“MERCY MERCY….JEROME KERSEY”

“MERCY MERCY….JEROME KERSEY” was gone at age 52

                                                                                         II

He collapsed in the Portland Trailblazer parking lot Wednesday…. To drive home, complaining he wasn’t feeling well. Knee surgery  a week earlier.

A blood clot in his left leg broke off and migrated  to his lungs.Pulmonary thrombosis.

.                                                                                        III

No grandeur of stats could forecast the inevitability of an overachiever: a human dynamo and complete player, from a class two college where he dominated the basketball acrobatics.

The grief counselors were speechless. His wife and children were stunned. His teammates Terry Porter “we grew up together”, Clyde Drexler, Gus Williams, Kevin Duckworth awakened to their own “ how fragile mortality is.”.

The unselfish overachiever and teammate, playing for a ‘w’ , an allegory for poetry in motion. A musical over drive, translated by the Harlem Globetrotters into an acrobatic “trapeze” in agymnasium, awed spectators in the bleachers… later hooplacameras, ESPN, referees to maintain  the clean  cut rules of a competition, originating in schoolyards and academia, to the pros, the moneyed halls of status  and the Hall of Fame, once their stepping stones of  legendary flesh, had come complete circle…

George Mikan, Julius(“Doctor J”) Irving, Earl the Pearl Monroe,7 footer Bob Kurland,

                                                                                     IV

What could a Nobel Prize conquistador Ralph Bunche, himself a basketball “honky” from Los Angeles City College and UCLAsay…. his Howard University Professorship(History) but a leg up on these grand- children of sharecroppers, finding theirRoyalty in Abe Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, a hundred years later.

Skin pigment breaking the color line at in UCLA’s BrooklynDodgers Jackie Robinson, the Wilbur Johns John Wooden God’s Way, opening it up for “Wilt”, Bill Russell, Brooklyn bornMichael ”Air” Jordan, Wesley Unseld.

“Mercy mercy Jerome Kersey”        

                                                                                        V

24 years of age, a late comer from a Division 2 school,(“March Madness”) to the slam dunk contest, prior to the NBA all star game, he stayed with Michael Jordan, doing the double clutch, hanging time, slight of hands, while suspended in motion  50 points said the judges,..49 and into the final round these twoacrobats, playing out their vision an dream,  testing their passionand collective intelligence,  translated into  the judges had to mathematically diagnosed on  a scale:  the chords of the space ‘s NASA and the planet of nets, hoops, schoolyards, gyms, sweats, scrambling for loose balls, weaves, man to man, zone defenses,cuts, screens, picks, time clocks to bring the ball down and shootclock…. set shots from downtown,(3 points against a per diem2) with one hand (“Hank” Luisetti of Stanford) from the antiquated and ancient two handed set of a Wally Kaplan(Midwood High’s p.e. Chairman Julie Raskin) or *Dolly Kin gat Madison Square Garden..

                                                                                      VI

“Mercy mercy, Jerome Kersey”……

”Doing the dirty work. Diving for loose balls, leading the fast break.” Rivaling the Lakers I n the playoffs: Koby,” Shaq”, Derek Fisher, the Phil Jackson, and his back up coach on thebench…the triangle offense of Tex Winter of USC, Kansas Statementor… his pioneer system evolving..

                                                                                         VII

Mighty “soul”  magicians..left hand right hand…dribbling…looking for the open man, a deceptive trajectory that encompasses leadership: intuition, lack of egotism, the ultimate- recognition and the putting themselves I n their right spot of their brother hood and NBA family…..Doc Ramsey, RedAuerbach, Red Holzman, LIU’s* Clair Bee, all  fathersurrogates…. breaking down the bias of skin pigment..

“Mercy Mercy Jerome Kersey.”

                                                                                       VIII

Two credits away from his degree, he returned to his alma mater: a small college campus in Virginia, for his culmination and degree, returning to Portland, his family … wife andchildren and his role in the community..

