Jefe's House

I was thrilled to return to the verdant and lonely shadowland that is the New Jersey Pine Barrens for Labor Day weekend. Three days a’campin’ in the sasquatch-infested Bass River State Forest where I went a’hikin’ and a’fishin’. I kept a big pickerel and threw back a coupla baby cats along the squatchy shores of Lake Absegami.  No cryptids — neither a squatch nor his winged cousin the Jersey Devil (pictured right) — reared their ugly heads, and I searched in earnest, including a night walk around the lake and some daytime recon along the Barrens’ many isolated footpaths for my next visit.  Bigfoot had given me the brush-off, but I did find some sasquatch scat on the Batona Trail. Or was it a load of horse shit? I never can tell.     

More to the point, summer ended with a lovely weekend outdoors.  

Some visual foreshadowing above Lake Absegami. The cloud fish foretold of my...

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...reeling in a keeper moments later.

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*[photos via coasttocoastam.com, cryptomundo.com, and me]

My friend John tossed me this book to review for monthly arts and politics journal The Brooklyn Rail about one of the 20th century’s first women playwrights, crime reporter turned dramatist Maurine Watkins, author of Chicago, which was a biting, satirical straight play long before it was a Kander, Ebb & Fosse musical.  Enjoy the review, or, more importantly, enjoy the book.

Douglas Perry
The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired ‘Chicago’
(Viking, 2010)

Close on the heels of Deborah Blum’s The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York (Penguin, 2010), comes Douglas Perry’s true crime history The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago, which turned out to be a welcome companion piece.

The former is a dissection of New York City’s use and rapid improvement of nascent forensic medical techniques during the Prohibition era.  Murder after murder is lovingly recreated—especially those involving poisons—and then deconstructed by über CSI experts. The latter book takes us to Prohibition-era Chi-town, where the weapon of choice wasn’t poison but pistols, and the bad guys were bad gals.    **CONT’D HERE>>

See?  I told you sasquatches are real.  I’ve known this ever since two friends and I had a Class B encounter with one a few summers ago in the Blue Ridge Mountains while sitting out late to watch the Perseid meteor shower.  Now finally there’s proof in what’s being called the McKenzie River video (you can watch the whole thing here).  The mysterious “McKenzie River figure” is most certainly a Bigfoot, this is indisputable. I’ve done my own thorough spatial-velocitoanalysis (I zoomed in and slowed it down) and can confirm as much:

On second thought, I see a doddering old man with a cane wearing a yellow or khaki colored cap walking on a path along the riverbank.  Rats.

(Absurd how if two humans go by in a boat the Bigfoot community can’t first assume that a third figure enjoying the scenery from the shore might also be a human.  This is a well-traveled area.  It might not be Grand Central Station but it’s a well-traveled area.)

"Everyone knows how against cocaine I am." Yeah, right up against it. So close she leans on it.

Maybe Paris Hilton’s Bible was hollowed out and that’s where she kept her coke; you know, the Bible she started conspicuously sporting  as a fashion accessory just before her sentencing 3 years ago for a parole violation related to a drunk-driving charge?  She carried around that and a copy of The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, both of which I’m guessing she traded for Oil of Olay and skin oranger as soon as she wound up in the big house. 

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I wonder if she’ll buy new copies to carry during her October 27th court appearance for being caught with blow last Friday night.

I’ll be holding a special prayer brunch for Paris this Sunday right after church.  If you can’t attend you can still join in by praying the Paris Prayer with me at exactly 1pm EST:  God, grant me the Percocets to accept the things I cannot change, the cash to change the things I can, and the lawyer to know the loopholes.  Amen.

 [photos via bestweekever.tv and speedselling.com]

A look at how Christians behave on sacred ground:

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From Youtube’s lefthandedart.  “A man walks through the crowd at the Ground Zero protest and is mistaken as a Muslim. The crowd turns on him and confronts him. The man in the blue hard hat calls him a coward and tries to fight him. The tall man who I think was one of the organizers tried to get between the two men. Later  caught up with the man who’s name is Kenny. He is a Union carpenter who works at Ground Zero. We discussed what a scary moment that was for him. I told him that I hoped it did not ruin his day.”

