Randy and Evi Quaid, A Modern Day Bonnie and Clyde?

In the halls of justice, where the heavy axe of democracy swings. . . Where wooden benches like church pews sit gazing blindly into the golden eyes of an eagle emblazoned on the belly of the judge's bench. . .

Randy Quaid undergoes trial.

I sit between a greedy writer and an obese man, the latter of which is even now sneaking nibbles on a breakfast pastry. I can smell it, the sugar I mean, and that mixed with the aftershave and coffee of all those around me makes for a real assualt on my empty stomach - empty save for a beer or two. I should have eaten first. The beer burns my guts and the man of the hour walks in, Randy Quaid himself, with wife in tow. For a man on trial he looks ridiculously calm, looking more like the Prom King with his Queen next to him - in this case his crazy Queen, her arm placed between the crux of his, the two parading down the aisle and through the gate to his attorney, for their first dance as King and Queen. Randy sits down next to the attorney, his wife next to him, three ducks all in a row. His wife looks like a strange bird, her face contorted into a constant grin, her hair greased up and all over the place. A simple creature with small tiny bones and a small tiny face, yet behind those eyes is a circus that performs year round, and its always entertaining her judging by how she's always smiling. Trapeze artists do flips in her head, she smiles and Randy hardly even looks at her. He's accustomed to it too and is furthermore far more preoccupied with a satchel he had brought in on his shoulder. He keeps gazing down into it, his lips moving, telling crazy secrets, telling crazy truths, telling 'everyone one of them' bastards off.

The judge enters, everyone like the sunrise, the judge sits, everyone like the sunset. The stenographer comes to life as the trial proceeds, her record the only thread of reality running through the courtroom. . .

JUDGE OCHOA: Randy and Evi Quaid, you have been charged with defrauding the San Ysrido Ranch, in Santa Barbra, California, to the amount of ten thousand dollars, and in turn conspiracy, and burglary. . . How do you plead?

RANDY QUAID: Didn't do it.

EVI QUAID: I was there - yep - didn't do it. We paid you see, we paid! I've got the card right here! Went -swoop- right through the machine and everything.

Mastercard she says, amazed, and with a quick tug from her purse she pulls out the credit card in question. In a fit of madness she proceeds to press it into her forehead until it sticks.

EVI QUAID: See! See!

See! she keeps shouting, while the judge's gavel pounds out his disgust. . .

JUDGE OCHOA: Order! Order!

Order! he keeps shouting, Order! Order! bouncing off the walls and through the air like pure gravel. After long Randy gets into it too, having just recently woken up to the sound of Order! Order! pounding in his ears like his own heartbeat. He had been daydreaming, a smile on his face, his head aglow with the images of squirrels on water skis. . . he had never seen a squirrel ride water skis before, more or less a whole Gawd-Dang-Fleet of em' and it was all so peaceful and all so funny, but that Blasted Gavel, that Infernal Racket! His eyes blink open like the revolving numbers of a pin ball machine, and his mouth goes to work, as the stenographers machine, like a metronome keeps the beat. . .

RANDY QUAID: I've even got a witness! He was there the whole damn time! The whole damn time!

Randy reaches down and pulls out his 1987 Golden Globe Award for his part in a television drama about Lyndon B. Johnson called LBJ: The Early Years. He holds it up above his head, and it reflects in the sunlight, like a beacon of Randy's innocence. he revels in it, he stares up at it, his lips curled back in a wicked smile. . . And Evi with her See! See! and the judge with his disgusted gavel, the stenographers machine, all beating together in a cacophony of noise and utter madness.

RANDY QUAID: I'm innocent! Golden Globes don't lie!

JUDGE OCHOA: Order! God! Damn it! Order! Damn it! Order!

The court room ceases, the madness cut by the bladed words of the judge, cut just like a string. He eases himself back into his seat, lets his gavel fall over dead. He's embarrassed by his outburst, but he had just about had enough of these two ninnies, and rightfully so. Since their initial arrest, the couple posted bail, and then proceeded to miss their first court date, and then three more after each rescheduling. It has been a long ordeal that has cemented Randy Quaid as a real fucking psycho, something which the Actor's Equity Association knows full well - for in 2008 they banned Randy Quaid from the American Actor's Labor Union and fined him more than 81,000 dollars after he "physically and verbally abused" all 26 members of a Broadway play he was headlining. Like a champ Randy played it off like they just didn't understand him, that he was just "being artistic."

Yet no matter how you look at it, smacking a bitch is smacking a bitch. . .

Aside from those questioning his sanity, his ordeal with the law and subsequent disappearance led many to believe that Randy Quaid had died, and combed the coast looking for his dead body. When he showed up to court the vultures of Hollywood with hanged heads went back to whatever stoop it is they occupy, waiting for the next victim. . . Word is that Randy Quaid and his wife were scumming around the country while on the run, living in rat holes and abandoned mines, feeding off of vermin and whatever they could find. Hell, there are even rotten tales of a man with a Santa beard (Randy) and a crazy wife (Evi) swooping into towns and scooping up children to take back to whatever hellish den they originated from, to clean the screaming child of his bones and drain him of his precious blood.

