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After the release of his story Mr. Marks awaited on pins and needles for the public's reception of it. Aside from the initial favorable review from Mr. Musante, not one member of the team had even a word to say about it. That sent Arthur on a binge of cocktails and crossword puzzles. Instead of his usual one or two beers or glasses of wine with dinner he now always had two or even a third followed by a haze of NY Times' puzzle clues until he passed out. 1
To make matters worse Mr. Hosang was livid over the negative portrayal of him in the story. Hosang badgered the author, Arthur, at ungodly hours of the morning as early as 8:00 am with rants like, "Fast food is serious business!" 2 and "Big boys need a banana hammock!" 3 or just madly muttering "Josang! Josang! Josang!..." 4
At first flattery like "...you had good taste, really...better than the average fast food employee" fell on deaf ears. 5 But Marks tried to show the subject of his docudrama that the scenes were just hammed up for good effect, that it was funny, and that it even showed a little love.
"You wanna jump my bones! Don't ya!", said the Crazy man pulling a schizophrenic Houdini on him, changing the author from character assassin to lascivious admirer in the wink of an eye. 6 That spawned a rumbling cloud of flailing fists and upended furniture. A shoe flew. Thirty seconds later Marks was in a headlock. "If you don't calm down I'll keep you in this until you pass out." But Marks came back juvenilely, "Let me go or I'll hold my breath until I pass out!"
It took loads of convincing to allay his fears, but in the end Hosang seemed to understand...or maybe it was just his fear of ending up in the backyard. 7
Meanwhile Hosang was last seen in Cancun where in a failed attempt at self-deprecation he claimed he was the model of moderation with the smaller hat size.
1. Moderate with the beer and wine. Not so moderate with the puzzles and words.
2. Hosang really was the manager of a Rally's before the author knew him.
3. There is no record of banana hammocks worn nor anything large therein.
4. There was some badgering of the actual "Josang" error maker.
5. Hosang once did claim to have been dressed out of the 1970s JC Penney Catalog as a kid.
6. He never acted like that. Even his old man got a kick out of the story.
7. Only green things in the backyard aside from the occasional roof rat cat trophy.