What an accomplishment people. It staggers one’s imagination
The whole thinking of the “animal” labeled women’s collegiate basketball...
In the razzle dazzle of digital: data bases social networks Now you see it Now
you don’t.
The on line angels of the world into their mobile phones.....
“An opus magnifico Not anything like painting on the ceiling of Saint Basilico
Michaelangelo lying on his back, the brushes clenched in his mouth” (Irving
Stone’s opus)
Or for that matter “The education of Hyman Kaplan: the mentor bonding with
his immigrant students. The surrogate father moderating his scrappy son’s roles
into an integrated unit, humans redefining themselves for a new dimension... ..
the new world a coming has arrived. Gene Auriemma morphing as John
Wooden..
II
“To be at your absolute best when your best is absolutely needed” (Ucla’s coach
John Wooden on his Ucla 88 game winning syndrome ) To instill his will
and conquistador frame of mind from his “prime”...
An Indiana State All American to his “lids”.stuffing away any status seeking
connoisseurship on how a playground game evolved from James Naismith’s apple baskets.
Who among 20th 21st century coaches could lace up his sneakers?
Not that John Wooden is Cambridge’s Charles Darwin in disguise. He’s closer
to Harry Houdini Mandrake the Magician. His 99 years on the planet attest to
his transcendence in our galaxy and pop culture egg nog.
III
“One small step for women. A giant leap for mankind.”
Althou the Charlotte Bobcats franchise and MJ as their Chairman, the
feminine gig 6 decades earlier recalls Phil Spitalny and his all women
ensemble during World War 2, these UConn “instrumentalists” have an ESP
and karma inherited from their “mothers” .
These ladies let the 89 wins come to them. Since they integrate as one, their
aggressiveness unlike the tandem of Paul Silas and the “Oakman” at the
Bobcats, Long Beach’s Larry Brown at 70 resigning....,
“Off with their heads, my ladies, The hour is getting late ”ad libbed
their bench .
These “Trojan Women” are into their respectful roles ..
No need to prove any ego trip of an Oedipus...an adrenalin swish...a libido
rush They are not the Harlem Globetrotters nor a Rucker league of
show off slam dunkers...leaping off the boards... to Ed Pauley’s c(h)ords.
These are female fatales in the prime of their Miss Jean Brodie souls..
Wheeling and dealing their tattooed ragtimes into a divine presence.
No issue of “Bulls” “Bobcats” ”Celtics”“Knicks”
A Bonnie without a Clyde
Maya Moore on her Koby Bryant pogo stick drills it from the perimeter.
Bria Harvey makes the chest pass from Auriemma’s drills. The spontaneity
and rhyhm takes your breathe away, the “ family” into their groove....
Coach Aurriemma calibrating his vision unto their DNA learning curve
..the ticks on the clock winding down...teenagers yearn for role models....
the priceless “maturation” to add to their resumes.
Goethe’s mothers from Faust..
The “mailman” Karl Malone of the Utah Jazz posting the love letters
from their fans.
”Unbelievable”
IV
So the Huskies bought into coach’s vision..matriculating beyond Amelia Earhart
Babe Didirikson Zaharias Louise Rainer Ingrid Bergman Katherine Hepburn Greta Garbo
Helen Keller Susan B Anthony Eleanor Roosevelt Golda Mier Mother Teresa Marilyn Horne Joan Sutherland .Marie Curie
Emma Lazarus.’s..The New Collossus for the ages.
XL Center, Hartford, an ex Ucla “junky” from downtown&Yukon Philosopher,
Hartford campus..hunkered down by a blizzard,50 mph winds
When the Bard summed up his 37 some plays...
When the Bard summed up his 37 some plays...his reality at the Globe.. he
said something that came straight into our consciousness 4 centuries later in
what was once mind boggling promiscuity. Gays and lesbians no longer
shadow boxing in their reality scene ..a military engagement with 9/11's evil.
“Where are you “Captain Bligh” Clifton Webb Monty Wooley Rock Hudson?”
En garde! Victor Victoria
In consolidating the obstacles and convolutions to their growth and development....the
nostalgia of growing up....its spurious sleaziness.. a fine pretense to its mayhem and
maddening banalities.
Letting city slicker tongues&pitchmen come into their boudoirs vis a vi couch
potatos....losing their suede shoes tip toeing the surreptitious entry of strangers.
Like sitting ducks...on the Ocean Park Venice amusement park cubicles “.Try
your luck in our game of skill. You suckers..”
That all people peoples must know, even the Saints that they may fail in their
odyssey: that their quest may ultimately end in resignation and futility.
But as Sir Simon Rattle, the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic after 5 years
conducting the orchestra (144 nationalities) alleges..Tchaikovsky’s eroticism...
“How I came to stop worrying and learned to love the Nutcracker”
In playing a top security prison, the prisoners on hearing Wagner’s Ring Cycle
knew more about the insidious betrayals, the specious manipulations. the lack
of trust, these outlaws beaten down by their interior argument ..rejected by
society knew more about “Tristan and Isolde” than the audience..
Many of those culture vultures once were goose stepping in the city that
condoned their Fuhrer shacking up with Eva Braun in his “Eagle’s nest”.
“Ich bin ein Berliner”
*Resonating the euphoria at JFK’s Brandenberg Gate, 1963,
Ny.City.12/ 21/10. Full Moon Lunar Eclipse Winter Solstice 3:17 a.m
said something that came straight into our consciousness 4 centuries later in
what was once mind boggling promiscuity. Gays and lesbians no longer
shadow boxing in their reality scene ..a military engagement with 9/11's evil.
“Where are you “Captain Bligh” Clifton Webb Monty Wooley Rock Hudson?”
En garde! Victor Victoria
II
In consolidating the obstacles and convolutions to their growth and development....the
nostalgia of growing up....its spurious sleaziness.. a fine pretense to its mayhem and
maddening banalities.
Letting city slicker tongues&pitchmen come into their boudoirs vis a vi couch
potatos....losing their suede shoes tip toeing the surreptitious entry of strangers.
Like sitting ducks...on the Ocean Park Venice amusement park cubicles “.Try
your luck in our game of skill. You suckers..”
That all people peoples must know, even the Saints that they may fail in their
odyssey: that their quest may ultimately end in resignation and futility.
But as Sir Simon Rattle, the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic after 5 years
conducting the orchestra (144 nationalities) alleges..Tchaikovsky’s eroticism...
“How I came to stop worrying and learned to love the Nutcracker”
III
In playing a top security prison, the prisoners on hearing Wagner’s Ring Cycle
knew more about the insidious betrayals, the specious manipulations. the lack
of trust, these outlaws beaten down by their interior argument ..rejected by
society knew more about “Tristan and Isolde” than the audience..
Many of those culture vultures once were goose stepping in the city that
condoned their Fuhrer shacking up with Eva Braun in his “Eagle’s nest”.
“Ich bin ein Berliner”
*Resonating the euphoria at JFK’s Brandenberg Gate, 1963,
Ny.City.12/ 21/10. Full Moon Lunar Eclipse Winter Solstice 3:17 a.m
“To our someday” the life and times of the Kubrick supermarket delivery
“To our someday” the life and times of the Kubrick supermarket delivery
boy six decades ago.
Bartender wet nurse and good humor man under the Avenue J subway.
He tried to make us better.. Ko our mind boggling hangups like a “Champion”
II
His “Paths of Glory” and its motivations drove the same lanes with Fellini,
DeSica,Truffault Rosellini. But did he ever grab Samuel Grafton like he
did Kafka...
Ah that is the question, people peoples.
... III
But his “One eyed Jack” Brando flick into tinsel town was a setback, the two
geniuses never seeing eye to eye.. On the street though, the smart money boys
knew Stanley was Stanislofsky of the Moscow Art theatre in disguise .
“Space Odyssey” proved it, shot on MGM’s Borhamwood studio outside London...,
Who would have known that the former delivery boy would share the same
space with another “hacker” from Wingate.
Three on three biscuit give&goes , a block down from the Avenue J BMT
subway line, his delivery boy bicycle leaning against the market’s
front window...unchained..
IV
“Well .Major Fenton,” said the head honcho, guiding him into the gourmet
beanery “The Culver City money men say your “Mister Novak” high school
chronicle went ballistic on ABC tee vee. .
“Can you duplicate the feel good ? The chauffeured Jaguar is waiting on your
next burp.”
In the meantime Stanley was injecting “Hal”with his soul ..kaputing Alec
North’s score. Straus’s Thus spoke Zarathustra” overwhelming the galaxy
at Culver City...
V
( a flashback in our hour glass of vanquished Time)
Pumping his legs, the delivery boy triumphant at Wingate Field three man
weave, drove his wheels toward Park Slope, a block from the Pavilion movie
house, across from Prospect Park.
VI
His delivery..the Bryna apartments.....the cornerstone of a three floor apartment
house, down away from the Pavilion, a scene for many of Bryna’s son aka Kirk
Douglas... a Schraft waiter& wrestling maven from the college circuit.
A doubles player at the Beverly Hills tennis club.. 1949.
“Who’s there?” asked the actor in futuro, mot knowing that in futuro would
embrace his director .... ”Paths of Glory” “Spartacus”
“ Kubrick’s market.Your delivery boy from under the Avenue J subway.”
The kliegs of Ave J.The passing of director Blake Edwards at 88 of pneumonia..
Cleveland Indian pitcher Bobby Feller of leukemia at 92, his Iowan Field of
Dreams age 15.”.
December 16, 2010
boy six decades ago.
Bartender wet nurse and good humor man under the Avenue J subway.
He tried to make us better.. Ko our mind boggling hangups like a “Champion”
II
His “Paths of Glory” and its motivations drove the same lanes with Fellini,
DeSica,Truffault Rosellini. But did he ever grab Samuel Grafton like he
did Kafka...
Ah that is the question, people peoples.
... III
But his “One eyed Jack” Brando flick into tinsel town was a setback, the two
geniuses never seeing eye to eye.. On the street though, the smart money boys
knew Stanley was Stanislofsky of the Moscow Art theatre in disguise .
“Space Odyssey” proved it, shot on MGM’s Borhamwood studio outside London...,
Who would have known that the former delivery boy would share the same
space with another “hacker” from Wingate.
Three on three biscuit give&goes , a block down from the Avenue J BMT
subway line, his delivery boy bicycle leaning against the market’s
front window...unchained..
IV
“Well .Major Fenton,” said the head honcho, guiding him into the gourmet
beanery “The Culver City money men say your “Mister Novak” high school
chronicle went ballistic on ABC tee vee. .
“Can you duplicate the feel good ? The chauffeured Jaguar is waiting on your
next burp.”
In the meantime Stanley was injecting “Hal”with his soul ..kaputing Alec
North’s score. Straus’s Thus spoke Zarathustra” overwhelming the galaxy
at Culver City...
V
( a flashback in our hour glass of vanquished Time)
Pumping his legs, the delivery boy triumphant at Wingate Field three man
weave, drove his wheels toward Park Slope, a block from the Pavilion movie
house, across from Prospect Park.
VI
His delivery..the Bryna apartments.....the cornerstone of a three floor apartment
house, down away from the Pavilion, a scene for many of Bryna’s son aka Kirk
Douglas... a Schraft waiter& wrestling maven from the college circuit.
A doubles player at the Beverly Hills tennis club.. 1949.
“Who’s there?” asked the actor in futuro, mot knowing that in futuro would
embrace his director .... ”Paths of Glory” “Spartacus”
“ Kubrick’s market.Your delivery boy from under the Avenue J subway.”
The kliegs of Ave J.The passing of director Blake Edwards at 88 of pneumonia..
Cleveland Indian pitcher Bobby Feller of leukemia at 92, his Iowan Field of
Dreams age 15.”.
December 16, 2010
In a self induced trance the Dean of Sleepy Hollow
In a self induced trance the Dean of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle,
shook off his 6 decades of manifest destiny... coming to grips with his
depression born consciousness, honed by cornering the market on sugar free
doctor peppers pepsis cokes root beers creams oranges and sasparellas .
”A ickle a pickle, people peoples”
II
Those WPA recipients cared not a whit about Meyer Lansky of East New York
distributing the bottles to a whisp of a kid...aptopos Huckleberry Finn, but an
“urchin” whose natural rhythm lent itself to shooting Michael Jordan baskets
from “downtown”in the public school 233 schoolyard ...adjacent East 92nd
Street Avenue B WPA brick two story basement homes.
“Mr.Lucky aka Meyer Lansky sold him the sodas for two cents a bottle, and
little Rip Van Winkle got a markup at a “ nickel a pickle”.
Long before “Come back little Sheba”, Shirley Booth on her karma at three in
the morning, declaring. “Mister Lancaster we just viewed the stills from
today’s set .I couldn’t resist waking you dahling....in all my years on stage and
screen. Cross my heart and hope to die
“The stars are in your constellation. It’s inevitable you’ll become a leading man
of star magnitude....so help me God”
III
Little did she kmow “From here to Eternity” was playing out But the Gods
of fortune would work their fate...the bonding stirred up would free the mirror
of their souls with audiences into a collective collaboration that transcends the
reality of their own empathy and themselves.
Jimmy Cagney lent his Freeacres NewJersey abode to the kid and his own
Shirley Booth momma..employed by Cagney’s booker (Black&Erlinger)
So amidst the flying squirrels and squawking blue jays the urchin began his
recovery from a 30 day coma of typhoid fever.... and his Uncle Phil’s blood
transfusion.
A cross country motel route 66 I thru the dust bowl in a ‘33 Plymouth.
The vast Culver City MGM studio on West Washington....
Venice California canals and the Loma apartments off the speedway.
The bathroom in the hall. The Venice Ocean Park fun filled stalls over the
lapping Pacific Ocean waves. ....the merry go round on the distant pier.
Santa Monica Wilshire Boulevard Westwood Village Ucla and Beverly Hills in the “Heaven is North Hamilton Drive on the way to Sleepy Hollow’s trance........
The Big Apple December 10 2010
shook off his 6 decades of manifest destiny... coming to grips with his
depression born consciousness, honed by cornering the market on sugar free
doctor peppers pepsis cokes root beers creams oranges and sasparellas .
”A ickle a pickle, people peoples”
II
Those WPA recipients cared not a whit about Meyer Lansky of East New York
distributing the bottles to a whisp of a kid...aptopos Huckleberry Finn, but an
“urchin” whose natural rhythm lent itself to shooting Michael Jordan baskets
from “downtown”in the public school 233 schoolyard ...adjacent East 92nd
Street Avenue B WPA brick two story basement homes.
“Mr.Lucky aka Meyer Lansky sold him the sodas for two cents a bottle, and
little Rip Van Winkle got a markup at a “ nickel a pickle”.
Long before “Come back little Sheba”, Shirley Booth on her karma at three in
the morning, declaring. “Mister Lancaster we just viewed the stills from
today’s set .I couldn’t resist waking you dahling....in all my years on stage and
screen. Cross my heart and hope to die
“The stars are in your constellation. It’s inevitable you’ll become a leading man
of star magnitude....so help me God”
III
Little did she kmow “From here to Eternity” was playing out But the Gods
of fortune would work their fate...the bonding stirred up would free the mirror
of their souls with audiences into a collective collaboration that transcends the
reality of their own empathy and themselves.
Jimmy Cagney lent his Freeacres NewJersey abode to the kid and his own
Shirley Booth momma..employed by Cagney’s booker (Black&Erlinger)
So amidst the flying squirrels and squawking blue jays the urchin began his
recovery from a 30 day coma of typhoid fever.... and his Uncle Phil’s blood
transfusion.
A cross country motel route 66 I thru the dust bowl in a ‘33 Plymouth.
The vast Culver City MGM studio on West Washington....
Venice California canals and the Loma apartments off the speedway.
The bathroom in the hall. The Venice Ocean Park fun filled stalls over the
lapping Pacific Ocean waves. ....the merry go round on the distant pier.
Santa Monica Wilshire Boulevard Westwood Village Ucla and Beverly Hills in the “Heaven is North Hamilton Drive on the way to Sleepy Hollow’s trance........
The Big Apple December 10 2010
If and when the current “don’t ask don’t tell”is
If and when the current “don’t ask don’t tell”is abandoned by our current lame duck Congress, our poll of fighting men in Afghanistan and around its landscape...on ground in the air...suggests matinee idols like Charles Boyer ....his Pepe Le Moko making love to sultry Hedy LaMarr in the Casbah........while his disciple “I taught him all he knows” Rock Hudson sensuously kindled a flame with Doris Day in Stanley Shapiro’s “Pillow talk”
“And why not. Their autographs on our hand grenades mine sweeping tanks would be
explosive. The coefficient of expansion. Sure alzheimers and schizophrenia is at the top of our front line menu.. Remember Kirk Douglas and Adolph Menjou in “ Paths of Glory”
II
“Would you mind serving in the trenches with the likes of aggressive gay and lesbian partners.?”
“Not at all,” said Studs Lonigan, the hero of James Farrell Chicago turn of the century novel. “Maybe their presence would contribute to our straight interior arguments.. Maybe not If the platoon’s thinking as one would be jeopardized...... As we measure their sacrifices in the calibration of our squad’s life...its soul searching identity.”
‘As long as they don’t alter our thrust. Change the environment’s delicate balance,” said Augie March, the hero of Saul Bellow’s “The world of Augie March”. .
