SOME FAVORITE QUOTES FROM THE ONLY ACTUAL SOCIALIST IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, BERNIE SANDERS

MY COMMENT ON THE ISRAELI/PALESTINIAN CONFLICT AT THE MOMENT

In every conflict, both sides tend to exaggerate, distort, misdirect, misinform and attempt to control information, at least to some extent...but...and it's another big BUT...when one side has a lopsided dominance in power over the other (as giant corporations do worldwide over most governments, media, small businesses and ordinary people, or brutal dictatorships do over their subjects, or "whites" have historically over "blacks" in the USA, or Brits over native Irish in Ireland's history, or Germans and most nationalities over Jews in their nations, etc.) cries of victimhood from the dominant power side come off as petty and indulgent...as does Israel when complaining that a people their government drove out of their homes and off their lands—and continue to do that in "occupied territory"—are throwing stones at them or sending rockets into usually unpopulated areas of Israel (because they fear a direct hit on an Israeli target with many casualties would mean an even more brutal response from the Israeli military than those in the past that have been so lopsided)...

And the kidnapping and murder of teenage boys on both sides (or any other criminal act) should be treated like a crime and the criminals found and brought to legal justice...And the Israeli government rightfully can brag about their usually more successful attempts to do that as in the present situation it would seem...but not turn it into a sideshow of revenge retaliations on the general populace of either side...obviously...though not obvious to many directly involved...

PS: It is totally hypocritical of Israel's government to demand no inclusion of Hamas in Palestinian governance because Hamas denies Israel's right to exist, when Israel's own government includes parties that deny Palestine's right to exist!

STAGE MEMORIES

Unlike most actors, I never appeared in live theater much. I started acting professionally when I was almost forty, having been in some student and underground—or what would be called low low budget independent—movies here and there since my first of those when I was twenty-two. And though I had a love of the art—or craft, depending who you're talking to—of acting, and wanted to express my creativity as much through that as I had been doing in my writing since I was a boy, I still took it on as a day job to pay for food and rent for me and my two kids I was raising on my own, with the help of women friends now and then, and for my poetry writing. And amazingly it often did.

So I didn't do much theater because I was concentrating on movies and TV to pay the bills. Of the few times I did a play, I had some great experiences, but the most amazing in some ways was my first real stage gig in my early years in L.A. when I replaced the actor who had opened only days before in the role of the counter man in Lanford Wilson's BALM IN GILEAD in its premier L.A. run. It not only was a terrific experience, but even more importantly, a lasting one in terms of relationships.

I am still in touch with a lot of folks from the play and more importantly FEEL close to everyone who was in it. There was a connection made over the couple of months we did the show that has lasted almost three decades and continues to. And the fellow cast members I'm in touch with all feel the same about that and they're mostly people who did a lot more theater than I did. Yet this experience shines as something as unique for them as for me.

Here's a shot of the cast. I can't remember all the names so I won't even bother, except to point out me crouched down in the lower righthand corner and the late Jesse Aragon in the center of the shot, being given the rabbit ears treatment by a man I still connsider my brother (as I did Jesse) Ty Granderson Jones. Whoops, I already named two. I'll leave the rest up to someone with a better memory than my post-brain-op one. But whether I can name everyone in the cast or not, I love 'em all.

A TRIBUTE TO THE RED, WHITE & BLUE (OF MY FACEBOOK FEED)

[click to enlarge the above if your eyesight's like mine]

GILBERT SORRENTINO'S IMAGINATIVE QUALITIES OF ACTUAL THINGS

Someone gave me this book, if I remember correctly, and I was glad to have it because Gilbert Sorrentino was a good friend of my good friend Hubert Selby Jr.'s (they had known each other since boyhood or maybe their teen years), and Sorrentino was always a favorite of my intellectual friends in the downtown Manhattan avant-garde literary world, especially the "Language Poets" etc. (and this reprint of the 1971 "novel" was put out by Dalkey Archive Press which specializes in obscure and difficult avant grade literary works).

I had tried to read Sorrentino ever since I first encountered his work in the 1960s, and tried again in the 1970s when my downtown friends praised his work, and then when Selby and I became friends in the '80s. Sorrentino would come up in conversations with Selby in ways that assumed I knew Sorrentino almost as well as he did, and was familiar with his work. But I found Sorrentino's writing not that engaging.

Years later I was talking to a West Coast book critic with a very bright and insightful intellect, and he started talking about how important Sorrentino was and how his work would last and would be admired by the avant grades of the future and all that while Selby's wouldn't, except maybe LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN, but he said the other books of Selby's were "disappointing" and added even Selby's old friend Gilbert Sorrentino thought so, according to this critic, and had said as much in conversation.

