Living (and Lovin') in New York City

photo by tgw, "Her Dancing on Her Toes" 2006

"What's love got to do with it?"
I have someone in love with me. It's a very private love. Sometimes I sit for hours trying to know what to do with it--IT being LOVE. Like I don't know how to handle it, though when I think about it, I luv the idea of it being directed toward me.

My second wife asked me right before she divorced me why I had never told her I loved her. At that moment, I could not recall anytime she had ever told me she loved me either, though turnabout wasn't fair play in this case. The closest we ever got to love, and I say this with much deep investigation, was during sex. But our sex wasn't love. Here again, I don't remember her saying she loved me during sex or after sex nor do I remember me saying I loved her during sex or after sex. What we did say was all sexual stuff, like "oh yeah! god-damn right, yesss, oh Jesus you're such good...." If that's love then OK I've had lots of love from lots of different women. Except my thinking keeps challenging me: "You've had sex with women you didn't love, right?" "Right." "If it was good sex, same as if she'd a been your wife, did that mean you guys were 'in love' at the hottest moment during the act?" "Why's it called an act?" And maybe that's the key to it in terms of sex. Sex is simply an act. A ceremony.

Sex is like dancing with a woman. The dance should culminate in sex. The sex dance is the dance that leads to love--the goal of the sex dance being copulation; the goal of copulation being procreation; the goal of procreation to have children, to raise them as a mother and father. "What's love got to do with it?"

Is mating LOVE? We're supposed to "be in love" before we marry aren't we? Marriage is the legalization of our natural need to mate to have children (or even if you're gay or Lesbian--without sex is there love?)--marriages should last at least 9 months. But we are mammals. Some mammals don't mate; the champion male of the tribe, pride, pack, whatever, gets to bang the females of his choice from his harem. Some humans see polygamy as the highest form of love a champion male can have for women in general, especially the women of his pride. Even there, if a polygamist male can't get it up, then can all those wives be happy living on "love" or would ringers have to be called in to satisfy the pride of women needing to be sexually serviced by a champion male? It's complicated; yet it should be simple. Chiefs around the world have always been allowed to have as many wives as they needed.

Like where did LOVE come from? Tina Turner singing about "What's love got to do with it?" called love a "second-hand emotion." Does that mean if the introductory sex was good, then came love? Tina claimed sex was terrible with Ike. Or did she? I always feel when I hear her sing "What's Love Got to Do With It?" that she is singing about her own feelings, though I know she didn't write the song, though surely it was written for her. Marvin Gaye believed sex was healing; therefore, sex is love.

The sex is all that I now remember in terms of affections I had for my second wife, the young one. In recalling sex with her is when I have a feeling of loneliness for her--you know, when I begin to miss her and think about what if we'd stayed together--guilt tripping old Herr Doktor would call it.

I was always able to get it up for her, if that has anything to do with it. Some of the best sex I ever had was with her: like one time in particular in New Orleans on a steamy summer's afternoon when I went into the bathroom while she was taking a shower and when she came out of the shower I was naked and with a towel and she stepped into the towel and I began to dry her off, kissing after I had dried, all down her luscious body, and she did have a wonderfully rounded young smooth untarnished body, and I pulled her back with me, sat my ass down on the toilet, pointed my burning spear skyhigh, and pulled her down on top of it with a "loving" plunge, and I will never forget that act and how well we grooved on it for over an hour in that bathroom. Everything just clicked. Even to the point of "cumming together," where sex stories usually dive off into fantasy (tall tales, fish stories), but we really did gush-spasm at the same time, her released liquid love gushing around my spurting madly inside her love. Absolutely perfect spontaneous sex with an absolutely perfect spontaneous conclusion.

I can rationalize that pleasurable event as a love event. I had to love that woman to fuck her that good; and she had to love me to fuck me that good. By remembering this story and the woman who participated in the story with me, I now maybe see that event, yes, as a love event. At that moment I am supposing we mutually needed sex and we mutually achieved satisfaction and as such we were sharing our LOVE for each other. So love has its roots in sex. "Oh, I love you, baby, especially after that!"

Sounds corny now. To believe that, then, yes, good sex is LOVE. But then, that leaves me vulnerable to the philosophical question, does that mean I couldn't have ever loved my mother because I never got to have sex with her?

And I stutter step my way into the question of did I love my mother?

No, I don't remember ever loving my mother. She wasn't the loving type. She hugged me when I came to her crying like a baby. She was gentle with me in, I suppose, a loving way when I was a baby and for a few years thereafter. She wasn't a bad mother. I grew up wonderfully free as a bird and in that sense I thank both my parents for at least leaving me to my own devices, which led to my from about 12 on living on my own, isolated from my parents by having a room of my own (like Virginia Woolf's "room of her own"), a room in which while I was in it I was allowed to keep my door closed--and my parents respected closed doors and taught me to do the same.

I never saw my mother naked. I've seen her in her underwear, but I never was turned on by seeing any naked aspect of my mother, like checking out her legs, or when she exercised on the living room carpet and her dress was up around her waist getting an erection looking at her pantied hips and big round ass. Those moments didn't cause me quiverings in my loins and writing about her like that now doesn't either. I do remember as a little boy getting an erection and running in and showing it to my mother but her reaction to that as cold, chiding, and certainly my erection was not caused by my "wanting to have sex" with her, though Freud might disagree with me on that one.

I have known dudes back when I was growing up and curious about things who obsessed over their mothers. One kid one time showed me some Polaroid naked pictures of his mother his father had taken of her and he had found while rummaging through his parents's bedroom closet (kids do that, you know). He asked me if I thought his mother was as hot as he did. I was too embarrassed to look at those pictures.

One friend of mine had a very hot mom. She looked like Jane Russell, the movie actress who was a hot property at the time thanks to Howard Hughes making the movie "Outlaw," in which Miss Russell's 42DD bosom was well exposed and exhibited, especially in one scene where she's slinking around in a very tight and revealing dress and stretching back to allow those breasts to sail high up into the lusting eyes of all the ogling men and boys fantasizing about ripping her blouse open and getting very oral with her. And this kid told me he peeped through the keyhole of his parents's bathroom and watched his mother shower--and he told me how big her breasts looked naked and how she had a huge black patch of hair covering her yass-yass-yass. That kid later found out he was adopted and one afternoon they hauled him off to the psycho ward after he tried to rape his adopted mother who he'd thought all along was his real mother. Later at his trial he admitted he hated this woman so much now that he wanted to kill her every time he saw her.

Father love! Forget father love. My mother used to tease my father by telling me when I was a curtain-climber to "go give daddy a kiss on the mouth," to which my father would back off and say, "Oh no, men don't kiss...men don't kiss." My father, I guarantee, never ever told me he loved me. Nor did I ever feel "love" for my father. D.H. Lawrence tried to explain "man-to-man" love in a couple of his books--men wrestling naked--men hugging each other; slapping each other on the butt; kissing! No, I never had those feelings for any male and certainly never for my father.

When I was a little brat, I got beat quite a bit. It was normal in those ancient days for parents to not spoil their children by "sparing the rod." "Spare the rod, spoil the child" was a phrase I heard quite a bit. Not only was this spare the rod philosophy in my home life but I faced it at school, too. These were the days in public school education that teachers had arsenals of custom-made paddles (boards that were whittled down into paddles, as in the paddlewheels on steamboats, some with holes drilled in them--to lighten the pain, they claimed, though when you got whacked with one of those paddles you realized the holes were in that paddle to eliminate any chance that a cushion of air getting between the paddle and your ass and thus softening the blow) which they applied to boys's asses with fierce pride in their "whipping" abilities. I suppose girls got "whipped," too, though I don't remember any being in line with me the many times I waited in that line of boys for my 20 licks. I do have etched upon my mind when I was 11 my girlfriend, she was 10, being beaten with a belt by her dad when he caught us in a very uncompromising situation on a bed in a back room of his house. I can still hear this girl's screams and the blows of his cruel belt on that so beautiful young woman's pure body--and she was Ingres-beautiful at 10--god, she was a pretty girl. I didn't know what love was then for sure but I knew what sex was. It's funny, at that age, every time that young lady and I were around each other we found a way to get off by ourselves to have sex, which is what is was even though it was so innocent and natural and sweet and tender. She's the first girl I ever remember kissing with hunger! Now, I suppose that kissing was my way of telling her I loved her.

I was beaten quite a lot in grade school. I still remember the principal who beat me the most. I remember his name, H.R. Reed. He was a big dude, too, 6-foot-3, a giant to a little kid. He was a methodical whacker. He hit your ass systematically the same every time, steady blows, usually 20 all together right on the dot.

I got into trouble because not only was I a cute little whitey kid but I had a mischievous gleam in my eye and an impish way of deportment. I wasn't openly mischievous like Bart Simpson; no, I was more the off-stage-type mischievous kid. Like one of my favorite pranks since I was a master printer by the time I was 5 thanks to my father's love of penmanship was changing the teacher's name on the blackboard when I'd first enter a new class. You remember how your teachers printed their names on the blackboard? Mrs. Baldridge. I changed her name to Mrs. Bald Ridge. Mr. Sims became Mr. Simple. Mrs. Schott became Mrs. Schnott. Always the kids noticed these subtle changes to those names before the teacher ever did. Sometimes the names would stay wrong for days before the teacher would erase them. I finally got caught by a young teacher I eventually got the hots for--"puppy love" the adults called it, Miss McMillan. I changed her name to Miss McHubba Hubba, "hubba hubba" being an adult phrase (it started with the Zoot-suit cats who followed Cab Calloway from the 30s through WWII) that meant a girl was a hot mamma--like a man would shout at a good-looking babe, "Hubba Hubba!" Putting words to the proverbial wolf whistle!

The first time I changed her name, Miss McMillan caught it. She laughed, got up, went over and erased Miss McHubba Hubba and rewrote it correctly. I was scared shitless for a brief minute, my face turning blazing red (a White folks vulnerability--they can't hide their emotions), my ears red and tingling. But then she carried on with class and I forgot about it. When the bell rang, she dismissed the class with the exception of, "Mr. Wolfe, I'd like to see you a minute before you go to your next class."