Sexual orientation and its response could be a celebration of “art being human & color blind” against an enemy that blows up their own people peoples as weapons of mass destruction that got this voluntary army here in the first place.
Rosie O’Donnell Ellen Degeneres making their chops....
”Where are you, Red Ryder?” .
“We give up, man.woman gays lesbians homosexuals you name it.,” said the Taliban state of mind ” into Ben Ladin’s 9/11 ambush..waving the white flag of submission.
Unconditional surrender. .
With our mixed band of soldiers in the Afghan mountains, December 5, 2010.
“And why not. Their autographs on our hand grenades mine sweeping tanks would be
explosive. The coefficient of expansion. Sure alzheimers and schizophrenia is at the top of our front line menu.. Remember Kirk Douglas and Adolph Menjou in “ Paths of Glory”
II
“Would you mind serving in the trenches with the likes of aggressive gay and lesbian partners.?”
“Not at all,” said Studs Lonigan, the hero of James Farrell Chicago turn of the century novel. “Maybe their presence would contribute to our straight interior arguments.. Maybe not If the platoon’s thinking as one would be jeopardized...... As we measure their sacrifices in the calibration of our squad’s life...its soul searching identity.”
‘As long as they don’t alter our thrust. Change the environment’s delicate balance,” said Augie March, the hero of Saul Bellow’s “The world of Augie March”. .
Sexual orientation and its response could be a celebration of “art being human & color blind” against an enemy that blows up their own people peoples as weapons of mass destruction that got this voluntary army here in the first place.
Rosie O’Donnell Ellen Degeneres making their chops....
”Where are you, Red Ryder?” .
“We give up, man.woman gays lesbians homosexuals you name it.,” said the Taliban state of mind ” into Ben Ladin’s 9/11 ambush..waving the white flag of submission.
Unconditional surrender. .
With our mixed band of soldiers in the Afghan mountains, December 5, 2010.
Hearing from one of our spies in the auction loop about Bob Dylan spouting
Hearing from one of our spies in the auction loop about Bob Dylan spouting a page or two of his musical idiom and signature for two- three hundred thousand $ brings to mind the Viennese “strudel” when Ludwig von Beethoven turned to his nephew....
II
“Give me my pen, Scooter.....we must scratch the Emperor’s name from the Eroica ...delete him!”.
“But why uncle? He’s your hero.”
“He was, Scooter. We have nothing in common A pimp for Josephine. ..out for himself An imposter. He turned his back on mankind. ....his own glorified ego trip, A whoremonger, ”.”said the Bonn born human, sprawled out at his piano bar, his bedraggled persona disguising measures in staff and keys, his biological clock in synch with the metronome swinging on the mantle.
A swish of the pen Ludwig changed the course of the revolutionary’s quantum leap to Elba, Beethoven resuming his aggression into uncharted turf, transcending the territory Haydn and Mozart traveled.. approaching papa Bach’s biological consciousness God is watching over me and my 22 namesakes
“Gimme five Scooter. Is the black coffee ready? I may be losing my hearing but not my taste buds.”
“His Orchestral Suite number one , Scooter. To emulate him...ah that is the unspeakable my nephew.” he said, breathing his pounding Eroica on his scratched out seven letters Emperor extinct as Ally Oop’s dinosaur.
III
Scooter into his functionary role, punched the Weimar data base for the private number for the Duke’s alter ego.... Wolfgang Goethe. “
“ Sir, we have uncle Ludwig on your data base. The information highway.”
“Scoopy do, Ludwig...I’m with you, scratching out Bonaparte’s name from what I hear on the grapevine. A tyrant wearing the Emperor’s clothes. You’ll long be remembered by posterity for stripping him down.. Balls naked. you hear me?”
Beethoven fondled his hearing aid, dilly dallying the gadget into his ear drum . “He was a small cheese. A pasgoodnik,” said the composer.
“Hmmmm,” said Goethe thinking out loud.... “You on an acid trip?, Ludwig. You sound like your other worldly self.. He’s a con artist pretending he’s Robin Hood....playing out his inner needs, compensating for his lack of body mass .
The fifth grade kids teasing him. “Shorty Shorty” dissimulating the gulls like the Bard said in the “Merchant of Venice” Another Shylock not knowing when to say .“ Mercy! Save my soul.”
IV
“If it wasn’t for my fraulein Vulpius metamorphosing as my frau . Only a mistress can understand my psyche .. She earned it. Sister girl friend frau mother granny she plays all the roles. Keeps me true to my nature, eluding those Faustian demons. Pops hustling marks as a barrister in Frankfurt Ludwig .isn’t it all a fantasy?”
“My father was a “30 lashes with a wet noodle” drunken sadist. How I dreaded the
cat of nine tails,” said the composer, retrieving its wallop from his memory bank.
“Heaven is on the way to it.” both immortals grasping the moment,.kindred to each others soul.
The former German Austria Empire , December 1, 2010.
What the Harry Conover modeling agency
What the Harry Conover modeling agency didn’t know was that this Dude coming off the Duke’s Trojan Horse on the USC campus, his father a recovering G.I. at the Sawtelle neuropsychiatric convalesce center...20 miles from his son’s discovery on line by director John Ford for a role in “Stagecoach”..... riding shotgun
II
The passengers: gassed up Thomas Mitchell.. bar stool temptress Claire Trevor and squeaky Porter Hall “Doing his thing” as he would characterize it decades later in his archives..
The social media like Face book Twitter the internet digital cosmos had not dominated the information highway’s landscape via “Stagecoach”.... Duke riding shotgun .....
How would Harry Conover and his array of Candy Jones(his frau) models long before Lindsay Lohan met her test at Betty Ford’s rehab center for drug and alcohol abuse at Rancho Mirage..
The Duke’s pop was into his role at his portal..eye loop in, discerning 21 jewels from 17, the hospital providing space for these WW vets all used up from too much living amidst their ego’s obstacle course....”How to get a yes”
Harry Conover and his models cared not a whit about any realities of urban life. ...Ucla’s Frederic Woellner “Heaven is on the way to it” and Charles Titus..Machiaveli and Gracian, the tomes for Erlichman and Halderman, Trcky Dick’s linebackers guarding the oval office after Adlai Stevenson JFK and LBJ had gone the way of unfettered aggression and shadowy like Mafia and Kremlin gun slingers.
III
Didn’t his tennis honcho Jack L, the operational “chief” of the Burbank studio say.”You don’t need a letter. Just call Bill Hearst at his swanky cottage. Tell him you want to write a column..”
So café society had to wait for the Harry Conover Candy Jones models to take the Ucla photo journalist profile.... letting it flow from Kherckoff Hall unto the information highway’s shallows and expectations.
Meanwhile the Whittier College football bencher,, the people be damned. Old Hickory never had it so good. Did he dear reader?
Done did Helen Gahagan Douglas in, winning her Congressional seat.in the rough and tumble of Machiavellian politics.
Where would the riding shotgun surface in the arcane traffic for notoriety and elusive fame and fortune in the Big Apple?. The Pierre hotel? The Waldorf Towers? The Saint George Hotel In downtown Brooklyn? Court Street and Montague.
IV
When the Ucla father figures... Harry Morris, director of publications, Don Padgett (Rugby coach) Don Ashen (treasurer) the athletic director Wilbur Johns basketball coach John Wooden Bill Ackerman graduate manager tennis coach Mike Frankovich (Binnie Barnes ‘h’) Colonel Bing, Air ROTC
Ralph Bunche Ducky Drake trainer and junior varsity track coach Harry Trotter... varsity under grads Craig Dixon (110 220 hurdles) Al Kapp the stamina clad cross country miler at ZBT’s Gayly Avenue fraternity....
Jane Withers home above Joe E Brown field ......watching the jocks chase their dreams.
V
Those father figures seeing him off at the Westwood Village Tom Crumpler Hamburger Hamlet Greyhound bus stop ....
“Good luck . Gimme five, kid.. We’ll miss you. Give our blessings to Broadway and the Great WhiteWay. Bloomy won’t know what hit him.....” said the hunker in the brown flannel coat ,the Babe himself off LeConte&Westwood Boulevard .....in town promoting “Pride of the Yankees” when screenplays had a Prometheus serendipity.
“Babe Ruth a force of nature.” said the Duke riding shotgun alongside the stagecoach morphed as the Greyhound bus .
“Wasn’t the whole romp deja vu, dear reader?”
The Big Apple’s information highway..., November 28 2010
II
The passengers: gassed up Thomas Mitchell.. bar stool temptress Claire Trevor and squeaky Porter Hall “Doing his thing” as he would characterize it decades later in his archives..
The social media like Face book Twitter the internet digital cosmos had not dominated the information highway’s landscape via “Stagecoach”.... Duke riding shotgun .....
How would Harry Conover and his array of Candy Jones(his frau) models long before Lindsay Lohan met her test at Betty Ford’s rehab center for drug and alcohol abuse at Rancho Mirage..
The Duke’s pop was into his role at his portal..eye loop in, discerning 21 jewels from 17, the hospital providing space for these WW vets all used up from too much living amidst their ego’s obstacle course....”How to get a yes”
Harry Conover and his models cared not a whit about any realities of urban life. ...Ucla’s Frederic Woellner “Heaven is on the way to it” and Charles Titus..Machiaveli and Gracian, the tomes for Erlichman and Halderman, Trcky Dick’s linebackers guarding the oval office after Adlai Stevenson JFK and LBJ had gone the way of unfettered aggression and shadowy like Mafia and Kremlin gun slingers.
III
Didn’t his tennis honcho Jack L, the operational “chief” of the Burbank studio say.”You don’t need a letter. Just call Bill Hearst at his swanky cottage. Tell him you want to write a column..”
So café society had to wait for the Harry Conover Candy Jones models to take the Ucla photo journalist profile.... letting it flow from Kherckoff Hall unto the information highway’s shallows and expectations.
Meanwhile the Whittier College football bencher,, the people be damned. Old Hickory never had it so good. Did he dear reader?
Done did Helen Gahagan Douglas in, winning her Congressional seat.in the rough and tumble of Machiavellian politics.
Where would the riding shotgun surface in the arcane traffic for notoriety and elusive fame and fortune in the Big Apple?. The Pierre hotel? The Waldorf Towers? The Saint George Hotel In downtown Brooklyn? Court Street and Montague.
IV
When the Ucla father figures... Harry Morris, director of publications, Don Padgett (Rugby coach) Don Ashen (treasurer) the athletic director Wilbur Johns basketball coach John Wooden Bill Ackerman graduate manager tennis coach Mike Frankovich (Binnie Barnes ‘h’) Colonel Bing, Air ROTC
Ralph Bunche Ducky Drake trainer and junior varsity track coach Harry Trotter... varsity under grads Craig Dixon (110 220 hurdles) Al Kapp the stamina clad cross country miler at ZBT’s Gayly Avenue fraternity....
Jane Withers home above Joe E Brown field ......watching the jocks chase their dreams.
V
Those father figures seeing him off at the Westwood Village Tom Crumpler Hamburger Hamlet Greyhound bus stop ....
“Good luck . Gimme five, kid.. We’ll miss you. Give our blessings to Broadway and the Great WhiteWay. Bloomy won’t know what hit him.....” said the hunker in the brown flannel coat ,the Babe himself off LeConte&Westwood Boulevard .....in town promoting “Pride of the Yankees” when screenplays had a Prometheus serendipity.
“Babe Ruth a force of nature.” said the Duke riding shotgun alongside the stagecoach morphed as the Greyhound bus .
“Wasn’t the whole romp deja vu, dear reader?”
The Big Apple’s information highway..., November 28 2010
The collective consciousness begs an Aristotlean inquiry into..
The collective consciousness begs an Aristotlean inquiry into the violent end of a Sarah Lawrence graduate Ronni Chasen, playing out her Waterloo as an “All about Eve”publicist among charred aggressions gone sour ...
II
Amidst the savagery of competitive juices searching for an audience thru 4 decades of a
driven psyche (carrying her sweetener) in her trappings as she sought out collaborative alter egos
for her actor song writer composer clients. .
Goethe could have told her that it all goes back to childhood. The Shiek of Araby befuddling his true believers tn their fifth grade innocense.... carrying on for seven decades of masking sore loser gambling.... blown away by his dissembling ego trip...
III
She hadn’t been born when Budd Shulberg scribbled “WhatmakesSammyrun?” but since he was coming off a high as the tennis champ of Pismo Beach, he had nothing to lose... his soul into an x ray calibration of passions running abut on roller coaster images.
“I’m ready for my closeup mister DeMille” says Gloria Swanson as William Hoilden’s body
floats in her pool, her state of mind oblivious to what was playing out.
IV
Turning left unto North Whittier Drive from Sunset (a short cut to Wilshire), Ronni named after Dave Chasen, the restauranter from Beverly Boulevard down aways from where Milton Holmes, the manager of the Beverly Hills Tennis Club plotted his “Mr.Lucky” scenario for Cary Grant seven decades earlier.
Frank Capra Horace McCoy Ernest Pascal Nat Perrin Milo Frank Joel Adler Bill Gargan Donald Woods Arthur Marx Humprey Bogard Willie Wyler Billy Wilder Budge Patty had all come and gone. But Ronni’s left hand turn unto “Dead End” takes your breath away..
Unfurling her ubiquitous taste of celluloid unconscious and poetry. .
V
Where could her support system have gone wrong? “ *You haven’t heard the last of me”
Short circuiting her larger than life empathy...those Big Apple yearnings into Riverdale and Sarah Lawrence’s feminine ideals .Her father a real estate businessman, her mother a home body, raising two children.
Was their bad faith in the sembling that led MGM to wheel deal its prize library of film and celluloid archives. The brain convolutions among insiders would cause United Artists like Douglas Fairbanks Charlie Chaplin Mary Pickford (“Gladys Smith”) to throw uip their arms.To make a profit among a torrent of red ink theatrics...
Fatty Arbuckle the Black Dahlia Ramon Navarro Gig Young Bugsy Siegal James Dean Senator Ribert Kennedy had a doomed reality..But here a force of sparkling nature with a New York accent, maintained an indomitable air.
Her “Cinderella” :Alice in Wonderland” “Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves” “Wall Street 2" Cher’s “*Burlesque” Morgan Freeman’s ”Driving Miss Daisy” “The Golden Pond” with Henry Fondas’s “aging isn’t for sissies” , paired with Katherine Hepburn as his caretaker wife.
“Shakespeare in love”..... .
Riverdale’s divine promise ....November 21, 2010
II
Amidst the savagery of competitive juices searching for an audience thru 4 decades of a
driven psyche (carrying her sweetener) in her trappings as she sought out collaborative alter egos
for her actor song writer composer clients. .
Goethe could have told her that it all goes back to childhood. The Shiek of Araby befuddling his true believers tn their fifth grade innocense.... carrying on for seven decades of masking sore loser gambling.... blown away by his dissembling ego trip...
III
She hadn’t been born when Budd Shulberg scribbled “WhatmakesSammyrun?” but since he was coming off a high as the tennis champ of Pismo Beach, he had nothing to lose... his soul into an x ray calibration of passions running abut on roller coaster images.
“I’m ready for my closeup mister DeMille” says Gloria Swanson as William Hoilden’s body
floats in her pool, her state of mind oblivious to what was playing out.
IV
Turning left unto North Whittier Drive from Sunset (a short cut to Wilshire), Ronni named after Dave Chasen, the restauranter from Beverly Boulevard down aways from where Milton Holmes, the manager of the Beverly Hills Tennis Club plotted his “Mr.Lucky” scenario for Cary Grant seven decades earlier.
Frank Capra Horace McCoy Ernest Pascal Nat Perrin Milo Frank Joel Adler Bill Gargan Donald Woods Arthur Marx Humprey Bogard Willie Wyler Billy Wilder Budge Patty had all come and gone. But Ronni’s left hand turn unto “Dead End” takes your breath away..
Unfurling her ubiquitous taste of celluloid unconscious and poetry. .
V
Where could her support system have gone wrong? “ *You haven’t heard the last of me”
Short circuiting her larger than life empathy...those Big Apple yearnings into Riverdale and Sarah Lawrence’s feminine ideals .Her father a real estate businessman, her mother a home body, raising two children.
Was their bad faith in the sembling that led MGM to wheel deal its prize library of film and celluloid archives. The brain convolutions among insiders would cause United Artists like Douglas Fairbanks Charlie Chaplin Mary Pickford (“Gladys Smith”) to throw uip their arms.To make a profit among a torrent of red ink theatrics...
Fatty Arbuckle the Black Dahlia Ramon Navarro Gig Young Bugsy Siegal James Dean Senator Ribert Kennedy had a doomed reality..But here a force of sparkling nature with a New York accent, maintained an indomitable air.
Her “Cinderella” :Alice in Wonderland” “Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves” “Wall Street 2" Cher’s “*Burlesque” Morgan Freeman’s ”Driving Miss Daisy” “The Golden Pond” with Henry Fondas’s “aging isn’t for sissies” , paired with Katherine Hepburn as his caretaker wife.
“Shakespeare in love”..... .
Riverdale’s divine promise ....November 21, 2010
The collective consciousness begged its Aristotlean inquiry into...
