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By Linus, the Angry Mime - linustheangrymime@hotmail.com Hey. Let me get this right off my chest and say that I fucking hate the month of February. Hate it, hate it, hate it. It’s still too cold and wet for people to appreciate good mime, much less pay me. People stay indoors more often, which makes it harder to find people to mug. Hookers know chumps get sentimental because of V-day, so rates for goods and services go through the roof. You can’t get a decent Captain Crunch in this town without breaking three digits or more. And, to top it off, we’ve got two stupid holidays that nobody even celebrates any more, unless you’re a discount mattress warehouse: Washington’s birthday and Lincoln’s birthday. In short, it’s a cock slap of a month. T.S Elliot had it wrong – February is the cruelest time of year. Which makes it all the more vicious that somebody decided to take this diseased placenta of days and call it Black History Month. Why not use January to do this? It’s a longer month at least, and you’ve got MLK right in the middle of it. No primaries or guilt-ridden sex to get in the way. Odds are, most people are gonna wake up around mid-March and not even give Black History month a single thought, which is a crime. There’s been a lot of dedicated African-Americans who’ve struggled to make a place in this world, and I’d like to celebrate these heroes today. Below are just a few of the mimes and stone-cold criminals that inspired me: 1) Scottie Davis, founder and Artistic Director of Salt and Pepper Mime Theatre Company - I hate cookie-cutter mime. You know, the kind of performance that looks like a million other stereotypical mime stuff you’ve seen in shitty tee vee shows. Scottie blew me away the first time I saw her work. She came to Paris in the eighties to do a few shows, and pissed off the old guard of mimes in a way that made me proud. Plus, she’s not doing mime work just for the fat cats – a lot of her recent work is for disadvantaged kids. Take it from me – the best mimes are poor, hungry, and able to break into a car in under eight seconds. 2) Frank Lucas - What’s not to love about Frank? He knew the best way to make a profit was to cut out the middleman. It’s the same way I made my money with selling organs. Plus, extra points for style go to him for using the coffins of dead American soldiers to smuggle heroin. 3) Charles Lane - Go see Sidewalk Stories today. Lane out-Chaplins Charlie Chaplin in this film. It’s a black and white, almost completely silent film, and Lane is kicking ass and taking names with his mime work. 4)Nicky Barnes - Your typical American folk hero. Rumor has it “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” is written about him. He was smooth, he was slick. And, once his associates stole his money in prison and starting sleeping with his wife, he went Witness Protection like I did. I’d like to think he used his free time back in the open air to remove a few important body parts from those who betrayed him. Any other influential African-American mimes/criminals you know about? Email me! LINUS - Linus is a world renowned mime artist whose productions “She Walks with Ghosts”, and “Sleep” have won him several international awards, such as the Deburau Prize He also served fifteen years in Oregon State Penitentiary for grand larceny. He trained in Paris at the International School of Corporeal Mime and will beat up anyone who has a problem with it.