The Flying Philosopher: November 2012

“Brighton Beach Memoirs” penned by Neil Simon was never like this

“Brighton Beach Memoirs” penned by Neil Simon was never like this. How could the creative one of the two siblings foretaste Hurricane Sandy decades later what was once the Berighton Beach bathes, later a high rise condo complex,(Neil Diamond’s mother’s habitat) overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, its surge acting out the half moon’s ocean rise..

“ Ed Norton” envisaged by Art Carney, Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason polishing his placard at the MTA garage on 39^th Street. “Norton you’re the Bloomy man for the reconnaissance mission,”the retired bus driver, polishing his driver of the century award, in the lobby..

“Ralphie boy your very word is my command, just like when we were alive and active with Alice and Tootsie. I’m your man,”he said, responding to his civic duty. “I always wanted to be an investigator. Not like I’m back in the sewers. But like a L.A. earthquake or the San Francisco. biggie.

“A natural calamity in our beloved Brooklyn... why Ralphie, it’s a charge the Nortons always will remember.”.

“Cherish the moment,. Nortron,” said Ralphie, spitting on his many splendored rag,tarnishing the edges round his plaque. . “We put in our time, . I know you can do a first class job. A problem solver with your open mind. You’re a million dollar man Nortron.. You transcend trivia.

Gimme a high five.”

. A mission impossible? Nevah!

III

Map in hand, the sewer afficionado making his way thru the once submerged streets under the “french connection” the BMT el not in service, until the outage is connected to the central grid, the cars recycled and put back in service.

“Awet war zone,” said Ed Norton to himself, as he recycled decades and decades of living out his dream as a comedian. A gift of selflessness and big mucho grande empathy,

Brought up on 14^th Street off the Ave H station. The same line decades later he was being recognized, cognizant of the Mayor, Governor, the civic fathers back in City Hall.

“Maybe even the Cossacks,” said Norton, ruminating about friends with wired coils, in potato hard boxed ears..

“Marie Anotoinette trying to find her place in the world. Can y’ blame her?,” he said, side steping one of his over flowing sewers, the debris like stench and garbage unto the sidewalk, the eerie silence broken by Norton’s boots, slushing through the water, where once pedestrians talked their Russian walk and gossip in this Russian outpost, once the bailiwick for Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs”..

Ed Norton plugged into his his lap... got to go up on the boardwalk today November 5 and walk around my old block.

Looks like half of Breezy Point ‘s club had been here earlier. A 30 mile jaunt past Floyd Bennet Field. The sea planes below the Bridge to Breezy Point, the Belt to and from JFK and Staten Island’s Verrazano Bridge,

Chairs, tables wooden steps. Hugh sections of piers, a blue rowboat stenciled RPYC or BPYC. Can’t tell.......Al sorts of metal...a refrigerator. Children’s toys. An erector se, electric trains, puzzles.

A rocking chair, facing the shoreline..

O so surreal..

Homes off Bay 7, where “Norton&Ralphie boy”, frolicked as high school kids ... a shanty town without power for weeks. Coney Island creek is loaded with smelly sentiments. Coal cars flooded it,. Hurricane Sandy under its half moon, raking its toll.

Lots of seniors 20 floors up in the cold dark and with n o water. 2 buildings of the Ocean/Millenium luxury condos at Coney Island Avenue have had major damage to their elevators and had to be evacuated.

Behind my building , was once a lovely old coop building. High end design circa 1960,WQ. Hershkowitz, the Inspector) Several steps up to the lobby, thinking they were still flying half mast so I dared the worst.

Everything had already been ripped out. Walls floors soaked to the mast.The high water mark was over my once sewer prone head.

A neighbor joined me on the first floor, tenants barely escaping the rising tide in their apartments.

VII

In the next door condo, adjacent to the boardwalk and Bay 7 where we romped as kidsthe cars in the underground garage were buried in the sand, from that Bay

The windows on the first floor blown out. How tenuous and fragile are our lives. God forbid, the prognosticators on their computer models saying a Northeastern is expected to hit what was once our shore in 2 or 3 days....counting the hours, the ticks....

