Hey! I Got Tickets!

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It woulda been in the late 1970’s.

A late weekday afternoon phone call at work.

“Hey! I got tickets for John Prine tonight. Wanna go?”

In the realm of stupid questions…

I know. I know. There are no stupid questions.

But Jesus!

“While out sailin’ on the ocean, while out sailin’ on the sea, I bumped into the Saviour and he said ‘Pardon me.’ I said, ‘Jesus, you look tired.’ And he said ‘Jesus, so do you.’” – John Prine.

It had been one of those livin’-too-near-the-abyss days. I had been berated by my customers (“This was cheaper last week”), berated by my employees (“I need the next three Saturdays off–I have a date/Why don’t you schedule more cashiers/The beer cooler is too cold to stock now”), and berated by my boss (Why is your payroll so high?). It had been a sweaty bike ride to work that morning, and promised to be a steamier ride home.

“He’s playin’ at the Idaho Round-Up tonight. First set’s at eight.”

The Idaho Round-Up was a local Lexington bar. It was about as far from Idaho as any place in Kentucky could be and the only “round-up” I could recall was when I was singing in a band a few years before in a bar in a nearby college town. The bar owner received a heads-up call from the local gendarmes to clear the room before the week-end patrol descended to check ID’s. As expected, they found none, and soon the crowd returned from the sidewalk across the street and no one was arrested. I, being the whitest and worst soul-singer in history probably shoulda been arrested, but there were still two hours to go in the gig and the bar owner still had drinks to sell. Pretty lame for a round-up…

Still, Idaho Round-Up sounded cowboyish and was easy to pronounce, even for the well-lubricated, and they managed to book some nice acts. Mr. Prine had played there with some regularity.

“The night club was burnin’ from the torch singer’s song and sweat was a’floodin’ her eyes. The catwalk creaked ‘neath the bartender’s feet and smoke was too heavy to rise.” – Prine.

The offer of tickets came from Richie Giallo, a wine salesman. I liked Richie. He was gaunt, red-headed, tightly-strung and…okay…if you watched yourself. When dealing with Richie, you needed to keep your store’s needs firmly fixed in mind before he babbled his blandishments. Then, give him half what he asked for, chat a bit about family matters, industry gossip, and the Reds’ chances. Then pull a reverse Columbo as he left; “Oh, by the way, here’s a few other things I need.”

I knew the dance.

He knew I knew the dance.

I knew he knew I knew…

All God’s children got music.

Of course I jumped at the chance to see Mr. Prine again.

“…I feel a storm all wet and warm not ten miles away…approaching…” – Prine.

It was an evening of many unknowns.

It turned out that Richie actually had several tickets. He was sitting at a table near the stage with a couple unknown to me and a date I’d never met, all drinking undetermined quantities of something unidentifiable from which emanated slowly spinning bits of spark and tabletop-searing ash…yes…probably unhealthy.

I was sitting a couple of rows back at a table with another couple I didn’t know and a date I’d met the day before. It was a different time then.

Then Mr. Prine hit the stage and I was basking in a glow of being home with a one-man family for Thanksgiving.

“Grandpa was a carpenter, built houses, cars, and banks, chained-smoked Camel cigarettes and hammered nails in planks. He was level on the level.” – Prine.

I first “met” John Prine on the floor of a barren, hippie-and-flea-infested house near the University of Kentucky campus. There was little furniture, but there was a turntable and four long-playing vinyl discs (that’s what “lp” means for you whippersnappers out there). Three of the records were by Prine, the fourth was disc one (of four) of Wagner’s “Gotterdammerung” (one of the current residents was beginning to take German). I was not taking German. I spun the Prine discs, first heard “Muhlenberg County” and was instantly hooked on Prine’s vocabulary.

“Onomatopoeia. I don’t wanna see ya speakin’ in a foreign tongue.” – Prine.

Then I saw him on stage for the first time in Centre College’s concert hall in Danville. It was a big, dark space. I was sitting in the upper level of the audience. Prine walked out with his guitar and a cigarette. It was just him, and a mike, and a wooden stool with a glass of water. He bobbed and weaved and shuffled his leg in a puzzling way. He drawled and sang and giggled for over two hours about a life I never lived…and made it mine.

