The Once And Future King-The Short Happy Life Of Joseph Robinette Biden-Last Seen Panhandling On The National Mall-He Could Have Been A Contender

By Frank Jackman

[This short piece about the rise and fall of one Sleepy Joe Biden, ex-VPOTUS, over the last short period since his announcement to run for POTUS was started prior to the news that Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and a fellow POSTUS contender had gone under the laser in Nevada. This is no reflection on his candidacy nor than of the current front-runner Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as the three main contenders of the Democratic nomination. It still remains a not so tongue-in-cheek did at Sleepy Joe’s belief that he could run a presidential campaign that did not run out of gas almost before it got started. FJ]        

No question Seth Garth and Sam Lowell two of my oldest co-workers here at this publication and going back even farther to our high school days as 1960s corner boys in front of Tonio’s Pizza Parlor in the Acre section of North Adamsville love to talk politics. No, love to spin some kind of web out of the political happenings of the day would be more like it. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely when I think about it now, in the old days, in those holding up the bricks in front of Tonio’s days they could have given a “rat’s ass” about politics, even parody. It was a guy like the late Peter Markin, always called the Scribe, and me who were incessantly talking politics to the point where the other guys, including Seth and Sam, would point daggers our way when the conversation drifted from girls, cars and girls to that subject.

Things change in life, usually out of some wake-up call event, and shift the axis another way. That happened with Seth and Sam in a very dramatic way that I am privy to so can disclose here-the Vietnam War of the 1960s, of their robbed youths. They, as was I, were dragged into that conflagration as patriotic as the next citizen, believed plenty of what the government said was going on and did what they considered their duty. Considered their duty until they got home starting crying to the high heavens about the insanity of that war, maybe all wars which meant that they had to go smack dab up against politics. Politics which for the most part they, we, have followed and acted on around specific issues like the struggle for peace, the struggle against the endless wars of the past couple of decades and the long wave on-going struggle against the bloat of the war economy on society and the individual.   

So you can see we mostly have dealt with issues rather than the hurly-burly of electoral politics, you know, getting people elected POSTUS, stuff like that. That was until this past election cycle or really the result of the last election cycle with the election to POSTUS of one Donald Trump. That opened many eyes, theirs and mine included, that we were dealing with a new kind of beast, a new “how low can you go” in that kind of politics. And that they, we, needed to do something  about it-pronto, or as pronto as the next election in 2020 would allow seeing that we were, are, essentially stuck with the bastard until then (the current noise about impeachment notwithstanding since the Republican Senate will not vote to convict and throw the bum out so “noise”).       

At the beginning of the year a number of us, Seth, Sam and me included, not just war veterans although the others were veterans of many social and political struggles all sat down and discussed who to support, if anybody for POSTUS in opposition to the monster in office (who has actually gotten more monstrous since then if you can believe that). We dickered back and forth given the growing number of Democratic candidates who had the fire in the belly necessary to even bother thinking about running came out of the woodwork. Most of us centered our choice on the valiant refugee from the 2016 election process Senator Bernard Sanders from Vermont and fresh-faced and new Jane on the block Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts. That is enough to be said about that political process because as the headline here notes this is about one Joseph Robinette Biden, former VPOTUS under Barack Obama.

And that will be the point, the main political point and the cause for much laughter and joking between Seth and Sam spilling over to me, Bart Webber, Jack Callahan, Frankie Riley, Chrissie McNamara and others in the room at the time. Joe Biden figured nowhere on anybody’s radar although there was plenty of speculation that he would be the front-runner if he ever decided to get into the race by the social media and   corporate media pundit class. Seth made everybody laugh especially at what has now turned out to be something of a prophetic pronouncement. Seth told everybody that the day Joe announced, if he did so, would be his best day, his high point and so it has turned out as he wobbles around sulking through the Trump Ukraine debacle that will come down on his head one way or another. (Strangely for once not of his own doing but Trump’s crazed notions about how to bring a domestic political opponent low via foreign powers.) 

Yeah, we all had a good laugh on that one at the time although for a while, for much of the summer actually, we could not figure out why he was still considered the front-runner since he could hardly utter a word without putting his foot in his mouth. Not the kind of person you want to send against a professional foot-in-mouther like Trump. We heard all kinds of fast talk about Sleepy Joe’s ability to beat Trump, to make him cry uncle under the weight of Joe’s brilliant career and his presidential campaign efforts. All baloney, all who gives a rat’s ass as we used to say in the old days when some yawn moment came.

So where is Sleepy Joe now, where is he staying tonight now that his over-loaded chariot has busted and he has tapped out in his $2800 packaged checks from guys like Comcast, the lovely bilking credit card companies that made Delaware, Sleepy Joe’s old constituency a safe haven for rough usurious interest rates and a billion others whom he glad-handed over the years. So things never change though a couple of months in and he is already like yesterday’s new. Except lots older and so now to make his dough he had to hang around the National Mall panhandling the millions of tourists who don’t remember that he was the VPOTUS to the second black president (by general admission around our circles Bill Clinton was the first by din of having a few black friends on and off the Vineyard  and playing some kind of mean sax was the first but that is just around our way).   

Hell, somebody said after the saw Sleepy Joe and heard his spiel about needing the dough to pay bills, buy a cup of joe, grab a hot dog, whatever line he was using at the time said he sounded better and more coherent than he ever did on the stump. Somebody said he raised around $2800 one day just working those crowds. Tough way to finish a political career but that is hard-ball politics up in the rarefied air of fire in the belly presidential politics. Enough said.    

