Traipsing Through The Arts-All 20^th Century Art Is About Sex-Forget That Stuff You Learned In Art Class About The Sublime-

A Kick In The Back To Art Critic Clarence Dewar-Sex And The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood-Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Bocca Baciata (1859)

By Laura Perkins

Sometimes despite your best intentions or at least the direction of your initial intentions you get waylaid by something that you had not expected, something that came out of left field, some undead thing, what do the kids call it some zombie beast thing, let’s call it some undead thing and that will suffice, in middle of the night. I had originally intended this piece to be a homage to the sensuality of the art of Arthur Garfield Dove, a key pioneer in bringing serious sexuality to serious art. (I will only do this three-name moniker thing once which drives my plebian blood pressure through the roof making an exception to Dove because maybe he was living on that boat in the Hudson River with his mistress, fellow artist Helen Torr, or was tied up with farm chores once he broke from his upper middle-class existence and got the heave-ho from dear old Dad but only once nevertheless). Then one Clarence Dewar, you have heard that name before in this space, as a so-called art critic for Art Today mentioned by me as a foil for those rubes who think that all 20^th century was the search for the sublime. (Nobody not even Mr. Dewar could believe that 21^st century art as it evolves in the age of the Internet has anything to do with sex or eroticism except a few crazed curators trying to move up the food chain at the MoMA.)

I first took Mr. Dewar over the coals, no, rapped his knuckles like some wayward schoolboy when he argued that Jackson Pollack’s Number 31 from 1949 was the epitome of the sublime in the last half century of the 20^th century. I had assumed he was just clueless about the real import of the painting as the clarion call to sexual liberation before that was fashionable in staid post-World War II America as the Cold War heated up. I thought that maybe he had attended too many classes and dinner parties with his acknowledged mentor Clement Greenberg whose rants over the search for sublime whatever that is or was and removing the fight for line from form were some stone tablets from the hills (maybe Joseph Smith’s upstate New York tablets hills although Smith could be excused having been born during the Second Great Awakening when art was about Jesus and the brethren which disoriented lots of country folk).

(It bears repeating every chance I get to note that sycophant Dewar got his ass kicked out of a publication Sam Lowell was acting as art and cinema editor for out in alternative newspaper universe San Francisco back in the 1970s for retailing (read plagiarizing) the latest words from the mountain by Clement Greenberg as his own. Acting essentially as a shill and flak-catcher for the well-known wily Greenberg who used up a whole generation of boys that way and never got a scratch on him although today at least his opinions, his words from the mountains are used to wrap fish remains in.)       

Then I talked to Sam Lowell about this latest troll. (We have already had enough, more than enough about the high-brow ones like one Arthur Doyle (middle name Gilmore omitted on purpose) and the swarm of born-again evangelicals who inundated this space, this sacred space with about twelve million quotes from the Bible basically in order to justify calling me Keil, the devil’s servant. I am worried about their reemergence since now I have to go back into the 19^th century art scene for fear that this fool Mr. Dewar’s nonsense will have unleashed those dopes again) Sam laughed said not to worry Clarence hadn’t had an original though since he was born, maybe before. This did not make me laugh because in addition to that Sam claimed that Clarence had been nothing but Greenberg’s poodle, his go-fer and flak-catcher. What did make me laugh was when Sam told me he had known Clarence back in the 1970s and had had to fired him for plagiarism. For taking whatever was on Greenberg’s mind on any given day and either just did a thin re-write or cut the title off from a Greenberg piece in some other publication and sent it in as is. Sam said if Clarence wanted to go low we would discredit him with that otherwise we would meet him on our own self-selected ground of sex and eroticism as the driving force for 20^th century art.

First I threw the wrecking ball around that sublime silliness in Mr. Dewar’s interpretation of what Pollock was trying to release and then Sam put the whammy of whammies on him with the evidence that Pollock was according to recent high tech testing either having sex with somebody or himself (okay masturbating I was trying to avoid writing that in case the Primitive Baptists got wind of it and started going crazy again ranting against me using protecting their kids from such usage as cannon fodder for their weak foolishness) and had used a condom which became part of the painting out in that lonely shed on Long Island. Then when Mr. Dewar tried to play lawyer for Edward Hopper and his brilliant Nighthawks talking bullshit, Sam’s term, but I agree, about all the lonely people, about the loneliness of urbanization I had to yank him up again for being not just a poor example of an art critic but maybe having read whatever Hopper’s press agent had to say to prettify the fact that Hopper was a dirty old man who spent more time with some young honey in a well-known house of ill repute (okay whorehouse) than with his wife, Jo, who nevertheless told a candid world Eddie, her Eddie was hot for buxom young things in a fit or righteous anger. (Thereafter she refused to let her Eddie do any nudes-except her- an unwise decision since as Sam noted, and John Updike did too many years ago, that in sweet revenge he portrayed her as some old-time bent whore who had best been put out to pasture years before. Check Hooper’s Girlie Show for his revenge on Jo. Oh yes, and as another prime example of the scandalous fact that he had flunked doing faces classes under either William Merritt Chase, you can hear me grind my teeth writing this, or Bob Henri.)            

