Sunday, February 17, 2019

Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of The "King Of The Beats" Jack Kerouac- In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)-Out In The Be-Bop Night- You've Got To Be A Football Hero....

Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of The "King Of The Beats" Jack Kerouac- 

“Advertisements for Myself”-Introduction by Allan Jackson, a founding member of the American Left History publication back in 1974 when it was a hard copy journal and until 2017 site manager of the on-line edition.      

[He’s back. Jack Kerouac, as described in the headline, “the king of the beats” and maybe the last true beat standing. That is the basis of this introduction by me as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of his untimely death at 47. But before we go down and dirty with the legendary writer I stand before you, the regular reader, and those who have not been around for a while to know that I was relieved of my site manage duties in 2017 in what amounted to a coup by the younger writers who resented the direction I was taking the publication in and replaced me with Greg Green who I had brought on board from American Film Gazette to run the day to day operations while I oversaw the whole operation and planned my retirement. Over the past year or so a million rumors have, had mostly now, swirled around this publication and the industry in general about what had happened and I will get to that in a minute before dealing with Jack Kerouac’s role in the whole mess.

What you need to know first, if you don’t know already is that Greg Green took me back to do the introductions to an encore presentation of a long-term history of rock and roll series that I edited and essentially created after an unnamed older writer who had not been part of the project balled it all up, got catch flat-footed talking bullshit and other assorted nonsense since he knew nada, nada nunca and, about the subject having been apparently asleep when the late Peter Markin “took us to school” that history. Since then Greg and I have had an “armed truce,” meaning I could contribute as here to introductions of some encore and some origin material as long as I didn’t go crazy, his term, for what he called so-called nostalgia stuff from the 1950s and 1960s and meaning as well that Greg will not go crazy, my term, and will refrain from his ill-advised attempt to reach a younger audience by “dumbing down” the publication with odd-ball comic book character reviews of films, graphic novels and strange musical interludes. Fair is fair.

What I need to mention, alluded to above, is those rumors that ran amok while I was on the ropes, when I had lost that decisive vote of no confidence by one sullen vote. People here, and my enemies in the industry as well, seeing a wounded Allan Jackson went for the kill, went for the jugular that the seedy always thrive on and began a raggedy-ass trail on noise you would not believe. In the interest of elementary hygiene, and to frankly clear the air, a little, since there will always be those who have evil, and worse in their hearts when “the mighty have fallen.”  Kick when somebody is down their main interest in life.

I won’t go through the horrible rumors like I was panhandling down in Washington, D.C., I was homeless in Olde Saco, Maine (how could that be when old friend and writer here Josh Breslin lives there and would have provided alms to me so at least get an approximation of the facts before spinning the wild woolly tale), I had become a male prostitute in New York City (presumably after forces here and in that city hostile to me put in the fatal “hard to work with” tag on me ruining any chances on the East Coast of getting work, getting enough dough to keep the wolves from my door, my three ex-wives and that bevy of kids, nice kids, who nevertheless were sucking me dry with alimony and college tuitions), writing press releases under the name Leonard Bloom for a Madison Avenue ad agency. On a lesser scale of disbelief I had taken a job as a ticket-taker in a multi-plex in Nashua, New Hampshire, had been a line dishwasher at the Ritz in Philadelphia when they needed day labor for parties and convention banquets, had been kicking kids out of their newspaper routes and taking that task on myself, and to finish off although I have not given a complete rundown rummaging through trash barrels looking for bottles with deposits. Christ.

Needless to say, how does one actually answer such idiocies, and why. A couple of others stick out about me and some surfer girl out in Carlsbad in California who I was pimping while getting my sack time with her and  this one hurt because it hurt a dear friend and former “hippie girl” lover of mine, Madame La Rue, back in the day that I was running a whorehouse with her in Luna Bay for rich Asian businessmen with a taste for kinky stuff. I did stop off there and Madame does run a high-end brothel in Luna Bay but I had nothing to do with it. The reason Madame was hurt was because I had lent her the money to buy the place when it was a rundown hotel and built it up from there with periodic additional funds from me so she could not understand why my act of kindness would create such degenerate noise from my enemies who were clueless about the relationship between us.
I will, must deal with two big lies which also center of my reluctant journey west (caused remember by that smear campaign which ruined by job opportunities in the East, particularly New York City. The first which is really unbelievable on its face is that I hightailed it directly to Utah, to Salt Lake City, when I busted out in NYC looking for one Mitt Romney, “Mr. Flip-Flop,” former Governor of Massachusetts, Presidential candidate against Barack Obama then planning on running for U.S. Senator from Utah (now successful ready to take office in January) to “get well.” The premise for this big lie was supposedly that since I have skewered the guy while he was governor and running for president with stuff like the Mormon fetish for white underwear and the old time polygamy of his great-grand-father who had five wives (and who showed great executive skill I think in keeping the peace in that extended family situation. The unbelievable part is that those Mormon folk, who have long memories and have pitchforks at the ready to rumble with the damned, would let a sinner like me, a non-Mormon for one thing anywhere the Romney press operation. Christ, I must be some part latter day saint since I barely got out of that damn state alive if the real truth were known after I applied for a job with the Salt Lake Sentinel not knowing the rag was totally linked to the Mormons. Pitchforks, indeed.    

The biggest lie though is the one that had me as the M.C. in complete “drag” as Elsa Maxwell at the “notorious” KitKat Club in San Francisco which has been run for about the past thirty years or so by Miss Judy Garland, at one time and maybe still is in some quarters the “drag queen” Queen of that city. This will show you how ignorant, or blinded by hate, some people are. Miss Judy Garland is none other that one of our old corner boys from the Acre section of North Adamsville, Timmy Riley. Timmy who like the rest of us on the corner used to “fag bait” and beat up anybody, any guy who seemed effeminate, at what cost to Timmy’s real feelings we will never really know although he was always the leader in the gay-bashing orgy. Finally between his own feeling and Stonewall in New York in 1969 which did a great deal to make gays, with or with the drag queen orientation, a little less timid Timmy fled the Acre (and his hateful family and friends) to go to friendlier Frisco. He was in deep personal financial trouble before I was able to arrange some loans from myself and some of his other old corner boys (a few still hate Timmy for what he has become, his true self) to buy the El Lobo Club, his first drag queen club, and when that went under, the now thriving tourist trap KitKat Club. So yes, yes, indeed, I stayed with my old friend at his place and that was that. Nothing more than I had done many times before while I ran the publication.                   

But enough of this tiresome business because I want to introduce this series dedicated to the memory of Jack Kerouac who had a lot of influence on me for a long time, mostly after he died in 1969 
******
All roads about Jack Kerouac, about who was the king of the beats, about what were the “beats” lead back to the late Pete Markin who, one way or another, taught the working poor Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville corner boys what was up with that movement. Funny, because we young guys were a serious generation removed from that scene, really our fathers’ contemporaries and you know how far removed fathers were from kids in those days especially among the working poor trying to avoid going  “under water” and not just about mortgages but food on tables and clothing on backs, were children of rock and roll, not jazz, the beat musical medium, and later the core of the “Generation of ‘68” which took off, at least partially, with the “hippie” scene, where the dying embers of the beat scene left off. Those dying embers exactly the way to put it since most of our knowledge or interest came from the stereotypes-beards before beards were cool and before grandfather times -for guys, okay, berets, black and beaten down looks. Ditto on black for the gals, including black nylons which no Acre girl would have dreamed of wearing, not in the early 1960s anyway. Our “model” beatnik really came, as we were also children of television, from sitcom stories like Dobie Gillis with stick character Maynard G. Krebs standing in for all be-bop-dom.        

