Tonight I did watch a movie, a Silent from 1929 called "Diary Of A Lost Girl", starring the great Louise Brooks. I own it - it was one of the dvds I bought in December from Kino, when they had their Silent Movie sale. "Diary" was directed by the German auteur GW Pabst, who we must now refer to as The Great GW Pabst. I can't believe he is not as well known as FW Murnau or Paul Leni, two other German masters of Silent cinema. Pabst is certainly as good as those guys, and maybe even better. I have seen three of his films now, including two masterpieces with Brooks ("Pandora's Box" is the other one) and the theatrical "3 Penny Opera", which I reviewed here a few weeks ago. I will resist making a pun about Pabst, in which I would be tempted to include the words "Blue Ribbon", but if I were going to make that pun it would be accurate, because Pabst deserves a Blue Ribbon for every film I've seen by him at the very least.
I will try not to give you too much detail from "Diary Of A Lost Girl", because you must see it for yourself. It's a Masterpiece, not only of Silent cinema but of all cinema. Our Miss Brooks stars as the daughter of a well-to-do pharmacist, and they live in a building in which the pharmacy is downstairs, at street level, and the family residence is behind it and also upstairs in a roomy mansion.
This movie was made almost 90 years ago, but it could have been made today, because of the issues it confronts head on. As the movie opens, we see the family housekeeper leaving the house in a hurry. She seems nervous and frightened. Next, we see why. The pharmacist has a partner, a tall, very Germanic looking man. He runs the pharmacy itself, and he is down there now, looking at photographs. This was a 1929 film, but even so, we see what he is up to. He is looking at pornographic photos of the housekeeper. This is shown very discreetly, nowhere near what would be considered as graphic as nowdays, but the implication is still clear : that the scary looking pharmacy partner is engaged in a porno operation with Louise Brooks' "respectable" father, the head pharmacist who lives upstairs behind the scenes with his sister, Brooks' aunt.
As for Louise herself, she is about to celebrate her Catholic Confirmation. She is all dressed in white, accepting presents from extended family members. All of this represents innocence.
But that is soon to be stolen from her, because the Downstairs Pharmacist has a plan.
First, however, the housekeeper who was leaving as the movie began turns up dead in the basement. That is because the pharmacist has given her a drug overdose to prevent her from exposing what is going on in the house.
Innocent Louise Brooks wants to know what is going on, and so the scary Downstairs Pharmacist promises to tell her, if she will meet him that night, downstairs in the pharmacy. She is naive, so she agrees to meet him.
And he drugs her too. Then, when she is unconscious, he.....(think Harvey Weinstein).
This is a brutal movie and 100% concurrent with what is happening today. It is told, thankfully, not in the ways of modern moviemaking, which would depict the full graphic horror of rape and violence, but in the implied, discreet gestures of Silent film. Still, the message is very clear and no mistake can be made as to what is happening. Here is young Louise, all in white and happy one moment, and a few scenes later - after the horror with the pharmacist - we see her emerging from a room with a baby.
The monster has impregnated her, but it is she who is blamed, and her father - the Head Pharmacist, who is complicit in the porno operation - ships her off to a reformatory, but only after he forces her to give up her baby for adoption.
That is all I am gonna tell you, and I am sorry for telling you that much, because it is so grim. But director Pabst, working from a script based on a book, is not gonna allow the situation to stand as it does. Brooks has to endure a lot more, and in fact she becomes a prostitute, so I just told you more even though I said I wasn't going to do so. Other prostitutes, victims themselves of a male dominated society, are sympathetic to her plight, and they become her only friends. But she desperately wants out of that life.
This movie tells the story of what has been happening to women for hundreds of years, but it does so in a way that preserves the dignity of the lead character and also her best friend in the movie, played by an actress named Edith Meinhard.
I've only told you part of the plot. There is much more to come, and many different characters to meet, both good and evil, whose desires and morals impede, or help to clear, the path Louise must trod to find her freedom.
The black and white photography is glistening in the "portrait lighting" style that was developing in Hollywood. Brooks had no acting background before she came into film, she was chosen for her distinctive look, but she had what you would call Movie Star Charisma in spades. Because of her style, she seems so modern. She could have made this movie today, in 2018, and so could have the director GW Pabst. It would have been very timely now.
"Diary Of A Lost Girl" seems like a precursor to today's news, but it isn't. It's just a film, made 90 years ago by a master filmmaker in Germany, during a period of artistic freedom in that country, that starred a great American actress from the early years of movies, and portrayed a situation that women have found themselves in throughout history. Pabst goes all the way, though, and as the movie ends, he provides a postscript for salvation. I won't tell you about it, and I've already told you too much.
I would just say, in closing about this film, "Diary Of A Lost Girl", that if you are interested in the history of cinema, or women's history, then it is a must that you see this movie. I mean, you already know the story - we know all about these monsters that are being exposed now, and they are indeed monsters. There are Demons in the world, and we have to call them what they are or we will never be rid of them. Demons who live inside some human beings. We are confronting it now, I hope, in Hollywood.
In "Diary", GW Pabst confronted it head on in 1929. ////
That was all the news for today, except for a short hike at Limekiln which produced the photo I posted on FB earlier this evening. Elizabeth, I hope your day was good. I saw a couple of Namm posts, Sarah and Drewsif I think.
Me and you should go next year. Then we can go to Disneyland too, cause Namm is right next door in Anaheim.
Okay, it's a done deal. We're goin'. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
"Kolchak" + Chicago + SB
No movie tonight, and not much news either. I did watch an episode of "Kolchak : The Night Stalker" which was really good, about an Alien invasion in Chicago. Might've been in your neighborhood, Elizabeth. :) The show takes place in the 1970s, though, so you are safe because Kolchak solved the case long before you moved there. "Kolchak" is an awesome show, and I'm sure I mentioned that I was a big fan when it first aired on broadcast TV in 1974. It only lasted one season; go figure that one. But it's influence lasted well into the future. Chris Carter has said that "Kolchak" was one of the inspirations behind "The X-Files" twenty years later (and I am having a Deja Vu moment that informs me I may have told you all of this before).
I don't know how much of the show was actually filmed in Chicago. Certainly some of the exterior establishing shots were, like Lake Shore Drive, the famous street that runs right along the lake. It curves around it, and you can see tall buildings pass by. In this episode, they also showed a Planetarium, so maybe that is a real facility in the city and was used as a filming location also. The Aliens broke into the Planetarium and were using the projection system to look at star maps.
They had landed in Chi-Town, created a ruckus, and were now hoping to head home. Kolchak was trying to stop 'em. He is a newspaper reporter by trade, but a detective at heart, just like me. :)
I saw a couple of posts since the weekend, some having to do with West Coast subjects, like going to the desert. That was a Morgin post. Let's move there, SB. Then we won't have to deal with the traffic anymore. We'll have to drive 150 miles to go to concerts, though..
Hmmm. Well, we'll figure it out. :):)
I saw another post about something called Shiprocked. I Googled it and I see that it is indeed a boat concert like Cruise To The Edge. Are you gonna go? That would be awesome, and especially because we - meaning You and me and everybody else - is hoping to see you back out there Elizabeth.
I am looking forward to more concerts that you will go to, and more photos and videos. Of course I don't know the details of your life right now, and I can only go by what you post, but one thing I can do is offer my encouragement. I have known you for almost six years now, mostly through intuitive contact, but I think that has been enough for us to develop a strong and unique communication.
I know how much you love to do what you do, and you are so great at all of it.
Your music, your photography and videos.
Your style. Your Artistry.
Put all of it at the forefront of your intention, and remember that intention is not just a word or an momentary impulse, but is an implant.
Intention is a mental and spiritual implant that you put into your brain and into your will, like a seed.
You already have The Goods - your music and photographic and video artistry, and overall soul of an Artist. All of that is You.
I've said it before, but now I say it again.
When you are doing what you do, what you love to do, then I am happy too, because I am right here with you all the way.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I don't know how much of the show was actually filmed in Chicago. Certainly some of the exterior establishing shots were, like Lake Shore Drive, the famous street that runs right along the lake. It curves around it, and you can see tall buildings pass by. In this episode, they also showed a Planetarium, so maybe that is a real facility in the city and was used as a filming location also. The Aliens broke into the Planetarium and were using the projection system to look at star maps.
They had landed in Chi-Town, created a ruckus, and were now hoping to head home. Kolchak was trying to stop 'em. He is a newspaper reporter by trade, but a detective at heart, just like me. :)
I saw a couple of posts since the weekend, some having to do with West Coast subjects, like going to the desert. That was a Morgin post. Let's move there, SB. Then we won't have to deal with the traffic anymore. We'll have to drive 150 miles to go to concerts, though..
Hmmm. Well, we'll figure it out. :):)
I saw another post about something called Shiprocked. I Googled it and I see that it is indeed a boat concert like Cruise To The Edge. Are you gonna go? That would be awesome, and especially because we - meaning You and me and everybody else - is hoping to see you back out there Elizabeth.
I am looking forward to more concerts that you will go to, and more photos and videos. Of course I don't know the details of your life right now, and I can only go by what you post, but one thing I can do is offer my encouragement. I have known you for almost six years now, mostly through intuitive contact, but I think that has been enough for us to develop a strong and unique communication.
I know how much you love to do what you do, and you are so great at all of it.
Your music, your photography and videos.
Your style. Your Artistry.
Put all of it at the forefront of your intention, and remember that intention is not just a word or an momentary impulse, but is an implant.
Intention is a mental and spiritual implant that you put into your brain and into your will, like a seed.
You already have The Goods - your music and photographic and video artistry, and overall soul of an Artist. All of that is You.
I've said it before, but now I say it again.
When you are doing what you do, what you love to do, then I am happy too, because I am right here with you all the way.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, January 29, 2018
You Can Review It
Hmmmm.......so you want me to review the Eric Johnson concert, do you? I figured you would ask me, and I did review it over at Facebook a little while ago.
What's that you are saying? Oh yeah.....you are saying that, in your opinion, a pair of quotation marks with dots in between them (put there to signify empty space) doesn't constitute much of a review. Okay, fine. You are entitled to your opinion....
.....but did you notice the two Exclamation Points that I put at the end? They were located right after the second and final Quote Mark. You can go back and look at them if you want. Oh - you say you don't need to, that you'll take my word for it? Okay, that's fine.
So what did you think of the exclamation points? Did you notice I put two of them? Not just one, but two? I suppose I could have put three or four, but at some point it would've become redundant.
And I think I've just hit on the idea for why I am reluctant to write a review of the concert that includes actual words. Anything I might write about it would be redundant, even if I began the review with a simple "The", as in "The" (concert was) (add your choice of superlative here and then continue).
So as much as I hate to disappoint you, I shall not write a further review besides the existing one on Facebook.
I was hoping to say "I shant write a review", because I love to use "shant" whenever the opportunity presents itself, but in this case, the structure of the above sentence indicated the use of "shall not" instead.
If you ever wonder why the British once ruled the world, it's because they came up with words like "shant". And they say it with an English accent. So try to top that! Here in America, we've got "won't", which is okay I guess, but if we are being honest then we've got to admit that "won't" is no match for "shant".
Where was I? Oh yeah......sorry. Yeah I know you want an EJ review with actual words, but I think that using no words provides a much better description of the concert.
What I will do, so as not to leave you empty handed, is to briefly review Eric's new guitar, the semi-hollow White Strat with the single F-Hole at the top. It's called the Thinline Strat, and it sounds miraculous. Now there's a superlative for you! There are so many colors coming out of this guitar (or should I say colours?) that you can almost visualise them as you are hearing them. I thought of the penultimate scene in "2001 : A Space Odyssey", where the astronaut is flying through a canyon of kaleidoscopic colors, everchanging before his very eyes. He is flying headlong toward his rebirth.
That's what this guitar sounds like when Eric Johnson is playing it.
He had his old rhythm section of Tommy Taylor on drums and Kyle Brock on bass.
Arielle opened the show, a very talented young lady.
I took the subway down to the Regent, and maybe because it was a Sunday night, everything converged in my favor. No traffic to the Metro Station, a quick subway trip, seating in the venue (which usually has no seats), so I didn't have to stand for three hours. There were only about two or three hundred people there, so I got off the subway, walked a couple blocks to the Regent, then went in and found an excellent seat with no one sitting next to me and no Giants in front of me. My sightline was perfect.
So there are the details of my experience. A painless transit, an easy seat.......
But the Colors. I've seen Eric about a dozen times now, maybe fifteen. It's always about the Colors.
I can't describe his concerts to you in words. Eric's technique is so far off the charts that he's in his own league, but we already knew that.
His music sounds like colors, in all kinds of combinations, volumes and textures. Some that you might not have known about but that will hit you right in your melodic center.
There is no review because you just have to go to the Eric Johnson concert for yourself, and then you can review it.
:):) xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
What's that you are saying? Oh yeah.....you are saying that, in your opinion, a pair of quotation marks with dots in between them (put there to signify empty space) doesn't constitute much of a review. Okay, fine. You are entitled to your opinion....
.....but did you notice the two Exclamation Points that I put at the end? They were located right after the second and final Quote Mark. You can go back and look at them if you want. Oh - you say you don't need to, that you'll take my word for it? Okay, that's fine.
So what did you think of the exclamation points? Did you notice I put two of them? Not just one, but two? I suppose I could have put three or four, but at some point it would've become redundant.
And I think I've just hit on the idea for why I am reluctant to write a review of the concert that includes actual words. Anything I might write about it would be redundant, even if I began the review with a simple "The", as in "The" (concert was) (add your choice of superlative here and then continue).
So as much as I hate to disappoint you, I shall not write a further review besides the existing one on Facebook.
I was hoping to say "I shant write a review", because I love to use "shant" whenever the opportunity presents itself, but in this case, the structure of the above sentence indicated the use of "shall not" instead.
If you ever wonder why the British once ruled the world, it's because they came up with words like "shant". And they say it with an English accent. So try to top that! Here in America, we've got "won't", which is okay I guess, but if we are being honest then we've got to admit that "won't" is no match for "shant".
Where was I? Oh yeah......sorry. Yeah I know you want an EJ review with actual words, but I think that using no words provides a much better description of the concert.
What I will do, so as not to leave you empty handed, is to briefly review Eric's new guitar, the semi-hollow White Strat with the single F-Hole at the top. It's called the Thinline Strat, and it sounds miraculous. Now there's a superlative for you! There are so many colors coming out of this guitar (or should I say colours?) that you can almost visualise them as you are hearing them. I thought of the penultimate scene in "2001 : A Space Odyssey", where the astronaut is flying through a canyon of kaleidoscopic colors, everchanging before his very eyes. He is flying headlong toward his rebirth.
That's what this guitar sounds like when Eric Johnson is playing it.
He had his old rhythm section of Tommy Taylor on drums and Kyle Brock on bass.
Arielle opened the show, a very talented young lady.
I took the subway down to the Regent, and maybe because it was a Sunday night, everything converged in my favor. No traffic to the Metro Station, a quick subway trip, seating in the venue (which usually has no seats), so I didn't have to stand for three hours. There were only about two or three hundred people there, so I got off the subway, walked a couple blocks to the Regent, then went in and found an excellent seat with no one sitting next to me and no Giants in front of me. My sightline was perfect.
So there are the details of my experience. A painless transit, an easy seat.......
But the Colors. I've seen Eric about a dozen times now, maybe fifteen. It's always about the Colors.
I can't describe his concerts to you in words. Eric's technique is so far off the charts that he's in his own league, but we already knew that.
His music sounds like colors, in all kinds of combinations, volumes and textures. Some that you might not have known about but that will hit you right in your melodic center.
There is no review because you just have to go to the Eric Johnson concert for yourself, and then you can review it.
:):) xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Sunday, January 28, 2018
Apology + Why I Must Write About 1989 + SB + Peter Hammill
Before I begin I wanna apologize for the tirade last night. This morning, I re-read what I wrote, and I realised that I engaged in some name calling that wasn't fair, and for that I am sorry. Basically I'm sorry for the whole tirade, because I don't wanna be a guy who spews negativity or says hurtful things. It's not right for me to do that, and the thing is, that it's not the real me at all. I've said this before, that if you know me, you know I am a happy guy who likes to talk about all kinds of things, anything interesting really. I love conversation and hope that when I write, that side of me comes through, and maybe my somewhat ridiculous sense of humor does too, haha. The flip side of all of this is that I have to write about 1989. I can't ignore it because it has affected my life to a degree that I can't really describe except to say that it's monumental. In a sense, it has become my life, and I hate that. I hate it because I don't want it to be my whole life. Some might say, as "K" once famously said to me almost 25 years ago, that I should just "blow it off". But I can't, for two reasons. The first reason is that it's the biggest secret in America right now, and perhaps of all time in the history of the country. That probably sounds pretentious or grandiose, but it's neither of those things. It really IS the biggest secret; my recent letter from the CIA in response to my FOIA request indicated that it is a National Security matter mandated to classified status by a Presidential Order. I kid you not.
And nobody will talk about it, not even a peep. I have never in my life heard of any subject whatsoever that absolutely cannot be spoken of, but apparently this is it : September 1989.
So the subject of what happened here in 1989 is enormous, and because I was at the center of it - I am the center of it - it all revolves around me, and I feel the tremendous heavy weight of it, every day of my life for almost thirty years. I am also likely the one, among all the people involved, who knows the least about it. Even the bad guys like Rappaport know more about what happened than I do. And so do the people I know personally, who were there. They may not know everything about that crazy and terrifying experience, but I'll bet that they all know more than I do. They know why it happened.
And that is exactly what I don't know. And not knowing is a source of truly awful frustration for me, a frustration that never goes away. So when I say that I don't want This Thing to become my entire life story, that's exactly what I mean. I used to have the life of a Regular Person, prior to 1993 when my memories began to come back. It's possible that the Feds thought they were doing me a favor by erasing the experience from my mind, but in truth, that is the most evil thing that anyone could ever do to any victim of violent crime. What if a person was mugged and didn't remember it? What if a woman was raped, and didn't remember it because someone from a Federal agency used drug and hypnosis techniques to erase her memory of the trauma?