Six feet high sand piles on Ocean Parkway. An alley cat at least trying to jump the mountains of sand on the sidewalk. The sea weeded century ravaged benches forlorn. .

To our someday, dump tr ucks will come and put back those mountains of sand on the beach, wence they rightly belong....sand castles pop bvottles for deposits, sifting snd for lost treasures.

All but fantasies bnefore the surge.’s violence ,its turmoil on Brighton Beach, changing how we thin k of ourselves and mortality. In the City that never sleeps.

Pfft! A myth!

VII

Of course the nay sayers would say Hurricane Sndy in no ways mirrors the massacre of 3000 of us, in the Twin Towers ambush of 9/11/2001

Brighton Beach Avenue boarded up. But thru the knotholes, foot may still be sold “Fresh?”

“Defrosted?” “Soaked?” ion more ways than one could imagine.Rocco’s pizza made by the light of a generator.

“Fresh cold cuts and cheese tomorrow” said the honcho to the crowd, hoping they won’t be sold. “Save my place in line,” said one hungry Brighton Beacher...

Trees mowed down by the surge under the half moon.. Places of worship- churches synagogues, their lobbies full of sand, instead of worshipers.

On line...... a prayer to a higher power .

VIII

On West 5^th, the handball players shoveling the courts.. The basketball courts at the projects stalled for the moment and beyond. NBA dreams put on hold for the Brooklyn Nets.

No one has a car but no one. Rumors circulating the insurance companies are not sending adjusters out in the field . Assuming the cars are totaled.

No way to see a doctor for stitches in my finger. No way to get one..

Some folks have cars but no way to get gas. Bloomy rationing it out on odd and even license plates. A driver got on line at 4:30 a.m. At 5 p.m., he waved the whiue flag, surrendering. Hee found agas pump at a station nearby.

Praying they don’t run out.

IXI

“The French Connection” subway ? A joke! Nothing until Kings Highway.

Buses are packed, the strap hangers energy ,mightier than pre Hurricane Sandy

crushing crashing surge..

No way to slosh over to Ira Waldbaum’s super market on Ocean Avenue&Voorhees...rumors that his “friendly service” is reopening...

Several blocks North, the war zone is but a myth..

Life ‘s continuum continues from the cradle to the grave.

******

Ed Norton closed his lap top. “The sewers were never like this”.

Brighton Beach “Memoirs”’s rip tide, ‘We gather together for the Lord’s blessings. Happy Thanksgiving’ November 22, 2012.

Hearing from the Mojave Desert’s “Pinto Mountain”

Hearing from the Mojave Desert’s “Pinto Mountain” outside Rancho Mirage and Palm Springs, Hurricane Sandy 3000 miles away at Manhattan Beach ( once the site of Gene Tunney’s WW2 Naval Training Base,) the bridge washed away at the cornr crossing of El Greco’s diner and Emmons Avenue, the touchstone of Sheepshead Bay and Ira Waldbaum’s supermarket on Ocean Avenue off the Belt, a far cry from his mother’s pot cheese grocery on Coney Island Avenue.

“All of Manhattan Beach and a good part of Sheepshead Bay were impacted by the surge. The family’s basement was flooded and she lost everything in there as well as in the garage..

“She had to have the burner repaired, replace the water heater, washing machine and dryer..

She had about 12 people in, throwing out everything. Tearing out the sheet rock on the walls, and cleaing out the mud.

“No electric heat or hot water for many days. The streets are full of mud.

“Most of the schools in the coastal area were flooded, including our JHS. A friend in Seagate, lost her house tro the surge. Four families lived there..

“ Disastrous force of Nature unlike a man made blitzgrieg, A tremendous outlay of money.- she’s still waiting for adjusters from insurance companies. And FEMA to inspect and make a decision about reimbursement.

“Many businesses on Emmons Avenue were destroyed or bardly damaged. I imagine the diner and the Lundys building were badly damaged.. Dr L’s office on the second floor?

