The Cheap Agony of Ugly George

personality

It's like I'm walking across South Central Neptune. Trudge and extra trudge, shees. The video-tape-camera Porta-pak lolls on my back, unwieldy as a 100-pound moron papoose. I'm panting. Above my left ear, this loopy, weird plastic microphone dish is in constant rotation. Could be a mad sunflower chasing headlights on Route 66. To my right--well, to my right, I can't see at all, because of the Sony-camera snout. I'm gonna get blind-sided, I know it, by a Sicilian asphalt truck while crossing Fifth Avenue. And they'll be able to do reruns of my death at the funeral. Oh-oh, one hand just turned black: The Iwo Jima-surplus shoulder strapping tends to give my arm paraplegia. I must resemble a future that never worked. Worse yet, it's 23 degrees Fahrenheit out today. My South Pole just froze over. Thank you, Playboy. This has to be the greatest sexual gig since Lili St. Cyr stripped in reverse.

What're we after, Ugly George and me? Oh, big pink tuna, waste from Love Canal, prime squanch, serious glands. That is: some not-so-well-wrapped female who will flex into a dimly lit hallway, take off her clothing and--and get industrial-strength frostbite, far as I can tell. An ordinary woman, that is: someone like your wife. George flexes beside me, tapping out his aggressive, unglamorous line. A sort of yellow-snow job. ''Right. Right. That's it; run past the Ugliness. Don't get famous, no. Hey, didn't I see you nude on The Ugly George Hour of Truth, Sex and Violence? Yeah? Same to you.'' And what do the young ladies say? They say, ''Get lost, scum bag. Shove that equipment up your ass, lowlife. Inch off, you worm.''

Since 1976 or so, off and on, more off, George Peter Urban has done for New York cable TV what SpaghettiOs did for Italian cuisine. I mean, a damp Earth Shoe has more panache. Remember that old pinup mag from 1952 where this male model in mustache and monocle and pith helmet hid behind fake palm trees so he could leer at some prize piece of turkey loaf in a full-length bikini? Remember? Well, that guy--I swear it--was George's father. George is the man who badgers nice middle-class women until they strip to their soft core for him. In a hallway. In Central Park. At his scuzzy Polish Penthouse. Production values are subminimal: more jiggle in his camera than in his women. Yet George's unique combination of invincible crudeness and female skin so lush it should be painted on a pinball machine can actually outdraw The Tonight Show from 11:30 to midnight, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Until last spring, anyhow, when Manhattan Cable and George--for reasons so tedious and involved that I will spare you them--parted company for, yes, a fourth time.

Which could put the First Lord of Feel under some peso pressure. Advertisers may bail out. In truth, George has had just one lucrative commercial sponsor (a porn moviehouse; you didn't think it was Hallmark, did you?). His gross revenue will come mostly from flogging fourth-hand video equipment. The Polish Penthouse (a hangar-ceilinged midtown studio) is full of cameras with glaucoma and sound systems that say, ''Eh?'' No vacuum cleaner, though. Lint on the rug is bigger than your fist. Plus sandwiches and coffee from last November. People who say sex is filthy may have something there here.

Right now, I'm feebing out on George's large black patent-plastic couch. My hand has finally gone from dark-fig color to off prune. There is a stage prop or three around. Some body paint. One medical uniform, one mortarboard and tassel, one, yes, pith helmet; and lingerie that might've come from Frederick's of New Jersey. Here--beneath the Pepto-Bismol-pink backdrop--George has debraed and groped over more women than a Turkish customs inspector. But me, I've been with him almost one week, and if we hadn't eaten sushi last night, I wouldn't have seen anything in the raw. Yet around his couch, shoe-boxed, there are several thousand still photographs. Memorabilia from a slightly out-of-focus lifetime. Nude after nude after nude. I dip in: again, again. Good God, it could be the complete Topps collection of ass.

