Political Satire: Having trouble surviving these times? You’re not alone. Join us in columnist John F. Di Leo’s exploration of an alternate universe, where we imagine the impossible:
Joe Buckstop, an aging, corrupt old fool, somehow becomes president in his basement, and every night, an aide has to bring him his soup and discuss the events of the day as he prepares to receive his nightly meds…
Note: We continue reprinting roughly every other chapter from Volume Two. In today’s episode, Joe Buckstop and his cook discuss crayons, paintings, and a bit of laundering…
Children, Crayons, and Painted Desert Soup
Dateline: July 8. Begin Transcript:
“Hello Down There! Are you in, Boss?”
“Of course I’m in! You wouldn’t be calling me if I weren’t!”
“You know, boss, that actually makes sense!”
“So what’s going on up there? What are you bothering me for this time?”
“Hold your horses, boss. Remember my knee. I take three times as long to get down these stairs as anybody else. Even longer tonight, because I have to be careful.”
“Careful? Why? What’s different about tonight?”
“Well, I stretched my talents a bit today, boss. Made a really complicated soup. It’s called Painted Desert Soup. Can’t let it get mixed up.”
“What do you mean, mixed up? Soup is soup…. it’s always mixed up.”
“No, boss, it’s not. Oy. There we go. Made it down the stairs without spilling or jostling it. Hope you’re ready to be impressed, boss!”
“I don’t need to be impressed. I just need… umm… I just need… umm…”
“What is it, boss?”
“Oh… come on… I just need… come on, man, you know the thing! I just need, uhh….”
“You need to eat, boss?”
“Yeah, that’s it!”
“Well, yes, here you go. Check this out. It’s called Painted Desert Soup. Designed to look like the Painted Desert itself.”
“I have no idea of what you’re talking about.”
“It’s from Arizona. Some restaurant in Arizona. And they published the recipe online and warned that it was really difficult, so I took it as a challenge, boss!”
“Oh. Why is it different colors? Is something wrong?”
“No boss, nothing’s wrong. This is called Painted Desert Soup. It’s really two soups in one bowl, one is black bean and the other is corn chili chowder, boss. Isn’t it neat?”
“Um… I guess…. are there crackers?”
“Yes, boss, of course I would never forget your crackers.”
“Goody!”
“Well, it was a lot of work… mostly in just managing to carry it all this way without messing up the look!”
“Can’t imagine why you’d go to all this trouble. But it is good…”
“Well, sir, to tell the truth, you might say that this sort of thing was on my mind today, sir.”
“Oh? Are you planning a trip to Arizona?”
“No. I’m not going to the Painted Desert, boss. But you might be.”
“Huh? Come on, now! Nobody told me about any trip!”
“Have you been meeting with any lawyers lately, about your son, boss?”
“Heh heh… when AREN’T I meeting with lawyers about my son?”
“Well, sir, this is specific to his new forays into the art world, boss.”
“Oh, yes, I remember that.”
“You do?”
“Oh yes. I bought him a box of crayons.”
“Crayons, sir?”
“Oh yeah. Look, here’s the deal: He asked for the 128 box, the really big one… We couldn’t afford the 128 color set, but I remember we went to the store and picked up the 64 box. He was just a kid, he never knew the difference. Heck, with his math skills… he probably still couldn’t tell.”
“Uhh, when was that, sir?”
“Oh, I don’t know… when he was four or five… or nine or ten… or maybe when he was in college. I don’t remember…”
“Umm, boss, I actually had in mind something more recent, sir…”
“Oh, no, come to think of it…. it definitely wasn’t when he was in college. The boxes he had me buy him in college had nothing to do with crayons…”
“I was wondering if you remembered any discussions about painting recently, boss. Recently.”
“You mean, like today?”
“Well, this year, anyway, boss. There have been rumors like crazy, and…”
“Oh, no, I don’t have any roomers.”
“Excuse me, boss?”
“No, see, I understand that a lot of people are broke right now, really hurting… really suffering from loss of a job or climate change or things like that…”
“What on earth are you talking about, boss?”
“…and people like that may need to take in a boarder or two. Some people even turn their houses into a boarding house, and take in three or four or five roomers. But I don’t have to do that.”
“I know, boss, see, I was asking…”
“And it’s because I’ve worked hard and served the great state of Pennsylvania for 50 years now. I was born and raised in Scranton, you know… bet you didn’t know that.. Scranton, PA… and all my life I’ve done my best to represent Pennsylvania…”
“Delaware, sir.”
“Huh?”
“It’s Delaware, boss. You represented Delaware.”
“I did? But I thought I was from Scranton! My card says I’m from Scranton…”
“Yes, sir, but you moved away when you were ten, and spent the rest of your life in Delaware, sir, at least, when you weren’t in fantasyland…”
“Huh?”
“So what I was wondering, sir, if these rumors about your son going into the art business was really at all true, sir.”
“Oh, yes… ahhh…. Well, you know… He’s always been a very talented businessman.”
“Has he, sir? Some would say he’s just always been a very well connected businessman.”
“Oh, well, isn’t every successful businessman well-connected?”
“Perhaps, but, ahh, well… his only connection has usually been you, boss.”
“Me? I don’t know anything about business.”
“Well, he traveled with you on junkets, rented office space with rooms designated for you, and seems to have gotten most of his work in life in subjects connected to whatever you were working on at the time, sir.”
“Oh, well, that’s all subjective…”
“Is it, sir? Lots of political thinkers don’t agree, sir…”
“Oh, well, I wouldn’t know about them. I thought we were talking about my son’s hobby of painting?”