So, yep, I am still very confused about LOVE and what it is.

My friends who are married faithfully call their wives and tell them they love them. And most of my friends have very successful marriages--at least on the surface. They all married late in life. My first marriage I was a very stupid 23 years old; my second marriage I was 26, but she was 18, 15 when I met her, 16 when I started "desiring" her, and 17 when we finally did the double-back beast and just 18 when the marriage took place.

She's the one who said I never told her I loved her. At the divorce proceedings, she told the judge that I seemed to "love" every other woman except her. The judge looked at me and said, "How could you treat this beautiful young woman like that?" I replied, "But judge, you weren't married to her for ten years!"

Now I know, I never told her I loved her because I didn't love her. That's pretty damn simple, but it wasn't that simple to explain back in those days.

I once wrote a letter to a woman I was absolutely madly nuts over in which I just wrote over and over "I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you." She's the first woman I ever saw that it was "love" at first sight. Except, here again sex has its foot in the door. I fell for her because her persona was a "sex fantasy" persona I'd obviously kept alive in my subconscious. I mean the first time I saw her--hell, not only was she gorgeous in the face, but she was classy, wearing denim overalls, a man's white shirt, and a headrag--her hair was bleached totally gold--and her voice was full of lust and intelligence and offering chances.

She replied to my love letter by saying she truly respected my love and she did feel a love back for me but she was happily married (to my best friend), and you know the rest.

Then came another woman, later after my best friend's wife, a bass player's wife, out West, while I was married to #2. The first time I knew I "loved" her was when I went with my wife to the hospital to see her and her husband's newborn baby. I looked at her in that hospital bed and I couldn't take my eyes off her--and she gave me her eyes back, too--we stared at each other--and those stares eventually became sneaking off and kissing and making each other so hot and pressing into each other--and, yes, I NOW remember, one time, out back of this restaurant where we had gone with our spouses to have dinner--I did, I told her I loved her. Holy Christ, I had forgotten. I have told a woman I loved her...and maybe that was love since we never had sex. Except I remember her sexually, too. I first remember her sexually. Then I remember kissing her. That was passion. And I remember feeling her breasts and tonguing her and pushing my loins deep into hers--and there was a heat like I'd never before felt coming from her circle of passion, her loins, her pushing-into-mine pelvic--and that was sex wasn't it, but, dammit, I think I really did love this woman. But I'm not for sure. Only in reminiscence am I turning this passion and desire we had for each other into love.

But now, I have a woman who says she loves me! This is a woman.... I was going to say I had never had sexual desires for, but that's not really the case. Except when I first saw her, it wasn't for sexual reasons I fell for her. It was her face, her look, her eyes, deep gorgeously dark eyes. It was also her forceful intelligence. She was so smart and that smartness made her more beautiful than she already was. A unique beauty. Then I noticed her flawless skin. Jesus what skin. Then I noticed her.... OK, OK, I did have sexual feelings for her, she is a gorgeous well-built woman, but, dammit, I think what I really feel for her may be love--the only "love" I know from knowing it from deep within me. My natural love? My instinctual love?

One thing about this love--sex has no role in it--except after she sends me a wonderful expression of love, Platonic love, highly romantic love, I do begin to tingle with excitement. I thrill at the thought that so wonderful a woman says she loves me. Looking at this picture I have of her and thinking about how, "Wow, that gorgeous woman really loves ME!," OK, it does sometimes turn sexual--I suddenly realize that after looking at her and thinking about her loving me I do have an erection.

Here I hang. Hung up just because a truly good friend says she loves me. I'm responding coolly. She knows from long ago that I'm putty in her hands, but is it love?

You see what a screwed up world we humans have "created."

thelonesomegrowlingwolf (waxingsentimentally)
for The Daily Growler

The Woman's Point of View
The Wolf Man is a very naive boy. Germaine Greer would have scratched his eyes out when she was a feminist bitch. His statements are so childishly devoted to his master Freud and his MASTERY of women. Kate Millett would have backed her automobile over his lame Freudian excuses for claiming he doesn't know what love is. I'm glad I'm not his lover.

He is a rather handsome devil in a animalistic sort of way. That is as long as he doesn't open his mouth. His last bar fight ended in him getting all his teeth knocked out. He excuses this on stage by telling the story of one of his heroes, Percy Mayfield, an early r and b singer/songwriter/bandleader, who was in a terrible car wreck that left his face a Frankensteinish mess. Unlike the Elephant Man (remember when Michael Jackson tried to buy the Elephant Man's bones?) and Michael Jackson, Percy refused to hide his deformity under a mask and his career tanked as a result. So Wolfie claims he, too, was in an accident where his face was smashed into an iron beam. Even with a Phantom of the Opera face, he's still attractive to women. Why even I have "desired" him at one time.

But, Jesus, after reading his love diatribe, I now feel sorry in a motherly way for his lost and lonesome self-caged situation.

Sex isn't love. Good sex should be a result of a good LOVE affair and not vice versa. Most women date guys and even if they half-ass like them, they usually figure around the third date at the end of the evening, if there was fun to be had and happiness pursued then probably they're going to end up in bed with the dude. I mean we women get horny, too, but in a different way than men crudely get horny. However, being horny and having sex I've never ever related to love. Lovemaking, OK, but LOVE, no.

It's natural for men to get horny when they see a female they are lured toward due to some sexual signs men think they understand. I overheard a guy talking to a colleague one time and saying he knew if a woman came to his desk and bent over in such a way he could take in her most revealing cleavage for a goodly amount of time it was a sign she liked him and was offering herself to him. Oh, poor men. They are so hopeful. Did men ever think that women showed cleavage just to air their breasts out. Bras get very hot and stiffling and uncomfortable. Plus, as a man told me one time, breasts smell like burnt rubber sometimes when they are released from the bindings of a bra, a male invention surely.

And faking it. It's called the sex act because for some women it is acting. Marilyn Monroe, the masturbational object for how many millions of men--still to this day?, told her closest friend that though she had fucked over hundreds of different men in her day, she had never had an orgasm. Now I have had an orgasm, so I know women can have orgasms, but for most women, I dare say, they are few and far between.

Have I ever been in love? Yes. Was it sex? No. Love is the reason for sex. To a woman, having sex is simply an action they must endure if they are serious at wanting to be married, mothers, successful wives. Those women who have no desires to get married and have children have sex for pleasure only--and, yes, sex can be pleasurable to a woman. Most times, though, boys, it's not. It's a chore. That's why we maybe have to be a little tipsy or in very swoony moods, moony moods, moods when our sexual horniness might be interpreted as LOVE.

I love to dance. But dancing to me is not sex. It's a coordinated effort by a man and woman to work together in rhythmic union to accomplish a completion together. If a night of exhaustive dncing leads to sex, OK, but if it leads to love, that's grander still.

True love is a willing of two people to be two together. If it works, if love is shared, then comes the good sex.

Freud didn't know shit about women. Most men don't.

I recently dated a man who asked me every time before we screwed if I were on "the rag" or not. I screwed him because he was a good "old country" screw, as we women sometimes designate men we'll screw but wouldn't marry or have kids by for all the money in the world, but what a dumb lumox.

Love must come from your family. As a child is where you learn love. Girls feel love before they feel sex.

The first time I saw a penis, I laughed at it. Over the years, however, I'll be honest, there are some penises I find terribly attractive--easy to make LOVE to.

franny&zoe,thedailygrowlertwoheadedgirlreporter
for The Daily Growler

“Because of our social circumstances, male and female are really two cultures and their life experiences are utterly different” Kate Millett

Growling on a Sunday in the Metropolis

I'm in a New Development
Politics is now beneath me. After a long ardent argument with a bunch of my erudite friends, I have decided politics is so miasmic and foul I'd best steer clear of it.

My erudite friends assure me that President Obama knows what he's doing; that he is a master at the art of compromise; that they can't help it if he is in Reagan's arms in terms of economics and Lincoln's arms in terms of union and unification. They guarantee me he did not make a deal with the Clintons, one of these friends saying I was also wrong to say the Slick One was down south playing the race card at one time when campaigning for his wife after Obama started whipping her there. They said I didn't know enough about politics to understand what's going on in terms of President Obama's weaknesses. One of my beloved erudite friends said the problem with Obama was that he is considered wimpy on homeland security and also in some circles he's considered against Law & Order (and I have to admit, Law & Order is lifting its ugly head again, yes it is--here in NYC the NYPD is putting thousands of cameras all over Manhattan Island from the Battery Tunnel all the way up to Washington Heights and the Police Commissioner is making laws up as he goes about making us safe for democracy). They went on to say he had to apologize to the white cop because as it turned out, Skipper Gates and his chauffeur were spotted by a passing motorist, a woman, who went to a filling station and called the Cambridge cops. Plus, my friend continued, this white cop trick-bagged Skipper into coming out of his house before arresting him. He said if Skipper had of stood his ground inside his house that the cop had no authority to arrest him. He said Obama jumped the gun in backing his old pal Skipper Gates against the police and that now the police would turn on Obama, demand an apology from him, and then make him look like a horse's ass.

I continued trying to disagree with these friends, but I promised them I would shove my political comments into the sidebin for the moment, though I still maintain I'm right, within a certain continuum, in my political observations. Plus, I liked this dude Austin Highchew's (don't call him Highchair or he'll turn on you--he'll snob you into a snail) idea that Obama is using his speeches as shields--guarding off criticism and then revamping his comments. I also have to remain curious as to why President Obama didn't consult Hilary on this healthcare plan business. I argued, too, that Obama's health-insurance-industry's-approved healthcare plan is a disastrous plan. Making every one who has no health insurance buy it--and from the same sons of bitches who have wrecked the system--I mean, come on, betting their money on people dying rather than living! How fucking antihuman is that? Mandatory health insurance! That's the best Obama and his whiz kid advisors could come up with--"We already have a system in place!" Obama argues, and I growl back, "But, that system isn't working; it's a failure; why you putting We the People's money in a failed system that will CONTINUE to fail!" And it's a blessed boondoggle for the HMOs, the insurance giants, and even for doctors!--it gives these highway robbers total control over the market now--and they'll raise their prices and the uninsured will be forced to buy insurance at higher costs than before and when they don't buy it their government will slap a tax penalty on them come April 15th! I mean how mean is such a healthcare plan, and from a Black man who knows god-damn good and well the only plan that will save We the People is the single-payor plan--otherwise, if you pump billions of dollars into a failed system--well, folks, you figure it out! Economic disaster. [Please keep in mind, that I believe we are in a State of Chaos right now--the old "tried and proven ways" don't work in Chaos--you need to reverse things, you see--that's the change we need, we need to reverse every fucking thing, including the god-damn money-grubbing Department of Defense! Reverse the War on Drugs! Reverse the two Wars based on 1 BIG LIE and a hundred thousand little lies--the BIG LIE being 9/11. (note The Existentialist Cowboy, a fellow Texan, currently is running an essay on 9/11 and how Bush lied about it--click on the Cowboy's link over on the right of the page to read it.]