A Magical Moment In The World Of Art-The Recent “Discovery” Of 26 Painting Presumed Destroyed In The Nazi” Night Of The Long Knives Destruction Of ‘Degenerate Art’ ” Of Abstract Impressionist Raybolt Drexel Shakes The Rafters

A Magical Moment In The World Of Art-The Recent “Discovery” Of 26 Painting Presumed Destroyed In The Nazi” Night Of The Long Knives Destruction Of ‘Degenerate Art’ ” Of Abstract Impressionist Raybolt Drexel Shakes The Rafters

By Laura Perkins

The reader may pardon me for having “gone dark” for the past few months and thus having avoided getting immersed in my fellow writer (and sometimes art mentor) Sam Lowell’s on-going battle, shadow boxing really, about the fate of the masterpieces that were stolen in the heist of the century (20^th) at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston some thirty years ago. Sam’s main beef, no, point, no, admiration, having been nothing but a charter member corner boy in his desperately poor youth so always on the lookout for the easy score and always just a little East of Eden on the legality question, was how easy the heist had been. Certainly to his eyes and ears with plenty of inside help and he didn’t mean the silly rent-a-cops who were supposed to protect the crown jewels but probably some well-positioned curators and volunteer tour guides. You know the cubby hole knowledge of some exotic artist for which some well-placed curators have written a seamless 66 page essay on as part of some exhibition and the suburban matrons who thrill to jabber their six-sentence knowledge of say, well, Rembrandt since we are rightly commemorating his 350^th birthday of later rating. Or as likely among those “volunteer” art students from the Museum School and Mass Art who facing the prospect of garret life for the next few decades decided to find a benefactor like the old artists, like Rembrandt if I am not mistaken did in the courts and chanceries of Europe back in the day. If the reader will recall at least one curator, a Holbein the Younger expert and a couple of art students (not sure from which school) left the staff shortly after the theft never to be heard from again after a light FBI grilling. But enough of this for Sam and I have gone on endlessly about the insiders as well as the simply although beautiful plan as it was laid out.          

More importantly than who qualified as prime suspects for the job on the inside for the actual thefts though, the thirty-year question really, was how the various agencies investigating the whereabouts of the stuff have come up mainly with egg on their faces. Sam, even today has a certain amount of glee when he describes the lightweight work done by the FBI and Boston Police  to recover the masterpieces even with the so-called big rewards available (although really chump change compared to the value of the art today at half a billion maybe more today so you know that missing curator and those so-called art students are not giving up squat, Sam’s word, not playing ball with the law, also Sam’s, else find themselves in stir. What a laugh.)    

Frankly, Sam, and through Sam, me have had a few so-called theories about the fate of the works, where they are, who had them and who has them now. It did not take old Seth Garth long to figure out where such stuff would be in the Greater Boston area once He and Sam put their heads together. So it was no surprise, made perfect sense to me to have known that the works had been stored in the Edward McCormick Bathhouse, or really the shed where they keep the tools and trucks,  over on Carson Beach for years so Whitey Bulger, complete with pink wig and paper bag beer could eye them at his pleasure while he was on the run. The key link was one guy, a career criminal mostly but with a François Villon poetic heart, who claimed to be the President of Rock and Roll, Myles Connors, who did the detail work (and also did as far as we know some very good preservation work to keep the “Big 13” from the elements coming off of Dorchester Bay.

Probably had things worked out Whitey’s way the artworks would still be over in the bathhouse, still be a one-man museum exhibition. But all of that art for art’s sake that a painter named James McNeil Abbot Whistler laid on an unsuspecting world went in the trash barrel because once Whitey needed dough for his defense in a fistful of murder and mayhem charges he sold all the good stuff, sold everything I believe except those hazy sketches nobody would really want today except museum curators desperate to fill up their artist retrospectives with enough material to not leave any empty spaces. Sold the lot minus the loss-leaders to a guy, I think his name is Tom Steyers, something like that, a hedge fund guy who has some social consciousness,  who has the good stuff locked up somewhere in order to peep at them on occasion but mainly to leave his kids with some start-up dough if they too wanted to be socially conscious billionaires. The second-rate stuff for all I know may still be in the bathhouse garage but don’t quote me on that.  

Frankly though, especially now that Whitey has taken the fall, has gone to sleep with the fishes, that is all old news, speculation and macho guy talk like Sam and Seth get into when they need some hot air time and not worthy of my time. Not worthy of my time as an acknowledged and proud amateur art critic. Not against the part I played in helping to put together the clues that would get 26 works, no, masterworks by the famous Abstract Impressionist Raybolt Drexel which everybody though the Nazis had destroyed when they went on a rampage against “degenerate art,” decided to burn everything in sight that blighted their vision of an Aryan Garden of Eden back in the 1930s when they thought they had a thousand year Reich in front of them. I played a minor role in the investigation and research but I played a part recognized by those inside the art cabal, even by my usual nemesis Clarence Dewar, professional art critic for Art Today. Believe me that kudo says plenty.

A little background, my background into the case is in order to set the scene. Back when I was a college student, back in the 1960s, at Rochester I was always mesmerized by a painting that hung near the statue of the great black abolitionist Frederick Douglass simple entitled Steel #6 by Raybolt Drexel. The amazing thing, no, the two amazing things about this painting, were, one, that it was one of only three known Drexels to have survived the Nazi onslaught in the 1930s when these scum were burning everything in sight by guys like Max Beckmann, George Groz, Milos Drebs and Raybolt Drexel as “degenerate art,” as against the cult of the superman Aryan race noise that soon enough, well, maybe not soon enough, got bloodied by some guys from America and Russia who didn’t like their drift of a thousand years of darkness. The other, number two, was that this painting was an almost classically pure example of one of the “new wave” trends in early 20^th century art, abstract impressionism, which Drexel did a huge amount to pioneer before they, and you know who the “they” is and if you don’t think Nazi scum, grabbed him and did something vile to him which even today we don’t know exactly what it was and where he was buried except  somewhere in Poland on the way to the concentration camps.             

I was at Rochester for four years before heading to the “real world” but I would bet that I looked that that painting a hundred times, at least. The funny thing is that it always struck me in different ways when I saw it in various lights, times of days, and my own personal moods. That is what abstract impressionism was about, that is what we know Drexel was trying to do with his paintings in a world moving toward various forms of expressionism and then pure abstraction (which usually today leaves me hollow). That is what he detailed in the few writings he was able to sneak out of Germany before they grabbed him. Here’s the play on Steel #6; numerous layers (one curator, an abstract impressionist expect so I will go with her judgement, estimated at least twenty) of white in all its variations covering most of the 48” by 72” canvass frame. Then in the lower left corner maybe 12” by 18” a piece of steel. Or something that looks like steel in all its admixtures of straight-up gray, blue-gray, black-gray, green-gray, charcoal-gray, lemon-etched gray and so on. The amazing point though, the look at it one hundred plus times point during four years at Rochester point, was the essence of the piece, that is the best way I can say it, if not exactly explain it, took one from the original iron ore to the finished product in one fell swoop. Incredible, magnificent, amazing.          

