Strong Coffy

Last night the Independent Film Channel showed a couple of '70s blaxploitation movies with Pam Grier: Foxy Brown and Coffy. When I watched them, in 2009, in Obama's America, I found both of them to be the guiltiest of guilty pleasures. They are racist, sexist movies, but I got caught up in them.

They are low budget movies made by American-International, a company not known for making art films, but films to be produced cheap that played on drive-in movie screens. What the producers didn't know was that with Foxy Brown and Coffy, despite eyebrow-raising views of black people, drug use and criminal activities, they were making feminist movies about strong black women. Pam Grier is statuesque and beautiful. When she made these movies she was in her mid-twenties (born in 1949). There are nude shots of her, and yes, they are gratuitous. Coffy is a pretty simple movie with a simple plot. With a sawed-off shotgun she wreaks revenge on drug dealers and corrupt politicians. She uses sex as a tool to get the bad guys in her sights. Not a role model for young girls, by any means, but someone using her wits in a dangerous business in a world of violent men.

What the filmmakers were trying to do was play to a low common denominator: people who like violence and sex; white people who think black people are all pimps, prostitutes, or heroin junkies. Prejudices are reinforced with these movies. In the early 1970s even distinguished actors like Lou Gossett and Robert DoQui were playing pimps in outrageous costumes. They were ridiculous caricatures, and while pandering to white racism, the producers manipulated black audiences, a whole demographic until then uncatered to, eager to see their own people on movie screens. For every noble African-American character played by Sidney Poitier, Brock Peters, James Earl Jones or Ossie Davis, the audience for black movies also had heroes like Richard Roundtree as Shaft, a "black private dick who's a sex machine with all the chicks," or Ron O'Neal as Super Fly, a drug dealer-hero, and then they had heroines like Coffy and Foxy Brown, both played by Pam Grier.

There is a lot wrong with these movies. They are embarrassing in their production values, their racial viewpoints, both black and white. In order to appeal to black audiences the white characters are even more corrupt and rotten than the black characters. But the movies were written, directed, produced and distributed by white people. It was a cynical tactic.

Despite all that there was Pam Grier. Looking at her then, and even now in her mature years, there is a beauty and intelligence that transcends the material she was given to work with. In 1997 she starred in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown, chosen for the part because of his fondness for movies like Coffy and Foxy Brown. She showed in Jackie Brown she was an A-list talent, not just a pretty face and great body, but a genuinely fine actress.

As motion pictures, Coffy and Foxy Brown are sleazy, violent, and exploitative. In other words, all of those things that we want in a drive-in movie. But they had one thing that raised them up above their material, and that was Pam Grier.

Making it real

Click on my cancer to make it a bigger cancer

It’s funny where profundities come from, those things that people say or do that suddenly, in a bit of synchronicity, attach themselves to us with personal meaning. In my case it was an episode of a TV show I watched. A psychiatrist character is talking to the heroine about changes. He says to her, “Sometimes when we make major changes, it takes time for us to make them real.”

Time is both a luxury and an enemy, twins joined at the hip. We breathe easier when we have time to make a decision. We go into a panic during an emergency. We have time only to react, no time to think.

Last week I had a biopsy of a suspicious node on my prostate gland and the test results came back as cancerous. Unlike a stroke or heart attack where I wouldn’t have any time to think about it, with prostate cancer I have time to think. I was referred to a urologist by my family doctor. During my annual visit just before Christmas she felt the node and said time was of the essence. She immediately referred me. Because of the holidays the time needed to deal with the problem was elongated. It took a week to get in to see the urologist, and when he confirmed the node, it took another two weeks before a biopsy. It gave me time for a lot of thinking. Too much time, and much of my thinking was negative. Last Wednesday morning I got the urologist’s call: “You have cancer on one side of your prostate, but I believe we’ve caught it early enough, and it’s curable.”

Later in the day my wife, Sally, and I sat across from him and discussed my options. Even before left his office I knew what I’d do, have surgery to remove the prostate. But he wanted me to “think it over,” then let him know. He gave me the time to really fret about it and have a couple of good old anxiety attacks. Sally and I talked and on Friday arranged for the surgery, which will be on February 12.

Now that the surgery is scheduled I have more comfort, the luxury of some time: “The surgery is three weeks from now. I have time to get used to the idea.”

I had more than enough time to get used to the idea of retirement, because I put in my paperwork in October, 2008, and as of January 1, 2009, I’ve been officially retired from my school district job. I’ve had occasion to visit the District Office since then—to discuss my post-retirement medical benefits—but I still have a feeling that the vacation I went on December 15, 2008, from which I didn’t return, is just that, a vacation. I still feel that one morning I’ll have to get up and put on my clothes and go to work.

When I see old friends they ask, “How does it feel to be retired?” and all I can say is, “I’ll tell you when I feel I am retired.” It’s why the line in the TV show, “…it takes time for us to make [changes] real,” had so much meaning for me.

