No More Neda Soltans, Please!

So I’m watching Hannity on Fox the other night. I don’t usually do the Fox channel since it seems to be more interested in commentary rather than news and even though I hate labels, I guess I’m a liberal at heart but with a conservative streak somewhere in the middle that dislikes the stuff they do.

This night they were talking about what is going on in Iran and the protests and the lack of President Obama to come out strongly against the recent election results there. Hannity brought up time and again the death or “martyrdom” of the young lady who was shot and killed during one of the protests and I realized that even though I had heard the story before, I hadn’t really paid that much attention to it.

I believe Senators McCain and Graham and other Republicans had told the story in order to criticize the President as being weak and timid and decided that I would see what they were talking about. It wasn’t difficult to find the video of the death of Neda Soltan, the Young Iranian girl who was shot, and I was surprised that it was still up. Here is a link to that video if you are interested. I didn’t post the actual video because it’s sad and discomforting as you see her slip away as I’m sure most deaths are. But even more than the death of the young Neda, I was struck by idea that many politicians seem not to realize that her death may have been determined 30 or more years even before she was born by the actions of the British and Americans in the ‘50’s. Here is what I mean.

In 1953 the freely elected Iranian Prime Minister Dr. Mossadegh was ousted by British and American interests when he decided to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi was reinstalled as the absolute ruler of Iran with the support of the Americans until the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Then American hostages were taken in Tehran and we backed and supplied Sadam Hussein with arms in his war against Iran. That war now over, the Iranian government now reflects an Islamic fundamentalist outlook and is a total rejection of the Shah’s rule and the distrust of and disaffection towards the United States.

This view and the recent Iranian elections have led many young people, such as Neda Soltan, to protest against it and the outbreak of violence in the streets where the militia has cracked down on them. The Republicans and some Democrats want the President decry what’s happening, increase sanctions and isolation against Iran and threaten the possibility of military intervention in the name of “freedom” and to what end? So we can start the cycle again? So there can be more blood shed by Iranians and possibly American or Coalition troops. Hasn’t there been an adequate amount of life lost in that region where we can say “enough already” and just stay away?

Sure I grieve for Neda as much as anyone else will who didn’t know her, but I don’t want her held up as a poster child for an excuse for more violence, for more suffering and for more fear. I don't want to see more friends and family go off to places they shouldn't be in to die or kill again. I don’t want to read the papers 60 years from now and say this all seems familiar.

I wonder if I’ll still be able to read 60 years from now?

I hate Hoaxes!

“There is someone being sucked out of the aircraft where the tail is supposed to be and there is some bozo standing up taking a picture of it happening,” was my first thought to myself. The second was that I was ashamed for even giving a nanosecond of thought to the picture and the others that came with it.

The pictures screamed hoax and I felt sorry for myself that I gave them any attention. I felt sorry that someone or some people didn’t have the sensibility to restrain their urge for fame or notoriety by not playing with someone else’s tragedy. I felt sorry for friends and family who might have been subjected to their losses as just a joke.


I am referring to a series of pictures that were circulating on the net this week showing what was supposedly the last moments of Air France’s flight #447 from Rio to Paris. It was said that a camera belonging to a Brazilian had been found in and amongst parts of the wreckage and it had three pictures of when the plane’s fuselage had broken apart. It reminded me of the picture of the tourist in his winter coat and hat at the end of summer on top of one of the Twin Towers in NYC having his picture took just seconds before one of the jets hit the World Trade Center. Why do people get a thrill from this, I don’t get it?

Sure, my sense of humor can be little sordid and out of place at times, but give me a minute or two and something will usually kick in and tell me to rethink what I’m about to do. As long as I haven’t said anything, I can generally steer clear of any mess that I’m about to commit and no one is the wiser for it. Why can’t others do that?


Speaking of which my next post will be about why I think John McCain is a crazy bitch and that the world is so much better than it would have been if he had become President. Well maybe. I have to think it through first.

Philly Pride 2009

Misery o’ misery!

I hadn’t really intended to write anything about Gay Pride this year. If truth be told, I’m not really that much into it, politically that is. Yes, I see the significance placing yourself out there so everyone else can see you and not brush you aside like yesterday’s trash. I realize the need to be heard when I or anyone else wants to state that we are human, we are equal and we deserve the rights that everyone else has in order to exist because our lives are not less than anyone else’s. But I’ve never really seen these events as being that effective.

