The Outlaw Josey Wales

Before it becomes history or too late to say anything I just want to mention one thing and say, I love Clint Eastwood and I don't care who knows it.

I don’t know if we are diametrically opposed to each other politically. The fact that he is an avowed conservative who believes in equal rights, pro-choice, the environment and ant-war is not very far from my own slightly left of Karl Marx when the feeling’s right beliefs and who doesn’t believe in big government but believes the George Orwell quote that some of us are moreequal than others. I think we have a common ground where we can worship on.

I’m not talking about the area where he’s been making movies for the last 50 years and I’ve been watching them for the last 30, although that might help explain my feelings for him. I’m talking about the fact that we both see and acknowledge the same issue or problem and neither one of us are satisfied with what the solution has been. Clint’s idea to solve things, at least on film, has always been to go in growling, teeth bared and with a big dick swinging in the wind. Don’t believe me, look at the clip below and tell me the Magnum isn’t a substitute for a body part. My solution has always been to wait for the Revolution and give or take names like Madame Defarge did in the Dickens novel although I doubt that would be any more effective Clint’s answer.

Even so, to have been able to see The Outlaw Josey Wales at the Republican Convention take down the President of the United States just by doing some simple local diner ad hoc scene was a sight to be remembered  as only a top-notch director could have done. It was just unfortunate that it was so good and out shone everything else that when Mitt came along to state his own case, no one really cared and more than that no one really listened.

But like I said earlier I love Clint Eastwood, and if he were running for something I might look at the GOP and see if there was some way that I could find myself supporting them. But instead of The Outlaw Josey Wales running they have my governor The Outlaw Jersey Whale standing in front of that moving blue screen making me feel sea-sick, and that bitch I’ll never support.

My how times have changed

Hattie McDaniel

You know I'm probably one of the few black men not born before 1939 who actually like's Hattie McDaniel's performance as Mammy in the movie Gone With The Wind. Ms. McDaniel showed a strength, integrity and loyalty in a role that was probably very unreal for people who had lived that role in real life. But her truth shines through and maybe that was the reason why she received the award for best supporting actress in a movie, I don't know. What I do know is that I'm always very happy to remember her and see her act even if it is once every 10 or 12 years.

Octavia Spencer

I suppose that I will have the same feeling when watching Octaivia Spencer in her Academy Award performance in The Help. I don't really know because I haven't seen it yet. I mean there's only so many times that I can accept excellence being recognized in black women when they play maids.

Sure someone will bring up Whoopi or Halle or God forbid Mo'Nique, but somehow that just gives me the feeling of everything being circular and that black women are back where they started and it makes me feel a little disturbed.

But it's Black History Month and you get what you can get when you can get it and this is what they they will be writing about in the years to come, so my hat's off to Octavia Spencer and all the others that will follow her. Congratulations!

As The Vultures Circle.

I was going to just to do one blog concerning Black History Month. It was probably going to be about how Phyllis Hymen made love to me in the Blue Note in New York and she didn't even know that I existed. But it probably isn't a good time right now due to the recent circumstances. Instead I'll try and think of something else and figure out a way of seeing how it relates to me.

Until then, lets all try to figure out why people on TV are so crass. Or...have they always been that way and it's taken people like Jon Stewart and his gang to point it out?

The Daily Show
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Why Does It Hurt So Bad?

I refuse to make this blog the damn obituary page...but when I was going to school in East Orange and she was singing with Teddy Pendergrass, I fell in love with her. I never met her or saw her in person, but she was Nippy the local girl who was going good and getting big and had the voice of an angel. She was beautiful.

But that was a long time ago so why....?

