This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
“T” For Texas, “T” For Trouble, “T” For Well You Get The Idea, “T”-William Holden And Glenn Ford’s “Texas” (1941)-A Short Film Review
DVD Review
By Lance Lawrence
Texas, starring William Holden, Glenn Ford, 1941
[In a recent introduction to this new series, a series based on short film reviews for films that deserve short reviews if not just a thumb’s up or down I noted that Allan Jackson, the deposed previous site manager, required his film reviewers to write endlessly about the film giving the material an almost cinema studies academic journal take on it. That caused a serious decline in the number of reviews over the years which I hope to make up with a flurry of snap reviews for busy people. To see in full why check the archives for November 28, 2018- Not Ready For Prime Time But Ready For Some Freaking Kind Of Review Film Reviews To Keep The Writers Busy And Not Plotting Cabals Against The Site Manager-Introduction To The New Series Greg Green]
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Hold it I am not going to talk about red state Texas, nor about rising star in some quarters of Beto O’Rourke, nor even about the oil-rich Texas of the 1950s Giant which made James Dean’s short career resume blossom and solidified Rock Hudson as a matinee idol (his subsequent tragic fate, his coming out of the closet with his AIDS announcement does not take away from that 1950s status). No, today we are going back to post-Civil War Texas (which was rebel gray) and the big-time cattle drives that drove that state’s economy well before the oil came gushing out of the ground in the film Texas. We will look at the fortunes of a couple of defeated “Johnny Rebs” trying to make their young ways in the world after their lost cause had been defeated.
The story line hinges on the exploits of Todd, played by Glenn Ford last seen in this space trying to make time with B-movie queen Gloria Grahame very married to a bad ass guy whom she hates but will not give her up and Dan, played by William Holden last seen in this space face down in Norma Desmond’s swimming pool in the high numbers end of Sunset Boulevard in the film of the same name. No, that is not right on the Holden sighting, last seen snapping his provocative jazz beat fingers at provocative come hither Kim Novac in Picnic. They leave the war-weary South to try their luck in Wild West, wide open lawless, or rather make your own law with a gun Texas. Which at the start get them into a series of semi-comic escapades around a stage robbery and end with them on opposites sides in the cattle wars-Todd as the “good guy” herd driver to an insatiable market and Dan as the “bad guy” rustler.
Naturally something has to give, despite their comradeship, and in the end Dan had to go down, had to take the bullet from guys who wanted the whole cattle business to themselves leaving not only “Rustlin’ Dan” out of the picture but Todd as well. RIP Dan, RIP. Oh, wait a minute did I mention, silly me, the love angle. Dan and Todd both were smitten by the same woman, the oddly named “Mike,” hard-headed and independent daughter of a rancher. You know in the end only one guy can be left standing-and there was only one. Dan might have rued his exit, might have asked for a better ending that a few spare bullets to his body but that was the way it was in Wild West Texas. Short enough, Greg?
The 37th Or Something Like That Reincarnation Of Woody Allen’s Epic Los Angeles-New York City Battle-And A Little Romance Thrown In-Woody’s “Café Society” (2016)-A Short Film Review
DVD Review
By Ronan Saint James
Café Society, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kristin Stewart, written and directed by Woody Allen, 2016
[In a recent introduction to this new series, a series based on short film reviews for films that deserve short reviews if not just a thumb’s up or down I noted that Allan Jackson, the deposed previous site manager, required his film reviewers to write endlessly about the film giving the material an almost cinema studies academic journal take on it. That caused a serious decline in the number of reviews over the years which I hope to make up with a flurry of snap reviews for busy people. To see in full why check the archives for November 28, 2018- Not Ready For Prime Time But Ready For Some Freaking Kind Of Review Film Reviews To Keep The Writers Busy And Not Plotting Cabals Against The Site Manager-Introduction To The New Series- Greg Green]
I will say this about Woody Allan, a guy can’t be too bad, can’t be too repetitious if he indulges his passions for old time bluesy, jazzy torch singers who are also into jazzing, 1920s and 1930s time frames, and be-bop Benny Goodman as an example big-time swing bands. Even if the story line of this latest production Café Society is a 37th reincarnation of stories he did much better when he was young and hungry when he wanted to make definite statements that New York City not La-La Land was the epicenter of American cultural expression in whatever condition it found itself. That said this retread still had its points.
Naturally poor Woody, oops, Bobby, was tired of New York for a minute decided to see the world and headed to Hollywood where a successful talent agent uncle might help him get a leg up in the movie business-maybe follow in “Unk’s” footsteps. Before he could get that leg up though he found his soulmate or who he thought would play that role-as naturally some gentile woman from the Midwest, here Nebraska but you name the vanilla state and can plug it in. So Woody certainly could never have been accused of not rushing headlong into the eternal film saver-boy meets girl trope that has kept many a film from the delete button of late.
