The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Just Before The Sea Change - With The Rolling Stones In Mind

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Just Before The Sea Change - With The Rolling Stones In Mind

A YouTube film clip of the Dixie Cups performing their 1960s classic (who brought the house down with this number about 15 or 20 years ago at the Newport Folk festival of all places to show an example of a song with staying power Chapel Of Love

From The Archives Of Allan Jackson

[In a recent introduction part of this series, see archives dated February 28, 2017 on the subject of 1960s icon writer Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters who set a certain tone for part of what that whirlwind decade meant to those in the Generation of “68, I noted that after some exhaustive investigation I had found out where the previous site manager of this publication, Allan Jackson, my old high school friend and a founder of the hard copy edition of this space as I was, was hiding out. The reason that was important was that we had lost contact with him in the aftermath of the vicious internal struggle where he was essentially “purged” after he was given a vote of no confidence mainly by the younger writers who though he had gone off the deep end last year in demanding wall to wall coverage of the 50^th anniversary commemoration of the famous Summer of Love in 1967 centered in San Francisco and environs.

When Allan went “underground” to use a term of art used in the 1960s for a lot of situations when people dropped off the face of the earth it seemed the rumors flew high and wide since he cut communications with all his old high school and 1960s friends who whose writing and adventures had formed one of the bases for this publication. Some rumors mentioned that he had been done away with in some nefarious way by the incoming new site manager Greg Green and his hand-picked Editorial Board. As I have mentioned before that seemed ludicrous on its face like this was some kind of replay (as farce as Karl Marx once said about second time around events) of the infamous Stalin-Trotsky war to the death which all the older guys were always knee-deep talking about in their radical 1960s pasts. (That  Board by the way mandated by the younger writers to avoid some of the problems caused by Allan’s increasingly single-minded devotion to “re-living” the 1960s especially in the decisive 50^th anniversary of the myriad events that dotted the landscape of 1968.)

A persistent rumor had him turning tail and placing himself in self-imposed exile out in the American Siberia Utah sucking up to the Mormons in order to get a by-line in one of their dink publications. Things got so out of hand that he had been alleged to have written reams of trash about the virtues of their wearing white underwear and the hardships of having five wives at one time. Worse, worse of all sucking up to a lizard, a chameleon like Mitt Romney who is running for U.S. Senate out there in order to be his press secretary. It got worse in the rumor mill as he was alleged to be living with, living off of some twenty-something part-time waitress surfer girl out in La Jolla who had a father fixation and who was “doing the do” an expression from the old days every chance she got with him and was teaching his to surf to boot. In a more sinister vein which could bring him big legal and maybe bang-bang troubles he was alleged to be putting together a big drug deal on credit with some guys down in Mexico who were looking to make a name in the States. Along the same lines was the rumor that he was running a high-class international whorehouse in Argentina with his old lover Madame La Rue catering to the strange whims of Asian businessmen. There were others, mostly along the same lines, but one last one will suffice to give an idea of what was essentially a smear campaign against the man. Supposedly he was in Frisco dating a transvestite who was connected with the opium trade and he was living high off the hog on Russian Hill stoned to the gills all the time.    

The way we, Sam Lowell and I, as I said among his oldest friends from back in the old Acre working class neighborhood in North Adamsville where we all grew up and came of age was simplicity itself. We checked with his third ex-wife Mimi Murphy to see if he had sent her an alimony check. He had and since he was still sweet on her (she had left him for a younger guy when he got too wrapped up in the 1960s for her taste) he told he not only about the purge which she actually already knew about from Josh Breslin but where he was to see if she wanted to “come up to see him” in his hours of despair. That “come up to see him” a telltale sign that he was not on the West Coast but up in Maine, up in Bar Harbor where he always went when things were tough. Had owned a house there until his parcel of kids from those three wives started college and he almost went bankrupt before he bailed out of that place to pay the freaking tuitions. So Sam and I headed up to see him, see what the real story was. More later except some of those rumors were actually at least partially true. That should keep things interesting.       

**********

Meanwhile story time

There were some things about Edward Rowley’s youthful activities that he would rather not forget. That is what got him thinking one sunny afternoon in September about five years ago as he waited for the seasons to turn almost before his eyes about the times around 1964, around the time that he graduated from Wattsville High School, around the time that he realized that the big breeze jail-break that he had kind of been waiting for was about to bust out over the land, over America. It was not like he was some kind of soothsayer, could read tea leaves or anything like that but in his senses which were very much directed by his tastes in music, by his immersion into all things rock and roll kind of drove his aspirations and that music had the cutting edge of what followed later, followed by about 1964 when that new breeze arrived in the land.

That fascination had occupied Eddie’s mind since he had been about ten and had received a transistor radio for his birthday and out of curiosity decided to turn the dial to AM radio channels other that WJDA which his parents, may they rest in peace, certainly rest in peace from his incessant clamoring for rock and roll records, concert tickets, radio listening time on the big family radio in the living room, had on constantly and which drove him crazy. Drove him crazy because that music, well, frankly that music, the music of the Doris Days, the Peggy Lees, The Rosemary Clooneys, the various corny sister acts like the Andrews Sisters, the Frank Sinatras, the Vaughn Monroes, the Dick Haines and an endless series of male quartets did not “jump,” gave him no “kicks,’ left him flat. As a compromise they had purchased a transistor radio at Radio Shack and left him to his own devises.

One night when he was fiddling with the dial he heard this sound out of Cleveland, Ohio, a little fuzzy but audible playing this be-bop sound, not jazz although it had horns, not rhythm and blues although sort of, but a new beat by a guy named Warren Smith who was singing about his Ruby, his Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby who only was available apparently to dance the night away. And she didn’t seem to care where she danced by herself on the tabletops or with her guy. Yeah, so if you need a name for what ailed young Eddie Rowley, something he could not quite articulate then call her woman, call her Ruby and you will not be far off. And so with that as a pedigree Eddie became one of the town’s most knowledgeable devotees of the new sound. Problem was that new sound, as happens frequently in music, got a little stale as time went on, as the original artists who captured his imagination faded from view one way or another and new guys, guys with nice Bobby this and Bobby that names, Patsy this and that names sang songs under the umbrella name rock and roll that his mother could love. Songs that could have easily fit into that WJDA box that his parents had been stuck in since about World War II.

So Eddie was anxious for a new sound to go along with his feeling tired of the same old, same old stuff that had been hanging around in the American night since the damn nuclear hot flashes red scare Cold War started way before he had a clue about what that was all about. It had started with the music and then he got caught up with a guy in school, Daryl Wallace, a hipster, or that is what he called himself, a guy who liked “kicks” although being in high school in Wattsville far from New York City, far from San Francisco, damn, far from Boston what those “kicks” were or what he or Eddie would do about getting those “kicks” never was made clear. But they played it out in a hokey way and for a while they were the town, really high school, “beatniks.”  So Eddie had had his short faux “beat” phase complete with flannel shirts, black chino pants, sunglasses, and a beret (a beret that he kept hidden at home once he found out after his parents had seen and heard Jack Kerouac reading from the last page of On The Road on the Steve Allen Show that they severely disapproved on the man, the movement and anything that smacked of the “beat” and a beret always associated with French bohemians and foreignness would have had them seeing “red”). And for a while Daryl and Eddie played that out until Daryl moved away (at least that was the story that went around but there was a persistent rumor for a time that Mr. Wallace had dragooned Daryl into some military school in California in any case that disappearance from the town was the last he ever heard from his “beat” brother). Then came 1964 and  Eddie was fervently waiting for something to happen, for something to come out of the emptiness that he was feeling just as things started moving again with the emergence of the Beatles and the Stones as a harbinger of what was coming.

