all the fans are muttering is there a Luther Burbank in the “ house” ?

From coast to coast, all the fans are muttering is there a Luther Burbank in the “ house”  ? The house being  “Allen’s Alley”….Senator Claghorn,  Mrs. Nussbaum, Toby Belch, Titus Moody, and  Ajax Cassidy, rounding out Fred Allen’s  commentary for his Sunday night radio barnstorm vis a vi NBC Burbank, Universal City, Rockefeller Center, All the ships at sea.

                                                                                   II 

Fred Allen: Senator Claghorn you are the tip of the iceberg. Tell our listening audience about the perils of making it as the politico winds change  with the cyber space electronic sensors…and metrics.

Riding the topical whirlwinds, Senator. You’ve been in Politics almost forever. You’re the Alben Barkley for Seniority. What’s the secret of your longevity, Senator Claghorn? Can you tell our listeners what makes you tick?                                                           III

“I’ll be perfectly frank, Fred. I was born into FDR’s New Deal.The WPA. Baking mickies off the sidewalk curbs. Hustlingbottle sodas at a niuckle a pickle. Wholesale  with Bugsy and Meyer Lansky two cents a bottle. But screaming my lungs out, wheeling the iced baby carriage, past the two story basementgarage red brick homes being constructed in East Flatbush. Est92nd Street from Avenue B to Remsen.

Fred Allen….Excuse me, Senator. What made you give up on apromising future? Las Vegas strip? Gambling? Playing Faro at the old Golden Nugget ..Wine women and song to drop a cliché.”

                                                                                    IV

Divine providence? Throwing the dice is what you wish for, Fred. But it seemed to me  I was only in the third grade. But one day when school was dismissed at P.S. 233, my curiosity led me to stroll to the Waldorf movie on Church Avenue. Wandered into the lobby. “They made me a criminal”

The actors into their posters were John Garfield (Julie Garfinkle)and Ann Sheridan, Claude Rains and the Dead End Kids.

Fred Allen:    Your star was ascending, Senator .

“I go my own way, Fred. Being a dreamer,  I figured if the “They made me a criminal” was a reflection of the society, then selling cokes, pepsis, cream, sarsaparilla, root beer, orange,lemon …Mr. Allen. That there was only one life to live: buying wholesale and selling  retail? ?                                                                        

                                                                                V

You got your finger on the pulse, Fred. That there’s more to life than what you see or hear

Fred Allen: They didn’t tell you that in P.S. 233?  Gossip andB.S. to make you feel good, Senator? That’s what makes our minor planet go round , waiting for your break.

Everything in synch.“ Playing hide and seek, tether ball, punch ball, stick ball, tag football (association)l, jump rope Dutch style. Ringaleveo, Filipino yo yo “round the world”…  But when we woke up, there were bodies in the tall grass. Sun flowers to the sky, disguising the remains, but if you looked  beyond you’d see deceased gang members. Dead gangsters fallen in the  warsof Brownsville, Williamsburg, Coney Island.

“Hubsey, you’re not made for these sins.. Tilden High School’s, skinny dipping In their summer pool.

Fred Allen:  Butt Senator how could skinny dipping at Tilden High be a turning point?

“Fred, I identified with a musical policeman named Harry Diamond… He played tennis at Herby Tittler’se clay courts onUtica   off Kings Highway….Senator Jake Javitz, Lefty Goldstein who became a dentist. Joel restringing racquets andplaying steady with Lefty…he became the captain of the team at Tilden, later L.I.U.. Long before he was snatched at Safeway, pocketing a Philadelphia cream cheese, earning him “the cream cheese bandit” sobriquet.

                                                                             VI

Fred Allen: Senator Claghorn is that the same Tilde High where Al Sharpton honed his debating sound&fury. Sid Gordon tolling left field at the Polo Grounds…Billy Terry, Mel Ott’s Giants….

