The hell with all this smorgasbord shish kebab crap”, said Bugsy Segal

“The hell with all this smorgasbord shish kebab crap”, said Bugsy Segal, the former bully mobster of Murder Inc., the Livonia Avenue hoods striving to take over the East New Yorkunderworld from Marlon Brando’s Sicilian “Godfathers”.

                                                                                                    II

Pounding his chest, like a campaigner for the Mayoralty of the city that never sleeps. “I am the “Phantom of the Opera”  

 Forty five big ones a seat….. Broadway’s longest show,surviving our minor planet’s war poverty and disease.

Bugsy,” kvetched”, offering his arm to Ruthie, the Brooklyn College music librarian’s aide de camp ,the two strolling from  the subway, Bugsy showing a side of his nature that Meyer Lansky, Al “Bummy”  Davis, a Golden Glovecontender)……..had never seen in the wars that stretched to the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island when a human (Abe Reles’s?)was thrown  from the pent t house to Surf Avenue below as though  it was a body from the Cyclone or the parachute jump, doting the father’s landscape of Donald Trump.

                                                                                                  Ill

When we first met Bugsy, it was at the Brownsville warehouse where the soda bottles were stored….contained in their bottled menagerie long before Tennessee William’s own “Glass Menagerie”

“A nickel a pickle” was our entry into the marketplace: the reality scene was East Flatbush, several subway stops from the warehouse and where Bugsy prove d to be Ruth of the Brooklyn College’s music library staff and the Luna Park poster as one got off the elevator to those hallowed scores of Robert (Clara’s Shuman’s genius composing  hubby) and Stalin’s secret sorcerer, Dimitre Shostakovich.

If George Gershwin created his data base at Tin Pan Alley, Major Fenton scanned his lungs out on those WPA red brickpublic servants. In their overalls: garbed with their hammers, saws, pail of nails. The cement trucks: their rolling masses of cement, pouring out their thickening mustard or ketchup..

Depending on how one sees it flow into the wheel barrow.

“Get your pepsi, coke, cream, root beer.  Seven up, Dr Peppersasper… orange . A nickel a pickle.”

A nickel a pickle…”Come and get it”” log before Edward Arnold  honed his MGM stuff to the dust bowl denizens of the early 200th century, trying to find their raunchy selves after Herbert Hoover’s speech writers mesmerized them, their gullibility into believing in his lines.  

“A chicken in every pot”, proved an empty and self serving fog horn. A lot of sound and fury out on the prairies…. Henry Fonda’s Jane Darwell “Grapes of Wrath”( Brooklyn born John Steinbeck)

                                                                                         

                                                                                                    lV

In the same motion as far as a crow flies, on Church Avenue “They made me a Criminal” was the titled marquee at the Waldorf movie. Studying the Warner Brothers (Jack L, later to meet in tennis doubles)  lobbied posters. John Garfield, (akaGarfinkle) Joan Caulfield, no relation to Salinger’s Holden (“Catcher in the Rye”) 

Munching a frozen milky way, Major Fenton joined the matineeeight nine ten year old innocents, awaiting the rise and fall of an actor in his persona named John Garfield aka Julie Garfinkle.

But like the 6th grade spelling bees and the birthday parties: spin the bottle, put the tail on the donkey’s tail blindfolded.

The female of the species to be emancipated decades later…..two wars, ‘Nam.

However “a nickel a pickle “was beholden to T.S. Eliot’s dustpan . Major Fenton’s wired hair terrier pup gave him a bacterial germ:  an unabated typhoid fever that ran to 106 degrees and a 30 day come at Beth El hospital on Linden Boulevard. (Brookdale.edu )

Given up forever, a last minute blood transfusion by his Uncle Phil of Bensonhurst , gave him a new lease on life. He opened his  ten year old blues……..

                                                                         

The City that never sleeps, August 22, 2013

“Say it ain’t so Vince,” Red Barber from his catbird seat

“Say it ain’t so Vince,” Red Barber from his catbird seat, Tallahassee, Florida. “We saw his potential, his promise  atEbbets Field in Brooklyn.

