Cell Phones

News today, picked up by our sterling editor John S. has it that hand-free cell phone use while driving cause as many accidents as any other cell phone usage. While on the fastest freeways catching sight of cell phones in action I have a baby. One day soon my auto will self-destruct from excessive horn use, or I'll get a whopping great ticket from 'screaming' with the horn about cell phone useage. I've seen drivers on the phone, reading from a sheet of paper while putting on lipstick. I HAVE!!

After avoiding cell phone ownership for years I recently buckled and got three, three different numbers: Wife, Son, Me. Astonishingly I found that, for example, the audio quality is excellent, better than two of our cordless phones. Not so long ago 2 meters Amateur Radio was a forerunner of cell phones. I admire Verizon for many things, one of which is their retaining use of the word "Wireless," which echoes radio history. I admire their, "For English stay on the line," and for hiring James Earle Jones whom I actually love, even though I've never met him. He played Jack Johnson on the stage, and in the movie. I'm wandering aren't I? It's late at night. Late at night I wander. What do you do? Talk on your cell phone? Way to go! Ha!

Barry

 

 

 

 

The other 'Disneyland'

Our many recent family outings climaxed yesterday, Saturday, with an afternoon and evening at Knott's Berry Farm, a rival of geographically nearby, Disneyland.  I don't know how well each is doing in their competition, but it sure got more and more crowded at Knott's as the day wore on, so that by 10 pm navigating through the crowds became a chore. My personal preference, based only on experience not at all on research, everything about Knott's is superior, especially safety. People have been killed and maimed on Disneyland rides in the past couple of years, and to my knowledge nothing similar has occurred at Knott's, and that in spite of the fact that the rides at Knotts are far more ambitious, higher, faster, and theoretically more dangerous. Plus, patrons are not harrassed anywhere near as much about safety at Knott's, as they are at Disney.

There is live entertainment at Knott's, and has been for many years. At Disney there are robots, animated Abe Lincoln, for example,  jerky-moving dummies. The contrast in mind-sets is most fascinating and revealing. On one of several cave-mine rides, in an 1800s passenger train, armed robbers leaped into our carriage, pistols drawn, yelling, "Put your hands up." To encourage our children to enter the spirit of the action I raised my hands in mock horror exclaiming, "Oh my God!" The robber-actor, in character, stared down the long barrel of his weapon and said, as if to amuse his 'terrified' captive audience,"If I'm your god you better get another religion." No such comic play acting, in fact no play acting of any kind, takes place at Disneyland (endless board meetings would have to be held regarding any mention of god) except by far removed cartoon characters, Mickey Mouse and equivalent, figures who are seen as lonely pedestrians 'mingling' with the crowds but without interaction. They'll condescend to pose with you, and that's it. Patrons are treated as invited guests asked to pay for every dish, and to pay plenty, while having advertising stuffed at all one's senses, loud, blaring, repetitious, condescending and insulting. No wonder the French won't buy it.

Dancing, dancing by the ordinary patrons takes place at Knott's, recruited by a genuinely down home, perhaps carnival-trained country dance performer, former, who was so relaxed, humorous, kind and funny, fifty people were following his comic directions called out loudly to the delight of everyone, 'dancers' and audience. Later there was a cowboy lasso (lariat) act worthy of Cirque de Soleil! Ha! Such fun!

It's been a long time. Never have I seen, way back when, such dangerous looking rides. One soars into the sky like a Saint Louis arch gone crooked, and higher! I set out to prove to my children I was no coward. 'What if I burst a blood vessel and have to wait for the completion of the ride before I could be taken to the hospital?' I asked myself. Sure, I can easily withstand strain I inflict on myself, running and swimming distances, but what about a machine subjecting my body to enormous pressures? I did, yes I did, I chickened out. Quickly I compromised and went off to the boat that gets taken up high, then 'dropped' in a waterfall shute and 'crashed' into a mini-lake sending up huge waves of spray. I was totally soaked, and loved it: I could look my watching children in the eye.

We drove home dead tired and full of 'carnival' food, with many a tall tale to tell, tales of fright and happiness, with only the latter true.

Barry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Worst Movie I Love

Why do we love some movies we tend to be ashamed of admitting we love? Because sitting in the dark with our popcorn, so to speak, the movie touches some truth about us we'd just as soon keep private.

