RUDIMENTS, pt. 940
(something otherwise good)
There was once a very Jewish
comic-actress type, named Fanny
Brice. She was big when President
Harding died - in fact, there was
such a national play on her story
that, once the announcement was
made that she was going to have
a 'nose-job' to alter her famously
Jewish nose (thus jeopardizing
any future 'Jewish' roles and
forcing a re-adjustment of her
career), she postponed the
operation (press coverage was
to be important) until the hoo-hah
over Harding's death and funeral
was over. Anyway, the headlines
ran all the stories, and Dorothy
Parker even quipped that Brice
(real name, 'Fania Borach')
had 'Cut off her nose to spite
her race.'
-
Things were once so very different
that what we 'live' today is mostly
useless junk; like a paraplegic at
a foot race. Beyond any pale. I
can still walk past the old Algonquin
Club, where there's a plaque outside
that tells a little about the famed
'Algonquin Roundtable' of those
1924-era days, where Dorothy
Parker, and Harold Ross and all
those people hung out. When
some form of words and a modicum
of intelligence were still valued
and counted for something. It's
all over now, and we are the far
poorer for it. Too bad.
-
I guess it's all about falseness and
the fakery we live by. Take a look
sometime, locally, at the frivolity
in the face of real adversity that the
'Avenel' page, using a poor example
(really poor) of what gets thrown up
(literally too) for people to be occupied
by while the place goes down the tubes.
Woodbridge and all. It's completely
pathetic, and scary too. I have absolutely
no pride, ever, in saying where I'm
from, and that's too bad.
-
In the 1920's everyone wanted
to 'go legit' even while there was not
any longer any ''legit' to go to. Sherman
Billingsley, with his Stork Club, was a
con and an advantageous breaker of laws,
as were half a million other business
and club proprietors, yet the whole
system went on, the great game was
played and all the 'pretend' functioned
as if real, and important. The country
was crazy. This was just before, sort of
between the wars, that the manufactured
mythology of what became the 'America'
we were taught about in schools and media.
No one knew the difference, and now
there are roomfuls of veterans and others
who stand and salute all that crap nightly.
Probably with a beer in front of them too.
Wars always used to go all high and
exalted in defining themselves : For the
cause and the purpose of....They leave
out all the chicanery and slaughter and
carnage, and all the business and stuff
which make millions in the continuing
profit-making environment was gives.
The great 'melting pot' now has more
ingredients in it than you can count, and
no one knows the difference between
Freedom and bondage now anyway.
-
Right out front here, of 'Town Hall'
(they've never graduated that up yet to
'City Hall' - and who'd want to) there's
a (yet another) monument to the war
dead of something or other. You need
be careful in these parts so as not to
trip over these monument things -
seems the more the place and raped
and ruined the more the drive the
point of a legacy and memory. Assholes.
Anyway, in 1966, right there, there was
also a Gulf station, for gasoline and
repairs. It's was right on the curve
just before the little strip of stores is
(UPS store and other junk). I used to
pass it often enough, with my driving
friend Bill Konawalow, and there'd be
small-town kinds of guys sitting around,
watching traffic, seeing what turned
around the monument. It was fun; he
knew the guys, and we'd stop there.
None of it was much, but, in those
little building blocks that make up
a person's personal memory and
things to be marked, it always stands
out well for me as representing a
fairly perfect encapsulation of what
once was and is no more. Not just
because of progress and time - no,
all that's just 'nostalgia' and 'nostaglia'
is a vacuous and vapid thing not
worth much at all. This goes way
past nostalgia. Nostalgia's very public;
this is, by contrast, a very private
situation that one remembers; like
the first time, for a guy, you slid
your hand up under a girlfriend's
dress, and got that hand inside
her coat. Gas stations of old -
just like the hands and coats and
all, are guy things, I guess. An old
memory-code built into the
standard male DNA.
-
Red lights and green lights and
stop signs and cars. Lines of crap
rolling through town while no one
watches anything in particular
and it all just rolls along pacing
itself for some inaudible song.
Each person has one of those small
town places in their mind, but there
are fewer and fewer left. Klein's
Garden Shop and the old State
Theater, that gas station at the corner
and the freight tracks at the siding
where they once crossed Main.
Where those two sisters lived, in
that little house - gone now for
some extended township parking,
zoned for nothing, and gone to Hell.
-
Like Fanny Brice, changing the
proportions of things, ladies and
gents, can sometimes affect the
outcome of the show itself, ruin
a career, and otherwise fearfully
destroy the outcome of something
otherwise good. And, oh, this ain't
nostalgia; this is real life.
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