“There are bulldozers on the streets to pick up all the items thrown out. People also lost cars that were flooded. A very bad situation.

“I understand the surge’s water flowed down streets for several blocks.

“ Coney Island Hospital was badly hit. Where will all the patients go.?What clinic will take them?

“Heart retching agonies and miseries....”

Meanwhile Marie Antoinette and Hedda Gabler were playing out their roles in “Thelma and Louise”, their Corvette streaking toward their doom.

4 star General David Petraeus crashing, the sassy scribes 500-1000e nails , thrown to the winds as the storm gobbled up Bogy’s gold dust.... John Huston’s “Treasure of Sierra Madre”....

“If they want bread, let them eat cake” said the social climbing “Princess”, sipping her wine from the goblet.

November 18, 2012

Hearing Marie Antoinette’s brother went on line to say

Hearing Marie Antoinette’s brother went on line to say his sister was devastated by the.

revelation of her relationship with the court’s crown jewel , the paparazzi like sharks salivating at their mouths, their own cameras ipso facto......

“Devastated?” I can’t believe it. No, not you brother. You of all the encumbrances and wreckage, your sister stretched out, wrecking reputations here, there, and everywhere. Doesn’t it beg the question.?

Porque? Why? Living is not to grow old, but to grow up

Devastated? Bull, brother. Bull.”

III

“Sweating out her poisons in the gym. On the chastity belt, indeed. The treadmill for a 20 ninuto. Then the 8 pound weights, alternate hands. Two sets of ten.

“You were her closest family tie when she short circuited. Didn’t yoiu see it coming? Her need to play out her desires. To compete in the gentleman’s cosmos. All that military fan dangling stuff.

Was that her reality? . Being a gun slinger in her fantasy speakeasy?”

Marksman? Sharpshooter? Expert?

At the 16^th century quad structured University....Professor Frederic Woellner’s”Sociological Foundations of Education”?

“Major Adler..”.

“Here, sir. Present and accounted for.”

“Marie Antoinette? Marie Antoinette? Gendarme. That Hilgard sorority dansel cutting class again. again. Chasing gremlins, Cheerleaders. Jan Popper’s Opera Workshop. Theater auditions. Southern Campus profiles. Friday nighters? Homecoming Queen? The mixed choruses?

“Getting pinned to a clean cut Gold Key frat of a “smiling passion”

“ A constancy like a gyroscope, not knowing where her spin would land..

She pretends she’s a renaissance dame ala Mademoiselle Curie before Pierre proposed and she became a Madame.”

Professor Woellner held up his hands. “Heaven is on the way to it,” he said, standing up there on the Education Building stage. “When I was younger, to win the Filipino sweater for doing tricks with the Duncan yo yo on the Midwood cinema’s stage.

‘Arround the world’. ‘Sleep my baby, sleep.’ ‘Walk the dog’.....”

Professor Frederic Woellner strolled to the front of the lecture stage.. Tore off his jacket....a white sweater emblazoned .....

‘Filipino Duncan yo yo champion’

At the door , the gendarme held a squirming wench , cutting class.

*****

“Heaven is on the way to it”

November 20, 2012 a Brighton Beach disaster , unlike any of us have lived through Hurricane Sandy, nanana.

General David Pereaus nav not remember Gary Cooper playingout

General David Pereaus nav not remember Gary Cooper playingout “The General died at Dawn”, in the 1933 flick, he could have visualized his own wasteland. His fall from grace. resigning as the CIA spy chief, an extramarital affair , his fait accompli....

Hadn’t he cornered Iraq’s fallen dictator, Sadam Hussein. Sorted out a semblance of order amidst the rival tribes.Living thru “weapons of mass destruction” and the giddy Commander in Chief’s landing on an aircraft carrier.,a far cry freom his soapbox as a Yalie undergraduate in New Haven’s Chapel Street.

Then in Afghanistan commanding some order in that craggy countryside which had defied th Kremlin and other invaders.