Back to the main story though. Not all the details of how these glorious 26 paintings survived are known even though we pressed the issue as far as we could, talked to everybody in Germany (mostly though second-hand conversations since the generation who would have known the facts straight up had passed on or had been killed during the war) who had any information about the transit, including army officers and lower-level government officials. For, example, some tank commander’s son, his father after the war proud to say he had saved some great art whatever he did in the war heading with his division west along the transit route, would tell us how the “shipment,” cloaked as an “ironic” steel shipment for the front stopped in the Ruhr Valley on the way and that the old man had ordered four trusted NCO guards to insure its safety. Many such examples.

In the great scheme though, what had originally saved the Drexels from the faggot fires of Nuremburg and Berlin was that after Drexel was grabbed what appears to have happened is that some half- committed Nazi named Klein who had a love of art (as we have seen plenty of autocrats and cravens who would blow up the world still keep some art work in their bunkers with them so don’t be so surprised by that love business) decided that the good German name of Drexel could not produce “degenerate art.” Meaning as well as other things that a non-Jewish German could not produce such art although that did not stop Herr Klein from having his SS boys grab Drexel for the rails to Poland while taking the 26 (it may have been 29 there is speculation 3 pieces got lost or destroyed on the way west) masterworks.  The “other things” being that it would be quite a stretch to see the simple designs of Drexel’s work on the same plane as say Max Beckmann who really did try to rub noses in his productions.

The three previously known to survive Drexels had been brought to America by George Groz who consigned them to the New World Gallery in New York City where Allan Austin, a rich Rochester alum saw Steel#6 and decided to purchase it for Spring Hall as a fitting  tribute to economic progress which fit in with the mission of the college). Once the European war started this half-Nazi, apparently still half-Nazi if his rise to general meant anything decided to take the artworks west with him while the Nazi tide was rising. West to Paris where he was stationed apparently through most of the war. When things started to go south for Germany after the heroic Soviet struggle at Stalingrad this Klein made plans to get the paintings to America. Some Germans, including high level German officers like Klein when they began to see the writing on the wall were going to save their asses as best they could when the Americans came knocking at the doors. Unlike guys like Martin Blatner and Max Steiner who went down in the bunkers to fall down with the 1000-year Reich. Through some byzantine network, the “tunnel” I have heard it called, got the stuff out of Europe and into the mansion of Amos Drexel in Pennsylvania-without him or his staff being aware of what would wind up in the basement as an ordinary shipment of industrial goods. This wealthy industrialist had some family relationship with Raybolt’s and thus a perfect set-up for a delivery drop.             

The story stops there for a while for the simple reason that Herr Klein never made it out via the OSS “tunnel” which maybe tells you how bad a character he was, how dirty his hands were what with the death of Drexel and who knows how many before he hit Paris and grabbed every Resistance fighter he could get his hands on, hung then on lampposts up and down the Seine as cautionary tales. Although I found no listing for him in the Nuremburg tribunals, even in the secondary lists since the Dulles boys were grabbing whoever did not stink to high heaven in order to begin in earnest the fight against the emerging Soviet power in Europe he must have been put to sleep.

The story from my ends begins a few years ago when I read an article in a scholarly journal which referenced how methodical the Nazis were before they went on the run, say 1944 when even Max Steiner know the game was up and decided to hit the bunker early. For example, for our present example, some low-level clerk or something was in charge of, made a list of all the “degenerate art” which went to the pyres in their crazy lust to rid the world of most 20^th century art. That made me curious about the fate of the other art works of Drexel which never made it to American shores. Through various connections I was able to get the list of destroyed art. I could not stop my heart from serious fluttering when I saw that nothing of Drexel’s was officially listed as consigned to the flames. That would eventually, again due to that great German skill of organizing everything into workable systems, open up the trail of who last had access to the Drexel work and then to Herr Klein’s role. (It was well known that Klein had had Drexel in his clutches in the 1930s before he “disappeared “ attested to by half a dozen SS scum who were only too glad to speak of their role of cleansing Germany of modern filth.)

The hardest part turned out to be in Pennsylvania, although not in the way one would think. Working with a senior curator from the Met, the gal who claimed that Steel#6 had twenty layers of white on canvass before anything else was done to the surface and a Drexel expert, we worked our way to pay dirt. Along the way interviewing some relatives of an art dealer in Paris who had worked with Herr Klein to get the works out of the country before all hell broke loose I had been given information that the clandestine works had been sent to something called the Drexel Institute which would have made sense, but which subsequent to 1970 I think changed to the more generic Drexel University. We spent untold weeks checking out possible lead there, nada, nothing. Then somebody told us about the Drexel mansion about ten miles outside of Philadelphia. A few weeks work there going through many crated boxes and crates looking for something that would have disclosed the item had come through Paris as least we found the secured iron box filled with the treasures, none on frames but after many years still in good shape (that estimation from the Met curator who also helped with the question of authentication).

A book is being written about this extraordinary find, a book which I will be involved with having published by Art Press, so I have limited myself to the shell of the way the items were finally discovered which were actually worthy of a detective novel. What intrigued me, what frankly freaked me out was that the Steel#6 up in Rochester was the end-piece of a series of six paintings on the same general theme of birth and growth. So in Steel#1-5 you will see the same attention to massive layering as in #6 although fewer layers but as you put the framed works in a row (Drexel noted in pencil that this is the way they should be collectively hung on the back of #1) you start with a very small gray object and work your way up to what I have previously described in viewing Steel#6. Amazing, beautiful and perhaps the definitive work expressing what abstract impressionism was all about when it flowered alongside Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and pure abstraction.          