That is where Eddie had been psychologically when his mother first began to harass him about his hair. Although the hair thing like the beret was just the symbol of clash that Eddie knew was coming and knew also that now that he was older that he was going to be able to handle differently that when he was a kid.  Here is what one episode of the battle sounded like:                    

“Isn’t that hair of yours a little long Mr. Edward Rowley, Junior,” clucked Mrs. Edward Rowley, Senior, “You had better get it cut before your father gets back from his conference trip, if you know what is good for you.” That mothers’-song was being endlessly repeated in Wattsville households (and not just Wattsville households either but in places like North Adamsville, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Dearborn, Cambridge any place where guys were wating for the new dispensation and wearing hair a little longer than boys’ regular was the flash point) ever since the British invasion had brought longer hair into style (and a little less so, beards, that was later when guys got old enough to grow one without looking wispy).

Of course when one was thinking about the British invasion in the year 1964 one was not thinking about the American Revolution or the War of 1812 but the Beatles. And while their music has taken 1964 teen world by a storm, a welcome storm after the long mainly musical counter-revolution since Elvis, Bo, Jerry Lee and Chuck ruled the rock night and had disappeared without a trace, the 1964 parent world was getting up in arms.

And not just about hair styles either. But about trips to Harvard Square coffeehouses to hear, to hear if you can believe this, folk music, mountain music, harp music or whatever performed by long-haired (male or female), long-bearded (male), blue jean–wearing (both), sandal-wearing (both), well, for lack of a better name “beatniks” (parents, as usual, being well behind the curve on teen cultural movements since by 1964 “beat”  except on television was yesterdays’ news). Mrs. Rowley would constantly harp about “why couldn’t Eddie  be like he was when he listened to Bobby Vinton and his Mr. Lonely or that lovely-voiced Roy Orbison and his It’s Over and other nice songs on the local teen radio station, WMEX (he hated that name Eddie by the way, Eddie was also what everybody called his father so you can figure out why he hated the moniker). Now it was the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and a cranky-voiced guy named Bob Dylan that has his attention. And that damn Judy Jackson with her short skirt and her, well her…

Since Mrs. Rowley, Alice to the neighbors, was getting worked up it anyway, "What about all the talk about doing right by the down-trodden Negros down in Alabama and Mississippi. And Eddie and that damn Peter Dawson, who used to be so nice when they all hung around together at Jimmy Jacks’ Diner (corner boys, Ma, that is what we were) and you at least knew they were no causing trouble, talking about organizing a book drive to get books for the little Negro children down there. If Eddie’s father ever heard that there would be hell to pay, hell to pay and maybe a strap coming out of the closet big as Eddie is. Worst though, worst that worrying about Negros down South is that treasonous talk about leaving this country, leaving Wattsville, defenseless against the communists with his talk of nuclear disarmament. Why couldn’t he have just left well enough alone and stick with his idea of forming a band that would play nice songs that make kids feel good like Gale Garnet’s We’ll Sing In The Sunshine or that pretty Negro girl Dionne Warwick and Her Walk On By instead of getting everybody upset."

And since Mrs. Rowley, Alice, to the neighbors and mentioned the name Judy Jackson, Eddie’s flame and according to Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” talk, Judy’s talk they had “done the deed” and you can figure out what the deed was let’s hear what is going on in the Jackson household since one of the reasons that Eddie was wearing his hair longer was because Judy thought it was “sexy” and so that talk of doing the deed may well have been true if there were any sceptics. Hear this:      

“Young lady, that dress is too short for you to wear in public, take it off, burn it for all I care, and put on another one or you are not going out of this house,” barked Mrs. James Jackson, echoing a sentiment that many worried North Adamsville mothers were feeling (and not just North Adamsville mothers either) about their daughters dressing too provocatively and practically telling the boys, well practically telling them you know what as she suppressed the “s” word that was forming in her head. "And that Eddie (“Edward, Ma,” Judy keep repeating every time Mrs. Jackson, Dorothy to the neighbors, said Eddie), and his new found friends like Peter Paul Markin taking her to those strange coffeehouses instead of the high school dances on Saturday night. 

And endless talk about the n-----s down South and other trash talk. Commie trash about peace and getting rid of weapons. They should draft the whole bunch and put them over in front of that Berlin Wall. Then they wouldn’t be so negative about America."

Scene: Edward, Judy and Peter Paul Markin sitting in the Club Nana in Harvard Square sipping coffee, maybe pecking at the one brownie between, and listening to a local wanna-be folk singing strumming his stuff (who turned out to be none other than Eric Von Schmidt). Beside them cartons of books that they are sorting to be taken along with them when head South this summer after graduation exercises at North Adamsville High School are completed in June. They have already purchased their tickets as far as New York’s Port Authority where they will meet other heading south. Pete Paul turns to Edward and says, “Have you heard that song, Popsicles and Icicles by the Mermaids, it has got great melodic sense.” Yes, we are still just before the sea change. Good luck, young travelers.

I Accuse-Unmasking The Sherlock Holmes Legend, Part VI-“Bumbling Up The Fight Against The Fascists”-Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce’s “Sherlock Holmes And The Secret Weapon” (1942)-A Film Review

I Accuse-Unmasking The Sherlock Holmes Legend, Part VI-“Bumbling Up The Fight Against The Fascists”-Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce’s “Sherlock Holmes And The Secret Weapon” (1942)-A Film Review

DVD Review 

By Bruce Conan

[Readers who are familiar with this series of short film reviews in the struggle to debunk the legend of the wiseass, sullen fake amateur private detective who went by the name of Sherlock Holmes but who used the moniker Basil Rathbone and whose real name was Lanny Lamont which will be explained below need go no further and can skip to the skimpy review below the end bracket. For those others who are clueless about the hopped up public relations created bumbling Holmes-Watson legend please read on to get caught up on one of the biggest scams in the history of private detection.   

Let’s get a couple of items straight from the get-go which will make what appears to be an exercise in futility on my part trying to overturn a massive fraud on the cinematic and literary public seem more necessary and vital to clear the air.

First if you look at my moniker in the byline above you will notice that I have used the name Bruce Conan. That alias of course, actually of necessity, had been forced on me by the notorious and nefarious group of blood-thirsty cultists who go by the name of the Baker Street Irregulars who seek my demise, my death according to some reports, for exposing their bloated homosexual hero (and his partner Doc, Doc Watson, the M.D. not the famous legendary blind bluegrass performer) for the bumbling fool that he is.

On the first five of these so-called film reviews (out of what I thought would be  twelve but have recently found out are fourteen films thus cutting my chances at completion down severely if I am not done in by some night-taker from that Irregular clot of inhumanity well before that) I was forced to use another moniker, Danny Moriarty. Yes that was in honor of the unjustly maligned heroic foe of Sherlock’s Professor Moriarty who it turned out was nothing but a fall guy for a dope and burglary ring that Holmes was running to keep up his opium-addled lifestyle. Unfortunately in the debunking business, in the whistle-blowing business you have to take some risks if the truth will out and somehow these determined holy goof cultists were able to figure out where I was and more ominously where I had sent my family for safe-keeping. Hence the new moniker and maybe another one or two before I am through to throw this menace off the scent while I get my family to other quarters and do my expose business.  

The second point. Readers, some irate although I think that they are just fronting, trolling would be the word in cyberspace times, for the notorious, nefarious Irregular cultists, have lambasted me for putting so much material in brackets throughout the review. Points about Holmes’ place in the private detection pantheon and that charged accusation of being back then when the times took a very different social-and legal- view on the subject of having a homosexual affair with Doc which explained some of the bumbling, the piling up of bodies, and the contempt for his fellow humans   before somebody else laid the bad guys low. Somebody else covered up his mistakes. To the extent that I think those anonymous readers have a point, whoever they are, I have decided to put the whole analysis here in one place. And as I have mentioned at the beginning the reader can move down past the end bracket to the obligatory although hardly pressing review or push on to find out the truth about a guy they might have thought that they admired at one time when they were kids.      

