WISDOM FROM THE MOUTH OF COMICS

"This isn't a particularly novel observation, but the world is full of people who think they can manipulate the lives of others merely by getting a law passed. There are large groups in America who, if they could swing it, would prohibit the use of everything that they didn't personally approve of - smoking, drinking, dancing, going to the movies, eating Italian salami and, if it cold be regulated, even love. 
" Well, we now know how successful the Eighteenth Amendment was.  It not only didn't stop anybody from drinking, but it helped to create the big-league hoodlum who today is almost as powerful as the government."

      - Groucho Marx, Groucho And Me, pub B.Geis Associates, New York, 1959.

How did we get in this mess?

If you are going to believe in change, be careful which messiah you allow to choose you. 

FULL CIRCLE

As we get closer to the Holiday Season, the anti-God people are once again going activist against the Christians, the Jews, and, I suppose, the Muslims, the Hindus and all the other great faiths on the planet.  Maybe it's me, but it feels like the atheists have become more bilious over the past few years, demanding equal space for anti-nativity scenes and bible-scoffing scrolls and suing that the well-lit trees be removed from public view.  Interesting, that people who don't believe in any sort of a god-thing can be so strident about getting space to inform everybody else how foolish it is to hope for some sort of cosmic destiny, and all because they themselves are sure there's nothing out there.  They haven't any proof, but it's not a crime to be stubborn about these important matters.  They have a right to their opinion, and yes, they have it thought out in a way that makes perfect sense to them.  In short, they have a religion of their own.

SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO EXPLAIN IT

Early on, I wrote a science fiction novel, titled Mission 998, in which, in the not-too-distant future, overpopulation on Earth drove mankind to build giant craft to cross the vast emptiness of outer space to reach other star systems.  When such a craft approached a planetary system that its sensors calculated could support human life, frozen embryos were inseminated and babies were artificially nurtured, born and raised until they could be dispatched to the lucky new planet.  Well, in my story, the new-born babies, coming down the line were analyzed and either approved or dispatched due to weaknesses, genetic imperfections and the like.  And, as there was an ingrained bias against Jewish people, the computer driven ship attempts to do away with the hero of the mission, who has a fraction of Jewish DNA in his genetics.   

Well, my agent howled at me that this would never do for the future of mankind, for, to his way of thinking, I had created a “Nazi state”.  I had created a state where necessity forced robotic decision-making, and in this case there was a well-documented anti-Hebrew bias, but I didn’t see it as the main thrust of the piece.  A ship launched by the Chinese would probably have a higher percentage of Chinese DNA on board, and since the Chinese are not consumed with brotherly love for the Japanese, one can see how a son of the Land of the Rising Sun might have the odds stacked against him.  I couldn’t believe the odd turn the discussion of this project had taken, and ultimately the agent and I parted ways. 

Today, being much older and a little wiser, I think I would have tried to explain the do-or-die necessity of the process of selection a little better.  How could my novel be anti-Jewish when my hero wins out over all odds?  Explain it, you see.  Explain without being boring or pedantic.  It’s not easy with your agent running like an ant from boiling water. 

Which brings me to a recent novel I wrote, The Rogue Pirates Bible Heretical, this one published by Double Dragon.  I sold it as science fiction - the tales from the bible once again handed down from generation to generation as oral history, this time by descendants of survivors of a space ship crashed on a distant planet ‘far out of the ordinary shipping lanes.’  You see, I took great care to disguise the underlying idea of the novel, that oral histories shift over time.  Still, it wasn’t enough.  I get emails from outraged readers who dislike the work for a variety of reasons.  But they never touch on what is really bothering them, the notion that I am messing with the word of God.  Interesting, when emotion and belief systems get involved, a writer can be mistaken as anti-Bible as easily as pro-Nazi.  So, my advice to fellow authors: if you want to please all of the people all of the time, stay away from subjects that trigger instant emotive response.  As to characters, use power-gays, strong women, sensitive male heroes and good dogs. Perhaps the giant spaceship in Mission 993 could have a side-pod where they raise all the imperfect children and allow them to live out their lives, and maybe my hero should be British and of royal ancestry, accomplished at knitting, cooking and gardening as well as aikedo.  And, considering the widely held rock-bound belief in the testaments old and new, I probably shouldn't have written my Rogue's Bible in the first place.  I doubt explaining it a little better would make any difference. 

 

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

Sometimes they are not actual railroads.  It could be a border guard on the rim of Europe, catching a few coins and looking the other way while a truck chugs in from Bulgaria or some other odd place with a load of people hungry for a better life.  Here in California and nearby Arizona, the long, desert Southern border is a sieve and there are guides and paths and even water bottle sites to prevent unpleasantness along the way.  So naturally we get a big percentage of Mexicans in the mix of illegal aliens that includes everybody from every continent in the world.  Still, let’s take a closer look at one of the little known underground railroads. 