“…and the sky is black and still now on the hill where the angels sing. Ain’t it funny how an old broken bottle looks just like a diamond ring?” – Prine.

No dammit, it wasn’t funny. And no, I’ve never been on that particular hill. But Mr. Prine put me there…forever…and I thank him for it.

After that concert in Danville, I followed him through his records and local appearances. I saw him in concert venues and night clubs about a dozen times.

Tonight he was jes’ fine as usual, but I was distracted.

My friend and host was in apparent distress. His head was drooping and his eyes were closed. His tablemates were laughing and pushing his floppiness around as if he were a Muppet until he was left sitting back in his seat, eyes still closed, and his head fully extended back with his Adam’s Apple pointing to the sky. It didn’t auger well for my friend’s well-being and I was, as usual, over-thinking the situation as to what, if anything, to do about it. Not so the other male component of our table. He swiftly and calmly moved and knelt behind my friend’s chair, straightened his head to a normal concert-watching position by cradling it in his arms. I followed him and assumed a similar posture on the other side of my friend’s chair. The other jolly’s at the table were at first dismayed by our intrusion, but still barely coherent enough to figure the odds of resisting. They ultimately sat subdued and the six of us finished the performance in our new positions.

“That’s the way that the world goes ‘round. Yer up one day and then yer down. It’s a happy enchilada and you think yer gonna drown…” – Prine…interpreted by a well-lubricated fan.

When the show was finished, I learned that my tablemate was an EMT. Under his instruction, we fastened my friend to his chair and conveyed him to the car. We drove him home, jimmied a large window on his porch, secured him to one of his own kitchen chairs and achieved putting him safely to bed. The EMT stayed with him through the night.

My friend was OK.

I never saw the EMT, his date, my date, or any of the other participants again…and that’s OK too, I guess. It was a different time then.

“I been brought down to zero, brought up and put back there. I sat on the park bench, kissed the girl with the black hair and my head hollered out to my heart; ‘Better look out below!’” –Prine.

I woulda liked to have helped more.

I woulda liked to have helped better.

But I lacked the knowledge and the skill.

“Before I took on anything too big, I’d wanna be sure I had a purty good cut man in my corner.” – John Steinbeck.

“I have always relied on the kindness of strangers” – Tennessee Williams.

Me too.

One Day in 1988

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Today was an off-and-on gray day in Lexington. It was very warm. We’ve had flashes of heavy rains this summer. Thus, everything is lush green. The angel flower we were given last year survived the winter, but started the spring as a desolate flat spot. Today, it is an exuberant member of our landscape jungle family covering about sixty square feet and putting out six to ten huge blooms per night. The fern explosion at rear corner of our garage is still ebullient this second week in August.

It wasn’t always so.

35 years ago today, we had had no rain for two months. The grass was crunchy and brown. It was 94 degrees in the blistering sun…but the house we had been living in for about eight weeks was full and happy.

Janie and Roger were getting married.

Chuck and Julieanne Pogue had come in from Hollywood to vacuum the new house for the occasion. Fred Foster was cooking for the crowd. Dick and Cel Pardy were holding court and flinging bird seed. Steve Caller was scanning and critiquing the bookshelves. Janie’s mom offered salient advice on the inherited landscaping. Jim Rodgers pronounced the pairing perfect. Laughter and love reigned

Jim, as usual, was right.

Janie and I had been pointed towards each other two years before by our guardian matchmaker, Robin Dickerson.

She, as usual, was right.

35 years have only been the best.

How can they possibly get better?

I can’t wait to see.

Ask Me About My Shirt

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“…conversational silences, even when motivated by the mere necessity of drawing breath, must out of ordinary courtesy be bridged somehow.” — Bruce Montgomery (aka Edmund Crispin).

“Ask me about my shirt.”

Out of nowhere and pertinent to nothing that had been said before, that was Queezer’s contribution to the afternoon’s tale-spinning.

I suppose it would qualify as a bewildering example of strategic chitchat…maybe not in normal company, but this was a group of theatre types. Conversational gambits gambol freely in such flocks.

