U.S. Military confrontation on Venezuelan-Colombian border a danger this week - All Out!
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Tuesday, February 19, 2019
U.S. Military confrontation on Venezuelan-Colombian border a danger this week - All Out!
Present At The Creation-The French Revolution Comes To Spain-Natasha Portman’s “Goya’s Ghosts” (2006)-A Film Review
Present At The Creation-The French Revolution Comes To Spain-Natasha Portman’s “Goya’s Ghosts” (2006)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Bradley Fox, Junior
[As of this post under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website brought in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Peter Markin was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the habit of assigning writers to specific topics like film, books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]
Goya’s Ghosts, starring Natasha Portman as Inez and Alicia, Javier Bardem as Lorenzo, Stellan Skargard as Goya, a Spanish production done in English, 2006)
[I find it ironic that one of the first assignments that new site administrator Greg Green has handed out deals with the turmoil of the French Revolution through the prism of the famous Spanish artist Francisco Goya which roiled through Spain during the height of the revolution in France and later during various Napoleonic conquests including Spain. Sometimes apparently, and this may have been Greg Green’s point in assigning the review life mirrors art as in the case of Lorenzo, the Spanish priest turned exiled partisan of the French Revolution and Napoleonic agent during the French occupation in the early 1800s before his downfall at Waterloo.
Seemingly a parallel example exists between Lorenzo’s topsy-turvy career and fate and that of the previous site administrator Peter Markin, who not so coincidentally was a good friend of my father Bradley, Senior and who has recently retired from that position after a vote of “no confidence” by the writers. The main reason given was Peter’s obsessive tilting of the coverage of subjects in this space toward events from the turbulent 1960s when most of the older writers came of age exemplified by the over-the-top coverage of the Summer of Love, 1967 he ordered the writers, young and old, familiar with the period or not, to cover. There has been, and here the parallel with Francisco who would go to his execution under the Inquisition once the French were defeated and swept out of Spain by the British with the aid of Spanish guerillas, a persistent rumor that Peter was purged and that the retirement ploy was just that a cover for the more aggressive removal mainly through the efforts of the younger writers which in the interest of transparency included me. So maybe Greg Green is trying to make a cautionary tale out of using this film plot as a review. I will try to track this down as I get more information by if you heard that one Peter Paul Markin has fallen under the wheels of a modern day Inquisition don’t be surprised. Don’t be surprised at all.]
*******
Artists, artist like the title’s Goya sometimes have the uncanny sense to be at the right place at the right time-at least the plot of this little gem of Spanish production film would indicate that. He lived and worked in the time of the French Revolution which was bringing a serious breathe of fresh air to feudal remnant Europe with the overthrown of the monarchy and of the attempt to bring the new democratic forms to the rest of the continent-including Spain which is where that revolution intersects with what Goya was observing and painting. In a sense Goya is all over the place in his work from the court painter to the royal family to the painter of the horrific effects of war on civilians and soldiers alike to the famous, or infamous if you like, painting of the Maja, the naked Maja which may or may not have scandalized European sensibilities. That is the subtext to the plot here where a Spanish priest, played by Javier Bardem, and Goya, played by Stellem Skargard, intersect through a rich merchant’s daughter model, played by Natalie Portman, whom Goya used and who inflamed the priest to lustful and criminal desire.
Spain was, and maybe still is, a tough dollar place to be a dissenter, dissenter mainly being anything but a Roman Catholic and a hardened monarchist (and possibly a closet Francoist fascist if the recent struggle for the legitimate right to independent statehood of the Catalan peoples is any indication). Spain after all was the land of Inquisition which did not take kindly to any dissenters and had the means (torture and the rack, ultimately the auto de fe and the stake) That is where the action in this film starts (so the faint-hearted should push the stop button now). Lorenzo is the main prosecutor for the tribunals always looking for victims via his extensive stoolie spy network and he finds one in the person of the lusted after Inez. She goes into the dock after being tortured for her confession and before long Lorenzo has had his way with her. That way with her leading to her bearing his child. Eventually Inez get out of the slammer but the place took a lot out of her, left her mentally damaged.
Meanwhile the Church has no place for Lorenzo who is now considered an albatross around its neck and he gets out of Spain by hook or by crook landing in France. The scene then shifts back to Spain some fifteen years later. Like a lot of hard-boiled men who seek the main chance he became a senior bureaucrat in Napoleon’s administration of Spain after its conquest. Such men changing allegiance as easily as changing their shirts. Inez has seen better days but Lorenzo is still interested in finding his daughter. That search is interrupted by the British invasion which finds Lorenzo unsuccessfully fleeing but being caught and once the old order is reestablished the Inquisition in reinstated as well. Live by the sword die by the sword Lorenzo is condemned and in a defiant and honorable finish refuses to recant before he is executed.