The collective consciousness begs an Aristotlean inquiry into the violent end of a Sarah Lawrence graduate Ronni Chasen, playing out her Waterloo as an “All about Eve”publicist among charred aggressions gone sour ...
II
Amidst the savagery of competitive juices searching for an audience thru 4 decades of a
driven psyche (carrying her sweetener) in her trappings as she sought out collaborative alter egos
for her actor song writer composer clients. .
Goethe could have told her that it all goes back to childhood. The Shiek of Araby befuddling his true believers tn their fifth grade innocense.... carrying on for seven decades of masking sore loser gambling.... blown away by his dissembling ego trip...
III
She hadn’t been born when Budd Shulberg scribbled “What makes Sammy run?” but since he was coming off a high as the tennis champ of Pismo Beach, he had nothing to lose... his soul into an x ray calibration of passions running abut on roller coaster images.
“I’m ready for my closeup mister DeMille” says Gloria Swanson as William Hoilden’s body
floats in her pool, her state of mind oblivious to what was playing out.
IV
Turning left unto North Whittier Drive from Sunset (a short cut to Wilshire), Ronni named after Dave Chasen, the restauranter from Beverly Boulevard down aways from where Milton Holmes, the manager of the Beverly Hills Tennis Club plotted his “Mr.Lucky” scenario for Cary Grant seven decades earlier.
Frank Capra Horace McCoy Ernest Pascal Nat Perrin Milo Frank Joel Adler Bill Gargan Donald Woods Arthur Marx Humprey Bogard Willie Wyler Billy Wilder Budge Patty had all come and gone. But Ronni’s left hand turn unto “Dead End” takes your breath away..
Unfurling her ubiquitous taste of celluloid unconscious and poetry. .
V
Where could her support system have gone wrong? “ *You haven’t heard the last of me”
Short circuiting her larger than life empathy...those Big Apple yearnings into Riverdale and Sarah Lawrence’s feminine ideals .Her father a real estate businessman, her mother a home body, raising two children.
Was their bad faith in the sembling that led MGM to wheel deal its prize library of film and celluloid archives. The brain convolutions among insiders would cause United Artists like Douglas Fairbanks Charlie Chaplin Mary Pickford (“Gladys Smith”) to throw uip their arms.To make a profit among a torrent of red ink theatrics...
Fatty Arbuckle the Black Dahlia Ramon Navarro Gig Young Bugsy Siegal James Dean Senator Ribert Kennedy had a doomed reality..But here a force of sparkling nature with a New York accent, maintained an indomitable air.
Her “Cinderella” :Alice in Wonderland” “Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves” “Wall Street 2" Cher’s “*Burlesque” Morgan Freeman’s ”Driving Miss Daisy” “The Golden Pond” with Henry Fondas’s “aging isn’t for sissies” , paired with Katherine Hepburn as his caretaker wife.
“Shakespeare in love”..... .
Riverdale’s divine promise ....November 21, 2010
II
Amidst the savagery of competitive juices searching for an audience thru 4 decades of a
driven psyche (carrying her sweetener) in her trappings as she sought out collaborative alter egos
for her actor song writer composer clients. .
Goethe could have told her that it all goes back to childhood. The Shiek of Araby befuddling his true believers tn their fifth grade innocense.... carrying on for seven decades of masking sore loser gambling.... blown away by his dissembling ego trip...
III
She hadn’t been born when Budd Shulberg scribbled “What makes Sammy run?” but since he was coming off a high as the tennis champ of Pismo Beach, he had nothing to lose... his soul into an x ray calibration of passions running abut on roller coaster images.
“I’m ready for my closeup mister DeMille” says Gloria Swanson as William Hoilden’s body
floats in her pool, her state of mind oblivious to what was playing out.
IV
Turning left unto North Whittier Drive from Sunset (a short cut to Wilshire), Ronni named after Dave Chasen, the restauranter from Beverly Boulevard down aways from where Milton Holmes, the manager of the Beverly Hills Tennis Club plotted his “Mr.Lucky” scenario for Cary Grant seven decades earlier.
Frank Capra Horace McCoy Ernest Pascal Nat Perrin Milo Frank Joel Adler Bill Gargan Donald Woods Arthur Marx Humprey Bogard Willie Wyler Billy Wilder Budge Patty had all come and gone. But Ronni’s left hand turn unto “Dead End” takes your breath away..
Unfurling her ubiquitous taste of celluloid unconscious and poetry. .
V
Where could her support system have gone wrong? “ *You haven’t heard the last of me”
Short circuiting her larger than life empathy...those Big Apple yearnings into Riverdale and Sarah Lawrence’s feminine ideals .Her father a real estate businessman, her mother a home body, raising two children.
Was their bad faith in the sembling that led MGM to wheel deal its prize library of film and celluloid archives. The brain convolutions among insiders would cause United Artists like Douglas Fairbanks Charlie Chaplin Mary Pickford (“Gladys Smith”) to throw uip their arms.To make a profit among a torrent of red ink theatrics...
Fatty Arbuckle the Black Dahlia Ramon Navarro Gig Young Bugsy Siegal James Dean Senator Ribert Kennedy had a doomed reality..But here a force of sparkling nature with a New York accent, maintained an indomitable air.
Her “Cinderella” :Alice in Wonderland” “Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves” “Wall Street 2" Cher’s “*Burlesque” Morgan Freeman’s ”Driving Miss Daisy” “The Golden Pond” with Henry Fondas’s “aging isn’t for sissies” , paired with Katherine Hepburn as his caretaker wife.
“Shakespeare in love”..... .
Riverdale’s divine promise ....November 21, 2010
In a reversal of roles on Monday night
In a reversal of roles on Monday night football ........................................................ Rin Tin Tin barked “It’s the bottom line Lassie. The scars from Michael Vick’s madden-
dening slashing ring. Are we not“men’s best friends?”
II
”The bottom line,”snapped Lassie, the Collie that made it big at the studio that proclaimed Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy(“his waiting Katie”) as their stardust.... not knowing their “Boom Town” was the Delphi Oracle’s precursor to Michael Vick’s ’ retributive stretch into his nirvana......a role as a starting NFL quarterback.
“21 months behind bars. Indeed.”“
The Irish Setter licked his paws unabashedly.... those big eyes casting an enchantment on what many animals knew....humans were being tested from walking our puppies to their graven sidewalks......
III
“Thirty lashes with a wet noodle. Like he was the Marquis de Sade managing an insane Poodle show....us untamed to tear out the gizzards of our German Shepard Boston Pugs..”
“Isn’tt a dog’s life?” growled a Spitz, licking his coat.
“Voila It’s all about family, submerging our master’s playful genius into our screaming fantasies. Didn’t he pay his freight? ....twenty one months in solitary confinement on bread and water in a Ventura County like detention center?” barked Rin Tin Tin, licking his paws.
“The wheel of retribution and fated police dogs.. Coach Andy giving him a four leaf clover to be the understudy .....how far can Donovan go with those Campbell chunky soups.... his momma teasing him.
“Working up his appetite,” for the those brain washed viewer tongues.
And the Eagles rethinking McNabb’s role, releasing him to the Redskins and an extension of seventy eight million bucks. How mucho more chunky soups could he schlop in a hundred reincarnated lifetimes?.”
Momma couldn’t you tell Donovan to stay in the pocket. Not get blitzed by our violent dog tackles. Why didn’t you give Donovan a spoon of his own chunkies?”
IV
The Boxer stood up on his hinds. “Lissen you dogs, I may not be a Greyhound but our master redeemed himself...reinventing himself for subjecting us to his war games.
I may be only a Boxer in appearance but I’m a Greyhound in disguise.”
“Our master took the game over from Donovan and his mother spoon feeding the canned chunkies .” man’s best friend scratching his hide for fleas..
Surrounded by bull slingers yes men, lackeys and toads who played their dissembling airs, kicking butt .... if you pardon the English.... Poodle.”
V
Rin Tin Tin Lassie the Labrador the Irish setter the Boston black and white Pug all stood on their hinds, barking approval. Rin Tin Tin taking his cue “ Passing for four td’s Running for two”.
“Ten complete passes before he even worked up a sweat.....he didn’t have to prove a damn thing in the City of Brotherly Love. Not a damn thing.”
And like a Greek chorus at the Delphic Oracle.... the animals all stood tall, barking in unison. Not a begging whine of self pity could b e heard. the humans chewing the cud.... a mother and son licking their chops 59-28.. ..
A divine presence......... a canine Providence playing out for Michael Vick and the Philadelphia Eagles.
The City of Brotherly Love, November 16, 2010.
dening slashing ring. Are we not“men’s best friends?”
II
”The bottom line,”snapped Lassie, the Collie that made it big at the studio that proclaimed Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy(“his waiting Katie”) as their stardust.... not knowing their “Boom Town” was the Delphi Oracle’s precursor to Michael Vick’s ’ retributive stretch into his nirvana......a role as a starting NFL quarterback.
“21 months behind bars. Indeed.”“
The Irish Setter licked his paws unabashedly.... those big eyes casting an enchantment on what many animals knew....humans were being tested from walking our puppies to their graven sidewalks......
III
“Thirty lashes with a wet noodle. Like he was the Marquis de Sade managing an insane Poodle show....us untamed to tear out the gizzards of our German Shepard Boston Pugs..”
“Isn’tt a dog’s life?” growled a Spitz, licking his coat.
“Voila It’s all about family, submerging our master’s playful genius into our screaming fantasies. Didn’t he pay his freight? ....twenty one months in solitary confinement on bread and water in a Ventura County like detention center?” barked Rin Tin Tin, licking his paws.
“The wheel of retribution and fated police dogs.. Coach Andy giving him a four leaf clover to be the understudy .....how far can Donovan go with those Campbell chunky soups.... his momma teasing him.
“Working up his appetite,” for the those brain washed viewer tongues.
And the Eagles rethinking McNabb’s role, releasing him to the Redskins and an extension of seventy eight million bucks. How mucho more chunky soups could he schlop in a hundred reincarnated lifetimes?.”
Momma couldn’t you tell Donovan to stay in the pocket. Not get blitzed by our violent dog tackles. Why didn’t you give Donovan a spoon of his own chunkies?”
IV
The Boxer stood up on his hinds. “Lissen you dogs, I may not be a Greyhound but our master redeemed himself...reinventing himself for subjecting us to his war games.
I may be only a Boxer in appearance but I’m a Greyhound in disguise.”
“Our master took the game over from Donovan and his mother spoon feeding the canned chunkies .” man’s best friend scratching his hide for fleas..
Surrounded by bull slingers yes men, lackeys and toads who played their dissembling airs, kicking butt .... if you pardon the English.... Poodle.”
V
Rin Tin Tin Lassie the Labrador the Irish setter the Boston black and white Pug all stood on their hinds, barking approval. Rin Tin Tin taking his cue “ Passing for four td’s Running for two”.
“Ten complete passes before he even worked up a sweat.....he didn’t have to prove a damn thing in the City of Brotherly Love. Not a damn thing.”
And like a Greek chorus at the Delphic Oracle.... the animals all stood tall, barking in unison. Not a begging whine of self pity could b e heard. the humans chewing the cud.... a mother and son licking their chops 59-28.. ..
A divine presence......... a canine Providence playing out for Michael Vick and the Philadelphia Eagles.
The City of Brotherly Love, November 16, 2010.
Swing it Duarte, 8 to thebar
Swing it Duarte, 8 to thebar…the beat reverberating in a stride, Swing low sweet chariot,
November11, 2010. a brain tumor gives the patient two months......
II
Over looking the skyline of the City of Angels…the Los Angeles Times, City Hall, the San Gabriel mountains in the background, the snail like bumper to bumper traffic flowing on the Santa Ana Hollywood freeways below, the resplendent plush offices of the Duarte- City of Hope executive suite hailing the arrival of the Russian born Dr George, the director of the tuberculosis hospital’s pathology lab……..
III
Ben H a transplanted Brooklynite, the likes of the old Boys High School, Marcy avenue, the Pitkin Sutter Avenue reality scene of East New York, Brownsville…Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegal, Al “Bummy Davis, Izzy, he had come West….
The desert ambience (before the smog like air) lending itself to convalescence and rehab for patients coping with lung and pulmonary disease.. (cancer tumors in the futuro)…..Duarte attaining a growing reputation in the Los Angeles basin, the pathologist Dr.George, one of Ben H’s rising stars, never feeling comfortable with the brass and PR honchos…. A Humanity overwhelming with Hollywood born crocodiles, lurking in the environs of the Strip and Sunset Boulevard IV
The Kiev born, Michael Reese trained Chicago renaissance man, tried to be cool, cooling his heels in Ben H’s monster outer office, his wave length into the Spurs- Pistons first game, a metaphor for his own benign Duarte bliss, three minutes from his Arcadia homestead. A hearty heart heart into his second wind, back to his lab.A Jonas Salk stalker of diseased tissue, precursor CSI escapist fare. V
Cell phone beaper wired, Dr.George earphones on: a cosmic spaced out Buck Rogers, Dr. George tuned into the SBC arena in San Antonio, the Spurs versus the defending champs the Detroit Pistons, in their home….Dr. George was into his survival threads, knowing as we all know, a Holy Grail scenario was playing out.
VI
What could he do but maintain in the presence of a brain tumor on the make……those Kiev like eyes into a furtive glance of the Southern California landscape, from those picture windows of Murray H’s suite
VII
Humming his Michael Reese blues, Dr. George’s Gomel born ears…..into Doctor Jack Ramsey’s own song and dance(his son in law, having been axed from the Wilt Chamberlain Alan Iverson led 76’ers franchise.. the City of brotherly love?)
“We got a humdinger here, Doctor .”
“A slam dammer! Dr George “
November 12, 2010...... Duarte Caliornia.
“Manu Ginoboli, the slasher from Argentina, vis a vi the San Antonio Spurs, was manna from Heaven, for Hubie Brown and his down to earth Soul. Like doctor Jack, his life was umbilical corded with “swish” “from down town” and Brooklyn born M.J. Sir Michael himself, the royalty of the NBA…..
Unlike Wilt Chamerlain and Bill Russell, the two Redheads from Brooklyn, Holtzman and Auerbach( eleven rings)Hall of Famer Hubie Brown had paid his dues from the very tip of his Memphis rhythms(Manu himself from the age 3 knew his Destiny)…..
Manu took over the game in the fourth quarter, scoring 15 big points, twenty two the second half….Fired up, rethinking his role, the locker room spritz between halves…..
“In our house, we can do no wrong, ”he said, sweating bullets, the stream of switzing , his swarthy Latino brow cheeks chin, total bull of the Pampas Primo Carnero? Rudy Valentino’s 21st century “Not to be frustrated, checked, Manu’s broken English complimented the Piston defenses. “Their big men..the two Wallaces are giants. But if we don’t penetrate the paint, going aggressively to the rim, they take the game from us…and 20,289 Fans…our sixth player….in our house..San Antonio, mine outside Buenos Aires….No way.!”
“They are not the defending champs for nunca: how you say in top spin English.For nothing……come at you one two defenders, doubling up…Switch on the matchup.You must play smart…..muy intelligente.”……”
”Spins in the lane, off the dribble…..”
Electrifying to say the least…..in the mode of Michael, and his colleagues…Steve Nash of Phoenix, Iverson…and Wade…”the crowd is on its feet,…the bugle blowing, “Gladys Gooding”on the organ…..”MANU MANU MANU MANU MANU……”
********
Dr. George took his head set off, awaiting Murray H’s growl grunt, eight to the bar. While he was consumed eaten up by his pathology lab, its constant never ending tissue ramifications, The life and death constancy hanging over the Duarte landscape, he found his nirvana in the creativity, the imaginative, the chemistry with the hoped for cures, battle with tuberculosis and soon to be cancerous tumors.
The struggle between life and death in the former orange tree orchids, not that far from the Santa Anita race track, and the likes of George and Dolly plying their Post and Paddock touting, Al Sliver, Whitey, Gene F. Bob Benoit in the circle, passing out the flyers….(sometimes throwing them to the skies, the players, betters coming to the tote board, challenging the odds at the pari mutual windows) full of great expectations, hope eternal, knowing the odds were stacked against them, but overcoming their weariness, ennui…. the constancy of a boring rut into an escape from the trivia and mundane
To Murray H. it’s all in how you look at it….Hadn’t he gotten the call from the insurance tycoon opposite the Alexandria Hotel and cottages on Wilshire.
“No more changing labels, Murray. Arrow shirts are behind us…a tubercular free rehabilitation center….like FDR’s Warm springs,” remembering the telephone service leaving a message that President Harry Truman called…..would we call him back?
‘What are we about, Dr. George” said Murray H. to himself. Knowing Dr. George
had built constructed his Arrowsmith lab with out the Sinclair Lewis smaltz. I’m playing the big shot among the movie industry, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Chaneys, Mayers, Goldwyn Harry Cohn Jack L.tycoons…but Dr. George has his own support system of purity, ideals and a terrific work ethic…..a mishagoss before he got here, an embryo of a Medical School since his arrival… is there no end to his
drive…..four sons and a daughter, a beautiful frau of a Sabbath, chasing down the disease with a few ticks of the clock from his Arcadia retreat. A repose and he’s back in the lab…like the polio maven Jonas Salk…
His frau, Picasso’s mistress….No delusions of grandeur, these geniuses wile away their moments, thinking big thoughts, peering thru the microscope at Paul DeKruif’s microbes while the rest of us are condemned to hawing and hemming, corralling them into a reality of….budgets, punching the clock, spreadsheets, retirement overtime, nepotism contacts, free lunches, grandeur events at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Beverly Hilton…you name it…No one wants to cut the grass, mow the lawn.The sweats?…..upkeep,overhead who’s gonna pay the gardener 60 big ones every 724,Diaz.…?
