The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love, 1967-Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night- The Music Of Tom Waits

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love, 1967-Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night- The Music Of Tom Waits

CD Reviews


Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night, Tom Waits, Electra/Asylum Records, 1975


The inner lives of the denizens of that late night diner in the famous painting by the American realist artist Edward Hopper, “Nighthawks” (1942). The scorching literary sketches of the rich and famous and the skid row bums provided by the late “Gonzo” journalist Doctor Hunter Thompson, accompanied by the renderings of the artist Ralph Steadman. The jingle-jangle high side lyrics of the legendary folk musician Bob Dylan of the “Blood On The Tracks” period. The reach into the far side of the part of the psyche exhibited by those down at the base of American society in an earlier period by the novelist Nelson Algren in “Walk On The Wild Side”. And that same reach later by the man of the “mean” Los Angeles streets, Charles Bukowski. Wrap them all up in a whiskey-soaked, cigarette-scarred, gravelly, rasping voice and you have the idiosyncratic musician Tom Waits. Placed in that same company as above? Yes, by all means. Not a bad place to be, right?

Although I have been listening to the music of one Tom Waits for decades, every since I heard Jerry Jeff Walker do a cover of his classic song of loneliness, longing and reaching for the elusive promise of Saturday night dreams in “Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night”, I am not familiar with his biography. All I know is that aside from his own far-reaching musical endeavors, as expressed in numerous albums over the years, he has acted in some motion pictures, most notably as a skid row philosopher of sorts in the movie version of William Kennedy’s “Ironweed” (a natural, right?) and has provided the soundtrack music to many movies, most notably the Al Pacino-starring “Sea Of Love”. That Waits soundtrack version of the late 1950’s, early 1960’s classic teenage anthem to longing and love is just the right example of what Brother Waits means musically to this reviewer. Taking that simple song of teenage longing, Waits’ husky-voiced rendition reaches back and turns it into something almost primordial, something that goes back beyond time to our first understandings that we are ‘alone’ in the universe. Enough said.

But so much for all of that because what I really want to mention is the “Waits effect”. Every once in a while I ‘need’ to listen to words and sounds that express the dark, misbegotten side of the human experience. You know, sagas of Gun Street girls, guys talking “Spanish in the halls’, people lost out there on the edge of society and the like. Is there anyone today who can musically put it better? If you need to hear about hope, dope, the rope. Wine, women and song or no wine, no women or no song. About whiskey-caked barroom floors, floozies, boozies, flotsam, jetsam, stale motel rooms, cigarette-infested hotels, wrong gees, jokers, smokers and ten-cent croakers. Drifters, grifters, no good midnight sifters. Life on the fast lane, nowhere lane, some back street alley, perhaps, out in the valley. This, my friends is you address. Listen up. Professor Waits is at the lectern.

"(Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night"

Well you gassed her up
Behind the wheel
With your arm around your sweet one
In your Oldsmobile
Barrelin' down the boulevard
You're looking for the heart of Saturday night

And you got paid on Friday
And your pockets are jinglin'
And you see the lights
You get all tinglin' cause you're cruisin' with a 6
And you're looking for the heart of Saturday night

Then you comb your hair
Shave your face
Tryin' to wipe out ev'ry trace
All the other days
In the week you know that this'll be the Saturday
You're reachin' your peak

Stoppin' on the red
You're goin' on the green
'Cause tonight'll be like nothin'
You've ever seen
And you're barrelin' down the boulevard
Lookin' for the heart of Saturday night

Tell me is the crack of the poolballs, neon buzzin?
Telephone's ringin'; it's your second cousin
Is it the barmaid that's smilin' from the corner of her eye?
Magic of the melancholy tear in your eye.

Makes it kind of quiver down in the core
'Cause you're dreamin' of them Saturdays that came before
And now you're stumblin'
You're stumblin' onto the heart of Saturday night

Well you gassed her up
And you're behind the wheel
With your arm around your sweet one
In your Oldsmobile
Barrellin' down the boulevard,
You're lookin' for the heart of Saturday night

Is the crack of the poolballs, neon buzzin?
Telephone's ringin'; it's your second cousin
And the barmaid is smilin' from the corner of her eye
Magic of the melancholy tear in your eye.

Makes it kind of special down in the core
And you're dreamin' of them Saturdays that came before
It's found you stumblin'
Stumblin' onto the heart of Saturday night
And you're stumblin'
Stumblin onto the heart of Saturday night

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love, 1967- When Doctor Gonzo Was “Riding With The King”- Hunter S. Thompson’s The Gonzo Letters. Volume Two, 1968-1976

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love, 1967- When Doctor Gonzo Was “Riding With The King”- Hunter S. Thompson’s The Gonzo Letters. Volume Two, 1968-1976  

Zack James’ comment June, 2017 :

You know it is in a way too bad that “Doctor Gonzo”-Hunter S Thompson, the late legendary journalist is not with us in these times. In the times of this 50^th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of Love, 1967 which he worked the edges of while he was doing research (live and in your face research by the way) on the notorious West Coast-based Hell’s Angels. His “hook” through Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters down in Kesey’s place in La Honda where many an “acid test” took place and where for a time the Angels, Hunter in tow, were welcomed. He had been there and later as well when he saw the ebb tide of the 1960s coming a year or so later although that did not stop him from developing the quintessential “gonzo” journalism fine-tuned with plenty of dope for which he would become famous before the end, before he took his aging life and left Johnny Depp and company to fling his ashes over this good green planet. He would have “dug” the exhibition at the de Young Museum at the Golden Gate Park highlighting the events of the period showing until August 20^th of this year.   

Better yet he would have had this Trump thug wrapped up and bleeding from all pores just like he regaled us with the tales from the White House bunker back in the days when Trump’s kindred one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal was running the same low rent trip before he was run out of town by his own like some rabid rat. But perhaps the road to truth would have been bumpier than in those more civilized times. He did not make the Nixon “hit list” (to his everlasting regret) but these days he surely would find himself in the top echelon. Maybe too with these thugs find himself in some back alley himself bleeding from all pores. Hunter Thompson wherever you are –help. Selah. Enough said-for now  

Book Review

By Joshua Lawrence Breslin

Fear And Loathing In America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, The Gonzo Letters, Volume Two, 1968-1976, Hunter S. Thompson, Simon &Schuster, New York, 2006 


I have written a number of reviews about the book s of the late outlaw gonzo journalist “Doctor Gonzo” Hunter S. Thompson. Those reviews have centered on the impact of his journalistic work in the pantheon of American political and social criticism and the jail break way that he presented his material that was like a breath of fresh air coming from out in the jet stream somewhere after all the lame gibberish of most reportage in the 1960s and 1970s (extending unfortunately to this day). His seemingly one man revolt (okay, okay Tom Wolfe and others too but he was the king hell king, alright) against paid by the word minute stuff of hack journalism told us the “skinny,” and told that straight, warts and all. The book under review however is more for aficionados like this writer who are interested in the minutiae about how this man created what he created, and the trials and tribulations, sometime bizarre, he went through to get the damn stuff published. And while one can rightly pass on the pre-Gonzo first volume of Thompson’s letters this one is worth reading for it provides the back drop to Doctor Gonzo’s most creative period, that period from about the publication of Hell’s Angels until his “discovery” of one Jimmy Carter. The period when Hunter S. Thompson was “riding with the king.”

