WHETHER IT WAS AN ACCIDEN T OR NOT, hearing a critique abut Fyodor Dostoyevsky “Brother Karamazov”, this corner was taken aback to our yesterdays, putting in our time at the Neuropsychiatric Hospital in Brentwood, several miles outside the post WW2 UCLA academic environs….KherckoffHall, the Library, Royce Hall Physics Building, the quad, administrative building, theater arts, parking lots, the L.A. Santa Monica bus terminal…….Jans Steps, men and women’s gym, the swimming pool…water polo.
Coach John Wooden – Athletic Director Wilbur Johns immortal “on the glass” legacy…“We’ll leave six ducats at the Gardengate, “Whitey”. (Madison Square Garden’s N.I.T Invitational)
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Almost in the same breath, Nabokov’s own novel of nymphets critiqued.(“Cherie, “, Maurice Chevalier)
Hence thus therefore an insight from New York Public Radio (WNYC..the Leonard Lopate open mindedness, the twointellectuals from literary Moscow, offered their critiques of the state of mind of the Karamazov family’ self destructiveness..tuned out to Chevalier’s “Thank Heaven for little girls” …...Lolita’s own metamorphosis…Lita Grey, Charlie Chaplin’s second wife..( Sydney and Junior’s mother?)
It’s one thing living in a Conrad “Heart of Darkness” pop culture but it’s another to relish those yesterdays at UCLA, where in those tic yearnings of post World War2, there was a sweepingRose Bowl vibe, that the planet would metamorphose into amasked semblance of a Shangri-la .… a Frank Capra Jimmy Stewart “Mr. Smith goes to Washington”, “It’s a Wonderful Life”, and Ronald Coleman’s “Lost Horizon”, Sam Jaffe in his role of the high caste 125 year old High Llama.
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“We’ve been waiting , Mister Conway. We’ve been waiting for you a long time”, Sam Jaffe (not the Agent) into his role as the High Llama, the leader of Shangri-la, hidden away in the Alps….John Howard,. Margo, waiting in the wings, the James Hilton mantra rolling in its Capra incarnation.
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However, our part time role at the Neuropsychiatric Institute , (John Wayne’s father, Mister Morison, in his hobby lobby watch repairer cache)…as a attendant in the catatonic ward…
“Bobby what the Hell happened. What are you wining and dining here?”’
Accosting our former sports writing cub reporter. Daily Bruin track and field, shuffling along in the murky corners of thoseonce semi tropical spaces , reserved for denizens who cracked up in the constancy of pretentious blow hearts, swept away bythe seismic changes…
”A hundred million for Lincoln Center’s naming.” Social status? Social climbing? You name it!
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It wasn’t as if Booby was a Stan Lomax WOR Big Appleprotégé. He was a warm empathetic track and field scriber, identifying with Craig Dixon on the 220 and 440 hurdles and AlKapp, John Patee on the cross country… four forty and the mile. (Burt Lancaster, Woody Strode off their own strides,watching Harry Trotter Ducky Drake stalwarts, stretching and straining their over achieving track team tandems. Joe E Brown field, Jane Withers hillside home on Sunset Boulevard, Ed Pauley’s pavilion in the future., overlooking.…..
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Back in the catatonic ward in our part time attendant role….”Bobby tell me, what happened?”, our naiviate,subsequently moving into holding his ankles as the psychiatrist and nurses applied electric electrodes to his ankles and arms, thetherapeautic shocks to his innards and soul to bring him back to the El Espanol community property Southern California realityscene and the believability of silver screen and the Shangri-laWestwood Village environs beyond. (Sonja Henie’s ice skating rink)
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“But Bobby, what happened? How could you becomedespondent and depressed? Subject A? Flunking out?”
On coke and heroin? Jack Daniels whiskey?…. holding his ankles as the shrink administered the electrical pulsations, the electrodes attached to wires from the electrical outlets in the walls.
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“Unbelievable. Yet not that fr from the pop culture of thepretending actors. “The Great Gatsby, the Last Tycoon” Jack L. Warner, doubles tennis player, the novelist dying at the Garden of Allah , on the Sunset Strip, the gossip columnist Sheila Graham ( scion to Professor Graham, UCLA) The bewildered novelist taking to drink….. He and his wife Zelda, buttering upto the cafe society toast of their celebrity.
The locale Garden of Allah on the Sunset Strip…the humoristRobert Benchley ,as the novelist breathing is last…. ….theposturing of his star gazing(1925, Zelda , she perishing in 1940, her F.Scott going it alone, gasping for air..
The New Yorker magazine “Information Please” humorist in the lobby, while “The last tycoon” … the Chief, oblivious to F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s waning breaths…..at the Strip’s Garden of Allah.
“It’s all a myth, boys. If you don’t like it, you can always earn your bread and butter, playing mahjong at another private tennis court..
Solly your serve!. Yon don’t have to open up a new can. These balls still have some life. ”
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In the meantime, several miles away as the crow flies on the freeways, at the Neuropsychiatric catatonic ward, Bobby into his electric shock aftermath…..his body squirming , the witch doctor and his two nurses and the part time attendant held theirbreaths.
The UCLA (16 credits) part time attendant, gripping those quivering legs……shaky arms ,Bobby’s shriek sounding out his troubled peace of mind.
March 27, 2015. The City that never sleeps.