If you think that sounds like science-fiction, Google MKUltra and read about the research of Dr. Ewen Cameron.
At any rate, that was done to me. I went through this terrible two week experience in which I could have died or been killed at least three times, and in which others were harmed including my parents, and at the end of it, the people in charge just erased it all away, and I literally remembered nothing for four years. But then it came back in 1993, and I have been slowly overwhelmed ever since, to the point where it is always on my mind and I have got to solve it before it solves me.
Anyway, that's reason #1 why I have to write about it here at the blog : because it is huge, the biggest of the big, and because it is dificult to deal with on a daily basis.
Reason #2, of why I have to write about it, is because it is the right thing to do, and conversely because to not write about it - to not try to engage others to talk about it and to ignore it instead is profoundly the wrong thing to do. As I said last night in my tirade, this is America. And this is my life.
These are Our Lives, my fellow 1989ers, and this is our country. That much of my tirade I stand by.
And I ask you once again, "what have we got if we haven't got the truth"?
I realise that the rest of you may indeed have some of that truth, that you almost certainly have more of it than I do, and perhaps that is why you do not feel the same urgency as me; because you already do know what happened, and maybe you know why it happened as well. I believe that the late Mr. D knew what happened and why it happened, and I believe that it led, in part, to his early death, because he held that knowledge inside for so long. He kept everything a secret because he felt guilty, until finally he didn't care anymore. His role in whatever happened was probably very small, but the point is that he knew about the bigger picture (which he related to "K"), and he kept it a secret from me all through the latter years of our friendship, from 1993 through 2001, when I didn't see him anymore because he just removed himself from circulation. And then he died in 2008.
Sadly, "X" lost a best friend just a year later. "M" was right around the same age as Mr. D, right around 47. "M", I believe, was on scene at the Wilbur Wash incident. I am not 100% certain of this, but I am more than 50% certain. "M" lived in Orange County and would've been far removed from Northridge when the events began, but it is possible that "M" came to the assistance of "X" at that time, or simply drove out to the Valley when "M" became aware of what was happening.
"M" had nothing to do with 1989, as far as being directly involved, but my memory tells me that "M" was there, as a bystander at the Wilbur Wash, trying to locate "X", who was there as well.
"M" and "X" were best friends, going back to high school. Just like me and Mr. D were best friends.
And so we both lost a best friend, both "X" and myself. And both "M" and Mr. D passed away within a year of each other, at about the same way-too-young age.
So I fight the secrecy, you guys, and though I am only one person, I am fighting it as best I can with the limited free time I have. What I do is write. And I will keep writing. I encourage you all to do the same, and to not ignore it. Write about it or talk about it with someone, even with me. That's what I was trying to say last night, and I again am sorry for the tirade and for letting my frustration get the better of me.
Having said all of that, I still wanna write - and am going to write - about everyday current stuff. Right now, the available subject matter consists mostly of movie reviews or snippets about books I am reading, just because I don't get to go out on many hikes these days or to Disneyland (which I need to go to asap or I am gonna get a case of Disneylanditis!) I'd also like to write both to the SB and about the SB, just like I used to, because the SB is awesome. But I can only do that if the SB posts, and I know that she doesn't have as much free time as she used to, but the point is that I'm still here if the SB is still reading, and nothing has changed in that respect on my part. Hey Elizabeth, will you go to Disneyland with me? :)
Well anyway, that's all I know for tonight. Today I listened to the new solo album by the great Peter Hammill, called "From The Trees". I just received it in the mail from Amazon, and man.......it is simply perfect from start to finish. Hammill's vocal style is an acquired taste, half-sung half spoken, with Shakespearean inflection. To hear him at his most powerful in his younger years, Youtube anything by Van Der Graaf Generator in the 1970s. He is one of my favorite singers and he is also a great lyricist. His solo music is quite stark, just his voice (older now, almost 70) accompanied by a single guitar, usually acoustic, or a piano.......but his songs are very tightly arranged and are built like the recitals of dramatic poems set to music. "From The Trees" is a bit grim, not a lot of Happy Chords on it, but the emotional power is something to behold. On my first listen, I thought of David Bowie's final album "Blackstar", also bleak but majestic, and I thought that Peter Hammill's new album would be the perfect companion piece.
See you in the morning in church. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
And nobody will talk about it, not even a peep. I have never in my life heard of any subject whatsoever that absolutely cannot be spoken of, but apparently this is it : September 1989.
So the subject of what happened here in 1989 is enormous, and because I was at the center of it - I am the center of it - it all revolves around me, and I feel the tremendous heavy weight of it, every day of my life for almost thirty years. I am also likely the one, among all the people involved, who knows the least about it. Even the bad guys like Rappaport know more about what happened than I do. And so do the people I know personally, who were there. They may not know everything about that crazy and terrifying experience, but I'll bet that they all know more than I do. They know why it happened.
And that is exactly what I don't know. And not knowing is a source of truly awful frustration for me, a frustration that never goes away. So when I say that I don't want This Thing to become my entire life story, that's exactly what I mean. I used to have the life of a Regular Person, prior to 1993 when my memories began to come back. It's possible that the Feds thought they were doing me a favor by erasing the experience from my mind, but in truth, that is the most evil thing that anyone could ever do to any victim of violent crime. What if a person was mugged and didn't remember it? What if a woman was raped, and didn't remember it because someone from a Federal agency used drug and hypnosis techniques to erase her memory of the trauma?
If you think that sounds like science-fiction, Google MKUltra and read about the research of Dr. Ewen Cameron.
At any rate, that was done to me. I went through this terrible two week experience in which I could have died or been killed at least three times, and in which others were harmed including my parents, and at the end of it, the people in charge just erased it all away, and I literally remembered nothing for four years. But then it came back in 1993, and I have been slowly overwhelmed ever since, to the point where it is always on my mind and I have got to solve it before it solves me.
Anyway, that's reason #1 why I have to write about it here at the blog : because it is huge, the biggest of the big, and because it is dificult to deal with on a daily basis.
Reason #2, of why I have to write about it, is because it is the right thing to do, and conversely because to not write about it - to not try to engage others to talk about it and to ignore it instead is profoundly the wrong thing to do. As I said last night in my tirade, this is America. And this is my life.
These are Our Lives, my fellow 1989ers, and this is our country. That much of my tirade I stand by.
And I ask you once again, "what have we got if we haven't got the truth"?
I realise that the rest of you may indeed have some of that truth, that you almost certainly have more of it than I do, and perhaps that is why you do not feel the same urgency as me; because you already do know what happened, and maybe you know why it happened as well. I believe that the late Mr. D knew what happened and why it happened, and I believe that it led, in part, to his early death, because he held that knowledge inside for so long. He kept everything a secret because he felt guilty, until finally he didn't care anymore. His role in whatever happened was probably very small, but the point is that he knew about the bigger picture (which he related to "K"), and he kept it a secret from me all through the latter years of our friendship, from 1993 through 2001, when I didn't see him anymore because he just removed himself from circulation. And then he died in 2008.
Sadly, "X" lost a best friend just a year later. "M" was right around the same age as Mr. D, right around 47. "M", I believe, was on scene at the Wilbur Wash incident. I am not 100% certain of this, but I am more than 50% certain. "M" lived in Orange County and would've been far removed from Northridge when the events began, but it is possible that "M" came to the assistance of "X" at that time, or simply drove out to the Valley when "M" became aware of what was happening.
"M" had nothing to do with 1989, as far as being directly involved, but my memory tells me that "M" was there, as a bystander at the Wilbur Wash, trying to locate "X", who was there as well.
"M" and "X" were best friends, going back to high school. Just like me and Mr. D were best friends.
And so we both lost a best friend, both "X" and myself. And both "M" and Mr. D passed away within a year of each other, at about the same way-too-young age.
So I fight the secrecy, you guys, and though I am only one person, I am fighting it as best I can with the limited free time I have. What I do is write. And I will keep writing. I encourage you all to do the same, and to not ignore it. Write about it or talk about it with someone, even with me. That's what I was trying to say last night, and I again am sorry for the tirade and for letting my frustration get the better of me.
Having said all of that, I still wanna write - and am going to write - about everyday current stuff. Right now, the available subject matter consists mostly of movie reviews or snippets about books I am reading, just because I don't get to go out on many hikes these days or to Disneyland (which I need to go to asap or I am gonna get a case of Disneylanditis!) I'd also like to write both to the SB and about the SB, just like I used to, because the SB is awesome. But I can only do that if the SB posts, and I know that she doesn't have as much free time as she used to, but the point is that I'm still here if the SB is still reading, and nothing has changed in that respect on my part. Hey Elizabeth, will you go to Disneyland with me? :)
Well anyway, that's all I know for tonight. Today I listened to the new solo album by the great Peter Hammill, called "From The Trees". I just received it in the mail from Amazon, and man.......it is simply perfect from start to finish. Hammill's vocal style is an acquired taste, half-sung half spoken, with Shakespearean inflection. To hear him at his most powerful in his younger years, Youtube anything by Van Der Graaf Generator in the 1970s. He is one of my favorite singers and he is also a great lyricist. His solo music is quite stark, just his voice (older now, almost 70) accompanied by a single guitar, usually acoustic, or a piano.......but his songs are very tightly arranged and are built like the recitals of dramatic poems set to music. "From The Trees" is a bit grim, not a lot of Happy Chords on it, but the emotional power is something to behold. On my first listen, I thought of David Bowie's final album "Blackstar", also bleak but majestic, and I thought that Peter Hammill's new album would be the perfect companion piece.
See you in the morning in church. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, January 27, 2018
Grim Came Over + "The Room" + America + You Have To Step Up To The Plate
Writing from home tonight. No movie to review, because Grimsley came over and we hung out for a while. He wanted to play me some tracks from a Frank Zappa album he bought called "The Lost Episodes", which as the title suggests are recordings that were never released, including a few that FZ made when he was just a teenager in Lancaster. I am a big Zappa fan (and you are too I bet), so it was a treat to hear this music. I will be ordering a copy of "The Lost Episodes" myself, to add to my collection.
I know I said there was no movie tonight, and there wasn't.
But there sort of was.
Grim brought a dvd with him, but we didn't watch it all the way through. Not only that, but this was a "movie" in name only, only because it consisted of a series of frames that are generally considered to constitute a "motion picture". So in that sense, it is a movie. But in any other way........no.
It is called "The Room", and you may have heard about it. It was "directed" by a character named Tommy Wiseau. You can Google him. In any event, the film is so bad that, in some circles (but not mine), it acquired a "so-bad-that-it's-good" status. Somehow, James Franco got wind of it, and liked it so much that he made his own movie about it, called "The Disaster Artist", in which he apparently recreates "The Room" to some degree. Because Franco is a star, "The Room", which was made in 2004 and went straight into the dustbin of history, became known to the press and public several months ago, and now it has gained a cult status.
For myself, I would never have bothered to check it out, because, though I had read about it, it seemed to be Just Plain Bad rather than So Bad That It Is Good.
And tonight my suspicions were confirmed. Grim brought the dvd with him and insisted I watch a few minutes of it, which I did, to placate him. It's not worth reviewing, because your nine year old nephew could make a better film, or your grandpa, or your dog. The only thing it has going for it is Wiseau himself, who stars, and the only reason that I say that is because he does have a tiny bit of Aging Rock Star charisma. But that charisma is extremely slight, and only extends as far as if you have already put the dvd in your player and pressed "play". In other words, there is no way you would seek this movie out, and you would never even see a few minutes of it unless you were James Franco, or unless Grim brought the dvd over to your apartment. But if that happened, and you had to sit through a few minutes worth, you would grudgingly say that Tommy Wiseau, with his funny accent and Whisky-A-GoGo look, is the only possible drawing card for "The Room".
It's not "so bad it's good", except in the minds of Hollywood hipsters.
In actuality, it's "so bad that you would never have heard of it had it not been for James Franco".
And that is far too much for me to have written about "The Room", even if I am always looking for something to write about. :)
I am gonna keep writing about 1989, and what I am looking for are unique angles that focus on specific details, the kind of stuff Columbo would notice if he were working the case. I have been going over everything I can remember about the overall experience for so long - almost 25 years - that I long ago hit dead ends in trying to understand the individual events that constituted the entire thing, which lasted (I think) about 12 days. But a couple of years ago, I figured out the connections between Howard Schaller, Mr. D and X, and in realising those connections I came to understand the knowledge of "K", who knew about what had taken place and tried to play coy with me. People in my circle knew that I had amnesia, and they took advantage of that fact. And when my amnesia started to break, they still attempted to control the situation by banding together and feeding me a bunch of BS, as "K" tried to do in June 1994.
With me being a natural-born detective, that strategy backfired, and here we are now, writing to the CIA.
To digress for a moment, we are living through some very stressful and challenging times in America. I will stand up right here and say that I am American to my core. I am not very political, but this is the land of my family and my ancestors going back 400 years. I can feel the land in my bones. I haven't traveled (though I'd like to), and the point is that I am connected to the history of this land in a spiritual way, and to the values this country was founded on. Now, I hear a lot of stuff in the ranting computer age that we live in, where many people want to take the country down and say that it was founded by racists or by the Illuminatti, and that America has never been a great country and blah, blah, blah.
And while I do not back away from a clear eyed view of what our ancestors did to the black slaves, or to the Indian people, or to the effects that excessive capitalism is having on our country right now, I still believe in America, because it is indeed a great country and it was meant to lead the world toward peace. Look at Europe over the last thousand years, and you know that Europe, despite the grand cultural histories of their countries and the fact that their scientists and engineers led the way toward the modern world, was not a place, with it's neverending history of war, to be a leader for world peace.
Nor was Russia, nor China.
Say what you will about the United States Of America, even as messed up at it is at the moment, but it has always been, since it's founding almost 250 years ago, the best hope for peace in the world.
The world is all messed up with violence. Who is gonna stop it? Russia? China? Germany?
No. Only the United States can fix the world. Not anarchy, not some third party dream, just the U.S. as we know it and hope for it.
But it will never happen until we Step Up To The Fucking Plate.
It is not enough just to go to your job everyday, and then come home and have a nice evening, and pretend that nothing out of the ordinary ever happened in your life, or that you never participated in anything unsavory. It is not good enough to hide. To wake up every single day of your life, and hide. You have got to stop hiding.
This is imperative, because this is the United States of America. And we need to save it. We now have a man - right at this moment - who is trying to exert his will on America, worse than Joe McCarthy ever did, and we have to stand up to him. But he never would have been in there in the first place if this country, which was once so great and such a hope, had not decayed to the extent that it has.
You are hiding an enormous secret, and what you are doing is profoundly wrong. Every day that you get up, and ignore what you know, and continue to keep your secrets, you are helping to throw America into the trash can.
So please, step up to the plate. Stop being a coward.
End of digression.
Sorry about that, but it needed to be said, and we will keep touching on the subject. What we need to do is to pay attention to the psychology behind the secrecy, and there is more to it than just cowardice. Some folks may have been threatened, or may feel a tremendous amount of shame. So we will work on that. But to get back to my original point, we will be looking more at small details, like those which finally connected the Schaller situation. Those minor details may work better than trying to understand the Grand Scheme. We can ask such things as, "how did Mr. Rappaport know that I would be home alone", when he came to get me? Or, "how did the authorities find out I was inside his house"? Who called them? Certainly not Jared Rappaport, nor his zombie-like wife. So, who knew I was in that house? Who called the authorities, and why did the person who knew I was in there not call the police?
Or did the authorities, i.e The Feds, know I was in there? Maybe nobody called them. Maybe they knew I was in there all along, and finally came to get me out, after 24 hours.
Those are the kinds of minor but important details we will be looking at.
SB, I hope all is well. I am thinking of you of course, just so you know. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
See you in the morning. :)
I know I said there was no movie tonight, and there wasn't.
But there sort of was.
Grim brought a dvd with him, but we didn't watch it all the way through. Not only that, but this was a "movie" in name only, only because it consisted of a series of frames that are generally considered to constitute a "motion picture". So in that sense, it is a movie. But in any other way........no.
It is called "The Room", and you may have heard about it. It was "directed" by a character named Tommy Wiseau. You can Google him. In any event, the film is so bad that, in some circles (but not mine), it acquired a "so-bad-that-it's-good" status. Somehow, James Franco got wind of it, and liked it so much that he made his own movie about it, called "The Disaster Artist", in which he apparently recreates "The Room" to some degree. Because Franco is a star, "The Room", which was made in 2004 and went straight into the dustbin of history, became known to the press and public several months ago, and now it has gained a cult status.
For myself, I would never have bothered to check it out, because, though I had read about it, it seemed to be Just Plain Bad rather than So Bad That It Is Good.
And tonight my suspicions were confirmed. Grim brought the dvd with him and insisted I watch a few minutes of it, which I did, to placate him. It's not worth reviewing, because your nine year old nephew could make a better film, or your grandpa, or your dog. The only thing it has going for it is Wiseau himself, who stars, and the only reason that I say that is because he does have a tiny bit of Aging Rock Star charisma. But that charisma is extremely slight, and only extends as far as if you have already put the dvd in your player and pressed "play". In other words, there is no way you would seek this movie out, and you would never even see a few minutes of it unless you were James Franco, or unless Grim brought the dvd over to your apartment. But if that happened, and you had to sit through a few minutes worth, you would grudgingly say that Tommy Wiseau, with his funny accent and Whisky-A-GoGo look, is the only possible drawing card for "The Room".
It's not "so bad it's good", except in the minds of Hollywood hipsters.
In actuality, it's "so bad that you would never have heard of it had it not been for James Franco".
And that is far too much for me to have written about "The Room", even if I am always looking for something to write about. :)
I am gonna keep writing about 1989, and what I am looking for are unique angles that focus on specific details, the kind of stuff Columbo would notice if he were working the case. I have been going over everything I can remember about the overall experience for so long - almost 25 years - that I long ago hit dead ends in trying to understand the individual events that constituted the entire thing, which lasted (I think) about 12 days. But a couple of years ago, I figured out the connections between Howard Schaller, Mr. D and X, and in realising those connections I came to understand the knowledge of "K", who knew about what had taken place and tried to play coy with me. People in my circle knew that I had amnesia, and they took advantage of that fact. And when my amnesia started to break, they still attempted to control the situation by banding together and feeding me a bunch of BS, as "K" tried to do in June 1994.
