About eleven thirty this morning I watched him as he sat crouched over his keyboard, squinting at the flickering screen and cursing the universe.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

He startled to attention. “Nothing, what the hell kind of question is that?”

That was heavily disguised a cry for help. I eased behind the chair to get a gander at the monitor. On display was a selection of three bumper stickers. The first one read: KEEP HONKING WHILE I RE-LOAD. Nice. The next one read: BAMBI, IT’S WHAT’S FOR DINNER. And then, IF IT AIN’T KING JAMES, IT AIN’T BIBLE. These phrases neatly summed up his personality.

His nose was two inches from the screen. It was a page of his current bids. His bid on the Honking sticker was six hundred ninety-nine dollars.

“Is there something special about that bumper sticker?” I asked.

He sat silent for a moment. “I think I screwed up.”

I rolled a chair closer to the computer. His bid on the Bambi sticker was eight hundred ninety-nine dollars. The King James was going for three ninety-nine.
“You have two thousand dollars tied up in bumper stickers,” I said.

“I was afraid of that. Damn, I need to call my wife and tell her not to buy that new refrigerator.”

“No,” I said. “Let’s look at this.” Beside the illustration of each sticker was a note: You are currently the high bidder on this item.

“The good news,” I said. “You’re the high bidder on these three stickers.”

“No shit.”

“The bad news is someone may come along at the last minute and out-bid you.”

“I wish the hell they would.”

I scrolled down to the bottom of the page. There it was; RECALL BID. We spent ten minutes adjusting the bids. “You have to remember, they don’t place decimals for you.”

His face creased. “I don’t need a lecture.”

“He said to the man who just saved him two thousand dollars.”

“Yeah, you’re right. All right, I’ll buy you lunch. But don’t go crazy. Nothing fancy.”

“Let’s go to the Deli.”

He pondered for a moment. “Can’t do it today. Catch me later.”

After I made arrangements for my own lunch, I came back to find him slumped over his computer. “Hey Burke,” he said. “Can you come here for a minute?”

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They go for CD changers, DVD players, airbags and any shiny thing that might catch their eyes. The police always come out and make their reports.

This morning the used car manager, was in a rage. “Our insurance carrier says he’s not going to cover these break-ins any longer,” he told the Cop. “What are you guys planning to do about it?”

“Sir,” the Policeman said. “As I told you before, this is the work of a bunch of kids. Even if we catch them in the act, and believe me we have, they go to juvenile detention and they let them out the next morning.”

“Not good enough,” the manager said. “We need you to patrol this area more. Pay attention.”
The Cop’s brow creased. His patience had run out. “Sir, we’re by here a minimum of eight times each night. Have you given any thought to hiring a night watchman?”
“That’s what we pay you guys for.”

That didn’t go over well. “Here’s your report,” The Policeman said as he ripped the paper out of his booklet. “Have a nice day.”

The manager was not happy. He stomped around the rest of the morning showing his ass. I tried to stay away from him.

After lunch I saw the Colonel scribbling on car windshields with a wax marker. He wrote: Low Miles! CD Player! Make an Offer! on a Volkswagen Jetta. I watched him work for a few minutes. He had scrawled information like this on at least twenty cars. DVD Player! Wireless Headphones!

“Do you think that’s a good idea?’ I asked. “You know, with all the break-ins?”
“Burke,” he snapped.” Do you not know anything at all about the car business? You’ve got to create some excitement with these people. Get some traffic in here. I know what I’m doing. You do your job and let me do mine.”

Okay Sarge, I thought. Carry on.

So the next morning, on the ground beneath all the marked cars, broken glass glistened like diamonds in the early light. “Damn it,” the managerl raged. “I can’t believe it. What are these cops doing? Eating doughnuts all night while we’re being robbed blind?”
I decided to do my job and let him do his, as requested. He called the police. “I demand that you send someone out here right now,” he shouted at the phone. “What? What do you mean? Don’t you take that tone with me. Is this a joke to you? What’s your name? I’m going to have you fired.”

Just another day at the old car lot.

He broke the world down into purely rudimentary numeric terms. He saw each person he met as a part of some grand unified economic theory. “I spent ten dollars to get in the door,” he said in his morning lecture. “And I saw twenty pussies. That breaks down to fifty cents a pussy. Anyway you look at it, that’s a solid deal. I call it my Cost-per-Pussy equation.”
No matter what I thought of him as a person, I had to admit he had put a lot of thought into this.

Odie had a second set of business cards printed up for special occasions. They read: Oscar Dalliforth Owner Bypass Ford. He used these to impress the semi-literate professional ladies at the club. The number on the card was a cell phone his wife didn’t know about. Some days his hot line would ring. Odie would take his call away from the showroom.

