Lily in Solitude...

"Where's Waldo?" and an important announcement

I've been busy, very busy revising and editing my DC Madam account and caring for a family member after a surgery. Life gets in the way: The book on my experiences with the Palfrey scandal--as I call it--should be finished and available in 2011 and should clock in at around 400 pages, including an index.

Why so little writing on the blog? Why do so few people blog these days? Because it's not sustainable, like everything else these days. Additionally, I'm finding less and less reason to write and post at this site just one philosophical and dialectical grounds. I've come to the conclusion that less-is-more with the Internet, a word to the wise. There's also a point where all you're doing is reacting. That in itself isn't a problem, but too often we all fall into this rut. But, before long, unless there's some burning reason someone can come up with, I'll be moving on to other mediums. I won't be gone 100%, but don't expect more than a handful of posts each month. This takes us to a related subject...

I'm going to do working on a book with "Party Monster" Michael Alig's mother, primarily about his period of addiction leading to his downfall and the killing of Angel Melendez. We're going to have a simple Youtube clip soon with what should be an brief description of the project, possibly some contact information, and probably lots of spastic jerks and thwaggling around since that gets the most hits (we're all doomed, I know...).

Expect something good with the clip. Needless to say, a link will be posted here too.

Misinterpreting events on purpose, so you don't have to!

The South Bend Tribune--and I'm not laying the blame entirely at their feet on this one--had an article today titled, "Teens taping fights: 'It shocks the conscience,' " a tale of teen bullying in South Bend (specifically between girls) and the recording of fights on cell phones and camcorders by other teens that are then uploaded onto the Internet for a variety of reasons that even the piece itself misses, or somehow ignores at its own peril. The reporting in the piece is generally very solid by all appearances and journalist Mary Kane Malone appears to have covered all of her bases, but as usual, the analysis and general thrust of it is all wrong, and that's the fault of a newspaper editor.

As a matter of fact, that's usually the case, but it also takes conglomerates reminding editors that they too have a mortgage to pay, so hyperbole it is.

I'm not going to name the names of the victims again and don't think that it was appropriate for the conglomerate-owned Tribune to list them but not their attackers. What is the precise hyperbole, or the hype of the article? This is incredible: the immorality of other kids standing by and recording the attacks/fights on their cell phones and posting them online, ostensibly to inflict more emotional harm and humiliation upon the victims. I'm certain most of these kids were acting in concert with the bullies, no argument there, but why is it a bad thing ultimately? The fact is that it's a good development regardless of the motives of most of the players.

Thirty years ago--and even as recent as fifteen--these acts of violence by children directed towards other children went unnoticed, they were rampant, and adults didn't want to deal with it anymore then than they do now--and that's the real heart of the article. People, especially authorities like principals, parents, police, and even juvenile professionals, don't want to deal with the issue of children inflicting violence upon each other. The trick is to change the subject or the focus:

The video of the fight had gone viral, the girl says, spreading from cell phone to cell phone. In less than a day, it seemed everyone in school had witnessed Chastity's humiliation. Teenage fights now include a new weapon: the camera phone. For parents, school administrators and law enforcement officials, the recorded fights provide a disturbing portrait of teenage violence that, until now, was only seen by those who witnessed it directly. "It shocks the conscience," said Capt. Phil Trent, spokesman for South Bend police. Parents of the victims say they are horrified at the gall of witnesses to flip out their phones and press "record" rather than intervene. But the kids? They call it entertainment. ... (The South Bend Tribune, 05.09.10)

This may or may not be true that it's "entertainment" and they're casting a blanket over the kids generally, as an entire demographic when there's no solid evidence--just a couple anecdotes--being proffered that the phenomena is widespread. Even if it were, how would they know why every kid recording an event was doing so?

But then, the article breaks down and admits that youth experts don't really know why the kids record the fights. Is that really the point? Again, from the article itself, this is the real point (my emphasis): "For parents, school administrators and law enforcement officials, the recorded fights provide a disturbing portrait of teenage violence that, until now, was only seen by those who witnessed it directly." Correct. Until very recently, the technology to record these events in a portable and easy manner was too expensive. Now, there's no running away from the problem since kids are unwisely (or very wisely) posting what is essentially incriminating evidence of children violently and criminally attacking other children. Before, this was impossible, and authorities could only rely on the hearsay of children, a morass of "he-said, she-said" recriminations that were once almost impossible to confirm, to corroborate. That's all changed now.

In short, many of these kids are doing the "right" thing, knowingly or unknowingly.

Some of these kids are alerting the rest of society that there are vicious sociopaths in our midst and showing us their actions. When it's done in the interest of society, of others, it's a very positive social act, a civic duty to report a crime. In the "wrong" hands they're also incriminating themselves and will probably be dragged into the tidal wave of civil suits that are likely to come out of these new technologies of easy dissemination, the power of the Internet writ large, as large as you can get.

"The (bullies) are basically making a recording of the evidence," providing a clear picture of who threw the first punch and how it ended, said William Bruinsma, director of the St. Joseph County Juvenile Justice Center. Police say a videotaped shoving match posted online might be handled differently than one that is not recorded. "The same shoving match, being turned into a form of entertainment by a third party on the Internet is enough to make parents, school administrators and law enforcement" take a second look, said Trent, the South Bend police spokesman. ... (ibid)

It's not about entertainment. It's about adults not wanting to deal with it, but knowing that they now have no choice in the matter. That's called fighting change. In the past it was easy because there was no way to document these behaviors. Now there is. So, yes, the kids have a "new weapon," alright: they can document acts of violence by other children, even under the guise of indirect participation. Indeed, St. Joseph County prosecutor Michael Dvorak "...said video can provide useful pieces of evidence when building a case." Yet, the Oklahoma state legislature has recently made moves that would make posting the footage online illegal and could likely pass it soon.

The article tries--vainly--to suggest through implication that there's an upswing in violence by American girls, something that it has to admit isn't the case from FBI statistics covering 1995-through-2008. You can almost hear the editor of the South Bend Tribune trying to argue their twisted logic and simply capitulating to the facts in the end since they were and are irrefutable, leaving the remnants of the their thought process (if you want to call it that) in the body of the piece. Missing the point is the entire point. Society-at-large has never wanted to deal with the fact that the genesis of bullying in many cases is child abuse, usually by adults, often by relatives. America is hardly the only nation with this problem, and denial is part-and-parcel of the behaviors surrounding the phenomena.

When the economy is already divesting adults of their rights, those of children don't figure highly either. However, children are a powerful moral symbol of the future, the canaries in the coal mine of where we're going wrong with the social contract and where we've been going wrong since time immemorial. Most importantly, the Tribune article commits the cardinal sin of blaming the victim: "But what might appear to be a clear assault on video could have an untold back story, he said: How can police be sure the victim was not the attacker a day earlier in an unrecorded fight?" They never care about that in other circumstances. The real issue is that they don't want to deal with the problem, the real heart of a very poorly-constructed article that carries a sadly commonplace logic in our culture, a culture in denial on most fronts. After all, nobody likes getting caught...