And “Habla el Espanol” maestro. Caught the big bruddercheating on the  final and flunked him. But his mother’syoungest sister..Aunt Selma, a teacher at Richmond Hill High in Social Studies, talked him out of it.  

“Give the big brudder a D, Sam, so he can graduate. “Yussell”never learned his lesson… “cheaters never prosper:, Fred...  

What’s the maestro’s name, Fred? He flunked the tennis captain A famous comic genius  high school teach?”?    

Fred Allen You’re thinking of Sam Levinson, the Tilden big time personality..  Graduate of Franklin Lane. His portrait hangsin the library.  Recital hall at Brooklyn College. . Ed Sullivan had him on 17 18 times.

The break from the corrupt yesterdays, (smacking his lips)  wasPolitics at Ucla , Fred. Machiavelli ‘s The Prince” Dr. Ttus gave me an A plus…. (Nixon’s Halderman and Erlichman were sitting up front, gobbling it all up, to their regret.

                                                                       VII

Fred Allen: Mrs Nussbaum, what’s the good word? In your café society? Central Park West? The automat?”

Mrs. Nussbaum: Fred, I am in the mood for good old fashioned smooching.

Fred Allen: Smooching? Why Mrs. Nussbaum I thought you were into the 21st century. ‘Lady Chatterley’s Love” is old fashioned. Out of synch with social networks, the Internet.“Hansel and Gretel” is passé. Hackers and the presence of cyberspace. Remember “The Interview” The studio backed down, not releasing  to  theater chains….thousands of Independents.

No, Mister Allen. I have never confessed to you about love at first sight. ….On Coney Island boardwalk. A tall dapper dandypitchman, hawking kosher franks with sauerkraut, mustard on a roll, as he taunted us kiddos. He was on stilts, the waves lapping up a coinciding storm as in rhythm with his strapped pitch. Hedanced scooted   his placard, stilting into Jimmy Durante’s  cubicle, he shared with piano playing Eddie Jackson.

Fred Allen: What we they selling, Mrs. Nussbaum? Frenchpianos? Made in A Brooklyn?                                                                                                            

                                                                                    VIII

They were selling  kegs of beer for fifty cents like there was no tomorrow. Schnozola belted a couple of bars, while his partner in beer kegs, banged the 88 keys. The man on stilts laughing up a storm, clapping in time, he shoes tapping in rhythm.

Fred Allen: And who was the man on stilts, Mrs. Nussbaum? What became of him?

‘His name was Archie Leach Next I knew he was on the opera marquee… Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly”’

Married to a Geisha girl, mister Allan .

Archie Leach. Into the discarded stilts.          

Fred Allan: Mrs. Nussbaum that was no song and dance man on those stilts.  He changed those stilts for a jalopy and drove to Hollywood. He metamorphosed as alias C.G.”

Mrs. Nussbaum: Not Clark Gable, mister Allen? He was my hero. I idolized him.”

Fred Allen: Cary Grant’s “I do”, marrying Barbara Hutton, the richest woman in the world. Heiress to the Waldorf  5&10 cent store fortune. It lasted only two years but it was longer thatbusting his chops on stilts, promoting those sizzling  franks  with sauerkraut…..it’s all in the sauerkraut, Mrs. Nussbaum.”.

Believe me the Coney Island boardwalk sets the tone. Themustard!

Christmas Day December 25, 2014  The City that never sleeps.          

Allen Alle

Allen Alley’s on radio, Fred Allen interviewing Cesar Romero’sgrandson Filiberto about the Castro Cuban revolutionmetamorphosing into “the promised land”, Mister Allen moves into a empathetic rapport “America and Cube resolve their differences? Havana and Florida cape, separated by  60 miles of shark invested seas.. but who in their right mind would want to defect Paradise now, Filiberto?”....