“ Crouched between my catbird seat and Al Helfer in the booth. But what did we know.  Vince Scully ‘s  acclaim and admirationat Chavez Ravine 48 hours ago, the L.A. Dodgers, putting his voice on for another year. At 85”, playing out his scrub like field of dreams a la Connie Mack, the patrician into his nineties..”.

“A latent immortal soul buried alive for 65 years, never burned out, by God”.

                                                                                    II

“But what did we know. Vince’s immortal soul. Eighty five years young and the Dodger organization sent him out to pasturefor another post graduate year….buddy amigo back breaking work of amore….nothing is work unless one wishes to do something else.” quoteth Branch Rickey from his sermon on the mount at  Montague and Court . “The Chancellor can do no wrong.”

85 years into “Boys of the Summer” said Red Barber, his eyes and voice, never a shill for Dan Topping’s Yankees across the river, down the pike in their new billion dollar scene…Memorial Park.

”I’m no pimp. I caked ‘em as I see ‘em,” said Red, his mind’s eye going back to those yesterdays at Ebbets, sitting in the broadcasting booth. This kid... an inintern.. a yearning intern.With a dream as Stan Lomax, the WOR sports editor for 40years, would say. (Midwood High’s Argus, 1943)”

                                                                                      III

Give the 20 year old kid, a whirl, a break. He may be a flash in the pan. A crooning syntax at best; a tonsils like the Bing,Sinatra.  But who kn ows what the morrow brings. A Johnny Vander Meer, pitching two…mind you two n o hitters,  thelights turned on for the first time. The Brooklyn roof tops  agog.”Night games from Bedford Avenue before Churchill’s mother (born in Brooklyn Heights) told her son in playing out the Prime Minister’s role,” maim the rooftops”, enabling the Londoners to deter  Adolph’s blitz.

“This is Ed Murrow, speaking from those rooftops as Hitler’smantra for Baron von Cram , raided the city,   rising from thewomb…  Ditty the Dinosaur, the saber tooth tiger; in the Los Angeles’s basin, Chavez Ravine the archaic base of the La Brea tar pits and Vince Scully’s Angels.

Leo Durocher, the manager in those hurly burly knothole kid yesterdays.”Nice guys finish last.”

“Eat your words, Leo.” The gashouse gang’ shortstop, speaking off the cuff at the Friars club,  out of touch with Red Barber’s protégé and his once invisible but emerging voice. Awesome perhaps the war still to come prior to Scully’s discovery…Bobby Bragan , the catcher behind Mickey Owen (the passed ball in the World Series of ’41, Howie Schultz, a 6’6” first baseman who played with the Boston Celtics during the off season, Coast Guardsman Gene Hedrmanski put in his time after active duty. Bragan while slow on his feet as catchers go (ErnieLombardi  of the Reds) tried  his hand at short, Pee Wee serving his time in the military.y.

                                                                                           IV

Larry McPhail out of Cincinnati, validated the cornerstone at Montague (Romeo’s nemisis?) and Court Street in  downtownBrooklyn. That cornerstone where the Professor,  a gashouse gang pioneer named Branch Rickey, gazed unto his crystal ball…..like Mandrake the Magician, he took a voodoo metric . “God give me the presence of mind to uphold my end of the bargain with the Dodger trust.   McPhails, O’Malleys.

“Who knoweth what the morrow brings ,” said the Mahatma, breaking the color line with Ucla’s Jackie Robinson… that eye hand coordination, transcending the Josh Gibson Satchel Paige Negro League,

Montreal and…”The boys of the summer” crashing the all whitecircuit, #42 laying down a squeeze bunt, the chalk swirling in the  slide at home plate. Ring Lardner , the father of  the  “Mash” creator, in the celebrity seats, brushing his jacket off.

“Say it ain’t so, Vince.”

                                                                                            V

And therefore these larger than life humans Heroes came forth to thunderous ovations, recapturing their own field of dreams. It was as though they never missed a heart beat as they stepped one by one out of the opposing player dugouts, their memories and epithanies flashed on the electronic scoreboard in center field.

