The Ballad of Blinky Jones

So you've left Iowa. It wasn't easy. There were harsh words with Dad, who only ever had one dream for you: to work yourself to death growing goverment-subsidized corn crops for possible use one day as ethanol fuel while expanding your corporarate agribusiness footprint across seven counties, amassing obscene wealth at the expense of taxpayers, the environment and probably your immortal soul.

But no, your mind's made up. You want something more meaningful. You've gone to Hollywood.

You hopped off the hay truck that brought you west, handerchief bundle tied to a stick over your shoulder, breathed in as deeply as the lung-searing smog would allow and said "So this is Hollywood!" only to be stabbed in the chest by a passerby and helpfully corrected: "You in Boyle Heights now, motherfucker!" It may be a quarter inch on the map, but there are people who take those fractions very seriously.

Punctured lungs heal, yes, but punctured dreams? Rarely so. Pride precluded you from writing home to retell the tale of your progress in the dog-eat-dog world of the Business We Call Show. For instance, that one time you had to eat a dog. That's something Mom wouldn't like to know.

But money is scarce and living is expensive in places with so very many area codes. The things you will do for money--and eventually also methamphetamine--are too gruesomely tedious to list, but your sturdy Midwestern upbringing reminds you that God gives us nothing with which we cannot cope, at least not without a half a bottle of mouthwash and a nice sitz bath.

On the non-illegal side of things, you've done it all, so long as it results in no reward and less pay: extra, production assistant, runner, courier, page, gossip-blog editor, MTV reality show persona, botox mule...

Nothing and nothing and nothing and nothing to show for it but a sort of dull, buzzing resignation in the face of universal and constant rejection.

You consider throwing it all away, marching right out of your cherry spot on skid row with your half a pillow case and your companion mongrel emergency-eatin' dog, back to a life of empty luxury and useless dignity as an appendage on Dad's growing farming concern when finally, unlooked for, unhoped for, the call comes, probably on a pay phone in an alleyway behind a Vietnamese human sex slavery clearing house: you're going to be featured in a national print marketing campaign. Not just in advertising, but in packaging. You'll be everywhere. At last, finally: famous.

You don't call home to share the news; it's classier, you decide, just to drop a note.

Dear Dad, it will say. Why don't you stop by the Walgreen's. It's time you did something about that effed-up eye of yours. Love, Donny.

And he'll walk in and he'll look and there you'll be, staring right back out at him with your one, good, piercing eye.



In your face, old man. That loan shark teaching you a lesson with that fire poker when you couldn't get him his $75 and subsequent $8,000 in interest turned out to be the greatest blessing of your life.

Why is there a picture on the front of an eyepatch box? Are they afraid people won't know how to use it? Is there really any kind of advertising war between brands of eyepatch warranting the use of a handsome but (by implication) horribly disfigured face? Not for us to say, mateys. That's someone else's problem. We're just running half blind into a bright, bright future, with both hands in front of us to correct for our problem with depth perception.