So it is easy to see where except to ostracize, meaning harass, maybe beat up if that was our wont that day, we would have passed by the “beat” scene, passed by Jack Kerouac too without the good offices, not a term we would have used then, if not for nerdish, goof, wild and woolly in the idea world Markin (always called Scribe for obvious reasons but we will keep with Markin here). He was the guy who always looked for some secret meaning to the universe, that certain breezes, winds, metaphorical breezes and winds, were going to turn things around, were going to make the world a place where Markin could thrive. Markin was the one who first read Kerouac’s breakthrough travelogue of a different sort novel On The Road.
Now Markin was the kind of guy, and sometimes we let him go on and sometimes stopped him in his tracks, who when he was on to something would bear down on us to pay attention. Christ some weekend nights he would read passages from the book like it was the Bible (which it turned out to be in a way later) when all we basically cared about is which girls were going to show up at our hang-out spot, the well-known Tonio’s Pizza Parlor and play the jukebox and we would go from there. Most of us, including me, kind of yawned at the whole thing even when Markin made a big deal that Kerouac was a working-class guy like us from up in Lowell cut right along the Merrimac River. The whole thing seemed way too exotic and moreover there was too much homosexual stuff implied which in our strict Irish-Italian Catholic neighborhood did not go down well at all -made us dismiss the whole thing and want to if I recall correctly “beat up” that Allan Ginsberg character. Even Dean Moriarty, the Neal Cassidy character, didn’t move us since although we were as larcenous and “clip” crazy as any character in that book we kind of took Dean as a tough car crazy guide like Sonny Jones from our neighborhood who was nothing but a hood in Red Riley’s bad ass motorcycle gang which hung out at Harry’s Variety Store. We avoided him and more so Red like the plague. Both wound up dead, very dead, in separate attempted armed robberies in broad daylight if you can believe that.    

Our first run through of our experiences with Kerouac and through him the beat movement was therefore kind of marginal-even as Markin touted for a while that whole scene he agreed with us that jazz-be-bop jazz always associated with the beat-ness was not our music, was grating to our rock and roll-refined and defined ears. Here is where Markin was always on to something though, always had some idea percolating in his head. There was a point where he, we as well I think, got tired of rock and roll, a time when it had run out of steam for a while and along with his crazy home life which really was bad drove him to go to Harvard Square and check out what he had heard was a lot of stuff going on. Harvard Square was, is still to the extent that any have survived like Club Passim, the home of the coffeehouse. A place that kind of went with the times first as the extension of the beat generation hang-out where poetry and jazz would be read and played. But in Markin’s time, our time there was the beginnings of a switch because when he went to the old long gone CafĂ© Nana he heard folk music and not jazz, although some poetry was still being read. I remember Markin telling me how he figured the change when I think it was the late Dave Von Ronk performed at some club and mentioned that when he started out in the mid-1950s in the heat of beat time folk singers were hired at the coffeehouses in Greenwich Village to “clear the house” for the next set of poetry performers but that now folk-singing eclipsed poetry in the clubs. Markin loved it, loved the whole scene of which he was an early devotee. Me, well, strangely considering where I wound up and what I did as a career, I always, still do, hated the music. Thought it was too whinny and boring. Enough said though.                   

Let’s fast forward to see where Kerouac really affected us in a way that when Markin was spouting forth early on we could not appreciate. As Markin sensed in his own otherworldly way a new breeze was coming down the cultural highway, a breeze push forward by the beats I will confess, by the folk music scene, by the search for roots which the previous generation, our parents’ generation, spent their adulthoods attempting to banish and become part of the great American vanilla melt, and by a struggling desire to question everything that had come before, had been part of what we had had no say in creating, weren’t even asked about. Heady stuff and Markin before he made a very bad decision to quit college in his sophomore years and “find himself,” my expression not his, spent many of his waking hours figuring out how to make his world a place where he could thrive.

That is when one night, this is when we were well out of high school, some of us corner boys had gone our separate ways and those who remained in contact with the brethren spent less time hanging out at Tonio’s, Markin once again pulled out On The Road, pulled out Jack’s exotic travelogue. The difference is we were all ears then and some of us after that night brought our own copies or went to the Thomas Murphy Public Library and took out the book. This was the spring of the historic year 1967 when the first buds of the Summer of Love which wracked San Francisco and the Bay Area to its core and once Markin started working on us, started to make us see his vision of what he would later called, culling from Tennyson if I am not mistaken a “newer world.” Pulling us all in his train, even as with Bart Webber and if I recall Si Lannon a little, he had to pull out all the stops to have them, us, join him in the Summer of Love experience. Maybe the whole thing with Jack Kerouac was a pipe dream I remember reading about him in the Literary Gazette when he was down in Florida living with his ancient mother and he was seriously critical of the “hippies,” kind of banged on his own beat roots explaining that he was talking about something almost Catholic beatitude spiritual and not personal freedom, of the road or anything else. A lot of guys and not just writing junkies looking for some way to alleviate their inner pains have repudiated their pasts but all I know is that when Jack was king of the hill, when he spoke to us those were the days all roads to Kerouac were led by Markin. Got it. Allan Jackson    






In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)


By Book Critic Zack James


To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for something, maybe the truth, maybe just for kicks, for stuff, important stuff that had happened down in the base of society where nobody in authority was looking or some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search looking for a name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the bandit poet Gregory Corso, king of the mean New York streets, mean, very mean indeed in a junkie-hang-out world around Times Square when that place was up to its neck in flea-bit hotels, all-night Joe and Nemo’s and the trail of the “fixer” man on every corner, con men coming out your ass too, called the “beat” generation. (Yes,  I know that the actual term “beat” was first used by Kerouac writer friend John Clemmon Holmes in an article in some arcane journal but the “feel” had to have come from a less academic source so I will crown the bandit prince Corso as genesis)
Beat, beat of the jazzed up drum line backing some sax player searching for the high white note, what somebody told me, maybe my oldest brother Alex who was washed clean in the Summer of Love, 1967 but must have known the edges of Jack’s time since he was in high school when real beat exploded on the scene in Jack-filled 1957, they called “blowing to the China seas” out in West Coast jazz and blues circles, that high white note he heard achieved one skinny night by famed sax man Sonny Johns, dead beat, run out on money, women, life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address for the desolate repo man to hang onto, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you will get caught back up in the spire wind up like your freaking staid, stay at home parents, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being, hell, let’s just call it being, beatified beat like saintly and all Jack’s kid stuff high holy Catholic incense and a story goes with it about a young man caught up in a dream, like there were not ten thousand other religions in the world to feast on- you can take your pick of the meanings, beat time meanings. Hell, join the club they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out on the poet princely mean streets of New York, Chi town, Mecca beckoning North Beach in Frisco town cadging twenty-five cents a night flea-bag sleeps (and the fleas were real no time for metaphor down in the bowels where the cowboy junkies drowse in endless sleeps, raggedy winos toothless suck dry the dregs and hipster con men prey on whoever floats down), half stirred left on corner diners’ coffees and groundling cigarette stubs when the Bull Durham ran out).

