Our second grade teach, P.S. 208 ‘s Mrs.Bautzer

Can you imagine our second grade teach, P.S. 208 ‘s Mrs.Bautzer, trying to align our left handed penmanship  to the conforming calculus of the Brooklyn’s dominant right handedness as thou  depression laden yesterdays weren’t enoughfor a breath of fresh air, no less accord conformity.

                                                                                    II

But she persisted not unlike Roy Eldridge on his horn, hssignature birthdays  repeating the body and soul of his tatt tt tat through the same cosmos she attributed our rebellious nature…….playing ringaleveo, jumping rope, tick tack toe,getting caught up in a pickle, running back and forth, avoid being tagged “out”!

Punch ball with the Linksman kids from the corner houe on   Avenue B and East 92nd Street……Izzy, Irving, Manny and their sisters Rosy and Pearl. Their mother a master chef, inviting “Hubsy” in for a grand feast, while our own   mother  fought her way thru Pitman shorthand, while scraping a few bucks as a steno to Jimmy Cagney’s vaudeville  booker Erlanger and Blackin I the Big Apple.

Flo Zigfield and Molly Picon, Sophie Tucker, Ethel Merman,Billy Rose waiting in the wings. Molly’s posters plastered on theChurch Avenue Utica Avenue lampposts

The Roy Eldridge horn toot tooting away into in to his universe of “free” association. Cryptic muse over the  1909 lifeline gigs.…...

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But how could a six year old kid know that left handedness wasa stigma in a right handed conventional   battleground where theAdlers demonstrated their stage presence in Yiddish theater downtown. Jimmy Cagney of RedHook, hoofing it, steno Esther,his Pitman scribe as a steno taking the whole “Wabash stomp”swing era in. (Chicago’s “Little Jazz”, improvising the upper register into Hollywood…”Ball of fire” Barbara Stanywck, GaryCooper gig..                       .

                                                         IV

From the Hotel Pennslyvnania and Gene Krupa on the drums, Anita O’Day warbling ”Green eyes” Roy Eldridge on his trumpet…..”the Wabash   Stomp the Florida Stomp  The big fat momma”…Jelly Roll Morton..Dixie Land. On 54thStreet…..Jimmy Dorsey coming to hear “the Bird”.

Into New Jersey’s Fort Lee, Gene Krupa on his drums as the leader, Roy Eldridge toot tooting…a jam session “You ain’tgone so long” (up tempo)….”the “Stomp” and its beats in cadence, Krupa into his dissonance ,the beats smashing….. Frank Sinotra caught his Hoboken dream on Major Bowes amateur hour at the Capitol Theater on Broadway..

                                                                               V

But getting back to the second grade teach at P.S.208, wrapped up in  right handed conformity, yet the left handedness……..”Route 23 on the New Jersey Turnpike, just 15 miles from New York City”…..

Who cares if Charlie Parker, Roy Eldridge, Gene Krupa is left handed? Not Lefty Gomez, the Yankee ace southpaw…..  Post Gas House Gang…Harry “the Cat” Brecheen? Howie Pollet?

Unregimented, improvising..

Southpaw Andy Petite?, the retired Yankee southpaw, with the menacing pickoff move at first base.

Left handed genius, Mrs Bautzer?  Right handed conformity? Whether the winds blow. Swing the boogey.. Whether we go….the New Jersey  Palisades….…..the upper registeraggressive cat A Chik Webb audition! at the Savoy Ballroom....

                                                                              VI

In the Anita O’Day sound, Ella Fitzgeralkd was promoted by Norman Granntz of L.A.’s Boyle Heights,  her lefthandedness…., the clubs and hotels “Sorry, the gig is fillede”her vocals left handedness “The man I love” Pearl Bailey, the post WW 2 airs not yet tolerating  the sounds of Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Lena Horne Ethel Waters recognized for what it was….. “Cabin in the Sky”!

….Hazel Scott’s celebrated Cotton Club …a fresh breathe of air in the land.       .Roy Eldridge’s `104th birthday.

 Left handedness in a right handed orbital universe 8 decades later?.

“Say it ain’t so, Satchmo?”.

