Remembering the ‘Rat Pack’……Frank, Dino, Sammy Davis, Jr. Peter Lawford, (JFK’s brother in law)

Remembering the ‘Rat Pack’……Frank, Dino, Sammy Davis, Jr. Peter Lawford, (JFK’s brother in law)

Joey Bishop into Dino’s grief, sitting in the lobby of the Bel Air Hotel, off Stone Canyon Road, on hearing his son crashed his AF F16 into a San Jacinto Mountain in the Mojave Desertambiance. ……Lake Arrowhead, Big Bear   the Creative Arts school, above the desert and March AF Base..

San Bernardino innards into Palm Desert, 29 Palms, the Pinto Mountain, Joshua Tree.  Rancho de Mirage.

That San Jacinto Mountain range… Victorville, Palm Springs,Riverside, Dusty Acres ….

                                                                                          II

The Brooklyn College alumni listing 29 Palms Esther Herbert 3000 miles away from Nostrand and Flat -bush Avenue junction….. hacking out those phone calls into Esther Herbert 29 Palms abode, the telephone  electric lines and water pipesbeing laid, giving Jimmy Cagney’s museum a semblance of Prospect Park’s Parade Grounds where Lefty Sandy Koufax discovered his star power for striking out enemy batters in the National League, the Dodgers vacating Bedford Avenue’s Ebbets Field for Chavez Ravine and the City of Angels.

                                                                                            III 

Dean Martin staring straight ahead. Breaking up Ernie Glucksman Colgate Comedy Hour, his alter ego the demoniacJerry Lewis, living out his tumultuous life in Las Vegas. 

Was Dean Martin swept away by the trauma of losing his beloved son…not having Ernie Glucksman as a surrogate father, observing the loss of himself. His loving son, who transcended the image, the Sunset Strip ‘Dino’!

                                                                                            IV

How could the father’s grief be mitigated? Could Mr. Glucksman hold his discovery in his arms, bemoaning his Philadelphia night club revelation….’Martin and Lewis’ a revolutionary comedy team’.

The absurdity of those laurels, Ernie Glucksman, raising the stakes to the television pioneers of the Colgate Comedy Hour…the  slam dunk… the “Martin & Lewis” from downtown.(beyond the 3 point line)

Milton Berle’s Texaco Hour,  Fred Allen’s Allen Alley  Ed Sullivan ..Sam Levinson,   Jimmy Durante’s “Good night, Calabas”.

                                                                                             V

So Dean Martin into his crushing  trauma. ..  into his solitary confinement, staring bleakly ahead into Stone Canyon RoadUCLA’s Chancellor Dykstra’s                                                                 9lenny Dykstra kin) office, a student gardener across from the hotel and Judy Garland’s marriage with Sid Luft, a WW2 AF veteran,  managing her ”Over the Rainbow” engagements.

Robert Riskin and Fay Wray (“King Kong’s” lady) pink stucco mansion off to the golf course, below President Ronald Reagan’s Bellagio Road retreat (the Travis’s, son Roy, UCLA opera composer .)

                                                                                               VI

Groping with his faith in being alive, living the best of dreams,being discovered by Ernie Glucksman.

Having Jerry Lewis as his sidekick   A grown man crying in the Bel Air Hotel lobby, thousands of stars

away from his first taste of press agency notoriety, since exitingfrom his mother’s womb.

February 7, 2016, The Bel-Air Hotel lobby revisited.

.

What’s playing out “Our man Flint“?

What’s  playing out “Our man Flint“?

                                                                                  I   

On hearing about the Flint, Michigan lead poisoning pipes in the drinking water,” Henrik Ibsen, the Norwegian pharmacist turned playwright (“Enemy  of the People, the Doll House…”) identified with civic negligence, bordering on criminality among the Mayer and his personas, the Governor’s gray hair becoming grayer responsible for  not shoring up the  children and  adolescents who were the promising  dreams of their lower middle class parents, embedded into their cradle to the grave livelihoods.

                                                                                        II

An outrage beyond any outrages on the planet thought IBSEN as he thought through the particles of his once pharmaceutical prescriptions. That the negligence of the Michigan civic responsibility is fraught with the Flint leadership fraught with their images: THEIR  POMPADOUR HAIRDOS, their perfumed  hair dressing appearances.

The pop culture’s arrogance is but an aberration n of the pleasure principle crippling the very humanity the publicsurrogates authority as elected to perpetuate the public good..

                                                                                        III

What happened here in Flint, Michigan? Why did the fiduciariesand politicians  fail their constituents? Corrupt their own consciences? Sell out their souls for a graying stylishpompadour? An image from the time they get up until they go to bed?

Where did the “Sellout” and moral responsibility  go dastardly astray.?

                                                                                       IV

But Henrik Ibsen was but an Associate Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in disguise, his mental apparatus into thearistocracy.. So of the upper class imtelligentsia like Hillary Clinton h000000000000ad her minister give her guidance every morning, on awakening.(Not that Bernie Sanders is far behind (the child of immigrants, Nostradamus  ( Nostrand & Flatbush Avenues junction) Brooklyn College two years, University of Chicago degree…President Robert Hutchens.)

Mortimer Adler’s Great Books.

To perpetuate the very early promise and potential of those nurturing winning e spelling bees and Arithmetic tests Home Room elections in primary grades and High School Colleges(UCLA’s Gayley Aveue and Sorority row’s Hilgard.

February 5, 2015 Flint, Michigan  “Our Man Flint” playing out.

Quacks like a duck….walks like a duck

“ Quacks like a duck….walks like a duck…..An old cowhand from the Rio Grande” sand one of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, as the Iowan caucus for the Democratic nod for the Presidency of our United States of America approaches the minute by minute hand, the caucus 7 p.m. date with destiny

playing out.

The James Madison High School graduate at age 74, tying Hillary Clinton for first place in Iowa’s testing for the White House as President Obama closes out his two terms.

“I may buy a farm in Iowa. I love you Iowans,” claimed the humbled Donald Trump , once of Coney Island, and the Big Apples Trump Towers…points North of Luna Park, Steeplechase, the Parachute Jump, the boardwalk,  Archie Leach(Cary Grant) on stilts, hawking franks and sauerkraut for two bits..

                                        II

Adlai Stevenson lost his sense of  Abe Lincoln’s metaphor, Presidents Harry Truman withered the “Hiroshima Mon Amour” and FDRs four term father figure and paralysis, Eleanor ,his  wife, at his side, have come and gone from  our Constitutional birthmarks:  Bernie Sanders’s children of immigrants, raised in a rent controlled apartment, some seven decades from Burlington Vermont, “here comes the Revolution” from a Socialist labeled a “man of the people”  a neighboring Bethlehem, New Hampshire urchin… of Old Man Ness and the White Mountains’ ski slopes..

                                          III

J.F.K’s Camelot has come and gone. The “Tea Party” haveoverthrown the barrels from the Boston harbor, showing theirRevolutionary fervor, not paying taxes on the English originated bares of tea.

“So what?”

“What has changed?” asked CNN’s Chris Cuomo, the late Governor Mario and Matilda’s son, of N.Y. asked of Senator Sander’s  wife Jane.”I love Bernie more than ever.”

Bill Gates couldn’t do what he once did with IBM… Microsoft.”But I love Bernie more than ever,” said Jane, his wife, once from Brooklyn too, repeat0ing her oath of faith.                                               IV

                                            IV 

“I love you Iowans. I think I’ll buy a farm here.”

February 2, 2016  the City that never sleeps.