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THINK TANK

My friend George has an idea for starting a new business and needs my help. But I told him I am too busy starting my own business and decline his offer. I have decided I am going to be a Washington think tank. You know like those guys that are constantly quoted in The NY Times and on Meet the Press. My only problem is that in order to be a Washington think tank I think I have to move to Washington DC.
Now I’ve wanted to move out of New York for about five years. The only problem is I’m terrible procrastinator. How can I be sure if Washington is the right place for me?
Maybe I can be an Upper Westside think tank.
I call my dad.
He says, “An Upper Westside think tank? That’s got be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard in my life; who in the world is going to pay you to think?”
“Well, how hard could it be? The Governor could call me up and say, ‘Do you think we should feed the poor?’ And I could say, ‘Yeah, I think we should feed the poor.’ And then he could say, ‘Do you think we should get the chemicals out of the Hudson?’ and I could say, ‘Yeah, I think we should.’ Then he could say, ‘Where do you think we could get all the money for this?’ and I could say, ‘I don’t know. Let me think about that and I’ll get right back to you.’ A think tank. I could do that. That’s what I want to do with my life.”
“That has got be the sickest damn thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I thought you were going to join the rest of the world and become an internet designer.”
Dad has been trying to get me to be an internet designer since the whole tech boom has started and ended.
“No dad, you’re the internet designer. Not me. I don’t like design. I hate everything about design. I hate the way everything represents something else.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?”
My dad grew up on a farm. He’s very smart, but not book smart and this causes him a great deal of pain if we discuss books.
“Well, you know when you design a set or a house and an inch equals a foot? I hate that. It drives me nuts. I keep thinking it’s only an inch, but really it’s a foot. I don’t know. I guess I have a hard time visualizing things.”
Then, as I talk this out to myself, I realize it’s not so hard to visualize it after all.
“Well, that sounds easy to me,” my dad says.
“It does to me too, now that I explain it to you. But anyway, I want to be a think tank. I don’t want to sit in front of a computer all day and design.”
“Being an Upper Westside think tank, you sit all day in front of a computer.”
“I want to sit in a garden with statues and think.”
He hangs up.
To be professional, I figure I need to get business cards. I go to a Xerox place. I look at the various designs, but I really don’t want something with my head shot on it, smiling. Nor do I want fourth dimension cards that look a version of Einstein’s theory of gravity. I need something simple and festive.
Maybe I’ll do a web page instead. I look online at a few of my friends' sites and I’m starting to get very mad about my friends' careers. Man, I’m nearly forty. They are all successful. My dad is right. I need to get my career going as a web designer. Then, I have internal conflict with myself, ‘James just do it. You think way too much about things.’ ‘But, I’m going to be a think tank. I should think about things.”
So, I get Front Page software and try to design my website. This isn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Maybe I'll be quoted in the Times as saying something like, “James McGuire, a think tank, will think this will be really popular in the future.” Or “James McGuire, a New York based Washington think tank, thinks this won’t be a good idea.”
I'm ready to publish. I make my website mysterious. It’s all black and then in nice letters it says, “James McGuire, LLC, Think Tank. Let me think for you!”
I really don’t think there’s going to be any customers, but I’m proud of myself for at least trying.
A few days later the phone rings.
“Um… hello, my name is Beth Sars. I work for a conservative law firm in Seattle. I saw your website. What are you?”
“We’re a think tank,” I say, acting like there’s more than one of me.
“Who are you?”
I explain to her that I’m a writer, but I can think as well as anybody.
She laughs and says, “Do you mind if I put you on speaker phone for my boss?”
“No, I don’t mind, but please know my answers aren’t free. I’ve got to make a living like anyone else. Now, what do you need to know?”
I hear laughter on the other end.
“What should we do about Israel?”
“I don’t know. Arafat should have taken the deal. Change its name back to Jacob.”
She says, “Will you send me a bill?”
“No problem,” I say.
I take her address. Now I’m thinking how much these Washington think tanks would probably charge the President. I send her a bill for forty thousand dollars. I never hear from her again. I guess she needs to think about some things before getting back to me.
Maybe I need to do some research first. I call Fraline & Rodgers, a prestigious Think Tank.
“Hi, do you think I could become a think tank?”
There's a pause and then a guy says, “Who is this?”
He sounds really paranoid, like someone wants to take all his thoughts and start their own business.
“My name is James McGuire and I’m wondering how I can become a think tank. Do you just sit around thinking all day?”
“Is this a joke? Is this someone from Bush’s office?”
“No, I live in New York.”
“I don’t find this funny.”
“I’m not being funny. I want to be rich and I want to be in the papers and I figure I can think just as well as anyone else.”
“This is more of an art than a business; now I’m a very busy man.”
“I’m good at art and what are you busy doing? Are your busy thinking? What are you thinking?”
“It’s much more than that. We do research…”
“And then after the research what do you do?”
“Well… we analyze…”
“You mean, you think don’t you?”
And then he hangs up.
Now I have to think again. I do find myself thinking an awful lot lately. Maybe instead of a think tank I could be a think armored vehicle. There really is no reason I couldn’t turn this into a business. The problem is this: one has to be taken seriously for their thoughts and I can’t I guess do that. My thoughts are free. Let’s just hope this country remains as free as my thoughts.