In my deepest thoughts I still think I have all the time in the world. If I pick out something I’d like to do there’s no need to hurry it up. Like the Rolling Stones song, time is on my side. In reality time is not on my side. Inside me, just like all of us, there is a ticking clock. Sometimes we stop and listen to the tick-tick-tick. We’re reminded that clocks, at some point, do stop. The question is when.

I’d like to live long enough to have the feeling that I’m retired, that the labor I did for over 40 years is finally being rewarded with the freedom to do what I want to do. My retirement, my cancer, are both things that are taking time for me to make real. In three weeks the surgeon will cut into me. That will be real. The retirement, the feeling I have every morning that I should get up and get dressed because I need to go to work, may take a little longer to become real.

To smile or not to smile...

Click on the picture to see it full-size.

On Tuesday, January 20, I opened my newspaper to this picture of all 44 U.S. presidents. What struck me, as it did when I first saw the portrait, is that President Obama's official White House portrait is unsmiling. It isn't that he looks dour, displeased or dyspeptic, but he looks serious.

In the early years of our republic some of the presidents looked downright grumpy. William Henry Harrison, #9, or #12, Zachary Taylor, have expressions that look like they've been sucking lemons. The newspaper spread shows that up until Richard Nixon--Nixon! of all people--presidents kept a straight face in their portraits. Nixon's picture has him grinning like a loon. I don't know that I ever actually saw Richard Nixon smile, and when I saw him I didn't do any smiling. From Nixon, #37, through George W. Bush, #43, all of the portraits are of smiling men. Jimmy Carter has a good and toothsome smile. Bill Clinton looks like he's thinking of sharing a cigar in the Oval Office with Monica Lewinsky. Ronald Reagan was an actor, easy for him to put on a mood. George H. W. Bush looks like he's laughing, Gerald Ford like he just heard a joke he didn't quite get, and George W. Bush looks like Alfred E. Neuman.

If you look at old pictures you hardly ever see anyone smiling. Some of the presidential portraits were painted, and some were from tintypes, both of which depended on the subject sitting still for a long period of time. No wonder they looked so straight-faced. I also think it had something to do with a public perception of the presidency as being a serious job. I'm sure there's time for joy, but also a lot of stress and periods where you wouldn't find a bunch of people sitting around swapping jokes and laughing it up.

When I watched the Inaugural ceremonies yesterday I saw President Obama smile many times, and he has a wonderful and incandescent smile. But I think he knew at the time of his official portrait that he had some serious business ahead of him. Perhaps that was why he broke the tradition of his predecessors going back over 40 years, and put on his serious face.

Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story

"...Deep in my heart I do believe, we shall overcome some day."

Comic book version, late 1950s-early 1960s. Click on pages to make them full-size.

Cloverzilla

I don't intend to turn my blog into a movie review blog. I don't watch that many movies, and the movies I watch are usually older and have already been covered. But, I watched Cloverfield today and have a couple of things to say about it.

Cloverfield, benign-sounding title notwithstanding, is a Godzilla movie. It's got computer generated images and a very hip cinema verité technique, but it's a Godzilla movie.

The main characters are twenty-somethings, and the action begins at a surprise party for Rob, who is being sent to Japan (Japan? Get it? An inside reference to Godzilla!) for his job. We have a clue--based on a video he made of the encounter--that at an earlier time he and his longtime friend, Beth, had broken through the fourth wall of their relationship and become intimate. As the story progresses, cleverly, in bits and pieces, we find that Rob didn't know how to handle the intimacy, so afterwards didn't call Beth. Tsk tsk. Isn't that just like a guy? Afraid of commitment. There's no explanation as to why she didn't call him.

Beth and Rob's relationship is the subplot that propels the action of the main characters. As everyone is running away from the attack of the monster, Rob and his friends make their way against the tide of evacuees to find Beth, who is trapped in her apartment. The suspense comes from the group of four encountering junior size monsters (parasites) in a subway tunnel, the rampaging 350-foot Godzilla-monster, and getting into Beth's building. She lives on the 39th floor, and her apartment building is leaning over, Tower of Pisa style, against another building.

All of this is told in a POV video style, as Rob's friend Hud handles the camera to "document" the attack. I think the video style of the movie may have hurt the box office--that and its awful title, Cloverfield--because in some of the reviews I read people left the theater with motion sickness. That didn't bother me with the DVD on my regular TV screen. It could be because the screen was a size that was manageable for my brain, not overwhelmed by hugeness and herky-jerky activity. I'm sure my wife and I would both need to take Dramamine before seeing this movie in a theater. (Hmmm. That could've been a gimmick. Free Dramamine to everyone who buys a ticket!)

The video simulation gave the special effects guys problems because they had to match their effects to a hand held camera. I'm amazed that they did it so well. I was also surprised that it was filmed in Los Angeles and not New York, because the special effects were so good I was convinced the movie was filmed in Manhattan.