In fact when President Clinton wanted to ban the ban on gays in the military, video tapes of gay celebration parades were shown to the top brass and the politicians including John McCain and said if gay people acted like this in the street then it would a cold day you know where before they would knowingly allow anyone with homosexual tendencies in their armed services. They thought the parades to be too flamboyant and too drag queeny to have officers and men like those among them. They must not have known that I would do a video that would be as dull as dish water and thrown out all of those fun concepts out.

As usual I decided to go to Philly’s Gay Pride Parade at Penn's Landing this year instead of Odunde, the African-American festival they have in South Philly. I don’t go there anymore because I’m becoming more of a snob as I get older and I realize that those people are really not my sort and there’s also less chance of me losing part of a kidney from gunshots if I stay away completely.

So after arriving after 4pm, less than 2 hours before the event would finish and probably well after any of the good stuff, acts, people and half naked muscle boys (there, I’ve said it), had left and I was wondering why was I there. It looked like I had missed all the fun part of the festival but just in time to sign up for the political stuff which as I said I wasn’t interested in.

Oh well, in order to salvage part of the weekend there is this little video which I realize is edited all wrong but I’m over it and I’m just looking forward to some leather at Folsom St East in NYC this weekend. Hopefully that will bring me out of this misery. I wonder what I will wear.

Friends of Dorothy

I hate clichés and stereotypes and maybe labels, unless of course I’m using them and then I can find a good excuse for bringing them up. At least that’s what I tell myself.

One of the clichés that I have always hated is that if you are a man and you like musicals you were automatically labeled as gay. It is as if under Webster’s or the OED if you are that way inclined, the definition of homosexual is male lover of the musical theatre. How absurd. That would be like saying only women and straight men are interested in sports. By the way is there some sort of basketball thing going on now?

So I’m at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre in Philly tonight to see the Grey Gardens the Tony award winning musical and I notice something. Well I noticed two things actually:
1 I’m the only black person there not working and
2 about 70 percent of the audience consist of all male couples.
It was like I was in an episode of Frazier.

Now what’s up with that? It’s not like the theatre had sent out a notice that they were going to do a rousing rendition of some Judy Garland song, Over the Rainbow or something and audience participation was expected.

In case you are unaware of the story, Big and Little Edie Beale were the aunt and cousin Jacquelin Bouvier Kennedy Onassis who lived in a rundown mansion in the Hamptons that was condemned by the Board of Health as being unfit for human habitation. I remember reading part of the story in the NY Times Sunday Magazine in the late 70’s or 80’s before I knew that Jackie O and Jackie Kennedy were one and the same person. Recently I’ve also seen part of the documentary Grey Gardens as well as the HBO movie, but I don't remember anywhere any indication or receive any clarion call that this was the must see theatre for gays around the region.

Although now that I’m thinking about it, it is June which is Gay Pride month and it is the 40th anniversary of the Miss Garland’s death as well the Stonewall Riots.

I can be so slow on the uptake at times, but as Little Edie in the play sings, "da da da da dum."

I have a Question

I have no family members living in Brazil or France that I’m aware of, although with the number of uncles and aunts and cousins that I have it may be possible. I also have really have no vested interest in the recent Air France tragedy but since the plane was an Airbus, the plane I seem to use more and more when I travel, I do seem to have slight curiosity as to what happened since, I’ll admit, I have a fear of flying.

As most people will know already flight AF447, an Airbus A330 took off from Brazil last Sunday with 216 passengers and 12 crew members and disappeared off of the radar as it hit a large storm in the southern area of the Atlantic Ocean. Experts from both sides of the Atlantic as well as government men have been speculating about the causes were for the disappearance. While terrorism has not been ruled out, most people have talked about the catastrophic failure of the plane’s onboard computers, including the autopilot, all of which shut down within a 4 minute time span and are guessing that the disappearance was due to frozen wind speed sensors or a broken rudder.

I say guessing because the “black box” has yet to be located as well as any other part of the plane which can be identified as belonging to the A330. The French have said that the debris that has been found in the ocean doesn’t belong to the missing plane and that they are not even sure that plane fell in the same area. That is why I haven’t used the word crash yet, but before I start to go into my Bermuda Triangle theory and I’m carted off somewhere in a jacket with straps in the back for my own safety, I have just one question. If the debris that has been found floating on the water doesn’t belong to flight 447, then who does it belong to and why does it seem to be Airbus planes that seem to do all the crashes these days?

