A tour de force. Canyon lined faces ,the scars ravaged by man’s inhumanity

A tour de force. Canyon lined faces ,the scars ravaged by man’s inhumanity

to man.”Lincoln” a massive scenario by  Stephen Spielberg&Tony Kushner with sublime ”commander in chief” portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis as the towering 16^th President of the United States.                                                

                                                       II

 Southern “rebs” against Northern “blue bellies”. Brother against brother, minefields of slavery in dispute. The whole range of  emotion come to life amidst cunning   self serving  playing out in some 120 minutes.

The inundation of role playing out as Daniel Day-Lewis gives his inimiocable energy to flesh out  Abraham Lincoln’s moral life, a battleground for the Civil War and the 14^th amendment.

Forces of  compromise playing out among what was once young naive idealistic white males, as they evolving into tough  but loveable as they spell out their passions on black folk in chains of servitude, during  Jefferson Davis and General(a West Pointer) Robert E. Lee’s “tentativeness” playing out below the Mason Dixon line.

“Your character is your fate”, Lincoln  under unrestrained pressure&probing... being vilified relentlessly. Aging ten years before our  eyes as Tony Kushner with the three dimensional Tommy Lee Jones, Hal Holbrook, Sally Field become the apotheosis of the President’s war room and inner sanctum, as he plays out his  day to day struggle against the knights of darkness during the war and win the accompanying 14^th amendment vote in the House of Representatives.

                                                          III

 Lincoln’s state of mind and temperament  being tested from all . His dreams becoming nightmares, having only his alter ego to sustain his Magna Carta in his fated American birthright. His need to relate parables and memories to his opinionated fractured listeners, coveting their own selfish agendas, Lincoln fuming at their opportunism and self serving.

“The people be damned”.

Not that he believed in the crony tableau, and its conspicuous consumption. Reality of trrading skins in the chess move maneuvering...even George Washington’s portrait being the buffoon, on the wall of an water cooler, owned by an English diplomat, never getting over the Revolutionary War.

                                                           IV

Meanwhile the sympathetic creative minds and what seemed like thousands of credits and cavalry horses galloped into their own trail and Divine Providence into this monumental “Lincoln” that comes alive, breathing fire and brimstone.....in pursuit of his own Holy Grail.

Tommy Lee Jones fresh from the vote, dusting off his wig, jumps into bed with his colored sweetheart mistress wife , the “fers” outscoring the “agins” in the 14^th amendment wooing vote...

                                                 

                                                     V

 To his wife, as they rode off in their chauffeured buggy “ We ought to travel. To the center of it all. Jerusalem” John Wilkes Booth waiting, in the theater, later that night.

Pavilion theater, adjacent to “Bryna Court”, Park Slope, opposite Prospect Park, Novemeber 27,2012

Bullied by Victor McClagen in his role of the gallows foreman

Bullied by Victor McClagen in his role of the gallows foreman  ,Frederic March as “Anthomy Adverse” took it unto himself, to lead the rebellion against the sadism that prevailed  throughout the slave ship’s voyage.

                                                   II

 The tongue lashing by the burly kimosabi of the Duke and John Ford, in no way caused Anthony Adverse to shirk from his leadership role, whether it was the stirring of the coals of Eugene O’Neil’s “Hairy Ape” ,William Bendix as the sweating shoveling coal “ or Anthony Adverse walking the gang plank.

Hence the Captain like Charles Laughton as Bligh in “Mutiny on the Bounty”, Anthony Adverse had to live by his wits.... a cat with nine lives.

                                                   III

What brought this once ocean of humanity to the fore, was the ferry debacle at the South Seaport, Pier Eleven, 24 houras ago. The fcerry crossing from the Fort Lee New Jersey shore, never made it to its berth, missing the dock, the cause celebre injuring 57 commuters, to the City that neb never sleeps..

The ensuing chain of causation woke up the first responders: the police, the firemen, the maritime commissioners and the politicos.....