Accept No Substitutes-Private Eyes Have Got The Public Coppers Beaten Six Ways To Sunday-So Why Is Ace Crime Novelist Lem Kane Doing A Police Procedural-“Hotel NewYorker” (2019)

Accept No Substitutes-Private Eyes Have Got The Public Coppers Beaten Six Ways To Sunday-So Why Is Ace Crime Novelist Lem Kane Doing A Police Procedural-“Hotel NewYorker” (2019)

By Rav Wilson

I am mad as hell this morning ever since I heard that I was assigned to review what is now Lem Kane’s 19^th crime novel Hotel New Yorker. What I am mad as hell about has a source in that Lem has switched up on me, has made me look foolish for having given a pretty good review of his The Cup Runneth Over (which by the way was his 18^th published crime novel since he had had the habit of numbering the series from the start) based on what looked like an interesting extension of the private detective genre into the 21^st century. In this century producing story lines which rely more on guile, paper trails and archival interventions than the two-fisted hit or shoot first and let God sort it out later that created the professional hard-boiled P.I. genre back in the day. Back when the international revolt against parlor pink teapot shamuses took root.  

Back in the days when Lillian Hellman, she already notorious for dealing with subjects like lesbianism, S&M, and underground foot fetish cults, literarily took Dashiett Hammett in hand and forced him to redden up and pile the corpses high in the pages of his Continental Op series instead of doing the normal nine to five leg and quite legwork that passed for hard-boiled crime detection when it was gathered at weekly women’s clubs meetings. Made him, made Hammett’s previously stiff, backwater repo man and keyhole peeper working out on a rundown seen better days office building Sam Spade man up a bit, lose lavender man, yes, gay man, Joel Cairo as a partner and take on ladies’ man Miles Archer. In response, pushed the editors at Black Mask into forcing Ray Chandler to throw some bang-bang lead, maybe a little machine gun fire for effect, around toughing up his previously cream puff P.I. Philip Marlowe who was mainly seen escorting the vivacious daughters of LA’s elite to various charity events and keeping their blackmail gambling and drug gaffs down a bit. Yeah, and Louella Parsons begging Phil Larkin to let more fists fly per page in his popular Private Eye Malcolm Dowry series (allowing her out of work actor son Bill, a former Golden Gloves boy, to grab some work as Malcolm’s bodyguard when Hollywood decided to put the P.I. on film).

But central to that concept, central to going hard-boiled to fit the times and the tired reading public was, is that the main characters be private actors, be private investigators who clean up the cold file messes left by the public coppers after they fiddle with the case for a couple of days then go back to the coffee and crullers. (Not that the private eyes could not have previously been public coppers who couldn’t take the gaff, who couldn’t take gambling impresario Eddie Mars’ weekly white envelopes, could look the other way when the booze was being run up the coast, or the underage girls either, or like Phil Marlowe saw the D.A.s office as your average cesspool of corruption and favoritism and bailed out, or was fired take your pick.)

That was what was interesting about the joint venture between P.I. John David Nicolas and his investigative partner/lover criminologist Doctor Alexis Newcome. The putting of two heads together unfettered by governmental rules, bureaucracies and staid traditions like the coffee and crullers grab every rookie copper was expected to start out doing day one to solve some crimes and avoid the cluttered deep freeze cold file chest. That seemingly ordinary skill set would as we shall see when we get to the bones of the Hotel New Yorker case would have saved a few innocent people, a few guilty also come to think of it. (Interestingly John David first got hooked on crime detection after picking up a soggy matchbook on the ground one day walking home when he was in high school to see if he could use the matches to light his cigarette and saw an advertisement for learning the private detection trade in ten easy lessons just fill out the form and mail in ten bucks and you were on your way. John David of course never did succumb to such a silly “come on” trick but went to Nick Charles’ Advanced Private Detection Academy in San Francisco becoming the school’s most famous graduate. Doc Alexis, grind, went the straight academic route up to and including a doctorate in criminology from Stanford.)  

Now that bastard Kane has gone and given us a freaking police procedural starring some Dorothy minus Toto from Kansas transplanted to New York City to teach the city slickers real crime detection named Ellie and Rogue her super street wise Afro-American sidekick who moved a shorter distance from Hoboken to the city and who is not quite sure what to make of a prairie-bred woman, both young and already detective sergeants if you can believe that. Who, in what is probably one of the great unheard of moves in the annals of public copper cases, actually stay on the case past the three day maximum usual for NYPD investigations before they head to the freezer. Jesus.    

In that Cup Runneth Over review I invoked the holy of holies’ name, the master hard-boiled private detective aficionado at this publication Seth Garth who was spoon-fed on the genre on Saturday afternoon matinee double-headers at the local cinema when he was a kid. Seth is so much the P.I. junkie he can tell you the difference in dialogue and plotline, between book and film, sometimes dramatic, on every film he saw as a kid. He has set the gold standard for crime novels for many years and has had many devotees including me as young as I am having only seen or read those ancient texts second or third hand. Moreover Seth had reviewed the first 17 of Lem’s crime novels, mostly favorable even if he still held to the older hard-boiled premises set by Hellman, Dick Sales at Black Mask and Louella Parsons. And that is exactly the point. Everybody bows down, and rightly so, to guys like Dashiell Hammett after he got the blood lust up, Ray Chandler when he added murder to Phil Marlowe’s squiring the young ladies around, Kenny Millar in his good days before he turned rotten and got his ass kicked out of the profession from letting Lew Archer take a few falls for him when Lew was on the downside of his career, Chester DeFord in his Dudley Smythe series, Phil Larkin for a while until he got wrapped up in women troubles that his fictional P.I. Dowry stirred clear of, and Link Soros who turned the whole private detection genre into something worth reading (and later viewing on the screen) after an all-out assault on the gentile Dame May Whitty noise that had previously existed complete with tea cups and parlor pink plots (and no guns or fists).