The trailer for the movie that had everyone excited showed the Stature of Liberty being beheaded and the head ending up on the street. That was an extremely well-done and dramatic bit of business. Some of the damage in the movie was directly inspired by the attack of 9/11. The images seem very familiar to us all: people running in front of a fast-moving dust cloud, people who couldn't get out of the way covered in dust. Collapsing buildings. It is just 9/11 intensified. After all, after the incredible and horrifying events of that day, how could a filmmaker hope to compete except to make it bigger?

The young people in the movie are an attractive and talented cast, who are all unknown to me.

I can recommend Cloverfield if you accept it as a very slick production made to look non-slick, and that at its heart it's a remake of an old Japanese monster movie. The monster in Cloverfield isn't a guy in a rubber suit stomping through a miniature city like in the original, but that's what I thought of while I watched the movie.

Goodbye Larry

My old friend Larry died last week, age 86.

When I met Larry he was in his mid-50s, and as cantankerous and curmudgeonly as a man years older. Larry, although raised near a city, was country clear through. He was a cowboy who owned horse property. Years before I met him Larry had gotten a job as a schoolbus driver, then worked his way into the electronics shop, where he fixed televisions, working on the school district's technology, which even in the 1970s was more from the 1950s. During that whole time his primary interest was in his horses, the job something to support him and his family.

Larry retired about 20 years ago, before computers became part of our daily lives. I just can't see Larry having anything to do with "those ornery cusses", as he liked to call devices he mistrusted.

Larry was a WWII Navy vet. After the Philippines were liberated from Japanese occupation Larry was stationed there and had plenty to say about his time there. I'm sure his family didn't know his Philippine stories.

Larry was a solid Roosevelt Democrat. He was a strong union man, serving as the president of our local in the early 1980s. Union meetings could get raucous when Larry was president, with lots of shouting. One time when we, as a group, questioned the union tactics in negotiations with our employer, Larry called us a "bunch of ungrateful sons of bitches!" and added, "I'm quittin'. This is the most thankless fuckin' job I've ever had!"

But he came back because it was Larry's job to be our union rep and he loved the contentiousness, the dust-ups and telling our employers where to stick it.

My first boss at the school district, Jim, was a staunch Republican, and a "right wingy-dingy Republican" as Larry called them. Larry got into a shouting match with my boss over politics one day while he was in our building wiring an intercom system. Jim called Larry's boss and said, "I don't want that guy in my building ever again." They must've smoothed it over because the next week Larry was back working on the system, but this time he didn't talk politics.

Larry was a needle artist and could dish out the insults. He knew my wife, who worked for the school district media center at the time. He said to me, "How'd an ugly bastard like you get such a cute one?" In a perverse way I saw it as a compliment.

Larry's "office" was a work bench in our electronics shop, where various projects were lined up, repair jobs to be done. Larry was taking a rare sick day, and his coworkers strung a 1/4" PVC hose, taping it under benches, the length of their shop. It was hooked to the water tap in the shop sink, and ended right under Larry's work space. When Larry came back to work the next day he sat at his bench and someone turned on the water. It poured onto Larry's lap. He jumped off his stool hollering, "You worthless bastards! You sonsabitches!" He told me later, "Them guys had their fun, but I'll get back at 'em." If he did I don't remember it, or probably just didn't hear about it, but I'm sure whatever revenge he thought up was good. That was Larry.

Psycho on steroids

The writer of Vacancy explained how he got the idea for the movie. When he got out of college he and his wife ran a dude ranch. It was only open four months a year which gave them eight months to travel. He traveled back roads in New Mexico and saw lonely motels without customers and wondered what went on in them. That gave him his idea for the story.

Or, more likely, he saw Psycho and thought he'd make it bigger. Vacancy is Psycho with three times the number of killers and twice the number of victims. Actually, many more than two, but for the purposes of the plot, two we care about.

David and Amy, played by Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale, are a couple in crisis. They are on the verge of divorce, after the tragedy of losing their son. They are traveling back home from Amy's family home, and ignore lessons from every horror movie they've ever seen by 1) getting off the highway onto A Lonely Back Road in the dark, and 2) by checking into A Creepy Motel after their car breaks down.

The movie seems well set up for suspense, but asks the audience to suspend disbelief with some plot contrivances. We're asked to accept that the killers, who are making snuff films for money (the motel biz is pretty slow where they are) are using a motel room which is easily identifiable in which to perform their murders. Not only that, they leave tapes of the murders next to a TV in that very room!

We know the killers aren't stupid people, or at least the chief killer isn't, because he's shown with a whole movie editing operation in his office. So why leave evidence around for anyone, especially potential victims, to find? We're not privy to such motivation, because we aren't given any information beyond the fact the killers are homicidal murder movie auteurs.

