Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- When Beat Was Neat-A Film Clip From The B-Film Classic “High School Confidential”-Phillipa Fallon’s “High School Drag”

High School Drag: Phillipa Fallon [1958]


My old man was a bread stasher all his life.
He never got fat. He wound up with a used car,
a 17 inch screen and arthritis.

Tomorrow is a drag, man.
Tomorrow is a king sized bust.

They cried ‘put down pot,’ ‘don’t think a lot,’ for what?
Time, how much? And what to do with it.

Sleep, man, and you might wake up digging the whole
human race giving itself three days to get out.

Tomorrow is a drag, pops, the future is a flake.

I had a canary who couldn’t sing.
I had a cat who let me share my pad with her.
I bought a dog that killed the cat who ate the canary.
What is truth?

I had an uncle with an ivy league card.
He had a life with a belt in the back.
He had a button-down brain.
Wind up a belt in the mouth with a button-down lip.

We cough blood on this earth.
Now there’s a race for space.
We can cough blood on the moon soon.

Tomorrow’s dragsville, cats.
Tomorrow is a king size drag.

Tool a fast shore, swing with a gassy chick.
Turn on to a thousand joys.
Smile on what happened, or check what’s going to happen,
You’ll miss what’s happening.
Turn your eyes inside and dig the vacuum.

Tomorrow, DRAG.
Phillipa Fallon [1958]
High School Drag
(Welles / Glasser)
MGM 12661

***Yes, Got Them Born In The Alley, Raised Up In The Slums Blues- Barrelhouse Mamas- A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Lucille Bogan performing her barrelhouse blues classic They Ain’t Walking No More.

CD Review

Barrelhouse Mamas: Born in the Alley, Raised Up In The Slums: Classic Piano Rags, Blues and Stomps from the 1920s and 30s, Yazoo Records, 1999

Recently I made a point in another CD review that dealt with some favorite blues torch singers that although it was mainly male blues singers (Son House, Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt and the like) who were “discovered “during the 1960s folk revival minute back in the day, back in the 1920s and 30s day, the most well-known blues singers were female. One only needs to think of names like Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Ma Rainey and Memphis Minnie, none of who are on this CD under review, Barrelhouse Mamas: Born In The Alley, Raised Up In The Slums: Classic Piano Rags, Blues, and Stomps from the 1920s and 30s, to get the point. Of course the above-mentioned names were the stars, the ones who achieved blues immortality and who drew down some serious dough performing for black audiences (mainly) in concert halls, movie theaters and any hall that was ready to roll, north and south, although mainly south in the then heartland of the American black population.

Naturally like any genre not everybody made it to the top, not even close in some cases. Not for lack of talent, but maybe being in the wrong place at the wrong time or maybe just because they liked working the off-beat milieu. With few exceptions the ‘barrelhouse mamas” here came up the hard way, made a small mark and faded back in obscurity once the blues (and jazz) craze died down with the advent of the Great Depression in the 1930s when spare nickels were not to be used for anything but survival.

The top tier performers here include a few songs by Lucille Bogan, a couple by Margaret Thornton including her Jockey Blues, and a couple by Saint Louis Bessie (not the famous Bessie Smith), including He Treats Me Like A Dog. Mainly these are songs that would resonate with their juke joint-style audiences, songs of no good, mean, always leaving, always two-timing, mistreatin’ men, no enough dough, not enough liquor, no way out of the slums and no way out of dire poverty (except maybe turning “tricks” on those mean streets). This is real slice of life down at the base of American society stuff not that far removed from today’s story line. As always with a Yazoo CD compilation there is an extremely informative booklet detailing the known information about these hard-pressed women.

***Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- The Non-Essential Elvis- A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Elvis Presley performing the essential That’s When Your Heartaches Begin.

The Essential Elvis Presley, Two CD set, Elvis Presley, Sony Music 2007

There are a thousand, thousand ways to package the be-bop rock and roll minute king of the 1950s teenage angst night. And for his early work he should be packaged, packaged to eternity. It is the rest of his work that is the problem and hence the problem with this two CD set of what the producers have picked as essential. There are just too many dud, and semi-duds from his later period (the 1960s and 1970s Las Vegas flame-out period.
Any essential product has to be top-heavy with 1950s stuff get a nod from me.

From this compilation the obvious classics That’s All Right, Heartbreak Hotel, Blue Suede Shoes, Hound Dog, Don’t Be Cruel, Jailhouse Rock and It’s Now or Never rate a nod. Th rest though are strictly a mishmash. And I know from where I speak. Why? Until very, very recently I actually, if you can believe this, did not think much of Brother Presley’s music. And I was (and still am somewhat) nothing but a be-bop rock and roll baby-boomer boy who could listen to the stuff all day and night. A while back I got a hold of a five CD set of Elvis’ work from the Sun Record days mainly. That’s the Elvis who will live in rock and roll history. Stuff like It’s All Right, Mama, I Forgot To Remember To Forget, Good Rockin’ Tonight, That’s Where Your Heartaches Begin, Your Right She Left and a ton of others. Ya, the stuff from the days when he was hungry, and we were too. This compilation will not satisfy that hunger.

***We Don’t Want Your Ism-Skism Thing- Dreadlocks Delight- “One Love: The Very Best of Bob Marley And The Wailers”- A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bob Marley and the Wailer performing their classic up-from-under song, Get Up, Stand Up.


One Love: The Very Best of Bob Marley And The Wailers, Bob Marley And The Wailers, UTV Records, 2001

Admit it, back in the late seventies and early eighties we all had our reggae minute, at least a minute anyway. And the center of that minute, almost of necessity, had to be a run-in with the world of Bob Marley and the Wailers, probably I Shot The Sheriff.Some of us stuck with that music and moved on to its step-child be-bop, hip-hop when that moved on the scene. Others like me just took it as a world music cultural moment and put the records (you know records, those black vinyl things, right?) away after a while. And that was that.

Well not quite. Of late the Occupy movement, the people risen, has done a very funny musical thing, at least funny to my ears when I heard it. They, along with the old labor song, Solidarity Forever, and, of course Brother Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land , have resurrected Bob Marley’s up-from-under fight song, Get Up, Stand Up to fortify the sisters and brothers against the American imperial monster beating down on all of us and most directly under the police baton and tear gas canister. And that seems, somehow, eminently right. More germane here it has gotten me to dust off those old records and give Brother Marley another hear. And you should too if you have been remiss of late with such great songs as (aside from those mentioned already) No Woman, No Cry, Jamming, One Love/People Get Ready (ya, the old Chambers Brother tune), and Buffalo Soldier. And stand up and fight too.

***Out In the Be-Bop 1960s Night- When Olde Saco Rocked, Rocked Into The Night

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Otis Redding performing his torch classic I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.


CD Review

1965: The Beat Goes On, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988

Scene evoked by the cover art that graces the front of this CD. The cover illustrates an example of 1965 teen jail-break concert, or better, some local teen queen bee club, where a local cover band, complete with mopped-hair and Nehru jackets, amped-up to the high heavens is trying to make its own musical break-out.

Ya, Olde Saco, Maine is rocking tonight. School’s over for the summer, mercifully over, and everybody who is anybody, anybody in the teen world, what other world is there, is out in the sea breeze night. Hell, Josh, Joshua Lawrence Breslin, freshly-minted junior-to-be at Old Saco High come the fall earlier in the evening even counted a bunch of walkers and others touristas who don’t really count out this night. This Friday night just before the French-Canadians from up in Quebec (the locals call them “cubies,” to draw a distinction between the foreigners and the homegrown varieties of French Canadian including Josh himself whose mother is a LeBlanc) descend on the town come July and take up all the air, the Maine soft fluffed beach sand, and the whiskey clubs with their arcadian dreams, and liquor stinks.

Ya, he chuckled to himself they sure don’t count, not tonight. And not down at the Surfside Club where the local favorites from up in Bangor, the Rockin’ Ramrods, are holding their first concert, well, dance really since they fronted for The Kinkies down in one of Boston’s Fenway night clubs a few weeks back. Now, for the squares, what the Surfside is about is a teen night club where no liquor is served, no official liquor okay. And only people eighteen to twenty-one can get in. Period, well, kind of period.

See last summer after the Beatles hit the shore the guy who owns the Surfside, Lenny LaCroix, decided he could make more dough, lots more dough, using his club on Friday and Saturday nights to let the teeny-boppers bop (hey, that is how he explained it to one and all in the Olde Saco Tribune). Before that he used to have a fox-trot and whisky crowd, mainly whisky, foul up the place for a few hours before heading off to watch late night television or something. And so almost every week since then every eighteen to twenty-one year old within fifty miles including those tweedy Colby girls and Bates guys came thundering down the newly opened Maine Turnpike to listen to what was what on the local music scene. But mainly to be seen, and see. Officially, okay

Hold on a minute. How does one Joshua Lawrence Breslin, who by no stretch of the imagination can fit the eighteen year old minimum either by looks or by stance, fit in. Well, that is where the old ancient human game, hell maybe Adam and Eve invented it, who you know, who you know in the Old Saco teen night scheme of things comes into play.

See the king hell king of that night is none other than usually day and night whiskey-soaked “Stewball” Stu (although nobody, nobody alive anyway, calls him to his face, not if they want to stay alive anyway) who has been the king of the car-crazed night here as long as anyone can remember. Why? Let us just say ‘57 cherry flaming hellfire red “boss” Chevy and be done with it. And Josh, having inadvertently done Stu a good turn turning over some local Lolita that Stu was interested in, has been riding “shot gun” on most Friday and Saturday nights in that '57 chariot for the past couple of years.