I had my bi-annual hair cut at the local shop a few weeks ago.  The owner doesn’t like me much, because he doesn’t approve of such long durations between clippings.  So he gives me to one of his apprentice clippers.  This time I got a lady from Nicaragua.  They know I am a writer, and one of the other cutters started pestering me to write up the story of his ‘best friend’, who was serving a life sentence for participation in a murder he didn’t commit. 

“That is a nothing story,” my lady from Nicaragua said.  “You should tell my story.”

“Which is?” I politely asked.  You don’t turn surly when the sharp blade is inches from your throat.

“I was raped over and over by Mexican soldiers.”  The clippers zoomed and dove in a menacing pattern over my head.

“Oh,” I said, hoping we’d come to the high point in her agitation. 

“Then I get here, I cross the border and am robbed of my last money by guides and dumped on the street in San Diego.  I get picked up by an old lady.  I work like a slave for six months, no pay, no time off, doing everything, and then when I show I am with baby, I am dumped on the street in front of a hospital.  I end up with no baby, naked, selling my body for dinero.”

Lurid as that sounds, I was the ultimate captive audience.  “How did you get to the States in the first place?”  I was thinking about the tough Mexican border to their south.  If you were caught trying to get into our Southern neighbor, you were beaten, jailed and if you were lucky, booted back to your own country.  And it is thousands of miles from there to San Diego. 

“I pay the Mexican soldier.  They rape me, but they take my money for transport.”

I promised I would look into it, but once I was free I scooted for the door.  It was only later that I paused to think the waitress at the nearby Pollo Amigo  was from Panama.  And my own gardener was from San Salvador.  Since he was coming to clip the hedges the next day, I asked him if there was a way to get across Mexico. 

“Sure,” he said.  “Mexican underground railroad.  More expensive than it used to be, but they still do it.”

So there you have it.  Our neighboring country to the south shows outrage that we not treat our Hispanic illegals with more courtesy, dignity and free health care and education, and they have a hidden railway to transport unwelcome immigrants across Mexico and into our country.  So the next time you are considering nations from the Mideast, Africa or Asia as your friends, look a little closer to see what that really involves. 

This Is The Way It's Supposed To Work

Forget the adolescent, howling rage from the White House for a moment.  Forget the news reports of eminent doom.  This is the way democracy works.  We, the voters-collective, elected a socialist President, and we have to live with that.  The President is pushing for a more liberal Supreme Court, and we have to live with that.  We elected a liberal senate, and we have to live with that, as well. We also elected a House of Representatives to follow the will of the people, and they do not like high taxes, big government, Obamacare, or spending money we do not have.  Sure, Obama and Harry Reid are raging like caged lions; nobody likes to have their personal aspirations and notions of what is right for the country placed in check by the will of the people.  Accusations are flung, and things seem out of control.  Things actually are somewhat out of control, and will be for a time, until common sense prevails.  If you and I don't like it, next time around we can vote for Representatives, Senators and a President more aligned with our vision of these United States of America.

THE TRUE BELIEVER - Eric Hoffer (2)

"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.  When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.

"This minding of other people's business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national and racial affairs.  In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat."

I think it is a matter of balance, whether a person is normally serious about the affairs of state or tends to be somewhat nutty with personal preferences, judgments and mitigations.  You can tell how far off course the discourse has become by the shrillness of the dialogue.

The True Believer, Copyright 1951 by Eric Hoffer.  Printed in the United States of America. Harper & Row, Publishers.

CALL TO ACTION! LET'S DUMP NETWORK NATIONAL NIGHTLY NEWS!

Over the past couple of years the States have become a tame and happy place, so bright and tranquil I don't believe we need those news anchors yapping and yammering at us any more.  Okay, if that's too big a leap, we can still keep the anchors and fill the half hour with the same stuff they're doing now, but let's not call them news anchors, and let's not call it news any more.  Let's change the name to something like "National Nightly People, Places & Things", or "Nation Nightly Lightly" or Netty Nips & Tucks". 

There was a time when with a half hour reporters couldn't shove in nearly enough of the political, economic and social news of the day.  But no more, and the proof is in the pudding:  Let's take last night's ABC Nightly News with Diane Sawyer as a random sample of the deterioration of the broadcast form (from Thursday, September 26, 2013):

Diane began with a sort-of bio/expose of a British lady known as the "White Widow" who was rumored to have been involved in a recent shopping mall terrorist raid on a shopping mall in Africa.  This went on for nearly eight minutes of air time. 

The next section was a minute or two detailing President Obama's displeasure with the Republican House of Representatives, calling them 'blackmailers' for attempting to stop Obamacare.  And this was followed by a minute or so of commentary presenting ex-President Clinton siding with Obama's point of view.  There was no presentation of the actual substance of the disagreement, whatever it might have been. 