I was kind of stunned but not entirely surprised. This stuff is pretty predictable much of the time. The difficult and distancing and full of literary tricks and loaded with irony is generally what gets the critical acclaim and the avant nod. And Sorrentino's IMAGINATIVE QUALITIES OF ACTUAL THINGS is all those things.

Not that the tricks aren't sometimes fun, and certainly all the insider references in this "novel" to the downtown scene of an era—which I was part of in my own way—long gone kept me interested as did trying to figure out who some of the characters were based on...but the idea of a story being told by an unreliable narrator whose characters are based on real characters who might not be real etc. etc. can sometimes grow tedious for this reader.

It may turn out to be true that the novels of Hubert Selby Jr. with perhaps the exception of LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN will not be remembered or considered important in the future, or maybe even now (I know Selby was disappointed when his later novels didn't even get reviewed in this country, and were mostly put out by a British publisher) and Sorrentino's will be. And Sorrentino certainly seemed like a good guy and I know my friend Selby loved him, but...IMAGINATIVE QUALITIES OF ACTUAL THINGS and the characters in it, including the narrator who sounds a lot like Sorrentino, did not leave a lasting impression on me, whereas every narrator and character in every Selby book he published has stayed with me even till now, and I'm sure will till I'm gone.

I hope I didn't disappoint whoever gave me the book. Let me make clear I enjoyed many aspects of it and even felt engaged in it for a while. But in the end, I'll be passing it on to someone who might dig it more.

ME ON A HORSE IN DEADWOOD

When they asked if I rode horses I said something like "I haven't been on a horse in a while," leaving the impression I once rode. But what I meant was, since I was a little boy in the 1940s being led around in a circle on a pony with someone else holding the reins down the Jersey shore in Belmar behind an amusement arcade.

So when I met the wrangler on set I told him that, and he said no problem he'd get me a gentle horse who had a lot of experience and then he taught me the four basic techniques for making it move forward, back up, and turn right or left. I was on the DEADWOOD set for three weeks and shot one scene over and over again of me and Peter Coyote and two horse stunt men galloping into Deadwood to jump off our horses and cross the dirt street.

I loved that scene because by then I'd been in the saddle a couple of weeks and was so happy to have mastered the basics well enough to pull it off. I also at the time hadn't had cataract surgery and needed my glasses to see but they were too modern so had to ride blind, almost literally. Especially in the night scenes during which I had to carry a flag in one hand and avoid potholes in the dirt street and hope the horse didn't get spooked by the many fires in barrels in the scene.

I can't remember the horse's name, which I'll blame on the brain operation, but I remember how gentle it was with me and how easily and promptly it responded to any indication from me on the reins. And to get it galloping, to the light pressure from my boots on its sides. I was so happy to be riding a horse being filmed on a set, the fulfillment of a childhood fantasy, I could have stayed in the saddle another three weeks. Unfortunately all the scenes of me actually riding (as well as others) weren't used in the end in order to fit in more plot stuff.

This is a shot of me in costume on the horse that I think the make-up guy took, the one who helped me glue on the mustache every morning. I'm a lucky guy to have had such a rich life, which it continues to be.

OBVIOUS CHILD

Went to see OBVIOUS CHILD tonight with some friends, and was pleasantly surprised to find myself laughing and nodding and leaving the theater completely satisfied as well as impressed. I'd heard about Jenny Slate, the star of the film, that she was the new kid on the comedy movie scene to watch. And she is. Her screen presence, at least in this flick, is charmingly vulnerable and daring at the same time.

She's helped by some great direction and writing from Gillian Robespierre (and three other women who share writing credit) and some terrific performances from the other actors including Jake Lacy as "Max" her straight man (in all senses of that term), Gaby Hoffman as her best female friend and especially Gabe Liedman as her best gay male friend and hysterically funny comedian, as well as other older more familiar actors who also put in great performances.

And yes, it is another independent movie about quirky people in their twenties and thirties [and the seemingly knee jerk elementary school lower body function jokes I generally judge as lowest common denominator distractions but she makes work better than the usual Judd Apatow routines] etc. but, and this is a big BUT, it is also a precedent-setting cinematic experience in some ways. It's almost shocking to realize that I'd never seen a film before that treated abortion like an experience that sometimes is the best choice and a part of life (at least for some) and also showed more of what that experience might be like than I'd ever seen on film.

It's a unique little flick, and Jenny Slate is a unique screen presence, though she did keep reminding me of an old and dear friend from L.A. who was acting in film and on TV in the 1980s and '90s but in roles that didn't showcase the traits she shares with Slate, or at least Slate's character in OBVIOUS CHILD, Lycia Naff, who in person is just as charming and funny and quirky and brutally honest as the character Slate plays [minus the fart etc. jokes], and attractive in very similar ways as well.