One last thought: should we embed journalists in our nation's schools? It's not necessary. Soon, very soon, the coverage of domestic violence will surpass that of the wars in the Middle East. Think about why.

http://www.southbendtribune.com/article/20100509/News01/5090310/1129/News

The burning question of this socio-cultural-political moment...

Was the Vatican aware that Michael Jackson was a pedophile?

I know, I was floored by all the surprise surrounding the incontrovertible evidence that there are priests that molest children!! "What was the world coming to?" I thunk. Americans might want to face the fact that most mainstream journalism is barely different from the National Enquirer, and that's even unfair to them since they sometimes actually report something accurately for yucks.

Never mind that I had heard about pedophile priests almost my entire life and that even in predominantly Catholic South Bend (Notre Dame University is located adjacent to the city) it was considered a cliché. In this historical moment, "surprise" that the Vatican has been covering-up acts of molestation by clerics for decades is everywhere. Why is this? Surely, some of this is cry of the siren, but abusers need willing enablers and they've gotten plenty of enabling over generations. The point is a distraction for those who want the cover-ups and the lies to continue. Some of them are doing it because they can't bear what's going to come out of all of this. The public, as in all the other things that we're supposed to be "protected" from knowing, can take it, the culprits and enablers cannot.

What about protecting children? The Vatican seems to be the last institution on earth willing to do that besides the Republican Party or any other number of faceless, self-perpetuating institutions. That's a culture in very serious denial about itself and a real exorcism is order. An exorcism is, in fact, what's occurring in a scandal of international scope. The Church will continue to insist that they can take care of the problem, but since when have they illustrated an ability to? Centuries ago, the Church once had their own parallel legal system alongside that of the Monarch. Did it produce justice? It did not.

Their reluctance to be held accountable by civil law and authorities speaks volumes that they haven't changed very much at the Vatican, and Pope Benedict XVI is hardly a maverick for change as his own personal handling of past cases illustrates plainly. Like the American Republican Party, they're just going to keep blowing their toes off because they don't know any better and because they don't know what else to do. All they seem capable of is blaming the victim, the pedagogy of the abuser. That's not going to make it go away anytime soon.

"The Inside Job of all Inside Jobs," a forlorn satire, torn from the pages of history, by Matt Janovic

It had been a dreary marriage to Mary Todd and a gloomy four years as president. I am feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders once again, but liberation is finally at hand on this lovely spring day of April 14th.
Had I finally enlisted the rebel sympathizer to kill myself just a day after my speech on granting negroes voting rights? I had. It wasn't as easy as that: I had to navigate through channels connected to the Confederate spy-networks that reached into Canada and, miraculously, and all at once, hit gold. It was a direct line to my nemesis, rebel Confederate President Jefferson Davis, partly by way of the nefarious Knights of the Golden Circle. This Booth is a strange character--and actor--and also a member of this peculiar abomination culled from the rituals and symbology of the beneficent Freemasons.

On our meeting yesterday the actor told me that after the speech he had vowed, "That is the last speech he will ever give." Our undisclosed and surreptitious meeting at a tavern outside of the nation's capital was...brusque. I could see the anticipation in his eyes, and I trembled for our nation, as President Jefferson once wrote, for our God is a just one. Richmond had already fallen a little over a week ago on that date. Just three days prior to our meeting at the tavern, the rebel General Lee had surrendered to that drunk, General Grant. What had it all been for? Yes, the slaveholders threw a tantrum over my winning the election, but the Union was and still is a phantasm. Why do I think this shall repeat itself in our history over a century from now over something so ephemeral as the Union? But the preparations for this were difficult and I could share my secret with no one within--or without of--the confines of the White House, certainly not my military or police sentry escorts.

Indeed, this was as baroque a means of avoiding sitting through that wretched, accursed play Our American Cousin, as anyone could imagine, but there were other issues at hand...

You see, Mary had run up an unconscionable and staggering debt--rivaling the cost of the war between the states--at the establishments of a number of prominent Washington dressmakers. Then, there was the dream that my own assassination had transpired and was viewing myself as some faceless spectator, displayed on the presidential catafalque, deceased. I awoke quite happy from such a phantasm as that! Now, this day of days, this morn, I happened upon my new Secretary of State, Mr. McCullough, and even he remarked that "I never saw Mr. Lincoln so cheerful and happy." Indeed I was this morn! He can never know how happy I have been on this day, the happiest of my life.

But, with her usual perspicacity, Mary chimed in, "Saying such things aloud could bring you bad luck." and I ignored it as I usually do. Why is it that everyone in my midst is either drunk or half-mad? Was it I that appointed them? I'm afraid so, and I don't even want to think about my grave error in appointing Schuyler Colfax. My melungeon ancestors are groaning, my heart yearns for the Appalachin, and perhaps, Portugal. Did I really have melungeon ancestors? Our family tree was a little unclear, but who could care but my political enemies and the now vanquished slave-holding contingency? I am still torn over the war between the states. Future generations will either lionize or scorn my legacy, but I feel assured that I will be mythologized as Cicero and Pericles were, and they will be just as wrong out of convenience...

Our plan--that of my assassin and me--comes tonight in Act III, Scene 2 after 10:00PM. A player will utter the line, "Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap... ." I have no conception of what "sockdologizing" is, but am very familiar--as my assassin is of the play and its contents--with what a "man-trap" is, hence part of the motive behind my plans for escaping this vale of tears. He knows his part, and his lines, well, and has rehearsed them like any other play.

As I sit here in the final moments before these fateful lines are uttered by the players, when my drunkard police escort Frederick Parker has run off to the tavern with timepiece precision as he has been known to do, and why I chose him, I can only reflect on the humorous possibility that some Southern halfwits in the distant future will run for any exit, for any wild leap of reason, to explain my killing. The irony is inescapable. They will do so to make sense out of an event which has no sense to it because this life has no sense to it. Yet, I feel the strong passion for my fellow man...and the gams of Major Rathbone's lovely fiance, Clara Harris who has also joined us in the presidential box here, tonight at Ford's Theatre. Booth is a strange one, perhaps mad. The South has lost, they have no hope of permanent secession, yet this "man" thinks that he can somehow turn the tide of history. Perhaps he will, but at least I will not have to endure the final act of this accursed play or to face bankruptcy over my wife's addiction to finery.

Mary is wittily saying to me in jest,"What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?"

My timepiece says it is squarely 10:15PM, and I can hear myself saying, "She won't think anything about it," and I hear a sound coming from behind me.