In those earlier reviews (especially Hell’s Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing On Campaign 1972, and Songs of The Doomed) I began with some generic comments applicable to all his work and they apply here as well so I will recycle them and intersperse additional comments about this book as well.

“Generally the most the trenchant social criticism, commentary and analysis complete with a prescriptive social program ripe for implementation has been done by thinkers and writers who work outside the realm of bourgeois society, notably socialists and other progressive thinkers. Bourgeois society rarely allows itself, in self-defense or hidebound fear, to be skewered by trenchant criticism from within. This is particularly true when it comes from a known dope fiend, gun freak and all-around lifestyle addict like the late, lamented Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Nevertheless, although he was far from any thought of a socialist solution to what ails society, particularly American society, and would reject such a political designation we of the extra-parliamentary could travel part of the way with him. We saw him as a kindred spirit. He was not one of us- but he was one of us. All honor to him for pushing the envelope of journalism in new directions and for his pinpricks at the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Such men are dangerous.

I am not sure whether at the end of the day Hunter Thompson saw himself or wanted to been seen as a voice, or the voice, of his generation but he would not be an unworthy candidate. In any case, his was not the voice of the generation of 1968 being just enough older than us to have been formed by an earlier, less forgiving milieu. The hellhole, red scare, cold war night in all its infamy that even singed my generation. His earliest writings show that shadow night blanket, the National Observer stuff, well-written but mainly “objective” stuff that a thousand other guys were writing (and were getting better paid for). Nevertheless, only a few, and with time it seems fewer in each generation, allow themselves to search for some kind of truth even if they cannot go the whole distance. This compilation under review is a hodgepodge of letters over the best part of Thompson’s career, 1968-76.

As with all journalists, as indeed with all writers especially those who are writing under the gun and for mass circulation media, these letters reveal the tremendous time pressures put on writers under contractual publishing deadlines, the ridiculous amount of time spent trying to “hustle” one’s work around the industry even by a fairly well-known writer , the creative processes behind specific works (particularly the Fear and Loathing books) as outlined in several letters, including some amusing “cut and paste” efforts to use one article to serve about six purposes , and horror of horrors, damn writer’s block (or ennui). Some of these letters are minor works of art; others seem to have been thrown in as filler. However the total effect is to show the back story of a guy who blasted old bourgeois society almost to its foundations. Others will have to push on further.

“Gonzo” journalism as it emerges in the crucible of these letters, by the way, is quite compatible, with historical materialism. That is, the writer is not precluded from interpreting the events described within himself/herself as an actor in the story. The worst swindle in journalism, fostered by the formal journalism schools, as well as in other disciplines like history and political science is that somehow one must be ‘objective.’ Reality is better served if the writer puts his/her analysis correctly and then gets out of the way. In his best work that was Hunter’s way. And that premise shines through some of these letters.

As a member of the generation of 1968 I note that this was a period of particular importance in which won Hunter his spurs as a journalist. Hunter, like many of us, cut his political teeth on raging deep into the night against one Richard Milhous Nixon, at one time President of the United States, common criminal (unindicted, of course), and all- around political chameleon. Thompson went way out of his way, and with pleasure, skewering that man when Nixon was riding high. He was moreover just as happy to kick Nixon when he was down, just for good measure. Nixon represented the “dark side” of the American spirit- the side that appeared then, and today, as the bully boy of the world and as craven brute. If for nothing else Brother Thompson deserves a place in the pantheon of journalistic heroes for this exercise in elementary hygiene. Anyone who wants to rehabilitate THAT man before history please consult Thompson’s work first. Hunter, I hope you find the Brown Buffalo wherever you are. Read this book. Read all his books to know what it was like when men and women plied the journalist trade for keeps.

In Search of …With Lost Loves In Mind-With It's A Beautiful Day's "White Dove" In Mind

In Search of …With Lost Loves In Mind

By Bart Webber

In search of… that sure as hell fit Dan Hawkins’ fix, his inevitable lost love fix that had this time taken him by surprise, taken him for a spin as well. That terrible fix had a name, Moira Kiley, whom Dan had had a long, long for him at thirty, relationship with for three years, three and one half years if you included the six months he had been in shellshock since she had left. It hadn’t been like he couldn’t have seen it coming, if he had had his eyes wide open for there were signs and word fights that came ever closer a few times. And then there was that time about a year before after they had gotten back from Paris, a freaking week after they both agreed that they had had a great time there and he had thought they had turned a corner, had thought about moving on from living together to marriage and such (that “and such” the question of children which he was ambiguous about and she was as well although less so).

That week after Paris one night, one Friday night, a night they called their “wine date” night which they were using as a way to touch base with each other, time to enjoy each other and be silly if they liked, silliness not a strong suit between them Moira first lowered the boom. She had told him that she was dissatisfied with their relationship in no uncertain terms, that the great time in Paris only made it clear to her that the episodic good times they had could not make up for all the times in between. Could not make up for his ill-humored fits of anger at her for no earthly reason making her afraid to mention anything in the slightest bit negative for fear of that rage. Could not make up for his usual indifference to her when he was hopped up on one of his work projects, one of his damn cases, one of his lawyer things. 

That time Moira coolly suggested to him that they go to couples counselling, something like that or she was leaving, way “going to find herself,” going find out what she was meant to do in this wicked old world (Dan’s term not hers) before it was too late (she was about to turn thirty, a critical age for such decisions as Dan had to acknowledge in his own turning thirty). Dan, who had grown up in a strongly working-class neighborhood, the Acre, in Riverdale about thirty miles west of Boston had been no partisan of what he called, what the guys whom he hung around with there, in college, and in law school called “New Age touchy-feely stuff” and at first had balked but after several hours of discussion over that weekend as Moira literarily was packing her bags he agreed. The funny thing was that once they found a suitable counsellor, a New Age-type no question, in Cambridge but who was very much into letting the couples have the floor, work out between themselves what ailed them, he could see the wisdom of Moira’s suggestion. Could see that his off-the-wall behaviors and her reactions were the source of their problems.

Naturally he had to “kick and scream” a bit about this therapy business but after a few sessions he was, using his term, “all in.” And so it had gone for the better part of a year before the crash, the lowering of Moira’s boom. Some sessions were good, the ones where they had to deal with each other’s hurt, hurts started in childhood with Dan having to prove he was not-bum-of-the-month which his father constantly called him and she with a father who would shut her up anytime she uttered anything, anytime. No question not a happy mixture. Some sessions, and this would part of Moira’s final indictment of him, seemed like a match between two professional talkers, the counselor and the lawyer, with her on the outside looking in. Still he, they had held on until their summer vacation for a week up in Maine. That Maine trip was another great time, a time when they not know for goofiness had beside the usual beach and dinner out routine gone and played miniature golf, gone to an old-fashioned drive-in theater and to a bowling alley. Then, a week after that great time, this week after a great time for Moira to spring something bad which Dan had thought a lot about the six months she had been gone, Moira lowered that final boom. After a short indictment of Dan’s short-comings, after again expressing her desire to find herself, to see what she was on earth to do she packed her bags that night and told him she was going to her sister’s house where she would stay until she found a place of her own. That was the last he had seen or heard from her except a few impersonal e-mails about forwarding her mail and forwarding her cellphone number to any friends who might call expecting that she would be found there.

