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.

The Rent is Too Damn High

As much as you may think that Jimmy McMillan is a joke, if you really listened to him at the New York gubernatorial debate, he made a lot of sense.

It's time for me to move to New York.

Philly Naked Bike Ride 2010

Perhaps the two or three things that I noticed most and asked myself about at the Philly Naked Bike Ride was how much better organized it was this year over last year, the two or three people who were riding motorcycles which sort of defeated the purpose of the protest and how many onlookers seemed to be “size queens.”

Even though I would say that at least a third of the riders were women, most people tended not to worry or judge the refreshingly freed titties that were jiggling up and down the street, but they did feel the need to state their thoughts about the exposed and unleashed male genitalia and how small they thought everyone was. I heard one guy say to his wife or girlfriend that he felt better now and not so small as he compared himself to the riders. Even I marveled at one point where I saw a fellow gym member whose dick is usually thick and at half mast with a lurid smile on his face whenever he’s in the locker room (shudder), look relaxed and normal. Obviously the message has been lost.

I think, and you can find this on the organization’s website, the whole reason for the ride is that there is an unreasonable dependency on unsustainable fossil fuel. They ride because there is a lack of respect for bike riders on the street by car drivers and they ride nude not just for attention to the cause, but because of the need for body acceptance and the awareness that not everyone can look like Pamela Anderson and Terrell Owens or whoever people think as good looking.

Perhaps next year they will do more to educate the public on what their message is but until then a little video.

Hallowed Ground in New York

World Trade Center

It seems that a building, abandoned for the last eight years on Park Place in New York City, has been purchased for the purpose of tearing it down and building an Islamic community center and people are up in arms. There is a tremendous uproar from people saying that would be disrespectful to the memories of the victims of 911 and signal a triumph of terrorism over good. And more than that, to tell you the truth, I don’t really care.

I could bring up the fact that not all of the people who were killed during the attacks were Americans or even Christian or that the largest amount of Muslims in the U.S. happen to be African Americans. I could also bring up the First Amendment Rights here, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” but I think that’s a no brainer. If the question was ever taken to court, no court in the land would ever think about denying people the right to worship whoever and wherever they want on the basis of it being unpopular. No, what really gets to me is the idea of calling not only the space where the Twin Towers but the surrounding territory, “hallowed ground.”

Years ago when I used to work for a brokerage house right opposite the World Trade center, I remember there used to be an Off Track Betting shop on Church St. I think. Not far from that, there was the Pussycat Lounge which I think was a stripper bar which I think still exists and is even closer to Ground Zero than the proposed community center. I don’t even want to bring up the only time that I stayed at the Marriott Hotel in the World Trade center was because it was only 2 blocks from where Afrodisiak was being held on Fulton St. Afrodisiak was a competitor of the Blatino parties where black and Latino men got together to do their thing. It was the first sex club that I had ever been to.

After the Ex and I found the location of the party, we had to walk up 12 fights of stairs because the elevator was out. Reaching the 12th floor I remember in between my heart trying to explode from my chest and being oxygen deprived, there was sign that said you had to be over 21 and no older than 35 to get in. I think that I had just had my 36th birthday and I thought if anyone said anything to me, anything, I would call the police and, “shut this illegal mutha fucka down.” Suffice it to say, they just took my money and handed me a garbage bag for the clothes and a small towel to cover the essentials.

There isn’t much else that I remember about that evening other than it being really dark. I turned at one point to the Ex while I was being sucked off and wondered out loud how, if I could talk to him face to face then whose chin was I banging my nuts against. I might have thought and said something differently if I had known that it would be considered sacred land in such a short while.

Anyway, in all deference to all those that were victimized during the 911 attacks and all those who have suffered since, that’s why I cannot go easily from sinner to saint and consider all of lower Manhattan as hallowed ground.

And that’s my piece.

"Can't buy me love"

The Beatles once wrote a song about money not being able to buy them love. Since I'm not a multi-millionaire like Sir Paul or Mr. Starr I don't really know if that's true or not...but I suspect that they were right.

I wonder why others don't see that.

Is Andrew Breitbart Another Flim Flam Man?

“Maury Povich has done more for the black family than the Democratic Party has ever done,” was the only line that I remember from the Tea Party rally that I went to last weekend. That was said by some guy at the podium who said that health care, or "Obamacare" as he called it, was a privilege and not a right and that the President was socialist who was going to take the country into the abyss if we weren’t careful.

I was disappointed at not seeing any Birthers at the rally, you know, the ones who swear that the President was born in Kenya and that he is some sort of modern day Manchurian Candidate. But what are you going to do? I did overhear one guy say that the President was a Muslim and so therefore wrong for the country, but no one else.

I listened to all 10 speakers on the stage who said basically the same thing that the Tea Party was not racist. It was the Democrats and the Congressional Black Caucus and the NAACP who were the racists and who were irresponsible to a crowd that was organized and seemed to be very friendly. As I bowed my head in prayer for one of the speakers and held hands with a stranger to the left of me I thought to myself that everyone and therefore wrong for the country, seemed to be really nice. But then again, they probably thought the same thing in Berlin during the 1920’s and, “how fetching they look in their brown shirts.”