With me being a natural-born detective, that strategy backfired, and here we are now, writing to the CIA.
To digress for a moment, we are living through some very stressful and challenging times in America. I will stand up right here and say that I am American to my core. I am not very political, but this is the land of my family and my ancestors going back 400 years. I can feel the land in my bones. I haven't traveled (though I'd like to), and the point is that I am connected to the history of this land in a spiritual way, and to the values this country was founded on. Now, I hear a lot of stuff in the ranting computer age that we live in, where many people want to take the country down and say that it was founded by racists or by the Illuminatti, and that America has never been a great country and blah, blah, blah.
And while I do not back away from a clear eyed view of what our ancestors did to the black slaves, or to the Indian people, or to the effects that excessive capitalism is having on our country right now, I still believe in America, because it is indeed a great country and it was meant to lead the world toward peace. Look at Europe over the last thousand years, and you know that Europe, despite the grand cultural histories of their countries and the fact that their scientists and engineers led the way toward the modern world, was not a place, with it's neverending history of war, to be a leader for world peace.
Nor was Russia, nor China.
Say what you will about the United States Of America, even as messed up at it is at the moment, but it has always been, since it's founding almost 250 years ago, the best hope for peace in the world.
The world is all messed up with violence. Who is gonna stop it? Russia? China? Germany?
No. Only the United States can fix the world. Not anarchy, not some third party dream, just the U.S. as we know it and hope for it.
But it will never happen until we Step Up To The Fucking Plate.
It is not enough just to go to your job everyday, and then come home and have a nice evening, and pretend that nothing out of the ordinary ever happened in your life, or that you never participated in anything unsavory. It is not good enough to hide. To wake up every single day of your life, and hide. You have got to stop hiding.
This is imperative, because this is the United States of America. And we need to save it. We now have a man - right at this moment - who is trying to exert his will on America, worse than Joe McCarthy ever did, and we have to stand up to him. But he never would have been in there in the first place if this country, which was once so great and such a hope, had not decayed to the extent that it has.
You are hiding an enormous secret, and what you are doing is profoundly wrong. Every day that you get up, and ignore what you know, and continue to keep your secrets, you are helping to throw America into the trash can.
So please, step up to the plate. Stop being a coward.
End of digression.
Sorry about that, but it needed to be said, and we will keep touching on the subject. What we need to do is to pay attention to the psychology behind the secrecy, and there is more to it than just cowardice. Some folks may have been threatened, or may feel a tremendous amount of shame. So we will work on that. But to get back to my original point, we will be looking more at small details, like those which finally connected the Schaller situation. Those minor details may work better than trying to understand the Grand Scheme. We can ask such things as, "how did Mr. Rappaport know that I would be home alone", when he came to get me? Or, "how did the authorities find out I was inside his house"? Who called them? Certainly not Jared Rappaport, nor his zombie-like wife. So, who knew I was in that house? Who called the authorities, and why did the person who knew I was in there not call the police?
Or did the authorities, i.e The Feds, know I was in there? Maybe nobody called them. Maybe they knew I was in there all along, and finally came to get me out, after 24 hours.
Those are the kinds of minor but important details we will be looking at.
SB, I hope all is well. I am thinking of you of course, just so you know. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
See you in the morning. :)
Friday, January 26, 2018
"A Generation" (Andrzej Wajda Retrospective at CSUN) + "X" and Schaller and the Coke Deal
Tonight we began our eighteenth retrospective of the CSUN Cinematheque, this time we will be watching the films of Poland's most acclaimed director Andrzej Wajda (1926-2016). Wajda is not well known, but he had a long career and he influenced, with his earliest works, great American filmmakers like Coppola and Scorcese. Tonight we saw his debut film, "A Generation" (1955), the story of a young man and his friends, living in shacks in a poverty stricken section of Warsaw during WW2, who decide to join the Resistance against the Nazi occupation. The leader of their local militancy group is a politically astute young woman. The young man who stars becomes enamored of her, which provides a love story subtheme. This romance figures strongly in the ending of the movie, though I'll not reveal how.
The young man gets a job in a factory, where he meets others in the Communist movement. Director Wajda got his start in 1955 Poland, which was then under the dominance of the Soviet Union, so to even get his films made, at that time, required that he portray Communism in a favorable light. To his credit, he does not overdo it. It is clear he has no Communist sentiment himself, and he presents the characters' political beliefs objectively so as not to upset the Soviet censors. The plot depicts the growing willingness of the youths to fight against the occupying force of the Germans, and to fight in street combat, in small numbers against great odds. They have nothing much to lose, their lives are lived in squalor against a ruined landscape, with a menacing foreign army roaming the streets of their city.
Imagine such a scenario in your own city. You too might fight back.
Wajda presents their story in a romantic way, showing the inexperience of the young men, most of whom don't have jobs let alone any discipline. One of the guys steals a gun from the factory (which is hiding weapons for the Resistance), and the boys go on their first mission, a spontaneous revenge killing of a local Nazi bully who has beaten up the leader of their gang.
This plot element forms the central storyline, but really the movie is about Youth vs. War, Idealism vs. Dominance, and the seemingly permanent human condition of having to stand up against something, rather than just being able to live your life in peace, as young people would normally do if the human race were not beset by devils.
This is the story of war and violence, and how it sucks young people into it's vortex.
Wajda directs the film with considerable skill for a first-timer, using Film Noir techniques of shadow and light, close-ups on faces, and darkened scenes of underground hideouts and grim factory workshops.
I have seen "A Generation" once prior, when I found the dvd at the Reseda Libe about five years ago. Seeing it on the big screen gave me a new perspective on the visual aspect, of all the things Wajda is trying to convey in every shot. It is an incredibly visual film, with a Western photographic sensibility.
And in black and white, which rules as you know.
I will get back into the 1989 story tomorrow night, when I will be writing from home (my night off). I don't know what angle I will explore, but I think I will keep working on the Schaller aspect - the probable drug deal, because it is that aspect that seemed to blow the whole thing up to epic proportions.
The thing is, you have to ask yourself : Why in the bloody world would "X" need to make a drug deal in the first place? "X" didn't use drugs.
Now, "X" was friends with a popular band, and like all popular bands, that band no doubt used drugs. And "X" even one time told me that "X" had brought a gram of coke to the band's studio.
Howard Schaller was mainly a Speed Dealer, a methamphetamine dealer. But because he was a major dealer, I have little doubt that he could've scored cocaine if it was requested, and especially if it was requested in quantity.
And I think that is what happened. I am intuituve, and I have thought for a long time that "X", for some reason, needed to score an amount of coke. Not just a gram or an ounce, but more than that. Maybe for a band, or maybe for something else. I could be wrong, but I also could not be wrong, because something has to explain Howard Schaller's unrestrained rage at "X" on the night of September 1st 1989 in the Northridge Hospital parking lot. You would've had to have been there to see how angry he was.
So there was certainly a drug deal, and it had to have been for coke - not speed - because bands don't want speed, they want coke. And so do other party people. And in this case, the drug deal must have been for a sizeable amount of cocaine, because why else would Howard Schaller become murderous on the night of September 1st 1989?
Not over a gram or two of coke, that's for sure.
No, he was pissed at "X" for one of two reasons, or possibly both reasons.
He either feared he had just lost a lot of money or drugs because of what had happened in "T''s apartment, or he was worried that he was gonna go to jail because of what had happened in "T''s apartment.
Perhaps there was a quantity of cocaine in "T"'s apartment that night, and Howard was worried that it would be found by cops.
I had upended the proceedings that night at the apartment building, and had thrown all the plans of the drug partners into disarray.
That is my basic theory of how, and why, Howard Schaller knew "X". Because of a drug deal for cocaine, in which Mr. D was the middleman, and for a large amount that, in my best guess, was meant for a rock band, or possibly for a more nefarious purpose that ended with Mr. Rappaport kidnapping me.
That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxox :):)
The young man gets a job in a factory, where he meets others in the Communist movement. Director Wajda got his start in 1955 Poland, which was then under the dominance of the Soviet Union, so to even get his films made, at that time, required that he portray Communism in a favorable light. To his credit, he does not overdo it. It is clear he has no Communist sentiment himself, and he presents the characters' political beliefs objectively so as not to upset the Soviet censors. The plot depicts the growing willingness of the youths to fight against the occupying force of the Germans, and to fight in street combat, in small numbers against great odds. They have nothing much to lose, their lives are lived in squalor against a ruined landscape, with a menacing foreign army roaming the streets of their city.
Imagine such a scenario in your own city. You too might fight back.
Wajda presents their story in a romantic way, showing the inexperience of the young men, most of whom don't have jobs let alone any discipline. One of the guys steals a gun from the factory (which is hiding weapons for the Resistance), and the boys go on their first mission, a spontaneous revenge killing of a local Nazi bully who has beaten up the leader of their gang.
This plot element forms the central storyline, but really the movie is about Youth vs. War, Idealism vs. Dominance, and the seemingly permanent human condition of having to stand up against something, rather than just being able to live your life in peace, as young people would normally do if the human race were not beset by devils.
This is the story of war and violence, and how it sucks young people into it's vortex.
Wajda directs the film with considerable skill for a first-timer, using Film Noir techniques of shadow and light, close-ups on faces, and darkened scenes of underground hideouts and grim factory workshops.
I have seen "A Generation" once prior, when I found the dvd at the Reseda Libe about five years ago. Seeing it on the big screen gave me a new perspective on the visual aspect, of all the things Wajda is trying to convey in every shot. It is an incredibly visual film, with a Western photographic sensibility.
And in black and white, which rules as you know.
I will get back into the 1989 story tomorrow night, when I will be writing from home (my night off). I don't know what angle I will explore, but I think I will keep working on the Schaller aspect - the probable drug deal, because it is that aspect that seemed to blow the whole thing up to epic proportions.
The thing is, you have to ask yourself : Why in the bloody world would "X" need to make a drug deal in the first place? "X" didn't use drugs.
Now, "X" was friends with a popular band, and like all popular bands, that band no doubt used drugs. And "X" even one time told me that "X" had brought a gram of coke to the band's studio.
Howard Schaller was mainly a Speed Dealer, a methamphetamine dealer. But because he was a major dealer, I have little doubt that he could've scored cocaine if it was requested, and especially if it was requested in quantity.
And I think that is what happened. I am intuituve, and I have thought for a long time that "X", for some reason, needed to score an amount of coke. Not just a gram or an ounce, but more than that. Maybe for a band, or maybe for something else. I could be wrong, but I also could not be wrong, because something has to explain Howard Schaller's unrestrained rage at "X" on the night of September 1st 1989 in the Northridge Hospital parking lot. You would've had to have been there to see how angry he was.
So there was certainly a drug deal, and it had to have been for coke - not speed - because bands don't want speed, they want coke. And so do other party people. And in this case, the drug deal must have been for a sizeable amount of cocaine, because why else would Howard Schaller become murderous on the night of September 1st 1989?
Not over a gram or two of coke, that's for sure.
No, he was pissed at "X" for one of two reasons, or possibly both reasons.
He either feared he had just lost a lot of money or drugs because of what had happened in "T''s apartment, or he was worried that he was gonna go to jail because of what had happened in "T''s apartment.
Perhaps there was a quantity of cocaine in "T"'s apartment that night, and Howard was worried that it would be found by cops.
I had upended the proceedings that night at the apartment building, and had thrown all the plans of the drug partners into disarray.
That is my basic theory of how, and why, Howard Schaller knew "X". Because of a drug deal for cocaine, in which Mr. D was the middleman, and for a large amount that, in my best guess, was meant for a rock band, or possibly for a more nefarious purpose that ended with Mr. Rappaport kidnapping me.
That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxox :):)
Thursday, January 25, 2018
"5 Against The House" + The Duplicity Of "K" And Others
Tonight's film was called "5 Against The House" (1955), a nifty little Noir about four college buddies who are visiting Reno during a break from school. While there, they visit a casino and are highly impressed by the sight of an employee wheeling a "cash cart" from the main counter to a back room where the night's take is stored in the casino vault. One of the pals is a bit of a math whiz. He calculates what the casino might bank on an an average night : 100 grand, an impressive sum, especially in 1955.
Two of the college friends look a few years too old to be in college : Brian Keith and the handsome Guy Madison. This is not miscasting. They are older because their education was deferred by a stint in the Korean war. They are now back in school to finish up their law degrees and are several years older than the other two buddies, played by the handsome Kerwin Matthews and the distinctive Alvy Moore, who looks like his name sounds, and who wound up playing the hard-to-decipher Hank Kimball on the classic series "Green Acres".
So there you have 4 of the "5" in the title. The two Korean War vets (Keith and Madison), and the two younger guys, one handsome and highly intelligent (Matthews) and one wry and goofy (Moore).
The dialogue in the first 20 minutes was non-stop wisecracking between the guys, spoken in a 1950s hipster slang, and because of that I was a bit worried that the whole movie was just gonna be a bunch of slick talk and no action. But that was just the set-up. Then two things happen. The first is that we are shown a major crack in the Cool Guy facade of Brian Keith. He gets in a fight with a smart aleck in a nightclub, and it is clear now that he is suffering from PTSD, though back then there was no such term. In the movie, he is called a psycho after he beats up the smart aleck.
The second thing that happens is that we are introduced to the sultry Kim Novak, who is singing in the nightclub. She also happens to be Guy Madison's girlfriend, who he hopes to marry. Novak winds up becoming #5 from the title. "5 Against The House" is so named because the four college friends and Kim Novak are gonna rob the casino. Most of them would never even consider such a thing, but the Intelligent Friend (Kerwin Matthews) concocts a plan which he swears is foolproof. The other friends demure, and say they won't participate, but they didn't figure on Brian Keith. Remember, he is a war psycho with PTSD. He sees no future for himself, in college or otherwise. He attaches himself to Kerwin Matthews' robbery plan, and pulls a gun on the others while they are on their way back to Reno.
Now he is gonna force them all to go along with the plan, which began as a College Boy prank thesis of trying to outsmart casino security. But now the pals have Keith on their hands and he has gone full PTSD crazy.
"5 Against The House" is quite an effective thriller once it gets going, after the snappy dialogue is out of the way. It has great location photography in Reno from 1955, shot in black and white. Brian Keith is the star, with his considerable Method Acting ability. When the big plot twist comes, midway through the film, it is Keith who turns the story into hard drama, after it began as a light comedy.
One again, for the third night in a row, I have seen a little-known but very enjoyable Noir, and as with the films of the last two nights, I give "5 Against The House" a big thumbs up. The B&W photography is fantastic, as is the idiosyncratic script by Sterling Silliphant, who would go on to become a major screenwriter.
Every time I think I have seen all the Film Noirs there are to see, I get lucky and find a few new ones, and this time I got my fix once again. Three things I've gotta have are my Noirs, my Westerns and my Sci-Fi, all from the late 40's through the late 50's, and all in black and white. :)
Well, I don't know if I have the energy to finish the story of "K", but I will try. It will be important for anyone following the tale to re-read the blogs of the past few days, if you even hope to understand the context. To reiterate, "K" had first been the girlfriend of my best friend Mr. D. Then, in June 1993, in a strange turn of events, Mr. D kicked her out of his house on Burton Street, and she came to live at my house, in our garage. She achieved this tenancy not by asking me directly if it was okay to move in, but by aligning herself with "T", who had already lived in our garage for over three years, since October 1989. In hindsight, years later, I came to wonder how "K" knew "T". "K" was shy to the point of reticence. She often would not respond when you said hello, that kind of thing. "K" was extremely withdrawn, not the kind of person to introduce herself to anyone, let alone to insinuate herself into a person's house. My take on how it all came about was that she had known "T" beforehand. Otherwise, why did she go straight to him in the garage when she wanted a place to stay? Why did she not come to me? I was the main man at 9032, and I was also a close friend of her brother and her ex-boyfriend Mr. D. "T" had once been a close friend too, and was still a "friend" in 1993, but only because my memory had yet to return.
"K" was caught in the middle of all of this. I will cut to the chase now and tell you what "K" said to me in June 1994, one year after she moved into our garage at 9032 Rathburn Ave. At the time, my memories of 1989 were just beginning to emerge, but I could not make sense of what I was remembering. It was an overwhelming time. We were just months removed from the earthquake.
As my amnesia broke, the fragments of memories of 1989 made me feel on the verge of something incredible, something frightening and mindboggling but also very important. It felt to me like the world depended on my making sense of what I was remembering.
I didn't trust "T", living in my garage. I was getting a very bad memory of him from 1989. Read my book for the story. So one day I asked "K", his girlfriend, who had also been the girlfriend of Mr. D, if she could help me to understand what I was remembering.
And she said, "Do you know how, sometimes, when something happens that you can't do anything about, that you just have to blow it off"?
I said "Yeah, but what do you mean"?
And she said, "Well this is one of those things. It's bigger than you are. You just have to blow it off because you can't do anything about it".
So said "K" in June 1994. That was almost 25 years ago. "K" was the first person to clue me into the fact that something major league had happened to me.
The point I have been building to in the blogs about "K", however, leads us back to my best pal Mr. D.
Because, just as there is no way that "X" could have had a connection to Howard Schaller without the help of Mr. D, neither could his then-girlfriend "K" known about the events of 1989 unless Mr. D told her. He was involved, she wasn't. How else could she have known?
How could she then have related to me, in 1994, that something so big had happened to me in '89, that the only alternative I had, in her opinion, was to "blow it off"?
She knew what had happened to me because Mr. D told her, when she was still his girlfriend. He must have told her sometime between September 1989 and 1993. Then, when he kicked her out of his house in June of that year, she ran to the only other guy who held the same secret she knew : "T", the lowlife false friend of mine who lived in my garage.
"K", a secret keeper for 25 years now, wound up marrying "T" about 20 years ago.
So there you have it; the people I used to know. As "BC" said to me when I was taken out of Rappaport's house, "they aren't your friends, Adam".