''Oh, what a pair. Yes, stoo-dents, it's Uhhh-hugly George with his hands on the wheel of a truck again. Arch your back, Doris. That's it. Such loveliness. How about something for the Greeks? Just tuh-hern around. There. There.'' In the near corner, George is editing a 28-minute show for broadcast tonight. (Teleprompter Cable, at the time, carried him throughout Upper Manhattan.) Splice one buttock here, cut in some frontal flash there. Then, rent this space body-painted on a pair of bazoongies so big they might be fresh from the two-a.m. feeding. ''Yes, goils--you, too, can appear nood--'' That monotone voice with the burlesque-house word slides can make my mind into plant food. Crack: His Sony editing machine has bent the metal shelf yet farther. And around George is his precious videotape library: more than 1000 naked, nubile and not-quite-alert women. (Forget about burgling George to steal your sister's tape back: Each label has been printed in Cyrillic. The Polish Penthouse is really Russian: George can read and speak it.) This collection will be his monument, memorial, memoir. The women are his. Workaday women from Douglaston and Bayonne. Stuck on Mylar. Enslaved to Sony. And George can never throw anything out: He has been known, believe it or not, to keep old Phone-Mate tapes.

•

Is George ugly? Does a cat have ear lobes? Ugly and getting worse by the half hour. His long black hair is especially regrettable: wild, frizzed, the sort of hair you last saw on a shrunken head. One dead front tooth has gone yellow; other teeth are pocked with decay. A skull that's wider than long and starting to dewlap under the chin: In fact, he may look more like Curious than like Ugly George. His skin has the tint of rancid lox, and I'm still waiting for a certain lower-lip sore to heal--not the man to share tooth cups with. That famous trademark, his silver auto-racing suit, has herniated at crotch and armpit. Ink soaks through one vest pocket. The Polish Penthouse is without shower or bath: To my knowledge, his long Johns have no understudy. And yet this slobbola has picked up more than 1000 women, while you, you're still trying to peek down your secretary's blouse at the office copier.

Also--red label, ground alert--better not mess with Mr. George, sahib. George, he don't smoke or drink or smell strange powder. And no one can lug a 100-pound creepie peepie around six hours per day without getting pumped up and benchpress hard. Moreover, the man is mean as creosote. Truth, Sex and Violence, it says; well, I dunno about the first two, but I saw more mayhem and potential mayhem each day than Bobo Brazil. When we met, George was wearing a T-shirt that had been Stanley Kowalskied by some indignant boyfriend. Later that night, at his front door, yet another video cuckold fed George big fist fruit (George took one or two before he gave the sucker a sudden curbside delivery). And you thought being George was all grab and soft-tissue culture. Uh-uh: wrong job description. At least one vicious phone threat will come in every second day. Scars spot his face like loose change on a bar. His leg was broken once (George wouldn't tell me how--''too disgusting,'' he said--but I can surmise, can't you?). When he's harassed on the street, a perfect caul of grim and sullen vehemence lies across his face. He will never answer either insult or gesture aloud; instead, his entire frame begins humming, so a rail might foretell the improbable train to come. George, then, is mine layer, squall line, danger. Time to stop poking your finger through the cage bars, friend.

And now, tallyho. Out on 55th Street, we've got a woman run to ground. Narrow passage, traveler's advisory: She can't maneuver between the stoop and this backed-in dump truck. George--snap!--has put his portable flood lamp on when--also snap!--the woman starts going absolutely baboon. ''You goddamn son of a bitch!'' Swipe at the camera. ''I'll get you--you!'' Her packages have hit cement. George, mother protective of his $4000 Sony, will snatch the swinging forearm in midclout. Then--oops, damage parties below deck--she has unpacked a real eunuch maker, foot up and crotch center. But George, so sorry, is adder fast: side-step, knee hard in her stomach first. She will retreat after that. ''Someone call the police. Someone please call the police.'' Passers-by, though, don't care to help: Her hair, after all, looks kinda purple; she might be a registered-in-Liberia whore. We just walk off. George, I can tell, is sanguine. This attack has been fixed on tape; it'll appear in the highlight film of his life (and in any court case). Violence, for George, is certification and applause.

But for me, being with George block after block, I'd rather have an infarction of the soul. Hell, this wahoo can exacerbate even good things. Not that he isn't intelligent enough. I learn a whole Leviticus' worth of street signals. Like, if you hear someone coming up behind you--clop, clop, clop, clop--believe that she is elk-faced, son. Troll her in deep water and the sharks'll throw up. (True: Attractive women try to move quietly.) Or like, if a bint has her coat open, bet that she's with the boyfriend, displaying. (True: Single women button up.) Tourists are friendly and gullible but seldom alone. Best pickup time is lunch hour and just after work (from seven p.m. on, women tend to pair off). Choose the well attired: They're usually brighter, and bright folk are more confident. And, Lord, you need confidence--especially with a silver-suited cranko who'd like to televise your navel from the dumbwaiter at Steak and Brew. ''Avoid shag hair and black lipstick. Also women chewing gum with a big cross right here.'' And most of all--oh, most--cherchez les WASPs.

