One Hundred Years

A few weeks ago when I saw the trailer saying that they were releasing the 3D version of James Cameron’s movie Titanic, I couldn’t really understand why. I mean I know that it was one of the biggest box office draws in the history of all film and cinema, but I never liked it.

At least I’ve never liked the first part of movie where the hero from steerage was able to wine and dine and romance with a passenger from First Class. I mean in real life in those days he’d have as much chance of that happening as I would have as a black man eating at the captain’s table every night, it wouldn’t happen. But then I realized it is the 100th anniversary of the tragedy and so of course Cameron and the movies studios are going to cash in….again. Can you say Ca-ching? But I can’t blame the director for trying and probably succeeding when there are people like me around.

I remember the year before Titanic came out originally; even I got caught up in the hype and went to Atlantic City where the man who had recently discovered the wreck was appearing at the convention center and exhibiting artifacts from the ship. He was raising money for the preservation of wreckage site and the materials that he had brought up. I bought a piece of coal from him that was brought up from one of the bunkers of the ship for $10. When I think about it, it probably cost the White Star Line, the owners of the Titanic, about $10 a ton for coal back then, but what are you going to do, that what as all I could afford. I saw it on QVC a few years later being sold for $25 a piece, I wonder what I could get for it now? 1912 must have been a hell of a year, the sinking of the Titanic and the death of Robert Falcon Scott or Scott of the Antarctic as I grew up knowing him as.

You must be wondering by now what any of this has to do with the video above; absolutely damn nothing other than...

In the movie South Pacific, this song is usually the furthest part of the film that I can get to without tearing up and changing the channel. You see the woman singing reminds me of my paternal grandmother, except my grandmother was a little lighter skinned with even more Chinese shaped eyes. It seems her mother was a working girl in the classic sense of the title and Mr. Chin was a client of hers, if Chin was even his real name. But Granny had the same height and shape and moved like this woman. She even wore the same hair style all the years that I knew her. I doubt that she ever sang like this woman but it’s been over 30 years since I’ve seen her. I’ve lost or worn out of everything that she ever gave to me and all I have now beyond the memories is the realization that the year that my little piece of coal went down with the Titanic was same year that she was born.

So all this just to say Happy Birthday Granny Muriel! One hundred years.

Coal from the Titanic

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!

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.

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.

I Remember

I am so old, that I remember when an Apatosaurus used to be called a brontosaurus on the Flintstones and when Pluto used to be a god, a Disney dog and a planet, but I don’t remember when I started to like classical music.

It could have been when I used to take music classes and the teacher would play “The Planets” by Holst and I recognized part of it as the theme music of some TV show or other but I don’t think so. It might also have started when I would watch Bugs Bunny do “The Barber of Seville” or his version of Wagner’s “The Ring” in “What’s Opera Doc?” both shows being classics in their own right. But again, I don’t think so.

It was probably when my father would play his disco album versions of Bach or Beethoven back in the day when we had records. Or when he would play A Whiter Shade of Pale, not the original Procol Harum version, but one done with a reggae beat by but someone I have long ago forgotten. And then it took me years to realize that was just a rip off of Bach’s Air on G. Since then, I have learned to appreciate classical music in the way that it can be used to feed or purvey emotions, especially when it is combined with visuals like video and film. Like the scene in the movie “Se7en” where Morgan Freeman is walking in a library looking for clues and absolutely nothing happens. But as soon as Bach is played in the background, what was going to be just another piece of celluloid lying on the cutting room floor turns into something erudite and wonderful.

Last weekend I had intended to buy Philadelphia’s own Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.” Ever since I saw or heard it being used in the Oliver Stone’s “Platoon”, I have always loved it and thought that I would use it somewhere at sometime for something. So since I hate going to record stores without knowing exactly what I want, I went on YouTube to see which orchestra or version would the best one for me. When I saw the BBC Orchestra from the Royal Albert Hall I wasn’t that impressed except for the fact that they were playing it in memoriam for September 11th, just a few days after the event and I remembered.

I remembered every minute of that Tuesday from when my sister called me at work from Florida to say that the World Trade Center had been struck. And then she called again to say that it had been struck again and then again to say that one of the buildings had collapsed and so I called her nuts because everybody knew those buildings were built to withstand airplane crashes. I remember how my Ex called and left me several messages each time I was away from my phone. He would tell me that his bus had been diverted away from the New York because no one knew what was going on and that he had arrived at the Lincoln Tunnel just minutes after the second plane had struck and that he needed help. I remember trying to get back to him to find where he was and what he wanted me to do, but the all the New York lines, cell phones and land lines were busy. I remember thinking that logically, everyone I knew would be safe, but I felt frustrated and to be honest a little scared, not for me but for everyone else.

Now it’s been almost ten years since those days and I wonder if I’ll remember as much ten years from now? I wonder if this is what it’s like when people say they remember when Kennedy was shot or the few who are left who remember when FDR died. So much has happened since then but probably not as much as has stayed the same, but I remember.

