On The Road Part Three
In the last installment of this On The Road slackathon, Dean Moriarty (Neal Leon Cassady) and Sal Paradise (Jean-Louis Kérouac, aka Jack) were being obnoxious in Frisco. 71 years later, in real life, the Family Barber Shop was closing. In the next 13 days, MAD magazine announced plans to cease publication, and the thirteen star flag became a symbol of racism. The world is without redeeming social value. One answer is to go back 71 years, and see where the road takes us.
In chapter 3 of part 3, Dean and Sal are about to go to New York. First they are going to have 2 days of kicks in Frisco. Before this happens, a lady needs to tell Dean off. “Your have absolutely no regard for anybody but yourself and your damned kicks. All you think about is what’s hanging between your legs and how much money or fun you can get out of people and then you just through them aside. Not only that but you’re silly about it.”
Chapter 4 is wasted on a trip to jazz nightclubs in seedy neighborhoods. “Holy flowers floating in the air, were all these tired faces in the dawn of Jazz America.” Chapter 5 is where the story picks up again. A travel bureau helps D&S get a ride in a “fag Plymouth.” PG read that line in amazement … that was something he remembered from reading OTR in 1984. The Orwellian synchronicity of it all. 1984 was just another year. Ronnie Reagan won a landslide re-election over its-his-turn Walter Mondale. America tottered on, with PG settling into a slack lifestyle. What PG did in 1984 had little to do with a dystopian book … a book that everybody talks about, but few have read. One thing PG did in 1984 was read OTR, and remember almost none of it 35 years later.
D&S are careening across the deserts and mountain passes into Denver. Along the way, they scared the fag Plymouth driver into prophylactic pansexuality. “At one point the driver said, “For God’s sakes, you’re rocking the boat back there.” Actually we were; the car was swaying as Dean and I both swayed to the rhythm and the IT of our final excited joy in talking and living to the blank tranced end of all innumerable riotous angelic particulars that had been lurking in our souls all our lives.” After a while, FPD hits on Dean, but can’t afford him.
“It was with a great deal of silly relief that these people let us off the car at the corner of 27th and Federal. Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” Once in Denver, D&S go looking for kicks, Dean’s father, and whatever else gone thing is the IT of the day. Cousin Itt shakes his head. Dean does connect with a beloved cousin, who has gotten religion. Beloved cousin no longer wants to associate with Dean.
Before moving on with OTR, this narrative has been interrupted for a youtube euthanasia emergency. Eighteen years after Dean/Neal went chasing kicks in the sky, bf Allen Ginsberg (Carlo Marx in OTR) wrote a poem about Allen’s butthole. This ode to shipping and receiving was recently indentured by a Tennessee entertainer. While looking for the text, google supplied a link to an Urban Dictionary definition of Allen Ginsberg. This UD page features an ad for Joe Biden.
D&S cavorted for a few days in Denver, and got out before they were, justifiably, arrested. “As the cab honked outside and the kids cried and the dogs barked and Dean danced with Frankie I yelled every conceivable curse I could think over that phone and added all kinds of new ones, and in my drunken frenzy I told everybody over the phone to go to hell and slammed it down and went out to get drunk.” Soon, they had a ride to Chicago. Through cruel fate, Dean was allowed to drive. “We had come from Denver to Chicago via Ed Wall’s ranch, 1180 miles, in exactly 17 hours, not counting the two hours in the ditch and three at the ranch and two with the police in Newton, Iowa, for a mean average of seventy miles per hour across the land, with one driver. Which is a kind of crazy record.” There should be a video game. Sit terrified in the backseat of a 1940’s Cadillac, while Dean Moriarty drives a hundred miles per hour, on the wrong side of the road, getting back on the right side of the road just in time to avoid a head on collision with a truckload of cattle. The telekinetic essence of the Frisco jazzmen can be recruited to provide the soundtrack. The death defying cattle will be played by Charlie Parker. Dean’s play by play filled in by Gene Krupa. “Sal, we gotta go and never stop going till we get there.” “Where we going, man?” “I don’t know but we gotta go.”
