Homage

From Old English, via French,  homage was originally a feudal oath of fealty. Contemporarily, it can mean a tribute to a person or style. One obvious example can be seen in  Spielberg's salute to the cliff-hanger serials of the 30's and 40's, Raiders of the Lost Ark.


A less obvious tribute is The Coen brothers, The Big Lebowski.  This cult classic makes obeisance to the 1946 film, The Big Sleep, based on Raymond Chandler's novel . I came across this while researching my guise for last weekend's Americanized celebration of Samhain. Upon reflection, the similarities became apparent. My dismay at not realizing this on my own still haunts me.


Both concern the blackmail situation of a wheelchair-bound millionaire involving two of his household's alluring, yet iniquitous females (both daughters in Sleep, a daughter and trophy wife in Lebowski). My favorite cinematic twist involves the protagonists - Philip Marlowe, the street-wise, clever private dick and the Dude,  the stoner slacker.


In Chandler's book, Geiger, the used-book seller, who becomes an early murder victim, is involved in pornography. The 1946 movie ignored this to avoid running afoul of the industry's Hays commission. The Coen brothers allude to this with pornographer Jackie Strayhorn. As for the nihilists, what story isn't embellished with negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. To quote the Dude, that must be exhausting.


Other small nods to Sleep exist in Lebowski. One of my favorites, is the PI who tails the protagonist. In the 1946 film, this character is played by Elisha Cook, Jr. In the 1998 film, Jon Polito plays the part. He refers to the Dude as a brother shamus. This 20's slang of unknown origin for a private eye is used several times by Bogie.


As a street-wise, clever stoner slacker, I appreciate how these similarities tie the films together - kind of like a nice rug - as ever BB


"If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come." - Raymond Chandler

Back in the Saddle Again

Ah, Gene Autry! That singing cowboy made a big impression on me. Rainy Saturdays sitting at home, watching his old movies on UHF channel 17. Goldtown Ghost Riders, Gaucho Serenade, Guns & Guitars - These movies stirred the soul of this impressionable youth. Cowboys, six-guns, guitars and those great shirts...what's not to love?

Then I discovered his 1935 serial, The Phantom Empire. A bizarre mixture of Western and science fiction featured an alien race living underground and desperadoes thwarted by Gene with help from the Junior Thunder Riders. I was hooked. For weeks I'd wear a beat-up old cowboy hat, cowboy boots and a toy six-gun trying to learn chords on a guitar found in the attic.

Even as a kid, I was an avid reader and loved the library. I'd leave the house (Mom would never let me parade around town in my boots and hat, so I kept them in the garage putting them on surreptitiously) to research the singing cowboy. This led me to John Lomax's 1910 Cowboy Songs & Other Frontier Ballads. 


Cowboy music started on the cattle drives. Longhorns were skittish, so vaqueros would sing softly to them at night avoiding a deadly stampede. It started with standard ballads, then some cowpoke would add cattle-specific phrases which led to original songs. This era was short-lived, but these anachronistic cavaliers left their brand on the American psyche.

Western music has ebbed and flowed in popularity, but will always stir fondness in this ol'buckeroo. I have two Scully shirts (Western wear company started in 1906 who made shirts for Autry, Roy Rogers & others), a worn-in pair of Tony Lama boots and finally figured out some chords on the guitar. Never could get that yodel down, though - as ever BB

"He's the last of the singin' cowboys/Singin' songs of inspiration and joy/Yippie Yi Yo, Yippie Ay Aye/
He took a break, just to chug him down a beer/C'mon folks holler out the songs you'd like to hear" - Last of the Singing Cowboys - Marshall Tucker Band

Electric Junkies

That's what we have become. While Hurricane Irene spared Baltimore storm surge and extensive flooding, the saturated ground and high winds caused massive tree damage. This resulted in power outages throwing over 700,00 Marylanders back to a pre-electricity age.

While our home was not affected, many friends struggled with day-to-day living without electricity's life's blood flowing through their veins. Besides the luxuries we now take as essential like TV and Internet, they lacked refrigeration and running water -21st century necessities. This got me thinking about life during the millennia prior to our addiction to the electromagnetic interaction of subatomic particles.