That said here is the play once Bobby gets out from under the New York scene (I would not be telling any tales out of school to note that he would scurry back before too long with his tail between his legs-okay) and into the wilds of Hollywood he finds that true love, his uncle’s assistant, receptionist I don’t know what he put down on his tax returns but something to cover the fact that Von, dear Von, is his uncle’s mistress if anybody can use that term anymore with a strange glance. Uncle is ready to ditch wife and all except for a time he dithers and that will give our Bobby his opening. Except (always the Woody “excepts”) when push came to shove and it was mano a mano on who Von was going to marry she went with the uncle. Fast forward: a bunch of years later both Bobby and Von met at some social event in New York and while they did not get it on or anything like that they were both very wistful after departing. Like what might have been. After three divorces and a bunch of affairs that sentiment hit me square in the eye. Again. We are doing short film reviews these days under strict orders from the “boss,” his designation of himself so that is it.
When The Bad Guys Come You Want Sean Connery On The Case -Once Against The Bad Guys Fall Into The Abyss-Sean Connery’s “Presidio” (1988)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Leslie Dumont
Presidio, starring Sean Connery, Mark Harmon, 1988
Every since he was 007 James Bond the one man spy ring to save the crumbling British Empire, worth saving or not, Sean Connery has seemingly never given a bad performance. That is the case here with Presidio. Maybe it is Sean’s ruggedly handsome no nonsense looks and his bravado manner but as long as he has played the avenging angel of John Milton’s poetry or some such classic of the Greek or English literary canon he can’t go wrong. In street language he puts the hurt, the big step off on the bad guys. No questions asked, no quarter given.
Of course now, in 2018, the Presidio which brought either terror to young Army recruits when it was a point of debarkation for the hellish war in Vietnam or delight to be on the Pacific West Coast, to be in sunny and thoughtful California if you drew an assignment there, the place is mainly shut up against the Golden Gate Bridge except the golf course which devotee Si Lannon of this publication says is a bear to play (and maybe why avid golfer Connery took the role, just a thought). Of course as well a military installation close by the city streets of San Francisco is going to have some jurisdiction problems if some crime spills out from the fort to those mean streets.
That is the underlying tension between Provost Marshall, the sheriff, chief of police, in military speak played by Connery and one wild boy ex-Army MP, played by Mark Harmon, who was then working for the SF Police Department. A murder, a vicious no hold barred murder if there is any other kind, occurred on the fort and the villains fled to the streets of Frisco town after a wild chase. The murder victim a female MP who was doing her job checking out some suspicious activity at the Officers’ Club. For that she got wasted and for that our man Sean will go to the ends of the earth to find the killers.
The big problem is why the killers were in the OC anyway, since apparently nothing was taken, nothing that seemed to be out of place. That will be the puzzle both Sean and Mark have to solve. Solved despite a serious disagreement about Mark’s budding affair with Sean’s wayward daughter who has had the angst of every military brat, civilian too come to think of it in trying to find her own identity against that titanic father force. That Mark had problems with the old man while he was an MP adds fuel to the fire.
In the end as expected the case will be solved. As it turned out the deal going down was not the drugs from Asia that I thought at first might be the reason the fort was being used as a transit point to bring the stuff into the country but diamonds, tons of them from the look of things. The cartel dragged down a few soldiers in its wake including a decorated sergeant who got caught in the middle for some problem he had over in Vietnam in the old days. Yeah, watch out bad guys when one Sean Connery comes on the screen your days are numbered.
Just Before The Sea Change - With The Dixie Cups Going To TheChapel Of Love In Mind
By Lance Lawrence
There were some things about Edward Rowley’s youthful activities that he would rather not forget, things that defined his life, gave him that fifteen minutes of fame, if only to himself and his, that everybody kept talking about that everyone deserved before they departed this life. 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 North Adamsville 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 tarot cards like some latter day Madame La Rue who actually did read his future once down at the Gloversville Fair, read that he was made for big events anything like that back then. No way although that tarot reading when he was twelve left an impression for a while.
Edward’s take on the musical twists and turns back then is where he had something the kids at North Adamsville High would comment on, would ask him about to see which way the winds were blowing, would put their nickels, dimes and quarters in the jukeboxes to hear. See his senses were very much directed by his tastes in music, by his immersion into all things rock and roll in the early 1960s where he sensed what he called silly “bubble gum” music that had passed for rock (and which the girls liked, or liked the look of the guys singing the tunes) was going to be buried under an avalanche of sounds going back to Elvis and forward to something else, something with more guitars all amped to bring in the new dispensation. More importantly since the issue of jailbreaks and sea changes were in the air he was the very first kid to grasp what would later be called the folk minute of the early 1960s (which when the tunes, not Dylan and Baez at first but guys like the Kingston Trio started playing on the jukebox at Jimmy Jack’s Diner after school some other girls, not the “bubble gum” girls went crazy over). So that musical sense combined with his ever present sense that things could be better in this wicked old world drilled into him by his kindly old grandmother who was an old devotee of the Catholic Worker movement kind of drove his aspirations. But at first it really was the music that had been the cutting edge of what followed later, followed until about 1964 when that new breeze arrived in the land.