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Two of the college friends look a few years too old to be in college : Brian Keith and the handsome Guy Madison. This is not miscasting. They are older because their education was deferred by a stint in the Korean war. They are now back in school to finish up their law degrees and are several years older than the other two buddies, played by the handsome Kerwin Matthews and the distinctive Alvy Moore, who looks like his name sounds, and who wound up playing the hard-to-decipher Hank Kimball on the classic series "Green Acres".
So there you have 4 of the "5" in the title. The two Korean War vets (Keith and Madison), and the two younger guys, one handsome and highly intelligent (Matthews) and one wry and goofy (Moore).
The dialogue in the first 20 minutes was non-stop wisecracking between the guys, spoken in a 1950s hipster slang, and because of that I was a bit worried that the whole movie was just gonna be a bunch of slick talk and no action. But that was just the set-up. Then two things happen. The first is that we are shown a major crack in the Cool Guy facade of Brian Keith. He gets in a fight with a smart aleck in a nightclub, and it is clear now that he is suffering from PTSD, though back then there was no such term. In the movie, he is called a psycho after he beats up the smart aleck.
The second thing that happens is that we are introduced to the sultry Kim Novak, who is singing in the nightclub. She also happens to be Guy Madison's girlfriend, who he hopes to marry. Novak winds up becoming #5 from the title. "5 Against The House" is so named because the four college friends and Kim Novak are gonna rob the casino. Most of them would never even consider such a thing, but the Intelligent Friend (Kerwin Matthews) concocts a plan which he swears is foolproof. The other friends demure, and say they won't participate, but they didn't figure on Brian Keith. Remember, he is a war psycho with PTSD. He sees no future for himself, in college or otherwise. He attaches himself to Kerwin Matthews' robbery plan, and pulls a gun on the others while they are on their way back to Reno.
Now he is gonna force them all to go along with the plan, which began as a College Boy prank thesis of trying to outsmart casino security. But now the pals have Keith on their hands and he has gone full PTSD crazy.
"5 Against The House" is quite an effective thriller once it gets going, after the snappy dialogue is out of the way. It has great location photography in Reno from 1955, shot in black and white. Brian Keith is the star, with his considerable Method Acting ability. When the big plot twist comes, midway through the film, it is Keith who turns the story into hard drama, after it began as a light comedy.
One again, for the third night in a row, I have seen a little-known but very enjoyable Noir, and as with the films of the last two nights, I give "5 Against The House" a big thumbs up. The B&W photography is fantastic, as is the idiosyncratic script by Sterling Silliphant, who would go on to become a major screenwriter.
Every time I think I have seen all the Film Noirs there are to see, I get lucky and find a few new ones, and this time I got my fix once again. Three things I've gotta have are my Noirs, my Westerns and my Sci-Fi, all from the late 40's through the late 50's, and all in black and white. :)
Well, I don't know if I have the energy to finish the story of "K", but I will try. It will be important for anyone following the tale to re-read the blogs of the past few days, if you even hope to understand the context. To reiterate, "K" had first been the girlfriend of my best friend Mr. D. Then, in June 1993, in a strange turn of events, Mr. D kicked her out of his house on Burton Street, and she came to live at my house, in our garage. She achieved this tenancy not by asking me directly if it was okay to move in, but by aligning herself with "T", who had already lived in our garage for over three years, since October 1989. In hindsight, years later, I came to wonder how "K" knew "T". "K" was shy to the point of reticence. She often would not respond when you said hello, that kind of thing. "K" was extremely withdrawn, not the kind of person to introduce herself to anyone, let alone to insinuate herself into a person's house. My take on how it all came about was that she had known "T" beforehand. Otherwise, why did she go straight to him in the garage when she wanted a place to stay? Why did she not come to me? I was the main man at 9032, and I was also a close friend of her brother and her ex-boyfriend Mr. D. "T" had once been a close friend too, and was still a "friend" in 1993, but only because my memory had yet to return.
"K" was caught in the middle of all of this. I will cut to the chase now and tell you what "K" said to me in June 1994, one year after she moved into our garage at 9032 Rathburn Ave. At the time, my memories of 1989 were just beginning to emerge, but I could not make sense of what I was remembering. It was an overwhelming time. We were just months removed from the earthquake.
As my amnesia broke, the fragments of memories of 1989 made me feel on the verge of something incredible, something frightening and mindboggling but also very important. It felt to me like the world depended on my making sense of what I was remembering.
I didn't trust "T", living in my garage. I was getting a very bad memory of him from 1989. Read my book for the story. So one day I asked "K", his girlfriend, who had also been the girlfriend of Mr. D, if she could help me to understand what I was remembering.
And she said, "Do you know how, sometimes, when something happens that you can't do anything about, that you just have to blow it off"?
I said "Yeah, but what do you mean"?
And she said, "Well this is one of those things. It's bigger than you are. You just have to blow it off because you can't do anything about it".
So said "K" in June 1994. That was almost 25 years ago. "K" was the first person to clue me into the fact that something major league had happened to me.
The point I have been building to in the blogs about "K", however, leads us back to my best pal Mr. D.
Because, just as there is no way that "X" could have had a connection to Howard Schaller without the help of Mr. D, neither could his then-girlfriend "K" known about the events of 1989 unless Mr. D told her. He was involved, she wasn't. How else could she have known?
How could she then have related to me, in 1994, that something so big had happened to me in '89, that the only alternative I had, in her opinion, was to "blow it off"?
She knew what had happened to me because Mr. D told her, when she was still his girlfriend. He must have told her sometime between September 1989 and 1993. Then, when he kicked her out of his house in June of that year, she ran to the only other guy who held the same secret she knew : "T", the lowlife false friend of mine who lived in my garage.
"K", a secret keeper for 25 years now, wound up marrying "T" about 20 years ago.
So there you have it; the people I used to know. As "BC" said to me when I was taken out of Rappaport's house, "they aren't your friends, Adam".
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
"Time Without Pity" + The Preliminary on "K"
Tonight's film was called "Time Without Pity" (1957), an edgy and slightly eccentric English Noir about an alcoholic writer (played by the great Michael Redgrave) who returns to England from Canada to visit the son he had forsaken long ago. That son is now on Death Row in an English prison, and is scheduled to be executed in twenty four hours.
I must make an interjection here, as I sometimes do in these matters, to specify that the word "scheduled", as written above, will be pronounced "shedge-ooled", in the British manner. If we are clear on that point - and I trust that we are - then we may proceed.
Michael Redgrave has not seen his son in years. He has neglected him really, but he has returned to England because his son has only hours to live, and Redgrave - a good man on the inside - is feeling the weight of the guilt of his neglect. He does love his son, and he is sure the son is innocent. It is demonstrated in the film that the son is a fragile character, unlikely to have committed the murder of his girlfriend.
As it turns out (and give me a moment while I switch off the italics).....and as it turns out, both the son and his girl had been involved with another couple, a racing car industrialist played by the Explosive Leo McKern, and his wife, who seems to have a lot of sympathy for the young man who is about to be executed.
Yes, it's a convoluted plot, and I've probably described the basis of it in an equally convoluted fashion. I never know how my sentences are gonna come out until I re-read them the next day, haha, but the thing is that - in movies - casting plays a huge role. Just as you know that, when you go to see a Tom Cruise movie, that he is not gonna die even if he is scaling a 127 story skyscraper, then you also should know that if you have an actor like Leo McKern in your film, he is not there to play happy-go-lucky.
Here, I think the director realized that, and he indicates who the real murderer is at the beginning of the film and then allows the characters to unravel the mystery by proxy. We in the audience have the answer from the start, but we don't know the puzzle.
"Time Without Pity" classifies as a Noir but plays more as a psychological thriller I think. As the plot progressed toward a conclusion, and the viewer is wondering if an answer will be provided to free the imprisoned son, I was slightly disappointed in the lack of clues that one would find in an American Noir of the same period, when there was always a detective on the scene to bust up the scam or uncover the deception. Michael Redgrave is relentless in his effort to free his son, and he hasn't much time because his son is gonna be executed the next day, but as the film nears it's end, we see that the story was more about the father and his relationship to his son, than it was a whodunit with all the clues laid out and solved, ala Hitchcock, or in an American Noir. In "Time Without Pity", it's more about the characters and their English eccentricities.
Still a very good film though, and I give it a solid Thumbs Up. The black and white location shooting in 1950s England is by itself enough to recommend it. And the eminence of Sir Michael Redgrave.
Well, I am Dog Tired, but I did say we were gonna explore the role of "K" in the 1989 chronicles. "K", as you will remember, was the teenaged girlfriend of Mr. D in 1988/89. And at that time, they had moved to the Burton Street house in Reseda. When they moved to that house, I more or less did not see Mr. D, or hear from him, for about five years. There was a phone call or two, and one very important phone call which I detailed in my book, but basically, when our band broke up in early 1988, I really did not see Mr. D until mid-1993. He had become a hermit, along with his girl "K", and that was that.
In the meantime, the Events Of September 1989 took place, and monumental they were.
I had no memory of those events, as you know, until October 1993, when my first memory came back.
Prior to that, by four months, there had been an acrimonious breakup in the "K" / Mr. D relationship. Mr. D had kicked "K" out of his house on Burton Street. This was in June '93. Suddenly, out of the blue, "K" showed up at my house at 9032 Rathburn Ave. in Northridge. You can Google Street View it for authenticity. But when "K" showed up at my house - by which I mean my family's house - she did not come to the front door. Instead, when I got home that day, I discovered that she was in our garage, with her brother, visiting "T", the guy who helped bring about the entire 1989 escapade. "T" was once a close friend of mine, and he wound up getting evicted from his apartment at the end of October 1989, the apartment in which the entire 1989 scenario began two months earlier. I know this sounds even more convoluted than the plot for tonight's movie, but the main thing to remember about "K" is that she was initially the girlfriend of Mr. D, who we have ascertained was the conduit between "X" and Howard Schaller in a drug deal. Read recent blogs to know the story.
"K" then went from being with Mr. D to getting kicked out of his house in June 1993, after which she relocated by her own initiative to my house. Only she did not do this by way of asking me or my family. No, she went directly to a guy who lived in our garage at the time : "T", in whose apartment the whole 1989 affair began.
This is gonna have to be a two part blog about "K", because I am tired and have gotta get to sleep, but as you can see, there were subterranean connections between "K" and her two boyfriends, Mr. D (her former) and "T" (her current as of June 1993). Those connections held deep secrets, which led "K" to try and bypass me and my family, in order that she could move into our garage with "T" when she was kicked out of Mr. D's house.
"T" was the guy whose deceit and false friendship precipitated the events of 1989, which began in his apartment on the night of September 1st of that year. Mr. D was my best friend, who had a big-time secret he was hiding about his connection to Howard Schaller, as referenced in recent blogs, and how - though that connection to Schaller - he introduced "X" to Schaller for the purpose of what was likely a big time drug deal, which wound up in disaster on September 1st, 1989.
And "K" was the 19 year old girl who was not directly involved in the events of 1989, but who knew all about the connections between "T", Mr. D, and "X", because she had been the girfriend of both "T" and Mr. D.
When "K" moved into my garage to live with "T", I approved it because for one thing, my family needed the rent money. And for another thing, I had no memory of 1989.
I had total 100% amnesia. But that would break in June 1994. And at that time, before "K" and "T" moved out of my garage in a big hurry, "K" would reveal to me something very important, which I will reveal to you tomorrow.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I must make an interjection here, as I sometimes do in these matters, to specify that the word "scheduled", as written above, will be pronounced "shedge-ooled", in the British manner. If we are clear on that point - and I trust that we are - then we may proceed.
Michael Redgrave has not seen his son in years. He has neglected him really, but he has returned to England because his son has only hours to live, and Redgrave - a good man on the inside - is feeling the weight of the guilt of his neglect. He does love his son, and he is sure the son is innocent. It is demonstrated in the film that the son is a fragile character, unlikely to have committed the murder of his girlfriend.
As it turns out (and give me a moment while I switch off the italics).....and as it turns out, both the son and his girl had been involved with another couple, a racing car industrialist played by the Explosive Leo McKern, and his wife, who seems to have a lot of sympathy for the young man who is about to be executed.
Yes, it's a convoluted plot, and I've probably described the basis of it in an equally convoluted fashion. I never know how my sentences are gonna come out until I re-read them the next day, haha, but the thing is that - in movies - casting plays a huge role. Just as you know that, when you go to see a Tom Cruise movie, that he is not gonna die even if he is scaling a 127 story skyscraper, then you also should know that if you have an actor like Leo McKern in your film, he is not there to play happy-go-lucky.
Here, I think the director realized that, and he indicates who the real murderer is at the beginning of the film and then allows the characters to unravel the mystery by proxy. We in the audience have the answer from the start, but we don't know the puzzle.
"Time Without Pity" classifies as a Noir but plays more as a psychological thriller I think. As the plot progressed toward a conclusion, and the viewer is wondering if an answer will be provided to free the imprisoned son, I was slightly disappointed in the lack of clues that one would find in an American Noir of the same period, when there was always a detective on the scene to bust up the scam or uncover the deception. Michael Redgrave is relentless in his effort to free his son, and he hasn't much time because his son is gonna be executed the next day, but as the film nears it's end, we see that the story was more about the father and his relationship to his son, than it was a whodunit with all the clues laid out and solved, ala Hitchcock, or in an American Noir. In "Time Without Pity", it's more about the characters and their English eccentricities.
Still a very good film though, and I give it a solid Thumbs Up. The black and white location shooting in 1950s England is by itself enough to recommend it. And the eminence of Sir Michael Redgrave.
Well, I am Dog Tired, but I did say we were gonna explore the role of "K" in the 1989 chronicles. "K", as you will remember, was the teenaged girlfriend of Mr. D in 1988/89. And at that time, they had moved to the Burton Street house in Reseda. When they moved to that house, I more or less did not see Mr. D, or hear from him, for about five years. There was a phone call or two, and one very important phone call which I detailed in my book, but basically, when our band broke up in early 1988, I really did not see Mr. D until mid-1993. He had become a hermit, along with his girl "K", and that was that.
In the meantime, the Events Of September 1989 took place, and monumental they were.
I had no memory of those events, as you know, until October 1993, when my first memory came back.
Prior to that, by four months, there had been an acrimonious breakup in the "K" / Mr. D relationship. Mr. D had kicked "K" out of his house on Burton Street. This was in June '93. Suddenly, out of the blue, "K" showed up at my house at 9032 Rathburn Ave. in Northridge. You can Google Street View it for authenticity. But when "K" showed up at my house - by which I mean my family's house - she did not come to the front door. Instead, when I got home that day, I discovered that she was in our garage, with her brother, visiting "T", the guy who helped bring about the entire 1989 escapade. "T" was once a close friend of mine, and he wound up getting evicted from his apartment at the end of October 1989, the apartment in which the entire 1989 scenario began two months earlier. I know this sounds even more convoluted than the plot for tonight's movie, but the main thing to remember about "K" is that she was initially the girlfriend of Mr. D, who we have ascertained was the conduit between "X" and Howard Schaller in a drug deal. Read recent blogs to know the story.
"K" then went from being with Mr. D to getting kicked out of his house in June 1993, after which she relocated by her own initiative to my house. Only she did not do this by way of asking me or my family. No, she went directly to a guy who lived in our garage at the time : "T", in whose apartment the whole 1989 affair began.
This is gonna have to be a two part blog about "K", because I am tired and have gotta get to sleep, but as you can see, there were subterranean connections between "K" and her two boyfriends, Mr. D (her former) and "T" (her current as of June 1993). Those connections held deep secrets, which led "K" to try and bypass me and my family, in order that she could move into our garage with "T" when she was kicked out of Mr. D's house.
"T" was the guy whose deceit and false friendship precipitated the events of 1989, which began in his apartment on the night of September 1st of that year. Mr. D was my best friend, who had a big-time secret he was hiding about his connection to Howard Schaller, as referenced in recent blogs, and how - though that connection to Schaller - he introduced "X" to Schaller for the purpose of what was likely a big time drug deal, which wound up in disaster on September 1st, 1989.
And "K" was the 19 year old girl who was not directly involved in the events of 1989, but who knew all about the connections between "T", Mr. D, and "X", because she had been the girfriend of both "T" and Mr. D.
When "K" moved into my garage to live with "T", I approved it because for one thing, my family needed the rent money. And for another thing, I had no memory of 1989.
I had total 100% amnesia. But that would break in June 1994. And at that time, before "K" and "T" moved out of my garage in a big hurry, "K" would reveal to me something very important, which I will reveal to you tomorrow.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
"The Breaking Point" with John Garfield + :):) + Tomorrow We Will Explore "K"
Tonight's movie was "The Breaking Point" (1950) on Criterion. John Garfield (of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" fame) stars as an ex-Marine, a former Purple Heart recipient in WW2 who is now the captain of a small fishing boat docked in Newport Beach, California. But business is not good. He is in financial straits, behind on his boat payments, and matters are made worse when he takes a "wealthy" couple down to Mexico to fish marlin, and they skip out on him at the end. It turns out they weren't wealthy at all, only dressed the part, and they scammed him. The woman, Patricia Neal (a great actress with a weird style) feels bad about what happened, and becomes friendly with Garfield. There is a subtheme throughout the movie involving his loyal wife, who sticks with him through thick and thin, and her discovery of his new friendship with the coy and attractive Neal. This subtheme creates a slight conflict in Garfield's marriage, but it really signifies his bond of love with his wife. Remember, he is a Purple Heart recipient, a man of valor.
But he is almost broke, and he is about to lose his boat because he can't afford the payments. And as he tells his wife, the job is all he knows. He can't just up and become a lettuce picker in Salinas (yeah, Ernest Hemingway wrote the book the movie is based on).
So despite his upstanding moral code, and his insistence on remaining a fishing boat captain, he has his weaknesses, and his main weakness is financial. Thus the dilemma of the film : Garfield doesn't wanna lose his boat, but he has no money to pay for it.
Enter Hoodlums. It seems that Garfield is acquainted with a shady lawyer, who he runs into down in Mexico. The lawyer is aware Garfield is about to lose his boat, and offers to connect him to a "client", a Chinese middleman who offers Garfield a sizeable fee to smuggle some Chinese workers into the United States via San Diego, a crime that - if he is caught - could get Garfield ten years in prison.
