Satire – Everett Leader Herald

— Eye on Everett —

The following column featuring the Blue Suit is written without notes, e-mails, evidence and sources. This column is all out of my head – made up-100% completely. It is fabricated and fake. But don’t ask the Blue Suit to agree to this description. The Blue Suit takes this column seriously. He feels there is some truth to the column and certainly the truth comes out when I, Josh Resnek, editor of the Leader Herald, interview the Blue Suit and spell out in narrative what exactly he has to say.

“Many people may feel I don’t exist, but I do,” the Blue Suit repeats to me over and over. “ I’m as real as Jason Marcus,” joked. “I didn’t have the chance to speak to Mike Marchese or Stephanie Smith before the election,” he recounted to me as we took drive around the city on Election Day.

“I was very unsure as to who would top the ticket – Mike or Stephanie?”

“I don’t think it really matters. This I know. Mike won’t allow the mayor to run unopposed next time around.

“But I’m not sure if Stephanie has it in her to run…but her candidacy, from my experience, would be ideal,” the Blue Suit said to me.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because she’s a woman. She’s a mother. She’s a wife. She’s successful in business. She’s assertive. She’s smart. She’s young. She talks only about what she knows, and she studies issues. Bottom line, she’s very very sharp, just the kind of candidate who the changing city would likely give quite a few votes. Could she beat the mayor? I don’t know. Right now I’m in the corner with those who believe, as his best friends believe, he’ll be the mayor forever. Nothing lasts forever. We all know this intuitively,” the Blue Suit said to me.

“I watched the School Committee meeting Monday night on ECTV. What a show that was. Actually, it was more like a three ring circus with fireworks and daredevil acts. Fred Capone was on fire. I hadn’t seen him confront the mayor with so much vigor and vitriol – never. And Fred looked fit and strong, strong enough to take the room apart if he got angry enough. I wondered to myself what is up with Fred? Does he still have it in him to want to be the mayor of Everett? Yes. I believe he does but I’m not entirely sure,” the Blue Suit added.

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— Eye on Everett —

The following column is written without notes, without evidence, without camera work, without witnesses and without interviewing anyone but the Blue Suit.

And what the Blue Suit relates actually happened – and if you don’t think so, then talk with him the next time you see him. Truth be known, the Blue Suit was taking his lunch earlier this week at Oliveira’s with its owner, Wilton Rangel when Rangel got a cell phone call.

“Excuse me, I’ve got to take this,” Rangel told the Blue Suit, pointing to his iPhone.

“Of course. Do what you have to do. I’m fine,” the Blue Suit answered.

Rangel disappeared for about 15 minutes. During that time, the Blue Suit filled his plate twice, about $30 worth of barbecued chicken, sausage, lamb and sirloin, and several big scoops of creamy mashed potatoes and a part of his plate was filled with salad. He devoured his food as he tends to do.

Out of the blue, Rangel appeared.

“Hey, come with me. I want to introduce you to two of my friends,” Rangel asked the Blue Suit.

The Blue Suit pushed aside his empty plate, stood up from his chair, stepped away from the table and walked two steps behind Rangel through the kitchen, and then into a hidden space behind a secret door in the back of the restaurant. Rangel stepped jauntily down the wooden stairway. The Blue Suit kept up with him.

They entered a room without windows, but all done up nicely with heavy wood paneling, comfortable leather chairs and subdued lighting.

They walked through that room. They came into another comfortable space where right there, seated at a table just in front of a fireplace with a roaring fire, the Blue Suit noticed immediately two of the most highly recognizable figures in the United States chatting.

The Blue Suit approached the couple.

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— Eye on Everett —

There seems to be a controversy about whether or not the Blue Suit is real or whether he is about satire in its purest form. The closer he is looked at the more some people want to believe he tells the truth and does not exist – an impossible bi-polar co-exclusive existence.

Some swear the Blue Suit was always telling the truth in these columns and that the columns weren’t about my relationship with him, but rather, was a part of a great deal of darkness aimed at many people.