The next segment gave viewers the same amount of time to consider that some airline pilots are regularly sleeping in the cockpits while the giant passenger jets in their charge go hurtling through the air. 

Next, a report on a major fast food chain's switch from Styrofoam to paper cups, a few minutes on the Michael Jackson Wrongful Death Suit trial (now in the hands of the jury), a short section on Deals in Shopping Malls, a 'color seg' on a 'high flying workout', and a final report on Bill Gates asserting that the Control-Alt-Delete command wasn't entirely his fault. 

That's the national news for Thursday, 27 September, 2013.  News Lite, not even.  You see what a false pretense the name National News has become. 

Meanwhile, the real jobless rate in our country isn't 7 point something it is over 15 point something because your government has fudged the numbers.  The actual rate of inflation is many times over the official rate because your government jacks the numbers.  The unreported disaster of Obamacare is about to rob the middleclass to give to the poor.  The dirty IRS is covering up the manifest criminal acts they performed over the past five years that most certainly influenced the outcome of the last presidential election: our labor force, our hospitals and our social services are flooded with illegal immigrants: our foreign policy is a shambles: our allies wonder at our lack of direction and our sworn enemies openly poke fun at and make fools of us. 

My God, none of this bad crap can possibly be true.  Surely, that would have been news and it would have been reported if it were true, but it wasn't reported and so obviously isn't true.  No way real Americans can accept this second world, the grim and absurd fictional one I've just made up.  Americans are too smart to believe the mad rant of a fool, too educated to be duped like that.  That second scenario must be something, like,  well, science fiction, a literary device presenting two entirely different worlds  superimposed on each other in the same place and time.  That problematic second world staggering under  the heavy burden of its problems of over-taxation, inflation, government corruption and international bungling, that can't be real, can't be so, can't be the way things really are.  I'll close my eyes and plug my ears.  Look, I'm doing it right now.  Can't be.  Can't be.  Can't be.

THE TRUE BELIEVER - by Eric Hoffer

"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.  When it isn't, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business. 
"This minding of other people's business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national and racial affairs.  In running away from ourselves, we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat."

There have been times in history and places on this planet earth where such incidents were not pervasive.  These United States of America used to be one such place, and, in shrinking sectors, still is. 

THE FREIGHT TRAIN OF LOVE

will make scheduled stops Sept 23 through 29 on the 
ALL ABOUT MURDER THING 
And because of this, price for the e-book is an
unheard of $1.99, one week only.  Click on the
clickable link below to purchase, but do it before
this Sunday evening, because after that the price
goes back up to 2/3 the cost of a Starbucks Vente
Latte: 

http://www.amazon.com/Freight-Train-Love-ebook/dp/B00EOY1LLK/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379972392&sr=1-1&keywords=the+freight+train+of+love

 

The Freight Train of Love by John Klawitter
When true love comes along, you’re just a bug on the tracks.


 

A CLASSIC WAR ROMANCE, ACTION/THRILLER, MURDER MYSTERY The heroine of The Freight Train of Love, Clair Moore, is an ex-NFL cheerleader with a wicked fastball, now doing very well in the real estate market in Southern California. She has fallen for an older man, the highly successful action-thriller novelist Jack Larch. Jack was born in the thick of WWII, but even though he is a so-called boomer baby, he doesn’t see himself that way. Jack thinks he’s found the fountain of youth. With three or four wives behind him, as Jack’s on-again off-again girlfriend of the past ten years, Clair is understandably hesitant to commit, even though she has a growing affection for the cranky old genius. But Jack’s wildly carefree youth is now coming back to haunt him in violent and murderous ways…spelling disaster not for Jack himself, but for anyone showing they might be falling for him.

Here are a few lines from The Freight Train of Love:

His small study desk was the usual mess. I paid his bills, gathered his checks for deposit and read his letters, which were mostly fan mail except for one. This one must have slipped behind the others, because it was dated right after New Years day, the first week in January. It was sad, in a way, because it was from the widow of an old army buddy, informing Jack that his friend had died. See there, how little I knew about the Jack-ster! He’d had another actual friend beside me, and I hadn’t even known it. I stacked the open letters in a pile with the silver letter opener on top of them. Jack would come up later in the day, put the letter opener on the shelf where it belonged and sweep the letters into the waste can without reading them.

Hey, I was done! I jumped to my feet and snapped off the green shade reading lamp on his desk. Then I bounded down the stairs, headed for the door. Free at last! I could practically taste the orange Jamba Juice I was going to have for breakfast.

 I paused on the way out. “Can I drive your new bird?”