So begins the main thrust of the plot, in which Garfield throws away his moral code so that he will be able to keep his boat and continue to provide for his family which includes two young daughters.
The Chinese caper, however, leads him down a slippery slope, and now he is entrapped in a bigger problem, which I'll not tell you about. That problem causes him to reluctantly enlist his services to an even more dangerous group of criminals, who plan to.......well, I won't tell you what they plan to do.
Any spoiler would take away from what is a very tight and suspenseful Noir with a climactic ending. The whole thing builds to a crescendo - Garfield's involvement in crime to pay his bills, his other involvement with Patricia Neal, which is only a friendly association but still slights his devoted wife. And finally Garfield - a really good actor who only lived to be 39 years old - is torn internally, because he has sold himself out to earn money and provide for his family, even though his wife has offered to get him a foreman's job on her father's lettuce farm. He's gotta do things his way, and it costs him. He gets himself in so deep with bad guys that he can't get out.
Or can he? You'll have to see the movie to find out, and I give "The Breaking Point" an enthusiastic Two Thumbs Up. I had never heard of this film until I did a Criterion search in the Libe's database, so maybe it is a new Criterion release, I dunno. It is a crackerjack Noir in any case, a thriller that takes place On The Waterfront (as was popular in 1950, with Steinbeck & Hemingway, et al), and it is directed by the great Michael Curtiz, of "Casablanca" fame. The finale is major league, and you just know it influenced future directors like Scorcese and Coppola.
So........watch it, I say.
That was all the news for the day. No hike. Those will not be as frequent in the near future due to increasing job considerations, but I will still make every effort to Get Out There When I Can.
In the meantime, You can out there for me, and Elizabeth I am glad you are doing so. I did see one post today, via your friend Nate, that included the phrase "Had an absolute blast", which I thought might have been a response to my own request yesterday that you Have A Blast on your trip with your Mom.
My intuition, so far as communication is concerned, is very much intact as you can see. I never miss a thing. :):)
If you indeed are having a blast, then that makes me happy. I will get out there at some point myself. Things have a way of smoothing out and stabilising, and though my job requires a lot more attention now, I am pretty good at stabilising situations. In fact, I think I am very good at it.
Stability is my thing, or one of my things. I like to think I have more than one Thing, lol.
So, to recap : an excellent and very hard-boiled Noir this evening, with a different setting - partly on a boat. No hike, but still reading and almost finished with Maury Terry's "The Ultimate Evil", which I would highly recommend if you are not squeamish.
Tomorrow night I will explore a couple of details about 1989, involving "K", the girlfriend of Mr. D at the time. I know I said that I would not mention gender, but in this case "K" - so far as I have been able to determine - had no involvement in the events of 1989, and so I don't feel it hurts her to mention her status as D's girlfriend. "K" was a peripheral figure, but one who provided extremely important information to me, way back in 1993. And by bringing it up, which I will do tomorrow, we will see yet another connection that provides more evidence leading to Mr. D's participation in a scenario that led up to the events of September 1989.
We will do that tomorrow. In the meantime : xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Big time love.
But he is almost broke, and he is about to lose his boat because he can't afford the payments. And as he tells his wife, the job is all he knows. He can't just up and become a lettuce picker in Salinas (yeah, Ernest Hemingway wrote the book the movie is based on).
So despite his upstanding moral code, and his insistence on remaining a fishing boat captain, he has his weaknesses, and his main weakness is financial. Thus the dilemma of the film : Garfield doesn't wanna lose his boat, but he has no money to pay for it.
Enter Hoodlums. It seems that Garfield is acquainted with a shady lawyer, who he runs into down in Mexico. The lawyer is aware Garfield is about to lose his boat, and offers to connect him to a "client", a Chinese middleman who offers Garfield a sizeable fee to smuggle some Chinese workers into the United States via San Diego, a crime that - if he is caught - could get Garfield ten years in prison.
So begins the main thrust of the plot, in which Garfield throws away his moral code so that he will be able to keep his boat and continue to provide for his family which includes two young daughters.
The Chinese caper, however, leads him down a slippery slope, and now he is entrapped in a bigger problem, which I'll not tell you about. That problem causes him to reluctantly enlist his services to an even more dangerous group of criminals, who plan to.......well, I won't tell you what they plan to do.
Any spoiler would take away from what is a very tight and suspenseful Noir with a climactic ending. The whole thing builds to a crescendo - Garfield's involvement in crime to pay his bills, his other involvement with Patricia Neal, which is only a friendly association but still slights his devoted wife. And finally Garfield - a really good actor who only lived to be 39 years old - is torn internally, because he has sold himself out to earn money and provide for his family, even though his wife has offered to get him a foreman's job on her father's lettuce farm. He's gotta do things his way, and it costs him. He gets himself in so deep with bad guys that he can't get out.
Or can he? You'll have to see the movie to find out, and I give "The Breaking Point" an enthusiastic Two Thumbs Up. I had never heard of this film until I did a Criterion search in the Libe's database, so maybe it is a new Criterion release, I dunno. It is a crackerjack Noir in any case, a thriller that takes place On The Waterfront (as was popular in 1950, with Steinbeck & Hemingway, et al), and it is directed by the great Michael Curtiz, of "Casablanca" fame. The finale is major league, and you just know it influenced future directors like Scorcese and Coppola.
So........watch it, I say.
That was all the news for the day. No hike. Those will not be as frequent in the near future due to increasing job considerations, but I will still make every effort to Get Out There When I Can.
In the meantime, You can out there for me, and Elizabeth I am glad you are doing so. I did see one post today, via your friend Nate, that included the phrase "Had an absolute blast", which I thought might have been a response to my own request yesterday that you Have A Blast on your trip with your Mom.
My intuition, so far as communication is concerned, is very much intact as you can see. I never miss a thing. :):)
If you indeed are having a blast, then that makes me happy. I will get out there at some point myself. Things have a way of smoothing out and stabilising, and though my job requires a lot more attention now, I am pretty good at stabilising situations. In fact, I think I am very good at it.
Stability is my thing, or one of my things. I like to think I have more than one Thing, lol.
So, to recap : an excellent and very hard-boiled Noir this evening, with a different setting - partly on a boat. No hike, but still reading and almost finished with Maury Terry's "The Ultimate Evil", which I would highly recommend if you are not squeamish.
Tomorrow night I will explore a couple of details about 1989, involving "K", the girlfriend of Mr. D at the time. I know I said that I would not mention gender, but in this case "K" - so far as I have been able to determine - had no involvement in the events of 1989, and so I don't feel it hurts her to mention her status as D's girlfriend. "K" was a peripheral figure, but one who provided extremely important information to me, way back in 1993. And by bringing it up, which I will do tomorrow, we will see yet another connection that provides more evidence leading to Mr. D's participation in a scenario that led up to the events of September 1989.
We will do that tomorrow. In the meantime : xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Big time love.
Monday, January 22, 2018
Ice Pancakes + Good Singing + Berkowitz Talks About Cults + 1989
Wow, Elizabeth......you can feel the cold coming right off of the picture you posted today. That's an amazing photo! The ice pancakes in the water make it look like it's bubbling with coldness. I Googled Cave Point County Park, and I see that you guys are way up past Green Bay on a peninsula. You and your Mom are hard core! But then you are Wisconsonites, so that goes without saying. :)
I hope you are having a blast and taking a lot of pictures. I'm glad you posted!
I had a good day. I was finally able to get Pearl back to church. She had missed several weeks because of the flu, which hit her pretty hard right after Christmas. But Pearl is hard core, too! She's from Minnesota, so that goes without saying. Midwesterners.......I tell ya. :)
We had good singing, even with only six choir members present. Then this afternoon I watched The Inevitable Happen, or part of it anyway. The Jacksonville Jaguars had a big lead through most of the first half, which is why I made my pronouncement at that time. I declared the game "over", because when the dreaded Tom Brady is playing, you know the game is decidedly over when his team is trailing, and especially when they are losing by double digits. I just laugh about it now, and to be honest I don't watch much football anymore because of it. There is no point. The outcome is assured before the season even begins.
Well anyhow.......the heck with football. Until next season anyway. And then the heck with it then, too.
I've got too much other stuff to think about.
Tonight though, I did finish the final episode of "Les Vampires". It was a Marathon Watch, eight days/ten episodes/seven hours total. And it was fun from beginning to end, which was Louis Feuillade's goal, I think. You can see, in every scene, how much fun the actors are having in making the movie, which is not to say that they are goofing or mugging for the camera. After all, this is a crime film telling the story of the worst gang ever to hit Paris, the amoral and anarchic Vampires. So there is suspense, and continuity, loads of plot and intrigue. It's a great, great show, but the overall sense of fun comes through in the direction of the Silent acting style. Feuillade wanted a light element to play above the heavy drama. That is obvious in the actors' facial expressions.
Stealing the show throughout is an actress named Musidora. She played the starring role of "Irma Vep", the anagram for Vampire. Musidora, whom I had never heard of before this lengthy film, is so expressive in her acting - and without sound - that she could have easily been a star in Golden Age Hollywood, had she been as young and vital in 1940 as she was in 1915 in France. I make this comment knowing that it reeks of sexism and ageism, but we all know that the film industry works this way, that it is generally geared toward the young. I am not a sexist or an ageist (stupid word), but I am aware that these policies exist. Anyway, I always digress, don't I?
Screw digression. Stick to the freakin' point, Ad.
And the point this time was that Musidora was a great actress, even just from "Les Vampires" alone. Man, she would have been a huge star, even today.
So do a little Googling - Google "Musidora", and "Les Vampires". It really is a landmark film.
Tomorrow I will probably get back to 1989. I am reading "The Ultimate Evil" by Maury Terry, about the Son Of Sam case, and as I have reported for several nights running, it is a mindblower.
It may be the scariest book I have ever read.
But - and I hate to say it, but I must - there are parallels in the Son Of Sam case, described in detail in "The Ultimate Evil", to 1989 and What Happened In Northridge.
In the "Sam" case, the parallel would be a Satanic Cult. In Northridge, it would be a Group.
In the book, Berkowitz talks about how his cult, which was nationwide in a few cities coast to coast, would establish themselves near college campuses. He talks, specifically, about college professors being part of these types of groups and cults, as well as other people from professional society. Doctors and lawyers, people with money and status. He talks about politicians.
To be clear, Son Of Sam was a murder cult, and I am not saying that the Northridge Cult in 1989 was involved in extreme crimes.
But my night in Jared Rappaport's house, in retrospect, with evidence studied over a twenty year period, leads me to believe that there was without any doubt whatsoever a very secret and very perverted sex cult right there in my neighborhood. This was my conclusion when my memories first came back, in 1996/97, and I reached this conclusion based on my experience in the presence of, and as a captive of, Jared Rappaport, who was a professor at CSUN, and who was also a psychotic and ultra-violent sexual deviant. When I was his prisoner, he alluded again and again, in aggravated rants, to a group sexual situation that I had unknowingly intruded upon and disrupted.
This scenario, which happened to me in September 1989, is very similar to the types of secret group sexual scenarios that David Berkowitz describes in the book "The Ultimate Evil" by Maury Terry.
As I read it, I am horrified. But I am also edified, because I recongise the similarities of these groups. I was aware of the Hollywood degeneracy that is now being exposed way back in 1997.
Twenty years ago. In fact I had a name for these people, and I wrote it in my book in 2006.
I called these lowlifes "The Porno People".
And by that term, I meant not simply people who worked in the porno industry, which was scummy but mainstream. No, I meant people high up in Hollywood, in the music and movie industries, who held "private parties", where private films were made, and private scenarios were enacted.
Where drug deals went down, and big time kinks and perversion.
Yep. I was talking about this twenty years ago. And I was talking about it because I got kidnapped by a psychopath, who - because he wanted to show me who he was, and how badass he thought he was - inadvertently told me a lot about his involvement in the scheme of things in his group. He thought he was really something, but in reality, he was just a piece of garbage.
Just like the Son Of Sam people.
These people are pure evil, whether they are in a murder cult or just a neighborhood sex-and-drugs cult.
And we've got to root them out, because their entire modus operandi is based on secrecy, and never talking about what they are (or were) involved in.
The Berkowitz revelations are mindblowing, and they parallel 1989 Northridge in many ways. Not in the way of murder, perhaps, but without doubt in the way of a demented group or cult that existed in the neighborhood, involving college professors, among others.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I hope you are having a blast and taking a lot of pictures. I'm glad you posted!
I had a good day. I was finally able to get Pearl back to church. She had missed several weeks because of the flu, which hit her pretty hard right after Christmas. But Pearl is hard core, too! She's from Minnesota, so that goes without saying. Midwesterners.......I tell ya. :)
We had good singing, even with only six choir members present. Then this afternoon I watched The Inevitable Happen, or part of it anyway. The Jacksonville Jaguars had a big lead through most of the first half, which is why I made my pronouncement at that time. I declared the game "over", because when the dreaded Tom Brady is playing, you know the game is decidedly over when his team is trailing, and especially when they are losing by double digits. I just laugh about it now, and to be honest I don't watch much football anymore because of it. There is no point. The outcome is assured before the season even begins.
Well anyhow.......the heck with football. Until next season anyway. And then the heck with it then, too.
I've got too much other stuff to think about.
Tonight though, I did finish the final episode of "Les Vampires". It was a Marathon Watch, eight days/ten episodes/seven hours total. And it was fun from beginning to end, which was Louis Feuillade's goal, I think. You can see, in every scene, how much fun the actors are having in making the movie, which is not to say that they are goofing or mugging for the camera. After all, this is a crime film telling the story of the worst gang ever to hit Paris, the amoral and anarchic Vampires. So there is suspense, and continuity, loads of plot and intrigue. It's a great, great show, but the overall sense of fun comes through in the direction of the Silent acting style. Feuillade wanted a light element to play above the heavy drama. That is obvious in the actors' facial expressions.
Stealing the show throughout is an actress named Musidora. She played the starring role of "Irma Vep", the anagram for Vampire. Musidora, whom I had never heard of before this lengthy film, is so expressive in her acting - and without sound - that she could have easily been a star in Golden Age Hollywood, had she been as young and vital in 1940 as she was in 1915 in France. I make this comment knowing that it reeks of sexism and ageism, but we all know that the film industry works this way, that it is generally geared toward the young. I am not a sexist or an ageist (stupid word), but I am aware that these policies exist. Anyway, I always digress, don't I?
Screw digression. Stick to the freakin' point, Ad.
And the point this time was that Musidora was a great actress, even just from "Les Vampires" alone. Man, she would have been a huge star, even today.
So do a little Googling - Google "Musidora", and "Les Vampires". It really is a landmark film.
Tomorrow I will probably get back to 1989. I am reading "The Ultimate Evil" by Maury Terry, about the Son Of Sam case, and as I have reported for several nights running, it is a mindblower.
It may be the scariest book I have ever read.
But - and I hate to say it, but I must - there are parallels in the Son Of Sam case, described in detail in "The Ultimate Evil", to 1989 and What Happened In Northridge.
In the "Sam" case, the parallel would be a Satanic Cult. In Northridge, it would be a Group.
In the book, Berkowitz talks about how his cult, which was nationwide in a few cities coast to coast, would establish themselves near college campuses. He talks, specifically, about college professors being part of these types of groups and cults, as well as other people from professional society. Doctors and lawyers, people with money and status. He talks about politicians.
To be clear, Son Of Sam was a murder cult, and I am not saying that the Northridge Cult in 1989 was involved in extreme crimes.
But my night in Jared Rappaport's house, in retrospect, with evidence studied over a twenty year period, leads me to believe that there was without any doubt whatsoever a very secret and very perverted sex cult right there in my neighborhood. This was my conclusion when my memories first came back, in 1996/97, and I reached this conclusion based on my experience in the presence of, and as a captive of, Jared Rappaport, who was a professor at CSUN, and who was also a psychotic and ultra-violent sexual deviant. When I was his prisoner, he alluded again and again, in aggravated rants, to a group sexual situation that I had unknowingly intruded upon and disrupted.
This scenario, which happened to me in September 1989, is very similar to the types of secret group sexual scenarios that David Berkowitz describes in the book "The Ultimate Evil" by Maury Terry.
As I read it, I am horrified. But I am also edified, because I recongise the similarities of these groups. I was aware of the Hollywood degeneracy that is now being exposed way back in 1997.
Twenty years ago. In fact I had a name for these people, and I wrote it in my book in 2006.
I called these lowlifes "The Porno People".
And by that term, I meant not simply people who worked in the porno industry, which was scummy but mainstream. No, I meant people high up in Hollywood, in the music and movie industries, who held "private parties", where private films were made, and private scenarios were enacted.
Where drug deals went down, and big time kinks and perversion.
Yep. I was talking about this twenty years ago. And I was talking about it because I got kidnapped by a psychopath, who - because he wanted to show me who he was, and how badass he thought he was - inadvertently told me a lot about his involvement in the scheme of things in his group. He thought he was really something, but in reality, he was just a piece of garbage.
Just like the Son Of Sam people.
These people are pure evil, whether they are in a murder cult or just a neighborhood sex-and-drugs cult.
And we've got to root them out, because their entire modus operandi is based on secrecy, and never talking about what they are (or were) involved in.
The Berkowitz revelations are mindblowing, and they parallel 1989 Northridge in many ways. Not in the way of murder, perhaps, but without doubt in the way of a demented group or cult that existed in the neighborhood, involving college professors, among others.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, January 21, 2018
1989 + Howard Schaller + Mr.D
Okay, make sure and read last night's blog to get up to speed (no pun intended), and we shall continue. I just now re-read the blog myself, and while it was not as well written as I would have liked (I was tired), I think it nevertheless described the basic setup of the Northridge Hospital parking lot incident involving Howard Schaller. The question we arrived at was "How did Howard Schaller know "X"? Other questions could be asked in the same vein, such as "How did Howard Schaller know we would be at the hospital"?, or "Did "X" know Howard"?