 I was there the day that Tommy Hilfiger was assassinated. The day they blew him to smithereens. Someone had it out for Tommy Hilfiger. We still don’t know why.
It all started one day when I was a waiter at Casa Ole in WillowBrook Mall in Northwest Houston. It was Tommy’s birthday. We never had anyone famous at Willowbrook Mall. Oh, sure Donny and Marie Osmond came one year to help out their little brother Jimmy’s failing movie career. That girl, Debra Gibson, whose mother made her perform in all those malls and sang ‘Electric Youth’ before she became a Broadway star, came one time. But, that was about it. But, for some reason Tommy Hilfiger was eating at Casa Ole on his birthday.
See, Tommy Hilfiger, who looks exactly like a combination of Dr. Suess’s Yertle the Turtle and a space monkey, goes around to different department stores and meets what he calls his “Team Tommy”. “Team Tommy” is like, oh, I don’t know, some sort of athletic clothing team or something. I guess they get together and play volleyball. My overweight manager is Sue, a woman who wears brown polyester pants and keeps her hair in a bun. We always say, ‘Sue, will you get your three buns over here?’. She hates all of us high school kids.
“Well, well, well,” she said, “it looks like Casa Ole is now playing with the big boys. He didn’t go to Bennigans or Ruby Tuesdays. He came here to Casa Ole.”
Sue used to work in fast food and was still a bit insecure about moving up to the big time.
At Casa Ole we sang this song on people’s birthdays and give them a small – and I mean champagne glass size small – free frozen margarita. You couldn’t even put rock salt around the edge. Then, we sang a song which we all hate. You can, for an additional $4.95, also buy fried ice cream.
We go over and sang the Casa Ole Birthday Song to Tommy Hilfiger sung to the tune of Happy Birthday.

Chimichanga to you,
And a cheese enchilada, too!
Guacamole, chile con queso
Hot tamale to you!

Is that not the queerest song ever? He could have said, ‘Listen, that song was really stupid,’ but instead he smiled, clapped and kept saying, ‘Very nice, very nice’. We brought him the margarita. Like Tommy Hilfiger couldn’t afford a small margarita. Then he brought out this magazine. He showed us pictures of himself folding his own sheets and riding around on a tractor on his big estate. Then it happened. Two mysterious hooded figures entered and knocked over Wanda about to serve a mole combo special.
Blam blam blam.
Three gunshots.
We were all shocked. Who could have done such a thing? A generation Xer who saw Tommy as a danger like our very own Malcolm X? Ralph Lauren? The ladies who meet with the Kabbalah rabbis as part of Showroom Seven’s recent Jewish movement? I repeat, who could have done such a thing? Why WillowBrook Mall and Houston? And probably the most important question of all: if they do a two hour special hosted by Tom Brokaw will they interview me?
Then, we all remembered he had recently been in a fight with Axl Rose. Could he be the one?
Tommy just laid there in a pool of blood, his face covered with refried beans. His stripped rugby shirt was so wrinkled from him flailing about while getting shot that you couldn’t see his own designer label.
Sue, the manager, came over and said, “Someone’s going to get it for this. Get back to work, we’ve got to keep up,” and muttered something about how no one should panic. You could tell she thought she was going to have to go back to Taco Bell for this one.
Finally, the police came and carted Tommy away. He didn’t even have time to drink his margarita. I guess it’s just another piece of the puzzle as to why someone would kill Tommy. This is a puzzle of the death of an American Icon.