There had been the slightest of pauses in the last boozy speculation of Montana Joe’s wistful reminiscence of a non-existent girls softball team in the Missoula of his youth; a softball dream team immediately and rudely dubbed; “The Humping Heifers of Montana” by the mis-enlightened ribald listeners of this day. Those listeners and their raconteur were only slightly embarrassed by their own crass-itude, and that embarrassment was overwhelmed by the self-pleased, wheezy guffaws from this gaggle of geezers. Said guffaws depleted the reservoir of oxygen in the geezers, thus creating a gap in the chinwag.

This was the gap Queezer sought to bridge with his sartorial demand; “Ask me about my shirt.”

He’d been politely waiting, enduring, besides the admiration for the softball team, the afternoon’s other discussions ranging from;

  • frank reverence for the scat singing of Cyrill Aimeé,
  • the value of singing lessons for young actors,
  • the remarkable competence of past local newspaper reviewers who had once said nice things about us,
  • incredulity about the amazing odds against our dogs being the best good dogs on the planet which clearly they were,
  • the stark drop in attendance and support for live theatre,
  • and the profound beneficial effect of the new pitch clock in major league baseball.

Burning issues all certainly, but lacking somewhat in focus and priority.

Queezer filled the lack and the gap; “Ask me about my shirt.”

Breath and drinks replenished, wary eyes queried sideways. Was this a trick question? Like; “How many fingers am I holding up?” or “How many colors of blue make up the sky?”

Junesboy finally sighed and took one for the team; “OK, where’d ya get that shirt?”

Queezer proceeded to rattle off the provenance of his very nice camp garment to an audience that in the soporific summer sun soon resembled William Powell’s post-prandial cigar-and-brandy old boys nodding and snoring in their New Year’s tuxedos in AFTER THE THIN MAN.

“I ordered it from L. L. Bean. It’s the shirt Roman Polanski wore when he sliced Jake’s nose in CHINATOWN. He got it from Lebowski’s laundry basket. It was one of the bowling shirts in scene three. Before that it was worn by Elliot Gould in the Japan golfing scene in M.A.S.H. Gould borrowed it from Hunter Thompson’s Samoan lawyer – that’s where the beer stains came from. Isn’t it great?”

This went on for a good 20 minutes or so.

Then I woke up from my doze.

But it is a real nice shirt and I really like camp shirts and Hawaiian shirts, whether they’re Tommy Bahama or off the $5.99 spinning wire rack down at Walgreen’s. One of the glories (and there are many) of retirement and hermitude is the possibility of wearing outrageous, voluminous shirts every day. After thirty plus years of a coat-and-tie career, it’s a possibility I strive to realize each morning.

My all-time favorite shirt was a flimsy camp shirt I bought in San Francisco’s Chinatown. It was made in Japan, cost $8.99 and featured not one, not two, but three full dragons in livid color set against a cream background.

It was a quality piece.

Mel Gibson wore it while prowling the treacherous streets of Jakarta with Linda Hunt in THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY. Before that, John Saxon wore it while getting his ass kicked by Bruce Lee in ENTER THE DRAGON. He borrowed it from Sean Connery who wore it while sipping tea with Tetsuro Tanba before jumping in the bath with Akiko Wakabashi in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE.

I wore it in “The Fifth of July,” directed by my friend Montana Joe on the Guignol Theatre stage in 1983.

It was a helluva shirt.

I’m glad you asked about it.

Hey!

Wake up!!

Hazardous Doin’s

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The cicadas are droning.

The frogs are singing an ominous bass line.

In the distance a tree toad is trilling for attention to be paid.

The fountain in the (black) lagoon is gurgling.

I might as well be in the jungles of India.

And, I am.

I am avidly lost in Gordon Casserley’s 1921 adventure tale; THE ELEPHANT GOD. The protagonist has just been attacked by a strategically-placed cobra, his slippers have been deliberately baited with a krait, his breakfast has been poisoned, and he’s now trapped in a courtyard with a mad elephant. He has eluded every threat thus far, but what might be next?

I am a true “Jeffty” who will always be five years old (100 points if you know that reference). I’m goggle-eyed and slack-jawed, unaware as my wife Janie pads in silently and whispers like thunder; “Are you awake?”

I gasp…..