For that six months since Moira had gone Dan had had time to think things through, think about what made Moira tick the way she did and how what seemed like a union of soulmates (both had used that designation when they gave each other holiday and birthday cards and the like) had turned to ashes with nothing in the end left behind. So he had been sad, been in a funk, and had worked like seven banshees to try to get her out of his mind, to move on. Then one day he realized that working twelve hour days and moping around was not going to either bring her back or allow him to move on. That six months had been in any case the longest he had been without a woman, been without some girlfriend, serious or not. Dan was now aching to get back into “the game” even if he had been sobered up about his own short-comings and was slightly apprehensive about getting back into a relationship, serious or not.

Dan was not sure how to go about finding somebody since he felt that he was too old to go to the bar-hopping “meat-market” and he did not meet many available, or desirable, women in his profession so he left his feeling stir for a while. One afternoon he heard a fellow male lawyer on his cellphone talking to somebody in such a way that it was a female and that he did not know the woman well. Once the fellow lawyer saw that Dan had overheard the conversation and knowing of his alone status mentioned that he had found Susan, the woman that he was talking to in the phone with whom he had just set up their first date, on a well-known on-line dating service. Asked Dan why didn’t he try it since they had vaguely talked about how hard it was to meet interesting women who were in the same profession as they were. Dan laughed and said no way that he was going to “meet” somebody, who knows some monster or serial killer, through the Internet. He had always found a girlfriend the old-fashioned way-meet them and then get their phones numbers if he was interested and go from there. But that conversation put a bug in Dan’s ear.                                                    

The long and short of it was that a couple of weeks later he decided to try “just for kicks” this new form of dating and signed up for the same service he fellow lawyer said he used. At first he was put off by the idea of paying for a dating service which despite the “come-on” of a free membership entailed payment if you wanted to get anywhere (and before he succumbed to payment he was badgered endlessly by the service about the benefits of membership). What floored him though was the questions he was supposed to answer to fill out his on-line “profile” (complete with on-line moniker-he used zackjames12 after his old friend from high school as a name he would remember easily when he logged into the site. He filled out some of the formation, left some of it blank, told little white lies about some stuff (what he was looking for in a woman which really amounted to getting somebody under the sheets, somebody to have sex with and see what happened after that but he pull some bullshit about a “meeting of the minds”). And he was off.      

Or Dan thought he was off but as it turned out he was having trouble connecting with most of the women on-line, probably because they were not Moira. One night when he was his father’s house in Riverdale he mentioned that since Moira had left him he had not had a girlfriend and then told the story about how he joined an on-line dating service but was not having much success except a few “chats” and a couple of cellphone calls that turned out to be not worth pursuing. He was down in the dumps about the situation. Dan’s father, Jethro, had to laugh. Women troubles would always plague the Hawkins men it seemed. Dan and his father had been estranged for several years after his father had divorced his mother to run after some other woman which had not worked out either. Dan had taken his late mother’s side and that had led to the years of estrangement (and had that constant belittling of him by Jethro). They had reconciled at his mother’s funeral and would periodically meet for supper and the elder Hawkins’ house.               

Beyond the seemingly endless women troubles of the Hawkins’ men the reason that Jethro had laughed at Dan was that he had a few years before joined the very site Dan had joined, or the senior version of that same site, Seniors Please. Jethro had always been a lady’s man of sorts, had had several girlfriends after he had left his wife and his girlfriend he was abandoning her for left him. He told Dan that over the past few years it was getting harder to meet women in the flesh. Those he came in contact with now that he was retired were concerned more about their grandchildren than dating men or else they were too young and didn’t have a clue about what he was talking about when he mentioned the hell he had raised in the 1960s. One had threatened to call the cops when he mentioned that he still like to smoke grass and was glad that a number of states were allowing recreational purchases. Wished Massachusetts would get on the stick about it and stop keeping it as some goddam crime. So he was reduced to going on-line, or that was the way he put it to his son that night.   

Jethro told Dan that he had had the same troubles at first in reconciling the old-fashioned way he had always previously met women just as Dan had in the days before cellphones, on-line credit card payments and the Internet. But eventually he got the hang of it. Realized that all he had to do was write a couple of cogent paragraphs and the women would jump at the chance to meet him. Well not quite that easy but it seemed from what the women told him when they “chatted,” on-line, on the phone or the few he met for a date that most of the guys, older guys remember, who trolled these sites were loons, guys who thought they were twenty-something and talked boyish sex talk or about how nice some mature woman would look in a black dress and high heels. He had learned to avoid the on-line grandmothers whose idea of being appealing to a man, an older man, was to fill their profile pages with photographs of each and every grandchild. Had learned to avoid sixty-something women who had never been married since what the hell would they know about life. Was lukewarm about women who had children at home but overall he had taken the position that the rest were worth checking out-and not be too choosey looking over the on-line “meat market, senior version.” They talked some more about the do’s and don’t like don’t give a woman your real e-mail address since one woman still sends him messages about getting together and that was months before and don’t respond to anybody, woman or man, who asks for money. That dough will be long gone.              

That night Dan when he went back to his Cambridge apartment he turned on his computer and worked for a few hours “hitting” on every good-looking woman who did not look like a mass murderer and who could write a couple of complete paragraphs. But mostly that they did not look like Moira. Yeah, in search …    

“Hitting the sawdust trail”-Preacher Jack Holds Forth -With Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood" In Mind

“Hitting the sawdust trail”-Preacher Jack Holds Forth     

By Zack James

“I am saved, I am saved, I am finally saved. I had sinned against the sanctified sons of Adam, blessed Cain for his courage and fallen Abel for laughing at him for falling down after the serpent screwed up their former digs East of Eden. Had flung my seed far and wide among comely women, tarts and the just curious who got the big brush off when I took off with some latter apple-fetching Eve leaving them barren for a time. Had spent my hours in avarice, the midnight sneak a specialty but armed robbery if necessary starting that first night at the Citgo gas station and debauchery-wine, women and song if I haven’t covered all of them previously. Had coveted, coveted wives, land, pigs, plastic, pottage. Had been lost in the rain outside the gates of Eden looking for Saint Anne up on some faraway hill but hitching up for a three day crawl and sheet fest  with sweet Melinda who could cure all your nightmares with those bloated lips made for undercover sheets. (She said she was just a girl who like to play the “pennywhistle” as long as a guy didn’t try to con her with crazy talk of love and going places.) Had trammeled the hedges of the wise and the thoughtful hags of evil misdoing showing old Macbeth what was what and that damn psycho he was hitched up to as well so much for the sirens of thickets and brews.

“Had been bent around a stick of jade, a stick of hash, a stick of jimson, a stick of the everlasting good and said my say in the midnight hours around the black hole of Calcutta. Had worshiped Stone Age totems from afar and prayed for dinosaur-etched dreams. Had been in that windswept night when all the cauldron of sinners were lined up for their daily soup. Had seen visions of cocaine codeine elixirs mired in sweated muddy fields of May. Had spoken ill of virgin sisters who repented their lustful ways to find chastity in the nomad hills out around Big Sur. Had been the poster boy for 24/7/365 sprees unto the death totems along windswept California beaches that Big Sur I mentioned when the virgin sisters had repented their lustful ways. Fuck them, sorry. Had drawn blasphemous guns in the desert night facing tommy-hawks and tommy guns. Had blanketed seven vestal virgins down in Delphi town and cast them out like lost sheep looking for fodder. Had sworn a sacred oath to Baal in the secret crevices of my mind. Had not thought twice about the slaughter and mayhem when Baal went behind the clouds looking for sweet Melinda and her long-line penny-whistle.   