What about Goya who after all is the hook for anybody with artistic sensibilities to have even bothered to watch this rather dragged out epic. He hovers over the scene doing his sketches and plotting his painting while trying to help Inez as best he could. But this film is mainly about Lorenzo and that is really the problem for me since we all know every revolutionary period brings certain figures from the old regime with them-after the masses have brought the changes and have fallen back exhausted. The French and Russian revolutions were full of such men who landed on their feet- for a time. Not enough Goya here to make this one move off dead center.
Happy Birthday Frederick Douglass- A New Biography In Honor Of John Brown Late Of Harpers Ferry-1859 *For Frederick Douglass On His 200th Birthday- JOHN BROWN- THE AVENGING ANGEL
Happy Birthday Frederick Douglass-
A New Biography
Click on link to hear a
serious biographer of Frederick Douglass the revolutionary abolitionist who broke
with the William Lloyd Garrison-wing of the movement when the times called for remorseless
military fighting against the entrenched slave-holders and their allies. This from
Christopher Lydon’s Open Source program
on NPR.
https://player.fm/series/open-source-with-christopher-lydon/behind-the-leonine-gaze-of-frederick-douglass
This is what you need to
know about Frederick Douglass and the anti-slavery, the revolutionary abolitionist
fight. He was the man, the shining q star black man who led the fight for black
men to join the Union Army and not just either be treated as freaking contraband
or worse, as projected in early in the war by the Lincoln administration the return
of fugitive slaves to “loyal” slave-owners. Led the fight to not only seek an
emancipation proclamation as part of the struggle but a remorseless and probably
long struggle to crush slavery and slaver-owners and their hanger-on militarily.
Had been ticketed at a desperate moment in 1864 to recreate a John Brown scenario
if they logjam between North and South in Virginia had not been broken. Yes, a
bright shining northern star black man.
Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the heroic revolutionary abolitionist, John Brown.
DVD REVIEW
JOHN BROWN'S HOLY WAR, PBS DOCUMENTARY, 2000
From fairly early in my youth I knew the name John Brown and was swept up by the romance surrounding his exploits at Harpers Ferry. For example, I knew that the great anthem of the Civil War -The Battle Hymn of the Republic- had a prior existence as a tribute to John Brown and that Union soldiers marched to that song as they headed south. I was then, however, neither familiar with the import of his exploits for the black liberation struggle nor knew much about the specifics of the politics of the various tendencies in the struggle against slavery. I certainly knew nothing then of Brown’s (and his sons) prior military exploits in the Kansas ‘proxy’ wars against the expansion of slavery. Later study filled in some of those gaps and has only strengthened my strong bond with his memory. Know this, as I reach the age at which John Brown was executed I still retain my youthful admiration for him. In the context of the turmoil of the times he was the most courageous and audacious revolutionary in the struggle for the abolition of slavery in America. Almost 150 years after his death this writer is proud to stand in the tradition of John Brown.
This documentary, for friend and foe alike, brings out the main issues of John Brown’s personal life and the political turmoil of his times. As usual in such endeavors the producers attempt to give an even-handed account by bringing in historians and others from many perspectives. And that is fine, especially for defenders of Brown, in these times when many right-wing tendencies have tried to invoke his name for their unworthy causes and the term 'terrorist' is freely bantered about as a universal term of abuse. In a sense this documentary, unintentionally I am sure, brings him back to his proper place as an avenging angel for the progress of humankind.
And what of the issues of Brown’s life and times? The documentary covers it all pretty well; his Calvinist upbringing and early abhorrence of slavery; his failures in various business ventures; his ‘monomaniacal' view that slavery must be abolished brought to life early on as a stationmaster in the Underground Railroad; his guerrilla fights in Kansas, including his role in the controversial murders of some pro-slavery forces there; his strategic and tactical military errors at Harper's Ferry; his stoic and resolute demeanor in face of his execution; and, of course, his subsequent legend. For those not familiar with John Brown this is a quick primer which should be supplemented with some reading. There are an abundant number of books on his life. Check them out. Check the link here to John Brown on "Wikipedia".