I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my brim fill later through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at a very low level, mostly through reading the book (need I say the book was On The Road) and having his mandatory two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an event whose 50th anniversary is being commemorated this year as well and so very appropriate to mention since there were a million threads, fibers, connections between “beat” and “hippie” despite dour grandpa Jack’s attempts to trash those connection when the acolytes and bandit hangers-on  came calling looking for the “word.” So even Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by the beat wave that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the wings of Allan Ginsburg’s Howl and Jack’s travel book of a different kind (not found on the AAA, Traveler’s Aid, Youth Hostel brochure circuit if you please although Jack and the crowd, my brother and his crowd later would use such services when up against it in let’s say a place like Winnemucca in the Nevadas or Neola in the heartlands).
Literary stuff for sure but the kind of stuff that moves generations, or I like to think the best parts of those cohorts. These were the creation documents the latter of which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down to his career life as a high-road lawyer (and to my sorrow and anger never looked back which has caused more riffs and bad words than I want to yell about here).             

Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then add my brother’s Alex name into the mix that automatically brings up memories of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Frankie, Jack, Jimmy, Si, Josh (he a separate story from up in Olde Saco, Maine and so only an honorary corner boy after hitching up with the Scribe out on a Russian Hill dope-filled park), Bart, and a few others still alive recently had me put together a tribute book for in connection with that Summer of Love, 1967, their birthright event, just mentioned.  Markin was the vanguard guy, the volunteer odd-ball unkempt mad monk seeker, what did Jack call his generation’s such, oh yeah, holy goofs,   who got several of them off their asses and out to the West Coast to see what there was to see. To see some stuff that Markin had been speaking of for a number of years before 1967 (and which nobody in the crowd paid any attention to, or dismissed out of hand, what they called “could give a rat’s ass” about in the local jargon which I also inherited in those cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural days in America) and which can be indirectly attributed to the activities of Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that aforementioned bandit poet who ran wild on the mean streets among the hustlers, conmen and whores of the major towns of the continent, William Burroughs, the Harvard-trained junkie  and a bunch of other guys who took a very different route for our parents who were of the same generation as them but of a very different world.

But it was above all Jack’s book, Jack’s travel adventure book which had caused a big splash in 1957(after an incredible publishing travail since the story line actually related to events in the late 1940s and which would cause Jack no end of trauma when the kids showed up at his door looking to hitch a ride on the motherlode star, and had ripple effects into the early 1960s and even now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that book had for their own developments, especially that living simple, fast and hard part). Made the young, some of them anyway, like I say I think the best part, have to spend some time thinking through the path of life ahead by hitting the vagrant dusty sweaty road. Maybe not hitchhiking, maybe not going high speed high through the ocean, plains, mountain, desert night but staying unsettled for a while anyway.    

Like I said above Alex was out on the road two years and other guys, other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that was their niche back in those days and were recognized as such in the town not always to their benefit, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first back in the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into the Army and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more years upon his return before his untimely and semi-tragic end down some dusty Jack-strewn road in Mexico cocaine deal blues. With maybe this difference from today’s young who are seeking alternative roads away from what is frankly bourgeois society and was when Jack wrote although nobody except commies and pinkos called it that for fear of being tarred with those brushes. Alex, Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack Callahan and the rest, Markin included, were strictly “from hunger” working class kids who when they hung around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking up ways to grab money fast any way they could or of getting into some   hot chick’s pants any way they could as anything else. Down at the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s goods or have to struggle too much to get even that little bit “from hunger” takes a big toll on your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not the only one in the James family to go toe to toe with the law back then when the coppers were just waiting for corner boy capers to explode nay Friday or Saturday night, it was a close thing for all us boys as it had been with Jack when all is said and done. But back then dough and sex after all was what was what for corner boys, maybe now too although you don’t see many guys hanging on forlorn Friday night corners anymore.

What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley “Scribe” from the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high school and that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although Markin was as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for books and poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most of the “midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds would have the inept Markin actually execute the plan. That was for smooth as silk Frankie now also like Alex a high-road lawyer to lead. That operational sense was why Frankie was the leader then (and maybe why he was a locally famous lawyer later who you definitely did not want to be on the other side against him). Markin was also the guy who all the girls for some strange reason would confide in and thus was the source of intelligence about who was who in the social pecking order, in other words, who was available, sexually or otherwise. That sexually much more important than otherwise. See Markin always had about ten billion facts running around his head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked him about anything so he was ready to do battle, for or against take your pick.

The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antennae for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into that genre, still doesn’t, despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny Bob Dylan above all else.) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and his wooly homo poem Howl from 1956 which Markin would read sections out loud from on lowdown dough-less, girl-less Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that they read the poem, read what he called a new breeze was coming down the road. They could, using that term from the times again, have given a rat’s ass about some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a mental hospital. (That is a direct quote from Frankie Riley at the time via my brother Alex’s memory bank.)


Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown up in Lowell, a working class town very much like North Adamsville, and that he had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring. So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was having one of my high school summertime blues. Read it through without stopping almost like Jack wrote the final version of the thing on a damn newspaper scroll in about three weeks. So it was through the Scribe via Alex that I got the Kerouac bug. And now on the 60th anniversary I am passing on the bug to you.           


Frank Jackman comment:

Well, I guess I can trust Frankie after all. Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, my old middle school and high school pal who I have been telling one and all about in a few stories, stories that prove, prove beyond a doubt, that teen angst, teen alienation, teen love, teen whatever is not some recent invention. Hell, even we now celebrated (maybe) baby-boomers had those maladies. I would further argue that we developed them into rarefied art forms, but that is for another time.

What I have on my mind at this time is based on Frankie’s creditable story about his pre- friendship with me (with me, Peter Paul Markin) adventures in the great carnival skeets night. I got kind of nervous at first when he started right off the bat about my take on his attempt to be king of the teen dance club night scene but by the end of his tale I kind of automatically dismissed his early remark as just sour grapes and a rather unreasonable bitterness about a mere passing fancy. The carnival skeets story, well, it was good. Frankie good.

Like I said in the introduction to Frankie’s guest skeets story I have plenty of my own carnival and amusement park stories to tell, with and without Frankie, and will, but today I am, once again, giving my space over to Frankie, Frankie straight up, Frankie in his own voice, and his story about how he fared as a budding young football star. The time of this story is, as least the heart of it, also once again just before I linked up with him in middle school (I didn’t arrive at the school until about mid-school year of seventh grade). As I also mentioned in introducing the skeets story the other stories I have told you about were from later, later, when I was there as an eye witness so I can trust them a little. This one though also seems kind of, well, Frankie-like so let him take responsibility for telling it.

Note: I do not have, other than as sporting propositions (bets, okay), as a fervent youthful follower of the hometown North Adamsville High School football team, and a rooting interest in the results of the “mythical” college football national championships, have much insider information about the nature of the game on the field and so do not really know much about the inside stuff that Frankie will tell you, if he does so. You know things like how to crack block a guy across from you and not get caught by the refs, or what kind of jaw-breaking stuff to have in your hands for the close in-fighting, or talking trash about the mother of the guy across from you to throw him off his game. Kid’s stuff really. If it sounds kind of fishy to you don’t blame me, or if you, can let me know where something is off and set me straight so I can tell Frankie off.

Francis Xavier Riley comment:


Football is serious business, American-style football that is, manly football, not that namby-pamby old sod knee pants and polo shirt soccer stuff everybody else in the world calls football. At least it was serious, American serious, business in my 1950s growing-up cold-water flat in a North Adamsville tenement, Sagamore Street tenement, presided over by one Patrick James Riley, my father, but known far and wide (neighborhood, far and wide, especially Shamrock Grille far and wide) as “Boyo” Riley.