“Had repented, how I had repented, for an hour, a day, and then murdered sleep. Had told death straight out that I did not believe in him, her or whatever gender-bender was being played out. Had seen visions of the great unmasking on the seven hills but I would be damned which seven hills seeking a sign that maybe Saint Francis would come and rescue a poor sinner. Had swollen my tongue unto the seventh generation of the seventh son and me an only child. Had been conceived in a dark cave by midget anglers who sent me forth to reek of whiskies, of fetid dopes, of sexed-up layaway plans. Had blasphemed against the sons of evil’s sons. Had laughed when the angels came by and spread their noisy wings. Had been a harlot with my head on fire swaying gently in the crosswinds of desire. Had seen the land of the righteous which some call milk and honey and detonated a time bomb box for the eternal. Had lifted up my head toward the sky seeking praise and pissed in rivers of pure noxious gas. Had seen lights in the sky giving me the okay to drive the pure from their abodes and sink them in clammy sea-beds beyond tepid seas. Had burned amulets and charred my face with the residue of empty desire against the great Western blue-pink night. Had danced the Day-Glo canyons around Death Valley and known what the ancient heathen warrior had craved when they reached for a man’s scalp. Had been besotted and wetted by pure rage against the coming of the light. Had done all of these things in fearless desire to crush whatever profit I could out of the flinty stone of Smith& Wesson,” cried out Preacher Jack.

Cried out to the throng that was standing, mostly standing except the few cripples, no they don’t call them that anymore even if they are all crippled up, something like handicapped or disabled or differently abled, under the big circus-style tent where he was have his yearly revival meeting in Peoria. That is in Illinois for those who have forgotten that town used to be a bell-weather for a million trends from the latest in overalls wear to skinflint motion pictures. Preacher Jack had just then completed the “call” part of his sermon to those who were in the audience who had traipsed from far and wide to hear his yearly message to the fallen angels of some strange Miltonic dream fest.  

Preacher Jack had been being calling out the saved message for at least the previous forty years ever since he had come back to the “real” world from over the Japan Seas in Asia where most of the stuff he declared himself saved from had occurred. Most of the rage, pillage, murder, arson. Had found himself beached in Southern California after running through a couple of marriages, run through a couple of benighted fortunes on dope, women, sin, gambling, more women, more sin and tagging along with a bunch of “brothers” from ‘Nam who also were having a tough time coming to terms with the real world after they got back. It had been there that Preacher Jack, then just Jack, John Lewis Jackson, Junior first heard the word, first got his senses back and began that long uphill climb to speak to those laid out before him in the seats between the freshly laid sawdust aisles. As he waited his usual few moment before he came to the “response” part of his ceremony he could, he could as he had counted on some many times, hear the soft sound  of moaning of those out there in the dark as they ran through their own sinful litanies in word silence.

Here’s the pitch as he continued, “Sinners against the bedeviled blessed night, the devil’s blessed night for that is his calling card time who will be saved” [Not a question and no response but some shuffling-the “no response” an expected one since Preacher Jack was just warming up to his subject and the crowd was still taking in his own confessions against their expectations and were not ready to “hit the sawdust trail” leading to the redemption center behind where Preacher Jack was holding forth.] “Ah, shy, huh, shy or sly thinking that no judgement can penetrate you can take you away from your worldly profit-gouged sins. Thinking that Preacher Jack will absolve you with merciless attentions for your intentions. You brother, you over there with the Robert Hall suit on and lust in your heart, be gone, take off your cloak, go back out into a candid world and tell the brethren of your new found understanding of what makes the world go round, about who shall be the king of kings, who shall benefit from your new-found nakedness.” [And on cue the man in the Robert Hall suit who just so happened to be one of Preacher Jack’s confederates, Jimmy Jamison, a guy who he had met under the bridges in Southern California, a fellow ‘Nam veteran who when he, Preacher Jack, “got religion” after attending a revival tent meeting near Saddleback Valley and saw the profits to be made getting the world-weary to cough up some salvation dough was when cleaned up was the perfect non-descript guy to pull off the “naked go forth” routine off and get people a little antsy seeing a totally naked guy heading out the back of the tent, or wherever the Preacher was holding forth, and would draw many disbelieving stares but no followers. No followers as expected since the idea was not to lead the sheep out the back door but up the sawdust strewn aisle to show true repentance with cash, credit card, no personal checks, in hand to continue the work of the, well, of the lord]              

After due time for the Robert Hall man to clear the premises the Preacher went in for the kill, went into the long harangue which produced the dough just as long as the “saved,” getting salvation on the cheap if you think about the matter closely did not have to show skinny shanks, desiccated stomachs or ground-sagging breasts. Beautiful.             

“You, you madam, you with the short dress on and the young children hanging off your arms, what evil thoughts drove you to cloak yourself in garb unfit for the Lord’s eyes. Did you come here for salvation or to continue your wicked whorish ways, looking to smite Adams once more before the Fall. Looking for a whore’s bounty in your hour of need. Speak up, sister, speak up we are all sinners her.” The women immediately put  a sweater she was wearing over those tender knees and spoke of how in the past she had had to take any man’s offer to provide for her children, had to  do things against the Lord’s word.      

[Preacher Jack had a habit of scanning the crowd in front of him before his performance or during the “call” section to eye who he would bed that evening. Usually it was a good-looking woman like the called upon one with the kids hanging her but sometimes it was some young thing that had a virginal look about her, and very occasionally a married woman who took his talk for good coin. Amazingly he was able to con them into bed by the old “hook” that they were serving God’s message or messenger by “putting” out for the good man of the clothe. Preacher Jack called it a fringe benefit of the job and claimed, without proof, that half the time he would be confronted by a woman who propositioned him. In any case on the night in question that short-skirted woman did give herself to the Preacher in order to be “saved”. ]      

He asked the woman, not expecting her to, to come forward and testify, to “hit the sawdust trail,” to come and be “saved.” (As mentioned above he had other plans for her salvation.) As he warmed up to the audience he sensed a certain reticence in the crowd to bear witness after that woman did not come forth. He then went into overdrive. To a male cripple [disabled person] on the ground in front he said “Fallen brother I know your affliction, I know you have sinned against the father of us all [the man lowers his head], have had evil thoughts in your heart, have cursed the Lord, his son, for putting in your condition. Have called on the demons to restore you to no avail. Look up brother, hear my words, hear what the Lord has directed me to say to you. Get up, walk, walk the sawdust trail, for a sign. [The man dumbfounded cannot move just yet.] Come now believe, believe in the word, believe in the holy word of God which I bring forth unto you, unto this crowd of sinners. [The crowd a little restless stirs.]  Walk dear brother and accept the Lord’s bounty. [The man makes the first struggling inept attempts to stand up and falters.] Come now the Father of us all will take away the stain of your misbegotten sins, will free you from your affliction if you believe in him. [Once more the man, now in focus to the Preacher, a young man, moves, drags himself forward a bit, pushes on his arms to rise and falls back. The crowd begins to become fixated on the man’s struggle.] I am an agent of the Lord, come and join me, come up the sawdust trial which in the end times will insure the ‘rapture.” [On hearing the word ‘rapture” the young man moves with his arms forward some more the crowd softly urging him on.] Come brother a few more steps and you will be free. [The young man moves close enough for the Preacher to grab and raise him up to a standing position giving a victory sign before quickly sitting him down on the chair behind him. The crowd visibly draws collective sighs and some motion forward is to be seen.] This brother has been raised by the Lord who can deny it. He is saved, he will walk henceforth. Who else will be saved. [The Preacher points to various hearers and direct them to the sawdust.  Several come, eyes closed, hands raised in praise of the Lord.]