“Every now and then a clear harmonic cry gave new suggestions of a tune that would someday be the only tune in the world and would raise men’s souls to joy.Once there was Louis Armstrong blowing his beautiful top in the muds of New Orleans; … sending it out broadcast to rock the jazz world.” … Later the idea would be to jazz the rock world, before hip hop levels the playing field once again. … “Then had come Charlie Parker, a kid in his mother’s woodshed in Kansas City, blowing his taped-up alto among the logs, practicing on rainy days, coming out to watch the old swinging Basie and Benny Moten band that had Hot Lips Page and the rest — Charlie Parker leaving home and coming to Harlem, and meeting mad Thelonius Monk and madder Gillespie — Charlie Parker in his early days when he was flipped and walked around in a circle while playing.”
Thelonius Monk … thank g-d for copy/paste … lived longer than most of the players in this tale. PG first heard of TM on the loudspeaker at Atlanta Stadium, when the announcer told of a Jazz Festival coming to the newfangled stadium. In his later life, Mr. Monk got as weird as his first name. Al McKibbon tells this tale: “He was also the bassist on Monk’s last album, made in 1971. At that time the two men toured with the Giants of Jazz, and McKibbon experienced more of the pianist’s eccentricities: “In Tokyo we were having suits made, because they do it so fast and all that. Monk had his measured lying in bed. He wouldn’t get up for them. … On that tour Monk said about two words. I mean literally maybe two words. He didn’t say ‘Good morning’, ‘Goodnight’, ‘What time?’ Nothing. Why, I don’t know. He sent word back after the tour was over that the reason he couldn’t communicate or play was that Art Blakey and I were so ugly.”
“Great Chicago glowed red before our eyes.” D&S delivered the vehicle to its owner. “It was now time to return the Caldillac to the owner, who lived on Lake Shore Drive, in a swank apartment with an enormous garage underneath manged by oil-scarred Negroes. We drove out and swung the muddy heap into its berth. The mechanic did not recognize the Cadillac. We handed the papers over. He scratched his head at the sight of it. We had to get out fast.”
After a visit to Detroit, D&S made their way to New York. Sal’s aunt said Dean could only stay for a little while, and then he would have to go. Dean needed to behave himself for a while. “Not only that, but a few months later Camille gave birth to Dean’s second baby, the result of a few nights’ rapport early in the year. And another matter of months and Inez had a baby. With one illegitimate child in the West somewhere, Dean then had four little ones and not a cent, and was all troubles and ecstasy and speed as ever. So we didn’t go to Italy.”
Part three of OTR ends here. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. The complete series has been published. part one part two part three part four part six part seven
7 O’Clock News/Silent Night
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme was on the car stereo yesterday. PG thought about the first time he heard PSRT. It was 52 years ago, in a basement down the street. Then it was a monural record player, with kids playing songs over and over to write down the lyrics. It is a stretch to go from that, to a thumb drive on a car stereo. Almost as far as Art Garfunkel’s hair has gone … from luxurious blonde afro, to bald as an egg.
The last song on that album was quite the statement. It starts off with Simon and Garfunkel, who are both Jewish, singing “Silent Night.” In the background is a newscast. The news is soft at first, and gets louder, and louder. What happened to the stories in that newscast?
“In Los Angeles today comedian Lenny Bruce died of what was believed to be an overdose of narcotics. Bruce was 42 years old.” This is the first item that can be clearly heard. It helps to establish the date of the broadcast… August 3, 1966. PG had never heard of Lenny Bruce. The comic has gone on to be an icon of American entertainment. Most of the people who feverishly admire Lenny have never read Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce!! While he was a talented comedian, Lenny was also a serious heroin addict. He was not a nice person. PG later wrote The Trial Of Lenny Bruce. This post is about one of his obscenity trials.