Genesis first. I had originally been assigned this series of film reviews by the previous site manager, Allan Jackson, who knew that I had done a series of reviews of films and books about two really legendary private detectives, the gold standard of the profession, Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe whom I had spent many a youthful Saturday afternoon watching on the screen and many a youthful night reading and re-reading up in my bedroom. I had noted, and Allan seemed to agree, that these professional private detectives were the epitome of what was what among such career detectives. Without going into great detail here I noted that what made them special was their grit, their lack of fear, their ability to take a punch or a slug for the cause and keep their heads when the obligatory femme fatale came knocking on their doors. Went under the silky sheets with female danger while tilting some windmills to grab a little rough justice in the world be it for a partner like Miles Archer or a broken down old man like General Sternwood with a couple of wild daughters who were ready for anything from those silky sheets to murder, murder one when you think about it.          

When Allan gave me the original assignment I was actually doing a series of film reviews for another Hammett detective Nick Charles, and the indispensable Nora of course, so I begged off for a while. Then came a big internal shake-up at this publication which I will not bore the reader with the details of and the emergence of Greg Green as the new site manager. Greg noting that old Allan assignment schedule was very interested in doing the Holmes series as well and so here it was all set up.

I originally went about my business of the first Holmes review  with no particular animus toward the man although I cringed a bit at his condescension toward other mere mortals based on the flimsiest motive that he was some kind of king hell deductive reasoning guru. He seemed at the time to have the truly bumbling Doc, Doc Watson, under his spell and moreover to have his number as a punching bag incompetent to make his own mistakes seems trivial in comparison. Then I started to analyze what his modus operandi really was. To see the holes in his deductive reasoning methods against real pros like Spade and Marlowe, hell, even lady’s man Miles Archer and half-drunk Nick Charles looked good in comparison. What I noticed from the very first film was that once he was on the case he let the bodies pile up before the villains were caught. Caught not by him but by third parties. Cops and an occasional civilian.            

That wasn’t so bad, even bad boys Sam and Phil were not virgin pure when murder was in the air although they always brought the bad guys to justice on their own hook. Then I noticed that Holmes, I will call him Holmes since that is what he conned the world into believing was his name and maybe he was right to do so with a Christian name of Lanny Lamont to live down, that he was totally incompetent with a gun, could not “fucking shoot the side of a barn” as my sainted mother used to say. Then Holmes started to take his act to foreign countries and that was the limit.

That is when I had to put my foot down and expose this nasty little bugger. Here is where the fake legend really got its start. Where whatever public relations guys Lanny, I mean Holmes, hired to build up his reputation in the prints went over the top. It was one thing for Holmes to get outsourced for jobs over the incompetent, venal, and corrupt coppers at Scotland Yard. Everybody knows the coppers there were on “the take” and I have since come to understand they have been paid off by the Baker Street Irregulars to see no evil when those cretins go about their blood rituals. And look the other way when they threaten me with murder and mayhem for tarnishing the image of their Nancy boy Holmes. I got that information by the way from a few ex-Irregulars who left the organization repelled by the blood rites and by the extortionate crimes committed to keep them in dough. It is another, however, to think that His Majesty’s MI6, its foreign spies, its James Bonds, was going to let Holmes within five hundred miles of any espionage case against the Hitlerite plague that was darkening the doors of Europe. The most bitter taste in my mouth was when he let an innocent fourteen year old serving girl get murdered while he on some landudum high.   

Everybody knows that real professional private detectives back in the day not only knew how to shoot, knew enough to keep innocent young girls from harm’s way, kept their own counsel in attempting to bring a little rough justice in the world but were committed skirt-chasers. Expected a little something more than another boy-scout merit badge in the fight for that rough justice. Nobody ever heard of a private detective who was not a womanizer. After the first film review I noticed that Holmes never looked at a woman, that he only seemed to be intimate with his teddy bear Doc, his roommate as it turned out and bedmate when they were on foreign cases. Once when he was captured by some bad guy and being held with a great looking young woman I noticed he never even looked at her. Sam or Phil would have looked her upside down and been grinning thinking about those silky satin sheets.

That slap against his manhood, his manliness, on top of all his other failures of nerve is what committed me to his exposure. I have taken more than my share of abuse from those criminals in the Irregulars who have started a smear campaign against me as being anti-gay, you know homophobic, against same-sex marriage and every other libel and slander they could produce in their insidious attempts to discredit me as I de-fang Holmes. Apparently, according to those ex-Irregulars who have come forward with information, there is a big internal battle between those who want to proudly “out” Holmes as a member of the Homintern pantheon and those who want to keep things hush-hush and go about their high-end criminal enterprises without the glare of such publicity. The latter clot seem to have become ascendant.    

Today there are probably a million gay private detectives and nobody thinks anything of the matter least of all me. Probably there are half a million gay partners and gay married private detectives although I don’t know if anybody bothers to keep such figures. But back in the day there were different social-and as I said before legal strictures against the “love that dare not speak its name,” against private detectives who were “light on their feet,” were “fags” and were keeping house with another man. So no way could Holmes, or Holmes and his paramour, qualify as real private detectives. That is the icing on the cake that is the way things were. And that explains why Holmes didn’t take look one at that good-looking young women he shared temporary prison with. As I keep saying a fake, yesterday’s news. Enough said.]

**********

Sherlock Holmes And The Secret Weapon, starring Basil Rathbone (I have mentioned previously my doubts that this was his real name since unlike myself he had never been transparent enough to say that he had been using an alias. I have since uncovered information that I was generally right and found at first that his real name was Lytton Strachey a known felon who spent a few years in Dartmoor Prison on weapons and drug trafficking charges. It turns out that I was either in error or the victim of a cyber-attack since then it has come out that his real name was not Strachey but Lanny Lamont, who worked the wharfs and water-side dive taverns where the rough trade mentioned by Jean Genet in his classic rough trade expose Our Lady of the Flowers did hard-edged tricks), Nigel Bruce (a name which upon further investigation has been confirmed as a British National named “Doc” Watson who also did time at Dartmoor for not having a medical license and peddling dope to minors in the 1930s and 1940s where I had assumed he and Lanny had met up. Again I think through another cyber-attack error they had met at the Whip and Chain tavern at dockside Thames while Lanny was doing his business on the sailor boys), 1942

It almost seems criminal after crucifying Lanny Lamont aka aka Basil Rathbone aka Sherlock Holmes above to bother running yet another bummer summary of one of these fake news cinematic storylines, here Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, which probably were made up on Fleet Street anyway at the behest of those nefarious Irregulars who through their media connections in the notorious Kit Kat Club, the haunt of the wild boys since about King George III, can get any libel published without recourse but I will simply use this as case number six in the struggle to topple Holmes and his ill-gotten fame.

      

Although Bond, James Bond, would sneer and M, the head of MI6, of British Intelligence would have heads rolling at 10 Downing Street somehow in the middle of World War II there was nobody available but a rank amateur key-hole peeper and known pervert Holmes to carry back some information and a key scientist who had developed a secret weapon that would change the war, would put Hitler to ground once the thing got into production. Assuming it worked, which it did.   