The pitch over Preacher Jack said to himself that that night’s take would be good, very good. This saving souls business was good, very good to him. Strangely he had had to exert very little effort to raise that young man so for a moment he thought maybe there was something to this whole thing, began for a just a slip of a minute to believe his own bullshit. Then suddenly his thoughts turned to that short-skirted woman and the kinky little things he would have her do that night in order for her to gain salvation.                       

On The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of Robert F.Kennedy-The Class of 1964-The Generation of '68-Innocence Lost

The Class of 1964-The Generation of '68-Innocence Lost   


Commentary by late Peter Paul Markin 

Recently, as part of a search for a pair of missing brothers from the neighborhood of my youth detailed in this space in the commentary Markin Takes A Turn As Neighborhood Historian, I contacted various members of my high school class, the Class of 1964, whom I knew, or through investigation, found out were still in the area and might be able to help. In conversations with a couple of them I found out about the fate of a number of former friends. One of the people I interviewed as a result happened to be a class officer and requested that I write a little resume of what I had been doing the past forty some odd years for the class record.

I have spent a fair among of ink in this space pointing out that I am part of the generation of ’68. I say that with no regrets whatsoever. I am, however, also part of the Class of 1964 that formed a solid core of the ‘68'ers. That is a different proposition, especially coming from a very, very working class high school that at the time had no minorities-none. The closest we came to that (pardon the silly joke from my youth), this being a heavily Irish area, was to have let a few Italians come in. The span of four years from 1964 to 1968 was not just a time of change but a virtual sea change for me. Below is the short commentary (edited somewhat to omit some local and family references).


The Class of 1964

I am now a proud member of the class of 1964, a class that started in 1960 with the hopes of a fresh breeze with the Kennedy Administration and its short-lived Camelot. Now in 2008 it looks like a new breeze like that of our youth might be blowing once again. For the kids’s sake I hope so. I would also note that I, along with many of you, are also part of the generation of ’68, a generation that raised some hell with the way things were done in this country. We lost that fight but some values remain from those times. All of this is by way of a preface to what I have been doing since high school.

Needless to say I got caught up in the politics of the time, civil rights, the fight against the Vietnam War, Bobby Kennedy’s ill-fated campaign, SDS-type organizations, the anti-war fight for the soul of the American Army and later other left-wing political causes. Ah, those were the days. I also did my share of time as a counter- cultural devotee, a ‘hippie’ living in various communal situations. You know the anthem-drugs, sex, rock and roll. Ah, those also were the days, as well. Then, in some ways unfortunately, I had to grow up. I have for the past thirty years been working as an educator. Along the way I had a mid-life crisis (you KNOW what that was) and went to back to school and got yet another degree. (Here I included some information about my family, etc.) …. Reading this little resume over I think I like the first part with the politics and the alternate lifestyle the best. I will say once again, ah, those were the days.

On The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of Robert F. Kennedy-November 22, 1963-Where Were You?

This is another one of those questions that I have been periodically answering from my Class of 1964 high school class committee.


Today's Question: How did you react to the John F. Kennedy assassination?

Well you knew this question was coming at some point. Some events form the signpost for every generation. For our parents it was the Great Depression and World War II. For today’s kids it is 9/11 and the ‘war against terrorism’. For us it was Sputnik and the Kennedy assassination.

Usually, when discussing these milestone events the question asked centers on where you were or what you were doing on that fateful day. I do not need to ask that question here. I know where you were, at least most of you. Unless you were sick, playing hooky or on a field trip you were sitting in some dank classroom as the Principal, Mr. Walsh, came over the P.A. system to announce the news of the shooting of President Kennedy. What I am interested in, if you want to answer this question, is not what your current take is on that event, whether you were a Kennedy partisan or not, but how you reacted at the time. Here is the story of my reaction.

In the fall of 1960, for most of us our first year at North, a new wind was blowing over the political landscape with the Kennedy nomination and later his election victory over Richard Nixon. If you want the feel of that same wind pay attention to the breezes that I sense coming from today’s youth. Maybe that wind grabbed you in 1960. It did me. Although some people that I have met and worked with over the years swear that I was born a ‘political junkie’ the truth is that 1960 marked my political coming of age.

One of my forms of ‘fun’ as a kid was to write little ‘essays’ on political questions. You know, like-Should Red China (remember that term) be admitted into the United Nations? Or, are computers going to replace workers and create high unemployment? (I swear that I wrote stuff like that. I do not have that good an imagination to make this up. It also might explain one part of a very troubled childhood)

In any case, I kept these little ‘pearls of wisdom’ in a little chapbook. Within a couple of days after the Kennedy assassination I threw them all away, swearing off politics forever. Well, I did not hold to that promise. I have also moved away from that youthful admiration for JFK (although I will always hold a little spot open for brother Robert-oh, what might have been?) but I can still hear the clang as I threw those papers in the trash barrel.

In Search Of… Part Two-With Lost Loves In Mind -With Iris Dement's "After You're Gone" In Mind

In Search Of… Part Two-With Lost Loves In Mind

By Bart Webber

“You know, Dad, the only good thing that came out of the break-up with Moira was that I finally cooled the fire in my head a little, finally gained a little peace. Funny it came through taking up meditation which I used to laugh at when Moira would urge me to think about doing it to relax my fevered head a bit. Used to call it just another one of those New Age things that she was always touting as the next best cure for what ailed humankind,” Dan Hawkins said to his uncomprehending father, Jethro, a man he until a few years before he had been estranged from once the old man divorced his late mother to run off with some floosy who left him flat and broken, hearted and financially. They had only reconciled after his mother’s funeral when it seemed that such mending needed doing. That incomprehension of old Jethro about what Dan had just told him was nothing but the truth as the old man was “old school,” had grown up in utter poverty in Riverdale, had done his time in “Nam and had been and was proud of his service and exhibited all the traits of those young men, white men,  who had come of age in the late 1950s and were unaffected, or claimed to be unaffected, by all the bullshit, Jethro’s term, that passed for wisdom during the counter-cultural 1960s. So his running off with some floosy, his heavy drinking (and at one point drug use), his sense of Vietnam, my country right or wrong, patriotism were all of a piece. All of piece that would make something like meditation, something he had seen the Buddhists do in Vietnam while good  American like him were taking care of the shit train that they had let their country fall into by ignoring the “commies” until it was too late. If his wife, if his girlfriends of which he had had many after that floosy slipped away with his dough and his balls, had suggested that he take up meditation for what ailed him he would have shown, had shown for lesser offenses than that, the back of his hand. (And Dan could through a miserable childhood of merciless criticism, and back hands, testify to the truth of that statement. A truth that contributed mightily to those many years of estrangement between the two men.         