Who knows, I certainly don’t in any case, when I got my first inkling that football was indeed the serious business of the Riley quarters. Maybe a Cold War night pick-up sandlot grade school game where blessed, or half-blessed, maybe, Patrick “Boyo” Riley, cheered bloody murder from the sidelines when my oldest brother, four years older brother, Tommy (known as “Tommy Thunder” in his high school playing days for those who remember that legendary North Adamsville High name) pushed one over the goal-line.

Or, maybe, even back before memory, before football name memory, sitting in the old (now old), wind-swept, uncomfortable-seat Veterans Stadium watching, totally confused and only marginally interested, as North Adamsville duked it out with cross-town arch-rival Adamsville for bragging rights for the year on hallowed Thanksgiving Days. Or, maybe, and more probable than not, hearing the lord Boyo making another of those ill-timed, ill-advised “sneak” (sneak from my mother, blessed mother, not half-blessed, no way, Maude) bets over the hushed telephone on “Fighting Irish” Notre Dame in their ignoble 1950s black night period.

Although I cannot name that first time, for sure, I can name the time of the time of Francis Xavier Riley’s understanding of when he knew he had better make football serious business, or else. Yes, indeed it was that sandlot grade school game, that now inevitable Riley baptism game where that self-same blessed, or half-blessed, maybe, Patrick “Boyo” Riley, cheered bloody murder from the sidelines when my next older brother, two years older brother, Timmy (known as “Timmy the Tiger” in his high school playing days for those who remember that also legendary North Adamsville High name) pushed one over the goal-line. That’s where Boyo laid down the law that come next fall, that 1956 next fall, I would be getting my Riley turn to tear up that sandlot over the younger brothers of those on the field that day.

And I bought into it, bought into it heart and soul, then anyway. So, naturally, dutifully the next fall I was in passed down uniform as one Patrick “Boyo” Riley screamed bloody murder from the sidelines as I performed my Riley baptism in that sandlot grade school game, and pushed my own football over the goal-line. Pushed that football for all it was worth, moaning and groaning, twisting and turning, all one and ten pounds of me, maybe, over some guys like Fallon, McNally, and Hennigan, who would take their own places along side Tommy Thunder and Timmy the Tiger come their Class of 1964 North Adamsville time.

But I have to tell you about the why, seriously. The why of why I bought into the Riley curse. Sure I was just a grade school kid of ten and didn’t know what the hell I wanted, or didn’t want. And, yes, before you all go off and try to psycho-analyze my behavior to kingdom come, I wanted to please Boyo. Or else. That "or else" being a boxing, or six, behind the ears, if you didn’t know. And actually football was fun, for the minute it took anyway, to find “daylight” and run like crazy, unimpeded, on that field toward that goal-line. With Boyo, and his cronies screaming that bloody murder like crazy. (I didn’t know until later, about twenty years later, that the damned fool bet, “sneaky” bet, from my mother, as usual, heavily on these games with said cronies. Jesus.)

But that’s just the obvious stuff. Here’s the boy’s-eye stuff that kept me going for more than a while. Tommy (I won’t use the Thunder part, although Markin would probably beat that nickname to death if he told the story) was beginning to make a name for himself up at the high school, even if it was only the junior varsity at first, when I started to notice how I fit into the Riley scheme of things. See, because Tommy, tough, hard, chip off the old block (of Boyo, naturally), corner boy, hell, king corner boy who else would it be, bulging tee-shirt, swivel-hipped Tommy was getting attention for his football exploits. People, old people, and others would give me the “nod.” You know the nod, right. Nothing said, just a little tip of the neck to signify that you were somebody, or related to somebody that mattered in the North Adamsville universe. And, of course, I gave that same nod back to signify that I knew that they were paying proper respect to the brother of their knight-errant. Ask Markin about it, about the nod. I think, now that I have had a good amount of time to think on it, that half the reason that he hung around me was to bask in that nod glow. Ya, ask him, although on this so-called "pre-markinian” stuff he may be agnostic. The bastard. Whatever else I swear just the nod, and the expectation of the nod, kept me on track for a year, maybe more.

There’s more though, and maybe in today’s hyped-up and pampered football world when serious prospects start getting the royal treatment at about age six this is no big deal. Tommy started to get some serious attention from my father’s cronies (there is no other way to describe this Irish mafia lot, who inhabited that Shamrock Grille like it was a holy sanctuary, and, although I didn’t realize it at the time, it was) and “cadging” an occasion drink, a liquor drink, a fellowship liquor drink from them. Ya, everybody wanted to be around Tommy, just for the rub off. And you know, I still don’t know whether all that crazy attention was good or bad. See, the idea was that they thought that he was going to be picked up by some college team after high school (he really was that good) and they would have inside information on some real bets. Of course, they all secretly or openly, were praying, if they knew how to pray, or remembered, wanted that college to be black night 1950s Notre Dame but I don’t know for a fact that they were all that choosy about what school took him.

Okay enough with the early reasons. They were all right, and sufficient, but as Tommy’s fame grew a little wider (and Timmy started making moves in that same football star direction) all of a sudden (all of a sudden for then girl-shy, but girl-interested, girl mystery charms interested anyway, me) girls, good-looking girls, some from the high school, some from I don’t know where, started showing up at the Sagamore Street cold-water flat. With cars. And with letting Tommy drive those cars. And not some dumpy your father’s car either (if your father had a car, which Boyo, like Markin’s father, usually didn’t which is probably why we both friendship connected on the car issue).

Sure the cars were a draw early, sweet Chevvies, some convertibles, a little of this and that but as I got older just having those girls around when I started to know the what’s up about girls, although there still was plenty of mystery about them, was enough. See, the girls were practically camped out in front of the house. They obviously didn’t notice or care about the crooked, jammed front door that you had to lift just right to get in the front door of the tenement downstairs. Or that paint, that paint that was desperately needed about six years before as the shingles had that weather-beaten look, that weather-beaten look that spoke of careless renters and not owner-occupiers. All I know was that there were horns at all times of the day and night, especially in summer, pushed down by nervous girls of all sizes and shapes, all foxy sizes and shapes that is.

This you will not believe but one time three girls showed up together. I asked them where they were going to meet the other two guys on the date at just to pass the time of day (and, as Tommy’s brother, to see whether they met my secret worthiness test). And one, one honey blond, slender with black Capris on, and, and , well, let’s leave it at that, plus about a hundred pounds of purring sexuality (and who caused me more than one restless night, and a few hundred Hail Marys) said, “Oh no, we’re all going together with just Tommy.” What? And Tommy, Tommy said, well, you know what he said- “What can a man do?” Yes, indeed, what can a man do. So I will give you three guesses about what kept me motivated, football motivated, when the nod thing got old.

And so, as 1958 arrives and “serious” seventh grade organized middle school football was all the talk, you expect me to now go into my own Riley legendary status. Right? And I would, except there isn’t one. See, old rugged, chip off the old block, corner boy tough (and that was tough in those days if you wanted to keep your place in front of some mom and pa variety store) Tommy and old muscle-chiseled Timmy got whatever one Patrick “Boyo” Riley (and sainted Maude) had to give in the way of football genes to his progeny. Tommy weighed in at about 210, a mean football field 210 (heck, that was a corner store hangout, beach shoreline drinking bout complete with hanging girls, off-hand barroom brawl 210 as well) and chiseled Timmy (no drink) at 195. I never weighed more than 120 (or more than 140, wet or dry it seemed, all through high school) once I made my big move at that sandlot debut I told you about before. More than that though, I had the "slows" that need no further description, and was un-coordinated to boot. Finished. So in seventh grade, the autumn “pre-markinian” (watch Peter Paul go crazy over that one like he did when he read my skeets story) seventh grade part, I tried out for the team but didn’t make it. And, funny, the old man, the old man for once did not box ears, or moan and groan about some mystical Fighting Irish lost and continued black night because I was not going to, single-handedly, save their “bloody arses” (a Boyo quote on that last part). 