Those guys, and Dame Whitty would have been clueless unto the grave about the matter if she even knew what the matter was beyond the larder, worked off the simple premise that where there is crime, rampart crime like developed in the big cities of America in the early part of the 20^th century you were going to need tough and ready guys to fight these monsters, these guys who were deep into liquor, selling women, illegal drugs, gambling you name it. Dame May would have run for the hills if she had had to face a guy like say Eddie Mars who ran everything on the West Coast before the big boys from the East decided to take in some sun along with the profits. Eddie was tough alright, but he snapped like a twig when Phil Marlowe got the jump on him and let him have the RIP rap. Along with that simple premise there was the idea that if there was crime afloat then the public coppers were knee deep “on the take” or looked the other way and so nobody in their right minds including some old biddies looking for lost grandsons even bothered checking in with these bums. Got their bulky checkbooks out for the so much a day and expenses private eyes. That is what Lem Kane (who as those who read the previous review by me know I went to grad school  with in the 1990s before he hit pay dirt with his crime novels) is overthrowing just to suck up to some by-the-numbers throw little scraps of evidence along the way police procedural which John David and Alexis would have wrapped up in day.  

Let’s go by the numbers here with Ellie and Rogue. Naturally against all good instinct Lem has too many moving parts going on in the plotline I suppose to fill out the book to his normal private detective production  so he throws in every possible social and criminal gaff around. Tough work although I know personally he had been given a huge advance from Random to do this little threadbare effort. (Yes, jealousy is abound here as with others who went to grad school with Lem, who showed us none of the crime novel promise he has exhibited and is in danger of losing with this throwback to Dame May Whitty stuff).

Naturally as well this Kane-etched storyline is not going to be some average fall down junkie found in a dumpster and forget about it gag or somebody whose kid got caught in a drive-by and is asking questions. Here from minute one we are in upscale New York which Dorothy from Kansas doesn’t seem to have much of a clue about or she would have backed off early in trying to frame some Mr. Big. A guy named Simon, yes, that Simon from Simon Real Estate who bought up all of the Westside Highway and is still counting the dough he has made on that boondoggle. This Simon is also known far and wide (meaning of course the Hamptons) as a man about town, always has the most gorgeous looking young women hanging off every arm. (Keep this thought in mind for later since those women play a role, maybe a small role, maybe big in what finally comes down to us.)   

Somebody got murdered in Mr. Big’s penthouse (let’s call him Mr. Big since if I recall correctly Lem always called his high-end characters that in classes) in the exclusive Hotel New Yorker of the title (if you have to ask for the nightly room rate or what you get for your dough, the amenities move on you can’t afford the joint or will smell the place up ). The murdered person was no stumblebum, some junkie stealing the silverware,  like usually happens in these situations but Mr Big’s trusted bodyguard whom he let use the place for some romance with a dame, a hooker as it turns out, a hooker associated with the same escort service Mr. Big would us on occasion to have a doll wrapped around his arms. So the public coppers, our Ellie and Rogue have to do some additional head scratching to figure out why a body guard for Mr. Big fell down, took the gaff  in Mr. Big’s bedroom after having sex with some woman unknown. And why that woman left no trace, or little of her presence and why.      

Ellie and Rogue take the easy road out trying to put a big frame around the notorious Mr. Big but get nowhere fast since he, so they assume, is totally connected and can walk away from this rap without any heavy lifting. And he does for a while having a high-priced law firm (if you have to ask their rates move on you had better get a public defender or  something) and Mr Big friendly judge  on his side leaving them with plenty of egg on their faces and no real leads as to who killed some rent-a-cop who got his job through some graft with, Nick Dolan, Nick who after leaving the New York public coppers landed on his feet with his own agency which got him some inside play with a gal in Mr Big’s office and he wound up as head of Mr. Big’s security operations.

Then the inevitable strange and usually unrelated chain of events throws things this way and that for the next few hundred pages of fluff. Through modern technology and its endless lists of hard information Ellie and Rogue find that the woman involved, or the woman they think was with robo-cop was a young hooker, oh, excuse me young escort who answered Robo’s pleas for companionship. They also somewhat weirdly find once they put the NSA tag on her that she, a college student at NYU, is being Internet “stalked” by a party, or parties unknown. Before long they find her very dead one sunny afternoon in her apartment mutilated. Oh yeah find that she had a roommate (follow the bouncing ball from here on in, okay) who also was hacked up but who survived, was taken to the hospital then walked away one late night. How is Lem going to glue all this together and make the average avid crime detection reader by into his grift. (By the way I agree with those like Lem, who uses modern technology extensively here although not so much when John David and Alexis were on the case in earlier novels, and Lank Revere who think that private eyes have to buy into the new technology, charge it up to expenses if they have too padding charges for that material just like the gas mileage in the old days).  

 As the bodies pile up Ms. Ellie and Mr. Rogue rather than like good public coppers put the thing in deepest cold file storage figuring that the world had one less bent whore to worry about with the death of Robo-cop’s young hooker companion on the night he fell down or who the other whore was who slipped into the night they keep going. Keep going rather than the “real world: solution, tried and true, and let’s say let this dead young woman’s anguished parents hire a private eye per day and expenses continue on. Continuing on though they get thrown into yet another gruesome murder scene (involving torture, meaning somebody, some party or parties unknown are looking for more than kicks but information, hard information and are ready to go medieval to get the damn stuff) of another young professional-type woman making coffee and cakes money on the side using her sex to ward away the evil bill collectors. Once they start to see some not obvious connections connect the unknown trail gets shorter.  

Then things start to tie in, start to congeal around the doings of our previously left alone very connected Mr. Big. Ellie and Rogue, mainly Ellie here finally see Mr. Big had some connections, used okay, the services of the escort service that Robo-cop had used, that this young professional women and part-time sex worker worked for. Throw in a previously independent Soho artist working her own coffee and cakes angles for her art using her body to keep afloat until the big breakthrough who was connected with that Robo-cop’s whore and here is the beauty of the police procedural spoon-feeding Casanova another young whore who was actually the Robo-cop’s “date” and who had witnessed some conversation between the murderer and the victim. Who just happened to be the NYU roommate who blew town when the heat was on, went underground anyway. Very curious.