The stenographer types out in verbatim:

JUDGE OCHOA: It is advised that the defense gets a hold of its clients before I throw you all out for contempt of court!

The defense recoils, the attorney takes his clients into his guidance and silences them with his sanity and judgment. He instructs them for a few minutes, talking to his clients as if he were explaining some horrible event to a couple of children who happened to witness it; he was kind, forgiving, and spoke rather gravely in simple terms the events that were to follow "if they didn't obey and 'play nice.'" And all with a rotten smile on his face. He nods silently to the judge.

JUDGE OCHOA: Good, now, how do you plead? And the simple answer. . . please.

RANDY / EVI QUAID: Not guilty.

The court room eases. The air gives way to silence and no longer seems hard to breathe. Even the fat man next to me feels it necessary to ease his belt, which strains to keep its hold on his pants in a constant tug of war with gravity. His stomach threatens gastric disturbances and to keep him from bursting I try not to look at him. They say looks can kill. Instead I concentrate on Evi and Randy, and my head rings with a rhyme, the story of Bonnie and Clyde:

They don't think they're too smart or desperate,
They know that the law always wins;
They've been shot at before,
But they do not ignore
That death is the wages of sin.

Some day they'll go down together;
They'll bury them side by side;
To few it'll be grief--
To the law a relief--
But it's death for Bonnie and Clyde.

They were the words of Bonnie Parker herself, and the same words that fools who believe in a thing like true love often quote. Its romantic, its brutal. Its nothing like real life. Its for people who fail to realize that the notion of being buried side by side with the one you love, means very little to worm food. I wondered what Evi would write, what epitaph she would frame in rhyme for her and her love Randy if she had the chance:

We tread the Earth exposed and naked,
Hiding amongst the leaves and thus;
We know we're incomplete,
And when we think to weep,
The country just laughs at us.

We know all our lines,
We've got them handy,
And when word gets 'round,
And we together go down,
You'll never forget Evi and Randy.

And surely, they will go down.

Randy's celebrity status isn't strong enough to deter any stiff sentences from being doled out by a star struck judge with constellations in his eyes. Even during his prime when the money came in and he wasn't exactly the talk of the town - but still folks were talking, he couldn't pull many strings, at least not as high up as when it came to matters involving the law. Furthermore family connections had slowly frayed over the years, and the recent press wasn't doing much for his image in the eyes of those of similar blood. So, like a cornered rat, he did the only thing a man wild with fear and weapons to fight but no real enemy to strike can do in a situation like that: he took off running. . .

Play your music stenographer:

JUDGE OCHOA: Now, Mr. and Mrs. Quaid. . .

RANDY QUAID: It was all Dennis' fault. He just couldn't take the jealousy. It ate him up for years, my wife knows. . . He was always envious that I managed to wrangle such a catch as her. Aint that right hon?

JUDGE OCHOA: You do realize you're under oath, Mr. Quaid?

RANDY QUAID: Are you implying Dennis aint jealous of me? Cause he sure as shit is - you ever see The Rookie? Can't hold a flame to a single Vacation movie - not a one- and that aint no lie.

JUDGE OCHOA: I will not have such language in this court. Now you're treading a fine line, another bit of profanity and you'll find yourself in jail - and I'll have a nice little cage for that bird of a wife of yours, too.

Evi cooed, as dumb as a dove.

As the court room was slowly begging to lose control over itself, the one true part had already been said: it was Dennis' fault, or at least in Randy's mind. For it seems that Dennis, aside from being a 'jealous prick' was also a big fan of prostitution, and often took women of the night to the San Ysrido Ranch. This endeavor proved profitable for the hotel as Dennis was a generous tipper, especially when shitfaced, and to Dennis hookers and liquor went together like peanut butter and jelly so he was almost always good and oiled up. This relationship between Dennis and the Ranch as his den of iniquity had eventually blossomed into a genuine friendship between Dennis and the owner of the hotel, one which hurt Randy as much as it aided Dennis.

And just like Dennis, not to share - not to share anything. . . Not the Ranch, not the prostitutes - not a damn thing. . .

People sometimes forget that jealousy, whether deserved or unleashed unfairly, can sometimes be a dangerous thing. For some it leads to horrible deeds Cain would be proud of, but for Randy it meant throwing a temper tantrum in a hotel room, destroying its insides during a whirlwind of emotion, and then skipping town when the rage subsided and he was able to think enough to know he had no way of paying for any of the damage.

The stenographer:

RANDY QUAID: Not a God damn thing! Not the hookers! Not the blow! Not a God damn thing! That jealous bastard. . . Could never stand to be in the shadow of big bro! . . . Not a God damn thing!

He swelled with anger and turned as cherry as his rose colored hair - the result of a dye job and new identity. The judge had them escorted out of court, and as they were pushed along like cattle, Evi sang out her best blue jay imitation - a cackle that rang in the ears of all those around her. Miraculously, their attorney managed to have the trial extended, and will convene once again in April. . .

But what happens next?

Well only time will tell for this couple of retard royalty. . .

iR