Roman Holiday

I promise that I will do just one more post on Rome before I completly lose all readership through boredom after this one. But I saw Roman Holiday sometime before I was 10 and there has always been one scene that I remember about it and I thought wouldn't it be fun to re-live it.


So I'm walking around for for what seemed like half a day looking for this thing, well really maybe an hour and I realized that I had been circling it a couple times because...



...isn't life a bitch?

The Ten Commandments

For some reason I have developed certain TV movie and traditions over the years for which I have no explanation for. Like, and I have never told anyone this before, I always cry when I watch the Sound of Music. When Capt. Von Trapp is hiding on the roof top or grave yard, I’m never quite sure, with his family while the Nazis search for them. Then Rolfe who is in love with one of the girls finds them and betrays them, tears will just start to roll down my cheeks. I don’t plan to do it. I don’t even plan to watch the movie, but I always catch it and I always feel shivers up my spin during that scene.

Another tradition is watching the 1956 version of The Ten Commandments every year around Easter. I try not to, but as soon as I switch on to the local ABC station and see it playing, I will forget whatever I was doing or planning to do and watch as much as I can. That means I watching it up to when the Israelites who were singing and dancing and having sex around the Golden Calf fall into the pit of fire, or 2 minutes away from the end credits. Did I say people were having sex around the Golden Calf? I may have been projecting. That probably happened at the clubs that I used to go to where the white people acted like they reliving the Golden Calf scene and the black people mainly stood on the outskirts trying to get a look at what was going on so they could condemn it later. Ah memories.

The strange thing is, I don’t even like The Ten Commandments. I remember seeing it on the big screen in the late 70’s and I was impressed by it. But since then, the more and more that I’ve seen I realize that it’s really a bad movie. The actors all play as if they are acting for the people in the balcony with stultified gestures and over the top dialogue that came straight out of the 1920’s. In fact in this version, I bet if you were turn the sound down for 30 or 45 minutes you would still know what was going on because it seems like the director, old Cecil B. himself, used his notes from his 1923 version of the movie. And the fact that ABC has turned a 3 hour movie into a 4½ hour movie with commercials doesn’t really help.

I can’t help myself, I have to watch it. Each year I have to look and see if I can find where Edward G. Robinson says, ”Where’s you Moses noowww?” I’ve never caught it, only heard people say it's there. I still thrill at Yul Brynner saying with hands on hips, “So let it be written, so let it be done.” And I still love to watch Anne Baxter vamp up her interpretation of Gloria Swanson or some other silent screen great, but with sound; and all of this in glorious Technicolor.

Some people get dressed in silly hats or ill fitting suits or chase around for hard boiled eggs that will put them at risk for salmonella poisoning to celebrate Easter, I watch The Ten Commandments, so sue me. What do you do?

Manners and the Cell Phone

Years and years ago, when Trailways was still in business or at least ran out of Philadelphia, I had gotten back from London and after noticing that everyone there seemed to have one, I decided to get a cell phone for myself.

I remember the Trailways thing because one of my first calls was done on the bus trip back from Boston to Philadelphia. The trip was one of those promotional deals done in order to save the company, $25 round trip for the Memorial Day weekend. I didn’t really want to go to Boston, but it was a hell of lot cheaper than the $500 plus that the airlines wanted to take me to Miami with a one-day advance purchase. Yes as usual I had left everything to the last minute and decided that I had had enough of the DC Memorial Day trips. No one told me at the time the trip to Bean Town would take 6 hours each way and have 2 sever cases of leg cramps.

Anyway, it was the Monday and I remember calling Larry and telling him that I would be arriving in Philly at around whatever time it was and that we should hang out and go to a club when I got there. When I hung up, a little girl who had been watching me came over and said that her mother, sitting behind me to my left would like to know if she could use my phone. I looked at the mother and thought the nerve of some people, doesn’t know me from a sack of shit but wants me to pay for her roaming charges, long distance charges and maybe even international charges if she calls Haiti or wherever she was from, (I’m bigoted that way sometimes, I don’t mean to be, but that’s how it is.) I shook my head and said “no” openly and “bitch” silently.

I bring this up only because I read earlier this week on MSNBC.com an article about the etiquette of cell phone use and how it has degraded the social interaction between many and left the rest of us angered or at least frustrated by the seeming lack of concern by the cell phone user for the privacy and comfort of those not engaged in their conversations.

Curtis is like that. If we are leaving the gym together and in the elevator, he will get on his phone and almost shout into it. Regardless of how many people are in there with us, he will talk, kee-kee and guffaw so loudly that I swear one time I felt the glass walls of the thing start to vibrate.

There was another time when a man on the Speedline, my commuter train, started to call his friend and tell him about his “I”-talian meal that he just had and had washed it down with a nice Chianti. He must have also caught an old movie too. He spoke of how he enjoyed himself until his friend on the other end must have told him that he was going to bed, it was about 9pm and they hung up. Then he called another friend and got to same point in the story when this one said that his wife was calling him and they hung up. And this continued and continued until he got to his station.

