the eXile - Other Shite

Issue #03/84, February 29 - March 10, 2000

An eXile Prank

By Mark Ames

When two Colombine High School students turned their suburban Denver school
into a blood-spattered Doom level last April, Americans reacted in carefully managed, pre-programmed stages, as if following some supermarket pop psychology bestseller on "Coping With Grief". According to the Soviet-like press reports, the nation first suffered a period of deep shock and horror. After the alleged shock wore off, the citizenry were then herded to the next stage, in which they plunged into one of the most laughably insincere periods of self-examination that the world has ever witnessed, as false and deluded as post-war Europe’s, only instead of blaming everything on those damn Germans, Vichy America piously accused every inanimate "issue" under the sun for the massacre: weapons, violence on television, the internet, latent homosexuality, Prozac... Everyone from the media to politicians wrung their hands in affected indignation, turning over every harmless, empty stone in the neighborhood in the search for the root causes, carefully avoiding questioning the most obvious suspect of all: Littleton, Colorado.

The eXile has increasingly come to believe that the Colombine Uprising was not only inevitable but even rationale. As eXiles from other Littletons--Hingham, Los Gatos, Ridley Park, Mahwah-- we felt pretty confident that even a random soil sample of the Littleton citizenry would prove our theory right, and help us finally understand once and for all why the Colombine Power Nerds took up arms against the kind of flat oppression that so few are able to put their finger on, yet so many feel crushing them. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s plans were inspired by raw, undiluted hatred, the kind of hatred we normally associate with ethnic wars and all the savage massacres that they inspire. A long-suppressed report published in Monday’s Denver Post detailed the extent of the duo’s rage: "They rigged up 95 explosive devices--enough firepower to wipe out their school and potentially hundreds of students. Forty-eight carbon dioxide bombs, or ‘crickets’. Twenty-seven pipe bombs. Eleven 1 1/2-gallon propane containers. Seven incendiary devices with 40-plus gallons of flammable liquid. And two duffel bag bombs with 20-pound liquefied-petroleum gas tanks." Their target was Littleton in its entirety: every treacly blade of grass and every inch of vitamin-supplement-nourished flesh was guilty of something so vile that all trace of it had to be eliminated.

Littleton, Colorado just suffered another one-two blow--Sunday’s double-murder of a Colombine nerd couple at the Subway Sandwich outlet, and then Monday’s Post revelation about the explosives-- would, you’d think, cause people to at least feign self-reflection. But no. Like a sitcom rerun, the press and pundits are manufacturing the same false picture of tragedy and grief, a narrative starring earnest, sympathetic Littleton citizens intended to reassure all the tens of millions of Vichy Littletonites from sea to shining sea that they are the victims, not the perpetrators, of this hatred. Here’s how ABC News led off on February 15, the day after the Subway Sandwich shootings: "Outside the Subway sandwich shop and within sight of Columbine High School the flowers are piling up: yet another monument to grief in this community that has known so much suffering. Tragedy strikes again in Littleton." Closer to home, The Denver Post bleated, "Once more, a stricken community mourns its children", while AP slipped this little bit of
Maoist propaganda in: "One group came to the parking lot of the sandwich shop and wrote on the asphalt in blue chalk, ‘For God so loved the world he gave his only son so that we shall not perish but have eternal life.’ (John 3:16). Using pink chalk, they wrote ‘God is love.’ The students also drew a circle around the word ‘hate’ and put a slash through it." Interestingly, the clear implication is that hatred, like marijuana, is a serious problem in Littleton. But what’s there to hate?

Posing as a Moscow-based "speculative hedge fund" honcho and amoral vulture-profiteer Seymour Gittleman, we called two Littleton real estate agencies on Tuesday, two days after the Subway Sandwich killings, to test the true magnitude of Littleton’s shared grief and soul-wrenching pain. We baited them with the choice between pursuing a fast sleazy buck by exploiting the bullet-riddled corpses of their neighbors’ children, or staying in character by at least showing the slightest degree of hesitation or moral confusion when confronted with Gittleman’s Faustian proposal. As we found out, once the national media turned their cameras off and headed back to the hotels, the fine sentiments vanished, and life in Littleton returned to how it’s always been.

FRONTIER REAL ESTATE 303-972-8900

Agent: Ron Hay-zher, may I help you?

eXile: Uh hi, Ron?

Agent: (chirpily) Yeah!

eXile: Hoosier, right?