And the very long in the tooth (over 21) Stu is nothing but the guy who turned the owner of the Surfside, Lenny, on to the idea of evicting the sloe-gin fizz crowd and making his joint a teen club. Besides Stu, at the best of times an oily mechanic to normal people (read: non-teens), is nothing but a magnet for the legion of honeys who love ’57 Chevys, or rather love being seen in that kind of vehicle, and what that does to them in lots of ways. Best of all if Stu, who sometimes can be a hard and cruel king, is open-armed welcome his boy Josh is welcome too. So tonight is no different from a million other nights that way. Strictly Friday routine.

So this night Josh is making his usual trek over to Stu’s “house,” really just a mucked-up trailer cum ad hoc garage, hell, let’s just call it a dump and be done with it, down at the corner of his own wrong side of the tracks street, Albemarle, and Main. That trip is required protocol now since mother Delores (nee Leblanc, and no nonsense French-Canadian in such matters) put her foot down (or rather both feet) last spring and declared Stu and his car persona non grata and persona non car. No big deal this night though as the stars have come out and Josh dreams his usual dream, his usual Friday night salacious dream of “scoring” a bevy of babes at this hoe-down teen night club scene so that he will have one for each night in the week like his mentor, Stu. He arrives at Stu’s, they pass their usual grunt greetings, and they are off into the ocean air, wave-flecked night.

First stop. Or rather first pass through. Jimmy Jacks’ Diner (the one on Main and Atlantic, the teen girl magnet and guy hot car hang-out one, not the lame senior citizen blue plate special before six joint over on West Grand, hell no) to see who may be out and about early, who is not going anywhere near some hot teen club, and who, or what, crazed who is looking for Stu to go mano y mano with him on some dawn Squaw Rock “chicken” run. Ya, some crazed yahoo from the sticks or something who hasn’t heard that Stu and his Chevy are immortal. But this night “no dice,” nothing, nada and so it is off to the pier to scout things out there on the pilgrimage.

Scouting the pier is a much part of the Friday night summer ritual as breathing, no question. See this is like Stu’s coronation, or reaffirmation of his kinghood. And also see that the honeys who hang around the pier are those who, unlike Josh and his cachet, have no chance of sneaking into (or staying) the Surfside and so they must cool their act on the amusement park boardwalk. That little problem, however, does not stop them from getting in line, a line six deep at times, to oh, oh, oh, Stu’s Chevy and hope, hope that maybe tonight he sees their teeny-bopper charms. And Stu, normally a girl stoic at least out front, loves this adoration from, well from girls his own age, his socially developed own age. Josh though thanks his lucky stars Stu is that way ever since that local Lolita turnover, thanks his lucky starts everyday. Even if the Stu aura has never brought him any luck with those silly, screaming skee ball sticks. Even on a lonesome Monday night.

But even an adored king knows that hanging around parent and cop heavy boardwalks is ill-advised, especially ill-advised, when one Officer “Pete” is aiming dead-eye at Stu and getting his pencil and citation book out ready to pounce on some lame town ordinance to ticket Stu. They are off, although more than one pair of sad-eyed, mini-skirted sticks is moaning and groaning about the leaving. Jesus, Stu really is the king hell king.

Arriving at the Surfside (on East Grand just after the Acey-Duecey Club where all the lamo, old-time motorcycle guys and their “sweeties” hang trying to jump-start their youth dreams) Stu parks in the spot that Lenny has set aside for him as is appropriate for royalty. Stu and Josh go in. And, as usual, they split up and take their respective spots around the bandstand. For a while now Stu and Josh have agreed, no, Stu have proclaimed that once inside the club it is every man for himself and Stu wants no high school junior-to-be messing with his time. Period.

Stu, of course, gets his usual looks from the local shapes (no amusement boardwalk stuff here either, pure honey) who know that a look from Stu means a ride in that ’57 Chevy if not tonight then sometime. But see Stu’s fifteen minutes of fame is strictly local, the girls from the colleges, the ones that Josh eyes and spies, think Stu is, if you can believe this, nothing but a high school drop-out and/or hoodlum. At least that is what one such college girl had just told Josh, while they were slow dancing to Otis Redding’s I’ve Been Loving You Too Long, when he tried to lash-up to Stu’s star with a freshman girl, Laura, from Colby.

And see, maybe, she, Laura, was right, well right from her Colby perspective, because just before midnight Stu (with a hot red head, definitely a shape, in short green mini-skirt whom Josh had seen around town working in one of the summer hash houses) came up to Josh and for the umpteenth time told him that he had to find his own way home because, well, just because. Just then that Colby girl, maybe sensing that Josh wasn’t some Stu clone, jumped right in and said she would make sure that Josh got home. And the way she said it had Olde Saco Rock jetty beach front ocean “parking” and checking out the dawn written all over it. Ya, Olde Saco rocked that night.

***Out In The 1960s Be-Bop Night- Wait Until Dark- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Wait Until Dark.

DVD Review

Wait Until Dark, starring Audrey Hepburn, Efram Zimbalist, Junior, Alan Arkin, Warner Brothers, 1967


If anybody touches a hair on the head of Audrey Hepburn they have to answer to me. Okay? Except in this little psychological thriller of a film, Wait Until Dark, from the late 1960s Ms. Hepburn seems to be doing just fine, just fine in her newly sightless world and therefore I will only need to provide back-up. And I am ready, more than ready, to provide such service if that main villain here, played by Alan Arkin, comes anyway near the neighborhood again. He may not be pure evil in the Faustian literary sense but on the streets of New York (or name the city) he is as close as one needs to get. And live.

Needless to say given the times, then or now, criminals, especially low-life master criminals like Arkin looking to move up the drug cartel food chain are a blight on society. And a terror to those without sight who stand in the way of, in the case, a drug-filled doll from foreign parts unknown brought in by a “mule” who decided to turn pro and run her own operation who passes off her ill-gotten bounty to Hepburn’s unsuspecting husband (played by Zimbalist) when the heat is on (and Arkin is hip to her plans). But here is where the dramatic tension comes in. The life and death duel between Arkin (and his confederates) balanced against the blind Ms. Hepburn’s fear-driven efforts to foil the bad guys which is a great sign for our side. But it still goes. Keep your mitts off Ms. H. Get it.

***Out In The Be-bop 1950s Night- A Good Old Boy Tries To Keep It Together- For Prescott Breslin Wherever He Is

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of June Carter Cash performing Will The Circle Be Unbroken to set the mood for this piece.

Keep On The Sunny Side: June Carter Cash-Her Life In Song, June Carter Cash and others, Two CD Set, Sony Records, 1999

Scene: Brought to mind by the song Will The Circle Be Unbroken performed by June Carter Cash on the compilation, Keep On The Sunny Side: June Carter Cash-Her Life In Song.

“Jesus, it’s been three months since the mill closed on the first day of our lord, January 1954, as the huge black and red sign in front of the dead-ass silent mill keeps screaming at us (and also to not trespass under penalty of arrest, christ,) and I still haven’t been able to get steady work, steady work anywhere, what with every other guy looking for work too, and I don’t even have a high school diploma to do anything but some logging work up North when they need extra crews,” Prescott Breslin half-muttered to Jack Amber, a fellow out-of-worker sitting on the counter-stool next to his from the same MacAdams Mill that had been in Olde Saco since, well, since forever. This conversation and ones like it in previous weeks between the two, and by many previous parties on those self-same stools, took place, of course, at Millie’s Diner right across the street from the closed, dead-ass mill the place where every guy (and an occasion wife, or girlfriend waiting to pick up her guy) who worked there went for his coffee and, and whatever else got him through another mill week.

Just then Prescott (no Pres, or PB, or any such thing, not if you don’t want an argument on one of his few vanities) fell silent, a silence that had been recurring more frequently lately as he thought of the reality of dead-end Maine prospects and rekindled a thought that came creeping through his brain when Jack MacAdams, the owner’s son, first told him the plant was shutting down and moving south to North Carolina not far, not far at all, from his eastern Kentucky roots. Then it was just a second of self-doubt but now the thoughts started ringing incessantly in his brain.

Why the hell had he fallen for, and married, a Northern mill-town girl (the sweet, reliable Delores, nee LeBlanc, met at the Starlight Ballroom over in Old Orchard Beach when he had been Marine Corps short-time stationed at the Portsmouth Naval Base down in New Hampshire just before heading back to the Pacific Japan death battles), stayed up North after the war when he knew the mills were only a shade bit better that the mines that he had worked in his youth, faced every kind of insult for being southern from the insular Mainiacs (they actually call themselves that with pride, the hicks, and it wasn’t really because he was from the south although that made him an easy target but because he was not born in Maine and could never be a Mainiac even if he lived there one hundred years), and had had three growing, incredibly fast growing, boys with Delores. Then he was able to shrug it off but not now.