WASP, WASPy, WASPish. The damned word is a comma in his syntax. Let some tall, blonde top loader from Duluth or Boise prance by and George will get all over planet-struck. ''I never had it. I could never look like a WASP.'' But, Mendel notwithstanding, his equally Russian mother could. ''She was 5'8 1/2? and looked like a Fifth Avenue aristocrat, not at all like a kid from a slum area in Brooklyn. She had a really good chance to be a model-slash-actress. Instead, she settled for marrying some nerd who was my father. I mean--what's so funny--I don't wanna get too much like Oedipus, but my mother's walking down the street 30 years ago or something and someone like me comes up to her and says, 'You know, I can make you a model-slash-actress.''' Got it? Here we have son George, beating the concrete bushes to find his mother of another year so he can make her a star. Something his father (dead when George was still in infancy) could never do. And what would young Mrs. Urban, 5'8 1/2? and aristocratic, say to him? She'd say, ''Take a walk, douche bag,'' just like everybody else.

For the rest--JAP, PR, BIC (Bronx Irish Catholic)--George has nothing but night soil and acid. ''My dick is 18 inches long. Except when I meet a girl from New York. Then it's an inch and a half.'' Never mind their clothing, these New York women; George will strip away their hope. Dump on their dreams. Aspirate their aspirations. ''Look at her. It's another loser paying $3000 for ballet lessons when she could get famous on my show for free.'' I wanna howl. This theme is eternal with George and bitter as sipped moth crystals.

Nor will it improve our air much to realize that George may technically be correct. Yes, if the girl is after mere recognition and media time, then, 999 chances in 1001, she'll get more by mooning Manhattan on his show than by trying to be a model (slash!) actress anywhere else. Art, unnghh, is hard. The shoal of naïve or just pretentious lady arteestes between 59th and 50th, Seventh and Lex, could make me grind enamel off. George, at least, is an honest con man: He won't pander to illusion--as do the 4852 schools of dance, music, theater, leotard painting, animal makeup and intermission design that slouch around New York. No, George won't seduce or sweet talk or promise much or even comb his horrid hair. The whole ugliness thing has a moral to it: Take me, it says; take this unkempt, tooth-rotten life just the way it is, admit what you are (a nothing; so appear on my slum-cheap show), and then from that primeval depth you may rise. With George's sponsorship, natch. They, call him scum and creep; he calls them failure, phony, idiot. Both have a valid point. But to say that George hates women would be to underestimate his capacity for loathing. George Peter Urban will have no truck whatever with art or idealism or human hope.

Because he is, you see, a disappointed idealist himself. Misunderstood since his primal chromosomes began to twine. You've heard the phrase terminate with extreme prejudice? Well, George, as he tells it, was born with extreme prejudice: into a poor Russian-immigrant family that didn't value education. Just check out this list of grievances.

Rank prejudice: All those good-ol'-boy Southern majors and colonels just wouldn't appreciate his Yankee drive.

Prejudice in bed: JAP and BIC coeds didn't date George because he wasn't premed or prelaw or prepossessing.

Academic prejudice: Jealous and incompetent poli-sci professors wouldn't weed him into their department.

Prejudice on Wall Street: Jealous and incompetent and WASP corporate types saw to it that George didn't make $1,000,000 in institutional selling.

You and you and you. Even me. All of us have to take some blame for Ugly George. No use detaching the TV cable: He is your children.

•

But what college, what branch of the military, what Wall Street firm, damn it? This joker, who'd like to see your labia mnjora right after he's shaken your hand first time out, won't even tell me when he was born. Me, who turned 40, big four-oh, in a bar with him. This pisses me no end. And so I do what I'm usually above doing, a little background research.

Born: 6/13/42

Happy birthday to George, Happy birthday to George, Now you are 40 And getting too old for this shtick.

School: pulled out of P.S. 31 in Green-point at the age of eight. Temporarily left Brooklyn for some darn place. (Mother remarried; may have taken his stepname.) Especially reticent about this period.