That fascination with music had occupied Edward’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 and later folk albums, 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 Haynes and an endless series of male quartets did not “jump,” gave him no “kicks,’ left him flat. As a compromise, no, in order to end the family civil war, they had purchased a transistor radio at Radio Shack and left him to his own devises.
One night, one late night in 1955, 1956 when Edward 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 driven by some wild guitar 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 whether she danced by herself on the tabletops or with her guy. Yeah, so if you need a name for what ailed young Edward 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 Edward 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 Brenda 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 Edward 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 later in high school 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 North Adamsville 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 black beret (a beret that he kept hidden at home in his bedroom closet 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 North Adamsville households (and not just those households either but in places like North Adamsville, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Dearborn, Cambridge any place where guys were waiting 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, had taken a look at what their Victorian great-grandfathers grew and though it was “cool.” Cool along with new mishmash clothing and new age monikers to be called by.).
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 midnight trips on the clanking subway 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 silly television shows and “wise” social commentary who could have been “Ike” brothers and sisters, was yesterday’s 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 just then). 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… looks” (Mrs. Rowley like every mother in the post-Pill world refusing to use the “s” word, a throw-back to their girlish days when their mothers did not use such a word.)
Since Mrs. Rowley, Alice to the neighbors, was getting worked up anyway, she let out what was really bothering her about her Eddie’s behavior, "What about all the talk about doing right by the down-trodden Negros down in Alabama and Mississippi. And you and that damn Peter Dawson, who used to be so nice when all you boys hung around together at Jimmy Jacks’ Diner [Edward: corner boys, Ma, that is what we were] and I at least knew you were no causing trouble, talking about organizing a book drive to get books for the little Negro children down there. If your father ever heard that there would be hell to pay, hell to pay and maybe a strap coming out of the closet big as you are. Worst though, worst that worrying about Negros down South is that treasonous talk about leaving this country, leaving North Adamsville, defenseless against the communists with your talk of nuclear disarmament. Why couldn’t you have just left well enough alone and stuck with your 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 had mentioned the name Judy Jackson, Edward’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 was going on in the Jackson household since one of the reasons that Edward 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 those mothers either but in places like Gloversville, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Dearborn, Cambridge any place where gals were waiting for the new dispensation and wearing their skirts a little longer than mid-calf was the flash point) 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. She too working up a high horse head of steam continued, "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 Dawson taking you to those strange coffeehouses in Harvard Square with all the unwashed, untamed, unemployed “beatniks” instead of the high school dances on Saturday night. And that endless talk about the n-----s down South, about get books for the ignorant to read and other trash talk about how they are equal to us, and your father better not hear you talk like that, not at the dinner table since has to work around them and their smells and ignorance over in that factory in Dorchester. And don’t start with that Commie trash about peace and getting rid of weapons. They should draft the whole bunch of them and put them over in front of that Berlin Wall. Then they wouldn’t be so negative about America."
Scene: Edward, Judy and Peter Dawson were 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. (By the way Peter’s parents were only slightly less irate about their son’s activities and used the word “Negro” when they were referring to black people, black people they wished their son definitely not to get involved with were only slightly less behind the times than Mrs. Rowley and Mrs. Jackson and so requires no separate screed by Mrs. Dawson. See Peter did not mention word one about what he was, or was not, doing and thus spared himself the anguish that Edward and Judy put themselves through trying to “relate” to their parents, their mothers really since fathers were some vague threatened presence in the background in those households.)
They, trying to hold back their excitement have already been to some training sessions at the NAACP office over on Massachusetts Avenue in the Roxbury section of Boston and have purchased their tickets for the Greyhound bus as far as New York’s Port Authority where they will meet others who will be heading south on a chartered bus. But get this Pete turned to Edward and said, “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 after which even Peter will chuckle about “bubble gum” music. Good luck though, young travelers, good luck.
At 18, drafted into the Austrian Army After having spent time in London As an apprentice waiter, he would tell a Christmas story That I always thought was just him spinning a charming fairy tale. Only much later, did I learn That he was part of that 1914 Christmas Truce and was telling the truth
One Last Time On The 50th Anniversary Of The Beatle's "Sgt. Pepper" Album (2017)-The Class of 1964-Stones or Beatles?
By Phil Larkin
[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Peter Markin was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the habit of assigning writers solely to specific topics like film, books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment by Green designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]
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Today I choose not to go on and on about the recent internal disputes on this site which has led to the canny and “exile” of the former site administrator, Allan Jackman who used the moniker Peter Paul Markin when posting, etc., because I have bigger fish to fry as they used to say in the old days in my Irish Catholic growing up Acre section of North Adamsville south of Boston. (Allan in a retro piece written well before all the controversies has given his take on this dispute in a posting dated December 15, 2014.) Those “fish” meaning in this 50th anniversary year of the Beatle’s world record bestselling album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band the world-historic dispute of that Acre growing up time about whether the Beatles or the Stones (Rolling Stones) were the band that fit our moods. “Spoke” to us although we would have torn each other’s hearts out, or did a huge amount of “fag” baiting (yeah, we were way behind the curve then on sexual identity issues even though one of our hang-around guys, the biggest “fag-baiter” ultimately to our collective shock “came out” a couple of years after the Stonewall Riots of 1969 in New York City and for a while “shunned” him until we wised up a bit mainly through our own chances in politics and ways of looking at the world) if anybody had dared to use such an expression in the year of our Lord 1960 something.