The current uprising of this fool, sending us back to the dangerous waters of the 19^th century art scene, is a post-mortem taking issue about Whistler’s The White Girl and our (Sam is included here) contention that Whistler was pimping his girlfriend to get out from under a mountain of debt. Mr. Dewar made the outrageous claim that Whistler was just conforming to the theories of his friends in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood comparing The White Girl to Brotherhood leader Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s Bocca Baciata. Jesus I though Sam was either going to have a stroke, or go to New York to see Mr. Dewar with murder and mayhem in his heart

Whistler may have been friends, may have had a few drinks at the Cock &Bull down by the waterfront in London on the Thames  where the liquor flowed and with the right connections you could feast on the flavor of the month lanadum which fueled more cultural careers than you could shake a stick at, name the artist, poet, in Rosetti’s case artist-poet and drugs were driving half their insights. Did poor crazy Ruskin Turner’s big-time patron in so that in the end he was blathering about all serious 19^th century being the search for the sublime. Drove a guy like art critic Bill Hazlitt straight to the nut house, straight to Bedlam talking about the need to go back to heroic historical paintings like the great David. Are you kidding?  But the drugs then, and now too check Grady Lamont’s admissions to illegal and extensive drug use before he hit the twelve- step road, weren’t for everyone.

Whistler and the brothers may have even shared, ah, what did they call them oh yes muses, wink, wink, models, for sure Fanny Cornforth who was free with her charms as long as they lasted before the drink and some sour DNA genes did her in. What they did no share, could not share was a vision about sexuality. Whistler as Sam and I have made clear in our studies of the predecessors of the 20^th century glut of sex and eroticism in serious art was about hustling his favorite muse of the month covering them in symphonies of colors, white, green, black, Sam, by the way says sym-phonies of color, language but frankly except The White Girl where he used an ancient from the days of the Whole of Babylon hsy symbolic trick with the wolf’s head and fur to draw attention to his wares his stuff is NOT sexual, is some drug-induced hazy mist at dusk or dawn nonsense. (By the way the Whole of Babylon, unlike pimp daddy James advertised her own wares, made her own way and didn’t need some humpty dumpty middleman to promote her cause.)           

Rosetti and the brethren though reeked of sex, reeked of the liberating spirit they found in early Renaissance painters before punks, Sam’s term not mine, like DaVinci and that no good bastard Raphael tried to suppress bringing everybody back to the crazy Mother Mary. Baby Jesus, Holy Family noise that crippled art for centuries except for Popes and the like who could afford the graft for real art, nudes and Grecian urn priapic material in their private apartments. The Brothers’ hero par excellence Botticelli and work like his divine Venus who Sam swears, this long before I knew him and while he was working his way through three marriages and three divorces, he had a “hippie chick” girlfriend who looked exactly like her, including the forever long hair and braids. Including those luscious ruby red lips that even I appreciated when Venus made a stop at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston a few years ago (and Sam pissed me off by staring at the painting for about an hour which wasn’t so bad but went on and on about that hippie chick, not a good move, not at all).

That is the rub, that is the clincher as to why a drug-infested pimp like Whistler could never make the cut, could never get into the Brotherhood for love nor money. Look at his so-called muses, look at their skinny pre-Angela Joie sullen sunken pinkish lips, even when he was hustling. Had no sense how important the lips were to sexuality and sensuality back in Botticelli’s golden age time. Then look at Bocca Baciata, or for that matter half a dozen Rosetti paintings using Fanny Cornforth, she with those big full ruby red lips not seen since Botticelli went through his paces. That should take care of one holy goof Clarence Dewar and his craziness, his half-baked theories. As Sam says on occasion though, enough.            

When The World Believed In Fairy Tales And Other Assorted “Fake Legends”-Woody Allen’s “Magic In The Moonlight” (2014)-A Film Review   

By Will Bradley

Magic In The Moonlight, starring Emma Stone, Colin Firth,      

Blessed be the niche writers. That at least is what I got for an answer from site manager Greg Green when I asked him why I was “chosen” to review the film under review Woody Allen’s Magic In The Moonlight. Apparently, and contrary to stated publication policy established by Greg and the then newly established Editorial Board set up to oversee the assignments and their distribution, I am now in the “legend-slayer” niche (and blessed) ever since I started taking up the cudgels again recently with reviews of fake legend Spider Man and real legend Jack Reacher.    

I am okay, and very much so, with the legend-slaying assignment which have been my entryway into getting my by-line ad freedom from free-lancer stringer status. But I will be damned if I know what legend I am supposed to be slaying in this frothy little 1920s based romance a la late Woody Allen after he stopped overusing the New York urban themes of his earlier career. My problem is that Moo Shi Beef or whatever alias Stanley Nevins, the famous magician who every aspiring magician even now bows down to, was using at the time when he was fooling everybody with parlor pink magic tricks in Paris and its environs was already a well- known charlatan and cultural appropriator (the Chinese garb and moniker of a well-born Englishman) who Lex Marshall had long ago exposed as a fraud and flim-flam artist who made his real money selling dope imported from China to his select clientele. Moo Shi Beef (sorry if I offend anybody but no insult is intended since Stanley worked the rackets under a bunch of names all Chinese as part of his scam but also to ease the way to get the dope he was peddling into England under an import-export license issued by a minister in high places who was being bribed by him. 