His end of the conversation always ran something like, “Yeah…sure…how much you got to put down? All right. Meet me behind the building.”

One afternoon Odie was busy with a little old couple he went to church with. Odie was a deacon in a very conservative church. The man he was with was the Right Reverend Mallory T. Cantrell. Both the reverend and his wife were dressed in funereal black. A solemn look on their faces. They made it obvious that they didn’t approve of Odie or me or this entire dealership. Odie had spent most of the morning kissing up to them. He used the church as a prospecting pool and it paid well.

The stripper phone vibrated in his pocket. His other customer base was calling. “Excuse me a moment,” he said to the couple. “Yes…okay come by in an hour,” he whispered. “What? You’re here now? I told you to call me before you come by. No, no I’m not ashamed of you.” He looked my way. “Come on in. I’ve got an…assistant for you to talk to. Yeah. Come in through the service department.”

“Burke,” he said to me. “How would you like to make some easy money?”

Whenever a car salesman utters those words, look out.

“I’m a little busy right now-“

“No Burke, I’m serious. I’m going to introduce you to a woman here in a minute. All you got to do is help her pick out a car, fill out her paperwork, put her in finance and I’ll give you fifty dollars. Tax free.”

He really thought I was that stupid. “No thanks. You’re telling me I do all the work and out of your five hundred dollars, you give me fifty.”

He glanced back at the Right Reverend. He glared at Odie and tapped his watch.
“All right Burke. You got me. I was just testing you. We’ll split the deal. You get two-fifty for an hour’s work. Here she is now.”

He made a grand sweeping gesture toward two women coming up the steps from the service department. The theme that day was cleavage. They were dressed in ultra short skirts. The one on the right was wearing a T-shirt that had been carefully ripped to expose her enhanced bosom.

The one on the left wore a man’s shirt tied around her waist, unbuttoned to just this side of legal.

“Go cut them off,” Odie said. “Don’t let them near my other customers.”

“Just a minute,” I said. “You guarantee that we split the deal. Fifty-fifty.”

The ladies came closer.

“Hell yes,” he shouted. The Reverend’s ears perked up. ”And hell is the wages of sin, young man,” He said loud enough for the Reverend to get the idea. “Now go and do your duty.” He pushed me toward the undulating pair.

“Mister Dalliforth is tied up at the moment,” I said. The two women looked over my shoulder at Odie.

“He over there with his preachy friends?” The T-shirt clad woman asked.

“I believe he is,” I said. “Now, can I help you?”

They sized me up. “You’ll do,” The one on the left said.

They picked out a new convertible Mustang. I didn’t believe either one of them could afford a new car. I kept trying to steer them toward a nice cheap used car. “Listen,” T-shirt said. “I’m putting nine thousand, nine hundred dollars down as a payment. Now will you let me drive that damn car?”

As we drove away, all the techs in the service department lined up to pay tribute to them as they jiggled over the speed bumps. We came back to the office and wrote up the deal. “Okay,” said. “Place of employment?”

“BJ Enterprises,” T-Shirt said.

“What does the BJ stand for?” I asked.

They both smiled at me. “You don’t get out much, do you?” she said. “Just write that down.”
“And the phone number to verify employment?” I asked.

She dug a business card out of her purse and recited the number. I dialed it. After four rings a man’s voice said, “Yeah, who is this?”

“This is Paul Burke with Bypass Ford. I’m calling to verify employment for Candy Striper.”

There was a very familiar ring to his voice. It dropped an octave.

“Yes, yes. Miss Stripper, I mean Striper has worked here at BJ Enterprises for two years now. A fine employee.”

I saw Odie in his office, hand over his cell phone. Now I knew why the voice sounded familiar. “And what is her job title?” I asked.

Odie stopped talking and looked over at me. “Damn it Burke. Write down ‘Public Relations’. Write down anything you want. Just quit screwing around and do your job.”

Two hours later, we finished the deal. I made sure my name was on the front. A group of salesmen watched as I explained the features of the car to Candy and her friend. They played it up for them. Bending over the hood, sitting in each other’s laps and patting each other on the butt.

Sweat beads collected on Odie’s brow. He was still with the Reverend and his wife. The receptionist’s voice rang out over the speaker, “Mister Dalliforth, please come to the front, your wife is here.”

Odie looked like a man on the verge of aneurism.

The Reverend, his wife, Mrs. Dalliforth and the little Dalliforth children all congregated around the receptionist’s desk. He glared at me and made sweeping motions at the two women.
T-shirt took offense at that. She said to me, “Is that his wife and kids?”

“I believe it is.”