Agent: Ron Hoosier, that’s correct.

eXile: My name is Seymour Gittleman. I’m calling actually from Moscow. I run a speculative hedge fund out here--

Hoosier: Uh-huh.

eXile: It’s called "The Zhyopa Fund". And uh, I’m actually from the LA area. I do a little bit of real estate, and I was just reading the tragic news about what happened a couple days ago, and it got me thinking. We do a lot of sort of risky, speculative investments going when prices are depressed and so on. And I had my assistant get me some numbers of real estate agents in your area, and so I’m wondering if this would be a good time to buy into some Littleton real estate--buy a house basically, a second or third house.

Hoosier: Well, uh, we have not seen a negative impact from the tragedy, you know. Littleton’s been under a big deal of stress ever since the Colombine incident. And, uh, these latest incidents have certainly put the damper on a few folks in terms of, you know, their mental health and--you know exactly what’s going on in this community. But so far we have not seen evidence of people, you know, just wanting to pack up and leave. You do hear that comment. Some people say, ‘Well geez, I’m uh forced to move to a different community.’ But those are still isolated, uh, occurrences.

eXile: What about--

Hoosier: (cuts us off) I’m sorry! Currently, the real estate market in Littleton is no different than the Denver metro area. It’s still, you get prime dollar. The only case I would argue--if you were looking for, to pick up some good buys right now, there are properties not only in Littleton but in other Denver areas where the properties need a lot of help. They need to be fixed up. And then, there’s some, probably some situations there where you can pick those properties up, go in there and do some quick fix-ups and turn around and flip it and make out.

eXile: These are single-family homes?

Hoosier: I’m talking about single-family homes. And you see them in all price ranges. The incoming price range, typically in Littleton a single-family home starts at around a minimum of 130,000 dollars to get into a single-family home.

eXile: I’m looking for basically a million dollar home, and maybe going for, you know--

Hoosier: For sort of--

eXile: --Fifty, sixty, seventy cents on the dollar at the moment.

Hoosier: (salaciously) O-kay. Uhh. In that--boy. You know, I don’t see that happening currently? Um, that doesn’t mean, that doesn’t go without saying that there might be an isolated occasion out there where we got a really high-end property that’s, uh, trying to be sold or liquidated. And you might end up getting it at sixty cents or seventy cents on the dollar.

eXile: But you’re not, uh, right now noticing anything like that.

Hoosier: No, that’s not--it would be a very isolated situation if that were to come up right now.

The conversation continued for another ten minutes as Hoosier, genuinely friendly and helpful to a perfect stranger inquiring how he can profit from his neighbors’ murders, does everything he can to keep a potential deal warm. He showed off his knowledge of every nook and cranny of suburban Denver real estate, including pedantic details of what parts of Littleton were actually incorporated and which lay outside of city limits, and expressed his thoughts on interest rates and the local economy. The nauseating display of cheerful nihilism was eventually too much even for Gittleman, who cut Hoosier off.

Hoosier: ...You know, they want to slow building down because, you know, we’ve got a lot of new buildings going up. So they’re putting moratoriums on them, like in the Parker area, which is Douglas County. That has been one of the hottest development areas in the Denver Metroplex now for the last two or three years. And there’re more just being built out there, and it’s exceeding their superstructure, and they can’t keep up with it, so--

eXile: Listen, I’m sorry to cut you off but something important...

Hoosier: (cheerily) Okay.

eXile: Something happened with my shoulder here. I’ll try to, uh call you in the next 24 hours or something--

Hoosier: (raises voice excitedly) Let me give you my direct number, and you can call me at any time! That’s 303-909-8796. And I would love to continue this conversation with you. Okay? Thanks Seymour.

eXile: Seymour Gittleman. Bye-bye.

Wow, now there’s a community deep in shock, bound together through a common tragedy, right? Just in case Hoosier was an amoral anomaly, we tested one more Littleton agency, Prestige Real Estate Group at 303-799-9898. We started off with a secretary:

eXile: My name is Seymour Gittleman, I’m a fund manager from Moscow, Russia. I’m actually from the LA area and I just, uh. The reason why I’m calling is, uh, I have a little bit of famliarity with the market there.

Prestige: Uh-huh.

eXile: And I just read about the tragic events of a couple days ago coupled with everything.

Prestige: Uh-huh.

eXile: And I’m obviously terribly sorry, but one of the things I specialize in is going in to temporarily depressed markets and uh, invest when other people might be more hesitant to. And I’m just--

Prestige: (curtly) You want to have an agent? I’m sorry.

eXile: Oh I don’t have an agent. I’m just looking for a potential opportunity.

Prestige: An investment property.

eXile: Well, single-family homes.