Of course the bloody British are all over the discovery and probably expected to use it on their colonials after a shortened war bout with the Germans on the plains of Europe. Fortunately heroic Professor Moriarty was onto the scheme, on to it as long he lived anyway before falling afoul of Holmes and a martyr’s death. The scientist who created the invention, the bombsight which would help decimate cities, towns, villages was a control freak (as I found that decimation did happen in Africa after the war when “the natives got uppity” and the “bloody wogs in India too when the British were still trying to hold onto the edges of empire). He divided up his secret into four parts to be worked on by four different unscrupulous Nazi-like scientists who did not know each other and did not know all the moving parts.

Fortunately despite Holmes’ best efforts the good Professor was able to thwart him in his efforts to piece together the four separate parts which Holmes had been given an inkling about since that mad scientist had given a code to his girlfriend in case anything happened to him or in the more likely case that he forgot the separate parts by being too clever by half when he divided everything up. Moriarty had the dastardly scientist in his clutches away from the nefarious British agents who were after the secret formula. Needless to say when Holmes went to that girlfriend’s “flat” (apartment) to grab the illicit code he did not take peek number one at her and she was if anything lovelier than the good-looking young woman he had scorned in Washington on another caper. Yet another example as if any more were needed about where the man’s proclivities were directed. Needless to say as well that Holmes would stop at nothing to do in poor Professor Moriarty and he laid a very devious trap for our good fellow which he fell into and went to his death. RIP, Professor, RIP.  

Asgard Is In The Ninth House-Once Again Down Valhalla Lane-Chris Hemsworth’s “Thor: The Dark World ” (2013)-A Film Review

Asgard Is In The Ninth House-Once Again Down Valhalla Lane-Chris Hemsworth’s “Thor: The Dark World ” (2013)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

Thor: The Dark World, starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tim Hiddleton, Marvel Comics, 2013

No, I will not as I did in the first review of the seemingly going on forever Marvel Comic Viking saga Thor moan and groan in public about having to dirty my hands with this kids’ stuff boys’ comic book super-hero fantasy adventures. Not because as a result of that very public wailing I got to get my feet wet in film noir even if on the edges and not the heart of the Bogie, Robert Mitchum, Dick Powell, Lauren Bacall, Glenn Ford, Queen Gloria Grahame Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe, Jim Turner, Jim West treasure trove which my longtime companion Sam Lowell, a fellow writer here, mined for years and kind of was smarty pants about the matter. Now after reviewing Beat The Devil I can have my little bragging rights, can hold my head high.   No, the hook here is what was left undone, was not finished in that first film review. The inevitable boy meets girl aspect which Hollywood, Bollywood, Indies, have also mined since moving pictures started well over a century ago now taking the lead from the novel and before that probably unto the Greek calends.        

That unresolved “boy” hunk (still sorry Sam) Thor, played by hunk Chris Hemsworth (once again giving a beefcake shot for all the women, young and old, to feast on if so desired) “girl” Earthling Jane, although not Plain Jane by any means, played by Natalie Portman last seen by me playing in The Black Swan who have been separated, planetary separated when Thor in defense of the realm of hometown Asgard tore up the bridge to Earth to thwart brother, adopted brother as it turned out, Loki from invading other worlds in his quest to be king of the hill on the cheap. That left the two inter-planetary sweethearts in a bind and it did not take a rocket scientist or even a third rate screenwriter to know that another film would issue to resolve that little dilemma.

So the Jane-Thor search for eternal blest will drive this one even more so than the first Thor-ian (sic, maybe) vehicle. Naturally this interplanetary romance will have to play out to a fight against the dark forces that guys like Thor and his small band of trusty devotees are always having to thwart. (Just as an aside I find it very interesting that ancient Thor from way back when doesn’t give a damn about taking an Asgard girlfriend like Lady Sif the one woman warrior in his cohort and who would certainly have liked to have gone under the silky sheets with him or say a female Frost Giant or any other dame from the nine realms but that is just an aside. I won’t even comment on how easily Thor from “primitive” Asgard has no problem with traversing say modern New York City or London and conversely Jane when she finally gets to meet Thor’s parents on backwater Asgard)        

Here’s the “skinny” (I have already given the origin of that expression from Sam so that is that). Thor is sulking for his Janie, Loki is back in chains from his craziness on plundering Earth and Jane is looking, desperately looking for a way to get back to Thor. Simple. The trick will be done through the revival of an ethereal substance Aether produced by the Dark Elves which will sent the nine realms into darkness, into the abyss if it once again gets in wrong hands. The vehicle to do this, that Aether, is, oh well, Jane who is infected with it. Thor finds about it and gets down to Earth Asap on that bridge that links all the realms which has finally been repaired. Finding radioactive Jane they are transported to Asgard (to meet his folks I think but supposedly to fight the menacing Dark Elves and their malignant leader who will stop at nothing now that his magic elixir is back on the radar).

All of this preliminary madness starts a series of battles between Thor and his trusty band and the Dark Elves and leader over various planetary and spacial locations including a minute alliance with Loki to get rid of the really bad guys. Loki “dies” honorably in battle and that is that but you know that cuckoo would do anything to get that coveted Asgardian throne. Eventually the Dark Elves are defeated, their leader wasted and the Aether out of bad guy hands. For now. Thor declines the throne offered by his “father” who turns out to be Loki and so it goes. Thor and Jane, well, they are back together on Earth but they still haven’t gotten under the silky sheets which makes me think that there will be yet another sequel. (Which turned out to be true as the third installment which I will not review, will not in a thousand years came out in 2017). I think I have had enough of this crowd, even hunk Thor.                     

If You First Practice To Deceive-Humphrey Bogart’s “Beat The Devil” (1953)-A Film Review

If You First Practice To Deceive-Humphrey Bogart’s “Beat The Devil” (1953)-A Film Review 

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

Beat The Devil, starring Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, directed by John Huston who co-write the screenplay with Truman Capote and thus the gold standard on this sent-up of noir-ish films, 1953      

Sometimes I am more than willing to steal and idea from a fellow writer. Not in this case, the case of my fellow writer here Leslie Dumont, an idea for a story or review but a ploy to get something I wanted, or getting rid of something I didn’t want. My last film review if you can believe this was of the Marvel Comics cinematic version of the comic book character Thor.  Without going into the gory details of how this came to be for an elderly adult writer who never had the boys’ fetish for comic book adventures and fantasies let me just say that it came to pass when our new site manager had a half-bright idea about reaching younger audiences and force-marched the whole staff into writing films reviews galore on the genre. Leslie’s story was a bit different in that she complained, complained publicly, that she was given five, count them, five “women’s films” in a row and though she was being type cast as such. The complaint, the very public complaint, got her a nice assignment thereafter. I took the same tact with this comic book super-hero tripe. And now I have a real review with a minor classic of the spook genre, Beat The Devil, with the likes of John Huston as director and screenwriter, Truman Capote as screenwriter as well and, most importantly, Humphrey  Bogart as lead actor along with Gina Lollobrigida and Jennifer Jones.             

That Bogie as “most importantly” is most important for me personally since this is in a sense a notice that I have arrived. My longtime companion fellow film review writer Sam Lowell has earned a certain fame as an expert in film noir, in the private detective branch especially with films like The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Out Of The Past, Lady In The Lake and the like in which Bogie played a central role. Sam would regale me with all kinds of quaint tips about what was what in those films and why he spent what he considered a worthwhile youth watching them mostly in revival theaters and retrospectives since even he is not old enough to have seen then in the original runs. Now I get to review maybe not the best Bogie vehicle but a good one as he closed out his worthy career.     

