Last Days

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 This week of extinguished stars, botched
executions, and reckless comparisons to Hitler kicks off with awful
news out of Afghanistan, where today two soldiers from Fort
Lewis were killed when an improvised explosive device hit their
vehicle in the country’s southern region. Today’s soldiers will be
identified by the Department of Defense via the Tacoma News
Tribune as 26-year-old 1st Lt. David T. Wright II from Oklahoma and 24-year-old Sgt. Andrew H. McConnell of
Pennsylvania, both of whom were part of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry
Regiment, 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division
stationed at Fort Lewis and deployed to Afghanistan in July. Later this
week, Fort Lewis will honor three soldiers killed in earlier
attacks—Spc. Jonathan D. Welch, Pfc. Jordan M. Brochu, and Spc.
Tyler R. Walshe-Vietti—who were killed by an IED on August 31 in
Afghanistan’s Kandahar province. Condolences to all.

• Also: After an extended fight with pancreatic cancer,
American movie icon Patrick Swayze died today at age 57. But
we’ll deal with that tomorrow.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 The week continues with Crazy About
Swayze, tonight’s double-feature event at Central Cinema.
Originally scheduled as a campy celebration, tonight’s screening was
abruptly turned into a memorial by the events of yesterday, and if
there is a better way to commemorate Patrick Swayze than with
back-to-back viewings of Dirty Dancing and Road House in a cinema that sells beer, Last Days
can’t think of it. As an aficionado of trashy American film, Last Days
has seen Road House approximately 650 times, single-handedly
proving that pain don’t hurt, but through some fluke of fate we had not
experienced Dirty Dancing until tonight. We were impressed, not
just by the film’s unexpected science-fiction time-travel elements
(let’s celebrate the ’60s by dancing to this power ballad from the
’80s!) but also by the glorious lead performance of Jennifer
Grey, the most adorable Jewish wallflower ever to carry a
watermelon. Thank you, Clinton McClung and the Action Pack for
producing tonight’s extravaganza (which included a sweet sing-along
farewell for Swayze by candlelight), and a moment’s silence for
Jennifer Grey’s tragically discarded original face.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 The week continues to continue with
people saying things. Specifically: Christie
Prody—aka the woman smart enough to date O. J. Simpson for
13 years after he was acquitted of the murders but found liable for
the deaths of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron
Goldman—who today told Good Morning America how she now
believes her ex-boyfriend is an unrepentant murderer. Details
come from ABC News, which reports the 34-year-old Prody—a
cocktail waitress who met Simpson when the celebrity-crime
sightseeing tour she was on drove past his house—entered her
13-year relationship with Simpson ready to believe in his innocence.
But as the years passed, she couldn’t ignore clues to the contrary: On
their first date, Prody wore black, which Simpson noted was the same
color his wife was wearing on the night of her murder, and coming years
reportedly brought numerous proclamations of would-be guilt—most
notably the repeated references to his wife, Nicole, getting what she
deserved. To those who believe that any woman who goes on a date with
O. J. Simpson gets what she deserves: You’ll be happy to know that
Simpson allegedly subjected Prody to “constant physical and emotional
abuse.”

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 Today we head north to Snohomish
County, where a 70-year-old man in Edmonds is facing criminal
charges following an altercation with a couple douchey
LaRouchies. Details come from the Seattle Times, which
identifies our septuagenarian protagonist as Henry Gasparian, an
Armenian immigrant who “witnessed firsthand the horrors of Nazi
Germany,” having lost two uncles and a brother during the Nazi
occupation of the Soviet Union in the 1940s. More recently, Gasparian
ventured out to the Edmonds farmers market on September 5, where he saw
posters and flyers depicting President Obama with a Hitler mustache and
lightly lost his shit. As Mr. Gasparian told the Times, his
response to the images was “personal and emotional,” and involved
trying to block the posters and grab the flyers from the hands of two
young activists for Lyndon LaRouche, the perpetual presidential
candidate/nutbag determined in his opposition to “Obama’s Nazi Health
Plan.” As the LaRouchies told police, Gasparian yelled
obscenities at them from his car, then returned on foot and
assaulted them without provocation. The skirmish ended with Henry
Gasparian in handcuffs and charged with two counts of fourth-degree
assault. “It’s shocking, to say the least,” said Aramis Gasparian,
Henry’s 29-year-old son, who told the Times that his father had
never had more than a speeding ticket before this incident. As for the
man himself, he remains stung and flustered. “I saw Hitler’s soldiers,”
said Henry Gasparian to the Times. “I saw swastikas every day.
To call Obama stupid, even criminal—OK, that’s politics. But
Hitler? It’s hurting to anyone no matter who is president.” Stay
tuned for upcoming court action, and confidential to the Seattle music
scene’s would-be Dylans: Please get to work on a Hattie
Carroll–style “Ballad of Henry Gasparian” immediately.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 Speaking of folk-song-worthy subjects:
Today we turn to Romell Broom, the Ohio man sentenced to
death for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in 1984. As the
Associated Press reports, the 53-year-old Broom was scheduled to
receive his state-sanctioned lethal injection this past Tuesday,
and the execution team began their work around 2:00 p.m. However:
“Executioners were unable for more than two hours to find veins that
would accept fluid from an IV without collapsing… After the team
spent nearly an hour trying to find a workable vein, Broom tried to
help them… He turned over on his left side, slid rubber tubing
designed to clarify his veins up his left arm, then began moving the
arm up and down while flexing and closing and opening his fingers.”
After an hour of vein-rolling and attempted shunt installation, Broom
“became visibly distressed… The team had been asking Broom
whether he wanted a break, but he chose to push ahead…” Around 4:00
p.m., prison director Terry Collins alerted Ohio governor Ted
Strickland to the execution troubles, and Governor Strickland issued a
temporary reprieve. “Collins later thanked the condemned man for what
he said was the respect he showed toward the execution team,” reports
the UK Guardian. But not everyone’s feeling warm and cuddly: “It
was obviously a flawed process,” said Broom’s lawyer Adele Shank
to the AP. “He survived this execution attempt, and they really can’t
do it again. It was cruel and unusual punishment.” Which brings us to
today, when a federal judge temporarily halted the state’s
attempt to execute Romell Broom again next week.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 Nothing happened today, unless you
count the weird fact that TV’s Batman Adam West, local film
legend/cautionary tale Frances Farmer, plus-sized pop star
Mama Cass Elliott, shrimpy pop composer Paul Williams,
bony supermodel Twiggy, award-winning Claus von Bülow
impersonator Jeremy Irons, Chic genius Nile Rodgers, TV
journalist Soledad O’Brien, Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker,
rhymey-named comedienne Cheri Oteri, and inexplicable celebrity
Jimmy Fallon were all born on this day.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 Nothing happened today.