Jersey Rocks!

A prolonged Memorial Day weekend on the lovely shore of the state in which I grew up included an impromptu trip to a casino to see South Side Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. This gave impetus to a musing on the state's musical influence.

Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, The Four Seasons, Springsteen, Whitney Houston, Bon Jovi, et al...these names come to the forefront of most discussions of the Garden State and music. These artists and many others contributed to the state's sundry soundscape.

The recording industry dawned in New Jersey. Edison invented the phonograph record in Menlo Park. The Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden hosted many of the earliest recording sessions. Hundreds of jazz recordings on Blue Note Records were made in a home studio in Englewood Cliffs. Somers Point's Tony Mart's operated from the late 40's until 1982. It heralded the advent of Rock 'n' Roll. Del Shannon, Duane Eddy and others rocked this shore bar. Here Bob Dylan checked-out Ronnie Hawkin's back-up band, recently named Levon & the Hawks. Dylan hired the Band to back him up on his historical electric tour. The rest is musical history.

To me,  Jersey rock germinated with four guys from Garfield - the Rascals. They were the Young Rascals on their first records because Atlantic didn't want to confuse them with Johnny Puleo's Harmonica Rascals. Yeah, like that would happen.

Felix Cavaliere and the boys mixed soul, R&B and rock creating Good Lovin, Groovin, It's A Beautiful Mornin', People Got to be Free, and other great music. The Rascals provided the soundtrack to much of my early cruising, partying and loss of innocence along the back roads between Haddonfield and the shore. They inspired the Asbury Park sound of Springsteen, South Side Johnny, Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul and others.

This is a subjective matter and I'm sure other hold alternate theories. To those I respectfully grab my crotch and say, "Here's your alternate theory!" As ever - BB

"...down the shore everything's alright, you with your baby on a Saturday night, don't you know that all my dreams come true, when i'm walkin' down the street with you..." - Jersey Girl by Tom Waits

Blanc et Noir

I have always enjoyed old movies. For some unknown reason, black and while films relax me. Westerns, gangster flicks, comedies, musicals, historical dramas -  they all provide an escape pod from life's impending doom. Yes, I used those two words. This is the first time I've written them since the fateful "unidentified projectile" incident. We shall see.

I believe our family was the last in Haddonfield, maybe the state of New Jersey, maybe the eastern seaboard to get a color TV. My dad believed the technology still needed improvement and the next model would have better features. So why get it now?

When he finally broke down and bought a color set, nothing irked him more than walking in on me watching some b&w classic.

I can still hear him cursing and muttering about spending the money for color and that damn kid watches nothing but black and white. Dad has passed on, but things haven't changed. I now watch a 60" plasma. Viewing sports on this is like being at the game. However, b&w oldies are still my staple TV diet.

The past few nights, I have reveled in the glow of White Heat, The Roaring Twenties, and Foreign Correspondent. The latter being a B-movie classic and Alfred Hitchcock's second Hollywood film after leaving England.

Of course the first two mentioned fall into my all time fav list - with a bullet! The Roaring Twenties made in 1939 was an homage to the classic gangster films of the early 30s. It's the last movie Bogie and Cagney made together. It also contains the best last line of any movie. As a down-and-out Cagney lies dead on the church steps, a cop asks who he is. Gladys George (an underrated character actress who is one of my "you know her; she's that lady in...") looks at the cop as she cradles Cagney's head and says, "He usetabe a Big Shot."

White Heat, also starring Cagney, was made ten years later. Cagney plays a true sociopath with a mother complex. This is a much darker portrayal than the lovable hustler with a heart of gold in the aforementioned film.

Despite my father's spectral voice grumbling about watching black & white movies in color, this film's final scene was exceptional and deMille-like on this behemoth TV. Seeing Cagney standing on a globe-shaped gas storage tank, shooting it out with the coppers and yelling "Made it ma, top of the world" as the tank explodes was Homeric. The film also contains one of my favorite Bogie quotes which I've always tried to emulate.  - as ever - BB

"I always say, when you got a job to do, get somebody else to do it." Humphrey Bogart as George Halley in The Roaring Twenties

March Madness

Not the college basketball bracket bender, but the spate of days during this part of the month with special significance.

It begins today with PI day - 3.14. If you really want to mire in mathematical minutia, you should have celebrated at 26 seconds after 1:59 AM. That's 3.1415926 - pi to the sixth decimal. Today is also the birthday of Albert Einstein - auspicious and arithmetically serendipitous.

March 15 is a good day for a toga dinner party. What else would I be wearing whilst bewaring the Ides of March? One course of course would be Caesar salad. But what to serve with it?  I recommend a delicious spicy Cajun stew. The recipe borrowed from Popeye's arch-nemesis: etouffee Brutus.* As Edgar Allan Poe said, "The goodness of a true pun is in a direct ratio to its intolerability."