But that's it; I'm through with politics. I leave Obama to figure the White Man out before it's too late and his administration is down the drain before he's even finished a year in office. The Repugs are trying their little racists best to trap "the coon up a tree"--and if you don't think idiots like Jeff Sessions and that ilk don't think and even talk like that coon up a tree analogy then get in line, you a stupid Amurican! Hang with these birds long enough and they'll let loose a coon joke, that I guarantee, one like: "You see our sheriff up here in Decatur pulled a couple'a black boys over on Highway 32 for driving like maybe they'd been hittin' the corn likker those boys love a little too heavy. He knew these boys. He'd caught 'em stealin' chickens, shit like that, nothing to waste a couple of county bullets on. So when the sheriff got up to the driver's side of their pickup, he flashed his light in on 'em and he seen Willie Stump, who he recognized, was drivin', and then he spotted Willie's brother Moses sittin' over on the passenger side, but there was a boy sittin' between the Slump Brothers the sheriff didn't recognize...." If you're White and from the South, you may know how that joke ends. And you bet that kind of joke is told daily around the District of Corruption--in both parties, too.

I can't imagine what Obama faces as a Black man in the White Man's House! A Black man as president has to be scared quite a bit and nervous all the time. I mean he must be constantly worried about his wife and kids, though he can't show any fear--he must stand tall against the White Man, like King did, like Malcolm X did--even like JFK did, and I don't say many nice things about JFK, except, I was there during Kennedy's first run for president and he had the Black vote solidly behind him; they saw hope in his being elected. We young Whites expected miracles out of this bird, too, but, sorry, progress in this country means the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and it always ends up that way. That's the Milton Friedman, University of Chicago, and the Chicago Boys way of stimulating the economy--do away with all welfare (except corporate welfare of course)--do away with things like free healthcare or like in Japan where they based their thriving economy on a total welfare state. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps! That's the Neo-Con way. That's the way of the New World Order. That was Reagan's way; it was Pinochet's way; it became Margaret Thatcher's way.

But don't listen to me; according to my erudite friends, I'm incapable of observing and commenting on politics. Fuck my erudite friends. I know I'm right; remember, I'm conceited.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

The Daily Growler "Insights" Edition

"His intentions were honorable"
We of The Daily Growler observe:
President Obama is trapped in the aura of his speeches.

Think of it as President Obama using his speeches as shields.

Behind the scenes, it looks like to me, is where President Obama is weak and maybe even helpless. These are the "secret" places where all the many shenanigans are being pulled in mechanical motions based on the rules and regulations of that back-room, private-club mentality, these places (K Street, in the think tanks, in the many foundations, the various old boys (white boys) clubs, in Billy Towson's Pharma healthcare lobbying business, in the backrooms of the Federal Reserve, in the advisory committee meetings) where all the promissory notes, IOUs, pay-offs, buyouts, bailouts, campaign finance deals, and the "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" offers are passed around. This ilk of backroom Power Elite players are always in the District of Corruption; they are always in town for these behind-the-scenes rituals...

Like, Obama's administration sticking to Bush's executive privilege scam and keeping all the executive powers they can that this 2-time illegally elected president put into place. For instance, they are not releasing information on who from the healthcare (making profits off disease--profits made by what's called "dumping the sick") industry has been to the White (Man's) House and conferred with President Obama (same as Bush refused to say who was at that oil big shots meeting with Unka Dick, the untamed Neo-Con, affair). In Obama's press conference he lamely excused this "secrecy" as "Well you guys were here taking pictures, so you saw who was here"--then later he said he had released a letter telling who SOME of the big shots were who were there. Don't worry, there were no single-payer advocates there, only healthcare-for-profit dudes, one meeting with Obama 13 times! Keep in mind, too, that Max "Backwards Thinking," Backus, Obama's healthcare advisor and head of the special committee looking into national healthcare, is the largest receiver of contributions from the healthcare-for-profit industry and big Pharmas in Congress (remember, he's from Montana, where most of the land that was stolen from the Native Americans of the region is being grabbed up cheap by Power Elitists like T. Boone "Nat'ral Gas" Pickens, Ted "The Carpenter" Turner (remember when this hick colorized all our old black and white movies?), and celebrity rich, like David Letterman, etc.; one billionaire from Italy bought a whole huge mountain outside of Billings in order to build an outrageously gaudy, conspicuously ostentatious "mansion" all over the top of it, with helicopter pads where his Euro Trash friends can whirlybird in and out for his fabulous trendy parties and wild, wild, La dolce vita weekends--partying hearty on sacred lands that used to belong to Native Americans who are now serving time for not bowing down to the Great White Father's Godly demands--that they either went on these Montana "Injun/Redskin Devils" reservations or they were massacred by the U.S. Calvary--except for the great American general George W. Custer--"Holy Jesus, look at all those fucking Indians!"). By the way, since Max, being a member of Congress, gets free, all-expenses paid healthcare courtesy We the People; that shows these goons are all for socialized medicine as long as it's them that's getting it.

These behind-the-scenes political players are always in Washington, District of Corruption. They stay behind while the President and his "administrators" are out going around the world attending special banquets and then doing photo ops with the jive heads of whatever state or nation or political bailiwick they're in. All this fol de rol followed by one of those beautiful and promising speeches (Joe Biden, our Yahoo-type VP, is still in the Republic of Georgia (from whence came Joe Stalin), kissing the Georgians's ass right under the bald-face nosy eyes of old former KGB goon, Putin in Russia. Why is Joe in Georgia? The answer: OIL, OIL, OIL)(And Hilary was in India the other day carrying out G.W. Bush's trading India nuclear-power-plant building for mangoes! Yep. Hillbilly Hilary, in the name of President Obama, is going right ahead with Bush's plans to give India the very latest in nuclear-power-plant technologies. And you ask why--because we are running out of mangoes? The answer: Hilary Clinton went to India to seal this deal because this deal means 20 billion dollars to both GE and Westinghouse, both nuke plant builders (also warmongers because they build hi-tech-hi-cost military equipment like rockets, missiles, nuclear reactors on submarines), sleazebag corporations who have the nerve to currently be appealing to the Indian Congress to give them impunity should one of these several nuke plants ever blow up and kill a couple'a billion Indians (nobody will miss a billion or so Indians is the Power Elite's way of considering this)(Isn't it ironic how we currently in this country have a ban on building new nuke plants; yet it's OK for India--and Hilary was very proud of this deal in her SPEECH where she said the US was thrilled to be bringing much needed energy power to the poor beastly woggies! Yet, I believe when Hilary was a senator she voiced her opinion she was against building new nuclear power plants in this country--yet, they're alright for India. Of course, if you should ever get to see Bill and Hill's stock portfolio (did you notice no member of Congress got foreclosed on or lost their fortunes in the stock market) you'd see it's jammed full of HMO stocks, and GE and Westinghouse stocks, and Martin-Marietta, and Pfizer, and, of course, Exxon-Mobil--oh, but I forgot, poor Hilary claims she went broke running for president).

Remember how Union Carbide treated the low-life woggies when their safely-American-corporate-built chemical plant blew sky high in Bopol--they never suffered any criminal charges for that; in fact, did they even pay anything to any of those poor Bopolians? Since the incident, like so many American corporations do when they get in trouble, Union Carbide changed their name and now they are spotless as the unpissed-upon driven snow).

And, hey, folks, we get mangoes from India in return. The best mangoes in the world are grown within the tropical belts of North and South America, especially on islands like Jamaica (noted for their Julies and Bombays) and the Domincan Republic--but, oh no, we have to trade India nuclear secrets to get the mangoes we want. I want to know, who the hell eats that many mangoes in this country! That's how fucking stupid all this shit is.

--It was just (today) announced that Obama's healthcare bill is tabled until the fall. His own party determined this. This is a big defeat for our president. Poor Obama. His speeches are beautiful but they are hollow and full of promises he now realizes he cannot bring to pass.

Obama's strategy was one of bringing his heroes, Lincoln and Reagan, together into a coalition-unity party, a middle-of-the-road coalition of Dumbos and Repugnicans. Lincoln's great speech-making abilities and Reagan's voodoo economic policies kept intact in a trade-off for a new healthcare system. It backfired on Hillbilly Hilary when she tried it under her hubby and it's backfiring on Obama for championing that same old national healthcare. If politics were logical, shouldn't Hilary be the national healthcare advisor? Why Sec'y of State?

-- Like did anyone realize that Obama and the Dumbos have made Uncle Joe LIEberman a major player in Homeland Security?

--There's another back-room shenanigan that I am drawn to believing more and more each day. I think this shenanigan took place during the seemingly interminable presidential election campaigning. As you may not remember, Obama rushed right out and grabbed the spotlight with his brilliant speeches in Iowa--and from right there in the Iowa caucus on he started beating Hillbilly Hill, even though, as Hillbilly and her husband kept insisting, Hilary was winning more states and it looked like to her troop of hangers on that she would do better against the Repugs than a Southside Chicago wet-behind-the-ears senator who was BLACK would. Remember Slick Willie down south trying to play the race card for Hill?