….oh no……

…I shriek and suck all the air out of this quiet Hollywood/Mt. Vernon neighborhood in Central Kentucky.

My head snaps up out of the book and out of India, whiplashing my life before my eyes (that’s gonna ache…where’s the Naproxen?)

Reading is dangerous!

Who’d a’thunk?

Reading is dangerous. I’ve lived in that perilous valley since Dick and Jane, since Doctor Dolittle, since Bartholomew Cubbins’ Oobleck. At least, that’s what the news cycle and the Kentucky State Legislature has been telling me.

Oobleck…sounds like something that might have escaped from a Chinese wet market. Hugh Lofting’s colonial depictions of non-white races are clearly offensive in the 21st century, though the kindness and respect he grants animals, and his objections to fox-hunting ameliorate my frown a mite. Dick and Jane’s relationship with Spot…grooming for bestiality? Cultivating a species prejudice against cats?

Dangerous stuff indeed.

I don’t know how I survived all this indoctrination.

I’ve read voraciously my whole life. Hell, I read at red lights.

I’ve read Jack Kerouac, Herbert Huncke, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Hunter Thompson, Paul Bowles, and Abby Hoffman. I’ve never done drugs, been drunk at the Derby, been arrested, or shot my wife. I have thought freely and fiercely, questioned authority, and sought the next right thing to do.

I’ve read Harper Lee and learned the value of standing on another man’s porch and looking out at the world as he sees it…and sought the next right thing to do.

I’ve read H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe and learned that behind some doors lie madness…which is clearly not the next right thing to do.

I’ve read Clair Bee and Wilfred McCormick and still cannot hit a curve ball…but I have a better idea of the next right thing to do.

I’ve read Edgar Lee Masters, Sherwood Anderson, Dylan Thomas, and Davis Grubb. I know that so many of us with widely varying competences are most often searching for the next right thing to do.

…the next right thing to do…

Surely that’s a worthy quest. Yes?

Even at the cost of a rude misstep or two, or an awkward or offensive moment, or a challenge to our beliefs…

…or even a hair-whitening scare from a stealthy-footed Janie.

Grecian Yearn?

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I have good friends who are currently walking in the steps of Sophocles.

They are traipsing and emoting on the stages and stones for which Aristophanes wrote, in front of audiences comprised of the ghosts of thousands of years and several tourists recovering from jet lag.

What’s Greek for “trés cool?”

They are surveying the markets and hills and olive trees of Nafplion, unencumbered by the restraining doubts and visions of Kazantzakis…and un-driven by the ferocity of Byron.

They are absorbers…

…of the beginning of much…

…of the tenacity of higher thought…

…of the remains of what could have been…and…

…what may still be possible.

I envy them their journey and am grateful they have chosen to share their revelations daily on social media……even the sesame seed covered nuts.

Yes, I envy them being there.

But…I don’t envy them getting there.

I am at a place in my life where the simple thought of dealing with airports, luggage, cramped seats for hours, luggage, varying hotels with varying standards of hygiene (and plumbing), and luggage is beyond tolerance. Hell, the thought of driving six or seven hours in the car is beyond tolerance.

My friends still have this energy, this drive, and I admire them mightily. I’m happy for them, but it’s just not for me.

Besides…I’ve already been there.

I’ve argued with Antigone, I’ve drunk the hemlock, I’ve fought and betrayed my brother in the hills of revolutionary Greece (Nikos Kazantzakis’ THE FRATRICIDES), I’ve sailed with Byron to physically redeem Greece…from something, I’ve roared with Zorba, I’ve been struck to death and then swallowed by governmental corruption (the brilliant film; “Z”). I have sung with Orpheus in Greece, Brazil, Paris, and Hadestown. I used to sell olives from Nafplion. Last week I eavesdropped on Zeus himself as he decided to let Euripides prattle on a bit more (Eden Philpotts’ “The Miniature”).

I know it’s not the same as actually being there

…but…

…my aging kitten is in my lap, my luggage is gathering dust upstairs, and there’s no “Do not disturb” sign on my doors…

…and this week I’m in early 19th century rural France trying to retain my head as the aristocracy returns to power. The view and the air are invigorating, the politics are intimidating…and I didn’t have to shuck my shoes to get there.