Here is as Sam always said in his by-lines and I have picked up because I like the sound of it “the skinny.” This is about the “gang that couldn’t shoot straight,” a group of four, count them, four unsavory characters who are trying to corner the uranium market in 1950s Africa, a time when most of Africa was still colonial or close to it. Bogie comes into the act as the respectable if broke American businessman drawn into the scheme because he needs some dough, needs it badly to keep him and scratching wifey, played by Gina in clover-or else. This motley crew and a few others like the British couple of which Jennifer Jones is the flirty flighty wife are waiting on Italian shores for a ship to be ready to take them to the African shores and to those ill-gotten riches. Nothing goes right as to be expected in a spoof, a comedy of errors and mistaken intentions, especially by the leader of the cabal Ferguson (played by Robert Morley who did not evoke shades the “Fat Man” Sydney Greenstreet as the jovial but deadly treasure-seeker in The Maltese Falcon if as so critics contend this is a spoof of that classic) who suspects the Brit of trying to beat him to the punch in Africa, the imprisonment of that Englishman by the captain of the ship and the eventual fact that the wily Brit does grab the brass ring in the end.

Leaving Bogie laughing the laugh of the conned, very conned and our brigands under arrest. Like I say not the best Bogie, that would be The Maltese Falcon (also a Huston directed film), the super-classic Casablanca and the 1940s steamy with their clothes on To Have and Have Not with paramour Lauren Bacall. Still I can brag in the family that I did a Bogie film review and worked a con to get it. Not bad, huh.     

For Georgia O’Keeffe At Peabody-Essex (2017) Just Because She Lighted The Firmament For Long While And Made Me Appreciate Luscious Desert Blooms And Such

For Georgia O’Keeffe At Peabody-Essex  (2017) Just Because She Lighted The Firmament For Long While And Made Me Appreciate Luscious Desert Blooms And Such    

By Lenny Lynch

Defiant, independent, no lover of men, boys either as she put it fore-square in her late Victorian high school yearbook (making me wonder if she was not some preternatural Frida Kahlo taking her pleasures where she found them but the sever looks with that hard-press bun of a hairpiece done about six ways to severity make me think that she lived for her art and thought about sex through her fleshy vaginal lush flowers. And so she went to see William Merritt Chase the godfather of many of her generation. Went too a-skimming to that oasis of modernism and protest art politics the Art Student League in New York City then Mecca on the rise (ASL making me think that it was a popular front invention of those devious American-born Stalinists with their hands deep in the pie but no that institution stands on its own although when you look at the roster from Stuart Davis to Jackson Pollack and beyond makes you wonder-good wonder, the wonder of Scotty Fitzgerald’s lonesome Dutch sailors as they coursed  Long Island Sound and saw, hell, saw the fresh green breast of a new land. Pity later-okay.         

Hit the town running pushing into old Stieglitz’s workshop, what did he call it oh salon, he onto something about art once the camera took pretty pictures out of an artist’s hands (took praise be ugly pictures too picture old dusty Okies travelling, sideshow geeks, drag queens working too hard to be Miss Judy Garland, gay lovers in secluded closets before the Stonewall wash us clean, holy goofs and con men, things blowing up, things being blown up but mainly the human comedy to make one think that something somewhere went awry) and left the field shattered dumping those picture perfect pantries filled with precise foods, prefect flowers in season or out, and brilliant baskets of fruit, my god, millions of brilliant baskets of fruit, grapes gleaning pearl-like. No the times, like all times, required something more and Ms. O’Keeffe was showing just a glimmer of that understanding when she went to upstate New York and painted red, blue, green barns, and the like showing us a new pastoral.      

But forget all that. No, put it in the past once she headed Western, an Eastern girl born for the West just look at those later photographs of her like some wizen Earth Mother pioneer stock come a-blazing to tame the land to her brush. Make desert-forsaken whitened cracked cattle bones and sagebrush come alive in the new dispensation. Made that homestead Ghost Ranch (dude ranch so figure we are close to Professor Turner’s closing of the frontier Clark Gable will do the rest come The Misfits time) come alive with Western-strewn colors all siena brown, mojave yellow, death valley red. Did it with some style too, something to look at in big gallery art museum walls. Something to ponder about living for your art and be damned with the rest. Be damn with the men, boys too.         

When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of The Late Folk-Singer Dave Van Ronk’s Time

Happy Birthday To You-

By Lester Lannon

I am devoted to a local folk station WUMB which is run out of the campus of U/Mass-Boston over near Boston Harbor. At one time this station was an independent one based in Cambridge but went under when their significant demographic base deserted or just passed on once the remnant of the folk minute really did sink below the horizon.

So much for radio folk history except to say that the DJs on many of the programs go out of their ways to commemorate or celebrate the birthdays of many folk, rock, blues and related genre artists. So many and so often that I have had a hard time keeping up with noting those occurrences in this space which after all is dedicated to such happening along the historical continuum.

To “solve” this problem I have decided to send birthday to that grouping of musicians on an arbitrary basis as I come across their names in other contents or as someone here has written about them and we have them in the archives. This may not be the best way to acknowledge them, but it does do so in a respectful manner.   

When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of The Late Folk-Singer Dave Van Ronk’s Time

  

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Sometimes Sam Lowell and his “friend” Laura Perkins (really “sweetie,” long time sweetie, paramour, significant other, consort or whatever passes for the socially acceptable or Census Bureau bureaucratic “speak” way to name somebody who is one’s soul-mate, his preferred term) whose relationship to Sam was just described in parenthesis, and righteously so, liked to go to Crane’s Beach in Ipswich to either cool off in the late summer heat or in the fall before the New England weather lowers its hammer and the place gets a bit inaccessible. That later summer heat escape valve is a result of the hard fact that July, when they really would like to go there to catch a few fresh sea breezes, is not a time to show up at the bleach white sands beach due to nasty blood-sucking green flies swarming and dive-bombing like some berserk renegade Air Force squadron lost on a spree who breed in the nearby swaying mephitic marshes.

The only “safe haven” then is to drive up the hill to the nearby robber-baron days etched Crane Castle to get away from the buggers, although on a stagnant wind day you might have a few vagrant followers, as the well-to-do have been doing since there were well-to-do and had the where-with-all to escape the summer heat and bugs at higher altitudes. By the way I assume that “castle” is capitalized when it part of a huge estate, the big ass estate of Crane, now a trust monument to the first Gilded Age, not today’s neo-Gilded Age, architectural proclivities of the rich, the guy whose company did, does all the plumbing fixture stuff on half the bathrooms in America including the various incantations of the mansion. 

Along the way, along the hour way to get to Ipswich from Cambridge Sam and Laura had developed a habit of making the time more easy passing by listening to various CDs, inevitably not listened to for a long time folk CDs, not listened to for so long that the plastic containers needed to be dusted off before being brought along, on the car CD player. And is their wont while listening to some CD to comment on this or that thing that some song brought to mind, or the significance of some song in their youth.  One of the things that had brought them together early on several years back was their mutual interest in the old 1960s folk minute which Sam, a little older and having grown up within thirty miles of Harvard Square, one the big folk centers of that period along with the Village and North Beach out in Frisco town, had imbibed deeply. Laura, growing up “in the sticks,” in farm country in upstate New York had gotten the breeze at second-hand through records, records bought at Cheapo Records and the eternal Sandy's on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge and a little the fading Cambridge folk scene when she had moved to Boston in the early 1970s to go to graduate school.     

