{"id":29903,"date":"2009-06-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-26T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/WP-IMPORT\/2009\/06\/26\/one-hand-clapping\/"},"modified":"2009-06-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-26T03:00:00","slug":"one-hand-clapping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/one-hand-clapping\/","title":{"rendered":"One Hand Clapping"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\u00a0
(A sequined Glove)
\u00a0
The news spread through Twitter and all the broadcast media late yesterday, and it reverberated in the halls of Big Pink with the speed of electrons. The nerve center is the concierge desk, and the Queen of all information is the Day Lady, Rhonda.
\u00a0
She has been down there since the building went Condo in the early 1980s. I think it was the year Thriller was released, in 1981.
\u00a0
She was getting ready to go off shift at the desk in the lobby, and I had just walked was holding an orange notice that told me I had to get the Hubrismobille, the Police Car and the Harley out of the garage not later than 0800 on Monday.
\u00a0
\u201cRe-striping and concrete repair,\u201d the notice read, but I suspected some darker plot, maybe in conjunction with the Arlington County Tax Assessor. They are always poking around down there, trying to smoke out the cars with Maryland tags. They suspect that people are not happy to pay the extra taxes on their personal property every year.
\u00a0
We are a transient lot at Big Pink, and times being what they are, it is worth it to check up on personal property and actual site where vehicles might happen to be garaged, despite what the official records in Richmond or Annapolis might indicate.
\u00a0
I\u2019m in the process of moving everything out of the County myself, you know. I mean that seriously and have reported it to Richmond.
\u00a0
I asked Rhonda what she thought, since she is very much the conscience of the building. When she is on duty she is plugged into everything that is happening here, analogue and digital.
\u00a0
She pursed her lips, and pulled off her glasses, letting them fall down at the end of the chain on her ample bosom. She rolled her eyes in that way that reminds me she must have been really hot in her younger days.
\u00a0
\u201cI don\u2019t know about his personal life,\u201d she said thoughtfully. \u201cThat seemed a little messy for my taste. But he sure could dance, couldn\u2019t he?\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cYou have got a point there. That Moonwalk thing. I could have saved a lot of money on movie tickets over the years if I could have done that. The ushers would think I was walking out while I was sneaking in.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cYou are dating yourself, Vic,\u201d she said. \u201cThey don\u2019t have ushers any more.\u201d
\u00a0
I shrugged. \u201cYou know he wound up owning McCartney and Lennon\u2019s music catalog, and married Elvis Presely\u2019s daughter for a while. That tells you something about the magnitude of what he was able to pull off.\u201d
\u00a0
Rhonda nodded and put her glasses back on. \u201cWould someone explain the glove thing to me? I never did get why he had just one glove. Circulation problems? Or wardrobe malfunction like his sister?\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cIt\u2019s in the Goddamn Smithsonian, Rhonda. And I think he actually wanted to be his sister,\u201d I said. \u201cAt the end of it all I can\u2019t even make fun of him. I just feel sorry. Sorry they took your childhood away, and sorry that you could never get it back, no matter how much money you spent.\u201d
\u00a0
Rhonda is a practical woman. \u201cGive me a hundredth of what he had and I would be willing to give it a try,\u201d she said, and got ready to walk out to the bus stop in front of the big pink building.
\u00a0
When the Intern got home from work, she hadn\u2019t heard the news. But it surprised me that she had \u201cA-B-C\u201d on her iPod Nano, and we listened to it in tribute, sharing the ear-buds.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com <\/p>\n

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\u00a0 (A sequined Glove) \u00a0 The news spread through Twitter and all the broadcast media late yesterday, and it reverberated in the halls of Big Pink with the speed of electrons. The nerve center is the concierge desk, and the Queen of all information is the Day Lady, Rhonda. \u00a0 She has been down there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}