March 16 is not a special day except for those with a knowledge of Roman history. This day began Bacchanalia. A wild, two-day festival with excessive drinking and debauchery celebrating Bacchus, the god of wine . Do you think I could get a special rate on my toga if I rent it for three days?

The madness that is March climaxes on St. Paddy's Day. This has become a Bacchanalia of sorts, but started as a religious holiday of fasting and prayer. In my Fells Point neighborhood, we pray that the drunken idiots leave without dousing our stoops with green urine.

Notice it's Paddy's not Patty's. The masculine diminutive is Paddy based on the Irish Padraig. This is one of my pet peeves of which there are many -as ever BB

* In the Popeye comic strip the nemesis's name was Bluto. When they created the cartoons to be shown in theaters, the movie company thought Bluto was copyrighted, so they change it to Brutus. It change back to Bluto when Hanna-Barbera took over the cartoon in 1978.

"March is the month of expectation,/The things we do not know,/The Persons of Prognostication/Are coming now." - Emily Dickinson

Say What?

At 2 am this Sunday, we set our clocks ahead one hour. Blame for the biannual changing of the timepieces usually falls on farmers unless you ask one.

As daylight saving draws nigh, I think back to my time in Iowa. The week before the clock change, area TV stations would parade out the most Grant Wood looking farmer they could find. This old-timer would rant about how politicians were the ones messing with the clocks. Farmers are up and out before the sun no matter what time the grandfather clock shows -thus spake the curmudgeon Hawkeyes.

That memory turned the rusty cogs of this ol'cranium. Many things accepted as common knowledge are fallacious. Today's chapter: Inaccurate quotes.

This week marks the 131st anniversary of the publication in Strand Magazine of the first Sherlock Holmes' story, A Study in Scarlet. Despite it's mention in films and just about everything else Holmesian, in none of Arthur Conan Doyle's tales did the scientific sleuth utter the words, "Elementary, my dear Watson."

Another that has always nagged me is "far from the maddening crowd". Originally written by Thomas Gray's, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, the phrase is "far from the madding crowd" which is also the title of a Thomas Hardy novel. It's mostly used incorrectly.

The ninth most quoted person in Bartlett's is Alfred, Lord Tennyson. As a child, I read Charge of the Light Brigade over and over. Many are familiar with the words, "Ours is not the reason why; ours is but to do or die." (insert loud buzzer here) Wrong! The quote is: "Theirs not to reason why/Theirs but to do and die"

Now onto the movies and one of my favorite actors, Humphrey Bogart. Bogie impersonators' ubiquitous line is "Play it again, Sam." However, those words were not uttered in Casablanca. Rick says, "Play it for me. If she can stand to listen to it, I can. Play it."

Another Bogart classic, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, contains a classic misquote. Never does the bandit say the words, "We don't need no stinkin' badges." The actual lines are "We don't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you no stinking badges!"

There are many more examples. Why the misquotes? That question tickles my curiosity. In some cases, I believe, it's brevity. Take my Bogie examples. Both reduce several lines of script down to a few words. As for the literary examples, I blame that on people being lazy and quoting what they hear without knowing the actual work. As Mark Twain said, "A classic is something everyone wants to have read, but nobody wants to read."

An even more intriguing question is why do these misquotes bother me so. Is it a harmless eccentricity or a debilitating obsession? Eccentrics are happy with their behavior and don't want to change. Obsessives hate their behavior, but can't change it. I figure what, me worry! So I must be eccentric - as ever BB

"The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer." - Ken Kesey

Leap Day

Today marks my fifteenth leap day. They started when I was two. Every four years since then, these 366-day-years have meant very little to me. No offense to those Leapers who enjoy the celebration. But then, Leap Year is an important plot element in Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance.

Gilbert & Sullivan's operettas are one of my guilty pleasures. Some have been lucky enough to be present when I extemporaneously break out into a piece from the HMS Pinafore or the Mikado. (my rendition of Poor Little Buttercup is sensational)

For those not familiar with Pirate's libretto, the main character, Frederic, is apprenticed to pirates until his 21st birthday. Unfortunately for ol'Freddy, his birthday was February 29. With a birthday every four years, he won't reach 21 until well into his eighties. They just don't write plot twists like that anymore!

Ireland's St. Bridget is also associated with Leap Day. Legend has it that she went to St. Patrick complaining that a woman never gets the chance to pick the man she wants. So Paddy agreed that one day every four years, women could ask men to marry. Traditionally this became Leap Day.

In one of life's strange twists, the St. Bridget tradition morphed with a holiday in Al Capp's Lil Abner. One of my favorite Sunday comics, the crazy colorful characters first attracted me. In later years, the satire caused my chuckles.