The female part of this legend-busting expose was the famous, or rather infamous Sophie Baker the well-known medium who bilked half the nobility, the male nobility although I am sure if she ran out of men she would have gone to the women’s side, of Europe before she was done. Although she never was fully exposed since she had secret lover in Scotland Yard and maybe another at Interpol I do not believe that recently anybody had thought of her as a legend. It turned out I was wrong that she was subject to a female cult of worshipers, especially among the Roma people and that her exploits are the stuff told to their children as an example of what it was like when the world could easily be hoodwinked by a beautiful if harebrained fraud. A whole generation of fortune-tellers, spiritualists, mediums, and grifters worked their rackets based on the little booklets she wrote on the subject after she retired to some castle in Nice.    

That was later though, after both Moo Shi, hell, I will call him his silly English name Stanley, and Sophie had passed their prime. This film is really the story of their brief affair (they were supposed to get married after Stanley had in a drunken stupor proposed to her but she backed out after some prince beckoned with castles and diamonds and Stanley could only offer the loot gathered from card tricks and magic travelling circus magic tricks) after Stanley, Stanley of all people although this was before Lex lowered the hammer on his operations to prove that Sophie was a fraud. See Stanley along with the Chinese magic tricks gag had a big reputation as a debunker of others, of being the last rational man in the Empire. Basically a snob and stuffed shirt. But that was part of his grift, his cover which is why Lex had to dig deeply to expose him and Lex always considered him a very worthy opponent for just that reason. She was brought in to break up Sophie’s scam, her seance silliness that half the English nobility and gentry were paying big dough to be thrilled by.  

Maybe it was that two kindred had so much blarney in common but from the first minute they met anybody who was around then could see that they would go under the silky sheets before long despite the eyewash they were feeding each other. And so it went back and forth, back and forth under the night they got drunk and wound up under those already mentioned silky sheets. I already have told that they would have a brief affair and no marriage despite Stanley’s proposal once Sophie went to serious gold-digger work on that dubbed prince. What I didn’t tell you is that Stanley’s fortunes rose for a while until Lex dumped his evidence on the world and he wound up selling life insurance on cold calls back in Bristol. We already know Sophie’s upscale fate. What I want to know is why was I brought into this low-rent scene when I could be taking dead aim at Tony Stark’s silly Avenger operation which desperately need to be exposed. For now.

The Legend-Slayer Cometh-Again-Crushing The Press Agents Hype Of The Myth Of Teenage Mutant-Marvel Comic’s “Spider Man” (2012) A Film Review

DVD Review

By Will Bradley

You never know in the fake news legend-slaying racket when some ordinary citizen gets the royal treatment, and everything comes up roses. You also never know when fake news legends are going to rear their ugly heads as now when I have to dissect, maybe deflate, no, matter untangle, is a better word, the legend of a teenage mutant named Spider Man. I have been off helping fellow journalist Sarah Lemoyne do a wide-ranging series on B- film noirs from the 1940s and 1950s (remember the queen of the Bs Gloria Grahame and you will get an idea about what B-films were all about) which should begin publication later this year.

Since after demolishing the fake news Legend of “The Shadow,” aka Lamont Cranston, a New York playboy who while idling the daylight hours waiting for nightfall so he could hit the nightclub circuit hired for big money John Kerr who used to work for the Times but who left the business to make a ton of money hyping whoever wanted to be hyped like Cranston I had some time my hands I agreed to help Sarah doing the research and watching the movies. Then out of nowhere Greg Green who runs the show here, is the site manager, asked me to check out the strange legend and stranger doings of one Jack Reacher. No sooner had I done so then this punk kid from New York, a mere teenager reared his ugly head and wanted everybody to bow down to his prowess.

As I have mentioned before, with the seeming exception of real hero Reacher who shuns publicity, likes life “off the grid,” all these fakes get by through hiring well-paid press agents, publicity people, flak-catchers. I am not sure where the kid got the money, maybe a trust fund left by his deceased parents, by the way when not in costume his name is Peter Parker, hired Stanley Klee, yes, Stan the famous press agent who worked miracles if you like for all kinds of ordinary citizens who wanted to bask in the glow of a group of vigilantes called the Avengers, a grouping funded by a guy named Tony Stark. When I heard that name Stark as I had with Reacher initially until I found out he was the real deal I immediately became fearful that this was another “deep state” operation where anybody who question anybody about anything was doomed to the ash heap. The jury is still out on that proposition but I press on.     

Like I said in the old days legends were created usually out of whole cloth by those well-paid press agents who beat the drums for whoever was paying the tab (and expenses too). But at least they were adults, could sign a contract, had left puberty way behind. This kid, egged on by the cynical Stark who seems to be behind almost every alleged “save” of the world, couldn’t wait until he grew up, needed to show his metal early on. Here is a kid who unlike say Superman who at least changed in a telephone booth or in a men’s restroom changed into his uniform in some dumpster-filled back alley. Jesus. 

I will let my ire at even having to do this silly piece about what really were glorified high school hijinks and give you the lowdown, give you the straight stuff. I will say I had a problem though getting the story straight since Parker either changed press agents or somebody was working a scam and pretending to be Spider-Man but the story I got was that after his parents died he went crazy (after the usual period of sorrow to show he was human, a little) and tried to figure who killed his scientist father and mother. 

The old man had been trying to solve the riddle of the universe along with another scientist who used the name Connor, a one-armed bandit who craved working with two arms. They had worked for a Big Pharma operation interested in regeneration of limbs. Peter claimed to have documentation left by his father which would solve that little riddle.       