The killers inexplicably taunt David and Amy by doing dumb things like calling the room and not saying anything, then banging on the door of the room and the connecting door to the next room. Uh, yeah...and this is for what purpose? David and Amy watch parts of the tapes, and despite heavy duress instantly grasp the significance. In the tapes the killers rush in and overwhelm their victims. So why now do they toy with David and Amy? Well, because then we have a 90 minute movie and not a 10 minute movie of a couple getting ambushed.

There is some nonsense about tunnels under the motel leading into various rooms, and killers chasing David and Amy in some sort of roundabout fashion. It reminds me of old comedies where people creep through hallways, go in one door, come out another.

Clichès abound in this movie, and the logical lapses are big. But the movie is intense and the quick glimpses from the snuff films are morbid and repulsive. The DVD has "extended scenes of the snuff films." Gee, guys, thanks, but I think I'll skip that section.

Personally, I stay on the main roads, I travel during daylight, I don't go to motels on lonely stretches of road. In that respect I'm smarter than David and Amy, and avoid turning my own life into a snuff movie. My recommendation is that since you've already seen Vacancy, in several other movies which have been cannibalized to make this repellent entertainment, you're better off skipping it altogether.

Goodbye Donald Westlake and Richard Stark

Donald E. Westlake, novelist, died of a heart attack at age 75 on New Year's Eve. He was in Mexico with his wife.

Westlake, who is one of my all-time favorite writers, wrote over 100 books. I'm proud that I've read just about every one of them, and his short stories, too.

In his earlier years he wrote under several pen-names, but whittled them down to one: Richard Stark for his stark stories of the thief, Parker. He wrote his more humorous books about hapless criminals, Dortmunder and Kelp, under his own name.

If you're not familiar with his name, you are probably familiar with some of his movies, which include the fantastically popular 1972 film, The Hot Rock, starring Robert Redford and George Segal. He also wrote the screenplay for a story that broke a lot of rules, The Stepfather, with Terry O'Quinn (John Locke in the TV series, Lost). I haven't seen The Stepfather for over 20 years--it's currently not available on DVD in the U.S.--but no one could forget the opening, as a blasè O'Quinn comes down the stairs and steps over the corpses of the family he has just murdered, only to leave the house and set up residence in another town...with another family.

The Parker novels (and it's just one name, "Parker," no first name), are set in a world of criminals and big crimes. Parker is a thief--and killer, when need be--who makes a couple of scores a year and then lives off the ill-gotten proceeds. He has no mercy, no conscience. He's a complete sociopath. The trick that "Richard Stark" pulled off so neatly is that we readers are always pulling for him to get away with it. The series was originally published as paperback originals in the 1960s*, beginning with the novel Point Blank. As the series developed a cult following it found its way into hard covers.

While Dortmunder and Kelp are criminals they have foibles that can be very funny, but there is no funniness about Parker. From Flashfire (2000):

The driver was getting out of the Cherokee. He gave Parker an incurious look, turned to lock the Cherokee, and Parker stepped rapidly toward him, taking the Sentinel out of his pocket, holding it straight-armed in from of himself, aiming as he moved. He fired once, and the .22 cartridge punched through the meat of the driver's left leg, halfway between knee and hip, then went on to crack into the door panel of the Cherokee, leaving a starred black dent.

The driver sagged, astonished, falling against the Cherokee, staring over his shoulder at Parker. "What? What?"

Parker stepped very close, showing him the Sentinel. "I shot you," he said. "The vest doesn't cover the leg. It doesn't cover the eye, either. You want one in the eye?"

"Who the fuck are you?" The driver was in shock, the blood drained from his face. He pawed at his left leg.

Parker held the Sentinel close to his face. "Answer me."

"What'd I do to you? I don't even know you!"

"I'm robbing you," Parker told him.

Whew. As you can tell, Parker isn't a very nice guy.

Amorality is a strange thing to root for, and it takes a skilled writer to bridge the gap between disgust for the character and empathy. My guess is it's a form of fantasy or wish. In some situations in life we'd all like to be Parker, in total control, who lives in a black and white world: take what you need, don't let anyone stop you, kill anyone who gets in your way. Thank god I don't know anyone like Parker, but thank god I had the series to read over the decades.

*My Parker paperbacks are stashed, but I recently found a first printing of The Jugger from 1965. When I found it I felt like I had just hit the lottery.

Goodbye, Paul Newman

Paul Newman is prominent on the list of famous people who died in 2008. He had a career that spanned decades, and made quite a name and reputation for himself as an actor, among other things (race car driver and salad dressing maker, for two).

Sally and I watched his 1982 movie, The Verdict, the other night, and were once again impressed by the depth of his skill as an actor. By coincidence this week I found a DVD that purports to be his first professional acting job. It's from Tales of Tomorrow, a half-hour science fiction series. The DVD I have is volume 1, and Newman can be found in the last episode of the season, "Ice From Space," first broadcast on August 8, 1952. It was shown on the then-fledgling ABC-TV Network live, filmed in the Kinescope process where a camera filmed the TV monitor, for showings in other areas of the country. In the episode Newman plays Sergeant Wilson, one of only five actors in the low-budget--or should I say no-budget--drama.