“What the fuck are you talking about, Dan? How the hell was whatever that meditation bullshit that ball-buster Moira trying to lay on you going to help keep you to together when she wanted to run the show, ’’ old Jethro answered back with that unknowing grin on his face that what Dan should have done was given her his back hand, and maybe a couple of good fucks and that would have stopped that noise.

“Dad, you can’t do that with women anymore and you probably couldn’t even in your day and if you had tried to lay a hand on Ma she would have left you high and dry way before you got tangled up that floosy Susie that broke you. I don’t want to talk about that, okay. Just hear me out with a word and maybe you can learn something for once,” Dan responded plaintively. His father almost began to say something nasty but the look in Dan’s eye told him to back off.  

This is the way Dan’s old high school friend, Rich Bruce, remembered what Dan had said to his father one night when they were having dinner at Elmer’s Diner in old town Riverdale where Rich still lived and Dan needed to confide in somebody about what he was trying to do to be less distraught about Moira’s quick disappearance from his life.    

Although at first Dan and Moira were crazy in love like many twenty-somethings who were going through their first serious love affairs right from the start there had been tensions, tensions caused by Dan always being in overdrive as he was starting his career in law at a major law firm, Dale, Dale, and Rutgers where the pressure was great to perform or hit the bricks. Dan had met Moira one night at Jeff’s Grille, a local hang-out for law students at Suffolk once they got over the grind of 1L after he had taken his bar examination and needed to unwind. She was a last year student at the Museum School of Art who was there with a girlfriend and he had asked them if they wanted a drink to celebrate his “victory” since he believed he had passed the damn thing on the basis of the written questions. One thing led to another and they started dating and making plans, in the meantime moved in together.      

That’s when the heartache began, that’s when that fire in Dan’s head led to many word fights and Moira’s first threats that things were not working out and that she was leaving. In lieu of that, at least for a while once Dan explained what pressures he was under from the high-pressure law firm he was tied up with, Moira decided to start doing meditation with Don Henderson, the locally famous Buddhist convert who ran classes each week at the Boston Center for Adult Education. Moira admitted for a while that doing her “meds” she called it helped to relieve the tensions between them. 

Just for a while though as she became more distraught at Dan’s behavior, including a fear that he might strike he in a keyed-up moment. She suggested to him that he might benefit from meditation. He blew off that suggestion, laughed at her and said that if anybody he knew every found out that he was doing such a New Age thing he would be laughed out of town.    

Probably Dan’s response set something off in Moira, he wasn’t sure if that was the moment when he had time to reflect on what had happened after she packed her bags and left but it didn’t help. She got moodier the more he got in that same condition, they made love less often and not as tenderly as before, a sure sign that things were going downhill fast. She would speak wistfully of having to find herself, having to see what she was all about in this wicked old world (Dan’s term, not hers) and the kicker, that she thought Dan’s frenzies were affecting her already delicate health. That last part, the affecting her health part got Dan’s attention and that was when he suggested the trip to Paris. She agreed.        

The trip to Paris had been great, they saw the museums, ate well, made love better than they had in a while and came back refreshed. Or so Dan thought. A week later, perhaps seeing how great things could be away the pressure-cooker of their lives together Moira lowered the boomthe first time. Said she wanted out. Dan begged her not to go and the only way he could placate her then was to succumb to her request that they go into couples counselling. Dan had hated even the idea of that kind of thing (and when he told his father about what she had asked him to do the old man gave a look like wasn’t he just pussy-whipped). So they went to a counsellor in Cambridge that Moira had heard of through New Age network and while Dan had held his nose at first once he got into the sessions he told Moira that he was in all the way, one hundred percent.      

Those weekly sessions went on for the better part of a year until he and Moira decided to take a week’s vacation to Maine. That week was another great time for fun at the beach, eating out and doing a few goofy things like playing miniature golf, going bowling, and going to an old-fashioned outdoor drive-in theater. A week later Moira lowered the final boom, packed her bags and left (that threatening to leave and leaving after a great vacation had Dan thinking about Moira’s own psychological problems but not much). Her argument was that like before she had to find herself, see what she was about and still thought Dan was aggravating her medical problems. She also told him in uncertain terms that he had better take stock of himself, seek some help, maybe see Don about doing meditation or he would become a human wreak.           

Well Dan moped around for a while, several weeks, thinking about where he had let the thing fall apart. Knew that he had been responsible for a lot of what had gone wrong, had been an ass about stuff. Then one day on the bulletin board at the law firm he saw a notice that several institutions in Boston, including Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) were putting on a Hubweek, a week of social, physical, and medical therapy workshops and lectures to let people calm down essentially. He noticed that one workshop was being held at MGH with a Doctor Herbert Benson, a name he knew from a book he had read that Moira had left around the apartment one thing when she was looking for yet another New Age idea. This Doctor Benson had proof, had done research, that practicing meditation would help your health or as Dan put it put out the fire in his head, let him be at peace a little. So he went to the workshop and the rest is history. He started doing that previously scorned meditation. And he felt better, calmer.  Old man Jethro Hawkins’ reaction:WTF. Some things never change.           

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love (1967)-From The Archives-FEAR AND LOATHING ON CAMPAIGN TRAIL 2008

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love (1967)-From The Archives-FEAR AND LOATHING ON CAMPAIGN TRAIL 2008

Zack James’ comment (June 2017):

You know it is in a way too bad that “Doctor Gonzo”-Hunter S Thompson, the late legendary journalist is not with us in these times both this 50^th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of Love, 1967 which he worked the edges of while he was doing research (live and in your face research by the way) on the notorious Hell’s Angels. His “hook” through Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters down in Kesey’s place in La Honda where many an “acid test” took place and where for a time the Angels, Hunter in tow, were welcomed. He had been there and later as well when he saw the ebb tide of the 1960s coming a year or so later. He would have “dug” the exhibition at the de Young Museum at the Golden Gate Park highlighting the events of the period.    

Better yet he would have had this Trump thug wrapped up and bleeding from all pores just like he regaled us with the tales from the White House bunker back in the days when Trump’s kindred one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal was running the same low rent trip before he was run out of town by his own like some rabid rat. Hunter Thompson wherever you are –help. Selah. Enough said-for now  

COMMENTARY


In my old age I am getting a little weak-kneed about having to wade through the basically vacuous blather coming out of the Democratic and Republican presidential nominating processes. While we are in a little period of ‘doldrums’ before the deluge I keep falling back to the work of Hunter Thompson on earlier presidential campaigns to try to keep a little sanity. Here’s a little tribune to the fallen journalist. Damn, Hunter we sure as hell could use you now. Call me collect from wherever you are. I’ll gladly accept the charges. Selah.

This commentary was originally used as part of a review of Hunter Thompson's Songs of the Doomed. Since most of the points I made in my review of that book apply here I will let that review stand in here for the essential thrust of his whole body of political work. Obviously each book written by Thompson on the various presidential campaigns is formatted differently but whether Thompson was skewering the Nixon era, the Reagan era, the Clinton era or the Bush eras the song is the same. And it was not (and is not) pretty.