After some serious experimentation the formula actually worked, for a minute, on Connor whose missing limb came back. Too hasty though way too hasty since they had been rushed by a weirdo supervisor into production without enough testing. Connor turned into Lizard Man and this is where the legend stuff starts at least this is as far back as I can go to get the story straight. Weirdo Connor goes crazy and Peter Parker apparently finding some back alley as a dressing room becomes the knight-savior who saves Gotham once again. (By the way hasn’t Gotham been saved about seventeen time from everything from dinosaurs to weird aliens, the outer space kind okay the others are okay for our purposes. Doesn’t a place like Toledo or Peoria need of some protection). Lizard Man wants to change evolution and make humanity a lizard swamp. Naturally with the help of a young woman he, Peter, is interested in they create an antidote and everybody including Connor gets well courtesy of Big Pharma.

Baloney, pure fable, which even a guy like Stan should have known would not fly. Jesus, being saved from a lizards’ swamp by a teenage mutant looking to make the “bigs.” Are you kidding. I hope the kid didn’t pay too much to his press agent for this noise.    

The Girl With The Gun Simple Eyes-With Robert Mitchum And Jane Greer’s The Big Steal In Mind

By Zack James

Duke Halliday had a funny feeling that he had seen her before, had seen her maybe one time when he was in Acapulco over by the ocean on other side of Mexico from where he was now landing in Vera Cruz on the eastern side of this benighted sweat-filled dusty road bracero country. Yeah she had come up on him from behind speaking some low-slung Spanish to a bracero that he had pushed aside, pushed aside hard and she had made her apologies for the whole gringo race to that besotted bracero and then levelled off and told Duke “what was what” in proper schoolteacher or something English. (Duke, trying to get a word in edgewise, tried to explain without success and with an on-going sneer continually on her face which meant she brooked no back talk while she was talking that the particular bracero he had “shoved” had attempted in broad daylight and on the crowded docks to heist his wallet. Had he the chance Duke would have told her that any member of any nationality anywhere would have received the same shove under the circumstances. Although he did not tell her that a big-shouldered burly guy like him was used to shoving for any reason under the sun, drunk or sober, just to let whoever challenged him think twice about the matter.)   

Those silent thoughts over she had not gotten half way through her schoolmarm berating an errant student when he had had that funny feeling that while her hair was darker (the result of some man-made elixir), she was a little more shapely but not bad in all the right places and had a couple of small crow’s feet showing around the eyes she was the spitting imagine of Kathie, Kathie who had tried to kill him, kill him good as they were heading to Baja California and the good life. Left him on the side of the road after having just crashed through a police blockade and with two big slugs in his almost heart leaving him for dead and for taking the fall on those big shoulders alone, the big step-off fall if it came to that. That evil schoolmarm rattling last heard by Duke in Miss Johnson’s eight grade English class had thrown him off a bit on some small reflection because no way was Katie, a she-devil, a woman take any man’s measure and make him run through hoops, her hoops either a schoolmarm or much for language beyond the customary swear words and a few “come hither” phrases that when she was in heat or wanted some hard work done, like killing, maiming or armed robbery which would bring a guy running like a lap dog, including him.       

That funny feeling maybe not so funny because when he had seen her the last time she had already broken his spirit so bad that it would have taken emergency surgery, maybe more to put the broken pieces together. The story flashed through his now increasingly fevered brain almost as quickly as it happened. In those days he had been a private eye, a shamus, and a pretty good one with a partner who maybe wasn’t so good but who covered his back, mostly. Yeah Duke had been known for taking no prisoners when he got on a case. Left no untidy pieces and was as anybody could tell from a quick look at him that he was built for heavy lifting, could handle himself in a tight corner, and could give and take a few swift punches.

Those calling cards are what brought him to the attention of Whit Sterling, Whit the big-time mobster out in Reno. Whit had as most guys, guys including big-time mobsters a woman problem, had it bad for a piece of fluff named Kathie. Nothing but a work of art femme fatale and nothing but big trouble from the first day she came out of some ditch in some Podunk looking for the next best thing with that come hither look of hers and the guys fell right in line. No heavy lifting for that gal, none. She had for kicks skipped out on Whit with a chunk of dough, about forty thou, not much today, not much then maybe either but being a big-time mobster meant no sweet pussy was going to do a dance of death on him. Not if he expected to stay on top of the totem pole. And so he sent Duke to find her, bring her back if possible, bring back that fucking forty thou though even if he had to waste her. That waste her being perhaps necessary since she carried a very un-ladylike .32 and had used it on some long-ago lover whom she shot dead as a doornail and walked. Walked when the jury believed that she had been raped by that guy. Had clipped Whit too for good measure when she was in the process of her escape, with that quick forty thou which would keep her until the next guy she needed anted up.

The trail to Kathie naturally led south to warm sunny cheap living Mexico. Duke had had no problem finding her, as if she had left bread crumbs to lead him to her. Once he got a look at her, no, smelled that jasmine something scent she was wearing and which he could smell/feel a block before she entered the café where an informant told him she hung out he was a goner. And she seeing those broad shoulders, that clefted chin, those arms and hands that looked like they could handle just about anything-except a woman’s gun took dead aim at her new protector. They hit the sheets that first night, she almost raping him before they got to the bed, and they ran around for a while in Mexico before heading north until Whit got nervous and hired another private eye to ferret them out. In that confrontation Kathie killed that trailing shamus after he knocked Duke out. Needless to say, Duke was not going to take the fall for her, not on murder one. Whit or no Whit.   