January 30, 2015. The City that never sleeps on trumpeter Roy Eldridge’s 104th …

The mecca of “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest”

The mecca of “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest”…the Lavender Hill Mob incognito””….regardless of the courses(JackNMicholson, a New Jersey golf caddy in his prior life)“divinity”, the smoke signals were hovering over the Hollywood Hills and the nightmare back in the moneyed telephone lines of the 5 sisters as they  conspired to commit their older brother Max to the closed wards of an insane asylum, Islip, Long Island.

A demonic conspiracy, rivaling Ezra Pound’s poetic incarnation. 

“Right Roscoe? Right!”

                                                       II

Whatever their unholy alliance of penis envy, brother Max scribing a letter to the current occupant of the White House. “All he needed was emotional support,” said the shrink , handing Uncle Max’s dossier to his nephew. 

“All he needed was emotional support,” repeated the witch doctor.”You’re the only relative who cared. Where were the relatives who opposed the trumped up indifference of his sisters who visited their brother once a month in a hired limo.

“Ladies in retirement” playing out?” 

                                                                                     III

Self serving morality. Aunt Carrie  building her mansion on Long Island Sound, transporting her cart of flowers from 125th Street in Harlem. Preserving the buds and bulbs in her lighthouse. Her drive and ego trip into Goldfarb flowers,her catering (CBS) store on East 57th Street and ThirdAvenue, two blocks down  from Sutton Place.

Aunt Carrie’s Freeport manse off North Long Beach Avenue, was fought out as n immigrant ‘s success peak..onedaughter omitting suicide, the other suffocating in a fire.

                                                                                        IV

Poor Uncle Max didn‘t have a Chinaman’s chance, forging hisown  immigration . Not a support system among the alleged sisters, to show him the way.

Right Major?

Right!

                                                                                         V

A suffocating self serving “the Ladies in Retirement”  playing out their phony  endearment, while their older brother,diminutive Uncle Max, caught up in the family’s tyrannyand hypocrisy, held unto those steel bars that identified hisimprisoned universe.

                                                                                         VI

In attempt to find liberation and possibly enlightenment, our mother migrated to Southern California, knowing her older son was an  bully, always seeking acknowledgement by  domination and suppression. His womanizing but an encore in his self serving gratification.

The business of fantasy and cinema in the studios was beyond his ken.

MGM and Louis B. Bayer. Paramount and 103 year old AdolphZuker. 20th Century and the Mexican War veteran Daryl Zanuck.  Warner Brothers and Harry, Jack, Sam nd Albert.Universal Studio and the German Carl Laemmle… Columbia and Harry Cohn. Republic Studios….Vera Ralston and her tycoon husband.……cowboy “shoot em upevil”, with Gene Autry, Andy Devine, Smiley Burnett 

From Kansas City, Missouri….Walt Disney and Mickey andMinnie Mouse. Snow white and the 7 Dwarfs.  Stokie’s“Fantasia” Sam Goldwyn studio in Hollywood’s “Wuthering Heights”  Danny Kaminsky Kaye” “HansChristian Anderson….. Monogram in the Valley, ‘B’ Michael Shayne crime flicks. Charlie Chaplin’s studio onLa Brea. The United Artists alliance: Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford (Gladys Smith) and Charlie. RKO (Howard “Slim” Hughes)…Desi Lu on Melrose..(Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball)                

                                                                                          VII

In this mist, the Cream Cheese Bandit into his own   bullying demoniac, atop his Mulholland Drive        

hi rise status “copter” pad, he drove to Trader’s Joe in Rancho de Mirage for two jars of blackberry jam….not stumbling on  shoplifting a Philadelphia cream cheese while he was a“batch”, a single stud playing out his  Chief Special Rehab,serving time at Treasure Island, near the end of World War2...

From his perch, the Cream cheese bandit played out his paranoia…”That Tilden High School basketballcoach(1939) writing me off. “You’re not a Varsity team player”….a half a century later, the cream cheese bandit went off on a diatribe, fit for the Californiafreeways. “All his yesterdays surrounded by selfless basketball heroes…..LIU’s Dolly

King, Ozzie Shectman, Stan Waxman, the Rader twins,(Madison High School) selfless magicians whosegenius coach Clair Bee cud mold into a full court press. Defending and attacking the basket nets, once in the paint..