I did a screen capture of what may be Paul Newman's first appearance on camera of any kind. He is to the right of an actor who is just a spear-carrier, and doesn't speak. At least Newman has a few lines to say.

Everybody starts somewhere, and if the DVD information is correct, this is the very moment Paul Newman started his screen career.

The New Year's elopement

Happy New Year. January 1, 2009, is our wedding anniversary: forty years. We eloped.

Forty years ago tonight I was about six weeks out of the Army. Sally and I were invited to a party. The party-givers, who we didn't know, actually invited our friends, Dick and Lynda, who invited us. The party was pretty boring. I'm sure I was drinking too much, as I did in those days, and I didn't know anybody. In an offhand way I said to Sally, "Why don't we go get married?" I think I was trying to be funny.

Ha, ha.

Ha.

The laugh was on me. As soon as she heard the m-word Sally practically jumped into my 1967 Dodge. Dick and Lynda were game. They were as drunk as me. We took off in the night toward Wendover, Nevada, which is about two hours west of Salt Lake City. It had snowed and our route, I-80, was pretty slick in spots. I've always wondered if I was just too stupid to get killed or if some guardian angel wasn't looking over me. How I made it to Wendover in my drunken state on icy roads is a mystery to me.

When we got to Wendover Lynda went into a casino and asked if there was a justice of the peace who could marry her friends. The people there said we'd have to travel to Elko, the county seat, which was another bunch of miles...in the dark...on icy roads. As soon as Lynda came back to the car and told us the news my nerve fled me. It drained out of me like pulling the plug on a crankcase. I tried to back out, but no one was having any of it.

"No!" said Lynda. "We've come this far and YOU'RE GOING TO GET MARRIED."

You know what? I've told this story so many times I'm afraid it's taking on the smell of one of those bullshit lies I talked about in my last blog entry. But it's true, or at least as true as my memory can be counted on for the truth. I took one look at Sally, at the tears in her eyes and said, "Well, OK, Elko it is."

We got to Elko about 3:30 in the morning. We went to the Stockman's Casino. By that time the casino as emptying out. The drunks who had passed out were being ejected by the Elko Police, who were making periodic sweeps through the place. Lynda asked one of the cops, "My friends want to get married." The cop laughed. "Well, tell 'em to go upstairs and practice up. The courthouse will be open at noon." Damn, curses, foiled again! I'd been hoping that being New Year's Day no one would be venturing to do business like marrying folks. I have since learned about Nevada that rules be damned. It's a wide-open place when it comes to things like that.

An older man who was pretty drunk, but not drunk enough to be tossed out, waved us over and offered to buy us drinks. We sat down and were treated. He rambled on about something or other. I'm sure he wasn't as old then as I am now but he looked like a geezer to me. The drinks kept coming. At one point he was talking about something and looked down at the tabletop and said, "Oh, fuck the world!" Apparently, being alone on an early New Year's morning was a bit depressing for the guy.

In my wallet I had about $15. I think Dick had a few bucks, but neither of us had thought of how much it would cost for a wedding license, or any other costs for that matter. It was in the days before Visa, but the drunk man had a credit card he let the girls use to call home. Maybe American Express or one of Visa and Mastercard's ancestors, Bankamericard or Mastercharge. Sally called her stepmom about 5:30 a.m. and told her what was going on. My future mother-in-law said she'd call my mom, who had called her concerned that I hadn't come home. Me? I didn't care if anyone was worried or not. I was worried enough about how I was going to pull this wedding off.

Dick had been playing nickel slot machines for about a half hour, and winning. He told me, "I think people have been loading 'em up all night and they're ready to pay off." Were they ever! I won $65 in nickels in a very short time on one machine. A girl with a tray full of $2.00 rolls of nickels stood by me and as the jackpots kept coming she'd just hand me my winnings.

I had to go to the bathroom and when I came back the machine I'd been playing had an out of order sign on it. Ah, well.

I was wearing a sport coat and my pockets were loaded with heavy rolls of nickels. The rest of the morning is a blur, but at noon we were at the courthouse, getting our license. We weren't the only couple there to be married; we were first in line but there were some others there for that purpose. I am looking at a copy of my marriage license as I type this: Elko Township Justice Of The Peace Edward T. Lunsford performed the ceremony. Our friends Dick and Lynda were our witnesses and their signatures are on the license. I haven't spoken with either of them for over 20 years, but they were our best friends for at least a few years after the trip to Elko.

At the conclusion of the ceremony Justice Lunsford said to me, "It's customary to tip me." I asked, "Will you take rolls of nickels?" and he gave me an answer I have used ever since: "If the bank will take it, I'll take it." So I forked over two or three rolls of nickels.