“Dr. Martin Luther King says he does not intend to cancel plans for an open housing march Sunday into the Chicago suburb of Cicero. Cook County Sheriff Richard Ogleby asked King to call off the march and the police in Cicero said they would ask the National Guard to be called out if it is held. King, now in Atlanta, Georgia, plans to return to Chicago Tuesday.”
It is hard to imagine in 2019, but Dr. King used to be referred to in present tense. Twenty months after this newscast, Dr. King was killed. “On 4 April 1967,” (exactly one year before he died) “Martin Luther King delivered his seminal speech at Riverside Church condemning the Vietnam War.” Opposition to a wretched war played a large part in his last year.
“In Washington the atmosphere was tense today as a special subcommittee of the House Committee on Un-American Activities continued its probe into anti-Vietnam war protests. Demonstrators were forcibly evicted from the hearings when they began chanting anti-war slogans. Former Vice-President Richard Nixon says that unless there is a substantial increase in the present war effort in Viet nam, the U.S. should look forward to five more years of war. In a speech before the Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in New York Nixon also said opposition to the war in this country is the greatest single weapon working against the U.S.”
This is one of the saddest paragraphs ever. In 1968, Richard Nixon ran for President, again. All the players (except third party candidate George Wallace) were manipulating events in Vietnam to manufacture an “October Surprise.” Tricky Dick somehow won, and kept American forces in Vietnam until 1973 … six years after the seven o”clock news.
Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
This Whole Thing Seems Fishy
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A brilliant recap of the 2019 conference in spoken word Ryan Johnson
Rosser Shymanski Reflects On Decades In Entertainment
Neal Cassady revisited, Carolyn Cassady interview, David Heine, dec. 1999
A History of Stonewall, the Riot That Started the LGBTQ Revolution
The Difference Between Support And ‘Toxic Positivity’ In One Simple Chart
Nike Pulls ‘Betsy Ross Flag’ Shoes at Kaepernick’s Urging: WSJ
Nike Drops Sneaker Featuring Betsy Ross Flag After Colin Kaepernick Is Said to Complain
Branded as racists, Gibson family took on Oberlin College to rewrite obituary
Gibson Bros., Inc., et al. v. Oberlin College, et al.
Gibson’s Bakery paid a high cost for an unfairly damaged reputation
Oberlin College president Carmen Twillie Ambar on $44 million ruling
Nike Pulls Betsy Ross Shoe due to Colin X Kaepernick
25 Words That Are Their Own Opposites
Femme Fatale (cover by Mathieu Saikaly and Pauline De Tarragon)
White gay privilege exists all year, but it is particularly hurtful during Pride
Fourth of July’s ugly truth exposed: Declaration is sexist, racist, prejudiced
As I Please, in Tribune, 17 March 1944, George Orwell
The Nanny State: the word troubling us since the 1960s
Joan Crawford & Bette Davis Feud Documentary (2000)
Unsupervised word embeddings capture latent knowledge from materials
Colin Kaepernick and the suspicious sky cloth shoes
Mad magazine’s demise is part of the ending of a world
Step-Dad Live-Tweeted His Son Trying To Sneak A Girl Out Of The House
BREAKING: Man wanted for malice murder in Covington
People Are Unfollowing Dwayne Johnson After This Controversial Post
Stop Reclining Your Seat on Airplanes
Cher fans asked: ‘Is she a man?’
