Adieu, Tacony Lou
A story about Philadelphia's hardcore punk days is scheduled to be the centerpiece in Thursday's Inquirer Magazine. It's written by Lou Perfidio, a freelancer that some of you may recognize from Blinq's comments section or as the blogger known as Tacony Lou.
When an editor called Lou's house Tuesday to ask a question, his wife, Mary, delivered the news. Tacony Lou Perfidio had died the night before. He'd had pneumonia and suffered from high blood pressure. The coroner pronounced the cause of death to be heart disease. Lou was 43. He left a nine-year-old son, Caesar.
I'm pretty shaken. I've known him since 1988, when I walked into the Inky's Horsham Neighbors section and there he was, in the back, a giant, bearded bear with claws. Lou wanted to know, in so many words, if I was one of us or one of them.
I never really knew how we defined the terms, other than I did my best to be one of us. He was a formidable guy.
I ran him through the Nexis database because I remember a few highlights of his life in print - most of them coming outside of the Inquirer, where he was a somewhat frustrated suburban correspondent for a few years after J school at Temple.
I remembered something about him appearing on an Arizona cable show as The Great Satan, and winding up in some sort of hot water. I remembered something about him showing up in a New York bar and proclaiming himself the Greatest Pool Player in the World - and winding up in a New York Times column.
The facts are even juicer than I remember.
Lou Perfidio arrived at least one beer before the appointed interview time at the same smoky haunt. He wore a tie decorated with pictures of houseflies. ''For luck,'' he inexplicably explained. His cap was on backward. Later in the day, he planned to pick up a blind cat, a gift he professed to greatly prize. He kept saying such as this: ''I'm the greatest pinball player of all time.''
The 26-year-old bachelor told the story of a slightly tilted life. His truck driver father met his mother at a Philadelphia candy store where he was putting some eye-catching moves on a pinball machine. Mr. Perfidio's own youth was squandered developing otherwise marginal motor skills behind a captivatingly cacophonous contraption in a Philly cheese steak shop. ''I was flipper-crazy from the beginning,'' Mr. Perfidio said.
It was a half-year later when Lou wound up in an Associated Press dispatch out of Tucson.
His talk show was suspended from its public access TV slot as Arizona authorities investigated whether it was obscene. The man from the Tucson cable company described it as "sort of a talk show, but it's definitely not the Johnny Carson Show."
Appearing in costume as The Great Satan, Lou offered profanity, nudity, ethnic and racial slurs plus explicit talk and depiction of sex acts. There wasn't a follow-up article, but two years later, Lou turned up in another piece, by an Inquirer feature staffer writing about those who do odd jobs.
Lou Perfidio, 29, is no student, and he's not out on the streets trying to pay for college. He needs money to live. Although he holds a journalism degree from Temple, he has been driving cabs on and off during the last few years to keep his stomach happy. Despite the free-time thrills, he finds that odd jobs pay the bills.
"When I go out in my cab," I expect to make between 80 and 100 bucks a night, realistically," Perfidio says. "That's what I rely on to pay the bills. That's what I do best."
But he has other skills.
Perfidio recently began tutoring fellow writers. His ad in City Paper said, "Can't Write? I can."
That he could.
He wrote a letter to the Los Angeles Times when he was living out there in 2003.
Tell me, if I were a white clergyman and told everybody that six black guys raped a teenage white girl, smeared dog feces and spelled out a racial epithet on her body -- and that a black district attorney was in on the act -- and then the girl was found by a grand jury to have fabricated the whole episode and I was found guilty, by a jury, of defaming the district attorney, do you think I'd have a bat's chance in hell to be a Democratic presidential candidate 15 years down the road? Black clergyman Al Sharpton paid his $65,000 fine for defamation as if it were a parking ticket and was free to go stir up more racial hatred in New York and, now, in sheep's clothing, on a national stage. Now he is cute and cuddly. Now he leads all the folk. God bless America.
Oh my God, how awful. And what a wonderful tribute you've given Lou. A true newsman, and a guy I'm sorry to say I never met in person. But you know, being included in his blogroll was a weird honor. If a guy like that thought a girl had enough balls to "hang" with him, that means something, you know? Godspeed, Tacony Lou.
And you know, it seems oddly fitting that Lou beat it out of this world before the copy desk could get hold of him. Attaboy, Lou.
Dan, As you always could, you captured the LouEssence. As he always did, Lou left the world as he lived -- kicking, screaming, shouting, cussing, making you listen, making you read and, damn it, making you care about Philly, its people and the power among those without titles. If Caesar has any of Lou in him, watch out, Philly. It's only a few more years before another Perfidio will be on the scene, taking names and living large.
Dan, you continue to expand your repertoire of journalistic style and grace. More than a moving tribute, you've created an intimate short story about a fascinating man who clearly lived with gusto, guts, brains and brio. You've given us an evocative glimpse of the "real" Tacony Lou, as best as that could have been done. The Blinq and Philadelphia communities lost a vociferously honest voice, you lost a colleague and friend. I'm truly sorry, but believe me, you've done him proud. Just this once, I'll bet Lou would have nothing to complain about.
I knew Lou as a student at Temple in the 80's. Memory recalls his larger than life persona--a somewhat imposing figure who was brilliant, disturbed, and undeniably sensitive underneath all the bravado. Lou struck me as someone whose intelligence opened up whole new worlds for him, but who was always acutely aware of his roots. He got into Columbia's journalism school after Temple, but ended up passing on the opportunity. His friends were disappointed, but I think it was just too "establishment" and upwardly mobile for Lou's comfort. I'm glad to know that he kept writing, and sad to hear of his passing. I wish his family well.
I was saddened to read of Lou's demise. "I Love Misery" was to Philly baseball blogs what Deadwood is to Westerns. I don't know if I can get through another miserable Phillies' season without his commentaries.