I would have felt sorry for this man’s friends having to put up with him, but they got to end their conversations. I and the rest of the passengers in the car heard the same story over and over again for at least 6 times word for word, and each time as clear as a bell even though we were about 20 feet apart. Everyone was starting to get annoyed. I guess like me they just wanted to get 20 minutes or so of peace and quiet after a long day and this bozo was intruding in it.

Speaking of peace and quiet, have you ever travelled on Amtrak along the Northeastern Corridor? Some trains now have a quiet car at the end where conversations and cell phones are forbidden and all electronics must be in the mute mode in order to enhance the ride and joy of their fellow passengers. I love it and try to find it whenever I am on Amtrak.

As for the movies, I won’t even get into the amount of times that I used to hear cells phones ring and conversations start when I was at there. Although now, I have learned to avoid certain places and stay away from those elements that exasperate me. That’s code for me being “Bougie” even though I’m not sure bougie is what really describes me.

A few years ago I was on my cell phone and telling, well he never reads this, Lamont my plans for the weekend.
“I think that I will come up to Neeeew …..York,” a loud release of breath and a pause, “this weekend.”
“Are you alright?” asks Lamont.
“Yeah. I was just stretching,” I said trying to remember not to flush the toilet until after I hung up with him.

Truth be told, I think that wasn’t the only time that I’ve gone through that, nor was Lamont the only person that I’ve done it to. But if someone were to do that to me and show so much disrespect I would try to reach through that phone and I would, I would…

Well, who among us is perfect?

I am a free man!

Alright just to please RunningMom. Apparently the the previous video of the Boy Wonder was offensive to some, so I have decided to move on and add more posts so that it will eventually disappear.

I had intended to write something about Ricardo Montalban and Patrick McGoohan, both of which passed away this week, or this weekend when we celebrate the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. with a day of service and welcome the the first African American President as he takes office on Tuesday. I would something like a week in review. But there isn't much more that I could say that you haven't thought of or couldn't find out and read for yourselves. So just a note.

Most people will remember Mr. Montalban as Mr. Roarke, the nattily dressed host and may I say Architect of Hidden Dreams on the show Fantasy Island, or as one of the old MGM actors they called in when they needed a latin type and Cesar Romero wasn't available. But I have and always will remember him as one of the best science fiction villains that has ever graced the silver screen and the man who is probably responsible for the success of the most successful science fiction franchises ever, Khan. Without him there would never have been a 3rd or 4th or 9th Star Trek movie.

"He tasks me. He tasks me. I will chase him 'round de mooons of the Antares Nebula..." Which really isn't a direct or even correct quote from Khan on Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan, but it's what I remember and it's what I think of and sometimes spit out when I get into that trekkie kind of mood and I'm surrounded by the right people, trek people. With all the sex and danger that he exhibited at age 61 when he did the movie, he has kept me going if only in the hope that maybe one day, some day I could be as smooth real life as he was on screen.

I think I was under 10 when I first saw The Prisoner and I didn't understand it then. Truth be told, when I saw the series being repeated on PBS about 10 years ago, I still didn't understand it. But at the show's opening, which is posted below, Patrick McGoohan runs around trying not to give up information about something and not willing to accept himself as just a number but instead claimed that he was a "free man." This also is something that I strive for, although it's kind of hard to try to do as in a few weeks from now I will be sending in my personal information on tax forms about how I live and what I do and get to be able to live that way and all with a big fat social security number on top.

Speaking of a free man or freedom itself, MLK, 'nuff said.

It can also be said that an Obama in the White House will be will be a direct result of the efforts for freedom that the good reverend Dr. King gave his life for, as did so many others from the march from slavery to the March on Washington DC and beyond. And this is the part where you come in. This is the part where I realize that there is nothing I can say or do that will lift this moment any higher or greater than it already is. This is the part that I will leave to the poets and the historians and to you to record and honor, this moment and this time.

On the way to DC

And the award goes to...

“What this country needs is a good 5¢ cigar,” somebody’s vice-president said at the beginning of the last century.

That is a quote that you can look up on Google to find who said it, but I think you would be hard pressed to find who it was who may have said or decided that what the entertainment industry needed was one more award show. Yes it’s that time of year again.

From the People’s Award to the Oscars, from the Grammys to the World Music Awards, from Essence Magazine Awards to I don’t know, People Magazine’s sexiest man alive award, this nation is rife with award giving shows where everyone pats themselves on the back and congratulates one another for having survived the previous year with work or some other attribute being recognized for being above and beyond that of others.

The only award show that I ever really watch has been the Oscars and that is only because I grew up watching movies, the classics on TV so there is some sort of affinity there that I can’t really explain. Although the last Oscar show, I should call it the Academy Award Show, that I actually appreciated was when John Wayne left his sick bed to present the Best Picture award wearing a tuxedo and hairpiece that were both much too big for him and kept slipping; he had lost a lot of weight at the time. Then he died like two weeks later. But that’s show business and I loved him for it.

