The YouTube version of this had to be taken down because of some SAG licensing issues, but you can still see the hi-res version here at Endless Spectrum Studios. If nothing else, this is an impress example of what talented people like Dave can do with some fairly simple equipment. It was shot with a single camera, and all of the editing was done on a regular desktop computer.
Last night I ventured east into the heart of Iowa, along Interstate 80 from Des Moines to Brooklyn, a town which shares very few characteristics of its more famous namesake. I was going there to meet an old friend from many years back, who I met when he was in a band and living the Rock & Roll life in NYC, and I was spending much of my time in New Jersey. We made plans to rendezvous’ at Rednex Steak and BBQ, which was about equidistant for us both. It was described as one of those grill-your-own-steak joints that are popular in this part of the country.
After about an hour’s mind-numbing drive across the fruited plain, I arrived in the town of Brooklyn and tracked down Rednex, which was not at all difficult since it was one of two buildings in town with lights on. My friend Joe was waiting at the bar, and we chatted for a bit before heading to a table and looking over the menu.
Now, perhaps I am a bit jaded with my city-slicker ways and all, but I don’t think it unreasonable to expect a restaurant named “Rednex Steak and BBQ” to offer steak or at least some BBQ. We learned that neither were available and that these rare delicacies are offered on weekends only. Oh well, no big deal, I am a visitor to these parts so I have to be flexible and understanding of local customs and procedures. We asked if there might be someplace nearby (with or without the word steak in its name), where one may actually get the sort of food we were craving. The waitress directed us to a place “just down the road.”
I had the impression she was speaking about someplace we could walk to, or at least travel to on the same tank of gas, but in central Iowa the meaning of “just down the road” turns out to be quite different than it is back home. We eventually did come to the place we were sent only to discover that it was well and truly closed. Figuring, in for a penny, in for a pound, we kept going along the same road until we arrived in the town of Victor. We settled in at a little joint named the Sit & Sip, which was this town’s only illuminated spot besides a gas station. The was not the sort of place where you could ask for a side of arugula, but I did enjoy a nice burger and had chance to catch up with Joe before we both hit the highway in different directions for home, what with this being a school night and all.
Sometimes I just want to throw in the towel and admit that Rhode Island can be a pretty sad place. It is exhausting defending my home state to people from other parts of the country, assuming that they know it is a state in the first place and not some suburb of New York (to many geographically-impaired people, Rhode Island is the same as Long Island). It seems as though the only time the state makes news is when a local politician gets caught rummaging for loose change in the wrong pocket or one of our congressional representatives drives across the lawn of a federal monument at 2AM.
Until recently, we at least had some halfway-decent mobsters. As late as the 1970’s, Raymond Patriaca and Associates (LLC) ran a respectable, standard mob. Their headquarters was in the back of a vending and pinball-machine company located on Federal Hill (Providence’s “little Italy”). I assume that their activities involved strong-arming people into putting their machines in their businesses, selling stolen snow tires and fur coats, and collecting protection money so’s nuttin’ bad happens. Regular mob stuff. Sure, we’re not talking about a team of international super-villains based in a hollowed-out volcano, but still serviceable for a hometown operation.
Today, what remains of “the mob” in and around Providence is an embarrassment even to the law-abiding. I just read of the arrest of eighteen people for participating in “a criminal enterprise” and there wasn’t even a decent nickname among them. The alleged ringleader, whose first name is Gerald, goes by the imaginative handle of “Jerry.” Come on, can’t they at least have an “Ice-Pick Nick” or “Timmy two-toes” in the group? The best they had to offer in that regard involves a long deceased (and still missing) member of the group named Joseph Scanlon, a.k.a. “Joey Onions,” but even I could do better than that.
Worst of all was their choice for a headquarters. No smoke-filled strip-club backroom for this band of Monte Carlo jewel thieves, no sir. Instead, they based their enterprise in the “Valley Street Flea Market”, a ramshackle collection of stalls and kiosks offering the sort of crap that would be too downmarket for a dollar store. This, after moving from a second-hand furniture and appliance store that must have been a bit too upscale for their needs. In fact, the police noted that the currency of choice in many of this enterprise’s operations were counterfeit designer handbags and sneakers, rather than uncut diamonds and stacks of crisp 100’s carried in a Haliburton briefcase handcuffed to a courier as you would expect.
The crimes they were charged with involved the standard panoply of drug and weapons offences, interspersed with allegations of selling stolen catalytic converters and brokering precious metals without the proper license. Not even one attempted laser attack on Fort Knox for Christ’s sake.