They say, they believe, they claim, they fictionalize the idea that satire is really the truth and that the Blue Suit is not about satire.

Again and again, I am forced to write, to note, to identify and to certify that the Blue Suit, who is my friend, lives in a closet on Abbott Street. He is a cloth, off the rack, blue suit whose life has been spent in some of the highest places here in Everett, at city hall, and in faraway places on vacations.

The Blue Suit’s secrets are his own. His revelations are his own. His animus about many things is not about me, it is about him. His life has been colored and given shape by his living situation. He’s had a tough time for many years having to live up to his reputation as the holder of important secrets. And he has fought with himself for years to get into better physical shape. His suit sleeves have ripped. His pant legs have been torn. His lapels are stained with food he dripped on them. His pants have split several times but he’s always been able to get them repaired at a local cleaner on Broadway where a fulltime seamstress is employed.

She has stitched him back together a dozen times during the past 6 years. She knows all about the Blue Suit but no one has asked to question her about him because her lips are sealed.

After all, the Blue Suit inspires loyalty.

He also inspires in some the belief that he is real but how in the world can that be?

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— Eye on Everett —

Although we do not believe it is necessary, from time to time we like to remind the readers of this column that Josh Resnek having a friendship with a cloth blue suit is all about political satire on the one hand, and the art of fiction on the other.

For those of you who don’t believe this, find a blue cloth suit and try having a conversation with it. Try patting it on the back, or dining with it at Kelly’s or at Oliveira’s or make the attempt at discussing local politics and the secrets the Blue Suit claims to hold.

Try walking around Everett Square with a cloth blue suit, that is, the Blue Suit when he runs into admirers and they ask for his autograph or give him a high five.

The Blue Suit, as the British might tend to put it, is a one off. He’s a one of a kind who came off the rack at a lesser store but who is descended from very fancy parents – a father who was handmade and a mother who was a Gucci dress.

How he ended up in Everett is the stuff made of dreams, and of fiction. The caveat with the Blue Suit is that he sounds so convincing and so self assured and so so hungry for food all of the time!

This week, the Blue Suit and I (Josh Resnek) discuss the upcoming primary taking place next Tuesday.

He asked me to title this piece, “I had a dream.”

“I had a dream, Josh, about the primary. Let me tell you all about the dream because it was so vivid and lifelike in every way. I was hanging inside the closet where I live on Abbott Street when I awakened. I had to pinch myself the dream seemed so real,” he said to me.

“What did you see in your dream? Was your dream in color?” I asked him.

“It was like being at the movies and watching actors performing on the big screen,” he answered.

“It really blew my mind,” he added.

“What exactly blew your mind as you like to say?” I asked him. He cleared his throat and moved about a bit as we drove in my car around the city checking things out.

“I saw the results before the primary has taken place. How’s that for a dream when you’re me, or anyone, for that matter!” he said with energy and more than a bit of wonder.

“I know who won and I know who lost a good week before the primary is taking place. How’s that for looking into the future?” he wondered aloud. “I don’t know anyone who can do this but me.”

“You’re right about that,” I said to him.

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— Eye on Everett —

Mayor and I talk about life, Donuts and Money

By Josh Resnek

Kickback Carlo called me.

“We really need to talk.”

I agreed.

We met over a stack of stale honey dip donuts and bitter coffee on Monday afternoon at his empty donut shop on Squire Road in Revere which is for sale.

“Have a donut,” he offered. “No. I don’t eat them anymore,” I answered.

Kickback inhaled three donuts before we began talking.

“God, I’m hungry today,” he said, chewing the last bit of the third honey dip and wiping away the sugar coating from his lips with the side of his hand.

“Do you know anything about donuts?” he asked me to start off. “It’s a horrible business. Do you know that? You have work yourself to the bone just to get by,” he said.

“How would you know?” I asked him. “You’ve never worked a legitimate day in your life. What do you know about working to the bone? You have a terrible work ethic. Everyone at city hall knows this. You don’t work at all. You are rarely at city hall. ”

Kickback squirmed just a bit.

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