But still, and blame this strictly on Tommy and Timmy not the old man, the half-blessed old man, maybe, and certainly not sainted Ma, Maude, I developed a very, a very healthy, interest in girls, and kept looking for one like that honey blond that I interviewed and told you about before. (Ya, the one that gave me the restless nights, that one.) But, see, that kind of thing takes a whole different skill set. You bet it does. So when I didn’t make the team I started going book nutty. Oh sure I liked books before, and liked to read, especially detective stories (that’s where I got half the names I made up to call twists, oops, girls), but now I started to read everything and anything.

Why? Well, maybe you don’t remember, or maybe you’re just too young to know, but when we were growing up and Markin will back me up on this, christ we talked about it enough, the “beat” thing, or as Markin put it in one of his foolish stories about me the “faux” beat thing, was in high gear. What I noticed, or two things I noticed, was that the “beat” girls I saw in Boston and Cambridge looked kind of foxy (and kind of easy to get to know) and that some of the nubiles (ya, girls, I learned that one from going to the Museum of Fine Arts over there on Huntington Avenue in Boston. They had some neat Egypt stuff there too.) at old North Adamsville Junior High (ya, ya, I know just like Markin that it’s now middle school) were dressing kind of “beat.” So I started dressing (much to Maude’s and Boyo’s displeasure, especially Maude’s) beat-flannel shirt, work boots (couldn’t afford engineer boots that I would have died for), black chino pants (no cuffs, Markin, get it) and my own personal touch, what I was known for from middle school to the end of high school- my midnight sunglasses.

So with my dressing the part and my new found wisdom I started to make my moves, my “faux” beat moves, quietly at first just a little off-hand remark here or there to some girl. Most moved off, offended by something, probably the midnight sunglasses in school. But here is where psychology comes in. If I started saying stuff in a sing-song way, a really be-bop way like you’d see or hear the beat poets do, and I kept at it rather than give up after a few words some of the girls, and here is the beautiful part, some of the best looking, cutest, and brightest girls, the girls that counted started to stay around me. That’s where Markin came in, came to our school, and cashed in on my psychological insights.

And guess who one of the girls was who liked my pitter-patter, although not the first, definitely not the first with her little Catholic rectitude thing (a serious copy of Ma Maude’s little Catholic rectitude thing), my everlovin’ sweetie, my main squeeze (although I wouldn’t dream of calling her that to her face, even in private), my middle school and high one and only, Joanne. Now Markin said this thing was about football so I will see if I can talk him into letting me tell you about the ins and outs of my “courtship” of Joanne another time. Probably not, see, they, Markin and Joanne, didn’t get along, although they were always civil to each other, at least that’s how I remember it. But, maybe, I can tell you something here that will cause him to relent. Markin was sweet, sweet as a girl-shy, off-beat, hell, timid, boy could be, in middle school, on Joanne. And she was sweet on him, at least that’s what I heard. Sweet on him before I worked my be-bop in the 1950s schoolboy beat night on her. After that, strictly no contest.

As for the football. Did I regret not growing big enough to eat a house for lunch and have room to spare and also not having to work overtime to have the girls come ‘round the house like they did with Tommy and Timmy. Well, yes I did, but like Tommy always used to say- “What’s a man to do?’’ Do not get me wrong, I spend many an enjoyable granite-grey autumn Saturday afternoon watching and screaming my head off as the lads, some of those same lads that I ran roughshod over in sandlot grade school, did their business, especially that final victory over arch-rival Adamsville High in November, 1963. The thing is what they did the rest of the week? Those six periods of gym per day must have been exhausting. Those 'study' halls must have really taxed their abilities to the limit. Moreover, being fed the victor's grapes by nubile young women must have atrophied their mental capacities. Meanwhile this long gone daddy, this arcane knowledge-laden long gone daddy, with Markin in tow, always in tow, be-bopped his way into the 1960s night.

*Out In The Be-Bop Night- Langston Hughes’ Poetry- “The Weary Blues”

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of performances of Langston Hughes’ poetry as described in the headline.

February Is Black History Month


Markin comment:

You know, and if you have been reading some of the writings in this space you should know, that clearly I am not the only one in the universe who has gone out searching for that be-bop, blue-pink great American night, or the high white note either. Thanks, Brother Hughes.

Tomorrow: Presidents Day Protest against Trump's fake emergency (RSVP)

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The Stuff Dreams Were Made Of-With The Late Sam Spade In Mind


The Stuff Dreams Were Made Of-With The Late Sam Spade In Mind




By permission of Bart Webber

“Hey, sailor buy me a drink I am feeling a little blue today because I just read in the Times that my old boss Sam Spade what did he call it, oh yeah, cashed his check, has gone to the pearly gates or wherever ex-private dicks go to,” Effie Perrine was loudly calling to a guy in a three piece suit a few bar stools down who certainly was not a sailor. Not a sailor, or if so was totally lost in the Garden Bar of the Grand Hotel in New York City. The guy who seemed sober enough slid down beside her and offered her that drink. Scotch, neat so you knew, if you knew Effie as she had advanced in years, nice way to put it, was definitely feeling blue as the bartender brought her a drink and a whiskey sour for the three-piece suit. When Effie asked his name he gave it as War Bond and had started to give his line when she stopped him cold asking if he remembered the name. Barton answered that if that was Sam Spade of the Samuel Spade Investigation Agency which had after the war given the Pinkerton organization a run for its money then he had heard of the organization but had not known that the founder was still alive.

Effie used that acknowledgement as her entre into telling her new friend why she was feeling blue this day. “Back in the day, back before the World War, back in the late 1930s Sam Spade was the last of the tough guy private investigators, the last of the guys who could take a punch, give a couple back, take a slug and throw back some too, get some flame in the sack and have time for lunch all in a day’s work. Not like the no-name private dicks today excuse me with no balls and no way to get them watching too much television with their pansy detectives like that Nick Charles everybody is raving about. Punk, nothing but punk,” Effie effused as she eyed her empty glass and point to Barton. As the bartender went to fill the order Effie said the following, “Do you remember the black bird case that was in all the papers back then, the case that made Sam’s career?” Ward gave a look of bewilderment and said “No.” Effie retorted, “If you don’t interrupt a girl and let me tell the story then for kicks you can take me upstairs to my room and we can see what we shall see.” Ward perked up to that offer, said the unnecessary yes and gave Effie the floor.                   

“I met Sam back then out in San Francisco when I first hit town after blowing dust off my shoes from nowhere dust bowl Nebraska at the height of the Depression. Actually I met his partner Miles, Miles Archer, when they were partners before Miles was killed on a case. I had met him in the Farrell Hotel on Post Street when I was doing the best I could working the bar for drinks and for tumbles to keep my head from wasting away on some park bench. This Miles was nothing but a lady’s man, nothing but soft-touch jobs and I knew I could handle him. Had handled guys tougher than him when I was nothing but a teenager in Omaha. He had this wife whom he didn’t like, and she didn’t like him either. During the time Miles and I ran together Sam was boffing Miles’ wife, Iva, I think her name so there were no problems. Miles, like guys like Miles always do, got tired of me and was ready to leave me high and dry until I put the bug in his ear that if he didn’t watch out his every loving wife might be getting a little call from me. The way things worked out though was that Miles brought me into the office to be the office secretary and that is where I met Sam.               

