Funny/Sad

Bert Williams, died on this day in 1922 at age 46. Williams was not just historically the first African-American star, but in his heyday of the century's second decade, an uppermost figure on Broadway who worked with and ranked alongside the likes of Eva Tanguay, Irene Franklin, Bert Leslie, Ed Wynn, Leon Errol. On August 15, 1900, a major race riot erupted in New York City over a black man who had accidentally killed a white attacker of his wife. At the height of the riot the cry went out to "get" Bert Williams, along with a handful of other prominent black performers of the day, including Williams' partner George Walker. Writes James Weldon Johnson in his Black Manhattan, "These seemed to be the only individual names the crowd was familiar with. " Williams survived physically unscathed, but due to the color of his skin the seemingly sure cure of fame had failed to protect him. The incident is said to have haunted him for the remaining twenty-two years of his life. Williams was, in the words of W.C. Fields: "The funniest man I ever saw, and the saddest man I ever knew."

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Cat Blog Friday #5

Kuro and Daffy

Do I know you?

My friend and blogist extraordinaire, Jan Herman, emailed earlier today to call my attention to a little dustup that has happened as a result of something he wrote recently at artsjournal.com :

It seems that slightly-to-the-right-of-Atilla-the-Hun "Weekly Standard" columnist Stephen Schwartz's decidedly different ideological past has come back to haunt and bite him in the ass---thanks to Jan's excellent long term memory. One that extends back to his clerking days (circa '66) at San Francisco's legendary City Lights Bookstore.

You can read all about it at Gawker .

I suppose it could happen to anyone; just look at John Dos Pasos. And my---al caps---EX-FRIEND, Lawrence Jarvik. One minute he was a self-described Trotskyist making documentaries about subjects like the failure of American Jewry to come to the aid of their brethren living in Nazi Germany. The next, he was a pod-like, right wing scourge of NPR and PBS, and most other things that even remotely smacked of garden variety liberalism. Without even any noticeable transitional stops in between. I tell you. . .it gave me whiplash. I suppose the moral is Be ever Vigilant. Be vewwwy vewwwy Vigilant!

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Memories of Michael

Second day of Michael Jackson trial.

Way back in mid-sixties, there were rumors that the mob shot Michael up with hormones to keep his voice preternaturally high. True
or not. . .it never seemed like a pretty picture behind the scenes.

In the early seventies, I remember watching a low-rent L.A. cable show hosted by singer Chuck Jackson. One episode featured an interview with Michael taped in the back of a moving limo hereabouts in this city where the future comes to die. Chuck musta really pulled strings. Even then, MJ didn't seem to be "all there." The hormones?

Somewhere in the early eighties I watched Michael on an afternoon talk-panel show where the other guest was Fred Astaire. He got all sychophantic with Fred, who was absolutely having none of it. Jackson wanted to know how Astaire danced on the ceiling in Royal Wedding. Fred kind of went sniff sniff and turned his head in the other direction as Jackson fawned on and on, then finally caught Astaire's drift and shut up. Racism? Nahhh! More likely a class thang.

Then there was the time my friend Randal High phoned me around '68 while a Jackson Family special was being televised. He called from North Carolina to NYC, where I was living then, just so he could get me to turn the show on and hit me with a one-liner: "As if any further proof were needed that we really are a nation of pederasts, just take a look at this kid." Ho ho ho hee hee hee ha ha ha. Alas, eventually Michael's shoe apparently (make that allegedly) got shifted to the other foot.

What a ghoulish and sad life. Has anyone ever fallen so vertiginously from such a high plateau of public adoration? It might be lonely at the top but it's crowded at the bottom, as someone (?) remarked somewhere (?) the other day. And even more so in stir. "Do I have to tell you one more time, bitch? Do the moonwalk!"

Even before the trial began yesterday, you just know all manner of contingency plans are being made on the offchance. . .. Just how do you go about deaccessing a menagerie? Ads for "slightly used" giraffes and elephants in the Santa Barbara Penny Saver? And trying to figure out who he'll stay with when and if he ever gets out. Probably not the folks, for obvious reasons. Liz? Well, she's been under the weather lately. Janet? Jermaine? Tito? Dibs are most likely already being taken on who'll get the exclusive post-prison TV interview. Babawawa? Prolly not. . . again, for obvious thanatopsical reasons. Oprah? Maybe. Though, she recently announced plans to quit in ten more years.

Here's what the recently departed Dr. HST has to say on the subject doing the deed with kiddies:

"The difference between an outlaw and a criminal is the difference between a pedophile and a Pederast: The pedophile is a person who thinks about sexual behavior with children, and the Pederast does these things. He lays hands on innocent children---he pentrates them and changes their lives forever. Being the object of a pedophile's warped affections is a Routine feature of growing up in America---and being a victim of a Pederast's crazed "love" is part of dying."

I almost feel sorry for Michael Jackson and his current Lear-like dillema , but obviously. . .not quite.

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