“Right, sir. He paints. He admits to having no formal art training. And yet, now he expects to fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars per painting.”
“Isn’t that wonderful? My boy has finally made something of himself.”
“Umm, sir, aren’t you worried that people will take advantage of his new career as the world’s easiest money bribery scheme ever?”
“I don’t understand.”
“No? Well, boss, let me put it this way. Traditionally, most artists starve; they get nothing for their work while they’re alive, even if they’ve been attached to the best art schools in the world. Right?”
“I dunno. I guess so. Okay.”
“Well, sir, there are three ways – only three ways – that an new person to the art world can command enormous sums for his art: If he’s really absolutely incredible, if his name is already incredibly famous, and if it’s a vehicle for bribery or money-laundering, sir.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, let’s say he’s fantastic. Maybe some of these works from a new artist are fantastic. I don’t know. I can’t tell. Maybe they are. If so, they might get a couple thousand dollars for one. But this new art agent says he will be making five or six figures per painting, as high as half a million dollars sometimes. Is there any possible way Hunter’s work could enter that level, sir?”
“Well, I’m no judge of art, but it looks good to me.”
“Okay, then, the second option. People want to buy his stuff just because of who he is. What do you think, boss? Is that possible?”
“I don’t know. He’s the smartest person I know, I can tell you that.”
“Well, sir, that’s nice, but I don’t think it’s the sort of attribute that drives up the value of a painting.”
“Well, if anybody can get a better price on a painting from his signature, it’s my boy!”
“Hmm. Okay, well, sir, the third possible reason why a completely unknown, unproven artist might command six figure prices for his art is if they’re not really buying art, sir. You know what I mean?”
“Huh?”
“I’m saying everyone’s afraid that this business of his might just be a very clever way of collecting bribes, sir.”
“See? I always did say my boy was clever. Clever boy. So proud.”
“Uh, yes, sir. Well… the thing is, if that’s what’s going on, it wouldn’t be legal, sir.”
“Oh, legal, schmeegal. We’ve always left that sort of thing to our lawyers. They take care of that malarkey.”
“Sir, let’s say someone wants to get a favor from the administration. He pays $100,000 for a painting worth a hundred bucks, and your family has just collected a hundred thousand dollar bribe. Surely you can see how the possibility of a thing like that has everyone nervous, sir, right? Even Democrat papers are crying foul on this one, boss!”
“Aw, you make a big deal out of nothing. We just told the gallery to keep the sellers secret. They won’t tell my boy who bought his stuff, so it couldn’t possibly be a bribe.”
“Well, boss, that’s assuming two things. It’s assuming that the gallery owner will keep a promise like that, and frankly, as I understand it, absolutely nobody with more than one brain cell believes that we can trust the gallery owner to keep the donors – I mean, buyers – absolutely confidential.”
“Oh.”
“And the other thing is, the first buyer might not even be the briber anyway.”
“Huh?”
“Well, sir, the first buyer could be a straw purchaser. He buys it on behalf of someone else, who buys it on behalf of someone else… they could do it two or three or four times just to cloud the trail, boss.”
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about straw purchases.”
“How can you be so sure, boss?”
“Well, because we don’t use straws anymore. See, people have begun to realize that straws float in the oceans and cause trouble for underwater animals like fish and shrimp and uhh…. eels… and guppies.”
“I don’t think straws cause any of those creatures a lot of trouble, boss. And besides, that’s not what i meant. A straw purchase is when middlemen engage in purchasing in order to hide the actual buyer.”
“Why don’t they just wear a disguise?”
“Excuse me, boss?”
“Well, the buyer could wear Groucho glasses and a Groucho mustache. Then nobody would know who he was.”
“Sir, that wouldn’t fool anyone.”
“It would fool me!”
“Well, maybe so, boss, but you’re not really a prime control for that sort of study, you know.”
“I’m not?”
“No, sir, you’re not.”
“Oh.”
“So the fear is, boss, that the first buyer could be a secret shell for a second buyer, who could be a secret shell for the third… and before you know it, the buyer might be a lobbyist who wants some E.O. issued… or some billionaire who wants you to authorize some kind of permission, boss.”
“Oh, that’s silly.”
“Is it, sir? That real buyer could be a foreign government, maybe even an enemy government, sir, bribing you for a trade concession or a foreign policy condition or an export license.”
“Oh, I like concessions. That’s where you can get a hot dog, or an ice cream cone, or… I really like ice cream cones. You know, I think they’re my favorite thing at a concession.”
“It would be so easy for the gallery owner to get the information back on who really bought a piece. There could be a signal, or a message, or a code… There are a million ways even if the gallery owner keeps his promise on its face, sir.”
“I don’t usually sit in the gallery. I like the mezzanine though. Or maybe the first balcony. Good places to sit.”
“Not that kind of gallery, boss. I’m talking about the art callery.”
“Oh. What for, are you looking for something to hang in your living room? I could introduce you to my son…”
“No, boss, I don’t think I could afford his kind of work. Maybe I’ll wait until I have a huge mansion to furnish, like one of yours, and I’ll do the whole place in your son’s art.”
“Oh, that’d be nice. Just let me know what federal contract you want, and I’ll get right on it.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“Federal contract, oh… wait… habit. sorry. . Never mind I said that. So now, let’s see… what you do is you just call the gallery guy and tell him Bibs sent you… and he’ll take care of ya just fine…”
Copyright 2021-2024 John F Di Leo
Excerpted with permission from Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volume Two, from Free State West Publishing, available in paperback or eBook exclusively on Amazon.
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant. A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), are available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.
His newest nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” was just released on July 1, and is also available, in both paperback and Kindle eBook, exclusively on Amazon.
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