“I was immediately attracted to Sam and after that barely talked to Miles except on office business. I, once I honed in on him, grabbed Sam for a while, lived with him even, but I knew that I was just a plaything for him and so when Harry came along I latched onto him. But being in the office, working with Sam when he was in his prime, when he was the real deal detective was how I was up to my skinny ankles in the black bird case.[Ward looked down with an approving look, a look complete with lips smacking.] 

“You know this was the heart of the Depression so after sleeping my way into a job and after the communal lusts wore off I proved to be a very competent office manager which is really what I was. Sam would depend on my judgement a lot, would ask me to evaluate a client if for no other reason than would the party pay up for services rendered. That’s how I got involved with this Wonderly, LeBlanc, O’Shea whatever her real name was, I’ll call her Bridget, which to this day I am not sure what it was since we never wound up billing her. Sam maybe got a few hundred dollars out of her in cash and that was all we ever got. She had come walking into the front office where I worked (and screened the clients) all boas, feathers, and the scent of jasmine looking for some detective help. Told me that a guy named Dashiell Hammett, who I had never heard of although Sam told me later he knew the name, had recommended Archer& Spade to help with her secret problem. I personally although I let her into Sam’s office thought when all the dust settled and Sam and I were laughing about the roller coaster ride we had just been on that she had just grabbed the first name in the telephone book and would have worked her way down until she got her claws into somebody who would do her bidding after a whiff of that jasmine.      

“The story that she gave Sam, the story that got poor Miles Archer an early grave, was she was looking for a sister who was running around with some hardnosed gangster and she needed some heft to face the guy and whatever his demands were down. Her hundred dollar bills (Sam told me Miles had seen her wallet and they had plenty of brothers) a couple Sam said for the record got the services of Archer& Spade. Miles licking his chops all the while volunteered to meet this bad guy, this Thursday, Thursby something like that I have trouble with names of late later that night at the Majestic Hotel.

“The next thing I know is l got a call in the middle of the night from Sam saying Miles had taken the big send-off, had cashed his check and could I break the news to this Iva whom Sam went back to fucking, excuse my English which would not have been sued then but now we can say whatever we want. I did but what a bitch to settle down. He also asked me to call Bridget and was pissed off at me when I told him she had flown the coop. The situation got worse when some coppers came to his door to shake him down not only about Miles and what he was working on but that this guy Thursby whom Miles was to meet had been blasted to kingdom come later in the evening. Sam kept saying that he could feel the noose tightening around his neck and I could see it in his eyes.       

“You never know about men though, especially tough guys like Sam, guys who are tough and good in bed which Sam was and not all tough guys are-some believe me are pansies no doubt. Bridget wound up calling him saying she was in fear of her life and could he please, pretty please stand by her. She probably spread her legs, spread then wide or gave him a quick blow job but an hour later he called me and told me that Bridget had laid five hundred bucks on him to stay on the case. He was in, all in come hell or high water.

“The next I heard from Sam he had just finished blowing smoke at the cops investigating the cases of Archer and Thursby when Bridget and this fag who had come to the office looking for Bridget, looking for what he said was the black bird she knew about had tangled. The cops bought whatever he was selling but it was a close call. That mention of the bird and what it was worth in human life and death was what the whole thing would turn out to be about. Who had it, who thought they had it, and who was willing to pay cold hard cash to get it.

“That is when the Fat Man, a guy named something Street got on his high horse with Sam and tried to get him to betray Bridget. Sam wasn’t buying that line just then but he definitely saw that whatever sexual promises laid ahead with Bridget he was going to have the cash nexus in mind as well. Was going to get out from under the cheapjack back office in some failed office building with losers and fakers and go uptown. Said he would take me there with him. I was in, all in too.     

“The deal on the black bird was that it was supposed to have been loaded with jewels as tribute by some monks or knights back in the dark ages to the Spanish king. The thing never got to him so the damn thing was whoever had control of the item who would profit from the possession. The Fat Man, a clever guy from the one time I saw him tried to cut corners on Sam since he knew, or thought he knew it was. Put the bang-bang on Sam. Did the Fat Man no good because this guy, this ship captain that Bridget had conned into working with her when she was working in some Hong Kong whorehouse from what Sam told me later wound up in our office with the bird. Wound up dead too from the Fat Man’s hired gun. But we had the bird although seeing that guy die right before my eyes was one of the worse things that I have ever seen in my life.         

“We had the advantage now since Sam had put the bird in storage somewhere and mailed the ticket to me for safekeeping. Sam was off to deal with the Fat Man, with Bridget or whoever had dough to win the bird. That was his story anyway.  He negotiated, negotiated up front for Bridget but I think really for himself, with the Fat Man at his apartment. He was to get ten thousand up-front for delivery of the bird to the big man. That is where I came in. I was to pick up the bird from storage since I had the ticket and bring it to the Fat Man’s apartment. I brought it and then left.      

“Sam told me later that all hell brought out when the Fat Man and his associates found out that the bird the Captain had delivered to us was a fake, worthless. He left with his confederates after flashing some guns. Leaving Sam and Bridget to face the coppers. That is where Sam went into his magic act, where he sent Bridget over. See she had killed Miles for her own reasons, probably had killed Thursby too. Sam was not taking the fall for her, no way. She was going to the big-step off, and while he would not forget her he had to take her down, let her take the fall for his profession, for Miles whether he liked him or not. Bad for business letting civilians run amok over the dead bodies of private investigators.

“Here’s the part that never got in the newspapers which was just what the cops gave the newspapers. Bridget and the Fat Man were not the only one’s smitten by the idea of the stuff of dreams. Sam saw this bird as his way out of cheap street. That fake bird was not the bird the Captain had delivered to the office. The one I had innocently delivered to the Fat Man’s apartment. Sam had squirreled it away in another storage box. Later after cashing in on the jewels he gave me more than enough to set me up here. And that is the real story of how the Sam Spade Investigation Agency got its start. The real story of the days when guys did private investigation for keeps. Sam Spade RIP. Now you can take me upstairs and see what is what.”             

Troubled Times-Alfred, Oops Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1934)-A Film Review

Troubled Times-Alfred, Oops Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1934)-A Film Review 


DVD Review

By Film Critic Sam Lowell

The Man Who Knew Too Much, starring Peter Lorre, directed by Sir Alfred Hitchcock, 1934

The last director Sir Alfred Hitchcock (I guess you can still use the honorific “sir” if a guy is dead and in any case he longingly coveted that title so I will stick with it) had two period in his long film directing career (three if you include his television work). The early British period which produced among other films the one under review, The Man Who Knew Too Much and the American period with such gems as the really chilling Psycho and The Birds. While nobody would claim that the British period films compared with the production values of the later period you can see the little tweaking that Hitchcock would do with his later films in this one.       

There was no escaping the reality of the 1930s after Hitler’s rise to power that any thriller would have to have as a part of the plot the threat of assassination to political figures as part of the mix. This film is a classic example of the genre in the 1930s (as in the 1950s and 1960s the Soviet Union would ask as foil for espionage fare. Here an ordinary English couple with their young daughter are in Switzerland for a clay pigeon shot (well, maybe I had better amend that “ordinary English couple” and make it a stiff upper lip English couple) when friend is mysteriously shot. Before he goes beyond the pale though he confides in the husband that he has to get some information to the British consulate. The husband dutifully gets the information and is ready to move heaven and earth to make sure the proper authorities get the crucial information.