But for himself..... had he read or seen“Hedda Gabler”....a model for a 21 sat century Hedda scripting his biography...by sleeping with the pistol packing Hedda..

In search of her pedigree (graduate work at Harvard) carried away with Hedda’s aggressions (2 pistols). 500 to 1000 emails to a friend of the family........her own seething seduction into his or her inevitable 5 star fall from top billing.

III

“My God David, how could you be undone by a sultry character assassin out of Henrik Ibsen named Hedda . A vixen flying into Baghdad several times for her “scoop:.”

Then into her “Mata Hari” Greta Garbo demoniac, she banked her advance, and then undone by her sulky poison pen e nails to a friend of David and Holly’s family.

Not to be vanquished by the book of her hero nor her clinging pants suit , waiting for the “reel” Hedda to done do him in.

Carried away byer jealousy , the e mails to the family friend. Doing pushups, promoting her Roman de clef, Hedda’s syndrome on the make, waiting for her own determinism to break.

Hedda inventing her own gold medaled disgrace to fame&fortune.

Who should be denied in this instance? A nistress in the guise of a biographer taking notes on a General named David Pereaus.

Thirty seven years of wife Holly’s bliss, a family into the pomp&circumstance of military mores and status.

Didn’t Clytemnestra have her Agamemnon done in by by her Furies. Electra and her brother Oresttes seeking revenge for their father’s murder in Sophocles’s Greek epic.,.

Here a vixen scheming for her “What price hath glory?” the two lovers deaf&dumb to Gary Cooper and Ann Harding. playing out “The General died at dwn” 8 decades later.

The City that never sleeps, 11/11/121

Dumbkomf

“Dumbkomf”,”stupido”bellowed Dave Chasen, that famous Hollywood insider turned restauranteur, not unlike Toots Show, who graced the hard liquor with Frank Sinatra, Joe DiMaggio,(“the Yankee Clipper”) Jimmy Cannon the sports columnist, but 3000 miles away on Beverly Boulevard Chasen’s opened,”Dave’s cheese cake ,”once a delicacy became the toast of the town almost in the same status symbol as Nathan’s hot dog, spilling over with sauerkraut

On what better note, to defer to one of his famous patrons, a n actor from Pasadena, several miles toward the Glendale, LaCrescenda, San Gabriel Mountains...out toward Flintrridge, Altadena, the Santa Anita race track.... Arcadia, Sierra Madre.

Here Bill Holden grew up and he wooed a budding actress Brenda Marshall .

Before our blog goes astray with the Holden “I wanted wings” with Veronica Lake of the long blonde peekaboo covering her left eye, its interior moral stance, the heart&soul of our genre, swishing her tresses to the Big Apple’s right eye. .

III

The Belasco theater opens on Broadway...1937, a Group theater drama “The Golden Boy”, authored by a playwright named Clifford Odets of the Group theater, directed by Harold Clurman.

Who but Luther Adler has the starring role. Nepotism being the name of the game. Stella Adler, his older sister, and subsequently Marlon Brando’s coach.

Joe Bonaparte leaps off the page, coming to life almost in the same breathe as Julie Garfinkle aka John Garfield exhorteed in “Awake and sing” Odets play coming to grips at the Las Palms theater in post World War2 Hollywood.

The karma is not the 75 years of suspended time but restoring to the digital cosmos and the Hurricane Sandys blitzkrieg, Odets dramatization of post Obama life, can be fathomed by 21^st century souls, relevant to their moral life, mirrored by the Group’s ensemble.

J. Edward Bromberg, Gale Sondergard, Julie(John) Garfinkel, Harold Clurman (Sylvia Sidney’s brother), Art Smith, Morris Carnofsky, Franchot Tone, Elia Kazan, Lee J. Cobb, Will Geer, Cheryl Crawford, Howard da Silva... the group honing the Stanislavsky method out of the Moscow Art Theatre.

The publicity for the 21^st century Joe Bonaparte has Joe Louis standing over Max Schmeling in their return bout, J.L going to his corner, for M.S. walloping him in their first canvas setting.