An incorruptible tale of morality, from the cradle to the grave playing out …….

1/27/ 15 the “Blizzard that closed down the 127 year old subway system” The City that neversleeps. 

 

 

Is it Divine Providence KARMA

Is it Divine Providence KARMA “meant to be” or not…but there was Charley Parker’s alto sax from Bird land…Oh sure“Bird’s”afficiandos from Kansas City would acclaim, that the “Bird” was their own..

THE ORIGINAL!!

The Kansas City “Yard bird. The Bird”.                                                                                                                                                 

                                                                                             II

“Billy Bergs”….Hollywood Boulevard and Vermont? Wherever the Bird and Dizzy Gillespie were toot tooting theirbebop sound . ….17 years old, a Ucla “freshman, scribblingfootball scrimmages and tennis for the Daily Bruin, challenged by the semi tropical landscape, an amigo named HowieGoldman (Midwood  High and basketball at Wingate Field)whose father was the Adams Hat crème de crème at the Boulevard and Ivar,  a block off Vine Street, down away from the library, and the plume de plume hotel at the street, where the composer Harry Revel “Paris in the spring” twirled the ivories, holding court..

Later in the patio, he brought out his bag of oranges. “The Surrogate Court Blues was  my beat”(the Name Dedective) said Harry Ravel, peeling his orange as though World War 2 had ended, but shortages were still the drift..

“Finito” our boys were coming home , to continue their post warlongings and dreams into the semi tropical scene…..VictorMacLaglen (“The Informer)” came booming through the veranda . A big smirk, laughing it up, carrying his bag of oranges in a wrinkled paper bag..

It was 1945,wasn’t it? Commander John Ford, Rear Admiral ( Naval Reserve) discovered Duke Wayne on the USC football line, adjacent to the Trojan Horse. Mister Morrison was on hiswave length or meant to the:”Iformer” Maclagen into his and Commander   Rear Admiral Ford was on his “meant to be”. At the Hollywood Plaza Hotel, a block from Stanley Rose’s book store, “What makes Sammy Run’s Budd Schulberg’s reading….(“The Pismo beach tennis champ….Irwin Gelsy, Sam Jaffe, PhilGersh)

Creating art in the cinema of Hollywood’s sound stages andArizona’s Monument Valley

                                                                                    III

How could they master Cyber Space social media rada, make it their ownr? This Holy unholy trio? The consciousness wrapped up in “Stagecoach”, the Duke riding shotgun. The passengers Claire Trevor, John Carradine, Thomas Mitchell, Porter Hall.

The driver (Barry Fitzgerald) spitting out…..”giity up youDudes,” snapping   the reins, the horse flesh sweating bullets,their legs like pistons into the lashes.

                                                                                    IV

In the meantime, the Hollywood Boulevard Normandy Avenue reality was much to miniscule for the Goldman’s and the Ucla“freshman” to share, so Howie’s mommy put out an S.O.S toward the Hollywood High School locals….Jay Cameron’smother, the locale for Lana Turner, Ava Gardner at Hollywood High School. Her son Jay and Howie into the school’s band, the school off the library’s Ivar and Sunset Boulevard, the drive in restaurants Lana Turner’s a swinging  waitress made famous..

.Artie Shaw, the bandleader “Beguine the Beguine” with Mickey Rooney in the “meant to be” semi tropical environmental vibes.

“Have him call Beverly Hills Mrs Miriam Latker. She may need a roomer. A block from LaCienega’s restaurant row and across the way from m the Fox Wilshire,  near the LaCienega tennis courts……

.Schroeder, Kramer, Ted Olewine. Sammy Match’s tennis shop….actors like Kent Taylor (“Boston Blackie”) AllennJoslon playing chess…composer Igor Stravinsky  him living,offNorth Wetherly Drive.

                                                                                 V

Little did Missus Goldman know that the call was fortuitous and that the connection would son bear “fruit”. The freshman’s girl friend’s uncle was the second unit director on “King Solomon’sMines” George Marton once of Budapest) was off to Africa,second location director…Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr, heading the international cast for footage on the second location.Giving realism to Rider Haggard’s immortal story.  