Singer was forced to reassure fans early in her career because she had a deep voice
Police officers were reportedly asked to leave a Tempe Starbucks for making customers feel unsafe, sparking the #DumpStarbucks campaign
VAGINA POWER “A man’s life force is in his NUTS” – Tylor
Joseph Campbell Lectures: The Power of Myth & Storytelling
Man out of prison for 2 days accused of stabbing 17-year-old to death at Circle K
vagina power ~ isreal’s troll army ~ apollo 11 ~ 0704 trivia
bret stephens ~ nanny state ~ MAD shuts down ~ neal cassady raps
Obama Rallies In Ohio ~ derek jarman ~ femsplainers
bandcamp ~ GLF ~ gentleman angry in court
transtrenders ~ dave barry interview ~ go home
@ericweiskott I recently learned the word JEOPARDY was originally a chess metaphor it’s from French JEU PARTI “divided game” = “chess problem evenly divided between winning and losing” ~ Has @Nike confirmed or denied the story by @WSJ ? This whole thing seems fishy Since when does a company do what an super bowl losing endorser tells it to ? #BetsyRossFlag ~ Faggots, Dykes, and Fairies: Welcome to the world of The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions ~ July 3, 1981 Before posting this, I googled Lawrence K. Altman. He wrote the NYT article about the rare cancer in Gay men. Dr. Altman is still writing for the NYT, 38 years later. ~ Paris in the 40’s, and in the 50’s I read “Quiet Days in Clichy” twice. Once in the late seventies, later around 2014. My old paperback was held together with a rubber band by the time I finished it the second time. Mr. Miller has a great style of writing. I like to read in small bites. I have this idea that he thought his stories in French, and then wrote them down in English. ~ @RuPaul You’re born naked and the rest is conjecture. @chamblee54 the pro/con replacement for conjecture is projecture – the state or fact of projecting or jutting out maybe projecture is what happens after birth ~ We need a better expression for apathy. I don’t give an *obscenity* is past the expiration date. ~ From patriarchy to snowflake: five keywords you need to know Snowflake, The Nanny State, Patriarchy, Safe Space, Sovereignty ~ It would be better if #MADMagazine was writing about the @washingtonpost shutting down. ~ I was in a CB recently. In the merch department, they had a pillow. On the pillow was a drawing of a pink flamingo, in pink sequins. The lettering on the pillow said, in big pink letters, just be fabulous ~ pictures today are from The Library of Congress. ~ i065 twitter 0614_1245pm was performed in dickhater sunday night:
calamity slander and pollution ~ get arrest warrant for sarah palin
eat the salad of my apparition ~ transcendental commodification
seeking outside the perimeter sin ~ calamity slander and pollution
mister pompeo cuckoo collision ~ machine gun is mightier than the pen
eat the salad of my apparition ~ traditional goober termination
depravity cavity for the win ~ calamity slander and pollution
end-of-quarter deadline revolution ~ scandal involving cadaver drug spin
eat the salad of my apparition ~ diabolical trump hairdo collusion
institutional rachel maddow grin ~ calamity slander and pollution
eat the salad of my apparition ~ selah
Glenn And John
The Glenn Show on blogginheads.tv is fun to listen to, especially when co-blackguy John McWhorter is sitting in. The show has a way of producing quotes, which gets in the way of multi-tasking. You are cruising along, doing whatever, and someone says something that needs to be noted. You stop, find the text on youtube, go to bhtv, and make a video clip. 56822 had a bunch of these moments. Many of these incidents involve america’s favorite bad word. The substitute today will be donald.
John is some sort of academic, working at Columbia University. Part of the academy game is writing books. John is working on a history of the english language, and a book about profanity. “the chapter on fuck is frankly a lot of fun.”
Profanity is a social function, rather than a moral one. Like the rest of the language, it changes over time. “You know people have taboos and it’s reflected in language and ours used to be about damn and hell and fucking shit and now those taboos are about and get ready listeners this can be hard get ready you ready it’s about donald faggot and cunt.”
John later gave an example of usage. He was doing a radio show in Oakland. “We said donald … this n-word piety had not come in.” Later in the show, John returned to his academic roots. “that’s the way Myron would put it because he’s an asshole … yes I said it folks.”
