The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum

=> Peeling Narsai Michael David

Peeling Narsai Michael David

Posted by Farid (Moderator) - Tuesday, November 18 2003, 12:04:00 (EST)
from *** - ***

Mexico -

Windows 98 -

Internet Explorer
Website:
Website title:

The Power of Shumirum...

The monument of Shumirum has worked its way through the bowels of Assyria like a tornado or an emetic till it's hit its most recent obstruction...Narsai Michael David. I never thought the day would come when Narsai would try to seize the monument as well, joining forces with that other putz Nimrod and that Pooter Bejan. (Shawn...you don't have a court injunction yet telling me I can't use or invent ANY cute names for the Cunt's cunt)

A couple of years ago when Jackie Bejan was working for Assyria by dragging the Shumirum through every office San Jose has in its City Hall, we'd agreed to sell one of my sculptures to freinds of her's in order to pay the expenses for completing the Shumirum. Then she got funny on me and I wound up owing the foundry around $5,000 and according to the deal I'd struck, they could keep the monument and install it in the sculpture garden of Marina, California(if I didn't pay by a certain date)...a small seaside town north of Carmel where Joe DiMaggio was born...from BetNahrain to the birthplace of the Yankee Clipper...such has been our ride through history.

Would that I had just let the foundry do it. Still believing it was a sacred trust to get the monument installed in Chicago I appealed to Narsai who provided the money on condition that I sign a document saying he now owened the piece. That wasn't enough but I had to get the foundry's owner to sign and send him a similar document. Two years later Narsai takes it on himself to strike a deal with Nimrod whereby I send the monument to Chicago...Narsai gets his tax write-off and pockets $80,000 to $90,000...Nimrod gets the monument to put either in his neighborhood..."look what I did for you"...or it goes into storage with the other sculpture Helen, his sister, bought in the basement on Clark Street..."where there are no Knee-grows"..all of them being near the Oriental Institute on the campus of the University of Chicago...which was the reason John gave me for not putting it there...but that's ancient history by now.

When I balked, Narsai contacted the foundry...said he owned the monument and had the signed letters to prove it. By that point the foundry owner was set to install it in Marina anyway, with my blessings. Anything, almost, was better than seeing the $200,000 piece laying in a barbed wire enclosure...such too has been our ride through history. When he heard this, Narsai contacted Nimrod again...I suppose to get Nimrod breathing down the owner's neck as well. The last thing Nimrod wants to see is the Shumirum in Chicago in the prestigious location the Arts Council gave us. The next to last thing he wants to see is the Shumirum installed anywhere except in the park down the street from his house...but best of all in storage in the AUA's basement...or, if all else fails...flat on her face in California. The one thing Nimrod and I agree on is that it should be melted down if none of the above happens quickly.

Narsai now wants it installed all of a sudden. He told me a few weeks back that he didn't want any more tax write-offs but that was the usual bullshit. He wants this one very badly...as well as the name-fame of having brokered the deal...for Assyria. Narsai to the rescue...his chef's fat cocked jauntily to one side, brandishing a ladle, riding a Thoroughbred rack of lamb...sweeping all obstacles before him...ones which proved too daunting for the kitchen help.

The foundry owner is in consultation now with his lawyer to see how he avoids getting de-boned and fried...Narsai's already checked with his and waits to make his move...and Nimrod's checking his Ouija Board to see what's best.

For two years Narsai beat me over the head about how much was actually owned on the Shumirum. let me detour...old Henry Ford was notorious for putting the squeeze on his presidents and vice-presidents. At the beginning of each new year he'd invite them to lunch one at a time during whch he'd ask them what they believed they'd be achieving the following year for good old For Motor Company. Each of them wanting to put the best face on it would get ahead of themselves describing what Henry could expect...never being sure if they'd be terminated after the lunch. And, sure as Golani's short...come the next year's lunch and Ford would ask each of them if they'd "lived up to their own expectations"...and of course they hadn't and to make up for it would promise to do even more the coming year and so on. He had them coming and going.

