Took the boating test in Ocean City, NJ, on Saturday morning while Monica went to the beach. I passed. Enough said. They didn't give out scores, but now I'm legal to sail the Mariner on the same body of water where I first began sailing, in a Mariner.
I joined Monica on the beach after the test. It was blazing hot in the sun and cool under the beach umbrella, where I stayed. At about 11 o'clock, we went up to the boardwalk so Monica could buy a book. There was a silver-haired orator in blue oxford button-down with sleeves rolled neatly above his wrists. He was decrying, through a bullhorn, society's dependance on fossil fuels and was exhorting a gaggle of onlookers to seize the Gulf Disaster moment and work for renewable energy sources.
Some time later, after a woman with a waist-length blonde braid and the bullhorn had accompanied a tall young man with a television camera to the edge of the ocean near my umbrella, there were, suddenly, one hundred or more individuals in street clothes gathered, along with the silver-haired orator, near the wet edge of the retreating tide. No sooner could you say peaceful protest than the folks gathered by the sea joined hands in a block-long line, with the orator urging them on.
And then the bizarre happened. Out of the midst of these descently earnest individuals appeared a man with a black and white Hawaiian shirt, black-lensed sunglasses with large, white frames -- and the bullhorn. In an Elvis voice, he began singing "I can see clearly now, the rain must fall . . ."
His pompadour was black and his sideburns were long but there appeared to be either a bald spot at his crown or a malformed skull for there was a dent up there.
One of two silver-haired bathers with Fortune 500 teeth and tans who were standing behind me commented that it figured "Elvis" would be a liberal.
Having completed his vocals, the Elvis impostor joined the hand-holding line at its center, looking from my vantage point under the umbrella as if he were being stretched between the left and right wings of the protest line.
In time, the demonstration, apparently filmed for future reference, dispersed and the "Elvis" man posed with some of the participants for photos.
Odd.