Duke figuring it was his hard luck that he had picked a gun simple gal dropped out of sight, went underground really but he didn’t figure that Whit might have hard feelings about Duke taking his daily rate plus expenses money, and his woman too. But Whit was built that way and one of his minions found Duke doing short order chef duty in a dinky café diner outside of Pacifica. Brought him in to see Whit once he made Duke see reason with a fistful of brass knuckles and a jackroll, and Kathie. Yeah Whit was a piece of work, had found Katie and somehow had been taken in once again by here after she gave him back that forty thou to square things-for a while. But bringing oil and water together was not good this time as Duke and Kathie linked up again to do in Whit (both agreeing for their own reasons that Whit had to be done in or else neither life was worth a penny). Duke though what they hell had his claws in him since she took that well-used .32 out of her back aimed and without a blink fired. Almost a professional hit. Duke thought, though later when it was too late that he would have at least given the guy a way out as slim as that was. Yeah, Kathie placed two neat slugs into Whit’s heart as they were leaving. Never even looked back.         

As they headed out in Whit’s automobile for freedom in the Baja they ran into that police roadblock which they ran and Duke sensing he was in for a rough tumble if he ever crossed Kathie decided that he would turn himself in. Needless to say, Kathie did not like that idea and placed two neat slugs in what she though was Duke’s heart while she was driving to boot. The commotion though cause the car to crash and Duke jumped out trying to get the hell away. Kathie lay with her head over the steering wheel, maybe dead, maybe alive. That was the last he saw of her, the last time he had been in trouble over a woman after he squared himself with the coppers on the Whit and private eye beefs.      

Now that he looked at her a second time Duke could see that although she looked very much like Kathie, and giving a few pounds and years gone by this was not her, although she did have that gun simple look in her eyes that he had come to fear but it may have just been coincidence. As for her, as for Joan, she too had some sneaking feeling that she had met Duke before, had met him up in Reno one night when she was feeling frisky after a few drinks, after winning a few bucks at the gaming tables and feeling like she wanted a man that night had picked a guy with broad shoulders, with big hands that knew where to be put with a willing woman, and the ability to fend off any guy whom she didn’t want to deal with once she gave him her best come hither look. He who called himself Jeff then had told he had been built strictly for one- night stands which was fine by her that night as they hit the sheets without even knowing last names, also that night okay with her. A second look at this guy said behind those sleepy blue eyes and that granite chin was long-time serious affairs not one- night stands and not all had ended well. Still given what her predicament was just then trying to get a couple of thou back from the last guy who threw her over for some cheap laughing eyes Spanish whore who probably would give him a sexually transmitted disease those big shoulders, those hands and those fighter eyes would come in handy in case she ran into trouble with Jim, Jim Fiske if that was his real name.           

Duke looked her up and down and licked his chops and she took note that he ate her up, a conquest and she wasn’t even wearing her jasmine something scent that was guaranteed to get from a guy whatever she wanted from sex to heavy-lifting. So their dance in a dance began. He asked her if she wanted a drink, she accepted, and they went into Senor somebody’s cantina. They drank for a few hours, talked the talk and headed to her place (he didn’t have a place since he was just off the boat) and hit the sheets just the way they both figured when they compared notes in the morning.

Here is the funny part, the part that would glue them together for the duration. Joan had a photograph of that last guy she had tangled with, the guy who had run out on her on her bedroom table face down. When Duke turned the frame over and saw one Jim Fiske he flipped out. Pulled out his revolver and carefully aimed it at Joan. She in turn turned around and pulled out her own gun. A draw. That was when upon inquiry Duke found out that Joan and this Fiske had been lovers. Fiske was the guy who had taken a powder on her. More importantly to Duke this Fiske had waylaid him when he worked for Wells Fargo and taken some quarter of a million in cash from the bags strapped to his wrists. Then Joan told her two- bit story. Comparing notes, they decided to work together, after another run under the sheets to seal the deal, seal the deal by request from Joan on this one (Duke was not sure that he cared for her sexual aggression, but she had little tricks that he liked that usually only whorehouse whores knew).     

They gathered information that Fiske had hit the highway for Mexico City where he probably would try to convert the cash he had stolen from Duke which any way one looked at it was hot as a pistol since one did not usually act so foolishly as to rob a Wells Fargo armored truck or its employees. They rented a car and headed west stopping along the way to give a description of the dapper Fiske who had the look of a solid gringo and not some stinking bracero. They had some trouble in a small town, really just a trading post and a cantina, over cashing a check. That is where Duke started buckling a little once Joan took out her little snub-nosed gun and forced the proprietor to cash the check. Duke just stood there with his jaw hanging until she told him to wise up and that they had better vamoose.       

Having been given a description of Jim’s car they hit a little town and noticed a car fitting Jim’s description being worked on in some stinking garage, or what passed for a garage in sunny Mexico outside the big cities. They waited around for Jim to show to pick up the car and a couple of hours later he did show up. With a look of surprise on his face at seeing Joan he sized Duke up and figured that at best in a mix he would get the worst of it and so he “cut” them in on the robbery dough not knowing that Duke was the guy whom he had robbed. They travelled together uneasily until they hit the outskirts of Mexico City where they went up a private road and entered a big hacienda where Senor Blanco was waiting for Jim to deliver the hot money to fence. Jim took a cool one hundred thou in the transfer and was glad to get it. Duke figured he was a goner, could never work security again. 