The only thing that could break the cursed thoughts was some old home music that Millie, good mother Millie, the diner’s owner (and a third generation Millie and Mainiac) made sure the jukebox man inserted for “her” country boys while they had their coffee and. He reached, suddenly, into his pocket, found a stray nickel, put it in the counter-side jukebox, and playedWill The Circle Be Unbroken, a song that his late, long-gone mother sang to him on her knee when he was just a tow-headed young boy. That got him to thinking about home, the Harlan hell home of worked-out mines, of labor struggles that were just this side of fighting the Japanese in their intensity and possibilities of getting killed, or worst grievously injured and a burden on some woe-begotten family, of barren land eroded by the deforested hills and hollows that looked, in places, like the face of the moon on a bad night. And of not enough to eat when eight kids, a mostly absence father and a fading, fading mother needed vast quantities of food that were not on table and turnips and watery broth had to do, of not enough heat when cruel winter ran down the ravines and struck at your very bones, and of not enough dough, never enough dough to have anything but hand-me-down, and then again hand-me-downs clothes, sometimes sister girls stuff just to keep from being bare-assed.

Then he thought about the Saturday night barn dances where he cut quite a figure with the girls when he was in his teens and had gleefully graduated to only having to wear hand-me-downs. He was particularly lively (and amorous) after swilling (there is no other way to put it) some of Uncle Eddie’s just-brewed “white lightening.” And he heard, just like now on the jukebox, the long, lonesome fiddle playing behind some fresh-faced country girl in her best dress swaying through Will The Circle Be Unbroken that closed most Saturday barn dances. As Millie asked him for the third time, “More coffee” he came out of his trance. After saying no to Millie, he said no to himself with that same kind of December resolve. A peep-break Saturday night dance didn’t mean squat against that other stuff. And once again he let out his breathe and said to himself one more time- Yes, times are tough, times will still be tough, jesus, but Delores, the three boys, and he would eke it out somehow. There was no going back, no way.

Just then through the door Jack Amber yelled, “Hey, Prescott, the Great Northern Lumber Company just called and they want to know if you want two months work clearing some land up North for them. I’m going, that’s for sure.” And, hell, he was going too.

***Out In The Be-Bop 1940s Crime Noir Night-Fatal Attraction- “The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers"- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir, The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers

DVD Review

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Kirk Douglas, Lizabeth Scott, Paramount Pictures, 1946

Ya, a woman can get under your skin, no question, no question at all, in 1940 or 2010 makes no difference. Now two guys tugging away is an even tougher story, especially when the dame is a heartless femme fatale like Barbara Stanwyck who plays the woman under their skins in the title of this crime noir, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Now Barbara Stanwyck was never my beaux ideal of a femme fatale, I run more to the Rita Hayworth hot-blooded Gilda-types (with that strand of hair over the eyes) but I could see where guys, normally sensible guys, would be running through hoops in order to win her favors. And she would give them the "kiss of death," that hard-hearted kiss of death mentioned above. Take no prisoners, none.

A little plot line of the story goes a long way to figuring out those charms, those decidedly not girlish, not 1940s girlish anyway, charms. Rebellious Martha, an orphan being brought up to be a lady by an old-school rich aunt wants none of it and keeps running away, aided and abetted by ragamuffin, wrong side of the tracks Sam, played by Van Heflin. As the film opens she is being brought back after one such caper, scolded by her aunt assisted by Kirk Douglas’s father, Martha’s tutor (Douglas plays Walter, the other love interest in this dance of death combination). When dear cruel auntie (played by Judith Andersen, who knew how to play that kind of role to a tee) tries to confront Martha just as she is getting ready to fly the coop again with Sam, with Walter swore to secrecy, she just happens to fall down the long flight of stairs. After less than one shed tear the trio (Martha, Walter, and his dear old money-grubbing dad) work up a story and stick to it, stick to it to well because to make it stick ultimately they have some unnamed vagabond lug eventually go the chair for their misdeed. Meanwhile Sam, figuring that Martha has gotten cold feet, blows town on the next train out, a circus train.

Fast forward eighteen years. Sam, passing through town, decides to see what has happened since he blew town. Well Martha and Walter have gotten loveless married (loveless on her part, naturally) to seal their part of the pact with death, Walter for crazed-out love, Martha to keep him on a leash. Martha who turns out to be a pretty good businesswoman basically runs the town now. But here is the kicker, guilt-ridden about how they obtained their ill-gotten gains our blessed married couple think Sam is here for a shake-down thinking he saw what happened that long ago night when auntie went crashing down the stairs. Of course Sam had no idea of the sort until things start to unravel around his new-found girlfriend, sweet, husky voiced Lizabeth Scott who has her own troubles with the law. The long and short of it is that Martha is still carrying the torch for Sam, Walter is getting more drunken crazy for Martha and sweet hard-luck Liz looks to be holding an empty bag when Martha puts her whammy on Sam.

There can be no happy ending here, right? Well, right but only part right. This murder most foul has put a death grip on Martha and Walter, a death grip that is triggered by Sam's reappearance but also that nasty little deal of creating a fall guy for their misdeeds. So you know, know just as well as I do that the fates are against them. As for Sam and Liz, well they get out with the skin of their teeth but they get out. Once again, you know the routine; crime doesn’t pay, one way of the other it eats away at you. Got it.

***On The "Decline" Of The English Language- With The English Writer George Orwell In Mind

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for George Orwell's famous essay, Politics and The English Language.

On The Pressing Issue Of The 50th Anniversary Reunion for the North Adamsville High School Class of 1964

Peter Paul Markin comment December 3, 2012:

Yeah, maybe I am the only one who sees getting worked up about the 50th reunion of the Class of 1964 as a “pressing” life and death issue in the year 2011, a whole two years away, but there is something like a method to my madness beyond the points mentioned below. With the rise of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement a couple of years ago I thought I had some added wind in my sails so that now that I would have a chance to express some language, the language of class struggle, to a new audience. A language learned in my hard-ass, hard-bitten, hard-hearted, well, just hard everything, old North Adamsville working- class youth. A language then not so much of technical terms of political struggle like vanguard party, workers party, and workers government but coming from a somewhat inarticulate sense of injustice in the world, that same unformed sense that I find when talking to today’s youth. Not talking to our kids, the ‘missing’ generation, for the most part, unfortunately, but our grandkids, for christsake. But there is something of a disconnect between my language, a language reflecting a few hundred years of struggle and theirs, a bite-sized, heads down, fingers-tapping, text-squeezed language.

I have been for some time now holding forth in this space about the need for each generation to learn the lessons of history in their own way, create their own forms of struggle, and learn their own languages to set the framework of that struggle. Just like my generation learned, in the end and after bitter struggle, from the working- class and socialist movements of our then past. And I still hold to that view with this proviso-precise political language is as important now as it has been for previous generations so learn the lessons of history- and listen, a little please, to the song sung by those previous generations. Enough said.
*******
From The North Adamsville High School website - Is there anybody on this site who is from the Class of 1964? Or has a parent (s) (Ouch!) from that class? Or a grandparent(s) (Double Ouch!)? The reason I ask this question is that now that both strands of that Class of 1964 (the North Adamsville Junior High, a.k.a., Middle School, Class of 1960 and the Adamsville Central Junior High, ditto on the middle school thing, Class of 1961, are safety past their respective 50th anniversaries of graduation from those hallowed institutions it is time to start planning for the Class of 1964’s 50th anniversary reunion in 2014. (1964 plus 50 equals 2014 for the Math majors out there)

What? In 2012, in the age of the Internet year 20 (or so), there is a pressing need to gather in the old geezers and geezer-ettes (sic, sorry) for an event two years away? Well, yes. Hear me out. See the Generation of ’68, the last generation to seriously try to put a dent in the way this society does its governmental business by attempting to turn the world upside down at the grassroots level, was just on the edge of the technological revolution so there are probably some classmates out there who will take some effort to reach. I know of one old geezer, who shall remain nameless for fear of legal repercussions, who I will only identify by zip code, 02152, who is still waiting, waiting patiently, a vice of old age, on his front porch daily for the post man to deliver his e-mail. So you can see what we are up against.

Moreover, since many of us have lost a step, or seven, to the ravages of time we need plenty of advanced preparation to make everything every possible way accessible. Of course this last comment does not apply at all to any female classmates as I do not need, do not need at all, any cyber-stones thrown at me. It also does not apply to any male classmate bigger than I am, especially those goliaths of the gridiron who did us proud in their senior football season capped by that great victory over arch-rival Adamsville High. But it is a consideration.

Needless to say the last two paragraphs are so much eyewash coming from these quarters. The real reason, the real, real reason, is that I am on a “crusade” to get classmates to write, old- fashioned write, a little something for the 50th reunion, say maybe a page of pithy things that will make us laugh-and proud that we survived 1960s high school. I figure that it may take that amount of lead time to make sure the job is done right. And definitely hear my motivation for this one out.

We may be one of the last generations that still believes in (or knows about) complete sentences, paragraphs and the like. So if nothing else when some archeologists, in a thousand years, hell, in one hundred years, start digging out our current artifacts and come across our recollections in Olde English they will say btyomglolfyitmi. (Translation into Olde English: What in the world is this primitive gibberish?). Case closed.

***Out Of The 1940s Crime Noir Night-When Anti-Semitism Rears Its Ugly Head-“Crossfire”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir film, Crossfire.