One hot late August day they got into one such discussion about how they first developed an interest in folk music when Sam had said “sure everybody, everybody over the age of say fifty to be on the safe side, knows about Bob Dylan, maybe some a little younger too if some hip kids have browsed through their parents’ old vinyl record collections now safely ensconced in the attic although there are stirrings of retro-vinyl revival of late according a report he had heard on NPR. Some of that over 50 crowd and their young acolytes would also know about how Dylan, after serving something like an apprenticeship under the influence of Woody Guthrie in the late 1950s singing Woody’s songs imitating Woody's style something fellow Woody acolytes like Ramblin’ Jack Elliot never quite got over moved on, got all hung up on high symbolism and obscure references. Funny guys like Jack actually made a nice workman-like career out of Woody covers, so their complaints seen rather hollow now. That over 50s crowd would also know Dylan became if not the voice of the Generation of ’68, their generation, which he probably did not seriously aspire in the final analysis, then the master troubadour of the age.

Sam continued along that line after Laura had said she was not sure about the connection and he said he meant, “troubadour in the medieval sense of bringing news to the people and entertaining them by song and poetry as well if not decked in some officially approved garb like back in those olden days where they worked under a king’s license if lucky, by their wit otherwise but the 'new wave' post-beatnik flannel shirt, work boots, and dungarees which connected you with the roots, the American folk roots down in the Piedmont, down in Appalachia, down in Mister James Crow’s Delta. So, yes, that story has been pretty well covered.”  

Laura said she knew all of that about the desperate search for roots although not that Ramblin’ Jack had been an acolyte of Woody’s but she wondered about others, some other folk performers who she listened to on WUMB on Saturday morning when some weeping willow DJ put forth about fifty old time rock and folk things a lot of which she had never heard of back in Mechanicsville outside of Albany where she grew up. Sam then started in again, “Of course that is hardly the end of the story since Dylan did not create that now hallowed folk minute of the early 1960s. He had been washed by it when he came to the East from Hibbing, Minnesota for God’s sake (via Dink’s at the University), came into the Village where there was a cauldron of talent trying to make folk the next big thing, the next big cultural thing for the young and restless of the post-World War II generations. For us. But also those in little oases like the Village where the disaffected could put up on stuff they couldn’t get in places like Mechanicsville or Carver where I grew up. People who I guess, since even I was too young to know about that red scare stuff except you had to follow your teacher’s orders to put your head under your desk and hand over your head if the nuclear holocaust was coming, were frankly fed up with the cultural straightjacket of the red scare Cold War times and began seriously looking as hard at roots in all its manifestations as our parents, definitely mine, yours were just weird about stuff like that, right, were burying those same roots under a vanilla existential Americanization. How do you like that for pop sociology 101.”

“One of the talents who was already there when hick Dylan came a calling, lived there, came from around there was the late Dave Van Ronk who as you know we had heard several times in person, although unfortunately when his health and well-being were declining not when he was a young politico and hell-raising folk aspirant. You know he also, deservedly, fancied himself a folk historian as well as musician.”    

“Here’s the funny thing, Laura, that former role is important because we all know that behind the “king” is the “fixer man,” the guy who knows what is what, the guy who tells one and all what the roots of the matter were like some mighty mystic (although in those days when he fancied himself a socialist that mystic part was played down). Dave Van Ronk was serious about that part, serious about imparting that knowledge about the little influences that had accumulated during the middle to late 1950s especially around New York which set up that folk minute. New York like I said, Frisco, maybe in small enclaves in L.A. and in precious few other places during those frozen times a haven for the misfits, the outlaws, the outcast, the politically “unreliable,” and the just curious. People like the mistreated Weavers, you know, Pete Seeger and that crowd found refuge there when the hammer came down around their heads from the red-baiters and others like advertisers who ran for cover to “protect” their precious soap, toothpaste, beer, deodorant or whatever they were mass producing to sell to a hungry pent-ip market.  

Boston and Cambridge by comparison until late in the 1950s when the Club 47 and other little places started up and the guys and gals who could sing, could write songs, could recite poetry even had a place to show their stuff instead of to the winos, rummies, grifters and conmen who hung out at the Hayes-Bickford or out on the streets could have been any of the thousands of towns who bought into the freeze.”     

“Sweetie, I remember one time but I don’t remember where, maybe the Café Nana when that was still around after it had been part of the Club 47 folk circuit for new talent to play and before Harry Reid, who ran the place, died and it closed down, I know it was before we met, so it had to be before the late 1980s Von Ronk told a funny story, actually two funny stories, about the folk scene and his part in that scene as it developed a head of steam in the mid-1950s which will give you an idea about his place in the pantheon. During the late 1950s after the publication of Jack Kerouac’s ground-breaking road wanderlust adventure novel that got young blood stirring, not mine until later since I was clueless on all that stuff except rock and roll, On The Road which I didn’t read until high school, the jazz scene, the cool be-bop jazz scene and poetry reading, poems reflecting off of “beat” giant Allen Ginsberg’s Howl the clubs and coffeehouse of the Village were ablaze with readings and cool jazz, people waiting in line to get in to hear the next big poetic wisdom guy if you can believe that these days when poetry is generally some esoteric endeavor by small clots of devotees just like folk music. The crush of the lines meant that there were several shows per evening. But how to get rid of one audience to bring in another in those small quarters was a challenge.

Presto, if you wanted to clear the house just bring in some desperate “from hunger” snarly nasally folk singer for a couple, maybe three songs, and if that did not clear the high art be-bop poetry house then that folk singer was a goner. A goner until the folk minute of the 1960s who probably in that very same club then played for the 'basket.' You know the 'passed hat' which even on a cheap date, and a folk music coffeehouse date was a cheap one in those days like I told you before and you laughed at cheapie me and the 'Dutch treat' thing, you felt obliged to throw a few bucks into to show solidarity or something.  And so the roots of New York City folk according to the 'father.'

Laura interrupted to ask if that “basket” was like the buskers put in front them these days and Sam said yes. And asked Sam about a few of the dates he took to the coffeehouses in those days, just out of curiosity she said, meaning if she had been around would he have taken her there then. He answered that question but since it is an eternally complicated and internal one I have skipped it to let him go on with the other Von Ronk story. He continued with the other funny story like this-“The second story involved his [Von Ronk's] authoritative role as a folk historian who after the folk minute had passed became the subject matter for, well, for doctoral dissertations of course just like today maybe people are getting doctorates in hip-hop or some such subject. Eager young students, having basked in the folk moment in the abstract and with an academic bent, breaking new ground in folk history who would come to him for the 'skinny.' Now Van Ronk had a peculiar if not savage sense of humor and a wicked snarly cynic’s laugh but also could not abide academia and its’ barren insider language so when those eager young students came a calling he would give them some gibberish which they would duly note and footnote. Here is the funny part. That gibberish once published in the dissertation would then be cited by some other younger and even more eager students complete with the appropriate footnotes. Nice touch, nice touch indeed on that one, right.”

Laura did not answer but laughed, laughed harder as she thought about it having come from that unformed academic background and having read plenty of sterile themes turned inside out.       

As Laura laugh settled Sam continued “As for Van Ronk’s music, his musicianship which he cultivated throughout his life, I think the best way to describe that for me is that one Sunday night in the early 1960s I was listening to the local folk program on WBZ hosted by Dick Summer, who was influential in boosting local folk musician Tom Rush’s career and who was featured on that  Tom Rush documentary No Regrets we got for being members of WUMB, when this gravelly-voice guy, sounding like some old mountain pioneer, sang the Kentucky hills classic Fair and Tender Ladies. It turned out to be Von Ronk's version which you know I still play up in the third floor attic. After that I was hooked on that voice and that depth of feeling that he brought to every song even those of his own creation which tended to be spoofs on some issue of the day.”

Laura laughed at Sam and the intensity with which his expressed his mentioning of the fact that he liked gravelly-voiced guys for some reason. Here is her answer, “You should became when you go up to the third floor to do your “third floor folk- singer” thing and you sing Fair and Tender Ladies I hear this gravelly-voiced guy, sounding like some old mountain pioneer, some Old Testament Jehovah prophet come to pass judgment come that end day time.”