I have gone round and round on this one and by overwhelming general consensus, excepting our leader Frankie Riley, who tough and smart as he was, couldn’t get us to buy into his view that the “boys for Liverpool,” meaning po’ boy working class guys like us were superior to the Stones. And here is the funny part some fifty plus years later those of us who are still around from that time and still speaking to each other, including that gay brother (a couple of guys are not for very long ago reasons but in the baby-boomer male psyche “forgive and forget” was, is, a tough dollar) having recently gathered together to listen to a ton of Beatles and Stones material still believe that our youthful opinions hold true. That truth despite most of us, having survived the “from hunger” neighborhood, wound up having decent and honorable careers. Even Frankie belatedly to be sure feels that the “angry young men” Stones still represent best our own anger at our situations in a world we did not make than the more wistful Beatles. Personal preferences, time, and whatever youthful angst and alienation obviously mixing up the pot when comparison time comes around but there you have my take on that still simmering controversy.
So the Stones “win” that battle but today I want give a “shout out” especially to those on the Beatles side about a program on NPR’s Terry Gross- hosted Fresh Air. One day she had, in an encore edition originally aired on June 1st, the son of George Martin, the guy who produced Sgt. Pepper who for the 50th anniversary remixed his father’s original album work. For an hour he spoke about many interesting things that occurred during the original production and the things that he had done to give the thing a 50th anniversary retooling.
Here’s the link but listen to Stones stuff before final judgment-okay:
On The 50th Anniversary Of Beatle's "Sgt Pepper" Album (2017) The Class of 1964-Stones or Beatles? Allan Jackson (using the moniker Peter Paul Markin on this site) commentary
Working Class Hero
Street Fighting Man The following is a response to a canned Q&A section from a committee of my high school Class of 1964 (a few edits here to delete personal information). I share it with the aging lefties and rock and roll aficionados in the audience. Okay, so Markin has come in from the cold and reunited with the Class of 1964 after over forty years of ignoring that fact. Big deal, right? For those interested in my profile you can read my comments in the My Story section. But today, since I have joined this work and it is my dime, I feel I might as well use it for the purpose that I joined, to network with some of the old crowd. I propose to use my bulletin board space to pose certain questions to my fellow classmates to which I am interested in getting answers. Thus I will be periodically throwing a question out and would appreciate an answer. No, I do not want to ask personal family questions. After forty years this space is hardly the place to air our dirty little secrets. No, I do not want to talk religion. That is everyone private affair. No, I do not want to talk politics, although those who might remember me know that I am a ‘political junkie’ from way back. In fact I mean to get myself into some 12 step rehab program as soon as this current campaign is over, if ever. What I want to do is ask questions like that posed below. Join me….. “Manchurian Candidate” McCain vs. The Huckster”? Boring. Ms. Hillary vs. Obama ‘The Charma”? Ho, hum. Three dollar gas at the pump? Oh, well. No, what has my blood boiling is a question that I am, after forty years, desperate to know about my classmates from 1964. In your callow youth, back in the mist of time, did you prefer the Rolling Stones or the Beatles? The question was posed in the canned Q&A section above but I feel the issue warrants a full airing out. I make no bones about my preference for the Rolling Stones and will motivate that below but here let me just set the parameters. I am talking about when we were in high school. I do not mean the later material like the Beatles "Sergeant Pepper" or the Stones' "Gimme Shelter". And no, I do not want to hear about how you really swooned over Bobby Darin or Bobby Dee. Answer the question asked, please. I am not sure exactly when I first hear a Stones song although it was probably “Satisfaction”. However, what really hooked me on them was when I hear them cover the old Willie Dixon blues classic “The Red Rooster”. If you will recall that song was banned, at first, from the radio stations of Boston. Later, I think, and someone can maybe help me out on this, WMEX broke the ban and played it. And no, the song was not about the doings of our barnyard friends. But, beyond that it was the fact that it was banned that made me, and perhaps you, want to hear it at any cost. That says as much about my personality then, and now, as any long-winded statement I could make. That event began my long love affair with the blues. And that is probably why, although American blues also influenced the Beatles, it is the Stones that I favor. Their cover still holds up, by the way. Not as good, as I found out later, as the legendary Howlin' Wolf’s version but good. I have also thought about The Stones influence recently as I have thought about the long ago past of my youth. Compare some works like John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” and The Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” (yes, I know these are later works) and I believe that you will find that something in the way The Stones’ presented that angry, defiant sound appealed to my working class alienation. But enough. I will close with this. I have put my money where my mouth is with my preference. When the Stones’ toured Boston at Fenway Park in the summer of 2005 I spend many (too many) dollars to get down near the stage and watch old Mick and friends rock. Beat that.