The trip back to Salt Lake is also a blur, but when we got back I remember my father-in-law, Ray, shaking my hand and giving congratulations, and I also remember my mother in a white heat of anger. I'd gone home to take a shower, change clothes, face Mom. I don't remember exactly what she said to me but it was probably more of the same "you're a harebrain" talk she gave me often. In this case she was probably right. To make a long story even longer, Sally and I spent the night at Motel 6. Motel 6 ("We'll leave the light on for you") was named that because a room cost $6.00, which I paid for with rolls of nickels. Motel 6 was bare minimum stuff: a bed, bathroom, no TV, no phone. Hey, we were on our honeymoon, so (wink-wink-nudge-nudge) who needed a TV, and especially who needed or wanted a phone?

On that night, January 1, 1969, I had no idea how long the marriage would last. Just now using the calculator I figured that Sally and I have been married 14,600 days. Does that sound longer than 40 years?

Finally, a couple of weeks later we found out that the man who had used his credit card so Sally and Lynda could call home, and who bought us drinks, was using a stolen card. It was easier to get away with it in those days. It took a while before the paperwork caught up and the crook was long gone. By then I'd settled down into a dull terror that now I had a wife and responsibilities. Ulp. In my wildest imaginings I never thought down the road, probably no more than a few days or week at a time, and certainly not 40 years.

Bullshit lies

So, it turns out the dream romance was just that, a dream. The story of Herman Rosenblat and wife Roma, who it was said met at a concentration camp as children, then re-met and married years later in America, turns out to be a hoax. Herman Rosenblat excuses the falsehood, which brought his wife and him fame, as just trying to make people feel good.

Well, OK...that's fine, but it's also a bullshit lie. Sometimes people get caught up in their own lies and when they've told the lie long enough it becomes the truth to them. Maybe after all these years to Herman and Roma those 1945 events they described actually happened.

For a time when I was a junior in high school I was a bullshit liar. I told lies about things I can barely remember now. I scratch my head trying to figure my motives. I'm sure there are psychological reasons: wanting to be accepted, wanting to be the center of attention. One day I was at my locker in a hallway crowded with fellow students. A couple of lockers down I overheard two classmates laughing about one of my lies, and I knew I'd been busted. They knew I was lying to them, and I was embarrassed.

When I was telling whoppers I felt like an actor in a play, reciting lines, and I wonder if that's how Herman Rosenblat felt. As humans we're good at lying. Lying and deception are in our psychological makeup, but like a lot of other human behaviors we call it wrong for others yet do it ourselves.

Even though we all tell lies, we have a certain naïve quality that allows others to manipulate us with lies. A while ago I talked about people believing that they were abducted by aliens and taken into UFOs for medical experiments. Some of the people who tell these stories may believe them, but others are lying and they get people to believe them. Our capacity to believe lies makes it easier for a liar to get away with his craft.

Oprah had Herman Rosenblat and his wife on her show, and now that the truth has come out I'm sure she feels betrayed. Other people have been questioning the Rosenblat story for a while, and now that it's been exposed for the lie it is, I'm sure they feel vindicated. But there are other people who, even in the face of the truth, would rather believe the fiction.

Is it me...?

Or is it he?


I know it's been a week since I wrote you, my hundreds of thousands of adoring fans. Day after day e-mails fill my mailbox with your messages imploring me, "Please, El Postino, please come back to your blog. Enlighten us with your wisdom, guide us on our paths of intellectual curiosity, tell us in unsparing detail your fascinating outlook on life and describe to us everyone else's major character defects."

Of course, then I woke up and realized I'd been dreaming.

But this wasn't a dream, because apparently I do figure in other peoples' lives, in some strange way. A principal I've worked with for several years was talking to me recently. He mentioned that he found it enjoyable, "to talk to you and your wife in Las Vegas a couple of years ago."

I said, "I haven't been in Las Vegas since 1973."

He replied, "Oh, then it must've been Mesquite [Nevada]," to which I remarked, "I've never been to Mesquite."

He looked a little puzzled but continued on as if I hadn't just disrupted a memory. The thing is, and I've mentioned it in this blog before, people do think I'm other people. In the early '90s I was asked, "Are you the guy in the underwear ad?" Last year I was asked, "Aren't you the guy in the Auto Zone poster?" "No, I'm not."

Finally, I worked with a secretary for 15 years who was so sure it was me having dinner at the Macaroni Grill restaurant that she approached "me" and started talking. It wasn't until "I" said I wasn't "me" and didn't know "me" that she asked if perhaps "I" was my own twin brother. I can't vouch for the story because I wasn't the "I" talking to her.

So what makes people think they see me elsewhere? These aren't strangers, these are people who have worked with me every day for many years, and yet they think I'm someone else. Who the guy and his wife were that the principal thought were my wife and me I have no idea. I wonder if that couple thought my friend was some sort of crazy person.

It could be the white beard. Maybe that's what people are looking at, rather than my other features. What say you. I ask again, as I have asked before: Do you know me? Do you think you know me?

