November 6, 2024

 Well folks, God Bless America. Yesterday was a great day, though I'm not here to rub it in because I know what it's like to be on the losing end, and until just about 12 weeks ago, I was as ardent a Democrat and committed anti-Trumper as anyone, until George Clooney and Van Jones pulled an Ides of March job on Joe Biden and replaced him with the worst presidential candidate in the history of politics. I said she was gonna get creamed on the day she was coronated, and I was right. The thing with Queen Kamala (who used to pronounce her name "KA-muh-lah" before it morphed into "commala") is that she was like an evil character from a fairy tale, cackling at the world, full of herself, in favor of policies so absurd that you wondered if she was serious. ("Open the borders!" "Defund the police!" "Let the rioters out of prison!" "Legalize theft!", et al) And she was serious, of course. That's what made her so dangerous. She was like a "Batman" villian. She wanted mayhem. She didn't like civilized society. She didn't like people. She was only in love with herself. On top of that, she was a dim bulb. And like an evil fairy tale queen from out of the past, it was easy to recognise her, to see her coming from a mile away, to see who she really was behind all the word salads and comical accents. So thank God she is gone, and may we never see the likes of her again. Let's hope she takes George Clooney and Van Jones with her. I may be done as a Democrat, but to my friends who will always be Left, I say, "whatever you do, please don't pick someone like Queen Kamala EVER AGAIN." And reject the Far Left in general. God Bless. And don't worry, because this time it's Friendly Trump as President. His daughter-in-law and campaign chairwoman Lara Trump did a brilliant job with the makeover, turning him from Mean Trump to McDonald's Trump. And it's not just Trump, but Team Trump, with J.D. Vance, Elon, Bobby Kennedy, Tulsi Gabbard (there's your first woman president), and many more. It's a coalition presidency and good things are gonna happen. As things stood, with the current administration, it couldn't have been much worse. So keep your chin up. We may have some daylight ahead.   

I don't have a whole lot to report that you don't already know about. I will say that yesterday was one of the greatest days of my life, and not just because America rejected Queen Kamala. A big part of my work involves memory recovery, and I remembered something yesterday that made my heart soar. And today is a wonderful day as well because it's the birthday of a very special person, who may even know what it was I remembered because she is a supergenius! I'll leave it at that for now.

Though it's been an amazing week, with David Gilmour, Halloween, the Election and The Wonderful Memory all in a seven day period, this does not mean that everything is well. See the last blog for emphasis. Things are even crazier in my life than they were when I last wrote, and you could almost say I'm in an emergency situation. I sure hope it doesn't come to that.

Here I was, in July (only four months ago), having just published "Pearl the Wonder Girl" (available on Amazon!). I was so excited. I had a real book, complete with pretty cover and everything. I'd written and designed it myself, a real bookstore book. And I had another book in the can, almost ready to go. All I had to do was give it one more proof-read, maybe a tiny bit more polish, then I'd be all set to release it, maybe by the end of this year. That was my plan, in July, to have both books out by the end of this year.

But then All Hell Broke Loose.

Things were uncovered that set my world on its end. The second book threatened to become two books. My third book, a rewrite of "What Happened in Northridge" would now take five lengthy books to complete.

I hope to get re-organized now that the election is over. I've got a massive investigation to complete. I'm gonna miss Depressed Ginger, Red Eagle, Election Time Channel and the great Megyn Kelly, who've been part of my daily coping mechanism through the summer. Before the infamous June 27 debate, I wasn't really paying attention. Then suddenly, I couldn't look away. Those podcasters, and other shows on Fox (like Gutfeld, Laura Ingraham, Jesse Waters, The Five, and the brilliant ladies on Outnumbered), they got me through all those tumultuous days. But now I've got so much work to do that I can't have any diversions or interruptions. I also need a bigger living space.

There are other issues (near emergency) that are far more pressing, but I have faith that God will help me.

Happy Birthday to the aforementioned Wonderful Person. I wish you a beautiful day. To everyone, we've still got a couple Monty Movies to watch and we'll try to get back to regular blogging. Stay tuned.

November 1, 2024 (David Gilmour)

Howdy folks, and Happy November. I'm sorry I haven't written for a while, but right now I'm really straining to keep the blog going. There's just so much going on, most of it not good, and because I don't wanna report nothing but negative stuff, I've opted for the last couple weeks to remain silent. You'd do better these days to read The Book of Revelation, and you should be reading your bibles anyway. I'd say we're in the End Times, and I almost hope we are because I can't stand any more of this.

To the good people of the world, I say "Prepare Ye the Way of The Lord"! That's the title of an anthem we used to sing in choir. And to the bad guys, I say "Run to the Hills!" That's a song by Iron Maiden. Run to the hills, bad guys. Run while you still have time, though it won't do you any good in the long run because "King is Coming". That's a song by King's X.