                                                                                           

Cry the flood of tears until the ducts are empty. A larger than life human  came into our ocean of humanity thru the tube…. theweekly pro  games and our own school yard dreams of seven and a half decades ago, in the quest for heroes and dignity….”a w”

“MERFCY MERCY JEROME KERSEY”    

February 22, 2015. The City that never sleeps  

                                                                                         

The Magic Mountain of Thomas Mann

“The Magic Mountain of Thomas Mann coalescing with Claude Debussy’s “ Clair de Lune” on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2015, a loss of life in Copenhagen , in the name of religion, freedom of expression on the guillotine block, passions stone deaf to “Claire de Lune’s…. Magic Mountain counterpoint.

                                                                                        II

How did these two creative giants do it? Discover the cumulative impact? Was Lou Gehrig’s “I’m the luckiest man on the face of the Earth”..his crippling disease foreshadowing his  demise 7 and a half decades ago…..blood  flowing from hisMona Lisa wounds that are  immune to the consciousness of  our planet’s inhabitants and their souls of moral ambiguity.

                                                                                           III

Could any human being like a Lou Gehrig say what he said seven and half decades ago? “I’m the luckiest man on the face of the Earth”

Baking mickies on the sidewalk curbs, skinny dipping in the Tilden High School summer pool, hide and go seek during the afternoon tags, “get yer cokes, pepsis, sasparllella, root beer, cram, orange …Ice cold. A nickel a pickle.”

But FDR’s New Deal, pulling ourselves out of those depression laden yesterdays seven and a half decades ago, our Brooklyn East Flatrbush accent, hustling the WPA brick layers, plasterers, painters into the hustle, buying ice cooled sodas, wheeled in a baby carriage, Bugsy Segal, walking alongside as a security guard aide camp incognito, on lend lease from Brownsville’s Murder Inc. ….the tycoon being Meyer Lansky, atop his bottled soda warehouse in Brownsville.

An Al “Bummy” Davis, a Golden Gloves contender, whose role when he wasn’t in the ring, was escorting short hand stenos,coming from their Big Apple roles….off the New Lots subwayin Brownsville.

Jimmy Cagney’s vaudeville turn at Klaw and Erlanger “I’m a Yankee doodle Dandy, I’m a Yankee doddle kid”, the Red Hook born “Yiddisha” speaking ”Angel with a dirty face”  bargaininghis 7 year contract with Jack L of the Warner Brothers studio, years later when he became a star on the Burbank, California’ssilver screen…. 

Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, Ann Sheridan, “Bogy”, IdaLupino, Joan Leslie, Jack Carson, Dennis Morgan Allan Jenkins, Frank McHugh, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet,Mary Astor, John Garfield.(Julie Garfinkel) screen writer William Faulkner, reader Mark Myerson…”Life with father’s” son in law). Rin tin tin.

Clint Eastwood “Bonanza” one for the ages…Bll Orr, Jack L’s son in law, playing mah chon). Pat O’Brian, “win one for theGipper” Ronald “Dutch” Reagan (our 40th President)

                                                                                      IV

So where in such an oasis , could a fledgling B’ tennis player from Midwood High School on Bedford Avenue, in Brooklyn’s Flatbush, playing doubles against Jack L and his partner SollyBiano, the studio’s casting director, find a Walter Lippman, MaxLerner (“Learned Man”) essayist to put it all together.

                                                                                       V

Meanwhile over at Paramount on Melrose in L.A., Cecil B. DeMille off his “Ten Commandments” screened “Shane”, as Alan  Ladd,  director George Stevens, playing out a metaphor of good versus evil, Shane ‘s struggle with Jack Palance.. the Brandon de Wilde ‘ s “  eleven year old rancho de mirage” dash to the ranch’s gate .”SHANE SHANE”

His hero (Alan Ladd, formerly of North Hollywood High School) fades away, slapping his saddle. “Getty up pony. Getty up.” 

February 15, 20915. The City that never sleeps.

“Godzilla”

“Godzilla” transcends Boris Karloff’s “Frankenstein”, Vincent Price’s “The fly” Bela Lagusi’s “Dracula” Even the replica of the monster in  Tokyo, the  stature not unlike its San Diego marketing icon,, comes close to  our exploratory  digs at the LaBrea tar pits seven decades ago.

“Just  because I sign my name min your book Herr Einstein,doesn’t mean you’re obliged to read it.”  scoredd William Faulkner.. in a  tongue in cheek relativity.