As though they didn’t have enough for brain&skull lapses....the incoherent coherent dumbing

down the culture by television sit coms, the miscalculation at Pier Eleven is the tip of the Elementary School shootout in Connecitcut, the “Batman” rage by the Neuroscience graduate  student in Colorado, and the all encompassing declaration of war in the 9/11/2001 am bush of 3000 humans in the Twin Towers-Pearl Harbor. Calamity Jane,  reality scene..

                                                      IV

 So here we are ...Anthony Adverse at the gangplank. “Do you wish to be blindfolded?, you scum?” asked the slave ship Capitan.”You can optt see your fate playing out. . You wont have to see the man eating palatable sharks below. Your last moment will be  finite, Anthony Adverse..

“Take your poison, you scum.”

The sadism ands bullying playing out as the ship’s leadership navigated the shoals of

of psychological tyranny, covering up madness and the soul’s  concussion- like bifurcation..                                                                                

                                                         V

The sharks scenting flesh, snapping below.... the sharks above, relishing another link in their belts of authority role playing. Happy endings within this reign of terror was once part and parcel of the American Dream. Its revolutionary ferver and the Declaration of Independence.

The rebellion enjoying its Boston Tea Party......come the Revolution...

                                                     VI

Anthony Adverse with the perfumed hanky of Olivia deHaviland, harnessing its fragranc on hias brow, “(his last wish”) he ripped off his blindfold and .....

 Fed the sharks mojo and appetite, dashing to the Captain’s berth, ringing the six bell alarm, snaring the wheel, liberating the sweaty “hairy apes” below.

 Reversing El Capitan’s  sadistic “street cred”, the Ocean of Humanity in its nativity, Anthony Adverse in the Captain’s berth, restoring the course.  Olivia deHaviland waiting at the Pier Eleven dock..

                                          

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From the deck of the Intrepid and its Space Shuttle, the City that never Sleeps, January 11,2013 

Gabby Gifford’s determinism to return to the battlefield and trenches

Gabby Gifford’s determinism to return to the battlefield and trenches, where a crazed  hired gun” ambushed Angels in disguise, their classroom peers at Sandy Hook Elementary, refused to go quietly into 21 coffins.....

                         

                                                 II

To begin another school day in Monroe Township, eight miles down the Connecticut road..The Congress lady given up for dead at the Arizona shopping mall, had regained most of her thinking on her feet, encouraged by her retired Nasa officer husband, his own risk serviced life in orbiting, she took on the aggressiveness of Alana Ladd, playing out the  “Shane”. of her actor father.

To let these school bound survivor kids and their mothers and fathers absorb the mirrored perceptive of a survivor, who rose from that shopping mall rampage, bloody brain and skull wounds....an intensive care rehab,  patient surgeons playing out their own heart lines to her life support.

                                   III

Who could ever forget “Shane:, Alana’s father, waved off into the sunset by that tenderfoot

 of all first second third and fourth graders, living out their dreams on our minor planet’s classroom..

“Shane  Shane,” he cried, his heart palpitating, those arms hands and feet into the Bard’s **Tempest” the assassin(s) captured in a “Duel in the Sun”. The tenderfoot longing for every child’s “Shane” Brandon de Wilde.’s breathtaking longing of a fare the well.

 

                                                      IV

Not unlike the rehabilitated heroine from the John Ford Duke Wayne Monument Valley “Stagecoach”, she showed the parents what it took to preserve her image of caring, remembering the 6^th grader who went out of her way that day in the mall, identifying with the Congress lady’s modus operandi.

“To see her own mirror of what she wanted to become when she grew up.”i

 

                                                       V

A grain of serendipity if you will, like in a Aesop or Grimm fairy tale, the events seemingly per chance, but therein lies the fait accompli .Dissembling beyond any stretch, or coincidence by coincidence..

 

“Gabbee Gabbee,, the young girl embracing her tomorrow... her futuro. not knowing the Arizona badlands of Monument Valley, was a  Dude, a waiting in disguise, his trigger finger to shatter the girl’s “tomorrow and tomorrow” into oblivion.