The latter two questions did not really cross my mind for many years. "Yeah....some Detective you are, Ad", I hear you saying. I know it sounds lame. But the investigation into 1989 was so multifaceted, so gigantic, that I was constantly switching from event to event, detail to detail. I mean, this thing was - and is - huge. So when I hit a brick wall in trying to figure out a certain detail, I would just switch over to another event and work on that. As I said last night, it should have been easy to figure out how Howard Schaller knew "X". The answer was right there, hiding in plain sight. Howard was a drug dealer, and not just a small-time marijuana guy but a methamphetamine seller. He sold to many people in the Metrocolor Lab, which was how I got introduced to the drug. And he was also a biker. Not a member of a biker club, but I would wager that he knew a lot of outlaw people.
The main obstacle to my understanding of the relationship between Howard and "X", besides the total absurdity and incongruity of it on the surface, was that "X" - as far as I knew - was not part of the drug world in any way. By September 1989, I had known "X" for nine years, and in all that time I had never seen "X" use drugs or have anything to do with them. "X" did not even smoke marijuana, nor even drink except for the occasional wine cooler. Therefore, I suppose I had a mental block when it came to connecting "X" to Howard Schaller through drugs.
That mental block lasted for twenty years. During all that time, when I thought of the Hospital parking lot incident, I just figured there must have been some crazy reason for Howard's attack, probably having to do with MGM and me, some past grievance that I couldn't fathom. I even did a lot of Google research back in the early 2000s and discovered that the Metrocolor Lab went out of business and closed up for good in late August 1989. In other words, Howard Schaller had very recently lost his job at MGM, after working there since about 1959. "Maybe he was pissed about that", I guessed.
But none of it made sense. And so for twenty years, from 1996 when the memory came back, to 2016, I couldn't figure out why Howard attacked our car that night, on September 1, 1989, and I couldn't understand how he knew "X" or why he was so infuriated at "X".
Then, one day two years ago, the answer hit me like a bolt out of the blue. Here's how it came to me :
I recalled something that my friend Mr. D once said to me back in the late 80s, perhaps around 1988. At the time, he worked at a flower shop in Canoga Park called "Mr. B's Flowers". You can Google it for authenticity, and to put you in the neighborhood. I wasn't seeing Mr. D as much in 1988, because our band had broken up, and he was living with his girlfriend "K" (who will figure later on in other details about 1989). They lived for a time in a house in Canoga Park that was rented by our mutual friend Shecky, a musician who grew pot for a living. Then, in late 1988, Mr. D and "K" moved to the house on Burton Street in Reseda that was owned by his parents, and which I myself would move to many years later in 1995. My point, however, was that in the last couple of years of the 1980s, I did not see Mr. D very much. He had been my best friend, and would remain so, but he had more or less disappeared from my life from late '88 to mid-1993.
However, during one phone call in about Fall 1988, he mentioned something offhand.
"Hey, guess who came into the shop the other day"? He meant Mr. B's Flower Shop.
I replied that I had no idea.
"Howard Schaller", Mr. D informed me. D said that Howard picked up a flower arrangement he had ordered, but then he speculated something......"he's probably selling to people in the shop".
Selling speed, he meant. D had worked at Mr. B's since 1982, and I knew from his reports that the shop was fueled by drugs, top to bottom. Most folks who worked there were using, including the bosses. So when Mr. D told me in 1988 that Howard had "stopped by" the shop, I made an educated guess that maybe he was selling to someone in the store. Or maybe more than one person.
The kicker was that Howard lived just around the corner from Mr. B's Flowers, near Hart Street (and again you can Google map it). Howard lived just a minute away, so it was not a stretch to figure that he might have drug customers at the store, which was full of druggies.
My good friend Mr. D, God rest his soul, was a hard core drug user. He was harder core than me, and I was pretty hard core. But I had had enough by 1997, and I quit. I quit everything.
D did not quit, and he died in 2008, at 47 years of age.
But to get back to the story, when I remembered - in 2016 - what D had told me in that phone call from 1988, that Howard Schaller had come into his place of work at the flower shop, I began to think.
And I thought......."Wait a minute. Mr. D used to ride with me over to Howard's house, every week in the Summer of 1982. He would always wait in the car while I went inside and scored, but he knew of Howard and had an association with him, through me, since 1982. Heck, he sat in my car, in front of Howard's house while I was inside, week after week".
And Dave was very addicted, to the extent that it wound up killing him. And he worked in a shop where everyone used drugs, and where it seemed like Howard - who lived around the corner - might have been a supplier.
A lightbulb appeared over my head, and I put two and two together. I myself had not seen Howard since 1982, and thus had not used speed since that time, by 1988. But Mr. D, being very addicted, may well have approached Howard when he was in the flower shop, especially if he knew that Howard was selling to others in the shop. He might have told Howard, "Hey, do you remember Adam? Yeah, I know him". And so perhaps Howard would have trusted him and begun to sell to him.
As I said, I didn't see Mr. D very much between late 1988 and mid-93. It was like he disappeared with his girlfriend "K", who will play a very important role in the story (if I ever get to that point).
Here's the bottom line for tonight. This took me twenty years to figure out, but I believe that Mr. D did indeed make himself known to Howard Schaller while working at Mr. B's Flowers, which he himself told me Howard had frequented.
I believe that, during the time period beginning in late-1988, during which I did not see D for about five years, that he became a customer of Howard Schaller, completely independent of my own connection to Howard, who I had not seen for many years by that time. D wanted to get speed, and so he got up the balls to introduce himself to Howard, who came into his flower shop.
And now, he knew Howard personally himself.
For twenty years, I could not understand how Howard knew "X" that terrible night in September 1989.
But then it hit me : "The only possible connection for "X" to know Howard was through Mr. D. He was the only other person who had any connection whatsoever, among the people we mutually knew, to Howard Schaller".
Howard was a guy I knew, beginning in 1979, when I first started working at MGM. Mr. D didn't know him then. And I didn't even know "X" in 1979.
But I knew Howard. And by 1982, I was driving to Howard's house every week, with Mr. D in the passenger seat.
Mr. D was the only other person in our circle who had any association with Howard.
Therefore, in 2016, my question was finally answered.
"How did Howard Schaller the meth dealer know "X"?
Through my best friend Mr. D, that's how. D must have been a go-between in a drug deal, involving "X" and the late but not-so-great Howard Schaller.
There is no doubt about it, and we will explore the situation further when we next write and read about 1989.
Perhaps tomorrow night.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
The latter two questions did not really cross my mind for many years. "Yeah....some Detective you are, Ad", I hear you saying. I know it sounds lame. But the investigation into 1989 was so multifaceted, so gigantic, that I was constantly switching from event to event, detail to detail. I mean, this thing was - and is - huge. So when I hit a brick wall in trying to figure out a certain detail, I would just switch over to another event and work on that. As I said last night, it should have been easy to figure out how Howard Schaller knew "X". The answer was right there, hiding in plain sight. Howard was a drug dealer, and not just a small-time marijuana guy but a methamphetamine seller. He sold to many people in the Metrocolor Lab, which was how I got introduced to the drug. And he was also a biker. Not a member of a biker club, but I would wager that he knew a lot of outlaw people.
The main obstacle to my understanding of the relationship between Howard and "X", besides the total absurdity and incongruity of it on the surface, was that "X" - as far as I knew - was not part of the drug world in any way. By September 1989, I had known "X" for nine years, and in all that time I had never seen "X" use drugs or have anything to do with them. "X" did not even smoke marijuana, nor even drink except for the occasional wine cooler. Therefore, I suppose I had a mental block when it came to connecting "X" to Howard Schaller through drugs.
That mental block lasted for twenty years. During all that time, when I thought of the Hospital parking lot incident, I just figured there must have been some crazy reason for Howard's attack, probably having to do with MGM and me, some past grievance that I couldn't fathom. I even did a lot of Google research back in the early 2000s and discovered that the Metrocolor Lab went out of business and closed up for good in late August 1989. In other words, Howard Schaller had very recently lost his job at MGM, after working there since about 1959. "Maybe he was pissed about that", I guessed.
But none of it made sense. And so for twenty years, from 1996 when the memory came back, to 2016, I couldn't figure out why Howard attacked our car that night, on September 1, 1989, and I couldn't understand how he knew "X" or why he was so infuriated at "X".
Then, one day two years ago, the answer hit me like a bolt out of the blue. Here's how it came to me :
I recalled something that my friend Mr. D once said to me back in the late 80s, perhaps around 1988. At the time, he worked at a flower shop in Canoga Park called "Mr. B's Flowers". You can Google it for authenticity, and to put you in the neighborhood. I wasn't seeing Mr. D as much in 1988, because our band had broken up, and he was living with his girlfriend "K" (who will figure later on in other details about 1989). They lived for a time in a house in Canoga Park that was rented by our mutual friend Shecky, a musician who grew pot for a living. Then, in late 1988, Mr. D and "K" moved to the house on Burton Street in Reseda that was owned by his parents, and which I myself would move to many years later in 1995. My point, however, was that in the last couple of years of the 1980s, I did not see Mr. D very much. He had been my best friend, and would remain so, but he had more or less disappeared from my life from late '88 to mid-1993.
However, during one phone call in about Fall 1988, he mentioned something offhand.
"Hey, guess who came into the shop the other day"? He meant Mr. B's Flower Shop.
I replied that I had no idea.
"Howard Schaller", Mr. D informed me. D said that Howard picked up a flower arrangement he had ordered, but then he speculated something......"he's probably selling to people in the shop".
Selling speed, he meant. D had worked at Mr. B's since 1982, and I knew from his reports that the shop was fueled by drugs, top to bottom. Most folks who worked there were using, including the bosses. So when Mr. D told me in 1988 that Howard had "stopped by" the shop, I made an educated guess that maybe he was selling to someone in the store. Or maybe more than one person.
The kicker was that Howard lived just around the corner from Mr. B's Flowers, near Hart Street (and again you can Google map it). Howard lived just a minute away, so it was not a stretch to figure that he might have drug customers at the store, which was full of druggies.
My good friend Mr. D, God rest his soul, was a hard core drug user. He was harder core than me, and I was pretty hard core. But I had had enough by 1997, and I quit. I quit everything.
D did not quit, and he died in 2008, at 47 years of age.
But to get back to the story, when I remembered - in 2016 - what D had told me in that phone call from 1988, that Howard Schaller had come into his place of work at the flower shop, I began to think.
And I thought......."Wait a minute. Mr. D used to ride with me over to Howard's house, every week in the Summer of 1982. He would always wait in the car while I went inside and scored, but he knew of Howard and had an association with him, through me, since 1982. Heck, he sat in my car, in front of Howard's house while I was inside, week after week".
And Dave was very addicted, to the extent that it wound up killing him. And he worked in a shop where everyone used drugs, and where it seemed like Howard - who lived around the corner - might have been a supplier.
A lightbulb appeared over my head, and I put two and two together. I myself had not seen Howard since 1982, and thus had not used speed since that time, by 1988. But Mr. D, being very addicted, may well have approached Howard when he was in the flower shop, especially if he knew that Howard was selling to others in the shop. He might have told Howard, "Hey, do you remember Adam? Yeah, I know him". And so perhaps Howard would have trusted him and begun to sell to him.
As I said, I didn't see Mr. D very much between late 1988 and mid-93. It was like he disappeared with his girlfriend "K", who will play a very important role in the story (if I ever get to that point).
Here's the bottom line for tonight. This took me twenty years to figure out, but I believe that Mr. D did indeed make himself known to Howard Schaller while working at Mr. B's Flowers, which he himself told me Howard had frequented.
I believe that, during the time period beginning in late-1988, during which I did not see D for about five years, that he became a customer of Howard Schaller, completely independent of my own connection to Howard, who I had not seen for many years by that time. D wanted to get speed, and so he got up the balls to introduce himself to Howard, who came into his flower shop.
And now, he knew Howard personally himself.
For twenty years, I could not understand how Howard knew "X" that terrible night in September 1989.
But then it hit me : "The only possible connection for "X" to know Howard was through Mr. D. He was the only other person who had any connection whatsoever, among the people we mutually knew, to Howard Schaller".
Howard was a guy I knew, beginning in 1979, when I first started working at MGM. Mr. D didn't know him then. And I didn't even know "X" in 1979.
But I knew Howard. And by 1982, I was driving to Howard's house every week, with Mr. D in the passenger seat.
Mr. D was the only other person in our circle who had any association with Howard.
Therefore, in 2016, my question was finally answered.
"How did Howard Schaller the meth dealer know "X"?
Through my best friend Mr. D, that's how. D must have been a go-between in a drug deal, involving "X" and the late but not-so-great Howard Schaller.
There is no doubt about it, and we will explore the situation further when we next write and read about 1989.
Perhaps tomorrow night.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, January 20, 2018
1989 + Howard Schaller
Okay, tonight we are gonna talk a little bit about 1989. Nothing major, it'll be ground I've covered many times before. I will not use names, just identifying letters like "X", "Y" and "Z", and I won't use genders. You who were involved know who you are. I'm going easy because I'm not mad at anyone and not as full of fire about the case as I was in 1997 or 2006, when I did name names on Myspace. Now, while I am not upset any longer, I am still just as determined as ever to find the truth.
Actually, make that twice as determined. Ten times as determined. I have to know what happened, and why, because it has had such an enormous effect on my life, and in 12 years I will be 70. And 12 years go by fast. In fact, it was 12 years ago this Summer that I began to write about What Happened In Northridge in earnest, for my book. That was in 2006, twelve years ago now. Yes indeed it does go by fast. And as the time has gone by, years and years of it, what has struck me is the Absolute Silence about 1989. Everybody who was involved in it knows what happened, and yet no one but me has ever talked about it. That part - the Total Silence - has been even harder for me to deal with than the memories of the events themselves. So I need to do what I can, because in 12 years I will be 70.
I will write letters to the CIA, I will perhaps write a letter to Ann at some point in the future, and I will write here at the blog, on and off. Therefore, with malice toward no one, with only the whole truth as my goal, here we go.
Let me preface by saying that there are two aspects to the case : one is what I will call the Local Aspect, the stuff that seems to have involved my friends and people in the neighborhood, and likely some drug connections and very likely some sexual connections. The other aspect I will call the Federal Aspect, which deals with all the far out, crazy sounding stuff like movie stars and soldiers and politicians and even possible aliens who were present during the proceedings. I will leave the Federal Aspect alone for now and focus just on a detail or two from the Local Aspect.
Here is a detail that took me about 20 years to make sense of. It took place the first night, September 1, 1989. I was in a car in the parking lot of Northridge Hospital. Those who are familiar with the story have heard this a dozen times at least. In the car was "M", the driver; "A" in the passenger seat, and "V" was in the back seat with me. These three had taken me to the hospital. I will not rehash the reason why because everyone knows it. The visit to the hospital was not successful, and we were getting ready to leave. A car then pulled up next to ours. Inside was "T"; "T's mother, who was driving, and "X". The people in our car shouted to "X" to join us, to leave the car "X" was in and ride with us. After some persuasion, "X" did so, getting into the back seat with "V" and myself. And then we tried to leave. But suddenly, before we could back out of the parking space we were in - and in fact before our driver "M" even started the car, something crazy happened. A madman came out of nowhere and attacked our car from outside.
This man's name was Howard Schaller. He was born in 1938 and is now deceased. At the time, Howard Schaller would have been 51 years old. He was powerfully built, with the upper torso of a weightlifter, and he attacked our car, with five people inside, with the full force of his body. He had a steel towing chain in his hand, and he threw himself against the trunk while swinging the heavy chain against the back window. Needless to say, it scared the hell out of everyone inside the car. People were yelling at the driver "M" to get us the hell out of there. But we couldn't because Howard Schaller was all over the car, hitting it with his chain and his fist, and we were terrified. He was trying to open the doors, and that is when I saw his face.
In an incredulous whisper, mostly to myself, I said "Howard"?
A few moments earlier, all I knew was that an enraged maniac was trying to either demolish or break into our car, but now that maniac had a face - one that I recognized in near disbelief.
I couldn't make sense of it. What was my former shift boss at MGM doing? Was he trying to kill us? It sure seemed so, but why? All of this was happening so fast. All I could register, in my state of shock, was "It's Howard Schaller.....but why is this happening"?
The reason why became clear in a few more seconds. Howard, peaking with anger, was interested in getting at a single person within the car. That person was "X", who had just entered the car a minute or so before the attack began. Now, trying to pick the lock on "X"'s passenger door, Howard shouted epithets at "X", horrible and frightening things. "M", our driver, was trying to get us out of there, but now we were at an angle where we were blocked by another car, or by a curb or tree or something. I think it was a car, but anyway, we were sandwiched in. Howard was out to get his hands on "X". I do not exaggerate when I say that he sounded murderous.
We in the car told "X" to lock the door and stay put. But everything was happening so fast, and it was all so terrifying. Rage is the word I use to describe it, or rather, "enraged". Howard Schaller, a guy I used to work with at MGM from 1979 to 1982, was enraged, totally out of control, and big and strong like a football player. Or a biker, which he actually was.
What he was doing there at the hospital I had no idea. I was still "out of it" from the ordeal that caused "A" to want to take me to Northridge Hospital in the first place. But I sure knew Howard. Not only had he been my shift boss when I worked at the MGM Metrocolor Film Lab, he had also been my Speed Dealer from mid-1980 through the Fall of 1982. I got turned on to "crank", a cheap form of methamphetamine, while working in the lab as a 19 year old. Very quickly, I was hooked. At first, I bought it via a friend who knew Howard but soon enough I was buying it directly from the foreboding but somewhat humorous man himself.
And by the Summer of 1982, I was driving over to Howard's house in Canoga Park on a weekly basis, to buy a gram of "crank". It was pretty good stuff, but not even close to the speed we got from Bob 15 years later. That stuff was rocket fuel. But I digress, and don't take speed because you won't be able to handle it and something bad will happen to you.
Back to the story, as we shouted at "X" to lock the car door, "X" did something entirely different, to the extreme fright of the rest of us. "X" opened the door and got out of the car, to face Howard Schaller alone. After that, I opened the door on my side and got out too. You can figure out why.
A confrontation ensued, but I am not here tonight to review that.