                                                                                 II

In our wildest dreams , how could the  saber tooth tiger, and Denny the Dinosaur, no less Alley Oop, his rambunctious feel on his powered club, his grip tightening as was his want, on waging war…doing battle in the ferocity of a hypnotic frenzy gone “viral” in our prehistoric cave man existence.

                                                                                  III  

Which brings to mind, the very verve  hip up tempo composerAlexander Desplat .  If not for his scoring ”The King’s Speech”,a dynamic into the Buckingham Palace “dialectic”, the Paris based cosmopolitan assimilated the monarch’s stuttering,aligning it with musical measures and canon, until  the therapy  worked its  charm.. the bloc vanishing into the  King’sSpeech…. His unconscious.                                                                                 IV

“The Imitation Game” seems to be a much more malevolent curse on the human condition and the proponent genius breaking the Nazi machine; its coded anti British cues for destroying Prime Minister  Churchill’s resistance to Hitler’s” conquest of “London Bridges falling down falling down” the witch doctor’s neurons pulverized: the protagonist’s decoding ,along with his  band of fellows..        

                                                                               V

The stuttering verve   of the “King’s Speech” is a leg up on the “The Imitation Game”. The theme of the “The game” demonstrates the degradation  in the human condition, doesn’t it? Yet the very synthesis of the  demons and its musical motif, redeems the protagonist’s  physical and moral decay.

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“A non stop fortissimo” in the parlance  of monsieur Desplat. Japanese guitars, electric violins, a constancy of the “Harry Potter” construction, its  calculus foreshadowing “The Budapest Hotel”. A seething  Stefan Zweig’s commentary  in  Bella Bartok’s Hungary… folk songs   prevailing , the Dragon reduced to  measles and American theme parks.

                                                                                VII

“Discovery of your inner hero” seven decades after “Frankenstein” outweighs the technological and

cyber space “mutations” in our  society..U Tube’s millions and millions of hits in director Wes Anderson’s “Budapest Hotel”,casting Ralph Fiermes as a  witty Marx Brothers (Groucho’sMiriam Marx demanding  sacra religious obeisance from a  busboy, seven decades ago)

A snide swipe at upper crust European this time around,transcending stereotypes, juggling the Grand Hotel’s “ menu”.

A hundred and eighty degrees from Vicki Baum’s “Grand Hotel”ages ago. The musical soundtrack of  keyboard instruments, ancient organs, music boxes,  harpsichords and plucked strings… a florescent transcendence to the Swiss yodel folk group.. 

“Visual environment to follow emotional issues” is how some critics characterized the Budapest Hotel’s “emoderrato’s 32 tracks. Deplat orchestrating Russian Folk Songs, flamingo guitars, church organs in the last will and testament circa a haunted house..a concordance with Elvis Presley’s “The Devil in Disguise”

The literary genre of Stefan Zweig, Roman clef  pallet of satire, adding to Wes Anderson’s and Alexander Desplat’s   nonstop fortissimo…….”Who ate the Hungarian Goulash? Who’s the “gonnif”?

 12 days before the  “Oscars”. February 10, 2015 The City that never sleeps.                                                                              I                                                                                

The disturbing death thrall it seems to this corner

The disturbing  death thrall it seems to this corner, is the pop (“popular”) culture targets its gullible audience, with such incredulous myths and fanfare that when the bubble bursts……..

                                                                                          II

Reference to Whitney Houston submerging her divinity in a Beverly Hi8lls bathtub 5 years or so, and her daughter  committing the same barbarous act, several days ago in Atlanta, Georgia….

                                                                                             III

Reasonable minds may differ but this  mother daughter  “suicide” smacks of  more than duplicity. Isn’t it one thing for the mother to be disturbed, failing to find herself in and among the veneer and idols she was willed to be; unlike the StrSpangled anthems of incredulous phoniness and deception.

                                                                                        IV

“Catcher in the Rye” (our Marty Rye of Cicago’s South side  andUCLA)   demonstrates Holden (Bill Holden) Caufield (JoanCaufield) swerve those idols and lies that the self serving menaces perpetuate among humans trying to find their “star”, not aware of the sinking “Titanic”they’re floundering on.

                                                                                          V

Salinger depicted the cannibalism in his New Yorker stories. Holden and his younger sister Phoebe, (To Esme, with love”)stroding through the pathology and deceptions. Their dialogue sweeping up fallacy and con that emasculated their cradle to the grave existence…..