The Duke riding Shotgun (like Shane)on his Trojan Horse, discovered by his alter ego John Ford.. both thespians once upon a time, their souls soaring to the Far Country..

 

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“I learned that it is the weak who are cruel. And that greatness is to be expected only from the strong”....  author, Leo Rosten

The City that never sleeps, January 5, 2013

As the wheel turns my friends, the Cream Cheese Bandit

As the wheel turns  my friends, the Cream Cheese Bandit, caught with his pants down, by the  Safeway store manager, the “Tiny Tim” size cream cheese in his foul weather jacket pocket, was given a slap on the wrist, the store manager’s “Don’t let it happen again,coach. We’ll forward the shoplifting photos to Central Division, Parkler Center.......you’ll have a rap sheet like a Siamese twin....into your umbilical cord, coach.”

“You should know better.....Hollywood Hills,(adjacent Stan Kenton’s pad) Trousdale Estates, Maylord Apartments. Venice, Eagle Rock, La Habra. Westwood, Santa Monica. Sawtelle West L.A.”.Beverly Hills..... Fox Wilshire kliegs off La Cienega’s restaurant row.

 Bel Air’s Stone Canyon Road, Bellagio Road’s oil painting, pogo stick croquette on the back lawn..”.Dutch’s (President Reagan)  homestead before his “win one for the Gipper” Presidential library, above Simi Valley.

 “Why coach,. you got more addresses than a Deputy Sheriff out of the Dakotas ...Aldo Ray, sleeping on your driveway... in his station wagon , day dreaming Columbia Pictures could finding him a place in the sun, named Gower Gulch.”

                                        II

“In the mail room..” said the coach, placing the cream cheese on the counter.” Max Arno” said he could place me in the mail room when we first saw the light of day at Gower Gulch two blocks from Hollywood&Vine, Archie Leach aka Cary Grant, Clark Gable’s 8x10's in the windows..... 

 The Brown Derby, down away from Charley Parker’s Dizzy Gillipsie ...Slim Galliard, Errol Garner at Sunset across the street where Al Lapin, founder of the House of Pancakes, tried his  hand at flapping kiddie television..in the air, before he and his brother, Jerry,  in Toluca Lake’s turf for The 3 Stooges Moe Howard and his wife’s “coz”, Harry Houdini.

Bing Crosby and Bob Hope teeing off at nearbvy Lakeside golf club, while Olivia de Haviland was waiting to spread her  “Snake pit” in retirement to London’s Mayfair.

                                        

                                               III

Meanwhile the Witch Doctors across the Continent were sorting out the Cream Cheese bandit’s Uncle Max’s dossier at the Islip, Long Island, asylum for the insane.

 “What was the diagnosis, doc?” the Cream cheese Bandit’s younger brother was into hia probing... What the hell was wrong with him for writing a  letter to President McKinley? Is that  a facility for locking him up? Putting him behind bars?  maddening incarceration day after day for five decades. Who’s insane here ,doc?”

                                                IV

“There’s nothing wrong with your Uncle Max. All he needed was emotional support,” said the shrink. “Penis envy by any other name, Major.. Emasculation....once a month his four sisters would pay a visit, playing out their roles. ..emancipated women. “30 lashes with a wet noodle”, Major.”

The interior of the closed ward. A small boned human, his grayng wavy once black hair, toupeed as he gripped the bars. Those scared eyes widened as he saw but a figure of what he could have been....

 “All he neededwas emotional support.”

                                                        V

Major Fenton in his USA Blues, his hands reaching between the bars. Uncle Max scared like a rabbit, backed away, retreating to the guarded hole in the wall, whence he came.

The sisters had withered away his being, he remembered nothing but his four sisters, ministering to their grand design: hiring a limo, cutting the costs four ways,and making their due to Islip....on a black widow cruise, paying their filial obligations to a boy and young man they grew up with....but had long forgotten in playing out their drives for competitive acclaim and recognition.

“All he needed was emotional support.”

 

The day before  New Year’s Eve... the City that nev er sleeps, December 30, 2012