Obama was a winner because of his charisma. Obama was out-slicking the original Slick One. Why Brother Obama was way more charming to the Black and White ladies than Billy Jeff Clinton had been! And Obama does have quite a charismatic presence: he's tall, he's loose, he's friendly, he's a glad-hander, he's mild-mannered, he's certainly good looking, boyishly good looking, just what most women no matter their ages dream of having as their own boy toys, fantasizing about affairs with those charismatic charmers who have a true POWER whether its effective or not!

When Obama comes in a room, he gets immediate attention and favorable respect. And Obama utilizes this perhaps a bit too much, to a point where when it fails to work, he's frustrated, helpless, which means he gets on Air Force One and heads out to make another brilliant speech somewhere. I'm being a bit sarcastic, but, hell, I'm pissed off. This man had a chance to change the world; literally; and he's wimped out, as far as I'm concerned.

And, I think I know why he's wimped out. I don't think it has anything to do with his intentions. His intentions were honorable and maybe they still are, but I don't think he can realize his intentions given the back-room situation in the District of Corruption. Again, I sarcastically emphasize, all advertisements are lies, whether they are advertisements in the commercial press or on teevee or whether they are self-advertisements in beautiful speeches. Since all advertisements are lies, surely then the people who create the advertisements are liars, deluxe liars, as are the people who contract the advertisements to be made! Ah, hell, why am I beating around the Bushes with this advertisement analogy? The truth is, all politicians are dishonest; it's just the nature of the job, and that's what being president of the United States really is, just a job.

--Robert Gates--and I still can't believe Obama kept this Neo-Con nightmare general as his DoD head--G.W. Bush's main man--and this army fool is now saying he needs 21,000 more troops (isn't it strange to just ask for 21,000?--why not 25,000, or 30,500? Ask Colon's Pal, that's his expertise, fixing battlefield deaths so that the US always needs more and more troops) for our failing war efforts in Afghanistan, a mess that is now causing turmoil in Pakistan as Obama's search-and-destroy tactics (from General Petraus's "Surge" tactic, too) against the Taliban in Southern Afghanistan is driving all sorts of militants, rebels, and terrorists into Pakistan. As one Pakistan writer put it, "Pakistan is on the brink of exploding." And when Pakistan explodes--LOOK OUT!

More troops needed in Afghanistan. Oh boy, the beat goes on. Canon fodder. That's all Gates needs, more fodder for his mighty canons.

I actually saw DoD figures saying that the death toll in both of these inhuman wars has now surged over the 5,000 mark; 5,000+ dead young men and women. Canon fodder. Volunteer canon fodder. Like the poor stupid young man the Taliban captured recently and have been trotting out for photo op and propaganda purposes. I want to feel sorry for him, but then I think, wait a minute, when this guy volunteered for the US Army don't tell me he didn't know there are two bloody, filthy, terrifying wars going on and his kind were getting killed and maimed and mentally unbalanced or perhaps captured! And shouldn't he have known that if he were captured by our enemy that he could possibly be tortured same as the US tortures its captured enemies, whether they are guilty of anything or not. Soon I suppose the Taliban will decapitate this poor lad. Such a shame; too bad that's not Robert Gates they've captured instead of this poor shavetail, who, by the way, walked away from his base camp and into enemy territory...oh well, these wars go on and on and on and on and on. At least the war gods are happy! And now we learn, the Neo-Con maniac, Unka Dick "The True Amurican Patriot" Cheney wanted to use the Army in the USA--that's illegal, folks, though Robert Gates recently approved back when he was Bush's handpuppet a North American Command that if you read the fine print has been approved to do US Army surge and destroy tactics in North America now. Unka Dick wanted to send tanks and troops to Buffalo to wipe out all those al-Queda cells up there! Oh how stupid and dumb and ignorant we Amuricans are! Hey, we're the stupid dumbasses who found Walter Cronkite the most trusted man in the USA during his years as the CBS Evening News anchor. Back in those days, I'll tell you who was the most respected man in my way of thinking: Gore Vidal. Yeah, Gore used to be on television a lot with his wry wit and insider insights on American politics. Gore was a Gore, as in Al Gore, and one of Jackie O's relatives.

Think about when you were eighteen. What would have made you at that age go down to a US Army recruiting office and volunteer for military service?--for 2 years of potentially dangerous military service out of your young life, your young stupid life, a young life you may never even get to enjoy should you be included in the future additions to the list of 5,000+ troops who have already been killed or the tens of thousands who have been maimed or the hundreds of thousands who have been mentally scared for life?

You couldn't have dragged me with a bulldozer down to an army recruiting office and forced me to volunteer for any US armed service back when I was 18. Truth was, when I turned 18, I had two choices, 1) go to college and avoid the draft for at least 4 years, or 2) volunteer for the gyrenes, swabbies, or flyboys or be drafted by the fucking U.S. dog-soldier Army. Yes, I got a college deferment, but after college, I had no choice but to join the Army or become a Conscientious Objector (a CO) and be placed (weaponless; wearing a red cross armband with a red cross symbol on your steel pot) in charge of the gutbuckets on the battlefields. Being a CO in those days was worst than saying you were a member of the Communist Party or a member of Madalyn Murray O'Hare's American Atheist Church! (Check out how Madalyn Murray O'Hare died! Undeserving of even an Atheist.)

Today you "volunteer for the Army," though it's not really a volunteer army as much as it is a contracting employer of professional canon fodder. Today's soldiers are salaried workers; that's what they are. Mostly from the lower classes; the dog soldiers mostly poor Whites, Blacks, Latinos, and illegal immigrants.

Also, that 5,000+ death toll doesn't include all the soldiers who have committed suicide since these fiercely WRONG-WAY (BACKWARDS THINKING) wars were first foisted on We the People--at an ungodly cost, too, billions of dollars a month.

So I think the Clintons approached Obama during the presidential campaign and they cornered him and they made a fucking deal. I guarantee you this had to have happened. Otherwise, why would Obama hire nearly all the Clinton tricksters back into his administration? And that includes Eric Holder (he was in the Justice Dept. under Clinton); and that includes Sonia Sotomayor (Clinton elevated her during his terms--even though it was Pappy Bush who appointed her to the Federal court (remember his son Jeb married a "brown person"--remember Pappy talking about his "little brown grandkids"?)); and that includes having to rely on the advice of deregulators like Larry "Let's Dump Toxic Waste in Africa" Summers and Robert "Goldman-Sachs Crook" Ruben, and using Timothy "the Professional Ivy-League-Trained Civil Servant" Geithner (whose grandfather was head of the Ford Motor Company), a big player in the Wall Street collapse; and why oh why did he keep G.W. Bush's Army general staff criminals on, like Gates and Petraus--on and on go the Bush-Clinton advisors who are now on the Obama payroll--nothing new under the sun--and Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State! What a foolish choice that was--except, I feel Obama had no choice. Check out Hilary's connection to this current Honduras mess that is bringing back the infamous Death Squads to Honduras, those created by current Obama advisor and member of the law firm representing the Honduran coup regime, Johnny Boy Negroponte (a Greek shipping tycoon's maybe legitimate son born in London), who is what now, still in Iraq setting up their defense forces? Check out how palsy-walsy Hilary and Slick Willie are with their old friend, Lonnie (we mistakenly called him "Lanny" a few posts back) Davis. Lonnie's law firm is currently lobbying for the Honduran coup government before Congress. Obama could bring this Honduran mess to an end by simply freezing Honduran bank accounts and withdrawing the millions of dollars worth of aid and military supplies we send to them with no strings attached every year. Instead, poor old powerless Hondurans will be massacred now--all in the name of defending the great democratic nation of Honduras from the evil influences of outside agitator "Commie" nations (read: Cuban sympathizers; read: Indios revolutionaries like those in power now in Ecuador, Venezuela, and Bolivia).

Have you noticed you have no idea where Bill Clinton is these days?...or what he's up to? I never saw any results of Slick Willie's debate with Boy George "the Election Stealer" Bush in Toronto, did you? Obama rewarded the Slick One by making him our representative to Haiti on their current affairs--

And, yes, they love Bill Clinton in Haiti, especially all those Haitians he rounded up and put in Guantanamo when it was used as a prison housing crazy Cubanos and AIDS-riddled Haitians (remember when we tried to blame Haitians for bringing AIDS to this country?--when it was a Canadian airline steward, a white guy, all along!).

Ah, those backroom shenanigans! They have us on a rocket sled headed for Hell, but, hey, enjoy the ride--it's better than any ride they have at Six Flags!

Here's an interesting reason why we are staying in Iraq forever and not leaving there in 2011 as Obama promised during his campaign (immediate withdrawal he said then): Obama has just refurbished the massive US Green Zone Embassy in Iraq at a cost of 300 million bucks. This wasteful embassy employs 1,400 regular staff, plus 17,000 (that's right 17 thousand) contractors. Plus, even though Obama has announced we are officially finished in Iraq, there are still 50,000 US troops stationed at the Embassy--and I just heard this morning on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now that the phony president of Iraq is in Washington saying he welcomes US troops staying in his country forever now. Just a few months back this little hand puppet was saying he wanted US troops totally out of Iraq immediately!

The war dead keep piling up but the warbucks keep flowing out. Do you realize the absolute sorry sleazebags that are getting filthy rich off these regressive wars? Like sleazy, greasy, smarmy arms dealers--I mean, you wanna get rich quick, invest in black market arms!

--Israel is currently testing long-range missiles in our Pacific Coast waters--we have a missile target range somewhere off San Diego--out where G.W. Bush made his famous "Mission Accomplished" bullshit photo op--I mean, come on, that little rat bastard should be serving time for that alone. He put on a military uniform for that laughable bash (laughable had it not have been so Yahoo in its backward-thinking glory), which is against the law--but, I forgot, poor little spoiled brat rich boys don't do no time for any of their crimes. I keep forgetting my own beliefs, like that members of the Power Elite never make mistakes; therefore, neither do they ever commit crimes.

I feel President Obama's great speeches are shields. One speech today may get the listener and follower (a handful of people probably when analyzed) thrilled to death; while the next day, a new speech might cause the listener and follower to ponder, "Wait a minute, yesterday you said this...today, you're saying that!" And that's a phenomenon I call the "what's going on?" syndrome of politics. And that's the way politicians want We the People left hanging. Just like one of those serialized teevee shows likes to keep you "hanging" in the lurch after each episode until the next episode will totally turn your original analysis of "who done it?" haywire. Confusion keeps you controllable; and keeps you listening and following.