When the trio got outside though before Jim could say to Joan for them to move on together without Duke Joan coolly put two slugs between his eyes. He fell like a tree. Joan just as coolly went over to the fallen Jim and swooped up the dough. Coolly asked if Duke was up for the road ahead. Not sure juts then that he had not played out this scene already he walked toward her and took the gun out of her hand. Then took her arm as they walked out into the sunset but the look on his face said he would spend many sleepless nights watching over his shoulder for the other shoe to fall. Jesus these gun simple women would kill him yet.   

In Honor Of Frida Kahlo At The Museum Of Fine Arts In Boston-

February 27 to June 16, 2019-

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Frida Kahlo and Arte Popular

February 27, 2019 – June 16, 2019
Saundra B. and William H. Lane Galleries (Gallery 332) and Saundra B. and William H. Lane Galleries (Gallery 334)

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The influence of Mexican folk art on Kahlo’s work and life

Like many artists in Mexico City’s vibrant intellectual circles, Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) avidly collected traditional Mexican folk art—arte popular—as a celebration of Mexican national culture. She drew inspiration from these objects, seizing on their political significance after the Mexican Revolution and incorporating their visual and material qualities into her now iconic paintings.

Following the recent acquisition of Dos Mujeres (Salvadora y Herminia) (1928), this is the MFA’s first exhibition on Frida Kahlo. It tightly focuses on Kahlo’s lasting engagements with arte popular, exploring how her passion for objects such as decorated ceramics, embroidered textiles, children’s toys, and devotional retablo paintings shaped her own artistic practice. A selection of Kahlo’s paintings—including important loans from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin—is brought together with representative examples of arte popular. Bringing fresh attention to Kahlo as an ambitious, ever-evolving painter, this exhibition also opens broader discussions about the influences of anonymous folk artists on famed modern painters.

The MFA’s mission is to be a meeting place of world cultures. Acknowledging the cultural heritage of the artist, gallery labels for this exhibition are provided in both English and Spanish.

La misión del Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) es ser un lugar de encuentro de las culturas del mundo. En reconocimiento a la herencia cultural del artista, los textos de la galería para esta exposición se ofrecen en inglés y español.

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By Laura Perkins

Honestly although I have known the name Frida Kahlo since back in the 1970s when we down to Mexico and along the way went to the famous Blue House Frida and Diego Rivera shared I was not familiar with her work as I was with Rivera and the other male muralists for which Mexico was then famous. I got more familiar with her work indirectly through the film Frida although I would not say I was well versed even then. What I connected Frida to more than art, or rather who I connected Frida to, was the Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky who persecuted by Stalin and his agents was on the planet without a place to stay. Frida and Diego through their connections got Trotsky into the country.  Although I had a Trotskyist boyfriend at the time I went to Mexico I was unaware, as I believe he was since he never mentioned it then, of the short love affair between Frida and Trotsky (which would culminate in a Frida painting dedicated to Trotsky now in the Women’s Art Museum down in Washington).       

My real introduction to Frida, live and in person, was several years ago when the MFA displayed (as in this exhibit) her famous Two Peasant Women painting which in many ways shows her artistic skills to advantage and has the addition advantage of showing how close she was to her deeply held Mexican roots. That alone is reason enough to see this exhibition at the MFA if you are in or near Boston between now and June.      

The Legend Slayer Cometh Once Again-Dismantling Or Trade Puffing The Legend Of One Jack Reacher?-Tom Cruise’s “Jack Reacher” (2012)-A Film Review

Water And Oil Don’t Mix And Warblers And Crime Novelists Don’t Either-Deanna Durbin’s The Lady On The Train (1945) -A Film Review Of Sorts

DVD Review  

By Leslie Dumont

The Lady On The Train, Deanna Durbin and a bunch of guys sniffing around her door. And they aren’t looking for songbirds,  1945 

Rule number one: don’t let a warbler, meaning in this case a female warbler, meaning a singer, night club singer usually, a torch singer like Miss Peggy Lee or Miss Helen Whiting, the queen being Miss Billie Holiday, within ten miles of a murder investigation (nobody can help it and nobody should be tagged with a foul if a warbler is within ten miles of a murder which is how the rule came about in the first place). Rule number two: no murder mystery writer should go within ten miles of a warbler who decides to ignore rule number one even if she was within ten miles of a murder. That warbler had a name, although if we wanted to keep her privacy intact at this long remove we could stick with “lady on the train” which is how she got within that ten miles of that nefarious murder which she could not as a devoted, maybe fanatic is better, crime novel reader pass up investigating. For convenience sake let us give her a name, Nicky, Nicky Collins from San Francisco back in the day, back during World War II but it could have been anytime when murder fouls up the air. And before you say it yes that is the same Nicky Collins who father (and previous other forebears) made about seven different killings in various markets and owned half of that town. As far as anybody could tell Nicky was only heading to New York during the Christmas season for coffee and crullers when she witnessed that murder from her first-class train window which will establish rule number one.          