“Get the drift” asked director Marton from his  rehearsing pad,high above his home atop Lookout Mountain off Laurel CanyonBoulevard…. the Hollywood Hills.

                                                                              VI

At the same moment in time, the Westwood Village campus of the Ucla Bruins longed for a  basketball coach the likes of Wilbur Johns, the local coach, and athletic director, who opted for his own initials in reverse for the immortal John Wooden.

Lew Alcindor….a 7 footer from the Bronx….7 decades after thekarma…. the Cultural  Ambassador of the United States,debuting on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Sunday morning .

It’s meant to be. ….. .   the “Yard bird” in disguise.

The City that never sleeps. January 24, 20154

“From here to Eternity

“From here to Eternity” encompasses a lockout at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn…Avenue M and 16th Street, a block down from where the Warner Brothers pioneered their movie studio(Al Jolson’s “The Jazz Singer”) and down away from Avenue K’s Wingate Field (Midwood Field) where theName Detective served his solitary confinement for 36 years at the Surrogate Court , probating Barbara Streisand father’s estate( an English High School teacher)

Some informed or uninformed teachers in the know, claimed he identified with William Shakespeare (the Bard) and therefore caused an envious rift among his colleagues in the Department.

                                                                                             II

But as this 70 year old narrative unravels, Wingate Field named after the Judge of the Surrogate Court, his papa being General Wingate who fought under General Pershing in those European trenches (“Paths of Glory”…., WW 1 the war to end all wars”)starring that doubles tennis player, Kirk Douglas.

                                                                                             III

But our narrative short circuited upon hearing that Anita Ekberg passed on at 83. She was a Swedish sex Goddess not unlike Mae West (“Come up and see me sometime”) or AnnSheridan…..Marilyn Monroe “Some like it hot”..

As a kid growing up in those middle class dwellings and  elevator apartment houses surrounding Wingate Field (quarter mile track and bleachers added later), these sirens of the silver screen (Greta Garbo, Hedy Lamarr, Lupe Velez, Fay Wraycouldn’t hold a torch to Anita Ekberg.

                                                                                             IV

She was the Amazon!!!! Fellin I’s “La Dolche Vita”. She caught the eye of New York Post columnist Max Lerner at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the columnist and part time Professor from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts..

We were we the first to claim to all our tennis and weaving“high five” basketball amigos that Anita Ekberg was from downtown ”beyond the three point line”.

If an intellectual connoisseur like Max Lerner of the New YorkPost could muster the surrealism Picasso like sculpture of the Goddess from a another planet, then an all  full court press was“kefuful”- off the charts.

                                                                                             V

Anita Ekberg died “destitute” claimed the mortuary pros. But in my unconscious she was born into the imagination of Goethe, the Aesop tales, Grimm brothers. She may not have been LittleRed Riding Hood but she was much more than the Beverly HillsHotel pump room siren, being interviewed..

Or swimming in Roma’s fountain de Trevi, with the likes of Lord Byron and Shelly.

A toast to Anita Ekberg’s life on and off the silver screen. May her and Fellini’s “La Dolche Vita” live forever in ourunconscious.

January 21, 2015….. “Destitute? from those adolescent  yearnings of Wingate Field 7 decades ago ”From here to Eternity” playing out...                            

THE ORACLE AT DELPHI….

THE ORACLE AT DELPHI….OUR MINOR PLANET IN ITSEARTHY “REVOLUTIONS”

                                                                                 1

THE BROTHERS JESSE JAMES AND FRANK JAMES……..”BONNIUE AND CLYDE”

THE SUPPORTING CAST: TYRONEPOWER HENRY FONDA   WARREN BEATY, SHIRLEY MCLAINE’sBROTHER, FAYEW DUNAWAY INTO A CATHARSIS….WEEPING SOBBING, THEIR THETEARSINTO a GRECIAN POOL.