One being too busy to analyze all these shield speeches (President Obama is averaging three or four of these speeches a week now as he travels the globe and the continent holding his "special" meetings with them or those and then giving a photo op and then a little speech after the banquet), if one is "honestly" interested, then one has to depend on the analysis of teevee, radio, Sirius, iPod, YouTube pundits and opinionators, shock jocks, social commentators, Pentagon generals leaking false informations, apologists who can find no fault in anything political as long as it's laissez faire, stuck in a rut, and leaving our nation a nation of Filthy Rich (the one percenters) versus the Abysmally Poor (check out the growing tent cities around the country--I think there's one in Lafayette Park right across from the White (Man's) House--but you'd never know it. Washington reporter/pundits like to stick around the Press Club drinking brandies with Bob Bernstein and Rev. Sun Yung Moon (he owns a newspaper! and is a big palsy-walsy of Pappy Bush's, Bill Clinton's new best friend, remember?)).

thestaff (including thegrowlingwolf, austinhighchew, and waltercrackpipe)
for The Daily Growler

Life in New York City--Uncle Walter

And This Is the Way It Was With Me and Uncle Walter
I never saw Walter Cronkite as a great journalist. He was a WWII war correspondent, but so was Ernest Hemingway. And so was the great Ernie Pyle. Then when old Walter took over the CBS nightly news, by that time, I didn't watch television much at all. After I left home to go to college and then to go on about my life's business, I shunned television. I felt it was beneath me.

My family got their first teevee, a Crosley, in 1953. My parents were Protestant-Ethic people, not fundamentalists but what they like to call themselves, "nondenominational." However, they still had enough of the family's past Anabaptist influence on them to not be sure whether television was a tool of Satan or a means of getting the gospel out! The gospel to my folks was a mixture of pure-dee Christianity and the work ethic (Max Weber called it "the Protestant Ethic") that led to the realization of the American Dream.

Our nextdoor neighbors got a teevee before we did. One of the big excitements for a while there was being invited by these neighbors over once a week to watch "The Liberace Show." The nextdoor neighbor woman, Zeera, and my mother loved Liberace. My father and Big Stu the nextdoor neighbor father made fun of Libby but I don't remember them making fun of him because he was gay. In fact, nobody used "gay" to mean homosexual in those days--gay was in all the popular songs--"let's have a gay old time," or "living a life so eager and gay." "Queer" was the schoolyard word for gays; yet though I had heard the words queer and pansy hurled about between schoolyard boys, I had no idea why they were derogatory words! I had no idea why a queer was called a queer or what a queer did that made him a queer in the first place. At that age, neither did I have any idea what a Lesbian was even though I had a great aunt Gus who was a woman deputy sheriff in L.A. and when she came to family renunions always brought her gal-pal along with her, a babe twice as tough-looking as great aunt Gus.

Even the schoolyard joke, "Name three fruits that begin with L" didn't make sense to me in a homosexual sense. The answer to the joke, "Lime, Lemon, and Liberace," made me laugh like a hyena; yet, here again, I didn't identify being a "fruit" with being gay. I knew my dad was always saying, "He's nuttier than a fruit cake," but I knew he meant crazy people and not gays.

Then, the nextdoor neighbor's kids, Little Stu and Big Buttski (I think his real name was Bernard), got to inviting me over on Saturday afternoons to watch the afternoon movies, usually old black and white grade Bs from the 30s, a lot of Lon Cheney Jr. movies and Tarzan movies and King Kong and shit like that. I can also remember being over there and staying up until one in the morning many a Saturday night watching the "Nightowl Movie."

It was only a few months later that my parents caved in and one day my dad came home with the Crosley. It was a huge big box of a thing--the "picture tube" (a Cathode Ray Tube) making up the bulk. My dad built a whole wall unit back on our once solarium room. Yeah, I grew up in a house with a "sun room," a half-circle (half-moon) room my dad and my one-eyed uncle built on the back of our house. It was a half-circle of all casement windows. The windows opened onto the west and the sunsets that part of the wide-open spaces was famous for. The room had a red concrete floor and was painted a light blue and when the sun was sinking, it was quite contemplative to sit in that room and experience the sensation as streaks of yellows, reds, oranges came streaming in those windows causing a prism effect in the room with the different colors dancing around the room like the Aurora Borealis. However, when my parents added my grandmother's big apartment onto the house after she got too old to live alone, it destroyed the sun room's purpose and converted it into a common old ordinary den. So my dad built this wall unit with a special set-in boxed shelf for the big new teevee. The Crosley fit perfectly in that shelf box. And soon my parents's lives revolved around that set. Even to the point my mom bought teevee trays and teevee dinners--Swanson's teevee dinners became our evening meals--my mother worked, you see, so she didn't cook when she got home. My fav Swanson teevee dinner? The Salisbury steak one. A ground round steak pattie covered in a mushroom gravy, with mashed potatoes and green beans, with a little compartment of apple pie in one corner of the little aluminum tray TV dinners came frozen in.

Soon an irony developed. My parents had never let me go to see a movie in a theater and my mother's brother ran a chain of movie theaters around Texas, too. In the mid-thirties, because she lost her second child, a boy named John, my mother turned to Jesus after blaming the loss of her precious child on her wild and heathen ways (she and my father were champion dancers; my dad smoked Lucky Strikes and wore tennis flannels and silk shirts and was a dandy and my mother was a cute little blond who was a flapper, wearing short swishy skirts, letterman sweaters, and bobbing her hair (the cutting of a woman's hair down to a man's style was considered a big SIN according to Christianity in the 1920s, the Jazz Age, and my parents were children of the Jazz Age). So after she found Jesus, she put a halt to her heathen ways, let her hair grow out, started wearing dresses that covered her knees, quit playing stride piano (and she was a really fine stride pianist), and quit doing the Charleston or the Lindy Hop or the Castle Walk or the Eagle Rock, and she STOPPED going to the movies. After we got the teevee, you see, suddenly you didn't have to go to a movie theater to see a movie. There were movies FREE on teevee. One night I saw there was a late night movie on I desired to see, so I got up my nerve and asked my mother could I watch it, and she surprisingly said yes. Then, on top of that surprise, she stayed up with me and watched it, too, for another surprise. I don't remember the movie, but I remember how into it my mother got and I know for sure after that night my mom became a staunch Betty Davis and Rita Hayworth fan.

A further irony, though I was allowed to watch movies on teevee, I still wasn't allowed to go to the downtown movie theaters. They were pits of sin to my mom; certainly my mom knew about the things that went on in the balconies of movie houses. She rationalized that at least in watching a teevee movie you were in the privacy of your own home. That way, I assumed, if the movie was leading you into temptation, you could run to the family Bible and confess your sin real quick and gain forgiveness for it fast enough you could get back and finish watching the movie.

The first movie theater I EVER went to happened one night when I spent the night with four of my high school buddies at my pal's house whose dad was a dentist and they had big bucks and a garage apartment with a pool table--it was a great place for a young boy to spend the night. On this night, one of these guys suggested we take in the midnight preview at the Majestic Theater. So the four of us sneaked off and went to the Majestic. I was scared to death I'd get caught by my parents but by then I was rebel enough to go ahead and do it, fuck the consequences.

The movie was a western: "The Buffalo Hunter," starring Victor Mature, who we called Victor Manure, and some really deliciously Injun-looking actress, a white chick smeared with walnut stain to make her look Native American. And then came the scene that was the cause of our suddenly wanting to sneak out and go to this midnight preview, the scene in the movie where Victor Manure comes upon this walnut-stained chick taking a bath in some cattails. How exciting to young boys was that!--you could barely tell she was NAKED--however you could see enough of her naked skin flashing through the cattails that you knew she was NAKED, though you couldn't see any of the essentials, like a naked breast, which would have sent us all into a masturbational frenzy!

However, after I left home and went off to college, I had no teevee, except down in the TV lounge in the Union Building or the big teevee down in the dorm day room off the lobby.

After I left home for good, I had no teevee for several years. It was my second wife who one day, we were living in New Orleans at the time, said she thought it was time we bought a teevee so we went out and bought our first television, a Philco black and white portable with a 13-inch screen. We had that teevee about a year when we up and moved to Mexico City, where there was no teevee in our hotel suite, the only teevee in the hotel being a small set in the lobby (I watched the first Clay-Liston fight on that lobby teevee). Then when that wife and I moved to New York, color television was the big new innovation and we bought our first color set, a Sony Trinitron. And for the next several years, yes, I watched teevee with my wife, though I didn't watch as much as she did as I was by then into my LP record collection and started sitting in my Eames chair with a typewriter on my lap, earphones on, jazz or classical music pumping into my skull from my stereo. As this wife and I drifted apart, I quit watching television with her; I quit doing anything with her. After we divorced, she got the Sony Trinitron and I went through another timespan without television.

From 1974 until 1977 I had no television. Then I met my third wife and man we hit it off to where we were together all the time, in spite of her having a husband, and one night she came over and brought this old television set with her. This is funny. I was unable to get a picture on that set so I simply listened to the sound when I turned it on, as if it were a radio. One night weeks later, #3 came over and said, "Let's watch teevee. Is my old set still working?" I told her that I could get sound but no picture. She said it had been working fine when she brought it to me and she couldn't imagine why it wasn't working now and she went over to the damn thing and she fiddled with one of the knobs and damn if the picture didn't come on pretty as a picture. "You had the contrast/brightness control on black screen."

I moved from that apartment in 1981 and once again I had no teevee, except for the summer when I slept on friends's couches and shit and I watched teevee with them. After I moved into where I am now, I had no teevee until around 1987 or so, when a girlfriend, I was divorced again by then, asked me if I wanted her old teevee since her on-the-side lover had bought her a new one. I took it. It was an RCA color teevee, and I set it up and turned it on and it worked fine. From then on, I've had a television. I threatened to do without television when the analog channels were sold to the business world and the tv industry forced HD teevee on us, but instead, I went on eBay and bought an HD teevee for $159 bucks, postpaid from California, and it works fine and gives me a great clear picture and it's a big enough screen that when I play my jazz DVDs on it, it's like being right fucking there, man. I've got this one DVD on the life of Oscar Peterson, and man the picture's so clear and BIG it's like you are sitting on the bench with OP as he and Ray Brown and Herbie Ellis (a Texan and North Texas University graduate) explode with swinging ferocity, opening with a god-damn tour-de-force version of "Caravan," the Juan Tizol classical jazz piece.