Monday, February 18, 2019
Artists’ Corner-In The Aftermath Of World War I- Dada Takes A Stab At Visually Understanding A Broken World After the Bloodbath Which Mowed Down The Flower Of The European Youth
Artists’ Corner-In The Aftermath Of World War I- Dada Takes A Stab At Visually Understanding A Broken World After the Bloodbath Which Mowed Down The Flower Of The European Youth
By Lenny Lynch
I don’t know that much about the Dada movement that swept through Europe in the early part of the 20th century in response to the creation of modern industrial society that was going full steam and the modern industrial scale death and destruction such mass scale techniques brought upon this good green earth by World War I. (Foreshadowed it is agreed by the industrial carnage at places like Cold Harbor in the American Civil War, the butchery of the Franco-Prussian War and subsequent river of blood by its own rulers of the Paris Commune and the Boer War.) The war to end all wars which came up quite short of that goal but did decimate the flower of the European youth, including vast swaths of the working class. Such massive blood-lettings for a precious few inches of soil like at the Battle of the Somme took humankind back more than a few steps when the nightmare ended-for a while with the Armistice on November 11, 1918. An event which in observing its centennial every serious artist should consider putting to the paint. And every military veteran to take heart including the descendants of those artists who laid down their heads in those muddy wretched trenches. Should reclaim the idea behind Armistice Day from the militarists who could learn no lessons except up the kill and fields of fire ratios.
I don’t know much but this space over this centennial year of the last year of the bloody war, the armistice year 1918 which stopped the bloodletting will explore that interesting art movement which reflected the times, the bloody times. First up to step up George Groz, step up and show your stuff, show how you see the blood-lusted world after four years of burning up the fields of sweet earth Europe making acres of white-crossed places where the sullen, jaded, mocked, buried youth of Europe caught shells and breezes. Take one look Republican Automatons. Look at the urban environment, look at those tall buildings dwarfing mere mortal man and woman, taking the measure of all, making them think, the thinking ones about having to run, run hard away from what they had built, about fear fretting that to continue would bury men and women without names, without honor either.
Look too at honor denied, look at the handless hand, the legless leg, the good German flag, the Kaiser’s bloody medal, hard against the urban sky. The shaky republic, the republic without honor, shades of the murders of the honest revolutionary Liebknecht walking across Potsdam Plaza to go say no, no to the war budget and grab a hallowed cell the only place for a man of the people in those hard times and gallant Luxemburg, the rose of the revolution, mixed in with thoughts of renegade burned out soldiers ready for anything. Those former were forever your brethren and breathe. Weimar, weak-kneed and bleeding, would shake and one George Groz would know that, would draw this picture that would tell the real story of why there was a Dada-da-da-da-da movement to chronicle the times if not to fight on the barricades against that beast from which we had to run.
Step up Max Ernst and show us your stuff, show us what four fucking years of war did to the brain. Ernst was drafted and served both on the Western and the Eastern front. Such was the devastating effect of the war on the artist that in his autobiography he referred to his time in the army thus: "On the first of August 1914 M[ax].E[rnst]. died. He was resurrected on the eleventh of November 1918." How could one any longer draw bowls of fruits or natty portraits of high society fashion or even peaceful fishing villages like their forbears. The times were out of joint, connected only by the most tenuous thin reed bonds.
Poets' Corner- Langston Hughes- “Trumpet Player”
Poets' Corner- Langston Hughes- “Trumpet Player”
Shorty Blast (not his real name , his stage moniker that was all, the reason for the ruse will be mentioned below but since he was working the New York café society crowd and needed to have a cabaret license a necessary moniker ) dreamed his eternal great big fat immense high white note dream, dreamed it incessantly, dreamed it right then while he was playing, horn splish-splash playing, just kicks riffs and raffs, little be-bop, be-bop nothings that got the customers attention and a certain nod, maybe a sent-over scotch, like the brethren knew, hell, knew anything about high white notes or anything. Just then he was dribbling for the early arrivers (and early leavers, the six in the morning wakers, hah, his bedtime, jesus what do they do all day but wait upon the night, their own version of the high white note night), the quick scotch and soda crowd before the night bleeds, bleeds all Mayfair white around eleven (and the real stuff, after hours after two, when the clubs let out and the boys play for each other, and to beat each other, to tag off some phantom riffs ) at this Red Fez gig that he had been working, working for a couple of months now to keep body and soul together and to keep Mister Landlord, a not very understanding fellow, from his door, and to keep the former Mrs. Blast far, far away from his door (and his latest paramour, Miss Lucille Pratt). Yes, he dreamed of that high white note, dreamed when or where or how it would come but never, never that it would not come because , he, frankly, frankly you hear, brothers and sisters, had the sheer lung power and muse-magic to turn that big fat note on a dime.