**********

A few days ago I went to YouTube and found a video of sexy pin-up Bettie Page dancing. Someone had put a song by '60s garage rock band, The Seeds, over the video. I put it on my blog. Today I went again to YouTube looking for songs by bandleader/entertainer Louis Prima, and found one of his songs over another stripper, also named Betty, Betty Blue. I give you Betty, I give you Louis:

Blue Eyes Crying

A few days ago I was taken by surprise by a pair of blue eyes. As I lost myself in a reverie about eyes being the windows of the soul, the eyes have it, and eyes on the prize, I thought about "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain," one of my favorite songs of all time.

Thank god for YouTube, which is a treasure chest of music remembered, forgotten and new.

Roy Acuff did the first version of "Blue Eyes" the year I was born; his is a more uptempo version of the Fred Rose song. Hank Williams followed in this transcription from his old radio show, year unknown (gotta be very early '50s or late '40s, because Williams died New Year's Eve, 1952).

Willie Nelson's "Blue Eyes" is the one I heard first when it was released in the early 1970s. This version from Austin, TX, is Willie redoing the song as only he can. He would never be content to sing the same version over and over; he reinvents music. His is a lot closer to Hank Williams', which shows the evolution of a great song. Williams and Nelson both understood that "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain" is a lament, a song about loss, not a hillbilly dance tune.

Finally, Sheryl Crow takes Willie's version and makes it her own song. But she continues on with the song as lament: "When we kissed goodbye and parted, I knew we'd never meet again." Powerful words in a simple melody, made so much more by the interpretations of the great artists who have sung this special song.

Roy Acuff, 1947



Hank Williams



Willie Nelson



Sheryl Crow, 2004

Turning the Page

The cult fave, pin-up model Bettie Page, died the other day at age 85. I don't think anyone ever thought of her as being that age, because all of the pictures of her, and there are thousands out there, are of a young, voluptuous, beautiful woman.

I saw pictures of Bettie in 1966, after she retired as a model. A friend was showing me some old magazines and pointed her out. I was amazed at her beauty. I think everyone who sees her for the first time has that feeling.

Among her other modeling jobs, Bettie used to hire out to photography clubs. Guys with cameras would pay her to go on some location shooting, then take her picture. There could be thousands more pictures of Bettie we've never seen, from the late 1940's-early 1950s, in photo albums and in desk drawers. What she's most famous for, the pictures that helped sell hundreds of issues of magazines, "the kind men like," are everywhere. After her religious conversion Bettie went home to the South, then disappeared. There was a revival of her image in the 1980s, but she wasn't making anything off the public's appetite for her. She came forward and claimed her own pictorial representation. I hope she made some money from the process.

Page made an untold number of film loops and was the subject of photos with S&M as the theme. These were made by Irving Klaw in New York City, and sold to a specialized audience of guys who liked to see girls tied up or spanked. When I see pictures of S&M as it's done now it seems painful and dangerous, and someone could get seriously hurt. With Bettie you never got the feeling she was suffering; just that she seemed to be enjoying her work, and that for her it was all just another gig in front of the camera. In my adolescent mind the pictures of her in nylons and high heels seemed forbidden, mysterious, kinky. Nowadays you see stuff like that in the pages of fashion magazines. Apparently Bettie was about 50 years ahead of fashion. Either that or people looked at those old pictures and said, "That's the look I want for this ad!"

A captured still from the DVD, Bettie Page The Girl In The Leopard Print Bikini.

I believe that well into our current century, like Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page will remain the object of a loyal following.

Here's a great video. Someone matched up an old burlesque clip of Bettie with the song, "Can't Seem To Make You Mine," by the '60s group, The Seeds.

Old galfriends

A coworker asked me a few months ago, "Do you ever wonder what happened to your old girlfriends? Do you ever wonder what they're doing now?" I answered, "Hell, no!"

I've gotten to a stage in life where I understand about unfinished and finished business. Some folks never do, so maybe I've got an advantage. I know when a relationship is over. I knew my relationship with Cathy was over when I was in the Army and got a Dear John letter from her. She told me she'd met someone else and they were going to get married.

I met Cathy when I was just short of 17, and she was barely 15. I was a junior in high school and she was a 9th grader. I suppose her folks were pretty liberal by letting us go out together, but usually we double-dated. Parents thought that was safe. It really wasn't; instead of one couple in a car necking you had two couples, but I digress.

Cathy and I practiced the relationship business on each other for about three years, and we made a lot of mistakes. Kids don't understand the process of courtship, the process of getting to know a person of the opposite sex, getting disappointed, getting dumped, getting your heart broken. We went through the process with monotonous regularity. We'd get to a point where we'd be fine, then something would happen and we'd be fighting again.

During one of our fights she went on a date with a classmate, who ran his Volkswagen Beetle into the back end of a parked car, sending Cathy to the hospital with her teeth knocked out. Luckily the boy's dad was a dentist who fixed her teeth for her. But the hidden damage was that she sustained some sort of brain injury. I never found out what it was.

