ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 6, 1995 TAG: 9512060032
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Ben Beagle
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
I was devastated, as we almost never said in Radford, to see that the old book club is now offering some pretty steamy movies.
This outfit sold me "Mrs. Miniver" years ago, and all those coffee-table books on Swedish floral arrangements and other really interesting stuff.
For example, there is a very expensive series of tapes based on "The Story of O," which avant garde persons such as yours truly here once bought in paperback at a long-ago cigar store.
There's also a little number called "Sins of Desire, which stars Tanya Roberts. I'm not going to explain how I know about "Sins of Desire" or Ms. Roberts, except to say that a Martha Stewart Tanya is not.
"What has gone wrong in our society?" I asked the greatest station wagon driver of them all, who is now pretty punch-drunk from Christmas shopping. "Imagine the old club selling trash like that."
"Would you like an electric razor for Christmas?" the driver asked.
"I certainly would not, madam," I said. "This old weathered face of mine, which retains suggestions of how handsome I once was, has never known the touch of such an invention. No. Give me honest lather and a throw-away plastic razor."
"There's a band saw on sale here," the driver said, and I could see her eyes were glazed.
"I can't use sissy things like that," I said. "Give me the roar and barbarity of a chain saw - whining cruelly beneath an expressionless gray winter sky. Cutting up rather than putting up. Blue smoke pouring majestically into the crisp air.
"Why do you keep talking Christmas here, woman? Don't you care where the world in which your children will live is tending? Have you no fears for the future of man and woman on this tired old planet?"
"I'll think about that after Christmas," she said. "How about a nice custom-made pool cuestick?"
"You know I haven't been in a poolroom since 1944," I said. "Although I do say that at that time I was marvelously adept at nine-ball."
"Whatever," the driver said. She left the room and I heard her engine fire as she left on her 25th mission to the targeted shopping mall of the day.
I soon lost interest in writing an indignant letter to the book club president. It's a free country. The club can peddle anything it wants to.
But don't blame me when a R-rated version of "Mrs. Miniver" shows up, with old Tanya in the title role.
LENGTH: Medium: 51 linesby CNB