Barbwire by Barbano: Tin boxes and tin men

BARBWIRE
by
ANDREW BARBANO
Pirate Laureate of the High Desert Outback of the American Dream
The Barbwire Molly Ivins Memorial Columniator Hall of Flames

Site map
SITE NAVIGATION TIPS: When all else fails, read the instructions (A favorite John Hanks aphorism I've been using for decades)

Je Suis Charlie
"Our republic and its press will rise or fall together." — Joseph Pulitzer

Get ahead of corporate-influenced news—>Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential

Photo: Debra Reid, Sparks Tribune

   Everybody knows the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
   Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
   Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
   That's how it goes. Everybody knows...
Everybody knows the scene is dead
   But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
   What everybody knows...
   Everybody talking to their pockets.
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
   and a long red rose.
   Everybody knows. Everybody knows.
That's how it goes. Everybody knows.

— Leonard Cohen, 1934-2016

By Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) & Sharon Robinson
© 1988 CBS Records, Inc.

I hope you understand I just had to go back to the island.
— Leon Russell, 1942-2016

Tin boxes and tin men
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 8-9-2023 / Expansions in blue.

Greatest Hits Dept.

WE WON: BIG NEWS FROM THE NEVADA PRESS ASSOCIATION CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH —> BARBWIRE NOMINEE GUY RICHARDSON INDUCTED INTO HALL OF FAME ON FIRST BALLOT

Barbwire nominee Dennis Myers elected to NPA Hall of Fame

Support Don Dondero
and Jake Highton
and David Toll and
Foster Church and
Norman Cardoza next.
Send endorsements

Eee-yo-leven!
Barbwire wins 11th Nevada Press Association award

GOLD 2017-18

2018 First-Place Winners
From the depths of despair to the den of iniquity & holy of holies

"Excellent work. These are some of the most moving columns I've read."
— NPA contest judge/9-29-2018

The Grasshopper and
the Dragonfly
9-6-2017

Kicked off the Ledge
4-18-2017

NATIONAL NEWS FIRST-BREAK
Back to the Future in
Mississippi West Nevada
10-18-2017

Gold 2017
Don't ask Renown Med for marijuana to help your chemo
10-4-2016
We Don't Need No Education
Toxic turf threat ignored
12-13-2016
Kate Smith & Lady Gaga
2-14-2017

Bronze 6-pack
In the Uber-Nevada legislature, words can kill
4-28-2015
On artificial turf, don't breathe unless absolutely necessary (above)
11-24-2015
Leading questions, lead-headed leaders
1-19-2016

Hopelessly trying to win an earthquake
4-18-2013
2013 Loony Tunes Legislative Lexicon
5-30-2013
The politics of media ga-ga boosterism
3-20-2014

More statewide and national award winners

We Don't Need No Education—>
Neverending Barbwire Series

1997 Pulitzer Prize entries

Barbwire.TV:
15-year overnight success
Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008

The Barbwire's Greatest Hits
BEATING LUSH RAMBO AT HIS OWN GAME: Highlights from radio days
mp3 file

The Dean's List

The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.

RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006

Tomorrow's news today —> Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential
TOP SECRET— HushHush!

“Mr. X, may we ask you a question? It's amazing, is it not, that the city pays you slightly less than fifty bucks a week, yet you've purchased a private yacht?”

X: “I am positive your honor must be joking! Any working man can do what I have done. For a month or two I simply gave up smoking, and I put my extra pennies one by one into...

“A little tin box, a little tin box
That a little tin key unlocks.
There is nothing unorthodox
About a little tin box.

"A little tin box, a little tin box
That a little tin key unlocks.
There is honor and purity,
Lots of security,
In a little tin box.”

The above exchange comes from the hit 1959 Broadway musical "Fiorello!"

The Barbwire is eminently qualified to deal with the scandals hereinbelow because I played a corrupt judge in the Fresno State production of that show.

"Fiorello!" was about a little Italian guy elected to clean up Tammany Hall politics after the corrupt regime of flamboyant Mayor Jimmy Walker.

Fiorello LaGuardia (for whom the New York City airport is named) served as Big Apple mayor from 1934 to 1946.

When newspapers went on strike, he even went on radio to read the comics so little kids (and a few big kids) would not miss out.

"Little Tin Box" is my second-favorite song from the show. Retired Laborers' Local 169 Business Manager Dan Rusnak reminded me about it after he read last Sunday's New York Times front page story revealing how Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas sorta purchased "the Rolls Royce of motor coaches" in 1999.

At that time, most of the household income for Clarence and his wife came from his government salary of $167,900.

So how could he afford a luxury house on wheels which cost $267,230 used?

New ones today cost from $1.8 to $2.5 million.

In 1999, the retail base price was $1 million or much more "depending on the bells and whistles. It was a rich man's toy," according to the Phoenix dealer who sold it to Clarence.

The Ginny and Clarence dreamboat had only 93,618 miles on it, "relatively few for a vehicle that experts say can easily log a million miles in its lifetime," the Times reported.

Clarence has always made a big deal of his up-from-poverty roots and has preached about his identification with the common man throughout his charmed life.