“Swing it Duarte, eight to the bar”
********
The X factor of a 5.6 earthquake rattled thru the Southern California landscape like a freight train. Was it a force of nature “Manu Ginoboli” his game face on “A major West Coast motion offense. A half a dozen pictures fell off the wall” said a Palm Springs habitee of Rancho de Mirage.
His coach, Popovich, once of the Colorado Springs Air Force Academy, saying “Manu like Tony Parker Timmy (Duncan) was able to take the game over. But any seismic repercussions….”It’s all anal”,the details beyond details.”He’s on a roll, sprinting out on the fast break. Slashing his way to the glass, his body into the two Wallaces.. A body fake, they switch, Manu goes to his left hand, they double back , he goes to his right hand. They hack him, the ball spins off the glass. A swish. He goes to the free throw line for a three pointer….his confidence off the charts,”said Pops.
*********
Dr.George’s sensibility and big mucho empathy picked up the 6.2 seismic vibrations, the City of Hope hi rise not immune to any forces of Nature in the City of Angels..his rocket head gear rocking like he was into game 2 at the SBC center…..
Hubie Brown, Dr.Jack, the former Portland Trailblazer coach, his redhead of a center, Big Bill Walton, waiting for the tip off, the motion offense…..
Dr. George listened to these erudite coaches turned analysts….The Pistons like Dr. George were on their heels. The Spurs came storming out from get go like Afleet Alex at the Belmont Stakes…He could see in their energy, they were young unspoiled by the Motown experiences..Parker dating, Ginobili recently married, Bruce Bowen also married Horry (five rings) had been San Antonio Spurs from their NBA day one…..they could do no wrong ,chasing their dream.
The Champs were defensive giants but they had been around, talented castoffs, playing for several franchises before landing with Larry Brown. Not they were corrupt.. Nobody would say that Dr. George, but they had been around the block as had Larry Brown Therefore the two Wallaces, Rick Hamilton, Prince with his 7 foot 2 inch wing span, their clutch point guard Chauncy Phillips were reaching the rim of their learning curve….. ********
Between Michael Jackson having a proclivity for sleeping with youngsters, OJ renting Hertz cars, Martha Stewart making a phone call to her broker, and Billy Graham making the scene in Flushing, spelling out the case for a Higher Power in the big Apple’s cosmos, notwithstanding Allah being evident at 9/11, it causes one to be spellbound and speechless at the same time.
A Robert Horry record breaking Jordan “swish” from downtown.
June 16,2005…(to be continued)
Part 2
Continuing a brain tumor....the patient diagnosed with two months to go...November12,2010 II
Dr.George took his head set off, awaiting Murray H’s growl grunt, eight to the bar. While he was consumed eaten up by his pathology lab, its constant never ending tissue ramifications, The life and death constancy hanging over the Duarte landscape, he found his nirvana in the creativity, the imaginative, the chemistry with the hoped for cures, battle with tuberculosis and soon to be cancerous tumors.
III
The struggle between life and death in the former orange tree orchids, not that far from the Santa Anita race track, and the likes of George and Dolly plying their Post and Paddock touting, Al Sliver, Whitey, Gene F. Bob Benoit in the circle, passing out the flyers….(sometimes throwing them to the skies)..... the players, betters coming to the tote board, challenging the odds at the pari mutual windows) full of great expectations, hope eternal, knowing the odds were stacked against them, but overcoming their weariness, ennui…. the constancy of a boring rut into an escape from the trivia and mundane
To Murray H. it’s all in how you look at it….Hadn’t he gotten the call from the insurance tycoon opposite the Alexandria Hotel and cottages on Wilshire.
“No more changing labels, Murray. Arrow shirts are behind us…a tubercular free rehabilitation center….like FDR’s Warm springs,” remembering the telephone service leaving a message that President Harry Truman called…..would we call him back?
IV
‘What are we about, Dr. George” said Murray H. to himself. Knowing Dr. George
had built constructed his Arrowsmith lab with out the Sinclair Lewis smaltz. I’m playing the big shot among the movie industry, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Chaneys, Mayers, Goldwyn Harry Cohn Jack L.tycoons…but Dr. George has his own support system of purity, ideals and a terrific work ethic…..a mishagoss before he got here, an embryo of a Medical School since his arrival… is there no end to his
drive…..four sons and a daughter, a beautiful frau of a Sabbath, chasing down the disease with a few ticks of the clock from his Arcadia retreat. A repose and he’s back in the lab…like the polio maven Jonas Salk…
V
His frau, Picasso’s mistress….No delusions of grandeur, these geniuses wile away their moments, thinking big thoughts, peering thru the microscope at Paul DeKruif’s microbes while the rest of us are condemned to hawing and hemming, corralling them into a reality of….budgets, punching the clock, spreadsheets, retirement overtime, nepotism contacts, free lunches, grandeur events at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Beverly Hilton…you name it…No one wants to cut the grass, mow the lawn.The sweats?…..upkeep,overhead who’s gonna pay the gardener 60 big ones every 724,Diaz.…?
“Swing it Duarte, eight to the bar”
VI
The X factor of a 5.6 earthquake rattled thru the Southern California landscape like a freight train. Was it a force of nature “Manu Ginoboli” his game face on “A major West Coast motion offense. A half a dozen pictures fell off the wall” said a Palm Springs habitee of Rancho de Mirage.
VII
His coach, Popovich, once of the Colorado Springs Air Force Academy, saying “Manu like Tony Parker Timmy (Duncan) was able to take the game over. But any seismic repercussions….”It’s all anal”,the details beyond details.”He’s on a roll, sprinting out on the fast break. Slashing his way to the glass, his body into the two Wallaces.. A body fake, they switch, Manu goes to his left hand, they double back , he goes to his right hand. They hack him, the ball spins off the glass. A swish. He goes to the free throw line for a three pointer….his confidence off the charts,”said Pops.
VIII
Dr.George’s sensibility and big mucho empathy picked up the 6.2 seismic vibrations, the City of Hope hi rise not immune to any forces of Nature in the City of Angels..his rocket head gear rocking like he was into game 2 at the SBC center…..
Hubie Brown, Dr.Jack, the former Portland Trailblazer coach, his redhead of a center, Big Bill Walton, waiting for the tip off, the motion offense…..
Dr. George listened to these erudite coaches turned analysts….The Pistons like Dr. George were on their heels. The Spurs came storming out from get go like Afleet Alex at the Belmont Stakes…He could see in their energy, they were young unspoiled by the Motown experiences..Parker dating, Ginobili recently married, Bruce Bowen also married Horry (five rings) had been San Antonio Spurs from their NBA day one…..they could do no wrong ,chasing their dream.
IX
The Champs were defensive giants but they had been around, talented castoffs, playing for several franchises before landing with Larry Brown. Not they were corrupt.. Nobody would say that Dr. George, but they had been around the block as had Larry Brown Therefore the two Wallaces, Rick Hamilton, Prince with his 7 foot 2 inch wing span, their clutch point guard Chauncy Phillips were reaching the rim of their learning curve…..
X
Between Michael Jackson having a proclivity for being and becoming a rock star, OJ renting Hertz cars, Martha Stewart making a phone call to her broker, and Billy Graham making the scene in Flushing, spelling out the case for a Higher Power in the big Apple’s cosmos, notwithstanding Allah being evident at 9/11, it causes one to be spellbound and speechless at the same time.
A Robert Horry record breaking Jordan “swish” from downtown.
June 16,2005…to be ...November 12,2010 Duarte, California
And so they came running for the San Francisco Giants Texas Rangers World Series
And so they came running for the San Francisco Giants Texas Rangers World Series... ducats in their sweaty palms...Hamilton Air Force ( a mall) San Rafael; the wine country Napa Valley Vallejo across the bay ... Golden Gate Bridge
Alcatraz Island Treasure Island (the World’s Fair, ‘39 WW2 ‘46) Bay Meadows Market Street Original Joe’s the Fleet Building .Fisherman’s wharf...Berkeley Oakland
And the cable cars.......”All aboard”
II
Tris Speaker Frankie Frisch Luke Appling Spider Jorgenson Nax Lanier Al Kaline Ernie
Lombardi Maury Wills . the knothole kids from the Ebbets Field bleachers.
.Larry Doby Eddie Waitkus Billy Jurgess Willie McHovey Rudy York Joe Morgan Bill Rigney
Greg Maddox Tom Glavine Chipper Jones Don Larsen Monte Irwin Orlando Cepeda
Juan Marichal
III
The umpires Bill Klem Majorkurth.Al Bartlet...Radio’s Red Barber Al Helfer Vince Scully
Barry Bonds Sammy Soso Mark McGuire Mike Messina Bill Mckechnie Rollie Hemsley
Yale University Comparative Lit Professor A Bartlet Giamatti... Commissioner of Baseball
IV
And boarding Don Nelson in relief.,..strumming his guitar Spike Jones “In der Fuhrer’s face”
Cable car screeching ..... San Francisco game 1, World Series, October 27 ,2010
“All aboard”
Alcatraz Island Treasure Island (the World’s Fair, ‘39 WW2 ‘46) Bay Meadows Market Street Original Joe’s the Fleet Building .Fisherman’s wharf...Berkeley Oakland
And the cable cars.......”All aboard”
II
Tris Speaker Frankie Frisch Luke Appling Spider Jorgenson Nax Lanier Al Kaline Ernie
Lombardi Maury Wills . the knothole kids from the Ebbets Field bleachers.
.Larry Doby Eddie Waitkus Billy Jurgess Willie McHovey Rudy York Joe Morgan Bill Rigney
Greg Maddox Tom Glavine Chipper Jones Don Larsen Monte Irwin Orlando Cepeda
Juan Marichal
III
The umpires Bill Klem Majorkurth.Al Bartlet...Radio’s Red Barber Al Helfer Vince Scully
Barry Bonds Sammy Soso Mark McGuire Mike Messina Bill Mckechnie Rollie Hemsley
Yale University Comparative Lit Professor A Bartlet Giamatti... Commissioner of Baseball
IV
And boarding Don Nelson in relief.,..strumming his guitar Spike Jones “In der Fuhrer’s face”
Cable car screeching ..... San Francisco game 1, World Series, October 27 ,2010
“All aboard”
Numero 28 Joe Girardi
Numero 28 Joe Girardi.... an efficiency expert de extraordinaire... a company man garbed in Yankee pin stripes.... “ throwing the dice” from Casey Stengel, a banker from Glendale Ca growing up on the Field of Dreams with his mother’s Kansas City(Mo) goal of him becoming a dentist
II
Honus Wagner, Roger Hornsby Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig, the Gas House gang....Pepper Martin Leo Durocher Paul and Lloyd Waner Stan Musial Enos Slaughter Van Lingle Mungo Joe “Ducky” Medwick “Ole Reliable” Tommy Henrich George Selkirk Peewee Reese Pete Reiser Dixie Walker Jcckie Robinson Willie Mays Micky Mantle Joe Dom and Vince DiMaggio Ted Williams Johnny Pesky Bobby Doerr Creepy Crespie Sal Maglie “the barber” Stan Hack Red SchoendistGil Hodges Babe Herman Dick Wakefield George Brett Bucky Walters Billy Southworth Joe McCarthy Hilda and her ragamuffin band at Ebbets Field Lou Novikoff Bo Belinsky Johnny Murphy Walter Alston Vito Tamulis Robin Roberts Stan Lopata Del Ennis Richie Asburn Lenny Dykstra Ted Kluszewski Gene Conley Eddie Matthews
“Murderer’s row” Charlie Keller... Hank Bauer Gene Woodling Tito Martinez Harry Danning Cal Ripkin, Jr .Cecil Travis Paul DehringerVic Raschi David Coen Tommy John Ernie Banks Lew Riggs the Cooper brothers pitching catching for the Cards( Mort and Walker) Mel Stottlemyre pitcher and pitching coach for ten years, with Joe Torres
Roger Maris Hank Greenberg Ralph Kiner Hank Aaron Johnny Mize Roberto Clemente Sandy Koufax Don Drysdale Yogi Berra Don Zimmer .Mr.October Reggie Jackson Johnny Vander meer Bobby Feller Lefty Gomez Dizzy Trout Hal Newhouser Billy Martin Paul O’Neil Pie Traynor George and Dick Sisler Snuffy Sternweis Gerald Priddy Mel Ott Ralph Branca Bobby Thompson Bill Terry Carl Hubbell Hal Schumacher Sid Gordon Bobby Brown
Bernie Williams Whitey Ford Phil Rizzuto..Frankie Crosetti..Red Rolfe Joe Gordon the Mahatma Branch Rickey Sandy Amoros Harry the cat Brecheen Howie Pollet Joe Torres Ralph Houk Charlie Gehringer Slats Marion Warren Spahn Curt Flood Bill Dickey Harry Danning Billy Herman Babe Phelps Josh Gibson Duke Snider Carl Furillo
Whitlow Wyatt Kirby Higbe Hugh Casey Fat Freddie Fitzimmons Curt Davis.Howie Schultz Pete Coscarart Eddie Stanky Dolph Camilli. Mickey Owen’s passed ball .Cookie Lavagetto Arky Vaughan .Satchel Paige Dutch Leonard.Joe Black Roy Campanella Don Newcombe Jal Gregg Rex Barney
Terry Moore Harry Walker Babe Dahlgren Al Gionfrido Eddie Miksis Eddie Basinski Randy Johnson Andy Pettite Billy Cox Gene Hermanski Augie Galen Larry French Frenchy Bordagaray(mustache&goatee).....Lou Boudreau.Andy Pafko Whitey Kurowski Brooks Robinson at the hot corner....Mo Rivera in relief at age 40.....(without steroids) Roger Clemens Red Ruffing Spud Chandler Dizzy Dean & his brother Paul..Johnny Sain. Cal Abrams Allie Reynolds Eddie Lopat Ken Griffey(Jr and Sr) Johnny Bench Pete Rose Jr Gilliam
Ten world series rings to Joe’s one when he had non conformists like bearded Johnny Dmon and “Godzilla Chop Suey .October 24,2110 self destroying no less at Arlington, Texas a toot and a whistle from JFK’s inevitable Dallas.......
III
The flakey brain waves of the former catcher become manager...relying on his binder of stats in the age of cybernetics....not having a Bobby Cox or a Charley Dressen ...his convoluted thinking was a Walpurgis of a nightmare.... self destroying before fans on six continents.
Lifting pitcher Phil Hughes(a second game disaster) shrieking screaming in the bottom of the fifth..when “say it ain ‘t so Joe” walking his talk to the guillotine .
“Say i t ain ‘t so Joe”
IV
Not a risk taking original thinker but recitative of deja vu syndrome since early September when the Yankees began their self destructiveness.,playing not to lose, leaving men in scoring position. Not getting runs in, going thru the motions after George Steinbrenner’s passing..
Not a clutch hit nor an “Ole Reliable” or a Dave Winfield in the lineup. Johnny.Damon clean shaven to the Tigers. Godzilla to the Angels.....
A company man couldn’t get it done.... Could he?
Right? Right.
V
Those convoluted brain waves like that of Justice Clarence Thomas’s frau...after 19 years dialed the Brandeis University professor Anita Hill to publicly apologize to her husband, the Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas for his stud like innuendos he made with the attractive worldly wise “Miranda” of the Bard’s “Tempest”.
As thou being on the make was an off the cuff impromptu for a Supreme Court nominee..
Girardi never ever second guessing himself imaginative adjustments to his self defeating syndrome.
When Phil Hughes was pulled in the 5th, he went screaming into the tunnel....his frayed psyche climbing the walls. Girardi never the father figure to youthful dreams of being and becoming his binder and “gimme the ball, kid” playing out his “30 lashes with a wet noodle” syndrome.
He couldn’t dominate an inning no less mine his pitch count . Finito to David Robertson’s home run gafes and his whupping boy A.J. Burnett’s. bottom line... pitching his maligned soul in spots where he wild pitched... hit a batter and walked bubbamizes in a cast of nine Texas Rangers.... a freaking out pitch count .
He and his zinger doomed..
“Say it ain’t so Joe”
A somnolent day of reality in the house that Ruth and George built October 24, 2010.... The Babe in his camel haired coat walking by the Ucla men’s gym..the Renaissance campus 1949..