The Old Days In Gay “Closeted, Hell, Entombed ” Hollywood-With a New Book About AIDS Victim Hollywood 1950s He-Man Icon Rock Hudson-Even His Name Dripped Masculinity In Some Quarters In Mind
By Seth Garth Here is a link to a Terry Gross Fresh Air show on NPR about a book about the life and times of 1950s movie icon Rock Hudson by Mark Griffin All That Heaven Allows which forms the backdrop to this commentary: https://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/2018/12/05/673714293/fresh-air-for-dec-5-2018-rock-hudsons-double-life
I suppose I am the one person of the old-time working poor Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville corner boys who should do this commentary on 1950s and before “gay” Hollywood through a book reviewed on NPR about the life and times of masculine icon Rock Hudson who dramatic announcement in the 1980s that he had AIDS brought new light (and more research money) on the disease because of his standing in the Hollywood firmament. I don’t usually put much stock in coincidences although they certainly exist so but I find it ironic that at nearly the same time I was listening to this Fresh Air with Terry Gross interview that Allan Jackson was maybe three doors away from me writing his defense of himself against all kind of false accusations after he had been purged from his site manager’s job at this publication, including that he was the M.C. of a drag queen club out in San Francisco. As Allan subsequently detailed that false accusation, that slander and libel whether it was actionable in a court of law by some of the ”victors” in his ouster was purposefully put on as fact, really alternate fact, when he had wound up in San Francisco visiting his, our old friend and corner boy from highs school days Timmy Riley, now known far and wide in the world of “drag queens” as Miss Judy Garland and the proprietor of the so-called notorious KitKat Club which has since become a major tourist attraction in that city. What has come out only recently (although I and a couple of others who had put some money up knew what the situation was) is that Allan after Timmy had flee North Adamsville when he “came out” to his parents who would subsequently disown him and a few friends, a few corner boys remained in North Adamsville after high school scorned him to go to gay and drag queen friendlier San Francisco in the post-Stonewall period had loaned, had given Timmy the money to buy and refurbish the run-down KitKat Club in North Beach. (Although everybody in Frisco knows him as Miss Judy Garland we all still call him Timmy so let me stick with that name.) So, yes, Alan was staying with his old friend, and mine too, at one of Timmy’s apartments above the club which he also owned trying to jump start his life. So much for unverified “facts.” Allan mentioned in his introductory piece to a series on Jack Kerouac the 50th anniversary of whose death will be commemorated in 2019 that when we were corner boys, when we were hanging around Tonio’s Pizza Parlor in the early 1960s we would mercilessly gay-bait anybody who seemed the least bit, well, faggy, light on their feet, homo all the terms of approbation used at the time for gay-bashing. And here is what may startle the unwary reader Timmy Riley, football playing, rugged, pretty handsome and girl attractive was the leader of the pack. Moreover we did not, and I speak of this as both Allan and Timmy have with eternal shame, just talk the talk but would go down to Provincetown in high which we knew was “queer heaven” and not just gay-bash some poor unsuspecting guy but “lead” on to get somebody out in back of some bar and beat the shit out of the guy. And again Timmy would be in the lead. We were shocked, shocked to the core when we heard from Sonny Lewis that Timmy had “come out” had started painting his fingernails, and they had beaten him up one of the main reasons Timmy fled the town. What does all of this about an old gay and drag queen (they are not both the same, okay) corner boy from working class North Adamsville have to do with a famous movie star from our times like Rock Hudson. Well everything since, as the book and a documentary point out, Rock and a number of other he-man role male movie stars like Guy Madison, Rory Calhoun, and famously Tab Hunter had to stay deep, deep in the closet to maintain their livelihoods. To keep up the illusion, the movie theater illusion that every female movie-goer (and who knows now when you think about the matter some male movie-goers) that they could grab the guy for a boyfriend. Such was, and is, the Hollywood dream factory. Despite the fact that like the revelations long known in Hollywood about the “casting couch” culture which, male or female, depending on the predilections of the man in power, helped get you up the food chain the “gay community,” who was gay, who was sitting out in Malibu with a bunch of men, good looking athletic men without women. I am not sure how much trouble Rock got into, or avoided in having his male companionship and his affairs, before his public announcement of his AIDS condition (in those days a sentence of death) and the how and when he knew that he preferred men to women but we saw Rock, maybe not as the coolest guy around, maybe guys like Steve McQueen and Paul Newman were more our models of manliness, as a serious masculine figure especially when he was not doing that silly romantic comedy stuff that none of us could relate to. What I do know, do know from talking with both Timmy and Allan over the years that Timmy, and I assume Rock, paid a terrible psychic price for having to stay in the closet. Worse having to hide who they were, are against guys like the North Adamsville corner boys who were quick with fists and not understanding. So this does not do justice to the subject but RIP, Rock Hudson, RIP
The Legend-Slayer Is Back- Legends Of The Old American West-The Saga Of Jake Walz’s Old Hoary Dutchman’s Gold Mine-Ida Lupino And Glenn Ford’s “Lust For Gold” (1949)-A Film Review