“You can drive my bird any time,” Eddie chuckled, but I pursed my lips at him. That wiped the quick grin off his face. Eddie’d had his shot with me, and he’d blown it.

  I gave my voice that school-girlish, pleading tone, and push my full red lips into a sexy pout, “Please, Jack. Please, please, please, please…?”

It was a good act, but Jack was definitely not in the mood. “No, Clair-Bear,” he growled at me. “Christ, my new car’s a classic.”

I tossed my honey-blonde curls. “Jack, don’t be such a bastard. It’s not new and it’s not a classic.”

“Marilyn Monroe owned that car, and she hardly ever drove it. It was her personal car.” “Jack, a couple days ago you put my car on life support.”

There wasn’t much he could say to that. He sighed, “If you have to go out, take the Jag.” I looked over at Eddie. We’d developed our own language. He did a little sideways tilt of his head and a brief squint of his face combined with a shrug that meant Let it pass. “No bird for you, Clair,” Jack said again for effect. I gave Eddie another look, this one that said I was thinking I’d like to tell Jack where to stuff his bird. But I pulled myself back from the edge, the way I generally did with the Larch-ster. The cream-yellow Jag was a sweet little number in its own right (Jack ran around telling everybody it was once owned by one of the stars on General Hospital), and, after all, I needed a ride, and the Jag was light-years better than a taxi.

“Oh, all right,” I told him, giving my voice just enough push so he could figure I was not amused. I put on a show, flouncing through the study like I’d gotten a mad on. My real aim was to make my getaway before Jack had time to change his mind, but then I remembered the letter from his dead friend’s widow. I paused, framed in the doorway that led from the study to the great room, a huge dining hall with a giant fireplace and a long, heavy table that could seat twenty-six people if they owned the right film credits or maybe had been nominated for an Oscar.

“You got a letter from Miami,” I told him.

“The town sent me a letter?”

I’ve already told you; Jack can be a real bastard. I bit my lip, struggling to keep my temper. “No, Jack. The girl.”

“It’s Mi-a Mi-i. Mia My.” He repeated the name for emphasis, then paused, thinking about it. “Jesus, now you read my mail?”

“I’ve read your mail for years, remember? You let it pile up. Checks from publishers, threats from crazy people—everything.”

“Yeah, yeah. What did Mia My say?” Jack wasn’t really listening. His mind was miles and continents away. He was in the southern hemisphere, marching along with Dunk Stingray as the heroic fellow sauntered out of the barren Andes foothills after dispatching three Bulgarian assassins.

“Her husband died,” I told him. I have no idea how those three words will affect Jack. I was just passing on the news from a letter he obviously hadn’t cared enough about to open, even though it had been sitting on the cluttered oak secretary desk in his bedroom for months. He was in another of his foul moods, I had his permission to use the Jag, and all I wanted now was to get out of the study before some other bad thing happened.  But I wasn’t fast enough.

Jack stood up with a sudden jerking motion and shouted without turning around to face me. He was half-crouched over and his sudden piercing cry was that of a man with a big spear or stage-four cancer in his guts. The harshness in his voice startled Eddie, and it was more than enough to freeze me in my tracks. “What?! NO!! It can’t be!! How?” Jack screamed his anguish, talking more to God or the devil than anyone in the room. “How could this happen?!”

As I’ve said, I’d been around Jack for quite a while, competing with the fast young crowd that wants to hang with ‘the new Hemingway,’ as he likes to be called. In that moment I’m sure I looked every bit my nearly thirty-six years…and more. My eyes darted from Jack to Eddie. I was feeling uncertain, and even afraid—not of Jack , but for him.

“Some rich kid lost control of his daddy’s SUV,” I told him. “From what Mi-a Mi-i wrote, I think he saved her when he pushed her out of the way.”

Jack sagged back in his chair. “Yeah,” he said to himself, talking in a low, defeated voice, “That’s something he would do.”

I was staring at Jack, shaking my head, the fun sucked out of my day. Eddie looked out the window and didn’t say anything. I walked back across the huge open area and sat next to Jack in the leopard print chair I use when I have to over-the-shoulder proofread for him, and after a while I gently ran one hand through his unruly stand up hair. “Jack, I honestly didn’t know,” I told him. “You never write him.”

“I send Christmas cards,” he grumbled. He glared at me as if everything was my fault, “Go do your shopping.”

I knew him well enough to let the thoughtless, abrasive side of his personality slide on by. It was part of survival in The House of Jack. I didn’t move. I could hear the antique windup clock ticking in another room as the silence lengthened between the three of us. “What the hell, Jackie-poo,” I said after a while. “I’ve got more purses than I know what to do with.”