DVD Review

Crossfire, starring Robert Young, Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum, RKO Radio Pictures,1947

In a recent review of a 1950s crime noir, Pickup At South Street, a film that combined the ordinary subject matter of this genre, some crime doesn’t pay scam, with a veneer of 1950s political anti-communist “red scare” political conformity I noted that putting the two together weakened the film. That is the case here as well although the combination is somewhat different-a seemingly senseless murder committed under mysterious circumstances in post-World War II New York and with a very heavy dose of plebeian anti-Semitism mixed in. Not that the question of anti-Semitism cannot be properly portrayed in film, witness the same years Oscar film, Gentleman’s Agreement, but under the plot line (and character development) here it just doesn’t jell. It might have worked just as well as a straight police procedural with no particular social message. Here’s why.

This is a tale of the three Roberts. Robert Ryan, a twisted pycho Army NCO lifer-type with a hard anti-Semitic craze, frames one of his men for a foul murder of a “civilian” shirker (said shirker in reality having been discharged as a result of wounds performing his military duty in the war). Needless to say this shirker (aren’t they all) is Jewish (a "Jewboy" in Ryan’s vernacular). And murder brings in Robert Young as a hard-bitten New York detective who is assigned the case and who smells a rat (Ryan) early on but can not quite put his finger on it. And enter too Robert Mitchum as a fellow Army NCO who also smells a rat, although he too is not quite sure who did it.

As the story evolves it is clear that Ryan’s chosen fall guy didn’t do it (although his whereabouts, his actions, and his alcohol-induced “fog” didn’t help his case) and that Ryan did. That part works, works decently enough for a second-rung crime noir, but there is never any strong motivation presented for Ryan’s anti-Semitism other than the plebeian platitudes common to gentile attitudes toward Jews then, and perhaps, now. I know from my own working class background that attitude, and the expression of those attitudes among 1950s Irish Catholic working-class kids (“they killed Christ, see”). They should have left this one to stand on its crime doesn’t pay, especially for pychos theme.

***On The 40th Anniversary Of The Death Of Jimi Hendrix- From Woodstock Nation (1969)To Class-Struggle Nation (2011)

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Jimi Hendrix performing his classic blues rock, Hey, Joe.

Markin comment:

As we gear up for another titantic struggle to bring the American "beast" down it is rather appropriate to remember one of the icons of the 1960s cultural struggles this year.

From the American Left History blog

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

*The Cultural Wars-Part 247- Woodstock 2007

COMMENTARY

As a political writer who stands well outside the traditional political parties in this country I do not generally comment on specific politicians or candidates, unless they make themselves into moving target. Come on now, this IS politics after all. How can I justify not taking a poke at someone who has a sign on his chest saying –Hit Me? Lately Republican presidential hopeful Arizona Senator John McCain has fallen all over himself to meet that requirement.


And what is the fuss about. Studied differences about how to withdraw from Iraq? No. Finding ways to rein in the out of control budgets deficits? No. A user friendly universal health care program? No. What has sent the good Senator McCain into spasms is a little one million dollar funding proposal (since killed in the Senate) that would have partially funded a museum at Woodstock, site of the famous 1969 counter-cultural festival. His view is that the federal government should not be funding projects that commemorate drug, sex and rock and roll. Well so be it. However, the topper is this. In order to sharply draw the cultural war line in the sand he mentioned (just in passing, I’m sure) to the Republican audience that he was speaking to that he did not attend that event as he was ‘tied up’ elsewhere.

Unlike his draft dodging fellows, like Bush Cheney, Wolfowitz, et. al in the Bush Administration McCain saw action in Vietnam. Of course that action was as a naval pilot whose job it was to attempt to bomb North Vietnam back into the Stone Age, a task in which they very nearly succeeded. Through the fortunes of war he was shot down and spent several years in a POW camp. That comes with the territory. In the summer of 1969 this writer also had other commitments. He was under orders to report to Fort Lewis, Washington in order to head to Vietnam as a foot soldier. That too comes with the territory. The point is why rain on someone else’s parade just because you want to be a hero. Moreover, it is somewhat less than candid to almost forty years later belly ache about it.


A note on Woodstock as an icon of the 1960’s. The slogan- Drugs, sex, and rock and roll. We liked that idea then, even those of us who were rank and file soldiers. Not everyone made it through that experience . Others recoiled in horror later, including some of those today on the right wing of the culture wars. And others who did not 'inhale' or hang around with people who did formed another reaction to those events. Those experiments and others like communal living, alternative lifestyles and ‘dropping out’, however, were part of the price we felt we had to pay if we were going to be free. And creative. Even the most political among us felt those cultural winds and counted those who espoused this vision as part of the chosen. Those who believed that we could have a far-reaching positive cultural change without a fundamental political change in society proved to be wrong long ago. But, these were still our people.

Note this well. Whatever excesses were committed by the generation of ’68, and there were many, were mainly made out of ignorance and foolishness. Our opponents, exemplified by one Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal, and today by John McCain spent every day of their lives as a matter of conscious, deliberate policy raining hell down on the peoples of the world, the minorities in this country, and anyone else who got in their way. Forty years of ‘cultural wars’ in revenge by them and their protégés is a heavy price to pay for our youthful errors. Enough.

***Out Of The 1940s Crime Noir Night- Drifter’s Farewell- “Moontide”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film Moontide.

DVD Review

Moontide, starring Jean Gabon, Ida Lupino, Thomas Mitchell, Claude Rains, 20th Century-Fox, 1942

There are a million ways, a million ways cinematically and maybe in life too, that boy meets girl, crime noir or not. Even if that “boy” is a not so young drifter sailor, Bobo (played by Jean Gabin last seen by this reviewer in the incredible French film, Max Ophuls' Children of Paradise), whose been around, and thinks he wants to stay been around. Except fastened to the California waterfront like glue by his profession he is called upon to save a damsel in distress. A young woman, Anna, who serves them off the arm in some hash house (played here by Ida Lupino last seen by this reviewer in High Sierra with Humphrey Bogart and Pard) who was, at wits end for some unknown reason, sets out to drown herself. Naturally sea-worthy Gabin saves her, and the romance is on.

But wait a minute this is a crime noir as well as a boy meets girl story. And Bobo is set up to fit the frame while he was drunk by his friend Tiny, a serious ne’er do well and slightly psycho, after Tiny has killed a denizen of the waterfront over some trivial matter. So the boy meets girls setting up house (on a barge of course out on the breakwater) part keeps on getting set back by the Bobo frame-up part. All, by the way, done in high 1940s melodramatic style.

But there is more. This film’s script is filled with little philosophical reflections by one and all, Bobo most of all. For Bobo about leaving the high seas adventure life and its down time waterfront dive existence and settling down. By Anna about whether she is “worthy” to be Bobo bride and find happiness in their cozy little barge by the breakwater. And by other characters, as well, like Doc (a boat owner) and the night watchman, Nutsy (played by Claude Rains). Hell, even Tiny makes a pitch that he just needs a new life up north to break out of his psycho ways. Like I said very melodramatic but as always with Gabin you get some incredibly expressive acting and Ms. Lupino does her misspent working class unworthiness existence whine to a tee.

***Out In the 1950s Crime Noir Night- A Grifter’s Farewell- “Dark City- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir, Dark City.

DVD Review

Dark City, starring Charleston Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Dean Jagger, Jack Webb, Harry Morgan, Paramount Pictures, 1950

No question after running through a seemingly endless run of crime noir films that not all the films in the genre are equal. The classics like The Big Sleep, Maltese Falcon, Gilda, and Out Of The Past speak for themselves with fine plot lines and slightly awry femme fatales to brighten things up. The film under review, although not in that category, could have been better had it not gotten caught up in some melodramatic flim-flam and stayed the hard-boiled, gritty classic grifter story that it set out to be. The outlines of the plot surely gave more promise that was delivered.

Down in those post-World War II means streets out West a lot of war-weary, war-tousled, war-scarred guys tried to do, well, the best they could. And the best they could usually was some grifter scheme to make a score off some bozo mark and hit the road, hit the road fast, and leave no forwarding address. That is the substance of the plot here. Ex-soldier (World War II just in case you might have forgotten, or were not sure what war I was talking about since there are many to choose from these days) Dan Healy (played in an understated, post-war alienated, existential man kind of way by Charleston Heston before he became Moses or Ben Hur or whatever big screen techno-color champ he became later) make his downwardly mobile way to grifter-dom in some seedy skid row town.

Dan's thing is gambling and, of course, for such an endeavor you need suckers with dough, easily parted with dough. And, as well, some confederates in on the scam. That is the case here as Dan and two fellow grifters (one played by Jack Webb before he got “religion” and became Sergeant Friday on the 1950s television show, Dragnet) rope in the sucker, a guy holding a five thousand dollar check (serious money, serious money down on mean street then) although the money is not actually his. Needless to say a fool and his dough are soon parted.

And that is where things start to go wrong with this film (as well as in the lives of our three gamblers). Filled with remorse the mark (played by Don DeFore) can’t face the horror of going back and confessing to his employers that he blew the dough on gambling, and instead hanged himself in his lonely room. Not for him the easy road of blowing town and changing his name, toughing it out, or even filing a court claim against the miscreant gamblers. In short, nobody, nobody this side of Hollywood takes the rope on the facts presented here. And then it gets worst. See the mark has an older dominating brother who watches out for him. Now this suicide business once he finds out the cause gets him a little exercised. See the brother is a stone-cold psycho and he is out to even the score-three dead, very dead gamblers.