The End

Postscript, 03.19.2013--And those pages torn from history, those pages were ripped from the spine of John Wilkes Booth's diary, disposed of at a military prison outside of the nation's capital, consumed by the smouldering embers of war...

Added value supplement to "Will the Menstrualcramp run...and flow?"

South Bend, Indiana--What was his fucking name? Wilbur? Fred? Terry? Chuck? Kilroy? George? I can't remember his goddamned name, so George it is. Anyway, he was our band instructor, our music teacher at John Adams High School in the 1980s, and, as he told us at least seven times in one year, he was "Lisa Germano's dad." I'm probably going to get whacked for this if John Mellencamp becomes a senator, but what the hell? It's not especially damning of him, just Mr. Germano and Indiana, and hardly even that.

So, anyway, I can barely remember anything about Mr. Germano's class, but he was a really nice man, I liked him, and he rose above the pack of Jackapes I had to dodge every day. But that's all he could talk about sometimes: "My daughter Lisa is playing violin for John Cougar Mellencamp [he was still called this at the time], bow before her icon, yadda-yadda-yadda, blah-blah-blah," like it was Shintoism, worshiping the people who came before us, except for no particular purpose. OK, there was one. He got to say his daughter was famous and that he was proud of her, which is fine, it's cool, solid. He should have been.

But why, then, is that all I can remember from his class, says I-and-I? Babylon soon come, but this one still has me vexed. True, I never liked reading sheet music, and that's what he taught, so once again, I was fucked. Math has never been my strong point, regardless of its context. I have to imagine that in-between my naps in his classroom, Mr. Germano had to have said something about his daughter Lisa at least seven times, no less, and probably a lot more were I able to recall how many doo-doos I had that week. But alas, I'm not autistic...or at least I don't think so. Consider (not the lillies, that's for another time class) that he was telling all of his classes this shit every class.

My opinion, though, over the years is that he--Mr. Germano--didn't especially care about the quality of the music Lisa was playing (which was very competent on her end) but that she was "famous," that coveted status that means everything outside of the ideals of humanism and the good deeds of St. Francis. It's a queer attitude that I don't relate to and didn't back then around 1983. Let's be honest though: she could have sleptwalked through the simple parts she had to play for her "boss." She was classically trained and could play circles around that shit, get real. For a time, she was working in a bookstore in Indy during the 90s! Mellencamp didn't want to do anything, her 4AD (Pixies, Cocteau Twins home label) record deal didn't go the way she might have hoped it would, and she had a shitty job like me--what the fuck! That's showbusiness, as they say, whoever the fuck "they" are.

Non-sequitur time: It might seem like a great idea to have someone famous whom one likes and feels holds and reflects the same values, but that's not the thing in practice. I'm sure Mellencamp is a great guy, and I've heard good things about him. Does that mean he'd be a great senator? No. But really, I hope she's doing well. I assume Mr. Germano has passed away, I don't know. He was a nice man in a crappy school, and I think he followed us from Edison Middle School, but again, I don't remember it all, or what I had for lunch on February 13th, 1979. I know, what an asshole...

The time Digger Phelps saved Christmas Eve (a true story)...

It was that special night--Christmas--and Zofia and her daddy were headed home through the back streets adjacent to Notre Dame's golf course and campus. The neighborhoods were built, in most cases, around the time of the Great War and its aftermath, mostly populated with professors, former Notre Dame coaches, and even a few celebrities, like the comedian Martin Short, a home he bought for his children while they attended the university's prestigious law school.

The law school itself is run by the notable Robert Blakey, former chair of the House Assassinations Committee that was convened in the late 1970s to investigate the killings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, and John Kennedy.

But it had snowed and melted overnight before Zofia and her daddy went out to run errands for when grandma and her uncle were coming over to celebrate Christmas eve with them and they had forgotten how icy the neighborhoods could get! The moment they hit the patch of ice, it was over: they slid very quickly into one of the neighborhood yards; it was shocking and jarring, but they were alright when it was over. But they were stuck. What to do?

Help was on the way! A grumpy old man who appeared to have been born with a jelly-doughnut in his mouth ambled-up to the side of the car. Daddy had already gotten out. The man said nothing, just grunted, and motioned. He took the jelly-doughnut out his mouth and said, "Move it over that way and you'll be able to get out."Daddy did what the man said, and it worked. Daddy waved to the man with no response who was headed home, eating his jelly-doughnut he'd been born with. Funny how people can overcome their shadow side, being kind and grumpy all at the same time. Grumpy!

But the fact remains: Digger Phelps saved Christmas eve. Thank you Digger.

Coming soon: Digger Phelps saves Christmas eve!

South Bend, Indiana--A true, but very brief anecdote on the former N.D. coach saving the day!

Nowhere special: South Bend, Indiana

Ed.--Here are a few photos I took of the town I live in. The photo to the top right shows the building in which John Dillinger, Homer Van Meter and Baby Face Nelson robbed the Merchant's Bank on June 30, 1934, to the left of the front-end of the car in the center of the shot, a building with arches and a tall front. It's now a Cambodian restaurant. The building to the bottom left was once an outlet of the Chicago Stock Exchange, or at least that's what I've been led to believe. The State Theater was featured in some shots of the Party Monster "Shockumentary" that was aired on Cinemax in 1998, about South Bend native and club kid promoter Michael Alig. There hasn't been a hell of a lot going on here since Studebaker closed in 1964.

In the future: my take on "Club Kid" promoter Michael Alig and the club kids scene

I had a very warm and friendly chat with Michael's mother Elke Blair just last night--it was like talking with an old friend. I'm just two years junior to her son Michael, who was also born here in South Bend in 1966. My first experience noticing the club kids was in 1994 (I'm pretty sure it was the Joan Rivers show) when I saw some of them on a talk show. I also saw the Geraldo broadcast with Michael and Elke and was pretty impressed with the creativity of their look, their decadence, their style, the flippancy and devil-may-care side of it. It looked like a lot of fun. They seemed to be having a good time and a sense of humor about themselves, what more can a subculture ask for? Everything has a beginning...

South Bend/Michiana is a peculiar place, a hotbed of dysfunction. During the 1980s, South Bend had the highest unsolved murder rate in the continental United States, a little known fact. We created Dan Waters, the writer of the black comedy "Heathers"(1988). Waters went to Penn High School, the same place that Michael went to, and it was the same kind of brutal environment as depicted in the film minus the more fantastical parts of the plot. But the homophobia was very real during 1970s-80s when Alig and Waters attended Penn. I can attest to the fact that the other schools in the area were no different. In fact, if you were "different" from the clearly molested and physically abused rednecks and white trash that unfortunately populated the majority of the school bodies you were a target, it was up close and personal, and violence was always simmering beneath the surface.