Hence his announced love for the open road to commune with the common folk, "in a condo on wheels," as he once bragged about it.

I don't have the space or the interest to recount the fraudulent and banal facts about Clarence's carefully contrived personal mythology.

"He told me he saved up all his money to buy it," said talk show personality Armstrong Williams. Hmmm...where have I heard that before?

A little tin box, a little tin box
That a little tin key unlocks.
There is nothing unorthodox
About a little tin box.

Clarence noticed the rolling ocean liner while visiting Phoenix to attend a dinner at the conservative Goldwater Institute.

"In a speech that night," the Times reported, "he said he had never yearned to be a federal judge. 'Pure and simple, I wanted to be rich,' he said."

It pays to have rich friends, one of whom "loaned" him the quarter-million-plus to acquire the wheel-house. Whether or not Clarence ever paid him back, they won't say.

Maybe they lost the little tin box holding the records.

The Broadway song introduced a new term into the legal lexicon and resulted in a national public relations coup for Nevada.

In 1984, Federal District Judge Harry Claiborne brazenly asserted a "tin box" defense to explain where he got the money to live a Clarence-style life.

Harry may have been corrupt, but the olden-days Las Vegas legend was one helluva defense attorney — most of the time.

Back when I lived in Gomorrah South, I was told — only partially in jest — that if I ever wanted to commit murder, hire Harry Claiborne and I would never be convicted.

Alas, without home field advantage, Harry lost his biggest trial. In 1984, he was convicted of tax evasion in an away game at Reno.

The Nevada Supreme Court reinstated his law license after he served 17 months.

After all, he was a helluva lawyer, tin box and all.

Can't say the same for Clarence, tin motorhome and all.

PG-13 WARNING. During Fiorello's run at Fresno State, two of my fellow cast members got engaged, spawning a bawdy drama department one-liner.

Courtesy of my male chauvinist piggy castmates, herewith a trip in the Wayback Machine, adapted for the Barbwire...

Q: What did Ginny Thomas give Clarence on their honeymoon?
A: A little tin box.

BARBWIRE CODA: Clarence gave it back with a little tin key to stash "consulting" fees. On January 6.

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT DEPT. August 11, 1973, is regarded as the birth of hip-hop. I mildly disagree.

Back in 1970, I wrote and voiced a rhyming radio spot for advertising clients selling their Instant Trim exercise program.

Here's a vaguely-remembered line: "Come on in and do some slim when you get it on with Instant Trim."

Alas, no mention of killing cops or raping women. I could'a been a contender.

ON THAT CONCLUDING MUSICAL NOTE, my favorite Fiorello song:

Politics and poker, politics and poker
Everybody's broke and getting broker.
Everybody knows the trouble that we're in.
Decisions, decisions when you gamble on your friends.

Politics and poker, politics and poker
Make the average guy a heavy a smoker.
Bless the nominee and give him our regards
In poker and politics
You've gotta have the cards!

¡Sí se puede!

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for those cruelly afflicted by the cruelly small minds on this small planet, especially victims of our perpetual wars.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.) Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)
___________________
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 54-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988. "Fiorello!" book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman; music by Jerry Bock; lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, slightly adapted.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

The apogee of the apocalypse
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 8-2-2023 / Expansions in blue.

   Everybody knows the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
   Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
   Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
   That's how it goes. Everybody knows.
— Leonard Cohen, 1934-2016

This here news junkie has become so sick of the 24/7 Donald Xi Putin Show that I've cut back viewing. Cartoon violence on standard TV shoot-em-ups is often quite preferable to reality.

Perhaps there's an upside to this over-saturation of servitude to power-besotted psychos.

The signs in the heavens (cough, hack!) are pretty clear that Mother Nature is sending her spoiled brats a serious warning thru the muck and mire: Get fixed or get gone.

Barbwire-ites know of my simple solvent for the Herculean task of clearing the Augean stables of current humanity: Women. In command. Period.

Long before writing became popular, there were countless predictions of Armageddon. One of my erstwhile talk radio listeners even gave me a copy of "A History of the End of the World." This came as the world trembled that Saddam Hussein could use (non-existent) nukes against Bush the Elder's invasion to protect the Lone Star royal family's Persian Gulf drilling rights.

Same fears abide today, only worse, as many nations actually possess the nuclear button.

So maybe we stand at the apotheosis, the apogee, the highest point, the culmination of...what, exactly?

Exactly. We either climb to new heights of enlightenment, or crash down, smothered under various clouds of the mushroom, fire or ozone varieties. Pick your poison.

Meanwhile, moonhowlers meander over the nit-pickety small. Should Washoe County school children be exposed to the words "penis" and "vulva"? Doesn't much matter to little kids without enough to eat or roofs over their heads.

This tiny blue picayune pixel of a planet, in the tick of time occupied by our species' sentience, doesn't matter all that much.

Yet.

Today, we have arrived at a point prepared to soar into a sparkling age in which there is no war, no want, no wantonness.

Where science and art synergize into a symphony of wonder and achievement.

Welcome to Wonderland, Alice.

We have matured to a point where we actually control our collective futures, forward or backward, to the garden or to the graveyard.