Service record: Who can tell? Stupid Privacy Act. If you spent 1960-1962 in a Quonset hut with George Peter Urban, write me C/O this magazine.

College: B.A., CCNY, 1965. Possibly M.A., Brooklyn College. No thesis on record, though he bills himself as a Ph.D. Presumably taught poli sci at the college level for two years.

Work: Bache and Company until November 1970. Here he began picking women up--on his lunch hour and on Wall Street. Photographed them in a corporate broom closet. Would that make Bache a divestment firm?

Follows then his slovenly career as porn actor, as amateur pimp and, at last, as the Mr. Rogers of raunch.

But enough. We digress from me. Back on cooch patrol, I'm getting a lot of Anusol from the street traffic. Eight days now I've prowled with George and nada. Very clear consommé. Big vapor. I haven't felt so rejected since Mother forgot my pram on the A train. One more kid calls me Rocket Man or Space Cadet and I'll televise his uvula for him. I don't see how George can hack it: Monomania like his dug the Panama Canal and gave Saint Simeon Stylites a hemorrhoid problem. For George, Chock Full is Lutèce: windows, brother, windows. He'll race out, sandwich crust in mouth, to get a flying finger from some arrogant WASP. At night, we cruise with my station wagon, window wide open, heater blaring; a couple of out-takes from American Graffiti. Insane, I figure, we'll be at this until Brooke Shields's eyebrows grow together.

So why, you ask, does he do it? Because it has made him famous. Incredibly known. Once and for all, he can give an Italian fist to those snobs at CCNY or Bache or wherever whichever Service stationed him. George and herpes have grown in public consciousness about the same time. ''Hey, George.'' ''Yo, George.'' ''Love your show.'' ''Go get that tit, George.'' We can't move from point A to square one without six people recognizing our not exactly inconspicuous self. And good people: James Mason, Orson Bean, Michael York, Milton Berle in one day. John Lennon, Debbie Harry, Ed Asner, George McGovern, even Miz Lillian (land sakes, child) have granted pavement interviews. George has been seen in Le Matin, Stern, The National Law Review, the London Sun and even a large-circulation Israeli newspaper. He is known as George L'Affreux in France and George (something Swedish) in Sweden. But TV--ho-ho--network TV goes ass up over the kitchen table for George.

Tracking shot. CBS News. George on his usual beat in midtown. Then close-up. ''This one-man band is low budget. He calls himself Ugly George.'' Morley Safer doing voice-over. Relish the hypocrisy in his mellow, authoritative tone, so pompous he could make fat bubbles rise from a septic tank. ''It all has the same purpose--to put dirty stuff on TV without even attempting to seek any redeeming value.'' Is that so? Then why is CBS right behind George with its camera crew, like some dog reading his love mail on a hydrant? And not for the first time. Because no one can jack up your flabby news-show rating better than His Ugliness. Twice--twice--George has seduced a gorgeous pedestrian nude for CBS. (Sure, we slap Xs over her bosom--heck, CBS wouldn't show unredeeming ''dirty stuff.'') George has appeared on NBC, ABC and all but one local TV station as well. They use him; he will use them. Two cannibals in a game of chop poker. But George doesn't mind being exploited. Because, at long last, he may become eligible for bracket creep.

One afternoon, Electric Blue, a major European home-cassette distributor, (continued on page 194)Ugly George(continued from page 150) promises George $10,000 up front--and that's just for the British rights to his material. George is ecstatic. He'd smile, but it might crack the sore on his lower lip. ''To hell with America. In Europe, they love me. I'm gonna be the Charles Bronson of soft-core.'' Electric Blue proposes a bonzo media hype, old George flexing around London for female smoked eel. Then on to Cannes. Why not? Those froggos think Jerry Lewis is Mark Twain. With George, the earth's the limit. He even has an Ugly George feature movie cued up in his mind. But--fasten your scare strap--the worst is yet to trickle down.