Glenn is writing his memoirs. It has been a long, strange trip. From the south side of Chicago … “you know just a donald from the south side so to speak” … he got educated, and moved into academic life. Along the way, he became a Reagan conservative, and a coke freak, not necessarily in that order. He is in recovery, from both conservatism and cocaine. As one man said in a half way house, “okay you’re very smart professor Lowry I want you to ask me one question what were you doing in the streets of Boston showing your ass just like a donald from the project’s”
“It ain’t over til its over.” Years ago, the popular saying was “It ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings.” Apparently, fat ladies are now a protected class. This is progress. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Jack Delano took the pictures in Aliquippa, PA, in January 1941.
The Nanny State
From patriarchy to snowflake: five keywords you need to know Those naughty naysayers at the BBC had a five part series about trendy words. The fabulous five are Snowflake, The Nanny State, Patriarchy, Safe Space, Sovereignty. We learn that snowflake used to mean someone in Missouri who was opposed to abolition. Words do not always mean the same thing.
The Nanny State was the segment that sent PG scurrying to google. TNS was coined by Iain Macleod, who seems to have been quite the nuisance. Mr. Macleod wrote an article in The Spectator where he gifted us with the phrase. BBC says the article was about having speed limits on British roadways. Unfortunately, the article is behind a strict paywall, and you cannot tell for yourself. The paywall is a capitalist twist on TNS concept.
BBC also referenced an article by George Orwell. This is a splendid piece, where the former Eric Blair complains about what he calls “Pamphletese.” This is the style of writing used by communists in 1944. What does this have to do with TNS? Maybe the state’s nanny is big brother in drag.
The Orwell column is a splendid bit of writing. There is a list of words he would like to see banned: “Achilles’ heel, jackboot, hydra-headed, ride roughshod over, stab in the back, petty-bourgeois, stinking corpse, liquidate, iron heel, blood-stained oppressor, cynical betrayal, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, jackal, hyena, blood-bath.” Many of these are little used today. English cliches have a Darwinist quality, and only the strong survive. Unfortunately, the language is perpetually littered with questionable phrases. Anybody reading can think of a few dozen. These things too shall pass away.
“Yet they and other equally inappropriate words are dug up for pamphleteering purposes. The result is a style of writing that bears the same relation to writing real English as doing a jigsaw puzzle bears to painting a picture. It is just a question of fitting together a number of ready-made pieces. Just talk about hydra-headed jack-boots riding roughshod over blood-stained hyenas, and you are all right. For confirmation of which, see almost any pamphlet issued by the Communist Party—or by any other political party, for that matter.” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Founding Babydaddies
People often try to justify their opinions by saying that the “founding fathers” agree with them. They often are guilty of selective use of history. A good place to start would be to define what we mean by the phrase founding fathers. This is a repost
The FF word was not used before 1916. A senator from Ohio named Warren Harding used the phrase in the keynote address of the 1916 Republican convention. Mr. Harding was elected President in 1920, and is regarded as perhaps the most corrupt man to ever hold the office.
There are two groups of men who could be considered the founding fathers. (The fathers part is correct. Both groups are 100% white male.) The Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, which cut the ties to England. Eleven years later, the Constitutional Convention wrote the Constitution that governs America today. While the Continental Congress was braver, the Constitution is the document that tells our government how to function. For the purposes of this feature, the men of the Constitutional Convention are the founding fathers.
Before moving on, we should remember eight men who signed the Declaration of Independence, and later attended the Constitutional Convention. Both documents were signed by George Clymer, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, George Read, Roger Sherman, and James Wilson. George Wythe left the Convention without signing the new document. Elbridge Gerry (the namesake of gerrymandering) refused to sign the Constitution because it did not have a Bill of Rights.
The original topic of this discussion was about whether the founding fathers owned slaves. Many people wonder about this. If you go to google, and type in “did the founding fathers”, the first four answers are owned slaves, believed in G-d, have a death wish, and smoke weed.
The answer, to the obvious question, is an obvious answer. Yes, many of the founding fathers owned slaves. A name by name rundown of the 39 signatories of the Constitution was not done for this blogpost. There is this revealing comment at wiki answers about the prevalence of slave ownership. “John Adams, his second cousin Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Paine were the only men who are traditionally known as founding fathers who did not own slaves.
