Clouds In My Coffee

“You walked into the party,
like you were walkin' onto a yacht.
Your hat strategically dipped below one eye,
Your scarf, it was apricot.
You had one eye in the mirror as,
You watched yourself gavotte.
And all the girls dreamed that they'd be your partner.
They'd be your partner.
You're so vain....you probably think this song is about you”.

Carly Simon
You're So Vain

I was sitting in my orange velveteen chair,...eatin' Ghirardelli chocolates (60% cacao) and watchin' Carly Simon singin' “You're So Vain” on an old episode of Saturday Night Live,...via my i-pod,....when I began to ruminate about ol' Billy Garretson's lawsuit for false arrest brought against the officers of Los Angeles.....during the moments in which I wasn't taken with Carly's gorgeous hair, sleepy eyes and sexy lips.

Ya know,.....I'd have to say that I side with Bill on this one.

It becomes apparent to the most casual observer that, had Bill pursued this endeavor, he woulda been a very rich man in the small hamlet of Lancaster, Ohio.

Unfortunately, as everyone knows, Mr. Tarlow's fees were quite expensive and he had to cut his losses due to the enormous amount of time he had to spend to “prep” his client.

It is my understanding that Tarlow couldn't even keep Bill on track as to what he did during the moments when he first awakened on that fateful Saturday morning.

His story changed with the frequency of a cheap ham radio.

First, it was King Vitamin,...then it was Lucky Charms,...then it was Malt-O-Meal.

(One is hot and two are cold, Bill. The hot cereal needs to have water cooked before it becomes edible,....not that Malt-O-Meal is ever edible....)

Then it was the Sports section that he claims he was readin' in the can,....that was then changed to the Arts and Life section....which he later declared was actually the Comics.

Magilla Gorilla was on the TV (television)....and then he changed his story to say that it was Rocky and Bullwinkle.

This guy couldn't even get his story straight when the cops busted down his front door,....quick-handed and prematurely, I might add,...and then, to add insult to injury, he couldn't even clarify the identity of the dead woman sprawled out on his front lawn!

(Sounds like Phil Spector, don't it?)

He said it was Winifred Chapman....but we all know that Winifred Chapman was a Negro woman....(I'm sorry...an African-American)....in her 50's,...as opposed to Abigail Folger...who was a honky woman in her 20's.

It has been said that,.... what...with all the blood and all,....that she couldn't be identified because of the vast amount of carnage that was inflicted upon her supple and nubile corpse.

All one needs to do in that situation is simply look at her arms and hair color.

Had he kept this 'handy-dandy-rule-of-thumb-when-a-dead-woman-is-on-your-lawn' principal at the forefront of his mind, we wouldn'ta had the wasted police man-hours spent tryin' to determine just who the foxy-but-dead woman really was.

It's the details that matter!

I imagine that Tarlow was about to pull the remainder of his hair out while tryin' to get Bill ready for his deposition.

I think his biggest bargaining chip for winning this case, however, was the fact that the cops didn't let him put on a shirt when they took him into custody.

I woulda been horrified if the cops busted down my door and took me out without a shirt on, man.

That's a Kafkaesque nightmare, man.

Five people brutally slain in close proximity to my being....and the cops haul me out of my house without a shirt on.

Bogus.

It would have been polite,....not to mention, humane,....if the police had been
kind enough to allow Mr. Garretson to cover himself before they strolled him through the grounds on his way out of the gate,...to the back of a police cruiser,....that undoubtedly had the windows rolled up for an extended period of time,...in the Los Angeles August that was quickly permeating the morning hours,...with those dark 'pleather' seats that police cruisers are known to have.

I imagine that the initial touch of those over-heated seats musta had the same effect on his psyche that those silent whistles have on dogs.

(I'll bet he said the words “oww” and “shit” 40 times in two minutes)

He wins the lawsuit on that basis alone!....cruel and unusual punishment!

But!,.... he could have effectively argued that he was simply being a good steward of what he was entrusted with. He was simply minding his own beeswax and taking care of the Weimariners that Mr. Altobelli saw fit to trust him with.

That's what he was paid to do!,....not babysit the movies stars and heiresses in the main house!

All he had to do was feed the dogs and pick up their poop....which,...(heh-heh).....ya gotta wonder who was in charge in THAT scenario,....'cause it sure wasn't Bill.

Hold on.

(pause....rewind)

(....to get off the subject for a moment,...there really is nothin' like a chick with big hair,...who is playin' a piano and usin' words like “gavotte”.......Carly is such a fox, man.)

Anyway,...what was I sayin'?

Oh, yeah,....Garretson.

It was quoted by Madlock that Garretson was bein' held as a “person of interest”....in his interview at the front gate.

Then, about two minutes later, he said that they were holding him on “suspicion of murder”.

What the hell, man?

A “person of interest” sounds a whole helluva lot better than sayin' he's a “murder suspect”. If you say “person of interest”, you could be, theoretically, in the same classification as Truman Capote or Andy Warhol.

If you say “murder suspect”, then you may as well lump him into the OJ category.

Slander is what it is.

If Madlock didn't let his temper get away from him, then there probably woulda been no lawsuit because Billy woulda been invited to the fancy-schmanzy homes of people who, under normal circumstances, would ask him to go pick up the poop of their dogs.

Am I right?....of course I am. I always am,...right, Burb?

He coulda won that case if he just stuck to his guns.

If you're readin' this, Bill, you should really find out what the statute of limitations is in this. There are people like me who actually think the Man did you wrong by arresting you. It's not your fault that people were killed near you. You had no control over that, man. They arrested you because you just happened to be nearby. People end up not breathin' and dead and they gotta blame somebody....that's what it was, man.

Derosa just wanted to get a feather in his cap before the flys started accumulating. He jumped the gun on this one and there was no cause to treat you like a common criminal.

You were just picking up poop and keeping the dogs company.

They should at least issue an apology and admit that they got the wrong man this time!

Also, if you're readin' this, Bill,...don't you think Carly Simon is a pretty good lookin' chick?

I think she is.

She's a freakin' babe, man.

Anyway....