I mentioned before that most of these police procedurals have to bring in every possible contemporary social and political idea and issue that will fit. Have to bring in the average coffee and cruller cops if for no other reason than to show how superior the lead characters, young up and coming detective sergeants no less, are against the run of the mill rummies who make up the force but also some ex-cops who may or may not have been corrupt. Enter Nick, finally, you remember Nick, the guy who did a hard twenty on the publics before landing on easy street with Mr. Big, as the fall guy, or at least one of the fall guys. Did his twenty on the force then landed on his feet working for Mr. Big as his chief of security. Had hired Robo-cop out of sunny Taliban-infested Afghanistan and kept him moving up the ranks to guard Mr. Big.

Here is where everything gets squirrely and that is exactly the right word. Nick, and for that matter Mr. Big, Simon okay, have a secret, have a secret that set off this weird train of events (in Lem’s mind anyway). Solid ex-cop Nick who still cuts a tough guy figure with the publics who he came up with, and our man about town Mr. Big are shacking up, are lovers, are gay lovers and Robo-cop found out about the affair. Here is where John David and Alexis would have had this case cleaned up, the final bill sent and have time for lunch. Mr. Big had a very big reputation as a “swinger,” as an eligible bachelor. Ellie and Rogue had busted the code, had the skinny on the sex worker angle early on. They could have asked more than one of the escorts who escorted Mr. Big around town whether they played footsie. One gal, one candid gal, Lena, said while Mr. Simon was a perfect gentleman he had made no play and that had hurt her feelings since she had her reputation to think about. There was also plenty in the social media about Mr. Big maybe being a “switch-hitter.” It all came out in the end by only after the bodies piled sky high.    

In 2019 big deal you say, about Nick and Mr. Big being lovers, especially in New York City and you would be right since crime detection, hard-boiled crime detection has recognized gayness, good guys and bad, at least since Sam Spade sniffed Joel Cairo’s lavender calling card in The Maltese Falcon and Allan Ladd’s Johnny Bad salacious killer looks at a couple of guys in a bar in This Gun For Hire (while tossing off Veronica Lake). So why an indiscreet moment even for a tough ex-copper with his boss would set off this flurry of sheer madness seems distinctly odd. As it turned out the whole thing got connected, got glued together if you think about it,  by this older hooker. Tanya, who moved into that doomed NYU student’s apartment being the one with Robo-cop and an active witness, not the co-ed. The young professional real estate broker and part-time hooker and the Soho artist hooker were part of a big mix-up about who was supposed to be at Mr. Big’s apartment the night the bodyguard fell down. Oops!

The side story, the inevitable side story to fill out the pages maybe written into the contract , is this judge met earlier who was supposed to be covering for Mr. Big who in turn could help him on his way up the judicial ladder had been, intergenerational sex aside, the “lover” of that NYU student’s roommate back down in Baltimore before the judge headed north for the bright lights. Dimmed, dimmed by a son who knew the old man was bonking the hooker in the days when she was a babysitter for him and in New York went crazy when it looked like the old times were coming back. To protect his mother, some Tammy Wynette “stand by your man”- type this kid figured murder the hometown hooker, and on the fly the NYU student who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and who was the only really innocent part in the whole show. Like I said too many moving parts, even for a private detective.              

He’s Been A Bad Boy, He’s Been A Bad Boy-Again-The Very Loosely Film Adaptation Of Homer’s “The Iliad” Bad Boy Brad Pitts “Troy” (2004)-A Review

He’s Been A Bad Boy, He’s Been A Bad Boy-Again-The Very Loosely Film Adaptation Of Homer’s “The Iliad” Bad Boy Brad Pitts “Troy” (2004)-A Review

DVD Review

By Alden Riley

Troy, Brad Pitts

That dude, that max daddy poet who wrote in weird meter indeed, some hex hexameter thing only poets and English Lit majors would understand Homer (no known last name or place of residence although assuredly not homeless in the modern sense) knew how to tell a story, kept the crowds humming, kept the boys and girls fixated to see what they could learn about allure and love trampling power, glory and a side order of hubris which is after all a Greek word.

Yes, that daddy, oops, max daddy poet whose works were only slightly shorter than the late Professor Alan Ginsberg, he of Howl angel hipsters and homoerotic fantasies got the whole thing about the ten major themes in Western literature right-especially the boy meets girl idea, the hubris of the gods (God in latter day mono speak) defining some ill-thought out fate for mere mortals, the mortals taking their own bad ass  fates with grains of salt, the hubris and rage, fury maybe a better word and the seemingly never-ending wars for power, glory, etc. maybe love in the mix too if Helen was as beautiful as the man said, the tormented life of the hero-heroine and the like. Good job brother, good job indeed. How old Homer’s idea translate to the big 21^st century screen is another question as the Bad Boy Brad Pitt-led cast of the film adaptation of Homer’s epic Troy bring to a crude point what our max daddy was trying to say on his way to numero uno in the Western literary canon, the now doomed old white men canon which has been given short shrift of late. (For no known academic reason except style and politics because after all you could in my humble opinion make world literature a “big tent” including all the unjustly forgottens-but later on that since we are into the roots today).

Here’s the play as old-time film reviewer Sam Lowell a man locked in his own literary battles with Sarah Lemoyne, a young up and coming reviewer, was fond of saying in his salad days. Needless to say, love drove things batty back then, back three thousand years ago just like today if you can believe the news, fake, alternative, truthful or otherwise and take a look at what is going on around you. Paris, excuse me if I don’t run the litany of other aliases he went under especially after he went down to infamous and unmanly defeat at the hands of his girlfriend’s husband, Menelaus, king hell king, another Sam Lowell expression, of virtuous and manly Sparta who was full of that rage, maybe fury is a better word, and swore to kill the bastard who took his woman away without so much as a by your leave had eyes for one Helen. Helen, hellion, formerly of Sparta and now address unknown but suspected to be in a place called Illium and hence the Illiad but who in those days when men, women, gods (God in that damn mono-speak) worked like seven dervishes to keep the place safe from infidels, greedy kings and warlords, con men and priests under the name Troy, not Troy, New York which was only a Dutch sailor’s wonder dream back then if anybody was living in Dutch land.