                                                                                        II

TO JUSTIFY THEIR EXISTANCE ,  THE ROLES THEY IDETIFIED IN FANTASY. A SURREALMIX OF THEIR SOULS AND  TRAPPINGS INTO REALITY  

IN THIS INSTANCE, THE NAME OF ALLAH…

                                                                                         III

 A SUBLIMATION  WHEN ONE OF THE BROTHERS  EARLIEST YEARNINGS  AND DREAMSWAS TO BECAME A REOLLING STONE ROCK STAR. A JOHN LENNON BACKFIRE?

                                                       .                                   iv

WHENMCE THEY MIGRATRED TO FRANCE FROM ALGERIA?   PEPE LE MOKO? ALBERT CAMUS? A HEAVY DOSE OF REALITY FROM WHTEVER ANGLE ONE INTERPETS THE BROTHERS EGO TRIPS.

                                                                                             V

THE ORACLE HAD NOT GRASPED THE  PARISIANMASSACRE SINCE THE GESTAPO MOWED DOWN THE POLISH JEWS IN THE WARSAW GHETTO 72 AEONS EARLIER. THE FUHRER BRAINWASHED  HIS GESTAPO TO OBLITERATING SIX MILLION JEWS FROM THE FACE OF OUR MINOR PLANET  AND NO ONE EVEN SAID A WORD UNTIL IT WAS TOO LATE OF A HOLOCAUST..

January 14, 2014 The City that never sleeps. .,

Evil once again reared its immeasujrably masscfre and murderous abandonment

Evil once again reared its immeasurable insanity and murderous abandonment..a maddening massacre of two policemen, sitting in  their patrol car in a neighborhood, not that far from Boys and Girls High School, near Fulton and Utica Avenues, the nexus of East New York in Brooklyn..  

                                                                              II

A thirty one year old Chinese officer, seven years on the force,gun  downed  in the ambush, Liu was remembered by his wife of two months, who flew in with her in laws from China. Weeping, holding  her slain husband’s   honored plague, bestowed by Police Commissioner William Bratton.

Some officers standing   their uniformed disciplined splendor,outside the funeral home, turned their back on the the Mayor De Blasio, as he offended them after the nation of assassinations of and Ramos Liu  two weeks ago ….the emotions…. from despair to disrespect.

The Nation in mourning, the flow of tears drowning out in the sellout out top the gun lobby, the economic ammadaa, confusing hunting with “weapons of mass destruction”.

                                                                                  II

“I’m too old to cry,” said Adlai Stevenson on hearing aboutanother killing of two protectors of our Constitutional Democracy and its Bill of Rights.

“But I’m too young not to hear the needto curb the murderous crescendos to bear down on our innocents selfless children and humans.”

                                                 III

Evil dissembling , the subterfuge of “:Scarface’ “G men”“Angeles with dirty Faces”  “Black Legion” “I wake up screaming”. doesn’t tell the sadism and masochism that prevails in the underbelly of envious maddening minds of bloodthirsty revenge obsessed creatures, itching for their “appearance”,lurking in the neighborhoods where these two young cops were gunned down, their assassin taking his own  life, running into a subway.. 

The terror was not lost on the very young admirers of Adlai Stevenson so many thousands of days ago at the Presidential campaign in Pasadena, California whence the train of onslaught and assassination began in our land.

The horror can‘t b e lost on the very young natures awaiting their tomorrows, watching television and their futures. Adlai Stevenson spoke about. 

                                                                                       IV

The army of blue came in helicopter fly over, motorcycles, on  feet, in big bars, limos, , the hearse, the Dyker Heights nativesstood on their front porches, “.waving” their big flags, splashed o their balconies.

They heard the taps, and they saluted.. Two wars to end all wars were fought in Europe. The other big skirmishes  of suicide killers, not that far in memory. Mortality was on the scale, ndteven Pope Francis ,knowing the life and death balance wasplaying out in     his presence.

That poverty war and disease were on the table…..on the nearby links of the golf Bay Ridge course. And in the Military Confinements of Fort Hamilton Base, adjoining the 18i hole course, opposite Poly Prep, the football field where the preppies“reved” their salvos, unconscious of the adjoining Fort Hamiltoncommissary and skyscraper barracks.

                                                                                     V

The preppies in their “Dead poet’s society” state of mind,oblivious to the assassinations of the two policemen, as though Clint Eastwood in his “Dirty Harry” role, could take over the rank and file, putting high risk neighborhoods like Bedford Sty  he would steamroll with hissteam shovel and clean up their arsenal of death dealing guns, machine guns, and suicidalpistols.                                                                  .