I am here to tell you about the detail that took me twenty years to figure out. You see, when my memories came back, I could not for the life of me understand why Howard Schaller would have been in the Northridge Hospital parking lot that night, attacking us. More specifically, I could not understand his interest in "X".
"Why was he not after me"?, I wondered. "I'm the guy who knew him".
But then I thought, "what would he want with me? I had not seen him since 1982, a full seven years before the incident in the parking lot".
I was vexed for decades about why Howard, my old drug dealer and shift boss at Metrocolor, would have wanted to extricate "X" out of our car that night. And i was equally vexed at why "X" would have voluntarily left the car to face him - a murderous man. During the confrontation that ensued, in which I stood next to "X", it was clear that "X" and Howard knew each other.
But how could this be?
I was the one who knew Howard. I was the one who had worked with him, even if it was seven years ago. "How in the world could he possibly know "X"?
"And why would he have wanted to hurt "X" that night"? Hell, the way he was talking, I thought he wanted to kill "X". That's how scary it was.
Howard Schaller was a big, burly, longhaired biker who looked like a Hell's Angel. I had worked with him at MGM Laboratories in the early 1980s, and I had bought speed from him during that time.
And then I hadn't seen him for seven years. But now, all of a sudden it seemed like he wanted to kill "X". I couldn't understand how he could even know "X", even as I stood at "X" 's defense.
It took me twenty years to figure it out, though the answer was staring me in the face the whole time.
Tomorrow night, we will talk about how Howard Schaller could have known "X", and why he would have been infuriated that night, to the point of wanting to commit an ultra-violent assault.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Actually, make that twice as determined. Ten times as determined. I have to know what happened, and why, because it has had such an enormous effect on my life, and in 12 years I will be 70. And 12 years go by fast. In fact, it was 12 years ago this Summer that I began to write about What Happened In Northridge in earnest, for my book. That was in 2006, twelve years ago now. Yes indeed it does go by fast. And as the time has gone by, years and years of it, what has struck me is the Absolute Silence about 1989. Everybody who was involved in it knows what happened, and yet no one but me has ever talked about it. That part - the Total Silence - has been even harder for me to deal with than the memories of the events themselves. So I need to do what I can, because in 12 years I will be 70.
I will write letters to the CIA, I will perhaps write a letter to Ann at some point in the future, and I will write here at the blog, on and off. Therefore, with malice toward no one, with only the whole truth as my goal, here we go.
Let me preface by saying that there are two aspects to the case : one is what I will call the Local Aspect, the stuff that seems to have involved my friends and people in the neighborhood, and likely some drug connections and very likely some sexual connections. The other aspect I will call the Federal Aspect, which deals with all the far out, crazy sounding stuff like movie stars and soldiers and politicians and even possible aliens who were present during the proceedings. I will leave the Federal Aspect alone for now and focus just on a detail or two from the Local Aspect.
Here is a detail that took me about 20 years to make sense of. It took place the first night, September 1, 1989. I was in a car in the parking lot of Northridge Hospital. Those who are familiar with the story have heard this a dozen times at least. In the car was "M", the driver; "A" in the passenger seat, and "V" was in the back seat with me. These three had taken me to the hospital. I will not rehash the reason why because everyone knows it. The visit to the hospital was not successful, and we were getting ready to leave. A car then pulled up next to ours. Inside was "T"; "T's mother, who was driving, and "X". The people in our car shouted to "X" to join us, to leave the car "X" was in and ride with us. After some persuasion, "X" did so, getting into the back seat with "V" and myself. And then we tried to leave. But suddenly, before we could back out of the parking space we were in - and in fact before our driver "M" even started the car, something crazy happened. A madman came out of nowhere and attacked our car from outside.
This man's name was Howard Schaller. He was born in 1938 and is now deceased. At the time, Howard Schaller would have been 51 years old. He was powerfully built, with the upper torso of a weightlifter, and he attacked our car, with five people inside, with the full force of his body. He had a steel towing chain in his hand, and he threw himself against the trunk while swinging the heavy chain against the back window. Needless to say, it scared the hell out of everyone inside the car. People were yelling at the driver "M" to get us the hell out of there. But we couldn't because Howard Schaller was all over the car, hitting it with his chain and his fist, and we were terrified. He was trying to open the doors, and that is when I saw his face.
In an incredulous whisper, mostly to myself, I said "Howard"?
A few moments earlier, all I knew was that an enraged maniac was trying to either demolish or break into our car, but now that maniac had a face - one that I recognized in near disbelief.
I couldn't make sense of it. What was my former shift boss at MGM doing? Was he trying to kill us? It sure seemed so, but why? All of this was happening so fast. All I could register, in my state of shock, was "It's Howard Schaller.....but why is this happening"?
The reason why became clear in a few more seconds. Howard, peaking with anger, was interested in getting at a single person within the car. That person was "X", who had just entered the car a minute or so before the attack began. Now, trying to pick the lock on "X"'s passenger door, Howard shouted epithets at "X", horrible and frightening things. "M", our driver, was trying to get us out of there, but now we were at an angle where we were blocked by another car, or by a curb or tree or something. I think it was a car, but anyway, we were sandwiched in. Howard was out to get his hands on "X". I do not exaggerate when I say that he sounded murderous.
We in the car told "X" to lock the door and stay put. But everything was happening so fast, and it was all so terrifying. Rage is the word I use to describe it, or rather, "enraged". Howard Schaller, a guy I used to work with at MGM from 1979 to 1982, was enraged, totally out of control, and big and strong like a football player. Or a biker, which he actually was.
What he was doing there at the hospital I had no idea. I was still "out of it" from the ordeal that caused "A" to want to take me to Northridge Hospital in the first place. But I sure knew Howard. Not only had he been my shift boss when I worked at the MGM Metrocolor Film Lab, he had also been my Speed Dealer from mid-1980 through the Fall of 1982. I got turned on to "crank", a cheap form of methamphetamine, while working in the lab as a 19 year old. Very quickly, I was hooked. At first, I bought it via a friend who knew Howard but soon enough I was buying it directly from the foreboding but somewhat humorous man himself.
And by the Summer of 1982, I was driving over to Howard's house in Canoga Park on a weekly basis, to buy a gram of "crank". It was pretty good stuff, but not even close to the speed we got from Bob 15 years later. That stuff was rocket fuel. But I digress, and don't take speed because you won't be able to handle it and something bad will happen to you.
Back to the story, as we shouted at "X" to lock the car door, "X" did something entirely different, to the extreme fright of the rest of us. "X" opened the door and got out of the car, to face Howard Schaller alone. After that, I opened the door on my side and got out too. You can figure out why.
A confrontation ensued, but I am not here tonight to review that.
I am here to tell you about the detail that took me twenty years to figure out. You see, when my memories came back, I could not for the life of me understand why Howard Schaller would have been in the Northridge Hospital parking lot that night, attacking us. More specifically, I could not understand his interest in "X".
"Why was he not after me"?, I wondered. "I'm the guy who knew him".
But then I thought, "what would he want with me? I had not seen him since 1982, a full seven years before the incident in the parking lot".
I was vexed for decades about why Howard, my old drug dealer and shift boss at Metrocolor, would have wanted to extricate "X" out of our car that night. And i was equally vexed at why "X" would have voluntarily left the car to face him - a murderous man. During the confrontation that ensued, in which I stood next to "X", it was clear that "X" and Howard knew each other.
But how could this be?
I was the one who knew Howard. I was the one who had worked with him, even if it was seven years ago. "How in the world could he possibly know "X"?
"And why would he have wanted to hurt "X" that night"? Hell, the way he was talking, I thought he wanted to kill "X". That's how scary it was.
Howard Schaller was a big, burly, longhaired biker who looked like a Hell's Angel. I had worked with him at MGM Laboratories in the early 1980s, and I had bought speed from him during that time.
And then I hadn't seen him for seven years. But now, all of a sudden it seemed like he wanted to kill "X". I couldn't understand how he could even know "X", even as I stood at "X" 's defense.
It took me twenty years to figure it out, though the answer was staring me in the face the whole time.
Tomorrow night, we will talk about how Howard Schaller could have known "X", and why he would have been infuriated that night, to the point of wanting to commit an ultra-violent assault.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, January 19, 2018
Last Night Got Deleted + I Am A Detective At Heart
Well, there I was, typing away last night, writing about Episode Six of "Les Vampires". Then I moved from that to making a few observations about the Tide Pod phenomenon, in response to some posts made by Elizabeth. I finished up by noting the witty comment made by her friend Steve : "How do we get teenagers off of Tide Pods and back on drugs"? That is funny any way you look at it, but I did add a semi-lengthy caveat about drugs, and I went on a mini-tirade about the current epidemic of pot smoking, which I do not think is a good thing based on personal experience.......
It was just Your Average Everyday Blog. There didn't seem to be anything controversial in it. Surely I've written more pointed things in the past (and puh-leeze stop calling me Shirley!).
But for whatever reason, after 45 minutes of writing and typing, I was nearing the end of my words, when suddenly they all disappeared. Yep. As I typed, finishing a sentence, the Blogger template suddenly was wiped clean. Not a word remained, only a blank page. My fingers were nowhere near the Delete button, and anyway, I would've had to mark the entire text for "delete" to have it happen all at once.
So I don't know what happened. It could have been a glitch, or it could have been something else. I have had it happen before, at a time when I was writing something controversial, and back in the Myspace days, when all I wrote about was 1989, my blogs would often freeze up and delete when I hit the "publish" button. I remember feeling terrible frustration on a few occasions when I'd written all day long at the Oviatt, intensely focused on the subject, only to have the blog freeze and delete at the end.
Because I have in the past written about an unacknowledged subject, and because so many Myspace blogs froze up, I began to chalk it up to "hmmmmm.....veddy inn-teresting". With Blogger, which I've used since June 2013 when Myspace went out of business, it never freezes, but once in a great while it will do this "spontaneous total delete" thing, and it always happens after I have been writing for a while, when I am almost finished with a blog.
I don't know jack about computers, and I'm sure a glitch is the most likely explanation, but still.....I've always wondered about the possibility that someone might be messing with me.
The only remotely controversial thing I wrote last night was about a scene in "Les Vampires", which I likened to a Manchurian Candidate scenario. I mentioned the CIA and MKUltra.
But I have written things in the past that could be taken as far more antagonistic to the Agency, though all of those remarks have been directed at the CIA's dark past of the Dulles era, and has never been meant to refer to it as it exists today. But even so, those darker subjects of the 1950s never suddenly vanished as I typed them.
So the Myspace freezes and Blogger deletions have gotta be the result of glitches........right?
"Right".
And so Onward and Upward, as Bill Nelson would say.
I haven't any news today except for Episode 7 of "Vampires" and an Aliso walk. I'll get back to reviewing the Vamps perhaps tomorrow night, or near the end of the serial which will come this weekend. What I am really blowing my mind on, to be honest, is the book I am reading about the Son Of Sam case, "The Ultimate Evil" by Maury Terry.
The case itself is horrible. That goes without saying. But you know me, I am a detective, and I have a strong sixth sense, and something about this book has been bugging me ever since it became clear that Berkowitz was not the lone culprit but was part of a cult. As far as the Sam case is concerned, that much has been proven by more than a reasonable doubt. The real Sons Of Sam were the Carr brothers, John and Michael, who lived near Berkowitz and who were Satanists. Their father was named Sam, hence "Son Of Sam". Those guys, the Carr brothers, were evil incarnate, and Berkowitz - though guilty for sure and should never get out of prison - was mostly their accomplice. It's a horrific story, one of the worst in American history, and probably fit for study only by Your Unflappable Detective (me).
I wouldn't want you to wade into the grimness of what humans are capable of, because it is better to stay on the bright side.
Me - I do both. My soul is anchored in the Light, and my spirit flies around between my soul and my physical self here on Earth (think of the bi-location of electrons for comparison). But my mind, in thought, goes into dark areas out of necessity. I mean, I've been reading about serial killers since I was about 12, starting with Manson, and I've read every Ann Rule book, and in the past decade I've graduated to high level political stuff, especially the JFK assassination. World War Two.
To cut to the chase and give you my main motivation, well....you already know it.
It is 1989.
And in reading Maury Terry's landmark book about the Son Of Sam case, and the wider criminal revelations it led to, which were evil beyond belief, I have to say to you that I am reminded of 1989.
It is not the nature of the crimes by which I make my comparison, in no way shape or form. Obviously not.
But in reading about Berkowitz and his cult, which existed among neighborhood acquaintences, and held secret, behind the scenes meetings, and dealt in drugs and other escapdes, and above all kept their proceedings secret, I am indeed reminded of what happened in my own neighborhood.
I am going to be writing more this year about 1989, because I have had to deal with it and go it alone for nearly thirty years, and I don't find it fair. In reading about the case of David Berkowitz, and the neighborhood group he was involved in, which spread out into something national, I am reminded again of what happened to me in the opposite way. I was a victim of what seems to be, in retrospect, a neighborhood cult, or if not a cult, then certainly a group of my friends and neighbors who were involved in a sex and drugs situation. And once I discovered it, by accident and intuition, I was toast.
And I've been toast for almost thirty years, while others have sailed away scot free and have never had to answer a single question.
It is my life's goal to change that equation. Sooner or later, all the folks who have been evading and avoiding this will have to step up to the fucking plate. I guarantee it will happen, because I won't give up until it does happen.
So that is part of my life as a detective. It is a huge part and the main part, but not the only part.
My soul is in the Light, but I have to go down into the darkness. I have to study it and read about it, and when I find clues that apply to my own life, I am inspired to investigate them.
In this case, they deal with Group Secrecy and behind-the-scenes activity among so-called friends.
I will write more in the days ahead. The truth is gonna come out, guys and gals. I am almost 58 now, closing in on 60 and I've got nothing much to lose.
But I will also write my usual movie reviews and stuff, so not to worry. It's just that I have been extremely impressed by Maury Terry's one man effort to get to the truth in the Sam case, and I feel I am slacking in my own case by not putting more effort into 1989. So I've gotta give it everything I've got.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
It was just Your Average Everyday Blog. There didn't seem to be anything controversial in it. Surely I've written more pointed things in the past (and puh-leeze stop calling me Shirley!).
But for whatever reason, after 45 minutes of writing and typing, I was nearing the end of my words, when suddenly they all disappeared. Yep. As I typed, finishing a sentence, the Blogger template suddenly was wiped clean. Not a word remained, only a blank page. My fingers were nowhere near the Delete button, and anyway, I would've had to mark the entire text for "delete" to have it happen all at once.
So I don't know what happened. It could have been a glitch, or it could have been something else. I have had it happen before, at a time when I was writing something controversial, and back in the Myspace days, when all I wrote about was 1989, my blogs would often freeze up and delete when I hit the "publish" button. I remember feeling terrible frustration on a few occasions when I'd written all day long at the Oviatt, intensely focused on the subject, only to have the blog freeze and delete at the end.
Because I have in the past written about an unacknowledged subject, and because so many Myspace blogs froze up, I began to chalk it up to "hmmmmm.....veddy inn-teresting". With Blogger, which I've used since June 2013 when Myspace went out of business, it never freezes, but once in a great while it will do this "spontaneous total delete" thing, and it always happens after I have been writing for a while, when I am almost finished with a blog.
I don't know jack about computers, and I'm sure a glitch is the most likely explanation, but still.....I've always wondered about the possibility that someone might be messing with me.
The only remotely controversial thing I wrote last night was about a scene in "Les Vampires", which I likened to a Manchurian Candidate scenario. I mentioned the CIA and MKUltra.
But I have written things in the past that could be taken as far more antagonistic to the Agency, though all of those remarks have been directed at the CIA's dark past of the Dulles era, and has never been meant to refer to it as it exists today. But even so, those darker subjects of the 1950s never suddenly vanished as I typed them.
So the Myspace freezes and Blogger deletions have gotta be the result of glitches........right?
"Right".
And so Onward and Upward, as Bill Nelson would say.
I haven't any news today except for Episode 7 of "Vampires" and an Aliso walk. I'll get back to reviewing the Vamps perhaps tomorrow night, or near the end of the serial which will come this weekend. What I am really blowing my mind on, to be honest, is the book I am reading about the Son Of Sam case, "The Ultimate Evil" by Maury Terry.
The case itself is horrible. That goes without saying. But you know me, I am a detective, and I have a strong sixth sense, and something about this book has been bugging me ever since it became clear that Berkowitz was not the lone culprit but was part of a cult. As far as the Sam case is concerned, that much has been proven by more than a reasonable doubt. The real Sons Of Sam were the Carr brothers, John and Michael, who lived near Berkowitz and who were Satanists. Their father was named Sam, hence "Son Of Sam". Those guys, the Carr brothers, were evil incarnate, and Berkowitz - though guilty for sure and should never get out of prison - was mostly their accomplice. It's a horrific story, one of the worst in American history, and probably fit for study only by Your Unflappable Detective (me).
I wouldn't want you to wade into the grimness of what humans are capable of, because it is better to stay on the bright side.
Me - I do both. My soul is anchored in the Light, and my spirit flies around between my soul and my physical self here on Earth (think of the bi-location of electrons for comparison). But my mind, in thought, goes into dark areas out of necessity. I mean, I've been reading about serial killers since I was about 12, starting with Manson, and I've read every Ann Rule book, and in the past decade I've graduated to high level political stuff, especially the JFK assassination. World War Two.
To cut to the chase and give you my main motivation, well....you already know it.
It is 1989.
And in reading Maury Terry's landmark book about the Son Of Sam case, and the wider criminal revelations it led to, which were evil beyond belief, I have to say to you that I am reminded of 1989.
It is not the nature of the crimes by which I make my comparison, in no way shape or form. Obviously not.
But in reading about Berkowitz and his cult, which existed among neighborhood acquaintences, and held secret, behind the scenes meetings, and dealt in drugs and other escapdes, and above all kept their proceedings secret, I am indeed reminded of what happened in my own neighborhood.