And now, Uhhhh-hugliVision! Over dinner, I ask George what he will do to refoist his show on Manhattan Cable. (An abstruse lawsuit is docketed.) Oh, George doesn't fret. Oh, there are other ways of getting into the American home. How, George? Oh, this very night, from a secret transmitter in New Jersey, his program is being beamed south toward Philadelphia. Legal pirate video. A band--as yet no expert I've spoken with has been able to figure out what kilo-mega-giga-sorta-hertz it might be--a band that can be picked up with a cheap descrambler and a small TV-top antenna. Abruptly, the image hits me: 1000 disfigured shins and knockers and nates zipping over Hoboken. I went out with this New Jersey girl once. How will they tell a scrambled woman from the right-side-up kind?

Meanwhile, George is empire building. For now, he'll shoot the signal out commercial free. Naked PBS, sort of. But after some while, he should be able to charge $50,000 per spot. True, at present, there are only about 1200 descrambler-antenna doo-gidgets in the area. So--no problem--George may manufacture and sell them. Give it a year; UBS (Ugly Broad-casting System) may program nude news and weather. How about a nude public-soivice spot for CARE or U.J.A.? Nude variety shows, with someone in clothing to provide the variety. Good grief--stop me--a plucked peacock, even. Sure, the FCC and ABC-NBC-CBS will honk, but George is positive that any court would uphold his First Amendment rights. (One week later, response has been enthusiastic. By popular demand, the transmitter is also aimed at Long Island.) I've said one or two derisive things about George. Don't be misled; I do not underestimate him. Before solar and wind, bitterness is the cheapest, most cost-efficient motive force. George can do almost anything. Except score a piece of sklook for me.

Then, one night, while I'm sacked out on his Polish Penthouse couch--fanfare and blat--there George is, looking like some brazen retriever with a dead duck in its mouth. He has made the momentous hit: 24-year-old Lea. Bring her here, George. Drop her; that's a good boy. Woof. OK, so it wasn't your textbook operation--he didn't have the Captain Video outfit on when he met her--but at this moment, I'm not Tom Wolfe, either. Lea is very real, somewhat on the zaftig side, tall, blonde. Not quite a WASP; more a large bumblebee. She was coming from the I.R.T. subway when George played his strange bassoon for her. Lea is vague, unsuspecting, cheerful and, thank Father Fecund, her breasts are bigger each than a gallon can of Enfamil.

Watch the hairy birdie, Lea; smile. Poor wench; this'll be like getting raped by Fibber McGee's closet. Crash and clank: take one. With his left foot, George has propped the video Porta-pak up on its precarious base. With his right hand, he is still trying to solve her blouse. And all the while, he'll make mindless interrogatory chat. ''How long have you had those tits, Lea? You don't want to cheat society out of this goodness, do you? Ever think of your bust as being art, Lea?'' Bloo-ink, the Porta-pak has tilted off to one side. Now it's focusing on a nude coat rack. George will curse and run at it; then, zip, back into the picture before Lea can start rebuttoning herself. She'd like to go, but every time she moves, George is all over her with some foam-brained question. ''Great perfume, Lea. What kinda perfume you got on?'' Weird: There is this quirk in human nature, this glitch of civility, that requires us to answer a question even when being depantsed.

''Uh, I think I've got--''

And while Lea is figuring out what Chanel she tuned to, poppo! The bra will come up. Her bust has fallen out: bop, bop, two gutter balls in a crooked alley. Oops, the camera floodlight is blinking off. ''Goddamned stupid electric design--'' Yaaaa, George has charged out of frame. Wham, kick, back again; Lea hasn't had time to retrieve her top bureau drawer. By now, his black energy is demoralizing her a bit. More important, still: She's afraid he'll tear or fingerprint her blouse. Bang! Bang! Bang! Jesus--guess what?--someone is at the studio door, wanting to use George's toilet. ''Go away! Go away, goddamn it!'' George has Lea by the fertile crescents, frantic, smiling, screaming, questioning, jiving, kicking loose wire aside, cursing. And--bloooop, last swerve--the camera has shifted aside again. This time, it's interviewing my foot. George has howled.

''Listen,'' Lea says, ''why don't I take my blouse and bra off, so they don't get--'' I mean, what else could a nice girl do?

She could've walked, I suppose. Yet Lea didn't. Nor did Penny or Joan or Ellen or Carol or about 1139 other ladies. The reason for that is, I think, surprisingly trivial. We come now to the Social Significance section of this article, or Why My Ass Appeared on Manhattan Cable TV Without Me.