II
Honus Wagner, Roger Hornsby Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig, the Gas House gang....Pepper Martin Leo Durocher Paul and Lloyd Waner Stan Musial Enos Slaughter Van Lingle Mungo Joe “Ducky” Medwick “Ole Reliable” Tommy Henrich George Selkirk Peewee Reese Pete Reiser Dixie Walker Jcckie Robinson Willie Mays Micky Mantle Joe Dom and Vince DiMaggio Ted Williams Johnny Pesky Bobby Doerr Creepy Crespie Sal Maglie “the barber” Stan Hack Red SchoendistGil Hodges Babe Herman Dick Wakefield George Brett Bucky Walters Billy Southworth Joe McCarthy Hilda and her ragamuffin band at Ebbets Field Lou Novikoff Bo Belinsky Johnny Murphy Walter Alston Vito Tamulis Robin Roberts Stan Lopata Del Ennis Richie Asburn Lenny Dykstra Ted Kluszewski Gene Conley Eddie Matthews
“Murderer’s row” Charlie Keller... Hank Bauer Gene Woodling Tito Martinez Harry Danning Cal Ripkin, Jr .Cecil Travis Paul DehringerVic Raschi David Coen Tommy John Ernie Banks Lew Riggs the Cooper brothers pitching catching for the Cards( Mort and Walker) Mel Stottlemyre pitcher and pitching coach for ten years, with Joe Torres
Roger Maris Hank Greenberg Ralph Kiner Hank Aaron Johnny Mize Roberto Clemente Sandy Koufax Don Drysdale Yogi Berra Don Zimmer .Mr.October Reggie Jackson Johnny Vander meer Bobby Feller Lefty Gomez Dizzy Trout Hal Newhouser Billy Martin Paul O’Neil Pie Traynor George and Dick Sisler Snuffy Sternweis Gerald Priddy Mel Ott Ralph Branca Bobby Thompson Bill Terry Carl Hubbell Hal Schumacher Sid Gordon Bobby Brown
Bernie Williams Whitey Ford Phil Rizzuto..Frankie Crosetti..Red Rolfe Joe Gordon the Mahatma Branch Rickey Sandy Amoros Harry the cat Brecheen Howie Pollet Joe Torres Ralph Houk Charlie Gehringer Slats Marion Warren Spahn Curt Flood Bill Dickey Harry Danning Billy Herman Babe Phelps Josh Gibson Duke Snider Carl Furillo
Whitlow Wyatt Kirby Higbe Hugh Casey Fat Freddie Fitzimmons Curt Davis.Howie Schultz Pete Coscarart Eddie Stanky Dolph Camilli. Mickey Owen’s passed ball .Cookie Lavagetto Arky Vaughan .Satchel Paige Dutch Leonard.Joe Black Roy Campanella Don Newcombe Jal Gregg Rex Barney
Terry Moore Harry Walker Babe Dahlgren Al Gionfrido Eddie Miksis Eddie Basinski Randy Johnson Andy Pettite Billy Cox Gene Hermanski Augie Galen Larry French Frenchy Bordagaray(mustache&goatee).....Lou Boudreau.Andy Pafko Whitey Kurowski Brooks Robinson at the hot corner....Mo Rivera in relief at age 40.....(without steroids) Roger Clemens Red Ruffing Spud Chandler Dizzy Dean & his brother Paul..Johnny Sain. Cal Abrams Allie Reynolds Eddie Lopat Ken Griffey(Jr and Sr) Johnny Bench Pete Rose Jr Gilliam
Ten world series rings to Joe’s one when he had non conformists like bearded Johnny Dmon and “Godzilla Chop Suey .October 24,2110 self destroying no less at Arlington, Texas a toot and a whistle from JFK’s inevitable Dallas.......
III
The flakey brain waves of the former catcher become manager...relying on his binder of stats in the age of cybernetics....not having a Bobby Cox or a Charley Dressen ...his convoluted thinking was a Walpurgis of a nightmare.... self destroying before fans on six continents.
Lifting pitcher Phil Hughes(a second game disaster) shrieking screaming in the bottom of the fifth..when “say it ain ‘t so Joe” walking his talk to the guillotine .
“Say i t ain ‘t so Joe”
IV
Not a risk taking original thinker but recitative of deja vu syndrome since early September when the Yankees began their self destructiveness.,playing not to lose, leaving men in scoring position. Not getting runs in, going thru the motions after George Steinbrenner’s passing..
Not a clutch hit nor an “Ole Reliable” or a Dave Winfield in the lineup. Johnny.Damon clean shaven to the Tigers. Godzilla to the Angels.....
A company man couldn’t get it done.... Could he?
Right? Right.
V
Those convoluted brain waves like that of Justice Clarence Thomas’s frau...after 19 years dialed the Brandeis University professor Anita Hill to publicly apologize to her husband, the Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas for his stud like innuendos he made with the attractive worldly wise “Miranda” of the Bard’s “Tempest”.
As thou being on the make was an off the cuff impromptu for a Supreme Court nominee..
Girardi never ever second guessing himself imaginative adjustments to his self defeating syndrome.
When Phil Hughes was pulled in the 5th, he went screaming into the tunnel....his frayed psyche climbing the walls. Girardi never the father figure to youthful dreams of being and becoming his binder and “gimme the ball, kid” playing out his “30 lashes with a wet noodle” syndrome.
He couldn’t dominate an inning no less mine his pitch count . Finito to David Robertson’s home run gafes and his whupping boy A.J. Burnett’s. bottom line... pitching his maligned soul in spots where he wild pitched... hit a batter and walked bubbamizes in a cast of nine Texas Rangers.... a freaking out pitch count .
He and his zinger doomed..
“Say it ain’t so Joe”
A somnolent day of reality in the house that Ruth and George built October 24, 2010.... The Babe in his camel haired coat walking by the Ucla men’s gym..the Renaissance campus 1949..
Akim Tamiroff playing out the Chilean miners’s dilemma
Akim Tamiroff playing out the Chilean miners’s dilemma....Rescued after 69 days in the bowels of the San Jose copper mines- his wife and mistress awaiting his arrival back at the surface.... Samuel Butler’s “Way of all flesh”
But it would be presumptions if the miner identified with HG Wells “Invisible man”, the Claude Rains doubling ...either way “30 lashes with a wet noodle” sandbags his soul when he ascends .
II
Alec Guinness as the ferry boat captain navigating his “unconscious” between Gibraltar and Tangiers Morocco for tango lessons with Yvonne De Carlo,(a stone throw from Hedy Lamar’s Casbah) his lady in “ vows” waxed at the dock railings...
III
Which role should he assume? emerging out of those copper mines deep in the belly of the San Jose mountains?
Who has the answer to his riddled existence? His duplicity massaging a double life ?
Mickey Rooney marrying twins? John Mansfield likewise, tripping the “light fantastic” eleven times?
The unanswered question mined deep below sea level .
IV
From the Old Oak Hotel on ‘H’ to the Kent theater on Coney Island Avenue where Gary Cooper was romancing two damsels in Carl Foreman’s quantum leap to “High Noon” .
Dimitri Tiomkin’s musical pulse . Stanley Kramer’s down to earth taste, he transcended his Bowery Boys gas bags , the kids trying to find themselves in the City that never sleeps..
Cyber bullying dormant for five decades ...his black listed credit” Gums of Navarone” playing out in post Vietnam paddy realities..
.
V
In the meantime our Sheriff wearing his “Red Badge of Courage” awaited the arrival of the train from Philadelphia and his mail order “bride”.
The stentorian Princess Grace in her regal state of mind disembarking ...her blue eyes searching for the celebrity ritual...
Marjorie Maine stepping forward, extending the posies .....“You can’t take anything for granted in these here parts ,mam,” she said, admiring the blossomy finery that only smart money could buy in suburban Philadelphia boutiques....
‘I’m waiting on the Sheriff,” said the Princess like she was riding shotgun .”I trust we didn’t get our faxs crossed. He’s too mature to be chasing gas bags and Bonnie&Clyde desperados. Settle down into retired contentment. Live longer with a wife and the comforts of tee vee,” said the blue blood, spoken with the self serving “lines” of the tart the Sheriff was admiring att her shaded Old Oaks window as he strode thru Main Street toward the station and the so called better class of women.
VI
“Turning in your badge for matrimony, Sheriff? asked a cow hand , batching it from the saloon doors ... beer in hand.... his eyes cast on Katy Jurado’s silhouette at her hotel window ..
Princess Grace would have none of this drift, her haughtiness and image, recoiling at re- inventing how the West was really won. Before the dot. coms and optic fibers torturing the back of the cowboy and quick drawing gun slingers like Alan Ladd’s “Shane”
VII
Meanwhile Alec Guinness as the tango dancing ferry skipper.... sultry Yvonne De Carlo teaching him the moves in Tangiers....the Captain. oblivious to the presence of his wife.... mother of his children.... awaiting his security blanket of a pension at the docking “Captain’s Paradise”....
VIII
Our duplicitous miner rescued from the abyss, his life restored in the guise of Akim Tamiroff Claude Rains Gary Cooper Alec Guinness portrayals....
Treading the thin line between domesticity and his senorita de amor underground.
The “underground” that never sleeps, October 16, 2010
But it would be presumptions if the miner identified with HG Wells “Invisible man”, the Claude Rains doubling ...either way “30 lashes with a wet noodle” sandbags his soul when he ascends .
II
Alec Guinness as the ferry boat captain navigating his “unconscious” between Gibraltar and Tangiers Morocco for tango lessons with Yvonne De Carlo,(a stone throw from Hedy Lamar’s Casbah) his lady in “ vows” waxed at the dock railings...
III
Which role should he assume? emerging out of those copper mines deep in the belly of the San Jose mountains?
Who has the answer to his riddled existence? His duplicity massaging a double life ?
Mickey Rooney marrying twins? John Mansfield likewise, tripping the “light fantastic” eleven times?
The unanswered question mined deep below sea level .
IV
From the Old Oak Hotel on ‘H’ to the Kent theater on Coney Island Avenue where Gary Cooper was romancing two damsels in Carl Foreman’s quantum leap to “High Noon” .
Dimitri Tiomkin’s musical pulse . Stanley Kramer’s down to earth taste, he transcended his Bowery Boys gas bags , the kids trying to find themselves in the City that never sleeps..
Cyber bullying dormant for five decades ...his black listed credit” Gums of Navarone” playing out in post Vietnam paddy realities..
.
V
In the meantime our Sheriff wearing his “Red Badge of Courage” awaited the arrival of the train from Philadelphia and his mail order “bride”.
The stentorian Princess Grace in her regal state of mind disembarking ...her blue eyes searching for the celebrity ritual...
Marjorie Maine stepping forward, extending the posies .....“You can’t take anything for granted in these here parts ,mam,” she said, admiring the blossomy finery that only smart money could buy in suburban Philadelphia boutiques....
‘I’m waiting on the Sheriff,” said the Princess like she was riding shotgun .”I trust we didn’t get our faxs crossed. He’s too mature to be chasing gas bags and Bonnie&Clyde desperados. Settle down into retired contentment. Live longer with a wife and the comforts of tee vee,” said the blue blood, spoken with the self serving “lines” of the tart the Sheriff was admiring att her shaded Old Oaks window as he strode thru Main Street toward the station and the so called better class of women.
VI
“Turning in your badge for matrimony, Sheriff? asked a cow hand , batching it from the saloon doors ... beer in hand.... his eyes cast on Katy Jurado’s silhouette at her hotel window ..
Princess Grace would have none of this drift, her haughtiness and image, recoiling at re- inventing how the West was really won. Before the dot. coms and optic fibers torturing the back of the cowboy and quick drawing gun slingers like Alan Ladd’s “Shane”
VII
Meanwhile Alec Guinness as the tango dancing ferry skipper.... sultry Yvonne De Carlo teaching him the moves in Tangiers....the Captain. oblivious to the presence of his wife.... mother of his children.... awaiting his security blanket of a pension at the docking “Captain’s Paradise”....
VIII
Our duplicitous miner rescued from the abyss, his life restored in the guise of Akim Tamiroff Claude Rains Gary Cooper Alec Guinness portrayals....
Treading the thin line between domesticity and his senorita de amor underground.
The “underground” that never sleeps, October 16, 2010
In the epoch of Time vanished but mot vanquished
In the epoch of Time vanished but mot vanquished.... never sweating the small stuff..... Ethel Kennedy auctioning one of President Abraham Lincoln’s original Emancipation Proclamation,. she and Bobby shared on their walls for over a half century in Virginia....
Meanwhile tte Empire State’s Governor David Patterson in his lame duck role... his enlightened far sightedness giving Shirley Chisholm her due.... Brooklyn College graduate,’46
”The first Black lady to run for President” a civic building metamorphosing her drive and passion.
“She had gits”
II
“How to get a yes” offered to the Long Beach (Ca) Teacher’s Journal back in 1952-54 crediting
Sol Kaufler editor, and a contemporary... Brooklyn College graduate(s).’47’48
The cacophony of a “pen” pal named “Whitey Pig” off his tinsel town aggressions, lamenting for a role at radio stations advertising agencies flack factories...
“It’s not what you know , it’s who you know”
III
A stinging “no no Whitey” his uncle Ham giving him the DNA coup de grace.
“My tongue is tied, Whitey .I know it sounds shafterooney and vain. But the shareholders are tuned into my chops like I was out of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. They wouldn’t buy an iota of nepotism...it’s their DNA line...the coup de grace,”..
“Keep pounding the Hollywood Boulevard Hall of Fame pavement You’ll find your bacon and eggs.”
IV
Channel eleven CBS tee vee ABC news....Alan Young Stanley Shapiro . Max Arno .Hollywood Citizen News Metro Goldwyn Mayer as a reader (“Johnny Tremain”) ..all under “Slim’s” radar..
The only Bacon seemed to be .... James of the Associated Press and a Burbank Boulevard “pen”in North Hollywood. where he met his wife Doris...
“You’re a Pig, Whitey. Remember Pigs have guts.”...
V
A cybernetic algorithm to the digital social networks, caught a conjugal lapse about **Robert Anderson’s “Tea and sympathy” in the aftermath of the Korean Yalu River 39th parallel stale- mate....
General Matthew Ridgway waiting on .General MacArthur’s imperial word from Tokyo.....
”Cross the Yalu or not, Mac?”
Across three continents saw the Rivoli premiere of “Tea and sympathy” **Phyllis Anderson on the arms of the playwright,. his agent and wife at MCA, the base for Phyllis Jackson’s mojo chemistry.
James Jones “From here to Eternity” Sinotra Lancaster Monty Clift cast in Buddy Adler’s larger than life “reality scene” at Columbia’s Gower Gulch..
Cyber bullying on and off campus.... Judge Harold Adler, presiding, Bronx criminal court.....
October 12, 2010..
Meanwhile tte Empire State’s Governor David Patterson in his lame duck role... his enlightened far sightedness giving Shirley Chisholm her due.... Brooklyn College graduate,’46
”The first Black lady to run for President” a civic building metamorphosing her drive and passion.
“She had gits”
II
“How to get a yes” offered to the Long Beach (Ca) Teacher’s Journal back in 1952-54 crediting
Sol Kaufler editor, and a contemporary... Brooklyn College graduate(s).’47’48
The cacophony of a “pen” pal named “Whitey Pig” off his tinsel town aggressions, lamenting for a role at radio stations advertising agencies flack factories...
“It’s not what you know , it’s who you know”
III
A stinging “no no Whitey” his uncle Ham giving him the DNA coup de grace.
“My tongue is tied, Whitey .I know it sounds shafterooney and vain. But the shareholders are tuned into my chops like I was out of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. They wouldn’t buy an iota of nepotism...it’s their DNA line...the coup de grace,”..
“Keep pounding the Hollywood Boulevard Hall of Fame pavement You’ll find your bacon and eggs.”
IV
Channel eleven CBS tee vee ABC news....Alan Young Stanley Shapiro . Max Arno .Hollywood Citizen News Metro Goldwyn Mayer as a reader (“Johnny Tremain”) ..all under “Slim’s” radar..
The only Bacon seemed to be .... James of the Associated Press and a Burbank Boulevard “pen”in North Hollywood. where he met his wife Doris...
“You’re a Pig, Whitey. Remember Pigs have guts.”...
V
A cybernetic algorithm to the digital social networks, caught a conjugal lapse about **Robert Anderson’s “Tea and sympathy” in the aftermath of the Korean Yalu River 39th parallel stale- mate....
General Matthew Ridgway waiting on .General MacArthur’s imperial word from Tokyo.....
”Cross the Yalu or not, Mac?”
Across three continents saw the Rivoli premiere of “Tea and sympathy” **Phyllis Anderson on the arms of the playwright,. his agent and wife at MCA, the base for Phyllis Jackson’s mojo chemistry.
James Jones “From here to Eternity” Sinotra Lancaster Monty Clift cast in Buddy Adler’s larger than life “reality scene” at Columbia’s Gower Gulch..
Cyber bullying on and off campus.... Judge Harold Adler, presiding, Bronx criminal court.....
October 12, 2010..
In the annals of literature gay bashing evolving in cyber bullying
In the annals of literate humanity, gay bashing morphing as cyber bullying was an anachronism ... on our shores aside from Crete, Theseus slaying the Minotaur, the Prince’s father missing a cue, took his own life in Athens...
An eighteen year old freshman violinist at New Jersey’s Rutgers University, took his own by leaping off the George Washington Bridge , his computer cell phone found in his parked car.. A dorm roommate betrayed his sexuality, using a web con cam streaming his privacy for a hundred and forty eight other voyeurs.
Il
Goethe’s “Werther” living under the slashing ebbs and tides of conformity took his life...and Andre Gide claimed a false accusation may be more promiscuous than rumor and innuendo. That remaining in the closet is a life preserver in a ocean of self serving humans who gave up on themselves in search of a vicarious cheap thrill.