What does that tell us about Joe Bonaparte identifying with the Detroit black bomber. A Max Jacobs discovery, he brought his chops to the Heavyweight Championship of the World..1937

Could Luther Adler, Sylvia Sidney’s spouse her brother, Harold Clurman, the director, the forgave his toning sounding violin for the clamor of the prize fighting ring and its ballyhooed. sadism, betting odds from the Las Vegas sharks...

Falling in love with Frances Farmer in the role of an afficionado, Odets shaking the dice for Luther Adler’s embracing the new reality. Odets wooing Frances Famer, Bonaparte rethinking

the bow and strings for the blustering ....

Requiem for a heavyweight.

For Bill Holden identifying with Joe Bonaparte, the “Golden boy’” , seems an anachronism, a From Pasadena to the studio stages, playing out Luther Adler’s Joe Bonaparte, Barbara Stanwyck, the Frances Farmer role.

Ringside, Dan Dunphy, Bill Corum.

Falling in love with Frances Farmer gives an ambiance to his reality. To transcend his yearning to be somebody, with its instant gratification. (on the boxing circuit)

Lee J. Cobb’s son, a classicalviolinist bent on becoming a rock star, .in the hullabaloo of the ring’s big bucks, breaks his hand.

Frances Farmer walking off with his soul in a sling, her heart broken.

An allegory, indeed pops..

Whether or not William Holden made the role for himself, he was forever cast in the myth of Joe Bonaparte, selling out the real Joe, his father’s son..

Watching the air traffic thru the Palm Springs airport fences. Passing time at Chasens, getting gassed up at Shangri-la in Santa Monica, he seemed to be “Born Yesterday”. A prisoner of “Stalag 17" and director Billy Wilder, he patronized his Kenya trips like it was an extension of his Pasadena-Hollywood sound stages..

A captive of his youthful Joe Bonaparte soul, abandoning his bow and violin for the animalistic hungers and dreams n all of us, we dare say....the two lovers redefining themselves into life.

75 years after the 1937 Group Theater’s Belasco opening

*******

“Have a good day, “Golden Boy”

The City that never sleeps, November 7, 2012

Listening to Beethoven’s Egmont overture”from Goethe’s opera

Listening to Beethoven’s Egmont overture”from Goethe’s opera, depicting his hero’s ideals during high tides, Napoleon the liberator metamorphosing as “the little Emperor”.

The composer taking Goethe’s raison d’etre and transformed its heroic trump into tragedy, crossing out Napoleon’s name from his Third Symphony’s dedication, the Erica..

Come the Revolution in Vienna, Austria.

III

Here im the City that never sleeps, the tyranny wasn’t Napoleon revealing his true self, but a cannibalistic Nature, crashing down upon the denizens, many of whom inhabited a turf named Brighton Beach, two blocks from the wildly roaring wind capped Atlantic Ocean waves.

III

“Evacuate Evacuate” came word from Gracie Mansion’s low land command center.

One citizen stone deaf to the pleas, awoke to four feet of surging salt water and a frenzied fish, out of its orbit...

“Never again,” cried the survivor, her middle aging life engulfed and surfeited by not listening. Almost like her hanging umbilical cord tied to her ear drums.

“I never did listen. That’s how I was brought up. Thinking I could outwit my beginnings My origins. My East Flatbush roots.”

“Not young enough to cry. Old enough to know tragedy.

I am wasted.,” she lamented, her hands gripping the fish. Slipping it into a bowl, once the savior for the gold fish of her youth, the bowl lettered “Sandy”

*****

You have to lose yourself to find yourself.

Brighton (Russian) Beach, two blocks fro the quieted Atlantic Ocean. November 1, 2012.

The surging “Stormy weather”

The surging “Stormy weather” shares Burt Lancaster’s “Atlantic City” as

Freud’s Beyond the pleasure principle playing out , Franken Storm

a tusami like fury, pounding the tri states and their once comfortable thinking denizens, the winds howling, the tidal waves storming their sand bagged shelters.