Michael was harassed, I was harassed, and most all of my friends were too. I can literally remember witnessing a major fight every day of school from about 7th grade until my junior year in high school at John Adams (I graduated in 1986). Racism was also endemic and went both ways (but the black kids tended to like me).

I can recall being stopped in the hallways at John Adams and being asked point-blank, "Do you like rap?!" You were supposed to answer "no," I answered "yes," and was rewarded with a swift punch to the arm. I'd say that was typical, but usually the response was significantly more violent. What I'm getting at here is that my and Michael's experiences weren't especially different, and I'm not even gay. In my case, I had the misfortune of being from a "broken home" (Michael was as well) in a Catholic town in the early 1970s. Notre Dame was literally just down the road from my house. Was I discriminated against? Was my brother and my family? You bet, and it's even worse than it reads, there was a lot to it.

I am going to be discussing some of these issues with Elke in the future on this site. When I first saw the "Party Monster" documentary on Cinemax in 1997 (practically fresh out of an extended college stint) I nearly fell off of my couch. Why was I seeing footage of downtown South Bend on television, and on Cinemax of all channels? Naturally, I was riveted. And then they showed Michael and the club kids and it all began falling-into-place...and it depressed me. I cannot say that it's a "bad" documentary, but it's too short and there was so much of the story left out that it should never been viewed as the last word on the decline and fall of Michael Alig and the club kids. At under an hour, this just wasn't going to be possible, so Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey (originally of the techno dance unit the Pop Tarts who once worked for Alig) had to focus on what would fit easiest into the cramped running time, and it shows.

As crazy as it sounds, it's too sensationalistic and spends far too much time on Michael Alig when it should be focusing on why chaos came to the club kids scene at the Limelight and Peter Gatien's other clubs, their environs. Yes, it was drugs and misbehavior, but what about the role of the DEA, the FBI, and the NYPD? What was the role of organized crime? What about the drug informants within the scene? Why is Peter Gatien running around free and operating a new club up in Toronto (rumor has it that he no longer runs Circa)? What was their contribution of these players to the disaster? How many of the talking heads in the documentary were informants? We may never know, but I frankly don't think that the Party Monster documentary gave us much depth or understanding. Worse, it didn't show us much of the glory of the club kid scene, a movement that outlasted so many others by several years, a major feat.

Barbato and Bailey's films are more of a very brief overview of things, and that's not slamming it or dismissing it outright. What of Michael's childhood? That section lasts barely five minutes. They were "in love" with their subject? What of Michael's side of the story? Nearly all there is comes from James St. James and a little from Elke. It's not so much what's in the documentary as what isn't. But one thing's certain: the entire story is still untold.

Public Enemies (2009) review

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“That was the attitude at the time; that the authorities were buffoons who couldn’t get Dillinger, and these were same authorities that couldn’t fix the Depression, couldn’t relieve the suffering from the Dust Bowl, and Dillinger was attacking the institutions, i.e., the banks that had made everybody’s life a misery.”--Director Michael Mann to Roger Ebert, June 19, 2009.

For anyone who ever wondered, “What exactly was John Dillinger really like as a person?” Michael Mann’s sad-but-lively love song to the Depression-era gangster is going to be a real treat, and one that was a long-time-coming. Someone finally got the story right. Why did it take so long? There are a number of very simple reasons, but when it comes to crime, American culture tends to go through up-and-down cycles of punishment versus rehabilitation.

We never learn, and the majority of our “big house” prisons have served as criminal-factories, producing hardened men and women who might have never gone down the road to even greater crimes then they would have. In an interview transcript from June, Mann sides with a majority of corrections administrators, wardens, and even corrections officers’ unions that the system didn’t work over eighty years ago. It doesn’t now:

This is off on a sidetrack. I wanted to know about prison because it’s the prison that made him, those prison conditions made him into who he was. Of course, all of this is about finding character, what’s the character, what’s behind it. …We came up with a 1936 Bureau of Prisons investigation because that State Prison was a scandal. They had institutionalized forms of torture, of beatings, suffocation of people in strait jackets--it was horrendous, it was a hellhole. And he survived that at the top tier of that kind of population so this was a tough, tough guy.[i]

Indeed he was, and he was a product of his times as all of us are. Today, we would say that John Dillinger had become “institutionalized” by a brutal criminal justice system, and it all began with a juvenile crime of robbing the town grocer for $50. Dillinger was given ten years by a biased judge, and that was that. The die was cast from a child’s mistake, and just about anyone under the circumstances would have wanted some payback.

This is why Dillinger wanted to be known and why he didn’t wear disguises when he robbed banks.

Now that the national focus on punishment versus rehabilitation has shifted and nearly 80 years have passed, we’re able to look back at the 1933-34 crime wave with better information, more perspective, and a clearer vision. To recount the general plotline created by Mann and his collaborators is to tell the real story of the thirteen months of John Dillinger’s short life (although some would disagree that he was the man shot in the alleyway of the Biograph Theater in the very hot summer of 1934—granted, a long-shot if ever there was one).

“Public Enemies” couldn’t have had a better writer-director. Mann’s oeuvre in the crime genre is practically unassailable with “Thief” (1981), “Manuhunter” (1985), “Heat” (1995), and the more recent “Collateral” (2004), starring Tom Cruise. Few directors are better at depicting crime than Michael Mann.

It’s fun writing this review since I personally know of a few locations here in South Bend that Johnnie robbed back in 1933-34. Michiana was literally his stomping ground and he hid around this area and several nearby locations, some of them controlled by the Chicago Outfit who would hide bank robbers for money up-front. Just down the road from where I’m writing this right now is State Road 6 (built in 1932!) and the town of Walkerton, Indiana, down which the Dillinger gang was chased by Indiana State Patrolman Arthur Keller in 1933.

This jibes with a ruined location at nearby Koontz Lake that my father used to show me and my brother in the 1970s, which as far as I can tell has never been documented. I also know and have known people who were at the Biograph Theater the evening of Dillinger’s assassination by federal agents, a husband and wife who shall remain nameless in this review. As a point-of-fact, I was told by the husband before his recent passing that, “Someone pointed Dillinger out to us in the audience.” [ii] “M” and “K” were kids at the time, and when they saw the commotion in the alley of the Biograph, they fled the scene out of fear. The husband also saw Nelson’s shooting-spree in downtown South Bend and the safe house that the gang hid in, allegedly on Michigan Street, just blocks away from where I viewed this motion picture. How do I know these anecdotes are true? When “M” died earlier this year, I conveyed some of the stories to their children—they had never been told any of it. “M” and “K” weren’t supposed to be in East Chicago that hot summer night in 1934, they were only 12 and 13 years old, respectively, and they never sought any fame over what they claim to have witnessed.

