Big Jim and Huck Finn cruising the shoals...

Big Jim and Huck Finn cruising the shoals on the 93 foot Sweet Sixteen allegory..shooting the lights out among the Ithaca Cornell seniors and Kentucky’s athleticism..handcuffing the Big Red with a stifling defense.


The ferocious second game was brilliantly scorched in a second overtime by Kansas State, almost in a mimic of Adolph Rupp.s gun and run quuintets he pioneered at Kentucky.... the dawn of modern basketball,.prior to World War 2.

II

Former Laker coach., a Kentuckian from the word “go” Pat Riley, sat in the bleachers, his profile look alike John Barrymore....his once black hair streaked with gray, combed straight back..., watched with the acumen of a Miami Heat owner.... those piercing eyes searching for another Dwayne Wade Shaq O’neil....even to a Wes Unseld or Jerry West role he opposed in his playing days/

Million dollar NBA magicians in disguise..

Like the Pope, coach Johnny Wooden at Ucla, Riley understood the apparatus .the calibration..the differential geometry and calculus of what it takes to shoot the lights out on a 93 foot Mississippi riveted raft..

III

“What hath these larger than life human beings?” asked Robert Frost on his birthday .”To bring a happiness that transcends the poetry of the Old Testament’s storied word.”

Wasn’t their passage to fulfillment a coveted “Phantom of the opera”, North Hollywood High’s Ucla Laker Gael Goodrich.

Elgin Baylor gambled, putting his life on the line, didn’t he? Maintaining a low profile . in a hoop de hoop cosmos gone bonkers. in a Magic Johnson promotion. Beyond the ghetto of wish fulfillments.

Right Pat Riley?.......Right......sitting in the bleachers ,his eyes sizing up his treasure trove.

“This is my life” .Don Malmberg, ex Bruin footballer, assistant to Ralph Edwards,.producer, not unlike squeezing blood out of a turnip on the fifth floor of dynamic Maimonides led medical

center in the Big Apple’s Boro of Brooklyn.....

IV

Hungering for approbation...an emancipation Big Jim steered their raft while Huckleberry Finn aided and abetted . “Not having Tom Sawyer at my side ,” he said. hoisting his own sails of larceny

“There is nothing to believe in,” said Big Jim, his own life on the line as thou he had escaped from steerage. Eluding the posse’s noose, the price a “ plantation” slave pays for escaping.

“An allegory , “claimed Big Jim, manipulating the rudder in the ebbs and tides of the Mississippi, the raft merging with the sweat swaggering players.

“We ae the stuff dreams are made on our little lives rounded with a sleep”

Huck,remembering Aunt Polly’s take on “civilization:”

The Sweet Sixteen plunging ou the larceny in our souls.. opposing forces of guile and trickery..finesing their bodies and souls in a thrust toward freedom and victory....

The Wildcats and Kansas State in doulbe overtime March 26, 2010.

Aging isn’t for sissies

“Aging isn’t for sissies”, said Bette Davis, watching the college basket ballers breathlessly galloping back and fourth along the 94 foot court of netted dreams .....breathtaking divine promise threading the needle in lanes from Spokane to Buffalo to Providence to Jacksonville


“What doth this big dance madness? Coach Wooden asked..... eleven championships 77 consecutive wins, the program clasped in his gnarled fists, his assistant Denny Crum out of San Fernando High, sitting on the bench, .next to a gap in space.,a calibration of digital data and Ucla mystique draped in his hands. ...... rolling the dice in a nirvana...the Ides of March in synch ..

II

Picks screens swishing threes from downtown.... crashing the boards for slam dunks....a flagrant fouls scrambling for loose balls.... blocking or charging fouls? one on one double pumps in yer face... reverse spin thru the cords 7 footers ladders tip ins put backs touching the iron goal tending refs eh what! Hook shots two on one pivots swish ..hacked into free throw the pressure of their life on the line.....going home or to the sweet sixteen in Salt Lake City... the final four
in Houston, baby.

Survival of the fittest in this chess game. ....Oh my goodness the game clock on ,the shot clock 29 28 27 26 tick tickings away... a gift to be alive and watch our own youth being served, both clocks winding down ... Their mentors coaches rock stars whatever..... whom they identify with....expectations on the bench........our own gam clocks winding down.

III

The ghosts and spirits of these athletes....the Pope of Westwood , “coach” John Wooden telling his boys there is no failure. “To be as nimble and caring in the classroom as on the floor. Spread the wealth, be selfless give up the ball whether you’re in the two three zone as Syracuse’s Jim Boe heim or my man to man.
“ Be selfless don’t look for your shot, brethen but look for the team’s “w”.”