I think the best appreciation for an award was done by George C. Scott for his award winning performance in Patton. He not only did not show up for his award but he told them what they could do with it. He was only interested in his work and not the petty politics that go with movie industry that he thought had burned him, as I'm sure petty politics burn other people in other industries or companies. As far as I know that Oscar is still sitting on a shelf in the back of a warehouse somewhere waiting for someone to claim it.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is that awards are fine and everything, but it is the work that is really what it’s about and trying to do the work even more so. The fact that one piece may seem to be better than other pieces to certain people at a certain time is really arbitrary and unimportant in the long run. It’s the work that counts and so I would like to thank the…

Actually I was working up to what this piece was going to be about, but this has already gone on much too long as is that there will have to be a Part II to this, or a So & So Returns to finish up the arc.

By the way, am I only the only person in the world who thinks that Viola Davis who was on screen all of 5 minutes in the movie “Doubt” should get more than just a paycheck for her performance? For a black woman to come up and knock Meryl Streep on her ass when they were together and send her back to acting school, and you know I love me some Meryl, is an achievement worth seeing and experiencing.

Thoughts About the 3rd Reich?

I don’t know when I first started going to the movies on New Year’s Day or when I finally realized that it had become a tradition, but it has. I will go to the movies with a friend, or with a lover. I will drag my sister out to something she has no interest with or I will go by myself because I can’t find anyone to go with me. Sad some will say, but actually I prefer to see a film by myself anyway. There is no need to worry about if the other person is enjoying it, to hold hands or listen to them munch on their popcorn or listen to them slurp from an almost empty soda cup while I try to hear that almost imperceptible point in a movie that will turn it from just a film into a life affirming experience. There is no need for me to hold back the urge to tell someone to just, “shut the fuck up, and try watching the screen like I’m doing.”

I remember one time although it wasn’t a January 1st picture, but the movie was really boring for both me and my partner. In order to stop him from fidgeting, I somehow started to masturbate him. There was no else in our row and very few people behind us and I saw him shoot on the floor and over the seat in front of us as I stroked him. At the time I thought it was truly disgusting and someone was going to have to clean that shit up and then I felt really low afterwards.

Anyway, so recently I’ve been seeing the coming attractions for Valkyrie with Tom Cruise opening on December 25th. It looks like a real snappy piece of work with nice production values and if it is as good as it looks, it may turn out to be not just new but something interesting. Although somehow a movie about a failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler where everybody dies by being shot or hung by piano wire except for Der Führer doesn’t really seem to bring the Christmas spirit out in me, nor would I think in anybody else.

I didn’t think there could have been anything more ridiculous than a marketing campaign for Adolf Hitler at Christmas until I saw yesterday Heath Campbell of New Jersey in the Lehigh Valley who was suing a store for not providing a birthday cake with his 3 year old son’s name in icing on it, Adolf-Hitler Campbell.

Back in the 80’s, Hunterdon County where Mr. Campbell the child’s father is from, was known as Klan country and there was talk of inbreeding so I’m not really that familiar with the area; I’ve just driven through it because there was no real reason for me to stop and or stay awhile.

Campbell says that he is from German descent, although I'm not sure what part of the Rhineland the name Campbell is from, I still sort of understand where he is coming from and I really believe he has a right to name himself and his children whatever he wants. But Campbell seems not only to be showing himself as a racist, but I think he is going out of his way to prove that he is a stupid ass racist not be capable of living in a civilized society especially if he thought that his son’s name wouldn’t have an adverse affect on not only his son but the people around him. This is one man who deserves a beating, not because his ideas and views maybe repugnant to some, but because he is just so damned stupid.

I wonder when young Adolf grows up, what company is going to hire him and put his name on their payroll?

One of my Guilty Pleasures

Nothing here but a quick morning shout out.

I have a bunch of guilty pleasures, some of which have gotten me into trouble now and again. But one of them only keeps me up late late because I always have to watch it from start to end when ever it's on and that is Sweeney Todd. For some reason I just can't get enough of it on TV. Sure it's about crime, revenge, blood lust and cannibalism, and it's hokey and corny but I always get so much more out of it.

For me it's about unrequited love, longing for it but never really getting it. The love of a good life, a good partner, family or even a good business and or occupation that you can be proud of. It's about wanting something and coming so close to it but never being able to hold on to it.

Anyway as Rod Serling used to say, "Submitted for your approval..."

Random Thoughts

Nothing is going on and I am not sure what I am going to for the next few days. I suppose I shall do the usual, which means just going through the motions. Doing what I have to do and not because I want to do it. But I’m sure I have options.

It’s Halloween and there is the old silent German vampire movie, Nosferatu, which they are going to play at the Unitarian church in Philly for a charity event accompanied by live organ music as it must have been done when the movie first came out. That might be nice. But I’ve seen it before and after seeing Freddie Kruger and other countless slasher movies, I’m not sure that overacting and bad lighting will do it for me this weekend. Plus I’m not sure that I could get anyone to go with me for that one, although that’s never stopped me before. And also, I can see it for free down below.