Highway Patrolman Arthur Keller’s (who also appears to have had no reason to lie) oral account, conducted on October 27, 1971 at the Walkerton Police Station by Interstate Trucking historian Harry D. Woods captures the real John Dillinger:

He came from one of the most wonderful families I ever met. I can only say one thing for John Dillinger—he was an organizer. He had a sense of direction like a bird. He proved it to a bunch of us guys one night in Chicago back in November 16, 1933. He was a driver that if he was alive today, I’d still take my hat off to him. As far as John Dillinger was concerned, he got the blame for everything. I remember one particular incident when he was in his heyday. The bank of Modoc [sic], Indiana, a little two-bit bank, was robbed. There was a bank robbery in Pennsylvania that day. Racine, Wisconsin, was robbed that day. John Dillinger was indentified as the gunman at all three of these banks. The fact was, John Dillinger was sitting on his can in an automobile, a Buick, behind the bank at Racine. He was never in the bank.[iii]

This is the very same John Dillinger as portrayed by director Michael Mann and his co-writers and a bevy of researchers hired for the movie production, and they really did their homework. The November 1933 incident Keller refers to is one in which Keller was pressured to execute the bank robber illegally in an ambush by his Indiana State Trooper superiors, probably why he didn’t go into further detail. As usual, Dillinger got the jump on them and got away, but it was very close.

Mann and his collaborators attention to historical detail and accuracy is just staggering, and merely adhering to the facts has given him and the audience for this film a real feast for the eyes, quite a ride. For example: nearly every movie ever made about John Dillinger—until now—has gotten the color of “the Lady in Red’s” (Hungarian East Chicago madam and hooker, Anna Sage) dress wrong. She wore a white-blouse with an orange skirt when she accompanied Dillinger to the Biograph. There are many other examples just like it in Public Enemies, and truth be told, I’ve read nearly everything about the man and his life and was expecting Mann and company to screw-up. They never did once. From the very beginning, to the very end of the film, I was expecting some really ridiculous distortion of history, and it never really came.

There is one scene that appears to be stylistic where Dillinger strolls right into the FBI’s Chicago Field Office, and he definitely had the balls for it as well as the cunning to get away with it. Call it a nod to social banditry and the noble outlaw who restricts his robberies to the rich, the banks. Right now, you couldn’t have a timelier message. The truth is that it actually happened, it’s not fanciful!

Public Enemies is the first motion picture to accurately express the meaning of the life of John Dillinger and his place in the history of America’s criminal underworld and our modern law enforcement apparatus. Mann intercuts between Dillinger’s pursuer, Melvin Purvis, Dillinger and his gang, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and Al Capone’s Lieutenant, Frank Nitty, and his associates who harbored the Dillinger gang for money. They sure weren’t doing it for their health, and when Johnny crossed from Indiana to Illinois after his incredible escape from Crown Point Jail with a wooden-gun, Hoover saw his opening and federalized the pursuit of Dillinger that had been on shaky legal ground up to that point. The rest is history.

After that, Dillinger and all the rest of the bank robbing gangs were a liability to the growing, cancerous networks of organized crime that were operating “coast-to-coast.” For decades, Hoover would deny their very existence and wouldn’t mount a national campaign against them until he had no choice. But it was easier to get more congressional appropriations for the FBI through getting John Dillinger and the other bank robbers of that bygone era. After 1934, the FBI would move towards becoming the nation’s police, and her record has been very patchy indeed, including collusion with organized crime and the harassment of political dissidents. Something died at the Biograph Theater that night, and it wasn’t just John Dillinger.

Public Enemies features a very solid ensemble cast and uses it in a way that would make the late Robert Altman proud, and it’s a very kinetic action film while being a great history lesson. You can tell that Michael Mann has wanted to direct this film for at least thirty years, if not more, and according to him, the Kentucky-born-and-raised Depp came to the project with the same passion, if not more. The Chicagoan director truly did his research. Public Enemies is a labor of love and an important movie not to be missed.

---

[i] Mann, Michael. “John Dillinger, scholar of crime: The Michael Mann Transcript. The Chicago Sun-Times. June 26, 2009. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090626/PEOPLE/906269998

[ii] “M” and “K” to the author, January 2009.

[iii] Woods, Harry D. “The Story of Mr. Arthur Keller as Told to Harry D. Woods.” Indianapolis: Indiana State Highway oral history project, 1971. 10-11.

Bert Szymanski (1921-2009)

South Bend, Indiana--This week, our friend and neighbor Bert Szymanski. He was 87 years old and is one of the last surviving people in Indiana (besides his widow) who saw John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson in life. Bert was also a father, a grandfather, and a great-grandfather who was loved by many. Bert was a trucker who helped build the Alaskan highway during WWII. Like many of his generation in South Bend, he worked at the Studebaker plant for several years and was laid-off when it closed in 1963.

Bert told me in January of this year some interesting details that are corroborated by Dillinger's lawyer's (Louis Picquett) book regarding the gang's hideout--a safe house--here in South Bend during the 1933-34 crime wave.

Details told to me by Bert fit Picquett's account of their staying in-hiding in South Bend like a glove. There were other Dillinger gang hideouts in this are, one at Koontz Lake that's long gone, destroyed by a freak tornado in the 1960s (my father showed us the remaining steps and foundation during the 1980s).

Dillinger was chased just down the road of our current residence by Indiana State Highway Police on old S.R. 6, just ten miles down the road from our home in Walkerton, Indiana. This was his stomping ground. Bert and his wife Sally saw Dillinger inside the Biograph just minutes before his murder by FBI agents in the alleyway of the theater, but fled the scene out of fear. They were just kids, no more than 13. Amazingly, I don't think Bert ever told his children about this, but then, I don't think he and Sallie were supposed to be in East Chicago on that hot summer day in 1934 either.

We're losing these stories to mortality every day, and it's a shame that we don't take more care in preserving our history. Sounds like a job for the federal government and a new W.P.A. oral history program.

Bert was a good man who loved his family, his children, his grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and his neighbors. He was a good friend of my late grandparents and he will be missed. Bert and I reflected that he lived to see two Great Depressions in his lifetime, but he was pleased that Barack Obama had won the election and was hopeful that he could be our FDR. He was a smart man, a working man. I helped Bert from the floor of his garage twice--which contributed to a hernia! I will never regret helping my neighbor, he was quite a man. He was buried this morning, and hundreds attended his viewing yesterday. I'm going to miss taking him vegetables from our garden. Sleep well, the neighborhood isn't going to be the same without you.