Generally thinkers and writers who work outside the realm of bourgeois society, notably socialists and other progressive thinkers, have done the most the trenchant social criticism, commentary and analysis complete with a prescriptive social program ripe for implementation. Bourgeois society rarely allows itself, in self-defense, to be skewered by trenchant criticism from within. This was particularly true when it came from a known dope fiend, gun freak and all-around lifestyle addict like the late, lamented Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Although he was far from any thought of a socialist solution and would reject such a designation we could travel part of the way with him. We saw him as a kindred spirit. He was not one of us- but he was one of us. All honor to him for pushing the envelope of journalism in new directions and for his pinpricks at the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Such men are dangerous.

I am not sure whether at the end of the day Hunter Thompson saw himself or wanted to been seen as a voice, or the voice, of his generation but he would not be an unworthy candidate. In any case, his was not the voice of the generation of 1968 being just enough older to have been formed by the earlier, less forgiving milieu of the 1950's. His earlier writings show his struggle to break out of formalistic journalism. Nevertheless, only a few, and with time it seems fewer in each generation, allow themselves to search for some kind of truth even if they cannot go the whole distance. This compilation under review is a hodgepodge of articles over the best part of Thompson's career. As with all journalists, as indeed with all writers especially those who are writing under the gun of a deadline for mass circulation media these works show an uneven quality. However the total effect is to blast old bourgeois society almost to its foundations. Others will have to push on further.

One should note that `gonzo' journalism is quite compatible with socialist materialism. That is, the writer is not precluded from interpreting the events described within himself/herself as an actor in the story. The worst swindle in journalism, fostered by the formal journalism schools, as well as in other disciplines like history and political science is that somehow one must be `objective'. Reality is better served if the writer puts his/her analysis correctly and then gets out of the way. In his best work that was Hunter's way.

As a member of the generation of 1968 I would note that this was a period of particular importance which won Hunter his spurs as a journalist. Hunter, like many of us, cut his political teeth on one Richard Milhous Nixon, at one time President of the United States and all- around political chameleon. Thompson went way out of his way, and with pleasure, skewering that man when he was riding high. He was moreover just as happy to kick him when he was down, just for good measure. Nixon represented the `dark side' of the American spirit- the side that appears today as the bullyboy of the world and as craven brute. Sound familiar? If for nothing else Brother Thompson deserves a place in the pantheon of journalistic heroes for this exercise in elementary political hygiene. Anyone who wants to rehabilitate THAT man before history please consult Thompson's work. Hunter, I hope you find the Brown Buffalo wherever you are. Read this book. Read all his books.

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love (1967)-In The 1960s Time Of Fear And Loathing- The Movie-Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas”

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love (1967)-In The 1960s Time Of Fear And Loathing- The Movie-Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas” 

Zack James’ comment:

You know it is in a way too bad that “Doctor Gonzo”-Hunter S Thompson, the late legendary journalist is not with us in these times both this 50^th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of Love, 1967 which he worked the edges of while he was doing research (live and in your face research by the way) on the notorious Hell’s Angels. His “hook” through Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters down in Kesey’s place in La Honda where many an “acid test” took place and where for a time the Angels, Hunter in tow, were welcomed. He had been there and later as well when he saw the ebb tide of the 1960s coming a year or so later. He would have “dug” the exhibition at the de Young Museum at the Golden Gate Park highlighting the events of the period.    

Better yet he would have had this Trump thug wrapped up and bleeding from all pores just like he regaled us with the tales from the White House bunker back in the days when Trump’s kindred one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal was running the same low rent trip before he was run out of town by his own like some rabid rat. Hunter Thompson wherever you are –help. Selah. Enough said-for now   

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, starring Johnny Depp, based on the gonzo journalism of Doctor Hunter S. Thompson.

Make no mistake I have read everything of Hunter Thompson’s that I could get my hands on. I love Johnny Depp as an actor. However, this film does a true disservice to both of their talents. Johnny makes no sense as Hunter, although he was legitimate wild man Hunter’s friend. More importantly, Fear and Loathing, driven by stuff internally spinning in Thompson’s head, does not translate on the screen as anything but a diffused and nonsensical homage to late counter-cultural self-indulgence, drug division. Of the worse sort.

Thompson always claimed that his literary attempt to use the tenets of ‘gonzo’ journalism in the book was a failure. I disagree with that evaluation for the book but certainly not for the film. Let us face it this is classic case of the film being very, very inferior to the book, although the episodes and language hew fairly close to it. Please, please read the book. And please, please read many times that little gem snippet of his about his take on the high (and low) side of the 1960s experience, what it meant to those who got caught up in the excitement and danger, and when he could see the whole thing literally ebbing. Classic. You will also laugh and be entertained by his drug-induced attempt to find the meaning of the American experience in the post-World War II world. As for the film it will give you nothing but fear and loathing.

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love (1967)-A Random Word … On The Late Hunter S. Thompson-Doctor Gonzo

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love (1967)-A  Random Word … On The Late Hunter S. Thompson-Doctor Gonzo   

Zack James’ comment:

You know it is in a way too bad that “Doctor Gonzo”-Hunter S Thompson, the late legendary journalist is not with us in these times both this 50^th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of Love, 1967 which he worked the edges of while he was doing research (live and in your face research by the way) on the notorious Hell’s Angels. His “hook” through Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters down in Kesey’s place in La Honda where many an “acid test” took place and where for a time the Angels, Hunter in tow, were welcomed. He had been there and later as well when he saw the ebb tide of the 1960s coming a year or so later. He would have “dug” the exhibition at the de Young Museum at the Golden Gate Park highlighting the events of the period.    

Better yet he would have had this Trump thug wrapped up and bleeding from all pores just like he regaled us with the tales from the White House bunker back in the days when Trump’s kindred one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal was running the same low rent trip before he was run out of town by his own like some rabid rat. Hunter Thompson wherever you are –help. Selah. Enough said-for now  

Make no mistake the late, lamented Hunter Thompson was always something of a muse for me going way back to the early 1970’s when I first read his seminal work on the outlaw bikers, Hell’s Angels. Since then I have devoured, and re-devoured virtually everything that he has written. I have reviewed many of those efforts elsewhere in this space. As I noted recently in reviewing his 2004 work Hey, Rube not all his efforts have been equally compelling. That was the case in panning Hey, Rube but here we are on much more solid tradition ‘gonzo’ style from the old days. Maybe it is because this work is in the form of a memoir and thus intentionally places the good Doc’s actions in the center of the writing that makes this more in the mold of his better compilations like the Great Shark Hunt and Songs of the Doomed.

Thompson uses a stream of consciousness trope going from the present (early 2000’s) and his then current doings and splices them together, in some segments randomly, to events as far back as his childhood in Louisville, Kentucky. Along the way we find out him at age nine in trouble with the FBI. Down and dirty in Rio with the crazies. Incessantly testing his beloved guns and various hot motorcycles at various and sundry appropriate and inappropriate times. Taking trips to places like Vietnam just before the fall, Cuba, Grenada after the invasion and elsewhere where the journalistic action might be and a story, in the Thompson style, might develop. Needless to say there is plenty of ink about sex, drug and rock and rock including his deeply affecting and traumatic tangle with the law in the early 1990’s. That, my friends, was a close call. And throughout, as usual, there are pithy political comments about the various idiots-in-chiefs and their henchman that he spent his life hammering. Maybe not your way, definitely not my way but his way. His fateful run for Sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket in 1970 probably set the tone of his politics accurately. For those who have read other works by Thompson some of the signature language may be old hat as he meanders along in this volume. For others it is a chance to learn the lingo. Enough said.               