Why impeach a macho society and pop culture for being a waste land......out of touch with the needs of growing up in a tech savvy reality scene gone bonkers ( “don’t ask don’t tell”)
III
Robert Anderson’s “Tea and sympathy” had John Kerr playing out the role at a boarding school, being caught skinny dipping with a teacher hankering for Andre Gide’s Parisian proclivities...
”All you can give the victims is tea and sympathy” quoteth Deborah Kerr’s alter ego at “living a lie”. sewing circle off campus on Gayly, across the tennis courts.
“Nother shot of Jack Daniels, sweetie?”
IV
“Deja Vu all over again” may be a cliche but in this instance the banality of any morality. Merely lip service and con..failing to get to the insecurities underlying human fraility ...their whupping scent.... failing to come to grips with their own moments of abusive loss. Not finding their own way..
V
But Jascha Heifitz and Isaac Stern virtuoso violinists in their own personas did....throwing up their hands in consternation. Didn’t they fight out the struggle on their imperial strings?... Jascha noshing a pastrami at the deli on North Canon Drive.” The grub, waiter..”
Isaac Stern exhausted at salvaging Carnegie Hall from the wrecking cranes “Could I save his soul from jumping? ... my own reputation at stake? I have northing more to prove.”
VI
Goethe may have thought of rewriting the Magna Carta. Dante and the Bard grabbling with their own personas in a cosmos of dissembling 21st century cyber bullying. .
The harassed having a countenance unlike the harasser’
The City that never sleeps October 7, 2010.
An eighteen year old freshman violinist at New Jersey’s Rutgers University, took his own by leaping off the George Washington Bridge , his computer cell phone found in his parked car.. A dorm roommate betrayed his sexuality, using a web con cam streaming his privacy for a hundred and forty eight other voyeurs.
Il
Goethe’s “Werther” living under the slashing ebbs and tides of conformity took his life...and Andre Gide claimed a false accusation may be more promiscuous than rumor and innuendo. That remaining in the closet is a life preserver in a ocean of self serving humans who gave up on themselves in search of a vicarious cheap thrill.
Why impeach a macho society and pop culture for being a waste land......out of touch with the needs of growing up in a tech savvy reality scene gone bonkers ( “don’t ask don’t tell”)
III
Robert Anderson’s “Tea and sympathy” had John Kerr playing out the role at a boarding school, being caught skinny dipping with a teacher hankering for Andre Gide’s Parisian proclivities...
”All you can give the victims is tea and sympathy” quoteth Deborah Kerr’s alter ego at “living a lie”. sewing circle off campus on Gayly, across the tennis courts.
“Nother shot of Jack Daniels, sweetie?”
IV
“Deja Vu all over again” may be a cliche but in this instance the banality of any morality. Merely lip service and con..failing to get to the insecurities underlying human fraility ...their whupping scent.... failing to come to grips with their own moments of abusive loss. Not finding their own way..
V
But Jascha Heifitz and Isaac Stern virtuoso violinists in their own personas did....throwing up their hands in consternation. Didn’t they fight out the struggle on their imperial strings?... Jascha noshing a pastrami at the deli on North Canon Drive.” The grub, waiter..”
Isaac Stern exhausted at salvaging Carnegie Hall from the wrecking cranes “Could I save his soul from jumping? ... my own reputation at stake? I have northing more to prove.”
VI
Goethe may have thought of rewriting the Magna Carta. Dante and the Bard grabbling with their own personas in a cosmos of dissembling 21st century cyber bullying. .
The harassed having a countenance unlike the harasser’
The City that never sleeps October 7, 2010.
God’s Way (** Universal Studios amended September 30, 2010**)
God’s Way (** Universal Studios amended September 30, 2010**) (Draft 2,August first, 1997. American Air Museum in Britain, June 11,2001)
Unlike the Korean war tags we never were awarded, the stringed I.D. dangling around our necks ‘The American Air Museum in Britain’ ….Official Opening By Her Majesty The Queen August first,1997’,the good wife and ourselves sidestepped the barricade unto the Duxford RAF air strip that memorable yesterday outside Cambridge, U.K……
The Pakistani clerk at our London bed & breakfast digs , 50 miles away, had said earlier…”Sir, if The photos you took , make me seem like a Prince Charming ,don’t mail them back . My brother is on his holiday. Our sister’s apartment He works across the street., Kuwait embassy Save your money”, scribbling her phone number, a 718 area code… Brooklyn..
Developing the view press &click snapshots back on Coney Island Avenue, we dialed the number, an Omar Shariff voice, in its lilting musical tones, answered “You got my brother’s pictures….can you deliver them , ipso facto Major. We’re flying back to perfidious Albion from JFK, this afternoon.”
“Where are you, Omar?”
“You know Brooklyn’s Flatbush ? 815 East 14th Street, apartment One H.”
“Do I know? It’s God’s Way,” we said. ”It’s a six floor elevator apartment house. on Avenue H. Two blocks from the Avenue H station. .The local subway. stop. .A day dreaming punk from Santa Monica, California., we were raised there .Attending Public School 217, Midwood High School. The best man at our wedding. Doctor Howie,” the pianist, CPA ” lived in the same apartment, as your sister. How’s that for being in the flow of the game .The moment, sir?”
Our odyssey begins a month earlier, Fort Hamilton Army Library. Bay Ridge, dating historically 1825 Not that far from Flatbush , Keith Lewis, Jr .an internet pro, E mailed Sandra
Brooks, Mildenhall R.A.F.,Beck Row Village,29 miles from Cambridge,UK. About standby billeting for a once Air Force Ready Reservist with 23 years longevity, and his good wife ?
When the electronic mailbox was sorted out for the fourth time, Sandra Brooks who wasn’t from Brooklyn wrote “Major, call USAF-RAF Lakenheath direct.”
“Sergeant Gideon,” answered the NCO in charge of lodging. “Com’ on ahead, Major. .We’re expecting Lady Fenton, the good wife. Our motor pool is on orders for her Majesty’s honor guard, Transportation Squadron, 48thFighter Wing.”
We thought back all of our yesterdays. 47 years ago, June 29,1950…..a Second Lieutenant, out of UCLA’s ROTC, in the role of a Supply Officer on temporary duty to the Officers Club..448th Reserve B 25 Light Bomb Wing, Long Beach, California, adjoining Signal Hill’s rasping oil drills.
President Harry Truman, a no nonsense Commander in Chief, activated the 452nd B 25 Light Bomb Wing, on being briefed about the North Koreans invading South Korea, crossing the demilitarized zone.Colonel Cochrane, the Long Beach base’s full time operational officer for Colonel Keeney, the 448th,Colonel Sweetzer, later Brigadier General,452nd….”Lieutenant, you’re on verbal orders .Report Hamilton Air Force Base, the 2567th Processing Squadron, San Rafael, California. Travis Air Force Base, Japan, Korea. That’s your fate, my boy.”
Deferred until February ’51, for graduate school in teaching, Colonel Paul McGuire called during the Cuban crisis, Khrushchev steaming missiles toward Castro’s Cuba ”Be my Group Intelligence Officer, Canoga Park, California . We’ll cut orders, giving you jurisdiction from Santa Barbara to Long Beach, sending you Intelligence School, Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas…Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Pentagon. Defense Intelligence Agency, Western
European Desk, Arlington….How’s that sound?”
“How can we resist you , sir?”
For another 12 years…two week tours at a stretch , several in the California desert, two, the AF Academy, teaching Space. in schools, we found ourselves August 1st,1997,strolling toward the ecliptic designed American Air Museum in Britain, the skies opening up, the raindrops descending. She ran for cover in the makeshift hangar where 2000 Yanks, many of them in their tattered khakis, mothballed blues, besprinkled ribbons, medals Milling around the dining tables , with wives children grandchildren widowers widows girl friends, sweethearts, lovers, mistresses, next of kin testing the grub:: sandwiches, English biscuits, warmed over hotmeals, fish & chips tarts pastries tea and coffee.
Reminiscing of some 6 decades spilling the air ,the BBC audio taping “in yer face”, London’s Imperial War Museum Greg Smith clicking snapping away…pilots, copilots, crew chiefs navigators, bombardiers, tail gunners , maintenance crews flight officers air controllers radar techs, Intelligence officers supply operations medics, flight surgeons legal eagles armaments anti aircraft crews reconnaissance, nurses, WAFS, mess personnel, chaplains, M.P.s , grave diggers.
Meanwhile the Major “nuisance” in his good wife’s stead. fled for the Air Museum’s cover, those earlier raindrops pelting the air strip like big chunks of hail out of the ice age. inside the hangar’s door the swooping P38’s, ‘47’s,flying fortresses, step ladders into the cockpits, nary a B 25, A10…..scaffolding for a Remembrance reality scene & ceremony, Fall 2002
“Charlton Heston” he called the echo resounding in the cavernous space, ,the actor stumbling at the Museum’s door, hearing his credits. ”It sure is wet,” he said, looking into & through the Major, a limo pulling alongside the entrance, ”Where did we meet?”
Those yesterdays trailing back 30 years, UCLA’s reality scene of a bon voyage for Jules
Stein’s departed soul. Henry Mancini playing out his theme from “Romeo et Juliet”, the solemn airs sounding through the campus. .Dr. Stein, a bandleader turned ophthalmologist had
bought **Universal Studios** where Mr.Heston had starred, “Airport ‘75”.
**(amended September 30,2010)
Joyce Selznick’s acting school,:the likes of Bernie Schwartz (Tony Curtis before “The Defiant ones, Trapeze, Sweet smell of success Spartacus Houdini Some Like it hot ( Joe E.Brown’s “we can’t all be perfect”) Gia Scala blue eyed Italian starlet from Bluffside Drive,North Hollywood, chaperoned by her mother...and.Piper Laurie.
The limo driver cried “Charlton, her Majesty’s jet , from Edinboro Castle, Scotland is taxying
Hurray, water cress sandwiches without venison is worth writing home. Rank knows no chow hounds, sir.”
Insides the dining hangar for the 2000 Yanks, the War Museum’s pro, Greg Smith, continued his viewing. Snapping, shuttering. For the benediction, the well groomed museum staff, distaff &male, set up chairs and benches on the strip, the skies closing, raindrops ceasing..
Her Majesty, Prince Philip, former Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher, Duke of Kent, a Field Marshall, Charlton Heston.
Greg Smith clicking away like into a dot.com on a web site’s home page. Her Majesty in her yellow ponchos tucked under the canopy outside the Museum hangar. Her USAF color guard in their protocol, the band playing the strains & some Sousa that bonded the American Anglo Saxon peoples in the Battle of Britain.
“Do you know the Greg Smith singers, playing the UCLA Spring sing?” asked the Major .”Any relation?”, the Fly Over into the graying mists. 3 F’16’s ,wingtips fingerprinting through the skies, a Flying Fortress… sailing through the ocean of humanity…
The resonating voice of “Airport ‘75”Charlton Heston, leaping into the Bard’s “Henry V”., the
loudspeakers in sync….”My soul shall thine keep company to Heaven; tarry sweet soul for mine. Then fly abreast.…As if an Angel dropt from the clouds….O for a muse of fire that would ascend. the brightest Heaven of invention.. A Kingdom for a stage, Princes to act.
Monarchs to behold the swelling scene….”
On the USAF bus ‘s return ,,passing Madingley American Military Cemetery, through the
Brandon Suffolk countryside toward Lakenheath, the Honor Guard stripped of their protocol, cajoled the latrine officer from Cleveland’s Shaker Heights, laughing about her moment..
On the ‘morrow, Greg Smith called from London’s Imperial War Museum. ”Major, before departing for Heathrow. call Andy at Duxford’s darkroom. He’s processing all our negatives.
You & Lady Fenton might be lucky.”
Walking through the lush Lakenheath grass toward the post office’s phone, he stumbled, his blue eyes sighting a buried tableau. ’To Andy, his was the ultimate sacrifice. Transportation
Squadron.,48th Fighter Wing Sweeping into a plaque….
‘To the airmen of many nations who flew with the R.A.F. during the Battle of Britain. And soared into the Heavens that others might live...”If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say “This was their finest hour.” Sir Winston Churchill,, Prime Minister….
Saturday, July 12,1997,Lakenheath RAF, England
Saturday, July 6,2002,Brooklyn
American Air Museum in Britain, August 1,1997 revisited September 22,2010
Unlike the Korean war tags we never were awarded, the stringed I.D. dangling around our necks ‘The American Air Museum in Britain’ ….Official Opening By Her Majesty The Queen August first,1997’,the good wife and ourselves sidestepped the barricade unto the Duxford RAF air strip that memorable yesterday outside Cambridge, U.K……
The Pakistani clerk at our London bed & breakfast digs , 50 miles away, had said earlier…”Sir, if The photos you took , make me seem like a Prince Charming ,don’t mail them back . My brother is on his holiday. Our sister’s apartment He works across the street., Kuwait embassy Save your money”, scribbling her phone number, a 718 area code… Brooklyn..
Developing the view press &click snapshots back on Coney Island Avenue, we dialed the number, an Omar Shariff voice, in its lilting musical tones, answered “You got my brother’s pictures….can you deliver them , ipso facto Major. We’re flying back to perfidious Albion from JFK, this afternoon.”
“Where are you, Omar?”
“You know Brooklyn’s Flatbush ? 815 East 14th Street, apartment One H.”
“Do I know? It’s God’s Way,” we said. ”It’s a six floor elevator apartment house. on Avenue H. Two blocks from the Avenue H station. .The local subway. stop. .A day dreaming punk from Santa Monica, California., we were raised there .Attending Public School 217, Midwood High School. The best man at our wedding. Doctor Howie,” the pianist, CPA ” lived in the same apartment, as your sister. How’s that for being in the flow of the game .The moment, sir?”
Our odyssey begins a month earlier, Fort Hamilton Army Library. Bay Ridge, dating historically 1825 Not that far from Flatbush , Keith Lewis, Jr .an internet pro, E mailed Sandra
Brooks, Mildenhall R.A.F.,Beck Row Village,29 miles from Cambridge,UK. About standby billeting for a once Air Force Ready Reservist with 23 years longevity, and his good wife ?
When the electronic mailbox was sorted out for the fourth time, Sandra Brooks who wasn’t from Brooklyn wrote “Major, call USAF-RAF Lakenheath direct.”
“Sergeant Gideon,” answered the NCO in charge of lodging. “Com’ on ahead, Major. .We’re expecting Lady Fenton, the good wife. Our motor pool is on orders for her Majesty’s honor guard, Transportation Squadron, 48thFighter Wing.”
We thought back all of our yesterdays. 47 years ago, June 29,1950…..a Second Lieutenant, out of UCLA’s ROTC, in the role of a Supply Officer on temporary duty to the Officers Club..448th Reserve B 25 Light Bomb Wing, Long Beach, California, adjoining Signal Hill’s rasping oil drills.
President Harry Truman, a no nonsense Commander in Chief, activated the 452nd B 25 Light Bomb Wing, on being briefed about the North Koreans invading South Korea, crossing the demilitarized zone.Colonel Cochrane, the Long Beach base’s full time operational officer for Colonel Keeney, the 448th,Colonel Sweetzer, later Brigadier General,452nd….”Lieutenant, you’re on verbal orders .Report Hamilton Air Force Base, the 2567th Processing Squadron, San Rafael, California. Travis Air Force Base, Japan, Korea. That’s your fate, my boy.”
Deferred until February ’51, for graduate school in teaching, Colonel Paul McGuire called during the Cuban crisis, Khrushchev steaming missiles toward Castro’s Cuba ”Be my Group Intelligence Officer, Canoga Park, California . We’ll cut orders, giving you jurisdiction from Santa Barbara to Long Beach, sending you Intelligence School, Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas…Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Pentagon. Defense Intelligence Agency, Western
European Desk, Arlington….How’s that sound?”
“How can we resist you , sir?”
For another 12 years…two week tours at a stretch , several in the California desert, two, the AF Academy, teaching Space. in schools, we found ourselves August 1st,1997,strolling toward the ecliptic designed American Air Museum in Britain, the skies opening up, the raindrops descending. She ran for cover in the makeshift hangar where 2000 Yanks, many of them in their tattered khakis, mothballed blues, besprinkled ribbons, medals Milling around the dining tables , with wives children grandchildren widowers widows girl friends, sweethearts, lovers, mistresses, next of kin testing the grub:: sandwiches, English biscuits, warmed over hotmeals, fish & chips tarts pastries tea and coffee.
Reminiscing of some 6 decades spilling the air ,the BBC audio taping “in yer face”, London’s Imperial War Museum Greg Smith clicking snapping away…pilots, copilots, crew chiefs navigators, bombardiers, tail gunners , maintenance crews flight officers air controllers radar techs, Intelligence officers supply operations medics, flight surgeons legal eagles armaments anti aircraft crews reconnaissance, nurses, WAFS, mess personnel, chaplains, M.P.s , grave diggers.
Meanwhile the Major “nuisance” in his good wife’s stead. fled for the Air Museum’s cover, those earlier raindrops pelting the air strip like big chunks of hail out of the ice age. inside the hangar’s door the swooping P38’s, ‘47’s,flying fortresses, step ladders into the cockpits, nary a B 25, A10…..scaffolding for a Remembrance reality scene & ceremony, Fall 2002
“Charlton Heston” he called the echo resounding in the cavernous space, ,the actor stumbling at the Museum’s door, hearing his credits. ”It sure is wet,” he said, looking into & through the Major, a limo pulling alongside the entrance, ”Where did we meet?”