The presiding dignity of the fortress unbreachable King Priam, played in the film, remember to follow the bouncing ball because we are reviewing a film along the way, by the oldest brother of Peter O’Toole or maybe father because he had lost a step or seven since he played Lawrence of Arabia in another war is hell film and Henry some number in The Lion In Winter going mano a mano with Eleanor of Aquitaine speaking of salad days. Priam father to ninety-eight pound weakling Paris who was totally outmatched by old man Menelaus and his mega-death brother and heir apparent Hector who as older brothers often have to do finished off Menelaus just in a nick of time.  So Hector he-man and Paris light on his feet match up in the sibling contest to bring some excitement to Illium town.  

Funny this older brother had it right when he heard Paris had bewitched Helen, that beauty so they say who would go on to launch a thousand ships-and not in a good and jovial way like at a ship’s christening. War ships and plenty manned by rough-hewn sailors who took their love anyway they could get it under the whip just like Carl Solomon of Ginsberg hipster dreams and madness. This kidnapping, some say the whole thing was an early high-end wife-swapping but those harpies have malicious tongues, of Helen was bad news, was predicted by Mr. Hector, also no known last name or abode, except that silly Illium, of bringing down everlasting hell and damnation on the town, would make guys, gods, like Apollo go crazy with ire, maybe fury is a better word. Proved right but at what cost when senile and nerve-deadened Priam indulged his freaking younger son and who knows maybe had twilight designs on her himself if she really was that beautiful. (The gal who played her Diane Kruger no question an ice queen beauty was built for sweaty nights and silky sheets but who would soon wear on a man’s nerves with her damn harping about that bloody lost to her ex-husband now mercifully dead by the hand of Hector mentioned already).

War, war to the death, like half of the Western literary canon that would follow this path-breaking epic was all that could resolve this deadly dispute. Not surprising the leader of the war party in Greek was Menelaus’ older brother Agamemnon, king of flea-bitten Mycenae and a guy who lived to breath everlasting hell and damnation on anything that breathed over in Illium town-wanted power glory and a few good wenches, slaves to keep his bed warm. Naturally this is only the barest outline of what got the conflict going and be assured that no way could Hollywood dole out enough dough to do the whole Trojan War, Trojan remember the other name for residents of wacky Illium. The cost for the billion extras along would break Universal or Paramount. The war lasted years as one might expect of guys who fought with axes, spears, and arrows so this film will only detail the last gripping episodes where Troy is burned to the ground by the greedy Greek governors led by brother-less child Agamemnon and that cast of thousands who roiled the Aegean finding love wherever they could-savage rapine if the occasion called for it and wenches and shipboard romances if they hit an lively port.  

While the boy meets girl story drives the film, has to since after all Helen’s face launched that one thousand ships and the guys who played the Greek kings except the pretty boy kind of Ithaca who seemed to have some sway over him, the real focus is on the warrior class, on guys like one Achilles, later in history as predicted by myopic mother to be known as painful Achilles heel but then a stone-cold killer, a warrior to put every Marvel Comic cinematic character in the shade, even Captain America if you can believe that. This Achilles is ranked number one in the world, the known world which was basically the Greek city-states, Troy, Dutch lands if inhabited by static dreamers and maybe bloody England since many of the actors had distinctive British accents and had that sun never sets on the Empire demeanor.

The problem with being Achilles, warrior for hire to the highest bidder or if he liked the take, remember played by modern day bad boy, and bad boy again Brad Pitts, is some ass is always looking to knock you down, take you down a peg. Or have some hireling do the dirty work. No question Achilles, another guy with no known last name or address except the battlefields of whoever has the best deal, had a long run at number one stone cold killer maybe the legendary Greek psycho but he also had his sensitive side, that brooding philosophy king in waiting Plato was always dogging us mere mortals with. Worried maybe about his strange obsession with bedding vestal virgins especially those who served one Apollo, a god among gods (God in mono-speak), also with no known last name or place of residence. Emphatically not worried about his fate, knowing what dear mother had spun her crystal ball around, knowing too a soldier’s destiny but ready to throw the dice that glory would come with living fast, dying young and making a good ashen-strewn corpse. And we still speak his name, speak of the warrior king if not of his vestal virgin with the unpronounceable first name, also with no last name although her former residence was One Temple Of Apollo Place. Yeah, that max daddy Homer sure knew how to tell a story-even in weird meter.              

It’s Only A Chocolate Moon, June-Version 2 Million And Seventy-One Of The “Boy Meets Girl” Saga-Jean-Pierre Ameris’ “Romantics Anonymous” (2010)-Better “Les Émotifs anonymes » -A Film Review

It’s Only A Chocolate Moon, June-Version 2 Million And Seventy-One Of The “Boy Meets Girl” Saga-Jean-Pierre Ameris’ “Romantics Anonymous” (2010)-Better “Les Émotifs anonymes » -A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

Les Émotifs anonymes-Romantics Anonymous, starring Benoit Poelvoorde, Isabelle Carre, 2010

I have only been in the film reviewing business, profession really since I went to graduate school at NYU for a short while (at least let me call it a profession to satisfy my beleaguered parents who wound up paying for me to become a professional at something, paid a ton of money so bear with me). I have had many conversations with my unofficial “mentor” Seth Garth who has been particularly helpful in my struggle to be the “Queen” of 21^st century film noir against the limitation posed by the so-called “King” of film noir in the middle of the 20^th century or thereabouts Sam Lowell. (In the inevitable interest of transparency Sam an old friend of Seth’s from high school days which has not hindered him from helping me.) Fortunately today I do not have to lock horns with Sam in doing this review of the French-Belgian film Romantics Anonymous but Seth helped me nevertheless. Or maybe better Sam through Seth when he pointed out that Hollywood and later other film centers has survived by playing about two million versions of the “boy meets girl” theme which they grabbed from early in the Western literary canon, maybe Homer with his sweet music hexameter The Illiad.  When I thought about it later I checked through the recent film review archives and noticed from Robin Hood grabbing Lady Marion to Phillip Marlowe grabbing some ravishing blonde that theme really does resonate.

