Fine tunning Charles Grodin’s "I miss him"....Johnny Carson’s...role playing at the very pinnacle ’Here’s Johnny" by Ed McMahon, reminiscent of Don Wilson..an alter ego..( for Jack Benny across town.) karma
II
Thirty aeons at Burbank’s Shangri-la, the Nebraskan native played out..good humor man bartender and wet nurse. A repartee of burlesque and barber hunor as he "lost himself to find himself"...."Fearless Fosdick strikes again."
Wasn’t the bonding and chemistry with Grodin’s psyche providential? The mustachio of a tramp wearing a derby, baggy pants, lumpy shoes, dangling a cane..(theVenice,Ca. roller skating rink) the other Charlie found his persona forever.
So much so that the man of a thousand faces offered a deal to Grodin so Carson could see a mirror of himself in Grodin’s own carousel of "up tight menches" and strung out nay sayers.
A bubbling champagne of kindred souls playing out their needs to tear off the masks of pretension that suffocate the minor planet we call Earth.. Thirty years since since Spielberg’s "ET"docked his space ship., the savior faire among us, suspending disbelief.
III
To be in that mix! The NBC ushers should charge admission. The Laurel&Hardy barbs not lost on Charles and Johnny in their hip improvisations.
How can you top this
Park ya carkas Leches Pete the Ma Russian ? Fred Allen’s Senator Claghorn ....,("Senator McHooey")
IV
Mark Twain (Sam Clements) assails on Democracy. Hearing Bill Clinton’s "president" plugging a Congressional candidate of the "Jersey Boys" ... on the make with Monica Lewinsky
his sensual vibes, much like the fly inspector trying to make a score in the FFA classroom of North Hollywood High School. The venue, where Monica started her learning curve in the senior side of politics.
The caste system indeed. Not a conscience in the oval office...the apex of role playing. Dwarfs the Group theater,
Stella Adler’s dramtrurgy Brando and Paul Newman, Shelly Winters. Lee Strassberg, Elia Kazan mentors.
Clifford Odets rounding ouyt the Group’s method acting.
La’s Actors Lab.....Morris Carnofsky, J Edward Bromberg, Art Smith, Larry Parks, Betty Garret.
V
Was the awesome Magna Carta all to the nought in hindsight.?
"Rubbish"
Here’s Johnny
VI
Offering Grodin an exclusive, Carson expanded his range of impersonations.
Dsarth Vader’s antithesis of Princess Lea, his vibes sky rocketed until Grodin brought him back to gravity..His ratings "hit the sky".,needless to say George Lucas still counting the shekyls from "American Graffati"
Right, George?
Right.
VII
After three decades of labor of love and three marriages, the peevish Nebraskian , tossed in the
tossed in the towel, from his workouts..
His son killed in a car crash,.
Last seen at Wimbledon and the Queen’s Jubilee,,he appeared impish as ever, the nightly strain and stress of milking impersonations, not unnoticed by the savior faire, watching his karma play out.
******
"I miss him," said Charles Grodin.....
"The Empire strikes back"", June 3, 2012
"? Peter Donald Harry Hershfield? Joe Lurie, Jr?
Stanisloff Kristalball was in his information highway lane
Stanisloff Kristalball was in his information highway lane, ready
to wing it from JFK when his I phone with its android ding a ling
applications“Stan the man,”said a voice a drift with passion.”Is you is or
is you ain’t my baby? Coming to our
Idaho night?”
II
How could Stanisloff resist? A
French kiss with a potato. Am Idaho
night showing off his voice.
Compensating for his educational needs or lack of...
Didn’t he wax poetic like Mozart’s “Magic Flute”? The recognition from his teen age yesterdays
gave his image a rocket boost, his sound&fury hadn’t experienced since that
virginal Idaho night, he heard his sound piercing the pines of Boise.
III
Caught up in his delirium, searching for approbation from
anywhere in the Continental United States , the society of Masonry offered him
a place to hang his hat.