By Will Bradley Lust For Gold, starring Ida Lupino, Glenn Ford, 1949 . You know we have today, damn throughout history really, had enough alternate fact distortions of events to fill a library, a major college or big city public library. I have been on a tear in 2017-2018 (and hopefully for the future as well as long I have site manager Greg Green’s confidence) debunking a whole raft of undeserved, overblown or just plain false legends which have been built out of whole cloth and have entered the books with devoted followers and a whole lot of people not devoted who believe based on nothing more than somebody’s conjecture, opinion. This is my answer to the increasing number of fellow staff members, including writers who have not been able to get their heads around the idea of legend-busting. This so-called ironic indifference in a publication looking for some historical truths and whose unspoken motto is – “speak the truth no matter how bitter.” Which is exactly right, exactly the right note I am trying to achieve. Take a back seat doubters, way back. I have elsewhere in a previous trifecta of legend-busting reviews mentioned I have had a descent amount of success, some very positive comments about how my reviews have enlightened some readers to think through their acceptance without thought of legends, of everything from belief in angels to a glowing acceptance of the Hollywood/ television view of the American Old West and the desperadoes, malcontents, drifters, con men and women, and everybody who headed west after busting out in the East. I will not go through the litany here of who I have taken down but I cannot go to busting the so-called Lost Dutchman’s Mine legend around ornery bastard Jake Walz who allegedly found the pot of gold and kept everybody else away-with hot lead- unless I mention my one significant failure, the Johnny Cielo legend. The only reason I am doing that here is that I have new proof, if anybody who is still defiantly attached to the press agent baloney around that hoary legend about one of the key elements to the Cielo legend will listen -Johnny taking 1940s film star and off-handedly beautiful Rita Hayworth to Barranca when he ran rough shot there with his airplane mail service fro big bucks . Belief in Johnny’s case, in his publicity agent legend, has always primarily depended on the hard fact that for a period, the period Johnny claimed to have Rita sharing his bed down in Central America, she had left Hollywood under mysterious circumstances and had not surfaced for a while. The documents I have, including lustrous photographs with dates of processing the negatives attached on the back as they did in the old days, prove that Rita was secretly playing footsie, house, whatever you want to call the liaison with the Aga Klan before they were married. Was in New York and or Morocco during that crucial time. As I speculated early on in my research Johnny had hook-winked, who knows maybe she was a willing accomplice getting free airfare south and away from whatever troubles she was running away from, some young gal from Hoboken down in the Jerseys, Sarah Miles, or at least that was the name she was using, who looked very much like Rita whom he had met either walking the streets or in some whorehouse in that town. The few photos of her, revealing photos for the 1940s from some men’s magazine show that her legs were not nearly as well-formed as Rita’s and that while you can never tell about a woman’s hair even now if they don’t want you to know she was a brunette. I can hear the aficionado disclaimers now that even if my information is true maybe, maybe an important doubt word trick used forever by con artists and press agents to set up alternate facts that maybe Rita had sent the Aga Khan Sarah in her place to be able to stay with Johnny in humid, sweaty Barranca bungalows. We shall wait for the bogus blowback. I will admit that I had some early trouble with Zane Grey readers, hell, even Larry McMurtry brethren trying to cut down the legend of Link Jones, the baddest desperado who tried to con the world that he had changed, had become an upright citizen, that he had stopped being a ruthless gunslinger and no holds barred daytime bank robber. No question they should have strung him up, hung him high and this from a guy who doesn’t believe in the damn death penalty. The clincher there was Link’s prison confession to a fellow cellmate where he went out of his way, maybe even embellished his exploits, to make him seem a tough guy to a young kid just starting out on the wrong track. That said this saga of Jake (Jacob but nobody called him that, nobody still standing after saying that) Walz should be a lot easier to dispel since at least Link had been a man of the West. Jake had been an Eastern tin-horn from Europe failure heading west to avoid some German hoodlums who wanted his head. So what is the big deal with Jake, with his longstanding legend that even my grandfather who first told me the story of how Jake had held off all-comers when they tried to “steal” his bags of gold (which he had in turn had gotten by wasting the real owners and his own partner, nice guy right) and had known Jake’s grandson, Brent, who retailed the legend (and who himself had spent a lifetime, or what seemed like a lifetime looking for the rest of what his grandfather had not hidden from plain view.) According to Brent his grandfather after busting out in the East headed West with an old prospector Winer who claimed he knew where a ton of already mined gold was located outside of what is now Phoenix. Other parties including a relative of the guy, the hombre, the Mexican who after all was only going home to what before the Gadsden Purchase had been part of his own country, who sweat mined the stuff were on the trail as well. Brent claimed that his grandfather had to kill that relative, had to kill that partner too or they would have killed him, shot him dead and left him for the buzzards. Sure thing, Brent. The weird part, the part that has always made me wonder if all these Old West legends were produced solely in New York by lazy writers who couldn’t leave the comforts of their hotels, is what followed. What Jake had to do to keep his kale once he went into Phoenix to cash in with every hungry vulture in town ready to deal him low. The weirdest story was about some dame, some ex-whore, Julia something but don’t get hung up on names since everybody was using aliases then even the respectable citizenry, who was married to some grifter who couldn’t put two quarters together who took dead aim at Jake. Minus the husband part. She had been through from hunger long enough and wanted easy street, wanted to get out of stinking Phoenix, get out of Arizona which wasn’t even a state then and head to Frisco and the gay life of spoiled lady, mistress if that was the way things turned out. She was going to use hubby as a decoy to keep Jake wondering about her, about whether her love was true. After a minute seeing Julia and hubby in the backstreets laughing together he got the dust out of his eyes and decided he had to kill the pair, or be killed. Legend has it that the bones of Julia and hubby are still guarding the empty plot where Jake’s gold had been. Nice guy right. They say, through Brent again, Jake roamed the hills at night keeping those who still thought there was still gold aplenty from entering. The reality is after the Julia bust-up Jake now John Walsh headed to Frisco and lived a life of splendor and only killing a couple more people who threatened his way of life by exposing him as another two-bit grifter. Another hoary legend down.