Clasping hands,”their better instincts coming to the fore, the players streaking to each other after some miraculous shot in the paint... along the baseline “alley oop”, the teammates high five in recognition of his mate’s “unbelievable”. eye contact and presence under the pine.

What hath glory? A triumph of Bach Vivaldi Sondheim’s “Follies” old can can girls., reliving the enchanting musica of glorious energy, bringing the fans to their feet......

Getting a second chance at Fate playing out ..

The flow of the game, the intense anxiety& pressure to the “ohs” and “ahs” of their mothers and fathers sitting in the stands...the apprehension on their faces..whether their DNA’s rises above their lifelines and into the cosmos of the dreamed moment ....realization of those living sleeping eating the pumpkin......into the. rhythms and flows. of our own lives....

Liberation Paris Baghdad! :.......Hail Mary.”

IV

South Philadelphia projects hard tops grueling weary s grinding Rucker league ball.....a mentor? A nod? From high school into the promised land..College and....ask Denny Crum from San Fernando High and the Pope’s anointed assistant,,sitting next to him on the bench,. Denny Crum into his role..... the Pope’s alter ego...the son he never had...

Neither wars Korea Vietnam unconscionable 9/11 ambushes Iraq Afghanistan gushing blood sniper murders on our souls could beleaguer our spectre of ghosts for some seven decades...the inexhaustible Harlem Globe Trotters.....”Sleepwalking Tatum.........”

Barney Cohen’s Midwood High’s nirvana.... point guard captain Lenny Singer...forwards Honest Bbill Rosenblatt Ira Schneider..center Howie Lustgarden Shelly Fein Wally Kaplan.....,coming offf the bench Gerry Ringleheim Eddie Joachim Norman “Lefty” Fischer Howie Weisglass Buddy Solomon Jack “the moose” Dym Shelly Flanzig Jack Singer el capitan Stan Rubin and the inestimable “commish” Marv Glauberman....

V

The college million dollar men setting the level......CCNY and Nat Holman Long Island University and Clair Bee, his “Pic” assistant. into the bench&paperwork.....NYU and Howard Cann.... St. Johns and Joe Lapchick.......

Weren’t the mid majors like Northern Iowa taking it to the Jayhawks while a blue blood like Michigan State gets a buzzer beater against Wisconsin. The parity is infinitesly less majestic that the Pope himself.....

Coach Wooden shakes his head in disbelief. “The blue bloods of the major conferences reeking their headbands and sweats...rethinking the entry passes from the conferences across the tracks. Could the championship at Houston feature the Big Red. Cornell’s seniors against Northern Iowa.? Ah Horatio that is the question?” ...

A maestro like Tiger Woods in his Hamlet like confession can’t dent the soul of the Ncaa’s sweet sixteen ...the Tiger may have freaked out but the pumpkin’s universe has larger than life expectations ....... coming to grips with the best in our natures.....

That’s the bottom line.....a no brainer

Right Coach? Right..


Ncaa’s “Sweet Sixteen” Salt Lake City, Utah March 23, 2010

Ma Barker with Shelly Winters

“Et tu Brute”... “a Bonnnie and Clyde tit for tat tandem. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway....Amy Bishop’s alter ego being her biological partner ....what difference who captured who in those Northeastern U. labs where her pops had a supporting role for 32 years...an associate prof in documentaries and digital art.......


O that a man might know the end of this day’s business ev’r come! But it suffice that the day will end, and then the end is known

I

“Bonnie,‘y know I love ya like you’re my own self.....a twin soul “.....his forceps grippiug the frog’s legs. “ Stripping the dissection down to balls naked..killing is too good for the “Doc...”

‘Strangle him like in the real world. Stabbin or shooting? What’s his poison? Not Ucla’s Professor Woellner’s “Heaven is on the way to it”...Titus’s Machiavelli or Gracian not these Lady Macbeths playing out vindictiveness is their de Sade temper tantrums,..demolition derbies.,

Right Bonnie? Amy? Lady Macbeth?

“Lettin em out of hen pecking post graduate PHD tenure tracks........a moral travesty in their unbridled ambitions.....unable to get out of their luggage..their friggen ego trip careeming down the slopes... their bobsled into streaming revenge.....

ot a redeeming air in their descending souls..

Bonnie and Clyde welcome.....the scaffold awaits life’s disenchantments....you deserve each other.