On the good side, I saw David Gilmour in concert at the Hollywood Bowl on Wednesday night. I went by myself, took public transport round trip, and you know what? It wasn't half bad. For one thing, it's not like the old days when, if you missed your bus, you had to wait 45 minutes to an hour for the next one. I can remember many a junior high school afternoon standing at the Nordhoff/Amestoy bus stop, waiting and watching for the RTD, and as every kid knew, it wasn't coming. A watched bus never boils. But this is fifty years later and the buses and subway trains run every ten minutes, and with even greater frequency at peak hours. I left at 4:30 and got on the 240 Metro bus at Reseda and Superior (i.e. "The Street That's 'Just A Little Bit Better" Than All Other Streets"). The senior fare was 75 cents, with a free transfer to the Orange Line, which took me from Reseda and Oxnard to the Noho Red Line Station on Lankershim and Chandler (the Orange Line goes past a very dear address, en route). From there, the fare was another 75 cents for the tube. My train left two minutes after I boarded. I got off two stops later at Hollywood and Highland at 5:45, just 75 minutes after I started my trip. I doubt I could've driven to Hollywood that fast in rush-hour traffic. The total price was just $1.50 versus the ten bucks in gas and even more in parking fees had I driven. Getting back, by the same method, cost just 35 cents (senior fare at off-peak hours and free transfers). $1.85 round trip. Yeah, the bus is a little cramped, and there are occasionally sketchy people on board, but this time the trip was unobtrusive and efficient.

I walked up the hill to The Bowl and got there by 6:10, which was very early but I wanted to take no chances because I had to go to the box office for a paper ticket. I purchased mine when the Gilmour shows went on sale in May, knowing an electronic ticket wouldn't upload to my flip phone, but there was no way I was gonna miss David Gilmour, so I bought it anyway (Section S, dead center, incredible seat) and did what I did for The Who two years ago: went to the box office, showed the nice lady my flip phone, told her "I'm a Cave Man", and she got me a paper ticket. Then I had ninety minutes to kill before showtime, so I went up to my seat, watched the sun go down behind the hills, watched The Cross light up on the adjascent hillside, and meditated on The Current State of My Life. I was blowing my mind in both good ways and bad, and then the Bowl went dark and David Gilmour came onstage at 7:42.

I've seen DG four times now over a 44 year span beginning in 1980, when I attended the very first concert of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" tour on February 7 at the old L.A. Sports Arena. That was the night the stage curtains caught fire from the pyrotechnics and, for a minute, everyone thought it was part of the show. I also saw Gilmour play the solos from "Comfortably Numb", which - come to think of it - may have been the first time he played them in front of an audience, and of course, he was and remains God.

The next time I saw him was in April 1994 at the Rose Bowl. Pink Floyd was his band by then, they were touring for "The Division Bell" (my favorite album of all-time), it was three months after the earthquake and six months after my first memories returned. It is tied with the California Jam for the greatest concert I've ever been to.

22 years went by until I saw him again, in 2016 at the Hollywood Bowl. By that time, I was 56 and working as Pearl's caregiver. My life had changed so much since that Wall show in 1980. Just to give you some perspective, when that show happened, John Lennon was still alive. I had yet to meet Lilly. My goodness.

In 2016, DG was 70 and touring for his solo album "Rattle That Lock", a solid effort yet not near the level of "The Division Bell". Still, he was as great in concert as he ever was. I am sure I reviewed it here at the blog, and I probably said it was once again tied for the greatest concert I'd ever seen.

This brings us to Wednesday night, October 30, 2024. David Gilmour is now 78. The first time I saw him, he was one month shy of 34. My life since 2016 is so remarkably different that I don't know what to say anymore, and it's almost impossible for me to review the concert because it's too personal and imbued with symbolic-but-very-real meaning. In fact, I can only symbolize it in metaphors, or "summing terms". Wednesday's concert was 1962, it was Edwards Air Force Base, it was Meadows, but most of all it was Lorne Street School. If you know what I mean by those things, then you know a little bit about me.

There is something intrinsic about David Gilmour and his music. His guitar has that "radio" tone that only the early Beatles ever got. I'm not talking about the way he plays, which is entirely different than The Beatles. I'm talking about that Radio Tone.

The light show was suggestive of (or was deliberately evoking) another time, a Downtime (or just prior to The Downtime), lost now to all but a few. Does anyone besides me and the Office of Naval Intelligence remember the Downtime? Well, David Gilmour seems to. I realize this "review" may not make much sense to most readers, but it's as accurate as I can get, and what else could I have said? That it was "the greatest concert I've ever seen"? Yeah, but you probably already knew that.

This time was extra special because he brought his angelic daughter Romany on tour. I mentioned in a recent blog that she was introduced to the world as part of the Gilmours' "Von Trapped Family" podcasts during Covid. She sang and played harp, with her Dad and solo, and she was so good that many fans including myself called for an official collaboration. Now, she's appeared on his recent album "Luck and Strange" and sings lead on two songs, one of which - "Between Two Points" - she performed Wednesday night at the Bowl. Everything about the show was "off the charts" as I like to say. They played 2 hours and 20 minutes of music, and during intermission, a cheer went up among the fans as it became known that The Dodgers had just won the World Series.

So that was a Very Good Night indeed, and so was Halloween.