Narsai has a variation on this. Whenever a project is being discussed whether it's an addition to his house...or business or something we were doing together...he'd make sure to ask how much you figured it would cost and hurry you along to giving him a price...well before you could form any kind of accurate estimate..which was his intention. I remember telling him it was too early to tell...that I'd have to make some calls first, check prices etc. He knew what he was doing of course and would press ahead saying.."well just give me some idea". Now he knows I, or whomever he has in this position, wants to get the go ahead and fearing an overestimate will scare him off...give him a quote that's sure to be too low by half. Then...sure as shit will rise to the top...when the actual reckoning comes to be made..he'll dramatically toss his pen down...lean back in his chair and give you that woebeone expression that says..."how COULD you try to take advantage of me so"?

Sure enough this happened with the $5,000 work needed to be done on the Shumrium. At the time I was given the quote, the owner hadn't counted on the additional work I'd brought in...the five versions of Shumirum's name that were to be cast in bronze as well as a levelling of the lioness he hadn't taken into account...honest mistakes all of them. This happens all the time and no one in the Art world rags at foundry owners for trying to "cheat them" by giving a low bid just to "snare" the person. But Narsai lives in the kitchen, with the rest of the hired help...he doesn't deal in Art in any direct way except as merchandise, like any other...pork chops or onions in bulk, which makes artists and foundry owners Tradesmen, like any other...and he knows from his own example what that means. Whenever this happened to me in the past I knew it had just been an honest mistake and made no bones about it...no dramatic tantrums ending in..."but you SAID it would only cost THIS MUCH"! The point is, of course, to get the bill reduced by anything, 5%...30%...even 1% represents a "bottom line savings"...so go for it.

This is what Narsai had been doing for two years...refusing to pay the additional costs...which weren't "additional" at all. Even though he had in his posssesion the five bronze castings of her name already...given to me and unpaid for, because that's the way it works when you have a good relationship with your foundry...as I've always had. A week ago I received a message from the owner saying Narsai had called offering to pay all outstading costs as well as any additional ones related to preparing the hardware for installation as well as a patina on the queen and lioness. All of a sudden he's all eagerness to pay.

The way I figure it, he see's his opportunity to take the monument...send it to Nimrod...get all the benefits that would accrue to him and my tough luck. How he could be so stupid I don't know. There must be a death wish the size of Texas in these people. I told him if he attempts such a thing I'll do whatever I have to stop it...including ratting him and his afairs out...also the fact that it was Narsai who insisted to me that he had it on good authority that Jackie had indeed fucked the Whacki Rabbi of Eye-racky, when I maintained that didn't have to be the case...which must have been cute when the Whacki Rabbi called Narsai from Iraq to ask who was spreading these "rumors". I'm not taking the fall for that one on my own...I'm going to call that son of a bitch to the witless stand when the trial comes and he can repeat...or lie...as all of them will have the oportunity to do.

Then there were groping incidents in the back seat of a rental car in New York several years ago with Narsai making an ass of himself with a cousin of mine...much to my and my wife's dismay. It got so bad I took to driving like a maniac just to throw him around back there. Narsai's wife had warned him some years back..."cut it out with the giblets or I'm gone."

Now...how anyone...Narsai most all...could think I wouldn't do whatever was necessary to derail any attemts to seize the monument, I can't imagine. I think it's the "Lew Garcia Syndrome" and I'm partly to blame. I give too much and take too much and it lulls a Garcia...Golani...Nimrod...Bejan and now Narsai into thinking they have me where they want me...that something special and wonderful in THEM has cowed my spirit so. What they don't realize is that I'm the one driving the engine, not them. When they take that one step too far...I shock the shit out of them by turning that "other" face that was there all along. The wiser person is the one who sees that face before it turns. I know Narsai better than I knew any of the others...I've got more dirt on him than on any of the others...including stuff the IRS would appreciate knowing. I also know those other aspects of his character better than anyone else who knows him...having seen both his soft underbelly...and he has a big one...and the tough as nails son of a bitch people in the business world know him to be. There are people from San Francisco to New York and beyond who think he's a rattlesnake...others who know he's really a boor...a peasant underneath all that culinary gliter he picked up from books here and there.

The man has excellent qualities...like Jackie has. But so what? Even I have a few good ones... and look at me.

I told Narsai I want a letter from him to the foundry owner renouncing

---------------------

- BACK TO INDEX - REPLY - QUOTE - EDIT - DELETE -

The full topic:
No replies.

***