Ben Hecht penned a novel “The Sensualist” while “Duke” Wayne

Ben Hecht penned a novel “The Sensualist” while “Duke” Wayne and Maureen O’Hara starred “To the shores of Tripoli”, their talents begging the question of Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi’s self destructiveness...

II

But whether “Geronimo” had read it and made it part of his soul, that is another question.

Priding himself as a Bedouin warrior living out his doomed martyrdom. he reminds us of an unsolicited encounter on the sands between Beersheba and Ashkelon five decades ago when he

began his “Geronimo” odyssey .

What comes to mind “The last of the Mohigans” the Apache like Indians responding to casting calls . The grm weather beaten faces, the scare crows around their eyes.

III

Not unlike an Art Aragon battler coming from the barrio into Van Nuys, California Khadafi longed for his power structure. .But not from central casting.... ”that’s for sure, Geronimo”

IV

In amassing it, he acquired his voluptuous secretary and a harem of sultry Maria Montez’s willing to act out the despot’s megalomania delusions and paranoia..

He’s reached his point of no return. No “Geronimo” here, challenging the repressed embedded rage as the scenario plays out the crushing “Last days of Pompei”

One city fallen to his defectors... Tripoli, the capitol next, as the sweeping humanity is heard on line thru “lovelorn” camouflage..

“We no longer want your cake”,Gerinmo”.Nor your bread, ladies!.”

V

The discombobulating “I will fight to my last ounce of blood” cried the despot, recognizing his desperation..., the “Duke” in a careening PT boat...out of Malta.... to the “Shores of Tripoli”

Waiting at the ferry, February 24, 2011

Rugged individualism gone manic..

Rugged individualism gone manic, Charles Darwin of Cambridge University,


his reputation at best tenuous, anchored his HMS Beagle off the beachheads of

Indonesia.

When to his astonishment, his once aging eyes came alive . Energized by footprints......naah it would make a believer out of him for the rest of his days on our minor planet

“Foot....say it isn’t true naysayer... What madness ist his...fish prints on the dunes?”

II

The Devonian lung fish once thought to be extinct had reached the threshold

of Jules Verne and Kirk Douglas’s “20 thousand leagues under the sea”


“Did the Devonian discard his gills for lungs and the pittter patter of being&

becoming landed gentry. His genome trajectory and genetic blueprint calling

for his Boulder Dam Grand Canyon metamorphosis beyond any Ovid could

dream of., no less fathom in civilization’s watershed..


The first burst of “creepy Crespie” emerging from the ocean depths, evolve unto

those Indonesian dunes.... pitter patting...............

III

Charles Darwin not yet a Sir Charles trid to hook catch cajole the lung fish into

a capture.......transcend human consciousness beyond a King Kong Fay Wray

notoriety at the Big Apple’s Empire State building.



Not unlike IBM’s landlocked Dr. Watson of “Jeopardy”, the lung fish

could only pitter paddle among the surreal Indonesian reality scene.



“ I’ve found a home at last.” if the Devonian could talk the walk of his species.



Or was it all futile? The battle lines drawn. Human compassion in limbo..

Rugged individualism gunned down...

IV

“Willy nilly like I said I found a new home



Why submit to my genetic code? My DNA when my amphibian ipso facto is a mutating

facet of my evolving from the oily British Petroleum on the Gulf of Mexico’s sea floor..



Doesn’t my liberating stance go beyond Francis Bacon and the Bard’s ”Love’s

Labor Lost.”.”.Midsummer Night’s Dream”...with the Mick and Olivia de Haviland..

still carrying on......

V

“If my gills morph as lungs breathing oxygen, doesn’t the natural selection

of my duality in Neptune&MotherNature circumvent the Magna Carta..

Beyond Sir Charles voyage on the HMS Beagle to the Galapagos ?

A freak tweeting out his own tsunami..

VI

“Eh what, Gunga Din?

Doesn’t it beat scrounging for landlocked water bottles?”

On an Indonesian beach, tracking the Devonian lung fish’s

pitter padder................................

Presidents Day, February 21,2011.

Rip van Winkle in his self imposed trance in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Rip van Winkle in his self imposed trance in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow


didn’t have to contend with digital I pods and downloading data from I tunes

which unconscionably put Apple’s Steve Jobs unto a medical furlough....



II



Whether the stress was all that consuming? Worth Silicon Valley’s thrust into

the measure of the man?



The Mid East’s man’s inhumanity to man in turmoil...the Boston Tea Party’s chain of causation be the catalyst for change? No less in Madison Wisconsin, the teachers pension fund found vulnerable to attack..



