Lemmings

These rodents live near the Arctic. I grew up with the popular misconception that hordes of the little
creatures would run into water or over cliffs in an act of mass suicide. Reasons ranged from population control to misguided migration to group hysteria. This belief was so commonplace that similes such as, "follow mindlessly like lemmings", "like lemmings going to slaughter" are ingrained in common parlance.

This belief is false. Lemmings do migrate caused by either an increase of predators, or overpopulation. They can swim, but often the body of water is too large or turbulent for their endurance and many die. They are not suicidal stooges.

{Digression Warning} In 1973, National Lampoon did a show entitled Lemmings which ran in Greenwich Village for about a year. I was lucky enough to see it. It was disrespectful, irreverent and hilarious. The second half of the show was a satire of rock concerts called Woodshuck. I went into conniptions laughing at the then-unknown-to-me Belushi imitating Joe Cocker. A couple years later when Saturday Night Live began, I recognized John Belushi and Chevy Chase from the Lemmings cast.

 Yesterday another mass murder befell our nation. Ten people killed and others injured on a formerly peaceful college campus. That makes 16 incidents in the past eight years. I try not to make my blog a pulpit for political views. We need a serious dialogue to address this problem. That will never happen. Why? Human/lemmings will follow their particular demagogue over a chauvinistic cliff rather than succumb to rational thought.

Opponents will beat their chests; shout their platitudes; fill their ears with beeswax to block the sirens'
call of the other side. Each will profess its belief as sacrosanct, and the others as blasphemous. Examination of mental health issues, the possibility of compromise on gun control, the analysis of the situations to find a common cause and possible solutions will be chaff driven away by the wind of jingoist diatribes. The outcome will be same as it ever was - more senseless killings accompanied by pulling of hair and bemoaning the problems created by the "other" side.

Comparing the mass hysteria of our race to the misconception of the lemmings is an insult to the rodents. Our technology has evolved, our weapons are more lethal, our communication devices are more powerful, but our actions are still those of primitive cave dwellers. We desire to destroy anything that we view as antagonistic and make up beliefs to erroneously explain what we don't understand. As ever - BB

Jack Nicholson as George Hanson in Easy Rider: They're not scared of you. They're scared of what you represent to 'em.
Dennis Hopper as Billy: Hey, man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs a haircut.
Nicholson: Oh, no. What you represent to them is freedom.
Hopper: What the hell is wrong with freedom? That's what it's all about.
Nicholson: Oh, yeah, that's right. That's what's it's all about, all right. But talkin' about it and bein' it, that's two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free, 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are.

Guilty Pleasures

Tempus Fugit as the Roman poet, Virgil, said. Summer's end approaches with a deluge of diversions. Among the many things I have put off as I tread water against the flood of activity preceding Labor Day weekend is my blog. I haven't posted since mid-July to the consternation, chagrin, and probable relief, of my readers. I've jotted down several ideas, but haven't followed through on them, until now.

Soap operas began on the radio in the 1930s. The genre flourished on
television. For over half a century, I avoided the mindless, sensational, drivel that spewed forth from these serials. By the year 2000, soaps began to decline in popularity and now less than a handful remain on air.

In true Billings tradition, I snubbed this form of "entertainment" during its popular period, but have embraced it now that it's no longer fashionable. She who shall not be named got me hooked on Days of Our Lives. I get home at night craving this digitally recorded drug like a junkie looking for that next fix.

Will Chad find out that Abigail's baby is his, not Ben's? Will Teresa's wicked machinations get her into Brady's life? Will Clyde succeed in taking over Salem's organized crime? The tension titillates.

I am so into this that I'm able to predict the peculiar permutations of the writers. I knew that JJ would sleep with his girlfriend's mother. I knew that Abbie was pregnant episodes before it was revealed. At the height of the hatred between Hope and Adian, I knew they would fall in love.

Gilbert & Sullivan operettas are also on my list of guilty pleasures. Of course there are the big three: H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and the Mikado. Less popular ones like The Gondoliers and The Yeoman of the Guard also give me enjoyment. I have been known to break into a verse or two. "But I'm still called buttercup, poor little buttercup, sweet little buttercup I." Mostly to the dismay of those around me.