After she was out of my life I got lucky. I met and married my wife, while the guy Cathy married divorced her at some point. I have no idea what happened to her after that, and after I get through writing this I'll go about the business of not thinking about her for say, the next 40 years.

Some people never get over former loves. Some still feel love for a person long gone out of their life. I'm not telling anyone how to feel, but I think I'm just more pragmatic. I don't waste time on someone who's gone. When a relationship is over it's time to just move on, not fret about what went wrong or worry about getting the person back. Not long after my youthful romance with Cathy ended I moved on, lessons learned.

Mom, is that you?

My friend linked to a really fun vintage pin-up blog.

I had a thought looking at all of these old-time girly photos. What if a guy in 2008 is looking at this site and sees a picture of his mother from her younger days, posing seductively? Here's a basic plot, and I'm throwing it out to all of you writers out there. Use it if you want to:

The man did not know this side of his mother or her past. His father is in the Alzheimer's wing of a nursing home, out of his mind. His mother died of cancer in her sixties, so he can't confront her. His mother's only surviving sister, his aunt, is initially close-mouthed, but tells him some names of people his mother mentioned during her wild days. The man decides to find out about her and uncovers her links to not only photo clubs (the clubs organized to take pictures of models for a fee), but also pornography, the mob and murder.


That's all I have. Your assignment, should you decide to accept it, will be to come up with a near 50-year-old mystery and the secrets the man uncovers that have a ripple effect to the present day.

I thought of it after finding this pin-up picture on another blog earlier this year.

The face reminded me of photos I've seen of my mother when she was young. Mom died this year at age 86, so she would have been the right age, and my imagination ran away with me. No one wants to think of his mother in this situation, but somebody's moms did it. There has always been a whole industry based on women who don't mind showing off their bodies, and there are a lot of guys who like looking at them, more than enough to support the industry.

If you use the plot, let me know. I'd love to read what you've written.

Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette

Thursday night we had Thanksgiving dinner at my brother-in-law Randy's house. We've been together for many years. Conversation was fun, we laughed and told stories.

At least once one of the family smokers slipped outside the house for a cigarette. In those long ago holiday celebrations three and four decades ago ashtrays were all over the house. We all just lit up where we were. We had a great meal, then finished it off with a cig and a cup of coffee or a drink. My father-in-law, Ray, smoked, I smoked...several people smoked until the air was choked with noxious fumes.

I started smoking as a teenager, but was in the Army before the addiction took hold. In June, 1967, we were taking a night class, outside, sitting on a lawn. An old sergeant noticed one of the guys in the back lighting up, so he said, "What the hell. Smoke 'em if you got 'em." I had a pack in my pocket and realized I was craving a smoke. Not just wanting it, but needing it. That's when I knew that all of the experimenting I'd done with tobacco over the past two or three years had finally come to addiction. When I tell that story people say, "How did you feel about it?" I guess they expect me to say I hated it. But I'm honest about it: "Well, it made up my mind as to whether I was a smoker or someone who just flirted with it. I knew then I was." I was kind of relieved. It was cheap, too. When I was in the Army cigarettes were 17¢ a pack! When I got home in late '68 the price doubled to 34¢.

It took ten years of smoking before I decided to seriously kick it, and it was because of the publicity about second-hand cigarette smoke, about kids growing up in a smoking household. My wife was pregnant with our son at the time. I set a target date and quit that day three months before he was born. I went through several days of withdrawal agony. By the time I'd been nicotine free for about two weeks I figured I'd beat the habit, and it turned out I had. Over the next few months I gained 30 pounds, though, and was pretty upset about that. That took another ten years to get rid of, but that's another story.

Nowadays I've almost forgotten how obnoxious smoking really is. I just don't see it that much. I'll be sitting at a traffic light and smell tobacco smoke from another car, or I'll see people standing outside a workplace, in the cold, puffing away. I'm grateful that on that date in 1978 I quit smoking. Just six months after my addiction became noticeable my father died of a heart attack at age 47. He was a lifelong smoker. Legend is, although he never confirmed it, that when he was 12 his mother handed him a carton of cigarettes and said, "I know you're going to smoke anyway, so you might as well smoke in the house." I didn't take heed of his death, let it be a lesson. I kept smoking anyway for nearly another decade.

When I quit smoking the average price of a pack was 65¢. Outrageous! Now I see people spending the better part of a $5.00 bill on a pack of cigarettes. If I hadn't already quit that would be enough to make me take the pledge.

"Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette" was a song that came out the year I was born--1947--and was made popular by Tex Williams. Asleep at the Wheel does a great version, featured in this video of happy, smiling--and presumably addicted--smokers.

"Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette.
Puff, puff, puff, and if you smoke yourself to death.
Tell St. Peter at the Golden Gate, you just hate to make him wait,
But you've just gotta have another cigarette."