Well, if you have been paying attention you know that Charleston Heston, the star and therefore kill-proof, is one of those marked for extinction so the other two get their just desserts and old Heston squeaks by after some close moments. The problem is when we see finally see who the killer-brother is there is no way that anyone could believe, or at least I could believe, that this gorilla was anybody’s brother. Come on.

The other place where the film goes wrong is on the inevitable love interest angle. Now Danny boy, who spends a good part of the film moodily cutting up old torches from back in the day, has a sort of girlfriend. A very fetching smoky-voiced chanteuse, Fran, (played by Lizabeth Scott) girlfriend who wears her heart on her sleeve for him, although he is mostly indifferent to her. No femme fatale here-just a what you see is what you get gal who can sing the blues, while having them over her man who done her wrong. The problem is that the chemistry between Danny and Fran is all wrong, all wrong alls ways. Fran is the girl next door and Danny, is well Danny, a grifter and the two don’t mix. And the plot gets further muddied when Dan, trying to get a lead of where the mark’s brother is, starts to play footsie with the dead mark's non-grieving widow. So you see now what I mean when I say that not all crime noirs are created equal.

***Out In The 1950s Crime Noir Night, Kind Of- Beauty Is Only Skin Deep, Right, “Stolen Face” –A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film Stolen Face.

DVD Review

Stolen Face, starring Paul Henreid, Lizabeth Scott, Hammer Film Productions, 1952


Love, as almost everybody knows from personal experience, will make you do crazy thing sometimes. It will drive a seemingly rational calm and thoughtful man or woman over edge every once in while. Make “evil” in the world without missing a beat. That, my friends, is the premise behind the film under review, Stolen Face, one of a long line of films that portray the bad results of fooling around with Mother Nature too much, and with getting fogged up in that love embrace.

A British doctor, a plastic surgeon, (played Paul Henreid last seen leading the anti-fascist resistance as Victor Lazlo in early World War II in the film Casablanca) in post-World War II London working apparently for the National Health Service, and working very hard and diligently, thank you, takes a little vacation to the wilds of coastal England. He winds up in an inn along the way, an inn which also is hosting a beautiful American pianist ready to go on a European tour (played by smoky-voiced Lizabeth Scott) with a cold. Well, naturally, Doc comes to the rescue, and as part of the "cure" they fall head over heels in love. However, Lizabeth is already “spoken for,” leaving Doc very unhappy. So back to work he goes with a vengeance.

And that vengeance, as previously, entailed working on the faces of criminal types to give them a chance to change their ways (okay, Doc, if you say so). As part of that work he runs up against a disfigured dregs of the working-class young woman (okay, lumpenproletarian), Lily, whom he thinks that he can help by use of the surgeon’s scalpel. After much ado he gives her a new beautiful face, a face that is strangely very, very, very similar to his lost love’s. On top of that he goes off and marries her. But here is where things get dicey and the scriptwriter proves to be no Marxist or other believer in the ever upward rise of human progress. Lily, skin beautiful or not, goes back to her old ways “proving” that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. Worst Lizabeth comes back; ready to get back into Doc’s arms. Fortunately Lily, drunk as a skunk riding on the train with hubby Doc, falls out of the train door (or was she pushed) just as Lizabeth shows up. Very convenient, very convenient indeed although no one is looking to make a court case out of it. Yes I guess beauty is really only skin deep, but no question love can drive you screwy. No question.

***Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- Storms Are On The Ocean- For Prescott Breslin,Senior

A YouTube film clip of June Carter Cash performing Storms Are On The Ocean one of Prescott Breslin’s favorite boyhood tunes.

Wildwood Flower, June Carter Cash, produced by John Carter Cash, Dualtone Music, 2003

Scene: Brought to mind by the song Storms Are On The Ocean performed by June Carter Cash on her Wildwood Flower album.

Prescott Breslin was beside himself on that snowy December day just before the Christmas of 1953. He had just heard, no more than heard, he had been told directly by Mr. John MacAdams, the owner’s son, that the James MacAdams & Son Textile Mill was closing its Maine operations in Olde Saco and moving to Lansing, North Carolina right across the border from his old boyhood hometown down in Harlan, Harlan, Kentucky, bloody Harlan of labor legend, song, and story right after the first of the new year. And the reason that the usually steady Prescott was beside himself at hearing that news was that he knew that Lansing back country, knew that the matter of a state border meant little down there as far as backwater ways went, knew it deep in his bones, and knew that come hell or high-water that he could not go back, not to that kind of defeat.

Prescott (not Pres, Scottie, or any such nickname, by the way, just dignified Prescott, one of his few vanities), left the mill at the closing of his shift, went across the street to Millie’s Diner, sat at the stooled-counter for singles, ordered a cup of coffee and a piece of Millie’s homemade pumpkin pie, and put a nickel in the counter jukebox, selecting the Carter Family’s Storms Are On The Ocean that Millie had ordered the jukebox man to insert just for Prescott and the other country boys (and occasionally girls), mainly boys, or rather men who worked the mills in town and sometimes needed a reminder of home, or something with their coffee and pie.

Hearing the sounds of southern home brought a semi-tear to Prescott's eye until he realized that he was in public, was at hang-out Millie’s where he had friends, and that Millie, thirty-something, but motherly-kind Millie was looking directly at him and he held it back with might and main. In a flash he thought, tear turning to grim smirk, how he had told his second son, Kendrick, just last year when he asked about the Marine Corps uniform hanging in a back closet in the two by four apartment that they still rented from the Olde Saco Housing Authority and naively asked him why he went to war. He had answered that he preferred, much preferred, taking his chances in some forsaken battlefield that finish his young life out in the hard-bitten coal mines of eastern Kentucky. And then, as the last words of Storms echoed in the half-empty diner, he thought, thought hard against the day that he could not turn back, never.

And just then came creeping in that one second of self-doubt, that flash of why the hell had he fallen for, and married, a Northern mill town girl (the sweet, reliable Delores, nee LeBlanc, met at the Starlight Ballroom over in Old Orchard Beach when he had been short-time stationed at the Portsmouth Naval Base down in New Hampshire), stayed up North after the war when he knew the mills were only a shade bit better that the mines, faced every kind of insult for being southern from the insular Mainiacs (they actually call themselves that with pride, the hicks, and it wasn’t really because he was from the south although that made him an easy target but because he was not born in Maine and could never be a Mainiac even if he lived there one hundred years), and had had three growing, incredibly fast growing boys, with Delores. He reached, suddenly, into his pocket, found a stray nickel, put it in the counter jukebox, and played the flip side of Storms, Anchored In Love. Yes, times will be tough since the MacAdams Mill was one of the few mills still around as they all headed south for cheaper labor, didn’t he know all about that from the mine struggles, jesus, but Delores, the three boys, and he would eke it out somehow. There was no going back, no way.

***Out In The Be-Bop 1940s Night-I’ll Get By As Long As I Have You-For Prescott And Delores Breslin

A YouTube film clip Bing Crosby performing Far Away Places to give a little flavor to this sketch.

CD Review

Sentimental Journey, Pop Vocal Classics, Volume 2: 1947-1950, Rhino Records, 1993

Scene: Brought to mind by the sepia-toned family album-style photograph that graces the cover of this CD and by the song Far Away Places.

“Prescott James Breslin get your dirty hands off that wall this minute, yelled Delores Breslin (nee LeClerc), Mother Breslin to some, including the yelled at Prescott, honey, to Prescott Breslin, Senior, Father Breslin to the junior one being yelled at just this minute. Just as Mother Breslin, hell, let’s call her Delores, was getting ready for cascade rant number two aimed in Prescott, Junior’s direction wafting through the air, the radio WJDA air, came the melodious voice of Bing Crosby singing in that sweet, nuanced voice of his, Far Away Places. Their song. Their forever memory song.

Delores flashed back to the night in 1943 over at the Stardust Ballroom on East Grand in Old Orchard Beach that she, then a typist for the State Insurance Company right here in Olde Saco (and making good money for a single, no high maintenance girl) and Marine PFC Prescott Breslin, stationed after serious service in the Pacific wars (Guadalcanal, etc.) at the Portsmouth Naval Base met while they were playing that song on the jukebox between sets. Sets being performed by the Be-Bop Sextet, a hot, well, be-bop band that was making a national tour to boost civilian morale while the boys were off fighting. They hit it off right away, made Far Away Places their song, and prepared for a future, a joint future, once the war was over, and they could get their dream, shared dream, little white house, with or without picket fence, maybe a dog, and definitely kids, a few although they never specified a number. The perfect dream to chase the old Great Depression no dough blues and World War II fighting dust away, far away. And to be to breath a decent breathe, a not from hunger breathe.

Just then Delores snapped back into the reality, the two by four reality, of their made due, temporary veterans’ housing set up by the Olde Saco Housing Authority (at the request of and funded by the War Department) to house the housing-hungry returning vets and give them a leg up. Add on the further reality that Prescott’s job at the Macadam’s Textile Mill was none too sure now that rumors were circulating around town that the mill-owners were thinking of relocating to North Carolina. And the biggest reality of all: well, Prescott, Junior, Kendrick, and most recently still in the cradle Joshua. And three is enough, more than enough thank you. But as that terrific tenor of Dick Haymes singing Little White Lies was making its way into her air space she fell back to thinking about that now old dream of the little white house, with or without picket fence, a dog and a few (exactly three, thank you) that was coming just around next corner. And just as she was winding up to blast young Prescott, his dirty hands, and that wall, maybe a little less furiously that she intended before, her thoughts returned to her Prince Charming, Starlight Ballroom1943, and their song. Their forever memory song. Yes, she would get by.