Alright so that's 2 questions, but still who and why?

One Verse One Chorus

Oh my God, get the room ready at the Home because I think I’m ready for it. Why? Because I think I am getting too old and I’m doing things that I used to laugh at when other people did it.

It was Saturday night, which meant that it was fun times at my house if you are into being alone staring at the TV and wondering why is life passing you by, when between channels I noticed Tony Orlando from Tony Orlando and Dawn pitching 70’s songs for Time-Life. Now I’m not going to say I hadn’t seen these types of paid 30 minute commercials before, but I had never been able to relate to most 60’s songs let alone early rock and roll and or Glen Miller. Did they ever find him? But 10 minutes into this Romancing the 70’s, the remote must have gotten stuck, I started to notice that not only did I recognize most of the songs but I had started to sing along with them.

You know I was one of those people who said that Rap would never last, but 30 years ago if you had told me I would have been singing “You Needed Me” with Anne Murray at 12 midnight I would have said that you and whoever brought you into the world were crazy. But there I was belting out tunes at the top of my voice searching for the right note to go with the Captain and Tennille and Melissa Manchester and people and groups whose names I had forgotten so long ago.

Speaking of forgetting, I had forgotten how bald Elton John was before he got his knighthood and how close he was to getting totally blind every other week according to the magazines. However Tony and crew didn’t show Sir Elton doing b’b’b’ ”Benny and the Jets”, which would have sent me screaming off the wall and dialing that toll free number. I would have been so loud they would have called the cops on me. They do that in this neighborhood you know. I know because I’ve done it at least twice myself.

So there I was last night being nostalgic and remembering how I used to sing some of these songs on my bike at the crack of dawn delivering newspapers when I realized that I could write something and relate it to this old video I found. Well I didn’t really find it and it’s not that old since it was finished today, but I was feeling almost sorry for myself this week and this was one of the ”woe is me” songs that I sometimes cling to.

So here is one verse and one chorus of it.

The Body

Why is it that the more I see of Jesse "The Body" Ventura my respect for him increases geometrically? Ever since I saw that Ventura wasn't just a dumb wrestler clowning around in the squared circle on TV, but was someone who could not only read, but emote and act as he did in Predator, I thought this man may have a brain. He was also someone who could state his beliefs and take it to the people and have them support him as he took the governor's office in Minnesota. Not a small accomplishment. And now he went up against the Aryan chick in The View and beat her down as well "The Darkside" Cheney and all those people who seem to have forgotten about the trials at Nuremburg after the Big One, all in the same two minutes.

I shall never look down on a wrestler again.


BTW, if the war in Iraq continues any longer, can we still call World War II the Big One?

You like-a, me Leica

I think it was last year or maybe the year before that I heard that a certain 35mm Leica camera of not a very vintage age was worth thousands dollars on eBay.

I called Florida and asked my mother and asked if she knew where my father’s cameras were. I had known that he had bought a Leica back in the 70’s but I didn’t know what model it was. I did remember that it was a nice piece of work. It was the type of workmanship that would have made Himmler proud and brought a tear to his eye. A solid example of German engineering with a smooth action and movement that made you feel confident in whatever activity you were about to participate in. I would stare through the view finder and watch the little circle in the middle focus and refocus as I played with the lenses mesmerized by the control that I seemed to have over light and images and maybe the future.

Unfortunately, I never really used the camera and now that I think about it, I never saw my father use it either. He was more of a cheap, plastic throwaway camera user back before people bought disposable cameras and still turned their noses up at anything plastic. In fact later on in life he would thrill at the idea of having as many forms inexpensive cameras as possible. He would have Polaroids of course, as well as cameras with a revolving disk of film or something. He had many others that came in a box that you mailed back somewhere when you were done and others that I swear looked like they came out of a box of cereal or free with a purchase of under arm deodorant.

So as far as I knew the Leica was untouched and in pristine condition in its shiny black leather and red velvet lined case, or at least it would have been if my mother hadn’t thrown everything out when my father had died.

I bring this up only because a couple of weeks before my last trip I bought a video camera. It was Panasonic that cost way to little for something that was supposed to brand new from Amazon and yes when I opened the box I had the distinct feeling that someone else’s hand touched the merchandise before mine and I was sort of upset. But for $300 less than the cost at Best Buy was $300 that I could use elsewhere so I kept it and moved on. However, what I also noticed was that the lens for the Panasonic was made by Leica. I had finally gotten my own Leica product and even if it was just a little lens, it still made me feel a little warm inside. Funny that, I think I’m still competing with a dead man that I don’t think I ever liked.