And so this night, this could be night, Shorty did, as he always work did, once he had a few house scotches in him, or maybe some godsend reefer to change the pace if one of the boys scored (he, having been burnt once with a small container and done a couple up at state prison was not the scorer any more, no way, not with that dream note still out there. He knew that the note could come out at the Red Fez, the Hi Hat Club, maybe at some wicked jam at LoJo’s, or even while he was up in his tenement room, practicing ,when Miss Lucille was not around since when Miss Lucille was around, around with her wanting habits on, even Gabriel did not want to blow some funky horn but no way, no way in hell was that note coming out in Ossining town, no way), was to go into a certain state, a certain state where he was not really in the Red Fez , he was not playing for crowds, early or late, was not even in the present time but back to Mother Africa times, to Pharaoh times if anybody was asking, okay.
That Pharaoh time kick had stayed with him since about the sixth grade, yes, it was the sixth grade when he and his older brother (now resting in some European graveyard after having spilled his black brother blood against that damn Hitler) and he, they , were mesmerized by the Egyptian exhibit at the Museum Of Fine Arts in Boston where they grew up complete with pharoanic statues and wondered , wondered out loud about those slave days, about the winds rushing across the Nile, about the rapid river run of the Nile, and about some ancient sound, a sound that sounded very much like the sound that would be produced by that high white note, the note that would bring down pharaoh, bring down Mister’s thousand acre cotton fields, bring down Mister James Crow, bring down that silky smooth Mayfair swell crowd that was starting to fill up the place just then. And so Shorty played, played like Pharaoh was coming to get him, coming to take his deep breath away…
*******
Trumpet Player
The Negro
With the trumpet at his lips
Has dark moons of weariness
Beneath his eyes
where the smoldering memory
of slave ships
Blazed to the crack of whips
about thighs
The negro
with the trumpet at his lips
has a head of vibrant hair
tamed down,
patent-leathered now
until it gleams
like jet-
were jet a crown
the music
from the trumpet at his lips
is honey
mixed with liquid fire
the rhythm
from the trumpet at his lips
is ecstasy
distilled from old desire-
Desire
that is longing for the moon
where the moonlight's but a spotlight
in his eyes,
desire
that is longing for the sea
where the sea's a bar-glass
sucker size
The Negro
with the trumpet at his lips
whose jacket
Has a fine one-button roll,
does not know
upon what riff the music slips
It's hypodermic needle
to his soul
but softly
as the tune comes from his throat
trouble
mellows to a golden note
With the trumpet at his lips
Has dark moons of weariness
Beneath his eyes
where the smoldering memory
of slave ships
Blazed to the crack of whips
about thighs
The negro
with the trumpet at his lips
has a head of vibrant hair
tamed down,
patent-leathered now
until it gleams
like jet-
were jet a crown
the music
from the trumpet at his lips
is honey
mixed with liquid fire
the rhythm
from the trumpet at his lips
is ecstasy
distilled from old desire-
Desire
that is longing for the moon
where the moonlight's but a spotlight
in his eyes,
desire
that is longing for the sea
where the sea's a bar-glass
sucker size
The Negro
with the trumpet at his lips
whose jacket
Has a fine one-button roll,
does not know
upon what riff the music slips
It's hypodermic needle
to his soul
but softly
as the tune comes from his throat
trouble
mellows to a golden note
Langston Hughes
The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Real Scoop Behind “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?”-Martha and the Vandellas- Dancing In The Streets
The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Real Scoop Behind “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?”-Martha and the Vandellas- Dancing In The Streets
This sketch takes place in the 1970s but is driven, and driven hard, by the music of the early 1960s when the grifter described here first came of age and hence its inclusion. Frank Jackman
“Hey, brother, can you spare a dime?,” (or sister now something unheard of back in the day, back in the early 1960s, when some cop might pinch you at her request for disturbing the fair sex for being unseemly in public asking a proper lady for anything. Now here in the go-go 70s any human form is qualified for the hustle where every low-rent guy takes a shot figuring maybe to get something so the other party, particularly women, can get you out of their faces and move on) followed by “Got an extra cigarette, pal (or gal, ditto the sister thing except unlike back in the day, pal or gal, in the new age, as likely as not, probably has no butts, has no “cigs,” doesn’t touch the stuff ever since the Surgeon-General’s report put the fear of God in lots of people)?”