Closely associated is my love of musical theater. My favorite is Guys & Dolls. It has Damon Runyon characters, loud suits and crap games. What's not to love? The movie version was horribly miscast - Marlon Brando, really Marlon Brando. Sinatra wanted the role of Sky Masterson. But that went to Marlon and he played Nathan Detroit. Throughout the film Frank referred to Brando as Mr. Mumbles. However it does have Stubby Kaye as Nicely Nicely singing my favorite number Fugue for Tinhorns.  Listen to it through the link below.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RthEYvh6aMM
 There's nothing like a live performance, but whenever a Broadway musical's movie version shows up on the tube, chances are I will watch it.

Dave Grohl said the entire guilty pleasure thing is BS. He blames in on residual punk rock guilt. I think he is not entirely correct. I predate the guilty pleasure to the beatnik era long before the term punk. This or that isn't cool, so you can't like it. While I agree we should like what we like, I still feel pangs of guilt and embarrassment about these pleasures. But not enough to stop me from breaking into a few lines of I Am A Very Model of A Modern Major General when the muse hits me. As ever - BB

“I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.”  Oscar Wilde

Temptation

The evening of Wednesday, July 15, Baltimore's Harbor Tunnel closed for several hours. It wasn't a vehicle accident, nor a construction issue. An armored car's door flew open and thousands of dollars littered the roadway. Authorities closed the tunnel while the money was collected. This story on the morning news reminded me of a similar situation that happened in Philadelphia.

The Ben Franklin Bridge crosses the Delaware River from Camden, NJ to center city Philadelphia.
The Walt Whitman goes from Gloucester City, NJ to South Philly. They are only a couple of miles apart.  Depending on traffic you can take either bridge and cut through the city to your desired location.

One February day in 1981, a Purolator Armored Car was taking money from Atlantic City casinos to a bank in Philly. The Ben Franklin would have been more direct, but traffic dictated the armored car take the Walt Whitman then drive through South Philly to the bank. As anyone who drives those streets knows, the constant traffic and bad weather turn them into potholed obstacle courses.

Several Purolator employees had complained about that truck's faulty latch. This day, the vehicle hit a deep pothole, the door opened and out fell a bag with $1.2 million of untraceable cash. Driving behind the armored car was Joey Coyle, an unemployed longshoreman from South Philly. He stopped, put it in his car, went home and counted the pile of cash. He could not believe his luck, and just days away from his 28th birthday!

Joey did not have an easy life made harder by his methamphetamine addiction. He took a little of the money, scored some meth, then went home to hide the rest. In his frenzied state, he hid and re-hid the money over and over again in his small row home.

Not a criminal mastermind, Joey took a couple thousand to his local bar, started buying drinks for everyone and giving friends $100 bills. He rented a limo and took several of his buddies on a trip to Atlantic City.

It didn't take long for this unusual windfall to attract attention. Within weeks Joey was arrested. At his trial, Joey's attorney pleaded temporary insanity caused by the unbelievable bonanza enhanced by his drug problem. The judge was sympathetic. Since most of the money was recovered, he found Joey not guilty, but remanded him to a drug treatment center.


Joey became a local celebrity, and his story was made into a movie starring John Cusack. The movie upset many in Philadelphia as it was filmed in Pittsburgh. The film treatment glossed over more of the unsavory details and was just not very good.

Things did not go well for Joey. He never shook his addiction. Depressed over his mother's recent death and facing jail for another drug conviction, the poor soul hung himself in 1993 just before the movie was released.

Many in South Philly thought of Joey Coyle as a hero. That is absurd, but he did experienced something about which many working stiffs dream. At times I wonder what I would have done if it had been me driving behind that armored car on that cold February day. As ever - BB

"I can resist everything except temptation." - Oscar Wilde

Cant

That isn't an typo; no apostrophe is needed in this "cant." I came across the term while researching the Celtic root of another word. It comes from caint, old Gaelic for word. Cant is slang used by certain groups, so outsiders won't know what is being said.

It's no surprise that I am fascinated by language.  Slang represents the most colorful and creative use of verbal communication. Often employed by the more disreputable members of society, cant flourished among thieves, musicians and the drug subculture.