I went for my usual walks, including a Reseda walk that encompassed Lorne Street School. If you know why I did that, you probably have a top secret clearance at ONI or ONR. Reseda rules. It is my favorite town in the world, and Lorne is my favorite school, and on Halloween night, the streets surrounding the school were like a giant block party, with every house lit up and decorated to the hilt, and more trick or treaters on the sidewalks than anywhere else in the area, which was already very crowded. My Northridge walk was good, too, and of course I love The 'Ridge, but not as much as I love Reseda, and I absolutely detest and protest what's been done to 9032. Drive by and see it for yourself. It looks like a prison bunker.

But yes, the last two nights were amazing, amidst everything else that is going on. Now, we head to the election, and if Trump wins, we may have the slightest chance for daylight...

I will write you again when it's over. Stay tuned.

October 18, 2024

Howdy folks. I hope you've had a good week and are surviving the election season. I'm feeling a little less tense now that Trump is leading (slightly) in the polls. I'm constantly on Youtube, though, watching all the prognosticators (Red Eagle Politics and Depressed Ginger are my favorites), and I won't be able to completely relax until it's over. I went to see Judas Priest on Tuesday (Oct. 15) at the Youtube Theater in Inglewood, inside the SoFi Stadium complex. Had a double traffic nightmare on the way down - it took 45 minutes to get from my apartment to the 405 freeway onramp at Nordhoff. That's 45 minutes to go 4.5 miles, and no, I am not exaggerating. After that, it was smooth sailing all the way to where the 405 connects to the 10. Then, about 6 miles before the Manchester offramp, the freeway turned into a parking lot. All told, it took two hours to go 27 miles. I won't be going to any more venues that require using the 405, but this show was more than worth it. I also got to see the outside of the massive (and massively impressive) SoFi Stadium. It's without doubt the Stadium of the Fyoochum. I'd love to see the inside but I imagine a Rams game must cost minimum 200 bucks, so alas, it will probably never happen. Inglewood has scored big on the stadium/arena front. They've now got the Intuit Dome opening just down the schtreet from The Forum and SoFi. It's gonna be hard for Staples Center and LA Live to compete. You have to walk halfway around SoFi to get to Youtube, a smallish, 4000 seater similar to Nokia at LA Live. Inglewood is trying to put Staples out of bidness, but I like Nokia better because you can take the subway there. Driving on the 405 is a Grade A nightmare. Even getting to the 405 is hell. 45 minutes to go four and a half miles...

Can you say "Escape from L.A.?" Please, Mr. Trump, make America great again. Los Angeles used to be such a great, great place. Now, it's Blade Runner.

But Judas Priest redeemed the whole trip. They were so far off the charts, and it's quite an accomplishment because few other (no other?) bands have done what they have done, which is to replace two classic members and still present a show of equal brilliance. It's a different kind of show, admittedly, because Tipton and Downing were legends, whose twin solos not only cut to the bone through the musculature of the riffs, but were also highly musical. As blistering as the solos were, they had memorable melodies, you could whistle them. Such was the level of musicality in that era. But the heart and soul of the band is now the Faulkner/Sneap duo. They look like two pirate ship captains from the 16th century, flying the JP Flag proudly, riffing with the same power and exactitude as their predecessors while soloing with a fusillade of notes in the modern style. Watching them, you understand why Britannia rules the waves and likely always will. It's Judas Priest on steroids. Metal God Halford is singing (almost) like it's 1981, and his range is light years better than in 2005, when he was overweight and giving up on the high notes. Now, he's killing it (with a little help from a delay/sustain on occasion). But overall, it's become the Richie Faulkner show. He's the best of the "shredder" guitarists. Yeah, he plays a trillon notes, but he's an emotive shredder, and now that I think of it, he may be the only member of that category.

Grimsley (who came with me) mentioned that Scott Travis has improved. "He's turned into an octopus"! And I agree. He used to be a solid-but-mechanical metal drummer who relied on the double kick bass drum pattern. He's more inventive now, playing to accommodate the song, which is what made Dave Holland so great. Holland will always be the drummer who gave Priest their gigantic, booming sound, but Travis has finally come into his own. It was a jaw dropping show. We had trouble finding the car (I street-parked to avoid the fitty dollar parking fee) but the drive home was a piece of cake. 

  I've been revisiting the Judas Priest catalogue since then, reaquainting myself with albums like "Defenders of the Faith" and "Turbo". This got me thinking about the history of Heavy Metal and it's worth noting that the first Black Sabbath album was released in England on February 13, 1970, two months before the breakup of The Beatles was announced on April 10 of that year. Think about the musical vision of Tony Iommi, who was just 22 at the time. To single-handedly come up with that sound, in the era of early Elton John and James Taylor? I mean, The Beatles were still together when he invented those riffs. The music on that first Black Sabbath album arrived so far out of left field (even considering the presence, at the time, of heavy artists like Deep Purple, Cream and Jimi). Who ever heard anything like the song "Black Sabbath"? My goodness. I've come to think of Tony Iommi as a musical mastermind the equivalent of Sirs Blackmore and Page. He invented heavy metal, but the point is that his sound was as radically different as possible at that time. Could his Italian heritage have had an influence?  