Benjamin Franklin was indeed a founder of the Abolitionist Society, but he owned two slaves, named King and George. Franklin’s newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette routinely ran ads for sale or purchase of slaves.
Patrick Henry is another founding father who owned slaves, although his speeches would make one think otherwise. Despite his “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech, he had up to 70 slaves at a time. He did apologize from time to time. He knew it was wrong, he was accountable to his God, and bemoaned the “general inconvenience of living without them.”
Patrick Henry was a star of the Revolution, but not present at the Constitutional Convention. The author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was in Europe during the convention. Mr. Jefferson not only owned slaves, he took one to be his mistress, and kidsmama.
One of the more controversial features of the Constitution is the 3/5 rule. Here are the original words “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” In other words, a slave was only considered to be 60% of a person.
This is offensive to people today. It was a compromise. The agricultural southern states did not want to give up their slaves. The northern states did not want to give up Congressional representation. This was the first of many compromises made about slavery, ending with the War between the States. This webpage goes into more detail about the nature of slavery.
The research for this feature turned up a rather cynical document called The myth of the “Founding Fathers” . It is written by Adolph Nixon. He asks : “most rational persons realize that such political mythology is sheer nonsense, but it begs the question, who were the Founding Fathers and what makes them so great that they’re wiser than you are?” (The link for this information keeps changing. Here is the latest source. This is not a totally reliable source.)
Mr. Nixon reviews the 39 white men who signed the Constitution. He does not follow the rule, if you can’t say anything nice about someone, then don’t say anything at all. Of the 39, 12 were specified as slave owners, with many tagged as “slave breeders”.
The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, have served America well. However it was intended, it was written so that it could be amended, and to grow with the young republic. It has on occasion been ignored (when was the last time Congress declared war?). However fine a document it is, it was created by men. These were men of their time, who could not have foreseen the changes that America has gone through. Those who talk the most about the founding fathers know the least about them.
July 3, 1981
July 3, 1981, was another day before a holiday. The new President, Ronald Reagan, was recovering from gunshot wounds. There was talk of an era of conservatism, with possibly severe repression.
There was an article in the New York Times. RARE CANCER SEEN IN 41 HOMOSEXUALS. “Doctors in New York and California have diagnosed among homosexual men 41 cases of a rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer. Eight of the victims died less than 24 months after the diagnosis…”
This was the media debut of AIDS. It would not have that name for a while. Almost nobody thought, on that summer day, just how bad AIDS would be. In five years it was obvious how serious AIDS was.
PG was on another trip to the west coast. It was becoming obvious that this would be a vacation, rather than a relocation. He was riding a bicycle, with a milk carton overloaded with camping gear. Some kids told him to get saddle bags, and carry the weight lower. If you have the weight on top, you would lose control coming down a big hill. PG did not listen to the kids.
On July 4, PG left Patrick’s Point state park, about 300 miles north of San Francisco. Coming down the first hill on highway 101, the bike shook, shook harder, and flipped on its side. PG was thrown off. The front wheel was bent beyond repair. PG gathered his gear, left the bike behind, and got a ride into the nearest town.
PG got a bus ticket to Seattle. That city was in an economic downturn, with less than half a page of help wanted ads. PG found a auto delivery service, and got a VW bug going to Oak Ridge, TN. In a few days he was in Atlanta. A few days later, a temp agency came up with a job as a driver for a blueprint company. PG worked for that company, in one form or another, for the next 24 years.
As for the gay men with Kaposi’s Sarcoma … in all probability, the patients mentioned in that article were all dead within a year. AIDS has become a dominating story in our time. At its worst, it was claiming 50,000 lives a year. With the advent of wonder drugs, the death toll has been greatly reduced. The impact of AIDS on American life cannot be adequately described. This is a repost.
Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. Lawrence K. Altman is still writing articles for the New York Times.
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