Maybe the blame should go in the NYPD who have had so many homicide cases, solved, unsolved, cold cased when some out of town dame, warbler yells bloody murder they are seriously non-plussed. I am sure when crime novelist Wayne Morgan gets over his honeymoon ecstasies he will be filing some kind of law suit against the NYPD for dereliction of duty or something. Some offense against rule number two. See when Nicky gets nada from the coppers she, devoted to the crime novel genre calls on Mister Morgan for some assistance. No go, forget it he is betwixt and between working up the outline for his next book AND he has a Fifth Avenue fiancé who keeps a good-looking guy like him in check especially when some good-looking femme comes sniffing at the door. Done.     

Well not quite done since Nicky decided to fly solo and see what shook out. Plenty once by a very fortuitous development she found out whose murder she had witnessed from that slow boat to China train even if she could not figure out where the dastardly event took place. It turned out the deceased was one Eric Waring and yes before you ask that is the Waring from Waring Industries whose company will after World War II grab the attention of about six Congressional committees looking into the shoddy work done during the war, the no-bid contracts and the ridiculous bribes, pay-offs and other back room deals so maybe he was better off under the ground, especially when those Army Air Force guys had a name to go with the suicidal airplanes they had to ditch that Waring put out to speak nothing of the transport ships that went under the North Atlantic without any assists from German U-2 boats.

Nicky is nothing if not a snooper, a spook, a holy goof but abandoning all sense she goes out to the vast half of Long Island Waring estate looking for clues. It is a toss-up whether that was a mistake or not since she got her breakthrough clue there. The press releases, the Waring publicity department, the flak-catchers in general had the death of Waring down as an accident out at the hacienda while Waring was trimming the Christmas tree. No way. She grabbed a tell-tale pair of men’s slippers soaked with blood which said otherwise and along the way fell privy to an in-house conspiracy to do any Waring relatives out of anything in the will. All proceeds going to one warbler, Margo who worked out of the Circus Club and yes before you ask that is the same Margo, no surname needed not if you heard that voice although not in this escapade who used to headline at the Circus when the Circus was place number one to be in the city during the war years. I mentioned this was an inside job and it was, a beauty although I think there were too many moving parts. The guy who ran the Circus, the front man anyway was thick as thieves with this warbler Margo (although we did not hear song number one from Margo and got three from amateur night Nicky (doing by the way a very forgettable version of a  Cole Porter tune Night and Day which they  should never let anybody but Billie Holiday do especially not a white-bread like Nicky who anybody could see was only slumming).

One thing Nicky did have figured right was that the guy, stooge really, running the Circus was not the mastermind behind everything. He was some half-bright guy who maybe would be number three or fourth in an organization, another one of those gangs that could not shoot straight operations but this scam took a more vengeful guy, a planner not a thuggish knockoff artist. Nor skipping the romantic ne’er do well interludes was Nicky’s first choice for fall guy, Arnold a spendthrift nephew of Waring’s who had the beady eyes to do the deed but not the evil heart. If I didn’t know better I would have suspected this Morgan maybe going off the rails trying to come up with a new plot for his next book but that was too convenient. Anyway, then you would have an extra rule with no purpose since Nicky led this guy a merry chase letting him take the knuckles no lady would get even from serious bad guys.

No if you want to wrap this one up, if you want to see who was the  devil incarnate who not only wasted old man Waring, but that song-less warbler Margo, and a few others as well not counting who he wanted to eliminate to clear his path was Arnold’s milksop brother, Steve, the so-called good boy to Arnold’s bad boy again but who harbored many resentments against his uncle which caused to go down that slippery slope road to the big step off, the price for failure. You can see why the rules were set up the way they were set up.

“Put Out The Fire In Your Head”- With Patti Griffin’s Not Alone In Mind 

By Bradley Fox, Junior

[Sometimes this generational divide between parent and child that occurs naturally once the younger generation comes of age and begins to make its own way, make its own mistakes, and have its own problems grappling with day to day life in a hectic, dangerous world can only be deciphered by someone from that generation. That is the case here with the story of Sam Lowell’s youngest son, Justin. Sam told me his side of the story, really his take on Jason’s story since Sam had had little directly to do with what got Jason into his difficulties. I tried to write it up as a cautionary tale of sorts to help inform Sam’s, my generation, the generation that the late Peter Markin, our mutual friend who passed on under mysterious circumstances down in Mexico after the 1960s had ebbed and we had lost the cultural battles, called the Generation of ’68  about what was troubling our children. I failed in that effort.

I told my son, Bradley, Junior (with Sam’s permission), who knew Justin when they were younger, the details to see if he could write something that would make sense to Sam and me about what makes their generation tick. As for the grandkids, forget it between the Internet and its subset social media and the trials and tribulations they confront in an extremely dangerous world going forward it would take, as young Bradley told me, the minds of Freud, Einstein, and Rapper Rocco combined to even know what subliminal language they were speaking. Here’s my Bradley’s take on the whole mess [BF, Senior]:      

Justin Lowell had been a late love child of Sam and his third wife since divorced, Rebecca, and as such, with eight years between him and the next youngest child, Brenda, and hence eight years of being the only child at home after she left for college, was pampered by her, cocooned Sam said.  And frankly had been by Sam as well although the number one thing all of his children from his three failed marriages said of him was that he was a good and generous father but he that was a distant figure always off doing some lawyerly business and not around enough to get rid of the that foggy picture of him. But enough of Sam Lowell’s failings since this is about how Justin navigated the world not Sam. 