Anyhow, that's my musical news of the week. Everything else is As Usual. I'm trying to acclimate myself to the realization that "1989" wasn't limited to that year but has been an Ongoing Thing, at least through 2009. I'm poring over my journal from '09, looking for clues. According to the daily entries, it was one hell of a psychic year. I wonder if the bad guys felt this. Do they have psychic abilities, or are they just connected by their iPhones? I am gonna blow this thing out of the water, I can guarantee you that. My journal is the key. Well, that and my amazing memory of course.

This being Halloween Month, I've been watching nothing but horror movies, so we'll resume our Montgomery Clift retrospective in November. We only have two more Monty Movies to go. In the meantime, I've been sticking to old favorites like Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, in movies I've seen multiple times. Last night, I watched "The Old Dark House," and I've harped on this before, but James Whale has gotta be put up there on the Mount Rushmore of directors and artists in general. I know he was inspired by German Expressionism, but he took it to another level by making it larger-than-life. He basically invented the "under the chin" Monster Lighting and gave his creatures a realistic look. Frankenstein really does look like he's made out of cobbled-together body parts. Whale excelled at making the gruesome look real, and he could also do Sinister: look at the mean-spirited performance he got out of Claude Rains in "The Invisible Man". He's got three horror classics to his name (the two I've mentioned and "Bride of Frankenstein"), one near-classic in "Old Dark House", and he also directed the definitive 1936 version of the classic musical "Showboat" with Irene Dunne and Paul Robeson. But we're talking Halloween, and the thing with "Frankenstein", "Bride of Frankenstein" and "Invisible Man" is that they are age-proof. Those three films are as scary and weird now as they were upon release 90 years ago. Maybe even scarier and weirder (because nothing is weird anymore...)

Well, anyhow, I somehow keep going in the midst of all this madness. The bad guys have someone (or some system) that protects them, or This Thing would've been over years ago. They don't go to jail, even though some of them have done monstrous things that law enforcement must surely know about. I mean, if I know what they've done, if I've been able to figure it out and remember it despite everything that's been done to me to block and bury my memory, then surely the police know, or the FBI, or someone. So yeah, the bad guys are protected in some way, and seem blase or blithe about it. They seem not to have a care in the world. But God is gonna get 'em, and one day they will be surprised. That's all I know for certain. 

October 13, 2024

(late edit) : Before you read this blog, I beseech you to watch this interview:

 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1609653943295093

Once you have watched, pass it along. Thank you.

Now, for the blog...

Well folks, I don't know what to tell you. I apologize for being late again, but it's getting harder to write about things "fun and light" when there is so much evil being uncovered. There's also the onrushing election, coming at us like a runaway train, and I don't know about you but it's got me laser-focused because I've never been so worried, politically, in my life. I won't be able to relax until this woman is gone.

Did you guys see that video of Obama lecturing those young Black men, like he was their Dad? He treated them not as individuals but as a group. He even called them "brothers" (which he pronounced "bruthas"). How insulting. What an a-hole. Unlike everyone else, I never was enamored with Obama. Lefties thought he was The Messiah (wrong!) but to me, he was just the jerk who, with the help of a-hole David Axlerod, shoved Hillary out of the way of the 2008 nomination. I was a poll worker in the General Election that year (in West L.A.). We worked that day from 6:30 am to about 10 pm. I'd never seen such a long line in my life, and when it was announced that Obama won, cheers went up and horns honked in the street. I thought, "okay, people love this guy" and as the years of his presidency went by, I "kind of" grew to like him. He seemed personable and the fact that he made Hillary his Secretary of State definitely helped. But still, he wasn't much of a president. More of a slick, used car salesman. He tried to force everyone to buy Obamacare and he made the war worse in Afghanistan. In foreign policy, he wasn't much different than the Neocons, and I thought he was really just George W. Bush in a Democratic suit. The difference was that he was a much better speaker. And, sorry, but I couldn't stand Michelle. She was the most arrogant, ungracious First Lady the country has ever seen. Some say she's an America Hater.

Well, anyway. I'm disappointed that even Bill Clinton is stumping for Kamala Harris, who makes the Obamas look like Red State Patriots. Maybe he'd be the puppetmaster if she won, I don't know, but let's forget politics for the moment...(I'm thinking of moving to a Red State).

We've got 2009 to deal with. My life gets more revelatory with each day, and I realize I've been surrounded by bad guys for most of my life. One thing I want to absolutely stress, with zero doubt, is that Lilly is not included in that group. No matter what has happened in her life, or what her experience has been, she is a good person. I say this in case she is reading. I know she's on the Good Side and I'm on her side in every way, even though I haven't seen her for almost 30 years. And I know God will bless her, now and always.

This 2009 thing is so far off the charts that it almost leaves me speechless. The audacity of certain people knows no bounds. Unfortunately for them, it will also be their downfall, because hypnosis wears off. Memory eventually returns, especially when you work as hard as I have to bring it back. Karen On A Mattress In The Living Room.