Club Nova

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Rowdy and jes’ happy to be there!

I saw a video of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire this afternoon. The wind was swirling at 110mph, the temperature was -50°, and the snow was flying in every direction like a freshly and maniacally shaken snow globe.

It was intended that I should be terrified, or at least intimidated by this.

Meh.

I’ve been in Anchorage, Alaska watching the fog freeze.

I’ve landed in Edmonton, Alberta at 1am in February in an icy glaze.

I wandered jacket-less in a 45° morning in Key West seeing signs on store doors apologizing for being closed for the first time in decades because of the “frigid conditions.”

Perhaps you’re thinking; “Yeah, that’s rigorous, but you can’t compare it to Mt. Washington today.” And perhaps you’d be right.

But…

…I’ve been to Antarctica…

…in the basement of Levas’ Restaurant in downtown Lexington in January.

Hoo boy!

It was the winter of 1985.

The unfinished basement of Levas’ Restaurant was the home of Actors’ Guild Theatre at that time and rehearsals were beginning for their next production; “Terra Nova” by Ted Tally, a dramatic retelling of the heroic, but doomed attempt by Robert Falcon Scott in 1910 to be the first to reach the South Pole.

Heroic but doomed…

One might be tempted to attach that same forecast to any attempt to recreate the vastness, harshness, whiteness, and absolute cold of the Antarctic in the basement of a Greek-leaning eatery/piano bar on Main Street in Lexington, Kentucky, an almost Southern city whose snow-removal system is longingly referred to as “April.” Keep in mind, said basement had concrete floors, square metal ceiling supports, low ceilings, and just enough space for about 30 plastic chairs for the audience. Nothing screams polar extremes like plastic chairs.

But for all those geologic and climatic and architectural obstacles, we had some things going for us.

The script was fine.

The director (Carol Spence) was committed and smart and clear. She assembled a rowdy cast and herded them expertly towards a moving end.

The landlord (Angel Levas) believed in the value of the arts but also believed in the value of makin’ a yankee dollah. He resisted adjusting the thermostat of his building to accommodate the non-paying underground thespians in the basement. ‘Twas brillig indeed! The Antarctic’s proximity was a nightly given.

I recall one particular rehearsal when Carol brought in an improvisational consultant to lead us in an exercise involving the medical stages of freezing to death. We were supine on the floor in the dark and listening as he read from medical books of frostbite damage and the effects of blood flow becoming blood-fled. He crooned to us of the creeping muscular constrictions on the glide path to doom.

Why this show never became a musical plumb evades me.

White sheets were hung. Shiny white material obscured the support poles. The arctic sleds were pulled four feet and we believed they had been hauled forty miles. The plastic seats were filled with enthusiastic audiences who stood at the final curtain, though they may have been trying to get their blood flowing again.

I finally warmed up again by July.

Mt. Washington, you got nothing on me.

On the Road + 70 years

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I think I first read Jack Kerouac’s road-trip opus about 1968. The wheels that inspired Kerouac’s chronicle had rolled a few years before I was born, but I was now in my teens and had been driving for about 20 months. It was not unusual to find me cruising the intoxicating two-lane rural asphalt through northern Fayette County for hours after my school day at Bryan Station. My folks had moved to Omaha, I was alone, gas cost about 33¢ a gallon, Dad had left me a 1959 sky-blue Cadillac he had restored to viability for the spring…and, of course, I was gonna live forever…and maybe…just maybe…I might catch a gander at that Golden Gate Bridge on the old Athens-Boonesboro Road.

20+ years later, I finally did make it to San Francisco, not on a spiritual journey by thumb, but on a business trip by plane and by rental car…not wine spodee-odee, but Napa cabernet…not crashing at someone’s pad, but snoozing at a Holiday Inn on the Wharf. I’m not complaining. It was fine enough. But my zooming and dreaming though the tree tunnels of the Bluegrass and Jack’s crooning about jazz-inspired freedom and the end-of-the-western-world light had promised a bit more.