Life is beautiful   my be a cliché but Frank Capra and  General Jimmy Stewart on the tube  “It’s a wonderful life”, Ward Bond as the copper at the b ridge…no Bach’s Partitas but the General’s self destructiveness … climbing the bridge… his wish fulfillment- hari kri- for the bank’s foreclosures on his friends, neighbors, employees . Remember Donna Reed overreacting,taking the creditors by storm…Mucho gracias de nada.”

Mister Allen moves the radio make closer to Senor Romero.“Knowing that you’re a former knothole kid, Senor. Yourgrandpa the Cisco Kid “Weekend in Havana”, costarringCarmen Miranda.”The Brazilian Bombshell” Tell our audience in your honest words, do you think the “The invisible man” Lone Ranger hi ho Silver” liberates of our almost 6 decades,(1959) will  energize “Habla el Espanol” Yankee first basemanLou Gehrig. “I’m the luckiest man on the face of the Earth”?

”Viva Roberto Clemente” May his dream  live forever, mommy.”

                                                                             II

“Mister  Allen this is  larger than  Jackie Robinson breaking the color line with the Dodgers. Sandy Koufax  with the House of David, on the Parade Grounds at Prospect Park, graduate of Lafayette High escuela in Bensonhurst. I’m only a fifty five cent nickel and dime bandit. A knot hole kid, sitting in the  ChavezRavine  bleachers..

Emerging Habla El Espanol dream. Grandp’s role as the Joker in “the Batman”

“How does the metamorphosis make an impact, SenorRomero?””

“ Muco grande dos passo.. No more status seekers.. But competitive like Pancho Gonales, Segura in tennis. No longer does a player think about defecting to Florida. Athletes can liveout their dream. Playing in mucho grazies stadiums.. Beforegrino fans….1959 Milton’ss ‘ Paradise Lost’ playing out Fidel’s revolutionary memories.””

“You sound  bigger than Benito Juarez.(Paul Muni) PanchoVilla. Senor Romero..larger than Shangrila.”                                                                                                    I

                                                                            III

“Katy Jurado, Delores del rfio.  Ali Khan’s senora.. Rita Hayworth. (“Gilda”). Habla el Espanol Senoritas. They transcend the silver screen, Senor Allan.. Bajas, California Acapulco. Tijuana, Guadalajara,  Juarez, Senor . No longer do we have talk out of both sides of our mouth. Driving a cab, arole of a gardener, kissing up to our ed  kimosabis, living inMiami…con mucho dinero.

“A knot hole kid before Allen’s Alley can you give our listeningaudience  “ It’s a wonderful life” opinion of what the liberation of Cuban defectors means to the big leagues in Hall of Fame millionaire row.”

“Ard” from the Dominican Republic, the “Panchos” from theEst LA. barrio… Boyle Heights,(Brooklyn Avenue) HollenbeckJr. High, Roosevelt High. The escuelas of Lincoln, Wilson andGarfield can don their jocks and stripes, hit those funkyfungos…  oil their mitts, clean out their spikes, washing machine sud and bleach their uniforms, caps. Jackie Robinson’snumero 42   El Serno Jr, East L.A. City Colleg,(Public Speaking)

“Adios barrio…Ponce de Leon’s fountain of youth, mommy, poppa.. Spring training is eternal, mommy.. Whittier Boulevard, La Habra, Fullerton Stte College. Mommy Poppa oh how our grandmas, grandpas would embrace the American dream.

The gringos…Leo Carillo, Ton y Quinn.., Margo (Martha Sodo)from Belvedere Gardens Jr S. tevenson

 o.  

Lupe Velez, Gilbert Roland the”amigo”, Art Aragon the bailiff in pegged pants and the key chain, Enrique Bolanos, Delores del Rio, Katrey Jurado…….Fathers Sera Crespi… the San Fernando missions, our heritages Mommy, Poppa. Fidel’s brother is theFountain of Youthn   reincarnated”

“I AM THE LUCKIEST MAN ON THE FACE OF THEEARTH”, Gehrig’s fanfare that day in the Bronx...a toreador for all bullfighters whose birthrights are “Dos semanas in Havana” Brazil’s Carmen Miranda, grand poppy’’s Cesara Romera’sCuban heritage….mommy a concert singer, daughter of Latino Jose Marti, Cuba’s national hero

’The Statute of Liberty welcomes immigrants from the cradle to the grave, where ever’

“ Hasta la vista, baby.”