January 7, 2015. The City that never sleeps. …funeral homehours  ,lying in state for  Mario Cuomo, former  Governor or  the Empire State thrice, passing at 82…..

Archie Bunker’s creator Norman Lear

Archie Bunker’s creator Norman Lear  reappears at age 92,getting a haircut at Gower Gulch (Sunset Boulevard), on barberFred Allen’s radar, decades after “All in the family” orchestrated  the moral underpinnings of  Archie’ s prejudices and shrinking violet short mindedness with his son in la, daughter   wife….Edith bearing the brunt of maintaining the Bunker facade on aseven day tee vee nee hospitality tour by  the Nation’s viewers..

                                                                                       II

Fred Allen brushing off Norman Lear’s  gray locks:” Retired now, bet Jack Benny that we could still do an honest days work in Hollywood. Norman you used the Jack Benny character without the violin with Archie.?

“Jack’s stinginess, pawning his Strat0 violin. The Mary Livingstone wife: as  resounding echo of Benny’s thrift,  his character saving a penny to pawn his violin with Mr. RappaportDid you and your colleagues resurrect ….The pawn broker meeting Archie Bunker? 

                                                                                      III

Norman Lear: Unconsciously Fred Archie goes back to Charles Dickens “ Scrooge” to some extent and depending on the audience identifying with “Faga”n of the Oliver Twist gang.Holding up Archie as a model rascal, his leadership in a free fallevery 7 days, Edith holding Archie up to his prejudices.

Fred Allen: A 360 degree turn from Arthur Miller’s “Death of aSalesman”….a tragedy where the father figure wrestled with the hobgoblins of his yesterdays, slipping into self destructiveness…chaos, bankrupting himself. Selling out his support system: wifeand son Biff when he flunked out in school, college beyond his finger tipped dream..

Norman Lear: All he wanted was attention, Fred. He begs for a comeback. To be wanted..Isn’t that the  modus operandi for Archie Bunker, hiding out beyond his bias .and stagger.......

Fred Allen: A grown man crying. But your Archie Bunker is razor sharp. His neurons are capable of navigating cyber space web sites and their configurations. Archie is master of his interior dialogue., .never diminishing his role as Archie Bunker, the headmaster of the Bunker stagger..  He could never identify with Wily Loman... Traveling in different orbits .passing without any recognition.

Norman Lear: Wily takes his illusions seriously. Archie resources are absurdity and humor in grabbling with the contradictions inherent in the “storm an drung” of the Bunker stagger  middle class.”

Fred Allen: Lee J Cobb as Wily. Your Archie Bunker stagger,Carol O’Connor.

                                                                                       IV

Norman Lear: Flying the aerial dog fighters against the Nazis,,the German pilots s the Baron von crams, Blue Maxes you get toknow bliss and tragedy. The enemy is just like us so in war, you’re like Audie Murphy, the fabled soldier,. You survive by destroying a part of yourself…. The enemy is within your own shadow Fred.

Fred: It sounds like Johnny Weismulller’s  (Tarzan) jungle, Norman.

Norman Lear: Isn’t hat  the reality y, Fred. The war zone is our wasteland. Our protectors here gunned down, ambushed…guns an issue Archie never made a stagger, a boo boo about. t.  Godbless him if would do his swanger as the leadership freaks out,rewriting the scenario . In the meantime the Wily Lomans self destroy while the Archie Bunkers flourish, no worse the wear for their hankerings and opinions. No worse the daily grind and wear and tear.

                                                                                       IV

Fred Allen unlike the Barber of Seville, put the full size mirror to Norman Lear’s 92 year old locks. “Beautiful, Norman. No one would recognize you for your ageless locks of hair.”.”

Brushing off his hair unto the floor. Norman Lear handing Fred Allen a C note. “Keep the change, Fred.  You earned it.”, his feetside stepping those 92 year old lumps of hair, cluttering the floor of the six chair barber shop on Hollywood’s Gower Gulch. 

New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2014.  A healthy New Year to all….