The Babe in his camel hair coat, pointing to the distant bleachers;  Lou Gehrig “I’m the luckiest man alive” “Joe DiMaggio and his 54 game hitting streak. The Mick, Mantle,Roger Maris with his two sons at his side …Bill Dickey, Hank Bauer in the “clutch”, Yogi, Billy Martin, Paul O’Nei, Bernie Williams without his guitar, dashing out on the field.        

“Say it ain’t so, Vince.”

                                                                                         VI

And then these athletes… playing out their own field of dreams,the ceiling of their skies reenergizing their years..

# 42, himself Jackie Robinson before his Chock full of nuts and NY Giant role, showing his teeth, waving his cap. “Campy”, theonce brawly catcher, paralyzed. Don Newcomb, his twin soul on the mound, the circuitry catching Satchel Paige “Don’t lookback. You’ll see something gaining on you.”

“”The boys of the summer” Casey Stengel, Hodges….and then Pee Wee Reese, thed captain from the South…Dixie Walker, his brother Harry, the Waner brothers (Paul and Lloyd), Pete Reiserbefore his  concussion, crashing into the Center Field wall ,the clothing store advertisement.

“Ducky” Medwick, Van Lingel Mungo… the barber himself..Sal Maglie, shuffling between the Polo Grounds and EbbetsField., his sinister  look, shading his sideburn s as he faced the likes of “Mr. October”, George Steinbrenner ,the Yankee impresario signing Reggie Jackson to a personal assistant bargain when his playing days ended…..the quads, knees Johnny L sugery faded out his career. (as with Jeter, El Capitan,testing himself in minor league Trenton, the Bronx Bomber farm teams a la Newark, Montreal for the Bums across the bridge and Navy Yard, at Bedford Avenue.

Stan the Man Musial playing his harmonica, Ted the splinter Williams, serving in two wars, yet batting 406, throwing the dice into his immortality, his mortal son wanting to freeze hispapa forever.

“Say hey” Willie Mays bowing to the thunderous acclaim,joining his mates, sharing their space… ala  a viable Monument Park.

Creepy Crespie of the Cards and the Bards  King Henry cutups (Slender, Mistress Quickly, Falstaff.) Father Serra’s Missionary influence, historically among Southern California converts...

The Dodger managers: Charley Dressen,  Tom LaSorta, Don

Mattingly (present and accounted for). Walter Alston’s quiet mind and leadership at both Chavez Ravine and BedfordAvenue.

Carl Furillo, the Duke, “Cookie” , Dolph Camili, Ed Stanky, Billy Herman,(a Babe Herman relation?) Lew Riggs, ArkyVaughan, Kirby Higbe from the Phils ,dependable WhitlowWyatt ,)(the pitching duels with the Cards Morton Cooper, his brother Walker, catching) Larry French, Curt Davis. “Fat”Freddy Fitzsimmons and  Hugh Casey mopping up in relief..making names for themselves, Casey owning a diner in the neighborhood, like the  great Yank reliever M. Riviera, mopingup…his 9th inning grand finale after some 19 years saving w’sfor Steinbrenner’s motivated leadership.

                                                                Vll

But the loudest scream of impropriety went from the fans to Mickey Owen, who in the ’41 World Series against the Yankees,he dropped a third strike against Old Reliable,Henrich ging to first on the passed ball, and the rest as they say is “a bloop and a blast”.

Babe Phelps, his predecessor even forgave him. Nothing could stop the Yanks They were on a steamroller….King Kong Keller,the Yankee Clipper and “Old Reliable”Tommy Heinrich….  Joe Page stretching, in the bullpen.

Then the southpaw Sandy Koufax, his Van Nuys partner DonDrysdale, the Dugout owner on Oxnard Boulevard…Sid Gordon(Tilden High School), Mel Ott, Bill Terry of the Polo Ground Giant rivals.  Paying tribute to Vince Scully, who arrived on the scene in 1948, sixty five years ago.

Can Tommy Holmes, the Brooklyn Eagle scribe, Jimmy Cannon, the New York Post writer capture the ferocious competitive energy .To measure their heroics by mortal hair picking and the standards of a Philadelphia lawyer. Ask Don Zimmer, the shortstop, and Yankee coach, who played for both teams.