To read the reviews on The Freight Train of Love: http://www.amazon.com/Freight-Train-Love-Michael-Klawitter/dp/0983037213/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363105591&sr=1-1&keywords=john+klawitter

And for more about the author click on: www.johnklawitter.com 

 

 

Ready To Push Out To Sea?

The whaling industry is unquestionably cruel. But by outlawing that business, one promotes an expansion of the whale population leading to more incidents of schooners and sailing boats running into whales during the night hours and an increased mortality rate among sailors. Although the human deaths are a direct result of the well-intentioned efforts of the anti-whaling activists, the Green Peace pirate/warriors never, ever think of it that way.

Bags of rice flown to Ethiopia as a result of ads showing wide eyed starving children with bloated stomachs save many of these urchins who grow to breed and create a new generation of children of whom a large percentage surely will die of starvation. It can be shown with absolute certainty that funding these charitable contributions leads to the inevitable deaths of tens of thousands of next-gen humans, but those giving from the heart and the well-meaning charities themselves never think of it this way.

Anti-abortion ads help save countless unwanted babies in a world of seven billion humans that are inexorably squeezing out countless species of animals, some of them, like gorillas and elephants, arguably sentient as (or more) than humans. What an odd, backwards, cold way to look at a multiplication problem...the alternative, however, is to look the other way, that is, until every way you turn you're staring at another person staring back at you. War, of course, is a solution, but the choice between killing the unborn or killing them after they grow a little is tragic either way. Which is avoidable?
And if so, how?

So there's work to be done and hard choices to be made; it is not as simple as passing legislation to save the sand dab or the spotted owl, not accurate to believe we are simply saving the whales or the rain forests, not enough to act empathetically in the pretense of solving an immediate problem while neglecting a grim, looming future. If we are to be the custodians of the earth, we have to begin to accept the responsibilities of our so-called sentiency.

There are futurists who say not to worry, there are plenty planets in the universe that we can in turn overpopulate. Yes, but getting from here to there, that is the overriding problem. As my friend, the late football great David "Deacon" Jones used to say, "To play in the Superbowl, you've go to get to the Superbowl, and to get there you've got to win the playoffs." To which I might add, in the great bowl of life, we're not yet even to the finals.

                   

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IMMORTAL ANGELYNE

Oh, talking about people growing older (which we weren’t, but are now), how many of you have heard of  Angelyne, the blond lady with the come hither look, one hand idly resting on the pink wheel of her pink Corvette as she blows you a kiss?  You know, the famous Angelyne who in the 1970’s tooled up and down Sunset Boulevard, glowing in her tight pink blouse and tight pink short shorts?  If you have no idea who I’m talking about, it might be worth a google.  Back then, her billboards were everywhere around Hollywood, craftily placed near the studios and towering over The Strip.  Angelyne, looking down on the hubbub and madness of show biz, her pouty red lips seeming to beg for just one more something, her marvelous breasts spilling out over her rosy décolletage. 

 Rumor back then was that she had a sugar daddy who paid for the billboards, hoping to fulfill her dream that she might land a role and end up on the silver screen.  To my knowledge, she never did.  She was the original Kardashian girl, never got a lead role in a movie but had those billboards plastered all over the Strip and on a good night you might see her in person at a stop light at the corner of Hollywood and Vine and she just might blow you a pouty kiss or at least wave in your direction, and so she was famous, in her own way, without ever having an actual film career.

 Well, flash forward - I saw her two weeks ago, working a parking lot at an Osh hardware store in Woodland Hills!  No, no, no - honest!  Hang with me here for a minute:  This was at the west end of the San Fernando Valley near my hillside home studio, a long way from Old Hollywood, relatively speaking, but of course Angelyne had the latest model of  her hot pink steed to convey her about.   She was still the stellar attraction, still had matrons and their daughters and old men like me huffing across the parking lot to see her.  And she was still curvaceously plump, still brimming out of her impossibly tight pink outfit.  Unbelievable, I know, but true.   

 What on earth was she doing, I asked myself, and in a flash headed over there to see for myself:  Yes, there she was, gathering quite a crowd as they swarmed over to buy Angelyne t-shirts.  Yep, she was selling t-shirts out of the back of that shiny hot pink Corvette.  “You’ll like the Andy Warhol one,” she told me.  “I always was Andy’s favorite subject.”  She paused, thinking back, maybe about that other blond Warhol icon.  “Well, one of his favorite...”

 Now maybe you think this is one of those sad nostalgia stories about one of those crippled old bag ladies wandering around Tinseltown with broken dreams, and although it easily might be, somehow I don’t feel it is.  Here is Angeline, forty years later, as Ripley always said, Believe it or not!  My God, her makeup was so thick I was afraid her face would crack, but it didn't and she was still flirty and flouncy and somehow she made everything work and the show went on.  She was sexy Angelyne the legendary Hollywood Billboard Queen, bigger than life and looking like she belonged in a Marvel comic book for super-heroines. 