During all those years of off-and-on teevee in my life, I don't remember ever watching the Walter Cronkite news. My wives were into PBS, so we watched Robin McNeil and my brother's protege Jim Lehrer, the McNeil-Lehrer Report. I do remember when Barbara Walters was given one million bucks to join the ABC Evening News cast, I believe as the first woman anchor in national teevee history. I may be scary wrong about that, but I remember Barbara's elevation to TV's Power Elite, though I never watched an ABC News cast either. I remember in the 70s and 80s running around with my best friend who was a Walter Cronkite impersonator--he was always pulling that "And that's the way it is" thing while we were out cattin' around and jivin' the ladies!

I do, however, clearly and photographically remember the day of the Kennedy Assassination. I was in Dallas, Texas, that day, a young, young office manager at the County Juvenile Home, which was located up on a bluff above the Dallas Trade Center building where Kennedy was due to give a speech around 2 that afternoon. I remember just after I'd gotten back from lunch, I heard suddenly a wailing woman's scream coming from back in the juvie's television room. As I rushed back to check on it, it was a juvie full of little criminals, some of them murderers, so we were always on the alert when we heard a scream like the one I heard that afternoon, I saw this woman coming toward me running, a woman named Flo...and I see her perfectly clear as I recall this, I see her face, in the extreme crying mode, and she ran up to me and said, "They've killed him; they've fucking killed the president" and we turned and ran back to the teevee room and when I got there, Walter Cronkite was on the screen, looking down, dejected, and stone stunned. That image of Walter Cronkite has stayed with me all these years.

And that's the way it was with me and Walter Cronkite. Did I look to him for trustworthy news reporting--oh hell NO.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

As a PS: We must refer you to The Daily Growler's own highly respected and trusted reporter, Walter Crackpipe. Here's a past post from our Uncle Walter, who by the way is very much still with us, cruising along the St. Lawrence Seaway at the moment on his yacht The Triple Up Yours with fifth wife, the gorgeous Greek model, Symbolina.

A Crackpipe Blast From the Past:

Sunday, March 22, 2009

The Daily Growler Sunday Edition "Bashing Obama"

Squatting in the Aisle
with The Daily Growler's Venerable Old Cuss Reporter, Walter Crackpipe
Oh boy, oh boy, already this beautiful Sunday morning--our day to the Good Lord Sun, the true and only god to me; yep, I'm a sun worshipper--the commercial teevee millionaires are bashing President Obama already this beauty of a Sunday, blaming him for everything from the current economic crisis to being a mocker of handicapped children. The latter bashing for his silly kid-like comment on the stupid numbskull jackass joking Jay Leno teevee show where the Prez said he'd bowled a 129 in the White House bowling alley (can you imagine a kid suddenly moving into a mansion with its own bowling alley!) and when Jay asked him wasn't that a good score, Obama simply replied, "Yeah, maybe in the Special Olympics...." Ohhhhhh-oooooooh, a shudder went through Jay Leno's ultraLiberal-almost-Commie audience! Obama, Obama, thou of the cursed race of Ham, thou hast committed a faux pas worse than the cartoonist who drew you as a chimp wearing a diaper laying in a pool of your own blood with two bullet holes in your chest and a couple of cops off to the side, one of them holding a gun pointed at you that is the gun this cop's just shot and killed you with, and the cop is saying, "Now who's going to write the next stimulus bill?"--Obama, Obama, thou hast ridiculed poor little helpless Special Olympic kids--poor little helpless mindless beings! The Special Olympics, by the way, was founded by that old wrinkled Joe Kennedy daughter, Eunice, Maria Shriver's mother. One assumes, and I certainly assume this, Eunice founded the Special Olympics out of guilt for the horrible deed her father, Old Bootlegger Joe, as we call him around here, did to her sister Rosemary, like turning her into a vegetable by having her lobotomized. As Sweet Saintly Mama Rose said afterward, "Well, the lobotomy did stop her violent behavior though unfortunately it also left her incapacitated...." Oh, blessed Mama Rose--surely the Catholic Nazi Pope will make her a saint--three miracles, let's see, she gave birth to three divine sons, like a Holy Trinity of Kennedy divinities: first, Bootlegger Joe's favorite son, named him after himself, Joe Kennedy--a WWII hero according to the Kennedy revised history of the world; then the miraculously born and raised precious John Fitzgerald (for old Swizzlin' Honey Fitz, the old crooked-as-hell Boston Back Bay "fightin' potato famine Irish" politician--hell he was mayor of Boston--"Sure my son Joe's a bootlegger, so what the fuck you stupid shanty Irish gonna' be doin' about it?") Kennedy, who was also a WWII hero, remember PT-109? in spite of vicious rumors that that whole thing was a staged affair (I know you're aghast now! How dare I give sarcastic disrespect to JFK, the US's Little Perfect Prince?); and last but not least, the precious and all-clean-cut-all-American boy, Bobby Kennedy, the lawman in the family. All three boys died violent deaths--though their spirits have arisen--therefore, we give high praise to the possibility of one day seeing a plastic statue of Saint Mama Rose in all her soon-to-be churches or riding on the dashboards of all the Kennedy family limos and BMW sports cars--and certainly one or two around on the Kennedy Family fleet of tax-deductible yachts and sailboats--maybe in the tax-exempt Church of the Holy Mother Rose--down there in Boston's Back Bay--or over in Roxbury! Ah, the wonderfulness of fiction and how it can so easily become reality--like this, The Daily Growler, a work of fiction that is reporting through the fictional mouths of an aged, even if still wet behind their ears staff--like the wet-behind ears of the luscious Franny&Zoe, but I'm a nasty old man when it comes to her. What I'm saying is it's an empirical staff, a mixed-bag staff of generational goofs, all tagged atheists, scoundrels, Socialists, abominations to Jesus Christ's plans for the United Snakes of America--a staff that freely believes like Fundie Nutjob US Christians (read: Holy Rollers) that the US was founded by God through his faithful Catholic son, Saint Christopher Colombo, a Jew from Genoa--whoaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Chris Colombo a Jew, nooooooo, no, Chris was a Sicilian, dammit, a member of the Cosa Nostra of those dear old days!

I am an old fuck now, folks--check me out; have you caught a glimpse of me lately on PBS? I'm as old as newsprint and soon to be just as obsolete. I've been in the reporting business since I was a young rascal war correspondent from Texas in World War II, said to be the only JUST war the US has ever started or fought in--a war started back then in defense of Mother England who was so weak and vulnerable--the cost of the burden of Mother England keeping her Empire together and fighting her blood brothers and sisters the Prussians was breaking her ass.

And, yes, I was in WWII, as was old saggy-ass Andy Rooney. After WWII I got involved in the Greek conflict started by Harry "Ass" Truman, Mr. Citizen, when he sent our Marines to Greece to keep Greece from going Commie. Harry was bent on reestablishing a royal house there, giving the Greeks a fop Brit-ass-kissing king when the seat of Western Democracy (White Democracy) unanimously wanted a Statehood (in the national sense) and not a Monarchy--but we White Americans have always craved a king ever since gout-ridden old King George the Third drove us out of Merry Olde England--proudly, his royal highass was kicking the whackos out of his empire: the Puritans, Pilgrims, Calvinists, Anabaptists, and also the anarchists, pamphleteers, and Brit debtors (who became infamous in White history as the "indentured servants"--low-caste Whites in servitude to a White bossman/patron--passage to the Colonies in return for working off their debts to the royal crown.

While Merry Olde England was kicking its weirdo religious, political, and criminal elements across the Pond to the Redman's Land, the Euro Royals were also running out their whackos, the Huguenots, the Roman Catholics--especially out of England, Germany, and France (like good old Lord Baltimore and Lord Calvert who turned Maryland into a Roman Catholic state at one gay olde Colonial time--these two Lords had a couple of good old time rotgut US whiskeys named after them, too). Ironically, Lutherans and Scandinavian Christians (Christian Socialists) also came over here by the droves--Swedenborgs, etc., Moravians, Manicheans, barbarian pagans, all being driven out of their White homelands. And look out, soon here came these boatloads of White weirdos over here, tumbling onto shore here and immediately seeking all kinds of White Western freedoms of religion, politics, and crime, coming here and declaring this their new homeland. So what this country was already occupied by a very politically organized native people, who, by the way, are now still imprisoned for the sins they committed against those invading White Men and their pale women--the White Man who rampantly developed his Aryan superiority under the Manifest Destiny and then put into practice his Christian philosophy of the only good Injun being a dead Injun--How? How Chief Wahoo! How Washington, District of Corruption, Redskins (hell there's a redskin babe on top the Capitol dome isn't there?)? How Kansas City Chiefs? How Chicago Black Hawks? I did find it a little humorous to hear a young Black man talking about sports teams using insulting Native American images as their mascots the other morning on a talk show. He started mentioning teams like the Atlanta Braves (remember the tomahawk wave?) and the D.C. Redskins...but then he said, "...and the Cincinnati Reds...." "Whoaaaa," I hollered at him, "Dude, though the city's name is Native American their baseball team's identity as the Reds has nothing to do with Native Americans." You see how separated Whites and Blacks are in this country still, even after a Black American has been elected president (legally!!!)! Whites assume they know Blacks just like Blacks claim they know Whites. Unfortunately, the fact that Whites did enslave US Blacks and did have factions that claimed they had a right from the Christian God to own slaves because under that God Blacks were the Sons of Ham and were cursed by God the Vicious Father of the Jews to be servants unto the Jews and the Gentiles!! Whites are Gentiles, according to Whites; therefore, Blacks are cursed by the White Man's god to be their servants, except servants to White people mean slaves.