Andrew Breitbart

The real reason that I went to the rally was because I read that Andrew Breitbart, the man who brought down the Acorn organization with videos of pimps and whores getting tax advice, was going to be on Independence Mall in Philadelphia. I thought that maybe he would explain how or why he had slandered Shirley Sherrod who was forced to resign from the Agriculture Department for being a racist. He didn’t of course. What he did do before going to his book signing was find a way of saying that he was being made the victim by the Main Stream Media and the Democrats and so on and so forth without actually saying that he was a victim or mentioning anything that had happened in the past few weeks. “Poor me” he was saying.

I wish I could do that. I wish could say shit without saying shit and walk away the hero of an event and perhaps a little richer in the process. Instead, I would find a way of putting one foot in my mouth by saying what I’m thinking and then figure out a way of putting the other foot in at the same time.

I remember taking a political science class for an elective once that I dropped out of a long time ago. It wasn’t that it was difficult or that I was doing really badly. It was because I was getting C’s and worse than that, I was bored. I see now that if I had stayed in class I might have found out that there really isn’t anything scientific about politics. It should really be called a Political Art; the art of the flim flam.

"Play la Marsellaise. Play it!"

Paris is one of Philadelphia’s sister cities. I’m not sure what that means other than it has the Rodin Museum which has the largest public collection of artwork produced by August Rodin outside of Paris and that it has an excuse to do quirky little things that represent that bond.

One of those things is to do a re-enactment of the storming of the Bastille which was a castle turned prison where they kept a few people behind bars. The prison was overrun by the people in Paris back at the start of the French Revolution, the prisoners were released and the building torn down. Philadelphia relives this event by having actors invade, the now defunct, Eastern State Penitentiary on the weekend before or after Bastille Day.

Eastern State, if you remember is the first state penitentiary in the United States and is the one during the 30’s that kept gangster Al Capone for a few months and bank robber "Slick" Willie Sutton for 11 years not including the time that he spent on the outside after he tunneled his way to escape. But he was gone for only about 30 or 40 minutes so it doesn’t really count. Willie is also the one incorrectly known as the man who said when asked why he robbed banks, “Because that’s where the money is.”

Anyway during this year’s re-enactment of the Bastille, they had an actress on top of the ramparts of the prison play the role of the Marie Antoinette. From there she tossed free Tastykakes to the crowd below apparently referencing the “Let them eat cake” quote that the queen is supposed to have made when told that the people didn’t have bread to eat.

I didn’t attend this year’s performance because it was raining all day and plus I think it’s kind or corny. What I should have done instead was to rent or maybe even have bought a copy of my favorite movie Casablanca to celebrate Bastille Day. There is nothing that makes you feel more alive and free and maybe even want to fight Nazi tyranny than when Rick allows a resounding rendition of the Marsellaise to be played in his club, unless of course you happen to be female, Arabic and have a certain religious penchant about clothing. But then again which country is it that you know that doesn’t have flaws somewhere?

Vive la France!

To Kill a Mocking Bird - Redux

How long has it been, 20 or 30 years since I read the little brown book that my grandmother’s cousin kept in a box in her closet? Actually a better question would be why was I in her closet?

She kept dozens of books there; ones by people like Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim. All of them about pimping or being a drug addict or being raped and becoming someone’s bitch in prison or all 3. Ah the classics, I don’t think they write ‘em like they used to. But she had one book that has stayed with me all of these years. It was about a little girl in the 1930’s whose family life had entered into a situation that was completely foreign to her. It was about how she discovered how truth can often be hidden behind form and ritual and convention and that win or lose, sometimes the fight is all we have; the only thing that can bring meaning to our lives.

Of course I’m referring to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird that was first published 50 years ago this weekend. I’m not going to review the book since I’m sure that’s been done by editors and professors and plenty of other people who are much more capable than me. Plus I have not read the book since I first opened it, But I remember it. I remember not realizing that Scout, the protagonist and narrator was a girl until I was about 2 thirds of the way through the book. I remember Jem her older brother who looked after her to his utmost ability, the way that most brothers do but only when they have to. I remember reading about her father Atticus the lawyer shooting a rabid dog and defending t Tom Robinson in court not because it the heroic thing to do, but because it was the right thing to do. I remember the fear created by the presence of Boo Radley until, as with all things once the reality is known, the truth is often different from the perception.

I haven’t been to Oakland since the mid 80’s so I don’t really know what the truth is about what happened on New Year’s Day 2009 when an unarmed Oscar Grant was shot in the back and killed by a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officer. I don’t know how different the bay area is from the south of the 1930’s or if there is or even was a racial element to what happened. I suspect that things are very different, but I don’t know. All I know is what I feel and that is that a young man was wrongly killed and that someone or a society should have to pay for his loss and the loss to those around him.

But whether others think of the incident as murder, man-slaughter or just deserts all I can say is that I’m reminded of a short passage in the book where Atticus said to Jem: 


“I'd rather you shoot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.”