Yeah, Billy Bailey, William James Bailey, used-to-be brash corner boy, a contender for the title of king hell king of the corner boy night around Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, “up the downs” back in North Adamsville in the old days, the old days these days being the early 1960s before smart and brash corner boy Frankie Riley put an end to that dream by trumping all upstarts since he was “in” with the shop owner, certainly had the panhandler lingo down, down pat, after only a few days on the bum. Funny during these few days on the bum this time he would almost blush when he thought back to the days when he used to laugh in the faces of swollen-faced raggedy-assed guys trying to pan-handle him for dough, trying to bum a smoke, and here he was with the brethren. Hustling maybe a little cleaner in attire that the brethren since he had not gotten down to second-hand Sally goods yet although a few more weeks with constant use of the few clothes that he did have might have him howling. Hustling too with cleaner breathe since he did not drink (that jones long over and done with substituted by several subsequent joneses including his current burden. He still felt that contempt for the buggers since he “knew” that a few days of this street work and he would be off the skids, on his feet again and then able to go back to laughing at the brethren, a good laugh too, while they pipe-dreamed their lives away.
Yeah, this was strictly temporary because his ship would come in before he wound up on cheap street like the boyos hanging around the Common swilling rotgut wine (or maybe low-rent whiskey if the day’s take was good) smoking tobacco “roaches,” butt end really off the ground and pissing all over themselves. However every once in a while he would get a funny feeling, kind of turn up his collar a little more, push his baseball cap lower on his head, put on sunglasses ( a real no-no in the pan-handler racket since you want the “marks” to see your desperate eyes, your pleading desperate eyes, to close the deal. Besides sunglasses might make them feel you just blew in from the coast.) when he realized that he was on the bum in his own home town, his ever-loving’ roots, Boston. (His hometown of North Adamsville close enough so that he did not have to tell people who asked the name of the town and could get by with Boston unlike if he was from Lowell or Lawrence or places like that. Sure he had been on the bum a few times, nothing big, once on the Mission in Frisco (where in the same day he walked across the Golden Gate Bridge and that night slept, slept newspaper for a pillow sleep, under that edifice), a couple of times on Larimer Street in Denver before they gentrified the damn place and along the arroyos down in Los Angeles with a bunch of Vietnam veterans like himself who unlike him couldn’t adjust to the “real” world.
Yeah, those were a few day bums, maybe a week, couple of weeks, no more than a month and then back to the world. Short falls, maybe drunk too much and jobless, later maybe too much gambling on run-out horses and dogs (and no money coming in to feed the habits once he got behind), maybe some twist threw him over for a steady guy after he wore out his welcome (and her pocketbook). On the bum this time, this time though a real fall, in hock and up to his ass in debt, mostly big score no-go dope on credit deal debts, when he had tired of drunk risks, gambling risks, frail risks, guys looking for him, not Boston guys thankfully, well, looking for him to pay up. During the long days of pan-handling this time though he would think back to the old days, the days before the “falls” when hustling dough was just for some short money, pick up some spare change, to wander into free campsite, Volkswagen bus pick-up sharing stews, brews and dope hitchhike roads looking for the great blue-pink American West night with some honey, some Angelica honey, bum like a few years back. Angelica, the proto-type of his sexual desire in those days, all Midwest blonde, slender, frisky, proud and sensible, traipsing after him across half the continent before going home to Indiana and then later joining him in southern California before she decided on white picket fences and kids. Sweet kiss, baby, you were probably right when that last night you said your gallant knight was made of sawdust. Yeah, that was a while back, late 1960s back when even he sensed the world might be turned upside down. Hoped maybe he and his would get a fair shake in the world even though more pressing personal issues drove his days and nights.
Those days, those days after the hellish army routine, the “Nam bummer, the Nam bummer before he hightailed it with the arroyos brothers who couldn’t face the “real” world down in L.A. he practically made a religion, yah a religion out of living “free,” living out of the knapsack(oddly an old World War II surplus job found at Snyder’s Army and Navy which he father had told him he carried all thorough Europe when it was to kick ass with the Nazi), living under bridge (not arroyos brother bridges but nice, meaning girl company nice, sleeping bag also Army surplus and light campfires and fine stews), no sweat, if need be. But those “golden days” dried up a few years back and now here in 1976 he was facing a real skid row choice. How it happened he will get to along the way but first let’s set the parameters of what 1976 panhandling, to put an eloquent name on it for “bumming”, shiftless bumming , looked like and how to survive in the new age of everybody me-ing themselves, even with people who were not on the bum. Christ, lord the times were hard, hard times in old Babylon, no question.