The "homeliest gal in the hills" was Sadie Hawkins. Her father, a Dogpatch dignitary, fearful of her living forever with him started Sadie Hawkins day. On this day, women who could chase down a husband could get married. Al Capp's yearly Sadie Hawkins' comic strip fell in November. Somehow these two traditions melded together and February 29 has become a bachelor's bane.

With its connection to an operetta, an Irish saint and a comic strip, I have convinced myself that February 29 has become one of my most-liked days. I'm a leaper! Wouldn't you like to be a leaper too? as ever - BB

"Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform/And tell you ev'ry detail of Carataucus's uniform/In short, in matters vegetable, animal and mineral/I am the very model of a modern Major-General." - from The Major-General's song from Pirates of Penzance

I Knew That!

Aside from the appeal of acquiring arcane knowledge, I get a kick providing little known facts related to everyday things. I truly delight in the light gleaming from people's eyes when they are told a detail they don't know about something they do know.

Take the sticker that gives the expected city and highway mileage shown on new cars. We've all seen them, but did you know it has a name? It's a Monroney Sticker; named for Oklahoma senator, Mike Monroney. He sponsored the 1958 Auto Disclosure Act which initiated the sticker's use. Information required on the sticker has changed over the years, but the name remains the same.

Others include the name of the movie playing at the drive-in during the Flintstone's opening credits, what a tittle is and where the terms upper and lower case relating to letters derive.

My all time favorite is the Wilhelm scream. I'm sure you have all heard it, but few realize this ubiquitous movie/TV sound effect. (I know at least one blog follower who does - a nod to my buddy, Christian.)

Originally used in the 1952 movie, Distant Drums, the scream didn't get it's name until the 1953 film, The Charge at Feather River. Film historians believe this was the third time that sound effect was used.

For decades, film editors used the scream, but it took Star Wars to make it a cult classic. Lucas repeatedly used it throughout the entire series, as did Speilberg in Raiders. For me, true delight rises from the fact that one of my that guys - "you know that guy he played..." has a close connection to the Wilhelm scream.

Sheb Wooley is that guy. This trivia gem has so many facets where do I start? Though a country-western singer, his biggest hit was the novelty pop song The Purple People Eater, which he wrote as well as performed. Sheb acted in many movies among them, High Noon, Giant, The Outlaw Josey Wales and many TV shows including Rawhide with Clint Eastwood.

As if that isn't enough, he wrote the theme song to the TV classic Hee-Haw. Yes, it was he who vocalized the iconic Wilhelm scream. I can't believe more children aren't named Sheb. It works for both boys and girls. As ever - BB


"I said Mr Purple People Eater, what's your line?/He said eating purple people, and it sure is fine/But that's not the reason that I came to land/I wanna get a job in a rock 'n roll band" - The Purple People Eater

What Can You Get for a Nickel?

Not much these days! Until the early 50s you could make a phone call for a nickel. (in some rural areas the five-cent call lasted up to the early 70s). Remember pay phones? They have gone the way of  typewriters and animal sacrifices.

Even a Luddite like me doesn't use a typewriter any more. As for animal sacrifices, sure they are anachronistic, but until the oracle gets one of those swipe machines for my debit card, it's the only option I have.

Back to the nickel - old slang for the nickel was a jitney piece. It took some etymological sleuthing to find out why. Best guess is that the word comes from one of two French sources. Jeton in French means a small metal disk; jeter means to throw or discard.

Today, a jitney is a small passenger bus that takes people around Atlantic City. The AC jitneys are the only privately funded public transportation system in the United States. Their history is a story of entrepreneurship.

In 1915, Atlantic City's trolley system went on strike. Two clever fellows decided to chauffeur people around town in their private cars for a nickel, or to coin a phrase (ooh that one hurt) a jitney piece. The concept caught on as cars required no rails and no public funding. By 1917, AC began issuing jitney licenses, and the system still exists.

Throughout the Depression, jitneys surfaced in cities across the nation. Out of work men who owned cars could make some money shuttling anyone with a nickel around town. Most of these ceased with the end of the depression. A handful kept operating as illegal cabs and the term, jitney is still used to denote illegal taxis in some American cities. Other than Pittsburgh, I'm not sure what cities. I always knew them as gypsy cabs until I came to Baltimore where they call them hacks.

The Hill is a predominantly African-American section of Pittsburgh. Up through the 70s, cabs would not go into that neighborhood. Some denizens filled that void illegally using their cars. Playwright August Wilson wrote a play in his Pittsburgh Cycle entitled  Jitney which centers around one of these illegal taxis.

During the 11 years I lived in Atlantic City, I rode jitneys on a daily basis. They were colorful as well as convenient. Many were owned by Greeks who would decorate the inside and blare Entekhno music. As owner/operators, they make more money the more passengers they take. A ride to work on a Jitney racing to beat out competitors to the next stop would get my heart beating faster than a strong cup of coffee. - as ever BB

"Make a pledge and mischief is nigh" - one of three inscriptions on the temple at Delphi