TakeYourMedicine

Miami

We aren’t allowed the luxury of as much time to be stupid as we were in the good old days. If the smile you send out returns to you, just track the speed of shit you emit. It’s faster than, well, a speeding bullet.

This morning the Miami Herald carried the story of Melanise “Neenee” Malone, a five- year-old girl who was killed by gunfire in nearby Opa-Locka. A resident of that town’s notorious Triangle, an area in thrall to gang violence, Neenee and her family were in the process of fleeing the gunfire that had terrorized the area for the past two days. Bullets whizzed through the windows and walls of the apartments on Lincoln Avenue while residents huddled in back bedrooms, hallways, and other spaces that they hoped would be out of the path of the bullets.

Neenee’s mom, sister, and mom’s boyfriend were waiting for the police they’d called to provide them with a bullet-free escape from the neighborhood terror. When the police arrived, Neenee’s aunt swept in with her van to scoop the family up and carry it to safety. They hadn’t gone but a few blocks when bullets ripped into the van, killing Neenee.

On the same day that this sad story carried the front page of the Miami Herald a local version of the entertainment chain New Times had dedicated its front page to the image of some cool dude in a wife-beater and a panama hat in a cut-and-run with his trusty Colt 45 government issue leading the way. “Bullet time,” the headline announced coyly: “We can’t conceal our curiosity about who’s packing fashionable heat in the Magic City.” Inside was a comparatively innocuous feature on the number of guns, licenses, and such in Miami-Dade, along with a rundown of the principal occupations of those packing the pistolas. What was awful was the fashion spread:: echoes of Pulp Fiction with an Uma Thurman look-alike angling a hip with her jeweled Baretta 92 FS, the winner of a Marvin Gaye lookalike contest hanging heavy with his Desert Eagle tucked suggestively behind his belt buckle, a suit slipping his Luger into his Bianchi Triad ankle holster above his cordovans, and once again Brandon, who it turns out is a professional gun model with his Colt pointed at his privates.

This spread has all the timing of the NRA convention in Denver just after Columbine.

Terribly chic. Kinda with it. Kinda now.

Neenee loved to dance. She had just learned how to braid hair. No telling what other interests she'd have developed if she hadn't fallen into someone else's fashion show.

Just don’t show that spread to Neenee’s mama.