[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the now deposed and self-exiled previous site administrator Allan Jackson (who used the moniker Peter Paul Markin on this site) was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the habit of assigning writers solely to specific topics like film, books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment by Green designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]
[As the above notice has indicated the former site administrator, Allan Jackson, an old friend of mine from high school days and a man whom I supported during the recent intense bitter internal struggle at this site which centered on future direction and purpose, has been deposed and banished to exile (self-banished according to him but seen differently by the survivors). Because the fight was along generational lines, self-styled “Young Turks” and branded “old-timers” as much as anything else new administrator Greg Green, with the endorsement of the newly-revived Editorial Board, has decided to let each combatant give their take on the issues at dispute, if they so desire. The reasoning as far as a I know is to clear the air and to let the reading public know what goes on behind the scenes of every publishing operation, old-fashioned hard copy and new-fangled social media driven before any material sees the light of day.
I have no serious gripe about Allan’s tenure except that I did notice he got more set in his ways as he got older. Was less inclined to “go off the reservation” with any new idea presented to him to expand the subject matter which forms the living experience of the American scene. What I am about to speak of though, hopefully without setting off an avalanche of gripes about the old regime, is related to the subject of today’s post, sports, specifically golf, my favorite sport. Sports, including golf, something which Allan was adamantly against posting material on reasoning that there were an infinite number of sports outlets putting an infinite amount of information about every possible sport or game and we did not need to, could not, compete against that reality. Furthermore although this site is about important nodal social, political and cultural happenings in America which includes an overweening love of sport by significant segments of the population he would pass on assigning or accepting any sport-related posting.
As a general proposition for the direction of this site I would, and did, agree with him on that. Except my sports perspective was not the television, radio, on-line professional and top amateur stuff but down in the average American trenches. How an average Joe goes about the business of doing some sport, again specifically golf, which I enjoy and having been a member of a golf club long enough have plenty of “slice of life” material. No go, no go until recently that is which I will mention in a minute.
What busted me up, almost at one point busted up our friendship which has been pretty solid since high school many, many years ago was that several years ago, Allan was all over the idea of having a significant sports angle posted on this site. And not some “literary” (his term stolen from the real Peter Paul Markin, a big friend in our youth) touch like Ring Lardner did with his baseball series around the title You Know Me, Al in the early 20th century or Damon Runyon with betting horses (or betting on anything) in a million shrewd short stories centered on old Broadway a little later.
Allan’s idea, reflecting his personal interest in college football, was to write, or have somebody write weekly commentaries during the college football season every fall. And for a couple of years, this before I started writing regularly for this site, I guess he thought he had cornered the wisdom on the “sports” market. Thought that doing so would make American Left History more relevant to some anonymous “average Joe” who would then pick up on the various historical and political points which are the hallmark of the site. The hook? Project the winners of each week’s games. Not just the winner’s but as always in sports, certainly in football, provide a numbered point spread for the readers to use when making their bets elsewhere.
There were two problems with that approach. First Allan, unlike the real Markin always known as Scribe, didn’t know the first thing about football, at least what college teams to focus on for betting purposes. Here is how bad I heard it was (he would never talk about it to me when I came on board or when we went out for a few drinks with the other surviving high school guys). Alan actually would run a line on the Harvard-Yale game like anybody outside those two schools gave a fuck about the point spread. Was clueless about such teams as Miami (which he thought was Miami of Ohio and wondered why nobody wanted to bet when they played Kent State) and had no idea outside a certain devotion to Notre Dame about serious big-time college football (our “subway” fan Irish neighborhood “go to” team from way back even when they sucked during our high school days team). Worse, that second problem, was that readers were complaining about a guy whose percentages against the point spread had been about ten percent even doing such an operation. One reader told him to use a Ouija board, a couple have his wife make the picks and numbers out a grab bag, stuff like that.
