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

Author:

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

Author:

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

Author:

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 →

Obama’s Death Panel Murdered Michael Jackson

Author:

Obama’s Death Panel murdered Michael Jackson, David Carridine, Anna Nicole Smith, Farrah Fawcett, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Walter Cronkite, Heath Ledger and Steve Irwin while in beta testing. Sarah Palin’s moose died in animal testing and a 24-hour guard has been placed around the late Leona Helmsley’s $2 million pooch Trouble. Patrick Swayze is the predicted next victim. Along with the Swayze on the any-day-now list are Lindsay Lohan, Amy Winehouse, Eddie Van Halen, Kate Moss and, in keeping with tradition, Continue reading →

‘It was a time of euphoria and devastation’

Author:

I’ve been beating up on the legend of Woodstock pretty good lately. As much as I downplay the value of the festival itself, I’ve never doubted the accomplishments of that generation. It showed that mass action can stop a war, it launched the organic food and healthy living movement, and in its quest for global information sharing (as in The Whole Earth Catalog), set the tone for the creation of the Web. Bruce Pollock has written 12 books on music, interviewed a couple of hundred musicians, written several hundred lyrics, turned out at least 100 columns for a newspaper in New York, produced nearly a hundred record compilations, founded and edited exactly 100 issues of a top music magazine, and published an annual reference book on songs for 17 years. He wrote the following in celebration of his book, “By the Time We Got to Woodstock: The Great Rock Revolution of 1969.” “It was a time of euphoria and devastation, freedom and assassination, revolution and retribution, moonwalks and sit-ins, love-ins and race riots, sex, drugs and guns. It was the 1960s. The Kennedy coronation in 1960 promised glamour, hope and change; the return of Richard Nixon in 1968 ended all that silliness. In state after state idyllic college campuses became terrorist cells, inner cities went up in flames, families were torn asunder, as the drumbeat of “Popular music tried to drown out the drums of war. Graduating from high school in 1963 and ‘64 and ’65, the rock and roll of sock hops and malt shops, surfing and going steady gave way to an edgier, angrier sound, foretelling the end of innocence and the eve of destruction. For the first rock generation, the times were a-changing and we wanted the world…now! Starting late in 1966, FM radio carried this message from coast to coast, working its way up from underground, on the back of the expanding album market, with AM radio and the 45, the outmoded status quo, giving way in its wake. Through the visions and violence of 1968, the cracks in the dream turning to chasms, it held out the last remaining olive branches of hope—or was it refuge—to its burgeoning constituents, broadcasting the music of the future from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Byrds, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, Jimi Hendrix, Sly & the Family Stone, the Doors, the Dead, the Airplane, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, Mother Earth, Moby Grape, the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Velvet Underground, the Mothers of Invention, the MC5, Tim Buckley, Tim Hardin, Richie Havens, Funkadelic and the Fugs. “After sitting out the decade on the sidelines, Richard Nixon’s mission upon election was to restore order to the chaos, even if, as his crony in the governor’s mansion in California told a cheering throng, “It took a bloodbath.” And so, as the bloody year of 1969 unfolded, Aquarius fell on the counter culture. While the crucial musicians still issued albums like manifestos, as their draft eligible brothers tried to live the music in the streets, the government escalated its assault, here and overseas. “Holding to the last to the music that was supposed to set them free, at one mad outdoor party after another, from Miami to Denver and from Woodstock to Altamont, at least it could be said, and nowhere better than in this blistering book, that a generation went down swinging.” He’s wrong on that last point. That generation isn’t gone. Every time you vote in opposition to the Iraq War or munch an organic carrot while surfing the Web, you’re feeling its influence. Continue reading →

A hot Jamaican Black Muslim voodoo practitioner scared the bejesus out of her

Author:

I’m a magnet for crazy people. If I walked into a party and Courtney Love was there she’d be over in a flash. This is absolutely assured; it could be no other way. This curse follows me everywhere. When my late mother was at the point where she needed home health aides around the clock, this Jamaican woman was recommended to me and I hired her. She was 40 or so and hot, something I didn’t quite know what to make of considering she was a Black Muslim. She was a certified health aide and wonderful. I’ll call her Olivia. But she brought along her new roommate, who also was a home health aide. She was an Irish woman well into her 70s. I’ll call her Mary Kate. I got two for the price of one, except I had to feed both. They ate a LOT of takeout Chinese. My mother’s house is in a patch of gardens and woods separated by a large brook from protected wetlands. It’s like having a cabin in the woods. Olivia, it turns out, is a city girl. One of her jobs was washing the sheets and bedclothes. She strung clothesline all over the inside of Continue reading →

