Power Puff

John J. Pitney, Jr. from the January 1997 issue

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His dialogue is a middle-class white guy's take on what ghetto dwellers sound like. Here's a reaction to a murder: "'Oh, lawdy,' says Velma, 'Somebody else got shot. Lawd a' mercy.'" And here's a discussion of young love: 'While we was in the kitchen,' Lookout tells him, 'she say, 'Who that boy?' She say, 'He look mighty fine.' She wants you, cuz. Word, cuz. Go for it.'" To his credit, Lind is an equal-opportunity offender. None of his characters--black or white, straight or gay--sound like recognizable human beings.

Lind's Washington bears no resemblance to the real city on the Potomac. The Washingtonians who do the most harm are not the sex-obsessed cynics of Powertown, but nerdy idealists who spend their nights drafting new regulations for the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Perhaps Powertown is not really about people in Washington at all, but about alien creatures on a strange new world. In that case, it might supply the basis for a nifty science fiction movie.

Too bad Ed Wood isn't around to direct it.