Psst--You Might Want to Stock Up on Beer and Gas

I heard from my old friend Abdul the other day and he said, “Beware.”

As you might imagine, this shook me up considerably, considering the current climate of caution in America, until he explained that his reference was to the “Star Wars” movie and not to a terrorist attack.

He was warning me that it was a lousy movie and I shouldn’t waste my time seeing it. “See ‘Spider-Man’ instead,” he said, in the kind of conspiratorial tone he loves.

I guess I’m a little edgy these days. We’ve had so many warnings about impending terrorist attacks that even visiting my barber requires a certain amount of courage.

When I told Abdul of my concern, he hesitated a moment and then said, “Well, I do have some serious information.”

He’s kind of a character, and I was tempted to ignore him, but then he came up with a source as good as those who feed information to the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Council, the Department of Defense and the White House.

Abdul had heard from his mother in New Haven who had heard from her cousin in Detroit who had heard from a sister in Tacoma who had heard from a niece in East Timor that certain Arab owners of convenience stores, gas stations and liquor stores who are secret members of Al Qaeda will rise up as one sometime this summer.

“Good Lord,” I said, “you mean there’s going to be an all-out attack?”

“Worse,” he said, shaking his head. “They’re going to all shut down at once.”

I’ll admit that the impact of the warning didn’t strike me at first, even though it came from a reliable source. Well, sources. But when one considers how many convenience stores, gas stations and liquor stores are run by Arabs, this could cause chaos if they simultaneously shut down.

We have seen many instances of rage in L.A. centered around cars, including road rage, lane rage and parking space rage. Suppose we were suddenly cut off from an easy source of gasoline. Would fuel rage follow? I shudder to think.

Even worse might be beer rage. If those guys in backward-facing Dodger caps and packs of cigarettes tucked into the rolled-up sleeves of their T-shirts can’t get their six-packs right away, God knows how they might express their unhappiness.

Hard liquor rage, while possibly more modified, could, in conjunction with the other rages, result in the kind of calamity that paralyzes commerce and shuts down the economy. I saw a friend go into a martini rage once when they mistakenly poured sweet vermouth instead of dry vermouth into his gin, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

“I don’t want to alarm anyone,” Abdul said, “but I’m thinking we should go to a pink alert status.”

“I don’t think we have a pink alert,” I said. “We have green, yellow and red. I’m not even sure about the green.”

Abdul leaned in closer. “Oh, there’s a pink all right,” he said. “The FBI just hasn’t made it public yet. It goes from yellow to pink and then to red. The pink means they’re just outside the door. I heard it from my sister who heard it from a bartender in Washington, D.C.!”

I am inclined to dismiss Abdul’s warning. Yes, his source/s are up to the level of Abu Zubeida, that so-called senior Al Qaeda commander we’re holding, but I’m not too sure about him, either. He warned us that terrorists were going to strike our banks, and then he warned us they were going to strike our malls, and nothing’s happened.

Causing problems at banks doesn’t concern me, since banks are so arrogant, but screw up a mall and all those teenage girls who are deprived of hanging out could begin displaying symptoms of mall withdrawal, resulting in untypical bouts of screaming, crying and refusing to clean their rooms.

I was in something of a dilemma. Abdul’s mother in New Haven and her cousin in Detroit and her cousin’s sister in Tacoma and her niece in East Timor could have been spreading what the FBI likes to call disinformation. Meaning lies. Another weapon of terrorism is to see us running around in all directions like so many Keystone Kops, dashing in and out of doors and bumping into each other until we drop exhausted and the terrorists walk in and take over.

On the other hand, if I don’t warn America as Abdul suggested, and all the convenience stores, liquor stores and gas stations actually do shut down, the damage could be devastating. Even worse, I’ll be nagged to death by Congress, talk show hosts, political pundits and people like me with no expertise in anything wanting to know what I knew and when I knew it.

So I’m not going to do anything but suggest that you keep some extra gasoline on hand and stash away several cases of beer. Do it secretly, because they’re watching us closely. I get that straight from my sister in Oakland who got it from a woman at a nail salon who heard if from the wife of a pool boy who got it from a friend in the cleaning business who heard it ...

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. He’s at al. martinez@latimes.com.