they gone? I think the answer may be that in the good old days, people were more tolerant of these characters on the streets, and even tried to help them from time to time with a handout of food or money. My guess is that most of them are in the penal system.
Treatment facilities don't get paid for with public dollars, but we can sure build jails for 'em, can't we? Have we really stopped caring about these people? Yes, many of us have. And I know when it happened. I personally stopped noticing somewhere between reading for the umpteenth time about how much money "one-legged Larry" was making in the panhandle game while remaining on disability and living in his very own house, and the 50th time I saw the HardCopy expose about the 15-year-old New York runaways who were earning up to $300 a day on the subways. Eventually, sensory overload kicks in and the result is one of the more common American ways: Apathy.