Prestige: But who did you call for initially?

eXile: Well, I uh, my assistant here gave me the names of a few agents in Littleton, and I was told Scott Matthias. But I’d be willing to talk to any agent.

Prestige: Let me see if anyone here can help you. Hold on.

[pause, transfers phone]

Agent: (Cheery, helpful tone) Good afternoon, this is Bonnie.

eXile: Hi, Bonnie?

Bonnie: Yes!

eXile: My name is uh, Seymour Gittleman. I’m actually a fund manager out in Moscow, Russia where I’m calling from.

Bonnie: You’re calling me from Russia? That’s pretty cool! What time is it there?

eXile: Uh, it’s pretty late. It’s after midnight here.

Bonnie: Well, what are you doing up so late?

eXile: Well, we generally--because I’m often times on LA time as well. I’m from the LA area.

Bonnie: I see.

eXile: I tend to fly around a lot. I tend to a lot of my work, let’s say, from noon to midnight and beyond.

Bonnie: I see.

eXile: I run a speculative hedge fund out here called "The Zhyopa Fund". You probably haven’t heard of it, but in any event, one of the things I do also personally, since from my experience in developing markets is also to sometimes go into briefly depressed, uh, "opportunities" I guess you’d call them. Uh, [bored tone] I read in the local paper about the tragic events that happened a couple of days ago again in Colombine, and uh, I was just wondering, I wanted to speak to a couple of agents out there and just find out if this--

Bonnie: (helpfully) Is this affecting the prices of property.

eXile: Yeah, is that affecting the prices at all and is there an opportunity now.

Bonnie: In my opinion, no.

eXile: Uh-huh.

Bonnie: No, I don’t think so. I think--and again, that’s my opinion--and when I say that, I haven’t seen the major Colombine event affect properties. And because this just happened I just think this is so new.

eXile: Yeah.

Bonnie: They don’t even know what happened yet with this particular incident. It’s not, uh--I mean it’s a lovely part of town.

eXile: Right.

Bonnie: And as you and I both know, crime can happen anywhere. You can live in what we deem Cherry Hills Village in this immediate area which are million-dollar plus properties. And you can have crimes happen there. So I think in that relationship, I don’t think--for what you’re looking for, I don’t think that that’s going to create--I mean, I could be totally wrong down the road. But right now I think it’s too soon to see the market react.

Shocked not just by Bonnie’s callousness, but by her bizarre attempts to pretend that the whole thing hasn’t even really happened, we quickly checked where we’d called--maybe we’d phoned some distant border village of Colorado, with no connection to the small suburb of Littleton.

eXile: Right, uh... I’m just looking at my notes here. Is Prestige located in Littleton?

Bonnie: We are in Inglewood, yes.

eXile: I’ve been in that area before, but...

Bonnie: You know where Park Meadows Shopping Mall is?

eXile: I have to say that was a few years back.

Bonnie: Okay, South Denver, where I-225 and 25 meet, we’re south of there. We’re in an area called Park Meadows, which is up and new and coming.

eXile: M-h’m.

Bonnie: We’re in an office right now of approximately 63 agents. And we all left Moore and Company about a year ago. Moore and Company was a family-owned business of 60 years in Denver, and we started Prestige.

eXile: (wearily) All right, that’s exciting.

Bonnie: It is exciting, ha-ha! Thank you.

eXile: I know how that is. I got into running a fund and starting up a fund.

Bonnie: Yeah, it sounds like you’re dealing with a very similar environment.

Colombine, sholombine. Bonnie does deals, and if grieving or telling a cynical vulture like Gittleman to fuck off on behalf of her neighbors meant offending a potential client, then to hell with the neighbors! Business is business:

Bonnie: We’ve got Lucent coming in, we’ve got a lot of technology coming in, so we still have a very high demand for housing. So if you really feel like it, this market is really hot right now.

eXile: Yeah, well, so there’s not a brief effect yet, a brief lull of some kind... You know what? What I’m going to do, I’m sort of uh, it’s an idea I have

Bonnie: (approving tone) You’re doing some homework.

eXile: Yeah, doing some homework right now. What I’ll do is I’ll definitely get back to you.

Bonnie: ... I’d love to hear back from you!

eXile: Thanks a lot.

Bonnie: Well thanks for calling! And get some sleep!

From out here in Russia it’s hard to believe that anyone can endure that kind of shallow, heartless world 18 hours a day, and then expect to "get some sleep". Most do endure it. A few flee. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s answer was to fight back. Like Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, they tried to destroy not just a monster or two, but the pods, the eggs, the queen mother... the entire planet that was their school.

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