See, a guy, a guy who called himself “Shorty” McGee for obviously physical reasons but who knows what his real name was, maybe he didn’t remember either after all the rum-dum sterno heat years and the endless backsides of skid row haunts, that he had hitched up with for a minute, an overnight minute at the Salvation Army Harbor Lights Center over in the South End kind of hipped him to the obvious tricks of the new down-at the-heels road. Like putting the two requests, change and “cigs,” together when you were panhandling. See, Shorty said it was all a matter of psychology, of working the crowd, the downtown crowd, the bustling workaday Park Street Station crowd hurrying to and fro looking for quick lunches, maybe a minute shopping spree in Jordan Marsh’s or Filene’s, and the Copley Square sunning themselves crowd on the benches across from the library maybe reading a book or feeding the pigeons, right to get you out of their sights and back to whatever sweet thing they were doing. So you endlessly put the two requests together, time after time after time, and always. And what happened was that when they turned you down for the dough ( as happened a lot), or maybe took you literally and pieced you off with just a dime, Christ a dime that wouldn’t even buy a cup of joe, could feel good about themselves, if they smoked, smoked cigarettes anyway, by passing you a butt. Billy thought, nice, this Shorty really does have it worked out just about right. Of course dimes and drags were not going to get him out from under, not this time.
Well, rather than leaving the reader out in the dark, Billy Bailey this fair 1976 spring was not just on the bum, but on the lam as well, keeping his head very far down just in case there were some guys who were looking for him, or worst, the cops, in case some irate victim of one of his scams took a notion to “fry his ass.” Of course he was counting on them, those victims, being mainly friends and acquaintances, of not putting “the heat” on him since he had already promised through the grapevine that he would make restitution. But we are getting a little ahead of the story, let’s step back.
The early 1970s were not kind to “free spirits” the previous name for what on this day were “free-loaders” and Billy, well, got behind in his expenses, and his bills, his ever expanding bills. But see the transition from free “s” to free “l” caught him off-guard, moreover he was just then in the throes of a fit of “the world owes me a living,” a serious fit. Why? Well see, he as a pauper son of the desperate working poor, “felt” that since he missed out on the golden age benefits of his youth that he was to make up the difference by putting the “touch” on the richer friends that he had acquired through his doing this and that, mainly high-end drug connections (not really rich but richer since the really rich were hunkered down behind about fifteen layers of fortresses, physical and legal, and as some writer who knew what he was talking about really were different that you and me, no question).
The long and short it was that he work the deal this way, this way once he got his hard wanting habits on first he would “borrow” money off Friend A under some scam pretext of putting it to good use, usually using some exotic drug story as the front (yes, his good use, including several long airplane fight trips to California and other points west-no more hitchhike roads for this moving up the food chain lad) and then borrow dough off Friend B to cover some of his debt to Friend A. Something like an unconscious classic Ponzi scheme, as it turned out. And then when he got to Friend X or somewhere around there things got way too complicated and he started “kiting” checks, and on and on as far deep into his white- collar crime mind as he could think. That could only go on a for a short while and he calculated that "short while" almost to the day when he would have to go “underground” and that day had sprung up a couple of weeks before.
So it took no accountant or smart-ass attorney to know that dimes and drags were not going to get him back on his feet. Nor were many of the schemes that Shorty had outlined over at Harbor Lights as ways to grab quick cash. (Hitting the poor boy charity circuit, good mainly one time, grabbing stuff on credit using somebody’s credit card gained through guys who sold fake credit cards and then selling the stuff quick and deeply discounted. Some check finagling. All things that really took sunnier times to work and squeak maximum benefit from. These were chicken feed for his needs, even his immediate needs, although some of the scams would fill the bill for a rum-dum or life-long skid row bum. But here is the secret, the deep secret that Billy Bailey held in his heart, after a few nights on bus station benches, cold spring night park benches, a night bout under the Andersen Bridge over by old haunt Harvard Square (girl-less and with no cozy sleeping and stew campfires), and a few nights that he would rather not discuss just in case, he finally figured out, figured out kicking and screaming, that the world did not owe him a living and that if he wanted to survive past thirty he had better get the stardust and grit out of his eyes. But just this minute, just this undercover spring 1976 minute, he needed to work the Commons. “Hey, brother, hey sister, can you spare a dime?” “Pal, have you got an extra cigarette?”
Postscript: Not all wisdom ends happily, and not all good intentions grow to fruition. Yes, Billy paid off his debts to his friends, mostly. However, Billy Bailey was killed while “muling” in a drug war shoot-out in Juarez, Mexico in late 1979 trying to do an independent score when the bad boy Mexican and South American cartels were bundling things up. Found face down with two in the back of the head. Yeah, Billy Bailey had moved down the chain a lot since the days when he was a contender for the king hell king of the corner boy night.