There are of course a large number of different parties going on, both privately and publically. Maybe I’ll do one of those. However since no one has invited me out a party, I invariably never show up even when I am invited, I may head to a bar or club. That means that I will end up regretting it on Saturday thinking that I spent way too much money on some rat hole for very little entertainment and watered down drinks. Well I guess that means Bill Maher on HBO, oh how I hate that show, or New York City for the parade.

I haven’t done the New York's Village Halloween Parade since the 80’s. I wonder if it’s changed much. I can try out the camera I got last month and see how it works at night. For that, I know I will have to be by myself. I can’t run as much as I have to or circle round as many times as I can when there are people with me. This is becoming a diary entry; the one thing that I said I would never do. Oh hell, there are so many “nevers” in my life that I wonder why I bother saying it.

I heard today that John McCain was in Defiance Ohio trying to rally the troops. He was probably giving the “Never give up, never surrender” speech where he calls his opposition everything short of Osama Bin-Laden Incarnate and gives no real or meaningful alternative answer to the majority of the country. Defiance OH; you have to hand it to his campaign, they may be going down in flames but they seem to bring a certain flare to it.

Defiance OH, that reminds me of when Obama and Hillary went to Unity NH just before the DNC Convention. Who thinks of these things? That’s the job I want. “Now Sen. McCain, if you can do a stimulating and exciting stump speech in Slim Chance NJ, I’m sure we will be able to rouse all the supporters, all 3 of them and not look like complete idiots on Election Day.”

Speaking of which, my friend Patrick told me that he would be at the Obama election head quarters in Philly on Tuesday to await the results. I asked why he didn’t think staying at home and watching George Stephanopoulos like the rest of the nation wasn’t good enough for him. Now that I think about it, I think I have found something on Tuesday to do now as well.

Trading Places?

Continuing with the Eddie Murphy part of my last post, the first time that I saw the building pictured above was in the movie Trading Places. It was the building owned by brothers Randolph and Mortimer Duke, the owners of an investment firm in Philadelphia that traded in futures and commodities. They educated me and Mr. Murphy to the beauty of Wall St. and that how no matter how much money their clients made or lost, they would still get theirs.

At that time in my life, I am not even sure that I had even heard of Philadelphia or if I had, I had no concept of where it was. But as I got older and moved to the Delaware Valley region I was surprised to find that the building was actually a bank headquarters. I have forgotten what the name of the bank was when I arrived, but suffice it to say it the name has changed 3 or 4 times in the last 18 years.


I was always amazed that whenever the bank changed hands, they would change the name on the front, not by putting up some cheap plastic sign with glowing lights inside but by re-concreting the edifice and carving out the new name. Is there such a word as re-concrete? Anyway, I always thought this was really grand that the new owners would keep the original integrity of the architectural design of the building. This helped maintain an aura of stability for Broad Street Philadelphia in what has really been an unstable industry around the nation.

Word came last week that the name on the building may change again. I believe both Citigroup and Wells Fargo are trying to take over the banking interests of the present owner, Wachovia Bank. Originally, the FDIC had brokered a deal Wachovia to purchase many of their bad loans if they sold their banking interests to Citigroup. But then Wells Fargo and principal shareholder Warren Buffett came along and offered much more money for the whole thing. There would have been so much in fact that the FDIC would no longer need to spend any of its own money to cover the debt. A conundrum.

Well as is the way of all things financial where a dispute is involved, both companies have taken their case to court and I have no idea what the outcome will be. But I think that somehow, some way, the real Duke Brothers of the world are still going be able to get theirs.

I'm Black and I'm Proud

I think that the two best movies that Eddie Murphy ever did were Trading Places and 48 Hrs. I remember one of the lines that Murphy said to the Nick Nolte character in 48 Hrs. where he was explaining why he had the need to be with a woman as soon as possible. He said that because he had been so long in prison, his dick got hard whenever a stiff breeze blew by. I never thought it was that funny at the time because I used to get that way all the time and that was without going to prison.

When I was younger my penis would get stiff at any time and for any reason. Like most people, I would look at someone and get aroused even if I wasn't attracted to them. I would also look at the latest Jaguar car and get hard just walking down the street. I even remember going into Bamberger’s in Newark, now it's Macy's, and having to leave the furniture department because I could no longer hide the woody that had become too prominent. It was the early 80's and baggy pants weren't really what men of my age were wearing then.

I would get up each and every morning and I would find myself looking at Little Jimmy looking right back up at me. We would stare at each other, man to man, eye to eye so to speak. It was a glorious sight. It made me feel like a line from a James Brown song, “I’m black and I’m proud.” Some people would ridicule me, but I enjoyed it. It was a sign that we were both alert and that we both knew we were alive.