Before electricity, Sol Invictus rode his quadriga across the skies ruling our lives. We rose at sunrise and most activities ended at sunset. Yes, first tallow, then candles, then gas lights shed some nocturnal illumination. But until Edison's incandescent invention, darkness dominated half our day.

In this hectic world, many yearn for simpler times when life seemed uncomplicated and guileless. If only we could return to those innocent days, we'd have more time for myface, twitbook, catching up on our DVR recordings of Jersey Shore and reading my blog - as ever BB

"Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile..." - Shakespeare, Love's Labor's Lost

Quid Me Anxius Sum?

Latin for “What Me Worry?” – the motto of Mad magazine’s impish mascot, Alfred E. Neuman. Translations can often be tricky. The Latin literally translates as “What am I worried?”  This illustrates the problem of translating idioms.


Each of our 50 states has a motto. Twenty of them are in Latin, twenty-four are English and the remaining six include: Chinook (Washington), Greek (California), Hawaiian (duh, Hawaii), French (Minnesota), Spanish (Montana) and Italian (Maryland). South Carolina and Kentucky have two. For the curious readers, both of South Carolina’s are Latin; Kentucky has one Latin and one English.

Maryland’s Italian motto is Fatti mashii, Parole femine. This archaic form of Italian comes from the Calvert family crest. While this idiom means “Strong deeds, Gentle words,” it literally translates as "Manly deeds, Womanly words." 

The state I grew up in, New Jersey, has the motto,  Liberty and Prosperity. Over the years, the Garden State has had several slogans. In 2005, the state wanted a new one. An ad agency was hired, but to no avail. They then looked to the citizens of NJ for ideas. The winner was a conglomerate of submitted ideas. “New Jersey, Come See For Yourself” An example of how lame marketing by committee can be. 

I submitted my own: “New Jersey, Here’s Your F@*#in’ Garden”. Graphically the spokesperson, traditionally the governor, would cup his/her genitalia as he/she intoned this "Jersey as you can get" slogan. 

I described an entire campaign -  a group of hikers in the Kittatinny Mountains, life guards on a beach, Revolutionary War reenactors on the battlefield in Monmouth, farmers in the blueberry patches in Hammonton, a group of Giants and Jets at the Meadowlands, Bruce and Little Steven on the stage at the Stone Pony - all grabbing their crotches yelling “New Jersey, Here’s Your F@$#in’ Garden.” 


The campaign would have generated international attention. The state would have achieved tons of free publicity - news articles, commentaries, editorials, late-night talk show fodder... but nooooo! Once again  I had cast intellectual pearls before cretinous swine. Or maybe they just thought this New Jersey idiom wouldn't translate well out of state? – as ever BB  

“Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.” - Oscar Wilde

Apology for Musings and Doggerel*

* Actually started this over a year ago as the introductory blog for this discourse. I forgot about it, then stumbled on it earlier this week. Better late than never as Chaucer coined. A mind is a terrible thing when wasted. - BB

From the Greek “apologia” in the manner of Plato, Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, I write this to give insight to my frame of mind. Be afraid, be very afraid.

1954… the Lone Ranger’s last radio episode aired, the H-Bomb was tested on Bikini Atoll, Bill Haley & the Comets recorded “Rock Around the Clock". America was in transition. World War II morphed into the Korean War that morphed into the Cold War. Amid this melee, I was born.

The bosom of the 50s nurtured me. The golden age of television’s glowing cathode ray was my lodestar. Nascent rock n’ roll was my lullaby.  “May you live in interesting times,” is said to be an ancient Chinese curse. Actually written by a Victorian-era British writer, it is apocryphal, yet apropos.

A brief list of events that occurred while I aged from 5 to 10:

1959 – Revolution in Cuba led by Fidel Castro

1960 – U2 pilot Gary Powers shot down over Russia  - war possible

1961 – Berlin wall erected – war possible

1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis – war imminent

1963 – President John F. Kennedy assassinated

1964 – Troops, not just advisers, sent to Vietnam.

Those are just the highlights of what occurred during my first 10 years on this planet. Mixing that with the normal twists and turns of childhood produced a strange potting soil to germinate the sprouting seeds of my consciousness.