II

Goading Bonnie on...International House of Pancakes booster seats...Al and Jerry Lapin’s start up on Riverside drive in Toluca Lake California, not knowing a lethal scenario was already playing out ..... in the cosmic madcaps of the 3 Stooges beyond the crepe suzette cheese blintzes home made pies and freshly squeezed orange juice....

Clyde fast asleep. It is no matter. Enjoy the honey...heavy dew of slumber. Thou hast no figures nor “Amazon fever” fantasies.. which busy cares draws in the brains of women..

Therefore so sleep so sound.

III

But ‘tis a common proof .... that loveliness is young ambition’s ladder, whereto to the climber upward mourns his face; but when he once attains the upward round, he then unto his back, looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees by which he did ascend.,,,,

The mocking fate of a Northeastern U support system,... the Amy Bonnie of our travail having an inside track into academia hen pecking by her father in his tenured role of 32 years of documentary and digital art, his Amy into her gig, yielding her “Amazon fever” her bulliness of dissonant smarts, her “Of human bondage”...... A young lady of privilege, unable to identify with Bette Davis as a “dinosaur”, waiting on Leslie Howard medical students..

Not a father nor mother for a support system gone astray in truancy. Yacht club horseback riding.... a role on a Hawthorne “Scarlet Letter” 240 seat town council.... the bewildered accouterments of a life style gone tole model bonkers in raising gifted children.

"Don’t you know who I am ... ,“ Amy punching the lady in the head for having the chutzpah in taking the I hop. booster seat for her own.......

Thinking she could seize the moment like the cream cheese bandit at Safeways, a block down from (LA’s) South Western and Pico, the two egotists caught up in their inexorable fate..

For clout...poor little rich girl fiercely showing her teeth and blowing her cover.,,,No honor among thieves., You can’t get away with anything., . .someone is watching.

IV

Greta Garbo to Sutton Place environs Louise Rainer into retirement ...Deanna Durbin to Paris....Shirley Temple to Northern California.....Joan Crawford in Pepsi’s spritz...Irene Dunne .Myrna Loy.Ann Sheridan. Ingrid Berman Italy Olivia de Haviland to London....

Their divine presence ....where doth they go?

Where to Bonnie znd Clyde on their inexorable fated information highway...a. Huntsville Alabama sub division tract?.

When my love swears she is made of truth, I do believe her thou I know she lies. That she might think me some untutored youth, unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.

V

We defy augury: there’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,’tis not to come If it be not to come, it will be now.; if it not be now, yet it will come: the readiness is all since no man has aught of what he leaves; what is’t to leave betimes? Let be.

VI

Amy Bishop unlike Bonnie had her own suffrage to wrestle.... those murderous aggressions playing out in the reality scenes of the Texas Oklahoma panhandle and the Braintree New Englandish I hops..and college neuro biological hazing..

What sayeth Plato? To learn their art before practicing it at Ucla’s Royce Hall.? Iris Murdoch ‘s own quest at Oxford. before Alzheimers...”.reflects God in the infinite mind”

”Reputation ,reputation reputation! O I have lost my reputation.. I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.”

VII

Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion ...all the interim is like a phantasmora hideous dream: the genius and the mortal instruments are then in council; and the state of man, like to a little kingdom; suffers them the nature of an insurrection., (rehearsing the 9 millimeter on the firing range)

The depth of night is crept upon our talk. And nature must obey necessity. Which we will niggard with a little rest....

VIII

My thoughts and my discourse As madmen’s are. As random from the truth vainly expressed for I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright Lady Macbeth

Who art as black as hell, and dark as night.

And Bonnie’s spirit, gung ho for revenge with her consort by her side.. What she wished for, she finally realized...tenure into the big house...

Come from hell shall on these confines with a monarch’s voice “I am Amy Bishop. Dr Amy Bishop” And let slip the dogs of war, that these foul deeds mell above the earth...with carrion men groaning for burial.

It hath been taught us from the primal state that she wish that was wish’t. And the ebb’d mien nev’er till worth love comes dear’d by being lack.. The common body like to a vagabond flag upon the stream goes to and bank, lackeying the varying tide tor self sacrifice with motion.

International House of Pancakes’s “mea culpa”, Toluca Lake, , February 26,2019.

Rereading Hawthorne’s “Scarlet letter” one can’t help but wonder “what was Amy Bishop trying to prove?”

Relax...frolic with your family.....enjoy

Why force the issue? If it ain’t in the cards, rethink your thinking.

Be grateful for small favors.

And althou it’s hindsight...the constant pressing may have morally blinded you to what you could have been and become......

The Big Apple, March 1, 2010