Friday, July 10, 2020 | Colonel Kurtz said it best in Francis Ford Coppola’s potboiler Apocalypse Now when he proclaimed, “There’s nothing I detest more than the stench of lies.” And so it is that another Friday finds us with our hands around OZY’s best True Stories. These are True Stories of fate and outrageous fortune and not just a little bit of cool, dark irony. Which, if you think about it, is a welcome antidote to all of the very real COVID-19 craziness we’re living through. So without further ado, a healthy dollop of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. |
| Eugene S. Robinson Editor-at-large |  |
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| | | 1. When Movie Magic Goes Horribly Wrong Maybe we’ll go out and enjoy a movie, just us and a few friends. And then, BOOM: a shooting in the theater, a confused act of bravery and a story to beat whatever was being shown on the screen that night. Welcome to Hollywood, baby. |
| 2. A Story About My Dad & Nine Bullets On a banana plantation in the Philippines, the author’s father went out to see some men who wanted to have a little talk with him. At the end of it, at least one of those present would never talk again. |
| 3. A Really Bad Mother’s Day Child abuse is horrible, and our passive responses to it compound the horrors. But what about when one kid has had enough? What happens when a kid snaps and acts out in the only way he knows how. |
| 4. What’s a Dad to Do When His Son Is a Cannibal? Lionel Dahmer has had a lot to say about his infamous son Jeffrey and the crimes he committed. And if you’re a parent yourself you can understand this in line with all those “What have you done this time?” conversations. |
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| | Spice Up Your Bedroom Life Here is the perfect poster to liven things up in the bedroom. With the pandemic not slowing down anytime soon and all your summer plans gone out the window, might as well spice things up at home because homebound is where most of us will be for the foreseeable future. Get it from the OZY store today. |
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| | | 2. Molestation Matters You have no reason to suspect anything. Until, that is, you overhear one of your young kids talking in her sleep and the bottom of your world falls through: Grandpa is not the good kind of grandpa. In fact, he’s the absolute worst. |
| 3. When Supping With Satan Most of us would keep an arm’s length from the founder of the Church of Satan. But having dinner with the dark magus himself couldn’t hurt, right? |
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| You Got, You Got, You Got What We Want! |
| | 1. C Is for Cuckold What if you discovered the love of your life was getting sexy with someone else? And what if this was what you had hoped for? Yep, it’s a topsy-turvy world out there. |
| 2. Do We Grope That Which We DON’T Want? It’s a fact of life that if you’re doing something public to even minor-league acclaim, you’ll inevitably run into someone who resents that. Call them hecklers, shit stirrers or, in a #MeToo reversal, a man who grabs another man’s privates with intent to harm. |
| 3. They Hate Us Because They Ain’t Us Boys sometimes go through phases where they don’t know how to process that which they like and so their automatic default is “rude.” But what about when they become men? Yeah, jerks abound. But what do you do if your particular jerk is delivered into your hands in the most satisfying of ways? |
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| | 1. So You’re Going to Prison Sixty million dollars worth of bond fraud? Someone’s got to take the fall for that. A father-son story of the most crucial kind. |
| | 2. Drugs Are Bad, M’kay? With as many people on drugs as there are, and with as much money made from the sale of drugs and spent on stemming the flow of drugs as there is, it’s a wonder no one involved with it manages to keep any of that money. But that’s the way the cocaine crumbles. |
| 3. The Al Capone of India Like any place, there are good people and not-so-good people in India. But how many of us think of organized crime when we think of India? You will now. |
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| | 1. Teacher, Felon, Dead Married schoolteacher Mary Kay Letourneau slept with and had a child with one of her students. He was 13; Letourneau was 34. And everyone seemed to think it was a fun tabloid story rather than a rape. Let’s dig a little deeper and find out why. |
| | 2. Let’s Get High and Die What’s that they say about the candle that burns the brightest not burning the longest? Mix in the great David Carradine and all bets are off. |
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