Will's Red and well Read at the Beach

Dear Penthouse, I know this sounds made up, but I swear everything you're about to read is true. Signed Cassidy Hutchinson....Yeah okay. If you believe Ms. Hutchinson's story, then can I interest you in some Arkansas real-estate opportunities? Perhaps a public works project in Brooklyn?

We massively singed ourselves at the beach yesterday, so much so that we got a minor case of heat stroke, something that used to happen to us during family vacays at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Our face and torso radiated heat. We thought we'd 'pre-tanned' enough. Obviously not. But in another day our red body will be a nice apricot tan. The sun loves us, as it loves all Mediterranean peoples.

[Mediterranean?-Ed?]

We are 48.6% Ashkenazi Jew, motherfucker. Drop our dad in Beirut and he'd blend right at the Beirut International taxi-stand. 

Continuing our conversation about Valery, our secret Russian contact in Moscow, he is a Russian, and a Russian old enough to remember Soviet times. Russians are tight-lipped and suspicious by nature. Soviets even more so. One has to get to know one's Russian and understand the way he uses his words. It's hard to convey, really. We'd say he's sanguine about the war and we don't think he's a Putin guy. Vallery gets downright sarcastic when I point out that soon Red Army will win another glorious victory for Mother Russia.

Keeping things in Moscow, our reading about the final days of the USSR is fascinating. It's a pathetic scene, with a weak, but over-confident Gorby trying to keep the union together while holding his hand out to the US and the West for hard currency which he desperately needs to plug budget gaps plus reform and modernize the Soviet economy. Gorby was a good talker, we'll say that for him. 

Writing wise, our mind is racing here at the beach. We find ourselves thinking about The Great Salvation of 1976 (we'll be spending July reading, editing and getting it to the editor) and The New American Order (we'll be writing another section in July). Just what goes into the foreign section? Trouble as Australia brings famine relief to India...Quebec separatists battling Cree rebels...what else?