Bogy in “Sahara”...Tyrone Power “Suez Canal” James Mason “Five graves to Cairo” “The Egyptian” Victor Mature Gene Tierney Jean Simmons...”Cleopatra” Liz Taylor with Richard Burton as Marc Antony.



Could the golden age of Hollywood be prescient? A for taste of their collaborations into the futuro..



The founding fathers into a rebellion beyond Jean Jacques Rousseau’s tumbling Louis XIV and his Marie Antoinette?.



Norma Sheaer’s “If they wantt bread let them eat cake”.





III



*DaleWasserman’s “The impossible dream” Mitch Leigh’s music, Joe Dorian’s lyrics

Peter O’Toole in Richard Kiley’s vocalize “The man from La Mancha”..... ...



Could Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” have anything to say for herself?

Her own rebellion against the tide of her time in Scandinavia 19th century.



IV



Therein lies the great rage, Don Quixote. Almost maybe perhaps

“ Humpty Dumpty” has fallen off the wall...



“To dream the impossible dream...to fight the unbelievable foe

To bear with unbearable sorrow To run where the brave not go.

To right the unrightable wrong..



“This is my quest to follow that star. No matter how hopeless.

..no matter how far”



Beverly Hills Tennis Club.... *Dale Wasserman, 1949’50



The Big Apple, February 18, 2011

Not wanting to sound like a shill for “The King’s Speech” ...

Not wanting to sound like a shill for “The King’s Speech” .....,




The Prince of Wales’s younger brother, George, finding his true self

thru a therapist, his alter ego. in a magnificent un- stammering role

curing George’s stammer, enabling his ascension to Buckingham

Palace.....

II

To confront Adolph’s blitzkrieg, realize his worth as a “monarch”

and role model husband and father....his speech impediment but a blink in the evolution

of the species.

“Come the Revolution” the therapist himself plagued by false credentials

and opposition by the Archbishop of Canterbury realized his divine presence

by having the Prince come to grips with his stammer.

III

Likewise in “The Miracle Worker” Annie Sullivan captures Helen Keller’s

heavy physical “stammers” ,bringing the planet a once despondent blind “genius” to the surface,

worthy of the best in “moments of personal discovery”

In order to get what Pete Seeger calls “notice”, didn’t Harry Houdini dive off a

Coney Island high board unto a postage stamp size pool?

Roseanne Barr scorching her own craving for comic ”notice” suffer one or two nervous breakdowns.

Bob Dylan sounding a lot like Babe Ruth in his narcissism

And the sixth Liverpool Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe seeing thru the

trappings...morphing as a garbage collector...and finding himself

as a painter.

IV

“What do you want?” asked the fab five’s first manager that night

at the Liverpool New Year’s Eve festivities ,the Mersey ebbs and tides

sounding off the board walk.

VI

What a heavy toll to pay for Pete Seeger’s “notice”

Don’t you think, Gunga Din?

Therefore the Prince of Wales signed off on the “King’s speech” for an alliance with

For Wallis Smpson, a twice married San Dieagan for the society

laden trappings of the Waldorf Towers and the parasitical life style

of Elsa Maxwell’s social network..

But who’s to say...,,, morphing into the Duke of Windsor role,

he knew in his youthful angst he was no match for his younger

brother’s stammer..

“Long live the King”

Be inspired by the belief that life is a great and noble calling

Not a mean and groveling journey But a lofty and elevating

Destiny. .

“The King’s Speech”..”Valentine’s Day”, February 15, 2011

People who belong together don’t have to stick together

“People who belong together don’t have to stick together” may be apropos


of Jerry Sloan, retiring after twenty two years as the coach of the NBA

Utah Jazz.



II



Our hungering eyes first gazed upon his heroics with the University of

Utah, playing in *Madison Square Garden. He was the epitome of a team player.

Unselfish, his deft passing to the open man, out of the weave or Tex Winter’s

triangle.



He was the ultimate Greek God, so humble in the arena of overrated egos and

self serving scorers preening for their own “cock a doodle doo”.



To put itt together...the serendipity and chemistry of complete players like John Stockton out of Gonzaga and the “Mailman” out of Louisiana.......



III



Surrogate father role model coach Sloan fought out his heroic dimensions in the

Salt Lake City cyberspace while calibrating the Mailman&Stockton quintets to championship gigs, to lose in the closing ticks of his “overtime”



IV



Therefore as hundreds of NBA coaches have come and gone, Jerry Sloan commands the dignity

and respect of other surrogate fathers...and those Utah dream teams and front office second guessers.


John Wooden Clair Bee Red Auerbach Red Holtzman Nat Holman Joe Lapchick Howard Cann Saint Anthony’s High School coach Hurley who earned his 1000th w several days ago.