Then about two years ago, I started to realize that I no longer got excited for no reason at all. The morning ritual had disappeared. In fact, I started having to be mentally aroused in order for me to become physically aroused. That was something new. Spontaneous and automatic hard-ons were now something that I had to work at. True, I no longer was worried about being embarrassed any more by walking around with a boner, but I wasn't sure I liked it.

I know that, or at least I think I am not a real candidate for a batch of Viagra or Cialis but when I do think about it, it becomes worrisome and doesn’t help me enjoy the moment whenever that moment occurs. I bring this up because recently I was asked to go to a gathering by the Philly Jacks. The Philly Jacks is an organization that manages these parties in Center City Philadelphia, where men of a certain sexual persuasion or interest get together on certain days of the week or month and strip naked and masturbate together. They do the kind of thing that boys, when I was 10 or 11, used to do when they found out about the pleasures of ejaculation.

Now I’m not really the sexual prude that I sometimes tend to be. Neither am I as bigoted as will seem to be now, but there is a reason why people are allowed to have their preferences and the idea of attending a gathering like that didn’t really appeal to me. I could see myself being one of two or three black men being surrounded by and being touched by overweight, out of shape older white men trying to get “jiggy” with the nigger in the corner before they returned to their alabaster skinned wives in Northeast Philly.

I know, trust me I know that the whole reason for attending an event run by the Philly Jacks is about getting a cheap, possibly safe but meaningless sexual outlet without getting involved, but would I really want to walk around dodging people, watching myself not being aroused and maybe even shrinking minute by minute for the 10 or $20 fee that they charge? I don’t think so.

Well, let me think about it some more, maybe it's time for a change.

Finding Me

It has been said that Descartes said maybe in Latin,”cogito ergo sum,” or “I think therefore I am.” I wish I could think of some great line that people will prattle off for years to come either knowing or not knowing what the true or original meaning of the quote was about. But I am no great philosopher. I am not even a mediocre conjurer who can pull shit out of a hat, so for now you are going to be stuck with me saying, “Life is a series of learning events.” Over the weekend I learned something that I would not have been open to about 10 years ago. But let’s go back a bit even further.

The only time that I have been to Las Vegas was in the mid-90’s when Mike Tyson was fighting Britain’s Bruno, forgot his 1st name. But it was one of those fights where the lead in to the ring by the opponents was actually longer than the fight itself. In fact the only thing I do remember about the fight was Tyson at the sound of the bell for the opening round, rushing towards the Brit, flailing away like some kind of mechanical harvester of death and knocking him down and out in less than 30 seconds.

The fight was held in what seemed to be the basement MGM Grand Hotel & Casino in Vegas and there was this long gangway or maybe I should say runway that the ticket holders took to get into the arena. On either side of this were people looking on waving, cheering and screaming at the celebrities as they walked forward. I turned to the filmmaker and asked why were people screaming at us and he said that it wasn’t us but Halle Berry and her ball player husband about a yard in front of us. Who? He went on to say that she was in a Spike Lee movie and Different Strokes, or Different Life or Different something, I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. All I did care about was the trickle down fame and celebrity from the 2 in front of us would trickle back our way. So as people gaped, oohed and aahhed, I didn’t wave back but instead I gave them the jaw. You know, the up thrusted chin that gives you just a slight air of authority, power and may I say a little bit of glamour. I was famous by proxy, and I was loving it.



So skip to yesterday, before going to the Arts Bank for the movie Finding Me, I went to a reception by the Philadelphia Gay & Lesbian Film Festival and the filmmakers at Ms Tootsies. It started at 5pm, so I showed up at 6 with my little entourage because it’s always best to have people see you come rather than you see them. I walked into middle of the floor of the restaurant and looked around and I realized that I knew absolutely no one there. But more than that, more than that, this was a Philly crowd and no one there knew me and no one cared. I was surrounded by young and good looking men and women and I wasn't part of it. My time was over and I was fine with it.

It’s not that I was ever famous or well known or even really given a damn about, but I was always the youngest in the room with the most potential. When that failed, I was always someone’s lover or someone’s friend. Knowing me meant that you were in the in-crowd, you had that chance of using me as a stepping stone to get to what you really wanted, your holy grail. Or at least that was the impression given since I probably gave and did nothing for anyone, but like the man said in the song, ”I never promised you a rose garden.”


This weekend, what I what I really realized was that all of that living vicariously through others was never important to begin with. That feeling of self produced importance was fleeting and really irrelevant when it came to just enjoying yourself. And if it was, well then it was time for people younger than I was with clearer skin and less receding hairlines to grab a little spot light for themselves. I had become the photographer and was no longer the photographed. And it was all good.

So to sum it all up, life is a just a series of learning....Alright, as a line it's corny, but one day I will find and build that quote that will define the age and explore new meanings of life and then we'll see who is more important, me or the pretty boys. You'll see, they'll be finding me.

Clothes make the Man

"Clothes make the man."