My private such secret movie I reveal here for the first time is Howard Hughes' vanity indulgence production, first released in 1943, but shot in 1941, partly directed by Howard Hughes, but also directed by superb director Howard Hawks, The Outlaw, starring Jane Russell, Howard Hughes' heart throb of the moment, the incomparable, very great, much honored stage and film star Walter Huston (father of movie great John Huston, director) and disappeared, good actor, Jack Buetel.

If, perchance, the making of this movie is tangentially mentioned in the recent biopic The Aviator directed by Scorsese, forget it, Scorsese I judge to be totally irrelevant, his opinions and his work. In my opinion what almost saves the movie is the evident direction by Howard Hawks. Hawks had a knack for getting performances of a lifetime out of an actress who in other movies was so-so. Jane Russell made her debut in this movie. She gave the movie a curiously appealing, if too obvious, sexy ambience. She never again came close to giving such a performance.  When I was an adolescent I could hardly believe my own eyes, and when she climbed into bed to warm Billy The Kid I was a voyeur, and I bet so was Howard Hughes, during the shooting.  Ostensibly she provided heat 'cause Billy was shivering from 'illness.'

Howard Hughes may have been rich, but this vanity flick was made on a very low budget. The sound track features portions of Tchaikovsky's symphony, the one from which the tune for the corny song, "Story of a Starry Night," was taken. (6th? 5th?) The full symphony orchestra version, Hollywood lush, sounds quite out of place as sound track over scenes from a Western movie with galloping horses and desert landscapes.  But it doesn't matter, the swelling music is keyed to the ever-so-alluring undulations of Jane Russell's breasts.

The core of the movie is the quite curious bond between Doc Holliday, Walter Huston, and Billy The Kid playedby Jack Buetel.  It's sort of father and son. When I saw this movie for the first time I virtually had no father, so for a spell I could indulge in a fantasy, pretend father, played magnificently by Walter Huston. 

During the course of writing this remembrance it has abruptly occurred to me why I have 'stupidly' avoided seeing Walter Huston in his academy award performance in an entirely different role in the movie version of the Sinclair Lewis novel, Dodsworth. He wouldn't be my 'father' in a suit in Paris with a woman, his 'wife,' who he can no longer love. My father was grossly lax as a parent, but he never wavered in his love for my mother.

The movies have a way of getting at our secrets and that's why we love them so.

Barry
 

 

 

Our Lives

There is, or used to be, a popular soap opera called 'Days of Our Lives.' I might have been on it. Small role. In The Young and the Restless (CBS on Fairfax just down the street from Canter's restaurant) I played a chaufeur, also a small role. It'd have been bigger but the actress with whom I appeared, and who in the story paid my salary, died, so that was the end of that gig. The days of our lives pass and often, at least for me, I can't make head or tail out of what happened. I can't be alone in that, surely.

My fiction is based on what happened to me in life, so I think a lot about what happened in life. Yet, the more I dwell on what little I can remember, the more I realize I do not know, not really, what happened. The good part of that phenomena is that fiction can then logically be what you remember, or choose to remember, and not on what actually happened; how could it be what happened if one can't remember what happened? I think we remember selectively out of self defense.  On that basis I have sworn on the Good Book(s) to never, ever, allow anyone to say I write autobiographical fiction. In fantasy I'm being interviewed about my novel on TV and cut down the interviewer when she asks me (well of course it's a 'She'!) if the book is "autobiographical."

Here's an example. Riding on the back of my Uncle's motorcycle, hanging on to my Uncle, I wondered about his scent. I was about 14. In my distressed state - my mother had died - I feverishly imagined that he smelled good because rich and privileged people had a better smell. Now, to that, I say 'balderdash,' he was wearing cologne.

Who on earth was it who said, or wrote, "The unexamined life is not worth living"? That's a famous saying but heck that too is a crock. Even the examination, in real life, ends up being a fiction. For example, my Uncle, a notorious swordsman, might simply have spent the afternoon (the illicit happens in the afternoon quite often) with one of his many conquests, and it was she, mingled with him, that I was smelling.

Today's soap operas, daytime variety, are cranked so high I can't see 'em anymore. They used to pretend to be about 'Our Lives.' I like that better even though it is a pretense. The people who played those roles, the same roles for years, were, and might still be, lovely people. A famous director, German I think, once said that audiences make an unconscious appraisal of the actor's real life character. In the case of much loved soap opera actors I can say with some certainty they are, were, lovely people. I know because I was married to one.