 I had to have one of those t-shirts, for old time’s sake, you know.  Cost me $20.  Don’t tell the wife. 

ONE OF THOSE DREAMS THAT REFUSES TO DIE

It has qualifications that make it noteworthy:  star power, speed, danger, champagne in big bottles and sexy girls.  I’m talking about Steve McQueen’s 4 decades old dream to film the greatest auto racing movie ever to hit the silver screen.  It got rolling when he sold a screenplay to CBS Cinema Center Films, then trying to move up from the small tube to big screen projects. 

Steve personally expounded on his dream once when I was running for him the work print of a featurette I had written and was producing, the subject being ‘The Making of McQueen’s Le Mans Racing Picture”.  His hands went flying expressively in the air and he talked of the big rush competitive racing drivers experienced.  It was like flying with eagles, he said.  He wanted his audience to feel what he felt, and the only way he knew to do that was to produce the greatest racing movie ever.

Unfortunately, his dream wasn’t anything like the screenplay he’d sold to Cinema Center, and the production that followed was one of the sourest in the history iof filmmaking.  His mentor, director John Sturges, quit, declaring it 'the worst experience of his professional career.'  Costs soared.  Three big name Hollywood writers dueled side by side in their own cabanas, churning out scenes they hoped might be approved for the next day's shoot.  Steve sulked, rejected everything, refused to come out of his cabana.  It was rumored he chewed cordite, known from Forsythe's The Day of The Jackal novel to give one a deathly grey complexion.  Time passed.  The picture went into hiatus.  Steve eventually sold a bunch of personal property and put up money to assure it would go forward.

The film  finally was cobbled together  and did make it into movie houses, and, depending on whether you are a film buff or a racing fan, it is either a colossal dud or a decent quasi-documentary.  To me, it is interesting that, 40 years after the event, Steve’s big idea and the way he defied the uber-lords of the Hollywood studio system to pursue his own vision has become a legend.  I can still see him, that skeptical little smile playing on his famous features as he tries to explain why something so ephemeral as a feeling of joy should be worth the effort.  Looking back, I think that maybe it was...but the way he went about it took a heavy toll. 

WANT GEORGE BACK?

This week's poll question in the Los Angeles Daily News was: DO YOU WISH GEORGE W. BUSH WAS STILL THE PRESIDENT? 
YES: 81%  NO: 19%
The average person out here no longer has a voice, but we still have an opinion. 

BOOMER LIT FRIDAY BLOG HOP - Fri 26 April 2013
The Freight Train of Love
by John Klawitter                                                        
When true love comes along, you’re just a bug on the tracks.

I am author John Klawitter, and I’m presenting my novel The Freight Train of Love on the Boomer Lit Friday Blog Hop http://boomerlitfriday.blogspot.com sponsored by the Boomer Lit Group on Goodreads.com

The hero of The Freight Train of Love, the highly successful action-thriller novelist Jack Larch, was born in the thick of WWII, but even though he is a so-called boomer baby, he doesn’t see himself that way.  Jack thinks he’s found the fountain of youth.  With three or four wives behind him, Jack’s on-again off-again girlfriend of the past ten years is understandably hesitant to commit, even though she has a growing affection for the cranky old genius.  But Jack’s wildly carefree youth is now coming back to haunt him in violent and murderous ways…spelling disaster not for Jack himself, but for anyone showing they might be falling for him.

Here are a few lines from The Freight Train of Love:

 

His small study desk was the usual mess.  I paid his bills, gathered his checks for deposit and read his letters, which were mostly fan mail except for one.  This one must have slipped behind the others, because it was dated right after New Years day, the first week in January.  It was sad, in a way, because it was from the widow of an old army buddy, informing Jack that his friend had died.  See there, how little I knew about the Jack-ster!  He’d had another actual friend beside me, and I hadn’t even known it.  I stacked the open letters in a pile with the silver letter opener on top of them.  Jack would come up later in the day, put the letter opener on the shelf where it belonged and sweep the letters into the waste can without reading them. 

Hey, I was done!  I jumped to my feet and snapped off the green shade reading lamp on his desk.  Then I bounded down the stairs, headed for the door.  Free at last!  I could practically taste the orange Jamba Juice I was going to have for breakfast.  I paused on the way out.

“Can I drive your new bird?” 

“You can drive my bird any time,” Eddie chuckled, but I pursed my lips at him.  That wiped the quick grin off his face.  Eddie’d had his shot with me, and he’d blown it. 

I gave my voice that school-girlish, pleading tone, and push my full red lips into a sexy pout, “Please, Jack.  Please, please, please, please…?”

It was a good act, but Jack was definitely not in the mood. 

“No, Clair-Bear,” he growled at me.  “Christ, my new car’s a classic.”

