The INVISIBLE GUY a real soundtrack for an imaginary spy film Episode One - ZIPPER RIPPER'S RIP TIDE RIDE   Copyright © 2002 - 2005 Arthur Jarvinen

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Scene:

Slum Mar, California. Zipper Ripper puts the pedal to the metal in her cherry woody wagon, taking Deaf Man's Curve on two wheels while spewing out the window a torrent of epithets that would make a seasoned sailor blush.

"By the way - see ya later, sucker" she says casually to Dave D'Prave, sitting in the passenger seat, as she pushes the "eject" button on the 8-Track, and laughs out loud as he plummets into the windshield of the Volvo P 1800 ES pursuing her, then chuckles with delight as she catches in her rear view mirror the explosion of the Volvo with its occupants and Dave. After shaking her hair out and checking her lipstick she punches the accelerator and charges on down to the beach.

Just as she's getting comfortable and is about to settle back to catch a few rays Zipper notices a couple of suspicious looking characters approaching her cautiously from the left, and glancing quickly about, spies a couple more behind her and to her right.

She discerns in an instant that they mean her no good, as the bulges in their baggies look a lot more like high caliber automatic weapons than any other sort of "gun" a surfer might be packing down there.

"I don't think so" she calmly asserts, as she grabs her board and hits the water.

Vvvvvvvvrrrrrrrrooooooooooooooom! With a sharp kick with her heel on the back of her board the built in hydo-jet motor comes to life, and Zipper Ripper rockets out through the surf. As her astonished pursuers look on dumbfounded, she kicks again, releasing a spring-loaded catch on the front end of her board, and up pops an apparatus resembling a locomotive's "cowcatcher", made of glistening stainless steel, and with a razor sharp edge.

As Zipper Ripper ploughs out through the incoming surf on her motorized board, her cowcatcher slicing the waves like a hot knife through butter, beach bums and bunnies, hodads and hot doggers look on in amazement. Like so many bowling pins, incoming surfers fly off in all directions, their boards shooting up in the air as their riders plunge below the surface for safety. One unfortunate fellow, concentrating intently as he manages to hang ten for the very first time, is taken completely off guard. Zipper Ripper's board slices through the wave in front of him, then continues straight ahead, ripping his board full length clean up the middle, and a bit of him as well.

So long, "chum" she yells over her shoulder, laughing, as she jets away from her unfortunate victim, floating in a state of shock in the rapidly reddening water as the sharks begin to gather.

………………………………….

Claude, watching casually from his comfortable chair-under-an-umbrella at Hodaddy's Hut and having just finished reading the interview with Walter Cronkite in the June 1973 issue of Playboy, slurps up another awful straw full of Piña Colada (from a mix – eeuuuhhh!) wishing he had gone for the jalapeno margarita made with real chiles and fresh-squeezed lime – the bartender's specialty.

   

TRIVIA: Simon Templar, a.k.a. The Saint, as portrayed on television by Roger Moore of  later James Bond fame, drove a Volvo P 1800. The one pictured above currently belongs to composer Jack Vees of New Haven, CT, who informs us that the June 1973 issue of Playboy included a picture of Playmate of the Year Marilyn Cole, of  Portsmouth, England, posed next to her prize, a "Playboy pink" Volvo 1800 ES. I've seen the picture; her shoes are as big as her boobs - pretty frightening. You probably didn't know that the "cowcatcher", attached to early locomotives to clear stray cattle and other obstacles from the path of the moving train, was invented by the English mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage. It's true. "Chum" is what they call the bait used to attract sharks (but you probably already knew that).