Don Cornelius

You’ve got to be shitting me, Don Cornelius is dead? The legendary writer, producer and host of Soul Train has been found dead from a self inflicted gunshot wound? Well fuck me! Hmm…

Well I suppose this is where I should speak about all the good things that he brought to American television, black entertainment and world music. This is the part where I droop my shoulders and lift my head to the sky and relive and feel the warmth of childhood memories. I think of the joy of watching his show every Saturday morning, listening to the many artists who would perform. From black to white, from young to not that old, from R&B to pop, you were never disappointed by who was there. They gave their all as they lip-synched to their own hits wearing clothes so tight that sometimes you could tell the religion of the men and which of the women had had boob jobs or were in need of one. I remember watching week after week and finally recognizing many of the individual dancers who would be there and grading each one of women on how they danced or the men on how questionable their masculinity was. I remember being thrilled waiting and watching for the Soul Train Line where the dancers in pairs would wait to perform their 5 to 10 second bit and I would dream about what I would do if I was there. That’s what I should talk about, but I won’t because remember him as being a miserable cunt.

I’m sure I’ve written about this before, I just don’t remember when, but I remember seeing Don Cornelius at the MGM Hotel in Vegas at the Tyson Bruno fight. I was there with a bunch of community kids and a few adults as guests of the boxing promoter Don King. The boys were there happy to see people, celebrities that they had only seen on TV and were collecting autographs and snapping pictures of everyone. I saw a couple of the boys who were about 9 or 12, recognize Cornelius who was sitting down on one of those ottoman things the hotel had looking up sad and old speaking to someone. They ran over to him and excitedly asked to take a picture of him. He looked at them, brushed them aside like yesterday's lint and waved them off.

Bastard!

Evelyn, one of the adults in charge, walked over to them and apologized to the man and took the boys away with her. He didn’t even flinch and my disgust for him grew instantly. I walked away.

Well this hasn't actually been a tribute and someday I’ll have to see someone about those traits in me that make me have these visceral feelings, but until then all I have to say is, and I really do mean it, “…as always in parting, we wish you love, peace and soul!” RIP Don Cornelius.

Of Thee I Sing

Marion Anderson

Speaking of Black history Month, when Luther Vandross died a bunch of us at work looked at the pictures of all those who attended the funeral or memorial service.

Of course all the usual suspects were there, the ones with names that you never forget: Quincy, Michael, Diana et al, at least I guess they were there because in actuality I did forget who did show up except for one big and fat woman who seemed stressed in all the wrong places with strange clothing that no one could recognize. Arnessia, a co-worker asked me who I thought it was. I said, “Next” as in the most obvious person next to die. It was about 5 minutes later when someone said that the unknown lady was Aretha.

Looking back I think I might have been a little callous in my assessments.

Aretha Franklin, who knew then that she would be invited to the Inauguration of the 1st black President of the United States or there would even be a 1st black President of the United States. Who knew then that more people would talk about her hat rather than the historical significance of her singing, “My country tis of thee,” on the steps of the Capitol. The same song that Martin Luther King had quoted from over 40 years earlier further down the Mall on the steps of The Lincoln Memorial, “Sweet land of liberty.” The same song that Marion Anderson had sung, but without the Anderson changes, at the Lincoln Memorial 70 years before after being invited by Mrs. Roosevelt to sing there when she had been refused permission to sing at Constitution Hall because of her race, “of thee I sing.” Who knew that she would become part of a historic moment that had come full circle?

As almost everyone knows, Aretha has been ill recently but I saw a tribute to her a few weekends ago on the Grammy Awards ceremony and I thought she looked good. Although getting sick is one hell of a way to lose weight. How many of those Grammys does she have anyway? I guess when you are recognized as the Queen of Soul all the facts and the figures, which one can find elsewhere, don’t really matter as long as she can express our sadnesses and still bring joy and peace and redemption to her listeners.

I hope things turn out well for her and us. I really do.

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin Tribute (Live at Grammy Awards 2011)
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Another Piece of my Childhood Gone

I think that I been able to go to the movies by myself since I was 8 or 9. There was that brief stint during my 20's when I wouldn't be seen dead without someone by my side, but now I'm back to where I was before. If no one will go to see something with me, I'll lose no sweat off of my nuts and just go by myself. Maybe I'm that way because of the movies that I used to see.....Bond, James Bond.

You see back when I was a kid, you had to be a millionaire's son, or damn close to one, to have a video machine, so I saw all my old movies in second run theatres. I would go to the local theatre or not tell my parents and catch a bus out of town to see a double billing of something or other. Some times I would be lucky enough to see some white girl shake her naked and well shaped pink nippled titties on the screen for all of 5 seconds in a movie that I would completely forget the name of after leaving.  Other times I'd be lucky to see a Thunderball and Dr. No special and see what real adventure was about.

