Catlin, Alan

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OK so we paint a picture leaving out scars and warts —I've heard worse from a preacher. Hell, used cars are one of the arts.—  Harold Witt Orinda CATHE DRESSERHe's a tall Steve Martin look alike contest winner with an advanced case of eczema and bad taste checking out the K-Mart clothes rack. "Too much, everything's too much here." He says to his frau who is wearing a house coat left over from the Crimean War and a pair of pants combining colors not natural to the spectrum as we know it now. "Why do you always drag me to these expensive places? You know how I like to shop. Five bucks is an awful lot to pay for a flannel shirt." Which is just about what you'd expect from a guy with unmatched shoes, olive polyester slacks, plaid sports coat a half size too small and a striped shirt made by someone with a raging hangover and a blindman's sense of color.THE VILLAGE IDIOTHe's forty years old going on nine mentally, still living at home with his mom, is the last of a dying breed and proud of it: a Grade OneState employee. Says, "Only one87Grade One been working longer than I have." There isn't a Civil Service test invented yet he could pass or a bad bet he wouldn't take: "I'll give youHolmes two to one, he loses for a buck." "Against Tex Cobb? Tex Cobb is a large warm body with a won and loss record, Holmes is the undefeated Heavyweight Champion of the World.""Make it three to one." Likes his seven and sevens: "Light on the ice,heavy on the booze, light on the Seven Up. I'm paying for the booze, not the soda." After two he's like talking to a mental sieve, the black holes in a hard stone wall. After three he starts spending his Lotto Money Grand Prize he'll never collect, has a warm tropic island and a Sony TV on the beach where he's watching the mergence of the two other world football leagues, the Assyrians slaughtering the US of A in a new kind of bloody terrorist attack Olympics in LA.BETTING FOOTBALL WITH THE VILLAGE IDIOTHe says, "Take the Giants and ten, you can't lose." "Who they playing?"I say. "Oakland." "There's no team in Oakland anymore." "Just take the points. It doesn't matter where they're playing." "That’s what you said last week about Cincinnati and they lost by 27 points." "It was a fix.""How do you know this one isn't a fix?""The Giants have nothing to lose.""The Giants have had nothing to lose for twenty years." "That's what I mean."I took the Raiders with the points.They won by 17. I haven't lost a heavy bet all season. My bookie wants to know where I get all this hot inside information. I'm not telling, why the hell should I share a valuable natural resource with some low life bookie?88

The Village Idiot

https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/wormwood/wormwood_a1985v25n3i99/wormwood_a1985v25n3i99p87.pdf

The Village Idiot

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