RON MARTINO IS A WEASEL

A wise person once said, “If you don’t have anything nice to say about someone, don’t say anything at all.” While I’m obviously ignoring that principle here, there is, in my defense, precedent for doing so. Actual legal precedent. In the matter of Marriott Resorts and Spas International v. Clifton James & Associates, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania found as follows:
Mr. Martino’s credibility is at best suspect. Even when presented with documents directly contradicting his testimony regarding the time, place and manner in which The Agreement was entered into, Mr. Martino maintains that the Plaintiff never informed him of its decision to remove funds from escrow and return all earnest money to Mr. James. As such, we disregard Mr. Martino’s testimony as it relates to all matters pertinent to our decision. And all that business aside, Ron Martino is pretty much a dick.”
1265 F.Supp 3rd 247-48 (LEXIS 2008).
Okay, the Court didn’t write that last sentence, but you can see what Her Honor was getting at, right?
Ron has one of those vaguely important sounding financial jobs that will occasionally involve him in some gentlemanly litigation. I try my best to appear interested when Ron discusses his work or his great new suit, or his golf outings with “K Street,” or the mediocre draft beer selection in the luxury suites at Lincoln Financial Field, but I usually just end up nodding a lot and thinking about monkeys or Rick Santorum or something else fun. I suppose if the police came to question me in relation to Ron having been kidnapped by Russian mobsters or something and they asked me what Ron did for a living, the best I could do is repeat what I’ve heard Ron say on a number of occasions in response to the same question – “I move money.” Douche.
Ron and I run in the same circles on account of our spouses having struck-up a friendship while breaking choke-holds during morning drop-off at the reasonably priced local daycare center our children attend. Initially, I only had to put up with Ron about five or six times a year at various birthday parties and child-oriented community events. This was fine given my easygoing nature and willingness to drink whatever’s at hand, but when I began to spend more time with Ron I found myself wishing that he would, say, accidentally overdose on being stabbed in the chest. Hence, I led the charge to expel Ron from book club.
Me and my college pal Rodney Weston founded a book club, Rodney’s Readers, about 3 years ago. At school we were both psychology majors who enjoyed wandering over to the English department when Professor John Tyler was teaching something interesting. Not because we particularly enjoyed reading books of great girth, but because Professor Tyler conducted his literature classes in what was once perfectly described by a fellow English professor on an unfortunately leaked faculty evaluation form as “the same business-like manner in which a nymphomaniac makes love – hard, fast and seemingly without joy.” Rodney and I found Professor Tyler’s style to be highly refreshing at a school in which the faculty was chiefly populated by overly sensitive, self-important blowhards who reveled in the sound of their own voices.
John Tyler was among that ideal class of American men formed only in the 1920’s and 30’s. Men who quashed fascism, earned advanced degrees at prestigious universities, journeyed to the moon and changed their own goddam oil, thank you very much. Men like John Glenn, Ralph Nadar and Robert McNamara (Ron would probably add Ronald Reagan to that list – douche). Professor Tyler died in his study in the fall of 2009. His grave marker reads, “This could be you someday.”
Divorced three times, Professor Tyler was hardly perfect, but what he lacked in domestic charm he more than made up for in dedication to his craft. His craft being, evidently, the absolute mastery of whatever he happened to be interested in at the time. I understand that for most of his adult life a typical morning for Professor Tyler would include rising before dawn, catching his breakfast in the stream that ran behind his property, editing a scholarly article, fitting a few fresh stones into his barn’s perpetually crumbling foundation and then, you know, heading off to work. And later, after their parents passed away, he took in his older brother Robert, who required constant care on account of his having been kicked in the head by a plow horse as a very young boy growing up on the family’s farm (in true Professor Tyler form, he refused to acknowledge any of the modern semantic niceties and simply referred to his brother as a “retarded person”). Even after being named poet laureate of the State of West Virginia and the college’s Honorary James T. and Katherine H. McDowell Chair of Literary Arts, the heading on Professor Tyler’s stationary remained the same: “John Tyler, P.O. Box 41, Campbelltown, W.Va., 26079, 829-3205.