It wasn't just seeing the decrepit old man running about on the screen that excited me, although I think that Sean Connery was in his mid-30's when he did those movies, it was the pace of the things, the jokes that I didn't understand, the veneer of being smarter than the other guy and the music, oh yes the music.

The film scores in a Bond movie are often simple but done in such away that punctuates and dramatizes every scene,  making the film and the audience climb into that other realm, the realm of movie magic.Much of that  music was written and orchestrated by John Barry. He suffered a heart attack and died this weekend.

As Sir George Martin said about his work,  "You could always identify John's scores. They were very dramatic. They leant themselves to the film in a way that enhanced everything. He was an extraordinary musician - very, very clever.

"Without John Barry there would be no James Bond theme, because the whole essence of that was the excitement, the drama, the orchestration."

Of course John Barry did the scores for many other movies, Born Free, Out of Africa, Indecent Proposal just to name 3 out of over 100, but it will the sounds that I heard in my childhood and the soundtrack of my dreams that I will remember him for.

If you have a minute, take a listen and you'll see what I mean.

No Obituaries Needed

I wonder why we only remember certain people when they’re dead. I wonder why we can’t honor them when their career has waned a little and nothing is going on with them but they are still here for us to tell them that we appreciated what they did for us.

By now everybody has heard that Teena Marie is dead. Of course I was saddened that she should die so young with so much left to contribute to the music world and I should say something about how she had an affect over my adolescence but to be honest I was never really a fan of hers. Yes she did "Behind the Groove" which would blow your mind and make you go without underwear so you could shake money maker on the dance floor, but it wasn’t the singing that I liked. It was the bass and the beat and the arrangements that moved me. It was more Rick James than Lady T, more Funk than R&B. But that was still no excuse for me to wait until she died just to say,”Hey.”

Today Gerry Rafferty also died. I sort of wish that I had bought his music and supported his efforts and said that he meant something to me, but I had never heard of him or his group The Stealers. They played "Stuck in the Middle with You," as the background music for one of the sickest and best movie scenes ever shot until today and for that I will always be grateful. If you have the time take click on this link and you’ll see what I mean and maybe we'll say so long and farewell together.

A few months ago I was in a friend’s car and he was playing a copy of Lionel Richie’s latest album. I laughed telling him that Ritchie was so yesterday and out of date and he told me that Lionel Ritchie may not have been as relevant as he used to be but he still was a phenomenal talent that should be recognized and respected. He was right of course.

I remember when the singer was at the top of his game when he was in The Commodores and after. He was king of the world and dancing on the ceiling and proving to everyone. He was doing R&B and Country, writing songs not just for himself but Kenny Rogers and other artists and was breaking all sorts of records and winning all sorts of awards…Well he would have been except for that small detail of Michael Jackson and his “Thriller” album kicking everyone to the curb and leaving nothing but dust and crumbs behind.

But Lionel Ritchie still wrote and still performed and still produced, and even though I may have been a little too young and inexperienced to realize what he was writing about at the time I do now. And even though I will probably still not buy his new music or pay to see him perform, I recognize him as a significant part of my life and salute him before the obits are needed by just saying, ”Hey,” and, "Good job."

Who is Brenda Vaccaro

Normally I don’t even care about award shows. They are all about people or things that I know nothing about and don’t want to know, or if I do, will forget about before the end of the next commercial. In fact because I love movies, the only show that I will watch is the Oscars but that’s only during the commercials of whatever else is on another channel. I used to say that the only thing that would make television worse would be to add another stupid award show, that was until someone discovered the reality show and TV and my life took a turn for the worse.

Anyway, for some reason I was going down the list of award nominations for the 2011 Golden Globes and under the category for Best Supporting actress in a TV movie there was a bunch of people listed but no Brenda Vaccaro. Brenda Vaccaro? Who’s Brenda Vaccaro you ask? Well let me tell you about Brenda Vaccaro. By the way, have I mentioned the name Brenda Vaccaro yet?