“O Idaho o Idaho Night” like it was a **La Scala “o solo
mio” **
IV
**He bought into his role, playing out his Philadelphia
truck driver
musical voice but not willing to pay the price for lessons.
“You have to lose
your self to find your self”
Didn’t Mario Lanza’s mother tell Esta Kaminsky, Jimmy
Cagney’s steno on the L.A. bus, that her son was cribbing . Lip synching
Caruso’s high C tremors at MGM’s stages
in Culver City...
Unlike Stanislaff Kristalball, he had no confidence.. No
presence of quiet mind . Caught up in the appearance of Face book and its Morgan Stanley underwriter..
V
Freaking out for the quickie. Selling out for ten minutes of
fame.
Up to a point the gullible public buys into it. Then as the New
York Yankees owner says “The team up for sale? It’s all a fiction.”
But it wasn’t always that way. Stanisloff’s role playing
could be attributed to his pops. Identifying with his father, sorting mail on
the torture rack....memorizing the zip
codes 11230....dispatching letters from the Coney Island
Avenue branch, while playing out an understudy role in Broadway’s record
breaking musical “Phantom of the Opera.”
“Off the charts,” cried Stanisloff on hearing that
his pops was winged by the chorus and understudies of “Phantom” to put his name
forward for a 2017 incarnation, a private launching into incandescent space..
Falcon Dragon
rocketing cargo to the International Space Station
Pops couldn’t
stowaway its res ipsa loquitur, orbiting (17,000 mph ) But on the
information highway... if the passenger
manifest is “on board”, Kristalball senior is into the futuro.
Even if he only knew Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon from
reading the funnies Sunday morning..sprawled out on the elevator apartment’s
living room floor.
“Phantom of the Opera” morphs the longest playing musical
into the mobilization of the private
sector from the
Mercury Theater Orson Welles “Invasion
of the men from Mars”
“Citizen Kane” and John Houseman seduced the earthlings into believing they shared their hard nosed realities with
an out of space consciousness in the Tri State area.
“Phantom of the Opera?”
“Indeed”
Memorial Day weekend , March 25, 2012
At the annual meeting of the Van Nuys High School Alumni
At the annual meeting of the Van Nuys High School Alumni...several
chairs were empty...Don Drysdale of Dodger &“ Dugout” pitching fame (Sandy
Koufax’s alter ego), Rickey Nelson of Harriet&Ozzie radio &tee vee
celebrity, and brother David,
“We’ve come a long way from those Friday nights cruising the Boulevard,” cried the acxtor bearing his name...rushing to the chair, bearing his name “I’m ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille” mimicking Gloria Swanson.
William Noble, principal.
Robert Redford and Tom Cruise
were sure to extend their bestest from their movie making world weary locations.
But in attendance was the
football coach , Colonel Tucker( Major Bob Waterfield, his aide de camp ((Jane
Russell’s ex )), Jim Mercer, son of Johnny Mercer, founder of Capitol Records
that cavernous roof as seen from the flowing freeway traffic.
II
A cussing Jim Mc Connaughy, a stalwart of the
Ucla line... an upper body strong armed
Don Paul. Backup center, Leon C. McLaughlin and
Bruin icons...
Moose Myers, Jerry Shipkey,
Ernie Case, Cal Rossi Skip Rowland in the backfield.
Tom Fears and Burr Baldwin at
ends.
For the newly structured Rams,
Pete Rozelle, their p.r. whiz kid ..from his office on Olympic&South
Beverly Drive..a block up from Herzbrun&Herzbrun, Stanley Gleis, the
partrner, whose office was opposite
Roselle’s, the NFL’s pioneer on Olympic..
III
“The raison d’etre for our calling is not to collect dues as
usual Buto see if there is an underlying cause de celebre in the calibration of their mortal flaws..
To calibrate the fatalities from 1945 thru the present.
Six decades of
horrors. A chain of causation which bespeaks of a haunting dimension beyond any
Fatty Arbuckle crushing entendre, which destroyed his persona and more deadly
his self esteem and reputation..
IV
“It behooves us as
Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident settles in with his weife and
children into his Fellow role at NYU’s Law School where he will study and play
out his daemons and angst with the Peking Communists.