Of course Justin had all the advantages that accrued to a financially successful small town lawyer’s son from living in a nice large house with his own room (and later own rooms since he took over Brenda’s as well), a good if not great college education (good since Justin was not a particularly studious type like myself and unlike Brenda who gained entrance to Harvard with no problem), and all the diversions that leafy suburban life in Riverdale could bring. All through high school at Riverdale High we were very close buddies so I knew a lot about his make-up, knew too that he resented his mother’s overweening attentions (and as already mentioned Sam’ distance which Justin called indifference unlike my father who went out of his way to be attentive and was a reason why we would spent much more time at my house than his). Many nights out with hot dates we would go wherever we went together, tried out and failed to make the championship Riverdale High School football team, things like that. Mostly though we talked serious stuff about dreams and what we would do when we flew the coop, when we had what Sam and my father always called when they got together and regaled us with their stories the “great jail-break.”          

Naturally after high school, members in good standing of the Riverdale High Class of 1992, when Justin went to State U and I went to NYU since I was desperate to live in New York City and breath the air there as part of my becoming a commercial artist we drew apart. Maybe we would call, see each other at Vinny’s Pizza in town and cut up old touches. That was mainly freshman year when everything was new and we were “free.” Then Justin kind of fell off my map as I got involved in some school projects and Justin from what he told me one time at Vinny’s got involved in the furious social life that dominates lots of school out in the boondocks and where kids are away from  home for the first time. That was when Justin, who had hated even the idea of liquor when we were in high school and wouldn’t speak me for a while after l got Kathy Callahan drunk (and horny you can figure the rest out yourselves) on a double date, started doing drugs. Started first I had heard on easy stuff marijuana to be sociable (Justin, me too, as much as we got along with girls were both kind of shy and inward at times which is probably why we gravitated toward each other beyond our fathers knowing each other since their youth) and bennies to stay up and study for those finals at the last moment. Later senior year I heard from Jack Jamison who had gone to high school with us and was also at State U Justin had graduated to cocaine, serious cocaine, serious enough to have to begin to do some small time dealing to keep up. He did graduate but it was a close thing, very close.         

After college Justin moved to Boston to take a job in a bank, work his way up in the banking industry to make lots of money. In any case in Boston is where he met Melissa, Melissa I won’t give her last name because now she is a big deal in the college administration of an Ivy League college. He met Melissa at the Wild Rose nightclub, the one just outside of Kenmore Square. Met here and quickly came under her spell (a lot of guys had, did, would do that before she was through). Melissa, not a beauty but fetching was one of those women who loved kicks, loved the attention her desire for kicks brought. Her kick at that time was heroin which some previous lover had turned her on to. She something of a manic-depressive as it turned out said grass, coke, pills didn’t do it for her, didn’t put out the fire in her head, the feeling that she could never get close to anybody. (Later it also turned out that she had been sexually abused by her drunken father and had had plenty of reason to want to put the fire out in her head.) She turned a very willing Justin to smack (it goes by several names, H, snow, the lid, sweet baby, and the like we will just call it smack). Se he had been having trouble adjusting to having to actually work his ass off to get ahead in the banking industry and he too needed something to put out the fire in his head.

Melissa, as far as anybody ever knew, never got seriously addicted to the smack, maybe cut it enough to keep from going to junkie heaven. Justin of course got himself a jones, a big sleep on his shoulders. He before too long got fired from his job, went on the bum, started muling down to sunny Mexico for the hard boys to maintain his habit, went back on the bum and finally got picked up by the cops on Commonwealth Avenue trying to break and enter some Mayfair swell condo. All he would tell them beside his name was that he “had to put the fire out in his head, needed to get well or he was going to jump into the Charles River. At that point, Sam, who was clueless about his son’s drug problems as most parents are until some tripwire turns the lights on had to come into the action, had to defend his youngest son on a damn B&E charge. Got him into a “detox” program too. Did what he could without recrimination, or just a little other than bewilderment that his son would succumb to drugs.                        

Well I wish that I could say that Justin turned it around after that first “detox,” effort but that was not the case. He went through programs for five years before he sobered up for good, or what Sam and Rebecca thought was for good. One night I was home to see my father and to attend our twentieth anniversary class reunion when I ran into Justin on the street who said he would rather not go to the reunion since he would have to explain too many things about his life. He suggested we go into Vinny’s a few blocks up the street and have a couple of slices of pizza and a soda for old times’ sake. We did so and while we were munching away Justin explained as best he could what had happened to him. He reminded me of that night senior year when we were sitting down by the river and he had told me how much he hated his father, hated Sam, since he was such a pious bastard, was almost non-existent in his life, yet tried to be cool about his own bogus jailbreak youth like they had changed the world, like his youthful coolness made everything alright. I had forgotten about that night, had had my own small (compared to him) troubles adjusting to my own father’s whims. Then Justin said he had spent all that time since that night trying to put out the fire in his head.           

Here comes the sad part, about a year later Justin met a woman, Selina, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire where he went to live to get a fresh start. They fell in love, planned to be married, and had made all the arrangements, the church, reception and all. The night before the wedding when he was out with some guys celebrating he went off the bus. Somehow he had made a connection, and before the night was over he was sitting in Prescott Park by himself as the cops came by based on a disturbance yelling “I‘ve got to put the fire in my head, I’ve got to put the fire in my head out.”