These people thought they could do whatever they wanted in life, step on whoever they wanted, persecute and threaten whoever they wanted. Hound and hassle whoever they wanted. They like to control things behind the scenes, and when caught, they try to stage-manage their situation, communicating in secret to keep their stories straight.

They also blackmail each other, or threaten blackmail. One guy, a particular asshole, has an "if I go down I'm taking everybody with me" mentality.

I've been thinking a lot about Pat lately. He died broke. He lived in his car and in homeless shelters for most of the last year of his life, while he was dying of cancer. He was flat broke after working since he was 13 years old. I thought about that, and I wondered, "what happened to his money? Surely he had some savings after fifty years." I thought about the people who showed up at his memorial service who didn't really know him, and I wonder: was Pat being blackmailed? And even if it wasn't a monetary blackmail, was he being blackmailed or threatened in other ways, by the people I am talking about?

I ask this because Pat is a central figure both in 1989 and 2009. Oh yes. Pat, for all his involvement in bad scenarios (and with the wrong people) was the only person who ever tried to explain things to me. On August 11, 1989, after the Freddy Krueger movie at the UA Granada Hills (which many of the bad guys attended), he tried to explain to me what was happening in my life, which was monumental. He knew more about my life than I did. For that effort, I thank him.

There's no turning back now, from all of this. This has got to be the Endgame. The bad guys have got to be defeated. I've done all I can, and I'll keep going, but there is no turning back from what I know.

The hour of the wolf is over. ///

October 4, 2024

 Howdy folks. Well, what can even be said? I'm talking about Pete Rose, who was not only my favorite baseball player (and favorite athlete, period), and not only one of my earliest heroes (along with The Beatles), he was integral to my life. Pete was one of those guys you expected to live forever, but he didn't and his death this week came suddenly and without warning to those of us who didn't know he wasn't well. I think it's beyond cool and such a blessing that, the day before he died, he was at a memorabilia show with fans and his teammates from the Reds: Tony Perez, George Foster, Davey Concepcion and Ken Griffey. Johnny Bench appeared the next day and just missed them.

The Cincinnati Reds from 1970 to 1976 were known as The Big Red Machine, and the 1975-76 teams, which also featured the late, great Joe Morgan (and others), and which won back-to-back World Series, are considered by many fans and baseball writers to be one of the top three teams in baseball history, right up there with the 1927 Yankees.

On Monday, when the news came in, a guy on Facebook referred to Pete as "The Beatles of Baseball", and I thought "That's perfect!" because that sums up not only his impact, but the energy with which he played and loved the game, and the adulation he received from the fans. Pete Rose and Sandy Koufax were my first two sports heroes. I got into baseball before any other sport, and when I was about five, my Dad took me to Dodger Stadium to see Koufax pitch. He was from the University of Cincinnati (Dad's alma mater), so Dad (who was not a sports guy) liked him and Dad also liked the Reds. When they came to town, he took me to see them play the Dodgers, and he told me to pay attention to Pete Rose, which I did and became a lifelong fan. But it was more than just baseball with Pete, who felt like family in the the way EVH or David Lynch do. I met Pete at a car dealership in the Summer of 1984, where he was signing autographs (in the days when he did it for free). I brought my first-edition Baseball Encyclopedia that Dad gave me for Christmas 1969. Now it's signed by Pete and Tommy Lasorda.

Pete Rose loomed large in my life, even when he was banned from baseball. If you've followed this blog, you know about what happened to me in 1989 and the infamous Giamatti-Sea of Love Timeline. The "Giamatti" part refers to former Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti, who banned Pete from the game on August 24 1989, then dropped dead from a heart attack one week later on September 1. My Dad called me that afternoon and said "That's what he gets for f-king with Pete Rose!" That's how revered Pete was in our family, and in Cincinnati, and among hundreds of thousands of fans around the baseball world. It's so great he was with his teammates on the last day of his life. Oh, and one more thing: I know you should never say never, but nobody's ever gonna break his record of 4256 hits.

In political news, how do you guys like Doug Emhoff, the "embodiment of the new masculinity"? If you couldn't tell he was a phony from his everpresent, pasted-on grin, and if the pregnant nanny didn't do it for you, maybe the revelation that he allegedly smacked his girlfriend (hard enough to "spin her around") will convince you that he's a seriously bad guy. This could be the October Surprise, and if you read the Daily Mail's highly detailed account, it apears to be true. Though the sources remain unnamed, if any of them come forward it will finish Kamala's campaign. Her husband, "the Wife Guy", turns out to be a hard core a-hole. Thank God both of them will be gone in five weeks, her political career will be over and we'll never have to hear from her again. I've been telling you that we are in a battle between Good and Evil, and in my own life that could not be more true. The 2009 revelations are turning out to be as bad as 1989, if on a much smaller scale, but they are of the same occult nature. The people involved are sick in the head, sick in spirit, sick in soul, and worse, they are evil. 