Larger than life humans who make an ordinary one glad to be part of their fated syndrome.



V



A man among marching men, Gunga Din:.

George Mikan of DePaul, Bb Kurland of Phillips AAU Bill Russell Wilt Chamberlain

Jerry West Elgin Baylor Don Barksdale Wes Unsell and Dave Minor when he starred wioth Toledo ,his shooting arm in a plastic cast..

To say an immortal soul graced the pines as a father figure may be over stating

his lasting pace thru two gripping decades plus two in the role of a coach...beyond those

undergraduate years pounding the wood as a player, learning the calculus and

geometry into the futuro.



VI



May his divine presence be remembered as long as basketball is played...

China, the hard courts of Madrid and Barcelona Paris Germany the Soviet Serbia........

His day dreams emerged from the womb of Salt Lake City... pioneering his “idiom”

dribbling with either hand, his furtive eyes searching for the elusive “Mailman”

dancing or Stockton assisting thru the paint...a lob pass......



Jammed by the trailor’s abbreviation point...


May we dream of seeing the likes of Jerry Sloan again

“People who belong together don’t have to stick together”

*Madison Square Garden National Invitation Tournament,

..February 9,2011.

Sorting out the planet’s musings:......

Sorting out the planet’s musings:......




Cairo-Alexandria Egyptian tale of two cities, Madame La Farge

knitting while the revolution continues seeking to alter change tyrannical rule

tyrannical rule by a former pilot from his 30 year grip on power, his

predecessor Anwar Sadat, a crtony of Jimmy Carter. assassinated..



II



You can’t hold back the masses, Mister Moto”(Peter Lorre)

and James Mason starring in Joseph L Mankiewicz’s”Five graves

to Cairo”



III



A sobering minority investment bid for the New York

baseball Mets by Martin Luther King Jr.,the Brooklyn

based Lafayette High Wilpon family and shades of Sandy

Koufax....thinking big time as skin pigment goes the way

of the saber tooth tiger ... L.A’s. miracle mile.La Brea

tar pits



Where is Wilt Chamberlain when Martin Luther

needs him?



IV



“It takes twelve to tango”:, the passing of the twelve tone

electronic composer&pioneer Milton Babbitt at the ripe old age of

94 in Princeton.



A half a century plus ten in Ojai he and his contemporaries

mused their Arnold Schoenberg dissonance for a three day

weekend.



Andre Previn, Luciano Beria being in the mix.



“Not pleasant to the ear” we hear you say but at least the dissonant

revolution cast no mortal dust as with President Mubarak’s

strong arm “leadership. “



The serendipity and calibration with Sinclair Lewis’s “Babbit”

had a mellifluous tonal impact, notwithstanding those Ojai

California grimacing neighbors some 60 years ago. .



Celebrating Franz Schubert’s 31 years of productivity

the sleety Big Apple awaiting another storm.,January 31,2011.

Now I say Governor in my recollection

“Now I say Governor in my recollection, fallible as it may


be...Gunga Din” was played by Sam Jaffe.



“Althou I respectfully submit your Victor McClagan... identifying with “Din

Din Din”.... scrounging for water bottles behind the front lines.



II



“But what else is new Gunga Din?



The “Five Graves to Cairo” “Tale of 2 Cities” Tyrone Power in “the Suez Canal” playing out

the Egyptian revolution,



“Not asking the Jews as slaves to rebuild the pyramids.....”.



III



“I know I know” cried a voice from Cairo’s Liberation Square....



“And what is that?” responded a rebel, aghast at the status quo scrambling:

the Pharaohs ....Joseph and his brothers.... the 10 commandments... Moses.....



IV



“Andy Pettite, the Yankee southpaw from Texas. Retiring after 16 years

in pim stripes A big mucho grande sixteen Gunga“Din”.



His numer 46 not yet retired.



“What’s so special about sixteen?”



“He had a charisma.... a flare as a lefty. An e.r.a 3.83.....5 World Series rings.. His pick off move to first....his cap.. shielding his dagger like eyes on the move to first, his left foot

still on the rubber, Gunga Din



He had it all with the great Bronx immortals and Mister Steinbrenner.

Memorial Park...... lights ut.... the smell and scents....realizing his dream as a

little leaguer...a sandlot urchin.



The flags flowing in the winds.... .the larger than life videos....the scorecard the hot dogs and mustard..



.”Mo”in the bullpen.



What stamina...to walk away from the money the dinero...... the hero worshiping fans nto a

non clutch struggle with his wife Laura and four kids.. at 38.....