"Twilight time" at Ford, with a dose of hope and wisdom

So I took my grandfather's old--old?!--2000 van cruiser to the dealer down the road for a recall fix (you don't want to know, but it includes the cruise control and the vehicle bursting into flames, even when it isn't running) early this morning, and it was almost what I expected: no customers, employees sitting around in the waiting room with me (cute girls!), salespeople and other staff walking around trying to look "busy" when it's obvious there's no way in hell that's going to be possible, and a few other of the depressing sights and sounds one might imagine walking into a car dealership in America these days.

Mind you that I took the van in just to have the recall work done, gratis (FREE). As you might expect, I waited while they did it and one the big-shots in the garage came back and asked if I wanted the whole-enchilada--check the brakes, blow out the transmission fluid, check the battery, change the oil, wash the van, kick the tires, etc., etc. . Naturally, I had my trusty credit card in-hand, the damage (to my finances) was going to be impressive, and it was!

After what seemed like at least a two hour wait (not bad), they were done with everything, no hassles, no worries. It felt great to finally have all this done, like a good early-morning dump, both invigorating and a little exhausting, but satisfying and a relief. Now, my van wouldn't suddenly burst into flames spontaneously on the highway or in our garage where it could spread to the house, maybe taking-out a few lawn chairs in the backyard, a squirrel, and maybe an errant opossum. That'll learn 'ya.

Ask any working-class American one of their greatest sources of frustration and anger besides their job or their boss, and they'll immediately home in on their car or truck. Frequently, it's an American-made vehicle like mine, a hand-me-down. For decades and decades--even back when Henry Ford was alive--the auto manufacturers were told by the public, by consumer advocacy groups, the government (but not much here), and everyone with a pulse, to make cars that were safer, more affordable, durable, got better gas mileage, and required very little maintenance. I know, I know--people need jobs, and I'm not going to begrudge that, but why not pay everyone properly? Wasn't that Henry Ford's idea?

Wasn't he an authoritarian nut, a Nazi-supporter? What does that make the latest brew of CEOs who have placed themselves on the extinction list as a class? They haven't believed that Americans should be paid a living-wage, never mind being able to actually afford their products. I know, that whole "logic" thing. The real problem, as usual, is the American obsession with work and the work ethic, a dysfunctional authoritarian division of labor, and greed. This no longer works...so?

Even the new president is overly-obsessed with work and it's a little worrying; but I feel assured that reality of current events is going to change him and his assumptions as it changes everyone else. More work is not always the answer, but a rethinking of productivity, wages, and the division of labor are. True, there is much work to be done getting a sustainable energy policy and economy (the same thing, really, something our intelligent president understands), but what after that? How will work be divided-up? Are we to tolerate more of the same old, same old regarding the policies of employers?

The president appears to be on the same page as working-class Americans here in his vocal support of the right to unionize, the right to collective bargaining that's implicit to a healthy democracy. This is all about the social contract, or what the Republicans and errant Democrats have debased it to. For every recall, every death caused by design-flaws done at the behest of profit and shareholders, and corporate executives, and for every breakdown that could have been avoided but was part of "planned obsolescence," the social contract was violated and discarded again and again. This was the fault of ownership and management, not the UAW, not any union, and not necessarily the consumer, although we have to make an exception with the SUV.

As I was signing the papers for the repairs and maintenance, a very smart, wise Black man shook his head in a chair across from us: "Yeah, Ford isn't going out of business...at least not right away. You know, if they would have just made cars that--maybe they wouldn't look great--didn't cost so much, but got good mileage and didn't need so much maintenance." He was an employee of the Ford dealership. His supervisor did nothing to contradict him, nothing at all. We all agreed, and I had a great talk with this man about the heart of all of this. Call me crazy if you like, but I've always had a greater rapport with Black Americans--they call it as they see it.

But today, at Ford, things have changed. Decorum has changed, and people are tired of towing-the-line for the big-shots, tired of keeping up appearances when it doesn't matter. I'd write that we need to do this and stop holding-our-tongues with employers when things no longer work, but that time passed long ago. Now comes the time to "fix" things, a time of incredible opportunities for working people...if they decide to be those squeaky-wheels that get oiled. We have an opportunity to rollback authoritarianism in the workplace like never before. If we fail to try we'll only have ourselves to blame.

Our children and their grandchildren will also blame us. They will be right. We can make things better, it's just a matter of will, the jaded-be-damned. Get moving, get organized.

You know you're from/in South Bend when...

You know you're from/in South Bend when you've missed every major social and cultural movement in the last forty years. Just sayin'!

You know you're from/in South Bend when you criticize aspects of it openly and are asked, "You from around here?"

You know you're from/in South Bend when Bobcat Goldthwait remarks how economically depressed it is at a show here, and it's when times were good.

You know you're from South Bend when you tell someone from another part of America you're from here, they don't understand, and you break down and say "Notre Dame." Then--and only then--do they "get" it.

You know you're in South Bend when the most exciting thing happening is a house on fire.

You know you're in South Bend when you realize that the most entertaining thing are the Snyders and the redneck disaster area that is Roseland, Indiana.

You know you're from/in South Bend when you realize that we have the finest homeless shelter in almost the entire continental United States, and that that's not necessarily a good thing.

You know you're from/in South Bend when 98% of the people you encounter here assume you're: Catholic, Polish, and a Notre Dame fan. Sydney Pollack was right.

You know you're from/in South Bend when you're aware that the poet James Whitcomb Riley lived here and that 99% of the local population do not.

You know you're from South Bend when you read the newspapers and read about the weekly drive-bys.

You know you're from/in South Bend when you see grown-men wearing spandex-tights that looked stupid in the 80s.

You know you're from/in South Bend when the South Bend Symphony Orchestra has yet to play very much 20th century music, and the 20th century is over. But, that's why you never go to see them, like everyone else.

You know you're from/in South Bend when most of the major industries here are housed in museums.

You know you're from/in South Bend when you're watching the outtakes from "This is Spinal Tap" and you notice that a character from South Bend is in it...and they're a total dork and a moron.

You know you're from/in South Bend when you realize very little ever changes here, and that Black people are almost the only people worth knowing. But: a beautiful place, just avoid the public and you'll be OK.

The Indiana GOP's Laughable Obama Mailer on William Ayers

South Bend, Indiana--What do you do when your party has nothing to offer the public except more of the same corruption, pederasty, whore-mongering, ethical-lapses, and an unbending loyalty to the rich at the expense of the rest of the public? You keep beating the same drum, over-and-over again because you have no new ideas or agendas and never did. In that moronic indefatigable spirit, Indiana's GOP sent this piece-of-paper to me.

This isn't to say Barack Obama is perfect by a long-shot, but the connection to former Weathermen leader Bill Ayers is stretching things more than a little bit. The truth is, it's a blatant lie meant to squeeze the rest of that 9/11 fear out of a frightened minority of the public.

