Tonight Art Bell guest hosted the late night radio show Coast to Coast, a show which has a loyal following amongst the unemployed on the Downtown Eastside who don't have to get up in the morning.
The retired Bell, who has a bit of a cult following, hosted from his home radio studio in the Philippines. [He is fascinated, he said on a previous show, that technology actually allows him to broadcast half way around the world and sound like he's in the U.S.] When he guest hosts, he treats his fans to photos of his Filipina wife forty years his junior, his growing daughter, and his cats.
Cats do the darndest things.
So do older men. A die hard Art Bell fan on the Downtown Eastside has said several times that he lost respect for Bell when he took up with a woman who was almost a kid. He reminded me that Rick, a guy who goes to Carnegie off and on, had done the same thing. Rick had shown him photos of his life in the Philippines. He showed a photo of a wife he'd had there; she was nude. He showed a photo of her cousin; she was nude. He showed a photo of the maid; she was nude.
I know Rick too. He told me that both of his young wives had left him after he brought them to Canada. "As soon as their feet hit the tarmac at the airport," he told me, "consider them gone."
