Two days ago, a British provocateur attempted to slam a foam pie in the face of Newscorp CEO Rupert Murdoch. As someone who has worked in advertising for more than 20 years, I certainly understand the urge to throttle someone deemed evil or idiotic.
I have sat in too many meetings with too many cretins and listened to too many stupid remarks, it's actually shocking that I pen this entry as a free man and not as tattooed lifer doing my third bit for Assault and Battery. But I'm a grown up, with a wife, daughters and two mortgages to support. So I've learned to suppress my inner Neanderthal.
That wasn't always the case.
In fact when I was 18 years old and filled with actionable piss & vinegar, I hit someone in the face with shaving cream pie, in front of a 100 stunned onlookers. Her name was Cindy. And she lived on the same floor in my college dormitory, which was mostly comprised of incoming freshman and sophomores. But Cindy didn't seem like a college student.
I have a hard time even picturing her as someone in her late teens or early twenties. The way she smoked her long thin cigarettes and spoke in a whiny, nasally voice made her seem like a 45 year old yenta, playing Mah Jong by the pool and complaining about her warm iced tea.
Those were just some of the qualities that made her so onerous. And it was all I needed to justify my actions. I planned my attack like Navy Seal Team Six. The RA's had gathered 100 or so students of Sadler 6 to hear the latest policies regarding phone use, meal cards and curfew hours. Cindy had taken her seat by a meeting table right by the stairwell. I, prepared with a home made pie of canned peach filling and Gillette shaving cream, stood at the wait on the 7th floor. I had also put on a full face ski mask, as if that would mask my identity. Given the high sign by a friend in the meeting, I bolted down the staircase, sprung through the door, spotted my target and firmly planted the pie all over her prematurely-aged face.
It was all so perfect. And all so perfectly uncalled for.
I can't believe I was ever that mean and petty and childish. Of course my behavior pales in comparison to some of the other guys on the floor who also had an unfavorable opinion of Cindy. If somebody ever attacks Murdoch with a fetal pig stolen from a Bio Lab, I'll share that disgusting tale.
2 comments:
Because I suppress, so successfully, my feelings of rage toward so many, I watch over and over again the fight scene from John Sturges' great movie "Bad Day at Black Rock" in which the one-armed Spencer Tracy annihilates a young and barrel-chested Ernest Borgnine.
In it, Tracy says with utter composure to Borgnine, "You're not only wrong, you're wrong at the top of your voice."
I always wished I had that presence and calm in the face of nimrods and bullies.
Poor Cindeeeee never knew what hit her. Oh the horror.
We also did Jerry the Jap but for this we hired a hit-man. It think her sinuses were impacted for a week.
Cindeee and Jerry brought down in the prime of their egos.
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