I couldn’t remember where I heard that quote from so I googled it. Apparently, it’s from Mark Twain. “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” This is why I try to be careful in what I wear. There is always some impression that I want to make or leave or not leave, and one of the easiest ways to do it is by the way that I carry myself and my choice of clothes. This is not a testament to the large and wonderful wardrobe that I have, because I don’t have a large and wonderful wardrobe. Rather, it is about communicating something, a feeling without me having to verbalize it.

There have been times on the street when someone would ask if I was in the military because of the way I held myself and the close haircut. Other times when I used to have to wear a suit to work, we went casual about 5 years ago, people would ask if I was a lawyer. Although, I could never tell if that was an insult or not because most of the lawyers I’ve met are drunks or cocaine fiends. One time at the gym, a woman asked me once if I was a ballet dancer. Again, I’m sure if it was because of my muscular and graceful bearing while I was stretching, or if it was the Lycra spandex thing I was in. Suffice to say, that article of clothing went into the garbage can at the end of the day.

This Saturday, I have a funeral to go to. The youngest sister of a co-worker passed away a few days ago from complications from cancer. As a friend, I have to go. I don’t want to go, but it’s not all about me so I’ll be there. The only thing is though, I’m not sure what I should wear. Trivial, I know but sometimes it’s the smallest things that count. Should I wear a suit? The ones that I have I got when I was about 10 pounds lighter. In fact about 4 years ago when I father died I wore one and halfway through the ceremony, I realized I was the only who was wearing a decent suit. My half-brother had some dingy colored thing that looked like he had just pulled it out the Salvation Army box. I couldn’t say anything of course since he’s older and we hadn’t spoken in about 10 years. Don’t ask, we’re not close. Other people wore shorts and even one had on a Tee shirt with a tie painted on it. King Tut was dead, this was what he was called behind his back and this was how they honored him.

Well I felt like an idiot looking more like a funeral director than a member of the family and I don’t want to feel like an idiot this weekend. It’s supposed to be 92 degrees and last thing I need to do is sweat like a pig in a sports jacket or collapse from heat stroke in the middle of the service. Like I said, it’s not about me and I don’t do heat well.

Hopefully the temperature should drop by 8pm when they show The Wizard of Oz in the open air at Penn’s Landing. That might be another clothing issue that I am going to think about. I have never been to one of these things, but from what I understand the audience usually entirely white, dresses up as movie characters and people sing along and cheer at the right places like they used to do when The Rocky Horror Picture Show used to be the cult film that everyone went to. I asked Larry for ideas for what costume I could wear and he said I could just dress normally and go as one of the flying monkeys….I’m a fuck him up next time I see him.

Anyway, just as Wizard warns us not to pay attention to the man behind the curtain, I really hope that day that no one pays any attention to me as I do what I do best, sweat and worry over nothing and just let the clothes make the man.

Will the Real Geek Stand Up

Saturday night I was bitching and moaning. Bitching and moaning. 12 bucks for a movie ticket in West Philly, can you believe it? This isn't London or New York. That’s like a 20% increase over the price from last year. And I was complaining about the increase in the company healthcare plan deductions. Also, and also, the guy had the unmitigated gall to keep a straight face as he took my money.

Well, I said to myself as I sat in theatre auditorium, if I couldn’t afford the $12 to get in then maybe I should waited for cable or something and stop griping. Then the commercials came on and I started to seethe. “12 bucks and I got to go through this. This isn’t London or New York, and I don’t want to be recruited by the Marines for Iraq, I’m too damn old.” I think I bitch like an old man now.

Anyway, the coming attractions started to play. I heard someone talking about an eye in the sky and I recognized the voice of JFK speaking about heading into space. I couldn’t quite see what was going on on the screen. There was some guy welding something. Was it a boat, a building? I couldn’t tell, but there note of music in the air that struck me as someone else wished John Glenn God speed. What is this? More words and more words as the camera pulled back from the lone welder still revealing nothing and then, “Space the final frontier.” The voice of Spock.

A chill ran through me. A thrill overcame me. This is what living was all about; I would only have to wait until December, 10 months, to prove it. Yes I knew there was talk of a new Star Trek movie, but who cared? I shouldn’t be so jolted. It’s a prequel and everybody knows prequels suck. But it’s been so long since I have been able to boldly go where no man has gone before (insert pun here) that it’s easy to forget all your misgivings and just go with it. I mean --- I am a movie buff.

So satisfied was I, that I realized at that point I could go home happy. My money had been well spent and I hadn’t even seen the movie that I bought the ticket for yet.

Cloverfield, good flick. A sort of Blair Witch Project meets War of the Worlds on 911. You actually feel what those Japanese people must have felt when they first saw Godzilla in the 50’s.

Now that I am at home though, I shall be looking for my official Geek membership ID card buried somewhere here. And I shall be reporting for duty on Christmas 2008. Maybe I’ll see you there too.

Live long and prosper.