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Now for sale, Jefe’s Rubber Crosses for Rubber KKKhristians. They Bend! Collect all 4. Celtic, Latin, St. Anthony’s and Patriarchal!  

1. ’You shall have no other gods before Me.’

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2. ‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image — any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.’  

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3. ’You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.’
 

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4. ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.’
Except for skipping church to honor our Lord at a protest, like on Sunday, August 22, 2010.

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5. ’Honor your father and your mother.’
Just don’t honor anyone else’s fathers and mothers, especially the dozens of Muslim civilians who worked in the Twin Towers and were killed on 9/11, plus at least 8 (continue reading…)

Sorry, Target. You had me at cheap shorts but I didn’t realize you were anti-American.  I mean anti-gay marriage.  Same thing.  I will no longer buy your inexpensive sweatshop threads.  Best Buy, I already hated you so no surprise there.  Go, guerrilla theatre.

Shareholders weigh in on Target and Best Buy’s political giving

"Respect a bear's space."

And from Boston on to a few days in New Hampshire for a visit to my favorite fishing spot that’s always teeming with wild brook trout, keeper after keeper, day after day. 

One can spend hours in
this
narrow

mountain gorge hopscotching up the rocks in the middle of the stream and throwing a line in to fish each hole and never see another person. 

For obvious reasons the exact location must remain a secret

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betwixt me and the trees. 

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I could tell you,

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but then

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I’d have to thrill you.

Slow men at work near Fenway Park.

Unless one wants to see Jersey Boys the theatre scene seems to be on hiatus in Boston during late July and early August but that’s okay, there’s plenty of street theatre everywhere one looks.

I’ve spent the past few days in Beantown, my first time here in at least ten years, and have enjoyed seeking out alternatives to the usual sights like the “Glory monument,” Beacon Hill, the Old South Church, the Old North Church, and Faneuil Hall. If you’ve never seen these nation-making locales (and reminders of our genocide about which residents of this so-called bastion of liberalism still live in a deep, dark denial) then  make them your first order of business when you come to Boston.

Bosch.

If you’ve seen them, then consider something off the tourist trolley line like the Museum of Fine Arts and its extensive collection of mummies and 15th century Flemish religious paintings, the kind that, with their vibrant colors and expressive faces, look like they were painted yesterday for a graphic novel. 

There’s also the Mapparium at Christian Scientist headquarters, a 3-story stained glass globe built in 1935 that one enters through a gangplank and explores from the inside.

Okay, I confess I did buy a ticket for one of the trolley tours. They’re an easy way to get around the city and take in a few sights at the same time.  While waiting in line to board I heard the dad of a Red Sox apparel-clad family say “…blah blah blah Roanoke blah blah blah.”  I asked if he was from Roanoke, Virginia, my hometown, and he said yes.  I reminisced with him and his wife about the world’s largest man-made star and the world’s smallest Graceland before they departed with their kids at the first stop, Fenway Park. 

I rode the whole loop but by 3/4s through the ride the trolley had become completely empty except for me. It was rush hour and we were crawling so the driver-guide asked if I’d mind our skipping the last three historic site stops so he could take me straight back to the final stop and knock off for the day. I told him no prob, and as a result I got my own private trolley tour of sites not on their usual  itinerary, like the location of the 1950 Brinks armored car robbery, the 1919 molasses flood and the Crispus Attucks monument on Boston Common.

I also recommend the Back Bay Fens which I (continue reading…)

This private school entrance is also spatially not in service. I checked.  But when they get it fixed I’m outta here.

Very cool that an Oscar Micheaux  (1920s director and screenwriter, including the 1925 silent Body and Soul featuring a true US hero, Paul Robeson) was issued this summer.  I spotted it at the post office today and had to buy a sheet. Now I just have to sit back, relax, and wait to need to mail something.  And then — look out.

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[image via harlemworldblog.wordpress.com]