Barry

 

 

Patriotism

Love of country, I suppose, is an extension of love of family. Hence, by the way, the title of the long ago traveling photography show, The Family of Man. Our soldiers abroad, men and women, risking their lives, giving their lives, in the past and in the present, demonstrate our collective familial love. Today we celebrate that glorious human characteristic, something I pray will never, ever, be taken for granted or in any way undervalued. Let us pray for our soldiers at Home and away.  Today, also, would be a fine time to honor the French, for example, and others, who though not colonists, helped us achieve Independence.

Barry

 

CLASSIC ARTS SHOWCASE (PBS TV)

Classic Arts Showcase plays every morning on PBS before Sesame Street shows up.

My so far favorite, brief segment - they are all brief - aired via satelite 'SKY' when I lived in Puerto Escondido in the Mexican state of Oaxaca:  At the Verdi home for elderly opera stars, in Italy of course, an old woman, still quite pretty and lithe, wearing a bathrobe, is slowly panned up to from a record label playing a fantastically beautiful aria. The old woman sits in an ordinary chair and silently listens attentively. We watch her face as the music continues uninterrupted. Very slowly she relaxes and listens uncritically.

At the conclusion of the aria the woman says with sincere, open-hearted glee and pleasure, "How beautiful!"

Of course it was herself she was listening to when she sang in performance many decades earlier.

Barry

Incendiary Writing Vs Lovable Writing

When I started out as a writer at age ten this is what I came up with.

Dear Peanut-butter, / hullo Pete how are you rascal, your going to cop a few insults my young lanky leded bandy coot. now I've fogotten a few names. If you must now I'm in fifth class any obos spit em of your chest. / oh! gee I'm wanted just a tick. / He I am you lopy eard weesel. I love Peanut-butter escpechly when it's chapman brand I'm only started. / Peter you asked me if I would give you a account of the fights I'v had. One lunch time I got my gang together and started throwing stones at a high school kid that kept on wagging school, he couldn't tell on us because we could tell on him for not going to school. We kept on throwing them every day until one time when he got a lot of other High school fellows to attack us but we ran to our head quarters were we had amunishin and gave them the verks. Gee I'm tired but I'll tell you a bit of news first. / to-day I was playing with a boy I now and I had a piece of rope around me and the other boy had the other end of it around him and we had back to back and pulling as showen. I pulled out my knife and cut the roap and he went head over turkey (pitty it wasn't you) and got up and started to bully me around natualy I hopped in to him and made him see that I as only playing. I don't want to skite but that's the only thing I could do.

I'v got a bute headquters it well camafaged ecuped with stones and bier bottle bombs and light-gloub bombs.

The boy I play with is a paper boy and he delivers Manly Dailys at 3oclock in the morning I went with him once and boy do I have some fun. We are going pasted a place and I fire a catapult inthrough somebody's windows and all the lights go on and a lady comes out and we hide and a cop comes around the corner and says, give me a dailie son and I say y y y  y - yes sir. Later the silly kid picks up a milk bottle and lets fly and busted in the middle of the street. We go into a big block of plates and ring the door bells as hard as posable.  and have some snooker fun. / golly I wish I could come up to muggee. It drives me silly to think I'm missing out on all the fun. / I'd do any thing to be able to come up. good-nigh, / good-nigh love from Barry (Absent Goat Catcher)

So, at age ten I was unconsciously using writing to assert my will, soft-talk my cousin Peter into persuading his parents to let me visit them again in the country, all the while hiding my loneliness and envy. All the violence is lying. "Skite" was Aussie for bragging. I insist I'm not bragging, but of course that is exactly what I was doing.

The only reason I'm in possession of photocopies of my letters to my cousins is that their mother kept them. Long after shedied, in old age, my cousin Michael was kind enough to send me copies. AuntHelen was so meekly Irish/Australian Catholic I'm still quite cheered, and proud she was my beloved Aunt. A country woman of that period might very well have thought my letter was wicked. She was wise, had eleven children, and totally understood each and every one of them, even to knowing how importanmt it was for them to keep alive their friendshipswith their cousins.

Aggressionis a part of the act of writing. I'm embarrassed reading this letter written by a ten year old, a young man not crazy about going to school, but I love owningthis proof, at least proof to me, that aggression and violence is a natural and useful attribute of all writing. Difficult to 'sell'this plain and obvious truth, but I keep trying; knowledge of that truth can be quite useful, and guilt absolving.

Barry