My attraction to the criminal element began with a love of film noir. Those movies led to novels by
Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and others. The slang in these books paint images more striking and lurid than the King's English can. Compare the difference:
I figured the canary for a good egg, but was conned by her gams and warble. She cheesed me vamoosing with my butter and egg man along with all the cabbage. Now I'm on the lam with nothin' but a roscoe and a ducat for a rattler outta this burg.
Translation:
I thought the female singer was a nice person, but was fooled by her legs and voice. She robbed me, leaving with my money man along with all the cash. Now I'm on the run with nothing but a gun and a ticket for a train out of town.

Prohibition not only gave impetus to organized crime, but forged a relationship between criminals and musicians. Making liquor illegal created the need for speakeasys. Musicians will play where ever they can. The illegal clubs in the urban areas became the greenhouses for nascent jazz. The more rural juke joints provided
the same for blues music. Both styles thrived during prohibition.

Early jazz musicians took gangster slang added their unique twist giving birth to jive. Singer/bandleader, Cab Calloway, wrote his own Jive Dictionary. Phrases flourished: teeth became crumb crushers, a guitar was a gitfiddle, fine drapes were good-looking clothes and so on.

American youth took to jive. They enjoyed having entire conversations that parents and other L7's could not comprehend.  (Make an L with the index finger and thumb of your left hand. Make the same shape with your right hand and put the thumb of the right hand on tip of the left index finger and the index finger of the right hand on the tip of the left thumb. It's a square - get it daddio - an L7.)

Along with illegal hooch, musicians experienced drugs in the speakeasys and juke joints. To keep the authorities and the non-hip patrons off guard, drug users created their own cant. A great source to learn about early jazz and the developing drug scene is Mezz Mezzrow's, Really the Blues.

Milton Mezzrow, born in Chicago in 1899, fell in love with the musicians and lifestyle of the jazz age.  He professionally played the clarinet, but his fame came from the potent marijuana he sold. In fact the word mezz became cant for marijuana. Later calling anything the mezz meant it was the best. Really the Blues has an entire chapter in jive about selling drugs on the streets of New York. The succeeding chapter translates the jive into standard English.

Slang shows the beauty, creativity and fluidity of language. It also shows our adaptability as a species as we try to hep the straights about the righteous racket to be had during this interplanetary killer-diller. As ever - BB

"He took her down to Chinatown and showed her how to kick the gong around" - Cab Calloway's Minnie the Moocher  - Kick the gong around was jive for smoking opium. The rest of the song about the dream of the King of Sweden, platinum car with a diamond wheel, etc. are all parts of Minnie's opium fantasy.

Happy 239th USA!

239 years ago in my birthplace, Philadelphia, the Declaration of Independence was signed. It was adopted on July 2 which John Adams thought would go down in history as the auspicious day. It was proclaimed on July 4. Americans chose that day as our birthday.

I abstain from pronouncing America as the world's greatest nation. We have too much hatred, divisiveness, ignorance, inequity and apathy to make such a grandiose declaration. Despite this, I love my country. I try to focus on the facts rather than the myths and folklore. I was told that during the Protestant Reformation Martin Luther once said, "I have no problem with Catholicism, it's Catholics I can't stand." While this is apocryphal, it eruditely explains my feelings towards America and Americans.

Red, blue, liberal, conservative, right, left - the terms of demarcation run on ad nauseam. I strongly
defend the country's freedom of speech and admire my fellow citizens' differences of opinion. All viewpoints must be considered as this republic* thrives on compromise. I believe the recent disdain for compromise represents our nation's biggest dilemma.

*Trivia side note - the United States is not a democracy; it is a republic. While a democratic form of government, it differs from a democracy in that elected officials represent the views of their constituents. As Mark Twain stated, "We have the best government money can buy." Will Rogers focused more on the individuals saying, "We have the best politicians money can buy." Special interest groups and single-issue politics form the antagonists of our system.

The United States bears many blemishes of dishonor in its history. At first only white, male landowners could vote, then just white males, decades past before people of color and woman could vote. Many nations, including Russia, abolished slavery before America did, and that was only after a four-year war. In 1953, the CIA with support from President Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers overthrew the legally, democratically elected government of Iran to protect U.S. and British oil holdings. The following year, the CIA did the same thing in Guatemala to keep that country's fertile soil in the hands of American owned, United Fruit Company. These are just a few examples.

Regardless of said blemishes, the United States remains a beacon of freedom for the world. Those escaping from intolerance, hatred and economic servitude yearn for our shores. The ideal of the United States draws them. It is this ideal we celebrate on Independence Day.