Well the husband wanted to move heaven and earth except that a nefarious foreign agent, played by Peter Lorre, and his minions who are up to no good have kidnapped the couple’s daughter as a hostage. The couple go back to London to await their fate. The play is that Lorre and his crew are in that fair town to set up and commit an assassination on an important foreign dignitary from an unnamed country (although it could have been one of a number that were unstable after World War). The dastardly deed was to be done while that diplomat was attending a classical music concert. The wife whose quick action while she was in attendance at that same concert averted that fate for the hapless diplomat.              

Get this though the assassin left a trail for the husband and seemingly every bobby in London to follow to their hide-out. That proved to be curtains for Lorre and his crafty crew as the police performed a classic shoot-out with the bad guys. Lorre took it in the end. As for the daughter showing her metal despite her age skillfully escaped the clutches of the assassin who was fatally shot by her mother who was the crack clay pigeon shooter. How about that. If you want to see an early product of a thriller master check this one out because of that lot this is probably the best.  

Once Again, Mission Possible-Tom Cruises’ “Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation -A Film Review (2015)


Once Again, Mission Possible-Tom Cruises’ “Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation -A Film Review  (2015)




DVD Review

By Movie Critic Sam Lowell

Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation, starring Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Alex Baldwin, 2015

Recently in reviewing an earlier film in the this Mission: Impossible, the third one, I noted that in reviewing Harrison Ford’s cinematic version of the popular 1960s television series The Fugitive from 1989 (are you following me) there were several films that had been made from old time television series and that some were able to cross, to “pass” and others were not. (The action has gone the other way as well with a film like say American Graffiti spawning a number of television series and they in turn spawning others). The film (now part of a seemingly never-ending film series) under review, Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation, is a similar example of the flipping process although the technological gizmos used in that long ago television series which seemed so exotic and improbable are today’s standard fare for, uh, eight-year olds delights. Although the missions were perhaps more interesting (and more politically attuned to then current Cold War realities) than now with a greater emphasis on the team as an ensemble rather that one “hot-dog” Ethan Hunt using the team as fodder for his exploits

That said every once in a while I like to grab as I did with that prior film an action-packed adventure thriller and no question this one is a vehicle for the action every minute title. I have not seen the other films in this series and so this review makes no pretense to have an overview of the series or the place of this film in the eyes of other critics but this one had a reasonably interesting story-line along with that mile a minute action.
   
The play here centers around trying finally to put a nefarious organization, the Syndicate, made up of, well, rogue elements from every known intelligence operation in the world and which is running amok out of action The operation is led by a “turned” British intelligence officer. Everybody is trying to bring that bad guy down including the British sending in an agent, a foxy agent to boot who knows what is what, Ilsa, played by Rebecca Ferguson, to infiltrate the operation. Along the way she has to do a lot of tough things to prove her “loyalty” to the Syndicate.

Problem is that IMF, or rather Ethan Hunt (I don’t have to give Tom Cruise as the actor playing the role at this point do I?), and his team are working the same street and at times working at cross purposes with the bloody British, with Ilsa too. Compounding all of this is the hard fact that Ethan and crew are rogues too since the IMF cowboys have been taken down a notch and defunded. Taken down by guess who-the C.I.A. in a little interagency squabble by its director, played by Alec Baldwin before he became Donald Trump. Not to worry though if anybody but that eight year old mentioned earlier was worried the crew will stand up and get the bad guys-get them bad, real bad like always. Don’t worry about the thinness of the story line in places and the various ruses and false leads and enjoy the bang, bang action for a couple of hours if you need an action thriller fix every once in a while just like me.  They say another film in the series is coming so if you like this constant action watch out for it. I think I will retire after these two.   

Yeah, no question that Davian went over the line grabbing Julie, went a little crazy even for somebody in his line of work and would pay with his life for putting Julie through the meat-grinder. And he does but guess what that Musgrave who gave Ethan the assignment had been “turned” and also had to be taken out. Guess by who? Yeah, Julie. This Ethan-Julie marriage latch-up was made in heaven.                     


Malignant Obsession-Bette Davis and Leslie Howard’s Film Adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage” (1934)-A Film Review


Malignant Obsession-Bette Davis and Leslie Howard’s Film Adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage” (1934)-A Film Review



DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Of Human Bondage, starring Bette Davis, Leslie Howard, based on W. Somerset Maugham’s novel of the same name, 1934

No question love can take some funny turns from eternal bliss to the malignant obsession of medical student Phillip Carey, played by Leslie Howard, for waitperson (then known as waitresses) Mildred Rogers, played in an incredible performance by Bette Davis in the film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. The human, the very human capacity to find love in some very wrong places gets a full-throated workout in this 1934 film. Moreover even though the smitten and tortured character here is a man the feelings know no gender boundaries.     

The first problem for our troubled medical student is the class issue in very class-bound England then, and now. The play between the up and coming doctor and the tart-like waitperson could only spell trouble even if Mildred had been half as perfidious as she was-always looking for the main chance-for the next Mister Big. The second problem was that the very smitten Phillip was physically- challenged (then called crippled which Mildred at one point made a point of being disgusting to here). The combination would have been daunting even if Mildred had been less of an opportunist. See while she was leading Phillip on she was also seeing her meal ticket-her Mister Big. Phillip played the sap for her on that one thinking he would marry her when all she was doing was making moves to marry Mister Big. Well Mildred should have checked his credentials or at least his marriage because Mister Big dumped her-turned out he was already married. All he did was leave her to the wind with child. Still Phillip took her back.                  

Okay once is okay but then the next best thing came along, a fellow medical student of Phillip’s and she was off again. Still once it was question of helping or her on the streets with an unwanted child he succumbed again. But he was getting wiser. At least he wasn’t as smitten as in those fresh bloom days. All she kept doing though was holding him in contempt while feeding off his feelings for her. At some point, a point where a young gentile women is interested in him, he begins to withdraw, begins to break from his feverish desire for Mildred as she begins her descent down into well, the gutter, the ”life,”  the hard streets. In the end T.B got her (then called consumption and if I recall earlier called the vapors), left her on deep cheap street and an unloved grave. Phillip, well Phillip finally got himself free, got free once Mildred passed the shades. Took life in his own hands and grabbed that gentile woman who was made for him. Still Mildred let him a not so merry chase. An excellent performance by Miss Davis especially one scene when she went berserk and cut up all of Phillip’s precious nude paintings (he had started out as a failed art student) and another when after she had been finally rebuffed by Phillip she spewed forth her utter contempt from day one. Watch this one-and read the book too.            

Speaker: What is going on in Crimea? - Feb 17 in Brunswick

Out In The Be-Bop Night- Langston Hughes’ Poetry- "The Negro Speaks Of Rivers"

Out In The Be-Bop Night- Langston Hughes’ Poetry- "The Negro Speaks Of Rivers"




February Is Black History Month 

Markin comment:

You know, and if you have been reading some of the writings in this space you should know, that clearly I am not the only one in the universe who has gone out searching for that be-bop, blue-pink great American night, or the high white note either. Thanks, Brother Hughes.

Out In The Be-Bop Night- Langston Hughes’ Poetry- "The Negro Speaks Of Rivers" February Is Black History Month Markin comment: You know, and if you have been reading some of the writings in this space you should know, that clearly I am not the only one in the universe who has gone out searching for that be-bop, blue-pink great American night, or the high white note either. Thanks, Brother Hughes.