On the large scale and rippling outward, the media is evil. Hollywood is evil. Everyone knows it. I know it first hand. P. Diddy, as evil as he is, is just a fall guy for thoroughgoing corruption and obscenity. The Left doesn't care, which is why I jumped ship. JD Vance showed them all up, and Walz - even though he was goofy and as nervous as could be - seemed like a decent guy (though he's got a problem with fibbing). I wish the ticket was Vance/Walz. And JD will be president some day. But we need Donald Trump now, in order to win, because if we don't end Queen Kamala's career, she will end this country with her woke movement pushing behind her. That is their goal, to end this country. Imagine what George Washington thinks of what America has become.

I am trying my best, but I feel like a voice in the wilderness, because I've been writing and talking and spiritually shouting to the Lord and the Universe, and to anyone in the world who will listen. I've been doing this for 35 years but have never recieved a single response concerning The Truth, and we all know what that is.

(deep breath...) 

Well, anyhow, in case you didn't see my recent Facebook post, "Pearl the Wonder Girl" is now available on Amazon (in paperback with a beautiful blue cover).

I don't have a Montgomery Clift movie for you, but I did order "Freud" on dvd and we'll watch it as soon as it arrives in the mail. Instead, to kick off Halloween Season, I watched two old classics this week, "The Man Who Changed His Mind" starring Boris Karloff, and "Invisible Ghost" with Bela Lugosi. Both have been reviewed before, here at the blog, and I'm sure you can find them by checking the Blogger search engine.

In music, I've been listening to "Degradation Trip" by Jerry Cantrell. Jerry, of course, is the founder of Alice in Chains and also a musical mastermind and self-described "curator of riffs" with a distinct guitar sound, and even though he had one of the great lead singers in the late Layne Staley, Jerry is a fine singer himself whose recognizable voice was half of the tight AIC harmonies. The band was known for many qualities, and among them I think the vocal harmonies should be emphasized. One of my favorite things about Jerry Cantrell that casual fans may not know, is that he was a choir singer throughout high school, and not only that, but he became the choir president and his choir won many Washington state competitions. When AIC achieved their first gold record, Jerry sent a copy to his choir director. Readers of this blog will know why that endears him to me, besides his great music with Alice in Chains: I was a pretty good choir singer myself and absolutely revere my five years as a tenor at the Reseda Methodist Church. Choir singing rules and I hope to do it again one day.

Well, that's about all for the moment. Back to the battle of Good and Evil. It's either me or them. Stay tuned.

September 28, 2024

 Howdy folks, and Happy Saturday. Sorry about the delay in posting. I guess it's because I don't have a lot of news to report; I'm just trying to ride the election out as it's made me more nervous than any election in my lifetime. I dread the thought of this narcissistic woman becoming president, but what's made my nervous tension worse is the growing realization that I've been targeted by predators for much of my adult life (in some cases for reasons known only to them), and what I have learned - just in the past week since I last wrote to you - has floored me. It's been hard enough dealing with the monumental 1989 issue for almost half my life, but now I know that I was targeted and abused by a predator as recently as 2009, when I was a housesitter in Reseda. After a while, a person like me - who has been repeatedly a target of predators - can feel very alone in the world. It's frightening to know that someone has fixated on you, and has known things about you that you yourself were not aware of. In my case, the predatory person was aware that I was (and, perhaps still am) susceptible to hypnosis. This person was (and I assume still is) skilled at inducing a hypnotic state, which is not always the "zombie state" depicted in popular culture. Depending on the level of trance induced, a hypnotized person can carry on a conversation with the predator, all the way down to being immobilized and barely able to speak, but the important thing is that a hypnotist can block your memory of what they've done. This happened to me while I was housesitting in 2009, and because the incident was witnessed by a third party, I have considered talking to a lawyer. Whatever I decide, my newfound knowledge of 2009 is going to change things. In the meantime, I am praying for the future of this country. Imagine me, of all people, rooting for Donald Trump. That's how serious the situation is. Please God, save us from Kamala Harris.

I have a Montgomery Clift movie for you: "From Here to Eternity", the Best Picture winner of 1954 (it won 8 Oscars overall). I need to quickly mention that Monty never won a Best Actor which is a total joke, especially when a hambone like Daniel Day Lewis won three. Anyway, his role in "Eternity" may be the one he is most known for. It's one of the greatest, most legendary films ever made and he's positively iconic in it. The top-billed Buht Lahncahstah is ostensibly the lead, and he is great too, but Monty is the centerpiece, it's his movie all the way. He plays "Private Robert E Lee Prewitt", a bugler who's been transferred at his own request to Schofield Army Base in Hawaii. He's also an Army boxing champ. The base Major knows this and wants him for the Schofield squad, so he (the Major) can look good if the team wins. He hopes to make General if that happens. When Monty makes it known that he doesn't box anymore because he blinded an opponent in the ring, the Major and his subordinate officers don't care. They want Monty on the team, no ifs ands or buts, and the more he refuses, the more they make his military life hell. "An Officer and a Gentleman" copied this motif decades later. While the persecution of Private Prewitt continues, Buht Lahncahstah is secrecty stealing the Major's wife (played by the great Deborah Kerr). Their make-out scene on the beach, in the rolling waves on the sand, is one of the most famous in all of cinema (even though it lasts mere seconds). Monty seeks refuge at a local dance club, tagging along with his pal "Maggio", the base cook, played by Frank Sinatra who deservedly won Best Supporting Actor. It is at this club that Monty meets "Lorene" (Donna Reed), a good-time gal from the Midwest who's wound up in Hawaii due to bad luck.