I tossed my honey-blonde curls. 

“Jack, don’t be such a bastard.  It’s not new and it’s not a classic.”

“Marilyn Monroe owned that car, and she hardly ever drove it.  It was her personal car.”

“Jack, a couple days ago you put my car on life support.”

There wasn’t much he could say to that.  He sighed, “If you have to go out, take the Jag.”

I looked over at Eddie.  We’d developed our own language.  He did a little sideways tilt of his head and a brief squint of his face combined with a shrug that meant Let it pass.

“No bird for you, Clair,” Jack said again for effect. 

I gave Eddie another look, this one that said I was thinking I’d like to tell Jack where to stuff his bird.  But I pulled myself back from the edge, the way I generally did with the Larch-ster.  The cream-yellow Jag was a sweet little number in its own right (Jack ran around telling everybody it was once owned by one of the stars on General Hospital), and, after all, I needed a ride, and the Jag was light-years better than a taxi. 

“Oh, all right,” I told him, giving my voice just enough push so he could figure I was not amused.  I put on a show, flouncing through the study like I’d gotten a mad on.   My real aim was to make my getaway before Jack had time to change his mind, but then I remembered the letter from his dead friend’s widow.  I paused, framed in the doorway that led from the study to the great room, a huge dining hall with a giant fireplace and a long, heavy table that could seat twenty-six people if they owned the right film credits or maybe had been nominated for an Oscar.

“You got a letter from Miami,” I told him.

“The town sent me a letter?” 

I’ve already told you; Jack can be a real bastard.  I bit my lip, struggling to keep my temper.  “No, Jack.  The girl.”

“It’s Mi-a Mi-i.  Mia My.”  He repeated the name for emphasis, then paused, thinking about it.  “Jesus, now you read my mail?”

“I’ve read your mail for years, remember?  You let it pile up.  Checks from publishers, threats from crazy people—everything.”

“Yeah, yeah.  What did Mia My say?” 

Jack wasn’t really listening.  His mind was miles and continents away.  He was in the southern hemisphere, marching along with Dunk Stingray as the heroic fellow sauntered out of the barren Andes foothills after dispatching three Bulgarian assassins.

“Her husband died,” I told him.

I have no idea how those three words will affect Jack.  I was just passing on the news from a letter he obviously hadn’t cared enough about to open, even though it had been sitting on the cluttered oak secretary desk in his bedroom for months.  He was in another of his foul moods, I had his permission to use the Jag, and all I wanted now was to get out of the study before some other bad thing happened.  But I wasn’t fast enough.

Jack stood up with a sudden jerking motion and shouted without turning around to face me.  He was half-crouched over and his sudden piercing cry was that of a man with a big spear or stage-four cancer in his guts.  The harshness in his voice startled Eddie, and it was more than enough to freeze me in my tracks. 

“What?!  NO!!  It can’t be!! How?”  Jack screamed his anguish, talking more to God or the devil than anyone in the room. “How could this happen?!”

As I’ve said, I’d been around Jack for quite a while, competing with the fast young crowd that wants to hang with ‘the new Hemingway,’ as he likes to be called.  In that moment I’m sure I looked every bit my nearly thirty-six years…and more.  My eyes darted from Jack to Eddie.  I was feeling uncertain, and even afraid—not of Jack , but for him.

“Some rich kid lost control of his daddy’s SUV,” I told him.  “From what Mi-a Mi-i wrote, I think he saved her when he pushed her out of the way.”

Jack sagged back in his chair. 

“Yeah,” he said to himself, talking in a low, defeated voice, “That’s something he would do.”

I was staring at Jack, shaking my head, the fun sucked out of my day.  Eddie looked out the window and didn’t say anything.  I walked back across the huge open area and sat next to Jack in the leopard print chair I use when I have to over-the-shoulder proofread for him, and after a while I gently ran one hand through his unruly stand up hair.

“Jack, I honestly didn’t know,” I told him.  “You never write him.”

“I send Christmas cards,” he grumbled.  He glared at me as if everything was my fault, “Go do your shopping.”

I knew him well enough to let the thoughtless, abrasive side of his personality slide on by.  It was part of survival in The House of Jack.  I didn’t move.  I could hear the antique windup clock ticking in another room as the silence lengthened between the three of us. 

“What the hell, Jackie-poo,” I said after a while.  “I’ve got more purses than I know what to do with.”

 

 

To read the reviews on The Freight Train of Love:
http://www.amazon.com/Freight-Train-Love-Michael-Klawitter/dp/0983037213/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363105591&sr=1-1&keywords=john+klawitter

And for more about the author click on: www.johnklawitter.com

And please check out the other samples of Boomer Lit at http://boomerlitfriday.blogspot.com.

