Wednesday, May 23, 2012

With a cigar in one hand and a drink in the other


     You might want to take a gander at Michael Levin’s remembrance of Tom Fuentes, Tom Fuentes: An Appreciation, appearing in today’s California Political Review.
     An excerpt:
     On one visit, I found Tom in especially ebullient spirits because a column in the Orange County Register that morning recounted his ability to crown kings and tell others to wait their turn, right from his king size bed. Apparently two Republicans wanted to run for the same office. Tom Fuentes, though no longer the titular chair of the Orange County Republican Party, was still the arbiter of such matters. He told one of the contenders, “It’s not your time.”
     Tom got a good chuckle out of that.
     He also liked the fact that the media played along with what came to be called the “Tom Fuentes Retirement Tour,” featuring appearances at his beloved Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach and at political gatherings throughout California. Tom would appear, dragging along an oxygen tank or two, and he would be treated like a walking Shrine of Lourdes. Everyone wanted to reach out to him one last time.
. . .
     It hurts to think that those same cigars could have contributed to Tom’s untimely passing. The only consolation is that there is a place in Heaven where conservatives gather, and there, Tom has been welcomed, with a cigar in one hand and a drink in the other, by the Reagans and Unruhs and maybe even the Old Man himself, RN….


Everyone is trying to get to the bar
The name of the bar
The bar is called “heaven”

The band in heaven
They play my favourite song
Play it one more time
Play it all night long

Oh heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens

There is a party
Everyone is there
Everyone will leave at exactly the same time

When this party's over
It will start again
It will not be any different
It will be exactly the same

Oh heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens

When this kiss is over
It will start again
It will not be any different
It will be exactly the same

It's hard to imagine
That nothing at all
Could be so exciting
Could be this much fun

Oh heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Heaven is a designated No Smoking area.

Clearly these fellows are lighting up somewhere else, hell perhaps?

Where's there's smoke, there's fire.

Anonymous said...

Richard Nixon gets to go to heaven? Really? Really? Come on.

Anonymous said...

In this obituary (thanks for the link!), Levin and Fuentes complain that California "had had become home to people who wanted to live off the wealth of the hard-working."

To see how "hardworking" Levin is, check out his bio at the end:

"New York Times best selling author Michael Levin runs www.BusinessGhost.com, which provides ghostwritten social media (Twitter, Facebook, blogging, YouTube, etc.) for its clients."

What a contribution to society! Changing the world one conservative tweet at a time. Jeez.

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...