Decisions for 2008

I don’t know when I started this tradition, but it’s been going on for the longest time now. That is, I go to the movies on New Years Day. I usually find some poor sucker to come along with me. More often than not, it’s for companionship rather than sex. And now that I think of it, if I have chosen the movie, sex is that last thing that you think of doing as you leave the movie theatre. In fact yesterday’s movie was “The Savages.” It’s a film about a brother and sister who decide to put their estranged and ailing father in a nursing home and wait for him to die. The movie falls into the category of “life sucks so leave me alone,” rather than, “let’s get it on.” Needless to say, I went by myself.

But before I decided to go to the movies, I had watched a little TV. As usual, nothing was on that interested me. The cable channels were showing films that no one cared about, even when they were first released. The networks were flooded by silly parades or they were showing sports teams that I cared even less about. So I watched C-Span for about 20 minutes. How about that for holiday fare? They were showing 7 or 8 of the lesser known Republican candidates for the presidential nomination in some sort of debate. When I say these were the lesser know candidates, I don’t mean people like Thompson or Brownback or even Alan Keyes who I am sure they only bring out for some black comic relief. I mean people you have never heard of, like the guy who owned a grocery store and made over $75,000 one year and now he thinks can run the world. Or the one who tried to get on a city council but failed and now thinks that all he has to do is change politics as usual and the country will bow down to him. These people were crammed into this small semi-circular huddle when I suddenly realized, not only would no one ever know about these people now or in the future, but they were all crazy.

There was the grey haired white guy who said that the polar caps on Mars were shrinking and that Mars has no cars, so global warming on Earth due to man made influences was just a myth and a lie. There was another white guy that said that America was failing because of the millions of fetuses that were being murdered every year and that gays were breaking up the family and God has left the country because of it. There was also the young black guy espousing that to hell with the Supreme Court and who he would nominate to it. As long as God was in the political equation, the States would be able to look after their own affairs without having to turn to the federal government. I guess he must not have heard about States Rights and how they lost against Civil rights.

I suppose, you have to be crazy to run for President anyway. Because if you win, who in their right mind would want to live a gold fish bowl anyway. Surrounded by people only there to kiss your ass or take a clean shot of you for the rest of your life.

Well like I said after about 20 minutes of this and positive that the other crazy candidates that are in the first and second tiers of the Republican Party will have nothing to worry about, I said check please and turned the TV off.

I doubt that any of the people I saw yesterday will have any impact on the Iowa Caucuses tomorrow or any of the other primary elections in the future, but it might be a thought that maybe we should look carefully at who we support or elect into office this election year. Some people may say that anyone would be better than the compassionate conservative that we now have in the White House but trust me, there people just as crazy, lazy and stupid in the front tier of the nomination races trying to get in; and if we are not cautious we may look back on the last 8 years as the good old days.

Oh by the way, Happy New Year everyone.

Mandingo Fantasy

The other night I was talking over a pizza with Curtis, a friend of mine and fellow blogger and we were talking about why so many white men like to have black men for lovers or just sexual encounters. I don’t think of myself as a racist but I’ve never been with a white man or at least admitted to it, but I said that that many white people were looking for that Mandingo fantasy.

Now I wasn’t talking about Mandingo, the name of the movie that I saw in the eighties or the book that it was based on. I was talking about Mandingo, the big dick African warrior of urban myth that would come and take you, manhandle you, rape you but leave you smiling and begging for more. Well maybe I am talking about the book and movie, where Ken Norton, a big black buck came in and took care of business for his white mistress. She wanted the Mandingo fantasy where she was ravaged by the black man but still be in control and still safe.

I say this is a fantasy, because most black men, although blessed physically, rarely come up to the standards that their white counterparts are looking for. Very few us will have that ten to twelve inches of man meat that they want. In fact the only person that I have ever come across with that kind of measurement is Mitch.

Mitch stands about six feet three or four and has a face that is almost punishingly ugly. From what I understand, his family no longer talks to him. I’m not sure if it’s because he is gay or because they are frightened of his looks. But he has an ass of two firm round orbs that stick out like a park bench, so solid that you could bounce a quarter off it. And his dick is a thing of beauty. It is so long and thick with veins popping in all the right places and a head that reminds you of a small Portobello mushroom that you would need to shave off all the hair from your ass so you could fit the whole thing in. To see him move when he is naked is to melt into your own dreams, slide into your own fantasies.

He is always surrounded by white men. Men he has been with and men that he will probably be with. These are people who even though know they will never measure up to his measurements in height or dick length think they will always be in control and they and will never be hurt by him. But I think as in most relationships they are hurt, because eventually they realize he is more that just a fantasy. He is a real person.

White men will always long for Mitch or men like Mitch. In fact black men will want him too. The Mandingo fantasy isn’t just confined to the white community. As gay men we all long for someone who will take us into a different world. As humans we all look for that partner that will affirm what we think of ourselves or cover what we least like about ourselves.

As for me, I think I will just rent Mandingo the movie again and leave real life and real fantasies for others to deal with.