YOU CAN MAKE UP YOUR OWN MIND, IT STILL BEING A FREE COUNTRY

An old army buddy sent me this link to a chart that, in my opinion, is a clever propaganda piece designed to persuade common, everyday people to the progressive socialist agenda.

John K.

Here is my old army buddy's email to me, along with the link:

There is a ‘talking point’ going around about how Obama and the current administration is pushing a “socialist” agenda and trying to effect “wealth redistribution”. Perhaps a dose of reality would enlighten us – here’s the numbers: 

Have a look at this very effective visual demonstration.
http://mashable.com/2013/03/02/wealth-inequality/


And here is my personal reaction to the 'chart' my buddy sent me:

Obama is pushing a socialist agenda and is redistributing wealth. Starting backwards from conclusion to premise, it is possible to build a chart that proves just about anything. This is one of the weaknesses of scientific methodology, done poorly. Would you like to see a chart "developed by the AMA" that shows that a greater percentage of people die inside hospitals than in restaurants or shopping malls? From the numbers, the stunned observer might well conclude hospitals are death camps. And, if I were a stout believer in the Anti-Hospital League, I could certainly build some persuasive arguments, using examples of bad doctors, nurses and diseases people can only get in hospitals. 

But back to the chart at hand: In my opinion, the dose of reality to keep one's eye on is not in these dummied up numbers presented as developed by the obiquitious Harvard professor... but in the results of the redistribution programs so far put in place by the current administration. Allow me for your bemused consideration to add a few factors to the professor's chart: Let's add the factor of productivity: In other words, if a person is of working age and not working, they should not be counted. And, let's blend in welfare. If a person is on welfare they should tip the scale by a factor of two, because they are actually taking away from the productivity of the whole. If a person sluffs off on a job and is paid more than they are worth, if a worker feather-beds, that is, is protected by a union in a non-productive, unnecessary or outdated position, that should be a negative. People who chose not to work to maintain their personal 'way of living' also have to be considered. Poets in attics, streetcorner beggars, the fellow playing the banjo outside WalMart, the modern monk who choses to isolate him or herself. And where are we to put the ill, the maimed, those who cannot work? If we are doing a non-moral map of our economy, we can't just lump them as 'against' the folks at the top of the chart. And what about the huge, enormous hidden economy, estimated by obiquitous Harvard professors citing other evils of our society as at least 15 to 20 percent of all incomes that go unreported...after all, if we are slapping the wealthy for tax loopholes how about Harvey next door who didn't report that car he won at the church raffle or Jose the gardener and Wille the tree trimmer who report nothing? How about thee and me, fellow middle-income American?

Wow. The chart developed by a relatively unknown ponderer living in Southern California has all the grace and beauty of the one developed at Harvard...and yet it looks stunningly different. You, being a fair and openminded person, have to ask yourself, "How can this be?"

 

Disappointing

Selective outrage is just another aspect of the self-delusion of pop progressivism.  Having strong convictions but weak moral principles, the peepees flail about and make bad decisions and then wonder who to blame.  Stand well out of the way; you wouldn't want to get your shoes wet.   

Publish and Perish

Yes, I am fully aware that when my cousin writes my biography he may use my various pennames, alias and code names and the fact that I wrote so knowledgeably of time travel as proof of my relationships with famous poets and scholars throughout history. 

Last Flight

In a recent post on Goodreads I referred to my short story "Last Flight", and I had a few emails wondering where that could be found.  It was published by Double Dragon Publishing in Twisted Tails IV, under my writing alias, Clay Rhett.  p. 159. 

Evaluation

Well, re-electing Obama wasn't the end of the world, after all.  On the other hand, it wasn't the best choice, was it?  Or are we all still convinced it was?  For my part, I finally figured out one small piece of the puzzle.  Obama isn't solving my problems... he orates constantly, he sermonizes, he lectures, he pounds the pulpit, he hammers away like Castro used to down in Cuba.  If we are now going to insist  repetition is a good thing, well, okay.  But good for whom?  There's lots of noise up on the podium, but I can feel somebody's hand groping big-time in my lower middle-class pocket, you know, the one where I keep my steadily  thinning wallet.

Let's do a reality check:  Has inflation stopped chewing into our hard earned dollars?  Are we paying less for groceries?  For gasoline?  Have our taxes gone down?  Is it costing us less to feed and educate our kids and put new shoes on their feet?  Did we get a big raise this year to compensate for the shrinking value of our incomes?  Did our social security checks increase by 10 or 20% over the past few years to keep up with our expenses?   Has the government reined in their run-away spending?  Let's say it another way.  How badly do we have to hurt before we admit it?  Or is saying we are right more important than fixing our  problems?  The good thing is, in this country nobody forces us to do anything in our own interest.  That is a good thing, right?