Ask the Scooter, Frank Frisch, Joe Gordon, Crosetti, Red Rolfe (his coz, Chairman of the Englsish departmet, nearby , off the freeway, Westwood Village and Ucla.

And then Hank Aaron appeared…..Like Willie Mays, he electrified the spectators……the young old identifying with his larger than  life gift of God..

Johnny Pesky, Bobby  Doer, Dom DiMaggio…Hank Greenberg,the Detroit slugger, Ralph Kiner, Ralph Branca? (he married the boss’s daughter), throwing the home run ball in the playoff game versus the hated Giants. Was it Bobby Thompson who hit it out … Carl Hubbell, Hal Schumacher in the bullpen, HarryDanning catching, in their N.Y. Giant field of dreams.

Warren Spahn warming up for the Braves before they moved to Atlanta (the Boston Braves).     Al Gionfrido miracle catch of a “say hey kid” drive into the gap at Ebbets…Goody Rosen, a” brother” a game of miracles…. Goody, an envious outfielder, in sheer disbelief.

The field of dreams morphed into a game of miracles.                                                                                                                                                    

And the hated Cardinals…Marty Marion at short Johnny Mize at first, Enos Slaughter , Terry Moore in center. t. But the “Barber” Sal Maglie walking out  to the mound as the scoreboard captured his dream  in the hardnosed “Bigs”

Joe Torre, a Brooklyn native and a catcher by dream, morphinginto manager of the Yanks… Dodgers in the Ravine. Anexecutive , never talking trash, bargaining with the player’s union (Arod’s use of drug enhancing substances)

Say it ain’t so, Vince.

Red Barber’s catbird seat, honoring Vince Scully’s sixty five years in broadcasting, Chavez Ravine ,  the Los Angeles Angels,August 22, 2013.  

“The hell with all this smorgasbord shish kebab crap”

“The hell with all this smorgasbord shish kebab crap”, said Bugsy Segal, the former bully mobster of Murder Inc., the Livonia Avenue hoods striving to take over the East New Yorkunderworld from Marlon Brando’s Sicilian “Godfathers”.

                                                                                                    II

Pounding his chest, like a campaigner for the Mayoralty of the city that never sleeps. “I am the “Phantom of the Opera”  

 Forty five big ones a seat….. Broadway’s longest show,surviving our minor planet’s war poverty and disease.

Bugsy,” kvetched”, offering his arm to Ruthie, the Brooklyn College music librarian’s aide de camp ,the two strolling from  the subway, Bugsy showing a side of his nature that Meyer Lansky, Al “Bummy”  Davis, a Golden Glovecontender)……..had never seen in the wars that stretched to the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island when a human (Abe Reles’s?)was thrown  from the pent t house to Surf Avenue below as though  it was a body from the Cyclone or the parachute jump, doting the father’s landscape of Donald Trump.

                                                                                                  Ill

When we first met Bugsy, it was at the Brownsville warehouse where the soda bottles were stored….contained in their bottled menagerie long before Tennessee William’s own “Glass Menagerie”

“A nickel a pickle” was our entry into the marketplace: the reality scene was East Flatbush, several subway stops from the warehouse and where Bugsy prove d to be Ruth of the Brooklyn College’s music library staff and the Luna Park poster as one got off the elevator to those hallowed scores of Robert (Clara’s Shuman’s genius composing  hubby) and Stalin’s secret sorcerer, Dimitre Shostakovich.

If George Gershwin created his data base at Tin Pan Alley, Major Fenton scanned his lungs out on those WPA red brickpublic servants. In their overalls: garbed with their hammers, saws, pail of nails. The cement trucks: their rolling masses of cement, pouring out their thickening mustard or ketchup..

Depending on how one sees it flow into the wheel barrow.

“Get your pepsi, coke, cream, root beer.  Seven up, Dr Peppersasper… orange . A nickel a pickle.”