I had an afternoon free on that trip. I went moseying. I walked the worn wooden floors of Ferlinghetti’s book store. I smiled to see Wendell Berry so proudly displayed there. I saw an old poster for Job Rolling Papers. I smiled at that too. I’d always thought those graphics were cool without knowing anything about Alphonse Mucha at the time, and also without knowing anything about rolling my own. My own what? I was a 40-something hippie-type liquor and wine retailer who had never smoked tobacco much less anything more exotic (euphemism for illegal). That’s got to be a miniscule demographic.

I also saw a poster for the current exhibition at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art. They were showing something called Bay Area Figurative Art 1950-1965.

Whoa.

I went.

For three hours I lost myself in the GI-Bill-fueled creative images of Elmer Bischoff, Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, Clyfford Still, and Paul Wonner – the same images in which Kerouac, Carl Ginsberg, and Neal Cassady would have swum after their highway hajj. I imagined myself into a 50’s garage/art studio, listening to Ginsberg chanting “Howl” while Kerouac passed the hat for wine. I know my comfort-loving geezer would not have lasted 20 minutes in that room, but once…once…I drove a ’59 big-finned sky-blue caddy on green-infused country roads…

One week, Joe, Eric and Junesboy, three mature bohemians climbed into Joe’s car and headed towards the Speed Museum in Louisville to see their current exhibition of the works of Alphonse Mucha.

What goes around…

We were on the road, yass, yass, on the road.

We lunched first at the corner drug store. It was Weeny Wednesday. Thus we were nutritionally fortified with hot dogs and milk shakes for the journey. Joe drove, it being his car, Eric navigated, I kibitzed from the back seat, geezer-splaining the ins and outs of Kentucky legislative schemes with my deep, eight-year outdated wisdom. Could there be a more potent recipe for random bewildered tedium?

But the sun was shining. The horse farms were still faintly green in January. The company was fine. We were in no hurry. Hell, we’re retired!

It’s unwise for us to be hurried. None of us are the skilled (<< snort >>) drivers we once imagined ourselves to be; Joe’s reaction time is borderline glacial, Eric likes to look directly and immediately at whomever he’s speaking to (left, right, or upwards when Joe decides the lane markers are mere suggestions), and I read mystery novels at long red lights until the guy behind me honks. We are three creative types who really should hire a limo.

Today, Joe extolled driving 100mph in Montana as a teen (as the trucks roared by us on I-64 today), Eric thrilled us with descriptions of his 30mph jaunts around Woodford County on his now-defunct Vespa (as two Harleys zipped by us on the right), and I offered a succinct assessment of the Reds’ chances in the upcoming baseball season; “I fear they’re gonna suck” (as a thoroughbred cantered past us with ease and grace and curious patience).

Against all Las Vegas predictions, we reached our destination and it was a good day. It was my first visit to the Speed since its renovation. It’s a treasure. I wish it was in Lexington, but I’m glad it’s as close as Louisville.

The Mucha exhibit was mesmerizing. It had me reliving pre-internet University of Kentucky Guignol Theatre days spent pestering local businesses to put up our production posters to attract an audience. Of course we didn’t have Sarah Bernhardt as a selling point, but we did have Betty Waren urging us on.

A special treat was crossing paths with one of my dozen or so ex-stage-wives who I had not seen for thirty years. At that distant time she wished me safe travels to the Antarctic to freeze to death in Ted Nally’s fine play; “Terra Nova,” in the basement of Angel Levas’s fine restaurant in downtown Lexington. Angel actually participated in our production by NOT turning the heat on in the basement. The Shivering Verismo School of Theatre – who knew such a thing existed?

Despite that frigid parting decades past, it was a warm reunion last week.

We three drifted through the beautiful exhibit. I concocted stories behind the images, Joe envisioned staging the plays and operas, and Eric attracted his usual entourage of other museum attendees who wanted a docent to describe and explain. He is remarkably suited for this role: he is intelligent, verbal, charming, and just happens to be a nationally recognized painter himself…and he can juggle anything.

Eventually, our trio reassembled in the museum gift shop where I made my greatest contribution of the day by finding and purchasing a killer tee-shirt for Janie’s sleep-ware collection. Priorities, gentlemen!

Back to the car and back on the road.

Three bohemians.

Three aging beatniks.

No open windows.

No open bottles.

Just cruise control and conversation.

We wended our way home.