Theories on personality development abound - Psychoanalytic, Humanist, Behaviorist, and Biopsychological to name a few. Whatever witch's brew of genetics, societal factors and husbandry produced the psyche that types these words is inconsequential. I have no idea what will incite my interest and give impetus to my doggerel. 

My father was once asked why I acted as I did. Dad shrugged his shoulders and said, "All I can tell you is when he was a kid, I put more stitches in his head than I can count." - as ever - BB
“I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.” -Oscar Wilde 

Sinister

Adjective - 1. giving the impression something harmful or evil is happening, or will happen 2. wicked or criminal - from Latin sinister - left

This Saturday, August 13, is Left-Handers Day. Lefties have rights too.


As one of 10% of the earth's population who is left-handed, I have suffered slings and arrows from the dexterous world. (From the Latin dexter - on the right)



Since ancient times, those using the left hand have been deemed instruments of the devil. What makes one left-handed? Theories abound. Researchers have discovered specific alleles of at least one of three single-nucleotide polymorphisms linked to left-handedness. I still prefer Flip Wilson's Geraldine postulate, "The Devil made me do it!" 

Growing up, the world seemed full of devices designed to disturb my disposition: scissors, spiral-bound notebooks, ladles, can-openers, corkscrews, et. al. The right side of the brain controls lefties. We are imaginative and creative; ergo, we survive well in a right dominated environment. 


So they say. I think the anguish of sinistromanuality explains why the left-handed lifespan is 9 years less than that of our right-handed brethren. 


Despite all of this, I enjoy being left-handed. I relish in being different. All my life, I've had a distaste for following the crowd. Am I a lefty because of my contrariness? Or is being contrary symptomatic of my left-handness? Causa latet, vis est notissima - Ovid (The cause is hidden, but the result is well known.)


I have one idiosyncratic lefty dysfunction which upsets me - the inability to use a fountain pen. One with a gold nib will form to your hand so that only you can write correctly with it. However, I have yet to find an ink that dries quickly enough. The drag of my left hand over the written words smudge out any possibility of using this stylish stylus. 


Left-handers excel in fencing. 44% of the world's top rated fencers are lefties. Alas, the pen may be mightier than the sword, but lefties make better swordsmen than scribes - As ever BB


"I am not afraid of the pen, or the scaffold, or the sword. I will tell the truth wherever I please." Mary Harris "Mother"  Jones 

Smell as Sweet

"What's in a name? that which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet" - William Shakespeare 

My topic is not a late 16th century play based on an Italian love story, but a 1957 film noir classic, The Sweet Smell of Success. The alluded aroma is not the fragrance of a rose, but the stench of entertainment's underworld of gossip columnists, press agents and mendacity.


The film did poorly in the box office. From the title, moviegoers expected to see Tony Curtis in a light-hearted comedy. Burt Lancaster fans expected a hero role. The film disappointed the audience. It's definative film noir full of unsavory characters, collusion and New York City neon juxtaposed against gritty street scenes. 


Martin Milner of Route 66 and Adam-12 portrays a jazz guitar player. He maintains his integrity while being unjustly smeared as a "marijuana smoking communist." West Coast jazz combo, the Chico Hamilton Quintet acts the part of the band.  Milner replaces John Pisano, who's left hand was used in the movie. This only adds to my personal fondness for the film. 


The pièce de résistance for me is the language. (A piece of Baltimore trivia associated with the film is the character in Barry Levinson's Diner who speaks only in quotes from this movie) Here are some of my favorite bon mots:
Steve (Milner) to J.J. (Lancaster): "You've got more twists than a barrel of pretzels." 
Steve to Sidney (Curtis) after Sidney feeds him some press agent fast talking: "That's fish four days old; I won't buy it."
J.J. to Sidney: "I'd hate to take a bite out of you. You're a cookie full of arsenic."
Sidney to J.J. - "The cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river."


I watched this film again Sunday afternoon and you can expect to hear these phrases added to my pathetic patois soon - as ever BB


"A lot of musicians aren't proud; they'll do other work, just to be able to play music. I guess that's the way it's always going to be - musicians will have to suffer to a certain degree in order to obtain their outlet. " - Chico Hamilton