All this lead-in to let the reader know that the film under review, except maybe to say “man meets woman” is deeply indebted to that trope-doesn’t actually make an sense otherwise. Doesn’t grab the viewer, as it did me, unless you take it for granted that the film is trying to pull at your heartstrings-and succeeds. The only addition that I make to the genre is the observation that this meeting was a very unusual- two social misfits meeting and cavorting despite their anxieties.  Their social shyness.

Angelique, played by fetching and doe-eyed Isabelle Carre, is a bundle of social anxieties who is in an anonymous group trying to overcome her affliction. She also happens to be one great chocolatier, a natural who is befriended by a fellow candy man who let her make her chocolate confections at home and let the legend  of her work thrive in secret. Problem though is that eventually that candy man died and left  her high and dry looking for another job. That job search was finally successful when she was hired at the Chocolate Mill, a struggling old-fashioned candy operation headed by Jean-Rene who as it turned out was also filled with about six million social anxieties as well. Second problem-Angelique was hired by Jean-Rene, played by antic, frantic Benoit Poelvoorde, to be a sales representative-to go sell chocolate not make confections. Not good. As the film moves along Jean-Rene who is seeing a therapist is given various exercises to help break his social patterns (or lack of social graces) just as Angelique is using her group sessions to get a handle on her anxieties. The two are a carnival of mixed messages and misunderstandings.

That “collision” triggers the couple getting together for dinner and other social misadventures, some scenes which are funny and are added by Jean-Rene’s facial expressions and Angelique’s doe-eyed responses. Also along the way she helps bail out the firm by getting secretly back into her great chocolatier hermit character through a thin guise. At some point, probably well before they actually spent the night together-unintentionally, you know, you can bet six, two and even as Seth says (which he later told me he got from Sam who got it from an old high school friend known as the Scribe who was addicted to film noir private detective films) they will be together, will get married, or be together some way, even if they have to run away from each other for a while. A little gem of a feel good film but I wonder, given my own social anxieties and that of my partner, whether two people really would get together like this pair based on their personalities. Just a question though in the eternal  “boy meets girl” mix (which is now expanded to whatever coupling anybody is into-which is okay too).

The Death Of A Super-Hero-Ben Affleck’s Batman vs. Superman (2016)- A Film Review

The Death Of A Super-Hero-Ben Affleck’s Batman vs. Superman (2016)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Associate Film Editor Alden Riley

Batman vs. Superman, starring Ben Affleck, based on the DC comic series character, 2016 

There were no tears shed in these quarters when I heard that so-called super-hero Superman cashed his check, parted this life. My feeling is that the times, these times, require plenty of heroes, of that there can be no doubt, but that super-heroes are a drug on the market, a dime a dozen, maybe less. So I could to use an expression that the former film editor in this space was fond of using going back to his ancient corner boy, his expression, youth give a rat’s ass about the demise of a guy who wasn’t even from earth, was an alien, and not even an alien from another country but from a woe begotten planet, Krypton, I never heard of, don’t remember reading about in high school when we studied astronomy. We will never know, and maybe it is better that way, of the how and why of his going off the track, of his nefarious activities at the end against the interests of dear Metropolis/ Gotham, an American city (which we all know is New York City where else could it be). The powers that be covered up, covered up big time after Superman bought it, after he allegedly fell on his own sword, so that “the people” could have something to believe in during these trying times. Yeah, that was the “alternate facts” story from the bowels of Washington. Figures, right.          

Let me explain how I drew this assignment, the assignment to review Batman vs. Superman in this space. I have to admit that the few months I have been doing the associate editor’s job here that the film editor, my boss, Sandy Salmon has except on rare occasions given me films to review that are of interest to me. This though is one of the times I have drawn an assignment that Sandy has “ordered” me to do but for an unusual reason so I am placating him on this one. Sandy freely admits that in his youth, afterwards too, he was addicted to DC and Marvel comics, super-hero comics mostly. He felt that he could not emotionally handle the idea that one of the key guys who brightened up his benighted youth had passed on, would be no more. He told me that he had tried to write the thing but just couldn’t finish it.

I know that Sandy had grown up in tough circumstances so maybe he needed some super heroes to get through the tough times. My own youthful times were not nearly as traumatic. In fact we used to beat up on kids who wore Superman costumes for Halloween or some occasion like that. Used to call such kids the “f” word or as my gentile father used to say they were “light on their feet” and you know what I mean. Well I know better now about such stuff but the super-hero business still leaves me cold.

Let me get to the story line as Sandy likes for all of us to summarize so the readers get an idea of what the film is about. As with most comic-based films it is kind of simplicity itself-good vs. evil and little middle ground. This is where homegrown boy, Batman, played by Ben Affleck, gets his dander up about this in the end alien Superman. It seems that through several misunderstanding and some sleight of hand by log time nemesis Lex Luthor who is never up to any good Batman thinks Superman has gone over the edge. From one stand-point that looks to be the case, especially when a guy like Superman who has a long track record of saving humanity from rescuing little girls in distress to fending off monsters and other bad guys is the last guy standing when a bomb exploded in a Senate committee hearing on how to safeguard the world against those like Lex who want to use a recent find of kryptonite as a “safeguard,” a deterrent against any Krypton-initiated attacks.

Admittedly Batman fell into a lot of traps which were made to look like old pal Superman was in on the “fix.” It was not until too late that Batman found out that Superman alter ego love interest Lois Lane and his adopted earth mother were being held ransom to get Superman to do some nefarious bidding. Superman in the end though has to fall on his metaphysical sword attempting to fight off a mega-monster to save the world. Tough break though he is mortally wounded and in the cover-up he is once again an international hero and given an appropriate send-off. (Alter Ego Clark Kent, Lois’ honey gets a quiet hometown Kansas send-off.) Yeah, no tears shed in this corner for the guy since he knew he was in way over his head but maybe one should shed a tear for Batman because who knows what he will get embroiled in next. There Sandy I did your freaking review for you. You owe me, owe me big.