"AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz"

I am going to do another one of those "here is how this entry came about" posts... so steel yourselves, dear readers, against an onslaught of randomness.

It all began in 10th grade. Mr. Bodey was my World History teacher. His class was insanely easy... I believe I finished with over 100%. He gave out candy for getting questions right, and once in a while, he would throw out a "Rich and Dreamy" question, a supposedly "tough" question which would entitle the first responder to one of these:

But that is neither here nor there. Mr. Bodey is most notable for the fact that, at least 2 or 3 times a week, he would begin class by playing Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire," the Piano Man's furious epic of 20th century history from 1949, the year of his birth, to 1989, the year the song was written. Mr. Bodey had a transparency of the song's lyrics, and at some points he would devote an entire class period to reviewing them point by point. I guess it was an effective, if gimmicky, way of teaching 20th century history. Mostly, I think, he just liked the song. (He also had a strange affinity for a band called "BoyZone." But that is also neither here nor there.)

Several years passed. I occasionally heard "We Didn't Start the Fire" in one way or another. It always brought me back to the good ol' days of Bodey's 7:50 AM history class.

This brings us to Friday, October 7, 2005. But let's back up a tick, to this spring, when I was burning a copy of Bright Eyes' masterful album I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning onto CD. The album is less than the full 80 minutes, so I decided to throw some random tracks on at the end. By fortuitous chance, Track 14 turned out to be "We Didn't Start the Fire."

So back to Friday. I was sitting at my extremely interesting and intellectually stimulating desk job in a state agency which will remain unnamed, staring at a computer screen, doing mind-numbing tasks while burning out my eyes staring at a computer screen. (But I would do that anyway, so who cares.) Since my job mostly requires absolutely no thought, just punching keys like a trained monkey, I am sometimes able to put on my trusty headphones and listen to music. On this day, I had me a hankerin' for some Bright Eyes, so I popped in my legal backup copy. When I reached the end of the album, I still had almost an hour left. So I decided to listen to Billy Joel. I disabled all the tracks but "We Didn't Start the Fire" and set Windows Media Player on repeat.

I proceeded to listen to this song ad nauseam for the better part of an hour. (Let's assume it was, oh, 52.14 minutes. Dividing the total amount of time by the length of the song (4.8 minutes) gives us a grand total of 10.8625 repetitions.) By the end, I was almost able to sing along to every lyric, if prompted correctly.

Because of Mr. Bodey's tutelage, I knew what pretty much everything in the song referred to. However, in the last verse, when Billy sings:

Foreign Debts, Homeless Vets/ AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz

I was unsure who this "Bernie Goetz" fellow was. I was also stunned by what hatred Billy Joel had for him to associate him with the plagues of the 80's: the spread of AIDS, the crack epidemic, the massive national debt racked up by Reagan's budgets. I resolved to do some research.

Well, it turns out that Bernie Goetz deserves to be lumped in with these scourges of society. He shot 4 people-- kids-- over 5 bucks. His excuse was that he was being mugged with a screwdriver. (The kids claimed they were merely panhandling.) From Wikipedia:

On the afternoon of December 22, 1984, four African American youths, Barry Allen, Troy Canty, James Ramseur, and Darrell Cabey, boarded the train on a mission to rob video game machines in Manhattan. Minutes later, Goetz entered the same train and sat down across from the four youths. A few minutes later, two of the youths asked Goetz for five dollars. Goetz, pretending not to hear them, asked them to repeat themselves. Canty responded, "Give me five dollars."

The youths responded to Goetz's refusal by threatening him with sharpened screwdrivers. Goetz had a gun, a .38 five-shot Smith & Wesson, and shot his assailants, one bullet for three of his assailants and two for Cabey. All four survived, though Cabey was paralyzed for life.

After checking whether two nearby women were injured -- they were not -- Goetz refused to hand over his gun to the conductor and left the emergency-halted train. After Goetz left the subway, he rented a car, and drove to Vermont. He almost died in Vermont when he got lost in the woods where he went to bury the gun. He turned himself in to New York City police nine days later.

He was later convicted of illegal possession of a weapon, and served 8 months in prison. He also serves as a textbook example of why only the police should be allowed to carry pistols. [An aside: the new Florida law, allowing, basically, anyone to kill anyone for any reason, as long as you make up a good excuse later, scares me.]

In conclusion:
1. Mr. Bodey was a crazy teacher.
2. Mr. Billy Joel wrote a crazy song called "We Didn't Start the Fire"
3. Mr. Bernie Goetz is a crazy man who shouldn't be allowed back on the street.
4. Mr. Pat Smith has a crazy desire for his band Brad Halen to cover "We Didn't Start the Fire" in its epic entirety. (I just added that one now, but it's true.)

Bonus: Go to this website to see a charmingly crappy and tacky animation of "We Didn't Start the Fire."

Posted by smit2174 at October 8, 2005 8:32 PM | TrackBack