Those yesterdays trailing back 30 years, UCLA’s reality scene of a bon voyage for Jules
Stein’s departed soul. Henry Mancini playing out his theme from “Romeo et Juliet”, the solemn airs sounding through the campus. .Dr. Stein, a bandleader turned ophthalmologist had
bought **Universal Studios** where Mr.Heston had starred, “Airport ‘75”.
**(amended September 30,2010)
Joyce Selznick’s acting school,:the likes of Bernie Schwartz (Tony Curtis before “The Defiant ones, Trapeze, Sweet smell of success Spartacus Houdini Some Like it hot ( Joe E.Brown’s “we can’t all be perfect”) Gia Scala blue eyed Italian starlet from Bluffside Drive,North Hollywood, chaperoned by her mother...and.Piper Laurie.
The limo driver cried “Charlton, her Majesty’s jet , from Edinboro Castle, Scotland is taxying
Hurray, water cress sandwiches without venison is worth writing home. Rank knows no chow hounds, sir.”
Insides the dining hangar for the 2000 Yanks, the War Museum’s pro, Greg Smith, continued his viewing. Snapping, shuttering. For the benediction, the well groomed museum staff, distaff &male, set up chairs and benches on the strip, the skies closing, raindrops ceasing..
Her Majesty, Prince Philip, former Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher, Duke of Kent, a Field Marshall, Charlton Heston.
Greg Smith clicking away like into a dot.com on a web site’s home page. Her Majesty in her yellow ponchos tucked under the canopy outside the Museum hangar. Her USAF color guard in their protocol, the band playing the strains & some Sousa that bonded the American Anglo Saxon peoples in the Battle of Britain.
“Do you know the Greg Smith singers, playing the UCLA Spring sing?” asked the Major .”Any relation?”, the Fly Over into the graying mists. 3 F’16’s ,wingtips fingerprinting through the skies, a Flying Fortress… sailing through the ocean of humanity…
The resonating voice of “Airport ‘75”Charlton Heston, leaping into the Bard’s “Henry V”., the
loudspeakers in sync….”My soul shall thine keep company to Heaven; tarry sweet soul for mine. Then fly abreast.…As if an Angel dropt from the clouds….O for a muse of fire that would ascend. the brightest Heaven of invention.. A Kingdom for a stage, Princes to act.
Monarchs to behold the swelling scene….”
On the USAF bus ‘s return ,,passing Madingley American Military Cemetery, through the
Brandon Suffolk countryside toward Lakenheath, the Honor Guard stripped of their protocol, cajoled the latrine officer from Cleveland’s Shaker Heights, laughing about her moment..
On the ‘morrow, Greg Smith called from London’s Imperial War Museum. ”Major, before departing for Heathrow. call Andy at Duxford’s darkroom. He’s processing all our negatives.
You & Lady Fenton might be lucky.”
Walking through the lush Lakenheath grass toward the post office’s phone, he stumbled, his blue eyes sighting a buried tableau. ’To Andy, his was the ultimate sacrifice. Transportation
Squadron.,48th Fighter Wing Sweeping into a plaque….
‘To the airmen of many nations who flew with the R.A.F. during the Battle of Britain. And soared into the Heavens that others might live...”If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say “This was their finest hour.” Sir Winston Churchill,, Prime Minister….
Saturday, July 12,1997,Lakenheath RAF, England
Saturday, July 6,2002,Brooklyn
American Air Museum in Britain, August 1,1997 revisited September 22,2010
President Obama’s “Crisis in Education”
Chapter 51 revisited September 27 2010
Classroom teaching was not a racket.... President Obama’s “Crisis in Education” NBC’s “Today” ;
It was throwing yourself into a ocean of floating bodies andd derelicts and reckage and you had to eat ttime and float and keep breathing so you don't panic and drown.
They would eat you alive, almost as sure as lflesh is grass And God eats grass.
The world outside the classroom had their own standard of success, but inside bungalows sixteen and three A, Mister Farnham and Missus Gates knew the buck and the gimmick and the phony and the promoter and the gigolo and the star and the starlet and the model and the movie agents were a shade lower than the street-walkers and bitches of Paris who sold their bodies without the flimflam of a pretentious illusion.
Sure Mister Farnham was partial and prejudiced; he didn't go into this battle for nickels and dimes, yet at times like now the challenge of doing the impossible
seemed beyond his comprehension. He wanted to tell Missus Gates that it was possible Joe Sablow could learn to read - but he also knew little Joe's capacity. An overload capacity is like a tightrope walker, treading the rope as a hurricane bears down.
Let Morris Pitchford tell Missus Gates what the score was. That little Joe needed professional help; that the teacher had become de-sensitized by so many housekeeping chores that a boy's brain couldn't be studied when thirty-five other brains were demanding equal time. Little Joe need the University reading clinic, not Mister Leon Farnham.
Why should the classroom teacher - the heart and belly of the entire operation - waste his time over Joe Sablow's third grade reading. The principal was the public relations genius, the great white father, the butter and egg man; let him say a mouthful of nothing to Missus Gates. Why the hell should Mister Leon Farnham be a good humor man, bartender and wet nurse to the parents of his students. He had been hired to teach.
Missus Gates waited with the over consuming patience of desperation. Her foster son couldn't read at a pace faster than an eight year old. What if little Joe Sablow
grows up and can only get a job in the post office pidgeon-holing letters. What if the neighbors and relatives ask how little Joe's earning a living. Should she say, "He's working in civil service." or "He's a mail clerk in the Post Office."
How could little Joe concentrate in such noisy classes, where boys and girls got up whenever they wanted to. How could little Joe ever learn to talk in words
outside the vernacular of his adolescence. "Read good," "nice kids," "read find," "cute girl," "cool guy."
Maybe it was Mister Leon Farnham's fault thought Missus Gates. Maybe I should report him to the principal and the Board of Education and get him fired. I can too,
you know. I'm a taxpayer. What business does Mister Farnham have not improving my husband's first wife's real son's reading ability. I'll stir up the PTA about this
and we'll see who's running this three ring circus.
"I'm a taxpayer and damn it all, if they spend my Tony's money for beautiful looking schools, and lousy teachers can't stop the kids from tearing up the walls and making a mess of the rooms and the blackboards, then all the audio visual material, PTA meetings, teas, cookie drives, are a waste," she said.
"No, Missus Gates," said Mister Leon Farnham, looking directly into the window of Missus Gate's brown eyes. "It's no ones fault but your own for letting things get
out of hand. The French Revolution didn't come while Madame De Farge knit. You forgot to plant the seeds of tradition. You forgot to let roots grow in a desert.
Education is quicksand in your son's case, he's sunken deep into the waste of the disposal. Missus Gates, little Joe is in the cemetery and if you don't take him to a
reading clinic, he'll be buried alive.
You don't want little Joe to die at thirteen and be buried at seventy. You want him to live and breathe and taste the flavors that pour out of people's minds when they struggle for their identity and learn who they are. An effort which transcends their own prisons of flesh and perhaps carves out a universal design, for future generations to learn and live by. If these people who come after us perpetuate
the design, perhaps the earth as we know it, will become a better place to live and work in.
Missus Gates, this life is damn short, it's loaded with bull and propaganda 'cause people want to distort the facts when their self-interest
is on the stake. Call the University reading clinic, get
an analysis of the boy's sickness and plan a program at
home where you read aloud to him.
V
Let little Joe discover the stories of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, the poetry ofEdward Lear, David Copperfield, Robinson Crusoe, Alice in
Wonderland, Treasure Island and the Mother Goose Rhymes.
"MissusGates read to your self .....,Shakespeare's
`Macbeth'and the Midsummer Night' s Dream and Little
Women and Gulliver Travels and Moby Dick 'If
sicknessandsometimesdeathiscontagious thensois
optimismandenthusiasm ndloveandspiritand
traditionarecontagious. (“hear here”)
You wouldn't be here at school today if you weren't a woman of good will. Look around and you see the apathy of most parents; they aren't here,
yet their children are the ones who need the most help. I
wouldn't be here either, if I didn't believe in the
struggle and trying to win. There is a lot that needs
wanting; how can I overcome my moments of emptiness and
despair and tiredness and exhaustion and brain pounding.
VII
I see myself, a vision in solitude, kneeling by the water
dikes, packing bag upon bag of cement, hoping beyond all
hope to stop the dikes from flooding. And throw back the
raging sea. If you and I throw in the sponge and become
disillusioned by apathy - where less than five per cent of
the parents show up in a school of over two thousand
students - we'll all drown together and little Joe will
drown with us."
Missus Gates looked at the clock, urging the bell to
ring and the period to end. She couldn't remember the
torrents of thoughts, but she did remember seeing a tongue
dart back and forth in the crevice of Mister Leon
Farnham's face. She, somehow, felt that the tongue and
the brain of Mister Farnham were somehow tied up together.
Sure - a lot of the stuff he had said was repetitious
and boring and had been said before, but, maybe, as one
grows older, there isn't much to be said about life,
except to add insight into what was once thought, was
known, and make it knowable. Otherwise, it's all a waste
of time.
Mister Farnham made himself clear; he hit the points,
perhaps a little too emotional at times, but he, like
Missus Gates, was a person of good will; otherwise he
wouldn't be in the classroom, but would be out hustling
cars or conning a customer into buying something he didn't
need or throwing him a pitch about some lots in Salton Sea
in the Imperial Valley, which for a couple of pennies a
day or three hundred down and thirty a month and "they're
drilling for water, don't worry about it, the main thing
is you'll make money.
Today's foreclosures are tomorrow's bargains."
VIII
Missus Gates was impressed with an impression that
Mister Leon Farnham was a windbag, perhaps a person with
an inferiority complex who had to live in two world's -
the world of the adolescent and the world of the everyday
eat 'em alive.
A man torn in half by turmoil and distress. A man schooled and educated. A man with enthusiasm and some internal flame which ignited his
ego centricity. Maybe he was crazy? Why else should he
stick his neck out. For growth? Development? Whose
development? And what direction would it go? The way of
Jefferson? Napoleon? Lenin? Hitler? Modern
Republicanism? De Gaulle? Mao Tse Tung? Khrushchev,
"Ike"? Peaceful coexistence? Ronnie ("the Gipper")
Reagan? Brezhnev? Andropov? Gorbachev? Perstroika?
Glasnost? The Ayatollah? Obama and his open mindedness?
"Get you half brother Charlie," said Missus Gates to
her real four year old son. "We have to go to his next
class; it's his last period and then we can go home. Nice
meeting you, Mr. Farnham, it was nice talking to you."
3000 miles on the other side of the Continent.... the Big Apple, September 27, 2010
****************************************************************
Classroom teaching was not a racket.... President Obama’s “Crisis in Education” NBC’s “Today” ;
It was throwing yourself into a ocean of floating bodies andd derelicts and reckage and you had to eat ttime and float and keep breathing so you don't panic and drown.
They would eat you alive, almost as sure as lflesh is grass And God eats grass.
I
The world outside the classroom had their own standard of success, but inside bungalows sixteen and three A, Mister Farnham and Missus Gates knew the buck and the gimmick and the phony and the promoter and the gigolo and the star and the starlet and the model and the movie agents were a shade lower than the street-walkers and bitches of Paris who sold their bodies without the flimflam of a pretentious illusion.
Sure Mister Farnham was partial and prejudiced; he didn't go into this battle for nickels and dimes, yet at times like now the challenge of doing the impossible
seemed beyond his comprehension. He wanted to tell Missus Gates that it was possible Joe Sablow could learn to read - but he also knew little Joe's capacity. An overload capacity is like a tightrope walker, treading the rope as a hurricane bears down.
II
Let Morris Pitchford tell Missus Gates what the score was. That little Joe needed professional help; that the teacher had become de-sensitized by so many housekeeping chores that a boy's brain couldn't be studied when thirty-five other brains were demanding equal time. Little Joe need the University reading clinic, not Mister Leon Farnham.
Why should the classroom teacher - the heart and belly of the entire operation - waste his time over Joe Sablow's third grade reading. The principal was the public relations genius, the great white father, the butter and egg man; let him say a mouthful of nothing to Missus Gates. Why the hell should Mister Leon Farnham be a good humor man, bartender and wet nurse to the parents of his students. He had been hired to teach.
III
Missus Gates waited with the over consuming patience of desperation. Her foster son couldn't read at a pace faster than an eight year old. What if little Joe Sablow
grows up and can only get a job in the post office pidgeon-holing letters. What if the neighbors and relatives ask how little Joe's earning a living. Should she say, "He's working in civil service." or "He's a mail clerk in the Post Office."
How could little Joe concentrate in such noisy classes, where boys and girls got up whenever they wanted to. How could little Joe ever learn to talk in words
outside the vernacular of his adolescence. "Read good," "nice kids," "read find," "cute girl," "cool guy."
Maybe it was Mister Leon Farnham's fault thought Missus Gates. Maybe I should report him to the principal and the Board of Education and get him fired. I can too,
you know. I'm a taxpayer. What business does Mister Farnham have not improving my husband's first wife's real son's reading ability. I'll stir up the PTA about this
and we'll see who's running this three ring circus.
"I'm a taxpayer and damn it all, if they spend my Tony's money for beautiful looking schools, and lousy teachers can't stop the kids from tearing up the walls and making a mess of the rooms and the blackboards, then all the audio visual material, PTA meetings, teas, cookie drives, are a waste," she said.
"No, Missus Gates," said Mister Leon Farnham, looking directly into the window of Missus Gate's brown eyes. "It's no ones fault but your own for letting things get
out of hand. The French Revolution didn't come while Madame De Farge knit. You forgot to plant the seeds of tradition. You forgot to let roots grow in a desert.
Education is quicksand in your son's case, he's sunken deep into the waste of the disposal. Missus Gates, little Joe is in the cemetery and if you don't take him to a
reading clinic, he'll be buried alive.
IV
You don't want little Joe to die at thirteen and be buried at seventy. You want him to live and breathe and taste the flavors that pour out of people's minds when they struggle for their identity and learn who they are. An effort which transcends their own prisons of flesh and perhaps carves out a universal design, for future generations to learn and live by. If these people who come after us perpetuate
the design, perhaps the earth as we know it, will become a better place to live and work in.
Missus Gates, this life is damn short, it's loaded with bull and propaganda 'cause people want to distort the facts when their self-interest
is on the stake. Call the University reading clinic, get
an analysis of the boy's sickness and plan a program at
home where you read aloud to him.
V
Let little Joe discover the stories of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, the poetry ofEdward Lear, David Copperfield, Robinson Crusoe, Alice in
Wonderland, Treasure Island and the Mother Goose Rhymes.
"MissusGates read to your self .....,Shakespeare's
`Macbeth'and the Midsummer Night' s Dream and Little
Women and Gulliver Travels and Moby Dick 'If
sicknessandsometimesdeathiscontagious thensois
optimismandenthusiasm ndloveandspiritand
traditionarecontagious. (“hear here”)
You wouldn't be here at school today if you weren't a woman of good will. Look around and you see the apathy of most parents; they aren't here,
yet their children are the ones who need the most help. I
wouldn't be here either, if I didn't believe in the
struggle and trying to win. There is a lot that needs
wanting; how can I overcome my moments of emptiness and
despair and tiredness and exhaustion and brain pounding.
VII
I see myself, a vision in solitude, kneeling by the water
dikes, packing bag upon bag of cement, hoping beyond all
hope to stop the dikes from flooding. And throw back the
raging sea. If you and I throw in the sponge and become
disillusioned by apathy - where less than five per cent of
the parents show up in a school of over two thousand
students - we'll all drown together and little Joe will
drown with us."
Missus Gates looked at the clock, urging the bell to
ring and the period to end. She couldn't remember the
torrents of thoughts, but she did remember seeing a tongue
dart back and forth in the crevice of Mister Leon
Farnham's face. She, somehow, felt that the tongue and
the brain of Mister Farnham were somehow tied up together.
Sure - a lot of the stuff he had said was repetitious
and boring and had been said before, but, maybe, as one
grows older, there isn't much to be said about life,
except to add insight into what was once thought, was
known, and make it knowable. Otherwise, it's all a waste
of time.
Mister Farnham made himself clear; he hit the points,
perhaps a little too emotional at times, but he, like
Missus Gates, was a person of good will; otherwise he
wouldn't be in the classroom, but would be out hustling
cars or conning a customer into buying something he didn't
need or throwing him a pitch about some lots in Salton Sea
in the Imperial Valley, which for a couple of pennies a
day or three hundred down and thirty a month and "they're
drilling for water, don't worry about it, the main thing
is you'll make money.
Today's foreclosures are tomorrow's bargains."
VIII
Missus Gates was impressed with an impression that
Mister Leon Farnham was a windbag, perhaps a person with
an inferiority complex who had to live in two world's -
the world of the adolescent and the world of the everyday
eat 'em alive.