As for Burt Lancaster, his illicit relationship with Deborah Kerr is pure lust, or love/hate. Burt thinks Kerr is a tramp for sleeping with dozens of enlisted men, until she tearfully explains the reason for her infidelity. The psychological motivations for male versus female cheating are broached in a quick exchange of dialogue that is bold for 1953. I don't know if it is true that men cheat for biological reasons (lust, libido) and women only cheat for emotional reasons (abandonment, revenge, feeling let down) but I imagine the truth is somewhere in the middle. 

Back to Monty, he's a soldier, first and foremost. There's no way that the Major is gonna drum him out of the Army for not boxing. In a moment of doubt, he asks Donna Reed to marry him and go back to the States. Deborah Kerr also wants Burt to marry her. She says she'll divorce the Major to make it happen.

Into the mix is thrown a sadistic Sergeant of the Guard (the head of the Military Police), played by Ernest Borgnine. His character hates "Wops", and he singles out Ol' Blue Eyes for abuse. Frankie, rebelling, winds up as his prisoner, and I can't tell ya what happens after that without giving spoilers. Some fans say that "From Here to Eternity" is a soap opera, and I agree that it is, in format. But it's infused with deep meaning, especially as set against the coming of Pearl Harbor. Monty goes all out in his portrayal of a dedicated soldier. Though he has been arguably greater, in the dramatic sense, in other roles (like "Judgement at Nuremberg" or "A Place in the Sun"), nowhere has he had more screen presence or shown more force in a role. His showdown with Ernest Borgnine is brief but climactic. "Eternity" is a double-troubled romance featuring individualist personalities conscripted into World War 2. Let's end the war in Ukraine and prevent WW3. Vote Trump, I beeseech you, especially if you live in a battleground state. 

Hey, what do you guys think of the ICE statistics that were released yeterday? There are over 13,000 convicted murderers running loose in this country illegally, not to mention 15,000 convicted rapists. That's why they have no crime in Venezuela or El Salvador anymore - they shipped 'em all up here. How anyone can vote for Kamala Harris is a mystery...

I listen to the music of Richard Wagner every night. I almost need to pull myself away so I can listen to other classical favorites, but I can't and at the moment don't want to. Emotionally speaking, he may have been the greatest composer who ever lived, and when you hear the 9 minute opening to his final opera "Parsifal", you'll understand why. It may be the most profoundly "human" piece of music ever written.

What it means to be human. That's what we all wonder, and yet we have allowed society to degrade so that we can avoid that wonder and the simple magic of crows, squirrels and bunnies, to be replaced by smash n' grab robberies, re-inflamed "racial" issues that were settled in the 1960s, high-powered cars that allow immature drivers to rule over the roadways, and not enough police to stop them. We need a restoration of sanity, law and order and peace, and an end to chaos and mayhem.

Next time I will have a happier blog. It's been a tough week. Stay tuned.

September 20, 2024

 Howdy folks. Well, there's a ton of news as always these days, but I want to mention the arrest of P. Diddy, aka Sean Combs, which has gone somewhat under the radar compared to election reporting, the second Trump assassination attempt, and the Springfield situation. Diddy, in case you haven't heard, was arrested for sex trafficking among other things, and the details that have emerged about his crimes include his lifestyle and the parties he was famous for throwing at one of his mansions. They were known as "freak offs", and were exactly the kind of parties I have described here at the blog since 1998, when I first began writing about Hollywood's "Porno People", as I've termed them. I was the victim of such a group. As an aside, Diddy made videotapes of the orgies at his parties (just like the people who victimized me), in order to have a blackmail hold over the attendees. He also threatened anyone who wanted to leave. Getting back to my story, I - as most blog readers well know - was kidnapped by my next-door neighbor, a CSUN cinema professor, who was one of the leaders of a similarly styled sex-and-pornography ring that operated in my Northridge neighborhood and had connections to the so-called "music" industry. I was kidnapped and tortured by this psychopath because I unwittingly stumbled upon his sex group, which included many people I knew at that time, some of whom were also involved in cocaine trafficking. CSUN still employs the professor who kidnapped me, a scandal that - if uncovered - would make Penn State's coverup of Jerry Sandusky look small potatoes in comparison.

The Porno People are nothing less than pure evil. I could name individuals from families right here in Northridge who have been part of these occult organisations. These are the people I mean when I say "God's gonna get 'em" because Lord Knows law enforcement won't or can't because Hollywood owns the police and everyone knows it. They also own the Democratic Party. Jesse Watters of Fox News says that the Diddy arrest could take down the entire "music" industry, but I'll only believe that when I see it because they could've arrested Diddy 25 years ago. That's how long I've been writing about these people, and I will eventually tell everything I know when I write my five part book series "What Happened in Northridge", the story of 1989.