I first came across Brenda Vaccaro in Airport ’75 or maybe it was ’77, it was a while ago, and then again in the Jacqueline Susann film Once is Not Enough which she had done before the Airport movie. I had heard that she was once the older lady in Michael Douglas’s life when he was young enough to have an older lady. But Since then, nothing, Nothing that is until I saw her earlier this year, big as a Buick and just as ugly, in the Dr Death, Jack Kevorkian bio-pic You Don’t Know Jack.

In the movie she plays the role of Jack’s vibrant and yet caring sister that goes tits to forehead with Al Pacino with conviction and believability. She steals scenes when she has to and subjugates herself when she needs to, which was most of the time because she was dealing with Al and let’s face it no one can really go up against Al Pacino. She isn’t the star but she helps the movie move along when the movie needs to move along. She made my experience good and that was worth a mention I should think.

So it looks like…don’t you just hate it when people start off a sentence with the word so. I was watching CNN the other day and the guest started every thought with the word “so.” After a while it became so annoying and I realized that I had noticed it before with other people on TV or on the radio and that it must have become a trend or something. Either way I hate it. It’s now one of my pet peeves like people riding bicycles on the sidewalks only to risk life and limb to young pedestrians and old people as they go about business. But I’m going off on a tangent now and ranting. As I was saying...

So it looks like there will be no need for me to watch the Golden Globes next year and I wish I can say that they will miss me, but since I’ve never watched them before, my guess is that they won’t.

Palin Power: Bristol Earns Personal Best on DWTS

Just a quick blurb. If no talent Bristol Palin wins Dancing with the Stars on Tuesday, I have $100 that's saying that no brains mother Sarah is winning the presidency in 2012. I'm just saying.

Say it ain't so Joe

I wish I could embed the video that I want here, but Oprah didn’t become a billionaire by giving stuff away for nothing. So you will have to follow the link or watch the fuzzy bootleg Youtube version below and go to the 6 minute mark to know exactly what I’m trying to say. Although I’m sure that there are a lot of people who will have already seen it and come to their own conclusions.

Sometime last week I was watching a repeat broadcast of the Oprah Winfrey Show, the one that had Michael Jackson’s children in it. Funny how that still makes me chuckle inside thinking about the blood lines must work in the Jackson family. But I was watching the show, I suspect the same way most men watch Oprah with half a mind focused on something diametrically opposed to whatever she is harping on about, when I thought I heard old Papa Joe Jackson say that he had beaten his children and how proud he was of it. He thought that he had done a good job because other people’s children who hadn’t experienced his form of discipline had ended up in jail, or on drugs, or even dead.

Since it was just me and the TV in the room the only thing I could do was ask myself, “…er did he forget Michael?”

Room for one more...

You will have to know what I'm talking about to see how the title of this piece fits in, but it’s Halloween and you can have all your Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger or Friday the 13th movies. You can have all the slice and dice, slash and burn, cut ‘em up and throw some fake blood about and make you jump movies, but they are don’t make you think movies and that to me is the true horror.

Speaking of thinking, I remember hearing when Michael Redgrave died and wondering, “Who’s he?” Then hearing that he was a famous actor and the father of Vanessa Redgrave and wondering, “Who’s she?”

I would find out later that Vanessa had a sister, Lynn who had a TV show about some sort of hospital that I’ve forgotten the name of that I would watch. Vanessa also had an actor brother Corin and a daughter Natasha Richardson who I had seen star in a movie with Christopher Walken and would later marry the actor Liam Neeson. Vanessa had another daughter whose name is I’m not sure of, but since I don’t think I’ve seen any of her work, it doesn’t matter right now.

In time I began to learn about the contributions that all the Redgraves had made to film and cinema, if not the theatre. I began learn that each time one of them was the screen, the father, the daughters, the granddaughters, even the son now and again, there was that special spark that lights up the screen and made you take notice of what was going on. The best of them was of course the father, the original, and I don’t know why that is but it just is.