A man torn in half by turmoil and distress. A man schooled and educated. A man with enthusiasm and some internal flame which ignited his
ego centricity. Maybe he was crazy? Why else should he
stick his neck out. For growth? Development? Whose
development? And what direction would it go? The way of
Jefferson? Napoleon? Lenin? Hitler? Modern
Republicanism? De Gaulle? Mao Tse Tung? Khrushchev,
"Ike"? Peaceful coexistence? Ronnie ("the Gipper")
Reagan? Brezhnev? Andropov? Gorbachev? Perstroika?
Glasnost? The Ayatollah? Obama and his open mindedness?
"Get you half brother Charlie," said Missus Gates to
her real four year old son. "We have to go to his next
class; it's his last period and then we can go home. Nice
meeting you, Mr. Farnham, it was nice talking to you."
3000 miles on the other side of the Continent.... the Big Apple, September 27, 2010
****************************************************************
God's Way
August first, 1997. American Air Museum in Britain,
Unlike the Korean War tags we never were awarded, the stringed I.D. dangling around our necks ‘’The American Air Museum in Britain ….Official Opening by Her Majesty The Queen August first,1997, the good wife and ourselves sidestepped the barricade unto the Duxford RAF air strip that memorable yesterday outside Cambridge, U.K……
The Pakistani clerk at our London bed & breakfast digs , 50 miles away, had said earlier…”Sir, if The photos you took , make me seem like a Prince Charming ,don’t mail them back .My brother is on his holiday. Our sister’s apartment He works across the street., Kuwait embassy Save your
money”, scribbling her phone number, a 718 area code… Brooklyn..
Developing the view press &click snapshots back on Coney Island Avenue, we dialed the number, an Omar Shariff voice, in its lilting musical tones, answered “You got my brother’s pictures….can you deliver them , ipso facto Major. We’re flying back to perfidious Albion .from JFK, this afternoon.”
“Where are you, Omar?”
“You know Brooklyn’s Flatbush ? 815 East 14th Street, apartment One H.”
“Do I know? It’s God’s Way,” A six floor elevator apartment house on Avenue H across the way from Art Carney and his folks.....Above Bohacks, ”Ed Norton”(of the “Honeymooners”)whistling his cue to his Jackie Gleason in diisguise (Straus)..... waiting at his sixth floor kitchen window.. .
Two blocks from the Avenue H station. .The local subway. stop. .A day dreaming punk from Santa Monica, California., we were raised there .Attending Public School 217, Midwood High School. The best man at our wedding. Doctor Howie,” the pianist, CPA ” lived in the same apartment, as your sister. How’s that for being in the flow of the game .The moment, sir?”
Our odyssey begins a month earlier, Fort Hamilton Army Library. Bay Ridge, dating historically 1825 Not that far from Flatbush , Keith Lewis, Jr .an internet pro, E mailed Sandra Brooks, Mildenhall R.A.F.,Beck Row Village,29 miles from Cambridge, UK. About standby billeting for a once Air Force Ready Reservist with 23 years longevity, and his good wife ?
When the electronic mailbox was sorted out for the fourth time, Sandra Brooks who wasn’t from Brooklyn wrote “Major, call USAF-RAF Lakenheath direct.”
“Sergeant Gideon,” answered the NCO in charge of lodging. “Com’ on ahead, Major. .We’re expecting Lady Fenton, the good wife. Our motor pool is on orders for her Majesty’s honor guard, Transportation Squadron,48thFighter Wing.”
We thought back all of our yesterdays. 47 years ago, June 29,1950…..a Second Lieutenant, out of UCLA’s ROTC, in the role of a Supply Officer on temporary duty to the Officers Club..448th Reserve B 25 Light Bomb Wing, Long Beach, California, adjoining Signal Hill’s rasping oil drills.
President Harry Truman, a no nonsense Commander in Chief, activated the 452nd B 25 Light Bomb Wing, on being briefed about the North Koreans invading South Korea, crossing the demilitarized zone.Colonel Cochrane, the Long Beach base’s full time operational officer for Colonel Keeney, the 448th,Colonel Sweetzer, later Brigadier General,452nd….”Lieutenant, you’re on verbal orders .Report Hamilton Air Force Base, the 2567th Processing Squadron, San Rafael, California. Travis Air Force Base, Japan, Korea. That’s your fate, my boy.”
Deferred until February ’51, for graduate school in teaching, Colonel Paul McGuire called ,during the Cuban crisis, Khrushchev steaming missiles toward Castro’s Cuba ”Be my Group Intelligence Officer, Canoga Park, California . We’ll cut orders, giving you jurisdiction from Santa Barbara to Long Beach, sending you Intelligence School, Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas…Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Pentagon. Defense Intelligence Agency, Western
European Desk, Arlington….How’s that sound?”
“How can we resist you , sir?”
For another 12 years…two week tours at a stretch , several in the California desert, two ,the AFAcademy, teaching Space. in schools, we found ourselves August 1st,1997,strolling toward the cliptic designed American Air Museum in Britain, the skies opening up, the raindrops descending. She ran for cover in the makeshift hangar where 2000 Yanks, many of them in their tattered khakis, moth balled blues, besprinkled ribbons, medals Milling around the dining tables , with wives children grandchildren widowers widows girl friends, sweethearts, lovers, mistresses, next of kin testing the grub:: sandwiches, English biscuits, warmed
over hot meals, fish & chips tarts pastries tea and coffee.
Reminiscing of some 6 decades spilling the air ,the BBC audio taping “in yer
face”, London’s Imperial War Museum Greg Smith clicking snapping away…pilots, copilots, crew chiefs navigators, bombardiers, tail gunners , maintenance crews flight officers air controllers radar techs, Intelligence officers supply operations medics, flight surgeons legal eagles armaments anti aircraft crews reconnaissance, nurses, WAFS, mess personnel ,chaplains ,M.P.s , grave diggers.
Meanwhile the Major “nuisance” in his good wife’s stead. fled for the Air Museum’s cover, those earlier raindrops pelting the air strip like big chunks of hail out of the ice age inside the hangar’s door the swooping P38’s, ‘47’s, flying fortresses, step ladders into the cockpits, nary a B 25, A10..scaffolding for a Remembrance reality scene & ceremony, Fall 2002
“Charlton Heston” he called the echo resounding in the cavernous space, ,the actor stumbling at the Museum’s door, hearing his credits. ”It sure is wet,” he said, looking into & through the Major, a limo pulling alongside the entrance, ”Where did we meet?”
Those yesterdays trailing back 30 years, UCLA’s reality scene of a bon voyage for Jules Stein’s departed soul. Henry Mancini playing out his theme from “Romeo et Juliet”, the solemn airs sounding through the campus. .Dr. Stein, a bandleader turned ophthalmologist had bought Universal Studios where Mr .Heston had starred, “Airport ‘75”.
The limo driver cried “Charlton, her Majesty’s jet , from Edinboro Castle, Scotland is taxing .Hurray, water cress sandwiches without venison is worth writing home. Rank knows no chow hounds, sir.”
Insides the dining hangar for the 2000 Yanks, the War Museum’s pro, Greg Smith, continued his viewing. Snapping, shuttering. For the benediction, the well groomed museum staff, distaff &male, set up chairs and benches on the strip, the skies closing, raindrops ceasing..
Her Majesty, Prince Philip, former Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher, Duke of Kent, a Field Marshall, Charlton Heston.
Greg Smith clicking away like into a dot.com on a web site’s home page. Her Majesty in her yellow ponchos tucked under the canopy outside the Museum hangar. Her USAF color guard in their protocol, the band playing the strains & some Sousa that bonded the American Anglo Saxon peoples in the Battle of Britain.
“Do you know the Greg Smith singers, playing the UCLA Spring sing?” asked the Major .”Any relation?”, the Fly Over into the graying mists. 3 F’16’s ,wingtips fingerprinting through the skies, a Flying Fortress… sailing through the ocean of humanity…
The resonating voice of “Airport ‘75” Charlton Heston, leaping into the Bard’s “Henry V”., the loudspeakers in sync….”My soul shall thine keep company to Heaven; tarry sweet soul for mine. Then fly abreast.…As if an Angel dropt from the clouds….O for a muse of fire that would ascend. the brightest Heaven of invention.. A Kingdom for a stage, Princes to act. Monarchs to behold the swelling scene….”
On the USAF bus ‘s return, passing Madingley American Military Cemetery, through the Brandon Suffolk countryside toward Lakenheath, the Honor Guard stripped of their protocol, cajoled the latrine officer from Cleveland’s Shaker Heights, laughing about her moment’s moment..
On the ‘morrow, Greg Smith called from London’s Imperial War Museum. ”Major, before departing for Heathrow. call Andy at Duxford’s darkroom. He’s processing all our negatives. You & Lady Fenton might be lucky.”
Walking through the lush Lakenheath grass toward the post office’s phone, he stumbled, his blue eyes sighting a buried tableau. To Andy... his was the ultimate sacrifice. Transportation Squadron.,48th Fighter Wing ….
‘To the airmen of many nations who flew with the R.A.F. during the Battle of
Britain. And soared into the Heavens that others might live...”If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say “This was their finest hour.” Sir Winston Churchill,, Prime Minister, his mother born in Brooklyn Heights.….
Saturday, July 12,1997 Lakenheath RAF Base, England
Unlike the Korean War tags we never were awarded, the stringed I.D. dangling around our necks ‘’The American Air Museum in Britain ….Official Opening by Her Majesty The Queen August first,1997, the good wife and ourselves sidestepped the barricade unto the Duxford RAF air strip that memorable yesterday outside Cambridge, U.K……
The Pakistani clerk at our London bed & breakfast digs , 50 miles away, had said earlier…”Sir, if The photos you took , make me seem like a Prince Charming ,don’t mail them back .My brother is on his holiday. Our sister’s apartment He works across the street., Kuwait embassy Save your
money”, scribbling her phone number, a 718 area code… Brooklyn..
Developing the view press &click snapshots back on Coney Island Avenue, we dialed the number, an Omar Shariff voice, in its lilting musical tones, answered “You got my brother’s pictures….can you deliver them , ipso facto Major. We’re flying back to perfidious Albion .from JFK, this afternoon.”
“Where are you, Omar?”
“You know Brooklyn’s Flatbush ? 815 East 14th Street, apartment One H.”
“Do I know? It’s God’s Way,” A six floor elevator apartment house on Avenue H across the way from Art Carney and his folks.....Above Bohacks, ”Ed Norton”(of the “Honeymooners”)whistling his cue to his Jackie Gleason in diisguise (Straus)..... waiting at his sixth floor kitchen window.. .
Two blocks from the Avenue H station. .The local subway. stop. .A day dreaming punk from Santa Monica, California., we were raised there .Attending Public School 217, Midwood High School. The best man at our wedding. Doctor Howie,” the pianist, CPA ” lived in the same apartment, as your sister. How’s that for being in the flow of the game .The moment, sir?”
Our odyssey begins a month earlier, Fort Hamilton Army Library. Bay Ridge, dating historically 1825 Not that far from Flatbush , Keith Lewis, Jr .an internet pro, E mailed Sandra Brooks, Mildenhall R.A.F.,Beck Row Village,29 miles from Cambridge, UK. About standby billeting for a once Air Force Ready Reservist with 23 years longevity, and his good wife ?
When the electronic mailbox was sorted out for the fourth time, Sandra Brooks who wasn’t from Brooklyn wrote “Major, call USAF-RAF Lakenheath direct.”
“Sergeant Gideon,” answered the NCO in charge of lodging. “Com’ on ahead, Major. .We’re expecting Lady Fenton, the good wife. Our motor pool is on orders for her Majesty’s honor guard, Transportation Squadron,48thFighter Wing.”
We thought back all of our yesterdays. 47 years ago, June 29,1950…..a Second Lieutenant, out of UCLA’s ROTC, in the role of a Supply Officer on temporary duty to the Officers Club..448th Reserve B 25 Light Bomb Wing, Long Beach, California, adjoining Signal Hill’s rasping oil drills.
President Harry Truman, a no nonsense Commander in Chief, activated the 452nd B 25 Light Bomb Wing, on being briefed about the North Koreans invading South Korea, crossing the demilitarized zone.Colonel Cochrane, the Long Beach base’s full time operational officer for Colonel Keeney, the 448th,Colonel Sweetzer, later Brigadier General,452nd….”Lieutenant, you’re on verbal orders .Report Hamilton Air Force Base, the 2567th Processing Squadron, San Rafael, California. Travis Air Force Base, Japan, Korea. That’s your fate, my boy.”
Deferred until February ’51, for graduate school in teaching, Colonel Paul McGuire called ,during the Cuban crisis, Khrushchev steaming missiles toward Castro’s Cuba ”Be my Group Intelligence Officer, Canoga Park, California . We’ll cut orders, giving you jurisdiction from Santa Barbara to Long Beach, sending you Intelligence School, Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas…Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Pentagon. Defense Intelligence Agency, Western
European Desk, Arlington….How’s that sound?”
“How can we resist you , sir?”
For another 12 years…two week tours at a stretch , several in the California desert, two ,the AFAcademy, teaching Space. in schools, we found ourselves August 1st,1997,strolling toward the cliptic designed American Air Museum in Britain, the skies opening up, the raindrops descending. She ran for cover in the makeshift hangar where 2000 Yanks, many of them in their tattered khakis, moth balled blues, besprinkled ribbons, medals Milling around the dining tables , with wives children grandchildren widowers widows girl friends, sweethearts, lovers, mistresses, next of kin testing the grub:: sandwiches, English biscuits, warmed
over hot meals, fish & chips tarts pastries tea and coffee.
Reminiscing of some 6 decades spilling the air ,the BBC audio taping “in yer
face”, London’s Imperial War Museum Greg Smith clicking snapping away…pilots, copilots, crew chiefs navigators, bombardiers, tail gunners , maintenance crews flight officers air controllers radar techs, Intelligence officers supply operations medics, flight surgeons legal eagles armaments anti aircraft crews reconnaissance, nurses, WAFS, mess personnel ,chaplains ,M.P.s , grave diggers.
Meanwhile the Major “nuisance” in his good wife’s stead. fled for the Air Museum’s cover, those earlier raindrops pelting the air strip like big chunks of hail out of the ice age inside the hangar’s door the swooping P38’s, ‘47’s, flying fortresses, step ladders into the cockpits, nary a B 25, A10..scaffolding for a Remembrance reality scene & ceremony, Fall 2002
“Charlton Heston” he called the echo resounding in the cavernous space, ,the actor stumbling at the Museum’s door, hearing his credits. ”It sure is wet,” he said, looking into & through the Major, a limo pulling alongside the entrance, ”Where did we meet?”
Those yesterdays trailing back 30 years, UCLA’s reality scene of a bon voyage for Jules Stein’s departed soul. Henry Mancini playing out his theme from “Romeo et Juliet”, the solemn airs sounding through the campus. .Dr. Stein, a bandleader turned ophthalmologist had bought Universal Studios where Mr .Heston had starred, “Airport ‘75”.
The limo driver cried “Charlton, her Majesty’s jet , from Edinboro Castle, Scotland is taxing .Hurray, water cress sandwiches without venison is worth writing home. Rank knows no chow hounds, sir.”
Insides the dining hangar for the 2000 Yanks, the War Museum’s pro, Greg Smith, continued his viewing. Snapping, shuttering. For the benediction, the well groomed museum staff, distaff &male, set up chairs and benches on the strip, the skies closing, raindrops ceasing..
Her Majesty, Prince Philip, former Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher, Duke of Kent, a Field Marshall, Charlton Heston.
Greg Smith clicking away like into a dot.com on a web site’s home page. Her Majesty in her yellow ponchos tucked under the canopy outside the Museum hangar. Her USAF color guard in their protocol, the band playing the strains & some Sousa that bonded the American Anglo Saxon peoples in the Battle of Britain.
“Do you know the Greg Smith singers, playing the UCLA Spring sing?” asked the Major .”Any relation?”, the Fly Over into the graying mists. 3 F’16’s ,wingtips fingerprinting through the skies, a Flying Fortress… sailing through the ocean of humanity…
The resonating voice of “Airport ‘75” Charlton Heston, leaping into the Bard’s “Henry V”., the loudspeakers in sync….”My soul shall thine keep company to Heaven; tarry sweet soul for mine. Then fly abreast.…As if an Angel dropt from the clouds….O for a muse of fire that would ascend. the brightest Heaven of invention.. A Kingdom for a stage, Princes to act. Monarchs to behold the swelling scene….”
On the USAF bus ‘s return, passing Madingley American Military Cemetery, through the Brandon Suffolk countryside toward Lakenheath, the Honor Guard stripped of their protocol, cajoled the latrine officer from Cleveland’s Shaker Heights, laughing about her moment’s moment..
On the ‘morrow, Greg Smith called from London’s Imperial War Museum. ”Major, before departing for Heathrow. call Andy at Duxford’s darkroom. He’s processing all our negatives. You & Lady Fenton might be lucky.”
Walking through the lush Lakenheath grass toward the post office’s phone, he stumbled, his blue eyes sighting a buried tableau. To Andy... his was the ultimate sacrifice. Transportation Squadron.,48th Fighter Wing ….
‘To the airmen of many nations who flew with the R.A.F. during the Battle of
Britain. And soared into the Heavens that others might live...”If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say “This was their finest hour.” Sir Winston Churchill,, Prime Minister, his mother born in Brooklyn Heights.….
Saturday, July 12,1997 Lakenheath RAF Base, England
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