The likes of the Babe, the Iron Man, Dimag, Micky Mantle Roger

Maris the bleacher rats.......



’The Chairman of the Board “Noo York Noo York”



“Bigger than this caper?. The revolution?”



“No comparison..Bernie Williams, O’Neil. Joie Torres.....Chuck Knoblack

Scott Brosius Jorge Posada Mariano Rivera



”Mel Stottlelmyre into his rhythmic trance to the mound when Andy

lost his control: walking batters... a wild pitch...not nipping the outside corner.

...the blind as a bat ump calling balls&strikes.



“Yer outa here.”



Jorge Posada behind the plate.... playing out the deception..



V



“Don Zimmer Mariano Rivera watching and waiting in the bulpen, Don Nelson

Mike Messina Tito Masrtinez and Don Mattingly at first, waiting for the pick off move.....Willie Randolph Daryl Strawberry former catcher and manager Joe Girardi Dave Cone David Wells El Duque from Castro’s island...



“Rger Clemens, his Cy Young Hall of Fame numbers tarnished.



“Yogi Berra “scooter” Rizzuto Rodriquez@the hot corner..those double plays ...

Jeter high flying toss to second and Robinson Cano ‘s fluid dance and flowing

motion......his throw to first.



VI



Susan Waldman’s post game interviews with his masked killer instinct were

Star of the game,,”a cut above the rest.....a turning point of the game”....dynamic bonding of Waldman’s empathy with the Lefty’s soul....



A summing up that captured the Pettite need to win...what more could he prove?.

His own father figure... Gunga Din?



VII



Verbal facility may not be the “Dude’s”’ strong suit, his “y’ know ’ twangy “God” “the Lord” and his stomach and heart after the defeat in the playoff at Texas Stadium..



“I knew I was done”.



“The greatest Lefty in the game,”said Ron Guidry, a Cy Young bull penner...



Lefty Gomez’s some seven decades earlier, playing with Dimaggio, Tommy Henrich,George Selkirk, Bill Dickey Red Rolfe, Red Ruffing, Spud Chandler Joe Gordon. Charlie Keller



VIII



“The Rob Roy overture playing out...the Andy Pettite requiem,”Thanks Sisan

at a close... the expectations of a twenty year old rookie emerging from the womb

of anonymity..



Who’s counting Gunga Din.?...a southpaw scouted by a pinstripe scout..



Therefore whether or not his legacy is diminished by taking the performance

enhancing steroids, reigning every5th day in the rotation....persevering

thru the doubts and trappings....acclimating himself to Ovid’s metamorphosis....



IX



“I dismissed the fear of failure” said the hero for millions of fans.” Emotions aside,”

gulping down a Gunga Din salvaged bottled water from the front lines. .



“Thanks Susan”



Life’s 9th inning allegory and metaphor into eternity .....



Begun on a napkin mailed to George Steinbrenner many moons ago from North

Hollywood, California.



The new Yankee Stadium, the Bronx, February 5, 2011..

Sorting out the planet’s musings:......

Cairo-Alexandria Egyptian tale of two cities, Madame La Farge

knitting while the revolution continues seeking to alter change tyrannical rule

tyrannical rule by a former jet pilot from his 30 year grip on power, his

predecessor Anwar Sadat, a crtony of Jimmy Carter. assassinated..



II



You can’t hold back the masses, Mister Moto”(Peter Lorre)

and James Mason starring in Joseph L Mankiewicz’s”Five graves

to Cairo”



III



A sobering minority investment bid for the New York

baseball Mets by Martin Luther King Jr.,the Brooklyn

based Lafayette High Wilpon family and shades of Sandy

Koufax....thinking big time as skin pigment goes the way

of the saber tooth tiger ... L.A’s. miracle mile. La Brea

tar pits



Where is Wilt Chamberlain when Martin Luther

needs him?



IV



“It takes twelve to tango”:, the passing of the twelve tone

electronic composer&pioneer Milton Babbitt at the ripe old age of

94 in Princeton.



A half a century plus ten in Ojai he and his contemporaries

mused their Arnold Schoenberg dissonance for a three day

weekend.



Andre Previn, Luciano Beria being in the mix.



“Not pleasant to the ear” we hear you say but at least the dissonant

revolution cast no mortal dust as with President Mubarak’s

strong arm “leadership. “



The serendipity and calibration with Sinclair Lewis’s “Babbit”

had a mellifluous tonal impact, notwithstanding those Ojai

California grimacing neighbors some 60 years ago. .



Celebrating Franz Schubert’s 31 years of productivity

the sleety Big Apple awaiting another storm.,January 31,2011.