You can see how good he is in many of his movies from the mid 30’s and early 50’s but since it’s Halloween the one that I want to show here is Dead of Night where Redgrave plays a ventriloquist whose dummy starts to take on a personality of its own. This was or is a sort of early version of the Twighlight Zone where in fact many parts of the movie could be found as whole episodes of the later produced TV show sans Rod Serling doing the prolog. 



I’ve only seen this movie once before when they used to show classic movies on regular TV on a regular basis, but it’s always stuck with me.

Like the guy says, if you’re looking for something to curl up to this Halloween weekend, you could do worse by passing up this movie.

Oh and Happy Halloween.

Nothing More To Be Said Here

Alright but I've said it before, Betty White is a living legend.

Lena

Some people you have to look at all the facts and the figures and the stats to see what they are about. Others, you just have to feel them to appreciate them.

There will be no dates or numbers here for you to look at, just a celebration.

And the winner is...

Is it just me or does it seem that Jay Leno isn't really sitting on the same sofa with Oprah and Dave, but just added in digitally?



Oh and I'm sure I've said this before, but Betty White is the hardest working person in showbiz today and maybe ever. She is not only a Golden Girl but she should be recognized as a national institution also.

Teddy

The important and responsible thing for me to do would be say something about the huge amount of lives lost in Haiti from the recent earthquake and the possible further hardships that state will face, I should but I won't. I had wanted to write something about communication and the late night NBC TV debacle here in the States. In fact I've written about half of it but I think it needs to be heavily edited and taken in a different direction even before it's finished. Instead I will write about neither one of them because Philadelphia's own Teddy is gone.

It's not that the life of Teddy Pendergrass will ever be considered that important in the grand scheme of things but I've written about him before because it was Teddy that I fell in love with. I'm not talking about a physical love that you have with someone, although I'm sure that for a lot of people that wouldn't have been a bad thing; I'm talking about that scary stalker kind of love where I didn't want to have Teddy Pendergrass, I wanted to be Teddy Pendergrass. I wanted to be drop dead gorgeous and have women who would drop their draws and feel moist between their legs at the first sound of my voice like they did for him. I wanted to have the same animal power and attraction that he had that would make other men walk away with their manhoods cheapened and shrunken, or engorged and maybe wanting to drop their draws too depending on their needs, because he was more man than they were. I wanted to look like him, I wanted to be him.

Truth be told, I was in North Jersey when I really became aware of Teddy Pendergrass. For just a short time from when he sang the duet with East Orange's Whitney Houston who everybody said was gay, and the car accident that would cripple him at 32 for the rest of his life, I took notice of him and realized that he used to be the lead singer of Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, he was the sexy one with the voice. And now he's gone.

I guess that's the way of all things. Eventually everything and everyone will die if only to make room for others. With all the things that are going on in the world it's probably not that important that Teddy is no longer here except in that Disney "Circle of Life" kind of way but I'm glad I was a around for just a brief part of his career and his life after it because...because he brought me joy.

Reality TV that you can't find in the States

Did you know that CBS was still fighting the fine that they were charged with by the FCC for showing Janet Jackson's titty during the Superbowl?

I am always amazed by the amount of things that people can put on TV in other countries that would bring about the destruction of civilization in the US as well as the wrath of God if the same things were shown here. I long for the day when people can be a little less puritanical here and perhaps a little more accepting of the way people really are.

Also, I'm always surprised by the amount of artists who will not even do a TV commercial in America because they believe it may demean their careers but will at the slip of a hat shake it all loose and show daddy's little dividend just because they have crossed the borders.

Take Sisqo for example on Britain's Big Brother. Can you really see him doing that here? Would you like to see him do that here?

Pomp and Circumstance

I promise I will write something worth writing about soon, but since Congress will no longer be giving the Congressional Gold Medal or whatever it was to Tiger Woods I thoroughly and without reservation endorse these commemorative collectible plates in its stead.

Death & The Obituary page

Larry called and said that E. Lynn Harris had died. I knew of course already because it had been all over the net. In fact the first time I read it was on someone’s Facebook page.