The City that never sleeps, December 21, 2014

Fred Allen's pinez nose run in, with theelectronic bayonet charging advertising agencies

Once upon a time in days of yore….before the IndustrialRevolution, cyber space wasn’t even an instinctive vision,blueprinted on the walls of Alley Oop’s cave, where he and Dinnythe Dinosaur  retreated when the saber tooth tigers off the LaBrea tar pits, tracked and smelled prehistoric blood….not withstanding thehaute monde was a caveman and dinosaur steak deluxe.

                                                                                       II

Fast forward into cyber space coming to grips with the saber tooth tigers consumer eatery or diner thousands of years later; another millennium before the majestic China wall was but a gleam in Madame Chang Chai Chek’s eyes, a far cry from her in futuro, living the   good life in exile, on Long Island’s Nassau County’s North Long Beach, off the Long Island Sound.

                                                                                       III

But pioneering Fred Allen was oblivious to these wars and battles waged before he and his frau Portland Hoffa, sister of ArtieHershkowitz, the  agent, whose “coz” the Chairman of Philosophy at Yale, under Kingman Brewster ‘s reign. 

While Fred strode the airwaves, doing battle with advertising agencies before Jack Benny Mary Livingstone and their  gang with Rochester, Don Wilson, Phil Harris, Bobby Brfeen, Dennis day (post Dick Powell, Rudy Vallee) sounding their lung busting “Ma momma done tol me…… ma momma done tol me so…” 

                                                                                      IV

In trying to work up his comedic steam for his 60 minutes on the airwaves, Mister Allen and his cast traveled to Town Hall, to partake of Mark Twain’s ( Samuel  Clements)

“Shh,” said the usherette, guiding the troupe to their balcony seats,which were gratuitous for Fred Allen and his Allen Alley. In otherwords  comps, hearing Mark Twain……(Harper’s Magazine)                                                                                     V

“If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute a very small percentage of the human race: It’s suggested it’s a nebulous puff of star dust, lost in the blaze of the Milky Way.

Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard. But he always beenheard of. He has always been prominent on the planet. Always been heard of. He also been prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is actually out of proportion to thesmallness of his bulk.                                                                                    

                                                                                   VI

His contributions to the world’s list of great names in academia,science, art, music, finance, law, *architecture, medicine and economics along the way, are also out of proportion to his or hernumbers.

He hade a marvelous fight in this world  And he has done it with  one hand tied behind him  He is not vain of himself. And if he is, he ought to be excused for it.

The Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians rose,  the filed their hour glass … faded dream stuff and

they are all gone: other peoples  have sprung up and held the torch high for a time, but it burned out. And they sit in the twilight now or have vanished.

                                                                                 VII

The Jew saw them all: beat them all. And now is what he always wads. Exhibiting no decadence ,no  infirmity of age, no weakening of his part, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind..

All things are mortal but the Jew: all other forces pass. But he remains..

What is the secret of his immortality?”

December 14, 2014. The City that never sleeps. (*Judy Edelman’s 91 years… pioneer woman architect

Her life celebrated  by her family and the City’s architects)

Freaking out on “challenge and response”

Freaking out on “challenge and response”, the vernacular fordiscovering land mines along the way, from the cradle to thegrave. The aero dynamics  of absurdity playing out amidst  the stepping stones of survival, the crocodiles and quicksand   lurking below, while our orbiting planet spins in its “I can’t breathe” galaxy.