I eschew a jingoist, chauvinist view of America. I love this county in spite of its florid history. Only by seeing what we truly are, can we strive to live up to the words written by our forefathers:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." As ever - BB

“As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said 'No Trespassing.'
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me."  - Woody Guthrie This Land is Your Land

And Counting

Today I begin my seventh decade on this big, blue marble. I remember sitting in Sister Concepta's class in 1965. She was explaining years becoming decades becoming centuries. Sister stressed that the 21st century begins on 2001, not 2000, since there was no year zero. I did the math realizing I would be 47 at the beginning of the next century, and thought that I'd never get to be that old. At age eleven, 47 seemed ancient.

As the years progressed, my awareness of life's ephemerality strengthened. Originally, the target date for my demise was 27 like Robert Johnson, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, et.al. That goal passed, and my sights set on 32, the age the real life Dr. Gonzo, Oscar Zeta Acosta, thought would be his end point. Acosta made it to 39 before his disappearance and alleged death. Time for me, like the de Rochemont brothers' old newsreel, marched on with no end in sight.

Despite my best efforts to live as dissolute a life as possible, the years paraded past. Yet now with six decades of polluted water under my ramshackle bridge, I feel younger and healthier than I have in a long time.

Why, you may ask. I ponder the same question on a daily basis. Clean living and pure thoughts...that obviously isn't it. Genetics explains some of it. But I believe my true fountain of youth springs from the well of friendship with which I have been blessed.

It begins with my muse, Kristin. She got me back to playing music and writing. Without her support, I would not be playing guitar in public, nor writing this blog. My family has always been there despite the fact that I often take them for granted. Then there is the fraternity and sisterhood of musicians in Fells Point and beyond. Their support and encouragement to this old folkie has been heartwarming. Akin to them are the fellow vagabonds and
denizens of my neighborhood.

Paradoxically, the most recent two groups are among the oldest. In the past few months I have reconnected with compadres from prep school and college. These soul mates have rekindled a friendship and brotherhood that complete my circle of life.

To all of you, I humbly express my most heartfelt thanks. In the words of the old Christian hymn, will the circle be unbroken, by and by lord, by and by.  As ever - BB

"Some may never live, but the crazy never die." - Hunter S. Thompson

Dark Side of Gonzo

Last night I saw For No Good Reason, a documentary about Ralph Steadman. My first exposure to him was through his illustration work with Hunter S. Thompson. The title of the documentary comes from a response Hunter usually gave Ralph when asked about why they were attempting some bizarre assignment.

Steadman felt that whether it was the Kentucky Derby, the America Cup Race, the Foreman/Ali fight in Zaire, or the Honolulu Marathon, the plan was to disrupt, fool around and generally malign the participants and spectators at the event. They could be mean, almost cruel, and that was the dark side of gonzo. His artwork portrayed that darkness.

Unfortunately for most, the illustration of Thompson's work and maybe his Flying Dog beer labels comprise the extent of their Steadman knowledge. He is much more prodigious than that. I strongly urge you to find his illustrated editions of Alice in Wonderland, and Treasure Island. Experience his biting political satire through his work in Punch and Private Eye. His graphic, brutal honesty and biting ridicule lambast the greed-heads to use one of Hunter's terms.


Several birthdays ago, a friend gave me his book, Doodaa. It's an interesting fictional autobiographical biography about Gavin Twinge. This book showed me that gonzo owes as much to the illustrator as the writer. I consider myself as bull-goose looney as most deranged denizens of disturbia. This book revealed my amateur status.

Watching the documentary, I discovered his autobiography of Leonardo DaVinci, I Leonardo. It dumbfounded me that I had never heard of this book despite that fact that it was written over three decades ago. I delight in discovering treasure and look forward to experiencing this work of art.

The depth and vibrancy of Steadman's art transcend the experience of reading a book. His work truly adds the dimension of dementia. For that reason, I would not consider him a cartoonist or illustrator. Picasso said an artist was a receptacle for emotions. Viewing the amalgamation of emotions evoked by Steadman's work, one cannot deny that he is truly an artist. As ever - BB

"Stop doing those filthy scribblings, Ralph! You'll get us thrown out." - Hunter Thompson to Ralph Steadman during their first assignment at the Kentucky Derby.