History In The Making-In The Unmaking Too-Audrey Tautou’s “Coco before Chanel” (2009)-A Film Review
History In The Making-In The Unmaking Too-Audrey Tautou’s “Coco before Chanel” (2009)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Leslie Dumont
Coco Before Chanel, starring Audrey Tautou, 2009
Apparently Greg Green who hands out the assignment here, all the assignments here unlike before he came over to manage this sit and headed the film department at American Film Gazette where I was a stinger for a while early in his tenure has decided that I am to be the “women’s film” reviewer in residence since with the film under review Coco before Chanel marks the fourth straight women-oriented film I have reviewed. I don’t like, don’t like that implication at all, since if I had wanted to shell myself into a cozy non-threatening spot I could have kept my by-line at Women Today where I reviewed many things including films which were only marginally about women, one about a couple of gay men where there were no women at all.
The real thing that bothers me about this assignment from Greg who although he had posted in public that he reviews every film before assignment seemingly could not have done so here though is the subject matter on two counts. First dealing with famed Parisian haute couture fashion designer Coco Chanel when I do not give a damn about high fashion or low and resent that I have to blather on about fashionable hats and dresses like that meant anything in the real world. Fellow writer here Josh Breslin who was my companion for some years before I went to my by-line at Women Today can testify that I threw the bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume he gave me one Christmas across the room one time later when we having a drawn out, drag down fight about something. So much for fashion, high or low. The more egregious point though is that this is basically a dishonest film, a film which very conveniently cuts away before the German occupation of Paris when Ms. Chanel according to now disclosed documents worked hand and hand with the occupiers of what could have been burning Paris if Hitler had had his way and never was held truly accountable for her collaboration and her convenient grabbing fortunes when the Jews were rounded up. Thus this vehicle portrays yet another rags to riches by the bootstraps by a poor trodden down orphan who falls in love and is disappointed. Damn another two-bit love story.
Holding my nose, officially holding my nose if anybody including Greg Green is asking, I will do what is expected ever since Sam Lowell’s days as film editor and tell a few details about the plot-line. Coco and her sister were treated as wayward orphans at the hellish Catholic orphanage they grew up in after their mother died. When they came of age (after learning how to sew at the orphanage) they hit the road as a sister singing act and drew the attentions of some high society patrons of the saloon where they worked (and where Coco got her moniker). These upscale relationships gained them, and eventually Coco alone, some important connections with high society, with the world of money where women as “pet poodles” were as conscious about fashion as they were about having their sullen little side affairs.
Coco’s relationship with one such high society male got her entrée into the provincial country elite and then off to gay Paree where her hats first and later high end dresses gave her a certain cache. The film’s tension is between her overweening ambition, not a bad thing in and of itself especially for a single woman of limited means, and a love affair with a British businessman that cannot go anywhere since he, seeking his main chance, is engaged to be married to some daughter of the England nobility. Before that happens though the beast died in a car accident and that was that. Although Coco never married she was at least a mistress to some high ranking German when the Nazis tried to devour Europe, including Paris. I am still holding my nose. No mas.
Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program Three- A Shop Of One’s Own
Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program Three- A Shop Of One’s Own
“Doc” Jackson (first name William but nobody, including his wife, Lucille, ever called him anything but Doc, so Doc) had been dispensing pills and sundries and notions (not one knew what that mean, including Doc, but it sounded good, good to the tongue, when one said it reading it off the front door sign) at his corner drugstore for over thirty years in that spot at the intersection of First Avenue and Grand Boulevard and Third Street in the high Detroit Southward neighborhood, what some called the “colored section” when he first started out back just a few years after World War II, others, black and white, called “niggertown” showing some contempt or self-contempt in the snarly way that they pronounced it, still others, reflecting the new sociology of the 1960s called it by some seemingly pathological name, “ghetto,” and he called just plain ordinary vanilla home. See Doc had lived over that drugstore of his for all the time that he had been dispensing those pills, those sundries, and those notions. That apartment’s value and an adjacent rented one had helped when money was tight, when things were slow, or when the neighborhood and the times changed. He was proud that he had held on, held on tight.