Recall that this piece is coming from someone who doesn't intend to vote for Barack Obama, but for Ralph Nader (a write-in, Madonna's...well, Madonna, though Mickey Mouse is a real person). That said, I don't have a problem with the majority of the Weathermen bombings, though the truth be known, their core leadership (people like Ayers and Dohrn) were all rich kids throwing a tantrum over their parents' war. Like their parents, they had--and probably still harbor--a lust for power, which they got a good taste of during their rampage.

But the United States was committing genocide in Southeast Asia at that time, violence against Black Americans over the Civil Rights movement was appalling and widespread, and the nation was in flames and divided as it had been during the Civil War. Today, one could argue forcefully that we're doing the same things in slow-motion in Iraq, and that the GOP is doing their best to neglect and disenfranchise Blacks. One would expect similar activitites as the Weathermen today, but welcome to the post-9/11 and Oklahoma City bombing world. Today, domestic terrorism is unlikely to come from a leftward-direction.

If you're an individual who sees these things for what they are--unspeakable crimes against humanity committed by our government for the benefit of giant corporations, you have some options.The choices are few and difficult: you could just try to go on with your life knowing what's really happening in another country in your name. If you have a conscience, this isn't going to be easy, but never underestimate the power of rationalization, it worked wonders in Germany under Hitler. One of them is what Ayers and the rest of them did during the Vietnam war, though I don't recommend doing so.

Another option is to back what's happening wholeheartedly, eventually becoming a party to the slaughter, if only indirectly. This is the easiest route, since most of society and its institutions are going to tell you constantly that this viewpoint is not only valid, but necessary for "the maintenance of our way of life." And isn't our way of life wonderful? You'll be rewarded for doing what's wrong in most cases, but it's even money you won't be punished...at least not by Americans.

Yet another option is to take the route of nonviolent civil disobedience to the war, not even allowing for the application of violence against property that serves the war's expediencies--property that makes the war possible at all, like supply-dumps, recruiting centers, military bases, defense research labs, defense contractors and their facilities, defense research labs at public universities, and-so-on. These were the kinds of targets that the Weathermen targeted, and their main goal was to destroy property only, not to target human beings. But they did want to instill fear and terror in those who supported and expedited the war in Southeast Asia, making them terrorists. They wanted to "spread the love," which I don't find morally wrong.

Ultimately, I don't advocate what Ayers and others in the Weathermen Group did during the 1960s-70s. They and a group that became the PLP (the ineffectual Maoist People's Labor Party) splintered the most effective progressive student political organizations, SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) America has likely ever known. That's not the issue. The issue is Obama's connection to Ayers, which is practically nonexistent. Times have changed, but the GOP doesn't appear to have noticed.

For example, the generation of new voters never lived through the red-baiting of the Cold War years, scarcely knows all the details of the 1960s, and doesn't really care at all. They just know things are fucked-up and that they don't make enough money to live on. No "socialism" there, just common sense by ordinary people. The kids don't want to hear about Bill Ayers. Neither do the majority of Americans who want to hear about what McCain and Palin plan to do to "fix" the economy and to stabilize it. Reform is in the air, but all candidate McCain can do is talk about Ayers. This is because he has no "plan" and no vision, and neither does the rest of his obsolete party (who said they were ever good? not I).

Imagine that: all the GOP has to sell is fear. That's not a good platform for needed change that the vast majority of the public now wants and is going to start demanding before long. But please, please keep banging that same drum until the bitter end. I know you will. In one week--at-minimum--you're going to lose a lot of seats in Congress. And, oh yeah: thanks Indiana GOP, I needed kindling to burn the rest of my trash out here in the country. Thanks.

If Bill Ayers was a threat to anyone during the 1960s-70s, it was himself and the rest of the Weathermen, a cop, and a janitor. He and his wife Bernadine Dohrn helped splinter most of the New Left, making it essentially impotent in-the-face of an escalating war under President Nixon. It's all reminiscent of what Pier Paolo Pasolini said about the student riots in Paris during the Spring of 1968. "It's an internecine struggle." said the radical Italian Communist, poet, philosopher, movie director, and general polymath. Pasolini was right about Europe--and unwittingly--about people like the Weathermen. Ayers and Dohrn came from privileged-backgrounds. While underclass radicals went to prison in the 1970s-80s, Ayers and Dohrn were allowed into academia. Maybe that's why they do so much community work today. They should for the rest of their lives, they owe us and their comrades in our prison system.

This Republican mailer below omits quite a bit. If you were ignorant of the facts--as most Hoosiers are--you'd think Ayers met Obama right after he stopped bombing and turned himself in alongside his wife in 1980. Obama was a blip at that time, a nobody.

Barack Obama a radical Leftist? Take it from someone who actually is: that's a laugh. If only he was a Fred Hampton, a Malcolm X, or a Martin Luther King Jr. The fact is, he isn't. If....

They're Running the Protect America Act Ads in Heavy-Rotation in Indiana

South Bend, Indiana--Lots-o'-goobers here, the slack-jawed, drooling, yammerin' kind, that's why. How much you want to bet that the shadowy group running it to pressure Rep. Joe Donnelly to vote for the retroactive immunity version are being funded with Defense Department funds illegally? Being very wishy-washy, dumbo Joe might actually cave-in, hence the other reason they're running it here. Sorry, the threat is being exaggerated, but we're used to that since the president and the GOP tried to cry wolf every time they were in-trouble...just like now.

Hoosiers: they spook easily like most "oogah-boogah" people descended from lynch mobs, but that doesn't mean everyone here was raised by a wild-pack of baptists...

One would think the primaries are already here, but these silly-ass ads are all about making sure there are no real revelations about the crimes of the White House, Congress, and the telecoms, and how much they spied on all of us illegally. They knew it was illegal, and they're lying that we need this stupid legislation with its retroactive immunity amendments for the telecommunications companies--they are unrelated issues. Get a warrant, it's that simple. If it isn't, resign from office.

We might even be able to add a new crime into our lexicon: white collar crime, committed under the color of government authority using data-mining techniques which are also illegal. Why are some Americans so chicken-shit? Come visit Indiana sometime, and you'll find out: poor education, willful ignorance, lazy conformity, religious fanaticism, and your basic poverty and lack of culture. The usual.

Michiana/Indiana's 2nd District: This area is a mixed-bag, and if I was to say the group of people that I like the most here, it would be the Black people. There are also a few good-ol'-boys who live around here who have hearts of gold, they're very tolerant of differences in others. There are farmers around here who really are wonderful people. The Catholic community here is the mixed-bag, because--with the obvious exceptions--they're not especially tolerant, and frequently very well-off.

Employers around here aren't any better or worse than anywhere else in America--take from that what you will. Wanton, senseless bigotry is prevalent, in a town where Notre Dame students rioted against the Klan around eighty-years-ago. This was once a stop-over on the underground railroad. My father discovered a system of tunnels on construction site dig once that was part of that network. Indiana is a mixed-bag.

