Paladin, Liberty Valence, Some Sharks and Me

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So there I was working on a bottle of vodka with Paladin, who was wearing a purple muu muu and who was trying to get Liberty Valence on the phone so we all could go shark fishing in Hawaii. I wrote a syndicated column that the New York Times distributed to every major market except Washington, D.C., which apparently didn’t like me, which was fine with me. Richard Boone was in New York for one reason or another, and a bright-eyed young publicist called me to come meet him in his room at the New York Hilton. Boone famously played Paladin, the educated, sophisticated and cultured Old West mercenary who hired out to settle disputes, often with a sidearm, in the 1950s series “Have Gun — Will Travel.” You’ll know the theme: “’Have Gun — Will Travel’ reads the card of a man A knight without armor in a savage land. It’s fast gun for hire he’s the calling wind A soldier of fortune is the man called Paladin.” The lyric ignores the fact that Paladin’s home base was a posh San Francisco hotel, where he had a Chinese lackey named Hey Boy and who was sometimes seen as being a dandy. Not that many gunfighters lectured villains on their “rough way of talking” and left calling cards with the chess knight on them and the legend “Have Gun — Will travel. Wire Paladin, San Francisco.” I don’t remember why Boone’s young PR man invited me to meet him. I only remember the man looking terrified when he opened the door to let me in. He sat me on the couch. After a few minutes of rustling around in the other room, Boone appeared. He was wearing a floor-length purple muu muu and looked like he had just spent three days in a San Francisco hotel, this one in the Tenderloin. He said hello and faced me, squinting through a haze, the famous lines on his face looking like trenches. He asked, “Are you a drinking man?” Those days I was and said so. He trudged back into the other room, and after bit of rustling around, he appeared carrying a bottle of vodka. He slammed it down atop one of those shoulder-height dressers that hotels must buy by the trainload. He stared at the bottle for a minute, then turned back to me and raised an index finger Continue reading →

TSA full body scanners will upload ‘virtual strip search’ images directly to YouTube

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In order to prevent future crotch bombers from getting onto American airplanes, the Transportation Safety Administration wants to use full body scanners that see beneath clothes and project a “virtual strip search” onto a monitor. In an advanced version currently in beta testing, the images upload directly to YouTube. Several Hollywood producers have expressed interest in using footage from the scanners, which were developed with an unrestricted grant from the Fraternal Order of Paparazzi. Continue reading →

Farewell to ‘the Fin de Sucked’

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What are we to call the first decade of the 2000s? You know, like we call the 1960s “the Sixties?” A loss, obviously. What else are we to make of ten years that began with George Bush and ended with Sarah Palin? The general consensus revealed by a casual Google search is “the Aughts.” That’s a really archaic term, along the lines of “23 skidoo” and “the cat’s meow.” Or, for that matter, “take a powder,” which were it white I would do now. What other term can we use if not Aughts. Someone suggested “the zeros” or “the double zeros,” which fits even better. However, “zero” (no matter how many of them) implies that nothing happened. Were that only the case. A recent thread among my Facebook friends revealed more possibilities. I warned them I would be stealing their ideas: *The Ought Notties *All For Naughts *The LOLs *The FAILs *the WTFs *The Turd of the Century *The Fin de Sucked Continue reading →

The attack of the Aryan hellfraus

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Tiger Woods thinks that a ghetto is a country club where they don’t wear ties. He says that his Swedish wife “went ghetto” on him? She must be from the famous Stockholm ghetto where rival gangs the Herrings and the Reindeer throw snowballs at one another. Aryan hellfraus Elin Woods and Heidi Klum should form a tag team and go ghetto on their respective black husbands, Tiger and Seal. Guys who walk around named after toothy carnivores deserve to be kicked around by their shiksas from time to time. Continue reading →

Obama Health Care Terrorists will require that knee and hip replacements be made of recycled material

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WARNING SENIORS! Obama Health Care Terrorists will require that knee and hip replacements be made of recycled material. The new regulation will be part of the Administration’s plan to respond simultaneously to cost-cutting medical measures and environmentalists’ demands for concrete steps to reduce carbon emissions. Speaking on condition of anonymity, one Obama official added that Seniors in need of new hips will get 10% discounts of they agree to use hip replacements made from material from the World Trade Center. Continue reading →

RedOne and the Yerp Electropop Invasion

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RedOne is like the heart and soul of my universe. I met him and he completely, one hundred and fifty thousand percent wrapped his arms around my talent, and it was like we needed to work together. He has been a pioneer for the House of Gaga and his influence on me has been tremendous. I really couldn’t have done it without him. Gee, I guess she likes him. “She” is Lady Gaga and he is Nadir Khayat, better known as RedOne, the Moroccan-Swedish record producer, synthesizer slinger, and all around maker-happener who is a huge way responsible for seven American top hits this year alone. They include all five of Lady Gaga’s – “Just Dance,” “Poker Face,” “Love Game,” “Paparrazi,” and “Bad Romance;” Continue reading →

Time to Tweet Some Treason

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This from far down in a New York Times front page story: “Law enforcement officials who have been examining Major Hasan’s writings, including a Web posting on suicide bombing they have tentatively concluded was his,” … blah blah. Tentatively concluded? Tentatively? You mean that despite a huge investigation with international connotations, Big Bro’ can’t tell for sure who posted something!? I’m off to tweet some treason. Continue reading →

Strip Mine Afghanistan Now!