Where is Winston Churchill when we need hin? His Brooklyn born mother from the Heights, General Washington sighting the British fleet on the harbor, kept his distance, knowing the island of Manhattan was bartered from the Mahatma Indian tribe for trinkets and measly dollar bills.

Could Peter Stuyesant out maneuver this raging Franken Storm as he did the Mahatma tribe? from his perch of bartering on Governor’s Island..

III

The once in a lifetime force of Nature invaded Coney Island’s “Little Fugitive’s”

turf. Stillwell Mermaid Neptune Surf Avenue realities..

Nathan’s hot dogs, Bay 7, the boardwalk, benches, the pony ride, the targeted bottle throwing lane , Luna Parks rotating tunnel, the roller coaster, grasping for the lucky key on the. merry go round, sledge hammering the scale for a cotton candy prize, riding the Ferris Wheel

All at the same time of avoiding the same NYPD who were playing out their roles as first responders some 6 decades later as Franken Storm pounds the surf and the beach where the denizens rolled on the sand, Joey(“The Little Fugitive”) picking up soda bottles for the nickel deposits to pay for his framed up hungers...

There was no *evil on the planet, no less the parachute jump eluding to World War 2, and the nation’s resolute to drop behind the *Fuhrer’s enemy lines,

So where is Winston Churchill when we need him?

The raging like seas and winds pounding the island of Manhattan as “The Little Fugitive” and all his brethren, transcend his Coney Island “landscape”, and their own once in a lifetime sandbagged lives.

“The City that never sleeps” October 29, 2012

Batter down the hatches

“Batter down the hatches. Entrench the storm windows. A triple feature Hurricane Reap the Wild Wind&The Mortal Storm” are playing out ladies and gents,” warned the soothsayer of a 21^st century weatherman, fresh off his meteorology computer models.

New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie declared an emergency in Bruce Springstein’s state of affairs, “the Jersey boys” closing shop as the hurricane forced winds curl around the Bahamas,

bearing down on the Florida keys, up the East Coast and the tri states.

“Let’s not be cynical, “ said the Governor. “Be prepared for a “Mortal Storm” like no other since 1903. “The shoreline of our lives are precious. The Red Cross and the Salvation Army are into our senior citizen centers. Their kitchens are preparing tasty yet lo-cal meals,” the Governor not unlike Humpty Dumpty on the wall.

“Bedding down our most valued resources. Their dogs cats canaries parrots gold fish puppies. you name it.

”High School gymnasiums on high grounds, for sleeping cots. Far from our over flooding dams, said the hi profiled politico, standing in front of a fire station.

“Our public servants. Firemen, policemen, township honchos. Shepherding their peoples to Alp

like heights.”

III

“ I know you can do it. Shut down all the electrical grids. A couple of days of escapist reality tee vee won’t be suspended forever by your own reality show.

“Those of you who can afford to escape to hundred and fifty dollar per day inns&hotels as the storm lashes down on your home and lifetime of furnishings and memories, the water rising to your garage levels.

“Use your common sense,” said neighboring Mayor Bloomberg of the City that never sleeps. “Our department of emergency services is 24-7. The bottom line even mass transit, the subway lines, buses will be shut dfown,” said the Mayor, speaking on cue, from what was once Tammany Hal, now entrenched as Gracie Mansion in the digital age’s Information Highway and social network web sites extraordinary.

“Last but not least, we will close all schools on Monday, depending on how the hurricane like rains and winds bear down Sunday night,” said the dollar a year public servant.

In Connecticut, the Governor warmed of downed electrical lines, trees blocking roads, the waters from the Long Island Sound rising. “Stay off the roads, whatever you do,” he said, resounding the the caveats from the two other public servants.

Isn’t this what brings out the best in human nature?. Humans coming together. Arresting their beast like aggressions and selfishness, sharing their learning curves. to put it mildly.

Your neighbor is a mirror of yourself.

*******

You got to lose yourself to find yourself

The Cityu that never sleeps “Hurricane Reap the Wild Wind The Mortral Storm” playing out... October 27,2012