I am going to be writing more this year about 1989, because I have had to deal with it and go it alone for nearly thirty years, and I don't find it fair. In reading about the case of David Berkowitz, and the neighborhood group he was involved in, which spread out into something national, I am reminded again of what happened to me in the opposite way. I was a victim of what seems to be, in retrospect, a neighborhood cult, or if not a cult, then certainly a group of my friends and neighbors who were involved in a sex and drugs situation. And once I discovered it, by accident and intuition, I was toast.
And I've been toast for almost thirty years, while others have sailed away scot free and have never had to answer a single question.
It is my life's goal to change that equation. Sooner or later, all the folks who have been evading and avoiding this will have to step up to the fucking plate. I guarantee it will happen, because I won't give up until it does happen.
So that is part of my life as a detective. It is a huge part and the main part, but not the only part.
My soul is in the Light, but I have to go down into the darkness. I have to study it and read about it, and when I find clues that apply to my own life, I am inspired to investigate them.
In this case, they deal with Group Secrecy and behind-the-scenes activity among so-called friends.
I will write more in the days ahead. The truth is gonna come out, guys and gals. I am almost 58 now, closing in on 60 and I've got nothing much to lose.
But I will also write my usual movie reviews and stuff, so not to worry. It's just that I have been extremely impressed by Maury Terry's one man effort to get to the truth in the Sam case, and I feel I am slacking in my own case by not putting more effort into 1989. So I've gotta give it everything I've got.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
More "Vampires" + Dolores O' Riordan
Not a lot of news to report today, and no new film to review. I did watch Episode 5 of "Les Vampires", in which the Spanish Businessman, who left a body inside the fake safe in his Vampire-remodeled apartment, goes after the Intrepid Reporter, who suspects that the Businessman is not all he seems. And indeed - the Spanish Businessman is not a businessman at all, but a Master Criminal intent on competing with the Vamps with a view toward driving them out of business.
I say "Good luck with that, Monsieur"! For all his wiles, the Spaniard is no match for the whole troupe of black-clad, nightcrawling Vampires, who - shockingly for 1915 - have locked a large number of party guests inside the mansion of The Grand Vampire. The guests are all high-society types, bedecked and bejeweled, and suddenly the host (Grand Vamp) excuses himself. Then moments later a hissing noise is heard, and a poison gas is coming through the vents. The doors are all shut tight and locked.
The Vampires have created a gas chamber, and all the party guests drop dead and the 'Pires then steal their jewelry and wallets. "Reminiscent of Hitler", I thought as I watched. But the movie was made almost twenty years before he came to power. The scene was done in the same "just-for-fun" way as all the violence in the film is presented. So it's nothing horrible to watch, because of the way it is played. And in this respect I see a similar dramatic innocence in a lot of the Silent films I have watched so far, perhaps because acting was theatrically based then, and in theater at the turn of the century, melodrama was the format of choice. Gritty realism and Method Acting were still several decades in the future.
So I think that is why Silent films have a sense of fun even in the thrillers and heavy dramatic pictures that were made during the era. Just because of all the big-eyed facial expressions and physical gestures that were used to convey a story, in the absence of sound. Silent movies have an aspect of the old "Let's Put On A Show"! theatrical motto, as if it were Rule Number One in the Actor's Creed to entertain an audience at all costs. And that's what they do in the Silents : they entertain us. The Silent actors and actresses are Ultra Dramatic, with a forearm swept across a brow, and they want us to love them (which we do).....
So in "Les Vampires" there is always a spirit of fun, even when Irma Vep helps the Grand Vampire to gas a roomful of rich people. It sounds horrible, but it comes off more like "oh my goodness! Look what they've done now".
Plus, "Les Vampires" is a French production, and no one does Whimsical like the French. ///
I forgot to mention last night how sorry I was to hear about the death of Dolores O'Riordan, the singer for The Cranberries. I didn't know a lot of their music, only the singles that were played on the radio, but one song, "Linger", was played in heavy rotation in the early 90s, and it had an effect on me because at that time my life was changing drastically. In October 1993 my amnesia was lifting, and I would hear that song on the radio, with it's slowly building melody and hook, and the strings backing the vocals, and it made me feel filled with optimistic power, as if I was on the verge of an incredible discovery about my life. The key to the song was Dolores O'Riordan's Irish-inflected voice, which she allowed to lilt at various points in the song. It was a technique she would use in other Cranberries singles like "Zombie", which also got a ton of airplay. She was a really great singer, and her music had that combination of confessional emotion and hooks that made so much of 90s Pop truly great.
I loved 90s music, from all the one hit wonders like Belly and Blind Lemon, to bands that became legends like Soundgarden and Alice In Chains. And some of my favorite music of the era was the gentle yet powerful vocal tunes of bands like Sixpence None The Richer, with singer Leigh Nash, and The Cranberries with Dolores O'Riordan.
The songs of those bands got their power from the singers, who could in turn empower you the listener and fill you with magic, and maybe even put a tear in your eye.
That is not an easy combination to pull off, but it sure worked on me. :)
God Bless Nice People like Dolores, who give life all they've got. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox :):)
I say "Good luck with that, Monsieur"! For all his wiles, the Spaniard is no match for the whole troupe of black-clad, nightcrawling Vampires, who - shockingly for 1915 - have locked a large number of party guests inside the mansion of The Grand Vampire. The guests are all high-society types, bedecked and bejeweled, and suddenly the host (Grand Vamp) excuses himself. Then moments later a hissing noise is heard, and a poison gas is coming through the vents. The doors are all shut tight and locked.
The Vampires have created a gas chamber, and all the party guests drop dead and the 'Pires then steal their jewelry and wallets. "Reminiscent of Hitler", I thought as I watched. But the movie was made almost twenty years before he came to power. The scene was done in the same "just-for-fun" way as all the violence in the film is presented. So it's nothing horrible to watch, because of the way it is played. And in this respect I see a similar dramatic innocence in a lot of the Silent films I have watched so far, perhaps because acting was theatrically based then, and in theater at the turn of the century, melodrama was the format of choice. Gritty realism and Method Acting were still several decades in the future.
So I think that is why Silent films have a sense of fun even in the thrillers and heavy dramatic pictures that were made during the era. Just because of all the big-eyed facial expressions and physical gestures that were used to convey a story, in the absence of sound. Silent movies have an aspect of the old "Let's Put On A Show"! theatrical motto, as if it were Rule Number One in the Actor's Creed to entertain an audience at all costs. And that's what they do in the Silents : they entertain us. The Silent actors and actresses are Ultra Dramatic, with a forearm swept across a brow, and they want us to love them (which we do).....
So in "Les Vampires" there is always a spirit of fun, even when Irma Vep helps the Grand Vampire to gas a roomful of rich people. It sounds horrible, but it comes off more like "oh my goodness! Look what they've done now".
Plus, "Les Vampires" is a French production, and no one does Whimsical like the French. ///
I forgot to mention last night how sorry I was to hear about the death of Dolores O'Riordan, the singer for The Cranberries. I didn't know a lot of their music, only the singles that were played on the radio, but one song, "Linger", was played in heavy rotation in the early 90s, and it had an effect on me because at that time my life was changing drastically. In October 1993 my amnesia was lifting, and I would hear that song on the radio, with it's slowly building melody and hook, and the strings backing the vocals, and it made me feel filled with optimistic power, as if I was on the verge of an incredible discovery about my life. The key to the song was Dolores O'Riordan's Irish-inflected voice, which she allowed to lilt at various points in the song. It was a technique she would use in other Cranberries singles like "Zombie", which also got a ton of airplay. She was a really great singer, and her music had that combination of confessional emotion and hooks that made so much of 90s Pop truly great.
I loved 90s music, from all the one hit wonders like Belly and Blind Lemon, to bands that became legends like Soundgarden and Alice In Chains. And some of my favorite music of the era was the gentle yet powerful vocal tunes of bands like Sixpence None The Richer, with singer Leigh Nash, and The Cranberries with Dolores O'Riordan.
The songs of those bands got their power from the singers, who could in turn empower you the listener and fill you with magic, and maybe even put a tear in your eye.
That is not an easy combination to pull off, but it sure worked on me. :)
God Bless Nice People like Dolores, who give life all they've got. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox :):)
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
"Les Vampires" Rule! + "The Ultimate Evil" and the Heroic Investigation of Maury Terry
Tonight's movie was still "Les Vampires", at it will be for most of the week. I am loving this film and am feeling that even seven hours won't be enough. I am hooked on the Vampires and I'm gonna miss them when they are gone. Tonight I only watched a single episode (#4) because that was all I had time for, but it was a great one, once again featuring the devious Irma Vep. Director Louis Feuillade should have been given a posthumous Lifetime Oscar just for coming up with that name!
In this episode, The Grand Vampire sets up a scheme to steal 300,000 Francs from a bank, where Irma Vep has gotten a job as an assistant under an assumed name. The Grand Vampire himself is posing as a real estate broker, and he leases a flat to a Spanish businessman who has specifically requested an apartment with a safe. Ahh, of course! There are always Apartments With Safes available for rent. :)
And in this case, the apartment in question has already been remodeled by The Vampires so that the Safe is only a false front. The Spanish businessman places his valuables inside and closes the door, but behind a wall, The Vampires simply remove a flimsy particleboard backing on the phony Safe, and steal whatever the businessman has placed inside. This works out well for Irma and crew, until one time when they open the back of the Safe and a body falls out.
The Spanish Businessman is not a businessman at all! But has he outwitted Les Vampires?
Don't be too sure of it. The only one who stands a chance of that is our Intrepid Reporter, as mentioned last night. He has now discovered the location of the Vampire-remodeled apartment that is rented out to unsuspecting tenants, and he is staked out inside.
There is so much creativity and plot in "Les Vampires" that I am gonna have to watch it a few times to get a firm handle on the extent of what is taking place. That will be a pleasure, as this is a show that invites repeat viewings just from it's originality alone, but also because of it's wonderful sets and the tricky, "shocking-but-fun" criminality of the Vampires themselves. The Silent era acting is first rate, and the actress named Musidora steals the show as Irma Vep. Two Thumbs Up of the Highest Order for "Les Vampires"! :)
The only other news is that I am reading "The Ultimate Evil", the late Maury Terry's famous book about the Son Of Sam case, in which by his own investigation (as a newspaper reporter) he blew the NYPD's "official story" out of the water. Officialdom always wants to close cases. To close a case seems to be, throughout modern American history, much more important than using diligence to discover and report the truth to the public. In major crime cases, as in assassinations, the tactic used is often to simplify things, to identify a Lone Nutjob, like Lee Harvey Oswald or in the Sam case, David Berkowitz. To do this, to identify and then collar a single individual takes the heat off of the police department, because then they can say "we got the guy".
But as history has shown, in many cases they only got "one of the guys", or "the wrong guy", a patsy. But by the time the newspapers print their headlines, it is "mission accomplished", because by then the public sees the story in the papers - that the Bad Guy has been caught - and by and large they are pacified, even if Other Bad Guys Involved In The Same Crime Spree are still at large, and known only by the cops, who then either ignore it or cover it up.
"Case Closed! We caught The Son Of Sam, we caught Berkowitz". End of story.
Except for one thing. Sometimes, there are heroes like Maury Terry, who actually give a darn about the truth. I had heard about his book in the course of my own investigative reading, and when I saw the cover I remembered it as a controversial best seller in the late 1980s. I myself would not have paid much attention then, as Son Of Sam was a New York Thing to me, far away and - hey! - the case had been closed, right? I felt the same way in 1993 when the media convicted Damien Echols and his two friends in the horrible child murders in Arkansas. Those guys spent 18 years in prison, until they were set free because they didn't do it. But the Arkansas cops and District Attorneys didn't care one whit about that. All they cared about was Closing The Case, so that They, as The Authorities In Charge Of Protecting The Public, would be Off The Hook.
"Hey, lookie here! We got the guy".
Except for, a lot of times they haven't Got The Right Guy, but they don't give a flying you know what.
Now, in The Son Of Sam case, they did have the right guy in David Berkowitz. He was one of the shooters in the Son Of Sam case. But as Maury Terry uncovered, the police in New York were well aware of a ton of evidence that led to an accomplice, or more than one accomplice, and even more strong evidence in several of the shootings that pretty much proved that Berkowitz could not have been the shooter in that particular event. In other words, there had to be a second gunman at the very least.
But that didn't matter to the NYPD, and other people eventually died because of that decision, to "close the case" by nabbing and blaming a single person and then identifying him as a Lone Nut, a crazy guy.
It took Maury Terry and then finally Berkowitz himself, who will never get out of prison, to set the record straight, that he was part of a cult of killers. This story may be well known to some, and it is generally well known since the early 90s, but I am just reading Terry's book now.
It is very inspiring to me, despite the awful horror, because the author cared about what really happened. By his own impetus he solved the case, with help, when an enormous police department (NYPD) buried it by blaming it on one man, the first guy they caught, and then proclaiming "case closed". Yes, David Berkowitz was guilty and part of the Son Of Sam case, but it was not "case closed" as the NYPD told the public in 1977.
So - you know me - I am inspired by people who care about the truth. It's a hard slog to care, and to keep digging, when high-powered official forces sweep the real story under the rug, or bury it altogether. To do that in The Son Of Sam case was so negligent and downright rotten that it bordered on criminality. So, in reading the book, I am saying "thank goodness for Maury Terry, and others like him".
That's all I know for tonight. Elizabeth, if you are still out there, I hope all is well. Things seem different these days, but I just wanted to let you know I am thinking about you as always. :):)
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
In this episode, The Grand Vampire sets up a scheme to steal 300,000 Francs from a bank, where Irma Vep has gotten a job as an assistant under an assumed name. The Grand Vampire himself is posing as a real estate broker, and he leases a flat to a Spanish businessman who has specifically requested an apartment with a safe. Ahh, of course! There are always Apartments With Safes available for rent. :)
And in this case, the apartment in question has already been remodeled by The Vampires so that the Safe is only a false front. The Spanish businessman places his valuables inside and closes the door, but behind a wall, The Vampires simply remove a flimsy particleboard backing on the phony Safe, and steal whatever the businessman has placed inside. This works out well for Irma and crew, until one time when they open the back of the Safe and a body falls out.
The Spanish Businessman is not a businessman at all! But has he outwitted Les Vampires?
Don't be too sure of it. The only one who stands a chance of that is our Intrepid Reporter, as mentioned last night. He has now discovered the location of the Vampire-remodeled apartment that is rented out to unsuspecting tenants, and he is staked out inside.
There is so much creativity and plot in "Les Vampires" that I am gonna have to watch it a few times to get a firm handle on the extent of what is taking place. That will be a pleasure, as this is a show that invites repeat viewings just from it's originality alone, but also because of it's wonderful sets and the tricky, "shocking-but-fun" criminality of the Vampires themselves. The Silent era acting is first rate, and the actress named Musidora steals the show as Irma Vep. Two Thumbs Up of the Highest Order for "Les Vampires"! :)
The only other news is that I am reading "The Ultimate Evil", the late Maury Terry's famous book about the Son Of Sam case, in which by his own investigation (as a newspaper reporter) he blew the NYPD's "official story" out of the water. Officialdom always wants to close cases. To close a case seems to be, throughout modern American history, much more important than using diligence to discover and report the truth to the public. In major crime cases, as in assassinations, the tactic used is often to simplify things, to identify a Lone Nutjob, like Lee Harvey Oswald or in the Sam case, David Berkowitz. To do this, to identify and then collar a single individual takes the heat off of the police department, because then they can say "we got the guy".
But as history has shown, in many cases they only got "one of the guys", or "the wrong guy", a patsy. But by the time the newspapers print their headlines, it is "mission accomplished", because by then the public sees the story in the papers - that the Bad Guy has been caught - and by and large they are pacified, even if Other Bad Guys Involved In The Same Crime Spree are still at large, and known only by the cops, who then either ignore it or cover it up.
"Case Closed! We caught The Son Of Sam, we caught Berkowitz". End of story.
Except for one thing. Sometimes, there are heroes like Maury Terry, who actually give a darn about the truth. I had heard about his book in the course of my own investigative reading, and when I saw the cover I remembered it as a controversial best seller in the late 1980s. I myself would not have paid much attention then, as Son Of Sam was a New York Thing to me, far away and - hey! - the case had been closed, right? I felt the same way in 1993 when the media convicted Damien Echols and his two friends in the horrible child murders in Arkansas. Those guys spent 18 years in prison, until they were set free because they didn't do it. But the Arkansas cops and District Attorneys didn't care one whit about that. All they cared about was Closing The Case, so that They, as The Authorities In Charge Of Protecting The Public, would be Off The Hook.
"Hey, lookie here! We got the guy".
Except for, a lot of times they haven't Got The Right Guy, but they don't give a flying you know what.
Now, in The Son Of Sam case, they did have the right guy in David Berkowitz. He was one of the shooters in the Son Of Sam case. But as Maury Terry uncovered, the police in New York were well aware of a ton of evidence that led to an accomplice, or more than one accomplice, and even more strong evidence in several of the shootings that pretty much proved that Berkowitz could not have been the shooter in that particular event. In other words, there had to be a second gunman at the very least.
But that didn't matter to the NYPD, and other people eventually died because of that decision, to "close the case" by nabbing and blaming a single person and then identifying him as a Lone Nut, a crazy guy.
It took Maury Terry and then finally Berkowitz himself, who will never get out of prison, to set the record straight, that he was part of a cult of killers. This story may be well known to some, and it is generally well known since the early 90s, but I am just reading Terry's book now.
It is very inspiring to me, despite the awful horror, because the author cared about what really happened. By his own impetus he solved the case, with help, when an enormous police department (NYPD) buried it by blaming it on one man, the first guy they caught, and then proclaiming "case closed". Yes, David Berkowitz was guilty and part of the Son Of Sam case, but it was not "case closed" as the NYPD told the public in 1977.
So - you know me - I am inspired by people who care about the truth. It's a hard slog to care, and to keep digging, when high-powered official forces sweep the real story under the rug, or bury it altogether. To do that in The Son Of Sam case was so negligent and downright rotten that it bordered on criminality. So, in reading the book, I am saying "thank goodness for Maury Terry, and others like him".
That's all I know for tonight. Elizabeth, if you are still out there, I hope all is well. Things seem different these days, but I just wanted to let you know I am thinking about you as always. :):)
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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