A nickel a pickle…”Come and get it”” log before Edward Arnold  honed his MGM stuff to the dust bowl denizens of the early 200th century, trying to find their raunchy selves after Herbert Hoover’s speech writers mesmerized them, their gullibility into believing in his lines.  

“A chicken in every pot”, proved an empty and self serving fog horn. A lot of sound and fury out on the prairies…. Henry Fonda’s Jane Darwell “Grapes of Wrath”( Brooklyn born John Steinbeck)

                                                                                         

                                                                                                    lV

In the same motion as far as a crow flies, on Church Avenue “They made me a Criminal” was the titled marquee at the Waldorf movie. Studying the Warner Brothers (Jack L, later to meet in tennis doubles)  lobbied posters. John Garfield, (akaGarfinkle) Joan Caulfield, no relation to Salinger’s Holden (“Catcher in the Rye”) 

Munching a frozen milky way, Major Fenton joined the matineeeight nine ten year old innocents, awaiting the rise and fall of an actor in his persona named John Garfield aka Julie Garfinkle.

But like the 6th grade spelling bees and the birthday parties: spin the bottle, put the tail on the donkey’s tail blindfolded.

The female of the species to be emancipated decades later…..two wars, ‘Nam.

However “a nickel a pickle “was beholden to T.S. Eliot’s dustpan . Major Fenton’s wired hair terrier pup gave him a bacterial germ:  an unabated typhoid fever that ran to 106 degrees and a 30 day come at Beth El hospital on Linden Boulevard. (Brookdale.edu )

Given up forever, a last minute blood transfusion by his Uncle Phil of Bensonhurst , gave him a new lease on life. He opened his  ten year old blues……..

                                                                         

The City that never sleeps, August 22, 2013

Jodie Foster, a Yale undergraduate short circuited her silver screen fantasy

Jodie Foster, a Yale undergraduate short circuited her silver screen fantasy, addressing the disparity of the haves andhave-nots on our minor planet.

“Indeed!  Throw her a Frisbee, Major Fenton.”

                                                                                    II

Needless to say, the actress found just the right vehicle a la the Mir to delineate the 21st century handicaps and hiccups as themortals on our minor planet, face up to their transgressions in a shuttle to Mir. Or a facsimile space lab…...

To escape their gravity laden identities and pursue their face lifts from outside the galaxy….in outer space.

Spacing out in space modules may mean different things to different people but to a skull and bones Yalie, the terrain  where Jodie can probe the self serving greed and ego trips that give rise to a intimidation and confusion in a once wondrous joy our nation provided before the dust bowl, the two great wars, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the  9/11 terrorist murders at the twin towers..

                                                                                        III

The dichotomy of the Mir escape and the brain washing the fleeing mortals dreaded, gives rise to the apparition s and delusions the humans left behind suffer. A breath of fresh air, in the fabric of disillusionment, challenges by original thinkers like Ms Foster thrive on.

Assaulting the Alpine peaks As Ronald Coleman did in FrankCapra’s “Lost  Horizon”.(James Hilton) Yet after Wars to end all wars and aforementioned invasions, the weaknesses and moral infidelities on our Continent are still with us like the plague, only accentuated in cyber space.                                                                                                                                                      

                                                                                IV

Ms Foster discovered the theme that goes right to the soul of thecosmos. An industrialism once full of  promise is exhumed in the  studio lab and seen from the sci-fi “scalpel of Doctor Jodie!”

The vacuity of the idiot boxes only resonates in the enlightenment her persona lends to Madame Lafarge discardingher knitting, joining Rousseau’s French Revolution.(Dickens “Tale of two cities”)

That it no longer is a Dale Carnegie “How to win friends and influence people” A cloak and dagger game unless Jodie’s skull and bone Rudy Valleys, can unleash the pain the have-nots haveendured, frustrating their motivations…“Stop the world, I want to get off”, Shubert theatre, New Haven, Connecticut..

 Our “The Monkey from Mars” (Long Beach Teachers Journal, Sol Kaufler, editor) a melee from our saber tooth tiger yesterdays, throwing the Frisbee on the Yale- New Haven Green, off Chapel Street.        