Domiciled? Where else? Washington
Village,
“Where else could he find solace for his berrating the
leadership for their stinging rebut of criticism of their regime, silencing any
note that sounds original than their blanketing brain washing..
Confucius would have
none of it. But Mao’s “Nixon ion China” (John Adams opera), the American opera
gives you the reality scene’s reality. “Off with their togues, mates”
“ Ask Bill. He’s the principal. Didn’t you seer Rita
Hayworth’s “The Shanghai Gestuire”? Chaing Kai Shek’s imperial wrife,
living the good life on Long Island.
“ Now Linn insanity is playing out a moral dynamic that
transcends playing out his point guard role with the NBA’s Knickerbockers.”
(All the way from Taiwan ((Formosa))
“Good for NYU. Rescuing him and his family from the
inevitable gulag. A support system for
the foe of quiet tyranny. Pearl Buck’s”Good Earth” Paul Muni and Luise Rainer
digging in the coolies. Winning our sympathy.”.
V
But above it all, the imaginative caper from his guards,
climbing over barriers at night, in a state of blind alley defiance. Giving him
a second chance at denying his captors...liberating him.
Charlie Chan’s “Dead men tell no tales”.... Warner Oland,
Sidney Toler, Key Luke, his number onew son, the King Fu black belt fantasy
morphs into the NYU law scene in and around Greenich Village. Bank Street. Chen
Christopher Street environs, disocvoering the good life, playing out Warner
Baxter’s “Fugitive from a Chain Gang”
VI
“Awesome”
echoed the Alum of Van Nuys High School, their school two blocks from Bob’s Big Boy on Van Nuys
Boulevard,...their leitmotif decked out in his bespeckled red & white checkered jacket
“We’ve come a long way from those Friday nights cruising the Boulevard,” cried the acxtor bearing his name...rushing to the chair, bearing his name “I’m ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille” mimicking Gloria Swanson.
Vll
About the decadent list..... Will Rogers in a plane
crash.... Agent.Bert Allenberg in a car accident. Ted Husing.
Ernie Kovacs. “
“Jayne Mansfield, Carole Landis, Sharon Tate
Pier Angeli, Ramon Navarro Joyce Jamison Gia Scala Dorothy Dandridge..”
“James Dean on his flight from “Giant”. Getting his escape
on that highway ”.
“The Black Dahlia and her bludgeoned body......not to forget
Bobby Kennedy at the Ambassador Billy Wilder playing bridge in the hotel.
Sirhan Sirhan’s
daemons, sweating out his brain washing as a “working stiff” in a Pasadena
grocery store.
VIl
“Jeff Chandler ‘s demise in a Culver City hospital. “I’ve
lost track of the world” Gustav Mahler vintage and
late Dietrich Fisher Dictasu, his lider passing. at 87.
Public radio archived George Jellinek;s “Vocal scene” revisiting the baritone’s
encyclopedia of Shubert Schuman Brahms Faure Debussy Liszt Wagner Richard
Straus songs and lieder..
VIIl
“Yes, Gentleman Jim”? You have a Dietrich Fischer contribution in
German?”
“Die Easidlerinslein. O trust die Welt du stitl hacht. Der tage hat mich so mich gem acht
”Colleagues, fellow
alum, Schuman deserves better. Jan Popper’s UclaOpera Workshop.
“Forgive our fractured German,” said the Bruin lineman,
sitting down, in his alum chair..
“Bravo bravo,” responded the aging alums.
“A parable of
mortality.”
“Indeed” said Cololel Tucker, the football coach and
authority figure, who knew first hand about fractures, internal bleeding and
concussions..
IX
Meanwhile at Washington Village Chen Cuangcheng, his wife
and chlldren blessed NYU Law supporters for their own daring .. unsilencing his voice. Playing out his role as a Fellow at the campus.
******
‘Give me your tired your poor. Your huddled
masses yearning to be free’
The Statute of Liberty, Emma
Lazarus (1883)
The City that never sleeps, March 20, 23012
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