1. An Ugly George victim must have confidence in her cutlets. Lea did--from the navel up, at least. Her basement, though, was flooded: overweight down there and built rather like a floating dock, But, even more important than that, she had unattractive knee-highs on. Naturally, she wouldn't strip further. The condition of a girl's underwear or her cellulite will often determine the condition of her prudishness.

2. Women simply do not believe they're being video-taped. Would you? Come, now: This guy with an asinine dish closet on his back is saying he'll send your naked bubble nest into 200,000 New York conversation pits. Are you gonna believe him? Oh, maybe you half do. But we're used to cameras that go whir and have a moving ratchet of some kind. No ex-George woman I spoke with really thought the dumb Porta-pak was on. Yet video tape is winding silently through, like some fer-de-lance in high grass.

3. The women are off stride, at a loose end--not alert, insouciant, surprised. There is almost no moral or even sensuous component here. Posing for George has about as much significance to it as an escaped expletive on Sunday. Or let me give this example: You, I, we've all maybe once per lifetime done some single act of shoplifting--a cheap item snatched in impatience or childish pique. It has about that much ethical weight. George, understand, is playing the numbers. By sheer plodding effort, he can manage to inveigle that one impatient or childish woman in 300, say, who, for a whim, on a given aimless day, will strip. The phenomenon, I'm afraid, has no more socio-economico-politico-sexo meaning than that.

•

Lea didn't come back to see us. That fits the profile: Of my hypothetical 1139 women, probably 1100 gave George a verbal fat lip and so long next day. See, it isn't at all shocking that girls will undress in hallway or service entrance. Au contraire; a hallway is the most likely place, before caprice and bemusement wear off. Given that second thought, hell, who would intentionally appear on Pope Urban's show? A lift ticket from Coney Island has more class.

Question: Does George get laid more often than you do? Sure, mais oui, natch. George admits to playing the wet trombone with about five percent of his nude turnover--usually a one-cassette stand. But think it over. One score in 20, and those 20 are each one score in 300 or so. Do I have my zeros right? Yes, George will get his duck pressed once for every 6000 street women he can proposition. Even you could do better, Danskin and all. (Even George could if he didn't insist on filming his entire sexual oeuvre.) Never mind 23 degrees Fahrenheit and karate to the crotch and general harassment and a 100-pound processing lab on his back. I'd be Mr. Wilt given that situation. No, given that situation, I'd wanna have my ashes hauled back.

But George will persevere, inertial, like garbage thrown out of a moving space capsule. Because he has the audience. Are they all people whose brains lie dead in their craniums, just so much prosciutto on a melon? Nonsense. They enjoy camp and antiprofessionalism and George's studied crassness. His women, of course, are first chop. Besides, that audience can relate to George. George is middle-class-minded, very safe. (Weird sex. doesn't make his throbber bob even a little.) George's rage for success, though strangely placed, is that same Protestant (or Jewish) work ethic we recognize from Mom and Dad and Harold Stassen.

All the above aside, though, Ugly George represents a new erotic thing in this year of our often-embarrassed Lord. Yes, let us now praise infamous men. His puerile feely-feely attitude to sex can be refreshing, not just immature. Unlike Deep Glottis or your afternoon motel loop, George purveys a kind of innocence. I, for one, find it arousing. Transport me back, Mr. Sulu. That night when we persuaded Sheila Flammenhaft or Sandra Krupnik to go all the way--all the way off with her blouse? Wasn't it brave and thrilling and male wonderful then; wasn't it in a dimly lit hallway? Nuts to Linda Lovelace. George, at his best, can re-create that excitement. He is the custodian of our mislaid adolescence.

And his act is real. Consider: Since Nero last sicked a Nubian street gang on young Gallic slave girls in the Colosseum, when, where, has sexual spectator entertainment had any tension or pure foolish luck to it? Centerfold people pose. Porn novels and screenplays are written to a predictable formula. They pimp for our sexual fantasies--or for what those fantasies are perceived to be. The whore will act them out. And when she's feeling dutiful, so will your wife. We are patronized. But The Ugly George Hour is different. You don't know if he'll get tit or hit, kissed or spat on. And that lavish, reckless female in the hallway may turn out to be your neighbor or your receptionist or your fiancée. For one instant, maybe two, man and woman have a short but authentic sexual encounter. Jiggle your rabbit ears in whatever direction, you won't get that anyplace else.