Ed.-The shadowy group that ran the ads are called "The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies," of which Joe Lieberman is a founder. Newt Gingrich is alleged to be a founder as well. Their site is cagey on these matters: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/about_FDD/about_FDD_list.htm?attrib_id=7615

August 16th, 1977: The Day Elvis Died

South Bend, Indiana--It was a really hot day that day. We were all outside playing, dreading the return to school that month. The last year had been extremely violent, especially just walking to Edison grade school. The sky had a real amber-hue to it, and my brother and I were outside in our front-yard playing. I was nine, and he was seven.

We were cute kids, but our neighborhood was an unusually troubled one. Next-door, there lived a woman who was literally insane, a drug-addict (cocaine and pills), a child-abuser, an alcoholic, and she was fucking someone in the prosecutor's office, so when she threw a lawn boulder through one of our living-room windows, there was no recourse whatsoever.

The story of this woman will have to wait for another time, it's so baroque. On that same day in a part of London, the Sex Pistols' guitarist Steve Jones was doing his guitar-parts for "Never Mind the Bollocks," when one of the engineers in the studio stopped-in and told him that Elvis had died (he didn't care). My mother saw Elvis at Notre Dame University's Joyce ACC, where Frank Zappa and everyone else played, on that last tour. She loved it.

Did I say it was hot that fateful day in August of 1977? It was, it really was. We'd already been to the Museum of Natural History in Chicago to see the full-on King Tut exhibit--a once in a lifetime affair--and Star Wars was coming. Punk was already here at CBGB's (good riddance!)and Max's Kansas City (wish it was still around and relevant), but hardly anyone knew what it was in Northern Indiana at that time, nor cared.

It was the salad days of the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, Styx (yeccch!), Supertramp (double-yechhh!), Billy Joel, Alan Parsons Project, Steely Dan (back again, still good!), Carol King, Queen, Pink Floyd, James Taylor, Alice Cooper, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, and even Frank Zappa...it was another time altogether from today, but familiar in some ways. Elvis just seemed out-of-place by 1977. It was actually hard to understand his place anymore, and I guess he felt the same. In retrospect, it was a decade literally teeming with cultural innovations, a flipside to today where there are virtually none.

It's funny, but most of the music my brother and I listened to as kids were my mom's old 45s. They were great, and in 1977, music was expensive and scarce compared to now. Obviously, there was no internet, no world wide web. People kinda still lived in a regional sense, in a kind of cultural isolation, and you might never even hear of a cultural movement until it had been over for at least seven years. We had time to let our imaginations run wild, we didn't have to be told what to see, hear, or even think. It was cool. In that sense, we lived in an Edenic paradise that children in the modern world may never experience again (unless order breaks-down as I expect it to, then it might), and our minds were allowed to roam free as a child's should--at least outside of school.

But what was so special about our experiences that day? The crazy, stupid rednecks who lived diagonally to our house at Whitehall Drive: They were the first to have a VCR, but needed to shave their knuckles so as not to alarm us city folks. The father had the personality of a potato chip and worked in a paint-factory. Both parents left guns lying around in their bedroom, including a .44 revolver, which was pointed at me by the son (the youngest). They all definitely looked like inbreeders and could barely talk, let alone read very well, and they worshiped Elvis as a god. I think they were from Kentucky, which was unsurprising, and had a kitsch museum that they called home.

The rednecks had entire photo albums the factory dog father had made, all from before Elvis went into the Army until the seventies. Some were faded-Polaroids, some were from negatives, but most were in color, and most were pretty impressive. I should say here that I love Elvis's earliest recordings with Sam Phillips and the Sun Records label, as well as his early-singles with RCA ("Hound Dog" is still one of the heaviest rock songs ever).

Hey, I even love "Suspicious Minds," a later single from the "fallow years." Never, ever, recite the lyrics to this song to a schizophrenic. Read the lyrics, and you'll know why. Oddly, they could easily describe the King's life at that time, as well as life in America in 1969-70. Or now.

What happened that day? We're sitting outside on the edge of our lawn, right up on the curb. Broken-glass is all over the street in-front our house from Coke (TM) bottles, because we used to break them all the time there. We also used to have water and snowball/iceball fights a lot, but that's for another time, heh-heh. What did we hear that day?

This is what we heard: wailing and screeching--much like that of Muslim or Sicilian women at a funeral--that began emanating from the redneck house. It was really loud, then--all of a sudden, the fat brunette daughter came running-out screaming, and so did the other kids. I never saw the parents' reactions to the death of Elvis, but there wasn't much activity over there for awhile, it was really quiet. I assumed they were all in-mourning. We laughed really hard at the kids as they came outside squealing, it was pretty funny and ridiculous. Again, keep-in-mind that we loved Elvis too.

The reactions were similar throughout the USA that week, it was bizarre, and thus, the Cult of the Dead Elvis was born. Ever since then, I have wished they would all shut-up. For that reason alone, I wish he was alive, and his death at 42 was certainly untimely. If you want a real headstone for rock's demise, one could argue it was the day Elvis died, with some minor-footnotes of relevance afterward.

As a genuine cultural movement, created and played-by ordinary people for other ordinary people, rock has been dead in America ever since. The pockets are all that have ever mattered, not the mainstream. Rock was barely alive then. I miss Elvis. I wish he hadn't died in the state that he was in (Tennessee). "Train arrived, sixteen coaches long, ...Well, that long black train take my baby and gone." My baby's gone. The real Elvis is the lonely Elvis, the ponderous young man who yearned for a better life. How many whites listened to "Worried Man Blues"--the genesis of "Mystery Train"--in those days? It takes a worried man to sing a worried song.

I wish he'd made more of the 68' comeback, fired "the Memphis Mafia," Colonel Parker (really Mephistopheles to Elvis's Faust), and the idiot doctor who was prescribing him those pills that killed him. But that's not how things worked-out, and it's sad. What's sadder is that Elvis proved the American Dream is a lie, that fame is a hell of being constantly bothered, ripped-off, and misunderstood, and that all those rednecks are dreaming of something that never existed for more than a few-years.

Rockabilly rode a wave of Cold War fears, angst, and sexual-repression. It made a struggling redneck trucker a star, and it also ruined his life. On that hot August day--30-years-ago--we had a good laugh at the expense of the neighborhood rednecks--we loved Elvis too, but they made it into something more than it all was: a religion, and that's what it soon became, and what the Cult of the Dead Elvis still is today. Rock is a pathetic outgrowth of the American Dream, and it's a lie. Elvis, RIP (if you can).

At least my brother and I had a good laugh that day. We wouldn't be laughing the next year--in November--when Jonestown hit.