                                                                                     V 

Meanwhile Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Kellydown the road, are throwing the dice on an appeal to a higher Federal Court. A lower court holding their Stop and Frisk police power and practice is unconstitutional. Suspects of race andcolor denied their right to enjoy, assemble, without the uniformed cop stopping their growth and development.(Darwin’s  Evolution?)

“Whoever said this isn’t a police state?”

                                                                                    VI

“39 Steps””Suspicion” Hitchcock creating a straw man for the audience to presume ,suspect a “heavy” or a villain” and thus avoid the uniformed voice of authority to unmask the role player: “machina et deux, suspending the disbelief.

“Scarface” Paul Muni’s gangster persona, George Raft flipping the half dollar as his henchman, Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry”, Kirk Douglas’s “Detective Story”

Playing out their personas in civvies. 

Is any plainclothesman locking the cell door and throwing away the key? A suspect is charged with a crime. Committing a crime per se. But as one may interpret in Jody Foster’s tour de force    “Stop and frisk”, doesn’t suspend disbelief. Or does it, in curbing criminal anti social behavior?.  

A history that replicates December 7 1941 morphing as 9/11 Twin Towers ambush from the air, innocents being given their last breaths, without knowing what hit them.

                                                                                          VII

“Halt and frisk” may undermine the pleasure principle but living among addicts on heroin, cocaine, mescaline, the latest LSD import, you name it.   The 21st century has gone through the ceiling of cyber space and unto Jodie Foster’s scenario.

Seeing the have-have not dichotomy for what it is and the lives it puts in disarray….this isn’t a brief for “stop and frisk”.However in the Jodie Forster tempo of our times, a sightseer on New Haven’s Chapel Street, won’t see her catching Major Fenton’s Frisbee on the green.

On the Yale New Haven Green, off Chapel Street…the Frisbee sailing through the skies… Stratford on the Avon, Chapel Street,August 18, 2013.

Coincidences beyond coincidences

Coincidences beyond coincidences, the passing of First Hearing’s Lloyd Moss, a fixture for a half a century on the classical music scene , his sensibility and   generosity, enlarged  our state of frontal lobes and cranium expansiveness…. of what life could be and become.

”One  small step for man.   A giant leap for mankind. ” Neil  Armstrong, the Apollo mission, August 1969.

                                                                                      II

To appreciate the Lloyd Moss “First Hearing” you had to identify with that  Kingston Avenue Beauty Parlor  Crown Heights Brooklyn reality. Hearing his “daddy’s’” plastic radio…those sounds of big and small voices…Richard Tucker, Jan Peerce, Robert Merrill, around d the corner on  EasternParkway, opposite 770, the Lincoln Terrace Park tennis courts  beyond.

                                                                                       III

A religious rite every week, his “Voice of America” reveling in the opinions of Bob Sherman, Marty Bookspan, Edwin Downs,the host massaging their critical juices. Irving Kolodin ready toopine at a moment’s moment..

But Lloyd Moss in his tasteful buoyancy and diplomatic finesse, the listener would think   he was back on the Armed Forces Network (in Japan)  never offending anybody. …agreeing or disagreeing, with a poetic light touch . Not to make enemies, but to opine the passing of Mozart’s 39th in E flat, the strings cluttering their sound or not, the Cd recording hard with thefrittering or the linear notes” too small to read”.

All done with a humor and nonchalance,  the criticism taken with a grain of a beauty shop on Kingston Avenue, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, his “Daddy”  24/7 with a classical music  landscape.  WQXR

                                                                                           IV        

Being that all things are relative, the Southern Californiacounterpoint reared on Mulholland Drive. A perspective andvision that the late Marlon Brando, Jack Nicolson,  Jan Popper ,Ucla’s opera workshop impresario, Will Durant(97 years at his passing) and his wife Ariel, “The Story of Philosophy” andLorentz Melchior,  a Danish born basso in his retirement retreat,hearing Tracy& Hepburn pounding tennis balls ……… atopMulholland, overlooking the San Fernando Valley below.

A far cry from a Kingston Avenue beauty parlor, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York.

The city that never sleeps,  August 14, 2013.