***In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- When "Stewball" Stu Stewart ’57 Chevy Ruled The “Chicken” Roads

A YouTube film clip of Chuck Berry performing his classic School Days to give a flavor of the times to this piece

CD Review

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era: 1957, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1987

Scene: Brought to mind by the cover artwork that graces the front of the booklet that accompanies this CD. The artwork contains, in full James Dean-imitation pout, one good-looking, DA-quaffed, white muscle-shirted young man, an alienated young man, no question, leaning, leaning gently, very gently, arms folded, on the hood of his 1950’s classic automobile, clearly not his father’s car, but also clearly for our purposes let us call it his “baby.”

And that car, that extension of his young manhood, his young alienated manhood, is Friday night, Saturday night, or maybe a weekday night if it is summer, parked (priority parked, meaning nobody with some Nash Rambler, nobody with some foreign Volkswagen, no biker even , in short, nobody except somebody who is tougher, a lot tougher, than our alienated young man better breathe on the spot while he is within fifty miles of the place) directly in front of the local teenage (alienated or not) "hot spot." And in 1950s’ America, a teenage America with some disposal income (allowance, okay), that hot spot is likely to be, as here, the all-night Mel’s (or Joe’s, Adventure Car-Hop, whatever) drive-in restaurant opened to cater to the hot dog, hamburger, French fries, barbecued chicken cravings of exhausted youth. Youth exhausted after a hard night, well, let’s just call it a hard night and leave the rest to your knowing imagination, or their parents’ evil imaginations.

And in front of the restaurant, in front of that leaned-on “boss” automobile stands one teenage girl vision. One blondish, pony-tailed, midnight sun-glassed, must be a California great American West night teeny-bopper girl holding an ice cream soda after her night’s work. The work that we are leaving to fertile (or evil, as the case may be) imaginations. Although from the pout on Johnny’s (of course he has to be a Johnny, with that car) face maybe he “flunked out” but that is a story for somebody else to tell. Here’s mine.
********
Not everybody, not everybody by a long-shot, who had a “boss” ’57 cherry red Chevy was some kind of god’s gift to the earth; good-looking, good clothes, dough in his pocket, money for gas and extras, money for the inevitable end of the night stop at Jimmy John’s Drive-In restaurant for burgers and fries (and Coke, with ice, of course) before taking the date home after a hard night of tumbling and stumbling (mainly stumbling). At least that is what one Joshua Breslin, Josh, me, freshly minted fifteen- year old roadside philosopher thought as for the umpteenth time “Stewball” Stu left me by the side of Albemarle Road and rode off into the Olde Saco night with his latest “hot” honey, fifteen year old teen queen Sally Sullivan.

Ya, Stewball Stu was nothing but an old rum-dum, a nineteen year old rum-dum, except he had that “boss” girl-magnet ’57 cherry red Chevy (painted that color by Stu himself) and he had his pick of the litter in the Olde Saco, maybe all of Maine, night. By the way Stu’s official name, was Stuart Stewart, go figure, but don’t call him Stuart and definitely do not call him “Stewball” not if you want to live long enough not to have the word teen as part of your age. The Stewball thing was strictly for local boys, jealous local boys like me, who when around Stu always could detect a whiff of liquor, usually cheap jack Southern Comfort, on his breathe, day or night.

Figure this too. How does a guy who lives out on Tobacco Road in an old run-down trailer, half-trailer really, from about World War II that looked like something out of some old-time Hooverville scene, complete with scrawny dog, and tires and cannibalized car leavings every which way have girls, and nothing but good-looking girls from twelve to twenty (nothing older because as Stu says, anything older was a woman and he wants nothing to do with women, and their women’s needs, whatever they are)? And the rest of us get his leavings, or like tonight left on the side of Route One? And get this, they, the girls from twelve to twenty actually walk over to Tobacco Road from nice across the other side of the tracks homes like on Atlantic Avenue and Fifth Street, sometimes by themselves and sometime in packs just to smell the grease, booze, burnt rubber, and assorted other odd-ball smells that come for free at Stu’s so-called garage/trailer.

Let me tell you about Stu, Sally, and me tonight and this will definitely clue you in to the Stu-madness of the be-bop Olde Saco girl night. First of all, as usual, it is strictly Stu and me starting out. Usually, like today, I hang around his garage on Saturdays to get away from my own hell-house up the road and I am kind of Stu’s unofficial mascot. Now Stu had been working all day on his dual-exhaust carburetor or something, so his denims are greasy, his white tee-shirt (sic) is nothing but wet with perspiration and oil stains, he hasn’t taken a bath since Tuesday (he told me that himself with some sense of pride) and he was not planning to do so this night, and of course, drinking all day from his silver Southern Comfort flask he reeked of alcohol (but don’t tell him that if you read this and are from Olde Saco because, honestly, I want to live to have twenty–something as my age). About 7:00 PM he bellows out to me, cigarette hanging from his mouth, a Lucky, let’s go cruising.

Well, cruising means nothing but taking that be-bop ’57 cherry red Chevy out on East Grand and look. Look for girls, look for boys from the hicks with bad-ass cars who want to take a chance on beating Stu at the “chicken run” down at the flats on the far end of Sagamore Beach, look for something to take the edge off the hunger to be somebody number one. At least that last is what I figured after a few of these cruises with Stu. Tonight it looks like girls from the way he put some of that grease (no not car grease, hair-oil stuff) on his nappy hair. Yes, I am definitely looking forward to cruising tonight once I have that sign because, usually whatever girl Stu might not want, or maybe there are a couple of extras, or something I get first dibs. Ya, Stu is righteous like that.

So off we go, stopping at my house first so I can get a little cleaned up and put on a new shirt and tell my brother to tell our mother that I will be back later, maybe much later, if she ever gets home herself before I do. The cruising routine in Olde Saco means up and down Route One (okay, okay Main Street), checking out the lesser spots (Darby’s Pizza Palace, Hank’s Ice Cream joint, the Colonial Donut Shoppe where I hang during the week after school and which serves a lot more stuff than donuts and coffee, sandwiches and stuff, and so on). Nothing much this Saturday. So we head right away for the mecca, Jimmy John’s. As we hit Stu’s “saved” parking spot just in front I can see that several stray girls are eyeing the old car, eyeing it like tonight is the night, tonight is the night Stu, kind of, sort of, maybe notices them (and I, my heart starting to race a little in anticipation and glad that I stopped off at my house, got a clean shirt, and put some deodorant on and guzzled some mouthwash, am feeling tonight is the night too).

But tonight is not the night, no way. Not for me, not for those knees-trembling girls. Why? No sooner did we park than Sally Sullivan came strolling (okay I don’t know if she was strolling or doo-wopping but she was swaying in such a sexy way that I knew she meant business, that she was looking for something in the Olde Saco night and that she had “found” it) out to Stu’s Chevy and with no ifs, ands, or buts asked, asked Stu straight if he was doing anything this night. Let me explain before I tell you what Stu’s answer was that this Sally Sullivan is nothing but a sex kitten, maybe innocent-looking, but definitely has half the boys, hell maybe all the boys at Olde Saco High, including a lot of the guys on the football team drooling over her. I know, because I have had more than one sleepless night over her. See, she is in my English class and because Mr. Murphy let’s us sit where we want I usually sit with a good view of her. So Stu says, kind of off-handedly, like having the town teen fox come hinter on him was a daily occurrence, says kind of lewdly, “Well, baby I am if you want to go down Sagamore Rocks right now and look for dolphins?” See, Sagamore Rocks is nothing but the local lovers’ lane here and “looking for dolphins” is the way everybody, every teenage everybody in town says “going all the way,” having sex for the clueless. And Sally, as you can guess if you have been following my story said, “Yes” just like that. At that s why I was dumped, unceremoniously dumped, at my street while they roared off into the night. So like I said not every “boss” car owner is god’s gift to women, not by a long shot. Or maybe they are.

***Up, Up And Away- George Clooney’s “Up In The Air”-A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film Up In The Air.

DVD Review

Up In The Air, starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga,Anna Kendrick, Paramount Pictures, 2009

The last time that I reviewed a film starring George Clooney in this space he portrayed a much put-upon, but ultimately triumphant, fixer-man lawyer in the film Michael Clayton. I mentioned there that you may “buy” the fixer-man off, you may knock him around the courts a little with some silly law suit but in no way do you try to kill the bugger when he is doing what he does best, fixing things. Apparently, according the story line here where Clooney plays the hatchet-man for a company that “fires” high level people for those who do not want to get their hands messy, or place themselves in the line of fire if things go awry, that same poor judgment prevails here.

Oh no, no one is trying to kill Brother Clooney here, well, except maybe kill his spirit through the huge advances in communications technology that allow a company to avoid the expenses associated with flying all over the place in economic bad times to do the ”canning” and thus taking away an old school-style job from Clooney that he has become skilled at. It seems that somebody at headquarters got the bright idea to do the whole process by remote control, through computers. And the avatar of that idea was none other than a freshly- minted MBA (played by Anna Kendrick) out to win her spurs in the tough world of high-tech software innovations. Along the way though, as she tags along with Clooney on his aero-rounds, she gets “religion” and steps away to find a more socially useful way to flaunt her skills.

