Make Some Noise!

Remember the oboe (see post below)? Well, here is a very real story about a trumpet, the man who plays it and the nice people who broke his arm at Charles de Gaulle Airport last week as he protested not being able to bring his trumpet on the plane with him:

So Valery...63 years old, maybe 5' 5" tall, 140 lbs...pitched a bitch at the gate when some pissed-off functionary at a loading gate decided to pull rank on him. They called security and four (as he so colorfully put it to me today when he told me the story) "giant asshole cops" took him someplace where there were no witnesses, tried to forcibly take his trumpet away and when he would not let go of it with his right hand, pulled his left arm behind his back and broke it.

And people sniff and moan when the word "fascism" is used to describe what is happening in America and in much of Western Europe as well.

Vaslery did not try to fight these people. As he related today (I wish I could reproduce his great Russan accent) "I grew up in Soviet Union under Stalin and Khruschev. I know enough not to try to hit a cop. Let alone four of them. Big, stupid motherfuckers." (Here he stands on tiptoe and raises his remaining functioning hand as high in the air as he can.) "They were THS BIG!!! FOUR of them!!! I am not THAT stupid."

And indeed he is not.

Read the rest of what happened to Valery Pomonarev, an internationally known jazz trumpeter here and then catch a discussion of the incident at Left End of the Dial.

Like I said, what did the oboe ever do to you?