They both laughed. 

Laura then mentioned the various times that they had seen Dave Von Ronk before he passed away, not having seen him in his prime, when that voice did sound like some old time prophet, a title he would have probably secretly enjoyed for publicly he was an adamant atheist. Sam went on, “ I saw him perform many times over the years, sometimes in high form and sometimes when drinking too much high-shelf whiskey, Chavis Regal, or something like that not so good. Remember we had expected to see him perform as part of Rosalie Sorrels’ farewell concert at Saunders Theater at Harvard in 2002 I think. He had died a few weeks before.  Remember though before that when we had seen him for what turned out to be our last time and I told you he did not look well and had been, as always, drinking heavily and we agreed his performance was subpar. But that was at the end. For a long time he sang well, sang us well with his own troubadour style, and gave us plenty of real information about the history of American folk music. Yeah like he always used to say-'when the tin can bended …..and the story ended.'

As they came to the admission booth at the entrance to Crane’s Beach Sam with Carolyn Hester’s song version of Walt Whitman’s On Captain, My Captain on the CD player said “I was on my soap box long enough on the way out here. You’re turn with Carolyn Hester on the way back who you know a lot about and I know zero, okay.” Laura retorted, “Yeah you were definitely on your soap-box but yes we can talk Carolyn Hester because I am going to cover one of her songs at my next “open mic.” And so it goes.               

If You Want The Stuff Senator Bernie Sanders Has Been Talking About For A Million Years Including Out In The Wilderness When It Was Not Fashionable About Medicare For All, Eliminating Student Debt, The Fight For $15 (Hell Now More Than That) To Happen Accept No Substitutes-Fight For Bernie 2020 Not Come Lately Elizabeth Warren

If You Want The Stuff Senator Bernie Sanders Has Been Talking About For A Million Years Including Out In The Wilderness When It Was Not Fashionable About Medicare For All, Eliminating Student Debt, The Fight For $15 (Hell Now More Than That) To Happen Accept No Substitutes-Fight For Bernie 2020 Not Come Lately Elizabeth Warren  

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Face (Book) Photo That Launched A Thousand Clicks- Or “Foul-Mouth” Phil Hits Pay-Dirt-Finally

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Face (Book) Photo That Launched A Thousand Clicks- Or “Foul-Mouth” Phil Hits Pay-Dirt-Finally

From The Archives Of Allan Jackson

[Recently in an introduction to a re-posting of one of this series involving a take on the mad monk writer Ken Kesey and the equally mad monk Phil Larkin from the old North Adamsville working class Acre neighborhood where, Sam Lowell, the late Peter Paul Markin, Allan Jackson and a few others who have written here including me, I pointed out that the by-line had changed. The by-line which had originally in the first thirty or so sketches been attributed to Frank Jackman another guy from the old neighborhood has now truthfully as far as it goes been attributed to the guy, Allan Jackson, who actually wrote, edited, and guided the series through about two or so years of heavy work.

This whole subterfuge had been the brainchild of Greg Green the current site manager who owes his position to having been on the “winning side” in the big internal fight that roiled this publication in the fall of 2017 after Allan, the old site manager and one of the founders of this publication back when it was in hard copy had been purged, retired take your pick after he lost a fatal vote of no confidence. To stem the continuing controversy in the aftermath of the struggle when writers on both sides of the dispute on the future direction of the blog which was tearing things apart for a while Sam Lowell, and old-timer and also a founder of the hard copy edition, and Greg worked out a truce. An “armed truce” as one wag put it where writers would no longer refer to Allan Jackson, his regime, his shortcomings and fixations about the 1960s nostalgia trip that he was pushing the publication toward, or for that matter his good points.

Greg used the “truce” to sort of underhandedly revive the series under Frank’s name without Frank knowing that he had unwittingly taken credit for what was essentially Allan’s work although he had written several of the sketches under Allan’s direction. What was Greg’s purpose? When Greg took over with the aid of the stable of younger writers who forced the vote of no confidence he had planned to take the publication away from the old time base of 1960s nostalgia freaks and aficionados and appeal to a younger audience by among other things forcing everybody on staff to do film reviews of super-hero movies, you know, Ironman, Batman, Superman those Marvel and DC comic book characters come to the screen. While every writer I think held his or her nose while  doing the damn thing they also tried in vain to tell Greg that the kids, Generation X, the Millennials frankly don’t read film reviews, book reviews, cultural takes, which is why the comic book companies went to the screen anyway. See they can’t even take the twenty minutes to read a fucking comic book. Greg finally got wise when that “old fogy” base which has stuck with the publication although that population is dwindling and was a cause of Greg’s unwise decision started complaining about the wall to wall coverage of this comic book madness. That is genesis on Greg seeing the light.

Enter one Allan Jackson who found out what Greg had done and had a fit although they was not much he could do about it since all the material on the site unlike the hard copy stuff in the old days was not copyrighted. We had gone the freely publish common copyright route assuming nobody would care to “filch” the stuff. Apparently from what Sam Lowell told me Allan got in touch with Sam to find out what he could do to see some justice done to his work. Sam said he would talk to Greg the result of which ended up with a “compromise” of attributing the material to Allan’s “archives” without recognizing his central role in putting the whole series together.

You have to realize how intense that internal struggle was which now by general consensus of the old-timers who sided with Allan and the Young Turks who forced him out, who using a term Sam used forthrightly “purged” him and sent him into exile. To have him through negotiation become a “non-person” in the old Stalinist terminology that the old-timers including Allan and Sam were addicted to from their radical pasts in that 1960s which to this day has marked them. All kinds of rumors have floated about what had happened to Allan since last fall. That have gone from innuendoes that Greg had him done away with like in old Stalin times once he lost the vote like this was some epic Stalin-Trotsky world historic dispute to his being forced into exile in Utah working for some Mormon newspaper touting the virtues of wearing clean white underwear and praying seven times a day to the shade of Joseph Smith to hiding out in La Jolla with some twenty-something part-time waitress surfer girl to running dope across the border for the Cuernavaca cartel to running a high end whorehouse in Argentina with old friend Madame La Rue for Chinese bigwigs on travel. The very latest rumors have him in Big Sur as a disciple of Buddha of the hills or pimping for a local Fox News outlet in Phoenix. Fortunately I have found out where he is, or maybe better, where he last was and will report what is what when I catch up to my old comrade who seems to have gone off the rails. Jack Callahan]      

*********

Here's the story of the headline: 

Yes, I know. I know damn well that I should not indulge my seemingly endlessly sex-haunted old-time corner boys. After all this space is nothing but a high-tone “high communist” propaganda outlet on most days- the good days. I should, moreover, not indulge a “mere” part-timer at our old North Adamsville Salducci’s Pizza Parlor hang-out be-bop night “up the Downs” like one “Foul-Mouth” Phil Larkin. (For those who do not know what that reference refers to don’t worry you all had your own “up the Downs” and your own corner boys, or mall rats as the case may be, who hung out there.) Despite his well-known, almost automatic, foul mouth in the old days Phil had his fair share, more than his fair share given that mouth, of luck with the young women (girls, in the old days, okay). I am still mad at him for “stealing” my old-time neighborhood heartthrob, Millie Callahan, right from under my nose. (And right in the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church after Mass to boot. If he is still a believer he stands condemned. No mercy. As for me, an old heathen, I was just glad that I stared at her ass during Mass. I stand condemned anyway, if things work out that way).