“What the hell,” she said. “I’m moving to Atlanta next week. I’ll find me a new salesman down there. This bastard was a lousy tipper anyway.” She sidled over to the desk. “Why Odie, is this your wife?” Mrs Dalliforth and the Reverend looked wide-eyed at her. Odie’s five year old son tried to look up her dress.

Odie stammered “Hominy, hominy hominy…”

“Has he ever told you about his Cost per Pussy Equation?” T-shirt said before she walked away. “Get him to explain it. It’s quite a story.”

A circle formed around Odie. It was his family, the Preacher and his wife. He was a man without hope. I hurried to the finance office to turn in the deal.

His phone rang and he held it to his ear with his right hand. And then I saw it. Each little wart had a fingernail. Baby fingers grew out of his beefy right arm.

I can’t imagine the decision he had to make years ago. Keep his twin sibling with him or have him removed. Damn, would x-rays show hair and teeth under the surface?

My imagination took over. Who was I really talking to? The large man who stood before me or a little baby Don Rickles look-alike living under his skin calling the shots?

As he talked I imagined the internal dialogue, “Tell him we’ll offer fifteen five, tax and all,” Baby Rickles said to his twin.

“Fifteen five,” the lumbering spokesman said. He seemed to be listening to a voice I couldn’t hear. “Tax and all.”

We yammered back and forth for almost an hour. I swear there was something squirming under his shirt. Finally I hustled him out the door, “I’ll call you later. Thanks. Have a nice day.”

I watch too may cheesy movies. It’s starting to affect my grasp on reality.

Click on the ads brothers and sisters.

But now I’m back dammit. And for the first order of business I want to revisit a touchy subject; the insanity of television programmers. There was a time when the Discovery Channel tried to offer educational, enlightening fare. World class researchers exchanged butt sniffs with mountain gorillas in an effort to fit in with the cool kids of the primate genus.

They also recreated the lives of ancient Egyptians, leaving out the more unseemly parts, like their personal hygiene and the era when they accepted help from aliens in industrial grade UFOs to build the pyramids.

Now when you tune them in for a quiet evening of enlightenment you find a series where groups of grown men beat the shit out of each other with sticks. They fly these half wits into a jungle and dress them up in primitive local garb, give them sticks carved from indigenous trees and tell them to go at it.

Last night they ran a commercial for this epic. A group of Africans dressed in colorful Zulu wrappings watched as a group of Americans chased each other around with heavy duty switches. The Zulus looked amused, confused and bored, just like the viewing audience One contestant, with his nose running , cried to the camera, “Who’ll take care of my wife and kids if I die here?”

Damn, it’s too late, he’s already spread the dumb-ass gene.

They take Accountants and Wal-Mart workers, strip them down to their skivvies, set them at each other and chase them around with a camera. Pure genius, I’m telling you. Who needs story? It just gets in the way of watching a bunch of losers whack each other with tree branches.

Our development department at our new company; Third Rate Productions, is working on a low budget version to air on the public access channel: Last Car Salesman Standing.

We’re taking a bunch of sluggish, bloated sales reps and stranding them in the Clearance Aisle at K-Mart They’ll be dressed in the colorful native garb of their homeland. Plaid Sans-a-Belt slacks, checkered polyester jackets, white shoes and bad toupees, capped off with grass skirts and war paint. We’ll give them vacuum cleaner attachments and toilet brushes and let them go at it. The bargain hunters will think they’re escapes from. Dollywood.

It’ll draw huge ratings because people will watch anything on TV.

I give you this advice as a friend. Go rent a DVD of The Sopranos or Deadwood. Leave this toxic crap alone.

A small knot of squawking salesmen gathered around the newspaper this morning.

“Hey,“ one crusty old gas bag said. ‘I want to be hired in under this program,”

“Why you know,” said another. “It almost sounds too good to be true.”

We all laughed. Everyone of us had been suckered in by a similar con job sometime in our past.

The candidates have been rolling in. This advertisement hasn’t drawn the elite. A stream of foul smelling half wits have passed through the doors. One likely suspect, wearing muddy work boots, announced this morning, “I want to sell me some damn cars.”

He was the best so far. “What about that one?” Colonel Sanders asked the general manager.

“You’ve got to be kidding. That guy was nasty. Did you see what he was wearing?”

The Colonel gathered his wit, “We’ll put him in used cars.”

But wait, here comes a guy. He’s dressed in a suit, tie, matching shoes. He’s a gift from above. He mistakes the Old Grouch for management. “My name’s Lance Handsome,” he announces, offering his hand.

“Who gives a shit?’ the Old Grouch says in greeting.

Mr. Handsome isn’t fazed. “I’m here for the sales position.”

The Old Grouch says, “Praise the Lord.”