Out In The Be-Bop Night- Langston Hughes’ Poetry- "The Negro Speaks Of Rivers"Out In The Be-Bop Night- Langston Hughes’ Poetry- "The Negro Speaks Of Rivers"




February Is Black History Month 

Markin comment:

You know, and if you have been reading some of the writings in this space you should know, that clearly I am not the only one in the universe who has gone out searching for that be-bop, blue-pink great American night, or the high white note either. Thanks, Brother Hughes.

Poet’s Corner- Langston Hughes- “Trumpet Player”

Poets' Corner- Langston Hughes- “Trumpet Player”


Shorty Blast (not his real name , his stage moniker that was all, the reason for the ruse will be mentioned below but since he was working the New York café society crowd and needed to have a cabaret license a necessary moniker ) dreamed his eternal great big fat immense high white note dream, dreamed it incessantly, dreamed it right then while he was playing, horn splish-splash playing, just kicks riffs and raffs, little be-bop, be-bop nothings that got the customers attention and a certain nod, maybe a sent-over scotch, like the brethren knew, hell, knew anything about high white notes or anything. Just then he was dribbling for the early arrivers (and early leavers, the six in the morning wakers, hah, his bedtime, jesus what do they do all day but wait upon the night, their own version of the high white note night), the quick scotch and soda crowd before the night bleeds, bleeds all Mayfair white around eleven (and the real stuff, after hours after two, when the clubs let out and the boys play for each other, and to beat each other, to tag off some phantom riffs ) at this Red Fez gig that he had been working, working for a couple of months now to keep body and soul together and to keep Mister Landlord, a not very understanding fellow, from his door, and to keep the former Mrs. Blast far, far away from his door (and his latest paramour, Miss Lucille Pratt). Yes, he dreamed of that high white note, dreamed when or where or how it would come but never, never that it would not come because , he, frankly, frankly you hear, brothers and sisters, had the sheer lung power and muse-magic to turn that big fat note on a dime.
And so this night, this could be night, Shorty did, as he always work did, once he had a few house scotches in him, or maybe some godsend reefer to change the pace if one of the boys scored (he, having been burnt once with a small container and done a couple up at state prison was not the scorer any more, no way, not with that dream note still out there. He knew that the note could come out at the Red Fez, the Hi Hat Club, maybe at some wicked jam at LoJo’s, or even while he was up in his tenement room, practicing ,when Miss Lucille was not around since when Miss Lucille was around, around with her wanting habits on, even Gabriel did not want to blow some funky horn but no way, no way in hell was that note coming out in Ossining town, no way), was to go into a certain state, a certain state where he was not really in the Red Fez , he was not playing for crowds, early or late, was not even in the present time but back to Mother Africa times, to Pharaoh times if anybody was asking, okay.

That Pharaoh time kick had stayed with him since about the sixth grade, yes, it was the sixth grade when he and his older brother (now resting in some European graveyard after having spilled his black brother blood against that damn Hitler) and he, they , were mesmerized by the Egyptian exhibit at the Museum Of Fine Arts in Boston where they grew up complete with pharoanic statues and wondered , wondered out loud about those slave days, about the winds rushing across the Nile, about the rapid river run of the Nile, and about some ancient sound, a sound that sounded very much like the sound that would be produced by that high white note, the note that would bring down pharaoh, bring down Mister’s thousand acre cotton fields, bring down Mister James Crow, bring down that silky smooth Mayfair swell crowd that was starting to fill up the place just then. And so Shorty played, played like Pharaoh was coming to get him, coming to take his deep breath away…
*******

Trumpet Player

The Negro
With the trumpet at his lips
Has dark moons of weariness
Beneath his eyes
where the smoldering memory
of slave ships
Blazed to the crack of whips
about thighs

The negro
with the trumpet at his lips
has a head of vibrant hair
tamed down,
patent-leathered now
until it gleams
like jet-
were jet a crown

the music
from the trumpet at his lips
is honey
mixed with liquid fire
the rhythm
from the trumpet at his lips
is ecstasy
distilled from old desire-

Desire
that is longing for the moon
where the moonlight's but a spotlight
in his eyes,
desire
that is longing for the sea
where the sea's a bar-glass
sucker size

The Negro
with the trumpet at his lips
whose jacket
Has a fine one-button roll,
does not know
upon what riff the music slips

It's hypodermic needle
to his soul
but softly
as the tune comes from his throat
trouble
mellows to a golden note

Langston Hughes


Saturday, February 16, 2019

***UP FROM SLAVERY-THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

***UP FROM SLAVERY-THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS




BOOK REVIEW

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, FREDERICK DOUGLASS

FEBRUARY IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH

At the start of the 21st century the international labor movement faces, as it has for a long time, a crisis of revolutionary leadership. That leadership is necessary to resolve the contradiction between the outmoded profit-driven international capitalist productive system and a future production system based on social solidarity, cooperation and production for social use. In America, at least, there is also a crisis of leadership of the black liberation struggle, which is tied into the labor question as well through the key role of blacks in the labor force. More happily in the 19th century in the struggle against slavery by the slaves and former slaves for black liberation there was such a leadership and none more important than the subject of this autobiography, Frederick Douglass. Even a cursory look at his life puts today ‘clean’ black leadership in the shades.


That Frederick Douglass was exceptional as a fighter for black freedom, women’s rights and as a man there is no question. His early life story of struggle for individual escape from slavery, attempts to educate himself and take an active political role on the slavery question rightly thrilled audiences here and in Europe. I, however, believe that he definitely came into his own as a revolutionary politician when he broke from Garrisonian non-resistant abolitionism and linked up with more radical elements like John Brown and the Boston ‘high’ abolitionists like Wendell Phillips and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. This abolitionist element pointed the way to the necessary fight to the finish strategy, arms in hand, to end slavery that eventually came to fruition in the Civil War.


At one time I personally believed that Douglass should have gone with John Brown to Harper’s Ferry. He would have provided a better grasp of the political and military situation there than Brown had and would have been forceful in calling out the slaves and others in the area to aid the uprising. In no way was my position on his refusal based on his personal courage of which there was no question. I now believe that Douglass more than made up for any help he would have given Brown by his work for an emancipation proclamation and for his calls for arming blacks in the Civil War to take part in their own emancipation. As such, it is well known that Douglass was instrumental in calling for the creation of the famous Massachusetts 54th Regiment, including the recruitment of two of his sons. Yes, 200,000 black soldiers and sailors under arms fighting to the death, and under penalty of death by the rebels, for their freedom is a fitting monument to the man.

Douglass, as well as every other militant abolitionist worth his or her salt, lined up politically with the new Republican Party headed by Lincoln and Seward before, during and shortly after the Civil War. However, the Republican Party ran out of steam as a progressive force fairly shortly after the war, culminating in the sell-out Compromise of 1877 which abandoned blacks to their fate in the South. Douglass, committed to emancipation, education and ‘forty acres and a mule’ for his fellows stayed with that party far too long. When key elements of that party lost heart in the black struggle due to their racism and other factors, moved on to other interests, or accepted the traditional white leadership of the South he also should have moved on to another progressive formation.  Embryonic workers parties and other such progressive formations were raising their heads in the 1870’s. I do not believe that office in the Consular Service in Haiti was worth continuing to support a party going in the wrong direction. Notwithstanding that point, if you want to read about the exploits of a ‘big man’ in the history of the struggle of the oppressed, our history, when it counted this is your stop. Honor the memory of Frederick Douglass.