But back to George. See, he can see the writing on the wall a little but he is determined to run a rearguard action to defend his reason for existence, his style. Here he is clearly the first, well maybe not first but close, post-modern plastic card man who like Saul Bellows’ Dangling Man, or any one of a number of John Updike’s modern men, lives a purely existential life, and likes it. With the exception of a baffling relationship with a fellow female business-class traveler (played by fetching Vera Farmiga) who, shockingly (to Clooney) and incongruously (to me), turns out to be just another soccer mom on a lark his life, his solo life, is lived in hotels, airplanes, and rental cars. By the way (BTW for the cyber-slang crazed) George Clooney’s cool, clinical demeanor, and his quietly-determined quest for ever more frequent-flyer miles is perfect in this role. But one more time-don’t mess with the fixer-man, or the hatchet-man, not if his name is Clooney. Got it.

***The Heart Of The San Francisco Fillmore Night, Circa 1967

A YouTube film clip of The Jefferson Airplane performing their classic wa-wa song Volunteers to give a flavor of the times to this piece

Scene: Brought to mind by one of the songs in this compilation, The Jefferson Airplane’s Fillmore West-driven classic wa-wa song, Someone To Love.

It wasn’t my idea, not the way I was feeling then although I had “married” them under the stars one night, one late June night, in this year of our summer of love 1967. Married Prince Love (a.k.a. Joshua Breslin, late of Olde Saco High School Class of 1967, that’s up in Maine) and Butterfly Swirl (a.k.a. Kathleen Clarke, Carlsbad High School Class of 1968, that’s down south here in California), my “family” as such things went on the merry prankster yellow brick road bus that brought us north to ‘Frisco. I had only “adopted” the Prince here on Russian Hill one day when he was looking for dope. Before that I had traveled all through the great western blue-pink night, as my North Adamsville corner boy friend, Peter Paul Markin, would say from Ames, Iowa where I got “on the bus,” the Captain Crunch merry prankster bus).

I brought Butterfly and Lupe Matin (her Ames “road” name then although now she is going under the name Lance Peters. No, don’t get the idea she has gone male, no way, no way in freaking hell and I have the scars on my back to prove it. It’s just her, well, thing, the name-changing thing, and her real name anyway is Sandra Sharp from Vassar, that’s a high–end New York college for women, okay) up here for a serious investigation of the summer of love we kept hearing about down in Carlsbad where we camped out (actually we looked out for the estate of a friend, or maybe better an associate, of our “leader,” Captain Crunch, as care-takers). Yes, the “old man,” me, Far-Out Phil (a. k. a. Phil Markin, North Adamsville Class of 1964, that’s in Massachusetts, okay) married them but I was not happy about it because I was still not done with Butterfly myself. Only the residual hard-knocks North Adamsville corner boy in me accepted, wise to the ways of the world, that Butterfly had flown from me.

It was all Captain Crunch’s idea, although Mustang Sally (a. k. a. Susan Stein), if she was talking to the Captain (a. k. a Samuel Jackman) just then, which was always a sometime thing lately since she had taken up with a drummer from one of the myriad up-and-coming “acid rock” bands that had sprouted out of the Golden Gate night, The Magic Mushrooms, and the Captain was not pleased, not pleased at all, probably was the real force behind the idea. The idea? Simple enough, Now that they, the they being the thousands of young people who had fled, fled a millions ways, west, were about creating a merry prankster yellow bus world on the hills of San Francisco the notion that Prince Love and Butterfly Swirl were “married” under the sign of “Far-Out Phil and would have now have a proper bourgeois “wedding reception” was impossible. Celebrate yes, no question. Celebrate high and hard, no question. But the times demanded, demanded high and hard, some other form of celebration. And that is where the Captain (or, as seemed more and more likely once more facts came out, Mustang Sally) hit his stride.

Here is the “skinny.” The Captain knew somebody, hell the Captain always knew somebody for whatever project he had in mind, connected to the Jefferson Airplane, a hot band that was going to be playing at the Fillmore that next Saturday night. And that somebody could get the Captain twenty prime tickets to the concert. [Everybody suspected that the deal was more nuanced than that, probably the tickets for a batch of Captain-produced acid, or in a two-fisted barter, a big pile of dope, mary jane most likely, from somebody else for something else and then a trade over for the tickets. That high finance stuff was never very clear but while nobody worried much about money, except a few hungry times out in some god-forsaken desert town or something, there usually was plenty of Captain dough around for family needs.] So the Captain’s idea was that this concert would be an electric kool-aid acid test trip that was now almost inevitably part of any 1967 event, in lieu of that bourgeois (the Captain’s word, okay) wedding reception. And, see, the Prince and Butterfly, were not to know because this was going to be their first time taking some of that stuff, the acid (LSD, for the squares, okay). And once the acid hit the Captain said, and the rest of us agreed, there would be no sorrow, no sorrow at all, that they had not had some bogus old bourgeois wedding reception.

Saturday night came, and everybody was dressed to the nines. (Ya, that’s an old Frankie Riley, North Adamsville corner boy leader, thing that I held onto, still do, to say hot, edgy, be-hop.) Let’s just concentrate on the “bride” and “groom” attire and that will give an idea of what nines looked like that night. Butterfly, a genuine West Coast young blonde beauty anyway, formerly hung-up on the surfer scene (or a perfect-wave surfer guy anyway), all tanned, and young sultry, dressed in a thin, almost see-through, peasant blouse. According to Benny Buzz, a kind of connoisseur on the subject, it wasn’t really see-through but he lied, or close to it, because every guy in the party or later, at the concert, craned his neck to look at the outline of her beautiful breasts that were clearly visible for all to see. And while she may have been “seek a new world” Butterfly Swirl she was also an old-fashioned “tease,” and made no apologies for being so. She also wore a short mini-skirt that was de rigueur just then that highlighted her long well-turned legs (long flowing skirts were to come in a little later) and had her hair done up in an utterly complicated braid that seemed impossible to have accomplished piled high on her head, garlands of flowers flowing out everywhere, and silvery, sparkling, starry mascara eyes and ruby-red, really ruby red lips giving a total effect that even had the Captain going, and the Captain usually only had his eyes, all six of them, fixed on Mustang Sally.

And the “groom”? Going back to Olde Saco roots he wore along with his now longer flowing hair and less wispy beard an old time sea captain’s hat, long flared boatswain's whites, a sailor’s shirt from out of old English Navy times and a magical mystery tour cape in lieu of the usual rough crewman's jacket. A strange sight that had more than one girl turning around and maybe scratching her head to figure out his “statement.” That didn’t however stop them from looking and maybe making a mental note to “try him out” sometime. (By the way, I told the Captain later that the Prince had no idea of making a statement and, being more than a little stoned on some leftover hash that he found around he just grabbed what was at hand).

Now back to the action. In order to “fortify” everyone for the adventure the Captain proposed a “toast” to the happy couple before we left the merry prankster yellow bus to make the one mile trip to the Fillmore. So everybody, including the bride and groom toasted with Dixie cups of kool-aid. The Prince and Butterfly were bemused that, with all the liquor available around the bus, the Captain proposed to use kool-aid for the toast. Well, we shall see. And they shall see.

And they “saw,” or rather saw once the acid (LSD) kicked in about an hour later, more or less. Now what you “see” on an acid trip is a very individual thing, moreover other than that powerful rush existential moment that you find yourself living in it defies description, literary niceness description, especially from a couple of kids on their “wedding night.” So what is left? Well, some observations by “father” Far-Out Phil, now a veteran acid-eater, as I hovered over my new-found “family” to insured that they made a safe landing.

The first thing I noticed was that Butterfly Swirl was gyrating like crazy when the female singer in front of Jefferson Airplane, Grace Slick, started up on their acid rock anthem, White Rabbit. Some of Butterfly’s moves had half the guys in the place kind of male hippie “leering” at her (mainly giving her a sly nod of approval, and making a mental note to check her out later when the dope hit her at the high point in another couple of hours or so). (Remember she had on that diaphanous peasant blouse, and also remember that sexual thoughts, leering sexual thoughts or not, did not fade away when under the influence of LSD. In many cases the sexual arousal effect was heightened, particularly when a little high- grade herb was thrown into the mix.) I thought nothing in particular of her actions just then, many guys and girls were gyrating, were being checked-out and were making mental notes of one kind or another. It is only when Butterfly started to “believe” that she was Alice, the Alice of the song and of wonderland, and repeated “I am Alice, I am alive,” about thirteen times that I moved over to her quickly and gave her a battle-scarred veteran’s calming down, a couple of hits off the Columbia Red that I had just coped from some freak.

And where was Prince Love during the trial by fire honeymoon night? Gyrating with none other than Lance Peters, who you may know as Luscious Lois or seven other names, by who was my main honey now that Butterfly has flown my coop. But don’t call her Lance Peters this night because after a tab of acid (beyond her congratulations kool-aid cup earlier) she is now Laura Opal in her constant name-game change run through the alphabet. Prince Love had finally “seen” the virtues of being with older woman like I had learned back in Ames Iowa time, an older voluptuous woman and although she was wearing no Butterfly diaphanous blouse Prince felt electricity running through his veins as they encircled each other on the dance floor. Encircled each other and then, slyly, very slyly, I thought when I heard the story the next day, backed out of the Fillmore to wander the streets of Haight-Ashbury until the dawn. Then to find shelter in some magic bus they thought was the Captain’s but when they were awoken by some tom-toms drumming out to eternity around noontime found out that they were in the “Majestic Moon” tribe’s bus. No hassle, no problem, guest always welcome. Ya, that is the way it was then. When I cornered, although corned may be too strong a word, the Prince later all that he would commit to was that he had been devoured by Mother Earth and had come out on the other side. That, and that he had seen god, god close up. Laura Quirk, if she is still running under that name now, merely stated that she was god. Oh ya, and had seen the now de rigueur stairway to heaven paved with brilliant lights. She certainly knew how to get around her Phil when the deal went down, no question.