After a pile of those complains Allan suddenly stopped, stopped cold before the bowls season started the second season. Never to let another live sports piece muddy this site. Until recently when after something like a civil war between us he granted me a reprieve. Let me do a “slice of life” piece about an amateur, very amateur, golf tournament that some friends at my golf club were participating in. I didn’t ask but I assume since the war clouds were looming on the internal disputes after one of the younger writers flat-out refused to write a CD review on Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series Volume l2 declaring it nothing but mishmash and a distraction that he was trying to shore up support from the older writers as the “Young Turks” were throwing down the gauntlet. When I asked Greg Green about doing a short follow up piece after the smoke settled, the one below, he said such, said maybe I should do a whole series of “slice of life” vignettes if I could jumble the thing up with other sports as well as golf. Si Lannon]
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This screed, let’s call it a screed since I am up in arms about what I consider a dastardly deed provoking screed time in me, is being written on Saturday morning December 9, 2017 from “not the golf course, that expression to be explained posthaste since “weenie,” there is no other way to put it, Frog Pond PGA Golf Professional Robert Kiley declared yesterday December 8th the end of the golf season as we know it due to what he called, seemingly in panic, a snow emergency demanding all entrances and exits to the property under penalty of death be shuttered for the year since some foul-mouthed weatherman, oops, weatherperson had predicted the first snow of the season. A first snow that however was not projected to start until mid-morning on the 9th.
Well maybe not under penalty of death on the question of entering the property since we are all paid up members who actually “own” the course through our initiation fees and bond and are entitled to enter all year and play golf weather permitting all year as well using temporary green in the winter, but remember this is a screed. He nevertheless has certainly placed himself as a self-serving “weenie” since when the course “closes” for the year he hightails it down to Naples, Florida and golfs his brains out while we all suffer the “hot stove” winter golf roundtable blues until blissful come hither March. And certainly “panic” is an appropriate expression under the circumstances trusting in some holy goof weatherman, person whatever whose error rate is higher than any golfer’s score. (We by the way for those looking for harsher, rougher words use “weenie” rather than some other derogatory term since golf, unlike rough-hewn sports like bowling and badminton, is a gentlemanly and gentlewomanly pursuit and rather civilized except the vast “open secret” of the not too pleasant fates awaiting the golf balls used to further the sport’s aims.
In any case it is approximately 9:30 AM and I stepped outside for a minute and actually had a flake, one flake, hit my nose. I don’t like to cast aspersions on a man’s manhood especially when he holds the ticket to a person’s season-long entertainment but couldn’t certain rugged individual golfers of my acquaintance, my infamous 6:06 club, named as such for the usual tee time which we start playing at most of the season, that is 6:06 AM by the way so you know these rugged individuals are also old rugged individuals, have faced that one, possibly two snowflakes, and played a robust round at “the Frog” before the heavens erupted.
Enough of moaning and groaning about short golf seasons though after all in New England unlike Florida or Arizona the serious season has to come to an end at some point. What I am up in arms about is the line in the sand that was drawn yesterday between real golfers and fakahs (what in the rest of the English- speaking world outside of Boston are called fakers). For the uninitiated modern day notice is by ever quick-mail even in ancient golf world and one and all were informed of the closing by e-mail early Friday morning. Certain real golfers, 6:06 Club golfers, knowing the end was near, showed their metal by dropping everything they were doing once the clarion call panicky weenie e-mail came over cyberspace from Golf Central to announce a cease-fire in place. One guy, Sand-bagger Jackson, the moniker tells all, came running from the netherworld of the City of Presidents where he was working diligently on yet another report. Another, Kevin Zonk, moniker also tells a lot, put down pen abruptly and called a halt to yet another so-called earth-shattering conference about some bogus crisis in the health care system to heed the call to arms and yet another, Redoubtable Steve, came speeding from out of nowhere some fifty miles away ready to let the environment in this wicked old world go asunder to get one final fix, to have one final stab at the brass ring.
On the other side, and by now one and all know what side that is, there are certain guys, okay a certain guy, Kaz, who apparently knows only three letters, who in the interest of making mere filthy lucre debased themselves, no, himself, in order to do mundane things like cover mortgage payments, pay the armed bandits for upcoming educational expenses with daughter college loaming and the like. Now like I said I am not one to cast aspersions on a man’s manhood but what else can one think could be the reason for such an obvious no show. Especially when in the crucial final Frog Pond betting scheme, five dollar a man quota, a certain guy from the City of Presidents found fifteen dollars on the ground, or so it seemed like it.
Veterans For Peace is celebrates the anniversary of the Christmas Truce. We urge our leaders to follow the example set by the Christmas Truce soldiers who rejected militarism and the glorification of war. We call on the nation to honor veterans and all those who have died in war by working for peace and the prevention of war.
Who better than veterans who work for peace to tell the story of these soldiers' celebration of peace in the midst of war? There is no better way to honor the dead than to protect the living from the fear, terror and morale deprivation of war. Our society needs to hear this story that peace is possible.
Here are ways that you can be involved in the efforts to celebrate the Christmas Truce:
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