In The Time Of The Soviet-American World War II Friendship-With Edward Myrtryk’s Seven Miles From Alcatraz In Mind

In The Time Of The Soviet-American World War II Friendship-With Edward Myrtryk’s Seven Miles From Alcatraz In Mind  

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

Okay, okay regular readers of this space (and of the on-line version of the American Film Gazette) know that I have, how did Pete Markin put it, oh yeah, put myself out to pasture. In other words retired from the day to day grind of film reviews what with the inevitable deadlines sneaking up and giving me heartburn when I haven’t figured out a “hook” to tie the review up with and Pete is e-mailing every other minute I had had enough. I had conned my old friend, colleague and competitor Sandy Salmon (from that same American Film Gazette where he was a regular film critic with a by-line long before I began to occasionally write for the publication) into doing the yeoman’s work until he in his turn will retire and let younger hands get their chance. I also mentioned in that notice of retirement that I would occasionally comment on whatever I felt like commenting on as long as I didn’t have to meet some damn deadline.     

I have of late been impressed by some of Sandy’s reviews which are pretty good and which I have no quarrel with. What I have noticed when he reviews older films which is what this space is more and more dedicated to is that some remark he makes or some insight of his gets me to the computer to make a comment. That is what I am up to today in regard to a recent review he did of a 1940s World War II film, part propaganda, part action thriller entitled Seven Miles From Alcatraz. The “hook” for me was not the fact that it was directed by Edward Myrtryk who would after the war be red-baited and scapegoated as one of the Hollywood Ten, guys who wouldn’t snitch on their fellows who might have in the past been reds, you know, communists . Honorably done at the time although unlike Howard Fast and Dalton Trumbo he eventually spilled his guts to whoever would listen to save his career. That direction might have been part of what I was looking at which I will explain in a minute since the thrust of the film fit in very well with what the American Communist Party on orders from Moscow were doing to help the war effort once the Soviets became allies in 1941.        

No, what got me about this film was that even hardened criminals could under the story-line presented aid the war effort, could in this case be anti-Nazi fighters. My first reaction was WTF, yeah, that is exactly what I thought. Here is the gist of the story. A couple of hard cases tired of Alcatraz, the “Rock”, the supposedly inescapable Rock out in the dangerous Frisco Bay escaped to a lighthouse out in the harbor, out by the Japan currents from what I could gather. At that lighthouse there was the lighthouse keeper (an important job in the treacherous waters in the Bay), his daughter and a couple of other guys, one a goof but the other who just so happened to turn out to be a Nazi spy. A Nazi spy who is connected in with a group of fellow conspirators who have plans to blow up half of Frisco town once they grab a submarine off that lighthouse and get back to the Fatherland. Naturally they get nowhere once these cons get their patriotic fervor up after they “realize” that if Frisco town goes the Rock goes too if they get captured and are returned there before that event takes place. The conspiracy and the sub once the military gets a fix on them from the lighthouse keeper after the cons struggle with the Nazi agents trying to get back home goes to the briny deep. Fair enough nobody liked the idea, least of all me, of half of Frisco town being blown up.

What is really galling though is the idea that these hardened hoods were to be considered cinematically part of the great united front to wipe the Nazis and their allies off the face of the earth. Such guys from Steubenville, Ohio and Hazard, Kentucky who were itching to volunteer once the Japanese did their dastardly deeds at Pearl Harbor I understand as part of the front. Guys building ships, welding like crazy on three shifts to produce a ship a day I get it. Rosy the riveter picking up the slack when the menfolk went off to war great. Granny planting her Victory Garden, nice work. Kids running around getting string and aluminum foil for the war effort good young citizens. But cons who would as soon as put a slug in you, hey, in that light-keeper if it came to it before they “got religion” on what was what with the damn Nazis no I cannot buy that. What was Dmytryk thinking anyway when he took on this film.                

  

Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night –Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s “Key Largo”

Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night –Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s “Key Largo”

DVD Review

Key Largo, starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Edward G. Robinson, Lionel Barrymore, and Claire Trevor, Warner Brothers, 1948


“One Johnny Rocco, more or less, in the world is no business of mine.” So says one world-wise, world weary, been-through- the-mill ex-World War II military man, Frank McCloud (played, understatedly, by one cinematic 1940s tough guy, Humphrey Bogart) in the film under review, Key Largo. And he was right, dead right that a single guy , a single guy singed by life’s pitfalls could, would, or should take on one more hoodlum in this wicked old world.

But, of course dead right or not, this would be an exceedingly short film if Frank threw in the towel when he faced one real live Johnny Rocco hoodlum (played to a sleazy tee by serious 1940s gangster-type Edward G. Robinson). Moreover I set up the last paragraph to see if those who follow crime noir in all its glory were paying attention. Crime noir, for the one hundredth time, no, the one thousandth time, is based, for good or evil, on one premise, crime at the end of the day does not pay. And criminals must pay, either forfeiting their lives or doing one to ninety-nine in stir, the can, prison, okay.

And so world-weary, world wary, seen it all Frank McCloud must once more call on the better angel of his nature to eradicate one very live Johnny Rocco. Let’s give a few plot details to flush on this story and see why Frank had to bust up some two-bit racketeer. One Johnny Rocco and his courtly entourage of petty thugs decided to hit Key Largo, specifically the Key Largo Hotel, off-season, maybe to save a little dough on the room rates. No, no, no to make a score off of some counterfeit dough hot off the presses that his old crony Ziggy will pass off as real kale. But see Johnny has a problem because although a few years back he was king of the hill up in the Midwest he has been deported as, if you can believe this, an undesirable alien and has been cooling his heels in anything goes Batista-era Cuba waiting for his big comeback. So this deal, real dough for fake (at a serious discount of course) brings him back to old Estatos Unidos, well, Key Largo which is only a stone’s throw from Cuba.

And everything would have been fine except just then one ex-serviceman, our friend Frank McCloud, who happened to have been the hotel owner’s (played by Lionel Barrymore) killed in action son’s commanding officer in the European Theater, decided to stop by and commiserate on his way to Key West. And everything would have been very fine if a big blow, a hurricane, did not also gum up the works forcing everybody (everybody except the Native Americans left to fend for themselves during the storm) into the claustrophobic hotel lobby area where the frayed nerves of all were exposed.

Naturally since old Johnny had all the guns, all the gunsels, and a very nasty disposition when he was crossed he was hands down the winner, right. No, no you were not paying attention. See a dame, well, actually two dames, come in to muck things up. No femme fatales here though, just Nora (played, very understatedly by Lauren Bacall), who was married to the owner’s deceased son and is pretty easy on the eyes. While the sparks between Bogart and Bacall do not light up the screen like they did in To Have And Have Not they go for each other. So Frank’s hands off the world approach is doomed, doomed big time, if he wants to get anywhere with Ms. Nora. And then there is Johnny’s lush girlfriend, Gaye, who old Johnny does not treat right, no way. Add a slap or two to Nora by Johnny and Johnny is doomed, doomed big time. RIP. Thus there is, whether it makes any different in the great mandela in fact one less Johnny Rocco in the world. Got it.