Wended…

Le mot juste.

We missed our exit and had to wend our way through much of Woodford County.

Who cares?

It was a sunny day.

The horses (field ornaments all) were sprinkled in their paddocks.

I briefly flashed back to those après school days…

…on the road.

El Vampiro Negro

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It sounds like a horror flick made in Mexico in the early 60’s and reworked by K. Gordon Murray, inexplicably but plangently dubbed by radio announcers in Coral Bay, Florida, and released as a third feature lagniappe on a Santo-driven Saturday all-night Southern California neighborhood screen.

But it’s not……any of it.

Instead, it’s a gripping, non-supernatural 1953 reworking of Fritz Lang’s 1931 jewel “M” that’s actually scarier than the original.

Director Román Viñoly Barreto replaces Peter Lorre’s remarkable performance in the original with a gang of sterling actors from a larger portion of the planet’s population (women in the key roles – whatta concept!)

  • Olga Zubarry is earthy and anxious, vulnerable, but fierce, and she does what the police cannot.
  • Nathán Pinzón is pathetic and pitiless and readily tearful.
  • Nelly Panizza is energetic, hot in her lingerie, and fears neither the authorities nor repercussions…and near to her is not a safe place to be.
  • Roberto Escalarda is cool, cruel, perfectly groomed, and perfectly hypocritical. He also gets my laugh-out-loud line of the film as the prosecutor; “Round up the usual suspects.”

I believe film-makers watch other films……duh.

It would not be a surprise to me to find out Barreto was impressed by Tod Browning’s FREAKS (1932). There were moments during the stalking of the killer when I almost started chanting; “Gobbo-geebo, Gobbo-geebo, now we make you one of us.” And the final corralling of the villain in the sewers smelled much like the demise of Orson Welles in Carol Reed’s brilliant THE THIRD MAN (1949).

It also would not surprise me to learn that the West German 1960’s film interpreters of the Edgar Wallace canon had been exposed to this film. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that homeless blind match-seller before and I was expecting Klaus Kinski to jump out of the shadows at every turn.

I was also arrested by the long shots of shoes walking the rain-shiny nighttime cobblestone streets. A similar sequence opened Koreyoshi Kurahara’s excellent flick; I AM WAITING (1957).

Film-makers watch other films.

Two other odd thoughts…

This film, according to the always thoughtful analysis of Eddie Muller, was part of a golden period of Argentine film-making in the early 50’s. That productive time was truncated by government turmoil and the strangling sunami of films from Hollywood. Argentine films continued to be shown and win awards in Europe, but few made it to the States. This economic imperialism was replicated in other parts of the film world. While I’m pleased that the US product was so well-done and well-received, I ponder if the price of losing variety and diversity was awfully high.

<< sigh >>

Something we’ll never know…

Also…

There’s a scene on a roller coaster; usually a happy choice for me.

I love roller coasters and wish to ride them all…but I didn’t care for this one. It was a coaster that only held two people in each gondola for each ride and only one gondola for each ride. The two riders were genuinely terrified, as I would be. It’s one thing to be hurled to destruction doing a foolish thing along with a crowd of brave fools. It’s quite another to be a solo fool.

Perhaps that explains lemmings.

Perhaps that explains political rallies.

I need to cipher on that a bit.

The film is quite fine. If you get a chance to see it…lucky you.

My Guerilla Theatre Career

Junesboy, Lexington Theatre, Lexington-70's

“I was so much older then. I’m younger than that now.” – Bob Dylan.

“Come ON Roger! Dammit!

MOVE!

We’ve got to GO!”

These delicately emphasized instructions landed like thunder on 1970 Southern-Baptist-raised freshman ears that were still trying to accommodate Rhett Butler’s curtain line.

The assault continued; “Get in the car! Sit on Dixie’s lap! She’ll explain. Have you got your sign?”

The sheer number of questions generated thus far was daunting, but offered a promising seating arrangement for the adventure (though he would have preferred to be providing the lap).

Rodge doubted the diplomatic wisdom of quizzing the leader of this expedition (an upper-classman of the Theatre Department named Baker). He decided instead to pursue Dixie’s expertise — seeking to understand the intentions of this adventure and perhaps, eventually, pursuing the attentions of Dixie herself.