Unfortunately, I only had the pleasure of knowing Professor Tyler in his later years, when his manic pace slowed to an almost mortal tempo. Instead of riding his 1960’s era Schwinn to campus every morning, he drove a painfully practical Geo Metro. Instead of heading into Pittsburgh several times a year to take in a performance at Heinz Hall, he would stream the live broadcast to his computer (it won’t surprise you that he never owned a computer that he didn’t himself build). Instead of chairing the English department, running twenty miles per week and managing the local soup kitchen, he begrudgingly ascended to emeritus status, coached the cross-country team and cooked for the local meals-on-wheels.
Because he no longer taught a full class load, Professor Tyler enjoyed organizing single-credit book groups. These groups were extremely popular, due in part to the flexible schedule (group members chose the meeting time and place) and exceedingly simple structure. Professor Tyler’s book groups famously had only two rules: 1) Read the book; and, 2) Don’t be an idiot. No grades; pass fail.
And so at the inaugural meeting of Rodney’s Readers, we informed the group, including Ron, of these two simple rules. Most followed them with little trouble and if they breached the first, simply brought a decent bottle of liquor or two and quietly mixed cocktails while the others discussed the book. Although I imagine Professor Tyler saw little ambiguity in it, the second rule of book club is, admittedly, somewhat subjective. However, because the members of our group, while not a particularly scholarly lot, generally possessed a good bit of intellectual curiosity, we managed just fine for the most part. Ron, of course, comprised the other part, as it were.
At the second meeting, the topic of which was Steven King’s “Delores Claiborne,” Ron readily admitted that he had not read the book, but offered that he had seen the film. We referred Ron to Rule 1. He wasn’t concerned. Rather, he started in on a fifteen minute lecture regarding the “doability” of the film’s star, Jennifer Jason Leigh (a solid 8.5 out of 10 on the Ron Martino Doability Index, as it turns out) and the tragedy of co-star Kathy Bates’ naked hot-tub scene with “Jack Nicklaus” in the film, “About Schmidt” (a “negative kazillion” on the RMDI). We referred Ron to Rule 2. He laughed.
Now, Rodney’s Readers are surely not above a little sophomoric banter (I can make Rodney snort whatever he’s drinking just by looking at him and shouting “chowder pump” in a Boston accent), but we’re also adults – adults with kids and jobs and wives who grant us precious little time to gather, have a couple cocktails and clear the cobwebs from the deeper recesses of our right brains. So by the fifth meeting – the one where Ron insisted that he had read “Goodbye Columbus” even though he was obviously unaware the protagonist was Jewish and so, as if to make up for it, proceeded to explain that a good number of the Jews he works with are not, in fact, great with money – we were seriously contemplating disbanding the group.
The last straw arrived in the form of Ron’s steadfast objection to coughing up the $50 in dues each member was asked to pay to cover the cost of books purchased in bulk so as to receive a discount. Ron reasoned that because he was promising to bring the group some expensive Cuban cigars that he would purchase on his next, as yet unscheduled, trip to Toronto he shouldn’t have to pay dues. Then he actually argued that, at the very least, his dues should be reduced on account of his not having read most of the books. Douche weasel.
Eventually, Rodney and I decided that it would be an affront to the memory of Professor Tyler to let Ron ruin the group. So it was decided that at the next meeting we would tell Ron that he was out. If he objected, we would cite the Rules of book club. If he cried, well, Rodney is a licensed therapist, so….
As it turns out, Ron left the group of his own volition when he took a job with some firm in Baltimore and, without a trace of irony, reasoned that his 90-minute commute would leave him without time to read the books. We wished Ron well and pretended to be excited when he assured us that he would still have us all over to his house for a dip in the new pool that he was definitely putting in this summer. I’m sure now that Ron is out of the book club our dealings with each other will be much more pleasant. And I do feel a bit guilty for losing patience with him. After all, I’m certainly not perfect. In fact, my shortcomings are many – and hilarious.