                                                                                           II

“Just because we sign our name in your book, doesn’t mean you’re obliged to read it, Professor Einstein,” wrote William Faulkner  that afternoon in Princeton, New Jersey, the author editing his Mississippi material at his editor’s home around the corner, from “Herr Einstein”’s  domicile.

What’s insidious in the is the consumer society, assimilating most of the junk food it serves is that it’s texture is disguised by the pleasure principle. It’s impenetrable. “”There’s always a sucker blinded by the pitchmen selling the Brooklyn Bridge.                    

                                                                                           III

To see through the “believing” gulls  seems “im pos see blay”because moral ambiguity is up in the “air”.

It’s visible at campuses of higher intelligence: the land minesfrom the cradle to the grave prevail, in quicksand and swamps,the crocodiles  lusting at the tooth, waiting for their next “free”meal.          

 I                                                                                      IV 

The pleasure principle confronts the moral ambiguity as the Greek Prince Orestes sought out the Minotaur in his  contrapuntal  “dust bowl” of self destructive  blustering and bullying.  

Where  is there a mirror to be held up to  the monster and  hypnotic  delusion?   A self defeating loser’s mentality. A perpetual trance says former New York Knick number sixth man, Phil Jackson, playing out the High Llama role: headhoncho of basketball operations forty years after the fact: 6th mansplinters on the 70’s bench. “A loser’s mentality” the Knicks having only four wins in a 30 game agenda.

“Stop the  world. I want to get off”.

                                                                                        V  

The self determinant policemen in Ferguson, Missouri, and the New York city policeman on Staten Island, using a choke hold on a 54 Afro American grandfather selling cigarettes,demonstrates the moral ambiguity spin, binding the authority figure while the unarmed culprit tries to defend himself.

The grand juries in both instances, failed to spell out any indictments. The victims are waling the plank in these confrontations. Captains Bligh (Charles Laughton) and Queeq(“Bogy”) were sadistic in their roles, cringing out theirvindictiveness.

In these instances , the officers stream of consciousness doesn’t manifest any  Minotaur torment. But the grand juries and the riots and protests as an aftermath, show that the grievances need to be e addressed  in our post cyber space galaxy.

Didn’t James Baldwin spell out “The fire next time”, some fourdecades earlier...

                                                                              Vl

Orestes in his  Odyssey….slaying the murderous Minotaur . Yet the myth of that cave like beast’s wrath, still pervades in our culture.  Meanwhile the smoking gun and weapons of mass destruction myths are still voices on our galactic stage, their game faces still with us..

“Everybody finds their own self serving level”.  

December 9, 2014. The City that never sleeps.        

Judy Edelman, 91, pioneering female architect

Wherever custodians of the public interest gather in and out of cyber space, remembering and reminiscing about  Judy Edelman A pioneering woman in a male dominated bastion, married to our late cousin, Harold, and mother of two sons who like Judy, are larger than life, starring in  Anthropology and jazz combo’s 88 keys.   Never accepting the female lot in Architecture, she fought  out her role in the Big Apple and Greenwich Village gentrification, for some seven decades What made her DNA  transcend her turf, may be her link to her cousin’s “Wizard of Oz” and “Over the Rainbow” coming alive. Human endeavor may be interpreted as riveting , stifling and compromising.Ayn Rand’s “Fountainhead” launches the blue prints and computer models Yet the origin of their Edelman and Edelman plan of action began way back in Stony Brook, Connecticut. A ranch style four bedroom home, a half hour drive from Westport. A stream running through the acre. Walking distance of Westport High School. Their enduring vision being realized brings to mind Katherine Hepburn,Golda Meir, Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt. The three lady Justiceslarger than life, sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court. May Edelman and Edelman not only be remembered forever but the trail blazing pioneer Judy never be forgotten, whenever custodians of the public interest gather and reminisce. December 5, 2014. The City that never sleeps

Bernard Hermann, once of Juilliard

Although Bernard Hermann, once of Juilliard, didn’t subscribe to “You have to lose yourself, to find yourself”, he may haveorchestrated the ten year ego trip with ”Hitch”, director Alfred Hitchcock’s  nickname in the parlance of movie making on the Universal  lot, off Lankershim and Bluffside Drive in North Hollywood..marketable turf for Gig Scala, Archie Leach munching into his favorite Hungarian

Goulash…., Debbie Reynolds, Gig Young, Tony Curtis, Dorothy Dandridge, Joyce Selznick the “Miracle Worker” and femme fatalemaestro...