Anyway, here below is the reason that I bought the thing. It’s much too long but I didn’t want to make 2 or 3 videos. If you watch it enjoy, if not, trust me you’re not going to miss anything that you haven’t seen before and I promise, this will be the last time on this subject.

Angeli e Demoni

“Football, American football?” asked the little man as he spread his back and flexed his arms and smiled at me. I smiled back at him. Sure when you’re only 5ft 2in everybody looks like a football player to you I thought. Then he said, “Obama, yes, Obama?” and he gave me the thumbs up. ”Look my friend, just put your finger,” and he held up two pieces of string held in a loop, “and two wishes…blah blah blah.” I knew where this was going but my only wish was that he would leave me alone. I brushed him off.

Why is it that Arab men love to ask, “what you want my friend?” no matter where you are or what you are doing. Is this the first phrase they learn to say in English in their foreign language classes, or do they actually say this in Yemen or Syria or wherever they are from and just literally translate it word for word when they leave home? Anyway, that was what I noticed all the waiters seemed to ask me. I’m not saying that all waiters are Arabs in Rome but it certainly seemed to be a hell of a lot of them who were.


There was this one time when I was walking in Travestere which is a residential area in the city and I was looking for something to eat. I was starving, it was close to 3pm and the free breakfast at the hotel could only take me so far in the day. I had to get something or face collapsing in the middle of the street or turning into the Hulk. I was no longer in the mood for pictures so I can’t show you any here, but I found a place where the people were jumping and everyone seemed to be having a good time eating. I should have noticed that they were all eating pizzas with the thin crust or salads. I had had that the day before somewhere else and loved it, but I wanted to get something different this time.

“What you want my friend?” asked the waiter. He was an Arab I noticed after I decided the menu was going to be a waste of time since I couldn’t read it.
“I want some sort of chicken,” I said. I was thinking of fried chicken and fries actually. Look I’m a black man and it’s in our genes.
“I bring you chicken done Roman style. Chicken Roma huh? It is chicken with potatoes and sweet peppers like how we do it here.”

I agreed to that, a salad and a beer and he brought it out fifteen, twenty minutes later. To say that it looked like something that I might have thrown up ten years ago after a night of heavy drinking would have been to put it lightly, but I was hungry and there only one place that plate was going, down into my stomach. The fact that it was almost tasteless didn’t seem to matter either, I had been rescued. The €20 that I paid or about $28 seemed to be a trivial amount since I think most of cost was for the beer anyway.

I found out two days later when I ordered the “Pollo con Peperoni” from the menu of another restaurant and the same plate came out, that there are at least two ways of making this food. One way is for tourists done quick and easy which was what I had at the first place, and the other made with a flavor and a texture that will lift your empty soul and soothe your spirit. However, that was not going to be my best meal in Italy or even maybe the best meal that I’ve had since St Martin. That would go to the one I had in Orvieto, a town about 75 miles northeast of Rome. There is a little video of this town under My Stuff to the right of this if you’d like to see the place. I wish that I had taken pictures of the meal that I had in this little restaurant on this little side street on the way to the Duomo (cathedral).

Again I had trouble with the menu and the waitress didn’t speak any more English than I spoke Italian but I knew that pollo meant chicken so I went for the Petto di Pollo something something. This turned out to be a thinly sliced chicken breast covered with a really flavorful cheese topped with prosciutto and drizzled with herbs and olive oil. Looking at it I wasn’t sure if the chicken was grilled or boiled, but as I started to eat it I didn’t care. All I knew that was that my dick had started to dribble from the excitement and pleasure this food was giving me. It was more than “molto bene”, it was the kind of thing that would have made me shave the chef’s nuts for a week just to get another plate, but they were closing down for a couple of hours and it was time for me to leave. Siesta time you know. Now that’s true civilization; to eat scratch and then sleep and not feel guilty.



Anyway, I took close to 900 pictures of my trip all together and I have erased about 400 of them. That’s the beauty of digital. Here are a few of the rest which if you scroll over them some will have their names listed if I can remember them and you can click on them to enlarge them if you want. Also, no there are no pictures of the Sistine Chapel since they don’t allow you to take pictures there but uh…what more you want my friend?

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?