Lance looks at the empty coffee pot, “Say, old timer, why don’t you make us a pot of coffee?”

This rest of us stop, waiting for Lance to be schooled. Old Grouch is calm. “Wait just a minute there,” he told Mr. Handsome. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where you going?”

“I’m going to my car. Don’t go anywhere”

“Might I ask why?” says Lance.

“I’m going to show you the ass end of my Colt 45 revolver. Stay right here.”

Lance decides not to participate. He drives away, never looking back .

A few minutes later Colonel Sanders comes out of his office. “Where’d that guy go?”

“He left,” Old Grouch says. “He said this dealership looks like a third rate pop stand.”

“I was just coming out to tell him we wouldn’t hire him anyway,” Colonel says. “He struck me the wrong way. Besides,” he shakes a stack of applications. “We got plenty more first-rate guys here that want to sell cars.”

Stay tuned.

A school bus stopped on the corner near the store. Every time a group of junior high girls walked by he ran out and made some comment to them. “What’d you let it get so hot for?” or “How’s school going girls?” Even among car salesmen he was reviled.

His demise at Nissan came early one morning. Flash Three received a disturbing phone call. He hung up and ran screaming from the building past a row of new mini-vans. He jumped in a random van, cut it sharp and raked the sides out of the vans on his right and left. He hopped out of the van and surveyed the damage. “Alright,” he said. “Let’s try this again.”

He floored it and crashed into the row of trucks directly behind him. Five brand new vehicles demolished in less than a minute. He still holds the record.
There’s just something about that name. Flash.

Flash Two may have had a drinking problem. He disappeared for days at a time. One morning Flash Two walked to work.

“Where is your demo?” the new car manager asked slowly and deliberately.

“Well, it’s like this,” Flash drawled. “I believe it got buried.”

“Buried? What the hell do you mean buried?”

Flashed talked very fast. “I parked it out on this road where there’s a bit of construction going on. It’s a nice quiet place to take a lady. Okay, I woke up this morning in the woods. My lady friend had gone back to her husband. The car, you’ll get a kick out of this, there was a hole they dug to bury garbage. When I woke up I saw tire tracks leading right up to this spot before they just up and disappeared. That’s right. Somehow I had driven down in this culvert and before daylight they had dumped tons of debris on top of it and covered that with dirt and smoothed the dirt out and now there’s the prettiest little tree planted over the car. Don’t that just beat all?”

The manager barely suppressed his rage. “Stay right there,” he told Flash Two. The police arrived thirty minutes later and escorted Flash off the property.

Some of the names I’ve heard are; Tick, Rocket, Boots, Blue Sky and Plywood. Plywood was a nice enough guy but he should have given more thought to his moniker. But he liked the name.
The most popular alias in this region is Flash. I’ve met a score of guys named Flash. We’ll talk about three of them. Flash Number One had the name forced on him by grown men that should have known better. They thought it was a bit of clever irony because this Flash talked and moved so slow.

The first time I met Flash Number One, he was walking from the service department to the showroom of a Ford dealership. He placed each step with great deliberation and thought. He took a few minutes to walk the three hundred yards when a half-wit salesman called out, “Better hurry, we close in four hours.”

After I got to know Flash One, I realized he was smarter than any of the scrotes that made fun of him. He just took life at a different rate of speed. He kept a running commentary on the activities around him. Flash brought a Mustang Cobra to an arrogant young used car manager for appraisal. A knot of salesman watched as the manager grabbed the keys and said, “I’ll show you boys what this this car can do.” Watch this.” He revved the engine, popped the clutch. It made a farting sound and died.

Flash One said quietly, “I could have done that.”

On secretary’s day, the owner took eight ladies from from the office to lunch. He asked Flash One to drive them in a passenger van. When he returned, we asked him about his lunch date with so many women.

“All that estrogen made my eyes water,” he replied.

It pissed me off when the weasels gave him a hard time. He took it all in slow stride. Flash One had a loyal customer base and while the nit-wits made fun of him, he slowly and steadily made a fortune. The ultimate joke came when Flash One bought his own small town dealership a few years later and refused to hire his former tormentors.

First, here’s a list of previous movies they borrowed heavily from:
George Romero’s Dead series
Mad Max Road Warrior
Tron
Alfred Hitchcock’s, The Birds
The last joke in Shaun of the Dead.

Second, it was a very entertaining movie. The Zombie effects are coming along nicely. The scene with the ravens was well done. Plus the story structure didn’t fall apart like the last Resident Evil installment. Milla Jovovich is starting to look more like a bad ass and less like a kid as she ages. That helps in these roles. She’s a good actress. I’d like to see her in a role that allows her to flex her acting muscles.
Go see it at matinee.