It’s a bright November morning when he walks out of court after “some domestic violence bullshit” and into a horde of cameras on the edge of the courthouse steps. They’re looking for O.J., but he’s not O.J., he’s Lakhvir, an amateur boxer who completely misses the beauty of that moment—an athlete walking out of court on domestic violence charges and into the O.J. media pile. It isn’t lost on me, because this morning is my testament to a love of the absurd, and this is all I’m doing, shamelessly taking in the scene outside the O.J. hearing in downtown Vegas. So while I’m sitting there being a part of the ridiculousness—a pointless observer with an empty notebook at a nonevent—Lakhvir stops to talk to a man in a chicken suit.
Chicken George has momentarily taken off his yellow, beaked head for a cigarette break.
View a slideshow from the scene downtown
“What a clusterf--k,” Singh says of the crowd. “Man, look at this. Look at all these people.”
There’s really no crowd, so to speak—no bunch of middlebrow people elbowing one another for a glimpse of an alleged murderer/running back/thief/ginormous cultural catastrophe. Instead, there’s Chicken George; a guy in a bloody bunny suit; a portly, hairy, shirtless man wearing a barrel and suspenders; various placard-holders; dozens of uniformed cops; the block-long stretch of cordoned-off media; Lakhvir and me. “Don’t you have anything better to do?” he asks me and the chicken.
Chicken George takes a drag. “It’s about comedic truth.” I nod.
Lakhvir has no patience for it and walks off. George, on the other hand, is in his element. He explains to me, while an officer and a bomb-sniffing dog make the rounds behind us on the Regional Justice Center steps before O.J.’s arrival, that it’s his day off. He works setting up trade shows. “I just thought, hey, I’ll go down.” And wear a chicken suit. Of course, I think. No need to explain.
His forehead is pink and sweaty. The $20 chicken suit, which he wore last time O.J. was here, too, is hot, but it’s already paid for itself: He says he got $20 to wave KLUC 98.5-FM’s Morning Zoo sign in front of the media tents. He’s getting more cash from a court employee to hold up her stuffed dog. Attorneys in nice suits pose for cell-cam pics with him, Here’s me with a guy in a chicken suit outside the O.J. hearing!
Chicken George’s 16-year-old son asked if he could ditch school and come down with him to be a chicken or, even better, a chick cracking out of an egg, but George reluctantly made him go to school. For George, this is brilliant fun. And it’s a commentary on pop culture. And it’s a desperate plea to get on the Jimmy Kimmel show, because the bunny got on the Kimmel show last time.
Sure, a few of the placards actually have to do with O.J., inasmuch as O.J. is a person and not a ball of our collective incredulity bouncing around the atmosphere. A man on roller skates carries a sign that says, “O.J. did not do it.” A teenager walking by the RJC says to her friend, “I think he was an athlete, but I know he was in the Naked Gun movies.” And yeah, there are a few people who chitchat about the case itself—this case, and that one—but mostly, it’s a nice venue for performance art.
So much has been said and re-said, like this, about injustice, murder, racism, media clusterf--ks, patheticness, pity, shock, dismay, relentless badness, the whackedness of everything, our base infatuations, fame-gorging, grossness, assholes, dead-horse-beating, hate, disgust, crucifixion, numbness, vengeance, absurdity, irony upon irony upon irony—that finally, there’s nothing here but the simple promise of one man getting out of a Hummer and walking into court.
Still, nearly 200 national media outlets are represented on the curb across the street, camped out, waiting, burdened with this obsessive-compulsive tic, this imagined obligation to provide low-grade pop culture heroin to whomever will shoot it up. This is their corner. If anything happens, they will be here. If nothing happens ...
Chicken George has another cigarette, and gives another interview.
“It’s about comedic truth.”