A ‘hunka hunka’ of an anniversary

Author:

Exactly 40 years ago Elvis returned to the concert stage after a long absence during which he solidified his reputation as a darling of the American masses by making horrible movies that everyone who did not live on a coast watched. Let the anniversary celebrations begin. You may as well pop a few Buds over this, middle America; the Woodstock anniversary is coming in a month, and the scent of smoldering weed will waft from senior citizen colonies everywhere. Elvis anniversary commemorations doubtless will happen all over the planet, and will be but one of a hunka hunka of official and unofficial events planet-wide. The official events will revolve around Graceland, Elvis’s Memphis estate-turned-theme park, and around Vegas, where the magic moment occurred amid a hot July. First, a confession about Elvis and me. “Hound Dog” was the first rock and roll record I bought. It was a 45, which for those too young to recall was kind of a flat black donut with grooves on it. I bought all the funky little rockers that Elvis made for Memphis’s legendary Sun Records, and then tuned out when he switched to RCA and began mass-producing hits. Then he was drafted, his situation satirized in the Broadway show and movie “Bye Bye Birdie.” When your career becomes a joke for Dick Van Dyke, it’s over. Appropriately, when Elvis got out of the Army he retired from mass-producing hits and went into mass-producing generally awful Hollywood movies. Continue reading →

‘That night I was in England making a ham sandwich for Mama Cass’

Author:

Every newspaperman gets interesting letters. For example, the one dated April 26, 1971: “Dear Mr. Jahn, “I am writing a biography of the late singer, Janis Joplin. While talking with Jerry *****, a writer for the Newark Star-Ledger, he mentioned that you had been with Janis Joplin on the night she died …” No, I wasn’t with Janis the night she died. We didn’t get along nearly well enough for her to want me with her on her special night. (Besides, that night I was in England making a ham sandwich for Mama Cass.) Janis and I had a Southern Comfort and Coke one time, her cough syrup-like drink, and that was one thing I don’t care to do again (ever try one?) And I did see what Janis looked like first thing in the morning one time, hung over, in desperate need of makeup, a comb, coffee and, um, well, Clearasil, clumping down a motel corridor wearing a scowl and a cotton housecoat with little pink flowers on it. Continue reading →

The Day That Spock Gave My Son a Tribble

Author:

I remember the day that Mr. Spock gave my son a Tribble. It was 1975 or early 1976. I know because the magazine I was writing for folded soon after. Not with any help from me, I like to think. The rag may have folded thanks to new owners, who came into town from one of the flyover states and wanted to make a dramatic entrance into the Big Apple. — They decided to symbolically “kill” the old magazine so as to replace it with the new. They produced a tiny coffin and had the staff – except those writers and editors who were horrified and refused to participate – drive nails into it, “burying” the copy of the old rag inside. Among them was the poor old owner, teary eyed, whose family had run it since the 1930s. –Installed a time clock next to the reception desk. The entire editorial department refused to use it, and the new owner was forced to forget the thing. –Brought in one of those Rotary Club motivational speakers, who got the editorial staff together and delivered a lecture on how to motivate those who reported to us. Continue reading →

Woodstock Was ‘the Senior Prom of the Sixties’

Author:

Said comedian David Steinberg about the event that we celebrate the 40th anniversary of this summer, “if Woodstock was held 5,000 years ago it would today be celebrated as a Jewish holiday.” Maybe he said 3,000 years. It doesn’t matter. His point is that half a million people sitting in the rain and mud listening to distant thunder certainly is worth eventual celebration with cold fish cakes and horseradish. My sound bite for this milestone in cultural history was that “Woodstock was the senior prom of the sixties.” After that, cruel fate forced us all to grow up. I plan to offer my own thoughts and experiences in the handful of months to come. I will make you all sick of it. Be warned. I covered it for the Times. We can be insufferable. One thing the “Woodstock Nation” propagandists left out of the travel brochures is that when you get half a million people braving a downpour to play in the mud of an immense cow pasture while the vaguely heard thump of a rhythm section pounds in the distance like thunder in the next county, what they are playing in ain’t exactly “mud.” The gee-whiz writers for Look, Time, Newsweek, and God-knows-how-many other mainstream media sources left out the contribution made by the cows. I guess they thought it was more acceptable to Mom and Pop to know that their half-naked children were playing mud pies and not something more lasting (it’s damned hard to get pregnant or infected with a colorful disease when there’s mud and … well, think “moo” … being shoved into your orifices). Nothing much of an intelligent nature was being said at Woodstock, either. Bill Graham notably remarked that one way to keep the gatecrashers out was to surround the place with a moat filled with burning oil. Wavy Gravy was, oh my. I sat down under a soggy tent at the base of the hill where the helicopters were coming and going, carrying rock stars and reporters, and had a beer alongside Jerry Garcia. We had a typical sixties conversation: “Hey man.” “Hey man.” And we finished our beers in silence watching someone play. I don’t remember who it was, and like so many of the rockers I knew at that period in history, Jerry’s not here to jog my memory. What shall we make of Woodstock? I hated it at first. It was wet and cold and smelly and there was nothing to eat save for warm beer and stale donuts; the portable toilets were overflowing and there was nowhere to relieve yourself except the woods. Now, I spent a good chunk of my childhood in the woods and by the stream, and am fearless about using nature as my toilet. However, it’s not the sort of thing expected of New York Times writers, even werewolves like me. With the press badge came certain responsibilities. One is to avoid laying a loaf in front of half a million people. At the time, I hated it, I said. So did the editorial page people at The Times. Then they reversed course and opined about how wonderful the whole thing was. For three days in a cow pasture in slightly upstate New York, there was the equivalent of the third largest city in New York State and there were no murders, was no crime … well, okay, I hear you … nothing but peace, love, music, and a mud amalgam being ground into your assorted holes. No cops to speak of, but let’s not get picky. But about three days after the three days of peace, love, whatever were over, I realized that I had attended a certified event. There was a lot of good music, for those who got close enough to hear it, of course. My personal favorite was a nighttime set by the otherwise despicable Sly Stone and his “Family.” I’ll get around to him one, other than to say that Sly and the Family Stone’s performance of “I Want to Take You Higher,” with audience members throwing sparklers into the air, was absolutely sensational. Nobody said you have to be a decent human being to make great music. There were other moments, to be sure. Blood, Sweat & Tears. The Band. Jefferson Airplane, sure. Richie Havens, a friend from the East Village, his festival-opening marathon set is rightly famous. Sha Na Na, fellow fixtures on the Columbia campus who did some early harmonizing in my living room on 113th Street near the methadone clinic and drug building, were good. Independent film distributor and genial soul Richard Lorber lived in the apartment next door, and we flew into Woodstock alongside Joe Cocker in a National Guard helicopter. Joan Baez, who I sat next to a year and a half before in the front row of the Yippie press conference at which Abbie Hoffman announced plans to demonstrate outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, sang. I didn’t see Jimi, because as I recall I was off being huffed at by Janis while he was rewriting “The Star Spangled Banner.” And there was the never-to-happen-again chance to have a conversation with Jerry. Come to think of it, how did festival-goers get dry matches with which to light the sparklers? How did I lose anything resembling dry paper to write on and, thus, was forced to do some classic reportorial stunt writing? I ad libbed a “new top” –in that case, the first five paragraphs of an existing story. I wrote it in my head and dictated it over the phone line straight to the transcriber in Times Square, and it went into the paper without change. Said Dick Shepard, my editor and the paper’s designated werewolf trainer, “that means you’re a professional.” Thanks, I thought. Can the next gig be someplace dry? Continue reading →

Woodstock Was ‘the Senior Prom of the Sixties’

Author:

Said comedian David Steinberg about the event that we celebrate the 40th anniversary of this summer, “if Woodstock was held 5,000 years ago it would today be celebrated as a Jewish holiday.” Maybe he said 3,000 years. It doesn’t matter. His point is that half a million people sitting in the rain and mud listening to distant thunder certainly is worth eventual celebration with cold fish cakes and horseradish. My sound bite for this milestone in cultural history was that “Woodstock was the senior prom of the sixties.” After that, cruel fate forced us all to grow up. I plan to offer my own thoughts and experiences in the handful of months to come. I will make you all sick of it. Be warned. I covered it for the Times. We can be insufferable. One thing the “Woodstock Nation” propagandists left out of the travel brochures is that when you get half a million people braving a downpour to play in the mud of an immense cow pasture while the vaguely heard thump of a rhythm section pounds in the distance like thunder in the next county, what they are playing in ain’t exactly “mud.” The gee-whiz writers for Look, Time, Newsweek, and God-knows-how-many other mainstream media sources left out the contribution made by the cows. I guess they thought it was more acceptable to Mom and Pop to know that their half-naked children were playing mud pies and not something more lasting (it’s damned hard to get pregnant or infected with a colorful disease when there’s mud and … well, think “moo” … being shoved into your orifices). Nothing much of an intelligent nature was being said at Woodstock, either. Bill Graham notably remarked that one way to keep the gatecrashers out was to surround the place with a moat filled with burning oil. Wavy Gravy was, oh my. I sat down under a soggy tent at the base of the hill where the helicopters were coming and going, carrying rock stars and reporters, and had a beer alongside Jerry Garcia. We had a typical sixties conversation: “Hey man.” “Hey man.” And we finished our beers in silence watching someone play. I don’t remember who it was, and like so many of the rockers I knew at that period in history, Jerry’s not here to jog my memory. What shall we make of Woodstock? I hated it at first. It was wet and cold and smelly and there was nothing to eat save for warm beer and stale donuts; the portable toilets were overflowing and there was nowhere to relieve yourself except the woods. Now, I spent a good chunk of my childhood in the woods and by the stream, and am fearless about using nature as my toilet. However, it’s not the sort of thing expected of New York Times writers, even werewolves like me. With the press badge came certain responsibilities. One is to avoid laying a loaf in front of half a million people. At the time, I hated it, I said. So did the editorial page people at The Times. Then they reversed course and opined about how wonderful the whole thing was. For three days in a cow pasture in slightly upstate New York, there was the equivalent of the third largest city in New York State and there were no murders, was no crime … well, okay, I hear you … nothing but peace, love, music, and a mud amalgam being ground into your assorted holes. No cops to speak of, but let’s not get picky. But about three days after the three days of peace, love, whatever were over, I realized that I had attended a certified event. There was a lot of good music, for those who got close enough to hear it, of course. My personal favorite was a nighttime set by the otherwise despicable Sly Stone and his “Family.” I’ll get around to him one, other than to say that Sly and the Family Stone’s performance of “I Want to Take You Higher,” with audience members throwing sparklers into the air, was absolutely sensational. Nobody said you have to be a decent human being to make great music. There were other moments, to be sure. Blood, Sweat & Tears. The Band. Jefferson Airplane, sure. Richie Havens, a friend from the East Village, his festival-opening marathon set is rightly famous. Sha Na Na, fellow fixtures on the Columbia campus who did some early harmonizing in my living room on 113th Street near the methadone clinic and drug building, were good. Independent film distributor and genial soul Richard Lorber lived in the apartment next door, and we flew into Woodstock alongside Joe Cocker in a National Guard helicopter. Joan Baez, who I sat next to a year and a half before in the front row of the Yippie press conference at which Abbie Hoffman announced plans to demonstrate outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, sang. I didn’t see Jimi, because as I recall I was off being huffed at by Janis while he was rewriting “The Star Spangled Banner.” And there was the never-to-happen-again chance to have a conversation with Jerry. Come to think of it, how did festival-goers get dry matches with which to light the sparklers? How did I lose anything resembling dry paper to write on and, thus, was forced to do some classic reportorial stunt writing? I ad libbed a “new top” –in that case, the first five paragraphs of an existing story. I wrote it in my head and dictated it over the phone line straight to the transcriber in Times Square, and it went into the paper without change. Said Dick Shepard, my editor and the paper’s designated werewolf trainer, “that means you’re a professional.” Thanks, I thought. Can the next gig be someplace dry? Continue reading →