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I figured out how to flush the Taliban and Al Queda out of their mountain hideaways and into the open where civilized soldiers line up to fight. You know about the mountaintop-removal coal mining people currently leveling the Appalachians? Put them in charge of Afghanistan. They’ll simply shave the top half mile off the whole fucking country. Who knows, maybe they’ll find coal while they’re at it. Continue reading →

Prez notes weed on Woody

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The right was so obsessed with Dave Letterman’s sex life that they missed the revelation about Barack Obama’s nose. Following Dave’s confessional, Woody Harrelson came on the show and told how he visited then-candidate Obama in Hawaii hours after spending time with Willie Nelson. Obama remarked about how Woody reeked of weed. What, our Prez can’t find a consensus in Congress but he can sniff out weed on Woody? Call the executioner! Continue reading →

The Iraq War has grown old and tired. Bring on the slaughter

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Oh snap, we’re going to war with Iran. Awesome. It’s been years since Bush II launched something that the Massed Asses of Middle America can understand – a high-tech, special-effects-rich land, sea and air offensive with roaring engines, soaring jets, heaps of rockets red glare, and cheerleading “embedded” reporters feeding action-packed videos to a TV audience that hasn’t had anything to applaud cheer since those glory days of “shock and awe.” (Transformers II simply wasn’t enough). This day-to-day stuff where weary foot soldiers merely get blown up by buried IEDs that we never see on camera is dreary, dreary, for a population that now distrusts anyone who doesn’t talk like a professional wrestler. We have high-def TV now. Bring on the slaughter. Continue reading →

This story about Leonard Cohen has sex in it.

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I remember Leonard Cohen well from the Chelsea Hotel. This story has sex in it. Not between me and him. Between him and a woman friend of mine who I’ll call S. To be honest, though, there was no sex in that there was no happy ending in the traditional sense. She was hardly a blushing flower and in fact had the terrible habit of picking up guys in the subway. She picked up him in the Spanish restaurant that I believe still sits downstairs. They went up to his room, but she wasn’t equipped to deal with the prodigious size of Cohen’s member. She couldn’t complete the act. No wonder his songs are so bitter. If the act was completed by the usual other means, she didn’t say. All I know is that the blow job described in his song “Chelsea Hotel #2” was delivered by Janis Joplin. In the early 1990s he did an interview in which this Q & A occurred: “Who are your best male friend and your best female friend?” “My 12-inch dick.” According to S, that was no exaggeration. Now, how does that take us to me? In the early 1970s, probably 1972, I interviewed Continue reading →

How to explain health care to a mall dweller who can’t find his way back to the food court without following a trail of Cheetos

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When invited to use the word “horticulture” in a sentence, Dorothy Parker said “you can lead horticulture but you can’t make her think.” Not to be uncharitable or anything, but the death panel teabaggers have the IQ of a coconut palm and will sell themselves to anyone who hands out father-knows-best answers to life’s complexities. You look at those red-faced, sputtering fifty-somethings celebrated on ClusterFox News and you see folks who just buried or soon will bury their parents and are shivering in the cold in fear of how they will handle life without Mommy and Daddy to tell them what to believe. So they sell their fist-shaking, placard-carrying, flag-waving services to the nearest loudmouth who gives them orders in words they can understand. How does a ClusterFoxer explain health care to a mall dweller who can’t find his way back to the food court without following a trail of Cheetos? He says “Obama wants to kill yo Momma.” Continue reading →

The Kennedy Family and Me

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I took a picture of JFK when I was 17 and working as a photographer for the Suffolk County News. That’s Suffolk County in New York and not the one in Boston, though the latter might be more appropriate. It was the end of the 1960 campaign when he flew into McArthur Airport and addressed a small rally by climbing atop a car. You could climb atop cars in 1960. You also could be an unknown teenage photographer with no press credentials and walk up to the future President carrying a large metal box, specifically a Crown Graphic camera of the sort stereotypically associated with the press photographers of the time. Crown Graphics and their larger brethren, Speed Graphics, were on their way out, being replaced by single lens reflexes. But not entirely replaced. My fellow photographer Carl used one to get through crowds and police lines at murders, using the thing to bully people out of the way. He did this shouting “press!” And when he got to the scene of the crime he would put down the Graphic and whip a Leica out of his shirt pocket and get the shot of the corpse. I couldn’t afford a Leica or a SLR, but I had a hand-me-down Graphic. I climbed onto the car next to JFK’s, and all of seven or eight feet away from him took that shot. Soon after, I processed it in the darkroom I had built into my bedroom closet and brought the print to my dad, who was editor of the Suffolk County News. He paid me $2. That’s about the equivalent of $20 today. ( I can’t figure out how to post it here, but have a query into someone who does. Check back) I could have killed Kennedy. Three years later someone else did just that, and from much further away. I didn’t even shake his hand, though he thrust it in my direction later on when we both were down off our car roofs and he was walking down a reception line of sorts. “Shake his hand, shake his hand,” my father yelled. But I was working. And carrying a Graphic, which wasn’t easily put down in the middle of a crowd. I was afraid that someone would trip over it. My father shook JFK’s hand. He was accustomed to presidential familiarity. Four years earlier he drank bourbon with Harry Truman (see my first post, “Jimi, Harry and Me” ( http://mikejahn.moxietype.net/index.php?story=story090413-133217 ). Thus developed my special bond with the Kennedy dynasty. Eight years later I shed a tear over Bobby, and just now shed a tear over Teddy. (I also was stunned and disappointed when Jacki married Ari, but that’s another matter.) Teddy, Teddy was special, especially since he outlived the rest by decades. I took that picture in late October of 1960, nearly half a century ago. Continue reading →

Obama Death Panels Will Burn Grandma at the Stake

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I have learned that Obama not only plans to have “death panels” to decide when Grandma dies, he plans to burn her at the stake when she does. The administration has secret plans for what it calls “vertical cremation,” which builds on centuries of experience among religious fundamentalists and thus represents an attempt to reach out to the Republican base. According to an official who wishes to remain anonymous, Continue reading →