And how did the evening end with Butterfly and me, after I “consoled” her with my ready-teddy herbal remedy? After a search for Prince and Lance, a pissed off search for me, we went over into a corner and started staring at one of the strobe lights off the walls putting ourselves into something of a trance-like mood. A short time later, I, formerly nothing but a hard-luck, hard-nosed, world-wide North Adamsville corner boy in good standing started involuntarily yelling, “I am Alice, I am alive,” about ten times. Butterfly though that was the funniest thing she had ever heard and came over to me and handed me a joint, a joint filled with some of that same Columbia Red that settled her down earlier. And I, like Butterfly before me, did calm down. Calmed down enough to see our way “home” to Captain Crunch’s Crash-Pad where we, just for old time’s sake, spend the hours until dawn making love. (I send my apologies to those two thousand guys at the Fillmore who had made notes to check on Butterfly later. Hey, I was not a king hell corner boy back in the North Adamsville be-bop night for nothing. You have to move fast sometimes in this wicked old world, even when the point was to slow the circles down.) Asked later what her “trip” had felt like all Butterfly could utter was her delight in my antics. That, the usual color dream descriptions, and that she had climbed some huge himalaya mountain and once on top climbed a spiraling pole forever and ever. I just chuckled my old corner boy chuckle.

And what of Butterfly and Prince’s comments on their maiden voyage as newlyweds? They pronounced themselves very satisfied with their Fillmore honeymoon night. They then went off for what was suppose to be a few days down to Big Sur where Captain Crunch had some friends, Captain had friends everywhere, everywhere that mattered, who lent them their cabin along the ocean rocks and they had a “real” honeymoon. A few weeks later Prince Love, now a solo prince, came back to the bus. It seems that Butterfly had had her fill of being “on the bus,” although she told the Prince to say thanks to everybody for the dope, sex, and everything but that at heart her heart belonged to her golden-haired surfer boy and his search for the perfect wave.

Well, we all knew not everybody was build for the rigors of being “on the bus” so farewell Kathleen Clarke, farewell. And just then, after hearing this story, I thought that Prince had better keep his Olde Saco eyes off Lannie Rose (yes she has changed her name again) or I might just remember, seriously remember, some of those less savory North Adamsville be-bop corner boy nights. Be forewarned, sweet prince.

***Out In The Be-Bop, Be-Bop 1960s Night- The Great San Francisco Summer Of Love Explosion- In The Heart Of The Fillmore Night

A YouTube film clip of The Jefferson Airplane performing their classic wa-wa song Someone To Love to give a flavor of the times to this piece

CD Review

Classic Rock: 1967, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988

Scene: Brought to mind by one of the songs in this compilation, The Jefferson Airplane’s Fillmore West-driven classic wa-wa song, Someone To Love.

It wasn’t my idea, not the way I was feeling then although I had “married” them under the stars one night, one late June night, in this year of our summer of love 1967. Married Prince Love (a.k.a. Joshua Breslin, late of Olde Saco High School Class of 1967, that’s up in Maine) and Butterfly Swirl (a.k.a. Kathleen Clarke, Carlsbad High School Class of 1968, that’s down south here in California), my “family” as such things went on the merry prankster yellow brick road bus that brought us north to ‘Frisco. I had only “adopted” the Prince here on Russian Hill one day when he was looking for dope. Before that I had traveled all through the great western blue-pink night, as my North Adamsville corner boy friend, Peter Paul Markin, would say from Ames, Iowa where I got “on the bus,” the Captain Crunch merry prankster bus).

I brought Butterfly and Lupe Matin (her Ames “road” name then although now she is going under the name Lance Peters. No, don’t get the idea she has gone male, no way, no way in freaking hell and I have the scars on my back to prove it. It’s just her, well, thing, the name-changing thing, and her real name anyway is Sandra Sharp from Vassar, that’s a high–end New York college for women, okay) up here for a serious investigation of the summer of love we kept hearing about down in Carlsbad where we camped out (actually we looked out for the estate of a friend, or maybe better an associate, of our “leader,” Captain Crunch, as care-takers). Yes, the “old man,” me, Far-Out Phil (a. k. a. Phil Markin, North Adamsville Class of 1964, that’s in Massachusetts, okay) married them but I was not happy about it because I was still not done with Butterfly myself. Only the residual hard-knocks North Adamsville corner boy in me accepted, wise to the ways of the world, that Butterfly had flown from me.

It was all Captain Crunch’s idea, although Mustang Sally (a. k. a. Susan Stein), if she was talking to the Captain (a. k. a Samuel Jackman) just then, which was always a sometime thing lately since she had taken up with a drummer from one of the myriad up-and-coming “acid rock” bands that had sprouted out of the Golden Gate night, The Magic Mushrooms, and the Captain was not pleased, not pleased at all, probably was the real force behind the idea. The idea? Simple enough, Now that they, the they being the thousands of young people who had fled, fled a millions ways, west, were about creating a merry prankster yellow bus world on the hills of San Francisco the notion that Prince Love and Butterfly Swirl were “married” under the sign of “Far-Out Phil and would have now have a proper bourgeois “wedding reception” was impossible. Celebrate yes, no question. Celebrate high and hard, no question. But the times demanded, demanded high and hard, some other form of celebration. And that is where the Captain (or, as seemed more and more likely once more facts came out, Mustang Sally) hit his stride.

Here is the “skinny.” The Captain knew somebody, hell the Captain always knew somebody for whatever project he had in mind, connected to the Jefferson Airplane, a hot band that was going to be playing at the Fillmore that next Saturday night. And that somebody could get the Captain twenty prime tickets to the concert. [Everybody suspected that the deal was more nuanced than that, probably the tickets for a batch of Captain-produced acid, or in a two-fisted barter, a big pile of dope, mary jane most likely, from somebody else for something else and then a trade over for the tickets. That high finance stuff was never very clear but while nobody worried much about money, except a few hungry times out in some god-forsaken desert town or something, there usually was plenty of Captain dough around for family needs.] So the Captain’s idea was that this concert would be an electric kool-aid acid test trip that was now almost inevitably part of any 1967 event, in lieu of that bourgeois (the Captain’s word, okay) wedding reception. And, see, the Prince and Butterfly, were not to know because this was going to be their first time taking some of that stuff, the acid (LSD, for the squares, okay). And once the acid hit the Captain said, and the rest of us agreed, there would be no sorrow, no sorrow at all, that they had not had some bogus old bourgeois wedding reception.

Saturday night came, and everybody was dressed to the nines. (Ya, that’s an old Frankie Riley, North Adamsville corner boy leader, thing that I held onto, still do, to say hot, edgy, be-hop.) Let’s just concentrate on the “bride” and “groom” attire and that will give an idea of what nines looked like that night. Butterfly, a genuine West Coast young blonde beauty anyway, formerly hung-up on the surfer scene (or a perfect-wave surfer guy anyway), all tanned, and young sultry, dressed in a thin, almost see-through, peasant blouse. According to Benny Buzz, a kind of connoisseur on the subject, it wasn’t really see-through but he lied, or close to it, because every guy in the party or later, at the concert, craned his neck to look at the outline of her beautiful breasts that were clearly visible for all to see. And while she may have been “seek a new world” Butterfly Swirl she was also an old-fashioned “tease,” and made no apologies for being so. She also wore a short mini-skirt that was de rigueur just then that highlighted her long well-turned legs (long flowing skirts were to come in a little later) and had her hair done up in an utterly complicated braid that seemed impossible to have accomplished piled high on her head, garlands of flowers flowing out everywhere, and silvery, sparkling, starry mascara eyes and ruby-red, really ruby red lips giving a total effect that even had the Captain going, and the Captain usually only had his eyes, all six of them, fixed on Mustang Sally.

And the “groom”? Going back to Olde Saco roots he wore along with his now longer flowing hair and less wispy beard an old time sea captain’s hat, long flared boatswain's whites, a sailor’s shirt from out of old English Navy times and a magical mystery tour cape in lieu of the usual rough crewman's jacket. A strange sight that had more than one girl turning around and maybe scratching her head to figure out his “statement.” That didn’t however stop them from looking and maybe making a mental note to “try him out” sometime. (By the way, I told the Captain later that the Prince had no idea of making a statement and, being more than a little stoned on some leftover hash that he found around he just grabbed what was at hand).

Now back to the action. In order to “fortify” everyone for the adventure the Captain proposed a “toast” to the happy couple before we left the merry prankster yellow bus to make the one mile trip to the Fillmore. So everybody, including the bride and groom toasted with Dixie cups of kool-aid. The Prince and Butterfly were bemused that, with all the liquor available around the bus, the Captain proposed to use kool-aid for the toast. Well, we shall see. And they shall see.