"The world is in an uproar. The danger zone is everywhere." So warned Ray Charles in 1962, a bluesy predictive parable for the parabola of our arc on this watery ark.

Artists and philosophers have been trying to show us the way for millennia.

Are we finally ready to grow up? For every Jacinda Ardern there be a plethora of guys with guns.

The former New Zealand prime minister gave birth while successfully protecting her country from the COVID plague while puerile pubescent boys were playing target practice around the globe.

I may be a born critic, but I am eternally a guarded optimist with abiding faith in humanity's resilience.

Look at our newly immortal media magicians. Tony Bennett overcame many pronouncements of the demise of his career to become an international and American icon.

Paul Reubens (aka Pee Wee Herman) rose above ridicule and vilification, as did Sinead O'Connor.

All three recently departed awesome artists demonstrated how history will judge you kindly if you practice kindness to others, no matter the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

They were all living examples of the old Texas football axiom: Dance with who brung ya to the ball.

Translation: Stick to what you're best at, then fortune will smile upon you.

Which is why we live within what may well prove our finest or fatal hour: We have the ability to rise with our wonders or fail with our faults.

The ultimate in pro-choice.

¡Sí se puede!

Breaking News —> Masks work!

The Hounds of the Tubervilles
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 7-26-2023

Miss Priscilla Goodbody channels Princess Cassandra
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 7-19-2023

Love Letters from Miss Priscilla Goodbody
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 7-12-2023

True Confession: I drink Bud Light
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 7-5-2023

If you strike a king
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 6-28-2023

Invasion of the Chicken Pluckers
Gov. Ron DeSatanist soils the Silver State at GOP testiclefest
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 6-21-2023 / Expansions in blue

Politicians with nothing to hide
The Barbwire Nakedly & Unabashedly Announces Its New Fleshing Out Follytix Forum—>
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 6-14-2023
More naked reality

Web Xtras & Smoking Guns—>

Why the science is clear that masks work
By Zeynep Tufecki / The New York Times / 3-10-2023

For all the news you never knew you needed to know 'til now, subscribe to BARBWIRE CONFIDENTIAL—>Cheap. (HushHush!) Hie thee to BallotBoxing.US/

Peruse the Underbelly of the News —> Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential

For all the news you never knew you needed to know 'til now: Tell your friends and friendly enemies to subscribe to Barbwire Confidential for warm laughter, cheap thrills, hot scoops and occasional cold logic at BallotBoxing.US/ Cheap at twice the price. (Hush Hush!)

Barbwire dark foreshadowings unfortunately have a way of becoming reality. I thus suggest inoculation by signing onto the HushHush! list at BallotBoxing.US/ It's cheap as well as enlightening entertainment. Thank you kindly for your support.

$75 dead or alive: Still crazy after all these years
A mass murderer becomes famous on TV a century later
How come nobody noticed 'til now?
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 2-21-2018 Sparks Tribune

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory owners Max Blank and Isaac Harris. Is not Mr. Harris eerily familiar to television junkies?

From the Emmy-winning opening slate of the blockbuster "Cheers" television series. Combined with its "Frasier" spinoff, it lasted 20 years.

The "shirtwaist kings" immigrated from Russia and made a fortune manufacturing "Gibson Girl"-style blouses. (Photo, "The American Experience"/PBS)

The Emmy-winning opening slate of the "Cheers" television series before the "slate" of creators is superimposed. Looks like Mr. Harris' dead ringer (at left) is having a bloody good time.

"Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" — Chico Marx disguised as Groucho Marx in "Duck Soup" (1933)
Back to the story of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist holocaust

Triangle tragedy recalled as requiem
"The Fire in My Mouth," a new oratorio by Pulitzer honoree Julia Wolfe, premiered with the New York Philharmonic Jan. 24
By Michael Cooper / The New York Times 1-23-2019

SITE NAVIGATION TIPS: When all else fails, read the instructions (A favorite John Hanks aphorism I've been using for decades)

NevadaLabor.com | U-News | Bulletins + Almanac
Casinos Out of Politics (COP) | Sen. Joe Neal
Guinn Watch | Deciding Factors | BallotBoxing.US
DoctorLawyerWatch.com | Barbwire Oilogopoly Archive
Barbwire Nevada Corporate Welfare Archive
The Barbwire Molly Ivins Memorial Columniator Hall of Flames
Annual César Chávez Celebration
War Rooms: Banks, Cabbies, Cabela's/cabellyup, Cable TV, Cancer Kids/Mining, Energy, Food, Health Care, Resurge.TV/consumers, Starbucks, Wal-Mart
We Don't Need No Education
In Search Of...

Barbwire
Archives

Andrew Barbano is a 54-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and SenJoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee. He is the executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.

Barbwire by Barbano moved to Nevada's Daily Sparks Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in them parts ever since.
Whom to blame: How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the Barbwire in August of 1987
Tempus fugit.

Betty J. Barbano
2-7-1941 / 12-27-2005

Get ahead of corporate-influenced news—>Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential

Site composed and maintained by Deciding Factors, CWA 9413 signatory

Comments and suggestions appreciated. Sign up for news and bulletins