Well, that was then and now is now and if you read about “poor” Phil Larkin’s trials and tribulations with the ladies recently in a post here entitled -“Sexless” sex sites” you know that his old Irish blarney ( I am being kind to the old geezer here) had finally given out and that he was scoreless lately. That is he was scoreless as of that writing. As Phil pointed out to me personally as part of our conversations while I was editing his story he felt that he would have had better luck with finding a woman companion (for whatever purpose) by just randomly calling up names in the telephone directory than from that “hot” sex site that he found himself embroiled in. And, in an earlier time, he might have been right.

But we are now in the age of so-called “social networking” (of which this space, as an Internet-driven format is a part) and so, by hook or by crook, someone placed his story (or rather, more correctly, my post from this blog) on his Facebook wall. As a result of that “click” Phil is now “talking” to a young (twenty-something) woman graduate student from Penn State (that is why just a few minutes ago he was yelling “Go, Nittany Lions” in my ear over the cell phone) and is preparing to head to the rolling Appalachian hills of Pennsylvania for a “date” with said twenty-something. Go figure, right? So my placement of this saga, or rather part two of the saga (mercifully there will be no more), is really being done in the interest of my obscure sense of completeness rather than “mere” indulgence of an old-time corner boy. As always I disclaim, and disclaim loudly for the world to hear, that while I have helped edit this story this is the work of one “Foul-Mouth” Phil Larkin, formerly of North Adamsville and now on some twisted, windy road heading to central Pennsylvania.

Phil Larkin comment:

Jesus, that Peter Paul Markin is a piece of work. Always rubbing in that “foul-mouth” thing. But I guess I did get the better of him on that Millie Callahan thing back in the day and he did provide me a “life-line” just now with his posting of my story on his damn communist-addled blog. It is a good thing we go back to “up the Downs” time and that I am not a “snitch” because some of the stuff that I have read from him here should, by rights, be reported directly to J. Edgar Hoover, or whoever is running the F.B.I., if anybody is. We can discuss that another time because I don’t have time to be bothered by any such small stuff. Not today. Not since I hit “pay-dirt” with my little Heloise. Yes, an old-fashioned name, at least I haven’t heard the name used much lately for girls, but very new-fashioned in her ideas. She is a twenty-five graduate student from Penn State and I am, as I speak, getting ready to roll out down the highway for our first “in person” meet.

You all know, or should be presumed to know to use a Markinism (Christ, we still call his silly little terms that name even forty years later), that I was having a little temporary trouble finding my life’s companion through sex sites. I told that story before and it is not worth going into here. [Markin: Fifty years Phil, and every other guy (or gal) from the Class of 1964. Do the math. I hope you didn’t try to con Heloise with that “youthful” fifty-something gag-christ, right back to you, Phil.] Let me tell you this one though because it had done nothing but restore my faith in modern technology.

Little communist propaganda front or not, Peter Paul’s blog goes out into the wilds of cyberspace almost daily (and it really should be reported to the proper authorities now that I have read his recent screeds on a Russian Bolshevik guy named Trotsky who is some kind of messiah to Markin and his crowd). So a few weeks ago somebody, somehow ( I am foggy, just like Markin, on the mechanics of the thing, although I know it wasn’t some internet god making “good” cyberspace vibes or anything like that) picked it up and place it (linked it) on his Facebook wall ( I think that is the proper word). Let’s call him Bill Riley (not his real name and that is not important anyway) Now I don’t know if you know how this Facebook thing works, although if you don’t then you are among the three, maybe four, people over the age of five that doesn’t.

Here’s what I have gathered. Bill Riley set up an account with his e-mail address, provided some information about himself and his interests and waited for the deluge of fan responses and “social-connectedness” (Markin’s word). Well, not exactly wait. Every day in every way you are inundated with photos of people you may know, may not know, or may or may not want to know and you can add them to your “friends” pile (assuming they ‘confirm” you request for friendship). Easy, right?

Well, yes easy is right because many people will, as I subsequently found out, confirm you as a friend for no other reason than that you “asked” them to include you. Click- confirm. Boom. This, apparently, is what happened when Bill “saw” Heloise’s photo. (I found out later, after “talking” to Heloise for a while, that she did not know Bill Riley or much about him except that he has a wall on Facebook. So the weird part is that Bill “introduced” us, although neither Heloise nor I know Bill. This has something Greek comedic, or maybe a Shakespeare idea, about it, for sure.). In any case Heloise, as a sociology graduate student at Penn State, took an interest in the “sexless” sex site angle for some study she was doing around her thesis and, by the fates, got hooked into the idea that she wanted to interview me about my experiences, and other related matters.

Without going into all the details that you probably know already I “joined” Bill Riley’s Facebook friends cabal and through him his “friend” Helosie contacted me about an interview. Well, we “chatted” for a while one day and she asked some questions and I asked others in my most civilized manner. What I didn’t know, and call me stupid for not knowing, was that Heloise not only was a “friend” of Bill’s but, unlike me (or so I thought), had her own Facebook page with photos. Now her photo on Bill’s wall was okay but, frankly, she looked just like about ten thousand other earnest female twenty-something graduate students. You know, from hunger. But not quite because daddy or mommy or somebody is paying the freight to let their son or daughter not face reality for a couple more years in some graduate program where they can “discover” themselves. Of course, naturally old cavalier that I am said, while we were chatting, that she was attractive, and looked energetic and smart and all that stuff. You know the embedded male thing with any woman, young or old, that looks the least bit “hit-worthy.” (Embedded is Markin’s word, sorry.)That photo still is on Bill’s wall and if I had only seen that one I would still be sitting in some lounge whiskey sipping my life away.

Heloise’s “real” photos, taken at some Florida beach during Spring break, showed a very fetching (look it up in the dictionary if you don’t know that old-time word means) young woman that in her bikini had me going. Let’s put it this way I wrote her the following little “note” after I got an eyeful:

“Hi Heloise - Recently I made a comment, after I first glanced at your photo wall, that you looked fetching (read, attractive, enchanting, hot, and so on). On that first glance I, like any red-blooded male under the age of one hundred, and maybe over that for all I know, got a little heated up. Now I have had a change to cool down, well a little anyway, and on second peek I would have to say you are kind of, sort of, in a way, well, okay looking. Now that I can be an objective observer I noticed that one of your right side eyelashes is one mm, or maybe two, off-balance from the left side. Fortunately I have the “medicine” to cure you. If you don’t mind living with your hideous asymmetrical deformation that is up to you. I will still be your friend. But if you were wondering, deep in the night, the sleepless night, why you have so few male Facebook friends or why guys in droves are passing your page by there you have it. Later-Phil.”

The famous old reverse play that has been around for a million years, right? Strictly the blarney, right? [Markin: Right, Phil, right as ever]. That little literary gem however started something in her, some need for an older man to tell her troubles to or something. And from there we started to “talk” more personally and more seriously. See I had it all wrong about her being sheltered out there in the mountains by mom and dad keeping her out of harm’s way until she “found” herself. No, Heloise was working, and working hard, to make ends meet and working on her doctorate at the same time. Her story, really, without the North Adamsville corner boy thing, would be something any of us Salducci’s guys would understand without question.(I was not a part-time corner boy by the way, except by Frankie Riley’s 24/7/365 standards and The Scribe’s). [Markin: Watch it, Phil. I told you not to use that nickname anymore.] I’ll tell you her story sometime depending on how things work but right now I am getting ready to go get a tank full of gas and think a little about those photos that launched a thousand clicks.

Markin comment:

Phil, like I said to Johnny Silver about what people might say about his little teeny-bopper love. Go for it. Don’t watch out. And like I said before we had better get to that communist future we all need pretty damn quick if for no other reason that to get some sexual breathes of fresh air that such a society promises.