                                                                                        II

Two indomitable  geniuses or giants depending on how a sociologistmeasures their relationship  in the conundrum of the  studiomachinations and devilish self absorption.

The portly Englishman from across the pond, had been what is known as a film editor, the “headmasters” promoting his thankless role to director. And into the suspenseful scenarios…”The Lady Vanishes” and “The Thirty Nine Steps”, Mister Atomic”s fateddoom on the Music Hall stage, the devastation from somewhere in the orchestra seats.. the riveting gun shot sounds…”Mr. Atomic’sbody slumps. ‘….

The action on the train mirrors the “Mister Chips” handcuffed link to Madeleine Carol, the two fleeing the Mayfair theater for the Scottish Highlands of the fingerless master spy, trying to hunt them down in the tyranny of “Hitch’s” suspenseful plotting. And understated dialogue, the former film editor got the good word from the studio “bigs”, cavorting on the links at Hillcrest or the courts at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club or the gin rummy tables at Brentwood golf and tennis.

                                                                                            III

Meanwhile Bernard Hermann of the Big Apple, NYU, and Julliardwas chasing down Orson Welles at CBS’s radio Mercury theater. “Citizen Kane’s” original, made his reputation with the outer spacelanding from Mars, in clean cut middle class New Jersey, once the scene for Colonel Lindberg and his kidnapped son.

Once the doomed scene  had come and gone, “Citizen Kane”  heard the chimes of El Real Camino … the studio call at RKO’s MelroseAvenue..….and packed his toothbrush  and Mercury Theateraficiandos for the energy and drive to chronicle William Randolph Hearst and his own larger than life ambitions beyond Marian Davies (“A star is born?”) and those Fatty Arbuckle Harold Lloyd  Laurel&Hardy parodies and matinees for the man who wanted to becomePresident….. at his San Simeon castle.

                                                                                              IV 

Here were the priceless ingredients for Bernard Hermann to musterhis musical themes , not withstanding John William’s Star Warsillusion of Cyber space….. and the Arthur Fiedler Boston Popsrebound off ET’s score  at Universal Studio in North Hollywood..

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                                                                                              V

But where doth the Bernard Hermann idiomatic short  repeatingpulses(ostinati) go? …..Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, North by Northwest, Torn Curtain, Birds, those cackling catatonic measures unlike Stoki’s prelude and overture of Sebastian Bch’s harmonies in Disney’s “Fantasia”.                                      

So why did the cubby “Hitch” fired Bernard Hermann after all those collaborations. An intervening power? The studio chiefs wanted to run with the Beatles and Rolling Stones  rock and roll?.

How dare our potato stocked ears grab this melody?! Put yourself in Bernard’s shoes? A temper tantrum here and there . But “Hitch” sold out for  the likes of the “chiefs” and Bernard Herman “bon voyage”left for England and the haunting “Fahrenheit 451” score.

Trufault’s “Jules and Jim”? No way Jose! Our own scenario buried away on the lot, far from the gas guzzling freeway sound and fury..……..hear the theremin….. sine qua non a synthesizer  Bernard’s use of electronic orchestration. Extending his range beyond four and twelve flutes.  

TV’s “Have gun, will travel” “The Twilight Zone.

Radio’s CBS workshop Norman Corwin . David Raksin’s “The Subject is film music”.“Eagles fly alone.  A sparrow flies in a flock.”

December 3, 2014. The city that never sleeps.