He had seen some changes, from the high side money coming in during the “golden age of the automobile” when everybody was looking, looking hard to upgrade to a new car every few years (he had even caught the bug going from an old Packard, to a Chevy, to a high-end Buick, the one sitting out in the back of the store just then) to the hard time’60s when they, those bastard black brothers, burned everything they could get their hands on after Doctor King was assassinated, and almost got the drug store and its environs but the neighbors, his black and brown neighbors, had drawn a line in the sand and said, no, no more. And now, he was seeing some very disturbing signs that the town was going to be further devastated because they, as a result of some world oil situation which even he didn’t understand, were going to close Dodge Main, a place where in good times and bad, a lot of the neighborhood worked, or had somebody working.
Worst though, much worst, was that his old clientele was pulling up stakes, or was dying off he hated to admit and so his old seven in the morning to ten at night speedy service of those in need of their medicines (or their liquor, which he carried for those with prescriptions, and those without, but the less said about that the better) and he was being squeezed out, squeezed out by the new chain drugstores, the new one they want to build right on his corner spot. And there was nothing that he could do about it. See, despite what everyone believed, even Lucille, he didn’t actually own the building, the apartments or anything but had leased them from Mister Reed, a good white man who had run the drugstore before him and seen the neighborhood change and seen that Doc was someone who could be trusted to keep the place going, long ago. Mister Reed, who had recently died, had a son who, as sons will do, wanted to convert his legacy to cash and was willing to sell out to that Osco Drug chain. So here he was now with nothing much to show for a lifetime of work, of sweat, of service except to rekindle his dream of a shop of his own somewhere, anywhere to close out his days…
The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:[39][40]
1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black Community.
We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.
2. We want full employment for our people.
We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.
We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.
4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.
We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.
5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.
We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.
6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.
We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.
7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.
We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.
8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.
We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.
We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.
10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
In Black History Month-All Honor To The American Civil War Massachusetts 54th Black Volunteer Regiment
In Black History Month-All Honor To The American Civil War Massachusetts 54th Black Volunteer Regiment
The “Cold” Civil War Rages In America-In The Second Year Of The Torquemada (Oops!) Trump Regime- Immigrants, Trans-genders, DACAs, TPSers, Media People, Leftists, Hell, Liberals Know Your Constitutional Rights-It May Save Your Life
The “Cold” Civil War Rages In America-In The Third Year Of The Torquemada (Oops!) Trump Regime- Immigrants, Trans-genders, DACAs, TPSers, Media People, Leftists, Hell, Liberals Know Your Constitutional Rights-It May Save Your Life
By Frank Jackman
Over the first year of the Trump regime as this massive control freak regime has plundered right after right, made old Hobbes’ “life is short, brutish and nasty” idea seem all too true for a vast swath of people residing in America (and not just America either) I have startled many of my friends, radical and liberal alike. Reason? For almost all of my long adult life I have been as likely to call, one way or another, for the overthrow of the government as not. This Republic if you like for a much more equitable society than provided under it aegis. This year I have been as they say in media-speak “walking that notion back a bit.” Obviously even if you only get your news from social media or twitter feeds there have been gigantic attempts by Trump, his cronies and his allies in Congress to radically limit and cut back many of the things we have come to see as our rights in ordinary course of the business of daily life. This year I have expressed deep concerns about the fate of the Republic and what those in charge these days are hell-bend of trying to put over our eyes.
Hey, I like the idea, an idea that was not really challenged even by the likes of Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes in their respective times that I did not have to watch my back every time I made a political move. Now maybe just every move. This assault, this conscious assault on the lives and prospects of immigrants, DACAs, TPSers. Trans-genders, blacks, anti-fascists, Medicaid recipients, the poor, the outspoken media, uppity liberals, rash leftist radicals and many others has me wondering what protections we can count on, use to try to protect ourselves from the onslaught.
I, unlike some others, have not Cassandra-cried about the incipient fascist regime in Washington. If we were at that jackboot stage I would not be writing, and the reader would not be reading, this screed. Make no mistake about that. However there is no longer a question in my mind that the “cold” civil war that has been brewing beneath the surface of American society for the past decade or more has been ratchetted up many notches. Aside from preparing politically for that clash we should also be aware, much more aware than in the past, about our rights as we are confronted more and more by a hostile government, its hangers-on and the agents who carry out its mandates.
I have been brushing up on my own rights and had come across a small pamphlet put out by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a good source for such information in these times. I have placed that information below.
As the ACLU disclaimer states this information is basic, should be checked periodically for updating especially the way the federal courts up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court have staked the deck against us of late. In any case these days if you are in legal difficulties you best have a good lawyer. The other side, the government has infinite resources, so you better get your best legal help available even if it cost some serious dough which tends to be the case these days with the way the judicial system works.
Most importantly when confronted by any governmental agents from the locals to the F.B.I. be cool, be very cool.
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