Jerry Vilhotti about himself: I was born a hyphenated American in the East Bronx (Arthur Avenue and Fordham Road where Poe once walked with all his demons) coming in on a crash landing and still can't shake that hyphenated label - though now we live in a simpler place in time among the Litchfield Hills. I graduated from the only college that won the NIT and NCAA basketball tournaments in the same year but more importantly than that a Jonas Salk graduated from that same NYC school and tried to rid the world of polio and ironically another person graduated from there too - the Secretary of State - who has forgotten his proud roots and chose to begin his march toward the scent of more money. I had stories published in literary magazines in the USA, Greece, India, Scotland, Ireland, England and Canada and live with a beautiful wife who waits for me to return from my imaginary meandering and we both helped - I swear to God - in bringing into this world three sort of nice children a boy and two girls who I hope find a mate as good and tender as the one I did long ago and far away - just like the song ! __________________________________ oedipus crying The Greek gods and some lesser ones known as Chicanery, Gotcha and Doom sat watching this game they had encountered many years before; seeing the likes of the great Babe Ruth hitting awesome skyscrapers that went for "Homers" while almost at the same time devouring prodigious amounts of hot-dogs, speckled with "stuff", while gulping down gallons of American made nectar peed in by pissed off hyphenated people called "stressed out underpaid workers"; the American-Black, who may have been sixty five years old when he struck out his last major league Whitey who had a rope and a tree bulging in his back pocket. After the greed season happened when both owners and players showed great contempt for what was once a game doing end runs with the fanatics "leisure" dollars, the gods looked upon "The Thing" with a jaundiced eye. Their thinking was an old Greco-Roman ideal that made mankind something of beauty and not total disgust and so the gods began adding even more odd dimensions to The Thing: like having a ball trapped inside a grotesque Arabian Oily hand only to bounce out of it when making the pasture guarder bang against an AlBurton bought fence, making what looked like an out become a fourbagger and many other mischievous doings that confounded everyone making for many thrills to happen among the many Styrofoam, bought from AlBurton, leaking cup holders called fanatics. The announcement over the loudspeaker asked all good un-clean people to donate five, ten or a thousand dollars to a great cause propounded by the owner "Little Duce" of the Los Alamo Rockets but still even if they did that noble thing, the team would still be raising their prices on seat tickets - for didn't one of the great American gods say "time was money" - to make become a reality the pellet missile system which the whole world would fear - including friendly nations that were trying to play in the game of greed too? It was known also in corporate jargon as "The Mighty PMS" and if it worked by slaughtering the Indians, Braves and Redskins - then no other team would dare come into their stadium ever again! "Explain please?" Zeus asked. Poseidon, god of the sea and horses, took it upon himself to answer; being sort of a favorite of the mighty one who had beaned the throne off his father's head: "Before we Greeks came to power in the Mediterranean area, the whole world was concerned with dying; making all kinds of phony religions flourish, so building structures in honor of death, like the ziggurats of Babylon and the pyramids of Egypt, whose women were the first to rouge their lips to resemble juicy— " "What in the holy hell does that have to do with the price of bitter broccoli rape that the Romans ate?" Zeus shouted. "But my most powerful One—greater than even the Persian god of light with his twelve apostles who wanted reincarnation to make a better world happen but instead was misread saying his guess was resurrection — I was getting to the point in my own galloping wave-like way— " "Do you recall the bastard Prometheus person?" Hermes reminded him. "By Jove I do! You see, the owner of the teammortals named Casper Shrub, who lost much of his brain cells during his earlier years what with drinking like the great Babe and some say doing "babonia-dope" on the side and when as a juvenile delighted in killing frogs with his BB gun and those not killed to death by that he would put salutes into openings to blow them up, has this money making idea for the AlBurton makers of fungo limbs and Lilly white spheres who by the by contribute lots of masuma to his unholy pastime. And if the ticketbuyers fold into it, which he knows they will since these same people like the idea of paying bankers interest on their loanings instead of having the government make its own money with no interest involved-" "How pray tell?" Zeus shouted; rubbing his knee with a closed fist which he would soon bite; making spike mark indentations appear all over its back just like Gaea's once good earth had been eaten. "He wants to position one of his fungo mortals on the foul side of left pastures, and if the fanatics buy into this, he will add another one in foul right pastures so when they see the small sphere hit by an enemy clubmortal going toward Homerville they will begin hitting their spheres to hit it so preventing it from going over the fence and become a buying item for the courts to decide like who would become a president" All the gods looked away as Zeus began chewing the back of his hand - thinking indeed when the coliseum fell the whole world really did begin a dying.