I was never a big fan of Mr. Harris, I remember reading his first book when he published it himself, Invisible Life, and thinking how much potential he had. Then he went to a big publishing house and I read the second one and thought that it was trite. There may have been a third book of his that I read but I can’t recall. I felt that he had sold out and I had long lost interest in his work by that time which listening to his last interview on NPR this year, he knew already.

When I was young my grandmother would scan the obituaries page in the news paper to see who had gone to glory before she had. She would see a name and recognize the person as Mrs. So & So’s hairdresser’s cousin who had lived 4 blocks up from where she did as a child and who had gone away for a few months when she was 16 and had come back with a new baby sister. Or she would see listed Mr. Such & Such who lived at the end of the street who was a drunk, or a fancy man, or both and used to make her laugh with his antics when she was young. Now granny doesn’t do that anymore. Partly because being almost 90, most of the people that she knew have passed on already and partly because even if she did know them, I’m not sure she’d recognize them. Come to think of it, I’m not sure she’d recognize me and I’m her only grandson.

Instead, I seem to have taken her place when it comes to looking for news of the dead. Of course I don’t actually do the Obits page in the news paper. In fact I don’t think I’ve read a newspaper in about 5 or 6 years now. I mean I do read the Metro that you get at the train station for free, but everybody knows that’s just a glorified excuse for advertising pamphlet. By the time you’ve read headline for each story, you’ve already read a third of whatever it is that they’ve written. What I do is search for names on the web.

This means of course that if you are a nobody like me, you’re probably still alive as far as I’m concerned since there will probably be very little news about you. But if you are a celebrity, a someone worthy of mention on CNN or *choke* Fox then I’ve got you. I‘ll be able to tell small stories about how I almost met you or how someone I knew almost met the next door neighbor of yours. I will be able to say this, that and the other about how my life was changed and how I became a better person or how I found Jesus.

From Maude to Malden, from Richardson to Jackson and from Harris to…I don’t know Cronkite, I will be able to find something to reflect on, and I guess that’s okay with me. At least then I won’t have to mourn for someone I know. I won’t have to grieve over a family member that lifted me up when I was down, or miss a friend that listened to me when no one else would. I can pretend that death happens to other people and not to those I know and love.

And that's the way it is.

Fire Island Invasion 2009

On Friday at around 4pm I was at Independence Mall in Philadelphia. There was, as some people may call it, a protest rally by some black owned construction companies. They were demanding that more construction work be opened for black people in the city. They said that the President’s House that George Washington lived in before the White House was built and which John Adams moved into, should be reconstructed on the mall with black labor at the exclusion of others since the first house would have been originally built with slave labor. All very interesting I thought, but not quite the spirit of “Brotherly Love” the city is supposed to have especially when we were supposed to be celebrating the birth of the nation in the city that it all began. I decided to go my gym and come back later for the concert that was being held on the mall with Peter Nero and the Philly Pops.

I did go back and since I had my video camera I shot a few scenes of the Pop’s version of the theme from ET and something from Benny Goodman. Then when they started playing “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again” it was time for me to go home before the South started to rise again. Plus I knew that I would have to get up early to celebrate July 4th, the next day, not by coming back to the mall to listen to speeches or thinking of the Founding Fathers or heading to someone’s horrible barbeque, but to where I seem to go every year now, Fire Island.

The story is that back in 1976 a few drag queens were refused service from a bar in the Pines on Fire Island. The men went back to Cherry Grove on another part of the island and with their friends on the day the country was celebrating the bi-centennial anniversary for independence, they boarded a boat and invaded the Pines in full drag regalia. They and others have been doing that every year since then and organized by Panzi in the yellow. It has become known as the Fire Island Invasion of the Pines.

I have been going for the last 5 or 6 years and I wish I could say that I have been in costume, but I haven’t worn mother’s wig and pearls since I was about 8 and never in public. Usually I just head to the beach, strip down and relax. This time however because of the mass of people this year they ran out of room on the ferry that I usually take so I arrived at Cherry Grove at around 1pm just as the revelers were about to leave the Grove for the Pines. I decided to shoot this video with too much wind noise going on and to steal some pictures from flickr.com and some of the music from Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

I hope you enjoy it just as much as hope you enjoyed your weekend as I did mine.