In the car for the next three blocks…

Dixie draped a shirt card with strings attached around my neck. It read; “Broad Form Deed.”

She explained; “That’s who you’re playing; Broad Form Deed. We’re protesting against the Peabody Coal Company recruiting today on campus. Baker’s playing the Appalachian farm owner – you’ll see his sign –. When he asks you; ‘What do I get if I sign?’ you smile real big, maybe wiggle some jazz hands behind ears and say; ‘One hundred dollars!’”

“Wait. I’m playing an inanimate object?”

“Yes.”

“What’s a broad form deed, anyway?”

“A slimy legal thing.”

“What’s my motivation?”

“To not get arrested. If you see anyone in a uniform, lose the sign and disappear into the crowd…if there is one. Oh, and if Baker likes you and remembers, he may be the student director of next fall’s show. Could help in auditions. Oh, here we are.”

“Here” was in front of Kennedy’s Book Store at the corner of Limestone and Avenue of Champions. We tumbled out and stumbled about in front of 10-12 mildly befuddled students. I shouted; “One hundred dollars!” We reloaded the car and proceeded to a restaurant named Alfalfa’s, three other campus sites, and a witness-less finale at the courthouse in downtown Lexington (several miles from campus and half a state from the Peabody Coal Company).

From there we dissolved into the night.

I had long lost my sign.

I hoofed it back to my campus apartment.

I now had a performance experience that never appeared on my resumé.

I never saw Dixie again.

My arrest record remained pristine.

A couple years later, John Prine’s Muhlenburg County. Resonated immediately with me by his mention of the Peabody Coal Company.

All-in-all……I suppose I was made better by the afternoon. But…………Dixie was pretty cute.

Funeralville III

Junesboy, ,

The Queen of England died recently.

Perhaps you heard.

She was an admirable lady of 96, an inspirational, if mostly symbolic ruler of an empire who could open a flower show or diagnose a faulty carburetor and fix that blighter.

She became Queen the year I finally achieved successfully sleeping quietly through the night, to my parents’ relief. Thus, she’s the only Queen of England I’ve known, though, frankly speaking, I’ve had no urgent need for a “Mum” at all. I had my Mom.

My Mom died last week.

I doubt you heard…and that’s as she probably wished it.

At the end of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”, Willie Loman’s wife posits at Willie’s graveside; “Attention must be paid.” The first time I saw the play, I remember smirking silently at that line; “My Mom would beg to differ.”

In John Steinbeck’s CANNERY ROW, Flora points out; “Some people don’t want to put themselves forward.” That……that…………

I don’t know why.

She was an admirable lady of 94, a suddenly widowed (at 44) mother of three schoolgirls and a hippie actor/son. She fixed those blighters too.

I remember…

…We would sit in the kitchen around that yellow-topped table and listen to the UK basketball games on the radio (televised games had yet to be invented). Mom would have her pad and pencil. She would keep meticulous score. She would know precisely how many points Cotton Nash and Dan Issel, and Mike Pratt and Scotty Baesler had scored. It was important. School spirit was a fine thing, but hard facts ruled the day.

…The day she mildly explained to my Little League coach who had failed to put me in that day’s game, that he was sequestering a future Hall-of-Fame first-baseman on his bench to his team’s detriment. I started the next game, though I still await that Hall-of-Fame invite. That day I learned the power of advocacy and persuasion. Don’t confront…form a discussion group.

…Before I started first grade, we would hike every Tuesday five blocks to the bookmobile, check-out our maximum ten books and hike back. We would haunt bookstores and thrift shops with book piles. Before I could read, I would “read” these picture books and make up stories to fit the pictures. I had been promised by my Mom that when I started school they would teach me to read. I returned home angry from my first day of school because I still couldn’t read.

No.

My Mom didn’t have a parade of black Range Rovers through the streets of Edinburgh, or guns, or cannons, or horses, or military uniforms of centuries of history, or choirs…and that’s as she probably wished it.

I fear her memorial will be in the rider’s seat of my car when I’m driving alone. There’s always a book there, in case I get stuck at a slow drive-through, or a train crossing, or simply a longish red traffic light.

I think she would have wished that too.