And my elongated thinking took me far afield of my intended finger pointing, back paragraphs of time ago, at our vaunted Mr. Citizen, Harry "Ass" Truman. My intention back then in time was to inform you what a dumbass ignorant man the old haberdasher and horse soldier was--Jesus, I mean, this little creep Harry Truman during his time in office ordered the deaths of 300,000 innocent Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki with two nuclear weapons he didn't know what the hell immediate damage they would do and certainly had no idea what future damage they would do. Harry said, "Fuck those slanty eyed bastards, drop a Fat Boy on 'em and watch 'em turn to yellow toast! Anything to save our precious troops so we can use them for cannon fodder in the next splendid little war or police action I have planned."

There were no teevee cameras there in those days. Harry didn't know how devastatingly "evil" those A-bombs were--we called them Atom Bombs in those days--and children born in that era weren't called Baby Boomers, they were called Atomic Bomb Babies--any kid born from around 1945-46-47--the era of the Atom Bomb. And Mickey Rooney played the "Atomic Kid" in the movies. And there was the Colossal Man, too, Glen was his given name--both men effected by atomic radiation, Little Mickey given superpowers and Glen given a massive body. The Atomic Bomb also gave us Godzilla, a radiated lizard.

And sure enough, after Greece, Harry came up with his Korean Police Action! Another fine little mess we got into. But Harry insisted the Korean affair was not a war. Remember, Harry said the Korean War wasn't a real war, it was simply a police action--a little mopping up of commies--a UN police action to boot--not the US's fault, hell no, the UN was in command of the Korean Police Action. Such bullshit and such a useless wasteful war--

Since before WWII, the Repugnicans have consistently tried to wreck the New Deal and prove social welfare never works--laborers have to pick themselves up by their bootstraps--George Orwell wrote about that during WWII. This hatred of the New Deal started after the Privileged Power Elite East Coast New Yorker playboy Franklin Delano Roosevelt whipped young-whipper-snapper Power Elite California Mining and Land-grabbing expert Herbert Hoover and his Stanford-educated criminal elements in 1932, after once again the Repugnicans ruined our economy--and, folks, the Repugnicans had ruined US economies many times before 1929--to the point the Repugs had more of their presidents assassinated than the Dumbocrats--up until JFK got it in '63--though those who get so frustrated they assassinate did try to rub out Ronnie "Jelly Bean for Brains" Reagan! And the Pope, too, remember! Wow, aren't guns wonderful? Notice how the recent epidemic of assassinaters--gunmen randomly killing their families or ex-employers or just randomly knocking off dozens of innocent people-- is no longer cared much about with the commercial teevee channels or what newspapers are left--wild gunmen killing roomsful of people--I mean, come on, there's so much of it going on it's now being taken for granted--no more extensive coverage like was given the Columbine affair or the Virginia Tech killing spree. I mean, mass murdering is just one of our US legends now--in fact, we get terribly excited when we watch scary movies about serial murderers for instance. The stuff you can see vividly portrayed every night on commercial-pap television--tons of ways to murder--graphic details of ways to murder without getting caught even--the truly exciting murder shows are the ones where when they fade to black with Dick Wolf's creator credits running in somber white over that black you know the most vicious serial killer in the current world has escaped from prison and swears to start knocking off the criminal investigative teams that put him in prison--just at random--SURPRISE!--oh boy, a serial killer loose--how exciting is that? Don't worry, the male actors say, these guys only kill women--so we gotta be especially guarding of our hot-babe CSI women! Yes, women are brutally murdered on teevee every night and even on daytime soap operas these days--and you can't imagine the brutality these actresses are put through! I especially enjoyed one I saw last night--two girls were involved in a car wreck, one of the girls was DOA, but the other girl survived. Now listen to this; you talk about a bizarre writer's mind: The girl who survived the wreck was terribly messed up, you know, her face ripped off, with the surgeons having to glue her face back together going by her picture on her driver's license. The girl driving the car was said by the police to be the best friend of the other girl (they looked like twins they were so much alike) who'd been DOA. The mother of the DOA girl was infuriated by the death of her daughter at the hands of this friend who the mother said was a drug addict, a drunk, a whore, and she had killed her precious daughter, her lovely saintly daughter. Well, it turns out the girls had gone out partying together and they'd gone to this swinging club where they danced and drank all night. When they left the club and went to go home, the drunkest girl, the drug addict-whore, gave the other girl, the saintly girl, her carkeys telling her she was in no condition to drive because she was wasted as well as drunk and this saintly girl was not really drunk at all. This tale ends up with the mother sneaking into the hospital and suffocating the living girl with a plastic bag. As she suffocates the living girl, the living girl looks up and says, "Mamma!" to which the grieving mother of the dead girl says, "Your mother can't help you now, you bitch," then she proceeds to suffocate this girl. Later the cops arrest Mom and during the interrogation she admits to killing the drug addict-whore bitch who killed her precious loving saintly daughter--and, she bravely says, I'm ready to serve my time in good conscience. Then the cops spring on her the fact that they'd checked the mother's DNA against the DNA of the girl she had murdered who she thought was the evil girl. Turned out, the cops told her, that after the drunken-dopehead-whore girl got to the car and told the saintly girl she had to drive them home, the saintly girl said she didn't have a driver's license--so the drunken-dopey-whore girl gave the saintly girl her driver's license. Thus, when the cops got to the wreck, one girl was dead, with no driver's license, but the one girl who lived did have a driver's license, which was the driver's license of the drunk-dopey-whore--therefore, the mother of the saintly girl assumed the living girl was the evil bitch who'd killed her daughter! "Surprise, Mom," the cops said, "our DNA tests show you killed your own daughter! She was hollering 'Mamma' at you because you were her mother!" How's that for a fucking macabre script!

I'm very surprised the Repugnican nutjobs haven't blamed President Obama for all the serial murderers there are--even the ones born before Obama was born. Poor President Obama. He's in for a tough ride. How foolish was he looking backing up Tim Geithner today? In some ways, President Obama is as foolish as a young kid with a new toy. "One never knows, do one?" as Thomas Waller used to say.

waltercrackpipe
for The Daily Growler

BULLETIN: L Hat (our old pal at www.languagehat.com) has announced to triumphant cheering that his BOOK, Uglier Than a Monkey's Armpit, is finely available in the USA on amazon.com--here ya go, check it out, buy it, keep insults alive--insults for use in all languages, but especially the nastier ones!

http://www.amazon.com/Uglier-Than-Monkeys-Armpit-Untranslatable/dp/0399535063

BULLETIN #2: OH MY GOD, PRESIDENT OBAMA MAY BE A MORMON! Check Out Strange Practice of Mormon's Baptizing NonMormons, Including Jewish Holocaust Victims Into the Mormon Church! Wow! Ain't Folks Strange!

/www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/07/20/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5174534.shtml

Life in New York City--the Tourist Capital of USA

New Yorkers Must Now Kiss Tourist Ass for Survival
Why outlanders, hinterlanders, Euro trash, or whoever want to come to New York City as tourists is beyond me. Even an ex-wife of mine used to fly 2000 miles 4 times a year from New Mexico to shop at Lord & Taylor. I asked her one time why she did that and she told me because she could! That was a fuck-you response, but perhaps that is an elitist rationalization for coming 2000 miles to shop at Lord & Taylor.

And I have a funny story concerning this ex-wife's shopping: when this wife and I first moved to NYC we lived in Morris Plains, New Jersey (oh God, I could do a number on living in New Jersey). My wife had always said how she had always wanted to come to NYC since she was a young girl to go to Macy's or Gimbels (there was still a Gimbels when we moved here) and either work or shop. The first time she went to Macy's I went with her, my first visit to Macy's, too, and the place was a madhouse. The first floor was where the perfume and cosmetics counters were with perfume and facial cream and body lotion and lipstick sellers every few feet offering free brief makeup sessions for any ladies interested. Once the session was over then the ladies found themselves subject to a very hard sell by the demonstrators. My wife loved that and I had to stand there and endure a whole host of these demonstration babes praising my wife's beauty and giving her so much hustle: "Oh, honey, look at how well your eyes shine out using this Maybelene product" ["Oh, Maybelene, Maybelene, why can't you be true? You done started off doing the things you used to do" Chuck Berry]. Then we got on this narrow old wooden-stepped escalator way over on the 8th Avenue side and wobbled our way up to the women's fashion floors. The first time we visited Macy's we came away with over $200 worth of what to me was "floo-floo." I got that term from my Uncle Jimmy. I was once watching Uncle Jimmy shave and after he shaved he tossed on what he called "floo-floo" water! "Here go, kid, throw a little of this floo-floo water on your face. There now isn't that nice? When you're old enough to shave this floo-floo water will come in handy with the ladies I guarantee that!"

When my wife and I got back to Morris Plains I was reading the local Morristown paper and I saw a Bamburger's Department Store in Morristown ad for the same stuff my wife had bought at Macy's. "Hey, toots," I said, "here's that same shit you bought at Macy's cheaper because there are no taxes in Jersey. At Bamburger's up in Morristown." "It's probably not the same quality as what they sell at Macy's." It was later that I learned Bamburger's was Macy's--the name they used in New Jersey. Even knowing that, my wife still went into Manhattan to do her shopping; Morristown, though selling the same shit and without taxes, was very beneath her. "I didn't move to New York City to shop in Morristown."

I was watching David Letterman Friday night--sometimes he's funny though not that much-- when he announced that New York City was now the number-one tourist attraction in the USA according to the latest tourist industry reports! Holy shit, thought I. Why? What the hell is here that people want to see and experience bad enough to spend say $4,000 for 4 nights in an NYC highway-robbery hotel? There's a 14% hotel tax added onto that bill in these fast-track hotels, plus a state, city, federal tax, too--some hotels here now have towel charges on their bills because they know people steal towels. Stealing the shampoo and shit doesn't matter to them--those are free sample bottles anyway! But the towels, that's a different matter. Also NYC hotels have a bedbug epidemic going on right now but tourists don't give a shit; they'll sleep on filthy infected mattresses (cum stains and all) (hotels are supposed to change mattresses every so many years) without a complaint; and the carpets in these rooms are filthy and crawling with who knows what! It doesn't matter to tourists or business people. Business people now have what are called "executive hotels" all over the place. These are hasitly built narrow hotels in low-rise neighborhoods bordering on the midtown business area that rise up 18 or so floors and offer businessmen's specials--yep, they still call them businessmen's hotels because most executives are businessmen--not many women stay in these hotels so you know they are filthy!