His was no allegory and therefore his dialogue with Phoebe seemed to score a greater relevance than Mark Twain’s(“making it”, the original Boys High alumni motto) between Huckleberry Finn and Big Jim, the runway slave, drifting down the Mississippi River…

February 6, 2015….. The City that never sleeps.                                                    

“TO BE OR NOT TO BE, Coach”

“TO BE OR NOT TO BE, Coach”…that is the question, the Seattle Sea Hawks before an audience of millions and his Microsoft owner- benefactor watching, Pete Carroll, the former USC mentor and New York Jet grandmaster before he was fired,was left to his own neurons, in calling  on Divinity, in those desperate two and a half minutes of the Super Bowl’s fate...

His adversary, those bonding twin souls….coach Bill Belichickand quarterback Tom Brady.

                                                                                   II

“What could he be thinking?” asked the basketball radioconnoisseurs

parsing the Knick- Celtics  ….”from downtown..into the paint..he fires a jumper….’”    

                                                                                           III

Pete Carroll into his victory…. “twelve” 12 fingers held high as a 61 year old matinee idol got a   sonic roar from the Seattle fans, responding to the coach’s Knute Rockne “Win one for theGipper” motivational “speech” to the fans, thousands and thousands of them, basking in the Sea Hawks overtime victoryversus the Green Bay Packers in the  NFL overtime victory two weeks earlier.

                                                                                     IV

“How could he sleep?” asked the basketball connoisseurs from the greatest arena on the planet.

“Didn’t he see Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan “Sleepless in Seattle”?  “The Sea Hak?” with Errol Flynn?”

                                                                                        V

“Go with your gut, coach. You knew the “Pet Rocks” were consummate winners. The organization from the owner, his wife, son were  geniuses. The Super Bowl Lombardi ( born inSheepshead Bay, Brooklyn) trophy in their Victory Parades….three time momentum.

Where did the coach’s neurons metamorphose? Play it safe?? Fear of losing? An optimistic take without the home crowd’sapproval, playing in Phoenix, Arizona.

No number twelve!   Millions searching the coach’s soul,transmitting his signal to his quarterback who a few plays earlier passed a juggling miracle to a tall behemoth who snagged it in the red zone.

Could the Seahawks and coach Carroll replicate their overtime victory against the Green Bay mystique?

                                                                                       VI

Pass? Run? For the win?

It was coach Carroll’s call as he had at USC and the New York Jets and even the Patriots for a season, before……and in  thosemoments of “win one for the Gipper”, did he play it safe? Not to go into another gear? Run!

                                                                                       VII

On the two and half yard line, the quarterback did as he was toldfrom the sidelines, losing his edge. He passed…..

As Bill Stern used to say on the lost art of Sunday radio….”The rest is History. Good night and good luck”  But for Butler….a rookie 24 year old from Alabama, Malcolm Butler, intercepted the pass, falling on  the one year line, the players on both teams,steaming out of their dream.  

                                                                                       VIII

“The Pet Rocks never stumbling, their bonding …”your character is your fate”……the 24 year old rookie from Alabama ,leading the parade, his hands held high……

One two three fur five six seven eight nine teen eleven twelve fingers held high…..

“TO BE AND NOT TO BE, coach”

February 4, 2015 Boston, Massachusetts..the “Pet Roks” 4thSuper Bowl Parade.

(

                                                                                          

“God is my copilot” radioed Colonel Jacqueline Cochrane

“God is my copilot” radioed Colonel Jacqueline Cochrane, Amelia Earhart listening on the inter com, the two female legends, cruising the heavens in a dazzling up and away, climbing 5..10…15…20….25…..their  F 16 jet circling overtheir Mojave Desert  landing strip, George AF Base, Victorville,California, Edwards Air Force Base..  Colonel Cochrane breaking the sound barrier**…..

                                                                                    II

Coexisting in Indio with Floyd Odlu0m, her husband, who just became RKO’s successor to “Slim”, Howard Hughes, at themovie studio, Colonel Cochrane, a daunting   woman in her own “Katherine Hepburn” karma and image, lived an unspectacularbeat, on the date treed oasis in Indio, off Rancho de Mirage, cactus laden  desert dunes, tempting racing cars..