One day, The Porno People (who should really be called The Violent People) are gonna go down, and they're gonna go down so hard and so far into the void that they'll wish they were in Hell because Hell would be a vacation compared to what's in store for them. Sorry to go on a tirade, but as you can tell, I despise these people with a black passion. God's gonna get 'em, you can count on it.

Well anyhow, "Ya bettah thank a union membah"!...(deep breath)...what else have we got? A brief note on Ryan Routh....Manchurian Candidate much? Dig into this guy's background and tell me he's not a CIA asset.

I have a movie for you: "The Pajama Game"(1957), a musical I remember from early childhood. Though the film was released before I was born, it began as a Broadway play and they put on a version of it when my sister was a drama student in junior high school. The storyline involves a labor dispute between workers and the owner of a pajama factory, but that is only the context that bookends the romance between John Raitt (Bonnie's Dad), who plays the factory superintendent and Doris Day, the workers' union leader ("Ya bettah thank a union membah!") I love musicals as you know, and especially those from the 1950s with major league production numbers and art direction, and "Pajama Game" excels in this category. It may be the most "purely musical" musical we've reviewed because, rather than interspersing songs between lengthy blocks of story, this movie features one song after another, many in tightly choreographed, lavishly produced dance sequences. Of course, "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" took the meaning of "musical" to it's appreciable limit by having all the dialogue sung. If you've never seen it, check it out. It's one of my favorite movies. But back to "Pajama Game", the plot, such as it is, involves a labor dispute over a 7 1/2 cent pay raise. Showcased in a supporting role is a very talented actress and dancer named Carol Chaney, whose life was cut short by diabetes. I guarantee you'll be looking her up on IMDB when the movie is over, and you'll recognize Eddie Foy Jr., the long-time jack-of-all-trades performer who began life as one of The Seven Little Foys vaudeville act. The film was shot on the Warner Brothers backlot (which I had the pleasure of touring last April) and inside it's legendary soundstages. The main floor of the pajama factory was built inside one of these stages and looks incredible onscreen. I haven't worn pajamas in years but the movie made me want to rush out and buy some. "The Pajama Game" is a 10/10 classic, and once again the IMDB reviewers agree. Give it a view and get hooked on classic musicals.

To get an early start on Halloween season, I also watched "Two On a Gillotine"(1965), another film from my childhood (the release date was January 13, 1965, one month before I started kindergarten). I remember my parents went to see it, and I was interested in the word "guillotine", and why it was pronounced "ghee-o-teen". Mom and Dad told me it was a scary movie (Dad may have said "Ghee-o-teens" chopped people's heads off), and when they came back, they said it was really good. Having now seen it myself, I agree, but I think it was too long. It's more a suspense film than a horror movie, with Dean Jones and Connie Stevens giving it a tinge of romance. She's the daughter of a recently deceased illusionist (Caesar Romero) who has left her his 300K fortune (when 300K was a fortune). The movie opens with an onstage illusion, then cuts to Romero's funeral. The reading of his will takes place on the stage of the Hollywood Bowl in a classic use of mid-60s location. Jones, a huge star for Disney in the 60s and 70s, plays a reporter trying to get the scoop on Stevens, Romero's daughter, who is an exact double for her mother, who mysteriously disappeared decades earlier. The will states that Stevens must reside in her father's mansion for a week to receive her inheritance. Romero claimed that he would return from the dead as his final act of magic. Dean Jones is on hand to debunk this, but winds up falling in love with Connie Stevens. 

The movie was directed by William Conrad of "Cannon" fame. He makes a Hitchcockian appearance mid-film, and keep an eye out for a young Richard Kiel in the opening funeral scene. The running time is 107 minutes. 15 to 20 could've been cut, but then you'd miss some great shots of Pacific Ocean Park, aka P.O.P., the legendary So Cal amusement park that was built on the Santa Monica Pier to compete with Disneyland but became synonymous with hippies and bikers by the end of the 1960s. The best scenes in the movie feature Virginia Gregg as Connie Stevens' former nanny. The Great Parley Baer plays Caesar Romero's manager. The last twenty minutes redeem the horror premise. Conrad directs and photographs in black and white in the style of William Castle. "Two on a Guillotine" is definitely worth a view for that unique, centered, mid-60s ethos that existed for a brief time between the sunshine of JFK's Camelot and the wild fluctuations of the counterculture era. The 60s were a trip, because each year had a style of its own... 

I am sorry to report that Cupid's has a green fence around it, which means it will soon be demolished in one of the great tragedies of modern history. I can't imagine what they will put up in it's place, but I'll guarantee it will go out of business because the location was only meant for a small hot dog stand - it's in between a regular Northridge house and a small corner strip mall that does minimal business. The Cupid's lot is tiny; thank God they can't erect one of those postage-stamp-footprint (but tall) apartment complexes that have become ubiquitous around Los Angeles, but they would if they could, because developers are in their own way as evil as the porno people. Anyway, I am sorry the Cupid's owners sold the property, but I understand they were getting older and had no one to take over the business.

And that's about all I know on this end-of-Summer day. I'm blowing my mind on 2009 and I'm working very hard on my next book. Stay tuned.