I got distracted by this announcement that New York City is now the #1 tourist attraction in the US. It bothers me. My city, the city of American dreams, is now like a metropolitan DisneyLand; in fact, Times Square now is much like a human fantasy park, overwhelmed with overwhelming wide-screen advertisements and huge glaring signs selling you overpriced products and trumpeting the celebrity of overpaid celebrities! It's disgusting to someone who came to New York City because it was so accessible in terms of chances for success in whatever field you chose for your endeavors. Not any more. Like forget it if you are a stage actor or actress trying to make it in NYC anymore. New York actors now have to know how to smile outrageously widely and sing loudly and dance automatically to find work. Everything on Broadway is a musical revival; chorus work; backing up has-been stars making comebacks, like Patty LePon or Bernadette Peters or exuberant dancing and joyously big-mouth singing behind some American Idol amateur like Fantasia! The music in New York City now is boring. You go to clubs and the clubs are blaring house music, with a DJ instead of live music, or if it's live music it's an Amy Weinstein impersonator or some Will I Am look alike or some copycat rapper rapping the same old same old macho (I'm the man) bullshit--BORING. Jeez, I used to walk up from my apartment when I lived downtown over to the Half Note when it was on Hudson Street and see Dizzy Gillespie, or Zoot Sims, or Little Jimmy Rushing, or Wes Montgomery and Winetone Kelly--one of the greatest recording sessions of all time was Wes Montgomery and Wynton Kelly, Smokin' at the Half Note! This was recorded in 1965 and four years later Winetone was dead. I was at Wynton's memorial service at the old Martinique Club up on West 57th, sat next to Wynton's sister from Philly--Hank Edmonds made a rare appearance; Billy Taylor showed up; Philly Joe Jones was there; the Heath Brothers were there; Babs Gonzales was there selling his book. It was sad but it was fun for me--I was all over this town in the jazz clubs in those days--the town swung in those days.

I know, I'm whining! I'm a moke about it, but dammit, it makes me mad.

Another strange irony--they are making a movie in Queens about Atlantic City back in its old heyday (Atlantic City at one time was a black city; all the blacks who worked in the big hotels and spas and things made up the population. Several of the cities between AC and NYC were black cities, like Asbury Park, Red Hook (where Count Basie was born and raised). This movie company has built a full-scale replica of the A.C. Boardwalk--in Queens! For awhile, Hollywood was using Vancouver, British Columbia, as its big city set. I remember watching a Grade B movie one time about New York City filmed in Vancouver. It was funny, all the NYC cops wore Vancouver PD uniforms. Canadian cop uniforms are entirely different from US cop uniforms. Canadian cop uniforms are like British cop uniforms.

At 8 o'clock this morning, I was watching the British Open (I'm sorry, it's now called The Open). I have watched it since it began on Thursday because this year was so phenomenal since 59 year old, he'll be 60 in September, Tom Watson, led it from Day 1. And Watson played awesome golf. He was smooth, cool, laid back, and he led after the first day; then he led after Friday's round; then Saturday came and Watson stayed 2nd, dropping once to 3rd, but on the 18th he made a birdie and came into today's final round leading by one stroke. And old Tom Watson made it through today always lurking at the top, either being on top, tied, or one-stroke back. And old Tom endured all the way, shooting a birdie on 17 to take a one-stroke lead. Coming to the 18th hole, old Tom at -3 had a one stroke lead over Stuart Cink who was in the clubhouse at -2, so all old Tom had to do was par the 18th and he would be only the second man in 100 years to win the British Open 6 times, a feat that hadn't been done since Harry Vardon did it in the early 1900s. Tom had won 5 British Opens, a feat only one other man, the Brit Peter Thomson, had ever done. Tom drove off the 18th tee perfectly into the center of the fairway. Then he hit his second shot to the front of the green where it took a bounce and rolled through the green into the fringe--the froghair it's called in golf--though today's commentators (and a boring wordy lot they are, too) would never use a word like froghair. Tom Watson is known to be one of the most brilliant chip artists in golf, a chip shot being a shot where you use a high-loft iron, a pitching wedge or a 9 iron, and just chip the ball up over the froghair and land it just on the green and then it rolls down and either goes in the hole or gets close enough for an easy par putt. All Watson needed was a par. So what does old Tom the Chipping Fool do when he gets to his ball just in the froghair area? He doesn't chip but takes out his putter instead. I'm hollering, "No, Tom, you son of a bitch, don't putt that ball," but old Tom pays me no mind and he putts the ball toward the hole and the ball takes off. It's going toward the hole, then it suddenly takes a little scoot and shimmies by the hole some 9 feet. Tom Watson was known in his heyday as able to make a 9-foot straight in putt with his eyes closed.

So here came old Tom Watson up to the ball. One commentator says, "Tom has made a thousand of these in his career, this should be an easy one for Tom, and what a roar is going to go up from this crowd of 50,000 here at Turnberry, where Tom had won his most famous British Open 25 years before by beating Jack Nicklaus on the 18th hole with a miraculous putt...can he do it again...at age 59, going on 60--this will be a remarkable feat, one of the greatest happenings in golf history...in sports history!" And old Tom lined his ball up, got comfortably over it, eyed his line once more and putted.

The ball was a wimp ball. Old Tom hit one of the worst putts in his life! The ball limped like an injured sperm wiggling down toward the hole...and then it slithered just off to the side. Watson had made a bogey! As he knocked the ball in he pathetically looked up at the crowd, now silent! He was beat. You could tell it. He'd crapped out at the last moment. It was a real downer moment for all golf fans, especially me, who were cheering like crazy for this guy to pull off this golfing miracle. I'll never forget how pathetic and apologetic old Tom looked as he blew that putt.

He went on to play a 4-hole playoff with Stuart Cink, but by then, old Tom was whipped. As the headlines said after it was over, "Cink Sinks Watson in Playoff to Take the Open." But oh what fun we golf lovers had up until that boggie on that 18th hole. The most fun I've had watching a sporting event in many a moon. Not since I watched stunned as young Tiger Woods won the Master's with a record-breaking score his first year as a pro.

By the way, though I hate soccer, it is very boring to me, I do watch it--and I watched Honduras whip Canada in the North American wing of the Copa Oro, the Gold Cup tournament that determines where you'll be in the World Cup coming up next year. Honduras by whipping Canada, kept their hopes alive, except they are next playing the USA. The USA, by golly, has a pretty damn good soccer team this year, so I'll be watching them play Honduras--plus, Honduras, as we all know, is a military dictatorship again (Praise the American Lordy Lord), so I'll be rootin' for the USA to smear their asses. The USA beat Panama 7-1 to show you how fucking macho the US team is this year.

In a brief NYC baseball aside, I'm impressed with the Yankees play of late--what you should expect from the all-round best team in baseball--except A-Rod though they are glorifying him as best they can is only hitting .265 or so and has only hit 18 home runs this year. Still they are 2 games back of Boston. The Mets, however, ain't having such good luck. They are now 8 games in back of the Phillies with only the lowly Washington Gnats below them. In the meantime, the best manager in baseball, Joe Torre, has the Los Angeles Dodgers 7 1/2 games up on the San Francisco Giants. Looks like Joe's taking the Dodgers to playoffs again this year. Willie Randolph, by the way, who the Mets fired in the middle of the night because the Spanish players didn't like Willie so the Mets's Spanish general manager gave the job over to Spanish-speaking Spanish Jerry Manuel. "Bad move, Omar!" It's pitching. The Mets only have one good pitcher and that's Santana. They've got K-Rod, too, and he's a sweet reliever, but, hey, it's hard to relieve when the score is 11 to zip as it was the other night with the Mets losing. They are an injured mess, too. But, hey, injuries are caused perhaps by bad managing--workout routines, practice sessions, training information on how to take care of yourself if you're a young pumped up ballplayer.

Another interesting parallel line thing happened to me the other day as I walked by this wine and chocolate bar in my neighborhood, it's in the new 50-story luxury condo building up toward 5th Avenue from me--whatever the hell a wine and chocolate bar is, some Euro-trash idea, I assume--this one is filled every night with twentyish-thirtyish movers and shakers and the normal gaggle of trapped tourists--so as I walked passed this joint, I heard some jazz coming from within the place, a trumpet, guitar, and rhythm section. So I moseyed over to this floo-floo joint and waded through the outdoor tables (why would anybody eat in the outdoors of New York City? Why people with balconies in NYC never can use them--the filth in the air) and peeked inside. Son of a bitch, the trumpet player was a woman! There were too many snobs between me and her so I could go up and find out who she was and besides I was dressed in my cut-off jeans and wearing my "I Survived the NYC Blackout of 2003" teeshirt, not the proper attire for a chi-chi wine and chocolate bar. She was a pretty good-looking, too, great reddish hair. Her playing? Fumbly at best, though she could triple-tongue pretty good.

thegrowlingwolf (usually never on a sunday)
for The Sunday Daily Growler

REMEMBER: thegrowlingwolf FOR MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY!!!!

New Jersey Governor's Race
The citizens of New Jersey, it looks like, are going to shoot themselves in the foot in the coming governor's race by electing a total fool, Chris Christie (he looks like my hometown big-time crook and personal hero, Billie Sol Estes), in place of good ole boy Jim Corsine, the former Goldman-Sachs criminal and now filthy rich Power Elitist goon Dumbocrat governor. Chris Christie is the idiot who busted up the famous Al Qaeda (how do you spell this damn word?) pizza boy cell that was going to blow up Fort Dix. Remember, the Philly Muslims! Yeah, that was Chris Christie's big haul as a Federal prosecutor. Corsine is spending millions of his billions trying to keep that governor's job. Boy howdy it must be easy being a governor or a mayor--you can ruin a state or city economy and nothing happens to you.
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