Wherever **Murietta hot springs Highland hot sprigs, Desert Hot Springs, Palm Desert, Joshua Tree, Palm Springs, 29 Palm(“Yankee doodle dandy”, The Jimmy Cagney Historical Museum) Lake Havasu City, Apple Valley (Route 66 becomingan Interstate)

                                                                                  III

Their chutes on, the immortal duo climbed into the cockpit of their  F 16 Fighter jet, the runway cleared at George AF Fighter Base, the  engine transmitting  a position in  thrust of six hundred  modules on the instrument panel, Colonel waving to the mechanics and her husband, the engine warming up the runway, Amelia Earhart waving in  simulcast.

                                                                                  IV

Charting their mapped course over the Continent, ColonelCochrane in  her senior seat, pointed down as she circled thebirde over  Sheppard AFB, the Intelligence School, aka Ucla’s Mc-

gowan theater “Mozart and mushroom barley”) due west of the Oklahoma-Texas panhandle stretrch, South of Tinker AFB, she lifted the altitude to cruising  speed at 30000, piloting the  jet over Arlington, Virginia and Defense Intelligence , Western European Desk……a maneuver both aces radioed the Pentagon, Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence.   “tower”.

The Senate Office Building where the Major passed Bobby Kennedy and General Westmoreland in the hall, on hisr way to the Senator’s office to give Frank Mankiewitz (Ucla Daily Bruineditor) the copy of his speech, arguing the passage of the Public Television Act of 19867.

                                                                                  V

Toward Governor’s Islamd, where theyt once practiced take offs and landings with the likes of Air Force pioneers….Billy Mitchell, Lindbergh….. Sprague……Peter Stuyevesant, then New Yokr’s Mayor, buying the island from the Indians for  bracelets and sparkling jewelery.

The two ladies scouting  Roosevelt Field, now a shopping mallon Nassau County’s Long Island, where once stood  Mitchell field where the two women fought out their credentials, in Nasaspace..and over Hempstead L.I. where the Cream Cheese Bandit won his first Ppublic Parks tennis trophy (1939) in singles, with his father, the Name Detective, watching……Karol Kosalow,his coach from Czechoslovakia  “Steady, steady…deep deep.”His practice court in Scarsborough.

Over Far Rockaway…..Robert Moses Jones Beach where the Cream Cheese Bandit once nailed his stick to trash, blowingover the boardwalk.

                                                                                   V.

And then a pass toward Coney Island’s boardwalk in Brooklyn, the Bay 7 are locale, where Cary Grant,  into his Archie Leacchon stilt incarnation, celebrating Hebrew National hot dogs, knishes, beer and sauerkraut ,prior to his  “MadameButterfly”heroics, and his Hollywood alias as C.G….

.Bedford Avenue’s Midwood High School and the expansive Brooklyn College campus landing strip,  not that far from whereJackie Gleason’s alter ego  Art Carney and his mother and father lived above the Bohack grocery, on the corner of Avenue H and 14th Street (Rugby Road) , a block down from the BMT local stop.

                                                                                 VI

Climbing to a 35000 height, the Colonel and Amelia Earhart swooped past the Big Apple’s up end Sutton Place. …Carrie Goldfarb’s flower bastion on Third Avenue and East 57th.……

“Colonel, hold it! Do you see what I see?” Two humans on those rooftops, readying to jump. Hari kari!””

                                                                              VII

The first human who leaped to his death was a Doctor, married to a classmate of the Major’s back in Flatrbush, a Chinese pagoda still based in her parent’s lawn off Newkirk Plaza.. She going on to University, and then into an alias,  marketing actors, voicing commercials via tv v and radio media.

                                                                             

                                                                             VIII

“Heaven is on the wy to it”, as the second man leaped, his self destruction, occurring opposite a doorman building…400 East 57th Street.

The young man’s father an agent turned producer. Fanny Brice his grandmother…

Amelia Earhart and Colonel Cochrane climbing back into the confines of the Mojave Desert environs…….George Air Force Base. Landing their F16 on the pad, the radio voices, guiding their”16”  into the security of  the Fighter training base.      

“GOD IS MY COPILOT’ radioed Colonel Jacqueline Cochrane, Amelia Earhart listening..

February 1, 2015. The City that never sleeps